Peter Clothier 2010-02-09T21:05:13-05:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=peter-clothier Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Peter Clothier Good old fashioned elbow grease. Buddhism: A Review tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.437768 2010-01-26T18:47:59-05:00 2010-01-27T17:45:16-05:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
If, as I do, you look around in dismay at the hierarchies that seem to dominate our planet and our nation, you may stand to benefit from the non-attachment and the equanimity these teachings invite us to consider. You, as I, may have watched in sadness and bewilderment the stalemate of what purports to be our government, the disasters -- both natural and man-made -- that beset us, the stubborn denial of the human species in the face of its own ignorance, indifference, and outright cruelty, too often in the name of religious fervor. Like me, you may find these to be times when despair and withdrawal seem to be the only rational answers.

Time, then, perhaps, to pick up your copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buddhism by Gary Gach (Alpha Books, 2009) (This is a revised version of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism.) For some time now I have labored under the misapprehension that I had already published my thoughts about this useful and engaging handbook, but a search through my computer files finds no mention, and this revised edition has already been out for months. It's time to correct my omission.

There are, it's true, much shorter and much less demanding guides to Buddhism on the market. But most of these serve only to reduce their subject to its simplest outlines. This book does not. It looks at Buddhism from every angle; its origins in the life story and the teachings of the Buddha, and how they come down to us; the history of the spread of the religion to different parts of the East, and finally to our own hemisphere; the variety of its manifestations, including Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Theravadan, and Pure Land; its similarities with other religions and its differences; the core teachings themselves -- the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Precepts, and so on -- and not least their application to everyday life; and the basic practice of meditation, with ample examples of the huge variety of how-to's.

All of which may sound intimidating, but Gach makes the journey a pleasant and often light-hearted one. His narrative is filled with parables and poems (Gach himself is an enthusiastic translator of haikus), illustrations and engaging side trips into pithy expressions of wisdom by the great master teachers. And the truth is that this is not a simple subject, though many in the West have attempted to make it so, reducing complex thought to simplistic clichés. Gach is careful with detail, respectful of both the religious and philosophical complexities of Buddhist thought and practice. His book deserves to be read with the same careful attention; it is not one to read cover-to-cover, but one that asks for time and patience. It will reward those who bring that attention to it, not really "Complete Idiots," but rather those with a curious bent and an open mind, ready to learn from what is a serious source of the kind of human wisdom and compassion sorely needed in a world that becomes increasingly vulnerable by the day.

The precious and I think perhaps unique quality of Buddhism is that it specifically rejects the fanaticism that other religions seem unfortunately to foster; what it offers instead is the rational alternative of a Middle Path, respectful of all life and insistent at its core on the principle: Do no harm. Gach's book will serve you as a comprehensive, thoughtful and intelligible guide.]]> Breathing in the Buddha tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.401196 2009-12-23T13:14:08-05:00 2009-12-23T13:14:39-05:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
Here's a fine new publication by the documentary photographer Alan Brigish. Breathing in the Buddha is "a photographic exploration of Buddhist life in Indochina," and it documents a journey that takes Brigish through thee major cities in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, and at greater length through city and countryside in that elusive country, Burma. (The old name has a resonance for me personally that the new one, Myanmar, seems to lack. Perhaps it's the bad old British Empire genes, but I go with Burma.)

Brigish sets out with his camera, "curious about how Buddhist daily life works" in these four Indochinese countries. His lens is then appropriately directed toward two points of interest: the faces and activities of the people--most of them living in states of economic deprivation--and the serene beauty of the Buddhist temples and the stunning artifacts that grace their often opulent interiors.

It is, frankly, at once a compelling and an uncomfortable contrast. The photographs are absolutely gorgeous, reflecting the beauty of their subjects--first and foremost the faces, young and old. The young are fresh-faced, bright-eyed, their emotions close to the surface, whether in child-like joy or, sometimes, pain, suffering and sadness. The old reflect the hardness of lives lived in circumstances far less comfortable that those in which we live here in the West; and, in the case of Burma, in a society repressed by a tyrannical regime. In this context, the aesthetic opulence of the temples reminds me inevitably of the disparity between the architectural grandeur of the medieval church and the real lives of people living in the shadow of the great cathedrals. The monks, saffron-robed and smiling, seem a bit removed from the social circumstance, protected in their spiritual cocoon; and yet their omnipresence clearly provides solace, along with their reminder of values that transcend the suffering of the daily grind.

What Brigish is anxious for us to see, I think, is that human beings can find fulfillment and contentment in their lives, a kind of happiness, without those things that have come to seem essential to the Western mind; property, convenience, comfort--material well-being. The text of his book is the narrative of his journey and his observations along the way. Its subtext, importantly, included at intervals throughout the book in font that mimics the handwritten word, is the Buddha's fundamental teaching of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. It's a point-counterpoint strategy, image and text, narrative and teaching, that creates the rhythm that moves the reader through the book.

Brigish is wise to have hewed to the photo-documentary format here, and to have insisted as much on text as on image to convey his story, as well as on a modesty of scale. I'm sure it could have been tempting to go for a large-format, coffee table book replete with the kind of full-page, sumptuous images his photographs could have lent themselves to; but that would have been to introduce another, more damaging contradiction--the condescending Romanticization of hardship, the beautifying of the deprivation and suffering of others. Brigish has managed to avoid this trap with the commendable restraint of his presentation, a desire to share his observations without fanfare or eclat.

In the same context, I was happy that Brigish kept his story personal. It reads like a journal, the intimate record of a journey and of the meanings he himself discovered. His inclusion of the Buddhist teachings feels more like an act of personal realization than a need to preach some pre-established dogma or illustrate a point. Rhyming with his images, they offer themselves for reflection and establish a perspective through which the reader/viewer is invited to share the experience in a meaningful way, to "breathe in" the pages as they turn.

Not having visited any of the countries through which Brigish leads us, I am grateful for the opportunity of this glimpse into a world that was previously unknown to me--which is, after all, the familiar pleasure of all good books.

]]> Survival Of The Selfless? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.384619 2009-12-14T11:25:30-05:00 2009-12-14T11:26:09-05:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/ The Compassionate Instinct, edited by Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh and Jeremy Adam Smith, is subtitled "The Science of Human Goodness."

The collection of essays by various scientists includes not only a great deal of research information but also a good deal of story-telling and personal anecdotes challenging the old survivalist assumption that we humans are hard-wired for self-interest. The newest studies of primates are now telling us a different story--that such qualities as empathy, forgiveness, community, cooperation and trust are as much a part of the survival imperative as the ones that have commonly been accepted: competition, aggression, the urge to dominance and so forth.

The book is divided into three parts, the first examining "The Scientific Roots of Human Goodness"; the second, "How to Cultivate Goodness in Relationships with Friends, Family, Coworkers and Neighbors"; and the third, "How to Cultivate Goodness in Society and Politics." Heaven knows, these qualities and practices are needed if our species is to survive the near-disaster it has brought upon itself, and it is encouraging to know that the scientific community is beginning to promulgate a rational undergirding for them.

Perhaps--who knows--we can use some of this research to our mutual benefit. Who knew, for example, as research has revealed, that in combat situations--at least until recently--the majority of soldiers fired their weapons into the air rather than targeting the enemy? The revulsion for killing a follow human being was so powerful, so innate, that many went through the motions without actually following orders to kill. A hopeful discovery. But of course, once discovered, the finding resulted in the development of new training techniques to overcome the "natural" instinct." The kill rate in our recent wars has significantly increased.

Still, "The Compassionate Instinct" is a worthwhile read, and one that suggests that what we are discovering about ourselves as a species may, just conceivably, help us to redirect our sense of who we are and where we're going with this fragile planet of ours. The question remains as to whether we have yet "hit bottom," to revert to the language of addiction--and we all seem to be addicts, don't we? We're addicted to our fossil fuels, to our comforts and conveniences, to the kinds of food we eat, to our "rights"... To paraphrase yet another great writer, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, we must change our lives. ("Du musst dein Leben aendern.")

I had a lot of trouble with the second book, the third in "The Art of Happiness" series by the Dalai Lama and the psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler.

The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World purports to be "written by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D." I say "purports to be" because it's not, and that's the difficulty I have. It's really a book written by Howard C. Cutler M.D., based on his interviews with the Dalai Lama. It's the third in "The Art of Happiness" series. I reviewed the first for the Los Angeles Times about ten years ago, and I had the same discomfort with that book as I have with this.

The preponderant bulk of the book is written by Dr. Cutler. True, he includes ample quotations from the Dalai Lama, but His Holiness's actual words occupy, at a guess, no more than a tenth of the book. Otherwise, it's Dr. Cutler's gloss on the Dalai Lama's words, or Dr. Cutler's leading questions, which can go on for literally pages. At times, it's Dr. Cutler putting words in the Dalai Lama's mouth. All of which is intensely distracting, for this reader, from an otherwise useful and interesting book.

That said, The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World has much to recommend it, and it would have been a simple matter to have labeled it differently, and accurately, as a book by Howard C. Cutler MD based on interviews with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

The wisdom of the Buddha and of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition has much to teach a world that is beset by troubles today: war and violence, disease and hunger are the prevalent conditions in too many parts of the small planet which is increasingly overpopulated by our species. Through our human attachments to our own needs and greed, we are despoiling our environment and depleting our resources at an alarming rate, and creating the conditions for as yet unimaginable suffering and grief. That the Dalai Lama is able to smile and nod and spread compassion, as he does, despite this monumental mess is certainly worth Dr. Cutler's efforts to understand the fundamentals of his beliefs and practices.

And it's not too complicated. The Dalai Lama--if I may be so bold, as Dr. Cutler is, to be speaking for him!--believes in the fundamental goodness of his fellow human beings. He believes that all conflict and violence can be attributed not to some evil gene in the human species but rather to ignorance and the misperception of reality. He believes that if we were to see things clearly, without the narrowing of vision and the distortion brought about by our delusory thinking, we would all get along because it is in our interest to do so. That if we were able to listen to each other with compassion, to truly put ourselves in place of those we oppose or hate, then such abominations as racism, religious intolerance and extremist nationalism would be seen for what they are--distortions of reality rather than truths about our human nature.

The skeptics will regard these arguments as pollyanna-ish nonsense. There is in the contemporary world an ingrained, deeply inherited belief to the contrary: that the human species is by nature violent, aggressive, competitive, protective of its territory, rejective of the "other." And yet, as Dr. Cutler points out--and this is really the thesis of his book--there is an ample and growing body of scientific research that supports the Dalai Lama's position, a view that is amply supported by The Compassionate Instinct.

The multi-million year hard-wiring of the human brain is not exclusively geared, it now turns out, to the aggressive qualities long thought to have been essential to the "survival of the fittest." More recent studies of human behavior, and of the behavior of our cousins, the primates, are revealing that survival skills also required such qualities as compassion, mutual understanding and collaboration, even selflessness.

It's no coincidence, surely, that these two books should appear at a moment when we badly need to reappraise the way we share this planet, as a species, with our own and others; and when we are stand poised on the brink of the global disaster that could so easily be caused by the delusions of ignorance, mutual suspicion, fear, and greed.



]]> LA Art Rounds tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.367834 2009-11-23T13:18:33-05:00 2009-12-09T17:25:37-05:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
We're in town for the weekend, and will be spending the better part of it checking in on the art galleries to see a number of shows we have been postponing. Yesterday, Friday, we started out at the furthest point from our house, LA Louver Gallery, where we had been looking forward to seeing the latest collection of paintings, drawings and etchings by Tom Wudl, whose work we have followed since the early 1970s. I was especially interested because I had read, in advance, the text included in the announcement, that the work in this show were inspired by the Avatamsaka Sutra, the "Flower Ornament Sutra." This painting...


and this drawing...



... should give you some idea of the result. (Please use the link above for titles and other details. You'll also find a useful statement by the artist.)

In an art world where it seems that size is still regrettably some measure of success, these pictures dare to be quite tiny in scale. (The gallery even offers a magnifying glass for close examination!) They are meticulously executed, accumulations of finely painted details which come together to create the overall image in much the same way as pixels create the digital image--or atoms gather to create what our eyes perceive as objects. I see each of these pictures as a meditation, an enactment of practice as an aid to focusing the mind even as it creates an object of remarkable, compelling, breath-taking beauty. Acts of uncompromising, dedicated attention, they require the same commitment from the viewer, inviting the eye to participate in each moment of their creation. They become, seductively, without overt or pious religious intent, objects of spiritual devotion in the same way that icons and mandalas have done over the centuries. A truly wonderful experience.

From Venice, we drove back to Culver City to Cardwell Jimmerson Gallery to see the work of a good friend, Peter Sims, who has been a loyal member of our artists' group for years in a fine exhibition that also includes the work of another friend, Bob Burchman, and a third artist, Ron Griffin. Titled Abstraction in Reverse, the show explores the interface between representation and abstraction in the work of these three artists. Peter Sims, our friend, has been taking as the "subject" of his paintings tiny fragments from the world of design--a candy wrapper, a bar code--and enlarging them into what look to be large-scale geometric abstractions. In this remarkable painting (excuse the cell phone photo; be sure to link to the exhibition site, above, for better images) ...


... he takes one small corner of a tapestry by the Bauhaus artist Gunte Stoelzl and transforms the image on a huge canvas, building up layer after layer of paint (160 lbs of it!) until the thing becomes a gleaming mass of pattern, flowing form, color. The texture of the paint mimics, in a strange way, the texture of the weaving, but takes it to a place the original designer never could have imagined--a place where paint itself reigns as the monarch of the moment of its making. In this way, the artist transforms the cultural trivia of our times into an aesthetic reality of its own--showy, sexy, seductive, sensual, rich in sheer abundant presence. The trite phrase "a treat for the eyes" takes on a whole new meaning here. This is a visual banquet.

Bob Burchman--a sometime reader of my daily blog, The Buddha Diaries, I'm happy to report--has a different approach. He paints reflections of art works, captured as photographs and rendered as faithfully as possible in paint on canvas. Here's the reflected image of a famous work by the Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha...


... with, in the background, the reflections of the other pictures in the exhibition in which it is included. Skillfully done, these paintings leave the viewer's eye in the illusory space between the real world and its mirror image--and the mind in the same space between reality and illusion. For the Buddhist, it's all an experiential, existential reminder of one of the basic truths of the Buddha's teaching: that what we perceive to be the real world is no more than the construct of our minds. Burchman's paintings place us smack in the middle of the enigma of our selves and our relation to the apparently solid world around us.

Ron Griffin also addresses the illusory nature of reality. In paintings like this one...


... the seemingly collaged common objects--sheets of office stationery, envelopes--are in fact painted on the surface of the canvas (the printed lettering, reversed, is done by a transfer process). In two remarkable, large-scale "books", Griffin walks us through a series of similar fragments of the real world--a take-a-number ticket, for example, of the kind you pull to mark your place in the supermarket line--recreated in trompe l'oeil detail in modeling paste and paint. The play, here again is between what we imagine that we see and the reality that actually meets the eye. The skill with which this play is set in motion is what assures the success of the visual and mental tease.

We made a final stop at Cherry and Martin where we found a stunning series of C-print photographs of the Biosphere in Arizona by the artist Noah Sheldon.



This man-made "natural" closed system proved to have a curious history. Once the pride of biological sciences, it is now apparently in a state of some neglect, and Sheldon's pictures capture some of its shabbier aspects. This is not, clearly, their intent, which perhaps more accurately to reflect on the environment itself--the beauty and the mystery of planet we inhabit and the way in which we apprehend and experience it through the senses. His interest in the synesthetic experience in which sight, sound, smell and touch are stimulated simultaneously is evident in the sensual quality of his photographs, whose matte surfaces contrast with the usual glossy expectation of the C-print and seem to open up the image seductively to the eye. At the same time, Sheldon's pictures remind us poignantly of the delicacy and vulnerability of the natural world, at a moment in history when such reminders are an important remind of its need for our protection.

Altogether, a good day at the galleries. Thanks for joining me for this brief review!




]]> The Novice: A Book Review tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.344929 2009-11-04T14:20:26-05:00 2009-11-04T14:46:30-05:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/

The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit, & What I Learned, by Stephen Schettini, Greenleaf Book Group Press

If "The Novice" were fiction, it would be called a Bildungsroman--a novel of education. It's not fiction. It's the personal story of a young man who was brought up in Gloucester, England, where he felt himself a bit of an oddball with his Italian surname and an immigrant father who operated a fancy restaurant--exotic for its location, surely, on the main street of an English county town. In compensation, he chose to rebel--against his parents and their Catholic faith, against his school, against the rules, values and conventions of his middle-class social environment. The book is the long story of his battle with the rebel within, and of his coming to terms with himself as a finally liberated man.

His path is not a comfortable one, nor does Schettini attempt to make it so as he recounts it. We follow him from his early, angry years as a child and his defiant, shop-lifting youth to a disillusioned and disenchanted young manhood. At loose ends and casting about for some kind of meaning to his life, he breaks away from family and home, and takes us along on his cross-continental hitchhiking journey to India. Once there, he describes his discovery and embrace of Buddhism; he introduces us to his teachers and his fellow students at a Swiss Tibetan center where he goes to study, and to the often conflicted path toward his initiation as a monk.

We accompany him, back in India, to the Tibetan Sena Monastic University, and watch him grow disillusioned once again by discrepancies he perceives between the ideals of the orthodox Buddhist teachings and the devastating reality of a quasi-medieval environment rampant with hunger, disease, ignorance, and ubiquitous filth. We return with him to Europe and observe his downward spiral as he persists in obstinately questioning the certitudes in which his teachers would seem to have him believe--along with the upward spiral that brings him to a mature, less dependent sense of self and a release, not only from his monastic vows, but from the intellectual torment of doubt. He finds, finally, his heart, and the balance between heart, mind and spirit that can lead to the kind of inner peace for which he has been searching.

It's a lively read. Schettini excels at evoking the particularity of environment, whether natural landscape of bustling city. Here he is, describing his arrival at the foot of the monumental Bamiyan Buddhas (since that time, of course, barbarously destroyed by the Taliban):

Beyond the open space an enormous shadow dominated a sheer rock face at the western end. It was surrounded by several hundred smaller shadows--caves, most of them impossibly high. The lorry brought us into a direct line of sight, and the large shadow resolved itself into a niche in the vertical cliff. It contained something of immense bulk. In a flash of sunlight, the sandstone features were set in sharp relief and the ancient standing Buddha was revealed.

And here's a back street in Kabul, at night, in 1974:

The main streets were lit only dimly [...] I turned into dark laneways and the moon shone in eerie silence, full and accusing. Thick tobacco smoke and male conversation wafted from an open window. In a corner outside, a girl's voice crouched in a shapeless burka, whispering protectively over a bundle in her arms. The embroidery around her face rustled. A bubbling sound from within made me look up, and I watched a refilled narghile being set down amid a circle of men. One of them glanced in my direction and turned away. The girl's hand brushed my ankle and her voice pleaded. I dropped some coins in her hand.

This remarkable facility with language as an evocative tool brings us into the action and places us vividly in the situations Schettini describes. It moves us along, as readers, as much as does the narrative itself. We are present, engaged. That the author is able to bring the same clarity to describe his inner states and his relationships with those around him makes his story as profound as it is compelling to read. As one who myself abandoned the Christian beliefs with which I was brought up and who also found in Buddhism, later in life, the source of a potential inner serenity, I found myself resonating with much of Schettini's experience. His doubts and his intellectual conflicts, as well as the intensity of his pursuit of an elusive truth about the life we're given to live here on earth were intimately familiar to me.

I did find myself wishing that the end of the book--the mature commitment to a life of family and service--had seemed a little less rushed in the context of the whole. In terms of the personal journey, Schettini's re-dedication of himself as a teacher and counselor along the path to happiness could usefully have been given more attention than it receives in the final "Epilogue." Still, this remains a quibble that reflects, perhaps, my personal priority rather than the author's. All in all, a truly satisfying read.

]]> The Form of the Book tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.330039 2009-10-22T17:07:02-04:00 2009-10-22T17:07:53-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
The one I'm reading now -- more detail later -- is special. It stands out from every other book I've read recently, and I was not surprised to find that it was designed by its own author, a former Buddhist monk. I can't resist quoting from his postscript, entitled "Colophon" -- an end note about the book's authorship and printing. Here what he says about his choice of typeface:

This book is set in Linotype Sabon Next. In creating this typeface, Jean Francois Porchez revived a revival. The original Sabon typeface designed by Jan Tschichold was itself a revival of Claude Garamond's 16th century types for the 1960's. By referring to the original metal versions of Sabon for Linotype casting, Monotype machines and hand-setting, as well as Garamond's 16th century pages, Porchez has created a typeface of great utility and beauty.

Now there's devotion to detail for you. In the same passage, the author acknowledges the inspiration of Tschichold's collection of essays, The Form of the Book, subtitled Essays on the Morality of Good Design, whose "hilariously rigid principles," he writes, "have gravely influenced my ability to communicate visually and literally." Absolutely!

Don't you want to run out and buy this book, which so honors its own form. When you have it in your hands you have ... well, a real book. The typeface is attractive, inviting, and easy on the eye, which does not tire at all while reading. The paper has tooth to it, comfortable to the touch, and the pages turn effortlessly as you read. A further delicious touch is that the front ends of the paper, where the fingers reach to turn the page, are not straight cut, but ragged, torn. They remind me of those old French Gallimard publications (do they still do this?) where the pages were not even cut. You had to work with a paper knife to slice them open, to get inside the book to read.

What is this marvel of a book? It's called The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I quit & What I Learned, by Stephen Schettini -- an improbable name for a man brought up in Gloucestershire, England -- but then his journey, as I'm beginning to discover as I read, is improbable, too. The title is published in Canada by Greenleaf Book Group Press, and the quality of the book alone is more than worth its price. I'll be talking more about the content in due course. Suffice it to say that the texture of the writing is as meticulously attentive to detail as the book itself.

It's good to know that even in these days of often shoddy mass production, this kind of quality is still attainable to those who strive for it.
]]> Family Fun and Fitness tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.303665 2009-09-30T13:01:26-04:00 2009-11-30T05:12:01-05:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/ Family Fun and Fitness: Getting Healthy and Staying Healthy -- Together, and its sub-subtitle is Eat Your Best, Be Your Fittest: How to Hook Your Family on a Plan for Lifelong Good Health. Hmmm. I guess it doesn't sound like something you'd immediately grab for from the bookstore shelf, but believe me, what the title lacks in zappy shelf-appeal, it makes up for in honesty and clarity. This book is exactly what it says it is -- including the fun part.

Absent in good part from the health care debate (a notable exception is the comedian Bill Maher) has been any sustained talk about personal responsibility. The media have in recent months made a lot of the fact that we're a tubby and sedentary nation--well, more truthfully, obese--and that we have been getting tubbier and more sedentary by the decade. Even President Barack Obama, in what I thought was an otherwise brilliant speech to both houses of Congress on the urgent national issue of health care reform, did not take the opportunity to issue a rousing call to Americans to stop smoking, lose weight, eat better, and exercise more frequently. He and his wife, Michelle, have certainly made efforts to set the good example, particularly with their much-publicized White House organic vegetable garden and their public concern for the health and well-being of our nation's children. (I wish Obama were able to announce categorically that he has overcome his addiction to cigarettes, but all I've heard on that front is the cautious suggestion that he only sneaks one here and there ... ) We know that if we were all, as a nation, to take personal responsibility for getting and staying healthy, the costs of health care would soon cease to skyrocket as they have been doing, and the additional cost of covering our millions of uninsured would surely be covered by the savings.

Which brings me back to Knute's book. In the interests of full disclosure the author is--as I noted--a friend, and I have been among the many grateful clients of his training services at our local gym. As a former athlete and a trainer, he knows a lot about the human body and how to keep it fit. With Family Fun, he makes his expertise available to anyone who will listen--and I hope that many people will. His message is an important one: in an initial chapter on "Kids in Crisis", he offers a frightening and well-documented analysis of the state of our children's health, along with a persuasive argument that there are constructive, do-able ways in which this crisis can be addressed. (Take a look at that impossibly beautiful and healthy family on the cover. It's Knute's. The guy with the blond, Viking good looks -- that's the man himself. The fun those children are having as they romp with their parents on the beach is surely genuine.)

Okay, about the content. I was impressed with the breadth and depth of knowledge that the author shares with us. He is up-to-date with the relevant information and statistics in the fields of medicine and social sciences, and he draws on that knowledge to underscore the urgent need for families to change those ways that are proven to be destructive of not only health but happiness. Knute understands the psychological and emotional implications of good health -- and the lack of it -- and argues for a program that will benefit not just the body, but the body-mind. Can there be any doubt but that children who are healthy, secure in their homes, and loved by those around them will do better in school -- and later, in the course of their lives -- than those who lack these early benefits?

Knute starts at the beginning, writing about pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, and the earliest days and weeks of life. With two little ones of his own to have observed, nurtured, and loved, he understands the needs of small children and how they are best addressed. Prime among his concerns, of course, are what goes into the body, how it gets processed into energy, and how that energy can be used for beneficial ends. He makes it all not only very practical but also very practicable. What he proposes can be done by any family with the commitment to a healthy life.

I'm no expert on exercise and nutrition, so I'm not going to attempt a synopsis of Knute's regimen. He takes a good look at the quality of food at the family table, with an emphasis on whole foods and offers some sound, sympathetic advice on how to approach the issue of junk foods with children who are exposed to the daily assault of advertisement and peer pressure. His chapters on exercise underscore the importance of flexibility as well as strength, providing easy-to-follow instructions for practices that can be followed without adding to the burdens of a busy, stress-filled day. The accompanying illustrations work nicely as visual aids to the text. I'll confess I have not tried any of the recipes included in the appendix as healthy and tasty alternatives to the fast food habits to which so many of us are addicted.

We are reminded forcefully by the current heated debate about health care that we are, as a nation, doing a generally pretty poor job of taking care of the bodies we have been given to inhabit for the course of our earthly lives. And we know, don't we, that it all boils down to a matter of choice. We can respect our bodies and live healthy lives, or abuse them, and succumb to the life-shortening ill-effects of overweight, lethargy, and disease. This book holds out the opportunity for the better choices, and makes the bad ones inexcusable for any truly loving family. One of its more delightful aspects is that, beyond being a simple how-to tome, the book is a lovely testament to the author's devotion to his own family. And while it is expressly written for those with young families, its content offers invaluable advice to people of all ages and conditions. I'm personally looking forward to the sequel ... for grandparents, like myself! ]]> The Willing Suspension of Disbelief tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.277676 2009-09-05T14:31:24-04:00 2009-10-21T05:12:01-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
Friends write to me to let me know of their distress. I get sometimes bitterly angry comments to my online posts. I read and hear what the left-wing prophets of doom assert: that Obama -- if he was really anything other than one more crass politician who deceived us into voting for him -- has already capitulated to the corporate oligarchy and the strident voices of the right. He should never have been so naïve as to put his faith in the mirage of bi-partisanship. He lacks strength and sense of purpose. He should have spoken out earlier and more forcefully. He should be out there, leading...

I know. I hear these things, and I share the deep and troubling concern that gives rise to them. There is a whole big part of me that is ready to give up on all of it; to abandon hope in the weak-kneed Democrats who lack the vision and the conviction to come up with a plan they can agree on; and, yes, to blame a President who at times seems aloof from the fray and disconnected from the people who placed their trust in him as the last great hope for change.

And yet... there are times when the willing suspension of disbelief seems appropriate and necessary, in order to remain true to my own commitment to do what I can do for my fellow-beings with whom I share this planet. I share the skepticism. Call it, perhaps, realism: the facts of this country's recent history and its current affairs speak loudly. Deadlock and acrimony confront us everywhere we look -- here in my own state, California, and in the nation's capital. We are addicted to the material comforts of our lives, to such well-being as each of us has attained; and despite the demand for change on the left side of our national discourse, it seems that great power still lies in the hands of those who are adamantly, fiercely resistant to it. We are like some old, weary Gulliver, unable to break free from the multiple bonds of the Lilliputians who hold us captive.

In this circumstance, one useful strategy that stands between me and despair is the willing suspension of disbelief. I realize that it's a choice: it's "willing." But for the sake of my own sanity in a political culture that my more rational self deems utterly deranged and utterly beyond redemption, I make the active choice, for now, to suspend my disbelief. The act falls short of actually believing. I hold on to a small mental space where I acknowledge it to be a matter of intellectual and emotional choice rather than rational conviction. But the choice is still an empowering one, requiring that I not sink back into inertia.

It's also a "suspension." The mind-space I'm attempting to describe is temporal and provisional. I find that by suspending my disbelief I can more easily watch and wait, and find the patience needed to allow change to happen and, insofar as I am able, to help it along the way. It provides me with a place from which I can continue to act, in the hope that we can still return to our senses as a country, and that we can collectively reconnect with traditional values like compassion and responsibility toward others as well as for ourselves, with a sense of common social purpose, and with that truly American vision of "a more perfect union" that Obama has publicly embraced.

Call me naïve. Okay. An idealist. I'd rather be an idealist than an ideologue. But I'm constitutionally and temperamentally averse to succumbing to the kind of inaction and despair I might find myself accepting if I chose to surrender my willing suspension of disbelief. I'll settle for "human interest and a semblance of truth." And for believing, passionately, that acting as if something were possible can be the catalyst to make it happen. This, at least, is the path I choose.

]]> Solidarity (PO/PO) tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.270689 2009-08-28T15:12:47-04:00 2009-09-28T05:12:01-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/ see prior entry) to be a letter-writing campaign. That's only a part of it. (Do these senators read letters anyway, I wonder?) The more important part, as I envisioned it, was about community action, demonstration, solidarity... Remember "Solidarity"--the movement that led to the liberation of Poland from Soviet domination?

So I'm asking the more than 70 percent of us who say we believe in significant health care reform to be "solid" with our friends, our neighbors, our families, ourselves--and yes, our online contacts. I'm looking for access to bigger platforms, more active support... Facebook (follow link to the group that's already formed), Twitter, big circulation blogs and political sites. Can you do this?

AND I want us all to show up at our local Post Office, letters or cards in hand, at HIGH NOON ON 09/01/09.

Will you help me? Will you broadcast this? Will you be there? Will you shake my hand?
]]> Re: High Noon, 09/01/09: A Health Care March on Washington -- Close to Home tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.265311 2009-08-22T10:52:02-04:00 2009-09-22T05:12:01-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/ 2009-08-28-DoItForTed.jpg


JOIN ME! You've been following the news, as I have. NOW WE MUST DO SOMETHING. Here's my personal intention and commitment. It's quick easy, clean.... YOU CAN DO IT, TOO!

Step 1: I handwrite a brief letter to my Senators. "Dear Senator ..., I voted for you. I have placed my trust in you. I hereby respectfully request that you unequivocally INSIST on the inclusion of a public option or its equivalent in any health care bill that goes to President Obama. Yours truly, (signature.)"

(Find your senators' addresses here:)

Step 2: I place my letters in sealed, stamped envelopes, marked in bright, unmistakable letters on the outside: PO/PO (for Public Option/Post Office) in order to identify it as a part of this effort.

Step 3: IMPORTANT! On Tuesday, September 1 at precisely NOON o'clock, I drive, ride or walk to my nearest United States Post Office and silently place my letters in the outgoing mailbox. Suppose I were to find hundreds of like-minded people doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time? I shake their hands. What about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of good-hearted Americans? We will all come to the US Post Office. We will all place our letters in the outgoing mailbox. We will all shake hands.

What's so complicated? I promise to do this no matter if I'm the only one in the entire country, but I invite you to join me. With your help in forwarding this email and your commitment to this simple action, we can stage a massive, elegantly simple, nation-wide demonstration that links cities, towns and villages throughout the country. It will require a few minutes of your time, but WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

YES, WE CAN! A vast majority of us say we want significant health care reform. Now is the time to back those words up with action that cannot be ignored or dismissed. PLEASE JOIN ME WITH YOUR OWN PERSONAL COMMITMENT! AND FORWARD THIS TO OTHERS WHO WILL JOIN US! Seriously. We will all meet at our US Post Offices all over the country at noon on September 1st.

Please use the comments here or on this post to RSVP for the "Health Care March on Washington."


UPDATE: If you can, please also support the in-person "March on Washington," originally proposed by Robert Reich and discussed in this Daily Kos diary. ]]> Healthcare: Don't Scapegoat Obama tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.263775 2009-08-20T12:52:57-04:00 2009-09-20T05:12:01-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
It is a sad spectacle to watch as the man we elected to bring about change on any number of issues that face us as a nation is constrained by political necessity to modify his vision of significant and lasting change. I say "constrained" because I see President Obama as a pragmatist, whose political antennae are precisely sensitive to the line where what can be done crosses over into what cannot be done; and eventually as one who settles for the former. A realistic understanding of what simply cannot be achieved, given the socio-political system we have allowed to take over our country in the past half-century, may be anathema to those who long for radical change. I count myself amongst them. It is, though, sadly, a good deal better than no change at all.

The deplorable fact of the matter is that we have allowed the oligarchs to win. President Eisenhower famously warned us already in the 1950s--and with subsequently validated prescience--of the looming menace of the military-industrial complex. It seems from this perspective, in the first decade of the 21st century, that we "people" have surrendered our power largely to the corporate interests that currently have our government in their stranglehold. We have done this because we were willingly blinded to our long-term interests by the apparently irresistible appeal to our short-term gain. In allowing ourselves to be sold on the seductive--and clearly, in retrospect, deceptive--notion of "small government," we have handed the reins of our government to those who benefit most from its actions or inaction. In refusing to provide our government its lifeblood in the form of honestly paid taxes, we have foolishly ended up delivering that same money, de facto, into the insatiable hands of those who turn it to their profit. They profit from our health care and from our social services; they make money on our security, our military, even on our prisons. They make money on our money. The "privatization" of so many of the normal functions of government has resulted in fewer, more expensive, and less efficient services in virtually every area that affects our lives.

The obsessive and irrational fear of "socialism" that has gripped this country for so many decades has been manipulated by these same people. No question, socialism has produced some sickening, unconscionable excesses. But capitalism has produced no fewer. No political philosophy is immune from exploitation by those whose greed for power and economic gain exceeds their concern for the improvement of the lives of others. In this country, we have shamefully squandered a magnificent opportunity to demonstrate to the world that democracy can work, and have replaced that dream with a squalid oligarchy whose corruption is disguised by our embrace of a shabby illusion of freedom that comes in the form of material well-being.

So let's not scape-goat Obama. It's too easy for the rest of us to whine about the President's failure to persuade antagonists of what so many of us agree we need. He has done, is doing what can be done. But it's disingenuous to expect him to do it by himself. It's too big a job. Those of us who elected this man must recognize that we owe it to him now to do everything within our power to support him in his vision -- or sacrifice the right to sit back and complain. I heard one pundit say last night that we did not elect him to be a good President, but to be a great one. In order for that to happen, as it did with FDR, we must find the greatness within ourselves.

Friends, as the French say: aux barricades! Time to man (and woman) the barricades!
]]> The "Carterization" of Barack Obama (Part V of a Series) tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.237111 2009-07-17T12:00:22-04:00 2009-08-17T05:12:02-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/ malaise speech. It was this speech in which he -- modestly, but unwisely, as it turned out -- itemized a long list of complaints about his presidency from Americans of all walks of life, who had been invited to Camp David to meet with the President precisely for that purpose. Choosing not to take their criticisms personally, Carter identified instead a general malaise which he described as "a fundamental threat to American democracy ... a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity and purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America."

2009-07-17-throughtheireyes.jpg

I was reminded that this is a good time to recall those remarks by a visit this week to the studio of the Altadena-based artist Lynne McDaniel, where I was drawn immediately to a striking double portrait of Carter and Barack Obama reproduced above. McDaniel titles it "Through Their Eyes." Presciently, it was done long before Obama's presidential campaign and election, and shortly after the famous speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic convention -- the one that turned the nation's head in this young man's direction. McDaniel used photographic images for her picture, and a part of the reason it's so striking is that she made one significant change: Jimmy Carter has Obama's penetrating dark brown eyes, while Obama has been gifted with Carter's blue ones. Hence, of course, the title.

I think it's an extraordinary and challenging piece of work -- and not only because the painting itself is so terrific. It is. McDaniel has done an excellent job with the likeness, and the quality of her line and brush-work need no comment from me. Much more than that, however, I find the painting rich in both profound and provocative associations -- which is the reason that I felt the need to share it. It deserves a wider audience than the one it has thus far received, hanging quietly on the artist's studio wall. (Please feel free to forward the image, with or without this post.)

Let's talk about those profound associations first -- the notion of two men from astonishingly different backgrounds who came to share the same destiny as the world's most powerful leader. The painting is a study of that power from two points of view--its devastating after-effects on the face of the older man, and its emanation in the form of hope and promise on the younger. It's a study, also, that tells us much about the psychology of the men themselves, and about the aging process; we read much in this simple juxtaposition of images about the physical effects of age on the human face, and the different kind of energy projected by two men at different stages of their life. It's also, profoundly, a study of black and white American relations, and the inexorable process of historical change. The picture confronts us, unambiguously, with a reality that has changed radically -- for the better, let's be sure to add -- in the past 40 years. McDaniel's painting seems to assert with calm assurance that black and white are, quite simply and inarguably, equal.

Provocatively, though, the painting also raises the frightening specter of the "Carterization" of Obama. I recall, as perhaps you do too, the hopes that we liberals and progressives pinned on Jimmy Carter when we elected him in 1977, after the bitter taste of the Nixon years and the interregnum of Gerald Ford. We wanted radical change, we wanted a more transparent and responsive government, we wanted an end to war and partisan strife, we wanted principled compassion and justice to prevail over heartless, self-first greed and power mongering, and we projected the responsibility for all these needs onto this one, all-too fragile figurehead who could never have hoped to match them.

When he failed to meet up with our expectations and projections, we began to think of Carter as weak and ineffectual -- and projected those qualities, in turn, on the man in whom we had vested so much power. The eventual failure of his administration was, to my way of thinking, as much ours as his. The American electorate began looking to Ronald Reagan for the daddy figure we seemed to need to take care of us, and to compare Carter's image unfavorably with the skilled performance of that screen actor, whose illusion of strength we were eagerly taken in by. (I say "We..." Not me, of course! It's never ME. Is it?) Sure, Jimmy Carter had his failings. He was, in reality, far from the perfect model of strength and manly authority we longed for. So we settled for the illusion instead.

It's my fear that we could easily end up doing the same with Barack Obama. When I wrote the original essay in this series, "When Do We All Grow Up?" it was this fear I had in mind. Once more we have a President who is far from perfect and far from all-powerful. He needs the help and support of millions of others if he's to achieve those things he promised us to strive for. Once more we are beginning to perceive -- and name -- the man's weaknesses, and our points of disagreement. And once more we risk creating the reality we project on him. Government, as I've tried to say, is a contract, depending as much on a willingness to be governed as to govern. I've tried to say that, certainly, yes, it's our job to criticize and hold our man's feet to the fire. We must do so, though, with a clear understanding of the risks involved in each of us promoting the achievement of our own particular goals at the cost of the substantive change we need -- a change that can only be arrived at through deliberate means. It's a big ocean liner we're all sailing on, to use that old cliche; it won't be turned around with a quick or easy spin of the wheel.

Let me be absolutely clear: Obama is not Jimmy Carter. I happen to think he's made of tougher, less relenting steel. I don't see him offering a "malaise speech," like Carter's exercise in self-deprecation, in order to mitigate his falling poll numbers. I'm not worried about Obama; I'm worried about US. And in this context, the juxtaposition Lynne McDaniel offers us in her painting is striking, yes, and poignant -- and more than a little worrisome.
]]> Discipline (Obama, Part IV) tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.233961 2009-07-15T16:45:39-04:00 2009-08-15T05:12:01-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
This is a shame, because it's discipline alone that can teach us to prioritize, to strategize, to persist, and to achieve -- in our politics as well as in our personal lives. Let's start with the personal.

Each one of us, I think, faces multiple choices in our daily lives, and we do not have time for all of them. I don't know about you, but for me the days are more likely to seem too short than too long. Between the chores and errands and the necessities (like eating!), it's often hard to find the time to do those things I actually want to do; and there are so many of those that I won't get any of them done unless I make some choices. I have to prioritize, to choose among them those that are the most important. It's a kind of mental triage, much better performed when it's done mindfully than when I allow pure circumstance to make the choices for me.

Once the choices are made, it's a similar practice of discipline that I need in order to strategize the implementation of my plans. Without some basic organization, things tend to go rapidly awry. I will need the basic materials, I may need to enlist the support of others--who may be more reluctant than I to see it through. I will certainly need to organize my thoughts; or, if I prefer not to start out with the thoughts but rather develop them along the way, at least find that starting thread that will lead me where I want to go, and determine the time and place I need to make it happen.

Of all the disciplines involved, however, I think persistence is the most important -- and possibly the most difficult. There will inevitably be many distractions and many disappointments along the way, any one of which can weaken my resolve. The telephone rings, it's an important call that needs my immediate attention. The dog barfs on the carpet. The bills have not been paid, the leaves need sweeping outside in the garden. Or... the work is proving harder than I had imagined. The words won't flow the way I want them to. What I thought at first was an excellent idea turns out to lead me nowhere. I begin to worry about whether I've said it right, about how I might be judged by others.

I can soon find myself in a stew that only persistence can help me out of. Persistence is a discipline, too. It's a rejection of every distraction and excuse that comes along and a return of the attention to the task at hand. It's a refusal to be deterred from the purpose I have set myself, a quiet insistence on the pursuit of this particular goal. If I don't have it and put it into practice, I can forget about achievement. I'm not going anywhere.

These thoughts were prompted in good part by a much broader concern, this one on the national, even global scale: my continuing -- even increasing -- worry that we stand to squander the very opportunity we created with the election of President Obama. I keep coming back to this because I believe the country -- and indeed the world -- to be in very real danger. We're at a moment in our history where we need ourselves to exercise some of the discipline that attracted us to Obama in the first place, after the spectacle of a president who seemingly had none, and who drove us mindlessly into the abysmal mess in which we find ourselves today.

As I said earlier, we grudgingly admire in others the discipline that we lack ourselves, or fail to exercise. At the same time, it unnerves us. Our natural tendency -- eternal children that we are -- is to rebel against it. Barack Obama, it seems to me, is a man of steely resolve. How else could he have achieved what he has already achieved? How else could he have won the presidency, other than with those abilities to prioritize, to strategize, and to persist? And yet when we see him now -- prioritizing, strategizing, persisting -- we get impatient. Because the achievement of a particular goal might require a sidestep, a feint, a parry rather than a thrust, we are ready with accusations of backsliding and promises unkept. If a principle we hold dear becomes a willow rather than an oak, adapting its strength to the force of the wind instead of snapping in the attempt to remain upright at all costs, we natter on about the loss of integrity and the abandonment of principle.

I only hope that Obama's discipline will outlast our impatience and our skepticism. A man of willowy strength, he understands better than his adversaries the power of knowing when to bend -- and when it's important to stand straight. I choose to believe in his integrity, that those things he put forward as his beliefs and the promises he made when he campaigned and we elected him are still his beliefs and promises. He may not be able to achieve them all in the time at his disposal. It's possible that he'll be brought down by the weight of the multitude of less disciplined minds who seek to satisfy more immediate needs and reap more immediate rewards. For myself, having trusted him enough to cast my vote for him, I'm planning to trust him to take the longer view. ]]> Obama: Is it Time to Give Up? (Part III of a Series) tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.227288 2009-07-08T16:59:51-04:00 2009-08-08T05:12:02-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/
I'm not sure what, right now, may have triggered this question. Perhaps it was watching Future By Design, the film about Jacque Fresco, who advocates a (quietly) revolutionary approach. He sees no beneficial outcome for the human species in adhering to outworn habits of thought and action; as he sees it, the old model of corporate, economic and political power is serving to get us only deeper into the mire we have already created. What's needed now, he says, is a whole new model, a whole new way of thinking about ourselves, the way we live with each other, the way we make decisions...

I have been clinging on to the notion of hope. I think I will still cling to it, when all's said and done, for at least a while longer--perhaps for long enough to see what happens with the health care legislation this year. But I have watched with increasing dismay as "the system" manages to re-establish itself after the ripple of the Obama election, which I had seen as a greater disturbance than it seems, from our current perspective, to have been. It has not taken long to return to the depressing, circular cliche of "politics as usual." I have watched a mind I still consider to be superior and visionary constrained by political and social contingencies that stubbornly reject the possibility of change--out of fear, our of habit, out of ideologies long since proven to be barren. I have watched the ranks of the nay-sayers grow serried on both left and right. I have watched the failure of a social system born out of a belief in the rights of the individual, as the individual grows more strident in demands whilst the larger needs of society are buried in the resultant discord. I have watched as once-great states--most notably our own, California--become ungovernable and jettison even the safety net that protected the children of the poor. I continue to watch as the world goes mad with greed and commerce and the obsession with "growth," on the one hand; and with need, hunger, war and pestilence on the other. I watch as the world's population continues to grow beyond our ability to cater to the needs of all, or even most of its inhabitants. And I watch as those in power stand idly by and bicker over trivialities as the planet speeds on toward its possible destruction.

So is it time to give up? Not on humankind, for God's sake, no. But on the system we have created in order to govern ourselves and serve our common interests and our common goals? Last summer I visited a friend in Oregon and was disappointed in his lukewarm reaction to Obama. He had already given up on the old, and was embarked on the search for something new. Perhaps out of despair, but not despairingly. His wisdom was/is to see stalemate for what it is, and to test the potential for salvation in small groups gathering together to cultivate individual integrity and responsibility, and to take action in the world in the context of a communal good. He was, as I see it, beginning to "cultivate his garden." He calls it creating sacred lifeboats.

I have been telling myself that I'm not that far along that I need to jump overboard. I have been persisting in the hope that things can change within this broken system; that this Barack Obama can change hearts and minds, as a preliminary to making those significant changes in health care, the economy, the environment, world peace... the changes that we sorely need. Call me quixotic, naive, gullible, but I want to hold on to that hope a while longer yet. Which is why I have been posting these Obama pieces in the past couple of weeks, in the attempt to get my own head straight--and convey something of my personal struggle with others who may share my views.

The fact that I have received so much response in bringing up these matters suggests that there are many who share my doubts as well as my by now somewhat desperate hope. I'm particularly saddened that there are those who have read my words as a dismissal of the importance or urgency of gay rights. I understand, I think, where they're coming from, but that was far from my objective. It's one, only, of many points on which I personally disagree with the President without dismissing him, and without using my disagreement to withdraw my support or undermine his efforts. As he has often said, it's not about him; it's about us. He needs me, as he needs all of us who seek to bring about serious change in America. I was talking with a gay friend at the gym today, who said this: "I need to believe in that man." We agreed that Obama is having to walk a crooked path, not the straight (no pun intended) line that those who hew to a straight (ditto) ideological path would have him do. For now, I'm choosing to believe that he's playing a canny game to reach goals that we share. And unlike Rush Limbaugh, I do want him to succeed.

So my answer still is No, it's not yet time to give up. It's a time to be pragmatic rather than ideological. Time to push forward, against the deadwood opposition. Time not to let personal needs and anger get in the way of a last chance to return to sanity. It's no sacrifice of principle to recognize that uncompromising adherence to principle can sometimes serve only to achieve the opposite of its goal. As Shakespeare cautioned us in one of my most frequently used quotations, it's sometimes necessary to follow the crooked path in order to find our way: "by indirection," Hamlet said, we "find directions out."

That said, and while I understand the caution of his approach, I would wish that our President could see his way to be more bold in word and action, and take more risks than he has been willing to do thus far. So far as I can tell, the worst is already happening. We have nothing left to lose.]]> When Do We All Grow Up? (Part II: Obama the Quarterback) tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.223479 2009-07-01T11:55:25-04:00 2009-08-01T05:12:01-04:00 Peter Clothier http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/ When Do We All Grow Up?" and its subject was the kind of foot-stamping impatience with which progressives of all persuasions seem to be greeting Obama's first six months in office. Responses to my thoughts ranged from "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" to angry resentment and rebuttal.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that Obama is--or should be--above criticism. Don't count me among those who believe he can do no wrong. I am equally skeptical of those who invest the man with messianic qualities. But I do believe that criticism can be productive and supportive, if offered in the context of the bigger picture I was attempting to invoke.

When the critic allows his or her particular point of disagreement to become central and exclusive, though, the criticism soon becomes narrow-minded, parochial, and destructive. Thus, if I allow Obama's immediate resolution of the extremely delicate Guantanamo problem to become the exclusive yardstick by which I judge his performance, the sine qua non, I risk trying to bathe the baby while I watch the bath water drain away--to pervert an already overused metaphor. If I disagree with him on one, or two, or three issues, must I give up on him altogether and, worse, descend into dismissive vitriol?

The problem is that all-or-nothing progressivism plays into the hands of those who would destroy Obama at any cost--as they attempted to destroy Bill Clinton in the 1990s. While Clinton was able to hang on by the skin of his teeth, remember, it was at the cost of being elbowed further and further to the right in his political agenda. The divisiveness that results not from honest argument, but from anger, resentment, and bitter accusations of betrayal, lends both credibility and power to vitriol from the other side.

One of my respondents suggested the analogy of someone we'd hired to do a job and who should now be taken to task for failing to do our bidding. I prefer a different analogy: I see the President less as a hireling, and more as the captain of a sports team, to whom we've chosen to delegate the responsibility to make decisions in an ongoing series of ever-changing, unpredictable situations. In this analogy, we risk being the complacent armchair quarterbacks.

Then, too, the history of our recent decades should remind us that it's easy to sit back and whine about "the government," as though it were some evil, alien entity separate from ourselves. In doing so, we forget that the government is us. It's a compact between ourselves and those we have chosen to represent us. My point, to put it in a slightly different way, is that in each furiously riding the hobby-horse of our individual freedoms and in demanding that our individual needs be met, we fail on our side of the compact: we become, in effect, ungovernable, even as we blame it on the government.

I realize that my readers may not do so, but I still count myself a progressive. If I had been able--had the society in which I live made it even halfway possible--I would surely have voted for Kucinich. Given the realities of who we are as a society, my question is this: Do we really want to nitpick our current Democratic President to shreds, and clear the path for another right-wing ideologue to follow him--whether in four years, or eight? We complained quite bitterly about the ideological rectitude demanded by the other side. Do we want to sacrifice our own ultimate goals to another brand of ideological rectitude?

I think it's possible not to abandon our ideals and to exercise our right--our duty--to question policies we judge to be wrong-headed, all without losing sight of the big picture. I voted for Obama because I believe him to be a thoughtful man with all the right intentions; because I believe that he does have a firm grasp of the big picture--what Bush Senior dismissively called the "vision thing." I did not vote for him because I thought he could fix every problem in our society within six months, no matter how pressing; or that he would say nothing that I disagreed with; or so that he would take uncompromising stands on every issue. I voted for a man I thought would work, with whatever circumspection might be necessary, to achieve a more just society for us all.]]>