Steve Jobs on Death and What’s Important

In my recent post about humility, I observed that awareness of my eventual death helps me be less prideful and more humble.  Shortly after completing that post, I read a quote in Andy Tix’s blog discussing another benefit of thinking about death.   The quote was from Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University.  Jobs said the following:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

The point is a good one: the thought of our mortality renders many of our preoccupations  meaningless or trivial.  Jobs mentions being freed not only from pride but from a variety of other constraints.  Anticipating death releases us from many of our fears—fears of what others may think, of our own discomfort or shame, of failure.   It is a scalpel that cuts away what is unimportant.

Jobs seems to have confidence that, once liberated from pride and fear, we’ll be able to discover what is truly important.  Later in his Stanford speech, Jobs gave the following advice:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Jobs seems to be saying that recognition of what is important comes from within us.  Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls referred to this as the “wisdom of the organism.”  Other humanistic psychologists have roughly the same understanding of our inner nature.  Thus, Carl Rogers claimed that “There is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities.”  Abraham Maslow wrote, “If it [i.e. our inner nature] is permitted to guide our life, we grow healthy, fruitful, and happy.”  Jobs seems to agree that we possess an inner compass that serves as a prescient guide to how we should live.

It’s easy to think of counter-instances—people who followed their heart and intuition into a state of ruin.  The humanists might object that such individuals weren’t truly attending to their inner nature; there’s probably no way to determine whether such people were or weren’t.  As for Steve Jobs, his heart always led him in a particular direction.  Something about his nature repeatedly drove him to design innovative and user-friendly electronics.  Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the New Yorker about Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, suggests that Jobs’ gift was not as an inventor but as a tweaker—someone who took existing technology and refined it.  The Macintosh,, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad were not original, but were improvements on products or concepts already in existence.  Jobs’ passion for creating the perfect phone or computer is much appreciated by millions of Apple devotees.

It’s hard to know whether what Jobs did was truly important; those who look back on his contributions in fifty or a hundred years will be in a much better position than we are to assess that.  He was certainly consistent in pursuing what he thought mattered in life, though.  The tendency to devote himself to the minutia of products, fussing with them until he was satisfied, persisted into his final days.  Gladwell, citing Isaacson’s account, reports that, as he was dying, Jobs repeatedly poured over the plans for Apple’s new headquarters building, changing the details again and again until they pleased him.  Then, in the hospital for the final time and deeply sedated, he ripped off the oxygen mask that the pulmonologist put on his face, mumbling that it was poorly designed and he wouldn’t wear it.  What mattered to Jobs was the well-designed and perfectly functional object, and he pursued it to the last.

 

Humility

I have been thinking about humility after reading a brief article on the subject by Tim Keller (“The Advent of Humility,” in Christianity Today, December 2008).  Keller said the following:

“Humility is so shy.  If you begin talking about it, it leaves.  To even ask the question, ‘Am I humble?’ is to not be so.  Examining your own heart, even for pride, often leads to being proud about your diligence and circumspection.”

Keller’s comment reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s attempt to cultivate virtues.  He had success with some of those on his list but found it particularly hard to acquire humility.  As he ruefully remarked in his Autobiography:

“In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

Keller and Franklin both imply that it’s virtually impossible to deliberately acquire humility.  Perhaps that’s true; I do know that I haven’t acquired it.  Francis of Assisi was by all accounts a humble man, so it is interesting to look at how he avoided pride.  Here’s how St. Bonaventure described his approach (in The Life of St. Francis, tr. Ewert Cousins):

St. Francis of Assisi in his Tomb, by Francisco de Zurbaran

“He preferred to hear himself blamed rather than praised, knowing that blame would lead him to amend his life, while praise would drive him to a fall.  And so when people extolled the merits of his holiness, he commanded one of the friars to the opposite and to impress upon his ears insulting words.”

I suspect that I would need to have been humble to begin with for this strategy to work, since, were I to arrange to receive such insults, I would probably be pleased with myself over having gone to such lengths to defeat pride.

Keller may have it right: as soon as we think about whether we are humble or not, we’ve already succumbed to pride.   C.S. Lewis said that, if we were to meet a humble man, “He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”  That may be true, but it brings us no closer to humility, because we can’t stop thinking about ourselves.  At least I can’t.  I’m always thinking about what I’ve done or said, evaluating whether I handled a situation effectively.   Such self-evaluation seems to me a good thing:  it helps me not be rude, insensitive, or offensive.  Whenever I decide I’ve been effectual, though, I’m inclined to feel proud.  I’m not content with simply recognizing that I succeeded at something; I also decide that I’m a pretty great person for having done so well.

So I’m proud, but I’m probably not as proud as I once was.  Though I still think a lot about myself, at least some of the time I’m remembering that ultimately I’m not responsible for my successes.  If I’m capable in some area, there are so many factors outside myself—genes, parenting, the influences of others, God’s grace—that fostered the qualities I possess.  It has gradually dawned on me that I don’t really deserve the credit for anything I accomplish.  I sometimes still take the credit anyway, but not nearly as much as I used to.

I’ve also noticed that the thought of my eventual death tends to puncture my pride.  The Rule of St. Benedict (4:47) counsels each of us to “Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die.”  We are indeed dust, and to dust we’ll return.  The words “humility” and “humus” come from the same root; literally, when our bodies decompose, we’ll have reached a humble state.  In thinking about my future, it is obvious that my abilities will diminish, perhaps to the point that I can’t even care for myself any longer.  Then I’ll be gone and someone else will take my place.  Eventually, I’ll be forgotten.  So what reason is there for pride?  My ego halfheartedly tries to commend me for honestly facing my body’s eventual decay, but even it doesn’t puff up very much when standing in the shadow of death.  If I follow St. Benedict’s practice, there is some possibility that my soul will become humble before my body does.  Per Keller, Franklin, and Lewis, though, humility is such a delicate flower that grasping it will always crush it.

 

Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus

Two days before Christmas I went to see the exhibit “Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus” (at the Detroit Art Institute through February 12). The thesis of the exhibit is that Rembrandt discovered a new way to picture Christ. During the Renaissance, artists tended to paint a brown-haired, light-skinned Christ, often with a muscular, well-proportioned anatomy patterned on the Greek ideal. This Christ is active and heroic, typically gesturing with emphasis or emoting openly. Rembrandt’s early representations of Christ usually fit this mold. However, over the course of years, Rembrandt’s portrayals of Christ changed. For example, an early print showing the raising of Lazarus has Christ dramatically raising his arm over the grave, while a later version of the same event shows a much more subdued miracle worker. An early print of Christ’s trial shows him as a bold and dramatic, but, in a print made 20 years later, Christ is so unobtrusive that the viewer has to look carefully to pick him out from a clutch of figures.

The curators are particularly attentive to tracing Rembrandt’s change from painting fair-haired European Christs to painting dark-haired, Jewish Christs. Rembrandt lived much of his life in the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam and became quite familiar with his Jewish neighbors. In the mid-1640s, he made studies of a young Sephardic Jew, and, shortly thereafter, he and his school produced several pictures of Christ that had the hair style and facial features of that Jew. Rembrandt had discovered Christ’s Jewishness. (The view that Rembrandt was influenced in his portrayal of Christ by his interactions with his Jewish neighbors is disputed by some scholars, as noted in an article in the Huffington Post.) Rembrandt’s new way of picturing Christ continues his tendency towards a less active, more subdued Christ, but also evokes a new interiority. This is a contemplative figure whose serenity is suggestive of inner depths of spirit. The portraits of Christ made in the late 1640s are small, with a dark background that pushes the image of Christ towards the viewer. They invite intimacy.

The exhibit prompted a fair amount of reflection on my part. I was fascinated by the process of discovery that Rembrandt had to go through to find this Christ. The preconceptions bequeathed from his culture had to be stripped away little by little until he discovered a Christ freed from those preconceptions. It was courageous to follow this road of discovery to its end. Though Amsterdam was a city of relative tolerance, presenting a very Jewish Christ to a society that looked down on Jews took boldness, especially for someone whose livelihood was dependent on how the public received his work.

I also am interested in how the change in his representation of Christ is correlated with events in Rembrandt’s life. He achieved prominence in his twenties, moving to Amsterdam when he was about 25 and quickly becoming a successful and sought-after portrait painter. However, three of the four children he fathered with his wife Saskia died in infancy, and Saskia herself died when Rembrandt was about 35. Though he earned a decent income, Rembrandt lived beyond his means and went bankrupt when he was about 50. Isn’t it likely that these losses and struggles influenced his art by making it less showy and more subdued? Might the contemplative Christ reflect a more contemplative Rembrandt?

I also wonder whether Rembrandt’s process of discovery of a more interior Christ entailed a progression in his religious understanding. The earlier Christ is patently God-like—a distinctive figure who stood out from those around him and exercised his power in a dramatic fashion. The later Christ is more human—a man who was remarkable primarily in the sensitive and meditative qualities he displayed. This Christ is less intimidating and more approachable than the earlier version. Many followers of Christ go though a similar progression in how they view him. Early on, he is much different from us: the great prophet, the worker of miracles, the savior of the world. Though none of these elements disappear, they come to be counterbalanced by Christ’s humanity. He experienced the same times of confusion and struggle that we do; he felt the same feelings as we experience, and he sometimes faced daunting obstacles, just as we do. This is a Christ we not only respect, but one with whom we can relate. Perhaps in his later works Rembrandt was portraying Christ as he had personally come to know him.

The earlier, Classical portrayal of Christ evokes the universal myth of the hero. A more ethnically distinct Christ is a more parochial, less universal figure. Rembrandt was inviting his viewers to consider Christ as having been embedded in a particular culture and living in a particular time and place. At first, this might seem to make Christ less relevant to those from other cultures or living in other circumstances. Yet being tied to a certain time and place is a universal human experience. Like Christ, we all need to be engaged with our particular place and time. None of us lives as a universal man or woman; we all live as Jews or Dutchmen or Argentines or Americans, born in a specific era, with unique challenges and opportunities. Christ the Jew was Christ in the flesh, dealing with all the limitations that implies. He lived a life in the particular; he was human.

 

Christmas Cards and the Spirit of the Season

“I won’t buy anything from a store if the clerk says ‘Happy Holidays’,” a friend fumed.  “I celebrate Christmas, and I don’t like this political correctness that gets rid of Christmas.”

My friend has enlisted as a combatant in what Fox News has termed “The War on Christmas.” Does Christmas need defending, though? I, too, celebrate Christmas, but I’m not troubled by being wished “Happy Holidays,” regardless of the motives behind the wish—political correctness, a desire to include others regardless of their worldview, or opposition to viewing Christmas as a holiday in the sense of being a “Holy Day.”  There are many non-Christians in our society; why expect them to place particular emphasis on Christmas? For that matter, why expect that of all believers?  The apostolic church didn’t celebrate Christmas, and many Christians through the centuries chose not to commemorate it.   

My friend’s statement prompted me to reflect on the manner by which we go about giving particular importance to this time of year.  Christmas is by no means the only holiday celebrated, and, even if it was, Americans have given it various meanings both sacred and secular.  So how is our public discourse affected by our awareness that the holiday season means different things to different people?  Are we overly cautious about using the word “Christmas?”  Is there a reluctance to use Christian symbols to represent what we are celebrating at this time of year?  If we don’t use Christian symbols, what sort of symbols do we use?  I thought of these questions as I wrote Christmas cards over the past few weeks.  Rather than purchasing cards, I decided I would use cards that I had on hand, including card sets that charities had sent me in an attempt to evoke a year-end contribution.  I had cards from three large charities—WWF, Amnesty International, and Habitat for Humanity.  The first two of these have no religious connections, while the third has Christian roots but doesn’t present itself as solely doing Christian mission.  What sort of pictures and greetings were portrayed in the cards these groups distributed?

The first thing I noticed was that the word “Christmas” was seldom used; I found it on only two of about a dozen cards, both of which came from Habitat for Humanity.  “The holiday season,” or just “the season” was the preferred reference.  There weren’t any explicitly Christian symbols on the cards—no members of the Holy family, no manger scenes, no wise men, no Bethlehem, no shepherds,  no angels.   There were a few Christmas trees and wreaths; though these are associated with Christmas, they don’t have explicitly Christian connotations.  The closest thing to a Christian symbol was a dove; doves were pictured on three of the cards.  The word “peace” accompanied each.  This might connect in some way to the angels’ announcement of “peace on earth,” though it seems more likely that their proclamation has been secularized. 

This wasn't one of the cards I received--but it might have been. From http://barnaclebill.hubpages.com

It wasn’t just religious themes that were absent in the pictures that fronted the cards. There were no presents and  no Santas.  There also weren’t any family gatherings or other allusions to families.  In fact, for the most part humans were  shown at a distance and weren’t interacting with each other.  Thus, not only were there were no pictures of Christ’s birth, there were also none alluding to two other activities often associated with Christmas—the giving of presents and the gathering of families.  So what sort of pictures were on the cards?  Pictures of winter themes took central place.   The humans that were shown were mostly engaged in winter activities—building a snowman, skating, or riding in a sleigh.  The majority of cards showed snow falling, covering the ground, or both.  Snowmen abounded.   Besides the few humans, most of the other creatures portrayed were birds commonly associated with winter.  My count of animals was as follows: seven chickadees, three cardinals, three other birds, and one horse.

Opening the cards, I found the printed messages were fairly similar to each other.  Here are some of them:

Warmest greetings of the season.

Wishing you a holiday season filled with beautiful moments.

May the spirit of the season bring peace to last throughout the year.

May your heart be touched by the joys of the season.

Wishing you a world of peace and joy this holiday season.

May the beauty of the season bring you peace.  May the spirit of the season bring you hope.

May this season bring joy to your home that will last all year.

May your heart and home be filled with the joyful spirit of the holidays.

I mentioned earlier that “the holiday season,” often simplified to “the season,” was the most common designation for what was being celebrated.  What’s remarkable is that “the season” wasn’t conceptualized solely as a few weeks on the calendar or as a series of special days.  “The season” was seen as an agent in its own right—an agent that can bring peace and joy.  The season has its own spirit, and it is that spirit that exercises agentic functions.  Thus, we have “the spirit of the season” bringing “peace to last throughout the year.”   Though the copy writers seem to be trying to avoid explicit reference to a deity, they may be inadvertently demonstrating that humans naturally tend to evoke some sort of greater power when wishing others well.   We have an inclination towards the spiritual; if we exclude reference to the spirit of God, the spirit of the season fills the void.

 

Epiphanies of Recruitment

Many colleges and universities, including Methodist University, where I work, offer a class for first time college students to  aid their adjustment to the college environment and equip them with academically relevant skills.  I teach a section of that class to 17 freshmen.  One of the topics covered during our time together is career planning.  The advice given by the course textbook is fairly conventional—get to know your interests and abilities, then learn about careers that might be a good fit for you.  The text uses the term ‘vocation’ in a secular sense, neglecting its original meaning as a call or summons from God.  I made sure that my students knew the origin of the term and had the opportunity to consider whether they have received such a call.

Much of what I said about the subject came from Brian Mahan’s book Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose: Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition; I wrote about that book  previously.  Mahan notes that in our culture we are encouraged to be ambitious—to strive for well-paying careers, positions of power, and public renown.  Ambition makes the self into a commodity; the young are encouraged to sell themselves to prospective employers.  Doing so, though, reduces one’s worth to no more than what the marketplace is willing to pay.  Mahan encourages youthful seekers to take another route–to consider lives not of ambition but of vocation.

The life of vocation involves a call to something larger than oneself; Mahan calls it a “life increasingly given over to compassion for self, others, and world.” He suggests that many people experience the call to such a life in the form of “epiphanies of recruitment.”   These are encounters that beckon the person to a life in touch with human need.  An epiphany is a manifestation of divinity or of some deeper truth, so an epiphany of recruitment is such a manifestation that includes an invitation to do something in response to what has been revealed. One of Mahan’s examples is of a young lady named Martha, who went to visit an orphanage with some friends.  She was introduced to a young boy and spent several hours interacting with him.  The crucial moment for Martha came when the boy turned to her and asked, “Martha, do you have a daddy?”  Now Martha cries whenever she thinks about the boy and the orphanage.  She feels a need to respond in some way, though she doesn’t yet know how. 

 I told my class of the epiphanies of recruitment that called me to volunteer for prison ministry, and also of the epiphany that occurred while I served.  I worked in prisons from 1979 until 1984, but eventually left prison work to gain broader experience in the mental health field.  That may have been the result of ambition rather than vocation, though I don’t regret the direction my life has taken as a result of that choice.  In any event, while was driving from North Carolina to New Jersey in 1995, I had a strong sense that God was going to again use me to work with prisoners.  I didn’t know what to do with that feeling, but, in 2000, I heard about Kairos, a prison ministry based on the cursillo movement that builds Christian community among inmates.  I learned that a team of men just happened to be finishing preparations to serve on a Kairos weekend at Evans Correctional Institution in Bennettsville, South Carolina.  I contacted the team leader, asked whether they could use another volunteer, and soon found myself at Evans welcoming guests (i.e. prisoners) to the weekend.

I experienced many epiphanies in the year I was involved at Evans, but when I took my job at Methodist, it no longer was feasible to continue volunteering there.  I thought occasionally about Kairos, but I never thought I had enough time to participate.  Last year, a group of volunteers was planning to introduce Kairos at Scotland Correctional Institute, quite a bit closer to my house than Evans.  Gus Brown, one of those volunteers, contacted me in mid-2010, asking if I was interested in serving.  “I’m too busy,” I replied.  This March, Gus contacted me again.  I still was awfully busy, and planned to say no, but decided that maybe I should pray about it first.  The next morning, I opened the devotional guide I was using and turned to the scripture for the day.  It was from Matthew 25 and described the last judgment.  In it, Christ turns to those on his right and says, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”  Epiphany.   I was immediately certain that I was being called to volunteer in prisons, and called Gus to join the team that was being formed.

I described to my class one of the many marvelous experiences that occurred when I was on the Kairos weekend at Scotland CI.  I was sitting in the chapel area with the other team members.  The guests were on the other side of a partition; we were giving them privacy while they opened letters from members on the team.  Each team member had written to each guest.  We could hear the occasional ripping of an envelope, but mostly there was silence.  A deep sense came over me that what was being ripped was much more than envelopes.   Defenses and barriers that had been built over a lifetime, resentments and bitter feelings that had kept others out, were being shredded by the words of care that we volunteers had penned.  I felt a sense of God’s presence, and felt small, as if all that I could do or say was being dwarfed by what was taking place in the next room.  I started to cry.  As I told my class, “Either I was just a sentimental old guy tearing up over nothing, or what Jesus said is true and the kingdom of God was near.”  When we rejoined the guests a little later, it was evident that many of them had been deeply moved.  One of them commented, “If being a man means not crying, none of you are men, because I looked around and there wasn’t a dry eye.”  Some epiphanies have a way of spreading.  I hope my students will be prepared when the tide of divinity splashes into their lives as well.

 

Optimism Vs. Hope

I wrote previously about optimism, ending with the suggestion that optimism and hope differ from each other.  In this post, I’ll say a little about what I found when I did a web search on “hope vs. optimism.” Though some links were to writers who didn’t distinguish meaningfully between the two, the majority made some distinction.  In fact, many of those who thought hope differed from optimism made overdrawn contrasts between them.  Here’s an example–a quote attributed to Scottish theologian John Macquarrie: “Hope is humble, trustful, vulnerable. Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent. Hope has known the pang of suffering and the chill of despair.”  So if I’m optimistic about something, I’m being arrogant and brash?  I can’t hope if I haven’t suffered?  At best, this passage seems hyperbolic.  Both hope and optimism are similar in that they both involve positive expectations of some sort about the future; it’s best not to lose sight of their commonalities.

I found a few scientific studies differentiating between hope and optimism.  These tended to muck around in the slough of statistical analysis, and none turned up anything that I found particularly helpful.  Careful thought about  distinctions between the two seems to have an advantage over empirical research. Several well-known writers have tried to distinguish between hope and optimism—I encountered quotes from Miroslav Volf, Henri Nouwen, John Ortberg, and Vaclav Havel.  Here, for example, is a quote from Ortberg, as reported by  Smitten Kitten:

“Optimism and hope are not quite the same thing. Optimism requires a belief in progress—that things will in fact get better for me. Hope includes all the psychological advantages of optimism, but it is rooted in something deeper. When I hope, I believe that God is at work to redeem all things regardless of how things happen to be turning out for me today.”

Here is Nouwen, as quoted by KG:

“Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things—the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on—will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.”

I found that my fellow Christians often focus on a distinction made by both Ortberg and Nouwen.   Optimism is said to have as its object ordinary human events, whereas hope has to do with expectations about God.  Wouldn’t that imply, though, that a non-Christian (or at least a non-theist) can’t hope?  Isn’t it more accurate to say that nonbelievers hope as well, just in something different than believers?

Nouwen’s point that hope is related to trust is a useful one.  Hope more than optimism seems to depend on a sense that there is something benevolent that underlies our lives, though many attribute that benevolence to nature or karma or destiny or spirits rather than to God.  Optimism is often constructed out of selective interpretation of the evidence or simple denial that bad things might happen; hope is built on a foundation of faith in something larger than oneself.  Vaclav Havel, whose experience of living hopefully in the face of oppression gives him a more profound understanding of the concept than I will ever have, expresses it like this:   “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

Vaclav Havel

So hope is an ability to sense a deeper reality than what is visible.  It consists not merely of thinking that things might improve in the future, but of recognizing—not with the senses but with the heart—that something in present reality is right, and knowing that that present reality will pervade the future as well.   Havel thinks that such hope results in action. “Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.  The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”     (From Disturbing the Peace (1986), quoted here.)

 

The Great Hall

I recently drove up to Washington, DC and spent a day touring museums.  I saw a couple exhibits devoted to Andy Warhol, fifteenth century tapestries celebrating Portuguese king Afonzo V’s conquests, and some of the National Gallery’s permanent collection.   The exhibit that had the deepest impact on me, though was    “The Great American Hall of Wonders,” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through January 8, 2012.  According to its website description, the exhibit is an examination of “the nineteenth century American belief

Peale's "The Artist in his Museum"

that the people of the United States shared a special genius for innovation.”  The exhibit is introduced by a self-portrait of 19^th century naturalist and artist Charles Wilson Peale holding open a curtain revealing a museum of natural specimens.  Peale apparently did found such a museum where he exhibited a mastodon skeleton and other natural wonders.

The exhibit portrays significant technological advances of the age, including steam engines, railroads, and steamboats.  I was particularly struck by the section on railroads.  Included is the often-reproduced photograph of trains from east and west meeting nose-to-nose, linking the country by rail.  There are several paintings depicting trains chugging across the countryside.  Most of these show the train in the distance– pencil-thin and with a puff of smoke tethered overhead—an unobtrusive and innocuous addition to the landscape.  One picture titled “The First Train” shows Native Americans watching with wonder as a train steams across the prairie.  Another painting is probably more accurate in portraying the destruction that railroads brought in their wake.  A town is in the middle distance, smokestacks piercing the sky.  A train chugs up from the town; a barren field of tree stumps is shown in the near distance.  According to the curator’s notes, the artist was not lamenting nature being despoiled, but was instead favorably disposed towards the progress that the scene represented.

"The Waterworks"

The works included in the exhibit seldom give any evidence of conflict over the changes wrought by technological advances.  Some works dress these changes in noble garb.  A striking example is an 1825 sculpture by William Rush titled “The Waterworks” (I found the photograph of the sculpture here).  It is a celebration of the Fairmount Waterworks on the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia.  The reclining woman represents the river; she’s dressed as if she were a river goddess from classical times.  Her hand is posed over a water wheel and she’s smiling, apparently delighted at having her waters flow through this mechanical device.  The faux-classical blessing given the water plant seemed pretentious to me, but it was apparently well-received at the time.  I researched the history of the Fairmount Waterworks and learned here that “it was celebrated as a prime example of the blending of nature and technology.”  A park was built at the site, and it became one of the primary tourist attractions in the area.  Rush’s sculpture was once displayed there.

The 19^th century’s unabashed celebration of technology contrasts with the 21^st century’s ambivalence over technological advances.  We may like the comforts and electronic gadgets associated with technology, but we recognize the Faustian bargain by which the pleasures of modernity come at tremendous cost to the planet, to those less fortunate, and to our souls.  That sense of conflict over technology has been present in our society my entire adult life (that is, since the late 60s), and I imagine it’s been the dominant response to progress since the world wars.

Claire Perry, who curated the exhibit, seems heavily influenced by this conflict.  She’s appears uncomfortable with the exuberance over technological wonders and the confidence in progress that was so much a part of the 19^th century mindset.  I infer such discomfort based on her inclusion of some topics that have little to do with America’s “genius for innovation.”  For example, there’s a room of works portraying Niagara Falls; another room on buffalo, and a third room devoted to the trees of California, especially the sequoias. Why include these things?  The curator’s notes speak about American’s fascination with the natural bounty of the country and the belief that the vast American continent provided a suitable canvas for living out America’s destiny.  I think there’s more to Ms. Perry’s choices than cataloguing America’s fascination with abundance.  The pictures she chooses show buffalo herds being killed promiscuously and sequoias being logged to excess despite being unsuitable for construction.  Though she doesn’t say so directly, Ms. Perry seems appalled by such destruction in the name of progress.

Whether or not she disapproves of the felling of trees and buffalo, seeing images of such destruction had a powerful effect on me.  Pictures showing multitudes of wounded or dead buffalo in particular evoked horror and revulsion.  What sort of progress is this, to slaughter such magnificent animals for sport?  An even greater travesty was lightly touched on; the slaughter and displacement of Native Americans.  I came away from the exhibit troubled by our nation’s capacity for destruction and even more conflicted than before about science and technology.

 

Optimism

The story is told of an incurably upbeat man who jumped off the Empire State Building. As he hurtled down past the 20th floor, he was heard to shout, “So far, so good!” According to neuroscientist Tali Sharot, we’re all like that. Sharot describes our strong proclivity to don rose-colored glasses in her book The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain. I haven’t seen the book yet, but did read an excerpt in the June 6, 2011 edition of Time.

According to Sharot, the optimism bias is the belief that the future will be much better than the past and present. As her subtitle implies, we humans incline toward optimism even when the evidence for our positive expectations is weak. She reports the results of numerous brain imaging studies showing that the brain areas most associated with having positive thoughts about the future are the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, but I was less interested in the neural basis for optimism than the reasons she gives for its pervasiveness. Sharot notes that optimism is useful; being optimistic provides a variety of benefits. Optimistic heart patients are more likely to take vitamins, eat a proper diet, and exercise than are their pessimistic counterparts. Optimistic cancer patients have longer life spans. Depression is associated with an absence of the optimism bias. Sharot isn’t just a cheerleader for optimism, though, noting that in some circumstances it is maladaptive. In this context, I like British psychologist Havelock Ellis’s quip: “The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum.”

Sharot gives an origin myth for optimism. She suggests that optimism developed in conjunction with our ability to imagine ourselves in the future, that is, to engage in “mental time travel.” The capacity to picture the future was a mental advance that probably aided our survival tremendously. However, with it came the awareness that we would die one day. Following biologist Ajit Varki, Sharot claims that awareness of our impending death would have rendered us unable to function had it not emerged alongside irrational optimism. Sharot provides no argument to support this theory (though of course I’m drawing only on her article, not the book), and it’s not too hard to poke holes in it. For example, our optimism only pertains to our expectations for such things as getting a good job and a loving spouse; it is not an expectation that we’ll cheat death. So if awareness of mortality would immobilize those of our ancestors who didn’t have an optimistic bias, why wouldn’t it have done the same for ancestors who think they’ll have a few successful hunts or harvests before going the way of all flesh? If awareness of death leads to despair, it should do so for everyone, not just pessimists. Also, since our ancestors were for the most part members of collectivist societies for whom the survival of the group was more important than individual survival, shouldn’t their optimism have focused more on prospects for the group than on their individual well-being? As Sharot notes, we more easily become pessimistic about the future of our group than about our personal futures. That seems contrary to what would be expected from the evolutionary theory she advocates.

I don’t think of myself as much of an optimist, at least in the sense of having a general expectation that the future will be better than the past. In many ways, I’m convinced it won’t be. My aching knees will only ache more, and that little bit of difficulty I now have with glare when driving at night will get worse. I’ll have more trouble remembering people’s names, and words won’t come to mind as easily (I had the hardest time this week remembering the word “embalm” after someone mentioned dead people being injected with formaldehyde). My income will be falling in a few years, and I expect finances to be tighter. Despite such pessimistic expectations, I see myself as a person with hope.

Sharot seems to use optimism and hope synonymously, but I think there is a meaningful but subtle difference between the two. I did a web search on “hope vs. optimism” that helped me think about how they differ. This post is already long, though, so I’ll write later about what I found.

 

Selves Under Construction

I’ve always been fascinated by the tremendous effort that we put into constructing and defending what we take to be a flattering (or at least passable) image of ourselves. Previous posts (such as here and here) have alluded to this process. The process of self-construction begins when we are quite young, and it is interesting to observe children’s awkward and often amusing efforts to present themselves favorably.

A serviceable self requires the ability to give plausible accounts of one’s questionable actions. Here’s my 8-year-old grandson Calvin’s valiant effort to excuse his behavior, as reported a few months ago by his mother Jennifer:

Jennifer: “Calvin! Don’t punch Theo [his 4-year-old brother] in the stomach!”

Calvin: “Sorry, Theo, I was trying to hit you in the groin.”

Theo: “That’s OK, Calvin.”

A useful self should also be one that you can present as doing good and noble things. Here’s an attempt by Theo that occurred when I was visiting in July with my dog Zoe:

Theo: “I’m protecting Zoe.”

Me: “What are you protecting Zoe from?”

Theo: “The light saber.”

Me: “Who has the light saber?”

Theo: “Me.”

This exchange reminds me of a story told by philosopher/theologian Peter Rollins. A man came to see the parish priest, obviously distraught. “Father, you’ve got to help,” the man blurted out. “There’s a family down the street that’s about to be evicted. It’s the dead of winter, and they’re only a few days late with the rent, but the landlord is about to take out eviction papers.”

“All right,” replied the priest, “I’ll make some phone calls and see what I can do to help. How did you find out about the situation, by the way?”

“Oh,” the man said, “I’m the landlord.”

With Calvin and Theo this summer.

”

 

Hauerwas on 9/11

Today my son posted a link to an article that Christian pacifist Stanley Hauerwas wrote in response to the events of September 11, 2001. The piece was apparently published in the South Atlantic Quarterly in 2002. Hauerwas was appalled and saddened by the loss of life, but also saddened by President Bush’s decision to declare war in response. He remained steadfast in his pacifism, stating, “I should like to think pacifism names the habits and community necessary to gain the time and place that is an alternative to revenge.” He added, though, “But I do not pretend that I know how that is accomplished.”

Stanley Hauerwas

What I particularly appreciate about the piece is Hauerwas’s critique of war-making as an American proclivity. He suggested that the declaration of war was born of a desire to reassert control after experiencing a profound loss of control. He believed that war-making gives Americans a sense of comfort and normality: “War is such normalizing discourse. Americans know war. This is our Pearl Harbor. Life can return to normal. We are frightened, and ironically war makes us feel safe. The way to go on in the face of September 11, 2001, is to find someone to kill.”  Americans do seem quite content with being at war.  Seldom is public discourse disturbed by any sort of reminder that war is a bad thing, after all, and we should be trying hard to end our current conflicts. 

The passage I found most thought-provoking is this:

“War makes clear we must believe in something even if we are not sure what that something is, except that it has something to do with the ‘American way of life.’ What a gift bin Laden has therefore given America. Americans were in despair because we won the cold war. Americans won by outspending the USSR, proving that we can waste more money on guns than they can or did. But what do Americans do after they have won a war? The war was necessary to give moral coherence. We had to cooperate with one another because we were at war. How can America make sense of what it means for us to be ‘a people’ if we have no common enemy? We were in a dangerous funk having nothing better to do than entertain ourselves with the soap opera Bill Clinton was. Now we have something better to do. We can fight the war against terrorism.”

The declaration of war did give the nation a sense of purpose. The mission seemed noble; terrorism needed to be defeated. Of course, terrorism isn’t an enemy that can ever be defeated once and for all, so to declare war on terrorism was in fact to announce a perpetual state of war. After ten years, though, the benefits of war no longer seem as clear, and the nation is weary with the loss of American lives, the expense of maintaining the military apparatus, and the persistence of the enemy. Might peace eventually break out?

There is much more to Hauerwas’s critique. The entire article can be found here.