My birthday was last week, and it was one of the rare times that we weren’t on the road for it. The Upstate New York portion of the family gathered on our front porch for pizza, soda, and Kool-Aid, and then it was time for the cake.
Cheryl lit a candle, and held it out for me to blow out.
“Don’t forget to make a wish!” someone shouted.
I thought carefully about my wish, and then blew out the candle.
“So what did you wish for?” someone asked.
“I can’t tell you,” I replied. “It would spoil the wish.”
But my not telling them what I wished for didn’t prevent them from trying to guess - and they were all way off the mark.
A few days later my mother-in-law called and asked if I had won the lottery.
“Um, I doubt it. Why?”
“Because someone at the Price Chopper near you bought a winning Mega Millions ticket worth $43 million, and I remember that you wished to win the lottery.”
I thought that was funny, since I hadn’t told anyone what I had wished for. When I got off the phone, I told Cheryl about the conversation with her mother.
“So what did you wish for?” she asked.
“You know me well enough, what do you think I wished for?”
“Well, there are lots of good things: for people to leave you alone, for Devra to get a job, for Devra to get into college, for certain people who annoy you at work to get nice jobs somewhere else…”
“You forgot the big one.”
“What’s that?”
“For people to not be stupid.”
You see, to me, all the problems in the world come as a result of people just being bloody stupid. They don’t realize that what’s good for them in the short run may not be in their long-term best interests. They don’t realize that the person they’re mistreating now may be the person they’ll need to save their lives later on. They get in their own way by being so stupid.
And they don’t realize that I’m always right.
“That was a stupid wish,” Cheryl said.
“What?”
“At least you’d have a chance of winning the lottery. People not being stupid anymore is never gonna happen.”
“But I thought the point of making a wish was to ask for something that you normally wouldn’t get.”
“Yeah,” she said, but you have to have a realistic chance of getting it. Winning the lottery is realistic, having those bozos at work get new jobs somewhere else is realistic; they could all happen. Asking for all humanity to realize that you’re always right, ain’t gonna happen. And if you wish for stupid things like that, you’re just wasting wishes.”
Whoa! That was a totally new concept to me: wasting wishes. This, of course, implied that wishes came true. I figured that if they didn’t come true anyway, then there was no harm in wishing for things like world peace…or people not being stupid. And if they did come true by my wishing, then that’s great for everyone.
But the idea that you could waste a wish by using it for something impossible never occurred to me.
I guess wishes are about things that are theoretically attainable, but just need a little nudge (or a big shove) to have happen. I guess they’re also one of the few times when it really is all about you. That means that wishing for something that serves the greater good of the world may well end up being a stupid, wasted, wish, while wishing for a date with Kari Byron from MythBusters isn’t.
Anyway, enough of this. I need to go to the corner store and see if I got lucky with any of the lottery tickets I bought there.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
What's In A Name
It started when a 30-something Sunday School teacher came into the kitchen where the regular group of us were having a conversation, and asked me to come down to her class.
“Mr Gatling, could we borrow you for part of our video project?”
I didn’t think about it at the moment, but I did when I returned to the kitchen, and made a mental note to do something about it. When Sunday School was over, and she came to the kitchen to join us, I said to her, “Erin, what’s my name?”
“Mr Gatling,” she replied.
“No, let’s try this again. What’s my name?”
“Ohhhh. Keith,” she said.
The rest of the kitchen crowd laughed, and someone said, “Yeah, Mr Gatling is his father.”
Well, that wasn’t quite it. It was the fact that I work with people her age and younger, to whom I’m Keith, and there are other people her age at church to whom I’m Keith. As a teacher, she probably works with people my age that she’s on a first name basis with. So why was I Mr Gatling to her?
Because she grew up in this church, and probably remembers me from when she was a teenager, and then I was definitely Mr Gatling to her. Now that she was a grownup too, it was time to change that.
As we got to talking about this, one of the women in the kitchen said how much she hated it when adults introduced themselves to her kids by their first name. She said, “My kids have to call you Mr or Mrs Gatling, or if you don’t like that, I’ll settle for Mr Keith or Miss Cheryl. It’s a matter of respect.”
I bit my tongue.
You see, to me respect isn’t necessarily about the forms we use, but about respecting what the other person wants. And if I want to be called Keith, isn’t it being more respectful to go with what I want than what you want? Besides, I can call you Your Royal Highness, and think you’re a horse’s ass. Similarly, I can call you Chuckie, and be willing to follow you into Hell. But I chose not to fight that battle then.
Sometimes it’s about culture. If I’m from a culture that insists that you address me one way, but you’re from a culture that insists that you address me another one, who wins? Who’s right?
And sometimes the culture doesn’t have to be one of region or nationality, but could be one of where you worked. I worked at McDonald’s in high school, and the corporate culture there said that everyone was on a team together, and that meant that everyone was on a first name basis, no matter how old you were. When my mother came to work at McDonald’s with me and my sister for a few weeks while Western Electric was on strike, she immediately became Elsie, and once that genie was out of the bottle, it never went back in.
There is so much more to this, but I don’t have the time right now to talk about the question of how old you were when you first met someone, and how the same age difference can mean different things when you’re 3 and 17 than when you’re 13 and 27.
So…am I Keith, Mr Gatling, Mr G, or even just G? It all depends on who you are and when I met you.
And if you respect me, you’ll address me the way that I’d prefer to be addressed.
Although, if it really makes you feel more comfortable, I’ll let you call me something more formal than I might be happy with.
Oh Great Exalted One would be nice.
“Mr Gatling, could we borrow you for part of our video project?”
I didn’t think about it at the moment, but I did when I returned to the kitchen, and made a mental note to do something about it. When Sunday School was over, and she came to the kitchen to join us, I said to her, “Erin, what’s my name?”
“Mr Gatling,” she replied.
“No, let’s try this again. What’s my name?”
“Ohhhh. Keith,” she said.
The rest of the kitchen crowd laughed, and someone said, “Yeah, Mr Gatling is his father.”
Well, that wasn’t quite it. It was the fact that I work with people her age and younger, to whom I’m Keith, and there are other people her age at church to whom I’m Keith. As a teacher, she probably works with people my age that she’s on a first name basis with. So why was I Mr Gatling to her?
Because she grew up in this church, and probably remembers me from when she was a teenager, and then I was definitely Mr Gatling to her. Now that she was a grownup too, it was time to change that.
As we got to talking about this, one of the women in the kitchen said how much she hated it when adults introduced themselves to her kids by their first name. She said, “My kids have to call you Mr or Mrs Gatling, or if you don’t like that, I’ll settle for Mr Keith or Miss Cheryl. It’s a matter of respect.”
I bit my tongue.
You see, to me respect isn’t necessarily about the forms we use, but about respecting what the other person wants. And if I want to be called Keith, isn’t it being more respectful to go with what I want than what you want? Besides, I can call you Your Royal Highness, and think you’re a horse’s ass. Similarly, I can call you Chuckie, and be willing to follow you into Hell. But I chose not to fight that battle then.
Sometimes it’s about culture. If I’m from a culture that insists that you address me one way, but you’re from a culture that insists that you address me another one, who wins? Who’s right?
And sometimes the culture doesn’t have to be one of region or nationality, but could be one of where you worked. I worked at McDonald’s in high school, and the corporate culture there said that everyone was on a team together, and that meant that everyone was on a first name basis, no matter how old you were. When my mother came to work at McDonald’s with me and my sister for a few weeks while Western Electric was on strike, she immediately became Elsie, and once that genie was out of the bottle, it never went back in.
There is so much more to this, but I don’t have the time right now to talk about the question of how old you were when you first met someone, and how the same age difference can mean different things when you’re 3 and 17 than when you’re 13 and 27.
So…am I Keith, Mr Gatling, Mr G, or even just G? It all depends on who you are and when I met you.
And if you respect me, you’ll address me the way that I’d prefer to be addressed.
Although, if it really makes you feel more comfortable, I’ll let you call me something more formal than I might be happy with.
Oh Great Exalted One would be nice.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
On Obedience to Authority
In the famous (or infamous) Milgram Experiment, Yale Psychology professor Stanley Milgram told volunteers that he was testing the effect of electrical shocks on memory. In reality, his goal was to test people’s obedience to authority, even when what they were being asked to do went against their personal morals.
On May 22nd, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts suggests that due to the results of some recent experiments with children and dolls, nothing has changed on the issue of race over the past forty years.
I disagree.
In the experiments he talks about, five-year-old white and black children are given light-skinned and dark-skinned dolls, and told to choose which one is the smart one or the stupid one, the pretty one or the ugly one. And the sad results are that most children, even the black ones, will pick the dark-skinned dolls as being the stupid or ugly ones.
But are we really seeing childhood racism here, or a pint-sized version of the Milgram Experiment? In the original 1961 experiments, only 35% of the volunteers refused to continue administering the shocks, despite the prodding of the person who appeared to be running the experiment. Let me put this to you a little differently: Only 35% of adults were capable of saying “No, I will not do this anymore.”
What does this have to do with five-year-olds and dolls? A lot. If only 35% of adults found it within them to question the apparent purpose of Milgram’s experiment, if 65% of the volunteers followed the instructions of the authority figure to the point of administering the last 450-volt shock, then how can we expect five-year-olds to behave any differently?
What I am saying here is that perhaps we found out more about how children respond to authority than what they think about race. What five-year-old is going to have the savvy and wherewithal to say to the grownup in charge (the authority figure) “Why are you asking me this question?” “Why are you making me choose?” Indeed, that child might not even have thought in terms of one being good and the other being bad until the authority figure put that idea into her head. And not being given an option to not choose, they made the choices they did. Seems to me that this is the sign of a flawed experiment.
And suppose some smart child did indeed say, “This is stupid.” Would they then prodded, Milgram-like, into making a choice, or would they be left alone?
I’d like to see the results of this test with the child given red and green dolls to choose from; or one doll their skin color, and a doll that was green or red or blue or purple. Really, what happens when you tell a five-year-old to make a binary choice, any binary choice, and then explain why they made that choice?
The irony of Milgram’s experiment is that after he saw how disturbed the first batch of volunteers were at finding what horrible things they were capable of doing, he continued running the experiment; obeying the “authority” of academic inquiry, rather than saying “enough already” to human suffering.
I believe that there is a similar irony with the doll experiments, in that every time we run these on kids, we may well end up putting ideas into their heads that weren’t there in the first place, and perpetuating the problem.
And for Pete’s sake, why weren’t there any Asian dolls? After all, everyone knows that they’re the really smart ones.
Or maybe five-year-olds haven’t figured that out yet.
On May 22nd, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts suggests that due to the results of some recent experiments with children and dolls, nothing has changed on the issue of race over the past forty years.
I disagree.
In the experiments he talks about, five-year-old white and black children are given light-skinned and dark-skinned dolls, and told to choose which one is the smart one or the stupid one, the pretty one or the ugly one. And the sad results are that most children, even the black ones, will pick the dark-skinned dolls as being the stupid or ugly ones.
But are we really seeing childhood racism here, or a pint-sized version of the Milgram Experiment? In the original 1961 experiments, only 35% of the volunteers refused to continue administering the shocks, despite the prodding of the person who appeared to be running the experiment. Let me put this to you a little differently: Only 35% of adults were capable of saying “No, I will not do this anymore.”
What does this have to do with five-year-olds and dolls? A lot. If only 35% of adults found it within them to question the apparent purpose of Milgram’s experiment, if 65% of the volunteers followed the instructions of the authority figure to the point of administering the last 450-volt shock, then how can we expect five-year-olds to behave any differently?
What I am saying here is that perhaps we found out more about how children respond to authority than what they think about race. What five-year-old is going to have the savvy and wherewithal to say to the grownup in charge (the authority figure) “Why are you asking me this question?” “Why are you making me choose?” Indeed, that child might not even have thought in terms of one being good and the other being bad until the authority figure put that idea into her head. And not being given an option to not choose, they made the choices they did. Seems to me that this is the sign of a flawed experiment.
And suppose some smart child did indeed say, “This is stupid.” Would they then prodded, Milgram-like, into making a choice, or would they be left alone?
I’d like to see the results of this test with the child given red and green dolls to choose from; or one doll their skin color, and a doll that was green or red or blue or purple. Really, what happens when you tell a five-year-old to make a binary choice, any binary choice, and then explain why they made that choice?
The irony of Milgram’s experiment is that after he saw how disturbed the first batch of volunteers were at finding what horrible things they were capable of doing, he continued running the experiment; obeying the “authority” of academic inquiry, rather than saying “enough already” to human suffering.
I believe that there is a similar irony with the doll experiments, in that every time we run these on kids, we may well end up putting ideas into their heads that weren’t there in the first place, and perpetuating the problem.
And for Pete’s sake, why weren’t there any Asian dolls? After all, everyone knows that they’re the really smart ones.
Or maybe five-year-olds haven’t figured that out yet.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Good News From the Invitation Box
There’s a box in the closet in my study that has the invitations or bulletins from most of the weddings I went to during the 1980s.
I keep this box for reference purposes. And last week I checked it to see what time my sister-in-law got married. Since it was a Sunday wedding, it had to have been in the afternoon, after the regular service, and finding the invitation would tell me for sure. I didn’t find the invitation, but while I was looking, I decided to do a little counting. Of all the weddings I had documentation for, how many of those marriages were still intact?
There were 17 marriages documented in that box, mine included, and of those, 10 are still going strong, one ended with the untimely death of one of the partners after almost 20 years, three ended in divorce, and three are couples that I’ve totally lost track of over the years.
If I get rid of the couples I’ve lost track of and count the one death among the success stories, we get a score of 11 to 3. Put into percentages, that’s a 79% success rate for marriage among my friends – at least the friends whose documentation I still had.
Let me say that again: 79% of the marriages I had documentation for are still intact. And these are all first marriages.
There’s an old saying that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics; and some of you may want to consider this as one of the third, after all “everyone knows” that half of all marriages end in divorce.
But that’s one of those statistics too, and it’s not one to be trusted. Here’s why. The figures that “everyone knows” about marriage and divorce are taken by comparing the number of people who got married in year x with the number of people who got divorced in year x. These two numbers have nothing to do with each other – at all. The people who got divorced in 2008 may have gotten married as far back as 1958, and spread equally along the 50 years between the two. For the figures to be meaningful, you have to track a group of people who got married in 1958 and see what percentage of them are still married to each other 20, 30, 40 years later.
That’s what my invitation box did, and studies that use this method tend to come up with a 60% to 70% success rate.
There’s one more thing, though. At about the same time that I got the good news from my invitation box, Larry King got divorced for the 7th time. While it’s true that most first marriages tend to go the distance, if you’re counting the sheer number of marriages and divorces, people like Larry King, Elizabeth Taylor, and Mickey Rooney skew the figures.
But what about the weddings I went to during the 80s that I didn’t have documentation for in my invitation box? Ah…I knew someone had to ask about those. As I thought carefully and tried to remember all of them, the figures came closer to 68% and 32%. But that’s still pretty darned good!
And finally, a word for my friend whose documentation never made it into my box, but is one of the 32% of divorces. I do not in any way mean to imply that people in the 32% didn’t work hard enough, didn’t love each other enough, or weren’t committed enough. By no means! Sometimes things just don’t work out no matter how hard you try, and you sadly have to walk away from it.
But this same friend has since remarried and speaks of the joy of second chances. I firmly agree there. I know many people who found success the second time around.
And having just celebrated her 18th anniversary, I’m counting her as being in the 68% success rate for second marriages!
I keep this box for reference purposes. And last week I checked it to see what time my sister-in-law got married. Since it was a Sunday wedding, it had to have been in the afternoon, after the regular service, and finding the invitation would tell me for sure. I didn’t find the invitation, but while I was looking, I decided to do a little counting. Of all the weddings I had documentation for, how many of those marriages were still intact?
There were 17 marriages documented in that box, mine included, and of those, 10 are still going strong, one ended with the untimely death of one of the partners after almost 20 years, three ended in divorce, and three are couples that I’ve totally lost track of over the years.
If I get rid of the couples I’ve lost track of and count the one death among the success stories, we get a score of 11 to 3. Put into percentages, that’s a 79% success rate for marriage among my friends – at least the friends whose documentation I still had.
Let me say that again: 79% of the marriages I had documentation for are still intact. And these are all first marriages.
There’s an old saying that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics; and some of you may want to consider this as one of the third, after all “everyone knows” that half of all marriages end in divorce.
But that’s one of those statistics too, and it’s not one to be trusted. Here’s why. The figures that “everyone knows” about marriage and divorce are taken by comparing the number of people who got married in year x with the number of people who got divorced in year x. These two numbers have nothing to do with each other – at all. The people who got divorced in 2008 may have gotten married as far back as 1958, and spread equally along the 50 years between the two. For the figures to be meaningful, you have to track a group of people who got married in 1958 and see what percentage of them are still married to each other 20, 30, 40 years later.
That’s what my invitation box did, and studies that use this method tend to come up with a 60% to 70% success rate.
There’s one more thing, though. At about the same time that I got the good news from my invitation box, Larry King got divorced for the 7th time. While it’s true that most first marriages tend to go the distance, if you’re counting the sheer number of marriages and divorces, people like Larry King, Elizabeth Taylor, and Mickey Rooney skew the figures.
But what about the weddings I went to during the 80s that I didn’t have documentation for in my invitation box? Ah…I knew someone had to ask about those. As I thought carefully and tried to remember all of them, the figures came closer to 68% and 32%. But that’s still pretty darned good!
And finally, a word for my friend whose documentation never made it into my box, but is one of the 32% of divorces. I do not in any way mean to imply that people in the 32% didn’t work hard enough, didn’t love each other enough, or weren’t committed enough. By no means! Sometimes things just don’t work out no matter how hard you try, and you sadly have to walk away from it.
But this same friend has since remarried and speaks of the joy of second chances. I firmly agree there. I know many people who found success the second time around.
And having just celebrated her 18th anniversary, I’m counting her as being in the 68% success rate for second marriages!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Death of the Book
A while back I had an idea for a piece about the so-called “death of the book” that was supposedly on the horizon. Many well-known digiterati had said that with advances in portable computing, it was only a matter of time before the book, and indeed printed literature as we knew it, would all disappear.
And this was before the arrival, or even the announcement of the iPad.
However, like Mark Twain, I was prepared to say that the rumors of the book’s impending death were greatly exaggerated.
First of all, there’s the price factor. Sure, some of us in certain socio-economic classes can afford the latest new electronic toy when it first comes out, but for most people $400 for an Amazon Kindle is a stretch. And then to take this to the beach where it’ll get sand and water on it? No thanks, I’m leaving mine in the car where it’s safe, and reading a good old inexpensive and expendable paperback with me while I’m sunning myself.
True, after enough of the digiterati buy these devices to make the price drop, everyone and his brother will have one, and it won’t seem like you’re courting disaster to take it on the beach with you. I never would’ve taken my $400 first-generation iPod on the beach with me at Cape May. My $150 Nano (which, by the way, holds way more music than my first one did) goes with me everywhere. Perhaps one day the Kindles, Nooks, and iPad will reach this level of saturation and price point.
But the main reason I was prepared to say that the book would be with us for a long time is because I’ve heard this all before. Film was supposed to herald the end of live theater, records would bring about the end of live music, television would bring about the end of movies and radio. In the end, none of those things happened. In fact, it’s a special treat to see a live theater or musical performance. So it is with the plain old printed book. Other things may come along that are fancier and seem like they might take its place, but I’m betting that the book will be around for a good long time. I'm also betting that as time goes on, we'll see that the printed book has certain advantages over its digital cousins.
As I said, I was going to write a piece on this, but never got around to it. And then I saw Anna Quindlen’s piece Turning the Page in the March 26th issue Newsweek in which she said:
And it’s an audience that she reached mostly…by print.
And this was before the arrival, or even the announcement of the iPad.
However, like Mark Twain, I was prepared to say that the rumors of the book’s impending death were greatly exaggerated.
First of all, there’s the price factor. Sure, some of us in certain socio-economic classes can afford the latest new electronic toy when it first comes out, but for most people $400 for an Amazon Kindle is a stretch. And then to take this to the beach where it’ll get sand and water on it? No thanks, I’m leaving mine in the car where it’s safe, and reading a good old inexpensive and expendable paperback with me while I’m sunning myself.
True, after enough of the digiterati buy these devices to make the price drop, everyone and his brother will have one, and it won’t seem like you’re courting disaster to take it on the beach with you. I never would’ve taken my $400 first-generation iPod on the beach with me at Cape May. My $150 Nano (which, by the way, holds way more music than my first one did) goes with me everywhere. Perhaps one day the Kindles, Nooks, and iPad will reach this level of saturation and price point.
But the main reason I was prepared to say that the book would be with us for a long time is because I’ve heard this all before. Film was supposed to herald the end of live theater, records would bring about the end of live music, television would bring about the end of movies and radio. In the end, none of those things happened. In fact, it’s a special treat to see a live theater or musical performance. So it is with the plain old printed book. Other things may come along that are fancier and seem like they might take its place, but I’m betting that the book will be around for a good long time. I'm also betting that as time goes on, we'll see that the printed book has certain advantages over its digital cousins.
As I said, I was going to write a piece on this, but never got around to it. And then I saw Anna Quindlen’s piece Turning the Page in the March 26th issue Newsweek in which she said:
Americans, however, tend to bring an either-or mentality to most things, from politics to prose. The invention of television led to predictions about the demise of radio. The making of movies was to be the death knell of live theater; recorded music, the end of concerts. All these forms still exist—sometimes overshadowed by their siblings, but not smothered by them.Dang! She took the words right out of my mouth – and sent them out to a much wider audience than I could ever hope to reach.
And it’s an audience that she reached mostly…by print.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Sand and Water
One of the sadder, and yet more fascinating, things I had to do in 2009 was to attend my first Jewish funeral, for the mother of one of my students.
I loved how the cantor started it by saying, “Let’s face it, none of us wants to be here today. We all have things we would much rather be doing than this.” Wasn’t that the truth.
But it was the graveside ceremony, under a tent in the snow, that really struck me. One of the things that the two daughters did was to each put a spadeful of earth from Israel onto their mother’s casket, followed by some from good old Syracuse NY. Then family members each put a spadeful of earth on the casket. Finally the rabbi asked if anyone else wanted to do the same.
There was an uncomfortable silence as many of the people from school, most of whom weren’t Jewish, wondered what they should do. Was it appropriate for us to take part in what seemed to be such a painfully intimate tradition? The rabbi must’ve sensed our discomfort, because after that awkward silence, he invited us, all of us, to put a spadeful of earth on the casket, explaining that it was a mitzvah to do so.
Later on, I got to thinking about that some more, and laughed as I considered that if they put earth from New Jersey on my casket, it would have to be decontaminated of all the toxic wastes first. Then I thought, “Nah, just have them use a bucket of Cape May sand.” After all, Cape May is my favorite beach and probably my favorite part of New Jersey.
Well, about a week ago I read an article in the April issue of The Lutheran magazine about a pastor who collects water…for baptisms. He asks family members of the child to be baptized to bring water from places that are significant to them, and that water will be added to the water in the baptismal font that day.
What a great idea, and had I known about it 17 years ago, it would've taken me to Cape May again; this time for water from the Atlantic Ocean. We would’ve used Cape May water for the baptisms of both of our daughters.
Sand and water. Or rather – water and sand. Important symbols at both ends of life.
I loved how the cantor started it by saying, “Let’s face it, none of us wants to be here today. We all have things we would much rather be doing than this.” Wasn’t that the truth.
But it was the graveside ceremony, under a tent in the snow, that really struck me. One of the things that the two daughters did was to each put a spadeful of earth from Israel onto their mother’s casket, followed by some from good old Syracuse NY. Then family members each put a spadeful of earth on the casket. Finally the rabbi asked if anyone else wanted to do the same.
There was an uncomfortable silence as many of the people from school, most of whom weren’t Jewish, wondered what they should do. Was it appropriate for us to take part in what seemed to be such a painfully intimate tradition? The rabbi must’ve sensed our discomfort, because after that awkward silence, he invited us, all of us, to put a spadeful of earth on the casket, explaining that it was a mitzvah to do so.
Later on, I got to thinking about that some more, and laughed as I considered that if they put earth from New Jersey on my casket, it would have to be decontaminated of all the toxic wastes first. Then I thought, “Nah, just have them use a bucket of Cape May sand.” After all, Cape May is my favorite beach and probably my favorite part of New Jersey.
Well, about a week ago I read an article in the April issue of The Lutheran magazine about a pastor who collects water…for baptisms. He asks family members of the child to be baptized to bring water from places that are significant to them, and that water will be added to the water in the baptismal font that day.
What a great idea, and had I known about it 17 years ago, it would've taken me to Cape May again; this time for water from the Atlantic Ocean. We would’ve used Cape May water for the baptisms of both of our daughters.
Sand and water. Or rather – water and sand. Important symbols at both ends of life.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Pride, Logic, and Real Estate
A few years ago I read an article that said that for the amount of money it cost us to fight the war in Vietnam, we could've given every Vietnamese person $3000, and not have lost a single American life. And just think of how far $3000 per person - not per family, but per person - would have gone there.
But there's something about us that thinks it's dishonorable to "bribe" people to do things our way, or that makes us feel that we're condoning blackmail if we pay rather than fight. I'm not so sure about this. I think that $3000 per person would've been a very good idea, and might have earned us a lot of friends very early in the game, instead of the enemies we ended up with.
All of this leads me to think about real estate. Some of the most contested real estate in the world.
The stuff in the Middle East.
Call me incredibly naive, or call me an amazing realist, but I'd like to sit representatives of the Israelis and the Palestinians together in one room and ask the Palestinians this very important question:
It's as if we were actually smart enough to offer $3000 to every Vietnamese man, woman, and child, and they turned it down.
I think about the borders drawn in the divvying up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Borders that have caused nothing but trouble, because they weren't really based on the ethnic and cultural realities of the region, but on what Europeans thought would be a good idea for themselves. I think about borders that have been the backdrop for conflict after conflict ever since; and may well be considered the continuing battles of World War I.
And I wonder why Florin can't just offer Guilder so much money to buy the contested land once and for all, without a shot being fired?
The answer, of course, is pride. They would rather spend even more money, and lives, to try to seize the land "for free" than just peacefully buy it outright.
And if they could do this, if they could just buy the contested land from the other country, and didn't have to spend money on soldiers and weapons, maybe they could put their remaining funds to use on making life better for their own citizens.
Ah, too often pride gets in the way of logic.
Logic which would allow them to live long and prosper.
But there's something about us that thinks it's dishonorable to "bribe" people to do things our way, or that makes us feel that we're condoning blackmail if we pay rather than fight. I'm not so sure about this. I think that $3000 per person would've been a very good idea, and might have earned us a lot of friends very early in the game, instead of the enemies we ended up with.
All of this leads me to think about real estate. Some of the most contested real estate in the world.
The stuff in the Middle East.
Call me incredibly naive, or call me an amazing realist, but I'd like to sit representatives of the Israelis and the Palestinians together in one room and ask the Palestinians this very important question:
Is your issue with Israel about real estate, and the just compensation for it, or is it about pride?The answer to this question is very important. Because if it's really just about real estate, this whole thing can be settled in a few days with the writing of a couple of million large checks. But the cynic here suspects that as much as the Palestinians may say that it's about the land that was unfairly taken from them when they "abandoned it" (as the Israelis might say), it's more about pride and still wanting to drive the Israelis to the sea, no matter how much money they had to offer.
It's as if we were actually smart enough to offer $3000 to every Vietnamese man, woman, and child, and they turned it down.
I think about the borders drawn in the divvying up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Borders that have caused nothing but trouble, because they weren't really based on the ethnic and cultural realities of the region, but on what Europeans thought would be a good idea for themselves. I think about borders that have been the backdrop for conflict after conflict ever since; and may well be considered the continuing battles of World War I.
And I wonder why Florin can't just offer Guilder so much money to buy the contested land once and for all, without a shot being fired?
The answer, of course, is pride. They would rather spend even more money, and lives, to try to seize the land "for free" than just peacefully buy it outright.
And if they could do this, if they could just buy the contested land from the other country, and didn't have to spend money on soldiers and weapons, maybe they could put their remaining funds to use on making life better for their own citizens.
Ah, too often pride gets in the way of logic.
Logic which would allow them to live long and prosper.
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