And you thought it was the brain...! No, silly, the best part of your body is your index finger. In recent years it has clearly surpassed even the always-popular middle-finger salute. Lets consider...
* In sports, the index finger is jubilantly raised with every score. Why? Usually to roar to the world that we-are-the-one! Occasionally to point to the god the scorer believes in. Either way, that jutting index finger speaks valiant volumes
* In rock concerts, the index finger is periodically aimed right into the audience. It says this-one-is-for-you-baby or hey-take-a-good-look-at-the-privilege-of-me
* In politics, it's deployed as a challenge or a call. It jabs the air in front of your audience whenever you wish to make the point bigger (or perhaps whenever the point you're making needs some fury to fudge your facts)
* In courts, the index finger is usually the weapon of choice for the attorneys who are portraying the accused or defendant with words that need an exclamation mark for the jury
* In the streets, the index finger is what squeezes the weapons the dangerous few use to control the innocent many
* In every day life -- now here is where the human index finger has found its greatest destiny....! It's used day and night to command our world with our ever-ready universal remote! to text our friends! to access our Kindles and koodles and whatever other exotic whatchamacallits we just had to absolutely have!. Oh my friends, that little index finger is today master of all it surveys
Which brings us back to our initial assumption that the brain is the most important. You see now? How silly of us!
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
THE JEKYLL & HYDE IN THE HOUSE
Sometimes the biggest ideas come in the smallest wrappings. Consider this morning's New York Times story: "Bonus Season and Wall Street May Face Nothing but Zeros." Ponder this and you are pondering one of the central story-lines to the history of humanity....!
From the very first days in which humanity gathered into societies -- be they in caves or jungles or cities -- the heartbeat to the plot has always been the same: The few & the many. The few who have or earn or steal or conquer the wealth; the many who are left with what there is left. The few posit several rationales -- we're smarter, tougher, more committed. The many posit their rebuttals -- they're luckier, crueler, colder.
Whatever rationale one chooses to accept, generally they must learn to accept this Darwinian law of life. Usually grudgingly, until those times when the grudges erupt into revolutions.
But back to the lack of Wall Street bonuses this year. When you read -- or perhaps personally know -- some of the sharks who swim such waters, you can arrive at a two-edged conclusion. These are by and large decent citizens; but distinguished by a redoubtable conviction they've earned what they have, and you take it from me if you can!
To put an "ism" on it, this is Capitalism at work. Like all "isms" it has a Mr Hyde and Dr Jekyll face. Hyde has transformed this ideology and passion for power into great societies with great wealth and success. Jekyll has transfixed this ideology into an inexorable force which must and does keep conquering all in its path. It might be called the glacier of glory.
So another year-end is here. For Wall Street...for the big banks...for the big corporate conference rooms...for the power-brokers throughout the citadels of the East Coast Establishment. With or without bonuses this year, they will still be among the "few" next year. The "many" next year may be many-ier than ever since the Great Depression. What will we do with our grudge...?
From the very first days in which humanity gathered into societies -- be they in caves or jungles or cities -- the heartbeat to the plot has always been the same: The few & the many. The few who have or earn or steal or conquer the wealth; the many who are left with what there is left. The few posit several rationales -- we're smarter, tougher, more committed. The many posit their rebuttals -- they're luckier, crueler, colder.
Whatever rationale one chooses to accept, generally they must learn to accept this Darwinian law of life. Usually grudgingly, until those times when the grudges erupt into revolutions.
But back to the lack of Wall Street bonuses this year. When you read -- or perhaps personally know -- some of the sharks who swim such waters, you can arrive at a two-edged conclusion. These are by and large decent citizens; but distinguished by a redoubtable conviction they've earned what they have, and you take it from me if you can!
To put an "ism" on it, this is Capitalism at work. Like all "isms" it has a Mr Hyde and Dr Jekyll face. Hyde has transformed this ideology and passion for power into great societies with great wealth and success. Jekyll has transfixed this ideology into an inexorable force which must and does keep conquering all in its path. It might be called the glacier of glory.
So another year-end is here. For Wall Street...for the big banks...for the big corporate conference rooms...for the power-brokers throughout the citadels of the East Coast Establishment. With or without bonuses this year, they will still be among the "few" next year. The "many" next year may be many-ier than ever since the Great Depression. What will we do with our grudge...?
Sunday, December 19, 2010
BEAM ME UP SCOTTY....
Whenever Star Trek's Scotty would beam up Captain Kirk, it was based on the biologic theory about trans-positioning human molecules. Science labs keep working on it for real. Someday who knows...?
But here's something we already know. The molecules of our thoughts and of our memories can already be trans-positioned. By virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. Here's how...
The human mind (which some of us take to be something more than just the human brain) is a crackling network of thoughts, curiosities, aspirations, and memories throughout our day. Like a treasure-trove of small flying carpets, we can ride them to whomever and wherever they take us,
Perhaps it's to grandma and grandpa's holiday home too far away to visit. Or perhaps to a distant friend you'd like to see once more. Or to a former colleague with whom you grew and blossomed. Travel may not always be possible, but we can still meet them right now, right here, in the warmest corners of our mind. For haven't we banked a vault-full of feelings and memories for the entire cast with whom we've walked this stage of life?
But here's something we often forget.These dear ones have also banked their own vaults. And surprise, surprise. We're among the feelings and memories tucked inside there....! Funny how many of them have been totally forgotten by us. Sweet shards of feelings and memories they've held close even while we've let loose.
Test time.
How many times has a family dinner or an anniversary or a reunion bubbled up with feelings and memories that we have -- how embarrassing! -- completely forgotten? Well, you didn't mean to, but.... Like that time you wrapped a comforting arm around them...the time you sent a card...the time you joined them at a funeral...the time your eyes met theirs across the room.
Who knew? Ah, but they knew! And they remembered. And this funny feature of fate is why we are never quite complete without the missing parts held dear by the dear ones in our lives. So beam me up Joan, Rick, Debby, Lisa, Richard, Patt, Leo, Johnny, Jim, Will, Donn. Diane, Al, Jill, Judy, Gene, Claudia, and all the rest of you wonderful yous in my life....
But here's something we already know. The molecules of our thoughts and of our memories can already be trans-positioned. By virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. Here's how...
The human mind (which some of us take to be something more than just the human brain) is a crackling network of thoughts, curiosities, aspirations, and memories throughout our day. Like a treasure-trove of small flying carpets, we can ride them to whomever and wherever they take us,
Perhaps it's to grandma and grandpa's holiday home too far away to visit. Or perhaps to a distant friend you'd like to see once more. Or to a former colleague with whom you grew and blossomed. Travel may not always be possible, but we can still meet them right now, right here, in the warmest corners of our mind. For haven't we banked a vault-full of feelings and memories for the entire cast with whom we've walked this stage of life?
But here's something we often forget.These dear ones have also banked their own vaults. And surprise, surprise. We're among the feelings and memories tucked inside there....! Funny how many of them have been totally forgotten by us. Sweet shards of feelings and memories they've held close even while we've let loose.
Test time.
How many times has a family dinner or an anniversary or a reunion bubbled up with feelings and memories that we have -- how embarrassing! -- completely forgotten? Well, you didn't mean to, but.... Like that time you wrapped a comforting arm around them...the time you sent a card...the time you joined them at a funeral...the time your eyes met theirs across the room.
Who knew? Ah, but they knew! And they remembered. And this funny feature of fate is why we are never quite complete without the missing parts held dear by the dear ones in our lives. So beam me up Joan, Rick, Debby, Lisa, Richard, Patt, Leo, Johnny, Jim, Will, Donn. Diane, Al, Jill, Judy, Gene, Claudia, and all the rest of you wonderful yous in my life....
Saturday, December 18, 2010
DREAMING THE GREAT SECRET
If this were a fairy tale, there would have to be a secret somewhere in the plot.
In our case, there actually is. The great confounding secret of learning how 6 billion of us frogs and princes can get along well enough to save the fairy princess in the tower. Trouble is, the secret has been eluding us forever.
As one of the frogs, here's a small suggestion. Might we all -- frogs, princes and princesses alike -- drink from this same thought. Every one of us does at least three things in common each day. From whatever corner of the planet or from whatever demographic on the chart, each of us: Gets up in the morning...eats a few meals in the day...then goes to bed at night to find the rest to do it all over again.
Not an especially spectacular trilogy, I grant, but its raw indisputable commonality might be a good starting point to realize we've enough in common to try a helluva lot harder to understand one another before we kill one another.
* Getting up ranges from wheat farmers in Kansas to sheep herders in Australia to breakfast bakeries in Rome to bankers in Bavaria to students in college dorms, all reluctantly throwing off those comforting blankets and crawling to the morning mirror. There we stand, often staring and wondering why. Why in God's name am I so tired, so here, and so skeptical that this day will turn out the way I want? Still...we wash, dress, and try once again!
* The days' meals come in twos or threes. Maybe a quick coffee and toast at home, a bag lunch on the job, if our prince and princess lineage is just so, a two-hour affair over fine wines later in the day. Whatever and wherever, we all house the very same tummies and thoughts which need periodic refueling. Eating to live or living to eat is always a question. But while there's no one right answer, whoever we are there is always the one same question!
* Going to bed at night -- be we pope, president or prime minister -- has to be among the most universal of human rituals. It's been a long day. Good one or a failed one, body and mind both demand rest. A rest which comes in different shadowy ways for each of, for each of us carries to our beds different specters. Still, for just a bold moment, don't all 6 billion of us sometimes find bedtime the greatest single curtain-parting in our collective humanity? When all 6 billion of us sometimes get a peek into the secret. On those nights when sleep comes quickly and dreams play gently, don't all 6 billion of us feel, for just a little while, what it's like? To like everything and everyone in our dream?
Maybe dreams like that are the secret worth taking with us into the day ....
In our case, there actually is. The great confounding secret of learning how 6 billion of us frogs and princes can get along well enough to save the fairy princess in the tower. Trouble is, the secret has been eluding us forever.
As one of the frogs, here's a small suggestion. Might we all -- frogs, princes and princesses alike -- drink from this same thought. Every one of us does at least three things in common each day. From whatever corner of the planet or from whatever demographic on the chart, each of us: Gets up in the morning...eats a few meals in the day...then goes to bed at night to find the rest to do it all over again.
Not an especially spectacular trilogy, I grant, but its raw indisputable commonality might be a good starting point to realize we've enough in common to try a helluva lot harder to understand one another before we kill one another.
* Getting up ranges from wheat farmers in Kansas to sheep herders in Australia to breakfast bakeries in Rome to bankers in Bavaria to students in college dorms, all reluctantly throwing off those comforting blankets and crawling to the morning mirror. There we stand, often staring and wondering why. Why in God's name am I so tired, so here, and so skeptical that this day will turn out the way I want? Still...we wash, dress, and try once again!
* The days' meals come in twos or threes. Maybe a quick coffee and toast at home, a bag lunch on the job, if our prince and princess lineage is just so, a two-hour affair over fine wines later in the day. Whatever and wherever, we all house the very same tummies and thoughts which need periodic refueling. Eating to live or living to eat is always a question. But while there's no one right answer, whoever we are there is always the one same question!
* Going to bed at night -- be we pope, president or prime minister -- has to be among the most universal of human rituals. It's been a long day. Good one or a failed one, body and mind both demand rest. A rest which comes in different shadowy ways for each of, for each of us carries to our beds different specters. Still, for just a bold moment, don't all 6 billion of us sometimes find bedtime the greatest single curtain-parting in our collective humanity? When all 6 billion of us sometimes get a peek into the secret. On those nights when sleep comes quickly and dreams play gently, don't all 6 billion of us feel, for just a little while, what it's like? To like everything and everyone in our dream?
Maybe dreams like that are the secret worth taking with us into the day ....
Friday, December 17, 2010
THE SECRET'S OUT & IT'S ON LATENIGHT TV
When Mark Twain died in 1910, Louis B Mayer was just 25 starting his career as one of Hollywood's biggest movie moguls. The two men -- vastly different in every way -- shared a common destiny. They were each destined to be the voices of their century.
Twain's celebrated plethora of books captured much of the America of the 19th C, while Mayer's audience-pleasing movies captured much of the America of the 20th C. To access Twain, visit your library or grab your Kindle. To access Mayer, turn on late-night television where his movies play with happy regularity.
In 1943 -- during the trauma of WWII -- the Oscars honored Mayer's hugely popular series of "Andy Hardy" films. They called the series "the best reflection of our American values." And indeed they were, for they not only touched the hearts of parents and teens at home, but also the bloodied GIs on battlefields abroad.
In case you're too old to remember or too young to care, here's the values the star-studded Oscars celebrated that evening. Pretty simple, although to some pretty simplistic: Home...family...community ...country ... honor...thrift and fair play. Now 67 years later, the Oscars are likely to honor sharply different values. As reflected in the hot-selling films today, these values include: The streets more than the home...friends more than family.... connections more than community...hustle more than honor....and spend-it-if-you-got it!
This America of the 21st C is neither worse nor better than Mayer's or Twain's. Just different. The differences, though, reflect a nation that has grown up, grown rich, grown strong, grown skeptical, and grown pretty sure that there never really was an Andy Hardy kind of family. After all, wasn't that simply the back-lot concoction of an East European wannabe who liked to play mind games with us by casting the sweet likes of Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and all his other gushy "studio kids?"
Maybe.
However, for those who think so, they may be permitting their skepticism to get in the way of their seeking. Seeking to find and to embrace what is still best about America. Not so much its still great power, but its still small possibilities. Sorta like the way Mayer scripted his 17 Andy Hard films over 10 years -- the most popular entertainment series in the history of American entertainment.
Twain's celebrated plethora of books captured much of the America of the 19th C, while Mayer's audience-pleasing movies captured much of the America of the 20th C. To access Twain, visit your library or grab your Kindle. To access Mayer, turn on late-night television where his movies play with happy regularity.
In 1943 -- during the trauma of WWII -- the Oscars honored Mayer's hugely popular series of "Andy Hardy" films. They called the series "the best reflection of our American values." And indeed they were, for they not only touched the hearts of parents and teens at home, but also the bloodied GIs on battlefields abroad.
In case you're too old to remember or too young to care, here's the values the star-studded Oscars celebrated that evening. Pretty simple, although to some pretty simplistic: Home...family...community ...country ... honor...thrift and fair play. Now 67 years later, the Oscars are likely to honor sharply different values. As reflected in the hot-selling films today, these values include: The streets more than the home...friends more than family.... connections more than community...hustle more than honor....and spend-it-if-you-got it!
This America of the 21st C is neither worse nor better than Mayer's or Twain's. Just different. The differences, though, reflect a nation that has grown up, grown rich, grown strong, grown skeptical, and grown pretty sure that there never really was an Andy Hardy kind of family. After all, wasn't that simply the back-lot concoction of an East European wannabe who liked to play mind games with us by casting the sweet likes of Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and all his other gushy "studio kids?"
Maybe.
However, for those who think so, they may be permitting their skepticism to get in the way of their seeking. Seeking to find and to embrace what is still best about America. Not so much its still great power, but its still small possibilities. Sorta like the way Mayer scripted his 17 Andy Hard films over 10 years -- the most popular entertainment series in the history of American entertainment.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
YOU'VE NEVER REALLY BEEN ALONE
Ever go to bed at night feeling lonely? Wake up still feeling lonely? Even with all its incessant sights and sounds, it can be a powerfully lonely world. Artists, composers and poets are forever reminding us. And yet....
Each of us is actually an object of incessant attentions. Think about it for a lonely moment. Wherever you go these days there's a camera looking at you, a camera on the other end of which are eyes that are monitoring you. Other eyes even without cameras are monitoring you. At the IRS, the FBI, the CIA, the banks you use, the stores you shop, the schools you attend, and the companies whose credit cards you hold.
You may feel lonely, but you are far from being alone.
Now there are folks who take exception to this. Libertarians, Tea Partiers, survivalists, teenagers, constitutional atheists, and assorted free spirits. They resent any authority outside their own psyche. And so it is they resist taxes, body scans, seat belts, nativity scenes, parents, and now any federal regulation of their health. Their mantra is: Better dead free, than being alive slave!
The passions and politics therein are too complicated for any short commentary. However, the short and long of it is simply this: Nobody outside the Siberian hillsides has been truly alone since the telegraph.TIME MAGAZINE made a good choice in selecting the founder of Facebook as their person-of-the-year. His dazzlingly comprehensive network has now pretty much completed Mission Impossible -- no one ever need (or try to be) alone again.
There's a postscript. Even without the communication technologies, people have always been in sustaining communication with you and me. It's all those fleeting moments in our fleeting lives when for a sweet fleet moment someone in the world is thinking about us. A parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, a teacher, a clergy, a co-worker, a lover, a hater, whoever's lives we have once upon a time touched.
See...? There's really never been any reason to feel alone in this life. Feeling lonely is another essay.
Each of us is actually an object of incessant attentions. Think about it for a lonely moment. Wherever you go these days there's a camera looking at you, a camera on the other end of which are eyes that are monitoring you. Other eyes even without cameras are monitoring you. At the IRS, the FBI, the CIA, the banks you use, the stores you shop, the schools you attend, and the companies whose credit cards you hold.
You may feel lonely, but you are far from being alone.
Now there are folks who take exception to this. Libertarians, Tea Partiers, survivalists, teenagers, constitutional atheists, and assorted free spirits. They resent any authority outside their own psyche. And so it is they resist taxes, body scans, seat belts, nativity scenes, parents, and now any federal regulation of their health. Their mantra is: Better dead free, than being alive slave!
The passions and politics therein are too complicated for any short commentary. However, the short and long of it is simply this: Nobody outside the Siberian hillsides has been truly alone since the telegraph.TIME MAGAZINE made a good choice in selecting the founder of Facebook as their person-of-the-year. His dazzlingly comprehensive network has now pretty much completed Mission Impossible -- no one ever need (or try to be) alone again.
There's a postscript. Even without the communication technologies, people have always been in sustaining communication with you and me. It's all those fleeting moments in our fleeting lives when for a sweet fleet moment someone in the world is thinking about us. A parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, a teacher, a clergy, a co-worker, a lover, a hater, whoever's lives we have once upon a time touched.
See...? There's really never been any reason to feel alone in this life. Feeling lonely is another essay.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
THEY DO NEED MAPS
It was December 1941. Pearl Harbor had just been attacked. We were stunned and scared. Benny Goodman and his orchestra went into a Hollywood studio with 21 year old Peggy Lee to record an old Rogers & Hart song which had suddenly taken on new meaning:
"Some things that happen for the first time/ seem to be happening again/ and so it seems we've met before/ and laughed before/ and loved before/ but who knows where or when."
Deja Vu..? Haunting...? Yearning...? Mystery...?
All of these and more. It can happen anytime, anywhere, anyway. Perhaps the best thing to do with the feeling is to ride with it. Let it scoop you up and take you to where it wants. Usually that's to a time when -- in this very same place -- something significant happened. Gentle and lovely; apparently so sweet that your mind's appetite can't quite let go of it.
It's here again.
Mom in this kitchen scrambling eggs just before you drag off to school...Dad driving the family down this same State Street during a long ago Christmas week...Johnny and you working a summer-job assembly line in this old shuttered plant....Joan starring in the play where you first met in this very same theatre building....the delivery room up there on the third floor of this hospital you and the kids are driving past.
Here's the thing.
Everyone has a jewel-box stuffed haphazardly with vintage memories. Each a bead in the necklace of life that we wear. And while we don't always finger or fathom them, there they are still. Inviting our attentions. Encouraging our reflections. Without remembered yesterdays, there are thinner todays and fewer good tomorrows.
Oh, I can hear them now. The eager protesting voices of tomorrow beckoning us not to tarry but to travel....! And they are right. Still, they do need maps. Which is why yesterday's travelers are still here. Not the embittered ones who carry regrets on their shoulders, for their compasses are broken and provide poor directions. Instead, we call upon the enthused ones who can still hum the lyrics: Some things seem to be happening again...
...only this time, humming them in a fully rehearsed key for the newer travelers to hear.
"Some things that happen for the first time/ seem to be happening again/ and so it seems we've met before/ and laughed before/ and loved before/ but who knows where or when."
Deja Vu..? Haunting...? Yearning...? Mystery...?
All of these and more. It can happen anytime, anywhere, anyway. Perhaps the best thing to do with the feeling is to ride with it. Let it scoop you up and take you to where it wants. Usually that's to a time when -- in this very same place -- something significant happened. Gentle and lovely; apparently so sweet that your mind's appetite can't quite let go of it.
It's here again.
Mom in this kitchen scrambling eggs just before you drag off to school...Dad driving the family down this same State Street during a long ago Christmas week...Johnny and you working a summer-job assembly line in this old shuttered plant....Joan starring in the play where you first met in this very same theatre building....the delivery room up there on the third floor of this hospital you and the kids are driving past.
Here's the thing.
Everyone has a jewel-box stuffed haphazardly with vintage memories. Each a bead in the necklace of life that we wear. And while we don't always finger or fathom them, there they are still. Inviting our attentions. Encouraging our reflections. Without remembered yesterdays, there are thinner todays and fewer good tomorrows.
Oh, I can hear them now. The eager protesting voices of tomorrow beckoning us not to tarry but to travel....! And they are right. Still, they do need maps. Which is why yesterday's travelers are still here. Not the embittered ones who carry regrets on their shoulders, for their compasses are broken and provide poor directions. Instead, we call upon the enthused ones who can still hum the lyrics: Some things seem to be happening again...
...only this time, humming them in a fully rehearsed key for the newer travelers to hear.
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