The Politics of Care

As an institution designed to represent the people (all of the people), the Congress of the United States appears dangerously close to forgetting the sanctity and, in fact, the simplicity of this original purpose. As insurance lobbies, private health networks, and pure power politics delay and threaten to reverse an embarrassingly tardy health care program meant for the people, our Congress, secure in their own health care provisions supplied by we the people, choose to backpedal, allowing the momentum of this historic effort to fizzle and die, all the while claiming (incredibly) that we the people don't really want it after all. Once again, the poor and the jobless must wonder how to care for their families and the Medicare short-fallers (those retired due to unemployment, but not eligible yet for Medicare) must resume their desperate thoughts of moving to neighboring countries where, although poorer than the good old U.S. of A. in most respects, they somehow manage to take care of the health of their populations.
The Nike slogan "Just do it!" encapsulates the actual simplicity of the issue. How often do we make a task more difficult than it really is by layering it with complexities? When the Good Samaritan, that man of contemptible origins, stopped along a dangerous road to assist a robbery victim of higher caste when no one else would, it was a different time and place. But the circumstances remain familiar. There were many layers of reasons for the Samaritan not to lend care to the man; risks beyond the physical dangers - risks that were political, legal, and social. And there would ultimately be no personal gain. But he did it because he chose to do it, because he chose not to worry himself into indecisiveness by weighing all possible consequences, because he wanted to do the right thing. The United States Congress, regardless of political party or personal interests or consequences, needs to do the right thing for the people. In other words, our leaders need to demonstrate true leadership.
True leadership requires empathy, that quality which compels us to visit those feelings that others must be experiencing. Those that lack it must develop it. I recall a conversation with a brilliant medical doctor whose son was my student. When the discussion turned to role modeling, she resisted the notion that everybody could experience, let alone demonstrate, empathy. "My husband", she said, "has no capability to empathize!" Yet the science of the brain suggests otherwise. Except for psychotic conditions usually due to injury or defect, everyone with a normal frontal lobe structure has the capacity for the "sense of other" that is so necessary for social integration. The genes are there, but the neurological pathways must be traveled frequently enough to maintain the awareness. If we don't prioritize this function, as with every brain function, we will lose it.
True leadership requires courage. It takes courage to turn away from powerful interests, to disagree with the party gurus, to perhaps even endanger the life style to which your family has grown accustomed. But I expect my congressmen to be courageous.
True leadership requires foresight. This comes from global thinking, from extricating one's mind from the daily "trees" to contemplate the social "forest". It means projecting forward the consequences for the population of not having health care and grasping what it could mean to the legions of homeless, of jobless, and aged.
Finally, true leadership requires insight, that capability to know ourselves and know our weaknesses and deficits. It is this insight into ourselves which helps to engender empathy for others. I want a congressional leader with insight.
The Good Samaritan's action seemed selfless, yet it was self serving because it was a small step taken by one individual to role model the kind of community in which he would like to exist. If each individual congressman in this historic instance and for this momentous cause would think and act like a leader, he could lead us all toward a community in which we would all like to exist, a community for the people.

Right Brain Ascending

As I said goodbye to 2009, I realized that it was in fact the year of ascendancy for the right side of the brain and farewell to the left side of the brain, after decades of living in that domain. Daniel Pink predicted this in A Whole New Mind when he prophesied that the right-brainers will rule the future. It is a move from analysis to synthesis, from detail to the big picture.

How did I come to realize that the right brain is in the ascendancy? I realized that we no longer worship the scientists.

I grew up in the era of the left brain, when science challenged God. The household of my youth was that of a scientist, an engineer, where every idea, every emotion, was subjected to a form of scientific proof to authenticate its validity. Our world then was a world powered by scientists, held in awe for their triumphs that ended the second world war, relied upon for our country's safety and security in the decades of cold war, and worshiped for the technologies that revolutionized our lives. The left brain ruled. But no more.

Science is now declaring something we do not wish to believe, something that makes us uncomfortable, something that frightens us. With the same processes and proofs science now points to a future that is not hopeful and bright but dire and dangerous. And the only paths scientists can propose to avoid it are too confusing, too uncertain, too uncomfortable, and too late for us to accept.

The left brain, which is literal, sequential, logical, and analytical recognizes the danger that global warming (climate change) presents to humanity. The left brain is, so to speak, "in our face". It will not let us ignore the obvious conclusions presented by the facts. But the right brain is contextual, emotional, and global. The right brain presents an overview, a more distant perspective. It is here that we are finding comfort and taking refuge. The global position is a safer position; it allows us to view crisis from afar and to see an unchanging blue planet in the foreverness of space. The right brain allows us to believe the spin doctors, the lobbyists, and the false prophets. The right brain supplies hope but it does not stir us to action.

What is called for now is not only the hard unvarnished facts perceived by the left brain or just the distancing perspective of the right brain but a combination of the two. What is called for now is a literal understanding and acceptance of the current global situation from the left brain and the empathetic connectivity and a world-wide commonality of purpose driven by the right brain. It is in the balance of our spheres that our best future lies.