I have only one thing to say today, but it's a mighty important thing, indeed. Here it goes:
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
After that, there's not much else that needs to be said, now is there?
Someone gets in your face, and what do you say to him?
"Easy peasy, lemon squeezy."
Someone cops an attitude or flips out over something stupid? Same thing...
"Easy peasy, lemon squeezy."
It's the perfect expression for reestablishing authority in the face of unreasonable opposition. When the NYPD ousted Occupy Wall Street supporters from Zuccotti Park, instead of cursing out the cops and calling them pawns of the ruling establishment, what would a more useful response have been? It's obvious:
"Easy peasy, lemon squeezy."
The tension would immediately have been diffused, the police would have backed off in panic, and occupiers would still be on Wall Street.
If Jefferson had included this phrase into his Declaration, King George III probably would have been so impressed that he would have granted us independence immediately. If Napoleon had said it to Wellington after Waterloo, defeat would have turned into victory, haute cuisine would have been brought to England in the 19th century, and the free world would have been spared the legacy of overcooked meat and mushy peas.
In his debate with Ronald Regan, Jimmy Carter wanted to respond to Regan's "There you go again" with "Easy peasy, lemon squeezy" but was afraid to appear flippant. And so we had 30 years of free-market economic policies that have taken us to the brink of economic ruin. And all because someone forgot to say...
"Easy peasy, lemon squeezy."
Of course, you have to say it the right way--preferably with a cool Cockney accent and jaunty air of defiance. If you really want to impress, you could include a "love" at the end of the refrain:
"Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, love."
Adding that little flourish will befuddle your opponent even more: he won't know whether you're putting him in his place, making fun of him, or trying to pick him up.
So the next time I'm at a faculty meeting and a colleague tries to thwart one of my brilliant ideas for moving the college into the modern era, rather than getting angry and spewing my usual venom, you know damn well what I'm going to say to him:
Easy peasy lemon squeezy
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Occupy Wall Street Forum - The Final Word
Dr. Peter Fallon, Professor of Media Studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago, offers his insights on the Occupy Wall Street forum held at Molloy College in November. As always, Peter's analysis is provocative, thought-provoking, and definitely worth reading. Peter also managed to capture the only footage we have of the event on his trusty flip video camera:
Monday, December 12, 2011
What's Right With the Right?
If you’ve read anything I’ve written on this blog, you probably realize my political and economic views tend to be slightly left of center. Since I’ve started posting, I’ve constantly made the case for greater income inequality, have tried to shine light on the take-over of the American government by multinational corporations, and have done all I could to support and promote the Occupy Wall Street movement. If these aren’t liberal causes, then I don’t know what is!
And why shouldn’t I be an admirer of a liberal world-view? My father was a beneficiary of the G.I. Bill, which allowed him both to go to school and to get an affordable mortgage for our house. As a member of the UFA (United Fireman’s Association) he was also able, through collective bargaining, to provide more than adequately for my family, to allow my mother to stay at home while I was growing up, and pay for four years of tuition at Fordham University for me. As a graduate student in Belgium, I received an education through the doctoral level, health insurance, and even assistance with tuition—all courtesy of the wonderful Belgian taxpayer. A similar education in the United States would have been quite out of my league economically, so, if I didn’t have the advantage of living in a country that could be considered a bastion of liberalism, I probably would still be a Catholic high school teacher (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
I guess you could say, then, that I’m as pinko as they come, and proud of it.
That’s why it may come as something of a surprise to many of my liberal friends that I’ve taken up a secret pastime late at night when no one is watching: I’ve been engaging in serious dialogue with conservatives. And I must confess that I’ve been having a great time doing so.
How did this all come about, you may be wondering? Well, after Zuccotti Park was “cleansed” of the young radicals who had been occupying it, I found myself going to the Occupy Wall Street site to find out what was going on. Noticing how interesting the debates were on the site’s forum, I decided to contribute a post or two of my own. Although I had some nice chats with fellow liberals and leftists, what surprised me was how many self-proclaimed conservatives were regularly on this site. Some of them were clearly just nasty trolls—vicious right-wingers who were there only to disrupt the conversations that supporters of Occupy Wall Street were having amongst themselves. But some of them were sincere, thoughtful people who didn’t really seem at all like the kind of people who hated liberals like me.
So I decided to ask a very simple question of the numerous conservatives who kept coming back evening after evening to the site: why were they there? And I made it my vow to engage any conservative who was seriously interested in having a debate:
What I discovered was that there were basically four groups of conservatives who couldn’t stay away from the Occupy Wall Street site:
1) Rabid Rush Limbaugh-loving, liberal-hating right-wingers, whose brains had been fried from watching Fox News too much. It was no use discussing anything with these people because all they were capable of was name-calling.
2) Dopey evangelicals who seriously believed that Jesus was coming back at any moment and that all liberals were “New York Jews, queers, and filth” who would be left behind when the “Son of Man gathered up the righteous.” These people are even wackier than the Limbaugh crowd and equally incapable of rational thought.
3) Libertarians who believe, as Ronald Regan did, that “government is the problem, not the solution” and who were opposed to Occupy Wall Street because it seemed to them to be little more than another “big government” movement.
4) Self-labeled conservatives who actually are independents. They have problems with the direction our government is taking, but are uneasy with the methods of Occupy Wall Street, the kinds of people attracted to the movement, and the many seemingly radical ideas being proposed by some of these people.
I spent time every night going back and forth with all these folks. I found that, if I could keep my temper and really try to have an honest dialogue, those in the latter two groups were very often quite reasonable people who were on the Occupy Wall Street site because they really cared about the issues facing our country and were interested in debating them.
In fact, I found that, more often than not, if you could get beyond the hostility and platitudes that dominate political debate in our country, common ground could be achieved between those of us on the left and libertarians and conservative-leaning independents. For example, I found myself often agreeing with the libertarians that American government, as it currently exists, is really not all that responsive to the needs of its citizens and that many of our current government programs probably should be reexamined to see if they really are working (we would differ fundamentally though in our analysis of the cause of this problem and in our prescriptions). I also could understand why conservative-leaning independents might be wary of some of the extremist elements that have attached themselves to OWS (although I would maintain that extremist supporters of OWS are a fringe minority).
The point is that I think that it is a mistake to write off conservatives, when many of these individuals could become part of this movement if we just tried to take their concerns a bit more seriously and tried to see what we had in common with them, rather than what drives us apart.
I’m convinced that libertarians in particular have much more in common with Occupy Wall Street supporters than they do with the kind of social conservatives who have taken control of the Republican Party. Libertarians hate big government; we hate big corporations….but aren’t they really the same thing in the end? If we live in a corporatocracy, and our two major political parties are beholden completely to corporate interests, rather than to the interests of the American people, isn’t this possible grounds for some kind of meeting of the minds between libertarians and progressives? After all, do we really want to fight for the expansion of a government that consistently works against the welfare of its own citizens? One that continually fights expansionist wars all around the globe solely to promote the interests of its economic elites?
If liberals really need to have a fight, there will still be plenty of Limbaugh-loving reactionaries and fanatical evangelicals out there to do battle with. But why do battle at all with those whom we might be able to win over as allies if we just made an effort?
As Sun Tzu once profoundly wrote, “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
Friday, December 9, 2011
The Hero of the Hour
"I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America, because my negotiators cannot."
Thursday, December 8, 2011
On Human Perfectability (And Other Such Nonsense)
When I was a graduate student at the University of Leuven and had to decide on a period of philosophy in which to focus, there really was no question in my mind that it would be late antiquity. I had always found this period of history—which begins with the death of Alexander the Great and goes until the fall of the Roman Empire in the West—to be one of the most fascinating and underappreciated in European history.
But it was the intellectual thought of the period that really grabbed me. It was during late antiquity that all of the major schools of philosophy—Epicureans, Skeptics, Cynics, Stoics, Peripatetics, and the Neo-Platonists—were engaged in a mighty philosophical battle to determine whose philosophical system would come to dominate. Now, the approaches of all these schools differed dramatically, but they all shared one basic presupposition: that human perfectibility in this life was indeed a possibility.
For a young man in his 20s with more than his own share of emotional baggage, this idea naturally was quite appealing to me. All you had to do, it seemed, was have the right understanding of the nature of reality and live your life according to some well- defined principles and you were set. Happiness, self-realization, moral perfection, the good life—what ever you want to call it—could be yours for the taking. And once you attained this state of ultimate perfection, as exemplified by the great sages of all these traditions, you’d never again have to be bothered by anger, fear, despair, loneliness, anxiety, and the like. You’d essentially be impervious to the vicissitudes of chance and fortune.
It was a sweet dream, but, as I get older, I have begun to realize that this dream is actually more like a dangerous fantasy. And, unfortunately, it’s a fantasy that most Americans buy into to one degree or another. We think that, if we can just change our outlook on life, or get the right kind of job, or marry the right person, or have a bit more money, or find the right religion to belong to, our lives will suddenly become perfect. We would be walking around on a cloud of bliss, never again to know the tortuous pangs of unhappiness.
So, we spend our lives going from therapist to therapist, from medication to medication, from guru to guru, looking for the magic pill that will dispel the inner demons that plague us. But what we find, more often than not, is that we “flee into the desert” hoping to escape our problems, only to find that our problems follow us right into the desert (to paraphrase John Cassian). The desert, of course, is a metaphor for that secret cure that will end our unhappiness. In the early Christian Church, the desert represented escape from the wickedness and temptations of the city. But our own personal desert could be just about anything: it is basically the delusion that we have that everything in life will become just fine, if we can just change ourselves or our outlook on life just a little bit.
St. Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church, saw that this incessant question for perfection was a dangerous tendency that would actually rob one of the little happiness that was possible in this life. As a young man, he flittered from sect to sect trying to find the magic cure for his own misery. In the end, however, he discovered that the very quest for perfection was his greatest sin and that what he really needed to do was just accept his own fallen nature and muddle through life as best he could. The rest, Augustine came to believe, was in the hands of God.
I used to think that Augustine’s approach was insufferably cynical and pessimistic. But now I think that he actually was on to something. If we can just recognize that we’re not perfect and never will be, and try to accept who we actually are, with all our foibles, neuroses, petty character traits, and gross imperfections, we might actually find the modicum of contentment that may, in fact, be quite realizable in this life.
As the great philosopher, Clint Eastwood, once profoundly said…
So I say, start delighting in your own limitations. Your life may not be filled with apple pie and sunshine all the time (Whose life really is?). But you may just find that you are perfectly adequate for the ample challenges involved in living out your day-to-day existence.
And please don’t knock mere adequacy until you’ve given it a good try!
But it was the intellectual thought of the period that really grabbed me. It was during late antiquity that all of the major schools of philosophy—Epicureans, Skeptics, Cynics, Stoics, Peripatetics, and the Neo-Platonists—were engaged in a mighty philosophical battle to determine whose philosophical system would come to dominate. Now, the approaches of all these schools differed dramatically, but they all shared one basic presupposition: that human perfectibility in this life was indeed a possibility.
For a young man in his 20s with more than his own share of emotional baggage, this idea naturally was quite appealing to me. All you had to do, it seemed, was have the right understanding of the nature of reality and live your life according to some well- defined principles and you were set. Happiness, self-realization, moral perfection, the good life—what ever you want to call it—could be yours for the taking. And once you attained this state of ultimate perfection, as exemplified by the great sages of all these traditions, you’d never again have to be bothered by anger, fear, despair, loneliness, anxiety, and the like. You’d essentially be impervious to the vicissitudes of chance and fortune.
It was a sweet dream, but, as I get older, I have begun to realize that this dream is actually more like a dangerous fantasy. And, unfortunately, it’s a fantasy that most Americans buy into to one degree or another. We think that, if we can just change our outlook on life, or get the right kind of job, or marry the right person, or have a bit more money, or find the right religion to belong to, our lives will suddenly become perfect. We would be walking around on a cloud of bliss, never again to know the tortuous pangs of unhappiness.
So, we spend our lives going from therapist to therapist, from medication to medication, from guru to guru, looking for the magic pill that will dispel the inner demons that plague us. But what we find, more often than not, is that we “flee into the desert” hoping to escape our problems, only to find that our problems follow us right into the desert (to paraphrase John Cassian). The desert, of course, is a metaphor for that secret cure that will end our unhappiness. In the early Christian Church, the desert represented escape from the wickedness and temptations of the city. But our own personal desert could be just about anything: it is basically the delusion that we have that everything in life will become just fine, if we can just change ourselves or our outlook on life just a little bit.
St. Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church, saw that this incessant question for perfection was a dangerous tendency that would actually rob one of the little happiness that was possible in this life. As a young man, he flittered from sect to sect trying to find the magic cure for his own misery. In the end, however, he discovered that the very quest for perfection was his greatest sin and that what he really needed to do was just accept his own fallen nature and muddle through life as best he could. The rest, Augustine came to believe, was in the hands of God.
I used to think that Augustine’s approach was insufferably cynical and pessimistic. But now I think that he actually was on to something. If we can just recognize that we’re not perfect and never will be, and try to accept who we actually are, with all our foibles, neuroses, petty character traits, and gross imperfections, we might actually find the modicum of contentment that may, in fact, be quite realizable in this life.
As the great philosopher, Clint Eastwood, once profoundly said…
So I say, start delighting in your own limitations. Your life may not be filled with apple pie and sunshine all the time (Whose life really is?). But you may just find that you are perfectly adequate for the ample challenges involved in living out your day-to-day existence.
And please don’t knock mere adequacy until you’ve given it a good try!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Occupy Wall Street Forum at Molloy College
Here are a few shots from the Occupy Wall Street forum that was held at Molloy College on November 16th. The event probably raised more questions than it resolved, but it definitely got people talking about the issues driving the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The Five Funniest Works Ever Written
Every now and then you need to read a really hysterical novel to take your mind off the fact that the world in which we live is basically doomed. None of us individually can do very much about the world financial crisis, climate change, mass species extinction, the genocide in Tibet, or the dubious popularity of Lady Gaga. But we can do what great men and women throughout the ages have done when confronted from the insanity of the human condition: retreat into the world of a seriously funny book.
Here are my personal recommendations for the funniest works of fiction ever written:
5. Tie: The Decameron & The Canterbury Tales - Who says a great work can't be a laugh riot? I was forced to read both these works as a student and couldn't believe just how nasty, crude, vulgar, and tasteless they are (in a nice kind of way).
4. Pride and Prejudice - I know that some people find Jane Austen prissy, but I'm definitely not one of them. I love this book, reread it almost every year, and always laugh out loud when I do (especially when I come to any scene involving Mr. Bennett or Mr. Collins).
3. Catch 22 - See previous post.
2. Tom Jones - Joseph Andrews is also a hoot-and-a-half, but this is definitely Henry Fielding's comic masterwork. Sure its smutty and cynical, but that's what makes it so much fun!
1. A Confederacy of Dunces - Ignatius J. Reilly...That should say it all. If you are a guy between the ages of 35 and 50, you know damn well that this is the funniest work ever written. The rest of you just don't know what you're missing!
“I refuse to 'look up.' Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.” (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)
Here are my personal recommendations for the funniest works of fiction ever written:
5. Tie: The Decameron & The Canterbury Tales - Who says a great work can't be a laugh riot? I was forced to read both these works as a student and couldn't believe just how nasty, crude, vulgar, and tasteless they are (in a nice kind of way).
4. Pride and Prejudice - I know that some people find Jane Austen prissy, but I'm definitely not one of them. I love this book, reread it almost every year, and always laugh out loud when I do (especially when I come to any scene involving Mr. Bennett or Mr. Collins).
3. Catch 22 - See previous post.
2. Tom Jones - Joseph Andrews is also a hoot-and-a-half, but this is definitely Henry Fielding's comic masterwork. Sure its smutty and cynical, but that's what makes it so much fun!
1. A Confederacy of Dunces - Ignatius J. Reilly...That should say it all. If you are a guy between the ages of 35 and 50, you know damn well that this is the funniest work ever written. The rest of you just don't know what you're missing!
“I refuse to 'look up.' Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.” (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Catch 22
I'm reading Catch 22 again for the fifth time. In the event that you're not into mid-twentieth century absurdist fiction, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller centers around the lives of a group of World War II fliers, whose job is to bomb targets in Italy. The man character, Yossarian, has decided early in the novel that he has had enough and wants to be grounded. The only problem is that, in order to be grounded, you have to be crazy. Yossarian, whose nerves are shot from the stress of warfare, seems to fit the bill, but there's a catch, of course -- Catch 22:
Yossarian...decided right then and there to go crazy.
"You're wasting your time," Doc Daneeka was forced to tell him.
"Can you ground someone who's crazy?"
"Oh, sure. I have to. There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy."
"Then why don't you ground me? I'm crazy. Ask Clevinger."
"Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find Clevinger and I'll ask him."
"Then ask
any of the others. They'll tell you how crazy I am."
"They're crazy."
"Then why don't you ground them?"
"Why don't they ask me to ground them?"
"Because they're crazy, that's why."
"Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied. "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I? And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?"
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane then he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
When I first read this book at the age of 20, of course I found it hysterically funny. But a 20 year old foolishly believes that he has ultimate control over his destiny, and this delusion prevented me from understanding just how damned profound this book actually is. Now that I'm a world-weary, middle-aged cynic, I realize that there are Catch 22s at work around me all the time.
For example:
1) You have to keep consuming to keep the economy alive. But if you keep consuming you won't have any savings. If you have no savings, this will mean that you have no disposable income to spend. And, if you have no disposable income to spend, this will seriously hurt the economy.
2) Republicans and Democrats are both responsible for the mess we are in and both parties have sold out to special interests. We should, therefore, vote for politicians running on some other party line to break up the monopoly that these parties have on the political process. But, if you "waste" your vote on a third-party candidate, you are all but ensuring that a candidate you really hate--who by coincidence will either be a Republican or a Democrat--is certain to get elected.
3) It is wrong for the Chinese to adopt a way of life that will cause harm to the planet. But the Chinese are simply adopting the American way of life that we continually argue should be the norm for every country. So every country should do what we do, but, if it did, the planet would die.
4) Of course, the members of Occupy Wall Street have the right to protest. This is America, after all, and Americans are guaranteed the right to freedom of speech and assembly by the United States Constitution. However, if protests are effective, then they create a public nuisance, and therefore must be stopped at all costs.
5) If faculty member X would just stop criticizing the administration and do his own thing, he would no longer be the object of retaliation. But, if faculty member X stops criticizing the administration and does his own thing, he can't be living up to his contractual obligations as a faculty member, and, therefore, has to be "corrected" (i.e., retaliated against)....Ok, this one is a bit personal, but it does seem to fit the theme, doesn't it?
What Joseph Heller understood is that capricious autocrats don't simply want compliance from those they seek to control. They have to break their wills as well. And the best way to do this is to increasingly remove any sort of freedom that individuals have -- especially the freedom to protest or dissent. If no matter what a person does the are going to suffer for it, eventually you have a situation in which people become so neurotic and insecure that simply in order to survive they turn into mindless cogs in the machinery of the bureaucracies in which they serve.
I've always known that Catch 22 was a wonderfully written novel, but only now do I grasp that it also provides a template for understanding the human condition in the 21st century. If you haven't read this book, I'd urge you to pick it up immediately. It may not help you to escape from the Catch 22s at work in your own life, but it will definitely make you realize that to be considered insane in a totally insane world is actually quite an amazing achievement.
Yossarian...decided right then and there to go crazy.
"You're wasting your time," Doc Daneeka was forced to tell him.
"Can you ground someone who's crazy?"
"Oh, sure. I have to. There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy."
"Then why don't you ground me? I'm crazy. Ask Clevinger."
"Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find Clevinger and I'll ask him."
"Then ask
any of the others. They'll tell you how crazy I am.""They're crazy."
"Then why don't you ground them?"
"Why don't they ask me to ground them?"
"Because they're crazy, that's why."
"Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied. "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I? And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?"
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane then he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
When I first read this book at the age of 20, of course I found it hysterically funny. But a 20 year old foolishly believes that he has ultimate control over his destiny, and this delusion prevented me from understanding just how damned profound this book actually is. Now that I'm a world-weary, middle-aged cynic, I realize that there are Catch 22s at work around me all the time.
For example:
1) You have to keep consuming to keep the economy alive. But if you keep consuming you won't have any savings. If you have no savings, this will mean that you have no disposable income to spend. And, if you have no disposable income to spend, this will seriously hurt the economy.
2) Republicans and Democrats are both responsible for the mess we are in and both parties have sold out to special interests. We should, therefore, vote for politicians running on some other party line to break up the monopoly that these parties have on the political process. But, if you "waste" your vote on a third-party candidate, you are all but ensuring that a candidate you really hate--who by coincidence will either be a Republican or a Democrat--is certain to get elected.
3) It is wrong for the Chinese to adopt a way of life that will cause harm to the planet. But the Chinese are simply adopting the American way of life that we continually argue should be the norm for every country. So every country should do what we do, but, if it did, the planet would die.
4) Of course, the members of Occupy Wall Street have the right to protest. This is America, after all, and Americans are guaranteed the right to freedom of speech and assembly by the United States Constitution. However, if protests are effective, then they create a public nuisance, and therefore must be stopped at all costs.
5) If faculty member X would just stop criticizing the administration and do his own thing, he would no longer be the object of retaliation. But, if faculty member X stops criticizing the administration and does his own thing, he can't be living up to his contractual obligations as a faculty member, and, therefore, has to be "corrected" (i.e., retaliated against)....Ok, this one is a bit personal, but it does seem to fit the theme, doesn't it?
What Joseph Heller understood is that capricious autocrats don't simply want compliance from those they seek to control. They have to break their wills as well. And the best way to do this is to increasingly remove any sort of freedom that individuals have -- especially the freedom to protest or dissent. If no matter what a person does the are going to suffer for it, eventually you have a situation in which people become so neurotic and insecure that simply in order to survive they turn into mindless cogs in the machinery of the bureaucracies in which they serve.
I've always known that Catch 22 was a wonderfully written novel, but only now do I grasp that it also provides a template for understanding the human condition in the 21st century. If you haven't read this book, I'd urge you to pick it up immediately. It may not help you to escape from the Catch 22s at work in your own life, but it will definitely make you realize that to be considered insane in a totally insane world is actually quite an amazing achievement.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
They're Watching
THE MAN says that you are paranoid for thinking that he is spying on you.
But if THE MAN knows that you suspect that he is spying on you, how did THE MAN discover this information in the first place?
By spying on you, of course.
Therefore, your supposed paranoia is technically not paranoia at all (Remember, if you they really are out to get you, then you are not paranoid...just observant.).
So don't ever let THE MAN accuse you of paranoia without first producing evidence of this. And once he produces evidence of this, you know for sure that you are definitely not paranoid. Of course, you still could be obsessive compulsive, depressive, perverse, antisocial, megalomaniacal, and even border-line psychotic....
But you are most assuredly not paranoid.
quod erat demonstrandum.
But if THE MAN knows that you suspect that he is spying on you, how did THE MAN discover this information in the first place?
By spying on you, of course.
Therefore, your supposed paranoia is technically not paranoia at all (Remember, if you they really are out to get you, then you are not paranoid...just observant.).
So don't ever let THE MAN accuse you of paranoia without first producing evidence of this. And once he produces evidence of this, you know for sure that you are definitely not paranoid. Of course, you still could be obsessive compulsive, depressive, perverse, antisocial, megalomaniacal, and even border-line psychotic....
But you are most assuredly not paranoid.
quod erat demonstrandum.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Life is Suffering
I had the privilege--or the grave misfortune, depending upon how you look at it--to spend six years of my life studying the problem of happiness as part of the research for both my master's thesis and my doctoral dissertation. I explored the most profound ideas of the greatest thinkers of the ancient world on the subject, and almost drove myself insane in the process.
What did I discover as a result of this laborious process, you might ask? Only that everything I really needed to know about happiness, its cause, and the possibility of its attainment could be discovered by watching the following one minute scene from Woody Allen's Love and Death:
What did I discover as a result of this laborious process, you might ask? Only that everything I really needed to know about happiness, its cause, and the possibility of its attainment could be discovered by watching the following one minute scene from Woody Allen's Love and Death:
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