Cobb

Girl Scouts Aint Beanbag

A friend alerts me to this:

 

1. I’ve read on the Girl Scouts website that the current pension deficit issue will cause councils to see a 40% increase in pension expenses starting the day girl scout cookies go on sale, and a 62% increase over the next three years. According to the girl scout.org site “For many Girl Scout councils, this means that the pension expense will suck up money that would normally go toward operating expenses such as staff salaries and benefits, camp maintenance, outreach programs for at-risk girls, scholarship support for low-income girls, and general programming.“

I know you’re currently trying to get congress to grant legislation to help you but I haven’t heard of any progress on that so I’m under the impression that as it stands, cookie sales that previously went to scholarships and camp maintenance will now be used to pay pensions.  I’m reading of many historic camps that are being closed or sold.  It’s a concern for many reasons, but particularly because the girls in our troop were always able to say that cookie sales help at-risk girls and support community camps. We haven’t been able to get any verbiage to respond to people who will ask why girl scout camps are being sold and whether the councils will be able to support scholarships as they have in the past.

 

Girl Scouts is probably not a middle class organization any longer. It probably suffers in the same ways most formerly strong organizations have failed the formerly strong American middle class. We live in an upper middle class neighborhood and the Scout Leader of our girls troop is an aerospace project manager at Northrom Grumman. So this last year when the Last Kid sold her cookies, she made enough money for the troop to sponsor her and her mother on a three day Pacific cruise along with the other top sellers. Both of my daughters have had trips from LA to Disneyworld in Florida with most costs covered by their fundraising activities. In other words, we have a kickass troop, that is not only solvent but profitable. But I know that it kicks ass because we live in close proximity to the kinds of neighborhoods where fundraising is part of the culture and sponsorships are abundant, and because our leader is smart as a whip when it comes to managing time and money.

 

I think our story is very much like the story of America, where things taken for granted by a middle class simply are not economical any longer, and the things that work economically, like Priuses, are overpriced, over complicated and oversold. Nobody has the old drill press job that affords the family of four a new Chevy, because now gas mileage and crash protection are higher priorities than ever in our 'dont try this at home' society. And if that sounds like a crazy stretch of logic, it's because I've been thinking for a long time why America doesn't work the way it used to. The short answer is that we've all adopted what used to be upper class standards and are petrified at what we used to do in the unsupervised, unsafe good old days. How did your grandparents survive without ATM networks and a pocket full of credit cards? They just did. Today a cheeseburger cost 6 dollars. You practically need to finance it. How did your grandparents survive waiting 6 to 8 weeks for mail order delivery? They just did. Today you can't mail anything physical without activating multi-billion dollar logistics networks.

 

Our troop of Girl Scouts is run by somebody who understand those logistics networks, professionally. And I have no doubt we have at least one accountant looking over the books and figuring out how to finance our young ladies' activities. it aint beanbag. That's too bad. We need more beanbag. But can we accept that it's just beanbag and not a set of best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma business case to synergize a consistent set of community activities supporting our mission statement through cultural diversity for STEM awareness, retention and graduation?

A Black American Short Story

I am from a small town called Crenshaw. Crenshaw is actually a series of neighborhoods in Los Angeles.  About 100,000 folks live there from Manchester to Pico, from Figueroa to La Cienega. It was and is still the center of black Los Angeles. There are many stories about Crenshaw. You may have heard of them. 

Like with all of America, class matters. I've said black America splits up into five. Sticks-Projects / Ghetto/ Hood / Burb / Hill. Crenshaw doesn't have the Sticks, there are no rural shotgun shacks, but it does have public housing projects and Section 8 housing. You've probably heard of 'The Jungle'. There are ghettoes too. I grew up in the 'hood. Our middle class was American lower middle class. Big families, many originally from Texas. Our upper middle class, was solid American middle class. Our upper class was American upper middle class. You've probably heard of  'Baldwin Hills'. That's when I was growing up in that small town called Crenshaw. Now things are lining up. 

When my father left the Marine Corps and moved from Camp Pendleton to Los Angeles, he became a civil servant. This was 1962. Los Angeles was segregated and that's why, if you were black (Negro at the time) you landed somewhere in proximity to Crenshaw. We were middle class for blacks and ours was a good solid neighborhood, but unlike other neighborhoods we were a black neighborhood. You didn't so much move there because you wanted to, but because your choices were limited. So the result was that we had a broad economic and cultural diversity of black people in our neighborhood. To our left, was Rev. Robinson and his wife, an elderly couple. He never left the house not wearing a suit and hat. He always drove a brand new white Lincoln Continental. To our right were Mr. and Mrs. Arnold and their eight kids. He was a truck driver with a slim moustache,  hard greasy hands always in coveralls. They had a yellow Chevy Biscayne station wagon. Poor Mrs. Arnold, when Maurice Arnold died, the kids went wild. We were in the West Adams community, noted for its stately churches and quiet residential streets and yes its red light district. I grew up in a three bedroom house with a detached garage on a street called Wellington Road. In 1966 when we bought the house there were still white folks living in the neighborhood. They were all gone by 68. In 1968 America was on fire. 

I attended Virginia Road Elementary and Holy Name of Jesus School. I never sat in class with a white kid until I was 14 years old.  I was the school brainiac, the oldest of five children and I wore glasses. I loved playing football, hated that I was too short for basketball, and couldn't understand baseball at all. I could swim, wrestle, tumble and do a double front off the one meter board. I was skinny, tough and fast. I was honest and good, but I was an adventurer. I would take any dare. I played cello, jogged every morning and read science fiction.

I wound up at Loyola, a Jesuit Prep school, instead of Palisades High School, my first choice. I wanted to run long distance, play baseball and become a jet fighter mechanic. But I ended up finding my feet sophomore year in Debate, French, Geometry and computer programming. I was a logic beast. I still loved science but not so much science fiction even though I read all of the Star Trek novels. I tested well. I did little homework. I was a Star Wars nerd and wannabe pinball wizard. I graduated on my 17th birthday, a four year varsity springboard diver, and captain of the winning intramural soccer team with 80th percentile SAT scores and a 2.91 GPA. I had no concentrations - no single thing made sense to me with a career path I could envision. I was recruited by Pitzer, Haverford, Georgia Tech, Bryn Mawr and Florida A&M. All I cared about was USC Electrical Engineering. I got to USC and dropped out second semester. No money.

I worked at Fedco, which was basically the 80s version of Costco. I sold radios, boomboxes, car stereo. I bought audiophile stereo DJ equipment and did receptions and church dances. I bought a motorcycle and rode Mulholland Highway at unsafe speeds. I grew my hair to shoulder length and dated a girl with dark skin, big legs and long braids. I listened to New Wave and electronic music and roller disco'd on the weekends. I made it into the Teamsters and hung out with Vietnam vets in the warehouse. I quit the store after the strike didn't get me a raise enough to afford my own apartment. I wrecked my bike, cut my hair, got a job as a teller at City National, worked downtown, got a new girlfriend with light skin, perfect diction and short hair. My parents divorced, I moved in with my Dad and bought a Karmann Ghia with his assistance.

I was about to get into the management trainee program at the bank at the recommendation of Ken, the Sr VP, but I decided I wanted to go back to college and get my degree in Computer Science. So I went to State in 1982 until I ran out of money in 1986. But I got three internships at Xerox, won Dean's List, served in student government and pledged Alpha Phi Alpha. I did every dimension of college life except graduation. No matter, I became a wholly different young man, inspired by the books of Thomas Sowell, the music of Arif Mardin and a haphazard philosophy somewhere between Ayn Rand, Malcolm X, Yukio Mishima and Henry Miller. Yeah, I know. 

Somewhere between 1986 and 1992 I learned pretty much everything I needed to know about yuppie existence, corporate employment and Los Angeles. I got sick them all and joined a small software company and moved to NYC, became something of a neo-bohemian deep into semiotics, performance poetry and Beethoven. I moved to Boston and bought a Canon SLR, dropped in and out of aikido, capoeira, basketball, multimedia and speed dating, which hadn't been invented yet but...My wife, who at the time was my ex-girlfriend gave me an ultimatum. I took her up on it, provided she would take in my son born in Brooklyn, and we were married in 1994.

We moved to Atlanta and brought up three babies in the Northeast suburbs. I gave up my six figure entrepreneurialism for FTE benefits at another small software company which helped my move West back to California Christmas of 1997. We bought the minivan, and stored five tons of accumulated furnishings which we were not able to recover out of hock until 7 months later. Our rented house with the pool became the center of the mommyhood of the three Mrs Bowens. There was happy happy cousin pandemonium. We made grandfather into the doter. 

I commuted to Silicon Valley and almost got rich. Then the double whammy of custody (of my son) and tax problems hit. It cost me the ability to buy a house in California, a non-trivial task under the best of circumstances. I have never recovered from that financial loss, and so I became, at length, a better person. After 9/11 we settled in Redondo Beach, one of my favorite places in the country. We have been here ever since. I worked as a traveling consultant and by now have visited all but seven states in the US.

Along the way I kept blogging and my writing life online, dating back to Xerox days in 1986, fulfilled a number of purposes. It got me into NPR and the Republican Party. It got me speaking dates and 1.6 million hits over the years. It has taught me a lot about myself and about people. Professionally, I have done very well and am still reaping the benefits of building systems all over the country in most every industry. I have accomplished a wide variety of modest successes. The journey is an inexhaustible narrative I am happy to share.

It only serves some marketing purposes, I imagine, to call mine a Black American story, I have little interest in all the ways I have seen to approach 'black'. I have my own way and I don't presume that it is anyone else's, and yet I know my story speaks to all curious people. I've never been particularly good at abstracting the meaning of my life - I let people react and try to correct misperceptions. You see it doesn't make any sense to me to write without a healthy does of self, so I always do. That is, when I'm writing for people. When I write for machines, there is no self, there is only my idiosyncratic style. I'm from a small town called Crenshaw, which is black in the same way only in the most mundane manners today as 40 years ago when it was home. What I know about black is one volume in a massive library written by people mostly dead. I think there are some fascinating chapters in my book. Mine is the tale of the traveler, up from freedom bouncing from liberty to liberty. 

I live in the Burbs now, in very close proximity to the Hill. What was it that Orwell said about the lower edge of the upper middle class? I work at home as I presume the best writers always have, and I write for computers and people to sustain myself and my family. I'm happy with the balance but still have ambitions. This year and next will bring to a close the familiar chapter of being Dad. We'll see what comes next, but I have an idea. More later.

Takedown

That Old House

I can't remember where I read it, but it's rich people's houses that make the difference. Ultimately, I'm pretty sure I agree about that. Castle doctrine. I just saw the tweet  " when really the upper class is also held together by a kind of secret traditionalism"

A couple observations.

West Chop
A couple dozen summers ago, I used to go to Martha's Vineyard for the last big party. Labor Day weekend it was. And when I thought I was hot stuff in my Black American Prince years, I managed to hobnob with pretty much anyone I pleased. Until one day when I was writing poetry out by the West Chop lighthouse I happened across a couple of stunning lovelies whom I immediately attempted to charm. I made some bit of headway but discovered that they were coy about their lodgings. But I did managed to learn enough that they were heirs of the Vanderbilts. Somebody's grandparents were butlers and such butlers and their offspring were very well taken care of by the Vanderbilts. But it was the coyness and its accompanying rules that revealed themselves to be most interesting. You see they were quite clear that they were to have no male company after dark in their apartments, wherever they were. I attempted then to make a dinner date, but I could tell that I couldn't be so forward. I was taken aback a bit, considering the tone of entertainment that took place on the Avenue that evening. And as I grumbled to myself about how crass it all was, I couldn't help but obsess over those two and their restrictions - the sort my daughter now resides under at her sorority house in San Jose. 

South Pas
Just this weekend, on my way to visit some snow in the San Gabriel Mountains, I drove through one of my favorite neighborhoods on the planet, the swanky woody end of Pasadena on the east side cliffs over the Arroyo. I remember living there before 9/11 and my disgust at the one house that was my absolute favorite in every way except one. It had a giant banner in support of candidate Bush. Now I understand. Then, I absolutely could not. On this excursion, now much wiser, I felt a kind of saddened condescention for the prisoners of those august homes. I know what it is like to have everything I need at home and I know the feeling of girding my loins to make any trips anywhere away. I have clothing for every occassion and a choice of automobiles. 

Why leave home? Whom do you invite into your home? 

If you were resplendently wealthy and could afford the sort of home that is luxurious and large by any standard, I think that home would be some sort of anchor away from the public. Think about your dreams as a kid. Almost every fantasy mega-mansion includes a bowling alley. Who bowls alone at home? Well, if you had a comfortable library with all the books you wanted, or a stocked refrigerator with all your favorite food, or the complete collection of recordings from your favorite musical groups why would you go anywhere? More to the point, that as one rises in society, one finds the ability to 'do this at home'. I have quite surprised myself with the emergent quality of my own home cooking - to the point at which I'd put my Caesar salads and martinis against those of any fancy restaurant I've been to, which is quite a few. And if my lazy mediocrity can set a table that rivals the top 10%, imagine what I could do if I could hire the chefs and bartenders I know today.  At the very least, here in Southern California, the quality of home in-ground pools far outshines that of any public plunge. Ick. 

A home is a museum and a redoubt and a prison and a library and all that and more when it is of significant size and alive. This was in my final estimation of Bleak House the central organizing principle of Western society. The Big House. Propriety and Property all in one. That thing that shelters you and your children and your ideas and your comforts and prejudices. It is your retreat. And why shouldn't it be? Who can retreat in public except one who purposefully goes incognito to blend in with the crowd? 

These days it seems as if the public fears for no good reason. I have made it an axiom of my Peasant Theory that the masses are a force of nature to be reckoned with. You cannot change it, nor can you predict it with much accuracy, but you can certainly understand when its dangers are imminent and soon to be upon you. Weathering any storm requires a few well understood preparations. 

The upper class must surely understand these preparations. Wealth can prepare one for class simply through the social evolution inherent in retaining ones own house. I've not often congitated on the difference between old money and smart money, but surely old money must have some smarts, if only to get along with itself. Understatement in public would be a clear winner in my old money rulebook, and relaxation at home (or at some private club, if certain sanctities were observed about the home) would be a second rule. Of the sanctities, there have got to be some fairly hard and fast guidelines about whom one allows into the home. After all, butlers, security cams and guard dogs all serve similar purposes and we all kind of want those don't we?

At this point I'd like to take a tangent to observe how much of what we think about the upper class and of wealthy people in general is informed by, to be brief, Downton Abbey. It is our general understanding about English and European nobility, cast in our dramas and literature that gives us all these notions. I'm looking to get a more interesting picture of this from personal experience over the next few years as I begin to purposefully wander around the privileged classes of Americans. If I don't make my own million, I'm determined to observe other people's millions because I'd really like to know what is worth preserving, if I can sniff it out, in our current aristocracy's culture. After all, if we Americans are destined to become the likes of Lindsay Lohan when we all get rich (which we already are, mostly) then we may as well turn more things over to Sharia. Sharia has something very powerful going for it, which is that it makes the forces of the nature of the Masses, very predictable and controllable indeed. We have yet to see how good we are at corrupting our own democracy and liberties, but let us not forget Tytler's threshold has already been crossed. 

In times of trouble there must be clear tipping points. And yet some things are preserved. I'm now thinking of some of the extroardinary mansions just off the east end of Detroit. Grosse Pointe. Some of it is cheap, I think, if I can afford what was once upper class. The bricks still stand straight and hold in the warmth of woodburning fireplaces evoking home and hearth of a wealthy white Christmas.  In my own family there have been those that once possessed a building with servants' quarters. I slept there in comfort, though the wifi needed some work. But with the wifi and the fully stocked bar in the fabulously remodeled kitchen and the rarely used formal dining room, I couldn't be bothered to go out for pizza. We grumbled about the tourists who eyeballed the Frank Lloyd Wright across the wide tree-lined street. 

If America is fine, which parts are certainly world-class and robustly healthy, then that will be preserved like the image of Santa Claus. And whether or not one believes in the exceptional myths, they can and will be enshrined evoking the best of us during the best of times.

While Malvos will snipe and Wilsons derail
The best of our betters will somehow prevail
Because life is survival at all costs so know
That some will survive and never lay low
Or go quietly into that eternal sleep.
A home is a castle and castles will keep.

What's good is what prospers so long as we choose
To be good and reward a failure to lose
To the dark side while darkness will never be gone
We linger, the stinger of death we will gone.
And yet in our castles we find in our hearts
longing company and company's seductive arts
still do charm and disarm our armory's guncarts. 

New Assignment

 

 

 

News of the World

It's a Battle for the Hearts and Minds

JK is one of the good looking dudes from my old neighborhood. We are fraternity brothers, and like most people from the old neighborhood he's exceptional. Almost nobody from my 'hood disappeared into mediocrity, we're all somewhat extreme. I met him among many of my frat at a smoker in Mid City this evening. Afterwards, since some brothers were from out of town, we made it a point to take in some seafood at Harold & Belle's. I forget how good and how reasonable they are. I'm going back again soon.

We talked about the world, because we've seen it. More of it than we expected to see, I'm sure for all of us. Character counts, and we all had a lion's share. In the end, JK, who knows how to turn a phrase had the most compelling tale to tell. His tale, about a chaplain's assistant who refused to be separated from his charge, going two levels up the chain of command was inspiring and instructive, but it was one phrase tangentially contextual that caught my mind. It was something I know I hadn't written directly on - something we'll cover here.

But first a bit of context. I'm a bit of a prodigal when it comes to hanging out with such excellent gentlemen as my fraternity has produced. You see, I'm an Alpha Phi Alpha brother but despite that I have given up my rights to be a member in good standing with the Talented Tenth. I grew up adjacent to but in close social intercourse with the communities of Ladera Heights, Baldwin Hills and View Park. I didn't want to be a doctor, lawyer or accountant. I wanted to be a scientist, but a scientist who drove a convertable Mercedes 450 SLC. My father was an old school Episcopalian (good) but also a black nationalist (bad) and a US Marine (what!?). My mother could pass any paperbag test (good) and was a Catholic from New Orleans (good) but converted to the Foursquare Church (bad). Yet both were civil servants (not bad) and conservative in that unique way the black middle class is. And yes we were totally white collar. Still, I was the prodigy and did my requisite hobnobbing at cotillions and partied with the cool kids at Palisades, Harvard, Westlake & Loyola. I wanted and expected the tudor gothic house. I just wondered how I was going to get it with my Engineer's degree. At some point, however, I became gradually outcast - perhaps more in my own mind - from the mainstream of those of us dedicated to Uplift, the Struggle, the Movement and Community Service. I made a series of radical breaks with traditions, but I still love those very specific peoples. There's no way I can explain it all. But I'm glad they know me. I'm glad to know them, but I've been out for a long walk on the Right side of the wall.

JK spoke about the absurdity, from his unique point of view, of the way America's foreign policy puts us into conflicts, especially in the Middle East. He described his understandable difficulty, as an army chaplain, in digesting the political objectives surrounding our engagements in that part of the world. In the end, duty prevailed, but the phrase 'hearts and minds' stuck in his craw. And why shouldn't it? As he went over that matter several things occurred to me, one of them rather unique. From my own grandmother's lips used to come the phrase "You just want to stay mad." in describing the refusal of any number of peoples to be pacified by American military action. 

You cannot presume to win hearts and minds simply by providing security.

We Americans tend to assume that people want what we have, simply because we do. There is a kind of tacit acknowledgement by all Americans that wealth and fame is what we all want. That subtext out of the way, we debate endlessly about the ethics of means. You cannot have a political discussion in America that doesn't boil down to a tug of war about the means, but everybody promises the same ends. Education. Health Care. Employment. Infrastructure. We know that a world of immigrants beat a path to our doors for those things, and all of us in the spoiled 5 figure middle class want incrementally more. We can get into full preacher mode verging on indignant hostility when we talk about the gap between black teenagers in urban Chicago and white collegians in suburban Virginia despite the fact that there are literally billions of humanity who would risk much to get into the South Side, even for the conditions at the end of the Great Migration generations ago. 

And yet when we attempt to go about the planet doing God's work in 'nation building' it seems to strike all the wrong chords. What sort of nerve do we have providing the Infrastructure for Education, Health Care, and Employment in Iraq? What kind of American exceptionalist arrogance is that? We are easily accosted as wrong for attempting to provide for others what we all clamor for here at home. The irony weighs a ton. And yet human nature provides the perfect answer (see above text).

Dare I raise the question of police forces in America? Of course I dare. Because nobody wants to live in thugland, especially those with infrastructure, education, health care and employment. Everybody in America agrees that public safety comes first, without which even our greatest cities fail in misery and shame, not to mention are more than a little bit backwards cities and towns. We all agree on the one hand, that nobody will succeed in business or society when there is appreciable violence in the streets. We are reluctant to agree that you can't jawbone violence into submission. Killers need way more than stern lectures. There must be fierce retribution and zero tolerance, right? This country's citizenship has rent its collective clothing for the past several months over a handful of deaths. We're dying to see peace and quiet, truth and reconciliation.

But people have decided to stay mad. 

It occurs to me, as one of my brothers intimated about the depth of culture and history in Israel, that we in America might decide to carry on grievances about slavery for 400 years beyond today. Maybe nobody in the large majority of African Americans wants to get over it. So let's just assume it. Let's assume that I, and the 3 or 4 million in the Talented Tenth are the only ones capable of 'just getting over it', even though only a third of those actually *want* to get over it. So let's say I'm in the minority of the minority prodigally engaged, but substantially divested of all racial baggage. Let's say that I will never be the one representing or represented the 'permanent interests' of the African American community (as that is generally interpreted to be vis a vis the Legacy of Slavery). Let's say there's only half a million of us so dedicated and so consecrated. We're happy. We are Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele or whomever we are. We have our own reasons for our own patriotisms. We're satisfied in the mainstream. Our lives are secure.

But the rest of us, so the logic goes, are oppressed or suppressed or depressed or otherwise flattened and hard pressed in our communities. The rest of us want to stay mad, and we never worked our way out of our ghettoes. We live on 138th and Lenox and we have never been to the Central Park Great Lawn to play frisbee. We live in the 5th Ward of Houston and we've never gone on the tour of NASA. We don't know our way to your America. We are hypersegregated and we're always and forever going to need some extra efforts to rescue us out of our pressed situations. We're always going to be that Other America no matter how many sturdy hard-working immigrants arrive at our shores volunteering themselves into the melting pot.  We are always going to be the descendents of slaves and that will always be the determining factor. So what if we live in America? So what if we have security? So what if this is the richest country on the planet? All the more reason for us to stay mad. Or so the logic goes.

It bears repeating. Battles for hearts and minds end up just being painful battles, because some hearts and minds are closed. They may wear advertising about 'any means necessary'. They may say 'we want a national dialog'. They may claim that an equal opportunity requires an unequal push and so on and so forth, but every bus has a front and a back and in the end, some folks are just more comfortable at the back of the bus. 

No matter what you say, people have their pride, and that's what this is all about. Pride is not logical. Here's the thought experiment, which almost sounds ridiculous to bother explaining. What would you rather have, education, employment, health care and infrastructure or your community pride? Are you so proud of your ways in America, knowing that by sticking to them you lose education, employment, health care and infrastrucutre? How far back into the Legacy of Slavery or the conflict between Israelis and Arabs or the split between Sunni and Shia are you willing to dig in? How long will you refuse to conform? How long will you refuse to melt, to intermarry, to blend in, to get it where you fit in, to compromise, to let bygones be bygones, to bury the hatchet, to get over it? How many generations will you accept the burden of pride? Is it worth it? Yes? Because you just want to stay mad. You reserve the right to sit during the Pledge of Allegiance. You reserve the right to veto the settlement. You reserve the right to opt out, because you are not committed to integration. Segregation now and forever. Because Pride. 

More specifically, when it comes to violence, pacification does not provide acceptable justice. That's because  'The People' don't exist and so the Justice System does not satisfy the granfathered exceptions to the social contract granted to My Special Community. That's Israeli justice, not my justice. That's Shia justice, not proper Sharia. That's the white people's System, not mine. Hearts and minds aren't equal. They want to stay in their own little ghettoes. They want their own inviolate turfs. They don't accept the mainstream. They must have their own Pride Parade down Main Street, and City Hall better not deny the permit. So don't send your army in here to try and fix things. We like it the way it is, and who do you think you are anyway?

We know this ends badly. History is violent. People bear grudges. Forever. 

But the premise of progress is that lives can always be improved. So a Progressive agenda seeks to square the circle and reach out to the pressed peoples and make them over. It desires to do so with the assumption that what it has, the others do not, and their lack ought to make them submit to the program. When that fails, the opposition is blamed, but never 'blame the victim'. Really?

The Comic Returns

My Stoic Journey: The Sound of No Hands Clapping

Well this Christmas I celebrate the success of the project I had several years ago to get the hell out of the Enterprise software business and get into Open Source, DevOps and the Cloud. It's done. I'm there. I work at home and run several suites of stacks for several customers and that's all good. The Last Kid is a senior in highschool and we're in the middle of planning how to ditch the four bedroom house for cheaper, cozier digs. 

Along the way, some unexpected things happened, most significant of these were a dramatic increase in my credit rating and consequent quality of luxury furnishings. But seriously, it was the discovery of Stoicism and my martial education. These two things, which I didn't plan, came sideways out of the discovery, I suppose at long last, that I really don't like people in actuality as I do in theory. In theory I am an absolute modernist liberal. In practice, I feel most people don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. People meaning the people who practice democracy in America as a form of cultural identity and social complaint. I've concluded that things fall apart and at this rate my best efforts should be in divesting myself of the of the emotion so many have put into public debate. 

I was introduced to Stoicism, although I didn't know it at the time, by the following quote by John Boyd. 

“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.” 

My mind always drifts back to a series of afternoons in Southern California back in 2008 when I was working in Orange County. I was on the precipice of accepting the job before my current gig. At the moment I was making out quite well as an independent consultant. Although I was communting 100 miles a day and gas was approaching $4, I was happy and confident. A bit too much, I thought, in my BMW 750il. I considered my neighbor and friend who had recently purchased a large deisel Ford pickup truck. It was an anti-vanity. The issue of the day was immigration and I spoke for a moment about Jameil's Law on the local radio show with Warren Olney.  But my mind during lunches and commutes were focused on the larger role of long term thinking as I engaged the podcasts of the Long Now Foundation, of which I am now a member. In the long haul, I thought, I want to turn away from the politics of the sort that placate a loud public capble of rationalizing away the very meaning of 'illegal alien' and toward science. Scientific discipline has taken a back seat in our discourse and I don't want to be the guy in this society driving a luxury sedan. I'm about hard and excellent work at the top of my profession, or so I thought. And so in those days when nobody quite knew how bad the economy might get, I began a long march towards new sensibilities, anticipating no democratic solutions. 

So I was preparing myself for things to get worse. In fact, I wanted to purchase a Hummer, making a kind of outsized apocalyptic gesture. In the end, I wanted something that said smart survival. I wound up with a Toyota FJ Cruiser, and it has become my favorite vehicle ever. But deeper than this outward sign of an inward commitment, I was seeking a way to leave the chatter behind. I made a name for myself as a black Republican and founder of the Conservative Brotherhood, a move that was optimistic for values against a practical backdrop that was stunningly mechanical. For anyone who bothers to look closely, the GOP struggles mightily with reconciling the needs of electoral power, dedication to virtues and the resposibilities of governance. Pick one and a half. It was a boulder I'd rather not push. 

Fortunately I had dedicated my blog, the center of all my public thinking, to Socratic dialog, and people were still engaging me well enough to spark my own thoughts on every significant public matter. After some time however, once I got my final new job, working at home made me rather stir crazy. So I used Meetup groups to get from behind the keyboard and into real dialog. It turned out to be better in my own lab and library than in the agoras of Southern Cal. I met a few interesting people, but I would hesitate to call them friends. They too were single-minded or abstracted beyond much friendly use. Still, the philosophy meetup groups, the cloud computing meetup groups got me going. Raising my expectations and reducing my needs began to start coming more naturally. I decided not to be disappointed by disappointments in the field, and stick even tighter to long term thinking. 

Playing a major part in my transition was the entire zombie vibe that has infected our society. So I really began to think about what if democracy really did fail in America, not just in parts but the whole thing? I knew instinctively that we would revert to hierarchies and tribalisms, as many of us are doing in our solopsist idiot ghettos behind the barbwire interdictions of political correctness. But what if it weren't just Antioch University? So I began to develop my Peasant Theory, already making a very strong statement in my own sights that Obama's electorate was no place for my sort of long term thinking. 

Oddly enough, if these lessons in disappointment weren't quite enough, a couple video games helped push me the extra mile. Of course I read Seneca and Epictetus, but it was literally a boss battle in a game called Amalur that brought me to write:

As I approached the highest levels in Amalur, resolving the ultimate faction quest of the sages, I battled the Archsage's mental demons one of which was Ambition and the other Indifference. Having won, I got to choose and I chose Indifference as a power. Indifference is the power of equanimity. I know it contradicts Ayn Rand, but perhaps now is the time to consider disinterest. For years since my 40s I have been waiting for all the kids to eat first and being a river to my people with the pride of earning and giving away. But now it all starts to feel more and more like Indifference because it surely is not Ambition. Ambition is a tool to make one's river wide and deep. Indifference serves wisdom best. It makes one confident in judgment. The Judge is critical, but does not belong. 

I was becoming very judgmental. And it was finally Harold Bloom and Charles Dickens that helped me understand myself. People were behaving, according to me, at very low standards, and yet the chatting classes kept expecting to outsource a new generation of experts by public acclaimation and internet aggregation. We were and still are in the midst of a crap-populist revolution in America, both political parties harvesting shit tons of power by the buttload from the manufactured consent of a nation of asshats. And I knew that Wall Street was going to feed its own and the Exxon would still be Exxon. While the masses were tweeting out selfies, there was real long term thinking done by industry. Sure much of it was infantilizing the once formidable American middle-class, but once they decided to spend money through Verizon and AT&T texting adolescent spellings rather than essaying in paragraphs, well.. certain dislocations were inevitable. My job was not to outrun the bear, my job was to be in my castle not searching for mystical communications with nature in the first place. And so Bleak House has been my guide to what civilization can be without democracy. 

In the back of my mind is the Gangstarr soundtrack. 

Check it stupid 
While you're out there, on the main streets frontin 
Your game's week, so I'm huntin you down clown 
Cause you need to learn somethin 
All that bluffin, won't get you nothin but killed 
No mission fulfilled, because there's others who will 
get jealous, hell if they can take clout from you, they'll do it 
So that's what I'm about to do, I'll step to it 
and strip you of your pride (your pride) 
And then I'll stick and I'll rip you up from all sides 
or possibly I'll let you slide, slime 
Cause you'll set your own death in just a matter of time 
Yeah, and I'll be somewhere on the sidelines, y'know 

I won't disclaim all of that gangbanging harshness. What made us think we could be mellow in the first place? You cannot be mellow on credit. You're owned. Don't get me wrong. This is not pessimism. It's not even particularly skeptical or cynical. It's the mere acknowledgment that in the long term, to paraphrase Taleb, whatever can be, will be. In the long term, a black American president is inevitable. So is a limited nuclear exchange. The point is not to be shocked, but to be prepared. There are always backstreets. There are always sucker MCs, there are always men whose games are too tight to come apart at the seams. The trick, as Kipling would say, is to walk with kings nor lose the common touch. To observe judgmentally at the appropriate distance, and to have a home to return to at the end of what may or may not be an eventful day. The Chinese curse is not to live in interesting times, but that you would be become overly shitfaced by the whipsaw of the crap-populism of interesting times. I walked down the crapulous backstreets of Dickensian London. I get it. Buy better boots. 

One of the most intriguing ideas I have entertained in the past decade was an understanding of the best reasons for war, which have nothing do do with self-defense in the immediate sense, but the defense of reason itself.  The purpose of war is to destroy myths. The purpose of war is to restore human faith in cause and effect. The purpose of war is remind humankind of its limits. I didn't expect to be thinking such thoughts, but there it is all put together. It's only that thinking about my developing Stoicism that concerns me. Do I need war? Am I indifferent to that path to war? Do I accept it like the tank captain in Fury? "Ideals are peaceful, history is violent." 

The other day I read this excellent review of Mein Kampf by Orwell.

[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades…. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. -- George Orwell, 1940

I cannot be indifferent to that probability happening here in America, in the long term. If I were to mind the currents to a greater degree, I might be alarmed by those signs I could see. But I have decided to limit my field of vision to my own domestic tranquility, to my own probity, to my own property. I no longer am concerned about how I appear so much in the public sphere so long as I have a Western gentleman's comforts and privileges, because I aim in no uncertain terms for Western civilization to be sustained. Sinatra may be dead and Sammy may no longer dance the old soft shoe, but their pictures are still on the wall in my favorite restaurant where the bartender has read Kingsley Amis. I can survive another Blitz when Duke Ellington is triply redundant in the Amazon Cloud and I can still get packet radio. More importantly, I have friends with whom I can trust my life. I have tapped into some military tradition, and I will some more.  

Here is where things get a bit nebulous, because here is where I am. I don't have all of my answers, but I know where to look and whom to ask. I know that vodka makes good mouthwash, and I know I can drink vodka straight. I am a new organic all over again, and my loyalty remains to the city states of Los Angeles and New York, just in case things mostly don't work out. I can lose weight and run. I can shoot and cook and mend wounds. My martial education is advancing and I will have covered all bases by the time I reach 60. 

But. Hitler.

You see I understand and forgive the world its callow activities. I must. I have children I love, and I see the extent to which I have entrusted their education to the decrepit mediocrities of the American public. We don't know what class is any longer, because so little of what we have was forged by the harsh realities of war. We can lose the New Republic in a heartbeat because today's billion dollar fortune bears no resemblance to that of Carnegie's. Old money is dead, and hackers are trying Bitcoin. There's no gold standard, so you really have to get your own gold. We could lose the whole Republic in a heartbeat if the whole thing goes off standard. Which standards matter? (He said rhetorically as if to placate those post-modernists who actually wonder). I suppose Plato spoke about golden souls, did he not? I am ultimately in the business of aiding the survival of the Western, modern liberal ideal, in theory. But in practice, I leave my house in an urban assault vehicle. I don't survive on hope. I'm too heavy for that. I fall through hope's thin rafters so I'm all about concrete foundations, Fred Flintstone in Bedrock. Fred does not go to war. He is good natured, but very practical, and very defensive of his women.

Will that be what it takes? Will it be war that brings us out of the confusion that allows our politics to suffer in such reputable treachery?  If so, then let me be a war profiteer. Let me gain strength from the suffering of mankind, like a surgeon. Let me not profit from mankind's foolishness, like a rock star politian. I don't know. Will I be indifferent? I will work to be wise in my judgment, knowing judgment must come for each of us. We are men after all, and we do good and evil and must meet with our due rewards.

For the time being, I am an engineer among people who read tea leaves. I mock them. Yet I resist the impulse to slap the teapot over into their laps and rudely interrupt their mindless meditations. I sit in silent judgment, good natured and affably indifferent. I enjoy the tea. But I also don't complain about the price because I am part of the system that delivers it to the store where the common man shops. I am invested in keeping the ships afloat and the planes in the air. There remains infrastructure to be put to good use in the modern world, despite how many asshats vote for those who would deconstruct it mercilessly in search of an idiot-proofed utopia. Still, I'm not sure how much not to care the common man's ever more common mistakes when the health of the nation seems impaired by it. How many of us are just passengers on this ship?

The German comic Henning Wehn says something very deep about clapping along and enjoying yourself. I am Stoic. I am doing my work, and calculating, observing and judging with a studied indifference for the purposes of wisdom. I am reducing my needs to zero while focusing on my long term thinking, prepared for what can go wrong in my house made of bricks. I'm not just clapping along and enjoying myself in the public sphere. 

Free Tibet, Sorta

Quote of the day from my friend DJ:

The only reason we know the names Ghandi and Martin Luther King are because the people of the US and UK weren't willing to use violence to enforce what they knew to be unjust policies. The Chinese Communist Party has no such qualms, which is why non-violence has not and will not work in China. The Dalai Lama has been quite successful at making people like him, and making people aware of China's conquest of Tibet, but Tibet is still conquered, it's culture destroyed, and it's history and language dying. And all the protests in the world will not save it. Non-violence protest is a useful tool against relatively civilized governments only. You have to be pretty delusional to think that a single tool will solve all problems.

I like that. It fits with a couple aphorisms I have on the matter.

The first is specific to MLK.  Martin Luther King Jr's mistake was to consider non-violence as a strategy rather than a tactic. And to expand on that, MLK was never the leader that Nelson Mandela was. Mandela knew his tactics from his strategies. After all, he spent a much longer time in jail. 

The second is specific to Americans in support of Tibet. Every American who has a 'Free Tibet' bumpersticker would rip it off their cars if they knew actually freeing Tibet meant sending troops. But that's why Tibet isn't free.

There's a broad gulf between nationbuilding and peacekeeping. But we don't seem to have a good vocabulary across that space that has working political currency in American foreign affairs. Clearly Obama hasn't advanced that understanding, except to the extent it allows him to use drone strikes. But drone strikes are a tactic and not a strategy. So Boko Haram, like the Janjaweed Militia and IS is yet another force acting with impunity against the interests of civil rights in their nations. 

What to do? What to do?

 

Only Flowers Matter

A personal note to all concerned:

I get alerts from local law enforcement, and have for a year or so. So I get texts when a shooting goes down or children are abducted in my corner of LA County. Today I saw a story about a man who dropkicked a toddler with his steel-toe boots, stuffed her face down into the sofa and left her for dead. He's arrested for murder one, of course. I am, in short, accustomed to hearing about tragic events. I'm glad to be the kind of mature man who doesn't lose his cool as I know this kind of thing happens all of the time, every day in this country and every country around the world. But I am sick to death about the obsession and symbolic outrage that has captivated so many people. I'm even tired of mocking the idiocy.

It may seem to some that because of my determination to keep a stiff upper lip about such matters, as I enjoy reading military history and thinking about how to think about death and destruction, that I have lost some measure of sensitivity to the human condition. Nothing could be further from the truth. I know what people need when death comes calling. Just this weekend there was a suicide near my wife's place of business. I know I helped her deal with it. No I'm not a psychologist, but I've been around the block and you can tell me anything. Anything. I'm that guy. And I truly, honestly want to help people make it through. That's why I am an Emergency Response volunteer and why I'll be volunteering with the local PD next month. My aim is to be skilled in that regard. Hands on.

This is precisely why all the blatheration, as much as I love a good debate, is making me irascible. It's why I'm turning some of it off. There is a limit to how much one man's death can mean and there are few things more repulsive to me, when so many people experience tragedy, than celebrity victims.

I know that it is impossible for someone like me to give any comfort to someone who is emotionally distraught about their feelings for a celebrity supermodel who alleges sexual assault by a celebrity comedian who know in what state who knows how many years ago. Impossible. All such people want to hear are Amens the specific political sentiments that motivate them. I cannot provide comfort to people who have decided to be purposeful in their discomfort. It is the big brother in me that compels me to want to shut them up and have them listen to the comfort of reason. Ragers want to rage.

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin. All are celebrity victims. Their deaths, they being human beings with one soul - equal to that of any other ever born or yet unborn all deserve their respects. It's the amount of respect one could pay in a few hours at a wake or funeral (Which I seem to be going to more and more these days). But their deaths have been celebrated as omens, and they have been made great symbols. I am weary of the minds ensnared in that dirty business. They have made a tawdry spectacle of it all with their empty gestures, hashtags and manufactured outrage.

The more dignified I want to be, the more angry I get at the indignity of this political circus. I will find a way to maintain my engagement and my peace of mind. For now, I'm changing channels. 

(The picture is the grave of Marie Laveau in New Orleans to whom I'm distantly related. People leave tokens)

Barack Obama: Barbara Boxer in a Black Man Suit

Some people have been trying to rewrite history and make extraordinary claims for Barack Obama vis a vis his connection to black politics. HA!

Barack Obama, the candidate, studiously avoided being the black candidate for the black people. He was the black candidate who could win in New Hampshire and Iowa. When it came to the most serious and profoundly resonant nexus between Candidate Obama and Black America, namely his relationship to the Black Church in Chicago, all the power of a half billion dollar internet savvy campaign armtwisted the entirety of the US media to stay off the matter of race. 

It was precisely because Obama was ideologically indistinct for Kucinich and the heir to all that Howard Dean agitated that he moved the Democrats left and gained the lead. But he specifically did so by leaving his racial bona fides with black Americans unstated and implied. 

There is no way to honestly re-racialize the candidacy and legacy of Barack Obama. It flies directly in the face of the fact that his candidacy exploited the very idea of a 'post-racial' America. Obama did NOT grow up politically in anything approaching traditional black activist politics. All of his 'blackness' was gained through his marriage through Michelle. He steamrolled traditional black politics in Chicago, and the likes of Tavis Smiley was hopping mad about it. Here in LA, Maxine Waters (whose post-LA Riot political career was completely saved by the Clintons) and Magic Johnson were all in the Clinton camp against Obama. Obama literally came out of left field, with ties to radical leftists in Chi-town and money men who knew a phenomenon when they saw one. 

There is and was never any racial promise in Obama that had anything to do with black politics with one exception. Identity. Identity ain't policy. Obama shapeshifted his identity for the masses, and took over the role formerly held by Oprah, with Oprah's blessing. But he has always been Barbara Boxer in a black man suit.

Eric Holder Blasted

You People Don't Count

Somebody asked:

What does it say about America when African-American parents in 2014 need to tell their boys how to respond to police when out and about in order to come home safe and alive? 

And so I said:

It says that people in the press and chattering classes online have hyped up more political mythology and crackpot racial theories.

The fact is that there are about 40 million African Americans alive and well in America. To the best knowledge anybody has, an average of 96 are killed by police each year. Fewer African Americans of any age are killed by police than Americans are killed in car crashes with deer.  The FBI reports 3.4 million arrests of African Americans per year. Do the math. Does it sound like anyone has done a logical risk assessment here?

There is a liberal, paternalistic tradition in this country that says when anything bad happens to people, that special time, care, preparation and education must take place. Some of that is welcome part of the time. In the best of times, it's charity. More often, especially when multiculturalism is thrown into the mix, it's just condescending nonsense.

Everybody who is in the streets clashing with police, wants to be in the streets clashing with police. Right now people are flying in from other states to be in the streets clashing with police in Missouri. What do we tell them?

An Open Letter to Sniveling Negroes

Once upon a time, the United States of America was full of Negroes. America had a problem. It was the Negro Problem. It was characterized by a relatively complete failure for the Negro to gain an appreciable foothold in any of the nation's mainstream institutions. He couldn't be educated, he couldn't be drilled, he couldn't couldn't make profits because by and large he was segregated out of universities, armed forces and businesses. Along came WW2, and America changed profoundly in the way it saw the world and the way the world saw it. And because war is a good reason to kick a lot of nonsense to the curb, some of that nonsense of segregation was indeed pushed back. The Negro got a taste. Now the Negro was never far from a complete understanding of what America offered. He was always in close proximity to successful Americans. The Negro was America's housecat. He was fed but he was feral. He was never considered an equal, except by eccentrics. More importantly, he wasn't considered an equal by himself. He wasn't sure if he was a man or a pet. The war changed some of that. The reality of humanity interposed itself and the preciousness of life and freedom became obvious. The uncertainty and dual consciousness of man and pet was illuminated. Negroes became men. 

This history is surely familiar to you and I won't belabor it long. The point was that this man and that man had the nerve to stand up and fight, undaunted by hard times. They did so to put their best foot forward, to live free and shine in the light of liberty. Well that sounds all fluffy but the fact is now millions of Americans have backed themselves right back into the heart of dual consciousness. They are now obsessed by the death of two black suspects, one in Missouri and  one in New York, and have taken these deaths as ominous portents of the fate of the Negro in America. Once proud black Americans have let the little Jim Crow in their heads take over their personalities and whip them into submission. Now they are not sure if they are pets or men. They're certainly not acting like men.  I've had it up to here.

Just yesterday of my best friends said the following: 

Approximately two decades ago I got into an argument on Usenet (soc.culture.african.american--scaa for short), about police, black kids, and the talk. The brother I argued with suggested that the best thing to teach black kids was NOT to be deferential to the police. I thought this was foolish and that following this advice would likely get his kid killed. I don't think I had kids at the time but definitely didn't have sons.

I've got sons now. But I've done a 180--I now take that brothers position. I guess it boils down to this. If it really doesn't matter, then what values do you want to represent when you go?

I have decided to become an irascible asshole about this spate of black paranoia, because my sensitive friend Lester Spence has become infected by its cowardly poison. It is ironic that this demonic possession of fear, I say again FEAR, has gobbled up whatever common sense, perseverance and motherwit we used to associate with the Negro race. But it is clear that the lot of you have lost your minds and now tremble like autumn leaves at the prospect some white man might lose his mind. And so your fear of his presumed fear of you has made you both into idiots ready to lash out like cornered animals. I'm disgusted. Thoroughly and totally disgusted at this shameful regressive display. The very idea that the sons of tenured professors "ain't goin' out like that" and are prepping themselves for suicide by cop in a blaze of retarded glory are the wet dreams of Willie Lynch. For what? I spit on the graves of suicides. They are murderers of the self, and there is no greater example of self-hatred than that. Except this goes one step further to terrorist suicide. A plan to intimidate millions in an act of self-sacrifices that blames the other man. I've see a lot of bullshit walking in my life, but this is bullshit at the speed of light. 

If it has to be that those who would call themselves black in this country would sink so low, and be seduced and then obsessed by every freak accident social media can blast, then Carter Woodson is doing back somersaults in his grave. Are you all so desperate for identity that you will line up in unity behind every tragedy spewed in your direction? Ae you literally chasing ambulances? You have become a cult of death, letting it seep into your bones and affect your daily routine. This dead man means everything, you say. The man you never saw, never knew, never cared about until his death confirmed your deepest, darkest fear. And now fear dominates your spirits. You faithless wankers! 

I'm not going away. I'm not defriending. I'm going to stand tall and berate you until you come to your senses. I only hope I don't become exhausted. But every fresh morning when I hear about how this dead man seals the Negro fate, I puke all over again, and you're going to smell it and remind you that I don't buy that weak sauce. I don't know about any of you, but my grandfather was an orphan and my grandmother survived polio. They got married during the Great Depression. That's where I come from. Steel. And once upon a time in America, that kind of steel mattered, and it didn't need hashtag activism. It lived, and it loved, and it raised children. It didn't whine and complain and obsess and have its composure destroyed by the death of one man no matter how dubious he or his killer were. And it sure as hell didn't reprogram its children in reactionary paranoia. They knew how to live, and by God it rubbed off on me. So if you're going to listen to every halfwit reporter on the death obsessive news, you're going to listen to me too. 

Get a grip. Turn away from death and live!

The Peanut Butter & Jelly Question

I'm giving part of the attribution to Neal Stephenson's Baroque Series, and part of the attribution Michael Pollan to and part of the attribution to the developers of Assassin's Creed. Also, now that I think of it we should spread a few props to Niall Ferguson and Nassim Taleb. It was a combination of their concepts that helped me to understand that I could have lived very well in the past. Not just the recent past, but in the 18th Century. There were very good ways to live back then, and good ways prior to that as well.

So when I think about my own martial education, a lot of it has to do with ridding myself of priorities established by contemporaries. Particularly I emphasize those priorities directed to me as a member of the consumer society - of those priorities that would have me spend effort, time and money pursuing convenience at the expense of spending effort, time and money for the sake of self-sufficiency. To be independently wealthy in our connected society requires a great deal more than it used to. But I digress. The point here lies specifically around the area of food.

I have often speculated about the amount of desperation a man would have been in when he found himself eating the first oyster. He must have been really really hungry to go underwater and pull that horrid looking thing off of whatever mucky object it was attached to, crack it open and slurp up the gummy substance. But then somebody said, "Nah, it was a teenaged boy doing it on a dare." Suddenly it made perfect sense. Not so complicated at all. But if you look at the history of recipies for oysters, the sophistication arises over time. Of course you want to eat Oysters Rockefeller. You'd spend good money on that. I would.

And yet we have fast food. Fast food is for people on the go who may have neither the time nor the skill to Big Gulpify themselves, or craft up their own McNuggets. Indeed what part of a chicken is the nugget? It's not surprising that this stuff isn't the best for you, but what about margerine? What about artificial sweeteners? What's the point of all this scientifically engineered food product? What goes into making that sausage? We don't know, we don't care. We simply eat when we're hungry because, relatively speaking, we are all very rich and we have choices. But then again so did our grandparents have choices. So did people in the 18th Century.

They judge inventions against sliced bread, you know. Damned good idea, sliced bread. So now imagine you were someone other than a teenaged boy on a dare. How do you come up with the ingredients, much less the audacity, to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? You and I both know, it's pretty much a toss up between that and Oysters Rockefeller depending upon how much cold milk is in the fridge. But OK. Peanuts grow under ground, so you have to dig those up, crack open the shell and crush the nut. Then grapes grown on vines in a completely different climate, surely not right next to wheat. Where the heck do you get yeast? I don't know. So this is a recipe that took a lot of doing. A lot of trial and error. 

So yeah, if I lived in the days of Leonardo, I might have had a steel sword, but probably not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I probably would have had a good Italian sausage, though and probably a decent pizza. The recipe for pizza, specifically the combinations of all the foods possible we think about make a good pizza have been passed down for generations. Like the first oyster, it didn't kill anybody. How many generations of good pizza do we have? It proved itself to be a domesticated food a recipe worthy of handing down for generations. Just as I learned from my parents how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

What has survived for hundreds of years is better. Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. That's Murphy and Taleb. Pizza is the safe bet. I would say peanut butter and jelly will be a safe bet too, but probably not as safe as pizza, and certainly safer than say... well start reading this: http://www.fda.gov/Food/DietarySupplements/ I dare you. That's not a recipe from your parents, that's a recipe for disaster. 

So ask yourself if this new thing you want to eat or avoid eating has been known to as many people over as much time as peanut butter and jelly. 

 

Absolutely Stoic

Yes to this.