“No Problem” and Courtesy (essay)

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Consider the following exchanges:

1:
John: Hello, Margaret.
Margaret: Hi, John. How are you?
John: Fine, thanks; you?
Elizabeth: Fine.
John: What’s new?
Elizabeth: Nothing much.

2:
Lois: May I help you?
Stephen: Do you have any ______?
Lois: Yes, right over here.
Stephen: Thank you.
Lois: You’re welcome.

Conventional, polite, pleasant enough, right?

Now consider this revision to the first conversation:

1 A:
John: Hello, Margaret.
Margaret: Fine.
John: How are you?
Margaret: Nothing much.
John: Fine thanks. What’s new?
Margaret. Hi, John.

The replies here are responses to the wrong questions, right?

And how about this revision to that second conversation?

2 A:
Lois: Did you find what you needed?
Stephen: Yes. I’d like to buy this ______, please.
Lois: Oh, good.
Stephen: And thank you for your help.
Lois: No problem.

This conversation ends with a response to the wrong question just as surely as all the replies in conversation 1 A. Thank you is a statement indicating the speaker’s appreciation for something the other person has done. There are, of course, more than one appropriate response to Thank you. Consider these possibilities:

You’re welcome – This conventional reply indicates it was appropriate for Stephen (in conversation 2) to expect Lois to do what she has done. It turns the conversation back to Stephen’s wants and needs, which is as polite as Stephen’s Thank you, since the response is also about Stephen.

I’m glad you found what you wanted – Although this reply does not comment on the appropriateness of Stephen’s request for help, it is still a pertinent and polite response to his Thank you. It is still more polite as it indicates Lois’s own pleasure in Stephen’s being satisfied.

My pleasure to serve you – This reply goes beyond both You’re welcome and I’m glad you found what you wanted, since it indicates that not only did Lois find it appropriate for Stephen to ask for help; she actually appreciated the opportunity to be of service. The same would be true for Happy to oblige and I’m glad I could help.

Now, to what question or comment is the statement No problem an appropriate response? No problem indicates that, in the second speaker's mind, the person saying Thank you has just expressed concern for the second person. For instance, in the scene in conversation 2, Stephen might have said, “I’m sorry I didn’t know where to look for ______.” No problem would mean in that context, unless an insult were intended, that Lois understands how an intelligent customer might not have known where the ________ was in the store.

In a different context, Stephen might have said, I’m sorry to have troubled you. Maybe Lois had been engrossed in another project when he came in, which he had interrupted. By saying No problem, she would have been telling him, not rudely, that the interruption had not caused her a problem, as he evidently thought.

Appropriate uses of No problem as an uninsulting reply to Thank you only occur when the first speaker – in this case, Stephen - is talking about the other, Lois, and that she acknowledges that her experience is indeed the subject of the exchange. Comparable responses would include, Oh, that’s okay and You didn’t cause me enough trouble to be concerned about.

In other words, saying No problem in reply to Thank you is equivalent to saying, It was not much of a bother to help you. That’s not part of a polite conversation – and should absolutely never be said to a customer as in a store or a restaurant.

You see, in that kind of a situation, and in many other kinds of situation, saying No problem to a person who has just thanked you indicates that the person replying thinks the most important element in the transaction eliciting the Thank you was how much or how difficult was the work he or she has been required to do.

So, if we thank our waitress, and she or he says, No problem, should we reply, Oh, I’m sorry I made work for you?

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Reminiscence: The Children 1

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1

With A----- pregnant for the first time, naturally we began to think about children’s names. We agreed on several points:

• our children’s names would reflect our families’ Irish and English heritage

• we would always call them by their real names and not with well-intentioned but generic names (like Sugar, Dear, Cutie, Sweetie)

• and their names would not be easy to make into nicknames (like Robert, William, Elizabeth, Katherine).

Several years later, the second child - son W----- - was not feeling well. I was trying to comfort him while heating something up in the kitchen. I picked him up and held him, hugged him. He was a toddler, so after a few minutes he began to feel heavy. I put him on the kitchen counter, still holding him tightly.

After a minute, I looked him lovingly in the eye. “You’ll feel better soon,
W-----,” I said.

He suddenly threw up, right in my face.

I did not hit him. I tried my best to not even flinch, but to continue looking at him lovingly. I asked sweetly, “Feel a little better now, honey?”

In his most innocent, piteous little voice, he said, “I don’t like to be called ‘Honey.’”

2

While W----- was still an infant, he slept in a crib in his own room, next to ours. Our daughter L------ - who was 20 months older - had her room a few steps away down the hall. We had worked hard to make her feel good about a new baby’s arrival, and she did.

Every morning, for instance, when she would first wake up (and often before her parents were stirring), L------ would go into W-----’s room and climb up into his crib to murmur quietly to him in a few minutes they had to themselves.

One morning, when A----- went in, she found L----- clambering back down from the crib; she had a pained look on her face. Before A----- could even ask her the trouble, she said: “I don’t like that poop in my smell.”

***

Poem: first day of spring

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cycling
from work
home

a man wrestling
a bright stroller with
a girl

not
my daughter

beside him
peering
at the rushing
cars

what i'd do
i'd lift her

thinking that
cycling by

i felt her weight
on my arm
and her legs
on my chest

and my heart
leapt

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American Success: Dualities Within the Culture

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1

The force that historically has driven America – and the United States in particular – is generated by a dynamic tension between dualities.

These dualities consist of worthy, even noble motives or ideals that happen to be paired against one another, pulling in opposite directions. Yet the opposition is not between good and bad (not between good and evil, and not even between moral and immoral). Both members of each pair are unquestionably good.

Consider, for example, the classic duality between Reason and Passion.

By nature, passion - or as we might say more often today, emotion – is volatile, always changing, “in the moment,” unpredictable.

Reason by contrast is orderly, considers both the past and the future, is predictable (though not unchanging).

The ancients said that one should seek a balance in one’s life, inspired or motivated by emotion (or “passion”) and also guided by reason. An excess of either emotion or reason would lead to negative results; finding the right balance in one’s life between these opposing internal forces was the ideal.

An individual or a nation driven by excessive emotion would be always unstable, untrustworthy, subject to intimidation by others more powerful, and vulnerable to manipulation. An individual excessively driven by reason would be alone, cold, selfish, calculating; a nation driven excessively by reason would not be grounded in values, and would be seeking, not ideals, but only the nation’s material and political interest. Emotion is perhaps more critical to the individual and reason to a nation, but the opposed driving force - in some degree - is necessary to each.

2

Since early in its development, American culture has been impelled forward by the tension between such opposing and interrelated forces – dualities – as these:

Reason - - - - - - - - - Emotion
Order - - - - -- - - - - Harmony
Society - - - -- - - - - Nature
Social - - - -- - - - - - Individual
Public - - - -- - - - - - Private
Duty - - - - -- - - - - - Commitment
Loyalty - - - -- - - - - Independence
Social Order - - - - - Social Justice
Law - - - - - - - - - - -Freedom
Authority - - - - - - - Conscience
Virtue -- - - - - -- - - Love
Observation - - - - - Imagination
Tradition - - - - - - - Creativity
Principle - - - --- - - Inspiration
Classicism - - - -- - Romanticism
Male - - - - - - -- - - Female
Real - - - - - - - - - - Ideal
Privileges - - - - - - Rights
Observation - - -- - Revelation
Physical Senses - - Intuition
Fact(s) - - - - - - - - Truth
Science - - - - - -- - Faith
Skeptical - - - - -- -Trusting
Knowledge - - - -- -Feeling
Intelligence - - - - - -Common Sense
Education - - - - - - -Experience
Ability - - - - -- - - - Motivation
Society - - - - - - - - Nature
Others - - - - -- - - - Self
Service - - - - - - - - Pleasure
Interest - - - - -- - - -Esteem
Respect - - - - -- - - Happiness

If an item in any pair seems negative, then we must simply remove that pair from this consideration. The point is, this list is intended to call attention to the opposing, complementary motives or ideals that have driven American culture through its history. Each item in every pairing should seem capable both of motivating behavior and of being intrinsically good.

Pursuit of happiness, for instance, is one of the self-evident rights referred to in our Declaration of Independence. Happiness is obviously good. On the other hand, who could say that seeking to earn respect – the opposing force to the drive for happiness - is not good?

Making decisions based on knowledge obviously seems desirable, yet one says, “Sometimes, you’ve got to go with your gut.” Sometimes, that is, it is good to make a decision based simply on what feels right.

Some are motivated by the pursuit of virtue, which is clearly a good thing, but who could say that it is not also a good thing to do something out of love?

And so on. (I hope the reader will be motivated, whether by curiosity or by faith that doing so would be beneficial, to think through several others of these dualities, seeing for yourselves how both ideals in each duality are good in themselves, even if they each have opposites that are also intrinsically good in themselves.)

3

Conventionally, Americans are said to be different from those in older cultures.  Americans are said to be more individualistic and independent, more imaginative and resourceful, committed more to their own freedom than to tradition or social hierarchy. That kind of claim is asserted so often and is so well illustrated by reference to events that it is clearly true at least to some degree.

At the same time, however, often in our history Americans have exhibited extraordinary love of their country and self-sacrifice of many kinds – for others, for loved ones, for those in need, for future generations… This tendency to put others before oneself is also often said to be a defining trait of American culture.

Another conventional and no doubt true observation is that America was born out of the Enlightenment, the intellectual culture distilling what was special about the Renaissance into behavioral imperatives and moral values. Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison, and the many others who led the way to the establishment of our nation embodied the perceptions and ideals developed by Montesquieu, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and many other contributors in the eighteenth century to the cultural phenomenon now called the Enlightenment. The American founders had learned from these writers and statesmen and came to embody in laws, institutions, and in themselves the grand principles for these intellectuals such as independent inquiry, reason, distrust for convention and authority, equality of opportunity, and so on.

That is all true, but we must not forget that more than their intellectual forbears', our founding leaders’ principles, ideals, and passions grew up in the pragmatic struggle to survive and then to prosper. At every time in their lives, they lived with the sense of the wilderness stretching out in front of them, offering both opportunity and danger or risk.

Thus, American culture grows most fundamentally out of the duel between our great intellectual, legal, and social heritage and our practical desire to overcome real, material dangers and risks.

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Reminiscence: Mother, a Year Before

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1

A short time before my mother was diagnosed with cancer (which soon killed her), although she – and we – had been spared the awful ravages of Alzheimer’s, nonetheless, she had moved to a significant level of dementia.

A psychologist specializing in geriatric cases, whom we had hired a few years before as Mother’s care manager, had correctly predicted that over time Mother’s already-noticeable short-term memory problems would become more prominent. But she was always quick to explain that Mother’s ability to reason would remain sound and that her basic nature and emotional responsiveness would be unaffected. Unless she later developed Alzheimer’s – which seemed unlikely – she would not become “another person,” as many say about their aging parents.

This also proved to be true.

This care manager had a lot of experience with old people; she was intuitive, empathetic, and articulate. She listened as well as she talked. Mother had liked her right away, though after a short time from one visit to the next, Mother could not remember who that nice woman was.

So the care manager was good, but on at least one occasion, she just didn’t “get” it.

2

A year or so before she died, my wife and I took Mother to dinner at her favorite cafeteria, where she and my dad had gone once or twice a week and where she had continued to go after his death when taking a friend or relative to a meal. When visiting her, it had been our custom for a long time to take her to the cafeteria at least once.

She knew what to order, and how to do it. Although the staff always had someone carry her tray for her, she could have managed that tricky business too, I feel sure.

We were chatting away, as the three of us always did, when Mother set down her silverware and looked rather intently into my eyes.

“’Byron,’” she said sweetly and simply, “I don’t know who you are. Are you my brother? My husband? My son? I don’t know.” Not knowing who I was, was apparently a curious phenomenon for her. But it did not seem a disaster or a cause of embarrassment, or even concern.

Trying to answer in the same simple, rather casual way, I told her I was her son, and she sat back as though satisfied, and picked up her fork. The conversation on things in general picked up again, barely missing a beat.

Although she never asked me again, Mother, of course, would not have remembered this conversation. But I did.

3

Next time I spoke with the care manager, I naturally told her about this brief conversation. We had weekly talks, sometimes lasting more than a half-hour as she would report her observations to me and answer my (many) questions.

But I didn’t have any questions about that incident, although it did seem worthy of being reported to her.

After I told her, she began speaking right away. She was immediately more animated than usual. Apparently, I learned, mine was not a particularly unusual experience. It was reasonably common for a person with dementia to forget her or his relationship with friends and loved ones.

As Mother’s care manager continued to speak, it slowly dawned on me that she was working to console me, to reassure me that I was nonetheless an important person, and also to warn me that such would probably not be a unique phenomenon.

In other words, her assumption was that I must have been traumatized by my mother’s little question, feeling suddenly that I had lost my dear mother, wondering how I could go on without her. In short, she thought I found it a very negative occurrence.

This was so wrong, so off the mark, I didn’t think it necessary to say anything other than showing gratitude for the helpful information.

4

It seemed so obvious to me: Mother’s little question had told me, shown me, that my mother loved me and trusted me. She thought I might have been her dear brother G------------, or even her beloved husband of over 50 years.

That was as positive an experience, it seemed to me, as one could have.

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Wise Sayings from Ron Lucius

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First things first.
Enough is enough,
_______but good enough is not good enough.

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Rely on observation, respect for others, and reason -
Not on superstition, bias, and fear.

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Protect the poor
Support the modestly successful
Praise the rich and powerful
___but require them to help protect and support the others.

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DO lead others through example and reasoned argument.
DO NOT drive others through authority and intimidation.

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............…………………………………………………………Ron Lucius

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Story: An Oriental Tale

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1

As many as one thousand years ago, a small village of shepherds, salt traders, and barley farmers lay sheltered in a high and narrow Himalayan valley. The heavy wooden huts of the village, the fields to the East and West, the sheep and goat herds in the foothills, and the twisting paths to the salt lakes in the North were all controlled by the several ruling families of the valley people. The family elders remained inside their smoky, log-and-hide lodges more and more as they grew older, as the wealth and power of succeeding generations increased, until the oldest men seldom saw one another, after braving the harsh winds of the long winter and the weak sunlight, even though their low and dark lodges were but several hundred yards apart. Their true interest lay in their land, their herds, and their serfs who tilled and tended them; in the horses strung together that wound through the mountain passes to the South, laden with hides and wool and great chunks of gritty salt.

The traders who led the pack trains did not belong to the ruling families, nor to the serfs who lived in the fields in sod houses or in caves in the foothills just north of the village. Their families too lived in log huts within the village itself, not far from the Pootsonng River which flowed through the valley. The ruling families knew of the traders' exotic stories of other lands and peoples. They knew also of the traders' noxious and blasphemous desires to dig the glittering, heavy stones from under the mountains' hide. But the pack trains moved on to the South and returned in due time, with cotton and tea, and the trader families were quiet and the young men of the ruling families dealt with them fairly.

The ruling elders ignored the traders' petty blasphemies and ignored too the exotic lands and peoples from which their tea and cotton and fine brassware came.

By coincidence there were born at one time to both a ruling family and to a trader, sons of especial ability and intelligence. When these two sons were of age, they began to work together overseeing the fitting-out of the pack horses, sewing the hides into salt bags, weaving the goat hair cords or leather thongs. The trader's son was called Ha-Mul, and the ruler's son was called Amuthswahti. They knew each other by name.

Ha-Mul found that by asking his father and older brothers a day ahead, he could learn what share of the work the rulers would allot to the young master Amuthswahti and could join him. Only when Amuthswahti was sent into the barley fields or the vegetable gardens or into wide storage barns would Ha-Mul be left behind.

By the time Amuthswahti was old enough to move out of the elders' lodge, where his father lived now with the ancient family patriarch, and to take a wife from one of the other families, the other members of the ruling class already looked to him as a extraordinary individual. It was noted among the traders and the domestic serfs that the lodge constructed for Amuthswahti and his bride was not the usual square hut with a flap of hide at the door and mud from the Pootsonng smeared between the logs. It resembled instead the long, dark elders' lodge, oblong, with the fire-hole at one end, goat hides tacked on all walls, and split and polished logs tied into the entrance way as a door.

By the time Amuthswahti had two sons, a third having died at birth, and a new daughter, the other villagers already revered him as other peoples would revere a king or high-priest. Ha-Mul also had prospered, having by this time taken no fewer than six pack-trains of hides across the highland trail toward Sikkim and Bengal and having returned far sooner than the other traders, braving the harsh winds and the deep snows and bringing with him the finest ivory and brassware, the most delicate silk and cotton, the richest, dark teas. Even the ruling elders knew of his explorations far across the giant salt lakes in the North, toward Cathay, the huge shapeless Chinese empire far away there. But they made no stirring or protest so long as the village life remained undisturbed, all the more secure now for having Amuthswahti to oversee their interests and to insure the stability of their world.

Ha-Mul had not married until a year before Amuthswahti began constructing a new lodge, which was destined to become the center of village life, by village standards almost a palace for himself and his family elders and, for all the villagers, including traders, a market and meeting place. Ha-Mul had two wives and two young serving women living with him in a plain but spacious trader's hut near the new central lodge by the time it was completed. But he was denied a son. Even the several daughters his women bore him were not well and died before reaching womanhood. At first, Ha-Mul spent many months away from his people, living in the caves far to the North or leading trains across the mountain trails, but as Amuthswahti matured and prospered and began, like the elders, to remain quietly in the central lodge supervising the others' work, Ha-Mul also came to still his own wanderlust. He invited his brothers to live with him, and he spent many hours within sight and hearing of Amuthswahti, speaking when Amuthswahti asked him about his business or about his trading successes in the cities in the South. As the years passed, the two men became again as accustomed to each other's ways and to each other's company as they had been as boys, weaving goat hair ropes or sewing together the salt bags of hide.

2

Amuthswahti had become a thoughtful man.

He had always been a decision-maker, a leader. He had from his youth an extraordinary ability to organize working projects and domestic life as well, but as he reached maturity, he developed a greater sense of humanity, a deeper interest in the individual people with whom he lived, their peculiarities and their good sense. He found more and more that his greatest pleasures came from observing the simplest actions of the simplest folk around him, the serfs from the fields who brought in the produce for barter in the long open wing of his central lodge, the ancient peasant woman who had served his family as a domestic since long before he was born, his old parents and his youngest children. He liked men of his own age and class somewhat less, feeling that perhaps he should communicate with them more of his thoughts about such things, not confining himself to matters of wealth and tradition and trade. Ha-Mul, Amuthswahti sensed, was different from the others but different still from himself. These impressions made him uneasy, and sent his attention back once more to the activity in the marketplace or the kitchen and the nursery.

Once an incident threatened to disturb the deep calm of the village life. An old trader, whose wives had not prospered and had died or had been taken back to their families, was discovered abusing his youngest son. The two of them lived separately from the servants and the several other children and the elder family members. The boy appeared with the others at play first, and in later moths at his chores, with bruises on his arms and sometimes around his eyes. He was a quiet child who stayed somewhat detached from the rest of his brothers and from the other traders' sons. But, for years, this was not noticed by the villagers. The older man was like the others, packing the trains and tending the horses who made them up, taking his turn on the journeys to the South. Amuthswahti and the other men of the ruling families scarcely knew of his existence.

By accident one night, a trader's wife, slipping quietly to the river for water she'd forgotten to fetch before, heard from the old trader's hut a stifled yelp, and then a slap and a second tiny cry.

Next day her husband observed the youngster holding his shoulders unnaturally stiff and on raising his tunic found the welts and swollen, red stripes of a harsh beating on his back and what might have been scars. The other lads laughed sheepishly and the traders joked among themselves at the youngster's having been so disciplined, recalling their own youth. But this man, who had discovered the welts, continued to watch for several weeks, noting how frequently the boy was bruised or cut, and how often he walked stiffly or unnaturally, favoring one foot or not swinging one arm freely. This man and his brothers and another old trader quietly watched the hut for three nights, finally rushing in as the old man stuck the lad's buttocks with a worn leather-covered board and pinched the inside flesh of his thighs beneath his wood-soled boots.

The matter was brought to the attention of all the men who gathered each day at the central lodge. Ha-Mul and the other traders did not hesitate to order that the youth be placed with the other children of the family and the old man was cautioned that his behavior could not be continued. Amuthswahti did not speak at first, but after several weeks, when Ha-Mul happened to mention to him that the old man's work had been failing and that the others expected him soon to fall ill or die, Amuthswahti finally bared his mind to his companion.

"I am not surprised, Ha-Mul," he said. And when Ha-Mul questioned his meaning, he went on. "The boy too will be suffering."

The conversation ended here, as almost all exchanges did after two or three remarks, but the trader thought of his friend's comment and felt after several weeks that indeed one could observe in the young lad's bearing a despondency, a lifelessness that had not been present before.

"But how can this be?" he wondered, "now that his beatings have been stopped?"

One evening when he and Amuthswahti sat together alone before the fire, Ha-Mul asked him what measure he would have proposed himself. "Surely," he thought, "Amuthswahti would not allow the punishments to continue."

His companion replied slowly, after a silence, "It is a hard question," and then did not continue.

Ha-Mul stirred uncomfortably after moments of silent meditation had passed.

Amuthswahti then said, "Both the old man and the boy together must be considered. Both to be restrained, and both pitied."

Again the conversation ended here, but the next evening Ha-Mul suggested that perhaps the old man should be invited to live once again with all his family, so that the two would not be entirely separated but so that their nefarious deeds could not be repeated.

"That," Amuthswahti said, "would have been my proposal."

This was done.

The following winter, Ha-Mul learned from the old man's next eldest brother that he and the young son had disappeared, taking one horse with them and some food.

Amuthswahti knew that he and Ha-Mul had acted wisely, yet their solution had failed. From then on, he found the incident returning often to his mind. He felt that a certain tragedy had transpired, and he wished deeply he had known the old man and his son.

3

One afternoon after many years, Ha-Mul did not join the other traders in the wide meeting room at the central lodge. By this time, when few masters remained older than Amuthswahti himself and when Ha-Mul was among the oldest in the class of traders, the leading men of both groups came together on most days to speak of their crops and their commerce. Family and personal affairs were still discussed only among members of the one group or the other, but most other matters came to be discussed by all. A kind of informal government had evolved there in the meeting room, over which Ha-Mul customarily presided, although he and the others deferred to Amuthswahti's judgment when it was offered.

Ha-Mul's absence was felt, surely, before the day had far progressed. It was not mentioned, however, and as no matters of moment were introduced into the several languid conversations here and there about the hall, many of the others drifted one by one back to their own homes, before the servants had rightly begun to bring in the tea to them. Amuthswahti himself was at first not concerned at missing his old friend, but as the hours glided slowly toward evening (it was now almost summer, and the evenings were long, light, and warm), he began to grow uneasy. And finally he became quite unsettled.

He spoke to one of his sons returning from the building site of a new storage barn, asking if perchance the old trader had taken advantage of the lovely warm weather to go share his own experience with the younger men working there. But the son had not seen or heard of Ha-Mul since the evening before in the lodge at twilight. Amuthswahti had been thoughtful that night and had not taken special notice to his old companion's behavior, but now as he reflected upon the quiet tranquillity of that earlier scene, he thought he could sense a slight restlessness in the old man's deportment, an abstracted air about his remarks, perhaps an unusual inattention to Amuthswahti's elder son, a favorite with both.

Amuthswahti called for a traveling robe and walking boots. His servants left the tea and their meal preparations in surprise, scurrying to find which of the sons' boots would be suitable for their master and to present for his selection one of the family's fine, heavy robes. He chose instead a simple, hooded skin one of the traders had left behind, exchanged his slippers for the first pair of hide boots they brought to him and strode, alone, out into the empty market space and directly across the village. A few children did not hide their astonishment to see the tall old man walking by himself among the lodges and wooden huts, but the others who recognized him went on with their chores or their meals without appearing to see him or appreciate who he was.

At the lodge of Ha-Mul's family, Amuthswahti was received graciously and invited ceremoniously to join the circle seated comfortably outside along the high, wooded bank of the Pootsonng at one entrance to the hall. But the old leader was scarcely courteous as he greeted Ha-Mul's brothers and their sons. When he spoke at last with Ha-Mul's elder wife, he learned that his old companion had left the village at dawn, by himself, leading a single supply horse behind him, heading--his nephews added later--heading north toward the caves above the wide salt flats he had once explored as a younger man. Amuthswahti found himself growing irritated at the family's complacent composure. As if Ha-Mul went off alone into the hills to the north every day! As if this was not an unusual and a portentous sign of hidden motives or unsuspected plans!

Ha-Mul was away hardly a month, but the changes in the village elders in such a short time seemed remarkable to him on his return. Amuthswahti had followed his surprising behavior on the evening after the other's departure by spending all the next morning out of doors, first in the market nodding to the traders' wives when he could recognize them and later observing the progress of the storage barn. In a few days he ordered the household domestics to serve the evening meal at the benches and tables in the market space, left vacant by that hour. When Ha-Mul returned to the gathering at the central lodge late one afternoon, he found his old companion Amuthswahti and the others seated on the rugs and cushions in the open air between the wings of the lodge, shaded from the sun by a loose canopy of goat hides stitched together with thongs and tied to poles. Amuthswahti said that he had himself helped to select the hides.

Later in the evening, after the others had returned home from their main meal and Amuthswahti had invited Ha-Mul inside once more and had shared with him his best barley-wine, Amuthswahti suddenly chuckled out loud.

"You see, Ha-Mul," he said, "I too grow restless in this season." And then he added, "And perhaps before now as well; I am not certain."

Ha-Mul discovered at that moment, for the first time, that he had made his long journey and had pursued his little adventure for one reason only. So that he would be able to tell Amuthswahti of what he had seen and what he had learned of the world in the North.

The brief summer on the high plateau soon ended, and the village life returned to its accustomed ways for all. Never had Ha-Mul and Amuthswahti felt so close. The old trader arrived at the central lodge now before the market place had emptied of peasants and serfs. He stayed late into the dark, cold night. He told his friend slyly that he now expected to discover that the young serf who stayed with him to help him across the village in the darkness, slipping on the hard, dry ice, would ask permission to take one of Amuthswahti's cooks for his woman. The two old men often joked of this possibility in their slow conversations after the evening meal.

When he had left the village that summer, Ha-Mul had not tarried long in the caves in the rocky hills. As he remarked to Amuthswahti, they had not changed since their boyhood. The younger traders, like Amuthswahti's own sons, did not explore there now, preferring to steal away to the South to hunt stray ponies or wild goats in the less barren passes toward Bengal. Ha-Mul himself had moved on farther North, picking his way as he found it, not remembering how he had journeyed as a young man into Cathay. Perhaps the land was the same; the people he found were not.

First, on the other side of the rocky hills bordering the valley on the North, he had crossed a wide trail moving east along another plateau. Ha-Mul had considered following it himself, as a possible trade route which itself might finally bend down toward Sikkim and the cities in the South, perhaps providing an easier journey for the valley peoples' traders to enter the Pootsonng Valley themselves, bringing their own goods. But this dream failed to inspire Ha-Mul's desire, the simpler man he had used to be or ought to be. He told this to Amuthswahti last, after telling many other things. The other man had merely smiled sympathetically, shaking his head.

So Ha-Mul, the old man now that he had become, had chosen instead to follow the trail away to the North and the West, to find what peoples had settled now in that land and to find how they lived there. He had met almost immediately a small group of trappers, heading east with furs and fine silver jewelry. They were smaller men than some of the valley people, stocky and wide-faced more like the country serfs and a few traders than the taller, leaner, dark-skinned ruling families and Ha-Mul himself; but their language was not so foreign that the old man from the Pootsonng could fail to understand and to make himself understood. He tried to remember seeing such men trading thick, dark furs in the southern cities he had visited, and thought perhaps he did remember seeing them but briefly and only infrequently. These travelers told him of a small settlement at the western end of the trail where the lord of a strong kingdom still far away beyond the mountains had ordered some of his dependents and their peasants to build a city not many years before. The ruling families had already returned to their own lands, but the serfs had remained in the new city to continue the trade the foreign rulers had originally intended.

Ha-Mul almost left the trail then, to go on directly into the mountains, hoping to cross them and to find on the other side a true kingdom or a new city, disappointed to find his trail led only to a small, uncivilized outpost of peasants and traders not so different from himself. One of the party he met, however, an older man like Ha-Mul whose role among the others remained obscure to the Valley traveler, had spoken to him as the camp was broken up that morning to suggest he might stay with his family in a certain lodge. Many travelers, he said, visited there and they might be a curiosity of some note to a man of Ha-Mul's standing and years.

The old trader did not know what to think of this, suspecting a blurring of his language or an unusual unctuousness in the form of the older man's invitation, but though he remained disappointed in his desire for exotic, fine places, he decided to follow the trail westward toward the older man's settlement.

"It was a small adventure." Ha-Mul might have said, during the long winter months, to his old companion Amuthswahti; "it was a rather curious household I was permitted to visit in their village." The older trader had not knowingly planned to describe his travels and he was not accustomed to speaking his mind at length, so his account was filled with indirection and interruption. He seemed to Amuthswahti almost exasperatingly preoccupied with the material circumstances of his visit, the disorderly cluster of huts and lodges, the food he was served, and so on, while the old ruler was himself eager to hear of the people Ha-Mul had met and especially of the one other traveler from the distant frozen lands and beyond his imagination's reach.

"He was light-skinned and fair-haired," Ha-Mul might have said of this man, had his story over the weeks been pieced together; "he wore furs on his head and feet as well as on his back. He laughed often for no visible cause and quickly became quite drunken on the rice wine we were offered. He was too unsettled for a man of mature years, and his flashing, sparkling eyes in the fires at night were disturbing to me."

Ha-Mul did not recognize at first the significance of one of the fair stranger's anecdotes. He did not at this time discern that in it lay the seeds of his own approaching doom.

Amuthswahti, after several weeks, found his mind often returning to the savages far to the North mentioned by Ha-Mul's fellow traveler in the outpost beyond the salt flats. "Did he say," Amuthswahti asked again, "that they ate human flesh? Was this true, Ha-Mul?" The old trader in fact had to recollect for a moment that evening--his companion had intruded suddenly on his description of the journey across the mountains home again to ask his question--before he remembered telling of this inhuman practice earlier. "They were,” Ha-Mul replied, "a small tribe of uncivilized beasts. But very docile to all appearance, the teller also said."

Amuthswahti often questioned his old friend on this one portion of his narrative, so that eventually Ha-Mul too found the cannibalism of this obscure northern tribe deeply disturbing, feeling inside as he contemplated such an action a peculiar kind of revulsion. At the same time he observed in Amuthswahti what he sensed was a strange sort of excitement. As the long winter drew on, the two old men discussed every possibility that could lead even a primitive people to such horror: the promptings perhaps of a savage religion or even the tribal memory of severe shortages of other meat or an ancient custom of war or perhaps punishment. As he reflected, Ha-Mul decided--though he had not carefully attended at the time--that the stranger had distinctly ruled out the latter two possibilities. Visiting travelers were not threatened by the grotesque ritual, and the wandering tribe had no real enemies, living as they did in the frozen waste lands.

Amuthswahti grew more and more fascinated by the notion of eating human flesh. How could they, he asked himself, how could such a people know someone, a person with speech and with a mind, and yet do that? The village on the Pootsonng was unaccustomed to violence of any sort committed by one man upon another. Perhaps this fact explains why the old ruler soon found that the murder which would precede the ultimate, barbarous action did not disturb or even interest him. The social ritual, he would say to himself, the obscure tribal traditions might make such a thing possible. His own people, on the other hand, had almost no public life.

4

Ha-Mul was known in the village as a skilled surgeon of sorts. From his earliest maturity he had been able to lash broken bones in such a way that they might grow usably back together, or to remove with a sharp blade a festering sliver or cut out a sickening growth. He had all his life followed the lead of Amuthswahti, his old friend, not questioning his superior wisdom and his subtler understanding. By the time the winter days were gradually growing longer that year, it had been decided between the two old friends that Ha-Mul would use his skill in this line to realize an uncharacteristic, insane plan of Amuthswahti's. Killing or harming another was unthinkable to the old ruler. Ha-Mul was engaged, on a day before summer under conditions of the strictest secrecy, to administer the usual sleeping drug to Amuthswahti in the depths of the night and, while he slept, to remove from his left hand his last two fingers and the fleshy outside portion of the palm. After he had been allowed to recover from the operation and from the sleeping draft, Amuthswahti himself, using only his right hand as the other arm would be bound tightly to his chest so that his bizarre orgy would not be alloyed with pain of any sort, roasted over the fire and ate in the darkness of his sleeping chambers the portion of his hand that Ha-Mul had removed.

Later, of course, Amuthswahti could not explain to himself why he had felt so driven to such a perverse and terrible deed. But he knew until he died that he has been so driven, that had he tried he could not have resisted the overwhelming attraction of the idea once it had come to him, and that, far within--even though the very thought now revolted him to the point of actual nausea--he was glad he had gone ahead.

But alas for poor Ha-Mul!

5

When the old trader disappeared after the days had become long and warm, no one was disturbed. Amuthswahti was at first pleased, in fact, to have some time alone with his thoughts, examining his feelings as he gazed at his slowly healing, misshapen hand. But soon the other men of the village observed Amuthswahti's growing uneasiness. Questioned again about Ha-Mul's departure, the trader's elder wife and his nephews reported that again he had traveled to the North, as though this was now already an accepted matter of routine. Scarcely a month passed before Amuthswahti, in what seemed to the others an almost feverish anxiety, sent a party of ten men after his old friend, led by his eldest son. On the third day out, the party found Ha-Mul's body outside one of the caves north of the salt flats.

The earth beneath him was stained dark and under his right arm was a bundle of sticks for the fire. Under his left arm, which was missing below the elbow, was a broken staff he had used for a crutch. His left leg was severed from the knee and had bled copiously. At the entrance to the cave was what was left of his fire, and in the cold ashes lay the remains of two charred bones.

***

Filibuster - Let’s End This Debate! (essay)

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1: Avoiding Group-Think

Any group – from a small school or church advisory committee, to the U. S. Congress – needs to be concerned about “group-think,” when everyone agrees so immediately and so enthusiastically that critical thinking goes out the window and the possible arguments to the contrary of the opinion shared by all are never considered. This often leads to future problems that could have been avoided without the group-think.

No one would quarrel with this well-known principle, right? (joking) But for present purposes at least, let us assume we have examined arguments to the contrary – unnecessary delay, waning enthusiasm among supporters, increasing chances nothing will be done, and so on. So we are ready to move on to the next point.

One tried and true means of aiding in the effort to avoid “group-think” lies in the standard, somewhat complicated parliamentary procedure for ending debate. At formally conducted meetings, of course, the group usually follows the compendium of standard parliamentary procedures, Robert’s Rules of Order. In order to help insure that possible downsides to the current consensus have been duly considered, when one member of the group suggests concluding the discussion and moving on to the next issue, perhaps even to the ways the soon-to-be-agreed-upon action will be implemented, that doesn’t "just happen."

When someone, or in fact perhaps all but one person, wants to move on – which often takes the form of saying, “I call the question” – the person chairing the meeting asks those present to vote on whether or not voting on the main issue being discussed should take place without further ado. (It is a wise principle for group members, whenever this happens, to take it as an opportunity to ponder whether or not contrary views to the predominant mind-set have in fact been duly considered.) So, the group needs to vote on whether or not to vote; ending debate should not be allowed to promote a mindless rush to judgment.

Not only that. For debate to be ended at that point, a simple majority vote of those present and voting is not all that’s needed. To stop further discussion of the issue at hand requires a two-thirds majority of those present and voting. In other words, the majority required is what is often called a “super majority” of two-thirds rather than the half - or “simple” - majority. We should also bear in mind that the majorities required for an initiative to succeed are more than half (or two-thirds) of those present and voting rather than half or two-thirds of the entire membership (which is called an absolute majority).

Allowing discussion to be cut off, albeit with a required super-majority, is a procedural support for efficiency, which is often the motive for “calling the question” in the first place.

2: The Quorum

The percentage of a group’s total membership that can make decisions for the whole group is usually half the total of the full membership (“a quorum”). When fewer than half the members are present, no actions may be taken. If the majority required to end debate were two-thirds of the total membership, since attendance at meetings of most groups tends to be closer to half than to all, debate on any issue could go on interminably, even if the vast majority of the membership has made up their minds on the issue long before.

Taking a moment to consider whether or not contrary points of view have been sufficiently taken into account is indeed a good help toward avoiding group-think, and requiring a super majority of those present and voting to agree on cutting off debate is extra insurance; but allowing less than one-third of the total membership to stall action indefinitely would be excessive and impractical.

Let us say, for example, that you are chairing a formal meeting of a group of 30 members. If fewer than 15 members attend a particular meeting, no actions can be taken.

On the other hand, if all 30 members are attending and none are abstaining (because of a conflict of interest, for example), the number of votes required to end debate on a motion is the maximum possible, in this case 20. If only 15 members come to the meeting, which is enough to take actions, the number required to end debate is the minimum required, or 10. That is, with a group of 30 members, the number needed to end debate ranges between 10 and 20, depending on the number of members present and voting. That is a wide range, which allows enough flexibility for the group to proceed efficiently but not recklessly.

Note that, if the super-majority required for ending debate in this group were two-thirds of the whole membership, the votes needed would always be 20, the maximum that may be required, even if only 15 members had even bothered to show up at that meeting. This would seem neither fair nor reasonable, and few organizations would put up with it.

3: Governing in a Representative Democracy

What about debate in Congress?

In a republican democracy like ours, not ending debate too soon is even more important than in other organizations. Group-think should be avoided by any organization; in a democratic government, allowing dissent is also critical. The wise founding fathers responsible for our form of government took care to make sure that even views held by only a minority of citizens that are contrary to the majority view were heard and thus given the opportunity to be taken into account.

When a fundamental change in the government itself is proposed, for example - an amendment to the Constitution - both houses of Congress have rules to protect the minority’s right to be heard. In addition, three-fourths of the states must approve a constitutional change; we might call this an “extra-super majority.” Before such an important decision is made, our Constitution maintains, the will of the minority may not be ignored; debate must not be cut short.

Just more than one-fourth of the states (13, to be exact) can prevent approval of a constitutional change; this might constitute a single region or it might represent a particular minority religious tradition. So the minority view has considerable power in decisions regarding our governing system, which is one reason we have made only a relative few changes in the Constitution adopted over 200 years ago.

Not found in the Constitution but by strong tradition, in considering a possible change in just the law, both houses of Congress also have procedures protecting minority views – whether regional, religious, socio-economic, or something else.

Application of the usual standard for ending debate in each house of Congress would mean that a super-majority of two-thirds would be required for moving on to action, which facilitates timely decisions and which is both a good protection against group-think and an appropriate safeguard of the right of a significant minority to make its reasoning heard, which is essential for social stability in a democratic society. It is important to find the right balance between these conflicting imperatives.

4 – Protecting the Minority vs. the Duty to Make Decisions

The question whether to cut off further discussion addresses a tension between the desire for efficiency and the need to adequately consider opposing viewpoints. Both motives are not only understandable; they are positively good both for those debating the issues, and also for the people who will be affected by their decisions. The right balance between these competing goals must be found.

All Americans, of course, are potentially affected by laws approved by Congress (and approved by the President), which only emphasizes still further the imperative for each house of Congress to find the right balance between the public’s need for decisions and the opportunity for minorities to have their views taken into account.

Neither House of Congress follows the standard system of most organizations, simply requiring a two-thirds majority of those present and voting to cut off debate.

Our House of Representatives addresses the tension between efficiency and respect for opposing views in a complex manner that would seem to weigh the need for efficiency somewhat more heavily than the competing need to protect the minority.

First, in order to facilitate timely action, the House Rules Committee sets a limit on the total time that the proposed law under consideration will be debated by the full membership. Guaranteeing that every bill will be considered for a certain period of time supports the need for a democratic government to provide for minority views to be heard. The fact that the Committee sets this limit on the basis of a simple majority vote within the committee, on the other hand, supports the need for action to be taken.

In like manner, in the full House debate it is possible to extend discussion beyond the limit set by the Committee; on the other hand, such a decision is made by a simple majority of those members present and voting. This seems to recognize the need for timely action predominantly in two ways: by having a predetermined limit on the time for debate, as well as by allowing a simple majority to decide that the pre-set limit will not be extended in a particular case. The balance struck by these House rules does not seem to be controversial.

To be precise, for the House to take action, at least 218 members must be present (some of whom may choose not to vote). Debate on a particular measure will end when a predetermined time limit is reached, unless a simple majority decides to extend the time. So, 110 of the 435 members of Congress – at a minimum – may determine that enough time has already been spent debating the issue. If all members of Congress are present, a simple majority would be 218; thus, at most 218 of the 435 members would be needed to decide whether it was time to move on.

5 – A Problem in the Senate

The situation is different in the Senate. In fact, many feel that the Senate today demonstrates on almost every issue that the current “filibuster rule” that defines the terms under which the members may decide whether or not to end debate on a particular proposal fails to find the right balance with the result that the public’s need for Congressional action on substantive issues facing us all is stymied.

House rules tend slightly to emphasize efficiency. Senate rules seem designed to prevent action.

In the Senate, which again does not follow the usual rules, the method of ending debate has changed only recently.

Unlike the House, there is usually no predetermined limit on the amount of time a proposal may be discussed in the Senate – which certainly guarantees that a minority view will be heard. A minority – even a minority of one – can prevent action being taken by the Senate by speaking and speaking and continuing to speak, refusing to “yield the floor.” This “filibuster” in theory could last forever.

Through a tortuous process (called “cloture”), a Senator’s or a group of Senators’ refusal to yield the floor may in some instances be brought to a close. First, 16 Senators must submit a written petition for the Senate to vote on ending debate. To be approved, this method of “calling the question” requires a super-majority vote of three-fifths or 60 Senators. A minority of 41 Senators, that is, can prevent an end of debate indefinitely. This provision, albeit requiring three-fifths rather than two-thirds, nonetheless also favors the need to hear minority views over the need to take action.

As if these two means of preventing action were not enough, as the numbers just used reveal, the three-fifths super-majority required is 60% of the total Senate membership, not three-fifths of those present and voting!

These provisions have been in place for years. But only recently a change in Senate rules has increased still more the emphasis on minority power to prevent action.

Traditionally, a Senator’s right to refuse to yield the floor was limited to the amount of time that he (or she) could keep on speaking; the Senator could yield a certain number of minutes to a colleague, and that Senator to another, and he or she to another, and so on. Still, this requirement of significant physical effort in practice tended to limit debate and to allow action.

In 1975, however, this one, weak restraint on a minority’s power to prevent action by the majority has been removed. Now, a Senator may “hold the floor” without even being present.

6. To summarize:

Several current Senate rules destroy the necessary balance between the opportunity for minority views to be heard and the need to make decisions.

1. Unlike the House rules, or the standard practice outlined in Robert’s Rules, in the Senate the super-majority required for ending debate is a fraction not of those members present and voting, but of the total membership.

2. Unlike the House procedure, in the Senate there is no limit to the time allotted a member to hold the floor (or to pass it around a group of like-minded minority members).

3. Unlike the House procedure of deciding not to extend debate by (1) a 50% or simple majority (2) of members present and voting – in the Senate, a 60% majority of the total membership is required for ending debate and voting on the action proposed.

If the House procedure favors the need for action a bit more than the protection of the minority’s opportunity to voice its views, more than standard parliamentary procedure; then the Senate procedure favors very significantly the minority power over the need for the whole body to take action.

The result is that in our Congress, we do not have a proper balance between, on the one hand, the need to hear contrary opinions and on the other, the need (of all citizens) for Congress to take action.

***

Poem: What Did We Learn in Viet Nam?

***

We learned a lot
in Viet Nam

We learned it is easier
to destroy
than create
or support

We learned to destroy
in our songs
and our newspapers
in our books and plays and popular arts
in our politics
on the battlefields and
in our private
lives

We learned the lesson
well

We learned it is easier to destroy
than to create or support or sustain

In our tv programs
and our games and in our jobs
in our political arenas
in the movies and in our music
in the streets
in the fields and rice
paddies
and in our
hearts

We learned
one hell
of a lot
in
Viet Nam

But what we did
not learn

is the greatest
lesson

***