Too Many March 13, 2010

Being at a crossroads in life sounds exciting, but I’m discovering that it is actually quite scary. The fact is, there are just too many paths, that it is immobilizing. When so many paths are apparent, one’s first thought is, ‘I can now choose the best one; I do not have to settle for a path that is less than the best.’ This line of thinking immediately becomes problematic though, because then one begins analyzing each path, and each one has something about it that is not perfect. The awful truth is that no choice in life is perfect. Each one has something less than desirable, and requires an acquiescence or a compromise. Then, the trouble, however, is that when you once had too many choices and they all seemed good, you now have too many choices but they all seem bad. But they are not all bad in the same way; they each have their unique flaw. Then it feels like life just becomes a ‘lesser of two evils’ game.

I find I am just as immobile as I was when I felt I had all the best choices.

Properly Proper Property March 9, 2010

Human language is inseparable from human nature. As far as we know, we have always had language, and it is as much a part of who we are as our bodies and habits. I feel it is possible, therefore, that the more consistent and enduring the meaning of any given word (or its root), the more that word is a part of our human or cultural identity. I’m not talking about having a bunch of words for snow, as people like to claim about the Native Canadians. I’m suggesting that the more a root word is spread throughout a language, and carries its meaning through the ages, the more that root is a key to human nature. This is all abstract nonsense, but I am going to discuss a real example.

For some reason, the word “Property” has been in my head all day, and I’ve been considering its relation to the word “Proper.” So, finally I looked up both etymologies in the Oxford English Dictionary. It turns out that Proper came first, and interestingly, it does not have many other words with other meanings in its history. Instead, it is a root word itself, with an original meaning, namely: private, personal, particular, and a genuine example of a specific thing. The word appears in many other ancient languages, but all with the same meaning and basically the same spelling, from propire to propre to propius, propri, propio, propi, and proprio, in various respective languages.

It turns out, that when we use the word Proper in modern English, it means the same thing as it always has. For example, we might say that a woman’s behavior is very proper. What do we mean when we say that? We mean that that her behavior has certain qualities. Her behavior is private, in that it belongs to her as an individual, as in privately owned. Her behavior is personal in that it comes from her personality and is unique to her. Her behavior is particular in that it is definable and distinctive, not ambiguous. Finally, her behavior is a genuine example of a specific thing, an example of womanhood. That last part is the most important. In modern usage, we often associate proper with polite manners, strictness, tidiness, or even wealth. But that is not really what we mean. What we are really doing is associating the word with our culture’s idea of what a woman should genuinely, specifically be. The more a woman seems to be ‘truly’ womanly, the more we associate her with the word, Proper. That is why the word Proper is still used, even when we are not talking about polite manners. We use it for everything that is a perfect example of its kind. “This is a proper hamburger. It’s delicious.” “This is the proper procedure for arresting someone.” “Do that homework again, and this time do it properly!” In other words, as close to the perfect concept, or Platonic Form, as possible.

It quickly follows then, that Property, is just a form of the word Proper. Originally it was just the noun form, as in “That man’s manners are very proper, so he has property.” Property, in other words, just mean the characteristics of a thing. If a proper thing is simply a very genuine thing, then a thing’s properties are simply the attributes that make it so genuine. What is a Proper hamburger? Well, it has the properties: meaty flavor, a pink center, etc. So, simply put, a property is anything that is a trait or part of something genuine.

How did Property also come to mean our material possessions?

Maybe the etymology suggests that the things we make, own, and keep are so important to who we are as people, they actually contribute to our being genuinely human. Maybe that is why our instincts and thoughts are often directed toward our possessions and the acquisition of new possessions, because having material extensions of ourselves is what makes us human.

Why I Like Houston. February 23, 2010

Houston is a city that is bright. It’s one of those cities, where if the sun isn’t shining, then the yellow and pink paint on the taquerías is. If the sun isn’t shining, then the glint of metal and mirrored buildings is. It’s a city where you can choose to wear your sunglasses or not wear your sunglasses, because it’s always bright, but not too bright to look at. And anyway, the sun, in fact, is usually shining.

I also like Houston because the people are actually friendly. They aren’t friendly in the way newspaper features or ABC News at 11 say that towns are friendly. If a town is publicly known for being friendly, it usually isn’t. I love Philadelphia, for example, but Philadelphia is not friendly. Although its name is Love of Brother, the amount of Brotherly Love going on is highly debatable. When you walk into a bar in an East Coast city, there is no guarantee that people will smile at you and offer to tell you if your car is in danger of being towed. Car safety is not a usual measurement used when describing a bar, but it is actually something that is important to drivers. I’ve only been to two bars in Houston, but both times I felt assured that my car would be happily parked.

Don’t get me wrong! As I even tell Houstonians, when defending Philadelphia to them, I say, Philly is a city with a lot of character. Anyone I know in Philly would agree. It does have a lot of character. You only have to eat a sandwich in the dark at a terrace restaurant in University City to know that Philly has a lot of character. Or, you can sit on a stranger’s stoop on 8^th, 9^th, 10^th, or 11^th and South St., and do things you’re not supposed to do, to know that Philly has a lot of character. That is not in dispute. But Houston has warmth. It does. I’m not just saying that. You can be a Yank, who has never listened to a beat of country music in his or her life, and the Houstonians welcome you with open arms. They like meeting people.

Houston is just not gloomy. I grew up in small towns in the North Midwest, and although I didn’t know it at the time, they were gloomy. They get dark so much. Let’s not even mention the snow—other than the fact that I was lucky enough to miss the two blizzards of 2010. It’s quite impossible to be fully happy as a person when the very air around you is cold, dark, and gloomidacious.

Houston also feels very alive. Some big cities, like New York, are too alive. There is something unreal about it. Houston, contrarily, feels alive in a very real way.

Decisions, Decisions February 13, 2010

When do decisions in life actually happen? When present day life is an amalgamation of consequences of decisions, how does one discover which exact moments of decision led to such consequences?

Very few decisions in life are momentous and life-changing, and yet people’s lives regularly change in momentous ways–or at least unexpected ways. Therefore, it must be certain tiny decisions, or maybe a series of them, that cause great changes or events to occur.

I’m not being completely abstract–I am, in fact, thinking of my own life. Say one is sitting there in life, and realizes that her life is not in the place that she would have liked. She realizes that this is because many of the paths she chose turned out to be mistakes.  They were not mistakes in that they are regrets or wastes–because every path is at least a learning experience. They are mistakes because they were mistook for roads that would lead her where she wanted to go, when they resulted in no such thing. Now, I’m not one to stay on a road when I don’t want the destination. I’ll stay on each road for a while, and give myself plenty of time to observe my surroundings and enjoy the journey, but then once the unwanted destination becomes apparent, I will step off and onto the grassy shoulder.

This is possible for me because these mistaken roads are not major mistakes. They don’t have consequences that absolutely must be faced–like deciding to commit a crime. Instead, they are small mistakes, and the consequence is always simply being stuck in the soft grass at a crossroads in a place I don’t particularly want to be.

In order to move forward, however, one has to identify which decisions led to these mistaken paths. How else can one ever avoid them? If they were big mistakes based on big decisions, it would be easy–that’s why everyone says, ‘learn from your mistakes.’ As I said earlier, though, most decisions are not big. Life is a series of tiny decisions. So, how does one find the ones that were wrong among the debris of memory?

Several philosophers describe decisions as motions. Whether originating in the mental sphere or the physical instincts they are a chain of motion that results in an action. I feel, however, that many of these decisions do not result in a clear action. Neither do they result in inertia. Many, it seems, result in very subtle, or unnoticeable variations in behavior or attitude. I think it’s the case that a certain number of small decisions pile up to the extent that small changes in thought eventually become a fixed idea, even a belief. For example, deciding to watch something, or read something, or have a conversation, or taste a certain food, et cetera, slowly build up the consequence in the mind of wanting to move to a certain country. It is not one of those decisions that is alone responsible. It is the whole series. Then later on, if one ‘decides’ to actually move to that certain country, that ‘decision to move’ is not the only decision involved. It is simply the one that creates the largest action. But that large one could never have materialized if all the smaller ones that came before did not already have their results, namely, the tiny actions of slowly changing one’s mindset and creating a desire or goal.

Therefore, I would say that when searching for the culprit in a ‘wrong decision’ one must not simply look at the largest action. One must try and remember which small actions or events occurred to build up the desire of the large decision. If the main consequence of those actions is to fill the mind with an idea and grow that idea, then one should analyze them critically, and choose to ignore them if they have little substance.

Un Ballo in Maschera January 31, 2010

The other night I attended a small production of the above named opera. It was my fourth opera experience and by far my favorite. An elderly gentleman sat next to me, and during the intermissions he asked me about my background. He revealed that he too was once a student of political science and that that was part of the reason he was such an admirer of Verdi, this opera’s composer. He explained further that Verdi’s works were controversial when first written because of their political content. Many of his storylines involved the deposing of monarchs, for example. Un Ballo in Maschera was originally supposed to be about the assassination of the Swedish King Gustav III, but Neapolitan censors forced him to change the murdered hero into a generic count in a nameless city.

Immediately upon learning this, my first reaction was to find it humorous and somehow incongruous. I mean, the idea of Verdi, a famous and respected composer to be juxtaposed with political incorrectness seems like something that should not happen. The more I thought about this, however, the more I realized how often historical figures are held to a higher standard than one’s peers of today, the latter including colorful individuals who argue about suspended driver’s licenses in the DOT. Historical figures are just different. I think this is because they are either part of a faceless, labeled and described group or they are somehow notable and famous. The faceless people of history have no uniqueness or idiosyncrasies. They are simply the Middle-Class Victorians, or the Ancient Egyptians, or the French Peasants Before the Revolution. They do not have human traits; they have group traits. Whether their group is described as industrious, arrogant, or ignorant, history does not allow for members of such groups to be silly, or weird, or misfits. We tend to assume that most people in a historical group fit the standard to which history has ascribed them and examples of deviant persons seem like mere exceptions to prove the rule. The historical figures that do not have to fit in are the famous ones, but they are held to an even stricter standard. If history finds a figure to have had some particular trait or habit, or favorite thing, then that thing becomes something special and notable too—just like the person is. When everyone found out that Einstein, for example, did not speak until age five, rather than people starting to call him a freak or an outcast, people began using that tidbit as if it is some sort of proof; “See, it just goes to show, that just when you think someone is a moron they grow up into a mega-genius.” Of course, that isn’t a rule at all. Not every mute five-year old turns out a theory of relativity as an adult. That was quite an unusual trait for Einstein, but since he is a major historical figure, no one wants to tarnish him by lowering the standard. So, if we find a fault we turn it into a part of his greatness.

The people of the vast annals of history are supposed to either conform to specific group characteristics, or else be really legendary. Verdi is supposed to be a classical composer with composer-like traits. That is why his difficulty with political censors does not seem to fit. Our modern fellow citizens, on the contrary, are as funny and weird and diverse as a sci-fi TV cast. And, there is no reason to assume why people have not always been that way.

Anthropologists believe that behaviorally modern humans emerged 70,000 years ago. Thus, although they did not have the same technology and ‘civilization’ that we have had in recent history, they did all the same ‘lifestyle’ things that all living humans do—speaking in language, walking on two legs, have monogamous partnerships, raising their children through puberty. But even with those early humans, it’s easier to visualize as a conformist group with predictable traits rather than a bunch of assorted and unique individuals. It may seem funny to us to imagine a prehistoric bratty kid, or a prehistoric guy obsessed with grooming, or a prehistoric woman with jealousy issues—it’s what feeds comic strips—but is it not part of our deepest nature to have quirks, to be imperfect variations of the same genome?

Pancakes and Politics January 29, 2010

I learned how to make traditional Dutch pancakes, or pannekoeken, from my mother. She is from the Netherlands, and throughout my American childhood, she regularly made pancakes for dinner. Naturally, when I came of age and lived on my own, I wanted these pancakes to remain a part of my life, so I asked her to teach me how to make them. I’ve been making them several years now, but yesterday, for the first time in my pancake-making life, every single one of the pancakes turned out correctly. This is unusual, because even for such an expert pancake-maker as my mother, the first pancake often must be discarded. We even call it the test-pancake. This is because the large frying pan is never hot enough at the beginning, so natural impatience causes many people to attempt premature flipping. Another reason for the test pancake is that if one is not familiar with their ladle-to-pan proportions the resulting pancake will be too thick, and Dutch pancakes must be as big as a plate but quite thin (although not as thin as crepes).  My problem is always impatience, but this time it wasn’t. The first pancake was in, and I just waited. I just let it sit there. I waited until it asked to be flipped. Why was it different this time? Maybe it was because, for the first time, I wasn’t trying to impress anybody with my pancakes. My parents ate them, but they don’t need impressing. It seems this was both a positive and negative incident. It was good that I felt free enough to not care who I’m impressing and had the proper patience as a result. The downside was that I did not enjoy eating them as much as I am accustomed to do. The pancakes did not feel special. But, they are there, by my side, in the friendly way that tradition has.

I think this says something about human nature. We are genetically designed to be social beings, so almost all of our activities have a social aspect. We feel good when we other people notice, appreciate, are grateful, or are impressed by our actions (like making pancakes). On the other hand, our abstract brains allow us to do things for their own sake, and not for social reasons. We as humans can enjoy and succeed in an action just because the action has the potential to be completed. But just because we CAN do something for its own sake, that does not explain why we do so, or why we enjoy it.

After dinner I turned to the State of the Union address. This is something I get excited about, no matter who the current president is. I think the traditional nature of the address is what draws me to it. The Constitution states that the president should talk to Congress once in a while to report on the union, and that is why they still do it. The simple ‘from time to time’ edict of the Constitution is not enough for people though. It is human nature to organize and aggrandize. We get into the spirit of the address and allow ourselves to pretend it is a much bigger deal than it really is. We give it pomp and circumstance that the Constitution did not require of it. We made the annual address annual–it didn’t have to be–and nationally broadcast, and an important event to which dignitaries and carefully chosen citizens are invited. The president began his speech by recalling the tradition of it, even though it is a tradition that is not inherent, but purposefully created. If it wasn’t such a carefully constructed big deal, we would be disappointed by it. It is even designed in such a way that one can easily forget that it wasn’t always such a big deal. I was not surprised that CNN had a pre-speech countdown show. It seemed natural–even necessary.

The content of the speech itself further emphasizes the way in which a society makes itself organized, and grand, and hallowed. The gravity with which President Obama tried to touch on every commonly expected topic of policy, reminded me of the Stations of the Cross. Each topic–the economy, the domestic social issues, the opposition, the foreign policy stance, then the wrap-up with optimism for the future–was individually treated as though it was a station that must be visited for the speech to be consummated. But the topics themselves were empty. CNN described the speech as substantive and detailed, but there was actually very little substance. He promised things that are physically impossible for a president to accomplish simply because he does not have the power. Also he used the phrase, ‘I’ll issue an executive order’ with such lightheartedness it sounded a bit as these the founding principles of the nation and its Constitution are not something that regularly cross his mind. Noticeably, Obama did not mention the Constitution once, but the Republican governor mentioned it almost immediately. That distinction struck me quite forcefully. He was optimistic about the future, but after speech I actual have more questions than certainties about the changing political culture of America.

One time I heard about a political scientist, who on the two-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, was asked how he felt about democratic France. He said, ‘It’s too soon to tell.’

The American founding was also very, very recent. So, let’s not move too quickly in a different direction.