Jonathan Livingston Seagull

As I mentioned back in July, at the conclusion of Kyla Scanlon's conversation with Ezra Klein on his podcast he asked her what books she would recommend. The first thing out of her mouth was Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I was like "what what???" Not what I would have expected.

Out of mixed delight and surprise, I secured a copy of this 70s classic from the Chapel Hill Public Library earlier this week and read through the slim tome in a couple of nights. It's not heavy going.

Rather than summarize and expound upon it at length, I will simply pass along my approval of this lovely little book, a breath of fresh air and more. 

Crunchy

In August when we went to the mountains we stopped at the Ingles supermarket to pick up groceries. Happy to have just picked up Natalie at the airport and excited to get to our mountaintop rental, I accidentally picked up a small thing of crunchy -- not smooth -- peanut butter.

But of course I took it home and, when we had finished the thing of smooth we had in Chapel Hill, I worked through it over time. Seeing that we were nearing the end, I picked up a large thing of peanut butter at Harris Teeter last week.

But when I opened it this morning to make my breakfast PBJ (I think yall see where we are going with this) I discovered, much to my chagrin, that once more in my haste or inattention to detail I had bought crunchy. So now I have a bunch to eat up. Such is life. Rather than flagellate myself I'll just have to eat it because, of course, I can't give it away and I can't throw it away. I may just have to make some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies to accelerate its consumption.

Empowering toxicity

After my Al Anon meeting on Saturday I was talking to a guy who had come to our group for the first time who had moved up from Florida to get away from the horrific drug ecosystem there that was killing his daughter, who was a fentanyl addict but was in some sort of residential facility here in NC now. He said he thought Florida was the epicenter of it all: "There are rows and rows of drug motels, they deal openly in restaurants, a dealer threatened me with a gun when I told to him to keep him away from my daughter. When I told some cops about it, one of them suggested I should get a gun and shoot some of the dealers, 'Just do it in the right way so we don't have to arrest you.'  He was a deputy sheriff."

At the Bike Loud! ride a couple of weekends ago I was riding with a neighbor I had invited to the event, a woman who doesn't ride much. We were passed by a decent-sized group of stronger riders who were riding a longer ride. Then we were passed by a truck. About half a mile up the road, I could see that the bikers were enveloped in smoke after the truck had clearly been coal rolled.

Then of course there's the Trump video showing him putting on a crown, flying a plane and taking a big crap on the No Kings protesters, which should not have surprised us but somehow did. After all, this is the same guy who would tweet about people (Fiona Hill, etc) while they were testifying before Congress. 

What he has done is created a situation where violent vigilantism -- up to and including murder -- is pretty much encouraged.

When they go this low it is hard to keep going high, but somehow we must.

Fall season wrap

Just concluded the fall men's "3.5" ladder at the Farm. Went 0-5, which sounds bad, but is less bad when you take into account that most of the people I was playing were at least 15 years younger than me and played high school tennis, so were just fundamentally better than me. One of them I had beaten twice last season so he was highly motivated to kick my ass. 

Also, there are problems like my second serve, which pretty much sucks. As much tennis as I play, it should be better. The problem is that though I play a lot, I do little of what the people in the self-help industry call "deliberate practice," or consciously working on getting better.

This is a problem in many areas of my life, including writing. I have lots of goals, lots of activities, and do a lot of things but don't really narrow my focus and try to get better at any of them. Except my job and being a good parent, family member, friend, that sort of thing.

So I muddle along and maintain a generally high level of output across a range of domains, much of it uneven.

Gotta hustle over to Graham's now to drop off my e-bike, which he will test ride for a while, before hustling back to host a joint Young Amateur Byzantinist Society/Madonna Fan Club video call.

Clarity of purpose

This morning I drove Mary to a small diagnostic medical procedure, one that we all go through when we reach a certain age. It involves some dietary restricitions for a few days which ramp up the day before and... you know the one.

At any event, driving her there I felt the somewhat rare sense of absolute clarity that I was in the right place, doing exactly what I should be doing. This sense often evades me during the day, when I have a variety of items on my task list calling out for attention like a small child at the playground. "Look at me! Look at me!" they clamor all at once.

Taking your spouse in for a medical procedure is not one of those moments. There's no ambiguity or uncertainty, which is comforting.

The virtues of strong-throated church ladies and organs

On Saturday I was at a memorial service where the music was a piano plus a couple of hymns which everyone sung. Often at these services I'm with my mom, who reads music, knows all the hymns and loves to sing. So she sings it loud and proud, which allows me to both follow along and also sing out a little myself. The volume of an organ also lets the somewhat shyer singers participate robustly.

This option was not on offer Saturday. Nobody there really took the lead and sung it out, so we were all (at least on the side where I was) reduced to shyly piping out our weak versions of the song. It was a shame. I should probably bring my mom along to more of these, though at the age of 87 she already goes to more of them than she would like. I get it. I mean, hell, I do too.

Attention as the coin of the realm

There is general consensus that attention has now become a dominant commodity and driver within the new economy and, sadly, the Trump is its master. An op-ed over the weekend in the Times argued, plausibly, that on balance the failure of Democrats to meaningfully challenge him for dominating the news cycle is a large part of what dooms us to semi-relevance and failure.

But Trump also serves as the primary exemplar of the fact that attention-seekers are fucking assholes, on average. We can't help but to hate them because they crowd out airspace that might otherwise be filled with interesting, compelling, worthy things.

So each of us has to cultivate habits of self-management to titrate exposure to all the sources of noise outside of ourselves to figure out what we want, even as we also figure out a way to ask for enough attention from the outside world to sell our respective wares and flourish. We all need some attention, we just don't want to hog it. At least, most of us don't.

Nb. On the bike ride to work I got to thinking about my conversational style and how it maps onto this whole theme. Not infrequently I walk away from conversations (for example with Sarah Lu at Alan Haig's parents' service this weekend) feeling that I learned less about the person I had been talking to than I should have because I reflexively wedged in my own experiences, tangential to what we had been talking about. For example her child (daughter?) is at McGill and I jumped in with how I had been close to Montreal this summer while in Lake Placid. Who gives a fuck? Where did that come from? We should have transitioned to talking about what her child is studying. As we can see from my hedging I am not even sure of her child's gender. Not good. 

This tendency must come from feeling like I am always competing for airtime/attention. But most likely what happens is the person I was talking to walks away thinking, at some level, "what a jerk."

I really do need to go back and watch Egoyan's early movies and revisit how he thematizes the performance of the self.

The diffusion of the grey men

After a hiatus I've come back to come back to reading through this old book on the history of CIT, which only recently I was reminded had been taken over by Raleigh-based First Citizens back in 2022. Of course many of you might well ask "why should I give a fuck?" about my reading of an old book about an old finance company we've scarcely ever heard of. Aside from the fact that CIT had its moment in the sun, albeit a storm-threatened one, as it teetered on the edge of and then finally had to declare bankruptcy back in 2009, the history of CIT offers a lot of insight into the development of the US economy during the period of rapid industrialization and consumerization of the early 20th century, culminating in the roaring twenties. CIT was early in the financing of consumer auto purchasing but also lots of other stuff, both retail and B2B. Here's a list of some of the spaces they were financing, including on a wholesale basis (i.e. buying receivables from other, local financing entities).

Step back and think about how so much of this stuff had been done (if at all) 50-70 years prior. By individuals, by hand. Value chains were just beginning to be broken out into their constituent elements as population centers grew and regions and people were made able to specialize due to mass communications and greater ease in getting people and things from place to place. It had to be financed somehow, which meant that you had to have small armies of people figuring out how to get that done, to get money from financial centers out to peripheries and back again. All without computers.

It was a lot of work, much of it super-boring. My point is that there is a tendency to decry the financialization of everything but in fact finance had to grow to let everything else get done. And the only way for it to happen right was for these decentralized armies of salesmen and collectors to spread out building relationships, understanding facts on the ground and then over time aggregating wisdom and abstracting up to get better scale and efficiency. Sure, lots of nastiness was going on too. But eventually wealth flowed out and supported broader prosperity.

Things are different now as the mega tech companies suck wealth inwards, and China's centralization may mean it never replicates this moment. Now I am scrambling to generalize and conclude so I can move on with my day, so I'll just do that.

Clarifications

Reading Heschel this morning I realized I might have been harsh the other day in decrying the tech elite. Let me clarify.

The problem is surely not that they are all bad people. Far from it. The problem is that they work so much and earn so much and -- like everyone, are subject to the limitations of 24 and 7. That's why democracy and the public bourse are ultimately better ways to fund public goods, even as they are also imperfect. Mistakes are always being made, constantly. 

I also thought a bit more about Bill Gates and his problems with women, from hanging out with Epstein to allegedly misusing his position of power with both Microsoft and the Gates Foundation to have relationships with women.

I too was a skinny nerd and my self-image was formed in that crucible. While things got better for me through puberty and braces and sports, I was never able to entirely shed my negative self-image. So when I got to college and was apparently considered attractive on the marketplace of sexual partners, I never really quite believed it. I misbehaved, got punished, and punished myself. 

Let us recall that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg never finished college and never had an opportunity to grow through a life phase where they did a bunch of stupid shit and then realized they were assholes. They were off on the way to becoming billionaires before they had passed through puberty.

I have written before that I think the scene from Moonstruck where Olympia Dukakis says that men chase women because they fear death is the very apogee of cinematic insight. The correct solution to this problem is to figure out a way to fear death less, rather than to chase women. Philantropy instead of philandery seems like a good start.

Tea Party of the Spirit

Last week the Economist ran an article about the continued ratcheting up of the war for the very top tier of technical talent, the hunt for the Jeff Deans of the world (Google him and read up). The ever higher dollar figures attached to technical talent has in turned fuelled the messianic but likely ill-founded self-belief of many of these profoundly-talented people. Looking back over the blog I see that I had thought of and alluded to the quote below a couple of times in recent months, so here it is in full. If you are in a hurry, skip to the second paragraph (which I myself have taken the liberty of separating off).

One time in Holland when the market was rather dull for spices the merchants had several cargoes dumped into the sea to peg up prices. This was a pardonable, perhaps a necessary device for deluding people. Is it something like that we need now in the world of spirit? Are we so thoroughly convinced that we have attained the highest point that there is nothing left for us but to make ourselves believe piously that we have not got so far-just for the sake of having something left to occupy our time? Is it such a self- deception the present generation has need of, does it need to be trained to virtuosity in self-deception, or is it not rather sufficiently perfected already in the art of deceiving itself? Or rather is not the thing most needed an honest seriousness which dauntlessly and incorruptibly points to the tasks, an honest seriousness which lovingly watches over the tasks, which does not frighten men into being over hasty in getting the highest tasks accomplished, but keeps the tasks young and beautiful and charming to look upon and yet difficult withal and appealing to noble minds. For the enthusiasm of noble natures is aroused only by difficulties. 

Whatever one generation may learn from the other, that which is genuinely human no generation learns from the foregoing. In this respect every generation begins primitively, has no different task from that of every previous generation, nor does it get further, except in so far as the preceding generation shirked its task and deluded itself. This authentically human factor is passion, which also the one generation perfectly understands the other and understands itself. Thus no generaton has learned from another to love, no generation begins at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned to it than had the preceding generation, and if here one is not willing like the previous generations to stop with love but would go further, this is but idle and foolish talk.

Soren Kierkegaarde, Fear and Trembling, tr. Walter Lowrie 1941

Kierkegaarde writes of "generations," but what he says applies to individuals as well. The monumental arrogance of thinking that young tech gazillionnaires could, by virtue of reading Peter Singer and talking late into the night about it, figure out the optimal scheme for distibuting their wealth through "effective altruism" is ultimately ill-founded. Likewise Elon Musk's at once messianic and onanistic idea that he should aggregate untold riches with the goal of getting to Mars in case mankind can't figure out how to save itself. If mankind can't work together to save itself we all deserve to die. The earth will soldier on in our absence, largely indifferent to our momentary (from its perspective) presence. 

Technical, commercial and spiritual genius rarely coincide perfectly, and even more rarely in an individual's life. Bill Gates passed along a bumpy road of bare-nuckled capitalism and sexual poor judgment (to be gentle about it) to get to where he is today, and he hasn't fully nailed philanthropy, as MacKenzie Scott's challenge to his model (and Melinda Gates tacit acceptance thereof) has made clear. Gates should certainly be given lots of credit for his level of seriousness, effort, and recognition of the genius of others as he tries to give his money away.

Change in the air conditioning

We recently took our 2010 Prius, known as Beatrice within the family, to Auto Logic for her inspection and also a few more things. Most importantly, Mary had discovered that the AC didn't seem to be working. The cost to fix it and do a couple of other things that needed to be done exceeds the car's value. Plus, the stupid car still smells a little from an incident a few years back, discussed here. It is time to let her go where all cars eventually go. 

Checking through the archives I can see that Beatrice has been with us almost exactly thirteen years. Here is the first mention of her in the historical record.

Mary has rejected my suggestion that we try being a one-car household for a while and just lean on my e-bike, arguing that I need my car too often. We could limp on with Beatrice without AC through the winter, and we may well end up doing that, but I'm pretty convinced that the thing to do is just bite the bullet and buy another car. But what will it be? Straight electric or plug-in hybrid? By now I find it hard to justify going with a straight gas car.

But the problem is that now we have to figure out what to get, and I am a little intrigued at the prospect. As much as I pretend to be indifferent to car fetishism, I have lived as a male in the United States of America for almost 60 years now and it is difficult not to be infected by it all. So what should we get? A newer model Prius PHEV seems like the best idea but I am reading that rear visibility isn't great and that it's lower-slung nature makes it a little harder to get into and out of. Maybe a small Lexus PHEV SUV? I have always resisted the SUV AWD thing but maybe this will work. I will have to sell Mary on the higher list price, though. I like the looks of the Hyundai EVs but it seems like they have a lot of recalls, some of them major.

In any case, change is afoot. Here's a song for the moment. A fingerstyle masterclass, despite low production values. The actual song starts at the 0:53 mark if you want to skip some warm up.

Letter, spirit, and the Global Order

This week's Economist has an article about how Russia and China seem to be using shadow fleets of commercial ships flying under the flags of an ever-shifting array of small countries to conduct asymmetrical warfare. Launching swarms of drones like those we've seen in Denmark and Germany recently. Accidentally dragging their anchors on underseas data cables ("Oops!"). And so on.

As a refresher, the shadow fleet has been expanding ever since the Ukraine war started in 2022 and the US and allies imposed sanctions on Russia and pushed Russian banks out of the international settlement network SWIFT. So as we've stepped away from our post-WWII role as primary underwriters of a rules-based order and security guarantors thereof, we've created fertile ground for a shadowy world not just of commerce but of martial action that ignores, taunts and disdains us.

We never really had the wherewithal to fully impose any kind of order. But at least making an effort put in place frameworks, to give voice to and listen to others to optimize what those frameworks looked like, and to promote contexts in which those frameworks could be implemented, ultimately I think this was a much more fruitful way to go. The whole enterprise moreover fostered a spirit which sought good.

We are now sinking into a chaos where systems clamor for power. Or, rather, this primordial state of being which we sought to repress and contain is reemerging, swamp by swamp.

(honestly this post didn't go where I thought it would 45 minutes ago before I got distracted by work email and client issues. But the blog begged to be tossed a few scraps of meat nonetheless, like the seals at an acquarium, hungry beasts) 

The Morning Thief (or Thieves)

As I'm pretty sure I have written before, Duolingo has sucked up some of the time and energy that used to be devoted to the blog. This provides me with a bit of an ongoing quandry: is it better to allocate time to an artefact that will outlive me (my mind immediately races to Pushkin's riff on Horace's ode to a monument) or to an activity aimed at maintaining brain plasticity and functionality in the present?

A lot of thoughts swirl here. First and foremost, who cares? Since I have spent only marginal time and effort promoting my blog, the distinction between attention-craving and strictly edifying activity is pretty much effaced on first blush.

Then again, I care. The blog is much more me than are the languages, which are just another way of interfacing with the world and others. But language study is, by its nature, highly respectful of and inviting to others, it facilitates outreach and going out. That in the end is why I should not let it go.

Though both activities, it must be owned, stop me from actually getting out and meeting other humans at this time of day, which is something I used to do in the earlier days of my financial planning practice and which is in fact really horizon opening. Duly noted.

Rocking bow and scrunchie

Behold my most recent YouTube minor obsession, Summer Woods, whom I've been digging into mostly via her Tool covers. I should start by saying that Tool's not a band I have known a lot about, though I've learned a little since falling for Summer's work and am impressed. While they're not something I'm going to spend a lot of time listening to now, just because I don't rock that hard anymore, I can see that they do and are a good deal more serious about making their videos express something than most. And they've sold a bunch of records without appearing to compromise much. I'm sure there's something to hate about them, I just don't have time figuring out what it might be.

One thing you wouldn't immediately think about their songs is that they'd make for good acoustic covers. 

Enter Summer Woods, with her bows, barettes, and scrunchies. A cute little rich girl with whom I can imagine conversing lucidly at a reception about the relationship of Anselm Kiefer to Egon Schiele. But reaching deep, she owns this song. It's not a complex song to play, but she plays it perfectly, cleanly, no buzzing frets, no nothing. From way down. "To feel, to breathe, to know I'm alive." The irony between how she looks and how she plays is far from accidental. Somewhere down in there, she intimates, in each prim-looking suburban girl, something expansive hides. I love her.

 

Friends

Went to AA this morning and the topic was friendship in AA. It seemed like I might be called upon as a matter of course (due to this meeting's specific format), so I thought about it for a while.

First off, it must be owned that despite its intentional and admirable quasi-anarchical amorphousness, there is a strong institutional pressure within AA for people to say nice things about it. It makes sense. People are there for the most part because they want to be there -- certainly that's true for an earlyish Saturday morning meeting -- and they want to support one another and be positive. So there's a tendency to say nice things about all aspects of the Program (as we say).

So is there something qualitatively distinct about friendships in AA? To an extent, maybe. Certainly one's early relationships in the Program are forged in flame, everybody is to some extent in crisis and in need when they come in. The people who are there for them and get them through the difficult early years become special.

But as time rolls on, I'm not sure there's a meaningfully deep distinction between friendships in AA and out of it, in my life at least. Everybody has some kind of issues with which they struggle and needs some kind of support that calls for moments of radical honesty and vulnerability of the type one sees in AA. AA relationships maybe distinguish themselves by the amount of cant and dogma upon which one may rely in supporting another, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing in all cases.

It's a good question, though I'm not sure of the answer. Ultimately we are all constrained by the 24/7 problem and have to figure out how to allocate and load balance attention over these constraints.