Supposedly that's an "ancient Chinese curse," but the facts are questionable. Maybe it's a paraphrase of the Chinese proverb "It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period." Whatever.

These are certainly interesting, chaotic times. Some days, so much happens I can't keep up. Today has been one of those days. Here are a few highlights:

• A North Korean diplomat admitted to a US diplomat — bragged, really — that his country not only has nuclear weapons, but they're going to test them, they're planning to make more, and if they feel like it they'll spread 'em around.
• The US faces a dilemma in Iraq: leave quickly and leave a messy power vacuum which would likely fill with anti-American political forces; or stay longer and increase the rising tide of anti-American Islamic fundamentalism. No wonder the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" has been stuck in my head for weeks now...
• But hey, look! We caught the eight of spades! Please tell me that someone, somewhere is playing a card game based on the order in which these guys get captured.
• Meanwhile, the administration is getting really pissed off because Kofi Annan keeps saying "occupation" instead of "liberation". Geez. The rest of the world — what's with those guys?
• Meanwhile, according to the head of the BBC, it's no wonder that the US public sees things differently from the rest of the world, given what we're being spoon-fed.
• The San Francisco Chronicle says they fired veteran reporter Henry Norr because he wrongly claimed a sick day, not because he did so in order to protest the war. You decide.
• American Airlines, the world's largest air carrier, fired their CEO as they continued to prepare for probable bankruptcy.
• US states face such rotten budget situations that they're raising taxes and cutting everything from health care to education. So life becomes more expensive for citizens, especially for the ones who can afford it the least — the poor, the disabled and the elderly. Have you, too, noticed alarming price increases lately? Isn't this precisely the scenario that brought us stagflation back in the late 70's?
• Don't worry. Bush has the answer: tax cuts for the rich! And not some "little bitty" $350 billion cut, either. No way! He wants the mother hummer of all tax cuts. Nothing less will do for America's wealthiest.
• Yahoo's most popular story, though, was that of the Dixie Chicks' taking it all off in a desperate bid to win back some fans. Adolescent males will probably respond most enthusiastically, but hey, I'm just guessing.

Everybody's been all over Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) today, and rightfully so.

Because, again, I would argue, they [acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships] undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution...

Here are some other problems with his statement.

First, in what way do "acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships" threaten families? In what way would the enforced repression of consensual sexual urges be a good thing for America? Is he saying that if "deviant" consensual acts could be stamped out, that the "deviants" would then turn to "traditional heterosexual relationships" to satisfy their sexual urges? Is he saying that stamping out sexual "deviance" would turn "perverts" into mommies and daddies, and that this would be good for society? Or is he saying that the mere existence of "deviance" in some way threatens families and society? Does he think a list should be drawn up of all sexual practices that should be barred, or perhaps instead, a (presumably shorter) list of acts that would be permitted? Someone please explain.

Second, he equates the right of homosexuals to sexual privacy with the rights to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery. Earlier in the interview, he linked it with priests' statuatory rape of post-pubescent boys. The question in each case is "who is the victim?" I would argue that no victim = no crime.

• In the case of bigamy, if all parties are of legal age, and have voluntarily consented to the relationship(s), then I don't see who's being harmed. Perhaps the children? Most cases of bigamy, however, involve a man who marries two women with neither of the two women knowing about the other. In these cases, there are at least two victims, so clearly in those cases, it's wrong. The case of polygamy is virtually identical, if basically nonexistent in the Western world.
• Incest is nearly always non-consensual and involving underaged victims. Even with consensual, legal-aged partners, the practice is almost universally condemned, due (probably) to the strong liklihood of birth defects in any offspring that might result from the union.
• As for adultery, if all parties know what's going on and consent to it, then fine. Otherwise, (and usually it's otherwise) it's probably wrong, because someone's probably getting hurt.
• As for the priests and the boys, even if the boys are "post-pubescent" they are likely not of legal age and therefore they can't consent, in the legal meaning of the term consent, just as heterosexual minors can't consent to sex. I would argue that, even if the boys are of legal age, authority figures such as priests, teachers, coaches (etc.) should not be allowed to have sex with those over whom they have authority. So, if anyone had the slightest doubt (I sincerely hope no one did), sex between priests and boys is wrong.
• Sex between consenting adults, however, harms no one and is therefore not wrong.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [emphasis added]

Welcome to Earth, Senator. We do things a little differently down here. If you don't like our ways, feel free to leave. In the meanwhile, please mind your own business.

As always, your feedback is encouraged.

Posted by Me at 18:28 link

Check it out, folks. This is home. We came from the earth and we belong to the earth. Our fate is tied to the earth's. If we destroy the earth, then we'll surely kill ourselves.

It'll be a long, long time before we can pick up and move somewhere else. Right now, it would take our fastest spaceship 10,000 years to reach the Alpha Centauri system, the nearest star system to our own. Except that right now our spaceship would run out of fuel in a matter of days, never mind the dozens of other nearly-insolvable problems we'd have to solve before we could even dream of making such a trip. Life support, for instance, or how to keep our muscles from shriveling away in a weightless environment. Oh, yeah, and it would be good to have a destination, some other place we knew that could support human life.

For the foreseeable future, we're stuck here.

Hey, it could be worse. Earth is arguably the most beautiful celestial body we know about. The earth is diverse and wondrous, full of life, arguably a living being itself.

THIS EARTH IS PRECIOUS

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

ALL SACRED

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.

Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man.

We are part of the earth and it is part of us.

The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers.

The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man--all belong to the same family.

NOT EASY

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves.

He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consider your offer to buy our land.

But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.

This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.

If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people.

The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

KINDNESS

The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.

The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on.

He leaves his father's graves behind, and he does not care.

He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care.

His father's grave, and his children's birthright, are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads.

His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways.

The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings.

But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand.

The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand.

The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a midday rain, or scented with the pinion pine.

PRECIOUS

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath--the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath.

The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes.

Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.

But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh.

And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.

ONE CONDITION

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition: The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.

I am a savage and I do not understand any other way.

I've seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train.

I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit.

For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.

THE ASHES

You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin.

Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.

All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.

Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny.

We may be brothers after all.

We shall see.

One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover, our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white.

This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.

The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man.

That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.

Where is the thicket? Gone.
Where is the eagle? Gone.
The end of living and the beginning of survival.

The sad fact, as the cynics among you already know, is that this speech was really the work of one Ted Perry, a screenwriter, who in 1972 was working on an ecological film called Home. Here's the whole sad story. Perry embellished the work of poet William Arrowsmith, who in the late 1960's himself had poeticized the work of a Dr. Henry A. Smith — who claimed to have written down, 30 years after the fact, the words that Chief Seattle allegedly said. Smith was a translator and was probably present when Chief Seattle made his speech.

Here's the thing, though — every bit of that beautiful speech is true. Even if Chief Seattle never saw a city or a buffalo or a train.

It is strange to think about buying or selling the sky. The land should be sacred to us human beings. The rivers and the animals are our siblings. We should notice the air we breathe. We don't own the earth. WHAT DIFFERENCE WOULD IT MAKE IF WE DID? We still belong to the earth. Whatever happens to the earth happens to us. There's no escape.

Posted by Me at 20:30 link

I have a theory, mostly undeveloped, that could explain everything from why some of us love war, to why some of us love rock climbing, to why some of us love video games so much. My theory is that we love these things because they're difficult. Because they're hard, they seem important. Because we find them challenging, succeeding satisfies us and gives us a sense of purpose.

But these things (and the many other things like them) are not merely difficult; they're just the right kind of difficult. Tough, but doable. Too easy and we get bored. Too hard and we become frustrated and discouraged. Just hard enough and we'll devote our lives to it.

It's deeply ingrained in our culture, the idea that hard = right. Nothing worthwhile was ever easy, for instance. Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The Protestant work ethic. The problem is that difficulty can be misleading. I'm sure Hitler found the Jewish problem to be extremely challenging, and I'll bet he interpreted the difficulty of it to mean he was on the right track.

This theory came to me, oddly enough, while I reflected on the 2000 US Presidential election. I've wondered many times, Why didn't the Democrats ask the simple, obvious question: "are you better off now than you were 8 years ago?" Obviously, we were better off, much better off — we were riding the crest of the largest economic expansion in history — but the question was never asked. The Democrats allowed different questions to dominate the election, and offered lengthy, well-reasoned, nuanced answers to those questions. The Republicans, who had crafted the questions, answered them simply, in powerful soundbite-friendly chunks, making the Democrats look weak and indecisive by comparison. Why didn't Al Gore ever ask the simple question that might have won him the election? Maybe it just would have been too easy. Maybe for the Republicans, it was just hard enough.

I don't know if this theory has any validity. It feels true. On the other hand, maybe this has been explored. Let me know if you're aware of any research in this area. Regardless, it would explain a lot. Why I spent all that time and all those quarters trying to master Galaga. Why we as a people seem to love war so much that even when we're trying to solve other problems, such as poverty and drugs, we "declare war" on them. I guess it would also explain why some people love Jeopardy, and some people love Wheel of Fortune. What I could never understand were people who loved both, but that's for another day. Too hard right now.

Your feedback, as always, is encouraged.

Posted by Me at 23:46 link

Yesterday, I watched the landmark documentary Koyaanisqatsi for the first time in several years. Watching it on a 17-inch screen is like seeing one of Michelangelo's Sistene Chapel paintings on a postage stamp, but still, it affected me. If you haven't seen it - then see it! Preferably on a great big screen with amazing sound. More than any other movie I can think of, it needs to be updated for IMAX, but it hasn't been yet.

If you haven't seen Koyaanisqatsi, its first 18 minutes chronicle the natural landscape in its beauty, grandeur and harmony; the remaining 59 minutes show the human-built world in its destructiveness, chaos and ugliness. I was surprised yesterday to realize the nature section was so short; the parts had seemed roughly equal in previous viewings.

I saw it for the first time at the Student Union at UNC Chapel Hill, probably in 1985. The first time I saw it, the film overwhelmed me with the beauty and power of its flood of images and sounds. I remember thinking the message of the movie was that the world was filled with tremendous and varied beauty, that this was true of both the natural and urban worlds. In those days, I was in love with cities, which is natural for young, small-town folk. And, being a college freshman, as always I was drunk.

When I saw the movie again in the same setting a couple of years later, sober, my infatuation with cities had faded. I came away thinking the movie highlighted the antagonistic relationship between Nature and Humankind.

Yesterday, I came away with a new take: the antagonist is not Humankind, but Technology, which is shown destroying both Nature and Humankind throughout the film. Technology is shown to be both mindfully and mindlessly destructive, ultimately opposing and destroying even itself. At times, Technology is shown to force humans themselves to act as machines. People are shown more than anything else as victims, forced to live, work and play inside the giant machine of Technology.

I was also struck this time by a number of ironies. First, although the film is critical of technology and the urban world, the film wouldn't be possible without highly-advanced urban technology. Second, although the city is shown to be ugly and evil, it's actually more ecologically-sound for people to live in cities than it is for them to sprawl out in suburbs and so forth. Third, the natural world as portrayed contains very little life. The forces of nature (sun, wind, water) move, but they aren't alive; this is also for many of the technological forces at work throughout the film (earthmovers, jet aircraft, atomic bombs). Finally, because mankind is part of nature, any separation of the "two worlds" is an illusion.

And I came full circle, realizing that the urban world is beautiful in its own way, beautiful and ugly at the same time, and that much of nature is the same. Both views depend on who's looking and why.

Ultimately, I came away not with answers, but with questions: what's the role of humankind - and technology - in nature?

Not that this detracts at all from Koyaanisqatsi's power, or its stated message: that our way of living is "out of balance" and calls for a new way of living. This remains undeniably true. The questions, though, also remain: how should we live?

And, more fundamentally, who are we?

Posted by Me at 18:02 link