Mauigirl's Meanderings: philosophy

Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Meditation on Sputnik

In reading this week’s Science Times section of the New York Times, I learned that October 4 marks 50 years since the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth.

I was about four years old at the time, and remember being fascinated with the word, saying out loud with great satisfaction: “Sput – Nik!” And I have a very vague recollection of either having, or seeing, a small model of the enemy’s satellite, which was probably some kind of toy of the era.

But the launch of Sputnik had a much more profound effect on the United States than on my four-year-old self. From the NY Times article:

“Sputnik plunged Americans into a crisis of self-confidence. Had the country grown lax with prosperity? Was the education system inadequate, especially in training scientists and engineers? Were the institutions of liberal democracy any match in competition with an authoritarian communist society?

In The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (1985), Dr. [Walter A.] McDougall wrote that before Sputnik the cold war had been ‘a military and political struggle in which the United States need only lend aid and comfort to its allies in the front lines.’ Now, he continued, the cold war ‘became total, a competition for the loyalty and trust of all peoples fought out in all arenas of social achievement, in which science textbooks and racial harmony were as much tools of foreign policy as missiles and spies.’ ”

Sputnik was America’s wake-up call.

“Critics attacked the administration of President Eisenhower, who at first had dismissed Sputnik as an event of only 'scientific interest.' Soon the Defense Department stepped up missile development. The Democratic Congress established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”

The “missile gap” between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was a key issue of the 1960 presidential campaign and may have helped lead to Kennedy’s election.

Once elected, Kennedy made his famous vow to achieve “the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

Thus began the space race.

In addition to the progress made in space (the launch of the first successful American satellite, Explorer I, followed by the Mercury and Gemini programs), a new emphasis was placed on science and math in the schools, to train a new generation of scientists who could continue the progress in space.

As the space race continued, it had other influences. The scientific progress associated with the space program resulted in the invention of Velcro, Tang, and about 30,000 other inventions. TV spawned “Star Trek” and “Lost in Space,” which continued to fuel the imaginations of the next generation. And finally, in July of 1969, the Apollo 11 mission achieved Kennedy’s promise: Men landed on the moon. American men.

My parents and I were in Britain on vacation that July. We had just arrived at a small hotel in England and got to watch the moon landing on a black-and-white television in the parlor of the hotel surrounded by English travelers. They warmly congratulated us for the accomplishment of the astronauts, and I still remember one woman saying, “I’m so glad you got there before the Russians!”

Because that is what it was about. It was about the Cold War and trying to make up for the humiliation of the USSR having launched that Sputnik before we had done anything similar. It was about proving to the world that our science was superior, that they didn’t have anything on us.

Once this was accomplished, interest in the space race flagged and Apollo 17, in 1972, was the last manned mission to the Moon.

Since then it’s just been the space shuttles and the space station…no new exploration, no manned flights to Mars. When I was growing up I was sure that by 2007 we would have landed men on Mars, and probably started a colony or two!

Once the Soviet Union broke up and the Cold War was completely dead, interest waned even further. Without the contest between the two world powers, and without a clear mission such as sending a manned flight to another planet, there just doesn’t seem to be much point in it anymore. The space shuttle program just isn’t inspirational, and it relies on 30-year-old technology. And although the unmanned exploration of Mars by the Mars Rover is a practical way to explore Mars, it’s just not the same as “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Thinking about the Cold War almost makes me nostalgic for those days. Yes, I grew up under the shadow of the atomic bomb, with air raid drills in elementary school, hiding under our desks or lying face down on the floor of the school basement with our hands carefully placed over the back of our necks (as if that would have protected us in Nutley, New Jersey, if New York City were obliterated by The Bomb). And yes, that was not fun. I remember begging my parents to build a fallout shelter in our back yard as our neighbor had done.

But at least our rivalry with the Soviet Union had some good outcomes: Better science classes in the schools, a plethora of new technological advances. And at least we were up against a culture that wasn’t that different from us; when push came to shove during the Cuban Missile Crisis, both sides saw the potential for total destruction and pulled back from the brink of nuclear war. The idea of “Mutually Assured Destruction” kept either side from pushing the button. And despite the fear that nuclear war fostered in the population, we had the illusion of control. There were community fallout shelters, CONELRAD on the radio (now called the emergency alert system) and townwide air raid drills - and we got the idea that the government was still running the show and would somehow protect us.

The current “war” is very different from the Cold War. There have been no positive outcomes for either side; no scientific advances, no increase in educational quality in the schools. Fighting this enemy doesn’t involve science. It’s about duct tape on your windows and “reporting suspicious activity.” It’s about men with box cutters. And if a nuclear weapon comes into play, we won’t know it. We won’t be able to track its course through the skies and blow it up before it hits us. We won’t be able to look for the enemy planes and shoot them down. The Bomb is still a threat with this enemy. But it might be brought into our country in a container ship, or in a suitcase.

And this enemy is so different from us or from the former Soviet Union. We are at war with people whose culture we don’t understand and whose idea of honor and principles are very different from ours. Our opponents are not afraid to die for their cause. Destruction is not a deterrent for them.

The result is fear and a feeling of lack of control, since how can you fight people who aren’t afraid to die? How can you prevent destruction if you can’t see it coming?

And because learning and science aren’t key to fighting this new enemy, the emphasis on science and math in the schools has declined. The U.S. is no longer as competitive in scientific fields and is being overtaken and surpassed by other countries. Because science is no longer valued as it was in the 1960’s we are now able to boast of having a president and others highly placed in our government who actually don’t believe in evolution. It would have been hard to imagine this back in the 1960’s. We have actually been going backward instead of forward.

Besides the War on Terror, economic factors are an overriding concern – but only in the realm of that big gambling ring called the Stock Market. Real productivity is leaving this country. We are becoming a service-oriented economy; we don’t make things.

All of our money is being squandered on a war in Iraq rather than being invested in our schools, our children, or the once-cutting-edge space program. And this is a shame, because space travel is our future.

Although manned space travel is dangerous, ultimately we will need to turn to it again. Maybe not in our generation, and maybe it won’t be a country that does it but a private enterprise. But eventually our planet’s resources and open space will start to get used up and we will be facing a crisis of unimaginable proportions. Or some other event will occur to spur new interest in space. (Aliens, anyone?) Then and only then will the exploration resume.

Even beyond the practical reasons to expand to other planets, Mankind needs new worlds to explore or we will stagnate. Once there were new lands to discover on the other side of the planet. Now they’ve all been discovered. Mount Everest has been scaled many times by many people. Hitherto unknown islands have all been found. No wonder the American population doesn’t think about anything beyond Britney Spears. There is nothing to look forward to.

For one brief and shining moment in the 1960’s, space, “The Final Frontier,” seemed to herald mankind’s next journey of discovery. But the dream has faded with the fall of the Soviet Union and has been replaced with a self-centered focus on money, power and greed. Instead of “boldly going where no man has gone before,” our country is mired in a dangerous policy of spreading our religion of capitalism (under the code word “democracy”) to countries that have no interest in it. Something has to change, for the good of America, and the good of humankind. We need another Sputnik.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

No Rain, No Rainbows(R)

This is the signature philosophy of a list called Kimo's Rules, which I became familiar with in Hawaii. I have a card with the Rules in a lucite frame on my desk. However, I was never sure who had copyrighted the rules; all I knew was they always had an "R" at the end, meaning the list is a registered trademark.

Tonight when I left work I discovered it was raining. I usually know these things before I leave, but because it's been so hot the last couple of days, our Facilities people closed everyone's blinds to try to keep the heat out.

I stopped at the grocery store, and when I came out the rain was nearly ended. As I was driving up the ramp to the highway I realized there was a full rainbow arching over the road and disappearing into the distance.

Now, if you live in Hawaii, rainbows are very common. But here in New Jersey they are relatively rare. I always enjoy seeing them and feel as if they are a good omen.

Seeing the rainbow made me think of Kimo's Rules. So when I got home I decided to look them up so that if I wrote about them I would be able to give credit where it was due.

First of all, you are probably wondering what these mysterious rules are. I am going to list the rules below and will then go into the story of who trademarked them.

Kimo's Hawaiian Rules

Never judge a day by the weather.
The best things in life aren't things.
Tell the truth - there's less to remember.
Speak softly and wear a loud shirt.
Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
He who dies with the most toys - still dies.
Age is relative - when you're over the hill, you pick up speed.
There are 2 ways to be rich - make more or desire less.
Beauty is internal - looks mean nothing.
No Rain - No Rainbows.®

When I did my Google search, I discovered that apparently the originator of the Rules, one Kimo Krogfoss, gave the list to Rita Peeters, owner of Nite Owl T-Shirts on Kauai, back in 1991. Night-Owl then copyrighted the list.

According to this article, Kimo's Rules have been plagiarized many times in many ways. So, since I don't know whether my copy of Kimo's Rules was published by Night Owl or not, I will make it up to them by linking to their website so you can order your own T-shirt with Kimo's Hawaiian Rules on it: http://www.niteowlt-shirts.com/designs1.htm

Now, as to the rules themselves...

My two favorites are:

There are two ways to be rich: Make more or desire less.

and

Goals are deceptive; the unaimed arrow never misses.

I always say that the line about goals personifies my philosophy of life. I feel that I never really had goals, never really laid out a plan for my life. I took what came, I rolled with the punches, I drifted in the wind. And yet ended up in the right place; hence, the unaimed arrow never misses. I find it is better to fire the arrow into the air and see where it falls to earth, rather than picking a target and aiming at it. You can be totally successful at hitting that target and then find out it's not where you really wanted to be after all.

My friend Estelle disagreed with me when I was expounding on this idea one day. She said, "But you do have goals, you decide to accomplish specific things." And it's true, there are things I decide to accomplish as I go along. But my overall Life Plan never existed.

There are people who know from the time they are teenagers that they have a specific goal they want to reach in life: Become a millionaire (billionaire?), own their own company, be President...something they focus on all their lives, taking each step they need to achieve the goal.

This is not the way I operate. I pick small things to go after, and then as life changes around me, I follow the twists and turns. As Yogi Berra said, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." That's what I did. So I didn't end up in a job that matched what I majored in in college. But it's a job that suits my talents anyway. This is just one example of the unaimed arrow. There are many others. And I think people who follow those unaimed arrows are probably happier in life than those with those far-flung, ambitious goals. It's part of the "desire less" part of the other Rule.

Maybe by following the "unaimed arrow" Rule I'll never be rich...but I'll be content.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Messiness: Moral Weakness or Sign of Genius?

I am a messy person. There is no doubt about it. It must be something genetic, and, as with many of my traits, it seems to have been passed down through my maternal aunt. Or maybe I should blame it on my father. He was a packrat in his own right, and not all that neat. But he was only allowed to mess up small portions of the house when I was growing up, so it wasn't that obvious.

My mother has always been neat; not always that clean, mind you - she may have crumbs around the cat's food dish, or dust behind the chair. But overall, if you look at my mother's living space, it is neat. There are no piles of mail and catalogues, no crumpled sweaters that weren't hung up, no shoes lying around.

When I was a child, my mother tried her best to instill her neatness into me. When I was still a pre-schooler, maybe three or four years old, my mother tried to get me to help clean up my own toys. She tells me she tried to make a game out of it. "Here, honey, let's see how fast you can put your toys back in the toy box!" I wasn't having any of it; I was a child not easily fooled. I knew work when I saw it. I refused and she ended up putting the toys away, her first mistake.

Later on she would try to get me to learn to vacuum. I would give it a half-hearted try, but would perform so abysmally my mother gave up in frustration and did it herself.

I did go through a short phase of obsessive cleanliness when I first moved into an apartment with my friend Ingrid. I decided I had to thoroughly clean the apartment every week, including mopping, cleaning the bathroom, dusting and vacuuming. This phase lasted through the year and a half I lived in that apartment, and through the two years my husband and I lived in our apartment. It was only one bedroom, and he would vacuum and I'd clean the bathroom. So it wasn't much work, and he was neat like my mother, so between the two of us we kept the apartment pretty nice.

That all ended when we moved into our house. It is a large house, with many rooms, rooms just begging to be turned into "junk rooms." We also receive lots of mail, including magazines and catalogues.

Gradually the mess crept up on us. Some of my messiness apparently gradually rubbed off on him; sadly, none of his neatness rubbed off on me.

Neither of us can manage to throw away the unwanted mail that comes. We always think that a catalogue may have something of interest in it if we ever have time to look at it. We keep invitations that we may want to reply to sometime. We leave things out on the kitchen counter to remind ourselves to respond to them. Eventually some of these treasures are put on top of the microwave, when they start cluttering up the counter too much. As a result, the pile on top of the microwave often collapses and spills all over the counter. Instead of sorting through it and discarding any of these paper keepsakes, we just pile them right back up again.

Newspapers are another problem. We get two every day - the Star Ledger and the New York Times. Even though we recycle, there are always several days' worth of newspapers in a heap on the floor in our sunporch where we sit most of the time.

Our living room usually looks acceptable, but other rooms don't fare as well. Any surfaces tend to collect piles of paper or else dishes that are waiting to either go into the dishwasher or be put away. It is seldom that our dining room table is actually visible beneath the piles of stuff. We invite people over for dinner to force ourselves to tidy up.

The bedroom is a hellhole. The floor is covered with the various pairs of shoes I wear most often. (The closet floor has another large pile of those that I don't wear often). The footboard of the bed and top of the hamper have a myriad of clothes that have been worn once and are too clean to throw in the hamper but not clean enough to go back in the piles of clean laundry that are sitting in the baskets. I never actually put clean laundry away; I just use the laundry baskets as bureau drawers and pick things out of the baskets to wear.

Next to my bed are about 25 books and maybe 15 magazines, most waiting to be read, and some in mid-read. If I hear about a book that sounds interesting I immediately order it on Amazon.com so I won't forget about it. Then it sits waiting for me to have enough time to actually read it. It isn't until vacation that I sit for days on end in an orgy of book-reading, and finally catch up.

Once my mother bought me Sandra Felton's The Messies Manual, now available in a new updated version on Amazon.com. Felton explains in an entertaining and insightful way what makes us Messies be the way we are, and how to conquer our Messiness. Apparently Messies, as she calls us, tend to be perfectionists, and if they can't clean their house perfectly, they don't want to do it at all. Another tendency that leads to messiness is sentimentality - we tend to want to hold on to the past. That is certainly true. There are three boxes full of memorabilia from the old family house sitting in my living room!

One of the methods that the Manual recommends is to "Mount Vernonize" your house; that is, clean the house the way they clean Mount Vernon. They do it one room at a time until the whole place is done and then start over. But I have to admit I haven't really done that because it wouldn't be satisfying. I like the feeling of saying "There! The whole place is clean!" (Guess that's that perfectionism of mine).

Entertaining though the Messies Manual is, and as good as its advice is, it never actually changed my way of life. I truly think messiness is genetic. And, like any genetic tendency, it is very hard to eradicate.

So imagine how excited I was when I heard about A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place." Here was a book that actually said what I'd suspected all along: That people who are messy are actually on to something. We actually make the world better! What a great concept!

So naturally I immediately bought the book on Amazon.com and it is in the pile by my bed. I haven't finished it yet but so far it is spot on.

The authors' contention is that neatness for its own sake has hidden costs, because it takes time to organize and keep things neat; time that could be spent doing productive work. In addition, the neatness and organization may not even confer an advantage. In business, often moderately disorganized people and businesses are more efficient and creative than those that are obsessively neat.

I can certainly relate to this. If I took the time to organize all the messages in my e-mail inbox, for instance, I'd never have time to do ANY work. And even though I currently have about 1800 items in my inbox, I never have problems finding anything I'm looking for. But if I filed them all neatly in my personal folders, you can bet I wouldn't be able to find a thing!

Now mind you, you can't be like the Collyer Brothers and hope to function in the real world. There is a limit, and luckily I have not reached that limit. I am still at basic First Degree Squalor. Luckily DH, being a bit more of a neatnik than I am, keeps me honest. If I lived alone, doubtless I would never hang up my coat and would leave it lying around the living room. But when DH is home I do as he does, and hang my coat up. And, because of our tendency to fall behind on all of our houseworkly tasks, we do have a cleaning woman who comes in every other week. So we are not in danger of roaches, mice or other vermin taking over the house.

But keeping the house under control is just one more thing with which I must battle. It is part of my endless struggle between what I feel like doing and what I know I should be doing. Like exercising, and losing weight. The Id and the Superego always at war. I guess Freud had it right!

Monday, April 23, 2007

Tune in, Turn on, Drop out

DH and I just watched the PBS "American Experience" about the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967. It chronicled the advent of the hippies, who were attracted to San Francisco in the wake of the Beat Generation, following them from the idyllic time when they truly were living new values and starting a revolution - through the darker time when it became less about love, peace, and making the world a better place, and more about drugs and runaway teens and squalor.

In the beginning large groups were all living in Golden Gate Park and there was a group called the Diggers who brought "free food" every day. The members of the group would go around to marketplaces and supermarkets and gather up the wasted food that was being discarded, and go back and cook it up for the masses. There was also a Free Store where people brought their unwanted possessions - furniture, clothing, etc. - and those in charge of the store redistributed them to people who needed them.

One of the values this represented was the idea that the hippies felt they didn't have to work and could kind of "live off the land" and share and share alike. This philosophy apparently didn't take into account the fact that people had to have jobs and do work in order to run the marketplaces that the Diggers got their free leftovers from; that people had to have jobs and work in factories to produce the furniture and clothing that were being given away and redistributed.

When it comes down to it, it is very difficult to get around the need for someone to work in order to provide things for people to live on.

And even if one doesn't take that into consideration, eventually the whole "free" system broke down when San Francisco was inundated with too many people coming to share in the experience, but coming for the wrong reasons - to run away, to escape, to find drugs.

Once the population gets too big, barter and sharing don't work anymore. This is probably the reason communism never worked on a large scale.

It's really too bad, because the idea of communism - "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" - makes a lot of sense and it would be a wonderful way to live, in a perfect world. Unfortunately, it is not a perfect world, and there is no free lunch.

Many of the hippies of 1967 became the yuppies of the 1980's. Were the exact same people who shunned materialism and wanted to reject the world and live on a commune the ones who later became the masters of the universe and bought BMWs and large homes in the suburbs? Maybe not...but it was all one generation - ours.

And now our generation of Baby Boomers is poised to become senior citizens. Many of us are already card-carrying members of the AARP, and many have already retired from their careers and are pursuing other interests. The sex, drugs and rock and roll are long gone and we are now facing the realities of wondering what we'll do when we become old, not having died before then as The Who wished they would do.

One of my favorite folk groups, Modern Man, sings in their hysterically funny take-off on rap music, "Give me some ass...give me some ass...give me some ass-isted living!" It will be interested to see how we Baby Boomers redefine old age, just as we've redefined every phase of life as we moved through it.

I read an article a couple of years ago in the NY Times about Baby Boomers who were planning to live together in groups as they aged so that they could take care of each other, rather than being shuttled off to assisted living and then to nursing homes, isolated from the things and people they enjoy.

I like that idea. I was a bit too young to ever really experience the real 60's - I only hit the tail end of them, which was really the early 70's. I was only 9 when Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream" speech at the Washington Monument, and 14 during the Summer of Love. And I wasn't the kind of kid that would have hitched across country at 14 to join the flower children as some that age did. So no living on a commune, no marching for peace. I marched in one demonstration when I went up to college in 1972. And that seemed to be the last one they had.

Perhaps in the end I will live on a commune after all - in my old age, surrounded by good friends...hopefully near a beach, in warm weather...from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

It can work, in small groups.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Musings on J. Alfred Prufrock

I'm not sure that I ever understood exactly what T.S. Eliot was talking about in this poem (I think I read it freshman year of college and don't remember the commentary about it) but the one line that always stuck with me was,

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

It's such a universal truth, the way, every day, we get up and go through our usual routines. I read that line and knew exactly what he was talking about. Every day I pour myself a cup of coffee and use a spoon to stir the cream and sugar into it and lay the spoon down on the counter (dribbling a little coffee there, which will later dry into a hard scum that is hard to get off). And so our lives go by, one little detail at a time.

And now that I take various medications every morning (since I am officially middle- aged, with high blood pressure), I paraphrase in my mind, "My life is measured out with hydrochlorothiazide pills" and the line also crosses my mind as I open up new disposable contact lenses each day...."My life is measured out with contact lenses."

It all works. Eliot's quote was pure genius.

Another poem that resonated with me was "Siege" by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

"This I do, being mad:
Gather baubles about me,
Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time
Death beating the door in.

White jade and an orange pitcher,
Hindu idol, Chinese god, —
Maybe next year, when I’m richer—
Carved beads and a lotus pod. . . .

And all this time
Death beating the door in."

Another universal truth - we all spend so much time working, buying things, gaining possessions, and all the while we are all headed to the same fate.

Moving on...

Do you ever get sick of your own face? Like, you know how at the end of the winter, you're really, really sick of every sweater you own and sick of all your winter pants and sick of wearing shoes and socks and can't wait for spring clothes to be appropriate to wear again?

Well, that's how I feel about my face. Every morning, I look in the mirror, and there it is. The same face. I don't get to change my face when the weather changes. It's still there. Same old circles under the eyes that have to be covered with concealer, same old eyebrows that have to have a touch of eyebrow pencil or you can't see them. Same old two lines across my forehead. Same old face.

I think I'm beginning to understand why people have plastic surgery. It's not all about looking younger. It's about being sick of their face. It's like when you look around your living room and think "Gee, I wonder what the couch would look like over THERE instead of HERE? I'm tired of this arrangement!" So the next thing you know you have your husband patiently moving furniture around the room and gradually getting grouchier with every new instruction.

However, I'm not a plastic surgery kind of person. So I guess I'll have to be content with at least having new hair.

Yes, in a way I have new hair. I stopped dyeing it last fall and it has finally grown out. It has a streak of grey in the front and some salt-and-pepper action going on all over. It has added one new bit of interest to the sight in the mirror. I'm not sure if it's good or bad but at least it's new to me!

I suppose if I lost 25 pounds that would make some changes too!