GEORGE TEMPLETON: COMMENTARY
Billie Holiday
Inventing Myself
“Is it better to have equality at the price of poverty or well-being at the price of inequality?” Winston Churchill
We
get objective reality mixed up with subjective meaning. We know what
we are, but youth will determine what we will be. They have a shared
desire to improve the world, but they have to find the meaning of their
lives and the courage to be. That comes from the inner person.
Unequal Sharing of Blessings
When
you are a student, you choose to live a life of poverty. You put your
education first. This is not the case for the students and parents
implicated in the recent Ivy League college admission scandal. Is
education only about jumping through hoops? Do you win when you lie and
cheat? These students will carry the shame of their parents for the
rest of their lives. There is more integrity in failure than fraud.
Billie Holiday had it right when she sang, “Rich relations give crusts
of bread and such. You can help yourself but don’t take too much. Mama
may have, papa may have, but God bless the child that’s got his own”.
Equal Sharing of Misery
Our
Republican legislature wants young people to learn how to work.
Perhaps they are marching to the drumbeat of the Goldwater Institute,
the Chamber of Commerce, and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. Perhaps
they are on the side of the money instead of the people. A cartoon
argued that people just want “free stuff”, but voters approved a minimum
wage in 2016. People would rather live in poverty than in a community
where there is no work. Work gives life a purpose.
HB2523,
unanimously approved by the House Republicans, allows businesses to pay
less than the minimum wage to part-time workers who are full-time
students. More young people would be hired and get work experience
because businesses could pay them less. It would also create a lower
class employee who would compete with the poorest adults in our society.
Churchill
apparently saw an interaction between blessings and misery that our
legislature seems to not understand. Their hubris gets in the way of
continuous improvement. It chants “USA, USA” instead of understanding
its deficiencies.
Growing Up in the Placid Fifties
My
mother died bringing me into the world. I was raised by my
grandparents. Their doctors ordered them to come to Arizona because of
my grandmother’s health, but it was my grandfather who unexpectedly died
when I was 12 years old. His last words to me, as he entered the taxi
to go to the hospital were, “Now you will be the man around the house”.
I was stunned. We had no idea of what was coming down.
Growing
up young was typical of earlier generations. Their youth was before
electricity, cars, airplanes, and radio. Teddy Roosevelt was their idea
of the greatest president and the Civil War was not long ago. My
grandfather, a retired policeman, had only a fourth grade education. He
had a library, but could not multiply or divide. My grandmother was
the academic in our family, having completed an eighth grade education.
She was crippled because of a broken hip. Strokes blinded one eye and
twisted her foot. She had hemorrhaging ulcers and repeated heart
attacks. I bought the groceries, did the laundry, lawn, housecleaning,
and everything that took mobility or strength. There was no one else.
I was her caregiver and she became my mother.
My
grandmother had good advice: “Get a job”, but I wanted to go to
college. Government and private enterprise created accelerated high
school courses and summer institutes for teachers. The world was
changing and education was necessary to keep America great. I lived in
Arizona from 1948 and attended Arizona schools continuously. My
grandparents owned property beginning in 1950, but it turns out I was
not legally an Arizona resident and would have to pay out of state
tuition. That would make college impossible. My high school English
teacher saw something in me. One of her students was a lawyer. She
referred me to him, and pro bono, he got me classified as a resident.
Objective law denied amnesty. But the subjective nature of my situation
suggested otherwise.
Time to Strive
We should not be surprised or upset because we have to have to struggle with the frustrations in life. It’s all in the game.
I
learned how to work in the onion and melon seasons. I remember picking
cotton by hand. We worked seven days a week, typically longer than 12
hour days, and sometimes as much as 18 hour days. Those jobs paid about
half the minimum wage of the time, without overtime or benefits, but a
young person who lived at home, not needing to pay room and board, could
do well. I liked the hard physical work and was grateful to get it.
It
was too hot outdoors in the summer, but we worked outside anyway. I
remember, all alone, digging up the shed sewer line. They did not have
heavy equipment in those days. The trench was about fifty yards long,
ran through the dirt parking lot, and deeper than I was tall. I had a
hose to help break up the hard soil. But the objective reality of the
trench is not what was significant. It was the subjective experience
that mattered. I was covered with mud from head to foot from digging
the trench and I met a girl I knew. She was adorned in high heels and
fine clothing. It was clear to me, that I was not a bird of her
feather. It was helping me to learn who I was and what I was.
I
started college at age 17 and did well, but I lost my grandmother, my
room and my board in the second semester of my first year. There was no
money and I was broke. I became 21 years old on paper, because I had
to.
Lacking parental supervision there would be no scholarship for me even
though my grades supported one. So, my immediate problem became paying
for tuition, room, board, and books. Because of the Vietnam War,
full-time school was mandatory. Part-time work was almost
non-existent. Businesses not involved in interstate commerce paid far
less than the minimum wage. With employees’ mandatory meals and uniform
cleaning fees, the take-home pay was actually about one third of the
minimum wage. So, this meant running into financial problems the second
semester of every school year.
My
grandparents taught me to never use credit. At first, I had a small
bank account but that ran out quickly. I tried to borrow twenty
dollars, but I had no collateral. Fortunately, they had not yet
invented predatory friendly loans. Unfortunately, I overdrew my bank
account by two cents. The police came to investigate me, but all they
could find was a 1930 typewriter. The bank fined me. They could not
understand why I did not want an account anymore. Paying the fine took
all my income for two weeks, so I lived on only peanut butter and bread,
3 meals a day, during that entire interval.
So
another solution was to work full time while attending school full
time. That led to 3 hours of sleep per night, permanently. I was free
and independent but not as sovereign as I thought. Friends, the Church,
and teachers helped me. An increase in the minimum wage would have
been beneficial. But it is not fairness or salary that matters. It is
opportunity.
Sometimes,
what seems to be a disadvantage is an advantage. My day did come. Our
government was worried about Russian intercontinental ballistic
missiles. I had a good job immediately upon graduation. I either
contributed to the defense of our nation, or to the possible destruction
of the world, and I helped in the solid state revolution that changed
everyone’s life. Some people thought I was patriotic and moral. Others
thought not.
Jesus, an Artist
Is
emotion the enemy of intellect? Winston Churchill explained, “When
civilization degenerates, our morals will be gone but our maxims will
remain”.
We
think that science revolutionizes the world, but Joseph Campbell, the
famous mythology professor, explained that artists create the future.
They understand the power of the myth. You might feel that myths are
only lies. You should consider that Einstein worked more like an
artist, by imagination and intuition, than a scientist.
Every
child learns what the colors are, but colors are what philosophers call
“qualia”. We don’t know that our child’s experience of “red” is the
same as ours. An objectivist view holds that colors are properties in
the world, there to be perceived. The subjectivist view holds that
colors are mind-dependent secondary qualities. Was Jesus objective or
subjective? We know he was sincere, compassionate, joyful, disciplined,
wise, and never jealous, but these terms embody thoughts, emotions, and
actions.
A
handsome, tall, bearded Nordic Jesus walked on the water along with his
disciple, Donald Trump. The picture’s caption explained that they
would bring world peace. What about the big nuclear button that Trump
threatened North Korea with? He has only 7 minutes to decide whether to
launch a retaliatory strike. To wait longer would allow our nukes to
be destroyed while still on the ground. Isn’t there something wrong
with our system? It allows this madness to continue, to grow with the
new generation of smaller user friendly nuclear weapons.
It
was a time and place of religious foment. There were the Essenes, the
Samaritans, the Sadducees, the Zealots, and the imminent coming of a
messiah who would set things right. Did Jesus demonize the poor
stranger who came to him suffering from life’s vicissitudes? Did he
explain that he was for the Pharisee’s first and blame everyone else?
We
actually don’t know a lot about Jesus. That has made it possible for
people to make up their own idea about him. Megan Kelly, on the TV,
said that Jesus was a white man. He has been talked about as a
capitalist, a socialist, a poor man, a loving friend, and a member of
the Nazi party. Our intercontinental ballistic missiles have been
blessed by the clergy in the name of Jesus. Jesus was a Jew, but not of
the Old Testament kind. He tried to reconcile the individual soul with
the laws of society.
The
Jesus and Trump picture, pretending to be from Jerry Falwell Jr., went
viral. But it was a fake. Perhaps its intent was proselytization about
emotional beliefs that need no science, weather man, or objective
policy. God, the mysterious unexplainable is their explanation.
Land of the Make Believe
When
comfortable facts decide, we become heartless. Emotional words change
their meaning. It is easy to change minds, hard to change hearts. As
we think in our hearts, so are we.
Many
are angry because “xxxx hole” countries don’t respect us, don’t do
anything for us, and are not fair to us. Should we punish them until
they are on our side? This is about how we see ourselves, others, and
the world. No leader can fulfill the American promise. It is up to us.
f
the president* really had an ounce of empathy in him, he'd issue mass
pardons immediately because, otherwise, a number of people are going to
feel really stupid going off to federal prison. They will be going off
to federal prison knowing that they committed their crimes in defense of
nothing. William Barr on Sunday did what he was hired to do. 
