Janitors

A species of ant in my kitchen likes kimchi-fried rice. By Tuesday morning they’d found Monday’s unwashed dishes. A bucket brigade from the colony marched between the caulk and the window frame, down the counter, around the sink, through the pile of dishes, to their picnic. I watched throughout the week; their labor was so fascinating. Fewer workers are on the job this morning, just the handful needed to tidy up. All that remains of the rice is a thin skin of starch and cellulose pebbles.

ants eating rice

This army of miniature janitors cleaned up my mess.

Feed Me, Seymour

Polls out recently show Andrew Cuomo ahead among likely voters in the Democratic primary election in New York, and the other day the various unions declared their support for him, so now of course the news media are only interested in the horse racing aspects of this election. Meanwhile the argument being made for voting for Cuomo is to prevent the loss of the governorship to the Republican Party.

'Vote for the crook'

Andrew Cuomo isn’t exactly Edwin Edwards, no matter how many of his friends go to jail, but neither is Marc Molinaro David Duke, so one might think New York Democrats might consider not picking the “safe” choice. Or at the very least talking about what they want. But that’s the downside of machine politics: foregone conclusions.

This is the same problem the Democrats exhibit against Republicans (and vice versa) nationwide, and a poor electoral strategy when the public despises The Establishment. Why should I care which established team wins? What are you going to do for me?

The electorate is starved for substance.

Give me something to vote for not against.

Because I Said So

There is, yet again, a sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. I have not followed all the details, being somewhat unconcerned with Church politics and feeling no need to pretend that priests are saints whose every word is that of God. But I’ve learned of the abuse from those who refer to Holy Mother Church and are, again, disillusioned, or, again, insistent that this corruption springs from the liberality of the Second Vatican Council. If only the Church were fundamentally, doctrinally sound — traditionally orthodox — these abuses would be unknown.

Unknown, certainly, for hidden, much as they have been until now, behind a veil of obedience and secrecy, surfacing only in comedy and rumor. Yet everybody knows.

What does not seem to occur to anyone is that the insistence on absolute, utter, unquestioning obedience is a necessary condition for the abuse of power on this scale. Whether expressed as sexual predation or not, the wolves want sheep. The wolf does not wear the sheep’s clothing, but a shepherd’s.

The question of the abuse of power is an age-old one–one I’m not equipped to summarize–and one we’ve not solved, though we attempt to do so with hierarchy. While hierarchy may limit the abuses, it systematizes them, and is ultimately concerned with the efficient exercise of power, not with limiting its harms.

It seems to me that the logic of hierarchy is such that only two conclusions are possible: 1) There can be no abuse because might makes right, or 2) Might cannot be right; it simply exists. In the case of the former, why complain or be concerned about anything, since this is surely what God has ordained? In the case of the latter, an argument from authority is always a fallacy.

Don’t Fence Me In

Let me ride through the wide open country that I love

Jeff Sharlet had some trouble coming back from a trip to Canada because he took a picture. Remember when America was great and you could cross the border willy-nilly, both North and South?

Granted, I’ve not tried to sneak across from Canada with a trunk full of Molsons and Export A’s. Instead, I’ve just gone to the WASP homeland a couple of times and to some of our Caribbean colonies. But things are a wee bit less casual now than when you had to wake up the customs agent so he could stamp your passport for a souvenir. The inclination to make it harder has been there for some time, since at least Prohibition, but really took off after Sept. 11, 2001, prompted Congress to pass the so-called P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act they’d just happened to have had in a drawer for the occasion, and then reorganized the Executive to make things a bit more efficient.

Jacob Levy of the Niskanen Center writes that lawlessness at the borders bleeds beyond the border into the interior. That is, without due process at the border, due process can disappear elsewhere. While this could be a slippery slope argument, allowing the border–where Customs and Border Patrol have jurisdiction–to expand 100 miles from the border–where most of the people in the United States live–makes it much more a concern.

Do you carry valid identification?

Are you prepared to present your papers if asked?

Are you ready to disappear?

There’s an inside and an outside to a fence. National borders don’t only keep people out, but keep them in. And though I’m, almost, demographically in the majority (being a white male instead of a white female), my first thought whenever our dear leader talks about building a wall is not about how well the wall will work to keep the zombies out, but that I’m trapped inside.

There was a conceit during the Cold War that the United States didn’t have, and had never had, internal passports like those of Soviet Russia or pervasive bureaucratic identification schemes like Nazi Germany. Citizens of the Free World had freedom of movement; it set us apart from places like North Korea, Cuba, and Berlin. A free society doesn’t need to trap the serfs on the plantation. “Papers, please,” was a joke. Folks laughed at the concerns of those like Hal Lindsey that Americans would be marked with the Number of the Beast, but there was considerable opposition to national population tracking schemes, not just from the John Birch Society–concerns which not only disappeared, but appear to have inverted, in the past few years. Everyone is so scared these days.

The question of borders, artificial though they may be, is an important one, and will become even more so as migration due to climatic changes increases. The urge is to build walls to keep the flood out, and has been since at least the Great Wall of China. But I’m not aware of any way to stop this wave. It will crash.

I don’t want to be here when it does.

Yes, I like The Shire

In his New York Times column last Sunday, Ross Douthat remarked

The teenage nerd enters conservatism through either Atlas Shrugged or Lord of the Rings, and between Tolkienists like myself and the Randians a great gulf is often fixed.

There someone goes mentioning Atlas Shrugged again as if it were pervasive. Haven’t read it. Did read some Heinlein and LeGuin along with the Tolkien. But I feel like any conservative inclinations I have are more due to my father and mother, and their parents, than to a written work, though I can say that my attraction to anarchism was prompted more by LeGuin than Tolstoy, since I’ve not read any Tolstoy.

I do think of myself as conservative, though my understanding of the term puts me at odds with those who see conservatism as the implacable enemy of the liberal, or who think today’s Republican party is conservative (or today’s Democratic party, liberal). No, instead I see conservatism as something very simple: understanding that there is value in the things that are even if we can’t tell what that value might be, and so any changes are best minimal and moderate. This inclination fights constantly with the urge to destroy everything in order to start anew. These are trying times.

Private Gain at the Public Expense

We should be on the Appalachian Trail today, but the threat of thunderstorms persuaded me that this week was not the time for a first backpacking trip with the No. 1 and No. 2 Sons. So of course it’s been wet without any actual lightning. NWS, please indicate a 60% probability of no lightning instead of a 40% probability of storms, kthxbye. Such is the toss of the dice.

Yesterday a contributor for Forbes online, which is not the same as the magazine, wrote (since revised) that libraries should be replaced by Amazon. In summary, Author is upset he pays taxes to support the library, suggests that Amazon and Starbucks are sufficient. Outrage ensued.

It’s hard to tell these days if people are serious (Bannon et al.) or if they are simply being outrageous to drive ad revenue (everyone on YouTube), or both (cha-ching!). Nonetheless, the responses I’ve seen to the suggestion, on Twitter obviously, have been from writers sympathetic to and with fond memories of libraries. I’m one. We’re upset that someone would even suggest taking away something that’s so much more than Amazon could ever be.

But let’s consider seriously the suggestion. Amazon provides books. Starbucks provides coffee, a place to sit, free WiFi, and a toilet, provided you buy coffee and aren’t black in Philadelphia. These services are provided to each customer as used, unlike the public library’s services, which, usually, are paid for from taxation of property owners, which will necessarily include taxing those who do not use the library. Some might consider that unfair. Taxes are, roughly speaking, merely theft, sometimes in a pretty guise, papered over with implicit consent.

So for Panos Mourdoukoutas to pay $495* a year for something he doesn’t use is just not right, but that’s not the argument he makes: he argues that the value provided is less than the amount paid, and that Amazon could do better at less cost.

The other day, out of the blue, No. 2 Son (10) offered that he thought libraries should have public showers, so that people without homes could have some place to bathe. I averred that was a swell idea, and remarked that some people use the showers at sports clubs and the YMCA in that fashion. (What’s the YMCA, he asked, which opened up a whole ‘nother line of investigation. Where is the YMCA these days?) I might have mentioned public baths, whether of New York or Rome.

These are two quite different conceptions of the public good. The one is concerned only with what affects the individual directly, and, leaving aside the matter of theft for the moment, sees any expense for which one is not receiving an immediate benefit as frivolity and waste, if not outright harm. The other is concerned with what is offered to one’s fellow man, regardless of one’s immediate needs. Is there a way to reconcile these two?

Charity has been that way. We depend on the largesse of those better off to pay voluntarily for the support of those less fortunate. We do so because our success is due to the grace of heaven and luck. As a corollary, we shame, or did, those who do not as miserly. And shame those who receive aid as free riders and parasites. But are not misers also parasites? Do they not benefit from a society to which they care to contribute naught? One may take all one can, as long as one cares for those one has impoverished. Should one? That’s a different question.

Is there a way to provide public services on a subscription basis where the service is actually public not private? Where the res publica can be maintained in the face of the res idiotica? The Library Company of Philadelphia is, or was, organized on that fashion, as a subscription service.

Let’s pause for a moment. Does one seriously believe that Amazon and Starbucks would replace the existing library? Or would it be be more likely that funds for the library would be redirected to Amazon, thus again using the public purse to enrich private interests?

This is what Mr. Mourdoukoutas suggests:

Amazon should open their own bookstores in all local communities.  [emphasis mine] They can replace local libraries and save taxpayers lots of money, while enhancing the value of their stock.

That is, let Amazon destroy Barnes & Noble (not a local bookstore, by any stretch of the imagination) as well as that labor of love on the corner, erect some imitation in its place, and then destroy the public equivalent. Give the public’s money, those stolen taxes, to someone who can then charge the people again. Is this not the American Way?

If one were to embrace the miserly parasite’s conception of society, would we not but find a war of all against all? How is this different, except the masses have no hope of winning?


*My landlord would pay $103 if he paid his taxes. Mr. Mourdoukoutas’s property must be a bit more luxurious than average.

Feedback

I don’t recall many of my college successes with great clarity, but I do recall my few failures. Two in particular stand out: both D’s on short papers because “the assignment was not addressed.”

One was for a course on art in New York City, where we were to pick a work that moved us, say why, and discuss the work. We were not limited to the visual arts — the course covered architecture as well as paintings in museums — but I apparently stretched the definition of art a bit too far, and wrote of a surprising cornfield in the front yard of a house in The Bronx.

The other was for a course on communications technologies, where we were to discuss an emerging technology and its current and potential effects on society. I wrote on how credit cards and networked point-of-sale magnetic stripe readers enabled the elimination of people from the purchase of gasoline and, by extension, the elimination of clerks in general. This was in 1991 or so, and most credit transactions still involved imprints in triplicate on carbon paper. By 2001, full-service gasoline stations were no longer an option (except where required by law), and staff had been reduced to a sole employee whose only purpose in life was to check identification for cigarette and alcohol sales. And nearly all retail stores were experimenting with self-checkout lanes. Not sure how this didn’t satisfy the assignment.

I wonder if I were able to revisit those pieces today I would agree with the professors. Because I’d like to point out that I was right.

To Do List

  • Wake up
  • Empty the bladder
  • Brush teeth
  • Make the bed
  • Feed the cats
  • Your son writes his grandmother
  • Write your lover
  • Insulin
  • The school bus
  • Breakfast
  • Dishes
  • Laundry
  • Dinner plans
  • That book under your skin
  • No, I already fed you cats
  • Write museum ask what was that poem
  • Laundry
  • She doesn’t want more college advice
  • Maybe she does
  • Why don’t factory towns in New England resemble coal towns in West Virginia?
  • Sweep
  • Pick up soccer kits and distribute: game’s tomorrow
  • Grocery store
  • What was on the list?
  • Do this first
  • No, the litter box needs changing
  • Sweep
  • What was that about lunch?
  • Laundry
  • Sweep
  • Vacuum
  • No homework today
  • Bon-bons
  • Idle chatter that’s how you learn about another’s day
  • Guests!
  • OK. You cats never give up, do you?
  • Dinner
  • Insulin
  • Will they want to read tonight?
  • Dishes
  • No, you can’t stay up: game’s tomorrow.
  • Bed
  • Wait: weren’t you supposed to work today?

Certainly Meaning Matters

One of my more annoying habits is to speak in uncertain terms: to use perhaps or probably instead of yes; to use maybe or unlikely instead of no. Everything always seems to be rather than is. I find it less annoying than my urge to cite references, which interferes with the flow of conversation, but my interlocutors probably don’t. I would guess they think they I’m waffling, but this is done more from doubt and an awareness of statistics than indecision or equivocation.

But there are some things of which I am certain.

It’s much more relaxing to watch the UEFA Champions League or the Cincinnati Reds, where I know I have no power to affect the results, than the turmoil in public education or trade wars or shooting wars, where I’m only probably impotent. I can feel the difference: the excitement, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat compared to the anxiety and frustration and hopelessness and despair.

In The Chomsky Reader (1983), Noam Chomsky discusses with James Peck our fascination with sport instead of politics, and speculates that it might have to do with powerlessness:

[T]his concentration on such topics as sports makes a certain degree of sense. The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway, without a degree of organization that’s far beyond anything that exists now, to influence the real world. … The gas station attendant who wants to use his mind isn’t going to waste his time on international affairs, because that’s useless; he can’t do anything about it anyhow…

Analysis of the effects of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti noticed that adverse reactions to psychological stress increased after help arrived. That is, when the population was able to do something to help each other and rebuild, they were fine. When they were told to stand back and let their saviors do all the work, when they couldn’t act in response to the stress, their resilience failed.

The well-known Whitehall Study found death rates were inversely associated with one’s position in the power hierarchy, particularly with regard to one’s lack of control over one’s work: associated, that is, with powerlessness.

How are sports different that they are so casual? I’m not invested in the outcome. Whether the Reds win or lose will not affect me. I’ve not placed any bets on the outcome. It doesn’t matter. I certainly don’t care.

They might as well live in a fantasy world, and that’s in fact what they do. I’m sure they are using their common sense and intellectual skills, but in an area which has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere.

Some football fanatics get wrapped up in the result. For them it has meaning. They care enough to kill for it.

Should we expect the same of politics as it subsides into an identitarian team sport? What if this were a monarchy, where I knew my actions had no bearing, where I had no control over death and taxes?

What then? The Serenity Prayer, probably. Why not now?

There is a context where I can act, where I do have control, where my actions do matter: at home.

Let me turn my attention there.

Proud to be an American, Where What?

I overhead part of an odd conversation between No. 1 Son and No. 2 Son that came while they were preparing for bed after we’d watched The Gamers: Humans & Households.

No. 2 Son: Which would you rather be: American or Canadian?

No. 1 Son: Canadian.

No. 2 Son: Me too.

Ah, the corrupting influence of the Internet that causes such young souls to have a strongly positive opinion of Canada.

Though I must admit Lucy Maud Montgomery did convince me that Prince Edward Island would be a lovely place to live. And I did like the Montreal Expos (though not the Mets) because of Gary Carter (and the Reds because of Johnny Bench–apparently I wanted to be a catcher). (There was trouble in the household due to my divided loyalties.) And the Maple Leaf is an attractive flag.

But how can one cultivate the love of one’s country and its people when the actions of its, supposedly representative,  government in the world and at home are of such low character?

Intrusion

There are times when I get myself in trouble because I minimize the details, and see only the Big Picture. One of those days was when one of our clients complained that his customers were complaining that his site didn’t work. He couldn’t figure out why and asked for help. Turned out that an advertisement originating from the third-party ad server was injecting HTML that caused his page to not render. It could have been worse. It could have been pr0n.

He bought service from us, we hosted the ad server, the ad agency sold inventory, and no one in the supply chain knew where the advertisements came from or who what they contained, or could predict what advertisements would show on which site. Now why would anyone let some anonymous fourth-party alter their work? Why would we make that possible?

Oh, we have to do that. We need the money from the advertisers.

::facepalm::

the creation of the modern web

XKCD may be talking about the current brouhaha in social media, but it’s always been exactly the way advertising works.

Now

The iPhone crouches at the corner of my chair, well within reach. The iMac sits on the altar in the living room, but I can worship from afar by picking up the iPhone. The god of distractions is generous this way: it does not care what use you have for it, only what use it has for you.

Poetry rests in the little spaces between distractions. It waits in the silence for brief attention, patient, burdock along the trail.


There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money, all of it.

Your heart is beating, isn’t it?
You’re not in chains, are you?

There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.

— Mary Oliver, “Moments,” Felicity (2016)

All These Many Voices

We, all of us, have something to say. So many of us found a voice writing on the web, broadcasting on YouTube, or talking through a podcast, not to make money or sell something–though some do start with that thought–but because we must.

Year over year, there are more songs, more musicians, more books, more authors, more movies, more actors, both absolutely and as a percentage of the total population.

Are fewer making a living from it? Fewer “capturing the value” of it?

The value is in the sharing. We humans are a talkative species of chattering, gregarious simians.

Consider the Lilies of the Field

Yesterday I spotted a valiant, optimistic beauty in my lawn.

The crocus uses what time it has, when it can. It must. Today it still reached for the sun.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. [Matthew 6:34 (ESV)]

The Illusion of Perfection

One of my favorite stories of a political figure is of Jimmy Carter, who said, yes, I’ve sinned.

I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do–and I have done it–and God forgives me for it.

We know no one is perfect–we certainly aren’t–but we insist on believing others are. Our heroes must be, at all costs. Columbus, for example, who bumped into the New World by an accident of math, couldn’t possibly have been a brutal, ravening slaver. It would not do to admit that the emperor has no clothes or that the king has feet of clay.

After all, he’s just a man. — T. Wynette

Sherry Turkle spends a balanced chapter on the subject in Alone Together, but I’ve since run across a number of snide remarks bemoaning the cultivation of an image of perfection on Instagram or of editing one’s online personality on Facebook, at once more plastic and more permanent. This seems such an ungenerous assessment of how we use those tools, unlike Pinterest which is obviously solely aspirational, engendered perhaps by our American obsession with marketing our personal brand illusion. Why not see these, of necessity cropped, images as snapshot of beauty in the world?

Beauty’s where you find it. — Madonna

At times the entire project of the American Dream seems collapsed to nothing more than envy and covetousness, underlaid by a deep sense of unease. That’s more motivation than one can reasonably extract from the purchase of a large home with a large mortgage and a large garage filled with large cars. It’s exposed more in the frantic scurrying for a place in the Right kindergarten or avoidance of the Wrong school district, anxiety about getting into the Best college or joining the Prominent firm, as each of these choices appears to open or close future opportunity: My children won’t have a perfect life if I eat Frankenberries while I’m pregnant, if I’m not a Tiger Mom, if I am a Tiger Mom. We simply must do the one single right thing, but doubt what it is. The courage of our convictions is lost in the crowd.

There can be only one king of the hill. That’s how superlatives work. There’s only one greatest of all time. But these are terms for comparison within a group: relative positioning, not absolute. The argument over who is the best is absurd without context. Nevertheless, the struggle for position in this tribe of great apes matters. Because shit rolls downhill, one must fight for one of the few limited spots closer to the top of the shit heap. The ape on the top of the heap can’t show weakness.

Sports model society, to a degree. Not all the parents are LaVar Ball, nor do all sporting enterprises target the anxieties of parents, but a number are, and a number do, leading to the impression that one needs to specialize early, that one just has to join the elite academy team at age 8 in order to play in college at 18, if one harbors any dream of playing professionally. Have to be ready when those scouts come looking for the next 13 year-old star. Never mind that puberty happens. One could also move to Argentina and acquire a growth hormone deficiency in hopes of trying out for Barcelona. Not that either method works: Sales doesn’t like statistics that get in the way of money.

What happens to joy? What place has fun?

What if we looked at life, and particularly parenting, as an unfolding practice instead of something we have to perfect on our first attempt? What if we could make mistakes in public? What if we could admit fallibility? What if we could experiment? Does anyone have all the answers? Has no one seen nothing new? Is everything the same day-to-day? Why is it so hard to respect how things are and, at the same time, allow the possibility of improvement? What if curiosity and compassion were stronger than fear?

What if we said yes?

“Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” [Luke 18:16–17 (ESV)]

Connectivity

Respect for others’ time is difficult when you cannot see them. The telephone interrupts dinner, church, conversations. The burden of ignoring the interruption placed on the recipient no matter how respectful the caller intended to be. Social cues are missing.

The same for e-mail, or instant messaging, or the apps on that phone in our pocket.

The things that connect us disconnect us.

Sabbathday

Sun shining over the hill and through my window, slowly climbs down the wall. The calico sleeps and purrs after breakfast, half on the book I was reading. There’s a feeling of possibility.

This spaciousness and calm I miss during the week. In conversation with Joan Halifax, Krista Tippett remarked, “We experience time as such a bully.” The clock, she meant, the calendar; how we use our days against ourselves, letting them be so demanding, a treadmill.

Which bird sings outside his courtship song? Sparrow, cardinal, chickadee? Titmouse?

I am so ignorant of so much in this world.