Frozen Toothpaste

Since it’s that time of year, and I wanted to avoid another day like this, some word’s from Stephen Colbert’s 2006 Address to the graduates of Knox College.

But you seem nice enough, so I’ll try to give you some advice. First of all, when you go to apply for your first job, don’t wear these robes. Medieval garb does not instill confidence in future employers—unless you’re applying to be a scrivener. And if someone does offer you a job, say yes. You can always quit later. Then at least you’ll be one of the unemployed as opposed to one of the never-employed. Nothing looks worse on a resume than nothing.

So, say “yes.” In fact, say “yes” as often as you can. When I was starting out in Chicago, doing improvisational theatre with Second City and other places, there was really only one rule I was taught about improv. That was, “yes-and.” In this case, “yes-and” is a verb. To “yes-and.” I yes-and, you yes-and, he, she or it yes-ands. And yes-anding means that when you go onstage to improvise a scene with no script, you have no idea what’s going to happen, maybe with someone you’ve never met before. To build a scene, you have to accept. To build anything onstage, you have to accept what the other improviser initiates on stage. They say you’re doctors—you’re doctors. And then, you add to that: We’re doctors and we’re trapped in an ice cave. That’s the “-and.” And then hopefully they “yes-and” you back. You have to keep your eyes open when you do this. You have to be aware of what the other performer is offering you, so that you can agree and add to it. And through these agreements, you can improvise a scene or a one-act play. And because, by following each other’s lead, neither of you are really in control. It’s more of a mutual discovery than a solo adventure. What happens in a scene is often as much a surprise to you as it is to the audience.

Well, you are about to start the greatest improvisation of all. With no script. No idea what’s going to happen, often with people and places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say “yes.” And if you’re lucky, you’ll find people who will say “yes” back.

Now will saying “yes” get you in trouble at times? Will saying “yes” lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes.”

I’ve been faintly aware of Bloggingheads.tv for about 18 months, and a loyal “viewer” — more on those quotation marks in a minute — for about six months. Bloggingheads is a talk show with little production value but constantly compelling guests. Most episodes are about an hour long from end-to-end and features little more than two heads presented side-by-side talking to each other. The most movement you generally see on screen is heads bobbing during the course of the conversation, and some holding of books. There are no graphics, and rarely anything interesting to see.

But talk shows shouldn’t be about production quality and really shouldn’t rely on eye-candy. Dedication to those ideals makes Bloggingheads a place dedicated to interesting conversations about relevant (and interesting) topics. Surely those turned off by politics will be mostly bored by Bloggingheads, but most of the commentators are interesting and thoroughly knowledgeable about the topic they discuss.

As you may reasonably expect from the name, most Bloggingheads contributors are bloggers, and many are of the political variety. If one has spent much time in the political blogosphere at least a few names and faces will be familiar. If you’re unfamiliar with the personalities, take my word that they’re mostly interesting and intelligent.

To the “viewing” question: one could legitimately ask why — other than it’s inspiration as an alternative to cable news channels’ talk shows — Bloggingheads does video at all. As was noted, rarely is much of interest presented by the conversants’ faces, and almost never are the visuals necessary for comprehension of what’s going on. After all, the show is produced by two people taping themselves talking on the phone, with neither able to see the other. Acknowledging that reality, the show is available as an audio-only MP3 podcast, my preferred method of “viewing.”

It’s hard to address the contents of the show themselves, as so many episodes are produced in a week, with such a variety of topics and tones. There are some standards however. On Fridays, a left-leaning blogger and a right-leaning blogger discuss the topics that have lit up that “sphere”  in the past week. On Saturdays, two science personality — usually journalists, but sometimes scientists or even philosophers — will discuss topics including their latest writings or experiments. On Sundays, Mark Goldberg discusses UN-focused international affairs topics with everyone from activists, to ambassadors, and reporters. On Mondays, Will Wilkerson usually discusses new books with their authors on the libertarian-leaning “Free Will.” And recently, the sites founders, Mickey Kaus and Bob Wright, have gotten back into the habit of talking to — and yelling at — each other about mostly-mainstream political topics, usually on Thursdays.

That’s a small sampling of the content available. And there’s no doubt that it’s a lot of content. In a given week at least five hours content will be posted. And some of it will contain little more than “the narcissism of small differences.” And some will be punctuated primarily by two people hurling invective across massive divides of misunderstanding. And some will be dedicated to other minutia about which I simply don’t care. It can sometimes be too much for even the most time-rich viewers to watch loyally.

But these problems are minor compared the to unique qualities of the project. It’s certainly better — if less up-to-the-minute — than anything you’re likely to encounter on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. A show that features intelligent people having civil discussions about interesting topics? I’ll do my best to find time for that.

It can seem like there are hundreds of them. Those little phrases that tell you that you should make the most of today. Like, “Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Or “We’re only dancing on this earth for a short while.” Or “Live everyday as if it were your last.” Or “Tomorrow, you’ll be dead.” OK, admittedly the last one isn’t one you’ve heard before.

I think it’s odd that most of these sayings insist that today is only important if tomorrow you won’t be here and alive. As if, when you find yourself alive tomorrow, everything that was important about today will be unimportant. As if “the fierce urgency of now” is only fierce or urgent in the face of impending death.

Perhaps it’s not actually odd. It’s somewhat sensible: the so-often-ignored remarkableness of being alive is much easier to see if tomorrow we won’t have this so-often-ignored thing anymore. To quote Joni Mitchell, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” Perhaps it’s only when we the see the clear difference between being alive and being dead that we understand the unmistakable value in this thing called life.

And to quote — because this seems to be a topic much discussed in the literature — Marcel Proust wrote:

I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were suddenly threatened to die… Think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, our life hides from us, made invisible by our laziness, which certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

I think Proust, like all those other sayings and songs and phrases, makes a valuable point. And I suppose what I want to say is that I wish that it didn’t take the thought of our impending end to make us realize that every single day you wake up alive is truly an amazing day. Surely there may be some terrible things you’ll go through today, and tomorrow, and the next week, but you’re still alive. “It goes on.”

And so while I intimately understand why writers and poets so often bring up the thought of death, I wish we could learn to take note of life in itself. I’ve not said this as eloquently as I would like, but I’m just glad I got a day in which to say it. And I’ll leave you with Proust’s more eloquent — and somewhat ironic — elucidation of the problem with constantly valuing life only in the face of tomorrow’s death:

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.

The wars about which there is the least dissent, both contemporary and historical, are those which are judged to have been good, necessary, and just. And though there can be extensive debate against how much any war fits any or all of these categories, it’s hard to doubt that a war that is seen as good, just, and necessary is a “better” war than one that fit into none of those categories.

We can use Iraq as an example. Some would contend that America’s invasion of Iraq was none of the above. Not good, not necessary, not just. The vast consensus at the time, however, was that it was a good war, and if not a just war, at least necessitated by weapons of mass destruction.

Goodness in war is something judged by external moral absolutes. America’s mythical neoconservatives like to fight wars against evil. In such a black-and-white world, all wars waged by America are inherently good. Even if one doesn’t believe that America is always on the side of the good, there are some clear situation where we unquestionably wage wars on the side of the good. World War II, which is generally the most clear-cut war in history, saw the Allies fighting the good fight. It would be essentially impossible to define either the Nazis or the Japanese, both of whom believed they were racially superior and thus engaged in genocidal tactics, as much other than evil.

Necessity is perhaps more difficult to pin down than good. Realists, who believe in unwavering pragmatism in foreign policy, generally prefer to fight only the necessary wars. One can easily say that it is necessary to fight back when your territory has been invaded and your citizens are being killed. Leaving aside the Dalai Lama, who doubts the necessity of war for even self-defense, it’s generally acknowledged that a defensive war is a necessary war. More recently, it has also become recognized that in cases of genocide, war is necessary. It is with this belief that the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia — ending the reign of the Khmer Rouge — was necessary, that United Nations intervention in Bosnia was necessitated, and NATO action in Kosovo was legitimate.

This, however, gets to the final and most difficult point. When is a war just? Some liberal institutionalists believe that a war is only just if it has the blessing of the biggest international body of all: the UN. In this view, only the intervention into Bosnia was just. Because NATO intervention into Kosovo didn’t come with United Nations assent that it was good and necessary, the war was unjust. Others would say that assent from any existing multilateral institutions can make a war just. Thus, intervention in Kosovo, because it was blessed by NATO, was more legitimate than intervention in Iraq, where assent only came from an ad-hoc “coalition of the willing.” As it was viewed at the time, Vietnam’s intervention into Cambodia was actually the least just of all of these; it was completely unilateral.

But most commentators now agree that Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia was if not just, at least good and necessary, and thus worthy of respect. Rarely is a war waged by anyone seen by the whole world is good, necessary, and just. In this respect, WWII is a widely recognized exception.

It should also be noted that a war that seems good and necessary, if not just, when it begins is not necessary seen as such when it ends (or in historical hindsight). It’s hard to deny that America’s involvement in Vietnam, beginning with Eisenhower and not ending until the presidency of Gerald Ford, was initially seen as good and necessary. Good because Communism was broadly seen in America and the western world as irredeemably evil, necessary because without it all of Asia would fall to the evil of Communism. Yet today — and in some quarters, at the start of the war — it’s recognized that it was neither good nor necessary. The Vietnamese may have embraced communism, but are widely seen to have been seeking only independence. And the string of dominoes theory — if one falls the rest will too — is widely recognized as both unrealistic and silly.

Thus, in hindsight, Vietnam is seen as neither good nor necessary (it was never widely seen as just). It is thus widely seen as one of America’s lowest moments and worst wars. Wars that were not good, and not necessary, and not just are usually and understandably sources of national shame.

And though one could reasonably argue that all wars are a shame, it’s hard to deny that without at least goodness and necessity, or justness and goodness, or justness and necessity, a war truly is a shame.

I recently stumbled upon a spoken track by the folk singer Harry Chapin called “My Grandfather,” and was pleasantly surprised by how much it resonated.

My grandfather was a painter. He died at age 88. He illustrated Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry. And he was looking at me and he said, “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.”

He said, “Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles, you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams, and when it’s all over there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night somehow you toss and turn, you don’t settle easy.”

He said, “Good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you won’t even have to tell yourself, because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy. You sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say, ‘Take me away.’”

He said, “Harry, all my life I’ve wanted to be a painter and I’ve painted. God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I’ve painted, and I’ve painted, and I am good tired, and they can take me away.”

Now if there is a process in your and my lives, in the insecurity that we have about a prior life or an afterlife, and God (I hope there is a God — if He does exist, He’s got a rather weird sense of humor…), but let’s just…

But if there is a process that will allow us to live our days, that will allow us that degree of equanimity towards the end, looking at that black implacable wall of death to allow us that degree of peace, that degree of non-fear, I want in!