Category: Wisdom

Now What? – New Appreciation for Handicapped People

On By Norbert HauptIn Feelings, Wisdom3 Comments

Here I am in a wheelchair in Flores, Guatemala, looking at a daunting set of stairs.

I injured my knee severely during a vacation trip in a remote city in northern Guatemala. The trip home was daunting. Airline staff wheeled me to the plane. Now I had to make it up those stairs with only one good leg and a set of rickety crutches.

Within 24 hours of the accident, I had to travel by helicopter, boat, car and airline and enter a hotel room in the jungle accessible only by stairs up and down. Then the trip home to the United States, with a layover in Dallas, getting through customs at the DFW airport, with its endlessly long hallways, luggage areas, immigration queues and security lines, let alone the train between terminals, gave me a new appreciation of the challenges handicapped people have to deal with just to get around.

I destroyed my knee, but I gained invaluable insight into the hardships less able-bodied people than I have to face every day of their lives.

Of course, to get me home, it took a whole pit crew. My wife pushing the wheelchair and propping me up when navigating stairs on crutches. Our Guatemalan friends making appointments for emergency room visits and MRI scans. My Spanish is nowhere near good enough to make medical appointments or fill out patient information sheets. Our travel buddies propping me up under both shoulders getting me out of the boat hopping on one leg. Here is part of my pit crew in the lobby of the emergency room:

I don’t know what I would have done had I been alone. Friends are everything.

Every Man Dies Alone – Jeder Stirbt für Sich Allein

On By Norbert HauptIn WisdomLeave a comment

In 2011 I reviewed the book by Hans Fallada – Jeder Stirbt für Sich Allein. Here is the review.

Below are two paragraphs from my review:

If you have ever wondered how an entire country of 60 million plus people could have turned evil, attacked all its neighbors, killed 6 million Jews, devastated all of Europe, you should read this book. It all becomes understandable and obvious. A criminal and nefarious leadership started instituting totalitarian practices, slowly at first, and deliberately and systematically as it went. Children were brainwashed to spy on their parents. Over time, every bad apple enlisted with the dark side, where brutality, sadism, corruption and murder were completely accepted, as long as they benefited the ruling elite. Every thug got a uniform, and that uniform, without any checks and balances, authorized him to brutalize the citizenry as he saw fit. The acts were done by the military,  who controlled everything, including the police, the court system, the business establishment and the social system.

Those that didn’t agree with what was going on could not only not publish their opinion, they could not even speak it to anyone, since they never knew who was a snitch. Your own family and “friends” could have been undercover spies. Fear permeated all of society. Pretty soon, half  the country was busy arresting and locking up, and often executing, the other half.

Oh, my. Did I know what was coming to the United States in 2011? These words ring more important than ever now.

Viewing Life’s Priorities Through the Sunday Comics

On By Norbert HauptIn Wisdom1 Comment

We get the newspaper, the San Diego Union Tribune, in hardcopy only on Sunday. The comics are in color. My two favorite sections are the front page and then the comics, in that order. I don’t read all of them. Some just don’t interest me at all. But I noticed that over the years, my ability to connect has changed.

Dilbert – I was able to relate as a young computer programmer.

Baby Blues – Having babies and raising kids, oh yeah!

Zits – Kids are getting older, taking them to club volleyball and soccer, and teaching them to drive.

and now —- drumroll —–

Pickles

[click image for credit and website]
That said, I always like Doonesbury, but I understand it only a third of the time.

Zangam-se as Comadres Sabem-se as Verdades

On By Norbert HauptIn Language, WisdomLeave a comment

A Portuguese-native-speaker friend posted this message this morning (thanks Tony).

I have to memorize this.

The loose translation is:

When friendships fall apart, the truth tends to come out…..

which of course sounds much more poetic in Portuguese.

Time to Exercise Our Second Amendment Rights

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, Racism, Wisdom2 Comments

This picture shows an example of heavily armed but unmarked riot “police” in the streets of Washington, DC. Mind you, we don’t know who these people are. With no names, no identification and no badges we have no idea. If we were to be assaulted by one of them, there would be no recourse whatsoever. Is this not frightening to anyone?

Whether you are a 46-year-old black man, or a white female college student, or New York State Senator Myrie, or Rep. Ocasio Cortez, any of these thugs could assault you, possibly even kill you, and there’d be no recourse. How is this possible? How do we tolerate this?

Word is that these are mercenaries from Erik Prince, the brother of our illustrious Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, but how would we know? Also, do you all realize how expensive these forces are? Do we know how much money Trump is funneling into this buddy Prince’s pocket right now under the guise of national security?

The corruption is immeasurable.

I can’t believe I am writing this, but it seems like it’s time that we exercised our beloved Second Amendment Rights.

At the time when it was ratified, the Second Amendment was intended to have at least two security purposes other than a well-regulated militia:

  1. a practical purpose, to protect people from thieves, bandits, Native Americans, and slave uprisings
  2. a political purpose, to remind the rest of the world that the United States is well-armed

I haven’t been assaulted by any Native Americans in a long time, and I don’t know anyone who has been. We don’t have slaves anymore, so uprisings are not a danger. It also goes without saying that the rest of the world has, since 1792, figured out that the United States is well-armed.

However, the founders had another objective with the Second Amendment: During the early massive shift of power from the states to the federal government, the Anti-Federalists argued that the states and the people needed to be armed in case of federal usurpation of power. As a result, the American people are well-armed, as we all know, and as the NRA has been making sure we would be.

The picture above makes me feel assaulted by the federal government. Perhaps I should go to my local gun store (an essential business, after all, per the NRA), buy myself a few AR-15s, a helmet, a shield, black gloves and sunglasses, and go out there and fight for my freedom.

In other words, I should exercise my Second Amendment rights – since the federal government is clearly now turning against its own citizens.

Do you all see how Great America has become Again?

 

Thoughts about Politics and Hatred

On By Norbert HauptIn Political, Religion, Wisdom2 Comments

Recently a friend shared a post on Facebook:

James Fallows, an American writer, notes that on February 20 neither South Korea nor the U.S. had any deaths from the coronavirus; on March 20 S. Korea had 100, the U.S. had 150; on April 20 S. Korea had 236 deaths while the U.S. surpassed 40,000. S. Korea followed WHOs guidelines and suggestions from mid-January – the U.S. did not.

This friend is on the liberal side of the spectrum.

A friend of his on the conservative side then responded to the effect that he needed to “stop the hatred” and that he had “reached a low point in his life as a Christian.”

There is no hatred that I can see in the quote above, which wasn’t even his own, it was a shared post.

Obviously, this person on the right side interpreted the ongoing political criticism of the right by my friend as hatred.

Being critical, and having different opinions, is central to the concept of democracy. If we oppose somebody’s view, and publicize that, we’re not hating. We’re simply propagating our own viewpoint. If our arguments are powerful, we’ll convince more people to come around to our side, and eventually change the course of a country, or a world.

He also referred to the Christianity of my friend. He must be inferring that being critical of conservative political views somehow affects a person’s Christian credibility.

I don’t watch sports. I don’t watch football. A long time ago, in a casual social conversation, a friend of mine made the statement that “I know you hate football….” which offended me a bit. I choose not to watch football. It does not do anything for me and I’d rather spend my time otherwise. That does not mean I hate football. It does not mean I don’t understand other people’s fascination with the game. I am just not interested.

I am not religious. That does not mean I hate Christians. I have many Christian friends, and I respect them. Their religion does not affect my assessment of them. I am just not interested.

I am actually fairly conservative in my political thinking, but I haven’t voted for any American Republican in a few decades. I am registered as an independent. But I don’t hate the American political right. I speak out against it because I think it’s misguided and it’s terrible for our current world situation and our country and its future.  I will do what I can with sound, logical, scientific arguments, within my limited abilities and reach, to try to persuade people to lean in my direction. That’s democracy at work.

That is not hatred.

The View from my Window

On By Norbert HauptIn Wisdom3 Comments

There is a Facebook initiative going on called The View from my Window. People from all over the world, in quarantine, are taking pictures out their windows and sharing their views.

I find it mesmerizing. I can’t stop scrolling. People in Iceland, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Hawaii, Norway, every thinkable country, are posting pictures. There is ice and snow, there is lush tropical vegetation, there is desert, there are oceans, lakes and lagoons, there are city streets, there are brick walls in courtyards in European cities. All at the same time. All people at home. Everyone around the world is sharing.

COVID-19 is a global disaster of almost unprecedented proportions. But it is also a unifying experience. I have always been a global citizen. I have traveled. I speak multiple languages. But I have never before felt the amount of global unity that I feel right now.

In the morning, I spend ten or twenty minutes scrolling through The View from my Window and see snippets of the lives of people I will never know, people, who are nevertheless just like me, people who I feel are my friends.

And I feel united. I rise beyond national interests. I leave the closed world of my home and I look out and enjoy The View from my Window.

 

My Ignorance is Just as Good as Your Knowledge

On By Norbert HauptIn Wisdom2 Comments

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

— Isaac Asimov, 1980

JFK Addresses AFS Students at the White House – 1963

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Cool People, Feelings, Political, Travels, Wisdom5 Comments

Back on July 18, 1963, as the AFS [see below] students who had spent their high school year in the United States, were preparing to go back to their countries, they got to visit the White House. JFK talked to them.

It would be another 11 years before I had the privilege to be chosen as an AFS student. I arrived in the United States two weeks after Nixon’s resignation on August 20, 1974. Our group did not get to visit the White House when we went home in July of 1975.

All my life I have been proud to have been an AFS student and to carry the mission forward of spreading peace in the world, one person at a time.

It’s gotten a little more difficult in recent years.

[AFS stands for American Field Service, today the largest and most famed high school student exchange program in the world]

Countries are Bigger than People

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, Commentaries, Wisdom3 Comments

Germany’s president is Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The president of Germany is a largely ceremonial position, with the chancellor serving as the chief executive. In the U.S., our president serves as both. In Germany, these duties are spread over the two positions. At the 80th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, when the U.S. president made a serious faux pas by “congratulating” Poland and stating it was “a great country,” Steinmeier asserted at a ceremony:

I Affirm our Lasting Responsibility

— Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Germany did a lot of damage in the world during the last century and it still as an inferiority complex as a result to this day. Contrary to what the U.S. president currently often does when world affairs do not go right, namely blaming his predecessors, blaming his staffers and appointees, or blaming other nations and their leaders, the president of Germany took responsibility for the brutal and unprovoked attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 that started World War II.

Steinmeier and I have a few things in common. His mother was born in Breslau, which is in now a part of Poland and called Wrocław. She was a refugee after the war. My father was also born in Breslau, and he was a refugee. Steinmeier was born in 1956. I was born in 1956. When I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, World War II was ancient history to me. I only know the Germany of the economic miracle of the 1960s. Due to his age, the same would be true for Steinmeier. I am certainly not personally responsible for the atrocities committed by the people of Germany in World War II, even though my grandfather was a German soldier of low rank serving in the Wehrmacht during the war, and several of my uncles from the maternal side were reportedly members of the SS, even though I never had a chance to actually talk about this with them. It was not talked about then.

There are very few Germans alive today that were alive during World War II. Those who are still with us were children then. Nobody of any position of responsibility or authority is still alive. Nobody who has personally committed atrocities is still alive. And yet, the German president affirms the country’s lasting responsibility for damaging the Polish nation, resulting in the deaths of about six million Polish citizens, about a fifth of the country’s pre-war population, both by the occupation by Germany and then the Russians when they attacked from the eastern front. Six million Polish civilians were killed by war crimes, crimes against humanity and by starvation.

The U.S. president congratulates Poland for this.

The German president affirms his country’s lasting responsibility, even though he himself was born 17 years after the event.

Nations carry responsibility for their actions. The United States is currently responsible for millions of civilian deaths due to wars it started in Afghanistan and Iraq, which triggered conflicts all over the Middle East. That responsibility will remain with our nation. I wonder, in the year 2099, when a U.S. president, who is today not even alive yet, gives a memorial speech for the victims of these wars, whether he will exhibit the same sense of responsibility and grace for those victims?

Countries are bigger than people. They can do more good, and they can do more damage. Where does our country rate today? Will we be proud of our actions today come 2099?

 

Brutes and the Pillars of Civilization

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Wisdom1 Comment

Readers of the diary will have no difficulty seeing the similarities between Friedrich’s world and our own. And with Friedrich they will wonder with alarm why the pillars of civilization are so meager they can be pulled down by brutes.

— Kellner, Robert Scott. My Opposition (p. xxxi). Cambridge University Press, speaking about the Nazis.

Sigmund Freud Did Not Like America

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Language, Wisdom4 Comments

Freud is known for the following statement:

“America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake it is true, but none the less a mistake.”

— Sigmund Freud

In his youth, we was reportedly enamored with all things America. He had the Declaration of Independence hung on a wall in his room. He had memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and often recited it. But all that changed when he came to America one time. He never returned after his first visit.

He regarded Americans as poorly educated, uncultured, and backward, and he resented the fact that he had to take on more and more of them as patients in Vienna. He disliked the American system of consumption, and he didn’t respect American wealth and rich people.

He also had trouble with the egalitarianism we practice at America. People of all walks of life called him Sigmund, rather than Herr Dr. Freud or Dr. Freud. Most German speakers have a difficult time in America at first with the apparent familiarity and egalitarian social structure. They like their ranks and class distance as it is built into the language. They have trouble, at first, calling everyone “you” in the familiar form. In the English language, we address each other with you, no matter what the relationship is. We talk the same way to our doctors, our supervisors at work, the president of the country, teachers, relatives, parents, students, playmates, buddies and our dogs. Not so in German, French, Spanish, or Japanese, to name just a few major languages which differentiate the common address based on relationship and status.

Dr. Freud didn’t like the American way.

Is what we commonly call here “the greatest country in the world” really a mistake?

Let’s not ask Freud.

The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Wisdom2 Comments

When Trisha’s father passed away in 2004, he left her his library. Over the years, she kept only the most precious pieces. In her den, on a prominent shelf, is the fifteen book set of the Complete Works of Charles Dickens, by the Kelmscott Society Publishers, New York. The volumes are not dated, but I found through online research that they were published in 1904.

The books are now brittle, some of the spines have crumbled, and I don’t think any of the books themselves would survive a reading. They would disintegrate from being handled.

But precious they are, on that shelf, to remind her of her father, who himself must have acquired them when they were already old.

I have never read any Dickens, but it gives me comfort to know the complete works are in our house.