A Eulogy for Nuanced Thinking

Nuance is pretty much dead. On social media, it's so dead that I have recently decided to stop being satirical. People -- even people I think are pretty smart -- just don't seem to see it anymore. Over the past few years, things that I said with shades of blue and tan and green have been stolen from me by the groupthinkers and turned into explosions of bright yellow and, now, any reference to my nuanced ideas are seen as another voice in agreement with the screaming binary crowds. (Heck, I might as well mix metaphors. There are no rules anymore, right?)

(Swift is turning in his grave right now.) 

For instance, I have long criticized the fact that "science is the new religion." You can find posts about it here, going back to 2010. Then, along came the climate-change deniers and, counter to it, the "trust the science" movement. Now, on one side stand those who ignore science and, on the other, are those who blindly follow anything a scientist says -- who treat science as a depository of incontrovertible fact and see lab coated rsearchers as vestment-clad priests and priestesses of truth. So, if I question science, even after doing considerable reading on it, I must be seen as one side by a fool and by the other as one of their own. 

Fake news? Good old Mr. Trump killed that one. Again, for years, I complained about misleading and outright phony news. Now that he, in his inimitably oafish and cro-magnon-like way has appropriated the phrase, if one complains about the news with its biases and clickbaits, one is seen as a conservative who is only doing what the former president did: trying to kill news he does not agree with. 

I have also written about "wokeness," ridiculing it as a complete paradox: people claim to be "woke" -- which should be a state of the highest level of the achievement of rationality -- when, in fact, all they are really doing is subscribing to a pre-written script. But the conservatives killed that, by making it a slur and a joke. Worse, if one doesn't like that phrase, it will be assumed he is a racist. (God forbid someone call a Black man a "thug." Shame -- another very good word dies...)

I have also long pointed out the need to help our kids to be a little tougher; to allow them to believe in their own strength and ability to get through diversity. Then, along came things like meme of the eighteen-year-old lad storming the beach at Normandy alongside a picture of a "millenial" young man with tattos and stretched earlobes, wearing a pink tank-top and a tutu.  (See how much kids have changed!) Now, if I wrestle with the idea of weakness in our kids, I am pretty much percieved as calling them "snowflakes," which I certainly am not. But nuance, schmuance. You're with us or against us. 

For the love of all that is holy (oh, wait, I must be a religious nut for using that phrase and religion is 100% horrible... forgive me, angry masses...), I can't even express an English teacher's concern for the use of the word "they" as a singular pronoun without being implicitly accused of not caring if young trans people commit suicide. I made the mistake of pointing out this awful bit of writing from a local news Instagram: 

From Channel 6 News: "Singer Demi Levato has revealed they are non-binary and are changing their pronouns, telling fans they are 'proud' to make the change after a lot of self-reflective work."

My light-hearted quip that "telling fans that they are proud" is confusing and asking trans people to just invent themselves a new pronoun was met with questions about my concern for the well-being of others. I pointed out, on the thread, that "one begins to feel that if one ctiticizes a small thing about marginalized people that one is bound to be accused of dismissing them as humans." I've even been told that my assertion that the truth about a police incident between white officers and Black suspects or traffic stop subjects is not the important thing: one should always be on the side of the cop or the side of the Black citizen. 

How is that a remotely sane attitude? How does change happen with this idea?

So, and I mean this proverbially: don't put your arm around me. I don't want to be on your team. Teams are the reason people can't or don't think anymore. If you agree with me when I sound liberal, it doesn't mean I am a liberal and if I express a conservative view, it doesn't mean I am a conservative. 

I suppose the fools have always been louder than the thinkers. The problem is, there has never been a free and deafening megaphone like the Internet. 

Reading the Stickers

Every morning, now, I get up at dark-thirty and I walk out into my sleeping neighborhood. One thing I have been noticing is the bumper stickers on parked cars and I think these stickers are helpful in diagnosing the minds of the typical, middle-class American. These people are, after all, the real tide-shifters of American culture, so it matters.

One car I pass, daily, has a "Coexist" sticker.
You've seen them:

On this car, the sticker is surrounded by other stickers you would expect find on the same car: faded Obama campaign stickers; NPR stickers; a sticker with he name of the band "The Black Keys;" etc.

Around the corner from this car, surrounding a "Semper Fi" sticker is and "3" sticker (in honour of Dale Earnhardt of NASCAR fame); a Luke Bryan sticker; an NRA sticker; a sticker of a deer's head; and a "Worst President Ever" sticker.

American Sniper vs. the Sneetches

I don't want to be a doomsayer. (Well, yes I do -- who wouldn't? -- but that's not the point.) As I say, I don't want to be a doomsayer, but anyone who reads this knows that one of my greatest fears for world culture is that we are giving up our individuality under the stress of over-emphasis on "community." ("Community" is in quotes, because I feel we are a little free with the word: that any group is awarded the title of "community" when it should be a more of a high-quality group dynamic...)

Anyway, I have lost a few social media friends because of what I fear is this migration to groupthink. How, you ask? By professing an anti-war/pro-warrior philosophy. I've written about it here. In brief: war is a hard sell for me. I respect our warriors so much that I don't want them to be at the beck and call of those who might make commitments to war for the wrong reasons. (By the way, I use "warriors" to include all who do battle; soldiers, sailors, marines, etc.)

This sounds pretty reasonable, to me. Yet, I have has "patriots" actually stop talking to me because of this view. They apparently feel that if one doesn't support the war, one can't be a patriot. Sounds to me like a prescription for brainwashing.

The lives of individuals are always more important to me than group objectives, unless those group objectives are undeniably more important than individual life. (Stopping Hitler, for example.)

I just saw Eastwood's American Sniper. Bradley Cooper was brilliant; there were some fine scenes, but, overall, I found the film left me a little flat as Eastwoods films usually do. But I don't really do film reviews unless they have a larger purpose. Like this one:

The Tides of Morality

Over the last few years (while I wasn't paying attention, apparently) certain things that were once considered almost absolutely wrong are now considered admirable. Among these things are bragging, suicide, self-made and self-distributed pornography and incest.

I have heard each one of these behaviors, in print and elsewhere, defended at least once in the past year and, in those defenses, the behaviors above were not just defended, they were praised.

How I feel about these things is irrelevant. The important thing is that these changes serve to convince the active observer of societal trends that when it comes to morality, it really is now just a question of the tides in thought; concrete touchstones of what is "right" no longer exist; it is all a question of what the majority speaks up for. And when one has as many people (as much water) as we do, the movement of the ideas (the currents) is that much more apt to sweep people's thoughts along.

In the past, people were willing to accept absolutes. If God or if the king or if the law said it was wrong, it was wrong. Sure, some didn't think that way, but most did. Authority was something they were used to. Obeying was something they were compelled, either by force or by convention, to do. If, say, the Church told people not to marry their own siblings, they mostly fell in line. Those who did not fall in line were considered "sick."

"Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail"

The slide into mass-thought is inevitable. There is no hope of avoiding it. This is not a strong statement that I am making in order to set up some optimistic reversal at the end of this post. There is no hope of avoiding it.

When I write against the twisted, zombified version of "community" that people talk about today, it is not in the wish that "things will change." They won't. The general person has resigned him or herself to the idea that "community" is everything; that he has no need of privacy or anonymity; that she needs to actually own nothing -- just pay for it and keep it "on the cloud." People are cool with YouTubing things from their bedrooms, dirty socks on the floor and pictures of the grandparents on the nightstand notwithstanding. Why should the world not see my bedroom? Why should I clean my bedroom for the stupid world? 

The other day, in an in-class debate, a student used this argument: "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care what the government sees of your phone records?" Clank. [That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor.]

The Circus of Human Failure

You know the old story about the wizard who puts a spell on the well in order to enchant everyone in the village? The people fall to the spell, one at a time, until there is only one guy left and when he realizes that he is the "crazy one," after days of having tried to convince everyone that there is something wrong with the well, he drinks and is congratulated for finally having come to his senses.

I'm always reminded of this story when it comes to the old Sandburg quotation: "Someday, they are going to give a war and no one will come." Will this ever happen? Not if everyone is drinking from the well. (Or not unless the right wizard poisons it.)

Photo by Robert Capa; Spanish American War

So, here's the problem: war is absolutely absurd. It defies reason. It is something that should only happen in nightmares. Yet, we talk about it each day as matter-of-factly as we discuss the wins and losses of our favorite teams. Why?

Because although we teach our kids that war is a bad thing -- something to be avoided -- we don't go the extra step into convincing them, in their deepest hearts, that it is an abomination; a ridiculous, pointless, incomprehensibly stupid circus of human failure.

A Brotherhood of Rivals?

"Group mentality" and my distaste for it has been a recurring theme on this blog. I sometimes fear that regular readers might be sick of hearing it...

But, I don't hate groups, as a rule. For instance, I think it is cool when those with common interests get together to enjoy those interests. I'm even considering going to see Gavin Harrison give a drum clinic this fall. It's just that I won't be wearing a Zildjian T-shirt or a baseball cap with "Pearl" emblazoned on it. I don't like externalizing interests for the sake of others. Never have.

In short, it is cool to talk (or, even, to write about) drums, but I'm not a fan of broadcasting my interests superficially.

The drummer-cam; pre-first set.

This weekend, the band I am in played a group gathering in Wildwood, NJ. It was a biker weekend. The streets were glutted with Harleys, Ducatis, Hondas, custom bikes and even a few classic Indians. You'd think it would have been an environment of joviality; mass celebration -- a jamboree of jolly proportions.

Not really.

There wasn't a lot of smiling going on. If you watched the unending parade of motorcycles passing behind our stage, you saw expressions that looked more like a challenge than a metaphorical high-five among two-wheeled brothers. The atmosphere was one of subdued, communal anger; or, at least, challenge.

And the trappings! The vests and the bandannas and the leather pants and the other various shmagiggies...

Charlie Manuel, Fired: It's not "just business" and it is personal

As you already know, this is not a sports blog. But I happen to be a baseball fan; in particular, a Phillies fan. I have to comment on something, not so much from a sports perspective, but from a cultural perspective. It just so happens to be related to baseball. (If you are not a sports fan, stick with me -- this is about human nature and ethics...)

Recently, the Philadelphia Phillies, who recently had the greatest run of success in the franchise's time (a very long time, having started up in 1883) fired their manager, Charlie Manuel. It is clear, by most accounts, that Manuel was the greatest manager in team's history. It is equally clear, from my vantage point as a follower of the team since about 1978, that he was the most beloved.

Charlie: from nbcphiladelphia.com

Manuel's contract was up at the end of this year, and most people assumed, since the Phillies seem to be in decline and since Charlie is seventy this year, that this would be his last year at the helm. Most people (including myself) accepted this with wistful sadness, and they expected a nice send-off: thanks for the memories and the several seasons of October baseball and the 2008 World Series victory, Charlie. We love you. That kind of thing. (Oh, I also forgot to mention that he recently acquired his 1000th victory as a manager.)

Instead, Ruben Amaro, Jr., the general manager of the team, decided to fire Manuel with forty-some games left in the season. His reasoning? They wanted to bring in the next expected manager, Ryne Sandberg (a great guy and a great manager and Hall-of-Famer, to boot) as an interim manager, to see how he would do for the last few games of a desolate season.

Why We're Doomed (and Other Thoughts for a Happy Weekend)

Yesterday, in class, a student was doing a presentation on the novel 1984. (It was his choice, so don't roll your eyes at me, young man/woman. I'm not pushing my anti-groupthink agenda in class. Much.) The project, based on an assignment my kids do in grade school called "The Mystery Bag," was for my students to read a sci-fi novel, picked off of a list I provided, and then to summarize the book for the class and to present four objects that had significance in the plot and themes -- to explain why the objects are important to the story.

(1984 just yielded the cutest little stuffed rats...)

Anyway, at one point, my student pulled out a thesaurus. He went on to explain that he went to numerous bookstores looking for a dictionary because he wanted to explain the concept of the government changing words in books -- changing meanings of words -- in order to control the population. He then made what I think was a brilliant observation.

The Carpenter and the Blogger

Miserable and gurgling and coughing, I was sitting in the doctor's office (again) when a man in work clothes walked in cradling his bloody hand in a plastic bag filled with paper towels. The way he carried himself, he might have just been walking in to deliver flowers or something. Coolly, at the receptionist's desk, he crooned:

"Hi. Ah...I was working down the shore, and I chopped off a big section of my finger. They told me to go to some hand center -- something affiliated with Jefferson Hospital -- and it is supposed to be near here, but I can't find it...Do you now where it is?"

The receptionist was, as they say, nonplussed. She started to stammer. She asked the woman next to her if she knew of a hand center in the area. She did not. They asked a nurse. She did not know. They took out books and typed things into computers, all the while glancing nervously at the man's bloody hand. This went on for some time. It was not unlike a scene from the Keystone Cops silent films, behind the office glass, except that the comedic action was punctuated by nervous whispers.

Scripted Sincerity

Welcome to The Borg Collective.

On the radio, this morning, I heard a guy explain, with no sense of outrage (or even mild, wistful amusement) that hospitals, in order to get higher customer satisfaction ratings, are "scripting" doctors and nurses. For instance, they are telling a nurse who is transferring a patient to say things like: "Oh, you are going to the third floor. You'll have so-and-so as a nurse. She's wonderful."

Isn't that heart-breakingly hilarious? They are scripting the personal touch.

One must, after all, impress the queen bee of the hive, right? Or, in this case, the "team" that heads the "team," which is composed of more "teams."

Now, people are being told what to say in a workplace that is supposed to be driven under the energy of compassion and a desire to help others to heal. In a hospital, for God's sake. This is fine with the general population, because it is good for the work community. And what is good for the community is all that is important, right?

And what do you say, as a nurse or doctor? Do you say, "No, I won't do this," and risk losing your job in a struggling economy? No. Of course you don't. It doesn't seem like such a great evil, when you look at it that way. But, splice all of these little evils end-to-end, and you have the road to Orwell's worst nightmare.

I didn't start writing this blog with an agenda in mind, but you will notice that I keep coming back to this theme of the not-so-slow death of the individual in an increasingly hive-minded society. It just keeps slapping me in the face.

Well, call me old-fashioned, but when I get hit, I tend to hit back.

The Smiling Assault

I think that I have mentioned before how much I hate formality – dressing up, sitting up straight, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that it occurred to me, the other day, that a renewal of good, old-fashioned formality might just be the thing that can save our world from the groupthink, individual-suffocating vortex it is swirling down into.

We need to function in groups, right? It is, at times, essential for survival. So, we move into cities; we make organizations; we form “teams” and “think-tanks” and “committees” and “task-forces” for stuff.  We can all see the usefulness of working in a group. If we don’t see it, we at least have to admit that we are generally forced to, regardless of our perspectives.

The problem begins when individuals of the group begin to melt into each other. I think formality might be at least part of the remedy for this.

My wife, Karen, is a nurse. I used to joke about the fact that she referred to the doctors she worked with by their first names.  I used to ask her, “What happened to ‘yes, doctor; right away, doctor’” – the good old days when nurses called doctors “doctor” and the doctors called nurses “nurse”?

As a guy who is still a little uncomfortable with being called “Mr. Matarazzo,” even though I hear it a thousand times a day, my immediate reaction to informality between doctors and nurses  is: Good. Cut out the bull – we’re all equal. Formality, schmormality.

Cerebellar Web Post 35-6457A

15 March 6457
Cerebellar Web Post 35-6457A

Attn: Dr. Pweet
Archaeosociology Department Chair,
Bradbury University
Vallis Marinelles, Mars

Dear Dr. Pweet:

As requested, here is my report of this month's archaeosocial findings from the field study teams on Origin Planet (formerly known as Earth) on the sparsely-populated continent of North America, substation 17, in what was formerly the state of Ohio.

We have managed, through chrono-magnetic reconstruction, to recover some electronic discourse from a discussion medium "social media." These discussions took place on what used to be called a "computer" -- an extremely early form of our cerebellar interfaces. This week we have drawn some startling conclusions about the ancient practices of social and political thinking from the early twenty-first century. Based on the conversations we have re-imaged and analyzed, we have concluded that people were required -- perhaps under threat of imprisonment -- to join one of two sides: either "liberal" or "conservative" viewpoints. Each side seems to have used the other's name as a kind of profanity.

We deduced that they were required to join these factions based on the disproportionately small number of people who seem to have "crossed the line" regarding their philosophies. (A farily common exception to this rule seems to be a rather significant number of people who seem to have held the oxymoronical belief that the killing of fetuses was bad and that the killing of those convicted of crimes was good, or vice-versa. [For reference, you'll forgive me if I remind you that in this epoch of history, people actually did find reasons to take the lives of their fellow humans; some of these reasons even made killing not only lawful but laudable].)

Speak for Yourself

Has anyone else noticed an escalation in the use of "the second person" in common speech? It's starting to get ridiculous.

Usually, I hear it in interviews and I find it really annoying when people tell me what I would do in a given situation. For example, imagine an interview with a person who has escaped the attack of a mad gunman. Instead of :

"When it happened, I couldn't fight back. I was way too scared -- I hid."

...we often get:

"When the time comes, you just react by hiding. You don't think to fight back. All you can think about is getting away."

I don't? How the hell do you know? What a pathetic attempt head-off accusations this is. It's not that the speaker was too frightened to fight back; it is just he experienced what every human would under the same circumstances.

I understand "fight or flight" and the workings of the reptilian brain, but people do sometimes act heroically in these situations. And, by the way, it is perfectly okay if you were too scared to face down an armed maniac. Admit it, without shame, but do not insinuate what I would have done in your place. Neither one of us knows until the situation occurs.

Child Wisdom from To Kill a Mockingbird

Jem and Scout, from the film starring
Gregory Peck

Somehow, I never read To Kill a Mockingbird until now. Go ahead. I'll wait until everyone is done lambasting me. [Looks at sky. Whistles. Bounces up and down on toes. Listens. Waits for a guy in Gdansk to get in his last barbed verbal missile.] But I'm glad.

Experiencing the book, now, as an adult, might be better than having read it, as many of our kids do in the U.S., in the eighth grade. I might have just chalked it up as a good read that I remembered fondly, had I read it then. Now, I am nothing short of in love with the book. As far as I'm concerned, it is just about a perfect novel.

That said, the book is sad, in lots of ways. But, most powerfully, it explores, through the eyes of children (eyes which, sadly, must be opened to such things), the general awfulness and superficiality of people. Of late, and as a consistent theme on Hats and Rabbits, the idea that society and groupthink are bad things has weighed heavily upon my disposition. I feel much as Jem must in this excerpt from the novel, after he and his little sister, Scout, witnessed the unfair trial of Tom Robinson, a black man in the white-dominated Southern town of Maycomb, in 1935. Scout starts: