Grounded between good and evil

“The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,” wrote the Russian author and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Mary Chapin Carpenter expanded on that pithy statement in her song “A Dream Like This,” written for the “Dead Man Walking” album:

We’re neither light nor darkness

We’re neither night or day

We’re neither kind nor heartless

We’re neither lost or saved

We’re neither still nor moving

We’re neither held or free

Oh to be so human

Oh to be

We all want to—maybe even dream that we can—transcend that often-fine line between good and evil, harboring only good, or at least only good intentions, in our hearts. But if we look carefully and consider honestly, few among us would deny that less noble impulses sometimes creep in. Solzhenitsyn and Chapin may have something here.

That line between good and evil has been much debated in the public sphere of late. The recent dispute about the meaning and merits of the film “American Sniper” has inspired lots of thoughtful people to examine what it means to celebrate an “authentic American hero” who killed a record of number of people during his tour in the Middle East, and by doing so, saved countless lives of American service members and of local civilians. Or to denounce the glorification of killing, even (or especially) by one of our own. To honor the warrior, perhaps especially because he was subsequently murdered by a vet he was trying to help, or to insist that war is rarely glorious and that these wars have certainly not been. An interesting piece in the New York Times encapsulates the arguments about this film between “hand-wringing lefties and chest-thumping righties.” It’s worth a read, and you’ll find it right here.

Left unaddressed in most of this is the complicated urge to claim that both arguments can be true—or, correlatively, that both can be false. The line between good and evil runs through the heart of this nation just as it does through each of ours.

A similar ruckus, which has simmered for several years within the American Psychological Association, my own professional org, has recently spilled out into the mainstream media. In this case, the issue is the participation of psychologists in torture—in the originally denied, later acknowledged, and subsequently forbidden program of torture enacted against “enemy combatants” held at Guantanamo and several “dark sites” around the globe. If you haven’t followed the story of some psychologists' role in this, you’ll find a pretty thorough overview of it in this New York Times article.

This controversy, too, pits “good” against “evil.” Early revelations of psychology’s apparent organizational complicity several years ago inspired many to withdraw from the association in protest. Then, as now, many people insisted that psychologists’ participation in the program of “enhanced interrogation” violated psychology’s core ethical principles, not the least of which is the ancient medical dictum to “first, do no harm.” Others insist that psychologists’ participation in interrogation ensured that prisoners would be treated humanely and that their well-being would be of primary concern. How much worse would it be, these folks asked, if there were no one there who understood such issues? In those early years and even since this controversy reached the public sphere, these claims and their advocates have failed to convince those representing either position of the rightness (the righteousness?) of the other.

Left largely unaddressed here, also, has been the possibility that both positions are justified in some sense, and both are flawed, that neither side can know all the things that the other side knows, that even knowing everything about everything, one can be left ambivalent about such complicated issues. That the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of this discipline as it does through each of ours.

Oh, it’s easy enough for each of us to be sure that she is Right and the “other side” (as if it were that simple) is Wrong. I made that very claim when I resigned from APA in protest over the organization’s failure to confront this issue directly, and I remain convinced that my decision was right. But what do I know—and what do I not know—from my safe and comfortable vantage point as a concerned but distant observer? What would I think if I were actually there, in the actual mortal battle or in the position of making decisions that would determine the fates of countless people?

How can I possibly know what I would know with great certainty then?

I had thought about this occasionally over the years, even though I was clear that snipers are not my heroes and torture is not OK. And then I was reminded how simplistic my absolute conclusions might be when I saw a play by George Brant called “Grounded.” The play has just one character—a woman pilot who leaves her position flying fighter jets in the Middle East to have a child. Back in the States, she finds that despite the joy she takes in her marriage and her daughter, she misses flying terribly. Well, actually, she misses the sky and the feel of flying. So she re-ups and gets assigned to a base in Nevada, where she will fly drones long-distance all day, 7 days a week. She’ll technically live with her family, but that possibility quickly morphs into added stress as she tries to live two very disparate lives—think loving and gentle vs. intentionally lethal. During the day, she “flies” drones by watching a screen and manipulating a stick that guides a drone over the desert 7500 miles away. By night, she sees her daughter and husband briefly and sleeps. The commute across the desert—a different one, to be sure—is her only break between those two lives.

Early on, although she’d deadly bored with “flying,” she is pleased, even jubilant, at opportunities to take out “guilties.” Then she starts noticing body parts flying from the blasts. Slowly, initially subtly but increasingly blatantly, her world begins to unravel. She is less sure, less committed in her work as a long-distance warrior, more disconnected and distant from her nearby family. She searches, painfully, for some sort of solace, maybe even some resolution to this impossible dilemma she faces: killing “guilties” by day and nurturing a family by (brief) night. Especially when the bad guys turn out to have body parts, and then friends, and then families. I don’t want to tell the whole story in case you get to see it. (Watch for it! I would go again, and then again in an instant if it returned.) It’s just that it all comes together—or apart—as she confronts this awful dilemma of finding both good and evil in herself, in her government’s actions, in her enemies, in the world.

I saw the play at the Dairy Center in Boulder, where the pilot was played by Laura Norman, who occasionally performs with the Boulder Ensemble Theater Company. She was just extraordinary in her depiction of this woman—her early thrill at flying, her delight in her new family, her begrudging move to piloting drones, and her gradual descent into … what? The line between good and evil. As one reviewer wrote, Grounded “lets no one off easy… Clap all you want—and you’ll want to clap a lot—but the game stays with you.”  The game stays with you.

None of this makes a sniper a heroic figure for our children or torture an acceptable strategy in my mind. But I have to consider the likelihood that reality is not as simple as my mind.

A fuller rendition of the Solzhenitsyn quote above goes like this:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

I imagine that if he saw Grounded or read about the flap surrounding American Sniper or APA’s now-public turmoil, Solzhenitsyn would be stroking his beard and nodding, knowingly. 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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2015!

I’ve been thinking about writing a blog to welcome the new year, and in the process, I realized that I’ve been a bit whimpery and cranky of late (other than the post about the glorious Sound Circle concert, that is!). Hardly the way to end a year or welcome a new one! I have a friend who learned this lesson from her mom: Whatever you do on the first day of the year, you’ll do all year. So, I’d thought I’d start out on a good note here. I’d love to do a photo blog of beautiful or interesting scenes from my recent walks, but since I’ve been hobbled for about two months now (oops, whimpering again), instead, I’ll do a quick review of my recent film itinerary. Just to prove that I haven't been sitting at home with my lip hanging down for weeks on end.

My partner and I often have great intentions to go to a ton of movies over the holidays, since that’s when some of the best ones come out. But we usually don’t get around to it because the season is too wildly busy. But this year, we have managed to see a bunch of them. Plenty has been written about all these films (and you may have seen many/most/all of them yourselves), so I’ll dispense with my incisive commentaries and just do a rundown with quick comments to give the flavor of how they struck me.

So here they are, in no particular order:

Gone Girl – Really gripping, too imaginably possible, scary to imagine that folks may actually be like this with each other.

Boyhood – So different, it was hard for me to get into it at first. But imagining the reality of it (this kid is not a character; his life is actually passing like this) made it very thought provoking

Foxcatcher – Ew! Excellent acting x 3, and creepy (not in the monster sense, but in the sense of how strangely distorted human lives can become).

Imitation Game – Among the best, IMHO. Really fine acting, important story with vast repercussions, awful how Turing struggled under the homophobia of his day

Theory of Everything – Mostly a nice love story, remarkable portrayal of Hawking. Not enough about his astrophysics for my taste (but then I’m weird in that way)

Into the Woods – Eh (shrug). I’d go to see Meryl Streep in anything, and some of the other characters were good … but I didn’t find it really engrossing or as super-excellent as I’d hoped.

Fury – I generally hate war movies (especially of the John Wayne sort from my childhood), but this is more of the “Saving Private Ryan” sort. Excellent and awful.

Interstellar – Incredible visuals, interesting back story (or is it the front story?) about the relativity of time, often very touching.

Night Crawler – Ew (again)! Sociopathy on display, really well (creepily) portrayed.

Unbroken – Great acting by hero and villain, fascinating story, certainly engrossing, good.

Birdman – I know it’s supposed to be great. I thought it was good enough, but weird. Maybe I missed something.

And, still to look forward to, if our current pattern of movie-going persists:

Wild

Still Alice

Big Eyes

Cake

Selma

Woman in Gold

We’ll be seeing one or two flicks this next few days, then several more will come out in January that will be on the list. If all goes well, the year will start with movie-going, which means I’ll get to keep doing movies all year!

I’m not sure if this is what my friend’s mom had in mind. I think she was referring more to making your bed and being nice to your siblings. I also don’t know if she was right about this January 1 thing, but it’s probably worth thinking about.

In fact, maybe I should try to add something more substantive than movies to my plans for the day. I’ll give that some thought.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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Aging: It's all the rage

Lately it's seemed to me that aging has been claiming a growing share of professional and public attention. For example, there’s been a whole spate of interesting new research on aging. Not just biological decline (how to protect yourself against heart attack and falls) and not just fantasyland images (“You, too, can play rugby at 90!”). No, it’s actually about the average aging person, someone rather like, well, my friends and me! And on another plane entirely, a trove of movies have come out that deal with aging in a non-trivial, non-catastrophizing, non-patronizing way. This whole trend is a sign of a phenomenon my partner has long predicted: the baby boomer effect has followed us right into old age.

The baby boomer (hereafter, BB) generation is sort of like the pig moving through the snake—with the snake being a graph of the age distribution in the population—in  2010, the BBs were over 26% of the population. Given this huge demographic, it’s not surprising that whenever the BBs enter a particular life stage, that stage suddenly becomes all the rage in advertising, entertainment, research (especially that for public dissemination), self-help books, and other trend-setting / trend-following circles. Commercials plead to, sales people stalk, service providers cater to, books dissect and cajole, entertainment focuses on, and researchers enroll them.

This phenomenon has had particular salience in my life because I’m right on the front edge of the BB generation. I’m not technically one of “them”—the BB generation officially began with folks born in 1946, so I was a year too early to make the cut. But I grew up with BBs dominating all the social trends, and I benefited mightily from some of them. In truth, I was not usually aware of this. I never particularly noticed that my age group was such a focus—the fish doesn’t know it’s wet. But if I think about it, I can see that for most of my life, whatever “we” were into shaped what the culture focused on. There were just so many of us!

Still, old people are generally not so interesting in a fundamentally capitalist society—the old are a vanishing market, after all. Fashion designers don’t care much what old people like to wear or what’s comfortable for our downwardly-mobile body shape, and advertisers (except for pharmaceutical companies) seem pretty disinterested in old people, our tastes in, say, recreational activities. But enter the BB effect. For this generation, as perhaps for no previous generation of aging people, lots of concerns, commercial and otherwise, are interested in our interests. Now, it’s not that no one ever cared about old people before, but it’s different now, precisely because there are so flipping many of us.

Consider, for instance, how recently folks were complaining that there were no (zero, zip) decent movie roles for old women. (Old men could still get roles, usually starring opposite much younger female leads.) Yet in the past year or so, there have been a whole flock of movies specifically about people (including women) growing old. These include a very recent splash of stories about people heading off to some idyllic retirement home—a glamorous hotel in India (“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”) or a retirement home for former professional musicians (“Quartet”). On the other end of the scale are starkly realistic movies like the Academy Award-nominated French film, “Amour.” Old people (including old women) also show up in meaningful roles in movies that deal only obliquely with age—Judy Dench in “Skyfall” comes to mind. The range of experiences these films depict varies from joyful and enlivening to tender, poignant, and heart breaking—much like the range of experiences that actual old people have. Again, it’s not that movies never before depicted the lives of old people (think “On Golden Pond,” “Harold and Maude,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Trip to Bountiful,” “Away from Her,” “Bucket List”). It’s the density of them now. “Marigold Hotel” had barely faded to BlueRay when its clone, “Quartet,” and its counterpoint, “Amour,” appeared.

Not to be outdone, researchers also have us BBs in their sights. As in art, this work seems no longer to pack us into neat cartons (demented or extraordinary) but to actually comprehend the varieties of experiences that aging people have. A couple of intriguing recent studies:

1.       Cohorts and well-being

Here’s the most interesting study I’ve come across in a while. OK, one of them. It’s about the impact of cohorts on the experience of aging. In this research, “cohort” refers to a group of folks who share important experiences in common. Your age cohort, for instance, is folks born around the same time you were. The baby boomers are a cohort; we share a set of social and historical experiences that have influenced how our lives have progressed. Geographic location, economic status, race/ethnicity, sex/gender, sexual orientation, economic or educational  status … all of these things can influence who constitutes your cohort under particular circumstances.

Not surprisingly, different cohorts have different experiences that might influence how they age. Imagine, for instance, a study of whether older people are more frugal than younger people. You could study groups of, say, people in their 40s, 60s, and 80s and conclude from your results that older (80s) people are more frugal. But that would ignore the fact that people now in their 80s were young children during the Great Depression. They grew up in an era when frugality was a stark necessity. If you concluded that it was age that made them skinflints, you’d be missing the point. Or at least one of the points.

So, the folks who did this study I’m talking about now were curious about widely conflicting findings about age and psychological well-being. Basically, some studies have found that folks’ sense of well-being is fairly stable across age, others have found that it increases, with a slight decline in old age, and still others have reported a U-shaped trend, with relatively high levels of well-being in younger and older ages and a drop in mid-life. The folks who did this study wondered if cohort differences might be muddying the results. So they teased out the cohort effects—i.e., the time and circumstances under which people were born and grew to old age—and the result was fascinating.  

They found that all of the cohorts showed increasing well-being as they aged. But there were notable differences between cohorts: cohorts that are now older started with relatively lower levels of well-being, so their increased happiness still left them short of that experienced by people in younger cohorts. So, although everyone got happier with age, people who were born later started from a level of well-being that was markedly higher than the starting point of earlier cohorts. Their early advantage likely came from many sources: better health care, better educational opportunities, perhaps less economic or social stress early in life, etc. The amazing thing (to me) is that researchers haven’t sorted this out before. But that’s another story, all about funding and “publish or perish” environments, and such. Another time.

2.       Successful aging

This one was another tweak on usual methodologies that led to interesting new findings. Most studies of “successful” aging have used concrete measures that assess things like freedom from chronic disease and physical disability, along with measures of intellectual functioning and social engagement. But one group of researchers wondered about how older people themselves feel about the success of their aging process—noting that they might be in a better position to decide what constitutes success, factoring in their unique personal circumstances and particular goals. (Duh!)

Their results were really interesting. First, they found that older people didn’t think perfect physical health was either necessary or sufficient for successful aging. Far more important in their holistic sense of their own lives were psychological factors like optimism, resilience, well-being, and the absence of depression. In fact, resilience and the absence of depression were as important in their judgments of their own successful aging as was physical health.

Here’s one really intriguing finding: one of the factors most strongly associated with self-rated successful aging was old age. That is to say, older old people rated their aging as more successful than did younger old people. I can think of a few possible interpretations of this: When you get really old, that in itself indicates that your aging was “successful.” Or, alternatively, if you experience your life as personally successful, you tend to yourself better and therefore live longer. Or, resilience, optimism, and an absence of depression provide a buttress against the potential risks of aging. Or, people who live longer also have generally better lives and feel like they are aging successfully. That is, neither one causes the other; instead, both long life and a sense of well-being come from some third factor. Or maybe all of those play a role. Anyway, it's a striking finding, in my book.

Wow, this got longer than I meant it too. Especially considering that my main point was made in the first paragraph: the baby boomers have changed society as they have moved through it. Now that we’re old, society gets to follow us here, too. In the best of worlds, this will turn out to be valuable for the generations that follow us.

Snippets: “Old” from the outside, movies, and winter walks

I’ve been feeling a little like a whirling dervish the past few weeks, too busy to do all the things I want to do (does this sound familiar?). As I whirled, a whole flock of thoughts have landed along the wires of my mind, although you’d never know it from this blog. So, seeing no large chunks of free time ahead, I thought I’d pass along a few “Cliff Notes” on this mental aviary.

“Old” as a culture—the view from the outside

Last week, my partner and I went to Houston for the biannual National Multicultural Conference and Summit. This conference is put on every other year by several sub-groups of the American Psychological Association. It’s intended to offer a space to consider in some depth the issues that arise when psychologists put their collective mind to questions of diversity and multiculturalism. It’s always a thought-provoking few days, and it regularly pushes me to think on new levels about these things.

This time, I attended one session that framed aging as a culture in its own right. Now, I’m not personally persuaded that this is a worthwhile framing. We old people for sure create communities, and we might (emphasis on might) be able to identify some commonalities about us. But the “culture” label seems a stretch to me. Anyhow, I was prepared to consider this notion and to be stretched by the process. Unfortunately, I was not only disappointed but a bit irritated (cranky old woman that I am). Here’s what got me going:

Throughout this presentation, the speakers (three mid-life-ish women) kept referring to old people in the third person. “They” do this or that. “They” need something or other. “They” have one or another characteristic. I can’t quite express how odd it felt to be sitting in the room, being talked about as if I weren’t there (and I wasn’t the only older person in the audience). I’ve had this experience as a lesbian before, many times. In that case, at least there’s the excuse that my sexual orientation is (rather) invisible to those who don’t know me. But my age is not—nor was the age of the other old folks in the room. Still, the speakers completely invisibilized us. In the language of diversity educators, they “othered” us. They made us “others” who didn’t belong to the group with the power—the power, in this case, to describe us and our lives. It was really creepy.

Now, I knew that these people were undoubtedly well intentioned. They were trying to present old people in a positive light and themselves as appreciative of old people. But in the process, they were doing this thing we so easily do when we really want to do the right thing by a group: we create an idealized image of them, we dress that image up in all the best stereotypes about the group, and we smile at our creation. In the process, we objectify and dehumanize the individuals that make up that group. 

For instance, the lead presenter kept saying how much she “just loved” old people. “They're the most amazing people!”, she said. The problem is that we're not. Some of us are extremely cool; some of us are jerks; most of us are somewhere in between. Most of us are cool sometimes and jerks at other times. We're complicated human being with good and bad moments. Given her idealization of old people ("exoticizing," diversity folks call it), you have to wonder whether she'd care about us at all if/when we aren't amazing. Like when we're crabby or when we complain or when we're frail instead of matching her view of vibrant retirees who dance and jog and adventure their way through life. Does she “just love” old people, or does she love her idealized, imagined version of old people? 

As I reflected on all this afterward, I had yet another troubling realization: none of the presenters was herself an old person. Think about this: It would be totally unacceptable to present a session about virtually any other group and not give that group a chance to speak on their own behalf. I can’t anyone planning a panel about, for instance, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, or religious diversity if the group in question was not included in some significant way. Yet, these presenters apparently thought it was completely appropriate to speak on our behalf. Creepy.

So, did I say anything about this at the tinme? No. I can argue that the session ended without time for questions—which is true (and all too common). But I could have spoken to the presenters afterward. I didn’t. Why? I was sort of dumbfounded. I’m basically shy. I hadn’t quite articulated to myself what felt so uncomfortable. All true … but I realize that those answers simply permit their approach to go unchallenged and prevent them from realizing something that may not have crossed their minds.

Dang! All right, I get it. I’ll send a thoughtful, reasoned (vs. flat-out cranky) letter to the lead panelist. Thanks for the nudge.

Movies

“Cliff Notes” about some of the movies we squeezed in over the holidays and the long (MLK Day) weekend:

Skyfall: The latest James Bond flick, different (I think) from others in this series. Less violence (although some), fewer gimmicks and contrivances (also, some), more actual drama, great scenery. I liked it partly because it was sort of an ode to age and change: the old guard is moving on (dying, even), and the youngsters with new ideas and new techniques are moving in. I mean that in a good way.

Les Miserables: A familiar story from the stage version. Great acting, good music, thin plot line … but hey, it’s a musical!

Django Unchained: Terrible, over-the-top violence and gore bring awful realism to the horrors of slavery. This one has received really intense commentaries—pro for dealing directly with slavery and the completely understandable Black anger it aroused; con for its historical and psychosocial inaccuracy, it's disempowerment of slave women, and its gratuitous violence.

Lincoln: Excellent acting really brought Lincoln to life for me. I learned a lot about the Civil War era and the end of slavery—like about the questionable legality of the Emancipation Proclamation (BTW: you can now get an Emancipation Proclamation commemorative stamp at the post office). Don’t miss this one. Really.

Silver Linings Playbook: Getting good press, but some psychologists I know are conflicted: They’re glad to see mental health issues addressed as (potentially) manageable. But they’re bothered by the the overly-simple message: one still-troubled person rescues another still-troubled person and they live (apparently) happily ever after.

Zero Dark Thirty: The story behind the killing of Osama bin Laden. How could it not draw big? But I hated the not-at-all subtle message that torture is OK and that good information was gleaned through torture. The research is really clear that people who are tortured can be made to say things. Some of it is true, and much of it is false (either because they really don’t know and make stuff up or because they lie). Also, good interrogators can get as much, equally good information without torture. This stuff was dramatic (and sometimes graphic) but unnecessary. Maybe they used it to keep the audience engaged because otherwise, it’s sort of sloooow until the final moments.

The Impossible: The story of a (wealthy, Spanish) family of 5 who were vacationing in Thailand when the Dec. 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck. I found myself scrunched down in my seat, practically sucking my thumb (an understandable if not especially functional response to terror) as I watched. The movie pulled me right into the vastness and power of the waves and the relative insignificance and powerlessness of the people in their path. And then, after the water receded, it pulled me into the pained struggles and heroic resourcefulness of the survivors. The intensity never let up (although there were isolated happy moments), and the film stayed with me for a day or so. Some have criticized the focus on this rich foreign family when millions of local people all across the region suffered equally, and hundreds of thousands died. A legitimate critique. Still, the intensity of the movie changed forever how I understand the impact of natural disasters. I'd say see it for sure. Take your blankie.

Still to be seen: Life of Pi, The Hobbitt, and Amour (if we can find it). And any others you all suggest. Time permitting.

And finally ... Winter walks

Among the (many) blessings of the place I live is the weather—although climate change may make me eat my words. Colorado is graced by lovely sunny days, even in the midst of winter. Add to this the fact that the Boulder area is woven together by bike and walking paths, including many along creeks and beside wetlands. That combination makes for scenes like these on winter walks:

                    

          

What a gift to live here.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” … including aurochs and a six-year-old

Last weekend’s movie extravaganza, part two: In my last post, I mentioned seeing a bunch of movies last weekend. One of them was the Sundance prize-winning film, “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” To get right to the point, you really want to see this movie!

Hush Puppy is a six-year-old girl who lives in an impoverished and idyllic community (which is her whole universe… she’s six!) at the end of the end of a Louisiana bayou. This is the story of the universe through her eyes. Which is to say, it’s the story of the universe as understood/imagined by a six-year-old mind, with all its egocentrism and certainty, and its confusion of reality and fantasy. The gift to those of us watching is that we get to listen in on her six-year-old musings as she both contemplates and creates her universe. Hush Puppy is, at least in her imagination, a “beast” of sorts, proudly proclaiming, with her father’s encouragement as she flexes her muscles, “I am the man!”

Aurochs in Lascaux Cave, France 

The other beast in this southern wild is the legendary aurochs, an extinct relative of modern cattle famously shown in prehistoric cave paintings. Actually, the aurochs in this case is a beast of Hush Puppy’s imagination, so it doesn’t have to be true to science. And it's not. It looks like a cross between the prehistoric bull and the huge hogs that live in her yard, consuming everything in sight. That’s the license given by a six-year-old mind. So is Hush Puppy’s certainty that her history and that of her community will be the topic of future scientific discoveries.


Hush Puppy’s universe, real and imaginary, is threatened by nature, human intrusion, and human frailty. And it is sustained by her own imagination and the resilience and support of her father and their community. This isn’t your everyday “feel good” film, but it is delightful and uplifting, even as it’s realistically sad and hard. My own feeling on leaving the film was lingering curiosity: What happened next? Who did Hush Puppy grow up to be? What happened to her community? What—or who—will be the next aurochs in her life?

So go. You’ll love it. If you have any doubts, read this New York Times review.

Go ahead … enter the mythic, real world of a six-year-old child confronting the mythic, real beasts of her southern wild universe.

Passion springs eternal

Last weekend, I saw four films. Two were documentaries, segments of “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” that were part of a daylong discussion of race. Two were movie house flicks, “Hope Springs” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” All were about folks living on the margins—for reasons of race, age, and poverty, in that order. There’s so much to think about here, I think I’ll tackle one at a time, starting with my own “out group,” old folks.

“Hope Springs,” in case you’ve missed the trailer and the ads, is about a 60-something, empty-nest couple (played by Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones). They sign up for week-long intensive marriage counseling in an attempt to re-ignite intimacy in their marriage. Actually, she signs them up; he is a very reluctant participant.

This film was featured on the cover of a recent issue of AARP, The Magazine, with the headline “Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones on Keeping Passion Alive.” The deeper message would be conveyed by leaving out the word passion: “Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones on Keeping Alive.” Now, it’s true that this movie focuses on passion—specifically, sexual passion. And it is remarkably (some folks might say uncomfortably) frank in talking about and portraying sexuality. But my feeling during the film, and certainly as I reflected on it afterward, was that it was about much more than sexual passion. Early in the movie, the wife says something like, “We don’t share anything except a house.” Later she says, “I think I would feel less lonely if I were just alone.” Beneath the sorrow at the absence of sexual intimacy was a far broader longing for something that's been lost, some passion that goes far beyond sex. Something more than the perfunctory expressions of affection, for sure. But also something more than the everyday in everything … something more than the usual, the predictable, the safe, the comfortable, the familiar, the habitual, the unthinking, the automatic. Figuratively, something more than the house.

This couple was portrayed as boredom walking. It wasn’t just sex that was missing. So was passion of any sort. His life looked like this: breakfast served by his wife … a dispassionate peck on her cheek  as he heads out the door … work from 9 to 5 … dinner at 6 … fall asleep in front of TV … bed (in his own separate bedroom). Hers looked like this: cook his breakfast and clean up … get a peck on the cheek … work in a clothing store … cook his dinner and clean up … wake him for bed … retreat to her own bedroom. For their anniversary, they got each other an expanded cable subscription. Or maybe she made that up because when their kids asked her what they gave each other, the real answer was “nothing.” There’s more missing here than sex.

And this sense that something is missing doesn’t require a relationship that’s gone flat. The same longing is possible for someone living alone. Aging, with or without a primary relationship, is a challenge every day—the challenge of staying alive and engaged in a world that’s really set up to support the engagement of younger folks.

Back when I was studying developmental psychology, one of the main theories/descriptions of aging was called the “disengagement” model. (Granted, this was many years ago. But my point is that this is the model my generation grew up with.) In this view, the task of older folks is to disengage from the world they’ve participated in up to now. Retire from work, move the kids out of the nest, and gradually withdraw from social, educational, and cultural activities as they approach physical decline and death. The message overall is that old people should move quietly out to pasture. In fact, the interviewer in the AARP article revealed a version of this belief: “There is a bit of squeamishness on my part when I sit down with the actors to discuss sex after 60.” The unspoken but obvious message: Sex between old people seems odd, even embarrassing. It makes her uncomfortable. Sex is for young people. Certainly passion is.

There’s a line in the movie “Shawshank Redemption” where our hero is planning to break out of this awful prison. He says to a buddy, “It’s time to get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.” The culture we live in understands old people as engaged in the latter process, on their way to dyin’. For those of us who grew up in this culture, that’s how we’re likely to approach aging unless something inspires us to get busy livin’.

These days, happily, the old disengagement model vies with a new script for aging. In this version, old folks remain alive. I see people living this out all around me. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard retired people say (and said myself), “I don’t know how I ever had time to work!” or “I can’t always say exactly what I do, but I know I’m busy all day!” As Meryl framed it in the AARP interview, “I see bored 20-year-olds. I don’t see any bored 60-year olds. People may get crotchety, mean, but it’s because they hold life to a high standard. … The older I get, the more intense my appetite for living gets. I think I was heedless when I was younger. I thought it was endless. But I just lost two close friends in the last two years, and man, you realize you’ve just got seconds.”

It’s a great paradox: The possibility for passionate living as we age is rooted in the very fact of aging. It sprouts precisely from our awareness of how short life really is. “As I get older, my appetite for life gets more intense. … You realize you’ve just got seconds.” I’m reminded of Nora Ephron’s comment about  how short life looks from this end. “The time I have left is finite. … We all know donuts aren’t healthy. But life is a crapshoot. I’m saying you should have the donut!”

It seems to me that we have a choice: we can bemoan life’s brevity, now that we see it so clearly, so close. Or we can fill it with aliveness because we know, in a way we didn’t when we were younger, that every day is precious. Not long ago, I wrote about “celebrating oldness,” about finding joy in all the positive things that come with aging. After thinking about this movie and reading the interview, I would add another item to that list: the heightened appetite for living that comes from the up-close realization of our own mortality.

Imagine: Every day is a donut!

Batman and Ted

We just spent the weekend with my partner’s niece, who arrived Thursday evening to hang out with us for a few days. We always enjoy spending time with her, and we had planned a relaxing, laid-back time with lots of good conversation, visits to some favorite haunts, a theater outing (“Jersey Boys”), and whatever else popped up. Instead, we awoke Friday to the news of the shootings at the midnight opening of “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.” For us, like for many people, the day's trajectory turned on a dime.

This is the story of two movies we saw over the days that followed. There are so many contrasts here, so many paradoxes and “messages,” that I’m sort of at a loss as to how to explore them all—or any of them. But I feel compelled to talk about them, hoping something will emerge that gives me some perspective on all this. Some life lesson. We’ll see …

We had no particular plans for Friday, the day we awoke to news of the murders in Aurora. So we talked. About the shootings, about the yearning to understand the “why” and the consequent rush to “explanations”—encapsulated, simplistic, easily transmitted packets of supposed understanding that would make the senseless appear to make sense. We talked about the futility of pre-dicting and the easy satisfaction of retro-dicting. We talked about how fashioning an answer to the “why” allows us to believe that somehow the world is really under control. To believe that if we just knew why people do these things, surely we could stop such acts in the future. We want to believe this even though history shows that we cannot, that these acts are not predictable. Our desperate wish to make sense of it all points beneath the surface: it is precisely its senselessness that is so terrifying. We talked, too, about terrorism in the broad sense—not Al Qaeda, but hometown terrorism whose effect is to leave us terrorized—terrified and paralyzed.

Trying to create something positive from this impossibly difficult day, one of us floated the idea of a movie ... and then suggested, and we all quickly agreed, that we should go see “Batman.” We talked about two reasons to do this (and as we revisited it through the weekend, the three of us placed different emphases on these reasons). One reason was that we needed to refuse the urge to cower, to be terrorized. If we avoid all the places and things that might put us in danger, we would be totally paralyzed—and the “terrorists” would have succeeded. We would be giving over our personal and collective power to the few folks whose goals are most antithetical to our goal—living expansive lives. The other reason was that the movie industry in general and individual theaters, both already ailing (our local theater has sparse attendance on a good day), would suffer from this terrorist-initiated fear. And their losses would be magnified by lost employment when jobs are already uncommonly scarce.

So, we went to “Batman.” And we were glad, all weekend, that we had done that. It was a pretty good movie (remember, this is from someone who is definitely not a movie critic or even a Fandango “fan”), and I would have been glad to have seen it anyhow. Going under these circumstances also made it feel empowering—to us moviegoers, that is, and therefore not to the fear mongers. The film carries a redemptive message that was a nice counter to the awful events that greeted this same film at shortly after midnight on this same day. 

What a convoluted, twisted, complex, confusing knot of meanings: terror and senselessness, empowerment and refusal of fear, redemption and helplessness, determination to do evil and determination not to be paralyzed by evil. It makes my head spin.

The next couple of days moved along gently, as we let Aurora subside to an occasional conversation. We spent many lovely hours together cruising the Pearl Street Mall, eating, shopping, visiting a coffee shop, eating, talking about life’s ups and downs, eating, seeing some sights (without going sightseeing), eating. Sunday afternoon, we decided to take in another movie to chill out for a bit—which is to say, both to get out of the 90°+ heat and to relax for a bit. We couldn’t find much of interest, this being the summer blockbuster bonanza season, but from the promo and the fans’ recommendations, “Ted” looked good for the sort of light, mindless entertainment that fit our energy level. Bad, very bad choice. I have never found a movie so relentlessly offensive. In the space of a couple of hours, this film managed to weave in, quite seamlessly, sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, abelism, ageism, sizeism, religious and ethnic bigotry, and flat-out gratuitous scatological “humor.” It put to shame every movie of this “men behaving badly” genre I’ve ever seen. Why did we stay? Good question. Each of us was thinking she would walk out if she were alone … we should have talked about this then and saved ourselves the misery and the time that this thing exacted. I guess the teddy bear was cute … sometimes. Any other merits? Maybe a faint glimmering of some lessons: don’t behave like a total jerk and your life and relationships will be more satisfying. Keeping a Teddy bear from your childhood is sweet, but it does not excuse all things. Thin gruel for 2 hours.

It’s all so ironic. The film that was so closely associated with terrorizing cruelty, that was billed as an action movie complete with explosives, car crashes, and really bad people became a truly positive moment in the weekend. The one that we expected to be light, funny, and escapist was the greatest downer I’ve encountered in a while. So what life lessons am I to glean from this?

Maybe it’s simply the reminder that life isn’t as simple—ever—as the superficial versions of it would have us believe. Cruel, maniacal deeds cannot be encapsulated in sound bites or simple reiterations of stereotypes about “loner,” “odd,”misunderstood people whose acts we could have predicted if only we’d paid attention. Super-hero stories about men who wear black capes and masks with pointy ears aren’t necessarily silly or superficial. Confronting fear and acting anyway is empowering. The range of things that people find funny is extremely wide.

I don’t want to sound too preachy here. OK, maybe I do. Maybe I want to sound like an idealist on the one hand—“Refusing to be paralyzed by senseless acts is empowering”—and a cranky old woman on the other—“Making fun of other people (presumably to point out one’s own elevated status) is actually not funny.” But there is it, there I am. A cranky old woman with some hope that we can lead large, respectful lives even in the face of terror.

By the way, “Batman” had some genuinely funny lines. Just in case you thought cranky old women don’t get to have a good laugh.

Bucket lists and donuts

Not long ago, someone at a party invited everyone to share what was on their “bucket list.” Personally, I didn’t have such a list, although I quickly tried to think of a few things I could put on it if it were a required assignment.

(In case you missed it, the notion of a “bucket list” comes from a 2007 movie by that name starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two old men approaching the end of their days. One explains to the other that the “bucket list” is all the things you’d like to do before you die.)

This experience set me to thinking. Bucket lists seem to be all the rage these days. I just did a quick Google search, and over 15 million entries for “bucket list” popped up. Lots of these were in the “ideas for bucket lists” category, so it seems like folks are hunting for things they might put on their lists. Given their popularity, I started wondering why I had neither a list nor a burning desire to create one. I felt like maybe I was somehow remiss for not having completed this task.

Then, to stir the pot even more, I recently heard an old NPR interview with Nora Ephron, a screenwriter (“You’ve Got Mail,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Julie and Julia,” “Sleepless in Seattle”), humorist, feminist, and all-around amazing woman who died last month. The interview was from maybe 15 years ago, before Nora had (or knew she had) the leukemia that would take her life. She had written about growing old (I Feel Bad about My Neck), and Terri Gross was talking with her about that topic. Nora said something like this (I’m paraphrasing, but it’s close): “The time I have left is finite. For instance, I have a limited number of meals left. So if a friend says, ‘Let’s go to lunch at x,’ and it’s not a good place, I say, ‘No, let’s not!’” Nora continued: “We all know donuts aren’t healthy. But life is a crapshoot. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow and die. I’m saying, you should have the donut! I’m coming down on the side of the donut!”

“Donuts … bucket lists,” I thought. “What would be my donut, what’s on my bucket list? What am I missing?” My answer: Honestly, nothing I can think of.

Instead of making a wish list for the future, I found myself musing about how full my life has already been. I ended up thinking not about what I still want but about what I’ve already had. For most of my life, I’ve had the great good fortune to be able to do most of things I really wanted to do. I’m just not left with a bunch of unsatisfied yearnings. Maybe to demonstrate this to myself, I made a list of the things I’ve done and those I’m doing now. It was an eye-opening experience. I recommend it highly.

But having thought about this, I wondered, despite all that, should I have bucket list for the future, a box of donuts yet to eat? Knowing that I’m easily captured by the word “should,” I took this question seriously. And then I realized that the very act of taking it so seriously—as if it were an obligation, a requirement—could be a trap. Given my particular obsession with completing assignments, I could easily come to believe that something is wrong with not having such existential longings. It struck me that this fascination with bucket lists and donuts could make me lose sight of the life I have, thinking that the assignment is to imagine a life I could wish for.

Of course, this isn’t an either/or proposition. Bucket lists seem to me a grand strategy. They can help us identify things that we have denied ourselves, positive things that are possible if we just grant ourselves permission and take the initiative to go after them. But it seems like they can also suggest that happiness can only be found somewhere out there, in the exotic and the remote—even if, in fact, we have a rich life right here. Allowing, of course, for the everyday feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction that we all experience. And keeping open the possibility of spotting something we do want to experience before we kick the bucket.

It strikes me that the difference between a bucket list and Nora Ephron’s donut may lie in the spontaneity of the donut. I like the idea of being open to things that come along, coming down on the side of the donut. But I’m not so sure about formalizing a “To Do” list for the future.

After this mental exercise, I’m feeling more settled about the bucket list thing. I’m hugely grateful for all the experiences I’ve had, and I’m not yearning for anything in particular before I die. This is not to say that I won’t be on the lookout for that donut. But I feel no obligation to create a list, despite the fact that Google has 15 million entries telling me that it’s an assignment.

Whimper

After some strikingly distressing movie experiences this weekend, I find myself in the midst of an unaccustomed bout of despair. I could as well be in a friendlier and more accustomed mood of hope. But driving through the fields that surround Boulder this afternoon, where my favorite activity is watching for hawks and coyotes, I realized that my mood was leaning more toward “oof” than toward “yippee.” 

I attribute this largely to these two movies I saw that were both inspiring and deeply troubling. I was thinking about writing something about the inspiring part of each of them—and I will mention that—but I found myself overtaken by this distressing feeling I carried away from the second one. More a punch in the gut that a kick in the ass, to borrow neighboring metaphors. Here's the story.

On Friday night—some hours before they closed the CU campus to outsiders like me (and sprayed the grass with fish fertilizer) in an effort to stop the 4/20 “smokeout”—I went to an event on campus. The campus is beautiful on these spring evenings, and I was prepared to enjoy my outing.

The event featured the film “Precious Knowledge,” followed by some speakers.  This film is about a Mexican-American Studies program in a Tucson Arizona high school that got cancelled because powerful folks thought it taught kids awful things—like about their ethnic roots, about oppression, and about self-empowerment. Never mind that the graduation rates among these kids soared (heck, the staying-in-school rates soared, pretty much a prerequisite for graduation). Never mind that these kids were learning personal responsibility and collective problem solving. It was seditious, what they were teaching! It was hateful and racist! It violated what Martin Luther King taught! All nonsense, of course, but the folks in power had the wherewithal to declare it so, and the program was cut. Heartbreaking.

There were great stories here, too, of kids who made it through school because of this program and, equally marvelous, of kids who decided they would work to change the world because of their experience in this program. Actually, they have already tried mightily, lobbying, fund raising, even running as a relay team from Tucson to Phoenix to testify before state officials in an effort to save the program. One girl had a tattoo on her ankle that she designed as a reminder of her need to work for a better world. Inspiring.

Then today, I saw the film “Bully” (now in a theater near you; here’s the official trailer … more clips online). This is a film about a handful of kids in various towns (all in the Midwest and South, unless I missed someone) who endure daily, relentless bullying from their peers. Their collective sin, of course, is that they’re different. The adults in the film—especially school administrators at all levels, police, government officials, and other “public servants,” but also parents—somehow just don’t get it. They ask the bullied kids to change instead of insisting that their tormentors stop. They write it off as “kids will be kids.” They minimize, trivialize, disregard, and blame the victim until it made me want to cry. No, actually, it made me cry.

There were uplifting stories here, too. Parents who have taken it upon themselves to spend a lifetime working to end bullying, although it took their losing a child for them to do that. A lesbian teenager who chose to stay in her small town, even though her parents said they would move to someplace more welcoming, because she wanted to help change things. “If we move away,” she said, “they win.” She finally decided she wanted to move, but still plans to work to change things—just somewhere else. Inspiring.

Then, to add another layer to the weekend, my partner was off in Minnesota, participating in a major event designed to educate folks in that state about same-sex marriage ahead of their anti-marriage equality ballot initiative this fall. This, too, has both up and down sides. Upper: How wonderful that people from all walks of life are now gathering around to support LGBT folks in their battle for marriage equality. Not long ago, little such activism could be found. Downer: Why is it necessary to prove that LGBT people—heck, any people—are entitled to the same rights as other human beings?

Usually, I’m pretty easily able to grab onto the uplifting parts of stories like these. To feel inspired, see them as lessons for my own life and reminders that good things are happening. Usually, I’d be saying, “Isn't this cool? Look at all the ways that folks are working for progressive change!”

But this time, I just came away bummed. It’s wonderful that these kids are standing up against racism, homophobia, oppression of all sorts. It’s great that they’re aspiring to noble, change-the-world goals. But it makes me so sad that they have to. It’s wonderful that parents become ambassadors and organizers for their kids. But how tragic that they lost a child before they were moved to do that. It’s great that the world is beginning to grasp that equal rights for LGBT people is simply another form of equal rights for all. But why is this even a question?

I’ll get over this, I’m certain. Soon. But sometimes, I just need to suck my thumb and whimper.