We see evidence of chaos in nature as well as amazing order and balance.  Humans are constantly striving to conquer nature so that the inconvenience of struggle is, ideally and ultimately, eliminated.  We seem to now operate under the premise that no man should have to struggle and that we can govern struggle out of our existence regardless of the cost.  But, if you believe man has evolved and changed, what would that process of evolution lead to if we eliminated struggle from our lives?  With millions of years of human experiment, there is a wealth of data regarding the success and failures of man in his attempt to conquer the forces of nature. We have a long record of social experiment that include successes and failures. What can we learn from history? 

How is it that a new-born eventually comes to understand the wisdom of millions of years of human trial and error when the average life lasts less than 100 years?  Joseph Campbell studied the recurring themes in the fables and mythical stories of man across different cultures of the world that aim to teach the findings of the generations to instruct us “how to live”?  I think Campbell’s work is important and instructive and if a person wanted to consume one book by Campbell, I recommend The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers.

The aboriginal culture was the longest living, purely intact culture on the planet, what did they owe to that longevity.  Can we learn something from how they lived.  The primary foundation of their culture was a life lived in harmony and balance with the plants and animals with which they were dependent.  Mutant Message from Down Under by Marlo Morgan is a wonderful story illustrating the Aboriginal view of how to live sustainably in concert with the laws of nature.  One of the key elements lacking in the economy of the aboriginal was agriculture as we know it.  The aboriginal did not practice animal husbandry, did not herd animals to store food. We might judge the aboriginal society as unsophisticated and yet they survived as an intact culture for longer than any on the planet. Instead of trying to rise above nature and struggle, the aboriginal people of the Australian Outback wanted to live in balance with nature and embrace struggle as a part of live.

A look back at the history of man on our planet indicates that man’s shift from hunters and gatherers to an agrarian society with storage of surplus food was one of the most profound shift’s and changes in history and has had a profound impact on our planet.  Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, by Daniel Quinn (as well as his book My Ishmael) is a thought-provoking story causing one to consider the past and the path of man and his relationship with nature. In the book, Ishmael says: There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.  Guns, Germs and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond chronicles, in this non-fictional work, the rise and destruction of human civilizations in the history of man and the role of agrarian technology and food surplus in promoting population growth, dominance and superiority in civilizations.

The Journey of Man, A Genetic Odyssey by Spencer Wells describes the use of modern science to track the genetic mutations of humans back to his origin through the mail Y chromosome. The finding is that all people can be traced back to a tribe in Africa that lived 60 million years ago. The incredible undertaking shows how all humans are related and how we adapted and changed in different environments. The level of radiation or the predominant diet in a region, for example, would impact our need to absorb sunlight to produce vitamin D and therefore impact the shade of our skin. Does the thought that we all have the same origin change our acceptance and understanding of one another?

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville is a critique of the American experiment by a Frenchman who was originally chartered to travel to America to evaluate the criminal justice system. Tocqueville is able to identify the practical limitations and potential failings of a democratic system of self governance. This is a brilliant and insightful treatise that produced the famous reference: “tyranny of the majority.” These writings are potent and relevant even though they were written well over 100 years ago. I think every American would benefit from the incredible insights and predictive qualities of Tocqueville in Democracy in America.

Jonathon Haidt, a social psychologist, popularized moral foundations theory in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided By Politics and Religion. Intelligent and caring people can end up voting to support either liberal or conservative agendas. The one side assumes that the other side is either stupid, brainwashed, greedy or evil. But Moral foundations theory and the study of how differences in moral reasoning can produce different decision criteria, offers a possible explanation of how to good, intelligent and caring people can reach a completely different conclusion. Moral foundations theory offers six moral foundations or imperatives (with opposing factors listed for each) at work in moral reasoning: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Liberty/Oppression, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation. Haidt, with political origins and leanings as a liberal Democrat, studied the difference in the moral reasoning exercises of liberals and conservatives and compared those. What he found was that liberals consistently stress three of the six (harm, fairness and liberty, in that order) while conservatives stress all six foundations more equally. Haidt and other moral psychologists believe that the moral foundations are a decision criteria that stem from the process of human evolution as a response to adaptive challenges. It is not difficult to imagine why all six moral imperatives might be important considerations for group survival. The valuable insight from this work, in my opinion, is the development (mostly by liberals in my opinion) of the realization that there are justifiable reasons, rooted in the evolutionary development of man in a social setting, why conservative values (driven by the other three moral foundations) exist and why good and caring people can reach a different conclusion. When we consider the work of Jonathan Haidt we have to consider that although good and caring people can reach polar opposite conclusions, the opposite conclusions about how man should live and role of government in society will likely produce entirely different results.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, is a novel that imagines a world where the moral foundation of care is dominant to the detriment and even exclusion of decisions based upon the criteria of liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. In Atlas Shrugged, the productive citizens are shrinking in number while the dependent population is growing in number with the moral imperative or care calling the productive into servitude of the “moochers”. The consequence in Atlas Shrugged is the disappearance and unavailability of the productive and resourceful citizens and the implosion of society. I believe every citizen could benefit from reading the novel Atlas Shrugged. The novel allows for image of a society where dependency and self-responsibility take a back seat to entitlement. The novel warns us that decisions, while well intended are not immune to the law of unintended consequences when decisions are void of consideration of certain moral foundations that are a product of evolution based upon adaptive social norms in response to survival challenges. Unfortunately, Atlas Shrugged is extremely lengthy and is a significant undertaking for any reader. I believe it is an incredibly important work and, while I understand the reluctance of a good liberal to partake I would suggest that your conviction of belief will either be shaken or firmed from the challenge.

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, by Mark Steyn causes us to consider demographic shifts and the impact of increasing death rates coupled with decreasing birth rates in some countries and the threat of the opposite trend in other countries to the balance of power and our way of life. If the message in this book is considered with the history set forth in Guns, Germs and Steel it is not impossible to imagine that changing world population could lead to a shift in power and imposition of a new, undesirable, way of life could result. Mark Steyn has a brilliant and engaging writing style that will not disappoint.

I can only hope that my children read all items from my reading list above and will be encouraged to read from other people’s lists. In this way they will expand and challenge their thinking so that they can be responsible decision makers through an understanding of where we (humans) come, where we are headed and the possibilities for a change.

My mother, Linda, was the oldest of 7 children. She was raised in a small town in the Midwest. She attended a catholic grade school (I recall her talking about a strict nun.) Many people have told me that she was the most beautiful girl ever to come from McCook, Nebraska. Linda appreciated compliments but at the same time she was uncomfortable with the notion that she was beautiful and never quite accepted or entirely believed that this was the case. Linda attended junior college and worked as a receptionist and bookkeeper and was not a particularly sophisticated person. She was not versed in the matters of Washington or Wall Street. Linda was a compassionate and loyal person with a devotional love for her family and for the extended family of people in the circle of her life.
My mother went through a very tough divorce. Linda raised three boys on her own on a receptionist salary and enlisting help from her parents before she remarried a man who would provide for her and her boys and give her a complete family. She suffered two brain aneurysms in her life, one in her thirties and one in her fifties (almost exactly 20 years apart.) Although she had some imperceptible issues from the brain aneurysms, she was fortunate to recover remarkably well. Her family all reasoned that she had her full share of health issues and that she would now live a long life (her grandmother and mother both lived well into their 90’s.) However in 2006, Linda was diagnosed with glioblastoma (an insidious and incurable brain cancer) and she died in October of 2008 the age of 68.
I sat with her one night next to her bed while she was in a rehabilitative care facility after they attempted to remove the cancer from her brain surgically and held her hand while we watched a crime drama on TV. At one point she pulled her hand away and rubbed the incision on her head and said, “I had another one of those things.” I said, do you mean an aneurysm.” She said, “yes, one of those.” I said, “no Mom, you have a terminal form of brain cancer.” She asked some questions and then stared at the TV. I began to cry and then squeezed her hand and said, “Mom, I am so sorry.” She squeezed my hand and turned to me and looked me square in the eyes. In an effort to comfort me she said, “babe, no one ever said life was going to be easy.” And then she smiled at me as if to say that she was fine and went back to watching the TV and continued to stroke my hand. She was intent on comforting me at that moment.
My Mother said things to me like: “no one said life was going to be easy” as I was growing up. She used to tell me to make sure that I gave more to the world than I took because, “the only way for the world to keep spinning is for people to give more than they take.” When I was in college and having the normal struggles that a young person trying to find their way has, my mother sent me the serenity prayer. I will not recite the prayer here but it is about acceptance and self-responsibility. Many would have thought of my mother as less than a formidable person. Now that she is gone, I realize that she was the strongest of us all and she had “the secret sauce.”
I am not certain that people can find true serenity until they find self-responsibility and self-reliance. Certainly freedom is an important element of serenity. Maybe a person can find peace in captivity but that is not the kind of peace and serenity that I desire. My mother would provide love and comfort but the greatest gift she gave me was the ability to love, accept and comfort myself despite my imperfections and mistakes. My mother taught me that I am responsible for my own happiness and that the key to my happiness was inside me. She taught to be happy with more or less and to be grateful for what God gave me, for better or for worse. Linda gave me a measuring stick to evaluate my life that did not lead me to envy others or to expect others to make me happy. I think my mother gave me the means of being free even if I were physically held captive.
While my mother would comfort me in a time of need, she would at the same time challenge me to find comfort in the simple things and to appreciate the opportunity before me. That was incredibly empowering. She was a true leader and motivator in that respect. She gave me an endless internal flame of independence and freedom.
Amazingly, I hear leaders today talking about income inequality and promoting envy and dependence. I do not hear leaders teaching people to love themselves for other than their income or possessions or providing a way for people to measure their value or chance for happiness in other than dollars. I do not hear our leaders challenging citizens to give more than they take to help keep the world spinning. I do not hear leaders describe a path to self-reliance and serenity. Someone will always have more and some will have less in a free society. I hear our leaders encouraging comparison to our neighbors who have more measured by income and possessions. This comparison can only promote envy and anger. Dependency is another form of captivity that is more powerful than physical captivity because it imprisons the soul and isolates the soul from what it truly needs. What the soul thirst for is self-acceptance and an internal strength and flame that allows us to love and accept ourselves regardless of the station of our neighbor, for better or worse.