"From Where Will Reason Come?"

 This is being sent at this time of day, because Nerds-to-Go just addressed a problem that Microsoft caused by downloading “New Outlook” last week, without including my contacts. I am now happily back on old outlook.

 

Yesterday I attended a meeting about Ukraine. Understandably, great concern was expressed for the people of that war-torn nation and anger directed at Mr. Putin. My sense as I walked away: We must be careful lest our compassion for the Ukrainian people, our hatred for Mr. Putin and our passion for the freedoms we enjoy disturb the delicate balance of a world with a plethora of nuclear weapons. For almost seventy-five years we have lived in a world where multiple countries are capable of blowing up the planet in a matter of minutes. We, and the generations that follow, will also have to live in such a world. That fact must always be behind the geo-political decisions we make.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“From Where Will Reason Come?”

June 22, 2022

 

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed

us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

                                                                                                                Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

                                                                                                                Letter of the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 1615

 

In an op-ed in a recent The Wall Street Journal, Ted Van Dyk, author of Heroes, Hacks and Fools: Memoirs from the Political Inside, wrote: “The country is desperate for pragmatic problem solving and at least an attempt by leaders to collaborate across partisan and ideological lines.” It is true. People are impossibly divided, and the effect is being felt among families and friends. It is unhealthy, individually and collectively for the nation. One consequence was the choices voters had in 2020 – On the right the polarizing figure of Donald Trump, who despite his accomplishments as President, has an insatiable ego and is overly sensitive to criticism, which make him unpalatable to many conservatives. On the left, Democrats nominated Joe Biden, a 77-year-old career politician with no notable achievements, but with noticeable cognitive challenges. Was that the best a nation of 330 million people could do? Questions need to be answered: Why has reason failed? Where does fault lie? Why are we in this place? What can be done? 

 

The fault, in my opinion, lies principally with politicians who thrive on a strategy employed by Julius Caesar, divide et impera, divide and rule, and by a media that has given up on reporting in favor of advocacy. It is easier for politicians to address the needs and wants of specific constituents than to discuss complex issues that affect us all. Such activity has led to divisive “identity politics” and away from the understanding that we are all, regardless of race, class or ethnicity, citizens of this republic and that we all have a stake in its continuance. The United States is unique among nations in that our ancestors came from every corner of the world. It is unique in its government forged out of a belief in individual freedom, a government – with its separation of powers, rule of law, and protection of private property – whose primary responsibility is to guarantee the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution. We have differences, as expected and as we should, but, as citizens of the United States, we have in common (or we should have) a reverence for this imperfect but rare nation. 

 

Perhaps it is the cynicism that comes with age, but I believe most politicians would prefer not to solve many of the problems we face – illegal immigration, gun legislation, climate change, healthcare and abortion. One might add education and election integrity. These are perennial issues, which when left undecided serve both sides, in that they inflame noisy partisans, the driving force behind both political parties, and who further divide us. 

 

The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack is exhibit A. This is not a committee trying to understand what happened – Exactly what role did Mr. Trump play? Why did not advanced warnings of trouble prompt enhanced security? If this was an insurrection, why were there no firearms found on the rioters? Why did the committee not investigate the claim of New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capital?” Why was an unarmed woman shot and killed as she entered a Capital window? What might be done to prevent a future occurrence? Will the committee investigate the rioting during the summer of 2020, which killed 35, injured 1,500 police officers and caused $1.3 billion in property damage? From the start, the committee was established to be a partisan hit job on Mr. Trump and his supporters, not a bi-partisan voyage of discovery. Ironically, the Committee’s shaming of Mr. Trump may well backfire on Democrats who seemed to have forgotten that a viable Mr. Trump is Republican’s biggest liability and Democrat’s greatest asset.

 

As Michael Barone pointed out in an interview in The Wall Street Journal, it was not too long ago that “Americans expressed great trust in their institutions and great belief and confidence in their leaders.” Mr. Barone suggests Watergate was “a historical watershed” that ended that trust. But no matter its origin and whether deserved or not, disillusionment in government has harmed the United States. I recall being in the Senate dining room for lunch in the early 1970s and seeing Democrats and Republicans dining together. It’s my understanding that rarely happens today. Political partisanship has destroyed friendships and disrupted families. Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis argued in last weekend’s The Wall Street Journal that the problem is less about polarization around “fixed ideological poles” and more about hostility toward individuals. Regardless, questions remain. Why have we reached this impasse and what, if anything, can be done to end it? It seems to me that our best hope lies in education, a return to reason, traditional values and a revival of patriotism.

 

Amidst this anger, we appear to have forgotten that free-market capitalism, within a democratic context, has made Americans wealthier beyond the wildest imaginations of those who lived a hundred and two hundred years ago. Few young people in the U.S. appreciate the lifestyles they live compared to that of their forebearers. They have little appreciation for the political and economic systems that make their lives comfortable. Do they ever think of the magic of capitalism, that a loaf of bread can be brought to a supermarket shelf for only three dollars? It is Adam Smith’s invisible hand that guides the farmer, miller, baker, trucker and merchant to work together. 

 

Reason has been lost as time-tested traditions and customs have collapsed. The concept of national service disappeared with the abandonment of the military draft. The Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of God Bless America (written by Irving Berlin in 1938 as a peace song) are no longer public-school rituals. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, only 22% of children today are living with two parents, both in their first marriage. Fifty-four percent are living with a single parent. Church attendance (including that at mosques and synagogues), which was 73% in 1937 when Gallup first measured it and 70% in 2000, fell to 47% in 2021.

 

Too many public schools are more focused on woke issues, like gender identification and “saving the planet,” than on the basics of reading and math, or simply teaching students to think independently. Apart from Luxembourg, the United States spends more money per student than any other country, yet we rank 13 out of 79 countries on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), behind countries like Estonia and Poland. In a financial literacy test, the U.S. ranked nine of eighteen. Teachers should be embarrassed; parents should be upset, and we should all be concerned.

 

In the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, which was based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey, Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow) asks, rhetorically: If we do not use our brain to reason, “why did God plague us with the capacity to think?” “What other merit have we?” We need politicians and members of the media, to treat people as adults, to approach problems, not as ideological opportunities to push preferred agendas, but as issues that need resolution. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Immanuel Kant wrote: “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” Politicians (and media types) appeal to emotion, especially personal vilification. Their focus should be on imparting wisdom, allowing reason to blossom. Instead, they bully opponents and the electorate into submission with emotion-ridden ideological tirades, and the press laps it up.

"Sleepless in Connecticut"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“Sleepless in Connecticut”

February 27, 2021

 

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”

                                                                                                                Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

 

Insomnia is not uncommon as we age. Bodies that have been functioning for several decades begin to show natural signs of wear. The brain hormone melatonin, which regulates the circadian rhythm that determines our sleep cycle, may become affected by age. Being neither a doctor nor a scientist, I don’t pretend to understand our internal workings. I experience them and marvel at them.

 

An Irish proverb says: “A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.” I like that advice. I laugh a good deal but do not always sleep well. I am not alone. James Hamblin wrote in the December 21, 2020 issue of The Atlantic: “Roughly three quarters of people in the United Kingdom have had a change in their sleep during the pandemic, according to the British Sleep Society.” (The Brits seem to have societies for every conceivable situation!) I suspect polls in the U.S. would show similar results. Back in September, the UC Davis Health Center issued an article headlined, “COVID-19 is wrecking our sleep with coronasomnia.” They cite the fact people, working from home, are up at “weird hours” and that we need “variety in our activities.” I am not up at weird hours, unless one counts those trips to the bathroom to satisfy nature’s call, but the pandemic haslimited the variety in my life. They (the UC Davis people) offer a lot of useful tips: keep a daily routine, avoid your smart phone before going to bed, get exercise, cut back on news and social media “especially in the evening,” go easy on alcohol and don’t nap.

 

I get the exercise I need, at least I think I do. I no longer listen to the evening news. (I read the morning papers.) I stay away from social media, which I don’t find especially social. Perhaps I do shut my eyes, or as a friend once said, “check my eyelids for holes,” for a few minutes in the early afternoon. A glass of wine or sherry is the extent of my drinking now. My iPhone does ding after I have turned off the lights, but that is usually a child or grandchild sharing a text message. I love hearing from them, so don’t want them to take me off their distribution list. Perhaps I should leave the phone in another room at night?

 

A habit my wife and I have developed since COVID-19 made its entrance a year ago is to slip between the covers and watch a movie before letting sleep take the reins. Our preference is for light fare – the Thin Man series, with William Powell and Myrna Loy; an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical, like Top Hat or Swing Time; or a comedy with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, like Desk Set, or Adam’s Rib. Professionals advise against television in the bedroom, but it does not seem to me that old black and white movies emit much of the blue light that concerns them. However, there are evenings when we risk censure by watching newer detective series, like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, Inspector Morse (whose first name is Pagan!), or Inspector Maigret. These shows include some humor and little heart-thumping suspense. About half the time, I never make it to the end of the movie anyway. But that is the advantage of watching old favorites – one knows what one has missed, so it isn’t missed!

 

If I want to shut out the sound of the television or my wife’s questions, I roll to my left, with my bad right ear up. If feeling agreeable, I roll to the right so I can half-heartedly listen to the TV and grunt responses to my wife. E. Joseph Cossman, a one-time door-to-door salesman and mail-order entrepreneur, once wrote: “The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.” Easy to say, but harder to do when my eighty-year-old body is re-living its fifteen-year-old adolescence. Dale Carnegie advises us to get up and do something: “It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”  So, I do. I get up, slip into another room and escape into a Trollope, a Wodehouse, or letters from E.B. White. My mind relaxes and my pulse rate subsides. If not reading something comforting, I might gather notes I had scribbled on a pad next to my bed and see if I can decipher what I had thought were so ingenious when I wrote them in the dark. 

 

When my head hits the pillow, my brain goes into overdrive. I think of luck, which plays a big part in all our lives. And I think of how lucky I have been, yet I have done nothing to be so blessed. I worry about COVID-19, and I worry about our government’s response to it. I worry about the amount of debt our state and nation carry, especially unfunded liabilities, and what the effect will be on markets, so important to our future well-being. I worry about the claim (ahistorical and unfounded, in my opinion) that we are a nation of systemic racists, of the slide in our nation’s cultural values and morals and how our grandchildren will cope in a world that combines Orwell’s 1984 with the meanness of a Senator Joseph McCarthy. I fear a “managed” economy will replace free market forces, thereby reducing everyone’s standard of living. And I know there is little I can do about any of this. On other nights, a kaleidoscopic album of childhood images races through my mind, causing me to think back on shameful things I have done and hurtful words I have uttered. I think of people I have upset, and opportunities I have missed, and I think of those I once loved who now are gone. While I know I am not alone in having these thoughts, I realize that one is never so alone as when enmeshed in childhood memories. 

 

And yet…If you know the scene from the 1950 movie Father of the Bride, with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, with the two of them in their separate beds. Tracy, as Stanley Banks, works himself into a lather, convinced his daughter’s fiancé, Buckley Dunstan, is a crook, a swindler perhaps even a kidnapper or murderer. With his rants, he wakes his wife. Having released his emotions he falls asleep, leaving Ellie Banks to silently stew over the concerns her husband passed on to her. 

 

So, I feel like Stanley. Thanks for reading. I am batter for getting these anxieties off my chest and will sleep soundly tonight. I hope I have not upset you.