I think I've fallen into a triangle! Part 1

Murray Bowen, the founder of Family Systems Theory, spent his professional life studying the dynamics of human relationships. He described the complex interrelationships within a family.  And he used systems theory to analyze them  He formulated his thinking into Family Systems Theory.

I am certainly no expert in Bowen's theory although I have personally benefitted from his insights.  I have used them to understand better my own and others' behavior in my families.  I have also experienced how they can clarify interrelationships and resulting behavior in other human groups.  Perhaps, even an entire society.  With apologies to the late Dr. Bowen and his many highly trained followers, I want to use my version of one of his basic ideas to look at my own behavior.

Triangles:  Matin Tiller on YouTube

Bowen taught that two-person relationships, or dyads, are inherently unstable.  They have a low tolerance for tension and quickly turn to third parties.  A triangle with a third person can stabilize a two-person relationship experiencing tension.  For example, a mother and a teenage daughter are experiencing tension in their relationship.  The mother reaches out to a friend to talk about her daughter and the behavior that is creating the tension.  The friend can play a vital and useful role in helping to stabilize the mother-daughter relationship.  If the friend listens sympathetically and suggests strategies to help the mother and daughter communicate directly, the third person can help reduce tension and reestablish a livable balance.  We can probably all recall times when we reached out to a third person this way.  Perhaps we have been a third person for a dyad.

But triangles don't always turn out that way.  Sometimes triangulating a third person accentuates problems in the relations making it harder for the dyad to grapple directly with problems and feelings.  This can be especially toxic, I believe, if the third person is also experiencing tension in other relationships.  Let's adjust the genders in the example.   A father experiences tension  with his teenage son.  He reaches out to a female friend who it happens is also experiencing stress in her marital relationship.  It is deceptively easy for the two people to calm their tension and anxiety by bonding together through sharing information and criticism of the other person in the relation.  The friend deepens her relationship with the father by listening to criticism of the son.  She agrees with it and even stimulates it.  She never says or does anything that would help the father deal directly with the son.  She may even begin to share about her marital relationship.  Over time, the two may grow more emotionally enmeshed and thus more distant from the son and the husband, as well as the father's wife.  They have calmed their anxiety but have done nothing to address underlying issues.  The situation has become worse by inserting a third person into two family dyads and creating two new outsiders, the mother and the son.  They may, in turn, triangulate in retribution.  (By the way, I could change the genders in the examples and the result would stay the same.  These are human dynamics.)

There are also predators who cruise around the social landscape probing relationships to see if one or both members of a dyad are experiencing tension.  This creates an opening for a third party whose motivation is typically not benign.  This is especially disastrous in marital relationships.  An outsider senses a vulnerability in a couple of which even they may be unaware.  The predator typically focuses on the dyad member of the opposite sex and begins to ingratiate him or herself into the relationship as a friend of both.  Under the cover of friendship, the predator cultivates emotional closeness with his or her target.  This eventually pushes the other member into an outsider role.  The predator may become physically intimate with the target thus achieving his or her ultimate goal. There may be a reduction of the tension for the target member and surely for the predator but the original relationship can be damaged beyond repair.

So, this is a long way around to get to the triangle I think I have fallen into.  What I am about to say may sound ridiculous.  I know it did to me as it began to emerge into my consciousness.  Each of us as citizens of the United States is in a relationship with our elected leader, currently Donald J. Trump.

In my lifetime, there have been 14 presidents beginning with Franklin Roosevelt.  I have had a good relationship with the first 13.  I didn't like or agree with all of them.  I felt closer to some than to others.  (Disclosure:  I was born in Kansas City MO into a line of Democrats stretching five generations in rural Missouri and further still in Virginia.  While many of those would probably be Republicans today, my Dad would certainly not be.  However, this essay is not about politics although it seems to be headed that way.  Just hold on.)

The current president is the problem, or at least my problem.  On every level--personal behavior, style, and policy--I simply cannot stand Trump.  Beginning with the night of his election, I experienced intense anxiety that I had never felt with other presidents.  As time passed after the election, my anxiety didn't decrease; it increased.  The more he talked in those elliptical sentences, blurting out nouns without verbs, the more anxious I became.  My response was predictable, I began to recruit third persons into my Trump triangle.

Some of these weren't persons at all.  I began reading theology to try to understand some of the more fundamental issues of life.  I especially was drawn to Reality, Grief and Hope by Walter Brueggemann.  I needed to deal with reality, grieve what had been lost and experience hope.  It helped...a bit.  I got more engaged in hobbies:  photography, writing, web design.  Not much help there.  I was trying to find something to which I could become emotionally engaged and thus calm my anxiety.  It worked as long as I was actively engaged in those activities, but the impact quickly waned.

Next, I began to spend a lot of time talking about Trump with my wife and other like-minded people.  We would share outrage after outrage.  It felt good to let it all out with another person who shared my feelings.  This strengthened my emotional bonds with them.  My emotional space grew more settled.  The acceptance of those with whom I shared my feelings reduced the Trump-induced anxiety.  This is a classic triangulation.  I was bonding with a third person and reducing tension while doing nothing to deal with whatever was causing the disruption.  If I kept on this way without dealing with the real problem, there would be no end to this.

Then I turned to the national media to understand better what was happening.  What I now think happened then was a surprise.  I will pick up there in the next blog.

A crisis, an opportunity.

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before."  Rahm Emanuel  November 19, 2008

Emanuel said this as the Obama administration was preparing to take over the national government.    During the growing COVID-19 crisis, I think it has a particular relevance although I would restate the opportunity.  It is not that we can do things we should have done but for which we have been unable to build political support.  Rather this is an opportunity to reconnect with values that have become substantially less salient to our national life.

In 1985 Robert Bellah and a group of fellow sociologists published a study of the American character entitled "Habits of the Heart:  Individualism and Commitment in American Life."

"The title is from Alexis de Tocqueville who, writing about us in “Democracy in America” from 1835 to 1839, discovered habits of the heart--he named family life, religious convictions and participation in local politics--as helping to form the unique American character.  They were habits that would help sustain free institutions, De Tocqueville said. But he also suggested that individualism , a word he was one of the earliest to use and long since a catchword for the American character, could prove dangerous, setting citizens apart from one another, making positive collective action difficult if not impossible, and therefore threatening those same free institutions."  Charles Champlin Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1985  

 I read it shortly after publication and found it insightful.  It helped me--as a college administrator--understand the society for which we were preparing students.  My takeaway was this:  There were two principles at work in the American character:  communitarian and individual.  Our past could be read as the dynamic interplay between these two:  the urge to be a strong individual and the urge to be part of a community.  Bellah and his fellow authors expressed a concern that the creative balance between these two had been shifting.  Since the late 1940s individualism had been gaining strength and communitarian values were fading.  If this trend continued, the American character and society could be damaged in significant ways.

More than 30 years later, that concern has become urgent.  I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic can be an opportunity for America to rediscover its deeply rooted communitarian values which have been overshadowed by individualism.  Perhaps a rebalancing is possible.

The pandemic is and will be a challenging and intrusive experience for all Americans.  It may well be the marker for the rising generation much as 9/11 was for the Millenials.   The pandemic is forcing many but not all Americans to confront the reality that short term optimization of one's economic and social assets may lead to a sub-optimization of the economic and social assets of the larger community.  It would be nice, I suppose, if the single-minded pursuit of my own self-interest would somehow result in the improvement of the conditions of everyone.  Even Adam Smith's "invisible hand," required a society where the common good was clearly in mind for all.  It didn't take some special focus on the common good because that was assumed.  All that worked pretty well in more rural-based, face to face societies.  That focus began to break down with industrialization and urbanization.

While we could discuss which is the better--individualism or commitment to community--we would never come to conclude that one is better than the other, or a least we shouldn't.  We need both, not one at the expense of the other.  Ours is not a choice between a totalitarian communism or the objectivism of Ayn Rand.  We need a slider variable that will move toward individualism or toward communitarianism based on the circumstances and challenges.  The creative tension between these two fosters the vitality and creativity of a social group.  There is no absolute "best" state.  The optimum moves between but never to the two extremes.  Bellah et. al. were concerned that the movement toward individualism would be so drastic that the balance would be permanently damaged.

What we are all experiencing now is the dysfunction of extreme individualism that sees no problem with compromising the health of others as long as people can do what they want to do.  "I deserve a spring break so I am going to the beach and the bars."  "I always get together with this group of friends at a restaurant.  Why should I change my plans?"  "I am willing to run the risk of getting the virus.  Let other people worry about themselves; I'll worry about me."  "The virus has not come to my neighborhood.  Why should I change my behavior?"

Some are realizing now and soon everyone will that what I do impacts not only my health but also that of others, especially those whose age and/or underlying conditions place them at increased risk of negative outcomes from an infection.  We all have the chance to experience not our equality with others but our solidarity with them.  We have the opportunity to experience a conversion, a change of heart.  I don't mean this in any political or economic sense.  I don't even mean this in a religious sense.  We have the opportunity to experience an always present but often hidden reality.  We, all of us, are in this together.  Not just this pandemic but life.

We are called to act out of this change of heart in ways that most of us have never experienced.  Because this pandemic will spread through the country touching every state and locality, we all can experience what it means to be a community, with each of us doing what we can to help others, especially those who are often invisible.  I harbor no illusions that this spells the death of individualism.  That would be disastrous.  Maybe, just maybe, we can recalibrate our slider and move back toward those communitarian values that have always been an essential part of what makes us America.

Humanity has been at this point often in its history.  When the poet and priest, John Dunn, lay seriously ill with spotted fever during an epidemic in 1624,  he wrote a book of prose reflections entitled, "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions..." where his most famous lines--ironically prose not poetry--appear.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

We are likely to hear many bells tolling over the next months.  If we can take Dunn's sentiment to heart and act on it, perhaps there will be fewer, and we will be less diminished.

What mitigation means and why it is important

Mitigation efforts like social distancing help reduce the disease caseload
 on any given date, and can keep the healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed.Credit...
Drew Harris

I came across this graphic this morning in the NY Times.  It was part of an interview with Drew Harris, a population health analyst at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.  The graphic was created by Rosamund Pearce for an article in The Economist and is based on a 2017 CDC article about how to deal with a novel influenza A pandemic.  In yesterday's White House briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, "What we need to do is flatten that [curve] down."  I didn't understand the importance of that until I saw this graphic and read the interview.

Once a county moves to mitigation, as the U. S., there is no hope of stopping the spread of the virus.  However, we can do something to impact the speed and trajectory of that spread.  If we do nothing or do something too late, the virus infection increase dramatically in a short period of time.  We get the red curve.  If we take steps to "interfere with the natural flow of the outbreak," the infection spreads through the community at a slower rate over a longer period of time.  The blue curve.  These are called epi curves.  The broken line in the chart shows the healthcare system's capacity in a community.  The red curve rapidly exceeds that capacity which means that some people cannot get the treatment they need to survive.   There are more people than the system can handle and there are fewer health care workers who are healthy enough to work.  A double whammy.

This helped me understand the importance of doing my part in trying to mitigate this infectious disease and, in fact, any other including the seasonal flu.  Even before more extreme measures (social distancing) are mandated by local health offices, I can begin to develop good habits to interrupt community transmission.  Eventually, more severe measures will be needed but for now, I can do the common sense things recommended by the CDC.

For more information, go to www.coronavirus.gov

Some clarity for this Democrat...but only some.

Leading Democrat candidates before New Hampshire primary

For the past six months, I have been making monthly contributions to Elizabeth Warren's campaign.  I felt she brought an issues-oriented approach to a campaign that could easily descend into emotion and charisma.  She was an outstanding debater in high school.  She earned a debate scholarship to George Washington University.  I was also a debater in high school and college.  I understood her focus on problem analysis and well-articulated plans to address them.  I decided that I would reevaluate after Iowa and New Hampshire.

The time for that assessment is now.  Full disclosure:  I am a life-long Democrat who grew up in a union family with a strong commitment to social justice and equality.   Read the following with that in mind.  I have not come to a commitment to a specific candidate.  I would support any nominee, perhaps some with more enthusiasm than others.  However, I have come to the following conclusions.

Here is a link to a handy quiz that The Washington Post is providing to see how the Democrat candidates align with your positions on 20 issues.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/quiz-which-candidate-agrees-with-me/

First, electability never has been and should not now be a major factor in my choice.  I do not have the information or expertise to assess electability.  Primaries by their nature only measure the electability within the Democrat base.  If I try to get myself inside the head of a Republican moderate or an independent, I will only drive myself crazy.  Much of what passes for political discourse today is distorted and unreliable.  I have never been concerned about electability before.  I viewed the primaries as the chance to learn which Democrat aligned with my views on the central issues of education, health care, immigration, and wealth inequality.  I am competent to make that assessment.  All I have to do is know my own mind and assess candidates accordingly.

President we elected in 2016 has begun an assault on the America I hope for.  I have never felt the urgency to defeat someone as much as I do this election.  While turning Trump out of office is necessary, it is not sufficient to move in the direction of my hopes.  I am tired of thinking that all we have to do is defeat Trump and everything will return normal.  It is that "normality" that led to the election of 2016.  So much needs to be done beyond simply unraveling most of what has happened in the last three years.  That process, however, won't begin until we have a President who is aligned with the values that have guided me and so many others.

Second, my enthusiasm and financial support will be directly proportional to that alignment of values.  I will be most enthusiastic about a candidate who aligns with my values and who seems capable of taking action to implement them.  Given our constitutional system, that means someone who can work with a divided country and Congress to support and pass legislation.  Our divided system has meant that the last two presidents have used executive orders rather than legislation to move their agendas.  That is not a sustainable path to a stable future.

Third, I am much more of a centrist Democrat than I might have thought before these primaries.  As much as I might lean in a progressive direction, I am more of an evolutionist than a revolutionary.  I am more comfortable making changes to the status quo in most areas rather than burning down what we have and replacing it with an extreme solution, even one that sounds very appealing as a solution.  It turns out that I am not in favor of "Medicare for All."  I believe that we should, through our government, provide basic health care to everyone in the United States in the same way we provide public education.  However, the experience of other advanced economies shows that there are a variety of means to that end.  A single-payer system is one but not the only way.  We need to build on our mixed system of public and private insurance so that all residents are included.  This same approach is true with most major issues with which I am concerned.

Fourth, Elizabeth Warren made a fatal mistake by falling for the litmus test required by the Sanders wing of the party.  Even though she tried to walk back her endorsement of Medicare for all once she was attacked in one of the debates, it was too late.  Litmus tests are political creatures that do not play well or at all with a policy approach.  Much as I hate to say it, her candidacy is doomed.  No one needs or wants a paler version of Bernie.  You are either all in or all out.  On this measure, I am out.

Fifth, Michael Bloomberg is a disruptive candidate whose impact is not yet clear.  If he were not in the race, I would be moving toward Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar but I need to wait until March 3 and Super Tuesday before I settle on a final choice.

Stay tuned.

Louisa's Funeral

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020, the family and friends of Louisa Elizabeth Pickett VanHorne gathered at Abundant Life in Lee's Summit, MO.  We celebrated her life, her family, her many interests, her faith in God and especially her devotion to the Scriptures.

She was laid to rest next to her husband, Van, in Longview Cemetery.

The following are videos of family members' remembrances of Louisa.

I delivered a remembrance on behalf of my brothers and sisters.  You can click here to download a PDF.

Next Anola, the eldest sibling, read a message from Mary who was out of the country and not able to attend.

Heather Kopas, Louisa's daughter and first born shared her thoughts and feelings about her Momma.

Finally, Louisa's son, Lee Alan, shared his observations and expressed his thanks to all who attended.

It was a rich four days in Kansas City.  To be with close family at a time of deep feelings is always a blessing.  There is something special about being with people who have known you for your entire life and with people you have known their entire lives.  I was especially blessed that three of my children were able to join us for their Aunt Louisa's funeral.  Sean, Amy and Erin joined with the rest of the Picketts for grieving, story telling, laughing and crying.

After the burial, we returned to Abundant Life where the church provided a luncheon for family and friends.  It was finally time to just relax and be with one another without any formal responsibilities.  It was a time to catch up with cousins whom we see only every once in a while. 

You can click here to view more photos in a Google Photos album.

Louisa Elizabeth Pickett Van Horne January 25, 1954 - January 15, 2020

Ruth Platt Pickett holding her youngest child,
 Louisa

Louisa Elizabeth was born on January 25, 1954 into the family of Lee and Ruth Pickett.  She was the youngest of their six children.  I and my brothers and sisters will miss our baby sister terribly.  Her funeral will be 11:00 Wednesday January 22 with visitation from 10-11 at Abundant Life Church, Lee's Summit Campus Admin Building, 414 SW Persels Rd, Lee's Summit MO 64081. Burial at Longview Cemetery.  Click here to view Louisa's obituary.

Her sweetness and cheerfulness belied the many challenges she faced in her life.  Much like her grandma Nancy Norris, she found herself at 22 alone with a three year old daughter, Heather, and newborn son, Lee Alan. 

 Also much like Grandma, she devoted herself to providing a stable and loving home to her children in the face of challenges not of her making.  With the help of Ruth and Lee, she worked to provide for her children, started a career in library work, and began the process of completing her college degree.

Van with Heather and Lee

She met, fell in love with, and married Willard VanHorne.  She and Van loved each other deeply and grew even closer through their Christian commitment to a life of service both in and out of the church.  Van legally adopted Heather and Lee and was  a wonderful father to them.  His passing in 2011  was a blow to Louisa and the family.

Heather and Lee pursued their lives and careers outside of Kansas City, Heather in Colorado and Lee in the Navy, currently Seattle area.  Louisa was proud of their accomplishments but even more of the kind of people they were and are:  deeply committed to their Christian faith, family and service.

Louisa celebrating her degree with Mom and Mary
at Andy and Lois Sciolaro's home

In 2000 she completed her college degree from Friends University in Wichita KS through an extension program in Kansas City.  In 1990 she had began a career in cataloging for the Mid Continent Library which serves 35 libraries in three Missouri counties.  She eventually became head of a cataloging unit at the Midwest Genealogy Center, a modern building housing a stand alone and world class genealogy collection and services.  She retired in 2018 after 28 years of service.  This video contains her remarks at a reception given by her co-workers.

Louesa Elizabeth Funk Muir
Louisa's namesake and Great
Grandmother

Louisa faced a number of health challenges.  For most of her life, she suffered from a variety of auto-immune diseases including fibromyalgia .  She suffered through a knee replacement which became infected, very nearly fatal.  She then had to go through two more surgeries, first to remove the prosthetic and put in a spacer and antibiotics and then to remove that and place a second replacement.  She faced the prospect of actually losing her leg if the infection could not be contained.  She also was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that forms in a type of white blood cell called a plasma cell. Multiple myeloma causes cancer cells to accumulate in the bone marrow, where they crowd out healthy blood cells.  Her "smoldering" multiple myeloma became active and began to produce amyloids, a destructive protein, that resulted in amyloidosis.  This attacked several organs but especially her kidneys which lost 85 percent of their function.  This summer she underwent stem cell replacement therapy with all the attendant pain, discomfort and isolation.

I mention all this only to show the difficult health challenges she faced.  And yet, with all this, she never lost hope, deepened her already strong faith in God and was cheerful and sweet when almost anyone else would have been overwhelmed.  She left us on Wednesday January 15 and she leaves a hole in our hearts which will never be completely filled. 

You can click here to view some photos of Louisa from the Pickett Family Photographs Archive.

Enough is enough! Please listen to us not the gun lobby!

"In December 2012, a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children, six adults, and himself. Since then, there have been at least 1,607 mass shootings, with at least 1,846 people killed and 6,459 wounded." (https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-sandy-hook)  Here is a map that shows the locations of these 1607 mass shootings.

We are not sure why but the 1607th one has had a profound impact on us.  What happened in Parkland FL made us, we are ashamed to say for the first time, realize that our grandchildren, especially the 17 who attend school in the United States, could have found themselves in that same situation because almost nothing has changed since Sandy Hook.  Actually, that is not quite true since access to military-style weapons, really guns of any type, has increased rather than declined.  (New York is an exception.  Within two months of Sandy Hook, the legislature passed, and the governor signed an assault weapon ban along with a limitation of the capacity of magazines for those purchased before January 2013.  The original capacity was set at seven, but a court case found that arbitrary and set it at 10.  Magazines with a capacity of up to 30 and more are easily available in most other states.)  But as a nation we talked and then did almost nothing.  We can now see the results of doing nothing.

Perhaps it was thinking about our grandchildren.  Perhaps it was hearing words that used to have meaning to us become hollow and meaningless and even disrespectful:   "We'll keep them in our thoughts and prayers."  Perhaps it was hearing those young survivors and the parents of those who died speaking of the unspeakable.  Bill was moved to tears listening to a father and young survivor expressing their thoughts to the President on the evening news.  For whatever reason, we can no longer do nothing.  God forbid that these shootings have become so commonplace that we have gotten used to them.  As long as they don't happen in our city or our school, we express outrage and then move on to the next thing.  And there is always a next thing.

If we ignore this or distract ourselves with all the things and activities available to us, we am no different from the politicians who cynically say one thing and then do another.  This is a bipartisan phenomenon.  It includes Democrats who introduce all the "right kind" of laws but then sacrifice principle to political expediency because they fear political backlash that will compromise other issues they consider more important or will make it difficult to attract centrist voters so they can regain power.  It includes Republicans who take millions from the gun lobby and are petrified that their support of any action which that lobby does not approve will generate a primary opponent who is well funded and ideologically pure.   At least one can count on Libertarians to deplore what has happened and to make clear that they will not support any further intrusion of the government, especially at the federal level, into the lives of citizens.

We have taken three actions.  They are not big, perhaps even puny considering the problem.  But we have finally done something.  We encourage you to consider this whole issue and to ask yourself, "Can I just do nothing and wait for it to happen again?"  We realize that many of the people receiving this email have already done more than we could possibly hope to do.  We appreciate that some of you may find our actions and advocacy to be things with which you disagree.  But surely we must do something rather than just hope that it won't happen again.  

Here is what we have done.  First, Bill tried to write down our feelings and thoughts about all this and then used this as the content of contacting our federal, state and county representatives urging them to take action appropriate to their level.  (We have attached a copy of that document.)  Here are the four requests we made to those at the federal level:

1.     If you receive financial support from the NRA, return it and publicly state that fact and your reasons for returning.

2.     Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to re-establish the assault weapon ban that expired in 2004.

3.     Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to buy back any assault weapon for its fair market value.

4.     Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to permit the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence as the public health issue it clearly is.  I understand that such a study is currently excluded by legislation.  This is another example of the NRA’s influence.

Second, with our 20 grandchildren and our four children who work on campuses in mind, we are contributing to the Giffords Law Center to Reduce Gun Violence.  We are no longer convinced that donations to politicians will achieve any meaningful result. 

Third, we are trying to become more educated about this issue.  We have learned a lot about the New York situation in just the last two days.  Things we should have known but didn't.

It feels different this time and perhaps whatever might be done—and we might differ on what that is--can have some impact.