The writers of the Declaration of Independence closed their
document with a pledge:
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Nice. It seems comfortably fluffy because of our
familiarity with it. In reality, it carries an extreme weight. To
decide to oppose your king by force, to declare that he has no authority over
you or your land -- that's treason (in a royalist's perspective). So when
they say, "pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred
honor," they mean it literally: if the colonists had not succeeded in
their endeavor for independence, they would have all been killed--those who
signed the document (with John Hancock placing his signature in very large
script to be prominent -- a message to the King).
If they had failed to secure liberty from the king, they
would literally have forfeited every last thing they possessed; their
families would have suffered in destitute circumstances. None of them
would have retained a shred of honor for their cause as they all would
have been made examples of -- the signatories at least being killed
ignobly. (And just why is it that the concept of "honor"
doesn't seem to weigh very much in the collective American mind these days?)
John Hancock's Huge Signature: "In Your Face, Georgie
Boy!"
During the American Revolution, one of my ancestors, Capt. Fredrick Cramer,
from New Jersey, fought along side George Washington. An account has it that
during one of the various battles during which Washington was nearly killed, his horse was shot from under him. As officers typically rode white horses (well...George had at least one brown one), a white horse was an honor and a duty since your men could see you
clearly as you led them in battle (and a white horse also made you an
easy target) -- Cramer handed his white horse to Washington.
Another of my ancestors, a Richards from North Carolina, ran into the woods with his
son as the British invaded his village and tried to rid the place of
patriots. The document indicates Richards "was murdered and his wife
killed" for their support of independence: they had been hiding patriots. I'm not sure there's a
great difference between "murdered" and "killed" --
"dead" seeming pretty much the same for one as for the other. But the king had defined them as "rebels" and supporters of "treason," even as Thomas Paine and others were defining the king's actions as tyranny against inalienable human rights. He who controls the definitions.... How did the king label those who participated in the Boston Tea Party? We call them patriots today. But back then? See the ironies in the use of definitions and labels employed by those of the reigning ideology?
It's a serious undertaking to oppose a king. That is just what the
"protesters" and "rebels" in any country have gambled:
their actual lives, and fortunes, and honors in order to be free of despots and
dictators, manipulators of the laws and industrial-political connivers.
They, too, risk literally everything, and many, like my ancestors, have paid
with their lives for freedom.
There are other ironies inherent in this independence we have: we still pay taxes on
tea and windows. Imagine that. And who doesn't think that tax
dollars (billions) are wasted every day in Washington? Even given the
inconsistencies and ironies, the freedoms to be had in the US stand apart from
those in other places throughout the rest of the world. Simply put,
freedoms are immense in the U.S. -- absolutely immense when we think about the
histories of many other countries.
Yet...I've come to think that Americans' right to pursue happiness is
often taken well beyond reasonable, equitable, or beneficial. Does that
"right" seem today to mean solely, "I can do whatever I damned
well please," but fails to include my responsibility for how my
actions impact the welfare of others? So it seems to many Americans I meet
here and abroad. It violates the social contract that the Constitution lays out, as not only Jefferson and Company saw it (and wrote it) but also as Hume, Locke, and Plato saw these social responsibilities.
For instance, the Greeks (whose ideas of democracy largely became our own) saw such a person
as an idiot. Idiot is a word we get from the Greek,ἴδιος
-- someone who is a private person, concerned only with their own affairs and
pursuits without consideration for how their deeds affect the good of the
city-state, they do not care about the good of all the people, the πολλοὶ -- the very people
around them who share the same community with its rights and
responsibilities. These are people with whom you have a social contract and agree to abide by the same laws for the good of all, even at the expense of limiting
some of your individual, private freedoms. Read your Hume and
Locke, if not also your Plato.
In this context, idiocy means, say (on a large
scale), collusion between crooked politicians, big-business magnates, or a
collection of Bernard Madoffs (am I being redundant here?) who ferret away
their own special-interest packets while not working for the public's or
their constituents' best interests -- who work against the rights of all within
their society. Lobby-ism. "Corporations are people,
too." Not. And when that idea undermines the Constitution, the
people's rights, and laws that were written for and protect the individual,
not a corporation, then it all comes at the public's expense and the demise of
their rights and freedoms.
On a smaller scale, idiocy means the self-serving
individual who stands in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store, blocking
the way, oblivious to others in the aisle, or the person who rides sloowwwly
down the interstate in the passing (left) lane...blocking traffic. Idiots.
Watch the police (from the Greek, polis, city) move one of these
idiots over:
The writers of the Declaration knew this word, ἴδιος
(Jefferson and others knew Greek and had read their Plato...). We were
never meant to be so free as to climb over others or impede others' freedoms
while pursuing our own. And Plato clearly saw a politician as someone who is not intent on building their own fortunes. Read Plato's work The Republic. The writers saw it as Freedom with Responsibility
for others. (Is it just me, or is it contradictory to this sense of
responsibility that "Capitalism" has come to mean getting ahead --
and doing so in predatory fashion -- at the expense of others?). But
responsibility: that's a large part of the Greek way -- um, the ancient
Greek way. I have no idea how this all applies to Greece's current
financial situation.
But the "pledge" in the Declaration, that is a pact made among
friends, among compatriots -- I have friends of over 30 years now, friends I
can lean on, who know my worst and best, and of whom I know the same, and we
don't throw these important connections away. I like to think that
friendship is based on not only what the friends share in common, but on a
sacrifice to support each other in both freedom from things we do not desire
and freedom to pursue things we do desire. Isn't that called "happiness"?
And it's mutual. It involves respect for an individual's sovereign
independence as well as respect for our mutual good.
Friendship is a democracy, then, enabling individuals to pursue their own and
others' best interests. Friends "mutually pledge to each other our
lives...," as the Declaration says. If that breaks down, notice how
friendship ends -- or should end, by common opinion. So I see it.
And that's what happened in the 1700s between King Georgie's England and the
colonies: an end of friendship.
This 4th of July, I celebrate not only the "friendship" of my
ancestors who sacrificed much for what I now enjoy, celebrate not only our past
and current military personnel and friends like Corpsman Vinny C.,
"General" Ruxlow, Maj. Hurt, and CW2 Shawn, "Majormajor"
Tom, Purple Heart "Owie" Brekke, and many others who have personally
sacrificed to retain freedom for us, but I also celebrate well-loved friends
who have shared freedom and mutual good with me over many decades.
What a very rich place this land is -- rich no less in friendship. It was
personally costly to create, is personally costly to retain, and well worth
sacrificing for, I think. And it's always a sight nicer without idiocy.
How many times have we said, "If only I could relive
that day...I'd do things differently"?
Most years on 2 February, I watch Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day.
You know the story: how Phil (Murray) -- a man with an immense cavity where
anything resembling a caring human being should be -- cannot move from 2
February to 3 February. He lives a single day over and over in his least
favorite town, with each repeated day being perpetually and precisely the
same. Broken record.
The real story, they key, is not Phil being stuck in Puxatawney, PA, but stuck within a
single day as himself. (Still. It might have been intolerably worse: he could have been stuck in Des Moines....)
As with the movie Back to the Future, it's not where he's stuck
but when he's stuck -- and in what condition. In Phil's case, he's
on a modern "Quest," a Quest to see just what a rotten person he is
and to embrace the needed change of character. Never was a man set upon a Quest
with such reluctance.
It's not unlike Robinson Crusoe's quest on his little island. Before Crusoe
went to sea to make his fortune, his father advised against it and predicted
that, should Robin do this thing, he would get two things as a result:
"solitude and leisure to repent it." Ol' Robin Crusoe, landing
on the island, ends up completely alone and with lots of leisure. (Well,
he's alone until...Friday, heh heh.)
So with Phil's Quest in Groundhog Day. He has lots of leisure, and
there's that solitude of his situation: unlike everyone around him, he alone is
re-living the same day. His real Quest? He must search for himself, look
into the abysmal person that he has been, see how he has failed at life and
relationships, and then become a person -- and make some reparation.
That is, he has leisure to repent his previous choices and time to grow into an
actual human being. A lot about becoming a human being involves just
finding something useful to do each day. And that's Phil's
mission, his quest, should he decide to accept it. If he doesn't,
he will never get past 2 February -- at least in terms of his character.
Quest Stories
These date from millennia ago and have standard features we have learned
to expect in them. And more: Quests have changed from what they once
were.
Take The Odyssey: there's an old epic with the standard epic formula —
an epic hero who is on a Quest. Odysseus' 10-year journey to get home
from the Trojan War delivers a wild ride: he pokes a Cyclops in the eye.
He has an affair with a nymph. The nymph, by the way, turns all of
Odysseus' men into pigs (and all the women ask, "How could you
tell?!") And he hears the Sirens sing their alluringly fatal song --
the only human to have done so and survived it. And he scarcely escapes
Charybdis and Scylla -- some sorts of sea monsters that devour most of his men
and some of the boats. Would we ever be the same after facing
these phenomena?
Odysseus and the Sirens
But here's the rub: Odysseus, at the start of the tale, is
the epitome of all the heroic qualities a Greek hero possesses.
And despite the fact that he faces all these events, at the end of the tale he
is precisely the same character he was at the start: he's still the epic hero.
That's because the grand tales of older Quests focused on the external events,
exploring precious little of the interior life of the epic hero. (The
only change is that he certainly learned not to irritate Poseidon by poking his
son, the Cyclops, in the eye...but in a pinch -- facing death -- wouldn't
Odysseus just do exactly the same thing again?!)
Quest tales change along the millennia to focus not on the external but on the internal
life of the hero. Take Gatsby: his Quest is to retrieve Daisy, the love
of his life -- but not Daisy of the present. He seeks the Daisy he had
known in 1917 when they first met and fell in love. Gatsby's quest is an
internal dream to stop time, to go back to the way they were, and to begin
again. As Nick, the narrator, tells Gatsby, "you can't stop time,
you know": Daisy has married, had a child, and lived life into the 1920s;
time didn't stop while Gatsby was busy building the fortune that alone would
attract and hold onto Daisy.
Ironically, in Groundhog Day Phil gets what Gatsby can't: time
past. Phil gets the same day repeatedly. For Gatsby, not one single
second will be repeated -- even though, ironically, his past with Daisy is
always present in his mind. Of course, after Daisy returns to her husband
Tom, Gatsby must confront reality: you can't get the past back; Daisy is not
the same. And we see that Gatsby has lived with that one Dream, a dream
which obscured his life, his vision, and his character. He has
established an external and ill-obtained wealth, but his interior life had
devolved into a sham like his palace -- a facade devoid of anything
veritable. It's a great Dream, but as in a dream, it all comes to
nothing. It all vanishes when we awake. In the end, we get a sense
that Gatsby has been having a very deep look at himself -- he wakes and
understands, however briefly, and -- there, at that point, began a
change. That is the ἀναγνώρισις (anagnorisis): the moment of awareness of
the true situation. No spoiler here....
So what does Phil do with his time upon time? He does every single thing
that numerous humans do every day to avoid realities about themselves. He
gets drunk with some new buddies. He carouses, drives a car over a
mailbox and down some railroad tracks while fleeing police, and gets thrown in
jail. He manipulates at least two young women into bed and
attempts to get the object of his affections into that cheap bed as well.
He robs an armored car, buys a luxurious sedan, gets a new girl
on his arm, and goes to a Western movie dressed as one of Clint Eastwood's
Old-West Equalizers. What's T. S. Eliot's line? "Distracted
from distraction by distraction." Phil is. And none of it
works: he can't manipulate himself out of 2 February.
Tiring of the avoidance, he kills himself -- repeatedly, to no avail. As
suicide does, it accomplishes nothing except to give others pain (but
there's not all that much pain in others regarding Phil's
death...). He even attempts to kill himself with the groundhog, but the
groundhog is not the key: Phil is the key. Nothing else will work because
he will not face the person he has been and is, nor make reparation.
So each day Phil re-awakes at 6:00 a.m. on 2 February to the radio alarm clock
playing Sonny and Cher and inane chatter from the DJs. There are no
consequences from whatever Phil has done the "previous" day.
But he doesn't do anything to change himself into a viable human being instead
of the narcissistic vacuum he is. He is stuck in a hell of his own
making. His Quest hasn't begun because he's avoiding it. As he gets
sick of himself in the day-after-day sameness, he remarks, not on Groundhog
Day but on his own inner being, "It's gonna be cold. It's
gonna be gray. And it's gonna last you for the rest of your
life."
Sonny & Cher? Thanks, No. I'd Rather Not Relive This.
There's another very interesting Quest in Star Wars:
Luke visits Yoda for "Jedi training" -- lessons about himself which
(like Phil stuck in his 2 Feb.) he does everything to avoid. To start
right, Luke must enter the Dagobah cave.
Luke Enters the Cave: Lots of Roots
When Luke asks Yoda what is in the cave, he gets the frank
and ominous reply, “Only what you take with you.” That's loaded. It is not some
external phenomenon he can battle. It is himself, his lack of BE-ing, his
lack of character, that Luke must meet and conquer. The monster he meets
is himself. Luke emerges from the hole having seen something of what he
is.
Till We Have Faces.... Luke Meets Himself
And just so Phil, seeing what a horrible creature he is day after day, starts
to come out of his hole, like the groundhog, and sees just how much of his cold
nature is left. Will he remain a perpetual winter or will he grow into a
spring?
Of course. Right. We all live in a Groundhog Day. We,
in fact, do get our days over and over, and do so in order to look at
ourselves -- not, that is, as in a selfie, emptily external and
narcissistic -- but to see into ourselves and decide to grow into a
being somewhat worthy of the life we have. If you're not looking into
what can be an abyss of former days now and then to see what kind of being
you've been...well, your Quest awaits. It's hard to face, sometimes
terrible, to understand who we've been at given moments and what that has meant
for others. But if you've not faced that image, there's no escaping that
day, and you may be doomed to repeat it over and over.
And...it's true: we waste time, avoid, distract ourselves and others, excuse
ourselves, and will not look for the shadow we might have cast on someone
else's life. But perhaps...there's the day we'll learn a musical
instrument. Learn French, or at least read some kind of literature -- not
so we can schmooze and manipulate someone but read it for what it teaches us
about life and love, see what another person has seen as they passed through
their days. Perhaps we'll learn to listen, learn to help, learn to live,
and learn to love others while we learn to love ourselves out of a perpetual
sameness of a day without BE-ing [Link].
We need those moments of ἀναγνώρισις -- awareness of what is really
going on.
The ideal? The quest starts by learning to know and love Him who alone
can re-make our being. After all, one has the distinct sense in watching Groundhog
Day that Someone is definitely in control of whether or not he gets out of
2 February. In the movie that Being is hidden, but we might glimpse him
incarnate in the movie's bartender, who smiles but shakes his head as he looks
past the facades of the main characters, straight into their interior lives.
What you will see in your cave is something no one else can
tell you, just as Yoda said to Luke. And that is why it takes
honesty. If you can't face what is there honestly, you'll have to revisit
it -- or remain with some occlusion in your being. What was it George
MacDonald said? "Don't argue for your faults: God may let you keep them."
It's best to face things honestly and with empathy -- clearly, and with the
pain it may bring -- than to equivocate over half truths about yourself.
Sheldon Vanauken put it this way: "Honesty is better than any easy
comfort."
Solitude and Leisure...Once upon a Long Ago
If you're like me, you may have to face a much longer time in Groundhog Day
than other people do.
And visits to the cave: it may be in the wee hours of a thousand different
nights -- parades of ghosts. And then, not in the night but in another
moment during a long commute, looking at yourself in a moment of a day long
past, or on this or another day, and seeing not merely your motives but the
consequences of your actions for others -- pondering connections lost, people
you'll never see again, conversations you will never have, conversations without which you're left
carrying those things you needed to have said.
Or it may occur over a book -- a sentence, a phrase -- and you find yourself
alone in the cave, understanding clearly, for the first time, something you did
long ago: what it meant for someone else and what it meant along eternal
lines. 'Aναγνώρισις. It all involves leisure and solitary moments,
as on Crusoe's island. And as with Skywalker, no one can go with you into
your cave.
Get Rid of the Shades; Look It Straight in the Eye
Some time there will be a literal visit: a return to actual places where
we must re-visit what we once were at one time or another -- after all, part of
a Quest is the journey, literal as well as metaphorical.
[Edit: 22 March -- over a month after writing this blog entry: A literal visit? Here's an ironic example: just yesterday, I was
on a spur-of-the moment side-trip in Colorado. I ended up (silently but
unwillingly -- others in the car wanted to go) on a detour from our intended
destination -- to a place where, completely unknown to the driver or others in
the car, very important events had occurred in my life 40 years before. I
had not been to that place again since that time.
So there I was: a parking lot and amphitheater, face-to-face with ghosts of
people who were vitally important to me...and facing as well the ghost of my
former self -- re-viewing decisions made, things done, consequent
conversations, and events changing time and relationships. Most important
were those long-ago words, both spoken and left unspoken, that opened paths for
people to carry on happily with their lives -- which is a gift everyone
needs. The significance of these moments...? They were ponderously
heavy 40 years back, are so today, and certainly are so eternally.
Was this trip unplanned? Well, there's a question! This
visit was too ironic to be "unplanned" -- at least by me. The
driver had no idea of my life events unfolding in that place 40 years
previously. Looks like it wasn't a detour at all but the intended
destination for me that day -- a destination Someone else seems to have
planned. The others toured an amphitheater; I toured a cave...and had to
face myself...again.
40 Years Later
End of edit.]
While the most valuable moments of clear vision are made in solitude, there
comes a time to talk with another person, restitution to make, if possible --
at the very least to offer, to let them know that you know.... In
my experience, there have been people to talk with -- and it's always
best to talk to people who will not judge but can listen to you honestly, openly,
not dismissing your responsibility, but listening without judgement [Link].
Some other people, shining their halos and looking benevolent, will judge you
severely and, smiling, will not really forgive you (although they might say
they do). That'll hold consequences for them...; still, they are allowed:
you are the one who has erred, has caused pain. Yet they are wrong to
kick you when you are making an effort to own it all; they are cruel to heap
more judgement on your back. But you can't talk to them: they can't hear
you.
You know what a martyr is? It's a person who seeks
forgiveness from someone who thinks they're a saint.
And yet others: some people I wish I could speak to...but I
cannot -- I don't know where they are, and perhaps they are at a peace which I
would not disturb. This I cannot know, and so I leave a door open for
them -- which is all one can do sometimes.
That's the way it is on the Quest.
What's Phil's line when he finally gets to 3 February, the end of his
Quest? "This has been the end of a very long day...."
The purposes of Groundhog Day, of visits to the cave, are not to make us
dwell in the past. That was Gatsby's mistake. No: it is instead to
enable us to see who we are to be in the present. It is solely
preparation to move ahead in the right direction. That is
all-important. We can't move ahead if we don't examine what we've been,
who we need to become, and what reparation we might make.
Phil arrives at 3 February only when he is fit to
move ahead. And I think we can only move ahead (I mean internally,
that is -- not repeat the same mistakes) when we've clearly seen and owned
what we need to see. And then the past can be left behind.
Even then, sometimes a person you harmed in the past will
attempt to hinder you: will claim you are "forgiven," but will never
allow that you're no longer the person who did this or that thing....
They may even prop up a picture before others that is a snapshot in time -- one
sole image of what you were (and were so perhaps for repeated days), but
not what you are today. And then others will judge you by that
false picture -- a picture produced out of self-righteousness but, also, from
a petty vengeance. They've been hurt. They cannot move on....
Still, the picture they paint of you is not the reality; you
will move ahead regardless. And even that move is not entirely up to you,
just as it wasn't completely up to Phil when he would be allowed to move
on. There's that greater Someone who.... How does Hamlet put it?
...our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will -- (V.ii.9-11)
What about the wrongs that Phil has done? It is
precisely, in Phil's case, what Backman observed:
"They say the best men are born out of their faults
and that they often improve later on, more than if they'd never done anything
wrong...." (132)
The only ones who will not allow you to move on, who would
perpetually remember and display only your misdeeds in life, not the changes
for the better, are those who would always hold them against you -- yet these
same would want you to forget their misdeeds without mention. You may
forget them. These people are never, in that condition, worth your
attention.
And when you move on? You are fit to meet all the
wonderful gifts in the days ahead, and that is nothing but a gift in itself,
the highest Joy. Phil is happy at the end of Groundhog Day not
because he gets the girl. He is happy precisely because he now has
the capacity to welcome real happiness -- and has become a being who can enjoy
and add to others' happiness as well as to his own -- and not ruin it.
So. Shall we get on with our Quest?
Sources
Backman, Fredrik. A Man Called Ove.
Trans. Henning Koch. London: Hodder &
