Independence No More (March 2009)

So, this was the week that Bernie Madoff went to jail, and people stood outside the courthouse to celebrate his getting his "just desserts." The extent of the damage caused by his behavior has boggled the minds of many of us, and made the rest of us wonder if there is any way to protect our investments. We wonder if being responsible and saving will actually pay off in the end. We are shocked that people got "taken" who know a lot more about finances and investments than we do. "If they got taken," we reason, "What chance is there to prevent ourselves from being taken?" In other words, Madoff's fraud and dishonesty shakes our sense of financial security. It increases our fears. It shakes our sense of trust in our institutions. It makes us wonder who we can trust.

I hope it also challenges our "live and let live" and "everyone gets to believe what they want to believe" and "every person for him/herself" mentalities. Consider the phenomenal impact of Madoff's choices, the trickle down impact of Madoff's behavior. For instance, wealthy people in Palm Beach have had to foreclose on their homes, and have wondered how they will support themselves now that their wealth is gone. Some of us may say, "Well, I am not sure if I care too much about people who have had more than their share all along." But I think that, upon careful reflection, we will realize all of the people that these folks kept employed: gardeners, house cleaners, pool care people, home repair workers, interior designers. These employees didn't deserve to lose their livelihoods! And consider how much wealthy people buy in their communities on a regular basis, and the impact on the local businesses that are losing that income: restaurants and bars, clothing stores, car dealerships, theatres, home furnishings stores, and repair companies. Those businesses didn't do anything wrong! They didn't deserve the chaos caused by Madoff's illegalities!

But perhaps most distressing to me are the losses to philanthropic work that have and will trickle down from the losses experienced by wealthy people. Contributions to the arts, to research on health problems like AIDS and breast cancer and altzheimer's, to public television and radio, and to service organizations are all in jeopardy. And while the arts and broadcasting industries add value to our lives, more upsetting are the losses of services to those who don't typically access that value: the hungry, the homeless, those who are losing their homes, the mentally and physically ill, and the children off all of these less advantaged people. And, of course, Madoff's scandal is not the only challenge to philanthropy these days. The financial and real estate industries share that blame.

I think our current ethical and legal and economic experiences are a profound wake up call for all Americans who still believe in pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, in independence as a way of life, and in "every person for him/herself." We need to realize that one person's illegal, unethical, or character-less behavior affects us all. We are not insulated from one another. We are all connected. My behavior affects my friends and neighbors, colleagues and family members. They then react in ways that affect all of their friends and neighbors, colleagues and family members. And so on, in a wider and wider web of influence. If my behavior is positive, inspiring, and character-full, then I will spread love and inspiration and hope and trust out into that web. However, if I make less inspired choices, then I poison the web, and that spreads fear and despair and mistrust and a "you better get while the getting is good" mentality. And as people take the first step down the "slippery slope" of taking what they want, even if the shouldn't, it becomes harder and harder to climb back up, and the crimes become bigger and bigger, and more and more dangerous and harmful.

Let's instead own the connections that are the reality of our current existence. Let's own them and relish them and challenge one another to be more than we have been. Let's declare, "Independence no more!" and celebrate our interdependence. Let's rise to the challenge of taking responsibility for more than ourselves and our own families. Let's realize that as long as one person, one community, one country in the world is suffering in disease, poverty, homelessness, crime, or poor education, then we are all at risk. We are all affected even if we are unaware of the impact. Did you know that we are all paying 17% more at the checkout stand just to make up for the theft experienced by retailers? I am sure that you can point to other costs of illegal or unethical behavior that many of us are paying daily, sometimes unknowingly.

Let's celebrate the ethical code that Obama requires federal employees to sign, even if it means it takes longer to find necessary employees. Let's support efforts by our current administration to get everyone involved in creating change, in empowering all Americans ("Yes We Can!"), in combating apathy, in building technology-assisted networks to keep people informed and to listen to citizens. Whatever political party we hail from, I think we need to rise to the challenge to reconnect ourselves with our neighbors, next door, down the street, downtown, on the "other side of town," on the other side of the country, and on the other side of the world. And once connected, we need to send positives out through that web, positives like trust, love, fairness, respect, honesty, responsibility, wisdom, courage, and integrity. We need to spread the wealth of character and material possessions and money. We need to reach out to community members and friends and family members who have lost jobs, or lost homes, and are struggling to survive this economic crisis. We need to stop blaming those who don't have what we do, stop our superiority complex, and realize that environment counts for a lot - and in this environment, many are over-challenged. If we won't take a stand and do it, who will? If we don't act now, then when?

Empathy: The Ground of Moral Behavior (April 2009)

Major spreads in our local newspapers have detailed the tragedy of losing 21 polo ponies to incompetent or perhaps illegal pharmaceutical compounding. I have been struck by pictures of grieving owners, and have myself empathized with their pain, and felt the craziness of such an unnecessary loss. It seems that pain caused unnecessarily to animals draws out our feelings of compassion and empathy.

Similarly, our Girl Scout troop visited the local animal shelter to do a service project this week, and the girls found themselves drawn to adopt the "poor puppies and kitties" who had been mistreated and needed homes. The girls came home and very effectively persuaded moms (myself included) to visit and to adopt. I felt the pain of the little four pound puppy who had been in the shelter for three weeks recovering from illness and mistreatment. Why would anyone mistreat or harm these helpless little beings?


While I don't want to diminish any feelings we may have toward these animals, I do want to pose questions about our empathy failures with human beings. And I want to do so, not from a feeling of superiority, but from an acknowledgement that I need to be more empathic with the people I care about, and even with those whom I probably should care more about.

Empathy is "feeling with" people, the ability to get inside another's skin and know what they are experiencing. It is touted as essential to our ethical or moral development and as what motivates us to behave morally or ethically. Empathy is the internal feeling that urges us to behave well toward others. It is the internal response to the question, "How would you feel if someone else did that (something of questionable moral character) to you?"

And yet, how often do we leave our empathy behind? When we are angry at the boss or an employee, do we remember to consider what their feelings are likely to be in response to our anger, or do we focus only on our own? When a family member or colleague fails to take care of their responsibilities, do we start yelling? Or do we take time to consider whether our chastisement is warranted, or whether they have a good reason for the failure, reasons that need to be considered and discussed as part of the effort to get the responsibilities taken care of?

I have complained to my daughter's elementary school principal about the amount of yelling that goes on at her school, and have even transferred my daughter out of a classroom in which the teacher regularly yelled at children. Yelling isn't what is taught as a classroom management strategy in teacher education programs, and what is taught works very effectively. Although I understand that teachers may become frustrated at times, I wonder if the yellers are taking the time to anticipate what the children on the receiving end of the yelling will feel. After all, as adults, shouldn't we be able to put our children's or students' needs and feelings before our own, even if we are angry or upset?

I made a Lenten promise to my daughter to stop being as irritable or harsh with her when she misbehaves. As a former family therapist, I know that harshness is not a recommended parenting or change creation strategy. And I find that all it takes to put my harshness aside is empathizing with her feelings - thinking ahead about how she will feel if I "blast" her. Should we be any less concerned about the feelings of our neighbors, our coworkers, our boss, our church members, or our employees?

If our answer is "No, of course not," then I would challenge you to take the questions a step further - What about people we don't know? People at a distance? What about the homeless person on your street corner, or the illegal immigrant who mows your lawn? What about the neighbor who lost her job, or the single parent struggling to care for three children? What about that friend who has become largely housebound due to a disability? What about the professional family who has become homeless because dad lost his job, the mortgage payments went sky high, and there are no other family members to step up and help?

Or might we consider a lack of empathy to have played a part in our current crisis? Was Bernie Madoff considering the feelings of the people whose money he took? Were the mortgage brokers who provided loans for people who were going to find it really hard to stay solvent thinking about the long term feelings or experiences of the people who wanted to borrow money? Were the lenders and realtors and financial mavens thinking about the long term risks of what they were doing, the risks that people would lose their homes, their retirement, their life savings, their jobs?

I am reminded of Robert Fulghum's book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (2004), in which he reminds us of Kindergarten's rules - Share Everything, Don't Hit Other People, Play Fair, Clean Up Your Own Mess, Don't Take Things That Aren't Yours. If we asked people why they follow these rules, wouldn't they remind us that we would want others to behave this way toward us? Wouldn't putting ourselves in another's place, and thus empathizing with her or him, keep us from doing wrong? Aren't we encouraged to do the right thing by our empathy with others? How much better might our relationships be if we started from a place of empathy rather than our "rights?" If we can empathize even with the horses or the shelter animals, can't we do the same for other human beings? Can we encourage ourselves to extend our empathy just a little further each week? Let's hear a rousing chorus of our nation's current positive attitude: "Yes, we can!"