I’m currently reading True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor. Subtitle: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy. Halfway through I’m depressed by the extent of our environmental problems, especially global warming, and our lack of resolve to reduce emissions. Here’s a December 2010, twenty-minute long global warming TED Talk by the always excellent Naomi Klein.
I know, I said I wasn’t going to follow Presidential politics for another ten months, but Cain Truth is one entertaining website, and I just can’t help myself. And I know I’m supposed to assume a person is innocent until proven guilty, but I just can’t help myself.
Dig this headline from the website, “Cain Attacked by Accuser; Will Not Stop His Effort to Renew America.” Here’s what that conjures up in my pea brain. The Hermanator is walking down Main Street, suit coat over his shoulder, touching and healing struggling business owners while simultaneously pushing a steady stream of slowly approaching bimbos out of the way. The initial draft headline read, “This Week’s Skank Won’t Sidetrack the Cain Train from Fixing America.”
Cain is a heaven sent joke in response to all the peeps, like one of my friends, who thinks all of our political problems will disappear if we’d just elect a flesh and blood businessman.
From Slate.com: Cain initially called Ginger White’s claims “more false allegations.” But stopped short of accusing White of lying. Still, he nonetheless stressed that he had never had sex with her and that he did not consider their relationship to have constituted an affair.
Mrs. Cain Train is going to love that explanation.
If we’ve learned anything about the Cain Train, we’ve learned the more it talks, the further it goes off track. “At this point I’m just simply saying these things are going to come out and until we know what they are, then my attorney doesn’t know what to respond to.” The drip, drip, drip really is unfair to his attorney. If the women were more considerate, they’d do one large group presser. If you like gore, gather round, this is going to be a long, drawn out train wreck.
In the middle of rebutting the allegation, our Business Knight in Slimy Armor pivots. If you watch closely, you can see the wheels start turning in his big business brain. Damn, he suddenly realizes, after thirteen years maybe she’s got some evidence of our non-affair. Quoting again from Slate.com. . . the Republican did concede that the woman making the claim was “someone that I know who is an acquaintance that I thought was a friend.”
That’s what I hate about women, they just can’t keep non-affairs on the down-low. Asked if he had sex with the woman, Cain responded no twice. If you close your eyes, you can see a gaggle of Saturday Night Live writers excusing themselves from their dinner guests and sprinting to their respective laptops. The gift that keeps on giving.
Again, Slate.com. . . in a written statement Cain’s lawyer, Lin Wood, took a significantly different tack, suggesting that the issue was a private matter and that it was out of bounds in terms of what the media should be focused on. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Didn’t anyone from the RNC vet this guy? Have the “skeleton” talk with him? Granted, it would have been a long convo, but why do national politicians have to re-learn the Nixon take-away over and over, the coverup is always worse than the initial mistake/crime/non-affair.
If you are thinking of running for president sometime in the future, or just want to be a more authentic human being, ask yourself, “What would Herman do?” and then do the opposite.
If the King of Kapitalism really wanted to be President, he should have begun by talking honestly about his moral shortcomings and hoped that the electorate would have appreciated his honesty and separated his personal shortcomings from his political promise.
Is it just me or is it seemingly impossible to get along with narcissists? Of course if you caught my betrothed after one of our spats, she’d say I’m a self-centered sad sack.
I’m three-quarters the way through Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and I can’t help but make connections between it and Whybrow’s American Mania.
Don’t know if I’ve ever been so conflicted about one person. There are at least three Steve Jobs—1) the counter-cultural Zen Buddhist, exquisite designer, artist-philosopher, modern Stoic, vegan; 2) the focused, driven, scarily perfectionist, extremely mercurial, control-freak, business genius; and 3) the sometimes cruel, heartless, empathy impaired human being.
Readers of the bio are probably most interested in Jobs 2, but I find the human nature/human being story far more interesting.
I need to finish the book and think some more about it before reconciling my schizophrenic thoughts. For now I can say Jobs 3, the uncaring, mean, empathy impaired knucklehead often repulses me. Which brings to mind Whybrow’s insights on empathy. He writes, “. . . the experience of intimacy and the stability of the attachments one has in early years ultimately shape our capacity to understand the feelings of others. Human empathy is largely a learned behavior, much as is language. . .”
So we’re not hardwired to care about others? Whybrow says empathic understanding results from “social anchors” or a “. . . wellspring of healthy families and the nurturance of supportive, economically viable communities. . .” In other words, immerse young children in caring families, schools, religious and civic organizations and they will follow the caring adults’ lead and end up empathetic young adults.
Could the fact that Jobs was adopted have compromised the stability of his attachments so much that he never “learned empathy” in the way he learned English? I wouldn’t think so because he was months old when adopted and his adopted parents were stable, supportive, and loving.
After deciding not to marry Jobs, one of the two women he was closest to in his life found a psychiatric manual, read about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and concluded that Jobs embodied all of the symptoms. (Here’s hoping Betrothed never stumbles upon that.) She said, “It fits so well and explained so much of what we had strugled with, that I realized expecting him to be nicer or less self-centered was like expecting a blind man to see.” “I think the issue is empathy,” she added, “the capacity for empathy is lacking.”
I’m clueless as to the root causes of Jobs’s lack of empathy, but the larger, more important takeaway is that empathy is learned. Whybrow convincingly argues that empathy results from a “wellspring of healthy families and nurturance of supportive, economically viable communities.” Sadly, some families aren’t sufficiently healthy, nurturing, supportive, or economically stable enough to pass on empathetic understanding to the young in their charge.
If expecting narcissists to someday be nicer or less self-centered is like expecting blind people to someday see, the best way to cope with them is to stop expecting them to return personal interest and care with similar curiosity and kindness. Far easier said then done.
Narcissus admiring himself shortly before his first triathlonI often get frustrated with the Michael Moore’s and Rush Limbaugh’s of the world because their ideological analyses slight endless economic, political, and cultural subtleties that require deeper thinking and more tentative conclusions.
Peter Whybrow, in his excellent book American Mania, explains Adam Smith’s work in ways few conservative free-market zealots probably understand. “Smith favored private ownership, with capital being locally rooted,” Whybrow writes. “He distrusted large institutions—be they government or corporate—as forces that foster greed, distorting and suppressing the dynamic market exchange and social intimacy that are essential to fair dealing.”
“As businesses merge and increase in size,” Whybrow contends, “and as manufacturing and services become geographically remote from each other, the behavioral contingencies essential to promoting social stability in a market-regulated society—close personal relationships, tightly knit communities, local capital investment, and so on—are quickly eroded.”
In other words, your less likely to exploit someone you know.
It’s in this context that I recently read Alpine Experience’s dead-tree newsletter that arrived old school in the mailbox. Alpine Experience is a local independent retailer that specializes in high quality outdoor gear of all sorts. If their website wasn’t so poorly designed I’d link to it. Here’s their slightly less bad Facebook page. I used to have an Alpine Experience t-shirt that said, “Friends don’t let friends shop at chain stores.” I shop at AE once a year when they have their annual sale. When their prices are marked down 30-40%, they almost seem normal.
I like their irreverent, personal newsletter, but I’m sure it’s probably more expensive to produce than they can afford. Inside this issue was an honest, interesting reflection on Olympia’s newish REI store’s impact on AE’s bottom line. The author, I think the store’s owner/manager, said the new REI is definitely impacting their bottom line. Admitted they’ve fallen behind projections and need to have a good winter. I really hope I’m wrong, but given REI’s economies of scale and vastly superior on-line presence, I anticipate AE going out of business.
REI is a large national chain, but its progressive business practices give it a positive, medium-sized, community-based essence. Like AE, it’s a groovy store. It has been voted one of the Top 100 businesses to work for the last 14 years in a row. Read more about its enlightened business practices here.
Recently I was cycling with an acquaintance, an independent architect who has fallen on hard times. He’s taken a job at REI to get by, working as a cashier 16 hours a week. We were discussing the AE-REI tug-of-war. He told me he needed glove liners shortly before getting the job and they were $20 bucks at AE and $7 at REI. Probably an exaggeration, but I suspect comparable products are often 30-50% more at AE. That would be a huge headwind to building a reliable customer base even in a good economy.
Back to Whybrow. REI is not a megacorporation that fosters greed, nor does it distort and suppress the dynamic market exchange and social intimacy that are essential to fair dealing. But it’s not as small nor as local as AE and it doesn’t share it’s long history.
What to make of this capitalist case study?
During Sunday night’s Skype session with Nineteen I learned she’d been on a nice walk with KN, the uber-nice mother of one of her best friends, who was visiting Midwest leafy liberal arts college for Parents’ Weekend. On that walk KN revealed that she has read three books that I’ve recommended. Cool dat. Note to self: Make a batch of “I read PressingPause.com” t-shirts to give to subscribers and loyal readers. No doubt a future status symbol*.
I have another book recommendation for KN. I don’t read books consistently enough, as a result I don’t get through all that many, as a result, I choose what I read carefully. I don’t know if I’ve ever chosen as well as in 2011. The ten month long hot streak continues with A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine (2009). So good I read it twice, the second time taking nine pages of notes since I plan on using it in a future writing seminar.
Irvine says the public’s preconceived notions about Stoicism are wrong. Stoics were fully engaged in life and worked to make the world a better place. The goal of the Stoics was not to banish emotion from life but to banish negative emotions like anger, anxiety, grief, and envy. Musonius Rufus (Is there a better jazz/funk name?) said that “a cheerful disposition and secure joy” will automatically follow those who live in accordance with Stoic principles. Would be Stoics, Irvine writes, will take to heart the Stoic claim that many of the things we desire—most notably, fame and fortune—are not worth pursuing. Instead they will turn their attention to the pursuit of tranquility and virtue.
The word “tranquility” is hardly ever used in conversation today, probably because few of us experience much of it, but it’s the central concept of the book. Irvine says “Tranquility is a state marked by the absence of negative emotions such as grief, anxiety, and fear, and the presence of positive emotions—in particular joy.” On a scale of one to ten, what’s your tranquility quotient?
The bulk of the book is about how to practice Stoicism. Irvine does a great job of adapting the Ancient Roman philosophy to modern times. He acknowledges that people should choose a philosophy of life that fits their personality and that Stoicism won’t be for everyone. He points out that in some significant ways Stoicism and Christianity overlap; consequently, they can be complementary.
For Irvine the greatest problem is that few people have any coherent philosophy of life. As a result, they succumb to mindless consumerism; consequently, at the end of the road they often regret that they’ve squandered their time. What is your philosophy of life? To what degree does it shape your day-to-day actions?
The body of the book is a description of five Stoic psychological techniques and Stoic advice on ten topics such as dealing with other people, anger, old age, and dying. Probably best read with a significant other or a small group of friends who you can discuss it with.
* Any graphic artists out there interested in creating a PressingPause logo? If so, please email me (see the “contact” tab at upper right).
My Atul Gwande bro-mance or man-crush continues to build steam. He begins his most recent New Yorker essay explaining he’s been a surgeon for eight years and. . . for the past couple of them, my performance in the operating room has reached a plateau. I’d like to think it’s a good thing—I’ve arrived at my professional peak. But mainly it seems as if I’ve just stopped getting better.
He points out that top athletes and singers have coaches and asks whether you should too. He asks the question in the context of his own story of contacting his mentor from med school, a well-known highly respected doc, to see if he’d be willing to observe him in surgery and offer suggestions. I recommend the whole essay, but long story short, Gwande breaks through his plateau as a result of his mentor’s objective, insightful, detailed feedback.
Mid-point in the essay, Gwande explains how teacher-to-teacher coaching is one of the most promising reforms being implemented in some school districts.
He also acknowledges that many of his fellow docs and many teachers probably aren’t quite secure enough to open themselves up to pointed constructive criticism.
But he fails to mention another at least equally significant hurdle, sufficient money to compensate experts for their coaching time. School districts have to release coaches from their own classrooms meaning substitutes have to be paid for or everyone has to teach larger classes. And I can’t believe he expects teachers, lawyers, dentists, and other professionals making far less than professional athletes or elite singers to pay for coaching out-of-pocket. It’s unclear how financially strapped school districts and hospitals are supposed to add in coaching costs.
If only I had a magical “financial resource” wand. Now that I’m in better touch with my stubborn, self-defeating self-sufficiency, I see areas in my life where I could benefit from coaching.
In late August the personal trainers in mom’s swanky FL health club were doing some intriguing exercises with their clients. Made me want to toss medicine balls and run around with giant rubberbands around my ankles. And I’m sure I could benefit from swimming, running, cycling, triathlon coaching. Listening/marital bliss coaching. Cooking/nutrition coaching. Gardening coaching. Bicycle maintenance coaching. Golf coaching. Social media coaching. Parenting coaching. Writing coaching.
You get the drift.
A conservative Republican friend who I refer to affectionately as a “right wing nutter” is increasingly becoming a conservative Independent. He rails about many of the same things the OWSers (Occupy Wall Streeters) do including the negative influence of lobbyists and the unfair advantage gigantic corporations have over small businesses. Even though his fixes would no doubt differ from theirs, the Nutter and the OWSers diagnosis of our economic problems would overlap a lot.
Add into the mix, a “talking to” he gave his teenage son recently. Synopsis—being a man entails living passionately and standing up for and fighting for things that are important to you.
Connecting those dots, I asked him what he thought of the Wall Street protests.
Knee-jerk derision.
Why? My guess is anti-hippie bias. Can’t get past some of the protesters’ “out there” outward appearance and “in your face” style which he probably associates with liberal symbols from the counter culture movement in the 1960’s. Can’t quite get to the content of their character.
Many jump to negative conclusions about others based upon superficial things like clothing, tatts, piercings, hair coloring, mohawks, purple Converse hightops.
Young 1950’s and 1960’s Civil Rights activists were shrewd to wear their “Sunday best”. Maybe 2011 Occupy Wall Street activists don’t want the support of independents like my friend enough to change their individual, idiosyncratic personal style.
Here’s a 6+ minute film that provides an on-the-ground feel of things. And some stills.
Look pretty Main Street to me
Percussion and face painting, oh my!
Shouldn't there be a law about the mixing of tye-dye, bandanas, and the flag?
For the love of God, they're sleeping under tarps.
From the September 29th, 2011 Wall Street Journal:
Reebok International Ltd., a unit of Adidas AG, agreed to pay $25 million in customer refunds to settle charges of false advertising brought by the FTC over the shoemaker’s claim that its “toning shoes” could work better than normal footwear to whip muscles into shape.
Its TV commercials featured women with shapely legs prancing around in the shoes while doing everyday activities such as walking, vacuuming, browsing a bookshelf and cooking.
Such shoes were one of the footwear industry’s smash hits, generating more than $1 billion in revenue last year though sales have slowed this year.
“The FTC wants national advertisers to understand that they must exercise some responsibility and ensure that their claims for fitness gear are supported by sound science,” said David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection.
Sound science?! Does that mean Rick Perry can’t lace up his toners and run for the Republican presidential nomination?
Amazingly, the FTC didn’t find proof for Reebok’s claims.
Mary Lee Wagner of Fairfax, Va., bought into the craze four years ago, paying $230 for a pair of sneakers. The 58-year-old wore the shoes religiously for six months with hopes of shaping up her thighs. “There was no difference whatsoever,” she says.
She decided to give toning shoes another try after they went mainstream, reasoning that bigger companies had figured out a way to develop a more effective shoe. Two years ago, she bought a pair of Skechers Shape-ups for $75. After three months of use, she switched back to her $35 Ryka walking shoes.
And dig this. Different article, same paper, same day. Can’t make this stuff up:
Scented products, including crystals you sprinkle on your food and products you inhale before eating, can trigger your body to think it’s full, aiding weight loss, say companies who sell the products. Nutritionists and doctors who specialize in weight loss say the research conducted so far isn’t convincing.
Another method is crystals you sprinkle on your food before eating. A six-month “starter kit” of Sensa crystals, from Intelligent Beauty LLC, of El Segundo, Calif., costs $289. The kit includes a new set of two types of crystals—one for sweet and one for other food—each month. On its website, Intelligent Beauty says the crystals, which it calls tastants, are designed to “trigger your ‘I feel full’ signal.”
The idea that scent can help you lose weight is “intriguing,” says Louis J. Aronne director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. But the research done so far is “not adequate” to show the currently marketed products work, he says.
Better name would be Louis J. Killjoy.
Intelligent Beauty says participants lost an average 30.5 pounds over six months in a 1,436-person study conducted by Alan Hirsch, a scientist it describes as the “founder” of its weight-loss system. However, Intelligent Beauty—which puts Dr. Hirsch’s photo on its Sensa packages—declined to answer questions about the study or whether Dr. Hirsch is on staff at the company, whether he has an ownership stake or whether he receives financial compensation from sale of the product. Intelligent Beauty initially set up a phone interview with Dr. Hirsch and then cancelled it, citing an “urgent matter.” Dr. Hirsch, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
James O. Hill, co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry, a database of more than 6,000 people who have lost an average of 70 pounds and kept it off for six years, says there is no quick fix for people who successfully lose weight.
No. Quick. Fix. Damn you, James O. Hill.
Registrants exercise a lot and are “conscious of every morsel they put in their mouths,” says Dr. Hill, who is executive director of the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado in Denver.
That doesn’t sound like much fun.
Jeff Pearlman’s book, Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton, was released yesterday. Payton played professional football for da’ Bears from 1975-1987. The Walter Payton Man of the Year award is given annually by the NFL honoring a player’s volunteer and charity work, as well as his excellence on the field. Prior to 1999, it was called simply the NFL Man of the Year Award. Shortly after Payton died from cancer in 1999 the award was renamed to honor his legacy as both a great player and a humanitarian.
A humanitarian who, according to Pearlman, was in a long-standing close relationship with another woman besides his wife (who insisted not only on attending his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, but sitting in the front row), was addicted to pain pills, and seriously contemplated suicide. Apparently Pearlman spends twenty to thirty of the four hundred pages on the unseemly underside of Payton’s private life.
Payton’s coach, Mike Ditka, is leading a backlash against Pearlman’s book. “I’d spit on him,” he said recently. “I have no respect for him.”
In which case I have no respect for Ditka who needs a primer on the first amendment.
Dan Patrick, my favorite sports media person, recently discussed the controversy engendered by the book. His question was, “Do you the fan want to know the truth about the athletes you follow?” Patrick said he did. Others on his show said they did not. Patrick went on to say the fans don’t realize athletes are human beings. Ordinary human beings, a mix of good and bad, like all of us.
Wouldn’t it be nice if they were more like us. If we limit the discussion to professional basketball and football players (versus professional marathoners, swimmers, or amateur athletes for instance) from the last decade or two, there’s ample legal evidence that their behavior, on average, is far worse than the ordinary human beings that pay to watch them play.
Why? Some possibilities:
1) If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the same is probably true for money. I suspect, especially in cases where someone grows up without any, mad money blows those teetering on the fence of adhering to society’s norms off onto the “laws don’t apply to me” side.
2) Public adulation is another wind blowing those teetering on the fence of society’s norms off onto the “laws don’t apply to me” side. The star professional athlete’s classic line when pulled over, “Don’t you know who I am?”
3) In the case of football at least, the more violent the player is on the field, the more successful. Maybe it’s hard, when the stadium and television lights are turned off, to throw the non-violent switch.
4A) Some athletes blow through their money while playing short careers, don’t have enough of an education to fall back on after retiring, and turn to the “informal” economy to get by. See Lenny Dykstra. 4B) Some suffer from public adulation withdrawal. The Dennis Rodman effect. They’re committed to staying in the public’s conscience even if they have to repeatedly get arrested to do so.
5) Sociology. You are the company you keep. Middle school students aren’t the only ones susceptible to negative peer pressure. Locker rooms no doubt have tipping points.
Of all people, Ditka should know that every athlete is a one-person public relations firm. There are lots of faithful, law-abiding professional athletes making worthwhile contributions to society off the field. Just not as large a percentage of the readers of this blog.
The North Korean dictatorship now sees tourists on cruises as the best way to generate some foreign currency with which they can keep buying western luxury goods for themselves. Fifty-four pictures here.
Do the mostly Chinese tourists have no conscience? Don’t they realize they’re propping up the most heinous dictatorship in the world?
Easy to rip them I suppose, harder to reflect on the ways our travels sometimes negatively impact the people and cultures we visit.
When teaching and living in Ethiopia, I took what I thought at the time was an excellent picture that captured the harsh reality of poverty in the developing world. It was of two young girls who had hiked up to the top of the hills north of the capital city, Addis Ababa, with a huge thicket of wood branches on their tiny arched backs. Technically it was National Geo-like, and even more impressive after the excellent matting and framing job. After having it hanging in our home for quite a few years, the haunting, absent look on the girls’ faces started to trouble me. Despite being someone who values my privacy, I hadn’t asked for their permission. I raised my camera with my fancy zoom lens, pointed it right at them, and snapped.
There was no reciprocity in our interaction, no balance. I’ve since taken it down and use it as a discussion starter when teaching about cultural globalization.
I have other similarly unflattering travel stories. We don’t like to think about, let alone tell those stories though, opting instead for innocuous ones as if our travels are apolitical.
Our travel negatively impacts the physical environment; our physical presence inevitably changes the cultural environment; and our loding, dining, and recreational decision making tends to create distant economic winners and local losers.
To mitigate our negative impact, maybe we should travel less often, over shorter distances. And when we do travel far afield, we should strive to do so as global citizens, not amoral global tourists like the damn Chinese on the North Korean cruises.
Pressing Pause 
