Cobb

OK & Stoic About It

 

As I move forward in this, the final third of my planned life (whatever happens after I'm 75, I basically don't care), I am discovering the ways in which all the life I've lived is different or similar to the ways people have lived throughout history. Right about now I'm discovering my stoicism.

 

About 15 years ago, I put together a 'hyperbio' which was about 300 phrases, each tied to a specific memory, that I had grouped into about 7 phases of my life. At the height of my corporate professional career and the beginning of my corporate management career I considered adding the 8th phase. In 2000 I got ganked by the Feds and in 2001 I got laid off from Hyperion and there was 9/11 of course. I still hadn't gotten full custody of my son, and I had lost my last grandmother. So thinking about how to end phase 7 and begin phase 8 meant that now that I was over 40 I was going to have to consider death, loss and failure. So what to call phase 7? Should that include the death loss and failure through 2001 to start anew with phase 8, or should it end on a high note and phase 8 be the beginning of death, loss and failure? It was a lot on my mind as I flew Southwest Airlines every week with bumpy landings at BUR. 

I didn't resolve the ontology problem, but I did change the way I think. Ever since 9/11 I have asked, as a part of my morning routine, what broke while I was sleeping? And those of you who have worked with me may recognize that hangdog look on my face, and how I actually brighten up slightly when I am working on something that's broken. Failure makes me laugh, because in some ways it is the comeuppance of incompetence. Except, of course in IT, you generally don't get to know exactly who screwed the pooch, how or when. We're all organizationally firewalled and only blame goes over the transom. So I came to expect SNAFU, even find comfort in it. It's a horrible dualism to deal with in a world of technological improvement where people want ever increasing slices of their lives digitized. It is at once progress and chaotic dissolution. 

When I was the admin at Xerox Centre, I had the audacity, just ask David Bradley, to wear a disk drive head assembly on my keychain. it was my digital red badge of courage, having mounted a disk pack incorrectly and listening to flying heads grind into the platters and then crash in a cyclone of crumbled bits of aluminum and burning FeO₂. Somewhere around that time, in the late 80s, I was losing my patriotism over the flubs of the Reagan Administration in disbelief over news reports about the runways lengths in Grenada and then finally over Iran Contra. But I was still much too young to be a stoic - I lived at the beach.

But now I understand that thing Taleb calls the Dumbell Strategy, which is to pursue seeminly contradicting aims simultaneously in recognition that he who plays both sides manages risk. But it is not being two-faced, but being antifragile, the difference between which are the stuff of wisdom. There's no easy way to explain it, and I won't until I read his book which is due out in six months or so. But I am indeed finding parallels of this thinking in history and coming to terms with what has been said by the likes of Epictetus and Cryssipus as well as the gods of OODA. 

I am of the opinion that all human folly ends in war, if the folly is big enough. That is because stupidity rarely fails from killing things and epic stupidity, that which is powerful and sustained by cowardice and/or credulity inevitably kills people. Evil *is* rather banal in that you can see it coming a mile a way. Stupidity, on the other hand, usually presents with the symptoms of inattention.  Expect Inattention; it is legion.

What does it all mean? It means that when I have a miserable week, as I had just the other week, starting with a funeral I really was unprepared for, a backlog of work I had committed to and failed to deliver, and an increasingly busified schedule full of tasks everyone hates like auto repair, tax preparation and helping kids study for finals at midnight; there is a solution. That solution is to listen to the tribulations of the thousands of Bolsheviks being falsely accused, tortured into confession, summarily tried and executed of being bourgeois nationalists, which is basically everything I ever wanted to be. Robert Conquest is my staid and sometimes deeply ironically arch guide through that horror - the details of which when I first encountered them 9 years ago sent me to sleep weeping. And now, like the whiskey I once could not stomach, I consume it for comfort.

I'm OK. I can handle it. 

I try to be both concerned and unworried. What I hate most of all is not the bad news, but being blindsided by it. I am comfortably down Miller's Alley and concerned (but not worried) about those things that are reasonably within my ambit of capacity to change. I reckon that to be a Stoic approach, but I'll let you know how Stoically correct I am. At the same time, I'm a Californian which means I do not intend to be fat or lazy or overly concerned with the quality of affairs in the public square, that which our meddlesome liberal friends insist on calling 'Zocalo', and will, I suppose until their Yankee inflected Spanish fails to deliver them from being dragged foot-first up the coming ziggurats of political human sacrifice ot the greater glory of La Raza. I'm going to the jazz concert anyway. I'm going jogging anyway. I'm going to eat in my walled garden like an Epicurean anyway. That's how I roll. 

I'm becoming convinced, as I'm sure the Stoics were, that Vulgaris populus ago in obscurum. Ordinary people live in darkness. Being OK is slightly better than that, especially for one such as I who is not likely to curse the darkness. That's part of the dumbell strategy. That is part of living up to Boyd's theory of liberty. 

“The most important thing in life is to be free to do things. There are only two ways to insure that freedom — you can be rich or you can you reduce your needs to zero.” 

But Taleb adds the kicker. He imagines, and we expect that he will describe, systems that benefit from failure - not creative destruction, but perhaps one can think of them as twin OODA loops, one for success and one for failure. Here is Taleb:

Seneca was the wealthiest man in the world. He had 500 desks, on which he wrote his letters talking about how good it was to be poor. And people found inconsistency. But they didn't realize what Seneca said. He was not against wealth. And he proved effectively that one philosopher can have wealth and be a philosopher. What he was about is dependence on wealth. He wanted the upside of wealth without its downside. And what he would do is--he had been in a shipwreck before. He would fake like he was a shipwreck and travel like he was a shipwreck once in a while. And then he would go back to his villas and feel rich. He would write off every night before going to bed his entire wealth. As a mental exercise. And then wakes up rich. So, he kept the upside. In fact, what he had, my summary of what Stoics were about is a people who really had, like Buddhists, an attitude. ...

And my definition is a Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. Very different than the Buddhist idea of someone who is completely separated from worldly sentiments and possessions and thrills. Very different. Someone who wanted the upside without the downside. And Seneca proved it. And the way you get there, Seneca is suggesting, is through mental exertion. Through renunciation--some of it's action, but some of it is the way you look at your life and what you prepare yourself for and how you affect your expectations.

Righteous.

Startup Money After Bad

When I see reasonably intelligent and civilized young, single people who talk with upspeak my immediate reaction is 'Val'. For my international readers, a Val is short for Valley. You may be familiar with the term. If not, check out the YouTube.

So I watched this attractive young woman on television - one of those tech talk shows, and she started spewing about her experience at forgettably cutesy spelled dot com which was funded. Funded means you and 12 other twentysomethings with a cool idea managed to convinced somebody with 100 million dollars that you're worth 4.5 million and you have a year to prove it. And 85% of you fail, some spectacularly - meaning you make it for 3 years and get another 40 people and 12 million dollars and *then* fail. It's a story as old as most old dogs.

What surprised me was how instantly it occured to me that she and 12 of her friends would be an unlucky 13 as soon as she started speaking. The very idea of of spending about five million bucks on any endeavor headed by people with less than 5 years work experience, no kids, overpriced undergraduate educations and caffiene fetishes just seems ridiculous right off the bat. And yet we all know it happens. It happens a lot. It shouldn't happen much at all - but it's how a lot of us think about money and work.

There is a small part of me that wants to start a conversation: The only reason I'm not a Silicon Valley millionaire is because... But I don't want to go there or even think I'm going there. It just seems obvious to me that certain things ought to fail. I'm pessimistic today. 

Be Careful What You Wish

You might just become predictable. 

Newt's Decency

I knew that Gingrich won the NC primary, but I didn't know until tonight that he threw CNN's John King to the gators. 

Gingrich is the most peculiar of the candidates. On the one hand, he is an insider's insider having been the Speaker of the House. In that role, ushering in the Contract With America, he went balls to the wall on Federal spending in a game of brinksmanship that brings back chills. On the other hand, he has been making rounds in the media brainstorming ideas that make even Robert Reich say, hey am I really talking to a Republican here? He has a real personal life, meaning he's not *even* trying to look like some Stepford President. (and I'm probably abusing the metaphor). Conservative ideologues and hardliners dont' think he's 'Conservative' enough - and what that means is that Social Conservatives don't think so, which to my reckoning is a plus.

But this is really about Gingrich's moment in thowing the media to the dogs and putting them on notice that he will not be cowed by their bull. Everybody on the Right knows that the media has been soft bigots for the low performance of President Obama on a number of critical issues. So finally he took the stage and reversed the sexual chokehold that the Hollywood Left thinks is a game-changer for what they presume conservatives to be, and left them tapping out. We've even had a little bit of that screwy perception here at Cobb, but it can be instructive to show exactly what kind of Conservatism Gingrich will demonstrate in his campaign. 

This may have been the moment, as with the Army-McCarthy hearings, that the decency of the people asking questions has been astutely brought into focus.

Harold Bloom and The Western Canon – The Books and School of the Ages

shamelessly stolen from Pops

Without fear of contradiction or being accused of unwarranted hubris, I start here by saying that I have something in common with the illustrious and famed critic, Harold Bloom.  First, we were both born during the 1930s.  But as it is commonly known, there are countless (albeit dwindling numbers of) folks who can claim that spirited decade as the point of their earthly entry.  Second, our surname begins with the same letter.  However, “B” is a common letter for last names, so that’s no big thing.  And, third, we have/had an attachment to Yale University.  I was born at Grace-New Haven Hospital on Chapel Street, a few blocks from that esteemed institution; and grew up on Dixwell Avenue in the Elm Haven Housing Project, a scant mile north of the university.  Still, geographical proximity is a no brainer and few flags can be waved because of it.  Anyway…now that our questionable but unplanned kinship has been duly established, I’ll move on to other concerns.

I must say that I consider myself to be a late Bloomer in that my familiarity with Haughty Harold [and I say this with unfettered admiration] comes many years after reading other lesser known literary critics.  But Bloom has a special “touch” which I find appealing, unique and off-putting all at the same time.  I am kinda sorta sadly nearing the end of his well known and widely read The Western Canon – The Books and School of the Ages.  Tradition and common sense might suggest that I wait until (finally!) closing the well-worn cover of the tome before attempting to craft any kind of assessment or review.  But I am thoroughly convinced that neither his style, reach, wisdom nor attitude will diminish by the time I reach “endgame.”  If nothing else erudite Harold Bloom is nothing if he isn’t consistent.  I find reading him as much a labor of literary love and just plain and simple labor.

Bloom has a way of more than casually hinting that those who venture to read him should [make that must] likewise read extensively or, at the very least, be vaguely familiar with the broad sweep of literature that he has absorbed over the years.  I am convinced that this is an all but impossible undertaking.  I am furthermore convinced that he was reading prenatal hieroglyphics on the lining of his mother’s womb well before his rush into the waiting world – or perhaps some waiting New York library– on July 11, 1930.

A personal contradiction and wake-up call immediately came to my mind after reading his early (p 16) observation that “…literary criticism, as an art, always was and always will be an elitist phenomenon.”  If there was/is anything that I did not and do not need it’s the well-intended machinations of elitists of any and all genres.  Years ago I had read with measured albeit real disdain, E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy – What Every American Needs to Know.  It galled me that someone would have the (excuse the intentional redundancy) gall to actually construct a list of what one should read in order to be – and I did not excuse the expression – culturally literate.  It stuck me as paternalistic on the one hand and highly presumptuous on the other.  But I suppose that’s another review for another time.

Fast-forwarding to bombastic Bloom, I self-queried: “Why am I wasting my time with this Elm City academia elitist dude?”  And I had and have no sane and sensible response except that there was and is something about what he does so well that I continued to pour through his insightful and enlightened pages with no small measure of struggle coupled with appreciation.  To my surprise and delight I very early learned of Bloom’s virtual worship of no less a literary giant than William [the Bard] Shakespeare.  One cannot even casually think of Harold Bloom absent frequent and unabashed reference to Shakespeare.  Whether extolling the contributions to world literature of Emily Dickinson, Dante, Milton, Beckett, Neruda, Proust, Molière or Cervantes, Bloom magically and intentionally weaves his views around the accompanying indispensability of – what I will designate – William the Great.  My conscious bias comes from an earlier not-to-be debated list of Hillhouse High School English class readings.  We read lots of Shakespeare.  Period!  And in those days, the word “canon” was better understood as the “cannon” that would be leveled at the posterior of students rebellious enough not to memorize and, on occasion, act out what the Bard had penned centuries before.  So, in terms of relative familiarity, Bloom most competently treads on turf that isn’t all that strange or unattractive to me.  He places an unbending emphasis on originality, which can also be viewed as unprecedented creativity.  For example, he says  Shakespeare:

 “…wrote the best prose and the best poetry in the Western tradition”

and that he

“…will not make us better and he will not make us worse, but he will teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves.” 

Wow! Not even parents can achieve this result!

Harold Bloom cannot be faulted for readily falling into line with some all too often accepted and unchallenged contemporary thinking on topics or persuasions.  He will and does find himself at odds with those in and out of academia over such matters as social justice, multiculturalism and most assuredly feminism.  He doesn’t spend much time addressing these issues but then neither does he back away from his occasionally combative convictions.  Whether this makes him a stubborn literary elitist or the skilled provocateur of a good argument is the choice of the reader.  Just as it is the reader’s choice to “buy into” his predispositions on a headache-inducing list of authors and insights, which he takes for comfortable granted.

To his quasi-credit – at least from my perspective -- Bloom asserts “the Canon will never close” even with the caveat that “it cannot be forced open by our current cheerleaders.”

 There is a small measure of contradiction to his non-stop journey through the broad literary landscape when Harold the Hun offers this morsel of reassurance to the reader:

 “No one has the authority to tell us what the Canon is.” 

 I cannot help but wonder then what good purpose is served by some 500 plus pages of Bloom making a rather convincing case to the contrary.  Perhaps hanging out in New Haven for too long has its New England downside…a well-earned Yale PhD in tow notwithstanding.

Finally, one might ask, is Harold Bloom “worth” reading?  Well, to quote someone Bloom probably wouldn’t, I say:

    “You betcha!!”