Contemptuous Coffee Table Books

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Last week’s post ended with a contemptuous: “You know what? The Chinese can keep their thought police. It’s time to recognize Taiwan.”

Now, speaking of contempt, in these quarantine lockdown times, here is a nurturing paragraph, but with righteous swear words, from the blog of best-selling writer John Scalzi: (Whatever, for April 26, 2020)

• All the above, incidentally, is why you have my official permission to tell all those people who are saying that you should develop a new hobby under quarantine and/or if you’re not doing six different things all very well, then you are wasting this precious gift of time, to fuck right off. Motherfuckers, I released a bestseller in quarantine and promoted the crap out of it and am negotiating some genuinely breathtaking business deals and I’m still mostly feeling like sleeping until 3 fucking pm in the afternoon and then going back under the covers an hour and fifteen minutes later. If you’re getting out of bed these days, you’re ahead of the game.

One of our local National Hockey League coaches would concur. “I’m pretty good,” Matt Brown replies. “And I keep telling people, ‘Pretty good is the new great’” 

Wes Gilbertson, in a sports article for page C1 of the Calgary Herald, May 9, writes ‘Sadness. Frustration. Boredom. Fatigue.’ 

He then quotes coach Matt Brown: 

“I think probably the most universal theme is that everyone, almost every day, goes through some sort of low-grade grief, and the reason is just that the emotion of sadness is always in response to loss…. 

If you look at our Flames players, for instance, the two things that they love most are playing hockey and being together. Both those things are taken away. Every day that you wake up, it’s another day that you’ve lost those things, so it’s a bit of a Groundhog Day of grief right now.

“As a result, what sadness does is it causes a drop-off in energy…. (By design) 

So we can process loss, so we can wrap our head around it…. So what people find unnerving is that you get high-functioning, very motivated people that suddenly have no energy. They know what they want to be doing…”

So, dear reader, let’s not have self-contempt. Note: The article covers the whole front page of the sports section, having much practical advice for coping with COVID-19.

Hello Reader,

Got pretty books?

Of course I’m proud to be a member of the human race—not like being a Martian—but still, sometimes I have contempt.

Oh, how I wish humankind could learn two simple things, just two: 

First is: ‘Don’t invade other countries,’ 

Second is: ‘Don’t introduce invasive species.’

So while the pretty peacenik with a guitar sings “Where have the native flowers gone?” hoping her fellow civilians will get a clue, I know the truth: 

All we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.

… Here’s a poem from my Tracing the Martians of H.G. Wells poetry manuscript:

Coffee Table Books

Before I was born

there were books made for boys,

boys who wondered, “What’s it like on the inside?”

I saw how in a bomber fuselage

rivets and structural lines stretched along through rings,

with the turret gunner’s seat dangling like a swing.

The bombardier had a mattress to lie belly down on

looking through rings of plexiglas.

In a big cramped submarine

bunks lined the torpedo room,

with a sack of potatoes hanging inches

from a sailor’s nose.

They called their subs pigboats

as diesel fumes clung to their clothing.

A boy wants to see into the corners

of an airplane, submarine, battle-tank:

“What’s it like on the inside?”

An adult only wants to view the whole machine 

at a long glance,

posed clean and pretty on a stage,

in a coffee table book.

A grownup has trouble imagining 

the wreckage of war,

as I learned when they did a product-recall 

of a G.I. Joe battlefield command post: 

Toy soldiers with their map table and walkie-talkies 

were set in a jagged corner of an open brick building.

Grownups prefer their toys on a clean flat coffee table.

As a boy reading The Martian Chronicles

I learned that when adults saw newsreels of wars in China, 

they saw the footage as dim and unreal, too far away.

I felt war as a child 

during a nightmare in darkness.

I was with Danny Beck and Bobby Johansen 

and we were all crying.

We were soldiers by the black barn, 

and across the field was a creek.

And down in that dark creek, we knew, unseen, 

were the Germans. And we were in utter despair.

Adults live in their bright world of sunny 

coffee table pictures,

with no shadowed corners, 

never asking, “What’s it like on the inside?”

Sean Crawford

Calgary

May

2020

Social Media Silver Lining

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Hello Reader,

Got a silver lining to the covid-19 social media?

I was amused by the failure of nerve by the National Post. One full-page spread after another—and it went on for quite a few pages—had blue headlines at the top. Labeled Myth on the left page, and Fact on the right. This was a needed public service, but… —my mirth was from the National Post not daring to have the left side headline as Social Media Myth.

Because let’s face it, when someone tells you a myth, in person or on the telephone, they nearly always got it from social media. “My uncle Tom knows a guy, who knows a guy, who forwarded onto social media something he interpreted from the Web.” Misinterpreted, that is.

Who are these social media forwarders and believers? As it happens, I subscribe to a weekly email from famous blogger Mark Manson. On Monday he posted about how he published two nearly identical posts, exactly one week apart. The first one was well received. The later one resulted in all sorts of hysterical hatred and scorn. Why the difference? Manson has several theories, which might be phrased, in composite, as this: The Internet users were the sort of idiots who were slow to wake up to the virus that was already being reported on responsible channels. Here’s the link to Manson’s scathing “3. A tale of two emails.”.

Idiots, indeed. Over in South Korea some folks passed around a water bottle laced with household ingredients that would make it virus proof. In fact, they all got covid-19 from the same bottle. Did they get the idea of a safe water from social media? I don’t know, but such is the sort of thinking I would expect from social media lovers. Call it “being innocent of the need for common sense critical thinking.” Or call it stupidity.

Recently an acquaintance earnestly told me, over the phone, about something important she had just learned from social media. About how having a drink every 15 minutes would make you safe from the corona virus. You ask: Did I pour cold water on the idea? To my acquaintance, who maybe doesn’t have a high school diploma, did I talk down sternly from my mighty university degree in critical thinking? No-o-o.

Because a few years ago I did a thought experiment: Consider two young men. One fellow, full of idealism for saving the planet, has a non-union low-wage factory job. The other, even lower waged, and with less idealism, is employed at the local campus as a graduate student and teaching assistant. Which one saves the planet by using a ten-speed bicycle? I picture the bike rider as being the grad student, I bet you did too.

To me the difference between the two is not not knowledge of ecology, and not I.Q, but “knowledge” nevertheless, in the sense that “knowledge is power.” We all want a sense of power, of agency, and of control over our lives. "If I don’t feel power from knowledge then I’ll seek power from a fine set of wheels." Feel free to disagree, as I suppose I’m oversimplifying. Meanwhile, “they say” the panic buyers who valued toilet paper over the conventional “food and ammunition,” besides being too scared to think straight, were seeking a small sense of control in the midst of chaos. 

It seems to me that a person who has trouble with, say, science articles, or those traditional newspapers with “journalism ethics,” is going to fight against that nervous tornado of facts-hard-to-grasp by resorting to “power from social media.” And that’s why I didn’t have the heart to squelch my friend directly, but instead indirectly referred to my faith in fact-based journalism.

So where are we today? 

With all the distasteful tales whizzing around within social media, with many horrible lies needing long articles to refute them, with horrors needing a doctor on CBC radio to refute many myths at length, is there also, during this dark storm cloud, a sliver lining? As compensation, dare we hope? Has humankind, at long last, learned not to believe in social media? …

Nope. No silver lining. Not as long as people’s needs are not met by traditional media.

The good news, judging by the wimping out of the National Post, is that readers of social media can overlap with readers of ethical media. Maybe the readers of social media are both unknowing, and knowing too. In which case social media is more something to be ignored and kept in perspective, than something seen as a harbinger of social decent into barbarism. And maybe those of us with a sense of responsibility are just going to have to quietly live with the believers of social media. Like how during the blogging frenzy—remember?—folks with library cards (as noted by Neal Stephenson) were ignored by our new improved digital society, and in turn they ignored society’s practise of dull skimming and superficial soundbites, preferring instead to just quietly kept meeting with each other to have those deep conversations they loved, which society ignored. 

How many years did it take, in the time of our great-grandparents, to know that not all stuff in print is true? I think it will take us, in our own time, just as many years before we finally will say, “Just because my stupid brother-in-law forwarded it, does not mean it is true.” May God grant me patience and understanding.

If someone blindly believes in social media, or blindly distrusts journalism ethics, then it might help me to “chill out” if I remember: Some people—judging by their actions—also believe in gossip that morphs, instead of honest unchanging facts; some people won’t make the effort needed for ethics, any more than they will strive to become ladies or gentlemen. In the end, some people will make my blond aunt very nervous because they forward without forethought.. All this while peach fuzzed cub reporters are proud to be “gentlemen of the press.”

It’s been decades since I walked as a volunteer student newspaper reporter at university, yet I still check myself when I speak or write on the Web. With all due respect to social media folks, being a gentleman has become a way of life.

Sean Crawford

Dutifully stuck at home

In a plaster-walled wee cabin at the old city limits

2020 

Update: The BBC has an article, complete with a picture of the corona, about how to stop bad information from going viral.

Another Update: The government has just started up a rapid response unit. Sounds serious. Real serious. Is it serious enough to shake people's faith in social media? Not if my thesis in the above essay is correct. Sorry.

Footnotes: 

~What is a lady? I used to often say to my client Sheila-Ann, “Everybody likes you.” Gracious, thoughtful of others, never swearing, and ever polite. I noticed: Tough Handi-Bus drivers wearing rough work gloves would become smiling gentlemen around her. Now, that’s a lady.

~I documented fake news being a communist plot—er, I mean, a Russian plot, in the Part 2, Pax, to my essay Russian Trolls Meet Social Media archived December 2019.

~Three comprehensive posts defining three aspects of journalism ethics are archived in March and April of 2018.

~Of course the frenzied folks who skim sound-bites won’t have the patience to go over to my archives, and that’s OK. Better for them to stay away completely than to click an all-to-easy-link to a post intended for patient lovers of print.

Russian Trolls Meet Social Media

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Note: As you know, Karl Marx invented communism, or Marxism, while writing in the library of the British Museum. These days the library door, across from the main entrance, is blocked off—I checked.

Does social media have a soul? I ask because when Doctor Frankenstein created a soulless creature he cried, “I have created a monster!” But (in the book) no one else realized the monster existed—How lonely.

Hello Reader,

Got Russian trolls?

Question: What do the evil of communism, the troll farms of Russia, and the devil from hell have in common? 

Easily Answered: Their main strength, historically, has been people not believing they exist.

Vladimir Lenin (the first marxist-communist leader of Russia) referred to “useful idiots.” He meant individuals in the western democracies who, not knowing the evil of communism, would support it.

Did you know Russians (Soviets) caused the Six Day War?

I was a boy during the horrible, un-glorious, Six Day War between the democracy of Israel and the the folks who believed in dictatorships, folks surrounding Israel in the Middle East. There’s a reason (besides it being their watershed) why Israel still refuses to give up the Golan Heights, formerly Syrian, along the Syrian border. Here are two paragraphs from when Canada had been a state for a hundred years, 1967.

(Incidentally, Arab belief in dictatorship made it hard during World War II to persuade them to ally against Hitler and the Axis)

QUOTE

A consulting Soviet delegation met with Egyptian leaders on May 13, revealing that Israel had concentrated eleven to thirteen brigades in preparation for an imminent assault along the Syrian border. 

When the Soviet claims came to light, Israel denied any military buildup or aggressive intent. Middle East peacekeeping forces, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, stationed on the Syrian border to safeguard Israel from Arab terrorist attacks, also denied the Soviet claims. 

Days later, Syrian troops lined the Golan Heights, ready to respond to Israel’s imminent attack. Battle-ready, Nasser announced, “The Jews threaten to make war. I reply: Welcome! We are ready for war.” Jordan’s King Hussein signed on May 30, joining… the Iraqi president… His army then joined…

No longer waiting for the Israeli invasion, later revealed to be Soviet disinformation meant to destabilize the region…(bolding mine)

UNQUOTE

In those days, back before social media, the Russians (Soviets) used work-of-mouth for their disinformation.

What happened next was: After the Soviets propagated their fake news, the army buildup went on to include almost everybody in the region: 

QUOTE “Algerian, Saudi Arabian, Iraqi, and Kuwaiti armies set station on the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian fronts. A combined air force of 810 planes, 2, 880 tanks, and nearly half a million troops prepared for the battle of all battles…”  UNQUOTE

Israel still exists as a state. She survived (footnote) by having her armed forces focus on only one front at a time, in an operation code named Moked, in English, “focus.” 

Such a hellish waste of lives, that need not have happened. But at least the Russians and everyone else learned a lesson—or did they?

Today I see the Russian leopard hasn’t changed its spots. I accidentally read a little obscure line the other day, in web article on some North Americans being against vaccination: The Russians are using social media to put out fake news to encourage the antivax movement here in the west.

When I read that little line I was shocked awake—wow!—while realizing others would read it too, but then stay sleepy, and surely have forgotten it by the next day. Forgive me, for I’m awfully skeptical about my neighbors. I would say to them: Forget “big pharma,” worry about “big troll farms.” 

The Russians can put a man in space; their computer nerds surely know their science; therefore to me it’s obvious: 

if computer nerds under Vladimir Putin put out stuff in English to give credence to the antivaxers, 

then that is to help destabilize the democracies.

Why? Besides not liking our freedom? Probably for reasons of economic competition. After all, they destabilized the middle east in 1967 because they hoped to profit by selling arms.

Am I a conspiracy nut? About Russian efforts to destabilize? No, not unless you think the whole nation of Finland is nuts. They have a national effort, as reported on the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) website, to inform their people about the existence of big Russian troll farms. (footnote) Despite that BBC story, I suspect the average person over in Britain is still as unaware, and as trusting of social media, as we are over here.

In conclusion, I have—

Don’t touch that mouse! 

After a pause for blog identification, I will tell more:

• a professor, and why people want him fired 
• The Finns, and their national efforts against Russian troll farms
• The anti-vax study, the original one that kicked off the modern anti-vax belief

—I have Three Points, consisting of Two don’ts and One do:

First: Unless you are dealing with traditional media having journalism ethics, don’t believe “It must be true or they wouldn’t have printed it.”

Second: If you are reading social media, don’t believe “It must be true or my brother-in-law wouldn’t have forwarded it.” 

(as they still believe in India, despite government efforts to get village mobs to stop killing complete strangers. Have you heard? Some troll started a post about child abduction by strangers, and it is now going viral, unstoppable by anyone with common sense—mobs even killed a young government man who went to a village to warn them to please stop killing, stop believing forwarded social media.)

Third: Do believe the Russians are using big troll farms to destabilize the rest of us. After all, “X million Finns can’t all be wrong.”

Pause for blog identification:

Your are reading

Sean Crawford

Edmonton

December

2019

Part Two, (but do feel free to get a Second Cup first) 

On the importance of PAX and VAX

PRAY FOR PAX 

(peace)

Some “useful idiots,’” as Lenin called them, still refuse to believe: In Canada there is now resistance to erecting a national memorial to victims of communism.

In my province last month, a Canadian professor, at the University of Alberta, who had recently run for election on the ideals of the Marxist-Leninist party ticket, which, by definition, means HE BELIEVES in the Russian party line, 

(I remember the Soviet ambassador publishing a letter to my student newspaper to say the Ukraine famine was solely from bad weather) 

denied on his social media (not in class) that there was any Ukrainian holocaust, or holodomor, (man-made famine) by Joseph Stalin. This made a lot of people upset, partly because, for the sake of having a jolly good outrage, the first social reactors (pun intended) did not mention that the prof was a Marxist.

I know for sure an idiot can achieve a Ph.D…. yet continue being a “useful idiot.” I wrote about Marxist professors, the “Regina 16,” back in April 2010, archived as Socialists Reject Soldiers. They didn’t want poor children of soldiers killed in action to be eligible for special financial help to attend university.

Forewarned is forearmed

Finland

Got useful idiots? From Russian-speaking areas of Europe, folks allegedly “believed” what they saw spread on social media, and then they viciously launched assaults on the mental health and reputation of a journalist, Jessikka Aro. She told her experience in a BBC interview. How bad are the Russian assaults? You would have to read it to believe it—because hey, those troll farms won’t defend themselves.

I realize that some people, proud to members of a ‘new improved’ digital generation, believe in “the joy of having outrage,” but as for me, I still like Jessika more than I do her attackers: She had journalism ethics, and she had won a prize for her reporting about Russia’s state sponsored social media. 

This web story interviewing her is in prose.

Regarding Finland’s national effort, this web story is in video form, 

with speaking parts by the Finnish prime minister, Jessikka and the communications minister.

VAX

~As an adult, during my military service, I was immunized against lockjaw, also called tetanus.

As a boy I saw a  television commercial, a cartoon, advising vaccinations to protect against three characters: Dippy Diphtheria, who was foolish, Locky lockjaw, who couldn’t talk because his jaw was stiffened shut, and Rolly Polio, a mean guy in a wheelchair holding a crutch to smash people… characters who would not be politically correct to show today.

By the time I saw those commercials, I had already caught mumps, measles and chickenpox—but at least I had never caught smallpox or German measles, also called rubella. 

Catching these “childhood diseases” gave me, just like my mother and brother before me, an immunization against ever getting those diseases again. Happily, no one in my family suffered complications. I wonder if anti-vaxxers would deny such immunity can happen? 

Luckily, when I saw those cartoons, I was young enough, praise the Lord, to have already been vaccinated against poliomyelitis… Very, very lucky. 

And hey, do you know about that notorious FAMOUS STUDY that set off the original panic storm, the one that linked vaccinations to autism? That study could NOT be replicated; there was a sample size of ONLY 12—count ‘em, 12—AND the researcher had not disclosed that he had a financial vested interest. (link) He has since been kicked out of the medical community.

A baby born when that discredited study was published would be 21 years old now. Time enough for straight citizens to check with reality and continue getting their blessed vaccinations. 

Footnotes:

~How to Lose a Battle subtitled Foolish plans and great military blunders, edited by Bill Fawcett, Harper, 2006, specifically from the chapter The Six Day War by Edward E. Kramer, page 307.

~Here’s a very lengthy N.Y.Times think-piece interviewing experts on the future of social media.

An Experiment called Civilization

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

We are a young species on the make, and we are in the midst of a vast, millennia-long experiment called civilization that we never actually signed up for. It may succeed if we can adapt our traditional attitudes and behaviours to our new circumstances. 

Gwynne Dyer, Growing Pains, 2018, Scribe Publications

Update: of special note is Dyer's observation that there have been roughly the same number of years between WWII and President Reagan bringing in "Reaganomics,"and between Reaganomics and now. 

The economic changes of Reagan such as "the only stakeholders in the economy are the shareholders" and that wages should no longer rise as the national GDP rises, (to name just two) changes that would have been laughed at in the 1950's and '60's—even if we take them for granted now—have been measurable disasters, as documented on page 122 onwards. 

Americans should reconsider their "no longer new" model.
Sean Crawford 

Hello Reader,

Got global growing pains?

Believe it or not, I am unsurprised at today’s news.

Today, July 14, some British newspapers have a front page story from leaked diplomatic mail. The scandal is: Trump only scrapped the Iran Atomic agreement out of spite for Obama. Now governments in Europe are scrambling, Iran is giving up in disgust and is enriching uranium, oil tankers are being attacked with explosive mines—all just to… Spite. One. Man. …Really?

Yes, really, but I am not surprised because Gwynne Dyer had (roughly) said so in 2018 in his book that opens with the line, “This is not a book about Trump.” The second paragraph opens with, “We owe Donald Trump a vote of thanks, because he has inadvertently done us a great service. He is the canary in the coal mine—a giant orange canary—and he has made us aware of a growing threat to democratic societies that we should have noticed but didn’t.”

The book is called Growing Pains subtitled The future of democracy (and work) 

I knew I had to grab it, as soon as I spotted it one evening on the “staff pick table” at my favourite independent bookstore, Owl’s Nest Books. (I was there to read my fiction as part of an open microphone night) I have met Dyer, on some occasions, back when he was doing university speaking tours and I was a student reporter, or when my student club had invited him. I’m still chuckling at him joking, as we walked down the hall, “The older I get, the more I believe in conspiracy theories.” Of course the best jokes, dear reader, are always built on a kernel of truth: You’re on your own with this one.

A former naval officer, now an historian and writer, Dyer picks up lots of kernel’s because he has interesting friends and relatives all over the British Commonwealth. And Ireland: “Dyer writes with easy fluency, with gentle, teasing wit” notesThe Irish Times.

As to whether Dyer is friends with a diplomat who had to resign this month over leaks showing he had reported negatively on Trump, well, I wouldn’t know. I like Dyer as an ethical journalist-researcher, with a conscience. For example, after all the world’s investigative journalists had failed to notice the fact that no, Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD)… Dyer had the humility to retrace his steps, republishing some of his old features, trying to determine how the entire North American press corps had blindly failed to scrutinize the U.S. government while there was still peace time, before there was a smoking gun on a tank rolling across the Iraqi border. As for US reporters who swallowed the White House pronouncements on WMD, hook line and sinker, I don’t know of any being equally humble.

Here’s Dyer’s table of contents for Growing Pains

1/ A giant orange canary

2/ Don’t touch that button!

3/ The EU and Brexit: immigrants or jobs?

4/ Democracy: default mode politics

4/ Trump: stop the world, I want to get off

6 Globalisation or automation: what killed the jobs?

7/ Growing pains

Acknowledgements

Notes

Index

If you are feeling blue, dear reader, you might contemplate the “dreary theory” that the rich class always arranges laws and national culture to oppress the nation, that rule by kings and dictators is the default for the vast majority of human history. Yes, but—Dyer points out that for an even longer time, for nearly all of prehistory, people had the camp fire equivalent of Greek forums because they lived in little bands and First Nations and tribes… And then all through historical times, judging by popular culture and religion, people still kept the old hunter-gatherer dream of social equality in their hearts.

If the west got democracy first, then, as Dyer puts it, it is not because they had Greeks in their family tree but because they were the first to get mass media, like a virtual forum, with the spread of the printing press and literacy. As it happens, the Thirteen Colonies who rejected King George had the highest literacy rate in the world. Hence Common Sense by Thomas Paine struck Philadelphia like a rocket.

Today I have to chuckle: The Great Firewall of China can keep out “western” ideas, but within the wall, how can you keep a computer literate Chinese population from having ideas with each other? As Dyer notes, “equality”—what the French called “fraternity”—is human, not western. I will know that the communists are getting desperate when they start violently oppressing Hong Kong as a last grasp for keeping power, or when they start their mobs demonstrating against Taiwan, agitating for invasion of that island country. And why not? After all, the distraction of invading the desolate sheep farming Falklands almost worked to keep the Argentine colonels in power. Almost.

Reading Dyer, I have to add a new scenario: Previously I had believed in the Korean movie Snowpiercer, where the train is a metaphor: The upper (forward train car) class, decadently dancing in a golden discotheque, are the same folks who grab awful steel chains and start grimly swinging them to oppose the workers from lower classes, when the workers tried to get (up to the engine car) a fair deal. To me, the upper class is like dishonest older siblings who will change the rules of a game, a class that will even resort to illegal violence to stay in power. That was the world of my boyhood, or of China at the time of Tiananmen Square where, as Dyer notes, the troops and tanks moved in to kill the people after dark to avoid TV cameras. The student casualties can only be estimated, no one dared to count.

But times change. In Sudan this month they could still kill peaceful street protestors, but not by using the army: No, only by using “special forces” thugs, who are despised by both the army and the people. 

What Dyer had noticed in Eastern Europe, shortly before the tumbling of the Berlin wall, was uniformed army officers in the streets among the protestors. After seeing them, Dyer no longer felt he had to stay near doorways for fear of bullets. He too went out to the middle of the street.

The newest scenario, then, is that the upper class won’t resort to mass violence, not even to keep from sharing their power, not if the masses who would keep the government accountable remain peaceful and nonviolent. So now I have two scenarios to believe in. Such are my growing pains.

Dyer’s eventual conclusion is very exciting. Dyer has perspective in time—he takes a long view—and in space—he looks at the whole economic-politico system. For example (an example he never mentions) society’s diversion of money to retirement pensions to keep old people alive was an allocation, out of a nation’s total resources, brought in by Bismark, to prevent revolution—although of course today OAS and CPP seem like a “no-brainer” in Canada. If you read my blog then I believe that you will enjoy Dyer’s book, that if you open it to any page, then you’ll find Dyer “writes with a racy style, and provokes as much as he informs.” The Independent.

By “provokes,” perhaps The Independent means that Gwynne Dyer is like that Farside cartoonist, Gary Larson. Larson refuses to be chauvinist for humans, and Dyer refuses to be chauvinist for the western world or the U.S. “party line.” For my part, as a dedicated (North) American, such amused objectivity provokes me, but Dyer is honest enough, and funny enough, that I have to forgive him. (Except, maybe, for dating his years “After Common Era” instead of A.D. (Anno Domini) and Before Common Era, B.C.E., instead of B.C. But his book, while printed in the US, is published in Australia, (and the UK) so maybe that’s understandable)

What I won’t reveal today is how Dyer walks a path to a brilliant conclusion, using stepping stones of credible research: Research statistical, research anthropological, research economic, and research medical—such as tracking mental health and lifespan. I won’t hurt his book sales or “steal his thunder” by blabbing where his steps lead him. Besides, radical Truth is hard to retain after merely reading a wee blog post; I for one have to “read a new Truth six times” before it sinks in—or else write a book review.

Dyer’s book is only about 200 big print pages. I do encourage you to pick it up and have a look.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

July

2019 

Footnotes:

~From page 178, …”What really seems to motivate Trump in all three cases is just a desire to destroy Barak Obama’s political legacy, for reasons known only to himself.”

~Brexit. Explaining that if people outside Britain are interested, then it is from wondering if Brexit is a symptom of a trend towards something like populist anger, because seriously, as Dyer writes, “Middle Sized country Makes Large Mistake: not many hurt elsewhere is not a very exciting headline.”

~As for the spread of mass communication in step with spreading democracy, I was mind-blown by Neil Postman’s “favourite” of his books, The Disappearance of Childhood. Postman connected literacy to childhood, as well as to a sense of agency in grownups. I essayed about it in Literacy Grows People archived July 2012

~If you were a US citizen, would you have voted Trump? Don’t answer too fast, because

here’s a (link) to an essay by editor David Wong of Cracked Magazine. Although now a liberal city slicker, Wong has rural relatives and memories: He can easily “method act” what it is like to be rural and voting. My two favourite quotes: 

To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elite. “Are you assholes listening now?”

“But you might as well take time to try to understand them, because I'm telling you, they'll still be around long after Trump is gone.”

Editor: see update at the top of this blog.

A Little Humour

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got Humour?

I thought today I would attempt a humour piece, because I need the practise.

… At work and leisure I try to do the Right Thing, like everybody in those books says to do. 

Well, one time I was a young man, with no job, just a poor kid from the farm, off in the big city. How to get work? Well, of course, all the self-help books say the Right Thing is obvious: Just have Enthusiasm and really Believe In Myself. Oh, and have a marketing gimmick.

What could I do for work? Being from the farm I knew how to shovel manure, and how to have a strong back, but that was about all. So naturally, I went off to that clunky office building at the zoo. Once there, I suppose I should have gone to “Human Resources.” Actually, back on the farm, we called it “Personnel.” But hey, the books said to believe in myself, so bypassing Personnel I went down a little hallway to see the “Admin-istrative Ass-istant,” what we farmers call the “secretary,” because she had a desk right outside the door of the president himself: El Prezidente. The big cheese.

The Admin Ass was older than my mother, looking like an frowning dried up crab apple. All pumped up with enthusiasm, I shouted, “I’m here for a job!” She seemed unimpressed at the news, looked at me over her glasses, and asked,

“Have you a degree in marine biology?

“No.”

“In land biology?”

“No.”

“In microbiology?”

“No.”

“Then we can’t use you. No openings. Sorry.”

“Oh…” Then I summoned my enthusiasm: “Well, can-I-see-the-president?”

“No.”

I could see his door, marked “President.” I was looking right at it, like a pointer hunting dog. The secretary noticed the direction of my gaze, and repeated, “No.” But I remembered the books said to be persistent, so I narrowed my eyes and leaned forward, just like the best pointer would. As I had hoped, the secretary noticed. Too bad she added, “I said ‘no.’” I was leaning still further, about to fall over, when the presidential door opened, and the Man himself walked out. 

I thought to myself, ‘Quick, what would Horatio Alger do?’ Obvious the lad would show his pluck by following Mr. Big down the hall… so I did, right at the man’s heels. It was a short dead end hall with a small door at the end. No time to use my marketing gimmick. Quick—What would Alger say?

“Sir, if you give me a chance, you will never regret it!… I-would-be-proud to-be-a-member of-the-zoo!” The great man never stopped walking—he seemed in a hurry—but said over his shoulder, “Can you do marine biology?

“No.”

“Land biology?”

“No.”

“Microbiology?”

“Uh… umm…” I thought for a second. “No.”

“Then young man,” he said now at the end of the hall, reaching for the door handle, “I can’t help you.” I would have followed him through the door, but the room inside was only about the size of an outhouse, complete with toilet seat. I jammed my foot in the door!

“Sir,” I shouted desperately, “I have a strong back!”

He grimaced. “You’re hired! Now get-your-foot-out-of-the-door.”

When I went back down the hall and told the secretary my good news, I saw her show expression for the first time.

*** *** ***

Many weeks of happy employment went by, with me using my strong back. Have you seen those nice big rocks lining the path to the Safari restaurant? Those are mine. Pretty good, eh?

One day I was putting rocks along the path to the gorilla cage —I mean, “enclosure—” and I was kneeling and tamping a stone into place —that’s a zoo word, “tamping—” when I looked up, and standing over me was the president. He was holding out a square cream-coloured envelope. “Young man, I have something for you.” His envelope was the wrong size for holding money, but still, I just knew it was something special. He grimaced and said, “We have to have diversity on our board, so I’m inviting you and your partner to our board’s supper-meeting. Dress is formal.”

Wow! So after work I ran straight home to tell my dear wife. Ran down the sidewalk, that is, right along the river, as we lived in walking distance of the zoo. “Gosh!” I said, “isn’t this swell?” 

…Days later, on a fine summer evening, we walked down to the Safari room, she wearing her formal black dress, me wearing my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. First person we saw, outside the dinning hall, was a stranger in a nice business suit, rather like mine. I whispered to the wife, “Everybody’s dressed up, like us.” But I was wrong. Turned out the man was a waiter. We entered the big dinning room, with the big long table, and—Oh my Lord! The ladies all had black dresses, like my wife, but the men—they all had tuxedos. Drat! Foo-ey! Blast! I’m always the last to know.

We found our name plates and took our seats. I kind of sank down into mine, feeling small, and let my wife do all the talking. The lady next to her was a microbiologist, the fellow across from us said he was a marine biologist. The man next to me was busy talking to his neighbour, but I think I overheard he was a land biologist. I just sank still further into my seat. If anybody asked, maybe I could say I was a geologist, with a specialty in tamping. 

During the supper I couldn’t remember to do any Right Things from all those self-help books on How To Socialize. I just sank down still further into my seat, and avoided eye contact. My wife was fine, I could hear her and the lady beside her: They were comparing their tattoos.

During the business part, the coffee was keeping me awake, …suddenly I didn’t need any coffee anymore. —Suddenly the president was looking right at me. “You’re from a local farm. Maybe the zoo should have an exhibit of the local ecology, eh? Stand up, and take a minute or two, to give us your thoughts on what we could include.” So I stood, said ‘gulp!’ and ‘erk!’ …and I tried to do the Right Thing. The rest of the evening was a blur. Things only came back into focus when at last my wife and I were walking home.

*** *** ***

…Now, of course, not just at work but in my leisure time too, I try to do things right. As leisure, my wife and I both attend a weekly toastmasters club to learn public speaking. In fact, this includes impromptu “one to two minute” speeches after being given a surprise topic. For this we always had an “evaluator:” a person supposed to give us, and the rest of the listening club, feedback on how we had just done with our “gestures,” our “vocal variety” and other things too. Was “supposed to.” And sometimes, a listener in the club would get as angry as a witch, (rhymes with b-itch) angry: “because the evaluator “merely” retold what the speaker just said!”

That evening, as we walked home, with my brain all blanked out, it was a no-brainer to ask my wife for her evaluation of my talk. I spoke up as soon as we were clear of the zoo. “Dear,” I said, “forget the vocal variety, forget the gestures. All I want to know is: What the heck did I say? Did I sound like an idiot?” 

She said I did fine, really fine. I relaxed. And then she cheered me up by asking me to do my special marketing thing: So I did—We walked home along the river with me singing to her, in my very special opera voice…

The end

Sean Crawford

At the zoo,

Which is indeed by the river,

Where I have a membership,

Which gives me free parking,

Winter, 2017

Footnotes:

~No, I don’t sing opera. In fact, at work, if I’m around others, I would purposely sing like a kid. But then I was “outed.” Someone was hiding behind a tree to smoke. She heard me pushing someone’s wheelchair while singing like Bing Crosby, and then she told everyone I have “the voice of an angel.”

~Horatio Alger is like Pollyanna: If you read many self help books you soon learn those names. I haven’t read any novels about Alger yet, but I sure enjoyed Pollyanna. To me her story was just as good as Sarah Crew’s, and better than Ann’s. (of Green Gables) 

~Speaking of formal suppers, sometimes a medieval feast would include peacock as a delicacy. Last week when the zoo guys were moving the peacocks to their winter digs, once of them adventurously flew right over the wall of the lion’s enclosure. That day some lion ate better than I did.

~Here on the prairies we see gophers everywhere, such as along the town railroad tracks and underneath multi-lane pedestrian overpasses. Maybe that’s why there’s none on exhibit at the zoo. But at the London Zoo, they have something children like: Gopher tunnels you can crawl through! Complete with a few rainproof little domes where you can pop up and look around, just like a real gopher.