Tag Archives: 4th of July

The Elephant and the Rider: A Tale About Our Moral Judgments

                  Some people love hot sauce, the spicier the better.  Others like it mild.  Others want none at all.  Are these preferences the result of a logical thought process, or simply an honest report on what peoples’ taste buds tell them?

                  When we make judgments about other people, moral questions, and politics, is it our thinking mind that decides what’s true?  Or is it more often a deep feeling/reaction we have, and our thinking mind comes up with reasons to support that point of view?

When a human rider is on top of an elephant, which one holds the real power to decide what direction to go?

                  Several years ago, I read a book which challenged my understanding of the way we make judgments: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.  Haidt draws on extensive research about moral reasoning and comes to many important conclusions.  One of them employs the metaphor of an elephant and its rider.  In this imaginary scenario, the rider does not ultimately decide which path the elephant takes, but, in many ways, is “along for the ride.”  The rider’s job is to come up with reasons to justify which way the elephant wants to go.  Haidt says our moral judgments are like taste buds — more a reflections of our instincts and intuition than a logical process.  This explains why people across cultures, in religion and politics, fall into groups often labeled “liberal” and “conservative;” people may look at the same set of facts or events but draw different conclusions.

                  This explains why we hear people say, “How can they think like that? Why won’t they listen to reason and pay attention to the facts?

                  I grew up in a racist culture.  I didn’t realize it at the time – I just thought this was the way life was.  My view of African Americans came from all directions…comments, jokes, a biased history, commonly accepted racial slurs, and TV shows like “Amos and Andy.” I didn’t think this was point of view was right, it was just the way it was. As I got to know African Americans in school, in the workplace, and through our evolving culture, my views changed.  Personal experiences and compelling stories began to challenge my inherited bias.  My elephant began to go in a different direction, and my rider-mind began to understand the world differently. 

                  I grew up in a homophobic culture which has undergone a similar evolution.

                  After 9/11, I became involved with community interfaith groups that included Muslim and Jewish representatives.  I led a year-long project in which a dozen people from my congregation as well as a dozen from the local synagogue and mosque began meeting every other week for lunch.  In the early meetings, we did not talk about our different beliefs, but focused on getting to know each other as human beings.  We learned about each other’s families, life stories, hopes and dreams.  In the early encounters, my elephant kept tugging at me, saying “This person is fundamentally different than you.”  But over time that changed; the categories I had inherited faded, and I saw each participant as a unique individual.

Looking back, it is interesting to see how the change in my unconscious elephant came about through accumulated visual impressions and how they were tied to judgements. Before the project began, if I saw a woman wearing a hijab face covering, the only realities I could associate with that were the endless news stories about terrorists and the oppression of women; such stories were always accompanied with suspenseful, troubling music. So, when I first met some of the Muslim women, I felt tense.  But over time, as I got to know them, I no longer noticed how they dressed or if they had a face covering — I knew them as friends.  After the project ended, I was traveling to Ghana and had just boarded a plane at JFK airport. I saw five Muslim women coming down the aisle.  My “elephant” said, “Oh, look, some Muslim women…I’d love to get to know them!”  In that instant, I realized my snap judgment had totally shifted because of our project.  The change came about not by rational persuasion as much as lived experience.

                  I currently live in a community that votes very “blue.”  Before coming here, I lived in a community that was politically “red.”  I have friends who hold differing perspectives in both communities, and I can tell you what life experiences has led them to see things the way they do.

                  As we approach the 4th of July, we will be reminded of the words ““We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For decades, “all men” meant “all white males” – that was the elephant the leaders were riding at the time.  But through much suffering and striving, we’ve come to realize that the more profound and inspired meaning is not “all white men” but “all people.”  America at its best is not about the dominance of one ethnic group, but a shared dream for the entire human family.

                  Our spiritual traditions were born in cultures with their own sense of tribalism, identity, and biases.  But at their best, they call us to go beyond the brute instincts and assumptions we ride on.  They call us to see all people as created in the divine image, regardless of ethnicity, gender, and social status.  Through powerful teachings and stories, our “riders” can sometimes convince our “elephants” to move towards higher ground. Our progress may be slow and the obstacles never ending, but the ethical summons and divine vision is nonnegotiable.

Lead image: https///usustatesman.com

Lower Image: elephant_and_rider_by_ohmygodfatherscat_d1oxikr-fullview.jpg

Songs of America

            I’ve been thinking about songs that focus on the meaning of America.  I decided to do some modest research into the history of five compositions that reflect particular themes in our history as well as our collective aspirations.  I then asked myself a question: If you look at them together, what do they tell us about who we are?

As we are often reminded, the words to the ‘Star Spangled Banner” were written by an amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after seeing an American flag over Fort McHenry survive a night of bombardment by the British navy in 1814.  It’s a difficult tune for an average person to sing.  At every baseball game I’ve attended over the years, everyone listens closely to the brave soul who will perform it – will they stay within the melody as it is written, or will they do something surprising and amazing when they get to “O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave, O’er the Land of the free and the home of the brave?” The best performance I ever heard was a 12-year-old girl at a spring training game in Arizona…she hit every note with a beautiful tone and powerful volume, but didn’t overdo it; when she finished she smiled as if to say, ‘Yea, I could do this all day long.” The crowd went nuts.

“America the Beautiful” began as a poem written by an English professor, Katharine Lee Bates, in 1882. She had made a train trip from the East Coast through Chicago, across the Great Plains, and up to Pike’s Peak in Colorado. Thinking of all she had seen, she penned a poem describing the “alabaster cities,” “amber waves of grain,” and “purple mountain majesties” and blended those with themes from American history. I appreciate the way this song both celebrates America and also recognizes we are always going to be a work in progress: “America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.”

Not long after Ms. Bates was inspired at Pike’s Peak, a lawyer and poet, James Weldon Johnson, was serving as Chair of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida and began to compose a poem to honor Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  But then he felt drawn to commemorate the long struggle for equality by African-Americans.  Drawing on the Exodus story, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was set to music by his brother. It soon gained popularity and became known as the Black National Anthem. I find it particularly stirring and inspiring.  If you don’t know it, here’s the second stanza:

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place For which our fathers died.
We have come, over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
’Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

I did not know this song when I was growing up, but I became familiar with it as it began appearing in many church hymnals.  More than once I thought about including it in a worship service.  But my congregations consisted entirely of white folk; we had not traveled the same “stony road” or experienced how “bitter” the “chastening rod” had been, and it felt inappropriate to sing of that experience.  But what a powerful testimony it always is.

            In 1918, a musically gifted Jewish Russian immigrant was stationed at an army base in New York and felt inspired to write a song he called “God Bless America.”  Twenty years later, as the second world war was drawing close in Europe, Irving Berlin revised it and had it sung by the powerhouse entertainer, Kate Smith. “God Bless America” took on new meaning when members of both parties of Congress gathered on the steps of the capital on the evening after the 9/11 attacks and spontaneously sang it together.  After that, it was sung during the seventh-inning stretch at baseball games across the country.  In those early days following 9/11, it was often sung by a NY Fire Department member or police officer, and it became a way to honor all those who died in the terrorist attacks.

            But not everyone took a liking to Kate Smith’s “God Bless America.” Woody Guthrie felt it was too easily used to venerate the status quo of American life, which, especially during the depression, included glaring inequalities.  In 1944, he recorded his own American anthem: “This Land Is Your Land, This Land is My Land.” The message and the spirit of “This Land Is Your Land” affirms that the vision of America is a nation for all people, not just those in power.  “This Land Is Your Land” found new popularity in the Sixties and has remained popular ever since.

            This is my list of five “patriotic” songs.  If you consider them as a group, a certain composite image of our country emerges.  America is a nation that celebrates bravery and freedom. It’s a country of great natural beauty that has been blessed by the sacrifice of many people but will always be in the process of improving itself.  It’s a society in which formerly enslaved people have endured generations of severe hardship yet are resolutely moving toward a better future.  This is a much-loved land that needs divine blessing to fulfill its promises.  And it’s that rare place where people of all backgrounds and identities are meant to share in its bounty and its possibilities.

Here’s a sampling of performances of three of the songs:

Kate Smith, “God Bless America”

Woodie Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land”

Kirk Franklin, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”

And one loyal reader suggested I add these to the list:

Lead image: “Latino Nurses’ Choir Ring in 4th of July,” July 5, 2021, https://aldianews.com/en/culture/heritage-and-history/our-heroes-sing-4th

We’ve All Come to Look for America

            You might know the song, “America,” by Paul Simon. It’s based on a road trip he took with his girlfriend in 1964. Here’s the last stanza:

Cathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping
And I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

I have always believed that the essence of America is The Dream: the creation of a society where all human beings “…are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and a shared commitment to human dignity, democratic processes and the rule of law are the means of fulfilling that dream. 

            But there are times when I wonder if I’m naive.  

            In 2010 I attended a conference in Washington, D.C. and visited the Capitol. In the rotunda I viewed eight paintings featuring great moments in American history, including the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  I then turned to the “Frieze of American History,” a fresco depicting 19 other scenes.  Many scenes were ones I expected.  But I was surprised by others: Montezuma greeting Cortez like a God and Juan Pizzaro conquering the Inca people in Peru in search of gold. What are these scenes from Latin American colonial history doing in the U.S. Capitol? As I thought about it, it seemed obvious: the artist understood America as the supreme example of the hemisphere-wide history of Europeans conquest.

We don’t have to look too far in our recent history — from the January 6 attack on the Capitol to the mass shooting at the supermarket in Buffalo – to see that, for some, “the Dream” is not as important as the conviction that, beneath the rhetoric, “America” is really about the continued dominance of a specific group.

            So, if we “look for America,” what do we find? The Dream? Or just another country controlled by a particular tribe?

I remember being in New York for our oldest daughter’s college graduation.  Our two younger daughters and I took the ferry to Ellis Island.  We entered the reception area and saw a large collection of historic luggage on display– suitcases, satchels and woven baskets reflecting cultures from around the world.  We went into the waiting room where wooden benches are arranged end-to-end in parallel rows, so new arrivals would move up one row and down the next until it was their turn to be processed.  We sat on a bench looking out on the Statue of Liberty and read it was one of the actual benches used in the early 1900s.  My maternal grandmother had come through Ellis Island as a 21-year-old in 1912, speaking no English. Her passage had been paid by a family friend living in Riverside who would sponsor young people in exchange for two years of domestic service. I realized she may have sat on this very bench. I never knew her – she died before I was born – and I wished I could ask her what she might have been ‘looking for” when she made the trip by herself. I thought of all the opportunities and blessings my family and I have known – far beyond anything she could have imagined.  This was a moment when The Dream seemed real.

            I remember a 4th of July picnic in Yakima, Washington.  We had become close to several Filipino families in my congregation, and they’d invited us to celebrate the holiday with them.  There is a proud tradition of oratory in Filipino culture. The father gave the first speech, and eloquently described his dream of coming to America, all the obstacles he had to overcome, and how grateful he was to be here with his family.  Then one of his daughters spoke. Soon after she arrived, she had enrolled in the local community college to earn a teaching credential. One instructor told her she would never be a good teacher because her accent was too strong.  In that moment, she said, she became determined to prove him wrong. By the time we knew her, she was an official “Master Teacher” and universally respected in her profession. Being present for these testimonies made me feel closer to the meaning of the 4th of July than any fireworks display.   This was a moment when The Dream seemed real.

            On the day in 2010 when I visited the Capitol rotunda, my walk back to my hotel took me past the White House. There was a black family dressed in African apparel looking through the fence. The Obama family was living there at the time, and I tried to imagine what it felt like for this family to know that.  This was a moment when The Dream seemed real.

            I think of a Muslim grad student from Egypt who became a good friend.  He described what it was like to grow up in a country with a corrupt and repressive government, and how thrilled he was to become a US citizen. “Do Americans realize what an amazing thing the Constitution is?” he asked.  This was a time when The Dream seemed real.

            I’ve never “counted the cars” on the New Jersey Turnpike or Interstate 5, and it’s been a long time since I’ve ridden a Greyhound bus.  But I think about our country at this time in its history.  We’ve “all come to look for America,” and the quest may never end.  But to me, it’s all about The Dream.