2 Rantz

1. On the eggshells of youth

I’m a mass, or mess of contradictions and I know this. Hypocrisy, it could be said, is my watchword, so I apologize if this comes off to some people as a “do as I say” kind of rant. The fact is, I do try to live the life and alk all the alks, so give me the benefit of some doubt on this one.

We try too hard not to offend. Judaism has a strong theme of avoiding embarrassing people and we take this concept to an extreme sometimes, and hope that with enough honey, and enough spared rods, we catch our fly-children and get them to be good. The thing is, I don’t see it happening. We work so hard not to call out the young people so that they won’t feel put upon or offended by our harsh words. We hope that by sparing them this humiliation, and asking nicely, or hinting, they will choose to fly right. We don’t want them to be pushed away by our choice to walk up to them and tell them things that they don’t want to hear.

But that’s what they need.

If I have a student who is talking in the middle of my class, I have to break things down in a particular fashion:

A. The student must know that there is a classroom code which forbids talking
a. The student, by being in the class, is acceding to the code.
b. The student, making the choice to talk (especially if silence has been formally requested) is acting in a way which violates the code.
B. My reaction can be to
a. ask again for silence – this has proven ineffective already.
b. ignore the talking – this might be useful because the talking student then misses content, but others do also because of the noise/distraction, and the misbehavior is not remediated but, in a sense, rewarded
c. speak to the student privately later – while this seems useful, it does not change the distraction, nor does it overtly address the issue which sends a message to other students that the behavior is acceptable.
d. isolate the talker publicly – this is what embarrasses students. But the fact is, they have already forced my hand

Should our police shy away from catching criminals because it will embarrass the criminals? Should our justice system simply ask for compliance repeatedly? We can’t always be about happy talk. Certain aspects of society are in the realm of law and rules, not mercy and emotional safety. The individual has made the choice to break the rule. The move to identify the rule-breaker is not embarrassing – it is necessary. And the choice to be embarrassed by someone else’s pointing out a broken rule is a selective and manipulative way of discouraging any authority figure from doing the job of keeping an entire society in line.

Yes, I break rules. Yes, I would be ashamed if I were called out for my behavior. But I would be a fool to ignore that my shame should be aimed at my own lack of self-control and not at someone else’s response to a choice I made. I am not advocating a purely “strict justice” mode of behavior. Suggestion, private conversation and other modes of response are great early lines of defense. But at a certain point, we have to abandon this notion that a soft answer turns away wrath and we have to teach people that respect for laws and people are highly interdependent and once they abandon one, they lose the moral high ground to demand the other.

2. Maybe later is now

Technology is wonderful but it has ripple effects and one of them is that it has stripped away the idea of a deadline.

I like deadlines. They give me ulcers but in a good way. Yes, a good way. They teach discipline and they regulate the rhythms of life. Some things just have to be done by a certain time and some things have to be done even earlier than that. Learning to respect deadlines is an essential part of growing up. But technology has stripped away any respect for deadlines or any sense of urgency. This is, of course, ironic, as technology has allowed us to live in that present moment all the time because of all the instant gratification it provides. Send a letter? No way – I want an answer NOW. So an email? Not even – a text, and expect a text back on the same schedule (even worse with Whatsapp because you can see that the recipient received and read the message, so any delay in response is an insult). We want to download and watch something in the moment. Back in the day we had to wait for a download to happen (and hope it was without error).

But with all this speed, we have destroyed any need to long term planning or accommodating a deadline. I remember having to submit material for a magazine I was working on. We had to have it done with enough time for material to be typeset, read, returned, proofed, sent, blue lined and copy checked. Pictures had to be taken in time for them to be developed, submitted, laid out etc. So things had to be planned on a calendar well in advance. We learned to use our time, stagger our responsibilities and chart our progress. Now, with instant communication, phones that take pictures and such, nothing has to be planned because we assume that we can take care of everything at the last minute and it will all work out. This bleeds over into other areas – I don’t need to have my paper done well in advance because I don’t need time to type it up, even work on printing it at a printing center, or proofread it. The spell checker will do the work. The grammar checker well. The online site will create my bibliography instantly. I don’t need to keep a shopping list because my technology will keep track of what I have and need. Therefore, I don’t plan before I shop and have no idea what I can make that will go beyond what I recently made. I can get the directions while I drive so I don’t have to plan my trip, so I won’t remember to make t reservations well in advance. We have destroyed process and once we show such a lack of concern for deadline in one area, we have trouble instituting it in other areas. Planning is a skill that, to be applied properly, has to be recalled across the disciplines. If students don’t have to remember to write assignments down because the teacher will post it to a homework site, then they won’t remember to write other notes down in contexts where there is no teacher or web-posting to fall back on.

Do we subcontract our memories to the cloud? Sure. Do we rely on computers to be responsible for lower order thinking skills (thus destroying the foundation for our performance of the higher ones)? Absolutely. And are we, by letting technology dictate the pace of our lives, forgetting how to stretch things out and let them mature and develop over time? Yup, and that’s a really bad thing.

Just one wish

Sometimes I wonder what the greatest gift/blessing could be. At the same time, I also consider what the worst curse could ever be. I’m still unclear on the former but it is pretty obvious that the worst thing a magical being could ever say to me would be “I’ll grant you one wish.” Even just being asked would be horrible and having to turn down (for what?) that offer would be really sucky.

Many people might think of "one wish" as an incredible opportunity but I’ve thought it through and, trust me, it doesn’t end well. Fortunately, we have a spate of popular culture resources which can shed some light on the issue. I'll rabbit hunt it for the non-believers. What do I ask for? The snarky among you are leaning towards “ask for [more/unlimited] wishes.” But that’s just stupid. If one wish is a curse, then many more would, a fortiori, be an even greater calamity waiting to happen. The later wishes would be constantly used up trying to mitigate the disasters which occurred because of the earlier ones. Wishes are designed to subvert the natural order but that leads to consequences (think Jim Carey’s prequel to “Evan, Almighty”). The more the way things are supposed to happen gets shifted, the more problems ensue. The more responsibility for changing the world, the more one feels the weight of billions of voices, all crying and then suddenly silenced. Deal me out, thankyouverymuch.

Maybe I ask for immortality? No – Highlander (among others) proves that this is not only incredibly sad, watching everyone else age and die, but also extremely inconvenient, having to move around to avoid suspicion, and needing to create new identities. All that just so I can be around when the iPhone 23q is released? That’s not much of a trade off.

Should I ask for something more mundane? Everything has a price. Consider the movie “The Box” but replace it with a movie anyone has actually seen. I’ll wait. Now, think about the Monkey’s Paw. Money leads to death. Life leads to monsters. In the animated parody of that story, Homer Simpson asked for a turkey sandwich, and I now quote the sage: “I’ll make a wish that can’t backfire. I wish for a turkey sandwich, on rye bread, with lettuce and mustard and-and I don’t want any zombie turkeys, I don’t want to turn into a turkey myself, and I don’t want any other weird surprises. You got it? . . . Hey! Hmmm, mmm, not bad, nice hot mustard, good bread, the turkey’s a little dry . . . the turkey’s a little dry! Oh foul accursed thing! What demon from the depths of hell created thee?” Also, think about that whole “house elf” slave thing in the Harry Potter series. Food that magically appears on the table still has to be prepped by someone. That wish for a sleeve of never-ending Oreo cookies means someone is staying up nights, baking for me and the finite wheat harvests will not go to feeding the starving babies of Eritrea (it’s a place, I checked) but instead, to my gluttony. Wishing for something ex nihilo would throw off the balance of matter in the universe, and that is not a good way to start the morning, what with a universal imbalance and all, no siree.

Things never quite work out and the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment when the turkey, after all that pre-thinking, still ends up not living up to what the dream was for it. Do I ask for health for a relative? Which one? Who deserves to (out)live his divinely ordained time? Who has earned this magic more than another? Should I ask for health for all? Do we have the resources on this planet to sustain a race of significantly larger size? What about the lives of all the doctors, undertakers and grave diggers which will be ruined by this. When Donne pointed out in Meditation 17 (one of my top 17 meditations) that no man is an island he wasn’t just pointing out that our deaths (should) impact each other, but that our lives and their choices do as well! Maybe I’ll get rid of war and violence – which would mean the end of human nature, free will and would cause (inevitably) an invasion by Kang and Kodos (same episode…look it up).

Superhero movies used to be this form of escapism – wouldn’t we all want to have powers like Superman or Spiderman? It took a deeper exploration for us to see that with great power comes the death of your uncle and then a series of miscast reboots. The horror. The most recent set of Superhero movies have done a much better job of showing that having gifts of speed, strength, intellect or anything that puts one so far from the norm in society is fraught with downside (now there’s a superpower…being able to see the downside to every situation. My God, I’m SPECIAL!) Go watch WarGames and see what happens when you get what you ask for, when you get access to what you aren't supposed to have access to. You end up with Dabney Coleman mussing your hair and that's something I would want to avoid. And, oh yeah, arrested by the FBI and almost causing the end of humanity. I want to avoid those things also.

I could wish that my dog could talk but that doesn’t mean he will have anything interesting to say (nor that he would understand me when I spoke back). Should I do something to empower other species or will that lead to an ape revolt? Look how that turned out (spoiler alert, “not good”). Do I just want to be loved? That would get a bit stalker-ish, no doubt. I love Willy Wonka, but his quote about the man who got everything he ever wanted is totally off base as is this guy who admires the quote. The guy who gets whatever he wants ends up with no ambition and probably other problems.

Maybe the fascination with the “one wish” scenario is an expression of our own dissatisfaction with our lives. We are afraid to confront the underlying wish, “what if everything was somehow different; could I be happy then?” To make that one wish is to have to accept that things can’t be any better than they are without there being consequences. Just ask George Bailey and every TV show that invoked that “never been born” trope. Now, sure, some people live in such abject conditions that the price is acceptable. A victim who just wants to not be victimized can probably formulate a wish that, while it might negatively impact the world, would certainly, and in a very local sense, make things a whole lot better. We do this when we pray -- we pray most often to thank God for our existence and to recognize that things really aren't so bad. Sometimes we ask Jim to use the normal laws of the universe but bend them a touch to let things play out in subtly different ways, but only if He thinks that it would be for the best. We don't pray for 2+2 to be 5 (well, I used to, after EVERY. MATH. TEST, but I digress). In fact, Jewish law teaches that we don't pray for the impossible. But for the average guy the hypotheticals, when explored, can be shown to have more disadvantages than advantages. Being forced to make a choice about a wish would make me responsible for the undoing of the universe and that’s a burden I don’t think I could handle, at least not before lunch.