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. 

Let’s talk about Something Else: Teachable Moments and Unreachable Minds

By Gary Berg-Cross

In the abstract, casual moment it’s sometimes hard to get average folks to talk about topics like secular humanism, natural ethics and the like.  Sure these are important topics, but in the normal flow of things they can be a heavy lift and off putting.  But since it is important we should understand natural opportunities for such topics in the context of larger issues that ARE on the agenda to be discussed.

Following the Newtown shootings there has been justified focus on the topic of gun safety and why such things happen. There has been just a bit of discussion of non-religious views of the situation and the grief. It is what some call a “A teachable moment” – a term used widely in discussing learning and education, as a time when learning a particular topic, task or idea becomes possible or easiest for situational or developmental reasons. The concept is ancient with common sense predecessors like interest, motivation and ripeness. But it was popularized (and became perhaps too much of a buzz phrase) by Robert Havighurst in his 1952 book, Human Development and Education. The concept is also widely applied to therapy as an observation that some interventions are only successful when the “time is right” and the patient ready and open to consider something new. Religious messages often jump into these debates, witness the influence on healthcare discussions.

Of course there are other factors needed such as having the right teacher/therapist/parent/leader at a teachable moment.  A good teacher is someone not only able to communicate knowledge, but one who is a credible source also and one able to hold individual/group attention that goes along with learning.   So in the gun discussion good communicators identify where they are coming from, such as, “my perspective is as a gun owner.”  Of, course this is an easier category to understand than saying “my perspective is as a secular humanist,” so in a teachable moment we have to be ready with some back up, non-threatening explanation that includes the idea that I don’t have to be in the gun-owning tribe or with the religion belief crowd to have a say on a topic of interest like the ethics of guns. That’s probably even more difficult for people coming from the New Atheist tribe, but it is something we need to get accepted as part of the discussion of things.

As we enter a time when immigration, climate change, lowered defense spending and stimulating job growth will be big topics along with gun safety it seems appropriate to consider whether we have reachable minds.  Is the national thinking cap and cultural climate receptive and ready for freethinker’s perspectives? Can we help make it so?

A start is to work for acceptance of freethinkers as part of the conversation. Perhaps attention will be distracted and go elsewhere or sideways. We’ll see if people are interested, but it is likely to be a difficult task. In ‘Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam’ Nick Turse bemoans the fact that there was no public interest in Vietnam war crimes allegations. The public mind was largely closed and  unreachable. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre were aired, but stirred only a very brief public outrage before subsiding into indifference as talk moved on to more acceptable topics. The Winter Soldier hearings, which Vietnam veterans like now Senator Kerry participated in, were largely ignored and the testifiers treated with disgust. As John Tirman noted in a WAPO review of Turse’s book:

Turse has the journalist’s faith that exposure will result in justice, but in the case of war, there’s little evidence that the public wants to know more about atrocities, much less act upon them. British scholar Kendrick Oliver made this argument brilliantly in his book on My Lai, showing how reactions to revealed atrocities follow a pattern that ultimately leads to a rally-round-the-troops phenomenon. One could contend that war, by its very nature — and not just in Vietnam and Cambodia, but in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan — similarly leads to indifference to civilian suffering or even to blaming the victims.

This is the type of reaction freethinkers face all the time.  Revealing that one's thinking is flimsy and biased can lead to people digging in and rallying round their comfortable and unchallenged beliefs. It’s in part the problem of minds being closed by a drive towards loyalty, stability, respect for authority and group cohesiveness along with purity of thought.  Perhaps we’ve learned a bit of lesson, but still what is needed are teaching moments with the right voices ready to take up the issues.

 

Images

Chuck Hagel: http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2012/12/18/chuck-hagel-as-a-teachable-moment/

Teachable Moment: http://findability.org/archives/000629.php

Good without God moment: http://generationatheist.blogspot.com/2011/08/teachable-moment-by-shannon-b.html