On This Journey We Call Our Life

On This Journey We Call Our Life: Living the Questions - James Hollis


The Ruah book for our latest retreat. I actually liked it! Why are Jungians so Jungian? like super into the whole deal? Like Marxists or Christians or what have you. I remember this cool book, Feet of Clay, about gurus and charismatic religious leaders, which included a chapter on Freud and another on Jung. For whatever reason they had quite the flock of disciples, each with their own schisms, first from each other and then within their later developed camps. I guess I haven't met or read anyone recently who's a Freud devotee. I do sense the closed-circuit nature of Jung's world. Very re-ligamentous. Jung is universal in the best, open-eyed adventurer sense, as well as in the worst, conquering-colonialist sense. Is that fair? I mean I haven't read very much. Anyways.


notes

• chindi (Navajo) - hungry ghosts
• question for 1st half of life - "what is the world asking of me"
• 2nd half - "what does the soul ask of me"
• complexes - autonomous, affect-laden ideas; energy clusters which have a life of their own and, when unchallenged, put one's life on automatic pilot
• what is the implicit question of our family of origin
• Jung - worst sin is unconsiousness
• Jung - I happen to myself
• Jung - a complex can be really overcome if it is lived out to the full
• what anxiety is aroused when you contemplate alternatives
• the shadow is everything about myself with which I am uncomfortable (negative or positive)
• we embody shadow in at least four different ways
• when it remains unconscious it makes choices for us
• project it onto others and criticize
• identify with it and live it out, unable to critique ourselves
• admit it, see it, grow in our capacity to work with its energies
• Liliane Frey-Rohn - too much morality strengthens evil in the inner world, and to little morality promotes a dissociation between good and evil.
• seven questions for reflection on shadow
• what do you consider your virtues
• what are the key patterns of your relationships
• what annoys you about your partner
• where do you repeatedly undermine yourself
• where are you stuck in life
• where do mom and dad still govern your life
• where do you refuse to grow up, or expect rescue
• our personal myth is our implicit value system
• money and good health are tops in our culture
• mythologems - affectively charged ideas or beliefs
• the real choices in life will always involve the conflict between competing values
• even when one finally tumbles to a long-lost talent or enthusiasm, and the supportive energy is palpable, we are seldom spared old issues of diminished permission, uncertain self-worth, etc...
• the search for reciprocal energy may be the contemporary form of the old Grail question, 'whom does the Grail serve?"
• apotropaism - image or practice which wards off threatening powers
• the hysteria of certainty is in direct proportion to uncertainty in the unconscious
• three characteristics of spiritual experience
• principle of resonance
• encounter with numinous
• engagement in depth
• only consciousness of fiction can spare us from literalism
• Jung - the soul cannot exist without its other side, which is always found in a "you"
• meeting place of opposites generally attended by symbol
• this humble achievement of unique personhood, with all its perverse permutations, is an act of the greatest praise, and what we most owe the world
• It was Jung's clinical experience (and is mine as well) that the overtly dying do not dream of endings. They dream of journeys, crossings, recovery. All of us dream of dying, but that seldom points to one's bodily death
• the more we presume the ego's sovereignty, the more we breed monsters
• Jung: depression should...be regarded as an unconscious compensation whose content must be made conscious if it is to be fully effective. This can only be done by consciously regressing along with the depressive tendency and integrating the memories so activated into the conscious mind - which is what the depression was aiming at in the first place
• I was obliged to stand before the depression and, humbled, ask, "what do you want of me?"
• suffering the tension between conflicting desires or needs or duties can lead to an awareness of what is really at stake in the context of one's larger journey
• to re-member the psyche
• recall we are psyche's being
• seek a dialogue with psyche which promotes healing in ourselves and others
• something wishes to re-member us
• entelechy - realizes that which was potential
• we are not our history, although it is of us; we are the quality and temper of our journey
• 
  

Walking Dream

    Last week at Ruah we discussed spirituality from a Jungian perspective (but much of the Ruah readings and lectures have been Jungian; maybe too much Jung for my taste). We were instructed in several different active imagination exercises and told to pick one and work with it for an hour and a half. I picked the "talk to nature" exercise: 1)walk around, 2)pay attention for a strong reaction - positive or negative - to another living thing (non-human), 3) sit near that thing and "be present to it," attentive, open, 4) after a while, start to tell that thing about yourself, 5) then stop again and listen to it, 6) finally thank the thing and then go journal about the experience.
   Well it was a cold day, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to sit for long, so I thought maybe I'd go for a walk and talk to the air or something. In any case, I wanted to go outside, though I was only half-serious about engaging the exercise. Nevertheless my walk took a couple unexpected turns and felt quite Jungian and dreamlike, so my instructor M recommended that I write it out as a dream, in the present tense, and interpret it that way.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
   I grab my jacket and gloves and quickly leave. Sunny and cool. Yes I'll talk to the air or something...or not, whatever. I'll just try to be open. Breathe.
   I turn right out of the gate, on the brick walk, moving east on Grace Street. I see M, my instructor, a wise and beautiful woman whom I admire, walking ahead of me. I think, oh good, she's talking a walk too, but I don't want to follow her. She turns right down the 23rd street hill.
   In my pocket I fumble my phone. Earlier I missed a call from M, the electrician about my age, should I call him back? I'm supposed to be working on Ruah, not working on work.
   I call him, we talk just for a second, he says he has to call me back.
   Old houses I've seen a hundred times, I look at plaques and dates and names. The way dips down to 25th street and back up toward 26th. Sunlight is nice; it's cold in the shade.
   I don't like my work, why don't I like my work, I'm annoyed, here we go again with my worries about work.
   Hey a squirrel runs up the tree and sits on the lowest branch, about ten feet up. Stares me down. Really looks at me. Higher up, over the street, a dove perches, still and puffy, tail hanging down. I look at the squirrel. I hear a tap. Something else moves. I look, can't see it. I slowly adjust relative to the tree and finally see it. A woodpecker, a downy woodpecker or a hairy woodpecker? Probably a downy. It's pecking intermittently, working various angles at the joint between two small branches. Most of the bark is gone from that area.
   I'm standing, looking. Craning my neck. I'm excited, not cold. Well, maybe a little. I slide into the sun, put my hands behind my head to continue looking up.
   Is this loitering? Is anyone looking at me? Who is this creep?
   Around the base of the tree someone has been feeding these critters; sunflower seeds everywhere. Two squirrels now. One chases the other around the tree and down and right past my feet. The chaser comes back, giving me a wider berth this time.
   The dove hasn't moved. Is it asleep? How do birds sleep? Is it making micro-adjustments, smaller than I can see, with its tail and claws to stay perfectly balanced?
   Hello, my name is David Vinson...nice to meet you.
   I don't get much further than that. Still watching. Squirrel, dove, and woodpecker. Cars have passed, parked, started and driven away. I'm nervous, slightly embarrassed. Can I sit down? Not sure how long I can look up from this angle.
   I slowly back away and continue walking east. Here's the playground. Anybody at the hoop? I guess I'll walk around Chimborazo and go back. Or maybe down to Gillies Creek and then back.
   As I walk past the playground, to my right is the gully between Chimborazo and Libbie hills. I've noticed what look like paths down there before. The brush and briars are less thick this time of year...who does the property belong to? would it be ok to skirt the hill by way of the gully and come up chimborazo by the dog park?
   What the heck, let's go down. I backtrack and descend below the retaining wall, down into the gully. Ivy, sticks, brush, vines, trash, what you might expect. 
   Here's a sandy bed, and bushes with some clearance. I can stoop underneath these bushes, but to follow the wash out would be difficult. Would need to crawl or hack. I'll just climb back up the hill side and scoot down from another angle.
   Down. Here's a path, turns left, right, kinda runs out as the hillside drops sharply down southward. Looking left, just east through the bushes, I can see filmy water, bog-like. Is that water trickling down over some rocks I hear? A little scramble down, over a tree, under a vine, jump to the rocky, sandy creekside.
   .....
   Indeed behind me to my left a tiny cascade down to the creek. The creek, is it a runoff creek? a wadi, gully wash...running down from a...
   A large concrete arch...20 ft high? 30 feet across?
   I walk toward it...it's built into the gully, its bed filled in with sand, silt, and water...how far back does it go? Wait! its the Church Hill tunnel! The southeastern end of it. I squint...and can see a wall. It's bricked up back there, blocked up, closed up, yes I can remember being told about this. I had no idea it was here. Stalactites hang from the roof of the tunnel. The interior darkness of the tunnel, the peaceful trickle behind me, the sandy, rocky beach.
   Voices behind me. I can see the new tall row-house style apartments on the steep slope of Franklin street. Should I leave? The voices sound old. They're moving this way, slowly. Their voices echo in the tunnel. I see two old men walking upstream, carefully picking their way around the mud. One is leading the other, older. They step onto an old tire to cross the brook.
   We exchange greetings. The younger old man tells the older old man about the tunnel, a boiler explosion, the fireman that crawled out but died of his injuries, the unknown number of dead (less than ten) buried under the cave-in. He says he will be part of a urban hike the next day, tracing the approximate route of the tunnel, looking at depressions and landscape contours that are results of cave-ins.
    They head back toward Franklin street. I head back up the hill, explore a few more paths, find myself behind a fence at a colorful graffiti covered warehouse below Libby Hill. The gully wash is dammed up at that point with a mound of rocks and soil. Where does the water go?
    Back up, around and down again to the tunnel. I've got to show J this! He would love it! I make some sounds to enjoy the echo. I egress to Franklin St. this time, up Libby hill, time to go back to Richmond Hill.
   Passing MW's house (aunt of an old flame), I scope out her outbuilding, formerly house for enslaved folks, according to B. Wait, the gable end walls extend higher than the roof line, and the roof itself has a very low slope. Just like J and G were describing, based on the Sanborn map, may have been the case at the partially remaining house at Rich Hill.
   Emboldened, on my way back, I take a turn up the alley behind the 2300's on Grace street, to peer at three very well preserved outbuildings. Two are certainly houses for enslaved workers. Is the large one as well? It too has parapet walls on the gable ends.
   Back to Richmond Hill. Just in time. I want to share this...but maybe I don't. Will I have to? I really want to show J, rather than tell him. Prompted by our leader, we pair up to share out experiences. I'm sitting next to M, my instructor. I tell her. She shares her walk story. The river. Birds. The large group shares a little. I agree with D, who says that it was surprising. J asks me what exercise I picked. I hesitate, uhh, I'd really like to show you rather than tell you. Everyone reacts, laughing, now you have to tell us.

African Americans and Depression

African Americans and Depression - Julia Hastings, Lani Jones, Pamela Martin

What's the angle?
Hastings, Jones, and Martin - all three psychological researchers and all three African American - share some of their thoughts and research on depression in the African American community - a topic understudied and undertaught. They also provide a lot of encouragement to those suffering from depression, some advice on how to seek help, and a brief guide to America's health care (and mental health care) system.

What is depression?
They basically stick with the DSM definition, but also describe depression in case histories and examples.

What causes depression?
They don't specifically identify one cause or another, but simply say that depression has many causes - genetic, psychological, social, and/or environmental. They do, however, highlight a bewildering array of socio-economic stressors facing the African American community, not to place the root of depression in that sphere, but to demand that we understand depression in that context. For African Americans, social struggle is woven into in depression's cause and cure.

Religion and depression
They all mention spirituality and religion, in a positive way, and they explain that faith has been a key element in African American survival and mental resilience. They also note that, in the church, seeking psychological help can be seen as a lack of faith. Mental and emotional health are often thought to be the domain of spirituality.

Strength-building
Another refrain in the book is "encourage your strengths," or "play to your strengths," I'm paraphrasing. In the author's experiences, that seems to be a particularly important or effective.

Rates of Depression
They mention statistics of significantly higher levels of major depression in the White population than in the Black population. They suspect that some of that discrepancy has to do with the African American community being underdiagnosed for depression. I'm curious to know what more recent studies have shown.

notes

• Throughout American history the mental health status of African Americans has always been in question, and, according to Professor James S. Jackson, a noted researcher on Black mental health, has been 'used to justify slavery, enforce racial segregation, and reinforce the idea that blacks were inferior to whites.'
• Our strength as a people has always been discovering ways to maintain personhood against many adversities.
• With this daily assault on self-respect, the right to exist truly becomes an ordeal.
• John Henryism - working to exhaustion with little reward
• higher rate for major depression in Whites than African-American, but data may not be quite accurate
• the question as to whether African Americans, and Black people overall, exhibit different behavioral cues of depression remains debatable
• African American women are recognized as the most undertreated group for depression in the United States
• Men are more likely to report being very tired, exhibit irritability, lost interest in once pleasurable activities, and have difficulty sleeping
• although women are more likely to attempt suicide, a higher number of men die by violent suicide in the u.s.
• more than half of people suffering from depression cannot function well in meeting social obligations as a result of their mental illness
• the economically disadvantaged and the uninsured most particularly rely extensively on emergency medical services
• African Americans are overrepresented among emergency medial service users
• Af-Am are more likely to be considered gravely disabled or a danger to themselves or others and to be subject to involuntary commitment
• several factors may contribute to Af-Am's being properly diagnosed and treated
• mistrust, based on higher-than-average institutioalization
• cultural and language barriers
• reliance on family and religion
• the masking of depression by other medical conditions
• socio-economic factors, limited access
• only 1/3 of Af-Am with mental health difficulties use professional services
• a 2009 study found that 2/3rds of primary care physicians were unable to obtain mental health care for their patients who needed it
• Africentricity is both theory and practice that is rooted in a cultural orientation toward spirituality, interpersonal relationships, communalism, and expressive communication.
• bioecological theory
• microsystem - person to person interactions
• mesosystem - interconnectedness of microsystems
• exosystem - social environments not directly relevant, but involved
• macrosystem - cultural patterns and values
• chronosystem - periods of time or developmental stages
• the neglectful treatment of police brutality by the legal sectors of the u.s. expecially adds emphasis to the attack on the african american psyche.
• ...attempting to alleviate low feelings transforms into a search for a higher purpose and understanding
• experiencing depression tempts the mind to create suffering
• actually care for yourself
• ...there is something about discussing depression among African Americans that calls for hushed tones. We believe that no one needs to suffer unnecessarily when there are treatment options

More Birds

Why is this called the red-bellied woodpecker? Anyway they are striking, and one has visited us a few times recently. [retraction: it continues to visit us, and I have noticed the red tinge of its lower underbelly. to whomever named this bird - sorry I doubted you!]

On my bucket list is to see an ivory billed woodpecker. I have my Granddaddy Richard's painting of one, and he often commented about how they thought it was extinct, then found it in the backwoods of Arkansas. He was a life-long Republican, but also a big fan of the Sierra Club and other tree-hugger groups.



We've had a frequent visitor that I misidentified at first as a carolina chickadee (of which we have a few regulars; so cute); its a white-breasted nut-hatch, a male I think, but not quite this blueish. He doesn't seem too afraid of me, and will let me stand about four feet away. The chickadees are pretty tolerant as well. Closer than that and he makes a funny little squawk and flies away. He prefers the sunflower seeds, and will work hard to release the other seeds until a sunflower seed falls out.



The blue-jays are too big to perch on the feeder, but they often come around when the sparrows are feeding in groups. The sparrows dance around and spill seeds everywhere, and the jays and doves and squirrels can help themselves.



One of my most exciting bird sightings was a few weeks ago, walking up my brother's front walk - a little bird flew from upper right to lower left in my field of vision, darting deep into a bush and a small hawk, right on its tail, pulled up and swerved left at the last minute. I was like, whoa, what just happened. It was a small hawk, maybe a sharp shinned hawk? (which is said to be usually smaller than a crow)



Or maybe a cooper's hawk? I think I've seen some coopers hawks around richmond hill. Hawks frequent the trees and ride the up-drafts on the edge of the hill. I'm hoping I can learn identify them better. Speaking of the up-draft, it makes cleaning the south side gutters of the dormitory a pain. I toss the leaves over the edge and half of them blow back up onto the roof!

Using the Bible in Spiritual Direction

Using the Bible in Spiritual Direction - Liz Hoare

"...Get the dust off the Bible and redeem your poor soul..." - Hank Williams. 

That seems to be Liz Hoare's main advice to spiritual directors. Read the Bible, soak it in, "inhabit" its landscape, open yourself to the Spirit hovering over the scriptural waters. The best way to use the Bible in spiritual direction is to use the Bible regularly in your own life. Then during spiritual direction you may be led to incorporate Biblical stories or themes in your discussion, or you may be able to recommend certain verses or passages for meditation or reflection.

I was a little disappointed by the book; I was hoping for more play-by-play advice on how to use, advise, or recommend the Bible during a spiritual direction session. Or perhaps a case study approach, with analysis of how a spiritual director's use of Scripture proved helpful or not. This book is more about describing spiritual direction generally, while emphasizing the key role Scripture plays in Christian formation.  In fact this is a wonderful intro to spiritual direction.

On the other hand Hoare digs into different Bible reading traditions - lectio divina, Ignatian method, the Anglican version of the daily office, Evangelical commitment to Biblical authority - and she highlights the richness and good fruit these practices can produce. She encourages directors to encourage Scripture, but not to demand certain beliefs about it, or to demand certain interpretive styles. Hoare also recognizes that some people have been hurt by Biblical words, or by others who used the Bible in an abusive way. So directors should offer Scripture and Scripture reading practices gently and with no strings attached.

Perhaps her best example of using the Bible in spiritual direction comes in chapter 6, when she discusses Biblical themes that frequently come up in spiritual direction - questions, desert, silence, guidance, risk, fear. Maybe we could say that using the Bible in spiritual direction is an associative practice; we connect things or experiences from our lives to the Biblical world, which connects us to a wider landscape, a different perspective, a diverse tradition, a community.

Read the Bible, that's my take-away. Read Scripture regularly and then trust that the Spirit will prompt me to use it wisely during spiritual direction.


notes

• inhabiting a landscape
• scriptures as authoritative
• aim of spir dir to hear and respond to God
• at the end she would gather up all the fragments of conversation and offer it to God with me
• concerned with the whole of life
• throughout the story of God's involvement with humanity, one person has been used time and time again to point the way to another
• integration
• you have set my feet in a broad place
• scriptures as God's self-revelation
• many silences in Scripture that are worthy of attention
• we are not the best people to comment on our own spiritual progress
• inhabiting the Scriptures, the Scriptures inhabiting us
• need to be doing for themselves what they are seeking to help their directors to learn
• the desert dwellers believed that discernment and self-knowledge were central to interpreting scripture and that experience deepened interpretation and took them into new realms of spiritual growth and understanding. prayer and scripture mutually informed each other and faithful praxis led to growth in holiness
• God's word interact with our lives, prov 6.22, 'when you walk, it will lead you; when you lie down, it will watch over you; and when you awake, it will talk with you.'
• atmosphere
• spir direction in the Bible
• neither can control the scriptures, have a life of their own
• Holy Spirit the real director, also key to memory
• belong to community
• corporate enterprise
• God's word is always personal, but never private
• interpretation is always advocacy
• listening, performance
• not to be used to browbeat or force
• words of life turned into words of death
• story to understand our story
• we have committed ourselves to something we cannot yet see
• metaphor, imagery
• repetition
• deepen rather than deaden insight
• like panning for gold
• desert
• waiting
• spir dir very risky
• directors, vs mentors, guidance, anam chara, soul friend, etc, different models
• seeking a word "rhema", speak a word to me
• lectio divina
• ignatian prayer, finding God in all things, imaginatively putting ourselves in scripture, memorizing Bible verses or praying verses, daily office
• midwife, hospitality, teacher, gardeners, doctors, intercessors, friendship
• prayer
• road to emmaus, hearts burning
• "scripture and experience unite in the person of Jesus"
• pray as you can, not as you can't
• emphasis on listening, not necessarily reading
• scripture and prayer out loud, art, dance, "sigh's too deep for words", icons, eucharist
• paying attention to scripture together
• in God is our collective homecoming
• by wise and judicious use of scripture it can help to foster a language to see God in all things and articulate our experience with a companion along the way

Addiction and Grace

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions - Alcoholics Anonymous

Awesome.


Addiction and Grace - Gerald May

I appreciated May broadening the scope of addiction: we can become addicted to most any substance or behavior, he says, even or especially mental behaviors like thoughts and beliefs. The only thing we can't become addicted to is grace, because it is completely free. It is not controllable or predictable. You might say it is arbitrary and not dependable. In this book May presents the spiritual life as a gradual loosening of addictions through the interplay of God's grace and a person's will.

His five markers for addiction: tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, self-deception, loss of will-power, and distortion of attention.

Worry Loops

   I think I first recognized my tendency for anxious, circular thinking in late elementary school, like maybe 8 years old. I remember a couple specific loops, one having to do with washing my hands before eating...did I do it well enough? did I mess them up in the three minutes between washing them and dinner time? lemme washing them again, just to be sure. 
   That was the only neurotic behavior that I've heard my parents say they were worried about. At some point the hand-washing-loop disappeared, or slowly dissolved, or was dislodged by other, less specific worry loops. Most of my loops were and still are vague and moral. I was a very scrupulous kid.
   One of my current worry loops is Donald Trump. In fact I think Donald Trump + twitter + 24 hour "breaking" news has created a national worry loop. Maybe it's better labeled as obsession.

• "Obsessions: Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance as intrusive and inappropriate, and that cause marked anxiety and distress.

Is that not cable news? Is that not the collective response to Donald Trump or Donald Trump-detractors? It's out of control. Has there ever been anything like this before on such a large scale? Trump complains but he isn't really complaining, he loves the attention. He is obsessed with himself along with the rest of us.

Here are things I think about him, way too often. Maybe writing them down will excise them? Or abate them? I doubt it. My most helpful remedies for worry loops, generally, are 1) prayer/meditation/breathing exercises, 2) do something very involved, like play the piano, 3) go outside and look around.

• I can understand why Christians would vote for him, but why do so many Christians enthusiastically endorse him?
• He personally and publicly insults people, regularly.
• He insults the character (not just the opinions) of groups of people, regularly (immigrants, liberals, the media, foreign countries, etc).
• He lies, regularly.
• He exaggerates, regularly.
• He attempted to deter immigrants from crossing the border by taking the children away from those who did cross.
• He has drastically reduced our refugee acceptance rate to its lowest ever since the programs inception in 1980, arguing that we should help the refugees settle somewhere closer to their home, while simultaneously attempting to slash our foreign aid budget.
• He is on record multiple times speaking about his disrespect, objectification, and harassment of women.
• He seems to show no remorse.
• The only time I know of that he ever apologized for any of the things he's said or done was in response to the release of his taped conversation with Billy Bush. And in that very apology, he quickly deflected the spotlight on his sin and pivoted to an attack on the Clinton's (who have their own sins to account for, but the point is - Trump seems to care only if 1) he's caught and 2) it greatly affects his image).
• Money, influence, prestige, good looks, and ratings - these are his markers for success, his key goals. He proclaims them regularly, and his actions display them. His life has been based on them. Look, I don't know him, and I don't know his relationship with God, but it seems reasonable to say he doesn't care very much about the things Jesus cared about.
• Other things frequently on my mind
• He turned so quickly against Jeff Sessions, his biggest supporter in the Senate during his campaign.
• He praises the military but disrespects the service of veterans who criticize him.
• He makes policy statements out of the blue and with little to no explanation.
• A handful of top leaders in his campaign are going to jail.
• He loves tariffs, and continually asserts that Americans aren't paying for them. I don't mind tariffs, per say, but why must he lie about them?
• He says cruel things about immigrants and orders cruel things done to them.
• He regularly propagates the non-factual idea that hispanic immigrants are more violent and criminal than American citizens; that refugees and asylum seekers present a greater security risk than American citizens.
• He wants to coerce China into fair and honest dealings with U.S. companies - that's great! but why ditch the TPP so quickly? Why kick the EU in the shins? Why not team up with others to pressure China?
• He lambasts NAFTA and then updates it with USCMA like its some sort new discovery.
• He picks people to run the EPA that don't like the EPA.
• He shrugs off climate change like it's a rumor.
• Make America Great Again? That may be the most racist slogan ever used in a presidential campaign. How could that ever apply to Black people, or any people of color? did the campaign leaders not think about that? or not care? or do they honestly believe that America's economic power and expansion had nothing to do with slavery and racist, anti-Indian policy?
• How could he say, on live TV, in front of the world, contradicting all his intelligence, that he doesn't know why it would be Russia that waged a online campaign to sway the election?
• He says he cares about the American worker, but he doesn't seem to care about labor organizing. Capital, investment, and ownership can move around the world and across borders much more easily than labor (as he has demonstrated with his own business dealings). Investors and executives can grab the ears of legislators all over the world, but individual laborers can't. 
• He's skeptical and critical of globalism and "free" trade, and I appreciate that. But he approaches the problem in such a promotional, salesman, superficial way. Promoting American industry is great; but what about substantial change? The lower classes, as individual workers and consumers, have so much less freedom in the local and global markets than the upper classes. Most people know that intuitively. But people forget just how much leverage and how many protections have been won by the labor and consumer movements (not to say they haven't abused their power at times, too).