Isn't it interesting how each of us proceeds through our lifetimes as if our personal thoughts, emotions, opinions, needs and concerns lie at the center of all that exists?
Strikes me, whether you agree with his overall views, that's pretty much the underlying message of collective empathy Pope Francis left for us to chew on during his visit last week. In our overriding concern with ourselves, we all need to find room for others, to remain cognizant of our remarkably common qualities, needs and frailties as higher-functioning humans.
Even my Ozarks philosopher reader, Ralph Guynn of Harrison, might say, "Ain't no flies on that idea." (How I enjoy writing that phrase).
Spend a moment to recognize the concept of how we each live in self-absorption yet in the same boat. I believe such awareness of others' lives is one of the most important lessons we can learn. Most of the world's great religions think so too.
Since everything we consciously absorb enters through individual senses, hearts and minds, it's normal to filter the outer world in that way: how it all affects me. And forget that that condition is universal. I've written before about telling wide-eyed undergrads during the teaching years at Ohio State how important it was for them to understand that to every other person they, the students, were not the most significant ones. Rather, it's the person addressed who'd be filtering everything done and said through their own personal lens.
Therein lies my point today. Seems to me we're each better served by realizing everyone else we meet is continually preoccupied with their own joys and insecurities, concerns, fears, memories, conditionings and heartaches.
We become aware by simply understanding that the person in the car at the stoplight beside us may have just endured a divorce, or is facing heart surgery, or the loss of a loved one, or has received some terribly disappointing news because his life is filled with the constant flow of positives and the negatives. It really isn't all about me, or you.
Wouldn't it be a far different and vastly improved world if each of us routinely carried such empathetic awareness?
Just imagine how much more connected we all could be and therefore all the more we could learn from each other.
It's the politics, stupid
I was visiting the other day with a former employee of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) about that controversial hog factory the agency wrongheadedly permitted to set up shop two years ago in our treasured Buffalo National River watershed.
He offered an informed response when asked his opinion of why this agency hasn't already acted to schedule a hearing where the substantial evidence collected and analyzed in several scientifically based studies could be accepted and examined to ensure the protection of this river.
Each is said to document levels of microbial contamination in the watershed, which is likely to damage the Buffalo. I asked: "I mean, why wouldn't this agency, whose sole responsibility is to accurately and completely assess any and all credible evidence that could show contamination, want to have every possible fact to examine? Isn't that why this agency even exists? Why shouldn't they insist on having these studies?"
He stared back incredulously. "Now, Mike, you're not stupid," he said, cocking an eyebrow. "Surely you of all people understand how state politics works. This issue and that agency are very political. The only way such a hearing will happen is if the order to hold it comes from above. Either the governor's office or Pollution Control and Ecology, or both, have to tell Environmental Quality they want the hearing held in a purely apolitical manner and let the facts speak for themselves. That's just the way it works."
If that's the case, our Gov. Asa Hutchinson, or the Pollution Control and Ecology commissioners he appoints, indeed needs to step up and do the obviously right thing by our river and the people of Arkansas. Instruct the Department of Environmental Quality to hold an objective hearing (no politickin', lobbyin' or campaign-contributin' involved) to accept all the new studies and results that didn't exist when it so quickly and quietly awarded this factory its general permit. Then intelligently and honestly determine what changes are occurring in the watershed since this factory began accepting up to 6,500 of Cargill's swine to raise.
By my way of thinking, anything less than this kind of necessary fact-finding is indeed purely political and a flagrant dereliction of responsibility to the public, as well as a disgrace to the process of protecting this sacred national river. As I wrote this weekend, a Little Rock law firm is rightfully asking on behalf of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance why these highly relevant studies are being ignored and why the state hasn't slated a hearing to review the permit it issued to C&H Hog Farms. Perhaps that might lead to depositions and answers.
Tell me how you feel, Mr. and Mrs. Arkansas, about a hearing and preserving the quality of your national river. No need to ask my opinion, is there now?
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 09/29/2015