Me to Me Two Years Ago: Pay Attention

Anyone who can read Schechter’s blog entry and not be deeply moved in the most majestic of ways is either dead or something akin to a demon.  

Adam deeply loves his son whose name is Casey.  Adam’s love for his son shows in every conceivable way, from the way in which Adam holds Casey to the way in which he talks about him.  I have no idea what a divine being is like.  But it seems to me that a father would have to be a divine being in order to be more proud of his child than Adam is of Casey.  

There are several male students whom I taught, with whom Adam Schecter’s account of being a loving father will mightily resonate.  These are Simon Saks, Christopher Poulos, Michael McKean, and Kevin Flint.  These are all truly wonderful fathers.  I am not sure if I have the right to be proud of each of them for being such a loving father.  After all, it is not because of me that they are.  Still, I am ever so proud of each one of them.  There parental behavior gives deep and abiding meaning to the reality of tears of joy.

Adam Schechter makes it unequivocally clear that being a good father is absolutely transformative—and transformative way beyond anything that the father-to-be could ever have imagined.  This tells us what we already know, namely that there is no amount of imagination and ratiocination that can substitute for the experience of being a parent.  

Each of you can read Adam Schechter’s essay for yourself.  

Me to Me Two Years Ago: Pay Attention

But I draw attention to two comments that moved me dearly.  One is that Adam mentioned that he reads to Casey every day.  What a superb bonding moment between the child and his father.  Nay, what an ever so sacred moment that they share together.  The other is that Adams speaks of the marvelously beauty of showering his son with affectionate kisses.  Is it not utterly amazing that such a simple gesture can be so positively transformative in a child’s life?

To Schechter, Saks, Poulos, McKean, and Flint: I wish that I could make sense of how much it means to me to know that you are such wonderful parents.  But it really does not matter than I cannot.  For I know that I am ever so proud of each of you in your role as father.  

I hope that you will all read Adam Schecter’s essay; for I know that his essay will mightily resonate with each of you most majestically.  It no doubt seems blasphemous to say, as I do in The Family and the Political Self, that not even God’s love can replace parental love.  Alas, if I were even tempted to doubt the claim that not even God can replace parental love, Schecter’s blog-entry has rendered that temptation entirely without gravitas whatsoever.

Me to Me Two Years Ago: Pay Attention

© 2012 Laurence Thomas

In my Philosophy 191 class the Spring 2012 semester, I had a Korean student say “I love you” in Korean and then a Syrian student say those words in Arabic and then a Latino student say those words in Spanish.  Finally, the words “I love you” were said in English and French.  Most significantly, none of those utterances of “I love you” sound at all alike.  Yet, every new born infant to whom those words are regularly spoken to in just the right manner will come to the most fundamental sentiments of her or his developing years, namely that she or he is unequivocally loved by her or his parents.  And that ever so basic sentiment that actually defies explanation is none other than the ever so salubrious launching pad for that child’s development. 

There is no other sentiment in a child’s life that will have either the majesty or the power or the affirmation of affirmation of the child’s sense of being loved by her or his parents.  

Parental love at its best is that ever so bright “ray of sunshine” that lights up a child’s life in the darkest of moments.  Parental love at its best is that ever so towering “bridge over troubled waters” in a child’s life.  Parental love at its best is that “Rock of Gibraltar” that is a child’s ever present refuge.  Thus, it sometimes turns out that either the mere utterance of the words “I love you” or a mere hug of affection, where either the utterance or the hug was none other the parent’s expression of her or his immutable love for the child, can be rather like a virtual starburst of affirmation at that point in the child’s life by undermining the self-doubt that is currently plaguing the child rather like light eliminates darkness.  Nothing on the face of the earth or in the universe secures a child’s sense of worth like the majesty of parental love.  Indeed, in my book The Family and the Political Self, chapter 1, I note that not even God can replace parental love.  

Perhaps nothing more poignantly reminds us of the commitment that parents should have to their children like the movie “Sophie’s Choice”.  Having been required by the Nazis to choose which one of her children should die, that decision effectively leads Sophie to insanity.  She would have readily given her own life in order that her two sons would remain alive.

Sophie’s pain represents an ideal that has increasingly vanished.  Parents used to stay together for the sake of their children.  Of course, there are limits to doing that.  After all, staying together for the sake of the children does not work if the result of staying together is simply more turbulence in the home. 

But imagine that wife Wilma and husband Harold can both see that without a doubt each is an extraordinarily loving parent.  The gift that Wilma and Harold would give to their children would be to put their differences aside for the sake of the children.  That was once a far from trivial ideal that was embraced by many.   Not so nowadays. 

In a word, then, the gift of parental love has increasingly taken a backseat to the pursuit of self-interests.  So it is even in the case of the Wilma and Harold like scenario where both can see that the other is having an ever so marvelous impact upon the life of their child.  In the kind of scenario that I have just described parents are increasingly putting their self-interests above the self-interests of the children whom they have brought into the world. 

We cannot have both ways.  Parental love is as it should be when the child’s self-interests trump the self-interests of both parents.  That is an inextricable part of the majesty of parental love.  And there was a time, when this very ideal was roundly embraced by society itself.  Not so nowadays.  Increasingly, parental love is not seen as having the sacrificial majesty that it used to have.  Alas, for this ever so painful reality, we have no one to blame but ourselves as parents now unabashedly place their self-interest above the well-being and flourishing of their children. 

If I am right that not even God can substitute for the majesty of the direct experiencing of parental love from both parents, then the evil that we are doing by allowing parents to place their own self-interests above the self-interests of their children can be rightly characterized as unspeakable. 

The distinguished talk show host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, often speaks of parents staying together for the sake of their children barring violence and the like.  I have proffered a set of considerations that roundly underwrites here line of thought.  As Dr. Laura would surely say: If parents really put their children first, then in way too many cases the drawback of staying together for the sake of the children would be marvelously outweighed by the flourishing of the children which in turn would bring considerable happiness and joy to both parents–so much so that both parents might even wonder whatever made them think that they could not stand each other.  And that very possibility tells us one of the sublime truths about love, namely that it is transformative.

© 2012 Laurence Thomas

This suggest that friends brings something quite special to their relationship with one another, something that surely money cannot buy.  Part of what they bring, surely, is a most majestic sense of self—a sense of self which is anchored not in arrogance but in tremendous self-knowledge and which is mightily animated by a sense of gratitude.  Precisely what companion friends have for one another is a deep, deep appreciation of each other.  What is more, they provide each other with a reflection that she or he cannot give to herself or himself.  After all, there is no amount of self-knowledge that can substitute for the affirmation of another.  

Companion friends truly delight in reflecting the goodness of one another.  And they use their self-knowledge to realize that end.  No companion friend is ever so self-absorbed that she or he would not reflect the excellence of her or his companion friend.

Needless to say, the very character of a companion friend requires a most formidable backdrop; and I hold that there can be no more formidable backdrop than parental love.  For one thing, parental love at its best provides a child a sense of worth without equal, where that sense of worth is not at all tied to arrogance.  For another to be the beneficiary of parental love is to have a most profound and abiding sense of genuine gratitude.  

I distinguish sharply between (a) having been more than adequately cared for and (b) having been profoundly loved.  Parents could meet a child’s every basic need and yet not give that child the sense of worth that only parental love at its best can accord a child.  This should come as no surprise; for surely parental love is not reducible to the provision of material goods.  

Parental love majestically underwrites a child sense of worth and makes it nearly impossible for the pain of being devalued by others to endure.  That is, parental love at its best provides a resilience in the life of a child that is without equal.  

The an ugly child whose life is surfeited with parental love has a sense of worth that will be forever secure.  By contrast, the most beautiful child whose life is shorn of parental love will be plagued by a sense of insecurity.  The child who is most interesting in fitting-in than in flourishing and making the best out of her or his life will invariably the child who has a deficit with regard to parental love.  

Do not misunderstand me.  It is perfectly natural for young people to have fit and to do crazy things alone the way.  But self-destructive behavior is invariably a sign that parental love has been inadequate in a child’s life.

The best of friendship is not about two individuals endeavoring to fix or cover up one another’s inadequacies.  Rather, it is about two individuals who masterfully delight in inspiring one another to flourish and who is an ever so majestic reflection of that flourishing.  It is one thing to attend to a concern here and there.  It is quite another for a relationship between two people to be primarily about each other’s healing.  

A final reason for thinking that parental love is the basis for companion friendship is just the fact that parental love at its best is not about erotic love and friendship at its best is not about erotic love.  In so many ways, parental love is the perfect model for companion friendship except that in the case of friendship there is complete reciprocity and equality; hence, neither has authority over the other.  Yet, each has enormous influence with the other.  With parental love at its best, there is a deep and ever so profound trust on the part of the child that parents would never harm her or him.  And guess what?  So it is with companion friendships.  There is no amount of eroticism that can replace the depth of parental love.  If that is right, then it is perhaps more plausible than one might have ever supposed that no amount of eroticism can replace the depth of the love of companion friendship.  And that is precisely Aristotle’s account of companion friendship would seem to suggest.  

If I am right about the role of parental love in companion friendship, then in ways that we typically do not imagine, parental love is a most extraordinary gift.

The evolution in my thought on friendship has evolved considerably over the years.  See “Friendship” and “Friendship” and “Friendship”.  Notwithstanding their having the same name, these are three radically different essays on the topic of friendship, each written about 10 years apart.  And the argument of this essay blog-entry goes way beyond anything that I have said in the three essays on friendship, the substance of which will appear in a forthcoming essay entitled “The Character of Friendship”.

 © 2012 Laurence Thomas

So as you can see, I actually find technology rather useful.  Indeed, I have a plethora of technological gadgets for doing one thing and then another. 

The relevance of my idiosyncratic manner to technology is that it is just stunning to me how much it is assumed that people have roughly the same basic preferences about this, that, and the other.  Google, for instances, seems to think that folks with a Gmail account would like to chat while using their Gmail account.  I do not.  Or, Yahoo seems to think that those using their Yahoo account want to keep in touch with their friends on Facebook.  I do not.  In general, it is just stunning to me the extent to which it is taken for granted that those using any kind of social networking site want to share countless details about their lives.  I do not. 

There are times when I hardly want to share details about my life with me, let alone with some other person.  After all, my life is pretty boring.  Effectively, several times a week I go up the hill in the later morning and back down the hill in the afternoon.  To be sure, I frequently fly overseas, but I do not see much point in making an announcement about that on a social networking site.  Those who need to know are informed, and this includes close friends.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why some stranger or utterly casual acquaintance needs to know.  It is also the case that occasionally I have some amazing exchanges with students.  But who needs to know that other than those involved?

I have a Denon CD player that I bought in 1988, paying top dollar for it.  The CD player still works flawlessly.  One of the things that I like about it is that if a CD has 10 songs on it one can chose which 3, say, out of the 10 that one would like to listen repeatedly.  The more recent Denon CD players do not allow one that option.  The very nice Sony CD player that I bought for my home office 3 years ago does not have that option, either.  Why not?

Microsoft Word has decided that most people prefer not to have only two lines of a paragraph at the bottom of the page.  This is known as “orphan control”, and that is the default setting of the software.  I can only assume that most people concur with Microsoft otherwise, the company would have abandoned this “orphan control” feature.  But I would have thought that this sort of thing is a personal preference that varies from one person to the next and that is also dependent on the context.  

In a nutshell my problem is this.  Far from underwriting human individuality, it seems to me that technology is going the other way around.  It is effectively deciding what preferences should be common among human beings; and the set of preferences “that we should ALL have tends to keep growing.  Human individuality is increasingly taking a back seat to technological conformity.  

My very favorite example with regard to the idea that technology is presupposing increasingly greater homogeneity is just the fact that it is increasingly assumed that everyone wants to be connected 24/7 or that everyone will interrupt one conversation in order to answer an incoming call.  So it has now almost gotten to the point that one has to explain why the call went to voicemail; whereas I was under the impression that the very reason for voicemail is that, for varying reasons, people did not always answer their incoming calls.  What on earth was I thinking?  

Now work with me: Suppose that you are having a remarkable moment of reflection or a particularly wonderful conversation with someone!  Can it really be that bad not to answer the phone?  And what is the point of answering the phone only to say “Can I call you back?  I am in the middle of a conversation.”  After all, who does not know to call back if they do not get an answer?  

You would think that one would have the option—I repeat: the option—of setting a cell phone so that calls would go directly to voicemail if one were talking to someone.  But that option does not exist.  So I guess that everyone prefers what I now refer to as “communication interruptus”.  I do not.  If I am having a good conversation with someone, I really like letting and having that conversation run its course.  I know; I know: This is totally weird.  But what would one expect from a black guy who likes sitting at the back of an airplane? ! ? !

Alas, I recently encountered a former student, a Mr. James Michael Curcio, who is more like me than not with respect to refusing to become servile to technology.  This is a wonderful surprise.  Why, given the extraordinary self-control that he exhibits with respect to technology and his steadfast refusal to become subservient to it, I sometimes find myself wondering whether Mr. Curcio is from another planet or, in any case, whether he really is in his early 20s.  Not really.  The truth of the matter is that he has actually been rather inspiring.  Recently, we have had a few marvelous two hour conversations at Syracuse University’s Marshall Square Mall about the pursuit of moral excellence; and not once did I have to contend with him answering his cell phone.  And there is a word for moments that unfold like that: Awesome ! 

Without at all being hostage to the past, there is something truly wonderful to be said for being able to have a conversation that is not constantly subject to interruption.  Even though he is of the generation where technology reigns supreme James Michael Curcio instinctively grasped that truth.  And that fact says something tremendously positive about his moral and social character.

© 2012 Laurence Thomas

So if President Obama is right, then black-on-black crime in the Hood is to be blamed on none other than the fact that others are not doing their part to help those in need in the Hood.  Needless to say, this line of thought is utterly preposterous; and while it may to blacks as addressing the wrongs of racism, what Obama’s reasoning also does is mightily diminish the conception of blacks as responsible human beings.  One does not need a Ph.D. in psychology (or some other field) in order to grasp this very simple point.  Again, what we have here is Creative Blame.

Most profoundly, it is not impossible to help an individual by entirely denying that her or his role to be a responsible person.  And this point applies equally and with prejudice to all individuals regardless of their skin color, ethnic identity, their gender, or their sexual orientation.

Some people are gifted at taking themselves in a morally responsible manner.  They are likely to take act in a responsible manner even if no one else expects them to do so.  I know a few people like that. 

Unfortunately, most individuals are fundamentally social creatures in that precisely what motivates them to act responsibly is that this person and that person and the other person expect them to act responsibly.  

Without a doubt wrongdoings should be acknowledged.  But the acknowledgement of wrongdoings should not be aligned with the idea that people are thus justified in being irresponsible.  There is little doubt that Obama is making precisely such an alignment.  His silence on black-on-black crime suffices to underscore my point.  For if blacks do not take responsibility for themselves and making a decision to act in a morally responsible manner, then the Hood will in effect go to hell in a hand basket.  And since Obama lived in the city of Chicago for a substantial period of his life, there can be no doubt whatsoever that he is well aware of the problem of black-on-black crime.

One of the defining of features of a human being is the capacity for foresight.  What is foresight?  It is none other than the capacity to make reasonable extrapolations regarding what will happen with future interaction and behavior based upon the facts that one has at one’s disposal.  

Quite simply, then, Creative Blame is effectively undermining the exercise of foresight.  If I can blame you for my ordering two Big Macs each day at McDonald’s, then why bother exercising the basic degree of foresight that consists in recognizing the obvious truth that consuming two Big Macs a day will result in a substantial weight gain.  

If I am on a limited income, then I most certainly cannot afford designer jeans.  But why should I let my limited income get in the way of my going into debt to by designer jeans, if I can blame others for the fact that I am not well off.  

One of the defining features of being a human being is the wherewithal of an individual to take stock of her or his life and to make the reinforcements or revisions that are appropriate.  Not surprisingly, Creative Blame radically undermines the wherewithal or, at any rate, the motivations of a person to take stock of her or his life.  

In Living Morally, I begin with the observation that human beings are quintessentially social creatures.  This means that in one way or the other we are quite influenced by the behavior of others that take place around us.  Alas, if most of that behavior is negative and irresponsible, than most individuals will in fact drift in that direction and there will be a few who will mightily reinforce their commitment to do what is right.  

In the end, Creative Blame will destroy the good of human society as we know it.  For it is a defining feature of human beings that unless an excellence is routinely reinforce it will be lost.  Taking responsibility for our actions is an excellence.  Increasingly, that is what people simply fail to do in a manner that is akin to a deer staring in the headlights.  Given the present trajectory of Creative Blame, it is just a matter of time before the very idea of individuals being responsible for their very own lives will have no purchase at all upon our lives.  “Ridiculous”, you say.  Well, just look at how irresponsible human beings have become in the last 10 years owing to the ridiculous use of technology.  Any reasonable extrapolation from that reality portends an outcome for the social embodiment of Creative Blame that simply cannot bode well for the future of humanity.

© 2012 Laurence Thomas

Given how much human beings in the United States are given to Creative Blame it is becoming difficult to see how anyone supposes that she or he has free will.  Why?  Because free will invariably entails that one is at fault when one fails to do that what is manifestly reasonable and, as a result, one suffers or causes others to suffer.  

Here is an unusual example in this regard.  Everyone knows that the word “nigger” is a common occurrence in rap music.  And most rap artist count on white people to buy their music.  So please to tell me how a white person can be racist in saying the word “nigger” while singing along with a rap song?  Indeed, quite often the song is not about a white person calling a black person “nigger” but a black person calling a black person “nigger”.  Yet, many black people insist that the white person is morally to blame for saying the word “nigger” while singing along.  If it is all right for a white person to enjoy the song, then I cannot begin to fathom why it is wrong to say the word “nigger” while singing along.

Here is a quite different example.  It is increasingly the case that parents less and less time with their children.  So I do not think that it is all unusual for children nowadays to “act out”.  After all, there is not a piece of technology on the face of this earth that can take the place of parental love: the touches of affirmation; the smile of admiration; and the looks of appreciation.  But rather than parents blaming themselves for the fact that their children now act-out because they receive so little direct parent-to-child contact, it is now the case that just about every child born these days has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  

People walk down the street texting and blame others for not seeing them texting and giving them the right away.  

People regularly eat at McDonald’s and order the super-size menu and then blame McDonald’s for the fact that they are now fat.  

In college, people do not read the syllabus and then blame the professor for not informing them of their responsibilities for the course.  

People spend way more money than they have; and it is the fault of companies for advertising their products in enticing ways.  

I could go on but, of course, you get the point.  The mantra of contemporary American society is quite simple: Someone else is always at fault for something undesirable that happens to me, no matter how irresponsibly I behave.  That is none other than Creative Blame.

At the very heart of the idea of Creative Blame is none other than a deep, deep form of self-deception.  For we cannot both value free will and, the very same time, so readily embrace the idea of Creative Blame.  That is rather like wanting to be both short and tall or hot and cold at the very same time.  Not an option. 

There is no better indication of the demise of a society than the extent to which self-deception prevails in an increasing global manner in that society.  The practice of being irresponsible and blaming others has increasingly become the norm in American society.  And make no mistake about it: That is a most ominous sign.

© 2011 Laurence Thomas

Of course, there is a time and place for everything.  So I am not at all advocating correcting people where this turns out to be none other than a form of tremendous humiliation.  But I find it stupefying that people whose job it is to deal with the public cannot speak basic English.  Here is perhaps my favorite example: “May I know your name, please?”  For just about every company that I call, I get someone whose first language was other than English who handles the call and that is what they ask in order get started: “May I know your name, please”.  

Of course, I understand what the sale representative really means to say, namely “What is your name, please?”  However, what I absolutely do not understand at all is why in the course of being trained, sale representatives are not instructed as to what the proper expression is.  It is entirely irrelevant that callers can be counted upon to grasp what the proper question is.  The answer, I suspect, as to why training does include the proper formation of the question is none other than the stance of politically correctness, which has that it is in some way racist to correct people for their mistakes with the English language, given that one has managed to understand them, anyhow.  

Well, I hold a very simple view, namely that respect is a two-way street.  To be sure, there is nothing at all to be said for brutally criticizing a person for her or his poor English.  There is nothing to be said for humiliating the person.  In either case, that constitutes a lack of basic respect for that individual.  However, we also have a lack of basic respect in the other direction, when people are so busy being proud of their ethnic identity that they feel entitled not to learn to speak English properly.  And I resent that. 

Political Correctness does not help the matter because it is too busy invoking the charge of racism for even giving any thought to correcting those whose command of the language is so impoverished.

What intrigues me, though, is how often non-native English speakers will mock Americans for not being able to speak a language other than English or for speaking that other language so very poorly that it would almost be better if they did not try to speak it.  And this shows me just how disingenuous so many are.  

Furthermore, it is as clear as anything is to me that learning to speak properly the language of the country to which is moving is none other than a simple measure of basic respect.  I have no clue why anyone would suppose that doing so is in some way incompatible with a person being proud of her or his ethnic identity.  Similarly, I have no idea why correcting a person’s English in the right way and at the right time is racist.  

I correct the English of my white well-off students.  Does that help to diffuse the charge of racism when I correct the English of a Latino student or an Asian student?

The problem of which I am speaking is beginning to manifest itself in a major way at American universities.  Diversity is valued more than competence with the language, where diversity often makes reference to students from overseas.  Needless to say, to value diversity to that extent is to make a horrendous mistake; for when diversity is valued more than competence with the language, then standards of intellectual excellence invariably slip.  After all, there is a limit to what one can teach people whose command of the language is seriously limited and who think that there is nothing to be said for improving their ability to speak the language and, moreover, it is deemed racist even to entertain the thought.

When I think of racism, I do not think of an effort to improve the person’s standing by, for instance, significantly enhancing his command of the language, be it English or whatever.  Rather, I think of having the aim to make the person worse off.  But clearly the view of racism that I have stands in need of being seriously updated!  I need a therapist who will help me to see that I am racist in thinking that it is a good thing for people to enhance their command of the English language, especially those who are students or who are dealing with the public.  

© 2012 Laurence Thomas

From the standpoint of evolutionary theory, good parents should give their children the resources that the children need whereby the children can take their place in the world as fully competent adults who can in turn have children. 

Well, insofar as caring and parenting is involved, the members of every other species on the plant routinely do precisely that to the extent that is appropriate.  Or so it is barring the intrusion of some force that prevents this from happening.  Human beings are the only species on the planet whose caring for their offspring is so entirely up in the air.  There are, to be sure, some truly wonderful parents.  But, alas, there are some truly horrendous parents.  

If the percentage of animals that were sloppy in caring for their offspring equaled the percentage of human beings who failed to care for their children properly, then it is arguable that a great many species would already be extinct.  Far too many human beings bring children into the world and then find just about any and every excuse not to take care of the children properly.

Alas, one of the most untoward consequences of liberty is that in point of fact parents can be mightily irresponsible in caring for their children.  This parents can do to their children without ever causing any physical harm to their children.  Arguably, Plato grasped this truth in a way that Mill did not.  

As a matter of biological instinct, it is rare for female animals to abandon their children.  True, there are instances where a male animal A will kill the infant offspring of male animal B if male animal A is now mating with the female animal with whom male B mated.  But then some male adults human beings will have sex with their step-children.

While the difference here is in one very clear sense one of apples and oranges, there is a very straightforward respect in which the human adult who has sex with his innocent step-children is light years more horrendous than the male animal who kills off the competing offspring from of the female with whom the male is now mating.  At least the animal has the excuse of being driven by sheer instinct.  Adult male human beings who sexually abuse their step children have no such excuse.  They have no excuse at all.

There are many adult human beings who often fail to provide their children with the basic training that the children need to at least be minimally competent in society.  Not so with animals who train their offspring.  For instance, a mother wild cat will unequivocally teach her offspring how to hunt for food.  However, the world is full of parents who fail to train their children adequately or who fail to see to it that their children receive adequate training.  

By and large, human beings have made far more of a mess of freedom than they put freedom to good use.  And that was precisely the view that Plato held about democracy, namely that without the adequate moral training at the outset democracy will be none other than a disaster for human beings.  

My favorite example in this regard is the extent to which hostilities exist over ethnic differences although we now know in a way that has no equal that we are all equally human beings.  If you have A-blood type and I have A-blood type, then no matter how differently we look from one another, the healthy person can share some blood with the other if the person needs it.  Yet, human beings continue elevate ethnic identity as if it constituted some significant biological difference.

A final and most disconcerting observation is as follows.  There is simply no correlation whatsoever between being free and being responsible.  And democracy has no way whatsoever in which to address the simple reality that democracy is compatible with enormous and utterly damning levels of irresponsibility.  Never on the face of the earth have so many been so free and, at the very same time, so irresponsible.  Never have so many been so free and at the same inclined to blame others for their own mistakes and foolhardiness.  

If we are veering towards a better world, that is far from obvious.  And the best way to see this is by noting that we are far from where we should be given all the information that we have at our disposal.  What Plato grasped as well as anyone, if not more fully than anyone, is that freedom without the proper moral training will mutate into none other than a form of living hell.  

© 2012 Laurence Thomas

So what bothers me about Marks’s article?  My answer comes in the form of a question: “What, pray tell, did the article have to with being poor and black as opposed to merely being poor?”  And the answer to that question is very simple: Absolutely nothing.  The advice that Marks proffered holds equally for any smart kid who is poor: white, black, Asian, Latino, Arabic, and so on.  

Now, it is precisely because Marks’s advice so obviously applies to all poor children who are smart, and equally so, that his singling out poor black smart kids draws enormous attention to itself.  There is not a single recommendation that does not apply to a poor Asian or Latino or white or Arab, and so on, provided that they are smart.  

But I imagine that Forbes would never have published an article entitled “If I were a Poor Kid”.  And that consideration brings me to my sense of outrage with Forbes Magazine.  It looks for all the world as if what we have is none other than a form of misguided liberalism.  Forbes by way of Marks or, conversely, Marks by way of Forbes, has used blacks in order to promote the image that they have marvelous racial sensibilities with respect to blacks.  Thus, what we have is none other than a rather self-serving article.  After all, it is not as if poor black folks all over the United States are likely to read Marks article and thus profit from his having published it.  Indeed, poor people generally, whatever their ethnicity, are not likely to read the article.  However, blacks are singled out.  And my point is that they are singled out in a way that can only be construed as self-serving.  And perhaps there is no better evidence of this than that Marks proffered ideas are merely based upon his untried self-reflections—and not an ounce of personal experience.  His being white is utterly irrelevant; his complete lack of experience is not.  Imagine a male offering advice to women regarding how to deal with rape, where that advice is based solely upon his reflections regarding the matter.  We would all take him to be a fool—not because he is a male, but because he has no experience in that regard.  A male who has worked with female victims of rape could obviously have much to say to female rape victims.  Likewise, a white who has worked with poor black kids or poor kids in general could have much to say about how they should proceed in order to succeed. 

To see just how pugnacious Marks’s essay is, I ask the following question: Should I boast and beat my chest when I help Asians or Latinos or Arabs, or whites, and so on, who are very talented but also extremely poor and thus are entirely lacking in a sense of direction in terms of academic success?  To me the answer to this question should rightly be a resounding “No!”  This is because in so behaving I am merely doing my job.  

A wonderful essay to poor students generally about how to succeed would have been a marvelous moral gift.  Alas, that kind of essay would have gotten in the way of Marks being able to pat himself on the back for being ever so mindful of the plight of poor blacks, and thus a non-racist white.  And that I suggest is really what Marks’s essay was all about.  Otherwise, to paraphrase one of Tina Turner’s well-known songs: “What ‘s race got to do, got to do with it?”.  

© 2011 Laurence Thomas

Most surprisingly, what American Express does is simply go primarily by location and last name.  And that is woefully irresponsible on the part of American Express.  Why?  Because many people who are entirely unrelated have the same last name.  There are numerous people whose last name is Williams or Cohen or Smith or Cho or Thomas or Davis or Jones or Goldman or Brown.  And so on.  Yet, these individuals are not related in any way whatsoever. They are not related even though they live in the very same town.

Because the above names mentioned are sufficiently common, that makes it particularly irresponsible and legally problematic that American Express should assume that two people are related merely because they have the same last name and live in the same town.  The day after I learnt that there “relatives” of mine in the area, I used one of the available services for searching public records and found out that there are six people with the last name “Thomas” in the Syracuse area.  I have never met a single one of them.  But American Express has determined that I am related to some of them.  It is no more plausible to suppose that two people with the last name “Thomas” are related than it is to suppose that two people with the last name “Cohen” are related or two people with the last name “Cho” are related.  So it is even if they belong to the same ethnic group.

Since I am quite scrupulous about how I do things and I am not financially burdened in any way, then it seems very clear to me that if American Express has engaged in such unscrupulous behavior with respect to me, then there is good reason to believe that it has done so with respect to others. 

Finally, since public records can be mistaken, it behooves any company to be extremely careful in supposing that two people are related merely on the basis of public records.  Every cardholder should be treated with a modicum of decency.  American Express blatantly violates that basic precept by the use to which it puts public records with respect to (some of) its cardholders.

I am so very glad that I had momentarily forgotten my pin number.  For it was my forgetting that number resulted in the agent to seek verification of my identity naming family members.

© 2011 Laurence Thomas