[FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening
thompnickson2 at gmail.com
thompnickson2 at gmail.com
Sat Sep 5 19:50:51 EDT 2020
Again, people. Could we just forget the whole anecdote? Please?
I wish we could focus not on the particulars of the anecdote, but on that
fact that Trump's charm comes from the fact that he tells the truth about
his basest impulses, while lying about everything else. And that trait
ingratiates with those amongst us who have base impulses for which we fear
we might be shamed.
Speaking of shame! Whew!
Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
<mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
<https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 5:41 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening
James is the man... I didn't want to name him speculatively on-list. I
don't know the Ohori's owner, only the original founder Susan Ohori... I
guess she cashed out some time back? It hasn't felt like her touch for some
time. James would have been avoiding Larry, not you, even though you might
have been vaguely implicated in it. He might even remember you as "Nick"
and "from New England" and "wild eyebrows"... the current circumstances
don't have me "running into him" as likely as in the past, but the
discussion is in the queue for if ever we do!
Dear Steve,
I would not be surprised if you did, indeed, know him. Somehow, he worked
his way into being something of a water commissioner up there, mediating the
most difficult issue I can imagine. as a stranger? The whole thing seemed
incredible to me, but a credit, in any case, to the vibes he gives off.
I won't tell on FRIAM entire story of how our last meeting went. I also
befriended the then owner of Ohori's, a very sweet and generous human, also
with LOTS of life experience, who can easily flip into right wing asshole or
left wing asshole, depending of what is needed to call attention to himself
and create tension in the room. So I am sitting talking to our tall friend
and Larry comes up to the table and says, "Can I join you?" I want to say
no, but Larry does, after all, own the place, so my Liberal
anybody-can-talk-to-any-body-else thing kicks in, and we're off. Larry
flips into right-wing asshole, I try to modulate, and Our Friend stays for a
suitably polite interval and then makes his excuses and leaves. As he goes
out the door, Larry turns to me and says, "Did I say something?" (Larry is
not a complete idiot; he just plays one on TV)
It goes down as one of the most humiliating moments of my life. But I am
not sure you can repair it. I guess you could say, if he remembers me, that
the bald, lame, crow-watcher thinks fondly of him, would love to know how
the water thing worked out, and looks forward to running into him again as
soon as I can start going to coffee houses again. I think his name is
James.
I am glad to know he is alive, and presumably well.
As to you second story, it is terribly familiar. Both my father and my
older brother could, when not sober, talk about "Jews". It just seemed to
come out of nowhere. I will reserve my further comment for a FRIAM post
which I will make in a moment.
Thanks, Steve,
Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
<mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
<https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
From: Friam <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening
Nick -
I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in my "second
order circle" so I only see him while visiting certain friends or at events
we all share or the occasional criss-cross in a public venue. I will try
to remember to ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype
might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate on what forms
that might take as I explore my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my
projections of what *his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking
about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"... he has been
fairly politely blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial
conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at navigating (not
so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.
My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing up in KY fairly
proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from
a subculture that was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having
a close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of Frankfort
during the school year in the depression for lots of reasons. She was
therefore raised as an only child, her cousins having recently grown and
moved out of the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a
friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her
aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day after school
until it got to where she started being noticeably late home... when she
told her aunt why she was late, she said "why don't you just invite your
friend home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who
resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt married a
Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous and in a nicer
neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day,
her aunt very politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in fact,
was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the
first black person she had ever met and it was years later that she guessed
that that was what it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a
deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother
gave her a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar
baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of doll that young
girls were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how their
ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave babies. Her mother
explained how wrong *all* of it was, from the slavery to the treating even
the babies as property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies,
etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our moves and it
showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her mother's (our aunt's) china that
we never used... my sister saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play
with it" whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and then
declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it, it is just a
reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't know if it went in the burn
barrel with our other trash or if she figured out some more respectful
disposal method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or similar
for whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and other similar
instances made me think that my parents were the least prejudiced people I
knew, until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from college,
one of who was African American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a
very sociable and interesting person (his father was career military and his
mother had died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by
"help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone
and they very sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought
that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations
but it was clear that they were very much against the relationship, even if
they didn't quite try to forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I
think they even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a
conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me. But made me
realize how hidden some of these judgements, stereotypes, opinions, etc can
be. I'm sure I'm laced with junk like that.
- Steve
Dear fellow congregants,
One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One
expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him
because "He tells it like it is!" They can say this while acknowledging
that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the
time, what is he telling the truth about?
I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the
Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother's life hero was Eleanor
Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President's
death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears.
Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish,
gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But - and here is
the point - when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as
a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that
these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in
Massachusetts, in the 40's, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody
in any of these categories.
Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely
tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate,
international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He
fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the "old wise black
man". I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which,
given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension
begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot
control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of
the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by
it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I
never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my
lie.
This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his
own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is
FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many
others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on
from one's childhood, a world in which others find one's basic
categorizations distasteful - in fact, a world in which one finds one's own
basic categorizations distasteful.
To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of
type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that
sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a
tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read
through that lens. That's abduction. This person wears a dress, this
person is a woman, this person is gentle, that 's abduction. (Well, it's
abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity
groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to
design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick's
white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive
taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of
institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public
universities and armies - or conservation corps).
Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we
have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on,
"Look, I'm sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to
know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please
call me out whenever you feel confined by it. "
A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.
Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
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