Words of wisdom

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been binge watching season 5 of The Walking Dead. I figure it's the best way to prepare for the 2016 session of the WV legislature. Last night I had to write down some words of wisdom from a character on the show:

If you feel safe enough to be bored, you're lucky.

I think that may well be the case. There are a lot of people around the world who would give just about anything for enough safety to be bored.

To live deep

I remember having a discussion with some young people about Thoreau's Walden a while back. One person pointed out that he didn't really rough it or live totally off the land, as if he cheated by having occasional dinners at a friend's house.

I tried to point out as tactfully as I could that he didn't go to the woods for commando or survival training. It was more of what we might call today an extended spiritual retreat.

In some of his best known words, he explained his reasons this way:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had never lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Thoreau is at his best in passages like that which challenge the reader. It would be terrible thing to discover at the end of life that one had never lived at all.

CUTTING CORNERS. That would be BP. Here's the Washington Post on the president's speech while we're at it.

STATING THE OBVIOUS. Here's Dean Baker on the obtuseness of some of his fellow economists.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO boredom?

A DEAL? It looks like the dispute which cost the Rev. Jim Lewis his license to function as a priest in WV is close to resolution.

MAKING EYES. Caterpillars, no doubt after a careful study of The Art of War, make false ones to scare off predators.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Repenting of goodness

There are any number of occupation hazards progressive types are susceptible to. Some of the worst in my book involve moralism and self righteousness, disorders often accompanied by the related condition of earnestness. I find it difficult to breathe in the presence of people without a sense of irony and a healthy dose of cynicism.

But it's not just a matter of taste. People who are overwhelmed by a sense of their own righteousness--or that of the cause which they profess, the two being easily confused--sometimes have zero sense of politics or tactics and are tone deaf and snow blind to even thinking about how their actions might appear to someone not already converted.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy a good ethical fight, one where you try to correct this or that excess or injustice, but these days I try to think of such occasions less as a matter of righteousness than of getting my ya yas out in a socially acceptable manner. This is more a matter of moral luck than anything else; a different turn of the goddess Fortuna's wheel and I would have wound up in prison or worse.

I guess my thinking on these issues has been heavily shaped by people like William Blake, Nietzsche, Freud, Niebuhr et al who have been suspicious of our moralistic pretensions. But I'm also standing right smack dab in the biblical tradition. Jesus loved whacking self righteousness and the author of the First Epistle of John wrote that "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."

For reasons like that, I love the parts of Walden where Thoreau is critical of goodness and humanitarianism. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes:

...if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

and

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life...

Having said that, y'all be good.

A VOTE FOR SCIENCE. Congratulations to WV Senator Robert C. Byrd for refusing to be buffaloed into a vote to block the EPA from dealing with climate change. Most state politicians seem to have adopted the position that anything which goes against the perceived interests of the coal industry is untrue by definition. Once again, WV's senior senator has stood out from the crowd.

NICE TRY. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is trying to shift blame for its Upper Big Branch mine disaster to MSHA ventilation regulations. As the Church Lady on the old SNL would say, "Isn't that convenient?"

FELICITY. Here's another look at the politics of happiness. Thoreau might actually like this one.

BORED OR UNEMPLOYED? Here's a link to keep you busy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED