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CORRUPTING GOOD WORDS

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The English language is an exceptional way to communicate. While I am no linguist, it pleases me to be able to use a language rich in meaning. Malleable in ways that allow emotions to permeate the soul. A stretch from precisely defining something to painting connotative images in a human mind. Images that allow the message’s recipient to imagine and create.

So how can we examine the word “commune” as a root word for both supporting and, conversely, undermining the word “service.”

To commune is good when it is extended to mean interaction, connection, and meaningful collaboration. We commune with each other and God. We communicate to better understand each other. We take communion to cement our relationship with God through Jesus.

It is central to everything good about service.

On the other hand, to be a communist or one practicing communism is interpreted by Americans as being evil. Inappropriate and even disloyal. We have been taught appropriately to believe that way. To perform the correct kind of service, one that opposes both communism and those who practice it on an international scale.

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In a previous blog post, I mentioned Dr. Zoya Malkova, a Russian citizen and educational leader. In World War II Zoya was a pursuit pilot for the USSR, shooting down Nazi planes. But she was much more than a national hero in the militaristic sense.

She became a marvelous public school teacher and education official in the nation’s bureaucracy.  

I became friends with Zoya after the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), when she made frequent visits to the United States. The purpose of her visits was to explain to Americans what happens when a governmental system with a strong secular and pragmatic core collapses.

Zoya’s best analogy for Americans was as if our Constitution and government were tossed out. That everything we had been taught to believe is now disparaged. That George Washington, like Stalin, was a despot to be forgotten.

Questions asked by citizens of the now defunct USSR were hard to answer. The foundation of education was in disarray.

What is left for schools to teach? What is left for our families to celebrate? To what do we belong as a culture?

Such questions were hard to answer even before the USSR’s demise. The basic core of communism is economic collectivism, which can seem soulless and rigidly practical. Drab in regulated ways.

Even during the highpoint of the USSR’s existence, the ruling bureaucracy only marginally recognized the uplifting achievements of the union’s member nations. Their contributions in the world of literature, music, dance, and even technology.

Economic collectivism emphasized production and distribution of wealth. Believing in and becoming inspired by a gearbox in a tractor. By the statistics of industrial output.

The center point of national pride had less to do with what was valued spiritually or esthetically. National pride was based on industrial strength, military prowess after defeating Nazi Germany, and the expanding territorial achievements. Gaining dominance in nuclear and rocket science.

After the demise of the USSR the once mighty Stalinist empire, built on what remained after World War II, was real estate chopped into ethnic parcels of land. Pieces of territory reinvigorated traditional cultures that lived there. Or formed totally new cultures and nation states.

Zoya had belonged to the Soviet Communist Party. Not because of its allegiance to the teachings of Vladimir Lenin, or the dictatorial rule of strongman Joseph Stalin, but because she knew no alternative.

The political state ruled by the dictatorship of the proletariat (working class) was based on collectivism, an economic principle established by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. German philosophers, political theorists, and economists who lived and worked in England.

Marx and Engels never thought their ideas would be co-opted by a massive empire like Russia, but Lenin did. Lenin sold the idea that those who do the work should reap the benefits of their labor. He created a political system based on that idea.

Starting with a strong central government (“temporary” dictatorship) to ensure the system was correctly established and maintained.

Communism took the idea of “commune” to new levels of economic principles and political infringement on a culture. Earlier communes like those established by indigenous people (and many American villages of the 18th and 19th centuries) were small and interactive. Often glued together with pervasive beliefs associated with things spiritual and life affirming.

Communism, as envisioned by Lenin in the context of a large nation’s needs, had to become both bureaucratic and rigidly based on uncompromising rules. It was and is a prescribed economic set of beliefs superimposed on a misguided political arrangement. Powerfully enforced rules. Rules that allowed Lenin’s successor Stalin to incarcerate or kill hundreds of thousands who did not comply as prescribed.

Living in that kind of culture makes service mandatory and without any kind of spiritual or altruistic base.

My friend Zoya intensely worried about that cultural mandate. The school curriculum, once supported by teachers and resources as training to be comrades in a collective system, had to be turned into something with no validity or overriding reason for existence.

Communism had corrupted the good connotations associated with communal human relations. It had changed our basic needs to commune with one another for the good of each person. Communistic thinking and acting had corrupted the good definition of communing with each other.

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The word and function of service must be based on thoughtful introspection and an insight into how it will benefit others. Service has no meaning if it is designed to be obligatory. Forced on us by a bureaucracy or organization with dubious motives.

Service is neither valuable nor good if it is based solely on the strong proclamations issued by a self-proclaimed leader who appeals to our basest instincts and subliminal biases.

Vladimir Putin, an administrator who once served in the security branch of the USSR’s bureaucracy, finagled himself into gaining dictatorial power in Russia. Putin admired the USSR and achieved power as Russian’s current president. A position unlike the American presidency because it allows almost unlimited authority to the holder of that office.

Putin has used his position and the goal of regaining national pride to initiate aggression against nations that were once members of the USSR. To bring them back into the Soviet fold Stalin created after the upheaval caused by World War II. 

To serve Russia now is to serve Putin’s personally held ambitions to make Russia great again.

Putin’s way of unthinking and morally untethered service is an abomination in meeting the real needs of humankind. 

To authentically serve is to offer our ability to commune with each other in love and charity. To fulfill our life’s purpose in ways God intended.  

©2022 Stu Ervay – All Rights Reserved

A SOCIETY WITH SERVICE AT ITS CORE

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Democracy means governance emanating from the opinions of the people. And their willingness to serve that government.

To make that happen people must create a written system that gives them the freedom to establish a common good. 

The written system is a social agreement that ensures permanency and continuity over time.

In the modern world, constitutions, bylaws, and other social contracts are created to maintain the system. An aura of allegiance becomes part of the culture, frequently referred to as patriotism.

“Service” therefore becomes prescribed in terms of what we patriotically do in support of the system we created. In our case, service embodied in the American Constitution.

Patriotism as an exercise of loyalty to the system differs from the authoritarian processes humans originally created. In which a strong individual who is highly respected by the tribe is given the right to make decisions about everything from individual behaviors to the expansion of the culture.

Such allegiance is loyalty to a monarch or dictator and that leader’s national priorities. Service is measured in terms of how well one defers to the will of a single person.

Great Britain found a way to combine democratic and monarchial systems into one. But that novel arrangement was made possible by the monarchy giving away many of its traditional powers. Today, constitutional monarchies exist because the authoritarian leader agrees to do so in ways prescribed by the social contract.

British citizens can serve both the monarch and governmental system because their merger is, in their minds, mutually compatible. Americans are asked to serve the Constitution first and foremost. While that is true with American military personnel, they must also serve the wishes of the president, their constitutionally designated commander-in-chief.

Many proclaim to serve a symbol such as a flag. But symbols are only as meaningful as the system they represent. While I am proud of the American flag, I do not serve it. I serve what it represents to me as a citizen.

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I am fascinated with other cultures, especially those associated with indigenous tribes once isolated from developing regions of the world. Anthropologists like to study small civilizations. To gain insights about how human beings build their communities within isolated areas.

While not extensive, my interest centered on the indigenous people of the American Southwest. I found the cultures of the Anasazi (Pueblo) descendants like the Hopi and Zuni most interesting. Primarily because I worked with their schools in the communities of Keams Canyon, Arizona and Zuni, New Mexico.

The idea of service among the Pueblo tribes is interwoven with the spirit world. The sanctity of the earth as our home. A commitment to family welfare. Family is not limited to biological connections alone, but rather to everyone in the tribe. Service is at the core of their societies, necessary for all to survive.

Service is not voluntary, because it is the purpose of life. Service is also provided by kachinas, who come from within the earth to heal and support. They are not worshipped but are seen as an integral part of human existence. Kachinas serve so long as human beings strive to help themselves.

When visiting the village of Zuni, I occasionally went into the church founded in 1629. Priests accompanied Conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, making it one of the first Christian churches on the North American continent. As with other cultures in the New World, the Europeans allowed their beliefs to coalesce with local traditions.

Today’s Catholic priests refer to that kind of merging as “drawing Christ from the culture.”

Around the turn of the century, my education consultant organization was asked to work with the Zuni schools.  To give them a model to locally control the content of their curriculum. Curriculum made difficult by the new federal mandate called No Child Left Behind.

Zuni children, like all American students, were to meet generic academic standards. And demonstrate their knowledge on standardized high stakes tests.

The NCLB model disregarded the values of the Zuni Tribe, even in the study of history. Unlike the church, our own government did not draw anything from indigenous cultures like the Zuni.

Instead, our nation tried to impose its values on people easy to dominate. A tradition that extends back to the mission of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ boarding schools that existed for a century.

I mention Zunis and other indigenous cultures, because a major difference between their cultures and ours has to do with service. For those groups service is the essence of life. Life is infinitely more than the possession of property and power over others.

Coronado, in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, went through Zuni and into what is now Kansas looking for material wealth. He never found it.

Gold and property eluded him, although he helped to open the door for Spain to gain more territory in the New World.

Which brings me to our culture’s penchant for overlapping political and economic perspectives. Propagated with the idea that democratic freedom is related to self-aggrandizing enterprise.

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Politically, many Americans believe the perpetuation of our way of life depends on the fulfillment of economic opportunity. Like a modern-day Coronado who searches for gold and property for himself and his nation.

To those who hold such values it is important for ambitious people to be given as many opportunities as possible to acquire and hold wealth. Admired are the homes, lifestyles, and opinions of those who succeed in gaining wealth in a competitive free enterprise system.

Thousands of stories underscore this way of thinking and acting. As well as its frequently unfortunate outcome. A classic example of the failure of greed is The Great Gatsby, a 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Among many today, service is admired as being a kind of necessary sacrifice. For those inclined to offer it.  People who forfeit riches to assist those less fortunate.  

True or not, such charitable behavior is often accepted as a reason for a longer and more fulfilling life.

That was the message of a book written by Grace Halsell in 1976: Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life from the Sacred Valley. The location is the village of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, in which people typically lived to be over 100. They served each other in their community. To quote one resident, they believed, “To live is to learn to die.”

Learning how to die means reaching the end of life with few if any regrets. Knowing that the giving of self is to serve others honorably. Similar to how our American society reveres its deceased veterans. 

As a journalist and speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson, Halsell knew about American power and wealth. She was struck by the shallowness of capitalistic values and manipulative techniques to acquire more. And to dominate through aggressive competitiveness.

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Being a good American citizen is working toward understanding the complexity of our society. Of our politics and economic system. And doing something to make both valuable in the context of service.

Finding ways to serve. To continuously celebrate our nation’s accomplishments in bettering human life. To be a model for other societies that attempt to exist with service at their core.

©2022 Stu Ervay – All Rights Reserved

SERVICE IN A POLARIZED CULTURE

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Polarization of opinion is a byproduct of democracy.

Constitutional government is better than autocracies. Or other totalitarian ways to manage society. Deliberations can be positive avenues through which possible actions are discerned, created and applied.

However, as good as democracies are, their kind of representative governance is messy—even frustrating. It is anything but quiet contemplation in an atmosphere of efficiency and certainty.

Decision-making seems to take forever as lawmakers debate incessantly. Trying to hammer out compromises. Their positions ‘poles’ apart.

Or if they align themselves with a party platform to show loyalty. To achieve goals emanating from a particular philosophy.

I have never served in an elected position as a legislative or congressional representative. Not something to be proud of. But like many Americans, I hold politics in low esteem.

Especially when candidates pander to crass attack ads paid for by political action committees. “PACs” are financially supported by corporations and special interest groups. They pay PACs huge amounts based on the 2010 Freedom of Speech rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Advertising companies with creative writers can easily sway public opinion. Through a combination of deceptive verbiage, sinister graphics, ominous voiceovers, and shady proclamations.

Americans have been hoodwinked into taking extreme positions by unscrupulous advertisers. By commercial broadcasters allowed to spew out anything they please with no restrictions. By social media giants filling our minds with intellectual detritus. Disgusting!

In 1964 Marshall McLuhan told us “the medium is the message,” taken from his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. He said the medium itself should be considered before accepting the message it delivers. In today’s world, that assertion applies to everything from emailed ads to TV sound bites. From bumper stickers to Twitter.

And we are heavily influenced by them, their perceived good way to fix the problem. They too often work as intended. Our education system does not help students guard against untethered hyperbole designed to convince people without supporting evidence. The awful part is that it can lead to mass hysteria. Acceptance of solutions that lead to revolution, war, and millions of deaths.

Many historians point to the 20th Century’s invention and use of commercial radio and motion pictures as media to effectively sway public opinion. To bring to the surface underlying fears and prejudices against human beings perceived to be dangerously different than ourselves. Skin color, religious views, cultural preferences, and political/economic viewpoints.

To make us afraid. Very afraid.

To the point many otherwise decent folks believed in genocide. The total elimination of the other fearsome culture.

Now, in the 21st Century, we have even more invasive media used to promote biases and polarization. The proliferation of unrestricted television and social media produce unverifiable information, used to justify existing prejudices or create new ones.

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Cooperation, politically referred to as bipartisanship, is now a sought-for goal in Congress and other representative groups. Advocated by those critical of the polarization. Fueled to overcome the hysteria caused by the purveyors of hate and narrow cultural viewpoints.  

Bipartisanship has existed throughout American history. Usually, it starts with an influential leader who articulately asserts a point-of-view through words or actions.  S/he enlightens with “ah ha” moments. “I never thought of it that way before” reactions.

That is the ultimate kind of service. Often produced by people brought to the brink of despair.  The example: Abraham Lincoln when he penned The Gettysburg Address.

Some highly principled people were intelligent and self-effacing enough to work together to find solutions to the nation’s problems. They were creative thinkers, articulate writers, and responsive negotiators.

Their service was equated with self-effacement. Simply the right thing to do. Rudyard Kipling’s poem, IF inspired me to provide that kind of service.

But Kipling was also an advocate of service in the guise of “the white man’s burden” genre. That interpretation of service caused the kind of superior feelings which resulted in many misguided missionary endeavors. Patronizing behaviors toward women and minority groups. The idea that those of us born with theoretically superior attributes should care for those born with inferior intelligence or abilities.

That kind of thinking was polarization of the worst kind. Should we be happy to serve others if they would just recognize their inferior status and show appreciation for our largess? Recognizing and accepting our Christian charity without seeking equality with us?

Service with strings attached. Service that creates the kind of resentment that seethes below. That makes polarization worse.

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As an educator, the service I try to provide is one in which students are given the intellectual, emotional, and academic tools to become contributors to humanity. My job as a teacher is to help my students progressively become ‘more.’

Many of my students were potentially already more than I. But sometimes had to be convinced of their precociousness.

Service with no strings attached. With no polarizing wall between who I am and who he or she will someday be.

With no fear of being dominated or the possibility of succumbing to the inclination to dominate another. Just knowing we are on this earth to serve each other’s welfare. Whatever way we can, thereby leaving a legacy for others to follow.

©2022 Stu Ervay – All Rights Reserved

SERVICE THROUGH WRITING

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In my opinion, writing is performing a service. Or a precursor to the offering of a service that is truly meaningful.

Because writing requires deep intellectual engagement before any action is started. A probe that goes deep into our selfhood and pulls out who and what we are, thereby giving us insights into the world in all its dimensions.

Writing causes a better understanding of our strengths, weaknesses, and potential.

Most of all, it makes our unique and beneficial leadership qualities come to the surface. And gives us courage to use them for the common good.

It is the reverse of the kind of service depicted in The Nun’s Story. Sister Luke was expected to disappear into a collective of those giving allegiance to a core set of beliefs. She was asked repeatedly to sacrifice everything she believed herself to be.

Her writing was limited to keeping medical notes used in nursing or a record of when she was too prideful. Or unable to comply with the rules of her order or proper living.

It worked somewhat, until that sacrifice became unbearable. Coping with the reality of war, the loss of her father, and trying to answer questions not provided by faith alone. To use her intellect and insights to confront evil and serve humanity in a creative way.

My experience in the military was similar. Allowing myself to buy into the military culture until I could not.

The tank is not an object that promotes warm feelings. Nor are its weapons, ammunition, and the human skills needed to make them work effectively. A tank is a death-dealing machine that can also cause massive destruction to buildings and infrastructure. No redeeming value except as a tool to kill and hurt other human beings. Those we identify as the enemy. People like us. Taught to identify us as the enemy.

During my time in the military I wrote letters. Often to my mother and father. Eventually to my fiancé, who later became my wife. Much of my writing focused on how I felt about my work.

That writing made me think about what I was doing at the time and how I felt about it.

By the time I left the Regular Army and National Guard, I had earned a master’s degree and begun a doctoral program in educational leadership. In the Guard, I was encouraged to attend the Advanced Armor Officer School at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

At age 26 I had already attained the rank of captain and was being groomed to become a field grade officer within a few years. Completing advanced combat courses, and later programs referred to as Command and General Staff Officers’ Courses. They pretty much assured promotion up to and through the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Those with advanced degrees who could also write, teach, and effectively manage a unit command were at a real advantage. Combat commanders, while often recognized for their courage and skills in leading successful campaigns under hostile fire, did not always achieve high rank.

As a student of history, it was evident that leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell were successful in the army because they communicated well. They accepted and succeeded in fulfilling difficult managerial responsibilities. Powell served as a small unit commander in Vietnam. But Eisenhower never had such an experience. His skills were both managerial and collaborative decision-making. Especially among diverse and domineering personalities such as those involved with the Allied War Effort in WW II.

And Eisenhower wrote very well.

I admired these men. But I often wondered if their accomplishments were more related to career success than selfless service. My ultimate conclusion was both.

As an 18-year-old private first class in an Army reserve unit, I was asked by a sergeant to conduct a short instructional program on how to use a particular piece of equipment. Since I had no idea how to use that equipment, I turned to the Army field manual. It soon became clear why the sergeant asked me to conduct the instruction.

The technical writing used in the manual was gobbledygook. Filled with military jargon and convoluted instructions. To develop a lesson plan, I rewrote the most critical part of the manual, creating a step-by-step visual for classroom use.

An officer who watched my instruction was critical of my rewriting the manual. But he admitted that the resultant lesson was more lucid and understandable. How insubordinate I was! To have the nerve to redo a document written by a college educated officer skilled in technical writing and use of that piece of equipment.

That experience taught me a valuable lesson. My initiative was a service to the Army and the men who participated in the class. To the disapproving officer, I was an insubordinate young soldier exercising an initiative that would hurt my chances for promotion.

Instead, I circumvented the system and became an officer. With the goal of serving competently, not to just advance my military career.

Eisenhower and Powell also circumvented the rigid “by the book” system. Eisenhower was the architect of the campaign to rid Europe of the Nazi scourge. His leadership often put him into conflict with politicians and subordinates. But his intelligence and communication skills overrode the opinions of those preoccupied with protocol and rigid strategies. Eisenhower became our president during the 1950s and applied those special skills.

Eisenhower’s fresh way of thinking and ability to communicate were more than career advantages. They were a genuine service to the nation.

Powell did much the same thing by reforming a dysfunctional Vietnam era military into the quality force it is today. A good career move. And a good service to his country.

After retirement from the military Powell became the founding Chairman of America’s Promise—The Alliance for Youth. A group meant to mobilize people from every sector to build the character and competence of our country’s youth. Service through communicating. Through speeches and the written word.

We read, reflect, AND write to become more effective human beings. Those actions make us more than robotically motivated creatures programmed with stimulus-response software. They allow us to serve with sensitivity and moral awareness.

©2022 Stu Ervay – All Rights Reserved