Harold's Story - Part 1

By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio

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I had lunch with an old friend, a Tlingit elder, Harold, today. I’ve known Harold for nearly a dozen years. And I know him to be a serious, thoughtful man; he’s someone who has taught me many things, not the least of which was the powerful consequence of even the smallest positive intervention in someone’s life. I have seen it in action: Harold is the embodiment of Emerson’s dictum that it is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself…. “Serve and thou shall be served.” Harold helped me, a lawyer once upon a time, see love in a loveless system.

During the hour, he related to me a personal story. He and his brother had spent a week working with the RCMP on race relations and cross-cultural understanding—by all accounts a successful few days. The following week, strolling through a department store, he noticed a security officer scolding some aboriginal kids, but passed by. Shortly thereafter, he saw them all outside, the security man still berating the kids, but in language Harold felt was racist. He stopped and spoke to the youngsters, telling them that inside the store was a private matter, but they were entitled to their use of the sidewalk. He returned to his car. Then he saw two police cars pull up quickly, and he thought he had better return. “I know how these things escalate in the minds of young people,” he said. “Then they’re angry, it escalates, and they end up going down a road no one ever imagined. I’ve seen it all before; I’ve been there.” As he approached, he heard the security guard make some startling accusations, as well as barking at Harold that this matter was none of his concern. Harold replied that as long as he felt there was unfair, racist “bullshit” going on, he would always be concerned.

He was suddenly seized by the elbow by one of the officers who had just arrived. Harold jerked his arm away. This time two officers grabbed him: “You’re under arrest for causing a disturbance.” In spite of his protest, he was taken forcefully to the cruiser and locked inside. The young people went on their way. Around the block, the cruiser stopped. Harold asked why they were stopping. “To check something,” was the reply. Harold became concerned and angry; he demanded to be taken to the police station and charged. The officer said that he’d decided to give Harold “a break and let him go.” Furious, Harold went straight to the police station on foot and asked to see the officer in charge: he wanted to make a formal complaint. After waiting for a time, an officer appeared at the wicket to ask Harold what he wanted. It was the same officer who several minutes earlier had locked Harold in a cruiser car. Harold was sad as he related this, saying only: “We had just finished a week of talking about these issues, and without losing a beat, here was this guy making assumptions about me as just another goddammed Indian. I’m starting to feel that we’ve gained no ground at all.”

His story (which I’ve considerably shortened here) reminded me that we constantly relate to one another on the basis of our assumptions about who the other is. Jim Selman, another thoughtful friend who devotes much of his time contemplating these things, goes further, calling them ‘assessments’, often made in advance. Our assessments are neither true nor false, he says, they are merely judgements arrived at on the basis of what we think we’ve heard or seen—we fail to make a distinction between truth and those assessments. He considers that frequently our relationships are not truly authentic, but merely an exchange of assessments (often I would say a half-cooked porridge of gossip, half-truths, impressions, preferences or biases, and one’s own needs) in which the inner person is seldom discernible. A racist, for example, will never see the real person in front of him: he will only see a caricature of a human being for whom he has certain specific and predictable expectations. He will only “see” what tends to confirm his assumptions. If we stereotype in our relations, others will always present to us already distorted by our bigotry. We deny that the other person has wisdom. Somewhere in my life as a lawyer, I learned that counsel’s special gift is to see the insides of things: we see the world as a series of transparencies which, when laid one over the other, form an image of the truth. We see inner structures, processes, histories, aspirations and values; instruments not always visible to the quotidian eye. But that is as nothing, if we are incapable of turning that eye inward.

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: assessments bigotry elder judgements love race_relations racist service tlingit

Toward An Ethic of Aging III

By Stuart J Whitley | Bio

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In my last post I wondered about whether or not there was an ethic of aging. Again, by ‘ethics’ I mean simply some general consensus or agreement about what is good about the way we relate to one another. This is a group or communal expression of belief, rather than an individual or moral outlook. The distinction is thus simply drawn between morals and ethics, terms which are often interposed. I should be more explicit and ask whether there is a reasonable consensus around obligations associated with the process of aging. One needs to be clear about such things because there are many ethical issues relating to this subject: the diminishment of worth of old people and their relegation to institutional repositories, the abuse of the elderly, the genetic or pharmaceutical tinkering with the aging process, and so on.

What I’m talking about is whether ethical obligations arise as one draws toward and enters the last quarter of one’s natural life. A duty, perhaps. It is necessary to consider the nature of ‘duty’, to whom it is owed, its relationship with responsibility, and moral decision-making (and the nature of compromise and courage and blame as dimensions of this discussion). The very idea of duty has a quaint ring to it these days; sometimes that is the best that may be said for it. After all, concentration camps abound more than one hundred years after the Boer War (during which they were introduced as a weapon against civilians who might offer succour to the enemy), where internees were encamped in brutal conditions by those who later asserted that they were only doing their duty. The debasement of the term in this way has diminished its currency. The call to one’s countryman to ‘do one’s duty’ can be seen in both positive and derogatory terms. What is one’s ‘duty’? This will almost always be contextual.

The Oxford definition of ‘duty’ is a moral or legal obligation to which one is bound or ought to do. This would be something to which one is committed or obedient to because of the rightness of the thing moving within oneself as a binding force.

In “The Duties of a Citizen (Larchwood, Ontario, 1913)” cited by John Ralston Saul in Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997), the Duties of a Citizen as a lesson for recent immigrants were expressed as follows:

•    Understand our government
•    Take active part in politics
•    Assist all good causes
•    Lessen intemperance
•    Work for others.

Saul describes this as a participatory obligation in a process that is democratic and cooperative. As character is developed by experience, it follows that a richer contribution could be made by someone who has lived long. As the social welfare state has a duty to care for the elderly as they become frail, so one might argue that there is a concomitant obligation on the part of seniors to invest their accumulated wisdom in the transmission of values and knowledge to the subsequent generation.

In the context of Biblical tradition, elders were required to perform several functions as a matter of duty. They resolved disputes, drawing on their acquired knowledge and skills. They attended to the sick. "Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil …” (James 5:14). Elders in the religious community were role models for righteous behaviour: they are to watch out for the church in humility. "I exhort the elders who are among you, I being also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God among you, taking the oversight, not by compulsion, but willingly; nor for base gain, but readily; nor as lording it over those allotted to you by God, but becoming examples to the flock.” (1 Peter 5:1-4). Elders are the designated leaders of the church who act not for pay or reward but because of their perceived duty to serve. Clearly, the role of the aged in leading, as a matter of moral duty, the vertical process of cultural continuity is an ancient one.



There was a contemplative and teaching role, which reflected the accumulation of wisdom borne of an exemplary life. Eldering was a position to be sought but not taken lightly: "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1). The role of elder was one to be taken very seriously, which inherently assumes a moral content, a duty, if not a sacred trust.

Of course, cultures that prized elders and their contributions were aboriginal. The skills and knowledge essential for survival had to be transmitted from one generation to another, and for understanding of the ways of the world—especially the inexplicable events that beset humans—elders had an obligation to explain, lead and inspire. While wisdom is not necessarily the sole purview of the grey beard, nevertheless, with age and experience comes the weight of authenticity. Examples abound: when Ahtahkakoop, notable Chief of the Plains Cree, was asked toward the end of his life about the decisions he had taken during the transition from hunter to farmer under increasingly repressive policies of the Canadian government, he said that decisions must have the long view: “Let us not think of ourselves but of our children’s children. Let us show our wisdom by choosing the right path now, while we yet have a choice.”

The plains Indians had a concept that generally captures the idea of ‘duty’ as a reciprocal obligation: it is the idea of wechewehtowin, which loosely means ‘partnership’ in Cree. There is a distinction between wisdom and knowledge, meaning that everything is one as created by the Great Spirit, and has four aspects: mind, body, emotion, and spirit. Ancient wisdom is learnt from experience and taught by wise old people; it has equity with other knowledge systems. Wisdom lies mainly in the acquiring, sharing and application of knowledge. Through use of the Cree concept of ‘partnership’, it has been argued that both Aboriginal wisdom and western scientific knowledge could be accommodated, and one way to approach it was to view it as a puzzle whereby each knowledge system supplied certain pieces (see WIDENING THE CIRCLE, Newsletter of the Native Mental Health Research Team, Volume 2, Issue 2 Winter1999).

I do think there is at least a vestigial obligation in elders, regardless of culture, to impart wisdom. In a democracy, this may be taken as a given, for a democracy without participation cannot sustain itself, and informed participation makes for a richer discourse.

 

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: aboriginal aging cree duty elder elder_abuse eldering knowledge wisdom

Toward an Ethic of Aging I

   By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio

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About three years ago, I assisted an aboriginal woman elder with a presentation she was doing for the media. She was trying to explain the role of justice as conceived by the first peoples of this continent. Paraphrasing her: first, she said, there is the sky over all of us, then there is the water below. What takes our breath away when we look to the rivers and the forests is the same thing that possesses us when we think about the wonder inside our own bodies. As the moon compels the oceans with forces we can feel (if not fully understand), so is every atom of water linked one to the other in performing the essential tasks that the living earth needs. A rainstorm in the mountains stirs our blood. What we do to the pond in the slough where the horses graze, we do to the world. As goes the fate of the smallest creek, goes the fate of us all. All things are connected.

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Written by eldering at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: aboriginal elder ethic justice responsibility wisdom

Discernment: Harold's Story

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is the first post in a three-part series.

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Written by eldering at Learning

Tagged with: aboriginal assessment elder racism rights

Riverboats and Bone Yards I

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This post is the first in a five-part series.

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As a young boy growing up in England, I was consumed with tales of the ‘Dark Continent’. The memoirs and descriptions of Burton, Speke, Livingston and Stanley enthralled me, especially their references to the fabled graveyard of elephants, where the fading behemoths of the Serengeti went to die. Trying to conceive of a place like this was such an effort that it faltered on the steps of my young imagination. The African elephant can live as long as 70 years or more: the idea that this intelligent beast should know its time nears and be drawn to a resting place with its kin seemed fantastic.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Learning

Tagged with: elder future obsession time with youth