Thinking Out Loud in Public

This summary of Guy Debord’s analysis of our culture by Nobel prize winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa in Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society seems to be a fair description of our current situation.

Does anyone else find the pardoning of a turkey by the President a macabre tradition?

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, especially my friend @apoorplayer who may or may not be buried in snow. I could spend the day thinking of all the things I’m grateful for.

(sneaking in the side door)

Shhhh. Don’t mind mind me. I’m back. Again.

Books written for K-12 teachers are mind-numbingly awful. It’s amazing anybody decides to become teachers.

Learn Like an Athlete – David Perrel.

There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering about this short essay, but I have been surprised at how few people really know how to learn something in a focused, organized fashion. I think this is the result of our education system, in which teachers organize your learning for you. It’s the Mama Bird going out and finding the Worm of Knowledge and shoving it down students' only partly opened beaks. As a result, after they leave school and never learn anything again. But I think a lot of people are hungry to learn, but don’t quite know how to do it on their own.

I find it typical that RFK Jr is attacking “ultraprocessed food” as part of the administration of President Mickey D, whose consumption of fast food is legendary. Listen, here’s the key: if you want to cut down on ultraprocessed food in your diet, learn to cook food from scratch. Not entirely – it’s not necessary to make your own burger bun – but there are many things we buy for convenience that can be made from scratch. For instance, bake your own fries from regular potatoes; make your own chicken (and extra points if you can buy it from a local farmer); cook spaghetti sauce using tomatoes and spices. You get the point. Basically, shop the perimeter of the grocery store, and cook your meals. We have a lot of cooking devices that can make this process easier, and with a mindful choice of recipes these devices can have the meal ready to go by the time you arrive home.

BUT, I hear the objections: I don’t have _time _to cook. No you don’t. Which really should lead to some questions about our economic system which robs workers of the time to live a healthy life – or, perhaps more accurately, creates the conditions that ruins people’s health. Your law firm that demands 80 hours a week? Yeah, they’re killing you. The cities with ridiculously high rents which force you to live away and commute? It’s killing you. The demand for constant increases in productivity? It’s stealing your health. Avarice and exploitation, not what we eat, is at the root of so many problems in our society. But hey, ordering takeout, buying gas and a car for your commute, taking prescriptions for high blood pressure or cholesterol all add to the GDP, and so it is good for our economy, and that’s what they value. RFK and the CDC will try to guilt you as an individual about your consumption of ultraprocessed food while failing to acknowledge the causes of our reliance on them.

The irony is that cooking at home is cheaper than eating out, which is like getting a raise – the one that your company won’t give you. Taking back your time is resistance. Cooking at home is resistance. Shopping the perimeter or the farmer’s market is resistance. You have the ability to take back your agency without having to ask anyone for permission.

From Milton’s Paradise Lost – Eve’s dream of temptation:

happy though thou art, Happier thou mayst be, worthier canst not be: Taste this, and be henceforth among the gods

The dream is one of ambition, of dissatisfaction with mere happiness and a vision of being godlike. This is the philosophy upon which 21st century life is built.

“Companies lost their mojo for a combination of the following reasons: focus on cost reduction, decreased quality of the product, losing their own identity and uniqueness by mimicking others, straying from simple concepts, losing touch with the consumer, moving away from organizational strengths, trying too hard for the mass market, jumping on the bandwagon, losing innovation, becoming “greedy,” decreasing customer service, thinking more of the business than of the consumer, not paying attention to community relations, losing authenticity, and losing an open, innovative, creative culture.” – Gary Erickson, Raising the Bar

Erickson is the owner of Clif Bars, but this quote could just as easily be applied to the theater and film scene, especially the regional theater.

“Our real journey in life is interior,” [Thomas Merton] concluded, clearly choosing his words with care, “ … a matter of growth, deepening, and an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action. I pray that we all may do so generously.”

Paul Elie - The Life You Save May Be Your Own