By What Measure?

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." ~ Bertrand Russell

It's an interesting comment. On one level it reveals a value system that is common among many intellectuals. Intelligence has high value.

But in the Gospels, there are other values of importance. Being good, for example. Or being compassionate. Or being wise. There are so many educated fools that the very expression has become a byword.

I remember listening to a mean spirited diatribe by Andy Rooney against Mel Gibson and his film Passion of the Christ a few years back on Imus in the Morning. Rooney essentially dissed Gibson and the film because "the smartest man of the last century, Bertrand Russell" was an atheist.

So there you have it. A smart man's ideas are more valid than a holy man's. What do we do, then? Give everyone I.Q. tests to decide who gets to declare what we should all believe? It's nonsense. Newton was a smart man, and a Christian.

Sir Isaac Newton has been near universally ranked as the greatest mathematician of all time. Of Newton, Einstein said, "Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort."

So?

This only proves that smarts does not bring us all into agreement. One difference between Newton and Russell, however, might be that Newton was quite humble about his smarts. Before his death he remarked, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." I doubt either claimed to have perfect knowledge. And maybe Russell would have been embarrassed to have Andy Rooney put him on a pedastal like that.

There was a time when I thought being smart was the thing to be. I looked down on people who couldn't spell. Then, in college I met a guy who was valedictorian in his high school and lo, he was an atrocious speller. He wanted to co-write a play with me because I was an excellent speller and he felt I could communicate his message more effectively than he.

This threw a monkey wrench into my notion of smarts. And later when I learned he raped (at the time it was "heavy coercion") a friend of my girl friend, more head spins were occurring for me. Personal character has to be part of the equation.

By what measure, then, should we be measured? I can't recall anyone saying Mother Teresa, St.Francis of Assisi or Gandhi's significance had something to do with I.Q. Where did this strange measure come from?

There are other faulty measures of value, too. But it's getting late, and before too much fog settles in I'm going to pass on that.

A World Of Mental Pictures

“We see what our minds are trained to see.” ~ Journal Note, 1991

Most of what we know comes to us indirectly. We accept what we read in books, what we see on television and in the movies. We read newspapers and make assumptions about the veracity of what is called news. Astute readers may occasionally notice a little spin within the writing but we usually assume the reported facts have actually occurred.

Yesterday’s headlines included a story about a murder. A man stabbed a man outside a bar in Hermantown. We generally believe that in point of fact, the murder not only took place but occurred outside a bar and not across the street at the auto parts store. It was purportedly the first murder in Hermantown history. Most of us accept that as a matter of fact even without knowing the history of Hermantown.

Things are dicier when it comes to news broadcast from overseas. Walter Lippman, in his 1921 book Public Opinion analyzes in depth the problems associated with our pictures of reality. He begins with the story from Plato’s Republic of the men in the cave who can only see each others’ shadows but believe they are perceiving reality.

How do we understand what is really going on in the world if our minds have been filled with pictures that are interpretations, not realities? Lippman points out that our images of the world do not come from direct experience. As a consequence, our behavior is not derived from what we know but rather from what we are led to believe."The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do," Lippman writes.

The book appeared shortly after World War I, and is peppered with examples of how the American public often had a distorted view of events at that time. Lippman’s book outlines “how opinions are crystallized into what is called Public Opinion, how a National Will, a Group Mind, a Social Purpose, or whatever you choose to call it, is formed.”

During the Viet Nam War, falsified skirmishes from the battlefield were sometimes leaked to the media in order to make it look like the Viet Cong were attacking a U.S. outpost. The news stories helped legislators in Washington D.C. win key votes to help escalate the war effort. Those votes were based on events that were non-existent.

We have an image inside our heads of our world & universe that’s more comprehensive than any generation in history… TV, magazine, Nova, Discovery, talk radio, the internet. Does all this flood of information make us wiser and smarter than any generation? Or are we now so overwhelmed that we’re even more easily manipulated?

Tomorrow night is our Philosophy Club and we just happen to be discussing Descartes. Descartes, as you may recall, was the one who presented us with that famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am.”

The point he was making is not that he exists because he is a thinking person. Rather, he was wrestling with this very same issue that we’re discussing here. What is true? What can I be sure of? What a reliable basis for behavior? I need a tool to help sort through all these sensory perceptions and miscellaneous anecdotal messages regarding what I should be. What do I know innately as opposed to what I have been told from outside myself?

We like to believe we have reliable pictures in our heads. Capitalism is good. Government needs to be handcuffed. Business people are good because they provide jobs. Unions are bad. Muslims are dangerous fanatics. Or maybe we have alternate pictures. The compartmentalization of everything into black and white is likewise a picture many people have. It resolves a lot of things, makes some choices less complicated.

But what is true? What is reliable?

My suggestion -- and it’s sort of the place Descartes ended up -- is to separate what you know to be certain from what is grey and uncertain. When we hear a new idea, we shouldn’t just swallow it whole without examining it. Put it on the shelf for a little bit and see how it stacks up or fits with everything else you’ve tested and accepted… or rejected.

Even the apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, did not demand that his hearers accept what he himself was saying. He commended those who checked things out first before acting on Paul’s teaching.

I have high regard for those who are able to hold new ideas with a loose grasp until they’ve fully investigated and verified them, if able. Sometimes it may even stay on that shelf till it gets cobwebs. Eventually, as the saying goes, the truth will out.

In the meantime, things aren't always what they seem.

So Many Books, So Little Time

Today... a few gathered quotes on books. There are few greater joys than reading. This week I started Walter Lippman's Public Opinion, a 1921 discussion of propaganda and mass manipulation that preceded the Bernays book I discussed yesterday. Reading is a great way to meet thinkers who live outside the sphere of our social relations. Books are a wonderful thing.

For this reason, I share a few quotes about books here, and will make a few comments to go along with them.

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends." ~ Dawn Adams

It is possible to love a book on many levels. Sometimes for the beauty of the language. Sometimes for the richness of the ideas it conveys. Sometimes one is impressed by the power or magical mastery of language, as in Hemingway's collection of short stories In Our Time. Without books we would be paupers.

"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors." ~ Joseph Addison

So true. About ten years ago I began listening to books during my commute to and from the office, and on trips to the Cities. I remember listening to Michener's Mexico during a trip to Lake Geneva many years ago. Currently I am finishing A History of England, Volume 3 from 1750 to 2000. Churchill, Orwell, the Irish potato famine, the French Revolution, the descent from world power to has been... it is a history of people and places that speaks much to us today, if we would hear. What a contrast to the repetitive fluff that passes itself off as entertainment or content on the usual airwaves.

"Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life." ~ Mortimer J. Adler

When the internet first emerged, I created a project to help raise funds for a youth center computer room. I named the project Dandy Yankee Doodles, hoping to obtain doodles from celebrities and other famous folk which could be made into collectibles of some kind. Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, sent a doodle. A couple others also contributed as well. And Mortimer Adler's secretary sent a note saying that Mr. Adler did not doodle. I appreciated its thoughtful warmth. When I read this quote, it is likewise unembellished, true and straight, from a logical, good man.

"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry." ~ Gaston Bachelard

Speaking of poetry, last night I learned that the poem that begins, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree" was not written by a woman. Joyce Kilmer, the author of these memorable lines, was a man who ended up being killed in the trench warfare of World War I. Journalist, literary critic, lecturer and poet... Kilmer died at age 31 in the Second Battle of Marne. I think of Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."

"He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes." ~ Barrow

Words good and true. Who has not experienced the comforted of a good book at some point in their lives?

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Similar sentiments from yet another space in time.

"Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable." ~ Augustine Birrell

This quote seems directed to the writers of this world. Remember, writer, that readers are only human. If you are writing to be read, keep it in mind that you've got to keep the customer satisfied. Make it worth our while. Please don't think you're so important that whatever you say is something we need to hear whether we like it or not.

"It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything." ~ Lord Henry P. Brougham

I like this quote because it speaks of a vastness which many people are tempted to disregard. There is value in understanding what a Marx or Nietzsche or even a Hitler has written. I've read Mein Kampf. If you read National Review, try a little Mother Jones or Harper's. If you're reading Rick Warren or Billy Graham, how about tackling Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian for something to chew on. If you like postmodern deconstruction, take a stab at Kreeft's Refutation of Modern Relativism.

"After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books." ~ Thomas Carlyle

Carlyle was a Scots Presbyterian Calvinist who lost his faith, but continued to have keen insights about life and the Brit world in which he found himself. Any serious reader can't help but come across a pithy Carlyle maxim now and then. Seems like I came across quite a few over the years, but never knew who he was till reading this third volume of the history of Britain. Carlyle figures prominently in the section dealing with the Victorian era. I half considered a full blog of Carlyle quotes last week, and will probably save them for a snowy day in the near future.

"A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Marcus T. Cicero

Yes, there should be books in every room. My office has a wall of books. But it pales in comparison to the walls of books my grandmother had. Alas...

"The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring." ~ Warren Chappell

The same probably applies now to blogging and electronic media..

"The mere brute pleasure of reading --the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing." ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Ah yes.... Chesterton weighs in with a vivid image that tells all. What lover of books hasn't felt this kind of pleasure?

Propaganda Revisited

The word propaganda is actually a Latin word that was originally introduced in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV in response to the global rise of Protestantism. He formed an “Office for the Propagation of the Faith” to oversee Catholic mission efforts in the New World. (“Congregatio de propaganda fide”) It is interesting that global forces and fears were the impetus behind these propaganda efforts, much like modern times.

During World War I propaganda became a secret weapon of our own government to turn public opinion against the Germans in order to prepare our nation for war. Before the war the word propaganda was so insignificant that it didn’t even have an entry in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. During the war it was little understood how much the media served as mouthpiece for the propaganda machinery that demonized “the Huns” and portrayed the Germans as Prussian barbarians.

In 1928 Edward Bernays, in a book titled Propaganda, argued that propaganda was a good thing, a useful tool for the ruling elite because the masses needed to be moved. They were sheep too dumb to know what was best for them without guidance. The government and the media should work together to create an appetite for the right goods, services, leaders. It was a positive, not a perjorative.

Within months of publication of this landmark manual the word was already getting a bad reputation. George Creel, in another book, revealed that our own U.S. Office of War Information had heavy-handedly practiced the art of public manipulation to seed the war effort. When the public learned they had been hoodwinked, manipulated by falsehood and innuendo, lies, exaggeration and half-truths, … well, the word had to be replaced by more positive terminology.

The new term is Public Relations. And what PR professionals practice is called “spin.”

The problem is, no one knows anymore what is true and what is spin. Hence we live in an era of disillusionment and distrust.

During World War I it was said that Germans always lie, Americans always tell the truth. When later Americans learned their country told them half truths and outright lies, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

Bernays used his book as a stepping stone to advance his own career as a publicist. He ultimately achieved the stature he desired, becoming a mouthpiece for Big Tobacco for a spell as well as for General Electric in what amounted to helping it achieve a “stranglehold on America’s electric power” in “the largest peacetime propaganda drive in peacetime history.” (M.C.Miller)

His crowning achievement was the work he did in Latin America during the 1950s on behalf of the United Fruit Company wherein he paved the way for the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz. To our shame as a nation, we did not dig into the motivations of UFC or the underlying truths behind what was really going on there in Guatemala, or Costa Rica. The resulting damage to U.S. credibility in the region lingered for decades.

In the Viet Nam era, we find similar tactics. And post 9/11… well, who knows where the truth goes when you have all these think tanks and spin doctors ever so busy weaving words into mesmerizing pinwheel spells and snapdragon daisywheels of distraction.

Words can serve as a conveyor of truth, but in a world where they so often veil and betray truth how does one know? How can one be sure? The imperative is learning how to hear, how to listen, how to weigh the value of what is spoken and written... how to separate the darkness from the light and give order to the chaos. In short, how to discern.

A Poem About Truth

Short Story Monday.... this one is perhaps unusual in style, written at a time when I was captivated by the South American short story writer Jorge Luis Borges. It's one of my favorites, though often misunderstood being somewhat satirical and mystical at the same time. Enjoy.

A Poem About Truth

May 18, 1944. At Hitler's war conference he is told that the enemy has carried out two spy operations during the night on the heavily defended French coastline. At one place, near Calais, German troops have found an orange peel, an empty flask and a shovel lying on the beach. Years later they would say that they also found a landscape painted on driftwood, a finely crafted home made flute and a dagger. In the estuary of the river Somme, two British commandos were discovered in the late afternoon. "They came ashore in a rubber raft," General Jodl, chief of Wehrmacht operations, tells Hitler. "They claim to know nothing."

The scene changes to a French restaurant once frequented by Napoleon. The restaurant serves excellent Italian fare. Three nights have passed. A stout German woman makes pasta in the kitchen. Two French chefs argue about how to make croissants. They are smoking cigarettes and sipping wine. They know that Hitler is a madman, but it does not affect their cooking. The taller chef, thinnest of the two, is also a writer. At night he composes poetry in the same way that a garden produces flowers. The effect is dazzling. His mother also was a poet, as was his grandfather. He does not believe in war or death. He is restless, anxious about love, and lives alone. If he had a lover, he knows that he would write less poetry, since he writes only to fill his piteous empty hours. When he reads his poems, he cries, then burns them. He is brutally honest with himself.

The following evening he overhears a Nazi under-lieutenant commenting on Britain's secret operations. He seizes the opportunity to become part of an adventure. He never again sees his home. Later that night the chef is captured in a forbidden zone near the Seine whereupon he fakes an English accent and says he is a spy. He is blindfolded and driven to a chateau where he must stand before Rommel. He makes up a story about a wife and daughter in Britain. The details are vivid, but Rommel loses interest and orders him to be shot. That night he writes a poem about the event and leaves it in his cell. The German officer who reads it laughs at the insipid rhymes and melancholy metaphors. He shares it with his friend who notices that the word "mishap" is misapplied and that "appendage" would have been a better choice of words than "freehold."

By week's end a hundred eyes have seen the poem. Many jokes are made of it. Heinrich (we do not know his last name), a company agent from Stuttgart, makes a copy of the poem, then translates it into German. In the translation he improves the meter and resolves the problematic third stanza. He sends it to his mother who doesn’t understand it, but keeps it in a small wooden box on the bureau next to a framed photo of the Fuhrer.

It’s possible the original poem is still in existence somewhere, but no one knows for certain. My cousin, who married a German woman, says her father saw the poem, the original version, and remembers that it was called Truth Is A Fire That Burns. We don’t know if this was the same poem, or if he saw the poem at all. After the war many German soldiers say they saw the poem, and many more say they made copies of it to send to the Fatherland. We know that most of them are lying. Over the years versions have appeared in literary journals, some superior to others, all of them improvements on the original. I have seen it thrice in English literary journals -- once, I believe, in the Antioch Review, though it may have been one of the other college publications that begin with an A. Someone told me that it has been translated into 57 languages. In Laos, the mountain peoples now say that it is the Word of God.

No one remembers the French chef who gave his life to produce the poem. His unknown name has been swallowed up by history, but his poem lives on in human hearts.

The End

Copyright 1998 ~ Ed Newman
PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED if attribution is cited.

Ten Power Questions

For seven years I belonged to a small group of business professionals called the M5. We would meet to challenge one another, to be a portable, personal board of directors for our careers, and to hold one another accountable to the goals we set for ourselves.

Many invaluable lessons were learned. Many additional tools added to my life toolkit.

The following ten power questions were shared at one of these meetings. Unfortunately I did not see an attiribution in my notes, and when I Googled "Ten Power Questions" I came up with many other sets of questions, but not these. So, if you know the source, please add a comment so we can give attribution.

If inclined, these are each worth further reflection. Perhaps you will find them as meaningful as I.

Ten Power Questions

1) When am I most myself? What people, places, and activities allow me to feel most fully myself?

2) What is one thing I could stop doing, or start doing, or do differently, starting today that would most improve the quality of my life?

3) What is my greatest talent?

4) How can I get paid for doing what I love?

5) Who are my most inspiring role models?

6) How can I best be of service to others?

7) What is my heart's deepest desire?

8) How am I perceived by: my closest friend, my worst enemy, my boss, my children, my co-workers, etc.

9) What are the blessings of my life?

10) What legacy would I like to leave?

GM Suffers Unhappy 100th

Armchair quarterbacking from the sidelines, things are not looking up in the U.S. economy any time soon. A year ago I had dinner with a publisher who predicted a bad year in 2008, and it looks like he weren’t a-kiddin’. Unfortunately, the shakeout that hit the housing and financial markets has not worked its way through the system yet. More fallout is clearly in the cards as the auto industry staggers to remain the viable, reliable heartbeat of America.

Since the end of 2004 General Motors, biggest of the Big Three, began losing money in great rivers of red ink… 73 billion dollars now, and still flowing. GM, which should be celebrating in this year’s 100th anniversary, is sweating, hands outstretched, seeking help from the rich uncle who just finished throwing gobs of money at the banking sector.

Third quarter losses for GM were $4.2 billion. GM shareholders have seen the value of their holdings fall 82% this year alone. Many industry watchers have said that without federal aid, the company could collapse resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs (after factoring in those many businesses that subsist on sales to the giant automaker.)

Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, told Bloomberg Television yesterday that "either the federal government provides money for a bailout and lets the industry retool, restructure, and move ahead, or the industry dies.''

How did this happen and how bad is it really? Did GM put itself in a bind by making cars that consumers weren’t interested in? The top selling cars last year again were Hondas and Toyotas.

I remember the Ford slogan two decades back, “Have you driven a Ford lately?” My 2008 answer is, "Have you driven a Honda lately?" No offense, but “Buy American” is not going to fix our woes unless American manufacturers pull their heads out of the sand and start making quality cars that consumers want.

GMs woes, howwever, are not all their own making. The banking collapse has been a devil of a problem for all the automakers. In 2007, more than 80% of people wishing to buy a new car could get financing as opposed to 33% in September this year. Tight money has left an already languishing U.S. auto industry in dire straits.

Yesterday, the drums began beating for a bailout. Too many people have a vested interest in keeping GM alive. But where does this money come from? I’m not sure I really want to know.