What we don't want

Just like our reflection on Bowen's song showed us, home can be a lot of things to a lot of people. Regardless of what we might specifically think it is, one thing is certain, we are dead certain when we don't have it. In other words, it almost seems as if we have a clearer idea of what it isn't than what it is.

This isn't all that uncommon really. When it comes to the really big-ticket items ... Gd, Life, Happiness, Peace of Mind, Success ... we really can't just sit down and explain it to someone, describe in detail what it is. About all we can do is say what it isn't. When we have a clearer idea of what something isn't, all of that knowledge (and it is truly knowledge, for it aids us in doing things), can be brought to bear on our striving toward those ideals. Instead of seeking the positive things, the positive characteristics, it is often easier to simply avoid the things that will thwart our efforts. If you want to be happy, start avoiding things that make you unhappy. You may not get to your goal all at once, but you're certainly closer.

This approach isn't anything new, that's for sure. St. Thomas Aquinas and his fellow Scholastics made great use of it. They even had a name for it, the via negativa (the negative way). This isn't the curmudgeon's get-into-jail-free card, it is just a more pragmatic approach to staying out of trouble, hence out of unhappiness, which by default puts us closer to what we really want to be, namely happy. The method, this approach, if you will, has fallen somewhat out of favor in our modern, be-positive world, but there are those around, like the Swiss author and consultant Rolf Dobelli, who promote it very actively and make it the centerpiece of their own activities.

It would seem, however, that the old Dale Carnegie power-of-positive-thinking is still holding sway, but how many of you have secretly given up on being positive about everything. You set yourself up for disappointment when you're always striving for something positive and barely ever attain it. Or we do finally attain it and realize it isn't what we thought it would be. Don't you just hate when that happens! I do. No, it would seem that maybe we don't always specifically know what we want. And if we don't, but we don't want to do nothing until we've got it all figured out, well, that's the time to head out on the good old via negativa

It may not be the panacea that some of you may be looking for, but I'm willing to bet it's a better deal that what you've got going right now. What's really good about it is that it can be applied to just about anything we want to achieve, attain, reach, you name it. You don't have to go for the gusto, just avoid what it isn't. It can't be any simpler than that.

Heaven home?

The last couple of posts dealing with Wade Bowen's song got me thinking a bit farther afield as well. In fact, while reflecting on it, I was reminded of a story I heard a long time ago that made quite the impression on me, so I thought I'd share:

A student once asked his Rabbi: "Worthy Teacher, what is Hell like?"

To which, the Rabbi responded: "Hell, my Son, is like a great banquet, a feast attended by all. There are rich and luscious delicacies beyond the imagination, food of all kinds and in never-ending abundance.

"Around the table, however, are sitting the most pitiful and ravaged souls. Skeletons with the flesh falling from their bones because they have been given only long spoons to eat with and try as they might, they simply cannot get the food into their mouths. They sit in the presence of all that is good and they are starving.

"Well, then, Worthy Teacher, what is Heaven like?"

"Ah, Heaven, my Son", the Rabbi answered, "Heaven is like a great banquet, a feast attended by all. There are rich and luscious delicacies beyond the imagination, food of all kinds and in never-ending abundance.

"Around the table, however, are sitting plump and jolly souls. Laughing and thankful folks who have also been given those long spoons as well, and they are merrily feeding one another."

Just a thought ...

True home

What Bowen's text got me thinking about is his intimation, the implication, that "home" is not to be found here, but only once we die, in the afterlife, in Heaven, if you will.

My trouble with this is the fact that it is precisely this view of "home" that has been perpetrated by organized religion for as long as I can remember, and it would seem - if you read even just a little bit of history - for a long, long time. What bothers me about it is the fact that it provides too much "justification" for our miserable lives here. Granted, we've made all kinds of "progress" and we are drowning in creature comforts, but oddly enough, even in this day and age, in the very straightforward, down-to-earth mind of the singer, we still haven't managed to have Heaven on Earth. There is still something missing, there is still the loneliness, the isolation, the alienation ... all those sensations that are the opposite of what we consider to be "home".

Oh, I can hear some of you already: but it's always been that way (the "way-it-is" fallacy, again), and who is little ol' me to change something that big (the "I'm-just-me" fallacy, also again)? We're just always getting in our own way, it would seem.

I can't be the only one that it might have occurred to that maybe that's why we've been put here in the first place: to make this place our home. We're all in this together folks. The history of DNA shows us that we're all somehow related, if you go back far enough, or if you take the Adam-and-Eve story seriously. What we do is just limit ourselves in the oddest kinds of ways and we do so with an energy that could just as easily be redirected to something a lot more constructive.

No, folks ... I hate to be the one to break it to you (OK, not really), but it's just us, right here, right now. You can believe in a Creator, something greater than ourselves, and you can believe that there is nothing but the matter we encounter in this particular reality. It doesn't matter. All of us on this planet, whether we like it or not, or whether we can satisfactorily explain it or not, are simply all faced with the same, common fate. In other words, if we don't do it, it just isn't going to get done.

If things are bad, if things aren't like they should be, if things aren't like what we would like them to be, there is nobody to blame but ourselves. This is our home, and it seems to me that it's high time to start treating it as such, and treating each other as the family we actually are. If we did, we wouldn't have to wait for death before we had our togetherness. Instead, we're just killing ourselves with a loneliness that is self-induced, because we apparently can't see the obvious.

Home

Home, I suppose, is a lot of things to a lot of people. Home is

... where you hang your hat (or, as Groucho Marx put it, where you hang your head).
... where the heart is.
... where your bread is buttered.
... the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes.
... where you can scratch where it itches.
... where you can say anything you please, because nobody pays any attention to you anyway. (Joe Moore)
... the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. (Robert Frost)

Yes, it is a lot of different things. But, what all of these ideas - serious or humorous - have in common is a feeling of being accepted, a feeling of being where you belong. And, all of these different ways of saying it is that "home" is a place where there is a certain amount of peace (even if it can be hectic at times). Home, for perhaps the very same reasons (which is also, just a tad schizophrenic), is something that we too often just take for granted. Home, going home, being home ... are all so self-evident that we simply overlook how important it is and how meaningful it is to everyone who has ever experienced it.

But, another idea is that it's somehow related to the family, too. Granted, not everyone gets along with their family. Lord knows how many these days no longer deserve to be even called that, but this also makes it small, but above all, personal. Yes, home is a very personal idea, one that is personal to each and every one of us.

For some reason, though, our singer appears to be having trouble finding his ... or at least finding his way there, or perhaps back there. This is also a common theme. Home is sometimes where you spend half you life trying to get away, and the other half trying to get back. Again, that's part of the low-end schizophrenia that so characterizes too many of us these days. But you don't have to have run away to get that feeling. "Hansel and Gretel" is as power a fairy tale as it is, not just because of the witch or the gingerbread house, but because it's a tale of being lost from home.

No, home is a very powerful, very pervasive, and very personal idea. This is one that we haven't necessarily made up, but it is certainly one that we color in many different ways. What makes it so strong, though, is that although the individual ideas of home may be different, we all immediately know what everyone is talking about whenever the notion is invoked.

Togetherness

There are two things about Wade's little ditty, the first of which is the idea of "togetherness".

Of the song's eight stanzas, four of them (1, 2, 5, and 6) are context-setters: they ask questions or make statements about the singer's feelings about life. The other four (3-4 & 7-8) constitute two two-stanza refrains in which he presents his solution to the problem. Unsurprisingly, the "problem" is the sense of pain and frustration caused by loneliness; the "solution" is, in a word, "togetherness". It is by and through others that we become whole. And there's nothing new about this either. So what about the song got me thinking?

The theme addressed in this simple song is one that forms the heart of most modern music (and by that I mean rock & roll, country & western, rhythm & blues, and all their many variations) for as long as I've been listening. This theme has been stated, sung, spoken, crooned, warbled and shouted so often that I'm beginning to think we have simply tuned it out. I mean, how hard can it be? We all feel better when we feel and know that there are others - just one significant other - who care about us. We all feel better when we know and feel that we care about them in return, and even when it involves people who aren't even aware of our feelings. This is, in other words, something I'm sure practically every single one of us have had a some, several, or many points in our lives. In fact, I would be so bold as to maintain that it is a universal human experience, for I've seen it and felt it everywhere I have ever been.

Why is it then - and now we're getting to the reflection part - that the world's still such a nasty place at times? Why is it that so many people too often feel just like the singer of the song? Why are feelings of isolation, solitude, and loneliness so widespread? It doesn't seem to make much sense. In fact, to me it doesn't make any sense at all.

Maybe that's what's so difficult about it: it's so simple. Like the Golden Rule ... easy to say, straightforward as all get-out, and seemingly impossible to put into practice. But, I don't find that such a satisfying explanation. If we simply can't, we won't, and if we don't, there's no hope, and that's what I'm trying to avoid.

But, there is something else about the song that got me thinking, and it's what the singer sees as a pre-condition for the solution. Next time ...

If we ever make it home

OK, so making things up is a big part of our lives, that can't be the end of the story. We do this in many more aspects of our lives than just business or economics. It's actually something that we do more often than not, and like is so often the case, we do it without really even thinking, so let me take another example:

A reported-deceased-but-still-much-alive fraternity brother from long-times-past turned me on to a Wade Bowen song (with the same title as this post) that I decided to share with you, for it got me thinking. It's not that I'm going sentimental on you, rather, there is an ultimate point to all of this. Here are the lyrics (with some help from Weldon B.):

Is anybody out there searching
Has anybody lost the way
Am I the only one who’s hurting
Today

Must have got some bad directions
How’d we ever end up here
All this pain and desperation
And fear

If we ever make it home
They’ll be peace like we’ve never known
Nobody’s gonna walk alone
We’ll be leaning on each other

Every wall that we’ve built up high
Is gonna fall right before our eyes
Love will surely conquer hate
If we ever make it home

There’s darkness in the daylight
As the devil works his trade
He’s the first one to the gravesite
With a smile on his face

There’s a flicker in the distance
Where a single candle glows
And another walking with us
Who knows

If we ever make it home
They’ll be peace like we’ve never known
Nobody’s gonna walk alone
We’ll be leaning on each other
Loving one another

Every wall that we’ve built up high
Is gonna fall right before our eyes
Love will surely conquer hate
If we ever make it home

Oh if we ever make it home

You see, it's just a simple, straightforward, red-dirt text. It's neither high-end poetry, nor profoundly philosophical, nor should it be. It is, like any good song, though, one that should stimulate us to reflection.

The reflections are next.

Left holding the ...

Is it really that simple? Well, yes, in fact, it is. There are many ideas that we encounter every day that are however they are because we made them that way or we have allowed them to become that way. Let me take a common business example:

We all know what a "shareholder" is: someone who owns a share (or shares) in a business. We also know what a stakeholder is: someone who has a vested interest in a business. Simple enough. Now the question: who decided, when, and how that shareholders are more important than stakeholders? Is there some inexorable, immutable law of economics that dictates such, or did we just make it up? I think it's obvious, we made it up. So let's take a closer look at this pair of ideas:

I think it is reasonable to maintain that all shareholders are stakeholders, but not all stakeholders are shareholders. The moment someone wants to build a nuclear waste disposal facility in my backyard, I have a vested interest in that business' business, whether I own any of its shares or not. As I tried to make clear quite a while ago (Stock Market 101a and Stock Market 101b), if you just bought some paper in the market, you've neither invested, nor are you really an owner, you're just a stockholder, a speculator, and as such, you are more interested in how much you will earn when you turn over the stock. The future of the company and the results of its activities are not your primary concern, as they are for the people trying to run the business and those that are directly affected by its actions.

This is the reason that the idea of "shareholder value" is so perverse. Yes, technically you own shares, but the reason for the business' existence isn't your prime concern. Stakeholders - folks who are directly affected by each and every action of that company - are much more involved, and for that very reason, should be considered much more important.

How did this get turned around? Good question, but we can see that it is the way it is for no other reason that we allowed it to get that way. I'm not against anybody buying or selling shares, as long as they realize that their true role in the economy has little to do directly with the business itself. And, as far as I'm concerned, they should be treated accordingly.

If we made it up, then we should be allowed to change it ... but we can never change ideas alone.

Well, if it's just made up ...

Sometimes just a simple shift of perspective can help make sense of things. In essence, we humans are really a very simple sort. This isn't a bad thing either. We may have ideological issues as soon as things get a bit to big for us individually. What works in the family may or may not work in the neighborhood, but it usually does. What works in the neighborhood may or may not work in the community, but it usually does. When we get to larger units of organization, however, that's when we find that things start breaking down, or at least tend to break sooner.

What we need to remember that in these larger contexts the "-isms" and -"ists" start showing up and they can throw us off balance quickly. Consider these three simple words: "ego", "egoism", "egoist". Or, how about these: "collective", "collectivism", "collectivist". Or ... here's one that can get lots of folks rotating: "social", "socialism", "socialist".

The first words in each of these sets causes us hardly any problem at all, but the remaining two, in each case, get weighted down with increasing negativity. Why is that? The second terms in the sets simply represent ideas, nothing more. The third terms are simply individuals who we can say subscribe to the ideas. Why are the ideas, then so negative? The first terms in the set are merely descriptors or simple facts. That part of each of we like to refer to as "I" is called an ego in psychology. A collective is merely a group of individuals with a common purpose (like a business, for example). And social is how we as humans are by nature. There's nothing evil nor nefarious nor even suspect in any of these, but as soon as we raise them to the status of notions or concepts, ones that can, it would seem, have individuals who believe in them, then things start to change.

What we need to remember, I think, is that these are, in fact, just ideas. They mean what they mean because we make them mean that. We agree, as a group, most often unconsciously, that these concepts (and all others like them) have a particular meaning. In other words, as I never tire of saying, we simply "make them up". The downside of this is that this is a hard process to steer. The upside is, though, that if we don't like the way we're headed with them, we can change direction.

There are still a lot of things up to us. We just have to recognize that they are.

Is it even possible?

It is very possible that I'm just missing the real point, but I know that in most of small-town America, for example, cooperation and support and mutual consideration are high priorities. Why do we think that we can't take this up a level, say, to the national, or even international level? That's something else that makes me wonder.

After all, humans are social creatures. It's part of who we are as a species. The dependency (and yes, I chose that word specifically) is hardwired into our DNA. It's part of what makes us human. We can, however, with enough focus and effort sometimes overcome such "mere" limitations, but I think we do so at our own peril. The mind is a very powerful thing. Perceptions can be game-changers, and it would seem that at sometime within my own lifetime the game got changed.

My philosophical friend Günther Anders advances the notion that our multifaceted, over-stimulated existence forces us into a kind of schizophrenia. It sounds bad, and it probably is, but think about it: we cook dinner, have the TV on in the background, we're minding the kids and the spouse is standing there unloading about the bad day at work. Where's our attention? Are we really devoting the time and effort to each of these tasks that they duly deserve? I doubt it. We've split ourselves into more than one person, trying to more than one thing at the same time. That's backwards. There should be more than one person attending to anyone of those things at any given time.

In the popular imagination, schizophrenia is a split personality. In other words, the unity of the individual has been shattered. As a result, we have a lot of trouble just getting ourselves together (which is one way we phrase this), and if we aren't getting it together, who is? It turns out more are not than are.

This is anything but a healthy state of affairs. What we once understood as a given social bond, something that bound us together has become more and more difficult to achieve. We would like help and support in the family. We seek help and support in the neighborhood, perhaps our local community, but beyond that, we are of a different mind. Out there, in the "real world", in the dog-eat-dog business world, the world of global competition, it's every person for him or herself.

And that's schizophrenic. We act one way here, another there. We believe one thing here, another there. This goes beyond the mere adapting to changing circumstances. Being of more than one mind isn't healthy.

Get it together

OK, now that I have all that off my chest, maybe I can get back to just wondering there are so many things that just make me wonder.

It is obvious to me that there are just some things that you can't do alone. Since such a big deal was made of this "building businesses" thing, it seems like fair game as an example. Aside from any political ideology, unless you are (a) a sole proprietor with no employees OR (b) a limited liability corporation with no employees AND (c) you contract out NO work, then, OK, whatever your business is, I agree, you built it. Yes, there are a whole lot of small businesses - microbusinesses - out there, but if there's more than one of you, you didn't do it all by yourself. You might have had the idea, you might have even decided which way to go, but you had help with the actual building of the business, because all such businesses must run or they can't be built at all.

My question is, what's wrong with that? Why is it such an insult to simply say, I had help. Does that make one less of a business person? I can't begin to imaging why? Does it make one dumber than other business people? I'd say know, for it is the intelligent person who knows what s/he can and can't do and who might be the best person to lend a hand. So, if there is no real problem here, what is the problem?

It's this inability to put my finger on the cause that frustrates me. If it's not a business issue, and since it shouldn't be a social issue (that's how organizations are supposed to function), it must, then, be a personal issue. There must be something in the American psyche (and I have to restrict this a bit, because I have been asked by more than one neighbor what this whole thing is about).

Personally, I don't think it's only an American thing, but Americans may be better at it than others. The problem, I believe, is simple egoism. Again, too much me, not enough we. I have always been amazed that pitchers win baseball games, even though there are eight other players on the field with them; and quarterbacks are responsible for football wins, though they call upon more than 30 other players (when you consider the rest of the offense, the defense and special teams) to win ... well, to even play the game.

I think it's kind of sad, though, because it not only ignores a lot of valuable contributions, in a way, it also denigrates those who aren't the star. But, without them - the non-stars - nothing would happen at all.

SOD - Same Old Dilemma

I'm starting to think like Yogi Berra. It's deja vu all over again.

Nothing seems to work. Nothing functions as it should. Real discussion is next to impossible. Nobody is really responsible for anything. Everybody else is all screwed up. You really can't get anything accomplished. A major election is bearing down on the Americans, and there are more and more of them most likely thinking that there's no way that they can't waste their vote (a truly American idea). And those of us who think they have a clue are proposing one solution after another that may in fact solve one problem, but each of these "solutions" invariably causes a half-a-dozen new problems.

No, it's not a happy place. Deja vu all over again is what we know as a rut. We're in one, and it's an exasperating one on top of everything else. Poor us.

Well, no. Yes, nothing works, and we're all in an exasperating rut, but I'm afraid you're not going to get any pity from me.

It's not that I'm a pitiless person, far from it. I like to think, and I do try whenever possible, to awaken my own sense of empathy and compassion for anyone who finds him or herself in a inescapable (or perceived inescapable) dilemma. And, I'm especially sensitive and sympathetic toward people who find themselves in dilemmas that are not of their own making. Those are the people I believe we are called to help. We, however, are none of the above.

No, I think I've come to the conclusion that things are just the way we want them. We all know things are "suboptimal", to use a non-word to describe what is really a non-situation. Things don't have to be as they are, but there are precious few of us who want them to be different. And we all know that most folks are only interested in any kind of change if it is a change that provides them some kind of personal advantage: if there's nothing in it for me, why should I be involved at all? Bad question.

What is in it for you is precisely what is in it for everyone else: something different. You get what you ask for, you get what you work for, and you get what you deserve.

If you think things are going to hell in a handbasket, well, don't come crying to me. If things aren't as you like them, there is only one person to blame: yourself.

Yes, in case you missed it: it's all your fault. So, as the Brits like to say, "SOD it."

The "I'm-just-me" fallacy

So, what do you want me to do about it; I'm just one person?

Yep, each and every one of us (at least I hope so) is just one person. Just like the Beatles once sang, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." This should be the oop-oop-dee-doop moment. Yes, each and every one of us is just one person, and yes, each and every large-scale problem we face is bigger than any one of us, so why do we even think that any one of us should even attempt to propose the solution? We needn't. We shouldn't.

For us moderns, though, this fallacy is a little more problematic. We simply don't do things all by ourselves. Even when we say we do (and we've been hearing more than enough about that in all the campaigning that's going on in America), we don't. Everybody gets help from someone or from some group of people, and practically everybody gives some kind of help to someone somewhere, maybe even to more than one person. We humans are social creatures and we simply don't do very well on our own. The problem is, we simply have to own up to the fact that we're not in any of this alone.

I don't know when this fear of groups came about. Americans, for example, are staunch supporters of individualism, but there are no bigger fan groupings than there (and if you don't believe me, go to a major American sporting event of any kind, any time, anywhere). So where's the problem? Why isn't it possible to get together with others and actually do something to make things better. Oh, sure, there are some of you who think that's what you do in supporting your political party or its candidate, by voting, or any number of other little non-actions that are really not collective efforts at all. Barns didn't get raised in America 150 years ago because it was up to everyone to build his own barn, and natural-catastrophe victims don't get helped because I happen to have an extra blanket around the house. No, these kinds of things get done because we join together with others to make sure they happen. Acting collectively is not a bad thing. Anything can be bad if abused, so why do we disparage the idea when what it is that we really have an issue with is the abuse of the idea?

The point is, it is never just you. You are never all on your own. You are never alone. You may think you are. It may feel like you are. But if you look, you'll find like-minded individuals who will help out. You have to go out and find them, you have to get together with them, and you have to get busy.

Yes, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." Just admit it.

The "way-it-is" fallacy

You can't expect me to do anything about all this crap ... that's just the way it is.

Do you ever hear that one? I hear it a lot. It's one of the things that ticks me off maybe more than anything else. If we look at the big three of human existence - religion, politics and economics - there is not a single thing about any one of them that is just-the-way-it-is. Over the past couple of months, I've spent a lot of time and effort trying to show just why this is the case. This is stuff we (and by "we" I mean every single one of us, without exception) humans have simply made up. There is no natural law of religion, like there is, say, a law of gravitation, or that there are three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas).

Each religion is a collection of beliefs and doctrines that human beings have - at a minimum - collected, organized and attempted to implement. In all of the Scriptures of all the religions that I've read, there was never anything anywhere that said how to do it. For the most part, they were simply collections of how one should be and how one should act. Some human being or some collection of human beings - perhaps over time even - specified what that "how" should be.

Every political system, from the divine right of monarchy to democratically elected officials is a human construct. Somebody, or some group of people, sat down, formulated some principles and others have tended to follow them. Again, there is no law of politics, there is nothing that says there even has to be politics, but that we have to have as much as we do, that we have to do it in a particular way ... well, that's just something we decided to do, not something we can't do anything about.

And my favorite, economics ... there is no natural law of money or credit or anything of the sort. As a so-called "science" (which I personally think it is anything but), it's barely 250 years old, and all of the problems that we have since we've talked about it this way haven't been solved. I mean, what good is a science if it can't solve problems. It is, as currently portrayed, practiced and propagated, is the most worthless of all. Yet, it is the one that we have placed most centrally in our thinking, and it is the one that everybody feels most helpless in dealing with.

Why? I don't know. But each and every one of these three significant parts of our lives are anything but something that is just that way. No, in simplest terms: we made them up. There manifestations and expression in our lives are simply how we "decided" to organize our existence. We could just as easily have thought of something else, but we didn't. This simple realization that much of what pains us about life are simply fictions, is tough for a lot to folks to swallow. It takes courage to admit that maybe we didn't do as well on these as we could have. I don't really think that's a problem at all.

If we don't like something, if we see that something isn't working, then we are free to change it. That is how it really is.

The show must go on

Yes, the show. Where would we be without the show? Over the past couple of weeks, especially in America, there has been nothing but non-stop show.

I'll tell you, though, what is tough for us ex-pats to explain: why all the show, and why doesn't substance matter anymore? I realize, of course, that the statement/question is a bit oversimplified and something of a rather platitudinous generalization, but it's not completely without merit. After all, as I asked a couple of posts ago: why conventions? they really don't do anything except put on a show.

Well, without thinking about it long and hard - which I'm sure I'll do eventually - I think that the lack of substance that all of sense is a simple defensive reaction. There's too many stimuli in our environment, there is too much noise, too much movement, too many unresolved issues, too many things that just don't seem to work anymore, too many unanswered questions ... and beyond the shadow of a doubt, too many opinions. We're being overwhelmed, we are drowning, in a flood of data, information and issues, too many of which are simply beyond most of our understanding.

There are things that we probably can do very little about without Herculean efforts: global warming (it may not be just humans causing it, but if you don't acknowledge it, you can't do anything about it, but it'll happen anyway); economic inequality (not just personally and individually, but globally); debt and deficits (what can I say); militarization and war (if there is anything that 100,000 years of human history should have made clear: it's not even worth thinking about as an answer). But, in all the conversations that I've had, especially over the past two weeks or so, everyone whom I talked to said the very same thing, almost as if it had been scripted by someone else: "Well, that's just the way things are, there's nothing that a little guy (or gal) like me can do about it."

To my mind, that's the biggest problem of all.

I think one of the reasons we think we can't do anything is simply because we're overwhelmed by it all. There's just too much to think about, and thinking about stuff - whether you want to admit it or not - is a lot of work. There's too much to keep track of, there is too much for me to figure out, there's too much that I don't know enough about, there's not enough time in the day, there is nothing I can do. Same old same-old means we get more of the same old stuff.

How frustrating is that? There is obviously something wrong with the picture.

Willing to learn

Maybe I've been a bit hard on my fellow country-people as of late. Oh, they're allegedly a rough-and-tumble sort, so they should be able to stand it, but perhaps I've been inaccurate in some of my assessments. After all, I was thinking about possible explanations for what I am witnessing ... and inductive approach, to be sure: look at the facts and phenomena being displayed and try to generate an explanation (theory) to account for them. However, having at least a modicum of respect for science, I agree that in light of new evidence, if necessary, the explanation needs to be modified accordingly.

Recently, I was re-reading a true American classic, Richard Hofstadter's Anti-intellectualism in American Life. It was a Pulitzer winner, and I know, for many of you, simply "high-brow", but that's what the book is really all about: just how long that attitude has been part and parcel of what America is and what it stands for. At any rate, I ran across the following statement in a footnote:

Electoral appeals on both sides [of the presidential contest between Jackson and Adams] were lacking in truth and in delicacy [...].

Now, apart from the fact that a sentence like that makes the heart of a former student of language and literature beat just a little faster, it is even more remarkable for its relevance today. Doesn't that very well describe an attack ad? Lacking in truth and in delicacy? Perhaps we shouldn't be so kind to the below-the-belt exchanges that pass for campaigning for the office of what many bill as the "most powerful person on earth". Why am I the only one who is apparently shocked by the discrepancy between what it's supposed to be about and how everyone seems to be going about doing it?

My point is really that you can romanticize all you want about the good old days (that really weren't), but the uneducated, uncouth, simply ignorant adoration of brute force, deceit, and backhandedness exhibited then and being exhibited now strikes me as more than just inappropriate when we are talking about a decision that is going to affect the lives of (at least potentially) every single human being on this planet.

When the backwoodsmen of the frontier were squabbling amongst themselves, it was bad enough, but it really didn't matter all that much. In the world today, as globalized and as networked as we are, such squabbling is no longer isolated and provincial, it's a demonstration of real values that some folks hold dear.

The world is watching, but I'm not convinced they think it's a good show.