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Moral Imagination

3/8/2017

A couple of days ago my friend,

Sharon,*

...posted the following message on her Facebook page:

To which I would add: It's also called being possessed of a moral imagination.
I learned this term - moral imagination - last year from an New York Times op-ed piece

by author and Columbia University Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, who happens to be a transgender
woman.

According to Ms. Boylan, the concept of moral imagination was conceived by 18th Century Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke (ironically, the founder of modern conservatism),

...and consists of "the idea that our ethics should transcend our own personal experience and embrace the dignity of the human race."
     The key phrase here is "transcend our own personal experience"; as in, our ethics should give us the ability to see the humanity in everyone, the ability to feel empathy and concern for someone whose situation or suffering may not the be the same as our own. As Ms. Boylan points out in her article, "The root cause of so much grief in the world is our failure to do just that."
      And of course one of the correlatives of that failure is the "otherization" of those who aren't within the circle of the people we've been carefully taught to accept.
          "I have seen people open their hearts," writes Ms. Boylan, "when some otherized soul is revealed to be a member of their own family, or a friend." So true.

I can think of an example of this phenomenon in Ohio's Republican Senator Rob Portman, who was anti-LGBTQ rights until his own son came out as gay. Then Portman became pro-LGBTQ rights, or as much as the Christian anti-LGBTQ coalition within his base would allow him to be. A beneficial thing, of course, for both the LGBTQ community and our society as a whole, but hardly a demonstration of moral imagination.

   And, as Ms. Boylan so eloquently adds, "too many people are still met with hatred because whoever and whatever they are is something others have never been compelled to imagine."
     I suppose in my case it could be argued that my own commitment to the cause of LGBTQ rights comes from the fact that I have a daughter married to a transgender wife.
       And yet I've been told by more than one person that, considering the hateful attitudes that abound on this planet, my daughter and daughter-in-law lucked out to have to have hatched in my nest, so to speak,

...my LGBTQ-rights activism pre-dating my knowledge,

...and my daughter's knowledge,

...that my son-in-law would one day be my daughter-in-law.

I suppose I can't argue that point, even though I consider myself the one favored by fortune to have been blessed with Theresa and Callie.

In her article, which was written last summer, Jennifer Finney Boylan advocated that it was time to bring moral imagination back in style.
I can't help but wonder if the silver lining to the dark Trump cloud over our country may be that our Disgrace-in Chief is, in fact, bringing moral imagination back in style

*...a woman of great moral imagination.

References
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/opinion/bring-moral-imagination-back-in-style.html?_r=0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke

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The Panhandler In Panera: A Parable

3/5/2017

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There was an op-ed piece in Saturday's New York Times praising the declaration by Pope Francis that giving to panhandlers is always right, that if anyone approaches you on the street asking for money then they're in need so just give them the money, no questions asked, and don't worry about it.

Every Wednesday morning I meet at Panera with a group of friends that I call my Posse.

   There's a young man who now and then comes into our Panera and goes from table to table begging money from the customers. His shabby clothes hang off his emaciated frame, his face is pale and drawn, he moves like a zombie but has twitchy manner about him. I never give him money nor do my friends, though we've offered to buy him food. Like a naggy mother I've tried to press him to sit down and eat or drink something, a bowl of soup, a sandwich, some coffee, something, but he always refuses. He just wants money. Money for bus fare, he says in a torpid, listless voice. He can be persistent, and it aggravates me to see him hovering over people sitting at their tables and booths. I can't stand to watch people hesitantly pull out their wallets, I want to yell, No! Stop! Don't give him that money! But I don't yell it and people, our instinct to want to help each other being part of our nature, do give him money. Especially the older people.
       A couple of times I've sought out the manager. Sometimes when the manager kicks him out he hangs around outside the restaurant to hit people up on their way in and out. Once the manger called the police on him.
      Of course I only see him at Panera on the Wednesdays when I'm there. I imagine he must come there on other days as well. And he must have other places where he panhandles.
       Last Wednesday he was back again. He looked more haggard, more drawn, worse than ever. After he tried without luck to pick up some money from my friends and I he stopped at the booth across from our table where there sat two middle-aged women. It was the usual scenario: the women hesitated while he hung over them, waiting for them to relent, which they finally did. Don't do it! I tried to call to the women via mental telepathy as they dug into their purses.
      After the man ambled down the aisle looking for the next likely hand-out I impulsively sprung up, went over to the women in the booth and informed them that that guy comes here regularly, that he's just looking for drug money.
     One of the ladies told me that that was between himself and God, that if someone asks her for money she's going to give it to them, it's not for her to decide what they use it for.
      Duly humbled and put in my place by this disciple of Pope Francis, I returned to my seat, where I should have stayed in the first place.
      Following his statement that one should always give money when approached for it, Pope Francis was asked, "But what if someone uses the money, say, for a glass of wine?" His answer was, “If a glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life, that’s O.K. Instead, ask yourself, what do you do on the sly? What ‘happiness’ do you seek in secret?”
       What I would like to ask Pope Francis is, "But what if someone uses the money to buy crystal meth?"

Reference
"The Pope On Panhandling,"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/opinion/the-pope-on-panhandling-give-without-worry.html?_r=0

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Get Out And See "Get Out"

3/3/2017

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     It's Saturday afternoon, which means it's time to start thinking about a movie for Saturday night, right?
     Have you seen "Get Out" yet? Have you heard of "Get Out" yet?
     If not, I recommend you get out to see it - soon, before everybody else has heard of it and gotten out to see it.
      Because I predict that "Get Out" is going to be the next creep-a-licious, jump-through-your skin cult classic, up there with "Wait Until Dark," "Fatal Attraction," "Pacific Heights" and probably a whole bunch of other scary movies which I haven't seen because I'm not a fan of scary movies. I'm especially not a fan of those scary movies labeled "horror" movies because I always imagine "horror movie" to be a synonymous with "slasher movie."
   And yet this is not always the case. "Get out", for example, which I saw last Saturday night, is marketed as a "horror movie" and yet, as I was thankful to learn as I sat - or I should say, shivered - through it, it was not "horror" of the "slasher" variety.
      On the other hand, the movie "Logan," which I saw last night, the latest in the series of X-Men movie sagas,

...this one about the fate of X-Man mutant Wolverine,

...in his old, grey, post X-Men years,

...though categorized not within the "horror" genre but rather of the "super hero" genus, portrayed plenty of slashing. In truth, though, what else would you expect from a movie about a fella with knives coming out of his knuckles? But then the plethora of slashing in "Logan" hardly scared you or made you jump, as you could see each slashing episode coming a mile a away, were cheering it on, even, because every one the dozens of slashees in "Logan" was a bad guy who had it coming big-time. Which, back to my point, didn't make the slash-ful "Logan" any kind of a horror flick.
"Get Out," on the other hand, though it lacked gallons of gore, is plenty scary enough to earn its "horror" movie label,

...more catering to one's fear of the unknown, the not-understood, fear of things that go bump in the night, things that may or may not be hiding in the closet, people and things that may or may not be what they seem, wheels within wheels, the windmills in your mind,

...all played out in the setting of a white girl who brings her black boyfriend home to meet her liberal parents, who seem to be trying too hard to show that they're perfectly fine with their daughter dating a black man.

When I saw "Get Out" on its opening weekend in Columbus, the line at the Stoneridge Cinema in Gahanna was out the door.

And I'm betting, once word gets out about how good this movie is, it'll end up - or should end up - on everybody's "must-see" list. Which is why I say to go see "Get Out" soon, to avoid having any of the movie's bumps, jumps and spoilers sprung on you by everybody who got out and saw it before you did.
One more thing I'll say about "Get Out," in fact, what really makes it such a good movie, is that woven into the scary unwinding of the story are discussion-worthy racial themes; "Get Out" might even be considered a twenty-first century allegory for - oh, well, I won't even go into what it might or might not be an allegory for. Go see it and decide for yourself whether "Get Out" is the subject for a future a college course on race relations or just an ingeniously enjoyable scary movie.

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The Worst Kid In The Math Academy

3/2/2017

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Around about 20 years ago I volunteered as a math tutor in a middle school in a poor area of Columbus. I was one of a group of math volunteers who worked under a devoted teacher - truly, I found all the teachers at this school to be so caring and devoted to their students that to this day it makes my blood boil when politicians blame teachers for poor results among students in schools in impoverished districts, but that's another subject altogether - anyway, I worked under this wonderful teacher whom I respected and very much liked except for the fact that she always gave me the worst of the worst-behaved students to work with because, supposedly, I was so patient and kind.
In truth, though, I believe it wasn't so much that I was patient and kind as that I was kind of meek and long-suffering,

...sort of like the the wimpy teacher in the tough school played by Charlie Day in the movie "Fist Fight" (which I thought was a great movie, by the way).

     Anyway, the principal of the school at which I worked came up with an idea for a special supplementary tutoring program called The Math Academy which met after school once a week and on Saturday mornings for a term of 8 weeks. The teacher whom I volunteered under was to be program's moderator, and I also volunteered to be a Math Academy tutor. All the school's students were invited to participate in The Math Academy and for those students who attended every class there would be a special recognition ceremony at the end.
     The moderator of The Math Academy gave me two students to work with, two 6th-grade girls, with the warning that one of the girls was the worst-behaved student in the school. Yet there was a feeling of optimism among the staff because the girl, the least likely of students, wanted to be part of The Math Academy.
      The girl turned out to be a too-fun-loving kid whose problem was that she always needed to be the center of attention. Much to the delight of those students who enjoyed her antics and fed her bad behavior by their laughter and acknowledgement, she was non-stop disruptive and teased, tormented, or otherwise distracted the children sitting around her,

...sort of like a female version of Jonah, the disruptive middle-schooler in the TV series "Summer Heights High."

   I soon learned that part of this child's behavior problem was that she had a learning disability. She didn't understand 6th grade math, was bored and confused by it, and so kept herself amused and gained a sort of bad-girl status among her classmates and teachers, a status she would never have been capable of attaining from academic achievement.
     In truth The Math Academy was a waste of time for this student, who was in dire need of a different, more serious kind of intervention. She certainly wasn't capable of doing the work required for The Math Academy and her presence was detrimental to the rest of the class. BUT...she did show up for every Math Academy class, and for this she was honored at the awards assembly at the end of the 8-week term. During the assembly the principal called the girl up to the stage and praised her for meeting his personal challenge to her: to participate in the The Math Academy with 100% attendance. This she had accomplished - to the surprise of everyone - and the principal was proud of her, the teachers were proud of her, the whole school was proud of her, and she certainly looked proud of herself and happy as could be as she received an award, a special T-shirt, and a standing ovation from the school. And though I'd been at my wits' end trying to control this wild child, still indubitably the worst kid in the school, I, too, stood and applauded for her shining moment of under- achievement.
       The other night I found myself thinking of that shining moment of my little Math Academy student from all those years ago as I watched Donald Trump receive voluminous praise for his mediocre but surprising accomplishment of standing before Congress and reading a speech from a teleprompter in a civil tone of voice without indulging in his usual misbehavior. The content of his speech may have been the same garbage as we're used to receiving from the current occupant of The White House, but this time it was whip-cream-covered garbage, and it was nicely delivered, the delivery looming larger for some than the content, anyway.
    But to those out there who are cheering Donald Trump for his shining 90 minutes of under-achievement, don't be too deflated when he goes back to the usual antics of the worst kid in the middle school.

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Moral Imagination

The Panhandler In Panera: A Parable

Get Out And See "Get Out"

The Worst Kid In The Math Academy

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