Dr. Golf: Inspiration abounds in a Tour de Force

—Publisher's note: To the uninitiated....the Geezers Emeritus have had a long-standing series of gaming battles conducted in an on-line battlefield designed to resembled the old board game, Risk. Dr. Golf is our historian of these battles, and following is the result of the latest battle—

With one of the most daring attacks in recent memory, Dr. Golf, in a single turn vanquished his foes, eliminating Mercurious and the Mathematician, and reducing the Professor to English cream. 

Like Angela Merkel on Greek debt, Dr. Golf was ruthless and wondrous, uncompromising and unsympathetic. Would that there could be more action heroes like our stunning Dr. Golf. In a game regrettably won more and more by sluggish bureaucrats who eat porridge and slurp weak tea, our Dr. Golf slashes and dashes about on a steady diet of red meat, martinis and dark Cuban cigars.  

When he finds time for rest is anyone's guess, but one can only imagine that his time in bed isn't wasted on sleep. Maybe Dr. Golf could address the sluggish world economy before the next game consumes his undivided attention once more. The world can only wait and we can only dream.

Geezers in the Land of Women

Being a man is not easy, though the Geezer wives might say otherwise. But I must say, that being a man in the world of women gets a little easier as you enter the Geezer years.

It was damned hard as a younger man to gauge just what the proper behavior was for any given moment, as the trends for acceptable, politically correct behavior shifted quickly in the strident 1980s and 90s.  I remember being in graduate school, for example, at a time when you were taking a serious risk by opening the door for a woman, or offering to vacate a seat on the bus so a woman could sit down.

At the time, such behavior was viewed as an insult—a not-so-subtle statement that we as men saw women as physically weaker and inferior, requiring our deference and care. Not all women viewed things this way, of course, so it was terribly challenging to know how you should behave. I remember Ralph, my office mate in graduate school, telling me that he used the presence of armpit hair to gauge this. If he sensed (or saw proof) that a woman failed to shave the underarms, you absolutely did not act with polite tradition, at the risk of verbal emasculation. But if you either saw, or sensed, a woman who did shave under the arms, you were allowed to behave like a gentleman.

 It perhaps bears saying that Ralph did not have a lot of dates.

Young men today tell me that the problem still exists, though perhaps not to the same degree. Some modern young women still rather vehemently insist on being treated exactly like men are treated, while others have softened and find it polite and genteel for a young man exhibit this kind of behavior. So this is clearly a generational issue, not just a function of the times we live in. It's still hard for young men to exist correctly in female eyes.

It's much less of a problem for Geezer men, though, because as men age, pretty much all women chalk up displays of traditional social graces as being normal behavior given the old-time upbringing we geezer men experienced.  These days, I find that almost every young woman smiles in appreciation when a Geezer holds a door or gives up a seat; I have seen the same woman frown in disapproval when a young man behaves similarly a few minutes later.

Showing an hormonal appreciation of pretty women is a tricky thing for young men, too. We all remember years when we honed the skill of looking at pretty girls while pretending not to, averting your eyes when you sensed the woman's gaze heading toward your own eyes, stealing small quick glances rather direct stares, even appreciating the view through reflected glass rather than directly. A direct gaze is admittedly intrusive, after all, and pretty girls are always even prettier when they don't realize they are being viewed.

Flash forward 25 years, and you find that virtually all women are pleased, even charmed, by a well groomed, well-dressed Geezer who offers an appreciative glance delivered with a smile—provided it is not terribly lecherous. Dirty old geezers aren't appealing at all, but healthy ones are charming, apparently.

In the workplace, female colleagues of young professional men are often resentful of restrictions on them (often for rightful reasons, such as pay inequity and fewer promotion opportunities), and as a result all the men, even innocent ones, feel the effects of their struggle and resentment.

But by the time you reach Geezerhood, most of your contemporary female colleagues have long since realized that their foes in the workplace are just as often other women, not men exclusively.  That's not to say that workplace discrimination against women by men doesn't exist (it obviously does) but if you are a reasonable geezer that projects a sense of fairness, most women will now treat you as an equal, not a potential slave-master. They no longer make you pay for institutionalized injustices for which you are not responsible.

As a sign that things are definitely different for Geezers, at lunch yesterday I approached a department store door, and realized that approaching from the opposite side was a woman with a highly political, radical bent to her. She wore short, spiked hair, studs in her ears, a surly look, and a sleeveless T-shirt that read "Hands Off my Uterus, Asshole!" The furriness of her underarms was widely visible to the world. The coming social encounter would have been  terrifying to me back in the day, though the proper way to behave would not have been in dispute back then. In 1979, you would cast your eyes down, move by her meekly with nary a word and certainly not a glance.

I held the door for this young woman with a smile, standing aside as she passed through the door. 

She smiled shyly, and actually gave something that vaguely resembled a bow as she moved by me.  "Thank you sir," the young tattooed goth  murmured. There was a faint blush on her cheeks. Immediately following was a very pretty woman, who smiled at the old-fashioned manners she had witnessed, then brushed by close enough to let me smell her perfume.

Yes, arthritic knees aside, in many ways I prefer the Geezer years.

Movies by Mercurious: Dec. 8

I very much wanted to like Hitchcock, as its subject is one of my favorite film personalities, and it features three very entertaining actors: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, and Scarlet Johansson.

Alas, it falls short, through no fault of the actors, but mostly the screen play. The film quite can't decide what it wants to be: in-depth discussion of the creative process of making Psycho; examination of the complicated and fascinating marriage between Hitchcock and his wife Alma; or a depth psychology portrait of Hitchcock's strange and disturbing relationship to his leading ladies.  As a result, it does nothing very well.

The movie fails in the biggest way as regards the psychological portrait of Hitchcock's inner life. Ed Gein, the Wisconsin psychopath whose story serves as one major influence on Hitchcock's film, is presented as some sort of alter ego from whom Hitchcock takes personal and career advice. In nothing I ever read about Hitchcock was there ever any hint that he was this far down the path of bat-shit crazy, so this plot thread seems utterly contrived, and just plain silly.

The depiction of the historical problems and creative solutions on the Psycho screen play and filming and interesting, but it is hardly new ground, and you could get most of this from a short magazine article on the subject.

The plot thread that works best, and the one that the director should have taken as the core of the movie, is the unusual partnership between Hitchcock and his wife, a story that's not told often enough, and one that could have been amplified to great effect in the hands of these two fine actors. The few moments of extended interplay between husband and wife represent the only genuinely engaging moments in the film.

Scarlett Johanson is of course today's equivalent of the classic Hitchcock blonde, and if he was working today, she is exactly the actress he would long to work with. She does a passable job of playing Janet Leigh, but isn't exactly allowed to shine with any range here (then again, Janet Leigh wasn't an actress of great range, herself). But the presence of Scarlett Johanson wasn't enough for this Geezer to be able to strongly recommend the movie.

It's fine if you've already seen the other holiday films, but not really worth your time otherwise.

Geezer quotient:  70/100.


Better than Hitchcock, but still slightly behind the other big end of year movies, is Life of Pi.  I was very curious about how this excellent, fairy-tale-like novel would reach the big screen. I can think of no other director that could make a more valiant effort than Ang Lee, whose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is one of my all-time favorites, but this isn't in that league, despite the many accolades and the likely nomination it will receive for Best Picture of the Year.

There is no point in discussing the plot here, just as describing the book plot is nearly impossible. Suffice it to say that both are about Big Questions, including fate and the existence of God.

The film is gorgeous visually, though, and is probably well worth seeing for that reason alone. But don't attend expecting it to duplicate the experience of the book. Movies rarely do, of course, but with a book that was so magically successful, meeting expectations in film is nearly impossible.

Geezer Quotient: 88/100

Citizens of 4F

—publisher's note:  "Citizens of 4F" was a running feature penned by Mercurious in a previous life for another little-read digital magazine.  This episode is a new introduction to that series, which features a series of personality profiles, real and projected, of the people Mercurious encounters on his daily commuter bus rides (the 4F line) between residential south Minneapolis and the downtown business district—


Gladys is a passenger I see both on the 7:00 am bus into downtown as well as the 5:45 bus out of downtown, maybe 4 days out of every 5 days that I ride. Recently, she has changed her behavior in a very noticeable way.

Now, people in general, and bus commuters in particular, are creatures of habit. Over the years, it has become common for me on the morning ride to take the window seat on the right side of the bus, four rows back from the front. At the first day, this was really just because the spot happened to be open, and as it subsequently was open most every morning, it grew to be became "my spot."

It offered certain advantages, because, as you've noticed, I'm a snoopy observer, and this seat lets me clearly see a good number of regular riders at the front of the bus.  It's this vantage that has allowed me to say, with authority, that approximately 40% of Minneapolis bus commuters bide their bus time reading books—a number that makes us considerably more literate than the US norm.  And I also know, with some authority, that of this number, E-book readers make up half (or 20% of the total ridership) and that novels are the the literary snack of choice.

Gladys is one of these literate bus commuters.  She is of modest means, as her clothes, shoes, and hairstyle attest. But she is certainly literate, and impressively so. She carries a book bag bearing the logo of an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, from which she brings reading forth material that is invariably weighty. No Danielle Steele for Gladys; she reads Joyce Carol Oats, Margaret Atwood, Faulkner, Welty, Steinbeck. And she is serious enough that she owns her books rather than borrows them; no library stamps on these editions. She does prefer bargain, mass-market editions rather more expensive hardcovers and trade papers, but this is no flaw.

As an editor, I appreciate anybody who prefers to buy books, even second-hand, over borrowing them from the library. It speaks of someone who values books, has many around the home, and likely rereads them again and again.

Gladys, well, she looks like a Gladys, which is of course why I've given her this name. She is slightly round, about 50, 52 years of age, with a slightly frizzy hair treatment that suggests either a poor permanent-curling, or a treatment in need of renewal. Not quite beehive, but trending that way.  There isn't a lot remarkable about Gladys, and I imagine that a great many of the regular riders don't even recognize her as a regular.

Gladys normally takes a seat opposite me on the bus aisle,  three rows back. This too, just happens to be a habit, as the bus is quite empty early in the morning, and we both really have our choices of seats.

A week ago or so, a very interesting behavior began. When I get on the bus in the morning and begin walking down the aisle, Gladys now quickly gets up from her normal seat and scurries up to occupy the one that has been my more-or-less traditional home for years now.

Now, this would not be even noticeable, and certainly not something I'd even wonder about, if the seat was already occupied when I boarded the bus in the morning. The fascinating thing is Gladys' apparent need for me to be fully aware that she is deliberately moving into this seat so as to deny it to me.

Initially I was puzzled and a little annoyed. It's certainly no issue to me where I sit on the bus. But the fact of Gladys' deliberateness was a obvious statement of some kind. Then I grew concerned, and worried that I had inadvertently slighted her in some way and that her actions were a communication of some kind of anger. Had I accidentally cut her off in the aisle on some ride recently?  Had she tried to say hello on the street and had I ignored her? (This isn't uncommon, as my hearing isn't great these days). Or was she annoyed with the way I study people and using her act of as a way to say "bugger off, pal."

I could find no such faux pas on my part. My study of fellow humans is done very subtly, and I really don't think anybody catches on to the fact. The verbal portraits I draw about people are concluded from dozens, if not hundreds, of small glances that collect over many months.  I certainly don't stalk anybody, and don't ever stare at people for long periods at any one time in a way that would offend them.

And my memory is still good—almost photographic for visual things—and I would remember any act on my part that could be taken in an insulting way. No, these little acts of deliberate, mild hostility in Gladys seem self-born with no original causal event to explain it.

Then I found myself a little amused and even impressed with her. It shows more spunk than I frankly would have expected given her otherwise meek manner. It was mysterious, and mystery is fun. I was impressed in the same way that I applaud when a senior citizen burns rubber away from a stop sign.

I do wonder what the heck is going on with her, though, and at last have determined that her boss, who looks a little bit like me, is a real jerk giving her a hard time at work. Gladys' little acts of defiance toward me let her imagine that she's getting back at that asshole boss.

Tomorrow, I'm going to ask her if she wants to punch me in the stomach.  It will probably make her feel better, and maybe she'll smile later in the day when her boss starts to behave badly.  She is a small women, and it won't hurt very much. And besides, these days I am very well padded in that area of my anatomy.

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.