And so it goes...

"I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue. You were saying something about best intentions." - Jules Winnfield

I stopped blogging back in October with the very best of intentions: to free myself of the pressure to produce that had crept in during the previous year of writing online, and to resume with a more creative direction.

Then, as should have been expected, life intervened.

So here we are, at the dawn of a new year: a good time to refocus and move forward. The creative theme will remain unarticulated for now, though I've provided a bit of a hint in the cartoon above. I'm interested to see if readers can figure it out on their own, or if it's simply too tangential and obscure for healthy folk. We'll see where this goes.

I wish you a happy new year.

Only connect...

February 7, 2009:  Updates are coming.  Seriously.

Blog Gone Bad

Today marks the end of Sed Digressio's first year. It was on October 15, 2007 that I moved some randomly assembled photos, paintings and poems first posted on truslow.org to this platform, and it's been an interesting experiment: to create a virtual home for myself, a place I could visit when I was traveling that would help me feel grounded.

I've decided to take a break, and resume blogging in November with a new direction. I'm not entirely sure what that is, yet, but I'm working on it.

You might be interested to know that over the last year, 2,300 visitors came to this blog 4,200 times, viewing 10,300 pages. The most popular content (in order) has been: Michael Sowa, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Wassily Kandinski, the photos, Hope, Edward Hopper and Edvard Munch. The interest in Michael Sowa has been especially keen: Almost 10% of all Sed Digressio traffic originates in Germany.

It's time to do something different. I hope you'll come back and see what transpires in November.

The Chief Digressor

P.S. During the hiatus, I'll still be updating Merrie Frances pictures on http://www.truslow.org/.

No kidding.

Almost a year ago, I posted what I still consider to be one of the oddest duets in musical history.  Take a moment to welcome a new addition to that list:  Norah Jones and Keith Richards, the rock and roll icon now known primarily for snorting the ashes of his father.

Over the line, Smokey!

Good comedy depends on an awareness of the audience's limits, the discipline to stay within them, and the wisdom to know when they can be trampled. It strikes me as a delicate social undertaking: the performer risks his relationship with the audience as he navigates between what little will succeed and the mass of what will fail.

On any given day, this blog endeavors to rise slightly above the gutter, usually to reproduce art, philosophy and music that transcends normal life. But today - perhaps inspired by my ignorance of the audience and my fundamental suspicion of lines - I push the boundaries by offering three of my favorite, all-time limit-testers.

These are not for children, and while there is nothing offensive about the video content, you wouldn't want your co-workers to hear the sound. Consider yourself warned.

The opening scene of the film "Chasing Amy".

From the television show, "Kids in the Hall".

Finally, I direct you to this link of Steve Martin performing a classic portion of his stand-up routine.

Sizzlin'

This morning, I ran my second 10k of the year (and, to be honest, ever): The Buckhead Sizzler - so named because the course is relatively flat and runners expect good finishing times. My Peachtree Road Race time on July 4th was shamefully near the 75 minute mark, and today my goal was 55 minutes.

I'm happy to report that I finished the Sizzler in 54:33 (an average of about 8:47 per mile). If the same rules apply to next year's Peachtree as this year's, today's results should qualify me for a "time group placement", meaning that I won't start in the back of the pack. My next goal is to run a 10k in 50 minutes, so maybe I'll speed up even more between now and next July.

I have posted my personal GPS track here. My GPS seems to think that I went a shade further than the official length of 6.21 miles, and so does GoogleMaps, and so does my car's odometer. At least the race organizers and I agree on my finishing time, which is all that matters. I can only tell you that it felt like a million miles, and it took everything out of me. Readers who are marathon runners continue to have my utmost respect (though increasingly I question your motives and sanity).

My Oscar Moment: I'd like to thank my parents (immortalized here in this must-see portrait), who came out and cheered me on, and my wife, who not only was the most enthusiastic fan on the course - baby in tow - but has made all my athletic growth possible over the last five months.

Jet Man

As regular readers are aware, I am not entirely a fan of man's technological quest to overcome nature. However, I would be willing to reconsider this philosophical view if somebody would give me a jet pack.  I have no statistics on this fact, but I suppose that every boy has had this dream.

In this morning's news, I see that Yves Rossy (here is the "Jet Man" website) will attempt to fly across the English Channel later today.

Yar!

In celebration of today - International Talk Like A Pirate Day - I offer this bit of wisdom: a family that plunders together, stays together.

Moose

As the weather turns cooler, I always think of Autumn in Montana, and the critters found there. Photo taken by Steve Wall.

Lingering beauty.

With only three previous posts this month, one might suppose that I have been on the road. Sadly untrue. August ushered in a surprising change in my employment situation (I'm now both here and here), requiring yet another fundamental modification in my life "plan" (ha).  Still, while one can take the boy out of traveling, one can't take traveling out of the boy: so on this final day of August, I write (as I did here, and here) to share some ideas regarding beauty from The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton.  

de Botton writes that "a dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this, and it mattered to me'".  To explain this more fully, he focuses on the philosophy of John Ruskin.

Ruskin believed that "there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. The most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so."

de Botton explains, "If drawing had value even when practiced by those with no talent, it was, Ruskin believed, because it could teach us to see - that is, to notice rather than merely look. In the process of re-creating with our own hands what lies before our eyes, we seem naturally to evolve from observing beauty in a loose way to possessing a deep understanding of its constituent parts and hence more secure memories of it."

Can you imagine lingering in a place for 20 minutes to draw a scene that has captivated your attention, rather than pausing for 5 seconds behind your camera and moving on? What about coming home from a trip with a book of sketches, rather than a disk of images? Which one is more inclined to help us truly possess that which we experience when we travel?  Ruskin too "began to note the devilish problem that photography created for the majority of its practitioners.  Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it."

I gave up photography for over a decade, returning to it half-heartedly only three years ago, for similar reasons.  I found that with my camera in hand, I became preoccupied with the question, "does this make a good picture?" rather than, "how does this place, this scene, this moment, impact me?"  Even though I am happy to have our new camera, I still fear that photography is giving me a false sense of permanence, an excuse for not living in the present moment: "With this photo, I can always come back and re-live this again some day." Not true.

Besides, can you imagine trying to draw the Bavarian chaos above? Okay, bad example...

Words Matter ("Liberal")

Back on April 6, I digressed briefly on my frustration with the emptiness of contemporary political language, specifically: words that have substantive meaning have come to mean so little. In that post, I went on to provide a robust definition of "conservative." As I try to make sense of all I've seen and read this week, I feel compelled to contrast "conservative" with a definition of "liberal" (with a nod toward Lincoln's answer to his own question, "What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?").

As I did with "conservative", I take this definition from Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot.

In general "a liberal" (or "a radical", as they often have been and often are still known) believes in

1. "The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism. Radicals believe that education, positive legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity toward violence and sin.
   
2. Contempt for tradition. Reason, impulse, and materialistic determinism are severally preferred as guides to social welfare, trustier than the wisdom of our ancestors. Formal religion is rejected and various ideologies are presented as substitutes.
   
3. Political leveling. Order and privilege are condemned; total democracy, as direct as practicable, is the professed radical ideal. Allied with this spirit, generally, is a dislike of old parliamentary arrangements and an eagerness for centralization and consolidation.
   
4. Economic leveling. The ancient rights of property, especially property in land, are suspect to almost all radicals; and collectivistic reformers hack at the institution of private property root and branch.
   

The radical, when all is said and done, is a neoterist, in love with change."

Portrait above is "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" (1753), by Maurice-Quentin La Tour.

Inside.

Inside of each of us is a thing of beauty - perhaps beauty itself - a glowing thing of life that wants to get out.

It is trapped under mud and rock and hurt and fear and sin and memory and habit and it cries and yells to get out - except on the empty days when it doesn't.

Inside some of us is a bridge, or a painting, or a poem.

Inside me is my life,
my own beauty,
my song to God,
my connection,
my peace.

Why couldn't I have a bridge?

- anonymous

Photo of Mathematical Bridge (Cambridge) by this artist.

And on, and on...

I have been tracking the progress of Roz Savage, who I learned about on Will's blog. Observing her cross the Pacific has given me a lot to ponder about my own limitations, capacity for dedication, and drive for achievement. I have long considered one of my life's goals to be a bike trip across America, but with my life transitioning as it has over the last two years, I'm thinking that for now I should settle for goals I can accomplish closer to home. Still, keeping my long-term, but relatively minor bike-ride objective in mind as I watch Roz is good perspective.

Over the last week, I've done some reading on people like this, folks who do extraordinary physical feats because they want to, or feel that they simply must. For example, this article in Wired has started me thinking about my own running primarily as a mental challenge (a belief my brother has long held). Let me also share this link to Karl Meltzer's website, where we can watch Karl try to run the entire length of the Appalachian Trail faster than the current record holder (yes, people keep up with this sort of thing). He started this morning and seems to be moving along. Because.

Release the hounds!!!

Gareth Armstrong, as Shylock

“The mere receipt of an order backed by force seems, if anything, to give rise to the duty of resisting, rather than obeying.” – H. A. Prichard

Canine "leash laws" are a matter of controversy, even among friends. It turns out that they also can be the foundation of bad relationships between neighbors. Living on my street is a man - we'll call him Shylock - who persistently and obnoxiously believes in the letter of the law, and thus objects to the practice of off-leash dog walking, no matter the total isolation, late hour, harmlessness of hypothetical dog, nor other circumstance. Conversely, others on my block believe merely in the spirit of such laws: dog owners must be in complete control of their dogs, and are absolutely responsible for their behavior. After all, if a dog bites, do you care if she's on a leash? I have heard that Shylock's zealous support for the letter of the law has resulted in calls to "the police", though not surprisingly, I have yet to see a Fulton County Animal Control officer on my street... ever.

I make my living by promoting ethical behavior in organizations, a neighborhood being but one example. Not taking into account Shylock's arrogant and bullying style, the ongoing conflict troubles me deeply from a moral point of view: Is a violation of the leash law also a moral wrong? Do we have moral obligations to obey every law, no matter how silly we think one might be?

Laws are statements of minimal social norms. Societies create laws to describe behavior that is either required or unacceptable. Given this absolute quality, one hopes that all laws - which are coercive by nature - are grounded in some sense of shared morality, but the inescapable truth is that The Law is morally fallible, and specific laws are corrected or even repealed using this very rationale. The reality is that some laws unjustly restrict a citizen's liberties or infringe on personal rights and obligations without a compelling moral argument for doing so. These immoral laws should be resisted on principle. Do "leash laws" fall into this category?

I believe that some do. Many leash laws in Georgia do not go so far as to require an actual leash, specifying only that the dog must respond to voice commands and be "at heal" in the presence of others. This makes sense to me, because those laws articulate a reasonable expectation of responsibility and control, but do not dictate the type of control. However, the overly sensitive Fulton County statue to which this neighborhood is subject requires a six foot fixed length lead. Why? Why six (why not seven)? Why fixed? Who can say? From a practical perspective, these leash laws are motivated by the bad behavior of dogs that have not been trained properly by their owners. All the dogs I know at the center of this conflict are small, harmless, non-agressive, and well-trained. If the specific dog is small, harmless, non-aggressive, and well-trained, then what, exactly, is the law trying to achieve in this case?

The Fulton County leash law (and Shylock) is attempting to force dog owners to perform in an arbitrary way that may or may not have any relevance in a given situation, and as such is an inappropriate government infringement upon individual personal liberty. The law actually prevents the dog owner from taking personal (voluntary) responsibility for his own (or his dog's) actions. Much like helmet laws, leash laws start from the presumption that citizens are dumb, insensitive to context, and in need of parenting. So, Fulton County would like to be my daddy, but can I say no?

I encourage all responsible dog owners who have harmless, non-agressive, well-trained dogs that respond immediately to voice commands to resist overly aggressive leash laws by practicing civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is a violation of the law without any loss of respect for law and the other basic political institutions generally acknowledged to be fair and just. Speaking most generally, civil disobedience is that act which knowingly violates a law, committed in deference to a higher order (like natural rights), or in support of a cause greater than the actor himself (like liberty) and the law itself. Under John Rawls’ strict interpretation, civil disobedience is a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law, usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.

Civil disobedience is a form of political statement, an invitation for others to join in a just cause. Civil disobedience is deliberate lawlessness, and can be classified as either direct (by breaking the very law that is objectionable) or indirect (by breaking laws which are not objectionable, but which call attention to the wrong). Lastly, acts of civil disobedience must be conscientious, which generally means that one acts out of an honest and sincere conviction that what one is doing is the uniquely correct thing to do, no matter what the personal cost. This stipulation rules out the motives of private or personal gain, or malevolent emotion as primary factors. The actor’s willingness to suffer inconvenience, expense, threats, real danger and punishment helps to demonstrate that his purpose is to protest a greater social injustice or wrong and not to achieve some immediate gain for himself.

So, if you are a responsible dog owner, act on principle and release the hounds!!

The false self.

In a previous post, I quoted a well-known passage in Henri J. M. Nouwen's book, The Way of the Heart, a work I had not read. I'm reading it now, and finding it very thoughtful. Here is a more lengthy excerpt:

"The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions.  'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated, or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a business man, or a minister, what maters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends.

These very compulsions are at the basis of the two main enemies of the spiritual life: anger and greed. They are the inner side of a secular life, the sour fruits of our worldly dependencies. What else is anger than the impulsive response to the experience of being deprived? When my sense of self depends on what others say of me, anger is a quite natural reaction to a critical world. And when my sense of self depends on what I can acquire, greed flares up when my desires are frustrated. Thus greed and anger are brother and sister of a false self fabricated by the social compulsions of an unredeemed world."

The image above is "Versace Veiled Dress, El Mirage" (1990), by Herb Ritts (the artist who took perhaps my favorite image of all time).

Flight of fancy.

I have fallen for the first season of the HBO production, "Flight of the Conchords". It is one of the rare television programs that is consistently funny, creative and yet somehow oddly relevant. The show is part absurdist / deadpan comedy, part musical theater. It's also a shade risque and a little edgy.

Above is the probably-not-safe-for-work song, "A kiss is not a contract". Here are other random (neither boss nor child-friendly) video clips of their music: a) Business time, b) Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, c) If you're into it, d) She's so hot, e) Mutha Uckers, and, f) Sugarlumps. Each makes me laugh out loud.

More standing.

"New York City Skyline" (1940), by Leon Dolice

Another interesting passage from the book I'm reading, "I'll Take my Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition":

"Religion can hardly expect to flourish in an industrial society. Religion is our submission to the general intention of a nature that is fairly inscrutable; it is the sense of our role as creatures within it. But nature industrialized, transformed into cities and artificial habitations manufactured into commodities, is no longer nature but a highly simplified picture of nature. We receive the illusion of having power over nature, and lose the sense of nature as something mysterious and contingent.

Nor do the arts have a proper life under industrialism, with the general decay of sensibility which attends it. Art depends, in general, like religion, on a right attitude to nature and in particular on a free and disinterested observation of nature that occurs only in leisure. Neither the creation nor the understanding of works of art is possible in an industrial age except by some local and unlikely suspension of the industrial drive.

The amenities of life also suffer under the curse of a strictly-business or industrial civilization. They consist in such practices as manners, conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, romantic love - in the social exchanges which reveal and develop sensibility in human affairs. If religion and the arts are founded on right relations of man-to-nature, these are founded on right relations of man-to-man."

Jabberwocky

"Farm Road" (1979), by Andrew Wyeth

Below is the favorite poem of many: "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872.  I know people who talk like this.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Aw yeah...

Get More: MTV2 Legit, Full Episodes

Frankly, I don't know why this is so funny to me, but it is, and it has been for many years now. Awwww yeahh....

City Life

"Room in Brooklyn" (1932), by Edward Hopper

In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton describes the city dweller's need to travel in the countryside by referencing the poems of William Wordsworth, who

"... proposed that nature - which he took to comprise, among other elements, birds, streams, daffodils and sheep - was an indispensable corrective to the psychological damage inflicted by life in the city.

The poet accused cities of fostering a family of life-destroying emotions: anxiety about our position in the social hierarchy, envy at the success of others, pride and a desire to shine in the eyes of strangers.  City dwellers had no perspective, he alleged, they were in thrall to what was spoken of in the street or at the dinner table.  However well provided for, they had a relentless desire for new things, which they did not genuinely lack and on which their happiness did not depend.  And in this crowded, anxious sphere, it seemed harder than it did on an isolated homestead to begin sincere relationships with others."

An excerpt from Wordsworth's "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey":

[Nature] can so inform 

The mind that is within us, so impress 

With quietness and beauty, and so feed 

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 

The dreary intercourse of daily life, 

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 

Our chearful faith that all which we behold 

Is full of blessings.

Anger

"Seneca on Anger" by Alain de Botton

Over the last several years, I have felt in myself and in many of my close friends a growing store of anger, regret, resentment, and disillusionment. Perhaps this is merely what They call "middle age", or "the onset of reality", but it's grim stuff, and it has many of my contemporaries well within its grasp. And not just a few.  A satisfying explanation for why these emotions are so pervasive among the smart, peaceful and prosperous currently eludes me (even after watching the video), but there it is.

This transition is associated with a growing sadness about the world, an acceptance of the inevitability of cruelty and disappointment, a questioning about the natural order and purpose, and a loss of both optimism and hope. It is clearly linked to a weakening of spiritual faith - any belief that God "cares".

Last week, I was (sorta) joking with a friend that recently I have embraced pessimism as a time-saving device, and today I come across the video above suggesting that it could be more: a successful coping mechanism. To reduce anger, Seneca suggests that we manage (adjust downwardly) our expectations about life. While this makes sense at some level, it is an approach decidedly lacking in all those natural, joyful inclinations that make life worth living, and borders on hopelessness itself. Though perhaps it proves that cynics are optimists run down by reality.

My grandmother used to tell me that happiness (and optimism) is a choice, and this was a choice that she had to make every day.  In contrast, Seneca starts from the Buddhist position that to be happy is to suffer less, and to suffer less we must suffer in advance, to prevent disillusionment when the inevitable occurs.  Frankly, I suspect that my grandmother was far happier than Seneca must have been.

Still, it's an intelligent, interesting video. It is part of a series by Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel, and The Consolations of Philosophy, from which these videos are derived.

UPDATE: The timing of William Kristol's uplifting piece in Monday's New York Times about Tony Snow and the nature of optimism couldn't be better. Thanks to Captain / Doctor / Professor / Momma Betsy Holmes for the heads-up.

Stink Gorilla More

The essay found here is a collection of thought-provoking ideas surrounding the nature of art, humanity, expression, morality and abstraction.  It reminds me of a story on Will's blog about a man who associates mathematical concepts like Pi with colors, lights, and feelings, and it makes me wonder if our whole notion of "abstraction" and "concept" are too restrictive.  Perhaps the categories of "real", "think" and "feel" are far more fluid than we imagine them to be.

The top image to the left is "Stink Gorilla More" (1983), and below is "Anger" (1984), both by Michael.

Da Da Da.

There is something extraordinarily decadent about this minimalist 80s classic from the one-hit-wonders known as "Trio". Who would have thunk that a song comprising nonsensical German and repetitious babble would be co-opted by the likes of Volkswagen, Pepsi, and even Microsoft?

The Peachtree

Mark and John Truslow, photo by Patti Truslow

Today I ran The Peachtree Road Race, a 39 year old tradition integral to Atlanta's celebration of Independence Day. The Peachtree is a 10k for which I started training at the beginning of April primarily in an attempt to lose some weight (20 pounds so far, more to go) and also to participate in something I'm often too lazy even to watch.

I can not boast about my results, beyond saying that I ran the whole way. That in itself is quite an achievement for me, as I could not run at all in April and could not run much more than three miles at the end of May. Somehow, I made it.

Actually, I made it with the positive encouragement of my brother. I knew that I wanted to lose the weight, and he not only gave me the athletic goal, but the constant support that I needed to get it done. Thank you, Mark.

Prince Albert

A reader of this blog commented that several posts (like this and this) addressing technology seemed influenced by Dr. Albert Borgmann, Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana. As Dr. Borgmann was my professor in 1999, it occurs to me that in the interest of citing my sources, a word could be said about this remarkable thinker.

Like most of the scholars in Missoula, Dr. Borgmann could have taught at the world's best institutions, but selected "The U" for social or environmental reasons (Dr. Borgmann is an exceptional skier).

He is all at once brilliant, focused, humane, exceptionally clear and (though few students ever witness it) funny, compassionate and merciful. He gives every indication of loving his pupils, even when he's scaring them out of their German-fearing-minds.

He is known around the globe for several of his books. Perhaps the best known is "Crossing the Postmodern Divide", but in this area of technology and philosophy that I also find so interesting, he made his name with "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life" back in 1984 (in recent years, he has gotten a lot of press for "Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology").

Reading one of his books is not a simple undertaking, but insightful, rewarding, and inspiring in many ways. To get a feel for his style, I suggest this article, or - if you have headphones (the quality is not so good) - this audio interview.

Everybody cares about my opinion.

"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

Image and quote from The Big Lebowski (1998).

Okay, so not everybody cares about my opinion. However, when I go into restaurants and am accosted by researchers, or browse the internet and am swamped by survey requests, or when I read any newspaper and am encouraged to "talk back" to the author, or when I'm stuck behind a truck that wants me to "tell us how we're doing", you can forgive me for feeling that humble, thoughtful people are begging for my wise counsel and that very soon, the universe around us will change for the better thanks in no small part to a thorough airing of my views. After all, we're told endlessly, "your opinion matters".

I'm weary of this growing obsession with surveys, polls, and feedback. Not surprisingly, it appears to result primarily in banal uniformity and a shameless pandering to people with little imagination. While "my opinion" may matter to the people who are hired to farm it, it's simultaneously obvious that "I" do not. If I mattered in this process, here are a few things that would be different:

• The study would follow a recognized standard and methodology. Most surveys and intake methods appear to have been formulated by Marxist dictators after a full day of drinking. ("Which of the following three adjectives best describes your boss?  Brilliant, outstanding, or wonderful.")  Please don't waste my time with poor surveys.
  
• I would be given an assurance that my name and personal information (like my address) will never be associated with the data I provide.
  
• I would be given the opportunity to comment on related topics into which the study did not inquire. If you really want my opinion, make sure that I can give it to you.
  
• I would be given the results of the study, and not merely my personal data and the summary data, but the researcher's statement of interpretation, too.
  
• At some point in the future, I would be told how the data I provided changed something. This guideline is to prevent what is increasingly commonplace: the organization that sets out to give every indication that they listen to all viewpoints (but don't) and are responsive to their customers or employees (but aren't). Show me how my input was used, or why it was ignored. Otherwise, don't ask.
  

(Political opinion polls are political instruments best seen as weapons, and are not to be confused with other types of research. For this reason, I simply refuse to take them.  I vote.)

We all have a right to our personal views. The current trend toward polls, surveys and feedback seems to downplay the fact that some opinions are not based in reality, are held by individuals who are unreflective and uninformed, or perhaps are even misrepresented for some other reason.  What I dislike is knowing that my world is being shaped by just these opinions.  It's a trend that will one day fade. I hope.

The Solstice

"Tyrrhenian Sea and Solstice Sky" (2005), by Danilo Pivato

Click on image for larger version.

As a person who appreciates the power of sunshine I celebrate the Summer Solstice for exactly the same reasons I avoid all thought of the Winter Solstice.  Yes, the days get shorter from here on out, but for today, we can be happy.

To The Sun-Dial, by John Quincy Adams

To The Sun-Dial

Thou silent herald of Time's silent flight! 

Say, could'st thou speak, what warning voice were thine? 

Shade, who canst only show how others shine! 

Dark, sullen witness of resplendent light 

In day's broad glare, and when the noontide bright 

Of laughing fortune sheds the ray divine, 

Thy ready favors cheer us--but decline 

The clouds of morning and the gloom of night. 

Yet are thy counsels faithful, just, and wise; 

They bid us seize the moments as they pass-- 

Snatch the retrieveless sunbeam as it flies, 

Nor lose one sand of life's revolving glass-- 

Aspiring still, with energy sublime, 

By virtuous deeds to give eternity to Time. 

Work and technology

"Noon, or The Siesta, after Millet" (1890), Vincent van Gogh

One of the several books on my bedside table is, "I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition", by Twelve Southerners. It's a wonderful collection of essays contrasting The South's (historically) agrarian culture with The North's industrialism. I came across the passage below and it made me think again of the threat to human nature posed by the technological imperative.

"The contribution that science can make to a labor is to render it easier by the help of a tool or a process, and to assure the laborer of his perfect economic security while he is engaged upon it. Then it can be performed with leisure and enjoyment. But the modern laborer has not exactly received this benefit under the industrial regime. His labor is hard, its tempo fierce, and his employment is insecure. The first principle of a good labor is that it must be effective, but the second principle is that it must be enjoyed. Labor is one of the largest items in the human career; it is a modest demand to ask that it may partake of happiness.

The regular act of applied science is to introduce into labor a labor-saving device or a machine. Whether this is a benefit depends on how far it is advisable to save the labor. The philosophy of applied science is generally quite sure that the saving of labor is a pure gain, and that the more of it the better. This is to assume that labor is an evil, that only the end of labor or the material product is good. On this assumption labor becomes mercenary and servile, and it is no wonder if many forms of modern labor are accepted without resentment though they are evidently brutalizing. The act of labor as one of the happy functions of human life has been in effect abandoned, and is practiced solely for its rewards."

The view from here.

"Tetons and The Snake River", Grand Teton National Park (1942),
by Ansel Adams

One of the most accessible, interesting and insightful books of contemporary philosophy is "The Art of Travel" by the amazing author Alain De Botton. As the summer travel season moves along, I will be jotting down some of my favorite passages from that text.

"Our misery that afternoon, in which the smell of tears mixed with the scents of sun cream and air conditioning, was a reminder of the rigid, unforgiving logic to which human moods appear to be subject, a logic that we ignore at our peril when we encounter a picture of a beautiful land and imagine that happiness must naturally accompany such magnificence.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. Thus we will not enjoy - we are not able to enjoy - sumptuous tropical gardens and attractive wooden beach huts when a relationship to which we are committed abruptly reveals itself to be suffused with incomprehension and resentment.

How quickly may the advantages of civilization be wiped out by a tantrum. The intractability of the mental knots points to the austere, wry wisdom of those ancient philosophers who walked away from prosperity and sophistication and argued, from within a barrel or a mud hut, that the key ingredients of happiness could not be material or aesthetic but must always be stubbornly psychological."

Politics and the young man.

"Aristotle with a Bust of Homer" (1653),
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Something about the events of this past Tuesday brought to mind a wise passage in Aristotle's Ethics:

"Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit."

Or, as Ronald Reagan famously asserted regarding Walter Mondale, "I refuse to make my opponent's youth and inexperience an issue in this campaign." (Hat tip to Dr. Moore for the historical fact checking...)

You don't recover.

"Homage to the past" (1944), Marc Chagall

"You don't recover from the events of life, you take them with you, you knit them in, you grow with them and around them; they become who you are; they are life itself; how else my life might have been is unknowable." Charles L. Mee

Life and art

"The function of the artist is to provide what life does not." Tom Robbins

"Art is finished once the artist has truly said everything that was in his heart." Christian Krohc

Painting by Michael Sowa. Click on image for larger version.

Post Secret II

Above are two submissions to the Post Secret Project, and they remind me that a) relationships between people do not end, they merely change, and b) emotions are rarely genuine and pure. Methinks Paul Simon doth protest too much when he sings, "I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain", though clearly there are many who appreciate the man who said,

"I wish I had never met you. Because then I could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there."

The unseen is everything.

Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana. Photo taken by Wadih Ghsoubi. Click on image for larger version.

"Today, to him gazing south with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky over the mountain's long, low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; today the unseen was everything, the unknown the only real fact of life."

The above quote from The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker: "There is no secular world." True. True.

The unreasonable man

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw

Image is "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear" (1889), by Vincent Van Gogh. Click on image for larger version.

Henryk Górecki

The most interesting people, and certainly the best artists, are exceptionally self-reflective, self-critical individuals who are entirely free from the desire to see themselves through the eyes of others. It is a delicate state, but those who achieve it are souls truly liberated from the social confines of their surroundings and open to pursue the strength of their own authenticity. They are not sociopaths, for they often possess a conscience and an empathy and a rigid morality that surpasses their peers. They simply do not allow others to motivate or define them.

Consider this quote from the composer Henryk Górecki:

"I never write for my listeners. I think about my audience, but I am not writing for them. I have something to tell them, but the audience must also put a certain effort into it. But I never wrote for an audience and never will write for because you have to give the listener something and he has to make an effort in order to understand certain things. The same thing is true of poetry, of paintings, of books. If I were thinking of my audience and one likes this, one likes that, one likes another thing, I would never know what to write."

and this exchange during a 2007 interview attempting to discuss his quartet, "Songs are Sung":

"It’s just notes," says Gorecki dismissively. Does it have a religious or spiritual impulse? "That must remain in my work room," he repeats. Did the third symphony have a message? "Listen," says the composer, "what goes into my music stays in my room. The world can hear what it likes."

It seems that whenever I find a friend or an artist that I admire, a quick look into his or her life reveals a similar character. Will we ever find a politician like this?

While I'm not a big fan of the glossy video interpretation of the movement above, the entire symphony is truly transcendent. Much if not all of his other work is also worth a listen.

Rooms by the sea

"Rooms by the sea" (1951), Edward Hopper

Duck Dash

Since early April, I have been exercising four to five times a week as part of an effort to lose weight. As my calves allow, that exercise generally takes on the appearance of something like running.

Earlier today, my brother Mark (a great motivator and far more accomplished runner) and I ran a 5k race called the Duck Dash near his home in Cartersville. This was my first athletic race, ever, of any sort, and I'm glad that I did it.

If you'd like to see an interactive report on how the race went, you can check out this link.

The Giant

"The Giant" (1923), by N.C. Wyeth

Terra firma

One of my favorite photo collections from the 1990s is compiled in a book called, "Earth from Space". This is a set of earth images taken by astronauts with high resolution gear, and it's beautiful to me.

Now there are several online versions of the same idea. The image to the left comes from "Big Blue Marble: Next Generation" (no, not the television show with the great song). Click on the image to see a much nicer view. The website Earth from Space has a decent interface, and many of those images, and more, are also found at Visible Earth.

When you're falling.

"When you're falling", by Afro Celt Sound System, featuring Peter Gabriel, from the album, "Volume 3: Further in time".

Repeal the 17th.

Due to overwhelming support, this posting on the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been moved to its own site. Please take a look at:

http://www.restorefederalism.org

Home movie

My brother Mark did a great thing this morning by uploading a very interesting family movie to YouTube. The video is a collection of several films taken in and around Summit, New Jersey, (my grandfather's home town), between approximately 1915 and 1935. The footage was assembled by cousins with talent for such things and distributed at our last reunion in Summit.

This is a fascinating look at one slice of America during that period of our history. It's wonderful to see my great-grandparents in their homes, their eight children at various ages, and my grandfather as a dashing young man shaking hands with his family before taking off from a field in his open cockpit aircraft.

Merrie Frances

Our daughter, Merrie Frances Truslow, was born today at 12:54 pm at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. Merrie Frances is a very sturdy 8 pounds, 8.3 ounces, with a ton of hair, blue eyes and a very nice smile.

Here is a link to the most recent photos shown above.

It's about the drop.

I remember well my drive across the country from Montana to Georgia, especially the day when I passed through Sturgis, South Dakota during the world famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

What struck me more than the ear splitting volume (and visual beauty) of the motorcycles was the rich, larger-than-life American subculture that surrounded them. Before me were literally hundreds of thousands of people who were neck deep in an entire universe that I knew nothing about. I felt as if I had been dropped onto another planet. At other points in my life, I've stumbled upon windows into other such strata of American life, observing the activities of friends who were into "fan fiction" or computer programming, or fencing.

Recently, it occurred to me that I have been a part of several of these hidden worlds. The ethics profession is one, to be sure, but that which I enjoy the most is the domain of jugglers. Here there is a shared body of knowledge, language, dress, assemblies, heroes, and sacred days. If you want to get an idea for what it's like, check out my favorite juggling store, Dube.

Awareness test

On Sunday afternoon, I rode my bike for the first time this season. It turns out that I'm fat and out of shape, and nothing says, "worthless and weak" quite like the hills I can't ride.

If you'd like to see details of my ride, click here.

When I roll on surface streets, I spend a third of my time scared of motorized vehicles, and another third verbally assaulting drivers who don't bother to adjust their car's trajectory based on the presence of a large man on a bike.

(Video sent to me by my brother, Mark.)

Shaker Morning Light

"Shaker Morning Light" (Berkeley, 2005), by Paul Martin Lester

Taken shamelessly and without permission from the photographer's website. Paul Lester is an astonishingly cool human being and a thoughtful artist. Take a moment to enjoy his pages.

Words Matter ("Conservative")

The current presidential election, the inanity of which persists at upsetting me on a daily basis, does not provide useful answers to these questions: 1) What is a reasonable set of criteria by which thoughtful citizens might evaluate a candidate for president? and 2) From a societal perspective, what are these elections - now posing as "national dialogs" - trying to resolve?

This blog does not allow readers to post comments, but the Chief Digressor is interested to hear your insights regarding these two questions.

Here I will begin to look at the second of these two questions by setting out a conceptual definition of the term "conservative". In a later post, I will attempt an honest description of "liberal / progressive / radical". If liberal / progressive / radical readers would like to suggest a comprehensive definition, I will consider using it. I seriously doubt that I will ever write on the transient associations between ideological believers and their current party affiliation. What's the point?

Politics has a nasty way of taking a word that has one clear, impartial meaning and turning it into an emotion with several, but this obfuscation makes a meaningful discussion impossible. I am in favor of a debate grounded by shared terms, so let us start with the basics.

In 1953, Russell Kirk wrote what is now considered the indispensable history of modern conservatism, "The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Eliot". In it, he traces the philosophical and political history of conservatism in Great Britain and The United States, pointing out along the way that only these two "among the great nations, have escaped revolution since 1790", a stability he attributes to the conservative nature of these cultures.

Here is Kirk's summary of what "a conservative" believes:

[...] the essence of social conservatism is preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity. Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors; they are dubious of wholesale alteration. They think society is a spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution: it cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine. "What is conservatism?" Abraham Lincoln inquired once. "Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?" It is that, but is more. I think that there are six canons of conservative thought:

1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist, " says Keith Feiling: "He knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom." True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.

2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls "Logicalism" in society. This prejudice has been called "the conservatism of enjoyment" - a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot "the proper source of an animated Conservatism."

3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a "classless society." With reason, conservatives often have been called "the party of order." If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic leveling, they maintain, is not economic progress.

5) Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters, calculators, and economists" who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power.

6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman's chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.

Portrait above is of Edmund Burke (1729-1797). I'm sorry that I do not know the artist. I didn't paint it, I assure you.

Growing up.

All grown-ups were children first. (But few remember it.)

Grownups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from those figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

I know a planet where there is a certain red faced gentleman. he has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved anyone. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: "I am busy with matters of consequence!" And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man - he is a mushroom.

The above is written by Antoine de Saint Exupery, in "The Little Prince". Image taken from the text.

I know, your profession is hard and full of things that contradict you. I can only suggest that perhaps all professions are like that, filled with demands, filled with hostility toward the individual, saturated as it were with the hatred of those who find themselves mute and sullen in an insipid duty. The situation you must live in now is not more heavily burdened with conventions, prejudices, and false ideas than all the other situations, and if there are some that pretend to offer a greater freedom, there is nevertheless none that is, in itself, vast and spacious and connected to the important Things that the truest kind of life consists of.

Even if, outside any position, you had simply tried to find some easy and independent contact with society, this feeling of being hemmed in would not have been spared you. It is like this everywhere; but that is no cause for anxiety or sadness; if there is nothing you can share with other people, try to be close to Things; they will not abandon you; and the nights are still there, and the winds that move through the trees and across many lands; everything in the world of Things and animals is still filled wtih happening, which you can take part in; and children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way - and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children, and the grownups are nothing, and their dignity has no value.

The above is written by Rainer Maria Rilke, from Chapter VI of "Letters to a Young Poet". Image is a portrait of Rilke.