Ethical Guerrilla

Why (even) Bernie Madoff Deserves Compassion

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

Bernie Madoff says he's become a "human pinata." Ha-ha-ha.  Seems like he's the one who made so many other human beings human pinatas when he beat the hell out of them with his greed.

What I need, Ethical Guerrilla, is your take on this.  Maybe we should take into account that this guy lost his freedom and he lost his son.  Does Bernie Madoff have a right to self-pity?

Signed

Love to Bash Bernie

Dear Love to Bash Bernie:

Compassion can be a cruel business.  We don't get to choose who deserves it and who doesn't, because - at the end of the day - suffering is suffering, whether the afflicted person is saint or a sinner. You may not be able to FEEL the love for the down-and-out person, and it is MUCH easier to blame, hate, condemn, and wish ill to those who've done bad things in the world, but that doesn't mean that anyone's pain - even the crooked Mr. Madoff - is not authentic.

We want so badly to split our world into the two halves: US and THEM.  The GOOD and the BAD.  The DESERVING and the DAMNED.  It's so much easier to condemn and turn away from people we demote from being fully human to monsters, or less than human.  But this is not a wise position, seductive though it may be. When we remember that even the worst offenders in our midst are people with hearts, histories, dreams, fears, regrets, and illusions - just like us - it is both illuminating and confusing.  How much simpler a black-and-white world would be!  How inconvenient, even annoying, that individuals like the larcenous Madoff are NOT, in fact, monsters, whom we can condemn without conscience.  Asking whether Madoff deserves to feel sorry for himself is like asking whether he deserves justice, or a hot meal, or the counsel of a rabbi when he asks for one.  The irksome but undeniable answer is of course, he does.  Denying him a right to his grief is like playing God - and NOT a kind God - and that, dear reader, is not the way ethical people roll.

I am not advocating self-pity, of course.  I would rather that Madoff felt true contrition and experienced a jailhouse conversion from sociopathic crook to remorseful ex-crook (which he has not).  I would much prefer that he take full responsibility for his destructive behavior and issue eloquent apologies to as many of those whose financial lives he helped to ruin as possible.  And maybe he will, in time.  (Enlightenment comes on its own schedule)  But until that remorseful day arrives, he deserves our compassion - FOR OUR SAKE AS MUCH AS HIS - since to hate him is to allow his crime to lower our own moral ground, and rip ourselves off the way he fleeced others, victims of an internal Ponzi scheme in which hatred piles onto hatred and our spiritual accounts are drained.

My best advice to you is: Watch your hatred boil through you.  Listen to the Great Inquisitor-thoughts rolling through your own mind ("off with his head" "may he burn in hell").  Ask yourself if this hating person is who YOU want to be, and how lack of forgiveness stunts your growth.  Question your own investment in calling for his lynching, and investigate what this says about you.  When you close your heart to the "human pinata," you close your heart to a person in pain, as exasperating as the truth is.  You may not like Bernie Madoff, and you may feel disgust for his lack of conscience - and contempt for his felonious acts - but that does not give you the right to push him outside the circle of human care. Unless you want to be just like him.

Mark (aka the Ethical Guerrilla)

Please follow me The Ethical Guerrilla on Twitter and Facebook! www.facebook.com/mark.matousek, www.twitter.com/markmatousek.  I welcome your comments and questions.  You can connect with me at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the role of elitism in democracy.  Here you can read it.

Fear is only contagious until we say ENOUGH

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

Those folks who publish THE ECONOMIST are no dummies.  In this current issue, they talk about how contagious fear is and how it could bring down the whole European economy. Say Greek defaults on its debt and Europe panics.  Then here in the U.S. of A. we panic.  After all the economic indicators aren't too hot right now in this nation. The whole global economy comes down.

You talk a lot about mirror neurons in "Ethical Wisdom." Aren't they behind fear being so contagious?  Is there anything that can stop fear from spreading?

Signed,

Caught the Fear

Dear Caught:

The only thing more contagious than fear is love.  That's why it's so important to be aware of how automatically we reflect, imitate, and internalize the actions and moods of those around us.  The purpose of mirror neurons - the most fascinating discovery about human behavior's creation since DNA, many scientists believe - is to harmonize us with our environments.  That is why the company we keep is so hugely important (people are our "biological allies," according to science writer Daniel Goleman), and the messages we absorb from our up-and-down society can present such a potential danger to our well-being.

Understanding emotional mirroring changes how we view ourselves in relation to the world.  Instead of seeing ourselves as separate entities with autonomous attitudes (and nervous systems), we realize how suspectible we are to environmental shifts, and how easily things like courage and confidence can be quashed by naysayers in our midst.  In the case of Greece's financial meltdown, this ripple effect is obvious as we watch the European Union tremble collectively like a house of cards with one too many jokers in the deck.

The question is: How can we protect ourselves from such reactivity at a time when many of us are struggling to keep our spirits (and bank accounts) healthy? The first step is for us to understand that fear (described a shrink friend of mine as False Evidence Appearing Real) of the magnitude you're describing is an ancient survival over-reaction, wired into our brains when mastodons still pounded the earth, whose apparent urgency is an illusion created by our fight-or-flight response. 

Humans are born with something called a "negativity bias" that causes us to respond far more powerfully (and readily) to bad things happening than to good.  In primitive times, this was a vital survival mechanism; it was safer to assume that outsiders were enemies than potential allies, if our ancestors wanted to maximize chances of staying alive. It was smarter to assume that surprises were dangerous, new things untrustworthy, and the future absolutely forbidding - just to play it safe.

This is why conservatives are conservative (and liberalism is an elite exception around the world, too).  We evolved to think the worst, not the best, of our fellows, and to anticipate disaster.  Given this negativity bias, fear has a head start in our reaction line up, so that when bad things do start to happen, it's hard for us to believe they will pass.  Optimism struggles with fatalism, as love is forced to tussle with fear.  Not love in a romantic sense, but love as the antidote to dread; love as faith in different outcomes; and love as trust that good will prevail in spite of negative circumstances and predictions.

Such love - what psychologists now call "elevation," spiritual types term "higher consciousness," and secularists simply call "hope" - is our best tool for counteracting terror, whether economic, political, religious, or physical.  It's our secret weapon against despair.  Assaulted by doomsday prophets (and careless governments going broke), the best thing we can possibly do is follow the advice of a waitress I know at my favorite Cuban coffee shop in New York.  Surrounded by bums, thieves, catcalling customers, and the raucous traffic of Manhattan, this cheerful woman cannot be rattled; her good humor is impenetrable.

One day, after a particularly gruesome assault by a drunken patron, I asked her to tell me the secret. Why wasn't she afraid of those customers?  How did she not absorb the insanity swirling around her eight hours a day? 

Carmen chuckled and looked me straight in the eye.   "I just smile and keep on working."

Mark (aka the Ethical Guerrilla)

Please follow me The Ethical Guerrilla on Twitter and Facebook! www.facebook.com/mark.matousek, www.twitter.com/markmatousek.  I welcome your comments and questions.  You can connect with me at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the role of elitism in democracy.  Here you can read it.

 

 

 

 

 

One person's pickle is another person's liberation.

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

Not so long ago Andrew Cuomo was at a career and personal bottom.  He had lost an election and was out of a marriage to a Kennedy.  Now look at where he is.  After his victory on marriage equality, the buzz is Cuomo for president in 2016.

I ask you, Ethical Guerrilla, why can't more people in a pickle change?  Should society start creating a new ethical imperative that we better well change after we fail?  The U.S. no longer has the economic resources to carry the burden of those who fall from grace and can't put something new together.

Signed

Angry at what is and what doesn't have to be this way

Dear Angry:

This is a fascinating and scary letter.  I'm as happy as all other fair-minded people over Andrew Cuomo's championing of gay rights, and impressed by his professional and personal comeback.  I'm  also pleased to hear about the presidential buzz, distant and unpredictable though the 2016 race is in the national imagination.

What frightens me are the implications of your question.  The notion of any society mandating changes of the type you suggest is draconian, unenforceable, and contrary to fundamental protections of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - even if that happiness looks like miserable failure to those in power.  One person's pickle is another citizen's liberation, just as any given person's apparent success can mask profound feelings of inner defeat.  You can't judge losers, or winners, by their cover.

Comparison is an invidious business.  Too much of our lives are spent adjusting our expectations, tweaking our standards, and managing our reputations in light of other's accomplishments.  Your notion of a Big Brother for underachievers is actually nothing more than that rotten habit writ large.  In such a country, we would no longer just be beating ourselves up for our bad patches, and suffering the disapproval of friends and family.  The government itself would become our moral scold, sticking its judgmental nose even deeper into our personal business.  Your plan has a law of the jungle whiff to it: switching hemispheres, it reminds me of that Inuit tradition of abandoning the sick, crippled, old, and useless on ice floes when their social usefulness is spent.

You use the loaded  phrase "fallen from grace" to describe economic failure.  Beware of equating material success with spiritual blessedness, since the two are rarely synonymous.  Losing your job isn't failling from grace!  It is not a black mark on your soul not to be able to pay your bills.  You will not lose your place in heaven - if you believe in an airy-fairy afterlife - when you can't make a mortgage payment.  We spend far too much time in this country equating money with God, and economic aspiration with enlightenment.  Worldly success is not a religion: it's a cult of triumphalism fueled by greed, where people are measured by what they have instead of who they are.

Finally, you would be wise to notice the punishing tone of your suggestion, and the personal anger you've fantasized into national policy.  Angry people want angry governments, just like homophobic people want systems that act out personal prejudice on the municipal stage.  Government does not belong in the bedrooms of consenting adults any more than it belongs in our career path. Before you start judging folks who are down, I suggest you start grieving your own losses.  It will make you a more generous citizen.  It will also come in handy when YOU fail, which is bound to happen sooner or later.  The good news is that there won't be laws to kick you when you're down.

Mark aka the Ethical Guerrilla

Please follow me The Ethical Guerrilla on Twitter and Facebook! www.facebook.com/mark.matousek, www.twitter.com/markmatousek.  I welcome your comments and questions.  You can connect with me at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the role of elitism in democracy.  Here you can read it.

 

 

 

Homophobes are on the defensive after Cuomo's historic victory

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

New York will be sixth state to allow gay marriage.  Its Archbishop Timothy Dolan says he's "a little down" about that.  What are the ethics involved here, on both sides: The side of the state and the side of the Roman Catholic religion?  Is there any way of finding moral common ground here?

Wanting to be Fair

Dear Wanting:

I feel so sorry about Archbishop Dolan's bad mood over the legalization of gay marriage in New York.  Dolan and his homophobic cohorts are shaking in their frocks at the terrifying prospect of same-sex couples being able to live together in peace, with equal protection under the law.  

You may have witnessed his comments on the matter in Maureen Dowd's Sunday column in THE NEW YORK TIMES.  Speaking to the CATHOLIC REGISTER, he had the gall to wonder whether "it's going to stop with this?"  "You think now bigamists are going to want their rights to marry? You think somebody that wants to marry his sister is going to now say, 'I have a right?' I mean, it's the same principle, isn't it? ... Next thing you know, they're going to say there's four outs to every inning of baseball.  This is crazy."

Indeed it is - certifiably crazy.  Comparing same-sex love to incest, and the sanctity of marriage to the God-given rules of baseball, is nuts enough to deserve professional intervention.  Asking whether or not moral common ground exists in this debate between homophobes and citizens demanding civil rights is a little like asking why women seeking the right to vote couldn't find common moral ground with the patriarchal scaredy cats doing everything they could to block their civil liberties.  In order for such common ground to exist, folks like Dolan would need to acknowledge that same-sex marriage has a moral foundation in the first place.  And that, of course, they will not do.

This is the oldest tactic in the oppression playbook: deny full humanity to the underclass, thereby stripping them of full moral consideration. Turn them into less-than-human figures (as with Jews, Blacks, and other minorities in racist cultures), or into less-than-deserving ones (as with women and gays), and assault their dignity and autonomy accordingly.  This is how Us-versus-Them thinking works: by placing underdogs outside the sacred circle.  Claiming moral authority, they feed the many-headed tyrant of monster of hypocrisy, abuse, and deception, and enable public figure like Timothy Dolan to trash the lives of hundreds of thousands of patriotic, tax-paying, family-loving, spouse-adoring American citizens without the blink of a Catholic eye.

This is an abomination.  The courage of gay people - as well as liberal-minded people of all sexual persuasions - is testament to the fact that the train of freedom can't be stopped once it has already left the station.  What irks homophobes the most is the knowledge that they're fighting a losing battle, in which neither history or justice is on their side, no less common decency.  The symbolic power of traditional marriage as the last bastion of heterosexual dominance is too enormous - and scary - to surrender without a fight, however.  That's why these sexist dinosaurs are forced to resort to transparent scare tactics (Incest! Bestiality! Pederasty! Baseball rules!) to frighten their already frightened faithful.   When empirical facts and spiritual truth fail, ideologues on the decline are left with no ammunition but propaganda and bald-faced lies.

But Dolan et al. are the flat-earthers of the democratic universe.  Their time is nearly over.  History will leave them behind.  And gays will be storming the nuptial palace.

Mark aka the Ethical Guerrilla

Please follow me The Ethical Guerrilla on Twitter and Facebook! www.facebook.com/mark.matousek, www.twitter.com/markmatousek.  I welcome your comments and questions.  You can connect with me at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the role of elitism in democracy.  Here you can read it.

 

Suicide is a human right - and it's time for our culture to get the message

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

I know that you're a Baby Boomer just like I am.  How I loved Peter Falk in "Columbo" and how it broke my heart to observe his decline from dementia.  He's finally out of his misery.  He died last week.

Soon enough I could be in his shoes, that is, finding my mind and dignity fading.  So could you.  Shouldn't we have the option, before that happens, to opt for suicide if we are cursed with dementia?  This is as much an ethical question for society as a legal one.

Signed

Still has his marbles

Dear Marbles:

I'm so glad that you asked this question!  Nothing burns me up more than people sitting in judgment of suicide - whether or not an individual has dementia or a terminal illness.  I've too watched too many suffering people linger in emotional and physical agony out of consideration for their friends, family, the legal system, and organized religion.  This is a moral scandal and MUST STOP.

Our contempt for suicide is kin to our denial of death in this culture.  We find it abhorrent that anyone - in any situation - would opt out of this world; we cannot bear that anyone would view death as a superior option (to living) under ANY circumstances.  Unfortunately, this is the case, however, when suffering has reached such a tragic crescendo, the only intelligent, merciful, and wise response is to let these people go. 

I worked at hospice years ago and heard the wonderful death-and-dying expert Stephen Levine (who worked with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross) say the most compassionate thing about suicide that I've ever heard.  Stephen said: "What God would be so cruel as to judge someone in agony? Wait till you're on your own bed of nails before forbidding someone else to end his pain." Judges and priests would be wise to listen.

We all remember the case of Terri Schiavo, whose husband was forced into a humiliating, public battle to release his comatose wife from a decade-plus of vegetative suffering in a hospital bed. Watching Terri's birth family fight Mr. Schiavio was a heinous study in selfishness and magical thinking.  Of course, we have sympathy for anybody losing a loved one.  It's terrible to be forced to release someone whose recovery you've hoped for.  It's excruciating to watch someone die, and unacceptable to be implicated in aiding that death (for those who oppose suicide.)

But those militating against suicide have the wrong enemy in their cross-hairs.  It's not suicide they are railing against.  It's the human condition itself, with its appalling, built-in losses and grief.  The only thing that Americans hate more than grieving is losing, and suicide carries a double onus of inviting grief (by hastening another's demise), and appearing to be some kind of failure, as if the competition in life were simply to keep breathing as long as possible, regardless of the quality of existence.

But suicide is not a failure.  It's a choice.  And it is not one that's going away despite legal and religious antipathy, or campaigns to smear heroic people like the late Jack (Dr. Death) Kervorkian. Over one million people die by suicide every year.  The World Health Organization estimates it is the 13th-leading cause of death worldwide and the National Safety Council rates it 6th in the United States.  It is a leading cause of death among teenagers and adults under-35.  There are an estimated 10 to 20 million non-fatal attempted suicides every year worldwide.  By every available measure, suicide is here to stay, regardless of how inconvenient this truth might be. The question is: How can we learn to accept this truth and expand the understanding of our mortal options?

We can start by confronting our terror of death.  When Ernest Becker wrote his Pulitzer Prize book "The Denial of Death," in 1973, he was the first psychologist to hit the existential nail on the head, framing many of our culture's ugliest problems problems - rampant narcissism, exploding clinical depression, stupendous addiction levels - in light of their underlying cause.  Until we accept our mortality, Becker argued, we cannot evolve as human beings or create a just and fair ethical world. 

The denial of death operates at the deepest level of our consciousness.  Indeed, human civilization itself is "ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality."  By hiding the dying and the dead as we do in America, and by describing life-and-death as a battle we can actually WIN - a "good fight" that we must continue - painting ourselves as heroes opposed to the Grim Reaper - we set up a doomed opposition (Us versus Mother Nature) in which we're forced to choose sides between denial and reality.  "Do not go gentle into that good night" - was poet Dylan Thomas's paean to the denial of death.  That became our battle cry against the inevitable, fostering the destructive notion that death is a form of failure, and hastening death as an ignoble crime.  It is time for this propaganda to STOP.

Twenty years ago, I gave the eulogy at my sister's funeral.  She had taken her own life at the age of 30 and though I grieved for her, I was well aware of how much she'd suffered, and how ready she was to leave this world.  While our family blamed her - why? why? why? - I seemed to be the only one there who felt relief that Marcia was on longer in pain.  I was also reminded of another true thing that Stephen Levine told me years ago.  After the first five minutes of weeping, we're crying for ourselves, not the loved one.  Were we to remember this in our debate against suicide, and stop blaming the victim, we might discover a deeper compassion, not only for the deceased but for ourselves.

 Mark aka the Ethical Guerrilla

 Please follow me The Ethical Guerrilla on Twitter and Facebook! www.facebook.com/mark.matousek, www.twitter.com/markmatousek.  I welcome your comments and questions.  You can connect with me at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   Last week in my commentary I explore the misunderstood role of anger in society.  Here you can read it.

 

Botox-enhanced geisha masks v a mother's loving face: Ethical Guerrilla comments

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

I'm afraid that I have really screwed up as a mother and it was all because of vanity.  I had Botox injections. 

After that, my teenage daughter seemed to distance herself from me. I assumed - shame, shame - that she was envious of my youthful looks.  Now, I hear that Botox freezes face muscles.  Because it does, I can't recreate other people's facial expressions. The bottom line on this, the scientific research shows, is that I can't recreate other people's facial expressions.  So, I can no longer send a signal to my brain's wires to feel what that other person is feeling.  I'm left unconnected to the people who are supposed to be in my life.

In my insecurity to appear younger, did I blow my relationship with my daughter?

Signed

Frozen

Dear Frozen:

This is a fascinating question.  Those of us who've watched some of our favorite screen actresses disappear behind Botox-enhanced geisha masks - Faye Dunaway and Nicole Kidman - can well understand your daughter's distress over losing a mother capable of facial expression.  But fear not.  The stuff wears off, and when it does, you will once again be able to scowl, smile, and crinkle your forehead like an actual (living) maternal creature.

You can also take comfort in the fact that, as child psychologists assure us, it is the mother's eyes that matter most in parental bonding - knowing that we're seen by our primary caretaker (so unless your eyelids have been Bo-toxed together, and you're still able to look at your daughter, you should be in the clear till returning to normal).

Here is a little background.  When we are children we learn empathy by mirroring the love seen in our parents' eyes, and learn to care for others by imitating how they care for us.  Donald Winnicott, the psychologist, called this "the mother's gaze," and though Winnicott lived in another age before women like you were having potentially lethal bacterial toxin shot into their crow's feet (Clostridium botulinum is considered the most powerful neurotoxin ever discovered), he was no stranger to women torn between their roles as mothers and their vanity as females.  Then as now, offspring suffer without a caretaker's sincere attention; from a young age, children can pick up phonies in a line up and detect facial insincerity in lab studies.  And here, dear Frozen, is the rub.

We cannot be sincere and fake at the same time.  There's nothing wrong with cosmetic surgery in moderation (though there SHOULD be a 12-step program for abusers, NTA, Nip 'n Tuck Anonymous).   Everyone has the right to look as young, or as doll-like, as she or he chooses.  We are even free to model our faces after other species (remember poor Jocelyn Wildenstein, the New York society maven, who mangled her face to look like a cat?)  But we cannot hope to appear simultaneously sincere, authentic, down to earth, or even lovable.

Though many people (like you) are going under the knife (or the needle) in order to be more attractive, surgery too often has the opposite effect: of alienating other people; of placing our sincerity in question; of appearing deceptive, tricky, and false.  Just as you can't be sincere and fake at the same time (even if you're Lady Gaga, who appears to be a plastic surgery virgin), you can't be forthcoming and hide simultaneously.  And plastic surgery IS a form of hiding that comes with an interpersonal price tag.  Some will argue that the same can be said of all appearance-changing ploys, from hair dye to girdles to contact lenses.  But this is a false analogy.  Shooting poison into your epidermis is not the same as wearing lifts in your shoes; injecting butt fat into your cheeks or lips is not the same as a padded bra; and slicing into the scalp to pin back your ears is not the same as hitting the Grecian Formula shelf.

In the end, your daughter will forgive your disappearance, provided it it temporary.  But the next time you're thinking about going into hiding, think again.  It may not be worth the sacrifice.

Mark aka the Ethical Guerrilla

 Please follow me The Ethical Guerrilla on Twitter and Facebook! www.facebook.com/mark.matousek, www.twitter.com/markmatousek.  I welcome your comments and questions.  You can connect with me at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the misunderstood role of anger in society.  Here you can read it.

 

"Ripped from work force, unemployed transformed into existential wanderers," Mark Matousek

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

Wow! What courage.  I read and re-read four times your advice yesterday here telling us baby boomers to keep ourselves marketable.  I am doing just that.  My husband isn't.  He's been out of work for two years.  He won't learn new skills.  He won't take a low-paying job.  He's waiting for his $110,000 job in IT to come back from India.

What's the right thing to do?  Should I kick him in the butt?  Should I see a lawyer about a divorce?  Should I just learn to live with it?  He can apply for Social Security in seven months.

Signed

Living with Two Years of Magical Thinking

Dear Magical:

Though your frustration is understandable, money isn't really the issue here.  So often in cases where employment, career, and finances are the "presenting problems," the deeper issues have less to do with cash than character, and the tangles of neurosis, depression, and low self-esteem that financial woes have served to reveal.

Awful as it is to be broke, when people lose a career job - especially middle-aged people in the autumn of their professional lives - the deepest loss is one of meaning and purpose.  Many hard-working people no longer know who they are when a job identity is taken from them.  Ripped from the work force, they're transformed from upstanding, paycheck-earning citizens to existential wanderers in a spiritual desert. 

In the classic hero's journey described by mythologist Joseph Campbell, this transition from the "ordinary world" to the "wilderness" is both a shock and a call to adventure, a blow to the ego (and bank account) as well as an opportunity for self-realization.  The great teacher St. John of the Cross referred to this as "the dark night of the soul," through which every pilgrim is forced to pass (sooner or later) if he or she wants to evolve as a human being.

Too few of us understand this process while it's happening.  Instead we curse our fates and blame our spouses and wait for our ships to come in (never grasping that the ship is within us).  We believe that a new job, or a bigger 401K, or some stroke of professional luck will salvage our sagging self-image and put us on the good side of Fortune.  But life doesn't really work that way.  The new job may come along, of course (and I hope, for your sake, that it does); finances may improve and the Unemployment Pilgrim may manage to fix his or her career mask back in place for the moment.  But the mask will slip, sooner or later - that's what masks do - and the misguided attempt to secure an identity by external means will fall, once again, on its brittle face.

What wisdom cultures grasp, and our materialist society doesn't, is that all loss is a doorway to power.  Power comes from knowing the truth, which, in human life, means understanding that impermanence is the name of the game, and that's the good news.  Counter-intuitive as this sounds, impermanence is what helps us grow as people; without it, we would have no cause to look beyond the window dressing of life - things like careers, beauty, even relationships - to what cannot be taken away - namely wisdom, integrity, insight, faith, and love - "that lets the light in."  If we spend our time resenting "the crack," we miss the illumination that comes from knowing that it actually saves our lives.

This is the upside of our economic downturn, which too few people are talking about: The return to simpler, more authentic values; the call for self-reinvention; the discovery of aspects of ourselves (and our dreams) that we may have forgotten in our drive to climb the corporate ladder, or garner professional success.  This paradox explains why people often remember times of suffering (especially group suffering) with such tenderness, even awe: because hardship brings us closer together; and essential concerns tend to open the heart.  This is also why so many soldiers recall wartime as the best time of their lives: their period of deepest bonding, insight, and gratitude for the simple fact of existence itself.  Where life and death meet, epiphanies happen.  This is why loss is our greatest teacher.

If you attempt to see your husband's predicament for what it really is - a dark night of the soul - a pilgrim's progress toward awakening - a gestation time when something new is being born in the shadow of confusion - it will give you compassion and respect for the man, and also help you stop asking the sort of unhelpful questions that have driven you to the brink of divorce. He doesn't need a job primarily; he needs a sense of meaning.  If you love him, try trusting him to know what's best for him.  That will only help.

Mark aka The Ethical Guerrilla

Please follow me The Ethical Guerrilla on Twitter and Facebook! www.facebook.com/mark.matousek, www.twitter.com/markmatousek.  I welcome your comments and questions.  You can connect with me at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the misunderstood role of anger in society.  Here you can read it.

 

Now that balding baby boomers like David Caruso & myself are the majority ...

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

I'm no spring chicken.  So I think a lot about how businesses like to get rid of us after we hit 40.  But, to be fair, it might not just be aging.  It might be that we baby boomers are getting stale/smug.

Take David Caruso on "CSI: Miami." The ratings are down 5% and there are always rumors the show is going to be axed.  Caruso is losing his hair.  More to the point, he seems to have lost interest in trying new things.  His acting has become so stylized that he's a caricature of what he was 10 years ago.

So, how are the aging and those who employ us supposed to "do the right thing?'

Signed

Scared

Dear Scared:

This is an excellent question.  With so much bitching about our youth culture, too little is said about the responsibility of the aging to remain relevant and make ourselves useful.  I'm not saying that teeny boppers should run the world. Nor am I saying that old folks should be dressing up like Lady Gaga for the Early Bird special.

What I am saying is that IF you're getting up there in years, and IF you want to remain mainstream, you can't expect Madame Progress to hold the door for you while you get your Pampers out of storage.

Now that balding boomers like David Caruso (and myself) are becoming the majority in our culture, it's imperative for us to figure out where we belong - and where we DON'T - on the cultural landscape.  We should not be fooled into believing that our arsenal of anti-aging ploys, from Viagra, to cosmetic surgery, to fitness fascism, to parterning with The Young (listen up, Cougars and Chicken Hawks) will give us any authentic claim on our own lost youth.  It is narcissistic, bogus, and spiritually damaging to cling to what is no longer ours.

The trouble is that we - the aging - have yet to create a bona fide niche for ourselves in a forward-looking society.  We continue to expect younger people to defer to us, to make way for us, to feel sorry for us, to overlook our stuck-in-the-mudness or sheer inappropriateness for jobs better suited for those half our age.  It is time for aging Baby Boomers to stop whining!  It is time for us to GET REAL.  Not only must we work harder to keep up with things like new technology (or be left in the pre-digital dustbin), remain curious and willing to learn new tricks; we must also stop striving for prizes that don't belong to us and turn, instead, toward a new zone - the Boomer Zone - where assets like wisdom and experience are more highly valued than a Justin Bieber hairline and washboard abs.

Peter Pan (and Pollyanna) must die, which means accepting reality.  The single most important change we must make is to stop fighting the aging process.  We must stop pining for halcyon days when we were the breeding class.  We must reject ubiquitous messages to wage war on time, wrinkles, and death.  We must stop judging ourselves by ridiculous (overly youthful) standards, and locate a sense of humor - PLEASE - about our new station in life.  As the poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote in her wonderful poem One Art:

"The art of losing isn't hard to master"

That is, if we are willing to grow up.  Too many of us middle-agers are caught in the Groucho Marx dilemma of not wanting to belong to the club that will have us as members (the club of people who remember Mel Torme).

For underneath our blaming of the young for feeling left out, overlooked, and undervalued, is a reservoir of self-loathing and self-rejection.  This toxic dump in the middle-aged psyche must first be drained if we want the rest of the world to embrace us.  This is an inside job.  No one can make you feel old and worthless if you believe you're a gift to the world.  Saccharine as it may sound, it is absolutely true.

Mark (aka The Ethical Guerrilla)

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the misunderstood role of anger in society.  Here you can read it.

The Ethical Guerrilla is also at http://facebook.com/mark.matousek and http://twitter.com/markmatousek.

Too Ugly for Beautifulpeople.com

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

I'm not "beautiful," at least not according to U.S. Standards of Taste.  The tipping point in this, at least for me, was reading that Denmark online dating site Beautifulpeople.com dropped 30,000 members who the powers-that-be declared "ugly."  During a cyber attack on the site those now-labeled "ugly" were allowed in, by error.  What discrimination against those not classically attractive.

I wonder if the not-beautiful should lobby federal and state legislatures to protect our rights.  The beautiful, just like America's political dynasties, receive special treatment, ranging from being hired to great promotions to marrying monied spouses. Or, maybe it makes more common sense to mandate uglies to do a makeover.  Maybe they won't become beautiful but they could become attractive.

What do you recommend is the right thing to do, both by those of us who aren't knockouts and by those in power?

Signed

Feeling at a competitive disadvantage in America

Dear Feeling at a competitive disadvantage in America:

Beautifulpeople.com should be ashamed of itself.  Its "dog dumping" campaign is fashionista fascism at its most disgusting.  And its business practices are equally horrific.  Those 30,000 admitted as members via computer error are members.  They should remain members.  End of that part of the story. 

There are other parts, of course.  Any self-respecting dating company should stand for diversity, diversity, diversity.  A certain Austrian doctor with a taste for coprophilic frauleins would have been pleased by this exclusive attitude.  That is, if this Aryan weren't too ugly for membership himself.

One wonders, too, about the sexist policy being used to execute this Brigit Jones program.  Are men and women being judged by the same desirability standards?  Or are women being nixed on a more superficial basis (the presence of blondness and big boobs, for example) while less attractive male candidates (especially those with big jobs or incomes) are allowed to remain?

Anyone who's spent any time on the dating scene knows that it's a man's game out there; for every squinty-eyed, hairy-eared male troll looking for a good time, there are five attractive females willing to cut him some slack if he's a gentleman, picks up the check, and doesn't carry bedbugs. One look at the pantheon of ugly dudes who consistently attract gorgeous women, Hefner, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, et al., is enough to make the point that - when it comes to the pretty-ugly divide - the dating playing field for men and women is anything but level.

Naomi Wolf made this point glaringly clear in "The Beauty Myth," her classic 1991 study of how appearance is used as a weapon (a power tool) against women.  Wolf posited the idea of an "iron-maiden," an intrinsically unattainable standard of beauty that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it.  She argues that forced adherence to standards of physical beauty has grown stronger for women as they gained power in other societal areas, and that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and that patriarchy determines the content of that construction.  Though 20 years has passed since "The Beauty Myth" was published this "tyranny of hotness" has gotten worse, and folks like the brass at Beautifulpeople.com are the reason why.

As for your suggestion about defending the rights of "the ugly," or forcing the less-than-gorgeous to get a makeover, God forbid.  A compassionate society does not dignity the shallow, short-sighted demands of the horny men in charge.  It warns them to get off their high horse and take a good hard look in the mirror.  They might be appalled at what they see.

The Ethical Guerrilla welcomes your questions.  Please send them to Mark Matousek at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the misunderstood role of anger in society.  Here you can read it.

The Ethical Guerrilla is also at http://facebook.com/mark.matousek and http://twitter.com/markmatousek.

 

Kaavya Viswanathan Loses Parents: Should society be compassionate?

Dear Ethical Guerrilla:

Last Sunday, the parents of Kaavya Viswanathan died in a crash of a small plane, on the trip back from visiting her.  Her father, a brain surgeon, was piloting it.  Under normal conditions, this would be considered a tragedy and we would have compassion for this woman in her 20s.

However, nothing associated with Kaavya has been "normal."  While a Harvard undergraduate, Kaavya had been accused of plagiarism.  In the media feeding frenzy after that, it came out that her family pumped about $30K into coaching and more to prep her to be admitted into the Ivy League.

Maybe I'm in the wrong circles but those I bump into have little or no compassion for Kaavya's loss.  For example, my favorite site GAWKER has this headline: "Parents of Harvard's Chick-Lit Plagiarist Die in Plane Crash." 

Signed,

Very Very Ambivalent [I was lucky to get into a state university and had to do that with no coaching, not even for the SATs.]

Dear Very Very Ambivalent:

As a human being, I share your mixed feelings.  As The Ethical Guerrilla, though, I see no ambiguity in the mandate that we should have compassion for this woman who lost her parents.  They took that trip to visit with her.  Such mental suffering she must be going through. 

Many people approach the subject of plagiarism with the same self-righteous zeal as Puritans on a witch hunt.  And the degree to which we buy into this blacklisting propaganda is revealed in your question.

Ms. Viswanathan lost her parents in a violent tragedy (parents who, to make the tragedy worse, lived to see their family shamed by a daughter's mistake, and $30K disappear down the Ivy League tubes).  Her crime wasn't even a violent offense!  (She lifted fictional material for a novel.)  I guarantee you that if Ms. Viswanathan had not been paid so much money for her book ($500,000 for a two-book deal when she was still an undergrad), the public's outrage factor would fizzle proportionately.  That is because our loathing for her overblown crime has everything to do with envy.  And the schadenfreude over her public humiliation, and now even by the death of her parents, is morally stomach-turning.

If we only felt compassion for perfect people, the world would be void of compassion.  No one should fall outside our field of caring, if for no other reason than that they are human beings  No exceptions.

The Ethical Guerrilla welcomes your questions.  Please send them to Mark Matousek at mark.matousek@gmail.com.

You can read more about the right thing to do in "Ethical Wisdom."  It's out in bookstores.  Or you can order "Ethical Wisdom" here online. You might also visit my syndicated weekly column on Law and More, which is housed in the Library of Congress.   This week in my commentary I explore the misunderstood role of anger in society.  Here you can read it.

The Ethical Guerrilla is also at http://facebook.com/mark.matousek and http://twitter.com/markmatousek.