#182 – Dick Bernard: The Honourable Alan King-Hamilton

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Alan King-Hamilton died in suburban London on March 23. He was 105. I learned of his death in a phone call from his daughter, Mary. She suggested that the Telegraph had a good obituary of her Dad. The obit catches him well.
It was, to greatly overstate the case, unlikely that I would ever have known, much less met in person, Mr. King-Hamilton. His career included many years as a Judge in London’s famed criminal court, the Old Bailey.
Nonetheless, back in early November, 2001, at the Royal Air Force Officers Club in London, we met Judge Hamilton for tea, and there ensued a continuing friendship until recent years when he became more frail.
That a North Dakota country kid would ever meet a London Judge was at best unlikely. The unexpected journey began in June, 1982, when my Dad and I and four others travelled to Quebec and took dorm rooms at Laval University. At our first meal there we met a lady with a British accent who was travelling solo, and we invited her to join us for a couple of days as we explored my Dad’s ancestral haunts in and around Quebec City.
It wasn’t until sometime later that I found out that the lady, Mary King-Hamilton, was the daughter of a retired English Judge, and it wasn’t until later still, on a trip to England in early November, 2001, that we learned that King-Hamilton was not just another judge, but one who had presided over some of the best known criminal trials during his time on the bench. Some years earlier, we learned that her grandfather, Alan’s father, was member #11 of the British Motor Club, the granddaddy of all Auto Associations.
Mary showed us around her world, including getting us a pass to view an Old Bailey trial in progress.
We went to Middle Temple, the hundreds of years old enclave reserved to members of the English Bar, thanks to the Judge.
In the library at Middle Temple, I saw a book which King-Hamilton had authored, and riffing through it saw two words, “North Dakota”, something which immediately drew my interest.
In 1927, he was President of the Cambridge Union Debating Society, and he and two fellow debaters came to the U.S. under the auspices of a program later to be known as Fulbright Scholarships, and during the Fall of 1927 they debated at about 30 different colleges and universities in the Midwest and Western U.S., and in Canada. Their second stop was at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, where my father was then living. In fact, Dad would have been a freshman there at the time, but lacked the funds to enroll.
I learned that the Judge had a diary of his travels through the U.S. and asked permission to see it. A copy was sent to me. This caused several months of very interesting activity on my part, collecting information from all of the colleges and universities that King-Hamilton and his fellow debaters had visited. It was very interesting to note how the Englishmen perceived the Americans and vice-versa.
Were I to sum up his many pages of observations, I would pick this quote, where he sums up the America he’d visited for several months: “It is a curious thing that all down through the Middle West, from North Dakota to Texas, we have encountered religious curiosity which develops into something like intolerance upon the information being given to them. In the East they want to know who your father is, in the Middle West who your God is, and in the far West how much money you’ve got!” (In his 1982 book, “And Nothing But the Truth”, Judge King-Hamilton recalls this same question, and asks “I wonder if it is still the same now, more than fifty years later” (p. 14).
I’m richer for having known The Honourable Alan-King Hamilton.
I think of him every time I see or hear reference to Arianna Huffington, who many years later became the President of the same Debating Society at Cambridge.

Alan King-Hamilton, front and center, 1927 at Cambridge University

#172 – Dick Bernard: "Chickens", meet "Roost"

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I grew up in rural North Dakota, surrounded by all sorts of sayings such as “your chickens will come home to roost” which meant, basically, that ultimately you’d get what you deserved….
This comes to mind with reference to our entire society, which generally does not seem to get it that there is a certain relationship between actions and results. An endless list could be made.
A cartoon in yesterday mornings Minneapolis paper said it well, through the voice of Eric Hoffer, American Social Writer and Philosopher: “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.”
Quite often my in-box will include something from someone I know, forwarded from an unknown source. More often than not, the forward is demonstrably false, or hopelessly misleading, or not sourced at all. But it is passed along as truth. People who should know better pass the falsehood along, and then get angry when I dare to respond.
Last week someone forwarded a litany of complaints about assorted things like not getting a social security cost of living this year, Medicare costs going up, while Congress was giving itself a raise. “7. Do you feel SCREWED?…Why should they care about you? You never did anything about it in the past. You obviously are too stupid or don’t care…Send the message to [Congress] — YOU’RE FIRED!…It’s time for retribution. Let’s take back America.” The rest of the fairly short mention was similarly angry.
Well, thank you very much.
As I customarily do, I filed a brief response with the person who sent the forward to me, and copied the person who had forwarded it to him. Both are retired professional people who I know, personally.
The initator of the e-mail blasted back to me: “I am receiving less from SS [Social Security] than I did in 2009. Tell me why congress should not take a cut in pay along with those of us on a fixed income? … Simply answer my question.”
So, I did answer the question, but only sent it to him. My answer made him even angrier. “I worked hard in my business and do not need a social security check…Furthermore, following your possible response, I will mark all future e-mail messages from you as “junk mail” so I do not have to waste my time with your typical liberal ideas [this is probably the nub of his issue: “liberal”]. I suggest you do the same.” I thought to myself, lots of people work very hard…if he doesn’t need social security and there’s an economic crisis, why is he insisting on a raise (I think I know why, but that doesn’t make any difference.)
I didn’t bother him with another e-mail, but I did hand-write him a brief U.S. mail letter, including copies of the stuff he had sent me. It’ll soon be in his mailbox at his winter home outside Tucson AZ. I didn’t bother to engage in a reasoned response, or in an angry one. It is a waste of time. My guess is he will remain angry.
There are legions of angry people like him who add to the problem, rather than contribute to the solution in this country. People who felt they had control and now feel they have lost it. People who (they feel) KNOW the answers, but are intolerant of others with opposing but at least equally logical answers as well.
Personally, with attitudes like his, I’m happy his faction is out of power. Maybe there might be a chance to resolve some of the deep problems that we’re mired in.
Unfortunately, on the other end of the political ideology spectrum, there are lots of “my way or the highway” folks as well. I heard one or two yesterday, and I hear people like them every day. These, right and left, are the people who dominate the visible political conversation in this country (what most people see or read), and too often neither end distinguishes themselves.
It will take a lot of work to effect change, but I’m willing to work at it.
We don’t need our country’s “chickens to come home to roost.”

#160 – Bob Barkley: Context and alignment are everything.

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Context and alignment are everything: Context determines how we think about things, how we see things and how we see each other. It is our unconscious reality – one we create for ourselves or is created for us through marketing and such.
As a result, many, no, most if not all, of us go through our lives in what can only be called fantasy. This is because context is not actual reality. It is simply the way we view reality at a particular point in time. Authentic learning is the process of consciously reflecting upon and adjusting one’s context to fit a new reality. Those who do not adjust are doomed to that fantasy.
Thomas K. Wentz in Transformational Change states it about as simply as it can be when he writes: “You can’t do things differently until you see things differently.” “Contextual blindness,” Wentz later adds, “is oppressive and demoralizing.” Wentz was applying this observation to business management, but I contend that it applies across the board to all personal and organizational settings. How many marriages have been torn apart by couples not sharing a common context for their thinking and behaving together? Is there a family anywhere that can’t relate to that observation somewhere amongst their kin? I doubt it.
Peter Barus, an extremely bright, wise, and articulate acquaintance of mine via the Internet, captured much of this with the following: “…human beings have no direct awareness of what is actually going on in the world around them, whatsoever. Instead our brains construct a kind of virtual-reality model of the environment, organizing the chaos of sensory input according to an arbitrary self-referential logic, simply ignoring whatever doesn’t quite fit, patching the gaps with bits of recorded memory, and we live as if these multi-sensory movies-in-the-head were reality. It is a survival adaptation that works astonishingly well. The brain needs to predict the immediate future well enough to keep you alive in the great outdoors, and it’s pretty good at this. You can go through life without ever waking up from this dream, and things will sort of automatically turn out ok, mostly. At least there will be a sort of continuity that is sufficiently reliable to increase population.”
This façade of reality that we all live with is context. And real context is something we can influence. It can best be described as creating focus and determination – Kennedy’s vision of “a man on the moon in ten years” set a context for the nation. It established focus on what could be, and how to get there, rather than on its improbability.
As we are ending the first decade of the twentieth century, context seems dramatically influential in our world. Are we focused on getting affordable health care for all, on reducing man’s negative impact on our climate, on removing money from undue influence in politics, on establishing an authentic sense of community where we all care for each other – that accepts that we all belong together? Or have we established up front, in a predetermined context, that all of that is unrealistic and impractical?
Do we common folks simply have a different context – a different sense of reality – than our elected leaders? I hope that is what it is. I hope neither of us is ignoring the need to learn and adjust – to grow our reality and refine our context. What else can explain Obama’s departure from what he promised in his campaign? Does he simply see things differently now? And if so, why does he not attempt to share that change with us? Tis a puzzlement.
But context is not all there is to it because, as Wentz observes; “When the context has changed, entirely new content will be created.” That new content can be both invigorating and productive or it can be chaotic and overwhelming. Which it is becomes a matter of the related concept of alignment.
So, if Obama’s context has changed, and he fails to share it convincingly, we are stuck with a predictable chaos, and the nation will stay unaligned. And I have to admit that this is what I feel right now – chaos.
What Kennedy’s statement did was get everyone headed in one direction and fully aligned. Clearly our nation isn’t there at the moment. The opening sentence of George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky’s book, The Power of Alignment, is the following quote from Jim Barksdale, CEO of Netscape: “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing!”
What is Obama’s “main thing?” I do not know and few seem to. He must correct this and soon or the chaos will continue.
So, context, either new or old, absent alignment ends up creating chaos. The role of leadership is to assure a shared context and foster alignment. This component is sorely missing from our recent national leadership on almost any issue. And the context that has been created and fostered by corporate and conservative-leaning leaders – of both parties and the media – has developed and exploited our unconscious reality to the point where the demise of our society is real, if not imminent.
Bob Barkley, counselor in systemic education reform, author, and retired Executive Director of the Ohio Education Association. Worthington, Ohio.
Email: rbarkle@columbus.rr.com

#156 – Dick Bernard: Howard Zinn

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However he’s looking in on we mere mortals, Howard Zinn is probably getting a kick out of all the attention he’s getting in death. Today, for instance, National Public Radio went to the trouble of admitting its obituary of Zinn was unfair. Zinn is likely smiling and would probably agree with the old variously attributed adage: “I don’t care what they say about me, just spell my name right.”
I’ve not yet read Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States”, nor his other books. I saw him in person once, April 9, 2009, doing his part in his “Voices of a People’s History of the United States”. He responded to a couple of e-mails I sent him, and he gave me his home address without a clue as to who I was. He came across as a really nice genuine gentle man.
Nonetheless, he was labeled as a radical, and a “revisionist” historian.
The latter label I got a particular kick out of: his task in life seemed to be to correct the earlier and abundant revisionist historical mythology about our own history as a country – more or less our Lake Wobegon view of ourselves, where pats on the national back are all we learned, and all that is acceptable; where outrageous national behavior is not spoken in polite company. We could do, and did, no wrong….
If Zinn was pilloried as departing from the party line of our history, then the worst that could be said about him was that he was the mathematical negative which, when multiplied by another negative, equals a positive. He balanced the national story – which made him frightening to some.
Somewhere I still have an audio tape of a speech he gave in St. Paul in 2002. It is a wonderful speech, gentle, pointed, spot-on. He acknowledges his WWII career in a bomber over Europe. He served his country. He then puts the war part of our national ethic into its less palatable perspective.
As one friend remembers it, Zinn commented in his People’s History that “orthodox history has been written ten times over…no need to do it again.”
Go to YouTube, and enter the name Howard Zinn, and you’ll have a good variety of Zinn-samplers.
The day after I learned he had died, I sent to my list the earliest Howard Zinn writing I had on file in my computer. My post is dated March 25, 2003; I don’t know when Zinn wrote it…doesn’t matter. In peace, Howard.
On Getting Along
By Howard Zinn
You ask how I manage to stay involved and remain seemingly happy and
adjusted to this awful world where the efforts of caring people pale in
comparison to those who have power?
It’s easy. First, don’t let “those who have power” intimidate you. No
matter how much power they have they cannot prevent you from living your
life, speaking your mind, thinking independently, having relationships
with people as you like. (Read Emma Goldman’s autobiography LIVING MY
LIFE. Harassed, even imprisoned by authority, she insisted on living
her life, speaking out, however she felt like.)
Second, find people to be with who have your values, your commitments,
but who also have a sense of humor. That combination is a necessity!
Third (notice how precise is my advice that I can confidently number it,
the way scientist number things), understand that the major media will
not tell you of all the acts of resistance taking place every day in the
society, the strikes, the protests, the individual acts of courage in
the face of authority. Look around (and you will certainly find it) for
the evidence of these unreported acts. And for the little you find,
extrapolate from that and assume there must be a thousand times as much
as what you’ve found.
Fourth: Note that throughout history people have felt powerless before
authority, but that at certain times these powerless people, by
organizing, acting, risking, persisting, have created enough power to
change the world around them, even if a little. That is the history of
the labor movement, of the women’s movement, of the anti-Vietnam war
movement, the disable persons’ movement, the gay and lesbian movement,
the movement of Black people in the South.
Fifth: Remember, that those who have power, and who seem invulnerable
are in fact quite vulnerable, that their power depends on the obedience
of others, and when those others begin withholding that obedience, begin
defying authority, that power at the top turns out to be very fragile.
Generals become powerless when their soldiers refuse to fight,
industrialists become powerless when their workers leave their jobs or
occupy the factories.
Sixth: When we forget the fragility of that power in the top we become
astounded when it crumbles in the face of rebellion. We have had many
such surprises in our time, both in the United States and in other
countries.
Seventh: Don’t look for a moment of total triumph. See it as an
ongoing struggle, with victories and defeats, but in the long run the
consciousness of people growing. So you need patience, persistence, and
need to understand that even when you don’t “win,” there is fun and
fulfillment in the fact that you have been involved, with other good
people, in something worthwhile. Okay, seven pieces of profound advice
should be enough.
Howard Zinn

#153 – Dick Bernard: Haiti. Hope is on the Way?

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It can fairly be said that the place called Haiti, and the people called Haitians, have been raped, looted and pillaged by my “civilized” world for the entire 518 year history since Christopher Columbus and his men landed there (in the vicinity of today’s Cap Haitien) in 1492. An excellent primer on this history for me was Dr. Paul Farmer’s book, “The Uses of Haiti*“. (I initially thought that this book was still in print. Apparently it is not. The link provided here is to a discussion and critique of the book by someone I early became acquainted with and respect. Take a look, and read the review* all the way through.)
(Today, Dr. Paul Farmer is the most prominent “point person” for the U.S. and the United Nations on Haiti. He was appointed some months before the earthquake; and he has a long history in Haiti and among the Haitians. His Partners in Health is easily considered one of the very best destinations for donations to Haiti. His more recent book, Pathologies of Power remains available, and worth a look.)
It can be fairly said, I believe, that everyone of us in the developed West have grown up with an official and almost exclusively negative narrative about why Haiti is so poor. The essence of the narrative is that Haitians are incapable of running their own affairs: that their problems are their own fault, and that we in the developed world need to rescue them from their own incompetence. We are “the Great White Fathers”.
Historical narratives are developed and shared by people of influence, like leaders, or academics, who are in a position to convey their influence down to the commoners who are the pawns of history. The official story is the story written by the one in Power**. We are told what to believe, and tend to believe what we are told by people more “important” than we are. That is an elemental fact of life. Even Black Americans and Native Americans have absorbed a negative story about Haitians. It is a fiction which has come to be accepted as reality.
When my friend Paul Miller finally convinced me to travel with him to Haiti in 2003, I knew almost nothing about the place and its people. I came back committed to learn about the geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and Haiti. It has been an eye-opening and troubling experience.
Today, January 23, 2010, I feel for the first time since I darkened Haiti’s door December 6, 2003, that hope is truly on the way for Haiti, and along with the hope, some potential for long-term justice for the Haitian people.
There are a boat-load of serious problems beyond the earthquake: I read about them every day in commentaries never seen by the ordinary news consumer in this country. And you don’t undo over 500 years of exploitation overnight.
To those who look only backward at the abuse of a beautiful country and its beautiful, determined and tenacious people, I urge: don’t turn your back on the future and in effect walk only backwards with your eyes only on the awful past.
To those of my country men and women, especially those who share my whiteness, who believe only the official narrative, consider the possibility that you’ve been lied to, deliberately, and often, by most everybody. Crucial information has been tampered with, or left out of, the stories you’ve heard. Open your eyes as you walk forward, trying to help.
To both, consider the possibility of true dialogue, and a willingness to understand the other. Without such an intersection, all of the huge outpouring of money and caring and good intentions engendered by the earthquake of January 12, 2010, will be for naught…and we’ll slide back into the dismal reality that has prevailed over Haiti’s entire history.
Post note: Within the last few days the Twin Cities Daily Planet published a post of mine about the current situation in Haiti.
I have a website concerning Haiti which includes a comparative map and a timeline of significant historical events.
* The review relates to the original edition of the book, 1994; the book I read was the 2003 revised version which very likely dealt with some of the concerns Bob Corbett had with the first edition. To my knowledge, neither edition remains available.
** Quite by accident I was able to document one such occurrence with Haiti. Click on “Anatomy of an Official Lie” here .

#150 – Dick Bernard: "We're off to see the Wizard…."

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Last night, we listened to the magnificent Minnesota Orchestra as the front band for the 1939 classic film “Wizard of Oz”. It was a wonderful evening. I felt a bit guilty being there, given what has happened in Haiti in the last few days; on the other hand, we had these tickets for almost a year.
I did watch the film with new eyes last night. It remains a wonderful film with lots of positive messages for one who chooses to look for them. (In the lobby, at intermission, I noticed a poster borrowing from Robert Fulghum’s “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten“: “everything I need to know I learned in the Wizard of Oz“. A lot of simple truth there, I thought.)
I don’t remember when I first saw Wizard of Oz, but it was long after it was made. Even though I was born a year later than the film, in 1940, movies were a rare treat in my growing up life in the country.
Last night coincided closely with Martin Luther King’s birthday, and last night I looked at the casting for Wizard of Oz. I looked pretty intently. I do not recall a single face that looked unlike mine. The cast was, best as I could see, totally white.
That is how it was, then. If African-Americans had any roles at all, as in the famous Civil War epic Gone With the Wind produced about the same time, Negroes were kept in their proper subservient place, invisible or inferior; and if their role was important, whites in black face filled in just fine, if I remember rightly.
I describe a deeply ingrained American attitude. And, yes, it has played out in Haiti for its entire 206 year history as an independent Republic, right up until today.
Coincidentally, this past week I listened to a talking book, The Hornets Nest, Jimmy Carter’s first novel, an account of the Revolutionary War in the South, in the years 1770-1790. (The audio book was excellent, worth my time.)
Carter’s book outlines the tension and violence in the south often relating to whether or not there should be slaves, and how to deal with the native population. (One doesn’t need to read a book about what happened, but Carter effectively develops how the grass roots embrace of slavery and eradication of the native Indians evolved and became institutionalized.)
This afternoon I finished the fifth and last CD of the book, and in Carter’s epilogue, the final sentences recounted Thomas Jefferson’s reluctant but firm embrace of slavery as the only way to assure white dominance and continuation of the “American Way of Life.”
Carter in his last words also notes the official continuation of American slavery till the Civil War, and the separate-and-unequal prevalence to the present in our country.
It was Jefferson who was U.S. President in 1804 when Haiti’s slaves defeated the French and declared their independence from France, only the second free Republic in the western hemisphere. A free Haiti was an intolerable threat to our own United States, ourselves a slave state; meanwhile, the vanquished France successfully starved the infant Haiti Republic almost to death, with the U.S. standing by, and so it has gone for Haiti until the present day.
No wonder, some Haiti advocates wish us to be gone.
Our racial climate is different now, than it was in the time of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, but not so much.
The conversation about Haiti, spoken and unspoken, is dominated by racial attitudes that we have been brought up with.
There is an opportunity, in this time of horrible crisis in Haiti, to slowly begin to change the conversation.
I wonder who, or how many, will actually try to do so….
A bit more on Thomas Jefferson and his own personal attitudes here.
At my own website is a timeline of Haiti-American relations. (There is on error there; the U.S. occupied Haiti in 1915-34, rather than 1919). My general Haiti web address is here.

#148 – Dick Bernard: Harry Reid and me.

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So, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is being drawn and quartered for remarks made about candidate Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election. “There but for the grace of God go I”, and probably most everyone else, of any ethnicity, anywhere.
As a good friend of mine is wont to say “give me a break!”
Let’s take two days ago, just for instance.
It was Sunday, and I was at Church, this particular day taking care of a social justice table about my particular passion, Haiti.
A few of us were visiting at the neighboring table, including a man of, shall we say, very dark complexion, and an interesting accent to his English. “Where’re you from?”, I asked, since I was curious.
“Minnesotan”, he said…and it took awhile for his puckish grin to appear. He’d heard this one before.
It was awkward for a bit. He was Ethiopian, he finally said, had been here for quite a long while. There are plenty of Christians in Ethiopia, and also, as I began to insert foot in mouth once again, Jews as well – I’d seen a group of these black Ethiopian Jews in Israel in 1996….
Upstairs in church my long-time and great friend John was ushering. We said ‘hello’ as usual, and I got to thinking back two or three years ago when he and another friend of mine in another state were helping me set up an earlier rendition of this blog. I sent a brief e-mail to the other guy about my African-American friend, John, but by mistake I copied John on the e-mail.
I immediately apologized to John for the stupidity – his ethnicity had absolutely nothing to do with anything I was talking about with the other guy – and the matter was over in an instant. My guess is that John is used to gaffes like mine on the race issue. But it has stuck in my mind. And perhaps in his, too.
The one who says that they’ve never thought, or talked, negatively or apprehensively about someone who looks different than they do is not being truthful. I’ve been to homogeneous countries where most everybody looked alike (except for we tourists) and we were all white.
We grow up with said and unsaid messages that are imprinted.
I do family history, and I was taken aback when Aunt Mary on my German side, born in 1913 and lifelong North Dakotan, wrote in the early 1990s about the horses she remembered on the North Dakota farm. King, Queen, Kernal, Sally, Nelly, Sylvia, then “I think Old George and Nigger were part bronco”, Prince, Lady…. Horses were truly a part of the family in those old days, and, I suppose, “Nigger” was a black horse, but….
(I picked these words out of the family history I wrote. Initially I was going to edit out that word, but I’m glad I didn’t…some years later we found a batch of letters from 1905-06 from the farm kin in Wisconsin where on occasion “nigger” and “Jew” popped in as well.)
It’s a problem, and Harry Reid will survive it – since, after all, it’s rank hypocrisy for anyone to cast judgement on the man for such a statement in our still race-sensitive society. Similarly, it is unfair to “judge the book by its cover”…being white, or black (or blue or green or whatever) is no criteria for goodness, or badness.
This goes all ways, and it’s no fun to experience it first hand.
I remember my first trip to Haiti in 2003. I’d been there all of two days, and we were being briefed by victims of heinous crimes in the slums of Port au Prince during the 1991-94 coup time. It was very, very powerful. At the end, we went around to shake hands with the participants, men and women. One of the men refused my hand. I hadn’t said a word in the presentation, and I knew nothing about Haiti. I reminded him of someone, I’d guess. I wonder who.
Best we all learn by bits and pieces. It’s all we can do.

#147 – Dick Bernard: Avatar

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UPDATE January 12, 2010: I have been most intrigued by the assorted interpretations, on all “sides”, about the real meaning of most everything about Avatar. About all I can say is that it serves a useful function in causing thought and (hopefully) conversation. Now, if the assorted “sides” could dialogue with each other about the diverse meanings of the film, now, that would be something. It is now a blockbuster status film. I think it deserves its status. And it is an opening for serious conversation about, particularly, American society and its relationship to the rest of the planet.
A few day ago I made reference to the new film Avatar in this blog.
At the time, I had not seen the film. I went yesterday. I would highly recommend the film as food for thought and for lots of reflective discussion for anyone with even the slightest interest in or concern about the past, present and future of humanity and the planet in general.
Avatar is a high-tech 3D film set far in the future on a planet populated by humanoids similar, I would say, to the indigenous peoples who populated this country and hemisphere 500 years ago, pre-Columbus.
The planet has been targeted for exploitation of an essential new element by a force from the late, great planet earth (to borrow somebodies phrase from long ago.
The earthlings do not, shall we say, represent us as we would like to be seen…on the other hand, they represent us pretty accurately…at least the exploiters who have moved from one objective to the next over the centuries who, in turn, have enlisted our support for things that lay waste to a decent, balanced relationship between the earth and all of its creatures, only one species of which happens to be human.
As we watch the “transformer generation” in Avatar, we are watching ourselves, today, and in especially the last 150 years or so in the U.S., far longer in exploited places like Haiti, where European exploitation began with Columbus over 500 years ago. It is not a pretty sight.
On the other hand, those who we dismiss as Third World, presumably worth less than ourselves, are portrayed well, particularly as their relationship to the earth and each other is concerned. One is reminded of the intimate relationship between the Native Americans and their environment in the time before the introduction of the things that have brought us domination and prosperity.
One can wonder who will get the last laugh as humanity lurches down the road to some final probably destructive destination, perhaps sooner than we like to imagine. Perhaps Jesus’ Beatitudes, the first of which is “Blessed are the Meek” (defined in my grandmothers Bible as the “poor”) are the ultimate inheritors of heaven, to contrast with the present hell on earth visited on so many of them.
For the rich among us, which is most Americans, even those of us who are fairly poor, perhaps we’ve got it as good as it’s going to get…in the end we may trade places with those we now dominate. Nobody knows, just a thought….
Avatar is a long film, nearly three hours, but it is gripping. I found myself wanting popcorn, but not wanting to leave the theatre should I miss something. Those with me in the theatre were equally glued to their seats. Avatar is certainly not an escapist film.
People watching this film can come to their own conclusions. It will be difficult, however, to come to the conclusion that the reality of our lives will serve future generations well.
I recommend this film.

#143 – Dick Bernard: YouTube, Elders and Youngers

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UPDATE January 7, 2010: Representative comments follow, plus a followup observation from the writer of the original post. (I have disabled comments due to an avalanche of ‘spam’. My e-mail address is on the “About” page.)
Yesterday afternoon an e-mail announced that I was on YouTube. Since I’ve not been on YouTube before (at least to my knowledge), I rushed to the link. Indeed I was there, the last minute and a half or so.
When I opened the movie, there had been no views at all, not surprising since only my friend, Lynn Elling, and I, had received the e-mail announcing it. Besides, when the young man, who was one of the founders of YouTube in 2005 (and a few years earlier a student at St. Paul MN Central HS), put up the first link of himself at the San Diego Zoo, I suppose he was the first and among the very few viewers of that famous YouTube video, too. ( I looked just now, and there have been five viewers of my ‘show’; I doubt my performance will go viral, like Minnesota Wedding, with over 37,000,000 views since last summer, but one takes what fame one can get!)
The three of us who speak on the Dec. 21 video were at a local school, rededicating it as a peace site. Lynn Elling who founded World Citizen has campaigned against the horrors of war since he witnessed the aftermath during three years as a Naval Officer in the Pacific in WWII. He’s a hero of mine. Martha Roberts is current President of World Citizen.
I wasn’t listed among the speakers, but was called on near the end, and expounded for a bit on a disconnect I was feeling in the class room of 15 year olds.
The feeling came when Mr. Elling talked about a workshop that changed his life in the late 1940s. Leader Maxwell Maltz (Psychocybernetics) convinced Lynn, then a floundering insurance salesman about to quit the trade, that if he could visualize any goal “in three dimensions, technicolor and stereophonic sound”, that goal could come to life – and it did for Lynn, who became very successful in his financial products business.
But as I was listening to Lynn, along with the 30 15 year olds, it occurred to me most of those kids had no idea what, at minimum, “technicolor” or “stereophonic sound” were; and were it not for rare movies like the current Avatar, “3 dimension” (called 3D, of course) would be equally foreign to them. So, when I was unexpectedly given an opportunity to speak, that disconnect is what I expounded about. (Most of that portion is edited out, but the reference to computers also applies.)
Lynn was in college when I was born; 40 when I graduated from college. To those 15 year olds, mostly born in perhaps 1994, I realized I was well beyond ancient as well.
Their view and their vocabulary and their skill-sets are entirely different than those of myself, or Lynn, or Martha. More so than any time in history, Elders and Youngers have relatively few life experiences or expertise in common. We live in different worlds.
It is obvious, but too seldom considered, that there exists a big generation gap between today’s Elders, who care a lot about the future for the Youngers, and the Youngers themselves.
I tried to point out to the kids I was talking to that we want to help them achieve their future, but in reality, their future is in their hands, not ours. I was speaking from the emotion of the moment, without holding back.
We have to learn how to better communicate between generations.
We’ve got a long ways to go.
Take a look at me in the movies. Enjoy the show. It’s less than 5 minutes in all, 1 1/2 minutes of me, so no time for popcorn.
(Truth be told, I looked again at the Minnesota Wedding. Now that’s interesting!)
Comment from Carol Ashley Jan. 4, 2010: You said “their future is in their hands, not ours.”
I have often heard this at graduations and it bugs me. We’ve created their future by our own actions and we still (or did before the corporate takeover) have a lot of effect on the world. I think it wouldn’t hurt if we took our cues from younger folk as we age.
If we tell young people only that the future is in their hands, do they believe it? I doubt it. Or at least not totally. They’ve not had much power up to that point. If we say it’s in their hands and we want to help them make the kind of world they want to have, then we not only let them know they have to create their future but indicate we will help. This, I would think, would be more apt to motivate them. It also focuses on a communal effort.
Better communication between young and old and in between certainly needs improvement. I so often see parents and other adults minimizing teen experience…first love, first breakup…all that stuff. If we took them seriously at all ages and really listened to them, I think they might listen to us, too. It’s easy to minimize the experiences of youth, but if we examined ourselves, we could see that those experiences are part of what makes us who we are. They are formative (to use a psychological term) and therefore very important. So I think we need to start by respectful listening. I think that applies to the split in our country, too. It’s not an easy task to listen to some one of a different political persuasion, especially if what we hear seems so untrue, but it is the first step.
This is all on the micro level. You, Dick, often have talked about those incremental steps. I’m sure those steps are important. It just doesn’t seem like they can work fast enough for the crises we see in the world today which is why I’m not very hopeful. Still, I think those steps are important wherever and whenever we have the opportunity or can make the opportunity.
Comment from Judy Berglund January 5, 2010: I took a few minutes to review the video, and I think you guys are on to something. I wish your remarks hadn’t been edited. You recognize something that few in our generation recognize: that we aren’t talking to our kids enough and we aren’t doing enough to understand how they communicate. Our kids are idealistic, and we can tap into that idealism through efforts such as your presentation. They feel powerless, and we can empower them through such presentations. Let’s do more to understand them and to help them understand us. Here’s to YouTube!!!
Comment from Lynn Elling (the other man in the video) to the person who made the video January 4, 2010: WOW!!!
Dick: It has been most interesting to review these and other comments, including the most recent one from a good friend who’s a retired teacher: “I was trying to guess their interest. Sometimes older people don’t connect with younger students so I was curious about the interest level.”
I was more “primed” for this than usual, since only a few weeks earlier I’d been to an excellent all day workshop entitled “Coming Forth as Elders: Heartening Community with the Vision of Elderhood“, facilitated by Kaia Svien and Eric Utne. Thirty or more of us had a day to sit with this topic, most of us in my age range – some a little older, most a little younger….
My audience on Dec. 22 was 10th graders. Their next stop after my little talk was lunch. I taught 8th and 9th graders for nine years, years ago so I know the species. A rock star would have his or her work cut out…! But I didn’t see anybody “cutting and running”…they were polite and well behaved. Perhaps I was sufficiently passionate so that they wondered, “where is HE coming from?” As Judy mentioned, I, too, wish that the rest of what was said was on the DVD (about 5 minutes in all, I’d guess.) But probably it is best as it is, the rest of the remarks left to each imagination (including my own).
The DVD has helped, already, to lead to conversation.
There is a communication gap between youngers and elders these days that is far greater than in the good old days, when the youngers worked the farm with their parents and were blessed (or stuck) with an environment where everybody lived life in common. With variations, other environments were similar.
Today there is a canyon between elders and youngers. Acknowledging it, and talking about it is the step to resolution. It will be slow and difficult, but it needs to happen.
Our generation has left a mess for the youngers; and while I didn’t feel at all empowered when I was 15 (in 1955); at the same time a future was being held for me when I matured. Today we are truly “spending our kids inheritance”, shamelessly. They don’t have the luxury I did.
In the e-mail exchange with the classroom teacher, I learned about an important event happening in San Jose in late March. The details are here. Check it out. Don’t be terribly surprised if you hear from me about the conference, if I can figure a way to attend…. (Find the upcoming events box and take a look, and let others know about this opportunity.)

#141 – Dick Bernard: Invictus

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New Years Eve we decided to go to a movie at the local theatre.
We finally chose “Invictus”, a new Clint Eastwood film about Nelson Mandela and the sport of Rugby and the 1995 World Cup, held in South Africa not long after the fall of Apartheid and Mandela’s release from many years of imprisonment and his election as President of South Africa.
I knew relatively little about those turbulent times in South Africa, nothing at all about Rugby, and, of course, Invictus is simply a film – a dramatization – of a real event.
But Morgan Freeman is a wonderful Mandela, with a great supporting cast, and every aspect of the film was inspiring. Through and after the film, one has to really work to stay stuck in the negative attitude of the impossibility of deep change, forgiveness and reconciliation.
A good review of the film is here.
The text of the poem, Invictus, is here.
If Invictus is accessible in your area, consider going to see it; or keep it in mind for later rental. You will likely leave the film as I did, inspired.
And, personally, think in terms of possibility, rather than impossibility, when considering matters of necessary deep change.
Happy New Year.