Category Archives: Philosophy

Stairway to Heaven: Forty Years Later

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As most people do, I spend my life in a busy pursuit of this or that goal. I enjoy the hell out of every day. But in the busyness of it all it’s easy to forget that life comes to an end pretty quickly. It’s very human to be consumed with thoughts of own mortality, and it’s also very human to completely ignore such thoughts instead preferring the comfort of an aimless conversation.

Anyway, the following performance of Stairway to Heaven by Heart in front of the band that wrote it, 40 years earlier reminded me of just how quick life goes by. There’s something very relatable about the image of Robert Plant looking over the greatest creation of his life with a mix of pride and sadness…

By the way, I don’t know if there is anything harder than performing the greatest rock song of all time in front of the people who wrote it. Ann Wilson did it perfectly.

The Silver Lining of Pollen Allergies

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Every year, starting mid-April and ending in early June, I “suffer” along with 20% of Americans the pollen allergy symptoms of runny nose, itchy eyes/throat, cough, trouble breathing, etc.

Silver liningI like this kind of “suffering” in that it’s not at all “suffering” but rather just annoying discomfort. Over the years of trying to learn and get good at stuff, I’ve figured out a simple fact that improvement requires you to be always choosing the less “comfortable” option. In other words, as many people have said, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. That might seem ridiculous or even masochistic, but I think it’s just practical. Every day I step outside my comfort zone in a bunch of ways in work, in sport, in conversation, in thinking, etc.

Feeling like crap for a couple months due to an allergic reaction is yet another chance to deal with discomfort. No big deal.

 

 

Not Breaking News: Six Thousand Americans Died Yesterday

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6,000 Americans died yesterday. 40 of them were murdered. 100 of them died in a car accident. 84 of them committed suicide (1,000 others tried to commit suicide and failed). Most of the rest died due to a long struggle with heart disease, cancer, stroke, etc.

There is no mystery in those statistics. It’s just a mass outpouring of simple tragedies of life. There is no narrative we can tell about these six thousand. There is no one culprit on whom we can focus our attention and in so doing attempt to find some kind of closure.

boston-bombingWith these six thousand shadows in the background, the horrific bombing in Boston almost seems faint, like another ripple in an ocean of human suffering. I am overwhelmed by the immensity of it. My inclination has been to put the dramatic megaphone of the news on mute, and try to be a helpful hand in whatever small way I can in my little corner of the world.

Take It Easy: Don’t Let the Sound of Your Own Wheels Drive You Crazy

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“One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.” - William James

The above quote gets at something very practical in life. It’s remarkable how many conflicts start (and go on for years) over minor tensions or even complete misunderstandings.

self-deprecating-humor-clownI guess it’s some kind of arbitrary conception of pride and self-importance that keeps people from stepping into an obvious tension and easying it by a bit of self-deprecating joking around.

I interact with several very different groups of people (academics, fighters, computer nerds, musicians, etc) and the funny thing is that the people who are most willing to swallow pride and make fun of themselves when tension builds for whatever reason are the fighters. I think that stubborn pride derives from insecurity and fear, and a person who’s been through many battles of being punched in the face over and over has conquered that fear.

Take it easy, as the Eagles say, “don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy”.

Our Response to the Next 9/11 Magnitude Terrorist Attack

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911-terrorist-attackFor me, the attack of 9/11, 2001 did not arouse feelings of anger as it did in many of my fellow Americans. I was simply deeply saddened, the same as after the recent shooting in the Sandy Hook elementary school. Perhaps because of this feeling, the military response in the next 12 years (in my view) was at best flawed and at worst irrational. Many of my friends disagree. I think it boils down to how you see the world, the arc of history, and the best way to defend against and deter future violence.

These days, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have lost any semblance of support among the majority of the American public. But I believe that support can be reignited in a single day of another tragedy. In the rare times when I tune into a video of a MSNBC/Fox/CNN take on a particular subject, I worry that the mechanism of popular media is equipped to stir and ride waves of hysteria. In a perfect world, the media would provide a calm voice of reason: the facts, the context, the several distinct ways to interpret the current events. But in this aspect, we do not live in a perfect world. I fear that any tragedy of the magnitude of 9/11 terrorist attacks will create another state of temporary insanity among the masses. I include myself in that obviously. Anger, sadness, fear can all be exploited intentionally or unintentionally (through institutionalized momentum).

It’s been said by many people in the last 10 years, but our government on many levels is lacking the mechanism to protect us against ourselves when we are in such states of “temporary insanity”. If another big terrorist attack happens on U.S. soil there should be a set of laws that tie the hands of Congress and the president to slow any drastic action and allow a cooling-off period allowing at least a brief chance for rationality and long-term interest of the public to prevail.

Bach, Religion, and a Story of Betrayal

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BachSt.MatthewI got a chance to listen to J. S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the Kimmel Center right here in Philadelphia this weekend. It sets the biblical story of the betrayal, suffering, and death of Jesus to music. The whole performance is over three hours, and was my first experience of its kind.

As a secular person, having just enjoyed a Seder dinner with my mom, dad, and brother an hour before, I was going to this performance with some skepticism, of the kind I feel when a Jehovah’s witness comes to my door with promises of salvation and spiritual liberation. Plus, coming from a classical piano background, I always thought of Bach as a cold calculating composer devoid of passionate melody, for no good reason I should add. I was more into Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, etc.

This was probably the first time at a classical performance that I was moved on an emotional level. To me, this story had nothing to with religion. It was a story of love, hate, and most of all (for me) betrayal. Bach brought the intensity of it out, and made me forget my original skepticism.

The thing that particularly stuck with me for days after was the “God why have you forsaken me” that Jesus exclaims. The feeling of being abandoned by everyone, including your father, touched something with me. I know this story (and the resurrection after) has been at the core of millions of people’s faith in the supernatural, but to me it was a story of simple human suffering of the kind that many of us have or will have to experience in life. Bach may not write a big choral composition for my version of it but it will go on anyway in silence or with a far less beautiful soundtrack.

I am thankful for this experience as it showed to me another way that music can bring out the simple drama of life.

Side note: One very important lesson I learned, is that I will enjoy and understand a performance like this a lot more than I otherwise would if I do research on the story behind it ahead of time. With understanding comes appreciation. I spent a few hours reading about its composition, about the biblical story, and actually reading the relevant chapters from the Gospel of Matthew several times. I’m glad I did.

There is No Medication for Life

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“Psychiatric diagnosis and treatment is particularly subject to fads and undue drug company influence because judgments are still based on subjective data that cannot be confirmed or disproved by laboratory tests.” - Allen Frances, Professor, Duke University

The statistics on people who suffer from depression are staggering. For example, according to the National College Health Assessment of college students (carried out by the ACHA):

  • 86.8% of students felt that they were overwhelmed with what they had to do.
  • 86.1% felt like they were exhausted.
  • 61.0% felt very sad.
  • 57.3% felt very lonely.
  • 46.5% of student felt hopeless.
  • 31.3% felt so depressed that they found it difficult to function.
  • 7.1% seriously thought about committing suicide.
  • 5.5% intentionally bruised, burned, cut or physically hurt themselves.
  • 1.2% attempted suicide.

good-doctor-adviceA significant percentage of people in the above survey undoubtedly suffer from a clear-cut chemical imbalance that can be helped by (and only by) medication. By significant, I don’t mean 61%. I mean fractions of 1%. Everything else is the ups and downs of life. Part of being human is learning to ride through that rollercoaster without falling off.

Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to determine whether a person requires medication, or if a more proactive life-oriented action would be more productive, such as change of diet, lifestyle, career, relationships, etc.

Steven Rinella on Joe Rogan podcast mentioned the counter intuitive notion that when you’re camping and you’re freezing, you don’t want to move, but the right thing to do is to start moving and in so doing you begin to feel great. I think of the state of depression in the same way. It’s a dark place that you get out of by doing stuff you don’t want to do at first.

Some cultures treat people suffering from major depressive disorders as weak whiners that just need to suck it up, while other cultures treat anyone who is sad with a daily dose of medication and multiple therapy sessions a weak. There must be a healthy middle ground erring on the side of prescribing medication only when all else fails.

The Most Amazing Reminder of How Far We’ve Come

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chris-hadfield-danny-boyA couple of days ago I heard Col. Chris Hadfield sing and play a song on his guitar while on board the International Space Station. The realization that I was listening to a fellow ape-descendant make sounds with his mouth while floating in lower Earth orbit at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour filled me with the kind of awe that erases every concern and problem I’ve ever had about anything.  The mystery of life and the universe is both terrifying and beautiful.

We’ve come a long way…

Just click “play” and imagine a fifty year old Canadian playing this in a capsule floating in space.

Love Versus Principle in a Time of Moral Chaos

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Ewald-Heinrich-von-Kleist-assassination-plotA friend posted a link about the passing of Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist. He was a German soldier and one of the participants of the plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944. One of the reasons I return to this period in our history often is because of how many brutally raw moral dilemmas and tests of will it contains.

The story of Von Kleist is yet another moving example. As a young man of 22 at the time of the assassination plot, he volunteered to wear a “suicide vest”. The fascinating part of that is that he discussed this idea with his father (a longtime member of the German resistance movement against Hitler). In the above article: Von Kleist remembered explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly before telling his 22-year-old son: “Yes, you have to do this.”

That, to me, is a dark and disturbing window into the moral chaos of Hitler’s Germany. Just imagine the weight of those words in the moment they were uttered and in the years after.

Relative Absence of Constructive Criticism in Polite Society

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constructive-criticismPeople are polite, in general. I find that it’s very rare to get criticism from friends and co-workers on work I do that relates to a field they have some expertise in. The feedback I gather up usually has to be from indirect cues. What I get is a stream of compliments of various degrees of sincerity and it’s my job to decipher the actual state of the person’s mind. I guess that’s the way of the polite world, but I wish it was was more direct and clear. Constructive criticism is an art form that most people are not very good at (including myself). It’s hard to tell someone what essentially is just one opinion when that opinion has a potential of hurting their feelings.

My close friends will tell me when I’m full of shit, but there’s not enough of that. I don’t mean that I would change my actions based on people’s criticism, but I would like to be aware when I’m swimming with the stream of opinion or when I’m swimming against it. In the latter case, I would need to put a little more effort into the swimming.

The internet, as it evolves, is changing all that. As people are putting their real identities online, platforms for providing critical feedback are popping up all over the place. Facebook is one example, but their are more niche sites like StackExchange where experts can gather to disagree in a constructive (albeit heated form) while backing their comments with their real-world identity.

Anyway, this is an official notarized request for people to call me out on things I say that may be stupid, ignorant, misinformed, or just confusing, and I’ll try to return the favor.