The smart person and the idiot; or, Semper Gumby

It's also phrased "Improvise, Adapt, Overcome".

Over on Scholium is an excerpt from an October 1, 2010 article in Vanity Fair, "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds" by Michael Lewis.  The blogmaster pulled this excerpt because Lewis, who is an atheist, spent some time with the Orthodox monks at Mt. Athos; the blogmaster is an Eastern Orthodox convert from the Anglican communion.  Now I'm going to do a little further extraction, from Lewis' conversation with Fr. Arsenios, whom he describes as "Mr. Inside, the consummate number two, the C.F.O., the real brains of the operation.  'If they put Arsenios in charge of the government real-estate portfolio,' a prominent Greek real-estate agent said to me, “this country would be Dubai.  Before the crisis.'"

... Like a lot of people who come to Vatopaidi, I suppose, I was less than perfectly sure what I was after.  I wanted to see if it felt like a front for a commercial empire (it doesn’t) and if the monks seemed insincere (hardly).  But I also wondered how a bunch of odd-looking guys who had walked away from the material world had such a knack for getting their way in it: how on earth do monks, of all people, wind up as Greece’s best shot at a Harvard Business School case study?

After about two hours I work up the nerve to ask him.  To my surprise he takes me seriously.  He points to a sign he has tacked up on one of his cabinets, and translates it from the Greek: THE SMART PERSON ACCEPTS. THE IDIOT INSISTS.

He got it, he says, on one of his business trips to the Ministry of Tourism.  “This is the secret of success for anywhere in the world, not just the monastery,” he says, and then goes on to describe pretty much word for word the first rule of improvisational comedy, or for that matter any successful collaborative enterprise.  Take whatever is thrown at you and build upon it.  “Yes … and” rather than “No … but.”  “The idiot is bound by his pride,” he says.  “It always has to be his way.  This is also true of the person who is deceptive or doing things wrong: he always tries to justify himself.  A person who is bright in regard to his spiritual life is humble. He accepts what others tell him — criticism, ideas — and he works with them.”

The lost art of frugality

“As a newly-graduated person, someone coming straight out of college, I don’t like the idea of having less money coming to me due to the selfish interests of people in Congress who don’t have any interest in reducing our financial problems,” [Gabriella] Hoffman told FoxNews.com [some of us who have been around the block a couple of times ain't too wild about it either, kiddo].  “This is an impediment for future economic growth. It’s going to make it harder for young people like myself to get married, find a better job, you name it. ... 

“Although it’s a small quantity on a monthly basis, just having less money going into my paycheck will prevent me from doing things and force me to be more frugal,” she said [Oh no, not frugality!  O the inhumanity!].  “I’ll be more cautious with my spending.”

Consumer credit as a percentage of GDP, 1/1/73 – 11/1/12

Judging from some people's reactions, you'd think we never paid 6.2% Social Security tax before. Of course, many of those people were making up to twice as much more seven years ago, long before the Obamination was in office let alone suggesting a temporary reduction in SSI taxes.  (Not me — $2/hr more but fewer benefits.)  But at the same time, many of these same people probably shrugged in indifference while FoxNews was foaming at the mouth about raising the top withholding bracket back to the Clinton-era 39.6%.

I can't put very much weight in such grumbling.  All but the most improvident people will take care of the necessities first and cut back on the extra comforts (I can't in good conscience call them luxuries): one night out less per month; pork chops instead of steaks; Wal-Mart instead of Kroger's, Von Maur or IKEA.  They might even find that happiness, good times and love are still possible on $40 a month less.

The fact of the matter is, thirty years of credit-driven prosperity have pretty much ruined our culture's ability to be thrifty (frugality as a virtue rather than a necessity).  Any squirrel will tell you that the time to stuff away the nuts is in summer, when the nuts are plentiful, so you can live off your storage when the winter comes.  Winter comes every year; eventually, no matter how hard the government works to prevent it, recessions follow growth.  In economics and finance, the line between inductive reasoning and a hot hand fallacy is slender indeed.

What would Juvenal have said?

Decimus Junius Juvenalis (fl. 100-120)

LORD POLONIUS:  What do you read, my lord? 

HAMLET:  Words, words, words. 

LORD POLONIUS:  What is the matter, my lord? 

HAMLET:  Between who? 

LORD POLONIUS:  I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. 

HAMLET:  Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

—Shakespeare, Hamlet II:ii

So thirty-three or so years after first devouring these lines, I finally started reading the "satirical rogue" — the Satires of Juvenal.  At some places, Juvenal is hard to read, probably because the underlying text suffered from quite a bit of corruption over its long existence.  And a lot of his humor would simply pass over the heads of someone who, like me, has only a smattering of education in the classics and Greco-Roman mythology.  One line, though, caught me by surprise: in the middle of a passage about homosexuals, Juvenal sneers, "Gracchus has presented to a cornet player — or perhaps it was a player on the straight horn — a dowry of four hundred thousand sesterces" (Satire 2).  Plus ça change, plus ça même chose: I suppose as long as there are wind instruments people will use them for witty references to fellatio.

Just a little further we read this:

"I have a ceremony to attend," quoth one, "at dawn to-morrow, in the Quirinal valley."  "What is the occasion?"  "No need to ask: a friend is taking to himself a husband; quite a small affair."  Yes, and if we only live long enough, we shall see these things done openly: people will wish to see them reported among the news of the day.  Meanwhile these would-be brides have one great trouble: they can bear no children wherewith to keep the affection of their husbands; well has nature done in granting to their desires no power over their bodies.  They die infertile; naught avails them the medicine-chest of the bloated Lyde, or to hold out their hands to the blows of the swift-footed Luperci!

Again, the more things change ....  

Ask Tony: Why would Catholics celebrate Jesus' circumcision?

Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), Circumcision of Jesus

Today, January 1, is the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church.  But on older calendars, since it falls on the eighth day of Jesus' life (according to traditional Jewish and Roman reckoning), it was — and still is, by traditional and Eastern Catholics, as well as some Lutherans — celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision.

Now, if you focus on the fact of the circumcision itself, you can get kinda creeped out; just to add to the creepiness, the story goes that at one time there were so many people claiming to possess as a relic the Holy Prepuce that one pope forbade further mention of it on pain of excommunication.  (That's the story, at least.  The reports and claims of faked relics have themselves suffered from inflation and exaggeration over the years; while forged first- and second-class relics were a problem for a long time, serious scholars of the medieval period doubt they were ever so abundant as has been alleged.)

Part of the problem is semantic, even cultural.  "Celebrate" has taken on implications of joyous fun that, when the rite emerged, weren't necessarily present in its Latin roots.  The noun celebratio and the verb celebro, celebrare in their primary uses referred simply to the act of gathering or thronging, especially for a ritual, and only secondarily to commemorating a special occasion; the Eucharistic meal as a feast can hardly be called festive.  Think of "holiday", and how it began life as a contraction of "holy day": holidays became vacations because holy days entail rest from labor.

What are you doing here?

Close this window.  Shut off your computer.  Go hug your family, sing some carols, eat too much and open your presents.  And don't forget to go to church some time in the next 24 hours.  Have a blessed, blessed Christmas.

 

 

What if the world had come to an end yesterday?

Well, that was awkward, too ....

So ... apparently the magic apocalyptic decoder ring doesn't work so well with either Christian scriptures or Mayan calendars.  If it were me, I'd put it back in the Cap'n Crunch box and send it back to General Mills.

Send them your copy of The Prophecies of Nostradamus, while you're at it.  And I'm still waiting on my Jetsons car and Dick Tracy two-way wrist TV.

I can't rag these people too much.  After all, I'm prone to fits of the-end-is-near prophecy as well.  I'm still convinced that the economy will irretrievably tank by 2030 (I qualify for full SSI benefits in 2031, of course), triggering the second collapse of Western civilization.  If it's not inevitable, I find it a lot more likely than Ray Kurzweil's "Singularity" and the childlike belief that advances in medicine will help "us" (read "the rich") achieve "actuarial escape velocity" (yes, in 2045 the most happy state will arise).

Re-doing the math

Bill O'Reilly gets on my nerves.

Okay, I understand that the pressures of the instant media make it difficult to do a lot of research before one has to put on makeup and get in front of the camera for a thirty-second thinkpiece.  Which is one reason why these segments should be rotated between two or three people, no more than one segment per day (through the miracle of recording, it can be replayed ad nauseam), so the commentators can have plenty of time to look up the facts for their next piece.

But Bill O'Reilly illustrates well exactly what Alexander Pope meant by the poem, "A Little Learning".  Consider his December 6th rant on "entitlement spending":

Right now an estimated 66 million Americans are receiving food stamps and/or Medicaid. In addition, there are 21 million folks working for the government.  That means that 87 million people in America are being subsidized by we [sic] the taxpayers.  But there are only 109 million Americans working in the private sector.  Doing the math, it's impossible for 109 million workers to support 87 million people. It can't be done. No matter how much you tax the workers.

Hold on a moment, Mr. O'Reilly.  The 21 million people working for the government aren't being "subsidized" ... they are being compensated. The money and benefits they receive are wages in return for labor, and is their just due (and just to make it clear, that 21 million covers all government workers — federal, state and local).  Ironically, they too get taxed; who in the private sector contributes to his employer for his own wages? We can certainly talk about whether each and every job done by a civil servant needs to be done.  However, if they work for us, then we're obliged to pay them fair, honest wages.

Next issue is the 109 million in the private sector: this seriously misrepresents the number of people paying taxes out of their income.  As of November, 143.3 million civilians were employed, along with about 1.4 million men and women in the armed forces.  While these numbers include government workers, as I pointed out above, they too pay taxes.  And, by the way, so do many of the people on food stamps and Medicaid: the government giveth, and the government taketh away.

Wake up, sleepyheads!

© 2012 Sarah Webb/Catholic Standard and Times

If a Catholic "Great Awakening" can happen in France, it can happen here, too.

That, at least, is what the US Conference of Catholic Bishops believes, and is trying to get moving.  San Francisco's new angel, Abp. Salvatore Cordileone, says that the USCCB's new five-part pastoral strategy is "not meant to be another program but rather part of a movement for Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty, which engages the New Evangelization and can be incorporated into the Year of Faith.”

Talk about engagement:  The plan, as currently laid out, envisages five ways to participate that, taken together, constitute a pretty thorough spiritual workout:

1. Host or attend a Eucharistic Holy Hour (an hour spent in prayer and reflection in a chapel in which the Holy Eucharist is displayed;
2. Pray a daily Rosary;
3. Include prayers for life, marriage and religious liberty in the Prayers of the Faithful at daily and weekly Masses;
4. Fast and abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year;
5. Participate in the 2nd annual Fortnight for Freedom (June/July 2013).

 Not all the details are completely worked out, but they're forthcoming; see the USCCB website here for further details, and be sure to bookmark the page!

Attempting the impossible

Watch the following video.  If you don't at least get a little misty at about 3:54, check your pulse, then go to the vitamin store for some empathy supplements.

Now, my resident cynic wants to convince me that, in putting together the clip (and the forthcoming documentary), Diamond Dallas Page, the former professional wrestler turned yoga instructor, was drumming up a little business for himself.  If that's the case, though, it's brilliant marketing, because DDP actually shows up only once in the clip; director Steve Yu doesn't allow him to take over Arthur Boorman's story.

Frankly, this video doesn't so much inspire me as make me feel ashamed, like a whining, feckless crybaby.  While I don't have much sympathy for people who whine and kvetch all day about their personal problems without doing anything to correct them, when it comes to my weight and the health problems it's created for me, I can kvetch with the worst of them.  And I'm not suffering any mobility problems, either.

"The Lord helps those who help themselves," we say to each other.  And regardless of how or what you think about God, He certainly requires some effort from us on our own behalf.  "With God all things are possible" (Mt 19:26); for man, maybe not so much ... but you don't know how much you really can do until you attempt the impossible.

The next quixotic quest: halting "Christmas creep"

First, a blessed Thanksgiving to all ... or, at least, to all who still bother to celebrate it.  In another five to ten years, if the stupidity doesn't halt its increase, Thanksgiving may be completely forgotten, wiped away by "Black Thursday".

This is no longer a series of holidays.  It's one large commercial season.  Merry Hallothanksakwanzmas Time!  It's all part of Satan's plot from Hell.

Although I stubbornly (perhaps foolishly) maintain that humans do in fact have free will, "Black Friday" was already a serious enough challenge to that premiss.  Watching "Christmas creep" slowly munch its way through the calendar, defecating annoying TV ads that convert the carols you like the least into clamorous jingles (I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against Target for what they've done to Handel's "Hallelujah"), has its own creepy fascination ... it's like watching a live-action rendition of Christmas in the Valley of the Dolls.  Watching people line up like lemmings awaiting their turn to jump off the cliff at insanely early hours of the morning on Black Friday for 50% off an item that was marked up 30% three weeks before — well, it's unsettling at the least.  Pavlov's dogs were penny-ante poker compared to this mess.