Saving the World -- One Kindergartener at a Time

The United States Supreme Court recently denied certiorari in the case of Peck v. Baldwinsville Central School District, a case out of New York City that was decided in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court’s decision not to hear the case left intact the Second Circuit’s opinion, which ruled that a kindergartener named Antonio Peck (and his parents) had provided enough evidence to warrant a jury trial on whether the child's free speech rights had been violated. In brief, the child had been asked to make a poster that portrayed a way to save the environment. With the help of his mother, the child made a poster that said the only way the environment could be saved was through Jesus. School officials asked the child to redo the poster, which he did; the new poster contained less religious content, although it did depict a church, a cross, and a small Jesus figure. The school allowed the second poster to be displayed along with the other children's posters in the school auditorium, but the principal instructed that Antonio's poster be folded to conceal the religious components.

The Pecks sued for viewpoint discrimination, and the federal district court granted summary judgment to the school, effectively saying that the Pecks were not able to state a claim for a violation of free speech rights. But the Second Circuit reversed, saying that issues of fact remained on the free speech claim, which would need to be resolved by a jury. (Read a summary of the Second Circuit’s opinion here.) The Second Circuit wrote that "[A] manifestly viewpoint-discriminatory restriction on school-sponsored speech is . . . unconstitutional, even if reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical interests."

I tend to agree. These facts present a classic example of how American common law is often the manifestation of a nation arguing with its conscience. (Thanks, Senator Obama, for characterizing it this way in your memoir.) There is a deep balance that needs to be found between the various clauses in the First Amendment, especially these three: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech."

How to find this balance? Andrew made the excellent point that we can be guided here by Jacob Needleman’s vision of American society as the vehicle by which we create conditions of life in which the ultimate questions can be freely pursued. Our goal is to craft a society and a way of life where we can freely engage in our own intellectual, moral, and spiritual searches: a society that allows - and, in fact, encourages - persons to reach their full potential. How best to save the environment is a perfect example of the kind of ultimate question that everyone - from a kindergarten child to a twenty-something blogger to a national leader - must be able to search within himself to answer. My applause to the Second Circuit for taking a step forward in this direction, by creating an environment that allows young Mr. Peck, and others like him, to embark upon the crucial exploration.

On being green.

Offline, we've been discussing the difference between envy and jealousy. Turns out, I think the discussion helps clarify what the two things are. Here's a sum-up; but, note: this is clean slate, and does not extend the definitional discussion below. Also, I am being descriptive, and not prescriptive, of what these terms mean. Finally, I am agreeing with Mike's comments (below) that these are bad things--and so am explaining why they are bad.

Ordinary language tends to conflate envy and jealousy. The philosophical consensus is that these are distinct emotions.

To sum up the discussion in this link, jealousy is focused on the goal; envy is focused on the competitor. Both are three-place relations.

Jealousy involves three parties, the subject, the rival, and the beloved; and the jealous person's real locus of concern is the beloved—the person whose affection he is losing or fears losing—not his rival. Whereas envy is a two party relation, with a third relatum that is a good (albeit a good that could be a particular person's affections); and the envious person's locus of concern is the rival.

…

Because envy is centrally focused on competition with the rival, the subject might well be equally bothered if the rival were consorting with a different (appealing) person, but would not be bothered if the ‘good’ had gone to someone else (with whom the subject was not in competition).

An aside on envy: Stemming off this, I would call an aspect of envy the “kid and fire truck toy” theory. Kid A ignores a lonely, plastic fire truck. Kid B goes to the toy and has a field day rolling it across the play room carpet. Kid A becomes instantly interested in the red plastic toy and tries to edge Kid B away, fails, and then cries to Babysitter X “make Kid B (these kids speak in abstract language too) give me the truck!” Somewhere in the midst of Babysitter X’s lecture on the value of sharing, Kid B has moved to another toy, Kid A has grabbed the truck, and immediately lost interest in the once-valued commodity.

Here, envy is manifested in Kid B’s propensity to act as a driver to Kid A’s wants. Kid A and Kid B are “rivals” for purposes of this discussion; they are peers with common stations in life and presumed aspirations (seeking out the enjoyable passage of time within a playroom). Obviously lacking in his ability to find fun, Kid A is envious of Kid B’s seeming amusement, and is led to one potential result of envy: copycat-itude.

In any event, let’s return to envy/jealousy in respect to relationships. Strike that. It is helpful to divide out relationship and pre-relationship (crush, flirt, moonlight walks…) because, as we should see, the crucial aspect the reasonableness plays in all this changes with the status of relationship.

Starting with the abstract: simply wanting to be in a relationship is neither jealousy nor envy. Narrowing in, say you see a happy couple. Wanting a relationship like that (so you say to yourself) is likewise neither envy nor jealousy…it is rather a reasonable aspiration. Even coming upon a specific person with whom you wish you were calling “darling” is not necessarily jealousy.

In this situation, jealousy is the unreasonable attachment of emotion upon the desire for that “good.” Various indicators reveal the unreasonableness. It might be the 13 year old that really really wants to be married to the unknown celebrity; it could be the fault of emitting onto a person what we want them to be, and not who they are; it could be our desire for what we want trumping the more reasonable desires for what is good.

Envy, here, is the unreasonable attachment of enmity toward the competitor to this goal (the “goal” here being the crushee. Note: this clearly objectifies the person, and that’s really the point, isn’t it? Jealousy and envy, in their unreasonableness, tend to have that effect.) We would be envious of the guy we see the girl flirting with. Again, though, it isn’t automatically envy to take notice of competition; rather, envy comes at the point that said notice becomes unreasonable emotion (ill-will, for instance). It is also possible to be envious of the barriers to having the relationship (the goal). One might be envious of the crushee’s personal or career aspirations (I think). Envy is that angry eye turning to the obstacle. It is the tripped up runner yelling at the hurdle.

We see here, too, that jealousy and envy can (and, likely usually do) co-exist…spurned on by one-another.

In all this, the basic concept of agape (brotherly love…the “highest” love in most Greek literature) is in many ways is the active refusal of jealousy and envy.

springtime means my pool's about to open back up.

A Time to Talk
by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.


Happy weekend everybody! Thanks for all the friendly visiting.

the answer. on a coffee shop window around the corner.

to boil with heat.

Let's drop, for a moment, our marriage discussion and really nail down this concept of jealousy. What had me and Lily so perplexed is that, patently it would seem, general society will react to the following two scenarios quite differently:
1) X is "jealous" because spouse Y is kissing another person; and
2) X is "jealous" because spouse Y is having tea with a friend and bonding over Oprah.

The jealousy, or hurt, or sense of shame here, whatever name is used, will undoubtedly be treated with more sympathy for scenario 1, and will be nearly universally ridiculed in scenario 2. Now, whether that should be the case or not is not my concern. I am only curious why. And my curiosity is compounded when pondering the concept that, if jealousy is X's chosen nomenclature for explaining the emotion, and if jealousy is bad without degrees of less or more bad...then why does society treat number 1's jealousy more sympathetically than number 2's?

Beyond this question...or, perhaps, in pursuit of its answer...what in all heck is jealousy? Some thoughts:

I can dig that it's simply no good. At the same time, I feel in my gut it is a basic human response to challenges to our status, and it is better to acknowledge it and erase it than to supress it. I don't fully feel the popped up emotion is so bad, whereas I suspect the accumulation of pop ups is a real stinker.

What is the difference of jealousy and envy? Is there one? And to covet?

To the extent jealousy and envy are synonomous (please offer some argument that they are not...i've failed thus far to think of one), I am more ready to regard them as unhealthy things to be addressed and zapped. But perhaps there is more complexity here?

Finally, to simply screw this all around, some Greek:

Jealousy's root word comes from the latin zelus. This is the same word that gives us zealous. And that latin word comes, in turn, from the ancient Greek "zelon;" meaning ardour, excitment of mind, and so forth...but also meaning an envious and contentious rivalry. And, better yet, that greek noun comes from the Greek verk, zeno, meaning to boil with heat. And, as were many verbs in this poetic language, the verb was used metaphorically as boiling anger, love, zeal, for what is good or bad.

Do we use the old sense of the word? an envious and contentious rivalry? wrestling the angel?