Chapter 3: The Great Puzzle - Modesty and Moderation (excerpts)
We live in times of much “perplexity” - “inability to deal with or understand something complicated.” Yet I have spent much of the first two chapters talking about how great we are; how people build character and that we have remarkable ability to overcome weaknesses. I realize that all this positive information, while true, may ring a little “hollow” - “without significance, insincere” given the reality of our circumstances. I don’t have to remind you of what you know all too well, that life often feels like being on a rollercoaster. For all its highs, there are plenty of lows. As wonderful as life can be, just as quickly it can take a turn, and get lonely. For some of us, it doesn’t take much for a door beyond sadness to open, to darkness. We talked about happiness too. Most of us will achieve more happiness in our lives than sadness. However, with all this talk of happiness, we know that there is a flip side of the coin. In one moment, we are standing on top of a mountain gazing at a sunset experiencing great joy for the beauty we are seeing, and in the next moment, we feel sad at the thought of someone we love not being with us. Even if we can get our arms around the fact that in life there is sadness with happiness, we seem to have bigger problems in America that we need answers for. Life is full of “contradictions'' - “a combination of statements or ideas or features that are opposed to one another”, which are hard to understand. We spend our whole lives living between wildly opposing forces. Understanding these contradictions, in particular, the largest one of all, will help you greatly, not only to answer the question of “how should I truly be judged?”, but also to bond us together as Americans. This I admit is a huge undertaking. Therefore, this chapter is broken up into sections. The information in each is like sisters or brothers, they are related. Together, I hope that they will help you see through the confusion, and understand what is going on. I will start with a quick story which I hope will be a runway for us to take flight. It’s your time to fly! So strap on your seat belt!
It starts with birds . . .. I know what you must be thinking, that I am “infatuated” - “possessed with an intense but short-lived passion or admiration” with using animals to explain life, it’s true, and I haven’t even used my ostrich yet. But I did say fly, so I think that my birds fit here… Anyhow, about my birds. I have a porch at my home outside of Boston (the original house dates back to early farming days so we call it a farmers porch.) What you see pictured below is a white vase that I placed at the top of one of the interior columns, with a bird's nest next to it. By placing the vase in this location was my 27th attempt in 27 years to stop the birds from building a nest somewhere on the porch every spring. Without fail, sometime in May they get busy and start their construction and they are quite protective of their job site! When we open the door to the porch they fly out of the nest and head right for us, swirling over our heads as their little babies shriek. It scares the poop out of everybody, including the mailman, Doordash, and UBER Eats drivers so we can’t get our food. Over the years I’ve been placing objects in the locations they have built in hopes that they will someday get the point and scram. I’ve even climbed up there and removed building materials but Mommy and daddy bird (Papa Bird) whirl over my head in anger. Regardless of all the things I do to try to stop them, they come. Why do I tell you about my birds?
I told this story to reinforce an important fact. That is, we truly are a bunch of birdbrains ha ha... I love that because, while it’s funny, the reality is that we are animals, and without a solid understanding of this, too many of us will miss the opportunities to develop the virtues needed to live in an organized society. Unless we understand the sometimes ugly truth about how we think, too many of us will succumb to uninspiring behavioral traits and will bring the rest of us down with them. Like my porch birds, we feel our way through life more so than think our way through it…
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We live in a complicated world - this much you know. For every rule, there seems to be an exception. This is the great puzzle that has been set out before us.
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Today peace eludes us, but it wasn’t always this way. We have come very close in the past to solving the puzzle completely. It happened in less complex times, but it did happen. If we recreate it, it can happen in the future.
Section 1 - The Enlightenment
It started in places like Athens, Greece, only a few 100 years ago, when the first schools came into being. With the discovery of language and written words we left our primitive nature in the past; no more caveman mentalities, no more carvings in stone. Education (Siri defines in part as “gaining a body of knowledge,” I define it below) allowed people to form thoughts and express themselves in a manner that would convince other people of things that were not formally agreed upon. People were figuring out what they could rely on as being true, or not, and what behaviors were acceptable or not.
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Back then it was cool to grow a beard, and to place your hand on your chin, look to the sky, and think … hmmm, “This world is amazing .. and there is so much I don't know about it…” Sorta like you going on TikTok or Instagram today and sending “memes” over social media, talking about “ethics” - “moral principles that govern a person's behavior” was trend-setting and all the rage! Then something even more amazing happened. Not acting like you know everything, and being nice to people with whom you had disagreements, became “customary” - “according to the customs or usual practices associated with a particular society”. Can you believe this? It’s true. Certain “courtesies” - “the showing of politeness in one’s attitude and behavior toward others”, was extended to people with different opinions.
There has never been a person alive or dead, in my opinion, who changed the course of history more and made the world a better place, than Ben Franklin.
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The rules of Ben Franklin's clubs:
To declare not to harbor any feeling of animosity against any club member.
To profess an equal affection for all men, whatever their creed.
To regard as an act of tyranny (there’s that word again!) any infringement upon freedom of worship or opinion.
To love truth for itself, to try to know it, to take pleasure in hearing it, to strive to spread it.”
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Section 2 - Moderation
I have a lot to say about “moderation”. Siri defines the word as “the avoidance of excess or extremes; especially in one's behaviors or political opinions”. This may sound boring to you, but this section will be anything but boring. I am going to try to make the case for moderation, in a very unique way. I may go out on a limb, and disturb my comfort level, and maybe yours too.
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I want to start with a metaphor (don’t worry it doesn’t have any farm animals in it). We have lost the safety and security of our mothership (America), and millions of us adrift at sea lost and losing hope. We have set our ship on fire because we argued to the point of its destruction. Now appears a single lifeboat! Enemies cling to their opposing sides. We are left with only one choice - to reach across the raft, grab hands, and pull to the MIDDLE. The middle is the only place where the raft balances. Please think hard about that. The fact that a shared raft will not float unless people move closer to one another and meet at the center is only one example of many that should prove to us the importance of seeking the middle.
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Moderation is the most underrated of all virtues and it simply must be GOD’s will for us. There is just too much evidence of it.
This is not a religious book. I wasn't raised with much formal religion, nor do I practice much today. I don't say this out of embarrassment or with any pride. I only want to be truthful with you, and I can’t deny how I feel. My truth is that it’s GOD’s puzzle we are solving, and if we follow his clues, we can and will get it right. I’m gonna take this a step further. I think each of us carries a little higher power within ourselves. I believe we need to believe in each other as being connected to GOD’s purpose, to make this whole thing work down here on earth. Was that BIG enough for you?
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Clue 3 - For over 3500 years, in Chinese Culture, it is widely believed that all forces of life are “dual” - “consisting of two parts, elements or aspects.” … Many natural dualities (such as light and dark, fire and water, expanding and contracting) are thought of as physical manifestations of the duality of life. All things come together, and find energy in their opposite.
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Ok, I will admit, I am a little desperate to convince you of my theories and I wonder if I'm reaching just a little bit here. Hmmm… I’m not too sure. Let me think about this for a second… Ok, just did that. I’m not reaching. Think about it my fellow birdbrains, do you want to grow up to be too tall or too short? Too dependent or too independent? Too emotional or not emotional enough? Too charismatic or not charismatic enough? Too “woke” or not “woke” enough? Should we have total trust (in something or someone) or no trust at all? Too much cheesecake for dessert or not enough? Seriously now, if some can be so strong, and some can be so weak, if some can be so right and others so wrong if some can be so happy and some can be so sad… isn’t there too much evidence that someone is trying to tell us something? They are yelling at us - GO TO THE MIDDLE! CHOOSE THE MIDDLE! THAT IS WHERE WE BELONG!
I’ve spent enough time calling us birdbrains for you to understand that another big key to our success is to greatly limit what we ask of people. By asking our fellow citizens to meet in the middle when it comes to dealing with politics, we don’t ask too much. C. Everett Koop, Former US Surgeon General (1916-1938) reminds us that we do not need to agree on everything, and we don’t all need to be best friends. When he said, “The American ideal is not that we all agree with each other, or even that we like each other. It is that we will respect each other's rights, especially the right to be different. And that, at the end of the day, we will understand that we are one people, one country, and one community and that our well-being is inextricably bound up with the well-being of every one of our fellow citizens.”
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Life is a constant test...for all of us. But here is the deal: each time we resist the “perversities'' (a big word but another good one) that exist in our nature, (“perverse” - “of a person or their actions; showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences”) we are rewarded. Think about the feeling you get after doing good, helping a neighbor, visiting an elderly grandparent, or after completing a hard task. You get this warm feeling, like the “runners high” after a marathon. That is the signal. Like I said, none of it comes easily. It is hard work to be a good citizen, but according to many, it is the only way that we solve the puzzle
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People have moved away from modesty and moderation, and we have lost a lot in the process. Trust in others is very low, and our shared sense of history and what we have in common is slipping away. There is a reason for this. My theory is very simple. We’ve spent the last few years asking way too much of people. We’ve had too much change too quickly, and we can’t handle it. (You know the whole elephant and birdbrain thing). Adapting, growing, and changing is who we are, but it has to be done in a way that advances everyone, and brings us closer together, not further apart. The ways of the modern world, technology, all the wires, the cloud, the satellites, and drones, and the constant electronic and digital communications - have drowned us and moved us further apart from each other. I mean what the hell in the world is a fungible token or artificial intelligence anyhow? By asking too much, we’ve in essence scattered the pieces of the puzzle all over the table.
Let’s move on to the next chapter, to look at the evidence in support of my theory. With a better understanding, I’m confident that we can find the pieces of the puzzle, pick them up, and put them (and us) back together again.