Tag: equality

Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men

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Christmas 2023 is two days away. Two days before the mania between Thanksgiving and December 24 relinquishes control of our lives and gives way to Winter’s solemn grip taking hold until Spring Training begins, the snow melts, and our thoughts return to warmer days.

In this time of rising nationalism, vindictive and dictatorial ethos, racist overtones, war, threats of civil war, and in an era seemingly allergic to personal responsibility, community, and accountability, here are my wishes for this Christmas season and 2024.

Number One: A return to civility. I joke that I can trace the downfall of society to the first “Casual Friday” at work. What began as a fundraiser and a sticker identifying us as having donated and, therefore, allowed to wear jeans at work devolved into wearing pajamas at Walmart. Casual Friday is now every day. When can we begin “Dress Up Friday?”

Manners and respect go a long way. Simply cordiality can do two things. First, it engenders a sense of community. We would recognize the other individual as a person, a fellow human being beset with challenges both seen and unseen. This alone can blunt the raging self-centeredness of Americans. Second, even in a tense situation, cordial interaction allows for a defusion of emotions. Perhaps it could help reduce road rage and the gun violence pandemic in America.

Number Two: A return to a sense of community. The world where employees spend a lifetime at one company is no more. The end of the pandemic saw the “Great Resignation.” Companies blamed employees. Employees blamed capitalism. And the stock market blamed the government. The only loyalty still in existence is the loyalty Donald Trump expects of everyone on the planet (without reciprocity).

Business claims to value people, their employees, as their greatest resource. That should tell you all you need to know about the state of American capitalism. Employees are not resources. Iron ore is a resource. Paper clips are a resource. Employees are people. By relegating employees to the inanimate, companies feel justified and vindicated when conducting mass layoffs (resource inventory reductions), demand more of those “fortunate” to remain (without any corresponding wage increase), and have their equally productive remote positions reallocated to “hybrid” or permanently reclassified as in-office only. If the stock goes up, the decision is correct. The greatest resource be damned.

Leviticus 19:18 reads, “… you shall love thy neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 19:19 says, “… love your neighbor as yourself.” Given how America has a “you first after me” mentality, this wish alone could alter humankind. By changing this aspect of society, selfishness would abate, civility would return, and manners would be insisted upon.

And Number Three: A return of respect. Do not expect or wait for me to apologize for your bad behavior. Seemingly gone are the days of respect for our neighbors, community, family, friends, strangers, co-workers, and countries. We would solve many of the world’s problems if only respect lived. We have chipped away at respect to the point where we do not even respect ourselves. Personal accountability no longer exists. We do our children a disservice when we tell them to respect others, be kind, and work hard, and success will follow. There is no longer any downside to bad behavior. Instead, it seems those who exhibit deviant behavior excel in life at the expense of every other person. This slide away from civility and toward self-centered American society began long ago, probably in the 1960s, when the youth dared question the government and demands for equality were met with violence.

Mafia movies and TV shows would have us believe that respect made for an orderly business and kept everyone in line. Fear may have been a better term. And that was until everyone flipped and became an informant to the FBI. The cause? See wishes Number One and Two above. Specifically, being self-centered. Self-interest is superseding the community. Sensing a theme? We were taught, “Respect is earned.” However, the default position upon meeting someone should not be disdain or an immediate dismissal. Perhaps we should alter the phrase. Instead of “respect is earned,” maybe it could be “respect is offered, maintained if reciprocated.”

That’s my list. Three items.

The King James Version (KJV) reads, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

The English Standard Version (ESV) (and most other versions I researched) is less global and more subservient, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” Peace, but only for some. Got it.

I want civility, community, and respect. This does not make me a “Make America Great Again” acolyte devoid of compassion and a wish for a time that never was. In many ways, I would argue that what I wish for is the opposite of what the MAGA crowd expects. Mine is a wish to return to what was once respectful, but this time applied equally to all. Peace on earth, goodwill to all humankind. All humankind. Happy holidays, everyone.

My Generational Fallacy

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Maxwell and Finnegan

I am a middle-aged white man. And I can recognize some, but not all, of the societal privileges afforded to me for no other reason than I am a white man. I feel it is important to establish that upfront. I have accomplished things in life partly due to my efforts and partly because of my accident of birth. Accident of birth. What else can I call it? In addition to being born a white male, I was also born in the United States. Again, not of my choosing. But here I am, and I accept the failings in my life as my burden, my fault. I take full ownership of my failures but share my victories as being due to my efforts, others’ efforts, white privilege, and the combination of those factors occurring here in the United States.

The paragraph above is enough to exclude me from the Libertarian party, who believe they alone are responsible for the air they breathe, and they’d like you to thank them for making enough for you like it’s Reardon Steel.

With that backdrop established, let me tell you a little about my upbringing. My first best friend was black. We shared the same first name. When he or I moved away, I’m not sure what happened (I was young and cursed with a terrible memory), my next best friend was Jewish. And the thing is, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. Or I hadn’t learned from society to hate yet. The only thing I now hate is willful ignorance. I learned so much from my friend about Judaism, its holidays, and the amazing food! I was raised Catholic (as was most of the state in which I was raised). I assumed everyone was Catholic. It wasn’t until much later that I learned Catholicism was itself but a branch of Christianity and Christianity a branch of organized religion.

Throughout my life, until I was probably 30 years old, I assumed that the problems of the past were destined to be solved by my generation. Racism being foremost in my mind and the easiest to solve. It was just wrong! That’s easy to fix, I thought. It was, I thought, the low-hanging fruit of justice, and I assumed I no longer lived in a country responsible for strange fruit (listen to the song). I also thought later in life that gun violence in America would be easily fixed after 26 first and second-graders (and educators) were slaughtered at Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT. In both situations, I learned there was a generational fallacy in my thinking. I assumed my and subsequent cohorts, armed with better information, compassion, and the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, would see the obvious path to social justice. How I was wrong! Chronological snobbery? Maybe. I now believe it is a combination of regional biases and willful intransigence that prevents solving society’s problems.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be 94 years old now if he had not been murdered at age 39 in 1968. What he did, what all who fought for civil rights in America in the 1950s and 1960s, and accomplished, cannot be appreciated using today’s time prism. The Overton Window has undoubtedly shifted on civil rights and many other topics.  What they accomplished then, at great personal risk and, for some, with their lives, is monumental. However, the Overton Window is not a slider moving in one direction but a pendulum constantly swinging between the warmth of progress and the cold intransigence of those benefiting from the status quo. “Make America Great Again” is the most recent example of this philosophical ossification. “Progress” is seen as a threat to their privilege. Equity and equality are, ironically, seen as unfair. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are seen as nefarious as Affirmative Action. After George Floyd was murdered by the police, DE&I programs blossomed nationwide, and workplaces and communities benefited from new thinking. Unfortunately, today we see the pendulum swinging the other way and DE&I programs being cut in red states all across an even more divided America.

I saw an interview with Martin Sheen recently. He has been arrested for protesting more times than he can count. And it has cost him roles. He said, “If what you believe doesn’t cost you anything, then you’re left to question its value.” He is 83 years old now. And I couldn’t help but appreciate his passion.

I confess to being a West Wing fanatic. I adored that show (especially the first four seasons written by Aaron Sorkin). I think the season finale of the second season (Two Cathedrals) is the best episode of television ever created. That said, and while I remain a devout fan, I also think it ruined politics for me and a generation of those like me. I assumed life was a meritocracy and not the plutocracy and cleptocracy it truly is. I appreciated the sincere debate depicted in the show and assumed that was how politics worked. Today, there is no debate, only sound bites, social media gotcha’s, net zero wins, and tribalism, where a foundation of facts cannot be agreed upon. We can’t even agree on what is a fact!

Martin Sheen lives how Aaron Sorkin writes.

Contrast that with today’s news that 25-year-old NASCAR driver Noah Gragson was suspended indefinitely for liking a disgusting meme laughing about George Floyd’s death. He’s 25 years old. So, no, I no longer believe my generation will solve society’s ills no more than I think my children’s generation (or Noah Gragson’s) will move us forward.

They say the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging there is a problem. We haven’t graduated from that simple first step.  There is no low-hanging fruit when those on the other side will embrace any atrocity rather than let you “win.” And for that, society loses.

My generational fallacy has cost me. Not as much as those in the fight every day. It is a cost for which I feel the need to apologize. It has cost me from seeing the issues clearer. Evidence of that is easy to see. Reread this and count the number of times I say a version of “assume.” However, contrary to the familiar American saying, in this case, it has only made an ass out of me.  I hope to do better. I dream of our country doing better. And now, not generationally.

Today

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“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

With these words, quoted from Aeschylus, Robert Kennedy consoled African American campaign workers (and millions worldwide) in Indianapolis on this night 55 years ago after having announced to the crowd that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated earlier that evening in Memphis.

If you get a chance today, watch the speech he gave. It is shocking in its beauty and honesty. It was reported that the Secret Service told Kennedy they could not guarantee his safety if the crowd became violent. He gave the speech anyway.

He said, “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the ancient Greeks wrote so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. was 39 years old on that day. Imagine a different universe where he lived. What would the United States look like today? Would we have faced the horrific stain of slavery head-on and ensured equality among all our citizens? Would we finally be living in a nation where his (now grown) are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? Maybe. Probably not. Intransigence and ennui ossify both the disengaged and unaffected. It is worth noting, Robert Kennedy was dead two months later, himself the victim of America’s gun violence.

At 58 years old, after a decade of railing against gun violence, that uniquely American disease, I am still haunted by the following sentiments when tending to my own heart and not the soul of our troubled nation:

Robert Kennedy:

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”

“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Christopher Hitchens:

“Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”

“What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can’t be apolitical. It will come and get you. It’s not that you shouldn’t be neutral. It’s that you won’t be able to stay neutral.”

“For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my ‘race,’ unless I was permitted to put ‘human.’ The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put ‘white,’ which is not even a color let alone a ‘race,’ and I sternly declined to put ‘Caucasian,’ which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King’s campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you ‘black.”

Today, a former president was arrested and indicted on criminal charges in Manhattan. Donald Trump is the antithesis of Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. because while they carried the torch of justice to move society ever closer to a bright future, he chose to pour gasoline on smoldering embers and moved us backward toward our dark past.

At a time when our country is as divided as ever, short of outright conflict, I hope there are more of us whose “purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better” than those who want to see it burn.

Sunshine

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We are a broken nation. Short of another insurrection, we are living in a cold civil war. One side is armed with guns, bullets, and hatred. The other side is armed with reason, truth, and awe at the dissension one man (Trump) could release. Republicans will win at any cost, including the nation’s destruction, if it means Democrats win a skirmish. Democrats eat their own and want a group hug with Republicans.

It is difficult to find the silver lining, the momentary oasis from hatred and paralysis during these times. It is hard to imagine “normal” life existing outside our echo chambers. Stochastic terrorism and dog whistles from the right. Infighting and inertia on the left. However, I found it about six months ago.

While scrolling through the division and vitriol on Twitter, I came across a neuroscientist at Concordia University in Montreal. Yes, Canada, where stereotypes abound of civility and courtesy. Dr. Nadia Chaudhri posted about a fundraiser she had organized, called the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award. It awarded scholarships for minority and historically marginalized students in neuroscience. It was inspiring to see in the age of Black Lives Matter, Oscar’s so White, and other diversity and inclusion awareness campaigns.

Dr. Chaudhri was more than a neuroscientist and associate professor. She was also a wife and mother. And she was Pakistani. Born in Karachi, she attended Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, becoming the first woman to win the Williamson Medal for outstanding academic and extracurricular achievement. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburg and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of San Francisco. She was also dying of ovarian cancer at age 43.

As we whittle our list of “acceptable” people with whom we agree on everything, it became clear reading Dr. Chaudhri’s tweets that she was a tireless advocate for the Wingspan Award and an incredibly loving wife and mother. Living in Canada didn’t matter. Being from Pakistan didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was a good person. She was just a good person trying to do the best she could for those she cared about in an impossible situation. I never met her, but she was a good person. And that mattered. I enjoyed reading her tweets about her husband Moni (who she called her Moon) and her son (who she called her Sun).

When the chemotherapy no longer worked and the clinical trials failed her, she tweeted that she was entering the inpatient palliative care program at McGill University’s Health Centre and was meeting with her six-year-old son to tell him she was dying. Yes, memories flooded my brain of my late wife and I having that discussion with our children, but I wept for her, her son, and her husband. My son is getting married in a couple of weeks, and my daughter is recently engaged. I cried because I knew her young son would have to enjoy his significant life events without his mother there just as mine have.

She continued to raise money for the Wingspan Award by having people sponsor her to shuffle through the palliative care ward each day. She posted them on Twitter. As her Twitter account swelled, so too did the donations. She raised over $615,000 (CAD) from 8,600 donors. From her hospital bed, she replied to every person who donated. She posted paintings she did, usually of cards or gifts people had sent her. In one painting, she depicts her husband and son burying her ashes under a tree, hoping that her son would understand her wishes and come to peace with what was to come next in his young life. On September 9th, she was promoted to full professor. She celebrated with her husband, son, and the hospital staff with coffee ice cream.

When her legs no longer supported her daily fundraising shuffle, she danced in place in bed, the focus always on the scholarship.

Even when the inevitable happens, like a fool, I feel caught off-guard. Dr. Chaudhri died on Tuesday, October 5th. I sobbed. I sobbed because I would now be without the sunshine she brought with her inspiring tweets. I cried because the underrepresented in STEM lost a champion. I wept because I knew what her husband was feeling. I sobbed because I knew the world her son would now grow up in without his loving mother. It didn’t’ matter that she lived in Canada, that she was from Pakistan, that she advocated for the coronavirus vaccine for everyone, that she was excited she could vote in Canada’s recent election. It mattered because she was a good person.

Find those that inspire, that bring sunshine into this increasingly dark world. Better yet, be that sunshine for someone else. Thank you, Dr. Chaudhri.

Doubt and About

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sharing

I seem to be suffering from a philosophical breach between the correlation of the concepts of equality, fairness, and justice.

Equality, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “The state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities.”

Likewise, fairness is defined as, “Treatment of people equally without favoritism or discrimination.”

And justice is defined as, “The quality of being fair and reasonable.”

It has always been my belief that these three ideas are interchangeable and, indeed, their very definitions weave the three words between themselves. The concept of heads and tails played out in words.

Ah, but life, they say, isn’t fair. In fact, William Goodman even went so far as to say that, “Life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.” I can think of nothing so completely inaccurate! Is there anything fairer than death? Is not death the greatest equalizer of all? Jim Morrison may have said it best when he said, “No one here gets out alive.”

But does that mean that life must be unfair? Our parents teach us to be fair to our siblings. Our teachers urge us to be fair to our classmates. The concept of sports is based on the rules of fairness. But as adults, we see fairness fade into a utopian panacea of equality we strive for but which few believe can be achieved which is itself then distilled into the feeble concept of justice we settle for and call law? Fairness is bastardized into law and laws are created by a political system that few trust. So then the answer is yes, life is unfair, unequal and unjust.

And so far, we have only touched on that which man can control. Nature is even less concerned with fairness. Here, biology, astronomy and the rest of the sciences are even less concerned with fairness and more concerned with physics and laws which pay no mind to humans or human suffering. The mechanisms of cancer in the human body, despite our best efforts, still march to orders little understood by medicine and unconcerned by fairness, wishes, or prayer. Cosmic gasses coalesce according to galactic influence, forming stars which burn, explode, collapse and die – again, all without concern for mankind’s wishes or prayers.

Ultimately, do we do our children a disservice when we tell them to treat each other fairly? Are we setting them up to become fodder for those less concerned with equality; leaving them to the sieve we call law, knowing too it is manipulated by the same usurpers who discard equality for their own benefit? And if so, what happens to society?

Governments, economies, races, religions or sexes, whenever we try to label an entire group we get into trouble. The United States is not a democracy; it is a constitutional republic on paper (with oligarchic underpinnings). There is no such thing as a purely socialist economy just as there is no such thing as a purely capitalist economy. A purely socialist economy will always fail because individual people are greedy. A capitalistic economy will only survive if it convinces the masses that they are all capitalists and not simply feeding the greediest at the top. And so labeling situations as purely fair or unfair for our children sets the expectation that, as adults, neutrality is the norm and justice is equality. Perhaps we are better off calling it what it is: building the flock.

We all want our children to succeed, but by engraining fairness into their moral and ethical DNA we are setting them up for economic failure, casting them out into the sea as chum for those sharks concerned with neither equality nor justice; acquiescing to our “better angels,” knowing that our children will be less “successful” but people we can call fair, equal and just.

And so they too will question the definitions of fairness, equality and justice as they struggle through life, seeing those less just than themselves achieve more than they and those more deserving struggle with less, as disease and misfortune picks off their beloved without warning or justification and the bigoted and ignorant thrive. The circle of an unfair life. But you can’t take it with you.

The Class Ceiling

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On Sunday, June 9th, a 39 year old man was arrested following a 911 call from inside actress Sandra Bullock’s Los Angeles home. The man was arrested after having scaled a fence on her property and gaining access to her home via a back door while she was asleep upstairs. She was not injured in the intrusion. An investigation of the individual led to his being charged with 19 felony counts, including: seven counts of possession of a machine gun, 2 counts of possession of an illegal assault weapon and 10 counts of possession of a destructive device (tracer bullets), in addition to breaking and entering and trespassing.

As horrifying as this is, we, as Americans did not even bother with a collective shrug. We barely blinked when a gunman opened fire in Santa Barbara or when there was yet another school shooting in Oregon. We have become accustomed to both violence and guns. Too many of us are numb to it now. Couple that with the pervasive misogyny of the intertwined subcultures of men, guns and violence and you begin to see the framework upon which our society is now built and upon which some of our elected officials feed.

Ms. Bullock was in Los Angeles to accept an award. Nothing surprising there! Actors and actresses have an entire season dedicated to celebrating their celebrity. However, this award speaks to the subculture we’re discussing. Spike TV holds a Guy’s Choice Awards show every year. Ms. Bullock was there to accept their “Decade of Hotness” award. Now, whether or not Ms. Bullock is a talented actor is best left to individual taste (however her box office receipts and salary per movie indicate that she is worth the investment), but must we award “hotness”? How, in 2014, am I supposed to look at my daughter and tell her not to be too concerned with her looks, that we celebrate intellect and passion above appearance? She would laugh until she cried. And then she would shatter every mirror in our house. We need only look at the tabloids at the checkout line to see the focus of our shallow society. From “Best Bikini Bods” to “Guess who went under the plastic surgeon’s knife?” to the latest drivel from all the celebrated-beyond-reason Kardashians, we idolize celebrity, but only pretty celebrities.

On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 as an amendment to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Specifically, it states that:

No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions…

However, according to a study of The White House’s National Equal Pay Task Force, in spite of the fact that women play a major role in the economic engine of America (as compared to 1963) and the fact that women now earn more advanced degrees in America than men, women had only closed the gender wage gap from 61 cents for every dollar earned by men in 1963 to 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2011, the latest year for which data is available. While undoubtedly a significant gain, one would think that a law passed in 1963 would have completely eradicated the difference by now.

It wasn’t until 1984 that the term “glass ceiling” was first used by former Family Circle Editor Gay Bryant, and that was used to describe the competition between women in reaching the highest levels of business. She is quoted as saying, “Women have reached a certain point – I call it the glass ceiling. They’re in the top of middle management and they’re stopping and getting stuck.”  This definition of the glass ceiling would seem to mesh with the findings of the Council of Graduate Schools study where the majority of advanced degrees were obtained by women (59.5% of master’s degrees and 52.2% of doctoral degrees).

However, it is still a man’s world. From the media’s “sex sells” focus on female images Photoshopped beyond human anatomical limits to the overt compensation of men’s 3-story pickup trucks and need to openly carry AR-15’s and AK-47’s in Target and Home Depot, the male psyche is being beaten educationally and logically by women and has resorted to beating the female image with the only objects left to their stunted minds, guns and misogyny. Essentially, rather than dragging the woman to their cave by their hair, they subjugate her by obliquely beating her with the blunt object between their legs through anthropomorphic means in the form of a firearm. What a shame.

If only men saw women as equals and sought their advice on the important social issues of our time, perhaps we would find a partner instead of a punching bag. As President Kennedy said repeatedly, beginning in 1959, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Instead, members of Open Carry Texas have resorted to calling members of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, “thugs with jugs” and have a one minute free for all where they open fire on a female mannequin. Guns get bigger, but, we’re told,”they’re only used for hunting,” as if we are supposed to believe that deer, birds and rabbits have gotten exponentially larger and evolution has furnished them with Kevlar skin.

We’ve become little boys with big toys (or more accurately, big boys with little minds and big guns). Am I expected to teach this to my daughter? Am I expected to treat my wife this way? Am I expected to subjugate my mother like this? And what does any of this teach my son? You may call me less than a man or a wimp or a feminist, but I’d rather open my arms and use my intelligence than open my legs and show my ignorance.

(If you’re interested in a little mental exercise, read this post. I was writing it in 2012 as news broke from Newtown, Connecticut of a shooting at an elementary school.)

A Conversation With My Daughter

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feminist

 

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

I am lucky. As a heterosexual, white, American man, I found, out of the millions of available women, the best. Does that sound right? “I,” “I found,” “I am lucky.” Let me try to rephrase that. A strong, compassionate, brilliant woman, a woman with talent and brains and limited tolerance for fools, a woman destined to positively impact the lives of countless people, chose me. Better. Although I was right, I was/am lucky.

I had the most incredible conversation with my 19 year old daughter last night. It was a text message conversation, but, in many ways, the technology was not a barrier to thought or feelings, but an aid. Perhaps it is the inherent delay in responding or the necessity to distill thoughts into typed words. Whatever the cause, the effect was blinding, pure logic bathed in compassion. The subject: Feminism.

Again, I’m a guy. But that does not preclude me from discussing or even embracing feminism. Ultimately, feminism is one wavelength within the light spectrum of equality.

Plato wrote in The Republic,“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.” That was in 380 B.C.

On October 9, 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban on her school bus for having the audacity to think, “Let us pick up our books and our pens,” I said. “They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.” (I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban)

Clearly, in 2,392 years we have done little to evolve as humans. Why do some (males and females) see feminists as the enemy? Why have some vilified them as militant, anti-men?

To help answer this question, I need to back up to a 30,000 foot view of “civilized society.” My daughter is an artist, and the best kind. She is infused with talent, an incredible work ethic blended with a strong desire to learn and stirred by passion; truly a recipe for greatness, both as an artist and as a compassionate human. As we chatted last night we wandered into a metaphor that, I think carries some veracity. The idea that while seeing all issues in pure black and white is easy (read: requires little or no thought), it is boring and excludes the rainbow of colors that make life (and art) joyful. Seeing (or rather acknowledging) the gray in an issue requires us to pause and consider differing opinions, perspectives and, potentially, shaking the ledge upon which we base our morals. It is neither comfortable nor easy, but it is necessary and should be required! Somewhere along the line, Descartes argument cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) has been bludgeoned into “I am, therefore I need not think.” How sad.

Feminism is not the charge of a select group of women but rather the obligation of all rational thinkers, therefore, all of humankind. Where it is the weak minded and threatened man who disdains feminists, so too is it the weak minded and male-oriented, society-molded female who defends organized subjugation. To subjugate one is to imprison all. Eleanor Roosevelt said it best, “”No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Our willing abdication of thought may inevitably lead to an Orwellian future of newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrimes and perpetual war. How far down this road are we already? Who wants to drive?

I am proud of my daughter. She is strong-willed, passionate and compassionate, thinks for herself and wants to make the world a better place. If that is the definition of a feminist, sign me up.