Last Wednesday was one of those rare perfect summer days: Blue skies with low humidity, clear air. I was rounding at Baystate Medical Center. As I passed a line of cars waiting to enter the parking lot at 3300 Main Street, the outpatient center, I heard a driver shouting out his window:
"Stupid jackass!"
Had I done something wrong? Who was he shouting at. Did the recipient of his anger even know it? It was really just disembodied vitriol wafting through the summer air.
At the end of a busy day, with the usual stresses of our needy and often poor patients and their complicated lives, I was rushing to meet up with a group from the Northampton Cycling Club for their 5:30pm ride. So I was wasting no time zipping up I-91 N. I passed a car in the left lane, doing about 73mph in a 65mph zone. Before I could look in the rear view mirror again, there was another driver on my tail. I turned on my right hand turn signal, but he was impatient. He zipped around my passenger side, and cut me off as he passed into the left lane, waving his middle finger at me out his window.
As I've said previously, there was no road rage in Bhutan.
If you had road rage, you would probably fly off a cliff to your death. The Bhutanese look with bemusement at the frequent road closures that occur on 3000 meter mountain passes, with large Indian trucks passing within inches. Bemusement and patience.
So it was not with anger but with curiosity, more than anything, that I thought about Americans and American drivers as I was driving towards the Academy of Music in Northampton. Why are so many Americans so bitter, indignant and resentful? Why the rage? Do they know how fortunate we are, to live in a country with all the material comforts one needs, in a free democracy, with roads going anywhere we want, working toilets, no civil war, endless forms of entertainment, a relatively safe and stable society?
I write relatively safe, because it is a society where anyone, no matter how crazy, can get their hands on guns that should only be available to the military, and shoot up - in close succession - an historic black church, a military recruitment center, and a movie theater. In Bhutan, where even the police don't carry guns, such shootings are of course unheard of. (There was one isolated episode, in the last ten years, where an abusive father owned a gun. He threatened to kill his son. The young man took the gun and killed the father. This story is known to everyone in the country, because it is the only case of gun violence in recent history. It is used as a cautionary tale) These (almost always) venomous white males are like the cankers exposing the underlying infections of racism and paranoia, all too prevalent in this country.
This is not to say that Bhutan, home of Gross National Happiness is utopia. It's recent history of persecution and virtual expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis, in the vain attempt to maintain ethnic purity - some say to prevent annexation by India or China - is shameful. Alcoholism is rampant, and with it unreported child and spousal abuse. And I found pockets of random violence. Young street toughs, high on the drug of choice - glue - would occasionally beat up the unarmed police! And among the male college students with whom I met, in their "hostels" to talk about typical teen topics - their residential advisor got them to talk about their senseless fist fights during and after football matches during which they would bloody each other. But the boys would laugh about these fist fights as soon as they were over.
The caretaker of our apartment, whose cell phone was stolen by a gang of youths, said, in describing the event: "It was funny, actually."! There is, in the words of Milan Kundera, an incredible lightness of being among even sad events in Bhutan.
Whether it is their Buddhism, or the fact they love their enlightened king, or their isolation, or the fact that modernization is so new to them - probably all of them - there is not the constant undercurrent of anger, cynicism and violence which pervades the United States.
And what is constantly weird to me is what Americans choose to get angry over: It is the "asshole" that forgot a turn signal, or didn't turn fast enough. It is our President, for doing his best to make health insurance available to millions more people. It is doctors for "poisoning" kids or "overloading their immune systems" with lifesaving vaccines.
But where is the outrage directed against the energy companies that are responsible for causing climate changes that is already killing many thousands and may kill millions? Or the growing obscene gap between rich and poor in this country? Or the fact that the richest country on earth permits so many to get sick, go bankrupt and die without a rationale, affordable health care system available to all? There is appropriate indignation over the killing of unarmed black people by police (and citizen murderers like George Zimmerman). But African Americans have shown remarkable restraint in the face of the violence directed against them.
The perfect example is the nobility of the families of the black Christians who were slaughtered in the AME Church in Charleston by a white racist terrorist. (Yes, he meets the definition). Their expressing their forgiveness of this young man, only days after the murder of their spouses, parents, and siblings is the kind of the kind of dignity, generosity and superiority of spirit that all Americans need to learn from.
It is consonant with the teachings of all the great world religions from Buddhism to Christianity.
As the rabbi at the Manhattan Jewish renewal synagogue Romemu said during a service we attended only a week after the Charleston church shootings, those killed were like the martyrs of old in Judaism, practicing their faith with an intensity and honesty and courage few of us have, while inviting a stranger into their midst.
It is their kind of faith, as much as learning from the lessons of Bhutan, which can provide an antidote to the epidemic of middle finger waving, ranting, raving and killing in this country.
"Stupid jackass!"
Had I done something wrong? Who was he shouting at. Did the recipient of his anger even know it? It was really just disembodied vitriol wafting through the summer air.
At the end of a busy day, with the usual stresses of our needy and often poor patients and their complicated lives, I was rushing to meet up with a group from the Northampton Cycling Club for their 5:30pm ride. So I was wasting no time zipping up I-91 N. I passed a car in the left lane, doing about 73mph in a 65mph zone. Before I could look in the rear view mirror again, there was another driver on my tail. I turned on my right hand turn signal, but he was impatient. He zipped around my passenger side, and cut me off as he passed into the left lane, waving his middle finger at me out his window.
As I've said previously, there was no road rage in Bhutan.
If you had road rage, you would probably fly off a cliff to your death. The Bhutanese look with bemusement at the frequent road closures that occur on 3000 meter mountain passes, with large Indian trucks passing within inches. Bemusement and patience.
So it was not with anger but with curiosity, more than anything, that I thought about Americans and American drivers as I was driving towards the Academy of Music in Northampton. Why are so many Americans so bitter, indignant and resentful? Why the rage? Do they know how fortunate we are, to live in a country with all the material comforts one needs, in a free democracy, with roads going anywhere we want, working toilets, no civil war, endless forms of entertainment, a relatively safe and stable society?
I write relatively safe, because it is a society where anyone, no matter how crazy, can get their hands on guns that should only be available to the military, and shoot up - in close succession - an historic black church, a military recruitment center, and a movie theater. In Bhutan, where even the police don't carry guns, such shootings are of course unheard of. (There was one isolated episode, in the last ten years, where an abusive father owned a gun. He threatened to kill his son. The young man took the gun and killed the father. This story is known to everyone in the country, because it is the only case of gun violence in recent history. It is used as a cautionary tale) These (almost always) venomous white males are like the cankers exposing the underlying infections of racism and paranoia, all too prevalent in this country.
This is not to say that Bhutan, home of Gross National Happiness is utopia. It's recent history of persecution and virtual expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis, in the vain attempt to maintain ethnic purity - some say to prevent annexation by India or China - is shameful. Alcoholism is rampant, and with it unreported child and spousal abuse. And I found pockets of random violence. Young street toughs, high on the drug of choice - glue - would occasionally beat up the unarmed police! And among the male college students with whom I met, in their "hostels" to talk about typical teen topics - their residential advisor got them to talk about their senseless fist fights during and after football matches during which they would bloody each other. But the boys would laugh about these fist fights as soon as they were over.
The caretaker of our apartment, whose cell phone was stolen by a gang of youths, said, in describing the event: "It was funny, actually."! There is, in the words of Milan Kundera, an incredible lightness of being among even sad events in Bhutan.
Whether it is their Buddhism, or the fact they love their enlightened king, or their isolation, or the fact that modernization is so new to them - probably all of them - there is not the constant undercurrent of anger, cynicism and violence which pervades the United States.
Half the citizens of Bhutan were rehearsing for the celebration of the King's 60th birthday
But where is the outrage directed against the energy companies that are responsible for causing climate changes that is already killing many thousands and may kill millions? Or the growing obscene gap between rich and poor in this country? Or the fact that the richest country on earth permits so many to get sick, go bankrupt and die without a rationale, affordable health care system available to all? There is appropriate indignation over the killing of unarmed black people by police (and citizen murderers like George Zimmerman). But African Americans have shown remarkable restraint in the face of the violence directed against them.
The perfect example is the nobility of the families of the black Christians who were slaughtered in the AME Church in Charleston by a white racist terrorist. (Yes, he meets the definition). Their expressing their forgiveness of this young man, only days after the murder of their spouses, parents, and siblings is the kind of the kind of dignity, generosity and superiority of spirit that all Americans need to learn from.
It is consonant with the teachings of all the great world religions from Buddhism to Christianity.
As the rabbi at the Manhattan Jewish renewal synagogue Romemu said during a service we attended only a week after the Charleston church shootings, those killed were like the martyrs of old in Judaism, practicing their faith with an intensity and honesty and courage few of us have, while inviting a stranger into their midst.
It is their kind of faith, as much as learning from the lessons of Bhutan, which can provide an antidote to the epidemic of middle finger waving, ranting, raving and killing in this country.
