In the award-winning movie TWELVE ANGRY MEN we're squeezed into a rancorous jury room which -- according to our western judicial system -- is an example of how free societies reach responsible decisions. Head-butting, idea-blazing confrontations are a messy but productive process.
Which makes you ask: What exactly are these ideas with which we are always butting heads?
Our Founding Fathers didn't try to define them, simply say they were our "unalienable right." Buddha probed deeper: "All we are is the result of what we have thought." Centuries later Descartes wrote: "Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am." Pascal nuanced: "The heart has its own reason that reason knows nothing of." In our age Einstein added: "The process of scientific discovery is in effect a continuing flight from wonder."
Scramble these comments and it would seem that as citizens of a free society, it is our unalienable right to think what we will, but our thinking will probably always be a tug between our rational need to find exact answers side by side with our emotional need to remain in a state of awe and wonder.
To put all this another way -- for exactitude we have our computers! for everything else we have us!
Right now the "us" spend the majority of our time at work, play and sleep. Whatever's left over is spent in arguing (AKA, public discourse). In Washington, in bars, in restaurants, in classrooms, at family dinners, and most of all in radio & cablecast shout sessions. It's not twelve angry men; it's 300 million angry men, women and that third gender known as pundits.
Were our Founding Fathers to return, one wonders what would be their reaction to their creation? Chances are the same as would be other great minds returning to behold the consequences of their creations. Buddha, Moses, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohamed, Luther, Locke, and how about Bill Gates. It might go something like this: "How did you all get everything I said so wrong...?"
Our tale ends with this. Recently jury decisions that get it wrong can be over-turned by an impeccable new test. DNA. If only there were such a test for what we get wrong in our daily head-butting, idea-blazing confrontations. Oh but wait, there is...!
That last whispered report, gossip, gaffe or soundbite we heard. Yes, our unalienable right to be wrong. It usually goes something like this: "I just heard from someone who knows these things...."
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
EXPLOITATION NOW INCORPORATED
To exploit someone is to "use or take advantage of them unfairly." The sine qua non to a million daily actions, lately in particular of powerful men and the women in their lives. But while our media frenzy over such headlines, there is a back-page story. The daily story of daily consumer exploitation, all the more reproachable, because in this case the consumers really are being consensual.
If you've missed this story, well you're not alone. Like the fish doesn't notice he's in an ocean because the ocean is all he knows, the same is true of us. The American consumer swims in a sight-and-sound-around ocean of corporate hustle which has been craftily constructed to exploit every possible thought, feeling, appetite and desire we possess.
Too exaggerated...? I think not.
Think television, radio, newspapers, billboards, social media. Is there anywhere -- anywhere at all -- where we are not head-to-head and feeling-to-feeling with another high-priced corporate hustle? The biggest blockbuster coming to a theatre near you...the hottest album from this singer in years....the newest baddest concert in town...the next game pitting the rivals-of-the-century...the latest singing or dancing or survivor sensation ...the just released tell-all memoir...the next you-gotta-have sports car...that new fast-food menu with all the taste and none of the fat...and lets not forget this remarkable over-the-counter cure for diseases you don't even have yet.
But wait, there's more.
Is there ever a day in which you haven't heard Oprah pitching the novel-of-the age...Dave and Jay cooing and laughing with the big-name guest here to pitch their big-profit enterprise....the Sunday morning programs featuring prominent pols pushing personal agendas...cable news channels highlighting their batting order of pundits talking their boss's talking points....and lets not forget those would-be presidents who have instead found a pricey platform on cable from which to preach.
Granted, the examples here are stacked to make a point. And yet, is there really any consumers left out here who really believes their last purchase, ticket or vote was not the result of corporate hustle? Yes, this is free enterprise at work. But upon some reflection, don't you feel someone just worked you over...?
If you've missed this story, well you're not alone. Like the fish doesn't notice he's in an ocean because the ocean is all he knows, the same is true of us. The American consumer swims in a sight-and-sound-around ocean of corporate hustle which has been craftily constructed to exploit every possible thought, feeling, appetite and desire we possess.
Too exaggerated...? I think not.
Think television, radio, newspapers, billboards, social media. Is there anywhere -- anywhere at all -- where we are not head-to-head and feeling-to-feeling with another high-priced corporate hustle? The biggest blockbuster coming to a theatre near you...the hottest album from this singer in years....the newest baddest concert in town...the next game pitting the rivals-of-the-century...the latest singing or dancing or survivor sensation ...the just released tell-all memoir...the next you-gotta-have sports car...that new fast-food menu with all the taste and none of the fat...and lets not forget this remarkable over-the-counter cure for diseases you don't even have yet.
But wait, there's more.
Is there ever a day in which you haven't heard Oprah pitching the novel-of-the age...Dave and Jay cooing and laughing with the big-name guest here to pitch their big-profit enterprise....the Sunday morning programs featuring prominent pols pushing personal agendas...cable news channels highlighting their batting order of pundits talking their boss's talking points....and lets not forget those would-be presidents who have instead found a pricey platform on cable from which to preach.
Granted, the examples here are stacked to make a point. And yet, is there really any consumers left out here who really believes their last purchase, ticket or vote was not the result of corporate hustle? Yes, this is free enterprise at work. But upon some reflection, don't you feel someone just worked you over...?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
THE VOICE MISSING IN THE LAND
Throughout most of human history, rulers always had at least two non-political adjuncts to their reign: The court jester and the court wise man. A lost practice which may yearn for revival before it's too late.
No absence of court jesters today, saying dumb things and sleeping in wrong bedrooms. But there are no longer wise men whose words carry mighty meanings in the land. And even if these seers were often executed by their rule, at least they were taken seriously
In their absence, rulers now have experts. People who know more and more about less and less. Which may be why rulers and nations today see the "big picture" only in "fragmented footnotes." No lack of details about WHAT has gone wrong this month (eg. policy mistakes, mis-spoken remarks, illegal lobbying, mis-spent funds, battlefield errors). But who is left to ponder WHY....??
The experts do seek to explain HOW (eg. it's the person's party affiliation, cultural background, economic interests, race, religion or nation). However, such expert explanations beg the question of WHY; for no one party, culture, interests, race, religion or nation has any monopoly on wrong-doing. Re-reading the wise words of the wise men in earlier ages, they almost always roar in the king's court warnings reminiscent of Shakespeare's Cassius: "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."
In place of the ancient wise men, today we have wise professors in philosophy classrooms and wise authors in piercing literary narratives. Thoughtful students and reflective readers resonate with the wise WHY's that seem to lurk behind our human actions and failings. Somehow, though, these wise realizations have little or no voice in great decision-making.
Well, we are told, it's so obvious. Too academic, too impractical, too heady for a hard-elbowed world....!
Maybe so, maybe no. And yet, a world of clashing elbows will forever remain competing for victories over rivals who -- upon closer and wiser consideration -- are exactly like us. The Human Condition which has forever bound the peoples of the world like conjoined (Siamese) twins. Only we refuse the wisdom of the wise who forever remind us: No one is an island on which they can presume it's "the other" who is wrong.
No absence of court jesters today, saying dumb things and sleeping in wrong bedrooms. But there are no longer wise men whose words carry mighty meanings in the land. And even if these seers were often executed by their rule, at least they were taken seriously
In their absence, rulers now have experts. People who know more and more about less and less. Which may be why rulers and nations today see the "big picture" only in "fragmented footnotes." No lack of details about WHAT has gone wrong this month (eg. policy mistakes, mis-spoken remarks, illegal lobbying, mis-spent funds, battlefield errors). But who is left to ponder WHY....??
The experts do seek to explain HOW (eg. it's the person's party affiliation, cultural background, economic interests, race, religion or nation). However, such expert explanations beg the question of WHY; for no one party, culture, interests, race, religion or nation has any monopoly on wrong-doing. Re-reading the wise words of the wise men in earlier ages, they almost always roar in the king's court warnings reminiscent of Shakespeare's Cassius: "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."
In place of the ancient wise men, today we have wise professors in philosophy classrooms and wise authors in piercing literary narratives. Thoughtful students and reflective readers resonate with the wise WHY's that seem to lurk behind our human actions and failings. Somehow, though, these wise realizations have little or no voice in great decision-making.
Well, we are told, it's so obvious. Too academic, too impractical, too heady for a hard-elbowed world....!
Maybe so, maybe no. And yet, a world of clashing elbows will forever remain competing for victories over rivals who -- upon closer and wiser consideration -- are exactly like us. The Human Condition which has forever bound the peoples of the world like conjoined (Siamese) twins. Only we refuse the wisdom of the wise who forever remind us: No one is an island on which they can presume it's "the other" who is wrong.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
PROGRESS IS A PRICKLY THING
Ever see a small child at Christmastime stare quizzically at the fancy new automated thingamajig, only to start playing with its wrappings...?
Seems humanity is destined -- even if it has its doubts -- to move from the simple to the more complex. Usually that's called progress. Using this definition, we have progressed enormously, and are now bristling with ever more sophisticated tools for learning, creating, oh and killing.
We wonder. Phones so sophisticated we're not always able to make a call...apps so numerous we're not really sure why we have them all...websites like this one so numerous and relentless, we can't keep up even if we cared to. Maybe more is not better after all! While kids thrill to this stuff, many adults shake their heads. But then, this counter-point is hardly new. It's precisely how progress proceeds, right...?
Right...! All throughout history there has been stunning progress side-by-side with voices concerned with complexity. In ancient Israel, dissenters like the Essenes. In ancient Greece, dissenters like the Stoics. In 18th C Europe the Luddites damning technological progress, and Rousseau calling for a re-discovery of the Noble Savage. Thoreau here in the 19th C looking at the complexities of his Boston and retreating to Walden Pond.
Our 21st C is no different, only more so. There are the "survivalist," "sovereign citizens" and "terrorists" out there brandishing guns and damning the world to hell for its sins and conspiracies. However, more of us are dissenters than we may admit. Dissent today can be subtler and closer to home. The desire to shop farmers markets...to buy organic foods...to get-back-to-the-basics...to embrace fundamentalism ....and most of all, our passion for soundbites, because, well, they just make all these complex ideas so much easier to digest.
Voila! the rise of political stand ups...cable news pundits...radio & blogger shouters. Please, for God's sake, anyone anywhere who can simplify all these complicated things and people in my life. After all, I'm out of school, and don't have to do any more homework assignments!
Here's the problem. In a democracy, school is always supposed to be in session. It's called citizenship. So while this recurring yearning to keep-it-simple is a lesson-of-life forgotten by every generation's wunderkinds, better the gorgeous simplicity of a Thoreau than a gun-toting Redneck or bomb-throwing patriot.
Simplicity is a very good thing. But good things are good only so long as you know something good to do with them...
Seems humanity is destined -- even if it has its doubts -- to move from the simple to the more complex. Usually that's called progress. Using this definition, we have progressed enormously, and are now bristling with ever more sophisticated tools for learning, creating, oh and killing.
We wonder. Phones so sophisticated we're not always able to make a call...apps so numerous we're not really sure why we have them all...websites like this one so numerous and relentless, we can't keep up even if we cared to. Maybe more is not better after all! While kids thrill to this stuff, many adults shake their heads. But then, this counter-point is hardly new. It's precisely how progress proceeds, right...?
Right...! All throughout history there has been stunning progress side-by-side with voices concerned with complexity. In ancient Israel, dissenters like the Essenes. In ancient Greece, dissenters like the Stoics. In 18th C Europe the Luddites damning technological progress, and Rousseau calling for a re-discovery of the Noble Savage. Thoreau here in the 19th C looking at the complexities of his Boston and retreating to Walden Pond.
Our 21st C is no different, only more so. There are the "survivalist," "sovereign citizens" and "terrorists" out there brandishing guns and damning the world to hell for its sins and conspiracies. However, more of us are dissenters than we may admit. Dissent today can be subtler and closer to home. The desire to shop farmers markets...to buy organic foods...to get-back-to-the-basics...to embrace fundamentalism ....and most of all, our passion for soundbites, because, well, they just make all these complex ideas so much easier to digest.
Voila! the rise of political stand ups...cable news pundits...radio & blogger shouters. Please, for God's sake, anyone anywhere who can simplify all these complicated things and people in my life. After all, I'm out of school, and don't have to do any more homework assignments!
Here's the problem. In a democracy, school is always supposed to be in session. It's called citizenship. So while this recurring yearning to keep-it-simple is a lesson-of-life forgotten by every generation's wunderkinds, better the gorgeous simplicity of a Thoreau than a gun-toting Redneck or bomb-throwing patriot.
Simplicity is a very good thing. But good things are good only so long as you know something good to do with them...
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
DON'T CONFUSE MY LIFETIME WITH YOUR FACTS
Renowned futurist Arthur Clarke wrote: "People can live longer without food than without information." Fast-living Coco Chanel had a different take: "There is a time for work and a time for love. That leaves no other time." Two different ways of looking at the facts life presents us.
If all 7 billion of us examined facts with our reason, it might be the better world Clarke envisioned. But Coco was probably closer to the fact that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts. Political journalist Chris Mooney calls this the theory of Motivated Reasoning: "Neuroscience shows how our reasoning is actually suffused with our emotions. What researches call 'affect.' Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive and negative emotions about people, things and ideas trigger much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts about them."
When you think about this, we shouldn't be surprised. Evolution demanded we react quickly. Michigan University political scientist Arthur Lupia: "We push threatening information away as we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators but to data as well."
In his recent THE SOCIAL ANIMAL, columnist David Brooks addresses some of the same themes. Or if you haven't time to read, just watch the cable news channels. Put a half-dozen political pundits in the same studio with the same facts, and you won't get a single consensus on anything. Including the resume of the pundit chattering next to them!
University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt nails it: "We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers. Our reasoning is simply a means to a pre-determined end. Which is winning our case." Hence the theory of Motivated Reasoning. When it comes to issues like global warming, capital punishment, abortion, healthcare, or someone saying my child is a bully, Mooney asserts: "We can and do go to great lengths to rationally explain away facts that may seem obvious to everybody else." Ah yes, I think I remember doing that. And you?
A pause here.
If there really is something to this theory of Motivated Reasoning, really now how crazy is it...? How crazy is it to abruptly discard an emotionally charged belief-system that's taken me a lifetime to build...? I mean, just because you suddenly stick all these facts in my face...?
And so the world goes.
If all 7 billion of us examined facts with our reason, it might be the better world Clarke envisioned. But Coco was probably closer to the fact that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts. Political journalist Chris Mooney calls this the theory of Motivated Reasoning: "Neuroscience shows how our reasoning is actually suffused with our emotions. What researches call 'affect.' Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive and negative emotions about people, things and ideas trigger much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts about them."
When you think about this, we shouldn't be surprised. Evolution demanded we react quickly. Michigan University political scientist Arthur Lupia: "We push threatening information away as we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators but to data as well."
In his recent THE SOCIAL ANIMAL, columnist David Brooks addresses some of the same themes. Or if you haven't time to read, just watch the cable news channels. Put a half-dozen political pundits in the same studio with the same facts, and you won't get a single consensus on anything. Including the resume of the pundit chattering next to them!
University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt nails it: "We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers. Our reasoning is simply a means to a pre-determined end. Which is winning our case." Hence the theory of Motivated Reasoning. When it comes to issues like global warming, capital punishment, abortion, healthcare, or someone saying my child is a bully, Mooney asserts: "We can and do go to great lengths to rationally explain away facts that may seem obvious to everybody else." Ah yes, I think I remember doing that. And you?
A pause here.
If there really is something to this theory of Motivated Reasoning, really now how crazy is it...? How crazy is it to abruptly discard an emotionally charged belief-system that's taken me a lifetime to build...? I mean, just because you suddenly stick all these facts in my face...?
And so the world goes.
Monday, May 16, 2011
WHOLE NEW DEFINITION OF OBSCENITY?
A famous jurist quipped, "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it." The same may be said for obscenity. Defined as "repugnantly indecent," it usually has something to do with sex. Here I'd like to make a case for how it also has to do with spending.
Money and how we spend it is culturally significant. It helps define our status, our role, our very value. And so we celebrate wealth. The tycoons who have it, the celebrities who flaunt it, and the ambitious who earn it. Like 23-year-old Maurice Harary of New York who made $120,000 in just 48 hours by selling a line of T-shirts featuring the death of Bin Laden.
Americans' facility for making money helped give birth to what many call our Exceptionalism. With the first 17th C colonists there began the national myth that we were blessed by God to give humanity a new beginning in a new world. Today that same case is emphatically made by politicians and pundits "tired of the negativism from social secularists."
What nourishes that negativism...? Often it circles back to how we spend what we make. Americans continue to spend more on cosmetics than new hospitals, more on vacations than new schools, and staggeringly more on entertainment than any other field of discretionary spending. Movies, sports, cable channels and websites consume billions each year. The very same years we bicker over the millions being proposed for wiser energy policies, wiser infrastructure, wiser market regulations, wiser teachers.
News flash.
As we speak, TV sponsors in New York are lining up to eagerly pay a 10% hike in fees for the fall's new network season. A season promising more night-time sedation via time-tested cop & doc shows, vampire & violence episodes, along with a whole new brew of raunch & reality programs. OK, lets be fair, you can see the appeal here to both the sponsors and the sedated alike. But then -- in a land seething with so many needs -- you can also see the obscenity to it.
What would be truly exceptional about us is if we could still remember how needs always trump wants.
Money and how we spend it is culturally significant. It helps define our status, our role, our very value. And so we celebrate wealth. The tycoons who have it, the celebrities who flaunt it, and the ambitious who earn it. Like 23-year-old Maurice Harary of New York who made $120,000 in just 48 hours by selling a line of T-shirts featuring the death of Bin Laden.
Americans' facility for making money helped give birth to what many call our Exceptionalism. With the first 17th C colonists there began the national myth that we were blessed by God to give humanity a new beginning in a new world. Today that same case is emphatically made by politicians and pundits "tired of the negativism from social secularists."
What nourishes that negativism...? Often it circles back to how we spend what we make. Americans continue to spend more on cosmetics than new hospitals, more on vacations than new schools, and staggeringly more on entertainment than any other field of discretionary spending. Movies, sports, cable channels and websites consume billions each year. The very same years we bicker over the millions being proposed for wiser energy policies, wiser infrastructure, wiser market regulations, wiser teachers.
News flash.
As we speak, TV sponsors in New York are lining up to eagerly pay a 10% hike in fees for the fall's new network season. A season promising more night-time sedation via time-tested cop & doc shows, vampire & violence episodes, along with a whole new brew of raunch & reality programs. OK, lets be fair, you can see the appeal here to both the sponsors and the sedated alike. But then -- in a land seething with so many needs -- you can also see the obscenity to it.
What would be truly exceptional about us is if we could still remember how needs always trump wants.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
WHAT'S THERE TO REMEMBER ON MEMORIAL DAY?
Every Memorial Day is supposed to help the living remember the dead.
But after all, we're only human, and so we usually see things darkly as through a glass. I got that from St Paul 2000 years ago, but the "darkly" still fits every new headline we tend to see as an historical epoch. Say like we did with vaudeville, Saturday movie matinees, the Big Band era, the McCarthy Hearings, film noir, and now the Great Recession. All important moments in time, but in the long term really only moments.
To earn the name epoch, it has to be something so big and so enduring that people are still reading and living it centuries later.The rise of Rome, the entrance of Christianity, the invention of the printing press, the Age of Discovery. Each of these remarkable periods took and impacted entire generations.
Then there's WWII. You know, the one kids in school still get mixed up with the Civil War, or think it had something to do with the Panama Canal, or wasn't-that-when-Teddy Roosevelt-charged-up-a-hill?
WWII took only six years (1939-45), but it also took 60 million lives...displaced another 100 million ...crashed several colonial empires...birthed a Cold War that shoved the world to the brink of atomic annihilation. But because all this played out in an age of instant global communication, what once took generations to soak into the fibers of everyday life, this soaked into billions of lives almost as it unfolded.
Which is why kids today may not know the facts and stats to WWII on this Memorial Day, but whether they know them or not, they're living them. Virtually every idea in their head and passion in their gut comes from that epochal worldwide trauma that ripped whole civilizations off their tracks.
Ironically, the technology by which today's generation live -- from penicillin to radar, from computers to cellphones, from jets to robotics -- first came into our world to wage war not peace. The moral values today's generation espouse -- their rights, their freedoms, their individuality -- aren't from the lyrics of Rock or Rap, but echo from the lives of kids who died at Normandy and Iwo Jima. The heroes today's generation see on the big screens -- Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Eminem -- are celluloid copies of forgotten figures who played on the much bigger screen called life -- Chuck O'Hare, Audie Murphy, Ernie Pyle, Bill Mauldin, Glenn Miller.
This is not to condemn the students who sleep through their history classes, the winners who scoop up the riches of Wall Street, or even the well-heeled aficionados who strut their stuff in sports bars. One generation has no right to keep reminding another generation. But on each Memorial Day, it may have an obligation.
But after all, we're only human, and so we usually see things darkly as through a glass. I got that from St Paul 2000 years ago, but the "darkly" still fits every new headline we tend to see as an historical epoch. Say like we did with vaudeville, Saturday movie matinees, the Big Band era, the McCarthy Hearings, film noir, and now the Great Recession. All important moments in time, but in the long term really only moments.
To earn the name epoch, it has to be something so big and so enduring that people are still reading and living it centuries later.The rise of Rome, the entrance of Christianity, the invention of the printing press, the Age of Discovery. Each of these remarkable periods took and impacted entire generations.
Then there's WWII. You know, the one kids in school still get mixed up with the Civil War, or think it had something to do with the Panama Canal, or wasn't-that-when-Teddy Roosevelt-charged-up-a-hill?
WWII took only six years (1939-45), but it also took 60 million lives...displaced another 100 million ...crashed several colonial empires...birthed a Cold War that shoved the world to the brink of atomic annihilation. But because all this played out in an age of instant global communication, what once took generations to soak into the fibers of everyday life, this soaked into billions of lives almost as it unfolded.
Which is why kids today may not know the facts and stats to WWII on this Memorial Day, but whether they know them or not, they're living them. Virtually every idea in their head and passion in their gut comes from that epochal worldwide trauma that ripped whole civilizations off their tracks.
Ironically, the technology by which today's generation live -- from penicillin to radar, from computers to cellphones, from jets to robotics -- first came into our world to wage war not peace. The moral values today's generation espouse -- their rights, their freedoms, their individuality -- aren't from the lyrics of Rock or Rap, but echo from the lives of kids who died at Normandy and Iwo Jima. The heroes today's generation see on the big screens -- Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Eminem -- are celluloid copies of forgotten figures who played on the much bigger screen called life -- Chuck O'Hare, Audie Murphy, Ernie Pyle, Bill Mauldin, Glenn Miller.
This is not to condemn the students who sleep through their history classes, the winners who scoop up the riches of Wall Street, or even the well-heeled aficionados who strut their stuff in sports bars. One generation has no right to keep reminding another generation. But on each Memorial Day, it may have an obligation.
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