Bosch: Gamblers (detail of the hell section). I like Bosch best when just details of his paintings are presented.**
THE GIFT SHOP
When it's come to that
The end of my life
The glitzy tunnel
The well-lit exit
Let there be a shop where I can
Browse for just a while
The way I've always loved to
The best part of any experience
Being its commemoration
A whole life should be no exception
Relive before lights out
A finger on the switch
Relieve me later
Hold on
Just one more thing
Can we stop here? I always
Say after so much Do Not Touch-ing
I want a plastic Tyrannosaurus pressed in my hand
I want to make my own geodes
Polish pieces of coal
From the backyard and save them all
From the pressure of becoming
Diamonds
String Galapagosian shells in a strand around my neck
I want to make sure this has
Really happened
And is not some other thing
Give me proof
There are some items I need to see first, at last
A memento in my pocket
A key chain of my father's glasses
A postcard of my mother's silver hair
My loves, felt finger puppets in the shape of endangered birds
My friends, each a snow globe
Some astronaut ice cream
To tide me over
~ Cate Peebles, (Boston Review, Summer 2011)
**
Strikes me as fabulously American, that plastic Tyrannosaurus, the whole idea of a gift shop at the exit.
But it’s not just a jokey poem. It gets poignant:
I want to make sure this has
Really happened
And is not some other thing
Give me proof
There are some items I need to see first, at last
A memento in my pocket
A key chain of my father's glasses
A postcard of my mother's silver hair
My loves, felt finger puppets in the shape of endangered birds
My friends, each a snow globe
Some astronaut ice cream
To tide me over
*
Mary:
Love it, the whole idea of souvenirs . . . without intrinsic value, but important as markers that can be kept as reminders of certain times, experiences and events.
Oriana:
But you know, there may be a kind of lesson in the fact that a typical souvenir of the sort sold in those stores is, well, there is no avoiding "negativity" here, a piece of junk . . . A precious memory deserves better — deserves a thoughtful, quality choice of a souvenir — or, and this is probably more common — such a souvenir will emerge on its own, outside of our choice. The best souvenirs are not those we buy, but rather are “found,” like poems.
An unusual young man who was once at least somewhat in love with me, without return, gave me a lovely green marble (or perhaps actual malachite) “egg.” I took it reluctantly. A few years later (now it seems like a few weeks) he died of cancer — and suddenly that egg became precious to me, reminding me of his jokes, his gentle personality, etc. I keep it on a kind of “altar” that I made, look at it with pleasure, and sometimes pick it up just to feel its smoothness. It's become my favorite “souvenir.”
“I find it incredibly amazing how at every sunset, the sky is a different shade. No cloud is ever in the same place. Each day is a new masterpiece. A new wonder. A new memory.” ~ Sanober Khan
Kirk Ruse: Pele’s Song*
HOW THE “GOOD GERMANS” EMPOWERED HITLER
~ “President Donald Trump is a symptom of a much larger problem. New research suggests that Trump's supporters are so motivated by racism and bigotry that they may willing to overturn American democracy so that white Christians like themselves can maintain continued power over our society.
~ Looking at Trump and his supporters' authoritarian views and apparent disdain for normal politics and democracy, it does not seem that this situation will end well.
I do think there's certainly a very strong possibility that it's not going to end well — and that's from the perspective of a German historian. And as a historian, my natural tendency is to always try to stop people from invoking Hitler. In most cases it was not appropriate to make such a comparison. But now, with Trump, my resistance and that of other historians to making that comparison is being overcome.
But there is an important qualifier: History doesn't have to repeat. It doesn't have to look exactly like what happened before. It won't. But if we wait for Trump and this moment to fully become like Hitler and the Nazis, and that is the point at which you start to act, then it is already too late. The unfortunate aspect is that if you set the bar so high in terms of outrage and horror then people all too often let things continue when they could have been stopped earlier. Once it gets to that point it's way too late.
Where I see things going right now with Donald Trump is that if he is not stopped the result will be some form of authoritarian, racially exclusionary democracy. My focus is much less on a particular system, whether he's a fascist or not. It's much more the question of exclusion. Trump and his allies are trying to create a kind of white, Christian, male-dominated national community for their followers. He's drawing the boundaries around that community and excluding all those groups that don't fit in, whether it's the handicapped, immigrants, Muslims, Jews or other groups. Those Americans and others who are not part of Trump's imagined community will be second-class citizens and will have their rights restricted.
~ Trump's rise is a white backlash against Barack Obama and the perception that the United States is going to be a "majority minority" country. No modern democracy has survived a transition where the majority ethnic or racial group surrendered power. Trump's voters are rejecting multiracial democracy and cosmopolitan values. Most of the American news media is unwilling to state these facts.
Part of the problem is also a belief that progress is natural and that it moves in the direction of more freedom and more democracy. It happened slowly in this country. But there is nothing inherited or natural about it. Progress can just as easily slip back. As you pointed out, civil rights for African-Americans — it's only been about 50 years.
If you look at the situation in Germany for Jews, they were technically emancipated in 1871. So when you look at how they had those rights taken from them over a couple of years after 1933, you're talking about 60 years [later]. Things are getting better: Jews are getting more and more rights, Jews are getting more opportunities. more doors are open. Afterwards it got even better for the Jews in Germany, despite the fact that anti-Semitism was on the rise in the 1920s. And yet those rights were taken away.
So you can't get too comfortable. That's one of the things I think people don't necessarily appreciate. It's comforting to think that things always work out for the better over time. Maybe in the very long run that happens, but there are these steps backward, as we are seeing with Donald Trump. We have to fight to keep our democracy, our rights and our freedoms.
~ Part of this denial by many people about the dangers that Donald Trump and his authoritarian fascist movement represent is also a function of the myth of American exceptionalism.
That is a fundamental part of nationalism. If you're a nationalist, you believe your group is special and somehow superior. This means not acknowledging your country's wrongdoing. It means forgetting and playing dumb. Nationalism also means explaining away all the horrible things your country has done that are very similar to the horrible things that all countries have done.
But if you're a nationalist, you can't really acknowledge such things. So when people point them out, you take offense. They're attacking your identity by saying you are not special. And this is why academic history is not popular in certain respects.
~ Which is why piss-poor fantasy history from the likes of Bill O'Reilly is so popular.
A historian's job is not to make people feel good about themselves. You might write a particular history that has a story to it and it may make people feel good, but that's not the point. Our history will read like the history of Britain and the history of France and the history of Germany and Russia. Countries that have had empires, that have suppressed people and committed unspeakable acts of violence. That's the reality. Should it make you feel bad? It should make you aware of the dangers and want to prevent such things from happening in the future.
~ What do we know about Hitler's rank-and-file supporters, those everyday "good Germans" who either actively or tacitly supported him? Once Trump is gone there will need to be a national reckoning about all of those people, whom history may remember contemptuously as "good Americans.”
Of course Hitler was not elected chancellor before he came to take full control and power. The most he had was 37 percent of the vote in a multiparty system, which means about two-thirds of the country didn't want a Nazi dictatorship. At the same time, if you take all of the people who voted for the Nazis, the Communists and the German nationalists, a significant majority of Germans voted for some kind of dictatorship.
They were certainly not voting for democracy anymore. That was finished. And so the notion that the end of democracy under Hitler came as some kind of surprise to Germany is partly false because most of them didn't want democracy anymore. They were looking for something else. They did not want a Hitler dictatorship, but some kind of authoritarian system was going to happen. It should also be clear that those people who followed Hitler or voted for him did so for different reasons. They were not all vicious anti-Semites. Some voted for him for economic reasons, some voted for him for nationalistic reasons, some voted as a protest. The frightening part, of course, is all those people weren't bothered enough by Hitler's anti-Semitism to not vote for him.
~ Just like in this country with Donald Trump.
Exactly. I can't say that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. But there was no secret to his beliefs, just as there was no secret to Hitler's. So if you voted for him for some other reason, obviously, again, you were not bothered enough by Trump's racism to prevent you from voting for him. So there's a certain tolerance and acceptance of racism among Trump's voters and supporters.
Hitler became more popular as time went on, because he succeeded in doing things that people wanted. The economy improved -- not necessarily because of his policies, but it did improve. He started to take apart the Treaty of Versailles, which was enormously unpopular, and until 1939 he did it peacefully, which is what most Germans wanted. So the more success he had, the more Hitler was able to win people over. This included people who hadn't voted for him before.
Eventually, during the war, when Hitler's successes became enormous, even people who had opposed him at one point or another started to back him. So Hitler was popular, really, throughout the regime. It's quite remarkable. More so than the party itself and more so than any number of institutions in the party. So it's hard to say, in terms of "good Germans," who they were, because of course it was very difficult to express oneself. You don't know if your neighbor is flying a Nazi flag because they have to or because they really believe it.
Eventually, during the war, when Hitler's successes became enormous, even people who had opposed him at one point or another started to back him. So Hitler was popular, really, throughout the regime. It's quite remarkable. More so than the party itself and more so than any number of institutions in the party. So it's hard to say, in terms of "good Germans," who they were, because of course it was very difficult to express oneself. You don't know if your neighbor is flying a Nazi flag because they have to or because they really believe it.
I do believe, generally speaking, that most Germans were supportive of Hitler. And like what is happening in the U.S. with Trump and immigrants and Muslims and other groups, Hitler was tremendously successful at marginalizing the Jews.
Jews were Germans and many people saw them as such. And in almost six years: pushing them to the margins, removing their rights, removing their citizenship and removing them from the national community, so that by the time of the war what happened to them was much less of a concern to ordinary Germans. If you don't want to ask about what's happening to Jews, you don't have to.
For example, if you aren't necessarily totally anti-Semitic yourself, but there's an auction for Jewish property after the Jews have been deported and now you've got a nice living room table and chairs. You know on the one hand that's a terrible thing. You have just gained at the expense of someone who may have likely died as a result. And so to assuage that, you think to yourself, "They must have done something to deserve this. Innocent people can't get deported.”
~ Continuing the parallels with Trump, there is the common argument that Hitler was viewed as being a fool or an idiotic cartoon character by most Germans, especially elites, even while he and the Nazis were taking over the country. Is this correct?
Certainly earlier on he was seen that way. Outside of a very small circle of extreme nationalists Hitler was not taken seriously at all. German politics until the end of the First World War was still very much a kind of elitist enterprise. The notion that someone like Hitler, who was really a nobody, could play any kind of leadership role was laughable to most middle-class and upper-class Germans. This was true even in the early 1930s as he became a powerful national figure.
The business elites, military officers and some aristocrats who helped him win power did so because they firmly expected to be able to manipulate him. "Who is this guy? We are the natural rulers, and this person has no political experience whatsoever. He has never won an election, he has never held any elected office. We are going to use his popular support for our purposes."
I think there was also a certain degree of belief that after Hitler became chancellor he wasn’t going to last. He was the third chancellor in two years. Things were very unstable. Hitler had no experience, so the idea that he was going to succeed where all these other seasoned politicians and experienced people had failed before led a lot of people — Jews included — to take a “wait and see” approach.
~ As a historian of Germany, what were your thoughts when you first heard about Trump's concentration camps for immigrants, refugees and migrants? Especially the children who are put in very Nazi-sounding "tender care" baby prisons?
They only care about people who are in their group. Therefore, if you make fun of Ivanka Trump you are going to be demonized. But for them, if you make a horrible remark about a disabled child who has been removed from the arms of her mother: "So what?" That person’s mother should never have crossed the border. They are not thinking about that person as a human being. Trump's comments after Charlottesville where he called Nazis and other white supremacists "very fine people" was just another example of this.
With Trump's nationalistic rallies, and all of his language and imagery, he is setting up an environment where violence is possible. No one should be surprised when the violence occurs because we have seen that throughout history. Trump's intentions do not matter.
Once a process of violence and nationalism on a massive scale starts there is very little that can be done by regular people. For example, the only people who could stop Hitler after a certain point were the Russians, the Americans and the British. Individuals could not do it even though they tried.
~ How are people socialized into treating other people so badly? In particular, what of Trump's ICE enforcers who are enthusiastically breaking up families and otherwise dehumanizing and abusing nonwhite people?
You are going to have a certain segment of the population who are already ideologically aligned in that way. They are racist and hostile already. They are ready to go. Unfortunately, ICE seems to be an organization that attracts those kinds of people. In any society, whether they are sociopaths or not, such people need to be ideologically motivated. The problem is you need many more people. Hitler could not have followed through on his plans with just the SS. He had to bring in many other people, conscripts, to take direct roles in the killings.
That’s why it is important to inoculate people against such bigotry, racism and hatred ahead of time. Many ordinary people will do horrible things when told to do so by their leaders and government.
~ What are some things that give you hope? What are some things that scare you and cause you concern and worry?
What gives me hope is the public resistance. I think that awareness is putting some obstacles in Trump's path and has slowed down what otherwise might have been.
The scary part is the enablers and those other people who are in a position to stop Trump or otherwise restrict him but either aren't doing anything or are actually making the situation worse. There are, of course, people in the Republican Party in both houses of Congress who are complete cowards.
Again, Hitler couldn’t do anything without people who helped him ... and those people were not all Nazis.” ~
https://www.alternet.org/expert-nazi-germany-explains-how-average-citizens-enabled-hitler-just-trump-ordinary-people-will-do
Oriana:
Many good points, e.g. Hitler was ridiculed at first, but rose to great popularity later. In a more sinister parallel, he was expected to last in office only a short time. I remember the widespread predictions that T would not last a single year. And some still keep predicting that he'll be removed practically tomorrow.
We've already had ample proof that nothing can touch T, not even the clearest proof of treason and Russian mob money laundering that Mueller can provide. T's base love Russia and Putin, and if you presented proof that T was born in Russia and is totally controlled by Russia that might even increase his popularity. These people hate democracy and adore dictators.
We have to come to grips with the new idea that a significant percentage of Americans adore dictators and want a dictator — as long as it’s their guy.
On the other hand, T is a half-wit (possibly demented) next to Hitler's diabolically shrewd machinations (Putin is also obviously quite shrewd; if only we had someone with Nixon’s cunning to face him!) But he's already done some damage, and empowered open racism, Neo-Nazis, etc. Obviously his base adores dictators (maybe they even secretly prefer Putin over T) and, again, would rather have a dictator as long as he's one of them. That a significant percentage of Americans would prefer a dictatorship to democracy was a painful eye opener to me and many others.
On the side of differences: Hitler wasn’t out for personal financial gain, and he wasn’t indifferent to the welfare of ordinary people. For instance, his “strength through joy” (Kraft durch Freude) program offered leisure activities and vacations to millions of workers. The production of the “people’s car” (Volkswagen) also began, with the idea of a truly affordable car. Hitler also began an anti-smoking campaign — truly visionary for the times. (Of course none of this is meant as any kind of “offset” for Hitler’s crimes against humanity.)
*
(Another point: those who rail against “identity politics” of race and gender often fail to recognize that nationalism is precisely that, as is the extolling of one’s own religion or any other “tribe.” If we evolved that way and it’s very hard for us to overcome that kind of automatic allegiance, we — as humanity — need to acknowledge it and deal with it, not just selectively condemn the kind of tribalism we happen to dislike. And we are all blind and unthinking in some respect.)
Mary:
The historian' s article was chilling. Sentence after sentence exactly on target. After reading this I can't help but fear it may be too late to escape the worst consequences of our current situation. It was astonishing to see Trump elected. And each day since then has been another shock — the crassness of his language, his disrespect for our allies, and open admiration for our long declared historical enemies — suddenly N Korea and Kim, Russia and Putin, are admired and courted and toadied to, and Canada (Canada!!) is a hostile country. The level of public discourse has devolved to the level of "locker room talk" and the leader of the "free world" speaks puerile nonsense that skirts the edge of psychotic word salad. His acts defy the principles supposedly honored by our laws and constitution. Already young children have been taken from their families and put in cages. This is important — the unacceptable and unthinkable is already happening.
This raises the question — "Is it too late? Have we already lost the chance to stop the process that will end our democracy? Are our liberal coasts doomed to be swallowed by the agrarian, "flyover" folks, all mad as hell and hell-bent on restoring an idealized version of an America that never existed, was never real, for anyone not born into the privileged white male heterosexual population? Are we like those Germans who felt progressive measures and the general forward movement of society could not suddenly be rescinded, lost, and replaced, that rights could not be revoked for those excluded and maligned as the sinister "other" and that then those excluded could be murdered en masse, by an enormous system designed for killing on an industrial scale?
It is so important to recognize that progress is not ensured, that all the important battles must be fought over and over, especially in any struggle with the privileged. Power and privilege are not willingly surrendered. In fact the enormous rage uncovered in the Trump base, is the rage of those who feel they have been robbed and cheated of what is rightfully theirs, all the privilege due them, that they feel is threatened by the freedom, rights and equality of all the others, the non white, the female, immigrants and refugees, non-Christians, and the poor. They actually feel persecuted by "Black lives matter," and the "me too," movement. As the nation's demographics continue to change, and the white Christian majority becomes the minority, their rage and fear increases, they want to defend their privilege by retaliating and attacking all perceived threats. And yes, Trump has created a situation where violence is possible, a huge collection of tinder, just waiting for the spark.
Oriana:
My disappointment started with Bill Clinton, who seemed a younger, covert Ronald Reagan — not interested in the common good. Or, if interested (universal health care), rendered powerless by his sex scandals. But at least I didn’t fear for Social Security and Medicare, or the right to a safe abortion. The fundamentalists crazies were a nuisance, not a threat. And the global right-wing movement was still dormant — or so it seemed.
And yet, completely unaware of what was on the horizon, I felt disappointed with Bill Clinton! Talk about the Age of Innocence!
Now with the militarized police so much better equipped to break up demonstrations of those trying to defend human rights — while protecting Nazi parades — it is downright scary. Something IS going to happen. Perhaps the country will break up into smaller regions — at least that would mean the end of foreign wars. But all predictions are off.
What is completely freaky is that the confident predictions of how Trump would be out of office within months — certainly by the end of his first year — did not come true. As in so many authoritarian countries, a small minority can come to power and not let go — the famous checks and balances being easily subverted. Now there seems no end of this nightmare — except for some catastrophe that no one would call a happy ending.
Can we even imagine a future? Or does the world as we know it simply have to end? WHAT, NO ASTEROID? AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY OF DINOSAUR EXTINCTION
~ “While the majority of her peers embraced the Chicxulub asteroid [named for a crater off Yucatan] as the cause of the extinction, Gerta Keller remained a maligned and, until recently, lonely voice contesting it. She argues that the mass extinction was caused not by a wrong-place-wrong-time asteroid collision but by a series of colossal volcanic eruptions in a part of western India known as the Deccan Traps—a theory that was first proposed in 1978 and then abandoned by all but a small number of scientists. Her research, undertaken with specialists around the world and featured in leading scientific journals, has forced other scientists to take a second look at their data. “Gerta uncovered many things through the years that just don’t sit with the nice, simple impact story that Alvarez put together,” Andrew Kerr, a geochemist at Cardiff University, told me. “She’s made people think about a previously near-uniformly accepted model.”
Understanding the cause of the mass extinction is not an esoteric academic endeavor. Dinosaurs are what paleontologists call “charismatic megafauna”: sexy, sympathetic beasts whose obliteration transfixes pretty much anyone with a pulse. The nature of their downfall, after 135 million years of good living, might offer clues for how we can prevent, or at least delay, our own end. “Without meaning to sound pessimistic,” the geophysicist Vincent Courtillot writes in his book Evolutionary Catastrophes, “I believe the ancient catastrophes whose traces geologists are now exhuming are worthy of our attention, not just for the sake of our culture or our understanding of the zigzaggy path that led to the emergence of our own species, but quite practically to understand how to keep from becoming extinct ourselves.”
Keller and others accuse the impacters of trying to squash deliberation before alternate ideas can get a fair hearing. Though geologists had bickered for 60 years before reaching a consensus on continental drift, Alvarez declared the extinction debate over and done within two years. “That the asteroid hit, and that the impact triggered the extinction of much of the life of the sea … are no longer debatable points,” he said in a 1982 lecture. “Nearly everybody now believes them.” After Alvarez’s death, in 1988, his acolytes took up the fight—most notably his son and collaborator, Walter, and a Dutch geologist named Jan Smit, whom Keller calls a “crazy SOB.”
As Keller has steadily accumulated evidence to undermine the asteroid hypothesis, the animosity between her and the impacters has only intensified. Her critics have no qualms about attacking her in the press: Various scientists told me, on the record, that they consider her “fringe,” “unethical,” “particularly dishonest,” and “a gadfly.” Keller, not to be outdone, called one impacter a “crybaby,” another a “bully,” and a third “the Trump of science.” Put them in a room together, and “it may be World War III,” Andrew Kerr says.
Keller had a promising lead: The Earth’s four prior mass extinctions are each associated with enormous volcanic eruptions that lasted about 1 million years apiece. The fifth extinction, the one that doomed the dinosaurs, occurred just as one of the largest volcanoes in history seethed in the Deccan Traps.
Now she was drafting a new paper showing that the biggest Deccan eruptions—accounting for nearly half of the volcanoes’ explosive output—had been squeezed into the last 60,000 years before the mass extinction. During that time, so much gas, ash, and lava were pumped into the ecosystem that the Earth hit “the point of no return,” she said.
(from Keller’s bio: “She was returning from a picnic near Sydney’s Suicide Cliffs one day when a bank robber, fleeing the scene of the crime, shot her, puncturing her lungs, shattering her ribs, and landing her in intensive care. “Woman Shot ‘for No Reason,’ ” announced a headline in The Sydney Morning Herald. (“She looked dead,” a witness told the paper.) A priest came to administer last rites and, as Keller hovered in and out of consciousness, commanded her to confess her sins. Twice, she refused. “I credit that priest with my survival, because he made me so mad,” Keller told me. The experience also cured her of her death wish.”)
According to Keller’s research, while Deccan’s lava flows would have devastated the Indian subcontinent, its release of ash, toxic elements (mercury, lead), and gases (sulfur, methane, fluorine, chlorine, carbon dioxide) would also have blown around the world, wreaking havoc globally.
As she sees it, the ash, mercury, and lead would have settled over habitats, poisoning creatures and their food supply. The belches of sulfur would have initially cooled the climate, then they would have drenched the Earth in acid rain, ravaging the oceans and destroying vegetation that land animals needed to survive. The combination of carbon dioxide and methane would have eventually raised temperatures on land by as much as 46 degrees Fahrenheit, further acidifying oceans and making them inhospitable to plankton and other forams. Once these microscopic creatures disappear from the base of the food chain, larger marine animals follow. “At that point, extinction is inevitable,” Keller said.
Rocks elsewhere in the world support the sequence of events Keller has discerned in the Deccan Traps. She and her collaborators have found evidence of climate change and skyrocketing mercury levels following the largest eruptions, and other researchers have documented elevated concentrations of sulfur and chlorine consistent with severe pollution by volcanic gases. Keller posits that even the iridium layers could be linked to Deccan’s eruptions, given that volcanic dust can carry high concentrations of the element.
She also sees Deccan’s fingerprints in the fossil record. The gradual decline of the forams—followed by their sudden, dramatic downfall—aligns with Deccan’s pattern of eruptions: Over several hundred thousand years, its volcanic activity stressed the environment, until its largest emissions dealt a final, devastating blow. The Earth’s flora and fauna did not show signs of recovery for more than 500,000 years afterward—a time period that coincides with Deccan’s ongoing belches. The volcano simmered long after most species had vanished, keeping the planet nearly uninhabitable.
Keller fears that we are filling our environment with the same ingredients—sulfur, carbon dioxide, mercury, and more—that killed the dinosaurs and that, left unchecked, will catalyze another mass extinction, this one of our own devising. “You just replace Deccan volcanism’s effect with today’s fossil-fuel burning,” she told me. “It’s exactly the same.”
Keller sees a bleak future when she looks at our present. Oceans are acidifying. The climate is warming. Mercury levels are rising. Countless species are endangered and staring down extinction—much like the gradual, then rapid, downfall of the forams. Whether or not Deccan ultimately caused the mass extinction, its eruptions illuminate how our current environment may react to man-made pollutants. If Deccan was responsible, however, Keller’s theory casts our current actions in a terrifying light. (Not to be outdone, impacters recently highlighted the Chicxulub asteroid’s relevance to the present day in a paper for Science, arguing that the asteroid injected enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause 100,000 years of global warming.)
The asteroid theory has ingrained in the public’s imagination the idea that mass extinction will be quick and sensational—that we will go out in a great, momentous ball of fire. Big rock from sky hits the humans, and boom they go. But Keller’s vision of the sixth extinction, given what she sees as its parallels with Deccan volcanism, suggests that the end will be drawn out and difficult to recognize as such within humans’ brief conception of time. “We are living in the middle of a mass extinction today,” Keller told me. “But none of us feel that urgency, or that it really is so.” ~
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/dinosaur-extinction-debate/565769/
Chicxulub Crater, buried underneath YukatanOriana:
The asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction is so ingrained in the public imagination that it comes as a shock to learn that a serious competing theory even exists — and there is lots of evidence for it, including the four previous mass extinctions. And it’s awfully unpleasant to consider that humans are now producing the same gases that proved so deadly before.
**
WHY WE ADMIRE THE MAFIOSI
~ “It’s no surprise that family members paint idyllic pictures of their mobster ancestors. Every mobster was also a father, brother, uncle, or grandfather, and—at least theoretically—his villainy didn’t spill over into those roles. The real question is why so many other people feel the same way. We don’t glamorize all violent crime; no one holds the Son of Sam or Charles Manson in high regard. (It’s hard to imagine their descendants gathering for a celebratory dinner at a steakhouse.) So why are Al Capone, Lansky, Arnold Rothstein, Luciano, and their ilk held up as mythic figures, even heroes of a sort, not just by their families but by the general public? Why are members of the Italian mafia treated more like celebrities than unsavory criminals?
Part of the answer is historical. According to James Finckenauer, an emeritus professor at Rutgers University and the author of “Mafia and Organized Crime: A Beginner’s Guide,” the glamorization of the mob started with Prohibition. In the early years of the twentieth century, mobsters were just small-time operators. Then came the Volstead Act, which outlawed alcohol. “One of the side effects was to solidify organized crime and create a real, international organization out of what was, in essence, small criminal groups,” Finckenauer told me. Because Prohibition was hugely unpopular, the men who stood up to it were heralded as heroes, not criminals. “It was the start of their image as people who can thumb their noses at bad laws and at the establishment,” Finckenauer said. Even when Prohibition was repealed and the services of the bootleggers were no longer required, that initial positive image stuck. Books like Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” communicated the idea that mobsters were men who cared about the happiness of their communities and who lived by their own codes of honor and conduct, impervious to the political whims of the establishment.
The specific immigrant identities of the original mobsters also made them easier to admire. With the significant exceptions of Meyer Lansky and Arnold Rothstein, the original high-profile mafiosos were, by and large, Italians. And, even as late as the nineteen-twenties, Italians and Italian-Americans were often considered “other” by much of the rest of the country. In fact, many people subscribed to what criminologists call the alien conspiracy theory of organized crime—the idea, as Finckenauer puts it, that “Southern Italians came to us with evil intent to create criminal enterprise on our shores.” (Today, Donald Trump advances a similar theory about immigrants from south of the border.) That outsized sense of Italians’ otherness, combined with the idea that the mob’s rigid rules precluded the involvement of outsiders, made mobsters less threatening. “By and large, people are under the impression that if they don’t have any dealings with stuff the mob deals with—no drugs, no borrowing money, no illegal gaming—they have nothing to fear from organized crime,” Finckenauer said. Because their violence seemed directed at their own communities, not anyone else’s, it was easy to romanticize.
Social psychologists have long distinguished between “in-groups” and “out-groups.” Out-groups come in different guises. There are some with whom we feel absolutely no affinity; often, we separate ourselves from them by putting them down. But other out-groups are enough like our in-group that, although their identity remains separate from ours, they seem like less of a threat, It is to this second category that the mafia belongs. People who see themselves as “all-American” can be fascinated by Italian mobsters, and even admire them, without worrying that their lives will come into contact with mobsters’ lives. It’s no coincidence that the other glamorized mob figures in the U.S. are Irish: from “The Departed” to the forthcoming Whitey Bulger bio-pic “Black Mass,” they’re presented as similar enough for sympathy, yet different enough for a false sense of safety to creep in. For reasons of language, culture, and race, members of the Chinese and Russian mob have proven harder to romanticize.
Ultimately, the mob myth depends on psychological distance, a term coined by the New York University psychologist Yaacov Trope to describe the phenomenon of mental distancing that takes place when we separate ourselves from events, people, emotions, or concepts. In some cases, that distance comes naturally. As painful events recede into the past, our perceptions soften; when we physically remove ourselves from emotionally disturbing situations, our emotions cool.
Once attained, psychological distance allows us to romanticize and feel nostalgia for almost anything. It provides a filter, eliminating some details and emphasizing others. We speak of the good old days, hardly ever of the bad. Psychological distance is, among other things, a coping mechanism: it protects against depression and its close cousin, rumination, which pushes us to dwell too long on unpleasant details from the past instead of moving forward. When, instead, we smooth the edges of the past, remembering it as better than it was, we end up hoping for an equally happy future.
But psychological distance doesn’t require time. Under the right conditions, it can flourish in the moment. The psychological distance provided by “otherness” mimics the distance provided by time. It’s not a phenomenon unique to the mafia. It’s easy to glamorize warfare when there is no draft, or to idealize anyone whose life style seems risky and edgy without putting you, personally, at risk—spies and secret agents, rebels without a cause, the beatniks of Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road.” As long as there isn’t an easy-to-recall, factual reminder that brings us down out of the clouds of romanticism, we can glamorize at will. The lives of serial killers offer those concrete reminders: they lurk in neighborhoods like ours, threatening people who could be us. The mob is more abstract: it’s a shadowy, vague “organization” whose illicit dealings don’t really impinge on us. Abstraction lends itself to psychological distance; specificity kills it.
We grant mobsters dignity because we enjoy contemplating the general principles by which they are supposed to have lived: omertà, standing up to unfair authority, protecting your own. Those principles are what you see and hear when you watch Lansky and Luciano’s golden years reënacted in the “The Making of the Mob,” or when you follow Whitey Bulger’s takeover of Boston in “Black Mass.” In the same way, when Meyer II or Elaine Slott speaks to me about the past, I hear echoes of greatness—of lofty ideals and grand ambition, of important principles that the cold world didn’t always uphold. Because they’re related to him, Lucky Luciano’s familiars see him as a principled man worthy of our admiration instead of a criminal deserving of our disdain. Psychological distance allows us to see him this way, too. It makes us part of the family.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/why-do-we-admire-mobsters?mbid=contentmarketing_facebook_citizennet_paid_science_why-do-we-admire-mobsters_2-4-visit
Omertà = code of silence
LIFE WISDOM FROM DARIUS FOROUX
1. What’s the one quality that everyone must have?
Persistence, perseverance, determination, grit—call it whatever you want.
For centuries, humans have discovered that’s the one quality that separates people who get what they want from the people who don’t.
I’m not even talking about becoming successful. For example, the Stoics strived for achieving tranquility — not financial success or recognition.
But living a tranquil life is hard. And it takes a lot of hard work to achieve a state of tranquility. You see, persistence is what makes that possible.
When you give up without a good reason, you’ll never know how your life could end up.
2. What’s the one book you suggest everyone to read?
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
It’s a book about thinking. Sure, it’s a novel, and it’s about murder. But the book goes so deep that you can’t help but get touched by Dostoyevsky’s writing.
This book needs to be read consecutively. Preferably, you want to read it for at least two hours a day. And don’t read anything else during the time you read this book. You’ll never forget the period that you were reading it.
3. What’s one powerful piece of advice for living a fulfilling life?
Get clear on what you want.
People who always hesitate, can’t make up their mind, and who are all over the place, will be left behind.
Decide what you want. And be firm with your execution. Don’t deviate from the path. For nothing and no one. If others can’t accept that, they are not the right people in your life.
4. What's your one piece of financial advice?
Don’t try to make money.
That’s because of a well-known paradox: He who tries too hard will fail.
When you try hard to make money, you’ll become unethical and focus on the wrong things. When you focus on providing genuine value, you will be rewarded for your help.
But remember that you need money to eat and grow. Don’t act like a charity.
5. What’s one skill that everyone must have?
Writing.
Not because we write so many texts, emails, and messages. No, writing is thinking.
So when you become a better writer, you’ll also become a better thinker.
How does one become a better writer? By writing more.
6. What’s one thing that you regret starting late or wished you started earlier?
Investing.
I’m not talking about stocks or real estate. I’m talking about adopting the mindset of an investor.
I never thought of everything you do in life as investing. Working out, reading, taking classes, spending time with people who matter to you — it’s all investing because these activities have a return.
Buying a fancy car, going to restaurants multiple times a week, mindless online shopping—these are things that have little to no return.
7. What’s one thing you learned the hard way?
Doing something is different than reading about it.
Sometimes you read about something that sounds nice. Starting a business, moving to a specific country, working remotely, etc.
I always read and heard stories about how great it is to live in London. Then, I actually did it. And then, I found that many people in the city struggled to pay rent, started relationships only because they could save on their living expenses, and kept doing useless shit so they didn’t feel depressed.
Of course, this is not true for everyone in big cities. But it’s the way many people my age live. And that’s something none of them will admit.
8. What’s one thing that should never be forgotten?
You’re never alone.
Life gets hard sometimes. And for some of us, our natural instinct is to solve everything by ourselves.
Don’t do that. No one in the history of mankind became happy or successful without help. Realize that you’re not alone.
Seek out people who share the same values as you. Become friends. They will help you when the time is right. And vice versa.
9. What’s one thing we must not think twice on spending?
This is obvious, but my answer is “books”.
A few years ago, I acted like a cheapskate when it came to books.
I remember picking up Antifragile by Nassim Taleb in a bookstore once. I decided I couldn’t spend 10 bucks on that book. I probably went to a Starbucks after that to drop $5 on a fancy drink.
Anyway, I recently bought Antifragile. It made a big impact on my thinking.
I was an idiot for not buying/reading that book earlier. Do yourself a favor, if you see a book that might help you—buy it.
10. What’s your definition of life in 50 words?
No one knows what they are doing.
That’s life in 7 words. And it’s something I truly believe in. It’s what keeps me sane.
In the past, I always believed that everybody had it more figured out than me. But it turns out that no one has definite answers to the biggest challenges in life.
Why are we here? What’s the meaning of life? What should you do?
No one knows. We can all guess! And that’s what a lot of people do. I’m the same. However, we must know that everyone you see around you is no different from you.
That means we’re all the same. We’re trying to figure things out. That’s precisely what this article was about.
https://dariusforoux.com/10-questions-10-answers/
Drosera capensis: Cape sundew, a carnivorous plantOriana:
I like the last answer best. It rejects the absolutism of some of the previous answers. Life is too complex to know what we’re doing. We can’t even predict the weather with perfect accuracy (too many variables), much less life. So we might as well not be so hard on ourselves and others. We improvise. We muddle through. We do whatever it takes to survive. Sometimes it’s drugs and alcohol — perhaps that’s the only way a person can survive a particular situation. “When I had to live on coffee and alcohol, I lived on coffee and alcohol,” Milosz states in one of his poems (I forget which one, and I’ve forgotten all the other lines). Once you’ve lived and suffered long enough, you begin to understand just how hard life is, and how everyone — everyone — deserves at least some degree of compassion.
Writing — Nietzsche put it best: “To improve your style means to improve your thinking.” But is it the most important skill? I’d hesitate to put it in such absolute terms. “Intelligent empathy” or simply even “listening” are higher on my list.
Interesting that Darius chose Crime and Punishment. It’s a novel that haunts you. For me the greatest surprise and also the greatest lesson was the unintended killing of the pawnbroker’s sister. You may have the most perfect rationale even for murder — but there will be unintended consequences, and more victims, more evil.
But how are we to know what we “really” want? As Lawrence Durell put it, “Each psyche is really an anthill of opposing predispositions.” And so much depends on the stage of life. But choosing something — anything — and sticking to it is probably a lot better than trying too many things at once. “Get good at something, anything” — that would be my answer — perhaps the only absolute I’d defend, though probably even here exceptions could be found. So much depends on the circumstances.
I agree about investing in the broad sense. One of my regrets is not having gone to a certain poetry conference. Yes, it was expensive, but it would have been a memorable experience and a chance to interact with a poet I greatly admired. I realize that perhaps it would have been a disappointment — but if so, an interesting disappointment. “For a writer, even the bad is good.” Absolutely. Invest in experiences. (And yet, there are times when nothing is the best thing to do.)
In a minor vein, I remember how much I enjoyed an exhibition of paintings by Georges Innes, and the delight I felt browsing through the book on Innes at the museum gift shop, reliving the pleasure of the paintings again. But, out of habit, I skipped buying the book, and instead ordered a used copy from Amazon. The pages were faded and bent; the whole book was shabby. Well, a “learning experience.”
“You are never alone.” Sometimes you are better off NOT asking for help. Most people don’t mean to be toxic and hurtful rather than helpful, but unwittingly even well-meaning friends may become just that. What I’ve learned instead is trusting my unconscious. Stop thrashing around and the answers will come.
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I have a problem with books like Antifragile — they imply agreement with Nietzsche’s “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” I have found this to be a harmful falsehood, delaying my understanding of how trauma generally weakens us and makes us more vulnerable. Because of painful life history, now a relatively minor stress can throw a person into suicidal despair. As a friend once put it, “a traffic jam is an A bomb going off.” There you are, sobbing uncontrollably at the wheel.
No, we don’t become stronger in broken places — scar tissue is not stronger than healthy tissue. Adverse effects of misfortune are life-long — or, as a friend put it (very few people understand this), life simply isn’t long enough for us to recover from serious wounds. Studies do show this. True, there are lessons we can learn, and something good CAN indeed come from something bad — but don’t count on it. You will not escape suffering, and suffering is NOT good for you.
Sure, you need to develop skills on how to deal with inevitable disappointments and all kinds of badness that life is bound to throw at you. But there is no need to worry about too few challenges ahead. The real worry is that we may not get the kind of compassionate listening — or compassionate silence — that we most need when adversity hits.
There are a lot of apologists for suffering out there — a lot of people who’ve been brainwashed to believe that suffering is GOOD for you — which then implies that it’s not so bad to inflict suffering on others, especially children — it toughens them, right? It “develops character”? That’s why I keep returning to this theme. We could in fact prevent a lot of suffering, but lack the will — usually not because we are innately evil, but because we lack understanding and have been fed falsehoods, often by those who want to preserve their power but also by other victims who desperately try to “look on the bright side.”
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Overall, there is indeed wisdom in these answers. The problem is that they sound too absolute. Don’t trust absolutes — they don’t hold in the face of life’s complexity.
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Coming up in the next blog: Seek to be useful, not happy — also from Darius. Because even approximate answers can be useful. Absolutely.
Cape Disappointment State Park, WA; Eric KlemmWHY INDIVIDUALISTIC WESTERNERS FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THE MIDDLE EAST
Asher Susser: ~ “Western societies see themselves as societies of individuals. The rights of the individual are at the core of political debate, guaranteed by the state. People organize politically as individuals.
[In the Middle East, you] belong to a group—that is, your family, your extended family, your tribe, and perhaps above all else, your religious denomination. So, you are first and foremost a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Christian—and some kind of Christian at that, either Maronite, or Greek Orthodox, or Greek Catholic; and these differences matter.
Why do we keep getting this wrong? Well, in the West, one unfortunate by-product of Edward Said’s influence is the unwillingness to recognize the otherness of the “Other.” . . . [W]hen [someone] from the U.S. and other Western states looks at the Middle East, he or she explains Middle Easterners not as Other, but as [just like] us! That’s why we got this whole story about Facebook and Twitter during the Arab Spring. It was a way of saying, “They’re just like we are!”
Westerners saw Facebook and Twitter, but didn’t see the Muslim Brotherhood. . . . And then the commentators were shocked when the Muslim Brotherhood walked all over everybody. But they were obviously going to walk all over everybody! The only people who are going to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from walking all over everybody is the military—not the secular liberals. The secular liberals, to kick the Muslim Brotherhood out of power in Egypt, had to use the military—nobody else could do it.” ~
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2015/03/why-westerners-fail-to-understand-the-crisis-of-the-middle-east/
“It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir.” ~ Seamus Heaney
HUMANISM: WE MATTER TO EACH OTHER, AND THAT IS ENOUGH
“We want to be necessary, inevitable, preordained since eternity. All the religions, almost all the philosophies, even a part of science, bear witness to the heroic, indefatigable effort of mankind to deny in despair its own contingency.” ~ Jacques Monod, a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist. “Contingency” is best understood as “accidental nature.” “The first scientific postulate is the objectivity of nature: nature does not have any intention or goal.”
From Wikipedia: [Monod] was also a proponent of the view that life on earth arose by freak chemical accident and was unlikely to be duplicated even in the vast universe. "Man at last knows he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he has emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty.”
But this seems to ignore the social context of human existence. No one is just an isolated individual. We derive the meaning of our life from the ways we touch the lives of others. Society definitely prescribes duties and complex rules, with penalties for those who’d break them. The duties and rules evolve over time. Our destiny? Definitely nothing ordained once and for all. Perhaps the most comprehensive answer here is that our destiny is simply to be a member of humanity (and that's not a small thing; that is magnificent). A multitude of factors determine the kind and degree of our contribution.
Also, the longer I live, the more I value affection, plain and simple. A smile. It’s affection, even the promiscuous smiling at strangers that at first so bothered me about Americans, back when I was in my teens, that takes away the bleakness of the secular view. It’s affection and personal warmth that transform atheism into humanism. Affection affirms the value of another. Cosmically we are a speck of dust, but we matter to each other. For me, that is enough.
And yes, it's our ability to see faces in things. For a moment I distinctly saw a German shepherd-like dog looking at me from the nebula! And I love it that the brain works that way, finding not just pattern, but something to love.
No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies. ~ Mark Twain, A Double-Barreled Detective Story
TODAY’S TEENS: LESS SEX, MORE DEPRESSION
~ “Teens' experiences with sex are changing, and the news is almost all good, says Kathleen Ethier, director of CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health.
"Fewer are initiating sex," Ethier says, "fewer are currently sexually active, they're having fewer partners, and they're using more effective hormonal birth control methods."
In 2007, nearly 48 percent of teens said they'd had sex at least once. A decade later, it's 39.5 percent. One change in the data that Ethier's not happy about is a recent decline in condom use.
In 2007, 61.5 percent of teens said they'd used a condom during their last sexual encounter. By last year, that rate had dropped to 53.8 percent. Ethier says this is due, at least in part, to "a decrease over time in requirements that school cover HIV and [sexually transmitted diseases] in health education programs."
According to the report, young people aged 15-24 account for half of the roughly 20 million new STDs reported each year.
One more red flag, Ethier says: More than one in 10 young women (11.3 percent) reported being forced to have sex.
Drugs
When it comes to illicit drugs — like cocaine and heroin — teen use is way down, from 22.6 percent in 2007 to 14 percent in 2017.
For the first time, though, the survey also asked teens if they have ever misused prescription opioids. Fourteen percent said they had.
Violence
The survey also asked high-schoolers about bullying and violence at school. One in 5 said they'd been bullied at school. Fifteen percent said they'd been bullied electronically.
The rate of students who said they'd been threatened or injured with a weapon at school has dropped significantly in the past decade. But students of color are still far more likely than white students to say they missed school because of safety concerns at school or in their communities.
Mental Health
Roughly a third of teens surveyed said they'd experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
The news is even worse for students who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Nearly two-thirds reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
In fact, in every category, LGB teens were at higher risk than their heterosexual classmates. They were twice as likely to report being bullied in school or electronically, three times as likely to seriously consider suicide and four times as likely to attempt suicide.
"It's shocking and alarming and tells us that things are terribly wrong," says Ellen Kahn, director of the Children, Youth & Families program at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. "We seriously need to address this."
Kahn says these data are a stark reminder of the lack of protections at the federal, state, district and school level for LGB teens and of why, she says, these protections are so sorely needed.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/06/16/620278545/what-teens-really-say-about-sex-drugs-and-sadness
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“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly.” ~ Toni Morrison
To love another is something like prayer
and it can't be planned, you just fall into its arms
because your belief undoes your disbelief.
~ Anne Sexton
Grettis Skogafoss, Iceland
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“Man is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.” ~ Mark Twain (1835-1910), Letters from the Earth, "The Damned Human Race," 1909
Shia-Sunni Battle**
ending on beauty:
‘And yet there is music in me’: In the asylum
at Arles, Van Gogh wrote to his brother
the only words he could muster
for the fire that had overwhelmed his life.
And then he wandered out to remake the stars.
Joseph Fasano, Grace
Van Gogh: Cafe Terrace at Arles
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