A Stoic Foreign Policy

Syria: What is in our control and what lies outside our control?

Discussing the tug of war between idealist foreign policy choices and realism the folks over at War on the Rocks hint on a policy truth that is just as true in our private lives, "the true path to immorality and catastrophe was found in mistaking the ought for the is." 

Anytime the world as we conceive it inside our head deviates from how it is in the flesh-space dimensions outside of our imagination, we are set up for disappointment at the least and tragedy at worse.  Some deviation is impossible to avoid, we do not have perfect knowledge.  Even the hardest nosed realist makes mistakes.  Yet when our view of the world is tinged by ideals, any set of ideas, we will develop a false view of the universe and, consequently, respond poorly.  The more ideals color our perception of the universe, the greater the error we are prone to inflict upon either ourselves or others.

The humility of stoicism is that the practitioner trains their mind to accept that which is outside of their control and to distinguish between our preferences and what is.  Perhaps we would prefer the world to be different but in in the very naming it as a preference we remove from the idea the power to delude us.  "Ought" is reserved for things within my control: my thoughts, my actions, my attitudes and even then what is ought is brought in line with the nature of the universe.  I ought to be an exemplar of what it means to be human and human.  I ought to execute my role well, whatever that role is.  I ought to be a model homo sapiens.     

It always escapes the confines of the lab.

The life excellently lived is a microscopic example of realist political action.  The thinking errors which lead an individual into a workplace tryst, thinking it good and will make them happy, are of the same kind that lead a nation's leaders to undertake an ill-advised war: consequences are obscured by misinformed emotion.  The stoic understands the good life to be one lived with courage, justice, prudence and temperance regardless of the circumstances or limits imposed by the world-as-it-is.  A realist foreign policy should be driven by the exact same motivations.  People are people.  Decisions are decisions.  Good thinking leads to good decisions regardless of the subject.  Bad thinking leads to bad decisions whether the damage is personal or commit the populace of an empire to ruin. 


Realists are the true ethicists and the most effective practitioners of compassion.  Ideology is always a simplified view of the world that forces an interpretation on every event in order to fit the worldview espoused. Regardless of the title, ideologues have decided, before the details of a problem are known, the proper course of action on the basis of the theory they hold to be true. 

Marcus Aurelius wrote, "The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing in so far as it stands ready against the accidental and the unforeseen, and is not apt to fall."  Ideology makes predictions as if life were a dance: predictable and rhythmic.  Children often think their lives will unfold in a predictable and benign manner.  Success require putting away childish things and "getting real" both in how we approach our personal lives and the public policy we advocate.

Book Review: The Epictetus Club

My wife has made amazing progress as a cook over our 18 years of marriage. Despite some wonderful meals in her repertoire, she still frequently falls into what I call the fast trap. When turning on the stove top on she reflexively spins the knob to high, and then attempt to ride the wave as she browns burger or sautés vegetables. Scorching is frequently the result and meals burned around the edges a regular occurrence. Dishes also become more onerous for what is essentially nothing more than a habit ingrained overtime.

The fast trap also springs when she does not think of the day’s meals as a daylong endeavor but approaches each meal reflexively in response to hunger. There are days when breakfast begins when a child clamors for it. Lunch preparation begins when she starts to get hungry at mid-day. Dinner is planned when I have begun to hunt through the cabinets, looking for sustenance. When meals are prepared for their speed and not necessarily their optimal taste or texture the family is fed but stress is acute and satisfaction is decreased.

There is a temptation to the fast trap whenever we discover a concept or idea that stuns us with its sense of promise. We want answers quickly. We want serenity now. We want five steps and two weeks to a better tomorrow. Some changes can be made quickly but long lasting change happen more slowly. We can grasp some ideas in a moment but others must sit and roast slowly in the crock pot of an unhurried mind if their full flavor is to emerge. Hope for serenity is smelled before it is tasted and the change in diet takes time to show itself in our overall health.

A few years ago I observed that my monotheism was dying. My moments of unbelief were growing longer and more certain and periods of faith shorter and presented as emotional responses rather than conviction. Disoriented I began to search for something solid about which to orient myself. In some passage of some book somewhere I came across a reference to Epictetus, a stoic philosopher of the second century of the Common Era. As I read his work I began to find hope for an anchored and disciplined life after the death of my god.

By the happenstance of history we have a remarkable corpus of Epictetus’ teachings available to us and I consumed them quickly. Some of it I understood immediately it was easily incorporated into my life. Other bits rattled around in my brain and with sometime I was able to sort them out. The meaning, let alone relevance, of other passages still eluded me. I read college textbooks about the teachings of Epictetus. I began to follow some blogs about contemporary stoic practice. I worked through other ancient and modern authors. I re-read the teachings of Epictetus in another translation thinking perhaps this would help make things clearer. I adopted some stoic practices myself but on the whole I was caught in my own kind of “fast trap.” I thought by turning the heat up higher, reading more words about stoicism, reading more sophisticated analysis of the ancient philosophical schools, that I could make my brain “cook faster” and see the results of a stoic education, if not immediately than quickly, but I was starting to feel a little crisp along the edges.

Reading The Epictetus Club by Jeff Traylor offers a taste of stoicism slowly cooked by an inmate with few books and an excess of time. Concepts that seem largely theoretical are made concrete through clear examples of life leading to and then within a state prison. The genesis of these stories and the desire to escape them are universal to being human: spousal conflict, desire to be a good parent, money problems, seeking a purposeful life, the temptation of shady business practices, worry of what the future holds, the instinct to avoid consequences for our own rule breaking, anger, yearning for respect, and the fear of death. They apply to us all as the author details as he applies the same questions the prisoners face to his own life as a newly minted college graduate beginning a career. The story is told in such a way that applying them to any setting or stage of life is a straightforward task.

Interspersed within compelling narrative the book is organized around ten central lessons taught by inmate “Zeno” that confront basic thinking errors human beings make and offers alternatives to replace them. Complete with exercises and illustrations, the book breaks down Epictetus’ teaching into easily understood bite-sized pieces. It leaves the reader with a slow cook recipie for "what I can work on next" which serves as an outlet other than my fast cooking habit of quickly moving on to another book.  If the book itself is not practical enough, it contains resources for an Epictetus Club program that can be used as a template for stoic practice.  It is not a source of go-to information about the philosopher or the first century but it is an accessible and practical outline of stoic practice. 

Power to the People

Because empowering people outside the bounds of central government control is dangerous.

He speaks of liberty, freedom and helping society’s marginalised. His dedication to civil liberties has brought him a loyal band of followers. Now Cody Wilson, scourge of the campaign to control the proliferation of arms, is coming to London with a new mission: to challenge the global financial system.  Mr Wilson, 25 – named by Wired magazine as one of the world’s 15 most dangerous people after he created a gun that can be downloaded and built with a 3D printer – is promoting a crypto-currency that would operate outside of government control.

The Independent

Tomorrow is the Big 4-0

Looking forward to the next forty, should I get them, I have just one wish: a face like Willie's.

"But I just want to be happy!"

I shudder a little inside when I hear anyone over the age of 12 using the word "happy."  In most cases I am pretty sure they do not know what they mean when they use the word.  A better Socratic would ask them about it.  Maybe I'll get there someday.  I am as confident as I am about anything, however, that many use the word happy to describe a "steady state" to be achieved and held and when they do so they are speaking of a fantasy: there are no steady states.  One would be just as well off as to own a trained unicorn or to retain title on a rainbow than achieve happiness as the concept is commonly employed.  In recent years I've taken up the use of the word "joy" and its cognates as a form of passive resistance to this trend.

There are those, however, attempting to redeem the term and return it to useful employment and there is an audience for what they are selling.  Stoicism is a practice of living that can be undertaken within nearly any other philosophical, cultural, or religious paradigm.  It seeks to supplant rival conceptions of what it means to live happily (or joyfully).  It rejects the hedonisms of any age, whether it be the hedonism of youth which seeks happiness in experiences, the hedonism of middle age in the collection of stuff, or the hedonism of the old which is reverence.     Likewise it rejects the conception of happiness which says, "Just go along to get along" a passive avoidance of actually living life in the hope of avoiding hassles, and settling for that small accomplishment as a happiness.

What is stoicism then?  In short it is a discipline of mind that only seeks what is within one's own control.  It is a lifelong discipline as our lives are in constant flux and not only is our environment changing but so too is our brain.  This is no small task but neither is it overwhelmingly difficult.  It will neither come with reading merely one book or a "graphic novel" but neither is there is a need to lock one's self up in a monastic's cell for a decade of chanting and meditation.  Stoicism overlaps greatly with a modern approach to psychotherapy: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  Likewise it can be thought of as a kind of Western Buddhism, while Christianity might be said to have drank stoicism's milkshake, stoicism never really went away.   If you already accept that the elusive nature of happiness might have even a small part to do with what bounces around in your own head rather than being the full and total responsibility of your circumstances, stoicism/CBT might be helpful in gaining ground on your own pursuit of happiness.

As for what a daily practice of stoicism is or might look like, I'll describe my personal practices in a later post but the disciplines of mind I seek are standard.  For a beginners approach to stoic practice, no one is doing more work helping women and men get started then Don Robertson and I'd defer to his suggested starting point with only a single recommendation: the use of writing a few short sentences every morning and evening to make the practice a little more concrete and a little less mental.  More of us remember to brush our teeth just before bed than remember to be grateful for the day for the very reason that one is concrete and the other is not.  If you want a more intense introduction, by all means check out the Live like a Stoic Week 2013 Handbook.

270 Words

On this, the 150th Anniversary of the Gettysburg address we remember those husbands and sons who did not die in vain.  My grandfather tells me about his grandfather, who fought and returned home intact, at least physically intact, from that war.  We easily forget with our Facebook updates and Obamacare failures but these words remind us of the carnage that took place during those years and the relative magnanimity that followed the south's defeat, magnanimity born of the knowledge that we were all still, or rather again, one nation.  When we have difficulty giving grace to our political opponents who do no more than insult our own narrow conception of good sense, we demonstrate our own ignorance, shortsightedness, and vainglorious pride.

You don't have to say much to mean much.  It doesn't take much to forgive much.  Everything hinges on remembering, despite our differences, we are all Americans and "jaw, jaw is better than war, war."

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Milleniels

They'll be alright.  Nothing a little time under pressure can't fix.

Thursday is for Politics

The big policy disagreement in this household the last year has been how to read the "Common Core" standards.  This is the first critique that strikes me as having real substance.

Core Meltdown Coming

I’ve stayed mostly out of the Common Core nonsense. The objections are mostly fuss about federal control, teacher training, curriculum mandates, and the constructivist nature of the standards. Yes, mostly. But so what? Here’s the only important thing you need to know about Common Core standards: they’re ridiculously, impossibly difficult.

I will focus here on math, but I’m an English teacher too, and could write an equivalent screed for that topic.

I’m going to make assertions that, I believe, would be supported by any high school math teacher who works with students outside the top 30%, give or take.

Two to three years is required just to properly understand and apply proportional thinking–ratios and percentages. That’s leaving off the good chunk of the population that probably can’t ever truly understand it in non-concrete situations. Proportional thinking is a monster. That’s after two to three years spent genuinely understanding fraction operations. Then, maybe, they could get around to understanding the first semester of first year algebra–linear equations (slopes, more proportional thinking), isolating variables, systems, exponent laws, radicals—in a year or so.

In other words, we could use K-5 to give kids a good understanding in two things: fractions and integer operations. Put measurement and other nonsense into science (or skip it entirely, but then remember the one subject I don’t teach). Middle school should be devoted to proportional thinking, which will introduce them to variables and simple isolation procedures. Then expand what is currently first semester algebra over a year.

A co-worker was fired for a broach of public morality that our employer thought disregarded our "corporate values," which is to say the values of the institutions aristocracy.  In a free nation, with a freedom of association, I respect the rights of my employer to fire my friend, even as I am more in agreement with my friend than the aristocrats who fired him.  That right of free association, however, extends to all institutions and liberty does not mean that certain groups are afforded special protection as a political favor to tie up their votes.

ENDA is a bad idea

When Washington first passed employment discrimination laws, Congress saw that anti-black discrimination was so widespread, so destructive and so intractable that the government was compelled to impose a remedy on private business. The question today is whether another intervention is warranted — or will it do more harm than good.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed the Senate on Nov. 7 with supporters promising to end anti-gay discrimination in the workplace. The law may or may not do that — but it will certainly ban legitimate practices by private employers. Federal laws, after all, are not precision-guided weapons. They are blunt and they always inflict collateral damage.

If the Washington Examiner refused to hire a reporter simply because the reporter was gay, that would be wrong. But one can imagine cases in which an employer might justly place on employees conditions that are tied up with sexuality or gender identity.

The problem with the article is the psychological need to bring global warming into the story and emphasize as fact what is not yet understood: the many ways beyond luminosity that the sun impacts earth's climate.

Strange Doings on the Sun

Something is up with the sun.
Scientists say that solar activity is stranger than in a century or more, with the sun producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected and its magnetic poles oddly out of sync.
The sun generates immense magnetic fields as it spins. Sunspots—often broader in diameter than Earth—mark areas of intense magnetic force that brew disruptive solar storms. These storms may abruptly lash their charged particles across millions of miles of space toward Earth, where they can short-circuit satellites, smother cellular signals or damage electrical systems.
Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is "a total punk," said Jonathan Cirtain, who works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as project scientist for the Japanese satellite Hinode, which maps solar magnetic fields.

Truckin' Buddy

Stupid Smokestack

A Free People

will not be controlled.  It is best engage in the positive work of building a society where legislation is limited to those areas where there is broad consensus.  If you can build a 1911 with a 3D printer, you're not far away from printing a fully automatic AR-15.  Either we can live in a tolerant nation where the harmless minority is allowed to live as it wills or we can construct a police state to enforce meddlesome legislation which no one really cares about.  A diverse society which is also an armed society is a libertarian society.

Armistice Day 2013

We remember and honor the sacrifice of war's veterans, regardless of what we now think of the war the in which they served.  We acknowledge those who did not return whether they volunteered or were drafted, whether they believed in what they were doing or were just looking to come back home.  We acknowledge that war is, in the course of human events, necessary if a people are to remain free but that the cost is always greater than the politicos promise "to be home by Christmas."  We remember, but we do not celebrate.  War is always a tragedy, especially to those who are most intimately impacted by it.

We reserve the right, however, to curse throughout eternity those leaders who through ignorance, neglect, deception, or any combination of the three lead live to a ripe old age after leading us into senseless wars which serves only their own egos, delusions, or narcissism.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

A Year's Potatoes

Downs the road a ways is a potato warehouse and sorting facility.  If you pick them up there, they are $0.20 a pound.  We make use of a root cellar to buy in season and in bulk.  I got three growing kids and the dimes add up.

Our house did not have a root cellar when we bought it but it had the perfect spot for one and an afternoon and fifty dollars was all I needed to build one.  I know an old man in town who sells food grade barrels, most of them originally held Tabasco sauce, saw off the top and some scrap plywood for a lid, and you are set.  The spuds last more than a year in storage and we have one less thing to pick up at the grocery store.

400# in the cellar.

The last of last year's potatoes, still firm and tasty.

They come in the house about 20# at a time.

Statistics

Half a million miles over ten years in my own vehicle without a cracked windshield.  Thirty miles over forty minutes in a borrowed pickup and the universe gives me this gift.

Winter

Defending the Banjo

I am not a real big fan of Rascal Flats or contemporary country in general but any friend of the banjo is a friend of mine.

Wednesday Hootenany

The thing about turning 40 this year, my life is about halfway between Luke Duke and Uncle Jesse Duke.

Neither one had as much cool in their whole body as Roy Orbison had in his pinkie toe.  Let's relax, it's Wednesday.

Every where is Margarita-ville on a Friday

I wonder if my dad know about the "extra verse" that was cut out of the single?

Your Last Stand? It's only Wednesday.

Open country is just a few days ahead.

It's Friday, Run Little Rabbit...

Run, Run,

As you will see, there is nothing new under the sun, even the hanging down pants fashion; though I don't think Stringbean had the fashion impact we've seen the last decade.  I'm not sure what is up with the eyebrows.

Wednesday, Take it as it Comes

even if you're in a place where you gotta eat a little more possum.

A little Jerry Jeff Walker for your Wednesday.

Women Like to Slow Dance

It's Friday, have a slow dance with someone you love or, if that isn't possible, your spouse.  Once you convince her that you're not about to confess to something terrible, like investing in a penny stock or buying new draperies in a trout print, her demeanor will start to soften and you will start collecting points for the moment you do screw up.

Statistician's Blues

Beware true believers, or anyone else for that matter, bearing statistics.

The End of Summer

It is my end of summer of ritual. Some people take a vacation; others take the family to the State Fair, but I enroll for my annual training. It is a day when those of us at the bottom gather for a story. Some are ready to suspend disbelief, others of us lean toward literary criticism. In reality, however, it is little more than a compulsory day with someone else's knee is in my back that they may pursue the approval of another; one whose disinterest could not be more self-evident.

"Potato Skins"

I know that it isn't health food but could someone explain to me how it is even possible that this solid food could have oil listed as the primary ingredient?  Whatever the answer, there ain't that much potato in these "potato skins."

Hank Williams said it Best

Every time this songs comes up my oldest reminds me how much he likes it.  Whatever the future holds, I'm optimistic that the kid and I will have some foundation to understand one another.

Have a good weekend.  Be well.

Stoicism in verse

Of all the things that can happen to you, "it's all right."

Of all the things you can do, do right.

I know evil is hard to define but

that doesn't mean we should omit it from the dictionary altogether.



Banjo Friday: Steve Martin

There is a light at the end of that there tunnel.  Don't let that smokin' fiddle fool ya,' that ain't no train coming.  It is just the weekend.

Ten minutes of the Steep Mountain Rangers and Steve Martin joy.

Another Roy Clark Wednesday

No I won't feature him every Wednesday, but I could.  The week is half over.

Monogamy is Hard, say Researchers

No, I suppose monogamy is not natural but that argument has been made in one form or another since the beginning of Western Civilization.  Evolutionary research is drawing the question into the limelight once again and, with the weakening Judeo-Christian tradition of the contemporary West, the value of monogamy is apt to be treated with degree of critique unseen since the rise of the church in the third century AD.  At root of the renewed interest in various forms of polygamy, including serial monogamy, lies a confusion between behavior that is natural and that which is beneficial.

The Guardian reporting on the evolutionary basis of monogamy is typical.

The mystery of monogamy: scientists claim to have the answer

Next, they used simulated evolution from 75m years ago to modern day. As the simulation ran, it showed how monogamy rose and fell for different species. Having run the program millions of times, they found that the evolution of monogamy in primates was preceded by one thing only: infanticide by males.

"You do not get monogamy unless you already have infanticide, and you do not get a switch to paternal care if you don't already have monogamy," said Opie, in research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Opie says the findings are linked to increases in brain size. In primates, brain size expanded as social groups grew larger, which meant that mothers were infertile for longer and more males were close by. For males, infanticide was a strategy to make females fertile again.

"Monogamy is only one strategy for dealing with infanticide. But it's not the only one," said Opie. "Chimps mate with all the males in their group to confuse paternity so males won't attack. But in others, humans included, males stick with females to protect them." Once a species becomes monogamous, paternal care and other behaviours evolve that help offspring to thrive, he said.

  A little more straight forward is this article in Slate where the authors claim we just don't know why homo sapiens are, at best, monogamou-ish.

Seeing as we're neither one thing nor the other, scientists have been left to speculate on how our ancestors might have done their thing. Were they like gorillas, where most males suffered while one dude enjoyed the chance to spread his seed? Or more like chimpanzees—sleeping around, with males competing for multiple partners? Or is there another possibility, like the one championed by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá in their best-selling and soundly criticized paean to free love, Sex at Dawn? According to that book's authors, our ancestors did as bonobos do: They had rampant sex without much bickering.
Such discussions tend to dead-end quickly, though, since we just don't know for sure. Our most recent relatives in common with these other primates lived about 6 million years ago. (I suppose if bonobos could be anthropologists, one of them might write a book on whether bonobo sexuality evolved from something humanlike.) "What this really is," says Barash, "is a Rorschach test for the people asking the question."

Scientists and other technicians excel when offering theories about how monogamy, or anything else for that matter, came about but the question remains unasked, "How is the development significant?"  Take for example the large frontal lobe of homo sapiens.  It developed to allow greater group size, tool making and a variety of other practical reasons related to survival in the African savanna.  Once we began walking the earth with this frontal lobe, however, we found many other uses for it beyond its initial design: philosophy, drama, domesticating livestock, building the Hoover Dam,  going to the moon, and so on and so forth.  There is a difference between cause and consequence, between the origin of something and its value.  Unintended consequences are as likely to manifest as a net positive as a negative. 

Zeus and Hera: trouble always followed the "ish" in monogam-ish.

Still our frontal lobe is not overly efficient.  Monogamy is a long-term commitment so there are good odds that we will all be tempted to reason, at one time or another that if monogamy is an adaptation rather than a natural state, then perhaps I'd be happier if I indulged the (natural) human desire to wander.  As I suggested earlier in the week, the immediate desire for happiness is frequently in conflict with the more long-term commitment to meaning.  It took one day for the Guardian to follow up with another article, So monogamy works for some animals. Doesn't mean it's 'natural' for us.  The author concludes,

We need to get beyond our cultural obsession with what is "natural" when it comes to human relationships, and the common assumption that this equates to what is "normal" and also to what is "good". Instead we should turn our attention to the diversity of ways in which humans connect, and ask ethical questions about how we relate to each other in a world of ever-changing relationship rules.

Setting aside the dualism assumed by the author (everything we experience in a relationship is routed through our brain which, last time I checked, is part of nature and therefore natural), lets assume her instinct is correct and monogamy is a construct of relative value.  Does a stoic understanding of the human experience have anything to add to this assessment of sex, commitment, and the value of monogamy?  Of course it is natural for males and females alike to seek to spread their genetic bets as widely as possible, but regardless of it adaptive origins, does monogamy provide a private or public good?

If we begin with the assumption that polyamorous or monagamous-ish relationships are the more natural state of human affairs, we have not yet demonstrated that polyamory is good for either the individual or society.  Our lives are awash in unnatural practices which we would loath to surrender: vaccinations, electric lights, agriculture, centralized national government, coffee shipped thousands of miles to my west Wisconsin kitchen, and pretty much everything else that fills our days.  They are not natural.  Only eating what I can kill and the wife could gather would be natural but, in our case at least, would result in starvation.  Our cultural advancements have their critics but without them, however, the human population would crash and modern civilization would cease.  A more natural state is not always to be preferred.  As Thomas Hobbes observed, life in a state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  We seem to value society, wealth, ease, civility and length of years.  Each of which is a rather recent innovation in evolutionary terms.

There are academic paper or, if you are in a hurry, this shorter synopsis which give details about the benefits of monogamy.  At least in a state of civilization there would seem to be great benefits to monogamy, or at least monogam-ishness.   Within a stoic frame of reference, however, an individual commitment to monogamy contributes to each person's fulfillment, not because of the power of romantic love or any inherent joy of matrimony.  The practical benefits would, I suggest, teach us that the practice tells us something about the nature of the universe.  If a cell phone works, it's workings are congruent with the laws of physics.  If a relationship type "works" it is also congruent with the nature of human thriving.  How do we connect the experience of monogamy with traditional stoic values?

Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates, empties a chamber pot on his head.

1. Monogamy as Temperance:
   Searching after a silver bullet is a hallmark of human behavior whether in investment or relationships.  The grass appears to be greener on the other side so there is an impulse to sell our stocks when they are low, and buy them when they are high, to leave one job thinking another will be more satisfying, to add sexual partner to another thinking that in the endorphin high of eros we will find something that we were earlier missing.  Embracing monogamy is a practice that trains us for every other area of our lives.  The hunger of dissatisfaction is natural but but its inability to be satisfied causes it to become destructive after certain needs are met.  The cure for animal desire is human assessment.  The new is never as good as we imagine.  Jumping from one bed to another undermines joy as quickly as jumping from one stock to another undermines a retirement fund.  Yes, like a bad stock, there is a time to leave a relationship but the decision is best made not with primal emotions but human rationale.  Monogamy is, in brief, an exercise in temperance as applied to sexual relationships.  Temperance allows us to enjoy a thing while maintaining perspective on the larger scope of life.  
2. Monogamy is training for Freedom:
   Monogamy requires fidelity and fidelity is practice in the restraint of passions.  In the midst of options keeping your word to a spouse as both of you both age and change is a practice in interpersonal fidelity that has applications in every other relationship.  Passions, whether they be love, hate, greed, or any other undermine our readiness to keep faith to others or, more importantly, with ourselves.  If our passions can dominate us than we are not free but rather under a yoke to our primitive brain, a slave to the apes from which we emerged.  If we are not free to keep faith with ourselves, that is with our conscience, than we are miserable slaves indeed and the ex-spouse deserves the house, car, and the dog; perhaps, then, we'll at least learn something.
3. Monogamy breeds Justice:Monogamy breeds justice as the social benefits of the practice ripple through society (see the study on social benefits above) but on a personal level we are trained to listen to our spouses express their own needs and emotions even when they contradict the needs and emotions we would project upon them.  Having been trained to listen and correct our misconceptions we are better attuned to listen to every other manifestation of the universe that presents itself.  Justice is the faithful exercise of right relationship.  Monogamy is a graduate education in relationship and as we learn to get monogamy right we garner the skills to treat every other thing, our boss, the neighbor's dog, the soil beneath our feet, as they deserve rather than as we desire. 

Monogamy is hard but if it were easy it would be of less personal value as a training for other areas of life.  It would not be totally unfair, if not completely accurate, to describe it as a social construct, but  it is a well entrenched construct with tangible social benefits.  A culture that is monogamous-ish will out perform one that is not.  Evolution, at least in humans living in sophisticated cultures, favors monogamy.  Though monogamy is not yet instinctual, we are capable of monogamy and the adaptation provides social goods and personal benefits for those who would embrace it.  It is one manifestation of the virtues and can be an aspect of the well-lived life.

The value culture places on monogamy is, with the retreat of Judah's god and his commandments, uncertain.  Our animal impulses would love to be free of its constraints, offering promises of leisurely pleasure that does not restrain our future freedom.  That future freedom from commitment comes at the cost of the opportunity to be trained in personal restraint which delivers the abiding joy found in human freedom from the passions.  Whatever its future prospects monogamy was and is of personal benefit and a natural consequence of valuing the ancient virtues of justice, temperance, prudence, and, as anyone who has had to tell a spouse about that thing they spent the grocery money on can attest, courage.  The contemporary stoic would continue benefit from sitting for monogamy's lessons.

Libertarian Campaign Song

I don't know if it would stir the masses like "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow" but I might be willing to knock on a few doors.

Relax, It's Banjo Friday!

Is it still a pre-adolescent crush if at age forty I still have a thing for Barbara Mandrell?

Old Rattler

Bogus Therapy Dogs

It only takes a couple clicks of the mouse to buy a patch that says "therapy dog," purchasing a pass for your dog to enter a wide variety of businesses that forbid any other dog.  I'm not the least bit surprised to learn that this is going on, I'd thought of it myself and entertained the idea from time to time.  I'm not saying it is right, only that it doesn't take a genius to see a way to exploit a system that both asks people to not do something they believe they have a right to do, in this case take their dog where ever they go, and is built on trust.

New Yorkers use bogus 'therapy dog' tags to take Fido everywhere

Phony “service dog” tags have become common among city pooch owners, who use them for everything from taking Fido bar-hopping to pick up chicks to getting discounts on the Hamptons Jitney.
Dog owners can easily snap up bogus tags, vests, patches and certificates on the Internet, circumventing the city Health Department and undermining federal regulations designed to aid the disabled.
“I was sick of tying up my dog outside,” said Brett David, 33, a restaurateur whose tiny pooch, Napoleon, wore an unofficial “therapy dog” patch during a visit to Whole Foods on Houston Street.

If this turns out to be a problem that needs to be solved (some problems are preferable to the solution), there are two possible ways forward.

1. End the special treatment of therapy animals by freeing businesses to decide whether or not to allow animals onto their premises.  If some want to cater to dog-lovers, or any other animal owners for that matter, allow them to do so, as long as they can still pass any applicable public health or safety regulations.
2. Require the owners of therapy dogs to carry their papers at all times and instantly ask any owner who cannot produce verification to leave the business in question.  Likewise, there could be a fine involved for misrepresentation of your pooch as a therapy animal.  

I confess a preference for informal policing and market solutions to the heavy hand of the state.  My first instinct is to prefer the first option though I am well aware of some of the problems that might arise.  My terrier doesn't care much for children and my heart jumps every time I see a toddler make a dash for "the puppy."  It definitely impacts where I decide to take him but I'm not confident all dog owners would use the same discretion.  I am not confident that even with the best discretion available that all problems would be avoided.  I know they wouldn't and our flawed expectation that Fido to act like a little person would result in trouble, even for responsible dog owners.  So if we are going to allow special treatment for therapy dogs, perhaps we do need insist on sanctions for those who would break public trust by passing their dog friend off as a therapy animal.

There is one thing that I don't quite understand: when using a therapy dog to pick up chicks do the girls being chatted up not care that you're a guy who needs a therapy dog or do they not care that you're a guy who would violate the public trust by passing your dog off as a therapy dog?  If the former, good for them.  If the latter, they are getting the quality of man they deserve. 

The Guitar Wizard

A little Odd Couple instrumental to commemorate the middle of the work week.

Bitchy/Asshole Resting Face

Don't judge me. 

Musket has the watch



Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle

Stringbean and Estelle died too young but they died better than most.  Everyone must die.  Not everyone lives refusing to be a victim.

The Trek from Meaning to Happiness

I do not know what most people mean when they use the word happy.  I am happy that my dog is learning to go into a down/stay when we are visiting new places but can a person have a happy year or a happy life?  What would that mean?  You can have a year that is filled with joy, but I would suggest that is more an issue of learning to notice the joy around you than a description of exterior accomplishment.  Marriages can be fulfilling and perhaps that is what we mean by having a happy one.  I understand the idea of the "happy home" but these are both expressions of having put work into relationships and sometimes foregoing short-term happiness for long-term meaning.

I suspect that either we do not know what we want when we speak of a desire to be "happy." Either that or we do have an idea and there is a conflict between the hedonism of our desire and the altruism of what we think we ought to desire.  Unwilling to address the conflict, we speak and think in the terms of "happiness," as something the universe will grant it to us because we are good or deserve it.  The universe, however, cares not a whit about your next breath, let alone your happiness in doing so.  Meaning, however, is something we can pursue, if we are willing to sacrifice in service of others.

Living in service of a meaning, however, will entail opportunity costs.  There will be things you can not do,

You keep on using that word.

vacations you cannot take, relationships you cannot pursue, things you cannot buy, and time spent in mundane tedium that makes the dynamic possible, that must be surrendered in service to the meaning you embrace.  Insofar as your internal state of happiness, it matters little the content of the meaning you serve.  Though if you are going to dedicate yourself to something or someones, I would recommend taking a dispassionate look at the situation.  Will you be content to die knowing you poured yourself into this meaning?  If so, I suspect you will find a path that at least will raise the possibility of happiness.

The mainstream is starting to take notice of this conflict in popular culture.  In the Alantic we read this description of what researchers found when they began to ask what people mean by happiness,

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors of the study wrote. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need.” While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me, "Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy.”

My take is that we evolved a tribal species yet Western culture in particular has developed in a highly individualistic manner.  Are tribe is the people around us on an everyday basis. People with whom we identify and whom we could find ourselves serving with little regard for the opportunity cost.  For some people this would be their family or co-workers, others will look to a cause like animal protection, battered women or gay rights, others will find it in a hobby like beekeeping or hunting groups like Ducks Unlimited.  The name of your tribe(s) is unimportant, only that it be worthy of the meaning you give it and the service you offer.

In service we find significance and in significance we find a happy life.

Meaning can result in happiness if you measure the giving over a long period of time.  Serving others, serving a tribe, building something whether it be a community, an organization, a farm, or a monument can result in plenty of "unhappy" days, months, or even years but the happiness arises from having done something you find worthwhile, not necessarily in the day to day doing itself which might be arduous.  Time is the factor we tend to neglect.  Are you chasing after the ever changing day to day happiness "hit" or are you living a life that, over time, will grant the deeper, heavier, sustaining happiness of having done something.worthwhile.

The Pups make a Catch

OK, so I helped them out a little.

Religious Shift to Orthopraxy

Damian Thompson over at the Telegraph posits an interesting, if speculative, theory, the world's religions are de-emphasizing orthodoxy (right belief) for a renewed focus on orthopraxy (right behavior).  This is neither good nor bad, just a change of discussion.  Orthopraxy is just as apt for abuse as orthodoxy, and perhaps more so since it is easier to hide your divergent beliefs than aberrations of behavior. It would also seem to suggest a confession of defeat on the part of the faithful.  We can not win a philosophical debate, therefore we will not engage in one.

The Amish, Hasidic Jews and Salafist Muslims are all good at holding on to their flocks. These three groups have different attitudes to conversion – almost no one joins the Amish, a few secular Jews become Hasidic, lots of Muslims embrace strict observance – but their emphasis on behaviour rather than belief gives them a certain robustness in a sceptical 21stcentury. Mainstream Christianity, in contrast, still requires adherents to believe “six impossible things before breakfast”, to quote Lewis Carroll – and then to debate them earnestly with others.The Amish show that you can spend most of your time living the Gospel rather than thinking about it. (An example: when a gunman killed six Amish girls in 2006, their parents shocked the media by promptly forgiving him.) Perhaps there’s a hint of this in Pope Francis’s sermons, which focus on deeds rather than doctrine. At any rate, it’s a pleasing thought that the visitors gawping at the beardies in their buggies may, to some extent, be looking at the future of Christianity.

Musket digs Sculpture

The bride had a biennial family reunion yesterday.  The kids had friends their own age and playground equipment.  The bride had cousins and second cousins and fifth cousins twice removed with which to socialize.  Since the absence of college students had the place looking like a ghost town, the over-sized terrier and I decided to take a walk in Eau Claire.

The big disappointment was that none of the bars had patio furniture out, so I had to forego any adult refreshment.  The good news was that Eau Claire has added some sculpture to its streets.  Some of it wasn't bad.  Some of that was even photogenic.  We started and ended our walk in Carson Park, home of rocks, trees, fishing holes and small town baseball.