What I Believe

Odd, that it's hard to say exactly what one (what I) believe? In the semi-anonymity of the Web (I assume SOMEONE other than god is watching)... it might be easier.
Let's see.
I believe the gap between people is immense. No amount of "love" ever truly spans the gap. The lover loves, the loved one might "feel" the love, but like the deconstructionists say, you never know.
Nevertheless, it is a great value to love, it feels good, is the essence of what is "good" (more on that later) in humans. But it is not "god", I have no idea what god is.
However, having said that, I think people who declare their atheism rather arrogant. It seems more like an angry statement, more like "I'm sick to death of all this believing crap" than a profound statement. More profound to me is looking around and acknowledging how little we know about:
1. "Why" we're here. [It's so highly improbably that we could develop this complexity "by accident" that I would side with the god believers if I had to.]
2. What is the "meaning" of one's time. [I'm inclined to be absolutist here. ALL times are essentially the same, from a human feeling point of view, because (I do "believe" in evolution) our body-minds (as some like to say) developed over millions of years and DO NOT change because we have a cellphone on one ear and an iPod in your grubby paws).
3. Technology is something, but how much? People like to use technology as proof that things REALLY change. Like the popular: "We can blow up the whole world now!" Or it's newer variation: "We can (change/destroy) the climate of the whole planet now!" I'm inclined to think this is more hubris than fact. True, an all-out nuclear war (or an apocalyptic Gorean scenario) would alter "life as we know it" but here's the tricky part. Though it might be objectively true that our high tech can do this "damage" (one wonders if the mythical Gaia cares), how much does knowledge of it change the daily human experience? Example, when the printing press, or the gun, or the crossbow, or the seagoing vessel were viewed by the local philosopher, wasn't his/her fantasy of "total change" essentially the same from an internal human feeling perspective? In other words, we are condemned to live inside who we are, and we have relatively little control over change whether we like to "blame" humanity or not. It's kind of irrelevant what is the change agent. Blame blinds us. And while I'm at it, I hate the idea of "saving the world." Well, I can imagine it motivated SOME good things in history, (saving England, saving Christianity from the Mongols, etc.) but mostly it's an illusion of power that inflates, the inflation is expelled as "blame" (ie. crime, war) legitimizing hatred and killing. We have already seen: it is not a huge step from "saving the earth" to killing those who are destroying the earth (ie. SUV drivers, etc.) It's not THAT FAR either from the same thinking we abhor about Islamofascists: if so and so is insulting Allah, then, logically, they should die and I should be a hero. What's so different?

the NEW YORK TIMES IDEA ISSUE: C.R.P and stop writing

Inflammatory molecule C-reactive protein

It's been "scientifically discovered" that never giving up on hard to attain goals increases the body's production of C-reactive protein (C.R.P.), an inflammatory molecule associated with reduced immune system functioning.

Finally, a reason to stop writing novels!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-reactive_protein

NEW YORK TIMES IDEA ISSUE: vegan sexuality

Premise: Vegans (largely women, not large women) will "help the planet" by selecting not to have sex with carnivore men. The vegan ladies counsel each other to "convert" a male, then dump him and move on to another conversion.
But what if the carnivore males stop breeding with vegan females? Will veganism die out?
It's interesting how much certain causes are becoming gender-linked.

(more later)

Bob Dylan vs Woody Allen

They're both Jews. They were born only six years apart. Woody is all East Coast. Bob (Zimmerman) Dylan was born in Minnesota, in a blue collar town of few Jews. Bob obfuscated his "Jewishness," adopting a 'travelin' man' (Woody Guthie/gyspy protester) persona. Woody has always reveled in his Jewishness, albeit an ironic secularist take on Judaism as a religion, in many was an embrace of 'ethnic New York' Jewish culture more than a religious statement. Bob has drifted around religiously, once a Jewish Jew once a Christian, but mostly a hipster. Is Woody Allen hip? Certainly his films have been, occupying a intellectual/comedic niche few others could penetrate or emulate. Still, he persistently presents himself as a prototypical nerd, the unhandsome, horny, troubled nebish always lusting after the woman who barely stoops to acknowledge his attentions. People say it's autobiographical and probably is to some degree, but that doesn't mean we "know" Woody. The real Woody has to be much more hard driving, ambitious, and difficult than this whiny screen presence.
I just watched CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS again. It is an all out masterpiece, despite Woody's presence. I am one that doesn't ENJOY watching his character do his schtick (over and over again in so many films). He's not really an actor. Why does he insist on being in his own films? They're mine, one imagines him saying, it's what I want. It's a kind of ego-ism one sees in fine art (artists who insist their personality is what it's all about). It's a kind of dis of his own audience--instead of making "the best movie he could make" he insists on his quirky auteurship that (nearly) requires him to be in 90%+ of his films. Does he think he does a good job onscreen? Sure he delivers original, funny lines, like "the last time I was in a woman was the Statue of Liberty." Funny. Quirky. And Woody. But does he have to be the one delivering it?
Dylan's take on "identity" as fluid and temporary started early. One wonders if there have been times when he regretted his chameleonism, but then, as he grew older, he became the identity that he made. Bobbie Zimmerman became Bob Dylan. There was no going back. One migh argue that some of that small town boy remains in his insistence that he not be the "genius" of his generation, his modesty, his insistence of being "just a musician." He did not, ala Al Gore (only seven years younger than Bob) become a "spokesman for his generation." I respect his modesty.
In the end, Woody remained faithful to his New York artist roots. The ultimate social rebel--who are "we" to tell him he can't marry his common law wife's (Mia Farrow) adopted daughter (Soon-Yi Previn).
As a hipster, Dylan's marriages and divorces never became scandals. Perhaps because he was a rock star and not a comedian, he could get away with it. Compared to the crazies around him, Dylan was probably all in all an acceptable husband and father with only two discrete divorces.

Stephen Colbert, Ali G, and Michael Scott

It's not that I think Colbert's so funny. Actually, I was a bit disappointed that by the time I finally got to see him (not being a TV guy myself) he wasn’t funnier. A friend of mine who considers himself a “centrist/contrarian” (not unlike myself) thinks he’s very funny, but this same friend can’t stand THE OFFICE, which I love. (I suspect it’s because my friend is a CEO.) I don’t find Michael Scott’s character in THE OFFICE very political at all. If anything, he’s a somewhat apolitical guy who is striving to be politically correct, say, on Diversity Day. He usually screws things up because, for example, he thinks he’s so far from being racist that he’s “practically black” (not unlike the Clintons) but in reality he’s always offending people, revealing (to the audience and coworkers) that he is racist, homophobic, and gender-stupid.

What about Ali G? What are Ali G’s politics? Well, as a sort of person of color, a blue collar Brit hip-hop wannabe you’d think he’s pretty safely liberal. But he’s uneducated, and that means his blue collar background (say, it’s good to beat your girlfriend once in a while for the sake of your sex life) has never been challenged. “White people” in positions of power tend to meet with him (I imagine) because THEY are trying to be politically correct—i.e. they get credit for being “open” to uneducated people of color who CLAIM to be some kind of underground journalist. Because they think they’re “safe” with him (ie. already gave at the office) Ali G can trick them into exposing prejudices that are not politically correct, for example when he gets Boutros Boutros Galli to admit “French sounds funny.” Perhaps it was easier to use French than say Arabic, but still, it’s not cool for the ex-UN chief to be making fun of any language.

And now Stephen Colbert.
He is brilliant, to be sure. I first encountered him on the radio, in an interview on NPR (which I admit I rarely listen to). The pompous (liberal) host was chortling along with Stephen’s rather crass jokes (“reading the New York Times shrinks your testicles”) and I thought why is the host laughing rather than attacking this idiot? Then I got it. He’s laughing (wink wink) because Stephen is a liberal making fun of conservatives! Fair enough. But is he funny?
We’ll come back to that.
Is he accurate? The pomposity of his ego—that’s kind of funny, and kind of true. Rush Limbaugh makes a big thing of how smart he is, how great he is, and you figure he half believes it and is half already parodying himself: “Talent on loan from God” as he says. I’m ok with pomposity as a target. One thing I found odd was Colbert’s distrust of books and learning in general. Is this “conservative”? Certainly not among the readers of the Wall Street Journal and The Economist (though I don’t consider The Economist that conservative). So who thinks conservatives are anti-book? Oh, right. They do! The people who insist who DUMB Bush (and Cheney et al) are. Dumb, dumb, dumb. True most conservatives (rightfully so) are suspicious of “higher education” especially as the faculty in the non sciences is pretty much 99% liberal-left in colleges today. So that might be evidence of “dumbness” or anti-bookishness? Perhaps. The other “funny thing” about Colbert that I don’t quite get is how he’s a liar (Oh right, “Bush lied, people died”) who has no respect for facts of any kind. He makes stuff up and he’s not very good at it. This I not unlike Michael Scott (of THE OFFICE) when he tries to inform people about prison life so they would be more sympathetic to ex-cons but obviously he’s pulling stuff out of Harry Potter. Now that’s dumb. So, despite the suit and the “educated class” appearance (glasses and pencil in hand), when we look at Colbert we are (not unlike Ali G) once again looking at an uneducated, or undereducated or pretending to be education person. In other words at best a community college man pretending to be an Ivy Leaguer. He obviously doesn’t make the grade. So “we” chortle at him, the idiot. Who does he think he’s kidding?

So, my question(s) are:
Is he funny?
Why? Why not?
What part of him is an accurate parody of “conservatives” and what part is a “liberal fantasy ABOUT conservatives.”

Let me know.

I should never have read Summerhill or seen A Thousand Clowns

Bad Parent Entry #2027

I should never have read Summerhill. Or seen A THOUSAND CLOWNS. Summerhill, in case you're not familiar, was (is?) a school in England where basically kids did whatever they wanted. It was based on the belief (unlike Steiner's Waldorf that is positively controlling by comparison) that humans are naturally good, curious and motivated. That really appealed to me in high school (a Catholic boy's school -- not the epitome of trust in nature). I vowed (and for some dumb reasons the vows of the 18 yr old do access our deep DNA) to be into "freedom" especially if I ever had kids.
And then the movie A THOUSAND CLOWNS where Jason Robards plays the loveable, eccentric single dad of an eccentric kid. The subtext was: as the "1950s" die also (good riddance) dies the idea of control vis a vis kids. Eccentrics are usually right (even if their methods are a bit wierd). They stand for humanity at its best! Control freaks (Republicans, adults, "teachers", etc.) are all manifestations of our closest approximation to evil.
You see where this went? Drugs, sex and rock-and-roll and later, um, permissive parenting. Worse than permissive parenting is the guilty permissive. The non-guilty permissive is adamant that they are right. Don't know many of those. Know plenty of controlling parents, from the "wood toy" Waldofians to the Sunday school megachurchers, plenty of those around, all worried, all worried. Permissives tend to be downbeat, depressed, feel like parental failures. Not tough enough. Shoulda done this or that. (Even Tony Soprano is in this category).

letter from the Bad Dad

Dear Kids,

Bad news. Not the worst. No divorce. No terminal illness, but bad for you nonetheless. You might be too young (13 and 16) to appreciate the "badness" of this news, but here it is. I have decided to no longer attempt to IMPROVE my parenting. In the short run this might feel good to you, as I will continue to dote upon you (feeding you, washing your clothes, and being "media permissive") but there may be a time (in therapy?) when you may want to confront me about this decision. For you "N" (16 yr old) it means I won't try to force you to eat vitamins (you could end up in the hospital with scurvy, but hey...), I won't keep saying "when are you going to learn to put away your own clothes and wash them?" You may be in for a shock (probably yes) when you first live on your own. Then again, maybe you'll rise to the task and bring forth that natural organizing skill I've seen you muster. The food thing? You're on your own there. My answer to "What can I eat, dad?" will no longer be "Let's make a list of (the few) foods you eat." It'll be: more tuna? Again, there's a looming issue of mercury poisoning, but I'm crossing my fingers on that one. I'm not going to worry either about your exercise vis-a-vis your eating. If you get "out of shape" and find that unpleasant--just look at how bad a job I did with your younger brother and hopefully you'll conclude you "don't wanna go there." Hopefully. Otherwise, more confrontations in future therapy.
You think I'm being sarcastic? Actually, I'm not. This is really me watching out for myself, for my own sanity, it just SOUNDS sarcastic. Perhaps because I'm calmly delivering it? Can't help that--and--we don't wanna go there--that is, where my parents failed.
Son "L"? I'm going to stop worrying about your anger and thinking you're going to have an unhappy life because of your short temper and generally selfish attitudes. That's not positive thinking anyway! I see you get over moods faster than me, and maybe that'll be your saving grace. Who knows? And your weight? Dude, you're on your own. You might end up being "a big guy" for the rest of your life or not. I can't really do much more about it. Sorry. Very, very sorry. It could be worse, remember that. I could be suddenly killed or disappear, or we could lose all our money or (fill in disaster here)... I'm going to stay here and be me, the bad dad. (And in the history of bad dads? I'm probably only a "5" if a "10" is the kind that kept a Child Called It in a cage!) So, enjoy what you have!
Sincerely,
Dad

I would stop writing if... (Why Write?)

I would stop writing if... my inner monologue would quiet down.
I would stop writing if... I thought there were a lot of good writers out there.

I would stop writing if... I thought the next generation of writers had managed to wriggle out from under the (inevitably) politically correct pedagogy of MFA programs.

I would stop writing if... I thought Hollywood "got it"--that is, that young 'hip' writers, working in highly paid vaguely cooperative batches can produce solid fiction.

I would stop writing if... I didn't think "the media" was invading that part of the brain that needs a bit of quietude in order to make (better) decisions

I would stop writing if... I didn't have anything to say

I would stop writing if... I had so many "good books" piled up to read instead of digging for things that have been bypassed by the "National Public Radio" consciousness**

I would stop writing if...