Bruce Jenner and Gender

Anyone who did not see Diane Sawyer's masterful two hour interview with Bruce Jenner on ABC television recently missed a Master Class on philosophical anthropology, psychology, and ethics. Jenner's evident intelligence, sincerity, and sensitivity to the big issues surrounding his lifelong struggle with gender issues helped to make the show instructive in ways I had not anticipated.

For anyone who missed the show, and who has not had the chance to glance at the cover of almost any magazine recently, the former Olympic great and Decathalon gold medalist, once declared "the greatest athlete alive," has revealed that he's had a lifetime struggle with gender identification. Born, of course, with the body of a man, he says that he has since childhood felt like a girl, and then a woman, in perspectives, thoughts, and interests. He sought to make clear that he is not homosexual, or gay. What he's experienced is different from that. He has been married three times and has fathered several children. He has loved his wives. 

One thing the interview made clear was that gender is a more complex issue than most people assume. Anatomy doesn't necessarily confer it. As in most things, the world is a more rich and complicated place than we often give it credit for being. I initially watched the interview out of curiosity, and came away with a deep sense of compassion, not just for what this one individual has been through, and is likely to go through, still, but for all of our brothers and sisters who are misunderstood in any way, and feel forced by social pressure to pretend to be something they're not, something that's not authentic, along any deep dimension in their lives. It brought home to me in a new way the power of the emphasis in eastern philosophies on compassion for all creatures, and wonder in the presence of the real.

When we understand the New Testament emphasis that "God is love," and grasp the profound empathy that real love embodies, we can approach issues like this with a new heart and a new wisdom. Despite the fact that these revelations have come out amidst the flamboyant media circus that is everything Kardashian, we, in a sense, have that whole spectacle to thank for providing such a public stage and forum for this issue to be raised - not only of gender identification, but of the need for compassion in all things.

In our complex world, a few things are simple. One of them is compassion.

Half Glass Living

One night at dinnertime, years ago, when my son Matt was at the ripe old age of thirteen, he walked into the kitchen, put a plate on the table, and said, out of the blue, “Dad, I've figured out that glass question.” I drew a total blank.

“What glass question, Matt?” I asked as I quickly searched my memory for anything we might have been talking about in the preceding hours.

He said, “You know, the one about the glass being half empty or half full.” Oh, that glass question. You know the famous scenario: A water glass contains liquid up to its midpoint. The question is then asked whether the glass is half empty or half full. Everyone then tells us that a pessimist will say it’s half empty, while an optimist will say it’s half full. The situation is supposed to be a test for inner attitude. It’s assumed that there's no objectively better answer. Either can be right, and yet neither is objectively preferable. What you say will be determined by what you are as an observer, not just by what the glass is as an item apart from you in the world.   

Well, my son wasn’t about to buy that. He had heard the question somewhere, and apparently it had been bothering him. He now had his own take on it. “So, what's the answer?” I asked with real curiosity, wondering how someone his age would approach this old classic. And, in reply, he said something that proved to me again the simple truth that you can be a philosopher at almost any age.  

He thought for a second and said, “It all depends.” Well, of course, when I heard these opening words, I thought that we’d be quickly going straight into the familiar and well trod territory of attitude relativism. But his next words surprised me and took us into a totally different direction. He said, “If you were filling the glass up just before you got to that point, it’s half full. If you were drinking from it or pouring it out just before that, then it’s half empty.”    

Aha! “It all depends,” people have always said, but they’ve thought the answer depends on the attitude of the person looking at the glass. Matt couldn’t accept that as the final word. It does all depend, he was saying, but it depends on what real process had been going on previously, in order to bring the glass to its present state. What something is sometimes depends on where it came from, on how it got to be as it is, and maybe even on where it’s in the process of going. That’s a pretty profound insight.  

There’s a lesson here for us all. How’s your glass these days? How’s your life? Is it pretty good, or pretty bad? If you’re like most people, you may think of yourself as somehow representative of roughly half-glass living. There are some good things in your life. And there’s a lack, or an empty space, as well. Well, then, if this is even remotely an accurate representation, the question arises: Is your life generally half full, or basically half empty? According to young Matt, it all depends. Have you been emptying it out, dissipating your energies, squandering your deepest self, alienating those who are closest to you, and as a result losing things of real value – or have you been filling up your life in the best possible way, adding elements of true value and deep worth to your daily experience? Have you been depleting or enriching yourself? What real process has been going on up until now, and is perhaps still presently occurring in your life, right now, or in your business? Where have you been, in this regard, and where are you now going?

Anticipating the Future

The future is hidden by mist and fog.

Psychologists have recently been telling us that we're really bad at predicting how certain future outcomes of our actions will affect us and feel to us at the time they bear fruit. We ask ourselves, "If I do A, will that make me happy?" Or "If I do B, and C results, will that give me what I really want?" We try to imagine what a different or new or remote set of circumstances will feel like, and apparently, we almost always get it wrong.

There are two reasons we get it wrong. First, the future is uncertain. No one can really anticipate it, in all its details. Futurists have a history of howling failures. That's part of why they keep pointing us to the future - in the past, they haven't looked too good! Some things are predictable. Many are not, and they often interrupt our best planning and anticipating.

The second major cause of failure in anticipating the future consequences of our actions is that we're always extrapolating from the situation and mindset we're in, and that inevitably colors and distorts what we project the future to be. We view the future through present lenses. The problem is that hope and fear, desire and worry, along with ignorance and selective attention, can individually, or together, tint those lenses much more than we're aware.

This presents a problem. It seems to be the core of wisdom to think through the future consequences of our actions. But if our thinking, in so far as it projects future states, which imagining consequences always does, is inevitably flawed, then what are we supposed to do?

Fortunately, for understanding various possible futures, we're not forced to rely only on our own imaginations and projective abilities. We have the testimony of a great many people who have already lived through the consequences of every generally described action, or set of actions, imaginable. Although the details of life, society, and our options change continually, because of technology and politics, and for many other reasons, human nature has always been basically the same. That's why it's important to listen to people who have already experienced what we're thinking about doing. They can tell us how it actually felt to experience creating a small business, declaring bankruptcy, taking out a huge loan, getting married to someone very different from them, or very alike, having children, or separating from a friend or associate or family member who has changed in unfortunate ways.

Whatever situation you now contemplate, it's a specific instance of a general type that people have experienced before. That's why it's important to talk to wise people, and read the advice of wise people who have gone down this road before us. They can help tutor our otherwise unreliable imaginations, and guide us into the level of caution or action appropriate to our situation.

Wisdom is available. Use it well. That will help you in making all your most important decisions and will give you new lenses to help you see through the mist and fog up ahead.