Who are we without our vengeance?

I was maybe 8 or 9 when I first had the thought, “Why am I me, and not someone else?” I became aware of being aware, if you will. I looked at other people and wondered what things would feel like if I were them and I asked why I had been born into the body that I was in, and not some other body in some other place. In that moment I understood that though I was me - Ashley - I could just as easily be anyone else. This was a powerful revelation for a child to have. It was the first time that I realized that everyone around me had just as deep and rich of an inner life as I did; that the world didn't turn on me and my wants and needs, but that it simply turned, and all of us were seeking the same validation as human beings.

When you boil it all down, our collective explosion of vitriol over current events is pretty simple. We are continuing to dehumanize others as justification for our immoral behavior (torture and police brutality). Some people have no problem with this. Trying to converse with people who have no problem with this is maddening, because you are actually talking about two different things, placing two different sets of values on human life.

My view is "All human beings have dignity and worth, regardless of their skin color, creed, orientation, or criminal actions they may have committed." Not even the wickedest person ceases to be a human being because they rob a gas station or beat their spouse to death or shoot heroin. There are no actions you can take that invalidate your humanness. Due process and humane, ethical treatment are facets of basic human dignity, not to be exempted or ignored because someone broke the law or was perceived to have been a "bad guy." As hard as this may be to hear and digest, commitment to this principle is necessary. To me the greater sin is prioritizing vengeance over ethics.

But this is what a lot of people want. I see it in every argument over police officers leaping straight to the use of deadly force where people of color are concerned. I see it in these arguments over whether the torture - the physical and sexual assault - of terrorists is justified. There is an endless stream of minutiae regarding every one of these killings of unarmed black men. Most of it is geared towards proving that the deceased were "thugs," that they had it coming, that their humanity ceased to be the moment they made contact with a police officer because our culture paints cops as infallible superheroes, whose authority makes them always correct, even when they demonstrably aren't. Michael Brown was rendered a stereotype, an inhuman monster, and this justified his execution in the eyes of millions of people.

This is the dehumanization process at work. It makes us enemies of ourselves; it turns us against our brothers and sisters. Dehumanization is convenient; it strips away context, nuance, and murkiness and renders everything in stark black and white (often quite literally). There's no need to understand the complexities of any situation - or of human emotion and behavior - when dehumanization is a convenient fallback and arbiter of that very human drive for bloodthirsty vengeance. You don't have to think. You don't have to consider the inner life of the human beings at stake. Stereotypes deprive our brothers and sisters of their humanity, every moment of every day.

I hear well-meaning people claim "I don't see race" or "I don't see gender." But this view only reinforces stereotypes and dehumanization. This view is usually espoused by white people or straight people who want a medal for not being proactively evil, people who behave as if reducing everyone around them to a comfortably homogeneous image is progress. Ignoring our differences and diversity - pretending they don't exist so that painful realities need not ever be confronted - only widens the gulf that has opened in American culture.

By the same token, acknowledgement of institutional factors that disproportionately punish and restrict large segments of our population is dismissed as "race baiting," as if people of color enjoy having to remind everyone around them that they are consistently dehumanized. Folks argue about this as if it isn't real - as if the incremental, hard-won social progress made by people of color in the last few decades somehow cancels out 400 years of the ATTITUDES that brought us slavery and Jim Crow, attitudes that persist at every level of authority and are reinforced by deliberate separation and dehumanization of our fellows.

Emmett Till. Amadou Dillao. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. John Crawford III. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. These are not just names. They are lives that were taken through the abuse of authority and power. And they are lives that were cheapened by the mental gymnastics performed to make their deaths "their own fault." Mental gymnastics facilitated by decades of institutionalized racism and a process of systematic dehumanization that shoehorns their actions into a script, a trope that plays out exactly how we intend it to play out so that we may have the satisfaction of an Other "getting theirs."

Who are we with our hate? Angry, vengeful people, viewing those different from us as enemies. We remain separate from them and thus closed off to any understanding of fundamental, transcendent humanity.

Who are we without our hate? That remains to be seen.

The only solution is to not allow the cruelties of the world to harden us into separation from our brothers and sisters. We must permit this suffering, these cruelties, to soften us into opening ourselves up to forgiveness. This is not weakness. This is not the behavior of a "liberal pussy." This is an affirmation of human dignity, of ethical judgment, of every human being's right to due process in all phases of their life.

"Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace—disappointment in all its many forms—and let it open me?' This is the trick." - Pema Chödrön

The tide has come in.

2013 was a barn-burner, eh? The Year the Internet Finally Ate Itself. The year where being offended became the national pastime and stockpiling offenses committed by nebulous Others was more or less the sole purpose of Facebook.

We've gotten really good at permitting ourselves to be distracted from things that really matter. It seems like we've just now noticed that we have to share the planet with lots of people who don't think the way we do, and rather than relaxing our stances just a tad, to allow those competing stances to have some room of their own to breathe, we instead rage all-out culture war fueled by sensationalist journalism and pundits who make shit up out of whole cloth and pass it off as truth. 

Rather than vigorously debate how we can improve the quality of life for our citizens, we get in pissing matches about whether or not a camouflaged bigot with a beard and a duck call should have to endure public backlash for saying idiotic things. Rather than address the urgent issues of class and racial inequality in the United States, we watch a grown man with a Rambo complex murder a teenage boy armed with Skittles because black people are scary, and then parlay his crime into fame as a folk hero for people who wear teabags on their clothing and stockpile exploding hollow-point ammunition to fight off hypothetical invaders.

It's hard out there for an intellectual pimp.

But from all of the offense emerged something peculiar – despite all the bluster, change was happening. And I was able to witness it firsthand.

In 2005, the state of Kansas (my home state) placed before its voters an amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage as solely between one man and one woman. This amendment is more restrictive than most; under it, civil unions are invalid, as are common-law marriages. The amendment passed with 70% of the votes in its favor. SEVENTY. PERCENT.

For an idealistic, bleeding-heart twenty-something, this was embarrassing and devastating. It’s impossible to grow up in the shadow (45 minutes away!) of the Westboro Baptist Church and not feel like you have a responsibility to fight that kind of noxious hate. I paid lip service to the bigotry most of the time; sure, I went to Pride rallies with friends and carried signs at counter-protests, but I also had this Straight Privilege that meant I didn’t really NEED to get that involved. I thought it wasn’t really my fight, and in 2005, after that amendment zipped through with 70 goddamn percent of the vote, things looked pretty bleak.

I entered a period of intellectual malaise, as people in their early 20s often do. I had gotten some pretty bitter doses of the world and I didn’t want any more, and I started tuning out these issues as other people’s problems. Fortunately this attitude was destroyed by the wrecking ball that was graduate school. My life was upended by my time at the University of Idaho; personally, professionally, and morally and intellectually as well. I started thinking about stuff again. I started paying attention to injustice, to bigotry, and I started recognizing the signifiers of institutional systems that make life really hard for people on the outside of those systems. It was a massive wake-up call. I began to see how all systems of oppression are connected.

I had an amazing professor at Idaho who not only planted ideas in my head, but showed me how I could actually bring about change on my own. Barry was my Socrates, but holy shit, I’m no Plato. Barry once told me a story about a friend of his, a former militant leftist affiliated with the Weather Underground in the 1960s. This friend became an investment banker, but retained his political philosophies. The friend was often challenged and accused of “selling out,” of betraying his values and embracing the evils of capitalism. “But you see, he knew what he was doing,” Barry said. “He was working from within.”

Working from within. Now THERE’S an idea. So that’s how you change things.

I bring all this up because I'm nothing more than an idealistic, (mostly) straight kid who gets heartburn from injustice, but I also like to make excuses and I had long told myself that the gay rights thing wasn't my fight, that there was nothing I could do except support my gay friends and love them without exception. On the contrary - I could help topple this system from the inside, as an outspoken ally. I just needed the proper context for this eureka moment.

Jump ahead to March, 2013. I was making arrangements to travel to Washington, D.C. to read a paper at the PCA/ACA National Conference. Checking the dates, it dawned on me that my visit was coinciding with the U.S. Supreme Court's hearings on two major cases related to same-sex marriage. This meaningful coincidence was enough to prompt me to make my way down to the Supreme Court for the arguments in United States v. Windsor. 

I got off the airplane, hopped on the Metro, and made the mile or so walk from Union Station to the Supreme Court. I was toting all my luggage with me - I hadn't even been to my hotel yet - and probably looked like an insane person. As I got closer to the Courthouse, I started encountering groups of people walking the same direction, carrying signs and holding hands as they meandered down First Street.

It was a beautiful sunny day with puffy clouds everywhere, and the vast majority of the assembled crowd had turned out to support Edith Windsor's case - an interesting one, because it revolved around money and the right of married couples to avoid estate taxes after the death of a spouse. I saw one dude with a big hand-painted sign with an out-of-context Bible quote on it, but men in drag were posing for pictures next to him, which sort of took the bite out of his argument.

A ruling in Windsor's favor would effectively render federal restrictions against same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The atmosphere on the sidewalk outside the building was nothing but optimistic - even joyous. I couldn't stop smiling, in fact. This made a huge impression on me - you could sense that a turning of the tide was imminent. It was a moment where the energy of the movement had gathered enough momentum to start pushing back against the institutionalized bigotry of prior decades, and that energy was palpable. It was impossible to stand there in that crowd and not breathe as one.

I was able to stand in the courtroom for what felt like a minute or so, but was probably longer than that. For obvious reasons, many people wanted to be in the courtroom to hear the oral arguments, and they whisked groups of people through at a pretty rapid pace. While I was there, attorney Paul Clement (the government's lawyer) argued his case in defense of the government's restrictions on same-sex marriage, to some eye-rolling from the spectators (as in, me) and skepticism from the Justices. Particularly Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is a national treasure, she's such a damn badass.

I walked up and down the street, took pictures, chatted with people. There were lots of activist groups handing out stickers and signs and rainbow flags. I met two women and their preteen kids. The women had been together for almost 30 years, and had driven from Ohio to tell their story. One of their kids held a sign that said "I love my moms!" The kids were polite and friendly, their moms down-to-earth and optimistic in spite of their inability to have their partnership legally recognized. 

One family, one story. One of many. There were hundreds of stories in that crowd; stories of rejection by parents, by pastors, by friends. Stories of starting over, stories of love being someone's only salvation in the face of cruelty. Stories of people being forced to deny the fundamental truth about who they are to pacify all the people around them who tell them that their existence is "wrong."

It was clear to me then, the level of injustice that we tolerate in the name of always needing an outsider or an "Other" on which to project our insecurities. These people that gathered outside of the court were demonstrating for their right to love, to exist, to be themselves in a world that would rather they didn't. But that day, I felt the tide turning, and turn it has. I have strong emotional responses to injustice when I see it, and being there to witness the turning of this tide is still one of the most profound experiences I've ever had.

We simply cannot remain silent about the myriad issues that fall under the gay rights umbrella. I'm talking to you, straight people. We've got some power here, and rather than exploit that power to continue reinforcing these divides that paint gay people as less than human, we need to use that power to highlight our shared humanity.

This experience was meaningful because I felt, for a brief moment, like I was standing on the shoulders of giants. Another time, another decade, and I could have been walking with Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy down those same streets. The human struggle is an old one, pockmarked with violence and unrest and disaster. The contentious issue changes, but the quest is the same - all people want to be treated like people, and loved without exception.

We cannot continue making exemptions and exceptions for who is worthy of human decency. This point was driven home for me repeatedly in 2013; all of the hot-button issues of the year could have been solved by merely acknowledging our shared humanity. This goes both ways - no matter how bigotry and injustice inflame our passions, the only reasonable course of action is to meet hatred and ignorance with love.

Here is to another year of shameless idealism, of working from within, of cultivating our shared humanity, of allowing the joy and optimism of a just cause to surge through us and motivate us to love all others without exception.

I'll leave you with a verse from the Dhammapada, one of the canonical texts of Buddhism:

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.

A case for supporting the arts

I had to tackle this one. Couldn't let it slide; it stoked too many fires that I've let go cold.

This Gawker article was published today imploring people - potential donors, I guess - not  to contribute any money to the floundering New York City Opera. The tone of the article is incredibly moralistic and condescending towards art and artists. The author dresses it up as if he is only referring to this specific opera company, but his faux-Libertarian rejection of donor support for the City Opera conceals a greater contempt for so-called "unpopular" arts. By unpopular, I mean artistic endeavors that do not make anybody insanely wealthy. 

I don't know enough about the inner workings of the City Opera to comment on their financial status and whether they NEED $20 million to stage three productions - I'm looking at a larger issue here. The City Opera is just a convenient catalyst for this example of cultural malaise towards the arts in general.

The author's argument is this: We should not contribute money to the City Opera because that money could be used helping starving children or malaria victims. He writes, "in a world of limited money and resources, we must make choices. A dollar given to one cause is a dollar not given to another cause." For this argument to hold any water whatsoever, charitable giving/philanthropy must be a zero-sum game, ignoring the myriad ways in which philanthropy ITSELF has ripple effects far beyond its individual cause. The author is essentially saying that no money should be donated to the arts until...worldwide hunger, disease and poverty are eradicated? It is utter contempt for art and artists, cloaked in moralistic preaching. This guys KNOWS that people will be disinclined to argue with him if he pulls the "Think of the starving children!" angle.

I often see this kind of argument dressed up in culture war language. It's a common tactic of people who are offended by an artwork, therefore they campaign for all art to cease to exist (see the right-wing attacks on Robert Mapplethorpe). If they permit it to exist, then it is forced into a limbo where it relies on outside support from patrons to function. And if you can't get the money together to make art, too bad! The free market has spoken! It must not be as valuable as you said it is, dirty hippie.

Because we all know the only things are worth having are those that make someone rich. After all, who needs art? Art won't feed anybody. So say we take the author's dubious advice and withhold all patronage of art until all global catastrophes are solved. No one is hungry, no one is sick, no one is poor. Yay! What happened in the meantime? Well, there's no culture. Sure, there are television shows about rednecks and housewives, but that should be plenty, right? That'll keep the masses suitably intellectually sedated so the power elite can continue consolidating their grip on humanity to drive up the price of their stock shares.

Because - and this capitalist loathing of art emerges as a distinctly American cultural quirk - art has self-reflective qualities. Art makes you think about things. It often reflects universal struggles in abstract ways that generate introspection. It is absolutely easier and simpler to just consume the irrelevant "struggles" of the Kardashians, because that won't challenge any beliefs you hold. Art, on the other hand, ENCOURAGES people to consider the society they live in with a critical eye. Authoritarian types do everything they can to keep art away from the lower classes for this very reason.

When composers started writing operas about something other than mythological heroes, they wrote about common, shared experiences that people from all walks of life endure. In particular, the lower classes attended the opera because they could identify with the struggles of the characters in some way, and composers would often throw in jabs at the aristocracy that the lower classes would understand. Opera has always been, in various ways, critical of the society where it lives. Opera and hip-hop are often about the same things; it's just that one genre requires more instruments.

In the United States, they (the power elite) don't need to ban art. They don't need to censor it. All they have to do is portray it as frivolous and effeminate, and people will self-censor.

The author of this article is, of course, fishing for controversy (read: PAGE VIEWS), but there's no controversy here. He's taking people to task for giving their money to artists. He wants to tell us that the "best use" of our money would be to THINK OF THE CHILDREN. My contention is that by permitting the arts to flourish, you are stimulating society to think critically about WHY there are pressing social problems in the first place. This in turn creates human beings who are more likely to engage with the world around them...and maybe even contribute cash money to other causes.

I am a musician and I make art for a living. I will never be wealthy doing what I do. But damn, I can't imagine my life without art. Studying music in its various historical contexts has molded me into the person I am today - it is the reason I can synthesize information and ponder WHY.

These are my charities of choice. I give a little bit to both organizations each month, and then I go out and make music as a calling. Perhaps you too would like to prove to Mr. Nolan that you can support the arts and other causes simultaneously? What a concept!

Human Rights Campaign

Oxfam America

I mention this not to boast but to illustrate how my exposure to art has broadened my worldview to where I actually give a shit about things that are basically completely beyond my control.

Art is not expendable. It is not frivolous. It is vital to the emotional and spiritual health of a society, and necessary for developing psychotic apes into thoughtful human beings.

There's Too Much Confusion

This past spring, I took a course on the operas of Richard Wagner. It was one of the more interesting scholarly experiences I have had; when dealing with Wagner, the sky is the limit as far as approaches and concepts of study.

When it came time to produce the final paper for the course, I was so overwhelmed by the many ideas I had that I was struggling to come up with anything solid. I began pondering Wagner's vast influence on the music we hear in media today, and my path then became clear: why not combine two things I really dig? And that's how I wrote a paper on Wagner and Battlestar Galactica.

"There's Too Much Confusion" - Battlestar Galactica as Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk

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