Last December, Brugh Joy passed away. Brugh originally had been a doctor. He'd interned at Johns Hopkins and finished his training at the Mayo Clinic. He was a practicing physician until a bout of pancreatitis steered him toward alternative medicine. Brugh dove into energy healing, Jungian work, and dreams. He left his medical career and began leading self-development workshops. Michael Crichton wrote about his experience at one of Brugh's seminars in his book Travels.
My wife and I do dreamwork once a month with a couple of friends who are students of Brugh's. In 2008, they got me into one of his weekend workshops, in Chicago. It was an amazing experience! At the first meeting, he led a heart-centered ritual that inducted everyone into the work for the weekend. I was amazed at how this one 80-something man could work with all 25 of us, taking each of us deep into the work.
In the evening, after the last session of the day, Brugh was chatting with me, when he casually put his right hand on my chest and his left on my back. I felt intense energy flow through my chest, blowing my heart open. Every morning, we'd do dreamwork. He'd call for dreams, and he'd go around the circle and got right into the meat of each dream immediately. And the dreams I had while I was there were very big, very vivid, as if Brugh's presence had evoked powerful forces from my subconscious.
This turned out to be my only chance to work with Brugh in person. Brugh had had pancreatic cancer sometime in the 1990s and had fully recovered. He was in such good health that he went on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet a couple of years ago. But in 2009, he was diagnosed with a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer, his third experience with pancreatic health issues. This time, there was no recovery.
The way Brugh worked with treatment for his cancer, and the way he approached his death, was a lesson in itself. He treated chemotherapy as if it were a holy sacrament. He was totally open to whatever happened, and he met his own death with a sense of wonder and curiosity.
Most of the people in the Chicago group had known Brugh for several years, some for a couple of decades, so I was surprised and grateful when I received email inviting me to a celebration of Brugh's life with the rest of the group. I went with my friends to Chicago last Sunday, and we all gathered again. We sat in a circle, conducted a Brugh heart ritual, and shared stories. Brugh was certainly there in spirit.
I'm grateful to have had the chance to work with Brugh. He helped me come to terms with my chronic pain condition. He showed me that working with the physical body is a valid spiritual path. His advice to find some type of body movement practice, such as dance or martial arts, led me to tai chi, which has been very good for me on a number of levels. So even though I knew Brugh for just a little while, I'm going to miss him.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Anathem: The Grand Unification of Theories
While on vacation last week, I finished reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. And then when I got home, I started reading it again. I can't remember the last time I reread a book immediately after my first read. But Anathem is difficult for me to put down.
WARNING! There be spoilers ahead! If you haven't read Anathem but plan to, you may not want to read this post further until you've finished the book.
Thinking about Anathem after reading it for the first time, I realized that in some ways, it's odd that I'm so drawn to this book. For one thing, the book shares much in common with adolescent or young adult fiction. The narrator, Fraa Erasmas, and his friends are all young people about 18 or 19 years old, but as in much adolescent fiction, these youngsters embark on an important adventure. Those in power place these young folk in positions of great responsibility. Out of all the people available for a daring foray that affects the future of an entire planet, this group is chosen. And of course, they come through. I do like some adolescent fiction. I've read all the Harry Potter books, and I still have a warm spot in my heart for such great works of literature as Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert Heinlein. But I don't believe I've ever felt like reading any adolescent fiction twice in a row.
The book also could fall into the category of expository fiction, fiction written to inform the reader. I'm generally not a fan of exposition. I recently read Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan, and I felt that its plot was too contrived and the characters too weak to carry the exposition of the study of consciousness that obviously was the point of the book. The problem I have with the genre is that it's difficult to make exposition interesting. It takes a lot of literary talent to draw me into a story that basically is trying to teach me something.
The plot is nothing new. It's a first contact science fiction novel. There have been many before--H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds; Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End; Carl Sagan's Contact--and there will likely be many to come. Some are interesting, and some have new twists or approach the subject in a new way. But I've read enough of this type of book that I wouldn't expect another in the same vein to spark my interest.
So, what about Anathem has led me to read it again? For one thing, the 7,000-year history of the fictional world of Arbre mirrors that of our planet, which makes Anathem a roman a clef. Part of the fun of reading the book is guessing which philosopher, mathematician or physicist Stephenson is talking about when Fraa Erasmas mentions Saunt Muncoster, Saunt Protas, or Saunt Halikaarn.
Arbre as a reflection of Earth also allows for some almost snarky commentary on contemporary culture. The avout, the people who join the cloistered 5,000-year-old mathic order, have a very long-term view. This makes for much fun at the expense of the common conviction that whatever place and time we happen to be living is the pinnacle of human development. For example, when Fraa Orolo interviews Artisan Quin to learn what to expect the next time the gates are open to the public, he asks,
The mathic order isn't just a device to set up cultural commentary. It's also a way of exploring a major theme of the book, the relationship between intellectuals--the avout--and nonintellectuals--the extras. In that way, it reminds me of Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel. In Anathem, the relationship between avout and extras has oscillated over several millenia, between assimilation of avout into Saecular life, and isolation in concents. The way the extras view the avout is a matter of survival to the members of the mathic order, who have endured sacks at the hands of the Saecular powers.
Anathem focuses on other uneasy relationships, as well. Within the mathic order, there is a long-standing tension between the syntactic faculties--mathematical formalists--the followers of Saunt Proc, who hold that formal reasoning is essentially devoid of meaning, and the semantic faculties--Platonic realists--the followers of Saunt Halikaarn, who believe that symbols do carry meaning. The majority of the avout exercise Sconic thought and thus are nontheistic, holding that theoretical speculation about anything that exists outside space and time, such as a deity, is out of bounds. They stand in opposition to the Deolaters, anyone inside or outside the order who believes in a god or gods. Within the category of Deolaters, there are Bazians (Catholics), counter-Bazians (Protestants), and other sects.
Like Fraa Arsibalt, one of Fraa Erasmas's friends, Stephenson's novel attempts to find common ground among all these factions. The Arbrean legend of Cnous, Deat and Hylaea mirrors the fact that on Earth, too, religious and secular thought share the same roots. Stephenson tries to unite some of these various points of view by mashing together the idea of other worlds found in physics, mathematics and religion. The novel leads the reader through a series of events that suggest that the world of mathematical ideal forms may be one of the other universes in the multiverse posited by such theories from physics as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics or various cosmological inflation theories. Somehow, Stephenson also manages to bring the Procians, in the person of Fraa Lodoghir, and the Halikaarnians, in the person of Fraa Paphlagon, into some kind of agreement. I'm a little hazy on that point--one of the reasons I'm rereading the book. This sounds like heavy stuff, and there's a danger, as with all expository fiction, that exposition will kill interest. But as Stephenson showed in his Cryptonomicon, he has a talent for leading readers through explanation in an interesting way.
Stephenson isn't trying to come up with some version of the one ultimate absolute truth. He paraphrases Emerson:
WARNING! There be spoilers ahead! If you haven't read Anathem but plan to, you may not want to read this post further until you've finished the book.
Thinking about Anathem after reading it for the first time, I realized that in some ways, it's odd that I'm so drawn to this book. For one thing, the book shares much in common with adolescent or young adult fiction. The narrator, Fraa Erasmas, and his friends are all young people about 18 or 19 years old, but as in much adolescent fiction, these youngsters embark on an important adventure. Those in power place these young folk in positions of great responsibility. Out of all the people available for a daring foray that affects the future of an entire planet, this group is chosen. And of course, they come through. I do like some adolescent fiction. I've read all the Harry Potter books, and I still have a warm spot in my heart for such great works of literature as Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert Heinlein. But I don't believe I've ever felt like reading any adolescent fiction twice in a row.
The book also could fall into the category of expository fiction, fiction written to inform the reader. I'm generally not a fan of exposition. I recently read Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan, and I felt that its plot was too contrived and the characters too weak to carry the exposition of the study of consciousness that obviously was the point of the book. The problem I have with the genre is that it's difficult to make exposition interesting. It takes a lot of literary talent to draw me into a story that basically is trying to teach me something.
The plot is nothing new. It's a first contact science fiction novel. There have been many before--H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds; Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End; Carl Sagan's Contact--and there will likely be many to come. Some are interesting, and some have new twists or approach the subject in a new way. But I've read enough of this type of book that I wouldn't expect another in the same vein to spark my interest.
So, what about Anathem has led me to read it again? For one thing, the 7,000-year history of the fictional world of Arbre mirrors that of our planet, which makes Anathem a roman a clef. Part of the fun of reading the book is guessing which philosopher, mathematician or physicist Stephenson is talking about when Fraa Erasmas mentions Saunt Muncoster, Saunt Protas, or Saunt Halikaarn.
Arbre as a reflection of Earth also allows for some almost snarky commentary on contemporary culture. The avout, the people who join the cloistered 5,000-year-old mathic order, have a very long-term view. This makes for much fun at the expense of the common conviction that whatever place and time we happen to be living is the pinnacle of human development. For example, when Fraa Orolo interviews Artisan Quin to learn what to expect the next time the gates are open to the public, he asks,
"Who decides who is and isn't a criminal? Does a woman with shaved eyebrows say 'you are a criminal' and ring a silver bell? Or is it rather a man in a wig who strikes a block of wood with a hammer? Do you thrust the accused through a donut-shaped magnet? Or use a forked stick that twitches when it is brought near evil?"Some of the commentary is more pointed:
"Are people starving to death? Or are they sick because they are too fat?"And some is just plain funny:
Artisan Quin scratched his beard and thought about that one. "You're talking of slines, I assume?"
Fraa Orolo shrugged.
Quin thought that was funny. Unlike Artisan Flec, he was not afraid to laugh out loud. "Sort of both at the same time," he finally admitted.
An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.As a system administrator who provides computer support for a mathematics department at a university, I'm especially amused by the portrayal of the Ita, the IT support caste. They are seen by the avout as "sneaky, scheming, villainous Ita." Polluted by their contact with the world outside the concent--the Saecular world--and by their knowledge of syntactic praxis--computer technology--the Ita are untouchables, from the point of view of the avout.
The mathic order isn't just a device to set up cultural commentary. It's also a way of exploring a major theme of the book, the relationship between intellectuals--the avout--and nonintellectuals--the extras. In that way, it reminds me of Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel. In Anathem, the relationship between avout and extras has oscillated over several millenia, between assimilation of avout into Saecular life, and isolation in concents. The way the extras view the avout is a matter of survival to the members of the mathic order, who have endured sacks at the hands of the Saecular powers.
Anathem focuses on other uneasy relationships, as well. Within the mathic order, there is a long-standing tension between the syntactic faculties--mathematical formalists--the followers of Saunt Proc, who hold that formal reasoning is essentially devoid of meaning, and the semantic faculties--Platonic realists--the followers of Saunt Halikaarn, who believe that symbols do carry meaning. The majority of the avout exercise Sconic thought and thus are nontheistic, holding that theoretical speculation about anything that exists outside space and time, such as a deity, is out of bounds. They stand in opposition to the Deolaters, anyone inside or outside the order who believes in a god or gods. Within the category of Deolaters, there are Bazians (Catholics), counter-Bazians (Protestants), and other sects.
Like Fraa Arsibalt, one of Fraa Erasmas's friends, Stephenson's novel attempts to find common ground among all these factions. The Arbrean legend of Cnous, Deat and Hylaea mirrors the fact that on Earth, too, religious and secular thought share the same roots. Stephenson tries to unite some of these various points of view by mashing together the idea of other worlds found in physics, mathematics and religion. The novel leads the reader through a series of events that suggest that the world of mathematical ideal forms may be one of the other universes in the multiverse posited by such theories from physics as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics or various cosmological inflation theories. Somehow, Stephenson also manages to bring the Procians, in the person of Fraa Lodoghir, and the Halikaarnians, in the person of Fraa Paphlagon, into some kind of agreement. I'm a little hazy on that point--one of the reasons I'm rereading the book. This sounds like heavy stuff, and there's a danger, as with all expository fiction, that exposition will kill interest. But as Stephenson showed in his Cryptonomicon, he has a talent for leading readers through explanation in an interesting way.
Stephenson isn't trying to come up with some version of the one ultimate absolute truth. He paraphrases Emerson:
The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth while it's true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.I suspect that that's what I truly love about Anathem. Stephenson outlines his ideas in great detail, but without being dogmatic. Instead of a religious tract handed out by annoying door-to-door proselityzers, Anathem is more on the order of a beautiful chorale, an artistic work inspired by ideas but not beholden to them. And as Fraa Orolo observers, “Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.”
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Another Step Along the Road to America, Inc.
The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that is one more step toward a United States in which corporations hold citizenship instead of individuals. The ruling frees corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. It is a natural extension of Buckley v. Valeo, which holds that money is equivalent to political speech and therefore political contributions cannot be limited. We have gone from one person, one vote, to one person's dollar, one vote, and finally to one corporation's dollar, one vote.
This shift in power from the individual to the corporation might not necessarily be a bad thing, if the responsibilities of citizenship were being required of corporations, along with the rights of citizenship being conferred upon them. Historically, however, corporations have tried to steer government away from burdening them with responsibility of any kind. Exemptions, deregulation, subsidies, and immunity are the spoils that corporations gain from their contributions. The nuclear power industry is exempt from punitive damages in liability cases. Health insurance companies are exempt from antitrust action. And on and on.
As I mentioned in another blog entry, it looks like the only way to deal with corporate donations is to pass a law that requires elected officials to wear the logos of their donors. If the Supreme Court is not going to allow limits on corporate contributions, then the only recourse is to make sure that the public is aware of which politicians are in the pockets of which corporate entities. And besides, it would just plain be fun to see an elected body full of colorful, NASCAR-like symbols.
This shift in power from the individual to the corporation might not necessarily be a bad thing, if the responsibilities of citizenship were being required of corporations, along with the rights of citizenship being conferred upon them. Historically, however, corporations have tried to steer government away from burdening them with responsibility of any kind. Exemptions, deregulation, subsidies, and immunity are the spoils that corporations gain from their contributions. The nuclear power industry is exempt from punitive damages in liability cases. Health insurance companies are exempt from antitrust action. And on and on.
As I mentioned in another blog entry, it looks like the only way to deal with corporate donations is to pass a law that requires elected officials to wear the logos of their donors. If the Supreme Court is not going to allow limits on corporate contributions, then the only recourse is to make sure that the public is aware of which politicians are in the pockets of which corporate entities. And besides, it would just plain be fun to see an elected body full of colorful, NASCAR-like symbols.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Taking One for the Team
I got an H1N1 vaccination a couple days ago. No jack-booted storm troopers forced me to, no public health bureaucrat ordered me to--I did it of my own free will (if such a thing truly exists). In fact, I paid $10 for the privilege.
I'm not one who believes that the medical establishment has all the answers. Traditional Western medicine is not very good at dealing with chronic pain, for example. Western medicine has little to offer those who have the kinds of neuromuscular problems that can cause things like chronic pelvic pain syndrome--something I've experienced first-hand. I've had to search outside the medical establishment to find effective treatment for chronic pain.
However, there are many conditions that almost everyone would admit that Western medicine can treat very effectively. For example, I can't think of any of my friends in the community of alternative medicine who would not go to an emergency room for treatment of severe trauma. Nearly everyone recognizes that an acupuncturist or Reiki practitioner is not going to do you much good if you have a dangerous arterial bleed.
But for reasons that escape me, there seems to be a lot of resistance to vaccination. I am no fan of needles. I would prefer that my tissues remain unpunctured. Maybe the old country doctor I saw when I was a child is to blame. Whenever he examined me, I'd always whimper, "Am I going to need a shot?" and he'd always reply, "Yeah, and it's going to hurt!" And so it did.
It seems to me, though, that the practice of vaccination has been hugely beneficial to the human race in general. It's one of the few Western medical technologies to propagate throughout the world, reaching even the poorest areas of the least developed nations. Vaccination has eliminated smallpox. It has prevented polio from crippling multitudes of children. Or so I thought.
Recently, I was very surprised to learn that some in the anti-vaccination camp believe that the polio vaccine is a hoax. I grew up in the 50s and had friends who were mildly affected by polio, who spent several years on crutches, hobbled by the effects of the disease. After the polio vaccine became available, presto, there were no more crippled kids. That's a subjective impression, not objective research. But the denial of the efficacy of polio vaccination surprises me. And there are web sites that claim that smallpox vaccination is a hoax, and even rabies vaccination.
I understand that vaccines can have side effects, sometimes very debilitating side effects, which affect a portion of those being vaccinated. That's a fact that no one denies. Almost any traditional medical treatment can have negative as well as positive results. I know that the swine flu vaccine used in 1976 may have been associated with cases of Guillain-Barre paralysis. Some people have allergic reactions to some vaccines. Whenever I'm vaccinated, I almost always have a day where I feel achy and lethargic. When I was a kid and got my polio injection--always just before my birthday, for some reason--I would be sick for a day or two after.
I also understand the concerns about thiomersal, the mercury compound used as a preservative in some vaccines. Although there has been no proven link to autism, some people do believe there is one. I'm a father, and I can empathize with parents who have reservations about vaccinating their children. Thiomersal is being withdrawn from vaccines, at least in most first-world nations, so hopefully, this will be less of a concern in the future.
To my mind, the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks. The percentage of people who develop serious side effects is very small. When I am vaccinated against an easily communicable disease, I'm not only protecting my own health, I'm helping to protect the public health, the health of those around me, even those who choose not to be vaccinated. By exposing myself to a slight risk, I benefit myself and everyone around me. It's not like I'm throwing myself on a live grenade, but it's an altruistic act nonetheless.
The public health aspect of vaccination also seems to be another cause for concern among those who reject vaccination. There seems to be a fear that vaccination will be mandated, part of a larger conspiracy to use the threat of a pandemic to control the populace.
We have been fortunate to not have any experience with a widespread outbreak of a virulent disease for some time, not since the 1918 influenza pandemic. That pandemic had an estimated 10% to 20% mortality rate--somewhere between 3% and 6% of the entire human population died. More than 500,000 U.S. citizens were killed by the disease. In some places, there were not enough well people left to dig graves or take care of the sick. I suspect that when a similar pandemic strikes again, concerns about coercion will take a back seat to public health needs, at least for the moment.
I often ask people I know who oppose vaccination whether they'd be vaccinated if they were bitten by a rabid animal. While there have been reports of a handful of people who have survived rabies, rabies is, for all practical purposes, 100% lethal if the person bitten is not vaccinated in time. And rabies appears to be a very unpleasant way to die. Almost invariably, after some hemming and hawing, the people I ask reply that, yes, they would be vaccinated. So, it seems to me that, even among those who oppose vaccination, there is some recognition of its efficacy, despite all the claims about vaccination being a hoax.
I have run across one person who claims that she would reject the rabies vaccine. This boggles my mind! I hope that she never has to put herself to the test.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Tooth and Consequences
About nine years ago, I had my first and, so far, only, root canal. Of course, beforehand, I had to hear everyone's horror stories. But I was pretty sure that, compared to my early experiences with dentistry, the procedure would be a walk in the park. When I was a boy in rural Iowa, my old country dentist drilled without administering novocaine! I was relieved that the root canal was anticlimactic. As expected, the procedure went smoothly, and I had very little pain. It took some trial and error to get what felt like a pretty good fit for the crown. But eventually all seemed well. The tooth occasionally felt a little odd, but not painful.
But earlier this year, I began to notice increasing pain in my jaw when I bit down on the tooth. I tried to chew on the opposite side of my mouth, but whenever I accidentally bit down on the tooth, a stabbing, hot, agonizing pain would shoot up into my cheek, as if someone were jamming a red-hot ice pick up through my molar and into my eye socket--or as if my old country dentist were drilling my molar again. The pain would last for a couple of hours. I finally had to admit to myself that I needed to have the tooth examined.
My dentist x-rayed the tooth and saw what seemed to him to be a little bit of swelling between the root and the socket, so he referred me to a periodontist. But the periodontist saw nothing unusual in the x-rays. He said he could redo the root canal and it might relieve the pain--or it might not. Back home, I decided I didn't want to undergo another root canal if there was little certainty of a good outcome. I returned to my dentist and asked him to smooth down my crown to try to get a better fit. He did, and I had some relief for a few weeks. But then the pain came back.
I was stuck. I was facing the prospect of having to live with increasingly excruciating pain, without any hope of an effective treatment. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this was a very familiar situation. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with chronic pelvic pain syndrome--constant untreatable pain in the hips and groin and low back. Thrown back on my own resources, I found ways of working with the condition that eventually resulted in my being able once again to be fully active without pain. I knew from personal experience that undiagnosable, untreatable chronic pain can be workable. So I sat down and began to puzzle through this tooth pain.
I used my mindfulness training to try to avoid chewing on the affected side, and to stay with the pain when I did mistakenly bite down on the tooth. As I sat with the pain, I tried to release any thoughts it spawned and to relax into the physical sensations. I gradually came to see that part of the pain involved muscle tension in my jaw and face. I tried to be mindful of this tension, even when I wasn't in pain. I soon saw that this tension was the result of a mistaken response to something my Alexander Technique teacher had tried to teach me.
I've been seeing my Alexander Technique teacher for nearly two years now. She's been helping me recognize and release places where I habitually hold tension in my body. My pelvic pain condition has melted away, and my sense of well-being and ease has increased. In the course of her lessons, she pointed out that I tense the muscles that make my lips thin. I responded by trying to force my lips to purse out more than they had, instead of trying to relax my facial muscles. This increased muscular tension in the face and jaw was what seemed to be associated with my tooth pain.
I massaged my jaw muscles and used the tools I'd learned from my Alexander Technique teacher to relax my face and jaw. The result was miraculous! The pain melted away, to the point where now, I can bite down on my molar and only occasionally feel a little, short-lived twinge. I remembered reading something about tooth pain in Clair Davies's book, The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook. I looked it up, and sure enough, Davies wrote that trigger points in the jaw muscles can cause sensitivity in the teeth.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The NASCARization of Politics
I have a simple two-part solution for campaign finance reform here in the United States. First, remove all limits on campaign spending. Second, require that all elected officials, and all candidates for elected office, wear the logos or some other insignia that identifies each major organizational donor to their campaign.
Eliminating limits on campaign finances conforms with Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that holds that campaign donations are a form of speech and thus cannot be limited or regulated. Requiring office holders and seekers to wear logos makes good use of the growing cultural trend to identify with brand names and symbols. The resulting openness and transparency should make for better politics, or at least, great entertainment. Politics, sports, entertainment and business continue to merge into one gigantic amorphous mass. My idea is just one more stage in this grand fusion.
This win-win-win idea simply recognizes reality. Since 1976, Buckley v. Valeo has stymied efforts to reign in campaign finances. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, life in the U.S. has become more commercialized over the ensuing decades. Corporate logos appear everywhere now. People walk down the street wearing T-shirts and jackets proudly proclaiming their allegiance to Nike, Ford, Budweiser, and on and on. Stadiums and arenas are no longer named after heroic sports figures, but instead wear the names of Qualcomm, Target, Conseco, et al. Even colleges and universities are beginning to succumb to the trend. The University of Houston has an Enron Teaching Award. My own employer, The University of Iowa, recently considered naming their College of Public Health after the Wellmark Foundation, which is affiliated with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa.
My admittedly brilliant idea will solve all our campaign finance problems, and I'm sure it will prove to be extremely popular. Politicians will love it, because it will do away with all those pesky campaign finance laws they have to follow. They'll finally be able to receive unlimited amounts of cash without the risk of penalty (not that there was ever much risk of penalty to begin with). The general population will love it because we Americans love to identify with large, extremely wealthy organizations. We proudly wear logos on our clothes, plaster them on our cars, hoist them above our sports arenas and even our institutions of higher learning. Organizations will love it because not only will they continue to be able to use political donations to exert influence--they'll also be able to leverage their donations to market themselves.
All those pickup decals showing Calvin peeing on a Ford-Chevy-Dodge logo (pick one) will now have greater political significance. As the idea takes hold and our elected officicals begin to look more and more like NASCAR drivers, I look forward to the day when I can turn to C-SPAN and watch a senator emblazoned with the Microsoft logo respond to a senator sporting an Apple emblem. I can only hope that some day, in the halls of Congress, we will finally hear the political debate that epitomizes our current system: "Less filling!" "Tastes great!"
Eliminating limits on campaign finances conforms with Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that holds that campaign donations are a form of speech and thus cannot be limited or regulated. Requiring office holders and seekers to wear logos makes good use of the growing cultural trend to identify with brand names and symbols. The resulting openness and transparency should make for better politics, or at least, great entertainment. Politics, sports, entertainment and business continue to merge into one gigantic amorphous mass. My idea is just one more stage in this grand fusion.
This win-win-win idea simply recognizes reality. Since 1976, Buckley v. Valeo has stymied efforts to reign in campaign finances. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, life in the U.S. has become more commercialized over the ensuing decades. Corporate logos appear everywhere now. People walk down the street wearing T-shirts and jackets proudly proclaiming their allegiance to Nike, Ford, Budweiser, and on and on. Stadiums and arenas are no longer named after heroic sports figures, but instead wear the names of Qualcomm, Target, Conseco, et al. Even colleges and universities are beginning to succumb to the trend. The University of Houston has an Enron Teaching Award. My own employer, The University of Iowa, recently considered naming their College of Public Health after the Wellmark Foundation, which is affiliated with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa.
My admittedly brilliant idea will solve all our campaign finance problems, and I'm sure it will prove to be extremely popular. Politicians will love it, because it will do away with all those pesky campaign finance laws they have to follow. They'll finally be able to receive unlimited amounts of cash without the risk of penalty (not that there was ever much risk of penalty to begin with). The general population will love it because we Americans love to identify with large, extremely wealthy organizations. We proudly wear logos on our clothes, plaster them on our cars, hoist them above our sports arenas and even our institutions of higher learning. Organizations will love it because not only will they continue to be able to use political donations to exert influence--they'll also be able to leverage their donations to market themselves.
All those pickup decals showing Calvin peeing on a Ford-Chevy-Dodge logo (pick one) will now have greater political significance. As the idea takes hold and our elected officicals begin to look more and more like NASCAR drivers, I look forward to the day when I can turn to C-SPAN and watch a senator emblazoned with the Microsoft logo respond to a senator sporting an Apple emblem. I can only hope that some day, in the halls of Congress, we will finally hear the political debate that epitomizes our current system: "Less filling!" "Tastes great!"
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
I Didn't Read the News Today, Oh Boy!
I have a confession to make: I've quit the news--at least the international and national news. I have stopped actively looking for and reading news online, viewing the news on television, listening to the news on the radio. I have turned on, tuned in and dropped out.
No, that does not mean that I have no knowledge about what's going on right now. I know about the election in Iran, the Metroliner wreck in Washington, the Obama administration's health care initiative. The news is a difficult thing to escape. It pops up everywhere. And I have not quit the local news--at least, I have not quit the less strident, less lurid local news outlets. But I have quit reading blogs, quit receiving emailed news bulletins, quit surfing over to the major mainstream web sites.
What brought me to this point? Why did I unplug? Simple observation. I realized that on days when for one reason or another I hadn't consumed the news, I felt better. I slept better at night. I felt much calmer and more focused. I slowed down. I listened more attentively. I was less combative. So, I began experimenting, deliberately avoiding the news for a day or two, seeing how I felt, then immersing myself in the news again and observing my reaction. The length of time I went without news gradually lengthened, until finally, I simply stopped reading the news altogether.
I could speculate about why disconnecting from the news would have an effect on me. A lot of news stories are framed in a way that invites a strong emotional reaction but actually have little direct bearing on my day-to-day life. The most complex and nuanced issues are presented in a dumbed-down, polarizing manner that invites me to choose a side and fight. Equanimity and compassion are not the realm of the news media. But whatever the reason, not reading the news has had a positive effect.
So I invite you to try unplugging, too. Take a day off. The world will continue to spin without us. Governments and families and athletes and movie stars and armies and the police and terrorists and religions will all continue to function (or maybe dysfunction?) without our having to form an opinion about their every action. And by the end of the day, maybe you'll find that you feel better for having disconnected.
No, that does not mean that I have no knowledge about what's going on right now. I know about the election in Iran, the Metroliner wreck in Washington, the Obama administration's health care initiative. The news is a difficult thing to escape. It pops up everywhere. And I have not quit the local news--at least, I have not quit the less strident, less lurid local news outlets. But I have quit reading blogs, quit receiving emailed news bulletins, quit surfing over to the major mainstream web sites.
What brought me to this point? Why did I unplug? Simple observation. I realized that on days when for one reason or another I hadn't consumed the news, I felt better. I slept better at night. I felt much calmer and more focused. I slowed down. I listened more attentively. I was less combative. So, I began experimenting, deliberately avoiding the news for a day or two, seeing how I felt, then immersing myself in the news again and observing my reaction. The length of time I went without news gradually lengthened, until finally, I simply stopped reading the news altogether.
I could speculate about why disconnecting from the news would have an effect on me. A lot of news stories are framed in a way that invites a strong emotional reaction but actually have little direct bearing on my day-to-day life. The most complex and nuanced issues are presented in a dumbed-down, polarizing manner that invites me to choose a side and fight. Equanimity and compassion are not the realm of the news media. But whatever the reason, not reading the news has had a positive effect.
So I invite you to try unplugging, too. Take a day off. The world will continue to spin without us. Governments and families and athletes and movie stars and armies and the police and terrorists and religions will all continue to function (or maybe dysfunction?) without our having to form an opinion about their every action. And by the end of the day, maybe you'll find that you feel better for having disconnected.
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