Category: Friendshipology

What Do the Following Fraternal Twins Have in Common with Alice’s Restaurant — by James Luce

~ Billy

Yi Qi and Male Bonding
East and West
Syntax and Semantics
– 20 Feb 22

(Before proceeding, you will find it useful to first read Stephen Lee’s entertaining and informative article about Yi Qi that is posted on this site.)

As I’m composing this essay, East and West are just barely balancing on the verge of WW III. The US/EU could go to war at any time with Russia, China, North Korea or all three. I hope you are reading this essay in peace.

The question in the title of this article came to mind as a result of having read and discussed a draft of Stephen Lee’s article about the meaning of Yi Qi (righteous loyalty), its ancient, complex, and fascinating philosophical/linguistic origins via the transmogrification and malleability of Chinese characters, concluding with a discussion of Yi Qi in China today. Stephen notes that there are seemingly coincidental similarities between manifestations of Yi Qi and what in the West is called Male Bonding.
For example, Chinese tales of the mythical folk hero warrior, Guan Yu, extol the virtuousness of truly righteous loyalty, the warrior standing by his fellows in danger and never betraying them to the evil enemy. Stephen notes that there’s also a sinister side to Yi Qi as represented by the 108 Outlaws of the Marsh. These folk heroes stole from the rich and gave to the poor, similar to the Western myth of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. The difference between these two gangs being that The Hood bunch returned to the Nottingham people the money stolen by the local aristocratic crowd from those same people, whereas the Marsh bunch gave the money they stole from the aristocrats to poor people who had not necessarily been the original victims. Thus, The Marsh system was not as efficient or equitable a redistribution of wealth scheme as perpetrated by the Hoods. However, both involved the commission of many violent felonies.
The West has many examples Yi Qi/Male Bonding that are not remotely pure, righteous, good, or productive. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are two loyal buddies gone bad…sticking together through adversities of their joint making and dying side-by-side in a hail of retributive bullets. Another, larger, example is The Wild Bunch. These four dastardly desperados didn’t have a shred of the Cassidy/Kid humor and joie de vivre. Not a bon mot between them. Neither of these two gangs gave any of their stolen loot to any poor people, keeping it all for themselves. Yet they too are folk heroes because of their devotion to Yi Qi. And then, of course, there’s the Mafia, American folk hero murders and extortionists simply dripping with Yi Qi and blood.
In modern America the ideal of Yi Qi in all its variations is robust. Every extreme is represented, from fraternal charitable organizations (pure) to drug cartels (toxic), with political organizations (dominated by male bonding) located somewhere in between those poles. Thus, it’s clear that it’s really not just a coincidence that China’s Yi Qi is paralleled in the West with Male Bonding. It’s not a coincidence because, after all, we’re all humans. Our ancestors faced the same problems and mysteries, few of which have been fixed over the millennia. The difference today between each of us and between our cultures is simply a manifestation of different routes to failed resolutions of our common problems and mysteries.

Welcome to Alice’s Restaurant!

Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, released in 1967, is the generational anthem for most War Babies (1939-45) and Baby Boomers (1946-64). The first seven minutes forty-two seconds of this song are about Arlo’s adventures in Stockbridge, Massachusetts: Thanksgiving dinner at Alice’s restaurant and his subsequent arrest and trial for littering and creating a nuisance…but that’s not what he came to tell you about. He spends the remaining ten minutes fifty-seven seconds singing about the Military Draft, a very hot topic during the Vietnam War. I’ve started out talking about Yi Qi. Here’s what I really came to talk about: The Roots of our Common Humanity and the Routes we need to collectively take so as to reacquire our Common Humanity.
The primary focus of this essay concerns how to restore harmony among and between the bitterly splintered factions of our originally Common Humankind. These factions we usually refer to as our myriad cultures, nations, economies, minor genetic variations, languages, philosophies, religions, and other artificial, antagonistic, and divisive instruments of civilization. The original humans fought over food, water, and basic survival. In today’s world we have dozens of more things to fight about, most of which have nothing to do with food, water, or basic survival: patriotism, politics, beliefs, irrational prejudices, languages, and cosmologies. What could be more idiotic than to go to war or start a bloody riot over skin color, a flag, a political party, or especially those variable cultural answers as to where we all came from originally and why. “Especially” because nobody really knows and probably never will.

So…Let’s talk about just one of these splintering factions, the least likely to stir up patriotic or cultural animus: Languages

My father and his three older siblings were China-born, children of a Presbyterian missionary in Shandong Province during the disarray of the prolonged warlord period. When I was a very young child, I remember that my now grownup Aunt Beth hung embroidered towels in her New York apartment that read East is West. It was not until several decades later that I began to understand this cryptic message. We will return to this theme shortly, but first…

There’s a traditional belief/stereotype among Westerners, Anglo-Americans especially, that the Chinese people and their language are inscrutable. Well, what does that mean? The dictionary says, “impossible to understand or interpret”. So, perhaps Americans criticize the Chinese because Americans aren’t intelligent enough to understand what is being said or written in Chinese. In turn, Chinese people traditionally believe that Americans are blunt, both in language and mind. So, perhaps Chinese people criticize Americans because our dominant language, English, is, for the most part, direct and blunt and, well, plain ol’ Anglo-Saxon…avoiding ambiguity of meaning whenever possible. Or perhaps there’s another explanation for these stereotypes.

The source of these cross-cultural stereotypes is most likely the syntax and semantics of their respective languages. If Yi Qi is translated as “righteous loyalty”, that’s inscrutable to an American. But if it’s translated as “male bonding”, there’s no problem.
Let’s see which language and which culture is more inscrutable by comparing two quotations. Which of the following quotations was written by a Chinese scholar and which by a Western scholar:

A man is never too old to learn.
vs.
A man is never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

Both of these aphorisms have a similar message, but one is blunt while the other is a bit fuzzy. So, it may surprise that the first quotation was written by an anonymous Buddhist scholar several thousand years ago and that the second is by the famous British scholar, C.S. Lewis.


Which of the following quotations is more inscrutable?


What is the sound of one hand clapping? (an ancient Buddhist riddle)


If a tree falls in the forest when nobody’s around, does it make a sound? (Bishop George Berkeley, a 17th-century Anglican)


They both seem inscrutable to me. Well, maybe these aren’t representative samples. Maybe Eastern thinking really is more inscrutable than Western philosophy. Let’s start out in neutral territory, somewhere neatly in between East and West: Ancient Greece was influenced by Egyptian, Iranian, and Chinese scholarship that flowed along the Silk Road and other trade routes. Our neutral thinker of choice is that famous pagan Plato. He postulated that physical objects and indeed the entire observable universe was nothing but shadows of True Reality (what he called Forms) that we mere humans could never see or experience.
Returning to Bishop Berkeley, who goes Plato one better, we find that this inscrutable Western Christian scholar believed in Immaterialism, a philosophy that denies the existence of all material substance. That is, all objects and indeed the entire observable universe exist only as ideas in our minds. If we don’t think about something, it doesn’t exist. There is no reality at all.
Let’s now compare, using the inscrutability scale, these two Western philosophers with their ancient Chinese counterparts. Several thousand years ago in pre-Buddhist China, philosophers thought about the Dao. The Dao is an ultimate source that connects all things and the entire observable universe. Everything is real, tangible, observable…no Forms or shadows or ethereal existence-only-in-the-mind. Rather the Dao is a Way or Guide that is observable, accessible to cultivated people who have the leisure time to contemplate it. In this real world, patterns can be detected, cyclical patterns that interact between the polar forces of Yin and Yang. Yin is a symbol of earth, femaleness, darkness, and passivity. Yang is a symbol of heaven, maleness, light, and activity. While these distinctions are offensive to our modern Western views, they match perfectly with how both Westerners and Easterners have divided things up for millennia. Furthermore, traditional Chinese philosophy at least acknowledges that water is wet, rocks are hard, a chair can be sat on…in short, the world exists in reality.
We can see that in the Pre-Science Age, the Greeks, Chinese, and Europeans postulated a similar answer to a shared mystery. Yet it was the Chinese solution that is the least inscrutable.
But what about modern times? Is the situation different now? Only slightly. If you read the modern Western philosophers, you will note extensive incorporation of Eastern ideas from the Dao, Buddhism, Islam, Jainism, and even some of the Hindu scripts. Reading modern Chinese philosophers, one finds substantial bits and pieces of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, Dewey, and Heidegger.
Ahhh. But then there’s those ambiguous scribbles called Chinese characters that they use for writing. Not like good, clear, alphabet writing with just a few, easy to write and type letters. Certainly this makes English less inscrutable than Chinese…or does it?

Here’s a simple, plain, typed-with-letters sentence in English. “As a linguist, I love ambiguity more than most people.” See? Clear as a bell, sort of. This sentence could mean that the linguist “loves ambiguity but doesn’t appreciate most people” or that “most people don’t love ambiguity as much as he does”.
Well, perhaps Anglo-Americans can at least take comfort in the fact that English words are clear, unambiguous, and never inscrutable. Except maybe just a few, such as the word “sanction”. Even though this word is typed clearly with letters, “sanction” can mean either approve or disapprove. Compare with those Chinese scribbles. Approve: 批准 could never be confused with Disapprove: 不赞成. And then there’s flammable and inflammable. Both mean capable of catching fire. The list of inscrutable English words is almost endless, if not also eternal or infinite. To conclude with a good, clear Western question…If waves really exist, where do they go when they reach the beach?

继续我们的旅程

The above process of analyzing languages can be applied also to all the other previously mentioned factions of civilization that divide our Common Humanity, but such a detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this essay. Very briefly, all the philosophic, linguist, religious, and other cultural artifacts and variations extant today are just a dense, swirling fog keeping us from seeing that we’re all just humans trying to figure out how to stay safe in a dangerous and confusing world…and once safe, how to get along in peace. All the past and present isms of religion, politics, and philosophy are just failed and conflicting experiments. We are bungling alchemists in a universe based on cold and uncaring physics.
We are all humans, evolved from the same genetic mixture that uniquely gave us an opposable thumb and an immensely intelligent brain, a brain that learned how to use the thumb for more than climbing trees and gathering fruits. We’ve used our thumbs and cumulative knowledge to build and to destroy; to make war with technological gusto and diligence; to strive for peace but neither sincerely nor successfully. Humanity gets an “A” in the course of evolution for our millennia of effort, but a C- for achievement. We are still ignorant children playing with fire. The time left for us to grow up is perilously short.
No one culture, no nation, no person is passing the course. We need to give all others a break. Stop the chest thumping, stop the celebrations of our respective failed experiments, and get back to the difficult task of studying, striving to find better ways to achieve harmony and to solve all our common mysteries.

Now back to Aunt Beth’s embroidered towels… “East is West”

East is West

Like a maze when first encountered, all of Humankind’s myriad, eclectic routes through life over time and place appear jumbled, confused, and divided into many paths. Yet on closer examination, there is continuity, harmony, and a common goal. The maze is not made of many parts, rather, like Humanity, it’s an indivisible unit, a living organism thriving in the same soil under the same sky. Viewing the maze from above is much different than from on the ground. An individual can’t see that there’s a common goal when inside the maze, rather only the varied pathways. Most of the paths are dead ends.

The trick for Humanity is for everybody to harmoniously help to find the correct route to the common goal.

OBT, James

End Notes
Sino-American stereotypes: https://immi.se/intercultural/nr42/zhu.html
You may listen to the song and read the lyrics of Arlo Guthrie’s, Alice’s Restaurant at, respectively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM

and https://www.google.com/search?q=alice%27s+restaurant+full+lyrics&rlz=1C1RXQR_esES973ES973&oq=alice%27s+restaurant+full+lyrics&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l2.14811j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF

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DISCUSSING THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN APPROACHES IN TEACHING THE GOLDEN RULE – Billy with Josha Friedman, Anabel Jensen, and Rick Hanson – August 2021

~ Billy

Billy Initiated :
I just noted the difference between the Eastern and Western approaches in
teaching the GOLDEN RULE. The Western approach is ” Do unto others as you
would want others do unto you.” and the Eastern approach is: ” What I do not
want others to do unto me, I shall not do unto them.” One is Active and the other
Non Active.
Cheers !
Billy

Joshua Responded :

Hi Billy – that’s quite interesting! Anabel Jensen advocates for “the Platinum
rule” instead: Do unto others and is truly best for them.

Anabel Clarified :

Hi William,
I hope you are continuing to thrive. Yea! Josh was close. I call it the Palladium
Rule—an extremely expensive mineral. And, the rule is to ASK what they want
and then provide that. The secret is in the asking not guessing. 
Yes-let’s have lunch and discuss.
Love,
anabel

Rick Hanson Added :

Billy, this is really interesting. It highlights how the Five Precepts in Buddhism –
as well as much of the moral teachings in general, and even the ultimate
realization – are expressed through negation, e.g., not harming, not stealing . . .
even not conditioned, not dying, not subject to arising and passing away.
You might know about Thich Nhat Hang’s reformulation of the Five Precepts in
the affirmative:  https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-5-mindfulness-
trainings/ . 

Obv, both approaches are needed. Meanwhile, yep, there seem to be some
ways that the different orientations – between doing/not-doing – loosely track what
some might see as Western/Eastern sensibilities.
Cheers back!

________________________________________________________

ADITIONAL COMMENTS by JGL :

Do not do unto others what you would prefer being done unto you…

(especially if you are insane)
Rather…

Do unto others what they would prefer being done unto themselves.

(unless it’s something harmful)
If there’s any doubt…

Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.

jgl

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Friendship and Friendshipology: Interview with Billy Lee by US-CHINA BETTER RELATIONS COALITION – 2021

~ Billy

“Show real interest in who they are as fellow human beings,
and be not too judgmental by one’s own idealism. Cultivate
each other’s good qualities, and intrinsic goodness.” Billy Lee

Interviewers: Inin Fan and Jackson Barkstrom
Editors: Emily Zhang and Jackson Barkstrom

In today’s interview, Billy Lee shares his thoughts on the importance of
global friendship and cross-cultural bonding, along with advice on how
to establish these cross-cultural bonds. As an individual who has worked
and participated in different projects connected with friendship, Billy
tries to promote mutual understanding and tolerance with an emphasis
on positivity and goodness of the self and others. The Friendshipology
website is one of Billy’s valuable projects where he helps share
meaningful stories and insights about friendship with the world.

To learn more about the Friendshipology website, please visit:
https://Friendshipology.net.

_____________________________________________

Billy Lee is a retired architect who worked early in his career with I.M.Pei. A graduate of Phillips Andover, he received both a BA and MA in architecture from Yale. Through an invitation by C.B.Sung in the 1970s, Billy joined an American delegation of architects lecturing at Tsighua University. Inspired, he ultimately established a scholardhip for young Chinese architects.

He is best known for numerous youth exchange programs through his Children, Art and the Environment Program, where he impacted over a million children. is proudest moment was the launching the World’s Children’s Mural Painting Park at the China National Children’s Center in 2008. An annual event, this program was proven to be an effective way to build Xin Xin Jiao ( Heart to Heart Bridges ) among children from different countries, backgrounds, and Cultures.

_________________________________________________

THE INTERVIEW :

When and how was the idea of starting the blog about Friendship and Friendshipology born? 

I joined the US-China People’s Friendship Association South Bay Chapter in 2006, and was elected membership director in 2012. That started my serious inquiry on what friendship really means, and how it can be initiated, nurtured, sustained, and maybe recovered after some gross misunderstanding.

In 2015, I was invited to conduct a workshop on “Good Feelings” at the
International Child Art Foundation World Children’s Festival on the Great Mall in Washington DC, on a July 4 weekend. There sprouted the idea on guiding a group of international students to define friendship, write an declaration of interdependence, and propose an ideal cross-cultural institute on Friendshipolgy.

An amazing opportunity to start a project that may eventually lead to the ultimate ideal was a proposal to connect Stanford University’s and Peking University’s psychology departments to do a 3-year joint research project at both ends of the Pacific. The study was named “The Role of Emotional Values and Expression in the Development of Cross- Cultural Friendships in the US and China.” Our hope was this would initiate a momentum towards global engagement subsequently.

Although that proposal fizzled due to fund-raising difficulty, my dear 1990 Institute colleague Dr. Marsha Vande Berg, advised me to keep telling this story to my friends – To keep the idea alive! Surprise! Out of the Blue, a young friend, Yi-lu from Beijing, wrote to me and said she had set up a website https://MingSingLee.com (recently changed to https://Friendshipology.net), and had recruited three other young friends (Yihua, Wenmo, and Tingting) to help manage this bilingual website. I
started to post a few of my own articles onto the website but very wisely decided later to involve many of my close friends.

It is sometimes hard for people of different backgrounds/nationalities to establish a solid friendship with true bonding. There can be a wall between us that stays hard to break.  How can we build true and emotional cross-cultural friendships? 

I think we start with showing our own convictions and commitments, and make a real effort to reach out. Be kind, caring, empathetic, and respectful. Be patient, open-minded and appreciative about diversity. It always takes time to transcend from artificial to natural relationships. To start by reaching out mindfully. Show real interest in who they are as fellow human beings, and be not too judgmental by one’s own idealism. Cultivate each other’s good qualities, and intrinsic goodness.

You came to the U.S. for the first time at the age of 15. Can you share an early cross-cultural friendship experience and what you learned from it?

During my second year at Andover (for boys only then), I attended a tea dance at the neighboring Abbot Academy (for girls only then). Abby Emmons first reached out to me and taught me how to catch the rhythm and move step by step. She was kind and joyful. We have stayed friends after 72 years.

One year, I was invited to teach architectural design at Ningbo University, Ningbo – my ancestral home. The host professor warned me to keep apart one male student from a female student as they were in a romantic relationship. As I did not pay much attention to this particular warning, the professor was obviously very displeased. However, his attitude towards me totally changed one afternoon, as I saw his shoe
lace on his injured leg was loose and I knelt before him to tie the shoe lace for him. Before leaving Ningbo, he asked if I would consider serving as their honorary department head. This shows “paying proper respect” is especially meaningful in certain cultures.

You are a founding member of the 1990 Institute, and an active member of the US-China People’s Friendship Association. You initiated the C2C (Children to Children, Connecting 2 Countries) Exchanges, via The 1990 Institute –in collaboration with All-China Women’s Federation, China National Children’s Center, and China’s Environmental Protection Ministry. Do you see any progress in cross- cultural communication since the time you began working on this?

What I accomplished in China via the 1990 Institute, were most gratifying, but I really regret that 1990 did not follow up to support the International Students Mural Painting at China’s National Children’s Center. I think we needed just a few more years before CNCC understands the long-term historic significance of that project – annual gathering of international students to paint together in Beijing about
building friendship and protecting our common environment. Cross- cultural collaborative projects unfortunately grow or wane with political situations. Timing is important, but to allow enough time is also important.

Do you think that the pandemic affected cross-cultural friendship?

The pandemic certainly affected cross-cultural friendship. It should be viewed as an opportunity to confront our common cause instead of a convenient excuse to cover up one’s own weaknesses or a vehicle to promote fear and suspicion for political advantage. 

 
What are good ways for young people like us to promote global friendship?

 I am really glad that you emphasize global friendship instead of just US-
China better relationship. I urge you to consider this challenge a long-term commitment and a global challenge. I think you should do some checking on how similar youth organizations sustain for the long term. Obviously, climate change still needs youth support. Just a

few miscellaneous ideas here: Connecting students globally with a global journal, how about fight bullying together, learning each other’s most endearing songs, etc. Creating an indicator for measuring improvements, strategize on how to influence the influencers – youth, teachers, parents, activists, media, entertainment industry, and enlightened leaders everywhere. 

Important note:
Billy Lee and the Friendshipology website welcome more stories on how
Community Spirit affects individuals and how individuals can affect the
larger community. The website hopes to collect more inspirational and
educational case study examples and ideas which induce Friendship,
Bonding, and Good Feelings. If you have an article or an idea for a story,
please email Billy Lee at  WilliamMSLee@gmail.com . With your email
please also provide a short vita and at least one of your favorite photos.

____________________________________________

GOOD FRIENDS PASS ON UPLIFTING STORIES TO ONE ANOTHER“ A friend sent me these and I thought you might like them too.” wrote Anne Gates – August 2021

~ Billy

Short stories that make us think twice about the daily happenings in our
lives as we deal with others:
 
Today, I interviewed my grandmother for part of a research paper I’m working on for my Psychology class.  When I asked her to define success in her own words, she said,  “Success is when you look back at your life and the memories make you

smile.”

Today, after my 72-hour shift at the fire station, a woman ran up to me at the Grocery Store and gave me a hug.  When I tensed up, she realized I didn’t recognize her.  She let go with tears of joy in her eyes and the most sincere smile and said,

“On 9-11-2001, you carried me out of the World Trade Center.”
—————————— 
Today, after I watched my dog get run over by a car, I sat on the side of the road holding him and crying.  And just before he died,

He licked the tears off my face.

Today, I kissed my dad on the forehead as he passed away in a small hospital bed.  About 5 seconds after he passed,

I realized it was the first time I had given him a kiss since I was a little boy

Today, in the cutest voice, my 8-year-old daughter asked me to start recycling. I chuckled and asked, “Why?”  She replied, “So you can help me save the planet.” I chuckled again and asked, “And why do you want to save the planet?”

Because that’s where I keep all my stuff,” she said.

Today, a boy in a wheelchair saw me desperately struggling on crutches with my broken leg and offered to carry my backpack and books for me.  He helped me all the way across campus to my class and as he was leaving he said,

“I hope you feel better soon.”

Today, I was feeling down because the results of a biopsy came back malignant. When I got home, I opened an e-mail that said, “Thinking of you today.  If you need me, I’m a phone call away.” 

It was from a high school friend I hadn’t seen in 10 years. 

Today, I was traveling in Kenya and I met a refugee from Zimbabwe  He said he hadn’t eaten anything in over 3 days and looked extremely skinny and unhealthy. I offered him a sandwich I was carrying.

The first thing the man said was, “We can share it.”

The best sermons are lived, not preached.
—————————— 
I am glad I have you to send these to.

______________________________________


BILLY’S COMMENTS :
Anne Gates, Correspondence Secretary for Abbot Academy Class ’51, and I met at our zoomed virtual joint Andover-Abbot 70th Reunion recently. Although we had met before, we connected more sentimentally this time. She said very kindly, “ I like to be your new Friend.” Indeed, I embrace her dearly as my new Beautiful Friendshipology Friend, 友学 学友 , in our pursuit of deeper bonding and the Art and Science in Building and Promoting Friendship.

______________________________________

UNUSUAL ESSAY BY MY OLD FRIEND GORDON HAMMOND INDEED REQUIRES DEEPER DELVING” by Billy – August 2021

~ Billy

Snow was expected

By

Grodon L. Hammond Jan.2021

– – – during the night. However, it did not happen. It started to rain, and the train whistle blew three times. That meant the bridge had fallen. The engineer called for everyone to run. I got off and ran as fast as I could run through the trees. I saw a hobo camp and recognized 4 hobos. They offered me a cup of coffee. They were my uncles, and one was my father. He had abandoned his family and I didn’t recognize him. I asked him if he could repay the 5 dollars he had stolen from my piggy bank. He took up a collection from his brothers, and he repayed me. He died a month later.

I could see the Interstate highway and traffic was moving at 70 mph toward the river. I knew the road shared the bridge with the train. I tried to stop the traffic, and I knew there was a catastrophe ahead. So, I just sat down and watched and listened and prayed. The sound of train cars tumbling over and over, and the screams of car passengers, made me doubt the power of prayer. However, I saw people and children climbing out of the ravine and toward me. I helped some children to get into the cars that had stopped and turned around.

I recognized 2 young girls, they were hand & Hand and crying and their clothes were badly torn. However, they were my neighbors ! I could not find their parents. The girls said their father was using his cell phone. I don’t use a cell phone. Many people with cell phones can not remember the number for 911

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BILLY’S COMMENTS:
Gordon is my first and best friend from Phillips Academy Andover as we were both assigned in 1947 to stay at Green House, Mastered by Mr. Harold Howe III, a history teacher who later became Secretary of Education in President Lyndon Johnson’s cabinet. I consider Gordon one of my best friends, for he, indeed, helped me prepare my homework while I was struggling desperately with the English language. Gordon also invited me to spend Thanksgiving at his home – my first Home Stay Experience in the United States.

Upon my request to write something for my Friendshipology website, he sent me this short essay with a newly published book called , “ A Run-Of-The- Mill Yankee Scientist “. Below is the cover of that book with a photo of “ That Handsome Dude.” The book is actually a Condensed Oral Interview of Gordon by Sanlyn Buxner in 2016 for the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Historical Astronomy Division.

The interview succinctly captured very personal family history as well as Gordon’s professional achievements and hobbies. I did not know that his father abandoned the family when he was ten years old. I am glad that he enjoyed and did well in Golf, Riflery, and Sports Car Racing. Wow, I am fascinated and impressed by his White Dwarf Stars Explorations.

I am particularly grateful that I am one of only five Friends he has so far shared this personal story book. His essay is still a puzzle to me, but I also can not remember why and when I started to address him “NODROG” in my letters to him. I think it was after his visiting me at Camp DeWitt at Wolfeborough, New Hampshire, before he departed to fight the Korean War.

___________________________________________

Gordon L. Hammond

Prof. & Scholar/Research Scientist
Astronomy Program, University of
South Florida, Tampa, Florida 1986-
1995

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“A CHALLENGING BUT INTERESTING REFLECTION ON THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP” by Michael G. Crisp – May 2021

~ Billy
Mike Crisp and wife Leslie in Ladera, Portola Valley, Ca. Bio : Born in Kentucky. Raised in upstate NY. Colgate University graduate (Philosophy), Officer in U.S. Coast Guard, Editor-in-Chief, McGraw-Hill College Division, VP and Publisher, Science Research Associates (IBM), Chairman and CEO Crisp Learning. 

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Friendship  

A few months ago I wrote an article for our local community newsletter featuring Billy Lee and his family. Part of the article focused on Billy’s website Friendshipology.net. In reading several of the blogs on his site, I became intrigued by the concept of friendship; what it was, how it occurred and why it was so important. Following are some of my thoughts on friends. 

What Are Friends? 

I think they are someone that you can rely on to be honest with you. Individuals that you trust. People you can laugh and or cry with. A person that can provide empathy and comfort. And someone you enjoy sharing experiences with. Friends are also those who can teach you about new things, including cross cultural customs and lifestyles.


Types of Friends  

Friends come from a variety of sources. There are childhood friends; school friends; work and or military service friends; family friends and friends of the family; couple friends; casual friends; neighborhood friends; old friends and new friends; and finally best friends. 

Making Friends  

The most important thing in making friends is that the process should be natural – not forced. Friends are individuals that you enjoy being with. Often friends will have a shared interest. A friend is someone you look forward to seeing regardless of how much time has passed since your last interaction. Making friends requires follow-up and communication. It also should mean that you care about your friends well being. 

Keeping Friends  

My wife is especially good about making and keeping friends. In thinking about how this works, I have noticed that in addition to showing an interest in the other person and being a good listener, she often follows up with a phone call, text message or letter to let her friends know they are in her thoughts. True friends are those who connect with you in good times or bad. True friends value your opinions.  

The Importance of Friends 

My Dad often said, “there is no honor in being the richest person in the cemetery”.  As we age and experience ups and downs, it becomes increasingly apparent how important friends are. Much more important than money or possessions. More important than social status. I believe the best marriages are based on friendship. In conclusion, friends are perhaps the most important element in this thing called life.   

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BILLY’S COMMENTS : Mike and Leslie have been our old friends and neighbors in Ladera since early 1980s, We actually got acquainted on the Ladera Tennis Courts. I remember Mike had a very strong forehand strike and ran like a basketball forward for every ball conceivable. Leslie was definitely one of the steadiest players in our group. Everyone wanted to partner with her at our famous July 4th Ladera Doubles Tennis Socials.

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FRIENDSHIP SIDETRACKED – BY NOT KNOWING OR APPRECIATING OTHER’S DIFFICULT CONDITIONS-SITUATIONS.

~ Billy

“To promote Cross-cultural Friendship, increasing understanding about people and their difficult conditions can help. My writing – Reflective Thoughts – these days focus on upgrading Understanding. “

By : Bill W.Kwong – Global Educator and Program Consultant – April 2020

BA: Cornell MA: NYU & Stanford / 35+years teaching experience in N.Y.C. and S.F. / Previous Dir. of Global Initiative – Crystal Springs Uplands Sch. – Hillsborough, Ca. / Conducted educational immersive travel experiences since 1991 – mostly Asia – particularly China / Member – 1990 Institute Board of Directors – Promoting Trust and Understanding between U.S. and China

Reflective Thoughts and Stories: Entry #1

Many decisions from China often puzzle those who look at things through American lenses. I find it helpful to share the comparison elaborated below with my colleagues and students when I try to get them to understand why China does what it does. 

Geographically, U.S. and China have roughly the same landmass.  In terms of population, China has slightly more than 4 times that the U.S. has. In terms of land where you can grow food, U.S. has about 1.5 times that China has. The same landmass has been continuously cultivated for at least 2 to 3 thousand years in China when the land in the U.S. has only been heavily used after the Europeans arrived in the 16th century.

Sustaining a lot more people with a lot less land, particularly land that has been heavily used for a much longer time, requires a different kind of governing.

To bring this home to my friends who teach at independent schools, I ask them to consider the management of China and the U.S. similar to working with students situated in two different classrooms.  First, I invite my friends to think of teaching 72 teenagers in a classroom that is the same size as the one they currently have in an independent school. In this extremely crowded room, the students only have a fraction of the books, usable pens, and pencils. In addition, these overused instruments are generally worn, books come with torn pages, and pencils are broken. Teachers assigned to teach in this room are looking at a class that is far different than what we generally find in an elite independent school. In the more affluent school setting familiar to my friends, each of the 18 students belonging to a class comes to school every day with “new” books, functional equipment, and connection to a vast amount of resources. Two very different conditions indeed.

In the classroom I am accustomed to teaching in my independent school, I encourage free-flow sharing of ideas.  Students are allowed to speak their minds and inject their thoughts into the discussion without raising their hands.  When a student violates a rule, I have time to rationalize with the offender to show my care and to give him the extra dose of motivation to do better. Students feel validated, respected, and encouraged to embrace their individual aims and values.

In the other classroom, to get anything done so the arena can resemble a place of learning, I imagine that establishing and maintaining order would be the key.  Students have to wait for their turns to speak and speaking may be limited to a fixed time on the schedule.  Violations will be severely punished, often publicly so all can learn from the example.  Rule breakers will think twice before daring to disrupt the proceedings again. Individual requests serving the needs of a few do not have a chance to gain recognition when the needs of the mass are deemed supreme. It is very difficult to manage this classroom.  The purpose and the goal often focus on “survival”.  To get anything done, strict adherence to a rigid structure is crucial for its existence.   

This comparison often helps my fellow teachers and others to understand that the American style of government with its emphasis on freedom of speech, individual pursuit of happiness, and democracy are difficult to achieve and not necessarily suitable when it comes to governance in China today.

ABOUT FRIENDSHIP & MEDIATION BY ADRIAN HO – Varenna Consulting

~ Billy

When I heard a few years back that my Uncle Billy had started a “Friendshipology” initiative, I found it not at all surprising as I had long felt that he was an exemplar in the area of friendship.  He’s been a long life friend to my father and to me, and I’ve seen his remarkable ability to connect with people of all ages and all persuasions.
A little background…  My father emigrated from China to the US back in 1950.  He came to the US as a teenager and Billy was the first friend that he made after arriving.  I can only imagine the combination of security, comfort, and joy my father felt in making his first friend in a new land where he knew no one — and it came in the form of Billy.  Thus I have always known Billy as “Uncle” Billy, “Uncle” being a term of respect and closeness in Chinese culture.  
Years later, when I came to the Bay Area as a graduate student, the pattern repeated itself.  Having spent all my life in the Boston area, I knew few people in the Bay Area, and so at a welcoming reception for the new grad students and their families, I invited Uncle Billy to attend.  One memory I have from that event was that I introduced him to people there as “my father’s good friend,” and Uncle Billy corrected me by saying, “and I am Adrian’s friend too!”  This comment really struck me (and I remember it to this day, over 35 years later) as I had always related to Uncle Billy through my father, and here he was connecting to me directly by stating his friendship with me.  So Billy has been a first friend in a new place to both my father as well as to me!
___________________________
I had lunch with Uncle Billy the other day, and he talked about this blog and his thoughts on friendship.  I spoke to him about my involvement in community and court mediation and he asked me to write about mediation for his friendship blog.  So in what follows I will describe what mediation is and how it works, what are the key elements of good mediation, and finally how it relates to friendship.
A good way to introduce the topic of mediation is through the following quote:

“Conflict is inevitable but combat is optional”  –  Max Lucado

Conflict is indeed inevitable.  As individuals, people have their own needs and wants, and at any given time one person’s needs might be different than someone else’s — this is simply part of life.  Some examples of common conflicts include landlord/tenant disputes (security deposits, evictions, etc.), neighbor/neighbor disputes (noise issues, fence issues, etc.), disputes between businesses and customers, and family conflict (divorce, etc.).
A well-known way of dealing with conflict in our modern world is through litigation, which is combative in that the conflicting parties argue in front of a judge in an adversarial style, trying to prove their case and discredit the other party’s case.  Litigation tends to be expensive (lawyers fees, etc.), time consuming, and stressful, especially because of the adversarial nature of the system.  Ultimately, the judge makes a ruling, which may or may not be to one’s liking, so the outcome is uncertain.  
An alternative, non-combative way of resolving conflict is mediation.  In mediation, both parties come together in front of a neutral third party (the mediator) and get a chance to freely and confidentially speak their concerns and needs.  The mediator does not make a ruling, but rather is there to facilitate and encourage honest and free discussion between the parties.  In such an atmosphere, often the parties can come to some agreement themselves, which the mediator will help clarify and write up.  The key distinction is that any agreement is crafted by the parties themselves, so they are more likely to be satisfied with it than with a judge’s ruling, over which they have little control. 

The following table highlights some of the key differences between mediation and litigation

MEDIATION LITIGATION

TimeTypically a few hoursWeeks to Months
CostOften freeExpensive (lawyers fees)
Control of process and agreementParties are in control of the outcome and any agreementJudges rely on precedent and make a decision which results in loss of control and power for parties
CommunicationHonest communication of interests and needs is encouraged between partiesCommunication between parties is discouraged by counsel.  Opportunities to express concerns are limited
Emotional AtmosphereCooperative and informalAdversarial and stressful;  court is formal and can be intimidating
ConfidentialityAll information shared during mediation is privateAll information shared becomes part of the public record

Because of the many advantages of mediation, often courts will require that mediation be tried first before litigation.  It doesn’t take much time, and if an agreement is reached it tends to be something with which both parties are satisfied (since they are the ones that created the agreement).  If an agreement is not reached, the parties can still go on to litigation without too much time and effort lost. 
A good mediator will focus on several things in the mediation:  Remaining neutral and not judging, listening well, creating an environment in which both parties feel safe to honestly express their needs and concerns, and asking good questions to help the parties to talk with each other.  If these factors are present, it is often the case that the parties themselves will come to some form of agreement.  In the community mediation that I do, this happens in about 80% of cases.

So that’s mediation (in a nutshell);  but what about Uncle Billy’s Friendshipology Initiative?  What does mediation have to do with friendship?  Another quote is illuminating:

“Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deeping it.  That factor is attitude”  –  William James

Just as conflict can arise between any two people, it can also arise between friends (or family members).  William James reminds us that the key factor in how the conflict will impact the friendship is attitude.  Indeed, if you have a conflict with a friend, and the way you try to resolve that conflict through the “litigation” model (by trying to prove you are right, trying to discredit your friend, trying to “win” the argument), then it is likely that your friendship will be harmed.  On the other hand if your attitude is aligned with mediation, then you will have an honest, open, respectful discussion with your friend to express both your needs and understand your friend’s needs, and you will try to find a way to come to an agreement, and your friendship can deepen.  In the first approach your goal is to “win” the conflict;  in the second approach your goal is to try to find an agreement.  The first approach focuses on yourself only, the second approach focuses on you and your friend and your relationship.   I think for most of us in any conflict we have with a friend or family member, if we take a step back and think about it, in almost all cases we will realize that the relationship we have with that friend or family member is far more important than winning the specific conflict.  Unfortunately in the moment we often tend to lose sight of that fact, and we slip into a “litigation” mode.  So next time you find yourself in a conflict with a friend or family member (or pretty much anyone for that matter) , a suggestion is to keep in mind the principles of good mediation:  Listen, seek to understand, be honest about your needs, and focus on how you can together reach an agreement as opposed to how you can “win” the conflict.  In doing so it may seem like a small victory, but if we all approach everyday conflict this way, we can help enable individual friendships to grow and deepen and help “friendship” in general to spread across our communities and the world.  ___________

Adrian Ho
Varenna Consulting
T:  415 377 4739E:  adrian@varennaconsulting.com

Friendship- its Origins, Evolution, & Future

~ Billy

By James Luce – Author of CHASING DAVIS – Feb. 2020

A dear friend and colleague at The 1990 Institute Executive Committee, James always thought that the word Friendshipology is not quite right. He suggests that I use G.I.F.T. The Global Institute for Friendship & Teaching – in lieu of Friendshipology

A SHORT FUN QUIZ TO GET THE COGNITIVE PROCESS GOING

Question One: Which word in the following set doesn’t belong ? Empathy, Love, Animosity, Loyalty

Answer: The second word in the set: Love

 The reason love is the odd word out in this set is because all the other words are of ancient evolutionary origin and are all emotions genetically and behaviorally expressed by many non-human species over millions of years…whereas love in the romantic sense didn’t appear until at the earliest a mere 800-years-ago in the songs of wandering Provençal troubadours…and, of course, love is exclusive to our species.

Question Two: What is the definition of Friendship ?

Answer:

     It depends on where you are in time. Today friendship is frequently defined as someone who is not a family member or lover for whom we feel affection/affinity/empathy/loyalty, with whom we share similar moral values, and on whom we rely for emotional support. You’ve heard that old saying “We chose our friends, but we’re given our families”. Yet 200,000-years-ago, when our fledgling species was struggling to genetically differentiate itself from other primates, friendship was exclusively limited to kin…members of our clan…on whom we relied for our very physical survival. 

          The definition of friendship also depends on where you are geographically. In some contemporary cultures, as in ancient times, kinship is the dominant, determining factor…such as the Xhosa in South Africa. In other cultures friendship may extend beyond kinship but is long in gestation and grand in its mutual obligations…such as in France. In the USA friendships are basically unrelated to kinship; many such relationships form instantaneously/transiently like bubbles blasting out of a champagne bottle…and are often soft, ambiguous connections that are much sought after in quantity but frequently short-shrifted in quality.

Question Three:

Are there any global, culturally universal common denominators determining friendship?

Answer:
          Perhaps…but none that have yet been verified by any properly controlled study or investigation that I’ve found. However, there’s a recent, reasonably rigorous Oxford University anthropological study (1) that has isolated seven candidates for universally accepted moral values. This study investigated sixty different cultures representative of our global diversity. Because shared moral values is one of the common characteristics of friendship, these seven provide insight into a common denominator for how friendship can work globally…and why it’s imperative now that it must work.

The seven universal moral values are: help your family; help your group; return favors; be brave; defer to superiors; divide resources fairly; respect others’ property.

          Given that all humans are genetically related and have been for over 200,000 years, it’s not merely coincidental that 29% of these shared characteristics are based on direct kinship; that 57% deal with cooperation within the group; and that 100% of them deal with preservation of the group…emphasizing the paramount importance of cooperation.

Perhaps surprisingly, these statistics are in stark contrast with the world’s major religions.

          The three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all accept the same basic Ten Commandments.(2) Yet only one of the seven globally accepted moral characteristics (14%) is included in the Ten Commandments (#8: the admonition to not steal) and only 40% of the Commandments deals with group preservation. 

Buddhism doesn’t have a “Ten Commandments” but it does have five traditional “rules” which are startlingly similar to the Ten: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie and don’t use intoxicants. Excluding the first four of the Ten (which deal with worshiping a specific deity and thus have no place in Buddhism), there’s an 80% overlap between the Abrahamic and Buddhist rules but, again, only a 14% overlap with the Universal Seven.

Hinduism’s Ten Commandments equivalent is difficult to identify, but traditionally the following seven are accepted as the “rules of behavior”: austerity, tranquillity, non-violence, non-adultery, non-corrupt, no stealing or coveting, no lying. These are similar to the Abrahamic and Buddhist set, but again there’s only a 14% overlap with the Universal Seven.

Thus, there’s no correlation between what people universally believe are the core characteristics of morality on the one hand and the rules advocated by their respective religions on the other.  This perhaps helps to explain in part why interfaith and international friendships can be formed. More on this topic after the quiz. 

Question Four: Which came first: Friendship or Controlled Use of Fire ?

Answer: Friendship came first…by at least 183 million years.

While there’s substantial evidence that our ancient ancestors (Australopithecus…Greek for “southern ape”) learned how to use fire about 1.7 million years ago, the origin of what became known as friendship (kin cooperation between social mammals) dates back as far as 185 million years ago to the first “pre-mammal” social species such as the tiny cat-like Kayentatherium.   Thus, even in its most primitive form, friendship helped our very distant ancestors survive and thrive during the Age of Dinosaurs.

Humans didn’t invent friendship, Evolution did.

Some species don’t make friends – even though they practice kin cooperation

          All species that live together in large groups cooperate with their kin, but not all such species make friends within their kinship group. For example, all social mammals make friends within their kinship group, but fish, ants, and bees do not. Why is that?

          The search for an answer to this question dates back thousands of years. How was it, for example, that bees “know” how to collectively build and protect a hive, serve their queen, find pollen and return home, make honey, nurture the young…in short, cooperate for survival of the species? Certainly bees didn’t attend school for sixteen or more years as would a human require to learn similarly difficult skills.

After centuries of false starts and wild conjectures, in the late 19th-century the concept of “instinct” was thought to explain all these complex behaviors. An instinct is genetically programmed by evolution. The behaviors exhibited are complex, rigid, invariable, specific to each species, and, of course, unlearned. Humans, being special, didn’t have any instincts. Back then it was believed that our behaviors were too cerebral, too sophisticated, too learned, and too divinely inspired to be merely instinctual. Instead, as with all other animals, humans had various, amorphous “drives” (hunger, thirst, procreation, survival etc.)…but no instincts. Unlike bees, we had no rigid set of genetic instructions as to how to fulfil these drives…how to hunt, how to find water, how to find a mate, how to build a dwelling, how to invent the bow and arrow, or even how to change a diaper.

But science marches on.

By the late 20th-century we’d learned that all human behaviors (as well as the behaviors of all other species) were genetically determined but modified by both experience and the environment.(3) The difference between humans, other mammals, and insects is a matter of the relative degree of rigidity of the genetic impulses and the variable extent to which environment/experience impact behaviors.

Genetically controlled behaviors of bees are modified only by genetic mutations and are altered only by extremes in the environment such as fire, earthquake, drought, injury, and disease. In contrast, human behaviors are both modified and altered by relatively minor environmental/experiential variables (e.g. minor variations in upbringing, cultural expectations, and even temperature). Bees are like steel, whereas humans are like ice cubes. Steel remains solid so long as it isn’t placed in a blast furnace at 2,500º F. Ice cubes remain solid unless taken from the freezer and left on the kitchen counter, a difference of as little as 0.1º F. 

As with all animals that live in large groups, bees must cooperate or go extinct. Bees don’t have to make friends in order to cooperate…so they don’t. There’s no genetic blueprint in bees coded for friendship or anything like it. Bees cooperate with each other because they have no choice or even an ability to make choices. Evolution is very stingy and doesn’t approve of wasted genes or wasted expenditure of metabolic energy.

Humans live in large groups, so we also must cooperate or go extinct. Our problem at the moment is that long ago we evolved a highly sophisticated choice-making mechanism called our cerebral cortex. Evolution expended an immense genetic fortune on this “choice box” because it was an extremely useful tool for survival…or at least it was for the first 200,000 years.  Our species differentiated itself (filled its own unique environmental niche) in part by allowing each member of the species to make choices about almost everything…an extravagant capability unheard of even among our closely related primate relatives.

In terms of sheer numbers, our species is the most successful large mammal that has ever evolved.(4) In terms of the longevity of our species the answer is still out. Somewhere along the relatively short evolutionary road from our beginnings to where we are today we goofed, left something behind, took a wrong turn.

According to the Doomsday Clock (5), we “civilized” humans are closer to ending all life on this planet than at any time since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Back then the Clock was set at seven minutes before midnight. On January 23, 2020 the Clock was reset to 100 seconds before midnight, the shortest time ever recorded.(6) You’re supposed to brush your teeth every morning for a longer time than that. 

So what went gone wrong with our unique cerebral choice box?

Our species has faced extinction at least once before, when the Doomsday Clock (had it existed) would have been at five seconds before midnight as far as human life on Earth was concerned. Geneticists have determined that all humans today are the descendants of between 1,000 and 10,000 Homo sapiens, a tiny remnant of people who somehow survived some sort of catastrophe about 70,000-years-ago.(7) It’s uncertain what the cause was of this first near-extinction of our species, but it certainly wasn’t due to human activity.

Not true today.

Scientists moved the Clock setting this year due to a variety of changes over the last year, all of which are the caused in whole or in large part by human activity: climate change is speeding up, nuclear arms treaties are collapsing, population and forced immigration continues to rise, and global tensions between the major nuclear powers are heating up faster than our atmosphere and oceans.

 Seventy-thousand-years-ago our species managed to survive because whatever the cause was it was transitory, insufficient to finish us off. We didn’t need any new skills to survive.

Again, not true today.

Unlike in the remote past, today we’re all in one big kinship group whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not. In the remote past all tribes were remotely scattered and self-sufficient. When tribes did meet and conflict (not cooperate) there was no loss of self-sufficiency. Each tribe could hunt and grow its own food, build its own housing, find its own water, make its own clothing, tools, weapons, and maintain its only source of energy…fire…for heat, light, and protection. All of these functions were the result of close kin cooperation.  This cooperation was both ingrained (genetically based) and learned from our kin as children from the time we were babies. Cooperation came as naturally to our ancestors as was the tribe’s spoken language. The skills necessary for survival were known by everyone in the tribe. Some did better at some tasks than others, but everyone could pitch in at almost any task when needed. Tribe A did not need Tribe B to survive.

Once again, not true today.

In today’s world few of us know how to hunt or grow food, build our own housing, find our own water, make our own clothing, tools, weapons, or provide our own source of heat and light, or how to protect ourselves against bandits and bears. Even huge “kin” groups such as cities are collectively capable of performing only a few of these functions, but not all of them. Instead, we rely on something that is evolutionarily totally unnatural, totally without genetic basis…it’s a new form of cooperation held together, not be genes and lessons from our mother’s knee, but rather the glue is made up of complex and often indecipherable business contracts, labor/management agreements, legislation, treaties, international trade agreements, vast systems of international transportation, highly costly and incomprehensible-to-most-people scientific and engineering research and development done in a language few of us can understand, let alone duplicate. Tribal conflicts of brief duration with not-usually-lethal consequences have been replaced by ceaseless wars with weapons of devastating destruction. We no longer have shared rules of either peace or conflict.

Tribe A can no longer survive without Tribe B.

In summary, over the 10,000 of “civilizing” ourselves we’ve lost or severely repressed the ancient genetic compulsion to cooperate even with our immediate kinship group, let alone with an immense, scattered one. Things have deteriorated so badly that we now are forced to teach parents how to socialize their children and even teach teachers how to socialize their students. What a mess.

We must now turn to the other side of the cooperation coin…conflict, hatred and distrust of “different” tribes. Way back when, survival depended not only on intra-tribal cooperation, but also on communal distrust and fear of other tribes. Why? Because other tribes competed for the same resources. Genes in tribes that did not code for conflict-with-the-Others soon disappeared because anyone not so coded wasn’t likely to live long enough to reproduce. Infants were taught not only to cooperate with friends and family, but also to hate and kill those not of the tribe.

Over the millennia tribes grew into nations, each with their own language, religion, customs, and taboos. Conflict with the Other became ingrained not only in our genes but also in our cultures. As noted lyrically in that insightful song from South Pacific “You have to be taught to hate and fear, you’ve got to be taught from year to year…you’ve got to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a different shade…”

If our species is to survive into the next century we must immediately start teaching our children that we are all part of one vast Tribe of Humanity with its seven billion members and also teach them that intra-cooperation within that Tribe is as essential to us now as it was way back then for intra-cooperation between tiny little kinship groups of a few dozen people.

The difficulty is that we have never experienced millions of years of evolutionary coding for cooperation within something as big and diverse as the Tribe of Humanity. We must rely entirely on educating our young. It’s too late to teach the vast majority of adults whose mind and behaviour sets are too rigidly in place to be so fundamentally altered as to actually “cooperate with both thy close and distant neighbour” no matter what the race, creed, or cultural quirks that particular and extremely different neighbor may display.

How that crash course in global cooperation and friendship is to be implemented I leave to people who are wiser, younger, and more administratively competent than am I. A good start would be a fully funded and staffed organization operating under the name of Global Institute for Friendship and Teaching.

OBT, James

Footnotes:

  1. Seven Moral Rules Found All Around the World: links to two articles on the subject and the full study

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-02-11-seven-moral-rules-found-all around the world

https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/responsible-living/blogs/universal-moral-rules

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/701478

2. Islam views the Old and New Testaments to be earlier and genuine revelations from Allah.https://www.pbs.org/empires/islam/faithpeople.html

3. Details of this interaction are the topic of what’s known as The Nature v. Nurture Debate…that is, to what extent are behaviors controlled by our genes or by our environment/experiences. 

https://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html

4. Nobody’s counted them, but it’s estimated that both rodents and bats outnumber humans. Excluding them, we’re number one in terms of population size. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-populous-mammals-on-earth.html

 5. The Doomsday Clock…its history https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article239576533.html

6. The Doomsday Clock…its current setting   https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

7. Whatever the cause, we’re descended from only a relatively few people: https://www.livescience.com/29130-toba-supervolcano-effects.html

Links to additional reading:

  1. The origins and meaning of instinct, NCBI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182125/
  2. The history of friendship and why it’s important: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/02/10/history-of-friendship-evolution_n_4743572.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABNIy-p-E7HjFOOzE7zf60KJ39V5dfJu1DrErEvRSY11fZ-H2pgqbfdA87a8vL_HFYFOfp-LavM7yRAeMzp5Cp9EguzXjQ8sGuktpsNr9pGE0MLYrTAOJIRkq9Swb7WlSAqo6j3EK5xAfziI_ZfJxbncryyWPWGftEJyekRy05y8
  3. The evolution of friendship: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-evolution-of-friendship 
  4. Variability of moral values globally: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/15/whats-morally-acceptable-it-depends-on-where-in-the-world-you-live/
  5. The differences between Chinese and American business ethics: http://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbpitt/ethics.pdf      

IN PROMOTING FRIENDSHIPOLOGY MEET VIC YOUNG, my FF FRATERNITY BROTHER

~ Billy

Vic Young is my FF (Chinese Fraternity) Brother. Our Friendship deepens as we share ideas and insights. His letter below – titled ” Won’t you Be My Neighbor?” indeed inspires and challenges me at the same time. What I learn most distinctly from his letter is that “To Become Good Neighbors or Friends it usually starts with an easy “Hello”, followed by building Honest, Caring, Civil and Empathetic Mutual Respect, and Understanding. It”s more complex for us Chinese Americans in the United States today. “

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor? “ by Vic Young

Bro. Billy,

You have been consistent over your life about living and leading with “friendship” and your current endeavors on your FRIENDSHIPOLOGY INITIATIVE.  I am humbled and daunted by your request to comment on the subject.

It reminds me of the sermon I heard years ago.  My pastor at our church was returning to the Bay Area from a trip.  He settled into his seat on the plane next to a gentleman.  After the seat belt sign was turned off, the gentleman struck up a conversation to break the ice with the pastor.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I am a pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley.”

Not the response he was expecting, the gentleman nervously said, “Great.  I get it.  Do the right thing, turn the other cheek, do unto others…..”

Trying to keep the conversation going, the pastor asked the gentleman, “and what line of work are you in?”

The gentleman responded, “I am an astrophysicist.”

The pastor said with a smile, “oh, let me see.  Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”

Such is “friendship.”  There is more to it than meets the eye.  There is always context.  It is not always sugar and spice.

“Friendship” is often taken for granted. It is something that is often difficult to articulate or more importantly to demonstrate.

As fraternity brothers, our relationship is founded and perpetuated by friendship and fellowship.  Fraternal bonding is another conversation.

Your FRIENDSHIPOLOGY work addresses a broader audience. Friendship is like spinach; it is good for you, but…

I choose not to delve into this academically (philosophy, history, social and psychological impacts); nor with quotes and slogans. Well, maybe one slogan?

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

That is the highly successful award-winning 2018 documentary film about Fred Rogers and his iconic children’s television show on PBS that guided generations.

Now, we are awaiting the release of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” starring Tom Hanks portraying America’s most beloved neighbor. It is about overcoming skepticism, learning about empathy, kindness, and decency.

Variety Magazine noted:  “behind the smile lay a weird sort of tough-nut faith that made him willing to look at dark things, and a philosophy of life that can only be described as…love. As in: love your children, love thy neighbor, love yourself. Fred Rogers may have come off, on TV, like a walking piece of kitsch, but the real truth is that this ordained Presbyterian minister was the world’s squarest Middle American flower child.” I did not know he was a minister.

The question is what is Mr. Rogers about, on-screen and in real life?  He really wants to be your “neighbor, to be your friend.”

Why is there interest in and anticipation of Mr. Rogers’ story through these two films?  It is not nostalgia. Simply, people need something to lift them up and to find new meaning in this world going through seasons of division, darkness, chaos, anxiety. 

Most of us do not know our neighbors.  We do not always act like neighbors.  We are constantly in transition. We are too busy with our own priorities and our own business to be neighborly and to be “friends.”

We need Mr. Rogers to move into our neighborhood.  He exudes friendship and love – love your children and love your neighbors.

We need to be like Mr. Rogers.  We need to be good Samaritans.

Friendship is the Golden Rule. Friendship is spiritual.

Today, it can be a challenge.  Friendship has also evolved in this modern society. In the past, friendships drastically differed; motivated by protection.   In the past, people chose to make friends for survival and protection from other people who bullied you. In the present society, people choose their friends for who they are of many qualities that make them connect to each other. Friendship has become more diverse ethnically and culturally. As time passes, the society we live in has changed the friend into someone of the ideal friend for themselves for comfort.

Friendship is a distinctive kind of concern for your friend, a concern which might reasonably be understood as a kind of love, Agape.  This is a kind of love that has come through the Christian tradition, by extension, our love for God and our love for humankind in general. It is the latter I think you are focusing on.

This does not mean it is easy.  Belonging to one another despite diversity and differences still plagues society.

 “Friendship” in today’s world needs to extend beyond your typical examples and outreaches in order to address the ills of the world. Friendship may mean that, for a moment, it is not focusing on your needs, but those of others.  This means turning the status quo on its head.

We, the world, need “friendship” more than ever.  We need not go into what is happening in the U.S. today, a deeply divided nation.

There are realities, but we are driven by mostly fear, presumption, intellect, biases, and definitions.

We cannot solve every problem out there, but we can make a small difference.

We have a severe homeless problem in our state.  Who knows when the problem will be solved?  Heretofore, like many people, I focused more on the discomfort of their presence and motives rather than their plight.

It is easy for us to walk past a homeless person, quickly.  It is as if they don’t exist, because we choose not to see them.  Yes, some are just pan-handling and others have serious mental problems.  Instead of rushing past them, is there one of them that would feel better if we just looked at them and acknowledged their existence, let alone part with $1 or a Big Mac?

Charity and kindness, not judgment and analysis.

What do you do when “spies and illegal aliens” move into the neighborhood?

Driven by the current leadership in Washington, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and now the Chinese have been unnecessarily painted black, so they fade from sight. Racial profiling of Chinese in America is trending again.

Our government acts as if they suspect all Chinese, including Chinese Americans, and are willing to suspend civil and legal rights. Most importantly, they are fostering racism throughout the country in pursuit of security.  This is not just about the FBI, but Americans.  We have not learned from mistakes of the past and what happened to the Japanese and others around the world?  We need to speak up and make all Americans understand what should be done and what should not be done.

For us, the Chinese, we cannot hide from both sides of the issue and simply protest the obvious.  There are bad Chinese in America among us and trying to steal technology and thus endangering national security. 

Friendship means not conforming to patterns of the world. Don’t get to a default mode or safe posture. This is the USA. Where is the idea of freedom, if not friendship?  Friendship and civility do not trump (no pun intended) vigilance and security.

Friendship also means that we may be bolder and more tender.  That’s what enables solutions, reconciliation, forgiveness, family and safe communities.  Friendship is a beautiful neighborhood.