Align with a Lion

 

“If we were to interpret the lives of animals with a human eye, we would conclude that they are in flow most of the time because their perception of what has to be done generally coincides with what they are prepared to do,” observed Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

“When a lion feels hungry, it will start grumbling and looking for prey until its hunger is satisfied; afterward it lies down to bask in the sun, dreaming the dreams lions dream. There is no reason to believe that it suffers from unfulfilled ambition, or that it is overwhelmed by pressing responsibilities.  Animals’ skills are always matched to concrete demands because their minds, such as they are, only contain information about what is actually present in the environment in relation to their bodily states, as determined by instinct. So a hungry lion only perceives what will help it to find a gazelle, while a sated lion concentrates fully on the warmth of the sun. Its mind does not weigh possibilities unavailable at the moment; it neither imagines pleasant alternatives nor it is disturbed by fear of failure.

“Animals suffer just as we do when their biologically programmed goals are frustrated. They feel the pangs of hunger, pain and unsatisfied sexual urges. Dogs bred to be friends to man grow distraught when left alone by their masters. But animals other than man are not in a position to be the cause of their own suffering; they are not evolved enough to be able to feel confusion and despair even after all their needs are satisfied. 

“When free of externally induced conflicts, they are in harmony with themselves and experience the seamless concentration that in people we call flow.”

The Four Colors of Liberation

Umberto Eco on being a 13-year-old in Italy in 1945: "A few days later I saw the first American soldiers. They were African Americans. The first Yankee I met was a black man, Joseph, who introduced me to the marvels of Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner. His comic books were brightly colored and smelled good."

In the Still of the Night

 

Chatter? Clatter? No.

I draw my strength from silence,

From the clock’s faint tick.

Inner Harmony, Not Outer Control

“It is important to do as much as we can to prevent nuclear war, to abolish social injustice, to eradicate hunger and disease,” wrote psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “But it is prudent not to expect that efforts to change external conditions will immediately improve the quality of our lives. As J.S. Mill wrote, ‘No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes places in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.’

“How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experience.”

Dreams of Courage and Daring

It always amazes that some people seem to think that good works can somehow magically appear in a corrupt world without idealism and dreams of courage and daring. My other blog, Great Caesar's Ghost, uses superheroes as a lens to view cultural history. You can browse it here.

Fascism's Right There in Front of You

Henry Giroux: “Fascist politics saturate U.S. society. Ultra-nationalism, the calls for racial purity, voter suppression, hyper-militarism, required loyalty oaths from higher education faculty, rampant censorship, a ubiquitous anti-intellectualism, and a full-fledged attack on social provisions and public goods make clear that democracy is in crisis. Yet, in too many cases, the larger significance of these incendiary calamities is missed because they are treated as separate from each other.”

A Green Umbrella

Snow dusts sidewalks 

lightly, everywhere except 

under evergreens.

The Plain, Ugly Truth about the Right

As Mitchell Zimmerman observed, "With or without Trump, the modern GOP — with its love of guns and sympathy for violence, its contempt for free elections and hatred of a free press, and its embrace of white supremacy — remains an extremist organization that threatens American democracy."

'Dems in Disarray?' Not So Much

Whenever a Washington Post headline includes the words “Republicans Panic,” happy days are here again.

“Dems in Disarray,” corporate news media? No, let’s try “Repubs in Retreat.”

Now comes the “Trump-off” part where Republicans pretend they aren’t the same vicious yahoos who attacked the U.S. Capitol to try to murder lawmakers and set up a fascist dictatorship. 

But that's still what they are, of course. Some stains don't wash away.

Now the GOP will try to put Trump in a box, make him disappear and pretend they never heard of him— the same trick they worked with Bush. But the Mango Mussolini isn’t the type to quietly retire and paint bad pictures.

And the Republicans are going to play the Sanity Game again, while the corporate news media feverishly tries to bury the records of the years they spent raving in the madhouse.

Luckily, however, Trump cares nothing for the Republican Party, and is perfectly willing to burn it all down to warm his fragile ego.

And a vicious, protracted knife fight between Trump and DeSantis isn't going to help either of them. But it’s going to help US a lot.

The News Media: Shameless Shills for the GOP

Just look at these headlines and tell me again about the corporate news media's "neutrality."

Every one of them proved to be false.

The corporate news media's relentless speculation was based not on facts, but its insidious, long-established pro-Republican bias. When it counts, the supposedly "liberal" news reporters always serve as reliable shills for the GOP.

Both Sides Don't Do It

The practical effect of claiming that "Both sides do it."

From Nixon’s shame-faced, furtive political burglary to Bush’s eager, lip-smacking use of kidnapping, torture and lies to sell a lucrative war to Trump’s American banana republic, the right’s response when caught red-handed in acts of evil is always, “Oh, both sides do it, so it doesn’t matter.”

And there’s no one I despise more than the cringing “centrists” who deal with every critique of liars like Alex Jones by whining that "Both sides do it!" and stuffing their ears with old David Brooks columns.

At the GOP presidential debates YEARS BEFORE Trump, the audiences cheered wildly for poor people to die in agony without health care, for child labor and for wholesale executions. So the “bipartisan both siderists” can go right on dithering about “both sides being just as bad” until these knuckle-dragging fascists line them up and kill them.

Say a candidate is caught lying relentlessly, and reversing and re-reversing his positions on every major issue. If you reply, with blithe, self-serving cynicism, that “both sides lie,” then you are A) giving the worst candidate a complete pass for his dishonesty and B) awarding the office to the most accomplished con artist, thereby turning a vice into a virtue and deliberately establishing the practice of handing power over to the most corrupt possible candidate BECAUSE he is the most corrupt possible candidate. 

You could hardly imagine a more effective recipe for national disaster — the very national disaster we see unfolding all around us now.

What those Fighter Jets Fight For

Government is evil, but the Pentagon is God. That’s self-contradictory gospel of the American right. 

Propaganda and myth about “warrior heroism” perpetuates permanent wars that pay trillions to the profiteers of the military-industrial complex while feeding young Americans into the sausage grinder. That is their function.

Black Adam, Black Adam, He’s Not Very Bad Indeed

Black Adam meets the iconic DC Comics superhero Hawkman

Well, despite all the dreadful reviews, I went to see Black Adam this afternoon. I would say it’s a movie made for comic book geeks, not the general audience, but since I fit within those parameters, I quite enjoyed it.

The stoic protagonist is an ancient, problematic champion reawakened by a familiar magic word, and the superheroic Justice Society struggles to contain his seeming omnipotence. Black Adam wades through enemies like a more compact but equally effective Godzilla.

This is the first time we’ve seen the Justice Society on the big screen, despite the fact that they were the first superhero team in comics, created in the early 1940s.

As the colorful fireworks rolled on and on, I kept wanting to see the plot take an inobvious turn, and three-quarters of the way through it did, amping up the audience’s interest.

Pierce Brosnan’s long familiarity with action-adventure shenanigans lets him handle the role of the venerable superhero Dr. Fate with ease (and no, he’s not an imitation of Dr. Strange. If anything, it’s the other way around).

I was particularly impressed by Dwayne Johnson’s vastly and I think effectively underplayed Black Adam. Johnson has a rare, odd kind of otherworldly gravitas that lends itself perfectly to a superhero role (I’ve always thought that Uma Thurman has it too). It’s why I've long wanted to see Johnson playing the pulp superhero Doc Savage in a film project that’s now apparently dead.

The film should properly be counted as the second Shazam movie, for those who are bothering to keep score. A surprise credits sequence is a crowd pleaser, and sports one subtle touch that is truly delicious.

The film references without exploring the eternal theme of superhero stories, which is power and morality. But it’s pretty interesting that the villains Black Adam crushes like annoying insects are military “contractors” occupying and oppressing a Mideast country. 

I’m guessing the Pentagon didn’t kick in any funding for this one.

Beware of Confirmation Bias

Accepting lies as facts is a snake pit out of which all other evils crawl.

For example, when a show about basic science can be considered “controversial,” the United States has reached terminal velocity of idiocy.

But facts can only change the minds of those who value them. That doesn’t include people who choose to believe in fairy castles in the sky.

Don't Look Now, Darling

I dismissed the idea of seeing Don’t Worry, Darling because the trailer made it seem to be a Stepford Wives rip-off.  But at Bart’s suggestion, we went to see it this afternoon and I enjoyed it.  

The weird mystery element remains engaging throughout, and the vivid mid-century modern design dazzles the eye. The music is an enticing blend of jazzy standards that comment on the action and effectively eerie female a cappella. Harry Styles is fine, and Chris Pine makes an insidiously creepy cult leader. You can see touches of all sorts of things here, not just Stepford Wives but Twilight Zone, Carrie, zombie apocalypse movies and more. But the blend remains tasty.

And if you’d care read it as an elaborate MAGA metaphor, you're perfectly free to.

Fish Out of Water

Tiny fish darting,

glinting gray in the sunshine

in a drying stream.

Love in the Uncertain, Wintry World of 'Sup?'

Bart, Paul and I just saw Bros, which was in turns witty and hilarious and finally touching, just the way a romantic comedy is supposed to be. 

The heart swells in the right places.

The central conflict is emotional unavailability, which feels very 2022 to me.

There's a running joke about Debra Messing, and another one about Hallmark movies.

Experiencing the Autotelic

“The term autotelic derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is not done with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward. 

“Playing the stock market in order to make money is not an autotelic experience; but playing it in order to prove one’s skill at forecasting future trends is — even though the outcome in terms of dollars and sense is exactly the same. 

“Teaching children in order to turn them into good citizens is not autotelic, whereas teaching them because one enjoys interacting with children is. 

“What transpires in the two situations is ostensibly identical; what differs is that when the experience is autotelic, the person is paying attention to the activity for its own sake; when it is not, the attention is focused on the consequences.”

— Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Csíkszentmihályi interviewed artists and musicians in order to understand what flow felt like,” Robert Genn noted. “Their reports — 7000 of them — were staggeringly similar: each described a feeling of total immersion and intrinsic enjoyment, a loss of a sense of time and other needs, and an almost out-of-body experience, where the activity was automatic, without much conscious effort. Think of a clarinetist observing her own fingers, letting the instrument play itself.

“The most important thing about flow is that it only happens when a person is nestled in a psychological state between challenge and control; immersed in an activity with which she already possesses a fair amount of skill and evolved technique. One cannot lose herself in a concerto, after all, until she has long practiced her scales.”

Csíkszentmihályi noted, “Some things we are initially forced to do against our will turn out in the course of time to be intrinsically rewarding.”

An Ode to the Equilux

When day equals night,

they call that the "equilux."

Balance is fleeting.

America the Ignorant

Jaime O'Neill: "I sincerely doubt that polite young lady at the bank is a racist. She gave every indication of being a nice person. But when she made that blanket dismissal of all politicians as corrupt, she revealed a willingness to accept a man like Donald Trump as at least no worse than the rest of them. In a mind like hers, there's just no significant difference between Lauren Boebert and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, no difference in character or values between Abe Lincoln and Aaron Burr, Joe McCarthy and Eugene McCarthy.

"Given how little most Americans know about American history, let alone our system of government, it's unlikely she'd know most of those names, anyway. I doubt she thinks there are reasons to bother with knowing stuff like that. She is the product of an educational system that teaches an array of skills, but often little else, thus creating cogs in a machine that we all must serve without much question."

Re: Butterflies

Fleet, fleeting, flying,

light-colored, lighter than air

as they flutter by.

Breakfast with Crows

Crows dip their bread in 

the birdbath, delicately 

testing a recipe.

Where Barnum Meets Goebbels

After seeing a show yesterday, Bart took me for an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen. And what should be playing on the TV but Fox News?

Turns out that ALL the news in America during the time we sat there was about how rotten Democrats are. Who knew?

Bart wisely sat with his back to that knuckle-dragging trash.

Fox News is where Phineas Taylor Barnum meets Paul Joseph Goebbels.

Like Water in a Sahara of Student Debt

I graduated from state university in 1977 with a student loan debt of slightly less than $500. Of course, that was when we all agreed that it was useful, even imperative, for members of an advanced, civilized society to have easy access to higher education.

That was before we decided to chuck all that and just let predatory Wall Street banks make a lifelong meal out of American students.

So why does the Washington Post Editorial Board choose to IGNORE that last point? I think you know.

The Post whines about Biden's student debt relief. You know what really takes money from that "broad tax base" that the Washington Post Editorial Board has suddenly discovered? The military-industrial complex squandering $1.7 trillion on some lame fighter jet.

Student debt relief, on the other hand, provides a cascade of social benefits both immediate and long-term. Do you think any of those people who didn’t go to college sell goods and services that those whose debt has been eased will now, for the first time, be able to AFFORD?

I presume, btw, that the Editorial Board includes a walrus and a carpenter.

While Waiting in Oncology

She was reading When

Our Lives Fall Apart, her hair 

lightly bleached, hopeful.

Art by Ioan Popei

Air Apparent

Feel the kiss of the 

sun on the back of your neck

as you step outside.

Attention Must Not Be Paid

We crossed paths with a young family that was taking a walk — father, mother and a boy about 8. Daddy was staring at his phone, mommy was staring at her phone, but sonny wasn’t staring at his cute canary-yellow phone. Instead, he was smiling at my dog.

Someday, however, he too will ignore his immediate reality most of the time. He’ll learn soon enough.

A Crow on the Go

A crow at the top 

of a tree, top of the world,

top of the morning.

The 'Reporter' Behind the Curtain

This isn't reporting. This is pre-scripted propaganda.

How to Change Your Mind

Forgot what you came in here for? There's a scientific explanation for this. 

When you leave one room and go into another, your short-term memory "resets," orienting itself to the details of your new environment. 

Sometimes, one of the things that gets flushed as irrelevant happens to be whatever you were thinking about in the other room. 

So if you want to change your mind, change your room!

The Doctor on the Facts of Life

Lies such as those told on Fox News do have this advantage: they can be fashioned to perfectly suit the audience’s most ridiculous fantasies and ugliest prejudices. The truth does not. It is merely absolutely necessary for survival.

A Message from the Lone Ranger

I taught and I write, I do what I can. Whatever happens, I will know I was on the right side because I have consciously tried to act with empathy and sanity. The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are. Mindfulness, courage and truth. I don't know if they'll carry the day, but I know they're the only values worth having.

Security Concerns? Forget It

“I see that a lot of us are just running around in circles pretending that there’s ground where there actually isn’t any ground. And if we could learn to not be afraid of groundlessness, not be afraid of insecurity and uncertainty, it would be calling on an inner strength that would allow us to be open and free and loving and compassionate in any situation.”

— Pema Chodron

--

“I've made peace with insecurity, because there is no security of any kind.” — Dick Van Dyke

The Pooch and the Past

The dog stops and sniffs,

reading recent visitors

the way you read this.

When Ravens Bitch...

No, Six Is Not Nine

Magdi Semrau: “Democracy relies on debate between citizens. This does not presume every debate is worthwhile, though. Nor does it imply ideological conformity is always bad. We should not, for example, be concerned about conformity concerning the tooth fairy or the shape of Earth. It's good to agree that the human body is made of cells, that Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and that 2 + 2 = 4. Conformity is often the result of the truth.”

Doggerel to Mark the End of Democracy

America, ’tis of thee.

Only lived as long as a sycamore tree.

The Gunfire That Barks "I Am! I Am!'

“Ego starts when a being stops considering itself a being and starts being its own point of view. It thinks survival is maintaining that point of view. An ego, therefore, is a point of view attempting to cause its own survival. So its purpose is domination of everything. An ego will sacrifice its own body just to be right.” — Adam Smith, writing about EST in his book Powers of Mind

--

And that, right there, explains every mass shooter.

Umair Haque: The Moral Universals We Lack

Umair Haque

British economist Umair Haque asks: “What does America not have that the rest of the rich world does? Public healthcare, transport, education, and so on. Every single rich nation in the world has sophisticated, broad, and expansive public goods, that improve by the year. Today, even many medium income and even poor nations are building public healthcare, transport, etc. America is the only one that never developed any — not on the national level, something that every person receives or can access, broadly. Public goods protect societies in deep, profound, invisible ways (we’ll get to that). And America is in fact losing the most basic public goods by the day — they are no longer safe from mass shootings in public places.”

“Working societies — if they are to endure, grow, and cohere, if they are to prosper, hang together, and really mature — need moral universals. Moral universals are simply things that people believe everyone should have.”

“Moral universals anchor a society in a genuinely shared prosperity. Not just because they ‘spread the wealth,’ though they do: because, more deeply, moral universals civilize people. They are what let people grow to become sane, humane, intelligent human beings. A person that is desperate for a meal will resort to whatever they must to feed their kids. A person constantly fed a stream of nonsense by Fox News will end up believing the earth is flat. Moral universals let people act morally, and acting morally is what the process of civilization is.

“Democracy therefore depends on moral universals. It is fairly hard, in the scope of human history, to establish a democracy. But it is harder still to keep it going. A democracy requires, before it demands votes, sane, humane, civilized people to vote. A society that cannot create sane, humane, civilized people can therefore no more reasonably stay a democracy than a global economy can be powered by fossil fuels forever.”

“American leaders are pretending like the relationship above is a great, confounding mystery. Like dumbfounded dinosaurs watching the mushroom cloud engulf the land, never in American mainstream media will you read a column, hear a voice, or see a face discussing the above relationship, making it part of the national conversation. Yes, figures like Liz Warren promote public goods. But in the mainstream, this connection is not made.”

Editor’s note: Umair Haque is the author of  The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business and Betterness: Economics for Humans.

Thor Four Leaves Us Ready for More

I could use a sweet movie right about now, and Bart, Paul and I found one in Thor 4, a/k/a Thor: Love and Thunder, a cosmic romp whose lightheartedness was enhanced by heart. 

These cosmic capers, inherently illogical, have to surf along on the strength of the emotions they evoke, and this one has just the right actors for the job.

By this time, Chris Hemsworth wears the role as stylishly as his red cape. Natalie Portman finally gets to really do something with her role as Thor’s lady love. Jane Foster. Russell Crowe made a Marvelous a-hole Zeus. Christian Bale devoured the scenery with Hollandaise sauce as the omnipotent and cruel yet sympathetic villain.

The film had all that, plus intimidating ancient weaponry that has surprisingly touchy feelings, and goats. I loved the goats.

It's interesting to me that while the first Thor film was visibly nervous about referring to its characters as “gods,” this one is God City, literally.

Bring on Thor 5.

But Oh To Be...

As free as a bird?

Sure, that’s nice, but oh to be

As calm as a clam.

What You'll Never Regret

You’ll never, ever

regret the hours you have spent 

not being afraid.

The Forest Knows No Fear

Fear is a phantom

who desires to distract you

from gently swaying trees.

Parking in the Park

Each lunchtime they park

in the park to escape an

airless cubicle

Gamboling Greenery

Breeze-blown tumbling leaves, 

green banners against the blue,

wave away winter.

How We Exit

Pebble in a pond,

ever-widening circles,

stillness restored soon.

Dr. Strange on the Yellow Brick Road

The two Benedicts, Cumberbatch and Wong, face relentless supernatural peril.

Bart and I just watched the new Dr. Strange movie. We’re off to see the wizard in this one, with a powerful witch pursuing a vulnerable girl to destroy her and gain what she possesses. 

A friend becomes an implacable, seemingly omnipotent enemy in this multi-dimensional Marvel of marvels.

I particularly enjoyed Dr. Strange’s Superman turn at the beginning, when he leaps off a building into costume to save a girl from a one-eyed Lovecraftian leviathan. The cosmos-splintering action rarely relents after that. As the Master of the Mystic Arts, Benedict Cumberbatch takes it all in stride with his usual lightly aloof touch. Once again, his Cloak of Levitation provides subtle comic relief.

This movie does run into the problem that has always plagued magical comic book superheroes like Dr. Strange, Dr. Fate and the Spectre. When you can seemingly wave your hand and do anything, the audience doesn’t know what the ground rules are. Stories about super powers require definite rules imposing limitations that the audience clearly understands, or the suspense is undercut. 

Nevertheless, I had a great time at this movie. The invincible enemy is overcome in a clever, logical and yet surprising manner. This Sam Raimi-directed film delivers a series of surprises, in fact, including one right at the end. 

Marvel continues its merry march.

Wind Waves Their Ears

Heads out the window,

Both dogs stare at each other

As their cars sweep past.