U NCOMMON V IRTUES #8: G ENERATIONAL F OCUS

HER FINAL MONTHS

Approaching 90 years old, she was getting thin and frail.
 
“Grandma, please. ”
 
This might be our last chance.
 
“Sebastian…” she said in that soft whisper, trying to brush it off and change the subject, “Why do you –“
 
“Grandma, why can’t we talk about things that really matter?  What do I really know about who you are? Why are we talking about all this little stupid stuff? I don’t know anything about your childhood, how you became a nurse, how you met grandpa… and I don’t know… how long… if not now…?”
 
She sighed heavily, caught between a veritable rock and hard place of pain.
 
She never wanted to talk about her past. She’d talk about playing cards, she’d talk about her children and what they were up to, she’d ask me about my life and what I was doing.
 
She never wanted to talk about herself.
 
We’d been close – I was the “favorite grandchild,” the one she was closest to. When I was 3 years old, she and grandpa had been teaching me to read, write, do math, do calculations, calculate money, look at newspapers.
 
But I’d lived most of my adult life outside of the USA, and we’d never had a really  close conversation as adults.
 
For a while, it seemed like she was going to live forever.
 
In her 70’s, she was as active as ever. She’d go into her youngest son’s business and yell at the men if their work stations were messy. She’d go to the large wooded rough property her middle son had bought in the countryside and clear rocks and boulders, chopping down trees well past the age most people were in the nursing home.
 
The description “strong silent type” is typically applied to men, but it fits her perfectly – matriarch, mother of nine children, skilled nurse and later head nurse, hard worker, didn’t like to talk about herself too much.
 
Her husband of 50 years had died 9 prior; it affected her, but stoic as always, she kept going. Kept working. Kept helping her children and grandchildren, kept reading, kept being fiendishly skilled at cards.
 
She seemed like she’d live forever.
 
Then the stroke happened.
 
Mortality is funny. Her children, in their 30’s and 40’s, couldn’t keep up with her energy at gardening and hard work when she was in her 60’s and 70’s.
 
The stroke changed it all.
 
Her body slowly stopped responding to her indomitable will. She was stubborn and insisted on continuing to be active, but sometimes she just couldn’t. It was embarrassing for her to have to ask my mother or uncle for help; she never asked anyone for help.
 
I was back from China. We were sitting together, we played a little cards and caught up, but she didn’t want to talk about her life.
 
“What’s it matter, Sebastian?”
 
“It matters to me, grandma. I want to know about your life.”
 
She paused, grimaced a little, weighing whether it would be better to dig into painful memories or tell her grandson that she wouldn’t speak of these things.
 
Mortality is funny.
 
We both knew… we’re both pragmatists… we both knew this might be our last time together.
 
She sat there, mulling it over, her mind perhaps ablaze and conflicted.
 
I felt bad – was I doing the wrong thing here?
 
Maybe I should drop it.
 
And then, some decision registered and flickered internally. She exhaled, the pain was gone, and she said –
 
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
 
***
 
STEALING TOMATOES
 
“Everything. Your childhood, your work life, how you became a nurse, what it was like… how you met grandpa, the kids…”
 
And she opened up.
 
Her childhood wasn’t good.
 
My great-grandparents, her parents, they spent everything they had emotionally to get over to America from Europe. Finally settled, they were turning to a new life – when the Depression hit.
 
There was no money. No food.
 
She walked me through the stories – some of them funny, many tragic.
 
She told me about being so hungry she’d sneak over to a neighbor’s farm to steal tomatoes.
 
My great-grandfather, apparently he was a very strong man. He got the family out of Europe at the height of the chaos. They got away. How many of other relatives didn’t?
 
He made it to America.
 
But the Depression, that final act, it was too much for him. It broke him.
 
How much shame was there that his youngest daughter was given away to foster care at age 8?
 
She was treated badly by today’s standards. By the era’s standards, maybe not. She wasn’t raised as one of their children; she was basically a servant.
 
This wouldn’t do for her. On strength of will alone, in early adulthood, she made her way out to San Francisco and went to nursing school.
 
Over time, the pain faded and she told me stories – the first time she drove in a car, Navy guys in San Francisco wanting to take her out on dates, the different hospitals she worked at, meeting my grandfather, having the first of her nine kids.
 
Nine kids! That wasn’t easy. She never took much time for maternity leave – she was always back, working with doctors and patients shortly after the kids were born.
 
The story starts to get familiar, starts to get to the point where I already knew some of it.
 
In her childhood, she was just about as poor as could be in the United States – stealing food, struggling mightily, getting taken in by a somewhat cruel foster family.
 
But she kept working, laying downs the bricks of a life. When my mother was born as the eighth child of nine, they had more money and were sending their later children to private schools.
 
A nostalgic twinkle was there in grandma’s eyes, talking about my mother’s childhood, telling some stories I hadn’t heard before.
 
Of all the daughters, my mother was the closest to grandma.
 
Grandma’s childhood was just about as poor and devastated as was possible to be in the United States of the day, but my mother had every opportunity to be upper-middle class, and took it.
 
I was the first born of my mother, and by then my grandparents were semi-retired. From age 3 to 8, at the age she had been stealing food and being given away by her parents so she could survive, I was getting taught by them about math, about money, about reading and writing.
 
She told me a little more about my childhood – things I had vague memories of came flooding back.
 
We talked for hours. After that initial break from the pain, she was so filled with energy until the early evening, when she apologized and said she was getting tired and would have to go to bed soon. We hugged a long hug, and she almost cried – she never cried, and she still didn’t, but she almost did.
 
The next time I saw her, she was at the hospital.
 
She wasn’t able to talk any more.
 
I was the second-to-last person to see her alive.
 
I miss her terribly.
 
And I’m incredibly grateful for all the sacrifices and endurance she had throughout her life.
 
***

UNCOMMON VIRTUES #8: GENERATIONAL FOCUS
 
Richard Nixon asks Zhou Enlai his thoughts on the French Revolution.
 
Enlai replies – “It’s too soon to tell.”
 
There’s now some scholarly argument that Enlai was talking about some protests and demonstrations a few years earlier, and not saying it was too soon to judge the outcome of the 200-years-prior French Revolution.
 
But what a marvelous story! Moreover, doesn’t it say something about Chinese culture that it could even be considered possibly true  that a Chinese statesman thought it was “too soon to tell” how the French Revolution turned out?
 
Our second-to-last chapter of Uncommon Virtues is about Generational Focus.
 
In Chapter 3, we talked about “Higher-Order Thinking” – seeing not just the first-order immediate consequences of any action, but of all the wide-ranging second-order effects, third-order effects, and so on.
 
Generational Focus  takes higher-order thinking to its furthest reaches – seeing the backward causal chain of all our ancestors that led to the present day, and seeing how our actions will shape our descendants, who will in turn shape the world.
 
***
 
A LETTER FROM PARIS FROM MR. JOHN ADAMS TO HIS WIFE, ABIGAIL
 
You have no doubt heard the quote –
 
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.  My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
 
This was from John Adams to his wife Abigail, posting the letter from Paris.

The year was 1780 – the American Revolution is still raging and has not been won by the Americans; the conflict was still very much in doubt.
 
The whole letter is remarkable. The paraphrased part is often-quoted, but I find the less-known paragraphs right before the famous part just as worthy of reading –
 
“To take a Walk in the Gardens of the Palace of the Tuilleries, and describe the Statues there, all in marble, in which the ancient Divinities and Heroes are represented with exquisite Art, would be a very pleasant Amusement, and instructive Entertainment, improving in History, Mythology, Poetry, as well as in Statuary. Another Walk in the Gardens of Versailles, would be usefull and agreable.—But to observe these Objects with Taste and describe them so as to be understood, would require more time and thought than I can possibly Spare. It is not indeed the fine Arts, which our Country requires. The Usefull, the mechanic Arts, are those which We have occasion for in a young Country, as yet simple and not far advanced in Luxury, altho perhaps much too far for her Age and Character.  I could fill Volumes with Descriptions of Temples and Palaces, Paintings, Sculptures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, etc etc—if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. ”
 
Mr. Adams then goes on to make his famous remarks about how must study politics and war, so that his sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy…
 
Huh! What a rare sentiment! What a remarkable letter!
 
***
 
DUTIES IN POLITICS AND WARFARE
 
These whole paragraphs are poignant and striking – and yet, do they not seem foreign to our age?
 
Mr. Adams reflects that he gets great pleasure and learning too  from studying art and statues and walking through the gardens of Paris, taking in all the culture of that day, and indeed, of all past European ages…
 
…  and yet it would be a breach of duty for him to linger upon such luxury, because he must be focusing on politics and warfare.
 
Incredible, isn’t it?
 
***
 
THE USEFUL MECHANIC ARTS, SIMPLE AND NOT FAR ADVANCED IN LUXURY
 
Time and time again, we see this pattern erupt in history –
 
Founders of dynasties and eras begin with rudimentary works – securing defense and governance, and then the basics of wealth and infrastructure, then further developing mechanical and practical arts, and further developing institutions – and then, and only then , can their descendants securely pursue the fine arts and luxuries.
 
Many of my friends are immigrants; I think sometimes about the work that Stepan Parunashvili’s father did to bring the family from Georgia (USSR Georgia, not the state) to Canada; I think of Kai Zau’s father struggling to move the young Chinese family to Washington, D.C.
 
I think of my twice-maternal great-grandparents making their escape from the horrors of early 1900’s Europe into the United States, only to immediately be ravaged by the Depression…
 
You know of Alexander the Great, obviously – but his battle-hardened troops were assembled by his slightly-less-well-known father, Philip II of Macedon.
 
And what of his father, Amyntas III of Macedon, who unified that nation? We hear of him – nothing.
 
The most-famous of the Medici is Lorenzo il Magnifico , “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” the patron to all those great Renaissance artists.
 
His grandfather is also known – Cosimo de’ Medici – who brought the family to prominence.
 
But what of his  father, Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, who founded the Medici Bank? He is indeed a less well-known character than his son and great-grandson.
 
And yet – who would Lorenzo be without Giovanni?
 
Who would Alexander have been without Amyntas?
 
These are not rhetorical questions – the answer is, “Not who they were.”

The built on their family’s work, expanded the bloodlines, made great impacts on their societies – indeed, on the entire world.
 
What will Stepan Parunshvili do in this world? He is already doing great things; I am proud to be his friend.
 
What will Kai Zau do in this world? He is already doing great things; I am proud to be his friend.
 
What will Stepan’s future children and grandchildren do?
 
What will Kai’s future children and grandchildren do?
 
We will yet see. Perhaps something, perhaps nothing – but are we not laying the groundwork for our bloodlines to thrive?
 
Stepan’s father and Kai’s father made the arduous trek to North America from tumultuous times and places, sweating and toiling and being separate from their wives and children, in order to secure future lives and prosperity for their bloodlines.
 
Many of my friends are immigrants – far more than would be predicted by mere frequentist statistics.
 
How mundane were many of the trials of our parents and grandparents, their trials of the “simple and useful mechanic arts, not advanced in luxury”?
 
And here we are.
 
Is this not remarkable?
 
***
 
THE LOVE OF ONE’S ANCESTORS – AND DESCENDENTS
 
There is an idea, uncommon in this day, but common through most of history –
 
It was to both love one’s ancestors – and one’s descendants.
 
We live in age that prioritizes NOW , and cares not so much for looking backwards nor forwards.
 
You will likely never meet your great-grandchildren, and almost certainly not your great-great-grandchildren… and yet…
 
… likewise, you have most likely not met your great-grandparents, and almost certainly not your great-great-grandparents… and yet…
 
… and yet, can you not be grateful to them? Can you not love them, truly cherish them, for the sacrifices they made – sacrifices to make you who you are, and to give this world to you?
 
Is this not good? Is this not beautiful?
 
It strikes me as good and beautiful.
 
Moreover, most of us do not have Macedonian blood in our veins, nor Medici blood, nor Adams blood…
 
… but are these not, too, our ancestors? Can we not love them and be grateful for them, for the march of civilization they produced?
 
I think so. I feel it in every fiber of my body.
 
My life matters, to be sure – I imagine you feel like yours does as well.
 
But you are the product of a relentless march of struggle and strife on the part of your ancestors – is it not appropriate to revere and be grateful to them? Even with any faults they might have had?
 
Is it not appropriate to think of one’s children and grandchildren, both of your blood and of your culture, those who you toil to improve this world for?
 
It is, of course, a subjective thing.
 
There is no compulsion to think this way.
 
But I feel  it, deeply, in every fiber of my being.
 
I am writing this from Athens, Greece. A few days ago, I walked among the ancient temples around the Acropolis.
 
A shiver went through me, despite myself.
 
They built this.
 
And here we are.
 
***
 
WHY IS THIS UNCOMMON? WHEN WAS REVERENCE PUT TO BED?
 
Leaf through the pages of history – almost all of it, among almost all peoples, included a reverence for one’s ancestors and a forwards-looking hope for one’s descendants.
 
And yet, John Adams’s position today strikes us as both particularly well-said – and also a rare and lost thing. People do not think this way any more.
 
The idea that we might have a short-term duty towards something extremely practical  in order to make way for the next generation to do even more practical things , and then and only then can our descendants be secure to do have the liberty to do as they please …
 
… it is common no more. It has been lost.
 
Where? Why? How?
 
I identify two primary culprits –
 
1. Iconoclasm
2. Pre-Existence Thinking
 
***
 
RAGING ICONOCLASTIC STORMS
 
Wikipedia says it well enough in its opening lines on Iconoclasm –
 
“ Iconoclasm is the destruction of religious icons and other images or monuments for religious or political motives. ”
 
On the 1st of June, 1966, in a People’s Daily  editorial in Communist China, a call went out to “Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons” – a call to destroy the “Four Olds” –
 
Old Customs
Old Culture
Old Habits
Old Ideas
 
Here is Wikipedia again –
 
“The Cemetery of Confucius was attacked in November 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, when it was visited and vandalized by a team of Red Guards from Beijing Normal University, led by Tan Houlan. The corpse of the 76th-generation Duke Yansheng was removed from its grave and hung naked from a tree in front of the palace during the desecration of the cemetery in the Cultural Revolution.
 
“Red Guards broke into the homes of the bourgeois and destroyed paintings, books, and furniture; all were items that they viewed as part of the Four Olds. Many families' long-kept genealogy books were burned to ashes.”
 
Tombs were broken up, statues were demolished with explosives, ancient venerated temples and cultural works spanning thousands of years of Chinese history were blown to pieces.
 
This is not unique to China – of course, the same things happened across the Communist world, and indeed, happens anywhere a new regime takes over and is not yet secure, aiming to bolster its power by sweeping the old world away.
 
This happened everywhere that life-and-death struggles took place between an old order and a new order.
 
The new order, ascendant in strength but still vulnerable, begins to destroy anything old – reverence to anything but the new order must be discarded and destroyed.
 
That hateful photo of Spanish guerillas shooting at the Cerro de los Angeles  in Spain; it is the same thing. New orders do not particular like reverence to older orders.

 
***
 
PRE-EXISTENCE THINKING
 
The first point is obviously political – of course a new regime might decide to destroy all vestiges of an old one, if it be to the new regime’s benefit.
 
The second is a little subtler.
 
Christianity has come up a few times in our discussions of Uncommon Virtues  – I’ll remind you once again that I’m neither pro-Christian nor anti-Christian. A number of my friends are Christian and I respect their faith and devotions.
 
Though, I do sometimes look unfavorably on what I call “post-Christian thought ” which adopts many of the Christian positions without realizing it, and without realizing that Christianity had many cultural balances within it to build strong civilizations.
 
One idea in some sects of Christianity and other religions is the idea that souls exist before they come into existence in the world.
 
I will quote the Mormon position on the matter, since it was formulated recently in modern English –
 
“The concept of pre-mortal existence is an early and fundamental doctrine of Mormonism. In 1833, early in the Latter Day Saint movement, its founder Joseph Smith taught that human souls are co-eternal with God the Father just as Jesus is co-eternal with God the Father, "Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be."”
 
I like Mormons. I think they’re wonderful people. If you’re Mormon, by all means, accept the tenets of your faith and work accordingly.
 
However, for those of us non-Mormons, I think we ought to question this doctrine a little bit.
 
Do souls exist before they come to inhabit the body?
 
I have my answer – no . Emphatically no.
 
Stepan did not exist before his parents conceived him. Kai did not exist before his parents conceived him. I did not exist before my parents conceived me.
 
If you did  believe that souls existed independent of parentage, then where you were born in the world was just a function of luck and chance.
 
You could imagine a procession of souls, waiting humbly in eternity for their turn in line, getting a certain “luck of the draw” in where they are born into the world.
 
I do not believe this.
 
I was born in Massachusetts in 1985 as a result of my various ancestors immigrating to the United States, surviving and fighting through all the hardship of life, until – through a long line of descent – I came to be.
 
I do not believe I could  have been born in England or France or Russia. I do not believe I was a “soul” before I was conceived. Were I not conceived in ’85 in the USA, I would not have existed at all.
 
There is no chance that I could have been English or French or Russian or Ugandan or Turkish or Serbian or Japanese or Indonesian. I would have either existed, as I am and do, or I would have not existed.
 
Someone else might have existed – but not I.
 
This seems rather logical to me. If you don’t believe in the Pre-Existence of Souls, I think it’s the only obvious position.
 
(If, standing as a soul before divine judgment after death, I am shown to be wrong – I’ll say: “Oh. I got that one wrong. Wow. My apologies.”)
 
How does this tie into post-Christian thought?
 
In 1971 – and this is the year that I roughly date the beginning of the end of Generational Thinking in the West – John Rawls of Harvard published his famous “Theory of Justice.”
 
Now, two things must be said of Rawls straightaway: the first is that he seems like a genuinely very nice man. Many bad ideas have been ascribed to him, and some bad things have been said about him, but much of those are unfair. He seems sincere in his beliefs.
 
Secondly, before I ever looked into the matter, Rawls struck me as having an immense steeping in Post-Christian thought.
 
One of Rawls’s most famous thought experiments is imagining that we should choose the principles and rules of justice from behind a “Veil of Ignorance” –
 
"...no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance."
 
There is perhaps some  merit in this thought experiment – it is not, by itself, harmful. There is some merit in doing it.
 
And yet  – what have we lurking here?
 
I daresay that, in Rawls’s conception of the world, (1) souls  have snuck in, and (2) the focus is far too much on the individual and by far not enough on chains of familial descent.
 
We can accomplish much in a lifetime – innumerably much – but nowhere near as much as we can across three harmonious generations.
 
Amyntas III... Philip II... Alexander… and the world is Hellenized.
 
Giovanni Medici... Cosimo Medici... Pietro Medici... Lorenzo Medici… and the Renaissance flourishes.
 
Rawls’s work says, “If you didn’t know who you were going to be before you were born, how would you order things?”
 
But, practically speaking –
 
How would you know  or not know  who you were going to be before you born?
 
Without Giovanni, there is no Cosimo.
 
Without Philip, there is no Alexander.
 
Unless you are from a faith that believes in the pre-existence of souls, the concept of “who you might wind up being born as” is… meaningless. You were always  going to be conceived and born to your parents at that moment in time, or not born at all.
 
***
 
DEMOLISHING THE PAST FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES
 
So let us take a step back, for a moment, from the specifics of iconoclasm, pre-existence of souls, and Rawlsianism.
 
And what do we have?
 
We have theories of what should happen right now  that find the recent past an obstacle to enacting them.
 
This is true in any fundamentalist religion that wants to wipe the traces of any past culture from the Earth – this is true of militant Communism – this is true, too, of many less extreme political and social movements.
 
And perhaps there is even merit to it.
 
Perhaps.
 
But what do we lose?
 
I believe we lose that thought of John Adams, that trust that one’s personal sufferings can aid one’s descendants; the idea that serving our duties now enables a better future.
 
Practically speaking , philosophies that aim at leveling – even if there are merit to them  – tend to be concerned with wiping out our connection to the past.
 
They say, “So what if John Adams suffered and toiled? It doesn’t mean his children are entitled to more. That’s unfair. They were just lucky that their soul came into his child’s body.”
 
They would not put it like this – of course they wouldn’t – and yet, there it is.
 
***
 
IMPLICATIONS AND THE EXTENT OF IMPLICATIONS
 
Were I writing for a more general audience, I would perhaps hedge and vacillate more.
 
But this readership, I think, is smart enough to avoid obvious pitfalls.
 
The extent of the duties we owe to others – our families and friends, and others who are not our families and friends – is always debatable and ought to be reflected on from time to time.
 
I’m actually a firm believer in service and lending one’s talents to uplifting the world, including those “poor souls born into such unfortunate circumstances.”
 
And yet  – this view, if taken too far, exterminates Generational Focus  – and all the magnificent and far-sighted things that come with it.
 
The willingness and ability of people to feel gratitude for those who came before us, and to suffer and build for those who come after – this is a magnificently powerful force that leads to truly great things.
 
Cultures and people only concerned with the present moment are lead consistently into decay, decline, and ruin.
 
I believe that the exact opposite force  of an iconoclastic hatred of the past is far more powerful to build a strong society upon.
 
Meditate a little this week, if you will, on how you would act differently over the comings weeks and months if you took very seriously the works that people can accomplish over multiple generations .
 
How can you order your affairs to help your grandchildren flourish, and your great-grandchildren flourish?
 
For those readers who are currently parents and grandparents, this may come easier than those doing it in the abstract – and yet, it still brings waves of thought and inspiration, practical implication of how you could live your life today so that your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren can have ever greater opportunity to flourish.
 
We have mentioned Zhou Enlai already in this piece; he had many moments of truly great thought.
 
Perhaps the greatest moment of his life were when the young and destructive Red Guards were running rampage over Beijing, destroying the “Four Olds” – and were heading to destroy the beautiful Forbidden City.
 
Enali ordered the Army soldiers under his command to stand the Red Guards down – and to shoot them if they tried to destroy the Forbidden City.
 
And you can still visit the Forbidden City to this day.
 
For my part, I think we’re all – to some extent – the children of Alexander, of Lorenzo, and perhaps too Enlai – in addition to our own parentages.
 
I miss my grandmother terribly sometimes – but I’m very glad she persisted and sacrificed through a hard life, setting the stage some decades later for my entering of this world.
 
I only hope I can serve the future half as loyally and dutifully as she did.