I inherited a mean streak from my mother—a tendency to be critical of my betters and unpleasant precisely in those situations where deference and conciliation are demanded.
I would be quite happy to be a wealthy man, but fail to see the logic of paying someone no better than I am 636 times my salary. I don’t really care what the job is; it can’t actually be worth that much more than what I do. Period.
In my life, I have rarely had kind words for wealthy people. Wealth is something I just can’t respect, in and of itself. (By contrast, beauty or a sense of humor, all by itself, counts for a great deal with me.)
I am also not the guy who will ever say these words: “Let’s vote again to make it unanimous.” I don’t get it, frankly. We weren’t unanimous. Some of us wanted this, and others wanted that. We decided on a vote to settle it—so it’s settled, but clearly some of us did not get our way. Why pretend different? Deal with the reality.
If we decided to settle the matter with three tosses of a coin, would we then have to pretend that a 2:1 divide was really 3:0?
I am not an etymologist, but “mean” meaning “low, degraded in behavior” seems related to “mean” meaning “average”—and “kind” meaning “noble and good” seems related to “kind” meaning “of the same type.” Who would come up with such a moralized dichotomy of “mean” and “kind”?
Well, the old aristocracy, that’s who. For them, the “average” human being was despicable. What right-thinking lord would want to be thought of as merely ordinary? And “kind” simply meant, for them, “like us”—our kind. That is, better.
Later, the middle classes acquired some posh, and nobody wanted to be “mean” anymore, not even the poor, who were demonstrably less than average—in wealth, education, position, prestige, power, health, and autonomy, at least.
Noblesse oblige became mandatory even for the ignoblesse.
Whoever dismissively spoke of the “lowest common denominator” must have had the same idea. “Lowest” kind of puts “common” in its place.
None of this is metaphysical. Being mean won’t send you to hell, though it may make a lot of people tell you to go there.
Sarah Palin comes off as mean, but I don’t fault her for it. When she identifies with Joe Six Pack and pit bulls, she’s talking about “salt of the earth” people—who will never be accepted by their betters as “our kind.”
Governor Palin is inept, coquettish, dull-witted, mendacious, venal, superstitious, and narrow-minded, for which I have to admit I despise her a little—on top of which, she’s wealthy, which doesn’t help her in my book—but none of this is related to her being mean.
Molly Ivins was mean, so was her pal Ann Richards, who, if there was any justice in the world, was the governor who should have had a crack at being VP. Jonathan Swift was mean, but a greater defender of the Irish people never existed—and he wasn’t even Irish. Mark Twain was mean, too, Twain, the quintessential American patriot, who famously once quipped, “All right then I’ll go to hell.”
The Democrats who refused to support Howard Dean four years ago because he hollered like a common yahoo got the four more years of George W. Bush that they deserved.
For a classless society, America puts a whole lot of stock in being classy. Being mean—belligerent, cantankerous, and unpleasant—is the only way a lot of poor people got anything out of this world.
I’m mean. It’s the only thing my mother gave me that I haven’t had cause to regret. I hope I use that meanness more for good than for bad, more realistically I probably just break even, but every now and then we need somebody to cut through all the crap of being nice and proper. I’d like to offer my services.
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Apocalypse on Sale
If Ronald Reagan gets credit for the fall of communism, who will history credit with the fall of capitalism?
The economic boom that followed World War II was quite clearly a fluke, a one-time windfall, God’s blessings on America, if you will, for killing Hitler. Capitalism has been propped up by false bravado since 1979, when the federal government saved the Chrysler Corporation with $2 billion in guaranteed loans.
After the wave of assassinations in the 1960s, arguably triggered by economic forces as much as by social upheaval, the seams showed through in the 1970s. Long gas lines and higher food prices led to discontent—and fear of a dismal future. Jimmy Carter’s call for a toned-down feeding frenzy—wear a sweater indoors to cut energy costs, he urged us—cost him a second term.
In the 1980s, everybody was encouraged to live on credit—I even vaguely recall a magazine article that (seriously) recommended credit-card spending as a form of investment for the future, since, the author reasoned, the dollar would never be as valuable as it was then, so the interest due would never out-value the products purchased (depending, of course, on the long-term value of the purchases).
The Reagan years were the years of DYNASTY, DALLAS, and LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS on TV—all variations on the theme of luxury—a sort of Grand Guignol devoted to conspicuous consumption. They also saw the resurrection of VANITY FAIR magazine, which had folded in the middle of the Great Depression, significantly. It was the era of baby boomers and yuppies, young urban professionals with new MBAs and jet-black BMWs with a “Baby on Board.”
(Looking back, it’s clear that Brett Easton Ellis’s AMERICAN PSYCHO is the definitive account of the eighties’ shark frenzy—the gym-toned young exec as serial killer, merging the decade’s two most potent archetypes.)
Reagan’s America was officially a consumerist paradise. Productivity was down, homelessness was up, social services drastically cut, including military veterans’ benefits and tax breaks for educators. All there was left of American culture was shopping—and product placements in every sort of media and on every available space.
It was the full flowering of credit and investment firms and big pharmaceutical companies. Just say no to drugs, indeed! Fuck a cure for cancer—just get rid of my bald spot and make my dick stay preternaturally hard!
The real payoff for Reagan’s “voodoo economics” (a term invented by George H.W. Bush when he was feeling less cordial towards the Gipper) was the Clinton years in the 1990s, or perhaps we should call them the Microsoft years. Computer technology took off, rewiring American business while at the same time facilitating the outsourcing of American jobs to nations where smart labor came cheap and making nearly every aspect of American finance, amusement, and life totally dependent on silicon technology—a technology which, more than any previous one, rapidly obsolesces … by its very design.
It was a radical new capitalism. More money could be made in buying and selling stocks than in actually producing something. (In entertainment, Mel Brooks’ 1968 film THE PRODUCERS proved prescient. Artistic failure was the new gold. Financing, insuring, and merchandising were where the big bucks could be made in Hollywood and Broadway.)
The success (still mostly symbolic in a nation newly riddled with panic attacks, ADHD, hostile takeovers, and bankruptcy) became enshrined in the fact that, when Clinton left office in 2001, the US federal government had a surplus of $237 billion.
Today, though, our national debt hit the $10 trillion mark.
Yes, capitalism is crumbling fast. The attacks of September 11, 2001, sent shockwaves through the world, but Hurricane Katrina, four years later, was the object lesson that brought it all home for many Americans—as we watched our government helpless in offering assistance to its citizens in need—and witnessed levels of desperation and futility we had assumed were the special property of the so-called “Third World.”
America is turning into a Third World nation—or, on a grander scale, the whole world has re-entered the Middle Ages—extremes of wealth and poverty reintroduce us to feudalism in its latest form, while troops campaign in the Middle East to fight Crusades and Holy Wars all over again; at home, religious superstition and mythography dominate scientific fact and reasoning; literacy declines, replaced by images and icons; we enshrine our values and beliefs in cathedrally impressive shopping malls and adjacent cineplexes with as many silver screens as stations of the cross; and once-free people cry out for great men to lead and protect them, quite willing to set aside democracy and personal liberties … all to save them from the devils within and without.
Can you tell me why A.J., in the last season of HBO’s THE SOPRANOS, found William Butler Yeats’ words so haunting?
“The darkness drops again; but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, / And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Yes, I can.
The economic boom that followed World War II was quite clearly a fluke, a one-time windfall, God’s blessings on America, if you will, for killing Hitler. Capitalism has been propped up by false bravado since 1979, when the federal government saved the Chrysler Corporation with $2 billion in guaranteed loans.
After the wave of assassinations in the 1960s, arguably triggered by economic forces as much as by social upheaval, the seams showed through in the 1970s. Long gas lines and higher food prices led to discontent—and fear of a dismal future. Jimmy Carter’s call for a toned-down feeding frenzy—wear a sweater indoors to cut energy costs, he urged us—cost him a second term.
In the 1980s, everybody was encouraged to live on credit—I even vaguely recall a magazine article that (seriously) recommended credit-card spending as a form of investment for the future, since, the author reasoned, the dollar would never be as valuable as it was then, so the interest due would never out-value the products purchased (depending, of course, on the long-term value of the purchases).
The Reagan years were the years of DYNASTY, DALLAS, and LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS on TV—all variations on the theme of luxury—a sort of Grand Guignol devoted to conspicuous consumption. They also saw the resurrection of VANITY FAIR magazine, which had folded in the middle of the Great Depression, significantly. It was the era of baby boomers and yuppies, young urban professionals with new MBAs and jet-black BMWs with a “Baby on Board.”
(Looking back, it’s clear that Brett Easton Ellis’s AMERICAN PSYCHO is the definitive account of the eighties’ shark frenzy—the gym-toned young exec as serial killer, merging the decade’s two most potent archetypes.)
Reagan’s America was officially a consumerist paradise. Productivity was down, homelessness was up, social services drastically cut, including military veterans’ benefits and tax breaks for educators. All there was left of American culture was shopping—and product placements in every sort of media and on every available space.
It was the full flowering of credit and investment firms and big pharmaceutical companies. Just say no to drugs, indeed! Fuck a cure for cancer—just get rid of my bald spot and make my dick stay preternaturally hard!
The real payoff for Reagan’s “voodoo economics” (a term invented by George H.W. Bush when he was feeling less cordial towards the Gipper) was the Clinton years in the 1990s, or perhaps we should call them the Microsoft years. Computer technology took off, rewiring American business while at the same time facilitating the outsourcing of American jobs to nations where smart labor came cheap and making nearly every aspect of American finance, amusement, and life totally dependent on silicon technology—a technology which, more than any previous one, rapidly obsolesces … by its very design.
It was a radical new capitalism. More money could be made in buying and selling stocks than in actually producing something. (In entertainment, Mel Brooks’ 1968 film THE PRODUCERS proved prescient. Artistic failure was the new gold. Financing, insuring, and merchandising were where the big bucks could be made in Hollywood and Broadway.)
The success (still mostly symbolic in a nation newly riddled with panic attacks, ADHD, hostile takeovers, and bankruptcy) became enshrined in the fact that, when Clinton left office in 2001, the US federal government had a surplus of $237 billion.
Today, though, our national debt hit the $10 trillion mark.
Yes, capitalism is crumbling fast. The attacks of September 11, 2001, sent shockwaves through the world, but Hurricane Katrina, four years later, was the object lesson that brought it all home for many Americans—as we watched our government helpless in offering assistance to its citizens in need—and witnessed levels of desperation and futility we had assumed were the special property of the so-called “Third World.”
America is turning into a Third World nation—or, on a grander scale, the whole world has re-entered the Middle Ages—extremes of wealth and poverty reintroduce us to feudalism in its latest form, while troops campaign in the Middle East to fight Crusades and Holy Wars all over again; at home, religious superstition and mythography dominate scientific fact and reasoning; literacy declines, replaced by images and icons; we enshrine our values and beliefs in cathedrally impressive shopping malls and adjacent cineplexes with as many silver screens as stations of the cross; and once-free people cry out for great men to lead and protect them, quite willing to set aside democracy and personal liberties … all to save them from the devils within and without.
Can you tell me why A.J., in the last season of HBO’s THE SOPRANOS, found William Butler Yeats’ words so haunting?
“The darkness drops again; but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, / And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Yes, I can.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Message to Tim (re: Lars and the Real Girl)
My friend Tim, who teaches at a seminary, sent me a lengthy message today. Here's an excerpt:
"Hey I saw [...] that one of your recent favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl. We've found it to be a powerful movie about community! [...] One of the questions I've been asking in response is this: how do you discern when your acceptance of someone is enabling their brokenness rather than helping them experience healing? We tend to be a very accepting community (our church), but sometimes people stay stuck right where they are for years. Any thoughts on this, and on the movie?"
And here's my reply:
I love LARS AND THE REAL GIRL for precisely the aspect you mentioned--community. The brother, his wife, the would-be girlfriend, the doctor, the townspeople--the sense of wisdom and support there--fantastic--and deeply moving for me. It's what I always hoped existed somewhere.
Of course, the movie's a fantasy. Such a huge level of support and acceptance seems far-fetched--even the ease with which resistance was subdued seems improbable--far more likely (to pessimistic me, anyway) is that those who disapproved of Lars' little folly would have entrenched themselves, perhaps found a way to turn the whole deal into a Righteous Cause ("What kind of example is this for the children?")--the primal herd instinct to repel outsiders is much stronger than the movie presented.
But, then, I don't mean any of this as a complaint--it's only a movie, after all--Oz probably doesn't exist either.
Your related question is intriguing. How much is too much acceptance?
Here's my first thought on the matter, having not given it close examination yet: Acceptance is the opposite of resistance and entrenchment. When should we resist? Should we never resist?
Resistance is almost certainly the right thing to do when confronted with injustice, cruelty, manifestly destructive behavior--particularly when the harm is immediate and unmistakable.
But HOW should we resist? Nonviolently, compassionately. Is it possible? Is that really what turning the other cheek means? Satyagraha?
But we live in a culture that believes in redemptive violence--either the violence of swift revenge (or even torture) as an effective arm of true justice, or the violence of martyrdom, sacrifice, and (what's the word I'm looking for?) shunning, closing off, driving off. (I'm thinking as I go along here, so don't expect coherence.)
So, acceptance--I'm going on a limb here--is generally preferable to resistance--that is, saying YES is better than saying NO ... in general.
So when is acceptance wrong? I think acceptance runs the danger of becoming indifference when it ceases to be active. If "acceptance" is passive, it is simply not-caring. Active acceptance involves curiosity and involvement, empathy--an imaginative leap into the consciousness of others.
So in LatRG the townspeople (the ones we like anyway) manage, through openness and imagination to enter into Lars' delusion. In doing this, they are diligent enough not to become deluded themselves, but rather to find creative ways to interpret the delusion and mine it for its beneficial effects--not just for Lars but for themselves as well.
I feel the movie indicates that the people surrounding Lars are as profoundly changed in the end as Lars himself. (And we see some of them are already capable of this in the sister-in-law's persistence in trying to get Lars to come into the house for dinner, at the beginning of the movie.)
Talking about this subject, I'm reminded of something I read years and years ago about some Native American culture--what tribe or tribes I cannot remember. But it goes like this--if a child were born into the tribe whose only gift was to make dolls out of corncobs and could do nothing else, the tribespeople would then develop a NEED for corncob dolls--for ritual uses or as toys, or maybe as decorations. The tribe took from each what each was able to offer, in other words. When the dollmaker died, and if there was no replacement for him/her, the tribe gradually ceased to need the dolls anymore.
Of course, such a society would have to depend on the fact that most people would bring skills to the tribe conducive to survival, but given their organic view of community, all people's gifts were assumed to have value, not because they conformed to what is normal but because each member was already assumed to be irrevocably an organic part of the tribe.
Of course, this information may have been BS, part of the sentimentalizing of Indian culture--the noble savage and all that. But I think even if there never were such a culture, even if LatRG portrays a Hollywood dream, even if violence and ... ostracism! that's the word I was struggling to find up above ... but even if violence and contempt for outsiders are deeply ingrained in human nature, possibly even for good survival-centered reasons, still, isn't the idea of community a rather wonderful dream?
And maybe I haven't even answered the very intriguing question you posed.
"Hey I saw [...] that one of your recent favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl. We've found it to be a powerful movie about community! [...] One of the questions I've been asking in response is this: how do you discern when your acceptance of someone is enabling their brokenness rather than helping them experience healing? We tend to be a very accepting community (our church), but sometimes people stay stuck right where they are for years. Any thoughts on this, and on the movie?"
And here's my reply:
I love LARS AND THE REAL GIRL for precisely the aspect you mentioned--community. The brother, his wife, the would-be girlfriend, the doctor, the townspeople--the sense of wisdom and support there--fantastic--and deeply moving for me. It's what I always hoped existed somewhere.
Of course, the movie's a fantasy. Such a huge level of support and acceptance seems far-fetched--even the ease with which resistance was subdued seems improbable--far more likely (to pessimistic me, anyway) is that those who disapproved of Lars' little folly would have entrenched themselves, perhaps found a way to turn the whole deal into a Righteous Cause ("What kind of example is this for the children?")--the primal herd instinct to repel outsiders is much stronger than the movie presented.
But, then, I don't mean any of this as a complaint--it's only a movie, after all--Oz probably doesn't exist either.
Your related question is intriguing. How much is too much acceptance?
Here's my first thought on the matter, having not given it close examination yet: Acceptance is the opposite of resistance and entrenchment. When should we resist? Should we never resist?
Resistance is almost certainly the right thing to do when confronted with injustice, cruelty, manifestly destructive behavior--particularly when the harm is immediate and unmistakable.
But HOW should we resist? Nonviolently, compassionately. Is it possible? Is that really what turning the other cheek means? Satyagraha?
But we live in a culture that believes in redemptive violence--either the violence of swift revenge (or even torture) as an effective arm of true justice, or the violence of martyrdom, sacrifice, and (what's the word I'm looking for?) shunning, closing off, driving off. (I'm thinking as I go along here, so don't expect coherence.)
So, acceptance--I'm going on a limb here--is generally preferable to resistance--that is, saying YES is better than saying NO ... in general.
So when is acceptance wrong? I think acceptance runs the danger of becoming indifference when it ceases to be active. If "acceptance" is passive, it is simply not-caring. Active acceptance involves curiosity and involvement, empathy--an imaginative leap into the consciousness of others.
So in LatRG the townspeople (the ones we like anyway) manage, through openness and imagination to enter into Lars' delusion. In doing this, they are diligent enough not to become deluded themselves, but rather to find creative ways to interpret the delusion and mine it for its beneficial effects--not just for Lars but for themselves as well.
I feel the movie indicates that the people surrounding Lars are as profoundly changed in the end as Lars himself. (And we see some of them are already capable of this in the sister-in-law's persistence in trying to get Lars to come into the house for dinner, at the beginning of the movie.)
Talking about this subject, I'm reminded of something I read years and years ago about some Native American culture--what tribe or tribes I cannot remember. But it goes like this--if a child were born into the tribe whose only gift was to make dolls out of corncobs and could do nothing else, the tribespeople would then develop a NEED for corncob dolls--for ritual uses or as toys, or maybe as decorations. The tribe took from each what each was able to offer, in other words. When the dollmaker died, and if there was no replacement for him/her, the tribe gradually ceased to need the dolls anymore.
Of course, such a society would have to depend on the fact that most people would bring skills to the tribe conducive to survival, but given their organic view of community, all people's gifts were assumed to have value, not because they conformed to what is normal but because each member was already assumed to be irrevocably an organic part of the tribe.
Of course, this information may have been BS, part of the sentimentalizing of Indian culture--the noble savage and all that. But I think even if there never were such a culture, even if LatRG portrays a Hollywood dream, even if violence and ... ostracism! that's the word I was struggling to find up above ... but even if violence and contempt for outsiders are deeply ingrained in human nature, possibly even for good survival-centered reasons, still, isn't the idea of community a rather wonderful dream?
And maybe I haven't even answered the very intriguing question you posed.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Evildoer
The one good thing you can say about ignorance is it offers freedom from confusion. And few Americans suffer from confusion about ethics.
Take the issue of evil, for instance.
Yesterday, my officemate Jim brought up the topic in response to minister Rick Warren’s questioning Obama and McCain about their views of evil. I didn’t see the program or the subsequent clip, but apparently Obama gave a long, nuanced explanation of his moral views. When asked what he thought should be done about evil, McCain simply responded, “Defeat it.”
Unlike my officemate, I think evil exists—in a sense. Suffering, deliberate cruelty, and hypocrisy are obvious examples of it.
But I admit it’s an abstraction—and a relative concept. Even suffering can have its good points—it may even be a necessity. Virtue depends on evil—defeat evil and there’s no more virtue either. The concepts are meaningful only in relation to each other—sort of like “cheap” and “expensive,” nonsense as absolute values.
In fact, I don’t think evil can be apprehended … or defeated. To the extent that it has reality, it’s a part of the world, an unpleasant fact we have to accept as part of existence and do our best not to contribute to it.
But I bet more Americans respect McCain’s answer than Obama’s. This is part of America's perception of itself as innocent—or, less flattering, naïve, even willfully ignorant.
McCain cannot really hope to defeat evil, any more than he could stop a tornado hurdling towards a bus full of children by charging it with a revolver. Not only Americans see the good-heartedness of such a gesture, but apparently only Americans fail to register its numbing stupidity.
And possibly its hypocrisy, too, since I’m convinced that McCain and his supporters would do all kinds of bad things—torture, falsify, kill—in the interest of defeating evil.
Thus, some of my fellow Americans find my nuanced moral viewpoint unnecessarily vague. Theirs is much neater and clear cut. No confusion whatsoever. Evil wears the black hat and rides the black horse. Evil is the dark-haired one with the scar. Shoot it. Defeat it.
Take the issue of evil, for instance.
Yesterday, my officemate Jim brought up the topic in response to minister Rick Warren’s questioning Obama and McCain about their views of evil. I didn’t see the program or the subsequent clip, but apparently Obama gave a long, nuanced explanation of his moral views. When asked what he thought should be done about evil, McCain simply responded, “Defeat it.”
Unlike my officemate, I think evil exists—in a sense. Suffering, deliberate cruelty, and hypocrisy are obvious examples of it.
But I admit it’s an abstraction—and a relative concept. Even suffering can have its good points—it may even be a necessity. Virtue depends on evil—defeat evil and there’s no more virtue either. The concepts are meaningful only in relation to each other—sort of like “cheap” and “expensive,” nonsense as absolute values.
In fact, I don’t think evil can be apprehended … or defeated. To the extent that it has reality, it’s a part of the world, an unpleasant fact we have to accept as part of existence and do our best not to contribute to it.
But I bet more Americans respect McCain’s answer than Obama’s. This is part of America's perception of itself as innocent—or, less flattering, naïve, even willfully ignorant.
McCain cannot really hope to defeat evil, any more than he could stop a tornado hurdling towards a bus full of children by charging it with a revolver. Not only Americans see the good-heartedness of such a gesture, but apparently only Americans fail to register its numbing stupidity.
And possibly its hypocrisy, too, since I’m convinced that McCain and his supporters would do all kinds of bad things—torture, falsify, kill—in the interest of defeating evil.
Thus, some of my fellow Americans find my nuanced moral viewpoint unnecessarily vague. Theirs is much neater and clear cut. No confusion whatsoever. Evil wears the black hat and rides the black horse. Evil is the dark-haired one with the scar. Shoot it. Defeat it.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Shame Shame Shame
Former NC Senator John Edwards’ admission today that he had an affair with video director Rielle Hunter in 2006 is today’s news.
Expect more commentary on this affair in the days, weeks, perhaps months to come. It won’t be over until all parties show up on Oprah or Leno or The Real World to weep real tears before the public.
Let me just briefly express my sympathy for the Edwards family, Ms Hunter, and whoever else may be hurt or even inconvenienced by media maggots picking over this story till it is dry as bones. Take heart, folks, the silver lining is usually a fat book deal down the line, if not a major motion picture.
For a few moments here, though, count me as an unpaid freelance maggot, with few readers.
Rich, famous, and powerful men frequently cave in to the temptations available to alpha dogs. Whether these lapses get covered in the press or not, they are seldom if ever really newsworthy, and the amount and duration of the coverage have no bearing on their actual importance.
Infidelity is sad, sorry business. So is lying to the press—though arguably it’s worse to lie about the nuclear weapons capacity of a foreign power than to lie about what one’s doing with his privates.
The timing of Edwards’ confession is unfortunate—coinciding with (and probably obliterating forever from public consciousness) the urgently needed push for Congress to investigate and pass judgment on the unconstitutional behaviors of the present administration.
America loses its innocence year after year as each new scandal is treated as unprecedented and shocking.
Perhaps we crave the sensationalism because we think it wipes clean our own small failings to meet unrealistically high standards of behavior—it is for this hypocrisy, by the way, not for our purported permissiveness and license, that the rest of the world derides us Americans.
We "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel" (Matt. 23.24).
We are a nation of busybodies incapable of preserving its founding principles, which slip away while our enquiring minds peep through the drapes of the Beverly Hilton.
Expect more commentary on this affair in the days, weeks, perhaps months to come. It won’t be over until all parties show up on Oprah or Leno or The Real World to weep real tears before the public.
Let me just briefly express my sympathy for the Edwards family, Ms Hunter, and whoever else may be hurt or even inconvenienced by media maggots picking over this story till it is dry as bones. Take heart, folks, the silver lining is usually a fat book deal down the line, if not a major motion picture.
For a few moments here, though, count me as an unpaid freelance maggot, with few readers.
Rich, famous, and powerful men frequently cave in to the temptations available to alpha dogs. Whether these lapses get covered in the press or not, they are seldom if ever really newsworthy, and the amount and duration of the coverage have no bearing on their actual importance.
Infidelity is sad, sorry business. So is lying to the press—though arguably it’s worse to lie about the nuclear weapons capacity of a foreign power than to lie about what one’s doing with his privates.
The timing of Edwards’ confession is unfortunate—coinciding with (and probably obliterating forever from public consciousness) the urgently needed push for Congress to investigate and pass judgment on the unconstitutional behaviors of the present administration.
America loses its innocence year after year as each new scandal is treated as unprecedented and shocking.
Perhaps we crave the sensationalism because we think it wipes clean our own small failings to meet unrealistically high standards of behavior—it is for this hypocrisy, by the way, not for our purported permissiveness and license, that the rest of the world derides us Americans.
We "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel" (Matt. 23.24).
We are a nation of busybodies incapable of preserving its founding principles, which slip away while our enquiring minds peep through the drapes of the Beverly Hilton.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
How I Understand the Greeks
Philosophy is know-how. Practice, not preaching, is at its center. Philosophy is to seek the path towards who we want to be—through self-discipline, not through belief.
Wisdom is an idea. Philosophy is a way of life designed according to how we define that idea.
To claim to have achieved wisdom is unwise. To claim wisdom or goodness as an accomplishment or a received gift is a delusion. To be good means only to strive for what is best.
Becoming, not being.
Good intentions have value, whatever their outcomes, which may not turn out to be good—such are our limits as mortals. Good intentions are good because they imply that we are willing to act.
One should focus on good practice, living in the present, rather than on outcomes. To focus on good outcomes is to hope. Hope is a natural, often harmless impulse, but it has no moral value. Hope is magical thinking. In contrast, goodness and wisdom are matters of action and the practices we follow.
Hope is destructive when it blocks the willingness to act. In the conduct of our lives, excessive focus on hope stunts our progress, leads to self-deception, and justifies inaction.
The proper conduct of our lives requires us to focus on those practices that help us to become who we want to be.
Plato saw humanness as an accomplishment—through discipline, education, and exercise—not as a state of being. We are not born fully human. Discipline is to control or manage the self (or the soul). Education is to broaden the self by acquiring know-how. Exercise is to practice good conduct in life.
Plato taught mathematics and logical argument as two practices capable of transforming who we are. He also encouraged his students to contemplate death and the transcendence of the universe as a way to develop their humanity.
Plato’s main purpose was political, to transform society—through individual transformation—and he defined humanity in terms benefiting the transformation of society.
On the other hand, Aristotle reversed Plato’s direction—viewing the improvement of society as a way to improve the individuals within it. Aristotle evaluated politics according to how well it permits citizens to transform themselves.
Aristotle taught his students to analyze the world around them scientifically—to categorize and dissect—to experience their surroundings in a deeper, more exact way—to develop technology—in order to improve society.
Later, the Epicureans and Stoics established communities based on shared practices and life conduct. The Epicureans sought to control their desires and actions to achieve a consistently pleasant life. The Stoics sought to control their desires and actions to achieve harmony with nature. Like Plato and Aristotle before them, both philosophical schools sought the know-how to transform themselves to who they wanted to be.
Greek philosophy is separate from Greek religion, though of course both are culturally related. Philosophy involves ideas, but almost no mythology (narratives designed to explain or simplify cause and effect). Philosophy promotes practice and know-how, but not ritual and supernatural power. Philosophers contemplate death, but seldom concern themselves with an after-life.
Later, philosophy became the academic study of texts, rather than the practice of consciousness-expanding exercises. What Plato meant came to be more important than what Plato did. By the twentieth century, academic philosophy was more or less linguistics, not the practice of self-discipline and personal transformation in the conduct of one’s life.
According to Pierre Hadot, upon whose understanding of Greek philosophy mine is largely based, Christianity killed off classical philosophy by marketing itself as a substitute. Christianity combined philosophy and religion. It taught its followers how to conduct their lives and explained where the world came from and how it came to be the way it is now, as well as predicting its ultimate destiny.
Christianity is, then, a kind of supermarket for ideas, one-stop shopping for the mind. Also, unlike Greek religion or Greek philosophy, it is dogmatic—demanding belief (and a particular set of beliefs) in exchange for a one-size-fits-all life in eternity. Rather than attempting to improve life in the present, the goal of Christian transformation (rebirth) is to ensure good seats in the hereafter.
In time, what Jesus meant came to be more important than what Jesus said or did. The theology of Jesus as God has all but eclipsed the reported teachings of Jesus. (For instance, few Christian pastors teach or practice Jesus' instruction to give away all one's possessions to the poor ... or to turn the other cheek when attacked. Jesus may have been God but he said a lot of things that are apparently practically useless to modern Christians.)
For the Greek philosophers, good conduct makes us good people. Right practice is better than righteousness achieved.
Good conduct for Christians does not make us good or even better people, though it does please a potentially irate God.
Wisdom is an idea. Philosophy is a way of life designed according to how we define that idea.
To claim to have achieved wisdom is unwise. To claim wisdom or goodness as an accomplishment or a received gift is a delusion. To be good means only to strive for what is best.
Becoming, not being.
Good intentions have value, whatever their outcomes, which may not turn out to be good—such are our limits as mortals. Good intentions are good because they imply that we are willing to act.
One should focus on good practice, living in the present, rather than on outcomes. To focus on good outcomes is to hope. Hope is a natural, often harmless impulse, but it has no moral value. Hope is magical thinking. In contrast, goodness and wisdom are matters of action and the practices we follow.
Hope is destructive when it blocks the willingness to act. In the conduct of our lives, excessive focus on hope stunts our progress, leads to self-deception, and justifies inaction.
The proper conduct of our lives requires us to focus on those practices that help us to become who we want to be.
Plato saw humanness as an accomplishment—through discipline, education, and exercise—not as a state of being. We are not born fully human. Discipline is to control or manage the self (or the soul). Education is to broaden the self by acquiring know-how. Exercise is to practice good conduct in life.
Plato taught mathematics and logical argument as two practices capable of transforming who we are. He also encouraged his students to contemplate death and the transcendence of the universe as a way to develop their humanity.
Plato’s main purpose was political, to transform society—through individual transformation—and he defined humanity in terms benefiting the transformation of society.
On the other hand, Aristotle reversed Plato’s direction—viewing the improvement of society as a way to improve the individuals within it. Aristotle evaluated politics according to how well it permits citizens to transform themselves.
Aristotle taught his students to analyze the world around them scientifically—to categorize and dissect—to experience their surroundings in a deeper, more exact way—to develop technology—in order to improve society.
Later, the Epicureans and Stoics established communities based on shared practices and life conduct. The Epicureans sought to control their desires and actions to achieve a consistently pleasant life. The Stoics sought to control their desires and actions to achieve harmony with nature. Like Plato and Aristotle before them, both philosophical schools sought the know-how to transform themselves to who they wanted to be.
Greek philosophy is separate from Greek religion, though of course both are culturally related. Philosophy involves ideas, but almost no mythology (narratives designed to explain or simplify cause and effect). Philosophy promotes practice and know-how, but not ritual and supernatural power. Philosophers contemplate death, but seldom concern themselves with an after-life.
Later, philosophy became the academic study of texts, rather than the practice of consciousness-expanding exercises. What Plato meant came to be more important than what Plato did. By the twentieth century, academic philosophy was more or less linguistics, not the practice of self-discipline and personal transformation in the conduct of one’s life.
According to Pierre Hadot, upon whose understanding of Greek philosophy mine is largely based, Christianity killed off classical philosophy by marketing itself as a substitute. Christianity combined philosophy and religion. It taught its followers how to conduct their lives and explained where the world came from and how it came to be the way it is now, as well as predicting its ultimate destiny.
Christianity is, then, a kind of supermarket for ideas, one-stop shopping for the mind. Also, unlike Greek religion or Greek philosophy, it is dogmatic—demanding belief (and a particular set of beliefs) in exchange for a one-size-fits-all life in eternity. Rather than attempting to improve life in the present, the goal of Christian transformation (rebirth) is to ensure good seats in the hereafter.
In time, what Jesus meant came to be more important than what Jesus said or did. The theology of Jesus as God has all but eclipsed the reported teachings of Jesus. (For instance, few Christian pastors teach or practice Jesus' instruction to give away all one's possessions to the poor ... or to turn the other cheek when attacked. Jesus may have been God but he said a lot of things that are apparently practically useless to modern Christians.)
For the Greek philosophers, good conduct makes us good people. Right practice is better than righteousness achieved.
Good conduct for Christians does not make us good or even better people, though it does please a potentially irate God.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Anger Management
Impeach Bush. I know I'm not all by myself in thinking this imperative is sane and logical.
Today at a packed Judiciary Committee meeting Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment of President George W. Bush. Kucinich's rationale is that the President has usurped more power than granted the presidency in the Constitution and, in so doing, has violated essential principles of American democracy and law.
The CNN report on the meeting characterized it as "purely stagecraft," giving the final word to Republican Lamar Smith, who "dismissed the hearings as 'an anger management class.'"
Earlier this week, responding to Kucinich's announcement, a YouTube commentator complained that the government should spend money on reducing gas prices, rather than pursue a costly trial. The timing of the impeachment is also being criticized, since Bush has only six more months in office.
It won't be long before somebody starts to wail, "Hasn't the poor man suffered enough already?" (Not by a long shot.)
I can't understand why it was so easy to impeach Clinton for lying about a blowjob and so unthinkable to impeach Bush for lying about preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States.
And if it was worth billions of dollars to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, then surely we can cough up the comparable small change it would take to subject George Bush to some serious investigation for alleged wrongdoing in the most powerful position in the world. Leaving such a matter for the corporate-owned media or general public to theorize over and second-guess, without the authority of an official Congressional inquiry, is irresponsible. As for the timing, when might the President have been more conveniently impeached, without drawing criticisms of either "too early" or "too late"?
Frankly, all hope is lost for our country if Bush and his cohorts are not held to account for their reckless waste of human lives, money, infrastructure, and civil liberties. I don't think I'm overstating this issue's importance. And it's neither stagecraft nor a mere angry outburst to believe that presidents should be held legally accountable for more than their penises.
Today at a packed Judiciary Committee meeting Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment of President George W. Bush. Kucinich's rationale is that the President has usurped more power than granted the presidency in the Constitution and, in so doing, has violated essential principles of American democracy and law.
The CNN report on the meeting characterized it as "purely stagecraft," giving the final word to Republican Lamar Smith, who "dismissed the hearings as 'an anger management class.'"
Earlier this week, responding to Kucinich's announcement, a YouTube commentator complained that the government should spend money on reducing gas prices, rather than pursue a costly trial. The timing of the impeachment is also being criticized, since Bush has only six more months in office.
It won't be long before somebody starts to wail, "Hasn't the poor man suffered enough already?" (Not by a long shot.)
I can't understand why it was so easy to impeach Clinton for lying about a blowjob and so unthinkable to impeach Bush for lying about preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States.
And if it was worth billions of dollars to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, then surely we can cough up the comparable small change it would take to subject George Bush to some serious investigation for alleged wrongdoing in the most powerful position in the world. Leaving such a matter for the corporate-owned media or general public to theorize over and second-guess, without the authority of an official Congressional inquiry, is irresponsible. As for the timing, when might the President have been more conveniently impeached, without drawing criticisms of either "too early" or "too late"?
Frankly, all hope is lost for our country if Bush and his cohorts are not held to account for their reckless waste of human lives, money, infrastructure, and civil liberties. I don't think I'm overstating this issue's importance. And it's neither stagecraft nor a mere angry outburst to believe that presidents should be held legally accountable for more than their penises.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Nature?
Is homosexuality a product of nature or nurture? Did I choose to be attracted to men? Is bisexuality the norm? Did my environment condition me to find the male physique a turn-on? Or was I born “that way”?
I don’t fucking know.
Not that I don’t think the questions are important. They are. For that matter, I’m curious why I prefer brunet to blond, tall to short, hairy to smooth, a bit of paunch, albeit firm, to washboard abs. Moreover, I’d like to understand why I can not develop a taste for Brussels sprouts.
I sympathize with many people’s reasoning that if somehow scientists could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that homosexuality is an acquired genetic trait, society would grow more tolerant of homosexual behavior. Perhaps, but I don’t particularly think so, because biological explanations didn’t do much to win equal rights for women or blacks, now did they? And, in the U.S., a large portion of the population can not digest Darwinism, so forget adding the arithmetic it takes to grasp Mendelian inheritance.
For what it’s worth, my position is that even if I chose to screw men purely on a whim, my right to do so is self-evident in my rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” provided I don’t step on other people’s rights to same.
If I can choose between Coke and Pepsi, the path is clear for me to choose between men and women, as well. What’s more, I don’t think I have to sign a binding contract to fuck one sex exclusively.
That said, it’s hard for me to believe that any man doesn’t believe his penis has a mind of its own. Can I remember ever instructing my penis to crave men? No, I do not. Quite the opposite. As a good born-again Christian for years and years I prayed that the stubborn little prick would wise up and accept the majority opinion in such matters. Neither it nor God responded to my attempts to negotiate.
When guys ask me how I decided to be gay, I ask them how they decided to be straight. Several have told me that they do in fact remember making such a decision, but most guys get my point right away.
Do I remember a point in my life when I said, “What the hell I guess I’m gay.” You bet. And what a relief! Since then it’s all been a matter of semantics: do I really think the word “gay” applies to me? hasn’t it come to be basically a marketing term for a target group of consumers? does it imply, as some would argue, a whole set of subcultural affects above and beyond homosexual attraction? Those questions still pop up from time to time.
But did I ever decide not to be ashamed of myself for my sexual inclinations and tastes? Most definitely, yes.
And do I believe that I’m entitled to equal rights with my heterosexual peers? Hell, yes.
But would I feel any better knowing I had no choice whatsoever in whom I’d like to sack? I’d have to say no. It would interest me theoretically, I guess, but it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference to me.
I don’t fucking know.
Not that I don’t think the questions are important. They are. For that matter, I’m curious why I prefer brunet to blond, tall to short, hairy to smooth, a bit of paunch, albeit firm, to washboard abs. Moreover, I’d like to understand why I can not develop a taste for Brussels sprouts.
I sympathize with many people’s reasoning that if somehow scientists could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that homosexuality is an acquired genetic trait, society would grow more tolerant of homosexual behavior. Perhaps, but I don’t particularly think so, because biological explanations didn’t do much to win equal rights for women or blacks, now did they? And, in the U.S., a large portion of the population can not digest Darwinism, so forget adding the arithmetic it takes to grasp Mendelian inheritance.
For what it’s worth, my position is that even if I chose to screw men purely on a whim, my right to do so is self-evident in my rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” provided I don’t step on other people’s rights to same.
If I can choose between Coke and Pepsi, the path is clear for me to choose between men and women, as well. What’s more, I don’t think I have to sign a binding contract to fuck one sex exclusively.
That said, it’s hard for me to believe that any man doesn’t believe his penis has a mind of its own. Can I remember ever instructing my penis to crave men? No, I do not. Quite the opposite. As a good born-again Christian for years and years I prayed that the stubborn little prick would wise up and accept the majority opinion in such matters. Neither it nor God responded to my attempts to negotiate.
When guys ask me how I decided to be gay, I ask them how they decided to be straight. Several have told me that they do in fact remember making such a decision, but most guys get my point right away.
Do I remember a point in my life when I said, “What the hell I guess I’m gay.” You bet. And what a relief! Since then it’s all been a matter of semantics: do I really think the word “gay” applies to me? hasn’t it come to be basically a marketing term for a target group of consumers? does it imply, as some would argue, a whole set of subcultural affects above and beyond homosexual attraction? Those questions still pop up from time to time.
But did I ever decide not to be ashamed of myself for my sexual inclinations and tastes? Most definitely, yes.
And do I believe that I’m entitled to equal rights with my heterosexual peers? Hell, yes.
But would I feel any better knowing I had no choice whatsoever in whom I’d like to sack? I’d have to say no. It would interest me theoretically, I guess, but it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference to me.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Offense
Earlier this week somebody asked me whether people ever get offended at some of the things I say. “Sure, sometimes,” I said, and asked him whether he was offended by something I had said. “No, just wondering,” he said, “because of some of the things you say in class.”
I don’t set out to offend anybody. I have almost no compulsion to shock others. I have opinions, even entire worldviews, that are at odds with what people are used to hearing, but I don’t adopt them simply to be contrary.
In the classroom I rarely share my opinions, less out of timidity or prudence (I sometimes do express personal positions and see nothing wrong with teachers freely expressing their opinions) than out of a desire to get students to think for themselves, knowing, from experience, that students often grab hold of teachers’ opinions as substitutes for coming up with their own.
But I have no problem if my ideas offend others. It’s part of the learning process. A lot of people are offended by anything that doesn’t neatly fit into the order of things as they have come to understand it. I imagine Plato’s wanderer shocked some cavedwellers when he pointed out that the shadows on the wall are not the only reality there is. Any ideas to substantially improve society are at first going to sound shocking to those who have spent lifetimes nesting in the status quo.
I’m not running for office or selling anything, so, so what if something I say offends people? It’s something they have to learn to deal with in the same way that I have to deal with some of the strange, silly shit other people say—such as, in a current debate in the North Carolina legislature, that Jesus wants to exclude gay and lesbian kids from the protections granted in a proposed anti-bullying bill.
Furthermore, if you don’t offend people with your ideas sometimes, I have serious reservations about the value of your ideas. If what you have to say or write about is so obvious as to be anticipated, readily absorbed, or taken for granted, why bother communicating it all?
I don’t set out to offend anybody. I have almost no compulsion to shock others. I have opinions, even entire worldviews, that are at odds with what people are used to hearing, but I don’t adopt them simply to be contrary.
In the classroom I rarely share my opinions, less out of timidity or prudence (I sometimes do express personal positions and see nothing wrong with teachers freely expressing their opinions) than out of a desire to get students to think for themselves, knowing, from experience, that students often grab hold of teachers’ opinions as substitutes for coming up with their own.
But I have no problem if my ideas offend others. It’s part of the learning process. A lot of people are offended by anything that doesn’t neatly fit into the order of things as they have come to understand it. I imagine Plato’s wanderer shocked some cavedwellers when he pointed out that the shadows on the wall are not the only reality there is. Any ideas to substantially improve society are at first going to sound shocking to those who have spent lifetimes nesting in the status quo.
I’m not running for office or selling anything, so, so what if something I say offends people? It’s something they have to learn to deal with in the same way that I have to deal with some of the strange, silly shit other people say—such as, in a current debate in the North Carolina legislature, that Jesus wants to exclude gay and lesbian kids from the protections granted in a proposed anti-bullying bill.
Furthermore, if you don’t offend people with your ideas sometimes, I have serious reservations about the value of your ideas. If what you have to say or write about is so obvious as to be anticipated, readily absorbed, or taken for granted, why bother communicating it all?
Babel
With six months left in office, the prez is inflicting as much damage as possible, heating up a new front for his war on (of?) terrorism in Iraq, while snuggling up to fellow antihumanists in the Chinese government, whom, he recently stated, he worries about offending if he took concerns over Tibet's sovereignty and China's myriad human-rights abuses so far as not to attend this summer's Olympics festivities. (Note: China is largely banking our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasing U.S. debt by billions.)
He's also pushing for off-shore drilling, probably less to lower gas prices for consumers (which it probably won't) than to deepen the pockets of his business interests in the oil industry. This from the candidate who wanted in 2000 to be remembered as the "Environmental President," an ambition all the more preposterous when you remember he was running against Al Gore at the time.
Now he's pushing the Dept of Health and Human Services to adopt and enforce new rules limiting federal funding for organizations (including counseling and other social services programs) who don't hire people who will refuse to pass on birth-control information because of their religious convictions. Perhaps he envisions a future when Planned Parenthood will be unable to ensure that parents seeking help will get any sort of "plan" at all.
The new rule also redefines oral contraception and other birth control techniques as abortion, thus radically redefining the word "abortion." (See Robert Pear, "Abortion Proposal Sets Condition on Aid," NY TIMES 07/15/08.)
You will also note that Bush the linguist has also struggled to limit the definition of the word "torture" to exclude water-boarding and other interrogation techniques traditionally viewed as torture. (On the other hand, he supports efforts to limit the word "marriage" to retain its traditional exclusion of same-sex couples.)
His No Child Left Behind initiative, along with his support of school vouchers, has crippled America's public school system. For the present administration, "education" now means teaching to standardized, multiple-choice tests, instead of challenging students to understand the world more clearly and to think for themselves.
(Right now I have no patience with supporters of vouchers benefiting parents who wish to send their children to private schools. If folks want to send their kids to private schools, fine, but public schools are "public" because the public [you, me, all of us] supposedly supports them. As a single man with no children, I get no tax considerations for keeping children out of the public school system either. Paying taxes is part of my responsibility as an American citizen these days; more importantly it's a contribution to the public good, even when my money goes to people and causes that have no personal interest to me individually.)
The innovative vocabulary of the present administration is an affront to logic and reason. Bush's scrambling of syntax has struck many as funny, embarrassing, or cute. But it is more disturbingly a direct attack on our abilities to communicate with each other with any definite meaning or understanding. Further, it's an attack on logic itself.
As Orwell warned in "Politics and the English Language," "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
He's also pushing for off-shore drilling, probably less to lower gas prices for consumers (which it probably won't) than to deepen the pockets of his business interests in the oil industry. This from the candidate who wanted in 2000 to be remembered as the "Environmental President," an ambition all the more preposterous when you remember he was running against Al Gore at the time.
Now he's pushing the Dept of Health and Human Services to adopt and enforce new rules limiting federal funding for organizations (including counseling and other social services programs) who don't hire people who will refuse to pass on birth-control information because of their religious convictions. Perhaps he envisions a future when Planned Parenthood will be unable to ensure that parents seeking help will get any sort of "plan" at all.
The new rule also redefines oral contraception and other birth control techniques as abortion, thus radically redefining the word "abortion." (See Robert Pear, "Abortion Proposal Sets Condition on Aid," NY TIMES 07/15/08.)
You will also note that Bush the linguist has also struggled to limit the definition of the word "torture" to exclude water-boarding and other interrogation techniques traditionally viewed as torture. (On the other hand, he supports efforts to limit the word "marriage" to retain its traditional exclusion of same-sex couples.)
His No Child Left Behind initiative, along with his support of school vouchers, has crippled America's public school system. For the present administration, "education" now means teaching to standardized, multiple-choice tests, instead of challenging students to understand the world more clearly and to think for themselves.
(Right now I have no patience with supporters of vouchers benefiting parents who wish to send their children to private schools. If folks want to send their kids to private schools, fine, but public schools are "public" because the public [you, me, all of us] supposedly supports them. As a single man with no children, I get no tax considerations for keeping children out of the public school system either. Paying taxes is part of my responsibility as an American citizen these days; more importantly it's a contribution to the public good, even when my money goes to people and causes that have no personal interest to me individually.)
The innovative vocabulary of the present administration is an affront to logic and reason. Bush's scrambling of syntax has struck many as funny, embarrassing, or cute. But it is more disturbingly a direct attack on our abilities to communicate with each other with any definite meaning or understanding. Further, it's an attack on logic itself.
As Orwell warned in "Politics and the English Language," "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Eat Your 50-in. 1080p LCD Hi-Def TV
1 tblspn olive oil
Cold-cathode fluorescent lamp
2 tspn grated ginger
2 tspn paprika
2 bay leaves crumbled
2 tspn minced garlic
1 large QAM digital TV tuner, minced
Parsley and cilantro, half cup each
Salt
Chicken stock
2 10-watt stereo speakers, hand-crushed
Julienned zest of chrome finish
Heat oven to 400.
Heat olive oil in large roasting pan, and place lamp, face down, in pan.
Combine ginger, paprika, bay leaves, garlic, tuner, parsley, and cilantro in bowl.
Spread mixture over lamp and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add enough chicken stock to cover the lamp halfway.
Place over high heat and bring to a boil.
Remove pan from heat and place in oven.
Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
Turn lamp over, and continue until plastic is tender and the fluorescent paste bubbly, about 30 minutes.
Transfer lamp to serving platter.
Place pan on stovetop and heat remaining juices to boiling.
Add crushed speakers and chrome zest.
Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
Spoon sauce over lamp, and serve.
Makes 8 servings.
Enjoy with the satisfaction that, while food and fuel supplies dwindle, you had a President who started a two-front war on terrorism, using borrowed money from China, and advised you to go about your daily life, “working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games” (Atlanta, 11/08/01).
Bon appetit.
Cold-cathode fluorescent lamp
2 tspn grated ginger
2 tspn paprika
2 bay leaves crumbled
2 tspn minced garlic
1 large QAM digital TV tuner, minced
Parsley and cilantro, half cup each
Salt
Chicken stock
2 10-watt stereo speakers, hand-crushed
Julienned zest of chrome finish
Heat oven to 400.
Heat olive oil in large roasting pan, and place lamp, face down, in pan.
Combine ginger, paprika, bay leaves, garlic, tuner, parsley, and cilantro in bowl.
Spread mixture over lamp and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add enough chicken stock to cover the lamp halfway.
Place over high heat and bring to a boil.
Remove pan from heat and place in oven.
Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
Turn lamp over, and continue until plastic is tender and the fluorescent paste bubbly, about 30 minutes.
Transfer lamp to serving platter.
Place pan on stovetop and heat remaining juices to boiling.
Add crushed speakers and chrome zest.
Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
Spoon sauce over lamp, and serve.
Makes 8 servings.
Enjoy with the satisfaction that, while food and fuel supplies dwindle, you had a President who started a two-front war on terrorism, using borrowed money from China, and advised you to go about your daily life, “working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games” (Atlanta, 11/08/01).
Bon appetit.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Almost Is the Most All of All
Earlier this evening I voiced an opinion that perfectionists are just the manic side of slackers ... or something like that. That is, for perfectionists and slackers alike the choice is always between 100% and zero--if you can't be perfect, why bother at all?
Perfectionists drive themselves (and others) nuts, basically painting themselves into corners by cutting off all options that promise only a measure of success. Slackers see nothing worthy of an effort because the only reward to effort they can imagine as worthwhile is absolute perfection.
Realists will take a measure of success over nothing any day of the week ... and don't beat themselves for falling short of the highest conceivable attainment, often by recognizing that such an attainment is (almost by definition) a fiction.
Wisdom is realism plus the determination to improve. Life is a pilgrimage where the first step does not have to bring us all the way to our destination. Better is better than nothing, and better is best when there's no such thing as best.
Or something like that.
Perfectionists drive themselves (and others) nuts, basically painting themselves into corners by cutting off all options that promise only a measure of success. Slackers see nothing worthy of an effort because the only reward to effort they can imagine as worthwhile is absolute perfection.
Realists will take a measure of success over nothing any day of the week ... and don't beat themselves for falling short of the highest conceivable attainment, often by recognizing that such an attainment is (almost by definition) a fiction.
Wisdom is realism plus the determination to improve. Life is a pilgrimage where the first step does not have to bring us all the way to our destination. Better is better than nothing, and better is best when there's no such thing as best.
Or something like that.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sunday Night at the Movies: NORTH BY NORTHWEST, dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
Trains play key roles in a number of Hitchcock films, including THE LADY VANISHES, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, and, of course, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.
A train figures prominently in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. The train is the Twentieth Century Limited, which ran from New York to Chicago for 65 years.
Other forms of transportation (automobiles, planes) also play pivotal roles in NxNW—and, as if to point up the importance of transportation in the story, Hitch’s precocious cameo shows the director just missing his bus in Manhattan.
Famously, the plane in NxNW is a threat, as is the automobile. The bad guys use them creatively but ineffectively to try to kill the main character, Roger Thornhill, played with trademark suavity by Cary Grant, perhaps my favorite classic movie star, whose wit and elegance Hollywood has tried to rediscover in subsequent leading men from Tony Curtis to George Clooney.
But Grant is the quintessential leading man, in much the way that NxNW is the quintessential Hitchcock movie … by design, it turns out—screenwriter Ernest Lehman wrote the scrpt, he said, to be “the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films.”
The modern world of machines is no friend of Thornhill—except perhaps for the train, even one ominously named after the century of American technology and global influence, which ambivalently both saves our protagonist and further complicates his already bad situation.
Like a number of Hitchcock’s other films, this one is an examination of American ethics and power—or the ethics of power—or, more particularly, it exploits Hitchcock’s delight in discovering menace in innocuous and seemingly innocent objects, people, and settings—smalltown America, birds, shy motel clerks, the Statue of Liberty, the U.N., sacks of potatoes, and the sunny wide-open spaces of the Corn Belt.
The trouble Thornhill finds himself in fairly early in the plot stems from the shadowy workings of a think tank in the U.S. Intelligence Agency, over which a man simply called The Professor, presides. The movie climaxes at Mt. Rushmore, where Thornhill tries to elude the bad guys one last time by scampering across the gargantuan, somewhat contemptuous stone faces of Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Roosevelt, along with his newly found romantic interest, Eve Kendell (played by Eva Marie Saint in the archetypically glacial blonde mode Hitch favored in heroines).
So the film, planted firmly in the middle of the Cold War, is about espionage, not just as a plot device, but as a way to examine the absence of honesty in modern discourse, now that the USA is a world power.
NxNW has Hitchcock’s usual “wronged man accused of a crime he did not commit” in Thornhill, whose very name evokes Christlike suffering on a new Calvary. But Thornhill is no saint or innocent—his initials are “ROT”—and like the government bigshots who manipulate his reality, he, a Madison Avenue adman, manipulates the reality of the masses. Even more, he fakes chivalry to snatch other people’s taxicabs and escape crowded elevators, and he’s not above bribing his own mother to lie for him.
In the film, mirrored surfaces symbolize the characters’ duplicity and dishonesty—which Saul Bass’s opening credits set up, showing high-rise office windows in Manhattan, indifferently reflecting the comings and goings of the insignificant little citizens below.
The overall look of the film further stresses the point of how impersonal the world has become. Among other things, the movie is quintessentially a modernist work.
Many scenes seem deliberately allusive to Mondrian’s paintings—intersecting lines and sharp angles. The iconic crop-duster scene is carefully composed in diagonal and horizontal lines until, unexpectedly and suddenly, the plane flies directly towards the camera—and us the audience.
Hitchcock’s previous film VERTIGO focused on the fears and obsessions of James Stewart’s character and how they lead him to tragic realizations about his own dark motives, in part with the vibrant colors of San Francisco and the mesmerizing swirling of waves at Big Sur and Kim Novack’s hairdo. (The same swirling movement Hitch used again in PSYCHO, the shower water and blood whirling down the drain.)
Bernard Hermann’s musical score for VERTIGO is beautifully romantic, but his score for NxNW gallops with anxious intensity, punctuated at key moments with clashing cymbals.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST is, apart from Eve Kendell’s bright red coat at the end, almost devoid of color—with grays dominating virtually every scene—the Manhattan skyscrapers, the chrome train, and the looming stone faces at the end. Everything is oversize and threatening and, more importantly, inorganic—civilization removed from nature and humanity.
And deadpan incongruities like the housekeeper Anna’s farewell to arch-villain Vandamme with “God bless you” or the U.S. intelligence officer’s callous response to Thornhill’s life-threatening predicament (“It’s so horribly sad, how is it I feel like laughing?”) suggest to me that NxNW, which operates so obviously on the surface to be dismissible as “just entertainment,” embodies the director’s strongest critique of and skepticism about the dreams and values of his newly adopted homeland.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Baby Don't Pull Away
Today’s topic is intimacy. People think of sex immediately, but, though fucking is intimate, intimacy does not have to be erotic.
Americans are hung up today over closeness and touch. (I include myself to a large extent.) Gone are the days when two hetero guys might share a bed or hold hands and not get a little freaked out. Believe it or not, in the nineteenth century in America, two dudes holding hands was no big deal. Almost gone are the days when two girls can feel comfortable being openly affectionate.
Forget kids. Forget third grade teachers giving the kids a hug and running their fingers through the kids’ hair. Parents and their attorneys would have a conniption. On the one hand, this is tragic, because kids, like dogs, don’t have much vocabulary for expressing and understanding intimacy, and they sometimes need to be touched, picked up, carried around on some adult’s shoulders. To feel adored. To feel protected. To feel noticed.
No, not abused. And not needlessly pushed around either—since, on the other hand, a high percentage of adult-kid touching instigated by the adult serves the ego and interests mainly of the adult, not so much the kid—Remember Aunt Whazzit smashing your tiny face into her itchy wool sweater.
But, still, I could see an adult and a child bonding quite nicely while both use crayons to draw together on a nice big square of construction paper on the living-room floor. Unplug the Wii for a few hours.
Intersubjectivity is a fancy word for intimacy. Sharing and entering into each other’s subjective states. Opening up. Telling your story and listening to the other guy’s story. Empathizing.
Doesn’t have to be a 12-step program. Doesn’t have to be therapy. And doesn’t have to be foreplay.
One of the most intimate things an ex and I did back when we were partners was buy two copies of Larry Rivers’ WHAT DID I DO? and over a couple of days alternated reading chapters to each other aloud. Laughing so hard at parts of it, we collapsed into tears. Having someone read aloud to you is surprisingly intimate. Try it.
Later, some years later, the two of us met up again, post-breakup, at the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park. We were waiting for a third friend to show, who did not show, and it started to rain. We sat under an awning at the tea house, drinking green tea and nibbling rice crackers. We talked for two or three hours about peaceful, friendly, loving matters while watching the rain fall.
One of the great moments of my life.
Accumulating thousands of MySpace friends is not intimacy. It’s statistics.
Intimacy is face to face, with or without touching, with or without speaking. It’s sharing of the self. Humming together. Painting each other’s nails. Inspecting each other’s fur for fleas, like apes.
It requires some imagination—to get inside another person’s head and look at the world through his or her eyes. It requires heightened awareness of sensation—you have to sense the person’s aura or physical warmth.
It’s the one true path to wisdom and understanding.
Americans are hung up today over closeness and touch. (I include myself to a large extent.) Gone are the days when two hetero guys might share a bed or hold hands and not get a little freaked out. Believe it or not, in the nineteenth century in America, two dudes holding hands was no big deal. Almost gone are the days when two girls can feel comfortable being openly affectionate.
Forget kids. Forget third grade teachers giving the kids a hug and running their fingers through the kids’ hair. Parents and their attorneys would have a conniption. On the one hand, this is tragic, because kids, like dogs, don’t have much vocabulary for expressing and understanding intimacy, and they sometimes need to be touched, picked up, carried around on some adult’s shoulders. To feel adored. To feel protected. To feel noticed.
No, not abused. And not needlessly pushed around either—since, on the other hand, a high percentage of adult-kid touching instigated by the adult serves the ego and interests mainly of the adult, not so much the kid—Remember Aunt Whazzit smashing your tiny face into her itchy wool sweater.
But, still, I could see an adult and a child bonding quite nicely while both use crayons to draw together on a nice big square of construction paper on the living-room floor. Unplug the Wii for a few hours.
Intersubjectivity is a fancy word for intimacy. Sharing and entering into each other’s subjective states. Opening up. Telling your story and listening to the other guy’s story. Empathizing.
Doesn’t have to be a 12-step program. Doesn’t have to be therapy. And doesn’t have to be foreplay.
One of the most intimate things an ex and I did back when we were partners was buy two copies of Larry Rivers’ WHAT DID I DO? and over a couple of days alternated reading chapters to each other aloud. Laughing so hard at parts of it, we collapsed into tears. Having someone read aloud to you is surprisingly intimate. Try it.
Later, some years later, the two of us met up again, post-breakup, at the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park. We were waiting for a third friend to show, who did not show, and it started to rain. We sat under an awning at the tea house, drinking green tea and nibbling rice crackers. We talked for two or three hours about peaceful, friendly, loving matters while watching the rain fall.
One of the great moments of my life.
Accumulating thousands of MySpace friends is not intimacy. It’s statistics.
Intimacy is face to face, with or without touching, with or without speaking. It’s sharing of the self. Humming together. Painting each other’s nails. Inspecting each other’s fur for fleas, like apes.
It requires some imagination—to get inside another person’s head and look at the world through his or her eyes. It requires heightened awareness of sensation—you have to sense the person’s aura or physical warmth.
It’s the one true path to wisdom and understanding.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Republicans for Obama
I missed the story when it was news late in April, but in the new issue of ROLLING STONE I saw that Julie Nixon Eisenhower made the maximum possible single-person contribution to Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign.
Yep, she is the daughter of President Nixon and the granddaughter-in-law of President Eisenhower—still a Republican, but throwing her weight behind Obama, not McCain.
Other conservative Americans are also considering Obama. Besides Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of the current President, who announced on the Larry King show that she might vote for Obama, Obama gets favorable words (though not actual endorsements and contributions) also from Colin Powell (who basically said he would not vote for Obama just because he’s black any more than he would vote for McCain just because he’s a veteran) and Peggy Noonan, primary speechwriter for President Reagan.
Does this mean these folks are now liberal? Hardly. For the most part they are reacting against either “neocon”-brand conservatism, which basically has directed White House foreign policy for the past eight years, if not longer, or the scary influence of the military-industrial complex over U.S. politics in both major parties, which has existed at least since President Eisenhower pulled its lid off in his farewell speech in 1961.
These conservatives see Obama as a breath of fresh air in the corrosive world of politics, war-mongering, and corporate greed. Their brand of conservatism calls for fiscal responsibility, reluctance to enter into foreign conflicts, and libertarian views on matters of personal choice—like abortion and gay rights.
Does this then mean that Obama is conservative? Not exactly. In some respects, perhaps yes, if we accept the old-fashioned Goldwater sense of a conservative. Barry Goldwater parted company with Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s over the oppressive influence of the Moral Majority and similar religious-based groups in the Republican Party, and, despite his hawklike militarism of the 1960s, basically espoused the traditional rightwing ideals stated above.
Obama is hardly a libertarian, though. Yet he does not yet appear to be in anybody’s pocket—not the religious right’s, not corporate interests’. His avoidance of the jargon of fear and hysteria, which other politicians have exploited for so long now, appeals to the more rational, commonsense adherents to conservative politics.
Now that McCain so readily embraces Bushism and, in particular, the Iraq war, even thinking people on the right are turning away from him—and seeking a new approach, apparently even if it comes out of the Democratic Party.
Yep, she is the daughter of President Nixon and the granddaughter-in-law of President Eisenhower—still a Republican, but throwing her weight behind Obama, not McCain.
Other conservative Americans are also considering Obama. Besides Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of the current President, who announced on the Larry King show that she might vote for Obama, Obama gets favorable words (though not actual endorsements and contributions) also from Colin Powell (who basically said he would not vote for Obama just because he’s black any more than he would vote for McCain just because he’s a veteran) and Peggy Noonan, primary speechwriter for President Reagan.
Does this mean these folks are now liberal? Hardly. For the most part they are reacting against either “neocon”-brand conservatism, which basically has directed White House foreign policy for the past eight years, if not longer, or the scary influence of the military-industrial complex over U.S. politics in both major parties, which has existed at least since President Eisenhower pulled its lid off in his farewell speech in 1961.
These conservatives see Obama as a breath of fresh air in the corrosive world of politics, war-mongering, and corporate greed. Their brand of conservatism calls for fiscal responsibility, reluctance to enter into foreign conflicts, and libertarian views on matters of personal choice—like abortion and gay rights.
Does this then mean that Obama is conservative? Not exactly. In some respects, perhaps yes, if we accept the old-fashioned Goldwater sense of a conservative. Barry Goldwater parted company with Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s over the oppressive influence of the Moral Majority and similar religious-based groups in the Republican Party, and, despite his hawklike militarism of the 1960s, basically espoused the traditional rightwing ideals stated above.
Obama is hardly a libertarian, though. Yet he does not yet appear to be in anybody’s pocket—not the religious right’s, not corporate interests’. His avoidance of the jargon of fear and hysteria, which other politicians have exploited for so long now, appeals to the more rational, commonsense adherents to conservative politics.
Now that McCain so readily embraces Bushism and, in particular, the Iraq war, even thinking people on the right are turning away from him—and seeking a new approach, apparently even if it comes out of the Democratic Party.
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