Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • It’s the Zombies Who Burned the Witches

      “All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.” — William Butler Yeats

      I stumbled upon the social media rantings of an old college friend recently. I was shocked by the conspiracy theories being spouted, and recoiled at the gap that has developed between her worldview and my own. I’d tried to debate her before on her accuracy, but alas, she wouldn’t budge. Another college friend reminded me of the line they use when logic isn’t working: If you only knew what I knew. Right. If only…

      I understand better how people once burned witches. They were simply too devoid of experience to understand the things happening to them. When we know how to prevent smallpox or the plague, or to mitigate infant mortality or crop failure, we stop blaming the neighbor’s daughter who looked at us funny. We’ve entered a time when extreme opinions are paralyzing our progress, and it’s a direct result of the poverty of experience in the daily diet of so many. We’re all in danger of being burned at the stake as we look at these people who once seemed normal spiral into conspiracy theories fueled by an over-reliance on “Internet facts”.

      Have you noticed that all of the people living in the world’s intellectual centers perish in the zombie apocalypse movies? The survivors all move to remote walled villages with high walls and guns that somehow kill already dead people. In the real world, the zombies are the people building walls that close out contrary opinions and buying guns to fend off those who would dare cross them. We all agree that we must not become zombies, we just don’t agree on what a zombie actually is.

      In truth, I am conspiring—to keep hope alive. To help people find informational nutrition, and with it, to form better opinions. To seek experience beyond the walls, where insight lives. That pendulum has to swing back to consensus and shared beliefs some day, right? The alternative is to build our own walls, and doesn’t the world have enough of those already?

    • Becoming Better at Seeing

      I was talking to one of my in-law’s neighbors while walking the pup on their street. The neighbor has reached a place where you might call her elderly and frail, but was out shoveling her driveway because her grandson hadn’t shown up to do it. We’re all so busy this time of year… the grandson surely wouldn’t have let his grandmother shovel her driveway alone on a frigid day, but he wasn’t there to witness it and step in. My daughter and I were, and finished her driveway, cleared off her car and asked her if she wanted to come over to join us at the holiday party we were having. She politely declined and thanked us for the invitation.

      We become comfortable in our routines, even when those routines don’t make sense for us anymore. In a perfect world the tribe would revere and support the tribal elders. We live in a world where we’re tapped out and stretched thin, and sometimes we don’t get around to making the call or stopping by to see how those tribal elders are doing. Often they’re holding on by a thread, doing the best they can. A burst of snow quickly freezing into concrete has the potential to put someone over the edge without a lifeline.

      When we slow down a beat and stop rushing on to the next thing with our blinders on, our peripheral vision improves greatly. There are people moving through this world who easily see gaps and fill them with their full attention. I aspire to be more like them, while knowing I’m one of those people who are often too busy to have that situational awareness. We all want to help, don’t we? We just don’t always see. As we move down our path towards personal excellence, becoming better at seeing and solving is something to aspire to. We’re all in this tribe together, aren’t we?

    • Living Towards

      “People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.”
      ― Kim Culbertson, The Liberation of Max McTrue

      I live in a small town with no traffic lights in New Hampshire that snugs up against Massachusetts. I’ve been here for three decades now and for the life of me I know I’ll never feel like a local despite knowing many of them, watching our children grow up together and watching some of those children begin to have children. How can one spend more than half their years in a town and still feel they’re an outsider?

      I’ve been plotting my escape from this town for years, but then I keep running into people with a shared history and find the conversation pleasant. I stood out in the semi-frozen front yard raking up acorns and wore out my arm waving to neighbors driving past on their way back from Sunday activities. I recognize the patterns of the season in this town, from how the stars align against the hillsides to where the deer go to hide from all the hunters. There’s a rhythm to familiarity that we may wear like a warm coat.

      Life is what we make of it. Where we live, what we do for work, and how much time we spend with people who don’t see the world the way we do is often up to us. We are the light in someone’s day when we encounter them, or we’re a reminder to them that they’ve got to get out of this place. The world largely reflects back what we project out to it. The last few years I’ve projected that I’d rather be somewhere else than this small town. Who can blame the town for feeling the same about me?

      The thing is, we ought to be building our lives towards something, not recoiling from something. It’s a subtle difference, but the latter has us on our heels, the former has us charging ahead. One is regression, one is progression. Don’t we all want to feel like we’re making progress in our lives? When the world seems to be shrinking from us, it’s usually a reflection of our own stance with it. We must lean into our future, wherever we want it to take us. Just be sure to give a wave and a smile to the neighbors, they look like they’re going through some things too.

    • Tradition (Happy Thanksgiving)

      “Tradition is the illusion of permanence.” — Woody Allen

      The fact that we’ve always done something a certain way doesn’t mean that thing ought to be done that way forever. Tradition is merely a form of habit, ritualized and accepted as the way. But life is change, and tradition is thus always in a fragile state. We all crave some measure of permanence and familiarity in a world that guarantees nothing. And so it takes people deliberately choosing to do something the same way again and again that makes a tradition stick. For Americans, the ultimate expression of tradition is Thanksgiving.

      For more than half my life I’ve been getting up early and prepping a bird for a mid-afternoon meal with family and friends. It’s a lovely tradition, but admittedly unusual. I mean, it’s right in the middle of the work week, we’re all spread out across the country now, and the whole thing is just so expensive in time and effort. And we love it so because we’re all together again, for no other reason than that we choose to be. And that’s cause for celebration.

      We know (or we must know) that time flies (tempus fugit) and we’re all quite fragile (memento mori), and any one of these Thanksgivings may be the last for us. The whole holiday is an acknowledgement that we made it to here, today, and mostly together despite all that is happening in the world, and we ought to celebrate our arrival here today with a traditional meal altered slightly for dietary considerations. Yes, life is change, and we are surely changed by this complicated business of living, but today we still have this wonderful tradition and each other. Happy Thanksgiving.

    • Here We Are

      “A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
      ― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

      Those who pay attention know the score. Those who don’t are happy with the distractions the world flashes in front of them one after the other. They don’t want to know the score, they want to be entertained in the moment. Let the world crash down later as long as we all have a good laugh now. And here we are.

      To pay attention is to watch a story where you know the ending but you just hope maybe there will be one of those Hollywood twists that make everything all right. Whoops, the scientists forgot to carry over the extra value! Climate change is magically fixed! Only a clown would believe that, and here we are.

      The only answer is to build a resilient life for ourselves. Live in places that put us in the best position possible for the best or worst case scenario. Invest well financially, but also in our knowledge, our network and in our physical and mental health. Resilience is a way of life, not a lock on the door. It’s seeing how high the flood waters might rise and building ever higher than that. Yes, here we are, but maybe we need to move up and over there.

      The stoics went through their version of all this themselves. That they wrote about it offers us a light in the darkness with which to navigate. We too may be writers and thinkers and live boldly individual lives apart from the whims of a distracted society. We’ll be fine or we won’t, all we can control in the universe is how we react. Amor fati (love of fate). And here we are.

    • Another Way

      “Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.” — Franz Kafka

      Nothing is forever, it’s easy to see that in the transactions of life, but some things return back to us in another form. I will always believe the world reflects back what we project into it, and when we project love, we find we receive just enough back. We can’t very well hoard such things as love, for the act of hoarding isn’t love at all, and results in a reflection back that isn’t love. There are plenty of examples of people whoring themselves out thinking they’ll get love in return, when all they really get are a bunch of whores hanging around them. That ain’t love.

      I started a new gig yesterday, mostly because it felt like the right fit but also because I don’t like to sit still very much. Between the old and the new gig, I’d done all the yard chores, participated in a window replacement project and painted rooms. All just to get things done. Each of these things may feel like chores, but they’re all opportunities to return love to those who have loved us.

      Each act in a lifetime is a message to those around us about the type of person we’re going to be. When all feels lost we may be a beacon to help someone find their way. This is how to live in a world that often feels cold and dark. There is always another way, and it begins with love.

    • The Next Essential Thing

      I’m not going to lie to you, the last month has been a whirlwind of change, travel and starting all over again. We collectively face massive cultural changes in this new world that we’re all sorting sorting out in our own way. I’ve got plenty on my mind already, so the national election will have to be stacked in the corner to percolate for awhile.

      In medias res (“into the midst of things”) is the phrase that exemplifies the state I’m in. I’m jumping right into the next after a busy and productive month. For all that I’ve accomplished over the last month, I ought to pause and reflect, but there’s no time for it. I see the swirling current in front of me and I’m focused on staying afloat.

      And that’s the key word when we’re in the midst of things: focus. Focus on the essential next thing that will keep us from drowning in the current of change. Put one foot in front of the other, and keep moving across that floor. To get swept away in any emotion doesn’t serve us well, it pulls us under. The next essential thing is the only thing that matters right now. So let’s get to it.

    • The Diplomat

      “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

      Every trip reminds me that we’re mostly all the same. Would that everyone travel more, that they too might learn this lesson. True, the popular tourist destinations are already crowded enough, but the lessons aren’t learned on a tour bus or cruise ship anyway. To know people we must meet them on their terms, where they live, without the sticker telling everyone which group we’re in.

      I am a diplomat without the pension plan. Wherever I go, I work to meet people halfway. That may be Rome or London now and then, but mostly it’s the person next to me on a train or a restaurant. I don’t know who they voted for most of the time (unless they’re wearing the uniform), but it honestly doesn’t matter anyway. The job of the diplomat is to build bridges, not to tear them down.

      Each day I work my craft. It’s not manipulation I practice, but the craft of reaching understanding and finding something in common with that human I’m interacting with. Most people reflect back that which we project onto them (the rest are narcissists or psychopaths—it helps to realize when you encounter them too). The diplomats are the ones who keep this fabric of humanity woven together. Someone’s got to do it.

    • The Pub Crawl

      A place like Dublin deserves a good pub crawl to really say that you’ve been there. Whether you drink or not isn’t the point, it’s the opportunity to immerse yourself into Irish culture and celebrate life all at once that makes a pub crawl a great experience. Of course, if you partake a few drinks can help one in that immersion business.

      The name “pub” is short for “public house”, which itself was used to differentiate them from private houses and thus able to serve alcohol. You’ll still see many a pub calling themselves a public house, and it brings us full circle back to the roots. Whatever you call them, they’ve become central community gathering places for generations, making them integral to our cultural history. I’ll drink to that!

      There are a few things one ought to seek out in a pub when choosing which of the hundreds in a place like Dublin to visit. For me, a bit of history counts for a lot. If I never get to Dublin again in my lifetime (and that would be a pity), then I’d want to get to a place with some history. No pub has more of that than Ireland’s oldest pub, The Brazen Head, a place that “has been a hostelry… since 1198. The present building was built in 1754 as a coaching inn.” The food was excellent and the Guinness was a perfect compliment. Walking around it, you feel you’re living your moment in its long history.

      Darkey Kelly’s isn’t quite as old as The Brazen Head, but it has its own rich history. “Darkey” Kelly was a brothel-keeper who was burned at the stake in Dublin in 1761 for witchcraft. She almost certainly wasn’t a witch, but there was evidence that she was a serial killer. Rough way to go for anyone, of course, and why did it always seem to be the women being burned at the stake? Anyway, the pub itself was lively and filled with music and conversation, everything you’d want in a pub. The Irish whiskey collection was the largest I’ve seen. And as a bonus the Ireland-New Zealand rugby match was on, capturing the enthusiastic attention of the locals. It was my favorite of the bunch.

      As a nightcap for the evening, The Old Storehouse, brought more live music with a young and active drinking crowd. In fact, noticeably younger. The later it gets, the younger the crowd gets. And that young crowd surprised me as they belted out the hits of the 70’s and 80’s as if they grew up with them )which of course they have, they were merely reminding me). The duo played to the crowd with far more rock and disco hits than traditional Irish music, but with a talented fiddle player sprinkling beautiful Celtic all over them.

      No trip to Dublin would be complete without at least a pass by The Temple Bar. It’s surely lovely to look at, but more than any other pub it’s geared towards the tourists, prices and all. Still, worthy of a quick visit, if only for the obligatory photo with it. After all, what’s a pub crawl without seeing and being seen with the most famous of them all?

    • Stuck In the Middle

      Clowns to the left of me
      Jokers to the right
      Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
      — Stealers Wheel, Stuck in the Middle With You

      For those of us stuck in the middle with the extremists on either side of the political spectrum, these are challenging times indeed. Those who aspire to personal excellence must reconcile that objective with the circle of people surrounding them. On the face of it that sounds arrogant and more than a little condescending, but I will stand by the belief that we are the average of the people we associate with the most, and lately popular opinion leaves a lot to be desired. When did this become a desired outcome?

      We must hold the line anyway and work to show others who would follow the path. Progress is never a straight line to the top. These are things I tell myself when the world lets me down a bit. The issue isn’t with the world, frustrating as it may be, but with my hope that the world will see the light and surpass my expectations. We must work on ourselves instead, for that’s all we may control anyway. Still, navigating to a better middle seems necessary too.