Society « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Current Affairs ... Society ...

When I see little kids today, I wonder what the heck are they in for over the next 60 or 70 years. (Yea, I know, I’m an incurable wonk; most people notice the cuteness in kids before they worry about the future. I make Al Gore look like Mother Goose). Members of my generation (the wonderful Baby Boomers) were pretty lucky. Once the Vietnam thing finally died out, things were pretty good for us. Yea, there were some oil shortages, and now we have terrorism here on our shores to worry about. But still, we’ve had it pretty good. But between now and 2099, a whole lot of fecal matter is going to hit the fan.

First off, the terrorism problem may not just fade away anytime soon. Second, a whole lot more nations in the world are going to get nuclear weapons, and eventually terrorists are going to get them too. Third, world oil and gas production are going to peak at some point in the next 50 years, driving prices thru the roof (what we’re now seeing in terms of energy price run-ups is probably part of that trend, although we may yet see some temporary downswings). Next, there’s global warming. Al Gore’s move (An Inconvenient Truth) will soon be playing at a theater near you, and hopefully a lot more people will soon be worrying about a 5 to 10 degree increase in average temperature. But if all that wasn’t enough, how about world population growth? We’re marching steadily toward the 10 billion mark.

The conservative crowd responds to all this by advising us to stay cool. The stock conservative answer to all problems, i.e. unfettered market capitalism and the technological advances that it inspires, will ride to the rescue once more. There’s money to be made in finding new sources of energy, securing our shores, and cleaning the carbon out of our air. So just keep the government out of the way of big business, let the military do it’s thing, and everything will turn out just fine.

But hey, this time we’re betting the farm. Business usually makes its plans according to the time horizons of its capital sources. Bonds usually have 20 year terms (or less). Stock market investors theoretically have an infinite ownership horizon, but in reality most stock investors get in and get out in a few years. No one today buys stock for the sake of passing it on to their grandchildren. Profession investors managing retirement funds and mutual funds are always buying and selling, changing their portfolios in response to what they see as emerging opportunities and threats (mostly though just generating fees for themselves). Thus, business managers have no profit incentive to worry today about the way that the world will be in 50 years. Even if consumers express concern about problems such as global warming and fossil fuel depletion, businesses will run nice ads about how concerned they are (for example, those ads by Chevron and BP about their investments into alternate energy sources), and then get back to their short-run profit concerns.

Europe still thinks that government should start doing something about most of these problems (but not all), but the US has the rest of the world convinced that government should just stay out of it (except for terrorism). So China and India and Russia go their merry way, burning irreplaceable fossil fuels and polluting the air and looking the other way as nukes make their way to every corner of the globe, while famine and poverty get worse in Africa and the Middle East (and South America ain’t doing so good, either).

Actually, I think that each of the major world problems that I’ve identified could be dealt with, if the human race were a highly intelligent and cooperative lot. But we’ve still got that “me first, I got mine” instinct deep within our genes. And that causes war (including terrorism, another form of war). And war makes things fall apart. I believe that the worst threat for the 21st century is war. Technology may continue to expand our resources, but global warming, population growth and other factors will change where those resources are, how they are used, and who gets to use them. There are going to be a lot of winners and losers, and the game is going to be played very fast. Will everyone just stay calm, play fair, and wait for their cut? Will everyone trust that the winners will share some with the losers? Or will a fight break out?

Hugo Chavez, Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Il Jong and the leadership of Hamas don’t seem content to sit peacefully as the pot stirs. As things in the world change faster and faster in the upcoming decades, there may well be more like them. I hope that those little kids I see in the soccer fields and school busses will be able to figure out how to make the world that we give them work. The world today is indeed like a big stew pot that we’ve filled up and lit a very hot fire under. For a long time, the pot of stew just sits there calmly, despite all the flames. But at some point, it’s going to start boiling. My generation will be checking out just as things get bubbling. It will be up to those kids and their peers in Moscow, Cairo, Bombay, Buenos Aires, Seoul, etc. to try to keep the froth from sloping over the side and putting out the fire.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 1:04 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Friday, April 28, 2006

◊ Irresponsible Eating, Irresponsible Driving

Society ...

There’s an article in the May Atlantic about how eating contests are being turned into a commercialized pro sport here in America. There are now leagues and prizes and TV coverage of an expanding array of pie contests and hot dog contests and donut contests, etc. etc. It gives you indigestion just thinking about it.

Interestingly, professional eating was prophesied decades ago in an Alka Seltzer commercial. The setting was a pie-eating contest where a bunch of contestants were washing up in a locker room after the main event. One guy says to another “pretty good pie today, Tank; what was that, blueberry?” Mr. Tank replies “yea, blueberry” while eyeing a young rookie on one of the benches, suffering from indigestion. He goes over to offer some sympathy to the aspiring glutton, advising the use of a bubbly antacid drink. (This was one of the less noted efforts in Alka Seltzers’ award-winning series of commercials from the the 60s and 70s, including “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” and “that’s some spicy meatball” and the prison mess riot where the inmates chant “Alka Seltzer” while banging the tables.)

I’d be surprised if Miles Laboratories/Bayer doesn’t soon cut a sponsorship deal with the International Federation of Competitive Eating or the Association of Independent Competitive Eaters. I can see it now, the Alka Seltzer 500, a full day of . . . ugh. And after that, Bromo Seltzer would have to respond in kind . . . .

A lot of thinking people are thumbing their noses at this attempt to turn a vice (gluttony) into a profit opportunity. Converting over-consumption into a money making spectacle points to all that is wrong with America today, including its wasteful use of fossil fuels and its obesity crisis. How can anyone with a conscience watch people pig out just for fun (and get voyeuristic thrills when someone pukes) while people are starving all over the world, including some places yet in America? Ralph Nader has called competitive eating one of the four major signs of societal decay. Other folk invoke memories of the Roman Empire and its crazier emperors like Caligula. And the keepers of the Olympian ideal call this a junk sport, not a true test of athletic skill.

Personally, I couldn’t see wasting a half hour or so of my time watching people stuff their faces. I can’t relate to the people who gouge themselves against the clock, or who enjoy watching others do it. However, an Atlantic article points out that there are some interesting human stories behind the upward trajectory of competitive eating. Perhaps the best one belongs to Sonya Thomas, a short, 100 pound woman who emigrated from Korea. Sonya competes regularly against red-blooded American men and women two to three times her weight, and she usually beats them. Sonya in turn can only be beat by some Japanese guys, the best of whom is Takeru Kobayashi, a small, 23-year old eating machine.

As with the auto industry, America started the game of competitive eating, but Asia is beating us by staying leaner and working harder. Even in the game of gluttony, America gets tripped up by laziness and indulgence. We think that big is always better, but we eventually get passed by the smaller and smarter ones. America, this eating thing may be a joke, but something similar is happening in a lot of places that do matter. Like Toyota vs. GM, for example.

Oh, speaking about the auto industry, I recently saw one of Volkswagen’s new series of crash commercials. I’m quite impressed by the realism — people driving along, talking, having a good time, then WHAM, out of nowhere: breaking glass, air bags popping, twisted steel and plastic snapping, cars sliding over the road out of control, like toys. I was involved in a 30 MPH accident a little over a year ago, and I can vouch that these commercials capture the shock of a car collision at speed.

VW is doing this to sell cars, most certainly. They want to convince you that the Jetta will protect you better than anything else on the road these days. But they also do everyone on the road a great big favor, especially younger people, by reminding them that IT CAN HAPPEN TO ME. In the ad that I saw, two guys are yacking away while crusing a little bit too fast through a residential neighborhood. Then in a split second, a pick-up truck backs into the street, and CRASH!!!!!

The ad shakes you up a bit, and that is good. We all need some reminders that driving is VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS, a potentially DEADLY business (despite Volkswagen’s reassurance that the Jetta will keep you safe; if a Jetta interacts with a Navigator barreling thru an intersection or zipping along on a freeway, the Jetta’s occupants are toast). If we don’t treat it that way, as most people don’t, then there will continue to be unnecessary death, bodily injury and expensive property damage. We all need to wear those seat belts, put the cell phones away, keep the conversation to a minimum, and keep our eyes and our minds on the road full-time.

P.S., this is exactly what a guy in my office has been trying to do with high school kids, long before VW got the idea. Here’s a newspaper article about him. Arnold (Andy) Anderson, you are the man.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:43 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Thursday, December 1, 2005

◊ Rich Guy Telling You How to Be Happy

Practical Advice ... Society ...

I read an article the other day about a major investment bank that sent an advisory letter to its clients about how to be happy in life. The letter was from investment strategist James Montier in the London office of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a German financing institution. A lot of people found this to be quite interesting as investment banks usually provide their clients with money and business advice, but not philosophy. Mr. Montier is rather well known in the big money circuit, having authored a book entitled “Behavioural Finance: Insights into Irrational Minds and Markets”. I guess that Mr. Montier, having mastered the irrational side of the mind, decided to take on the rational; i.e., what is life and happiness really all about? Plato, Aristotle and their followers have written huge volumes on that question. Mr. Montier got it down to ten bullet points.

The “first commandment”, according to Mr. Montier, is that life is not solely about money. He advises his readers not to equate happiness with money. (I guess that this would be news to the rich people that Mr. Montier is addressing). “People adapt to income shifts relatively quickly, the long lasting benefits are essentially zero.” However, Montier later told an interviewer “I still need a little bit of money just to keep me happy.” One has to wonder just what “a little bit” is to Mr. Montier; $200,000 a year? $500,000? Or does a million not go as far as it used to?

This is obviously the advice of the rich to the rich. Mr. Montier does make a good point, in that when you’re making $500,000 a year and it suddenly goes up to $1,000,000, you get used to it pretty quickly and you don’t really feel that much better off. Your tastes and standards and expectations adjust, and you start wishing you had $5 million. What a bummer.

What Mr. Montier misses entirely in his proffered wisdom is the experience of people getting by on $7 or $10 per hour (i.e., $15,000 to $20,000 per year). At that level, there is something more at stake than adaptation to extra luxury. At that level, it’s a question of power, or lack thereof. People living in that income range can have their lives crushed so very quickly; a bad accident, a divorce, a layoff, sickness, a natural disaster (think of all the folk in Louisiana and Mississippi), etc. The feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability is not a good feeling. It’s hard to be happy when your family’s plans and dreams can be swept away in a moment (and you see or hear about it happening all the time). For those people, an extra $20,000 a year and a $50,000 bank account would certainly buy some happiness; or at least allow “the pursuit of happiness”, as the Founding Fathers said.

I’ll now list the balance of Mr. Montier’s bullet points on “the good life”.

MONTIER: Exercise regularly. Taking regular exercise generates further energy, and stimulates the mind and the body.

COMMENT: OK, that is good advice for the rich and poor.

MONTIER: Have sex (preferably with someone you love). Sex is consistently rated as amongst the highest generators of happiness. So what are you waiting for?

COMMENT: If sex is the highest generator of happiness in this world, then there ain’t gonna be all that much happiness to be had (which may be the hard-edged truth about life, after all). Sex and love definitely are a good combination, but there’s so much bad love and bad sex out there, and a whole lot of sex happening without love whatsoever. If sex does give occasional happiness, it’s usually quite fleeting; it’s quite uncertain when that happiness can be repeated, or whether it can happen again at all. If sex is the key source of happiness, then how can you be happy in your old age? (Oh, wait — maybe Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein has a lot of money tied up in the companies that make Levitra, Viagra, etc.).

MONTIER: Devote time and effort to close relationships. Close relationships require work and effort, but pay vast rewards in terms of happiness.

COMMENT: OK, this is true; it’s a good point to remember. But as to whether the main reward of a close relationship can be called “happiness”, i.e. a joyful or content feeling or state of mind, I have some doubts about that.

MONTIER: Pause for reflection, meditate on the good things in life. Simple reflection on the good aspects of life helps prevent hedonic adaptation.

COMMENT: I agree that meditation is a good thing. Mr. Montier’s meditation is a bit simpler that what I had in mind, but it serves a good purpose, i.e. not taking things for granted.

MONTIER: Seek work that engages your skills, look to enjoy your job. It makes sense to do something you enjoy. This in turn is likely to allow you to flourish at your job, creating a pleasant feedback loop.

COMMENT: This is a nice idea, but for a whole lot of people this is meaningless. You work primarily to pay your bills. Finding the work that you enjoy is a luxury for all but a few on this planet. I’m glad (maybe even “happy”) if Mr. Montier is one of those few, but I’ve found that the job market is a rough place for most of us. You don’t get a lot of choice. Unless you are quite lucky or have a huge savings account to live off of, searching for a job that will make you happy is out of the question. For the majority, a job is not going to be a big source of happiness (even when the pay is good).

MONTIER: Give your body the sleep it needs.

COMMENT: Good advice – try to get a straight eight. But even if you book the time, the question is, will you get that sleep? If your life is in balance and you are “happy”, you probably will. But if you’re not happy, you’re probably not going to sleep well even if you stay in bed for eight hours each night. (But again, maybe Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein has money in the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture sleeping pills.) If you’ve got a million or two invested with Dresdner, you’ll probably sleep pretty well. If you’re struggling to make the next mortgage payment and electric bill, maybe you won’t.

MONTIER: Don’t pursue happiness for its own sake, enjoy the moment. Faulty perceptions of what makes you happy may lead to the wrong pursuits. Additionally, activities may become a means to an end, rather than something to be enjoyed, defeating the purpose in the first place.

COMMENT: Did he just say something? Something about smelling the flowers?

MONTIER: Take control of your life, set yourself achievable goals.

COMMENT: For crack addicts, an “achievable goal” might be to sell the furniture to get their next fix. That might be all the control possible in such lives.

MONTIER: Remember to follow all the rules.

COMMENT: Do rules necessarily lead to happiness? What about enjoying the moment?

Well, once again, this document was meant to help Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein endear itself to its clients and hopefully gain new ones, and not as universal advice for the good of all humankind. Still, I thought it was rather interesting to see what the rich are thinking about these days. They really have no clue as to how most people live, or whether the majority could actually take their recommended steps to happiness. It sure is a lot easier if you have the money that they have !!!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:51 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Sunday, November 13, 2005

◊ The Morrill Act — The Better Side of Government

Politics ... Society ...

We live in a time when most people seem very cynical about what government can do. The general feeling is that government is a waste of time and money, so we might as well cut taxes. It’s easy to find examples of corruption (they’re in the news most every day) and hard to find examples of government programs that have had a positive effect on the country. But if you look hard enough, you can find some. It was the government, not the free market, that made possible the railroad industry, the trucking industry, the airline industry, and now the internet industry (the digital highway, as they called it back in the late 90’s). Those things all had a big effect on our nation — both good and bad, but hopefully more good than bad.

Then there was the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. Just as the Civil War was getting under way, President Abraham Lincoln somehow got a bill passed that quietly had a huge impact on American history over the next half-century. The Morrill Act gave each state 30,000 acres of federal land for each member of the state’s congressional delegation (i.e., Senators and Congressmen), in exchange for their promise to start an “A&M;” college (agriculture and machinery). The states were to sell the land and put the proceeds into a fund that would support the construction and operation of such colleges. Eventually, 70 “land grant” colleges were started, including one of my alma matas (Rutgers in New Jersey).

Between 1880 and 1900, the graduates of these colleges converted American businesses into huge, scientifically managed, technology-oriented affairs (of course, technology back then meant steam engines and telegraphs, but eventually became cars, airplanes, nuclear power and computers). The American economy grew in leaps and bounds, and the United States thus became a world power. After the Civil War, we were just plain lucky that no other nation was powerful enough to mess with us, as our nation was weak and vulnerable. But by the 1890s, we had plenty of guns and battleships (paid for by taxes, made possible by expanding technology), and we weren’t afraid to push other countries around. The Spanish-American War made it clear that the US had become a world-class predator, and was no longer the potential victim of some other expanding empire.

(Obviously our imperial / predatory attitudes were an unfortunate side-effect of the growing economic and military power that the Morrill-educated masses made possible. Those attitudes made us a lot of enemies throughout the world, but most of those enemies were weaklings in far-off places who seemingly couldn’t hurt us. But now, with the technique of terrorism being honed throughout the planet into a deadly art form, some of those weakling chickens are now coming home to roost, with bombs attached.)

So tax dollars today can make the difference between national strength and weakness tomorrow. Yes, I realize that too much tax and too much corruption can sap the strength of a nation, as Alan Alda pointed out on last week’s West Wing debate episode (in discussing the plight of poor African nations). But here in America, I think we need a restoration of public faith that our government can be good and can do good things with the moneys that we taxpayers give it. If the public wants it, deserves it, and demands it, it can happen.

The basic presumption of the Morrill Act remains valid, i.e. the more publicly-funded education, the better. But beyond Morrill, we have to renew the commitment within our education system to the greater notions of civilization, including liberality and wisdom and not just entrepreneurial techniques. Knocking out a huge cadre of MBAs and software engineers and bio-tech scientists will support continued economic growth; but what about the macro questions of fostering and preserving civilization amidst growing religious fanaticism, poverty, terrorism and ecological catastrophe? I somehow don’t think that we can rely on democracy and the free market to find solutions to these crises (although they certainly can play a role). Our nation has to commit itself to the preaching and promulgation of civilization, and has to put its money where its mouth is (and that means taxes, as we don’t have enough federal land left to repeat the Morrill Act).

I hope that out there in our universities, there is still a quiet army of believers in civilization, ready to be enlisted by a newly enlightened American public into a world crusade for a greater good. I know they’ve been on the ropes from both the left and the right over the past 30 years. They’ve had to put up with radical leftists trying to find refuge from the real world (who angrily insult the heritage of Western Civilization because of the past sins of its proponents), and with neo-conservatives who have cut their government support and now demand that they serve industrial/military research interests. They dance to the conflicting tunes of political correctness and academia-is-now-a-business-sector. They know that “civilization” ultimately means world civilization and do not limit themselves to Plato and Shakespeare, although they protect that heritage as the one we know the best. I hope they will be ready to go when their day finally comes, when the Morrill Act of the 21st Century finally arrives.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:18 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Sunday, October 9, 2005

◊ Another Rocky Story

Personal Reflections ... Society ...

There are several “Rocky” legends out there in popular culture today. There’s Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stalone’s underdog prizefighter from Philadelphia; there’s Rocky and Bullwinkle of cartoon fame; and then there’s the Rocky Horror Show (less said the better). But I have another Rocky story, and this one is true. It’s about a guy named Rocky Locarro who was the janitor in the public elementary school that I went to.

My own “Rocky story” isn’t much of a story at all, actually. Rocky didn’t do anything that captured the attention of the local newspaper, much less the national media. He didn’t commit any horrendous crimes against the children who were around him all day; he wasn’t a brilliant scholar or musician making a living mopping up classroom floors; and he wasn’t the chieftain of some crime syndicate working undercover. He didn’t even drink or fall asleep while on the job. Rocky was just another working class guy of Italian ethnic heritage who lived in town, had a home, raised a family, did his job, and died rather quietly a few years after retiring.

What made Rocky special wasn’t something that you could see back when you knew him. He was definitely the kind of guy that you took for granted. He was always there, emptying the class trash baskets, moping up puke, cleaning the boy’s urinals, keeping an eye on the boiler so that the classrooms were always warm in January and February (and they always were). He didn’t take many days off. If you needed something from your desk during Christmas or Spring break, all you had to do was to go down to the school and bang on the door around 10 am. Rocky would let you in and you would soon have what you needed.

What really made Rocky special was that he was a consistently nice guy. He sometimes had to yell at kids when they “got stupid”; i.e., when they started manifesting that charming combination of poor judgment and petty malevolence that’s inherent to youth (especially youth from ethnic working-class towns back in the unenlightened early 1960s). He didn’t push his niceness on anyone; he wasn’t trying to prove his virtue at every little opportunity. He didn’t have a big bright smile or an outgoing personality. He had a small, almost odd looking little body, not exactly the kind of person you’d want to hug. But he had a certain combination of empathy and sympathy for every kid, along with a lot of patience. You knew that Rocky would not hassle you any more that he had to. If he could give you a break, he would. By fourth or fifth grade, when you started to “turn cool”, he’d go along with your desire to assert your status (however undeserved) by calling an adult by his first name. If he was coming down the hall and you and your 10 year old friends said “hi, Rocky”, it was no problem; he’d give you a nod or a quick “hi” in return. Try that with a teacher or principal and you were in for some major blah-blah; it was MISTER, MISSUS, or MISS (no “MS” back in those days).

Back in my elementary school years, they didn’t have Ritalin or mandatory special education programs. Nonetheless, we did have a troubled, hyperactive student who bounced back and forth between grades and was occasionally referred to some special school in a distant town. There were a couple of other tough-guy troublemakers who didn’t get along well with the teachers. Rocky seemed to be the one guy who could talk to these unsettled kids (even though he had to chide them about smoking in the boy’s room). I can’t say if Rocky changed their lives. Some of them settled down and had productive adulthoods, and some didn’t. But Rocky was the only adult that they could talk to. He was also nice to the weaker, nerdy kids (like me). And to the average kids. Rocky was basically nice to everyone.

In addressing the economic problems and segregation awareness of American blacks in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that even if a man is just a street sweeper, he should push himself to be the best street sweeper possible. As with so much of what Dr. King said, this injunction can now be interpreted more broadly across all of humankind. Rocky Locarro was just an elementary school janitor, and yet he was also the best school janitor possible. To a large degree, he would be commended for what he was not: he wasn’t a child molester, a drunk, a slacker, or a tyrant. But he is also forgotten for what he wasn’t: he wasn’t a man of ideas, he wasn’t an entrepreneur, he wasn’t a politician, he wasn’t rich, he wasn’t a world-class athlete, he wasn’t a major artist, he wasn’t a “mover and a shaker”. And that’s a shame, because Rocky was one of those rare people who made life easier for most everyone around him. If there were more like him, there would surely be fewer wars, less crime, fewer lawsuits, better government, and a whole lot more trust and cooperation between people.

They say that capitalism, with all of its wondrous by-products (high tech gadgets, entertaining athletics and culture, sexy fashions, etc.), requires egocentric greed to function. If everyone were like Rocky Locarro in terms of ego, then maybe we wouldn’t have miniature cell phones and wide screen TVs and the Super Bowl and negative political ads and JenLo or Beyonce whomever the pop queen is at present. We’d have a plainer, more dowdy world where everyone was a whole lot more decent and respectful to one another. I, for one, would be willing to trade some consumer electronics and some entertainment culture for a few million more people like Rocky. “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” That seems like a trite statement, but if you knew a guy like Rocky Locarro, you’d realize that it’s a radical formula for a better world.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:59 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Monday, August 8, 2005

◊ The Return of Virtue . . . and Fear

Society ...

Conservative columnist David Brooks had an interesting column in today’s New York Times, interesting in that it was cram-packed with good news. Usually conservative columnists are full of doom and gloom about how society is going to hell in a bucket because of what the liberals did to it. But Brooks says that things are getting better; Americans are now living more virtuously, and he has the statistics to prove it. Crime is down, violence is down, drunken driving is down, drug abuse is down, divorce is down, teenage pregnancy is down, abortions are down, volunteerism is up, parents spend more time with their kids, etc. And I agree with Brooks that all of that is good news.

And yet, for all the goodness going on out there, there doesn’t seem to be much joy about it. Brooks says “I always thought it would be dramatic to live through a moral revival. Great leaders would emerge. There would be important books, speeches, marches and crusades.” But in fact, there’s little drama to be found out there: no great leaders, no great books, no rousing speeches, no big marches, and no crusades (thank goodness).

The one thing that there does seem to be a lot of these days is fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of losing one’s job because of some decision made in India or China, fear of being sued, fear of getting sick and going broke because of lousy health insurance, fear of having one’s pension taken away. I can’t help but wonder if all of this good behavior is inspired not by a revival of the human spirit caused by modern progress, but by the many threats and uncertainties associated with our modern dystopia.

Hey, I’m not saying that it’s bad that we’re all acting better. But unfortunately, it appears to be more of a reaction or a side-effect to some other bad things. As Brooks indicates, it’s a paradox that we’re not living in happy, Kennedy-esque times. We’re a long way from Camelot, even if we are behaving a little better these days.

(I certainly don’t see this better behavior filtering down to daily life, however. One example: people seem to drive faster and more aggressively wherever I go, rich neighborhoods or poor. Patience with one another at a crowded Dunkin Donuts check-out line or on a delayed airline flight seems in shorter supply than ever. Back to coffee, manners are even worse amidst the fashionable crowd at Starbucks.)

KIDS TODAY: A side note to Mr. Brooks’s “moral revival” theory regards America’s youth. Mr. Brooks cites statistics from the US Department of Justice indicating that teenage violence went way down over the past decade. I’ve also read that alcohol, drugs and cigarettes aren’t as popular with kids these days either. But are kids really living better lives? We hear a lot more about teenage depression these days, and the problem of bullying seems to get more and more attention. Many kids are overweight, which you wouldn’t expect if they were living healthy, balanced lives. SAT scores don’t seem to be trending upward. And the number of wacko crimes that affluent kids commit is rather scary.

Sure, we always heard about kids from the slums and barrios getting into trouble, but when I was growing up I don’t recall any shockers from the suburbs. OK, the Colombine High School situation was sensationalized by the press and is still fairly rare. However, the Jeremy Wade Dell stuff really isn’t. We just had some teenagers from an average family in northern NJ decide to kill an unpopular girl just for the heck of it, then hack her body apart and attempt to dump it in a river (just a half mile from where I grew up). And then there was a local crime in ritzy Upper Montclair last week (where a lot of people actually take David Brooks seriously); somebody trashed a garden full of historic, one-of-a-kind iris bulbs. There’s a local debate going on about whether it was the work of some bored, nasty rich kids (and there are a lot of them in Upper Montclair, I can tell you; they didn’t seem as bad 10 years ago), or some adult vendetta going on. If you want to check out the local debate about the state of Upper Montclair’s youth, here’s the townie blog coverage.

Virtue . . . still a tough sell, David Brooks notwithstanding.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:58 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Sunday, May 29, 2005

◊ Calling All Civilized Angels

Personal Reflections ... Society ...

Sometimes I think that the world around me has pretty much given up on the idea of civilization. Maybe we go thru the motions so as to avoid getting sued, but in our hearts, we’re all just animals right now; hunting and hurting (and sometimes even killing) as needed to meet our immediate needs. That’s sure what it seems like on my worse days. (And I’m not sure if I’m any better).

My place of employment deals with criminals, people who steal and rape and kill as needed to meet their immediate needs. Unfortunately, when you deal a lot with criminals, you pick up something of their nature. I can see that happening in the investigators and the assistant prosecutors, the “front line” people. I can understand when a police investigator goes into the tough guy routine, but it upsets me when I see the lawyers picking up those nasty habits. Lawyers, in theory, are supposed to devote their lives to the ideals of law, which are key components of civilization. You’d think they would go out of their way to be civilized – you know, the bow-tie kind of lawyer, the old-fashioned guy or lady who believed in the ultimate redemptive quality of practicing law and practicing it well. But no, many of our assistant prosecutors go around swearing and cursing and taking on threatening postures, just like their police investigator friends. It’s especially nauseating to me when the women do it – partly because of my old fashioned notion of women being the kinder and gentler side of the human race, but also because when women put on the tough-guy facade, they tend to overdo it (at least in my office).

I had to help a couple of assistant prosecutors with a press release after a big drug bust the other day. One of them was Terri, who is a head honcho over the “tough crime” units (homicide, narcotics, etc.). Terri is actually a rather nice and decent woman at heart. But when she starts dealing with a case, she starts using the F-word over and over. While talking with some cops as we were trying to get the facts straight for the press release, I heard her talking about a “cluster f—“. I didn’t even want to know what that was about.

Well, it took a bit of back and forth until we got the facts straight about how much cocaine and heroin were seized. Everyone seemed to have a different number, and the numbers didn’t always refer to the same measurements; sometimes we were told that there were so many grams of something, sometimes it was in “decks”, sometimes in “bricks”. And then there was confusion about what was taken in the immediate seizure, and how much came during the “rip” (removed from the person of those who were taken into custody).

Right at the point when the confusion was reaching its peak, Terri stopped her cursing and said, to everyone and no one in particular, “oh yea, figuring out how many decks are in a brick, this is why I went to law school nights”. Actually, that comment made me feel better. I found her frustration to be a hopeful thing. Deep down inside, Terri still held within her the ideal of civilization. THAT is why she went to law school nights. She still had some soul left.

We got the press release out OK. And I went home thinking about the refrain verse from Train’s Calling All Angels: “I won’t give up if you don’t give up”.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:21 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Saturday, March 26, 2005

◊ Terri Schiavo . . .

Brain / Mind ... Current Affairs ... Society ...

I want to say something here about the Terri Schiavo drama, but with all that’s been said over the past ten days, it’s hard to say anything new. It’s harder still to arrange all of the pieces and angles into a coherent, understandable picture. Nevertheless, for what little it’s worth, I’ve got some random thoughts that I want to share. (Hey, a million other bloggers are having their say, so why not me?)

*** Ms. Schiavo will soon be dead. Or is she already dead? Her parents certainly see her as being alive, but the doctors and judges seem to say that she’s pretty much dead, given that she’s missing the part of the body / brain where consciousness, thinking and feeling are mediated.

*** So, it boils down to the question of what human life is, and how do we know when it is present.

*** The doctors and judges seem to have settled on a definition of human life that is tied to upper brain function. If you have a working upper brain, or a resting upper brain, or even a misfiring upper brain, then you are human and are entitled to basic social protections (like food and water). If your upper brain is gone for good, though, then you’re not legally human. As the headline of an article in the NY Times asks, “Did Descartes Doom Terri Schiavo?“.

*** That explains why Ms. Schiavo was adopted by the religious conservatives as their poster child. The real issue here is ABORTION. If upper brain function defines human life, then most abortions do not involve human life. Around two-thirds or more of abortions take place during the fetus’ first three months, when the developing brain structure doesn’t show any signs of having been “switched on” (no brain wave, as with Ms. Schiavo). However fourth and fifth month abortions are fairly common, and by that time the fetus does exhibit signs of upper brain functioning.

*** So, if the Terri Schiavo case holds, it will have logical consequences for both sides of the abortion dispute. It will put to rest the idea that a human life is at stake during the first trimester. But, it will support the notion that abortion becomes murder immediately thereafter (unless the life of the mother is at stake).

*** As to the medical malpractice settlement . . . yes, I voted for John Edwards, but now I wonder if malpractice lawsuits sometimes go too far. Was an OB/GYN specialist responsible to ferret out Ms. Schiavo’s bad eating (and barfing) habits? And then pay out $1 million for not preventing their consequences? This doesn’t appear to be a case where a patient is harmed solely because they depended upon a medical specialist to interpret complex medical evidence and the doctor messed up. Bulimia may be a lapse of common sense or may be a psychological issue, or may even be a sociological question (see below). But is it primarily an OB/GYN issue? (I don’t have all the facts here; perhaps the doctor in question could and should have done more. But 100% liability doesn’t sound right either). If there is a problem today with judges and the courts, I’d say that it is exhibited here and not with what happened after Ms. Schiavo lost consciousness. (Not that I support Bush’s proposals to limit liability law suits, which are tailored to protect big business).

*** Getting back to Ms. Schiavo, it’s tough to watch someone die, even if they are brain dead. It’s got to be tougher still if you are the parent. I do feel sorry for Mr. & Mrs. Schindler. Even if it is just their imagination, Terri Schiavo is still alive to them, but soon won’t be. Mr. Schindler’s dramatic, rabble-rousing exhortations can thus be forgiven, given that a parent’s love for an injured child is just as automatic as Ms. Schiavo’s continuing eye and facial movements.

*** And the bulimia thing leads us to the late, great Karen Carpenter, who also died of a heart attack brought on by bad eating habits. Yea, it is regrettable that American society places so much pressure on women to be thin while at the same time offers so much incentive to be overweight. We just can’t seem to find the sensible middle. Getting back to Karen, wouldn’t it be ironic if Ms. Schiavo listened to the Carpenters when she was growing up back in the 70s?

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:40 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Thursday, February 24, 2005

◊ WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU

Philosophy ... Society ...

I was reading a few lines from the Enneads the other day, which were written by the Roman philosopher Plotnius. What caught my attention was the way that this great Neoplatonist from the Third Century summarized how I myself relate to feminine beauty. Hey, I’ll admit it; I’m not gay. Just like any other hetero guy, my brain was wired to enjoy the things that advertise a woman’s fertility: i.e., the blush of youth, ample hip and breast structures, and a body mass that’s not too great nor too small.

But I also give a lot of weight to the other features of a woman, those that don’t necessarily relate to baby-making. I try to see the entire picture, top to bottom. From what I’ve seen and heard over the years, a lot of guys, perhaps most guys, don’t focus all that much on the overall image that a woman conveys. They seem stuck on the first three things that I mentioned. I myself like to contemplate the geometry of a woman’s hairdo, how the pendant around her neck outlines the shape of her face and the lines of her neck, her how the color of her shoes complements the rest of her outfit. According to the dirty minds of America, I must therefore have a hair, neck and shoe fetish. It seems that if a guy gives attention to anything other than a woman’s breast and crotch, he must be a freak.

And yet I also know that the beautiful image of a woman is but an illusion, much like a rainbow. As with rainbows, when you chase after the source, you just wind up in the fog. Despite the spells that females cast with their pretty hairstyles and perfume, behind it all is just another imperfect human being, just another mixture of goods and bads, strengths and needs, sublimity and stupidity.

I think that Plotnius summed up what I’m saying here quite well. Here’s what he had to say about bodies and the vision of beauty:

When he sees the beauty in bodies he must not run after them; we must know that they are [only] images, traces, shadows . . . . For if a man runs to the image and wants to seize it as if it was the reality (like a beautiful reflection on the water, of which a story is told of a man who went to catch it and sank down and disappeared), then this man who clings to beautiful bodies . . . will, like the man in the story, sink down into the dark depths . . .

BUT THEN AGAIN: I must admit that my index finger and my ring finger are almost exactly the same length. There’s been a lot of research lately about what the ratio between the length of the index finger (the one you point with) and the ring finger (the one between the pinky and the insult finger) might mean. It’s pretty clear that women generally have equal lengths, or their index finger is longer, while guys generally have longer ring fingers. Legitimate scientists are saying that finger length relationships reflect the mix of hormones that a person was exposed to in their mother’s womb. Testosterone and androgen might cause longer ring fingers, while estrogen might correspond with longer index fingers. So, maybe I’m a bit of a “girly man”, who looks at a woman in the manner that woman look at each other (up to a point, anyway). They say that women dress for each other as much as for men; so maybe that’s why I look at them from both the male (caveman) and female (aesthetic) viewpoints.

So you ask, am I really gay? Nah. I don’t find any beauty or excitement in tendons and square bones and locker rooms; never did, never will. Homosexuals are not necessarily guys with too much woman-stuff inside (or women with too much guy-stuff in them). A lesbian isn’t a woman who was inadvertently programmed with male sexuality software, and vice versa for gay men. Gay people seem to have a whole different kind of software when it comes to sex. The finger ratio studies bear out the fact that homosexuality is a complex phenomenon. Guys with woman-like ratios and women with man-like ratios are not more likely to be gay. (However, there are some weak trends that can be identified, e.g. that “butch lesbians” have more male-like finger ratios than feminine lesbians).

I must say, though, that some days I get very tired of the whole subject of sex. I think that for most people, sex is the only pathway to transcendent experience — and that’s unfortunate. That’s why our society is so incredibly (and childishly) fixated on sex. And also so frustrated with it. As with any rainbow illusion, the more you run after it and the harder you strive for it, the less satisfying it becomes. (And that’s why stuff like Viagra is ultimately like any other narcotic; at first the thrill is huge, but then it fades away, so then you take more, but the thrill keeps fading, so you try even stronger stuff like Cialis, on and on . . . . they call that “addiction”).

Plotnius and the other great mystics (Jesus included) seemed to know that there were other pathways to the transcendent. Think about Shaw’s “Don Juan in Hell”, and how Juan walked away from the once-again young and beautiful Ana, whom he ravished while on Earth. While in a hell of eternal sensual pleasure, Juan had a vision, a conversion experience, a desire to contemplate the eternal while providing service to life. As Plotnius said,

When he comes down from his vision, he can awaken the virtue that is in him . . . such is the life of gods and of godlike and blessed men; a liberation from all earthly bonds, a life that takes no pleasure in earthy things, a flight of the alone to the Alone.

Well, unfortunately I’m not one of the great mystics. But at least I have enough inner peace not to worry about what the Governor of California (Arnold S.) would call me if he knew just how I appreciate beautiful woman, i.e. in a way that doesn’t involve immediate fantasies of getting them into bed.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:58 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Sunday, December 5, 2004

◊ The Pact and a Prescient Prosecutor

Society ...

As my 2 or 3 regular readers might recall, I work for a county prosecutor’s office . . . but only as a paper-pusher. I have nothing to do with deciding who is charged with criminal offenses, and how they should be prosecuted and then sentenced if they admit to guilt or are found guilty in a court of law. (And that’s just as well.) But I stand in awe of the people do. They’re making major decisions; get it wrong one way and you let a dangerous person free amidst society (and encourage others to commit that crime). Get it wrong the other way and you can ruin an innocent life. And they’re making a whole lot of these decisions, with around 100 new criminal cases pushed into our system each day.

I really don’t have any indication just how good or bad my employer is doing in that regard. I’ve never seen or heard of any “quality control” studies of the office. I don’t even know if there’s any way of doing such a study. I’ll have to leave that to the criminology people, and to the voice of the public.

But I did read recently about a case where someone in my office made what turned out to have been the right decision regarding charges and sentencing. That was in a book called “The Pact”, about three young doctors from the badest parts of Newark, NJ who made a mutual agreement in high school to stick together and help each other get through college and grad school as to become doctors. “The Pact” is triple-autobiographical, which each doctor telling their part of the story and adding their perspective on what they did together.

In one of Sam’s chapters (Dr. Sampson Davis), he tells us how he was arrested during the summer before his senior year in high school (in 1990). He and the other two pact members (Dr. George Jenkins and Dr. Rameck Hunt) had already taken their vows by then and were about to apply to college. But during summer break, Sam fell in with some other pals from his neighborhood who came up with a money-making idea: they’d drive around at night with a gun and rob drug vendors on the street. Sam was the get-away driver. Of course, it worked for a while and the money flowed in; but one night the local police just happened to stumble upon their little venture. Sam was soon in the youth lock-up, charged with armed assault.

Sam’s family was poor, but managed to scrape up enough to get him a lawyer. The lawyer started bargaining with our Juvenile Division and Family Court. Before too long, they had an agreement: the kid will serve one year. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, that would have removed Sam from the pact hardly a year after it’s making. You really have to wonder if George and Rameck would have carried on after that early setback, despite their best intentions. Had this decision held, perhaps none of them would be doctors today. As they tell you in the book, the call of the streets was loud and incessant for all of them.

However, after a while, the Juvenile Division in the Prosecutor’s Office agreed to a different outcome: suspended sentence and probation. Sam would be back with the other two pact members by opening day of senior year and would apply for college right along with them. With 20/20 hindsight, it was clearly the right decision. Sam was the driver, he didn’t possess the weapon, didn’t have a record, was doing well in a special high school for university-bound students (this is Newark, remember), and was otherwise ready to apply for college. Was Sam a threat to society, or did he just make a knucklehead decision under the stress of a bad environment, one he was on the verge of leaving?

Someone in my office knew how to frame that question and correctly answer it for Sam. And they were able to answer it quickly, given the case volumes we handle; they couldn’t leisurely read a book about his life and times, as I recently did. I have no idea who the Assistant Prosecutors were who handled Sam’s case; I wasn’t working there at the time and hardly anyone from those days is still there today. But I thought I’d add something about those anonymous lawyers as a footnote to the story behind “The Pact” (which is a good book, definitely worth a read). Had those “APs” made the wrong call back in 1990, the book may have never been written, and George Jenkins, Sampson Davis, and Rameck Hunt might have just been three more lives lost to the cruelties of Newark’s streets and jails.

So . . . I wonder if there are any ghetto kids out there making pacts to go thru law school together to become prosecutors?

◊ posted by Jim G @ 1:55 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

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