Recently I started writing my autobiography. Benvenuto Cellini once said anyone who had achieved anything had the responsibility to do so. What Cellini actually said was more along the lines of every important man (of which number he included himself) needed to do so, but I'll make his comment more inclusive.
I'm finding that writing about my life is far more difficult than I anticipated, not the least because I've needed to confront my demons with honesty and persistence, none of which I expected when I started. I'm finding, like Judy Collins in her song about life and clouds, that life's illusions are seductive side alleys.
Writing about life and living means dealing with parts of life that have been neatly (or maybe not so neatly) locked away in the file cabinets that are our brains. Sometimes we have tried to dump these memories because they are painful, or because they reveal us in ways we would prefer not to show the world. Whatever the reason, if one is to write an autobiography rather than a straight history or a journal, it is necessary to deal with feelings, prejudices, fears, unruly emotions--the things that make us human and also make life difficult. The good stuff in our lives is easy. It's the darker things we learn from--and, as I am learning, we all have them.
I've written many times in this blog about my dismay with religion and politics. Both of these pursuits have been with us since our earliest days as human beings. At least, we assume they have since every time we come across a new cave painting or carving, the first guess we make is that it is ceremonial and has to do with religion. Part of that is extrapolating onto ancient people our own need to find purpose in life and to express the wonder of our own improbable existence. I've been reading a history of the British Isles and have to wonder how my ancestors survived the plundering, warfare, plagues, and natural disasters--why me? why any of us? why didn't our ancestral lines die out? I suppose this is why we pay professional religionists to tell us what to think about these things.
When it comes to religion, I get the human impulse, but at the same time, I doubt the "accepted" answers we are told we have to believe. I cannot accept the idea of some godhead sitting in judgment of the day to day activities of four billion people in the world, and I am offended when someone says that their lucky escape from some disaster was a deity's handiwork when that means that all the others who weren't so lucky were on his s-- list. It doesn't work that way--and herein my problem both with religion and with politics: they are the creation of the human species, born out of our need to feel part of a group, and, even more, to feel superior.
There's a Jewish joke about a town always needing two synagogues: the one you attend and the one you don't. The implication, of course, is that your synagogue (or church, or school, or political opinion) is better than the other. All this is absolute nonsense. Nothing religious can be proved--that's what faith means--yet we are willing to kill each other over it. In politics, I doubt very much that someone asked directly to support a political prejudice (the poor are lazy for example) can produce any data to prove it. It is sufficient only for the speaker to feel good about themselves by judging other people.
If you look back to the last time we were told that the US was going to hell, that freedom as we know it has been lost, and that our children will never know the "real" America, it occurred when Reagan was running for president and he was talking about Medicare (which he promised to oppose). We older folk gratefully accept Medicare these days as undoubtedly we will accept the newest health care reforms in the years ahead. Obamacare may well be one of the cornerstones of our future. Politics is the art of finding people's prejudices and getting out in front of them--all the while hoping that people are too vain to notice.
I think Cellini is right--we all need at some point to sit down to look ourselves in the mirror and ask what the heck we are about. I highly recommend writing an autobiography, finding out why we are so willing to accept the closing of our minds through religion, why we are so willing to give up our individuality in the name of conforming to some political position or other that makes absolutely no sense when looked at in the dispassionate light of day, and why we don't trust our own observations of a universe that deserves so much better from us.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Looking Back Down the Road
These days, we hear endless talk from certain circles about not liking illegals, not liking the national debt, not liking Nancy Pelosi, not much liking the unemployed (but loving the unemployment rate as long as it is going up or down), not liking paying for education, not liking anyone else getting something for nothing all the while greedily accepting whatever pension or public slop comes down the trough. Everyone's unhappy with something; some are unhappy with everything; some just don't want anything but anarchy; some just want change for its own sake.
All this compaining seems to be burned into the human psyche.
I bet when they were building the pyramids, Kufu the stone carver grumbled about all those freeloading illegals come over from Sinai, stealing jobs from the locals and having too many children. And what about the pharaoh, how intelligent is it to run up the national debt just to build a tomb? It has to be the influence of all the homosexual courtiers waving about more than their fans. And what about Ramses, the new wonderboy stone cutter that everyone wants to carve on their tombs? It's all about youth anymore. Now back in the days, life was good: women didn't meddle in politics and children were raised to respect their elders--not playing in the streets but working to help support the family. There was more discpline and more respect for the gods--today we need to burn more incense, slaughter more sheep, and return Egypt to what it once was.
So as Kufu chips and shapes the blocks of masonry, he dreams of returning to this wonderful past. It's a time he hardly remembers except through the haze of years--choosing to forget the violence, illiteracy, and short lifespans that were part of daily life. It was a halcyon time for Kufu because it was familiar and he had a place within it. The fact that it may not be for anyone else escapes him.
Kufu's unfocused nostalgia continues today. It lives on among our conservative brethren who would like to return us to something, although I'm not clear what.
Is it, I wonder, the days of the early Republic when members of Congress fired pistols in the halls and beat one another about the head with canes? When the South based its economy on cotton and slavery? When a woman who didn't conform was burned as a witch? Or is it the early 19th Century with the settlement of the West when graveyards were full of children dead from lack of medical attention and when law was only as good as the fastest draw? Is it the late 19th Century when women and children were the chattel of their husbands and only men of property could vote? Or was it the early 20th Century when the world was consumed in war after war? When my grandfather would have denied me an education because teaching a woman more than housework was a waste? When my grandmother would have been startled by my irreligious attitudes? When my greatgrandparents would have sent me to work in the mills to help pay the rent?
I have to admit that I can do a credible Kufu too. I remember happy times from my childhood in 1950s Britain. People seemed more neighborly. Life seemed less rushed. There wasn't such an emphasis on what Wordsworth called getting and spending. But before I get carried away, I remember my mother and her friends doing a Kufu over the loss of Britain's empire. Having an empire meant prestige for her generation; yet how many among us today would advocate acquiring one? My memories are obviously cherrypicked.
The kids raised today will probably look back on life in the early 21st Century as familiar because it is all they have ever known. Now that is a thought.
All this compaining seems to be burned into the human psyche.
I bet when they were building the pyramids, Kufu the stone carver grumbled about all those freeloading illegals come over from Sinai, stealing jobs from the locals and having too many children. And what about the pharaoh, how intelligent is it to run up the national debt just to build a tomb? It has to be the influence of all the homosexual courtiers waving about more than their fans. And what about Ramses, the new wonderboy stone cutter that everyone wants to carve on their tombs? It's all about youth anymore. Now back in the days, life was good: women didn't meddle in politics and children were raised to respect their elders--not playing in the streets but working to help support the family. There was more discpline and more respect for the gods--today we need to burn more incense, slaughter more sheep, and return Egypt to what it once was.
So as Kufu chips and shapes the blocks of masonry, he dreams of returning to this wonderful past. It's a time he hardly remembers except through the haze of years--choosing to forget the violence, illiteracy, and short lifespans that were part of daily life. It was a halcyon time for Kufu because it was familiar and he had a place within it. The fact that it may not be for anyone else escapes him.
Kufu's unfocused nostalgia continues today. It lives on among our conservative brethren who would like to return us to something, although I'm not clear what.
Is it, I wonder, the days of the early Republic when members of Congress fired pistols in the halls and beat one another about the head with canes? When the South based its economy on cotton and slavery? When a woman who didn't conform was burned as a witch? Or is it the early 19th Century with the settlement of the West when graveyards were full of children dead from lack of medical attention and when law was only as good as the fastest draw? Is it the late 19th Century when women and children were the chattel of their husbands and only men of property could vote? Or was it the early 20th Century when the world was consumed in war after war? When my grandfather would have denied me an education because teaching a woman more than housework was a waste? When my grandmother would have been startled by my irreligious attitudes? When my greatgrandparents would have sent me to work in the mills to help pay the rent?
I have to admit that I can do a credible Kufu too. I remember happy times from my childhood in 1950s Britain. People seemed more neighborly. Life seemed less rushed. There wasn't such an emphasis on what Wordsworth called getting and spending. But before I get carried away, I remember my mother and her friends doing a Kufu over the loss of Britain's empire. Having an empire meant prestige for her generation; yet how many among us today would advocate acquiring one? My memories are obviously cherrypicked.
The kids raised today will probably look back on life in the early 21st Century as familiar because it is all they have ever known. Now that is a thought.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Cellphones Mon Amour
A luddite I am not: I do not go around smashing technology because I am wedded to things as they are. In fact, I think I've been very welcoming of most of our advances.
I owned a PC in the 1980s when they first became generally available (don't even ask what I paid for it. Hint: I had to take a loan and pay it off over time and I used WordStar and Xywrite word processing programs). I've even done fairly well learning to use the television remote, which looks like it could launch a space shuttle and has buttons so small you need a magnifiying glass to read them. The VCR programmer was another matter, but the less said about that the better.
What I want to talk about is my new cell phone.
All I really want in a cell phone is basic stuff, like store a number, dial it, answer a ring, let me know if there's a message, and shut on and off in a reasonable manner. I started ther service when I was widowed and wanted to be able to call AAA if I got a flat. My first phone, which I kept for many, many moons was just that. I learned the features as I needed them and I was happy as a clam until I forgot the thing in Starbucks outside Flagstaff and no one turned it in. It must have been someone less savvy than I because who else would bother with something so ancient?
Well, there I was in Arizona, six hundred miles from home and no phone. I didn't feel like driving home on long, empty roads without one and I didn't like the idea of waiting outside the restroom in some rest stop pleading with someone to make a call for me. Something clearly had to be done. I headed into the local Radio Shack. That's where I encountered a glittering world of the modern cell phone. It was culture shock.
When I was a child, I used to watch the weekly serials down at the local cinema. Kid's matinee it was called. One favorite was Flash Gordon, sort of a space cowboy who went from planet to planet and was always in some dire strait or another. The new cell phones were worthy of him.
"Do you want internet access?" the clerk asked me. He had this sort of doubtful look on his face as if he didn't believe at my age I knew the difference between ROM and RAM. Since those phones made my TV remote look deprived and required monthly IP access charges, I shook my head. He looked at me with pity.
"I have internet access on my home PC," I said with stiff dignity. "I use Skype long distance calling through my laptop. I just need a basic phone."
"Games and built-in camera? Choice of ring tones?" he asked. I shook my head. "Well," he said, "they come basic with all phones so it's a matter of quality and choice."
"Won't need them," I said.
"Blue tooth?" He asked. I had to think. I remembered that my grandson had a blue tooth on his game set. "I prefer to use a headset in the car," I replied. He looked at me sadly. His eyes said it all.
"Well," he said, "here's our most basic phone." I looked at the gleaming monster he handed me. It sat in the palm of my hand and cost almost $200. I looked at the others. This was indeed the cheapest as they were costing upwards of $500 amd looked like little tvs. He saw me looking at them and took one down. He turned it one way and it was a phone; when he turned it around he could type text onto the screen. He did it quickly using his thumbs. With my arthritic thumbs, it would take me hours to tap anything in.
"Cute," I said. That must not have been the right thing to say. "These are mini computers," he corrected me. "You can watch movies on them." I smiled sheepishly, not able to imagine watching something that small for hours. I would see double at the end.
I finally left with my "basic" call phone. It came "free" with renewing my two-year commitment to T-Mobile, which I would have done anyway since the service works for me. He had to show me how to open the darned thing (it slides instead of flips). I have used the camera once, just to see how it worked and promptly forgot how to do it except when I get into it by mistake--then it's tricky to get out of it. After several weeks I've managed to figure out how to set speed dial and how to change the ring tones. I can get my messages and finally set my PIN. It works. That's all I asked.
But, just to remind me whom these phones are meant for: my grandson grabbed the phone when he saw it, played everyone of the games on it, told me that it would connect to the internet if I ever wanted it, and asked why I wasn't downloading the cool tunes for sale as ring tones. When I explained I wouldn't be doing all that, he looked at me with the same pitying eyes as the Radio Shack clerk.
I owned a PC in the 1980s when they first became generally available (don't even ask what I paid for it. Hint: I had to take a loan and pay it off over time and I used WordStar and Xywrite word processing programs). I've even done fairly well learning to use the television remote, which looks like it could launch a space shuttle and has buttons so small you need a magnifiying glass to read them. The VCR programmer was another matter, but the less said about that the better.
What I want to talk about is my new cell phone.
All I really want in a cell phone is basic stuff, like store a number, dial it, answer a ring, let me know if there's a message, and shut on and off in a reasonable manner. I started ther service when I was widowed and wanted to be able to call AAA if I got a flat. My first phone, which I kept for many, many moons was just that. I learned the features as I needed them and I was happy as a clam until I forgot the thing in Starbucks outside Flagstaff and no one turned it in. It must have been someone less savvy than I because who else would bother with something so ancient?
Well, there I was in Arizona, six hundred miles from home and no phone. I didn't feel like driving home on long, empty roads without one and I didn't like the idea of waiting outside the restroom in some rest stop pleading with someone to make a call for me. Something clearly had to be done. I headed into the local Radio Shack. That's where I encountered a glittering world of the modern cell phone. It was culture shock.
When I was a child, I used to watch the weekly serials down at the local cinema. Kid's matinee it was called. One favorite was Flash Gordon, sort of a space cowboy who went from planet to planet and was always in some dire strait or another. The new cell phones were worthy of him.
"Do you want internet access?" the clerk asked me. He had this sort of doubtful look on his face as if he didn't believe at my age I knew the difference between ROM and RAM. Since those phones made my TV remote look deprived and required monthly IP access charges, I shook my head. He looked at me with pity.
"I have internet access on my home PC," I said with stiff dignity. "I use Skype long distance calling through my laptop. I just need a basic phone."
"Games and built-in camera? Choice of ring tones?" he asked. I shook my head. "Well," he said, "they come basic with all phones so it's a matter of quality and choice."
"Won't need them," I said.
"Blue tooth?" He asked. I had to think. I remembered that my grandson had a blue tooth on his game set. "I prefer to use a headset in the car," I replied. He looked at me sadly. His eyes said it all.
"Well," he said, "here's our most basic phone." I looked at the gleaming monster he handed me. It sat in the palm of my hand and cost almost $200. I looked at the others. This was indeed the cheapest as they were costing upwards of $500 amd looked like little tvs. He saw me looking at them and took one down. He turned it one way and it was a phone; when he turned it around he could type text onto the screen. He did it quickly using his thumbs. With my arthritic thumbs, it would take me hours to tap anything in.
"Cute," I said. That must not have been the right thing to say. "These are mini computers," he corrected me. "You can watch movies on them." I smiled sheepishly, not able to imagine watching something that small for hours. I would see double at the end.
I finally left with my "basic" call phone. It came "free" with renewing my two-year commitment to T-Mobile, which I would have done anyway since the service works for me. He had to show me how to open the darned thing (it slides instead of flips). I have used the camera once, just to see how it worked and promptly forgot how to do it except when I get into it by mistake--then it's tricky to get out of it. After several weeks I've managed to figure out how to set speed dial and how to change the ring tones. I can get my messages and finally set my PIN. It works. That's all I asked.
But, just to remind me whom these phones are meant for: my grandson grabbed the phone when he saw it, played everyone of the games on it, told me that it would connect to the internet if I ever wanted it, and asked why I wasn't downloading the cool tunes for sale as ring tones. When I explained I wouldn't be doing all that, he looked at me with the same pitying eyes as the Radio Shack clerk.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Senior Season at Yellowstone
There's nothing like the national parks when it comes to bringing out stupidity. I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe it's just excitement that breeds obliviousness, but it seems seeing a bison or an elk reduces otherwise normal people to quivering bowls of jelly.
We're just back from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks where we encountered all the best that humanity has to offer. It seems, unbeknownst to us that there is a phenomenon called the "senior season." I guess it must be all those seniors (like us) who figure the regular summer season with kids--make that noisy kids who can never walk anywhere--ends with Labor Day thus ushering in a period with fewer cars and available hotel rooms.
Whatever the reasoning, the period between Labor Day and the closing of the park (starts shutting down the end of September to end of October) is now one of the hot times to visit. We couldn't reserve any rooms in the park lodges even a month in advance and paid $140 a night for a Super8 room in Jackson. The Visitor's Bureau told us we were lucky to have found a room at all.
Yellowstone it appears is as popular as the Grand Canyon as a destination, judging by all the tour buses disgorging their Asian visitors and by the two rows of seating packed with spectators that circled around Old Faithful, which faithfully erupted on time. We stayed at West Yellowstone, which is actually fun as far as tourist towns go. All the animals we saw (bison and elk) were along the park road leading to the town, and the bison indeed did walk down the middle of the road. Herein lies some of the stupidity we saw.
For those who care for details, bison (American buffalo) weigh around 500 pounds. They don't see very well and are inclined to lumber along rolling their eyes and looking unimpressed. Each year, one hundred large animals get hit by cars and cause $150,000 in damage, presumably to vehicles. We were stopped on the road to let three rather large bulls walk down between the rows of cars when the very small car in front of us pops the sun roof just as one passes and a woman suddenly pokes her head out to start taking pictures. It startled me so I can't imagine it pleased the bison. The one next to her car started and then veeered away. Good thing it wasn't in a mood to be cranky as the animal was as large as the car and its head was pretty much on a level with hers. Only thing more silly were the occupants of cars up ahead who were running back down the road and trying to get beside the animals for more pictures.
The presence of animals did really strange things to people. Cars stopped in the middle of the road while the occupants got out. Other cars parked under signs that said do not park alongside the road. I saw one SUV parked across three handicapped parking spaces. Maybe you can't get a ticket if you don't park properly?
But it wasn't just animals. The geyser fields were another source of mischief. Apparently, there were those who didn't believe the warnings about unstable ground that can give way into scalding underground cauldrons. One fellow actually lay on his stomach on a slippery boardwalk because he wanted to dip his hand into runoff water to see if it was hot. Since the signs said the water in some locations could range from 160 to 280 degrees, one can only wonder about him. I suspect this is where the Darwin Awards might have originated.
Then there were the drivers--and not just of the trucks and RVs. I discovered in Old Faithful Lodge that power wheelchairs be a powerful extension of personal aggression just like the large trucks, invariably driven by older men possibly trying to recover lost youth and power by driving 25 in a 45 mile zone and refusing to use pullouts.
Ah humanity! Was it worth it? Of course. The national parks always are. But with visits to Yellowstone now at an annual rate of nearly 600,000 a year and all the others equally being loved to death, I would have to think hard about going back. On the other hand--I'd really like to see Yosemite.
We're just back from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks where we encountered all the best that humanity has to offer. It seems, unbeknownst to us that there is a phenomenon called the "senior season." I guess it must be all those seniors (like us) who figure the regular summer season with kids--make that noisy kids who can never walk anywhere--ends with Labor Day thus ushering in a period with fewer cars and available hotel rooms.
Whatever the reasoning, the period between Labor Day and the closing of the park (starts shutting down the end of September to end of October) is now one of the hot times to visit. We couldn't reserve any rooms in the park lodges even a month in advance and paid $140 a night for a Super8 room in Jackson. The Visitor's Bureau told us we were lucky to have found a room at all.
Yellowstone it appears is as popular as the Grand Canyon as a destination, judging by all the tour buses disgorging their Asian visitors and by the two rows of seating packed with spectators that circled around Old Faithful, which faithfully erupted on time. We stayed at West Yellowstone, which is actually fun as far as tourist towns go. All the animals we saw (bison and elk) were along the park road leading to the town, and the bison indeed did walk down the middle of the road. Herein lies some of the stupidity we saw.
For those who care for details, bison (American buffalo) weigh around 500 pounds. They don't see very well and are inclined to lumber along rolling their eyes and looking unimpressed. Each year, one hundred large animals get hit by cars and cause $150,000 in damage, presumably to vehicles. We were stopped on the road to let three rather large bulls walk down between the rows of cars when the very small car in front of us pops the sun roof just as one passes and a woman suddenly pokes her head out to start taking pictures. It startled me so I can't imagine it pleased the bison. The one next to her car started and then veeered away. Good thing it wasn't in a mood to be cranky as the animal was as large as the car and its head was pretty much on a level with hers. Only thing more silly were the occupants of cars up ahead who were running back down the road and trying to get beside the animals for more pictures.
The presence of animals did really strange things to people. Cars stopped in the middle of the road while the occupants got out. Other cars parked under signs that said do not park alongside the road. I saw one SUV parked across three handicapped parking spaces. Maybe you can't get a ticket if you don't park properly?
But it wasn't just animals. The geyser fields were another source of mischief. Apparently, there were those who didn't believe the warnings about unstable ground that can give way into scalding underground cauldrons. One fellow actually lay on his stomach on a slippery boardwalk because he wanted to dip his hand into runoff water to see if it was hot. Since the signs said the water in some locations could range from 160 to 280 degrees, one can only wonder about him. I suspect this is where the Darwin Awards might have originated.
Then there were the drivers--and not just of the trucks and RVs. I discovered in Old Faithful Lodge that power wheelchairs be a powerful extension of personal aggression just like the large trucks, invariably driven by older men possibly trying to recover lost youth and power by driving 25 in a 45 mile zone and refusing to use pullouts.
Ah humanity! Was it worth it? Of course. The national parks always are. But with visits to Yellowstone now at an annual rate of nearly 600,000 a year and all the others equally being loved to death, I would have to think hard about going back. On the other hand--I'd really like to see Yosemite.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Trust
Aristotle continues to fascinate me as I read further into his study of politics. In his opinion, one of the greatest dangers to demomcracy is running for office because it exacerbates the conflict between rich and poor--the greatest threat in his opinion because it can lead to civil war.
It works like this: The rich believe they should have more say because they have the wealth. The poor think they should have more power because everyone is equal and there are more of them. Both have a point, he says, and both are wrong because whichever one gains the power will govern in their own interest and not for the common good. This, he says, is the flaw of democracy.
I’d add another flaw. It’s quite possible for a group of people to exercise their democratic right and vote in a dictatorship. Hitler was elected to power. But I digress.
Running for office is dangerous to the common good, he says, because candidates for office have every reason to become demagogues and appeal to the naked self-interest of each group. Particularly damaging is what Aristotle calls “the wanton behavior of the popular leaders.” In other words, graft and self-interest, leading to an erosion of trust and the destruction of balance between competing interests. Maintaining a democracy, in other words, requires balance and trust.
How do we compare? Not a lot of balance these days, I’m afraid. It seems that 39% of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of 5% of the population and that 5% has learned it can do without most of the rest of us. Producing wealth doesn’t require a middle class or even much of a blue collar workforce when money is made by manipulating funds across nations.
I’m reminded of what someone once told me about the car rental business. “Hertz isn’t in the rental business anymore. They make more off the insurance they sell. So they’re an insurance company that rents and sells cars on the side.” Same thing can be said for the large corporations. They really aren’t into customer service and producing a product. Their major money comes from creating and spinning off subsidiaries. They manage by crisis. Just ask BP and, for that matter, the Corps of Engineers, the subject of an unflattering documentary called “The Big Uneasy.” But then, who cares? There’s no accountability beyond maintaining stock prices and CEOs are proving to be yet another disposable product.
As for trust—well, the depressing roster of politicos called on the rug—and I’m sure those are just the ones we know about—doesn’t create much of a climate for it. Plus the ravenous media who have turned journalism into pandering create a fertile climate for national paranoia. Those who were screaming about Obama attending the Rev. Wright’s Christian church are now screaming about his being Muslim. The only consistency appears to be that it’s OK to make up facts as long as you don’t like the man.
For those who think I exaggerate on the press, consider the headline (real)” Thirty percent of Americans support the Tea Party.” Impressive? Turn it around: “Fifty-six percent do NOT support the Tea Party.” I don’t about the others who are undecided. I guess they don’t have TV sets.
Aristotle’s point on democracy is that if the friction between rich and poor is allowed to widen and deepen the result is civil war. So he’d say what we need is some balance. Here’s my idea of it:
Tea Party—calm down. You do not have the market on civil rights. In fact, many of your members (male, white, over 50) didn’t support the civil rights movement when it happened; it’s only the most blatant hypocrisy and ignorance that is driving your self-righteousness. You are being funded by corporate interests, which means you are being used.
Media--go back to the days when your profession was honorable and you had some ethics. Mainstream media should not be the same as the paparazzi. Let’s have some Pulitzer Prize winning investigative stories that don’t just confirm everyone’s biases.
Republicans—for heaven’s sake repudiate some of the lunacy. Candidate Maes’ comments that he doesn’t have to pander to the moderates is going to turn off everyone. Remember when you received 1% of the vote with an extreme candidate? If you feel you can’t win without the extremes, it tells me that you have become a party of extremes.
Democrats—will you please stay out of things that don’t concern you. And will you please understand that you are never going to get the Republicans to agree with you on anything until they find their voice and their direction. It wouldn’t hurt you to find a clearer voice either.
If democracy matters more than just using a slogan to beat someone on the head, then it has to matter to all of us. Maybe we can learn to trust that our government really has our best interests at heart--once our collective heads stop spinning. Until then, screaming at one another may be cathartic—but how valuable will that be when this country goes up in smoke and we live under martial law?
It works like this: The rich believe they should have more say because they have the wealth. The poor think they should have more power because everyone is equal and there are more of them. Both have a point, he says, and both are wrong because whichever one gains the power will govern in their own interest and not for the common good. This, he says, is the flaw of democracy.
I’d add another flaw. It’s quite possible for a group of people to exercise their democratic right and vote in a dictatorship. Hitler was elected to power. But I digress.
Running for office is dangerous to the common good, he says, because candidates for office have every reason to become demagogues and appeal to the naked self-interest of each group. Particularly damaging is what Aristotle calls “the wanton behavior of the popular leaders.” In other words, graft and self-interest, leading to an erosion of trust and the destruction of balance between competing interests. Maintaining a democracy, in other words, requires balance and trust.
How do we compare? Not a lot of balance these days, I’m afraid. It seems that 39% of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of 5% of the population and that 5% has learned it can do without most of the rest of us. Producing wealth doesn’t require a middle class or even much of a blue collar workforce when money is made by manipulating funds across nations.
I’m reminded of what someone once told me about the car rental business. “Hertz isn’t in the rental business anymore. They make more off the insurance they sell. So they’re an insurance company that rents and sells cars on the side.” Same thing can be said for the large corporations. They really aren’t into customer service and producing a product. Their major money comes from creating and spinning off subsidiaries. They manage by crisis. Just ask BP and, for that matter, the Corps of Engineers, the subject of an unflattering documentary called “The Big Uneasy.” But then, who cares? There’s no accountability beyond maintaining stock prices and CEOs are proving to be yet another disposable product.
As for trust—well, the depressing roster of politicos called on the rug—and I’m sure those are just the ones we know about—doesn’t create much of a climate for it. Plus the ravenous media who have turned journalism into pandering create a fertile climate for national paranoia. Those who were screaming about Obama attending the Rev. Wright’s Christian church are now screaming about his being Muslim. The only consistency appears to be that it’s OK to make up facts as long as you don’t like the man.
For those who think I exaggerate on the press, consider the headline (real)” Thirty percent of Americans support the Tea Party.” Impressive? Turn it around: “Fifty-six percent do NOT support the Tea Party.” I don’t about the others who are undecided. I guess they don’t have TV sets.
Aristotle’s point on democracy is that if the friction between rich and poor is allowed to widen and deepen the result is civil war. So he’d say what we need is some balance. Here’s my idea of it:
Tea Party—calm down. You do not have the market on civil rights. In fact, many of your members (male, white, over 50) didn’t support the civil rights movement when it happened; it’s only the most blatant hypocrisy and ignorance that is driving your self-righteousness. You are being funded by corporate interests, which means you are being used.
Media--go back to the days when your profession was honorable and you had some ethics. Mainstream media should not be the same as the paparazzi. Let’s have some Pulitzer Prize winning investigative stories that don’t just confirm everyone’s biases.
Republicans—for heaven’s sake repudiate some of the lunacy. Candidate Maes’ comments that he doesn’t have to pander to the moderates is going to turn off everyone. Remember when you received 1% of the vote with an extreme candidate? If you feel you can’t win without the extremes, it tells me that you have become a party of extremes.
Democrats—will you please stay out of things that don’t concern you. And will you please understand that you are never going to get the Republicans to agree with you on anything until they find their voice and their direction. It wouldn’t hurt you to find a clearer voice either.
If democracy matters more than just using a slogan to beat someone on the head, then it has to matter to all of us. Maybe we can learn to trust that our government really has our best interests at heart--once our collective heads stop spinning. Until then, screaming at one another may be cathartic—but how valuable will that be when this country goes up in smoke and we live under martial law?
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Telos
I’ve been rereading Aristotle’s Politics lately, feeling rather glad that our thinking has advanced a bit since he wrote that there are some people who are born to be slaves and that women are naturally inferior. As usual, I had to get beyond those parts and, as usual, once I did, I remembered why I find him worth the time.
Most interesting to me are his concepts of the goal of politics and his concept of telos, roughly translated as meaning purpose or use.
To paraphrase, Aristotle believes that politics exists to train citizens to recognize the good and do noble things. Since contemporary politics seems to exist to aggrandize politicians, enrich corporations, and convince citizens they are being kissed while being screwed, that sounds quite refreshing. Naïve, perhaps—given the enshrined role of greed in every level of our political and social life—but still more attractive than the world of lobbyists and naked self-interest on every level.
The telos of human beings, Aristotle says, is to be happy, which means living what he calls a virtuous life. This, of course, begs the question of what virtue means. Virtue, he says, is doing the right thing because it is right. Note—not expedient and profitable. Someone living without morals and ethics cannot, by definition, be happy no matter how that person feels.
All of which is well and good, you might be saying—but what’s in it for us? I would answer, telos. What, in other words, Aristotle offers us is the challenge to look into the purposes of our own political structures. In this, he invites us to link outcomes to our purposes.
Consider, for example, the former administration’s political purpose in removing all impediments to individual initiative and economic expansion. Who was made happy? Obviously the upper echelons of business and investment in this country. Did it make them virtuous? Hardly, since a bunch of them are in jail. All Bernie Madoff managed to do (beside rob his friends) was demonstrate how unregulated exchange between people leads to economic cannibalism.
If I were someone from outer space suddenly cast into American society (and presuming I could understand the language) what conclusions might I come to about the purposes of the government? Well, for one thing, I might conclude that there is no clear purpose. In fact, there are multiple purposes working to undermine each other. The result of all the tumult being that no one’s better nature is appealed to. Listening to the excuses and posturing offered by those in political power, I would, in fact, have to conclude that the term public service is an oxymoron and the only service provided being what is bought and paid for.
Which brings me back to the question of slavery. We aren’t too hot on the subject of a class of people born to be slaves. Aristotle was talking about physical enslavement, particularly of losers in various wars, so I think there’s another way to consider this. If we define slavery as he does: slaves are people who work and act for other people’s purposes than their own, then I think a case could be made for intellectual slavery. How many times have people spouted unexamined truisms about such things as justice and virtue without ever examining them? War is a dirty business—why is it glorified? Why do some argue that if a majority vote for something then it is all right to tyrannize the minority? Why do we believe that our way of life is the only way? Why do we trot out Jesus Christ to urge him to bless our efforts in some ignoble personal pursuit? Why do we accept some political or philosophical position because our parents did or for some reason of guilty national pride?
It seems to me the way to virtue these days is to look for the rational in every situation, and open up assumptions to the light of day. This requires reason, debate (real debate and not just yelling), and a curiosity to find the truth collaboratively. If we are unable to do this and merely parrot the enthusiasms that clog the world around us, then we are indeed no more than slaves.
Most interesting to me are his concepts of the goal of politics and his concept of telos, roughly translated as meaning purpose or use.
To paraphrase, Aristotle believes that politics exists to train citizens to recognize the good and do noble things. Since contemporary politics seems to exist to aggrandize politicians, enrich corporations, and convince citizens they are being kissed while being screwed, that sounds quite refreshing. Naïve, perhaps—given the enshrined role of greed in every level of our political and social life—but still more attractive than the world of lobbyists and naked self-interest on every level.
The telos of human beings, Aristotle says, is to be happy, which means living what he calls a virtuous life. This, of course, begs the question of what virtue means. Virtue, he says, is doing the right thing because it is right. Note—not expedient and profitable. Someone living without morals and ethics cannot, by definition, be happy no matter how that person feels.
All of which is well and good, you might be saying—but what’s in it for us? I would answer, telos. What, in other words, Aristotle offers us is the challenge to look into the purposes of our own political structures. In this, he invites us to link outcomes to our purposes.
Consider, for example, the former administration’s political purpose in removing all impediments to individual initiative and economic expansion. Who was made happy? Obviously the upper echelons of business and investment in this country. Did it make them virtuous? Hardly, since a bunch of them are in jail. All Bernie Madoff managed to do (beside rob his friends) was demonstrate how unregulated exchange between people leads to economic cannibalism.
If I were someone from outer space suddenly cast into American society (and presuming I could understand the language) what conclusions might I come to about the purposes of the government? Well, for one thing, I might conclude that there is no clear purpose. In fact, there are multiple purposes working to undermine each other. The result of all the tumult being that no one’s better nature is appealed to. Listening to the excuses and posturing offered by those in political power, I would, in fact, have to conclude that the term public service is an oxymoron and the only service provided being what is bought and paid for.
Which brings me back to the question of slavery. We aren’t too hot on the subject of a class of people born to be slaves. Aristotle was talking about physical enslavement, particularly of losers in various wars, so I think there’s another way to consider this. If we define slavery as he does: slaves are people who work and act for other people’s purposes than their own, then I think a case could be made for intellectual slavery. How many times have people spouted unexamined truisms about such things as justice and virtue without ever examining them? War is a dirty business—why is it glorified? Why do some argue that if a majority vote for something then it is all right to tyrannize the minority? Why do we believe that our way of life is the only way? Why do we trot out Jesus Christ to urge him to bless our efforts in some ignoble personal pursuit? Why do we accept some political or philosophical position because our parents did or for some reason of guilty national pride?
It seems to me the way to virtue these days is to look for the rational in every situation, and open up assumptions to the light of day. This requires reason, debate (real debate and not just yelling), and a curiosity to find the truth collaboratively. If we are unable to do this and merely parrot the enthusiasms that clog the world around us, then we are indeed no more than slaves.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Bumping It Up
Just because of who I am, I tend to confront problems by seeing what has to be done, putting my head down, and just getting on with it. It's probably the residual British in me--just get on with it and don't make a fuss, as my mum used to say.
I used to believe this grim sense of determination was how I made my way through a doctoral program while teaching full time and keeping up my end of family life. I just kept plodding until I was there. The race, in this case, nopt going to the swift, who may have won the initial prizes, but to the steady and persistent.
From the vantage point now of an approaching birthday, however, things seem more complex and in some ways more poignant. I find myself asking sbout human motivation and how the impact of a single life is to measured.
When I was in the president's office at the University of Hawaii, one of the regents told me to advise my workaholic boss to take more care of himself. "Institutions have no memory and no gratitude," he told me. Many people would agree with him, and it's almsot a truism to repeat the observation that no one on their deathbed wishes they had spent more time at work. Yet I'm not at all sure that my boss would or could have agreed with him.
The reasons why people behave as they do are myriad and complex, which makes me wonder whether the behavioral research really has the universal application with which it is presented to us. I'm not sure my boss would have been happy kicking back at that time of his life. He was in a drive to succeed mode, building a university legacy. He needed to accomplish great things (which he did) and he had the family and staff around him to support him. Whether the university remembered what he did was immaterial. He had an intrinsic drive to achieve that he measured by his own standards. In other words, he was in control empowered by what he needed to do at that time in his life.
It seems to me that we have constantly shifting needs and reward structures throughout our lives. Those who later regret their efforts at work might have confused their need for respect with the trappings of their career. As King Lear was to find out, "a dog's obeyed in office." Once they left the job, there was no basis for their public authority. But that doesn't mean what they did in their career was unimportant; it just means that the validation of their career did not last for a lifetime and they are stuck in a rut.
It reminds me of the old public relations mantra that when faced with a media blowup (frequent in a university president's office), a good response was to "bump it up a level." For example, when faced with a protest march on the president's residence, talk to the media about freedom of speech. Politicians do this all the time, except they also manage to drop in something about this being a great country.
Bumping it up is probably a good idea when it comes to human motivation. The most profitable question is not necessarily "Am I identifying too much with my work?" but "How is the work I do at this moment and the way I do it an important part of my progress as a human being?" Not "How important am I?" but "How important is this experience in my life?"
For some reason, I must have needed to plod my way to that advanced degree, possibly involving some element of competition. It must have fulfilled an intrinsic need because once I had earned the doctorate, only my assistant ever used doctor in front of my name. Whatever part of me was stirred by earning the degree apparently had been satisfied by completing it.
As I read him, John Milton was dealing with the need for self-examination and self-validation when he talked about the need to test our "virtues": "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."
Perhaps that's what we are all here for: to place ourselves out there in the race for the immoratal garland, whatever that may be for us.
I used to believe this grim sense of determination was how I made my way through a doctoral program while teaching full time and keeping up my end of family life. I just kept plodding until I was there. The race, in this case, nopt going to the swift, who may have won the initial prizes, but to the steady and persistent.
From the vantage point now of an approaching birthday, however, things seem more complex and in some ways more poignant. I find myself asking sbout human motivation and how the impact of a single life is to measured.
When I was in the president's office at the University of Hawaii, one of the regents told me to advise my workaholic boss to take more care of himself. "Institutions have no memory and no gratitude," he told me. Many people would agree with him, and it's almsot a truism to repeat the observation that no one on their deathbed wishes they had spent more time at work. Yet I'm not at all sure that my boss would or could have agreed with him.
The reasons why people behave as they do are myriad and complex, which makes me wonder whether the behavioral research really has the universal application with which it is presented to us. I'm not sure my boss would have been happy kicking back at that time of his life. He was in a drive to succeed mode, building a university legacy. He needed to accomplish great things (which he did) and he had the family and staff around him to support him. Whether the university remembered what he did was immaterial. He had an intrinsic drive to achieve that he measured by his own standards. In other words, he was in control empowered by what he needed to do at that time in his life.
It seems to me that we have constantly shifting needs and reward structures throughout our lives. Those who later regret their efforts at work might have confused their need for respect with the trappings of their career. As King Lear was to find out, "a dog's obeyed in office." Once they left the job, there was no basis for their public authority. But that doesn't mean what they did in their career was unimportant; it just means that the validation of their career did not last for a lifetime and they are stuck in a rut.
It reminds me of the old public relations mantra that when faced with a media blowup (frequent in a university president's office), a good response was to "bump it up a level." For example, when faced with a protest march on the president's residence, talk to the media about freedom of speech. Politicians do this all the time, except they also manage to drop in something about this being a great country.
Bumping it up is probably a good idea when it comes to human motivation. The most profitable question is not necessarily "Am I identifying too much with my work?" but "How is the work I do at this moment and the way I do it an important part of my progress as a human being?" Not "How important am I?" but "How important is this experience in my life?"
For some reason, I must have needed to plod my way to that advanced degree, possibly involving some element of competition. It must have fulfilled an intrinsic need because once I had earned the doctorate, only my assistant ever used doctor in front of my name. Whatever part of me was stirred by earning the degree apparently had been satisfied by completing it.
As I read him, John Milton was dealing with the need for self-examination and self-validation when he talked about the need to test our "virtues": "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."
Perhaps that's what we are all here for: to place ourselves out there in the race for the immoratal garland, whatever that may be for us.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Moving
I remember reading somewhere that a fire is as good as a three moves. At the time I thought that draconian—after all, who could possibly want to lose all one’s possessions, not to mention a house, in a set of indiscriminate flames? After weeks of packing in preparation for putting the house on the market, I have a better appreciation of the sentiment.
Packing is extreme weightlifting for the soul. It’s not just the physical part of finding, packing, and storing boxes that’s the challenge, but the intellectual and emotional workout of deciding just how much of the past is indispensable, how much of the present is worth keeping, and how much the future might have need of anything from the other two.
Of the three, parting with the past is the most fraught because of the emotional baggage that attaches to every little souvenir or memento, particularly if it belonged to departed family members. Getting rid of Mum’s thimble and salt and pepper shaker collection, for example, became akin to rejecting her. She wouldn’t have had any trouble saying 'Oh for heavens sakes get rid of it' if something was worn out, but I struggled with letting go of anything. Once or twice I dumped something and then went and took it back from the trash.
I guess it’s just me. When Mum’s things were delivered to me after her death, I found she’d thrown out my brother’s Hornby train set, something I was never allowed to play with and would have liked to have. Apparently, she didn't have any trouble parting with it where I would have agonized. I was upset because getting rid of his things felt as if she’d shut me out of his brief life yet again. I used my perturbed feelings to finally put the thimbles and salt and pepper sets out for Goodwill, so I guess downsizing can also be a way of settling old scores. I still have plenty of her things, you understand, but my final criteria became keeping the things with happy, mutual memories. It was hard, but I did manage to get beyond keeping things just because they were hers.
Almost as challenging is parting with the present because the memorabilia is connected to lives as they have been lived: family, education, hobbies, marriage, children, career, friendships and everything else. It devolves into “What won’t be missed?” Well—as it turns out--it depends. For us it became three questions: “Is it replaceable? Does it have value?” but most important “Are we willing to pack this and pay for it to be shipped across the country?”
Under this rubric, every object had to prove its own worthiness, even art projects left over from the children’s school years. Of course, certain things had defenders and many times Sid said “It doesn’t eat much,” meaning that it’s something small enough, easy enough to transport, and—dammit he wants it—to slide into some packing box somewhere. In my experience, this part of moving generated the most discussions. We had an ongoing one over a TV table with sixties pointed legs that Sid had had for twenty-five years; our compromise was that it went as long as he was prepared to make the case he would use it in his workshop. Parting with a shabby kitchen storage unit became easier when it was presented as either this or that (that being a favorite kitchen table with a cutting board top).
Which brings me to packing for the future. This part requires clairvoyance. “What kind of life are we going to lead where we are going?” This begs the further questions of who are we? and what are we becoming? The danger here is to assume that moving automatically means we change as people. Probably not. For a time the skiing equipment was in danger, but cooler heads prevailed since we liked the idea of having it regardless of whether we used it as much as we have in Colorado. On the other hand, given my years, I think I can predict safely that I will not be using my ice skates again—white, size 10 ladies, hardly used, anyone need them?) Sid has finally parted with his technical climbing gear in recognition that he and I will probably lowland hike rather than try charging up fourteeners. Similarly, I got rid of a lot of baking pans—cake decorating is not in my future—and a bunch of cookbooks—who am I kidding about how much I plan to entertain?
Yep, moving is fraught. But the difference between it and a fire is vital. I get to choose what we keep. A fire makes the decision without any knowledge of me or what I value. So I’ll take the packing boxes any day although they’ll have to carry me out of wherever we move to—I’m not doing this again anytime soon.
Packing is extreme weightlifting for the soul. It’s not just the physical part of finding, packing, and storing boxes that’s the challenge, but the intellectual and emotional workout of deciding just how much of the past is indispensable, how much of the present is worth keeping, and how much the future might have need of anything from the other two.
Of the three, parting with the past is the most fraught because of the emotional baggage that attaches to every little souvenir or memento, particularly if it belonged to departed family members. Getting rid of Mum’s thimble and salt and pepper shaker collection, for example, became akin to rejecting her. She wouldn’t have had any trouble saying 'Oh for heavens sakes get rid of it' if something was worn out, but I struggled with letting go of anything. Once or twice I dumped something and then went and took it back from the trash.
I guess it’s just me. When Mum’s things were delivered to me after her death, I found she’d thrown out my brother’s Hornby train set, something I was never allowed to play with and would have liked to have. Apparently, she didn't have any trouble parting with it where I would have agonized. I was upset because getting rid of his things felt as if she’d shut me out of his brief life yet again. I used my perturbed feelings to finally put the thimbles and salt and pepper sets out for Goodwill, so I guess downsizing can also be a way of settling old scores. I still have plenty of her things, you understand, but my final criteria became keeping the things with happy, mutual memories. It was hard, but I did manage to get beyond keeping things just because they were hers.
Almost as challenging is parting with the present because the memorabilia is connected to lives as they have been lived: family, education, hobbies, marriage, children, career, friendships and everything else. It devolves into “What won’t be missed?” Well—as it turns out--it depends. For us it became three questions: “Is it replaceable? Does it have value?” but most important “Are we willing to pack this and pay for it to be shipped across the country?”
Under this rubric, every object had to prove its own worthiness, even art projects left over from the children’s school years. Of course, certain things had defenders and many times Sid said “It doesn’t eat much,” meaning that it’s something small enough, easy enough to transport, and—dammit he wants it—to slide into some packing box somewhere. In my experience, this part of moving generated the most discussions. We had an ongoing one over a TV table with sixties pointed legs that Sid had had for twenty-five years; our compromise was that it went as long as he was prepared to make the case he would use it in his workshop. Parting with a shabby kitchen storage unit became easier when it was presented as either this or that (that being a favorite kitchen table with a cutting board top).
Which brings me to packing for the future. This part requires clairvoyance. “What kind of life are we going to lead where we are going?” This begs the further questions of who are we? and what are we becoming? The danger here is to assume that moving automatically means we change as people. Probably not. For a time the skiing equipment was in danger, but cooler heads prevailed since we liked the idea of having it regardless of whether we used it as much as we have in Colorado. On the other hand, given my years, I think I can predict safely that I will not be using my ice skates again—white, size 10 ladies, hardly used, anyone need them?) Sid has finally parted with his technical climbing gear in recognition that he and I will probably lowland hike rather than try charging up fourteeners. Similarly, I got rid of a lot of baking pans—cake decorating is not in my future—and a bunch of cookbooks—who am I kidding about how much I plan to entertain?
Yep, moving is fraught. But the difference between it and a fire is vital. I get to choose what we keep. A fire makes the decision without any knowledge of me or what I value. So I’ll take the packing boxes any day although they’ll have to carry me out of wherever we move to—I’m not doing this again anytime soon.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
No Country for Old Women
William Butler Yeats had it right: there are places and times not for--in his case--old men, but also for old women as well. One of these is a wedding. I'm just back from attending a wedding in Washington state. It was held outdoors in a beautiful setting, the weather was perfect, the bride right out of the pages of a magazine, and everything well organized and happy.
Why then, one might ask, do I say I didn't feel I belonged? Let me answer that by stating my (new) philosophy of weddings. Weddings, I have concluded, are for the young.
Note that I talk of weddings, not of marriages. Marriages are the union of two people. Weddings are the elaborate, expensive celebrations written about in bridal magazines, planned to the last degree often by a new profession called wedding consultant.
Marriages can be held in a judge's offices with at most a corsage for the bride and maybe a carnation for the groom. Weddings are held in romantic locales, require $2000and up dresses plus formals for the groom and his attendants, flower arrangements that carry out a color scheme repeated by the cake, and several thousand dollars' worth of elaborate photography that inevitably includes a picture of a champagne bottle nestled among an invitation and the bride's shoes.
Marriages may be celebrated by a retreat to a local restaurant or someone's back yard. In the UK, it may be a retreat to the local pub. Weddings, on the other hand, require catering and an orchestra.
Finally, marriages cross every age barrier. Weddings, on the other hand, and as I said before are for the young by their very nature. The hours before the ceremony are taken up with false eyelashes, zippers, nylons, and frantic straightening of bows and curls. This is when relatively normal young women turn into bridezillas fully convinced that the least flaw will ruin whatever future life awaits them. I speak in generalities here because, happily, the bride did not make this transformation. She was, indeed, the wonderful young woman she has always been.
But even given the fact I wasn't needed much in the way of curls and nylons and was free to take long walks on the beach, I still felt out of place. The reason was the nature of the exuberance of youth. I had little in common with the young friends of the bride and groom, nor they with me. It didn't help that I beat a hasty retreat when, overtired and overstimulated, the children of the guests expressed their frustrations in the normal way: crying inconsolably at the disruption in their lives.
I now know I am old because I remember my own child doing the same--only way back then I was young myself. I admit it--I have become a Yeatsian old person, and a screaming child makes my ears ring and my heart rate rise. Any illusion I may have had before this wedding, any self-congratulatory estimate of my bearing my age well, dissipated as I made a hasty retreat rather than bend down to console the little one. I have never felt my age quite so much before, nor in some respects my own redundancy.
Yeats talked about the generations teeming and the young in one another's arms as a sort of scary reality. We who are older must recognize they are the future, and we who have had our day must bend before them. I made my contribution to the world--hopefully, I did some good. But it is theirs now, and I yield it gratefully to them.
I hope the world will understand if next time I just send a check.
Why then, one might ask, do I say I didn't feel I belonged? Let me answer that by stating my (new) philosophy of weddings. Weddings, I have concluded, are for the young.
Note that I talk of weddings, not of marriages. Marriages are the union of two people. Weddings are the elaborate, expensive celebrations written about in bridal magazines, planned to the last degree often by a new profession called wedding consultant.
Marriages can be held in a judge's offices with at most a corsage for the bride and maybe a carnation for the groom. Weddings are held in romantic locales, require $2000and up dresses plus formals for the groom and his attendants, flower arrangements that carry out a color scheme repeated by the cake, and several thousand dollars' worth of elaborate photography that inevitably includes a picture of a champagne bottle nestled among an invitation and the bride's shoes.
Marriages may be celebrated by a retreat to a local restaurant or someone's back yard. In the UK, it may be a retreat to the local pub. Weddings, on the other hand, require catering and an orchestra.
Finally, marriages cross every age barrier. Weddings, on the other hand, and as I said before are for the young by their very nature. The hours before the ceremony are taken up with false eyelashes, zippers, nylons, and frantic straightening of bows and curls. This is when relatively normal young women turn into bridezillas fully convinced that the least flaw will ruin whatever future life awaits them. I speak in generalities here because, happily, the bride did not make this transformation. She was, indeed, the wonderful young woman she has always been.
But even given the fact I wasn't needed much in the way of curls and nylons and was free to take long walks on the beach, I still felt out of place. The reason was the nature of the exuberance of youth. I had little in common with the young friends of the bride and groom, nor they with me. It didn't help that I beat a hasty retreat when, overtired and overstimulated, the children of the guests expressed their frustrations in the normal way: crying inconsolably at the disruption in their lives.
I now know I am old because I remember my own child doing the same--only way back then I was young myself. I admit it--I have become a Yeatsian old person, and a screaming child makes my ears ring and my heart rate rise. Any illusion I may have had before this wedding, any self-congratulatory estimate of my bearing my age well, dissipated as I made a hasty retreat rather than bend down to console the little one. I have never felt my age quite so much before, nor in some respects my own redundancy.
Yeats talked about the generations teeming and the young in one another's arms as a sort of scary reality. We who are older must recognize they are the future, and we who have had our day must bend before them. I made my contribution to the world--hopefully, I did some good. But it is theirs now, and I yield it gratefully to them.
I hope the world will understand if next time I just send a check.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Greater and Lesser Utopias
The world is a crazy place these days. For example, there’s Pope Benedict looking like the ghost of Tiger Woods, going around dressed as the spirit of confessions past. Then there are the Tea Partiers, who held a convention down here in Phoenix (July 2010), revealing once and for all they are the party of whites. No diversity there to distract them from their dreams of Utopia—small government, health care to the deserving, longevity to those who can afford it, and success to those who impose their economic imperatives untrammeled on the world.
Utopia’s an interesting concept. The first one I read, Sir Thomas More’s version of the same name, talked about an ideal world that had never existed and, given human nature, never could. It was a paean to a golden time when human beings might get beyond their greed (gold and precious stones were treated with contempt) and lack of care for one other. In fact, Utopia was an ideal society based on Christian principles—and, gasp, it turned out to be Christian socialism. There’s that dirty word—socialism. Self-proclaimed Christians hate to hear it yet fail to realize it is a logical extension of their own professed beliefs. In America these days, Christianity is all very well as long as it doesn’t interfere with kicking the crap out of illegals, doing away with social security so the elderly poor can starve or freeze because they failed to save enough for their old age, and leaving all social programs up to charities (as long as the half-way houses and shelters aren’t in “respectable” back yards).
The Arizona Statesman reported on the Tea Part rally in today’s paper and commented that most loose organizations of enthusiasts seldom last for very long. I’d love to believe so, but this group, if one may call it that, has revealed an American underpinning of self-delusion and unkindness that may lead to some longevity. For one thing, they have an amazing tolerance for hypocrisy.
They wish government out of people’s lives, yet want legislation to ban abortions: the government it seems should look into other people’s lives just not the Tea Partiers’. They want individual liberty yet want to give long prison sentences for relatively minor failures to conform and God help the Gays who don’t conform to their assumptions about marriage and sex. They want to believe in the perfectability of human beings, rather like the 19th Century idea of the Noble Savage who has been damaged by the polluting laws of civilization and who can rise again to his old glory if only freed of the chains that hold him back. (I wonder if any one of them has read “The Lord of the Flies.”)
They want to pick and choose what they are willing to pay taxes for without understanding that wherever the money is spent it drives the same number of jobs. John Ruskin once commented that complaining about the rich buying luxury goods was senseless because the luxury trade provided livelihoods for just as many people as if the rich had spent their money only on basic necessities. Government spending provides jobs. They don’t consider that many more people will be out of work if they shrink government. Who will pick up the slack? Will corporate America come rushing forward to provide new jobs—we know where they stand on sending jobs abroad. For this, the Partiers have no answer beyond platitudes. Sometimes I think there will be no peace until the country is either on the breadlines or involved in another Civil War.
It has always been my understanding that government’s job is not to protect our guilty bastions of self-interest but, like wiser parents, to prevent us from killing one another—plenty of which has happened in the past, and not just in the incessant wars that government involves us in. Now there’s my gripe—where you have a government, can war be far behind? This is a government of the people, not of Churches, not of corporations, and not of special interests, no matter how flattering these interests may be to who we think we are or could be.
Sir Thomas made neither the error of mistaking self-righteousness for morality nor believing that Utopias could ever be reality. A Christian life is a communal life, he said. Wow. This coming from someone who gave his life for his religion—executed because he would not put his king above his conscience. Let’s see some of these Tea Partiers give up something of theirs for their beliefs instead of just hitting the rest of us over the head with them. If this is indeed a nation under God, just where is all the other, inconvenient stuff such as loving others instead of promoting calculated self-interest as the way of the world?
Utopia’s an interesting concept. The first one I read, Sir Thomas More’s version of the same name, talked about an ideal world that had never existed and, given human nature, never could. It was a paean to a golden time when human beings might get beyond their greed (gold and precious stones were treated with contempt) and lack of care for one other. In fact, Utopia was an ideal society based on Christian principles—and, gasp, it turned out to be Christian socialism. There’s that dirty word—socialism. Self-proclaimed Christians hate to hear it yet fail to realize it is a logical extension of their own professed beliefs. In America these days, Christianity is all very well as long as it doesn’t interfere with kicking the crap out of illegals, doing away with social security so the elderly poor can starve or freeze because they failed to save enough for their old age, and leaving all social programs up to charities (as long as the half-way houses and shelters aren’t in “respectable” back yards).
The Arizona Statesman reported on the Tea Part rally in today’s paper and commented that most loose organizations of enthusiasts seldom last for very long. I’d love to believe so, but this group, if one may call it that, has revealed an American underpinning of self-delusion and unkindness that may lead to some longevity. For one thing, they have an amazing tolerance for hypocrisy.
They wish government out of people’s lives, yet want legislation to ban abortions: the government it seems should look into other people’s lives just not the Tea Partiers’. They want individual liberty yet want to give long prison sentences for relatively minor failures to conform and God help the Gays who don’t conform to their assumptions about marriage and sex. They want to believe in the perfectability of human beings, rather like the 19th Century idea of the Noble Savage who has been damaged by the polluting laws of civilization and who can rise again to his old glory if only freed of the chains that hold him back. (I wonder if any one of them has read “The Lord of the Flies.”)
They want to pick and choose what they are willing to pay taxes for without understanding that wherever the money is spent it drives the same number of jobs. John Ruskin once commented that complaining about the rich buying luxury goods was senseless because the luxury trade provided livelihoods for just as many people as if the rich had spent their money only on basic necessities. Government spending provides jobs. They don’t consider that many more people will be out of work if they shrink government. Who will pick up the slack? Will corporate America come rushing forward to provide new jobs—we know where they stand on sending jobs abroad. For this, the Partiers have no answer beyond platitudes. Sometimes I think there will be no peace until the country is either on the breadlines or involved in another Civil War.
It has always been my understanding that government’s job is not to protect our guilty bastions of self-interest but, like wiser parents, to prevent us from killing one another—plenty of which has happened in the past, and not just in the incessant wars that government involves us in. Now there’s my gripe—where you have a government, can war be far behind? This is a government of the people, not of Churches, not of corporations, and not of special interests, no matter how flattering these interests may be to who we think we are or could be.
Sir Thomas made neither the error of mistaking self-righteousness for morality nor believing that Utopias could ever be reality. A Christian life is a communal life, he said. Wow. This coming from someone who gave his life for his religion—executed because he would not put his king above his conscience. Let’s see some of these Tea Partiers give up something of theirs for their beliefs instead of just hitting the rest of us over the head with them. If this is indeed a nation under God, just where is all the other, inconvenient stuff such as loving others instead of promoting calculated self-interest as the way of the world?
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Master of the Dung Heap
I was listening the other evening to Our Lady of Wasilla screaming her message to her tea-baggers and found myself reminded of Aristophanes’ definition of a popular politician: “a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.”
Aristophanes, of course, lived roughly 2500 years ago, in politically charged and fractious Greece, the cradle of our political system, so I suppose one can say that politics was ever so, or more pointedly, two thousand years hasn’t seen much change in human beings as they relate to the avenues of power. I think he would recognize us and probably satirize us as he did his contemporaries. He would have much subject matter.
One thing has changed, though, and I have to point to this to us as our unique, modern contribution. We now have the means to broadcast the voice, breeding, and manner over the country and around the world. Not only that, we have created a new form of pundit who fits the definition of popular politician just as well. That idea is both depressing and amusing (in a rather horrible way).
I can picture what Aristophanes would make of Olberman and Limbaugh. He’d probably have recognized the type and written a play about them: Orwell’s barnyard where the animals are equal but the pigs a little more equal, and a raft of other animals, such as the cock of the barnyard, the influential master of the dung heap, try to work around the pigs. The point would be to introduce some levity as well as some perspective into people who take themselves far too seriously.
When I was an instructor in the English Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I remember one of my fellow instructors (we were very junior and slightly mutinous) having a cartoon pasted on her door. It showed a very large shaggy dog with a dialog balloon coming from the depths of the fur on its back. Inside the balloon were the words, “We junior fleas demand a greater voice in the running of this dog.”
Now that Ms. Palin has become a corporate juggernaut (it was reported tonight that she’s earned $12 million this year), she may be seeing herself as a rather large flea these days. I wouldn’t blame her actually. But she needs to keep in mind that a flea is still a flea. Real power is silent and secret. It operates behind the scenes. The powerbrokers are never seen, not even in the backrooms, certainly not out on the Boston commons carrying a placard.
Loud denunciations and easy slogans are not where the real power is. Such efforts are useful to someone, but not to the person using them. Ms Palin will be well rewarded for her efforts—as indeed she has been—but the real power will continue on the way it always has, in dark places where the principals are known only by accident now and then.
This is the way it was 2500 years ago and it is the way, it seems, it will always be as long as we fleas believe we are running the planet.
Aristophanes, of course, lived roughly 2500 years ago, in politically charged and fractious Greece, the cradle of our political system, so I suppose one can say that politics was ever so, or more pointedly, two thousand years hasn’t seen much change in human beings as they relate to the avenues of power. I think he would recognize us and probably satirize us as he did his contemporaries. He would have much subject matter.
One thing has changed, though, and I have to point to this to us as our unique, modern contribution. We now have the means to broadcast the voice, breeding, and manner over the country and around the world. Not only that, we have created a new form of pundit who fits the definition of popular politician just as well. That idea is both depressing and amusing (in a rather horrible way).
I can picture what Aristophanes would make of Olberman and Limbaugh. He’d probably have recognized the type and written a play about them: Orwell’s barnyard where the animals are equal but the pigs a little more equal, and a raft of other animals, such as the cock of the barnyard, the influential master of the dung heap, try to work around the pigs. The point would be to introduce some levity as well as some perspective into people who take themselves far too seriously.
When I was an instructor in the English Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I remember one of my fellow instructors (we were very junior and slightly mutinous) having a cartoon pasted on her door. It showed a very large shaggy dog with a dialog balloon coming from the depths of the fur on its back. Inside the balloon were the words, “We junior fleas demand a greater voice in the running of this dog.”
Now that Ms. Palin has become a corporate juggernaut (it was reported tonight that she’s earned $12 million this year), she may be seeing herself as a rather large flea these days. I wouldn’t blame her actually. But she needs to keep in mind that a flea is still a flea. Real power is silent and secret. It operates behind the scenes. The powerbrokers are never seen, not even in the backrooms, certainly not out on the Boston commons carrying a placard.
Loud denunciations and easy slogans are not where the real power is. Such efforts are useful to someone, but not to the person using them. Ms Palin will be well rewarded for her efforts—as indeed she has been—but the real power will continue on the way it always has, in dark places where the principals are known only by accident now and then.
This is the way it was 2500 years ago and it is the way, it seems, it will always be as long as we fleas believe we are running the planet.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
All Politics is Local?
I've been told repeatedly that all politics is local. I don't choose to believe this, because if it's true, it's a depressing indictment of the voters and the people who seek political office. Why? Because it means people vote only for their self-interest and those who seek their vote appeal only to the local vanity and greed. Despite much evidence to the contrary, I'm still naive enough to hope for a degree of statesmanship.
In my opinion, only local politics should be local. National and international issues should be conducted on the national and international level. That means in the interests of all of us. Even people in parts of the world we may not like: it's their planet too.
I used to believe that providing elevation in perspective was the job of the US Senate--until, that is, they started behaving like raccoons. For those who aren't familiar with the habits of the juvenile delinquents of the animal world--just ask anyone who has an outdoor fish pond. Raccoons have a nasty habit of pulling fish out of the pond, taking one bite, leaving the fish to die, and then going back for another--sort of killing for the sport of it.
Lest anyone not see the connection I'm making, this is precisely how the Senate has been behaving and by extension, the Republican side of Congress as a whole. It is full of people, comfortably covered by their cadillac health plans, who don't give a rat's ass about other people declaring bankruptcy over medical bills or struggling to care for senile elders at home; they prefer instead to spend public resources on tax cuts for those who don't need them and provide full employment by sending troops to war.
Oh they make noise about caring about people's physical walfare--but primarily for political gain. That's why the Republicans now vociferously oppose the very same plans they proposed when they were in power. It's all a game: what do we need to say to get reelected? Actually do something---pulllease. If this was a Republican-sponsored plan see how fast the concern for socialism would melt away. Right now, the UK, Australia, and Canada--surely not your average socialist states--are wondering what all the fuss is about. They've been taking care of their citizens' healthcare for generations and haven't slid into moral decay.
Which brings me to another thought. How many of these people spouting anti-socialist rhetoric can even define socialism and distinguish it from fascism, oligarchy, nationalism, and communism? I'll be willing to wager that Ms. Palin can't, yet that won't prevent her from trying to get out in front of the herd and lead them somewhere (maybe to Russia since she has telecopic vision and can see it from her house--I tried this summer at Wasilla, but no such luck).
Well, sorry Peter et al, there is already plenty of precedent for what the health plan proposes. The government already mandates our buying auto insurance. Do you really want to go back to the days before it was required? Drivers have to be licensed to assure some modicum of safety. Do you want to take a chance on who's on the road with you?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Universities and colleges haven't hesitated to comply with federal requirements if it means money. Businesses comply with federal interstate laws, farmers feed at the public trough by holding back production, medical offices comply with FIRPA--it's all around us. Freedom is a complete illusion until, it seems, it hits the wallet and reminds us we live in an interrelated, interdependent world. How big hypocrites are we? Consider that question when people want the government to protect them from Mad Cow Disease entering our food chain, unsafe drugs appearing on our shelves, and unsafe cars filling our showrooms.
In my opinion again (and I write my own stuff instead of regurgitating other people's ideas), we shouldn't be basing our vote on whether a candidate for office supports moving the state fair from Pueblo to Denver. We're better than that. Or if we're not--then let's stop all the bitching about how the government is not keeping criminals behind bars and preventing drug dealers from fighting turf wars on our streets.
In my opinion, only local politics should be local. National and international issues should be conducted on the national and international level. That means in the interests of all of us. Even people in parts of the world we may not like: it's their planet too.
I used to believe that providing elevation in perspective was the job of the US Senate--until, that is, they started behaving like raccoons. For those who aren't familiar with the habits of the juvenile delinquents of the animal world--just ask anyone who has an outdoor fish pond. Raccoons have a nasty habit of pulling fish out of the pond, taking one bite, leaving the fish to die, and then going back for another--sort of killing for the sport of it.
Lest anyone not see the connection I'm making, this is precisely how the Senate has been behaving and by extension, the Republican side of Congress as a whole. It is full of people, comfortably covered by their cadillac health plans, who don't give a rat's ass about other people declaring bankruptcy over medical bills or struggling to care for senile elders at home; they prefer instead to spend public resources on tax cuts for those who don't need them and provide full employment by sending troops to war.
Oh they make noise about caring about people's physical walfare--but primarily for political gain. That's why the Republicans now vociferously oppose the very same plans they proposed when they were in power. It's all a game: what do we need to say to get reelected? Actually do something---pulllease. If this was a Republican-sponsored plan see how fast the concern for socialism would melt away. Right now, the UK, Australia, and Canada--surely not your average socialist states--are wondering what all the fuss is about. They've been taking care of their citizens' healthcare for generations and haven't slid into moral decay.
Which brings me to another thought. How many of these people spouting anti-socialist rhetoric can even define socialism and distinguish it from fascism, oligarchy, nationalism, and communism? I'll be willing to wager that Ms. Palin can't, yet that won't prevent her from trying to get out in front of the herd and lead them somewhere (maybe to Russia since she has telecopic vision and can see it from her house--I tried this summer at Wasilla, but no such luck).
Well, sorry Peter et al, there is already plenty of precedent for what the health plan proposes. The government already mandates our buying auto insurance. Do you really want to go back to the days before it was required? Drivers have to be licensed to assure some modicum of safety. Do you want to take a chance on who's on the road with you?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Universities and colleges haven't hesitated to comply with federal requirements if it means money. Businesses comply with federal interstate laws, farmers feed at the public trough by holding back production, medical offices comply with FIRPA--it's all around us. Freedom is a complete illusion until, it seems, it hits the wallet and reminds us we live in an interrelated, interdependent world. How big hypocrites are we? Consider that question when people want the government to protect them from Mad Cow Disease entering our food chain, unsafe drugs appearing on our shelves, and unsafe cars filling our showrooms.
In my opinion again (and I write my own stuff instead of regurgitating other people's ideas), we shouldn't be basing our vote on whether a candidate for office supports moving the state fair from Pueblo to Denver. We're better than that. Or if we're not--then let's stop all the bitching about how the government is not keeping criminals behind bars and preventing drug dealers from fighting turf wars on our streets.
Monday, March 22, 2010
In My Corner, Jack
So they got the first part of health care reform through the house. Good show. But, while it is historic, it is hardly premature. There’s been talk of the need for this for generations, and I even edited the publication of Michael Dukakis’s proposed health reform plan when he was in residence at the University of Hawaii. I left Hawaii in 1993, so that should tell you how long ago that was.
Still, the current plan must be doing something right as no one is pleased. I’m reminded of the song from My Fair Lady where Rex Harrison sings about a quarreling couple: “And rather than do either, they do something else that neither likes at all.” No public option, but loads of good stuff anyway, such as regulating the health insurance industry with its record profits, to whose bleats I can say only that they brought it on themselves just as the financial sectors of this country brought their industry down around their ears.
As far as I am concerned, however, it’s not the health care plan that I am most relieved about. It’s the fact the hate and violence that seem to pass for political discourse on the right did not succeed in derailing the legislation. Had the bill been defeated, we could have looked forward to a generation raised to believe that spitting on legislators, calling them racial slurs, screaming down opponents, and forgetting inconvenient hypocrisy by denying its existence are all acceptable forms of behavior.
As I watched the distorted faces chanting Kill the Bill I was reminded of the disgusting behavior exhibited after the civil rights legislation when whites taunted and menaced black kids entering previously all-white schools. It seemed at the time that the South might go up in flames, yet time passed and the generations after have to be reminded of the struggles leading up to the legislation.
And time does change things. Recently, some of those people back then, whose distorted faces were shown on news television, apologized for their actions. Time has brought clarity. With hindsight and if one wishes to be somewhat charitable, one can say that the sixties were a time of insanity, brought on by uncomfortable social changes.
Today, I suppose we might say we face uncomfortable economic changes. That’s what this is all about—what’s in it for me? If I don’t have a job, what is the government doing taking care of anyone other than me? I feel angry and frustrated and frightened; therefore, I will listen to irresponsible radio figures who sound just as angry and frustrated and frightened as I am, and I will scream and make assassination threats and then –one day—I will look in the mirror and (perhaps) feel ashamed.
The world is not going to end because people earning over $500,000 a year have to bear a tax burden equivalent to what I carry on my comparably miniscule pension. Nor will it end because 32 million more people have the opportunity to purchase (notice: PAY FOR), insurance denied to them because they once had some illness. Nor will it end because 47,000 poor children in Arizona, one of whom has a brain tumor and can’t afford treatment, will get a chance to regain health coverage.
The British have an expression for narcissism and self-absorption: “I’m all right in my corner, Jack,” they say. I can only hope that when people see what is actually in the bill and understand that someone cared enough to get this thing through Congress they won’t give in to the hysteria we can expect in the months ahead.
Still, the current plan must be doing something right as no one is pleased. I’m reminded of the song from My Fair Lady where Rex Harrison sings about a quarreling couple: “And rather than do either, they do something else that neither likes at all.” No public option, but loads of good stuff anyway, such as regulating the health insurance industry with its record profits, to whose bleats I can say only that they brought it on themselves just as the financial sectors of this country brought their industry down around their ears.
As far as I am concerned, however, it’s not the health care plan that I am most relieved about. It’s the fact the hate and violence that seem to pass for political discourse on the right did not succeed in derailing the legislation. Had the bill been defeated, we could have looked forward to a generation raised to believe that spitting on legislators, calling them racial slurs, screaming down opponents, and forgetting inconvenient hypocrisy by denying its existence are all acceptable forms of behavior.
As I watched the distorted faces chanting Kill the Bill I was reminded of the disgusting behavior exhibited after the civil rights legislation when whites taunted and menaced black kids entering previously all-white schools. It seemed at the time that the South might go up in flames, yet time passed and the generations after have to be reminded of the struggles leading up to the legislation.
And time does change things. Recently, some of those people back then, whose distorted faces were shown on news television, apologized for their actions. Time has brought clarity. With hindsight and if one wishes to be somewhat charitable, one can say that the sixties were a time of insanity, brought on by uncomfortable social changes.
Today, I suppose we might say we face uncomfortable economic changes. That’s what this is all about—what’s in it for me? If I don’t have a job, what is the government doing taking care of anyone other than me? I feel angry and frustrated and frightened; therefore, I will listen to irresponsible radio figures who sound just as angry and frustrated and frightened as I am, and I will scream and make assassination threats and then –one day—I will look in the mirror and (perhaps) feel ashamed.
The world is not going to end because people earning over $500,000 a year have to bear a tax burden equivalent to what I carry on my comparably miniscule pension. Nor will it end because 32 million more people have the opportunity to purchase (notice: PAY FOR), insurance denied to them because they once had some illness. Nor will it end because 47,000 poor children in Arizona, one of whom has a brain tumor and can’t afford treatment, will get a chance to regain health coverage.
The British have an expression for narcissism and self-absorption: “I’m all right in my corner, Jack,” they say. I can only hope that when people see what is actually in the bill and understand that someone cared enough to get this thing through Congress they won’t give in to the hysteria we can expect in the months ahead.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Appeasement
Why am I getting the feeling that the Obama is behaving like Chamberlain when he sought peace in our time from Hitler?
Could it be because Obama is trying to negotiate with fanatics who hate us as much as the Nazi’s did? Who see negotiation as blood in the water? Who believe that the poor and the sick deserve all they get because if they were worth tuppence, God would have rewarded them just like the corporate bosses?
Could it be because I am currently in Palm Springs, the original American version of let them eat cake and if they can’t afford to play here, well, piss on them.
I am sitting in a resort where the tariff is over $300 a night ($99 last minute on Travelocity). It’s pretty, Italianate, and pricey—the banquet tonight is $110 per person and will undoubtedly be palatable but unspectacular. That’s the careless way it goes when expenses can be deducted. Today at lunch, one of the medical professionals gathering here held forth on how superior the American medical system is (ranked 37th in the world and behind Costa Rica?) and why a public plan (like Medicare, which they are all on and enjoying) would yield substandard care. I replied, “It would be better than nothing, which is what millions of Americans now have.” He looked shocked. I don’t know whether it was because I had the temerity to speak up or whether he simply hadn’t considered the point.
Obama’s problem is that he expects these resort denizens to give up something for the public good. That’s not what it’s about in this modern America of ours. It’s everyone for themselves and those that have despise those who haven’t. This viewpoint curls around the edges of the Republican positions. It’s not even that they oppose something because the Democrats propose it. It’s because they oppose anything threatening the comfortable niches that have carved out.
I really can’t blame them for wanting to keep the privileges they undoubtedly feel they have earned, Palm Springs among them. After all, once the herd moves into town with trailer parks, fast food, and cheap, carnival thrills –there goes the neighborhood. If there is a public option, after all, more of these (usually) minorities might even live longer and what would we do with the surplus population?
As I say, I can understand the self-protection of these individuals, but at the same time, this is not the behavior I expect of my government. The government of this country was designed to be a system of checks and balances. Obama has forgotten that in his Hawaii-based, Asian philosophy. Checks and balances are by nature confrontational. They have to be. He needs to take a stand for what he knows in his heart is right before he squanders any more of the people’s support who put him in the White House.
I, for one, need a clear call to action from him or else I might as well say to hell with it and go have a cocktail at the pool.
Could it be because Obama is trying to negotiate with fanatics who hate us as much as the Nazi’s did? Who see negotiation as blood in the water? Who believe that the poor and the sick deserve all they get because if they were worth tuppence, God would have rewarded them just like the corporate bosses?
Could it be because I am currently in Palm Springs, the original American version of let them eat cake and if they can’t afford to play here, well, piss on them.
I am sitting in a resort where the tariff is over $300 a night ($99 last minute on Travelocity). It’s pretty, Italianate, and pricey—the banquet tonight is $110 per person and will undoubtedly be palatable but unspectacular. That’s the careless way it goes when expenses can be deducted. Today at lunch, one of the medical professionals gathering here held forth on how superior the American medical system is (ranked 37th in the world and behind Costa Rica?) and why a public plan (like Medicare, which they are all on and enjoying) would yield substandard care. I replied, “It would be better than nothing, which is what millions of Americans now have.” He looked shocked. I don’t know whether it was because I had the temerity to speak up or whether he simply hadn’t considered the point.
Obama’s problem is that he expects these resort denizens to give up something for the public good. That’s not what it’s about in this modern America of ours. It’s everyone for themselves and those that have despise those who haven’t. This viewpoint curls around the edges of the Republican positions. It’s not even that they oppose something because the Democrats propose it. It’s because they oppose anything threatening the comfortable niches that have carved out.
I really can’t blame them for wanting to keep the privileges they undoubtedly feel they have earned, Palm Springs among them. After all, once the herd moves into town with trailer parks, fast food, and cheap, carnival thrills –there goes the neighborhood. If there is a public option, after all, more of these (usually) minorities might even live longer and what would we do with the surplus population?
As I say, I can understand the self-protection of these individuals, but at the same time, this is not the behavior I expect of my government. The government of this country was designed to be a system of checks and balances. Obama has forgotten that in his Hawaii-based, Asian philosophy. Checks and balances are by nature confrontational. They have to be. He needs to take a stand for what he knows in his heart is right before he squanders any more of the people’s support who put him in the White House.
I, for one, need a clear call to action from him or else I might as well say to hell with it and go have a cocktail at the pool.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Elderly and Assumptions
When I taught freshman English at the University of Hawaii, I used to give the students a newspaper headline and asked them to tell me what they supposed the story was about. The headline was "Elderly Couple in Freeway Accident."
Most of them told me it would be about why more restrictions were needed for senior drivers since they were sure the senior driver was at fault. The wisest among them said they didn't know enough to form a conclusion, but that didn't stop the majority from forming opinions based, as they later admitted, on their own thoughts on the subject of who might be called "elderly."
The use of the word "elderly" is interesting because it's another one of those terms that are defined subjectively. AARP has snagged the word "senior" which they define as anyone over 55, to the great displeasure of those under 65 who wish to defer being called that. In fact, some "seniors" say they are offended when the first AARP magazine arrives in their mailboxes. I admit to being a little shocked myself, but I soon balanced it by realizing that all that had happened was I had entered the market demographic that AARP likes to target: those of us, it would seem, who have little to do except become "active seniors" on our way to choosing our pre-need burial sites and caskets.
I think my students learned something that day when I began to give them further details about the accident. I told them that the other driver involved was a teenager. I asked then what they assumed. They said the teen probably had other teens in the car and was texting and/or speeding. Boy--they were tough on their fellow teens.
Then I gave them the actual story, which involved a run-away truck that had clipped the teens' car and pushed them into the elderly couple's sedan, putting the couple into the hospital with serious injuries. My student's were chastened and I thought it was a great exercise in assumptions. Not to be beaten down, though, they became indignant over what they said was the newspaper misleading them. "Sorry, Chums," I said, "you can't blame it all on the media. You were there too."
I was thinking about this other day when I was reading an impassioned article in the Arizona paper about how politicians are "not listening" to the people. Well, I wanted to say, maybe it's because the people aren't worth listening to. If my students had been in charge, there would have been even more restrictions on drivers over 65 and on drivers under twenty, neither one of which would have made any difference to the accident as it happened. All the legislative mayhem and protests that might have followed would have been caused by jumping to conclusions and not taking the time to look at all the details.
I think this happens a great deal of the time. In my more cynical moments, I suspect the media do this in order to generate controversy and have something to report. I will say H1N1 and rest my case, although I could also point to the most famous case of all: Orson Welles and the radio broadcast about alien invasion. People died in the panic caused by that program.
Finding out what really matters takes time and most people, it seems, would prefer the comfort of unexamined assumptions that sound good on the surface and flatter whatever it is they think they already know, or at least fear. This tendency does not give me comfort when I consider it drives political forces in most democracies. My late husband used to say, "Every head a vote, no matter how empty."
I have my own assumptions about things, I will admit. I try to control them because I know better, but that doesn't stop me from assuming that politicans are for sale, that unregulated corporations and financial institutions will gamble with the national capital if it makes them short-term rewards, and that laws are fashionable rather than just (the latter opinion, expressed on a jury selection questionaire, made me the first potential jurist both defense and prosecution eliminated from the pool).
Maybe what we all need is good dose of distrust in what we are told and what we read.
Most of them told me it would be about why more restrictions were needed for senior drivers since they were sure the senior driver was at fault. The wisest among them said they didn't know enough to form a conclusion, but that didn't stop the majority from forming opinions based, as they later admitted, on their own thoughts on the subject of who might be called "elderly."
The use of the word "elderly" is interesting because it's another one of those terms that are defined subjectively. AARP has snagged the word "senior" which they define as anyone over 55, to the great displeasure of those under 65 who wish to defer being called that. In fact, some "seniors" say they are offended when the first AARP magazine arrives in their mailboxes. I admit to being a little shocked myself, but I soon balanced it by realizing that all that had happened was I had entered the market demographic that AARP likes to target: those of us, it would seem, who have little to do except become "active seniors" on our way to choosing our pre-need burial sites and caskets.
I think my students learned something that day when I began to give them further details about the accident. I told them that the other driver involved was a teenager. I asked then what they assumed. They said the teen probably had other teens in the car and was texting and/or speeding. Boy--they were tough on their fellow teens.
Then I gave them the actual story, which involved a run-away truck that had clipped the teens' car and pushed them into the elderly couple's sedan, putting the couple into the hospital with serious injuries. My student's were chastened and I thought it was a great exercise in assumptions. Not to be beaten down, though, they became indignant over what they said was the newspaper misleading them. "Sorry, Chums," I said, "you can't blame it all on the media. You were there too."
I was thinking about this other day when I was reading an impassioned article in the Arizona paper about how politicians are "not listening" to the people. Well, I wanted to say, maybe it's because the people aren't worth listening to. If my students had been in charge, there would have been even more restrictions on drivers over 65 and on drivers under twenty, neither one of which would have made any difference to the accident as it happened. All the legislative mayhem and protests that might have followed would have been caused by jumping to conclusions and not taking the time to look at all the details.
I think this happens a great deal of the time. In my more cynical moments, I suspect the media do this in order to generate controversy and have something to report. I will say H1N1 and rest my case, although I could also point to the most famous case of all: Orson Welles and the radio broadcast about alien invasion. People died in the panic caused by that program.
Finding out what really matters takes time and most people, it seems, would prefer the comfort of unexamined assumptions that sound good on the surface and flatter whatever it is they think they already know, or at least fear. This tendency does not give me comfort when I consider it drives political forces in most democracies. My late husband used to say, "Every head a vote, no matter how empty."
I have my own assumptions about things, I will admit. I try to control them because I know better, but that doesn't stop me from assuming that politicans are for sale, that unregulated corporations and financial institutions will gamble with the national capital if it makes them short-term rewards, and that laws are fashionable rather than just (the latter opinion, expressed on a jury selection questionaire, made me the first potential jurist both defense and prosecution eliminated from the pool).
Maybe what we all need is good dose of distrust in what we are told and what we read.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
A Pair of Recluses in Arizona
It’s been six months now since we made the decision to bring the travel trailer down to Phoenix, site it permanently in an RV resort, and turn ourselves into part-time snowbirds. During those six months, much has happened, including an offer to publish my second novel from a commercial publisher, and the end of the on and off decision making process by which I decided not to sell the Denver house just yet. But far and above has been the learning curve involved with becoming semi-gypsies.
I must admit that some of the learning curve was anticipated—living small and spare is different from living in a large suburban house with basement and crawl space into which to stuff things that have dubious immediate purpose and only a “maybe” future ahead of them. Storing the unnecessary in an RV is undesirable if not impossible, so what is not obviously essential finds its way to the well-stocked local thrift shop. I have six hangers in my little bedside closet and that—as they say—is that.
The more important learning curve has, however, has involved something more profound since it touches on who we are and, more definitely, who we are not.
When we started this adventure, we were open (for us) to breaking out of our conventions of social behavior. In other words, we started conversations with fellow campers and looked forward to participating in planned resort activities. There was a morning coffee group of older gents that suggested Sid would not be always looking at me as he drank his; there was a hiking group we both could join; and there were planned social events such as potluck dinners and breakfasts.
While we were happily imagining this world of social contacts, however, we forgot a basic component of the whole equation. We forgot that we were us.
The old gents coffee klatch turned out to be a morning bitch about politics (liberal, black president)and things that go wrong with RVs. A large percentage of the park residents turned out to be blue collar or retired small business owners with McCain-Palin stickers on their trucks. We were fortunate in finding the only other couple (we believe) who are middle of the road like us. They were classier than us—daring to have an Obama-Biden sticker on their truck—but the message to us is clear: Arizona is a red state, the RV is a red zone, and we don’t fit in.
The hiking group turned out to be a group of “getting to altitude and staying there” extreme hikers (extreme for a group of supposedly over 55 anyway). We went with them on the first hike, a fairly simple walk in Lost Dutchmen Park. Ordinarily this park has some of the most mellow walks in Apache Junction, but the group went at a fast clip and ostentatiously stopped for the stragglers (us) to catch up to them. We were holding them back and let us know it. We decided to go off on our own in future. Last time I looked, they went hiking on Picacho Peak south of Phoenix, which has a fixed rope because of the steepness, a trail so narrow around an outcropping that is has a wire cage to catch anyone sliding off, and a reputation for having “no mercy” on hikers. OK—glad we passed on that.
The social events were a study in insanity. No matter how early one arrived, the best tables were marked with post-its as being reserved. This practice was apparently approved since many of the attendees were returners and wanted to sit with friends made over a number of years. Same time next year has real meaning in the park.
Reserving tables ahead of time meant that newcomers without these associations were relegated to the left-over seats around the perimeter with no chance at meeting people. At New Year’s, we got there early only to crushed so tightly against a wall people had to get up to let us out, Even though we’d bought tickets, we left without eating.
The worst evening as far as I was concerned was the so-called Hawaiian night. It was potluck so I cooked a ten pound pork butt, haole kalua-pig style. It made a mound of shredded meat so huge I thought I’d have left-overs to bring home. I don’t know what the others thought was Hawaiian food (one lady brought a small bowl of hominy???) but whatever it was there wasn’t enough. The food ran out before the diners did, something that would never have happened in Hawaii because of the custom of generous sharing.
Then to make matters worse they had “Hawaiian entertainment,” consisting of clowning around in Dollar Store raffia skirts. I was so offended I gave a short demonstration of the few steps I knew to the song they were jumping around to. There’s a picture of me on the web now in which I look a complete and overweight idiot. To me what they were doing was as bad as making whooping sounds and claiming it to be American Indian.
So, we’re now back to being our usual socially reclusive selves. We’re enjoying the weather, the park is safe and convenient, and we’re doing what we want at our own speed but except for Bob and Lynda, we are by ourselves.
And we’re finding it quite all right.
I must admit that some of the learning curve was anticipated—living small and spare is different from living in a large suburban house with basement and crawl space into which to stuff things that have dubious immediate purpose and only a “maybe” future ahead of them. Storing the unnecessary in an RV is undesirable if not impossible, so what is not obviously essential finds its way to the well-stocked local thrift shop. I have six hangers in my little bedside closet and that—as they say—is that.
The more important learning curve has, however, has involved something more profound since it touches on who we are and, more definitely, who we are not.
When we started this adventure, we were open (for us) to breaking out of our conventions of social behavior. In other words, we started conversations with fellow campers and looked forward to participating in planned resort activities. There was a morning coffee group of older gents that suggested Sid would not be always looking at me as he drank his; there was a hiking group we both could join; and there were planned social events such as potluck dinners and breakfasts.
While we were happily imagining this world of social contacts, however, we forgot a basic component of the whole equation. We forgot that we were us.
The old gents coffee klatch turned out to be a morning bitch about politics (liberal, black president)and things that go wrong with RVs. A large percentage of the park residents turned out to be blue collar or retired small business owners with McCain-Palin stickers on their trucks. We were fortunate in finding the only other couple (we believe) who are middle of the road like us. They were classier than us—daring to have an Obama-Biden sticker on their truck—but the message to us is clear: Arizona is a red state, the RV is a red zone, and we don’t fit in.
The hiking group turned out to be a group of “getting to altitude and staying there” extreme hikers (extreme for a group of supposedly over 55 anyway). We went with them on the first hike, a fairly simple walk in Lost Dutchmen Park. Ordinarily this park has some of the most mellow walks in Apache Junction, but the group went at a fast clip and ostentatiously stopped for the stragglers (us) to catch up to them. We were holding them back and let us know it. We decided to go off on our own in future. Last time I looked, they went hiking on Picacho Peak south of Phoenix, which has a fixed rope because of the steepness, a trail so narrow around an outcropping that is has a wire cage to catch anyone sliding off, and a reputation for having “no mercy” on hikers. OK—glad we passed on that.
The social events were a study in insanity. No matter how early one arrived, the best tables were marked with post-its as being reserved. This practice was apparently approved since many of the attendees were returners and wanted to sit with friends made over a number of years. Same time next year has real meaning in the park.
Reserving tables ahead of time meant that newcomers without these associations were relegated to the left-over seats around the perimeter with no chance at meeting people. At New Year’s, we got there early only to crushed so tightly against a wall people had to get up to let us out, Even though we’d bought tickets, we left without eating.
The worst evening as far as I was concerned was the so-called Hawaiian night. It was potluck so I cooked a ten pound pork butt, haole kalua-pig style. It made a mound of shredded meat so huge I thought I’d have left-overs to bring home. I don’t know what the others thought was Hawaiian food (one lady brought a small bowl of hominy???) but whatever it was there wasn’t enough. The food ran out before the diners did, something that would never have happened in Hawaii because of the custom of generous sharing.
Then to make matters worse they had “Hawaiian entertainment,” consisting of clowning around in Dollar Store raffia skirts. I was so offended I gave a short demonstration of the few steps I knew to the song they were jumping around to. There’s a picture of me on the web now in which I look a complete and overweight idiot. To me what they were doing was as bad as making whooping sounds and claiming it to be American Indian.
So, we’re now back to being our usual socially reclusive selves. We’re enjoying the weather, the park is safe and convenient, and we’re doing what we want at our own speed but except for Bob and Lynda, we are by ourselves.
And we’re finding it quite all right.
Friday, January 15, 2010
On the Back of a Whale
The Japanese say that their country rests on the back of a whale and earthquakes happen when the beast shifts its position. I've always liked this concept. Beside requiring an incredibly accommodating whale, it reminds us the planet is not inert but alive in the sense that there is a limit to the nonsense it will endure from us.
Now, I'm not saying we are responsible for earthquakes. In the face of no better way to understand their causes, I subscribe to the theory of plate shifting and continental drift. I lived almost 40 years in Hawaii. People living in the Islands know all about moving hot spots as the plates shift. In fact, the newest island, Loihi, is forming now under the ocean off the Big Island.
What I'm saying is if we can't control earthquakes, surely we can control ourselves. If we believe we are on the back of the whale, then common sense says we should respect the animal and understand it will behave like a whale. Why are we surprised when the whale shifts and brings earthquakes and tsunamis? Why are we wasting our time listening to ignorant claims of a pact between Haiti and the devil? It's the whale, for heaven's sake, just doing what it does.
I feel the same impatience watching people in Haiti being dragged out of sub-standard housing that collapsed around them as I felt when I watched Katrina survivors begging for water and food. Worse, I have every expectation that we'll see scenes just like this again when one of our West Coast cities is devastated as New Orleans was. Just what we will need: the media yet again arriving (when relief workers supposedly can't get in) to report every juicy detail of human misery and then provide fodder for the pundits comfortably back hime to shovel out their uninformed guesses and unhelpful speculations.
In fact, sad though I am for those in Haiti, it's the media that I am most discouraged about. Haitian family members in the US and around the world need to know about their loved ones and old neighborhoods, but this continual replaying of the same scenes recalls those dreadful days after 9/11 when we had to endure hours of watching the planes hitting the Twin Towers. It was pandering to our own worst tendencies to want to be entertained. Panders, in fact, is what the media have become in their desperate attempt to keep ratings.
Back when I was in college, eons ago, Marshall McLuhan was just hitting the circuits. His idea was prophetic: he said the medium was the massage (sic). He used the word massage because he wanted to say that the new form of instant communication and broadcast were inevitably going to shape what was broadcast. Today, our technology allows us to view and review (ad nauseum) human suffering and at the same time distance ourselves from it. We have no way to process what we are seeing except to watch it unfold like a movie or television show.
Our technology has, in my personal and admittedly senior opinion, debased our abilities to think metaphorically. Perhaps if we could envision the earth as a living creature, we might be better at not assuming arrogantly that everything here is for us to use and discard (a viewpoint for which I will not forgive the creation myth in Genesis). We might be better at helping our fellows instead of judging them. We might be better at remembering John Donne's words that no one of us is an island, even if some allow themselves to be smug and comfortable and moralistic.
l
Now, I'm not saying we are responsible for earthquakes. In the face of no better way to understand their causes, I subscribe to the theory of plate shifting and continental drift. I lived almost 40 years in Hawaii. People living in the Islands know all about moving hot spots as the plates shift. In fact, the newest island, Loihi, is forming now under the ocean off the Big Island.
What I'm saying is if we can't control earthquakes, surely we can control ourselves. If we believe we are on the back of the whale, then common sense says we should respect the animal and understand it will behave like a whale. Why are we surprised when the whale shifts and brings earthquakes and tsunamis? Why are we wasting our time listening to ignorant claims of a pact between Haiti and the devil? It's the whale, for heaven's sake, just doing what it does.
I feel the same impatience watching people in Haiti being dragged out of sub-standard housing that collapsed around them as I felt when I watched Katrina survivors begging for water and food. Worse, I have every expectation that we'll see scenes just like this again when one of our West Coast cities is devastated as New Orleans was. Just what we will need: the media yet again arriving (when relief workers supposedly can't get in) to report every juicy detail of human misery and then provide fodder for the pundits comfortably back hime to shovel out their uninformed guesses and unhelpful speculations.
In fact, sad though I am for those in Haiti, it's the media that I am most discouraged about. Haitian family members in the US and around the world need to know about their loved ones and old neighborhoods, but this continual replaying of the same scenes recalls those dreadful days after 9/11 when we had to endure hours of watching the planes hitting the Twin Towers. It was pandering to our own worst tendencies to want to be entertained. Panders, in fact, is what the media have become in their desperate attempt to keep ratings.
Back when I was in college, eons ago, Marshall McLuhan was just hitting the circuits. His idea was prophetic: he said the medium was the massage (sic). He used the word massage because he wanted to say that the new form of instant communication and broadcast were inevitably going to shape what was broadcast. Today, our technology allows us to view and review (ad nauseum) human suffering and at the same time distance ourselves from it. We have no way to process what we are seeing except to watch it unfold like a movie or television show.
Our technology has, in my personal and admittedly senior opinion, debased our abilities to think metaphorically. Perhaps if we could envision the earth as a living creature, we might be better at not assuming arrogantly that everything here is for us to use and discard (a viewpoint for which I will not forgive the creation myth in Genesis). We might be better at helping our fellows instead of judging them. We might be better at remembering John Donne's words that no one of us is an island, even if some allow themselves to be smug and comfortable and moralistic.
l
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