Confronting the rubbish that clutters our minds

 

Discarded X-mas tree obscuring truth & beauty
An art shot: CC Jean Stimmell

Thomas Merton is a hero of mine, about whom I have written before. I feel close to him not only in a spiritual and intellectual sense, but also personally, as we share a thicket of contradictions about what we have written and how we have conducted our lives – a mixture of cloistered retreat and sensuous adventure. 

Earlier in Merton’s life, Alan Jacob writes, “he was politically active, an eager participant in leftist demonstrations, and he grew increasingly interested in Eastern religions.”^⁠1 Whatever he wrote about was always pertinent, never stale, and, remarkably, more relevant today than it was in his day.

I also like to think we have a psychic connection. In 1968, he published his book that I like best, “Conjectures of the Guilty Bystander” (CGB). That was also the year I returned home from the trauma of Vietnam, and the same year Merton died grotesquely from accidental electrocution.

In this book, Merton was not trying to write a scholarly treatise. Instead, as he says in his preface, “These notes add up to a personal version of the world of the 1960s…They are an implicit dialogue with other minds, a dialogue in which questions are raised.” 

Questions that have become even more  applicable today.”

Here’s one such nugget: “The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see we cannot think.”^⁠2

 I’m in a constant battle to purge this insiduous, ever-increasing flotsam and jetsam from my brain. Staying focused helps, and physical exercise does too. However, what has aided the most has been opening up to spirituality: not the Catholicism of Thomas Merton, although I greatly respect it, but Eastern religion. In particular, meditation has allowed me to glimpse a deeper reality that is usually obscured by the overflowing clutter of my mind.

I’ve recently discovered that Complexity Theory complements my meditation, as espoused by Neil Theise.^⁠3  He posits, along with other scientists, that consciousness, rather than being an isolated physical component of the brain, is ubiquitous, residing within every atom in the universe, as well as in every cell of the body.

Now, whenever I’m lucky enough to enter a deep state of peace during meditation, I can name the transcendental feeling that comes over me: I’m merging with the universal consciousness of the universe. 

***

Now, back to Merton: Connected to the rubbish that clutters our brains, he points out the pitfalls of overwork. Worse than just becoming discombobulated, overwork is a form of violence:

“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.”

Merton, in his wisdom, understood how a frenzied lifestyle destroys a person’s inner peace. “It destroys the fruitfulness of his work because it kills the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful.” Thanks to his guidance, I have learned to throttle down enough to savor the moment more fully. 

This insidious virus I harbored, hampering my activism and peace of mind, has continued to spread until it's now an epidemic threatening our whole way of life. No one can dispute that overwork is the tyranny of today, not only for activists but also for idealists, artists, and committed, creative folks of every stripe.

In conclusion, I ask: Where are today’s prophets to guide us out of the wilderness, as Merton did for us in the 1960s?

XXX

¹ https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/thomas-merton-the-monk-who-became-a-prophet

² Merton, Thomas. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Image Classic) (p. 72).  Kindle Edition.

³ “Living at the Edge of Chaos." Neil Theise

Tricycle Talk :  “Living at the Edge of Chaos” Episode #88 with Neil Theise May 10, 2023

Is Western civilization an empathy weakling?

Meeting Others Where They Are
Concord Farmer's Market 2019
CC Jean Stimmell

I recently objected in a ‘My Turn’ op-ed to Elon Musk’s bizarre claim that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” This assertion is yet another example of the Trump Administration engaging in what George Orwell called “doublespeak:” fooling citizens into believing that things are the opposite of what they really are.

Classic examples of Orwellian doublespeak include “war is peace,” and “freedom is slavery.”

Musk’s statement outraged columnists across the nation. Molly Worthen in the NYT was incredulous: How can we not want children to grasp perspectives of people different from themselves?”^⁠1 

Michael Ventura, author of Applied Empathy, wrote that belittling empathy is part of a deliberate strategy. He pointed out that Trump has a long track record of disparaging empathy as naïve: “casting strength as synonymous with domination, suggesting that to care is to lose—and to control is to win.”

It is classic Orwellian doublespeak, Ventura pointed out: “They want to reframe care as weakness, dignity as naïveté and trust as a liability.” He urged us not to take the bait.

Until Trump and his apostles came along, empathy had always been regarded as a moral good that promoted virtuous deeds. No longer. Sadly, these empathy nay-sayers have become an increasingly loud chorus, reaching beyond politics and business to infect even my old profession of psychology.

I was dumbfounded when I read that a psychologist like Paul Bloom would adopt a Trumpian stance, asserting that empathy is a “parochial, narrow-minded” emotion — one that “will have to yield to reason if humanity is to survive.”^⁠2

As a retired psychotherapist, I think he has gone off the deep end. So did Cameron, Inzlicht, and Cunningham in a NYT article:^⁠3   These psychologists consider empathy critical to human survival. They proved, contrary to public perceptions, that empathy is not a fixed personality trait – something you either have or you don’t. Instead, it is a skill that requires practice.  It can be improved upon with effort, like learning to play tennis.

Their research shows that when individuals are made aware that empathy is a skill, they put more effort into understanding groups different from their own. Through this effort to understand, their empathy for others grew. Their conclusion: Empathy for people unlike us can be expanded simply by modifying our views about empathy.  

 

I learned that lesson early in my clinical practice.  I admit that occasionally I wasn’t drawn to a new client who, at first glance, might seem hostile, needy, or narcissistic.  

But after I got to know my clients,  I  was able to connect with every one of them, valuing each as a unique and valuable individual. It was a natural process that required no effort on my part, with one significant caveat: I had to first get out of my head – stop my chattering, judgmental mind – to apprehend what the person before me was really saying.

Jamil Zaki has written an excellent book, “The War for Kindness,” reinforcing the notion that empathy is a skill, a skill that requires making a conscious choice to show empathy. Her conclusion is that with practice“over time, empathic choices add up—building empathic habits and, eventually, empathic people.”^⁠4 

***

The empathy research I conducted revealed a very distressing aspect: studies have shown that powerful individuals exhibit less empathy than any other group. This happens because they have little incentive to interact with other people.

 It is a sad commentary on our times that two such powerful billionaires have been able to buy their way to the top of our government—they exemplify how wealthy and influential individuals often exhibit negligible empathy for the downtrodden, the poor, and those who are different from themselves.

xxx

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/opinion/sunday/empathy-school-college.html

² https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html

³ https://www.nytimes.com/2015//12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html

⁴ https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/in_a_divided_world_we_need_to_choose_empathy

My memories of Vietnam 50 years later

 

1966: Passing civilian ships as we prepared our maiden voyage up the My Tho River

The Vietnam War was a collective trauma that became a double-edged sword, representing both an unforgettable nightmare and the bloody spur that drove the transformational change that defined the 1960s. Alongside the Civil Rights movement, this war propelled social justice and sustainability to the forefront of our generation’s consciousness.

The conflict killed over 58000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese, including appalling massacres at places like My Lai, where American soldiers slaughtered more than 500 women, children, and old men.^⁠1 

We dropped over 5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam—the most extensive bombardment of any country in history—and more than twice as much tonnage as was dropped in all of World War II.^⁠2

The Vietnam War, in tandem with Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’, drove home the horrific dangers of pesticides, awakening the environmental movement. Vietnam stands front and center because it is an epicenter of wild species diversity, with many unique species. That was especially true before we flattened rural areas with 4 million tons of bombs, 400,000 tons of napalm, and 19 million gallons of Agent Orange^⁠3 – a curse for which I receive a VA disability.

Those of us in our generation who experienced our country running amok in the Vietnam era yearned for a simpler, more authentic, and more sustainable lifestyle. 

Here’s the background to my writing this: I was sitting around, feeling sorry for myself while recuperating from an operation, when I stumbled across a mesmerizing NYT photo essay commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.^⁠4 

The Vietnam photographs propelled me off the couch, overwhelmed by vivid memories of those years. As Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Vietnamese American author, wrote: “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.”^⁠5 Here are a few of mine:

I served in the Navy on an LST that delivered troops and equipment along the coast and into the rivers of Vietnam. I didn’t encounter much combat, but in 1968, the year I returned home, my ship, Westchester County LST 1167, was mined by Viet Cong sappers, resulting in the loss of 23 men, some of whom I knew.

The Vietnam War was personal to every American because of the sheer number of casualties and the fact that no one could feel safe because of the draft. Country Joe’s popular song expressed everyone’s worst fear: “Don’t be the first on your block to get sent home in a box.”

I grew up in Northwood but attended Pittfield High School. Among my circle of friends, two were killed in action, three returned with disabling wounds, and one committed suicide.

My personal memories wouldn’t make it onto a John Wayne highlight reel. We were relatively safe, battling only the stress and exhaustion of shuttling soldiers and armaments around, sometimes for months at a time without setting foot on land; there was no respite: 4 hours on duty and 4 hours off in the tropical heat that burned our feet through the soles of our shoes while our garbage piled up on the deck like a blossoming tent city.

 I remember the suicides in our squadron: a boy found hanging in the paint locker; the boy on the midnight stern watch who disappeared into the shimmering wake sometime between 12 and 4 a.m. There were others as well. It was always the youngest and the newest: it’s quite a shock to go from your Midwestern high school basketball games to float aimlessly around in the South China Sea, halfway around the world.

I also remember with gratitude both the goodness and diversity of the men I served alongside. It still amazes me that one can assemble a crew made up of individuals from every conceivable background who, under trying circumstances, become a tight-knit clan of brothers able to overlook each other’s shortcomings and come together in camaraderie to accomplish what had to be done.

In closing, I want to remind younger generations who resent us baby boomers – sometimes for good reason – that not all of us have spurned our obligations to our fellow citizens and the natural world to live high off the hog, greedily making money at the expense of others.

Many of us shaped by the blast furnace of Vietnam have rejected America’s wasteful, consumer society and have instead worked to create a more sustainable society based on social and environmental justice.

xxx

¹ https://www.history.com/articles/my-lai-massacre

² https://renewvn.org/the-most-bombed-place-on-earth/

³ Ibid.

⁴ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/world/asia/vietnam-war-photography-impact.html

⁵ Ibid

The fundamental weakness of Western civilization

George Orwell at work
photograph by ullstein bild

According to Elon Musk, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” 

When I read this in the Guardian, I almost fell out of my chair. Sadly, it gets worse! This heresy is not merely a hallucination emulating from Elon’s ketamine-fueled brain: It is gaining traction not only among evangelical Christians, “who have begun to recast the pangs of empathy that might complicate their support for Donald Trump” but also Catholics in the JD Vance mold.^⁠1

This is, perhaps, the most extreme example of the Trump Administration engaging in what George Orwell called“doublespeak,” coining the word in his dystopian novel “1984:” This is a trick to try to fool citizens into believing things are the opposite of what they really are. Examples of Orwellian doublespeak include “war is peace;” and “freedom is slavery.”

“Empathy is weakness” is Elon’s over-the-top contribution to doublespeak. It flies in the face of the Golden Rule, which calls on us to treat others as we would want to be treated by them. Various expressions of this rule have been the bedrock of religions and creeds throughout the ages.

Golden Rule gained strength as recently as the Obama administration; that’s when scientists discovered “mirror cells”– a type of nerve cell that reacts both when a subject performs an action and when the subject sees that action performed by someone else. 

This discovery provided a biological explanation for empathy, strengthening religion’s age-old claim. Perhaps this is what led Obama to declare that America was not suffering from a budget deficit but an empathy deficit.

What a transformation from then to now:  From the height of Obama lamenting the cuts to social programs as an ‘empathy deficit’ to Musk gleefully slicing through social programs while wielding a giant chainsaw.

Many other examples of over-the-top doublespeak come to mind, like Trump’s oft-repeated mantra that he won the 2020 election in a landslide when, according to all credible sources, he lost.

But to me, Musk’s empathy statement takes the cake. Riding the wave of their unchecked power, Republicans and Musk forget history. He is a throwback to Ayn Rand, who was the darling of conservatives in the 1950s. Rand wrote popular books promoting ultimate individual freedom while showing no mercy to the weak and disadvantaged. In many ways, Musk is Rand’s clone.

This isn’t the first time Republicans, while in complete control of the government, have leaned too far over their skis and crashed in a ridiculous fashion.  Just look at what happened during the McCarthy era in the 1950s when the FBI was run by J. Edgar Hoover, a right-wing zealot, much like our current director, Kash Patel. 

Here’s one example.

Influenced by testimony from extremists like Rand, Hoover’s FBI issued an official report on the movie industry, including his findings on a revered Christmas classic we still watch. Hoover determined that Frank Capra’s classic,  “It’s a Wonderful Life,” was “written by Communist sympathizers” attempting to instigate class warfare while “demonizing bankers."^⁠2

I predict future generations will reflect on the second Trump administration similarly to how we reflect on the McCarthy era of the 1950s and its baseless witch hunt against loyal Americans accused of being communists.

xxx

¹ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/08/empathy-sin-christian-right-musk-trump

² https://www.openculture.com/2014/12/ayn-rand-helped-the-fbi-identify-its-a-wonderful-life-as-communist-propaganda.html