Remembering the Past to Appreciate What We Have

image from Rep. Valoree Swanson's facebook page

This is the season for Texas history. March 2^, 1836, was the signing of Texas Declaration of independence from Mexico. While that was going on, a tiny force was holding out against an overwhelmingly large Mexican army—for thirteen days—at the Alamo, which finally fell on March 6^th. While things were looking pretty bleak, it was only a little over a month later, April 21^st, at the Battle of San Jacinto, that Texas won its war for independence.

Last Saturday I played music as part of the festivities at Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed. That location is about halfway between us and the grandkids, so we talked their parents into bringing them. When I was done playing, we still had some look around time, and took a few photos.

Washington-on-the-Brazos, where Texas declared independence from Mexico

The building, at Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed, was a lot more rough frontier than the original US colonists signed their declaration.

re-enactors of the signing

Re-enactors gave us an idea of the people who signed the Texas Declaration. Weather was good, but chilly. It's unpredictable this time of year. The signers in 1836 did it as quickly as they could, to get out of that drafty building.

inside the building where the Texas Declaration was signed

They had a good model for a Declaration of Independence, since they had the US as a model.

Grandddaughter Little PS 1

The kids got to make things: a cornhusk doll, some tooled leather.

demonstrating an old-time potter's wheel

We got to watch a potter at work.

demonstrating an old-time weaving loom

And a weaver.

I’m amazed at the ingenuity of what people figured out to do before electricity. The machines are involved and detailed, but foot-powered.

a protestor

I took a picture of this guy because of his costume and swinging the flag. But then I heard what he was saying. He was located in a protest zone, declaring his First Amendment right to express his views. All good. But his view was that Mexicans had been mistreated here in Texas, and it was their land. I think he stopped short of saying we ought to give it back; I didn't keep listening.

But this is curious. He’s at the place where Texans—including both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking—fought and won a war for independence from Mexico, because their dictator, Santa Anna, had taken away their rights, and all efforts to peacefully seek redress were thwarted. Stephen F. Austin had spent 18 months imprisoned, without charges, just for seeking a peaceful solution. He returned to Texas saying the only option left was war.

This painting of the Battle of San Jacinto
hangs in the Texas Capitol, but I got this image from History.com

After the Battle of San Jacinto, a brief and decisive victory for Texas, which included capturing Santa Anna, Texas was free of that tyranny. It’s the same way the United States became free from the tyranny of the British king following the Revolutionary War. The argument to give Texas back to Mexico makes no more sense than giving back the thirteen original American colonies to Britain. Once a war is fought for freedom, you don’t give your land back just to be nice.

It’s ironic that this man was making his argument in a place made safe for him to make it—because we won freedom from tyranny. And he’s complaining about that?

Our US Constitution is the best document ever created for allowing people to have freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

This is a good time to be alive. Innovation that has come out of a free market over the past couple of centuries is phenomenal. We live in relative peace. People all over the world are now more likely to have their basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing met than at any time in history.

It’s good to take a look at history now and then to help us appreciate how very good things are in the present.

Giving Thanks For and To

Gratitude, it is said, is the way to happiness. In a world—a fallen world, as we say in Christianity—where there’s plenty of bad things happening, and even purposeful malevolence, the way to happiness is to notice and appreciate the good.

image found here

A common suggestion for those suffering depression is to keep a gratitude journal, a daily recognition of good things. It helps shift the focus away from the bad that is so easy to find.

But there’s something about the word gratitude that we should notice: you are grateful for something, and you are grateful to someone. Simply being grateful, in a vacuum without the connection, is something else. Contentment. Gladness. Maybe resignation. But not gratitude.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, a synonym for gratitude, let’s notice what we’re thankful for—count those blessings. And also notice who merits our gratitude. That could be family members, friends, people who have done good things for us, or who are loving toward us.

But with every good thing we’re thankful for, and every good person we’re thankful to, there’s another layer of thanks to give. That is to God. He placed those good people in your life. He blessed you with the opportunities and the life, and the support. He even gives peace and comfort when you face the inevitable bad things that happen in every life.

I’d been thinking about this idea—that gratitude, or thanks, must be give to someone—for a few days now, after watching a debate between Jordan Peterson and Susan Blackmore. It’s from June, and was done in Great Britain, I believe. And the debate is about the relative merits of atheism and religion. There’s just a small portion that refers to gratitude. Susan Blackmore, the atheist, brings it up. And Jordan Peterson insists that gratitude can’t be just free floating.

Jordan Peterson (right) debates Susan Blackmore
screen shot from here

In this part of the conversation, Jordan Peterson has just pointed out that there’s a lot that undergirds society that was bloodily fought for. You can’t just decide you’re separate from that when you’re the beneficiary of whatever built civilization for you. Susan Blackmore tries to agree, that she’s grateful. But he doesn’t let her get away with calling that gratitude free floating. This is about 30 minutes in:

SB: All that leads me to gratitude for all that we have. I mean, I recognize that. I recognize that has nothing to do with any religious basis at all. I recognize that I could not come on the train here, have a really interesting discussion, meet Justin again, have a nice glass of cold water, without a lot of other people doing it for me. That gratitude, which is one of the things that you quite rightly put into your book, it gives good place to it. It’s very important. That doesn’t come from anything religious, unless you say that because I was brought up a Christian, it came from there. But I don’t base it on that anymore.

JP: Where do you think it comes from?

SB: I think it comes from a recognition that—  I’ve done a lot of meditation. I’ve meditated every day for thirty years, and I think that this has something to do with it. But it’s observing the inner consequences of different ways of confronting the world. And I’m much more in recent years in the habit of waking up in the morning, even if it’s raining in January in England, and looking out and going, Ah! And it’s a feeling of gratitude. Not gratitude towards God, or towards anybody or anything. Just free-floating gratitude. That seems to have a positive consequence. I set the day up better. And it’s kind of self-perpetuating. It pops up again and again.

Moderator: Do you think you can just have gratitude in general, or must gratitude always be given towards something, and ultimately…?

JP: Well, that’s a good question. That goes back to our discussion about acting things out. Gratitude is something you feel towards something. And you can say, “Well, I don’t feel it towards anything in particular.” And I would say, “Well, all right, that diffuse nothing that you feel it toward serves in your psychological hierarchy as your equivalent of God.”

SB: You know, but it’s gratitude— This morning for example, I looked out and it was so green. We’ve had frosts and white the last few days, and it was green this morning. And it was just gratitude to the universe, if you like. It’s not really God, because it’s not a creator. It’s not anything I can pray to. It’s—  I mean…

JP: Why do you feel gratitude towards it, then?

SB: I don’t know, but I find—

JP: That’s fine.

There’s no resolution here between them. They go on to other things. But I think Dr. Peterson has won the point. You can’t have gratitude without it being directed somewhere, toward someone. And “whatever serves in your psychological hierarchy as your equivalent of God” is what you’re aiming that toward.

I prefer to be more direct. I think the God I pray to, and believe is my loving Creator, who made me with purpose, is worthy of my thanks. And I offer that to Him. In addition, there are the loving people around me who also deserve the thanks I give.

Giving that thanks does indeed make life happier than it would be without the recognition and appreciation for the good.

May you find much in your life to give your thanks for and to!

First, Be Thankful for What’s Already Good

Long ago I had a job that included quality control for language translation software. My assignment was to find errors, to see if I could make things go awry. It was kind of a fun game. I had a few challenging words I’d try out, like “fitting,” which can mean a lot of different things, and be used as a verb, a gerund, a noun, an adjective…. Fun times in grammar world.

What happened when I found an error was, I showed the results to the programmers, and listed the things that didn’t work. Then they worked on those things—and generalized somewhat to avoid similar errors with other words. And then they had me try to blow it up again. When I finally gave my approval, we called it “Lindacated.” And everyone had a little celebration.

computer used in the illustration found here

What didn’t happen was, “I found an error, so you need to start over.” Because there was a lot that was right with the program already. We didn’t want that to get thrown out. That would be a waste. And starting over, or even doing major reworking, would introduce new errors.

People have different approaches toward errors and imperfections. Maybe it’s a personality proclivity to see something wrong, and focus on that, to the exclusion of all that’s right. But one example of imperfection does not require outrage, activist energy, and major interventions.

Take a look at our Constitution. It’s a formula for protecting our God-given rights in a way that offers maximum freedom, prosperity, and civilization. And yet that isn’t accepted as truth. We have people who say that, because our founders didn’t write it to instantly wipe out slavery, which pre-dated this nation and its Constitution by all the previous millennia, therefore the Constitution is basically flawed and should be ignored or thrown out—or overthrown, which is how changing the form of government works.

Would it have been nice if the Constitution had been able to accomplish that eventual outcome, which was in our Declaration, that “all men are created equal”? Yes. But the Constitution did set that process in motion. And no other such document had ever accomplished it by that time either.

Another example is the criminal justice system. Say a black man is killed in an altercation with police. Some questions have to be answered about that. What were the circumstances? Was there reason to believe the person a threat to law enforcement or the public? Did police follow procedures? These questions are asked, as a matter of policy, whenever a police firearm is discharged, with much greater scrutiny when someone is killed.

So that policy backdrop is like the Constitution. It’s a structure in place to make things as right as possible in a world where a lot of things go wrong. It didn’t do all that we would now wish for, so does that mean we should throw it out and start from scratch?

Sometimes law enforcement makes a mistake, and a death or injury happens that ought to have been avoided. When that happens, we need to look at what happened, look at policies, fine tune them as needed, in an attempt to prevent such errors in the future.

What shouldn’t happen is a wholesale distrust of all law enforcement, with accusations of racism and hatred and purposeful murder. There’s a lot right with our law enforcement system; we don’t want to lose that as we look at what we can improve.

Another example might be calling “systemic racism” in a country where it’s hard to find examples of actual racism, and it’s practically impossible to find examples of racism that are widely accepted by any major portion of society. Can we find an outlier or two? If we look, yes. Should we label all of society racist, then? No. There’s a lot of society—the vast majority, and the totality of any civilized portions of society—that believes we’re all created equal, and we actually do judge each other based on character rather than skin color. Do we want to throw out those good parts because we aren’t all of us 100% perfect?

Are there men who treat women inappropriately? Yes. And we have too many examples. But that doesn’t nullify the goodness of the vast majority of men in our lives, contributing to our civilization. We can’t allow disposing of due process and the idea of innocent until proven guilty just because some women have been abused. Abusing men with a loss of justice is not an acceptable trade off.

Wherever we look at disagreements in political issues, we’ll find examples. The ones I’ve given are from a particular side. It’s not impossible for conservatives to extrapolate faults as well; most of us see Obamacare as something that should be thrown out entirely. But that’s because Obamacare itself was an overthrow of the healthcare system—because insurance is too expensive for some. (We’ve discussed elsewhere why government interference caused that problem, and why less government and more free market would be the solution.)

So, yes, I have a particular view on this. Nevertheless, I’d like to suggest a better way, in the spirit of the celebration this week.

There are two ways of looking at reality: with a critical eye, or with thanksgiving.

Is there a place for a critical eye? Yes, when we need to improve something. But it should be in the spirit of appreciation for what works, so that we do not lose what works and introduce even more new things that do not work.

So here’s the action plan: when something comes up, something emotional, that makes you think, “Something’s got to be done to rectify this!” take a deep breath. Wait for more details. Look at the overall system, and especially look for something positive in the overall system. What’s working? Get a broader perspective, away from the pinpoint of the event. Only then can you see how the “problem” fits within the overall picture.

After that, you might realize all that’s needed is making sure the in-place procedures are followed to lead to the best outcome under the circumstances. Or maybe there are only small adjustments needed. Think of the energy you’ll save by not crusading for revolution when a little tweaking will do more good—and less potential harm.

It’s a more peaceful approach. Less driven by emotion of a particular event, without a fuller perspective. More likely to preserve the existing good.

Look for the good. Appreciate what’s good. Be thankful for what is already working. And then improve things with wisdom.