I found this today in “Notes to My Mother” on my computer. My beautiful and insightful mother passed away six years ago at the age of 103. The note below is years old but speaks to me today of all that remains the same. I think my mother and I would be having the same exchange today.

Note:

I visited my mother in Florida last month and took her to vote. At age 94, it was her first task of the day, and, at the end of the day, her concern was evident. The two of us have been pondering that vote ever since. She continues to send me excerpts from a book I was reading at the time, and which I left at her request. As I write this, the election controversy continues.

Why is it that in public life, battle and tough-mindedness are considered more real or fundamental than friendship and serenity?

When demonization is used to characterize an adversary, the adversary’s skills, sincerity, intelligence, and capacity are mocked in favor of one’s own supposed superiority.

Adversarialism appears in institutions like business and politics, where in order to win profits and office, it is necessary to undermine respect for and trust in someone or something else. Desires for justice, safety, and non-exploitation are sacrificed for “victory.” In its most virulent forms, adversarialism is murder, war, and environmental destruction.

Compulsive adversaries are those whose personalities are so constituted as to drive them, as if addicted, to fight and win or lose. Their insistence, and their leadership, solidify and reproduce the norms of adversarialism that most people are taught not to question and with which they learn to play along.

The Dalai Lama is a world force for rethinking assumptions about political behavior and individual behavior along what he sees as realizable ethical lines. He does not, as they say, just talk the talk; he walks the walk. And he does not do so as naively as it may seem. As if responding to the Rambo element in human behavior, he is fully aware that selfishness, anger, and hatred, as well as love, gentleness, and compassion are in us all. Through examining these inclinations carefully, both conceptually and emotionally, people can find ways in which the destructive tendencies can be deliberately diminished in their power over us. It is worth remembering that Rambo’s understandable rage got him nothing, nothing at all, that he wanted. That he yearned for respect, recognition, and love were apparent, but he know no means by which to find them.

When I spoke to her of feeling my own adversarial tendencies during this time, she e-mailed me one more excerpt.

People who address their own adversarialism learn self-knowledge that affects conversations with lovers, relatives, friends, teachers, students, clergy, therapists, and others who can, often in ritualized ways, invite reflections and inner honesty. They learn to ask: “Why did you say that?” “What did you mean by it?” “What were you feeling?” “What does that remind you of?”

And while reviewing Ethics for the New Millennium by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, I came across the following and sent it back to her.

So if it is true that a given country’s politicians are corrupt, we tend to find that the society is itself lacking in morality and that the individuals who make up the population do not lead ethical lives. In such cases, it is not entirely fair for the electorate to criticize its politicians. On the other hand, when people possess healthy values, and where they practice ethical discipline in their own lives out of concern for others, the public officials produced by that society will quite naturally respect those same values. Each of us, therefore, has a role to play in creating a society in which respect and care for others, based on empathy, are given top priority.

I await her response.

Excerpts from Rambo and the Dalai Lama by Gordon Fellman

& Ethics for the New Millennium by His Holiness the Dalai Lama