Category: Andrew Fiala Blog

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This is Not the Worst Year Ever

Time magazine declared 2020 “the worst year ever.”  That’s obviously not true.  In the 1850’s, millions were held in slavery.  In the 1860’s, over 600,000 Americans died in the war that freed those slaves.  One hundred years ago, the Spanish flu killed 675,000 Americans, while women struggled to gain the right to vote.  Our current troubles are minor in comparison.   

Time magazine’s hyperbolic headline can be forgiven as a ploy to sell magazines.  But people succumb to hyperbole.  We tend to magnify present suffering.  And that can impede critical thinking.   

History is not one story, it is many.  When historians look back on 2020, they will see failure that caused unnecessary suffering.  But they will also witness ingenuity that mitigated harm.  We should learn from our successes—and from our failures. 

Some of what we suffered in 2020 was the result of human greed, ignorance, and pride.  The Covid-19 death toll was made worse by selfishness, ignorance, and lack of leadership.  The fires in California were the terrifying result of human-caused climate change.  The social divisions and racial tensions of 2020 are the result of systematic stupidity and political polarization. 

But human intelligence prevented things from being even worse.  Health care systems evolved.  A vaccine was developed.  There were government bailouts.  School teachers invented online learning.  Firefighters demonstrated heroism.  And Americans educated themselves about racism and the American Constitution. 

Life includes both tragedy and triumph.  We fail.  We suffer.  We learn.  And we grow.

Resilience is a process of growth and development.  Resilient people generally avoid absolutism and hyperbole, which cause despair.  Defeatism undermines the spirit of invention, discovery, and growth. 

Consider a recent essay by Chris Hedges on cultural despair.  Hedges warns that despair can fuel the wish for magical solutions that can turn into fascism.  I’m sympathetic to his critique.  But Hedges’ assessment is itself dispiriting.  Hedges gives voice to despair.  And this leads him to conclude that reform is impossible.  He concludes that we are faced with a choice between tyranny and revolution. 

Hedges’ dilemma is typical of despair.  We tend to dwell on the darkness without noticing the light.  But history is more complicated than a stark choice between tyranny and revolution.  And there is no such thing as “the worst year ever.” 

Evaluation is relative and evolving.  Some people fell in love in 2020.  Others died.  Some families had children.  Some experienced divorce.  Some people began new careers.  Others lost jobs.  Art was created and scientific discoveries were made.  But businesses failed and crimes were committee.  For some people, 2020 was a great year.  For others, it was miserable. 

And yes, there was Donald Trump.  But there were also movements of social protest.  The Constitution was tested.  But the system worked.  Polarization increased.  But decent people sought common ground.

We must resist oversimplifying when we judge.  These are not the best of times.  Nor are they the worst of times.

Some new age advocates of mindfulness celebrate “non-judgmental awareness.”  There is value in this.  But non-judgmental presence is only a tool and a mood.  We need to judge things.  Judging helps us learn, invent, and improve.  But we need to be judicious in judging—moderate and prudent. 

We can learn a lot from acceptance and gratitude.  The mind can be sharpened by quietness and presence.  Thinking and learning require judgment and discrimination.  If we practice pure acceptance, we will never learn anything. 

If we are overly judgmental and hyperbolic in our judgments, we will also fail to learn.  We have to see what works—and what doesn’t.  We must also remain open to the new and the different.  We must be creative and inventive in our response to the world.

To say that this was the worst year ever is a kind of cop out.  It is a shoulder shrug and a sigh.  Shrugs and sighs are OK—for a moment.  Then it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get back to work.  Instead of dwelling on what went wrong, let’s learn from our mistakes.  We can also learn from our successes.  And with some luck and a lot of labor, the next year may be better than the last.

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Horseshit and the Human Condition

Why do snake-oil salesmen and con men succeed?

Because human beings have a great appetite for horseshit. 

Horseshit is a term that I learned from my grandfather, who was one of the world’s great artists of profanity.  My grandfather taught me a lot of interesting things, for example, that H. was Jesus’s middle name.  Like other men of his generation, grandpa distinguished horseshit from ordinary bullshit.

Kurt Vonnegut said that we prefer useful and comforting horseshit.  Hemingway defined horseshit as abstract, metaphysical nonsense.  Jack Kerouac warned that the world was trying to drown us in horseshit.

The philosopher Harry Frankfurt described bullshit as speech divorced from truth.  Horseshit is like bullshit.  But while bullshit entertains, horseshit seduces. 

A story about the fish that got away is bullshit.  A conspiracy theory is horseshit. 

Horseshit tantalizes.  It promises false nourishment.  It’s dangerous because it’s trying to sell you something.

I used to hike with my dogs on a horse trail.  They couldn’t resist the stench of fresh manure.  They would gobble it up by the mouthful.  And then they would vomit.

Human beings are similar.  We swarm to warm piles of nonsense and gorge on garbage. We humans are not typically interested in truth.  We prefer ideas that flatter and gratify.  We want to be titillated and entertained.  Truth is boring.  We prefer strong and spicy narratives.   

Malicious agents know how to manipulate this.  They spread horseshit.  And we buy it.

As my grandfather used to say, there are more horse’s asses than horses.

All of this helps explain the ordure oozing out of the White House.  Courts and election officials have repeatedly confirmed the validity of the 2020 election.  But Presidential power burnishes bullshit with the sheen of authority.  Prominent Republicans refuse to point out that the emperor’s new clothes are stained with runny hair dye. 

My grandfather would have asked a simple question about all of this.  Which is more likely—that there is a vast secret conspiracy to steal an election in “the U.S. of A.” (I can hear him adding “for chrissake”…) or that Trump is spreading horseshit?    

Horseshit is not unique to the Trump Era.  In 2004, Ralph Keyes published a book called “The Post-Truth Era.” Keyes pointed out that George W. Bush lied and manipulated the truth about the Iraq war.  But before Bush, Clinton lied, as did Nixon.  And so on—back to Caesar and Pericles.

In a recent op-ed, Nicholas Goldberg reminds us that lying is part of the arsenal of authoritarianism.  He cites George Orwell and Hannah Arendt to make his point.  But horseshit is as old as Plato. 

Plato did not like the bullshit stories of Greek religion.  He thought those myths taught the wrong lessons to the gullible masses.  Plato suggested that the philosopher-king should create new myths to manipulate the masses into buying his utopian scheme.  Thus Plato suggested replacing ordinary bullshit with tyrannical horseshit. 

Bullshit and horseshit have existed since human beings began talking.  Hunter-gatherers told bullshit stories around the campfire.  That is how art and religion were born.  Bullshit became horseshit when the shamans began profiting off those stories. 

Horseshit is meant to manipulate.  The bullshit artist is a lightweight in comparison to the horseshit hawker.  The bullshit artist is a good-natured raconteur.  But the horseshit vendor takes advantage.  Bullshit is playful and light.  But horseshit is denser and tastier.  It often even seduces those who sell it into believing that the manure they are spreading is true.

At some point reality bites back.  But often it is too late.  When your dog gorges on manure, he’ll eventually vomit.  But it is better to avoid the binge and the purge. 

The cure for all of this is fresh air and a good shovel. 

To see beyond the horseshit, Kerouac climbed a mountain. There is wisdom in taking a moment to rise above the stench. 

But you don’t need a mountain top to climb above the horseshit.  You only need self-control and a skeptical spirit, critical thinking and the scientific method.  Political checks and balances also help.

Stay focused on what is true.  Attune your nose to reality.  Feed your soul on nourishing ideas.  And don’t let anyone sell you a load of manure.

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Giving Thanks for Simple Things

Covid-19 has transformed Thanksgiving.  This year we should shelter within our bubbles and stay close to home.  Rather than complaining about a downsized holiday, let’s use this as an opportunity to rediscover the wisdom of living modestly and being thankful.

Ancient wisdom celebrates gratitude and simplicity.  Ancient sages teach us to be grateful for simple things and to celebrate abundance without extravagance.

Thanksgiving has strayed far from this idea.  Rather than a time to count your blessings and give thanks, it became an orgy of over-indulgence.  The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is a department store advertising gimmick.  The Black Friday frenzy is far removed from gratitude.  Good riddance to these extravagances. 

The Puritans of New England would be appalled that this festival of gluttony and greed commemorated their colonial adventure.  The Puritans connected thanksgiving with repentance and purification.  Instead of feasting, early Americans typically linked the ritual of giving thanks to fasting. Thomas Jefferson called for” public days of fasting and thanksgiving” when he was governor of Virginia.  During the civil war, Abraham Lincoln called for several days of “fasting and thanksgiving.”  In 1863, when Lincoln declared a national day of thanksgiving, he called for a day of prayer and “humble penitence.”   

This may go too far for those of us with a more secular orientation.  But there is wisdom in humility and abstinence.  You don’t have to be a Puritan to understand this.  Abstinence clarifies values.  Fasting heightens appreciation for simple things.  A thanksgiving feast that breaks a fast should consist of modest fare, eaten mindfully.

Mindfulness, gratitude, and abstinence are linked in most of the world’s traditions.  Muslims practice something like this during Ramadan.  The Buddha fasted and meditated on the way to enlightenment.  Ancient Taoist texts speak of “fasting of the mind” giving rise to the freedom of emptiness. 

This is not as far out and mystical as it sounds.  Mindful self-restraint quiets envy and desire.  The consuming self is like a vacuum.  It sucks things in: food, pleasure, and possessions.  But all of this frantic sucking produces anxiety, fear, greed, and envy. 

The mindful self stops sucking.  It becomes less focused on its own emptiness and more aware of its secret abundance.  The Greek sage Epicurus said that we already possess all that we need in abundance.  But we are confused.  We mistake wealth for happiness.  And we allow greed to make us ungrateful.  

When we discover self-sufficient abundance, it overflows.  It then becomes easier to give—and to give thanks.  The consuming self is a sucker and a taker.  The grateful self is content with what it has.  And in its contentment, it discovers compassion.

The ancient Greeks advise us to gratefully accept what fate gives us.  Seneca recommended an occasional fast as a reminder to be thankful.  This trains the spirit to be content no matter what fate sends our way.  Stoic serenity does not depend on money or good fortune.  Rather, it is built upon simplicity and gratitude. 

Seneca expressed these ideas in a letter criticizing the Saturnalia, the Roman equivalent of our holiday season.  He complained that preparations for the annual orgy went on all year.  And he noted that the season culminated in drunkenness and vomiting.  Seneca said it is wise to avoid all of that and to learn to “celebrate without extravagance.” 

The pandemic can help us re-learn this ancient lesson.  The usual extravagances have been cancelled.  And we are forced to abstain.  Rather than complain, let’s rediscover the wisdom of simplicity and gratitude. 

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Quit Complaining

In his victory speech Joe Biden said, “put away the harsh rhetoric, and lower the temperature.” He’s right. Let’s be done with grievance and aggravation.  Constant complaining cramps the soul and sickens society. 

My grandfather put this crudely. He’d often say, “quit your bitchin’.” A poet would say, “Let us not be aggrieved.”

The grievance machine runs on bile.  President Trump is complainer-in-chief.  He has griped and grumbled for years: from American carnage to a rigged election.  Conservative commentators copy his kvetching and complain about the “frauds and liars” in the liberal establishment. 

Of course liberals love lambasting Trump. They also lament his popularity.  After the election a headline in Politico said, “Democrats look at Trump voters and wonder, ‘What the hell is your problem?’”

All of this complaining causes heartburn.  Grievance produces grief.  Anger begets animosity.  And a small mind gets focused on small things.

There is a time and place for righteous indignation—but it is a narrow place and a limited time.  Genuine injustice ought to enrage us.  But rage can burn a hole in your heart if it is not transformed into creative activity.

Common sense teaches this.  Complaining about being hungry does not fill your stomach.  Whining about the wind won’t stop it from blowing.  But griping and groaning will certainly make you more miserable. 

Ancient wisdom traditions tell us to bear hardship without complaint.  They emphasize resilience and teach us to give up grousing.  The Stoics recommend taking things as they come without wishing them to be otherwise.  The Taoists teach us to stop fussing and fuming by learning to flow with the changes .

The wisdom of patient endurance and going with the flow is obvious.  But quiet retreat is not the whole answer.  The further lesson is to get to work.  We ought to transform resentment into resourceful action.  If the wind is blowing, close the window.  If you are hungry, cook something. 

Scoop Nisker used to say, “if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.”  We might add, “if you don’t like what’s happening, then either fix it or shut up.” 

Partisanship feeds on outrage.  The headlines called this the most important election of our lifetime.  The Republicans claimed it was a fight against socialism, anarchist violence, and leftist totalitarianism.  The Democrats claim.ed it was a fight against fascism, authoritarianism, and malicious incompetence. 

This created historically high voter turnout.  But a third of eligible voters didn’t bother to vote.  While the partisans are screaming, a third of Americans opted out.  Maybe the screaming has turned them off. Some non-voters are ignorant and lazy.  But some are sickened by the vitriol of the public sphere.

Grievance is a sales technique.  It keeps us glued to our screens.  Clever partisans fan the flames of grievance and complaint. But this divides us and closes people’s minds.

Our complainer-in-chief is a master of the dark art of aggravation.  His vain boasts and vile complaints are mostly hot air.  But his followers love it.  His opponents love to hate it.  And the viewing public keeps tuning in. 

The Trump era is like spicy food.  It’s exciting.  But it disrupts the digestion.  Some people get addicted to the cycle of heat and misery.  Others can’t stand the smell it leaves behind.

It’s wise to stop binging on spicy stuff. Most people intuitively understand this.  It is difficult to live life permanently aggrieved. Active people have little time for grievance.  We have work to do, families to care for, and activities to enjoy. 

Of course, there is irony in complaining about complaining.  At some point, we just need to stop it.

The world’s traditions teach us how to lower the temperature. Instead of grumbling, be grateful.  Instead of complaining, have deep conversations.  And instead of pulling your hair out, put your hands to work.

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The Trump Prophecy and Related Absurdities

These are boom times for doomsday predictions.  Some folks view Trump as the Chosen One.   A survey from earlier this year found that 35 percent of Americans think we are entering the end times.  Only 37 percent disagree.  And this week, Pat Robertson predicted Trump would be reelected but that an asteroid would destroy the earth. 

These prophecies are laughable.  But people apparently believe this stuff.  So let’s take a critical look at Robertson’s prophecy in order to see why this kind of thing is nonsense.

The first problem is that while Robertson says Trump will win the election, he also encourages his viewers to vote.  But if God has revealed that Trump is going to win, then why bother to get out the vote?  The very idea of prophecy undermines free will and agency. 

After Trump is sworn in, Robertson says the country will be torn apart by civic unrest.  Robertson predicts five years of subsequent peace and final death by asteroid.  But don’t these predictions give us a reason not to vote for Trump?  Could we avert the unrest and the asteroid by voting for Biden? 

Proactive prevention is not on the prophet’s table.  Indeed, the prophets of doom seem to have a kind of malevolent hope (as I discussed in another column).  They appear to look forward to the chaos and to the end. 

Now let’s turn to the tortured Bible interpretation that grounds this prophecy.  Robertson cites snippets of text from Ezekiel, Isaiah, Thessalonians, and Matthew.  This textual cherry-picking is silly.  The prophecy jumps through the Bible, extracts a few ominous texts, and offers a wild and anachronistic interpretation.

If you study the Bible critically, this approach is absurd (see my What Would Jesus Really Do?).  Critical Bible study undermines the idea that there is a hidden message in the texts.  These texts were created by human beings.  They evolved over time in response to historical forces. 

Scholars suggest, for example, that Isaiah was written by more than one author (this may be true of Ezekiel as well).  These texts were written for an ancient Jewish audience during the period of Jewish exile in Babylon.  Paul’s letter to Thessalonians is written centuries later and addressed to a newly formed Christian church.  Matthew was written a generation later for an audience who had witnessed the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. 

The meaning of these texts is grounded in these contexts.  It is absurd to believe that ancient authors wrote these texts as a warning to people in 2020.  If anything, we should heed Matthew’s warning against false prophets (Matthew 7:15) and Paul’s suggestion that we test prophecy and hold fast to the good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). 

And now, about that asteroid.  Ancient people feared objects being flung from the sky by angry gods.  But today, we know that there are no gods up there to do the flinging.  We understand that planets and space rocks orbit the sun at high speeds and sometimes cross paths.  We know that the universe is billions of years old.  Species have come and gone.  Some have been destroyed by asteroid impacts. 

But none of this was known to Ezekiel, Isaiah, Paul, or Jesus.  Nor did these ancient prophets know there were continents on the far side of the world.  So why should we believe that they made predictions about contemporary American life?

And why should we believe that God is the kind of being that gets angry and destroys His own creation?  The theological assumptions of prophetic Christianity turn God into a petulant bully. 

The theological critique of this kind of thing has been around for a long time.  One clear statement of the idea comes from Thomas Paine, whose thinking about religion and political life inspired the American Revolution.  Paine criticized “the prophecy-mongers.”  He said, “belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

Of course, in the American system, people are free to believe what they want.  But critical thinkers are also free to criticize the absurdities of prophecy.  That’s the way enlightenment works.  It is a slow process of sifting and winnowing.  Enlightenment is not an asteroid that strikes like a thief in the night.  It is critical activity that requires daylight and human agency.