The blog entries are in chronological order:

December 1:  The importance of Joy

Christmas time is one of my favorite times of the year, even though I am not a Christian (see the series on science and belief to get a sense of where I'm coming from).  The emphasis people put on joy, family, kindness, love, and peace on earth represents the best attributes of humankind and human desires, and at least for a few weeks it's not corny or naive to talk about love, caring, and joy.  So my first blog entry in December will be about joy.

It is my firm belief that joy should be a central component of every person's life.  Moreover, it is a component that we have far more control over than we realize.  Many people believe joy is absent because they look for it from the world around them -- what their friends do, what their job is like, how they are treated by others, etc.  They see an imperfect and at times cruel world, and feel that life is a struggle.  These types complain, are jealous, bitter, and often fall into a world where the demands of society, their own unachieved goals and the inadequacies of others create a life that is more a burden than a joy.  Especially in our world of material prosperity, it seems as if a lot of people are unable to find joy, perhaps because they look for it in material goods.  Emblematic of that is the violence that took place Friday as holiday shoppers greeted the season with pushing, shoving, threats and violence.  That wasn't the norm, but the emphasis on buying and on materialism shows a kind of dysfunctional culture.

To have a truly joyful life one has to first recognize that not every minute will be pleasant -- people all face tragedies, and these can sometimes be severe.  The example earlier this fall of Chanda Luker's experience as a Cambodian holocaust survivor (and her positive outlook on life in its aftermath) provides a stark example of what life can be (see blog entry for October 5).   Joy is not good things happening, nor is it a state of constant bliss and satisfaction regardless of what is going on around you.  No, what a joyful life requires is: a) an ability to adapt; b) acceptance of responsibility for your life (don't blame the system or others for your fate); c) perspective; and d) connections with others.  If you have a joyful life, you'll still feel the intense pain when tragedy hits, but will be able to come through it more easily, and with fewer long term consequences.  More importantly, you'll truly appreciate the beauty and wonder of each day and each experience at times when things are going well.

Adaptability:  Rigidity works against joy because it is essentially a demand that the world and other people conform to your expectations and desires.  While that might be nice, it's not going to happen.  People will be petty, mean and incompetent at times, and the world will in various ways meet out injustice.  Adapt to it.  That doesn't mean do whatever the world or others demand, but simply build your life around the world as it is, adapting to the imperfections and injustices in a way that doesn't accept them (you still try to change what you can), but which doesn't cause them to create anger and resentment in your life.  Those emotions obviously defeat joy, make you less able to effectively counter the problems, and are pointless -- the world won't change just because you are angry and resentful to it.

Responsibility:  People who blame others for their situation are usually not joyful people because they live in a world where they don't have control of their life.  But, of course, no one has complete control.  We are born into a world with certain limitations, both physical and social.  Some classes of people are in intense poverty, often due to injustice and exploitation.  Work to change that, but recognize that we are responsible for how we act and react to circumstances.  Even in cases where one is wrongly imprisoned, or put into the hospital by, say, a drunk driver, there is still that personal responsibility to deal with the situation as best you can, taking responsibility for how you deal with it.  That won't cure the injustice or take away the pain, but it provides a basis for joy; you can't have joy if you aren't taking responsibility for who and what you are.

Perspective:  This is so important.  Most people who are angry or upset are reacting to petty things.  Whether its a policy at work, a bad grade, a snide remark, or something in politics, people get worked up, angry and emotional over things that really aren't worth it.  Ask how important something really is to your life and position.  Ask if you'll even remember this situation a year or two years from now.  Understand how others might be looking at it different than you, and try to figure out their perspective, especially if its the actions of others causing the resentment.  Keep in mind all the good your life contains, and don't let a few little problems or annoyances destroy your joy.  It isn't worth it.  People often take things -- and themselves -- far too seriously.  Perspective is so important I'll make a whole blog entry on it later, a person without perspective can rarely be joyful; if you have perspective, many of the other things a joyful life requires fall into place. 

Connections:  Humans are social creatures, and while true joy is personal and subjective, connections with others give life a kind of variety we need.  We often think we need exciting new food, video games, movies, or distractions, but we really need other people.  To play sports, play music, debate politics, share meals, talk about life and our experiences and reflections, and recognize our own humanity in others is essential.  Another word for this is love.  You cannot have joy without love, you cannot have love without connections to others.  An inability to connect and share intimacy makes a joyful life virtually impossible to have.

Joy is possible for just about everyone.  One can imagine cases where people are imprisoned, abused and mutilated to the point that these ideas seem meaningless, and I'm sure that can be the case.  But for most people the lack of joy in life is a self-inflicted wound, while living a joyful life is a result of how one thinks and behaves.  So aspire to joy this holiday season! 

December 5:  This are just too hectic today, so my entry will be short, and basically an addition to the entry of December 1.

Today I read in the paper about a fire in town here in Maine which killed a two year old boy, and put his father into critical condition.  Having a son myself, and thinking about what it would feel like, I allowed myself to be swept up with the emotion of what that would be like, the tragedy they must feel in their life, even thinking about how the father must have felt as he was trying to get back to save his son, even as he was already badly burned. I did not even try to stop myself  from delving into those emotions and thinking about the tragedy; I always try to engage such stories fully, and not become cold to the reality of what people experience.

It occurs to me that this is also a component of being able to live with joy: the ability and willingness to empathize, and not think such emotions are a sign of weakness or mental softness. Indeed, the opposite is the case, those who mock or are afraid of such emotion are afraid to confront who and what they really are. Moreover, if someone doesn't confront and think about how tragedy really feels, and understands its reality for so many people, then one is unlikely to be able to survive a personal tragedy without sacrificing the joy of living. Many people have a sort of faux joy, an optimitism built on having had nothing really go wrong and not taking the world seriously. If such an optimism gets punctured, a person is unlikely to be able to really tolerate the pain, and more likely to become cold, cynical, and joy-less. So, ironically perhaps, one other key to having true joy is being able and willing to confront and empathize with an open heart the worst tragedies that humans endure. Idealistic joy can be weak; joy with a foundation of realism is stronger, and makes it more likely that one will be able to weather personal tragedy.

December 7:  In my International Relations class we're deep into the Rwanda case, asking both how it could have happened, and why there was no intervention.  In Comparative Politics we've been looking at Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and talking about the difficulties in creating stable democratic governments in the third world.  Both Sierra Leone and Nigeria have tried (Nigeria is currently on its third attempt -- six years into it now) but the demons of corruption, ethnic disputes and poverty intervene.  Both Sierra Leone and Nigeria have potential means to economic growth (diamonds and oil respectively), but in each case the money generated seems to lure more corruption rather than work for growth.  In fact, diamonds were at the root of Sierra Leone's 1992-2002 civil war.

Decolonization took place at the height of the Cold War, and the third world went from being simply pawns in the European set of empires to pawns in the Cold War.  Only since 1990 has their destiny been seen more in its own terms than of its value to the West.  I think that ultimately history will judge the post-colonial era in especially Africa as something like the aftermath of a holocaust.  The West destroyed the culture, traditions, political structures, and natural way of life of vast numbers of people, and instead subjugated them, converted them, and used them. 

The result has been genocides like Rwanda, civil wars that blanket central Africa and persist for decades, often with rape, forced slavery, child soldiers, and food being used as a weapon.  Somalia should have been exporting food, but war there in the early 90's caused mass famine.  Sudan sees a genocide in Dafur, but the world just looks on and does little.  The overall impact on humanity from colonialism is massive, far worse than the holocaust of WWII, or even Stalin's gulags.  Yet while we condemn those (the victims were western civilized people who look like us), we close our eyes to the third world, or see it as something tragic like a hurricane or earthquake.

Bluntly, people look at especially Africans as somehow not quite as human as the rest of us.  This isn't wholly conscious.  People know intellectually that these are all humans, people believe truly that they are not racist, but there is a fundamental racist core in our culture, and we all share it.  If atrocities of the sort that take place in the civil wars of Africa were to take place in Europe there would be intervention and outrage.  Instead, people tend to think "they can't get their act together" or "the people are still primitive and thus life isn't worth as much to them."  Both kinds of views are based on ignorance.

They can't "get their act together" because political and cultural stability is not something that simply gets created by forming a government or passing laws.  It rests on traditions, cultures, and shared understandings of social life.  The most stable systems have centuries of development to build up, changing to adapt to new circumstances.  But those centuries of development were destroyed by colonialism, different ethnic groups for pushed into the same state (or ethnic groups were divided between states), and suddenly they were to start a new system.  There is no way that can work.  The damage done by colonialism is irreversible, and it'll decade a long time before stable political cultures can be constructed.  Moreover, intense western cultural influences actually hinder healthy social development.  The ideas from the west often fit oddly in the cultural context of third world states, and warp perspectives.

They certainly are not primitives who do not value life.  Hear stories coming from Africa, here accounts of the love between families and the pain caused by suffering, and the close connections between family and friends and its clear that a life in Africa not only has as much abstract value as a life anywhere else, but it is valued by the people there as much as we value our own lives.  When a child dies at a refugee camp in Chad, it is just as tragic as a child death in a fire in Maine.

Christmas time usually is a time where people are generous, and think about trying to create peace and good will.   It is usually a time, even for those like me who are not religious, to celebrate the values of love and joy, those values which make life worth living.  We can't save the third world. The damage done is not something a few donations or even a few years in the peace corps will solve.  This is a problem that will be around for some time.  The best we can do is start to think about it, to confront it, not to let ourselves become one of those who simply reads the story, feels sad, and then turns the page and moves on.  We have to confront the reality of the situation, think about it, and try to do what we can to help our culture to truly understand the tragedy of post-colonialism, and do what we can to work towards a better future. 

If we don't, then we shouldn't be surprised if one day we are confronted with a kind of rebellion which we can't ignore. 

December 22:  Obviously I'm not blogging much during the busy finals week and break, and probably will be doing very little until school starts up again in Mid-January.  I'll start this possibly last blog of the year with politics, but end with a reflection on the holiday season.

The Iraqi elections of December 15th generated great optimism, but it looks like yet another supposed turning point that isn't.  The Sunnis are already complaining about fraud, the Shi'ite religious parties dominate, the voters seemed to emphasize sectarian factors over anything else.  To any student of comparative politics this mix of massive corruption and intense ethnic conflict (including conflict over valuable resources) is extremely troubling.  Add to that the neo-colonial factor of America's influence, and you have each side trying to use the US to advance its ends, and the American presence allowing extremists to ignite emotions and anger over the foreign occupier.  In short, this isn't an emerging democracy, there isn't even a clear Iraqi identity.  Instead it's an experiment as to whether democratic processes can ultimately overcome political culture.

When Vice President Cheney visited Iraq, he was given a pessimistic assessment by troops he talked with, who said they could not see progress on the ground.  For all the attempts at optimism, Iraq is simply stuck in a very slow process which could degenerate into full civil war, but isn't likely to yield anything like a stable western style democracy.  In fact, the best option remains to have the Iranian-Syrian alliance use their clout over Shi'ite and Sunni factions in Iraq to get them to cooperate.  This certainly would not be a pro-American cooperation, and would even increase Iranian influence.  In short, the Administration is between Iraq and a hard place.

But here in snowy Maine, the mood is not one dominated by Iraq or other issues.  Rather Christmas decorations shine off icy snow, and people are celebrating that one time of the year which, as I wrote earlier this month, ideas of peace, goodwill, love, and caring are not considered corny.  On my bit on "joy" on December 1 I noted that while I'm not a Christian, I find this time of the year special and inspirational.  I have no problem saying "Merry Christmas," because I find the ideals beautiful, even if I'm not a believer in the details of the myth.  There is one aspect of Christianity which makes it a very powerful ideal, and I think at Christmas time even us skeptics of religion should think about the power of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is something that comes hard to many people.  It's easy to forgive someone who admits they are wrong, grovels, or somehow makes amends.  But the ability to forgive even those who one show no remorse or continue nasty behavior is perhaps the most powerful force of all.  It occurs to me that hatred and carrying grudges against
others is probably the most counter productive thing to do if one wants joy in living.

So, no matter what ones' religion, one thing the Christian faith has right is the emphasis on forgiveness.   I'll add in grace there, because I see that as the ability to forgive oneself as well.  I don't think one can have true joy in life if one is unable to forgive others or oneself. If you carry a hatred or a grudge, you are in essence giving another person power over your emotions, letting that which you hate actually dominate your thinking and feeling. The inability to forgive others also creates more difficulty in forgiving oneself, because deep down one recognizes the contradiction in condemning another while ones' own behavior is imperfect. That eats at a person, creates depression, and blocks the ability to open up to the joy that life should contain.

Again, what I really appreciate about Christmas is the emphasis on the values of peace, joy, good will, forgiveness, and grace. Those values, I believe, is why Christianity was so persuasive to so many, and I think they do represent a fundamental truth about human nature. It's too bad so many people have been misled by the mythology and dogma that they put believing in a person or a story ahead of simply trying to live by the values their faith espouses. Those are powerful values.

So we can all celebrate the spirit behind Christmas, no matter what our faiths.  The ideals are powerful and carry a message of hope and love.  I think that spirit is behind other religions as well, and in fact is greater than our human constructed religious systems.   It also is greater than our human constructed ideologies and philosophical systems.  If we can somehow find that spiritual aspect of our lives, I think we can avoid the insanity you describe.  If we don't, we're lost in a material cacophony with no meaning.