In an interview with Rick Santorum, New York Times reporter James Freeman describes the Republican candidate (some of whose opinions, to be frank, on social and cultural issues I find myself warming to quite easily) as arguing that
"the cost of Europe's massive welfare states [makes] it too expensive for young people to have families."
Of course I'm not remotely qualified to comment on the truth or relevance of that statement (assuming it was even an accurate summation of Mr Santorum's views). And so I won't.
But it did get me thinking about some possible factors in present-day American society that make it difficult, expensive, in some cases even debilitatingly exhausting for people of any age to raise families. Among these possible factors, I couldn't resist considering one in particular as pretty close to the top. I mean the tragic inability of so many employers to pay, to one or both spouses, a wage live enough to minimize the need of both parents to juggle two, three, four - perhaps even five? - jobs between the two of them. Which is to say, a wage live enough to enable both parents to meet not just the much-debated emotional needs of their children, but even some of their physical needs as well. Or at least to meet those physical needs adequately enough so that the much-derided Public School System, in many districts, isn't called upon to serve those same kids not one, not two, but three meals a day.
Honestly, who could have imagined the State being so "vital," or parents being so "useless"? Except I'm sure that, in many if not a majority of cases, the parents aren't nearly so much useless as they are highly useful to a certain Somebody Else aforementioned. Somebody who in fact has an almost consuming need for them, whenever and however he may require their services. And like the proverbial professor in college, the way he hands out assignments, you'd think they had no other instructors but him, and no other courses besides his. Much less other life-responsibilities.
25 January 2012
22 January 2012
Thoughts on a Pastoral Visit
I wonder:
Do you think it's still possible - even in a rigorously perfectionist, profit- and results-driven Age like our own* - to have too much faith in a given medical or other clinical expertise?
* At least compared to that ignorant Old World of pre-1995.
I don't just mean the kind of faith that optimistically misjudges the skill of a single practitioner, clinic or hospital. I mean the kind of faith that grossly overestimates the degree of progress - or even worse, capacity for progress - of an entire industry. What is it about these Particular Times anyway, that makes us think we've got all sorts of perennially complex problems so unprecedentedly figured out? So comprehensively "in the bag"? Such that if, in spite of our most brilliant efforts, your condition - what? still isn't responding properly to treatment, the problem must lie with you and not with the solution?
Again, just what is it, that seems to have elevated Today's particular solutions into a kind of provisionally almightygod-like Program? Until, of course, we come up with a better god? The kind of Program that more and more folks, however dire the nature of their condition or concern, are expected simply to get with OR ELSE? Have we hypermoderns really become so wise, or so technically perfect (in which case, I suppose, who needs even moral competence, much less excellence?), that our demands must needs become only more Draconian, "fear-factored" and intimidating? And not just of workers and volunteers - at least of the really good, conscientious ones I know - but of beneficiaries and clients? Right on up to and including cancer patients?
And why do I sense that, in the case of so many people I know who are "up against it" - and no matter how serious the ailment or other problem they're up against - the response of the person trained to help is something just teetering on the edge of "Dammit! You're not trying hard enough!"?
Anyhow, at the rate we're going, I imagine it's only a matter of time before the labels on our drug-bottles include the following message:
WARNING: Product disclaimers are intended ONLY to limit patient's expectations of drug performance, NOT to lower clinician's expectations of patient responsiveness.
Do you think it's still possible - even in a rigorously perfectionist, profit- and results-driven Age like our own* - to have too much faith in a given medical or other clinical expertise?
* At least compared to that ignorant Old World of pre-1995.
I don't just mean the kind of faith that optimistically misjudges the skill of a single practitioner, clinic or hospital. I mean the kind of faith that grossly overestimates the degree of progress - or even worse, capacity for progress - of an entire industry. What is it about these Particular Times anyway, that makes us think we've got all sorts of perennially complex problems so unprecedentedly figured out? So comprehensively "in the bag"? Such that if, in spite of our most brilliant efforts, your condition - what? still isn't responding properly to treatment, the problem must lie with you and not with the solution?
Again, just what is it, that seems to have elevated Today's particular solutions into a kind of provisionally almightygod-like Program? Until, of course, we come up with a better god? The kind of Program that more and more folks, however dire the nature of their condition or concern, are expected simply to get with OR ELSE? Have we hypermoderns really become so wise, or so technically perfect (in which case, I suppose, who needs even moral competence, much less excellence?), that our demands must needs become only more Draconian, "fear-factored" and intimidating? And not just of workers and volunteers - at least of the really good, conscientious ones I know - but of beneficiaries and clients? Right on up to and including cancer patients?
And why do I sense that, in the case of so many people I know who are "up against it" - and no matter how serious the ailment or other problem they're up against - the response of the person trained to help is something just teetering on the edge of "Dammit! You're not trying hard enough!"?
Anyhow, at the rate we're going, I imagine it's only a matter of time before the labels on our drug-bottles include the following message:
WARNING: Product disclaimers are intended ONLY to limit patient's expectations of drug performance, NOT to lower clinician's expectations of patient responsiveness.
16 January 2012
A Decade in Perspective (Mine)
Greatness. Apparently some nations are born to it, others achieve it, while others thrust it away from themselves at the first opportunity.
So far as I can determine, the second category is a fair enough description of the United States in 1941. The third is a not inapt description of its weak, vainglorious grandchild 60 years later. Indeed, as I do my poor best to recall the America of 2001, what comes to mind is a country (or was it rather a wholly new, POST-Western civilization?) zealous to embrace every challenge except those involving its own real security. For one thing, and try as I may, I'm simply unable to grasp just how one manages the defense of an entire country chiefly upon the good faith and sound character of its cronies and capitalists. Surely national security, in its widest and most permanent meaning, has always been an affair not just of the well-connected - or even of "experts" and professionalized elites - but of the whole Nation?
Then again, just what sort of security challenges did America face at the turn of the millennium? Certainly our most immediately deadly enemies were elusive, insidious, infectious enough. That societal disease which I think we now most accurately call jihadism was nothing to trifle with; at very least it was determined to speed the collapse of what it presumed to be the hollow, rotten edifice of American and Western life. But note how small in scale these challenges might have appeared, how slice-and-diceable, how utterly manageable - perhaps even containable? - had we but tried to approach them with the right sort of national resoluteness and cohesion. After all, in one very practical sense an attack on everybody is also everybody's fight. And seldom, it seems to me, in the history of any country had there been one occasion so richly capable of bringing out the best in every kind, level and class of citizen. That is, had we but cared to educate and motivate our people even half as well for citizenship as we'd been doing for entrepreneurship. (Then again we had an entire globe to compete with. And apparently repeated studies had shown how weak and futile, as sentiments go, was American love of country when matched against Chinese pride of civilization. Just kidding.)
It should also be remembered that in 2001, despite the shame of Enron and kindred debacles, we Americans were near the peak of a kind of economic high. One that, admittedly, carried far more weight in the realms of emotion and ideology than on the scale of any really hard, verifiable numbers. At the same time any pinnacle, real or imagined, from which a nation feels itself on top of the world can be an awkward perch to come down from. And I suspect the sad truth is that America c. 2000 was so busy choking on its own self-infatuation (remember how we and China were going to rewrite economic history? - or at least so ran the subtext) that it was in no good place to meet existential challenges of any kind. As distinct, I mean, from the all-important economic ones.
So let's take some inventory. On the face of it we had, in the wake of 9/11, an unparalleled opportunity to be Americans; we chose instead to be ever more vindictive Republicans and Democrats, libertarians and collectivists, sham liberals and pseudo-conservatives, phony socialists and crony capitalists. Most urgently we all, for one reason or another, in one degree or another, chose to be corporatists. In the face of a uniquely savage assault on the very bedrock of human dignity everywhere, one might think we had an unprecedented opportunity to cherish, conserve, develop and maximize the potential of our Deity's most precious creaturely gift: ourselves and each other. Instead we chose to deify the organizational works of our heads and hands. We had a rare chance to remind some of our most productive, enterprising countrymen and -women that they too were Americans and citizens, and not just global producers and distributors; that they actually had families and neighborhoods, and not just colleagues and clients; that they themselves had bodies and souls - even their own! - to manage, and not just capital and overhead. Instead we encouraged how many of our employers, both corporate and non-corporate, both profiting and not-for-profit, to become a Thing so far removed from the root meaning of corporation, it was, if anything, more like an anti-body, an anti-Church, in which not only was eye telling ear, but head was constantly reminding just about every member, faculty, organ and cell: "I do not NEED you." (And no doubt there is something highly exhilarating - at least to our nasty, hardened, shriveled flesh - in having the "freedom" to say that.)
Lastly, considering we faced an enemy on the one hand so utterly new, antithetical and total, and on the other so non-expert, so wholly civilian and amateur and makeshift, you'd think an imaginative response might have found scope for every sort of talent, and a place for just about every hand on deck. Whereas instead what did we do? We told the overwhelming bulk of the ship's crew to go shopping.
And boy did we ever.
So far as I can determine, the second category is a fair enough description of the United States in 1941. The third is a not inapt description of its weak, vainglorious grandchild 60 years later. Indeed, as I do my poor best to recall the America of 2001, what comes to mind is a country (or was it rather a wholly new, POST-Western civilization?) zealous to embrace every challenge except those involving its own real security. For one thing, and try as I may, I'm simply unable to grasp just how one manages the defense of an entire country chiefly upon the good faith and sound character of its cronies and capitalists. Surely national security, in its widest and most permanent meaning, has always been an affair not just of the well-connected - or even of "experts" and professionalized elites - but of the whole Nation?
Then again, just what sort of security challenges did America face at the turn of the millennium? Certainly our most immediately deadly enemies were elusive, insidious, infectious enough. That societal disease which I think we now most accurately call jihadism was nothing to trifle with; at very least it was determined to speed the collapse of what it presumed to be the hollow, rotten edifice of American and Western life. But note how small in scale these challenges might have appeared, how slice-and-diceable, how utterly manageable - perhaps even containable? - had we but tried to approach them with the right sort of national resoluteness and cohesion. After all, in one very practical sense an attack on everybody is also everybody's fight. And seldom, it seems to me, in the history of any country had there been one occasion so richly capable of bringing out the best in every kind, level and class of citizen. That is, had we but cared to educate and motivate our people even half as well for citizenship as we'd been doing for entrepreneurship. (Then again we had an entire globe to compete with. And apparently repeated studies had shown how weak and futile, as sentiments go, was American love of country when matched against Chinese pride of civilization. Just kidding.)
It should also be remembered that in 2001, despite the shame of Enron and kindred debacles, we Americans were near the peak of a kind of economic high. One that, admittedly, carried far more weight in the realms of emotion and ideology than on the scale of any really hard, verifiable numbers. At the same time any pinnacle, real or imagined, from which a nation feels itself on top of the world can be an awkward perch to come down from. And I suspect the sad truth is that America c. 2000 was so busy choking on its own self-infatuation (remember how we and China were going to rewrite economic history? - or at least so ran the subtext) that it was in no good place to meet existential challenges of any kind. As distinct, I mean, from the all-important economic ones.
So let's take some inventory. On the face of it we had, in the wake of 9/11, an unparalleled opportunity to be Americans; we chose instead to be ever more vindictive Republicans and Democrats, libertarians and collectivists, sham liberals and pseudo-conservatives, phony socialists and crony capitalists. Most urgently we all, for one reason or another, in one degree or another, chose to be corporatists. In the face of a uniquely savage assault on the very bedrock of human dignity everywhere, one might think we had an unprecedented opportunity to cherish, conserve, develop and maximize the potential of our Deity's most precious creaturely gift: ourselves and each other. Instead we chose to deify the organizational works of our heads and hands. We had a rare chance to remind some of our most productive, enterprising countrymen and -women that they too were Americans and citizens, and not just global producers and distributors; that they actually had families and neighborhoods, and not just colleagues and clients; that they themselves had bodies and souls - even their own! - to manage, and not just capital and overhead. Instead we encouraged how many of our employers, both corporate and non-corporate, both profiting and not-for-profit, to become a Thing so far removed from the root meaning of corporation, it was, if anything, more like an anti-body, an anti-Church, in which not only was eye telling ear, but head was constantly reminding just about every member, faculty, organ and cell: "I do not NEED you." (And no doubt there is something highly exhilarating - at least to our nasty, hardened, shriveled flesh - in having the "freedom" to say that.)
Lastly, considering we faced an enemy on the one hand so utterly new, antithetical and total, and on the other so non-expert, so wholly civilian and amateur and makeshift, you'd think an imaginative response might have found scope for every sort of talent, and a place for just about every hand on deck. Whereas instead what did we do? We told the overwhelming bulk of the ship's crew to go shopping.
And boy did we ever.
31 December 2011
A Mid-Christmas Nonmeditation
Ever notice how we humans don’t take any too warmly to reminders of our own finitude, as distinct from other people’s?
No doubt nearly all of us - in one degree or another, at some point or phase of our lives - have assumed ourselves to be either immortal, or invincible, or indestructible. And even though most of us can pretty easily imagine some really bad things happening to us, that doesn’t mean we find it easy to identify with those people in our lives (near or distant) in whom the bad things are most visibly embodied. Homeless individuals, for instance. Or even those suffering the effects of a recent foreclosure.
Which in turn makes me wonder: Since when does any conscious margin of superiority, or advantage, that I believe myself to hold over you – be it “permanent” or temporary or even imaginary - better equip me to be of actual use or service to you? Does even the shrewdest, most efficient, most dedicated merchant do a better job of serving her customers by not identifying with them? By looking down on them? By knowing – or pretending to know – nothing of what it feels like to be patronized, hoodwinked, strung along, sold a bill of goods? And if the maker of all things could see the point, not just of knowing Divinely but of living humanly our miseries – our stink and blood and excrement and humiliation and cruelty – really, who are we to presume to be any better? Or safer?
Do you know what is the very worst way of ministering to, or consoling, or encouraging, somebody who’s facing death? Old age? Debilitating illness? Poverty? (Believe me, I've done it times past counting.) It is to make an unbridgeable gulf of the differences between yourself and that human creature, and between your prospects and hers. It is to behave – however unconsciously – as if those things either will not, or could not, ever happen to you.
05 December 2011
A Poem
I had a dove and the sweet dove died;
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,
With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving;
Sweet little red feet! why should you die -
Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why?
You liv'd alone in the forest-tree,
Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me?
I kiss'd you oft and gave you white peas;
Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?
- John Keats (1795-1821)
I want you to notice two things about this poem. First, its all-consuming tenderness. Second, its staunchly (albeit inadvertently) uncompromising realism. So far as I can tell, the narrator had no intention other than to describe exactly what he did, and exactly how he felt. Yet observe how unintended were the results.
I find the effect breathtakingly realistic. We all know how easily, sometimes, what imagines itself to be kindness can turn out to be the reverse: a "care" that's clumsy, confining, even unintendedly stifling of the creature we profess to love. Worst of all, it's the kind of thing that can happen in the most exasperating of moments: even, for instance, when we're doing our best to create what we hope and pray will be a kind of perfect environment, an atmosphere containing the utmost assurance of our care and affection.
So now let's suppose for a moment that human kindness to a mere bird could be something every bit as "cruel," so to speak, as the result described in this poem. Something so estranging from its peculiar paradise; so exiling, in fact, from everything it calls home. As we all well know it can. Or at least we do in our moments of imagination and poetry, and sanity. But in that case, how much more cruel, I wonder, are those cruelties we humans inflict on each other that we know to be cruel, and yet persist in believing will issue in kindness? I don't mean just those blunders we very discreetly confine to our private homes or private lives. I mean certain very acceptable presumptions that enter into the most visible paths of our public life. Even, every once in a while, into those paths that we positively know - I mean, we're so sure we can practically taste it - will lead to greater profit, greater proficiency, greater progress. My question: If a mere bird's natural paradise be such, that no amount of human tinkering or fretting, worrying or interfering can add to (though it may well subtract from) its stature one inch, then how much more man-impervious, how much more God-dependent, is our paradise? How much more will He clothe us little ones, even despite our little faith?
"It's not that SIMPLE!" you rebuke me roundly and soundly. Fair enough. Certainly if we're to believe our modern dogmas, we humans thrive on limitless complexity; we can never get deep enough into the rat race (no doubt that's why so many Americans dream of endless wealth and early retirement). But what if our wisest modernity is wrong? What if our own Divinely human, lost yet lingering Eden be a place (of body and mind) both immeasurably richer, and unsearchably more complex - and yet simpler - than the simplest yearning of the most irretrievably urbanized pigeon?
I'm not saying we shall have nothing human to do, nothing of our own to contribute - even to those fragments or echoes of Eden yet residual to us in this life. What I'm suggesting, rather, is that even our most strenuous contributions will in no wise conform to our present notions and experiences of strain. What I envision is a kind of "work" so Divinely-natured, as it were - so Word-attuned, and Word-attentive, to the pleasures of even the simplest of that Eden's inhabitants - as to contain in it nothing whatever of a certain Grimness we all know well, having been on both its giving and receiving ends. Nothing whatever of that grimly anxious self-importance which, so often in this present life, makes our attempts at love so heavy and toilsome and tyrannical, both to ourselves and to others. In short, nothing of fret and fuss, of busybodied interference and manipulation.
Of course our own proper Eden may also be technological. In places the City may even seem, by our present puny notions, to be hypertechnological. Yet for all that, I can also imagine it being saturated throughout with a kind of once-and-future, primordially innocent simplicity. One that manages somehow, like the mustard-tree of the parable, to give hospice to living creatures of all sorts. Or even - by some Divine-human feat which for now we can only describe as miracle - to every kind of living thing? Yet without squeezing or straining any of them (any more than we ourselves would want to be squeezed or strained). A simplicity that would, if anything, be far more trustful, far more childlike, than any such state as known to our first parents. And yet, perhaps for that very reason, all the more exquisitely molded to our original human clay and nature and calling. In short, all the more befittingly characteristic of that Adam who is both once and future: that one greatest, and yet most closely, most intimately God-dependent (Genesis 2:7), of all the visible earthly creatures of God.
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,
With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving;
Sweet little red feet! why should you die -
Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why?
You liv'd alone in the forest-tree,
Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me?
I kiss'd you oft and gave you white peas;
Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?
- John Keats (1795-1821)
I want you to notice two things about this poem. First, its all-consuming tenderness. Second, its staunchly (albeit inadvertently) uncompromising realism. So far as I can tell, the narrator had no intention other than to describe exactly what he did, and exactly how he felt. Yet observe how unintended were the results.
I find the effect breathtakingly realistic. We all know how easily, sometimes, what imagines itself to be kindness can turn out to be the reverse: a "care" that's clumsy, confining, even unintendedly stifling of the creature we profess to love. Worst of all, it's the kind of thing that can happen in the most exasperating of moments: even, for instance, when we're doing our best to create what we hope and pray will be a kind of perfect environment, an atmosphere containing the utmost assurance of our care and affection.
So now let's suppose for a moment that human kindness to a mere bird could be something every bit as "cruel," so to speak, as the result described in this poem. Something so estranging from its peculiar paradise; so exiling, in fact, from everything it calls home. As we all well know it can. Or at least we do in our moments of imagination and poetry, and sanity. But in that case, how much more cruel, I wonder, are those cruelties we humans inflict on each other that we know to be cruel, and yet persist in believing will issue in kindness? I don't mean just those blunders we very discreetly confine to our private homes or private lives. I mean certain very acceptable presumptions that enter into the most visible paths of our public life. Even, every once in a while, into those paths that we positively know - I mean, we're so sure we can practically taste it - will lead to greater profit, greater proficiency, greater progress. My question: If a mere bird's natural paradise be such, that no amount of human tinkering or fretting, worrying or interfering can add to (though it may well subtract from) its stature one inch, then how much more man-impervious, how much more God-dependent, is our paradise? How much more will He clothe us little ones, even despite our little faith?
"It's not that SIMPLE!" you rebuke me roundly and soundly. Fair enough. Certainly if we're to believe our modern dogmas, we humans thrive on limitless complexity; we can never get deep enough into the rat race (no doubt that's why so many Americans dream of endless wealth and early retirement). But what if our wisest modernity is wrong? What if our own Divinely human, lost yet lingering Eden be a place (of body and mind) both immeasurably richer, and unsearchably more complex - and yet simpler - than the simplest yearning of the most irretrievably urbanized pigeon?
I'm not saying we shall have nothing human to do, nothing of our own to contribute - even to those fragments or echoes of Eden yet residual to us in this life. What I'm suggesting, rather, is that even our most strenuous contributions will in no wise conform to our present notions and experiences of strain. What I envision is a kind of "work" so Divinely-natured, as it were - so Word-attuned, and Word-attentive, to the pleasures of even the simplest of that Eden's inhabitants - as to contain in it nothing whatever of a certain Grimness we all know well, having been on both its giving and receiving ends. Nothing whatever of that grimly anxious self-importance which, so often in this present life, makes our attempts at love so heavy and toilsome and tyrannical, both to ourselves and to others. In short, nothing of fret and fuss, of busybodied interference and manipulation.
Of course our own proper Eden may also be technological. In places the City may even seem, by our present puny notions, to be hypertechnological. Yet for all that, I can also imagine it being saturated throughout with a kind of once-and-future, primordially innocent simplicity. One that manages somehow, like the mustard-tree of the parable, to give hospice to living creatures of all sorts. Or even - by some Divine-human feat which for now we can only describe as miracle - to every kind of living thing? Yet without squeezing or straining any of them (any more than we ourselves would want to be squeezed or strained). A simplicity that would, if anything, be far more trustful, far more childlike, than any such state as known to our first parents. And yet, perhaps for that very reason, all the more exquisitely molded to our original human clay and nature and calling. In short, all the more befittingly characteristic of that Adam who is both once and future: that one greatest, and yet most closely, most intimately God-dependent (Genesis 2:7), of all the visible earthly creatures of God.
27 November 2011
How the "Real" (i.e., more or less Godless) World Works
In keeping with what I take to be the Spirit of the Moment, I thought I'd take a moment to share a few thoughts on the subject of protests. Or, more specifically, protest slogans. I notice that two questions keep popping up, within the limited space inside my skull, whenever I come across a really familiar slogan of protest. One like, for instance, "War is not the answer."
The first question I would address to the protestor is the following:
"Exactly who, and how broad or narrow, is your intended audience?"
The second:
"Assuming your message could have its most desired immediate effect, what sort of rejoinder or other response from that audience would best assure you that your point had been understood and well-considered?"
Now I suppose from the standpoint of Heaven there is such a thing as an ideal audience: People who are uniquely best-placed and best-suited to hear a message, either (1) because they'd find it not only utterly convicting, but convicting to such a degree as to inspire immediate and effective action; or else (2) because they were best able to furnish solid, well-grounded reasons why the message was either beside the point, or wholly unable to convict anybody of anything.
I have only the vaguest notion of what that ideal audience might look like which most deserves to hear and be convicted by the message "War is not the answer" (for all I know it may be most expressly identified by a look in the mirror). But whoever these folks might be, I get the funniest feeling that their most uninhibitedly truthful answer (given sufficient help from alcohol, caffeine, hypnosis or other uninhibitors) might run something like this:
"I got news for you: Peace was never even part of the question."
The first question I would address to the protestor is the following:
"Exactly who, and how broad or narrow, is your intended audience?"
The second:
"Assuming your message could have its most desired immediate effect, what sort of rejoinder or other response from that audience would best assure you that your point had been understood and well-considered?"
Now I suppose from the standpoint of Heaven there is such a thing as an ideal audience: People who are uniquely best-placed and best-suited to hear a message, either (1) because they'd find it not only utterly convicting, but convicting to such a degree as to inspire immediate and effective action; or else (2) because they were best able to furnish solid, well-grounded reasons why the message was either beside the point, or wholly unable to convict anybody of anything.
I have only the vaguest notion of what that ideal audience might look like which most deserves to hear and be convicted by the message "War is not the answer" (for all I know it may be most expressly identified by a look in the mirror). But whoever these folks might be, I get the funniest feeling that their most uninhibitedly truthful answer (given sufficient help from alcohol, caffeine, hypnosis or other uninhibitors) might run something like this:
"I got news for you: Peace was never even part of the question."
24 November 2011
One Thanklessly Productive Generation
One of the many things I am - or ought to be - thankful for:
That our US holiday of Thanksgiving hasn't (yet?) been moved to Sunday or Monday, the better to accommodate our global work, money and stock-trading schedules. (Don't give 'em ideas, right?)
No doubt I'm being way too curmudgeonly for a festive occasion, but stranger things have happened. Certainly our own glorious Age is no stranger to strangeness. In fact, I'd be amazed if any industrial era since 1914 has been more zealous to facilitate the global flow of all things busy - work, trade, money, influence, POWER - than these past sixteen-odd years. Anyhow, we sure have been bustling along. With, in some quarters, hardly so much as a pause for regret through that bitter fall-winter-spring of '08-'09. Ah, but then who among even our wildest optimists could have dreamed that, by 24 November 2011, we'd have so much to show for it all?
It's beginning to dawn on me that the serious, hell-for-leather pursuit of productivity is, in its upshot, not all that different from our other famous American pursuit, that of happiness. In other words, the more we pursue productivity - the more we press and strain and lunge and snarl and claw for it - the more the mercurial Beast eludes us. Until one day it finally tires of the whole ridiculous sport, and turns and snarls back. And then - ever so quietly and resolutely - it starts to hunt us.
That our US holiday of Thanksgiving hasn't (yet?) been moved to Sunday or Monday, the better to accommodate our global work, money and stock-trading schedules. (Don't give 'em ideas, right?)
No doubt I'm being way too curmudgeonly for a festive occasion, but stranger things have happened. Certainly our own glorious Age is no stranger to strangeness. In fact, I'd be amazed if any industrial era since 1914 has been more zealous to facilitate the global flow of all things busy - work, trade, money, influence, POWER - than these past sixteen-odd years. Anyhow, we sure have been bustling along. With, in some quarters, hardly so much as a pause for regret through that bitter fall-winter-spring of '08-'09. Ah, but then who among even our wildest optimists could have dreamed that, by 24 November 2011, we'd have so much to show for it all?
It's beginning to dawn on me that the serious, hell-for-leather pursuit of productivity is, in its upshot, not all that different from our other famous American pursuit, that of happiness. In other words, the more we pursue productivity - the more we press and strain and lunge and snarl and claw for it - the more the mercurial Beast eludes us. Until one day it finally tires of the whole ridiculous sport, and turns and snarls back. And then - ever so quietly and resolutely - it starts to hunt us.
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