In today's power-driven culture, the Alphas out there are easy to spot. The Dominatrix-es less so. However, they're both with us, and their passion for power is on daily display. From the studios of Hollywood to the Banks of New York to the chambers of government in Washington.
It was this flair for power that brought most people to this continent, that helped them subdue its wilds, and that finally lifted it to global superpower. We respect the role of power in our lives. Turning-the- other-cheek has never been an American specialty.
Sometimes, though, there's a problem with power.
That great Manhattan philosopher Woody Allen puts it this way: "Confidence is what you have just before you understand the problem." Aha, you remember the feeling too...! But not enough people in power do. CEOs, generals, presidents, senators, mayors and celebrities are so infected with its virus, they are usually stunned when they discover their power's limits. Say, in the face of a hurricane or an earthquake...a sudden market collapse or a relentless unemployment....a terrorist or a bacteria.
The true test of power is not only in using it, but in knowing what to do while you're losing it.
There are times in the lives of people and nations when the Genie in the Lamp is tired of saving you. That's when you have to save yourself. Some rush to heaven for steadying comfort [ the Facebook page "Jesus Daily" is right now the nation's most popular social-networking website]. Others flee to what are popularly called experts [ those well-published authors who confidently advise the world with how-to's ranging from diets, to movies, and lately to just how our leaders should be managing the economy]. Still others tend to hunker down into their own cocoons of diversion saying to themselves: if-the-sky-really-is-falling-I-just-want-some-political-alpha/dominatrix-to-save-me.]
Have you noticed lately...? No lack of folks willing to tell you they're just what you're looking for. Which surely makes one remember the instructive lines from Kipling: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it one you/ If you can meet with triumphs and disasters and treat those twin impostors just the same/ If you can talk with crowds yet keep your virtue/ Yours is the earth and everything that's in it."
This very night there are a few among us who can fall asleep in that conviction. To discover who they are will be to discover the truth to power.....
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
OK SO YOU'RE SMARTER THAN YOUR GRANDPARENTS; NOW WHAT?
Chances are your IQ score is 20 points higher than your grandparents.
That's according to the Flynn Effect, the political scientist who discovered average IQ scores in the West have steadily risen over the last 100 years. A conclusion which brings us to what we call today our best-and-brightest.
From Washington, Harvard and the Yankees in the East to Silicon Valley, Stanford and the Giants in the West, that's who we want. Who we pay the big bucks. Who we say we'll follow. But wait a minute -- how do we actually define best-and-brightest? What do these people look like? And how can we spot them?
Couple reasons why so many more are out there. Better nutrition, better healthcare, better problem-solving experiences ranging everywhere from playing video games to manipulating computers to having to make sense of complexities like the Harry Potter series.
However, once we identify the best-and-brightest IQs, what next....?
Here's where we run into a glitch. While Flynn's research shows "high IQ scores correlate with high grades and good job performance," Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware argues "....pure intelligence is a useful tool, but not a virtue." In an especially challenging statement she adds: "In other words, people today might be better problem-solvers on paper than previous generations, but that doesn't mean they will be willing to do what's necessary to, say, solve the problems the US economy faces today."
That concern comes from results like the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Here there is evidence while IQs remain on the rise, for the last 20 years children's ability to come up with original ideas and put them into practice has been "spiraling downward." Especially among children grades 1 through 6 ever since 1990.
College professors are about as plentiful as bloggers -- which makes you wonder about their value! In any case, here's what Professor Kyung Hee Kim of the William & Mary School of Education has to say. Examining the Torrance Tests, she told USA Today: "There's something wrong with today's standards-obsessed schools and legislators. Creative students cannot breathe. They are suffocated in schools. Leading in the long run to under-achievement."
When I was teaching at the dramatic dawn of the media & computer age, I often felt our kids were coming to school to have their educations interrupted. John Ruskin found the right words for me fear: "What we think, what we know, even what we believe is in the long run of little consequence to our world. The only thing of consequence is what we do...!"
That's according to the Flynn Effect, the political scientist who discovered average IQ scores in the West have steadily risen over the last 100 years. A conclusion which brings us to what we call today our best-and-brightest.
From Washington, Harvard and the Yankees in the East to Silicon Valley, Stanford and the Giants in the West, that's who we want. Who we pay the big bucks. Who we say we'll follow. But wait a minute -- how do we actually define best-and-brightest? What do these people look like? And how can we spot them?
Couple reasons why so many more are out there. Better nutrition, better healthcare, better problem-solving experiences ranging everywhere from playing video games to manipulating computers to having to make sense of complexities like the Harry Potter series.
However, once we identify the best-and-brightest IQs, what next....?
Here's where we run into a glitch. While Flynn's research shows "high IQ scores correlate with high grades and good job performance," Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware argues "....pure intelligence is a useful tool, but not a virtue." In an especially challenging statement she adds: "In other words, people today might be better problem-solvers on paper than previous generations, but that doesn't mean they will be willing to do what's necessary to, say, solve the problems the US economy faces today."
That concern comes from results like the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Here there is evidence while IQs remain on the rise, for the last 20 years children's ability to come up with original ideas and put them into practice has been "spiraling downward." Especially among children grades 1 through 6 ever since 1990.
College professors are about as plentiful as bloggers -- which makes you wonder about their value! In any case, here's what Professor Kyung Hee Kim of the William & Mary School of Education has to say. Examining the Torrance Tests, she told USA Today: "There's something wrong with today's standards-obsessed schools and legislators. Creative students cannot breathe. They are suffocated in schools. Leading in the long run to under-achievement."
When I was teaching at the dramatic dawn of the media & computer age, I often felt our kids were coming to school to have their educations interrupted. John Ruskin found the right words for me fear: "What we think, what we know, even what we believe is in the long run of little consequence to our world. The only thing of consequence is what we do...!"
Monday, September 12, 2011
I KNEW DORIS DAY BEFORE SHE WAS A VIRGIN
I actually didn't say that...! The acerbic musical genius Oscar Levant did. Back in 1949 at Warner Brothers where Doris was just emerging as America's girl-next-door-sweetheart. Lucky for her, the comment didn't get a lot of play once the studio PR department contained the damage.
The point isn't how Ms Day -- now contentedly retired in Carmel California -- survived Mr Levant's tongue-in-cheek shot. The point is how so much of American culture has always bristled with such shots. Fired as everything from wry humor to downright defamation. Americans love to think of ourselves as a free-spirited people who know how to play hard in both our walk and our words.
But if you step outside the frame for a moment, you begin to see what a perplexing picture that stands out daily in (1) our politics (2) our sports (3) our entertainment. Look, compliments are usually reserved for the wakes; until then, confrontations are often the name of the game:
* American politics has been a brutal blood sport right from the start. If anyone finds today's rough-and- tumble Washington shocking, they only have to scan the withering insults that plagued even our history books' top-five heroes Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR. As in what...? As in make-believe- king! slave-humping-lier! whoring-frontier-animal! gorilla-brained-bumpkin! Jew-loving-cripple!
* American may love their sports heroes, but can't resist their flaws. Read the sports pages where what sells is who-yelled-at-who in the locker room! which star dissed which upcoming team! which player was caught in which domestic fight! You see, pedestals in sports are built to be broken; this way the mob's frenzy gets fed twice.
* American show business -- well, the story here is all squeezed into one sleazy word: Paparazzi! There is this strange symbiotic relationship between the stars and their hoary detractors. The stars feed on the paparazzi's attentions (insult me, but for God's sake don't ignore me!). Meanwhile, the paparazzi feed on the carcasses their shots leave behind (scream at me, just don't break my camera!).
Americans talk a lot about down-time, weekends, vacations, getting-away-from-it-all. But look closer. If there's anything we love to talk about is: what's there about the rich-and-powerful I can talk about? Hey, the more I can cut them down, the taller I look. I mean, that's what democracy is, right....?
The point isn't how Ms Day -- now contentedly retired in Carmel California -- survived Mr Levant's tongue-in-cheek shot. The point is how so much of American culture has always bristled with such shots. Fired as everything from wry humor to downright defamation. Americans love to think of ourselves as a free-spirited people who know how to play hard in both our walk and our words.
But if you step outside the frame for a moment, you begin to see what a perplexing picture that stands out daily in (1) our politics (2) our sports (3) our entertainment. Look, compliments are usually reserved for the wakes; until then, confrontations are often the name of the game:
* American politics has been a brutal blood sport right from the start. If anyone finds today's rough-and- tumble Washington shocking, they only have to scan the withering insults that plagued even our history books' top-five heroes Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR. As in what...? As in make-believe- king! slave-humping-lier! whoring-frontier-animal! gorilla-brained-bumpkin! Jew-loving-cripple!
* American may love their sports heroes, but can't resist their flaws. Read the sports pages where what sells is who-yelled-at-who in the locker room! which star dissed which upcoming team! which player was caught in which domestic fight! You see, pedestals in sports are built to be broken; this way the mob's frenzy gets fed twice.
* American show business -- well, the story here is all squeezed into one sleazy word: Paparazzi! There is this strange symbiotic relationship between the stars and their hoary detractors. The stars feed on the paparazzi's attentions (insult me, but for God's sake don't ignore me!). Meanwhile, the paparazzi feed on the carcasses their shots leave behind (scream at me, just don't break my camera!).
Americans talk a lot about down-time, weekends, vacations, getting-away-from-it-all. But look closer. If there's anything we love to talk about is: what's there about the rich-and-powerful I can talk about? Hey, the more I can cut them down, the taller I look. I mean, that's what democracy is, right....?
Sunday, September 11, 2011
9/11 -- A LIFETIME LATER
[[ This Appears in Today's Chicago Tribune ]]
To some of us, 9/11 was the second shoe. The first had dropped almost exactly 70 years earlier. As a boy I had experienced the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941; now this on New York City in 2001. In the first, our proud fleet had been destroyed; in the second, our proud Towers. The enemies were getting closer. Is there some kind of connection?
Indeed there is. In 1941 the boy had suddenly learned his nation had enemies. What, America...? Oh yes. Seventy years later in 2001 the man clearly realized America had many enemies. All those things about his country that made him proud, made others angry. Angry that what we had and what we took in the world left less for them. And among them there would always be some fierce avengers.
During those 70 years the boy became an educator. US History was my field, and I remember trying to convey what was so unique about the United States. The first country that had been created rather than simply happened. Instead of one strain of humanity gradually evolving into a nation, we were many strains that hurried up the process by simply declaring ourselves free of any outside rule. Fortunately we had two great ocean walls behind which to remain safe from most outside interference.
However, by the 20th C those walls were no longer invulnerable. Ships, planes and missiles ended all that. By the 21st C television, the Internet, and social media made us even more vulnerable. Now those angry faces pressed against the candy store window that was America were capable of giving life to their anger. Turning their rage into retaliation.
On September 10, the world seemed to be made up of just two populations: Americans and those who wanted to be Americans. By September 12 there was serious reason to doubt that old patriotic scenario. My extended family lost members in the war that followed December 7; and some already in the war that has followed September 11. If I were still in the classroom today, I think I would ask my students about their admirable passion for peace and doing-their-thing. But I would also ask them is there room that also allows for struggle and following-the-flag.
Performing somewhere between these extremes -- the passion for peace and the need for struggle -- may be how best we can respond as a nation on this anniversary.
To some of us, 9/11 was the second shoe. The first had dropped almost exactly 70 years earlier. As a boy I had experienced the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941; now this on New York City in 2001. In the first, our proud fleet had been destroyed; in the second, our proud Towers. The enemies were getting closer. Is there some kind of connection?
Indeed there is. In 1941 the boy had suddenly learned his nation had enemies. What, America...? Oh yes. Seventy years later in 2001 the man clearly realized America had many enemies. All those things about his country that made him proud, made others angry. Angry that what we had and what we took in the world left less for them. And among them there would always be some fierce avengers.
During those 70 years the boy became an educator. US History was my field, and I remember trying to convey what was so unique about the United States. The first country that had been created rather than simply happened. Instead of one strain of humanity gradually evolving into a nation, we were many strains that hurried up the process by simply declaring ourselves free of any outside rule. Fortunately we had two great ocean walls behind which to remain safe from most outside interference.
However, by the 20th C those walls were no longer invulnerable. Ships, planes and missiles ended all that. By the 21st C television, the Internet, and social media made us even more vulnerable. Now those angry faces pressed against the candy store window that was America were capable of giving life to their anger. Turning their rage into retaliation.
On September 10, the world seemed to be made up of just two populations: Americans and those who wanted to be Americans. By September 12 there was serious reason to doubt that old patriotic scenario. My extended family lost members in the war that followed December 7; and some already in the war that has followed September 11. If I were still in the classroom today, I think I would ask my students about their admirable passion for peace and doing-their-thing. But I would also ask them is there room that also allows for struggle and following-the-flag.
Performing somewhere between these extremes -- the passion for peace and the need for struggle -- may be how best we can respond as a nation on this anniversary.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
I JUST FOUND AL GORE IN OUR GARDEN
You've heard it too. All the pro and con about Climate Change. But in this dustup we're putting the focus on the wrong word. The issue, my fellow earthlings, is not just the "climate." It's the "change." Let me explain before the next weather disaster crowds my act...
I'm no expert but I can report Al Gore's warnings have already taken place in our backyard garden. Five summers in a row our Day Lilies and other assorted beauties have been blooming weeks earlier than ever before. Not to mention five straight summers in which the nation has been battered by record-smashing rainfalls, hurricanes, and earthquakes. And while climatologists can debate the weather, the rest of us better confront the change of which the weather is only one feature.
This hunk of rock on which we all cling, it's spinning at the same rate but changing faster than it has in centuries. However, like the lobster in the boiling pot doesn't realize what's happening to him, we lobsters may be enduring the very same deceit.
Whether you study the clouds, the Bible, or that grim Mayan calendar, we are at another of those critical cusps of history where what was is not likely to ever be again. Change is not new, but recently change has changed! It's coming faster and more furiously than ever. As Margaret Mead put it: "Our world changed more in this last generation than it did in the last 50 generations." Populations...weapons...food and water supplies...energy consumption...ideological confrontations. When these things start shifting -- crammed inside as they are a smaller more interconnected place -- something's gotta give.
Presidents, popes, CEOs and generals speak in public with calm and wisdom. But in bed at night, they cower under their covers perhaps even more than you and me. Because they know more. And today knowledge is not always power. Often it's terror.
Still....! There is this comfort. Epochal change like this has battered us before and yet we're still here. Somehow we've made it this far. Which would appear to be a testament to humanity's endurance. Still, if the Mayan Calender is right about December 21, 2012, my kid brother is going to miss that surprise birthday party we were planning.
I'm no expert but I can report Al Gore's warnings have already taken place in our backyard garden. Five summers in a row our Day Lilies and other assorted beauties have been blooming weeks earlier than ever before. Not to mention five straight summers in which the nation has been battered by record-smashing rainfalls, hurricanes, and earthquakes. And while climatologists can debate the weather, the rest of us better confront the change of which the weather is only one feature.
This hunk of rock on which we all cling, it's spinning at the same rate but changing faster than it has in centuries. However, like the lobster in the boiling pot doesn't realize what's happening to him, we lobsters may be enduring the very same deceit.
Whether you study the clouds, the Bible, or that grim Mayan calendar, we are at another of those critical cusps of history where what was is not likely to ever be again. Change is not new, but recently change has changed! It's coming faster and more furiously than ever. As Margaret Mead put it: "Our world changed more in this last generation than it did in the last 50 generations." Populations...weapons...food and water supplies...energy consumption...ideological confrontations. When these things start shifting -- crammed inside as they are a smaller more interconnected place -- something's gotta give.
Presidents, popes, CEOs and generals speak in public with calm and wisdom. But in bed at night, they cower under their covers perhaps even more than you and me. Because they know more. And today knowledge is not always power. Often it's terror.
Still....! There is this comfort. Epochal change like this has battered us before and yet we're still here. Somehow we've made it this far. Which would appear to be a testament to humanity's endurance. Still, if the Mayan Calender is right about December 21, 2012, my kid brother is going to miss that surprise birthday party we were planning.
Friday, September 9, 2011
GLORIA STEINEM TAKES ON THE FRENCH POLICE
The French police have traditionally approached crimes of passion with: "Cherchez la femme!" (look for the woman). As a man, well that's always sounded about right to me. But then it's my gender who came up with this indictment in the first place. Been doing it ever since we indicted Eve...Helen of Troy... Bathsheba.... Cleopatra...Anne Boleyn ...Mata Harri...Monica Lewinsky....Heidie Floss...well, you get the libidinous idea.
Anthropologists -- and now Gloria Steinem -- suggest it's the male of the species copping out by shifting the blame. She made me do it...!
Listen in to some of the back-slapping jokes among the boys in the local sports bar. Catch some of the raunchier plots from Hollywood and television. Sit long enough to force your way through a rap song's lyrics. Steinem's case made and case closed.
This Punch-and-Judy dynamic has been around ever since we started putting on those fig leaves in the Garden. We noticed the differences. But now this is where the French have another traditional saying: "Viva le difference'." Whether you credit God or Darwin, the panoply of differences between the sexes is like traveling down the galleries of a magnificent museum that has no ending.
Ever since the earth goddesses of harvest and birth were replaced eons ago with the sky gods of thunder and power, the female of the species has been relegated to a subsidiary role in the great narratives. Now that the Steinems of the world have helped break the ancient seals, the scrolls are beginning to reveal the extraordinarily subtle counterpoints to this symphony of life.
For man's burst of strength there is woman's courageous endurance. For man's need to power there is woman's need to love. For man's passion to forage there's woman's need to harvest. One without the other is forever a half. Viva la difference' and viva the mutual respect for those differences. To be really whole, each half must join the other without becoming the other...
Anthropologists -- and now Gloria Steinem -- suggest it's the male of the species copping out by shifting the blame. She made me do it...!
Listen in to some of the back-slapping jokes among the boys in the local sports bar. Catch some of the raunchier plots from Hollywood and television. Sit long enough to force your way through a rap song's lyrics. Steinem's case made and case closed.
This Punch-and-Judy dynamic has been around ever since we started putting on those fig leaves in the Garden. We noticed the differences. But now this is where the French have another traditional saying: "Viva le difference'." Whether you credit God or Darwin, the panoply of differences between the sexes is like traveling down the galleries of a magnificent museum that has no ending.
Ever since the earth goddesses of harvest and birth were replaced eons ago with the sky gods of thunder and power, the female of the species has been relegated to a subsidiary role in the great narratives. Now that the Steinems of the world have helped break the ancient seals, the scrolls are beginning to reveal the extraordinarily subtle counterpoints to this symphony of life.
For man's burst of strength there is woman's courageous endurance. For man's need to power there is woman's need to love. For man's passion to forage there's woman's need to harvest. One without the other is forever a half. Viva la difference' and viva the mutual respect for those differences. To be really whole, each half must join the other without becoming the other...
Thursday, September 8, 2011
AMERICA'S GARDEN OF EDEN & WHAT HAPPENED TO IT
Politics is in full bloody bloom. Candidates are slashing their way through the American living room with furious flags to fly and vile enemies to devour. Our quadrennial no-prisoners-taken pig-out. Following Wednesday's Republican Debate, at least two themes became clear: (1) an angry rejection of "Obama's America" (2) a lusty recollection of the "Real America." Soon now we'll hear the fiery counter-themes.
But what exactly is this Real America? Actually it's not every exact. But then visions never are. Perhaps it's those small Huckleberry communities where everyone knows your name...local mom & pop retailers servicing their neighbors...kids able to chase fireflies late and safe into the night...especially, bold shirtsleeve innovators free to build their dreams without any government interference.
Who wouldn't want a touch of Mayberry USA? In contrast to our sprawling impersonal cities... gangs ...crime...unemployment; plus those encroaching ghettos, immigrants, and death-panels. People in hard times want to hear about better times. About a paradise lost that can be found again. If only the vipers in the Garden can be destroyed! After all weren't they our Garden's ruin in the first place?
Campaigns have wordy policy papers that most voters won't read. Campaigners, on the other hand, have feel-good images that any voter can picture. Reassuring images of what the Real America once looked like and can look like again. But first, as with all great crusades, the crusaders must be able to lead us to the vipers' nest. On Wednesday the nest was found and tagged: "Government interference." That crawly thing that somehow took root in our once upon a time free-and-natural Garden of growth.
Standing in the very holy-of-holies of the prophet who first said "government is not the solution but the problem," this crusade to reclaim the Real America thundered well. Soon we will hear from the other end of the Garden. More specifically, the candidate who would remain president in the belief that government is not the vipers in our garden, but more like the fences. There to protect the harvests from the foxes.
Ready or not, fellow toilers, we face 13 months of no-prisoners-taken struggle to win over our Garden.
But what exactly is this Real America? Actually it's not every exact. But then visions never are. Perhaps it's those small Huckleberry communities where everyone knows your name...local mom & pop retailers servicing their neighbors...kids able to chase fireflies late and safe into the night...especially, bold shirtsleeve innovators free to build their dreams without any government interference.
Who wouldn't want a touch of Mayberry USA? In contrast to our sprawling impersonal cities... gangs ...crime...unemployment; plus those encroaching ghettos, immigrants, and death-panels. People in hard times want to hear about better times. About a paradise lost that can be found again. If only the vipers in the Garden can be destroyed! After all weren't they our Garden's ruin in the first place?
Campaigns have wordy policy papers that most voters won't read. Campaigners, on the other hand, have feel-good images that any voter can picture. Reassuring images of what the Real America once looked like and can look like again. But first, as with all great crusades, the crusaders must be able to lead us to the vipers' nest. On Wednesday the nest was found and tagged: "Government interference." That crawly thing that somehow took root in our once upon a time free-and-natural Garden of growth.
Standing in the very holy-of-holies of the prophet who first said "government is not the solution but the problem," this crusade to reclaim the Real America thundered well. Soon we will hear from the other end of the Garden. More specifically, the candidate who would remain president in the belief that government is not the vipers in our garden, but more like the fences. There to protect the harvests from the foxes.
Ready or not, fellow toilers, we face 13 months of no-prisoners-taken struggle to win over our Garden.
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