I’ve had a bit of a difficult morning. I didn’t feel quite “right.” Know what I mean? This “not quite right” brought me right into what I’ve been writing about lately, namely the murky realm of “feelings”. In fact, Deb and I are furiously writing and re-writing our latest endeavor, namely a book tentatively entitled, I Need to Tell You How I Feel. So, this “not quite right” feeling is quite like what we have been writing about; this “something”, or call it a “feeling,” may or may be terribly important, but it is real and needs to be acknowledged, examined, and valued so I can decide or discover what I should say or do…if anything. As I have written about in this whole business of “feelings,” I have allowed myself to “just feel” emotionally and physically, staving off too much thinking and certainly staving off doing or saying anything. As I have previously written, “feelings” as I understand them, are deep-seated, spiritual, and core self phenomena that then erupt first into physical, then emotional, then cognitive, and then productive expressions of feelings. You will note that the way I am using the word feelings is not to equate them with emotions, but suggest that emotions are but a subset of feelings.
One further note before I go on with the “left, right, and center” blog, if you will indulge me, please. People of different personality types and temperaments tend to gravitate towards one of the four elements of feelings, namely physical, emotional, cognitive, and productive. I tend to be a person who races right through the first three of these elements into doing something. So, my strength tends to be getting something done and fixing what needs to be fixed, while my weakness (strength to a fault) tends to be in doing too quickly and too instantaneously, often without sufficient time being spent in the physical, emotional, or cognitive areas of feelings. In the present case I have tried to allow myself to stay with these first three elements of feelings to get to an honest and appropriate place of doing something.
The “something that is not quite right” has to do with Facebook. I’m not a regular on Facebook and don’t have 700 “friends.” Maybe 50. And I don’t spend much time searching the friends I do have, except to keep up with the doings and dreamings of my friends, which is always fun. I’m sure I’m not the only Facebook guy who has been distressed by the increasing amount of advertising on Facebook, but I can tolerate that because I can just scroll down the page. What I have found, however, is that I am not tolerating increasingly vitriolic, one-sided, and mean-spirited political/social statements. I wrote to my Facebook friends some time ago that I would no longer respond to such statements, even to “like” them because I found it was not good for me to do so (read: “felt” bad to do so). This worked for the most part, but I still get postings of such statements, often from dear friends, that stir less than valuable feelings with me. In other words, I am not any better after having read such postings. Rather, I am worse, whatever that means. I have been musing about this matter for some days, if not weeks, and have worked diligently to follow my own advice on feelings: first physical (pit of my stomach not right), emotional (largely sadness), cognitive (agree, disagree), before I do something. But I think I have come to honestly decide what to do. But before I identify what action I intend to do, let me tell you my dilemma, which is the “left, right, center” part of this blog because I am quite left, quite right, and quite center on things social, political, and religious.
For instance, on the matter of LGBTQ, I suppose I am quite to the left. There is little doubt that one’s gender orientation is largely, if not entirely biological/genetic in origin. I have seen many gay patients and friends over the years who admit that they have never had heterosexual interest. While their reports do not amount to a scientific study, there are studies that are quite solid that seemingly prove that fact, not the least of which being the lack of any person every having “changed” from homosexual to heterosexual. So on this matter, I am quite left of center, if we use that term, but I am not left on all things.
I find myself quite right of center on several matters, including minimum wages and unions. I think, forgive me my left-leaning friends, but I think unions have long outlived their usefulness and have for years only entitled a very few at the cost of many. And as for a minimum wage, the current direction of companies and corporations are moving towards better hourly wages all on their own. You can’t find a job in Madison for less than $14/hour, which by the way is $28,000 a year. Here, capitalism works, at least it works when we don’t have monopolies.
Unfortunately, monopolies of any kind tend to protect the few at the expense of the many. Monopolies, by the way, would include unions, but also Google, Amazon, and the like, not unlike the monopolies that my favorite president, Theodore Roosevelt, Republican by the way, attacked. He also attacked violence begun by unions. Oh, for a person who could see both sides of the social/political spectrum today. So when then there is a free flow of opportunity, capitalism works just fine, but any kind of financial control makes capitalism only for the rich and powerful.
So I’m on the left and the right on such things, but there are many more phenomena, some social, some financial, and some racial that push me to one side or the other, not being able to find comradery with anyone. The idealist left-leaners had a good heart, but not a good head, when they instituted entitlements in the 1960’s, these entitlements keeping many people in poverty and dependence. Mean-spirited punitive measures by the political right have been no better with its insistence tax decreases for the rich. I was raised largely in the 1950’s that included (Republican) President Eisenhower suggesting that people making over a million dollars should pay 70% taxes. This “I have the right to what I want” attitude on the right infuriates me just as much as someone who panhandles on the corner right next to the Kwik Trip sign advertising for workers at $15/hour. I was caught in that dilemma when I debated about buying and giving blankets for the homeless not long ago thinking they should “just get a job” and then within an hour found myself buying 6 blankets for them. Free apartments: is that going to help them? No apartments: is that going to help them?
There are many more questions than there are answers. How, for instance, do we deal with the 100,000 migrants last month who sought asylum in America coming from gang-run poverty-ridden countries in the “northern triangle” in Central America. Good minds and good hearts ought to get together on this one and find a solution that is generous and reasonable. My own thought would be to cut our $650 billion for Defense in half (or more) and find ways to really invest in Africa and Central America, not just in dictators and despots. But mine is a simple answer, not more valuable than President Trump’s simplistic solution of a wall separating us “haves” from those “have nots.”
So am I right, left, or center. Depends on what you’re talking about. And it probably depends on what I have heard on the news and what I have read on Facebook. So my decision…or is it a discovery…is that I will “unfollow” my friends, both on the left and on the right, who stir me to distress. I recently and mistakenly responded to a deeply passionate post about “30 Christians murdered by Muslims in Nigeria,” and found my response was less than valuable, and the responses I heard in return lacking in a wider view of life. I don’t need the distress, much less than challenge of someone’s feelings. I should know better. And I certainly don’t need to end up in some kind of fruitless tit-for-tat with people I respect, love, and simultaneously antagonize if I speak my feelings. So for now, goodbye to some of you. I wish you well. I really do.
I feel better. Now about “feelings,”…