Getting Sound Advice from MLK

By Gary Berg-Cross

Agonizing over the various conflicts around the globe I wondered what Martin Luther King might have said.  At the time he spoke up about the Vietnam war the main street press largely criticized him:

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position

of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind," and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam.

Well we are long past Vietnam but justice and judgment are still issues. 

Pushed by Neocons and ill served by career politicians lobbyists and a careerist, collaborative press we stumbled into Iraq.  We still brandish weapons at Iran, support authoritarian regimes, military-security states, occupations and drone populations into enemies at will.  We are grid locked and unable to stop the various wars that threaten.

The neocon voices are heard loudly in the land so perhaps a quick visit to the MLK memorial and some quotes brought up to date from him can put us in a better peace perspective.  What would MLK say?  And what goes through people's mind as they face the challenge of a moral life?

"I oppose the war in Vietnam (add your favorite here – Gaza, Ukraine, Iran etc.) because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world."
Anti-War Conference, Los Angeles, California, February 26, 1967.

"Injustice anywhere (again add your favorite here – Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Lybia, Syria etc.) is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, April 16, 1963.

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits." (Only we aren't going to pay for any of it.)
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964

"It is not enough to say 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but the positive affirmation of peace." (I hear in Congress that we must restore full funding to DoD.)
Anti-War Conference, Los Angeles, California, February 25, 1967.

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." (OK, I think we have the challenge and controversy, who’s standing where?)
Strength to Love, 1963.

"Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies."
New York City, April 4, 1967. (Oh that UN thing again.  What about American/Israeli/Russian etc. exceptionalism?)

"If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective."
Christmas sermon, Atlanta, Georgia, 1967. (See above….our loyalties are too important to give to the world for free it seems.)

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964. (OK, this temporary has gone on long enough.)

"Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in."
March for Integrated Schools, April 18, 1959. (I might make this a career, after all jobs are hard to come by  What does it pay?)

Contemplate these and see where you stand on events. Comments appreciated. 

Naked Negative Emotions

by Gary Berg-Cross

A pundit on the political scene recently summarized today’s conflict of raw emotions and suggested (I paraphrase) that Hate & Anger was winning out over Love and Happiness while Fear over Hope. These battle of opposites may be so, although dichotomizes are often a simplification that hides important complexities (see my discussion of Binary Thinking). Certainly this sports-game metaphorical judgment of winners and losers seems disturbing. We might also apply other psychological state ideas like apathy and cynicism in the political sphere. I guess there is more mention of this although since they aren’t binary ideas they don’t have as easy a comparison of one going up and thus the other down a zero sum game.

More broadly our system seems not to be handling distressful social and cultural problems, such as school, office and church shootings or racial and ethnic tensions.  It is easy to be on the negative side of emotions but we might more systematically expand that observation of what is abroad in the emotional and attitudinal space of the nation.  

Discrete emotion theory developed 2 decades or so ago (Fogel and friends) assumes that psychological states & emotions are phylogenetically adapted to serve the basic function of survival. That is, they are like a skill such as language learning and planning. Human emotions like reasoning serves a human purpose. 

And like a tree growing from a small acorn we might conceptualize them unfold from simpler states – feeling good or bad, being energized or not. Seeing a bear gets one energized. That’s basic for survival. Arousal is a primitive state as is its unaroused, relaxed state. If seeing a bear generates enough fear we may run away and survive. Babies have both but emotions can build on these as they develop. Being a social animal as well as one that can be eaten by bears some complex emotions like parental love are largely social in nature but are central to babies hence society surviving. There is developmental support for the idea that emotional expression like language expressions emerges, driven by maturation of the central nervous system but also social interaction.  Human children learn rules that modify and modulate emotional expression and behavior.  Simple experiments to test the theory reveal surprising results.  When people are told to hold a pencil between their teeth for some period of time (this uses the facial muscles involved with smiling) they afterwards reported feeling happy!  Discrete emotion theory, mentioned earlier, proposes functional values for each emotion, suggesting that patterns of particular neural activity in the brain causes the associated, subjective changes in feeling, but also in behavior. Behavioral changes make the theory testable.  These behaviors can be as simple as distinct sets of facial, vocal, respiratory, skin (measurable galvanicly), and muscular responses

During childhood certain repetitive emotional experiences, say anger situations, can develop traits and biases that will be a strong factor in interpersonal relationships later in adulthood. 

So it is bad for us as a culture if indeed Hate & Anger are winning out over Love and Happiness while Fear is dominating Hope.  Cultural systems can favor some emotions over others. An economic system that has a central base of fear and greed may be heading for a bit on trouble.  Sure fear is a core emotion, but so is happiness. Greed is more complex, although we can see kids hugging toys to preserve comfort and happiness.  Guilt is used by  cultures, including religious ones, as a balance on greed. Mary share your toys!

Indeed some negative emotions like resentment may act as moral checks on drives like greed.  It’s a question of balance. So hearing a binary contest of greed versus generosity just seems to be simplifying things too much.

But to be sure in the contemporary atmosphere the end result of emphasizing a negative emotion like fear or anger is to produce people and groups whose trait is being in the state of fear, or frustration or anger for long periods.  That’s unbalanced and bad for reasoning which usually requires some middle ground between excited and relaxed.