INTRODUCTION TO SALMON JOURNEY II OF KEN’S JOURNEY POSTS:
The following text is a condensation of an essay Ken wrote called, WOULD YOU RATHER BE BETTER OR LOVED. I have chosen and commented on the parts of the essay I think are central to a point Ken is making about human behavior.
I include a poem and a photo of young Ken after the notes.
MAKING SENSE OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
“. . . I claim to be making a semantic point about an overlooked connotation in almost everyone’s vocabulary, one that helps make sense of human behavior. What I have come upon is that the common way we use the word, better as in “You think you are better than me, don’t you!” or a person might say, “You’re not good enough.” Comments like this are often made to children and children mimic them with each other. Recognizing this use of the word, better enables us to get at something that when recognized causes great harm between people . . . It’s a subjective use of the word that has in an inner way rather than an objective analysis of any skills or aptitudes. For instance, do alpha wolves, in this way, feel they are better than beta wolves? Maybe, but I doubt it. Do brown bears feel better than black? I feel myself to be better than animals and better than some people – something I often feel. It affords me a certain baseline of privilege and rights. It is ontic and emotive. I feel myself to be good, not that I have done something more skilled, but qualitatively better.
This quality of being better can be illustrated with several examples. I have read that a black child knows the implications of this way of talking soon after starting school. A native woman said, “My sister thinks I am too good to drink with her.” A boy in special education who lives in public housing and has attempted suicide told me, “The chief problem in Wrangell High School is that some people are better than others.” By that statement he does not mean they have higher grades or more money; he means something that happens very specifically, a reality he experiences that awakens emotions with which he has to deal.
It is hard for us to feel that God is not better than humans, kings are not better than peasants, the educated are not better than the uneducated, that Americans are not better than Russian, saints are not better than sinners, boys are not better than girls. The effect is like an obstinate mist that darkens and chills the world. In the movie Ironweed, a derelict says, “Do you know why they call us bums? It is because it makes them feel good to say it.” Avoiding serious reflection on what we mean when we say better, we call it human nature.
I have come to think about this subjective use of being better as a pervasive and personal human fault. It is like an ironic litmus test. When I feel better I know I am doing something wrong. Not only are the cumulative effects of this evil apparent as in sexism, ethnicism, racism, speciesism, and the like, but also in the slightest indication that I for any reason think myself better. As a clergyman how I feel when I do the Sunday service is a fair example. It could be the way I hold my face when I speak or my tone of voice. I am better than parishioners. When challenged I am aroused. I may not say everyone is like this; neither is it possible for me to judge another person. Not even ought I to make a guess which might only reflect on me. What I can say –when I think about it – is that this is what characterizes the world, some are like this, I am like that . . . I know that it is within me.
After speaking rather openly to a few friends about what I considered a critical realization, I have reflected that nicer folks like me—even those concerned with rights and causes—seem to resist addressing what this better might imply. I have met with both humor and a bit of embarrassment when asking the question “Would you rather be better or loved?” Perhaps it is because what is meant seems altogether too common while at once so gratifying and simultaneously incriminating. When Wrangell beats Petersburg in basketball fans not only feel they are more skilled at basketball but better. Being better can seem essential to our feelings of self-worth and identity. The results of this usage of better can be cruel and painful. I have talked with suicidal teenagers who spoke of the daily losing battle to be one of the better kids –on their terms to be “good enough”.
. . . I have come to think the word offers a language clue to a deeply shared human secret. Indeed, while being better may appear to be a light hearted matter easily passed off as what is associated with experiences like enjoying winning or driving an expensive car, could actually be a euphemistic expression that hides an alluring dread of death and the ecstasy or power. Pitifully, it can seem the only way to lend a face to the void in one’s self. In a movie a poor white father says to his son, “If you’re not better than them people, you’re nothing . . .” Envy and resentment are obvious forms of this better feeling. Cain resents Abel because his father sees Abel as better than himself. It is the onus of judging. An alcoholic says, “To really help me, don’t judge me.” . . . To acknowledge what is understood in this fashion as in myself is to at first painfully laugh, then to feel shameful and childish. What I want to be -optically, emotively and ironically – is better! Something in me enables a perpetration of this seemingly necessary and unusually avoided expression of human nature.
Our lives are shaped by systems including cherished institutions: family, schools, church, country. These systems promote some involved and perhaps ingenious ways to help us feel that we are better. Lifelong students of human nature, like Ernest Becker, write about how we incessantly compare ourselves and mystify ourselves as if in this way to endure and take on feats, honors, distinctions and the like. Becker notes the nuances are countless. He argues that we want to be heroes and, at last, have ultimate significance which he takes to mean the same as righteousness as if a cosmic legality were involved: we want to be in the right. For Becker this has a certain taint. For me it is the reason that the critical question, “Would you rather be better or loved?” is so difficult for everyone I have asked to answer. . . . But this is how we live together.
NOTES ON MAKING SENSE OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Tim Olson
Ken’s subject in “Would You Rather Be Better Than Loved” is at the center of Ken’s thought on why it is that human interactions often lead to conflict and violence. I have condensed that essay and changed the title to “Making Sense of Human Behavior” to focus on what I think is the major theme of his essay. Ken’s theme is also significant to the present times in our country. Right now I can’t turn on the TV without images of protest and violence filling the screen. Accompanying the disturbing images are news channel pundits attempting to explain why this is so and who is to blame for it. “Troubling” is the word repeated, repeated and repeated. Many of us are not sleeping very well and limit the hours we watch TV news.
Ken states his purpose in the first sentence of the essay. “I claim to be making a point . . . that helps make sense of human behavior.” In the following sentences, Ken distinguishes between what he calls the OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE use of what it means to feel better.
The objective meaning of better is specific, measurable and observable. Ken writes that the objective use of feeling better can be tested by “. . .an objective analysis of skills and aptitudes.” He gives several examples and I would add: The NFL team winning the Super Bowl is the best team; The student with the highest grade point is the valedictorian; The individual with the greatest wealth builds a home pictured on the front pages of the media.
In contrast, Ken calls the subjective use of being better, inner. The full meaning of better is hidden, even, perhaps, from the person subjectively feeling better. The results of subjectively feeling better are not hidden, however. Ken writes, “It affords me a certain baseline of privilege and rights. It is ontic and emotive. I feel myself to be good, not that I have done something more skilled, but qualitatively better. The rights and privileges include who lives where, who is favored in the justice system, who gets the first place in line.
Ken’s use of the word “ontic” needs further explanation. Ontic means the real, ultimate existence rather than what is apparent to the senses. Ontic has to do with who we are that others and maybe even ourselves can’t see or even think about, but does influence our beliefs and behaviors. Ken’s illustrations help, but they aren’t my experiences.
I grew up in a white world. It isn’t that Blacks didn’t matter; they didn’t exist. When I was in the sixth grade, Central Lutheran Church bought our family a parsonage that turned out to be across the street from a black family. We lived there for two years and I never knew their names, how they lived or what they did when they were home. I don’t even remember seeing them on the street. Did I ever walk past their house? Only now do I ask myself, why not?
I went to a Lutheran college in the late nineteen fifties and this is the way it was during those years. Boys went to college to become doctors, lawyers, professors, business men, ministers and so on . . .Girls went to college to become nurses, secretaries, grade school teachers, parish workers and, of course, housewives. We all knew that the future for boys becoming men held far more prestigious opportunities, status and money-making than for girls becoming women. No one needed to say it, but men were better – ontically better.
Ken begins the last paragraph with “Our lives are shaped by systems including cherished institutions: family, schools, church, country. These systems promote some involved and perhaps ingenious way to help us feel that we are better. Ken will have more to write about this in future posts.
FANTASIZING
blue skis
track down
through
sun-white
feathers
of snow
making
powder flashes
of sky in my
breathtaking
world
To read Salmon Journey I, KEN OLSON CARVES HIS TOTEM – click here
Oh, Tim. Thank you so much for putting this together. It does my heart so much good to be able to think about Ken and his thoughts and how you have interpreted and helped the rest of us understand. I have just now read another terrific book. It is about a neighbor of mine when I lived in Sitka…Richard K. Nelson. It is called Raven’s Witness The Alaska Life of Richard K. Nelson. Richard died about a year ago. He was an anthropologist and wrote several books based on his years living with the people of the far north…and then moving to Tenakee Springs and then to Sitka. I knew him but knew his wife and son a bit more. His musings and interpretations of how nature presents itself and how the people of the land interpret it. It is so much along the lines that Ken would talk about …Nature…Mating and Aggression and all the soul things that present when you experience Nature. I so wish they could have gotten to
know each other and share compatible thoughts. I remember early on Richard wrote The Island Within and a friend of Ken’s, the old Danish Sea Capn. Michael Kaeler(? I think) sent us the book not knowing that he lived very close to me.