“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.” –  Immanuel Kant.

Like almost everyone else, I woke up this morning to news of racist re-tweets by the President, which is no longer unusual, and somewhat more surprising news that Matt Lauer, the popular co-host of the Today Show, had been fired for as yet undisclosed incidents of sexual harassment.

I guess that is no longer shocking either.

The Today Show makes hundreds of millions of dollars for NBC, and for them to fire Lauer this quickly and angrily tells us the complaints must be especially serious. Another God falls off the ledge and breaks into a thousand pieces, right before our eyes.

The New York Times has been working on this story for weeks. The powerful and often gifted and much-loved men are falling like dominoes.

The story is in my head, something important is happening.

It isn’t as if I didn’t know women are commonly harassed in America,  you have to be living in a cave or an old white Republican man not to know that.

But I am truly shaken by the depth and ugliness of it. Women are not surprised by the depth and ugliness of it.

I was a journalist once, and also the Executive Producer of the CBS Morning News.

I am also a man with a wonderful wife, many female friends, a daughter and a granddaughter.

I was  born Jewish, and am further startled by the number of Jewish men (including Lauer)  in entertainment and media and politics – some of whom I know – who have done unconscionable things to women.

But really, said a friend, that’s just because there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood and media.

Yes, I said, they are still Jewish. I have never been a devout Jew, but have always admired the ethical and compassionate underpinnings of the faith. Judaism is deeply imbued with moral  reflection. It is an  an old faith, much talk of righteousness and empathy, a chosen people. I guess nobody is morally superior to anyone else, no one can judge anyone else.

I don’t think for a second that men of other faiths don’t harass or abuse women but still, this is a puzzle for me.

Some of the media harassers I know – of all faiths –  always seemed profoundly ethical and compassionate to me in their work, so I am trying to sort out some eternal philosophical questions – is it possible for good people to do bad things? Is it possible for bad people to do good things?

Does a monster live inside all of us? Am I allowed to still care for these men?

Yes, yes, and yes. And yes.

Moral conduct, wrote Hannah Arendt, the brilliant moral philosopher, seems to depend primarily upon the intercourse of man with himself.  He must not contradict himself by making an exception in his own favor – the core of harassment – he must not place  himself in a position in which he would have to despise himself.

That is the true price of harassment, if the apologies of these men are to be believed. I believe them when they say they despise themselves.  The price for women is much higher.

Morally speaking, says Arendt, self-respect should be enough not only to enable a person to tell right from wrong, but also to do right and avoid wrong.

It seems one of the lessons from these revelations is that you can’t tell someone to be moral, the desire to be moral must come from conversations we all have with ourselves. It’s an internal, not an external decision.  I see now  that nobody is all good or all bad.

I have these conversation every day of my life, especially in recent years, after my awakening. I have no desire to do a single that will cause me to disrespect or despise myself. I am not saint,  I know that morality comes from inside of me, and my own dialogue.

I bristle when so many women tell me that men have no idea this kind of behavior is wrong. That is not true. I knew it was wrong. My bosses knew it was wrong. My colleagues and friends knew it was wrong.

Forcing your self in a weaker and younger person is so clearly and profoundly wrong, harassment is a breakdown of consciousness and morality. The most generous interpretation I can give it is that power corrodes and corrupts. And that’s still no excuse. There are some things the moral man simply will not do.

There are different parts to all of us, some are visible, some are hidden.

Understanding this may be helpful for us to understand as we sort though this enduring brutality and cruelty.

“I am willing to accept humility,” wrote Arendt, “because I have always believed that no one can know himself, for no one appears to himself as he appears to others. Only poor Narcissus will let himself be deluded by how own reflected image…”

No good or healthy man can get any kind of pleasure out of hurting other people, yet the modern story of men is that so many of them hurt people all of the time. Domination and brutality seem genetic sometimes. History tell us there is always a reckoning in one way or the other. A horrible price to pay for moments of cruelty and dominance.

We are all searching for moral men. We need them right now.

Without men, there would be no war, harassment would be almost unheard of, jails would be empty, violent crime would be shocking, deaths by gunshot rare. And see what the angry men in Washington are doing to our country.

People are not black and white, this or that. We lose touch with the reality of life every time we forget that. We set ourselves up to be stunned and bewildered by what is ubiquitous.

The Puritans have left their mark on the earth, after all, we are taught to see people as one thing or another, all good, all evil, nothing in between.

But the truth is, people have many hues, not just black or white. And they can’t be lectured to a moral place..

I admit I have sometimes wondered, often with irony,  what is missing in me as a man, that it never crossed my mind to masturbate in front of any other human, including my wife. So many admirable and successful men seem to think it is okay to do that. The women wanted it, they say. They are sorry if they hurt anybody.

Really? Or are they sorry they were caught?

 

W.H. Auden wrote this poem about men;

“Private faces in public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces in private places.”

It seems this poem was prescient.

I can’t really cut it as a powerful man.

 

I never once wandered around in my bathrobe with my penis hanging out in front of young employees at business meetings or anywhere else. The idea is literally disgusting to me, I can hardly even imagine how women feel exposed to that.

The idea of sticking my tongue in a strange person’s mouth, male or female, is also unfathomable to me, not arousing or sexual in any way. Grabbing someone’s ass would terrify and  repel me. What on earth is happening inside the souls of these men?

I guess some men are aroused and warped by power and money, as has long been suspected. The charge comes not from sex from bending someone less powerful to your will. Love is never coerced.

And other men are simply broken, ignorant or schizophrenic. They can be one thing in their work, another in their living rooms and behind closed doors. They are hypocrites, the lowest form of life.

There is nothing sexual about forcing myself on someone, especially someone young and vulnerable. Love is just the opposite, and love is what arouses me, not abuse or harassment. I guess that makes me freakish – less of a man – to some.

But more of a man to me. I do not despite myself.

No wonder I have never really been all that comfortable around men.

I see that the real heroes here – the only heroes – are the women who overcome their fear and misplaced shame to speak out.

I have often written and long believed that men, unchecked, are busy destroying the world. When I write that, I am mostly greeted by yawns. What else is new?

Just look at Washington or Kim Jong Un or Duerte or the other strongmen and dictators of the world or the almost all male corporatists and politicians bent on ravaging the earth for gold or the billionaire cannibals in Washington who know the truth but real but run and hide for political reasons.

I’m getting older, this fight will ultimately be won or lost when I am gone, it is, in some way, for the  young to decide. And for the women to decide.

So I am touched on many levels, even though I feel this is a story for women to define, not bewildered men. Maria and I have been talking about it every morning, these stories have been hurtful and disturbing to her, she is sometimes furious about them.

I am sometimes sick to my stomach.

“All words like Peace and Love,

All sane affirmative speech,

Had been soiled, profaned, debased

To a horrid mechanical screech.”a- W.H. Auden, “We Too Had Known Golden Hours.”

A poem for our times, I think.