The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Reading the first half of Larsson’s wildly popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is like watching an intricate pattern of dominos being meticulously arranged, revealing just why the audience generally waits until the dominos are in place to fall before showing up. But once Larsson has all his pieces in place, the second half of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo rushes to its conclusion, transforming the quality of time during the reader’s encounter in a spirited fashion similar to the suspension of time that occurs as dominos fall. With dominos it is as if the total sum of energy is deposited into each little black and white piece over the course of countless hours of labor, and that all of this energy is released, thereby transforming time, in the few seconds it takes for the dominos to fall, which release makes watching Dominos fall a direct encounter with our malleable universe. Maybe we would appreciate the transformational impact of falling dominos if we were there to see them laboriously arranged. Or we might just be bored until the fun started, which is exactly what I was until Larsson pushed over the first domino in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The Fruit of Knowledge

Apple has come up with an ingenius advertising slogan for its new iPhone 4g: “This changes everything. Again.” This slogan is wickedly effective at accomplishing advertising’s primary goal, creating anxiety in the consumer that can only be calmed with a purchase of the relevant merchandise. It is so effective because it plays off of the destabilizing effect of the rapidly accelerating pace of technological change. Because technology is intimately woven into the threads of our everyday lives, it is no mere hyperbole to proclaim that “everything” has changed as a result of Apple’s latest breakthrough. Everything that occurs at the very least does so in some form of relationship to advanced technology, and much of what occurs involves this technology directly. Ipso facto, if you transform the technology this, indeed, changes everything.



Our ability to interact successfully in the world, meaning our ability to both keep ourselves clothed and fed with adequate shelter, and to attract sexual partners, now depends in no small degree on our ability to manipulate the current technology. But this ability is increasingly unstable, which is what makes Apple’s two line slogan such a knockout combination. Not only is Apple able to change everything, it has the power to do so “again.” It is the “again” that is truly threatening, releasing the toxic anxiety central to the 4g purchase. Perhaps we are all accustomed to a certain degree of change; see timeless clichés such as “the only constant is change.” But we are ill equipped for change on the everything scale, much less so everything changing repeatedly according to Apple’s rigid schedule. Apple’s slogan demonstrates that not only are they aware of how vulnerable we’ve become to their wizardry, but that they are willing to exploit it.

Apple has long since been lauded as the world’s “coolest company.” I’ve always noticed how those individuals recognized as the coolest appear more concerned with their status than with the people who grant it to them. Apple’s aforementioned label, then, is apt. The twisted part is how we always try to win the cool kid’s approval, in the hopes that we might soak up some of that cool aura, with all of its benefits. Just so, we have fetishized Apple, paying more for its products, waiting in line over night at the mall for the privilege to do so, in the hope that the world’s coolest company might, via its glowing logo, anoint us the world’s coolest consumers. Which makes us doubly pathetic. Not only are we at the mercy of Apple, for now and forever (remember “again”), we also worship Apple.

God is not dead, and the secular age is a sham. Once more we are prostrate in fear and awe. But where, for example, Christianity changed everything once, and has left us waiting two thousand years for the promised second act, we only had to wait four years between the iPhone and the iPhone 4g. Apple, of course, is just getting started with this Second Coming. Again!

Transition by Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks’ Transition would be compelling based solely on the sci-fi conceit central to the story, that infinite parallel worlds exist and that trained practitioners can “flit” between the unnumbered versions of earth, briefly inhabiting the bodies and minds of individuals in each world. Banks successfully plays with this concept for the duration of Transition, but also uses it as a platform for serious reflections on some of the grim aspects of reality as we currently know it. Foremost among these is Banks’ assault on the use of torture as a tool in the “war on terror.” Banks conceives of a parallel earth in which the terrorists are Christians, whom the state tortures relentlessly. This clever plot device removes us just far enough from all of the assumptions we make about “Islamofascism,” and highlights torture as exactly what it is: evil. In sum, Banks has crafted an immensely pleasurable sci-fi thriller, and one that makes you think as the pages fly by.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman

Apparently unsatisfied with the critique of Christianity embedded in his brilliant His Dark Materials trilogy (most famous for The Golden Compass), Phillip Pullman is back for more with The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Billed as a “fiercely subversive retelling of the life of Jesus,” it is mostly a platform for Pullman to air his particular biases and grievances regarding the organized religion of Christianity. These complaints fall well short of fierce subversion, as they take the form of a fairly straightforward fictional depiction of the difficult encounter between post-enlightenment secular reason and the mysteries at the core of the gospel stories. Plenty of us struggle every day in managing this encounter, but, unlike Pullman, many of us choose not to simply explain away the mystery. In doing just that Pullman enjoys the satisfaction that comes with saying “case closed,” when all that has really closed is Pullman’s mind to the possibility that some mysteries will always remain unsolved, but that we somehow grow in wisdom as we fail to solve the mystery.

The Decision

It’s been a couple of weeks now since Lebron James’ infamous “Decision” on ESPN, and I remain transfixed by both the fact of the event (full disclosure: I didn’t watch “The Decision”, since I am of course superior to all those mere mortals who indulge in television while I water my ornamental vegetable garden, but read about it and listened to sports radio about it obsessively) and the public response/backlash. I have read and heard numerous credible theories as to why Lebron James is now a certifiable schmuck, my favorite of which is ESPN “Sportsguy” Bill Simmons’ argument that the NBA has always obeyed the unwritten code of pick-up basketball that requires the two best players on the court to be on separate teams, although last I checked the Lakers and Celtics weren’t playing shirts vs. skins in the Finals. I also don’t seem to recall Simmons suggesting the original Magic-Bird-Jordan Dream Team give back their gold medals, or that they should at least have let Jordan play for Russia to make things fair.

But amidst all of the conspiracy theories and Lebron bashing, which are a huge part of how fantastically entertaining the whole Lebron “Decision” process has been, I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why Lebron chose to announce his decision on “The Decision.” Many have been quick to label Lebron a narcissist, and while I am certain that Lebron has quite the healthy ego, nothing that came before “The Decision” matches this diagnosis. Narcissists generally have lengthy resumes (see one Terrell Owens). You don’t go from all around good guy, which is how everyone perceived James prior to “The Decision”, to the antichrist in one week of free agency.

The consensus is also that James and his advisors completely misread the public in hatching their plan for announcing “The Decision.” Perhaps they did, as I don’t believe they intended to turn James into a villain as if he were fan favorite Andre the Giant morphing into villain mode to challenge Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania. But our misunderstanding of what actually took place during “The Decision” trumps any of Team Lebron’s missteps. Lebron celebrated “The Decision” because he understood, correctly, that at this moment in time he was at the peak of his powers. We all whiffed on that, and proceeded to pile on with every endorsement of Lebron-as-narcissist, because of how we have always understood the source of the athlete’s power; Michael Jordan sold oceans of Gatorade and countless Nikes precisely because of his on-court game. But Lebron is a different beast. He is a cultural icon who just happens to play basketball.



Some observers have attempted to belittle James for taking a shortcut to greatness by joining Wade in Miami. These observers claim that James can only cement his greatness by winning championships as The Man, and that joining Wade’s heat removes this option from the table. But what “The Decision” clearly tells us is that Lebron does not regard winning NBA championships as the ultimate accomplishment. For Lebron, holding the entire destiny of a sport in his hands, as he so clearly did this summer, was a far grander achievement than winning mere basketball games, championships notwithstanding. It was an achievement worthy of a cultural icon, something beyond the championship athlete, whose ranks include Lebron’s new partner, Dwayne Wade.

And on many levels, Lebron was exactly right. We all obsessed over “The Decision” not because we really cared which team Lebron chose, because really, outside of Ohio, who cares, but because we were enthralled by the mystique of someone who was in complete control. Which made the Lebron backlash inevitable, because under all that cover of rejecting Lebron for his betrayal, his narcissism, his competeitive cowardice, we really resent Lebron because he became exactly what he wanted to be: ubiquitous. With “The Decision”, Lebron transcended basketball and ascended to the heavens. We all now hate him for leaving us down here while his star shines brightly somewhere close to Elvis Presley’s. If Lebron keeps it up, just like the Beatles he too will be able to accurately say that he’s “more popular than Jesus.” Jesus, after all, was but the King of the Jews. Lebron’s moniker “The King” gives him a little more wiggle room as to whom he might rule.

Things We Didn't See Coming by Steve Amsterdam

Steve Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming is a remarkable account of a dystopian near future, and it is remarkable for what it leaves out. Amsterdam is deftly sparing with the details of social, political, and environmental rot as he tracks his protagonist from adolescence (during the Y2K scare, natch) into his forties. Each step of the way Amsterdam provides just enough description as to how the earth and the people on it are breaking down, but his narrative leaves open the questions of how and why. In doing so Amsterdam connects his vision of a dystopian near future to our experience of the present, when we too are left to wonder at the how and why of endless war and oil spills, or, if you like, endless spills and oil wars. So while we perhaps can’t see what’s coming, Amsterdam’s novel makes clear how blurry things already are.

Audition by Ryu Murakami

Audition is Ryu Murakami’s contribution to the tradition of the femme fatale. Unfortunately, Murakami’s femme fatale Yamasaki Asami is not up to the task. Other than some vague intuitions from the victim Aoyami’s friend, and some heavy-handed revelations by Murakami that something horrible is waiting to happen, there is little about Asami to worry us that she is capable of the pending grotesqueries. There is just not enough tension here to enjoy the novel’s violent, conclusive release. Look elsewhere for your femme fatale fix.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog eloquently presents two Parisian heroines who would escape the miseries of this world, but finally, and together, reverse their respective retreats and face all that is, with an assist from a Japanese gentleman. They find strength in simple moments of beauty, but what is most beautiful is how strong they become in their connection to one another. Barbery’s two heroines, Madame Michel and Paloma, each penetrate the farcical aspects of modern life, which leaves them each thirsting only for escape. But their friendships, first with newcomer Mr. Ozu, and then with one another, demonstrate that while it is next to impossible to save one’s self, it is truly liberating to save one another. And this is reason enough not only to go on living, but to celebrate life.

I Don’t Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner

If you’ve been through your share of romantic catastrophes, and, like me, I’m sure that you have, then Julie Klausner’s I Don’t Care About Your Band will help you laugh instead of cry about your own intimate disasters. Klausner’s memoirs mine her train wreck of a dating resume to hilarious effect. Klausner seems to have enjoyed her first experience of giving head as much if not more than most of us enjoyed our first time receiving: “I remember thinking the moment I felt Nick’s goth penis in my mouth that I. Was. Home. That this was what I was meant to do.”

Klausner’s comic gifts are as abundant as her libido, as she deftly combines two of life’s greatest pleasures, sex and laughter. I’m just glad that I’m not one of her loser ex-boyfriends, because Klausner’s scathing treatment of her blundering ex’s proves the old adage that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But this furious New Yorker is also seriously funny, and, at long last, happily paired off. Here’s betting she’ll write an equally funny follow-up about the inevitable follies of successful intimacy.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate is a 21^st Century update of William James’ classic The Will to Believe.  Both works face down an aggressive atheism, and Eagleton grapples specifically with those “neo-atheists” who go beyond a reasonable stance that God does not exist and that we might be better off without religion to a fundamentalist stance that belief in God is inherently harmful and that religion is the root of all evil.  The popular published neo-atheists, specifically Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, hold that reason has rendered the question of God definitively answered in the negative.  Eagleton, like James before him, understands that reason alone can never pretend to answer the question of God, and that its better use is in grasping what religious belief truly offers (and understanding the harm it has wrought) as each individual faces the question of God that remains open for all to consider, Dawkins and Hitchens (or “Ditchkins”, as Eagleton comically conflates the two) notwithstanding.

Eagleton, a Marxist who appears to personally hold to that more reasonable version of atheism, nevertheless takes the gloves off in an inspired defense of religious belief, highlighting the sundry ways in which segments of the religion most familiar to Eagleton, Christianity, stand for the poor and dispossessed left behind by globalized capitalism.  And, even more so than religion, it is the state of the globalized world that is ultimately in question in Reason, Faith, and Revolution.  Eagleton captures the current unnerving vulnerability of our collective plight as we stare down religious fundamentalism of all stripes, terrorism wrought by extremists and states alike, staggering inequality of wealth, and ecological catastrophe.  Reading Eagleton, it is clear that the history of western civilization is not the upward arc out of religious irrationalism that the neo-atheists paint it to be.  In fact, it is not clear in which direction the arc is currently heading.  Eagleton’s genius here is that whatever his personal beliefs as to the question of God may be, he understands that what direction that arc ultimately takes depends in large part on the actions of our believers. 

Whatever our individual beliefs, we all must carve out a healthy space in our midst for our believers and their contributions.  Closing the question of God, as the neo-atheists would have us, just might give us the end to the human story, and I’m not talking about Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history.”   I think I’ll take The Neverending Story, even if the end of the story that I’ll never get to is rational certainty as to the answer to the question of God.  I’m almost certain that it’s more fun not knowing how things turn out.  

The Professional by Robert B. Parker

Readers lost one of their great storytellers earlier this year with the death of Robert B. Parker. By the time of his passing, Parker had published forty installments of the Spenser novels that made him both famous, and, in this reader’s opinion, the greatest hardboiled crime fiction writer of all time. What separates Parker’s Spenser from Hammett’s Spade, Chandler’s Marlowe, and all other pretenders to the crown, is the philosophy that shines through every page of Spenser that Parker ever wrote: a world in which evil is constantly afoot is redeemed when courageous individuals risk all for their sense of honor and justice, and are supported in doing so by the love that binds them to others. And the second half of that equation, represented by Spenser’s lasting love for Susan, in her own right one of our greatest fictional shrinks, and Spenser’s fraternal bond with Hawk, the embodiment of unbounded masculinity, is as important as the first. Between Spenser, Susan, and Hawk, Parker put on paper his very own wholeness. Readers return to Spenser again and again not just because Parker was a master of crackling dialogue, wise guy humor, edge-of-your-seat fisticuffs, and flawless pacing, but because the trinity of Spenser, Susan, and Hawk shows us a way forward in this oft cruel world. The Professional, one of the last Spensers, is up to Parker’s usual standards, i.e. it is sublime. Rest in peace, Robert B. Parker, and thank you for writing forty Spenser mysteries. I only wish you could write forty more.

Obama Gets Tough?

In a recent interview with Today show host Matt Lauer, President Barack Obama had his “talking tough” moment.  Obama explained that he had been talking to regular, everyday Americans , not ivory tower experts, about the gulf oil spill in order “to know whose ass to kick.”  Upon learning of these remarks I was immediately reminded of Obama’s Oval Office predecessor, President George W. Bush.

            

Bush built his entire presidency around a tough guy response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.  Bush’s tough guy theatrics, which notoriously included the “Mission Accomplished” incident in which Bush arrived on a US aircraft carrier via fighter jet dressed in full fighter pilot regalia, reached their rhetorical peak in 2003 when Bush taunted the “Islamofascists” with a hearty “Bring ‘em on.”

            

While Bush was a disaster as president, he was, nevertheless, well suited to his role as tough guy.  His firm resolve to use force, even, as in the case of Iraq, when uncalled for, required minimal nuance.  And nuance, as exhibited by Bush’s singularly unimaginative “Bring ‘em on,” was not Bush’s strong suit.   Much better for Bush, at least stylistically, to round up a posse and “stay the course,” come hell or high water.  Bush the tough guy had a few good months rallying the American people after 9/11, and the dye was cast for the next seven years of his presidency.  Ironically, Bush publicly voiced regret for his “Bring ‘em on” remarks at the end of his presidency, which was like the 2 Live Crew expressing regret for their explicit lyrics; without incessant chants for female genitalia 2 Live Crew would never have existed in pop culture.  Similalry, Bush only ever existed as president in the guise of the tough guy.

            

Obama was elected president for a number of reasons, and not least among them was an intelligence plain for all to see (and hear).  One of the qualities of Obama’s particular brand of intelligence is his capacity for nuance; Obama successfully touched the third rail of racial politics during his campaign precisely because of this ability to engage with a complex issue on many of its nuanced levels.  In this sense, as in others, we elected Bush’s opposite.  It would be absurd to suggest that Obama is somehow not tough, as any African American able to win the presidency must necessarily possess vast reservoirs of toughness.  But Obama is just too nuanced to play the part of ass-kicking tough guy convincingly.  One gets the sense from Obama that when he does dispense discipline it is in a controlled fashion, measured and delivered with a precision simply foreign to an old-fashioned butt-whooping.  But, “I will diligently pursue those responsible and hold them accountable” doesn’t sound nearly as tough as “I’ll find them and kick their ass,” and the polls must strongly suggest that what Americans want from Obama in response to the gulf oil spill right now is unadulterated aggression.

            

But a more interesting contrast between Bush and Obama is apparent when we look carefully at Obama’s exact words here.  When Bush said “Bring ‘em on,” we had a good idea as to whom the intended recipient of the ass-kicking was (the qualifications for “Islamofascist” were not crystal clear, but at the very least we knew they had to be Muslims).  But explicit in Obama’s tough guy turn is his confusion as to where to open his can of whoop-ass.  Recall that he spoke to those average Joes “so I know whose ass to kick.”

           

Obama’s indeterminate target is a symptom of the most significant threat America faces today and for the foreseeable future.  While I certainly hope to avoid any terrorist violence, the threat posed to civilization, western or otherwise, by terrorism pales in comparison to the potential danger of ecological catastrophe.  And while some would argue that we have created the terrorists just as much as we have created the threats to a sustainable environment (and some would deny that we have created either), it remains far easier to target any given human enemy of the state, be they communists, terrorists, or illegal aliens, then it is to target the agents of ecological disaster.  Blame BP and/or the US Federal Government for the oil spill if you wish to delude yourself, because never has “we have met the enemy and he is us” been more true than in the case of all things “environmental.”

            

Obama’s confusion as to whose ass to kick re. the gulf oil spill is a preview of things to come.  As “the environment” begins to unravel, and basic human resources such as food and potable water begin to diminish, an enraged public will clamor for the responsible heads to roll, just as they have in the case of the gulf oil spill.  But the only ass to kick is our own, since we all created this mess together.   Of course, the outcome of man-made natural disasters such as the gulf oil spill will make that collective beating a fait accompli.  As in all disasters, man-made or otherwise, those at the bottom of the ladder will take the brunt of the beating.  But perhaps ecological catastrophe may be the great equalizer.  It’s silly when they call Obama a socialist; oil, the lifeblood of capitalism, may, when spilled across the earth, turn out to be the greatest socialist of all, i.e. we’re all equally screwed.

Black Gold

The oil spill is the cruelest of ironies: a man-made natural disaster that is the result of our efforts to master nature.  For all of its gushing physical reality, it is even more psychically real.  The oil spill follows the first rule of psychic life, the return of the repressed.  The repressed content, what is unacceptable to modern humanity, is our helplessness in the face of nature.  Our conscious emphasis on the domination of nature is, of course, an enterprise fueled by oil.  So it comes as no surprise that the repressed content, human fragility, would gush out of the very place we go in order to master the natural world.

When a tsunami kills 100,000 we mourn our dead and move on with the project of subjugating the mass killer, perhaps even with renewed vigor and purpose.  But when the very weapon used to wage war on nature backfires in our face, the psychic fallout is devastating.  Because the oil spill doesn't just symbolize our fragile mortality with the image of slowly bleeding out from a wound that can't be staunched.  And it isn't even the fact that this wound was self-inflicted.  It's that this wound was self-inflicted by the very process intended to cure the disease. The oil spill is that quintessential late modern tragic figure, the kid who got autism from his vaccines.

By way of oil we thought we could divorce ourselves from nature.  But oil is a strict Catholic and doesn't believe in divorce.  The oil spill reminds us that we are bound to nature until death do us part.  And nature will tell us when we can part, thank you very much.  If BP doesn't stop outsourcing its efforts to Wile E. Coyote and Acme, that parting of ways might happen sooner rather than later.  When plans A,B,C,D,E and F don't work what can we expect out of Plan G?  I say it's time to bring in the psychics.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga


The theme of Adiga's The White Tiger is liberation. That Adiga's protagonist Balram achieves his liberation by way of the murder of his wealthy oppressor forces the reader to wrestle with the heaviest of ethical dilemmas. But the weight of all this is eased by Adiga's wicked black comedy. Apparently you can laugh while wondering how complicit you are in creating the conditions that force Balram to choose between murder and a life of naked servitude. I am lucky enough not to have to make Balram's choice, but does that make me one whom the Balrams of the world might need to kill?

River of Gods by Ian McDonald


Ian McDonald's River of Gods is fun because it takes us to a near-future India, but it is important because it tackles head-on one of the most important looming questions: what to do when machines become as smart, if not smarter, then us? River of Gods is an admirable addition to the canon of sci-fi projects which engage with man vs. machine, its most noteworthy predecessors being The Terminator and The Matrix films. Unlike those two, however, McDonald's tale is an optimistic one, holding out hope that the encounter between human and sentient machine may benefit both. Let's hope, then, that McDonald is as much prophet as novelist. Because if he's not, I'm betting on the machines. 

The Inevitable Disappointment of Weekends


Fridays are celebrated with unfailing consistency. Enter any workplace on a Friday and you will hear workers exuberantly voicing some version of Thank God It’s Friday. Ask a worker how she is doing on a Friday morning and she’ll say “It’s Friday,” knowing that this says it all. Most recently I’ve encountered “Happy Friday!”, as recognition of each Friday as a holiday unto itself deepens among the 9 to 5 set. Friday is the force that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together, to borrow a phrase; the love of Friday crosses all boundaries of race, class, gender, etc. Friday is universal.

But on Monday ask the co-worker who on Friday danced a jig at the water cooler how his weekend went and you will get a resigned “It was too short.” Even if you are regaled with tales of midnight love or Sunday morning spiritual breakthroughs, you will get an “it went by too fast” somewhere in the narrative flow. The would-be perfect weekend is never long enough, and is at best bittersweet. So we find ourselves in an absurdly repeating loop of always feeling unsatisfied by what we are always looking forward to. Every Friday we are Charlie Brown trusting that this time Lucy will really hold the football long enough for us to kick it, and every Monday morning we are Charlie Brown lying flat on our backs wondering how we fell for it again. Of course, by Friday we’ll be lining up for that kick again.

The unfailing beauty of Friday morning is in the way the whole weekend stretches out before us with pregnant fullness. It is this fullness that infuses us with joy throughout the Friday workday. The weekend is close enough to taste as we float through our Friday labors, and we taste it in its unadulterated fullness, for not a precious second of weekend leisure has yet been burned. Just as the 1960’s really occurred in the 70’s, the weekend really occurs after hump day on Thursday and Friday, in the sense that any joy truly contained in the weekend occurs on Thursday and Friday. The weekend’s only pleasure is that of anticipation. Fun may indeed be had on Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, but this fun is divorced from the disappointment inherent to every weekend, the disappointment expressed by the eternal “It was too short.” The weekend’s true identity is freedom from work. This is why the weekend is celebrated on Thursday and especially Friday, when the weekend is fully intact as a 64 hour interlude between shifts. The moment the actual weekend begins on Friday evening the weekend as respite instantly begins to wane. Actual weekends are essentially an experience of loss, in that the freedom represented by the weekend shrinks palpably moment by moment; as soon it comes into our possession we begin to lose it. This sense of loss peaks on Sunday afternoons, renowned for their glaring melancholy, a sadness perhaps best captured as sung by Morrissey: “Every day is like Sunday, every day is cloudy and gray.”

The enormous and bulletproof popularity of professional football has more than a little to do with the fact that its games are largely played on Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter. Shrinking daylight matches shrinking weekends, casting a pall so grim that in comparison the escapist fantasy world of the National Football League glows with life giving warmth, each bone crushing collision reminding us that life will go on even as the weekend dies at our feet.

The only thing that goes by faster than a weekend is summer break. For students, June, July, and August last about a day and a half. For teachers it is less than an hour and a half. But that last week of school in early June, with an entire summer stretching out before her, is the happiest week in a teacher’s life. Heaven, in fact, is Friday during the last week of school. Hell gets a little closer every second thereafter.

Big Mac, Large Fries, and an Extra Large Reincarnation


In his excellent Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor notes the ironic core of the increasing belief in reincarnation among Americans (25% of Americans now believe in reincarnation, per http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99945,00.html ). In traditional Indian culture reincarnation was viewed as a failure; each reincarnation signaled the individual’s failure to achieve the ultimate goal: liberation from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. This traditional understanding of reincarnation regards earthly existence as, at best, a great place to visit, but by no means the final destination. More to the point, it is a place to work out one’s karma, usually with a great deal of suffering. Earth as a place of suffering is at the heart of the traditional conception of reincarnation. In contrast, as Batchelor explains, contemporary Americans’ belief in reincarnation is fueled by a desire for more, not less, of earthly existence American style (not so sure they’re interested in reincarnating in what we used to call the Third World). Americans who believe in reincarnation want to come back. We are like the two year old for whom you just cranked the jack-in-the box the umpteenth time, only for us to shout “Again!” Reincarnation is the same in name only; somehow, for Americans who believe in reincarnation, the grass is no longer greener on the other side of death.

Before considering why America has reinvented reincarnation, it is important to note that traditional Indian culture is not alone in its stance towards life in this vale of tears. Christianity, natch, wants off the island, too: “Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven. (Matthew 5:12)” There are an infinite variety of takes on eternal life in the heavenly kingdom, but it is safe to say that everyday life in 2010 America is not a version. For Christians, the real world is but a prelude for what follows, which of course has implications for the reality we inhabit. Reality is never more than a first step, whether towards reward in heaven, or damnation in hell. This is a nice solution for the problems of evil and suffering, which, as in India, are the definitive aspects of this place we call home. A home from which Christians and Indians, whether by way of heaven or by exiting the cycle of rebirth stage right, just want out.

If the dominant spiritual tradition in America regards earthly incarnation in much the same fashion as the Indians traditionally have, then whence this mutant American strain of reincarnation? There is one seemingly reasonable explanation as to why Americans have transformed reincarnation from a necessary step towards departure into an infinite series of arrivals. The average American enjoys material improvements in living conditions undreamt of for nearly all of human history. The relative ease and comfort enjoyed by Americans has perhaps fundamentally altered the experience of life on Earth such that those who experience this Earth 2.0 are lining up to sign on for another tour of duty. In short, the presence of e.g. Dunkin’ Donuts in our lives empowers us all to echo Nietzsche and say “Yes to life!”

The problem with this explanation is that the joys of shopping at Walmart and/or Saks Fifth Avenue only run so deep; scratch the surface and you will find as much misery in America today as you’d likely find in any other time and place. If suicide is any indicator of net misery then the following from Wikipedia kills the joyful reincarnation theory: “According to 2005 data, suicides in the U.S. outnumber homicides by nearly 2 to 1 and ranks as the 11th leading cause of death in the country, ahead of liver disease and Parkinson's. Worldwide suicide rates have increased by 60% in the past 50 years, mainly in the developing countries.” Material wealth, if anything, seems to have made us more miserable, which makes American reincarnation even stranger. We don’t seem to be jumping for joy, in contrast to what our version of belief in reincarnation would lead one to believe. We just watch TV, surf the web, go shopping, and slurp corn syrup to get through the day (the average American spends 151 hours per month watching TV, or 5 hours per day, 68 hours per month on the internet, just over 2 hours per day, and consumes 37.8 pounds of corn syrup annually; the average American woman takes 301 shopping trips for a total of 399 hours annually). And most of us get to do this a few years longer than our ancestors suffered through e.g. life before corrective eyewear. But we’ve always had wine, women, and song, and not a one of our manufactured consolations can top that. Not to mention that our material wealth giveth and taketh away in equal portions: there is a traffic jam for every luxury car, a sexually transmitted disease for every birth control pill, to mention but two of my favorite inventions.

We are as miserable as ever; you could make a case that we have gotten better at distracting ourselves from the misery, but these distractions weave their own unique web of desolation. And still, Americans want more, as if life were like the bottomless fries at Red Robin. Our many versions of bottomless fries are a good place to start if we wish to understand what may be at the heart of American reincarnation. Americans treat the world like a bottomless basket of fries, when there are only so many spuds to go around. According to a fun game on the web at http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/, if everyone in the world consumed as much as I do, it would take 4.1 Earths to provide the necessary resources. I am an American, I am eating the world, and I too have been increasingly looking forward to some reincarnation. This is all connected.

To understand why, let’s revisit Freud’s theory of the death instinct. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud explains “that all instincts tend towards the restoration of an earlier state of things.” Following this logic, “inanimate things existed before living ones,” so “the aim of all life is death.” Ergo, the death instinct. Almost no one takes the death instinct seriously, which of course reflects the fact that almost no one takes his or her inevitable deaths seriously. But Freud’s greatest psychoanalytic successor, Jacques Lacan, did, and it is to his understanding of the death instinct and its role in human enjoyment that we must turn to fathom American reincarnation. To understand how Lacan can help us tease out the meaning of American reincarnation we must first introduce his concept of jouissance. Per Wikipedia, jouissance is a form of pleasure that is in opposition to our normal understanding of the term: “The pleasure principle, according to Lacan, functions as a limit to enjoyment: it is the law that commands the subject to 'enjoy as little as possible'. At the same time the subject constantly attempts to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go beyond the pleasure principle. Yet the result of transgressing the pleasure principle, according to Lacan, is not more pleasure but pain, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this 'painful principle' is what Lacan calls jouissance. (Dylan Evans). Thus jouissance is suffering.” (for this quote see http://www.answers.com/topic/jouissance ) The precise connection between the death instinct and Lacan’s theory of jouissance is too abstruse for consideration here (for a concise description see http://www.answers.com/topic/death-instinct-thanatos ), but the key insight is that, due to the death instinct, we experience jouissance, that insatiable urge to overdo it. Thus, the bottomless fries.

If we take the death instinct seriously, as I believe we must, then we must be prepared, as Freud was, to follow the logic to its necessary conclusion and see if that conclusion matches the reality we see before us. So, here goes. If Freud is correct and there is “an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things,” by “becom(ing) inorganic once again”, then I see no more efficient means for the Earth as an interconnected organism to achieve this goal then by way of its human components’ consumption of mass quantities. The death instinct is driving us to literally eat the Earth back to an inorganic state. Does this seemingly bizarre formulation agree with the facts on the ground? I would suggest that the potential for an environmental apocalypse of human origins argues in its favor.

From this perspective, reincarnation American style is an expression of jouissance. Not content with doing our part to enjoy the pain of Earth’s annihilation just once, we shout “again!” Americans believe in reincarnation because of the instinctual drive for excess, and what is more excessive than using up four planets’ worth of resources not once, but until the job of killing this one planet is done? America is the ultimate “expression of the conservative nature of living substance,” (emphasis Freud’s) in the sense that we are at the vanguard of achieving the “final goal of all organic striving,” i.e. death. American reincarnation, then, is just reenlisting in the decisive march.

Perhaps the Indians and Christians are onto something when they consider the earth a place of suffering. Treating the earth as a place of excessive pleasure turns out to be in service of a death instinct that is leading us ever closer to the abyss; jouissance makes us lemmings, only we’re taking everybody and everything with us over the cliff. A return to suffering may just save us all. It may seem crazy to suggest that exercising a modicum of restraint at life’s various buffet tables would equate to suffering, but things have gotten so out of whack in late consumerist culture that for us Yanks the suggestion that we curtail our gorging is oddly anathema. But I’d like my children’s children to enjoy some French fries too, so one serving of fries will have to do. Okay, two servings.

Grey Poop-On

I could never own a dog. As a child I loved my dog Riggins, a brown mutt named after the inimitable gridiron star John Riggins (inimitable in the sense that who else would pass out drunk at a State Dinner after telling Justice O’Connor to “loosen up Sandy Baby”). But dog ownership has evolved in the days since I grew up in rural southern Maryland, where dogs roamed free (and were stolen if they were purebred hunting dogs like Freckles, the Brittany Spaniel who preceded Riggins and hopefully enjoyed the rest of her presumed life as a proper bird dog). Dog ownership now requires picking up your dog’s shit with a bag wrapped around your hand like a glove, and then carrying said bag around the ‘hood with you like a Gucci handbag. I am decidedly not down with this, a stance only hardened by my recent stint walking Bo, my friend Jason’s beagle, whose poop I handled, bagged, and gallivanted with down the sidewalk.

The first problem is the handling. The texture of dog doody , combined, of course, with that unique scent, is singularly nauseating: the warm squishiness, or the warm firmness, depending upon the quality of the scat, was never intended for fondling. Holding dog poo in one’s hand is like cleaning cat pee off the floor with the sleeve of one’s shirt. That there is a layer of wafer thin plastic between skin and kaka detracts but little from the effect; remember, sex with condoms still leads to orgasms. Pawing pup’s poo-poo, baggie notwithstanding, still leads to nausea (when Bo pooped on the floor and wifey sent me to clean it up at 7am it led to some serious dry heaves- had I already had my Cap’n Crunch wifey would have had to clean up barf and feces- “Stays crunchy, even in dogshit!”)

But the larger problem is post poop-scoop. One can not maintain a baseline of human dignity while carrying around a bag of canine crap. One is immediately transformed from the master of a beast to the beast’s nanny. There is something amazing about changing your own child’s diapers; their shit literally doesn’t stink. But as close as I was to Riggins, and as much as Jason dotes on Bo, their shit is still nasty. Women were put on Earth to rule over men, and men are the boss of dogs. A man who carries around dog shit just got bucked down from sergeant to private, and a woman who carries around dog shit is akin to the Queen of England squatting in a port-o-jon; it just shouldn’t happen.

The French are reportedly shocked when they witness Americans walking around carrying bags of doggy-doo. Of course, the French pay minimum wage to immigrant labor to sweep up Parisian poop, but that aside, I am with the French on this one. Say what you want about the French, but those are some dignified folk. Their horror at our oblivious doggy servitude is enlightening. So I say raise a glass of Perrier, and let the shit fall where it may.

Review of Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco:

Eco is, at best, long winded here as he delivers the message that our obsessions come to rule us. In other words, you are what you think, so be careful what you think about. So if you spend your life searching for proof that Bigfoot is real, it really won't matter if Bigfoot is objectively real because your life is all about Bigfoot, which is as real as anything ever gets. I would have enjoyed Eco's take on this if only he had cut about two hundred pages.

Worms, Cells, and the Meaning of Death

There are two prevailing and contrasting theories of how cells die. The first, more comforting theory is that cells simply wear out from the rigors of life, and as wear and tear mounts become less able to fight off predators such as free radicals. Death appears here as an enemy at the gate, to be fought off in valorous combat until achieving the most honorable death possible for the Samurai, death in battle. The second, more troubling theory contends that aging and death are in fact preprogrammed into the cell’s DNA. This perspective essentially states “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

A 2008 Stanford research study, published in the 7/24/08 edition of the journal Cell, lends its weight to the latter perspective. The study looked at the impact of genetic programming in nematode worms, and found that the process of natural selection had resulted in genetic programming that predestined the worms to aging, and, by extension, death. A web article about the research, found at www.supercentarian.com/archive/genetic.html, explains the study’s key insight thusly: “key regulatory pathways optimized for youth have drifted off track in older animals. Natural selection can’t fix problems that arise late in the animals’ life spans, so the genetic pathways for aging become entrenched by mistake.” In essence, death becomes an existential dilemma for us precisely because it is in no way a dilemma for the process of natural selection. It is perhaps the greatest of ironies that our ultimate destiny is the result of nothing but an afterthought. (I have, of course, here made the leap from the death of cells to the death of cell based organisms; with the caveat that I am layman and not a cell biologist, we would appear to be on safe ground in asserting that the death of an individual human is intertwined with the death of his or her cells to a degree that makes this leap meaningful.)

We may proceed, with due caution but also with some degree of confidence based in scientific findings such as the Stanford worm study, in further exploration of the implications of our “planned demise from day one,” as one website’s description of preprogrammed cell death puts it (http://www.howstuffworks.com/). And if we are to proceed in such a fashion, then our first stop might very well be, yet again, at the doorstep of one Sigmund Freud. Because what the Stanford scientists and other theorists of preprogrammed cell death are telling us sounds remarkably like Freud’s most controversial theory, with apologies to penis envy, the death instinct.

Before discussing the particulars of Freud’s death instinct, it is important to pause for a moment in consideration of its singular lack of popularity. For really existing psychoanalysis, the worms at Stanford may be the bearers of bad news. Psychoanalysis would prefer to go about its business as if Freud had never postulated the death instinct. Psychoanlysis, like all the rest of us, is in flight from the specter of death; as David Loy explains, “our primary repression is not sexual desire but death, and that denial returns to consciousness in distorted, symbolic ways which haunt us individually and collectively.” (for this quote and a review of Loy’s Lack and Transcendence, see http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-EPT/padmas.htm) Psychoanalysis has repressed Freud’s death instinct, but, of course, the first commandment of psychoanalysis is the return of the repressed; those worms out at Stanford signal an opportunity for that return to emerge into consciousness from its current status as the unconscious urge towards compulsive repetition found in every form of death terror. Confronted with the science of preprogrammed cell death, psychoanalysis has no choice but to own the half of its legacy it has disowned, and the first murmurings of this reawakening to the death instinct can now be heard. (For an example, see http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=NP.006.0063A)

While psychoanalysis as a whole has repressed the theory of the death instinct, it is striking that the two most important psychoanalysts since Freud, Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein (Jung’s and Adler’s respective breaks with Freud led them to found significant branches of psychology, but neither can properly be referred to as psychoanalysts), both embraced the death instinct. In an article on the web about the death instinct (http://www.answers.com/topic/death-instinct-thanatos), Pierre Delion explains that “For Melanie Klein, a firm advocate of the existence of the death drive, psychic conflict is never a conflict between the ego and the drives but always between the life drive and the death drive. Anxiety is the immediate response to the endopsychic perception of the death drive. For Jacques Lacan, the death drive as something beyond the pleasure principle forms the best starting-point for introducing his concept of the ‘Real,’ in connection with the Imaginary and the Symbolic. He links to this the lethal dimension inherent in desire and jouissance.” It is my contention that Klein and Lacan achieved their theoretical insights precisely because they owned all of psychoanalysis, including the death instinct. It is my further contention that psychoanalysis has become marginalized as both a therapeutic practice and as a philosophical construct because it has only ever been, Lacan and Klein notwithstanding, half of psychoanalysis. As a mental health professional a week does not pass in which I do not hear psychoanalysis mocked by the phrase “So, tell me about your mother.” And rightly so, because psychoanalysis without the death instinct is a joke. Forget about your mother; tell me about your life in the context of your inevitable death.

To survive in any meaningful way, psychoanalysis must get real. Freud is, as ever, ready at hand with his reality principle, but we must be sure that our understanding of reality is shaped not only by our appreciation of life instincts such as libido, nor only by the demands of civilization as enforced by the superego, but also by their equal partner, the death instinct. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud notes that “two kinds of pressures are constantly at work in living substance, operating in contrary directions, one constructive or assimilatory and the other destructive or dissimilatory.” For Freud, these dual processes are less than harmonious, as he sees “an opposition whose importance was long ago recognized by the theory of the neuroses.” Our neurotic inability to reconcile what Freud calls the “Vacillating rhythm” of life and death instincts is inscribed in the worst of human history, especially war. In a letter to Freud on the origins of war, Albert Einstein described our inability to cope with the death instinct succinctly: “Because man has within him a lust for hatred and destruction.” (for the full text of the letter, see http://www.braungardt.com/Physics/Einstein-Freud.htm)

Zeroing in on exactly what Freud meant by the death instinct helps us see to exactly what degree the theory of the death instinct foreshadowed the theory of preprogrammed cell death. Per Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, “If we are to take it as a truth that knows no exception that everything living dies for internal reasons- becomes inorganic once again- then we shall be compelled to say that ‘the aim of all life is death.’” (emphasis is Freud’s) Freud’s assertion here that death occurs due to “internal reasons” is shocking in its prescience in relation to theories of preprogrammed cell death. However, his assertion that “the aim of all life is death” contrasts with the discovery that death is a mere afterthought to processes of natural selection. We are stuck with death not because it is the aim of all life, but because life only cares for the life of the species and cares nothing for the death of the individual. To correct Freud, the aim of all individuals is death, but, inevitably, life goes on.

But if we recall that the life instinct protects the cell up until the point that it has performed natural selection’s task, only then to succumb to the death instinct preprogrammed into its DNA , then the following passage just a few paragraphs later in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, indicates that Freud’s death instinct may account for natural selection after all: “The hypothesis of self-preservative instincts, such as we attribute to all beings, stands in marked opposition to the idea that instinctual life as a whole serves to bring about death. Seen in this light, the theoretical importance of the instincts of self-preservation, of self-assertion and of mastery greatly diminishes. They are component instincts whose function it is to assure that the organic shall follow its own path to death, and to ward off any possible ways of returning to organic existence other than those which are immanent in the organism itself. We have no longer to reckon with the organism’s puzzling determination (so hard to fit into any context) to maintain its own existence in the face of every obstacle. What we are left with is the fact that the organism wishes to die only in its own fashion.” In short, Freud’s insight here is that the life instinct and natural selection are ultimately subservient to the death instinct’s agenda, in that a healthy organism will ward off external dangers in the name of natural selection, but ultimately in the service of allowing the death preprogrammed into the organism’s DNA to obtain. The death instinct has but one card to play; it must play it last and if it does it trumps all.

We continue to repress the death instinct at our collective peril. In the most literal sense possible, the only way forward for each and every one of us is though death. As Pema Chodron writes in her commentary on the Tibetan Buddhist Lojong slogans, “ Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone.” And if Freud and the scientists at Stanford are right, it not only comes for us at the end, but is there with us every step of the journey; death is a part of who we are. In the same commentary, Pema Chodron counsels us to become familiar with death throughout life: “Practice opening and letting go throughout your life so you will not panic as everything dissolves at death.” It is only by doing so that the death instinct can emerge from repression. It is only by doing so that we can remain sane in the face of our preprogrammed eath. The leap of faith here, to be watered by practice, is that underneath all that death terror is what Pema Chodron calls “the innate ability to let go and feel compassion for others.” I’d like to die trying.

The Dukolina Blue Heels

In the afterglow of Duke’s narrow national title victory over valiant Butler, whose talented and fresh-faced thirty year old coach Brad Stevens makes me feel ancient at just thirty-five, one fact has become unavoidable: while UNC and Duke may field two men’s basketball teams, they share one basketball program. UNC and Duke stand head and shoulders above every other college basketball program only because of each other. You may wish to cue up Grover Washington Jr.’s “Just the Two of Us” as we proceed.

The UNC-Duke merger occurred in 1980 when Duke hired Mike Krzyzewski, a budding coaching genius who could go toe to toe with UNC’s resident basketball demigod, Dean Smith. While Smith had ruled basketball’s best conference, the ACC, with an iron fist for much of the late sixties and then the seventies, he had remained unable to capture his elusive first national championship. It is no coincidence that within two years of Coach K’s arrival at Duke, Dean finally got the monkey off of his back, with a little help from a freshman named Michael Jordan, in 1982. With the encampment of Smith and Krzyzewski within a few miles of one another, the epicenter of college basketball, which had been floating in the ether after departing Wooden’s UCLA and landing briefly in Knight’s Indiana only to discover that the company wasn’t so great, planted itself firmly on Tobacco Road. It hasn’t left yet.

By 1986, fueled by competition with the very best, i.e. Smith, Coach K came into his own and led Duke to its first of what would become almost perennial Final Four appearances. It was as if Duke and Coach K had drafted behind Smith and UNC for a few years and then slungshot past them at the mid-point of the decade, with the pendulum reaching the outer point of its Duke-ward arc in 1991 and ’92, as Coach K claimed back-to-back national titles. Duke had pulled ahead.

But the pendulum swung quickly back the other way. And this time it was Smith and UNC benefitting from the thrill of the chase. Smith knew he had just about one lap left in which to catch Coach K, and this sense of urgency propelled Smith to make the final act of his legendary career perhaps its finest, with a second national title in 1993 and two more trips to the Final Four in ’95 and ’97 before calling it a day and leaving a program fully loaded for his ever loyal assistant Bill Guthridge to make his own Final Four run in 1998. And it was almost as if Coach K exited the stage in order to let Smith have his well deserved spotlight to himself, as Coach K endured his brief wilderness period, missing half the ’95 season with what was politely referred to as “exhaustion”, and which landed him in the hospital.

Needless to say, Coach K’s dark night of the soul was short lived, and by the time Smith had officially hung up his coaching whistle, Coach K was ready to take back what he saw as rightfully his. And as Carolina struggled to find its way in the post-Smith era, Guthridge went to two Final Fours in three years but nevertheless realized it’s no fun replacing God and promptly joined Smith in retirement, Coach K reasserted his will. A narrow Duke loss in the 1999 national final was followed up by Coach K’s third national crown in 2001.

Which point brings us to the most fascinating juncture of the UNC-Duke merger. When Guthridge up and quit Dean summoned another loyal assistant, and a bona fide coaching genius in his own right, Roy Williams. But Williams did the unthinkable and said no to the Godfather, preferring to stay in a house he had built for himself, so to speak, in Kansas. In the chaos that ensued Carolina hired a man in way over his head, Matt Doherty, and Carolina entered its own wilderness period.

Under Doherty Carolina was no longer able to function as UNC in the UNC-Duke rivalry; the Tarheels were too busy imploding. A surrogate was required in order to maintain the symbolic order that had come to govern the college basketball universe. Enter Gary Williams and his Maryland Terrapins. For one shining moment Maryland was elevated to the college basketball stratosphere, like a passenger getting bumped from coach to first class. A heartbreaking Final Four loss to sudden archrival Duke in 2001 was followed by Maryland’s triumph as the 2002 national champions. Believe it or not, Maryland –Duke was now the game in town, while UNC was busy simply trying to keep its dirty Doherty laundry out of the media.

Perhaps Maryland could have joined UNC-Duke and transformed the rivalry into a “trivalry”, but something strange and sad happened instead. Maryland, and especially its fans, became consumed by the rivalry with Duke rather than fueled by it. For a rivalry to thrive, beneath the pleasure taken in mutual animosity there must exist a foundation of tacitly acknowledged mutual respect. Respect and animosity are the yin and the yang of rivalry, and in this case Maryland had way too much yang. Maryland’s fans truly hated Duke, resenting Duke in a fashion that was toxic to the emerging rivalry. Perhaps Maryland had developed too large a chip on its shoulder from all those years trucking down to Greensboro for the ACC Tournament, which should have been called the State of North Carolina Invitational Tournament. Whatever the genesis of Maryland’s vitriol, they hurled it in heaping proportions at Duke; the profanity became so obscene that Gary Williams himself had to verbally reprimand the denizens of “Garyland” for their poor sportsmanship and unseemly behavior. The breaking point was perhaps when Maryland fans threw objects at Duke players’ parents seated in the Maryland bleachers. There is nothing left to say but that Maryland’s fans, and college basketball rivalries are ultimately about the fans, did not live up to the promise of the fledgling Duke-Maryland rivalry.

And perhaps that is for the best, as three is inevitably a crowd. Maryland faded into the background, courtesy largely of the recruits Gary Williams did and did not land, and fate reasserted itself, as always, to restore the symbolic order. After Doherty was mercifully canned, Dean swallowed his considerable pride and reached out again to his unexpectedly prodigal son, Roy Williams. As Williams later put it, he couldn’t say no to Dean Smith twice, leaving unsaid the fact that the Godfather’s house was now in rank disorder. Williams must also have been able to sense that Smith was on Alzheimer’s doorstep, and that this was his last chance to make things right with his mentor. Williams was basically the son who had refused to come home and run the thriving family business, only to see the business subsequently run into the ground by his inept cousin. Of course he came home.

Like Smith before him, Williams was great before locking horns with Coach K in the UNC-Duke rivalry, but like Smith he had never won his coveted national title before doing so. And while Coach K’s focus blurred just slightly as he spent summers coaching Kobe and Lebron on the US national team, Williams never had more to prove than he did to all those who thought he looked foolish in leaving Kansas the second time that Dean asked him. And in a blink the pendulum had swung again, as Williams led the the Tarheels to a national title in 2005, and again in 2009, while Duke was uncharacteristically mediocre by Coach K standards, and unable to get past the Sweet 16 several years running. Carolina had pulled ahead.

The pendulum swings quickest whenever one school seems to have obtained marked superiority in the rivalry. To wit, UNC, a popular pre-season Final Four pick on magazine covers for 2010, unaccountably fell flat on its face, finished close to the bottom of the ACC and failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament. The effect was so shocking that Roy Williams temporarily lost his mind and compared the Tarheels’ losing streak to the deaths of thousands of earthquake ravaged Haitians. Meanwhile, all Coach K did was guide Duke to its fourth national title while simultaneously ruining the end of the movie Hoosiers (Butler became less like Hoosiers and more like the first Rocky in which Rocky Balboa wins the day despite losing the boxing match to Apollo Creed). Consider the symbolic order intact, and the UNC-Duke merger stronger than ever (with yet another assist from Maryland, who stepped up in place of this year’s lowly Heels and upset Duke in the regular season’s final week to share the regular season title with the Blue Devils; if Maryland were to win an Oscar it would inevitably be as best supporting actor).

For now, what is good for UNC is good for Duke, and vice versa. No single team can be great every year, but the UNC-Duke program can. The rivalry cum merger has made Duke and Carolina greater than they could ever be alone, which is orders of magnitude beyond what any other monistic college basketball program can achieve. This is unlikely to change as long as Coach K and Ol’ Roy steer the ship. Don’t think for a second that Carolina won’t be back with full force next year, as their service to the symbolic order was fulfilled this year. The rivalry’s real test will come when either Coach K or Coach Williams departs. This will likely be harder for Duke, as UNC has already endured the trauma of Dean Smith’s retirement and come out the other side. I’d hate to be the man attempting to fill Coach K’s shoes. But, eventually, the symbolic order will assure that those shoes are capably filled. UNC will probably win a national title or two while things shake out, and, who knows, maybe Maryland will get invited to the prom one more time.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (and the Price of Lunch is Your Free Will)

An old sign, commonly posted in public indoor spaces in the days when all men wore hats, read “Gentlemen may remove their hats, all others must.” This sign captures the reality of what we like to call free will. Like it or not, Freud’s breakthrough conception of the superego impinges significantly on free will, that notion that human beings are free at all times to choose. What Freud realized is that rather than roaming the range of existence freely like wild buffalo we are much more like cattle, free to graze as we choose within the given confines of our surrounding fences. Given the superego, the notion of free will must be replaced by what I would call zones of autonomy. And it is only because free will is shrunk down to zones of autonomy that we are collectively able to enjoy the fruits and protections of civilization. In essence, to participate in civilization is to be not free. This cost of doing business for the venture, civilization, which makes human existence possible is a steep price indeed. As always, you get what you pay for. The message at the core of Freud’s lasting philosophical statement, Civilization and Its Discontents, can be boiled down thusly: In order for civilization to function, it’s participants must sacrifice free will; this sacrifice makes us all neurotic.

One may sacrifice one’s free will to civilization in one of two ways. Minus the superego, whose emergence in the individual is never certain and is the result of what is best described as a moral education, the individual’s free will is almost inevitably curtailed by the state, whose “justice system’s” true function is to assure the ongoing viability of civilization in the form of the state. Those who exercise free will in opposition to the will of the state soon find this free will demarcated by prison walls (or, it is important to note, in the case of defiance of the state’s economic necessities via failure to manifest marketable skills, banishment to the varieties of Siberia that include urban slums). Paraphrasing Alcoholics Anonymous, stomping grounds of many a soul who has chosen free will over the law, the path walked without the superego will lead you to one of three places: jail or other institutions, hospitals, or your grave.

Conversely, if one is the recipient of a modicum of moral education, the thoughts and behaviors necessary for the smooth functioning of civilization are encoded in one’s psyche as the superego. The particulars of the superego will vary by individual depending upon the vagaries of his or her moral education. But you will always know if the superego is present and functioning effectively in the individual if he or she is generally managing to stay out of trouble. Those individuals who get into trouble due to the dictates of conscience, see Martin Luther King Jr. or the Berrigan brothers as examples of those jailed for acts of civil disobedience, have the most advanced superegos of all, and as such pose no true threat to the ability of civilization to function. In fact, those burdened with outsized superegos are perhaps the most important contributors to society of all, for by imbuing civilization with a semblance of justice they tamp down the collective neuroses resulting from the loss of free will. Just as in Animal Farm where all animals are equals, and some are more equal than others, in civilization, where none of us are free, some of us are less free than others. And they are irrefutably the best of us.

One of the superego’s craftiest maneuvers is in allowing us the appearance of free will in everyday life. As long as our thoughts and behaviors remain within the boundaries set for us by our respective superegos, we are free to think and do just as we please. I am free to go to the movies with my free time on Sunday mornings, or play tennis in the park. Countless little decisions are made by the individual from the seat of agency, the ego, each day. The sheer mass of choosing that accumulates from these unnumbered choices feeds the illusion of free will; if I am free to choose in this infinite variety of everyday moments I begin to have the emotional satisfaction as if it were the case that I am free to choose at all times. This effect likely keeps us all sane.

But what I am really experiencing are life choices made within the boundaries of my zones of autonomy. If one had an exceptionally rigorous moral education, the ferocity with which one’s superego wields the only weapon it needs, guilt, may discipline one well enough such that the great majority of one’s time is spent in the zones of autonomy, thereby amplifying the illusion of free will for the most moral among us. But while not all of us give in to the temptation to put our foot up the ass of our obnoxious neighbor, we all at least think of putting a well deserved foot up this neighbor’s ass. And because the superego monitors thoughts, and not just actions, we are all inevitably subject to its recriminations in the form of guilt.

And if you doubt the power of guilt to shape behavior, then it is time to take a long hard look at what is keeping you out of trouble. I have a close friend who I have known since childhood. I can vouch for the comprehensive nature of her moral education, which was of the progressive social justice Christian variety. She shared with me that what shapes her behavior is embarrassment. For example, she was recently embarrassed by a server at a local restaurant, and emphatically stated to me that she will never set foot back in the establishment, even though they have an amazing wine selection, because of this incident. Understanding embarrassment as simply being made to feel guilty for one’s behavior, it is clear that the feeling of guilt was so powerful for my friend that she will likely never again engage in the behavior that, rightly or wrongly, led to the feelings of embarrassment/guilt. But an even greater witness to guilt’s potency is the fact that she can’t even return to the scene of the “crime.” The restaurant will always be the site where she drowned in guilt. It is submerged forever.

I am certainly not immune to this. At work recently I was “embarrassed” by a colleague who happened to be coming down the stairs in the stairwell when I exited the stairwell via the door on the landing. I was in a funk that morning and didn’t notice that she was headed for the door in my wake, so I failed to hold the door for her. When we made it to the office she announced to anyone who would listen how “some people” were so rude that they couldn’t hold the door for those behind them (and yes, I did gently confront her- I am getting better at this kind of thing). Whether or not I deserved this rebuke or not, and for what it’s worth my wife gives me a free pass after hearing my version of events, my superego certainly took notice. I now wait approximately forty-seven seconds after opening any door before passing through, on the off chance that someone else might appear out of the ether and need me to hold the door for them. I am tempted to start wearing a doorman’s uniform to work. All that to say that when the superego talks, people listen.

Wittgenstein said “You can mistrust your senses, but you can’t mistrust your beliefs.” If you are blessed with a superego (and I do mean blessed; remember the alternatives), it functions as the ultimate belief which can’t be mistrusted. The superego bounds one’s choices in the same way that death bounds life. You can ignore the superego just as we often ignore death. But, like death, the superego inevitably comes knocking. Inevitably because the last time I checked nobody was perfect. And the superego demands nothing less than perfection.

So what does it mean for us that “Gentlemen may remove their hats, all others must,” i.e. those of you with superegos may choose to follow civilization’s dictates, and we’ll lock the rest of you up? The first step forward is always to get real about just where you actually are. As long as we cling to illusory notions of free will we shall remain lost in a fantasyland made out of the denial of our most profound existential dilemma. The dilemma common to every human being, male, female, etc., is that to enter through the gates of civilization, as we all must (language acquisition alone guarantees this entry), is to irrevocably forego free will in exchange for that shabby impostor I call the zone of autonomy. Every one of us is Meatloaf singing “I’d do anything for love, but I won’t do that.” And then we all do precisely that. What else is there to do?

Freud is a hero because he refused to flinch in the face of this defining existential dilemma. He saw no way out, and so he took none. His philosophy, and Freud was first and foremost our greatest psychological philosopher, owned this central problem of being human. He showed us exactly where we actually are, and he died a pessimist.

Unlike genius brother Freud, I am just folks. But like Freud, I too will someday die. And while I have begun to face the need to own where we humans actually are, I hope not to die a pessimist. There is a popular Buddhist book titled The Wisdom of No Escape. Freud showed us that there can be no escape from our shared dilemma. I turn to Buddhism to learn the wisdom inherent to this place we can not leave. I told my wife tonight that I believe that Buddhism is the “religion of last resort”, which is English for “the wisdom of no escape.” Pardon me while I remove my hat.

Whose On Third?

It is an axiom of organized competitive sports that the more difficult a feat, the more it is rewarded. In football a touchdown is more difficult to score than a field goal, and earns six points as compared to the field goal’s three. After a touchdown, a PAT kicked through the uprights nets one point, while the more difficult two-point conversion, in which a team must “punch it in” from the two-and-a-half yard line, is rewarded with twice what you get for the PAT. In basketball, a typical bucket gets you two points, while one from beyond the arc, or “downtown” if you are Brent Mustburger, is worth three. In figure skating a quadruple jump is judged superior to the triple. In darts you get more points for hitting the bullseye. We are drawn to sports because they are an island of logic in an otherwise irrational world, and that logic is precisely that the winning player or team is the one who is best at achieving what is most difficult within the given rules of a sport, i.e. would you rather be a birdie or an eagle?

And then there is baseball. Baseball is largely incoherent. Baseball starts off okay, as the easiest offensive feat, the single, is rewarded the least; it, of course, only gets you to first base. But the rewards for the other three possible base hits in baseball, the double, triple, and home run, make no sense at all, when judged based on their comparative difficulty. The best doubles hitters hit doubles at about the same rate that the best home run hitters “go yard.” From 1989 to 2009, the MLB league leaders in doubles hit anywhere from 40 to 59 doubles. These numbers are comparable to the range found for home run leaders during the same era, 35 to 73 (the somewhat broader range for home runs is explained by the “steroids era”; things seem to have gotten back to normal, as last year the MLB home run leader tallied a more human total of 47). In essence, a double is roughly as difficult to achieve as a home run. But the home run is rewarded with a tangible run, while a double only gets a player half way home, and merely affords a player an opportunity to score a run. Why should a double be so poorly rewarded if it is just as hard to hit as a home run?

Things come into even starker relief when we look at triples. From 1989 to 2009 the annual MLB league leaders in triples compiled anywhere from 9 to 23 triples, with most league leaders compiling triples in the low to mid teens. Triples are clearly more difficult to hit than home runs and doubles. But while you get closer to a run with a triple than a double, you still get less than a home run for your more significant accomplishment of hitting a triple. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

When I shared this insight with my friend Jason he looked at me as if I had suggested that humans regress to walking on all fours, i.e. he thought I was batshit crazy. Jason is both a baseball fanatic, (he is a near-genius practitioner of fantasy baseball, which empowers him to make and win fantasy baseball bets requiring the loser to engage in public acts of humiliation usually involving a combination of nudity and food) and a traditionalist. Like most traditionalists, a category which encompasses approximately 99.9% of baseball fans, he is blind to the irrational elements of baseball, a blindness resulting from acculturation to the baseball mythos, which for almost 150 years has regarded business as usual as perfectly normal. Which of course it isn’t. Baseball traditionalists freak out over obvious, yet relatively minor corrections to the game. Because it is boring to watch someone attempt to do something that they can’t, which is why the WNBA dunk contest doesn’t exist, some reasonable baseball folks came up with the designated hitter. Traditionalists acted as if this was the baseball equivalent of the Pope marrying Liberace. So imagine the traditionalist reaction to the suggestion that baseball’s entire scoring system is irredeemably flawed. To paraphrase baseball’s great Yogi Berra, Jason was 90% appalled, and the other half of him thought I must be joking.

Yet I am perfectly serious; we must fix baseball. But first, to Jason’s critique of my basic argument that the triple is more difficult to accomplish than the home run, and should be rewarded with an outcome commensurate with its degree of difficulty (it was only later through a painstaking 5 minute process of Google research when I learned that the double is just as hard to accomplish as the home run, so Jason’s critique focused on the triple). Jason’s primary argument is that the triple is a byproduct of luck or chance, that skill is not involved. Were this the case, however, one would expect to find different players atop the leader board of triples from year to year in the big leagues. Unless, of course, some players are inherently luckier than other players. Until we can isolate the good luck gene, however, we must accept that the repeated appearance of the same players atop the triples leader board reflects a specific skill set on the part of the players in question. And the last ten years of baseball history are enough to convince us that triples have little or nothing to do with luck: Carl Crawford lead the AL in triples for three consecutive years from 2004 through 2006, Curtis Granderson lead the AL in consecutive years in 2007 and 2008, Jimmy Rollins lead the NL in triples in 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2007, and Jose Reyes lead the NL in triples in 2005, 2006, and 2008. Ask any player of a game of chance and he or she will tell you that luck comes and goes. What we observe in the records of Crawford, Granderson, Rollins and Reyes is consistent excellence. If luck is in any way involved then it is in the form of the old cliché that you make your own luck.

So what are the skills involved in hitting a triple, the skill set that enabled Jimmy Rollins, for example, to lead the NL in triples four times? The first skill counters another of Jason’s arguments, that baseball players do not attempt to “place” the ball when they swing at a pitch. But there are a number of situations in baseball when “placing” the ball is exactly what a hitter is attempting to do. “Placing” the batted ball is a huge part of baseball strategy. To wit, when a runner is on second with less than two outs, a batter will often be instructed to hit towards the right side of the field, so that a ground ball hit in this direction will result in the runner being able to advance to third. Or, a batter will make every effort to hit a fly ball deep enough to allow a runner to tag up and advance , whether from second to third or from third to home. There is even an official baseball term for this “placing” of the ball, the sacrifice. The sacrifice is considered such an important skill that it is tracked as a statistic; e.g. in 2009 Bengie Molina lead the NL in sacrifice flies with 11. And don’t think for a minute that when it is contract negotiation time that Molina’s agent isn’t pushing for more money based on this particular skill in “placing” the ball. Being from Baltimore, Jason and I both know about the “Baltimore Chop”, a batting strategy propagated by Baltimore Orioles legendary manager Earl Weaver in which the batter purposely made contact with the ball in a chopping fashion such that the ball hopped up extremely high, allowing time for the runners on base to advance safely. The “Baltimore Chop” is textbook “placing” of the ball. And, of course, the bunt is nothing other than the strategic “placing” of the ball in the field of play. Just as a successful bunt or “Baltimore Chop” depends on the successful “placing” of the ball, so does the triple. As the great Willie Keeler put it, “hit ‘em where they ain’t.” That, in a nutshell, is the skill involved in the batter’s greatest art, the triple.

Which brings us to another of Jason’s arguments, that no one tries to hit triples. This rebuttal implies that players do attempt to hit home runs. But any baseball man (or woman) worth his salt will tell you that the surest way for a batter to enter a prolonged hitting slump is to go up to bat trying to hit home runs. Swinging for the fences will get you a lot closer to the Mendoza Line then to the warning track. Professional batters, then, generally take the approach of trying to make good contact. Baseball presumes that the best result of making good contact is the ball that flies the furthest in the air. But is this necessarily so? It is just as easy to make a case that the best result of making good contact is putting a ball in play that is the most difficult for the opposition to field. The home run’s dirty little secret is that it would never be a chore for a defense to field a power hitter’s long ball were it not for the well placed fence; power hitters just hit a lot of long fly balls, i.e the power hitter is simply the disguised master of the sacrifice fly. The triples hitter is the true master of “hitting ‘em where they ain’t”, i.e. the true master of hitting.

The home run hitter also benefits from another bias, the misguided belief that power trumps speed. Invariably, the most gifted triples hitters combine the art of hitting with preternatural speed. The home run hitter’s work is done once he wallops the ball; all that is left is to waddle around the bases. The triples hitter doubles the home run hitter’s accomplishment, as his work has just begun once he has “placed” the ball. He must then combine a track star’s speed with the courage of the poker player whose chips are all on the table. The triples hitter’s athleticism and derring-do lends him a panache inaccessible to the lumbering slugger.

The strange thing is that everyone already knows the triple is the most difficult hit to obtain in baseball (barring the inside-the-park-homerun, which we shall return to shortly). It is a baseball truism that the most difficult phase of hitting for the cycle (hitting a single, double, triple, and home run in one game) is getting the triple. Any time a player is getting close to hitting for the cycle the announcer will invariably either, a) point out that the hitter already has a triple, the most difficult part of the cycle, or b)note that the player has not yet hit a triple, the most difficult part of hitting for the cycle. And everyone accepts this as valid precisely because the triple is the most difficult hitting feat in baseball. The missing element in achieving one-year greatness in baseball hitting is referred to in the title of that very feat; by naming the act of leading the league in average, home runs, and RBI’s the “Triple Crown”, baseball is unconsciously acknowledging that the greatest player is not the one who leads in any of those (lesser) categories, but he who is the king of the triple.

With the preeminence of the triple now established, before we address the changes necessary to fix baseball, we must return to my earlier assertion that baseball must needs be fixed. Why bother? One might argue that in focusing on the difficulty of the triple I have overlooked the fact that the home run is judged most important because it accomplishes the object of the game, scoring runs. But this response is simply advancing the argument that since baseball has always had a flawed and illogical scoring system, than it must continue to do so. Which brings us to the core reason that baseball must be fixed, which is quite simply in order to save it. Baseball was the most popular team sport in America for at least the first half of the twentieth century, as along with horse racing and boxing it dominated the sports scene. This is largely because baseball is the perfect hybrid of individual and team competition. The showdown between pitcher and batter rivals the two greatest individual sports, boxing and tennis, for mano a mano thrills. But baseball, at the same time, offers everything that comes with great team sports, most importantly the beauty of watching men (or women) function as a unit and the joy inherent to participating and witnessing that unity in multiplicity. Despite these attractions, the illogical structuring of baseball’s scoring system puts it at odds with the driving force of sports as entertainment, which I touched upon at the beginning. People watch sports for many varied reasons, but the primary reason men (and some women) watch an ungodly number of hours of sports broadcasting is that sports holds the illusion of a world that makes sense. Unlike real life, which is largely irrational and incoherent, in sports there are clear rules with definitive winners and losers. Men deeply long for the world to be like this, although it obviously isn’t.

Baseball, with its rules that reward the easy over the difficult, is far too close to real life to hold our interest as we cope with the irrationality of a world that accelerates as rapidly as our technology advances. Football, the king of American sports, long since surpassed baseball in popularity. It did so in the 1960’s, as the world shifted, we landed on the moon, and things made less sense than they ever had before. Things continue to make less sense every year, which is why football, which makes perfect sense, grows in popularity every year. If baseball is to survive, it has to reverse the Talking Heads and start making sense.

So, how to fix baseball? A simple adjustment to the scoring system should suffice, leaving intact everything beautiful about the game. Home runs will still be rewarded with a run. Doubles will now also be worth a run. Triples will be worth one and a half runs. And, to prevent runners from stopping at third, and to reward the only feat more difficult than the triple, the inside-the park-homerun will now be worth two runs. These simple changes in baseball’s scoring system will give us back our national pastime. In Baltimore we used to yell out “O” as loud as we could during the “O say does that star spangled banner yet wave” line of the national anthem. We used to really care. We might not be able to make Peter Angelos sell the Orioles to Cal Ripken and save our team, but we can still save our sport.