Frozen Toothpaste

mrpattersonsir

Everywhere you look, especially as a teenager, the world is full of others. Of people “not like me.” And though teenagers feel this most intensely, few do not feel it regularly.

Just look at the latent antipathy that exists in this country toward Iranians. Or Arabs. Or Mexicans. Or even the French.

Surely these people are different from us. They live in different parts of the world. They look different. They sound different. Put face to face, we’d probably struggle to understand each other fully. And that’s ignoring language.

For all my years, I still don’t understand fully the people I’ve known since I was young. I don’t know my friends. I don’t know my family. Sometimes I don’t even know myself.

There’s a real and meaningful distance that seems to exist between “me” and “you.” And that’s assuming you’re someone I’ve met in some capacity. If we float in the same circles but don’t know each other by name that distance seems bigger still. If we’ve never seen each other, it seems impossible that there’s anything between us. And if we’ll never see each other we may as well give up entirely.

But before we lapse into nihlistic despair at the fact that we’re too different, I’d hope we could consider this. In his wonderful 1989 speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the 14th Dalai Lama said:

No matter what part of the world we come from, we are all basically the same human beings. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering. We have the same basic human needs and concerns. All of us human beings want freedom and the right to determine our own destiny as individuals and as peoples.

I, at least, find this point indisputable. Surely there are people in the world who think that they want to suffer, but it’s usually in some search for a separate and durable happiness. Religious self-flagellation is the imposition of temporary pain in exchange for long term happiness when God is satisfied with one’s commitment. And though I find the practice unfathomably odd and barbaric, even its practitioners seek long-term happiness.

From the time we first recognize differences amongst people, they becomes an easy way to understand the world. To see that we exist, as people and persons, because of our differences. That they define us.

And though I’m not foolish enough to ignore all differences, I think it’s terribly important that we see the commonality that exists underneath all the superficial difference. It’s sometimes trendy in the West to evangelize against superficiality. But beyond popular culture and children’s feelings, this evangelization rapidly dies.

And that’s certainly unfortunate. I feel rather certain that if the anti-superficiality crusade went all the way to the fundamental commonality that the Dalai Lamas and others point out to us, we’d live in a much better world.

IowaPolitics.com

It’s chaos. It’s a circus. It’s a money parade. It’s undemocratic. It’s pointless. It’s cheap drama. It’s the real American Idol.

That’s right everyone, it’s the middle of America’s presidential politicking season.

I could make a list, but I doubt I need to. You know that many people — in America, but especially in stable parliamentary systems — find this whole mess in which America is now submerged mildly absurd. Myself, I fluctuate between hearty agreement with their bafflement and tut-tutting consternation with the foolishness of the critique.

First, a few points. The way the Democratic party’s contest is held in Iowa is absurd, perhaps even undemocratic. The priority given to Iowa, New Hampshire, (now) Nevada, and South Carolina is, at best, unfair. The rush to have the earliest nominating contest has, this year, been harmfully chaotic but is a direct consequence of the truth of the last sentence. Too much money is raised and spent in the quest for a party’s nomination.

Having made all the necessary concessions to critiques, I’ll now heartily and blindly defend America’s system.

The most important point is that the system I defend is open. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim it’s always democratic, but it usually is. And open and democratic are better than most parliamentary systems can claim in nominating their candidates for leadership.

It’s no secret that Gordon Brown was to be Tony Blair’s successor from the first day that Labour took power in Britain. And it’s also no secret that only politicians determined that point. Lay members of the party had no say in who would lead the party. It’s like the way American Vice Presidents are selected — behind closed doors with unknown calculations being made.

But that’s also the way that parliamentary parties pick their leaders, and thus their analog of President. In America, a candidate has to win the support of a plurality of his party’s members, and then a plurality of the country’s electoral college voters (a chastisable system in itself, but not our topic here). This seems to me far more democratic than a system whose candidates are selected by a small group of full-time politicians whose party is than approved by the people.

In America’s system, a candidate must be liked and chosen by normal people. They can’t merely call in a small number of favors within the party, they must be chosen as the best candidate by a lot of non-politicians. And I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. This circus may be a dislikable result of a system that tries to give people — normal people — a say, but it gives people a say.

And then there’s this: I find this game we’re playing — however over-moneyed, shallow, and pointless — at least a little bit exhilarating. The result may not always be perfect, but it’s more exciting and democratic than any other system I’ve seen.

Rparle

Everywhere I see people who don’t understand how the world works. This includes, but is hardly limited to, when I’m standing in front of the mirror.

To my limited understanding, the world is wonderfully complex place full of wonderfully interesting people doing their absolute best to live the most useful lives they can. And I don’t understand even half of what happens out there.

And I don’t much see how fiction helps me or anyone else to better understand anything.

In that paragraph is the fundamental hangup I seem to have with fiction. It’s fictional. There’s a tautology if ever one existed.

I’m certainly no lover of literature, so perhaps that’s the simple nature of this beast. After all, I’ve also never been much a fan of any form of art.

Paintings. Drawings. Oils. Giant pieces of abstraction. It all seems rather dead to me.

If we were to accept the fairly reasonable, if not necessarily true, premise that art is fundamentally a window into the artist’s mind, then I suppose my fundamental dissatisfaction with fiction is that the people who write it don’t seem terribly interesting to me. They’re mostly — at least of the authors I frequently hear of — white, middle-aged, and male. These men are like me, or like what I’m going to be. I’d much rather have insight into the mind of a Russian housewife or a Congolese general than into the mind of a middle-aged white American.

But I like to read journalism. I usually struggle to read fiction. In some way, I would argue that even when the two are written by the same person, the first explores others, while the second explores nothing more than the self.

I’m certainly devaluing fiction. It’s an exceptionally useful tool to elaborate your personal understanding of the world. And when you understand something about the world differently than most others, that’s a tremendously valuable gift you give. Your fiction is then a way for people to learn about the world.

So too is it tremendously useful if you lived quite long ago. Roman fiction is often seen as more useful for understanding the world of the empire than are the histories made by friends of the emperors.

But most fiction I see, and most fiction I see people read, is dull. It’s John Grisham. It’s Tom Clancy. It’s Danielle Steele. And I can’t seem to understand the value in that. And I wonder: Am I the only one?

To be fair, I don’t mind watching a good fictional movie. And part of my dissatisfaction with fiction in print is probably that I read slowly. Or not at all. But those aren’t the only reasons.

I feel like most fiction is situated so close to the world I know that I won’t shun it as unknowable. It’s a drama about twenty-something Americans that I’m expected read because I’m a twenty-something American. And something about that just rubs me wrong.

Since my early years of high school, I’ve become more and more convinced that comics published in the local newspaper are little more than bland space fillers. Foremost in my mind among these problematically bad comics — which are also those I used to like most — are Garfield, The Family Circus, and Dilbert. Garfield always mixes the loser, dumb dog and lazy, food-loving cat stereotypes. Dilbert does little more than illustrate an office-drone’s daily annoyances. The Family Circus inevitably reverts to basic family stereotypes without much value or meaning.

And so it was with utmost pleasure that I stumbled upon The Nietzsche Family Circus. The brilliant website — which has been around for quite some time — pairs bits of Nietzsche’s signature existential philosophy with an averagely meaningless frame from The Family Circus.

My favorite results are when the young Billy gives his father some truly meaty bits of philosophy. There’s the great one in which while his shirt is being buttoned by his father he informs the older man that: “For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason.”

Or on the swing young Billy says, seemingly to no one, that “God is Dead” and we have killed him.

Of course it is somewhat difficult to review a project where the process of viewing is absolutely random. There is little guarantee about what will be seen other than that it will always include a frame from The Family Circus and a quote from Nietzsche.

But in that, alone, I think exists almost the entire genius. There is something very different about coming across philosophy in a book about it, and coming across it under a comic that seems to illustrate normal family life. Add to that the magic of seeing children discussing deep and complex issues and you’re sure to get nothing short of magic.

In many ways the project evokes to me the very best of Calvin and Hobbes, the much-loved and much-mourned comic by Bill Watterson. A great example of this parallel is this pairing, in which the young Billy tells his very irritated mother that “The lie is the condition of life.” I can easily see young Calvin, having disappointed his mother, deciding that the best defense was that life necessitating lying. Regardless of how you feel about that sentiment, the magic of the pairing must at least make you smile.

Some pairing are surely more logical than others. The image above is rather serendipitous. But all of them are, in my mind, improvements on the original. And the inventiveness of this project is certainly worthy of praise. Now all we need is a newspaper to publish them…

Something a little — OK, almost completely — different today. I just wanted to do something before I come back for 5-a-week.

This is a little song I came up with a few months ago. I decided that it’s a good present for the start of the new year.

About the song… it’s (hopefully) not news to anyone who grew up speaking English that the songs “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and the alphabet (or A-B-C) song have the same melody. Stranded with nothing better to do, I decided to combine the two into the amazing song you see below.

Twinkle, twinkle, E-F-G

How I wonder LMNOP

Up above the T-U-V

W-X-Y in the sky

Now I know my little star

Next time won’t you what you are.

Obviously there are many ways you could change and improve the song, but this is the version I came up with. I liked it the straight-forward structure, even though its grammar a little off.

I hope 2008 will be good to you.