It’s easy to be cynical. Like, really easy. Given enough time, you can find faults in the visible and invisible alike, and even what was once good can dim. I’ve seen The King’s Speech frice (that’s four times). I haven’t watched it in five or six months because I’m afraid it will no longer move me. More immediately, I fear I’m growing disenchanted with both Radiohead and the Beatles. That’s not good.
But even proper Cynicism is popular these days. Movies like Fight Club and shows like Wilfred are Cynical. In both shows — SPOILER ALERT — a pseudo-fictional character works to convince the protagonist to live naturally. (I mean naturally literally, as in ‘according to nature.’ I value literal expression.) Cynicism says, “Forget respecting societal conventions like authority or private property rights, Edward Norton/Elijah Wood/YOUR NAME HERE. Just live like the animal you are.”
Cynicism seems freeing. It challenges conventional values and thus frees people from the burden of meeting arbitrarily high standards. But Cynicism still values natural living. What if you’re as disenchanted with basic human functions as you are with everything else? You just might be a nihilist, and that’s nothing good. In fact, it's nothing at all.
Suffering through frustrations and travesties produces character. That character might be cynical or gracious, but it will be you. Honestly, grace makes no sense given how disappointing and terrible things can be. Why patiently hold out hope and choose to love what’s so dismissible? Because that’s grace, and grace is beautiful and true and good. And, unlike nothing, it is.
In case you didn’t already know, it’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day. That means it’s high time to read up on piracy on the high seas.
Pirates were pretty great — I hear David Cordingly’s Under the Black Flag is a great account of the golden age of maritime piracy — and they’re still terrorizing the Indian Ocean. (The graphic I wanted to post here is too big for the page. Check it out on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map_2010.png.)
In fact, if you want to ship anything from Europe to Asia through the Suez Canal, you run the risk of having your ships overtaken by pirates. Insurance companies are making a killing, too.
But while maritime piracy costs billions per year, digital piracy costs more. (There’s a great Economist article about the national extents of Internet piracy. It’s pretty new, too: http://www.economist.com/node/21526299.)
The gist of the article is that piracy of music and movies varies from country to country depending on laws and legal prices of information. Piracy in the United States is relatively low, actually. But the subject of information sharing remains.
Information sharing exposes security levels and acts as a shortcut.
Obviously, I’m talking about more than file sharing here. I think the type of information people share says a lot about how secure they are. On the one hand, kids will bully other kids about something that bothers them. Their bullying is a way to express their own insecurities. And don’t adults do the same thing? If something crazy or shocking happens to you when you go to the DMV, you want to share it with other people to know you’re not crazy yourself.
But on the other hand, sharing deep personal information can be a sign of security with the company involved. A person with an addiction will share that with a loved one when ready. There’s a level of trust involved. But sharing that doesn’t mean the person is secure with their own problems. I think we share things to carry each other’s burdens. The Randian individual wouldn’t need to share anything with anybody. But that Übermensch doesn’t exist. We mere mortals have to share things with each other to get by. We just can’t fool ourselves into thinking we can carry everything ourselves.
Now, once information is shared, it can act as a sort of shortcut. Whereas Russian graphic designers are way ahead of Americans because they’ve pirated the latest versions of Photoshop, so too can information sharing fast-track a relationship. I think many college students are surprised at the quality of friends they make away at school. People are more open with their college peers, and that can even dwarf years of parallel experience with high school friends.
But what kind of relationship will information sharing fast-track one to? It’s important to remember the first point about security levels. Trusting someone is a tricky business. It’s like pirating online without Privoxy — it can get you in trouble. So you must beware about who’s secure and insecure in a relationship before sharing information.
In fact, the golden rule of BitTorrent downloading applies to relationships, too. Seed as much as you leech; or, upload as much as you download. (Actually, you should seed a little more than you leech, but that would shipwreck my metaphor.) You should never get in a relationship where the information sharing is only going one way. That’s unhealthy and, in one direction at least, parasitic. One-way information sharing is great for therapeutic relationships, but we’re not all licensed counselors — and that’s a very good thing.
So next time you share what’s been bugging you with someone, make sure you’re both secure enough for that. And beware that that sharing (I hate it when you get two thats in a row) will shortcut your relationship somewhere. You better have a map or some navigational tools to know where you are and where you’re going.
Now for a pirated clip from Muppet Treasure Island.
On 18 August, I flew southwest on Southwest. First, I flew from Chicago to Phoenix. It was there that I boarded an essentially Southwest flight. That plane flew me from Phoenix to Orange County and then went on to San Jose.
My flight from Phoenix to Orange County was miles better than my flight from Chicago to Phoenix, and I don’t think that’s just because it was many miles shorter. In fact, I think it’s because Southwest was flying an essentially Southwest route when it took me from Phoenix to Orange County. The chief flight attendant spoke an unmistakably southwestern English. She sarcastically explained the procedures for a water landing to a cabin of people who would soon pass over the Sonoran Desert and dropped a “y’all” that said “This ain’t my first rodeo, Cowboy.” She’d probably flown that route a thousand times before.
The flight couldn’t have gone more smoothly. Granted, it was only an hour long, but I’ve never walked off a plane feeling rejuvenated. I had been delayed for three hours trying to leave Chicago, and that flight refreshed me. I think it’s because Southwest Airlines was acting essentially, and acting essentially is a paragon of how.
People doing what they do best, or acting essentially, gets the job done well. The doer acts with confidence and care, in the spirit of muscle memory. This helps others as only jobs well done can and prevents logistics from overwhelming the doer.
“That’s great, Nathan, but your pleasant flight means nothing to me.” Well it should, because you too can act essentially! (Putting all four of the requisite commas in that last sentence renders it unreadable.)
Malcolm Gladwell observes in Outliers that most people reach peak competence with jobs in their tenth year. Thus, he says that it takes 10,000 hours to perfect a job. Why were the Beatles so successful? They logged their 10,000 hours of rock and roll before any other four-piece British band by playing eight-hour sets in a Hamburg strip club. Why is Bill Gates a billionaire? He had access to a computer years before most and spent his youth running programs through it well into the night. So, both the Beatles and Bill Gates were content to toil in obscurity. Providence just had it that they struck it rich.
But not only were the Beatles and Bill toiling in obscurity, they were acting essentially. (The Beetles and Bill is a straight-to-video entomological production of Bill Nye the Science Guy.) We now consider the Beatles as essentially rock and roll, and Bill Gates is essentially a computer nerd. Sometimes, however, your essential activity may not be what pays the bills.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone made obscene cartoons in college, but those cartoons got in the hands of Hollywood higher-ups. Soon, Trey and Matt were writing, producing and voicing South Park. They’re still doing so fourteen, going on fifteen years later.
But Trey is a lover of musicals at heart. That’s why, four years before South Park, Trey and Matt made Cannibal! The Musical. This year, they won nine Tonys for The Book of Mormon. I’m going to go ahead and claim those Tonys as a triumph for essential acting.
Can you imagine the sheer logistical weight of scoring, producing and directing a Broadway musical? Now, imagine doing all that while you have a weekly animated show to write, voice and direct. Why haven’t Trey and Matt collapsed? Trey, at least, wasn’t hampered by logistics in working on The Book of Mormon. Logistics aren’t overwhelming when you’re confident — i.e., not thinking about yourself — and have an abiding care for what you’re doing. That care is quiet, too. The excitement may have subsided some, but something deeper is there in its place. Also, Trey drinks Dayquil to pull all-nighters.
And while professors can fret about lesson plans well into the night, conveying information in an engaging way is no problem when they’re talking about their pet subjects. Just let Sonia Sorrell talk about Galla Placidia or John Struloeff go off on Leo Tolstoy. The logistics of lesson plans don’t matter when they’re explaining what’s essential to them. If professors act essentially, the information teaches itself.
“So, discover what you love to do and do it a lot! You’ll make lots of money! You’ll be famous!” No. Find activity that makes you forget yourself. That’s a good sign you’re enjoying what you’re doing. Even if you’re not doing it better than other people, you’re doing it for a decent reason. But just because you’re doing something well doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing something good.
Re-watching Tron: Legacy on Blu-ray last night got me thinking. It wasn’t the stunning visuals or superb score that got me. (Buy the Daft Punk soundtrack on Amazon and you get a bonus track.) It was Jeff Bridges’s pseudo-Buddhism.
The Dude’s philosophy is pretty much the same outside the Grid as inside it. In the film, Olivia Wilde tells Sam Flynn that the Dude’s been teaching her ‘the art of the selfless.’ (Yes, I refer to movie characters interchangeably as their character’s name, actor’s name and character’s name from other movies. Essentially, I just call people what they’re most known for. That’s why, as an actor, you have to be a larger personality than your role or you’ll be forever typecast. Sorry, Daniel Radcliffe. You’ll forever be Harry Potter.)
I get that Buddhism strives to annihilate self or, rather, realize that selfhood is an illusion. I can’t get on board with that. But I can get on board with the diminution of the self. (Is ‘getting on board’ a train metaphor? I guess, then, I’ll take the midnight train headed for Humility City.)
Selfishness can take many forms. At one extreme, self-worship is pride. Secure people roll their eyes at the proud, but insecure people flock to the proud like Harold and Kumar to White Castle. (I’d give an example of a proud person here, but I can only think of real people I’ve placed in my Acquaintances circle on Google+. It wouldn’t be very nice to name them. Then this would turn into a gossip blog. Also, I’m being highly parenthetical this post. I’ll stop.) On the other hand, self-hate can attract secure people and drive away the insecure. Gregory House can hardly move for the number of doctors catering to him at Princeton Plainsboro, but many of his weak-minded patients can’t bear him.
I think it’s a good practice to go through your own thoughts and writings and, metaphorically or literally, underline the pronouns. How often are they first-person?
I think self-absorption traps people in their own minds and keeps them living only present wonderings. Memory and anticipation kind of fall away when all you can do is think about stuff on your own. Insulated in thought, it’s difficult to experience things outside of yourself. In fact, for all the thinking going on, it’s really difficult to know things.
Spanish and French both have two words for the verb ‘to know.’ While referencing the French words would be more academic — I hate that — it would also be plagiarizing Lewis scholar Michael Ward’s lectures on his book Planet Narnia. So, I’ll still use his ideas but I’ll translate them into Spanish.
Saber is to know something as a fact. Conocer is to know someone or some place personally. Conozco South Kensington.* Yo sé a Señor Cornwallis. But, and this is important not just to this blog post but my senior thesis, espero que conozca a Señor Cornwallis.
*Now’s as good a time as any to link to this YouTube video I found of Conan touring London. It aired on his old Late Night program. If I’m being real, he really hasn’t been as funny since he left New York.
As C.S. Lewis, the patron saint of Protestants, once said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.” Thinking about yourself less means you can think outside your present time, remember and project. But selflessness also allows you to really know other things and, more importantly, other people more fully.
I really think it’s just the economic principle of the Crowding out effect applied to the individual. You can only know of things if you’re selfish because your person is too crowded to let anything enter in. You can only Know things by allowing them to enter into yourself. (Yes, I just distinguished between the two ways of knowing by capitalizing the conocer. And while I’m sorry for the parenthetical, I’m sorrier English doesn’t have two different words to express the difference.)
So, go out there and learn something. Hopefully you can gain some Knowledge, because I’m pretty sure knowing stuff doesn’t really help you relate to people. Knowing stuff, however, does, because the personal can more easily be shared than the abstract and impersonal. Plus, Knowing stuff is good practice for Knowing people, which is probably a better end than Knowing stuff anyway.
No one likes to wait, which is probably why everything’s getting faster. But for all the time-saving technologies, we’re still waiting. Just for different things. That’s okay, actually, because there’s value in waiting. You don’t have to use your phone to pass the time.
I think the value of waiting is in its eternity, and I don’t mean that hyperbolically. If the present is the portion of time most like eternity, then how we spend that time is crucial, even preparatory. Blank time forces us to deal with our essential existences, and that can be scary. Some French Irish guy wrote a play about that, but I’m not going to mention it until the end.
Anyone who’s played a video game on any sort of disc has waited. Even this time doesn’t have to be wasted. Once, I was playing Half Life 2 with a friend, and we were waiting for the next stretch of one of the hovercraft levels to load. There was nothing to do but wait. We stared at the word LOADING and watched the ellipsis’s animated stoppage. In an uncharacteristic moment of inspiration, I hacked the blank time.
“Looks like we’ve encountered my old Chinese friend again, Loa Ding.”
Lame? Yes, but that hasn’t stopped me from using it again and again, in every applicable context.
Friend: “Looks like we’ll have to wait fifteen minutes to get a table.”
Me: “I guess we’ve encountered my old Chinese friend again, Loa—“
Friend: “Nathan, this isn’t a video game. And you really shouldn’t make Asian jokes in a P.F. Chang’s.”
In an effort to court the worst parts of waiting, I’ve developed a taste for elevator music, smooth jazz to be specific. There used to be a radio station that broadcast in Chicagoland, 95.5 WNUA. It pioneered the smooth jazz format, creating imitators the nation across. I used to tune in to 95.5 and accompany the blank time of driving with the silky sounds of saxes. Sadly, at 9:55 am on 22 May 2009, the station switched its format and began playing Spanish pop music. I don’t care how many times they play it, Daddy Yankee’s ‘Gasolina’ can’t soothe like a lazily improvised clarinet can.
Now, I like smooth jazz ironically, but smooth jazz is also a warning. Fall under its spell and you will’ve lulled yourself into accepting inactivity. Many people sleep or take drugs to do this, but smooth jazz can do the trick just as well. Subdued inactivity is very nearly lifeless. To enjoy waiting is to be active. To wit, I was just reading a G.K. Chesterton essay the other day called ‘On Running After One’s Hat’. He’s a man who knows how to wait:
Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys' habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things.
You can be in this same spirit at airports, bus stops and queues of all sorts. Waiting’s only boring if you let it be.
When enjoying blank time in public spaces, you may find yourself laughing, singing or talking to yourself. I was doing the penultilatter walking the south bank of the Thames the other day. (No, I wasn’t dancing: the penultilatter is not a Victorian version of the Robot. I should’ve just said ‘second’ here in reference to singing, but I pride myself on having coined penultilatter and antepenultilatter to describe the next to last and next to next to last in a list. It’s actually wordier and more confusing than just saying ‘second’ or restating the item, singing in this case, but this is my blog. I’m going to use made-up words from time to time.) As I said, I was ‘doing the penultilatter’ on the south bank of the Thames the other day, pleasantly working through the first verse of ‘Jerusalem’ when I saw a round man with an ear piercing. He was wearing a mesh top, carrying a messenger bag and talking to himself. “He’s a crazy,” thought I. Then I realized I was probably freaking people out myself, singing an English national hymn in an American accent and pushing quickly past all other pedestrians on the path. Rather than stop singing, I made a mental note of how extraordinary it is to enjoy blank time. Too few do.
But waiting is not always an event. Sometimes, it’s a season. Time spent in the desert can tax even the most patient and imaginative. At worst, waiting can push people into existential despair as in Waiting for Godot. (I regret that I couldn’t write this post without mentioning it, but it’s got waiting in the title!) As memories fade along with hopes for the future, the present becomes increasingly bleak. It’s hard to hear anything above the sound of your thoughts which are not, at this point, cheering you.
It’s a wonder to discover there are created things outside yourself. Some of these things are visible. Some are invisible. And people kind of fall into both those categories.
So as you wander in the desert or simply wait for your laundry to dry, enjoy. But know yours is not the only story. Compositions have some instruments resting while others play. And even though you may not have the score, you can still enjoy the harmony.
Couples look to each other for validation. As a single, you validate yourself through your work. And what’s unique about the workplace is that it’s one of the few places you have to interact with others. You probably spend most of your time in agonizing isolation, but you must work for a few reasons.
First, working gives you the opportunity to lord your skills, honed in utter darkness, over your colleagues. This not only assuages your deep insecurities, but will probably get your promoted — which is a great transition to the second reason.
You must make more money to hoard. You and I both know the economic argument for staying single: dating is expensive! But so is living comfortably or, in fact, living at all. Ideally, you’ll reach the point where you have moonshine tastes and a champagne budget, pushing a shopping cart of all your possessions down the street but sitting on assets that put you near the top of the Forbes Rich List.
Finally, we all know the real reason you keep showing up for work. Without work, you’d have no reason to get up in the morning. So here’s how you should spend your time at the office.
1.Be the most intense commuter. No one works as hard as you do because your workday begins the second you wake up in the morning. And since you’d never tolerate incompetence at work, you can’t abide it in strangers slowing your commute. If you drive, bottle up your road rage and let it explode one day down the line. If you take public transportation, study up on Olympic speed walking techniques, and make sure to stare condescendingly at those insufferable others on the bus or train with you.
2.Ironically acquiesce to on-site security. These days, most workplaces have some form of security. Most workers would become friendly with these security guards. After all, they’re just doing their jobs, too. But you know that security only distract from your work. Do whatever they say just to get back to working as soon as possible, but do so with an eye roll and a smug smile. Then go home and memorize your company’s security policies so you can throw them in the face of the guards. They’ll like that.
3.Compete against yourself so no one competes against you. Once you get started on your formal tasks, you might notice there are other people around you. They work with you, unfortunately. Whether it’s blatant or subtle, there’s a competition going on with these people. Everyone is trying to show they’re better than everyone else. Lucky for you, you actually are. Frustrate your co-workers by refusing to play their game, and compete only with yourself. When someone else does well, say nothing. In fact….
4.Only express positive emotions. Unfortunately, your brain releases chemicals that make you feel things (read: emotions). Get in the practice of only expressing the positive ones. You will rarely feel positive emotions. You’ll most often feel stressed, angry at yourself for your own perceived incompetence and entirely sick of everyone around you. Internalize all of it. The only way to get ahead is by pretending everything’s okay. This will also freak everyone out. They’ll think, “How’s he doing that? I’ve never seen him stressed or angry!” That’s because those emotions don’t contribute to productivity. It’s either robotic apathy or mild pleasantries for you.
5.Time your trips to the bathroom well. Most people go to the bathroom to avoid getting assigned unfavorable tasks. You go to avoid breaking down in front of everyone. Sometimes your emotions will get the better of you, but you can’t let anyone in the office know that. Just check to make sure your supervisor isn’t in the stall next to you before you start weeping.
6.Always look focused. Even if you’re done with your work and you’re killing time — after all, you’ve just a shopping cart to go home to — let no one know. Read the news or do someone else’s work, but do not have any fun. Fun is unproductive.
7.Feign weekend and leisure activity. By working hard and only displaying positive emotions, you may fool your co-workers into thinking you’re not dead inside. They might ask you what you’ve done the night before or how your weekend was. Since you obviously did nothing, make stuff up. Just don’t go too wild. People will think you’re mocking them if you say you went spelunking in Switzerland over the weekend. Say you went to a national park or something. People love that crap.
8.Get too much sleep. Pass the time between working hours by sleeping, a lot. Don’t let anyone disturb your slumber, either. You need your rest to get up for work the next day and do it all over again, and again, until you grow old together, er, alone and die. Retirees are quitters after all.
I miss writing This Day in History for the Graphic. (Check out the new website: http://www.pepperdine-graphic.com/.) So I picked the summer solstice as my excuse to once more summarise Wikipedia for other people. Overwhelmed by the number of 21 June’s noteworthy events — it is the longest day of the year after all — I elected to write about them all.
‘Good for you, Nathan, but I’m not going to read about them all.’ Neither would I, so here follows This Day in Haiku-story. You get to read less. I get to write less. You get to (pretend to) learn and laugh. I get to combine my loves for history, Japan and pedestrian prosody.
Also, I refuse to change my Microsoft Word language from ‘English (United Kingdom)’. You could think that pretentious, but I’m not trying to impress you. Don’t flatter yourself. I write in British English because I want to. I guess that’s just self-absorbed, but I’ll choose self-absorbed over pretentious any day of the year — especially on the twenty-first of June.
The fourteenth of June is Flag Day in the United States. On this day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted Betsy Ross's homespun stars and stripes. Many other countries celebrate flag days, but America's is today. (Denmark's is tomorrow.)
Eddie Izzard has a good bit about flags. Here it is set to a Lego animation.
Symbols attract attention either to themselves or to what they represent. In one sense this is good. The invisible is difficult to understand without visible symbols. But the problem arises when the symbols start to take on a life of their own and outshine what they symbolize.
Numerals are just symbols for numbers, and language is comprised of symbols for thought. But sudoku is not high level mathematics, and sesquipedalianism is not intelligence. Ideally, we'd all follow the words of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein when we communicated: "Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." In this way, symbols (read: words) would point directly to their parent thoughts. We discover this truth every time we get wrapped up in a book. The words on the page fall away, and we become part of the author's internal world.
But we love conspicuous symbols. Platinum credit cards, sports cars, big homes, and high fashion make us seem wealthy and powerful. Our own insecurities, shortcomings, and mounting debt are brushed under the rug.
This occurs on a larger scale, too. Skyscrapers make our cities seem more important, and they’re often built at great expense. But both the Empire State Building and the Burj Khalifa struggled to find tenants once completed. Magnificent as both buildings are, they overreached.
Dubai: the objectively greatest city in the world. Does your city have a taller building?
"Wealthy people and architects are stupid. I don't let my symbols run wild. In fact, I don't think I have any symbols." Facebook profiles are our own boastful PR. Emblazoned with the personal symbols of our own names, our Facebook profiles say only the best things about us. (Emos are still stuck on Myspace and LiveJournal.) There is no "dislike" button on Facebook for a reason. Activity must be overwhelmingly, if artificially, positive for the site to remain healthy. People don't become addicted to websites that insult them.
Modest symbols, ones that don't attract undue attention to themselves, tend to stand for the most powerful forces. Nazis don't get that. At the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one Nazi mistakenly assumed the Holy Grail would look like the cup of a king. Here's what happened to him:
In fact, the grail was a simple, carpenter's cup.
Many people wear symbols all the time in the form of wedding rings. What kind of ring would a blue-collar laborer be able to buy his wife? Now, what kind of ring would an aging millionaire be able to buy his new, young wife? Which ring better represents love?
Ultimately, the best symbols are impossibly simple. Communion is just food and drink, but it's everything more. And any child can draw a cross, but the wisest sage can never fully understand what it means.
So, as far as symbols go, the American flag is all right. It has some meaning and isn't unduly flashy. It can make people think about the United States if it isn't completely overused. But, whether the flag attracts attention to itself or to the nation it represents, it's not about the symbol. What matters is what's behind the symbol.
Sunday boredom reminds the single of his true loneliness. Whether you’re a student or you have a real job, Monday through Friday force you to be around a bunch of other people you probably don’t like. But hey, at least you have company. On Saturday, you may find yourself spending time with all those friends you pretend to like. Again, at least you’re not alone. But on Sunday, you are.
“I go to church on Sunday!” Great, but unless you plan to make it a twelve-hour affair, you’re still going to have to face Sunday boredom.
“I sleep in on Sunday!” Congratulations: you’ve already anticipated suggestion No. 1. But, again, unless you plan to hibernate, you’re still going to have to face Sunday boredom.
“I work on Sundays!” Then you have more money than time or not enough of either. Don’t waste a second reading this.
I’ve found a few ways to endure lazy Sundays without the company of a significant other. In the absence of a loved one, there’s no better way to warm your heart than in the microwave of distraction.
1.Power nap to depressing music. Simply losing consciousness is actually somewhat of a copout as an activity, but that never stopped a bored single from sleeping away his troubles. If you’ve gone to church, you can actually justify taking a nap. If you’ve slept in, you can believe the lazy man’s maxim — “The more sleep you get, the more sleep you need.” — and go back to bed. Trip-hop and post-rock make for great lullabies. Both are just mellow enough to slow your mind and just dark enough to cast a shadow over your dreams. (I’ve known some who preferred Pink Floyd; but, with Dark Side of the Moon at least, you risk getting startled awake by the screaming woman from “The Great Gig in the Sky.”) Whether you choose Portishead or Sigur Rós, you can guarantee you’ll wake up wishing you had never gone to sleep.
2.Write a Shakespearean love sonnet — to yourself. Imagine getting all the benefits of writing a real love sonnet without feeling the heartache of your special someone realizing how much time you spent honing your iambic pentameter and getting really creeped out. “This is so thoughtful… so… very… thoughtful.” Writing for yourself, you get to practice your verse, pretend you’ve accomplished something, and self-aggrandize. What could be better? (See No. 3.)
3.Redact a newspaper for a sweet old widow. There’s a lot of terrible stuff in the news, and rightly so. The truth hurts. That’s why so many people like to watch cable news networks that merely reinforce their beliefs. (MSNBC is as guilty as Fox.) So, why not take a Sharpie to a Sunday edition and elide your way into the good graces of a little old lady? Air strikes over Libya kill 10? No, no, no. Air strikes over Libya kill 10! Every old woman loves clean air, and if you can convince one to go to Libya in search of it you stand to inherit both life insurance money and an extra vote in the next election.
4.See how much water you can consume in a day. You must be near a bathroom to attempt this one. Seriously, hyper-hydration is deadly. But exercising your kidneys is healthy! It has exercise in the name, so you know it’s good for you! See if you can beat my record of six liters without wetting your pants, because going to the bathroom that often does tend to get old fast. Wearing Depends is cheating.
5.Disagree with the premises of commercials. No better way to trick yourself into contentment than by channel flipping for commercials and convincing yourself you don’t need the products or services advertised. Online dating services? Those are only for people who need people, and you don’t need people….
6.Facebook stalk prospects. Let off some steam the healthy way; creep on your secret crushes and frustratingly attractive exes. You can even spend some time Photoshopping yourself into photos with your would-be partner. Just remember not to upload said photos to your own profile and tag the target of your obsession, adding the caption: “HAPPILY. EVER. AFTER.” I know you don’t care about the social backlash, but the person will probably unfriend you. Then whom will you stalk?!
7.Tell no one what you're actually doing. Never, under any circumstances, let anyone know how lonely your Sunday afternoons are. As a single you must fool everyone into believing you’re perfectly content in your singlehood. In fact, you’re better off alone. I think Sun Tzu’s words about making your enemies believe you’re stronger than you are apply here. (Yes, I am pitting other people as the enemy here. What have they ever done for you, anyway?) Cheer up, though. You’ll soon be back in the Monday through Friday routine of feigning niceties to your peers, dishonestly answering “How are you doing?” with “Fine” so you can go back to brooding silently as quickly as possible.
Since 420, I’ve been thinking a lot but writing very little. Stir in equal parts ending my junior year and the all-but-complete abandonment of my journal, throw in a dash of international travel, and you’ll have a thick bowl of excuses stew. (Be careful: it’s not good for your heart.)
But, as I said, I have been thinking a lot. So, there’s that.
Before I left for London, I watched two parts of Alan Alda’s three-part, PBS documentary on what it means to be human entitled, appropriately, The Human Spark — http://video.pbs.org/program/1356407145/. (It’s well worth the three hours, or two in my case, if you’re at all interested in philosophy or anthropology.)
His conclusion? “Imagination and insight. That’s the human spark.” Essentially, we’re at our most human when we’re just doing nothing. Even when we’re idling, our brains continue to function and work on problems we’re not even aware of. In other words, daydreaming is completely unique to humans. So, too, is the ability to adopt different perspectives, be they interpersonal or temporal. Combine these two abilities, Alda argues, and you have our humanity.
My friend Alex is studying to be a neuroscientist. He thinks that’s reductionist, and he’s probably right. But Alex didn’t star for eleven series in M*A*S*H. 251 episodes spent in that U.S. Army hospital in Korea qualifies Alda to make definitive statements about our fundamental humanity. I’ll analyze what he has to say, anyway.
I think Alda’s “imagination and insight” is one side of a dichotomy in our consciousnesses. There’s present-mindedness, and there’s daydreaming — near and far. I leave it to Grover to illustrate this dichotomy.
Thankfully, we won’t need to suffer cardiac arrests ourselves to rectify this dichotomy. I realize this is probably a false dichotomy, but I think analyzing extremes informs how we can best blend those extremes. But which focus, near or far, better enriches our lives? I contend the “far” roots the sprout of the “near.”
First off, is "far" even a focus? It would seem that those who focus most on the past or future rarely focus at all. Next to hypocrisy, one of the biggest objections people have to Christianity, and Calvinism specifically, is that it keeps people thinking about Heaven to the exclusion of life here on earth. That’s problematic. How can Christians love their neighbors as themselves if they’re only concerned with what carat of gold will cover the streets in the sky? My other, future-financier friend, Adam — Yeah! I have two friends! — really hates it when fellow Christians say things like, “Oh well, it’ll all be worked out in Heaven.” In this instance, it’s as if Christians are absolving themselves of their present responsibility to enact their faith by appealing to the distant future. That can’t be the right way to rectify near and far, let alone to live.
In fact, everyone is guilty of forsaking near for far. Most technologies produced since the Industrial Revolution have been geared toward transcending space and time. Transportation innovations meant we could only move bodily: the railroad, the car, the airplane, the space shuttle. But other inventions meant we could go elsewhere in our minds: the telegraph, the phone, radio, TV, the Internet, cell phones. (Granted, books had been around for some time, even though few could read. But as Ray Bradbury demonstrated in Fahrenheit 451, a book cannot compete for sensory immersion in the same room as a TV.)
Even Angry Birds allows people to escape from their present circumstances. In one sense, this is good. All these technologies free people to choose the circumstances that best suit them. After all, only children and paranoid schizophrenics think the food in the fridge disappears when the door shuts. Everyone else believes firmly enough in object permanence to feel comfortable leaving things behind for a little while to drift elsewhere in mind or body.
The issue arises when people cease to be grounded at all. You know that guy. He only stops texting to Skype his friends back home. He scours Facebook for photos of friends from yesteryear and watches inordinate amounts of TV to escape from having to think about his present situation. This is not a firm belief in object permanence. This is obsessing about the food in the fridge when you have many other things to do.
But, as Hawkeye Pierce contends, our ability to be somewhere else in our minds is what makes us human. So, does "near" reduce our humanity?
Eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism love the concept of mindfulness — i.e., living fully in the present. Indeed, Eastern enthusiast Aldous Huxley included parrots in his utopia, depicted in Island, that constantly squawked to the island’s inhabitants: “Here and now, boys.”
Zen-like focus could be broadly seen as the logical conclusion of division of labor and specialization. Those best suited to do the most specific jobs will be those who can focus calmly, and entirely, from 9-5. Wired even argued awhile back that autistic savants would soon become the most desirable employees. What employer wouldn't want someone abnormally focused on their job to work for them?
Yet, attempts to enact the ideal presently have resulted in the most prolific bloodbaths in history. The Crusades, The French Revolution, the Taiping Rebellion, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Third Reich, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia collectively killed tens of millions of people. Were these instances of “near” going too far? Or of “far” corrupting the “near”? Would John and Yoko have had to kill a few dissidents to make “Imagine” a reality, too?
I don’t know. But I do know that Grover was right. Near and far are two different places, even mentally. And if “far” roots the sprout of the “near,” then we have to have both. That’s not a cop out because, actually, the only way to enjoy your fruit or veg is to pick it. Even potatoes and carrots must be dug up and brought near to eat.
So, in other words, you can’t neglect your roots, but you can’t enjoy them underground either. Live only in the present and you’ll have no direction. Live only elsewhen and you’ll have no life at all. We must trust our imagination and insight to inform our present, but we must act presently. Just make sure not to attempt to enact unrealistic ideals. Historically, that’s killed a lot of people. It’ll hurt you, too.
For years, I’ve commemorated 420. Except the literal train touring the Dole Plantation in Hawaii, I’ve never ridden the Pineapple Express. I’ve merely bombarded my fellowmen with trivia about the historic date. It’s just generally an awful day in history. Besides being the cannabis feast day, it’s Hitler’s birthday. It’s also the day not-very-American-supported troops failed to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It’s also the day of the Columbine shooting. Generally bad stuff all around.
Although I started telling people 420 trivia back in the eighth grade, more recently I’ve been writing a “This Day in History” column for the Pepperdine Graphic. It lets me peruse Wikipedia, ground my historical understanding in concrete events, and disseminate history humorously. I have a lot of fun with it.
But the Graphic’s last issue of the semester hit the stands on Thursday, 7 April. (There are almost certainly still copies on the vermillion rack in Firestone Fieldhouse. Pick one up if you haven’t yet. Also, check out Currents.) Thus, if I want to rehash events that happened on 420, I must do it on this, my blog.
My goal in this entry is to redeem 420 from the throes of wacky tobaccy, the Führer, American military debacles, and Coloradan school shootings. I want to prove that even on the darkest of days, many good things happen too.
On 420 in 1657, the colony of New Amsterdam (present-day New York City) granted Jews the freedom of religion.
Jews first came to New Amsterdam back in 1654. They came in two waves. First, Ashkenazic Jews arrived with passports from the Dutch West India Company from (Old) Amsterdam. The second wave were Sephardic Jews escaping Portuguese persecution in Brazil. Since I don't have much more information on that, here’s a list of famous Jews.
Famous Ashkenazic, read ‛German’, Jews include psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Zionist Theodor Herzl, the physicist and highly quotable Albert Einstein, despairing author Franz Kafka, Israeli PM Golda Meir, American composer George Gershwin, and... diary-writer Anne Frank. Quite a lineup.
Famous Sephardic Jews, or Jews from the Iberian Peninsula include rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinoza, Conservative British PM and demigod Benjamin Disraeli, “New Colossus” poet Emma Lazarus, and Simpsons voice actor Hank Azaria. In my book, while the Sephardic Jews make a good showing, they just don’t measure up to the Ashkenazic Jews.
That having been said, on 420, 1657 the Dutch gave these new Manhattanites the right to worship freely. This was no small feat, for it went against the will of the ornery, peg-legged director-general of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, who would still not allow the Jews to build a synagogue. Little did he know how thoroughly Jews would come to dominate the culture of New York. And little did he know his colony would be conquered by James II, Duke of York and become New York. Today, Stuyvesant’s name lives on in the Brooklyn neighborhood where Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z were born— “Bed-Stuy, Do or Die.”
315 years later, in 1972, Apollo 16 landed on the Moon.
The lunar module had an engine crisis before landing, and Thomas Mattingly, the astronaut who was removed from the infamous Apollo 13 mission at the last minute, was able to deal with the issue, correct course, and land the craft. This was the penultimate manned mission to the Moon, and astronauts roamed the surface in the lunar rover and collected over 200 pounds of moon rock, exfoliating the pores of the chronically dry-skinned Man in the Moon.
Four years later, former Beatle George Harrison sang the “Lumberjack Song” with Monty Python.
When Harrison died, Royal Albert Hall hosted a tribute concert to George where a reunited Python crew, including Tom Hanks (look for him in the lower right-hand corner of the Mounties) sang an ode to the enthusiastically transvestite Canadian. I can’t really make any joke about this song to make it any funnier than it already is. Here’s the link:
420 has also been a good day for the Chicago Bulls. In Jordan’s 1986 rookie season, he scored a then record 63 points in a playoff game against the Boston Celtics. Larry Bird described the rookie: “God disguised as Michael Jordan.”
On this same day ten years later, the Chicago Bulls won a still record 72 games in a single season. That means they only lost 10 games in the whole season. Incredible. The Bulls went on to defeat the Seattle Sonics to win the NBA Finals, making it their fourth win in the ’90s. The really amazing thing in those days, however, was the Bulls’ starting lineup video. So good.
My point is not that these events outweigh the bad things that happened on 420. I really don’t think there’s any way to measure that. My point is that no day, no matter how bad, is all bad. Whether it’s begrudgingly bestowed freedom of religion, a Moon landing, a Beatle making his mark on British comedy, or just generally a good day for Chicago sports history (and thus world history), no day is as dark as it seems. Remember that this 420.
"History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology." –James A. Garfield (Twentieth president of the United States)
When Charles Guiteau pulled a .44 on President Garfield, he was targeting one of the great minds of the nation. Garfield was a Republican in the tradition of Lincoln and was serious about granting blacks civil rights during Reconstruction. He was even smart enough to oppose the fiat currency Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase had peddled on the nation during the Civil War. It’s truly a shame Garfield’s doctors weren’t smart enough to sterilize their hands before they went digging around in his back for Guiteau’s bullet.
That having been said, Garfield’s thoughts on history are intriguing. If history is a why meeting a how, then, according to Garfield, that union has both a where and a when.
Disgruntled office-seeker and crazy person Charles Guiteau (left) put a bullet through the lung of ambidextrous polyglot President James A. Garfield (right).
When and where consistently converge in discrete events. E.g., President Garfield was shot in Washington, D.C. on 2 July 1881. But discrete events are merely the pegs on which we hang our understanding of the past. Do the how and why emerge directly from the where and when? Specifically, how do place and time affect an individual like Guiteau?
Individuals are the most beguiling variables of history, but are they merely pawns of place and time? If I can answer where and when someone is, can I determine what he or she is going to do?
Which place and time made Guiteau shoot Garfield? Was it growing up in Freeport, Illinois during the 1840s and 50s? Was it spending his younger days getting rejected by a utopian religious cult in New York? Was it spending the 1870s writing a speech for Grant and being repeatedly rejected for cabinet positions for which he had no qualifications? You might think the cult is what did it, but the assassin is often described as a disgruntled office-seeker. And does mere rejection really necessitate his shooting Garfield?
Okay, I’ve probably asked a few too many questions, but I hope you’re tracking with me. I’d like to think place and time aren’t the sole determining factors for an individual’s path. I know Morpheus would be upset with me as I cling to free will — “What happened happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.” —but Laurence Fishburne isn’t Emperor of the Universe, even if I’d like him to be sometimes.
This is the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar and Neo’s Obi-Wan, not the Emperor of the Universe.
Like the Oracle’s kitchen lintel plaque says: TEMET NOSCE. Know thyself. I’m going to make this piece a bit more personal than “History is for Lovers.” After all, it is my blog. Don’t worry: I’m not going to turn this into my diary.
I’m going to give three instances of place and time being the how and why behind one of my choices. Then, I’m going to go on the flip side and give three instances of place and time clearly pushing me in a direction I consciously turned from. Calm down: I’m doing it with pictures.
Elementary school Nathan was in the same class as P.J. Mangan from kindergarten to fifth grade, excepting the depressing fourth grade. Nathan became best friends with P.J., and they are still friends today. (There’s a great picture of us in a furniture/pillow fort back in kindergarten that I just don’t have access to. Believe you me, it’s a great picture.)*
Middle school Nathan could not watch PG-13 movies until he was 13. Thus, he watched all the old James Bond movies, rated PG before the PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984. He developed a deserved hatred for George Lazenby. He appreciates Australian Lionel Logue’s work with King George VI as portrayed in The King’s Speech, but no Australian has any business playing James Bond as Lazenby did in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
High school Nathan watched CoCo, who was then just Conan, interview Sarah Vowell about her book Assassination Vacation, probably on 21 February 2006. (That book is an excellent read and, incidentally, is how I learned about President Garfield’s tragic assassination.) Now college Nathan wants to express history creatively like Sarah Vowell did in that book—even if it means sporting the original General Burnsides sideburns.
Now for ways in which place and time pushed me one way and I went t’other. Again, pictures.
Middle school Nathan’s parents were, and are, straight-ticket Republicans. He, however, developed a strange fascination with communism, even using the AOL screen name “SovietSting.”
Nathan’s Texan mother pushed high school freshman Nathan into attending football summer camp. Instead of showing up to doubles, Nathan stayed home and played his Nintendo Gamecube.
Prospective college Nathan was an intelligent, white, Protestant from Wheaton, Illinois. He did not attend Wheaton College but randomly decided to enroll in Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Go Waves.
The careful reader not distracted by these poorly Photoshopped pictures will notice that even in these contrary examples, I still reference specific places and times. These places and times did have a bearing on my choices, of course. But did they determine my choices? I’m leaning toward no.
We cannot escape where and when. We occupy space-time. But given the inputs of where and when, I believe we have a little wiggle room in choosing our own how and why. If only I could have chosen for Charles Guiteau to have been anywhere else besides Washington, D.C. on 2 July 1881. Then, I’m confident, we would all celebrate the Garfield presidency and see his bearded visage hewn into Mt. Rushmore. Would that it were. Would that it were….
President James A. Garfield takes his rightful place in the presidential hall of fame.
