SO WHAT TO DO?
Today Elke and Heinrich had to go to a funeral and a meal afterwards of a good friend. They will have to do that again on Tuesday. So I had the day to myself, a gloomy, rainy day when I didn’t want to go outside to photograph Winsen.
In the late afternoon I walked to Aldi for a few more groceries and bought half of a goose. I’ve never eaten goose before. But first I had to figure out how to make the oven work. There are two knobs and cryptic markings that I couldn’t figure out. But by poking this button and that and waiting to see if there was heat being produced I finally got it to work. The goose was delicious. So that was my day, not very exciting.
But there was no way to avoid the question I have been setting myself up for, how to deal with rabid partisan tribalism made more intense because we live in a world of change where the old ways are being discarded and every day brings some now dislocation, a partisanship that is made much more intense by new forms of communication that let us join a distant army and revs us up to fight.
How am I going to resolve this? I’m not. Since yesterday I’ve decided I am not the one to save the world. If the world is going to hell it will go to hell whatever I say. But I don’t feel like going to hell or living in hell, so I have to find my own personal way of getting along and that is what I am going to try an figure out for myself.
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The answers for me come out of my personal experience, which is different from other people’s personal experience and may not be of much help to them. So I’ll share some of my experiences and describe how they help me even if they don’t help anyone else.
1. Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi. My missionary upbringing with scripture classes at least three times a week all the way through grade and high school have acquainted me with the Bible, particularly the New Testament and the life and sayings of Jesus. They are a part of my experience. Jesus, whether you think of him as being the son of God or not, was a loving person. He found that accepting other people fully made him feel fully alive. You can’t accept without forgiving. You can’t accept without listening, really listening, to the other person. This won’t protect you from people who are out to harm you and if you let down your defenses completely you will be vulnerable. Jesus was painfully crucified to death. But he loved and was loved and that love remains powerful today.
So the first thing that I need to do is to listen, not argue, to listen, and to accept people for being themselves.
2. Travel. My experience with taking students to India, was mainly because I wanted to return to India again and again and to offer this same experience of India to students. Going to India makes me feel very alive. India makes me feel very alive because I am able to leave American culture behind for a while and to understand it in a new way through opening myself up to a completely different culture. I discover what it means to be American by going to India but this also means that I accept Indians with beliefs very different from my own as good friends. I realize that most people don’t have this kind of cross-cultural experience but if they could it in some way their fear of their values being threatened would diminish and they would discover for the first time what it is to be an American. They would discover that they are not better, not exceptional, not the guardians of the world, not harder working. They are simply different and can be proud of and delight in their American identity.
I don’t know how to give everyone this experience but part of the rapid change in the world is that actual travel is much easier than it used to be. If an octogenarian can so easily and cheaply drop in on Greece or Germany, so can other people and if someone can’t make a trip there are plenty of foreigners close to home. And if people can’t get a cross cultural experience actually (and many people who are afraid of recent immigrants haven’t met any), they can do it digitally, you can walk down the street in Delhi in 3D in your own living room. All people need is the desire to do it. The Internet lets us be more tribal, it can also let us be more open and global and accepting.
3. The Simple Life. Almost by accident, the people in Sri Lanka and India who have helped me and my students have great cross-cultural experiences are Gandhians. The Buddhist Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka argues that the good life is the simple life and that villagers who live very simply can have rich emotional and cultural lives in communities in which people work together for their mutual good. The same is true in Gujurat where my friend Hasmukh Patel’s work with tribal Indians can give people living a simple life a good life. Gandhi gave up everything he owned, although it was remarked that it cost a great deal to keep Gandhi in poverty as he led India to independence from the British. Buddhists believe the simple life with the fewest possessions is the best life. So does the Hindu Gandhian movement in India. So did Jesus. One way to live well in a rapidly changing world is to live simply. I don’t know how to persuade Americans, with our Capitalist need to have the economy be continually growing, to slow down. But some people whose work is threatened might find that they could live a richer life with less just by living simply.
4. Living With Less. And fitting with both of these ideas is what I am learning, again, on this trip. I have two sets of clothes, an iPad and some cameras, and I have everything I need. I have brought with me thousands of books, libraries of music, access to concerts all over the world, endless magazines, and all kinds of tv and movies. And it all fits in a carry on bag and a small room.
I have a small house in Swannanoa, but it is full of stuff that in my old age I now need to deal with in some way, giving some to my children and getting rid of the rest. I can’t take it with me. I am forced into the simple life and find the simple life to be freeing.
5. Technological change. And, ironically, all these cultural opportunities are the result of the computer age and new technology and new ways of communicating. Even cheaper travel and cheap airbnb’s are the result of technology. This technological change that is so threatening to so many people is actually enriching my life at very little cost and will continue to do so. I am not afraid of losing what I have, I welcome it. And I don’t have to be an exemplary person or clever in some way or to have gone to college, I just have to embrace change. (Of course I am supported by inheritance and by social security and retirement income but so are many, many other people. More important than income is the will to live differently and to open up to what is around you).
So these are the things that I have learned through experience, not because I am gifted or smart, but because my chance experience and what makes me feel alive, the emotional drives within me, have led me in this direction.
I am not arguing that this will persuade everyone to become technological Gandhians (which even Gandhi with his spinning wheel wasn’t) but that it appears to be possible to let go of tribalism and to lead a simple life in which you can have a great time. So at least I can see a way out for myself. I need to listen and to accept and to live simply and open myself up to possibilities.
Personal Experience. And one more thing. All of this comes out of personal experiences. This is what happened to me. It isn’t theoretical,
It isn’t hypothetical, it isn’t projected conspiracy theory, it isn’t fear of things that possibly may happen, QAnon deciphered plots, it isn‘t from listening to my tribe. My experience is from meeting people as I travel and listening to them, not projected stereotypes of foreigners, it is from my actual experience of people who are different from me not a projection of threatening foreigners, it is from living simply and finding out that Jesus and Buddha and Gandhi knew what they were talking about even if I am not much of a follower, it is not from being a member of a tribe ready to go to war but by being an ordinary person fumbling his way through life and discovering great experiences. Dropping tribal partisanship and listening to my neighbor is a good first step. It comes, to the degree that I can do it, from letting go and opening up and trusting my own experience and the experience of the people around me. If it was hard, or needed intelligence or education or wealth I wouldn’t be doing it. I had the luck of good experiences but we all have good experiences. But because it is easy and all I have to do is let go, I can then, if I am able to do it sufficiently, even with many mistakes, have a pretty good time.
So that is my personal solution to partisanship and all the fear and fury that goes with it. I am simply a lucky person floating along who doesn’t know how to transfer his luck to anyone else.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 