Thoreau said it while puttering along the shores of Walden Pond: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation with their song still left in them." Now almost two centuries later we have the wonders of Facebook. Along with an entire galaxy of Steve Jobs & Steve Zuckerberg inspired social media. Would Thoreau consider this a satisfactory answer to our despair?
I'm not sure. Although he did comment on the excitement being promised by the new telegraph line between his Boston and Texas. He sniffed: "But does Boston have anything to say to Texas??"
With or without technology, it's been said about our species that men need to be important, and women need to be loved...! If that conclusions is arguable, this one is not: Both men and women need to be noticed...! To live and die with our song still unsung is intolerable. And so it is we all itch for that 15-minutes-of-fame that seems to be all around us in these media-ized days, but just out of reach.
Notice how by-standers can't resist gawking and waving whenever they see a television crew's camera. Notice, as did the media guru Marshall McLuhan, how these same bystanders will usually watch the crew's monitors rather than the event the crew is shooting. Notice how we can't resist exploding our best smile whenever someone's taking our picture. Notice how fans scream not only for autographs, but oh please just to touch for themselves the Great One they have come to see.
From kids climbing trees and yelling "Look at me!" to wannabes auditioning for American Idol, the Jerry Spring Show, Housewives Of; or simply queuing up to experience the privilege of being in the same television studio with...well, with whomever is going to be guesting this day.
[ Personal Note: I was the masked mystery guest for a Bob Newhart Roast in town. The nearby dinner guests became insanely curious about who I was. As one woman squealed, "You're famous aren't you! Will you sign my napkin?" For her, I simply had to be someone important whose signature she could take home as a prize. When the mask later came off, so did her squeal! ]
The international paparazzi -- weaponed to the teeth with the latest communication technologies -- have become an entirely new sub-set of the human species. A rapacious legion of blood-suckers who live on exploiting the fame of the famous. While at the very same time the famous exploit the power of the paparazzi. Meanwhile we -- the non-famous -- condemn this strange symbiosis while at the same time savoring every smarmy detail.
The writers of Genesis tried to explain this quixotic human appetite. Long before Freud or Shakespeare or even Paris Hilton, Genesis remarked on our desperately inquisitive need to know. Back then it was an apple. Right now it's virtually anything or anyone the media has instructed us is important.
Enter stage right -- Sarah Palin! History's latest spear-carrier to become the play's 15-minute star. Attention fellow spear-carriers: are you ready for YOUR cue??
Friday, October 7, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
FRIENDS FIRST; LOVERS LATER
Once upon a time not so long ago there was a virginal mood upon the land. Reflected in the Mickey Rooney-and-Judy Garland flicks of the 30s, the Doris Day-and-Rock Hudson films of the 50s, along with the smoky love songs of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Sure, people drew outside the lines back then; but few flaunted it.
In today's more fluid ethical culture, there aren't many lines aside from homicide or treason that we can't cross legally. Or at least comfortably. Surely not today's custom of falling in and out of beds and loves. This is more properly understood as the freedom to be who we are, however we are, with whomever we are. A new 20th C pill and philosophy freed us from the archaic chains of an outworn Judaic-Christian ethos. Thank you very much.
But here's the funny thing. That ancient ethos wore so long and so well that we can still spot anthropological evidence of it among surviving elders of that traditional friends-first-lovers-later prescription for love. Tracking this trail will often bring you to couples holding veined hands on park benches... strolling the Loop side by side....attending churches, concerts, and yep old Mickey-and-Judy film festivals.
Today's cooler culture will occasionally pause in amused wonder. How cute...how quaint...how can they stand it. If any of the local elders are celebrating a 50th or a 75th wedding anniversary -- well, that's motive enough for some eager twentysomething reporter to get out there with a camera and an interview. I mean, being young and cool doesn't prevent you from being polite and oh so indulgent.
Thus the inevitably perky interview question: "What must it be like...?" But even if that old married couple could find the exact words, could that young unattached single really understand? Would they really want to understand? Would anyone today?
Perhaps the answer's blowin' in the wind. Perhaps another of those collective feelings in which a society has traveled so far in one direction, the other seems to have a whole new appeal to it.
In today's more fluid ethical culture, there aren't many lines aside from homicide or treason that we can't cross legally. Or at least comfortably. Surely not today's custom of falling in and out of beds and loves. This is more properly understood as the freedom to be who we are, however we are, with whomever we are. A new 20th C pill and philosophy freed us from the archaic chains of an outworn Judaic-Christian ethos. Thank you very much.
But here's the funny thing. That ancient ethos wore so long and so well that we can still spot anthropological evidence of it among surviving elders of that traditional friends-first-lovers-later prescription for love. Tracking this trail will often bring you to couples holding veined hands on park benches... strolling the Loop side by side....attending churches, concerts, and yep old Mickey-and-Judy film festivals.
Today's cooler culture will occasionally pause in amused wonder. How cute...how quaint...how can they stand it. If any of the local elders are celebrating a 50th or a 75th wedding anniversary -- well, that's motive enough for some eager twentysomething reporter to get out there with a camera and an interview. I mean, being young and cool doesn't prevent you from being polite and oh so indulgent.
Thus the inevitably perky interview question: "What must it be like...?" But even if that old married couple could find the exact words, could that young unattached single really understand? Would they really want to understand? Would anyone today?
Perhaps the answer's blowin' in the wind. Perhaps another of those collective feelings in which a society has traveled so far in one direction, the other seems to have a whole new appeal to it.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
WATCHING THE RICH & FAMOUS FROM THE JOBLESS SIDELINES
Now here's a peculiar trio: The dead lawyer Clarence Darrow, the ditsy blond Paris Hilton, and the declamatory ex-governor/lover Arnold Schwarzenegger. Each in their own way helps reflect our times.
Darrow always advised: "History keeps repeating itself, which is one of the things wrong with history." Then as if to prove it, Schwarzenegger just donated an 8-foot, 600-pound statue of himself to his hometown in Austria, while Hilton has been busy being photographed handing out $100 bills on the impoverished streets of India. Both reminding us once again how history really is the same old story: The rich & powerful busy being rich & powerful; while the rest look on with a combustible mixture of admiration and resentment.
Usually this mixture doesn't combust. Usually we're kept pacified by our century's version of ancient Rome's bread-and-circuses. We call them movies-and-malls. Or kept pacified by Yankee humor as in Hallmark's latest card for your jobless friends: "Don't think of it as losing your job; think of it as a time out between stupid bosses!"
But then pacification lasts only so long. After awhile -- watching Congress be Congress, and budgets being busted by foreign wars -- the jobless grow restless. Crime rates spike. Dropouts grow. Sit-ins and street-protests flash. In cities like Cairo, London, now New York. The rich & powerful are distressed, even disturbed. How is is that the poor & powerless expect us to save them from their own stupidities! How is it that our recently criticized municipal workers (eg. cops, firefighters, teachers, street crews) can't do a better job with the ignorance and criminality of this rabble!
In Europe as well as the United States there have been some long-standing theories on these matters. They have to do with whispered theories about race...nationality...family values...IQs...musical tastes ...blue jeans and even climate. That last one is one of those enduring theories which in Europe pits the Teutonic work ethic of the North against the Mediterranean happiness ethic of the South. Ditto the states north and south of our own Mason-Dixon line.
What's going on here?
The Middle East may not be the only streets where this mixture of admiration and resentment catches fire. Once fires start burning, it's hard to predict them. Harder to control them. As with every large-scale forest fires, there's an upside and a downside. The down is the vast destruction of the grand forest that was once there. The up is the prospect for a whole new and grander forest.
Of course if you're not interested in forests, there's always the movies and malls....
Darrow always advised: "History keeps repeating itself, which is one of the things wrong with history." Then as if to prove it, Schwarzenegger just donated an 8-foot, 600-pound statue of himself to his hometown in Austria, while Hilton has been busy being photographed handing out $100 bills on the impoverished streets of India. Both reminding us once again how history really is the same old story: The rich & powerful busy being rich & powerful; while the rest look on with a combustible mixture of admiration and resentment.
Usually this mixture doesn't combust. Usually we're kept pacified by our century's version of ancient Rome's bread-and-circuses. We call them movies-and-malls. Or kept pacified by Yankee humor as in Hallmark's latest card for your jobless friends: "Don't think of it as losing your job; think of it as a time out between stupid bosses!"
But then pacification lasts only so long. After awhile -- watching Congress be Congress, and budgets being busted by foreign wars -- the jobless grow restless. Crime rates spike. Dropouts grow. Sit-ins and street-protests flash. In cities like Cairo, London, now New York. The rich & powerful are distressed, even disturbed. How is is that the poor & powerless expect us to save them from their own stupidities! How is it that our recently criticized municipal workers (eg. cops, firefighters, teachers, street crews) can't do a better job with the ignorance and criminality of this rabble!
In Europe as well as the United States there have been some long-standing theories on these matters. They have to do with whispered theories about race...nationality...family values...IQs...musical tastes ...blue jeans and even climate. That last one is one of those enduring theories which in Europe pits the Teutonic work ethic of the North against the Mediterranean happiness ethic of the South. Ditto the states north and south of our own Mason-Dixon line.
What's going on here?
The Middle East may not be the only streets where this mixture of admiration and resentment catches fire. Once fires start burning, it's hard to predict them. Harder to control them. As with every large-scale forest fires, there's an upside and a downside. The down is the vast destruction of the grand forest that was once there. The up is the prospect for a whole new and grander forest.
Of course if you're not interested in forests, there's always the movies and malls....
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
LIVING ON CLIFF-NOTES; LEARNING BY LITTLE-IZING
We have this habit of slicing and dicing our complex and confusing world into bite-size pieces. Easier to sort through. We intuitively break down big thoughts and complex ideologies into handy labels, headlines, soundbites. It's like living on cliff-notes...! Learning by little-izing...!
While short-cutting and cutting short is hardly the wisest way to understand a complex world, we do it anyway. And quite often into just two easy-to-manage halves. You know -- it's either good or bad, right or wrong, my way or the highway. OK, If we insist on this arrangement, then lets consider for a moment the most basic, simplistic, un-nuanced of all half-and-half slices: On one hand the powerful, on the other the powerless.
Simple. Basic. Neat. Historically and painfully accurate, because there hasn't been a time or a people that can't be so divided. Oh sure, the names change, but the slice-down-the-middle doesn't. Kings and peasants...Lords and serfs...Upstairs and Downstairs...Owners and workers...Wall Street and Main Street.
Take that last one: Wall Street/Main Street. Nothing is that simple, but right now a dazed and angry people are struggling to keep it just that simple so they can focus their many diverse feelings into one non-complicated-passion. As the demonstrators along Wall Street are chanting: You're the 1%, we're the 99%. And when some of the high-rollers were spotted the other day looking down at the street protests while sipping champagne -- well, that one picture said it all. You were almost waiting for one of the imperious hedge fund managers to shout out Marie Antoinette's infamous 18th C taunt to the powerless rebels of her times: "Let them eat cake...!"
In 21st C America everyone is quick to say it. Our nation is divided in half. Right down the middle. Which is why nothing is getting down. Compromise and consensus have disappeared as the ship of state seems to be twisting and struggling against the headwinds of history. Winds that have, since our post-WWII domination, shifted sharply against us at exactly the wrong time.
Now the powerless could study the history of the Great Depression. Or examine the pounds of pages gorging out of the Federal Reserve, Congress an the White House. But that's too complicated and time consuming. Especially for powerless little people -- from the angry streets of New York to the parched farms of Texas to the evangelical congregations of the Bible Belt. The anger is now....the frustration is real....the passions are looking for a person or persons to hoist on a cross.
When the time comes for the powerless to start saying to the powerful "Time is up!" then the time for reasoned debate and rational dialog is slipping fast away. Talking about breaking things down to their basic halves, what we have here then may be another fork in the road of our history: A bold new leadership or one more mesmerizing demagogue. Are you listening, Wall Street....?
While short-cutting and cutting short is hardly the wisest way to understand a complex world, we do it anyway. And quite often into just two easy-to-manage halves. You know -- it's either good or bad, right or wrong, my way or the highway. OK, If we insist on this arrangement, then lets consider for a moment the most basic, simplistic, un-nuanced of all half-and-half slices: On one hand the powerful, on the other the powerless.
Simple. Basic. Neat. Historically and painfully accurate, because there hasn't been a time or a people that can't be so divided. Oh sure, the names change, but the slice-down-the-middle doesn't. Kings and peasants...Lords and serfs...Upstairs and Downstairs...Owners and workers...Wall Street and Main Street.
Take that last one: Wall Street/Main Street. Nothing is that simple, but right now a dazed and angry people are struggling to keep it just that simple so they can focus their many diverse feelings into one non-complicated-passion. As the demonstrators along Wall Street are chanting: You're the 1%, we're the 99%. And when some of the high-rollers were spotted the other day looking down at the street protests while sipping champagne -- well, that one picture said it all. You were almost waiting for one of the imperious hedge fund managers to shout out Marie Antoinette's infamous 18th C taunt to the powerless rebels of her times: "Let them eat cake...!"
In 21st C America everyone is quick to say it. Our nation is divided in half. Right down the middle. Which is why nothing is getting down. Compromise and consensus have disappeared as the ship of state seems to be twisting and struggling against the headwinds of history. Winds that have, since our post-WWII domination, shifted sharply against us at exactly the wrong time.
Now the powerless could study the history of the Great Depression. Or examine the pounds of pages gorging out of the Federal Reserve, Congress an the White House. But that's too complicated and time consuming. Especially for powerless little people -- from the angry streets of New York to the parched farms of Texas to the evangelical congregations of the Bible Belt. The anger is now....the frustration is real....the passions are looking for a person or persons to hoist on a cross.
When the time comes for the powerless to start saying to the powerful "Time is up!" then the time for reasoned debate and rational dialog is slipping fast away. Talking about breaking things down to their basic halves, what we have here then may be another fork in the road of our history: A bold new leadership or one more mesmerizing demagogue. Are you listening, Wall Street....?
Monday, October 3, 2011
MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD MAY SURPRISE YOU
You get one guess. Who's the most important person in the world...? At least our 21st C world...?
If you guessed the Pope, Dali Lama, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Stephen Spielberg or Oprah Winfrey, those would be acceptable entries. However, nowhere near close. You see, by all pragmatic measures, the most important person is actually many persons. None of them well known.
I refer to the world's casting directors.
Stop shaking your head long enough to let me make the case. For a moment just think about all those people in the public eye who you DO think of as the most important person(s) in our world. Think again. Not one stands there in the power of the global spotlight without having been carefully cast for the role. In show business we call them casting directors. In the Vatican we call them the College of Cardinals. In the Washington we call them the party's power-brokers. Even quarterbacks are in many ways "cast" by owners in order to look the part [ try to find many NFL quarterbacks who don't fit on the cover of Sports Illustrated ].
Look, in every age, in every field, looks count. A fist-full of studies prove the point starting with the "cuteness quotient" of kindergarten kids. Today we're living in an age in which looks not only count for something...they virtually count for everything. The quotients vary -- cuteness, brainyness, holiness -- yet there will always be some standard by which the casting directors choose their man or their woman. We the audience -- voters, fans, true believers -- we intuitively require thid of those we shall follow.
Consciously or not [usually very consciously] the deciders take into consideration what every casting director in Hollywood has known forever: Casting the right player is 90% of the job. Think of all the stories of all the wrong might-have-beens in the movies: Lana Turner instead of Vivian Leigh in "Gone With the Wind," George Raft instead of Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca," Robert Redford instead of Al Pacino in "The Godfather."
Does this make the world's casting directors no more than skillful manipulators...? audiences little more than sheep being led by wolves...? everything in today's culture just another example of Show Business...?
I leave you to cast the answer.
If you guessed the Pope, Dali Lama, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Stephen Spielberg or Oprah Winfrey, those would be acceptable entries. However, nowhere near close. You see, by all pragmatic measures, the most important person is actually many persons. None of them well known.
I refer to the world's casting directors.
Stop shaking your head long enough to let me make the case. For a moment just think about all those people in the public eye who you DO think of as the most important person(s) in our world. Think again. Not one stands there in the power of the global spotlight without having been carefully cast for the role. In show business we call them casting directors. In the Vatican we call them the College of Cardinals. In the Washington we call them the party's power-brokers. Even quarterbacks are in many ways "cast" by owners in order to look the part [ try to find many NFL quarterbacks who don't fit on the cover of Sports Illustrated ].
Look, in every age, in every field, looks count. A fist-full of studies prove the point starting with the "cuteness quotient" of kindergarten kids. Today we're living in an age in which looks not only count for something...they virtually count for everything. The quotients vary -- cuteness, brainyness, holiness -- yet there will always be some standard by which the casting directors choose their man or their woman. We the audience -- voters, fans, true believers -- we intuitively require thid of those we shall follow.
Consciously or not [usually very consciously] the deciders take into consideration what every casting director in Hollywood has known forever: Casting the right player is 90% of the job. Think of all the stories of all the wrong might-have-beens in the movies: Lana Turner instead of Vivian Leigh in "Gone With the Wind," George Raft instead of Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca," Robert Redford instead of Al Pacino in "The Godfather."
Does this make the world's casting directors no more than skillful manipulators...? audiences little more than sheep being led by wolves...? everything in today's culture just another example of Show Business...?
I leave you to cast the answer.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
THE PSYCHOSIS OF SERENDIPITY
Listen to some of our jabberwocky motivation gurus and you'll be believing what they preach: "If you can dream it you can do it. You're your own reality."
No, no, fellas. You're thinking of psychotics...!
But would it be too psychotic to propose an unscientific answer to Stephen Hawking's search for the Theory-Of-Everything? It might begin with an expanded concept of the role of Serendipity in our everyday lives. Literally, Serendipity means bumping into good things by accident. But now lets expand that to bumping into all sorts of things by accident. When you do, you kinda get a theory-of-everything for what's ever happened to you and to the people and nations around you.
Watch me.
If my Father had not bought a home in the community of Austin in Chicago in 1940...we would not have been in the local parish of St Angela...I would not have met a bumptious director of parish variety shows named Jean Lynch...if I hadn't met Jean, I would never have known about her new Oak Park Playhouse theatre company...if I hadn't joined this company I wouldn't have met friends like Bob Newhart and Kim Novak...if I hadn't met them, I wouldn't have met Joan Cantello, the brown-eyed beauty I would someday marry...if I hadn't married Joan. we would not have been gifted with three amazing children...and if they weren't here, then all the lives they've touch would not have been so touched.
Well, you get the idea. An idea that applies to you as well.
Now If we expand this application to history, think all the remarkably serendipitous events that coincidentally triggered the rise and fall of so many civilizations and history-makers. Including the rise of ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece and Israel...the conquests and impact of Rome...the Protestant Reformation...WWI....the Normandy Invasion...the atomic bomb....not to mention the election of virtually every president in American history. With more space we could recount the precise co-incidentals around which these epic events played out. Including the sudden storms, migraine headaches, missed messages, accidental revelations, and last-minute-skeletons that no one could have possibly predicted let alone planned.
OK, I'm not a Stephen Hawking. I'm certainly not a motivational guru. But I am experientially aware of just how little of our chaotic world -- nature, economies, personalities -- can be squeezed into any man-made plan. [As the ancient story has it, tell the gods your plans then listen to them laugh]. And so while I'm not suggesting we sit like a rock to be kicked down the road by Fate...I am suggesting we should be better prepared to expect a great many serendipitous kicks along the way. Which might help us roll with those kicks better than we have.
No, no, fellas. You're thinking of psychotics...!
But would it be too psychotic to propose an unscientific answer to Stephen Hawking's search for the Theory-Of-Everything? It might begin with an expanded concept of the role of Serendipity in our everyday lives. Literally, Serendipity means bumping into good things by accident. But now lets expand that to bumping into all sorts of things by accident. When you do, you kinda get a theory-of-everything for what's ever happened to you and to the people and nations around you.
Watch me.
If my Father had not bought a home in the community of Austin in Chicago in 1940...we would not have been in the local parish of St Angela...I would not have met a bumptious director of parish variety shows named Jean Lynch...if I hadn't met Jean, I would never have known about her new Oak Park Playhouse theatre company...if I hadn't joined this company I wouldn't have met friends like Bob Newhart and Kim Novak...if I hadn't met them, I wouldn't have met Joan Cantello, the brown-eyed beauty I would someday marry...if I hadn't married Joan. we would not have been gifted with three amazing children...and if they weren't here, then all the lives they've touch would not have been so touched.
Well, you get the idea. An idea that applies to you as well.
Now If we expand this application to history, think all the remarkably serendipitous events that coincidentally triggered the rise and fall of so many civilizations and history-makers. Including the rise of ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece and Israel...the conquests and impact of Rome...the Protestant Reformation...WWI....the Normandy Invasion...the atomic bomb....not to mention the election of virtually every president in American history. With more space we could recount the precise co-incidentals around which these epic events played out. Including the sudden storms, migraine headaches, missed messages, accidental revelations, and last-minute-skeletons that no one could have possibly predicted let alone planned.
OK, I'm not a Stephen Hawking. I'm certainly not a motivational guru. But I am experientially aware of just how little of our chaotic world -- nature, economies, personalities -- can be squeezed into any man-made plan. [As the ancient story has it, tell the gods your plans then listen to them laugh]. And so while I'm not suggesting we sit like a rock to be kicked down the road by Fate...I am suggesting we should be better prepared to expect a great many serendipitous kicks along the way. Which might help us roll with those kicks better than we have.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
THERE'S SEX, EXERCISE, AND ONE MORE....
Darwin's boys have done it again. Our evolutionary biologists continue to study what makes us us. Now a British research team from Oxford has carried the study of our endorphins a major step further. Granting that our species benefits from the release of these chemicals during sex and exercise, Professor Robin Dunbar tells BBCNews.com that belly-laughs do much the same.
However, there was nothing laughable about the way his team applied painful levels of cold and pressure to the arms of their volunteers. They were trying to quantify the different level of benefit to belly-laughers in contrast to just gigglers. Don't laugh; well, at least until you know their results.
They had the volunteers watching funny videos. It turned out, the belly-laughers were able to sustain the cold/pressure 10% more than the gigglers. They didn't report what videos were played, but I understand Dunbar is known among his colleagues as an avid Fox News viewer. Which could certainly account for many of his more hysterical endorphins.
The team went on to report the physical effort of uncontrollable laughter makes our brains release these chemicals, thereby relaxing and relieving our pain. A protocol that has been effectively used with cancer patients in hospices.
Taking the long view, the research team further suggested: "Being able to really laugh out loud has given humans a unique evolutionary bonding advantage over the animal kingdom where only chimps can laugh, but then only by panting."
This layman is left to imagine a kind of human trifecta: Having sex on a treadmill while watching Bill O'Reilly on television!
But I digress. Back to Professor Dunbar. He is also renowned for another discovery. According to his anthrolpological study, there is a cognitive/affective limit to the number of friends -- actual or virtual -- that the average human can reasonably manage. Which sounds about right to me.
I mean, if there were more than 150 of us on that treadmill...well just imagine!
However, there was nothing laughable about the way his team applied painful levels of cold and pressure to the arms of their volunteers. They were trying to quantify the different level of benefit to belly-laughers in contrast to just gigglers. Don't laugh; well, at least until you know their results.
They had the volunteers watching funny videos. It turned out, the belly-laughers were able to sustain the cold/pressure 10% more than the gigglers. They didn't report what videos were played, but I understand Dunbar is known among his colleagues as an avid Fox News viewer. Which could certainly account for many of his more hysterical endorphins.
The team went on to report the physical effort of uncontrollable laughter makes our brains release these chemicals, thereby relaxing and relieving our pain. A protocol that has been effectively used with cancer patients in hospices.
Taking the long view, the research team further suggested: "Being able to really laugh out loud has given humans a unique evolutionary bonding advantage over the animal kingdom where only chimps can laugh, but then only by panting."
This layman is left to imagine a kind of human trifecta: Having sex on a treadmill while watching Bill O'Reilly on television!
But I digress. Back to Professor Dunbar. He is also renowned for another discovery. According to his anthrolpological study, there is a cognitive/affective limit to the number of friends -- actual or virtual -- that the average human can reasonably manage. Which sounds about right to me.
I mean, if there were more than 150 of us on that treadmill...well just imagine!
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