This is a reaction to a post by my friend Chris Clarke, a notoriously bright and creative guy whom I admire very much. Among many other things, he writes the blog Coyote Crossing.
His original post is about depression, but it also touches on his own life accomplishments. Both subjects strike a chord in me, and I had to comment. As often happens, the things I write elsewhere I echo here, just to keep a record:
I started thinking of myself as a Citizen of the World some years back, and I’ve even thought there should be an organization. But strangely, I’ve felt shy about publicizing the idea, for fear that someday I’d be subject to revocation of my American citizenship by some zealot with power. Perverse to the COW concept, though, I’m also rather proud to be an American. Just being associated with this particular philosophical experiment is rather cool.
[—> Just to be clear to anyone in government who might read this later, no, shithead, I’m not renouncing my citizenship. I was born in Texas, I’m proud to be an American, I vote, I pay taxes, I drive a Chevy truck, I support the American government and the Second Amendment, I shed tears when I see an American flag, I intend to stay a proud American until the day I die, paying taxes and voting until I’m as senile as Ronald Reagan. I ride horses with good American WESTERN saddles and not those sissy English ones.
Say you’ve picked out a private kindergarten for your little girl, and you’ve gone down to take a look at the place to check on a last few details.
During the hourlong tour and consultation, you ask “What are the classroom rules here at Bronfield Academy? What will be expected of my daughter while she’s actually in class?”
“Ah,” says the director. “Glad you asked, because we’ve got a list of the rules we send home for each new student before the term begins. Let me get you a copy of that. Yes, here we are.”
Here’s something I’ll bet you never considered before:
We have a lot of words in common usage, and I mean a LOT of them, a whole specialized vocabulary, that refers to things that don’t actually exist.
So there’s a word for the thing, but no thing for the word.
Fairy. Werewolf. Ghost. Bigfoot. Vampire. Channeling. Telepathy. Telekinesis. Clairvoyance. Goblin. Teleportation. Afterlife. Leprechaun. Zombie. Valhalla. Hell. God.
There are multi-word terms in the same vein: Spirit guide. Trance medium. Guardian angel. Mutant powers.
Knowing this, and knowing that there was a time when I DIDN’T know it, I think that’s a fairly profound problem.
Leaf One
Con games and sleight-of-hand magic work because, one, we humans only have so much attention to spare at any one moment, and two, they direct that attention deliberately in one direction. If you look at where the finger points, you miss … well, everything else.
Like the movie teen backing through a darkened doorway in the serial killer’s lair, we focus intently on one thing while something more important takes place just outside the sphere of our focus.
I’ll give you a real-life example that has bugged me for a long time.
I’m caught up in a back-and-forth argument with a guy online. He maintains that all news media are in the business of entertainment, and that there’s no difference between them. The far right, the far left, they’re the same. Fox News equals CNN equals MSNBC equals Jon Stewart, yada-yada-yada.
This was my final shot at explaining how wrong I think that view is:
Shane: The news media are entertainers, yes. I’m glad you see that. I worked in the news media for a number of years, and yeah, news pieces are put together as “stories.” Each item is framed in a narrative the viewer will find interesting and digestible. This is known — from the first days a budding journalist is learning to write news, you’re taught to do this. And yes, sometimes the story can overpower the facts.
Howdy!
Hope things are going well for you all down there.
I’m self-employed just now, and struggling with it. I think things are about to turn around, but argh, I’m in a bind right at the moment. It’s not the economy so much as a few of my own bad choices, but the economy is definitely playing into it.
Other than having no money, life’s going good. It’s spring here. The place I live, I wake up most mornings to the sounds of wild turkeys in the yard. So far this spring we’ve had whitetail deer, raccoons,four kinds of squirrels (gray, red, chipmunks and flying squirrels), blue jays, cardinals, goldfinches and crows (plus a lot of other birds passing through) as daily visitors. Some nights we see red foxes, and there have even been a few coyotes strolling through in the moonlight.
[ Another long one. Sorry. ]
Sanity has a horizon.
Meaning: Everything you and I do seems sensible to us. Everything other people do seems sensible to them. But not everything you and I do seems sensible to others, and not everything others do seems sensible to you and I.
Everything you and I do seems sensible, of course, because it’s US, and we’re caught up in the subjective immediacy of our lives. We’re inside our own horizon, and everything inside it with us is visible, understandable and comfortable. We naturally find it hard to think of ourselves as wrong or villainous or insane. Everything we do, however weird it might seem to others, seems sane and reasonable to us. Even if we don’t know the reasons, we’re prone to automatically assume SOMEONE knows, and those reasons must be good ones.
On the other hand, other people, out past our own personal horizons of sanity, often do things that seem crazy.
I just thought I’d get it out in the open, my opinion of Islam. I mean, considering this March 26 Reuters story:
U.N. Body Adopts Resolution on Religious Defamation
“GENEVA — A United Nations forum on Thursday passed a resolution condemning ‘defamation of religion’ as a human rights violation …”
…
The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the non-binding text, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states, with a vote of 23 states in favor and 11 against, with 13 abstentions.
Western governments and a broad alliance of activist groups have voiced dismay about the religious defamation text, which adds to recent efforts to broaden the concept of human rights to protect communities of believers rather than individuals.
Pakistan, speaking for the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said a “delicate balance” had to be struck between freedom of expression and respect for religions.
Ha-ha. Good one.
Robins look … well, silly. They stand on the grassy verge with heads upraised, stock still for indefinite periods like little feathered statues, than drop down and make lightning-fast dashes to some other part of the lawn. Where they again stand still for an unpredictable while.
And despite all the press they get in songs and stories, they’re not even all that pretty. An unattractive dull gray body, ugly yellowish bill. Okay, they do have that red breast thing going for them, but it’s not even really red, is it? More of a reddish brown. And when you live in a place where brilliant scarlet cardinals regularly visit your back deck – not to mention equally colorful blue jays, red-winged blackbirds, goldfinches, and several kinds of red-accented woodpeckers – robins are pretty tame fare.