2007

First, you must know what you are dealing with...

When I got out of music school, I was afraid I was going to starve to death so I got a bill collector job--of all things! Most of the time I'd sit at my desk with a stack of account cards calling one client after another, asking them to pay. But if I couldn't reach them I had to drive to their houses and try to collect mano a mano.

One fine fall day I drove to this nice little house in Charlottesville Virginia and found my client--a skinny, white man of some 60 years or so--planted on his sofa while his wife--not a signatory--puttered around him. Although it was only just mid-afternoon he had already had a couple of cocktails and was feeling no pain. It was obvious pretty quickly that the guy had no means or intent of paying his bill.

'First you must know what you are dealing with, and then you can proceed,' he said as he explained that he hadn't worked in six months. He repeated it probably a half dozen times during our 15 minute conversation - 'First you must know what you are dealing with, and then you can proceed.' Damn It! I thought, We'll never get paid.

Twenty five years later I can still see him sinking into his Early American Herculon sofa with his pants at mid-thorax. Given his age and the likelihood of alcohol toxemia, he must be on a stain-resistant sofa in the sky by now.

But, to me, he resides in a little Cape Cod in my head forever reminding me - 'First you must know what you are dealing with, and then you can proceed.'

And, of course, we never did get paid.

Shoulders of Giants

We understand the world through our direct experience, the shared experience of our communities, and the knowledge and wisdom of those who came before us. But what a jumble this last one is! Let's work on that a little bit. I suppose that should be 'knowledge and wisdom' that have survived the test of time. That's still not enough. It's really what's survived by chance, isn't it? (If you think the phrase 'god's will' might fit in there, what, prey tell, serves god to burn down the library in Alexandria? And what wisdom might have been lost to that inferno?)

Consider the view from here, this generation. We are awash with stuff--cars and planes and cell phones and laser pointers and computers, plastic and magnetic resonance scanners and medicine made by cracking the genetic code, the Internet, and on and on and on. It's everywhere and we use it everyday. So much so it's practically invisible. Two hundred years ago none of it existed. Moreover the science that makes these inventions possible didn't exist. That science, and the engineering and invention, that gave rise to all that stuff, must have a profound impact on how we understand the world. So imagine understanding the world WITHOUT ALL OF THAT!

So, science has changed how we understand the world. Participating in a religion without acknowledging scientific understanding does not return the participant to a purer day, a time closer to eternal truths. It is self delusion and magical thinking. Moreover those that endeavor to do so cannot hope to know how those who lived in pre-scientific times really saw things. Those ancients didn't ignore what their everyday lives told them about how the world works and neither should we.

As Newton said we stand on the shoulders of giants and owe it to those who came before us--in science, in the arts and in religion--to move forward with all the tools at our command.

Addicted to War

Chris Hedges has written a hell of a book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. He describes with significant nuance his experience of war (as a journalist) including his 'addiction' to being in a war zone. For him, with great peril came his most robust life experiences. Recovering from his addiction he writes with passion against wars of choice.

I was raised in a family of Quakers--the Society of Friends, the proper name. While the religion teaches absolute pacifism my father fought in World War II and Korea. I came of age just as the USA withdrew from Vietnam. I do not believe in absolute pacifism but would never have fought in Vietnam or Iraq, wars we undertook inappropriately.

That said even as a 50-year old man I can still hear the call of battle, and almost regret being untested, unproven and unformed by its horrible rigors.

That odd sense of loss has always been stirred by the wonderful movie Patton.