The Answer is Attention

The more I consider it, the more I realize that attention, properly directed, is the solution to many of our difficulties. 

We tend to underrate the value of the simple act of attention, but I assure you that Madison Avenue and political propagandists do not.

After all, as the philosopher Alan Watts once observed, “The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.”

And the poet Mary Oliver advised, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

Merely momentarily shift your attention from your driving to your phone, for example, and a child may die. This isn’t a metaphor, but a memory. The driver was a teenage girl, and the child was an 8-year-old boy.

Guarding the Mind's Eye

Theoretical philosopher Thomas Metzinger warns we are being overwhelmed as “…social media and tech firms aim to maximize user engagement by creating ever better attention sinks and developing pathological, addictive forms of media consumption.”

As New Scientist magazine reported, “Our attention, says Metzinger, is the resource they want, and that entails destroying our mental autonomy — our ability to control the focus of our minds — ceding it to who knows what algorithm.”

And what does Metzinger recommend? “Of course, meditation, which opens up news states of consciousness and provides mental control. He asks whether it should be a standard part of education, and argues strongly for robust intellectual honesty as well as old-fashioned values like integrity and sincerity. We need, he suggests, a fusion of critical rationality with mindful attention to help us grapple with rapid techno-cultural change.”

Back with a Vengeance

“(Trump) bears responsibility for what comes next, as do his allies and supporters,” wrote Timothy Snyder in The New Yorker. “Yet some, and probably more, of the blame rests with our actions and analysis. Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.”

Donald Trump is not a president at all. He’s the first American dictator, one the corporate news media helped usher into office by drowning us in sanewashing.

In Green Springs Seen

I measure my life

In green springs seen, and in those

I may yet enjoy.

The Misinformation Menace

For a propagandist, news isn’t relevant and/or interesting factual information to which the public is entitled. It’s a weapon to be deployed for the purpose of deception. 

The American media scene in the 21st century cannot be understood at all without constant reference to that fact.

The problem is that at least half the country is being fed a largely fictional narrative, every day, and accepts it to be true. That’s the Fox News Effect.

I realized more than 20 years ago that if lying propaganda could be substituted for news, this country’s ruin would follow in short order.

Determinism? So what?

Whether or not determinism is true in a technical sense, obviously we have free will in a a practical, existential sense. Nothing about the theory of determinism can help avoid having to agonize over a difficult decision. 

As Sartre observed, humanity is damned to freedom. We have it even though we often don't really want it.

Why We Love Sherlock Holmes

“He is Galahad and Socrates, bringing high adventure to our dull existences and calm, judicial logic to our biased minds,” wrote Edgar W. Smith in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

“Let it be said, more simply, that he is the personification in us of something that we have lost, or never had. For it is not Sherlock Holmes who sits in Baker Street, comfortable, competent and self-assured, it is ourselves who are there, full of a tremendous capacity for wisdom, complacent in the presence of our humble Watson, conscious of a warm well-being and a timeless, imperishable content. 

“The easy chair is drawn up to the hearthstone of our very hearts — it is our tobacco in the Persian slipper, and our violin lying so carelessly across the knees — it is we who hear the pounding on the stairs and the knocking at the door. The swirling fog without and the acrid smoke within bite deep indeed, for we taste them even now.”

The Dilemma of Consciousness

“The consequence of forging life by purpose and resolution is a sense of inner harmony, a dynamic order in the contents of consciousness,” wrote psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 

“But, it may be argued, why should it be so difficult to achieve this inner order? Why should one strive so hard to make life into a coherent flow experience? Aren’t people born at peace with themselves — isn’t human nature naturally ordered?

“The original condition of human beings, prior to the development of self-reflective consciousness, must have been a state of inner peace disturbed only now and again by tides of hunger, sexuality, pain and danger. The forms of psychic entropy that currently cause us so much anguish — unfulfilled wants, dashed expectations, loneliness, frustration, anxiety, guilt — are all likely to have been recent invaders of the mind. They are by-products of the tremendous increase in complexity of the cerebral cortex and of the symbolic enrichment of culture. They are the dark side of the emergence of consciousness.”

News Media 'Sanewashing' Trump

The word of the day is “sanewashing.”

Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop observes that major mainstream news outlets are routinely quoting Trump's incoherent, highly abnormal rants selectively in order to make them sound sane.

Allsop explains that the news media emphasizes “… lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing…. If journalists are sometimes sanewashing Trump, why are they doing it? … (I)t has something to do with that old desire to project a false equivalence, or ‘balance,’ between the two leading candidates.”

“When I wrote earlier this year,” Allsop notes, “it was in the context of Trump saying, at a rally, that his failure to win reelection would lead to a ‘bloodbath’ in the country — remarks, many critics suggested, that were subsequently sanewashed by allies and pundits who suggested that he was talking metaphorically about the auto industry. I argued at the time that the furor over the phrase missed the point: Trump said many unambiguously dangerous things at the same rally that got far less attention.”

So America 2024 is a place and time where a gibbering reality-TV loony can actually be propped for a second run at dictatorship, thanks to the collusion of corrupt national institutions.

On the Love of Books

“Book love, my friends, … lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant as long as you live.”

— Anthony Trollope

They Are Not Long...

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate:

I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

— 19th century English poet Ernest Dowson, who died at age 32.

Why Freedom is Progressive

Cognitive linguist and philosopher George Lakoff on the nature of American political freedom:

“The traditional idea of freedom is progressive. One can see traditional values most clearly in the direction of change that has been demanded and applauded over two centuries. America has been a nation of activists, consistently expanding its most treasured freedoms:

“The expansion of citizen participation and voting rights from white male property owners to non-property owners, to former slaves, to women, to those excluded by prejudice, to younger voters;

“The expansion of opportunity, good jobs, better working conditions, and benefits to more and more Americans, from men to women, from white to nonwhite, from native born to foreign born, from English speaking to non-English speaking;

“The expansion of worker rights-freedom from inhumane working conditions-through unionization: from slave labor to the eight-hour day, the five-day week, worker compensation, sick leave, overtime pay, paid vacations, pregnancy leave, and so on.”

Murder on the Dishes

Agatha Christie and her novels

“During domestic chores I could always relax my mind completely.  Robert Graves once said to me that washing up was one of the best aids to creative thought. I think he is quite right. There is a monotony about domestic duties — sufficient activity for the physical side, so that it releases your mental side, allowing it to take off into space and make its own thoughts and inventions. That doesn’t apply to cooking, of course. Cooking demands all your creative abilities and complete attention.”

— Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Another British novelist, Elleston Trevor, told me essentially the same thing, and I’ve found it to be true myself. 

Your unconscious mind does more than half the heavy lifting in good writing, and bland, simple physical activities can be useful in getting the conscious mind out of its way.

The Joy of Saying No

"We are afraid that we will be forgotten, that if we stop going all the time, the loneliness and emptiness we fear will surface. So we build a false sense of security, warding off uncertainty by making a fetish of constant activity.”

“There is a common phenomenon among those newly diagnosed with cancer. My friend Ange Stephens, a longtime therapist to people with life-threatening illness, calls it a ‘secret gratitude.’ After the initial shock subsides, many of her clients quietly express relief. ‘Now I can say ‘no’ whereas I always had felt obliged to say ‘yes.’’ They tell her ‘Now I can finally rest.’”

— Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations

They Chase Our Joy

“Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born.”

— Mary Oliver

The Answer from the Sea

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall—

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

“Excuse me, I have work to do.”

― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems

Listen for the Chime

“Many elderly friends have what I call the chime,” wrote novelist Anne Lamott. “It is a vibrating energy that certain artistic and spiritual people exude, as do people with a basic spirit of generosity. Almost silent, the chime rings like a tiny triangle off in the expanse. The chime is life and is in all of us, but it tends to be muffled until much of the clamor and hustle of existence quiets down. I hear it most often in the elderly, whose days are quieter, who gladly ruminate and gaze out windows a lot. They may appear frail, but there is strength in this fragility.

“Do not mess with the very old and their gangs. I see them live with grace and (sometimes cranky) humor, along with infirmity, pain, wobbly brains and the scar tissue of decades enduring the blows and losses splattered through human life. They laugh gently at me when they hear me once again in do-or-die mode: They’ve seen over and over that most things will be okay as long as we’re tender with each other. They are whom I want to be in 10 years, if I am alive and can remember this one thing.”

Happy the Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own:

He who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul or rain or shine

The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

--

My favorite poem. It’s by Horace, from Odes, Book III, xxix. Translation by John Dryden

Why Fascism is in Fashion

 

The global game plan —

"A right-wing populist harnesses the backlash to globalization’s failures to win an election on a grievance-filled us-versus-them platform. Cronies, enriched via corruption, finance the leader’s political agenda. Courts are packed with judges who allow further power grabs. Parliamentary districts are redrawn to entrench the ruling party. Voting laws are altered to favor certain parts of the population. The media is turned into an extension of the ruling party’s interests, while independent journalists are threatened, deplatformed, or imprisoned. Social media is used to monitor, intimidate, and demoralize political opponents. Civil society is demonized, harassed, or restricted." 

— Ben Rhodes, The New York Review of Books

How 'Centrism' Serves the Fascists

Here we go again, more both-sider BS from the corporate news media…

“The loss of the moderate center in both parties?” What claptrap. One party is “moderate” to the point of ineffectuality. The other is a fascist steamroller.

The perpetually surprised "both-sider civility" crowd effectively runs intellectual interference for the fascists. It sprays out the fog through which they attack.

The Enemy of the Good

“The vociferous critics of liberalism are like passengers on the Titanic who root for the iceberg,” wrote Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker. 

“After all, an iceberg is thrilling, and anyway the White Star Line has classes, and the music the band plays is second-rate, and why is the food French instead of honestly English? ‘Just as I told you, the age of the steamship is over!’ they cry as the water slips over their shoes. They imagine that another boat will miraculously appear — where all will be in first class, the food will be authentic and the band will perform only Mozart or Motown, depending on your wishes. Meanwhile, the ship goes down."

Beyond Reward and Punishment

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments,” wrote Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

“To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances. This challenge is both easier and more difficult than it sounds: easier because the ability to do so is entirely within each person’s hands; difficult because it requires a discipline and perseverance that are relatively rare in any era, and perhaps especially in the present.”

The Squid Who Loved Me

“A shining example, really, of the uneasy contract between the public and private (Ian) Fleming is the story about him flinging a squid at the novelist Rosamond Lehmann when she was staying at his home in Jamaica. In the version told by the writer Peter Quennell, Fleming did this to frighten Lehmann into leaving early since he was expecting the arrival of another lover. Lehmann’s less well-known account sheds a more satisfying light on the story.

“Lehmann came across the squid on the kitchen floor; Fleming had speared it, intending to have it for dinner. ‘As I looked at it,’ she recalled, ‘I suddenly caught its eye. It seemed to stare at me, and I felt for some reason that this was a creature every bit as intelligent as we were and that it was suffering terribly. So I persuaded Ian to throw it back in the sea. 

“He grumbled a bit and said, ‘How typical of a soft old pseudo-liberal like you. You may think nature is beautiful, but it is very cruel, very ruthless. Just you see. As soon as we throw the squid back, all the other creatures will go for it. Just you see.’ 

“So we did throw it in, and it was quite extraordinary, for suddenly this odd, grey, inanimate creature began to light up in the water until it was quite phosphorescent. Then it swam away as we watched and Ian was completely speechless. It was an incident I always intended to write about, but never have.”

— Nicholas Shakespeare, Ian Fleming: The Complete Man

Catching Time in a Bottle

This gets at something I have long suspected intuitively — that things do not really come into being and pass away. On some staggeringly deep level that’s beyond ordinary human comprehension, they simply always are.

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan in New Scientist magazine: “Time may not be a fundamental element of our physical reality. New calculations add credence to the idea that it emerges from quantum entanglement, in which two objects are so inextricably linked that disturbing one disrupts the other, no matter how distant they are…

“At its core is the suggestion that when we see an object change over time, that is only because that object is entangled with a clock. That means a truly external observer standing outside the entangled system would see a completely static, unchanging universe. Within this framework time is not a given, but purely a consequence of entanglement…”

“…This may mean that if we perceive the passage of time, then there is some entanglement woven into the physical world. And an observer in a universe devoid of entanglement – as some theories suggest ours was at its very beginning – would have seen nothing change. Everything would be static." 

Nietzsche posited eternal recurrence — the idea that our lives will repeat infinitely and that in each life every detail will be exactly the same.

Sanity, Not Salvation

“An agnostic Buddhist looks to the dharma for metaphors of existential confrontation rather than metaphors of existential consolation,” wrote Stephen Batchelor in Buddhism Without Belief. 

“The dharma is not a belief by which you will be miraculously saved. It is a method to be investigated and tried out. It starts by facing up to the primacy of anguish, then proceeds to apply a set of practices to understand the human dilemma and work toward a resolution. 

“The extent to which dharma practice has been institutionalized as a religion can be gauged by the number of consolatory elements that have crept in: for example, assurances of a better afterlife if you perform virtuous deeds or recite mantras or chant the name of the Buddha.”

Driven by a Surge of Impulses

“Much of the time we are driven by a relentless and insistent surge of impulses. We notice this in quiet moments of reflection, but usually just get carried along on the crest of its wave. Until, that is, we crash once more onto the rocks of recriminatory self-criticism, and from there into moods and depressions.”

“Worrying about what a friend said can preoccupy us so completely that it isolates us from the rest of our experience. The world of colors and shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations becomes dull and remote… We feel cut off and adrift.

“To stop and pay attention to what is happening in the moment is one way of snapping out of such fixations. It is also a reasonable definition of meditation.”

— Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Belief

The Wisdom of the Cicada

I don’t suppose we require a fresh metaphor for the futility of life, but if we did, the cicadas could certainly provide us with one.

Those long years of cool nothingness, and then an upward crawl, a clumsy flight, a raucous song, a reproductive tumble and a tumble into the dirt, all within weeks.

But at least they don’t bite. 

And what more vivid example of “living in the moment” could we find than the infrequent visits of our little red-eyed, flying friends?

The Homless One

 

His hand-lettered sign said “homless.” I gave him 10 singles and he replied, “Thanks … oh, wow!” 

I wished him luck, this tattered, youngish man who’d run out of it some time back.

No Time for Boredom

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Art and the State of Wonder

“I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” 

— Glenn Gould

Wheels in the Night

As George and I finished our predawn walk this morning, we saw a homeless man wobbling by on a bicycle, burdened by the inevitable backpack, his lonely light probing the darkness.

Failing Journalism 101 to Coddle Trump

Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post today, on Journalism 101—

“Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote to his readers to explain why he will not treat Trump like other politicians:

“The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

“The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

“This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a years-long campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

“The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

“Quinn warned, “Our nation does seem to be slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s. Maybe the collapse of government in the hands of a madman is inevitable, given how the media landscape has been corrupted by partisans, as it was in 1930s Germany.” He hopes that will not be the case but vows that his paper will “do our part.”

“This should be so blindly obvious that every respectable outlet should subscribe to it. That they don’t — and instead reject it — tells us how badly major outlets have forgotten their essential mission.”

His Small Paws Shiver

His small paws shiver

In swift pursuit of dream things

While I watch and smile.

The Old Man in the Know

At a local restaurant over breakfast this morning, an old cretin sitting behind me was telling a man at another table the details about several Iraqi cells that were planning or had been thwarted in bombing attacks in central Illinois.

This to be said of a country where we killed several hundred thousand innocent people in an invasion based entirely on Bush and Cheney’s lies.

Funny how profound American guilt so often expresses itself in viciousness.

Still Some Sun

That old clock may tick, 

But remember, you shall bask

In the sun again.

A Sign of the Times

Cold, high winds sent us

A cardboard sign that said "Free."

A fine reminder.

Emerson on the Purpose of Life

Among Ralph Waldo Emerson’s primary perceptions about living were these:

• There’s no other world; this one is it.

• All important truths must finally be self-evident.

• The purpose of life is individual development, self-expression and fulfillment.

• Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm, and your work should be in praise of what you love.

• The days are gods.

“On a day no different than the one now breaking, Shakespeare sat down to begin Hamlet,” explained Emerson’s biographer Robert D. Richardson Jr. “Each of us has all the time there is; each accepts those invitations he can discern. By the same token, each evening brings a reckoning of infinite regret for the paths refused, openings not seen, and actions not taken.”

“There is nothing in this list that Emerson had not learned firsthand. These are not abstractions but practical rules for everyday life. The public consequences of such convictions for Emerson were a politics of social liberalism, abolitionism, women’s suffrage, American Indian rights, opposition to the Mexican War and civil disobedience when government was wrong. The personal consequence of such perceptions was an almost intolerable awareness that every morning began with infinite promise.”

In Control of Consciousness

“Despite its great powers, attention cannot step beyond (its) limits,” observed Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  “It cannot notice or hold in focus more information than can be processed simultaneously. Retrieving information from memory storage and bringing it into the focus of awareness, comparing information, evaluating, deciding — all make demands on the mind’s limited processing capacity. For example, the driver who notices the swerving car will have to stop talking on his cellular phone if he wants to avoid an accident.

“Some people learn to use this priceless resource efficiently, while others waste it. The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life.”

Now consider what digital media has done to shorten the human attention span in the decades since this was written. What does that imply about the ability “to enjoy the normal course of everyday life?”

In Tepid Blood

Although it was masterfully done, Feud Season Two left me feeling that I didn’t really care what happened to Truman Capote or his Swans.

Truman destroyed a great talent with booze and pills, and practiced treachery to boot. And the Swans were Sondheim’s Ladies Who Lunch, permanently pickled in their own frustrations.

People who have every imaginable resource handed to them and nevertheless manage to remain unhappy tend to drain the well of sympathy.

Impoverished by Wealth

Americans seem to assume that the alternative to materialism is poverty. Ironic, because it’s clear to me that the result of materialism is emotional and mental impoverishment. 

The alternative to materialism is an indifference to wealth that provides a relative immunity to greed.

The Tiffany Trick

“During World War II, a man of middle age entertained a Marine one Saturday night. The man enjoyed himself so much in the Marine’s muscular embrace that he felt he should buy him something to show his gratitude, but since it was Sunday when they woke up, and the stores were closed, the best he could offer was breakfast.

“’Where would you like to go?’ he asked. ‘Pick the fanciest, most expensive place in town?’

“The Marine, who was not a native, had heard of only one fancy and expensive place in New York, and he said, ‘Let’s have breakfast at Tiffany’s.’”

— Capote, Gerald Clarke

And that anecdote gave Truman Capote a title.

The Gent Takes Off

The Gentleman Analyst exits his Observatory of All Things. And I observe that AI art is a hoot.

When the Rain Dances

Luxury listens

to the intimate tap dance

of rain on your roof.

How the Mind Can Manage Pain

“The largest-ever brain scan study of the placebo effect has revealed that it seems to act on systems in the brain that process the emotional aspect of pain, which could explain why sugar pills can ease discomfort,” wrote Moheb Costandi in New Scientist magazine.

“Expectation, suggestion and social cues can all influence the placebo effect, where a person’s symptoms lessen after taking dummy medicine that they believe to be an effective treatment.”

And this research points to a mechanism by which mindfulness can be used to manage emotions and thereby alleviate the perception of pain.

“The placebo effect is a way for your brain to tell the body what it needs to feel better,” explained Harvard Prof. Ted Kaptchuk.

Maigret's Prose

“The memories reached him in waves, because this was another year when spring was early, and that morning he had left home without his overcoat. He felt as light as the sparkling air. The colors of the shops, the food stalls, the women’s dresses were all bright and cheerful.

“He was not thinking of anything in particular, just a few disconnected little thoughts.”

— Georges Simenon, Maigret’s Pickpocket

I always enjoy the quotidian aspects of the Maigret novels — the specificity of weather, the satisfaction of meals, the small vivid impressions — as much as I do the crime stories. He’s one of those characters who wanders around in your mind, knocking out his pipe, after the story ends.

The Secret of Nostalgia

The simple secret to nostalgia for the past is that we know how things turn out, a comfort that the present reality — the only reality — never gives us. 

It's like a favorite movie we can watch again and again.