Fast is the drug of choice in today's western culture. But like all drugs, you have to deal with the crash that follows....!
At this point in time, mankind has never been in faster communication with his world. Radio, television, and a portable Internet means most of us -- even in the remotest hills of Asia and Africa -- are within nano-seconds of news. Some call this the electronic global village. Has a nice ring to it, but here's the thing. It's no longer just a matter of all-the-news-that's-fit-to-print; it's now a matter of all-the-news-that's-fit-to-use.
The brain is a prodigious instrument for information, and yet it along with our sensorium can only process so much so fast. In some critical instances -- from local flood warnings to global pandemic alerts -- fast is fine. Fast is necessary. But threading the informational needle calls for steady hands on our part. How steady are we when assaulted 24/7 by dozens of networks, hundreds of channels, and thousands of websites each working hard to stagger us with their next headline?
One of the least articulated losses we face without our morning newspapers is no longer having the efficacious luxury of processing the news through the filters and clockworks of our own mind. Even our monster computers have to slice and dice the data fed into them. How, then, can the much smaller computers of our brain hope to keep up?
Here's a simple test. Spend the next 60 minutes scanning CNN, HuffingtonPost and Salon.com. Simply permit yourself to be the human receptacle they hope you are. Watch, listen, read, and ingest their breathless gorging of news. Now turn it off and ask yourself three questions:
* What do I know now that I didn't know 60 minutes ago?
* What do I know now that is a functionable fact?
* What can I really do about it?
According to my Bell Curve, most test-takers will come to the verifiable conclusion that their pulse rate is now higher! their sense of control is now lower! and, except for the pre-requisite touch of humor somewhere in there, they are one fatal step closer to blowing their brains out!
Which would, of course, be a shame, for none of these news sources would bother to report it.....
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
WEDDING BELLS AND WHAT THEY'RE CHIMING
It's that time again. That wedding time of year. But what do you do when in the middle of the ceremony someone actually answers the if-anyone-has-reason-to-object part? In New York a woman stood up and announced she was having an affair with the groom.The bride sued her seeking damages for "emotional distress on my wedding day." Later the judge offered this counsel: "Your best revenge on a woman trying to steal your husband is to let her keep him!"
There may be other good counsel for May and June brides trembling on the brink of this ageless and still evolving institution:
* When everyone gets into the usual argument over which family and friends absolutely must be included in the limited invitation list, remember this comforting rule: None of the guests really care
* When you select the bridesmaids and groomsmen, remember these are people you like, so please don't insist on dressing them in outfits so nuptially melodramatic even children snicker
* When you hire a videographer, don't be intimidated by all the lights and lens; remember it's still your wedding not theirs
* When you hire a singer, you may want to select someone who works in a choir, because remember: Every soloist is always auditioning, and this is your day not theirs
* When you're having the wedding pictures taken, really really try to remember this is no one-shot affair; you and your kids may have to look at this shot in your home every day of your life
* When you arrange the meal for the reception, remember the age-honored rule: Chicken is cheap, but can always sound richer by the name of the sauce the chef puts on it
* When you hire the band, remember to go over their music list and outfits beforehand; loud in either of those categories is not what you want
* When the bride meets the groom at the altar, this isn't the place to ask about last night's bachelor party
One more thought. Churches and temples are still the preferred wedding venue in our culture. Thank God, most couples agree it's good to invite God to the wedding. Now it's even better if you invite him for the marriage!
There may be other good counsel for May and June brides trembling on the brink of this ageless and still evolving institution:
* When everyone gets into the usual argument over which family and friends absolutely must be included in the limited invitation list, remember this comforting rule: None of the guests really care
* When you select the bridesmaids and groomsmen, remember these are people you like, so please don't insist on dressing them in outfits so nuptially melodramatic even children snicker
* When you hire a videographer, don't be intimidated by all the lights and lens; remember it's still your wedding not theirs
* When you hire a singer, you may want to select someone who works in a choir, because remember: Every soloist is always auditioning, and this is your day not theirs
* When you're having the wedding pictures taken, really really try to remember this is no one-shot affair; you and your kids may have to look at this shot in your home every day of your life
* When you arrange the meal for the reception, remember the age-honored rule: Chicken is cheap, but can always sound richer by the name of the sauce the chef puts on it
* When you hire the band, remember to go over their music list and outfits beforehand; loud in either of those categories is not what you want
* When the bride meets the groom at the altar, this isn't the place to ask about last night's bachelor party
One more thought. Churches and temples are still the preferred wedding venue in our culture. Thank God, most couples agree it's good to invite God to the wedding. Now it's even better if you invite him for the marriage!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
WHY NOT A CHILDRENS'S DAY?
There is perhaps nothing more written about, loved upon, and worried over than our children. Ever since Cain and Abel, parents have come to learn they can be the source of enormous joy and staggering sorrow. Often at the very same time. Which is why it's strange that with annually prominent Mothers Days and Fathers Days, we have no Childrens Day....!
Still, we do spend a great deal of time thinking about them.There are at least four trajectories of thought on the matter:
* At first the Greeks and later the Bible laboriously pore over the stories of archetypes like Electra (who takes Fathers Day much too seriously), Oedipus (who gets carried away celebrating Mothers Day), and Moses (the quintessential Jewish-boy-succeeds story). Shakespeare's "King Lear" and later Freud's psychoanalysis further plumb the filial depths.
When you read these guys you can't help do some serious introspecting about this sex thing. What at first seems so much fun brings with it more morning-after issues than any morning-after pill can ever handle!
* Evolutionists have come to understand us as essentially existing and evolving for one purpose -- our own reproduction. In this muted light, our species is hardly distinguishable from any other populating the planet. We're born to live, grow, mate and breed our own kind. Period. Exclamation point. End of story. And of any gushy Mothers or Fathers Day cards
.
Personally, I've stopped reading Darwin and his successors. Right and brights as they may be, I can't quit look at my wife as simply the plumpest ovaries in the jungle, or my kids as merely the ordained genetic results of a one-night genetic compulsion. I guess I'll just have to evolve a few layers more to handle that!
* Victorians, ironically in the same19th century of Darwin and Freud , decided to swing in a different direction. Maybe it was Charles Dickens's poignant Tiny Tims and orphaned Olivers, but gradually children were seen as something more than just little adults. Enriched by the graphic sentiments of such as Currie & Ives, Norman Rockwell, and Hallmark, childhood blossomed into a sainted little garden of protected life.
Enter the Anglo-American legendary joys of Christmas and all things children. This opulent festival of gift-giving has pretty much become our Childrens Day; and when you're a kid or a grandparent, who's going to argue it!
* Finally, in our own times, children have become more than the subject of great narratives and grand gifts. To today's generation, they are the subject of study. By pediatricians, statisticians, and especially editors of the 104 current parents magazines that bulge from out of checkout counters and doctor's offices. And what's most amazing about their endless studies is that most of them comes down to some variety of "10-easy-steps-for.....".
Among such recent offerings is this latest from DePauw University which has researched the marital history of 600 adults. Observation...? "Of those frequently photographed as smiling in childhood, only 11% have ever been divorced.: Conclusion....? "Overall, people who rarely smile in their childhood are five times more likely to get divorced."
This and other such epic examples of current research leave one breathless. Perhaps we have at last reached the pinnacle of our long parenting progress through history. Greeks, Darwin, Dickens and Santa be damned -- the real reason we have children is so we can turn them over for publishable study.
Still, we do spend a great deal of time thinking about them.There are at least four trajectories of thought on the matter:
* At first the Greeks and later the Bible laboriously pore over the stories of archetypes like Electra (who takes Fathers Day much too seriously), Oedipus (who gets carried away celebrating Mothers Day), and Moses (the quintessential Jewish-boy-succeeds story). Shakespeare's "King Lear" and later Freud's psychoanalysis further plumb the filial depths.
When you read these guys you can't help do some serious introspecting about this sex thing. What at first seems so much fun brings with it more morning-after issues than any morning-after pill can ever handle!
* Evolutionists have come to understand us as essentially existing and evolving for one purpose -- our own reproduction. In this muted light, our species is hardly distinguishable from any other populating the planet. We're born to live, grow, mate and breed our own kind. Period. Exclamation point. End of story. And of any gushy Mothers or Fathers Day cards
.
Personally, I've stopped reading Darwin and his successors. Right and brights as they may be, I can't quit look at my wife as simply the plumpest ovaries in the jungle, or my kids as merely the ordained genetic results of a one-night genetic compulsion. I guess I'll just have to evolve a few layers more to handle that!
* Victorians, ironically in the same19th century of Darwin and Freud , decided to swing in a different direction. Maybe it was Charles Dickens's poignant Tiny Tims and orphaned Olivers, but gradually children were seen as something more than just little adults. Enriched by the graphic sentiments of such as Currie & Ives, Norman Rockwell, and Hallmark, childhood blossomed into a sainted little garden of protected life.
Enter the Anglo-American legendary joys of Christmas and all things children. This opulent festival of gift-giving has pretty much become our Childrens Day; and when you're a kid or a grandparent, who's going to argue it!
* Finally, in our own times, children have become more than the subject of great narratives and grand gifts. To today's generation, they are the subject of study. By pediatricians, statisticians, and especially editors of the 104 current parents magazines that bulge from out of checkout counters and doctor's offices. And what's most amazing about their endless studies is that most of them comes down to some variety of "10-easy-steps-for.....".
Among such recent offerings is this latest from DePauw University which has researched the marital history of 600 adults. Observation...? "Of those frequently photographed as smiling in childhood, only 11% have ever been divorced.: Conclusion....? "Overall, people who rarely smile in their childhood are five times more likely to get divorced."
This and other such epic examples of current research leave one breathless. Perhaps we have at last reached the pinnacle of our long parenting progress through history. Greeks, Darwin, Dickens and Santa be damned -- the real reason we have children is so we can turn them over for publishable study.
Monday, April 27, 2009
AMERICAN MOMS - 94 AND COUNTING
America has been celebrating Mothers Day for 94 years now. But my how it's changed....!
Declared in 1914, it's been celebrated ever since by equal parts: Devoted children, guilty children, eager florists and dewy Hallmark stores. However, while a mother is always a mother, motherhood today is no longer one-size-fits-all. It now comes in all different sizes, shapes and saint-hoods.
For me it came straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Apron-wearing, pie-baking, stay-at-home mom who lovingly packed my lunches in the morning, and had cookies and milk waiting when I came home in the afternoon. Today that memory has become an endangered species in America. How, then, should we celebrate this 95th Mothers Day?
Maybe by understanding that endangered doesn't have to mean extinct. Plenty of moms are still putting out cookies and milk. But at that time of day, many others are working second shift at the plant, doing triage at the ER, directing traffic in the loop, or maybe meeting deadlines at the office. Their presence in children's lives today is felt in other ways. Exchanging stories in the van taking the neighborhood kids to school, hosting the weekend tour bus to Lincoln's Home, or just sharing their exhausted end-of-the-day bed with you wrapped inside their arms in front of a television screen.
There are widowed moms, single moms, teenage moms, latchkey moms, and gay moms. They aren't always the way we find them in the Bible or in the classics, but their maternal value is no more meant to be frozen in literary time than our faith is meant to be frozen in church statuary. These are living values, and the only true sign of life in this world is growth.
The lacy, pink patina of the last 94 Mothers Days is something to cherish. But growth is cherish-able too. Growth and change today is America's middle name. During a century of Mothers Days, we've witnessed a doubling of the population, a movement from the farms to the cities, the breakdown of urban family life, an explosion of different signs and sins. Yet running through it all is always the same back story: Moms!
Laud them or lament them, ask your psychiatrist how they molded you or messed you up. The one enduring fact of life -- personal or public -- is that they remain the great indispensables. Nothing happens without them. And when we are at last without them, there's a hole in the soul nothing can ever quite replace.
This coming Mothers Day will be one more chance for some of us to finally get it right....
Declared in 1914, it's been celebrated ever since by equal parts: Devoted children, guilty children, eager florists and dewy Hallmark stores. However, while a mother is always a mother, motherhood today is no longer one-size-fits-all. It now comes in all different sizes, shapes and saint-hoods.
For me it came straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Apron-wearing, pie-baking, stay-at-home mom who lovingly packed my lunches in the morning, and had cookies and milk waiting when I came home in the afternoon. Today that memory has become an endangered species in America. How, then, should we celebrate this 95th Mothers Day?
Maybe by understanding that endangered doesn't have to mean extinct. Plenty of moms are still putting out cookies and milk. But at that time of day, many others are working second shift at the plant, doing triage at the ER, directing traffic in the loop, or maybe meeting deadlines at the office. Their presence in children's lives today is felt in other ways. Exchanging stories in the van taking the neighborhood kids to school, hosting the weekend tour bus to Lincoln's Home, or just sharing their exhausted end-of-the-day bed with you wrapped inside their arms in front of a television screen.
There are widowed moms, single moms, teenage moms, latchkey moms, and gay moms. They aren't always the way we find them in the Bible or in the classics, but their maternal value is no more meant to be frozen in literary time than our faith is meant to be frozen in church statuary. These are living values, and the only true sign of life in this world is growth.
The lacy, pink patina of the last 94 Mothers Days is something to cherish. But growth is cherish-able too. Growth and change today is America's middle name. During a century of Mothers Days, we've witnessed a doubling of the population, a movement from the farms to the cities, the breakdown of urban family life, an explosion of different signs and sins. Yet running through it all is always the same back story: Moms!
Laud them or lament them, ask your psychiatrist how they molded you or messed you up. The one enduring fact of life -- personal or public -- is that they remain the great indispensables. Nothing happens without them. And when we are at last without them, there's a hole in the soul nothing can ever quite replace.
This coming Mothers Day will be one more chance for some of us to finally get it right....
Sunday, April 26, 2009
WHY BAMBI MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG ABOUT US
We're a news-conscious culture listening daily to newspapers, television and blogs for the latest. While each medium is different, they all share one thing in common. They're each loud and insistent about the news they're reporting.
Right now, though, there's a quieter yet no less insistent sound out there...!
When you listen carefully, it's the sound of nature blowin' in the spring winds. Whispering to us an evolutionary message for dealing more wisely with our cockeyed world. It's the message of the pigeons, the deer, and the geese that have lately multiplied throughout our city in staggering numbers
.
There are complex biological reasons for this daily drama, but the simplest of them may be that these species have genetically learned to be less afraid of us. With the reluctant exception of gun-toting hunters, it seems evolution is doing its thing here. Specifically, altering the long-persistent genetic codes by which these flocks and herds have always feared us
.
Now, instead, we feed the noontime pigeons, enjoy the parading geese, and watch the deer daring out of their preserves. Say -- maybe Bambi was wrong about us after all!
Could it be that what's at work here in our city parks and fields is evolution quietly re-coding ancient fear genes with emerging co-existence genes? Just as it has for centuries with our dogs, cats, horses, and other domesticated species who have learned to come out of the wilds, and peacefully co-exist with our species. After all, they've learned exactly how to let us take care of them for life.
If evolution can re-code animal gene pools this way, is it also possible nature is quietly demonstrating how a co-existence gene might also be acquired by other once-warring species? Consider the possibilities. Whites and blacks...rich and poor...young and old....neighbor and immigrant...why even such natural enemies as Democrats and Republicans?
The times are pregnant with possibilities. Why not Cub fans and Cardinal fans....Americans and French.... Americans and Russians... someday even Americans and jihadists? Evolution has accomplished far stranger things as it keeps proving to its many species how they all share this very same tiny blue planet in this very enormously uncaring universe.
Evolution is a funny fascinating thing that's led to many surprising changes. Even among the unchangeable. So it's hard not to hope.
Trouble is, this evolution thing is a stunningly slow, methodical process, and right now we don't have as much time as evolution usually likes to take. Is there something we can do about that...? Say like we have with the pigeons, the geese and the deer...?
Saturday, April 25, 2009
THE LONG TALE OF THE GAY ELEPHANT
Some of us wish Michal Grzes had attend the opening ceremonies of the new Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Illinois where Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel spoke. But then Michal was busy attending a small holocaust of his own....!
Recently a Polish zoo added a new elephant. Ninio, to its attractions. Only half-ton Ninio is apparently not interested in mating with any of the elephantine femme fatales. In true, family-values outrage, a conservative Warsaw politician Michal Grzes protested, "We didn't pay 37 million zlotys to have a gay elephant!"
When you think about it, Michal is speaking for all the world's angry bigots. All those clear-compassed minds who can confidently tell you where true north is on every issue -- exactly right where they're standing. Gays, marriage, abortion, the Bible, the environment, elephants, whatever you've got they've got the answer.
Sure, everyone harbors some bigotries, often under the banner of "causes," but picking on Ninio could be the straw that breaks the elephant's back. Michal, you old Slavic savant, you perfectly demonstrate why this world of ours is always in trouble. Really! Your ignorant stance on homosexuality is the very same self-righteousness that has energized so many of our world's trouble-makers. Remember that other bigot, that Adolph guy who swallowed up your country in 1939? He had a cause too. The self-righteous destruction of all Slavs and Jews by his Aryan legions whose true-north destiny was to rule a purified world.
Look, Michal, I don't want you to go away mad. But I do wish your uninformed rage would go away. Not likely, though, for homo sapiens has harbored bigotries right from the beginning. Anyone swinging from a different forest than ours we determined was forever "different." The same with the tribes across the river from us. Then the countries across the ocean from us. And always, always those neighbors who somehow just didn't understand "normal" like we do.
Psychologists tell us that putting other people down like this automatically makes us feel taller. Theologians tell us that mankind's Original Sin comes from a pride that can't accept the possibility someone else may be more correct than us. Whatever the cause, the consequences have been interminable. We've been busy hating other people's habits throughout the bloody trajectory of history. Think about it -- no hate, no Alexander, no Hannibal, no Attila, no Crusaders and Jihadists, no KKK, no gay bashers, no Cub-Sox rivalry.
I guess, Michal, this means your hangup with gays is not really a headline-maker after all. Tragically, hating other's habits is page 6 news by now. But wait, here's a possible headline for tomorrow's editions: "Michal Grzes rides Ninio in Polish Gay Parade through what's left of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto!"
Recently a Polish zoo added a new elephant. Ninio, to its attractions. Only half-ton Ninio is apparently not interested in mating with any of the elephantine femme fatales. In true, family-values outrage, a conservative Warsaw politician Michal Grzes protested, "We didn't pay 37 million zlotys to have a gay elephant!"
When you think about it, Michal is speaking for all the world's angry bigots. All those clear-compassed minds who can confidently tell you where true north is on every issue -- exactly right where they're standing. Gays, marriage, abortion, the Bible, the environment, elephants, whatever you've got they've got the answer.
Sure, everyone harbors some bigotries, often under the banner of "causes," but picking on Ninio could be the straw that breaks the elephant's back. Michal, you old Slavic savant, you perfectly demonstrate why this world of ours is always in trouble. Really! Your ignorant stance on homosexuality is the very same self-righteousness that has energized so many of our world's trouble-makers. Remember that other bigot, that Adolph guy who swallowed up your country in 1939? He had a cause too. The self-righteous destruction of all Slavs and Jews by his Aryan legions whose true-north destiny was to rule a purified world.
Look, Michal, I don't want you to go away mad. But I do wish your uninformed rage would go away. Not likely, though, for homo sapiens has harbored bigotries right from the beginning. Anyone swinging from a different forest than ours we determined was forever "different." The same with the tribes across the river from us. Then the countries across the ocean from us. And always, always those neighbors who somehow just didn't understand "normal" like we do.
Psychologists tell us that putting other people down like this automatically makes us feel taller. Theologians tell us that mankind's Original Sin comes from a pride that can't accept the possibility someone else may be more correct than us. Whatever the cause, the consequences have been interminable. We've been busy hating other people's habits throughout the bloody trajectory of history. Think about it -- no hate, no Alexander, no Hannibal, no Attila, no Crusaders and Jihadists, no KKK, no gay bashers, no Cub-Sox rivalry.
I guess, Michal, this means your hangup with gays is not really a headline-maker after all. Tragically, hating other's habits is page 6 news by now. But wait, here's a possible headline for tomorrow's editions: "Michal Grzes rides Ninio in Polish Gay Parade through what's left of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto!"
Friday, April 24, 2009
WAITING ROOMS HELP EXPLAIN AMERICA
The role and rule of contradiction has been coronated in our America. It thrives everywhere...!
Enormous wealth side by side with enormous poverty, stunning success neck and neck with disastrous failure, historic progress shoulder to shoulder with historic decline. But if you really want to experience this full throttle, try sitting in a public waiting room. Service shop, hospital, wherever. Sit there and indulge yourself in everything that's wrong with your world coming out of that television set, and then everything that's right with it coming out of those magazine issues.
Sure they're back editions, but my how they render the perfect solution to every problem in your life. Acne, wrinkles, obesity, colicky babies, destructive two-year olds, how to salvage your next block party, ways to save your marriage, tips for breaking the bank at Vegas, 3-minute casseroles to stun your guests, oh plus 10 easy-herbal-tea methods for overcoming clinical depression. And just think -- you're not even paying for these nifty answers!
But then you glance back up to the screen. Riots in the middle east, fires in California, tornadoes in Oklahoma, bank failures in New York, the ubiquitous closeups of grieving family members of the murder victim, talk shows that won't stop talking, and wait -- breaking news from a new campus shootout!
Exactly who are we, then? The land of the new Sodom & Gomorrah, or that Shining City on a Hill? Will the real America please stand up.
To be sure, the answer to most contradictions is: Yes! Yes, opposites do co-exist, but yes they do generate a kind of synergy all their own. The challenge -- as individuals and as a nation -- is somehow transforming what's so wrong with us into agendas for what can still be right about us.
We hardly lack for leadership in this tasking. Political leaders, reformers, researchers, educators, clergy, and lets not forget the most efficacious of all -- dreamers. They're everywhere trying to be heard.
When we listen carefully, the only ones who say silly things like "If you can dream it you can do it" are at sales meetings, motivation seminars, and such. Our really best dreamers are more modest. Instead, they put it this way: "So long as you reach for the stars, at least you won't come up with a handful of mud."
Enormous wealth side by side with enormous poverty, stunning success neck and neck with disastrous failure, historic progress shoulder to shoulder with historic decline. But if you really want to experience this full throttle, try sitting in a public waiting room. Service shop, hospital, wherever. Sit there and indulge yourself in everything that's wrong with your world coming out of that television set, and then everything that's right with it coming out of those magazine issues.
Sure they're back editions, but my how they render the perfect solution to every problem in your life. Acne, wrinkles, obesity, colicky babies, destructive two-year olds, how to salvage your next block party, ways to save your marriage, tips for breaking the bank at Vegas, 3-minute casseroles to stun your guests, oh plus 10 easy-herbal-tea methods for overcoming clinical depression. And just think -- you're not even paying for these nifty answers!
But then you glance back up to the screen. Riots in the middle east, fires in California, tornadoes in Oklahoma, bank failures in New York, the ubiquitous closeups of grieving family members of the murder victim, talk shows that won't stop talking, and wait -- breaking news from a new campus shootout!
Exactly who are we, then? The land of the new Sodom & Gomorrah, or that Shining City on a Hill? Will the real America please stand up.
To be sure, the answer to most contradictions is: Yes! Yes, opposites do co-exist, but yes they do generate a kind of synergy all their own. The challenge -- as individuals and as a nation -- is somehow transforming what's so wrong with us into agendas for what can still be right about us.
We hardly lack for leadership in this tasking. Political leaders, reformers, researchers, educators, clergy, and lets not forget the most efficacious of all -- dreamers. They're everywhere trying to be heard.
When we listen carefully, the only ones who say silly things like "If you can dream it you can do it" are at sales meetings, motivation seminars, and such. Our really best dreamers are more modest. Instead, they put it this way: "So long as you reach for the stars, at least you won't come up with a handful of mud."
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