Brother, can ya spare a little empathy?

I was inspired by a charming meme I've seen go around. I guess I had to see it at the right time, or enough times, or from the right person to inspire me to say something possibly worthwhile in return.



I really do agree. You know the hardest thing about opening up, though? I bet it's no different regardless of gender, this thing: we feel the need to put out something aspirational, funny, and in no way add to the lurking potentially depressing atmosphere around anyone who may be reading/ listening. We know we should let all the negatives, go, and wield the light, and not be self-centered. And sometimes, we also think no one will express empathy or support, and we'll feel like we opened up and hah, here's more proof you can't count on anyone (which is not empirically so, but we're not talking about being purely rational). But learning to avoid that risk of vulnerability is as bad in its own way as people being dramatic for attention. But you can't understand how others you care about feel if you lose track of how YOU feel. How YOU feel- if you are striving to keep it to any kind of standard- is going to call on you to be truthful It might very well require you try to express yourself to someone else. There may be a quality in that listener- hell, sometimes the fact they aren't a great listener! Or maybe it's just your dog, who at least won't interrupt, talking. The qualities of your audience will allow you to see the shape of your own thoughts. Know thyself.
Even if you simply sit down to write, like this, you at least get to see what's going on inside. If you're inspired to write to someone- like half of this was intended- they just might evoke strength and perspective in that expression.


I want to be clear: I feel like a lot of the meanness going on these days stems from an unhealthy attitude about this very thing! Its consequences are catostrophic. On virtually this very day, two years ago, I watched an inability to simply go get therapy build, along with a lot of attitudes festering online, fuel a man's destruction of all his closest family relationships. So many horrible opinions are the result of men disconnected from their feelings, and then, the ability to see other points of view. It flows right into the lives of many bitter women, too. It is bitterness, including each gender, that leads to demonization, cruelty, blind stupidity- opinions that then utilize a fraemwork of other falsehoods that seem to connect with the entire negative identity. The denial of Facts themselves can be followed right back to our opinions of ourselves. When we reject the truth about ourselves, we reject truth in objective matters outside ourselves, also. It's all part of one big embrace of lies.

We can't be too hard on ourselves for not knowing everything- who knows everything? We can't be too hard on ourselves for having emotions, or we will have only hard emotions. Palm trees do not break in a hurricane, so often, because they are stong, but pliant. They naturally know when to bend as a response to great pressures. But sure enough, they are damn near impossible to break, because they are not rigid, yet they are not brittle. They can lose a few fronds and stay rooted.

Guys need to bear in mind the healthiness of sharing vulnerablity, at least, with someone they trust. It's so easy to get that impulse mixed up with ridiculous, even vampiric, drama regentry, or for the inherently noble, being negative or egotistical. Some guys are truly bearing an empathic load and great responsibilities. If they will only let their friends add their strength, they will find more capacity to summon that will- and benefit everyone in their life, all the more.

Do you feel we agree less on even calling the sky blue?

May I ask if you feel the discourse on what is Factual has degraded?

Or has it come to include and amplify the voices of more people who are not versed in a better set of objective facts? Or worse, has an agreement on what is moral and just- more intangible values- become the true victim? Do we delude ourselves there was a time when, disagreements abounding, there was a better consensus on 1) those moral values and 2) an evolving body of factual knowledge, which required at least a proper challenge via scientific method?

I am sure this also relies on what body of people we're discussing, too, and when. I would say the consensus 2) seems to have fallen into open dispute relatively more than 1), whose existence as a "are people inherently good or bad?" (Yes.) debate's continously documented.

I did grow up Evangelical, so I'm long since acquainted with facts chosen to serve religious doctrine (or The Truth, depending on how you feel there). That mode of thought, at least to me, either seems to have gone mainstream, or more people who previously had no opinion (often because they thought it was over their heads or not interesting). What passes for knowledgeable has changed in that we seem to be looking in the back of the book, if you will, for answers, then proclaiming conclusions without any rigorous exploration to 'show the work.' I've described a horrible way to turn in Math homework. Is that an analogy for what we now do as a society? Or am I selling the average person a bit short? Are we reaping the ugly underside of Convenience Culture, in pre-fabricated opinions we can then parrot passionately? I will say, religion- actual religion- was sort of fashioned that way for most believers. They were not expected to spend time on ecclesiastical studies at a scholarly or seminary level. What we were asked to do was read our Bibles, then take the Word of God at its word. You would grow stronger as a Christian if you read scripture and prayed. Most likely, you would come listen to the preacher deliver the inspired Word in sermons-and that was fine. Particularly if you attended whenever possible.

This pattern is also why I have in recent years recognized an idolotrous fervor for what passes as politically-inspired pieces of conversation. Now, some, many, still observe Evangelical culture as well. Some affiliates, and especially many outside that culture, wonder how its Jesus-inspired messages, as He is its central storyline figure, do not apparently clash with the rhetoric and aims of conservative policy. I do believe a fellow with whom I am barely acquainted reminded me, in a post to a mutual friend, that Evangelicism and Conservatism have at their core a distrust of human nature.

Now, returning to my initial question, which I'm not entirely sure I've supported with the tangent above, I ask if you think now, moreso than in decades before, people who never before professed interest in or credentials for being experts, or having given much thought really to the lines of cause and effect in policiy,

are adopting social media to drive and be driven by what is, when not examined, propaganda and misinformation.

I do think the average person did feel fairly confidently informed in their stances, however, simply because then, as now, the conclusions they've adopted seem reasonable.
But what I want to know is, are we divided more than ever by a subjective sense of reality that accepts an objective stream of testable hypotheses? Are we, wary of propaganda designed by nefarious parties that do not share our interests, becoming religious in our political fervor in a way that replaces religion, which, by its secular nature, embodies larger swaths of humanity who might dispute religious doctrine or mark the box, "I don't know," in favor of party lines? To the point of an evangelical level of devotion, and celebration of its figures and truths? Are we fallen to idolotry?

To my original point, Science, so long as you approached it with experiments you could reproduce, and results that moved the definition of factual consistencies, always held open the door, via method. to build upon its body of probable knowledge and acquire new discoveries.
Were we ever, more so than now, in accordance as to what's factual?

Did we ever agree more on things the way we agree the sky is blue?

Did we, not long ago in the past, have a better consensus of the facts from which we might proceed?

Is it worse now ---are we being conditioned to disagree more vehemently? Or does History contain our tumult's consistent cycles? Are we revsiting ideologies now we seem to have shed as inadequate to human survival?

Are we now, with each our definitions of 'blue' in our experience, unable to agree on problems beneath the blue sky?

Do we agree less on even calling the sky, blue?


Be chill, cease ill

Keeping facts straight in a crooked world: politics edition

A consensus arose that the center in this nation (and others I can think of) was moving right. (It also simultaneously looked like numerous civil rights-type positions were becoming mainstream.) Lately it's looking like there's no sensible 'center' that would actively incorporate both poles. The right outside of Trump is becoming a fringe; the Buckley type is hardly in evidence, politically, and forget liberal Republicans- that's been evaporating since '68. Meanwhile there's an active struggle between established Democrats and the activists. There's a serious, and possibly necessary, trend away from anyone campaigning as or supporting a 'moderate.' One cannot, after all, compromise by offering an equal seat to lunacy and lies.

My one caveat in this very emotionally-tempting partisanship- made worse by the evaporation of civility- is we don't want to lose our ability to discern fact and opinion. Lies, disregard, injustice- I hardly apologize for my emotional rejection of these things, and aims supported by said tactics. The disregard for objectively probable information- the abandonment of Reason- in the service of humanist principles accelerates this polarization. Simply put, I'll keep fact-checking to the best extent possible rather than seeking comfort in labels and tribalism. This, from someone whose life was personally poisoned by this Trumpian strain of thought: my wife was harmed and a gun taken out in our presence by a family member who will never know our company again without acknowledging culpability. So, I'm not impartial, nor, aside from an occasionally-obtained philosophical objectivity, do I respect all opinions as equal in quality.

I want to encourage critical thinking, pragmaticism (not austerity in favor of the status quo of disparity), and exploration of ideas. I do not wish to see the intent of liberal philosophy subsumed by propaganda in the vehement rejection of said humanist principles. I find this personally difficult sometimes, honestly, but we must keep the truism in mind: two wrongs don't make a right. I don't intend this as an argument with any positions stated in this thread, merely, my two cents on achieving some sort of vision and optimism that is not empty, while in no way surrendering to the depressing current of polarization and illogic.

Remembering a teacher: my Aunt Linda

It's Aunt Linda's birthday. It's my sister's birthday, too!

Like I have been and now am daily for the best pay of my life, Aunt Linda was a tutor, often, as I do now online with kids across the globe, from her home. She dedicated her teaching time generously to the staff of her church, Trinity Christian Academy. One of her rewards was affordable tuition for my sister and I. I believe the start we got there created a learning ability for which there'd be no turning back. She loved Jeopardy! and read quite a lot. I'm actually quite a lot more like Aunt Linda than Mom :-D

Aunt Linda and Grandma White were taking care of me while Mom was in labor with my sister. Mom called her before the sun rose to let her know the Time Had Come. Aunt Linda's birthday memory that year was feeding me spaghetti, which ended up a bit of everywhere: my hair, my high chair, the floor, all the usual twenty-one month old child's targets. Deb was born about 3:37 that afternoon.


We used to pick vegetables as a family in the garden outside her bedroom. We would pick figs off the tree by her window. I still have a scar from a pebble gained while running along the dirt driveway off the Old Calhoun Road that ran between that garden and her side of the house. I used to pick over the facinating room of hoarded items from the 1960's that showed me memorabilia from her teens, items from her time attending Bob Jones University, and various odds and ends, including the old typewriter either or her Mom used back then. I never could get the old camera to work, but that typewriter became my prize. I created fantasy baseball standings based on characters made with my sister, and wrote my first comic book plots, using up the ribbon several times. I still remember replacing the corrective ribbon. The whole thing closed inside a case.

We used to play board games and card games like Uno with Aunt Linda, both at the dining room table there, and later in the living room of the house where she moved with Grandma and Grandpa in 1991. I still remember peeping at Aunt Linda's answers while playing "Mastermind"- a guessing game using colored pegs. She never let me forget how I leaned over to give her a 'spontaneous hug' and have a look at her hidden pegs! We thought it was so funny at the time.

She embroidered a "Braves" shirt for me. Why I loved #4 so much, I can't say: I liked Biff Pocoroba's name, I guess, even if he was nowhere near so memorable as #3 and #5, Hall of Fame-caliber sluggers Dale Murphy and Bob Horner. She gave me my first 'job': rising at the same hour at which I teach today, the crack of dawn, to walk her dog, Shaggy, a mixed mutt bred from our miniature Daschund, Brandy. He had a crooked back leg and long hair. He was her baby for thirteen years. I earned the money for some much-desired Masters of the Universe figures, about a quarter or so at a time. It was a formative experience.

We used to go camping, all seven of us, for several years. I remember our asthmatic hike down a trail, where I was so convinced we'd gone the wrong way, as it seemed to go on forever. I thought I had the same problem she did. I'm still pretty allergic here in Georgia.

Aunt Linda. You taught us both our first piano lessons in your room. I used to compose my own tunes, which I favored over my lessons. I can't even remember all the first lessons I must've learned from you. Spending the night with her was the greatest adventure my sister and I knew, back then. She would set up cots for us in her room, in a very old house with intimidatingly high ceilings and the kind of massive front porch that has gone out of style.
She'd do due dilligence in getting us through dinner and washing up, and watched tv and played games with us. You have to understand, after I was eight, her house was a place I would casually just walk into, a refuge from the boredom of living out in the country. I killed so many hours borrowing their phone to talk to DAvid Holt. I still tried to break off and actually hang out with them, but I was reaching the age where you really get intensely curious about the outside world. But for many years before then, Aunt Linda was pretty much my best friend. I just know we shared a love of Garfield up til my adolescence. Like Peter Parker, I had an aunt to love, too.

She never married, and helped care for her parents in her somewhat early spinsterhood. I'm nowhere near so old-fashioned, but whether she shared her love of the Atlanta Braves and Baseball Digest, or games, or Lewis Grizzard, she invested so much into me in those long bottom-of-our-shared driveway conversations. I loved her dearly. I don't think she could quite comprehend our pilgrimmage to California- it's exactly the sort of thing she'd never have tried. For years she'd type up the Vent, the reader feedback column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper, for me on her old PC for years. It was full of snarky and sometimes insightful comments. She really had no better idea what to do with a computer besides process words. I always wondered afterwards what might've happened if she'd told her own stories. She dearly loved Eugenia Price, and got some books signed by her.

Sadly she fell out of touch near the end of her life, at 60, in 2009. She had successfully lost a lot of weight, but never met anyone to love. How difficult it was learn her elderly friend down the street had harped on and on with the prediction she'd gain the weight back. I think she had a habit of expecting the same honesty she gave others, too. But that's another story. There are certainly sad passages I carry with me, but indulging in sadness would be too bittersweet a way to eclipse what should be a testament. I want you to know her, too, and if you did, I want you to remember.

She always spent time with both the elderly and the very young. Playing cards with her lonely elderly neighbor came as naturally as tutoring an array of children.

You could find her talk radio playing every single morning. She helped call in our birthdays for the radio, because back then, morning radio was still something families did together. I'm not even that old, as yet, but imagine. It's like I grew up, not only in the country, but in another time altogether.

She put so much into many of my formative traits, I can no more forget her than the parents I so resemble. I have a single class for a change, in a few minutes, so I'll close by saying happy birthday in memory of a sweet, sometimes taciturn, often sarcastic and clever woman who loved us dearly. I taught vocabulary on the piano- an instrument she first taught me. I hope through me she's still passing along a brighter start to a new generation, a passion for serious learning bespeckled with good laughs and creativity.