Creating the Future by Choice: Using Reason, Duty, Love, and Belief

Learning with Poetry

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), 1818

Ozymandias: Greek name for Ramses II, pharaoh of Egypt for 67 years during the 13th century BCE. His colossal statue lies prostrate in the sands of Luxor. Napoleon’s soldiers measured it (56 feet long, ear 3 1/2 feet long, weight 1000 tons). Its inscription, according to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, was “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.”
Mocked: imitated

The “I” speaker has heard a story brought back from the French invasion of Egypt and relates it to the listener. The statue of Ozymandias was huge, but it is now broken and half buried in the boundless desert sands. The sculptor clearly understood the Pharaoh’s character and heart, and his skill remains to show the Pharaoh’s “wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.” The inscription is written for others who might hope to be just as mighty a king as Ozymandias was: “Look on my works . . . and despair!” But what is that “despair”? This is the greatest king that ever lived and “nothing . . . remains” of any of his works; only “the lone and level sands” remain. So the mighty have fallen and will always fall. Those who would be mighty should despair–despair not over being as great as Ozymandias, but despair over the actual lasting value of pride and power and wealth and arrogance. All is shattered, decayed, wrecked, buried. Only the artist’s insight is left.

Phyllis Ballata

Creating the Future by Choice: Using Reason, Duty, Love, and Belief

Learning with Poetry: A Poem a Week–Online

Guidelines for making the most of a few minutes each day with a poem.

If possible, print out a hard copy of the poem (usually just one page).

Make a folder to keep the poems so that you can return to them now and then.

These guidelines only take a few minutes during the day, but they help you have perspective and keep you thinking about important ideas. Your mind and heart are wonderful gifts to be enlarged and exercised. Poems are often about intense ideas. Be brave.

The best way to learn with poetry: Think of a poem 5-10 minutes a day for a week.

Day 1: Print out a hard copy if possible.

Read the poem silently and then aloud (or whisper–move your lips).

Day 2: Read the poem out loud and then mark ideas or words that seem most important or most confusing. Read the poem out loud again.

Day 3: Look up meanings of some words or references or historical background. Read the poem again.

Day 4: If the poem is short, memorize it, or else memorize a few lines. Read it out loud.

Day 5: Read the poem silently. Add notes for ideas you have thought of that connect to the poem. Add definitions or information that you want to remember. Remember some lines?

Day 6: Recite what you remember. Read the poem out loud.

Go on to another poem, and come back to this one as you think of it.

Phyllis Ballata

food for thought: Why Choose Cruelty, Meanness, and Arrogance?

We could have chosen justice, kindness, and humility, but we didn’t. Republicans and their representatives on the Supreme Court chose cruelty, meanness, and arrogance. We already know how to reduce the rate of abortion, but we ignored that hard-won wisdom.

We know that the justice of increasing the availability of health care for all, expanding Medicaid for the lowest-income citizens, and supporting basic reproductive health care and clinics all over the world has reduced and could continue to reduce the rate of abortion. But by consistently fighting against heath care, Republicans today consistently choose the cruelty of punishing and debilitating women, taking away contraception, even letting women die. They know that Medicaid covers 50% of all US births and 75% of public financing for family planning, but they have opposed and voted against expanding Medicaid because it would help the poorest women and families. This cruelty is actually anti-life, anti-health, and anti-care.

We know that the kindness of helping provide basic health care for the poorest among us (as with Planned Parenthood services) allows people agency over their lives, health, and family choices. But Republicans have deliberately chosen the meanest, most short-sighted policies – policies that have increased and will continue to increase the rate of abortion and maternal mortality by specifically and purposely decreasing health and safety.

We know that having the humility to listen to those with experience dealing with actual problems is much wiser than the arrogance of the powerful telling others what to do because they can. Giving responsibility and control of women’s health care to women themselves with their families, doctors, and nurses is the right thing to do. But Republicans and the Supreme Court power brokers have arrogantly assigned women’s reproductive health care to the legal system, to vigilante predators, and to providers they have terrified and paralyzed with fear. The arrogance of fundamentalist theology and politics that we see at work in today’s Republican Party has said they alone have the “right” answers, so everyone must obey them, or else. Fundamentalism always acts with absolutism, authoritarianism, and violence. We should and could be better than this.

We should not be cowed into hurting others because we are ordered to. Justice, kindness, and humility are good and are required of us – we already know this. So why have we chosen cruelty, meanness, and arrogance? Why do we allow absolutist authoritarians to have power over us? Our nation was created by people who rejected fundamentalist theology and politics. We know which attitudes and actions will actually reduce the rate of abortion, reduce the need for abortion, and empower women and families to make choices for their long-term health while at the same time improving our nation for all citizens. Our national and state laws must be centered on justice, kindness, and humility. We must reject the cruelty, meanness, and arrogance of Republican policies.

Phyllis Ballata

food for thought: Nightmare

In On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017), Timothy Snyder recommends reading books, and now would be the time to re-read On Tyranny in the light of Ukraine 2022 as well as in the light of our own tyranny of January 6, 2021. While you are at it, as Snyder recommends, go back to the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling and examine the psychology of tyranny in The Deathly Hallows. If you are wondering what is going on in Putin’s inner circle, reconsider Voldemort and his methods. Putin is Voldemort without a magic wand.

My fellow Americans,

Turn off the buzzing of the carrion flies circling our national death cult. Don’t let them lay their eggs in your brain.

Polish and sharpen your thinking.

Soften your heart.

Strengthen your sprine.

Stop whining about meaningless minor inconveniences.

Extend your tiny attention span – longer, wider, deeper. The decisions we make now, right now, will affect the next seven generations, and in fact the whole earth, for good or ill.

As Philip Appleman says in his prayer “O Karma, Dharma, Pudding and Pie”: “Make the bad people good – / and the good people nice; / and before our world goes over the brink, / teach the believers how to think.” Re-read On Tyranny because, as my mother taught me, “God gave you a brain and you are required to use it.”

Remember the old song by the Eurythmics (1983)? “Some of them want to use you. / Some of them want to get used by you. / Some of them want to abuse you. / Some of them want to be abused. . . . Who am I to disagree?” Disagree! Disagree with the bullies. Speak up against the tyrants. Voldemort is using and abusing many lives. There are bodies lying in the hall and the castle is falling into rubble. It is time to understand the past and stand up for the future.

food for thought: are we insane? part II

Mental and behavioral aberrations can become mass contagions – not simply individual delusions. The examples listed in the last blog-post show us that this exact thing has happened not just historically but also in our living memory in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. If we examine these, we find that we are in the middle stages of a mass infection right now. Recognizing this could perhaps save us from ourselves.

In the 1930s, the Nazi Aryan plague began with a fever of fear, anger, and rejection of philosophies that might have encouraged followers to think and question. Burning bonfires of books and holding mass rallies with mass chanting and marching cowed those who might be identified as resistors. Public intimidation and scapegoating were mass control techniques. So far the Trump cult has accomplished all of this – except that burning physical books has become burning intellectual and spiritual questioners on social media. So far the Trump version of the mass insanity of Fascism has only gotten to the Big Lie, physical intimidation, political insurrection mobs, and armed militia demonstrations. We need to vaccinate ourselves with a dose of ethical courage and education to stop this infection.

Thirty years later as Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was starting, he used masses of indoctrinated students as an armed youth movement to terrify and control China. Waving Mao’s Little Red Book of sayings, the Red Guard attacked anything “old,” aiming to destroy culture, art, literature, music, museums, and heritage sites; to publicly humiliate, beat up, or murder intellectuals and teachers; and to worship Mao while “re-educating” and purging other potential political leaders. The Trump version of leader worship includes intimidation and threats in support of anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-education, and anti-history. No Little Red Book, of course, but now indoctrinated Q-lovers wave signs, believe lies wholesale, and wait for the next secret message from the Dear Leader. Before Trump-worship becomes any more destructive, we need to invest in education, reinforce spiritual kindness, goodness, and empathy, and preserve the lessons of history that can inoculate us against authoritarianism.

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 began in a long history of racism and tribalism. The European colonial powers made internal conflicts worse and manipulated Rwandans to think of the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa tribes as different and incompatible races. Tutsi and Hutu were deliberately set against each other in a long running struggle over political power. Eventually the violence grew into a genocide of neighbor against neighbor organized by majority Hutu leaders, signaled by radio messages, and triggered by militias and political assassinations. Our version of tribalism, racism, and old grievances needs to be cauterized and healed before those Trumpist and supremacist leaders who would signal violence and overthrow of the constitutional government can deliberately increase danger to the nation with mass hysteria in the name of political power and manufactured hate.

Finally, a mind-control cult, such as Jim Jones’, shows us absolute and blind obedience that destroys families and isolates believers from any rational thought process. We don’t need to “drink the Kool-Aid” from either Trump or Q. We don’t need to organize a mass death-cult by listening to unethical talking heads, extreme right-wing politicians, or social media liars telling us to ignore science, medicine, and logic. We can exercise the freedom and the responsibility to resist mind control.

These versions of mass insanity ended in the deaths of millions, but we don’t need to go there. We can use reason, long-term insight, healing philosophies, and personal psychological strength to consciously work toward a “more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” – for all of us and all of our posterity, not just for the select few. Mass insanity can and has happened to all ages and in all places. The keys to resisting mass insanity are recognition of the danger signs and relentless responsibility. The insanity we are watching spread around us is contagious – but good will, empathy, and love can also be contagious. Let’s choose mass sanity instead.

Phyllis Ballata

food for thought: are we insane?

The first sign was that he dragged his critics and even his eventual supporters down to his level. Those who looked into the abyss in order to report or analyze found that the abyss also looked into them. The mean, angry, threatening language and name-calling rubbed off on them and became “normal.” They started to become the very thing they hated. Thoughtful people who wield various forms of physical, intellectual, or political power recognize this danger – the temptation to become an image of whatever they are working against. It was hard for the media to resist the thrill of constant excitement and lack of boundaries.

The second sign was the corruption and debasement of everyone around him. In order to get along they had to go along. Resisters were fired. Everyone Trump touched rotted. Some recognized the rot and resigned in order to protect their souls. In the end those that sold out either became empty shells or became toxic and contagious. Eventually the Trump circle was whittled down to include only the greediest, meanest, most cowardly, or most power hungry.

Now, apparently, loyalists and Q-lovers continue to hang on to the Trump cult. Many seem to be “insane” in the everyday sense of the word: foolish, absurd, delusional, and unstable. A lot of the definition of insanity has to do with lack of reason or logic, an increasing inability to tell right from wrong, even rejection of the very existence of law or justice. We are surrounded by abnormal mental and behavioral patterns, violations of social or ethical norms, and even the deliberate creation of danger. (No Masks! No Social Distancing! No Vaccine!) When fantasy and reality have become indistinguishable, do we dare to tell the plain truth?

The uncomfortable possibility is that this is straight up evil. Which is worse – insanity or evil? Whatever it is, the contagion spreads. Mental aberrations (and evil) can be infectious. We saw this among Mao’s Red Guard and Hitler’s Aryan believers, among Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid drinkers and in the Rwandan Hutu mania to massacre their neighbors. Maybe Donald Trump is an obsessive, uncontrollable, and pathologically corrupt sociopath – but should we allow this instability to metastasize? Are we mentally deranged? Have we lost our reason? Are we incapable of engaging in civic responsibility, justice, or honesty?

Maybe we need to look at each other and ask a simple question, “Are we insane?”

Phyllis Ballata

food for thought: controlling reproduction

Reducing the rate of abortion is an important goal for many of us, so we need to examine the two opposite methods of achieving this. Comparing actual current Republican and Democratic policies illustrates the choices we are making when we vote.

Republican Policies

• Reduce the availability of health care for low income citizens, including reducing Medicaid.
• Eliminate worldwide support for basic reproductive health care and clinics.
• Eliminate federal use of Planned Parenthood.
• Make abortion illegal in all or most cases.
• Give responsibility and control of abortion policy to the legal system.

Democratic Policies

• Increase the availability of health care for low income citizens, including expanding Medicaid.
• Increase worldwide support for basic reproductive health care and clinics.
• Support use of Planned Parenthood.
• Make abortion legal, safe, and available.
• Give responsibility and control of abortion policy to the health care system, women and doctors.

The availability and cost of basic health care are essential issues for women. By trying to eliminate or reduce funding for the Affordable Care Act and by preventing the expansion of Medicaid, Republicans also simultaneously reduce the availability of birth control and prenatal care. Since Medicaid covers about 50% of all US births and 75% of public financing for family planning, Republican policies to reduce Medicaid limit reproductive care and mean almost half of low-income women will not be able to use Medicaid for health insurance. Prohibiting Medicaid reimbursements for Planned Parenthood services also means no more screening for diabetes, cancer, STDs, or high blood pressure; and no more vaccines and preventative health care for marginal or underserved communities. By eliminating abortion guidance, this step also eliminates help with birth control (which is a goal of some members of the pro-life movement).

Democratic policies include increasing the availability of and income support for personal insurance (the Affordable Care Act) and supporting Medicaid and Planned Parenthood for both men and women who are poor and who need help not only with birth control and abortion, but also with basic health services, including screening for sexually transmitted diseases.

Worldwide, Republican policies for the last 40 years have restricted doctors and nurses from providing information about abortion for any reason. This has also reduced family planning information, prenatal care, and health services for women and children. When Democratic administrations have been voted into power, they have eliminated these gag rules on reproductive care worldwide.

The Republican goal of making abortion illegal in all or most cases means that the criminal legal system controls what doctors, nurses, and patients discuss and decide. Democratic policies place abortion inside the health care system, support increased availability of health insurance, demand personal responsibility from women, and give doctors, nurses, and patients the right to discuss women’s choices.

Historically, since Roe v Wade, the abortion rate has decreased more under Democratic administrations than under Republicans. In the US during the last forty years while abortion was legal and safe and birth control was available, the rate of abortion declined by almost 50%, and in the ten years from 2005 to 2014, the number of abortions in the US decreased by 21%. Abortions reached the lowest number in 2017 (when the Affordable Care Act continued unimpeded), and then began increasing in 2018 and 2019 under the Trump administration, as Republicans systematically tried to reduce or eliminate Obamacare, to eliminate Planned Parenthood, and to reject the expansion of Medicaid.

Abortion is reduced in the US and worldwide when women have birth control and family planning services readily available. Women who are able to take responsibility for their life choices are also able to extend their educations, take better care of themselves and their children, and lead safer and more productive lives.

When we vote, we choose whether or not to support reproductive health care for all women. When we vote, we decide whether the criminal-legal system and the “back-alley” or the health care system of patients, doctors, and nurses should “control” the issues of reproduction.

Phyllis Ballata

food for thought: fundamentalism = absolutism + authoritarianism + violence

Fundamentalisms

Religious fundamentalism can be seen in any week’s news: Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalism. But fundamentalism, or the “you must do as I say or else” point of view, is not just religious. In the 20th century our troubles came mostly from atheist fundamentalism in the form of leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. We can see political or nationalistic fundamentalism all over our world in authoritarian regimes. Our own Republican Party has been in a period of increasing political fundamentalism for more than half a century.

We have been willing to sacrifice our future to economic fundamentalism. The “you must do as I say or else” you will be “primaried” has destroyed the plans of many a moderate Republican to the point of extinction. We have been cutting our state and federal support for public higher education for decades – one of the reasons for continually increasing college student debt. We have sacrificed our public school children to “save” money, even though we know that we are starving the future to satisfy our greed today. Grover Norquist-style economic fundamentalists have put off maintenance of public infrastructure, which is an unappreciated need that only practical voters recognize. Would your teenager, who has no experience of life yet, rather maintain the roof on the house or get a new car? Actually, how about you? Can we take the long view anymore? Do we have a duty of care?

How we spend money reflects who we are. So why were we asked to sacrifice health care, scientific and medical research, safety nets for the weakest members of our country, and safe water, air, and land in order to do “tax reform” to benefit the richest members of our country? Why do the wealthiest citizens even want this? Why have we devolved into a country that worships short-term thinking, that is willing to ignore or even actively harm the helpless, and that thinks it can ignore the laws of physics and chemistry by pretending they don’t exist? Why have we decided that it is okay, even good, to be envious and boastful, arrogant and rude, irritable and resentful? If “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization,” then why have we rejected civilization? Who are we?

Fundamentalism takes many forms, all with the same basis: “I alone know what is right, I have the power to tell you what to do, and you will do what I say or else.” The violence of fundamentalism can be physical – the bomb in the market, a machine gun on the hill, acid in the face. But violence can also be mental, social, emotional, spiritual – the torch light and chanting in the night, lies and insults, a bully in a uniform or a pulpit, sneers and ignorance. Fundamentalism with its absolutism, authoritarianism, and spiritual, physical, emotional, social, or mental violence is an ever present temptation and danger for all humans, but it is not a necessity. We can choose another way of being. This is a test.

Phyllis Ballata

food for thought: once again, the poet speaks to “Now”

Of History and Hope By Miller Williams (Jan. 20, 1997)

“We have memorized America, / how it was born and who we have been and where. / In ceremonies and silence we say the words, / telling the stories, singing the old songs. / We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. / The great and all the anonymous dead are there. / We know the sound of all the sounds we brought. / The rich taste of it is on our tongues. / But where are we going to be, and why, and who? / The disenfranchised dead want to know. / We mean to be the people we meant to be, / to keep on going where we meant to go.

“But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how / except in the minds of those who will call it Now? / The children. The children. And how does our garden grow? / With waving hands – oh, rarely in a row – / and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

“Who were many people coming together / cannot become one people falling apart. / Who dreamed for every child an even chance / cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not. / Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head / cannot let chaos make its way to the heart. / Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child / cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot. / We know what we have done and what we have said, / and how we have grown, degree by slow degree, / believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become – / just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

“All this in the hands of children, eyes already set / on a land we never can visit – it isn’t there yet – / But looking through their eyes, we can see / what our long gift to them may come to be. / If we can truly remember, they will not forget.”

By Miller Williams (1930-2015) (Arkansas) from Some Jazz A While (1999); read for President Bill Clinton’s 2nd inauguration, January 20, 1997

Twenty four years ago on January 20, 1997, President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration, Miller Williams’ poem was intended to be an encouragement and celebration of America: “We mean to be the people we meant to be, / to keep on going where we meant to go.” Williams argues that the lessons that history has taught us must be passed down to the children to create a better future: “If we can truly remember, they will not forget.” Now 24 years later after a Donald Trump and white supremacist nightmare, we emphasize different words – can we “truly remember” when we have been smothered with lies and now have to fight for the right or even the ability to think or reason or understand?

“But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how / except in the minds of those who will call it Now?” We understand the past context from the 1990s, but we also read poetry in the light of our present knowledge and thoughts. “Now” in 2021 the line “Mostly we do” reminds us that we do not always “like the places” that we go when “in ceremonies and silence we say the words, / telling the stories, singing the old songs.” Have we “truly remembered”? “How does our garden grow?” What kind of seeds for the future are we now sowing? What will we reap? If we look “through [the children’s] eyes . . . what [will] our long gift to them . . . come to be”? Will they consider what we leave behind a “gift”? “We know what we have done and what we have said”?

“Now” 24 years later, we have become “one people falling apart.” We have not “dreamed for every child an even chance.” We have “let chaos make its way to the heart.” We have “let ignorance spread itself like rot.” We have not “tried to become / just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.” “Now” 24 years later, after a president who despises the poets, who is proud of knowing no history, and who cares not one whit for the children, and while his followers continue to be trapped in lies and corruption, we recognize the danger of allowing the brambles to take over the garden.

“Now” a 24-year-old inauguration poem speaks to us in an entirely different voice – a voice for this particular time. “But where are we going to be, and why, and who? / The disenfranchised dead want to know.”

Phyllis Ballata

food for thought: what does the poet know?

It’s time to learn from the best observer of life – the poet.

“What happens to a dream deferred?” can be asked of anyone: Indian Sikh farmers, Venezuelan nurses, Chinese teachers, African American business owners, Burmese students, Siberian ecologists, South African housecleaners. Langston Hughes analyzes the results of a dream deferred in Harlem, NY, looking carefully at the individual and specific consequences. But his powerful word pictures are true for humans all over the world.

Does the dream “dry up,” shrivel and lose all its juice, “like a raisin in the sun”? What happens to the people whose lives shrink smaller and drier, eventually desiccated and blown away as dust?

Does the dream “fester like a sore” sending an infection into the blood stream? When the red line of blood poisoning finally reaches the heart does it seize up or race or convulse and stop?

Does the dream “stink” and rot? Does it eat away at life, destroying the skin and muscle, until the body and mind disintegrate piece by piece slowly and inexorably? Is it a contagion destroying those close by, or does the smell of defeat or the stink of corruption drive others away?

Does the dream “crust and sugar over” filling all the moving parts of life with hard crystals? Like sand in the gears or gout crystals in the joints, does the immoveable dream cripple the dreamer with a feverish swelling that causes pain at the slightest touch?

Does the dream “sag” into depression and helplessness? Do impossible hopes year after year add weight that eventually can’t be carried, that wears the dreamer down and out?

Or is the consequence explosions of violence and anger? Is the pressure more than the outer shell can hold in when the match touches the fuse and the expanding heat suddenly releases?

Look at the news tonight. What is happening to those who are being crushed by political authoritarians, economic hardship or helplessness, physical fear and deprivation, emotional hopelessness, or psychological manipulation, lies, and pathologies?

When you see the people running from danger, protesting oppression, fighting for their lives, dying of despair and community decay – put them in the poem. Put them in the poem – and ask whether you are helping or hurting, overtly or covertly. Maybe the problem is your cheap food or cheap t-shirt, your plastic waste and toxic chemicals, your society’s use of power and influence, your fear that others might want education or birth control, your need for control over whoever is different in any way, your anxiety that status and privilege are slipping away.

We can ask this of anyone anywhere – in any physical situation: anyone in the palace or the hut, at the laboratory bench or on the path to the water hole, in the halls of power or on the street, in the corporate board room or in the sweatshop.

Look through the poet’s eyes and see the truth. Do you recognize yourself? Do you care? Can we turn the grapes into wine? Can we find a balm to cleanse the blood or heal the pain? Can we dissolve the hard crystals scratching inside our hearts and minds and grinding down our lives? Can we lessen the heavy burdens or help with the load? Can we defuse the bomb or blow out the match?

[Langston Hughes, “Harlem”]

Phyllis Ballata