Meditations – Limited Perspective: A Personal Vortex

A Cautionary Tale

Decades ago, in places near and far, earnest seventh-graders stayed up half the night writing ten longhand copies of a chain letter. The text claimed that the letter had already been forwarded around the world twice, and implored its recipients “not to break the chain.” It went on to list examples of bad luck that had befallen those who ignored the plea, and made promises of good fortune to those who kept the cycle going.

Inspired by these words, the young scribes spent their allowance savings on envelopes and stamps, and mailed off the letters, along with a postcard addressed to some name at the top of a list. Then, they waited hopefully for the promised arrival of “thousands of postcards from all over the world.”

Few of them asked if the stories of good or bad fortune were true, or what the original chain letter looked like before it had “traveled twice around the world,” let alone who had changed the text along the way. And even if they sought answers, none were to be found.

When weeks passed and nothing had come of it, some had already forgotten about it entirely. Some wondered what they had done wrong, and hoped that the mail might bring another letter with another chance. Some, who had never traveled far from home and yearned for even a card-sized glimpse of exotic locales, perhaps concluded that the world was a heartless place that devoured children’s dreams, if it even existed at all.

And some, perhaps with the guidance of good teaching in mathematics and critical thinking, learned the true lesson: they realized that an enterprise that appeared so sound and simple on paper was really doomed from the start. For while the kindness of strangers is real, it usually arises unsolicited or when it is needed, but not when systematically summoned. Kindness is a gift best given freely, and best received by chance.

It is the good fortune.

Toxic Fuming

After all these years, I still don’t get anger.

Don’t misread the last word of that sentence. I wish I could say that I don’t get angry, and I’m working toward that goal. But I’m here to say that I don’t understand the special place that anger itself has been granted among all other human emotions.

To use the recent parlance, why is this still a thing? We consider ourselves civilized above all other animals: we are (relatively) discriminating about what we consume and where we excrete; we engage in commerce, recognizing that division of labor makes life more efficient and productive for everyone; we pass laws and amend them as society advances. But unlike lawlessness, unfair trading, and urinating in the swimming pool, we give anger a pass, even at times defending it by labeling it “justified,” or more frequently “righteous.”

This is not blind acceptance. Unlike, say, joy or sadness, we sometimes work to “manage” anger. An ancient culture included anger (aka “wrath” or “ire”) as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But alone among the seven, anger is routinely blamed on other people. If you were to attribute your gluttony or your lust or your sloth to someone else’s actions, the message is that your own character is weak. In contrast, to say “You make me mad!” implies not just blamelessness but outright victimhood, accusing someone else of imposing on you an undesirable condition. Anger is not only the red-hot emotion, it’s also conveniently coated in Teflon.

What’s more, anger can be used as a sort of bioweapon, deliberately sent to infect others for the purpose of harm. “I’m just doing that to piss him off,” is the reason given for some acts of aggression. (As if reason is actually involved.) Sometimes the action is more passive-aggressive: have you ever noticed how many political-themed postings bear a provocative headline that focuses not on facts, but on adverse reaction? The template is usually something like this: “[Someone we agree with] made this statement or took that action, and [someone we don’t agree with] is fuming mad about it.” It’s not enough to contradict someone’s opposing views; it seems equally important to incite anger in the opposition, because it hurts them and therefore pleases us. This also implies that once someone “makes” you angry, there is damn little you can do about it. It’s the raging white elephant that you are obligated to accept. Or is it?

My first epiphany in this matter came over forty years ago via that great 1970s art form, a made-for-TV movie. It was called The Silence, and starred Richard Thomas in the rather un-John Boy role of a military cadet who is unjustly accused of violating an institutional honor code, and receives the unofficial (but tradition-bound) hazing of internal exile, calculated to drive him toward resigning in disgrace, thus not tainting his class with his shame. The young man’s family hired an attorney to take the academy and its shadowy machinations to court. I don’t remember exactly how the movie ended, but it’s easy to guess. Remember, this was the time when the previous decade’s rebellion had filtered its way into network television as the respectable effort to Strike Back Against the System. Dragnet was no longer in production, and the starring characters in the law dramas were defense attorneys, all fighting the good fight against a corrupt, or at least unfeeling, tangle of rules.

At one point in the film, the attorney asks Thomas’ character, “Aren’t you angry about this?” The response: “I don’t get angry.”

Full stop. From this point onward, no further events in the story are retained in my memory. But the implication of that one terse statement oiled my philosophical gears for decades to come. Anger is a choice. Anger can be refused.

Now, this is in distinction from a catchphrase shared by all too many revenge stories: “We don’t get mad; we get even.” Rejecting anger has little or nothing to do with righting a perceived wrong. It’s about not giving someone else the power to inflict an unreasoning and destructive emotion into your own psyche. It’s about maintaining a level of emotional integrity.

The meaning of that last sentence was especially welcome to me. I was in my seemingly endless adolescence, suffering the slings and arrows (and occasional pleasures) of a baffling array of emotions, all taking hold of me without warning and dragging me into psychological parts unknown. So, the notion that I could control anger was especially appealing at a time when I could barely control the pitch of my voice. Why wouldn’t it be? Anger had nothing positive to offer. The Incredible Hulk notwithstanding, anger doesn’t create heroes. Angry people break things. Angry people make statements they later regret. Angry people burn bridges (figuratively, but who knows?). Angry people are unreasonable, and reject reason in others. And angry people are simply unpleasant to be around, leaving a puddle of awkwardness and hurt feelings behind them. No one would choose anger if they didn’t have to. And apparently they didn’t have to.

I sat on this revelation for a long time. As with any discovery, the answers were soon outnumbered by new questions. If I knew about this, why did it seem that no one else did? If anger is a choice, why would anyone choose it? Is it just easier not to fight it? (That seemed likely.) Is it a bad habit, or even an addiction? If the latter is the case, then I must be cautious in approaching it in others. Even in my barely decade-and-a-half of life experience, I already knew that some people’s struggles were far more difficult than meets the eye. For example, I knew enough not to proclaim that quitting smoking is as simple as “Step One: spit the thing out. Step Two: there is no Step Two.” And I knew that anger is a more primal, more prevalent enemy than any drug addiction.

Also, anger has its defenders. It was anger with the Crown, some say, that led to the American Revolution. Anger with the prevailing social injustice sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights movement, women’s rights, LGBT rights. Hell, anger even prompted people to complain to the landlord about cockroach infestation. Those are all good results, right?

Good results, yes. But I contend that anger, at best, pushed the people along in the direction they were already headed. At best it is a catalyst, and not a reliable one. Anger is a force, but it’s not a vector force. (Pardon the high school physics reference.) Anger should never be asked to steer; anger pushes whichever way it pleases. Anger is not the car, but the JATO rocket tied to the car in the urban legend. Anger is fire, which is useful only when strictly controlled. Uncontrolled anger is potentially hellish.

Do I get angry? I wish I didn’t, but it does happen. And in those times I do my best to keep that anger to myself, even to the point of seclusion until I regain control. Yes, it can be difficult, but isn’t that part of the price of civilization? We don’t vomit in the presence of others, if we can help it, so why would we display anger? To do so is unkind, it brings discomfort to others. That said, I find it takes the utmost diplomacy sometimes when I’m around other people’s anger. To this day I still strongly fight the urge to say something along the lines of, “I’m sorry you choose to be so angry right now. How about if I leave you alone so that you can restore yourself to reason, and then we’ll see about solving whatever problem you have?” I’m not naive; I know that the result would be exactly the opposite of what I want. And yet, it’s precisely what I would hope someone would say to me. Seriously. By the same token, I outright reject the notion of “not going to bed angry.” Why carry out an angry exchange while the body grows more tired with each hour, when instead you can pause it, go to sleep, and discuss the matter next day when everyone is calmer?

No doubt some of you are now realizing that I was completely sincere in the opening statement of this essay.

You might wonder just how well I’m doing in trying to live up to this ideal. The answer is, I’ve had some success so far. When I was teaching, more than once I overheard students remark that “Mr. V never gets angry.” And recently, someone expressed gratitude for my not getting angry with them in a particular situation, adding that, if the roles were reversed, that person would certainly be angry with me. I couldn’t ask for a better compliment, I suppose, or at least I couldn’t expect one.

Some people are able to vent their anger, and then quickly return to normal. Some people seem to hold their anger for years, probably at the expense of relationships and their own happiness, if not their own health. For me, anger is a burden that carries no benefit, and as currency it can buy me nothing I wish to obtain. It’s the emotional equivalent of the appendix, whose usefulness is gone, leaving only potential harm. It’s a glowing, red-hot enigma. Someday I might see it in a different light, but until then I’m doing my best to keep it out of my life.

#anger

Mini-Musing №1: Unnecessary Numbering

I’m a big believer in the written outline. It’s a useful tool, a basic skeleton upon which a story or essay is fleshed out. With its simple hierarchical structure, listing major divisions with upper-case Roman numerals, subdivisions with capital letters, and further slicings with so-called Arabic numerals, then lower-case letters, and so on, the outline is an elegant way to organize ideas into a cohesive, flowing piece of writing that insinuates itself into the reader’s brain like a Ceti eel. Who could have a problem with that?

The answer, I found out, was some of my students. They didn’t object to the organizational method per se, but rather my insistence that a heading of “A” or “1” was acceptable only if it were succeeded somewhere by a “B” or “2.” My explanations sometimes fell upon unbelieving ears, occasionally leading to admittedly creative arguments:

“You can’t slice a pizza into one piece.”

“Well, what if you make a single cut from the center straight to the edge? That’s a slice!”

It didn’t help that a couple of my English teacher colleagues sided with the students on this point. I attributed that to having a mind more attuned to reason and ideas rather than calculations, the left/right brain theory. The atmosphere in the teachers’ lounge was contentious that day.

As time passed, I developed some better arguments, or shall I say explanations, to use with my students. You don’t give something a title of One unless you anticipate that there will be a Two. Imagine, I said, if at a wedding you heard, “Do you take this man to be your first husband?” Likewise, the phrase “World War I” did not exist until the beginning of World War II (this was a new historical fun fact for some in the classroom). If John Smith has no children, he’d be silly to call himself John Smith, Sr. Should the situation change, the name can change as well. Though not anticipated at the beginning, we can find ourselves later referring to a first marriage, a second Bush Administration, a third Godfather movie.

It’s true that an appellation of First can be applied when there is an expectation of more to follow. When this is done by royalty, it lends the air of being at the beginning of a dynasty. In contrast, Pope Francis declines to place a number after his title, perhaps as a show of humility. (His onetime predecessor John Paul I was not so openly modest, and, well, look what happened to him.)

Similarly, printings of books are numbered from the beginning, with the confidence that sales will bring about multiple repetitions. [Gratuitous literary anecdote: bombastic author Alexander Woollcott, receiving a shipment of his latest book fresh from the printer, stated, “Ah, what is so rare as a Woollcott first edition?” “A Woollcott second edition,” quipped his office mate Franklin P. Adams.] A designation of “first” for anything implies that there will be more, and creates a mood of suspense, but also a condition of being incomplete. It’s one thing to admit to murder; it’s a bit more to say you’ve committed your first murder.

[Mood-lightening quip, from my ninth-grade biology teacher Mitchell Cox: “My goal is to make my second million; I’ve given up on my first million.”]

Do numerations unnecessarily complicate our lives? And why is “Second” the most frequently occurring numerical street name? The answer to the latter is that often the first constructed street in a town was called “Main” or “Grand” or some such, with the numbering added only as parallel streets were constructed later. As for the former, the answer is a subjective one, worthy of pondering with both sides of your brain. Your first brain.

Louder on the Inside

A ~~Tune~~ Note I Can’t Get Out of My Head

Here are a few thoughts on my tinnitus:

The word is generally taken to mean a “ringing in the ears,” although it varies from case to case. For me, it’s usually a single high-pitched note, occasionally punctuated with a clicking sound.
I prefer the pronunciation with the first syllable accented, even though that contradicts my usual authority, Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1934, my copy is from 1949). The other accepted pronunciation accents the second syllable; I avoid that because it makes it sound like the word ends in -itis, implying an inflammation. This is one of my linguistic quirks, and I stand my ground.
Sources I’ve consulted all point out that tinnitus is not an ailment, but a symptom, usually of hearing loss resulting from exposure to loud noise. Fair enough. Although I might have played some music too loud in the ’70s (not Led Zeppelin, but Mahler and Richard Strauss), I pin the cause on my happy summer afternoons “experimenting” with fireworks. Ah, the days when $1.29 would get you a gross of bottle rockets and several hours’ occupation. Fond memories.
Tinnitus is a condition, like headaches, that is difficult to observe externally through empirical means. Therefore, no one is entirely sure whether animals ever suffer migraines or tinnitus. Paging Dr. Dolittle.
If someone asks me to describe what my condition is like, I tell them to grit their teeth hard so that they can hear a high pitched sound from their jaw muscles. I once heard a radio program where a doctor demonstrated the effect using a tone generator to make extremely high-pitched sounds. The reaction from the show’s host: “Turn it off! Make it stop! Please!”
A common belief over the years is that tinnitus is the sound of blood vessels near the eardrum. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has a servant girl mention the topic, not realizing that her interlocutor had committed murder the previous day. “It’s the blood.” “Blood! What blood?” “That’s the blood crying in your ears.” I do remember times as a child, sitting in a very quiet room, and hearing the sound in my ears getting louder until some external noise came up.
In all the years that I taught, one constant foible among many students was a real aversion to silence. Some of them seemed uncomfortable by a lack of noise in a room, almost to the point of panic. Some of these same young people played their music so loud that I could hear it from their earbuds across the room, so perhaps they need not worry about dealing with absolute silence before too long.
The volume level of my ear noise is fairly constant, though it does increase at times, particularly if my blood pressure is raised. I have noticed that even if I’m in a room where the ambient sound (e.g. music, machinery) is so loud that conversation is almost impossible, I can still hear my single note in the ear, like a fermata from a heavenly soloist.
Yes, I hear it even in my dreams.
I have made peace with it. There are certainly worse conditions to deal with (such as migraine headaches, which run rampant in my family, including me). I’ve read of some people whose tinnitus is akin to an endless torture, driving them to suicide in some cases. My luck is much better than that (at least so far). The threat level of my condition is somewhere between “nuisance” and “annoyance,” and as such I can live my life with it. And of course it’s not as bad as, say, missing some fingers, which was another possible outcome of my fireworks escapades.
And finally,I’m not sure what musical note my tinnitus is, but it is above 8000 Hz, which makes it at least an octave higher than Key 88 on a piano. If ever I wanted an über-nerdy conversation starter, there it is.

#tinnitus

In Praise of the Invisible Hand (and Foot, and Valve, and Junction Box…)

[This piece originally appeared on my Facebook page some 14 months ago, or a couple of eons back in social media time.]

Let’s give some respect to infrastructure.

If we ever hear this word, it’s usually in the context of large-scale funding for roads and bridges. But by its very nature, infrastructure is normally out of the spotlight, often not exposed to much light at all or given attention for years at a time. Infrastructure is every load-bearing wall in your house, every wire and pipe, every nail and setscrew, every seal and switch, every hinge, latch and lock. It’s all of those parts, manufactured in some other place, installed by someone you might have never met (and who may no longer be alive).

Infrastructure is, by design, highly functional while at the same time hidden from sight, or at least disguised as something less, well, utilitarian. Look at the photo above. What you are seeing are two cellular transmission towers that are camouflaged, more or less convincingly, as saguaro cacti.

It’s not only people who require infrastructure. A tree depends for its very life on suitable soil, reliable water, regular doses of sunlight, and perhaps a symbiotic relationship with some other life form, be it bird, insect or microbe. And of course, on air and gravity. Come to think of it, people rely on almost all of those things as well, including the microbes.

Now let’s zoom out. The infrastructure of a community is as important (and undercelebrated) as any other. Language and customs keep a community thriving, as do forms of commerce, law, and religious and other social institutions. Systems of public health and education literally assist a community (family, tribe, nation, etc.) in surviving from one generation to another.

But’s it’s not all technical. There is aesthetic infrastructure. Pictures on a wall, libraries, landscaping, architecture, and venues for entertainment (including sports) are all parts of the infrastructure which help a community define itself as distinct from others in the animal kingdom. Or, from that community on the other side of the hill.

And this brings me to a major point. People not only require infrastructure, but are part of it themselves. Public utilities are designed, operated, monitored and repaired by people. They do their job which we might not even think about when we flip a switch, change a channel, set an alarm, visit a website. There are people on the job for this at literally all hours, and on weekends, and on holidays, in inclement weather, during the big game, or when seemingly the whole world is taking a break. Someone somewhere is on the job, solving problems, or steering us all past the jagged rocks.

It’s tempting to make a value judgment, to say that we have not so much a dependence on our infrastructure as an addiction. We can live without many of these things because we have done so in the past: 40 years ago we had no internet, 400 years ago no electricity, 4000 years ago no paved roads, and so on. But that’s not the point. We provide these things for ourselves because we are an interdependent community, living “on the grid” because we ourselves are the structure of that grid. To shift a figure of speech, we are not just passengers on this voyage; we are all crew members.

You might feel that you are replaceable, that someone else could take over your job tomorrow. But look at it this way: more than likely your job is irreplaceable (or nearly so), and benefits the whole in a way that might not be celebrated, or well-rewarded, but would make a difference if it ceased to exist. We are not all George Bailey, who saved people’s lives; most of us instead are the scriptwriters, film developers and projectionists who made George Bailey come to life. We don’t always notice the thread, but everyone notices the hole. The thread is the substance that keeps itself together and is useful and valuable. The thread is us.

#infrastructure