Everyone has on occasion wished they could be invisible. Just
for a little while. Say when your friends are talking about you, or when
your boss is evaluating you, or most especially when the one you love
is sharing their feelings about you to a confidant.
But then
there's the ancient warning: "Be careful what you wish for, you just
might get it." If the truth-makes-us-free, it can often hurt like hell.
Perhaps living in a world of little white lies -- theirs and ours -- is
a much easier world to travel.
Still, this notion of
invisibility remains intriguing. And when you give it some thought,
you're aware of just how many forces in our daily lives are virtually
that -- invisible. Light waves...radio and television
waves...lasers...radiation...bacterium...and the latest entry into the
field: cybernetics.
Cybernetics has already gotten a bad name. As
in cyber-wars. Both America and Israel have reportedly infected the
Iranian atomic programs with long-distance viruses to slow or destroy
their targets. Like the US drones often invisible to those on the
ground, cyber-warfare is the latest form of science-fiction come true.
Think
of it this way. The natives in the farthest reaches of the fabled
Tibetan highlands or on the most isolated Pacific islands move through
their daily lives in the same primitive ways of their ancestors.
Hunting, fishing, celebrating. And yet they are unknowingly moving
through a 360-degree field of these same invisible forces that power our
computer-banks, smartphones, iPads, and cyber wars. You are struck by
the thought: Think of all they're missing...!
A followup thought might be: Think of all we're missing...!
Friday, June 8, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
EVERY DAY IS HALLOWEEN NIGHT
Of all our holidays, Halloween is the least romantic or
sentimental. Indeed, it is the night when we allow our worst demons out
to roam the streets in full costume. Ghosts, vampires, witches, goblins,
and Sarah Palin. But why is this...?
Psychiatrists tell us it's a necessary purging of the libido, that dark and menacing current which runs like a secret torrent through the chambers of our hidden hearts. Well, I'm okay with that. Putting faces and figures onto our worst fears does seem to allow us to laugh them away. But what of the days and nights after Halloween?
During those 364 sunrises and sunsets that same libido harbors fears we can't put into handy costumes to laugh at. What then?
Fear not, for there are always fears at hand throughout the year. Fears we can anthropomorphize as needed. Every age has their favorites. The Persians had Shedu, the Jews Mazzik, the Hindus Butahs, the ancient Greeks & Romans their gods of the underworld. Later the emperor of evil: The Devil.
However, these are only the furies-of-fear that come to us from our respective cultures. The greater of these are the ones we create ourselves. But so as not to frighten ourselves too much, we create them in the form of fiction. In the East one of the favorites has been Godzilla and his many derivatives. In the West there have been classics like Dracula...Frankenstein...King Kong...the Wolf Man...Mr Hyde.
Leaving fiction for reality, in our own times the West has had a great run of actual monsters to fear. To hate. And in time to destroy. There were such as Attila...Napoleon...Hitler...Stalin. For others there was Jefferson Davis....FDR...Clinton...Bush...the Pope...and now Obama. It is always fiercely fulfilling to find a monster in whom our worst fears can thrive, rage, and eventually conquer.
Often we get our fears and terrors exactly right. There are few who will step forward to defend a Hitler or a Stalin. Indeed their own people have experienced the consummate purgation by hating their own monsters more than anyone else. But then there are those who are simply monsters-for-a-day. The political and religious monsters of the moment who -- once defeated and/or dead -- can hypocritically conjure up lyrical epitaphs from even their greatest haters.
Just one more feature of that remarkable existential phenomenon known as the Human Condition. It is just so enormously human of us humans to fear something and someone all the days of our life. As little children fear the sounds that go bump in the night, all the way to the gnashed-teeth protestors spilling their hate into the streets, the pulpits, and later this summer in our two political conventions.
Psychiatrists tell us it's a necessary purging of the libido, that dark and menacing current which runs like a secret torrent through the chambers of our hidden hearts. Well, I'm okay with that. Putting faces and figures onto our worst fears does seem to allow us to laugh them away. But what of the days and nights after Halloween?
During those 364 sunrises and sunsets that same libido harbors fears we can't put into handy costumes to laugh at. What then?
Fear not, for there are always fears at hand throughout the year. Fears we can anthropomorphize as needed. Every age has their favorites. The Persians had Shedu, the Jews Mazzik, the Hindus Butahs, the ancient Greeks & Romans their gods of the underworld. Later the emperor of evil: The Devil.
However, these are only the furies-of-fear that come to us from our respective cultures. The greater of these are the ones we create ourselves. But so as not to frighten ourselves too much, we create them in the form of fiction. In the East one of the favorites has been Godzilla and his many derivatives. In the West there have been classics like Dracula...Frankenstein...King Kong...the Wolf Man...Mr Hyde.
Leaving fiction for reality, in our own times the West has had a great run of actual monsters to fear. To hate. And in time to destroy. There were such as Attila...Napoleon...Hitler...Stalin. For others there was Jefferson Davis....FDR...Clinton...Bush...the Pope...and now Obama. It is always fiercely fulfilling to find a monster in whom our worst fears can thrive, rage, and eventually conquer.
Often we get our fears and terrors exactly right. There are few who will step forward to defend a Hitler or a Stalin. Indeed their own people have experienced the consummate purgation by hating their own monsters more than anyone else. But then there are those who are simply monsters-for-a-day. The political and religious monsters of the moment who -- once defeated and/or dead -- can hypocritically conjure up lyrical epitaphs from even their greatest haters.
Just one more feature of that remarkable existential phenomenon known as the Human Condition. It is just so enormously human of us humans to fear something and someone all the days of our life. As little children fear the sounds that go bump in the night, all the way to the gnashed-teeth protestors spilling their hate into the streets, the pulpits, and later this summer in our two political conventions.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
THERE IS THE BLACK BOX & THEN THERE IS THE WHITE BOX
The Black Box has become legendary. We are always hearing about
recovering it from the downed plane. The idea -- applicable to modern
society in general -- is that somewhere, somehow we are able to recover
all the facts & stats needed to learn what went wrong.
Applause. Applause. Surely it's better to have Black Boxes in our lives rather than simply uninformed blackness. There's the cliche: "Research is finding out what went wrong only after it goes wrong."
Wouldn't it be grand if humanity had something more than a Black Box to fathom more than simply the facts & stats? These are important of course, but like the fallen bricks to some ancient desert site, researchers can't always be sure how the bricks once stood. Was this a temple or a bank? a jail or a brothel? Some cynics suggest 500 years from now our high school sites might be thought of us prisons, what with all their straight-line corridors, closed-in rooms, and metal-detectors.
To get a fuller picture, researchers at the sites need also to know something of the people. Their thoughts, their feelings, their fears, their gods. Hard not to recall another cliche: "Once we have all the facts, we have only part of the truth." An arguable proposition which says the aficionados of Black Box thinking can only tell us so much about us. The rest [and perhaps best] about us and our doings depends on those sifting not only through the bricks, but imagining the buildings themselves.
Enter today's other kind of researchers: philosophers, poets, novelists and composers. Is it not possible there is more to learn about our species -- whether at the plane's controls or lunching back in the cabin -- from a Shakespeare or a Dostoevsky than from a dozen site-sifters?
While that question echoes, here's a second. In this time of growing anti-government sentiment and voting, what has happened to that White Box which has sat under the American Christmas Tree sent by Washington? Ever since the 1930s New Deal, whenever opened it's been the reason for both hope [social security, medicare, highways, drug control, food inspections, scholarships] and for derision [the new anti-hero Wisconsin Governor Walker].
Two boxes, two ways of opening them, maybe too little time to be sure how best to use their contents.
Applause. Applause. Surely it's better to have Black Boxes in our lives rather than simply uninformed blackness. There's the cliche: "Research is finding out what went wrong only after it goes wrong."
Wouldn't it be grand if humanity had something more than a Black Box to fathom more than simply the facts & stats? These are important of course, but like the fallen bricks to some ancient desert site, researchers can't always be sure how the bricks once stood. Was this a temple or a bank? a jail or a brothel? Some cynics suggest 500 years from now our high school sites might be thought of us prisons, what with all their straight-line corridors, closed-in rooms, and metal-detectors.
To get a fuller picture, researchers at the sites need also to know something of the people. Their thoughts, their feelings, their fears, their gods. Hard not to recall another cliche: "Once we have all the facts, we have only part of the truth." An arguable proposition which says the aficionados of Black Box thinking can only tell us so much about us. The rest [and perhaps best] about us and our doings depends on those sifting not only through the bricks, but imagining the buildings themselves.
Enter today's other kind of researchers: philosophers, poets, novelists and composers. Is it not possible there is more to learn about our species -- whether at the plane's controls or lunching back in the cabin -- from a Shakespeare or a Dostoevsky than from a dozen site-sifters?
While that question echoes, here's a second. In this time of growing anti-government sentiment and voting, what has happened to that White Box which has sat under the American Christmas Tree sent by Washington? Ever since the 1930s New Deal, whenever opened it's been the reason for both hope [social security, medicare, highways, drug control, food inspections, scholarships] and for derision [the new anti-hero Wisconsin Governor Walker].
Two boxes, two ways of opening them, maybe too little time to be sure how best to use their contents.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
AHHH, THE CARNIVAL IS COMING TO TOWN
This summer all over America local communities will watch the
familiar ferris-wheel going up, and smell the cotton candy being spun.
It's the traveling carnivals which breeze into town for a magical few
days, then just as quickly dismantle on their last night to haul their
magic to the next stop.
In a time of enormous space shuttles, Caldron Colliders, and instant Apps, these old fashioned tent tours must seem a tad insignificant. And yet it's in their very insignificance we find their magic. For you see fellow patrons, they are altogether more real and more substantive than those others. What's more, they are just small enough to get inside our eyes, nostrils, and hearts.
But first be sure to free the child in you to find out what can happen. The rides become stairways to to the stars. The games turn into playing dice with destiny. As for the laughter and the giggles, oh they sound an awful like a chorus of angels beckoning the sleeping innocence in us to dare once more to be fully innocent.
And there's more.
Next be sure to free the adult in you to discover what can happen. Suddenly the whole silly, frilly experience takes on the feel of a journey. Whooshing you from the dreariness of your everyday days, up up and away into an encounter with what lies in wait beyond the everyday. Perhaps your dreams-come-true. Maybe your finale-finally-here. Whatever it is, it's there waiting just for you.
So... at the first sound of the traveling tent show in town, grab both the child and the adult in you. Take them by the hand, and learn what magic waits for both. No fair just guessing. You have to really plunge into the sawdust magic with both feet!
If this sounds like an advertisement, you're wrong. Better than that, it's a wish....
In a time of enormous space shuttles, Caldron Colliders, and instant Apps, these old fashioned tent tours must seem a tad insignificant. And yet it's in their very insignificance we find their magic. For you see fellow patrons, they are altogether more real and more substantive than those others. What's more, they are just small enough to get inside our eyes, nostrils, and hearts.
But first be sure to free the child in you to find out what can happen. The rides become stairways to to the stars. The games turn into playing dice with destiny. As for the laughter and the giggles, oh they sound an awful like a chorus of angels beckoning the sleeping innocence in us to dare once more to be fully innocent.
And there's more.
Next be sure to free the adult in you to discover what can happen. Suddenly the whole silly, frilly experience takes on the feel of a journey. Whooshing you from the dreariness of your everyday days, up up and away into an encounter with what lies in wait beyond the everyday. Perhaps your dreams-come-true. Maybe your finale-finally-here. Whatever it is, it's there waiting just for you.
So... at the first sound of the traveling tent show in town, grab both the child and the adult in you. Take them by the hand, and learn what magic waits for both. No fair just guessing. You have to really plunge into the sawdust magic with both feet!
If this sounds like an advertisement, you're wrong. Better than that, it's a wish....
Sunday, June 3, 2012
180 DAYS TO FIND THE NEXT BIG IDEA
In another election year another First Lady said something that
fits any election year. "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds
discuss events. Small minds discuss people." [Eleanor Roosevelt]
But it's a good bet the next 180 days will be all about the people and the events. As for the ideas, they will remain fuzzy in our minds. Spun and re-spun as they travel from their points-of-origin [ the candidates' major speeches ] to those would-be thousand-points-of-light [ the networks' major pundits ]. If ever we actually understood the big ideas in those speeches, chances are by now no one can actually explain them, including the speech writers.
Yet make no mistake. There are about 141 million very different voters scattered among 3,141 very different counties. Few presidents have succeeded without hoisting the banners of at least one big, unifying idea. For Washington it was preserving our new-won freedom. For Lincoln, preserving our now-challenged union. For FDR, preserving our now-broken economy. Surely today's candidates have no shortage of issues to grapple with. Jobs, productivity, taxes, health, education, human rights, security, world peace. Not a single one much different than 100 years ago. A 1000 years ago. And yet each now more complex, because it is inextricably wedged inside a global economy which runs by a clock no longer set only in Washington. The campaigns' task the next 180 days will be to seize and shape these conflicting issues into another of those single, unifying big ideas.
Think of each of the worried voters in each of these counties as intuitively searching for a banner to rally round. With their hearts as well as their heads, with their dreams as well as their fears. Both campaign camps are searching for that very banner! For that one big idea that encapsulates our worst fears then catapults them into our best dreams. Is there some word, some phrase, some vision that might electrify us again? After all, it takes only a majority in enough of these counties to do the job.
Whatever big ideas are being birthed now, each candidate understands it must somehow bind and bond as many of us as possible. A task made historically complicated in 2012 by the fact six of our seven national institutions can no longer be counted on to translate our differences into our destiny. Say like other big ideas once did: The New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, Sunrise in America.
Of our seven national institutions, the government is now held in suspicion more than admiration...the law is seen as working for the rich more than the rest....marriage is lately a debate more than a decision...schools are using more money to produce poorer results...the media are slanted by whomever owns them...religion is no longer something we can all agree upon...only the military stands as an institution still commanding general and binding respect.
About 180 days are eft to give birth to the next big idea. What shall it be, gentlemen? Making your search all the harder, the national budget you will inherit will no longer permit you to woo us with the usual promises of More. For one of the few times in our history, you will have to motivate us with warnings of Less.
More-With-Less...! Well, yes, now there's an idea. But is it big and bold and binding enough? I just mailed it in with my donation to the candidate of my choice.
But it's a good bet the next 180 days will be all about the people and the events. As for the ideas, they will remain fuzzy in our minds. Spun and re-spun as they travel from their points-of-origin [ the candidates' major speeches ] to those would-be thousand-points-of-light [ the networks' major pundits ]. If ever we actually understood the big ideas in those speeches, chances are by now no one can actually explain them, including the speech writers.
Yet make no mistake. There are about 141 million very different voters scattered among 3,141 very different counties. Few presidents have succeeded without hoisting the banners of at least one big, unifying idea. For Washington it was preserving our new-won freedom. For Lincoln, preserving our now-challenged union. For FDR, preserving our now-broken economy. Surely today's candidates have no shortage of issues to grapple with. Jobs, productivity, taxes, health, education, human rights, security, world peace. Not a single one much different than 100 years ago. A 1000 years ago. And yet each now more complex, because it is inextricably wedged inside a global economy which runs by a clock no longer set only in Washington. The campaigns' task the next 180 days will be to seize and shape these conflicting issues into another of those single, unifying big ideas.
Think of each of the worried voters in each of these counties as intuitively searching for a banner to rally round. With their hearts as well as their heads, with their dreams as well as their fears. Both campaign camps are searching for that very banner! For that one big idea that encapsulates our worst fears then catapults them into our best dreams. Is there some word, some phrase, some vision that might electrify us again? After all, it takes only a majority in enough of these counties to do the job.
Whatever big ideas are being birthed now, each candidate understands it must somehow bind and bond as many of us as possible. A task made historically complicated in 2012 by the fact six of our seven national institutions can no longer be counted on to translate our differences into our destiny. Say like other big ideas once did: The New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, Sunrise in America.
Of our seven national institutions, the government is now held in suspicion more than admiration...the law is seen as working for the rich more than the rest....marriage is lately a debate more than a decision...schools are using more money to produce poorer results...the media are slanted by whomever owns them...religion is no longer something we can all agree upon...only the military stands as an institution still commanding general and binding respect.
About 180 days are eft to give birth to the next big idea. What shall it be, gentlemen? Making your search all the harder, the national budget you will inherit will no longer permit you to woo us with the usual promises of More. For one of the few times in our history, you will have to motivate us with warnings of Less.
More-With-Less...! Well, yes, now there's an idea. But is it big and bold and binding enough? I just mailed it in with my donation to the candidate of my choice.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
CAN YOU LEARN HOW TO BE UN-AFRAID?
This is as good a time as any to test my philosophy professor's favorite theme: "The more you learn, the less you fear."
After a week of scanning the news, this is some of what I learned:
* Two chaperones at a Colorado HS prom sprayed disinfectant on students who in their words were "dancing like they were having sex with their clothes on"
* A single parking space is on sale in the heart of Manhattan for $1 million
* After Facebook's initial public offering, hundreds of 20-somehings became instant millionaires
* Having children can add or detract from a couple's happiness -- pretty much all depending on which survey by which committee of experts you read
* In the battle of the 99:1 %, facts suggest the 1% benefit generously from the federal outlay of $2.1 trillion in social programs like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and Pell Grants
* About 93% of immigrants applying for US citizenship can correctly answer six out of 10 questions about our history and government; only 65% of native-born Americans can
* Dr Daniel Wilson, best selling author & robotics engineer, is featured in this week's Wall Street Journal predicting, "High-tech implants will soon be commonplace under our skin and inside our skulls, making us stronger and smarter." In effect, prospects for a new superman
The first five items are a mixed commentary on our shifting social values. But those last two...When you place them side by side, you're reminded that tens of millions of uninformed native-born-citizens are about to vote our nation's future. And yet equally distressing is the memory of the last regime which spoke of creating a new superman.
One is left to wonder which is more dangerous: Our ignorance or those who would replace our ignorance with their neural enhancements? Sixty years later, I still wonder about Professor Link's pledge: the more you learn, the less you fear.
After a week of scanning the news, this is some of what I learned:
* Two chaperones at a Colorado HS prom sprayed disinfectant on students who in their words were "dancing like they were having sex with their clothes on"
* A single parking space is on sale in the heart of Manhattan for $1 million
* After Facebook's initial public offering, hundreds of 20-somehings became instant millionaires
* Having children can add or detract from a couple's happiness -- pretty much all depending on which survey by which committee of experts you read
* In the battle of the 99:1 %, facts suggest the 1% benefit generously from the federal outlay of $2.1 trillion in social programs like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and Pell Grants
* About 93% of immigrants applying for US citizenship can correctly answer six out of 10 questions about our history and government; only 65% of native-born Americans can
* Dr Daniel Wilson, best selling author & robotics engineer, is featured in this week's Wall Street Journal predicting, "High-tech implants will soon be commonplace under our skin and inside our skulls, making us stronger and smarter." In effect, prospects for a new superman
The first five items are a mixed commentary on our shifting social values. But those last two...When you place them side by side, you're reminded that tens of millions of uninformed native-born-citizens are about to vote our nation's future. And yet equally distressing is the memory of the last regime which spoke of creating a new superman.
One is left to wonder which is more dangerous: Our ignorance or those who would replace our ignorance with their neural enhancements? Sixty years later, I still wonder about Professor Link's pledge: the more you learn, the less you fear.
Friday, June 1, 2012
AS WE GET OLDER, WE DON'T GET ANY YOUNGER
There are more people over 65 than ever before. And yet
Americans seem to resent old age. The beautiful people downright hate
it. Among those who never reached it: Alexander the Great (33), Mozart
(35), Byron (36), Raphael and Van Gogh (37), Virgil (50), Shakespeare
(52). Cicero said, "Old age begins at 46." He died at 53.
Our strength and coordination peaks at 19...skeletal maturity in our early 20s....IQ is highest between 18 & 25...stamina dips by the early 30s ...creativity slows by the late 30s. By 50, according to George Orwell, "Everyone has the face he deserves." He died at 47.
What are young people to make of these data? Old people have already begun reconciling to them. Weight, wrinkles, memory loss are aging's unforgiving companions. Debbie Reynolds, one of Hollywood's perennial juveniles, nailed it: "Gravity sucks" Bette Davis, one of Hollywood's perennial heroines, added the exclamation mark: "Aging ain't for sissies!"
There is some measure of consolation. When you're 45, your vocabulary is three times as large as at 20. When you are 60, your brain possesses four times the information it did at 20. Time has happened, life has happened. As a consequence, you may not be wiser but at least you are less surprised.
Is there some common denominator both youth and age can share in this free enterprise culture?
In " My Dinner With Andre," Wallace says: "I grew up on the Upper East Side, and when I was 10 I was rich. An aristocrat riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now I'm 36 and all I think about is money."
In America, age, family name, caste, and inherited land have never quite become the crown to treasure and to wear. Wealth has. And so -- be we young or old, strong or weak -- wealth has remained the one enduring national gospel. The next question is: Does it make it easier to sleep at night? Or does it simply mean that Wallace has more time in which to fear its loss?
Our strength and coordination peaks at 19...skeletal maturity in our early 20s....IQ is highest between 18 & 25...stamina dips by the early 30s ...creativity slows by the late 30s. By 50, according to George Orwell, "Everyone has the face he deserves." He died at 47.
What are young people to make of these data? Old people have already begun reconciling to them. Weight, wrinkles, memory loss are aging's unforgiving companions. Debbie Reynolds, one of Hollywood's perennial juveniles, nailed it: "Gravity sucks" Bette Davis, one of Hollywood's perennial heroines, added the exclamation mark: "Aging ain't for sissies!"
There is some measure of consolation. When you're 45, your vocabulary is three times as large as at 20. When you are 60, your brain possesses four times the information it did at 20. Time has happened, life has happened. As a consequence, you may not be wiser but at least you are less surprised.
Is there some common denominator both youth and age can share in this free enterprise culture?
In " My Dinner With Andre," Wallace says: "I grew up on the Upper East Side, and when I was 10 I was rich. An aristocrat riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now I'm 36 and all I think about is money."
In America, age, family name, caste, and inherited land have never quite become the crown to treasure and to wear. Wealth has. And so -- be we young or old, strong or weak -- wealth has remained the one enduring national gospel. The next question is: Does it make it easier to sleep at night? Or does it simply mean that Wallace has more time in which to fear its loss?
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