Eucatastrophe Reader

"Somebody's hacking into the power grid, traffic cams... you got a theory?"

Tonight, a friend and I went to see the movie EAGLE EYE. I was reminded while watching it that paranoid schizophrenics could be the source of some great plot lines for movies. No one knows how to create stress better (speaking from experience). There is this combination of elevated self-importance combined with an elevated sense of your enemy's capabilities. I can not think of a better way to create stress really than to give a person the conviction that they are in a war with an unseen entity that has phenomenal powers, including omniscience and omnipotence .. and then give them the notion that they were chosen for such diabolical attention because of specific powers or abilities or characteristics inherent in THEM that the whole world may want to get their hands on. Thus, along with the messianic or napoleonic delusions of one's OWN importance in the scheme of things, one also is convinced that one's enemies are ever present, ever powerful, ever threatening. The end result is either a good psychotic episode (in which case you get sent to an assylum) or a good movie plot (in which case you make a lot of money).

Clearly, this movie is intended to scare the cell phone addiction out of you. Luddites and technophobes of all persuasions would love this movie if they went to movies. No one will walk out of this movie taking it seriously but ... I personally have had rather delusionary ideas that resemble those of the plot line almost to a T so ... in some way, I find myself feeling a bit nervous. Should someone who has been scared by something that no one else takes seriously, take a movie about what they were scared of seriously? Or is it just a way to cathartically laugh at oneself?

In this movie, it is only the technology that is "infested" with messages for its central characters. It is only a computer that watches their every move and interfere's with their every decision. Imagine what it would be like to believe that something even more powerful than a computer had the ability to send messages to you through any object.

The writer of Psalm 139 seems to have an experience of this sort several thousand years ago, long before the movie EAGLE EYE was ever conceived. :

You know when I sit and when I rise;
       you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;
       you are familiar with all my ways.

 Before a word is on my tongue
       you know it completely, O LORD.

You hem me in—behind and before;
       you have laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
       too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
       Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
       if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
       if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,
       your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
       and the light become night around me,"

even the darkness will not be dark to you;
       the night will shine like the day,
       for darkness is as light to you.

Was he experiencing paranoia? Or simply being given a window into reality? Thats the $750,000 question. 

"... a thing created is loved before it exists"

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars

"Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." Charles Dickens

I had a bad day yesterday yesterday and a friend advised that I watch a Charles Dickens novel. Not having one handy, I watched Sierra Leone's Refugee Allstars, a movie about a refugee band from Sierra Leone's civil war. It was another reminder that my problems are so not problems in the overall scheme of things.

What is inspiring about the movie is that EVEN in a refugee camp, in the midst of the smoldering ruins of destroyed lives, there can be music, and vision, and an impulse to make the world a better place that it was when it destroyed you and the people you love.

I think it was Dickens who also said that "the whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists." For a a while, I had two cats. One was black and white and one was all black. I began to think of one cat as being representitive of the world as it is (divided) and one as representative of the world as it might be some day (undivided).  It can be tough sometimes to live in this world and love BOTH the way it is ANd the vision of the way you know it might be. It seems like we are always losing sight of one or the other. Like we are all polygamists trying to love two wives (or husbands) equally well. Life as we are delt it and life as we should have wished it to be. Life as we get it served to us and life as we would have it served to our kids some day.

ENJOY

Question for Comment: Do you have a vision that is worth your love? Does it make it hard for you to love the life you must live on your way to it?

Something to make a faculty member wonder

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Tonight's movie was Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a movie by Ben stein about the Intelligent Design v. Evolution controversy. One hardly knows what to say in response. What if my comments about it are being monitored? Grin. All I know is that I took a position in my classes, similar to the one Stein takes that there ought to be a discussion, a debate, an openness to considering viewpoints. That the question is too important not to. I also know that I lost my job. Is there a correlation? Who would actually be willing to say that there was if there was?

I have a clear memory of a discussion between the Core faculty that led to one member asserting most vehemently that the faculty "could not and should not back down" in any way shape or form to a strictly Darwinistic approach to origins. I can only assume that it is as official a college doctrine as a college can afford to have. It would be impossible for me to know if by not forbidding a good debate on the subject, I compromised my employment.
 
Stein's movie can remind one at times of a Michael Moore movie in the way that it intersperses old movie footage with interviews. Though entertaining, it borders on the manipulative. I am not sure where that line gets crossed any more. Still, I do think that people who argue for Darwinism need to own up to its potential abuses even as religions must own up to the ways that they have been co-opted into contrary purposes.

Darwin Quote

"Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities." George Elliot

". . . ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities." George Elliot (Daniel Deronda)

Daniel Deronda

 Last night I was finally able to watch Daniel Deronda, another one of those novels I have placed on my list for when I someday get to teach a class on novels in the Victorian Age (if ever). What is so clearly illustrated in the movie is how tragic it is that we go through life misinformed and misinforming. When we do not know ourselves, we pretend to be something ... we fill in the gaps of our knowledge of ourselves with unsubstanciated default assertions that are rarely true in the end. We do the same with others. where there are gaps in our understanding of others, we tend to fill in the gaps with fictions and so much of our relational lives are lived as fictional characters meeting fictional characters. "How can we meet face to face till we have faces?" C.S. Lewis once asked and it is a question that we should be asking ourselves over and over. "I wish you could know everything about my life without my telling you" Gwendolyn says at one point in time in the movie. I suppose that is something we ALL wish of some of our relationships in life. Maybe that's why I keep a blog?

I suppose the essential difference between Daniel Deronda and Gwendolyn Harleth is in how they react to what they do not know. He has gaps in his understanding of himself but none that he has chosen and when he gets a chance to replace ignorance born of assumptions, he does. Gwendolyn on the other hand seems to be willing to pretend that she can be other than what she is. Or maybe simply to pretend that she can be a part of who she is and not have the other part mind. In the face of Hendleigh Grandcourt's manipulations, she looses herself. She looses her fierce desire for independence and autonomy and trades it all in for a financial security that she thinks is of more value to her.

I suppose the sad thing about this period, particularly for women, is that the choice to be independent was so difficult to achieve ... and indeed, men of this era had made it so. One might regard Daniel Deronda as "the better person" but ... one should not forget that he was a man and a man of inherited means at that. In short, he could afford to be a better person than Gwendolyn because he HAD a benefactor that did not demand his soul in exchange for his support. What, I wonder, would Gwendolyn and Daniel have turned out to be if their curcumstances in that regard had been reversed? If Gwendolyn had had a "Sir Hugo" to provide for her future, I don't think she would have compromised in her marital decisions at all. 

The fact is that life does force us to compromise between important values sometimes. Gwendolyn happened to believe in the Victorian assumption that a woman's role in life was to sacrifice for men and for family and, to her own sorrow, she does so in whom she decides to marry. Daniel doesn't but ... he is not put in a position where he looses his source of income for marrying someone other than who Sir Hugo approves.

But I wonder. My original point simply was that wherever we are ignorant about ourselves or the people we relate to, we tend to fill the ignorant spaces up with conjectures that are, I suspect, almost always wrong. And as long as we continue to do this, we will be inevitably making poor relational decisions because those decisions will not be based on the TRUTH of who we are and who they are. I tend to think this is why we can find ourselves confused in our new relationships as we experience, over the course of time, old relationships foundering on the rocks of experiencial knowledge. "The moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation," George Elliot (Mariann Evans)  writes in Daniel Deronda "as the moment of finding an idea." After you have been fooled, either by others or yourself, enough times, you doubt whether your first impressions of anyone can be true. "There is a great deal of unmapped country within us" she continues,  "which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms."

Question for Comment: What sort of experiences have helped you to get to know yourself better? What sort of curcumstances have allowed you to get to know others better most efficiently? 

I think I myself enjoy talking but sometimes I wonder if I require more now ... after have been talked out over a number of cliffs in my life. "Speech is but broken light upon the depth of the unspoken" Elliot wrote in her book, The Spanish Gypsy. Maybe it is important for me to get to know people by means of more than just writing? Maybe I am not as bad at judging who they are as I think I am. I just fail to make use of more than speech.

The Smoot-Hawley tariff ... anyone? ... anyone? ... anyone?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

In Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, actor, comedian Ben Stein plays the part of a History Teacher droning on about the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. The function of the scene in the movie is to make it clear that when Ferris Beuller decides to skip school for a day of frolicking, he misses nothing of any importance whatsoever. I confess, as a history teacher myself, the scene is both hilariously funny and tear-jerkingly sad at the same time. It is painful to watch one’s profession roasted so effectively on the spit of a good caricature. But it makes one want to rise to the challenge and show people that in actuality, the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill could be taught in such a way as to enlighten high school students about important issues relating to their lives and futures.

In essence, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff story is a classic tale in American economics and civics. It has antecedents back to the days of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson (if not further) who battled over the question of Federal economic support for certain sectors of the economy. Hamilton had argued that the country would be best served if its economic elites were made the primary concern of Federal economic policy. Hamilton had a vision for an America that could rival Europe in the manufacture of goods. His policies leaned towards the support of business interests and manufacturing interests and urban interests at the expense of rural interests, agricultural interests, and the interests of the common unskilled laborer. Hamilton was not a “No child Left Behind” sort of guy. He was an “Every Talented Elite Gets Ahead” sort of guy. Thus, he argued for the creation of a National Bank that could loan money to powerful business interests. He also argued for a tax on whiskey, a commodity that Western farmers made heavy use of as it was a primary way of converting crops into something that could be transported and sold even over bad roads for cash.  In short, the blue collar workers would work to fund the projects of the white collar workers.

The argument between Hamilton and Jefferson over some of these issues was essentially an argument about competing visions of America. And it is not an argument that is foreign to us today. Are we better off as a country when our resources are invested in each person equally? Or should we invest more heavily in some? either the most talented, bright, and ambitious OR conversely, the least talented, bright, and ambitious? Should we identify certain sectors of the economy to favor with public largesse or public bailouts and others to tax more heavily and regulate more heavily? Should we, for example support agriculture with subsidies and then tax corporations with confiscatory tax rates? Should airlines and banks get bailouts? Should manufacturing get protection from foreign competition? Should Walmart be allowed to provide consumers with low cost goods at the expense of American manufacturing wages?

The Smoot Hawley Tariff question sits smack dab in the middle of this debate and what it should say to a high school student is that those who control the rules under which economic decisions are made will, in most cases, control the economic benefits of the workforce’s labor. Representatives Reed Smoot from Utah and W.C. Hawley from Oregon created this measure originally to protect American farmers from global competition but once the Pandora’s Box of protectionism was in the air, many other Republican business interests saw a means by which they could protect their own industries from competition. By the time the bill was passed, rates on imports for thousands of items were raised like drawbridges to protect industries from low-paid foreign labor. The notion was somewhat simplistic in many ways. It pretended that the countries that were affected by such high tariffs would not retaliate by putting high tariffs on American exports. This was delusional thinking as was soon to be discovered. Dozens of countries simply responded by saying “If you are not going to let our companies sell in America in a fair fight for market share, we are not going to let your companies sell in our countries in a fair fight for market share.” A recent TIMES magazine article puts it this way:

Though some legislators today might be reluctant to make such a promise, no one in Congress is seriously proposing anything as drastic as Smoot-Hawley. Still, the pro-tariff mania that swept Washington 55 years ago remains a danger. "What we are afraid of," says S. Bruce Smart, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, "is that people are so emotional that they will do something that they know is foolish, just to do something."

http://205.188.238.109/time/magazine/article/0,9171,960038,00.html

The Smoot Hawley Tariff then can be used as a great example of how democracies can often make knee-jerk short term emotional decisions without thinking through their long term consequences. In 1929 and 1930, business interests had almost completely taken over the American democratic system, using power and money to buy candidates and influence. The Smoot-Hawley tariff was packaged as a measure to protect American jobs but in all honesty, given the way that companies were failing to distribute profits to the workers, it was a measure that would line the pockets of business owners in the short term but cost jobs in the long term. It was also a measure that frankly inhibited the ability of the American economy to move its human resources into more lucrative areas of money making. Loosing one’s job to foreign competition is painful but at some point in time, it is this pain that causes workers to get higher order skills and the children of those workers to prepare for jobs of the future and not the past. Smoot Hawley protected American schools from having to make a transition to a system of education that would have prepared students for better jobs than their parents had.

Had I been teaching Ferris Beuller’s class on the Hawley-Smoot Teriff Bill, I would have brought in the movie Life and Debt about how the Jamaican economy is being affected by IMF anti-protectionist tariff policies and we would have had a good debate about whether or not globalization – the distribution of different economic niches to different parts of an increasingly interdependent world is a good idea or a bad idea. Should Jamaican farmers give up growing their own onions and producing their own milk so that their farms can be better converted into resort hotels for wealthy Americans?

I might have brought in the documentary American Jobs and looked at how people who are not thinking ahead about global market issues get themselves dependent on jobs that are bound to be moved elsewhere in a global economy that allows business to travel to regions of desperation in search of lower labor costs. In 1930, business interests were pro-protectionism because the factories were located here. In today’s economy, this is often opposite because the factories have been located elsewhere.

We might have watched a documentary on how the government’s intervention in the affairs of the agricultural economy or the economics of the transportation industry or its willingness to subsidize the energy industry’s need for global protection are affecting food prices, food quality, local farming communities, access to prescription drugs, airfares, technological innovation in auto fuel efficiency, and other similar issues of significant concern. We might have watched some excerpts from the debate about NAFTA that politicians fifteen years ago were engaged in and then examined the results of its passing.

Ultimately, students would leave the class with a better understanding of the dangers of taking a Ferris Beuller’s Day Off on election day. We would look at how business interests had managed to take over the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations and how lack of voter turnout in the 18-24 year old age demographic today is amounting to a type of economic serfdom by negligence. Clearly, when the government decides to borrow money instead of raise taxes, it is voting to tax a future generation that either cannot or simply does not care to vote. In some ways, Hamilton and Jefferson’s conflict has become generational in American society as the government leans in favor of those who are voting now and takes that pound of flesh from those who are either not old enough to vote or not interested enough in politics to vote. There is a reason why prescription drugs of the elderly will be getting huge infusions of Federal dollars while Federal funding for college tuition decreases. And it has to do with the tens of thousands and millions of 18-24 year olds that think Ferris Beuller is cool for skipping classes about meaningless topics like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.

In the end, the joke’s on Ferris because while he is joy riding around in his friend’s father’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, he is NOT learning that the Italian car manufacturer, Enzo Ferrari started his company in the same year that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was being debated (1929). Ferris is NOT learning that American car manufacturer, Henry Ford, personally went in and begged President Herbert Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley Tariff,  convinced that the secret to getting out of the economic crisis was not to be found in initiating trade wars but in paying workers higher wages. What Ferris does not know is that in a country dedicated to high trade barriers, it would have been impossible for his friend’s dad to own a Ferrari and that if Ferris expects to work for profit in a global economy, he will have to realize the importance of trust in developing markets and suppliers. He will soon discover that hacking into a school computer to change his grades is a good short term solution to a problem but it is not an offense that an international business partner will forgive soon if he begins to apply similar strategies to his business dealings.

Francis Fukuyama argues in his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, published  a decade after Ferris Beuller’s Day Off came out, that unethical individualism of the sort that Ferris glorifies, is toxic to prosperous economies. As one commentator at Amazon puts it:

“Fukuyama examines the impact of culture on economic life, society, and success in the new global economy. He argues that the most pervasive cultural characteristic influencing a nation's prosperity and ability to compete is the level of trust or cooperative behavior based upon shared norms. In comparison with low-trust societies (China, France, Italy, Korea), which need to negotiate and often litigate rules and regulations, high-trust societies like those in Germany and Japan are able to develop innovative organizations and hold down the cost of doing business. Fukuyama argues that the United States, like Japan and Germany, has been a high-trust society historically but that this status has eroded in recent years. This well-researched book provides a fresh, new perspective on how economic prosperity is grounded in social life.”

In other words, it may well be Ferris’ approach to basic virtues like honesty, integrity, thrift, and work ethic that will make it impossible for someone in his generation to make the kind of money it takes to own a Ferrari. That said, it may ALSO be Ferris' disdain for tradition and his essential creative audacity that makes him millions. It would make for an interesting debate. 

I suspect that someday, a good sequel to Ferris Beuller’s Day Off might be a movie entitled The Day After Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. And in that movie, it would be interesting to see a good history teacher teaching a class on NAFTA. Grin.

There. I have laid down the gauntlet.

Question for Comment: I often say that a good history class is a critical thinking class that uses History as a Medium. Have you ever taken such a class?

"Forgive me if I was mistaken" - Fenelon

The Seeking Heart by Fenelon

As anyone who has been reading this blog would know, I have not taken too many opportunities in this blog to focus on what one might refer to as “devotional literature”. I have tried, over the years to read broadly, to expose myself to many different views on many different subjects and so you will find book reviews of novels, books on science, books on music, books on relationships, books on social issues, books on ethical issues, books on philosophy, books on Science Fiction, and so on and so on.

A few weeks ago, a dear friend began recommending to me books of a spiritual and devotional nature and I have wanted to take an opportunity to reflect on them. They are, by their own admission, books which are intended not to be devoured so much as books to be savored and “burned like incense” rather than simply consumed.

Today, I would just like to take a moment to share a few thoughts about Francois Fenelon (b. 1651) and his devotional book The Seeking Heart.  I confess that I like Fenelon and found myself intrigued by his biography as pictured in the introduction. “He was always original. Always creative, imitating no one, and himself wholly inimitable” a contemporary once described him. Its hard for me not to like a man like that.

His book is a reminder that there can be great power in great simplicity. The friend who sent the book to me in one of those people who proves the point about as well as anybody and so I shall not bother to get into an argument with the book simply because it is not the sort that I read nor suggest often. I’ll not even try to review it here. Fenelon is not an author to be reviewed really. He is a person to be experienced. And I think he would agree that the best knowledge is not distilled but experienced. As he says, “Don't live on a porch and think you are in the house!”

I like this paragraph about as much as any:

“A devout Catholic called upon Fenelon to come attend to its kin, a dying Protestant heretic.  On the way, Fenelon composed a prayer which, we are told, the two men -- a Protestant heretic and a Catholic bishop -- prayed together!

“Thou knowest, my savior, that I desire to live and die in the truth; forgive me if I was mistaken.” P. iv

The question that Fenelon poses that is of most interest to someone like me has to do with the place of the intellect in the healthy spiritual life. I have always tended to believe that God, as I perceive Him, is one who is as interested in engaging a fine mind as he is a warm heart and a good soul. Perhaps, it comes from knowing how much I myself enjoy the fine wine of a good mind. I should not wish to diminish the importance of shared tenderness by saying so, as I myself also know the pain of much light and no heat in my relational life, but I finished reading this book with questions about whether my own intellect is a “problem” in experiencing the same sort of joy and peace in life that my friend who lent me the book enjoys.

Here are some select quotes from Fenelon on the subject of intellect:

“Practice what you already know rather than looking for more knowledge.  You deceive yourself when you think you are growing spiritually because your curiosity has intellectually explored some spiritual idea.” P. 38

“Think little and do much.  If you are not careful, you will acquire so much knowledge that you will need another lifetime to put it all into practice.  There is danger in thinking that you are perfect simply because you understand what it would be like to be perfect.  All your beautiful theories do not help you die to yourself.  Knowledge nourishes the life of Adam in you because you secretly delight in your revelation.  Never trust your own power or your own knowledge.” P. 59

“Perhaps this winter I will have time to set foot in my library.  I shall enter it cautiously and listen for the slightest hint that God would have me elsewhere.  The mind must fast as well as the body.  I have no desire to write, speak or be spoken about, reason, or persuade anybody.” P. 60

 “My own mind has been such a deceiver that I no longer count on it. Be simple.” P. 61

“I warn you again: beware of philosophers they will trap you and do you more harm than you know how to do them good.  Their discussions go on forever, yet they never come to the simple truth.  Intellectuals are unwisely curious; they are like conquerors who destroy the world without possessing it.  Solomon himself testifies to the vanity of endless reasoning.  Never study spiritual subjects unless God prompts you to.  And do not study more than you can use.  Study with a prayerful spirit.  God is both truth and love. . . . I hope that you will obtain the knowledge that is kept for babes and the simpleminded.  Such knowledge is hid from the wise and prudent.” P. 62

“Thinking too much will distract you.  If you become trapped in your thoughts, they will blow out your inward spiritual sense like a wind blowing out a candle.  If you keep company with people like this, you will see how dry their hearts are and how far their minds have drifted off center.  It is best to stay away from such people.” P. 63

“Watch out that your curiosity does not cause you to seek things you shouldn't. “ p. 65

“All that buzzing in your mind is like a piece of the beehive.  If you set your thoughts, they will grow angry and sting you!  How can you expect God to speak in his gentle and inward voice when you make so much noise?  Be quiet and you will hear God speak.” P. 87

“You already know much more about good than you currently practice.  What you need is to put into practice what you already know.  Don't try to gain more knowledge before you practice what you already see.” P. 97

“You will find some help in the books you have read.  What you have read is true and will help you let a good foundation for your faith.  Just do not put too much trust in books, and learn to put them aside as God directs.  Your mind is a good thing, learn to distrust it and you will make better use of it.  Become childlike. “ p. 110

“It is not enough to like good books.  You must be a good book yourself.” P 111

“Most people don’t really know God. They know what they have read or been told, but it is an intellectual knowledge that lacks true spiritual experience.” P. 180

I suppose the above will suffice to give you the general idea. Here is a very intelligent man who has determined that the simplicity of a loving caring approach to people is far more powerful than a phalanx of hard logic, research, and intellectual fireworks.

I find myself wrestling with him … wanting to say “Why not both?” Must the two approaches be exclusive? I think of the image of young Jesus in the temple “listening and asking questions” and astounding the learned with his curiosity and insight while later serving as  a teacher of simple – ever so simple parables – stories of seeds – stories of lost sheep – stories of the utmost simplicity … and I want to challenge Fenelon and say “Is it possible that God exists all across the spectrum?” In Einstein as well as Mr. Rogers? In Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia as well as Shell Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends?

 Can simplicity augment intellect and intellect augment devotionalism? Is it possible to think hard and remain humble? To use one’s mind all day like a car mechanic uses tools … to come home after a day of thinking just as one might come from the fields after a day of plowing and feel that one is a “yeoman farmer” who has earned his days bread by the sweat of his brow and the gifts he was given to serve … producing nourishment for people who hunger for different things?

Question for Comment: I guess that is my question for today.What is the place of intellect in the devotional life? Is it a distraction or a pathway into something deeper?

"Perhaps it is good to have a beautiful mind, an even greater gift is to discover a beautiful heart"

A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

Sylvia Nasar

John Nash: "Perhaps it is good to have a beautiful mind, but an even greater gift is to discover a beautiful heart."

Today, while driving to Stowe for a walk on the bik paths, I finished listening to A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar . I confess that not everything in John Nash's life related to me and mine but there were moments where I felt a certain kindred spiritedness, not that I will ever win a Nobel Prize in anything but when the book mentions how Nash could easilyfind himself loving patterns more than people, I knew what it was talking about. When Nash talked about the process by which he learned to dismiss delusional thinking, I could absolutely relate. I found it sad that he was subjected to so much "treatment" at times. Sometimes, a delusional thought has to become REALLY obviously irrational before it becomes easy to reject it I suspect.

In this case, I am not sure that I want to see the movie again because it clearly is not entirely dealing with the entire truth about what made John Nash "crazy" and what made him "heal". The following observation comes from the Wikipedia article about him:

"Although prescribed antipsychotic medication, Nash has said he never really took it. On some occasions he was forced to, but after 1970 he was never committed to hospital again and never took antipsychotic medication again. The film "A Beautiful Mind" fabricated him later taking the then new atypical antipsychotics, which Nash attributes to the screenwriter (whose mother, he notes, was a psychiatrist) not wanting to incite people to stop taking their medication. Others, however, have questioned whether the fabrication obscured a key question as to whether recovery from problems like Nash's can actually be hindered by such drugs and Nash has said they are over-rated and the adverse effects are not given enough consideration."

I confess this is a question I often think about with respect to medications. I wonder sometimes if things can get better without being allowed to get bad. And if the best thing for a breakdown is simply to get oneself situated in a safe place and let oneself have it. I wonder if it is a bit like driving with a half flat tire for a month because one does not allow it to go absolutely flat. John Nash has a line in the movie where he talks about the difficulty he had in determining WHEN to look for patterns in the world and when NOT to. I just love this quote because I have had to ask myself similar quastions about my own habits of pattern searching:

"I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I just choose not to indulge certain appetites; like my appetite for patterns; perhaps my appetite to imagine and to dream."

Calvin_add_remix

I can so identify with this dilemma. Nash talks about how "rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos.” In short, there are some psychic benefits to seeing one's relationship to the cosmos in an inflated light. And I will give you an example. I had been thinking about creating a school but I knew that to do it right, I would need some funding. One day I was at my son's school and I met a man who works as a counselor named Will Mazer. He gave me his card and I commented that the head of the battleschool in Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game  was named Mazer Rackham. A few minutes later, I was getting my hair cut at the babrber shop and my barber gave me his business card. His last name is Mazzariello. And a few minutes later, on the lawn of my kids' house I saw a political sign for Cheryl Mazzariello. In a few minutes, several names with that name of a battleschool headmaster embedded into it (Mazzer). So I looked it up online and saw that the William and Hellen Mazer foundation gives grants to schools and innovative social change agents in Vermont.

So, the question is, "Is one finding a pattern where no rational pattern exists?" or is one picking up "messages" because one has a "mission" or because one is "special"? Or are these just coincidences? This is what John Nash struggled to figure out. At what point in time are the patterns intentional and at what point in time are they mearly manifestations of a subconscious WANTING to hear messages that may not really be there? If you happen to have a mind that is exceptionally good at picking out patterns. the world, with all its datapoints flooding in from every angle can be a totally overwhelming place. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a mind like John Nash's - capable of seeing phenominally complex mathematical patterns - and then NOT availing oneself of the habit of pattern searching in one's "real life". But I do know that it must have been overwhelming, especially if by means of intuitive thinking, you had managed to see many other things long before others saw them.

Question for Comment: Have you ever seen patterns or synchronicities in life that you speculated had greater meaning than sheer coincidence? What is your explanation for these? 

Helen of Stonehenge

10,000 B.C.

Movie of the day was 10,000 B.C. Ok so ... some interesting recreations of the ancient world to put into my database of visuals for teaching World Civilizations I but ... I have to say ... there are times when one gets tired of the HUNTER-Warrior ALWAYS getting "the girl" who needs do little but get abducted to attract buff young men to come to their thousand mile rescue mission aid. 10,000 B.C. is basically Helen of Stonehenge instead of Helen of Troy: The face that launched a thousand spears. Does anyone brave blizzards, mountains, deserts, man eating bird infested swamps, impossible odds, slavery, and battle axes for ME? I don't think so. In 10,000 B.C. it is predicted that the hunter who kills the next wooly mamoth will get the blue eyed stranger girl that everyone adores. I ask you, why can't it be the young man who draws the best wooly mammoth on the cave wall? Or the kid who saves the almost extinct wooly mamoth from certain death? Or the chemist who comes up with a substitute for wooly mamoth meat (like fake crab-meat)? Or the genius who puts a wooly mamoth to work in an agricultural endeavor? OR the idiot savant who figures out that a place that attracts wooly mamoths is TOO COLD for humans anyway? I mean seriously, Why does every epic in every age have to look like the Helen of Troy story? Why must Achiles, no matter what you call him (and in 10,000 B.C. the heroe's name is D'leh ...  an anagram for "held" the Germanic word for "hero") ALWAYS be the best young buck with a sword or spear or weapon of some kind.

Its exactly this that makes me love movies like SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL where the ARTIST gets the girl. Honestly, it is fine with me for the hero to have military aptitudes some of the time but "ALL" the time? Its demoralizing to people with communication skills - to guys who can talk their way out of conflict. Sigh. Though I will grant you this. D'leh isn't really a huge fan of wooly mammoth killing. He just wanted the girl ... and later in the movie, he sets a saber tooth tiger free from a trap at the risk of his own life and his attempted coup hinges on his ability to "influence" a wooly mammoth. In other words, he a sensitive animal loving sort of Beowulf. Progress? OK. But those of us who are nerds have been waiting 12,000 for the change of which I speak. At what point in time do we get to say "enough already"? Grin.

Question for Comment: If you made an epic movie, what sort of guy would get the girl? OR visa versa??  

A moment of gratitude

Paramount

Today, I would like to publicly thank all the folks who made an afternoon of biking in Pine Hill Park with my son so enjoyable. What I find so interesting about Vermont in general is how different people come up with different visions for different parts of it. Last night, the boys and I enjoyed a night of magic at the Paramount theater, the result of a lot of people having a vision for saving and restoring a hundred year old theater (originally vaudeville, a place where Harry Houdini once performed) and today Sim and I got to enjoy a whole warren of biking paths in an area of a local community that was almost entirely woods when I was a kid.

The neat thing about it is that when I was a kid, I had a few memories of this same woods that are still important to me. Once when I was in elementary school, I got lost while on a hike with a group of scouts and my friend, Doug and I, being guys, just figured the best way to get unlost was to simply keep hiking AHEAD of the group faster. It was only when we arived at Rockey Pond that I realized where we were and managed to get home and call my poor, probably worried sick, scout leader. I suspect that I do that a lot in life ... just charge on into the unknown when I am lost assuming that I will find some place that I recognize if I do.

Another memory I have of this woods is grackers. Apparently, there used to be some quarry up there where rations were stored in case the Ruskies attacked the city of Rutland. When they finally decided that it probably wasn't going to happen, they let people come up and get tins of cracker-rations for free. So my mom did ... and we ate crackers in everything for weeks as I recall.  

Another memory I have of this same woods has to do with a day that I ran away from home as a kid. I went up to Rocky Pond and found a rock outcropping with a cave in it and I filled it with moss, intending to stay over night only to hear a pack of wild dogs or coyotes around ten that night. at which time I flew down the mountain in the pitch black and decided my beef with my folks wasn't quite important enough to get eaten by dogs for.

Sim and I hiked all over those same rocks today looking for the cave, a relic of some thirty years ago in my own life. We stopped from time to time to play harmonica and share some stories and some laughs and take in the Fall foliage and sunshine. Just an all around great day.

And that is what I like about Vermont, different people having a vision for a place that other people can discover and enjoy. If you get enough people with such visions, the state begins to fill up with opportunities and alternatives to chose from. And what makes every place better is having layers of memories to associate with it. I love the fact that this place that once was associated with the fear of being lost and the fear of being eaten and the fear of eating nothing but crackers the rest of my life is now associated with the joy of time with my son.

Incidentally, I have a few memories of the paramount theater from my youth as well. I went to see the Disney movie FANTASIA there when I was in third grade. The place was FULL of third graders and I swear the popcorn rained out of the balconies like rain. I also had a memorable date or two there. Memories become the spice of a place. 

 Question for Comment: What is a vision you have for a part of your world?

Failing and succeeding on Troublesome Creek

Troublesome Creek - A Midwestern

Tonight's movie was a pretty low key affair. Essentially, it is a story, repeated thousands of times all over the Midwest every year, of a family farm that goes through the painful process of dying. The movie shows how the economics of farming has and is affecting families who have, for decades depended on their farms for a livlihood. It would be interesting to watch this movie in conjuction with The Real Dirt on farmer John another movie about a midwestern farm that was forced into making transitional adjustments.

I will say that it is tough watching a farm family auction off their life to get out of debt. Its just tough. Its tough to find you have spent your life developing skills that simply no longer pay the bills. It doesn't matter if they are farming skills or teaching skills. It still just hurts to be good at what you do ... better than you ever were ... while the value of your service deflates in the markets of supply and demand. There is a human cost to be born. I suspect that there are many "industries" that could stand a similar insider look.

At what point in time in the corporatization of our economic life will we wake up and realize the pain that is being inflicted in the interest of pennies and dollars? The movie ends by asking some rather profound questions. What exactly is "failure"? If a couple manages a farm for 50 years and provides food for hundreds and thousands of people while teaching many of their kids the value of hardwork and the skills necessary to raise food, can they be said to have "failed" when they are forced to auction everything off and move to a small doublewide in their retirement?

Question for Comment: I myself lost my job recently. Have I failed? Maybe you aren't in a job you love. Have you failed?