Jan 19 2010

Garbage

I was walking down the lane the other day and I noticed this piece of litter, looked like the melted bottom of a plastic bottle. I fumed for a bit, angry at whoever had just tossed it there, and planned to pick it up on my way back. To carry it all the way home, where I’d throw it in the garbage, and three weeks later take to the dump. And it suddenly occurred to me: why go to all that trouble just so it could be buried in some arbitrary place six miles away from here, when I could just as easily bury it here?

But it’s not so arbitrary, is it. It’s ‘away from here’, it’s not on the lane I walk on every day, it’s not in my backyard. And I realized then that when city planners started including dumps in their blueprints, we took a seriously wrong turn: with such a word, such a concept, we legitimized NIMBY. So too with words like ‘litter’ and ‘garbage’. What is that but stuff that doesn’t belong here, stuff we don’t want here, here in our back yard. We ‘throw it away’.

And where is ‘away’? Continue reading

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Jan 17 2010

Men’s Precision Teams

Have you ever wondered why there are no men’s precision teams?

Sure, precision skating requires attention to detail and a highly developed spatial sense. But both are surely male capabilities; in fact, aren’t they male superiorities? Isn’t that why (so we’re told) men dominate science and engineering?

And of course, the sport requires skating skill. But countless men–Alexei Yagudin, Elvis Stojko, Kurt Browning, Brian Boitano, to name a few–have proven this to be Y-chromosome-compatible.

Perhaps it’s the degree of cooperation required that’s simply beyond men. Yes, men are capable of cooperation–that’s what team sports are all about. But in hockey, football, basketball, and the like, there’s always room to be a star; there’s always room for grandstanding, for upstaging. In a precision skating team, there’s no room for even the teeniest of egos. (Synchronized swimming–there’s another sport men simply couldn’t handle. There’d be way too many deaths by drowning.)

And yes, men are capable of the timing that cooperation entails. Continue reading

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Jan 13 2010

Countdown to Looking Glass

I highly recommend the movie Countdown to Looking Glass. Through a series of newscasts by a fictional television network (CVN), we see a chain reaction that takes a mere eight days to go from the default by three South American countries on loans from the United States to the detonation of a nuclear weapon in the Persian Gulf.

Eerily, I realized that I watched people watch the media watch the world end. Complete with commercial breaks.

The credible ease with which one thing led to another was nothing less than frightening. It was like dominoes: once the chips are in place, all it takes is a single trigger, and the end is inevitable. Just like the nuclear fission process itself.

But perhaps what was more frightening was that only one television network aired the movie – and it did so at 2:15 a.m. on Christmas Eve. Apparently our real networks are not nearly as committed as the fictional CVN to keeping their viewers aware and informed. Those domino chips are in place.

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Jan 11 2010

Kids Behind the Wheel

The other day, I was walking with my dog on the gravel/dirt road I live on. It’s a back road that might see a dozen cars in a day. As one such car passed us, I noticed that a kid was at the wheel in dad’s lap. Proud dad, happy kid.

What is it with that? Why, of all the adult things, do parents push their kids into that one? Mis-asked the question. It’s not the parents, it’s the dads. And usually, it’s their sons, not their daughters.

Given that men are worse drivers than women (ask the insurance companies – why do you think young males pay such a high premium?), perhaps it makes sense: boys need all the practice they can get. But surely it would be better to take them to a go-cart track.

Proud dad, happy kid. I get the impression it’s not practice. Is it a rite of passage to manhood? Continue reading

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Jan 10 2010

I Don’t Have a Conscience

I’ve always been uncomfortable with the term “conscientious objector” – especially as it is used, to identify those entitled for exclusion from military service (whether in body or in wallet) on the basis of moral principles. I object to military service, on that basis, but I don’t have a conscience.

Phrases such as “Follow your conscience” and “Do what your conscience tells you” suggest that one’s conscience is a fixed sort of thing, an unchanging absolute. Indeed, it often sounds like one’s conscience is innate, something we’re born with. And something quite separate from us, a sort of homonculus, or at least an ‘inner voice’ (the voice of God?). Chomsky may have proven that there are innate structures of language in the human brain, but to date, to my knowledge, no one has proven there are, in the human brain, innate moral principles. Nor, despite a dictionary definition of conscience as “the moral sense of right and wrong”, has such a sixth (?) sense been established.

On the contrary, our ‘conscience’ is acquired: Continue reading

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Jan 10 2010

Arrogance, I think

Fresh from the office of my supervisor who persists in gently giving me unsolicited advice, despite being neither older nor wiser, I’m struck by Rousseau’s tone (in his “Marriage”): “Extreme in all things, they [women] devote themselves to their play with greater zeal than boys. This is the second defect. This zeal must be kept within bounds. It is the cause of several vices peculiar to women, among others the capricious changing of their tastes from day to day. Do not deprive them of mirth, laughter, noise and romping games, but prevent them tiring of one game and turning to another. They must get used to being stopped in the middle of their play and put to other tasks without protest on their part.” I have as much trouble imagining the absolute certainty, the arrogance, required to initiate, let alone sustain, such pontification as I do imagining myself putting an arm around the shoulder of the guy who works in Accounting, and telling him what he should be doing with his life. Even if I were his supervisor. I simply could not go on and on like that, not even to students, nor even to children. Not even at forty.

At least not without the qualifier ‘I think…’, Continue reading

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Jan 09 2010

Impoverished Scientists

To read the science journals, one would think animal life consists of nothing but predation and reproduction, both thoroughly competitive in nature. The absence of any capacity for pleasure, or at least for non-competitive pleasure, is frightening. Lining a nest with warm and soft material is not for comfort, but to “increase the survival rate of offspring” and arranging for others to watch the baby during long and deep dives is not from affection but to “maximize reproductive success”.

This is of concern for two reasons. First, to judge by my own life and that of the dog with whom I live, that view is, to say the least, narrow and thus incomplete.

Second, what does it reveal of the scientists? Continue reading

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Jan 07 2010

Profit and Loss – and You’ve Lost Your Marbles

Years ago, Joseph Schumacher examined the ethics of unlimited growth and concluded that “Small is beautiful.” The business world, with no shortage of conglomerates and an increasing number of mergers, seems to have missed the message.

One might quip ‘Well, that’s because hedonistic greed governs the business mind,’ but a quick survey of a second year Business class – in which not one student answered the question ‘Why is profit good?’ with ‘Because it gives me pleasure, it makes me happy, I wanna be a rich sonovabitch’ – suggests that either denial starts early or something else is going on. (Or both.)

Most students responded, by the way, with something like ‘Profit is good because it enables you to expand: to hire more people, to establish branches in other cities, to increase production.’ ‘And why is this expansion good?’ ‘Well, because then you can make more profit.’ (Can you say ‘circular’?)

The concept of limitlessness is ingrained in business policy and practice. Why is this so? Continue reading

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Jan 07 2010

Suicide, Insurance, and Dead Sugar Daddies

I’ve been thinking that, with the exception of those who are paralyzed or severely physically debilitated, people who seek euthanasia are cowards. They are grossly inconsiderate and amazingly irresponsible. I mean, if you’re ready to die, then die. But do it yourself! Don’t ask someone else to kill you, and then live with it. What an awful request to make, of anyone! It’s your life – it’s your death.

However, just recently the insurance connection clicked into place: if you suicide, the company won’t pay – so it’s for the sake of your loved ones that you endure or entreat –

So all these intellectual and ethical gymnastics we’re sweating over – passive/active, terminal sedation or physician-assisted suicide, the double effect, euthanasia or eugenics – it’s all because the insurance companies won’t pay? Wouldn’t it be so much easier, and, I suspect, cheaper, to simply legislate that they must? (Especially when the suicide simply hastens – what would otherwise be a slow and painful – death?) The financial desires of a certain private sector industry should not override our freedom to die!

Well, they don’t really. Continue reading

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Jan 06 2010

Casual Day at The Office

Every second Friday is ‘Casual Day’ at the office–the principal lets us wear jeans to school. I need two degrees to do my job, but apparently I just can’t seem to dress myself.

In addition to that of infantilizing the subordinates, Causal Day underscores the tradition of hypocrisy, the tradition of pretending: financial advisors who work on your portfolio at home probably do most of their work in jeans and a sweatshirt; they just change, they just put on the facade, the uniform of authority and competence, when they’re in their office. Do they think we’re idiots? Do they think we judge a book by its cover, do they think we’re fooled that easily?

Well, yes, they do. And they’re right. Behold the power of a suitcoat and tie: it says ‘I’m to be respected’. Anyone up on charges who borrows a suit for his day in court knows that. Oh, but the judge would be a fool to be suckered in by that. Yes–and so are we. Continue reading

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