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Our Big, Crowded Moral Circle
As you might already know, as horrible as we humans are to each other, we used to be much, much worse. In the Boston Review, Claude S. Fischer takes a quick trip into the history, not of callousness, but of sympathy; primarily, why are we getting nicer to each other?
Before roughly the 1800s, sympathy was less common and more restricted in scope, overwhelmed as people were by practical needs and circumstances. Cruelty ran through everyday life—animal torture, bloody brawling, severe punishment of criminals, child abuse, whipping of servants, and so on. Such atrocities repel us today but were less dreadful and sometimes even amusing to people then.
Fischer spends some time on Western civilization’s eventual fetishization of misery (more on that in a bit), and gets to the meat of it:
Other explanations of sympathy’s greater reach point to economics. One version simply claims that growing wealth and security freed Westerners to focus on higher goals, including the pursuit of conscience.
Ermmm, I don’t think so. If you’ve read Robert Wright’s Nonzero or The Evolution of God — which I reviewed here — you might be inclined to think in terms of utility, where treating the “other” as fully human (or, an expanding moral circle as Wright calls it) turns out to be a pretty good developmental trait for a society. “Our society prospers, and the commoners are less likely to rise up and kill me, if we engage economically (and through economics, culturally) with other clans/tribes/states. Let’s get some glastnost on!”
Fischer goes there.
An alternate economic explanation may be more interesting. Some scholars, the historian Thomas Haskell perhaps most explicitly, argue that the widening circle of sympathy resulted from growing participation in commerce. Commerce, especially at a distance, introduces participants to strangers. Success at trade both requires and teaches people to see situations from others’ perspectives, to make and to keep promises, and, by experience, to have sympathy, even empathy, for the other. Buyers and sellers, however much they struggle against one another, come to know one another.
Fischer’s order here is a bit different, but I suppose there’s a little chicken-and-egg here. Fischer/Haskell has it as, “I want to trade with this alien person, and oh look, he’s not so bad once you get to know (and profit by) him!”
This doesn’t quite explain why we’d start feeling sympathy for slaves, for example, or children who supply labor, as they are both sustainers of a particular kind of economy. Perhaps it’s an inevitable and fortunate byproduct of losing xenophobia, that we look closer to home to see the human beings being mistreated right in front of us.
This is where the fetishization comes in. Fischer seems to be implying that a lot of what we think of as deep and natural sympathy today — the mourning for lost family members and acquaintances, the need for passionate love in a marriage, the desire to help those suffering on the other side of the planet (or in another species) — an expression of our “humanity,” really, is at least in large part the result of a kind of sentimentality porn in popular literature. Novels and the like that fired off our emotions taught us not just to feel, but got us a little bit addicted to grief and passion.
For example:
Nineteenth-century sentimentality focused a great deal on death. Middle-class Americans amplified grief by, for example, adopting elaborate mourners’ clothing and burying the deceased in forested cemeteries rather than churchyards. These romantic settings evoked stronger feelings and provoked experiences of the sublime.
If you think that, say, the national rending of garments every eleventh of September has gotten to be a bit much, you may be seeing this in action. Or, more locally, perhaps you simply don’t get so worked up at the death of acquaintances, distant relatives, or generally people you don’t know very well, as some others do. You may be a sociopath, or, perhaps, you just don’t go in for what I think is often, as Fischer calls it, the amplification of grief. It’s one thing to feel a loss, and another (and this is not a judgment on it) to broadcast it with an expectation that many others feel it as you do, and that it must last and last. (You can see why I think the hashtag #neverforget is one of the more easily mockable.)
And so maybe these two somewhat distinct phenomena feed into each other. We have learned to grieve more, to feel great pangs of sympathy and attachment to all manner of persons (and non-persons…I’m literally looking at you, iPad), pushing ourselves to the point of dependence on the emotional chemicals flooding our brains. This serves to make our moral circles, which are an economic advantage, expand ever faster. Once merely a practical trait that enabled freer trade and cultural exchange, our desire to amplify our feelings brought more kinds of people (and non-people) into those circles more quickly.
Forcing us all, then, to contend with the fact that we now all live in one big, crowded circle, and we all have a lot of strong feelings while we’re in there. Fischer’s prescription is to “cultivate” that sympathy, since it is so artificial to begin with. I’m okay with that. That’s why I like things like secular humanism and the idea that we hold certain truths to be self-evident. To me, that means even if the feelings of sympathy are manufactured, we will behave as though they are encoded into our very DNA. It’s good we can choose to do that. So let’s choose to do that.
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There’s a One-in-Three Chance I Understand the Monty Hall Problem
That god damn Monty Hall problem. God damn that thing. God damn it straight to Hell!
I hadn’t never heard of the Monty Hall problem until I saw a Sam Harris lecture in DC a few years ago (got my copy of The Moral Landscape signed, what-what!), and he used it to illustrate how our intuitions can be faulty. I did not at all understand what he was talking about, but I mostly let it go. But as the years went on, I always had that little niggling thought in my head, everyone else in that room knew what he was talking about, and you still don’t.
(I’m not going to explain the entire problem here, go look it up.)
It came up again recently in this BBC piece I stumbled on who-knows-how. And after reading it, I still didn’t get it. And I began to feel very stupid.
So I told Twitter, which I sometimes do because I think maybe I’ll get sympathy or something. Instead, I got a barrage of well-meaning smartypants trying to help me understand it. This only made me defensive and embarrassed, which made it even harder for me to get why “It doesn’t matter if you switch” is wrong. I moved from feeling stupid to feeling like a Grade-A dumbass.
But somehow, through a melding and processing of all that I had by that point digested, I think — I say I think — I finally got it. Here’s why you should always switch:
Chances are, you probably picked a goat the first time, and the odds that you did don’t magically reset when Monty opens a door to reveal another goat. It remains that you still probably picked a goat.
So you should switch. You see? Because you probably picked a goat.
Is that it? Did I get it? I’m still not sure. But I think so.
I should say, there were some good alternate explanations proffered on Twitter:
The solution: punch Monty Hall out, because what kind of sadistic ass gives that choice to another human being?
the point is, no one knows who Monty Hall is any more 😦
Monty Hall’s biggest problem: death.
Marc: If you don’t understand the 1st of 3 explanations, you’re better off switching the next explanation you were planning to read.
Me: I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE
Marc: Actually your odds of seeing what I did there just went from 33.3% to 50%.
Me: ok stop.
Marc: We have a goat!
/scene
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Why I’m Not Watching the Best TV Shows in the Universe
Can I tell you how happy I am Alan Jacobs’ Text Patterns is back? When he retired it a ways back, I paid tribute. Happily, he couldn’t hold back his bloggery any longer.
Anyway, he’s in a similar position to me when it comes to a certain aspect of upper-middle-brow culture: He’s not seen any of Breaking Bad. Now, I have seen a couple of episodes, and I liked it just fine, but never stuck. I’ll get to why in a minute.
Here’s Jacobs’ first explanation:
Who am I kidding? I don’t have the time, or, rather, I’d prefer to spend the time I have in other ways, probably by reading books.
The big, sprawling multi-season dramatic series that have received the greatest commendation in recent years — from The Sopranos to The Wire to Deadwood to Mad Men to Breaking Bad — have never seemed to me to be worth the enormous investment of time they require. The one that I followed the most closely, The Wire, is really fantastic — but I have to say, if a genie emerged from the lamp and told me that I could have all the hours spent watching The Wire back, and my memories of the show completely erased, as long as I used that time to read books, I would certainly take that deal.
Now, I disagree wholeheartedly with the whole save-existential-hard-drive-space thing when it comes to The Wire, as that really was worth every minute. But I am on board with the gist of his point: there are only so many hours in this life, and giving them over to a television show, no matter how good, feels like a waste to me. I’d like to say I’m as prolific a reader as Jacobs, but I know for certain I’m not even close. (Sometimes I think I read vicariously through him as he writes about it. That sounds weird now that I’m typing it. Onward!)
My wife will get into a show, perhaps, and it’ll be on when I’m in the room, but I’ll either tune it out, or go on headphones, and do something else.
Later, Jacobs goes into more nuance about his abstinence:
. . . I think it’s worth noting that over time we all develop what I might call a default medium — that is, when looking for entertainment, each of us tends to gravitate towards one medium or medium-plus-genre as the first choice. (So not just “reading” but “mystery novels” or “newspaper journalism”; not just “TV” but “nature documentaries” or “dramatic series” or “sitcoms.”) Defaults can be overridden, of course, but they can be strong, and I suspect they get stronger with time.
That’s a good way to explain where I am. My default medium is the Web (which includes Twitter, Instapaper, and though one might quibble with their inclusion here, even podcasts and TWiT shows. Next is books. TV is somewhere, but far down the list.
But, to be clear, this is not because I think these particular shows are bad or a genuine waste of time. However, many of them share a particular trait: They are abysmally depressing. I did indeed watch the entirety of The Sopranos a few years ago, and I always, always, ended each show feeling incredibly shitty about humanity. It almost wasn’t worth it. The Wire could have done the same, but it also had moments of great uplift, great humor, and the writing was simply brilliant.
I thought, at least for my own amusement, tick off some of the recent-ish “good shows” of late, and talk about why I’m not watching or have not watched them.
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Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Deadwood: I tried each of these on, and each one made me either miserable (lord, did I become despondent after a few episodes of Mad Men) or sick with angst. I will probably come back to Breaking Bad when I’m in a better place.
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Game of Thrones: I did a whole season of this, enjoyed a lot of it, but became weary of its total objectification of most female characters, and each episode’s unwillingness to move the plot along more than by a handful of lines of dialogue. I’ll probably come back to this one, if only because I like swords and dragons and stuff.
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Dexter: My wife and I adored this show for the first couple of seasons, but it fell off quickly for me after that. Characters began making choices that were just too stupid to be plausible, Dexter’s inner struggles became more and more abstract, and once the season with Julia Stiles showed that, once again, we’d have scene after scene of people not asking each other direct questions and being mysterious in attitude only, I dropped it.
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House: This was my favorite show for three years or so. When the show became about whether or not House was capable of loving Cuddy, though, it became a childish soap opera. The side characters (or “cottages”) became more two-dminesional, and it stopped being worth my time.
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Weeds: I thought this show was stupid. She sells pot. Who cares?
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Oh, and there are people
,including my wife,who think that show Bones is really good. Wow, do I not understand that. That show is awful.
I’ve been more tolerant of comedies, as they’re usually shorter, and demand less of me emotionally. My wife and I both sit and watch, delightedly, old episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun, As Time Goes By, Frasier, Cheers, and The IT Crowd. I’m trying to get her into Black Adder. (Arrested Development‘s latest offerings have failed to impress.) Or we’ll take in a standup special. We watch Louie as well, as it’s amazing, but it’s also similar to many of the dramas I have eschewed, because it can be so dark and hit home so hard with its sadder aspects.
Perhaps I’ll update as I think of more. I imagine some of my thumbs-down selections have upset you, because for some reason people get really prickly when you don’t like the same shows they do. But just remember, if I were watching more TV, I wouldn’t be writing this post now, would I? Hooray for the free hours.
- Update: My wife would like to clarify that I have overstated her appreciation of Bones, and that she has “only seen like 6 episodes.” My apologies to her.
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Pax Horribilis
Anil Dash has coffee with an asshole:
[Disgraced misogynist Pax Dickinson] offered up a pretty boringly conventional defense of male privilege, and when I described the role of actual satire and comedy in punching up instead of punching down, he revealed that he sees attacking feminists and equality activists as punching up. . . . I’ve met guys like this before and I didn’t have any illusion that I was going to dissuade him from a perspective which his social group rewards with attention and the perverse impression that acting like an asshole is somehow being brave.
I keep wondering about what motivates the men’s rights douchetrucks that have helped poison so much of the skepto-atheist movement (Dickinson travels in the tech and “journalism” spheres), and this helped me remember what is really kind of obvious when you think about it. They’re not trying to change anything, or somehow make the world a better place, even just for their own awful kind. They’re just getting an attention high from their dim witted peers. As an attention whore myself, I get it, and that understanding only makes it more loathsome. It’s like they’re using my secret formula for clean, infinitely-available energy to build a genocide weapon.
Anyway, Dash talks about how he makes a point of erring on the side of being “unreasonably kind,” which I think is really just another way of saying he goes about his interactions with humans with a generosity of spirit, or, liberally doling out the benefits of his doubt. This is something, so I posit, that precious few in our movement ever even bother to consider, let alone put into practice.
He then wrings a little more value from his encounter:
My most lasting impression of this stupid half hour at a coffee shop was from right in the middle of the conversation about how we speak truth to power. I pointed out that his words were bullying because he was aiming at those who have less power than Pax does, and he said, with great animation:
“But you guys are winning! The progressives and feminists are winning in everything, in politics and media!”
So yes, we did find some common ground during our conversation.
This makes me think of how sad it is that people feel like they need to claim persecution in order to justify their behavior. The Christianists want to impose biblical literalism on public schools because Christianity is persecuted. Men’s rights activists need, yes, they neeeeeed to be vile, abusive, and overtly hostile because men, yes, men are persecuted. Without the absurd conceits that Christian literalism is unfairly censored from being taught as science, or that men are being victimized by women societally, their ravings and aggression become baseless, and merely base.
Think about it. “I, the Christian/male, who have traditionally been oppressing and persecuting, see you resisting my oppression and persecution, and therefore it is now I am who am persecuted and oppressed.” (takes a baseball bat to your mailbox) “I had no choice.”
Nonbelievers are, in many parts of human civilization, genuinely persecuted, but I loathe it when “our kind” resorts to bullying and scorching earth to make headway. I know that the ideals to which I have devoted my professional energies (secular humanism, skepticism, etc.) would be worth championing even if we were fully tolerated and accepted. I don’t need the veneer of oppression to justify my work. My values are good values no matter their current popular or political status. Just like feminism is a genuinely good value whether women are oppressed or not. Racial equality is a genuinely good value whether minorities are oppressed or not. Fucking environmentalism is a genuinely good damn value whether the planet is about to be broiled or not. If you do need to scream faux-oppression to justify the advancement of a value, of a principle, you best reexamine that principle with a boatload of scrutiny.
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If You Could Only Hear Yourself
Read your writing out loud, advises Alan Jacobs, particularly in the case of opinion or argument. Hear how your words might affect an audience by passing them up through your vocal chords and out your mouth, feeding back into your own brain via your ears. How would you then evaluate your rhythm, the strength of your position, and perhaps most importantly, your generosity of spirit?
Jacobs quotes a prayer:
“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despondency, lust for power and idle talk.” Idle talk! — how many of us would think to place, near the head of a long prayer to be repeated frequently in Lent, a plea to be delivered from that?
And yet many have been my idle words over the years. I wonder how much harm they have done to others, and even to me. . . .
In some cases the embarrassment would have been because of arguments badly made or paragraphs awkwardly formed; but in others because of a simple lack of charity or grace. An essay begins with an idea, but an idea begins with a certain orientation of the mind and will — with a mood, if you please. We have only the ideas that our mood of the moment prepares us to have, and while our moods may be connected to the truth of things, they are normally connected only to some truths, some highly partial facet of reality. Out of that mood we think; out of those thoughts we write. And it may be that only in speaking those thoughts do we discern the mood from which they arose.
I have argued that the skepto-atheosphere (or at least its online manifestations) could benefit mightily from the rhetorical and literary ethos of the essay. A movement eating itself alive, constantly swirling with varying degrees of outrage and righteous indignation, dividing into sects and factions which then divide further into sub-sects and sub-factions. (Go ahead, hop onto any popular atheist blog or onto any Twitter neighborhood where the heretics and skeptics play. You will doubtless see at least one jab thrown at another member of our “reality-based community,” at least one missile launched, perhaps brazenly, perhaps as a snarky aside.) But I would temper my prescription by adding that it must be a thoughtful essay, a careful essay, heard out loud by the writer as Jacobs has learned.
Something a fellow heathen has done or said (or is alleged to have done or said) has you fuming, and you take to one of the Web’s myriad platforms to immediately broadcast your ire — your dudgeon high and your motives unassailable. You feel it’s your duty to call it out, shine a light, muster disapproval.
But think: is what you heard true? If so, might there be additional context? Must it now define the character of your target forevermore, casting aside that you, they, and we were once all allies for some reason?
Might you instead at least consider, perhaps even experiment with, a dose of charity, a pinch of the benefit of the doubt, a slight hint of generosity of spirit? Can you just try it out?
Or just start with reading it out loud first.
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Triceratops Never Existed. Wait, Yes it Did.
I have a problem with this headline from the National Post, which says, “Triceratops never actually existed, scientists say.” Oh no!
But it’s not what the scientists say. According to that very article.
They actually say:
After studying 29 triceratops skulls, the scientists discovered the bone was thinning in the same area where the torosaurus’s holes were. Evidence began mounting as they counted the growth rings in the bones and discovered all the triceratops skulls were from young dinosaurs. What’s more, juvenile specimens of the torosaurus have never been found. They concluded the dinosaurs were actually the same, with the horns and ridge changing shape as the lizard matured.
The piece even concludes (emphasis mine) with, “Scientists will now reclassify all torosaurus as triceratops.” So, in other words, there’s still Triceratops. Triceratops always existed, not “never,” and now it’s Torosaurus that “never existed.”
I know, I know, click bait. But come on. It’s the opposite of what the article’s actually about!
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You’re Going to Lose Your Life, So Go Ahead and Lose Your Self
Stephen Cave talks to Susie Nielson about ways of coping with the reality one’s inevitable demise, something with which I cannot deal. Cave’s prescription? In order to be okay with letting go of yourself, you have to be okay with letting go of your Self:
Care more about other things, and less about yourself, and your own death will seem less important. There are ways to combine a meaningful life without being afraid of it ending. . . .
The idea of identifying with other people is important. But that’s a huge challenge; we live in a society where the prime source of individual value is the individual. Society says, your life should be about you, as a project. But of course, if that’s the case, then death is the end of that project. What I’m saying is, don’t make you the center of all your projects. Care about other people, other causes, whether that’s the world or other causes, because then your death will be less important.
I’m not sure I could ever make this work. I do care about other people, things, and causes. Very much so. I do feel a sense of meaning and connectedness by contributing my ideas and creative products to the world, into the culture. But none of that makes me any less terrified of my own death.
Perhaps this is because I have myself (or my Self) too invested in these causes and creations. As much as they might appear altruistic or idealistic, they just as much serve as the supports and scaffolding of my precariously constructed ego. Even when it’s not about me, it’s still about me.
Maybe I will change as my children grow. But their existence only makes me want to cling to this life even harder.
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Embedded in a Matrix of Perceived Consciousness
Michael Graziano explains his theory of consciousness, and I swear, it’s the first such explanation I’ve ever felt like I could grasp. This isn’t to say it’s correct (Graziano himself isn’t even asserting that), but it’s the only time I’ve heard consciousness explained and I actually (perceived that I) understood it.
The gist (I think) is that consciousness is an evolutionary outgrowth of “attention,” in other words, a creature’s ability to say, “hey look at that instead of all those other things.” This developed into an ability to give attention to the fact that you, the creature, are perceiving things and directing attention. So meta! But in order to make sense of that, the brain needs to construct models of what it’s perceiving, as well as a model of itself doing the perceiving.
I’m sure I’m butchering it. Here’s a but of Graziano easing us into it:
Some people might feel disturbed by the attention schema theory. It says that awareness is not something magical that emerges from the functioning of the brain. When you look at the colour blue, for example, your brain doesn’t generate a subjective experience of blue. Instead, it acts as a computational device. It computes a description, then attributes an experience of blue to itself. The process is all descriptions and conclusions and computations. Subjective experience, in the theory, is something like a myth that the brain tells itself. The brain insists that it has subjective experience because, when it accesses its inner data, it finds that information.
Mind blowing, and at the same time it has a loud ring of truth (again, I have I idea whether it actually is).
Graziano understands that it may be a disappointing idea to those who prefer an idea of the mind as a separate, ethereal thing. I’m more fascinated, however, by how deeply embedded it is. Rather than being a window of sorts into the world, consciousness gives us an internal simulation made of models and miniatures, approximating as best it can, including an approximation of our awareness of the world. Graziano again:
It is not a theory about the uselessness or non-being of consciousness, but about its central importance. Why did an awareness of stuff evolve in the first place? Because it had a practical benefit. The purpose of the general’s plastic model army is to help direct the real troops. Likewise, according to the theory, the function of awareness is to model one’s own attentional focus and control one’s behaviour. In this respect, the attention schema theory is in agreement with the common intuition: consciousness plays an active role in guiding our behaviour. It is not merely an aura that floats uselessly in our heads. It is a part of the executive control system.
In fact, the theory suggests that even more crucial and complex functions of consciousness emerged through evolution, and that they are especially well-developed in humans. To attribute awareness to oneself, to have that computational ability, is the first step towards attributing it to others. That, in turn, leads to a remarkable evolutionary transition to social intelligence. We live embedded in a matrix of perceived consciousness.
We are approximating our own awareness, as well as the awareness of others, who are all doing it themselves. It makes you wonder, if we’re all dealing with model soldiers, how different are our individual maps?
I dunno. Don’t listen to me. Go read the thing.
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Introverts: We’re *Genuine*, Not Jerks (Or, Genuinely Jerks)
Is there some kind of “introversion is the new black” thing going on? It’s probably due more to confirmation bias on my own part, but it sure seems like the more interested I am in the subject of introversion as perfectly valid way-of-being, as opposed to some kind of affliction or condition to be fought or hidden, the more I see written about it. Well, good then. I will consume this content, all by myself of course. Om nom nom.
Huffington Post has this listicle up — gah, I can barely even stand typing “listicle,” with it’s that’s-not-really-a-word ugliness, like it’s some half-assed word that isn’t even trying, not to mention that the format feels so cheap — where was I? Right, there’s this HuffPo listicle (gah!) on 23 signs you mightsecretly be an introvert, and despite the insipid structure and dubious title, it has a few items that rang little bells of familiarity in my head.
But first, to address that dubious title. “Secretly”? Nothing in here has anything to do with being closeted, which is implied by the word “secretly,” like you’re intentionally hiding your wallfloweriness. “23 Signs You May Be an Introvert and Not Know It” would have been more accurate. Okay, I’ll leave that there.
Really, it was two particular items that are really of a piece that got my attention. The first was on finding small talk “cumbersome,” explained thusly:
Introverts are notoriously small talk-phobic, as they find idle chatter to be a source of anxiety, or at least annoyance. For many quiet types, chitchat can feel disingenuous.
“Let’s clear one thing up: Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people,” Laurie Helgoe writes in “Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength.” “We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”
The other was on the dreaded necessary evil of networking:
Networking (read: small-talk with the end goal of advancing your career) can feel particularly disingenuous for introverts, who crave authenticity in their interactions.
Obviously, the theme here is an aversion to being fake. First, we take as given that any social activity is, to use an overworn cliche in the topic of introversion, “drains batteries,” as opposed to extroverts who “recharge” through social interaction. And this includes social activity we enjoy and have sought out! We had a couple of our closest friends over this weekend, and last night at dinner, after a full day with them, I could feel the switch go off in my head that said “you’re empty.” I could feel myself shut down, get silent, and I probably looked morose. I love these folks, and was having a lovely time, but like it or not, I was out of power.
That being the case, imagine how much more energy is expended in pretending to give a damn about what people are talking about, in actively participating in what feels like a bad piece of theatre in which we all stand near each other, and ask inoffensive and banal questions about each other’s lives, either to simply fill space, or, gag, to “network.” It’s unbearable to me, but I often have no choice. And it’s absolutely exhausting, I can barely stand an hour of it, let alone a day’s worth.
And what’s more, it feels phony, like a huge lie, and it makes me feel bad about myself on several levels. For one, I feel bad for being so bad at something so common and necessary as small talk and networking. Also, I feel morally dirty for pretending to such a degree, faking this level of interest and investment in an interaction I know in my heart I’d rather run and hide from. And additionally, I feel like a bad, narcissistic person for not being more interested in what other people have to say, in asking them questions to get to know them better, but I just don’t. That must mean, the thinking goes, that I must be some kind of jerk. (And I may be!)
This even ties into number 14 on the listicle (gah!), that you screen your calls even from friends. Well of course! A phone call is akin to someone walking into your house unannounced and expecting your undivided attention as you stop whatever you’re doing. Friend or no friend, that’s social interaction that will likely involve an unhealthy dose of small talk, so whether I like you or not, I’m still putting a buffer between me and any unsought telephony.
Anyway, it’s probably too generous to introverts (or to me) to chalk it up to this: introverts are just too genuine and sincere to stand being phony. But it’s closer to the truth than “there’s something wrong with us,” or, “we’re just selfish or narcissistic.” There are likely elements of all of these sloshing around in the mix. I probably am a little narcissistic (hello, actor!), a little too self-aborbed, and a little too uncurious about other human beings. But it’s also true that small talk and networking and any social interaction is crushingly exhausting to me, and that engaging in that interaction in an insincere way, quadruply so. Maybe just knowing that can help.
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Maybe the Clipboards Have a Start Button
Matt Licata discovers (happens upon? stumbles into? wakes up in?) a real-live Windows mini-store in a Best Buy, and shakes his head:
Wood floors and bright signs aren’t the important features of Apple Stores. If anything, they’re superficial details that probably shouldn’t be copied. The Windows Store Only at Best Buy is big, and it is full of undifferentiated Windows laptops. . . . Even the Surface is set up like a laptop. No compromises.
And then, the kicker:
The employees working in The Windows Store Only at Best Buy were taking notes on clipboards. That doesn’t give a great impression. If their technology isn’t good enough for their work, is it good enough for ours?
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The Keys to Hemant’s Ferrari
Hemant Mehta, empresario of Friendly Atheist, is getting married this weekend, and he’s leaving me with the responsibility of maintaining his blog while he gets his nuptials on. I’m honored, truly, and thrilled to be doing it.
But man oh man, it’s a lot of work! I have always been amazed at how prolific Hemant is with the sheer quantity of content he generates, all while keeping up a truly impressive level of quality. On top of that, he manages a set of regular contributors, like me, assigning, editing and scheduling posts.
It’s a weekend, so the expected load is a little lighter, but I’m still gobsmacked by how much attention it requires. When Hemant told me “I sleep zero hours,” I assumed he was being facetious. Now I’m not so sure.
Anyway, go ahead and see what I’m up to over there.
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A Losing Battle with Nothingness
Sleep robs me of my life.
I don’t mean to be overly hyperbolic (just appropriately hyperbolic). But I really do feel this way. It is a plague to me, a horrific affliction from which I suffer that renders me unconscious for about one-third of my life. I cannot create, I cannot be productive, I cannot educate or enrich myself, I cannot even nourish myself. For a block of hours every single freaking day, I am, essentially, a corpse.
For most of my life, my aversion to sleep was returned by sleep itself: I am, if left entirely to my own devices, an insomniac anyway. I would worry, I would plan, I would fantasize, and then worry some more, and all of that brain-churning would prevent me from entering a sleep state. There were times in my life in which I was nearly debilitated from lack of sleep.
I have almost no trouble getting to sleep anymore. Because now I have two small children and a fully-engaging job, and the exhaustion simply takes over. Sleep happens, whether I like it or not.
Until lately, I’ve been at something of a detente with sleep. I knew it would come, and it could pull the rug out from under my consciousness without warning, but at least it wouldn’t force itself upon me until somewhat late in the evening. Long after the children had gone to sleep, and even well after my wife had happily surrendered to slumber (she does not have an adversarial relationship with sleep as I do), I would stay up.
Doing what, exactly? It doesn’t matter, really. Mostly being alone. Perhaps reading, writing, dicking around on the web, maybe enjoying a podcast in the background of a game (okay, a marathon) of Bejeweled Blitz, whatever. The point was that it was my time. My precious, sacred, blessedly quiet, nobody-needs-anything-from-me time.
I have been clinging to that time, but I am losing my grip.
I am 35 years old. June 1 was my half-birthday, so technically, I’m now in my late thirties. With the children, the job, and the decay of my corporeal being, it is becoming apparent that I can no longer wage this battle with sleep as I have been.
Mornings, always difficult for me, are extremely difficult, as just the act of getting out of bed to care for my children (energetically awake at ungodly hours), is a colossal struggle. During work hours, I am growing ever-foggier, almost dizzy with sleepiness, and far too early in the day to chalk up to being “overworked.” In my after-work time with my family, which involves herculean efforts as it is, I am far too burdened by the weight of my fatigue. By the time my Paul-time arrives, I am spent. I sit on the couch like a pile of sludge. I have no energy to create, to write, to read — all I can do, really, is have something on TV. And even then, I drift. My grip on wakefulness, tenuous to begin with, is broken far too quickly.
I am forced, with deep regret, to admit that a surrender is in order. Sleep? You win. It’s like the Rock Biter in The NeverEnding Story, who, once confident of his standing within his particular domain, realizes he is helpless against The Nothing.
I’m going to have to check out of the day earlier in the evening. I don’t see much of a choice anymore. The detente is over. The enemy has advanced to the point where my only hope is to negotiate a peace so that I can at least have a modicum of sovereignty over my consciousness’s rump state.
I have to hope that the benefits will be palpable and quick to come. More wakefulness throughout the day would certainly aid me professionally, make me a better dad and husband, and generally make the day more bearable, less of a struggle, and more of a “life.”
But I can’t help but feel a twinge of panic over the hours I am bound to lose to the disease of sleep. Life is so goddamned short as it is. The days are so short already. Losing more of them to nothingness is kind of terrifying to me, especially as I get older. But I amolder, and my body clearly demands more nothingness.
Hopefully, for the remaining somethingness, I will be more present. I better be, or I will feel entirely screwed.
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How My Boy Sees Me
This is not definitive, of course. His three-year-old’s brain is always finding new ways to classify and assign value and meaning to things. But around the time of Father’s Day this year, this is how my own kid represented me for his daycare class.
All of it is true.
And I love him because I love him, too.
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The Fortitude to Try Again
Luke Eplin notes with disappointment what is obvious to any perceptive parent: Kids’ entertainment is rife with unrealistic portrayals of inevitable success (citing here specifically Turbo and Planes, neither of which I’ve seen):
In addition to disparaging routine labor, these films discount the hard work that enables individuals to reach the top of their professions. Turbo and Dusty don’t need to hone their craft for years in minor-league circuits like their racing peers presumably did. It’s enough for them simply to show up with no experience at the world’s most competitive races, dig deep within themselves, and out-believe their opponents.
It’s not just the more vapid movies, though. Think of even the good stuff like Harry Potter: a boy who has never practiced magic in his life, didn’t even realize he was capable of it, shows up to wizard school and becomes an unbeatable messiah figure pretty damned fast (not to mention his equally miraculous instant expertise at Quidditch). Never mind that he ignores his studies and spends more time creeping around the castle unlocking secrets and intrigue. He learns to believe in himself!
They are, in many ways, the perfect role models for a generation weaned on instant gratification.
I’m not so sure it’s directly related to instant gratification as it is magic gratification. Rather than “mommy give me this now,” it’s “I will become this without having to learn how.” I hoped things would be this way for me when I was a kid. I hoped I’d be an instantly-discovered child star without ever really having to train at anything exhausting like dance or combat. See how that turned out.
Anyway, Eplin finds the counter-example, not The Boy Who Lived, but The Boy Who Kept Failing:
A Boy Named Charlie Brown might come across now as harsh and unforgiving—especially to audiences that aren’t familiar with the comic strip’s cruel undercurrents—but its lessons are more enduring than those from movies where characters fulfill their impossible dreams. Charlie Brown learns through Linus’s tough-love speech that failure, no matter how painful, is not permanent, and that the best means of withstanding it is simply to show up the next day to school with the fortitude to try again. Losing also forces Charlie Brown to come to terms with his own limitations. He can’t rely on a miraculous victory to rescue him from his tormented childhood. He followed his dream, it didn’t pan out, and he ends up more or less where he started, only a little more experienced and presumably with a little more respect from his peers. They may no longer be able to refer to him as “failure-face,” but Lucy still yanks away the football when he becomes too hopeful. It’s incremental, rather than life-altering, progress.
Though I wished to be whisked away to success, I had a deep sympathy with Charlie Brown. Though I had yet to really experience what it was like to be reviled by my peers, I quickly felt like Charlie Brown and I were of a kind. It’s debatable whether this is a good thing.
But still, I have this tension in mind for my own children, between belief in oneself, and a realistic grasp of and respect for effort. I want them to know that while thinking positively (“believing”) can help fuel their will to work and improve themselves, they still must put in the work. I make a point of remembering not just to praise them for what they’ve accomplished, but how they’ve made the attempt — for trying rather than winning, for learning and asking questions rather than knowing. No one is really Harry Potter, but they don’t have to be Charlie Browns either, not all the time, anyway.
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