December 28, 2021

2021 Holiday-adjacent Tiny Letter

Words of gratitude

What a year. What a pandemic. I'm certainly not having a wonderful time of it, and I wonder who is. But when I reflect on the present era, I often return to gratitude for friends near and far—the people I see often and rarely. I'm not a praying person, but I'm a big fan of the serenity prayer. And certainly, ending the pandemic and getting people out to dance and party in the streets with abandon (to music of my choice, of course—more Jazzanova, less NO auto-tune) is not within my power. But I can keep in touch with people I care about. This newsletter is just one way. Thank you for being there, and for soldiering on, helping each other cope with present challenges. And someday we will have that party.

A few words on defeatist/optimistic thinking

A few years ago, while posting flyers at the food co-op for a cycling event, I saw the woman next to me posting her own flyers for some kind of New Age activity. Maybe sound healing, I don't remember. Referring in part to the flyer, she said something like, “I think people are really waking up now, we're going to see a shift in consciousness.” I just nodded, but didn't engage. Sadly, she is incorrect.

One of my friends is a fundamentalist Christian. I'm not going to call them out here, but instead simply try to fairly represent their viewpoint.

• Humans are fallen from grace.

• All of us are sinners.

• There is nothing you can do to get to heaven other than accept God with all your heart.

• And critically, the state of the world today is a direct reflection of humanity's disconnection from God, and people who don't get right with God are going to hell.

When my friend considers social problems, they see them entirely through this lens. They generally don't believe social problems can be solved by putting in place better (secular) policies and systems. For example, a large percentage of our prison population has mental health challenges. One way to reduce this number is to identify and help these folks early in life. This is challenging and expensive, but it is also, in my view, the right thing to do. While my friend may not disagree with this approach, they are much more likely to fall back on the “humans are sinners” framing, and suggest that these people, like people, primarily need more God in their life.

Meanwhile, conversations with my good friend David often veer towards the very sorry condition of the United States. At times, it seems inconceivable that a country once considered a leading light for democracy could end up on the verge of losing it. Add to this colossal levels of selfishness and sheer stupidity (media that exemplify the braindead megaphone, anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, etc.), the massive power now ceded to our wealthiest citizens, and our seeming inability to solve big problems, and you certainly have a recipe for disaster. In fact, by some measures, we are currently living through it. The framing is: “everything is going down, down, down.” I don't disagree with the assessment, but the comparison is to a very narrow window of time. We didn't have utopia in the 1990s, but we also didn't have a democracy on the verge of failure. Compared to the Civil War era, however…

I'd like to say that all of these narratives are incorrect, for two reasons.

First, history is cyclical. And where one is in that cycle does so much to inform one's perspective on how good or bad things are (or were last year, or the past decade). When I related David's perspective to my father, a history buff, he reminded me of this. If you were 17 in 1942 in the United States, you faced the existential threat of a world war, and if you were male, you could be drafted and killed on the battlefield. If you were a woman before universal suffrage, well, we can imagine how much that sucked. There are plenty of other examples.

Secondly, human nature is the only constant. I wish the New Age fan at the food co-op was right. I would love if humanity were on a positive, forward trajectory. But I don't find much support for this claim. We certainly have our moments, but as history cycles through, we will see great achievements, and huge catastrophes.

Note: I found it harder than expected to assemble the above into something coherent. I hope I got the idea across.

Michelle Yeoh in an upcoming weird sci-fi/action movie

I tried figuring out what this is about from the trailer, but I'm not really sure. I love the actor Michelle Yeoh - both a crush and admiration for her acting chops. She's a badass in the latest Star Trek franchise.

In praise of good design

I recently moved from a house I had lived in for a long time, to a small apartment. It's an adjustment, but I won't go into that here. Instead, I'd like to reflect on design for a moment. Specifically, how we interact with devices. It seems that nearly every modern device that uses electricity also makes sounds and expects us to pay it attention. Everything from the microwave to the gas pump, even the instant pot. There are branches of design and ergonomics that circumscribe these interactions.

When we think about our impact on the world, we recognize that some people have done unequivocally wonderful, amazing things. For example, the folks who grinded it out for years, studying mRNA, laying the groundwork for the life-saving vaccines that we now have the fundamental right to reject on the basis of what someone's cousin heard on Facebook. (“But she's a nurse's aide, and she sees people with hiccups every day!”) Others provide more direct support for humans, for example, therapists, the people at the daycare and keep your kid safe and thriving, or the property inspector who points out dangerous things in your home that you must fix. Hint: don't slice out support beams to "open up the space".1

We should also recognize, however, people who improve the mundane but necessary interactions we have with machines. For example, my new microwave, while perfectly adequate at heating up food, has a loud, irritating beep, one I cannot disable, and if I don't pull my food out quickly enough, it screams at me again. My Instant Pot also beeps at me very loudly, as if to say, “look at me, I have something breathlessly important to tell you about your stew!” This is a trivial thing to improve, but some manufacturers have simply chosen not to. So we have thoroughly modern, attractive devices that still add stress to our environment for no good reason.

The human equivalent would be, you order your coffee at the counter, pay for it, and when it's done, instead of someone gently calling your name, they shout "LATTE! LATTE!", startling everyone within earshot.

As so many of our interactions now are mediated by devices, we should give special thanks to the people who use design to improve the experience. On a related note, if you have left the default ringtone installed on your phone, or instead chosen a clip from a regrettable cock rock hit2 please change that shit now. A proper notification should be like someone gently touching you on the shoulder and saying in a low voice, “you appear to have a phone call, would you like to answer it?”

Album recommendation: Free, by OSI

Lots of synthesizers, but it's neither Goth nor dance music. Heavy guitar, but it's not rock. Aspects of Prog, but it's also not that. And it's not really industrial, either. I love it, though. The lyrics are few, per song, but they have a certain resonance. The video is nothing special, I just include it so you can hear the audio.

This is a project of Kevin Moore, ex-Dream Theater, and guitarist Jim Matheos.

Album #2: The heart is a monster, by Failure

I am pretty sure I discovered this band on my new favorite radio station, xray.fm, out of Portland, Oregon. They have a modern sound, and might not be out of place on whatever passes for hard rock radio these days, but they incorporate a certain kind of dissonance that reminds me of Steven Wilson, and they mostly diverge from the predictable, quick payoff hooks and choruses one would expect in the modern rock genre. That makes it harder to sing along to. Also, according to Paul, they have some pretty sweet guitar tones. I've been grumbling a bit about my inability to find new music that suits my tastes, but I'm happy to report that I seem to be finding good stuff again, and Failure is leading the pack.

Apparently this band hasn't made a new album in some time, and I haven't explored their earlier material, but I will listen to it and report back.

100 years of whatever this will be

An anonymous writer captures a critical point of the moment:

I think we are all gradually becoming more aware of patterns, of major things wrong with our society. They echo some patterns we've been seeing for decades now. The patterns go far beyond tech, extending into economics and politics and culture. There's a growing feeling of malaise many of us feel:

• Rich, powerful, greedy people and corporations just get richer, more powerful, and more greedy.

• Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves, not for society.

• Or, people who are in it for society tend to lose or to get screwed until they give up…

He then relates this to concepts of centralization and decentralization. Should systems fall under a central authority that is in theory, accountable to us? Or should they be without? It's hard for me to summarize what the author is talking about here, but it's a short article and a fascinating read. And I think they're right.

I realized I had also bookmarked this article, Why we need to address scam culture (NY Times), which touches on related points.

So much of everyday life seems rigged against us. That is reflected in studies, like a 2018 Pew Research survey of Americans and social trust, that support the claim that we just do not trust our institutions or one another. There are the big things, like the outsize role that money and influence play in electoral politics. When I do fieldwork at public political events, I hear over and over again from people across the ideological spectrum just how unheard they feel. How is it possible that an elected representative can get away with meeting with lobbyists but rarely, if ever, talking to his or her constituents?

Can we reverse Citizens United yet?

TIRED OF BEN’S PSEUDO-DEEP THOUGHTS?

Best recent meme, presented without comment

Eve Babitz, RIP

After reading the New York Times obituary, I regret not learning about this writer earlier.

Eve’s inheritance was her appetite, her curiosity and her zaftig beauty, like Brigitte Bardot with a shag haircut and hip huggers. She was a hedonist with a notebook.

Eve hung out at the Troubadour, the West Hollywood club that nurtured Jackson Browne, the band Buffalo Springfield, for whom she made album covers, and Steve Martin, whom she made over by showing him a book of Jacques Henri Lartigue’s photographs featuring crisply dressed men in white suits on the beach in France at the turn of the century.

Babitz wrote lusty, autobiographical books, and was known for her association with paramours including Harrison Ford, Stephen Stills, Jim Morrison, and Annie Leibovitz. She was dismissed as a lightweight writer, but rediscovered by a new generation that appreciates her irreverent tone.

Closing quote

“In every young man’s life there is an Eve Babitz,” Earl McGrath, the record executive, famously said. “It’s usually Eve Babitz.”