Fiddle or Fight While America Burns?

I hang out on Facebook a lot. More than I should, actually, although I've decided to back off on it over the coming days. But I read a post today from one of my Facebook friends in which she says she's tried of all the doom and gloom that people are spreading about America's alleged decline, and she's going to stop listening to them and get on with her business.

She thinks that we certainly have problems, but bright minds and natural cycles will solve them unless and until we allow ourselves to become so obsessed with the dire and unflaggingly repetitious pronouncements of such pompous prophets of doom as Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, and Tom Friedman that we become too demoralized and debilitated.

I disagree with her. I think our problems are very serious and that we have no chance whatsoever of solving them unless we begin by acknowledging and understanding them. This, with some minor modifications, is what I wrote to her:

I don't believe we are "functioning well" at all. Wall Street continues to grow richer while Main Street continues to grow poorer and our infrastructure continues to crumble and collapse before our eyes. Our educational system is in shambles at a time when it desperately needs to get its act together. Our political system is so polarized that very little can be accomplished. Health care is becoming more expensive and so-called Obamacare, a piss-poor patchwork substitute for single-payer but still better than what we've had before, is on its way out as Republicans continue to attack it and Democrats continue to cave to their demands. Our national debt continues to rise with no viable prospects for reversal. Soon China will be the world's dominant technological, economic and geopolitical power if it isn't already, and India and other rising countries such as Brazil may also relegate us soon enough to second tier, has-been status while our only preeminence, at least for a time, will be as militarily musclebound freaks.

These and a million other serious, serious problems eat away at our nation, and whether you want to collectively characterize them as "brokenness" or to use some other, more euphemistic term for them, they are real, and they are destroying us from the inside out while other countries chip away at us from the outside in.

If we acknowledge and understand our problems, there's always the risk that we'll succumb to debilitating and paralyzing despair and not only sink into the morass of mediocrity or worse but be miserable the whole way down. But if we don't acknowledge and understand our problems and just "fiddle while Rome burns" (pardon my mixed metaphors), expecting everything to right itself as part of some natural and inexorable cycle, we have no chance whatsoever.

The choice is ours. Fiddle or fight.

Your Bet

"So here’s the math: 98 climate scientists out of 100 will tell you that man’s continued carbon emissions pose the risk of disruptive climate change this century. Two out of 100 will tell you it doesn’t. And “conservatives” today tell you to bet on the two."

--Tom Friedman

First Webcam Video

I just bought a new webcam, installed it, and posted my first video with it to Facebook earlier today. And then I figured that if I'm using this blog to nakedly reflect the "real me," this would be a good place to post the video as well. Actually, I plan to post more videos of myself here over time, if I can think of anything to talk about, but this is my first foray into such Internet visibility.

To Chew or Not to Chew?

A local news channel posted on its Facebook page the following question: A congressman has asked the Giants and the Rangers not to chew tobacco on the field in this year's World Series. What do you think about that?

Almost everyone has responded by excoriating the congressman for not attending to more important things and by defending the right of baseball players to do what baseball players have always done. Yet, as you might suspect, I posted a rather different response that, despite its deliberate rhetorical excess, makes what I consider to be some valid points:

Why do any of you care if a congressman merely ASKS the players not to chew tobacco during the World Series? He's not trying to legislate against tobacco chewing. Apparently nobody else had the testicular fortitude to do it, so he stepped up to the plate to try to spare our nation's impressionable youth from being exposed to that vile habit during American baseball's most visible and iconic event. You should be applauding him for what he did instead of condemning him for it! How is it that you've allowed your exaggerated, reflexive hatred of government to override your concern for the health and well-being of your children?

The only problem I have with the good congressman is his naivety in thinking that major league baseball players are smart enough to heed his intelligent advice or that they give a damn about our children or anyone else but their overpaid and overly famous and pampered selves.

My Comment to Roger Ebert About Life and Death

Roger Ebert has an outstanding blog that uses the films he reviews as a taking off point for more extended reflections on the themes and issues raised by those films. In a recent entry about Clint Eastwood's new film "Hereafter," he makes the following comments about death:

"When I write that I expect to experience no more after death than I experienced before birth, I receive comments from people who pity me. They wonder how I can possibly live with such a bleak prospect. I find it more cheerful than most of the other possibilities that have been floated. I don't want to come back as an insect, haunt unquiet places as a ghost, or gaze down benevolently on my loved ones below as they, and all their generations to the end of time, die from mayhem or disease. I am also offered the possibility that I will be absorbed in God's love for all eternity, which is a better offer, but lacking in definition. If that means what it seems to mean, and if God is infinite (as he must be), then the role played by "me" can hardly be aware or conscious in any meaningful way. But I will become part of the universal, you say? I already am. You, too...We live, we die. That is not a tragedy. The tragedy would be never having been born."

I just replied with a comment that awaits Ebert's approval before it appears. Here is what I wrote:

Roger, I agree with you that there's nothing "bleak" about the prospect of dying and returning to the same state of non-consciousness that presumably characterized us before we existed. But I disagree with you that there would be anything "tragic" about never being born in the first place. For whom would it be tragic? If one never existed, there would be nothing to regret missing out on the experience it never existed to have.

In fact, I'd go further and agree with philosopher David Benetar's premise in "Better Never to Have Been" that if our lives are simply, as Alan Watts characterized the prevailing non-religious view, "a trip from the maternity ward to the crematorium," and, as Benatar argues, fraught with more pain and suffering than pleasure and happiness, the REAL "tragedy" for most if not all of us is that we WERE born. We'd have been better off had we never been at all.

Road Rage

Last week my wife and I were driving somewhere when I almost got into a violent altercation with someone. I was driving to an unfamiliar location and realized that I was in the wrong lane with a left turn coming up, and when I signaled and tried to move into the left turn lane, the big SUV behind me sped up to make sure I couldn't move over, as a woman in the passenger seat glared down at me as they raced by like she was thinking, "Screw you."

Well, I did manage to get over behind the SUV, and as we both sat at a red light, I made an angry gesture to the driver of the SUV. No, I didn't flip him the bird. I shook my fist at him. He saw me and opened the driver side door part way as though he was going to jump out and confront me right there, but it appeared as though the woman passenger stopped him from following through on his folly. He slammed his door shut and jerked around in his seat like he was completely beside himself with fury.

I don't know what I would have done if he had gotten out of his vehicle and moved toward me. I know I would have stayed in the car, but what if he started pounding on it or kicking it? What if he had a gun? He certainly seemed angry enough that if he had a gun, he wouldn't have thought twice about using it, especially if he hadn't had a female passenger to talk him out of it.

If he had had a gun and started walking toward me with it, I think I'd have tried to run him over. If he'd damaged the car with punches or kicks, I or my wife would have tried to get his license number and report him.

But what about the gesture I made to him? Should I have done it? Did he deserve to see my displeasure over the way he conducted himself when I tried to move into the left turn lane just before the stoplight? I think he deserved it. But what people deserve and what we should give them if it puts ourselves and our loved ones in danger are, perhaps, separate issues with the latter overriding the former.

In retrospect, I wish I had made no gesture, although a perverse part of me is glad I did. But if I had it to do over, should I have made the gesture I did or some other one? If another one, what should it have been? I kind of think that showing him the back of my open hand would have been better. It wouldn't have been overtly vulgar like flipping him the bird, or confrontational like showing him my fist. He would have probably thought I was flipping him the bird or challenging him to a fight anyway, but at least I'd have the satisfaction of knowing that I did neither, assuming he didn't shoot me and I was able to feel anything afterward.

What kind of society do we live in with people like the jerk in the SUV with his stereotypical Harley sticker on the back and, perhaps, a gun or crowbar under his seat driving on our public roads? Or am I the villain in this story?

Quote for the Day--Commemorate 9/11 With Compassion

"In the United States, we have witnessed an upsurge of anti-Muslim feeling that violates the core values of that nation...And now we have the prospect of the Quran burning proposed by a Christian pastor, who seems to have forgotten that Jesus taught his followers to love those they regard as enemies, to respond to evil with good, and to turn the other cheek when attacked, and who died forgiving his executioners...If we want to preserve our humanity, we must make the compassionate voice of religion and morality a vibrant and dynamic force in our polarised world. We can no longer afford the barbarism of hatred, contempt and disgust...In an age when, increasingly, small groups will have powers of destruction that were previously the preserve only of the nation-state, respect and compassion are now crucial for our very survival...Instead of looking at one another with hostility, let us look at the suffering that we are seeing in so many parts of the world...On September 11, let us all try to find something practical to do that can, in however small a way, bring help and relief to all those in pain, even -- and perhaps especially -- those we may regard as enemies...Imam Feisal Rauf is a Sufi. Over the centuries, Sufis, the mystics of Islam, have developed an outstanding appreciation of other faith traditions. It is quite common for a Sufi poet to cry in ecstasy that he is no longer a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew and that he is at home equally in a synagogue, mosque, temple or church, because once you have glimpsed the immensity of the divine, these limited, human distinctions fall away into insignificance. We need that spirit today -- perhaps especially near Ground Zero."

--Karen Armstrong

Quote for the Day--Obamanomics is Not Keynesian

"The way the right wants to tell the story — and, I’m afraid, the way it will play in November — is that the Obama team went all out for Keynesian policies, and they failed. So back to supply-side economics!

The point, of course, is that that is not at all what happened. A straight Keynesian analysis implied the need for a much bigger program, more oriented toward spending, than the administration proposed."

--Paul Krugman

Quote for the Day--The Joy of Infinite Love

"As Kierkegaard said, if at every moment both present and future I were certain that nothing has happened or can ever happen that would separate us from the infinite love of the Infinite, that would be the reason for joy."

-- Huston Smith

The Japanese Aesthetic Defined

I've been listening to a marvelous The Teaching Company course by Professor Grant L. Voth on the History of World Literature. I listen to it on my iPod Touch while taking my daily morning walk along a lovely creek trail. Today, I heard a lecture on Japanese poetry.

The Japanese aesthetic has always held an especially strong appeal for me, from the time I used to listen as a little boy to the tinkling of an ancient Japanese tune on my mother's music box to my introduction by Alan Watts to Zen and Japanese culture to today when a part of me still yearns to model the traditional Japanese aesthetic in the exterior and interior design of my home and my whole way of life.

But what exactly is that aesthetic? Well, today, Dr. Voth listed four of its key principles, qualities, or elements: (1) Subtle suggestion rather than explicit statement; (2) Asymmetry is always preferable to symmetry; (3) Simplicity is superior to complexity or clutter; and (4) Perishability is preferable to permanence.

I guess what this all boils down to is that the traditional Japanese aesthetic seems to possess a subtlety and depth missing from the traditional Western one where things tend to be much more boldly and, oftentimes, clumsily "in your face."

The paradox of this for me is that while I'm attracted to the subtlety and depth of the traditional Japanese aesthetic, I seem to have the kind of mind that finds it difficult to penetrate beneath the surfaces of things and ideas to plumb the depths beneath. Maybe it's partly a case of being drawn to the mystery of what is, for me, the forever impenetrable and unfathomable.

Quote for the Day--Leave the Sandbox

"In the perspective of mysticism, most of us are still playing in the world as if we were children in a giant sandbox. We have our rattles, we hold on tightly to our Popsicles; for the vast majority of us, most of life is spent with toys. Figures like Sri Krishna, Christ, and the Buddha come to the edge of the sandbox and remind us gently, “Look, your hair is turning gray. Do you want to play here forever? There are vast worlds to be discovered.” But often we reply, in effect, “Right, Lord. Just let me finish this one sand castle"...If we keep playing with pleasures and possessions for decades, before we realize it the sandbox becomes our universe. Then we have no thought for what we really are, who is within us, what is our destiny, whether life has any goal.”

-- Eknath Easwaran

Quote for the Day--Double Dip Recession

"No one in their right mind would have wished for another Great Depression, of course. But we seem to have got the worst of all worlds. The bank bailout, the stimulus, and the Fed brought us back from the brink just enough to dampen zeal for anything more. As a result, we are now slouching toward a tepid recovery that could just as well fall into a double dip recession, while a large portion of our population suffers immensely."

--Robert Reich

Quote of the Day--Eyes on the Path

“I know some people say “Keep your eyes on the prize,” but I disagree. When your eyes are stuck on the prize, you’re going to keep stumbling and crashing into things. If you really want to get ahead, you’ve got to keep your eyes focused on the path.”

--Russell Simmons

Was There a Ghost in Our Hotel Room?

My wife and I stayed at a hotel in Southern California last weekend. I won't say which hotel it was because I wouldn't want to get them or myself in any trouble. But I do want to report what we saw in our room.

We were lying in bed talking Sunday morning when I caught a fleeting glimpse of what appeared to be a moving shadow on the ceiling in front of the open bathroom door. My wife kept the bathroom light on and the door open a crack so she could find her way to the bathroom in the dark if she needed to. What I saw looked like the shadow someone might cast on the ceiling if they were in the lighted bathroom. But no one was in there.

I didn't think much of it or say anything about it. First of all, I don't believe in supernatural phenomena like spirits or ghosts, although I don't rule them out completely, and I just figured that my eyes were playing tricks on me. I never saw anything else like that the two nights we were there, and my wife didn't mention anything about it at the time.

Yet, this morning my wife called from work and asked if I'd seen anything "strange" in that room. I said, "Like what?" and she replied that she had seen the moving shadow. But she saw it four or five times. She also said she'd had a peculiar dream or two about a little boy in that room. I felt a few chills along my spine. I'm feeling them now too.

I told her that I didn't have any peculiar dreams, but I did see what she saw. I also asked why she didn't say anything to me while we were in the room. She answered that she didn't want me to stay awake looking for anything out of the ordinary and, besides, she didn't feel threatened by whatever it was that she saw.

I should explain that my wife is Thai. As a Thai, she believes in ghosts and takes them rather matter-of-factly. In fact, she and her whole family believe that a benevolent ghost protects their property in Bangkok. The opening fight scene from Rambo III was filmed there and they've called it the "Rambo House" ever since. You can read my blogpost about the filming here. The reputed ghost appears as an old lady sweeping the grounds of the property. She doesn't appear to family members but only to guests staying overnight. Everybody calls her "the caretaker" in Thai.

Back to our hotel room. I don't know what we saw. I'm inclined to believe that there's a natural explanation for it even if I don't know what it is. But who knows what it REALLY was?

I guess only The Shadow knows.

Quote of the Day--Existence Is Harm

Each one of us was harmed by being brought into existence. That harm was not negligible, because the quality of even the best lives is very bad--and considerably worse than most people recognize it to be. Although it is obviously too late to prevent our own existence, it is not too late to prevent the existence of future possible people. Creating new people is thus morally problematic.

--David Benatar from Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence

Quote of the Day--'24's' Degradation of the Presidency

"Whether Jack Bauer lives, dies, or falls off the grid is ultimately of little consequence, but how people view their president has a colossal effect on how we feel about our country and our place in it. If viewers found themselves relating to 24's final notes for its portrayal of a government bent on destruction, it's a disappointing, sullying end for one of television's most innovative shows."
--Joshua Alston

Quote of the Day--America's Spare Tire

"America used its spare tire to prevent a collapse of the banking system and to stimulate the economy after the subprime market crash. The European Union used its spare tire on its own economic stimulus and then to prevent a run on European banks triggered by the meltdown in Greece. This all better work, because we’re not only living in a world without any more spares but also in a world without distance. Nations are more tightly integrated than ever before. We’re driving bumper to bumper with every other major economy today, so misbehavior or mistakes anywhere can cause a global pileup."
--Thomas L. Friedman

Quote of the Day--The Purpose of Life

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”
--Robin Sharma from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Hallelujah

I used to make fun of the idea that heaven is angels circling God saying "Hallelujah" for all eternity. "How boring!" I would exclaim and think that hell could scarcely be worse.

But if heaven were angels singing "Hallelujah" like K.D. Lang in this stupendously stunning version of the great Leonard Cohen song that she performed during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics this year in Toronto, heaven might be pretty blissful indeed.

My Friend's Final Months

My former girlfriend recently learned that she has terminal liver cancer. First she was told that she probably had six months to live. But after more tests were run, her oncologist told her yesterday that it's closer to two months. She's 54 years young.

She said to me, "Why me? I'm a good person. I don't deserve this."

Of course she doesn't. Nobody "deserves" to die such a miserable death. Yes, someone could argue that she did things over the course of her life that likely helped bring this on. Yet, this doesn't mean she "deserves" to die so relatively young of such an awful disease.

But who cares, besides the handful of us who do? Does nature care? Does "God," by whatever name or formless form, care? I don't see how.

I don't know what to say to her at a time like this. Any comforting words that I contemplate offering her over the phone seem too shallowly if not insultingly platitudinous to utter. So, I mostly just listen with as much empathy and compassion as I can muster.

But how can one who's not in her position REALLY empathize with her? I know intellectually that I'm going to die someday, but I haven't had a doctor look me squarely in the eye and tell me I've got only two more months to live. Only if that were to happen, as perhaps it will someday, will I TRULY know what she's going through today. And by then it's likely to be of no benefit to her.

And without much empathy, there's not as much compassion as I'd like to feel and express. Because if the truth be told--and what else is this blog for if not to "nakedly" reveal the unvarnished truth within and without?--I almost envy her. For I've asked myself how I would feel if I were in her place, and the first word that came to mind was "relieved." After all, she's been living on borrowed time for eight or so years tethered to an oxygen machine and unable to do much of anything but lie in bed watching TV and sleeping. That must be awfully old by now. Soon, she'll be released from her gasping debility and suffering into pure nothingness.

But as soon as I post this, I'll call her and be as present for her as I can. And if her dying wish is granted and she's able to escape the loveless place that now imprisons her and come back to California to live out her last days with a longtime friend, I'll go see her and sit with her, and maybe, as I look into her eyes, hold her hand, and see and feel the life ebb from her body, something more will stir in me and radiate from me than I can feel or express now.

Maybe, when I witness, "up close and personal," the inescapable and implacable tragedy of her dying, I'll glow with more life and be able to meet my own eventual death or help others to meet theirs with fewer regrets than my friend undoubtedly feels over decades of wasted opportunities.