Be Quiet

In my post of August 19, 2010 entitled “True Believers” I wrote about serial changers of belief who with each change insist loudly that their newly-born-again self has found the one real truth. And, of course, they are proclaiming this to us because they want us to recognize their sincerity and, most of all, to join them in their new belief.

A recent article at Miller-Mccune (http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/shouts-banish-doubts-24157/) reports on findings by researchers David Gal and Derek Rucker. While they didn’t set out to study those I call “serial believers,” their conclusions are perhaps even more relevant to those multiple “born-againers.” In a paper entitled “When in Doubt, Shout!” they conclude that “advocacy on behalf of one’s beliefs helps banish any uncomfortable lack of certainty’”; those participants in the study who were most in doubt “expressed a greater likelihood to attempt to persuade other people of their beliefs.” As the Miller-Mccune article puts it:

“Although it is natural to assume that a persistent and enthusiastic advocate of a belief is brimming with confidence,” [Gal and Rucker] write in the journal Psychological Science, “the advocacy might in fact signal that the individual is boiling over with doubt.”

The Miller-Mccune article notes that “In a logic-driven world, [one would think] the shattering of long-held assumptions . . . would lead to a thoughtful period of reflection and re-evaluation.” However, just the opposite happens: “In our world, it leads one to actively advocate one’s pre-existing beliefs all the more passionately.”

While it might seem that the serial “True Believers” might be the exceptions that prove the rule, in fact, by their strong advocacy of their latest belief they demonstrate that their desire to have others join them is a need for confirmation of the validity of their new (and shaky) faith.

How unlike Hamlet and Nora Helmer (discussed in another of my blog posts, “The Act of Living,” September 14, 2010), who, having had their “long-held assumptions” shattered, face the new existential void in their lives without either blanking out the reality in front of them and retreating deeper into their shaky previous beliefs or turning to a new pre-packaged belief system and, proclaiming their sincerity in their new doubtful faith, attempt to induce others to join them.

***

I recall an article I read many years ago in the New York Times Magazine, which told of a paper left behind by an African diplomat after having given a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. At one place in the margin of this paper was written: “Weak Point. Raise Voice.”

As I concluded in the “True Believers” post, I ask those shouters of their beliefs:

"Why should I believe what you believe today, which you didn't believe yesterday--and will not believe tomorrow?"

Crystal Balls

I am not a channel surfer. I’m what I might call a “program destinationer.” That is, when I turn on the television I head directly to a particular channel to see a particular show. If the show is not on by some chance (think of pre-emption by a PBS begathon), I don’t go looking for something else to watch. Thus, my knowledge of the world of television programming is distinctly limited. It is only when I am unfortunately cornered in a waiting room, say, or the Laundromat that—like a passenger being subjected to a wayward journey by a clueless cabbie—I get to view things that exist outside my everyday world.

It so happened the other day that I was facing a television set tuned to the History Channel. The program was one of those future-disaster shows—much beloved by the Weather Channel—that informed its audience, through interviews with scientists and engineers, that because of deteriorating infrastructure (the roads, the dams, the bridges, the electrical grid) our country faces calamitous events and a return to Nineteenth-century living conditions. Among other possible disasters, Nashville might end up under twenty feet of water, Southern California might have its fresh water supply cut off, and we might all be subjected—if not to blackouts—to regular electrical brownouts. The scary case the program made for the need for immediate funding for repairs to our deteriorating infrastructure would, it seemed to me, make even the stingiest “small government” politician demand that Uncle Sam get out his checkbook immediately.

When the program ended, I took a deep breath and kept my wallet in my pocket through a long line of commercials, while I awaited the next presentation. Which turned out to be a program on Nostradamus and other alleged prognosticators of future events. We were told of supposed foretellings of the deaths of Popes and emperors and of natural and man-made disasters. The scientists and engineers of the previous show were replaced by astrologers and their ilk. The voiceover announced portentously that “experts believe . . .” without telling us who these “experts” are or what they are expert in. The show was a pandering to mindless loonies and credulous ninnies. As soon as the other person in the room left, I grabbed the remote and switched to the noon news. (Speaking of being confronted by “mindless loonies and credulous ninnies.”)

So this is America in the Twenty-first century: Presented as equally valid, scientific and engineering investigation and bozo prognostication. Something like Fox News plus science.

Chance of a Ghost; Ghost of a Chance

I read a lot of detective fiction and mysteries. And, as I imagine most fans of the genre do, I follow my favorite authors and their detectives from book to book. However, over the years I have from time to time waved farewell to authors and their detectives, abandoning series, not caring a hoot about what new mischief may be afoot in subsequent books. There were several reasons why I gave up on them, but I wish to discuss only one.

Last year I bid farewell to two police procedural series—both featuring detectives in contemporary England. In the last book I read of each series, the author wanted the reader to accept supernatural occurrences—ESP, stigmata, spirit channeling—as real events. Because the mystery genre demands reason and logic, and thus cannot countenance superstition and obscurantism, I could not tolerate such nonsense—and so ditched the authors and their works. Twenty-first-century rationalism was not to be flouted.

But why, if I am unable to accept ghosts and such in modern-era detective fiction, am I tolerant of the ghosts, for example, of Hamlet’s father and Banquo? The reason is the same as that for my acceptance of the intervention of the god Herakles in Sophocles’ Philoctetes or of the oracles whose prophecies cause so much trouble for Oedipus, Laius, and Jocasta. I accept, for Shakespeare, his work in the context of the belief system of Elizabethan/Jacobean England, and for Sophocles, his work in the context of the belief system of 5th-century B.C. Greece. In context, our “supernatural” was their “natural,” and part of the warp and woof of their belief systems. However, what is most important isn’t their intellectual, philosophical, religious differences from us, but the similarity of their concerns about the conundrums of human existence: chance, evil, honor, greed, love, lust, etc.

So, I am willing to allow an Elizabethan ghost to walk the battlements of Elsinore and move his son to revenge or a Greek god at the last moment to reconcile the irreconcilable.

But if Herakles appears in the mystery I am now reading and solves the detective’s case, that book is straight for the dumpster.

OMG

Did it ever occur to you that God’s name isn’t “God”? (I will assume here that God does exist, but only for the sake of argument, mind you.)

“God” is a native English word. But English, as a distinct language, has only been on the scene for about one-and-a-half millennia. Now, even if we dismiss (for the sake of argument) the Big Bang Theory and the existence of the universe for some twelve billion years or so (who’s counting?) and accept the contention (again for the sake of argument only) of those loopy creationists who believe that T-Rex and missus had outside cabins on Noah’s Ark and that the universe is only about six-and-a-half millennia old, that means that God either went around anonymously for five thousand years before deciding to latch on to an English name or had a real, non-English name from way back. We’re not buying the former possibility, are we?

So, if God had a real name prior to English, then what I mentioned in the first sentence is true: God’s name is not “God.”

Now here’s the point I’m leading up to: Why, if God’s name isn’t “God,” do some people feel it is necessary to write “G-d” instead of “God”? Even if there were an interdiction against writing the true name of God (is there?), surely there can’t be an interdiction against writing the non-name of God.

(Now, for my French translation, which vowel do I leave out of “Dieu”?

The Act of Living

We all act better than we know how.

Erving Goffman

***

Each of our days consists of a series of performances. At some moments it’s an individual star turn; at others it’s standing to the side holding a spear. Sometimes we are forced by events of the moment to improvise our roles; at other times we play out parts that we have been able to practice (at least in our minds) at leisure.

Consider the blind date, for example: who has not, in anticipation of the event, envisioned, as a mini-drama, the forthcoming meeting? We plotted the story line and scripted the dialogue (I’ll say this; she/he will say that) as we prepared our costume and makeup.

All the little playlets and mini-dramas of daily life are part of a bigger drama—the drama of one’s own life. And here too, we have in our minds (even if not always in the forefront of our consciousness) a scenario to be enacted. But what happens when the Hollywood screenplay of our mind breaks down? When the anticipated lines are not recited by other actors? Without our cues, the words we were so certain of stick in our throat. And without words to speak, we no longer have a role, a persona. We are cast into an existential void.

(I am not concerned here with those “True Believers” I wrote about in my previous post. They shed one certainty and clothe themselves quickly in another. They are the owners of a factitious seriousness, and, therefore, not to be bothered with.)

***

We are in nineteenth-century Norway, a bastion of Lutheran propriety. Nora Helmer, years before Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House opens, forged her father’s signature to obtain a loan, the money of which was used to allow her ailing (and unaware) husband to travel to a healthy clime to recuperate. But now the truth has been revealed to him, and he reacts—not as Nora expected him to (or perhaps we should say, as the script in her mind fostered by the patriarchal society expected him to) react.

Nora:

I have waited so patiently for eight years; for, goodness knows, I knew very well that wonderful things don't happen every day. Then this horrible misfortune came upon me; and then I felt quite certain that the wonderful thing was going to happen at last. When Krogstad's letter was lying out there, never for a moment did I imagine that you would consent to accept this man's conditions. I was so absolutely certain that you would say to him: Publish the thing to the whole world. And when that was done—
. . .

When that was done, I was so absolutely certain, you would come forward and take everything upon yourself, and say: I am the guilty one.
. . .

You mean that I would never have accepted such a sacrifice on your part? No, of course not. But what would my assurances have been worth against yours? That was the wonderful thing which I hoped for and feared; and it was to prevent that, that I wanted to kill myself.

Because her husband, Torvald, does not play his part as Nora rehearsed it in her mind, her role as heroine in the melodrama has to be abandoned, and she has to face the erasure of all meaning of her previous life.

Nora:

it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been
living here with a strange man, and had borne him
three children—

With no life script in her mind any more, Nora walks out the door on her former life. “I have no idea what is going to become of me,” she declares, but her actions will not be scripted by the conventions and beliefs of other people.

***

For Hamlet, too, the scenario no longer holds together. It is like an artifact whose parts have loosened, compromising its integrity.

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

If he can no longer trust the scenario, who—or what—is there to trust? It is no wonder, then, that he tests the honesty and loyalty of those around him.

To Horatio:

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
. . .
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
. . .
But what is your affair in Elsinore?

To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:

What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?
. . .
But in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
. . .
Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a
free visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come! Nay, speak.

To Ophelia [in a letter]:

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
I have not art to reckon my groans; but that
I love thee best, O most best, believe
it.

But what exactly caused Hamlet to see his life script fall to pieces?

Horatio:

My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

Hamlet:

I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Horatio:

Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

The sudden death of his father and the hasty re-marriage of his mother to his uncle were the events that undermined the scenario. Hamlet’s “O that this too too solid flesh would melt“ soliloquy is occasioned by his torment over his mother’s action. Notice how his thoughts do not run smoothly but are broken up by by pained outbursts:

That it should come to this!
But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month-
Let me not think on't! Frailty, thy name is woman!-
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears- why she, even she
(O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn'd longer) married with my uncle;
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

The “Happy Family” script gone, what does the world look like to Hamlet now?

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah, fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

True Believers

So Anne Rice—you know, the writer of those vampire novels—has announced on Facebook(!) that a dozen years after seeing the light and quitting being an atheist and becoming a Christian, she’s renounced being a Christian. Does that mean having presumably been born again, she’s been born again again? Keep going, Annie--a cat has nine lives; you can find out how many a human has. Though you have a way to go to catch the real master change artists, such as Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver went from being a serial rapist ("rape was an insurrectionary act," he declared at one point) to becoming, in turn, a founder of the Black Panthers, a born-again Christian, a Mormon, a conservative Republican.

What I find particularly interesting about serial born-againers is that each time they change they need to announce it to the world. "Look, everybody, I'm no longer an A, I'm a B!" Presumably, their announcements are to garner admiration from the public (for someone who has found the truth) and to inspire the public to follow in their footsteps (because you want to find the truth too, don't you?). But what I see in serial born-againers are people for whom it is a almost a badge of honor to proclaim: "Look what a stupid ass I was--but you must now follow me as I march off in the direction opposite to which I was heading before--but I'm right this time!"

***

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck has mistakenly drugged the sleeping Lysander, the lover of Hermia, (rather than Demetrius) and he will fall in love with the first person he sees when he awakes. As it happens, that person is the rejected lover of Demetrius, Helena.

HELENA
But who is here? Lysander! on the ground!
Dead? or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.
Lysander if you live, good sir, awake.

LYSANDER
[Awaking] And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake.
Transparent Helena! Nature shows art,
That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.

Lysander, of course, has no idea that his change of love object was caused by a drug. He proclaims that it was reason that instigated the change; after all, "The will of man is by his reason sway'd;/And reason says you are the worthier maid." And the rational fact that he produces? "Who will not change a raven (dark-compexioned, dark-haired Hermia) for a dove (fair-skinned, blond Helena)?" Thus, even the self-deluded will put in a claim for reason and produce a seemingly-logical explanation for his actions.

***

And so I ask with all sincerity those who appear before me hopping from one foot to the other in reverent ecstasy, hoping to convey to me the intelligence, reason, logic, and truth of their latest religious, philosophical, or political discovery: "Why should I believe what you believe today, which you didn't believe yesterday--and will not believe tomorrow?"

Velocity

A sort of philosophical investigation (eventually)

***

“Velocity”

Scottish football manager Gordon Strachan’s response to a reporter’s request for “a quick word.”

***

On the next-to-last weekend in July this year, the small German town of Hockenheim (population just above 20,000) was invaded by an international army: the Formula One circus had descended upon the state of Baden-Württemberg to conduct the German Grand Prix auto race. For those not familiar with the world of auto racing, be aware that Formula One is the most highly-sophisticated, technically-advanced, and, hence, most expensive form of auto sport (within the past two years such automobile giants as BMW, Toyota, and Honda, looking at the financial bottom line, packed up their gearboxes and went home).

The Formula One season is comprised (this year) of nineteen races run from March through November, and includes encounters at such venues rich in motoring history as Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Turkey, and Bahrain. It all leads, at the end, to the crowning of two champions: the World Drivers Champion (individual) and the World Champion Constructor (team).

The great sports writer Jimmy Cannon would occasionally write a column entitled “Guaranteed to Happen,” in which he would offer a jaundiced—but accurate—anatomization of a sporting event (such as the Kentucky Derby) or a non-sporting one (such as the annual office Christmas party). Well, it’s pretty accurate to say that “guaranteed to happen” during any Formula One weekend is controversy. And just past the half way point of the schedule the Hockenheim race produced the biggest of the season (so far).

At the start of the race the pole sitter (determined by qualifying lap speed) and hometown favorite, young Sebastian Vettel, from the nearby burg of Heppenheim, moved sharply to his right in an attempt to keep the second-place qualifier, Fernando Alonso of Spain, from outsprinting him into the first corner. Unfortunately for the German, not only did he not prevent Alonso from getting ahead of him, by veering off his driving line, he also allowed the third-place qualifier, Felipe Massa of Brazil, to pass both him and Alonso on the left. And so the race unfolded all the way to the checkered flag.: Massa in the lead, followed by Alonso, who was unable to pass the Brazilian, and Vettel, who was unable to pass the Spaniard. Or should have unfolded.

You see, while Vettel was driving for Red Bull Racing (all that energy drink profit has to go somewhere), the two cars in front of him were Ferraris, and the driver of the second-place Ferrari (Alonso) was getting more and more upset as the race went on, because he couldn’t catch and pass his teammate in the leading Ferrari, who he thought was holding him up. “This is ridiculous,” he complained over his radio to his support crew. Bowing to Alonso’s whining, the Ferrari race bigwigs radioed Massa (who had lost the 2008 World Drivers Championship by a single point), telling him, "Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?" “The Da Vinci Code” it wasn’t; a more obvious command from the management to let Alonso (a two-time World Drivers Champion) pass there couldn’t be. On lap 49 (of 67) Massa slowed dramatically, allowing Alonso by--and the controversy to begin.

Since 2002, after another Ferrari manufactured switch of positions (that time just a few feet from the finish line), team orders that would affect the racing outcome have been banned from Formula One. (The race authorities saw the Alonso/Massa switch as team orders and has fined Ferrari $100,000.) After the race,, neither of the Ferrari drivers, the unrepentant Alonso nor the crestfallen Massa, used the term “team orders” but came mighty close, Alonso pointing out that the team pays his salary (a whopping great one—leading F1 drivers are among the highest-paid athletes in the world). The Spaniard justified his win by claiming that he was faster than Massa all weekend during the practice sessions. (Alonso was ahead of Massa in the points standing for the Drivers Championship, but, in fifth place, a not-impossible, but also not-probable threat for a third title.)

***

And now the philosophical investigation:

What do we mean by “faster” or “fastest”?

Alonso, trailing Massa, claimed that he was "faster" than the Brazilian. But if he was "faster," why was he behind his teammate? Now, passing another car (at least one that is competitive with you) is not especially easy in F1. (The tracks are not the nice wide ovals like the Indianapolis Speedway, but are composed of both slow twisting corners and high-speed straights.) But neither is an F1 race a race up a ladder, in which the person who gets to the lowest rung first will always be ahead.

Perhaps Alonso was correct in claiming that he had the “faster” car and could race away from the other Ferrari in a head-to-head battle. Motor racing does provide for such match-ups—drag racing, where from a standing start two cars sprint down a quarter-mile strip to see who gets to the finish line first. At Hockenheim, it was Massa, starting farther back than Alonso, who won the drag race (against Vettel also) to the first corner. Did that mean he was “faster”? And how about this: the car that registered the top speed through the course speed trap (317.5 km/h) was driven by Englishman Jenson Button, who was fifth across the finish line. Did that top speed mean that Button, the defending World Drivers Champion, was the “fastest” of all the drivers—and should have been awarded the winner’s trophy?

The drag racing criterion for determining the winner is simple: who crossed the line first? But even there, one must sometimes separate “winner” from “faster”—for drag racing uses a handicap system to stagger the starts of its races, the “faster” car (based on past performances) being forced to concede its rival a slight time advantage.

The “fastest” car in a Formula 1 race (based on qualifying lap time) concedes its rivals nothing; in fact, it has all the advantages—it starts at the front of the grid a few feet forward of the second-place car sitting to its right or left (depending on the track configuration) and its initial racing line is on the clean side of the track, which allows for more tire grip. At Hockenheim the impulsive Vettel squandered his advantages, to the benefit of both Massa and Alonso. Massa, in front of Alonso, did not squander his advantage. He kept the Spaniard behind him all the way, until the Ferrari brass intervened. Had they not done so, and had Massa crossed the finish line ahead of his teammate and rival, would he not have been the “fastest” on the race track—if by that term we mean the one who completed the task, overcoming the obstacles in the way, in the shortest elapsed time?

Massa was Alonso’s obstacle, and apparently he could only overcome it by wishing it away.

It is worth noting a philosopher’s words about another sporting endeavor:

In a football match, everything is complicated by the presence of the other team.

Jean-Paul Sartre

***

In the Bible we are informed by “the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem”:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:11

On the other hand, a twentieth-century American writer advises us:

It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but that is the way to bet.

Damon Runyan