Hi!
So I haven’t blogged you like a summer breeze lately, let alone a hurricane, so I
thought I would change that. On past Thanksgivings around this time I would probably be half
in the bag and in no condition to blog anything remotely coherent or
grammatically recognizable, but I decided to stop after 2 beers and a glass of
whine today. Maturity breeds blogs.
And
besides celebrating the slaughtering of Indians and turkeys, what could be more
American than spouting off completely unsolicited thoughts on Thanksgiving? The Pilgrims would have wanted it this way. I can’t
wait to get started!
I’ve come to realize that I have finally
obtained true wisdom in my life. How do I know? Aristotle once said….hold on
let me Google the exact quote….nope can’t find it. Maybe it was Socrates? Screw
it. One of the ancient Greek philosophers said something like, “The difference
between the wise man and the fool is the fool believes he knows all there is to
know but the wise man is only aware of his own ignorance”. Or, to site a
slightly more contemporary source, I recently heard John Cleese—the British
comedian known as one of the creators of Monty Python—say, “The older I’ve
gotten, the more I’ve realized no one has any clue what they are talking about”.
He’s 74, but I’m only at the tender age
of 41 (practically a kid!) yet I feel as if I’m starting to reach that
stage of my personal development as well. I’ve realized I’m pretty much
clueless about pretty much everything, but so is everyone else! The best quote
I heard this week on the Ferguson debacle came from Glenn Beck (just kidding).
It was a Facebook post which said, “In other news, millions of
Facebook users suddenly get their law degrees”.
Bingo. Everyone is an authority on this case.
Not. None of us could buy a clue if they sold it at a Wal Mart Black Friday blowout sale.
In fact even if I had a law degree (at press time Arizona State is mulling over
awarding me an honorary JD—they’ve sunk to a new low) I still wouldn’t have an
idea. At the most basic level, we don’t even know what happened! There is the
report from Officer Wilson—hardly an objective source. There are the varying
eyewitness reports—not objective either because they apparently contradict one
another as well as some of the forensic evidence. And the witnesses may not even
be lying. They just don’t know! This is called the Rashomon Effect—named
for a classic Japanese movie in which a crime is committed near a clearing in
the woods and each eyewitness tells a different version of what happened so we
never know exactly what really went down. People's ability to provide a true objective
account is limited by their vantage point, perhaps their fear, maybe their
preconceived notions of life…. Even when we are present at events we often
don’t even know exactly what we saw.
But we do have forensic evidence. Science.
Pure objectivity. None of this wishy washy human error ridden eyewitness crap.
But forget it. Can the forensic evidence prove whether Michael Brown really did
reach for the cop's gun? And even if it could, could it prove whether
Officer Wilson had no recourse but to shoot him? Can it prove he truly didn’t
have access to his night stick? Can it prove that if he had shot him in the leg
once or twice that that wouldn’t have subdued him? Or can it disprove any these things?
So in the end…..we’re left to guess. I think
if we’re truly honest with ourselves, our views of this case—and maybe every
case—come back to our assumptions about the world in general, not the specific
facts that took place in one tiny corner of the world that most of us had never
heard of known as Ferguson, Missouri. To quote another insane famous wise man
who actually didn’t a have clue about anything despite book after book of
theories claiming the opposite, Sigmund Freud once said, “We are not rational
creatures, we are rationalizing creatures”. We look for ways to make the facts
fit our pre-existing biases. My own thought? I lean towards the suspicion that
the cop could have found other ways around this problem, that we was not in
fact painted into such a corner that shooting him six times was the only
option and that we are moving the line too far in what we call self defense.
But why do I think that? It might be simply because I root for the underdog. I’m the type of person who looks with utter
disdain on the guy whose favorite sports teams are the Yankees, Lakers, Cowboys,
Canadiens, and of course the other “name for the winners in the world”, as
Steely Dan would put it, the Alabama Crimson Tide. In other words, the obvious
front runner. The person who believes—not without some justification—that life
is short, you only get one life, life is about winning, and the best way to
assure winning is to reserve your sympathies and loyalties for other
winners rather than betting on those long shot losers. Meanwhile, others are the
champions of long shots—some might say lost causes. These poor lost souls
believe life is about transformation, not accumulation. They are most turned on by alchemy—converting base metals into gold, turning water to wine, or turning
frogs into princes. If things are gold, or wine, or princes to begin with, then
what’s the point? Where’s the fun? What is their purpose or anyone's purpose when the work is already
finished? Their favorite song isn’t All I Do Is Win, it’s Even The Losers Get
Lucky Sometimes.
And such a person as this might look at
Michael Brown as the base metal never allowed to become gold, the frog never to
be transformed into a prince. A big kid, yes. A shoplifting thug, maybe. But a
poor, underprivileged kid in a Cardinals hat who may have gotten direct or
indirect messages from the day he was born that he was worthless. Unneeded and
unwanted by the world. Human surplus. And he internalized those messages until he came to see
himself as good for nothing but shoplifting and lashing out. And for a cop to opt
for shooting him to death as a possible first resort to a conflict, perhaps not the
last resort? The final humiliation.
So when others say, “You don’t believe in
personal responsibility at all then? He was a victim then?”. The underdog
rooting-for worldview holding person will say it’s not that they don’t think he
was wrong, but that it’s naïve to believe his actions were the sole cause of
his death. Yes, shoplifting was the first domino to fall. Yes, it was wrong. But the
actress Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting several years ago and she was
likely treated a little differently by the authorities when she was caught. Disability
attorneys collect a cut of social security disability checks from claimants who
hired them even when the attorney played zero role in the case. The claimant
believes it was money well spent because they think the attorney is the reason
they were approved, but it was strictly their medical condition. It's robbery--a rose by any other name smells as sour. Wall Street masters of the universe conned people into buying mortgages they knew they couldn't pay off and watched bond prices soar knowing they could sell them off
just before the game was up. One could easily argue that was shoplifting on a truly epic scale, and not one of them faced arrest, let alone six bullets. So while
personal responsibility does matter, it’s possibly sanctimonious to site
personal responsibility when similar irresponsible actions yield wildly
dissimilar reactions depending on where someone stands on the social ladder. Possibly
the Al Sharpton haters are right to say it’s not about race, but it’s most
certainly about social class. And it that is the case, focusing on the dissimilar
reactions of similar wrongful actions is not about blindly shielding
oneself from reality, but rather properly diagnosing the fundamental relevant and irrelevant distinctions of reality.
But I regret to inform you that the above
paragraphs were written—or should I say scribbled?--by a naïve, bleeding heart,
deluded lost soul who has no idea what the real world is like. Call us when the
spaceship lands, buddy! Those who are a bit more sober minded, those
non-dreamers with their feet firmly planted on the ground know that everyone
has free will and fifty wrongs don’t make a right. So if you CHOOSE to steal
cigarlos and if you don’t fully cooperate with the cops and you happen to get
shot…….oops. We need to thin the herd. Another tax draining loser that won’t
be burdening society for years to come. A blessing in disguise. And this view is
not so much pro death as it’s anti-stealing. If you don’t steal cigarlos, no
cop ever shoots you, so in effect it was a suicide more than a homicide. These
champions of free will and context-less, sociology-less hard line morality accordingly
bend and reshape the forensic and eyewitness evidence the opposite way the
dreaming liberals will bend and reshape the evidence. The cop clearly had no
choice. There was no wrong doing. Period. But the key mantra from both sides:
let’s never learn anything!
But again, just to recap: everyone is full of
it! We don’t know. There was no camera—we will never know exactly what
happened. Ever. Fox News and MSNBC might as well each change their names to The
Mystery Channel. And if I’m right in saying that our conclusions reveal more
about our pre-existing views of the world than our diligence in studying the minute
details of the evidence, we’re still left with questions, not answers. Which
world view is right? Is it right to say that in a world filled with unpunished
sinners, it’s shortsighted and hypocritical to call the demise of one punished sinner justice? Or
is it right to say we’re the authors of our actions so any unfortunate
reactions are the footnotes written by others, but they are only made possible by us,
the one and only author? Thre is no invisible magnetic force which forces someone to rob a store, their own independent thoughts and emotions are the only driving force, so they bear sole responsibility and it's weak minded cowardice to blame socioeconomics. Therefore save your pity for the non-thieves, the ones
who pay for their cancer causing cigar/cigarette hybrids with money they earned
at Cinnabon. Who is right? I don’t know! And—don’t shoot the messenger--I don't think you do either.
One of the eeriest things about adult life,
the thing no one really warns you about when you’re a kid, is the realization
that no one is truly in charge. One of my all time favorite lines is from
Apocalypse Now. Martin Sheen comes along a bridge with chaotic gunfire between
the Marines and the Viet Cong and he says to the first soldier he sees, “Who’s
the commanding officer here?”. The soldier looks at him nervously and says,
“Ain’t you?”. He then goes back to firing his machine gun. Perfect analogy for
adult life! No one is in charge! Okay, people are in charge in an “all the
world’s a stage” kind of way. Some play
the role of being in charge, but they actually have little clue about how to steer the ship someone decided to let them captain. Bumbling idiots is
perhaps a bit too strong, but if the shoe fits…. The board members in charge of
Apple thought it would be an amazing idea to fire Steve Jobs in 1985—not
knowing it would take him returning in the late 90’s to rescue the company from
near bankruptcy. George Bush invaded Iraq having no idea for sure whether
Saddam had WMD’s or whether the invasion would lead to democracy and peace in
the Middle East or ISIS. It’s like the documentary of Robert McNamara calls it: the fog
of war. You can’t see what will happen because there are so many variables it’s
beyond human comprehension or prognostication, but you feel you have to act
anyway…so you guess and pray. W. likewise went with his gut because he didn’t
know! Much like he did while a student at Yale, he just guessed “C“. Obama also
didn’t know whether healthcare reform would bring better health to America or
bankruptcy. He acted not on the guaranteed assurance that he was doing the
right thing, but rather the “audacity of hope”. And what is hope but an
admission that we don’t know but we’re going to choose to believe the best?
But it’s not just our leaders who are
clueless, I’m afraid. Who are the smartest guys on the planet? I’d say it’s
either Howie Mandel or theoretical physicists. Too close to call. Let’s focus
for a minute on the latter. Clearly they can tell us how the universe began,
right? Everyone knows this: the Big Bang Theory. They even named a sitcom after it. Except…..what is it? A bunch of matter became too dense and exploded and
then we all had cable TV. With some stuff happening in between, but brevity is
the key to awesome blogging. But where did the matter come from in the first
place? And isn’t one of the basic rules of science “nothing can be created or
destroyed but only recycled”. So doesn’t that very rule almost nix the idea of
the Big Bang being the true beginning of anything? Then there’s this
thought—which I saw on the Science Channel a couple weeks ago—that the
explosion might been from a black hole which had collected too much stuff. But
what is a black hole? An invisible matter sucking, light sucking Death
Star (that’s not really a star) which is formed after a very large star
explodes. Another country heard from! So if it was a black hole that had reached its full seating capacity which caused the Big Bang, there had to
have been a star beforehand so how is that the beginning of the universe? This
is starting to sound like someone sent us the DVD for Breakin’ 2: Electric
Boogalo before we had a chance to watch Breakin’. Or…I don’t know! And they don’t know! And
although I don’t have a PhD any more than I have a JD, I think I can accurately
sum up the totality of collective theories on the origin of the universe from
nuclear physicists across the globe: “Beats the shit out of us. But we will totally
get back to you on this”.
(PS—Physicists have also theorized that we
might actually be living inside a super massive black hole as we speak, but
before I ponder that any deeper I may need to wait until they legalize
marijuana in Connecticut. Maybe mushrooms).
So politics, science, law…..what else are we
clueless about? Oh, of course: religion. Religion is perhaps the motherload of
people raging against their own confusion. I don’t know who to pity more:
atheists or total, unquestioning devout, 110 percent believers. In either case,
they are basically people who post reviews on Yelp of a restaurant they haven’t
eaten at yet.
BELIEVER: My wife and I visited this establishment
on Sunday and it was simply divine. The bread was heavenly and the house band
sounded absolutely angelic. Their cover version of Hallelujah even blew away Jeff
Buckley’s version. We were on cloud nine. If I had one small complaint it’s that I
tend to prefer my maitre d’s to be a bit more clean cut and wear classier footwear than sandals.
ATHEIST: I kept reading rave review after
rave review about this place but when I showed up it was a huge letdown. THERE
WAS NOTHING THERE.
I
think we can clearly see that both reviewers are batshit crazy. We just don’t know, do
we? And if hope is our way of navigating through our sea of uncertainty in
life, faith is our way of navigating through the uncertainty of the afterlife.
And the ultimate slapstick comedy is when confused scientists go to war against
confused religious extremists and vice versa. Other than contracting the first
few pages of Genesis, for all we know science and religion are bedfellows. As I
said earlier, maybe there was no true beginning of the universe, the Big Bang
might been just the latest cycle after a previous cycle died. That’s a sort of religious idea. Many religions have theorized that our world is only the latest
in many, many prior cycles. Maybe modern science is slowly proving them right.
And the scientific idea that nothing is created or destroyed so maybe there WAS
no real beginning of anything, it just always was? Well, religion offers a term for that too: eternity. So hey scientists and religious folks, why
you gotta be so rude? Don’t you know they’re human too?
And
I would probably be remiss if I didn’t note another way we try to build a
beautiful house atop our foundation of uncertainty: love. The cousin of hope
and faith. The world is full of old love songs passionately dedicated to future
exes. But...how do you know you won’t change? Or the other person won’t change?
Or that no one changes, but your perception
of the other person or of yourself changes and you had no way to see it coming?
Or that your relationship working depended on both of you not changing? Billy
Joel once sang, “Don’t go changing / To try and please me”. He doesn’t
perform that song anymore because it’s written about an ex he doesn’t want to think about.
But Billy can be forgiven because as Bono once said, “Love is blindness / I
don’t want to see / Won’t you wrap the night around me?”. If the man who is
singlehandedly ridding Africa of famine and disease with his bare hands can’t
figure out love, who can??
Well,
I’m not certain of anything except that it’s getting late. In summary…..I don’t
know. I’m clueless about how to end this blog which just illustrates the
clueless nature of everything! Maybe my parting bit of advice (which will rival
in its uselessness a Dr. Phil pearl of wisdom): if someone tells you to
get a clue, get them a mirror. I don’t have a clue, you don’t have a clue, they
don’t have a clue. But it’s okay. We have out hope, faith, and, our love. Who needs a clue?
