Praising Praise Music

On Sunday mornings, you'll likely find me en route to Devil's Teeth Baking Company to grab some breakfast sandwiches and beignets with Asha. There's a good chance that in the car ride over we will be getting our weekly sermon from Chance the Rapper's beautiful song "Blessings." The hook unapologetically resounds:

When the praises go up
The blessings come down

You'll find me — the self-proclaimed atheist — unironically singing along for the entirety of the song, one of many gospel-infused tracks on Chance the Rapper's excellent album, Coloring Book. In a later track, "Blessings (Reprise)," Chance proclaims "I speak to God in public." In a stirring musical tribute to Muhammad Ali, he makes it clear that he wants to wear his faith on his sleeves. I love Chance's genuine gospel music.

Does this present a contradiction? Alain de Botton's intriguing book Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion says no. He begins with a controversial statement: "The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.” I have some qualms with that, though I resonated with de Botton's overarching message. He writes:

I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.

In short, my aversion to the supernatural shouldn't prevent me from engaging with the good stuff. So, I'll praise praise music if it resonates with my soul. I'll enter churches and reflect deeply on the nature of our existence. I'll walk the pilgrim's path in the mountains.

The religious might object to my secular participation in what they find sacred. That's okay — I'd understand. I'll take my chances at offense if it means that I feed my own becoming.

Quiet

On retreat at a meditation center, I inadvertently broke my silence on the last of five days of quiet. I hadn't faced much difficulty with staying silent on the retreat. There were, of course, moments where automatic reflexes kicked in and I felt an urge to utter an apology when bumping into someone. However, I quickly found myself dropping further and further into the Noble Silence.

Part of what made it easy to settle in had to do with the sense of temporary community at the center. Everyone arrived ready to respect the quiet. We took seriously our responsibility to collectively nurture the silence. Quiet is a public good mauled by the tragedy of the commons. To enter a community of intentional silence was a breath of fresh air. Or, rather, it was an earful of fresh silence.

The ease of settling in made my inadvertent breaking of the silence all the more memorable. During the retreat, I quickly adopted a routine of getting up early and making a cup of coffee before our morning sit. I found that the ritual not only comforted me in a unique way — the solitude of the dining hall was an even deeper kind of quiet found only at the bookends of the day — but also the energizing caffeine banished the haziness that too often can visit during morning practice.

Before dawn on that last day, I began walking down the path to the kitchen to brew a cup when the immensity of the night sky halted me in my tracks. Piercing, radiating starlight punctured my chest, swelled, and then I gently breathed, "Wow."

I've experienced wonder and awe many times in my life. The moments of rapture come in many beautiful shapes and sizes. The release of "Wow" in the starlight may have been the most pure expression of awe in my life as yet because of the quiet that preceded it.

Silence, solitude, quiet, sanctuary — whatever you call it — offers fertile ground. So much grows there: reflection, transformation, healing, tranquility. So much can flow from a rest in that space, too. As we move on from a moment of quiet, we carry with us the fruits of its fertile ground. Often, we don't even know that we still carry them. Resting in the quiet, we tip silent dominoes that fall for many moments in the future.

Where is your quiet? What grows there? How can you come again to that space as to nurture you for the road ahead?

Off to find mine.

Forward, Forward, Forward

I'm still in a daze after our country elected Donald Trump. I've been searching for something to hang my hat on. Eventually, I remembered an old ad from Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. The ad's source material comes from a stump speech that Obama gave in Fredericksburg, Virginia in the pouring rain. It's vintage Obama on full display: enthusiastic and full of promise. So much has happened since we first elected Obama, but I still find the ad a salve in these complicated times. It's sappy, I know. But I think the words are instructive.

Throughout his speech, Obama plays with literal and metaphorical references to the storm they are in:

I understand times are hard. This won't be easy. The storm hasn't quite passed yet. Sometimes the skies look cloudy. And it's dark. And you think, "The rains will never pass."

I definitely feel a fear for the future. So much feels unknown and what feels known already scares me.

But Obama doesn't stay in this despair for too long. Only as he can do, Obama pivots to the audacity of hope:

But here's what I understand: that as long as all of us are together, as long as we are all committed, then there's nothing we can't do. That's why we started off this campaign saying, "Yes we can."

Then, he brings us all into a community of hope:

That's why we understood that black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native-American, young, old, rich, poor — it doesn't matter, we're all Americans. And our destiny will be shaped by us.

I think the inclusivity of hope is so important and an antidote to the vitriol of the 2016 campaign.

He then turns to the young generation so crucial to his organizing and election:

And this young generation that's out here... The young people of America understand that the clouds, these too, will pass. That a brighter day will come.

I like to think that Obama is referencing one of my favorite adages: "This too shall pass." I'm sure folks have seen the map of how young people voted in 2016, showing that politics might look different in the future.

Crucially, hope is an active thing. Obama closes with his call to action:

That you if you are willing work for it. If you are willing to roll up your sleeves. If you are willing to lock arms and march and talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, make a phone call, do some organizing, yes do some community organizing. Then I promise you, Fredericksburg, we will win Virginia. We will win this general election. And you and I together, we will change the country and change the world.

The only way out is through. Know hope and move forward, forward, forward.

Trump’s Anger and Clinton’s Mandela Moment

Martha Nussbaum opens her essay Beyond Anger with this claim: “There’s no emotion we ought to think harder and more clearly about than anger.”

This year's election vindicates Nussbuam. The campaign has shown the power of anger. As a candidate, Donald Trump effectively harnessed this dangerous emotion. It's a strategy that speaks to the devils in all of us with the potential for short-term success and a guarantee of long-term degradation. Clinton has an opportunity to lead with a response to anger that is more courageous, a response that is representative of who we are — and who we can be.

Three Ways We Can Respond to Anger
At the beginning of her essay, Nussbaum digs deep into philosophy’s past for a definition of anger:

Aristotle says that anger is a response to a significant damage to something or someone one cares about, and a damage that the angry person believes to have been wrongfully inflicted. He adds that although anger is painful, it also contains within itself a hope for payback.

Agreeing with Aristotle, Nussbuam notes:

[A]nger does contain a sort of strike-back tendency. Contemporary psychologists who study anger empirically agree with Aristotle in seeing this double movement in it, from pain to hope.

But this tendency — this hope for payback — doesn’t make sense, Nussbuam urges. In arguing her case, she imagines a scenario in which her friend has been raped:

I urgently want the offender to be arrested, convicted, and punished. But really, what good will that do? Looking to the future, I might want many things: to restore my friend’s life, to prevent and deter future rapes. But harsh treatment of this particular wrongdoer might or might not achieve the latter goal. It’s an empirical matter. And usually people do not treat it as an empirical matter: they are in the grip of an idea of cosmic fitness that makes them think that blood for blood, pain for pain is the right way to go. The payback idea is deeply human, but fatally flawed as a way of making sense of the world.

However, Nussbuam argues that the idea of payback can make sense in a limited situation:

There is one, and I think only one, situation in which the payback idea does make sense. That is when I see the wrong as entirely and only what Aristotle calls a ‘down-ranking’: a personal humiliation, seen as entirely about relative status. If the problem is not the injustice itself, but the way it has affected my ranking in the social hierarchy, then I really can achieve something by humiliating the wrongdoer: by putting him relatively lower, I put myself relatively higher, and if status is all I care about, I don’t need to worry that the real wellbeing problems created by the wrongful act have not been solved.

These two responses — the hope for payback and the pursuit of ‘down-ranking’ — aren’t all that’s available. Payback and down-ranking are only two of three paths:

A wronged person who is really angry, seeking to strike back, soon arrives, I claim, at a fork in the road. Three paths lie before her. Path one: she goes down the path of status-focus, seeing the event as all about her and her rank. In this case her payback project makes sense, but her normative focus is self-centred and objectionably narrow. Path two: she focuses on the original offence (rape, murder, etc), and seeks payback, imagining that the offender’s suffering would actually make things better. In this case, her normative focus is on the right things, but her thinking doesn’t make sense. Path three: if she is rational, after exploring and rejecting these two roads, she will notice that a third path is open to her, which is the best of all: she can turn to the future and focus on doing whatever would make sense, in the situation, and be really helpful. This may well include the punishment of the wrongdoer, but in a spirit that is deterrent rather than retaliatory.

So, to put my radical claim succinctly: when anger makes sense (because focused on status), its retaliatory tendency is normatively problematic, because a single-minded focus on status impedes the pursuit of intrinsic goods. When it is normatively reasonable (because focused on the important human goods that have been damaged), its retaliatory tendency doesn’t make sense, and it is problematic for that reason. Let’s call this change of focus the Transition. We need the Transition badly in our personal and our political lives, dominated as they all too frequently are by payback and status-focus.

Trump's Angry Route to the White House
It's tough to read Nussbuam’s essay and not think of Donald Trump’s campaign for president. As an individual, Trump is angry. The GOP establishment, the media, and opponents did not take his candidacy seriously. Trump's obviously fragile ego can't handle these slights and as a result, a deep anger boiled to the surface. He shamefully and painfully sought to delegitimatize a fundamentally decent president with the disgusting birther lie. Far from uniting his party, Trump sowed disastrous discord in the GOP, constantly seeking to humiliate — and thus down-rank — those who dare challenge him. Outlets that don't give him friendly coverage get banned and he shows wanton disrespect for the freedom of the press.

His campaign is also a reaction to an angry America. Some of this anger is understandable. When folks are left out of the political process, they gravitate towards someone who they feel can listen to them. Other anger is less sympathetic. As our country pushes for greater racial and gender equality, the status of the white male is threatened.

Trump's shameful denigration of the "other" is an obvious expression of down-ranking, appeasing those who feel their place in America is becoming more complicated and less privileged. Trump has insulted Mexican-Americans, Muslim-Americans, African-Americans, women, and people with disabilities. In response to Clinton's use of a private email server and a brazen example of payback, Trump has stoked the fire of anger by wildly threatening to jail his political opponent if he were to win the election.

In short, Trump's campaign is rotten to the core with anger.

Clinton’s Mandela Moment
In her essay, Nussbuam talks about how Nelson Mandela struggled against anger in South Africa:

[Mandela] often said that he knew anger well, and that he had to struggle against the demand for payback in his own personality. He reported that during his 27 years of imprisonment he had to practise a disciplined type of meditation to keep his personality moving forward and avoiding the anger trap. It now seems clear that the prisoners on Robben Island had smuggled in a copy of Meditations by the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, to give them a model of patient effort against the corrosions of anger.

Nussbaum relays a parable that Mandela used to tell people:

Imagine that the sun and the wind are contending to see who can get a traveller to take off his blanket. The wind blows hard, aggressively. But the traveller only pulls the blanket tighter around him. Then the sun starts to shine, first gently, and then more intensely. The traveller relaxes his blanket, and eventually he takes it off. So that, he said, is how a leader has to operate: forget about the strike-back mentality, and forge a future of warmth and partnership.

Mandela truly embodied this "patient effort against the corrosions of anger." Nussbuam details some of his acts of leadership: learning the language of his oppressors (Afrikaans), pushing the adoption of an inclusive national anthem, and rejecting opportunities to humiliate others.

Obviously, the context in this election is different from Mandela's story. However, Mandela demonstrated the courage one can have in leading with warmth when anger is understandable and the prospect of payback and humiliation is tempting. He chose a path in response to anger that was noble and pushed his country forward.

If elected, Clinton will have a similar opportunity. As president, she can respond to the anger of this campaign with divisiveness and further widen the chasm between fellow Americans. Or, she could chart a new path. I don't know if Clinton has the capacity to do so. However, I know that our country sorely needs a leader who can bring about reconciliation and cooperation.

Our Response
At the close of her essay, Nussbuam issues a clarion call:

Whenever we are faced with pressing moral or political decisions, we should clear our heads, and spend some time conducting what Mandela (citing Marcus Aurelius) referred to as ‘Conversations with Myself’. When we do, I predict, the arguments proposed by anger will be clearly seen to be pathetic and weak, while the voice of generosity and forward-looking reason will be strong as well as beautiful.

This election has been too much about anger. On November 8th, we are faced with a pressing moral and political decision in who we elect as President of the United States. We should, as Nussbaum suggests, clear our heads. I can only hope that the results on Election Day validate her idea that arguments made in anger are pathetic and weak and that the counterpoint will prevail.

We must choose that which is strong and beautiful, even if the vehicle for our becoming is flawed, broken, and frustrating. There will always be anger in society. It is up to us to decide how to respond to it.

Swimming Back to Reason

Recently, I had two challenges. Professionally, I didn't get a job that I wanted. Personally, I found myself in an Kobayashi Maru scenario. Both wounded me internally. In these two challenges’ wake, I’ve found myself catching up to reason, grasping at its salve.

In particular, the salve I seek lies in this essential and timeless guidance from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus in his Discourses:

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals and not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.

I take this sorting between what's within my control and what is not seriously. It's a mental model that I return to often and a wellspring for tranquility.

Unsurprisingly, I find myself drifting from this helpful perspective more often than not. Recent events are a good example.

With the professional set-back, I incorrectly labeled it as a failure. Stepping back, I was proud of my approach to pursuing the job. My application was crisp, powerful, and representative of my intentions to fiercely engage with the world. Still, even though the results of the process moved out of my hands the moment I submitted, the rejection stung.

With the personal situation, I unwisely extended my well-being to externals. How others perceived me. How others would act. Rather than keeping the locus of control firmly internal and focusing only on how I conduct myself, I tied my tranquility to variables out of my control.

The scariest part about the drifting away from Epictetus’s framework is that you don’t even realize it’s happening. Ego subtly pushes you away from safety and then, all of a sudden, you find yourself adrift in a stormy sea. Angry. Resentful. Injured.

As a result, I’m working to reassert reason and reestablish an internal locus of control. It feels as if I'm swimming to an island that I can see far off in the distance. The waves are against me. But I've made this swim before. Many times, in fact. Because of this, I know the safety that awaits me there. I know the promise of relief as I reach the beach, collapse, and recover.

Swimming back to reason is hard. But knowing that I’m swimming in the first place is probably more than half the battle. And the more times I swim back, the less likely I will drift in the future. All I can control is that I promise myself to just keep swimming.

The Art of Acknowledgement

As I discovered during my stay at a zen center, bowing is commonplace. You bow as you enter the dojo. You bow twice as you settle into your cushion. You bow when someone close to you sits down. You bow many times during the service after the sitting. You bow to the person across from you as you exit. You bow at the closing of a work session. You bow.

Some of the bowing I struggled against. I didn't love bowing to a statue of the Buddha. When I expressed my discomfort, one person framed bowing not to an external Buddha but the Buddha within. I found that helpful, though it didn't completely dispel my reservations.

In a larger sense, all the bowing is about acknowledgement. The bows at various points moving through the dojo were ways of creating increasingly sacred thresholds, both spiritual and physical. The bows to others are also acknowledgements: recognition of the spiritual work in process or the physical contribution.

I love how bowing in this way is an embodied way of acknowledging others. It reminds me of the Indian head-wiggle. This passage from Gregory David Roberts's Shantaram captures some of its depth:

No discovery pleased me more, on that first excursion from the city, than the full translation of the famous Indian head-wiggle. The weeks I’d spent in Bombay with Prabaker had taught me that the shaking or wiggling of the head from side to side – that most characteristic of Indian expressive gestures – was the equivalent of a forward nod of the head, meaning Yes. I’d also discerned the subtler senses of I agree with you, and Yes, I would like that. What I learned, on the train, was that a universal message attached to the gesture, when it was a used as a greeting, which made it uniquely useful.

Most of those who entered the open carriage greeted the other seated or standing men with a little wiggle of the head. The gesture always drew a reciprocal wag of the head from at least one, and sometimes several of the passengers. I watched it happen at station after station, knowing that the newcomers couldn’t be indicating Yes, or I agree with you with the head-wiggle because nothing had been said, and there was no exchange other than the gesture itself. Gradually, I realised that the wiggle of the head was a signal to others that carried an amiable and disarming message: I’m a peaceful man, I don’t mean any harm.

Moved by admiration and no small envy for the marvellous gesture, I resolved to try it myself. The train stopped at a small rural station. A stranger joined our group in the carriage. When our eyes met for the first time, I gave the little wiggle of my head, and a smile. The result was astounding. The man beamed a smile at me so huge that it was half the brilliance of Prabaker’s own, and set to such energetic head waggling in return that I was, at first, a little alarmed. By journey’s end, however, I’d had enough practice to perform the movement as casually as others in the carriage did, and to convey the gentle message of the gesture. It was the first truly Indian expression my body learned, and it was the beginning of a transformation that has ruled my life, in all the long years since that journey of crowded hearts.

Bows and head-wiggles have a simple, transformative power: they connect one person to the other through a physical gesture. They are the strokes of the brush in the art of acknowledgement.

I'd like to be a bolder artist and acknowledge others more. We are so quick to criticize. Our mental machinery runs so fast that we are already thinking of a response before someone finishes speaking. If I focus more on acknowledgement, maybe I can slow down my own internal race to engage, and welcome in greater patience and kindness.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you'll see me bowing and head-wiggling any time soon. Every culture has its own avenues for expressing the art of acknowledgement, which is at its deepest level a practice of the heart and mind. So, inside, I am bowing and head-wiggling. And from this space of acknowledgement, I see you.

Identity

Should I keep my identity small, avoiding statements like "I am a __", or should I embrace and share those pieces of myself?

Take, for example, my perspective on faith. Should I identify as an atheist? Last year, my dad punched my arm and said, "Why do you always say you're an atheist? If you don't believe in God, what do you believe in?" He has a point: saying I'm an atheist doesn't tell my whole story. To my credit, that's a point I made myself:

[T]hough it does not say anything about what I do find important . . . the fact that I am an atheist says much about what I do not believe in. I view the world's religions with the same skepticism that I apply to any idea; under that standard, I've found them wanting in their most important aspects.

What I wrote is both wrong and right. Strictly speaking, my atheism doesn't reveal anything additive about who I am because it doesn't implicate a particular philosophy of living. It'd be more accurate to say "I'm a secular humanist." However, people don't really know much about secular humanism; "atheist," on the other hand, falls squarely within our vernacular, often absorbing other meanings. In an important way, I'm caged by commonplace language.

Identifying as an atheist in this more permeable sense implies that I think there is a way to live a spiritual, ethical, and fulfilling life without faith. Like every other fellow human, I am a seeker of meaning and value. Nothing about my lack of faith detracts from that quest.

As a result, there's value in sharing my identity as an atheist. If more nonbelievers talk about their atheism with a sense of public curiosity and kindness, we can do two things. First, we can find community: there's no place in which nonbelievers gather and discuss how to navigate life, though the work of Alain de Botton is heartening. Second, we can shape the conversation about a life of nonbelief. Nonbelievers are a minority, often a much-maligned, seemingly amoral one. Perhaps publicly identifying as an atheist can present counter-narrative.

So, I should loudly proclaim "I'm an atheist", right? It communicates something about me and contributes to changing the perception of living without faith. Not so fast. There might be danger in so clearly identifying as an atheist -- or anything else. Paul Graham makes the case for keeping your identity small. The crux of his thought process:

[P]eople can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan. . . . The most intriguing thing about this theory, if it's right, is that it explains not merely which kinds of discussions to avoid, but how to have better ideas. If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.

Graham is on to something. Identities can cloud our judgement, forcing cognitive errors like confirmation bias. Graham focuses in particular on identities in religion and politics. Maintaining a small identity could have two, interrelated benefits. We might have the intellectual freedom to explore all positions on any particular issue. At the same time, we can stay wrong no longer than we have to by changing our mind in light of new evidence or lines of thought. Each of these benefits flow from a mind unchained by stated identities.

On the other hand, Graham doesn't adequately explore the value of identities. There might be value in communicating an identity to others, as I explore with atheism above.

Identities can also serve as personal guideposts for our lives. Rather than taking every moment to decide how we want to act, certain identities can serve as heuristics. Guideposts identities flow from a collection of "isms." For me, my current set might be humanism, progressivism, minimalism, Stoicism, and Buddhism. I've picked up each of these "isms" thoughtfully, thinking about how this meta selection for behavior and living can play out. Undoubtedly, dogma can creep into these perspectives, as "isms" are wont to do. But they have some utility. We don't need to decide how to live every single moment.

Given all this, how should I navigate identity? I don't have a clear-cut answer. Identities vary and that fact may require differential treatment. I gravitate towards allowing myself to identify as something but building in aggressive self-doubt and frequent reflection, particularly in the subjects of religion and politics. Other identities need not be so carefully observed. If I find myself falling off this tightrope too often, I must revaluate my position.

What about you? What, if anything, are you? I welcome your perspective.

A fresh sheet of paper, a good pen, and a cup of coffee is a recipe for focus, clarity, and problem solving.

Huxley's Forgotten Dystopia and Our Reality

I recently stumbled upon this quote from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death exploring Orwell's and Huxley's differing dystopian views:

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

Snowden's revelations and the rise of the rise of the surveillance state has introduced a more Orwellian bent to the story of the world, but I find Postman's analysis compelling. We all have a part to play in reclaiming our attention and collectively sorting out the signal from the noise.

Re: Violence and Pain

I've been thinking a lot about the unrelenting wave of violence suffered by black people in America. The onslaught of the lost has shamefully numbed me. I turn my eyes to each new headline and reach into the well for outrage at the injustice only to come up empty.

But people are in pain, a pain that's been built, fortified, and justified, brick by injuring brick, for all of our flawed nation's history. And the storm of violence shows no signs of breaking.

We have to turn towards the pain and the violence if there's any hope for us.

For the pain, the first thing I can say is that it's not my own. This post from Jedidiah Jenkins navigates to what I think is an important conclusion:

I don’t know what to say or do. But I am here. I cannot know what it is like to be you. But I can listen and I can be a better friend. And I should make sacrifices. I love you. And I’m sorry for my frightened selfishness. For my blindness, at first unconscious, and then chosen.

Even if I don't know you, I am here and I love you. If there is any balm in the insignificant compassion I can offer, it is yours.

Even with the pain, which must be recognized, there's also the violence. In thinking about it, I've returned to a powerful documentary I watched last summer called The Act of Killing, which deals with the killings in Indonesia from 1965-66.

The documentary takes you to some of the darkest corners of the human experience. In a conversation with Sam Harris, the documentary's director, Joshua Oppenheimer, offers a valuable reflection at the 42 minute mark:

Recognizing that virtually every act of evil in our history has been perpetrated by human beings like us, it's uncomfortable because it means that we might, if we lived in other situations, do the same thing. If we grew up in any of these perpetrators' families in 1950s Indonesia, come 1965, we might make the same decision. We would hope that we wouldn't, but most of us are very lucky never to have to find that out. And that's uncomfortable.

Oppenheimer continues, digging a little deeper:

But if you overcome that, you quickly realize that recognizing that every perpetrator is human with very few exceptions and shares the same human morality is the only hopeful response. Because if there's just monsters among us then we either have to surrender ourselves to this kind of thing happening again and again and again, in a kind of despair, or we have to isolate the monsters and somehow neutralize them. And then, how do we stop ourselves from becoming the monsters?

Answering his own question:

Whereas if we can build societies in which we foster the widest possible empathy and where we also foster doubt, where we teach children to doubt what authority tells them so that it's more difficult to incite people to join groups that would betray their individual morality, then we ought to be able to build societies where this kind of unimaginable violence truly becomes unimaginable, where it becomes impossible.

Oppenheimer's reflection points us to at least one part of how we can navigate our way out of the violence. We have to recognize the humanity in the perpetrators. At the same time, we have to foster doubt, gut-wrenching, soul-searching doubt. And we have to be wary of tribal politics, for it is tribal politics that led to the systems that meter out violence. We have to build and rebuild a society from first principles that reflect the good in us. I believe that's possible. In light of the alternative, I have to believe that it is possible.

I don't have answers. I mostly have questions. I am ready to learn and to change my mind if need be. But I want to join the conversation, because not doing so isn't a viable option anymore.