Now to Start a Grand Theory

Gathering random references for my humble future project to outline a Grand Theory of Everything

"We are discovering a plethora of evidence about our hardwiring for connection and compassion, from the vagus nerve, which releases oxytocin at simply witnessing a compassionate act, to the mirror neurons, which causes us to literally feel another person’s pain and thereby empathize. Darwin himself, who has been grossly misunderstood to believe exclusively in our competitiveness (hence the famous saying, “survival of the fittest”), actually observed and noted that humankind’s real power comes in its ability to perform complex tasks together—that is, to sympathize and cooperate."
-Tom Shadyac on the vagus nerve and his movie I AM

Contrast the above with...

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

While Galbraith was probably not sympathetic to the modern conservative movement, I think he was accurate, and famously one of Ayn Rand's books is called The Virtue of Selfishness. If conservative fire breathers were honest about it, they would admit all the talk of the individual is really about justifying selfishness.

[Very imprecise thought..] What IF...our society that gives us the modern world, for all it's wonders and pleasures was actually ALL WRONG for how humans would actually prefer to live?

An obvious objection is that everybody is different so how could someone say how they ought or would prefer to live? But the flip side is, doesn't the present system impose, by design, a way we have to live anyway?


http://layogamagazine.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=824%3Asitting-down-with-tom-shadyac&catid=178%3Amarch-2011-issue&Itemid=55

ref# 1 – Vagus Nerve

My View of "The Room"

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Initially I felt the author either thought too much of himself or was too pretentious, but once you get into the story that falls away and it turns out to be pretty interesting.

Pretty interesting, but ultimately pretty depressing. Imagine Ed Wood with money but horribly handicapped by certainly u-examined insecurity.

But I think it is because Tommy has money you feel free to laugh at his mistakes as he tries to live his dream of being an amazing actor in the face of obvious inadequacies

Johnny’s declaration of “I cannot go on without you” was where the problems began. Tommy would move as far into the dialogue as “I cannot go on” and get confused and call out, “Line!”

Sandy would then dutifully feed him the rest: “Without you”
“I cannot go…Line!”
“On. Without you.”
"I cannot…Line!”
“Tommy, for God’s sake, ‘I cannot go on without you’”
“Okay. Thank you”
"Action!”
“I cannot go on…Line!”


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Ad Man Murder Man

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Dorthy Sayers worked for an advertising company so surely the characters were accurate. And this is how she imagined the ideal aristocrat reacting...

The atmosphere suited him well enough. He was a bonhomous soul, with the insatiable curiosity of a baby elephant, and nothing pleased him better than to be interrupted in his encomiums of Sopo (“makes Monday, Fun-day”) or the Whoosh Vacuum-cleaner (“one Whoosh and it's clean”) by a fellow-member of the department, fed-up with advertising and spoiling for a chat.  (Kindle Locations 560-563)

And of course the '30 British language dazzles...

You see, Hankie-pankie told me to get out a list of names for a shilling tea and I got out some awful rotten ones, and then Ingleby came in and I said, 'What would you call this tea?' just like that, and he said, 'Call it Domestic Blend,' and I said, 'What-ho! that absolutely whangs the nail over the crumpet.' Because it struck me, really, as being the caterpillar's boots.” (Kindle Locations 644-647)

Every so often something not culturally sensitive sneaks in...

I need scarcely warn you against the golden-haired girl in distress, the slit-eyed Chink or the distinguished grey-haired man wearing the ribbon of some foreign order.” (Kindle Locations 4571-4572)

The needlessly long but enjoyable play by play of the cricket match was wonderfully interpreted for me by our resident Englishman at work. Thanks Tom!.

The innings opened briskly. Mr. Barrow, who was rather a showy bat, though temperamental, took the bowling at the factory end of the pitch and cheered the spirits of his side by producing a couple of twos in the first over. (Kindle Locations 4711-4712)

And finally one more listen to this wonderful world...

If you wants a murderer, Mr. Bredon's got 'is eye on one now, and you're jest playin' into the 'ands of the Black Spider and 'is gang–meaning to say, 'oever done this. Wot I meantersay, the time 'as come fer me ter divulge wot I know, and I ain't agoin'–cor lumme!” (Kindle Locations 5123-5125)



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The Earl of Louisiana

The Earl of Louisiana by A.J. Liebling
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It may be denial on my part that makes the territory covered seem so improbable. Though just a toddler, I was alive during the last campaign of Earl Long of Louisiana, so surely things could not have been so different during my time on earth. Right? But then again sometimes 50 years is a long time, and a lot can change. Plus the early ‘60s was an amazing time of change and Earl Long comes across to my eyes as the last of a unique breed.

During Earl Long’s last year in the Governor’s office he had some sort of break down, declared mentally unstable and flown against his will to a hospital in Texas under direction of his wife and nephew. When Earl got out he continued campaigning for another term even though ineligible. His announced plan was to quit shortly before his term expired have the lieutenant governor take over and therefore he would not technically be taking another consecutive term.

Anyway that was the story that brought Liebling from New York to New Orleans, a place he obviously fell in love with.

As for the spirit of the times, it is hard to imagine such blatant racism, so cruel that it makes the Longs (Huey and Earl) come off as quite magnanimous. Or maybe not…

“..the Long family’s position on the Southern issue. ‘They do not favor the Negro,” a Negro educator once told me, “but they are less inflexibly antagonistic than the others,’” pg. 23

Race is a prominent element is this record of that election year (1959) but for all of Liebling’s northern liberality I don’t think ever mentions actually talking to an actual black person.

A.J. Liebling must have been quite a character and I like his presentation, but I think it does have the feel of a different age of journalism. I like it, but it is different. One thing is that I found it hard to prepare quotes from the book for examples in this review, because the ones I really liked were not one- liners. He sets up a small story and it takes paragraph or two to finish it off. It is well worth it but you can’t just take one sentence to show how good he is.

His analysis is a little free-wheeling, such as one of his recurring observations that New Orleans is part of the Arab and Mediterranean culture

The Mediterraneans who settled the shores of the interrupted sea scurried across the gap between the Azores and Puerto Rico like a woman crossing a drafty hall in a sheer nightgown to get to a warm bed with a man in it. Old, they carried with them a culture that had ripened properly, on the tree. Being sensible people, they never went far inland. All, or almost all, the interior of North America was therefore filled in from the North Atlantic coast, by the weakest element in that incompletely civilized population-those who would move away from salt water.

The middle of Louisiana is where the culture of one great thalassic littoral impinges on the other, and a fellow running for Governor has got to straddle the line between them. Pg. 89

See what I mean about trying to pull one bit out? One piece is tied to another, then another and suddenly I am pasting the whole page in here.

His Levant/ Louisianna connection idea is, I think, based on and earlier time’s cliché that was embedded in people’s minds about the nature of the Arab world then.

On meeting the mayor of New Orleans…
The ceremonial coffee is a link between Louisiana and the rest of the Arab world. It is never omitted event though your host is going to throw you out when you have drunk it. pg. 54

Louisiana and New Orleans especially must have been quite a sight back then.

Morrison sees no chance of stemming the tide of Federal court decisions. He suffers under the disadvantage of living in the contemporary world, while the Perezes and Rainachs remain in the Jurassic. It is the gift of the Longs that they could straddle the intervening million years. Pg 179

One of the last political memories before I left the Great State was of the Governor devising political catfish bait. The cat is not a fish to be taken on bird feathers with whimsical names. It demands the solid attraction of chicken guts surrounded by then aura of asafetida: “Smells bad, but cats love,” the manual says.

…But other hands had been setting other trotlines with baits even more persuasive to the legislators….They (the statesmen) left the baits on his hooks untouched; they did not seem to be hungry. Pg. 145


And now Uncle Earl himself…

We got the finest roads, finest schools, finest hospitals in the country- yet there are rich men who complain. They are so tight you can hear ‘em squeak when they walk. They wouldn’t give a nickel to see a earthquake. They sit there wallowin’ hundred-dollar bills like a bullfrog swallow minners-if you chunked them as many as then wan they’d bust. Pg. 96

About his rival Mayor deLesseps S. Morrison of New Orleans…”I hate to say this- I hate to boost old Dellasoups-but he’ll be second again…(he always referred to him as Dellasoups)..I’d rather beat Morrison than eat any blackberry, huckleberry pie my mama ever made. Oh how I am praying for that stump-wormer to get in there. I want him to roll up them cuffs, and get out that little old tuppy, and pull down them shades and make himself up. He’s the easiest man to make a nut out of I’ve ever seen in my life”. The “tuppy” for “toupee”, was a slur on Morrison’s hair, which is thinning, though only Long has ever accused him of wearing a wig. Pg. 26

…if he was going to make up with Mrs. Long, and if he didn’t think that would help him get the women’s vote in the primary.
He said, “If dat’s da price of victory, I rather go ahead and be defeated. After all, lots of men have lost elections before.” Pg. 125


Oh yeah. It’s a very good book.


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My Night With Jennifer Aniston

Last month I had dream. In that dream I was at a grade school reunion and it seems Jennifer Aniston was in my 5^th grade class.

Anyway we started talking and we instantly realized we had a real connection. Like we were talking about deep, important things about life and everything, none of which I remember now. We spend most of the evening off in a corner talking in whispers or at least low tones indicating seriousness.

That last conversation was us realizing we could never do this again since the media wouldn't understand that our relationship was completely platonic. So with sinking hearts we all (somehow we were in a group then) shared a car as we left the reunion.

It just goes to show you how old I have become. I have a dream with Jennifer Aniston and all I do is talk. I am sure my younger dream self wants to time jump and give my current dream self a kick in the pants.

We Really Are Our Own Worse Enemy

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Pierce says he appreciates that America is a place where every crank can show whatever wild theory and God bless him if he finds a following. The problem is it seems the cranks are running the country and not out on the street corner.

The way this happens is the 3 Great Premises of Idiot America that the masses seem to eat up

1: Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.

2: Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.

3: Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.
This would be fine for the marketplace of ideas if there was a balanced, intelligent body around to challenge the wild eyed ones when the approached governing America. That way any actual ingenious idea would get through. BUT, in today's politics the elected representatives ARE the cranks and any expert with well researched thought out data is left in the dust because the there premises trump balanced reasoning.

The main examples are Biblical Creationism creeping into school science class cloaked as Intelligent Design, Denying Global Warming, and The Terri Shiavo showboating Republicans forced on America.

I say forced, but the thing is all these people are elected idiots (I'm a “life is complicated and there are many sides to each story” kind of guy, BUT anybody who falls on the non-science side of the above issues is an Idiot. Maybe they are wonderful people at home, but on these counts...). As I was saying, for the most part he blames the politicians but WE the PEOPLE elected these bozos so POGO's quote was especially prescient "We have met the enemy... and he is us" . OR maybe people in general have always been idiots.


Titbits

I didn't realize that it was under Reagan that dropping regulations in radio basically setup the nation of the saturation of conservative talk radio. There used to be this thing call the fairness doctrine where any view on radio or TV required the station to offer opposing views. What a quaint idea. Being fair about the issues. That would never fly now.

In 2003, the psychologist Paul Ginnetty examined this dynamic in Newsday, focusing on Limbaugh’s show but analyzing the appeal of the entire genre, what he called “the potent narcotic of reassuring simplicity.” (pp. 109).

He goes on how today politics requires not determining the best ideas but rather the best narrative.

The apotheosis of the modern novelized presidency was that of Ronald Reagan. (p. 234).

He offers up James Madison as the intelligent founding father we really should be emulating. But from the little reading I've done of that era, for all the wisdom of those chaps, it really could have gone off in another direction since I wonder, but don't know, if there were probably a fair share of cranks in the continental congress at the time.

In conclusion:
We've chosen up sides on everything, fashioning our public lives as though we were making up a fantasy baseball team. First (p. 261)

After pulling together notes for this review I a bit depressed, and I promised myself to cut back on the Vino so it will be a tough night.

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A Cockeyed World

Winter in the Blood by James Welch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

James Welch was first published as a poet and I think this prose shows his poetic beginnings

My lure caught a windfall trunk and the brittle nylon snapped. A magpie squawked from deep in the woods on the other side of the river. Pg6

But over all Winter in Blood is a hard book. Severe.

“And I was staring at the sobbing woman with the same lack of emotion, the same curiosity, as though I were watching a bug floating motionless down an irrigation ditch, not yet dead, but having decided upon death.
I slid off her. Everything had gone out of me, and I felt the kind of peace that comes over one when he is alone, when he no longer cares for warmth, and or sunshine, or possesions or even a woman's body, so yielding and powerful.” pg 99

I had a bias going into this story. I think that I thought a book by a Native American writer (I read he didn't care for the term but it is what is said now) would somewhere have an answer for me to the conflicts I see in our modern world.

Am I falling into a vague stereotype about Native America wisdom? Like I might then go on a sweat lodge retreat and contact a sympathetic animal spirit?

Winter in Blood is more a modern novel about a universal sense of separation and alienation written by a native American than primarily a native American novel, ok, maybe, maybe not.

BUT there was some indication of an underlying reply to the western civilization we know. He at least acknowledges what I have felt for a while, that there is something messed up in the world. The clearest statement is when the old, blind yellow Calf about talks with animals and why they are unhappy.

“They are not happy with the way things are. They know what a bad time it is. They can tell by the moon that the world is cockeyed.”

So maybe it does cover some of the territory of Ceremony by Silko, but Ceremony was much more explicit.


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