The Casual Blog

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August 14, 2011

Post-Enlightenment thinking and Michelle Bachmann

Is there any question that science, logic, and reason are excellent tools for problem solving? OK, these systems aren’t perfect, and they don’t apply to every problem. But can any thoughtful person fail to recognize their power to transform civilization and improve lives?

The answer is yes. Some people rely primarily on myth and magic as thought systems. But I normally think of these people as a not-very-significant minority. It may be, though, that that minority is getting more significant.

A column in the NY Times today by Neal Gabler posits that we live in a post-Enlightenment society that has gone backward intellectually to a method that does not employ rational thought. Gabler takes this as settled, and argues that it’s even worse: that we are moving into a post-idea world, where thinking is simply no longer done. Instead, we exchange undigested facts. As evidence, he cites social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

I’m not persuaded that social media is killing ideas, or even that the post-Enlightenment has arrived. But anti-rationalism is alive and well. Exhibit A: Michelle Bachmann. Yesterday Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll. In this week’s New Yorker, Ryan Lizza discusses the ideas that shaped her thinking.

Bachmann comes out of a tradition that believes the Bible is the literal, infallible, and unerring word of God. She claims to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and believes that he controls her life. She’s also been influenced by various fundamentalist thinkers who have some disturbing notions, including a revisionist view of slavery that holds that it was not all that bad.

It strikes me as implausible that Bachmann could be a serious contender for the presidency, but her style of thinking is having an impact on public policy. It’s hard to understand how the Tea Partiers could refuse to discuss the issue of tax rates, and be prepared to insist on this point at the cost of economic catastrophe. But if you believe that your ideas are coming directly from God, how could you question them? Why would you care to listen to opposing views? Why would you consider compromise? Thus usually harmless nonsensical beliefs become dangerous.

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July 21, 2011

Celebrating a wedding and a birthday

Sally and I went to Virginia Beach last weekend for the wedding of my niece Lauren. We were looking forward to seeing my siblings and their families, but there was also a slight feeling of dread. We were from a different tribe from most of this community, which is largely evangelical Christian Republican. We always wonder how we’ll deal with our deep differences, but we always finesse it. Despite our different political and other beliefs, there are a lot of things we have in common, and we focus on those.

I used to find weddings (except for mine) slightly strange, but as the years go by, I find them more and more moving. Young people bravely pressing into the unknown, full of hope and optimism, full of love. Lauren was a beautiful bride, and bouncing with excitement. Dustin, her betrothed, seemed sweet and committed. The ceremony contained various religious elements which meant nothing to me, but the uniting of these young people meant much. And afterwards, I loved seeing all their friends dancing and having fun.

After the wedding, my brother Paul took us out on the Chesapeake in his 30 foot power boat. I took the helm for an hour or so, and found that keeping on course in choppy water was more work than I thought. It was sufficiently rough that there was some seasickness, and we aborted the longer journey we’d planned. But we found a group of at least a dozen dolphins, and got close to watch them play. We also cruised through the inlets and looked at the impressive homes and boats, and had some wine.

Lauren’s wedding day was also my 56th birthday. I don’t like making a big production out of birthdays, and was happy to have something to celebrate other than getting older. But over the weekend, I found myself thinking about this milestone, and how different it was from what I would have imagined. From the vantage point of Lauren (23 years old), I’d have assumed this would be a time of painful decline. But far from it. I feel full of life, full of passion, full of curiosity. There are so many things that I’ve just begun! So much beauty! So many possibilities!

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March 19, 2011

A bird walk

It’s spring in Raleigh. The redbuds, forsythia, and pear trees are blooming, and the hardwoods are budding. With sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s, I had a powerful yen to get outside yesterday, but stayed hunkered down in my office dealing with a series of conference calls. But today is Saturday! I celebrated with a walk in the woods at Swift Creek Bluffs.

I haven’t been birding for a while, even before the winter doldrums, and had almost forgotten how pleasant it can be at sunrise on a beautiful day. The cardinals were particularly vocal this morning, perhaps still working out their spring pairings. Most of the birds I saw and heard were typical NC residents, but I was happy to get a good view of a magnificent Pileated woodpecker. I got some of the rust off my binocular skills in preparation for the arrival of the spring migratory birds.

But leaving aside the birds, it was good being out in the woods, walking along the path by the creek. It was enlivening but also peaceful.

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February 6, 2011

Piano lesson

One door closes, and another one opens. My piano teacher for the last four years, Randy Love, left for a sabbatical in China last month. Our piano lessons, at intervals of once a month or so, have taken me a long way along the path of the great western piano music tradition. The tradition is based on written texts, but much of it is unwritten, transmitted from teacher to student. Randy has transmitted much, and been an excellent master and a good friend.

During that time, I’ve enjoyed gaining fluency at the keyboard, but I don’t view increased technical mastery as the most valuable accomplishment. Much more important, and also much harder to express, is a change in the experience of the music. “Music is feeling, not sound,” according to Wallace Stevens (in Peter Quince at the Clavier). Stevens was on to something, although music is, obviously, sound. There’s a type of emotional energy stored in written musical texts and released and renewed with each performance. And there are many levels to that emotional experience.

So I went in search of a new master, and found myself yesterday at the music building at N.C. State in the studio of Olga Kleiankina. She’s a Russian with degrees from schools in Moldova and Romania, a masters from Bowling Green and a doctorate from University of Michigan, and joined the NCSU faculty last years as head of the piano program. She’s got an impressive amount of performance experience, and is an active concert artist. She was friendly but focussed. Straight away, she invited me to try out her two pianos, and after playing a bit of Chopin on each, I settled on the Mason and Hamlin over the Yamaha. Then she asked me what I’d brought to play for her. I played the first half of Chopin’s nocturne in D flat, Op. 27, No. 2, one of Chopin’s most beautiful, lyrical pieces, very like an operatic aria, with a broad emotional range. I played it rather well, with real feeling, I thought.

Olga was polite, but wasted no time with compliments. She said she could help me with my technique, and plunged in. It was quite bracing. We worked hard on weight transfer, activating the back and arm and relaxing the wrist. She showed me different ways of positioning the fingers on the keys for different sounds. She also talked about the shape of the gestures of the hand as it related to the flow of the music. She demonstrated this in various ways, including taking my hand and guiding it. I’ve usually thought of the physical aspect of piano playing as supporting but separate from the musical part, but Olga seemed to view the two as unified. Beautiful movements make beautiful sounds. She also demonstrated a level of attention to detail that was inspiring, and daunting.

At the end of the lesson, I felt like I could be at the foot of a new mountain. There’s a long way to go to reconfigure my playing along the dimension Olga pointed to. It will be challenging, and maybe transformative.

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January 30, 2011

So long, Krispy Kreme, and hello health

It was bittersweet to learn last week that the Krispy Kreme store in downtown Raleigh was closing due to lack of business. When a business fails, individuals suffer hardships. As a downtown Raleigh resident, I’m particularly eager to see businesses here succeed.

And Krispy Kreme and I go way back. As a boy I was a patron of the first Krispy Kreme store, in Winston-Salem. There you could sit at the counter and eat hot glazed doughnuts while watching more fresh ones coming off the conveyer belt. It was one of the few places in town open 24 hours. After finishing my paper route at 5:30 a.m., I’d sometimes stop in there for a delicious sugary treat. It was also a favorite late night spot for teenage munchie runs. Good times.

But in recent years I’ve come to associate Krispy Kreme doughnuts and similar sweet products with less cheerful things, like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and death. The products are more like cigarettes than food. The nutritional content is minimal, and the high sugar and fat content are unhealthy. This is not exactly big news. In a sense, everyone knows that too much fat and sugar are bad for you. But it continues to be a difficult fact for people to face and do something about. That much is obvious from our obesity epidemic.

We’ve made slow but meaningful progress in the last 50 years addressing the deadly public health effects of smoking. We’ve substantially reduced smoking rates, and therefore smoking deaths. The basic facts about smoking and cancer are now common knowledge, as a result of government requirements for warnings on cigarette labeling and restrictions on cigarette advertising. We have not done anything like this with risky sweet food products that kill people.

If anything, we’ve headed in the opposite direction. Information about nutrition is obscured by industry and federal agencies. Our government transfers our tax dollars to agribusinesses as large subsidies for production of excess corn, which is processed into high fructose corn syrup and added to many common food items. Thus healthy unprocessed food seems unusual and, by comparison, expensive. Thousands of advertisements have convinced us that sweet, fatty food products produce good feelings of love and fun.

Sure, it’s possible to get sound nutrition information and it’s possible to eat in a healthy way, but our culture makes it quite challenging. People who make a point of trying to avoid unhealthy food are viewed with puzzlement and sometimes anger. It’s no fun being ridiculed as a food nut. It’s easier to go along with the crowd.

Lifetime Fitness gym recently published an article by Pilar Gerasimo titled “Being Healthy is a Revolutionary Act,” That’s putting it too strongly, but it is certainly an act that defies settled conventions. The related web site does a good job of putting in bumper-sticker form some home truths about health and nutrition. http://revolutionaryact.com/ The first home truth gets down to business: “The Way We are Live Is Crazy,” based on our rates of obesity and chronic illness. But, it says, we can change.

Maybe so. If Krispy Kreme is doing less business, it probably isn’t because their doughnuts don’t taste good. They taste too good! It’s possible that more people are facing the fact that we can’t go on eating like this.

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August 14, 2010

Good wine food and a note on spinning

Last night Sally and I tried a new “wine restaurant” in Cameron Village called Cafe Caturra. I wasn’t entirely sure what a wine restaurant was, but they pulled off the neat trick of creating (at least for me) a natural, comfortable new category. A young waitress greeted us and told us we could sit anywhere (it wasn’t crowded) and order food, but we might first want to stop by the bar and choose a glass of wine.

The bar was tended by a tall, friendly guy who showed the wine-by-the-glass choices — ten or so whites and as many reds. As soon as we expressed interest in one of the Chardonnays, he produced a taste of the wine, which was buttery and delightful, and we happily ordered a glass. Then we found a table and ordered — a veggie panini for me and a little pizza for Sally. These were simple, hearty, and delicious. I liked the servers and the artsy bistro look of the place. I wasn’t crazy about the background music — hard rock, my least favorite genre — but it wasn’t overwhelming.

The music was several times louder at my two spinning classes at Rapid Fitness earlier in the week. Sally asked me how I liked it, and I told her that I liked the second one better, when I knew to bring ear plugs. These were my first ever spinning experiences, and I was a little anxious going in, as with anything new. The only thing I knew about spinning was that it involved riding a stationary bike, which seemed like such a simple idea that I had trouble believing people would give it a particular name or do it together. Since it had a name and a following, I figured there were also rules and norms, and of these I knew nothing. Was it possible to screw up spinning? I didn’t know, and since this was a group activity, I worried just a little.

Fortunately I managed to get to class a few minutes before the 6 am start time and have a brief orientation chat with Paul, the teacher. He showed me how to set up the bike adjustments and gave me the lowdown on bike shorts and shoes. He also recommended that I pick a bike near the fan, because we were going to be sweating. He suggested that since I was new, I might find at points that I needed to gear back a little from his recommended intensity. I thought this was both mildly insulting and probably wrong, since I couldn’t see hnow a stationary bike could be all that serious a fitness challenge. But boy, was he right.

A few minutes later a group of eight or so had assembled. Paul put on a microphone, fired up the dance music, and told us to get going. For the next hour he combined straightforward coaching (“now, crank it up”), cheerleading (“you’re doing great!”), and a story line about a bike ride over three mountains (“the group ahead is looking back and sees you’re gaining on them”). After twenty minutes my heart was pounding, I was drenched in sweat and considering the real possibility that I would not make it through a full hour. Following Paul’s tip, I eased back a little, then found some more energy, and ramped back up. At the end of the class, even my shoes were soaked. As my heart rate got back to normal, I noticed an unusual mellow, light feeling — the endorphins of happiness. I did a few minutes of yoga breathing and stretching, and felt really good.

So, spinning turned out to be a kick-butt workout and more fun than expected. I considered whether my well-settled idea that I was not the sort of person who likes exercise classes might be simply wrong. At any rate I was happy to find a new activity to vary the mix of my morning exercising. It’s good to change things up.

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July 10, 2010

Driving on the left

When we rented a car in St. Croix last weekend, the Hertz agent informed me that they drive on the left.  The guard at the airport exit reminded me again to drive on the left.  As did a policewoman at a drunk driver check point.  And with good reason:  it’s hard!  I’m guessing a lot of American tourists have accidents or narrowly avoid them.  The rule that one drives on the right gets deeply grooved into the brain.  The first two days, I consciously reminded myself repeatedly that left was right.  But by the third day left was starting to feel natural.  Then we came back to Raleigh, USA.  The first day I found myself hesitating — left or right?

That minor culture shock quickly receded in the face of the everyday challenges of work etc.  I did have a couple of days, though, where it seemed that every leaf on the trees I saw on my commute to work was distinct and clear.  The short Caribbean adventure transformed things just a bit.

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July 7, 2010

Greetings from St. Croix

Last July 4 weekend Sally and I decided to burn a vacation day to make a four-day  trip to St. Croix.  The main objective was to dive some of the largest coral reefs in the hemisphere.  We were eager to try out some new diving equipment and see some exotic flora and fauna.  The program we settled on involved a night dive, four daytime dives, and a snorkeling trip.

The diving was rewarding.  The reefs were reasonably healthy, and there were luminous tropical fish in abundance.  We saw our first spotted eagle ray, a magnificent and haunting creature.  We had our first see horses, first spotted moray eel, and first rock beauty.  We saw two large sea turtles and barracuda. Especially on the night dive, we saw many bizarre critters whose names we didn’t know.  It’s hard to do justice to the beauty of  reef diving.  The visibility was not great by Caribbean standards – around 40 feet most of the time – but we could see a lot.   So much life, in so many shapes and colors, some shy, some friendly, some intimidating.

Along with the diving, we had several unusually rewarding talks with various travel companions.  On the flight down, we met a 22-year-old guy working on Wall Street with a hedge fund.  One of our divemasters was a guy from Indianapolis, another from New Zealand, and another from northern Virginia.  They all had interesting personal stories.

I’ve been thinking recently about the way we each create and embody stories.  Constructing them is part of the work of being human, and communicating them is a defining characteristic of our species.  That is, to be complete, actualized humans, we need to tell our stories to each other.  On this theory, I’ve been more conscious of encouraging people to tell their stories, particularly if it seems they might be at all interesting.  I’m usually not disappointed.  Often stories that I expected to be ordinary turn out to be unusual and absorbing.

I used to have an aversion to the clichéd expressions of small talk, but fortunately I got over that. I’m now convinced that these clichés serve a very important purpose as tools for encouraging story telling.  “Where are you from?” is an invitation to begin a narrative.   The same goes for “How are you doing?”  From there, the story can go in any direction.

We had our setbacks and frustrations.  My regulator malfunctioned when we first tried a night dive at the Fredricksted pier, so we had to scrub that attempt.  The next night we made the intimidating jump from the pier to the dark water below, but got separated halfway through the dive.  The travel home involved painfully slow gate agents and customs agents, and a connection in Miami that was too close for comfort.  But we made it, and it was worth the trouble.

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June 26, 2010

Supreme Court connections to gifted people

This week I signed a letter in support of the nomination of Elena Kagan that was written by Peter Keisler and Harry Litman and signed by most of the Supreme Court clerks from the year (OT ’86) our group worked for the Court.  I always liked and respected Elena.  She was bright and friendly, and I was happy to guard her in our clerk basketball games, where I was fortunate to have a meaningful height advantage (she could shoot).   I find it reassuring that in a world where Tea Party whack jobs are sometimes taken seriously that Elena with such old-fashioned and relatively unexciting qualities as intelligence, balance, and decency has quietly risen to the apex of the legal profession.

I made another Supreme Court connection this week when I caught up with Larry Lessig.  Lessig clerked for Justice Scalia a few years after I did.  Now a law professor at Harvard, he’s distinguished himself as a constitutional and intellectual property law scholar and reformer.  His work on copyright law, including Free Culture and Remix, challenges the received wisdom that more copyright protection promotes greater creativity and shows that the opposite may be the result.  In this area, he’s a true rock star.

Lessig’s current project is focusing on the corrosive role of money in our political system.  On Tuesday Mel Chernoff and I attended the talk he gave at Campbell Law School promoting public financing of elections.  He’s well known for his extraordinary slide shows, which use super quick cuts to press points, and this was a good one.  We’d corresponded by email previously, and it was good to make a face-to-face connection after the event.  In addition to being brilliant, he seemed like a warm and sincere guy.

When I have personal encounters with really gifted people, I generally find it unsettling.  It’s inspiring, and I find myself thinking so much more is possible, but also being more-than-usually aware of my personal limits.  As John McPhee once noted in the context of great tennis players, there are many levels of the game.   It’s a privilege to play with higher level players, and rewarding. If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.  But it does not promote calm and tranquility.

It is

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June 19, 2010

Liberation — death, sorrow, life

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been a big news story these last few weeks, but the news reports have given little coverage to the fact that millions of sea creatures that will die.  Our scuba experiences in the last couple of years have made us more conscious of the teeming life in the oceans, the unbelievable profusion, a cornucopia of bizarre, beautiful life.  The loss of life now taking place is impossible to fully grasp, and painful to consider.  I think it’s good, though, to try grasping it, and accept the pain of it.

We humans are generally deathophobes.  At the same time, it’s obvious that death is a fundamental part of life.  It’s in front, behind, and all around us, and avoiding it is really not possible.  We may as well have a little courage and honesty and figure out how to think about it.

I keep coming back to the line by Wallace Stevens in his poem Sunday Morning:  “Death is the mother of beauty.”  When I first read it, I thought he was just being provocative, but I now see he was struggling with something profound.  It isn’t that death itself is beautiful.  But it is an integral part of the natural cycle of change, which is a defining characteristic of life.  In Sunday Morning, Stevens asks, “Is there no change of death in paradise?  Does ripe fruit never fall?”  The Talking Heads got at the same idea with the funny line, “Heaven/ is a place/ where nothing/ ever happens.”  Such a paradise would be inhuman.  And very boring.

But coming to terms with this part of reality is not just a matter of working through the ideas.  It’s also accepting some unpleasant feelings, like grief and sorrow.  It seems natural to avoid such things, but it won’t work.  Those feelings are integral to the human experience; they’ll always be there.  We may as well face them with honesty and courage.  Opening ourselves to those feelings makes us more human.  It’s liberating.

Sally had a harsh and sad confrontation with one animal’s death this week.  She was monitoring her blue bird boxes at the Lochmere golf course for new for baby blue birds, which is usually a cheering thing.  She came upon  a young Canada goose that had had a horrible accident that destroyed its beak and left it bloody and mutilated.   It could still move, but was plainly suffering and unable to survive long.  The poor thing needed to be euthanized, but there was no practical way to capture it without making matters worse.  She had no confidence that the animal control service would be able to assist without increasing the animal’s fear and pain.  There was no solution, other than nature itself.

Sally began to cry as she told the story, and continued to wonder whether there was something else she could have done.  She is a tender-hearted soul, and I love her for it.  I was reminded of the time years ago when she arrived home in tears at having run over a little frog as she was parking her car.  I knew then, once again, that she was the girl for me.

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