Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I was talking to a student in my writing workshop Saturday, and she was deeply upset, as she has been for awhile,  and concerned about the politics of polarization gripping the country.

I said I had an idea, I was going to write a series of articles on the blog saying I thought everything President Trump and his movement is doing is right, and is good for the country. I wanted to stand in his shoes and see the world from his point of view and that of his supporters.

She was shocked, she said she couldn’t believe I would even think of doing that. And then, she smiled and said, “oh, I get it. You just want to write about it, you want to shake people up.”

Maybe she’s right, but I hope she gives me more credit than that.

I’ve been living with animals for some time now, and I learn something from them almost every day.

I have noticed over the years that animals are never polarized, they live in harmony except when it comes to food and survival, the herds and flocks and families of animals do not live in disagreement, they might have to harm other animals to survive, but they are never polarized, they never act out of differing ideologies or opinions.

They never make moral judgments about one another. And in so doing, they seem more and more to be more moral than people to me.

I told my student I wasn’t trying to shock or be controversial, but sometimes, when I can’t bear to watch the news, or listen to another person tell me how much they hate the left or the right, or list outrage after grievance, I think about an old Quaker practice for dealing with conflict: assume that everyone is right.

It is as shocking an idea to people in our time as it is impractical and impossible in our fractured society. But it is good for the soul, it is a powerful spiritual exercise, it calms the spirit and teaches empathy and compassion.

And who knows? Perhaps it could spread like a meme or virus across social media.

In the larger sense, of course, idea is true. Everyone thinks they are right. And from their own point of view, they are right. I’m not God, I can say what I believe, but I can’t say who is right and who is wrong.

In our country one  half of the people are continuously telling the other half that they are wrong, everyone seems to have their own truth and their own facts and their own sense of right or wrong.

We have lost a common sense of good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral, just and  unjust. We no longer even make a pretense of listening to one another, or caring what people on the other side want or think. I have plenty of strong opinions, but I don’t want to be like that.

So I think the exercise for me will not be writing about President Trump or his followers – that is not my terrain – but paying some attention to the news and assuming everyone who disagrees with me is right, rather than assuming everyone who disagrees with me is wrong.

I want to think through what they are saying and why they are saying it. I want to have an ability to stand in other people’s truth and look for the light in it.

Everyone on the left, everyone on the right. Each person is telling their own truth, each person has a right to be believed and taken seriously, I want to see if I can broaden my view of right and wrong and  better understand what is tearing so much of the country apart.

In the center of moral consideration of human conduct, wrote the moral philosopher Hannah Arendt, stands the self. “If we strip moral imperatives of their religious (or political) origins,” she wrote, “we are left with the Socratic proposition. “it is better to suffer wrong than do wrong.”

It is better for me to be ad odds with the whole world than, being one person, be at odds with myself. Though shall never contradict thyself, wrote the philosopher Emmanuel Kant.

Where all are guilty, nobody is. Where all are innocent, everybody is.

The bad blood pouring through our world is contagious and disturbing, all good people are wearying from it, are worn down by it. I can only ground and focus myself, nobody else.  I will continue working to do that.

I don’t tell anyone else what to do, and I work as hard as I can not to judge people who see the world differently than me.  I also am surprised to find myself good at doing good. That has helped me keep a sense of self.

In my own life, I will continue to do good rather than argue about it, and work with refugees and immigrants, the Mansion residents, and my new and surprising passion, a community radio station in trouble.

I think it corrodes the soul to hate much of the time, and argue and seethe all of the time. I will do my duty and vote for people who share my values, and even work privately for some.

I don’t think anyone would be shocked by how I vote but I don’t have a need to share it on Facebook either or tell the world about it. It seems a private thing to me.

I am drawn to the spiritual exercise of assuming people are right rather than wrong. And pursuing the wisdom of animals and in my heart, by letting other people live as they choose to live without judgment from me.

I just want to try it.

A friend and former colleague e-mailed me yesterday to ask about my life. We had worked closely for some years, and were good friends. Like many men, we lost touch with our friendship and with one another, we were too busy.

We talked on the phone for awhile to catch up.

He had taken a tenured job at a Midwestern Journal School a few years before schools stopped giving out tenure and hired mostly adjunct professors – part-timers who lived in slavery.

He has that rarest of American things: lifetime job security. “I could murder my dean,” he said, “and they couldn’t fire me.”

My friend was secure, he had a wonderful plan, a good pension, summers off and a light but interesting case load. He had a summer home in Maine.

In the next year, he would have seven months off to write one of those books academics are expected to write. Nobody could tell him to do anything he didn’t wish to do. I detected a whiff or arrogance I had now seen before.

I am a former academic, I taught in a big city school, I have no illusions that academic teaching is a perfect life. But I did feel a momentary flash envy at all of the security my friend had in his job – regular paychecks, no health coverage worries, and when the time came for him to retire, he was all set and could afford to live almost anywhere he wished.

That is not, I told him, the writer’s life, it is not the artist’s life.

His hard work paid off for him, he said. I expect no payoff for my hard work, which is good, because there won’t be any.

As we talked, he asked me about my security, and I told him the truth. No pension, no savings, really, no top-tier health plan, I had a big hole in the donut every year. I have no paid vacation of any kind, a steady, daily work load, I could not afford summers off.

The only chance I ever  had of retiring – I have no wish to retire –  and hope to die right here on the farm, or at least close by.

I could, I said, die in poverty.

But my life, I said is wonderful. I love my wife, my blog, my farm, my photography, the small acts of kindness I am learning to do, the friends I am beginning to make. For me, this is the golden age of my life, the apogee, the summit.

“Doesn’t this lack of security bother you?,” he asked me. “I couldn’t live like that. How do you?” He didn’t mean to be offensive or doubting, he was sincerely puzzled that I had chosen that kind of life. But we had clearly lost touch with one another.

“First off,” I said, “nobody forced me into this life.  I chose it. I am responsible for it. It is the life I have always wanted, and I am happier in this life than I have ever been.”

But, he asked again, does the lack of security frighten you?

No, I said, it doesn’t frighten me, except on the darkest nights where I sometimes feel a wave of guilt and sorrow thinking I could not possibly leave Maria enough  money to live her life and do her work in comfort.

When the sun rises, I understand this is both a sexist and patronizing dream, and I also know Maria is as well equipped to care for herself as anyone I have ever known.  She has no interest in being taken care of by me all of her life.

It’s not all about money, not even in America.

But still, I can’t wave away who I was and who I am. But this fear is short lived, and I don’t it through the day or most of the night.

“Every morning, when I wake up,” I told my friend, “I tell myself I am OK today.” And that is as far as I take it.

And that is the truth.

I am OK today. I have everything I need. I have everything I have ever wanted. My life is full of meaning and love and purpose. I am surprised to find myself an instrument of good, an enabler of small acts of great kindness. I fully embrace this role.

I haven no idea about tomorrow, or a thousand tomorrows. I am OK today.

I am an artist of a kind now, and the artist is meant to put the objects of the world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance, which Joseph Campbell writes is “the light of our consciousness in which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, are revealed.”

The hero journey is one of the patterns through which that radiance shines the brightest, and I have been on that journey for much of my adult life. A good life, I believe, is one hero journey after another.

My friend knew all about the hero journey, he said he declined the trip. He wanted something more solid for himself and family.

So there it is, I said. Different paths.

Over and over again, I am called to the realm of adventure, to new horizons, to new challenges and trials.

Every morning, each time, there are the same questions. Do I dare? Can I survive? And if I do dare, all of the dangers and traps and pitfalls are also there.

There is, I told my bewildered friend (I think he was so grateful not to be me) there is always the possibility of a fiasco.

But then, there is also the possibility of bliss.

He said he had to go, we said goodbye. Somehow, I think it was our last conversation.

It’s interesting that sheep, who I don’t believe are very bright, know how to relax, and I don’t. So I went out with my camera today and walked and sat with them (I had no dogs with me) and they accepted me without the dogs.

They were lying in the sun, it’s a cool day here. They sat chewing their cuds without a care in the world, and I sat there with them.

Above is a photo of your

The Mansion has set up several bulletin boards as part of our Mapping Project, where readers of the blog send brief descriptions (and sometimes, photos) of the towns and cities where they live.

The messages are coming from all over the country and the world, Julie and the Mansion staff collect them and posts them in the Mansion hallways. The bulletin boards are filling up, please keep them coming.

The residents love this project and check on the maps every day. They read the messages and look for the towns on the map.

Your messages are much appreciated. All you have to do it write a few paragraphs about your community, describing it briefly. You can mail or e-mail a photo if you wish.

You can send your descriptions of your town to the Mapping Project, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y, 12816 or you can e-mail Julie, the Mansion Activities director: she is julia@the cambridgemansion.com.

Thanks, this brings the wider world into the Mansion in a way that reminds the residents of the world out there and the fact that there are people who care about them. You have transformed the Mansion in so many profound ways Thanks.