We are Goliath? and lots of other thoughts

Yesterday, I repeated the proverb that pride goes before a fall, and today, in the wee waking moments over coffee and letting the dog out for a run, I contemplated the idea that we are Goliath, we being the West, the U.S. This is, apparently, not a new notion, according to several items that came up on my google search, and it's not entirely new to me, either. But it's still a very scary thought for me. I don't like seeing myself as part of the Goliath team. Yet, I know this is how we are viewed by many people, many of whom live inside the West.

So, I just want to muse on this blog while I think about this notion, thinking out loud so to speak. I don't expect it to all make sense, or even come to a coherent conclusion, but I feel it's necessary to examine this idea. Plus, it dovetails nicely with the other input I got from MSNBC Morning Joe's discussion of Barack Obama. (Can they ever get tired of that subject? They have sliced and diced him 6 ways from Sunday; I like the guy, but really?) I heard Tom Brokaw and some other guy say something catchy about Obama's humility, which I can't for the life of me repeat right now, but essentially, the point was that his background as a child of both Kansas and Kenya set him on the path of centrism, which has been his pattern over the years, including Harvard, to bring everyone around the table.

Okay, that got me thinking, once again, that the election of Obama shows how significant is our national longing for return to a humble approach to global relations. Under all our patterns, and training and traditions and consumerism, and bravado and desire to be the best, underneath all our culture and civilization, there is a strong national, perhaps world, desire to admit that we (the so-called civilized ones) don't, in fact, know it all and we want to be able to sit at the table with the world as human beings, not as super-consumers and Goliaths.

Now, pause for a minute. Anybody who might possibly be reading this, pause and think about the last time you said something humble or admitted fault to your brother, sister, co-worker, mother, father, fellow-student, wife, husband, best friend, child, patient, client, direct report, neighbor, grocer, teller, banker, or waitress. When is the last time? How hard was it? Did you feel weak, if you did? Did you find it impossible to admit fault, if you didn't? Have you ever admitted fault? If you did, did you feel it was a mistake?

Personally, admitting fault is like having a baby; it takes a long period of gestation and a prolonged agonizing period of pain to give birth to an admission of fault. I don't do it well, however, I have done it, and heaven knows, I try. Admitting that I struggle with admitting fault is hard. The bottom line, we don't see the strength in admitting fault, we see and feel the weakness and vulnerability of that position and avoid taking that position. So much of both individual and collective life boils down to avoiding feeling weak and vulnerable. Collectively, a nation does so many things in the name of security, which boils down to not wanting to feel weak and vulnerable. Many extremes of behavior and justified in the name of security, like waterboarding as a prime example, in the ultimate name of security, which is another way of saying, I can't stand feeling weak and vulnerable. Admitting fault is not an act of "security" but it IS the act of a secure being. Metaphorically speaking, it's having a cow, man.

Now, I've brought personal and national security into the picture, which ties back into my post which posits that most of human endeavor is our attempt to bring order out of chaos. Order = security, chaos = uncontrollable forces. See how those two concepts are tied together inextricably? Desiring order and security . . . a human imperative that gives meaning and structure to life and can no more be changed than growing hair all over our body. At what point, however, does this impulse slip into compulsion to bring [our] order and security to everyone, including the world? At what point does it, do we, become like the Philistines, sending their champion every day to the valley to challenge the opponent and to take a stand for our way?

Maybe this analogy is getting stretched too thin. Personal and national security, we can't live without security, right? It's always a good thing to fight those intruders/evil-doers who want to rob us of our security, right? If we're sitting on the best of everything and the world wants a piece, we get to tell everybody how to do things, right? Our way, our western, now democratic, traditions are best, right? And if everyone does it the way we have been doing it for 200 plus years, they will get the things and ways we have, right? Isn't all that unquestionable? Isn't it treason to intimate otherwise?So how can we ever be Goliath? We're the wise and prosperous people who just want to help everyone, right?

Seriously, I'm asking these questions seriously.

At the same time that I pose these questions, I know that civilizations rise and fall, and things fall apart, and Goliath gets beheaded, and the little guy triumphs, and security, well, security must be sought in other ways than the old, traditional ways. History. It happened. I pose questions that are directed at the underpinnings of our assumptions. Hubris tells us that those underpinnings are unquestionable. And humility would tell us that questioning these assumptions are good.

The point I'm coming too, in this roundabout way, is that public dialogue is swinging more toward the questioning, more toward the hope that humility can result in overall good. Posing the question of whether I am faultless and perfect is a good thing. It's a healthy thought. Because, we're not perfect, and we are not secure. This civilization, this system, is not perfect and can never attain perfect security, especially not through external means. If we have enemies on every side, well, let's take a look at ourselves while we fight the good fight.

We are Goliath? If we are, we don't need to keep being Goliath. If we're not Goliath, it doesn't make us David, either.

I don't know how comfortable I am with questioning assumptions which have given me structure and security for ages. But if I don't question, I could easily become Goliath.