The New Puritans

John Winthrop, Puritan
and all-round great guy

—This article contributed by The Professor—

When the Puritans seized power from the English monarchy, one of the first things they did was close all the theatres.  On the heels of this edict, much of the priceless stained glass that adorned English churches and cathedrals was destroyed under the justification that it was idolatrous.  In short, the Puritans obtained power, and they were not shy about imposing their view of things on the world of their time.  After all: salvation was at stake!  The Puritans have received “bad press” over the years, which can overshadow the fact that here were energetic, sincere, intellectually vigorous people, who made significant personal sacrifices to further their vision of a world in which the “proper” order of things was created and maintained.  

Today we have a new form of Puritanism.  It is nothing if not sincere; it is characterized by a high level of intellectual energy; and its copious idealism and vigour is employed in the pursuit of a form of salvation: the life of this planet.

Yes, I am referring to the confident, intelligent, striving zealots of today:  the broad coalition of activist groups that might be referred to as the climate change movement.  They share many of the admirable traits of Cromwell and his lot, but—perhaps inevitably—they can display some of the downsides of zealousness as well:  judgmentalism; intolerance of opposing viewpoints; a penchant for overstatement; and a confidence in their own point of view that can border on hubris.  We all can show these characteristics when we feel strongly invested in an idea, but there is something “special” about a movement which undoubtedly considers itself liberal, but which exhibits many qualities similar to the “granddaddy” of all intolerance: the Puritans.

Of all the things we think of when we think “Puritan,” one of the first is the Puritan Work Ethic.  The most important thing to learn about this influential social legacy is that—according to the Puritans’ protestant theology—it was NOT work that was going to win you salvation. [Much to the contrary, these Protestants most energetically protested the Catholic idea of “salvation through (good) works.]   Since salvation was achieved through grace alone, the important thing to a Protestant was having evidence that you were a recipient of such grace.  And what evidence did they aspire to accumulate?  Wealth, gained through hard work: not for wealth’s sake, but as a sign that they had received God’s grace and therefore were among the “chosen.”

Fast forward a few hundred years to the turn of the millenium, and we could see another interesting race to display one’s “chosen” status.  Two manufacturers of roughly equal reputation and roughly equal customer loyalty came out with progressive new automobiles employing hybrid technology of roughly the same type at roughly the same cost.  It was a huge leap forward for the “green” technology movement, and one assumed the sales of the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid would eventually be roughly similar. 

But then something happened to distinguish these two otherwise similar green vehicles: Honda felt customers would prefer to avoid the bulky, boxy rear-loaded look that many earlier battery-intensive vehicles had sported; it’s design team combined a brilliantly engineered smaller battery with a creative approach to the rear end of the vehicle and created a hybrid Civic that looked notably similar to a “regular” Civic.  Mission accomplished (and an impressive mission it was.)   

Meanwhile over at Toyota, a bold choice was made to display the difference, to make a virtue of necessity and design a vehicle that wore its battery and hybrid status on its figurative sleeve.  Along with the distinctive look, a distinctive name.  The rest is history: In the three years following both models being introduced to the market, the Prius outsold the Civic hybrid by a factor of almost 3 to 1, inducing product shortages and waiting lists.  It became a cultural phenomenon. 

Market researchers were—not surprisingly—anxious to determine how such an unexpected market phenomenon could occur.  They should have consulted John Calvin.  Overwhelmingly people, when surveyed, indicated a wish to be seen as driving a “green” vehicle by others.  Resonating with the Puritans, the car itself was not considered as important as what the car conveyed to others: Prius drivers were obviously one of the chosen, and it was important for others to realize that.

There is another more contemporary parallel between religious zealousness and the rhetoric of the sustainability movement.   Can there be a more bold, overstated claim to importance than “save the planet”?   The stakes are, of course, high (as they were in the 70s when there were confident warnings of a “perpetual winter” caused either by nuclear generated dust or by accumulated particulate matter in the atmosphere.)  

But motivating people to do the right, moral thing under the implied threat that the planet will die otherwise makes me think of the way fundamentalists seek to induce young people to do the right, moral thing in their sexual relations.  In the more conservative, intolerant subcultures across the U.S. it is not uncommon—in our aids-aware culture—to use a similarly overstated scare mongering as a cornerstone of sex education (when it is present at all.)  The basic idea: if you have sex you’ll die.  A basic, overstated, fundamentalist way of looking at things, nominally and bombastically? based on “science”—but no better for inculcating a thoughtful approach to a wonderful expressive act than “save the planet” rhetoric is to encouraging thoughtful environmental stewardship.

So, you may well be asking (and rightfully so): what’s the point—that environmentalists are bad people?  Far from it.  Thank goodness there are thoughtful, sincere, intelligent people on hand and observant enough to call our attention to the fact that we have lost our way in relationship to the planet we have been given to steward.  And thank goodness that there were thoughtful, sincere, intelligent people who called attention to the fact that the Catholic church had seemed to have lost its way in terms of articulating and expressing our relationship to the divine. 

The point in both of these cases is: we need to guard against an impulse toward eliminating alternative points of view (one of the central issues in the “climate gate” e-mails unearthed two years ago.)  We need to be appreciative but be wary of energetic true believers (To a hammer, everything looks like a nail; no reason to dislike the hammer, but be wary if your hammer wants to ban the staple gun from your toolbox.) In short, we need to exercise a respectful scepticism toward these valuable, self-sacrificing idealists.  We should value them, by all means, but when they come for the stained glass, we need to be ready to push back.

A Foreign Geezer Unlucky in Fatherhood

The Geezers Emeritus are all remarkably lucky in how their children grew into their places in the world. By and large, we all count ourselves blessed to have sired good-spirited, talented, morally upright human beings. We also acknowledge that this is mostly because the geezer wives are all so damned good as parents. Had they modeled themselves after the male ancestors....well, it's better not to entertain that thought.

Not every geezer is this lucky though. A retired British naval officer became so disgusted with the quality of his own offspring that he issued a public letter that in effect disowns them and "outs" them as selfish louts. Check out this story , originally printed in the daily telegraph, but reprinted many dozens of times since then.

A Geezer View of Conflict

—this article contributed by The Professor™—

It seems like a relatively straightforward question, and I have asked it of many people:

Would you rather have a life that is like an interesting play or a boring play? 

You can guess the response: out of more than fifty responses over the years, I don’t recall a single person responding: “I’d prefer a life that’s a boring play, thank you very much.”  And of course, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Who would willingly chose to watch, or live, a boring play?

Well, yes, but when thought about further, perhaps it’s not so straightforward.  Interesting plays, as dramatists know, are built from one basic building block: conflict.

If I rephrased my question to ask for a preference between a life filled with conflict and one conflict-free, most people would respond with “no conflict, please.”  The reader can see the paradox of this: the same people who long for an interesting life also—in great measure—hope to avoid conflict through their life.

The Professor and wife, making up after
a loving argument

Why this contradiction?  As a society and as individuals, we are becoming distressingly fearful of conflict.  Not so long ago, a typical day was characterized by low-level conflict from early morning:  (“I gotta go to the bathroom!”—“Wait your turn!!”), through school (“If Christ could hang on the cross for three hours, you can hold off for ten more minutes”—“but I REALLY have to go!”), onto the playground (“I get to be captain”—“You’re always captain!”) Escalating slightly after school (“I told you and your dork friends not to walk on this side of the street!”—“Who’s going to stop us…you and who’s army?), and continuing at supper (“You are not leaving this table until you have finished your supper…think of the starving children in India. —“But they don’t eat Lutefisk in India.”)  And let’s not even play out the ritual back and forth about bedtime.

Like an effective, well-tested and lovingly administered behavioural vaccine, these small doses of conflict helped make us resistant, if not immune, to worries over conflict.  It was something we associated with interesting daily life; we got good at it, and we welcomed it (the last thing we would ever have wanted was an adult umpire to supervise our baseball—how fun would that be? —what would we argue about between innings?)

Fast forward to a different age:

“Don’t worry Jason, there are two more bathrooms for you to get ready in if Tiffany is taking too long.” 

“Of course, Joshua, there is no need to ask permission to go to the rest room, it’s a perfectly natural thing.”

 On the playground: “Come on everyone, let’s gather for a fun game of ‘circle of friends’ rather than that mean old keep-away.  Does someone have to lose to make us feel like a winner?” (Um, yes, actually.)

“My dad says I can walk wherever I want, and if you threaten me, he will tell the principal, who has a zero-tolerance bully policy, and you’ll be in big trouble.”

“Well, Melissa, if you REALLY don’t want those beans, I suppose your body just doesn’t need them—my parenting book says if we put an assortment of healthy foods on the table, children will NATURALLY eat what’s good for them.”

It’s important to make one thing clear: no one wants to ignore the horrible and widespread cruelty that can grow up and fester among groups of any kind. That’s not the conflict I’m encouraging.  No one wants people to get tuberculosis either, but the key to containing TB is not administering preventative antibiotics to everyone who sneezes.  There is a point where conflict becomes dangerous or pathological, and as a society we must be observant and deal with it, but insulating ourselves from every day, garden-variety conflict sows the seeds of something more subtle but almost as detrimental: an unconsciously fearful avoidance of conflict of any kind. 

I can recall any number of married couples over the years that have said to me or my wife (often contrasting themselves to us): “oh, we never argue.”  I can’t recall, though, many of these people who are still married. Those who are still married and never argue are, with the exception of the saintly—in a word—boring (which is trivial compared to the advanced condition of the disease: unhappy.)

Today’s “confliphobics” may be right: It may be better to work in an environment in which raising your voice when you feel strongly is considered “hostile and intimidating.” It may be more comfortable to have a carefully measured exchange of e-mails rather than a face-to-face conversation.  And perhaps a professionally “facilitated” workshop is superior to gathering for a drink or two after work.  

Our workplaces are increasingly populated by generations who have apparently grown up in a way so that even the spectre of conflict prompts avoidance behaviour and perhaps a call to HR services.  Many work environments have evolved in such a way that discourages a person to share what they really think—even if thoughtfully and carefully expressed—especially if they are not a member of a “protected” class of employee.

The geezer in us wants to judge, but how fair is that?  We who have been given the vaccine have little fear of such situations: we’ve built up a healthy supply of conflict-resolving anti-bodies.  But really, pity the poor people who have reached  (chronological, anyway) maturity without developing this protection—without a way to deal with the everyday conflicts that inevitably develop between individuals who are thinking and caring; and who have enough respect for their fellow workers to share what they think. Maybe there is somewhere that everyone thinks the same, and there is no conflict (See: 1984 or Brave New World.)  

Another theory, which I ascribe to, is that the only time there is no conflict is when no one cares.  The more one cares, the more probable it is that you will come into conflict with others who care as well.  AND THIS IS TO BE MANAGED (and celebrated,) NOT AVOIDED.  The inevitable conflicts that arise when people care should be valued—it is the sign of a culture that is alive and well.  Yes, it must be treated carefully (like you treat all valuable things), and we all need to work on our conflict-related skills.  We need to continue to practice and strengthen our abilities to turn conflict into art, the way the great dramatists have done for ages.  It’s how we make our lives into an interesting, artful play.  

Strange Moments in Geezer History, Volume 1

The Professor  has never been fond of Halloween.

Mercurious and The Mathematician silently
hated Dr. Golf for his successful diet.

Dr. Golf and The Professor on their first double date—
a kinky event, indeed.

For the first years of their friendship, Dr. Golf and
the Professor were unnaturally close. 

The Mathemetician's first girlfriend had unique ideas on
dressing up for a dinner party.

Born a bad boy, Mercurious will always be one .

'That's not exactly what I meant when I asked if you wanted
to play with my pickle," said Dr. Golf.

The Mathematician's parents soon found a solution for
his ability to escape any playpen.

Mercurious' tenure in the navy was short-lived,
as you might imagine.

Before therapy, Dr. Golf preferred women who liked to play rough.

The Professor was blissfully ignorant of how his
female students secretly longed  for him

Sometimes Today is Better than Yesteryear

For my kids, a Geezer is defined as a grumpy old codger who complains about almost every modern trend and preference, a fellow who always believes that the past was somehow more noble, more honest, more creative….just plain better than today.

This is not true, kids. I, as well as virtually all Geezers, can find something about modern life that is better than it was in the distant past. (The Professor, I’d argue, in his steadfast defense of antiquated mores, is the exception that proves the rule— that Geezers are reasonable souls).

True, it’s an undisputed fact that movies, politics, books, music, parenting practices, philosophy, education, men’s magazines, college athletics, business practices, Wall Street, space exploration, quantum physics, Broadway theater, stand-up comedy, fine cuisine, and hamburgers are all much worse today than they were 30 years ago.

But as evidence that I’m a reasonable, modern, “hip” Geezer, I offer that the following modern innovations truly ARE better today than “in the day.”

• Frozen Pizza

• Automobiles

• Consumer Electronics

• Luggage

• Drugs

• Clothing fabrics

• The Internet

• International travel

• Burritos

• Locally brewed beer

Let’s take them one by one:

Frozen Pizza.  Everyone acknowledges that a fresh pizzeria pizza, or a home-prepared pizza is by far the better choice, but almost everyone acknowledges that as a quick snack while watching a ballgame, we’ve been known to throw a frozen pizza into the oven.

When frozen pizzas appeared in the 1960’s and 1970s, they were essentially quasi-edible cardboard disks covered with a sprinkling of cheese and 5 or 7 pepperonis or clumps of sausage. “Deluxe” pizza had both the bargain-basement pepperonis AND the faux sausage.

It’s now quite possible to buy edible, even good frozen pizza, including variations with rising bread crusts, whole-wheat crusts; variations that offer good reproduction of Chicago style, California-style pizzas.

Today’s frozen pizza is just flat-out better.

Automobiles.  I have some Geezer friends who lament the fact that they no longer have to tinker with their cars.  They are bat-shit crazy. Cars are meant to give you dependable transportation, and by this standard today’s cars are light-years better. My first car required new spark plugs every 20,000 miles or so; the last two cars I’ve owned were handed off with 120,000 miles or more and never did require new plugs.  New cars now routinely achieve 38 or 40 miles per gallon, and generate significantly more horsepower that before,  with a mere 2.0 or 2.5 liters of displacement.

Not a lot of argument here. A 2012 automobile isn’t in the same class with a 1990 car.

Consumer electronics.  Yes, we’re too connected to the world these days. Yes, there is an information overload.  Yes, people talk and text on cell-phones too much.

But my smart-phone is a thing of wonder. When you evaluate the individual features, you find individual devices that do the job better—dedicated digital cameras, laptop computers, e-book readers, personal gaming consoles. But to pack passable versions of all these devices into one little product the size of a cigarette pack, and sell it for $200….well, that’s just frickin’ amazing. And my Macbook air is a thing of wonder—a wafer thin computer packed with all the power an editor could need.

Remember when a great piece of personal electronics was a cassette-playing boom box the size of a small suitcase?  Now tell me that today’s electronics aren’t far superior.

Once upon a time, a really good TV weighed about 400 lbs. and cost about $1000 (which, in today’s dollars, would be about $5000.  Today, you can have a high definition flat screen television that does a fabulous job with sports or movies for $500 or so. And do we really want to compare a blue-ray player with a VHS video tape player?

I recently read an article that said the typical smart phone of today has more computing power than the combined power of all the computers scientists used in the 1960's to get us to the moon. Now, that says a lot about the ingenuity we had back then, but it also speaks volumes of what our technology has done for consumers

Sorry. No Geezer, no matter how grumpy, can really dispute this. We have better gadgets today. 

Luggage.  In my youth and even early adult-hood, a piece of luggage for routine travel was a sturdy case with a tote handle that you lugged in defiance of gravity.  Then somebody got the brilliant idea to join this with one of man’s earliest inventions—the wheel—to finally make traveling somewhat easier.  The fact that it took the human race 3,000 years to put these two things together says that homo sapiens is not quite the innovative species we’d like to believe.

Don’t we all feel sheepish about this one?

Drugs. As a society, do we over-medicate?  Of course.  Do we wreak havoc by using antibiotics capriciously, thereby breeding super germs. You bet.  Do we often reach for a pill, when the ailment would be better addressed by changes in personal philosophy or behavior? No question about it.  Is our health care system a shambles?  Undoubtedly.

But beyond all that, there are lots of truly awful diseases that can now be addressed by narrow-spectrum drugs that reduce these from life-threatening ailments to chronic, easily managed conditions, Remember when tens of thousands of people were blinded by glaucoma?  Probably not, if you’re under 40 years of age. In my younger years, having type 1 diabetes meant you had a very good chance of going blind or having an extremity amputated at some point in life.  Today, it can be largely managed.

In 1990, a young boy named Ryan White died of the aids virus after contracting it from a blood transfusion and living for some years with ostracism and harassment at the hands of schoolmates and their parents. Today, Magic Johnson is a celebrity for living successfully with the HIV virus as a chronic condition. In my youth, epilepsy could only be treated with barbiturates that made people feel like they were swimming in molasses; today’s narrow-spectrum drugs have almost no side effects while controlling the condition far better.

You’d have to be a truly grumpy Geezer to want to go back to 1950 when it comes to therapeutic drugs.

(Note:  I make no comments on the nature of modern recreational drugs vs. the old stuff. I’m no longer in a position to speak with any authority on that subject.)

Clothing fabrics.  When I was growing up, you had cotton, you had wool, and blends of the two. All of it incredibly natural, and also incredibly difficult to care for. Remember the days when everything had to be ironed by hand? In those days, we all laughed at “plastic” fabrics like nylon and rayon and polyester, but today we’d be lost without them.  It’s been years since I’ve had to iron a shirt or pair of trousers, and all my clothes last far longer than they ever did.  Sure, I kind of like to have my clothes to be blends that include some cotton or wool, but the synthetics are here to stay, thanks be.

And I don’t know what they are made of, but the compression undershirts I’ve started wearing are both warm and incredibly comfortable.  I never had that feeling about cotton undershirts.

As regards fabrics, chalk another one up to 2013.

The internet.  This is cheating a little, because the web really didn’t exist in any appreciable way until 1990 or so (it was just a tool among academics in universities in the early days) but holy cow, has anything been more revolutionary in changing how we access information?

I find it truly magical that when I try to search for a file within my company database using a string of text, it can take 15 or 20 minutes to do so (if it’s possible at all); but type in a term like “photo of Susan Sarandon wearing garters”, and I get 395,000 results in less than one second, drawn from individual computers and file servers from all over the globe.

Yes, there’s a lot of garbage and misinformation on the Internet. But you can find a great volume of the world’s classic wisdom, too.  I have access to books that once would have been almost impossible to find, thanks to the web. And the Internet has given us email, too, the boons of which, I’d argue, outweigh the banes.

 

International travel.  There are people who argue that travel has lost its romance, but having traveled internationally 30 years ago as well as today, I very much appreciate the fact that international travel has become almost as routine as domestic travel. A recent trip to China saw almost no delays getting through customs, and traveling to Europe is now utterly easy, as routine as going to New York City. There are wonderful sights to see around the world, and I, for one, am thrilled that it is now so easy, and relatively affordable, to wander the globe.

Burritos.  This makes my list for the pure and simple reason that Chipotle is my favorite fast food on the planet. If I was stuck on a desert island and could have one fast food only, this is my pick. Both tasty and healthy enough that you probably wouldn’t come down with scurvy or rickets from eating it for a year or two.

A totally random selection, but burritos in my youth didn’t hold a candle to these.

Locally brewed beer.  I’m not going to shamelessly tout any modern brand of Midwestern microbrews. Local beers—many dozens of them— have always been a part of Midwestern life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but in the 1970s the options were truly evil concoctions with names like Ham’s, Schmidt’s and the worst of all, a foul swill named Fox Deluxe, which was guaranteed to send you to the bathroom with liquefied bowels within 30 minutes of imbibing.

Today’s local brews are truly great beers. No nostalgia for the malts of the past for this Geezer.

Movies by Mercurious, Week of November 25, 2012

I unfortunately do not have time for a full blown movie review this week, but can make a recommendation for those who are looking for  fresh movie and have already seen "Skyfall" and "Lincoln."

"Silver Linings Playbook" is well worth your time.

I am really not a Bradley Cooper fan. I generally find him to be smarmy and self-indulgent. But this movie is well worth seeing just for the performance of Jennifer Lawrence—a swell talent who I have yet to see in a bad performance. She is simply wonderful young actress who practices her craft successfully without going down the painfully anorexic body-image path of actresses like Keira Knightly. The supporting roles in this film, acted by Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, are also very fine.

And if you didn't catch it the first time out, do also see Jennifer Lawrence in a very, very good independent film from a couple of years ago, "Winter's Bone" (trailer below). The film is widely available on various on-line streaming options.

Silver Linings Playbook Geezer Quotient:  80/100

Winter's Bone Geezer Quotient: 95/100

Mercurious Once Again Reigns Supreme!

 In the latest battle of the Geezers Emeritus in on-line Risk competition...

Reverting to form, Mercurious trounced Dr. Golf in the latter stages of a thrilling mano y mano. Earlier, the Mathematician morphed effortlessly into his comfort zone as the wearer of urine-yellow uniforms for the upcoming game (he surrendered first, in other words; yellow is a signal of disgrace in our world) and the Professor disproved Thomas Wolfe, wasting no time in going home again to Loserville.  

Dr. Golf shocked those in attendance by his careless and sloppy play, allowing the deserving but less talented Mercurious to snag yet another victory.  Mercurious, well known for his lack of self esteem in this world of gladiators, has been documented on numerous occasions sneaking out the back door in the dead of night to engage mere mortals in combat—thereby inflating his scoring and his ranking. This behavior has led the Hall of Fame committee to reconsider his nomination.

In the final measure, Mercurious owes his victory not to talent but to the fact that he received undeserved reinforcement as a result of Dr. Golf’s dereliction of due care in his play.

Not to worry, as Dr. Golf has promised to come back rested and poised for victory and celebration in the upcoming match.  For Risk fans, nothing could provide them with greater comfort and anticipation.  All they can do now is wait.