Lady Ga Ga promenades through the Yankees club house with black bra and matching panties bursting out from a half-opened baseball jersey...jihadists recruit pregnant women for their suicide missions...science offers female Viagra pills...the Venter Institute vows to perfect its recent synthetic life experiments ...and the Chicago Cubs raise their ticket prices to see one of the worst teams in baseball.
This can only mean one thing. George Santayana was right: "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."
When everyone from performers to pharmaceuticals feel the need to excel by exceeding, it makes you wonder. Is there anything left in our world that's enough just the way it is? Has no one reached a place where they can feel satisfied, at least for a small while? Or is the frenzy to zoom higher -- here in America labeled "aspiration" -- so relentless that we must remain forever restless?
To aspire is good; to obsess, much less so. And yet here we are, a culture of obsessions. And obsessors. Pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box, going for the gold. Enough is never enough. Which of course dooms us to an eternal fascination of frustrations.
Aesop told the wonderful tale of the dog who had a great slab of red meat in his mouth, and was about to make a mighty meal of it. But then he saw himself in the reflection of a pool. Couldn't stand finding another dog with something he didn't have. He jumped into the water; lost his meal; ended up wet, hungry and maybe a little wiser.
Enough just wasn't enough....!
Today, Aesop's little wisdom would be counter-culture and surely counter-intutive to any CEO, Wall Street hustler, oil driller, sales manager, think tank director, or general. More is the name of today's game, especially when you're in first place and can't bear the thought of second.
I couldn't help think about all this the last time I visited Rome and London. People there -- especially on a lazy summer day -- seemed a whole lot more content without their old hard-driving, first-place empires...
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
SOMETHING BIG WAITING IN 2050 AD
Who was it that said this...? Maybe Donald Trump or Bernie Madoff. "The winner in life is the one with the most toys at the end of the game." It's the plot by which many live, and call their version of the golden rule. With much more wisdom, Bertolt Brecht said instead: "Do not fear death so much, but rather living an inadequate life."
Either way we choose to live our life, the Pew Research Center reports 58% of Americans expect life to change apocalyptic-ally by the year 2050. By then we expect either another world war, or the second coming of Christ. The US census Bureau's approach is considerably more statistical when they project by 2050 more than 50% of our population will be non-white.
Of course all this assumes our world won't already have come to an end on December 21, 2012. As predicted by the History Channel's favorite theme: the ancient Mayan Calendar!
Here's the point...
How really does our species measure life while we're still living it? Monks go to mountain tops....philosophers to campus seminars...poets to their pens...and musicians to their instruments. What's left for the rest of us? Well, in lands with caste systems there is always the privileges of your caste. In lands with tribal systems there is always the protection of your tribe.
In lands with a free-enterprise system like the United States, there is money. Money is the ultimate measure of most everything -- success, power, celebrity, court settlements, medical cures, and yes sometimes marriages. When you have neither nobility nor clan to resort to, cash is king!
The funny thing about cash is how the poor condemn it as "not buying happiness," and the rich approve it by spending it. But alas now DiscoverMagazine.com claims to have put the matter to the test. And thus to rest. It states: "Money does not buy happiness," based on experiments among hundreds of subjects. Their conclusion: "When above the poverty level, the acquisition of money has little bearing on one's happiness, because wealth makes delights that were already accessible seem less enticing...."
Now if you want to study the full experiment, that will cost you some cash. You need a good computer.
Either way we choose to live our life, the Pew Research Center reports 58% of Americans expect life to change apocalyptic-ally by the year 2050. By then we expect either another world war, or the second coming of Christ. The US census Bureau's approach is considerably more statistical when they project by 2050 more than 50% of our population will be non-white.
Of course all this assumes our world won't already have come to an end on December 21, 2012. As predicted by the History Channel's favorite theme: the ancient Mayan Calendar!
Here's the point...
How really does our species measure life while we're still living it? Monks go to mountain tops....philosophers to campus seminars...poets to their pens...and musicians to their instruments. What's left for the rest of us? Well, in lands with caste systems there is always the privileges of your caste. In lands with tribal systems there is always the protection of your tribe.
In lands with a free-enterprise system like the United States, there is money. Money is the ultimate measure of most everything -- success, power, celebrity, court settlements, medical cures, and yes sometimes marriages. When you have neither nobility nor clan to resort to, cash is king!
The funny thing about cash is how the poor condemn it as "not buying happiness," and the rich approve it by spending it. But alas now DiscoverMagazine.com claims to have put the matter to the test. And thus to rest. It states: "Money does not buy happiness," based on experiments among hundreds of subjects. Their conclusion: "When above the poverty level, the acquisition of money has little bearing on one's happiness, because wealth makes delights that were already accessible seem less enticing...."
Now if you want to study the full experiment, that will cost you some cash. You need a good computer.
Monday, June 28, 2010
COUNTERPOINT IN THE MUSIC OF OUR LIVES
We may not all understand counterpoint, but we can all appreciate this blending of different melody lines in music. It's what helps give majesty to a Mozart concerto, a Beethoven symphony, or a Dixieland riff. However, it's not always so easy to listen to the counterpoint in our everyday lives. Where different melody lines bang more than blend into one another.
Consider some glaring examples...
* Cops & Courts ~ All too often, the blue-uniformed team rounds up the bad guys in whatever ways it takes; then the black-robed team often seem to let them go free because of "the law." Each side holds fast to the propriety of their methods. Each side often rejects and resents the other. We could probably use a gifted composer to harmonize these differences; but in a democracy we simply have to work it out for ourselves
* Docs & Diets ~ The medical profession is almost on daily alert with its dire warnings about salt, sugar and fat. The irony here is that salt, sugar and fat are precisely what excite our taste buds. Even addicts them. The frustrations attached to this disharmony are not only psychological (driving millions to the latest health regimen), but even theological (driving other millions to wonder how could a good God be this cruel)
* Overt & Covert ~ In whatever wars we wage (legal, political, military) there is usually a vast difference between how we fight it in public and how we do it down-and-dirty in private. Until the Viet Nam war and the Watergate Cover-up went on television for all to see, a long history of my-country-right-or-wrong soured into a 24/7 gotcha media. Today's headlines are not so much about our overt heroes, but rather our covert spies and assassins and tricksters. The disharmony between what should be and what is has grown exponentially
How then are we to survive, existing inside this giant contradiction of melody lines? Between what we usually say and what we often do? Well, here's a better question.Talking about music, what kind do you -- in the safety of your own home -- find yourself tapping and jumping to? Now admit it, you do sometimes! Maybe its Rock, Dixie, Blues even Rap. Whatever it may be, keep dancing to it. Its harmony may just help you survive the world's disharmony.
Consider some glaring examples...
* Cops & Courts ~ All too often, the blue-uniformed team rounds up the bad guys in whatever ways it takes; then the black-robed team often seem to let them go free because of "the law." Each side holds fast to the propriety of their methods. Each side often rejects and resents the other. We could probably use a gifted composer to harmonize these differences; but in a democracy we simply have to work it out for ourselves
* Docs & Diets ~ The medical profession is almost on daily alert with its dire warnings about salt, sugar and fat. The irony here is that salt, sugar and fat are precisely what excite our taste buds. Even addicts them. The frustrations attached to this disharmony are not only psychological (driving millions to the latest health regimen), but even theological (driving other millions to wonder how could a good God be this cruel)
* Overt & Covert ~ In whatever wars we wage (legal, political, military) there is usually a vast difference between how we fight it in public and how we do it down-and-dirty in private. Until the Viet Nam war and the Watergate Cover-up went on television for all to see, a long history of my-country-right-or-wrong soured into a 24/7 gotcha media. Today's headlines are not so much about our overt heroes, but rather our covert spies and assassins and tricksters. The disharmony between what should be and what is has grown exponentially
How then are we to survive, existing inside this giant contradiction of melody lines? Between what we usually say and what we often do? Well, here's a better question.Talking about music, what kind do you -- in the safety of your own home -- find yourself tapping and jumping to? Now admit it, you do sometimes! Maybe its Rock, Dixie, Blues even Rap. Whatever it may be, keep dancing to it. Its harmony may just help you survive the world's disharmony.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
WILLIE GOES HEAD TO HEAD WITH THE BEAVER
Willie Nelson -- whose craggy face catches some of the wisdom and weariness of life -- said recently: "Rednecks, hippies, misfits; we're all the same." In the same newspaper edition, CBS announced its new boxed set of the classic "Leave it to Beaver" TV series.
The series was on the air during a gentler time, just after the Korean War and just before the assassination of President Kennedy (1957-1963). On the other hand, Willie Nelson's America has been around from the very first time the Colonials started battling the Native Americans for their land.
Which of the two Americas we wish to see depends largely on which America we prefer to see. These may be opposites, but philosophers have long argued that the finest minds are those which can hold and fathom opposing ideas all at the same time. Philosophers usually advocate subtle grays, not glaring blacks or whites.
The gray of Willie's ragamuffin world of proud hellions is no grayer than the Beaver's idyllic world of domestic harmony. It's just as real, just as compelling. Still, societies from always seek more harmony than hell. Our families, our schools, our religions and our governments all preach this. How then to balance these opposites...?
Tony Calvo -- wherever he is today! -- was my first and most enduring example of a hellion who did not and would not "fit in." He was my 7th grade locker partner who spent more time in the principal's office than anywhere else. Until he finally left school for a life of on-the-road freedom and mis-behavior. I, like the rest of Tony's class, stayed put, followed the rules, and occasionally wonder how much Tony's life was different than ours.
I always enjoyed Beaver's happy television family. I actually lived it as a kid back in the same neighborhood I shared with Tony.You see, fiction and fancy are not always foolish....! Especially when you discover they can come true. On the other hand, Tony and Willie and all the other passionate rebels without a cause continue to make more colorful stories. Even legends.
So here's a toast to them...from the safety and security of Beavers like me!
The series was on the air during a gentler time, just after the Korean War and just before the assassination of President Kennedy (1957-1963). On the other hand, Willie Nelson's America has been around from the very first time the Colonials started battling the Native Americans for their land.
Which of the two Americas we wish to see depends largely on which America we prefer to see. These may be opposites, but philosophers have long argued that the finest minds are those which can hold and fathom opposing ideas all at the same time. Philosophers usually advocate subtle grays, not glaring blacks or whites.
The gray of Willie's ragamuffin world of proud hellions is no grayer than the Beaver's idyllic world of domestic harmony. It's just as real, just as compelling. Still, societies from always seek more harmony than hell. Our families, our schools, our religions and our governments all preach this. How then to balance these opposites...?
Tony Calvo -- wherever he is today! -- was my first and most enduring example of a hellion who did not and would not "fit in." He was my 7th grade locker partner who spent more time in the principal's office than anywhere else. Until he finally left school for a life of on-the-road freedom and mis-behavior. I, like the rest of Tony's class, stayed put, followed the rules, and occasionally wonder how much Tony's life was different than ours.
I always enjoyed Beaver's happy television family. I actually lived it as a kid back in the same neighborhood I shared with Tony.You see, fiction and fancy are not always foolish....! Especially when you discover they can come true. On the other hand, Tony and Willie and all the other passionate rebels without a cause continue to make more colorful stories. Even legends.
So here's a toast to them...from the safety and security of Beavers like me!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
THIS REALLY HAS TO STOP...!
This really has to stop! I mean, really, this can't go on! Michael Jackson is only the latest example of our nasty nature!
Why oh why do we always wait until someone is dead before we choose to say and feel something good about them? To test this question, pay attention at the next wake, and see if you can bear the mawkish gusher of goodness people finally find in the life of the deceased. I always picture the corpse rising up and snarling: "Where were you when I was still alive, and could have used some of those feelings...?"
Psychiatry has an explanation for this, but stripped down to its essentials, it's simply our prideful defenses now being safely dropped. There's no longer any reason to be on guard. Which is a kind of silliness that borders on madness.
Classic examples in public life are the obvious. Lincoln was a war-mongering buffoon the day before he was assassinated, a national god the day after! FDR was a secret socialist who insisted on four unprecedented terms in office as far as his enemies were concerned; the day he dropped dead in Warm Springs, he suddenly had no enemies!
Marilyn ...JFK...Bobby...Martin...Elvis...Lennon ...Princess Diane...and now Michael. In one big collective epiphany, the masses quickly find compassion in their hearts and love on their tongues. The same applies to all the kids gunned down in the streets of gang-infested cities, whose grades and goodness would never have made any front page any other way.
Marilyn Monroe's biographer callously -- but accurately -- quipped that her death made her an icon. "Best damn career move she ever made." Sometimes, though, death only brushes us; as with Pope John Paul and President Reagan. If we survive with their kind of forgiving panache, we are rightly endeared to them.
But just think how much more so if only those bullets had really found their target....!
Why oh why do we always wait until someone is dead before we choose to say and feel something good about them? To test this question, pay attention at the next wake, and see if you can bear the mawkish gusher of goodness people finally find in the life of the deceased. I always picture the corpse rising up and snarling: "Where were you when I was still alive, and could have used some of those feelings...?"
Psychiatry has an explanation for this, but stripped down to its essentials, it's simply our prideful defenses now being safely dropped. There's no longer any reason to be on guard. Which is a kind of silliness that borders on madness.
Classic examples in public life are the obvious. Lincoln was a war-mongering buffoon the day before he was assassinated, a national god the day after! FDR was a secret socialist who insisted on four unprecedented terms in office as far as his enemies were concerned; the day he dropped dead in Warm Springs, he suddenly had no enemies!
Marilyn ...JFK...Bobby...Martin...Elvis...Lennon ...Princess Diane...and now Michael. In one big collective epiphany, the masses quickly find compassion in their hearts and love on their tongues. The same applies to all the kids gunned down in the streets of gang-infested cities, whose grades and goodness would never have made any front page any other way.
Marilyn Monroe's biographer callously -- but accurately -- quipped that her death made her an icon. "Best damn career move she ever made." Sometimes, though, death only brushes us; as with Pope John Paul and President Reagan. If we survive with their kind of forgiving panache, we are rightly endeared to them.
But just think how much more so if only those bullets had really found their target....!
Friday, June 25, 2010
CELEBRATING WHICH 4th?
This coming 4th of July we will celebrate the birth of the United States. But now 234 years later, we have to wonder exactly how united our many different states-of-mind really are. Diversity has always made us more "pluribis" than "unum;" however, never more so than this coming 4th.
In the past, we divided mostly along racial, ethnic and religious boundaries. While those rifts are still splattered with the blood of our prides and prejudices, the newest rifts among us run dangerously deeper. Right down to the loosening tectonic plates upon which our nation was built. Listening to those upcoming speeches and songs, we won't hear these rifts. But we may be able to sense them in between some of the lines and the lyrics.
About a third of us feel a sinking sensation of national helplessness [Nothing's going right, but at my age if I can just hold on a few years more, I won't give a damn!].
Another third feel an angry sensation beckoning them to political protest [Washington is broken, but I'm still young enough to fix it by bringing back the America I remember!]
The youngest third feel what youth always feels: Give the reins to us [We'll ride this bronco the way it should be, because the world belongs to the young!]
If that adds up to near 100%, what small slice of us are left to still recall and recapture a very different set of national feelings? The feelings that surged through the tattered ranks at Valley Forge...that thrilled to the boom years of the great new paddlewheelers and railroads...that inflamed the troops on both sides of Gettysburg, because they really knew what they were willing to die for....that made us charge into the 20th century in love with our explosion of cars and highways and radios and television sets and penicillin and vaccines and the all-for-one battle-cry that kept the plagues of Nazism and Communism from consuming our planet.
Those national feelings must still burn somewhere. But maybe now only as embers to be stirred every 4th rather than as torches to be carried back home with us. It's this small slice of us who may yet decide "unum" rules over "pluribus." Who may yet be willing to hear the trumpets from the leaders they elected. Who may yet sense our Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, was right that July 1776 when he said: "Now we must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately...."
In the past, we divided mostly along racial, ethnic and religious boundaries. While those rifts are still splattered with the blood of our prides and prejudices, the newest rifts among us run dangerously deeper. Right down to the loosening tectonic plates upon which our nation was built. Listening to those upcoming speeches and songs, we won't hear these rifts. But we may be able to sense them in between some of the lines and the lyrics.
About a third of us feel a sinking sensation of national helplessness [Nothing's going right, but at my age if I can just hold on a few years more, I won't give a damn!].
Another third feel an angry sensation beckoning them to political protest [Washington is broken, but I'm still young enough to fix it by bringing back the America I remember!]
The youngest third feel what youth always feels: Give the reins to us [We'll ride this bronco the way it should be, because the world belongs to the young!]
If that adds up to near 100%, what small slice of us are left to still recall and recapture a very different set of national feelings? The feelings that surged through the tattered ranks at Valley Forge...that thrilled to the boom years of the great new paddlewheelers and railroads...that inflamed the troops on both sides of Gettysburg, because they really knew what they were willing to die for....that made us charge into the 20th century in love with our explosion of cars and highways and radios and television sets and penicillin and vaccines and the all-for-one battle-cry that kept the plagues of Nazism and Communism from consuming our planet.
Those national feelings must still burn somewhere. But maybe now only as embers to be stirred every 4th rather than as torches to be carried back home with us. It's this small slice of us who may yet decide "unum" rules over "pluribus." Who may yet be willing to hear the trumpets from the leaders they elected. Who may yet sense our Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, was right that July 1776 when he said: "Now we must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately...."
Thursday, June 24, 2010
TOUCHING THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB
It was about 2 AM at the blacked out military base in Chicago's O'Hare Field. Today it's one of the busiest airports in the world; in April 1951 it was where our 126th Light Bombardment squadron was stationed during the Korean War. I was on guard duty...
Just then I saw it -- sleek and silent -- the "Enola Gay." The B-29 that had dropped the fateful bomb six years earlier on Hiroshima. In the succeeding 70 months our world had changed forever. Now here I was guarding the instrument of death itself.
Today there remains only one survivor of that crew, Theodore Van Kirk. At age 89 he's like most WWII vets. Unhesitatingly sure it was the right thing to do to shorten a horrific war that had no end in sight. With my own family members stationed for a daunting homeland invasion of Japan that year, I was sure too. Still am, given that far more civilian deaths were caused by conventional weapons.
And yet, I can't forget the feeling of black awe that filled me as I found myself talking to that mass of gray metal. For its part, It offered nothing in return. It had already spoken everything it had to say.
I now live only a few minutes from O'Hare Field and what had been the "Enola Gay's" home that long ago night. I still find myself straining to hear if I missed anything....
Just then I saw it -- sleek and silent -- the "Enola Gay." The B-29 that had dropped the fateful bomb six years earlier on Hiroshima. In the succeeding 70 months our world had changed forever. Now here I was guarding the instrument of death itself.
Today there remains only one survivor of that crew, Theodore Van Kirk. At age 89 he's like most WWII vets. Unhesitatingly sure it was the right thing to do to shorten a horrific war that had no end in sight. With my own family members stationed for a daunting homeland invasion of Japan that year, I was sure too. Still am, given that far more civilian deaths were caused by conventional weapons.
And yet, I can't forget the feeling of black awe that filled me as I found myself talking to that mass of gray metal. For its part, It offered nothing in return. It had already spoken everything it had to say.
I now live only a few minutes from O'Hare Field and what had been the "Enola Gay's" home that long ago night. I still find myself straining to hear if I missed anything....
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