MEMBER MONDAY

The lunch talk by Susan Klebold a few months back was probably the most affecting presentation our club has witnessed. Sue projected an almost Buddha-like serenity as she told her story.

Her story: sending her son off to school one morning. Good-bye, honey. See you tonight. There would be no tonight as her son, Dylan, along with his friend, Eric, a few hours later let loose the black bats at Columbine which resulted in not only their deaths but those of at least a dozen other students and a teacher.

John Donvan's review of "No One Cares About Crazy People," by Ron Powers (the title derived from a quote by Scott Walker's aide assessing the political influence of this particular contingent i.e. none) (https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-your-sons-are-schizophrenic-1490994144) reports on the author's view that few of us care about the challenges of mental illness until the emergency is inside our own home. But it's probably also a safe bet that, among each of our extended families or that of a friend, there lurks some sort of mental illness -- schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or acute depression.

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"Kludgeocracy in America"

(link: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/kludgeocracy-in-america) is a highly readable and concise article teaching you more about government today than all the civics classes, political speeches or, indeed a close reading of the Constitution ever could. It lays bare the perverse incentives that drive the complexity and incoherence in the system. The accumulation of all these distortions results in a modern democracy that is but a funhouse mirror reflection of anything our Founding Fathers had originally envisioned.

The root -- kludge -- comes from a well-known reference to those clumsy inelegant patches that may address temporary problems but which collectively and inevitably lead to system compromise or even breakdown. One of the ironies is that the very nature of the phenomenon blinds us to the cause.

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Sometimes it takes a grand unifying theory – say, for example, quantum mechanics to explain the laws of physics beyond that which Newton could teach – to really make sense of the world. The ambition of The Fourth Turning is no less profound: to discern and explain the evolutionary patterns of America’s culture to describe her past, understand her present, and anticipate her future…

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“How did it happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality — how did it happen that, from all of this, there should come the Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, . . . . St. Augustine’s City of God . . . ?”

How did it happen that, when the American trajectory nosedived into self-doubt, paranoia, and internecine political warfare — how did it happen that, from all this, there should come . . . . ?

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We last encountered the subject of sex a mere decade ago at our book club (double) session where we discussed Jared Diamond's "Why Is Sex Fun?" and pondered the following:  

The book title begs the question. Sex. Is it? Fun? It certainly runs the cosmic gamut from the most sublime to the punchline of a dirty joke. 

Is the subject simply the sum of all those things, or even greater than the sum: a gestalt of every fantasy, release, anticipation, pursuit, seduction, rejection, reptilian urge, and candlelight cliche; the sum of all fears animating every Portnoy complaint and Woody Allen anxiety; from bell-ringing ecstasy to the ultimate source of profound loneliness; a cruel biological trick to propagate the species; the very concept of oneness yet sometimes the mere substitute for talk; faded memories of past loves, both requited and unrequited? All that, is all that, rolled into the word "fun?"

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There are reports of dystopian novels flying off the shelves these days. People see those old works in terms of life imitating (literary) art. Member Monday regulars already understand this. After all, we covered the use of of language as a mechanism of totalitarian control months ago (11/14) in our discussion of Orwell’s 1946 classic essay, “Politics and the English Language”.

In the political world it's called spin, a term that's spin itself.  On campuses it's sometimes labeled political correctness. Whatever the term, it's the intentional use of language to create a new reality through the elimination or distortion of a discarded truth. Today's easy example, of course, is in the citation of 1984 as the warning of a Trump-driven threat to our Republic ( Why '1984' Is a 2017 Must-Read - The New York Times)…

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We're all familiar with the Nature/Nurture debate i.e. how much of an individual's attributes is the product of inherited (genetic) biological factors and how much is a function of one's post-conception environment. Our focus article, “What Science Says About Race and Genetics” (http://time.com/91081/what-science-says-about-race-and-genetics/?iid=sr-link1) applies that question to culture itself. 

Advances in human genome decoding over the past ten years provide some new insights that update the widely-accepted theories of natural selection set forth in Darwin's 1859 Origin of the Species.

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Our next Member Monday discussion centers around a topic that the more fortunate among us manage to do over one-quarter of their lives. The "others," not so much. The first portion of our discussion will be dedicated to them i.e. the ones who can't count on six hours of uninterrupted sleep. The topic: Sleep, Insomnia, and Dreaming. The remainder of the session, somewhat more whimsical, will then embrace everyone as we flirt with the subconscious.   

We'll start things off with a nod to the poets and their various sleep-related idiosyncrasies, featured in the focus article Staring Into The Soundless Dark” (click to open link, then click again). Poets are particularly qualified to speak on the subject of insomnia. First, they are over-represented in the sleep deprivation department. Second, poetry itself has been characterized as a form of sleep.

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Our next Member Monday(1/13) discussion topic may test the club’s safe-space boundary i.e. what is the proper place of religion in a functioning democratic society. 

James Chappel sets up the matter in his very readable article, “Holy Wars: Secularism and the Invention of Religion” from the Boston Review (link: http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/james-chappel-secularism-religion). The piece synthesizes four recent books in such a way that it avoids pedantry and abstractions as it frames the issue(s).

Our next Member Monday(1/13) discussion topic may test the club’s safe-space boundary i.e. what is the proper place of religion in a functioning democratic society. 

James Chappel sets up the matter in his very readable article, “Holy Wars: Secularism and the Invention of Religion” from the Boston Review (link: http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/james-chappel-secularism-religion). The piece synthesizes four recent books in such a way that it avoids pedantry and abstractions as it frames the issue(s).

At its heart is the question: How can people live together in a democracy if they have fundamental, irreconcilable beliefs about the nature of the universe? Think in terms of the impulse to limit/ban/vet Muslim immigration to view the matter at the wholesale level. Think in terms of Kim Davis (the Kentucky county clerk who refused, on grounds of violating her Christian faith, to issue a marriage license to a gay couple) to see it at the retail level. Per one of the cited philosophers, what a conversation-stopper: if someone claims to be acting for religious reasons, what is there to say?

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Let's just say the group worked its way through denial, anger, and bargaining as we discussed David Loy’s “Bodhisattva Path in the Trump Era” at today's Member Monday (12/12) session. The depression stage was a draw and acceptance drew a salute with the middle finger. There was the whiff of existential dread.    

But consider the words of St. Thomas Merton speaking of an evolution that survived, thrived, and ultimately blossomed through a different sort of existential dread:  

Let's just say the group worked its way through denial, anger, and bargaining as we discussed David Loy’s “Bodhisattva Path in the Trump Era” at today's Member Monday (12/12) session. The depression stage was a draw and acceptance drew a salute with the middle finger. There was the whiff of existential dread.    

But consider the words of St. Thomas Merton speaking of an evolution that survived, thrived, and ultimately blossomed through a different sort of existential dread:  

“How did it ever happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality — how did it happen that, from all of this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius . . . . St. Augustine’s City of God . . ?”

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It’s been almost a month now. Our upcoming Member Monday (12/12) discussion will address the looming Trump era. What does it mean?

There are a number of ways to address the topic. The analysis of David Brooks in the NYT OpEd “The Future of the American Center”  (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/opinion/the-future-of-the-american-center.html) speculates on possible political realignments in the aftermath of a guy who enters the room and starts to throw all the furniture around. Nothing can be taken for granted in this environment e.g. deference to our traditional two-party system; respect for the old caucuses; and, for that matter, regard for the separation of powers. 

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The end-times crowd is fond of the clunky acronym — TEOTWAWKI — but, when you think about it, every single instant is The end of the world as we know it. Per Heraclitus roughly 500 B.C., “no man steps into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” The river of time as we know it ends with each next step. It’s this . . then this . . and now . . . . 

And so it is with each rolling generation. Our next Member Monday (11/28) session will focus on the generation hand-off, from the Boomers (and before) to the GenXers to the Millennial GenYers (and later). This pass-the-torch-to-a-new-generation discussion will neither sentimentalize the past nor prejudge the future.

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The inspiration for our next Member Monday (11/14) discussion came from an off-hand remark by member Michael Kosacoff that journalistic writing today seems to have become flat, uninspiring and almost formulaic. Our discussion piece will be that classic 1946 George Orwell essay, “Politics and the English Language.” (attached below as Pdf file).

Read it and smile in recognition. Orwell’s central complaint about "modern" English i.e. the reinforcing cycle of sloppy thinking and deteriorating language, is perhaps even more evident today. Remember, of course, his reference to modern English is in the context of a piece he wrote at the time many of our club's elder statesmen were still youngsters.

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“After God cast Lucifer and his followers into darkness, all the fallen angels came straggling on the plains of hell — to recriminate, to console themselves and to discuss their new identities as devils. . . . . It may be time for men to hold a convention for the same purpose”.

Thus begins a Lance Morrow essay http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,980115,00.html?artId=980115?contType=article?chn=us written twenty-two years ago (“Men Are They Really That Bad?”, Time, Feb. 14,1994) that serves as the focal piece of our Member Monday (11/7) discussion as we eye our own convention on the subject of: The Sexes.

So be it. Let us gather in a gender-balanced forum to compare and contrast today’s environment with that of two decades ago. A good place to start would be with the smoldering sexual theater on this day before of the Presidential election as it flares with the latest accusation or leaked video, often overshadowing serious policy debate…

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Think of the word pleasure and the mind looks for context. Left to itself the word may conjure something akin to decadence, suggesting perhaps earthly excesses and sensual indulgences with all its fleshy titillations. The very term epicurean delights seems to capture it. There’s the whiff of puritanical hell fire.

Now emerging from his hiatus we have club member Dr. Jia Gottlieb to join our session and help us work through the subject. Jia, our guide at the club’s previous monthly Health and Spirit Circle, has spent more than a decade thinking about and writing on the subject. Chapter One of his forthcoming book is attached (below) as this week’s discussion article…

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If today’s (10/3) Member Monday discussion involved internet disembodiment, next week’s (10/10) topic represents the polar opposite: the total fusion of mind and body. The inspiration for this was the lunch talk last week by Mark Williams, one-time F-15 fighter pilot and master of total situational awareness. Our discussion will center around any of our personal life experiences which engaged the entire body and transcended simple cognition.

By way of background here is a portion of the introduction prepared for the book discussion of “Deep Survival” some years ago:  

We all know, even in relatively calm times, that many big life decisions – an investment choice, a major purchase, a love interest – are often emotionally made and later (maybe) intellectually justified. 

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Addiction is a strong word but start with the numbers. In ten years smartphone ownership went from zero to two-thirds of all Americans, 85% if you’re just including young adults. A 2015 study showed these young adults used their phones five hours a day. Owner percentages alone don’t tell whole story but consider this: almost half of Americans told Pew surveyors they could not live without one. Unknown to indispensable in a decade.

We’re learning that this indispensability comes at a cost. Our Faustian bargain for this always-wired world —  hyper-connecting, hyper-distracting, hyper-intruding, and hyper-demanding — is kind of enslavement. The gods have rendered unto us the miracles of efficiency. A part of our humanity may have been sacrificed at the altar as we interact with the world more like a piece-part. Quoting Len Barren, Boulder’s own Einstein doppelganger, “in a perfectly efficient society man is redundant.”

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Resolved: The War on Drugs was rooted in a government need to control its citizenry. Discuss.

Boulder author Dan Baum opens his piece (“Legalize It All”) in a recent Harper’s article with this first-hand interview of John Erlichman (Nixon’s then domestic policy advisor), “You want to know what this was really all about? . . . the Nixon White House had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people . . we knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black . . .  but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities . . . we could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news . . . did we know we were lying about the drugs? — of course we did.”

Of course they did. Fear mongering was good politics. Just-Say-No was the best perception management campaign since Reefer Madness. It drove legislation and powered exploding bureaucracies at both the federal and state level.  

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