Brindle Media

Posts Tagged ‘Vietnam’

Let me begin by stating my belief that, whether you’re having a conversation, writing a book, posting a blog, sending a Facebook message, tweeting, doing a radio show, podcasting, or making a movie, it’s all about story-telling.

A recent article in Miller-McCune magazine reports that, based on scientific research, psychologist Jonathan Haidt has determined the beliefs you and I hold are really more the result of our genes and environment rather than immutable truths. Having established that ideology isn’t based in rationality, Haidt and his colleagues have come up with a framework of 5 moral foundations. They are care/harm, which makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; fairness/cheating, which alerts us to those who might take advantage of us; loyalty/betrayal, which binds us as team players; authority/subversion, which prompts us to respect rank and status; and sanctity/degradation, which inspires a sense of purity, both literally (physical cleanliness) and symbolically. The conviction that abortion, euthanasia, or gay marriage is immoral arises from the sanctity impulse.

Haidt says that American liberals respond most strongly to the care/harm and fairness/cheating impulses and tend to dismiss the others whereas conservatives (and the majority of people in the rest of the world) take all 5 moral foundations into account. Another way of interpreting this information might be that liberals tend to be more optimistic and see the glass half-full while conservatives tend to be more pessimistic and see it as half-empty.

There’s little doubt that Michael Moore is more influenced by the care/harm and fairness/cheating factors than by the others described. He waves his symbolic “freak flag” proudly and merely mentioning Michael Moore’s name provokes viscerally negative reactions from political conservatives and many independents, too. He’s viewed as a caricature of an old, unwashed, left-wing hippie troublemaker.

So it will be easy for those who disagree with Moore’s politics to reject this book as irrelevant. I think that would be a mistake.

I was surprised by the humanity that emanates from this collection of stories. I listened to the audiobook , which Moore narrates himself, and was struck several times by the thought that those who despise this man might gain some useful insights from hearing his stories about growing up in working class Flint, MI, his staunchly Republican mother, his encounters with Bobby Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Harry Chapin, and John Lennon. And the life experiences which shaped Moore into the Quixotic documentary filmmaker that he is today.

You might laugh, you might cry, slam the book shut or shout at the dashboard, but you won’t be bored by the stories in HERE COMES TROUBLE.

At a recent Catholic wedding I attended, the priest spoke to the bride and groom about the difference between a contract and a covenant. He talked about how the union they were undertaking was not a contractual arrangement like a business deal but a sacred promise to each other and, by extension, to God.

This was the first time I can recall hearing this issue addressed during a wedding ceremony. It seemed apt and it got me thinking.

My generation, the Baby Boomers, grew up in the aftermath of World War II. It was the age of nuclear proliferation, a time of major scientific discoveries which helped provide answers to many of our questions about the universe and which (like the birth control pill) provided us with more control over our destinies. We witnessed the coming of age of the feminist movement and experienced the “Summer of Love” along with the era of disillusion and anti-heroism following the Vietnam War which led to the Gordon Gecko “Greed Is Good” 80s.

We went from a generation of idealists to a generation of cynics to a generation of pragmatists. No wonder we started thinking of marriage more like a business agreement and a matter of mutual convenience. Of course, the inevitable result was the burgeoning divorce rate among Boomers which must have created psychological concerns about commitments for our children.

When Googled the question “What is the difference between a contract and a covenant?”, one of the results was this: “The difference is in the attitude of contract versus the attitude of covenant. In contract both parties are hoping to limit liability or maximize profit or otherwise make things better for the self. The contract is then a way of ensuring that things go just as planned and, if necessary, to force the other party to promised action….A covenant relationship is one in which certain terms are set, yes, but the parties make the cause of the other their own cause. In other words, when I make a covenant, the goals and desires of the person with whom I am covenanting become my own.” Sounds about right.

So, have the children of Baby Boomers learned a valuable lesson about marriage and long-term relationships from our mistakes? Or is this just wishful thinking?

Your thoughts?