#432: Moments of Decision
Three great articles on cowardice, shame, and agency
Hi there, loyal readers. Happy Thursday. Thank you for being here.
If you’re newish to Article Club, you’re in the right place if you’re kind and thoughtful and like to read the best articles on race, education, and culture.
On that note, I think you’ll appreciate this week’s issue. The articles I’ve chosen don’t all share the same theme. But they’re similar in that they’re all about regular men who face a moment of decision. It’d be easy to say that the first man responds with cowardice, the next man with shame, and the last man with agency. But as with most things in life, there are layers. I invite you to explore them, in considering:
✏️ If you’re moved by any of these articles, please share your perspective. Feel free to email me. I’d be delighted to hear from you.
1️⃣ American Cowardice
At first I wasn’t going to select this article. It’s about guns and school shootings, after all, and nobody wants to read articles about guns and school shootings, especially not in this newsletter. But this one — a profile of Scot Peterson, the armed officer who stood by as the Parkland shooting unfolded — is sensitive and nuanced. In addition to telling the story of Mr. Peterson’s trial, the article explores what it means to be a coward, and how we expect heroism from regular people, as long as those regular people are not ourselves. We expect law enforcement to protect us without offering them proper training. We want our schools to be safe without giving them proper funding. And as a society, ever since Columbine and Sandy Hook, no matter how many shootings there have been, we still have done nothing about all the guns. “As a society, as citizens and legislators,” author Jamie Thompson writes, “we are those officers: equipped, well meaning—and paralyzed. Standing around, doing nothing, while children are slaughtered.”
By Jamie Thompson • The Atlantic • 47 min
2️⃣ Shooting A Dog
You don’t need to have read George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” to appreciate this thought-provoking essay. While on deployment in Iraq, Hugh Martin and his fellow soldiers come across an injured stray dog and decide to put it out of its misery. A simple decision, right? Not when Iraqi soldiers are standing nearby, eyeing them, ready to laugh at them. In the moment, all at once, Mr. Martin questions his legitimacy, his confidence, his manhood. “People join the military for a multitude of reasons,” he writes, “but I can’t help but think that I, like so many other boys, joined in order to be taken more seriously.” He adds:
Today, we might call this “fragile masculinity.” But I think that’s too pat. Reductive. The phrase fails to account for the ways in which the very human feelings of loneliness, fear, self-doubt, and isolation account for enlistment. Most people don’t want to be laughed at. So many of our actions in Iraq—I naturally say our since one always, in any military unit, moves and thinks as a squad, a platoon, a company, a unit—were driven not by necessity but by wanting to control how both Iraqis and other soldiers perceived us.
By Hugh Martin • The American Scholar • 17 mins
3️⃣ We Are Changed By What We Witness
I’ve read hundreds of essays that tell us to get off our phones and pay attention to life. But most are not written as well as this one by
, a dad who wants the best for his son Pax. After noticing that YouTube for Kids was diverting Pax’s attention, Mr. Simamora asks, “What is my responsibility as a father to cultivate the attentional skills of my children?” His answer is deep. Mr. Simamora argues that attention is one of our remaining acts of choice and agency. He asserts that we must teach our children the art of beholding what is beautiful and important. He writes:Life has beauty and joy to offer, but it requires contact with our attention for us to notice, perceive, and experience them. A poem only blossoms in the light of repeated contemplation. A sunset fading from orange to red to purple to midnight blue only provokes awe if we can take it in and not be dominated by the urge to capture it for later viewing. Reconciliation only happens when you can endure the discomfort of the difficult conversation and keep your attention steady despite strong emotions. A song, a dear friendship, a lover’s touch, a sublime bite of food, a riveting novel, the scents encountered walking through your grandmother’s kitchen — all of life’s treasures require us to pay attention. And when we do, we are enriched.
By Chris Simamora • The Practice of Fatherhood • 7 mins
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