The Seventeen Traditions, by Ralph Nader

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16. The Tradition of Solitude



For a time, my father worked from ten o' clock in the morning to two in the afternoon. Then, after an afternoon nap, he would return to the restaurant at five o'clock in the evening, and work until one in the morning. During those naps, we children had to find ways to amuse ourselves without making much noise. And yet we never had any trouble finding things to do. We were used to being left alone, to read or play quietly with our toys, to build projects or knit things, to climb trees, to walk in the nearby woods, or just to daydream. Compared with today's overscheduled children, we were used to a certain amount of solitude. And we enjoyed it.

The diversions we had in our hours alone were simple and rewarding. There were always new books to read, of course. There were chores to do, tasks that became more time-consuming as we grew older. And there was the radio -- one radio -- on which we listened occasionally to Jack Benny, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Fibber McGee and Molly, Lowell Thomas and Edward R. Murrow for the news, and on Sunday evening One Man's Family. We also had time to play outside, and time to think and muse. The philosopher James Harvey Robinson pointed out that the minds of children can reap lots of future benefits when they are permitted time for reverie. As I noted earlier, Shaf urged me to read Robinson's book when I was only thirteen, and the author's words about reverie made me feel good; until then I'd been convinced I was merely wasting time.

One reason that my parents put such emphasis on solitude was they valued their own solitude, their own time spent by themselves or with other adults. Their love for us was immense, their caring demonstrable, but they thought it was wise not to become totally absorbed by their children. As a result, we never threatened to dominate the proceedings when my parents entertained at home. We were accustomed to spending time by ourselves, and we felt little need to show off, for their sake or for ours. After a dinner with guests, we excused ourselves and went off to play with the guests' children or on our own.

Needless to say, things have changed. Some years ago, we invited a family with two small children over for Thanksgiving dinner. The four-year-old boy spent the whole day running wild, jumping off the table, knocking over glasses of water, screeching at the top of his lungs, and generally making every effort possible to ruin the conversation and the meal. Today, most parents might ask: Was he suffering from attention deficit disorder? No, the parents were suffering -- from an unwillingness to control their son's unprovoked behavior and lay down some markers. It's a symptom of today's sprawled economy that many children spend less time with adults, including their parents, than any previous generation in history. When they do have a few precious moments with adults, they often act out as if they're desperately trying to make up for the prolonged inattention.

"I believe that children should have some time to themselves," my mother once said. "This is what I intended when I told my daughter Claire she could not sing in the choir, with a group, until she first learned how to sing alone. I wanted the children to be able to exercise their minds and understand the importance of solitude, to be self-reliant, to think independently. The children were encouraged to be themselves, to know how to define themselves." Ralph Waldo Emerson would have approved.

Of course, our ideas of solitude today can be deeply flawed. Many parents plant their children in front of TV, video games, the Internet, or other electronic child-seducers for hours and hours every week. Solitude originally meant "a state of being alone," not a state of passive symbiosis with these frenetic and often lurid temptations. True solitude can involve an infinite variety of experience: being alone with one's imagination, one's thoughts, dreams, one's puzzles and books, one's knitting or hobbies, from carving wood blocks, to building little radios or model airplanes or collecting colorful stamps from all over the world. Being alone can mean following the flight of a butterfly or a hummingbird or an industrious pollinating bee. It can mean gazing at the nighttime sky, full of those familiar constellations, and trying to identify them all.

Being alone was easier in those days. The telephone didn't ring incessantly; compared with today, it hardly rang at all. We certainly weren't besieged by salespeople calling to interrupt at dinner time. Silence was common, a phenomenon that might have flummoxed many of today's fidgeting, electronically conditioned children. Children today suffer from shortened attention spans and reduced person-to-person interactions, and the results are wreaking havoc with their ability to think, converse, conduct themselves in family life, and educate themselves. Some of these youngsters are beginning to recognize such deficits in their lives. Maybe they are looking for what Alice Walker has called "quiet space."

Contemplating what "quiet space" did for me is an educated guess, another source of wonder. Yet I know that even in childhood I treasured and relished my solitude, not as an escape or expression of alienation, but as a time for exploration and self-reflection, a time to get to know myself better. Solitude was my engine of renewal, the steward for my self- reliance and the clarifier of my thoughts. And, perhaps most important, time alone allowed me to commune with my favorite authors -- the American muckrakers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who demonstrated the importance of challenging powerful interests, and the authors of adventure fiction, who inspired me to explore uncharted terrain and expand my vocabulary of words and ideas. Although I can't say I thought in these terms as a child, it's clear to me now that my mind was always led back to things that involved making a better life for the community. I was fascinated by people who broke new ground, and wanted to do the same.

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17. The Tradition of Civics



My parents' philosophy was rooted in what might be described as the "civic golden rule" -- that neighbors should treat neighbors as they themselves would like to be treated. A deep personal sense of civic duty isn't usually the result of enduring didactic lectures, much less of studying bloodless civics books. True civic awareness is a flowing river with many sources -- some as small as rivulets and brooks, some as large as tributaries. In our case, the flow began at a young age, as we accompanied Mother and Father to the local town meetings where the community made its decisions.

At these meetings, our parents -- and anyone else who lived In the town and cared to participate -- had the chance to talk with the town's elected "selectmen," as the local representatives were called. A holdover from early New England history, the town meeting was a more pristine form of local democracy that has had no equal to this day. The public business of the town was put on display, and those townspeople who showed up regularly had few inhibitions about airing their opinions. When there was disagreement, nothing was sacred. An interested party would hardly think twice before calling out his opponent in purely personal terms: "Your father, Greg, would turn over in his grave if he could see what you're doing here."

Even as a boy, I noticed that these gatherings were often dominated by the same few voters, who took to the floor meeting after meeting and always seemed unusually well prepared for the occasion. By the time I was a teenager, helping out in the restaurant, I realized that these leading citizen activists were widely viewed as mavericks, and that some considered them oddballs or even deviants. The day after a tumultuous town meeting, people would point out Mr. Franz, a particularly motivated older resident, walking down Main Street. It was as if he were one of a trio -- the town drunk, the town fool, and the town citizen. Who is more foolish, I wondered -- the core group of committed voters and taxpayers who engage in the process, or the much larger number who habitually abstain from town affairs, leaving their interests to be decided by others? Later I was delighted, and not a little vindicated, when I discovered that the ancient Greek word "idiot" referred to civic apathy, not intelligence.

On the other side of the ethical tradition was the Golden Rule, and a host of similar pronouncements in the Bible that enhanced that simple call to help and get along with one another. For Dad, that was enough as a frame of reference. In the daily soapbox that was his restaurant, he was happy to discuss anything under the sun with his patrons, whether local or out-of-town. From local tradespeople to campaigning politicians, few survived a visit to the Highland Arms without having a vibrant conversation with my father. Those politicians were his special target; his counter, with its long row of seats, was an irresistibly efficient way to shake hands with a captive audience of voters. Dad always lay in wait down by the end of the counter, near the large coffee urns. And when his and the politician's hands clasped, he wouldn't let go until he had his say and got some response.

There's little doubt that, in the nearly fifty years he ran the restaurant, my father educated, motivated, and inspired tens of thousands of people to think more deeply about the issues that affected them as citizens -- right there in Winsted, and around the country and the world. To this day, I still meet people from near and far who recall their conversations with him. He covered much ground in these encounters -- from colonialism and the suppression of self-determination to government waste, from the shortcomings of the press to the improper relationships between government agencies and big business that favored them over small businesses, from the constant problem of inadequate parking on Main Street to the unnecessary demolition of buildings such as the classic railroad terminal at Winsted. He was constantly struck by the human capacity for greed. Dad was frequently dismayed by the performance of our presidents, the cowardly behavior of the major political parties, the willingness of Congress to vote itself large pay raises, and the exclusion of independent voters like himself from parts of the electoral process. He had a special reserve of contempt for chain stores and their migrant managers, who always came with excuses from central headquarters in New York or Chicago concerning why they couldn't contribute to local charities. The list goes on and on.

Father's zest for public debate was equaled only by his appetite for problem solving. He was a demanding citizen. In his daily round of civic conversations, he did more than just toss around the questions of the day. He helped orient and mobilize many local residents into taking action, whether through voting or protesting excesses such as Congress's large, ill-timed pay raises for itself. In 1978, at the age of eighty-six, his protest march attracted national media attention. When critical town services were being proposed, such as building a new hospital wing or a modern sewage system, he got into the debate on the ground floor, and stayed involved through completion.

He also made people think about aspects of civic engagement to which they might otherwise have given little consideration. He was fond of reexamining the conventional meaning of words -- pressing his customers to think of "wealth," for example, in terms of not just money or possessions, but also charity, health, happiness, and justice in a community. He felt sorry for the very rich (even as he trounced them), pointing out that they lived in what he called a "gold cage." He never prejudged any customer to be beyond his interest, or beyond the reach of his arguments. The firmer they appeared to be in their views, the better he liked it. He was not into convincing the convinced.

My mother's civic life covered a very broad range of involvements, from the usual charities like the Red Cross to the larger subjects that are faced by every community -- issues involving health, children, public works, and the like. From the time she moved to Winsted, she was struck by how insular people could be, especially when it came to international affairs. So she joined the local Women's Club, and helped to start an international committee that brought well-known speakers to address the club and its guests. When my older brother was stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during World War II, Mother attended Spanish classes. And she became the first volunteer teacher of Arabic in the state's adult education program, which earned her a statewide television interview before any of her children had achieved any public attention.

As my mother well knew, the ethical fiber of a community is nourished by every small instance in which its citizens stand up for what is right. She encouraged her neighbors to write letters to the editor of the local newspaper, the Winsted Evening Citizen, but never hesitated to bypass that process and call the editor herself if she thought it would get quicker action. Mother really knew how to work the phones, in conversations that were short and to the point. Once, when the librarians at the Beardsley and Memorial Library were having trouble getting young people to return books, the local McDonald's offered to give a free hamburger to children who returned their borrowed books. Mother thought this was wrongheaded: Children should be taught to return books to the library on time because it was their responsibility, not because of some commercial (and caloric) incentive. She complained, and she prevailed.

When the monstrous Hurricane Diane demolished much of Winsted's Main Street in August 1955, she sprang into action. The storm forced the local theater to shut down for repairs, and when Mother realized that the young people of the community would need another recreational outlet, she promptly organized social programs for young people at the YMCA. But she also had her eye on a larger necessity -- preventing this kind of disaster from happening again. Given the Mad River's history of overflowing its banks, Mother realized that only a dry dam could protect the town from reliving the devastation with each future storm. So she pressed for a dam to be built a little north of Winsted, to tame the river.

For help, Mother decided to call on an acquaintance who had a connection to Prescott Bush, the state's Republican senator. Would the senator press for a dry dam? Alas, came the report, Bush responded with no more than a smile.

But my mother wasn't discouraged. One day, their mutual friend invited Senator Bush, the father and grandfather of presidents, to speak in the area. Mr. and Mrs. Nader went to hear him. After his speech, my mother went over and introduced herself. As she was shaking hands with him, she said, "Senator Bush, Winsted needs your support in getting the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dry dam to prevent future flooding."

Bush smiled, but said nothing.

Mother always loved recalling what happened next. "I wouldn't let go of his hand," she said, "until he promised to help." She had a tremendous grip.

And that, as it happened, made the difference. With the senator's help -- and no doubt that of others -- the Army Corps of Engineers did build that dry dam. There hasn't been a flood since.

"If you want to get a politician to stop smiling and start promising," she always said, "just don't let go of his hand." In other words, be persistent.

As children growing up in such a civically conscious atmosphere, we could have rebelled against our parents, as some children do. Instead, we were inspired to follow in their footsteps. Why? Perhaps because they led more by example than by didactic direction. They never took us by the shoulder and told us to be active citizens. We were simply immersed in the process from childhood, and we saw the results. What's more, we saw how much my parents enjoyed their involvement, no matter how controversial it got. The process had its ups and downs, of course, but their even tempers and sense of perspective always carried them through in good spirits.

From my parents, I learned the essential qualities that define the civic personality -- a blend of constant curiosity, inventive thinking, resilience in the face of obstacles, and a willingness to share credit with one's deserving colleagues. Of course, there are also countless skills that can, and should, be learned -- everything from how to interpret and disseminate a legislator's voting record, to how to use the Freedom of Information laws, to how to put on a good news conference. But in my years of public life I've found that it's those other, intangible qualities of human personality that usually make the difference -- and that are so often the legacy of one's family upbringing. No well-padded war chest, Ivy League education, or cutting-edge technology can take the place of such a personality, of such commitment.

Of course, there's no deliberate family recipe, or lesson plan, that can produce these traits. Some children will always want to rebel, and perhaps for the good; many more will simply go on with their daily lives, trusting that others will carry the weight of activism and engagement. But I feel sure that raising civically responsible children is most likely to happen in the kind of atmosphere my parents created: one of indirection and delights, strong examples and certain boundaries, solitude and conversation, witness and respect, and, above all, the strength of parental love and sacrifice. All of this cannot help but nourish a sense of dedication to help one's fellow human beings achieve a better life. And once this dedication takes root, it is likely to evolve into a self-starring maturity, into a personality that seeks out struggles for fairness and gets involved.

As I look back on our society's history, on our high points of civic courage and justice, it's clear to me that many of our greatest civic leaders must have been raised to engage with the world around them in just this way. Such values are what drive ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results. And, despite my concerns about the future, I am convinced that these "natural" leaders are still all around us, in each new generation, inspired by their sense of justice and eager to bring about change. These are our public citizens -- the architects, movers, and sentinels of a functioning, successful democratic society.

When I meet these confident, steady, refreshing figures, I like to ask them how they became the people they are -- how they developed such drive, such motivation and purpose. Quite often, they hesitate, then smile, and respond:

Well, when I was young, my parents ...
my mother ...
my father ...
my teacher ...
my neighbor ...
told me ...
took me ...
showed me ...
inspired me ...

For democracy cannot flourish without putting an arm around the shoulders of the young.

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AFTERWORD

If you have read this far, you may be wondering, what kind of children did all these traditions produce? I may not be the right one to ask; such questions require subjective answers, and mine would be biased in a way I find unbecoming. What I can do is describe the paths taken by my two sisters and brother.

My brother Shaf, who passed away in 1986, was a student of anthropology and then of law. He was a practitioner of community economic development, the spark plug for an industrial park, and a lifelong proponent of local democracy. He did not believe that the way to effect real change was to start at the national level; much of what happens there, he believed, only served to concentrate power in ways that infrequently benefited the people. Change, he believed, must start at the local level. For this reason he was a champion of community colleges, which took their relations with the community seriously. He was the principal founder of the Northwestern Connecticut Community College, in Winsted, Connecticut, which celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2005, and he went on to work in the community college movement nationally.

Claire received her Ph.D. in public law and government from Columbia University. Her thesis was a front-running work on the relationship between science and government, and she followed this with early research on energy conservation with a group at a national laboratory. She co-edited and coauthored an early book on science and technology and development in Third World countries, and also wrote scholarly articles concerning health and safety regulation for science and technology. She started a number of citizen groups and projects dedicated to fostering systemic change and democracy at the community level, and works with them to this day. For many years Claire chaired the Council for Responsible Genetics, founded by MIT and Harvard scientists who wanted to develop ethical and legal frameworks for the momentous technology of genetic engineering. After the closing of our local hospital, she was instrumental in mobilizing the citizenry to restore health care services in Winsted, Connecticut, under a creative arrangement based on community control. Thus the Winsted Health Center Foundation was born.

Laura received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University and went on to become a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. Her annual course on "controlling processes" has been a magnet for thousands of students. Through her fieldwork, writing, and teaching, she has been a leading scholar in the field of law and anthropology and of the hierarchies of power and control in industrialized cultures. She has served on commissions to develop more enlightened policies for all our children, and on several energy policy commissions that led the way in advocating sane energy policies. Her eldest daughter is a lawyer who defended children in court and then turned her interest to family, home schooling, and community. Her son has a doctorate in ecology and does hands-on fieldwork toward the biological and cultural preservation of tropical forests. Her youngest daughter, also raising a family, has a Ph.D. in infectious diseases, and is currently a working laboratory scientist in the area of cell destruction and cancer.

Laura's children maintain a keen sense of civic interest and responsibility, something they share easily with their friends, fellow citizens, and their own children. Like their older family members, they believe in talking about matters that matter, about events that affect or afflict the human condition. They use words like "just" and "unjust." They ground their arguments in fact, and display an abiding passion for liberty with responsibility and for freedom with fairness. They believe that deeds legitimize words, and that there can be no authentic pursuit of happiness without the pursuit of justice.

I shared their youthful enthusiasm. When I was a high school student, I remember reading a quotation that was like a path of light for me. It was Senator Daniel Webster's description of justice as "the great work of man on Earth." Webster understood that no society could be improved without effort. Embarking on the journey I found it hard work, to be sure, but sublime gratification as well. There is great joy in pursuing justice -- and that joy should be available to everyone.

Children develop their notions of fairness at a very early age. In their innocence, they are often able to imagine a world without poverty, war, or pollution far more easily than their elders. They have no axe to grind, which gives them a wonderful clarity and optimism. Through their words, deeds, and traditions, my family gave me the gift of believing in such ideals. Their strengths were my metabolism. They propelled me to try to reach as many people as I could, and to try to show them that most of our problems had solutions, if only people would give themselves enough time to stand up and be counted, and if only some of us would stand tall and lead.

For the people do have that power -- but only if they recognize it, and then take the time to apply it. That is the biggest "if" in politics, isn't it? But that is the best reason for trying to make the flowers of democracy bloom.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb whose words I carry with me everywhere I go, one that captures the spirit of my parents' legacy: "To know and not to do is not to know."

Mother and Father viewed our activities during adulthood with a modest equanimity. When I emerged onto the national public scene, and started making regular appearances in the national media, their reaction could be summed up this way: "Okay, Ralph, if there's anything harder than becoming famous, it's learning how to endure it and keep on track without letting it swell your head." David Halberstam's mother and mine were friends, and he tells a story along similar lines: The first time I appeared on the cover of a major national magazine, Mrs. Halberstam called my mother early Monday morning to congratulate her.

"Really?" my mother replied. "I think I'll go out and get a copy."

David could only chuckle. "What modesty," he mused. "If I was on the cover of Time magazine, our family would have emptied out every newsstand in Litchfield County."

Perhaps it was my father who best captured their attitude. Once, when I told him that I'd done my best at something, he leaned over quietly and looked at me. "Son, never say you did your best, because then you'll never try to do better."

Our parents always intended to place us on productive, stimulating pathways, to guide us along until we began to pick up the pace ourselves, and then let us go when they felt their work was complete. Mother used to tell other young mothers in the community that if a child's parents haven't done a proper job by the time their child reaches six or seven years of age, their challenges will only be compounded. "The earlier, the easier," she would say -- and not just when it comes to learning languages, she added with a smile.

There are millions of healthy two-parent and single-parent families who are still guided by traditions as rich as my parents' were. Of course, there are also millions of families who struggle daily under social, economic, or cultural pressures that are urgent enough to crowd out all other concerns. Today, more and more families are farming out their responsibilities -- feeding their children and entertaining them, educating and counseling them, providing day care and advice -- to commercial service providers. The "family industry" is swiftly becoming a real factor in our economy. And this comes with a price, as more parents lose confidence in their own judgments, in their ability to make decisions without the help of the "experts." As corporations deliberately encroach on the parenting of our children, and children spend less personal time with their parents, those all-important traditions are falling by the wayside.

Still, just as young people continue to attend Shakespeare's plays and to perform them, for many the verities and the frailties of family life are still instinctive, as they have been since time immemorial. In these pages, I hope more parents will find reasons to start rebuilding their connections with their children -- by reaching back through the generations, drawing on their family heritage, and passing along the lessons they themselves learned as children. What better way to provide the climate for nurturing what Thomas Jefferson called "an aristocracy of virtue and talent"? If today's parents are to fulfill their acknowledged desire to leave each generation stronger and healthier than its predecessor, cultivating these transcendent family traditions is a good place to begin.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For a volume of recollections and reflections about our family traditions, acknowledgments rest deeply on my parents, sisters, and brother, to whom this book is dedicated. More immediately, my gratitude extends to my sister Claire Nader for her on-point contributions, and my sister Laura Nader's anthropological insights. My nephew Tarek Milleron made precise suggestions in his review of the manuscript.

Special thanks to my colleague John Richard and to my editor, Calvert Morgan, whose skill as an editor is rendered finite only by his limitations of time.

Jacket Cover

My boyhood in a small town in Connecticut was shaped by my family, my friends, our neighbors, my chores and hobbies, the town's culture and environment, its schools, libraries, factories, and businesses, their workers, and by storms that came from nowhere to disrupt everything.... Yet childhood in any family is a mysterious experience.... What shapes the mind, the personality, the character?

So begins this unexpected and extraordinary book by Ralph Nader. Known for his lifetime of selfless activism, Nader now looks back to the earliest days of his own life, to his serene and enriching childhood in bucolic Winsted, Connecticut. From listening to learning, from patriotism to argument, from work to simple enjoyment, Nader revisits seventeen key traditions he absorbed from his parents, his siblings, and the people in his community, and draws from them inspiring lessons for today's society. Warmly human, rich with sensory memories and lasting wisdom, it offers a kind of modern-day parable of how we grow from children into responsible adults -- a reminder of a time when nature and community were central to the way we all learned and lived.



RALPH NADER was recently named by the Atlantic as one of the 100 most influential figures in American history, one of only four living people to be so honored. The son of immigrants from Lebanon, he has launched two major presidential campaigns and founded or organized more than one hundred civic organizations. His groups have made an impact on tax reform, atomic power regulation, the tobacco industry, clean air and water, food safety, access to health care, civil rights, congressional ethics, and much more.

For more information on Ralph Nader or the documentary An Unreasonable Man, visit http://www.anunreasonableman.com.

Jacket design by Matthew Cacciola
Jacket illustration by David Wolf
Author photograph courtesy of American Program Bureau

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Back Cover

I am often asked what forces shaped me. Rather than trying to give a full answer, I often reply simply, "I had a lucky choice of parents." Among other things, my parents were responsible for passing down the traditions they had learned from the generations before them -- traditions they refined and adapted to the unfamiliar country and culture to which they had emigrated early in the twentieth century. Such family traditions challenge the notion that the fads, technologies, and addictions of modern life have somehow replaced the time-tested wisdom fashioned in the crucibles of earlier generations.

The garb may change after all but the wearer does not.