Values and Meaning Part 1 - Respect

There's still quite a bit to say about Franzen's Freedom, but will plan to get back to that when time permits. This is more topical for me at the moment...

Over a hundred years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote Drift and Mastery - exhorting the nation to use science and reason to improve society in the new industrial age that had transformed the country over the past 50 years. "Drift" was the path of letting the institutions and values that had been established in a pre-industrial age continue to dominate society, and "Mastery" the path of altering institutions and updating values to reflect the new realities that industrialization required.

As I look to ground the sense of values and meaning for myself and my family in a post-religious environment, I think it's important to start to be explicit in the sources of values and meaning that can help orient our priorities and decisions.

Implicit in the fact that I'm leading this "discussion" is that meaning and values are created or invented. Based on my experiences and reflection on what I have been taught, what I have observed and lived through, here are the principles that I think we can use as a foundation. But that foundation can be changed, expanded - it is an emergent creation.

This exercise can feel abstract and disconnected from everyday life, but I like to have a framework to understand and explicate the principles rather than just drift along...

So in one of my sources, a post-religious couple focuses their parenting principles on teaching their girls to respect themselves and others - both in attitude and and behavior. Pride and confidence - as elements of self respect - are explicitly raised as counter to some religious concerns about the dangers of pride. This tension between humility and confidence is an important one to discuss with our kids. We certainly want to encourage ourselves to be ambitious, to create and follow dreams, to share our thoughts and experiences with others, and to make a difference in their family, school, community, etc.

But the confidence and ambition that can drive our actions should also be tempered by openness and humility to new ideas and experiences that can disclose new and better ways of living. A framework for taking in new ideas and experiences and evaluating them would be a valuable tool or skill that we can help support in our children. Our schools should plan an important role in helping children develop critical thinking, judgment, decision making skills.

Freedom - Walter's Work

Walter Berglund is a striver. He has a deeply felt need to make the world a better place. Nice, sensitive, and intellectual, Walter was a lawyer who gravitated into the world of philanthropy, and non-profit, environmentally-oriented causes.

He has worked hard his entire life, growing up in rural Minnesota with an alcoholic father and an angelic mother who managed a small motel. He worked at the motel all year long, starred in school plays, had numerous childhood friends, loved nature, and graduated valedictorian.

As Walter slid into middle age, he put himself in a position to work on his passions life. First, preserving a beautiful warbler that nests in Appalachia; and second reviving the awareness of the world to the dangers of human overpopulation. To make progress on his causes, Walter has used his intelligence, affability, and passion to cultivate relationships with very rich benefactors who are happy to fund causes, but with quid pro quos that raise some questions about the ultimate accounting.

There is a deep burning within Walter to make a difference in the world. He is willing to make strategic calculations and sacrifices in order to achieve his visions. Where does this burning desire come from, and what are the sacrifices necessary to pursue these causes?