hoffing and puffing

The short, bare-boned version of this site’s purpose: to express and to stimulate expression by others of self-conscious reflections on personal and public dimensions of everyday life.

The somewhat elusive, mid-length version of the purpose of this site: to fulfill the desperate hope that Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ quip about everyday “miseries” is not a comprehensive truth, even if it is hauntingly recognizable in the world around us and within ourselves. In "Love in the Time of Cholera," Marquez observes that if Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his wife, Fermina Daza, had learned anything together “…it was that wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”

Now, the really wordy version of what this site is all about. I make no commitment to limit the subject matter of my comments on this site. And I will not intentionally limit the perspectives from which its subject matter will be considered. In only two respects will I offer anything that can pass for a kind of coherence – the wholeness of my own being and my commitment to strengthen self-conscious reflections about everyday life.

The American cultural paradigm may contain much that is wise and much that is foolish, but either way it is saddled with an over-arching misunderstanding. In times of broad and deep cohesion this misunderstanding is functionally harmless, but in times of division and fragmentation it blocks health and deepens pathology. Our addiction to realism, practicality, pragmatism, efficiency, and immediacy has contributed to this misunderstanding. We often assume these characteristics operate uncomplicated by theories, ideas and ideals, and presuppositions – the stuff of philosophical engagement and seriously thoughtful reflection, sometimes disparagingly called “ideology.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Rather than the absence of philosophical ingredients, “practical realism” is only possible in framing a culture’s everyday life when there is a significant philosophical consensus. It is only when ideas, ideals, theories, and assumptions form a substantial common ground that a people can afford the luxurious assumption, actually an ignoble lie, that they don’t exist or don’t matter – are “irrelevant.” In fact, a philosophical common ground is the most essential factor in making cultural practicality possible.

But we’ve hit a rough spot. Our common ground has been shrinking; our consensus has been splintering. Yet, we remain stuck in the tacit notion that American beliefs, understandings, and purposes are somehow settled and shared – “given.” We just need ingenuity and persistence, or, if you want to take the less demanding route, apathy seasoned with trust in those who have demonstrated colossal untrustworthiness will do. It is a mess. Even worse, it is dangerous. It threatens the principles and purposes we assume we most cherish and most want to protect.

Nothing, for example, convinces Americans more quickly or firmly to abandon their liberties than to argue that it is necessary to protect their freedom! Gag on that one. Although we are often strengthened when we grow into fuller understandings of life’s persistent paradoxes and tensions, we can’t afford to swallow every contradiction thrown at us especially if the clearest consequence of taking it in is to make us smaller, weaker, and more dependent. That is manipulation; not an insight.

The momentum of a collective schizophrenia seems about to capture America. The President and his administration, our most aggressive religious leaders and media “ditto-heads”, and, sadly, a host of our neighbors and friends have shattered a basis for wholeness in our national life. Absolute truths and moral principles and Christian “fundamentals” are trumpeted by the same people, in the same breath, who have created and who defend one of the most incompetent, corrupt, and unprincipled chapters of indifference, abuse, hypocrisy, and cronyism in our nation’s history.

Too many don’t even see it. Too many see it and are paralyzed. Few still can imagine the possibilities of a healthier America. Those who accept have been joined by those who are resigned to create a powerful, tyrannizing majority that dooms America, if not to destruction, to a legacy of shame.

I will not accept and I am not resigned. I also do not presume to know the answers or the methods and strategies by which better alternatives can be brought to life. I do have a sense of a precondition for the formation of a better way. We need to become more critically reflective, more analytically self-aware, and more autonomously self-conscious. This, in itself, will not create the “answers” or, even, agreement among us about next steps. But it can create a new dialogue among us that is not captured by the enthusiasms or futility of our current malaise. That in itself is hopeful.

This is the contribution I hope this site can make, even in a very small measure. Beware – my purpose is not to solicit your agreement with my views, but to make it difficult for you to avoid more self-generated, self-conscious engagements with the realities of your own everyday life. This small step is not sufficient, but it is necessary and significant; all the more because it is increasingly difficult for any of us to accomplish with candid persistence. The hard work needs to begin.