Rosa Parks dies at 92...
If there is anyone who demonstrates the folly...of a "philosophy" of following the rules...
It's Rosa Parks...
Thank you, Rosa...for your courage...to break the rules:)...
Love,
Ben
This is why the world seems so cock-eyed to me:):):)...
Majority of Americans reject evolution...
You see...at heart:):)...I'm just a scientist:):)...
My mind thinks too logically to bottom out to the lowest common denominator of most Americans:):):)...or people, generally, for that matter:):):)...
I've had the evolution/creation/intelligent design conversation a million times:):):)...
But what it all comes down to...is that the broad, undeniable consensus within the scientific community...favors evolution...and all other theories -- various creation stories...of which intelligent design is an ingenious variation on:):):) -- are interesting cultural myths to study as a part of Western heritage, world history, and world cultures...
But science, they are not...
And I am just too intellectually honest...to try to pretend that I identify very much at all with the idea that somehow my own personal or religious dogma...could ever or should ever...trump science:):):)...or deep, profound understandings of the world:):):)...
I think the reason why I see the world so different from most people...
Is that I just don't take bullshit folk theories about the world very seriously, at all:):)...
I only take seriously the most rigorous thought...
And everything else is just kind of bullshit, as far as I'm concerned:):):)...
Most people don't think like that, I'm learning...
And my thinking on that...
They should...
And they should learn to live and think up to my standards and to the standards of the best thinkers in the world:):)...
And not me or those thinkers down...to the thinking of most folks...
And that is why I don't understand most people, much of the time:):):)...
Because I just don't take stupid that seriously, really:):):)...and I don't care how seriously others take stupid...it's still stupid, as far as I'm concerned...
And I only take smart seriously...
Smart can mean that someone understands cars...or weed-whackers...or whatever...
And it can mean that they understand people...or schools...or politics...or economics...or whatever...better...as well:):):)...
But I just don't respect thinking that takes stupid too seriously...and doesn't respect, enough, the best thinking...
And my expectation...is that people should live up to that...not me living down to stupid:):):)...
And that is the long and short of it, as far as I'm concerned:):):)...
Have a great day, everyone:):):)...
And if you happen to be one of those people who agree with the majority in this poll:):):)...
I would suggest keeping your day job:):):)...and not trying your hand, professionally, at science, any time soon:):):):)...
Unless you have a rigorously considered scientific challenge to evolution...
And it better be good...
And not some long rationalization for why "God does exist, gosh darnit!"...
Because if this is what you're going after...scientifically-minded people want proof for your ideas...proof for which yours and other ideas can be falsified...not just asserted...and not just self-righteous pronouncements of whatever dogma you ascribe to...
And my efforts are to bring folks up to that expectation...
And to stop having intelligent people...pander down to the foolishness of average folks:):):)...
Have a great night, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
I just heard this interview by Robert Siegel of National Public Radio with Adam Rosen of the Institute for International Economics about President Bush's nomination of Ben Bernanke to be the country's next Federal Reserve Chairman...
That reinforced why I write the way I write:):)...
Adam gave a pretty typical liberal economist's perspective...at least for a liberal in the opening years of the twenty-first century:):)...on President Bush's nomination of Ben Bernanke for Federal Reserve Chairman:):)...
Robert indicated that writers at the National Review, one of if not the most important conservative publication in the country, were expressing concern that Bernanke was not a supply-side economist...referring to the economic theory espoused famously by economists like Arthur Laffer --creator of the concept of the Laffer curve, which sought to demonstrate the marginal utility of higher tax and lower tax rates -- that low taxes and other incentives to business growth were key to growing the economy, since they encouraged savings and investment in new businesses and expansion of old businesses, increasing productivity, employment, and overall economic well-being along the way...
Thanks to Wikipedia for a nice, concise explanation of supply side economics...
Adam Rosen, of the Institute for International Economics sought to put Robert's mind to rest:):)...reminding him, as a newly appointed high priest of the field of economics:):), that supply-side economics is not taken seriously by mainstream economists:):):)...
Which is poppy-cock, of course:):)...and is Adam playing politics with an idea that he disagrees with:):)...because he's a liberal economist:):)...which generally means that he believes in things like progressive taxation (meaning high taxes on the rich and lower taxes on the middle class and poor), economic regulation, and other interferences in the economy that conservatives generally abhor:):) (and I do, too, just for the record:):)...even as an independent who has been a liberal for most of my life:):)...
And it just reinforced for me why I write about complex matters of scholarship and serious ideas as casually and as interspersed with the personal as much as I do:):):)...
First and foremost...it's because I want to humanize serious thought...I want people to see that it's real people who deal in it...not some distant, abstract idea-geek...who doesn't seem to have a soul outside of their immediate academic work:):)...and, as such...that we and all of us, really, are subject to human folly as much as anyone else...thought thinking seriously about life does tend to cut down on that folly, I think:):):)...
Also...because I want to be as open with my life as possible and as I feel comfortable:):)...
Meaning...I don't want people to just read my ideas...I want people to know about me...as a person...as someone who has a life outside of my ideas:):)...and that influence my ideas quite a bit, really:):):)...and I want to be honest that, like all scholars, likely...my personal life affects the way that I look at the world:):)...and think about it:):)...
But a big concern that some people might have about my writing, I think...is how casual it is...how unconventional it is for an academic to write so casually...and personally:):)...
And the reason that this doesn't bother me...is, first...because the personal stuff, I think, is really important actually...and I think it's important for people to know some of the day-to-day realities that shape me and my ideas:):)...and know that I test them every day:):)...that my ideas are not, at all, some kind of ideological agenda...they are ideas borne of very serious thought and real experience:):)...and that that is important to me:):)...and I think should be to everyone:):)...
But the reason why I'm not concerned about how people may disregard my ideas...based on how they're written...
Is borne out in that interview...
You see...Adam just disagrees with supply side economics:):)...and then found a creative, if somewhat deceptive, way to disregard ideas that he disagrees with:):)...
And that is just par for the course...in political and economic and other discussions, I think:):)...but in life, too, I think:)...
I sometimes do it...especially if I think I'm being bullied...and it's a clever and generally honest way to fight back in those situations, I think...to expect people to think seriously...rather than to mistake their groupthink and their bullying for serious thought...
But I try to be honest, generally, when I have a disgreement with someone...the higher the stakes the discussion...like if someone is impugning my character...the less seriously and the less respectfully I will take a disagreement...which I'm fine with, really...I think low-ball disagreements can expect some in-kindness in responses to them:)...
But, generally...I'll try to be as honest as possible about a disagreement:):)...
And...the bottom-line...with any idea...
Is that either you'll agree with it...or find agreement with it...or you won't...
That's really it...everything else is window-dressing...
Meaning...the formality or informality of the writing...the presentation...the grammar...the punctuation...
All the bullshit...eventually gives way...to the basic issue...
Either you find agreement with an idea:):)...or you don't:):)...
I heard about Ronald Coase's ideas on the internalization of extra-economic costs to a society for economic decisions (like environmenatal consequences, say) in a undergraduate macroeconomics class with a liberal economics professor, Martin Perline (one of my favorite undergraduate professors:):)...who dissuaded me of the kind of kooky thought of economist Murray Rothbard, in his book Bionomics, a libertarian tract that I was fascinated with as an undergrad:):)...
I've never read Coase, formally:):)...Dr. Perline did tell us that he had won the Nobel Prize in Economics:):)...and I found his ideas a fascinating opportunity to cut through a lot of the difficulty of getting businesses to think about larger environmental consequences from their business decisions and not at just narrow profit margins...
But I do know that Ronald's ideas are brilliant:):):)...and I don't give a shit about how he writes them:):)...or how he delivers them in a lecture:):)...or how he dresses or doesn't when he shares those ideas:):):)...
I just care about the ideas:):)...because I think they're good ones:):):)...
And that's basically how it works, I think:):)...
I can write in the formalities, too, of course:):)...I was in college of some sort for 12 years, for goodness sakes:):)...I would hope that I have the basics of grammar and spelling and other important formalities of writing down:):)...
But part of the way I write...is both to share of me, personally...meaning...how I'm feeling as I write:):)...like with smileys:):)...
And also to communicate...with the elipses...
That thinking is an on-going...never-ending...process...that it's never done...there are never finished answers...
And anyone who tells you there are...is not only bullshitting you:):)...but they're artificially shutting off the quest for better ideas...
Ronald Coase would never come up with ideas to "internalize the externalities," as Ronald might say:):)...
If he believed that all the important ideas in the world were all out on the table...no more thinking necessary:):)...
And neither would anyone else:):)...
Good thinkers and great thinkers know this...that's how they get to be good and great thinkers:):)...
But...my concern...was that not enough average folks...average thinkers...realized this...
That too many people thought that ideas were less open than all that...because they just look so neat and clean and polished up:):)...when they're written about in articles or books or wherever:):)...
When...really...when you get underneath the hood:):)...
All ideas...and all thinking:):):)...is in process:):)...and that nice, shiny engine:):):)...often has quite a few quirks that its most intimate mechanics know best:):):)...
And I just wanted as many of my own quirks out there as possible:):)...
Because I want people to realize...that anyone can do this:):)...it just takes some effort...and some desire...some practice...and a lot...a lot...a lot...of study:):):)...
And I was just thinking today:):)...as I was mowing the same lawns that I just mowed last week:):):)...
How much I love working with these ideas:):):)...
How important it is to me...
How in awe I am of people who develop genuinely new, interesting, constructive ideas...to make the world better...
And writers, generally, who inspire me to look at the world in a different way:):):)...
Adam Rosen is a fine economist, I'm sure...
But his comments were not on par with the really influential ideas of Ronald Coase...or Amartya Sen...or Fredrich Hayek...or Milton Friedman...or John Kenneth Gailbraith...or John Maynard Keynes...or Robert Heilbroner...or Carolyn Minter Hoxby...
Economists who sought/seek to explain the most difficult and important economic, political, and social phenomena...with deep, broad explanations...that are very diverse...and often in conflict...
And which all add to our understanding of the world:):)...
Adam's comments on NPR didn't really add much to that understanding, in the broadest sense...as very good an economist I'm sure he is:):)...and as much as I learned from him about Ben Bernanke...
I hope my ideas will contribute to that broader discussion in similar ways...
But I've made my peace with the fact that there will likely be people who disagree with me:):)...and probably will be on my death bed and long after I've left this tiny little planet, third from our sun:):)...
And that...either people will find the ideas useful:):)...or they won't...and everything else is just window-dressing:):)...
And in the meantime...I want to leave something of me that is more personal...more...me...than just my ideas:):)...as important as ideas, generally, and my ideas are to me:):):)...
To share of the life that those ideas are meant to help understand...and improve:):):)...
Have a good night, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
...the prospect of giving up on my friends depresses the hell out of me...
I've premised almost everything I think...in education policy, at least...and on a lot of domestic policy matters...but just the way I think about and care about people, generally...
...on the idea that all people can learn to think through serious issues...
That there is no need for either the contempt of those who are more convinced that people can think more and think and act better but refuse...
Or the condescending sympathy of those who are convinced that people may just not be able to think through matters better...
My premise has been that people can and need to think and, as a consequence, act better...and that better engaging serious issues with more thoughtful people gives them an opportunity to learn how to do that better...
And you would think that if I can't even do this with some of my best friends...then I just can't do it at all...
It is complicated...
These particular friends do seem convinced that such thought just doesn't apply to them...one of my better friends spends a lot of time pretending that more thoughtful ideas and movies and books, etc., just don't apply to him...that the values taught in places like school are just some vast illusion that he has somehow seen through...
A lot of people play this game, I'm learning...especially when they were less successful in school...I guess it's just easier on the ego than admitting that they just weren't as good of a student as they needed to be...even as schools and teachers must learn to better accommodate the learning needs of all students...
But I just think all this denial of the obvious reality that being smarter matters...and that it matters everywhere...no matter how important or menial the effort seems...that denying this reality just makes us all -- all of us...not just those engaged in the denial...active or otherwise -- weaker...less prepared...less able to take on important challenges in our lives and our workplaces and our communities...
I want to teach in public schools...and I want my kids to go to public schools...and I want to teach in a public university...
Not because I'm defensive of public schools...but because I genuinely believe in them...as the best opportunities for learning in schools...that folks either take advantage of or not...
Private schools are the same situation, I think...but I think public schools offer better opportunities...because they offer the better and more real-life challenge of working and learning and leading in situations with a broader group of folks...no matter how frustrating it is...which is more reflective the how the real world works...that we don't get to insulate ourselves in the real world from people who we think are dumber than us...or of a different religion...or not a true Christian...or whatever other ways that people try to insulate themselves and one another in university settings:):):)...
But the one thing that is a serious advantage for almost any school situation...where folks choose to be there...
Is that you're not dealing with the really most frustrating and fundamental difference between smarter students and less bright students...
Which is the stubborn refusal of some people to learn...no matter how much it is needed...
And since kids in public schools more often than kids in private schools, I imagine...don't choose to be there...they are more likely to rebel against learning and the learning process, I imagine...
There's some of this in private schools, as well, of course...but private schools can always kick such kids out...and then public schools end up absorbing them, often...if they can't get into other private school situations...
And that is how life works...
It would be great to think that someone we could just kick out all of the people in the world that we don't like...or don't like to work with...
But it just doesn't work that way...I've learned very much the hard way...that we often have to work with folks that we may have even imagined, at one point...as I did...that we'd never have to work with...
We just have to learn to work with all kinds of people...
The trick, though...is that we all still need to choose to learn...we just can't do it any other way...we can refuse to do or rebel against doing just about any damned thing we please, really...
And the reason why I believe in as much school choice and freedom for schools as possible...is so schools and students and parents and teachers can each and all learn to be responsible for their learning and teaching, together, as much as possible...without either expecting others to do the job for us...or rebelling against the process along the way...
But the challenge is still...that...ultimately...all students have to choose to learn...or else the process just doesn't really work, really...
And my frustration with my friends is that they want to be responsible...without really taking that responsibility seriously...they want to be in charge...without really taking seriously the need to think about how to use authority...they'd rather spend their lives defending their right not to think...no matter how adolescent and useless an instinct that is...
Than to spend it thinking about how to deal with life's challenges better...
They'd rather fuck up every challenge out of experience...and worse...do what so many less educated people do...make the same mistake over and over and over and over and over and over again...stubbornly and stupidly...rather than learning from it much more quickly by thinking more seriously about it...
They just want to defend the idea that they don't need so stinkin' thinkin'...to make it through life...than to come to terms with the obvious reality for anyone who does take thinking seriously...that thinking matters...and that...in no matter what endeavor we engage in...it impacts our ability to do it better...and to think about it better...
And the most recent round of bullshit that they've put me through...is just too much...it's just a bunch of dumbasses trying to play big people that they aren't prepared enough to do quite yet...and I've had to deal with all of the fallout...
But giving up not only seems unrealistic...and heartbreaking...since I really love these friends...it seems to be giving up on that ideal...that we all have to learn to take learning and thinking more seriously...no matter how we might foolishly argue against that idea...
But...in this case...the lesson is going to have to involve them learning to apologize when they fuck up...
Because I just don't trust them, anymore...no matter how much they fuck up...I keep coming back...not expecting apologies...assuming that they're more fragile egoes have a harder time dealing with that task...
But this time is different...they've been particularly shitty to me...
And this time an apology is due...and learning to offer it is part of the lesson they need to learn, right now...
It'll be good for 'em...but more importantly...it will be the only way that I'll know that they've learned the lesson...and they won't put me through what they've put me through in the last couple of weeks/months or so again...
And now I realize it's not too high an expectation...it's the only expectation that will change the situation between us, at this point...
I don't want to live in a world where the only people expected to learn are people who have and/or take advantage of more or better educational opportunities that others...
I want a world where everyone is expected and internalizes the expectation to learn and think and grow no matter what educational opportunities they do or don't take advantage of...and where everyone has as much freedom as possible to take advantage or not take advantage of those opportunities...so that they can learn what life is like with the alternatives...and so that they can learn better to take the better paths...as they have experiences that teach them, better, that they have much more to learn...
But there is a fundamental hump that everyone has to get over for that to happen...
People have to choose to learn...and to take learning seriously...and to take the thinking that is involved with that learning seriously...for all of that to happen...
And I have learned...with this particular group of friends...and this one friend, in particular...
That I can't make them think...no matter how important it is for them to do so...
That they can refuse to take thinking and learning seriously...for as long as they'd like...
And that we all have to deal with the consequences in the meantime...
And that they...and they're children...and everyone in their lives...will have to live with the consequences of that refusal...as long as they so choose that path...
And that will be the on-going, self-fulfilling prophecy...
Until we break that cycle...that is perpetual...as long as we don't engage that challenge and address it...
I'm not interested in that self-fulfilling prophecy...
And I've never seen a challenge that I'm afraid of taking on, frankly...ever...
So I know this is one that we can and must take on, as well...
And I'm up to the job...
But this particular one...this particular situation with these friends...
Will involve an apology...
And that is the only way forward with that particular situation...period...
And this is one self-fulfilling prophecy...that I am tired of tripping us all up...all of us...
It's gotta change...
No matter how stubbornly people who take learning and thinking less seriously...cling to their defenses about what they don't need to think and learn more and better...
I just don't give a shit what folks' excuses are...
The world is better when we all take smart more seriously...and treating each other decent, as well...which we learn the smarter we get...because smart people who don't take seriously treating people decently...really aren't that smart, afterall, as it turns out...and decent people who don't take smart seriously...are just being kind of dumb, really...
When I signed the lease on this little apartment in July...I was like, "Why in the world am I committing to this shitty little neighborhood for a year?"...
The truth was...because I didn't have time to find a new place while I was searching for jobs...and I couldn't put the leasing office off any more...
But I look around this cozy little apartment...and I think about all the strong friendships I have with all my neighbors (all of us seem to be pretty much friends...and some of us pretty close friends)...
And I realize that I love this little place:):):)...this little home I have, for now:):)...
And that I love feeling at home in my little place...the feeling of real, genuine safety...that one feels...when there is plenty of love around:):):)...
I've got to get to bed:):):)...I'm exhausted:):):)...
I'll talk with everyone later:):):)...
Love,
Ben
I have some neighbors upstairs who asked me to housesit their cat for a bit while they were visiting family in Arkansas:):)...she's an adorable little cat:):)...Minou, I believe, is her name:):)...I'm terrible with names:):)...
Anyway:):)...I cleaned her litter:)...and filled her food and water bowls...and her water cup:) (Stepanie...my neighbor...leaves a cup out for her kitty the same way Melissa and I would do for Darcy:):)...it's just too adorable watching a kitty put her paw in a human glass -- which both kitties would do when they got around our glasses:):) -- and so we all -- Melissa and I and Stephanie and Brandon -- just started doing it regularly:):)...
And Minou and I just cozied up together and watched some Tenacious D and some Reservoir Dogs that Brandon and Steph had on DVD:):)...and just kind of cuddled:):)...
And I noticed how cozy their apartment felt:)...
There's just some people, you know...who...no matter where they live...Steph and Brandon and I live in the middle of what makings of a ghetto that Lawrence, Kansas might have:):)...but, still...their apartment (my temptation is to say Steph's because Stephanie is such a lovely little host:):)...she's so sweet...you'd have to meet her:):)...felt so cozy...in this cold weather:):)...
And after Reservoir Dogs ended...I wrote Steph a note...and felt, for the first time in a long time, that I was among the kind of loving, decent people/families/homes that I was used to being among before my venture into the big, bad world...
And I went back downstairs...to my own apartment:):)...which I've got all tidied up, now:):)...computer on the living room table:):)...dishes done:):)...boxes that have been sitting around forever getting unpacked:):)...floor getting more fully vacuumed, more and more:):)...bathroom getting cleaned:):)...
The inertia of disregard that overlay the place when Melissa and I lived here together swept away:):)...
And I realized that I have about the most homey little place that I've ever been in:):)...
It's so nice:):)...to visit a really cozy little place like Steph and Brandon's:):) -- which is totally based on who they are, as people, of course:):)...and not a bit on anything less important:):)...
And then to come back to my little place:):)...
And feel like this is where I belong:):):)...it's really nice:):)...
I've always felt that way, more, in other peoples' homes...housesitting with Brandi:):)...in our apartments...the three we lived together in, in D.C., Lawrence, and Kansas City:):)...in Brandi's family's home:):)...in the home of the parents of her best friend, Wendy Werner:):)...
In the homes of, basically, loving, nice, middle-class families who take education and being good seriously:):)...but not too seriously:):)...and with lots of love and warmth and a genuine sense of welcome:):):)...
And now I feel that more in my home than I feel in the homes of anyone else I know:):):)...that's a good feeling:):):)...and what we all should want, I hope:):)...
That's what I've always wanted...
A home...
A real home...
Not land...or a structure I own rather than rent...
But a home...
A place where I feel loved:):):)...and where others who come around can feel loved, too:):):)...
And...after having that, more, when I was living alone and then with roommates three years ago before I left school:):):)...
I feel that again and more, today:):):)...
The difference was that three years ago I had no idea what the job market and financial uncertainty and financial tumbles all looked like:):):)...
And now I do:):):)...
And I'm not scared, any more:):):)...it's really great, I have to tell you:):):)...
Now I just enjoy my little life:):):)...
And...have the freedom to grow that life for real...and not just based on whether or not a boss or any authority figure "allows" me to grow that life:):):)...I haven't met a boss or authority figure, yet, who I trust to do that for me...they're all just too damn...bossy:):)...and I doubt I will any time, soon:):)...
And when I do...it will be the one who knows that I don't need his or her permission, at all...to make any choice important to my life...
And that's why my home feels more homey today than three years ago...
Because, today...
That overhang of fear of what would happen if I decided to make my own most important choices in my life...with others' input...but with all the final calls for myself...and the perogative to ignore anyone who treats me or my life in any other way...
That fear...is gone:):):)...
I do wish my more bullying, less thoughtful friends good luck with their lives:):)...but no more bullying for me...and I only take thoughtful insight seriously from now on...
The major situations in my life in the last three days have taught me that most people...really...only care about themselves...and rationalizing their lives around that self-centeredness...and that more genuine people...are pretty rare, really...I see, now, better, why it's so easy to get so lost in the bullshit of it all...because a big part of caring only about yourself...is pretending that you're doing it all in the name of others...
And I just have no interest in living my life that way...I want to be a genuinely good person...and spend my life with other genuinely good people...which are kind of rare, really...most people aspire to be good...and fake it till they make it, as Nancy Reagan would say...they just also fake themselves into thinking they're better than they really are, too...
I don't mean most Americans...or most of any kind of person, in particular...
Most people, period...aspire to be good...but fall far short...
And some people...as I just learned...don't even really try that hard to be good, really...so wrapped up in being cool...or being liked...or getting the stuff they want in life...or looking better for others than they really are...or being rich...or being powerful...or otherwise wanting things that they think will make them happy...but never do...
And worst of all...
Trying to win the rewards and avoid the punishments meted out by other not-so-noble folks to enforce their distorted notions of goodness...
And that's most people, I'm learning...
And then there are a very few people...
Who are more genuinely good...
Who have the same freedom to choose a baser life...
And choose otherwise...
And that is the kind of person that I try to live my life as...and am growing into...
I have applications and bills to work on, everyone:):):)...a fun Saturday night planned for me:):):)...
Have a great weekend, everyone:):)...
Love,
Ben
...I don't any more...
I can't think of any better argument for spending my time with intelligent, educated, decent people...
Than spending too much of it, by far, with the wrong crowd...
I've had a group of friends whose major aspiration in life is the newest high that they can get off of whatever drugs they can get their hands on...I've only done pot (and a whippet, once) in the my life...and almost all of it has been with this crowd...
I stopped smoking pot about the same time I stopped hanging out with this crowd...which I had only smoked very occassionally...
And now I think I know why momma and everyone else said not to hang out with the wrong crowd...
Because they're bad news...
And the most annoying thing about the wrong crowd...
Is that they so frequently forget that they're the wrong crowd...so insistent are they on rationalizing what fucked up lives they lead...
And I am beyond tired of it...
I had a nice little life as a good student...and a good guy...who didn't do drugs...and did well in school...I hated always doing what I was told...but even that doesn't bother me so much, anymore...as long as people do it nicely...when they don't...well, that's a different story...
And this crowd of friends is validating every conservative impulse I've ever had in me...to stay away from people who talk or act like they don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves...because...in all likelihood...they don't...
I just didn't know how nasty people were...until I left school...it's true...the school doesn't totally prepare you for a total shithole the real world often is...and generally made so by the people most cynical about what a shithole it is...
And the lesson I'm learning...is that the reason to prefer making friends with deep and abiding faith and decency and values and dreams and purpose and aspirations...
Is because the more shallow, foolish people in the world...are probably not people you can rely on...
And that is definitely the case, here...
Brandi did better than I ever gave her credit for...
She just started hanging out with a guy from church...
Wise move...
Because average people...the kind that you never see show up at church...for fear that they'll burn to a crisp the moment they step in...
Are one long pain in the ass...
And I, for one, am sick and fucking tired of the bullshit of this group of friends...and I have had it...
I'm definitely not a regular church-goer, either...I like church...a lot, often...I was a youth leader in a nice little liberal Christian church, Unity Church, in Wichita, Kansas...
And while I had a really great church experience, overall...I also know that many church folks can be a real pain in the ass to hang out with, too...
My plan...teach...write...get work in a university, at some point...
And spend as much time on my own, as possible...
And if I can't make change with these folks...to get them to think more when they need to...then it's just not possible...maybe Amartya Sen is right...maybe some people just can't be intelligent...or maybe...much more likely...maybe some people just refuse to think intelligently...
Either way...I'm tired of the bullshit...
Because I'm the only person that I can rely on...for any kind of decent judgment...for anything I need...for all the shit that really matters in life...
And if I find a girl, along the way, who's smart and wise and decent enough...then that will be fine, too...
But from here on out...
I'm doing this life on my own...
And with whatever decent people I can find along the way...
Ben
It's been a drizzly day outside all day, today...so the lawnmowing work was called off for the day...and it's been all cozy inside, watching the rain fall outside:)...
You ever loved someone, completely...and not really known what to do as they bullshit themselves and others...so they don't face themselves?...
I have this friend...that I love a lot...but who's been a real shit to me, lately...
And...to do this...this friend has had to totally bullshit himself...about himself...
It's been kind of amazing to watch the mental gymnastics on the whole thing...
I love him...a lot...he's like a brother to me...but definitely a younger brother...someone who still has a lot of growing up to do...
I have a younger brother, actually...who I also love a ton...who I've told this friend...who is so much like my real younger brother in so many ways...that he reminds me of my younger brother, Sam...and I think I've told Sam about this friend, as well, and how I feel about him...that's how close I've felt with this friend...
And...my friend...who I love...is trying to grow up...
Which I totally appreciate...and support...because I've known him for a long time...and it's great to watch him grow up...
But goddamn if sometimes he doesn't bulllshit himself...about just how mature he is or isn't...it's amazing to watch...I have to tell you...
And it's only because he began to handle a situtation poorly...that we've come to a head about this...
He won't take responsibility for it...and it's kind of a long circular discussion about it...because sometimes I'm not even sure if my friend realizes just how large a gap there is in his much less serious sense of responsibility...and my much more serious sense of it...
For anyone who's ever been in this situation in any capacity...you may have a sense of this...
You love people...you support them...you offer them constructive criticism (or in this case, you also call them an asshole...when they deserve it)...
But people who don't take responsibility as seriously...just don't see it, generally, as people who do see it about them...
Working in less-educated, lower-skill jobs has taught me a lot about this...watching people twice my age take half the responsibility...because they just never really grew up...it's really sad...and something that people who are more responsible just kind of learn to accept to some degree...and accept that they can trust such people only to a certain degree...
My friend is on the margin of that...
He wants more responsibility...but he has very little experience with it...and more importantly...he has a really serious problem honestly acknowledging to himself, as much if not more than with others, when he's fucking up...he is a master excuse-maker...
I suggested that he see this really brilliant movie, last night...he can't see it, he says...because he came up with the premise for it ten years ago...
And I'm thinking, "Do you want to grow up to be the wierd uncle that all the kids always have to wonder how much of what comes out of your mouth is bullshit and how much is honest?...Do you really think that people believe your bullshit as fully as you seem to believe it?...do you really think that this helps you in any way?"
The answer to all those questions is no, of course...
But my very good friend...who has so much potential to be so much more than he only half-hearted strives to be, much of the time...
Just keeps wallowing in his own bullshit, so much of the time...
We all have the folks in our family who bullshit themselves and others about why they didn't/don't chase their dreams...or do big things...whose constant story is about the one that got away...
I have more uncles and aunts like this (and a mom, to some degree...though we don't talk about it or much of anything else, these days, any more) than I have uncles and aunts who are more honest with themselves and others...
You have those few people in your family, you know...who seem to have it together...
And then the folks in your family whose whole life seems to revolve around dimishing the accomplishments of their brothers or sisters doing better...or bullshitting themselves that they are competing with those same brothers or sisters when they aren't...
The best family members are the ones who love themselves and one another, more, no matter how well or poorly each of them are doing...though it does seem like those family members who end up being the most successful, long term...
My dad was one of the more gracious and loving in his family...who after a long bankruptcy...is, by far, the most successful in his family...his brother, who runs the family business, is also one of the most gracious...and the other most successful member of the family...and his sister and definitely her husband do pretty well, also...
My mom has two younger sisters who are both very decent women...both of whom do fairly well in their lives in different capacities...one as a school paraprofessional...and the other as a successful real estate developer...as does her younger brother, who runs his own sign-making business...
But the less successful members of each of my extended families...are constantly grumbling about how shitty the little things in life are...and have petty little conflicts and rivalries with their more successful and generally elder siblings (though my mom might count in there, despite being the oldest in her family...maturity, I'm learning, is not at all, necessarily, based on age...it is more often based on how much people take responsibility for their lives...their successes...their failures...their futures...their dreams)...
And this friend has always kind of reminded me, often, of one of these more petty, grumbling relatives...
He's right on the cusp of being a more self-fulfilled, successful person...
But to get there...he's going to have to over this hump...to start to take responsibility for himself, more...or be forever condemned to making excuses for why he never made it...
Which is what that conversation about that brilliant movie that he doesn't want to see...not because he came up with it 10 years ago...but because it's brilliant...and he eats his heart out in such situations...is all about...
He has this one life...this one opportunity...to have a life that where he really earns his way through it on merit...and not on excuses...
And he's constantly sucker-punching himself...undermining his own aspirations...and generally...giving up on himself...
And the only way to move past it...
Is to acknowledge...that the person responsible for doing all of that...is him...
Not his teachers...not his friends...not his mom...or his sisters...or anyone...
Just him...
And as painful a recognition that will be about himself...
It is the only one that offers him a chance to start living a more honest life...where he earns his place in it...on his merit...and not by always dissing the referees...or the conditions...or the other myriad of imperfections in the world...
And on the other side of that pain...there is the freedom that he's been yearning for all his life...the freedom that comes with being judged on your merits...and being proud of that (and disappointed at times, to be sure)...and not just whining all the time about how the game is rigged against you...
I love my friend...but he is in something of a low-spot on this one, right now, I think...as are a couple other mutual friends of ours'...
And what they can't see...is that if they keep maintaining this bullshit...and all the shitty ways that it involves treating me...
Then I just have to wait...from afar...while he grows up...hoping that he will grow up...and feeling much sadder about the prospect that he just won't...that he'll make some kind of adolescent stand about not having to...no matter how old he gets...and no matter how little it's served him...the entire time he's done it...
Lots of people have this issue...we all probably have it to one degree or another...though some of us have it more, clearly, than do others...many of the efforts to get at President Clinton during his tenure had to do with this kind of pettiness...and envy...and otherwise destructiveness for no good reason...other than getting at those that don't confirm our own sad little self-pitying stories about ourselves...who demonstrate a capacity for success...or happiness...or all kinds of good things...that don't confirm our sense that our shitty lives result from forces that we aren't responsible for (which is true for everyone, of course...it's just that the most responsible people get a move on despite all of it...and don't get too bogged down in it)...
Why do people settle for that kind of bullshitting of themselves, I wonder?...it doesn't serve them...it doesn't make them feel better...it doesn't get them ahead...or any of even the petty things in life that they say that they want...
It's lack of courage, I think...a lack of confidence in themselves...and a lack of courage to pursue ones dreams fully that comes with that kind of confidence...and which involves taking that kind of responsibility...
And my very good friend...who I love like a brother...lacks that kind of confidence and courage...
And he bullshits me...and himself...and everyone else...to maintain it that way...
I do wish him luck...
But he owes me an apology...a sincere one...
And it's that kind of courage that he's going to need to show...that's going to get his life moving, more, in the direction that he really wants...down deep...when he's not bullshitting me, himself, and everyone else...
But I do wish him luck...
Have a great night, everyone:):)...
Love,
Ben
I was just walking...we have this really beautiful little park a couple of blocks away...train tracks near the entrance...a river at the back...playground equipment, including swings (particularly important playground equipment to me:):)...
I like to walk...I walk a lot...those who know me know that it is one of my important pasttimes...
And I realized...
How much I fully loved my life...
What an incredible and proud legacy...this legacy of ideas...that I'm a part of...just what a powerful legacy it is...the most powerful...the most important...the most influential, for obvious reasons...and the legacy that I and I think any person can be most proudly affiliated with...
Do you realize how many fewer wars there are today than in antiquity?...or even just a hundred years ago...or 50 years ago?...
How something as basic as war...something that has been with humanity since it's beginning...and much more frequent, arbitrary, and destructive in the past...for which politics, in its beginnings, was developed as an alternative...
How something as basic and destructive as war...
Has been diminished dramatically...
By the idea...that it could...
Powerful...
And my ideas contribute to diminishing that even further...as far as possible...or as far as I can see, at least...at this point in my life...whatever can reduce it's propensity more...I hope some whippersnapper comes along and kicks my lilly-white ass to develop better ideas to do it...
Do you know how powerful that is?...to know that you are part of that legacy?...
Or the legacy of those developing ideas to improve education?...or reduce crime?...or to promote more freedom so that other people have a more conducive environment for curing diseases...developing medicines...developing technologies?...
Do you know how powerful it is to think that you are doing work that can help people find more authentic love?...build stronger families...be stronger individuals?...be more at peace with themselves...for real?...
Work that can offer people the opportunity to face themselves more honestly and with more courage?...to help people forgive...and love...and live lives with more decency and compassion?...to help victims and perpetrators of even the most serious and gruesome crimes -- murder, genocide, rape, torture -- to face themselves...and one another...and to learn to have the courage to forgive...for themselves...and for one another...for victims to forgive perpetrators...and for perpetrators to face and forgive themselves...
And...in the course of that...to prevent those kinds of crimes in the future...by those same perpetrators...and by others...and by facilitating, better, their capture to face their crimes...and the victims they have left behind...
Ideas that can increase productivity in businesses and non-profits and all kinds of groups and organizations to deal with their central purposes...to increase the purposefullness and ingenuity and creativity and feeling of self-satisfaction that each of the members of those groups can feel in doing their work...and...as a consequence...do far better, more creative work...much of which we never would have anticipated without their freedom to engage in it...
Ideas that can better satisfy the material, political, social, personal and emotional needs of humanity?...
Do realize how powerful it is to be a part of that legacy?...
It is the most powerful legacy, actually...
The greatest...
And that is the reason why since I was a fairly young guy...I've always wanted to be a part of it...
And I have never felt prouder...of myself...of my efforts...of my accomplishments...
And happier...more content...more at peace...with my life...ever before in my life...
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...
The courage to change the things I can...
And the wisdom to know the difference...
And out of that little prayer...
Is reaped everything...
I have never loved my life more...or the people in it...
And I am so proud to be a part of that legacy...
Have a great evening, everyone...
Love,
Ben
I hesitate to write this entry after that last one...because I want people's help making the case against least possible necessary aggression...and I want people to see that I'm genuine in my efforts to come at the best/right answers...that I'm not some liberal activist looking to prove myself right...or some radical looking to manipulate the process...
That fundamentally...I am...genuinely...someone who wants to make the world better...and will really do just about anything to make it better...for real...no bullshit...no political agenda (that's not honestly about making things better, at least)...sometimes I think that I'm the only one who will know how genuinely I come to that conversation...
But you want to know the truth?...
After all the study...and all the effort...and all the really goddamn hard work...
You want to know the truth?...
The truth is...
I don't know...
I don't know what, exactly, will make the world better...
I hope I'm onto something...
But I really could be totally full of shit...
I hope not...because I already feel like a fool enough to not have to deal with that one, too...though...if it turned out to be the case...I'd deal with that one, too...
But the truth is...
I don't know...
I hope...and I try...and I think...and I try...and I hope...and I try...and I think...and I try...and I don't exactly know the order on all that...
I really don't know...
I just know that I trust my heart...that things can be better...even if I don't know exactly how they can be...
I just know that when I hear Louis Armstrong say the intro to the 1970 taping of What a Wonderful World...when he says...
"Some of you young folks been saying to me...hey, Pops...what you mean, what a wonderful world?...how about all them wars all over the place...you call them wonderful...and how about hunger and pollution...they ain't so wonderful either...
Well how about listening to old Pops, for a minute...it seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad...but what we're doing to it...
And all I'm saying is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance...love, baby, love...that's the secret...yeah...
If lots more of us loved each other...we'd solve lots more problems...
And, man...this world would be Odessa...
That's why old Pops keeps saying,
'I see trees of green
Red roses, too
I see them bloom
For me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world"
That when he says that...
I trust that...
I'm sure Louis was never some closet policy expert...I always assumed from that song...and because of my own biases as a liberal, I think...that Louis was a liberal...from that song...
But the truth is...today...I don't know any more...
If by liberal...you mean...someone who loves everyone (or most everyone, I suppose, for most folks)...and who believes in the power of the individual to take on any challenge...and to conquer it...
Someone who believes in freedom...and treating all people with respect...and understanding...
Then...I'd totally agree...I would say that's what Louis is being in that song...
But that kind of liberal...a "small l" liberal...a classical liberal...and freedom-loving liberal...a grown-up liberal...
Well, that can be just about anyone...
Conservatives are those kinds of liberals...
Liberals are those kinds of liberals (who we conventionally think of as liberals in contemporary political discussions)...
Radicals of every stripe can be those kinds of liberals, if they choose...
Anyone can, really...
But if you mean...a Democrat...or a campaign finance reform activist...or any other many different versions of liberal in a more conventional sense...
I don't really know, anymore...
Because that song...I hope...is one that everyone can identify with...
And the truth is...
Though I have this inner confidence that I might be right on this question...for whatever spiritual/ethereal reasons...
In an empirical way...I'm really not sure...
I wish I were...
I think it's right...
But I really don't know...
And I'm setting out to genuinely see where and whether they might or might not be right or wrong...with as fair and generous an effort to prove these ideas wrong, as much as possible...
Because...it really is more important to understand something...better...
Than it is to defend my opinions...about anything...
I just know that I genuinely care about doing the right thing...
And the right thing...I think...for me...and for everyone else that I presumably want to work on issues in behalf of...
Is to get to the right answers...to the best answers...to get it right...
And everything else just seems...like a less than honest effort...
On the one hand...
I live my life...like these principles are true...though I have no clue whether that's best for me or everyone else or not...
I hope so...
Other than being close to the ones I love...
It's my fondest hope in the world...
But I am more than prepared to give it up...if I'm wrong...
Because getting it right...is more important than being right...
You know what I mean?...
Getting to the best answers to lifes' most difficult matters...
Is more important than defending some fleeting self-righteous pose that I know more than I really know...
And I would just as soon be wrong...than to spend my life defending ideas that I've never really questioned...
That's the truth...
That and that I love my friends, all of them, and family more than I do any of this bullshit...
Politics is a passion for me...
But it is not my central passion...
People are my central passion...
I like them...
I want to do right by them...
I want to make things better for them...
I want their's and my life to be better...
Especially the people closest to me...
But everyone, really...
And I don't know if these ideas are the best way there...
I think they may be...
I live my life that way...
But I may be wrong...
That's all life is, I think...not really knowing...just making better guesses...
That's much of the reason why I think we should be more decent with one another...
Because...really...we're all just making our own best guesses...we're all just human...really...we're all just doing out best...really...no bullshit...that's all she wrote...
I miss my friends...
I got one who spends every ounce of her being to avoid me, right now...I imagine trying to get things figured out for herself...
And I have a whole crew of friends that I haven't been hanging with, for awhile now...trying to get all this stuff figured out for myself, better...
And I miss 'em all...and I need to get around to seeing my crew, at least...and cut out this bullshit...and just hang...and be friends, again...
This has been one crazy adventure...this life of mine...
I do wish it were easier to navigate...most of the time...
I wish we had more answers than we do...
That life played itself out more cleanly than it does...
But it doesn't...
We do as well as we do...
And that's it...
We do our best...
And that's it...
There is no better...
There's our best...and that's it...
You know...the truth is...
More than anything else...including saving the world...
I just want to have my friends back in my life...
All of them...
Jas...Dolly...Blick...Dave...and the rest of the crew...
Brandi...and Greg...if that were ever to be possible...
Jeannie...Tom...Wayne...all the rest of my professors and fellow grad students at KU...
And I want to see my family, again, as soon as possible...Thanksgiving is coming up...we haven't been together, as a family...all of us...in quite a long time, now...
I don't know if anyone will quite understand what a crazy adventure these last 3 or 4 years of my life have been...
I wish I would have started this blog in the months after Brandi and I broke up...
Now that would have been a study of a man in pain...and the story of how I fell in love with country music:):)...
I'll have to tell that story sometime...if I haven't already...
I've been saying, lately, that memories are like life's greatest hits...all played when you want them...
And sometimes I just wish that life's greatest hits could play, more, like they do on Melissa's Windows Media Player on her computer which she has so generously let me use while I search for teaching jobs...
That I could just play them...and really live them again...the really good ones...the ones that seem so distant the further away the people involved are in the present...
I have this one...that's got to annoy the fuck out of Brandi if she ever thinks about it...
Brandi could not stand the fact that I was so into politics...she felt like it consumed me...she felt like it was an obsession with me, I think...she just didn't understand that outside of her...and being a great dad...and being a great teacher...and a decent guy...that it was my great passion in life...
Brandi and I went away for a weekend to her family's cabin...and we took all these crazy political magazines and books with us...my idea, I think...
Brandi and Greg have a cabin, these days, I'm told...and something tells me that Brandi does not take along political magazines on trips where she is trying to escape the pressures of life...not enjoin them...as I made Brandi do on this trip...and in so many political conversations and adventures that we had against her will:):)...I'm exaggerating, of course...Brandi loved politics...just not quite as enthusiastically as I did...at the end, at least:)...
And we took these crazy magazines with us...and we talked politics the whole time...and made love all weekend...and cooked...and had candlelight...and flowers...as always...
I'd like to have that memory back...just for a little bit...to remember what it was like...just having a passion for politics...and being in love...and feeling totally un-self-conscious about either...
Just sharing a friendship...and a love...and a passion for making the world better...
And not caring whether Brandi liked it or not that I like that memory...
Just having it...
And I want to start making memories like that again...
There's this girl at work...of course there always is...but she seems nice:):)...nicer than most:)...I barely know her:):):)...but maybe:):):)...you know?:):):)...
Alright...it is way late...I should get some sleep before work tomorrow...
I just wanted to say all that...all that rambling:):)...
Hope everyone has a good day, tomorrow:):)...I'm going to be dragging ass, I'm sure:):)...
Talk with everyone soon, I hope:):)...
Love,
Ben
The Associated Press has an excellent story, via Yahoo, on the thankful decline in the murder rate last year, a 40 year low...
Murder rate hits 40-year-low...
It's great news, of course, for anyone concerned with murder and serious violent crime...rapes, unfortunately are up...though the thirty year trend is downward, thankfully...as are the report rates for rapes...
The biggest drops occurred in two cities, in particular...Chicago...by 150 murders...and Washington, D.C...by 50 murders...
"Of 19 large cities with more than 100 murders apiece in 2003, 13 had declines in 2004 while six recorded increases, Blumstein said."
Blumstein being Professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh...
Local trends, argues, Professor Blumstein, have driven the decreases...rather than national trends...
Professor Blumstein outlines many important local trends...including an ingenious effort in Chicago to infiltrate known gangs with ex-offenders to gain intelligence on current activities...
But there is one very important national and local/state trend, in Chicago and Washington D.C., that is parallel to a national trend...
Illinois and Washington D.C. have no death penalty...Illinois just recently abolished their death penalty...I am still researching how recently Washington D.C. eliminated the death penalty...and nationally, the use of the death penalty has also decreased...
Bureau of Justice statistics...capital punishment...
The long-term correlation between 40 year low murder rate and the decrease in the use of death penalty in the last three years would seem both positive trends to death penalty opponents...
But the overall statistical picture is much more complicated than that...
I've always consulted the numbers reported by death penalty opponents like myself (since this is one issue that I've felt a particularly strong moral cause in, as much and sometimes more than as a policy matter...a good reason to doubt my feelings on the matter, frankly, as a policy matter...though the moral reasons I think are pretty compelling, obviously)...
That states without the death penalty had lower murder rates than states with the death penalty...
Deathpenaltyinfo.com
(Just an aside...if there were ever a case for federalism on any matter of criminal justice...death penalty seems to be that case)
But then I came across these numbers...
Bureau of Justice Statistics...death row...
The absolute number of murders, for instance was lowest in 1999, with an overal number of murders at 15,522...which also happens to be the year of the highest number of executions, at 95...a number that seems to support the case for the death penalty decreasing the number of murders...as do the numbers for the following three years after 1999, when the murder rate increased, as the use of the death penalty increased...similarly, the number of death sentences decreased between 2000 and 2002...the overall numbers for the last thirty years are all over the place...though the 30 year trend is murders down...death sentences up...the use of the death penalty up -- and since this is the most significant challenge to these ideas...as well as the cases for gun and drug control indirectly alluded to by the Chicago officials and academics cited in the article...
"Chicago officials and academics have credited that city's murder decline to police targeting of gangs, drugs and guns."
Since this case -- that the death penalty, gun laws and enforcement and drug laws and enforcement are responsible for the decrease in the murder rate and violent crime rate, other than rape, in the last 30 years -- is one of the strongest cases against the principles of least possible necessary aggression -- since they would use aggression/force when I, at least, would not predict them to be most useful -- this is a case that I want to spend a lot of time with...
Now...to leave room for the many critics and detractors of these principles or variations and/or applications thereof by folks I've encountered since I've started working on them...
There are many permutations on that case that could still serve as pretty convincing proof that I am wrong...
The death penalty alone could serve as a case against these principles...as could gun laws...as could drug laws...as could variations between them...gun laws and drug laws, but not the death penalty...the death penalty and drug laws, for conservatives who support drug laws, but not gun laws...the death penalty and gun laws, for liberals who favor the death penalty, but not drug laws...gun laws and drug laws, for various death penalty opponents, but not the death penalty...and a million variations of a million other laws that might have significant influence on the rate of murders and/or violent crime...
So...there is a very good case to be made that I am wrong...
And goddamnit...I am bound and determined to make that case...
Isn't science great?:):)...
Facts are more important than opinions:):):)...
That's why I love it:):):)...
I'll keep working on it:):)...
Maybe others might work on it, too?:):):)...
Had a great day, again, by the way:):)...I love this job, on the whole:):):)...much more freedom and independence to use my own judgment (tempered by the experience of the folks I work for and with, of course) and do my job:):):)...
But it may turn out to just be my own fetish for freedom...or maybe, and much more likely, if I turn out to be wrong...something I'm still not seeing altogether:):):)...
Have a great day, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
I've been sick last night and all day today...diarrhea that turned into a really bad stomach ache...flu...virus...I don't know...I just know it's had me out all day today...
I'm feeling better so I can go back to work tomorrow, hopefully...
Also made some peace, today, which various pressures -- financial, especially -- that different folks have tried to apply with me...
I just don't care any more...I can only do my best...and if that turns out to not be enough...then so be it...
I'm not going to live the rest of my life afraid of what pressures -- financial and otherwise -- that people are going to put on me...I'm learning to just ignore them...and do my best...and get away from folks who play that way with me, from now on...until they can learn to play nice...and if they can't learn to play nice...then I'll just avoid them altogether...
Playing on folks' cowardice and insecurities is no way to run a country...or a world...or a business...or a school...or a family...or whatever...
It is a way to alienate people...and to lose peoples' trust...which I've had to learn the hard way...as much as internalizing the principle, today...
So that was really good...learning to tell folks to fuck off...until they can learn to play nice...and not being terribly upset about it, any more, in the meantime...
Before I was always concerned with how others reacted...
And now I just don't care...
If I trust you, I'll be more honest with you...
And if I don't, I won't...
And that's really the saddest tragedy of all, I think...
People who have no clue how others think about them...
Because they've scared everyone out of telling them...
And that is it's own worst punishment, I think...
Or people who spend their whole lives afraid of what others think about them...that's almost more pathetic, I think:):)...
I've met people like this...I have many friends who live like that...and I can't possibly imagine living like that...it's just such a sad, pathetic way to live...it's a life of no self-respect...either way...
And dealing with how people think and feel about you honestly is a painful way to live, sometimes...but it's the kind of pain that's good for you...and trying to avoid it all the time is a recipe for a sad life that just isn't real...but noone cares about you enough to tell you that...
I'm gonna try to sleep...and get over this stomach flu or whatever it is that I have...and hopefully be able to work in the morning:):)...
Have a good day, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
I guess I've been tagged...
If you haven't checked out Army Girl's blog, I definitely recommend it...she's being stationed soon...and she's definitely a blog to check out...
Seven things I want to do before I die:
1. Teach
2. Write...several books...
3. Tell the people in my life how much I love them and how proud I am of them, even for the little stuff
4. Make progress on the whole gambit of social and political problems in the world...and contribute my ideas and efforts to that end...
5. To meet one other person, at least...a woman, preferably...who cares more about doing good...than looking good...for real...
6. To fall in love with that woman...and to have a family...and to hope for the best for a world that's always looking for the worst...
7. Persuade folks to treat each other better
Seven things I can do:
1. Teach
2. Write
3. Think 12 moves ahead when most folks see two feet in front of them
4. Identify with and love just about anyone
5. Deal with pain
6. Take responsibility
7. Be realistic...and honest about realities...even and especially uncomfortable ones...
Seven things I cannot do:
1. Play the guitar...or drums...or any instrument, really:)...except for sing...which I'm pretty good at, really:)...
2. Do surgery or practice medicine of any kind
3. Hate or act indifferently toward others
4. Cheat...or intentionally break anyone's heart in any way...
5. Be self-centered
6. Be self-righteous
7. Pretend...when the stakes are too high...
Seven things I say a lot:
1. Bullshit
2. Love
3. Right on
4. Dumbass
5. I'm sorry/my fault
6. Fuck off
7. Good idea/nice thinking
Seven things I find attractive in a female (in no particular order)
1. Someone who loves everyone
2. Sweetness
3. Vulnerability
4. Intelligence
5. Forgiveness
6. Compassion
7. Wisdom
...or a genuine pursuit of any and all of these:)...
Seven celebrity crushes?
1. Katherine Hepburn
2. Meg Ryan (especially her When Harry Met Sally/ Joe vs. the Volcano era)
3. Julianne Moore
4. Sigourney Weaver
5. Hope Davis
6. Dar Williams
7. Natalie Maines, Emily Robinson, and Marty Maguire
Seven people who I'll burden with this tag, but are under no obligation (in no particular order):
1. Living Without a Clue
2. Kenny
3. Don Benedicto
4. Melissa
5. Bigandmean... at Relatively Unbalanced
6. Dean Mundy...Thoughtful Conservative...
7. Rose...at Anonymous Rowhouse
8. Dave...aka Billybeanbag...
9. Jade
10. Nikki...xpunkrockmomx...
Tag...you're it...
And check out Dean's excellent editorial on gun control -- A lesson from the Third World about the value of gun control...when you get a chance:)...
Love,
Ben
I had so many ideas to blog on today:):)...
My high school forensics coach and drama teacher, Conrad Jestmore...who had this really amazing impact on my life that I wonder if he'll ever know how much I appreciate his guidance...
And my good friend and forensics colleague, Brian White, who I was imagining as a new generation of teacher similar to and hopefully improving on the example of Conrad Jestmore:)...
I need to elaborate on the problem that gun and drug laws -- and other laws, as well -- pose to law enforcement on more serious violent crime...how -- very much like prohibition laws -- they inadvertantly support the "no snitch" environment that supports violent crime...since good, decent, and generally law-abiding citizens -- who, totally justifiably, in my humble opinion, do not want harm come to loved ones around more minor criminal offenses -- also end up rationalizing protecting folks who commit more serious and violent criminal offenses...a situation that has contributed enormously to the problem around unresolved murders and violent crimes in Kansas City...and that could be resolved, better, with less fear from folks that their cooperation with law enforcement would result in arrests of their loved ones for more minor issues...
And the article in the USA Today I picked up after work that caught my attention was about the CIA's planned efforts to improve the reliability of intelligence:):):)...which included their decision to stop trying to boss the Pentagon and FBI around when it comes to intelligence issues (doesn't the forethought on that one just make you want to cry, it's so touching:):):)...which is so laughable I spent the entire car ride back making fun of what macho dumbasses the CIA is that they can't just learn to trust one another and other law enforcement agencies, better, collaborate better...to flatten their organizations...to shorten the length of time that it takes for reports of intelligence to reach higher ups...to open up the various intelligence gathering arms of various military, law enforcement, and intelligence organizations to increase the number of intelligence reports, and thus increasing the chances of independent verification, which is the substantive way to increase reliability of intelligence...for those not primarily concerned with window-dressing and dealing with what controlling, cynical, macho dumbasses they are...as this pathetic little reform reflects:):):)...
Memo to Porter Goss...thanks for the reform:):)...and you need to start reading some of Paul Light's brilliant work to figure out how to improve intelligence gathering...you're a political appointee, Porter...not an intelligence or government expert...Paul is both...and he's brilliant...and his reforms -- many of which I just outlined in the above paragraph -- are ones you need to start seriously thinking about if your genuine concern is improving the reliability of intelligence...and not just the pathetically small goal of not pissing off the FBI and the Pentagon any more:):):)...
So many things I thought about blogging about, today:):)...
I've got a shower to take after a long day of lawn-mowing:):)...and some applications to work on:):)...but if I have a chance:):)...I might come back to some of these:):)...
I hope everyone is having a great day:):)...mine has been outstanding:):)...thanks for asking:):):)...
Have a great day, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
I picked up a bunch of books from the Lawrence Public Library book sale last week...the last day, they were giving away stuff for free:):)...so I have a couple boxes full of really great books, right now:):)...
I picked up a bunch of Cliffs Notes...they had a ton of them:):)...and after reading the Cliff Notes for Beowulf at Melissa's apartment the other night while were hanging out, talking:)...I realized how great Cliff's Notes can be:):)...
If you're not familiar with Beowulf:):)...it's one of the oldest known poems in the English language (Old English) that we still have a reasonably complete text of:):)...all I can remember is that it is the story of a hero who defeats a dragon named Grendel:):)...and protects the lives of the Danes whose lives were threatened by the dragon:):)...
I can only remember that much because the book/poem, itself, is almost impossibly unreadable:):)...because the language is so archane:):)...and it is the best case for Cliff Notes of any of the books I have ever read or attempted to read in the English language:):):)...
So:):):)...that's my long justification for why I have like 25 or 30 copies of Cliffs Notes in my living room, right now:):):)...
So:):):)...
I'm flipping through the Cliffs Notes:):)...in search among my new exciting literary finds (if I can reach to call them that:):)...of a book that I've always wanted to know more about:):)...but was too daunted by the actual text:):):)...
And so I came upon B.F. Skinner's Walden Two:):):)...
Now...I've never read Skinner's Walden Two...because...despite all the really great things about Skinner's theorizing...his identification of the principles of operant conditioning...and, thus, the foundations of behaviorism in psychology...
For the most part...B.F. Skinner...is a wanker:):)...
I don't mean he's not brilliant:):):)...he is:):):):)...definitely:):):)...
But he's also kind of a wanker:):):)...
And Walden Two really kind of sums up why B.F. Skinner is a wanker:):):)...
Walden Two is Skinner's narrative/argument for a utopia of tight regulation of peoples' lives...to guarantee a world where everyone does what Skinner wants:):):) (can we say, control issue?:):):)...
And what is so fundamentally wrong with the title of Skinner's book:):):)...
Is that it is this profound distortion of the meaning and purpose behind it's namesake:):):)...
This really beautiful, amazing, inspiring book that I spent several nights awake reading my junior year of high school:):):)...
Walden:):):)...by Henry David Thoreau:):):)...
Which is this really great book...about how Henry David Thoreau...in mid-nineteenth century New England...left his comfortable New England life...to go survive off the land of Walden Pond...communing with nature...and seeking spiritual growth...of his own free will...
Walden Two, on the other hand, theorizes a utopian society of regulated life to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as Hamlet might put it:):)...
The Cliffs Notes author (I know...I know...this whole analysis is a total cheat since I haven't actually read Walden Two, yet...I'm reading the Cliffs Notes to work myself up to read a book that I'm not that terribly thrilled about, given it's basic premise:):):)...and this was how I made it through Zenobia Washington's AP English class:):):)...bluffing:):):)...if you don't believe me:):)...ask my best friend my senior year of high school and still one of my best friends in the entire world, Angela Largent:):):)...it simultaneously impressed Angela and pissed her off so bad at me:):):)LOL:):):)...
OK...so...back to the story:):)...
So...the author of the Cliffs Notes writes, comparing Thoreau's beautiful account of his journey into the soul...and Skinner's account of a highly regulated utopia...that...
"...Walden ultimately concludes with an emphatic note of optimism and hope in humankind's ability to transcend its self-imposed limitations and fulfill its unmeasured potential for excellence. Walden Two ends with an emphasis on the predictability of human nature and a belief that regulation and control of human nature is necessary to achieve happiness and equality."
...which is like saying that Karl Marx and Adam Smith had a few disagreements:):):)....which is true, of course:):):)...but their disagreements are fundamental differences in how they see the world:):):):):)...not just distinctions that don't make a difference:):):)...
I read Walden my junior year of high school...
And I was so totally taken by it...
This beautiful story...
Of a man who gave up all of his material comforts...
So he could find himself...
It's still one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read in my life...
And Skinner titling his trifling little regulated utopia after Henry David Thoreau's incredible story of self-discovery and freedom of the the soul and of the conscience...
Is just really kind of fucked up...pardon by french, Dr. Skinner...
What Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden...is what life is supposed to more like, for all of us...not forced on us...but because it's a better life...
Not necessarily the moving into the woods and giving up the material comforts of life:):)...though that has a certain romantic appeal to it, as well:):)...at least for a couple weekends or so:):)...
But the life of self-reflection...of self-discovery...of digging deeply into one's soul...and being the person that one really wants to be...out of a deep sense of self-exploration...not a bankrupt sense of self-centeredness...
It is the deepest experience of freedom that a person can have, I think...
And Thoreau gets inside it so remarkably...that everyone should definitely read this really incredible book at least once in their too short lives:):)...
And that is what is so fundamentally distorted about the democratic world, right now...and the world, generally...
This total confusion between the highest ideals that life has to offer...in the form of the most profound sense of freedom...and self-discovery...and self-governance...and defining of one's own life...that such freedom offers...
And it's opposite...
A world where we try to control and regulate and otherwise limit that freedom...
And all the while pretend that it is the very freedom that we say that we want to expand...
The world is just kind of playing bullshit with itself, right now, rationalizing that fundamental distortion...
And that's what's so wrong with the way that people are thinking about the world...and its problems...and how to deal with those problems...right now...
As George Orwell writes in his dystopia, 1984...slavery is freedom...
And all of us seem to be saying...
Well...yes...but we don't mean complete slavery...that would be going just a bit too far, now don't you think, Ben?:):):)...
Well...of course it would:):):)...dumbasses:):):)...
Because the way forward for humanity...involves freedom...more of it...as much of it as possible, in fact...while still dealing constructively with aggressive situations that threaten our safety with as little aggression in response as possible...
And confusing freedom...with control...
Is like confusing your head with your ass...
That's how different the two are...
And that's how fundamental a distortion Walden Two is of Henry David Thoreau's original personal account...
And that's how fundamental a distortion of humanity's future and progress and potential...
That rationalizing a world of control instead of championing a world of freedom is...
And at this point...I'm with Thoreau...
If everyone wants to live lives of "quiet desperation," as Thoreau referred the fate of most people who never risk to live a life committed to authentic self-discovery and definition...
Then so be it:):):)...
But that's the life I'm gonna live:):):)...
And in the meantime...
Anyone who wants to bullshit themselves that control and bossiness and bullying is the same thing as freedom can do that all they want:):):)...
But there is no way in hell that you're going to convince me of the same:):):)...
Because I am just not that big a dumbass:):):)...to swallow that big line of bullshit:):):)...
You can fuck with many things in this world...
But not Walden...not Henry David Thoreau...
Some things are sacred:):):):):)...
Everyone should have that life...that life of freedom...of self-definition...of self-governance...of self-discovery...
But only few dare to...
The road less taken...
It's the only road I know, I think...
And the only one with a path worth blazing and a destination worth reaching to me...
Have a great night, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
Have you ever felt totally inspired and idealistic...completely on your own...totally independent of the world around you...
Say...for instance...when the world seems to be sapped of all idealism...so lost is it in rationalizing its own cynicism...
I've felt something like this at two different other times in my life...
Once...when I was in school...high school...college...grad school...doing well in school...searching out wisdom...competing successfully in forensics...working jobs that supported my schooling...and generally chasing dreams...with lots of folks supporting me:):)...
The second time...with someone else...totally in love...chasing idealistic dreams of our own...in school...undergrad...and grad school...but chasing dreams of our own that totally shaped both of our school experiences...that were bigger than school...they were about changing the world:):)...
And now...a third time...but stronger...stronger than I've ever felt it in my life...on my own...living on my own...working a job that has nothing to do with my ultimate aspirations...except as one more opportunity to learn about the great majority of folks...who live without great aspirations in their lives:)...looking for meaningful, purposeful work in a school...doing policy work that I very much hope will change the way people think about the world...about policy...and their government...about their communities...about their lives...
And this third time is especially different...
Because the first two times...I had one thing that wasn't present...that handicaps most folks, I think...and has handicapped me, at times, I must admit...though I think I'm getting over that...
Which is the knowledge that so many people...live such cynical, bankrupt, small-minded lives...and aspire for so little...
In a world...and a life...that has so much to offer...
If only people will extend beyond their immediate grasp...
You what I'm realizing, right now?...
That no matter how great or shitty life seems...
This is the one opportunity that you and I and everyone have...to live big...to do great things...to dream bigger than our current realities afford us...
The difference between this time...and times previous...
Is that I know, now, just how badly life can suck...how low it can sink...how small it can be...through the eyes of folks who only see two feet in front of them...
And I still dare to dream big:):)...
And all those times before...I was supported by all these people...who wanted to believe...in part because I did, I imagine...
And now...with so little support...with so few people rooting for this idea that the world can be safer, more decent, more humane, more thoughtful, wiser...better...
By trusting it and the people in it more...
Rather than bottoming out our every mistrust of those same people and that same world...
I am more idealistic than I was with all their support...
Not less:):):)...
Because goddamn it if I'm gonna let the small visions of the great majority of folks...whether I'm surrounded by people who support me...or not:):)...
Get in the way of my big dreams...
Have a great day, everyone:):)...
Love,
Ben
I was kind of getting bogged down, today, in my despair that life just seems like some kind of fucked revenge on smart kids, sometimes...sure seems like it...especially these days...
Rented Life of Brian, again...along with Monty Python's Holy Grail...
It's amazing how much contemporary politics is just one recycled version of yesterday's and yesteryear's:):)...
Brian and Roman soldier after Brian has been caught painting graffiti on a prominent Roman building...and has finished giving Brian a bizarre lesson in Latin grammar, complete with a sword to the throat to punctuate a lesson on the use of the nominative verb form...
Roman soldier: Understand?
Brian: Yes sir...
Roman soldier: Now write that a hundred times...
Brian: Yes sir...thank you, sir...hail Caesar, sir...
Roman soldier: Hail Caesar...and if it's not done by sunrise...I'll cut your balls off...
Brian: Oh, thank you sir...thank you, sir...hail Caesar and everything, sir...
Pretty much sums up my life, at this point...
I thought I'd give it another watch...and try to laugh at what morons we all seem these days...
God knows we need someone to laugh at us all, right now:):):)...
But then...as I thought about it some more...
I realized...
This is really kind of stupid whine...
Life is unfair for everyone...
I'm just getting my taste of it:)...
I just want life to be more fair for everyone...
And I get a little discouraged when it seems unfair...
"Cheer up, Brian...you know what dey say...
Some fings in life aw bad...dey can really make you mad...
Ovver fings just make you swear and curse...
When you're chewing on life's grissul...
Don't grumbul...give a whistle...
And dis'ul help fings turn out fo de best...
And...always look on the bright si-ide of life...(whistles tune)...
Always look on the light side of life...
Cause life's a piece of shit...when you at it...
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true...
You'll see it's all a show...keep 'em laughing as you go...
Just remember that the last laugh is on you...
Always look on the bright side of life" (whistles tune)...
I've instructed all my friends that I want the last 15 minutes of Monty Python's The Life of Brian played at my funeral:):):)...
Yeah...life ain't fair for any of us...we all feel a little cheated inside, I imagine...for something...
I want it to be better...
But this is what we all got, for now...
So we might as well share it, I guess...and enjoy it while we got it:):)...
Ever seen Mr. Roberts?...Henry Fonda...Jack Lemmon...James Cagney?...great movie...kind of captures it...
We're all stuck on this miserable little boat, together...when it's miserable, that is...like we're all making it, right now:):):)...
So we might as well all enjoy our time while we're here:):):)...
Like they say in Mr. Roberts...
What we all need is a little liberty:):):)...you'll have to see it to understand, better:):)...
And that's what I think we all use a little...a lot...more of...
Liberty, that is:):)...
And maybe a little less shit from one another...and a little more support...
Have a good day, everyone:):)...
Love,
Ben
P.S. I talked with my grandma, tonight...she's slowed down, some, with her illness...I know she must be dissappointed...being so active...and having to slow down...but she sounds like she's doing alright...we'll all hope good things for her:)...
I picked up a book at the annual Lawrence Public Library book sale...
It's called Winning Through Intimidation...by Robert Ringer:):):)...
I thought since so many folks had become enamoured with this approach:):):)...
That I should check it out and see why Mr. Ringer has been so unfairly excluded from the classics of modern political theory...
As the tortoise character on the book's cover says,
"Read this book and start winning today"
It sounds like a line right out of the playbook for Democrats today...stolen right out of the playbook of Republicans...
I'll have to ask Dr. Ericson why this wasn't one of the texts in our modern political theory class...
Since it's the main tool of influence in contemporary politics and too much of everyday life, these days...
Dr. Ericson and his ivory tower...
He just doesn't understand how real life works:):):)LOL:):):)...
You know what's really funny?:):):)...
That Robert Ringer and so many people today...think that intimidation is a new idea:):):)...that we just haven't tried sufficiently to deal with important problems in the past:):):)...
Robert published his book the year I was born...1973...
I wonder why we haven't heard from Mr. Ringer in either the scholarly or the popular publishing circles much since?...
Maybe his time has come:):):)...
Have a great day, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
You ever felt proud of yourself...and your efforts...of your courage...no matter the consequences?:):):)...
It's a great feeling:):)...I highly recommend it:):):)...
Have a great day everyone:):):)...
P.S. I talked with a good friend from Amarr about shipping on 3rd shift, recently:):)...it doesn't sound good...I guess they're trying to pressure for more productivity again...creating more conflict which just slows everything down, paradoxically...
But it reminded me that I want all the guys at Amarr -- everyone...Ben and John, included...even though we disagree about what will improve productivity there...and I had to get a serious break from all the nonsense that passed for thoughtful policy there:):)LOL:):) -- to know that I really enjoyed working there, on balance:):)...I really like those guys...and love 'em, really...though most of them would get really uncomfortable if I told them that to their faces:):):)LOL:):):)...so I just say it on a blog where only one or two have access so I won't have a truckload of tough guys coming to beat my ass for making such a pussy remark about our time together:):):)LOL:):):)...
And like everything else I do...I know everyone is working in good faith:):)...generally:):)...
I really loved working on a shipping dock...definitely not something I imagined for myself at any point in my life:):)...and I really loved it:):)...and it made an indelible impact on my life:):):)...
Thanks, guys:):)...
Love,
Ben
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