They Shoot Laptops, Don't They?

“A primary method for studying the effects of anything is simply to imagine ourselves as suddenly deprived of them.” — Marshall McLuhan, Essential McLuhan

There are two ways that new technology is received:  we love it or we hate it. The shock of the new drives many to denounce it, mourn the passing of life as we know it, and predict a bad end for all of us. On the other hand, the beta testers and early adopters bubble with enthusiasm: the new (fill in the blank) will make life easier, more fun, more efficient, and . . . more fun. But once we traverse this familiar territory we find ourselves in rough country without maps and only a general sense of the terrain. 

That is where we are right now with Facebook, the social media phenomenon that recently announced it would go public in May, reportedly raising some $5 billion in the process. When Mark Zuckerberg began Facebook at Harvard in 2004, MySpace was already the place to be online. Rubert Murdoch and News Corp bought MySpace in 2005 and by 2007 MySpace was valued at $12 billion. But by 2008 Facebook overtook MySpace and quickly eclipsed it as the leading social network. In its recent SEC filing for the upcoming IPO Facebook reported over 800 million users world-wide. If you do a search on Amazon for “Facebook” you’ll get over 4, 600 results, and Facebook is now considered essential for corporations, start-ups, and public figures. If there aren’t any dissertations about Facebook yet, I’m sure there will be soon. 

But it’s the effect it has on families and friends that I find so intriguing. Although I am no Luddite I am perhaps slower than some to adopt new media. I can fully appreciate the power of Facebook to bring people together, but it’s how people use it to punish and harass one another that’s so disconcerting. 

Facebook has become Everyman’s bully pulpit, a megaphone to the world. We’ve all heard stories of employees getting fired, students expelled or otherwise disciplined, marriages breaking up, and people’s secrets being exposed on Facebook. It’s simply wrong to blame Facebook for this, but it’s naive to imagine that this medium does not have the power to ruin people. 

I recently saw a video on YouTube which brought all this into sharp focus. A teenage girl had used Facebook to rant about all the housework she had to do, how oppressive her parents were, and how her life generally sucked because of her family. Apparently, this was the second offense of this nature: the first time she had been grounded for months, and her laptop and cellphone were confiscated by her parents. But this time her father decided to carry through on his threat to do much worse if the girl broke the rules again. 

So he made a short video and placed it online so that his daughter and her friends and suffering parents everywhere could learn from her mistakes. We see a man in jeans and a cowboy hat, settling himself in a chair in the backyard, with a sheet of paper clutched in his hand. In a voice tight and high with rage he reads a letter addressed to his daughter in which he quotes at length from her Facebook rant of the previous day, complete with obscenities and the kind of whining and exaggeration which makes parents apoplectic. He recalled how he worked two jobs when he was her age, put himself through college while working full time, and how just the day before he had taken time off work to buy and install $130 of software on her laptop—the very laptop she had later used to complain to the world about her cruel lot in life.  “I’m going to post this to your Facebook account,” he said, “so all your friends and parents everywhere can learn from it.”

I thought it couldn’t get any worse—but then he walked toward the camera and moved offscreen as he directed our view to the ground near his feet. There lay the girl’s laptop and in his hand was a .45 pistol. “I told you last time that if you ever did this again there would be something much worse than grounding—and this is it!“ And with that he pumped six bullets into the offending machine. “These are hollow-point bullets,” he yelled over the echoing gunshots. “They cost a buck apiece and I’m going to charge you for them, and for the $130 I spent putting software on this thing yesterday. Oh, and by the way, for what you said about your mother, she said to save a bullet for her. So there’s the last one from your mother!” And with that he clumped back to his chair and signed off with a strangled, “Have a nice day.” Fade to black. 

Okay. . . let’s see where things stand, shall we? We have a grown man, a father and a husband, shooting a laptop in his backyard, while ranting at his daughter for ranting about her family on Facebook. I guess it didn’t register with him that his movie wouldn’t be seen by his daughter on Facebook since he’d just blown her laptop to bits. 

The video has received close to 4 million hits—it’s gone viral, in other words. There are thousands of comments, 95 percent of them in favor of the father’s disciplinary methods. If this had happened in the village square things could have gotten ugly. But that’s the thing: Facebook is the public square, as is YouTube. Together they make the world into a village—much as Marshall McLuhan predicted decades ago. Bratty teenagers and fed-up parents now fight out their problems on a global stage, and everyone is invited to watch, listen, and join the brawl. 

By responding we become changed, an irony not lost on me, by the way. When all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, it’s hard not to think of it as sound and fury, signifying nothing. But it is something and it does no good to blame Facebook or YouTube by shooting the messengers. 

But by the same token, some reflection on these channels, these media, remind us that McLuhan also famously said, “The medium is the message.” It’s not just what is being said, but where and how the saying is transmitted and received. 

Those words between father and daughter, spoken or even screamed inside the walls of a home, remain the private property of that family, to be dealt with in their own way and time. But putting them on Facebook/YouTube turns them into a spectator sport, like bear-baiting, dog-fighting, and witch-dunking. 

And the troubling thing is that many will not see this as a moral failure, a betrayal of the fundamental sanctity of the family. Indeed, many of the comments cheer the father on for his “honesty,” “for telling it straight,” for giving his daughter “tough love.” 

Technology built to bring people together can do precisely that. It is not neutral in the way we mistakenly think that a gun can be used for good purposes or bad, depending on the person wielding it. A gun is designed to stop, maim, injure, and kill no matter who is using it. Mass media is designed to communicate to the masses. If it’s done right, if it works, — like Facebook and YouTube unquestionably do — then what we say and do can be shared with millions. 

As a species we’re still evolving, and having tools this powerful can seem like a Faustian bargain. But I’m hopeful that we might even learn from the past. We survived the pen, the printing press, the telegraph and television. If we don’t kill each other first we may survive YouTube and Facebook too.

The Still Point at the Super Bowl

"The simplest pattern is the clearest. Content with an ordinary life,you can show all people the way back to their own true nature." — Tao Te Ching, 65, Stephen Mitchell

This weekend the grandest spectacle in all of Mediaworld, the Super Bowl, will draw its millions—both spectators and dollars. I cannot think of another single annual event to which Americans pay such deeply religious homage. The arc of time, from pre-game to post-game, is sacred time, not to be violated by screaming infants, nagging housewives, or tinhorn dictators in Middle Eastern countries. Let Ahmadinejad threaten and bluster! He’ll have to wait his turn; The Game comes first. 

I’ve watched a few Super Bowls, even actually sat and watched the football game too, but those games fade into the blurry recesses of porous memory now. I think the last Super Bowl I watched was when Doug Williams was the quarterback for the Redskins. Then the next year he left for Florida and I left the Redskins. Back in those days the Washington Metro area’s water and sewage systems suffered regular shocks on Sundays as thousands of people flushed at the same time during commercial breaks. To remind myself of how long it’s been since I watched football is to call up an indelible image of John Riggins churning up the field, shaking off Don McNeal, for a 44-yard touchdown run and a Super Bowl record. That was XVII in Pasadena, in 1983. Commercial rates for a 30-second ad were $400,000; this year Volkswagen and other companies will ante up $3.5 million for 30 seconds. 

To put that into perspective, if you spent $1,000 per day of $3.5 million it would take you close to 9.5 years to blow that wad. Companies now can do that in 30 seconds, and with apparently little return on their investment. An article in Forbes notes that Volkswagen and Honda are topping the list of Super Bowl ads this year, having already released them on the Internet, but in purchasing language VW comes in at 13th. In other words, you have to wonder if spending the company’s money on a Super Bowl ad isn’t a vanity purchase, since on Monday or any other day after the game for that matter, the needle on the selling gauge isn’t going to tick more than a degree or two. 

But the Super Bowl, by current standards of entertainment value, is a blowout extravaganza, aiming for shock and awe from start to finish. The football game itself may rank second in reasons-to-watch after the commercials or perhaps even third after the half-time show. Those who mark the beginning of life each year with news from training camp will no doubt appreciate these diversions from the Holy Grail of their team’s heroic struggles, but they will not be denied the play-by-play and the endless angles from which to watch a fumble, a divine reception, and a slow-mo kick into the end-zone. 

There is a great divide between those of us who don’t watch and those to whom it would not occur to miss it under any circumstances. I don’t need to see it to appreciate its tawdry grandeur, its cued-up drama, and its celebration of youth, power, and raw egos. Down on the field, in the well of noise that must almost suck the air from one’s lungs, there is a domestic war being fought. To those who have struggled to get to this moment, life, the universe, and everything comes down to yards, minutes, and muscle twitches. Some, certainly not all, would play to an empty stadium, without cameras, satellites or commentators. The contest itself, shorn of the glitter and tumult of commerce, might be enough for some. 

For them the hours might hold a pure, numinous, power in which they see with absolute clarity the purpose, the means, and the goal. Emerson said, “We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.” 

Professional sports, political campaigns, and corporate strategy are the arenas of Mammon in our time. For those in the heat of the struggle, moments from victory, when the temptation and the means to crush others lies easily at hand, there might be a moment when their true face appears and they must decide whether they will wear it or sell all for a false one. That still point, a blade-edge of decision that maybe only comes with such simple grace once in a lifetime, must not be brushed aside. “It’s just a moment/This time will pass.”

That Was My Future

“Governments should strive to restore to men that taste for the future which religion and the state of society no longer inspire, and they should, without exactly saying as much, teach daily in practical terms that wealth, reputation, and power are the payment for work, that great success should come at the end of a lengthy period of waiting, and that nothing lasting is ever gained without difficulties.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

One of my favorite memories of childhood and early teen years is the image of the future as seen by Popular Mechanics in the late Fifties and early Sixties. As a recurring theme, the future was glorified for its clean cities, happy, healthy families, and the self-guided cars. 

Ah, the cars! They were blessed with automatic guidance systems so that Dad could take his hands off the wheel and turn around to the kids in the back seat who were playing a game together (nicely!), while Mom smiled approvingly. The family would arrive—on time—to their programmed destination, a gleaming skyscraper or, alternatively, a pleasant wooded valley for a picnic. These cars, as I recall, had only one flaw, but it was one that simply could not be overlooked. They were visual variations on what was later to become the AMC Gremlin, one of the most perverse cars of all time for many reasons. That mistake can be forgiven but how can the good people at Popular Mechanics have thought that our metropolitan highways would be anything but stupefyingly clogged?  I thought of this recently as I  inched through traffic on my way to the first class of a new semester. It took me as long to drive seven miles (45 minutes) into Washington, DC as it takes to drive almost forty miles to another campus just north of Baltimore. 

Understanding what this moment in the Great Timeline of History really means is beyond us. It’s beyond us in a curiously literal fashion in that the meaning of this moment, seen from a certain angle, is no-where, and it won’t be anywhere that makes sense for quite awhile. Of course, if you adopt another perspective on this, the present is not no-where but now-here, to be reveled in if not understood. These are not just word games; it makes all the difference in the world how we think about the present with regard to the future. For example, if the future is an eternal recurrence of the present, just more of the same, the appropriate response might be satire, as in Engel’s remark in a letter to Marx that Hegel seemed to be directing history from the grave, “once as grand tragedy and the second time as rotten farce.” 

Stephen Colbert, the faux Republican comedian and favorite spokesperson for the political theatre of the absurd, understands this. He understands it so well that he’s willing to put thousands of dollars into a campaign for the presidency that parallels, but does not converge with—at least not yet—the “real” Republican primary campaign. Watching the current survivors of this fracas is instructive. As I write Rick Santorum has declared himself the winner of the Iowa caucus, Rick Perry has quit the race, Jon Huntsman bailed out the previous week, and Newt Gingrich continues to savage Mit Romney at the knees. The tragedy is that these are the kind of people who want to be president; the farce is what they are willing to do to get the job. 

I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times the other day, a shot taken backstage of one of the Republican debates, moments before the candidates took their places. In the rear of the photo can be seen three or four stony-faced onlookers, aides perhaps, while in the foreground Rick Perry joshes Rick Santorum, putting him in an elbow-grip and leaning in close with a tight smile like a preacher about to clamp the guilt-cuffs on a prodigal parishioner. To the right of the photo, bathed in a Rembrandt spotlight, the two alleged statesman of the event speak together. Mit Romney, his back straight, his fixed smile gleaming, his hands gesturing expansively, makes a point to Newt Gingrich who is positioned with his back to the camera. Gingrich is hunched over with concentration, perhaps trying to hear over Perry’s raucous laughter and Santorum’s sharp response. The tableau reminds us that candidates are actors in a traveling road show, fellow evangelists in a long-running gospel revival paid for, produced, and packaged by groups with unlimited funds and a few simple demands. 

After all the name-calling, the low blows, the viciousness, and the outright lying, one of them, probably Romney, will stand up, wipe off his sword, and march off to battle the incumbent. The ability to cut and thrust, grapple and disembowel—and then to emerge, winner and loser together, all smiles and a thousands points of light, makes one’s head spin. I grew up thinking that it mattered what one believed in and acted upon, that you shouldn’t be wielding the sword to dismember your opponent and then denounce him for not beating his sword into a plowshare. 

But such bald-faced hypocrisy is not the talent of the Republican tribe alone. Robert Hughes writes that  “Propaganda-talk, euphemism and evasion are so much a part of American usage today that they cross all party lines and ideological divides.” Even so, naiveté has its benefits: we continue to believe that calculated sins were probably ignorant mistakes long after others have written off the whole political process as a bad joke. That naiveté grows into hope with time and conscience, and hope will not be fooled. The future we looked for in the past is here and it’s nothing like we imagined. It’s not as bad as some made it out to be and it’s certainly not as good as Popular Mechanics painted it. That future never really existed anyway. If you take a much longer view and if you realize that change is incremental and slow—until the fault line snaps and looses the tsunami—then what matters is that consistency and integrity will have their day, though you may not live to see it. Yet at some point we all look back and realize how much has changed, how much is still the same, and how much is still to come. 

More and more these days when I am tempted to regard the present order with horror, I appreciate Orwell’s comment that “Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If it seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin.”

We should save the word “tragedy” for the genuine article: the suffering of those in earthquakes, tsunamis, and war. The political battles and campaigns that we are watching right now can be viewed as comedy when seen up close. But let’s not forget that the means often become the ends because through constant use they have come to define us.

Zero to Sixty . . . .

“The will is free, but who can account for his own acts and opinions without invoking influences and accidents?”— Jacques Barzun, “Toward a Fateful Serenity”

One of the benefits of an hour-long commute, really, the only benefit, is the time to think, to free associate, to sum up. In two weeks I will slip into that mysterious age of 60, an age which I have, until now, reserved exclusively for the old, perhaps the infirm, most certainly those far enough from shore that the next wave only lifts them gently in passing before cresting up ahead with a roar. We attach significance to these arbitrary numbers—12, 18, 21, 30, the BIG 50, 60, 65. What do they mean? 

The King James Bible (Psalms 90: 7) gives us one of the most memorable phrasings of our limits with its customary sturdy poeticism:  “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” 

The line begins modestly, ‘days of our years,’ adds the common limit with ‘threescore years and ten’, offers up the exception with ‘fourscore years’ but undercuts the implicit surprise with the burden of ‘labour and sorrow.” Finally, the brutal efficiency of ‘it is soon cut off,’ is turned in mid-air as we strain against the tethers that bind us to the earth, and ‘we fly away.’ There’s nothing of Dylan Thomas’ plea to his dying father, “Do not go gentle into that good night/Old age should burn and rave at close of day/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” It turns out that we were always meant to leave this earth, but the image is almost one of indifference—‘we fly away’ without a backward glance. 

It is not to be thought that I am at this threshold as yet. I’ve been fending off AARP for years, and both my grandparents lived past 90 with a good measure of strength and plenty of cheerfulness. But, as I say, it marks a moment that we invest with meaning. We should not shrug off these moments, for they will not always announce themselves. 

In 2000 Jacques Barzun, one of this epoch’s greatest cultural historians, published his massive work, From Dawn to Decadence, a New York Times bestseller and the capstone to 75 years and over 30 books of a remarkable career. Two years later The Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works was published, and the first essay, “Toward a Fateful Serenity,” speaks autobiographically of the fault lines and accidents of history that shaped him early on. As a child of wealth, privilege, and genteel upbringing he lived through the chaos of the First World War in Paris, Grenoble, and the south of France. He remembers how temperament, tragedy, and trauma shaped him into the ‘cheerful pessimist’ who, in his eighties, could live serenely despite a culture that exalts selfishness. One of the things that history taught him was ‘the lost faculty of admiration.’ “The past,” he said, “is full of men and women (and children too) whose lives and deeds are worthy of honor, wonder, and gratitude, which I take to be the components of admiration.” 

And I, too, find myself surrounded by those I can admire, argue with, be inspired by, and learn from—from Aristotle to Zola, Annie Lenox to U2, A Bug’s Life to Unforgiven. Barzun recommends reciprocity, a reckoning of the debt we owe to those who have lighted our way. Thus, in gratitude to just some of those whose music has raised me up, here are lines that gave me words for the unwritten scripts I have lived out through the years.

“When you’re down and troubled, and you need a helping hand . . . .” — James Taylor

“Your time has come to shine/All your dreams are on their way . . . .” — Paul Simon

“It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive . . . .” — Bruce Springsteen

“So let us not talk falsely now/The hour is getting late . . . .” — Bob Dylan

“Shower the people you love with love/Show them the way that you feel . . . .” — James Taylor

“In your eyes, the light the heat/In your eyes/I am complete . . . .” — Peter Gabriel

“You may say that I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one . . . . John Lennon

“Guide me, O thou great Jehovah/Pilgrim through this barren land . . . .” — William Williams

“You broke the bonds/And you loosed the chains/Carried the cross of my shame/Oh my shame/You know I believe it . . . .” — U2

“The river’s wide, we’ll swim across/We’re starting up a brand new day . . . .” — Sting

“Leave it behind/You got to leave it behind . . . .” — U2

and of course. . . .

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me/When I’m sixty-four?” — The Beatles

Whose Reality Show is This?

“This is the age of contrivance. The artificial has become so commonplace that the natural begins to seem contrived.” — Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

If the Republican candidates were students in a communications and public speaking course their midterm evaluations—based on their classroom performances—might look something like this . . . 

Sarah Palin — Charming and even flirtatious when she wants to be, but can turn vicious in a heartbeat. Late with her assignments, doesn’t seem to prepare, spurns advice. A dominant figure in any group, she tends to blame others for her mistakes. Still waiting for her to turn in her thesis statement. 

Rick Perry — Another student who waits till the last minute to prepare and then tries to impress by his bluff and bluster. That works for awhile but his lack of preparation quickly comes to light when questioned on his positions. Proud of being a doer rather than a thinker—obviously believes you can’t be both at the same time. 

Michele Bachman — Reacts rather than responds. Talks faster than she thinks. Relays second-hand information picked up from headlines. Sincere, upbeat, dazzling smile, too impatient to study. Does C work because she is constantly distracted. Would rather text than study. 

Herman Cain — Gregarious, ambitious, loves attention, overconfident. Used to getting what he wants, thus cannot handle even the slightest criticism. Comes up with clever phrasing but with little substance to ground it on. Should change his major to advertising or marketing. 

Ron Paul — One of the older students, keeps to himself, something of a loner. Firmly rooted in 19th century cultural values. In a group he sees himself as a spoiler rather than a tie-breaker. Uses every speech to advocate for American isolationism, the gold standard, or against taxes. Pre-med major; says he has no time for gen ed courses like Public Speaking.                                                                 

Newt Gingrich — Not afraid to speak a dissenting viewpoint, but was disastrous as a group leader. Seems to enjoy conflict for its own sake or as a way to gain an edge on someone else. Can be perceptive on certain issues but lets his need for power overrule his better judgment. Alienates the other students who think he’s arrogant. 

Rick Santorum — Knows how to articulate the free-floating fears of his contemporaries. Speaks with certainty on issues, but cannot understand people not like him. Sincere, has deep convictions, regards compromise on certain issues as moral betrayal. His inability to imagine other ways of perceiving the world hampers his ability to lead diverse groups. 

Jon Huntsman — Thoughtful, reflective, quiet, sits in the back of the classroom but pays attention. Often stays after class to discuss something or ask a question. In class discussions he often has the last word because he does not try to shout down the others. Will give his viewpoint if asked, but won’t compete with Gingrich or Santorum for air time. 

Mitt Romney — Class president, comfortable with money and power, looks “presidential.” Speeches are carefully outlined, delivery is standard, phrasing is predictable as are his positions. Ambitious, self-assured, but lacks depth. Out of his element when classroom discussions focus on issues of justice, poverty, or the increasing gap between the very rich and the poor. Envied but not particularly liked.

Of course, any person is more than what you see. But the hidden parts—you might call them ‘character’—are rarely seen in a public figure for two reasons: first, television transmits images, not ideals, and secondly, candidates play roles that they then try to live up to. 

It is not farfetched to imagine that if a candidate were to listen closely to a wide variety of Americans and then to honestly and clearly express his or her personal convictions in response, that such a candidate would be applauded in the media for a fine performance. It would not be at all clear that anyone had actually listened to what was said. 

Measuring Goodness

"I think we can't go around...measuring our goodness by what we don't do.By what we deny ourselves...what we resist and who we exclude.I think we've got to measure goodness...by what we embrace,what we create...and who we include." — from the Easter Sermon, Chocolat

There are two great systems of ethics that most of us live by, often without realizing where they came from or their full outlines. While we may not know exactly why we make our decisions that does not prevent us from making them. But neither can we justify or even explain why we chose them in the first place. 

One system is built around duty, what we ought  to do. According to Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern age, we should act out of free will without regard for reward or punishment. What matters is why we do something, and the principle that establishes some action as ethical or not is whether we willed to do it or not. In Kant’s view, the only actions that could be counted as ethical would be the ones that we did because they were the right things to do, not because we wanted to do them or they gave us a warm feeling for having done them. We may, in time, come to enjoy doing what’s right, but that shouldn’t factor in as the reason to do the right thing. 

The other great system emphasizes the consequences of our actions. In the words of John Stuart Mill, the 19th century British philosopher who brought utilitarianism into general use, utility holds that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” By a calculus of goodness, then, we are called to maximize pleasure and minimize pain for the greatest number of people. In short, we try to do the best for as many people as possible. 

These are general theories of ethical action, not a cookbook for whipping up a delightful dish of goodness for the situation at hand. Yet we unconsciously use these throughout our days to handle most of our ethical dilemmas. At times we do what we must, no matter what it might cost us; at other times we try to make the best of the situation for ourselves and those around us. Neither system answers all our questions. Most of us use both of them without feeling that we have to choose one over the other. 

Yet, we usually have a default position, an ethical perspective that we act from almost intuitively. We may, upon reflection, choose another way, but we can learn a lot about ourselves by how we instinctively react to matters that confront us. 

So in the spirit of summing up at the end of the year, here are some ways you can tell which ethical system you most naturally follow. 

You know you’re a Duty person if:

• It makes you grumpy when people pass you when you’re driving the speed limit;
• You finish your chores before you go out to play;
• You toss and turn at night, replaying a faux pas you committed that day; 
• You make sure your car is parked straight within the lines;
• You’d rather embarrass yourself than cause someone else embarrassment by pointing out their mistakes;
• It pains you to leave something undone;
• You find yourself muttering, “What if everyone did that?” several times a day; 
• You pick up trash that other people drop;
• You can think of many reasons why someone did what they did;
• You’re more fascinated with why someone did something than what they actually did; 
• Holidays make you uncomfortable;
• A good day is when you get through your list;
• A bad day is when you don’t even make a list;
• Your besetting sin is self-righteousness;
• Your most annoying trait is being a tight-ass;
• One of your good traits is that you’re reliable;
• One of your best traits is introspection;
• You are an investor.

On the other hand, you know you’re a Utility person if:

• It matters to you if everyone around you is happy;
• You keep working for consensus after everyone else has taken their toys and gone home;
• You’re all about efficiency: effectiveness is for the slow;
• You’re an idea person, not a detail person;
• You get impatient with people who keep asking questions;
• You’ll hire an expert if it will save time;
• You like to be seen as generous;
• You’re comfortable with groups of people; 
• You’d rather have three okay desserts than one fantastic one;
• You think in economic metaphors like ‘the bottom line’ and ‘cost-benefit ratios’;
• Your besetting sin is cutting corners to get what you want;
• Your most annoying trait is blaming others;
• One of your good traits is that you can make decisions quickly;
• One of your best traits is that you’re willing to try new things if it will bring better results;
• You are an entrepreneur. 

For the duty-bound among us, here’s a gentle word for the new year: Don’t let doing things the right way stop you from enjoying the trip. 

And to those who are all about the bottom line: It does matter how you get there because you have to live with what you picked up on the way. 

It’s not too late to begin again.

Wearing the Faces We Keep

“Those who strive to account for a man’s deeds are never more bewildered than when they try to knit them into one whole and to show them under one light, since they commonly contradict each other in so odd a fashion that it seems impossible that they should all come out of the same shop.” — Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

Montaigne, that affable, erudite, bemused observer of human nature—mostly his own—would have found no end of contradictions in our political process. In an essay entitled “On the Inconstancy of Our Actions,” he marvels at the many faces we wear, sometimes on a single day, and wonders why people try to make sense of someone’s actions, especially “seeing that vacillation seems to me to be the most common and blatant defect of our nature.” 

Off he goes in his inimitable fashion, piling on Latin quotes from ancient philosophers and playwrights, and whipping out quips like a ninja’s throwing stars. “It is difficult to pick out more than a dozen men in the whole of Antiquity who groomed their lives to follow an assured and definite course,” he says, “though that is the principle aim of wisdom.” What’s more likely, says Montaigne, is that we “follow the inclinations of our appetite, left and right, up and down, as the winds of occasion bear us along.” 

So we get Herman Cain, a supremely confident man, who wakes up one morning and thinks, “I could be president: let’s do it!” Or Rick Perry, striding like a colossus through the Republic of Texas, glib in his own surroundings, but tongue-tied on the national stage. Who can resist the spectacle of the genteel but thoroughly manufactured fury of Mr. Romney, prodded out of his postage-stamp size comfort zone by the uncivil zaniness of Newt Gingrich, himself newly-resurrected and kissed by the media polls? Gingrich, who leads with his tongue, but has already sold his brain to science, defiantly admitted one of his major personal failings, a capacity to change to fit the context. For a conservative these days that is moral turpitude second only to being ‘progressive.’ Romney wins that honor, having declared himself a moderate Republican a few years ago. How he must regret those careless words about reforming urban schools and providing aid for the elderly! 

A politician these days must display an unbending spine of steel, be deaf to all pleas for fairness, and follow conscience, especially if it leads to money. In these chaotic times, when a reputation can vaporize with a single tweet, politicians decide their positions early and hold to them though the heavens fall. God forbid that they should see an issue in a new light, for that might demand a willingness to compromise. Thus obstinacy and bone-headedness are taken as the virtues of courage and resoluteness. As the Republican primary debates trudge onward it’s clear that only the strongest will survive this Bataan death march of moral recalcitrance. 

Why do we do this? I say ‘we’ because it is we the people who demand leaders who can instantly assess a volatile situation and then ignore their best counsel in order to stay the course. As American troops withdraw from Iraq I wonder if anyone can still believe the reasons why we devastated that country? Why do we want people who cannot deliberate, who will not reconsider, who can only perseverate? Montaigne was not glorifying inconstancy but neither was he denying it. He was allowing for it. That’s not the same as promoting it; it’s the realization of limits and how to work well within them. We want our leaders to be recognizable as leaders from a distance so we create a template for identification purposes. Do this, say that, wave this, kiss that. They have to fit the pattern or they won’t be taken seriously. Lacking any criteria for discernment, humility, and courage—characteristics essential for leadership in any age—we’re left to judge these people by the decibel level of their rhetoric and the cut of their hair. 

At the heart of it is something that is both necessary and elusive—trustworthiness. That is all we really require from a leader. The rest of it can be learned on the job, provided that person has the courage and strength to do so. 

When we communicate with each other, said Aristotle, we look for three things: logos, pathos, and ethos. They can be understood as reasoning, the ability to understand and empathize, and character. These were the things that Aristotle thought would protect us against the professional liars and the demagogues. How quaint they seem now in this viciously trivial political culture. 

“Virtue wants to be pursued for her own sake,” said Montaigne. “If we borrow her mask for some other purpose then she quickly rips it off our faces.”