Two sounds outside your bedroom window....
One, the whir of the military helicopter transporting President Obama to and from nearby O'Hare Field. You look up with awe at the meaning of such power. But then, the symphony of robins and cardinals are also up there. For the moment, they drown out the cacophony of blades and steel. In summer the songs sing themselves, and in these fleets of nature, the entire season is playing on key.
Our President bears the inescapable burden of office; down here, still the slightest of chances another summer will mean you won't have to bear anything except for its enormous joys. Escapism...? Probably...!. But oh what a fragrant escape. When you put down the newspapers, what is left is the catechism of Louie Armstrong smiling through: "What a Wonderful World."
Untethered from the responsibility to act and attached only to the irresponsibility to feel, you're in harmony with the freedoms of the natural world. Birds in flight...squirrels and rabbits in hunt...skies June blue...winds summer soft...green perfumes that intoxicate. The Tom Sawyer so long asleep stirs. Suddenly grass is once more for lounging...trees are for climbing...and girls, well girls with long flowing hair are for studying with the greatest of attentions.
You look up at the helicopter and the astonishing power it represents. You feel guilty in thanking God you are down here with summer, not up there with duty. But only a little guilty. Because in out-of-school summers long long ago -- with friends in the parks and lunches with Mom -- you felt not a care in your world. A feeling that has desire painted on it....
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
IS THERE A PHILOSOPHER IN THE HOUSE?
That relentless roar of oil savagely gushing from the bowels of the Gulf is the image of our times. Our skills and our technology joined at the hip to our dreams and our greed keep poking the planet's Pandora's Box. Given a world of natural gifts, our species has continued to play fast and loose with them.
Horace Walpole may have trumped even Shakespeare when he observed: "The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." And while we cry through our laughter, we may finally be ready to ask: Have we at last outfoxed ourselves? Have we not only over-played our planet's gifts, are we now over-playing even our own gifts? Especially the one we call the mind?
It is in our nature to seek and search and subdue. By these lights we have conquered continents and mastered oceans. We stand at the edge of someday perhaps conquering space. Mankind is progressing in ever larger concentric circles of accomplishments. However, like a conquering army gradually over-extending its lines of supply, we may be over-extending our capacity to manage what we are conquering.
Technical experts rush to the scene of every natural and human disaster. As it should be, for these minds are needed to confront the crises we have created. How much better, though, to call upon our best minds before not after! Minds best not simply in perspicacity, but in philosophy. Real insight as well as certified intelligibility.
Philosophers were once part of the monarch's retinue. Today, none such will be found in the inner circle of presidents and prime ministers. Why is this...? Why are those few best at posing the why-questions not there to pose them...?
Whenever a few quiet why-should-we-do-this questions are posed (e.g. drilling, cutting, legislating or fighting), the only ones there to answer them are the ones responsible for -- well, for the endeavor's bottom line. I mean, get real here; this is a no-nonsense, bottom-line world, right! And yet, as humanity keeps learning, there's a line still below that one.
It has to do with what is the right thing to do! To reach that line usually takes the kind of moral courage they just don't teach at MIT or in the military academies....
Horace Walpole may have trumped even Shakespeare when he observed: "The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." And while we cry through our laughter, we may finally be ready to ask: Have we at last outfoxed ourselves? Have we not only over-played our planet's gifts, are we now over-playing even our own gifts? Especially the one we call the mind?
It is in our nature to seek and search and subdue. By these lights we have conquered continents and mastered oceans. We stand at the edge of someday perhaps conquering space. Mankind is progressing in ever larger concentric circles of accomplishments. However, like a conquering army gradually over-extending its lines of supply, we may be over-extending our capacity to manage what we are conquering.
Technical experts rush to the scene of every natural and human disaster. As it should be, for these minds are needed to confront the crises we have created. How much better, though, to call upon our best minds before not after! Minds best not simply in perspicacity, but in philosophy. Real insight as well as certified intelligibility.
Philosophers were once part of the monarch's retinue. Today, none such will be found in the inner circle of presidents and prime ministers. Why is this...? Why are those few best at posing the why-questions not there to pose them...?
Whenever a few quiet why-should-we-do-this questions are posed (e.g. drilling, cutting, legislating or fighting), the only ones there to answer them are the ones responsible for -- well, for the endeavor's bottom line. I mean, get real here; this is a no-nonsense, bottom-line world, right! And yet, as humanity keeps learning, there's a line still below that one.
It has to do with what is the right thing to do! To reach that line usually takes the kind of moral courage they just don't teach at MIT or in the military academies....
Saturday, May 29, 2010
FACES, FACES, FACES
They're all out there...looking back at you...in every restaurant, truck stop, movie house and commuter train...the faces of the future... sometimes I'm afraid to really look into them.
Why? Because when I do, I see in them dangers beyond what I can bear, joys more than I would know how to handle. For you see, in those faces -- the eyes especially -- reside all our tomorrows. The good and the bad, the noble and the ignoble, the prospects for our species to leap boldly ahead or fall tragically behind.
In the ravished old face of the tired workman I see an end-of-the-day exhaustion which can mean either a stoic acceptance of the way of the world, or perhaps someday an explosion of in-the-streets rage. In the bearded young face of the student I see a crackling circuitry of dreams which can mean either another brilliant scholar, or perhaps the next mass murderer. In the lean clean face of the downtown executive I see a life swelled with accomplishments which can mean either thousands of clients well served, or maybe cleverly cheated out of their life savings.
Each person is more than a person. They are tomorrow's news stories. Heroes or vandals, rational or mad, willing to work with the system, or to plunder it. Scooping up my little life right along with it.
Each day hundreds, thousands of private faces behind which hide the world's great good fortune, or possibly its next worst nightmare. Who are these faces? They are us, really. And we are each ticking like some cosmic clock which, on some bright morning down the way, may ring loudly into a page of the history books.
One can only hope with all their hope that those pages will read of fine and worthy events. Up to now, the pages have been less than we'd like, yet always open to inserting some fresh new headline...
Why? Because when I do, I see in them dangers beyond what I can bear, joys more than I would know how to handle. For you see, in those faces -- the eyes especially -- reside all our tomorrows. The good and the bad, the noble and the ignoble, the prospects for our species to leap boldly ahead or fall tragically behind.
In the ravished old face of the tired workman I see an end-of-the-day exhaustion which can mean either a stoic acceptance of the way of the world, or perhaps someday an explosion of in-the-streets rage. In the bearded young face of the student I see a crackling circuitry of dreams which can mean either another brilliant scholar, or perhaps the next mass murderer. In the lean clean face of the downtown executive I see a life swelled with accomplishments which can mean either thousands of clients well served, or maybe cleverly cheated out of their life savings.
Each person is more than a person. They are tomorrow's news stories. Heroes or vandals, rational or mad, willing to work with the system, or to plunder it. Scooping up my little life right along with it.
Each day hundreds, thousands of private faces behind which hide the world's great good fortune, or possibly its next worst nightmare. Who are these faces? They are us, really. And we are each ticking like some cosmic clock which, on some bright morning down the way, may ring loudly into a page of the history books.
One can only hope with all their hope that those pages will read of fine and worthy events. Up to now, the pages have been less than we'd like, yet always open to inserting some fresh new headline...
Friday, May 28, 2010
TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, THAT'S NO LIE
If the truth shall set us free, why do we lie so much...? In politics, in business, even to ourselves...?
As usual, Mark Twain to the rescue. The old cynic learned his cynicism the hard way. By living a long life. Near the end of it he said something only a liar will dispute: "A man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do everything to get himself envied."
Most people would stop there and just try to internalize this uncomfortable truth. But not Dr Kang Lee of Toronto University. Wouldn't you know it, the good doctor came up with conclusions that question Twain's ornery wisdom. Instead of finding lies a debit, his research suggests it's an asset. Apparently the earlier a child begins using convincing lies, the more likely will he be successful in life. Why? Because better lying "...indicates better cognitive development."
All of which raises this question: Was America busy lying to itself during the second half of the 20th C? During all those years of peace and power and prosperity? Today's generation often report the hypocrisy of their parents and grandparents generations. Back when radio, movies and television filled our lives with happy little lies like: Truth always prevails...goodness always wins....honor is always respected...love is always fulfilled.
To listen & watch those old programs today -- radio's soap operas & kid shows, MGM's Andy Hardy & Doris Day fluff, television's "Father Knows Best" & "Happy Days" -- is either to gag on the gush or maybe to envy the exuberance. At first, today's smarter tougher young parents are likely to gag. Until, that is, they find themselves preaching some of the very same values to their own children. As one mother put it: "How I wish this were still the time when I could let my kids play all day long wherever they wanted, ride buses anywhere they cared, then come home to an unlocked front door...!"
Is it possible that those so-called hypocritical lies were really hopeful ideals? Ideals that, even when not reached, helped light up a slightly better safer world? Aiming just a little higher than we can grab still has the advantage of making us reach just a little more than we might. And that's no lie...
As usual, Mark Twain to the rescue. The old cynic learned his cynicism the hard way. By living a long life. Near the end of it he said something only a liar will dispute: "A man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do everything to get himself envied."
Most people would stop there and just try to internalize this uncomfortable truth. But not Dr Kang Lee of Toronto University. Wouldn't you know it, the good doctor came up with conclusions that question Twain's ornery wisdom. Instead of finding lies a debit, his research suggests it's an asset. Apparently the earlier a child begins using convincing lies, the more likely will he be successful in life. Why? Because better lying "...indicates better cognitive development."
All of which raises this question: Was America busy lying to itself during the second half of the 20th C? During all those years of peace and power and prosperity? Today's generation often report the hypocrisy of their parents and grandparents generations. Back when radio, movies and television filled our lives with happy little lies like: Truth always prevails...goodness always wins....honor is always respected...love is always fulfilled.
To listen & watch those old programs today -- radio's soap operas & kid shows, MGM's Andy Hardy & Doris Day fluff, television's "Father Knows Best" & "Happy Days" -- is either to gag on the gush or maybe to envy the exuberance. At first, today's smarter tougher young parents are likely to gag. Until, that is, they find themselves preaching some of the very same values to their own children. As one mother put it: "How I wish this were still the time when I could let my kids play all day long wherever they wanted, ride buses anywhere they cared, then come home to an unlocked front door...!"
Is it possible that those so-called hypocritical lies were really hopeful ideals? Ideals that, even when not reached, helped light up a slightly better safer world? Aiming just a little higher than we can grab still has the advantage of making us reach just a little more than we might. And that's no lie...
Thursday, May 27, 2010
THE MEMORIAL DAY NEIGHBORHOOD
I'm ready for this weekend's soaring rhetoric. It's always a boost. And yet for some it's going to be a bust.
Memorial Days are usually about remembering our past in order to better anticipate our future. But right now, many historians are busy lamenting our impending future based on our recent past. To put it another way, they're saying: There goes the neighborhood!
The neighborhood is us some 234 years after a terrific start, but currently in a terrible stall. Things have been going from good to bad and now bad to worse. Like any troubled neighborhood, folks there always blame their handiest target -- the "other guy." As in the president, the bankers, the generals, the executives, the immigrants. But that's angry, simplistic Tea Bagger thinking. And that kind of thinking isn't thick enough to cut it.
More serious Memorial Day historians might instead compare the great American Empire with the decline and fall of the great Roman Empire. They have a point. During the 5th C that neighborhood looked a lot like ours. Too many debts and stresses inside; too many enemies and encroachments outside.
However, listen carefully for this weekend's Memorial Day oratory will be about the stout national institutions that have held the neighborhood together all these years. Such as the government...the banks...the businesses....the schools...the courts...the churches and temples.
All true. But now all in trouble. It's precisely these institutions which have been failing us lately. Government stalled in stalemate. Banks corrupted by greed. Businesses heading over cliffs. Schools failing to educate. Laws failing to hold. And religions losing the faith of their own followers.
There won't be many historians giving Memorial Day addresses. However, their institutional concerns are worth considering. When Rome's institutions fractured, a brilliant empire collapsed into a barbarous dark age where rogues ruled the countrysides of Europe. Perhaps reminiscent of today's al-Queda, Iran, South Korea, Somalian pirates, and roaming survivalist bands.
Will that be our fate by some future Memorial Day...? In the 4th C the Church took the role of Rome as the one only sustaining institution to which the people could look. That didn't aways work out so well. This time will it be science and technology's turn to play that role? Or if not them, who?
In another 20 or 30 Memorial Days we may have the answer. For now, I'm happy we have a Memorial Day I can still recognize....
Memorial Days are usually about remembering our past in order to better anticipate our future. But right now, many historians are busy lamenting our impending future based on our recent past. To put it another way, they're saying: There goes the neighborhood!
The neighborhood is us some 234 years after a terrific start, but currently in a terrible stall. Things have been going from good to bad and now bad to worse. Like any troubled neighborhood, folks there always blame their handiest target -- the "other guy." As in the president, the bankers, the generals, the executives, the immigrants. But that's angry, simplistic Tea Bagger thinking. And that kind of thinking isn't thick enough to cut it.
More serious Memorial Day historians might instead compare the great American Empire with the decline and fall of the great Roman Empire. They have a point. During the 5th C that neighborhood looked a lot like ours. Too many debts and stresses inside; too many enemies and encroachments outside.
However, listen carefully for this weekend's Memorial Day oratory will be about the stout national institutions that have held the neighborhood together all these years. Such as the government...the banks...the businesses....the schools...the courts...the churches and temples.
All true. But now all in trouble. It's precisely these institutions which have been failing us lately. Government stalled in stalemate. Banks corrupted by greed. Businesses heading over cliffs. Schools failing to educate. Laws failing to hold. And religions losing the faith of their own followers.
There won't be many historians giving Memorial Day addresses. However, their institutional concerns are worth considering. When Rome's institutions fractured, a brilliant empire collapsed into a barbarous dark age where rogues ruled the countrysides of Europe. Perhaps reminiscent of today's al-Queda, Iran, South Korea, Somalian pirates, and roaming survivalist bands.
Will that be our fate by some future Memorial Day...? In the 4th C the Church took the role of Rome as the one only sustaining institution to which the people could look. That didn't aways work out so well. This time will it be science and technology's turn to play that role? Or if not them, who?
In another 20 or 30 Memorial Days we may have the answer. For now, I'm happy we have a Memorial Day I can still recognize....
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
THE TRUTH OF A PLATE OF RISOTTO
The seed is as important as the flower...
That's the sort of comment you expect to hear from a Tibetan monk sitting cross-legged on one of the hills just outside Shangri-La. Actually, the thought is no further away than our front door. It's the way some of us out there -- astoundingly few -- have finally learned how to understand time. Not as some linear A-to-Z journey, rather as one continuous present.
All too often, though, the seize-the-day zealots seize it as though this day is the only day that counts on the road. That is of course nonsense. There have been many days before today, before we were here to have todays. Those yesterdays can no more be ignored than the grin on our face or the hurts in our heart.
How best then to travel time...?
Grandma explained this brilliantly. Unfortunately I was only about eight, and so her Italian wisdom was lost on me. I preferred concentrating on her scrumptious plate of steaming risotto more than on her soaring wisdom. "Remember that big sticky pot on the stove you helped me stir...?" Yeah, I remember; it was a glop of yellow rice or something; made my arms tired! "That glop, Jackie, -- and all the songs we sang and stories we laughed at while we were stirring -- that's how we got this"
Oh, now I get, Grams....! Only Grams died on me before I was old enough to tell her. Now I tell her every today.
That's the sort of comment you expect to hear from a Tibetan monk sitting cross-legged on one of the hills just outside Shangri-La. Actually, the thought is no further away than our front door. It's the way some of us out there -- astoundingly few -- have finally learned how to understand time. Not as some linear A-to-Z journey, rather as one continuous present.
All too often, though, the seize-the-day zealots seize it as though this day is the only day that counts on the road. That is of course nonsense. There have been many days before today, before we were here to have todays. Those yesterdays can no more be ignored than the grin on our face or the hurts in our heart.
How best then to travel time...?
Grandma explained this brilliantly. Unfortunately I was only about eight, and so her Italian wisdom was lost on me. I preferred concentrating on her scrumptious plate of steaming risotto more than on her soaring wisdom. "Remember that big sticky pot on the stove you helped me stir...?" Yeah, I remember; it was a glop of yellow rice or something; made my arms tired! "That glop, Jackie, -- and all the songs we sang and stories we laughed at while we were stirring -- that's how we got this"
Oh, now I get, Grams....! Only Grams died on me before I was old enough to tell her. Now I tell her every today.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
THE CELL PHONE AS EARTH MOTHER?
"60 Minutes" recently featured an interview with the 71-year-old inventor of the cell phone. He proudly noted that today's hand-held communicators hold the world in their hands, but he questioned instruments whose user guide is heavier than the phone.
So now he's designed the Jitterbug which is a little phone that is only a phone. No screens, no keypads, no nothing else except talking with someone. Kinda like inventing our way back to the future.
But just when you think it's safe to pick up your little phone again, he promised that sometime soon, phones will be chips implanted behind the ear. With this step, mankind becomes the phone and the phone becomes mankind. Which sounds like a cross between a Star Trek and a Woody Allen movie!
For those not born into the mobile-phone culture, it's customary at this point to smugly say, "Yeah, but no phone will ever take the place of a good hug!"
Enter Seth Pollak of the University of Wisconsin. According to her research, "Biochemically speaking, a phone conversation with your kid is as good as a hug..." Whoa! Were they right when they kept telling us: Reach out and touch someone? According to this study, yes, because in it the phone call and the hug released the very same amounts of the "love hormone" oxytocin.
So here at the crossroads of another brave-new-world leap, we are left to ponder whether anything we've learned in the past fits the future. Among those sacred absolutes was the firm conviction that moms hold the key to life and to love. However, now Ms Pollak (who does not identify herself as a mother) is suggesting that the "key" may be something you can buy at your local phone shop for $79.99!
I'm wondering here what my Mom would have said to a price tag of $79.99. Wait -- I know what she'd say. "Come over here and give me a hug...!"
So now he's designed the Jitterbug which is a little phone that is only a phone. No screens, no keypads, no nothing else except talking with someone. Kinda like inventing our way back to the future.
But just when you think it's safe to pick up your little phone again, he promised that sometime soon, phones will be chips implanted behind the ear. With this step, mankind becomes the phone and the phone becomes mankind. Which sounds like a cross between a Star Trek and a Woody Allen movie!
For those not born into the mobile-phone culture, it's customary at this point to smugly say, "Yeah, but no phone will ever take the place of a good hug!"
Enter Seth Pollak of the University of Wisconsin. According to her research, "Biochemically speaking, a phone conversation with your kid is as good as a hug..." Whoa! Were they right when they kept telling us: Reach out and touch someone? According to this study, yes, because in it the phone call and the hug released the very same amounts of the "love hormone" oxytocin.
So here at the crossroads of another brave-new-world leap, we are left to ponder whether anything we've learned in the past fits the future. Among those sacred absolutes was the firm conviction that moms hold the key to life and to love. However, now Ms Pollak (who does not identify herself as a mother) is suggesting that the "key" may be something you can buy at your local phone shop for $79.99!
I'm wondering here what my Mom would have said to a price tag of $79.99. Wait -- I know what she'd say. "Come over here and give me a hug...!"
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