Choosing When to Die

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

I suppose it’s human nature to avoid thinking about death. I strive not to take my health, my loved ones, and all of the numerous things I enjoy for granted, but if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit to slipping in and out of “life is fragile, don’t take it for granted, make the most of the present” consciousness. I turned 48 a few weeks ago which means I’m almost certainly on the back nine.

Tuesday’s Frontline Film was titled “The Suicide Tourist“. I found it engaging and provocative. This paragraph is from an interview with Mary Ewert, the wife of Craig Ewert who has A.L.S. and in the film travels from Chicago to Switzerland to end his life. Mr. Minelli is the founder of Digitas, the Swiss organization that has helped 1,000 people end their life.

“Mr. Minelli and Craig take a matter-of-fact view of death — we all will die some day. They are able to reflect on how people, including themselves, die. In contrast, our society places an inordinate emphasis on the emotional aspect of dying, urging patients to fight death, to be brave warriors in the face of death. The decision to quietly, gracefully accept and welcome death is at odds with the emotional battle against death. Both are ways of dealing with death, one is not better than the other. However, both approaches should be respected. I fear that acceptance of death is still viewed as somehow bizarre and frightening, something to be forbidden.”

I went into the film without having given much thought to the website’s follow up discussion question: Is Craig Ewert’s decision to end his life a choice that everyone should have? Having watched the film, I’m inclined to answer in the affirmative. Now I think I’ll skim the online discussion and see what others think. How about you?

Doesn’t Compute

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

In an email I recently received, my father-in-law asked me what I thought of Tiger’s performance. I’m guessing his use of the word “performance” as opposed to “statement” means he wasn’t buying what Tiger was selling.

I thought Tiger was sincere, but who knows, talk is cheap, and as he acknowledged, only time will tell. The question of whether he was sincere is not the most interesting one, nor is the question of what he does or doesn’t owe the public, nor the related one of why didn’t he allow questions.

For me there’s one interesting, actually troubling aspect of the whole Tiger melodrama, and one interesting aspect of his performance or statement.

The disconcerting aspect is the opportunity costs of our fascination with celebrities. In your circle of friends, what’s the ratio of “Tiger talk” to “education, foreign policy, health care, or economic talk”? We are a People magazine people and the quality of our democracy suffers as a result.

The interesting aspect of his statement was how pained he appeared to be, how unhappy I’m guessing he is, and his paragraph on Buddhism. We are a materialistic people. Here’s a guy that’s close to being the first billionaire athlete living a complete life of luxury and he’s unhappy. How can someone who’s the best in their field, on the way to being the best ever, with hundreds of millions of dollars, private jets, yachts, houses, Escalades, be unhappy?

Doesn’t compute.

Lots of people think if they had El Tigre money and fame they’d be much more happy than they are. To me, the Tiger story, like a lot of Old Testament ones, is a powerful reminder that money and fame are no substitute for a sense of self; a selfless spirituality; honoring your ancestors; a sense that your wife, children, and close friends respect you; a sense that you’re at least as good a person as athlete.

E Pluribus Unum?

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

I’m keenly interested in how people of different political, cultural, and religious points of view relate one to another.

I first became interested in how people deal with those whose politics are radically different than their own as a high school social studies teacher leading discussions about contemporary issues. I quickly learned to play the “devil’s advocate” since some of my students were right or left-wing ideologues whose positions were highly predictable.

Also, I’ve been fortunate to have two friends whose worldviews are very different than my own. In contrast to most people who tend to keep the peace by avoiding talking about subjects related to politics, religion, race, and sexual orientation, we tackle them head-on.

In the last few years the church my family attends have added two new pastors for two that left. They’ve taken a moderate, fairly apolitical church considerably to the left in a few ways including a gay and lesbian friendly “welcoming statement” and by embracing evolution.

Here’s an excerpt from the “Clergy Letter Project” that was read Sunday. “We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as ‘one theory’ among others’ is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. . . We ask school board members to preserve the integrity of science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge.”

I like the pastors and strongly support the stands they’re taking, but I’m intrigued by how little effort they seem to be making to retain conservative members. Attendance is down a bit, so I assume some have left. My guess is there will be liberal replacements in the months ahead. In a year’s time I expect us to have the same size church, but we’ll be much more homogeneous.

Consequently, the church may lose some of it’s distinctiveness and potential to model the Kingdom of God on earth. Given the choice, people already tend to socialize with, live next to, work with, and recreate with like-minded people. If truly committed to following Christ’s example, it seems as if the church would be a counter-cultural institution, one where people’s faith trumps political differences.

And not one where political differences are swept under the rug, but where people commit to conversation and learn how to agree to disagree when necessary about things like gay rights, the causes of global warming, and the death penalty, all in the interest of modeling “another way”.

Am I too idealistic to think this is possible? The cynic in me can’t help but notice our church, like many, has two services, one formal with hymns and a traditional liturgy, and a hymn-free, informal “contemporary” one. The nucleus divides again.

In the end, will the small corner of the world that is Olympia, Washington end up more religiously, socially, culturally, and politically fragmented?

Shortcut-mania

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Spent Saturday at the King County Acquatic Center in Federal Way (the “KCAC” if you’re cool) watching the State YMCA Championship swim meet with over four hundred competitors. Fourteen’s swimming career began last August at the start of high school. She decided to swim because she recognized she wasn’t lighting the soccer world on fire, her parents encouraged it, her older sissy was a co-captain, and she thought it would be a good way to make friends.

The season exceeded her expectations in part because she improved a lot, a result of swimming five times a week and improving her technique. Dropping time is fun. Now though she’s an intermediate swimmer and dropping time is considerably harder. And swimming isn’t as fun. Saturday she swam more slowly than she had hoped. There had to be an explanation she thought. “Was the pool meters?”

The great thing about competitive swimming is there’s an almost perfect correlation between one’s training, pre-race prep, and race day performance. Fourteen misinterpreted her results on Saturday. Her conclusion, “I didn’t race very well. Just didn’t have a good day. Maybe I’m not as good as I thought.” The truth of the matter is she hasn’t been training consistently and intensely enough to swim any faster. It doesn’t matter if you have the perfect track on on your iPod pre-race and are completely amped, race day is simply a barometer of the quality of your training. The question is have you put in the time, have you done the work?

Aren’t we all like Fourteen? We often want to see improvement in some aspect of our lives without investing much time and energy in whatever it is? For example, recently I’ve read some extremely successful blogs that generate one hundred plus comments per post. When I do this I don’t think about how much time those bloggers spend on their blogs, I just say to myself, self, “You should have a blog like that.”

One’s blog readership and juice is almost exclusively a barometer of time and energy invested. The blogosphere is a meritocracy.

So the question for Fourteen, me, and maybe you, is how badly do we want to swim fast, have a widely read blog, get out of debt, lose weight, make a relationship work? Fourteen has other priorities like school and I have a day job. She swims and I blog “on the side” or maybe the “side of the side”. Maybe you try to reduce spending, save money, eat more healthily, exercise more consistently, and spend quality time with your partner “on the side”.

The challenge is being honest with ourselves about what’s most important. In the meantime, we shouldn’t be surprised by the meager results of our sporadic, abbreviated labors.

Democracy and Design

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

According to Timothy Egan (writing on his NYT blog), Amazon sold more electronic than hardcopy books during the Christmas season. He goes on to predict that the iPad and other electronic readers will accelerate the closing of brick and mortar bookstores. He writes, “. . . if Denver were to lose Tattered Cover, or Portland lose Powell’s, or Washington, D.C., lose Politics and Prose, it would be like ripping one lung from a healthy body. These stores are cultural centers, shared living rooms; no virtual community on the Web, or even a well-run library, can replace them.”

I agree. I suspect those specific stores will be anomalies, they’ll survive over the medium-term at least as a result of their loyal followings, extensive inventories, and exceptional customer service. The question though is what becomes of the small and medium sized independents who can’t compete on price and don’t have the history or momentum of a Tattered Cover, Powell’s, and Politics and Prose? I hope I’m wrong, but I expect them to go out of business. Does it matter? Is it just creative destruction, a shifting of economic tectonic plates, an inevitable byproduct of free-market capitalism?

Of course, from the perspective of bookstore owners, employees, and loyal customers, it matters. But what about from a socio-political perspective?

Social scientists are telling us what seems intuitive, we’re growing more and more ideologically segregated. I tend to listen to public radio and watch public television, with some Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olberman (in very small doses) mixed in. My right wing friends listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and watch Fox News almost exclusively. Plus, nearly everyone is plugged in to their personal iPods and smartphones making spontaneous conversations with people all but impossible.

Among other things, a vibrant democracy depends on civil discourse, or put more simply, people with differing opinions talking directly to one another. If not at bookstore cafes, or in book discussion groups, or during book reading Q&A’s, when do people truly engage with those who think differently than them? I’ve expressed my opinion before that women are better than men at making time for tea, conversation, and one another. For example, my better half and her friends, “The Clatch”, meet every few months at one of their houses. But I’m only giving them partial credit because they’re all left-of-center libs who think more alike than different.

What becomes of the listening, thinking, communicating, and problem solving skills of people who very rarely engage in civil discourse? For an answer, look at Congress.

Egan’s insight got me thinking about design. Are architects factoring socio-political variables like I’m describing into their designs. And if so, how? How do we design cities or redesign existing ones so that there are inviting public places where diverse people—culturally, economically, ideologically, religiously—are in the same place at the same time?

The Decade’s First Global News Story

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Ron Byrnes

Paul Collier in a January 17th Guardian story.

“Humanitarian crises around the world have shown that, while disaster response is often fast, effective and well-funded, reconstruction attracts fewer resources and, in many instances, fails to deliver an opportunity for a better future. Aceh, on the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and a region often taken as a model for focused development efforts after the 2004 tsunami, now faces new challenges as aid agencies reduce cash handouts and a lack of employment opportunities threatens stability.”

The media spotlight is shining brightly on Haiti just as it did Aceh in 2004. What are the odds that in six years, we will read that Haiti “now faces new challenges as aid agencies reduce cash handouts and a lack of employment opportunities threatens stability.”?

People’s recent generosity towards Haiti strikes me as odd given how little attention most people typically pay to desperately poor people and places.

In the medium and long-term, what impact can we expect an “ignore, give generously, and ignore again” style of philanthropy to make?

We need to commit to more serious and sustained global citizenship that rests on historical knowledge of colonialism, of specific places like Haiti, of globalization and neo-liberal economics, and less on one-off, media-inspired, charitable giving.

I would be more optimistic about Haiti’s future if people checked out books by Sachs, Collier, and other experts on global poverty and formed groups to debate the merits of their proposals for reducing global poverty.

If we don’t press our government to give more generously and intelligently, and we don’t consider changes in our own lifestyles, I can’t help but wonder if we give at times like this out of a sense of guilt.

The Potential Conundrum

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Ron Byrnes

As employees, parents, athletes, friends, artists, investors, people, how do we know if we’re performing to our potential? More specifically, how do you know what your potential is as a runner or how do I know what my potential is as a writer? How do we know if we’re seriously underachieving or maximizing our potential?

Self-understanding is obviously a big help. The introspective person who knows herself well definitely has a headstart on the non-introspective person. But we can’t objectively assess our potential without other’s thoughtful input. Given that, we should be providing more feedback to one another. Me to you, “You’re really good at ‘x’. Maybe if you did ‘y’, you could accomplish ‘z’.” You to me, “You have a talent for y, if you applied yourself even more you could probably do x.”

The problem though is no one likes to receive unsolicited advice. So where does that leave us? Waiting for one another to ask for input. To a co-worker, “What do I do particularly well? What are some specific things I could improve upon?” To a fellow athlete, “What do you perceive to be my strengths? Where could I improve the most?” To a spouse, Tiger to Elin for example, “What do I do especially well? What are some specific things I could improve upon?”

The problem with that though is we’re insecure, afraid that our weaknesses outweigh our strengths. Consequently, we don’t seek outside opinions. Our own are negative enough.

In the end, I’m too insecure to seek objective feedback from those who know me well; as a result, I’m unsure of my potential in any given context, so it’s anyone’s guess whether I’m underachieving, maximizing my potential, or something in between.

The Constitution and Christmas

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Ron Byrnes

Last Sunday the wife’s Sunday school class on making Christmas less stressful and more meaningful went really well. At least for the first fifty minutes. During the last ten it devolved into a gripe session about public school and state government political correctness. Then on Monday a grad student of mine sent me an email conveying the same things. Here’s an excerpt. “At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter to eliminate Jesus, in all public matter. And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith. Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace. The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded. The reason for the season , stopped before it started.”

At the end of the Sunday school class I sat in silence because I knew there was nothing I could say in a few minutes that would change anyone’s mind. Good thing probably because the teach may not have appreciated my stirring the pot. But that pot needs to be stirred.

Here’s what my conservative evangelical Christian friends would have me believe. The “founding fathers” were Christians and we are a Christian nation, a shining city upon a hill. As a result, public schools and other public places should allow the public expression of Christian faith whatever the form: the posting of the Ten Commandments, group prayer, the singing of Christian songs at Christmas, or the display of nativities or crosses. For the majority, Christianity is our common heritage, the national default if you will. People of other faiths should go ahead and celebrate in whatever ways they want in private, but as a distinct minority, they shouldn’t expect public schools and public places to accommodate their preferences.

In contrast, I believe the following.

1) We are a religiously pluralistic nation made up of many Christians mixed together with Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, atheists, and on and on.

2) Our greatest strength is our Constitution which protects minority rights against majority rule and creates a level playing field with respect to citizens’ diverse religious beliefs. Mutual respect undergirds that neutrality and enables us to peacefully co-exist.

3) Selflessness is a central tenet of Christianity; as a result, Christians should take some time to think about what it would be like if public schools and places were primarily Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, or anti-religious. The alternative is for Christians to forgo selflessness, devalue Christianity, and continue to insist on a “majority wins” approach to governing public places.

4) The “wall of separation between church and state” principle is misunderstood by Christians who instinctively view it as problematic. Christianity can be taught in public schools as long as it’s done in a comparative, non-evangelical way. Many Christians conflate religious neutrality and anti-religiousness.

5) One Sunday schooler took a swipe at Kwanza and “other minor religious celebrations.” Christians who complain about religious neutrality in public schools and public spaces are struggling to come to grips with the fact that demographics have changed in the United States and they resent that they have to change any aspect of how they grew up experiencing Christmas. It’s difficult to exaggerate the deep symbolic meaning Christmas-oriented language and music in public schools from yesteryear has on many middle-aged and elderly Christians.

6) It’s utterly and completely ludicrous for Christians to suggest anyone is “forbidden to speak of salvation and grace”. It compromises their credibility as thinking people. How much of an adult Christian’s life is spent in public schools and spaces, five percent? Ninety-five percent of the time there’s absolute freedom to speak of one’s religious beliefs and convictions in whatever way one chooses. The “forbidden” argument couldn’t be more disingenuous and it makes a mockery of believers of different faiths who are truly persecuted by their governments.

7) The historical Jesus lived in a religiously diverse world. Instead of complaining that the first century world in which he lived wasn’t explicitly Christian enough, he focused on spreading his message through example, and in essence, competing on a level playing field. Christians today should do the same.

Afghanistan-Pakistan

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Ron Byrnes

Post title most likely to drive away traffic?

Despite following global politics closely, a bachelors degree in history, doctoral coursework in international studies, and extended experience in developing countries, I’m relatively uninformed about the “stans”. Lately though, I’ve begun to educate myself. I found the recent PBS Frontline documentary titled “Obama’s War” an interesting introduction that nicely outlined the complexities. Last night I finished David Rohde’s five-part series on being kidnapped by the Taliban and held hostage for seven months. I found his story utterly riveting and am completely baffled by the commenter on the Times website that wrote of his story, “I’ve learned nothing.”

Next, I’m turning to Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article on drones titled “The Predator War”.

I still don’t know nearly enough for you to justify continuing to read, but then again, every U.S. citizen should be thinking it through since it’s our military (and tax dollars) at work. So here are my initial thoughts.

First, like in Iraq, the military campaign is too much of an American enterprise and not enough of an international coalition. If the premise is that the West’s security could be threatened by a victorious Taliban that empowers Al Qaeda, then Western countries should work in concert to defeat the Taliban. Going it mostly alone guarantees that with each civilian death antipathy towards the U.S., instead of the West more generally, intensifies.

Second, we should make a commitment to additional troops dependent upon other western countries contributing more. If other western countries refuse to commit more troops, we should adjust our plans downward.

Third, we could gain the upper hand against the Taliban in the next few years (win the military battle), but still compromise our medium-long term security if collateral death and destruction leads to even greater anti-Americanism (lose the hearts and mind war). Sons will avenge their fathers’ deaths.

Fourth, if Pakistan’s top intelligence agency props up Taliban commanders and if Afghanistan’s national election was rigged, what are the odds that any of our efforts to stabilize the countries, let alone improve their “medieval” infrastructure will pay dividends?

Fifth, in our efforts to avert another 9/11 terrorist attack, we must not add to Afghan and Pakistani civilians’ suffering. On that note, here’s a particularly disturbing excerpt from Rohdes story:

A stalemate between the United States and the Taliban seemed to unfold before me. The drones killed many senior commanders and hindered their operations. Yet the Taliban were able to garner recruits in their aftermath by exaggerating the number of civilian casualties. The strikes also created a paranoia among the Taliban. They believed that a network of local informants guided the missiles. Innocent civilians were rounded up, accused of working as American spies and then executed. Several days after the drone strike near our house in Makeen, we heard that foreign militants had arrested a local man. He confessed to being a spy after they disemboweled him and chopped off his leg. Then they decapitated him and hung his body in the local bazaar as a warning.

At present, I can’t support committing more troops or money to the war effort because the military campaign is too much of an American enterprise, we risk even greater anti-Americanism in the medium-long term, we don’t have dependable political partners, and the plight of Afghan and Pakistani civilians will most likely worsen.

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