The Virtue of Emptiness

On a particularly grumpy Monday, this grumpy Geezer observes the following: 

A Geezer nightmare 

• On a typical business trip, a professional now has access to Wi-Fi service on the plane, in restaurants, and at hotels, keeping him connected at all times. He almost certainly has a smart phone on which to check his stock prices and emails. He may well carry two phones, in fact—one for personal use and the other for business. They are never shut off, and it is entirely normal for this fellow to check that device every few minutes, all week long, all day long, morning and night. He also is almost certainly is carrying a laptop computer, and maybe an I-pad or some other tablet device, too. This poor bastard may also have a blue-tooth device that allows him to take phone calls while simultaneously typing emails (which will draw glares from the publisher sitting near him in the airport waiting lounge).

• On the home front, the situation isn’t much different. For the typical working parent with kids, it’s now almost unheard of to have an entire night off because of commitments to junior’s various school conferences, sporting events, musical performances, tutoring or sport coaching sessions, and a variety of other shuttling. When a family has two children in school, the two parents will rarely be able to dine together, they’re so damned busy serving their kids.

• If our modern hero has a little bit of time for mindless relaxation, he might turn on the television and find that the broadcast screen includes five or six “violators” that vie to divert his attention away from the popular drama or sporting event he tuned in to watch: network logos, and news crawls, and radar maps, and time and temperature readings, and promos for upcoming programming.

• For our kids, well, we’re schooling them to follow this path. There is no longer any such thing as a summer vacation, or time to hang out after school or on weekends. Most kids today maintain schedules that would have wearied the top executives of TWA back in the day.  Little Susie’s days are filled with: afterschool tutoring and coaching seminars; summer school sessions, SAT practice tests; 4-5 hours of daily homework. (This is an actual statistic from the state of Minnesota for kids in college-prep ciriculum.) A kid with even a few minutes of spare time seems to make parents panic. 

(The average five-year-old middle-class suburban kid today has already had more than one year, but not quite two years, of some form of education aimed at building knowledge by the time he arrives at kindergarten. This is such a truism now that a toddler who arrives to school unable to read competently is thought to be “challenged.”)

Now, you and I both know that none of us was raised this way. Back then, when you encountered a family that DID raise kids this way, they were viewed as truly weird—as though you had the Munster family in your neighborhood. 

The Geezers in a simpler time

As kids, we had hours to play, and our summers were delightfully long stretches filled with, well, almost nothing. Kindergarten was a place where little kids learned just to sit still and listen for a few minutes when asked to. And because this was so unusual and tiresome, we were then allowed to nap for a little while  before eating some cookies with milk and going home to play some more.

When I started in the work world, I loved business trips, because the out-of-touch hours spent on a plane, in cabs, in hotel rooms was utterly free time for me to ponder and think and muse, and read a book that I wanted to read rather than review financial reports in anticipation of the next morning’s meeting. Back then, the hardworking professional might put in 50, 55 hours of labor a week; the guy who worked 80 was thought (rightly) to be mentally ill.

The last 15 or 20 years, though, has seen a quantum shift in what it means to be a modern American.

As you can tell, I’m highly critical of these trends, and I sometimes wonder if I’m just being a crabby old geezer about it. Maybe the evolution of the species will someday bring about an ability to easily multitask in a way that seems bewildering to my geezer eyes of today. What seems like attention deficit disorder may just be natural evolution. It is important for old geezers to put their grumpy outlook into perspective.

But I just don’t think I’m misjudging this.  We’ve lost touch with the fact that true creativity hinges on some plain old fashion empty mental space in which to play with perceptions and memories and ideas, and rearrange them in interesting and useful ways. Nothing much comes out of a huge, dense mass of solid rock, while the same volume of stone blended with space into a few million cornices and cobblestones and building blocks can allow you to create a fine city with museums and parks and concert halls and art galleries. 

I would argue that for modern man, the inner mental world has become that block of solid rock, so packed with sensory input and informational bits that creativity is a virtual impossibility. We have no sense of play whatsoever anymore, and play is the essence of creativity—it’s what breaks up that block into materials with which to create.

Feeling morose about this fact, I posed the problem with some Geezer friends, and one suggested that I cheer myself by thinking about the metaphorical chisels and stone saws that can be used to carve up that unpleasant block of solid metaphorical granite, creating the space that is now so lacking in modern life. He suggested that for him, a dog was one such tool. Walk an energetic and loving family dog in the evening, and it’s virtually impossible to multi-task on an IPhone. Family dog = creative space. 

All right then. Much cheered, I’ll share some of my own tools for finding that creative emptiness:

• Garden. Having your fingers in the dirt once a day drains all static energy from your bones and sinews and synapses. 

• Do things yourself rather than hiring others. A lot of people find going to a spa or having a massage to be freeing for the mind. For me, mind space is encouraged by simple but productive labor. Make sure you break a light sweat; that’s when you know it’s real. There's no harm in doing things badly rather than hiring expertise; doing anything, even badly, is good for the soul.

• Find a sharp little knife and whittle a twig.  Enough said. Whistling while you do it is a nice touch. (I remember a time when we all had jackknives in our pocket, and played games in the school yard at lunch. And none of us ever got expelled.) 

• Throw or give away 27 things. In feng shui practice, it’s believed that rearranging exactly 27 items has spiritual and energetic significance. In my version, it is jettisoning 27 things. I don’t know why, but 27 items is enough to feel significant but not so much that it makes you feel obsessive.

• Meditate. Nothing profoundly mystical necessary. Just sit for 30 minutes and let your mind do whatever it wants to do, without guidance or coercion.  

• Go to a good animated movie. Turn off your critical faculties and just enter the fantasy of it.  Note: it helps if you attend the matinee with Mrs. Geezer. A middle age men in a theater full of kids may draw some odd looks, and maybe a cop.

• Experience the full hour just before and after dawn with a cup of coffee. The 30 minutes right around dawn is where everything in the world falls silent. The transition into and out of that silence is one of life’s wonders. 

• Doodle. Fill the margins of the business report you are reading during the next corporate meeting with the most absurd, goofy scribbles you can create. For geezers, it’s allowable to sketch boobies.

• Don’t answer all your emails. Don’t even read ‘em all. By this point, you know who has something to say and who is full of air. On at least one day a month, delete all your emails without even opening them. The world won’t end. If anybody gets testy, blame it on the IT guys, or on Google. They’ll be guilty of something, if not this. 

• Walk to work occasionally. If you argue that your commute is too far, don’t be too sure. Try it and find out. I’ve known people who walk 10 or 12 miles occasionally, and find it to be a fine thing.

• Get seriously drunk every so often. It blows the pipes clear and frees the sticky valves. A serious hangover can be a cleansing, space-creating, soul-searching experience.

• Get together with your Geezer pals on a regular basis. Trust  me, this is truly mindless fun. Note: this is virtually always practiced in conjunction with the previous point. 

Movies by Mercurious™: Week of Dec. 3, 2012

In the throes of the weighty end-of-the-year stretch when all the major studios are frantically trying to force-feed you their entries into the race for best picture Oscar, you are well advised to settle your digestion by looking for a little snack in the form of small independent movies.

"A Late Quartet" is wonderful form of this snack. It's the story of a world-class string quartet who has been together for 20-some years. Although they are at the peak of their fame and skills, they have grown a little stale in their precision, and a little weary of their collaboration. And they are also, frankly, just a little tired of one another as human beings. They are at that stage in life where, while continued growth is achievable, an individual has also spotted the ceiling and been forced to recognize that not everything is still possible. The older you get, the more crucial are the decisions you make, and the smaller the window for recovery if the decisions are bad.  (This, of course, is what makes this a great Geezer film. One of the benefits of getting older is that with a real understanding of life's arc,  individual moments take on a greater poignancy and liveliness because you recognize their terribly finite nature.)

The sudden diagnosis of early Parkinson's disease for the elder statesman of the group, the cellist played by Christopher Walken, throws the world into chaos. While the cellist has a year or so to continue performing, the group finding itself suddenly confronted with life's inherent uncertainty after years of successful complacency is the stuff of the classic tragi-comic formula.

This is not a "comedy" movie, mind you; but the film's serious presentation of the problems that arise when the status quo is suddenly overturned has its roots in the classic Greek Tragedy-Comedy cycle. Underlying the utterly realistic depiction of intelligent, talented people trying to cope, there are universal themes at work here, involving order and chaos, life and death,  love and hate, ambition and acceptance. It's a movie that makes you think about these serious subjects without preaching philosophy or beating you over the head with obvious symbolism. It reminded me, in some ways, of the very best Woody Allen endeavors, though, as I say, the comedy is the classic sort that makes you smile with understanding and sympathy, not laugh at absurdity and prat-falls.

The movie features Christopher Walken, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Kathleen Keener, and you will see no more finely acted movie this year. Compare Christopher Walken in "Seven Psychopaths" to his performance here, and you conclude there is no more interesting actor on the planet. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is invariably good, of course, but compared to his rather bombastic role in "The Master," this is a gem of subtlety and skill.

Geezer quotient: 96/100

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