Steve Harris
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The Meaning of 50

5/27/2022

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Next month, I will be going back to the Detroit area (where I grew up) to participate in my 50th high school reunion. I was given the extraordinary opportunity to go to the best private school in the state during a period of remarkable change in US society (1968-72) with a group of students who knew, even then, that we were a unique group.

While I have stayed active as an alumnus as part of the school’s official program, our class in particular, and (in terms of personal connections) to some of my classmates, this anniversary of our graduation has opened a new perspective, leading me to realize, in a personal and profound way, the path of my life, the nature of memory, and the meaning of history. There are those who dismiss reunions and their accompanying memories as either nostalgia, a place for mental indolence and rampant historical revisionism, or a celebration of contingency, exalting the chance meeting of people for a few years out of an extended lifetime which carries no more than its proportional weight (<10%). All are certainly risks, but they seem worth taking for the benefit of reflection (and not a few beers and laughs).

All sorts of influences burst into the consciousness of the era—political, aesthetic, technological, and herbal—on top of the usual strains of the hormonally-defined world of adolescence. It all seems impossibly distant now, but it’s equally impossible to know how our experience of this fifty-year distance squares with that of our grandparents’ generation or that of our grandchildren. I suspect that the pace of change has accelerated across the 20C; so, while we have seen more change than our forbearers, we are more used to change and acceleration which makes it, in a way, less disorienting; and the same is likely true for millennials compared to us.

Some members of our class recently had a Zoom call with some current graduating Seniors from the school. It was great to reconnect with their energy and sense of opportunity. It also struck me how many of the great cultural changes that were so urgent in our era are embedded and ordinary now. We “matured” in an era when “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” were not only our bywords, but were fairly new cultural descriptors. The cultural power of us “Boomers” has carried much of that forward. We saw (and often helped make) cracks in the social rigidities of gender, race, and religion that have, in the ordinary slow pace of historical development, brought us to the choices and confusions of the 21C.

One benefit of accumulated experience (a nine-syllable euphemism for “age”) is that we lived it and know it. Of course, we should always be wary of conflating memory with history. One of the interesting aspects of talking with people with whom I shared a lot of experiences back “in the day,” will be to see what of my memories are corroborated by others and what events and interactions I have stored so far back in my internal filing cabinet (another incipient anachronism) that their rediscovery will be revelatory (and disorienting in their own way). Perhaps I will get to see what aspects of the persona I have constructed over this half-century are truly rooted in those years or since or what was just a mask. Perhaps I will see what aspects of the “Steve” I created at 16 were real or useful or costly. Perhaps it’s finally time to put down some of the baggage I decided was so crucial to pick up back then. If I am fortunate, perhaps some of my group will—with candor and kindness—tell me how I appeared to them.

Anniversaries are always an opportunity to look back; to press “pause” on the day-to-day stories of our lives and try to comprehend the big chunks of change in ourselves and our world. (Back then, we “pressed ‘pause’” on the coolest tech of the day: an 8-track cartridge, rather than just asking Alexa to do it.) We get to try to see what of all the things we were excited about (then, and since)—cars, sports, creativity, relationships, moon landings, the War, college choices—really mattered when assessed over the course of a lifetime (so far). We redraw a line from there to here. It lets us see the turns not taken; the flukes, the choices, the plans and the surprises: it’s a life.

For all the advantages I had (socio-economic and genetic), did I actually make better choices? How did I use this launch pad to benefit my life and maybe even to craft it? Was my learning curve towards what I currently conceive of as “wisdom” any steeper? Were the regrets over which I anguished worth the stress?

The other end of this particular rainbow is today. Of our class of ~180 (boys and girls (in separate schools when we started)), we have lost 11 (that we know of). Their memory will hang over us, but likely less for what I remember of them than as an insistent reminder that our 60th reunion will see a lot more of us gone. Can I relish our time with this shadow on the one hand and an appreciation that a 90%+ survival rate in our late 60s would seem remarkable to our grandparents’ era? And, given the decade or two (on average) remaining to me, what will I do with this combination of memories and inspiration?

As we updated the contact information for our group, I was initially startled to see a lot more addresses in Florida, North Carolina, and southern California than I remembered when I was keeping active tabs on our class. Then it struck me: “geez, we’re ‘retiring’ now.” After all, we have already spent most of our lives. Fifty years on: careers increasingly completed, families raised and dispersed, so much to digest, so little to grasp onto.

As a Historian, I know that it takes some attention to separate the signal from the noise; to construct a narrative and choose what is significant and what is the interval. There is one story that emphasizes the past fifty years and consigns the earlier time and the time remaining to the sidelines. At the same time, from another perspective, I can see the fifty years since “back then” (even if briefly interrupted by prior reunions with some of the group) as a gap for which hormonally-imprinted youth and the immediacy of age seem all the more real.

The musical we produced our Senior year was “West Side Story,” the current revival of which provides one of many inevitable historical ironies of any pair of dates. We had an extraordinarily talented group of singers, dancers, and producers. It gave us part of our lives’ soundtrack, along with Motown, the Moody Blues, Zeppelin, and Don McLean’s “American Pie” (top of the charts for 1972!).

The show concludes with a reprise of “Somewhere,” insisting that, for Tony and Maria, “there’s a time and place for us.” For our group, which I like to think was extraordinary (even if only because it was ours), we had an overlapping life in a particular and rare “time and place” for which I am immensely grateful. This group…this time…this place… helped launch me on a particular trajectory (skewed with gifts and baggage). This regathering, fifty years on, will help me take stock of that trajectory and help me plan the rest.
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Denial

5/20/2022

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If you get caught in flagrante delicto, the late great comedian Lenny Bruce has some advice for you: “Deny it. Flat out - deny it! If you really love your wife, deny it. If they got pictures, deny it. … If they walk in on you, deny it. Just say this strange chick came into the apartment shivering with a sign around her neck that said, ‘l have malaria. Lie on top of me and keep me physically active or I'll die.’” – a schtick by Lenny Bruce (from the movie Lenny (1974)).

We all deny stuff (I know my own list is … robust). Since the days of the broken window and pointing at my little brother, we have done so most of our lives.  As Lenny Bruce implied, even if the facts are clear, there’s some small chance you might get away with it. Why? Because, as Bruce said: “They want to believe it!” Or, as Jack Nicholson’s character said in A Few Good Men: “You can’t handle the truth!”

We all (or at least some part of virtually all of us) want to believe a nice story. A simple understanding of the world seems vastly preferable to the stresses of dealing with its complexities; and “truth” takes a back seat to sanity. Sometimes, of course, there’s no self-deception involved; denial is a cynical/dishonest ploy to avoid blame/responsibility (“Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer” worked for some folks for a while). But, sometimes we do it because we can’t tolerate living in a world in which the (denied) fact is true.

This explains a lot of the climate deniers or Covid deniers. A world in which the world (i.e. nature) is actually running the show is scary. Things were easier when just about everybody believed in God. All the weird stuff and problems could be written off to Him and were psychologically manageable via faith in His goodness or his plan/providence from which we would all (sooner or later) benefit.

Science, however, has shrunk the scope of God’s domain. He’s only around the fringes now and faith is harder to come by and seems to have less to do with how the world works than it used to.

Left to our own devices (so to speak) we fabricate coherence.

I’d like to think that this inability to cope is behind some of the well-known phenomenon of Holocaust denial. Certainly there were those who were excessive apologists for Nazi Germany. Certainly there were those who sought the fame/notoriety of controversy. Certainly there were those who had plenty of reason to distrust conventional and governmental information and then ran a bit amok. But, some folks couldn’t handle the truth of man’s inhumanity to man (or, more particularly, the evil of their own country/people/allies). Their weltanschauung (“worldview”) was shattered.

As I have pointed out in previous postings, there are a lot of folks here in the US and elsewhere whose weltanschauung has been pretty well hammered and so, things that don’t fit are labelled “fake news.” There are a bunch of folks who “can’t imagine” that our democracy is at risk/ Russia will invade / Japan would attack the US Fleet in Pearl Harbor/ Britain would leave the EU / … (you get the idea).

The rantings and machinations of the “Stop the Steal” gang following Biden’s victory in November 2020 are a textbook example. Trump couldn’t contemplate a world in which he lost; so he created one in which he didn’t. Millions followed (still follow) this delusion. Perhaps some will wake up and admit to temporary insanity; or they will just hope this incident fades into history and they won’t be asked to take a stance on the question. But, I suspect, too many drank too much Kool-Aid and will never recover. At this stage, it’s hard to imagine that Rudy Giuliani was a respected/feared US prosecutor and (not entirely terrible) Mayor of NYC. What’s left is a sorry knock-off of Batman’s arch-foe “the Penguin” who got suckered into self-parody by Borat.

Whether recent or more dated, in order to offset these imaginings, evidence and rational analysis don’t work so well when dealing with the most ancient parts of the human brain. Those in “fight or flight” mode don’t stop to read statistical tables.

It’s an interesting question as to whether this psychostress is uniquely or even particularly a “modern” phenomenon. I suspect that core bio-psychological human capabilities have been placed, over the past few centuries, in an environment of far more complexity and rapid change than for most of our first 70,000+/- years. The bling of electronic living has not helped, nor have the hormone-stimulating activities of the media and advertising industries. Indeed, it’s ironic that the same drivers of rationalistic modernity: the “Scientific Revolution” and Enlightenment have also led to these anti-rationalist pressures and many brains can’t stand the strain.

Regardless of its historical origins, however, denial remains an apparently useful tool for many. Lenny Bruce would be proud.
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Revival of the Fittest

5/6/2022

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The vast majority of folks I know are deeply concerned about the likely path of humanity’s interaction with our planet. There are, to be sure, plenty of issues to be worried about, both immediate and long-term, and they are sufficiently well-known not to require rehearsal here.

Each of these folks carries some combination of despair and doggedness (and still a bit of legacy enjoyment of current creature comforts). Moods fluctuate: water is saved, birds are counted, even while eyes/ears glaze over at the news reports and webinars detailing the latest dire report or development. Amid this, I have noticed a streak of resignation in which the expectation of some kind of slow-motion-train-crash is relieved by a sense that we (of a certain age) will be “gone” by then and won’t see the worst parts of it. Even the well-off and (otherwise) pretty sophisticated blithely seem to assume that their progeny will be spared through some sort of “gated-community” salvation.

Of course, there’s no telling how far down the path of global distress our species will take us. Again, I won’t parse through the various dystopias and scenarios that have been sketched out. Suffice it to say that there is a significant chance that civilization will crumble and some successor will have to be rebuilt. (I will posit for this purpose that it will be by humans, not cockroaches or dolphins.) This scenario is a playground for utopians, with soaring opportunities for harmonious relationships between peoples, genders, and the rest of nature.

I won’t dive into that normative debate (i.e., what kind of world would we want?), nor the related predictive question of what kind of world is likely? There are plenty of current political views out there already which will serve (equally well) as the basis for projecting for both desiderata and prognostication. Instead, I’d like to pose some other questions: 1) Should we tell them how we got here and, if so, what should we say? and 2) How would we go about sending such a message into the future?

Regular readers of this blog have heard me warn of the perils of divining and applying the “lessons of history.” Nonetheless, the demand for such apparent comforts as a coherent human history with “actionable” lessons remains strong and whether future historians/anthropologists/archeologists will be curious or future politicians will be looking for someone to blame, there’s no reason to think that this won’t be a fortiori true for the post-enviro-calamity world.

Indeed, three renowned SciFi books each wrestle with how the past survives in a such a future. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (1950s) takes a “hard science” perspective on a galactic scale renaissance. Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959) goes down a more religious path. More recently, Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves (2015) includes a group who survive a (non-manmade) apocalypse by preserving the Encyclopedia Britannica in memorizable bites, one of whose members is named for her portion of scripture: “Sonar-TaxLaw.”

What should we leave behind? Should we start with the “Great Books” series from the mid 20C which sought to capture the finest thinking of human history (albeit with a strong White/European/Male bent)? Even a more diverse bibliography of ideas and literature might well be indigestible without some concordance/guidance/framework.

How might we account for the state of the planet and our civilization? Who will write the histories of how we got here? What of the stories of empires, genders, wars, ideas, demographics, technology, and everyday life would be worth preserving? The possibilities are endless and the arguments among historians would be too (as if no “hard stop” was imminent!) Will we (as we are doing in the more substantive vector of actual climate change prevention) talk and hypothesize; or will someone put pen to paper (to speak in 19C metaphors)?

But then, what use is philosophy and literature (or history for that matter) in a world that is rebuilding itself from remnants. The great Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert in the mid-18C addressed not only ideas but practicalities. It included hundreds of pictures of ordinary machinery because it sought to enable people to change how they lived, not just how they thought. Perhaps we should commission hundreds of “how-to” manuals, ranging from irrigation and simple pumps to solar panels (and also how to build the materials out of which all of this is made)? If so, how far down the technological road should we go before we are (implicitly) urging our successor societies to replicate our own (problematic) path? We might include all of it and let them decide. (But what critical histories of technology and society would we include in the package?)

Of course, it’s not at all clear who would make all decisions. UNESCO? A committee of Nobel Laureates? The Texas School Book Commission? I do know some historians, maybe I should ask them? More likely, it would be a small group of smart folks chosen by whoever raised the money to launch such an endeavor.

This brings us to the last stop on this hypothetical inquiry: Once you have the “stuff” chosen, how do you preserve it—for several hundred or a thousand years—until some group comes along who can handle this compendium of knowledge/wisdom? There are serious technical problems around data preservation and compression into a manageable size. What language (s) should be used? How do you design an educational path (including languages, math, sciences) so that people could (progressively) comprehend this material? Where do you store it so it’s both safe and discoverable?

I’ll stop with the questions now. It’s an interesting thought experiment. But I can’t help think that if we leave a mess, we should help clean it up—somehow (and apologize, too!).

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    Condemned to Repeat It --
    Musings on history, society, and the world.

    I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

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