Have I lost the fire?

An old acquaintance popped up recently telling me about demonstrations against the latest distant war and asking what I’m doing about it. There was a time when I would have been in the thick of it, full of hope, anger and the fire of passionate creativity.

I distinctly remember being twenty something and making pacts with a different friend to never let the fire of passionate activism, creativity and adventure go out. We swore to kick each other in the pants if the other ever wavered. But she’s gone, and I’m afraid I may have lost the fire.

What I didn’t know in my twenties was that soul-sucking, creativity-sapping hard times don’t always come in the form of tear gas, night sticks or bullets. As bad as those things are, there are things that will make you beg for something as easy to fight as a clear and distinct bad guy. And I’m not even talking about the inner demons of mental illness or the parasites of addiction. I managed to avoid those, though life has taught me a lot more compassion for others who didn’t slip the traps.

Image by Arie farnam - a porch railing holding pumpkins with candles inside portraying a pentacle and the word peace in different languages

I had freedom—just enough money to make my own choices and set my own course. I had transferable skills. I could go where I wanted and didn’t have to worry about the needs of others very much as I did. I mistook that privileged existence for deep caring about activism and great creative talent. It’s a common misconception.

Twenty years ago, I got sucked into the black hole of health problems which gave way to family responsibilities which led to worse health problems and much heavier family responsibilities. That’s what happened to my fire. It was buried under a mudslide and I’m still trying to find out if there are any smoldering embers left.

When I was in my late twenties, I gave up my last chances in newspaper journalism to lead antiwar protests. This isn’t something I’ve made a big deal about publicly. Potential employers wouldn’t see it as admirable, after all. I couldn’t stay in journalism and lead protests against the war in Iraq in a major international city at the same time. Journalists have codes of objectivity that preclude that sort of thing and no employers would allow it.

As a twenty-something, I don’t think I entirely thought through the potential consequences of that choice. I had a hot fire in me. I was watching the world explode with protest over a war based on lies, pushed by the questionably elected administration of my home country. It wasn’t happening in Prague yet, and the groups willing to try were marginalized and vulnerable to cheap attacks about supposedly being anti-American. I wasn’t just one more body in the streets for a protest. I was an American who also spoke the local language. Who could more credibly make the case that the protest was about human rights, rather than about being ideologically against the United States?

At that moment and in that place, there was a reasonable hope that I could make a real difference by joining and even leading the protests. The professional sacrifices felt worthwhile. Over the next two years, I was often cast into the role of negotiator between various factions. I had an acquaintance from my old political reporting who ran with the Czech Communist youth organization and friends in the staunchly anti-Communist student block. In a European capital city like ours, numbers of protesters mattered in terms of national policy and relations with the US. I worked to get both sides to come to events, while leaving their antagonistic or self-aggrandizing political banners at home.

Since my negotiating skills proved moderately handy and my rudimentary Arabic had once calmed a tense situation on the first day of our protests, I was also assigned as the negotiator for the Czech and international blocks in discussions with the local Iraqi dissident groups. That wasn’t easy, but it definitely gave me a sense of purpose and of my usefulness in the moment.

My primary counterpart on the Iraqi side was a guy named Ahmad. We worked together closely for months, and then his brother was killed by American soldiers in Iraq in a case of mistaken identity. The incident brought the war home to us. We swore it wouldn’t impact our budding friendship.

That was the last time I remember people losing their jobs or academic opportunities in the US over antiwar protests. Even though I had to make some sacrifices in my own career, I wasn’t directly fired or discriminated against for political reasons. But at the time, there were cases of suspension on college campuses as well as jobs or tenure lost in a variety of places because of people getting involved with antiwar protests.

Today the situation appears even more extreme, not just for people working in media but also in academia, law offices and even completely unrelated industries. I’ve lost track of the prominent journalists who’ve lost their jobs or been forced to resign. The pressure on college professors and students is intense, with even the entirely nonviolent Jewish Voice for Peace organization suspended at universities.

I can’t help but follow the news. People talk about shutting it out. I could just as well shut out thousands of people being killed in my own country or in my extended family. I don’t see the people under the bombs as foreign or as strangers “caught up in ancient enmity.” I’ve been too close. I have PaIestinian and lsraeli friends. I’ve also been in villages under shelling. I’ve had to hide huddled on the floor between the beds while renegade paramilitary forces out for revenge tore apart the neighborhood and bullets struck the gutters and wall just outside my window.

The news of the real world isn’t something I want to be able to shut out. But this time, there isn’t anything I know of that I can do that will matter. I’m in a small rural town where most people have very sparse information about what’s happening and have formed their opinions mainly based on the leaders they are used to listening to. And while the United States is involved in a significant way, another American speaking up about it in this case isn’t going to make a lick of difference, especially not out here in the sticks.

My heart goes out to those friends of mine who are personally affected. Every war is terrible. Innocent people always end up dying by violence, starvation or preventable illness. This war is even more heartbreaking than most to me because of the particularly intractable background and the fact that I know people on both sides of the conflict, none of whom have any realistic possibility of doing anything as individuals to help the innocent people being killed or to move toward peace. The Jewish people protesting the war in the US have the most chance of active agency at the moment, and they are doing admirable activism and often paying a heavy price for it.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, I spent the first few months volunteering to aid refugee evacuations because I had language and map-reading skills that were sorely needed. When Extinction Rebellion appeared to have a real shot at changing high-level European climate change policies, I dropped everything and was willing to get arrested and work with people who I didn’t always get along with to save lives. I wish there was a clear thing to do to make a difference right now. Even better, I yearn for a bad guy whose demise would actually be helpful.

Maybe it’s a symptom of growing up more than of the actual situation. I have realized my own futility. There is no way to win a war like this, and I have neither a useful identity nor any skills to put toward in the cause of peace or to aid the survival of individuals, even in a small way. But I did swear to hold onto the fire, and I wonder where the passion of my activism and creativity has gone.

I have a few little embers, barely glowing in the palm of my hand—the idea of going back to college and getting a master of fine arts degree. It may not help the world much, but it would give me a bit firmer ground on which to stand and from which to do useful and helpful things. But of course, this means entering the world of academia, and in my case, applying for scholarships, at a time when the silence required for career success is at odds with my conscience.

A recent ACLU open letter to colleges and universities across the United States criticized the penalizing and suppression of antiwar student groups during the scouring of Gaza, saying “It echoes America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era.” Students have lost competitive fellowships and job offers over peace-oriented social media posts. The only PaIestinian member of Congress was censured for words of heart-felt compassion for the victims of violence on both sides.

We all stand at the wall now in our own individual ways. We are forced to choose. Who will stand up, speak up, lose their voice, go to jail or lose opportunities as a result? Who will duck their head and hope to speak up more effectively another day? This is one of those times history will ask about.

I nurse my little embers. My fire is not burning brightly now. I’m barely hanging on. So, I change Ls to Is and Is to Ls to avoid the roving bots of censorship and academic blacklisting, I reach out privately to comfort grieving friends and I swallow back the hot words of protest.

How sure are you of right and wrong?

Thirty years after the war was over, a young father and history buff bought the shell of a house in the hills near a hotly contested border. He was a poor factory worker, but it cost only the equivalent of a month's salary because the old stone and timber dwelling was in desolate disrepair and the local fire department had been planning to destroy it in a practice drill. 

The new owner started to rebuild the house bit by bit. He wanted his children to grow up in the beautiful natural surroundings and he loved to learn about the tragic history of the land. He saved to buy new tools and materials and slowly over many years he rebuilt the old house to look like the pre-war photographs in the village archives. 

Creative Commons image by Heather Katsoulis

Creative Commons image by Heather Katsoulis

Then one day after the border was reopened, a middle-aged woman approached the house. She said she had lived there as a child, that the house belonged to her parents. Forty five years earlier when she was a child, militia men had come with guns and forced her family to flee. The armed men had stolen the family's bicycle, their only means of transportation, and forced them to walk over the mountains into the neighboring country with only those few things they could take with fifteen minutes warning. 

This is a real story. I knew both the man and the woman. They are real people. It's the kind of story that happens on contested borders. 

Ordinary people looking for a place of home and safety buy or stake a claim to land and homes. Other ordinary people are caught on the wrong side of a political, national, linguistic, racial, religious or economic divide are killed or forced to leave their homes. And so it goes.

And now tell me this. Who should own that house?

Should the man own it? He bought it with his hard earned wages, worked on it with his own hands and saved it from destruction. 

Should the woman own it? She was an innocent child forced to flee her home and she still has the birth certificates, deeds and other documents to prove that she should have inherited it. 

Your answer will probably depend on which border, which side of that border and which war you think I'm talking about. This isn't ancient history but a relatively modern and well-documented situation in which most of the questions can be answered. 

Take note of your instinctive answer and then consider whether the following facts change it.

The woman was part of a German-speaking minority and the house stands in the border region of the Czech Republic, then Czechoslovakia. The war was World War Two. Hitler annexed this border region of Czechoslovakia at the beginning of the war and the German-speaking minority was noted for significantly supporting the Nazis. 

That was the reason for their mass expulsion. Many, probably most, of the woman's group supported and cheered on the Nazis. And so--brutal and indiscriminate as it may have been--some people justify the forced expulsion of German-speaking people from Czechoslovakia.

But this woman was a child at the time, living in a remote rural cabin, no more to blame than any other child and less powerful than some.

I tell this story not to win sympathy for the Sudetten Germans. But rather to promote the practice of skeptical, mindful ethics.

If you were sure in the beginning of the story that the new owner should be compensated but the house should be returned to the old owner and then you changed your mind based on the added facts, you must admit that moral certainty is hard to come by. 

We want children of about ten years old to "know right from wrong." And yet educated and caring adults often find it difficult to say exactly what is right or wrong in a complex situation and which way the scales turn can depend on details that require an understanding of social, political, economic and historical forces. 

I don't personally have a definite answer for which is right or wrong in this real-life story that I stumbled upon as a teenager new to Czechoslovakia twenty-five years ago. The law here has retained the rights of new owners in that case. The man's claim is upheld by the law. But if the house had been confiscated by the Communist authorities and the family expelled after the Soviet invasion in 1968, the law would favored the old owners.

The law is not ethics. It's just the law. And one would be naive to believe that laws are consistent. 

Image by Arie Farnam

Image by Arie Farnam

I am happy to say that this woman did not demand her house returned or even seem bitter about the law. Instead she was thankful that the house had been preserved and reconstructed, so that it looked much like her beloved childhood home. The man invited her to come and stay and lovingly helped her to reclaim her memories and a family treasure buried on the property. Theirs was a story with a happy ending.

But so many similar stories are not. 

The past few weeks have had me thinking a lot about ethical dilemmas. The news has hit on story after story in which passions run high and there is more than one side with a claim. 

It isn't that I don't have strong opinions. I can clearly say that the killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters by Israeli soldiers is wrong, even a crime against humanity. But what exactly should be done to solve the situation? Whose homes should be sacrificed in a small country with limited land and water? 

That isn't so simple. One way or another in our crowded world, there are people in need without homes, often with a valid right to the land or homes where others, including those innocent and unaware of any injustice, are now living.

My entire native country is based on stolen land. And yes, we can say that those who have been wronged should be compensated, but by whom? Some of the descendants of those who stole from or enslaved others are wealthy from the profits of exploitation. Others are barely scraping by. And yet if there is a debt to pay, shouldn't everyone be required to pay all the same?

Even the question of the infamous Chinese prom dress leaves me befuddled. A white girl decided to go to the prom in a traditional Chinese dress, which she wore in inappropriate ways and seemed to mock in one photo. Many people are furious over this. It's called cultural appropriation, taking something from another culture, particularly one that has been exploited by your own in the past or present, and either claiming it as your own or using it inappropriately or mockingly.

Don't get me wrong, I can't abide people who set up shop as a "Shaman" or pen books on Native American spirituality who have no legitimate connection to either Siberian or Native American culture. Making a profit off of a stereotyped fakery poached from the struggling remnants of cultures nearly destroyed by exploitation is clearly wrong. 

But as I put Vietnamese spring rolls made with my own fresh garden greens down on the table for my children, while wearing a shirt with Guatamalan patterns, I am not so sure where the line is. I know where these things come from. I love them and treat them with respect. I want those cultures which have been endangered to be represented and kept alive. And I simply prefer the cuisine and color coordination of some cultures over others. But I can't say in every instance what is right and what is wrong.

If the girl with the Chinese prom dress had not publicly shared a mocking photograph of her dress, would it still have been wrong? Western prom dresses are, in my not-so-humble opinion, a fashion travesty of modern times. Please any culture that is willing to save us from them, please  step forward! Despite the problems, I still say the Chinese dress was the--hands down--prettiest in those photos.

Looking at all these less-than-clear-cut situations and modern problems, one is tempted to say that it all depends. Certainly, we should be critical thinkers and respect the opinions of others. It is tempting to say that there is no absolute right or wrong. Even when we teach children right from wrong when they are ten years old, we end up pointing out that a child in a storybook who steals food to survive is not really so bad. 

But these are terrible times to abandon ethics and claim moral relativism. Are the opinions of Neonazis equal to all other political opinions in political discourse? And if not theirs, then where is the line? 

We live in a time when political leaders preach an extreme religious doctrine and claim to be for high morals, while dallying with pornography, blatantly lying, taking and giving out huge bribes, poisoning their rivals, fixing elections and claiming it's legal, and abusing anyone vulnerable they can touch--without the scandals even making a large ripple. Gods help us, if we don't even know what is right and wrong anymore ourselves. 

Many intellectuals I have discussed this with say that an opinion is valid in so far as it is not against someone else or does not harm someone else. That seems like a good rule, but it is easier to to say than to apply.

Among the most vicious arguments I have seen in the past few days have been over the silent and non-violent actions of people protesting what they saw as deeply wrong. A week ago, dozens of graduates and their family members silently stood up and walked out of their own graduation ceremony at Notre Dame in protest as Mike Pence gave a graduation address.

When questioned, the protesters specifically mentioned Pence's support for extreme racist organizations and for Donald Trump's rabidly anti-Muslim policies. Pence is also noted for pushing extreme religious agendas and promoting the interests of large corporations, specifically the Koch brothers, in public policy. But regardless of whether one agrees with the reasons the protesting students walked out, the vicious verbal attacks and threats against them imply a certainty of the wrongness of protest. 

Pence himself called the banning of athletes who kneel to mourn the killing of unarmed African Americans during the National Anthem "winning." There is no question of right or wrong in that statement. It implies a game with winners and losers 

The actions taken to penalize the protesting and mourning athletes and their teams and the words often deployed against them are extreme, while their actions are mild, respectful and silent. 

I can understand a parent being upset if their child walked out of graduation to protest something the parent didn't understand or feel is important. I can even understand people brought up to believe that the National Anthem is sacred disagreeing with someone kneeling during it. But none of these are violent acts that harm another, and yet violence is threatened against those who take quiet actions in defense of their ethics. 

There are plenty of situations where I cannot say with certainty that I am right and another is wrong. Ddetails and historical context do matter. But I hope we will not lose the most basic concepts of right and wrong through this. If a person quietly stands, sits, walks or kneels to protest violence and hatred, they should have that right. I may not always agree with their side of the story, but I can always respect a quiet statement of ethical concern.