Sibling Estrangements

About 15 years ago, give or take, one of my sisters and I had an argument that led to a year-long estrangement. Eventually we got over it. (While we were not speaking, I don’t think my parents knew we were not.) Sometime between then and now, my two sisters had an estrangement that went on a considerable length of time. The igniting factor in the first instance was a disagreement over children’s behavior; in the second instance, there was dog behavior involved. 

How we raise our children, how we raise our dogs, how much attention we expect brothers and sisters to pay to our kids and pets and what kind of behavior we expect them to accept from those kids and pets – these are some of the knottiest issues between adult siblings, probably more problematic than money issues.

But money is sometimes involved with kids, too.

My father had two brothers, an older and a younger. The oldest of the three boys (their sister died shortly after World War II) had no children. When the youngest child of the youngest boy, a son, married and was looking for a house to buy, his uncle, recently remarried after the death of his first wife, offered to sell him the house he had lived in for years. My uncle’s price for the house was less than what he would have asked on the open market, but his sister-in-law, my cousin’s mother, thought our uncle was asking too much and thereby taking advantage of his nephew. What began as a family gesture of goodwill gave rise to bad blood that went on year after year of my two uncles not speaking to each other.

My father tried several times to play peacemaker, but it must have taken a miracle to get those two brothers back on speaking terms before one of them died. All those years wasted!

Two men we know, brothers, were estranged for several years, and it seemed as if they would never acknowledge one another again. Their father died before their rapprochement took place. Happily for their mother, she lived to see it. They are now business partners, all the bitterness and rancor buried with the hatchet.

Then there is the question of how much emotional support siblings expect of one another. When expectations don't match up, it can make for resentment.

But really, what is “unforgivable” between siblings? Is there anything? The long silences are hard on everyone, and it is never only the two feuding parties in the family who are affected. Whether or not other family members take sides or make every effort to remain neutral, there is a lot of collateral heartache. 

Is it any wonder people from different backgrounds have trouble getting along?

The Trouble With Too Many Facts

Imagine the following:

Imagine someone describing conditions of a town under siege and looking to allay the fears of those within the town. Let’s call him the Prophet, because the example will be easier if we have a name for him. The Prophet loves facts and has enough numbers and lists of numbers and statistics to fill thousands of written pages. “The situation is challenging, without a doubt,” he says to the people, “ but we are educated and intelligent and have all history and technology on our side to help us overcome our enemy.”

Tons of grain in warehouses, fresh water in wells and cisterns, herds of livestock and flocks of poultry, stores of preserved fruits and vegetables and spices and sugar – all this and more has been meticulously catalogued by the Prophet’s clerks, along with records of past sieges and their outcomes. Additionally, the Prophet cites what he calls the “Home Ground Advantage.” Those outside the walls, he reminds his fellow townsfolk, are sleeping on hard ground, far from their families, not in comfortable beds at home.  They will not want to continue forever in thankless discomfort.

But the Prophet’s chief message lies in his facts and numbers. Whenever a dubious voice is raised, the Prophet rains down a flood of facts upon the questioner’s head. He does not simply say, “Look at all we have!” but enumerates tirelessly until the questioner is overwhelmed by the sheer force of the wall of facts. The questioner feels stupid and falls silent.

What’s wrong with this picture? Are facts not important? Should we want not to be “confused with facts”? Should we instead make up our minds about what to believe and what to do without reference to reality?

I do not intend my example as opposition to facts or reality. What I see too often, however, is a blizzard or tsunami of facts thrown up as a smokescreen -- because when facts come in a blizzard or in a tsunami, they can be overwhelming and leave a crowd speechless with amazement. Historians are often guilty of this technique, but so are writers on economics, politics, and just about any other topic under the sun. Any “expert” with infinite facts at his fingertips can silence an audience – and, worse, can paralyze thought, which is my main concern.

“I'm only saying it because it’s true.” Have you ever heard anyone say that? What did it mean to you? Did it shut you up?

Here's something else that's true: The number of true sentences that any of us can utter at any given moment is infinite. We do not, therefore, make any statement simply because it’s true: we make it for some purpose. To make a statement is to begin to stake out a position, and to make thousands of statements is to stake out a huge area of ground.

As listeners, as readers, what do we need in addition to statements of fact?

If someone lays out a book-length position, complete with chapters and footnotes, bristling with dozens of facts on every page, I want to know: What is the basic line of argument? What am I being asked to conclude, and where, in the jungle of facts, are the lines of the argument? Sometimes the author has not constructed an explicit argument, and I as a reader have to infer it from hints. Other times an argument is explicit but rests on unstated or unexamined premises. Is there a hidden premise that, if brought forward, because false, defeats the conclusion?

Facts are important, but so are arguments. So too are values that lurk behind arguments.

Imagine another situation: One hundred people survive the siege, and the barbarians at the gate have all gone home. One survivor has a net worth of $1 million. The 99 others have nothing. The per capita wealth of the survivors is $10,000. This group of people is in pretty good shape, wouldn’t you say?

I hear someone saying yes, they’re in good shape, because the millionaire will need the labor of the ninety-nine and will have to pay them for their labor if their civilization is to enjoy a renaissance. Ah, but does survival necessarily entail a renaissance? And what if the millionaire can get work done – planting, harvesting, sewing his new clothes – simply by providing enough food to keep the workers’ bodies and souls together?

The number of survivors is a fact. The per capita income is a fact. Interpreting facts, predicting outcomes and making decisions based on available facts – that is something else again. That will depend on what you are trying to prove and what you want to see happen.

It is not enough to question facts. One must question the beliefs and purposes and values of people presenting facts. If no argument is given, an important question to ask might be, “What’s your point?”

Stop the tsunami in its tracks, freeze the blizzard in midair. Why are you giving me all these facts? You are trying to convince me of something. What is it?

[Just realized this is my 100th post on "Without a Clear Focus."]

Think You’ve “Heard Everything”?

The new horror story I read this morning has to do with banking and charitable giving. I want to urge all my friends and readers to get their hands on the July 14 issue of the New York Review of Books and read “The Undermining of American Charity” on pages 17 and 18 (or read here). The authors of the two-page feature are Lewis Cullman, a 97-year-old philanthropist who has given over 90 percent of his wealth to charity in the course of his lifetime, and Ray Madoff, a professor of law at Boston College and director of a philanthropic think tank at BC.

There is plenty of so-called “news” that the public doesn’t really “need to know” at all. This is information you do need.

DAF. Do the letters mean anything to you? They stand for donor-advised funds and are part of a very successful business plan undertaken by major financial institutions.

Say you donate directly to a charity. You will probably want to check its track record and make sure your donation is going to a worthy cause and not simply into administrators’ pockets. What if you have millions or billions to donate? How will you decide where to give and how much and when?

A DAF is a middleman between donors and charities. However much you put into a DAF account, you get an immediate tax break, just as if you’d donated directly to one or a number of charities; the organization, however, can hold your funds indefinitely, enhancing the parent financial institution’s bottom line and collecting management fees.

The story gets worse. By “indefinitely” you must understand no limit to the length of time “donations” can be withheld from waiting charities. You may die, your children may die, and your grandchildren may inherit the job of “advising” the DAF on charitable disbursements – however (BIG “however”), when you put your money in the DAF, you gave up all legal control over it. Courts have upheld the rights of DAF fund sponsors over wishes of donors. Yes.

There’s more, but you need to read the article, especially if you’re really, really rich and think a DAF is the way to make sure you come out as far ahead of the IRS as possible. Don’t be lazy, don’t be cheap, and don’t be stupid. Take responsibility for your own charitable giving and make sure the causes you want to support reap the benefit of your generosity.

Mom and Pop Lost Track of Time

Once Memorial Day is past, the days tend to blur into one another until Labor Day. It isn't that Mom and Pop are senile (she insists, somewhat defensively); it's just that they work every single day all summer long, with only calendar numbers to differentiate the days of the week. And so --

Pop: Today's Thursday, isn't it?

Mom: No, it's Wednesday.

Pop: Are you sure? I'm pretty sure it's Thursday.

Mom [now going over to Pop's belief]: No. Darn! I thought it was Wednesday, and I put the garbage out this morning. [It gets picked up on Wednesdays.] Maybe they'll pick up a day late because of the holiday? We'll find out when we get home, I guess.

Pop: I think that's right. Wait a minute, though. Were we supposed to go to dinner last night at your friend's house?

Mom [stricken]: Oh, no!

Pop: Was that for Wednesday or Thursday?

Mom: Wednesday! Oh, no!

Mom reaches for the phone to call friend, preparing an effusive, embarrassed apology in her head.

Pop [calling to Clare in shop next door]: Clare, is today Wednesday or Thursday?

Mom [Looking at her calendar]: It's Wednesday. Thank God!

Another crisis averted in the lives of Mom and Pop!

A Wise Friend's Response

A friend of mine who works for a Christian-based organization was asked to sign a declaration of faith as a condition for continued employment. She read it through and said sadly that she was unable to sign. "Why?" she was asked. "Because I don't believe it," she said in her direct but very sweet and honest way. She said, sadly, that if she had to sign to work there, she would have to resign.

They didn't want to lose her.

"What could you sign?" they next asked.

She thought a minute and then said, "I could sign that I believe in being kind to people."

The people took the paper away, and in the end no employees had to sign anything. My friend prevailed by standing her ground without yelling or shaking her fist at anyone.

Name This Plant -- Then Pull It Up!

This is an enormous colony of the dreaded garlic mustard, across from north Lake Leelanau between Leland and Northport, not too far north of the Clay Cliffs conservancy trail. Last year it looked to me as if herbicide had been applied to this area; if so, it failed in its purpose. The colony on M-22 looks to be flourishing this spring, and even expanding its territory. I noticed new clumps between this large colony and the drive to the Clay Cliffs parking lot.

In the same family as toothwort (and cabbage, Brussels sprouts, etc.), Alliaria petiolata is yet another member of the Brassicaceae family. “Especially invasive in forests,” says the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Wildflowers,

it can become so abundant as do dominate the ground layer, adversely affecting the native species.The garlic-flavored leaves are edible.

The most effective method I know of for discouraging this plant (and not killing anything else around it that has managed to survive) is to pull it up by the roots. It comes up easily (I pulled garlic mustard with a friend in her woods a couple years in a row, and there is very little there now), and if you want to make garlic mustard pesto with the leaves, go right ahead. Just don’t compost the plants you don’t eat, or they will take over your garden, and you’ll have nothing else!

My Philosophical Work

For a few years, I worked with a friend who had a garden business. She designed, we installed, and often we did maintenance through the season. One day I told her I was mad at Hegel. She was amused but interested and asked why. I told her it was because of Hegel's definitions of 'organic' and 'inorganic.' Tacitly rejecting vitalism (without giving it so much as a formal nod), Hegel called 'inorganic' anything that reproduced itself -- living things, repetitious work like planting or weeding, cooking or washing dishes -- while 'organic' was his more highly valued term for human inventions bringing something new into the world, be it a railroad or a new philosophy. Naturally, in the evolution of spirit as Hegel laid it out, he, Hegel, came out at the top of the heap. Ellen's frown grew deeper, and at last she exclaimed, "Now I'm mad at Hegel, too!" Ah, the comfort of a loyal friend!