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All That We Have

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I’ve been in e-mail communication recently with a young man I know and admire, whom I knew voted for Donald Trump. I asked him to please help me understand his reasons for this choice, and he did so honestly and respectfully. I learned things.

As a businessman, he cited the fact that business was better during Trump’s first term, and he believed it would be good again if Trump were to return to the White House. Inflation now was exorbitant, he said, the cost of feeding, to say nothing of clothing and housing, his young and growing family was “insane.” Trump promised to fix these issues, to bring sanity back to the cost of living in America.

When I pointed out that Trump is a proven con man and he’s conning the American people with his promises, my young friend admitted Trump is sometimes “brash,” but he won’t be there long, he said; JD will take over soon enough and he’ll likely be President for eight years. “JD’s background is so impressive,” my young friend said.

It occurred to me, toward the end of our civil and illuminating back-and-forth, in which we both calmly shared our perspectives on various points, that he and I were talking about apples and oranges. His “apples” primarily had to do with money and economics, and my “oranges,” with morals and ethics. The difference, in a way, between body and soul.  

When I lived in Mali, West Africa, for three years (1998-2001), I played a handful of cassette tapes until I wore them out. Among them were Tracy Chapman albums. Her music was like a bridge for me: She sang in English (Mali is a Francophone country), which meant I could understand all of her words. But her voice, its depth and timbre, seemed to me to be purely African – so filled with soul. My Malian friend Youssef often remarked that he thought her ancestors must have come from Mali: He could hear it in her voice.

Of all her songs that I played repeatedly and sang along with because I’d learned every word, my favorite, in her Crossroads album, was “All That You Have Is Your Soul.”  The refrain is worth committing to memory:

Don’t be tempted by the shiny apple

Don’t you eat of a bitter fruit

Hunger only for a taste of justice

Hunger only for a world of truth

Cause all that you have is your soul.

(Stock photo from Pixabay)

Donald Trump has just successfully sold bushel baskets of shiny apples to his believers. Now what? I wonder. Will some — or all — of Trump’s shiny apples turn out to be rotten at the core? Will Trump and his billionaire buddies become the sole beneficiaries of his efforts to revamp the U.S. government to “Make America Great Again”?  Will Trump-pal-and-techno-mogul Elon Musk manage to remake our world in his image – replacing, say, most workers with far more economical and efficient employees who are exponentially more intelligent than any human being and who never need to sleep or take vacations or coffee breaks? Never, that is, need to restore their souls because they don’t have souls? 

Time will tell.

In a recent opinion piece for The Hill, headed “The Trump Majority May Soon Feel Buyers’ Remorse,” Republican Alton Frye states:

“The election was clearly one in which voters’ perceived interests outweighed their professed values. Surely, not all of those supporting Donald Trump were applauding his character and the amoral values he represents. Given the complex factors that shape voting behavior, it is reasonable to conclude that the Trump majority was seeking an escape from the pain and disappointment and fears prompted by recent economic turmoil.”

Frye adds, “Close analysis of the promised Trump program suggests that his voters may soon have second thoughts. Any new administration’s plans are subject to change, but if the next president is supported by the Republican-controlled Congress in executing the proposals set forth in the campaign, the hoped-for escape will lead to greater distress on several fronts….” (https://us.yahoo.com/news/opinion-trump-majority-may-soon-193000898.html ).

According to American political scientist and author Norman Finkelstein, there are essentially two sets of values — material values and spiritual values – and they conflict. The material values are power and privilege, fame and fortune, he says; the spiritual values are truth and justice. Finkelstein contends that 99 percent of people [especially in the USA, I’d say] strive for the material values of fame and fortune, while only 1 percent strive for truth and justice. 

Clearly, matters of the soul get short shrift in this perennial conflict. 

Most religious and philosophical traditions support the view that the soul is an ethereal substance, a spirit, a nonmaterial spark – particular to a unique living being. Aristotle reasoned that a man’s body and soul were his matter and form, respectively – the body is a collection of elements and the soul is the essence. Many believe that our souls live on after our physical death. 

So in this sense, Tracy is prophetic. All we really have forever is our soul. And we negate it at our peril.

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