and SOME AMERICAN HISTORY,  or “KEEPING PEOPLE IN LINE” vs. “HELPING THEM”

MUSINGS, NO. 25, written in 2022  

Part 2 of  2

I’ve been talking (writing?) about incompatible views of the proper functions of government . . . and the mindsets that support such incompatible opinions.  This is a continuation of that topic.

Those incompatible mindsets are formed early in life, and they are formed entirely unconsciously.  No kid sits down to think about the ethics of abortion, for instance; he/she learns that from how his/her parents feel.  Ditto re: households in which the power structure is patriarchal, or dictatorial, or hierarchical, or egalitarian, or racist, or whatever else.  Those attitudes are installed — and deeply so — by age four or five.  Whatever you may ever go into therapy to deal with, it’ll go back to then.  Everything else is simply a metaphor, or vehicle, for those early-learned attitudes and mindsets.

Here’s something interesting.  It was only relatively recently that, in our own history, anyone in authority thought to make sure that “the people” had enough to eat; up until then it was most certainly every man for himself.  You know, Social Darwinism and all that.  This new idea came to the fore with the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt — out of the desperate straits of the Depression.  Roosevelt rolled out help and aid programs of all kinds: the New Deal, the Works Progress Administration, social security and health care . . . etc.  The Republicans have been fighting that mindset ever since.  

I think of them as the “Throw People Off The Raft” Party.

Historically, it was the Roman Empire that first had the idea that the government had a responsibility to ensure that the people had enough to eat.  Isn’t that amazing?  They were the first.  

But they had to.  They were, after all, managing a “tribe” in which most members didn’t know the others, and certainly weren’t related to any of them, and would have had no reason to look out for any of them.  Without a “government” to hold things together, all the groups and tribes and factions would be at each other’s throats in no time.  And Rome itself was huge . . . and needed a steady food supply.  It was like the United States is today, actually — with the added bonus that our government is, under Trump, alienating all of our former allies while simultaneously having anal sex with Russia, our former biggest enemy.  Wow.  Even science fiction types couldn’t make this stuff up.

The IDEA that the government should make sure that the people had enough to eat was, in fact, the Communist idea also.  It didn’t turn out to work that way in Russia, as we all know.  Still, the Scandinavian and European countries have “Socialized Medicine”, and that seems to be working better than our own paltry efforts at national “non-Socialized” health care.  As far as the Republicans go, their platform is that people should get the health care that they can afford, and in the last political campaign Mitt Romney actually poo-pooed working people’s idea that they thought they had a right to health care.  

Well, it’s hard to miss the complete absence of any sense that the Republicans, as prosperous citizens, have ANY responsibility for their less prosperous fellow citizens.  They see the government as TAKING THEIR MONEY AWAY FROM THEM in the form of taxes . . . but without wondering what things such as medicine, education, health, and services to the community [that paid the taxes!] the government might use it for.  It’s just too difficult a concept for them.

It makes one ill.  But on the other hand: wow.  Who knew that Franklin Roosevelt was a Communist!?  Well, he was!  He made efforts to distribute to the people what the people needed, both in the second half of the Great Depression and World War II.

And still, all that considered — insofar as it is a good and decent idea for a government to look out for its citizens — our own Republic didn’t lift much of a finger to help with the feeding-everyone effort while the Communists were advertising that that was their ultimate goal.  Our own ruling class saw doom and upper-class bankruptcy in the Communist scenario, and the U.S. fought the Communists and their egalitarian ideas tooth and nail.

Well, we all know that “Communism failed”.  It might have done so anyway, of its own internal complications, and without our help.  But we don’t know that.  We did help.  And our help was MASSIVE: we opposed, fought, resisted, propagandized, disinformed, misinformed, undermined, blackballed, vilified, and attacked Communists and Communism in every way we could, and justified our every move by pointing to their nefariousnesses.  Any government under that kind of assault will not be free to develop in peaceful ways.  

By “our own ruling class”, as I mentioned above, I mean pretty much anyone who made a lot of money by hook or by crook and has become part of “the American way”; that is, after all, the principal social message that any and all schools will have taught.  Or, if they didn’t teach it, they certainly never examined or questioned the principal pillars of American though.  These are the “we’re-the-good-guys” trope, the “right-to-get-ahead” part of the American Dream, and the Sanctity-of-Private-Property promoters.  

That has of course spread far and wide: and the propaganda got so thick that you could be lynched in the South if someone called you a Communist.  Under the highly alcoholic senator Joe McCarthy many people got persecuted, prosecuted, fired, blacklisted, boycotted, injured, etc. for thinking Communism was a good idea.  Yes, we all know that Communism failed. But the idea of it was nonetheless excellent: that everyone chips in and participates in a classless society.

The main idea was that You Should And Will Get Yours (“from everyone according to their ability to everyone according to their needs”) . . . but You Shouldn’t And Will Not Get Anyone Else’s.  Here, if you’ve noticed, the 1% has gotten the 99%’s share.  The financial world certainly stole a bunch of everyone else’s in the 2008 fiasco . . . and no one has rectified any of it.  Nor will they, from what I can see.  Well, neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump hinted that this was going to be a plank of their platform, in the past election.  And I don’t hear whispers about it in the election to come.

Well, the F.B.I. was going to take care of the Communist problem; its mandate was to oversee Domestic law and order.  (The C.I.A., born out of the earlier O.S.S., had the task of overseeing Un-domestic law and order.)  It was, therefore, the F.B.I.’s main job to get rid of all the domestic Communists (well, the ten most wanted criminals too, but mainly the Communists).  

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However, the F.B.I. allowed the Communist party to remain active in this country.  Yes, it did.  

And why did it do so?  Well, mostly because it needed bad guys.  The F.B.I. understood that once the Communists were gone it would have no reason to exist.  It would be out of a job.  There weren’t enough “ten most wanted” people to keep that many F.B.I. people employed.

I was told this many years ago by an old Communist fellow who knew this history.  I’ve never read about this, by the way; and neither have you. Why would we have?  It’s simply the most credible political strategy scenario imaginable.

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How things have changed.  I was saying that individuals will have internalized the imperative to uphold the function of the Government to “keep things in line”, as far as their sociopolitical lives go.  This will have been internalized as a rule for running their own personal and family lives as well.  

THE CURRENT SITUATION:

I’ve created a life for myself via making guitars.  I learned it by exercising hand skills, perceptual skills, analytical skills, and experienced common sense.  I have the sense that I now live in a world in which hand skills and common sense are less and less needed.  Well, electronic devices and computers have taken over.  By the same token, I seem to live in a world in which following one’s conscience and common sense of humanity is less and less the thing to do.  Especially by those who have influence and power they feel the need to defend.  Exercise of conscience and common sense appear to have been replaced by “following policy” or “following the rules”.  This seems to me quite true in the realm of politics — particularly the politics of the Right — as well as the corporate (financial, manufacturing, medical and scientific) sectors.   

You know, “carry out the Policy and don’t complicate things or waste time by being nice, empathetic, helpful, or a bleeding heart to people”.  

I probably sound like I’m overstating this, but that last part is very absent in today’s politics.  All you have to do is listen to any current official’s explanation of how the government has to separate illegals from their children.  And there’s Kelly Ann Conway’s famous “alternate facts” spin.  They mean it.  This is these functionaries’ job description.  It has to be, because of party policy.  And they’re paid to carry it out.

I wrote about this aspect of the plight of “illegals” in my last newsletter.  “It’s Disneyland for the kids”; someone actually said that . . . as the children live in cages without their families nearby, and “supervised” by people assigned to feed them, make sure none of them get too sick or try to escape.  The official line is: “well, we don’t want to do that, but it’s unavoidable; the main thing is that we have to keep the nation safe.”  Basically, it’s “we have no choice”.  I keep on hearing that on news programs.

I got an interesting email in response to my thoughts, from a friend; he wasn’t happy with the separating of families and children but, but he did make a point of letting me know that these people were here illegally and that we were merely sending them back to their own countries.

I don’t wish to start fights with people.  But it seems to me that this little conversation contains two entirely separate issues.  On the one hand, well, yes, they’re not here legally, and something ought to be done about that.  On the other hand — and I seem to be emphasizing this one in my own mind — how does that entitle anyone to mistreat them?  

I don’t need to tell you that the countries that many of the refugees are coming from (Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Syria, Iraq, some African countries, etc.) are DANGEROUS to live in, do I?  I guess that my thinking focuses on how untenable it is to live in those countries, as opposed to the fact that those people were born in those countries and should stay there if they don’t have the papers with which to immigrate here.  Would that life were that easy and hold on as I peel my blood pressure off the ceiling.  

As I’ve written before, my family and I are/were Hungarian immigrants.  We left Europe after the second world war, along with millions of people who had been displaced by that war, whose lives had been destroyed, and who wanted a new beginning.  In our case we left Hungary and went to Austria.  Then we moved to England.  Then we moved to Cuba.  Then we moved to Mexico.  No one wanted us. 

Is this sounding familiar? 

We did arrive here in the U.S. “legally” in 1959, after 14 years of wandering.  World War 2 was over as of 1945.  Plus, I think my parents knew we’d get in if we waited long enough (the U.S. was “the good guys” back in those days, much more than it is now).

I don’t think it works like that for the refugees I just mentioned, though.  Their nations are quite active areas of poverty, disease, and civil war.  And it is largely civil war that is supported by various world powers – us included.  That’s really different than the situation my parents and I faced.

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After World War II Cuba was one of two countries on this side of the Atlantic that accepted refugees without quota limitations.  The other was Ecuador.  So, those who didn’t want to rot away in some European internment camp flocked to Cuba or Ecuador, just to have a place to rest until they could figure out what to do with the rest of their lives.  Those became staging areas.  And from them expatriate Europeans moved on to Canada, the United States, Latin America, Palestine, Australia, back to Europe, or even Africa.  My family and I were part of that flow of humanity.  And we knew what it felt like to be strangers in a strange land, whom no one wanted and who would have been persecuted as “illegals” had we snuck in somewhere.  A lot like today’s Muslims and Mexicans.  These can be considered this administration’s M & Ms.   And they don’t have staging areas like Cuba and Ecuador to escape to.

Eventually, my family and I got green cards.  And here we are.

Here’s a question that I don’t have a good answer for.  An awful lot of Americans are from immigrant stock.  How can they feel this way about the next wave of people who are on that same track?  

What’s that?  What did you say?  Oh, we’re white and they’re not?  They lack the skills and education the U.S. needs?  Yeah, that explains it.  And they hate the U.S.?  What was I thinking?  And of course we did take in the Jews, the Italians, the Irish and the Scots of “the Celtic migration”, and other Europeans; these have been here a while and have by now become “American” – everything that the wanna-bes are not.  Pardon me for saying it but, from what I can see, that includes not being white.  Darker skinned people may or may not hate the U.S. . . . but what they all mainly want is to be able to feed their families and live in peace.  

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Just so.  As I try to put all these pieces together so that they make some sense to me I’m left with the conclusion that beauty, sympathy, charity, and kindness toward others seem to be quite useless in the minds of . . . well . . . Evangelicals, xenophobes, anti-gays, Tea Party people, America Firsters, and such.  They’re certainly useless and pointless in the struggles against the people who are now being labeled as bad and dangerous.  At least, that’s what it seems like from what I’m seeing and hearing.  

I probably sound very facetious in saying this, but I’m being straight.  It really doesn’t matter whether anyone thinks I’m saying that those are bad people or not; that’s beside the point.  I’m saying that the “nationalists” seem to think*** like that.  The qualities I named seem to not be useful to those people.  If they were useful or valued, well, they’d use them.  Would they not?

*** “Think” is such a silly-sounding word.  Try saying it to yourself a few times.  Doesn’t it sound like someone clanking a fork on some plumbing pipes?

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Aldous Huxley, in his book Brave New World, describes a futuristic society in which everyone kowtows to Big Brother; everyone participates in the daily five minutes’ hate that is directed against whoever big brother doesn’t like that week.  Once a week, everything stops for five minutes and people focus their hatred on someone or some group.

Behold Fox news and Rush Limbaugh.

Man, those scare me.  Hatred, hatred, hatred.  It’s like Germany before World War 2.  Can we be reassured by the fact that the current White House’s [Donald Trump’s] staff has already many times the turnover that Adolph Hitler’s staff did?  It’s like a tire that’s had sixty or seventy re-treads.  If anyone has any helpful insights into this, I’d be interested in hearing them.

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HERE’S SOME HUMOR ABOUT SOMETHING USELESS:

Paddy, the Irishman, walks into his favorite pub one afternoon.  Well, he’s not actually walking; he’s limping and dragging his leg.  

He’s covered in scrapes and black-and-blue marks.  His arm’s in a sling and he has a bandage wrapped around his head.

The barman looks at him in shock and says, “Paddy!  What happened to ye?”

Paddy replies, “Tim O’Malley gave me a beatin’ ”.

The barman, still shocked, asks, “what did he beat you with?”

Paddy replies, “he beat me with a shovel”.

“Well”, says the barman, “ ‘tis a fine beatin’ he gave ye, I can see.  But did ye no’ have anything in your hand you could defend yourself with?”

“Aye, I did”, says Paddy.  “Mary O’Malley’s breast.  ‘Twas a thing of rare beauty . . .  but I have to tell ye, honestly, t’was useless in a fight”.

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The Harvard-like Test

This is based upon typical graduation requirements at Harvard.  Try to finish within 5 minutes.  When you are done, count the number correct and see how you compare to others. OK, here we go…

1. Is there a 4th of July in England? Yes or no?

 2. How many birthdays does the average man have?

 3. Some months have 31 days. How many have 28?

 4. How many outs are there in an inning?

 5. Can a man in California marry his widow’s sister?

 6. Take the number 30, divide it by 1/2, and then add 10. What do you get?

 7. There are 3 apples and you take two away. How many apples are you left with?

 8. A doctor gives you three pills and tells you to take one every half an hour.  How long will the pills last?

 9. A farmer has 17 sheep. All but 9 of them die. How many sheep are left?

10. How many animals of each sex did Moses bring with him on the ark?

11. A butcher in the market is 5’10” tall. What does he weigh?

12. How many 2 cent stamps are there in a dozen?

13. What was the President’s name in 1960?

NO CHEATING

So how do you think you did?

(Answers below.)

TEST ANSWERS:

1. Is there a 4th of July in England? Yes or No?

     Yes. It comes right after the 3rd.

2. How many birthdays does the average man have?

     One (1). You can only be born once.  The others are birthday anniversaries.

3. Some months have 31 days. How many have 28?

     Twelve (12). All of them have at least 28 days.

4. How many outs are there in an inning? Six (6).

     Don’t forget there is a top and bottom to every inning.

5. Can a man in California marry his widow’s sister?

     No. He must be dead if it is his widow.

6. Take the number 30, divide it by 1/2, and then add 10. What do you get?

     Seventy (70); thirty (30) when divided by 1/2 is 60.

7. There are 3 apples and you take two away. How many apples are you left with?

     Two (2). YOU take two apples . . . therefore YOU have TWO apples.

8. A doctor gives you three pills and tells you to take one every half an hour.

     How long will the pills last?

     One hour. If you take the first pill at 1:00, the second at 1:30,

     and the third at 2:00, the pills have run out and only one hour has passed.

9. A farmer has 17 sheep. All but 9 of them die.

     How many sheep are left?

     Nine (9). Like I said, all BUT nine die.

10. How many animals of each sex did Moses have on the ark?

     None. Moses never had an ark.

11. A butcher in the market is 5′ 10 tall.  What does he weigh?

     Meat … that is self-explanatory.

12. How many 2 cent stamps are there in a dozen?

     Twelve (12). How many eggs are in a dozen? TWELVE … it’s a dozen.

13. What was the President’s name in 1960?

     George Bush. As far as I know, he hasn’t changed his name.

So, how did you do?

13 correct………GENIUS…you are good.

10-12 correct….ABOVE AVERAGE…but don’t let it go to your head.

7-9 correct……..AVERAGE…but who wants to be average?

4-6 correct……..SLOW…pay attention to the questions!

1-3 correct………IDIOT…what else can be said?

0 correct…………CONGRATULATIONS, you are a certified MORON

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HERE’S A RIDDLE FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT.  IF YOU’RE LESS THAN 12 YEARS OLD YOU’LL  HAVE FIGURED  IT OUT EASILY.  IF YOU’RE  30 OR OLDER,  IT MAY WELL STUMP  YOU:

A COWBOY RIDES INTO TOWN AT NOON ON FRIDAY.

TWO DAYS LATER, HE RIDES OUT OF TOWN, AT EXACTLY NOON, ON FRIDAY.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

FRIDAY IS THE NAME OF HIS HORSE.

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May 20, 2018

Hi again.  I want to repeat that you don’t have to read all this stuff.  Or, if you do, try to pace yourself.  And if you find this material interesting it’s perfectly all right with me if you share it, or part of it, with your friends. Or not.

I’ve been rambling on about maleness and femaleness.  I think that ideas of maleness and femaleness are as deeply hardwired into our language as they are hardwired into our minds.  As I suggested, it seems that the very word “environment” reeks of maleness.  At least, that’s how it seems to have started out; these days there’s a bit of an ecological spin to it.

Ditto “patriotism”, which word is much on the political forefront these days, if only in the negative.  The thing about both “patriotism” and “environment” is that they are such fundamental ideas that it never occurs to anyone to question them or see how they fit into the scheme of things.  Instead, people consider that the scheme of things fits into them: they are that basic.  Yet both are man-created concepts, and both of them seemingly trace back to maleness. “Patriotism” comes from the root-word “pater”, meaning “father”.  Patriotism = loyalty to the fatherland.  That root also gives us a whole slew of other words that begin with “pater” or “patr”. Many of them are pretty arcane, but we still use “patriot”, “patrician”, “patrimony”, “patriarchal”, and “paternity test” in everyday discourse.  We also “patronize” people.

In view of that root, what’s the deal with naming a woman “Patricia”?  Also, Athena was the Patron Goddess of Athens and the Patroness of the Arts.  Read up on Athena; those words are used.  But aren’t these all examples of those . . . uh . . . oxygenated moron things?

Given the discouragement that people feel with both the world and with government in general, I’d offer a gentler alternative to the forced, self-serving, ugly, and debauched version of Patriotism that people are rabidly claiming for themselves and/or hysterically accusing others of lacking or betraying.  Become a Matriot.  Believe in the gentler, healthier, and more nourishing principles.  “Matriot”, of course, comes from the word “mater”, or “mother”.

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton, the most hated female of our generation.  It’s true.  People HATE her.  I was listening to an interview with author Amy Chozick, who has just released a book about Ms. Clinton.  Ms. Chozick has put a lot of research and work into her book and ran plentifully into people’s attitude that, well, a woman might be a good president . . . but not that one.  Anyone but her!  A lot of people, women included, have a visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton.  Perhaps you are one such person.

Interestingly, and disturbingly, many people can give no reason for their hatred when asked; they just are adamant in their kneejerk revulsion of her.  Pointing out that such irrationally held opinions are not based in anything real, or documented, or even dispassionately looked at does not seem to help.  Fact-checking is lost on them.  Hillary is literally the most investigated and accused-of-malfeasance person of our generation and no one has ever found anything to charge her with nor found her to be culpable of except being stiff and unspontaneous. Well, Trump did once comment (on national television) that Hillary urinates, and he labeled her as being disgusting for doing so.  So there’s that.  The fact that Trump has such feelings about bathroom breaks is the surest proof that neither Melania nor Ivanka ever urinate.  He couldn’t stand it if they did.  But it’s very odd that he didn’t comment on those Russian prostitutes . . .

                             . . . well, you know . . . when in Moscow . . . arrgkh . . . .

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I’ve had some conversations of my own with people about these matters, and while I haven’t come away with any greater clarity I do sense that these are still hot topics a year after the election.  People are very frustrated with both Hillary and the Democratic establishment.  Interestingly, to me, almost all the conversations I’ve had were ones in which I was told whom to blame for the mishandlings of Hillary’s presidential campaign.  Or commenting on Hillary’s various failings as Secretary of State.  As though the whole thing was a massive tactical error on someone’s part . . . and without commenting on the incredible peccadillos of the opposition, the big picture, context, political history, Trump’s political track record of minus zero, etc.

Notice that I’m not saying this or that party is right or wrong; to even try to go there will inflame the situation further.  I’m commenting on how polarized the matter is.

That is soooo weird and troubling.

You might ask from where do the Republicans get their ideas that Hillary is    crooked, traitorous, dishonest, untrustworthy, repellent, and/or criminal?  In my next newsletter, a doctor with a flashlight will show us exactly where those ideas come from.

More later.

May 10, 2018

I learned a new word the other day: androcracy (pronounced an-DROK-ruh-see).  It means a system ruled by men.

Androcracy indeed; we’re all familiar with that.  “Andro” is the Greek root for “male” or “maleness”; the Latin root is “vir”, as in “virile”.  I’m under the impression that the Greeks also used “vir”, however, so I’m a bit confused on this point: Socrates’ wife Xantippe was famously a sharp-tongued scold and nag, and she was referred to as a “virago”.

Well, I suspect she had reason to be.  Her hubby seems to have been gone all the time, talking philosophy all day long with other men, and in general building up his resumé as a great thinker.  But not being a hubby. From everything I’ve ever read, he ignored his wife; he basically fled from her. He didn’t work as far as I know, and I don’t know what he could have brought home money-wise to make his wife happy (my guess is that he owned land and lived off his rents).  As far as I know there’s never been any mention of whether he had children, although he probably did. Somehow, I doubt that Xantippe started out as a virago.  Well, to the best of my knowledge domesticity was not a priority of any sort in Greek society; what was a priority was the polis, or community.  At least, it was so among the citizens.

Well, certainly the male citizens; slaves and foreigners (called “exenos” in Greek, from which we get the word “xenophobia”) didn’t count.  On top of that, in those days, women weren’t only not part of the social or political picture, but once they married they weren’t part of any picture at all — except maybe in mythology.  They became invisible. At least, that’s what historians have concluded from the remaining writings, folklore, statuary, stories, etc. about Greek daily culture. Greek daily culture, as far as any extant literature or records show, was very male-centered.  As a matter of fact men loved and adored each other in ways that would be viewed as very suspicious by some moderns.

There may have been heterosexual domestic life aplenty, but that’s the kind of thing that is so ordinary that no one ever puts any of it down on paper.  At some future time archaeologists may be trying to decipher the American sense of normal domesticity by referring to surviving historical documents like our Tabloids’ reports on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s marriage, novels by the likes of Ayn Rand and Norman Mailer, media fare such as Divorce Court and Judge Judy, and things that Donald Trump and Woody Allen said.

“Virility” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: “the period in life during which a person of the male sex is in his prime; mature or fully developed manhood or male vigor; power of procreation; male sexual potency; strength and vigor of action or thought”.  Hmmmmm. I guess women must not have any of those attributes, urges, or capacities. Not if the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t say so, and it doesn’t mention women at all as far as this kind of thing goes. So I guess there’s no doubt about it: virility is entirely a guy thing.  Interestingly, I haven’t run across any female version of this word. There’s “chastity”, which is a behavior solely attached to women who aren’t fully developed in their womanhood nor frisky in the procreative department. Its male counterpart is “celibacy”, which is sort of an anti-virility stance.  But there’s no female counterpart to “virility” that doesn’t border on sluttiness, at least that I know of. Women aren’t supposed to want to fuck.  Surely Stormy Daniels is an aberration.  Of course, perhaps she doesn’t want to be a sex object but merely does it because it pays the bills.  You know, like most people’s jobs.

I’m sure that the word “virgin” — which of course means a woman who has not yet had sexual relations — connects in some way to the “vir = maleness” trope.  I mean, they seem to have the same root. The Latin root for “virgin” is supposedly “virgo” or “virge”, but Virgo is also the name of a constellation; and that word is really not all that different from the Latin root for “male”.   Hmmmm. “Virgo/vir” might be something like the similarity between the words “male”/“(fe)male”?

Even Spanish has this odd similarity: “hombre” and “hembra”.  

How come they couldn’t come up with different words for genders that everybody since the beginning of time has agreed are not the same thing at all and perhaps not even from the same planet?

Maybe “virgin” was originally something like “vir + gen“, or “vir + gyne”, indicating that the male essence, when added to the primordial female essence, would start a process to bring some other essence into life and being.  “Gen” is, after all, the root word for beginnings, growth, creating things, procreation, starting things, giving life, and of course generating things.  

On another level (in medicine) we have mutagens, things that start mutations. Androgens are chemicals that stimulate maleness.  Organisms in which gender is not easily identified as being either male or female are androgynous (i.e., male/female).  And, more recently, there is the genome . . . the blueprint that everything starts from or begins with.

“Virtue” doesn’t exactly mean “manliness”, but it does mean something like it.  VIRTue, VIRTual, VIRTuous and other words in which there is a “T” after the “VIR” come from a different root: virtus, meaning excellence, position, or link.  The Oxford English Dictionary devotes almost an entire column to the many meanings and attributes of “virtue”, so it can mean lots of things.  Two of them, however, are “chastity or purity on the part of a woman” and “the display of manly qualities”. So I think we’re still in the same polarized male/female ballpark here.

Getting back to plain old vir: “triumvirate” means ” the rule by/of three men”.  Ergo, virology must be the study of men and maleness, no?  

Well, actually, no.  That word, and also virus and virulent, seem to descend from the root “virulentus”, which means “poison” or “poisonous”.  It’s very suspicious to me that the roots of “man” and “poison” are so similar. Once again, couldn’t they find some other word that actually sounded different???   

We’ve never had a triumgynate.  We’ve never even had a gynate of any sort.  We’ve only had gynecologists . . . who have virtually (there’s that pesky “T” again) all been men.  Go figure.  It does help to explain why the Greek Myths don’t mention the story of Gynocles and the Lion, or Androcles and the Lioness.  Still, everything comes from Mothers, so my mind wants to play with the word origin (origyn makes more sense to me than origen).

Well, mothers indeed: everything does come from them and out of them.  The root word for “mother” is mater . . . as in maternal, maternity, alma mater, matricide, matrimony, matrilineal, matrix, etc.  I don’t think the word “mattress” comes from that root, though. “Mater” gives us the word material.  “Material” is that out of which everything comes.  Everything is made out of, or comes out of, material.  Everything does really come out of the mother.  Likewise, the matrix also has mother-like characteristics.  It is that which holds and contains everything, and within which everything exists, and out from which things come.

Getting back to vir, I wonder if, somehow, the environment secretly refers to . . . all the men around us?  Or all the maleness around us?  How arrogant is that? Yet, there must be something to it.  In ancient Greece once a woman was married the world hardly ever saw her again.  Men did see prostitutes (the Greek word for which was “porne” by the way, from which we get pornography) out in the open – although certainly not in public places where The Men congregated to see and be seen, to be men of affairs, to discuss the matters of the world, do business, participate in the affairs of the community, vote, hang out and network, gossip and socialize, talk of poetry and war, hear the latest news, etc.  I’m pretty sure that the agora (the open public space in the community) was an all-male environment – as was, as I mentioned, most of the remaining literature and whatever historical record that has survived from those times and that culture.  (I suspect that Greek women were agoraphobic in the contemporary feminist meaning of the word.)

I mentioned that the focus of Greek socio-political thought was the polis, the community.  It was the adult Greek male’s responsibility to participate in community events (for a fuller account of this, read some Edith Hamilton or H.D.F. Kitto).  Polis gives us the words “political”, “policy”, and “metropolis”, and maybe even “polite” and “police”.  Those citizens who kept to themselves and did not participate in the affairs of the community were called idiots.  That’s where the word comes from.  Idiot comes from the root idio, which means by itself or from itself.  An idiot was someone who kept to themselves and didn’t participate in the community’s social, political, military, and economic affairs and culture.  It’s the same root as in the words idiopathic and idiosyncratic – which describe a condition or phenomenon that is its own, that arises out of itself, and is not connected to a prior cause.  Idiom, too; an idiom is some figure of speech or phrase that came about by itself by way of grammatical accident or convenience, but without being beholden or connected to, or deriving from, other words, roots, or common speech.  “Idiotic”, likewise, bespeaks of: “man, you’re on your own on that one; no one else is on board with it or is even going anywhere near it.  That’s all yours”.  

Finally, does it not seem to you that, in a way, matrix is just as apt a word as environment is?  They both refer to the . . . uh . . . vessel, membrane, or context that contains and holds everything — both literally and metaphorically.  Except that it is a female/feminine counterpart to “environment”.  The fact is that we exist in the Matrix of the world just as much as we exist in an Environment. Well, I think there must be some very good reason why the word patrix does not exist.  Anybody out there agree with me?  Do I see any raised hands? Hello?  Anybody there?

More later.

Speaking of the internal cues that signal “it’s all right; it’s done and you can stop now”, I am reminded once again to Donald Trump. He has a big mouth and constantly demonstrates that he lacks any sense of propriety or boundaries – even a sense that things might be precariously out of balance and dangerous. And he cannot stop himself; not now… or ever. He’s missing any sense of “it’s done; you can stop now” — which is, in everyday life, a person’s ordinary and necessary sense of closure and satisfaction in things large and small. Trump doesn’t have that self-regulating function.

Living life like that, carrying a nameless discomfort around day and night, year after year, without it ever reaching orgasm (release or closure), must be a living hell. It does go a long way toward explaining Trump’s chronic insomnia. And maybe his compulsive licentiousness. He lacks the capacity to feel satisfied, even with his own prior decisions— although they are decisions in only the most primitive and unreliable sense of that word. Clearly, when one gives such people power they become dangerous. And one wonders why that person’s supporters have allowed that to happen, and for what reasons.

On the other side of the divide, people who are technicians (as opposed to those who rely heavily on internal cues) use precisely those left-brain tools: they stop when they have met the explicit requirements of their job assignment or task. Are they “right” or “wrong” to do this? Neither. They’re just following a different brain-map and a more or less mechanical set of “assembly instructions”. If we were looking at two guitar makers operating out of these different mindsets then we could say that one would essentially be making a sculpture and would stop “when it was done”, while the other would be using the Numbered Instructions Model, and would stop when the instructions ended. If these individuals were painters then one would essentially be painting from a live model and the other would be painting by numbers — much like Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara had been doing when he was managing the Viet-Nam war; he’d been head of General Motors before then and his idea of running the war was to run it exactly like he’d run General Motors.

In the half-brain version of the previously given example of Engaging With An Enemy, the resolutions to such a task are unsatisfactory indeed. If you needed to engage with the enemy and had only a calculating brain, you’d very probably make up your mind that only one result was acceptable and go for it without flexibility, re-evaluation, or room for new input. Ecce Robert MacNamara – as well as General William Westmoreland and, later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. If you had a Trumplike brain you would be announcing a new goal for the challenge every week and the troops in the field would be spinning their wheels until at the next election. The ineptness shown in these examples is breathtaking.

If these are silly examples they are also tragic ones, but they go to something that is equally basic to a certain kind of guitar making. For instance, my students have had a few breakthrough experiences in exploring this in their own guitar work. They’d ask me for an opinion of a bridge or rosette that they’d made… and perhaps be surprised that I was sort of lukewarm in my reception of it. We’d then sit down and discuss what I was seeing vs. what they were seeing — and what that was all about.

Those sessions never fail to be interesting: these individuals will have never yet been asked to sit down and simply look at something— and I do mean simply look at the thing, and think about it exactly as it is in the moment in and of and by itself, and how its various parts fit together, and how it fits into its own greater context, and certainly without anyone telling them what they should think about it.

They may have read books on how-to, or heard lectures about aesthetics, history of design, or concern with market value or the luthier who made a particular guitar, or had been made aware of other people’s pre-judgments and aesthetics (and unconsciously making these individuals into points of reference for how they should think about their own work)… but they had never been asked to think for themselves and have a sense of what they themselves really thought. I ask that one just look at something and get a sense of what it really is, and what one likes about it or dislikes about it, as it is at that moment… without me suggesting to them what they should think… and then talk to me about it.

About the political thing: it is clear to me that in that realm, too, people have never been allowed nor encouraged… to… uh… simply… think… for… themselves. But that is a great way to get in touch with a sense of whether “it’s done, I can relax now” or not.

Anyway, who knew that guitar making and politics were so intimately connected?

I’ve been writing about the creative process, which is a significant part of my own work. Although I don’t have formal certification or credentials in this area, I consider myself to be knowledgeable in matters of creativity and the workings of the human brain; I may not be an “expert” but I am certainly a well informed amateur. Part of my education in these matters is that I notice things in the world around me; and I do a lot of writing. Writing helps me to sort out the things I’ve noticed and make sense of them. It helps me to discover things I didn’t know that I knew, or connections that were there to be made but that I hadn’t made yet. I think you might enjoy some of my mental meanderings as regards creativity.

We can start with the fact that I am a guitar maker. And, as a guitar maker, I want my instruments to “look right”.

“Well, of course,” one can say. “Who doesn’t? But what does that actually mean?” Well, it means one of two things. Either someone is completing a project whose parameters and details have been decided from the outset, or one is doing something personal and winging it on a creative impulse. In the first case the project is “done” when the recipe has been fulfilled; the thing “looks right” because that means the same thing as having followed the recipe. Alternately, when one is approaching a “creative” project in a mechanical way, and the project has to be delivered by a certain deadline, the place to stop is when the time allotted has expired; the project is done, by definition. In the second case there is no recipe or fixed deadline to rely on; the project is “completed” and the thing looks “right” when it “feels” right and one “knows” that nothing else remains to be done. Thus, the right look actually has two distinct meanings. To illustrate them one can imagine a project that entails engaging with an enemy. When the project is done in the army way it is completed when the enemy is dead. When the project is done in the creative or personal way, it may be completed when one has won the enemy over and befriended him, or negotiated a peace with him.

One interesting way to get a handle on these distinct aspects of “the right look” has been through studies of the brain – about which some interesting research has been done lately. Some of this research has focused on certain unfortunate individuals who had, for one medical reason or another, needed to have the entire right or left lobe of their brains surgically removed. This horrible circumstance presented a unique opportunity for studying such subjects after they returned to “normal post-surgical life”. Except that their lives were not “normal” any longer.

The Right half of the brain, the scientists have told us, is responsible for imagination, emotion, lateral thinking, creativity, intuitive connectivity, and capacity to appreciate beauty. The Left half is the critical mind: it carries out the functions of linear thinking, logic, assessment, planning, and calculation. And the surgical recoverees were observed to have new deficits in their mental lives that were, unsurprisingly, a direct function of which half of their brains they’d lost.

[EDITORIAL NOTE: the concept of strict division of right-brain/left-brain functions has taken some hits lately as the scientific community has published studies on the plasticity of the brain and how one half of it can learn to take over some of the functions of the other half. Still, if one really only has one half of a brain, I think we can be given a bit of slack in being categorical about how the brain works; if there is only one half a brain, there is no other half to share plasticity with. Also, even though having only half a brain is an extreme circumstance, it can be useful to push something to an extreme in order to make a point about, or to get insights into, that thing. Extreme doesn’t necessarily invalidate.]

Individuals who lost the emotional part of their brains were found to retain memory as well as verbal, computational, and mechanical skills. But they lost the ability to make personal on-the-spot decisions based in personal preference — such as we all make a thousand times a day without even stopping to think about it. Such people would be completely stymied, for example, in trying to figure out where to go for the weekend, or even which breakfast cereal they’d most enjoy eating — without making long lists of these choices’ various pros and cons. If Mr. Spock had lost his right brain just before the Klingons attacked the Enterprise then he’d have to make lists of every possible scenario involved in responding to the attack, and they would have taken over the Enterprise before he got halfway through with that list.

On the other hand, individuals who’d lost the left halves of their brains couldn’t plan their way out of a paper bag. They couldn’t hold thoughts together. Their lives were dominated by impulse. They’d lost the ability to engage in calculation and goal-oriented, systematic (first-this-then-that), exploratory (what if), critical (i.e., if-this-then-that type), or even ordinary sorting-this-out-from-that thinking. Most terribly, they had lost the capacity to feel personally invested in anything, in the moment – which has everything to do with getting the normal internal cues to any sense of “rightness” or “wrongness” of anything. These people became incapable of making assessments. Their “thinking” also lacked any sense of complexity, comparative significance, consequences, depth, flexibility, or carry-over. They really were stuck in the realm of impulse. And, needless to say, they were as incapable of meaningful personal attachments as they were unable to engage in disciplined behavior.

Ecce Donald Trump who, as I write this in 2017, gives every sign of being genuinely brain damaged in this way. He seems equally upset by being given a bad tweet by a nine-year-old as he is by a criticism from a head of state. He has no sense of proportion or carry-over; he doesn’t remember what he said last week; he spends time insisting that Mexico to pay for a wall instead of appointing the ambassadors, officials, and functionaries who would be making the government function. With Trump the dial is always set at the same number and the oven is always set at the same temperature regardless of what’s being baked. Please, re-read the previous paragraph.

An ability to sense the “rightness” or “wrongness” of things, just mentioned above, brings us to the doorstep of art and design — in which the dominant mindset is the striving to arrive at the internal cues that signal “it’s right and it’s done and I can stop now.” The striving can be endlessly modified by training and experience all life long; but the artist (or cook, athlete, gardener, fisherman, etc.) stops only when he knows it’s time to stop; short of that, he keeps on working, expressing, and seeking. There is otherwise no calculation, statistic, timer, rule book, syllabus, recipe, blueprint, or deadline to otherwise tell him that his task is complete. Those are all left-brain tools. The artist simply stops when he “knows” that it’s time to stop.