Good morning.
In response
to my stories about the men and women who've had a significant influence on my
life, one faculty friend wrote back to tell me a marvelous story about a
teaching moment. A number of years ago
he was teaching a weekly evening class of about 150 students. At one point
during the semester:
"I
told the students to put down their pens, I wanted to ask them a question.
"The room got very quiet and I
said, 'There is someone in your past life who was especially important in
getting you here tonight and shaping you to be the person you are today. Think
for a moment and decide who what person is–a parent, a coach, a former teacher,
relative, a minister, priest or rabbi, a neighbor, etc. You know whom I am
talking about. Now write that person's name in your notebook, draw a circle
around the name, and when you get home tonight or sometime tomorrow, write that
person a note and tell that person what their guidance and support or example
has meant to you.'
"At that point I saw them pick
up their pens and write.
"The next week I said to the
class, 'Remember what I suggested last week that you do? I hope you followed
through.' I saw many heads nodding.
"I went on to say that they
had no idea what receiving such a note means to people who receive them. And I
suggested that they make it a habit in the future."
What I missed in what I wrote about
Frank Sorauf was his sense of style and grace. That, too, is something I
remember. He could be harsh, in private
conversations, about people who he thought were screw-ups, but I also remember
that he carried himself off with a sense of elegance and poise that few of the
rest of us achieve. One of Frank's friends wrote back to me that, "yes,
actually that sense of elegance and poise is the characteristic of Frank that I
always thought of as central to him."
I also should have commented a
little more on Bob Stein. He was a great guy to work for, and I didn't *always*
leave our conferences feeling overwhelmed. Every once in awhile I'd come up
with a good idea, one he hadn't thought of, for which he'd commend me (maybe
after he recovered from surprise 😊).
Thus salvaging a small part of my ego. He's also been good counsel for me off
and on in the 43 years since we met.
* * *
Many of
those who read murder mysteries will know of Donna Leon. An American, she's
lived in Venice for decades, and her wonderful mysteries are set in Venice. I
happened to read an interview with her that roved over a number of subjects. It
turns out that she's an opera lover, and she provided a marvelous description
of opera:
I love the shameless excess of
opera. Music, singing, conflict, more singing, trios, quartets, death all over
the place, undying love, magic spells, thunder from the left, dragons, and then
more singing. I've got so many favorite performances it would take me too long
to list them: Joyce DiDonato singing Agrippina, Marijana Mijanovic singing
Giulio Cesare, Ann Hallenberg singing Ariodante.
Quite coincidentally, we saw Joyce DiDonato sing Agrippina
(via Met Opera simulcast, so not in person) just before the coronavirus roof
fell on us.
* * *
Sebastian
Purcell, an assistant professor of philosophy at the State University of New
York-Cortland, related in a recent article that
In the spring semester of the
school year, I teach a class called 'Happiness'. It's always packed with
students because, like most people, they want to learn the secret to feeling
fulfilled.
'How many of you want to be happy
in life?' I ask. Everyone raises a hand. Always. 'How many of you are planning
to have children?' Almost everyone raises their hand again.
Then I lay out the evidence that
having kids makes most people more miserable, and that their sense of wellbeing
returns to its former levels only after the last child has left the house. 'How
many of you still want children?' I say. Maybe it's just obstinacy, but the
same people who wanted to be happy still put their hands up.
With that,
Purcell goes on to discuss the concept of happiness in life and how the Aztecs
thought about it. He asserts that what the Aztecs knew well was that "You
should stop searching for happiness, because that's not really what you want.
We don't plan our lives around elevated emotional states. What we want are
worthwhile lives, and if we have to make sacrifices for that, then so much the
worse for 'happiness'."
Purcell
notes that western philosophy and thought of any kind has paid scant attention
to the Aztecs. In fact, he says, they had a "philosophically rich culture"
that included philosophers. Moreover, there is a great deal of their thought
that was recorded by the Christian clergy who came with the Spanish.
The Aztecs
shared with the ancient Greek philosophers (so Purcell tells me; I didn't know
that) an interest
in how to lead a good life. . . . The
Aztecs had a saying: 'The earth is slippery, slick,' which was as common to
them as a contemporary aphorism such as 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket'
is to us. What they meant is that the Earth is a place where humans are prone
to error, where our plans are likely to fail, and friendships are often
betrayed. Good things only come mingled with something undesired. 'The Earth is
not a good place. It is not a place of joy, a place of contentment,' a mother
advises her daughter, in the record of a conversation that has survived to this
day. 'It is rather said that it is a place of joy-fatigue, of joy-pain.'
The answer
of "how to lead a good life is that
we should strive to lead a rooted, or worthwhile life. The word the Aztecs used
is neltiliztli. It literally means 'rootedness', but also 'truth' and 'goodness'
more broadly." There are several aspects to achieving that kind of life
that I'm not going to delve into, but in summary, it
amounted to a kind of careful
dance, one that took account of the treacherous terrain of the slippery earth,
and in which pleasure was little more than an incidental feature. This vision
stands in sharp relief to the Greeks' idea of happiness, where reason and
pleasure are intrinsic to the best performance of our life's act on the world's
stage. Aztec philosophy encourages us to question this received 'Western'
wisdom about the good life – and to seriously consider the sobering notion that
doing something worthwhile is more important than enjoying it.
The worthwhile life versus the
happy life. It strikes me that the two are not incompatible. I think this is
right: "The Earth is not a good place. It is not a place of joy, a place
of contentment. . . . It is rather said that it is a place of joy-fatigue, of
joy-pain." However, as with much in life, it depends on where you are. I
suspect that there may be more fatigue and pain in some of the huge slums in
cities around the world than there is in the beach homes of Long Island or Lake
Minnetonka. I suspect that many of my faculty friends combine both happiness
and a sense of a worthwhile life; I am less sure that is true for people who,
for example, work on assembly lines or have clerking positions at big box stores—at
least in terms of job/career. But I suppose most everyone can, in some aspect
of their life, find something they believe worthwhile.
Leading a worthwhile life rather
than purely a happy life would surely make the world a better place, if "worthwhile"
means somehow making a positive contribution to the world (as opposed to
activities such as pushing opioids, engaging in slavery, keeping people in
punishing working conditions, polluting air and water, corporate fraud, spousal
and child abuse, research fraud, and so on and on).
It strikes me that the Aztec philosophy
at least overlaps significantly with the precepts of the major religions of the
world now practiced. I can't recall that "happiness" is a central
doctrine in any of the Abrahamic religions, whereas "being good" and "doing
good" are, in some fashion.
* * *
The IEEE
Spectrum is not a usual source of my reading. ["Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers . . . composed of engineers, scientists, and allied professionals
[such as] computer scientists, software developers, information technology
professionals, physicists, medical doctors . . . in addition to IEEE's
electrical and electronics engineering core." The Spectrum is the
association's professional journal.] But
I recently ran across an article about concrete in the journal (don't ask me; I
have no idea how I stumbled on it. Maybe "The Browser").
I finally
learned that concrete consists of only about 7-15% cement; the
rest is water (roughly 20%) and sand and gravel (60-75%). In my ignorance, I
have sometimes used the two terms interchangeably. About the only thing I knew
for sure is that the Pantheon in Rome is the largest structure made of
unreinforced concrete.
The Romans
were the first to develop and use concrete; their formula is not the one used
today. The modern process began in England in the 1820s; "lime, silica,
and alumina are the dominant constituents of modern cement; adding water, sand
and gravel produces a slurry that hardens into concrete as it cures." Concrete
extremely strong under compression but can be easily torn apart unless it's reinforced,
a process that began in the 1860s and has continued apace.
From 1900 to 1928, the U.S.
consumption of cement . . . rose tenfold, to 30 million metric tons. The
postwar economic expansion, including the construction of the Interstate
Highway System, raised consumption to a peak of about 128 million tons by 2005;
recent rates are around 100 million tons a year. China became the world's
largest producer in 1985, and its output of cement—above 2.3 billion metric
tons in 2018—now accounts for nearly 60 percent of the global total. In 2017
and 2018 China made slightly more cement (about 4.7 billion tons) than the
United States had made throughout the entire 20th century.
There's a
downside to all of this concrete. Yes, it's made possible the world's highways,
bridges, dams, runways, parking lots, and thousands of other structures
(including, I was reminded, the Sydney Opera House). But except for the
Pantheon, it deteriorates. Concrete is subject to "acid deposition,
vibration, structural overloading, and salt-induced corrosion of the
reinforcing steel. As a result, the concretization of the world has produced
tens of billions of tons of material that will soon have to be replaced,
destroyed, or simply abandoned." I don't know that I would have used the
word "soon" in that sentence, unless the author was thinking about
the long run of history.
The second
problem with concrete is that producing it accounts for roughly 5% of fossil
fuel emissions. "The industry burns low-quality coal and petroleum coke,
producing roughly a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement." There are alternative
production techniques but they are not widely used and apparently won't be anytime
soon. I imagine they're also more expensive.
I'm never
going to be able to walk down the sidewalk again without thinking of the cost
of producing and replacing it. It would certainly be an improvement if widespread
recycling were possible.
* * *
I have noticed
on several websites, in the news, and in Facebook comments hither and thither, that
a number on the political right, Trump-ish sorts and right-wing media sites,
are calling for the governors and Trump to open the economy back up sooner than
most public health experts appear to believe would be wise. It seems to me that
those calling for opening up sooner don't put a very high value on lives. Here
are the Minnesota statistics (from MPR) for April 16:
1,809 cases via 40,242 tests
87 deaths
445 cases requiring hospitalization
197 people remain in the hospital; 93 in ICUs
23 percent of cases in congregate living settings
940 patients recovered
Pretty low number for deaths as a percentage of the state
population; best in the nation, last I saw. The worst-case projections are
22,000 – 28,000 deaths for Minnesota alone if physical distancing is not maintained
and appropriate testing ramped up as quickly as possible.
My question
is how many Minnesota deaths are acceptable to those who want to re-start the
economy sooner. 1,000? 5,000? 10,000? All 22,000+? Which people's
siblings/parents/children/friends are they willing to sacrifice? The issue of
immunity is of signal importance: do you acquire immunity once you've had
COVID-19? The evidence thus far seems ambiguous; maybe you do, maybe for a short
time, maybe not, maybe it even varies with the individual. If there's little or
no immunity, the idea of "herd immunity" is inapplicable and much
will have to wait on a vaccine.
Comparisons
with other diseases are irrelevant. In many cases, they are treatable or they
don't have a high mortality rate. Or they are less contagious and sequestration
of the sick essentially addresses the problem. There isn't a social decision
that some people will die: whatever steps can be taken we generally take. Flu
shots are available and work to some extent; if someone chooses not to get a
flu shot and subsequently dies, that was an individual choice (and even if they
spread it before they die, the mortality rate is so low that it won't likely affect
anyone else). None of these things are true for COVID-19, and it's so highly
contagious that a public policy decision to increase exposure of everyone
is an affirmative decision that some must be sacrificed. I don't want to be the
one who makes that decision.
On the
other hand. . . . Everyone recognizes the financial devastation the economic
shutdown is having on many millions of people. How many will die because of
depression (lack of income, mental/social support) or from other afflictions
that can't be treated right now? How many lives will be derailed permanently
(e.g., colleges and universities are concerned that many may not pursue higher
education because of the coronavirus, lost jobs/careers never recovered). The
tradeoffs here are horrendous. But, since I don't want my son or wife or
brother or friends to die from the disease, I come down on the side of saving
lives over saving the economy. But it's not a comfortable conclusion.
--Gary
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