Under Fall’s Pretenses: Woodbane Suffers the Equinoxious Effects of the Season

A lethal dose of October.

     “Nurse! Quick!” shouted the doctor, picking a leaf out of Woodbane’s hair. “Prepare a sedative! Get me eight full-spec lamps! Stat! This man has had a lethal dose of October!”

     Stretched out on a gurney was Woodbane himself, his eyes wide and a crooked grin on his face. Two orderlies were rushing him toward the Intensive Care Unit. The doctor was running alongside. I was in close pursuit, having just sped Woodbane to the hospital by car. As we all raced down the hallway, leaves flew off Woodbane’s windbreaker and out of his hair, and in the confusion I found myself wondering if the doctor had really said what I thought he’d said. Then they wheeled Woodbane into the ICU, and the door closed in my face. I found a bench in the hall and waited.

     Woodbane lives two houses down from me. Just a few minutes earlier, we had been standing on his front lawn, where he was making leaf piles with a wide bamboo rake. He seemed fine, his white hair sticking straight out from his red face, his eyes gleaming. It was a beautiful autumn day, and Woodbane had been rhapsodizing, as is his wont. “Behold!” he said. “How the brazen breeze sends shivers through the half-clothed trees! How the random clouds, pushed from the north, rush south to pile cold and dark upon the horizon! How the sun stares low and cool, making of bright branches a bewilderment of shadows! Ah! See the coed with her thick sweater and windburnt cheeks pedal by on her bike!” Suddenly, Woodbane switched from rhapsody to nostalgia. “Alas,” he said, leaning on the rake, “for the good old days, when the scent of the burning leaf gave deathless seasoning to the season’s death, and the chapped-nosed girls sat wrapped in blankets on the fifty-yard line!”

Alas, for the good old days, and the scent of burning leaves.

     At that point I was feeling a little dizzy myself—Woodbane’s carryings-on often do that to me—and I thought about going home. But just then a large cloud passed in front of the sun, turning the air cold and gray, and suddenly Woodbane fell straight over backwards into a pile of leaves. Rake still clutched in his hand, he just lay there, a horizontal one-man American Gothic. At first I thought he was joking—illustrating, perhaps, his love of leaf piles. But when my pleas had no effect—“Woodbane! Woodbane! For heaven’s sake, man, get up! You’ll catch your death!”—I knew that he wasn’t fooling. I dragged him to my car and raced him to the hospital. . . .

 

     After fifteen minutes or so, the doctor opened the ICU door. He was a small old man, with shining spectacles. He wasn’t smiling.

     “May I speak with you a moment?” he said, motioning to me. They had pulled a curtain around Woodbane’s bed. The curtain seemed to glow.

     I stood up. “Will he be all right, Doc?” I asked.

     He frowned. “Well,” he said, “we might have caught it in time. But your friend is a sick man, a very sick man.”

     “What is it, Doc? What’s he got? You can tell me. I’m his best friend,” I said. I reminded myself of a bad movie.

     The doctor hesitated. From behind the curtain I heard Woodbane mumbling. “Chapped cheeks!” I thought I heard him say. “Standard time! The light! The light! Oh, coeds!”

     The doctor looked at the curtain and shook his head. At last he sighed. “Simply put,” he said, “we believe your friend has an acute case of October.”

     “Sorry, Doc,” I said. “Did you say an acute case of October.”

     “You got it,” said the doctor. “October.” Seeing my confusion, he went on. “Let me explain,” he said. “About twenty years ago, medical science discovered a previously-unknown disease that strikes millions of Americans every autumn. Its victims are extraordinarily light-sensitive, and as the hours of daylight get shorter, they become sluggish, depressed, even suicidal. We call the condition ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder.’ SAD, for short. The only remedy for SAD is careful doses of bright, full-spectrum—white, to you—light.” He looked in the direction of Woodbane’s bed. From behind the glowing curtain came the buzz of fluorescent tubes and the voice of Woodbane mumbling, “Catch your death! Pretty red cheeks!”

Full-spectrum light: the only remedy for SAD.

     “But, wait, Doc,” I said. “Woodbane wasn’t depressed. In fact, he seemed kind of, well, ecstatic. I mean, he was going on and on about the wind and the clouds and this girl on a bicy—”

     “—Ah! A girl!” interrupted the doctor. “I suspected as much. You see, my friend, when SAD hits men . . . well, the effects can be doubly devastating. For men, an extra element enters into the equation: SEX—with a capital X. Studies have shown that from September to October, the production of male hormones takes its largest leap of the year, then peaks in November. In the United States more babies are conceived in the fall than at any other time of year. Add to this the fact that cooler weather suddenly turns the lethargy of summer into the energy of autumn—plus all sorts of other factors we have yet to understand, such as the prospect of death brought on by the brilliant but dying fall landscape—and some men experience a veritable rush of desperate hyperactivity in October.”

     “Touchdown!” called Woodbane’s voice from behind the curtain. “Oh, snuggle!”

     “Wait, Doc,” I said. “I thought you said this disease—Seasonal Affection Disorder—”

     “—Affective,” corrected the doctor.

     “Whatever. I thought you said it made people sluggish. Now you’re saying it makes them hyperactive. Which is it?”

     “Both,” said the doctor. “Which is precisely the danger. Half the victim says, ‘Let me sleep!’ The other half says, ‘Let’s boogie!’ Half is hot, half is cold. The result: the victim cracks like a hot cup plunged in ice water.” He nodded somberly in the direction of Woodbane. “All we can do now is pray—pray, and hope for an early spring.”

     As I started toward the exit, I heard Woodbane’s voice call out from behind me, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light! Hey, kiss me, baby!”

     Outside, a fresh chill evening wind was scattering leaves, the sunset burned a brilliant yellow-pink, and I held the door open for a beautiful nurse with Asian eyes. All told, I found it pretty depressing.

                                    ___________________

This story first appeared in Memphis magazine in October, 1987.

FIPE HUNT: The five-paragraph monster that lurks in the lives of freshmen

I dedicate this post to everyone who has ever had to teach or learn the five-paragraph essay.

Hopeful freshmen with healthy colons on a beautiful autumnal day at the beginning of their college careers.

An ulcer-stricken freshman after a semester doing battle with the five-paragraph essay.

      Every September, several million 17- and 18-year-olds, fresh from the realities of pushing perfume at Sears or backpacking in the Rockies, enter for the first time the Oz of college. They should be warned: higher education offers nothing as real as rose water or as substantial as trail mix. The halls of academe are instead built on foundations of dream—and nightmare. On the one hand, for example, these fresh-faced freshmen will get to float through immaculately crisp November afternoons while huddled under improbably cozy blankets on impeccable 50-yard-lines with impossibly gorgeous dates who have implausibly clear skin and unthinkably excitable hormones, and this will spoil them for the plain, pock-marked realities of real life forever after. On the other hand, as if to pay for such rare dreamy moments, they will have to endure certain horrors: they will be asked to wrestle with Plato and Chomsky and other thinkers who are out of their weight class throughout interminable afternoons in musty lecture halls; they will be forced to torture rats until the pitiful inbred rodents learn to tap-dance on metal bars in rank psychology labs; they will be made to spit verbs and disgorge adjectives in strange languages that they will never have to speak in real life. But of all the unrealities the kids must face there is one that is more preposterous, more unnatural, more terrifying than all the others put together. It is . . . the Five-Paragraph Essay. The abominable Fipe.

     In the real world there is no such thing as a Five-Paragraph Essay. It does not exist in books, newspapers, or magazines. It is said to live only in locked desk drawers in the dim, airless corridors of the top floor of the English Building. It is quarantined there like the four-legged chickens in the cages of the aggie school and the recombinant viruses in the retorts of the biology lab. If allowed to escape, the Fipe could in fact be a danger to the general environment, spawning five-paragraph corporate memos, five-paragraph love letters, and, gasp, five-paragraph emails. Given its origins, however, it is unlikely that the Fipe could live for long outside the English Department’s stale atmosphere. For the Fipe is a monster conceived by the high priests of the ivory tower: The Freshman Composition Instructors. The Instructors themselves are creatures who fainted and failed in the real world long ago and who thereafter retreated to a tiny fantasy-filled empire where, like the Wizard, they can impose whatever strange and arbitrary rules they want on those unlucky enough to stumble into their domain. They reign by bluff and bluster. “Connect!” they bellow. “Explain! Develop!” They sometimes speak in magic tongues designed to awe their subjects: “Ref! Org! Awk!” they cry. Before them the callow freshman cowers, like Dorothy in the smoke of the Emerald Palace. Whenever they sense rebellion, the Instructors simply send their subjects out to find the Fipe, thereby distracting them from all other pursuits.

The Most High Instructors of Freshman Comp: Keepers of the Five-Paragraph Mysteries

     But few are they who have seen the face of the Fipe. In fact, it is said that only the Most High Instructors themselves know what a genuine Fipe looks like. Its brow is thought to be gray, lined, sweaty, and vague—it bears, in other words, the unmistakable symptoms of A Main Idea. Its body, like that of certain insects, has three indented parts, each connected to the head by a network of nerves as fine and fragile as spider’s silk. It has a tail, sometimes long and bushy, sometimes short and bare. It is reported to feed on specific examples and concrete images. (“The beeping watch on his hairy left wrist, for instance, gave Jane the hives”—chomp! “Two wet sweat socks and a pair of soiled jockey shorts lay on the bishop’s pillow”—gulp! “An orange cat patchy with ringworm recited the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in the fetid pound”—chomp! gulp! burp!) The Fipe’s favorite pastimes are said to be arguing, analyzing, clarifying, comparing, contrasting, supporting, defining, discussing, reflecting, and telling tales; no one, according to legend, can stand to be around it long. The Fipe is rarely passive, except when unwell. No two Fipes look, smell, feel, sound, or taste exactly alike, though each must be perfectly Fipe-ish in its own way. No freshman has ever caught a genuine Fipe, though once a semester a girl who wears heavy glasses will come running into English 1101, Section 32, flushed with hubris and armed with a perfectly printed manuscript, swearing she has snared one. Three days later, The Instructor, wearing a smirk of sympathy, will return her offering to her, its body bleeding red ink and its forehead carved with a large scarlet “C”—and that will be that. The Fipe, whatever it is, will remain at large. The girl with the heavy glasses will never be seen again.

The girl who thought she had snared the Fipe instead received a scarlet C and was never seen again.

     In recent years, a movement has surfaced in some English Departments to end the annual autumnal hunt for the Fipe. The movement’s adherents, some of whom were once inner-sanctum Instructors themselves, claim the creature is nothing more than a superstition, like the Fat Liberal or the Blushing Republican. In fact, in some areas of the country, mostly on the coasts, mysterious campus sects are said to practice rituals designed to call up creatures larger and smaller, less perfect and less symmetrical than the Fipe; youthful members of such sects are encouraged to bring in shapeless eight- or ten-paragraph animals that bear only the vaguest resemblance to the Fipe. These creatures are said to be pleasing to the eye, and the youngsters inordinately fond of them. The Most High Instructors consider all this heresy, of course, and the Fipe hunt remains in effect throughout most of the nation. Without it, The Instructors claim, the minds of the nation’s youth will deliquesce into sugar-free, decaffeinated soft drinks, and they will be left as errant as butterflies. The heretics say that that might not be so bad.

     In the meantime, this autumn, as always, as the whiz of the Frisbee and the roar of the frat are heard throughout the land, eager freshmen have once more wandered onto our yellow-brick campuses. With their bright eyes, clear heads, and healthy colons, they have arrived blissfully ignorant of the Five-Paragraph Essay and its dangers. Before the final bell tolls, the healthiest of them will be bleary, blithering, and ulcerated. Making certain of that will be the Most High Instructors of Freshman Comp.

     And the Wicked Which of the Worst: The abominable Fipe.

____________________ 

 

A freshman paper bloodied in the quest for the five-paragraph essay.

_________

The original version of this essay first appeared in Memphis magazine in October 1987.

WHY IT'S OKAY TO RAISE TAXES ON THE RICH: If anything, the wealth of the wealthy is now undertaxed

Warren Buffett (top) and Bill Gates (bottom): Two nice rich people who think that taxes on the rich should be raised.

      

Recently the local newspaper has been full of columns and letters praising rich people for the jobs they create and the taxes they pay. Most of these columns suggest that those who, like President Obama, want to raise taxes on the rich must “hate” them and are engaged in “class warfare.”

     I don’t hate the rich. I know a few millionaires, and most of them are decent, generous people. I like them.

     Nevertheless, I do think it is appropriate to raise their taxes in order to buttress the federal budget and thereby protect all our grandchildren from future financial crises.

     Let me explain my position with a hypothetical but realistic example:

     On the one hand, we have Richie Rich, CEO of Rich Inc., a Fortune 500 company. Last year, Rich made $2 million in taxable income (line 43 on Tax Form 1040).

     On the other hand, we have Average Joe, who made $50,000 in taxable income working for Mr. Rich’s company—rather better than average income for an American worker, but solidly middle class.

      Both Joe and Richie are married, filing jointly.

      For 2010, Joe paid $6,666 in federal income taxes—about 13% of his taxable income.

      For 2010, Richie Rich paid $629,760.25 in federal income taxes—about 31% of his taxable income.

      In other words, Richie, whose taxable income was just 40 times as great as Joe’s, paid almost 100 times as much in taxes. This seems to suggest that Richie is indeed paying more than his fair share in taxes.

      Until you look closer at the facts.

      First, Joe is left, after federal taxes, with about $44,000 in spending money. Richie is left with about $1.4 million. Anyone feeling sorry for Richie yet?

      Second, the average Fortune 500 CEO in the U.S. in fact earns not 40 times but approximately 200 times more than the average worker. It is likely, in fact, that Richie, if he’s an average CEO, has earned another $7 million in stocks, stock options, dividends, deferred compensation, and so on. Stocks and stock options do not figure into his taxes. Instead, they are placed in his investment portfolio.

Since President Obama's stimulus plan took effect, the stock portfolios of the rich have increased 60% in value, yet stockholders pay no more than 15% in taxes on their stock dividends, capital gains, or increased wealth.

       Let’s look at that portfolio, which is a key to thinking about this subject. Let’s say Richie received $6 million in stocks in early 2009, as part of his CEO compensation. Since President Obama’s stimulus package went into effect that year, Richie’s stock portfolio, if it has kept up with the stock market as a whole, has risen more than 60%. (The Obama stimulus has been very good for corporations and rich people—don’t let the Republicans tell you otherwise.) That means that in the last two years, Richie, in addition to his salary, has grown wealthier by about $4 million. How much in taxes has Richie paid on that $4 million? If he has not sold his stocks, he has paid. . . nothing. If he sells those stocks after holding on to them for more than a year, he will pay taxes at a rate of just 15%—the top long-term capital gains tax rate. If he's been earning dividends from those stocks over that time—and I promise you he has—he has paid taxes on those dividends at a rate of just 15%. In other words, Richie will pay taxes on $4 million plus dividend income at just about the same rate that Joe paid on his $50,000! In fact, if Richie has held on to his stocks, he has paid no taxes on his increased wealth at all.

     Third, Joe last year paid a payroll tax (which goes toward Social Security and Medicare) of 4.2% of his entire taxable income. Richie, on the other hand, paid a payroll tax on only the first $106,000 of his $2 million income. In other words, Richie paid Social Security and Medicare taxes on just 5% of his taxable income. If both retire at age 66, Richie will get monthly social security checks that are double the size of Joe’s. Yes, Richie has put double the amount into Social Security, but will he really need social security at all? (Most supposed problems with the future solvency of the Social Security system would be taken care of with a “means test” on recipients: If you are rich enough that you don’t need Social Security—say, you make $100,000 or more per year by other means, such as dividends—you wouldn’t get it. The money you have put in would be considered your patriotic contribution to the security of the rest of the elderly population. Republicans don’t seem to believe in this kind of patriotism.)

The rich get a nice fat tax deduction on the mortgage interest for their big houses. Renters get no tax break at all.

      Defenders of the rich often note that Richie also buys big-ticket items—expensive cars, yachts, houses, etc.—on which he pays large sales taxes, while Joe, spending less, pays much less in sales taxes. True, but Joe, to make ends meet, must spend nearly all his leftover income on such things as computers and clothes for his kids, cars for himself and his wife, and gasoline to fuel the cars. Richie, on the other hand, can afford to spend a nice tidy $700,000 per year on stuff (only half his after-tax income) and still have $700,000 or so left over that never is subject to a sales tax (and is probably put into stocks or tax shelters the profits from which will never be taxed at the highest taxable-income rate). Bottom line: Percentagewise, Average Joe pays a lot more in sales taxes than Richie Rich.

     Finally, there’s a good chance Average Joe can’t afford a house; he rents. Richie Rich, on the other hand, has two big houses. He gets to deduct the mortgage interest on those houses from his personal income. Joe gets no such deduction. Who’s getting government welfare in that case?

______________

This CEO says he plays golf 100 times a year. The average Fortune 500 CEO earns 200 times what the average worker does.

      I’ve never met a CEO who works 200 times as hard as the average worker—indeed, several of  the superrich CEOs I’ve known (and I’ve met a few) spend a certain number of their “work” hours with a golf club or a martini in their hand; I’ve seen them. (For more about CEO golf, go to this link.) Nevertheless, I believe that any person who creates a successful company from scratch, creates jobs, and pays his workers a reasonable wage is to be applauded. Indeed, opponents of an increase in the taxes of such people claim that raising their taxes (especially raising the capital gains and dividend taxes) would discourage them from starting new businesses and investing in innovative companies, thereby stalling out the economy and costing jobs. Higher taxes, they say, will sabotage entrepreneurship and fatally damage the financial system.

     History, however, says otherwise. Once upon a time (from 1950 to 1980), income taxes on the rich were above 70%, and the capital gains tax was double what it is today. Did the economy stall? Was there a slowdown in the creation of new companies? Were jobs lost? No, quite the opposite: It was one of the most economically successful periods in American history, with thousands of companies from Holiday Inns and McDonald’s to Microsoft and WalMart spearheading a huge growth in American enterprise and a vast increase in jobs.     

      So here’s the question: Would a 5% tax increase on the millions of dollars an enterprising businessman might earn really prevent him from creating a company that he expected to be successful? Not any of the businessmen I’ve ever met. They’re smarter, more confident—and, happily, greedier—than that.

In 1976, when Apple was founded, the capital gains and dividend taxes were 2-3 times higher than they are today, and the top income tax was double what it is today, but that didn't stop great entrepreneurs from starting great companies and hiring millions of workers. (For more on the history of capital gains taxes, see this link.)

    

     

    

     

LOOK LEFT, LOOK RIGHT: A liberal acknowledges his conservative side

Where does the liberal me end and the conservative begin?

       A good legal system is both liberal and conservative. Most people are, as well. This is worth remembering as those of us at either end of the political spectrum continue to punch each other silly in the run-up to next year’s elections.

       I am, by pretty much anyone’s definition, a liberal or, if you prefer, a “progressive.” I support all of the following:

• gay marriage
• a woman’s right to an unrestricted abortion
• tax-supported public-works programs, unemployment benefits, and welfare disbursements for the poor such that everyone has access to a respectable job, a living income, free public education, sufficient food, and free health care
• a 50% or higher tax rate on all individual earnings beyond, say, $200,000 per year, to help pay for the above programs
• a minimum 35% tax rate on capital gains
• strong worker unions
• a higher minimum wage keyed annually to inflation
• strong environmental-protection, consumer-protection, women-protection, minority-protection, disability-protection, worker-protection, and elderly-protection laws
• taxes on property owned by religious institutions
• an end to prayer at government events and to the word “God” on money
• an end to the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

And so on. Liberal positions, all. Okay, flaming liberal positions.

     A liberal is comfortable with change—change in the nature of marriage, for example, and in the distribution of wealth, and in the location of political and social power.  What is “traditional”—as in “traditional marriage” or “traditional gender roles” or the “traditional” relationship of labor to management, customer to business, and citizen to government—has less influence on liberals like me than on those more conservative. In fact, liberals believe many traditions should be left behind and many norms abandoned. Gay marriage is “abnormal”? So what? It’s “traditional” to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day. So what? Judeo-Christian beliefs are the norm in our society? So what? Liberals say “So what?” a lot. That is, they question traditions and norms. A lot.

Yes, I’m definitely a liberal.

Yet I also understand that, when it comes right down to it, I am also a conservative; that is, I want tomorrow to be pretty much the same as today. When I wake up tomorrow, I want my house and my things still to be my house and my things—not taken by someone else. When I wake up tomorrow, I want the persons I love—my wife, if I have one, and my children, say—still to be part of my life, and the government to pass laws that protect my family relationships. Whatever I own today, I want the government to make sure it’s still mine tomorrow if I’ve done nothing to disown it; whatever health I have today, I expect the laws to protect me from anyone who would injure me, so that I will still be healthy tomorrow; whatever business or job I have today, I expect the government to do what it can to protect that business or that job from anyone who would take it away from me without just cause, so it is still mine tomorrow. While I would willingly part with some of my money (through taxation) to support my liberal ideals, I expect the government to protect me from those who would simply steal my money or con me out of it; I expect that—I demand that—barring bad fortune or my own mistakes, I will be, approximately, no less wealthy tomorrow than I am today.

Make tomorrow predictably the same as today—that is the conservative’s doctrine. A conservative is, in other words, someone whose default position is to conserve the status quo. Like nearly everyone else I know, whether Obama Democrat or Tea Party Republican, I am, by this definition, quite the “conservative.” *

A conservative also believes in norms—the traditional, predictable, “normal” ways people behave. Norms pressure people to behave tomorrow as they behave today; enforcement of norms is another way to preserve the status quo. As a liberal, I’m somewhat relaxed in my attitudes toward many norms—I’ve lived with a woman for 20 years, for example, without being married, and I don’t believe in mowing my suburban lawn—but still, like most people, I want many things that I think of as “normal” today still to be the norm tomorrow: I don’t want to awaken tomorrow to a world in which people pee against storefronts in public, for example, or walk down the sidewalk blindfolded, or commit incest with their children; when I awaken tomorrow, I’d prefer not to see policemen directing traffic naked or calling little old ladies “f***ing bitches.” Many norms are more powerful to me than the written law. Like most people, I would, for example, sooner park illegally than call a black man “nigger” or an old grandmother “bitch.” I am, in other words, a fairly “normal” guy. That makes me (and most of my liberal friends) pretty “conservative,” too; we believe in many norms.

A famous set of conservative laws.

I would estimate that at least ninety percent of all laws are designed to protect the status quo and perpetuate norms. That is, nearly all laws are, at bottom, conservative. For simplicity’s sake, consider the set of “laws” that most Jews and Christians consider fundamental to their ethos: the Ten Commandments. Here they are, in modern language:

1. Don’t worship other gods.

2. Don’t worship false idols.

3. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and mother.

6. Don’t murder.

7. Don’t commit adultery.

8. Don’t steal.

9. Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife or property.

These are all, fundamentally, conservative laws. This becomes clear when they are put in slightly different language:

1. Don’t change the god you’ve been worshipping.

2. Don’t change the traditional way you worship.

3. Don’t change your traditional attitude toward God.

4. Don’t change the way people traditionally behave on the Sabbath.

5. Don’t change the way people normally treat their fathers and mothers.

6. Don’t change a person’s state of being alive.

7. Don’t change your normative sexual partner.

8. Don’t change who has which property.

9. Don’t change the facts.

10. Don’t even think about changing people’s wives or property.

Don’t change, don’t change, don’t change. Stick to the norms, the traditional ways of doing things. The Ten Commandments are a conservative set of laws.

As I said, even in the secular realm, most laws are conservative. This is obviously true of laws that echo the Ten Commandments: Don’t kill or injure people, don’t steal others’ property, don’t sell liquor on Sunday. It is also true of most other laws: Don’t go 85 in a 35-mph zone, don’t text while driving, don’t run a railroad crossing gate—that is, don’t do things that threaten to change the good health of yourself or others. Other laws are likewise conservative: Don’t run naked down the street, don’t pee in public view, don’t shoot off firecrackers at 3 a.m., don’t let your lawn grow knee-high in a suburb, don’t have sex with your children. In other words, stick to the norms. Preserve the status quo. Don’t change the way things are. Again, most laws are conservative in this way, and even most liberals, like me, support most of these status quo-conserving laws.

Yet there are also laws designed precisely to encourage change—specifically, to encourage improvements in life, what we liberals/progressives call, well, “progress.” Intellectual property and patent laws, for example, are designed to encourage change—to reward people who come up with new ideas and new technologies that will change the world for the better. The Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Medicare Act, the Environmental Protection Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and so on are examples of laws which brought about significant change. They overturned many social norms and economic traditions. In the eyes of most liberals, at least, they improved the world.

 Interestingly, while many laws are liberal in appearance, they are conservative in effect. The “liberal” Environmental Protection Act, for example, is designed to leave much of the natural world unchanged, and the Social Security Act and Medicare were designed to protect the current health and economic status of the elderly—to preserve their status quo. Consumer-protection and worker-protection laws may have changed, respectively, the traditional relationships between business and consumer (no longer “let the buyer beware”) and between worker and business owner (no longer “owner makes all the rules”), but they also gave consumers and workers the confidence that their tomorrows would not be threatened by unwanted, unjustified change. 

Conversely, conservatives argue that most laws designed to protect the status quo in fact contribute to progress—to positive change in the world. They point out that laws designed to protect wealth give people the confidence to take entrepreneurial risks. Who would open a new business if they thought that their profits were not safe from theft? Would we have cell phones and GPS systems today if there were not “conservative” laws that assured that their inventors would be compensated for their ideas and able to pass at least some of their wealth on to their heirs? Even the low capital-gains tax rate, which I think is too low, is defended by conservatives as a way to encourage those with money to invest in new businesses and new technologies in order to change the world for the better. It’s a fair argument.

It’s clear, then, that conservatives often support change and liberals often support the status quo. Neither is a bad thing.

(I know I’m going on too long, but, heck, this is my blog. Feel free to stop reading.)

Traffic laws are conservative and liberal.

When I taught a course called “Literature and the Law,” my students and I enjoyed looking deeply at certain laws, to determine their true purpose. Often that purpose was not obvious. Consider this simple law: Don’t run a red light.

Why is there a law against running red lights? At first the answer seems obvious: to prevent accidents and keep people from getting hurt—that is, to preserve the current health and safety of the populace. This is a conservative, “status quo” reason.

But look deeper, and the answer is not so obvious. Recently, a few towns in Europe have been removing all traffic signals and stop signs at certain intersections. The result? Not more accidents, but fewer! Intersections without stop lights or stop signs were safer than those with them. The reason for this is also pretty obvious: If you know there’s no signal or sign to slow down drivers crossing your path, you enter an intersection mighty carefully.

So why do we have traffic lights—and a law against running them—if driving is safer without them? Because without them, driving is slower. Much. . . much. . . slower. Without traffic lights or stop signs, we would have to slow down at every intersection, perhaps even come to a stop. In many places, the result would be near gridlock.

As counterintuitive as it seems, traffic lights allow people to get where they’re going faster.

And why are we interested in people getting places faster? So they can get to work quicker, build things faster, sell more things, invent more things, be more productive, make more money, write more books, teach more children, feed more people, spend more time with their kids and parents, and just generally move the world along at a quicker pace, toward some future that will be different from today—and yet somehow still the same.

Political thought and political action have no traffic signals. In the sixteen months that are about to lead up to the next national elections, as we liberals and conservatives continue to drive in mad circles around each other, led by our doctrinal GPS systems, we should remember to stop at each intersection and look both ways.

__________________________________

*With respect to the status quo, the least conservative, most liberal people are, understandably, the poor, the sick, and the hungry. For them, the status quo isn’t so pleasant. Liberals tend to sympathize with their desire for change.

WISHMEAL DREAMING: One Man's Vision for Ending Unemployment

Wishmeal dreams a way to end unemployment.

    "Wake up, Wishmeal! Hey! Wake up!" shouted Melba, turning on the light and shaking her husband's elbow.
    "Huh?" said Wishmeal. "Wha--?"
    "Wake up," repeated Melba. "You've had a dream."
    "A dream," said Wishmeal, blearily.
    "Yes, a dream," said Melba, reluctantly giving up the assault on her husband's limb. "You were laughing, Wishmeal. You know how I hate it when you laugh and you don't tell me why."
    "I know," he mumbled into his pillow.
    "Well, out with it," said Melba. "What were you dreaming?"
    "Let's see," said Wishmeal. A few seconds ticked by. "Oh, I remember. It was wonderful." He grinned senselessly, looking up at the ceiling from his pillow.
    "Don't grin, Wishmeal. Just tell me the dream."
    "I dreamed that people did everything."
    "That's disgusting," said Melba.
    "No, no," said Wishmeal, now awake. He sat up against his pillow. "I don't mean people did everything. I mean people did everything. I was living in the future, and except for inhuman stuff like treating sludge and de-ticking dogs, people did all the work, not machines."

In Wishmeal's dreams, Heidi replaces hold.

    "That's not the future, Wishmeal," said Melba. "That's the past. People did all the work in the past."
    "No, it was the future, I'm sure," said Wishmeal, frowning at their rose-filled wallpaper as he tried to retrace the dream. "There was a depression, and the unemployment rate was like 38%, and it was an election year, and so the politicians passed the Man-Over-Machine Law. They called it MOM, for short."
    "Mom?" said Melba, smirking.
    Wishmeal looked at her blankly and went on. "MOM said that any work that could be done by a human being had to be done by a human being. That was my dream. All the stuff that machines do now was turned over to people. It was—"
    "Bubbleheaded," said Melba.
    "—beautiful," said Wishmeal. "The best part was hold."
    "Hold?"
    "Yeah, hold," said Wishmeal. "In the dream I called this big company, like a mortgage company or a utility—something big and coldblooded like that. Its logo was an anaconda. Anyway, the person I wanted to talk to was on another line. But instead of putting me on hold, they put me on Heidi."
    "Heidi?" said Melba. "Heidi?"
    "Yeah, Heidi," said Wishmeal. "They connected me with this young woman named Heidi, and while I waited, we had this conversation about car racing. I claimed that any activity that requires gasoline can't be a true sport. Heidi agreed. We talked about it."
    "Heidi?" repeated Melba.
    "She had a voice just like my mother's," said Wishmeal, sighing. "Anyway, Heidi and I talked until the person I wanted was free. It turned out Heidi had been hired to replace hold when MOM passed. It was great."
    "Wishmeal," said Melba, rolling her eyes, "your mother's name is Heidi."
    "Oh, yeah," said Wishmeal vacantly. "I wonder what that means." He reached behind to plump his pillow.

In Wishmeal's dreams, caricaturists cover the bank exits.

    Melba sniffed. "Okay, Wishmeal," she said. "What else?"
    "Photographers," he said. "Photographers and cartoonists."
    "Of course," said Melba. "All right, Wishmeal, what were photographers and cartoonists doing in your dream?"
    "Taking my picture when I came out of the bank."
    Melba stared at him.
    "You know those automatic cameras that take everybody's picture when they're at the bank?" he went on. "Well, instead of them, the banks in my dream had real live photographers with digital cameras at each exit. If you hadn't committed a robbery, they'd email you your picture free. Some banks hired cartoonists instead of photographers, and they did caricatures. It was fun."
    "That doesn't make any sense," said Melba, cautiously. "Why would they do that, Wishmeal?"
    "Because MOM said so," replied Wishmeal, happily.
    Melba looked at him. "Okay, Wishmeal, that's enough. Go back to sleep," she said, turning off the light.

In Wishmeal's dreams, xylophones play in the vegetable aisle.

    A minute or so went by.
    Out of the dark, Wishmeal said, "That wasn't all."
    Melba sat up again, leaving the light off. "Go on," she said, drumming her fingers on the bedspread.
    "Stores didn't have recorded music."
    "Don't tell me," said Melba. "They had musicians."
    "Right!" said Wishmeal. "In the vegetable aisle of the grocery store, right next to the cantaloupes, there was a lady who played the xylophone."
    "Your mother plays the xylophone," said Melba.
    "I liked it," said Wishmeal. "I wonder what it means?"
    "It means. . . oh, never mind," said Melba. "What else?"

In Wishmeal's dreams, Bogart's hat lives in the living room.

    "Well," said Wishmeal, "instead of burglar alarms, each house had its own private detective. Mine sat in the corner and had a hat just like Humphrey Bogart's."
    "Your father sits in the corner and has a hat just like Humphrey Bogart's," said Melba.
    "I liked it," said Wishmeal. "And instead of smoke alarms, every house had its own fireman. And instead of thermostats, every house had a person who got paid to turn the heat up when he got cold and down when he got hot. And instead of washers and dryers, you just handed a little old lady in the wash room some quarters and she cleaned your laundry. And listen to this! Instead of Jacuzzis, they had—"
    "I don't want to hear it, Wishmeal," said Melba. "That's enough. Go to sleep. Now."
    "Oh," said Wishmeal. "Okay."
    He gathered his pillow under him and laid his head back down. Another minute went by.
    "Hey, Mel," said Wishmeal to his wife's back. "How about we unplug the clock radio, and in the morning you wake me, like maybe with a kiss."
    "Dream on, sonny," came the answer from the dark.

____________________________

This column originally appeared in Memphis magazine in June, 1985.



   

NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT: Why Mom’s rules are bad for your health

If my mom had ever read this blog post, she would have beaned me with giant zucchini.

DON’T LET YOUR MOTHER READ THIS. Send her out of the room.

She gone? Good.

I have a theory. It’s a simple theory, really, and I’m not the first to think of it, but moms don’t like it. The theory is this: Good manners are bad for your health. This is especially true of the good manners your mom insisted on when you were a kid—you know, the ones having to do with four-letter words like “yawn” and “spit” and “burp,” plus others that I can’t mention here even while Mom’s out of the room. “Sneeze” has more than four letters, but it belongs here too.

Almost all the rules Mom imposed back then are bad for your health. When she told you not to yawn or burp in public, she was flying in the face of millions of years of carefully calibrated human evolution. We were designed to burp and yawn. When I repress a burp or squelch a yawn, I am defying Mother Nature in the name of Mother Weathers.

The fact is, our bodies are anachronisms. They are outdoor organisms in what has become an indoor world. They were designed to live in forests and on the plains, not in offices and on trains. They were designed to hunt and graze, not write memos and choose between forks. It took eons for nature to create the sneeze, which still performs an important health function. Okay, so today we live in conference rooms and restaurants, and sneezing there isn’t as pleasant as sneezing outdoors. Nevertheless, it’s still good for us.

I therefore recommend that we ignore our mothers and accept reality. I recommend that we legalize the public burp, yawn, and spit, and encourage the uncovered sneeze.

There. I’ve said it, and I’m not ashamed.

Muhammad was a great advocate of the burp.

Let’s begin with the burp. We burp because we swallow air when we eat. Everybody does it. Doctors call burping “eructation.” Right after we burp, we automatically swallow a little more air, and pretty soon we have to burp again. It’s as regular as breathing. If we didn’t burp, our stomachs might explode. (In fact, there are cases on record of people who have gases in their stomach which have been known to literally explode, but that’s something different.)*

In many Near Eastern countries, of course, it is considered de rigueur for dinner guests to belch loudly after a meal, to express their satisfaction. Until the 17th century, the same was true in Europe. Then came fussy mothers. The prophet Muhammad preached that a belch, followed by the expression “Praise Allah,” would help “avert seventy diseases, of which the least is leprosy.” Wouldn’t surprise me if he was right. Bring back the burp.

Likewise, the uncovered sneeze. Sneezing, along with coughing, is simply a way of preventing bad stuff like dust and bacteria from getting into the lungs. Thanks to sneezing, which doctors call “sternutation,” lung tissue is almost completely free of microorganisms. Without sneezing, our nice warm, damp lungs would be a teeming hell of bacteria, and we’d be sick a lot. When you sneeze, you can rocket a germ up to twenty feet away. When you cover up a sneeze with your hand or handkerchief, you’re missing the whole point, which is to get the bad stuff as far away as possible. Germs are much more likely to thrive on your wet, sweaty hand than on the ground, where they’ll dry up and die.

Aristotle considered sneezing sanctified.

When we sneeze, we go unconscious for a split second. Also, it is impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze. This is Mother Nature's way of keeping germs out of the eyes, which, modern doctors tell us, may be the conduits of cold germs. When we sneeze into our hands (as our mothers tell us to do) and then wipe our eyes or pick up the phone, we’re probably giving somebody a cold.

Like burping, sneezing also has a distinguished history. Aristotle lumped yawning, sneezing, and belching together as “ejective” acts, but he considered sneezing more “sanctified” because it came from the head, not the belly. Folklore saw sneezing as a sign of life. A sick man who sneezed was thought to have a good chance to recover. In the Bible (2 Kings 4:35), the first sign that Elisha has brought a dead child back to life is when the child sneezes seven times. Some psychologists believe that a person who is able to let loose with a good sneeze is more likely to experience strong orgasms.

The next time you have to sneeze, ignore your mother, keep your hands down, and let fly. As a courtesy, make sure you're not aimed at anybody. Run outside first, if you have time.

As for spitting (let’s keep this brief), it works about the same. When you’ve got germs, your mucous membranes increase the secretions to wash them away. You’re better off expectorating the result than . . . well, any of the alternatives.

Time for the return of the spittoon?

Spitting is seen world-wide as a way to bring good luck. Hence, fishermen spit on their hooks, and fighters spit on their hands. In some places, shopkeepers spit on the first money they get each day, for good luck; in other places, people spit on newborn babies as a blessing. Some experts say blowing a kiss is a variation of spitting for good luck. Spitting is good for you, Mom notwithstanding. Bring back the spittoon.

We are all born to yawn.

Let us end with the mild-mannered yawn. Your mother told you it is improper to yawn in public. She was wrong. A yawn is good for you. Experts have never really understood the yawn, but the latest medical theory has it that a yawn helps the lungs by forcing open the little air sacs (alveoli) that bring oxygen to the blood. Tibetans believe that a yawn, like sexual intercourse and dying, produces a higher state of consciousness. If somebody yawns in the middle of your next speech, consider that.

It’s obvious that the world changes faster than evolution can keep up with; it will be another 20,000 years, for example, before a baby is born who is adapted to the electric light. Our bodies are still the same outdoor bodies that were designed to sneeze and spit in the wide open spaces. The world is now an indoor world of little ladies who tell us not to spit and sneeze in their kitchens. Their rules are not good for us.

But don't tell Mom I said that.

_____________ 

*As for the gases that build up in the lower regions of the digestive tract, it’s best that we dispatch them in a short, small-font footnote, far out of the sight of Mom. Certain foods, especially certain carbohydrates, react with bacteria in the intestines in a kind of fermentation process. The resultant gases are released through flatulence. Unrelieved gases can be dangerous. Though some Hindus and Arabs see flatulence as a form of purification, freeing the body of evil spirits, more common is the Greek attitude. If a Greek priest “broke wind” during a religious rite, the ceremony was declared invalid. For that reason, priests were forbidden by law from eating such food as beans before significant ceremonies. I refuse to say any more on this subject, even with Mom out of the room.

This essay first appeared in Memphis magazine in April 1989. It has been reprinted widely, including in the 2005 and 2006 editions of the Virginia Tech English Department's first-year Composition text.

OSAMA BIN LADEN AND THE CYCLE OF REVENGE

     Osama bin Laden was killed today. This morning Americans all over the country, from baseball parks to the White House to Ground Zero, are being shown on tv cheering that news. Congratulations are coming in to the Obama administration from around the world. The phrase of the day—spoken by the President, the Secretary of State, and just about everyone else—is “Justice has been served.” In other words, although no one in an official position will put it this way, “Vengeance is ours.”

     That makes today a good day to write about revenge.

     Legal philosophers have long observed that one of the purposes of a civilized system of laws is to control the revenge impulse. (Full disclosure: Most of what little I understand of this subject comes from Chapter 2 of legal scholar, polymath, and federal judge Richard Posner’s book Law and Literature, which I taught in my Literature and the Law class for six years at Virginia Tech. He uses The Iliad and Hamlet as his examples of revenge literature.)

     In primitive, pre-legal social systems, revenge served two purposes: 1) It satisfied the “revenge impulse,” which is simply the desire to hurt someone who has hurt you, and 2) It served as a deterrent, warning others who might hurt you that if they made you suffer, they would suffer in return. Straightforward eye-for-an-eye retribution was the simplest form of revenge. If someone killed your son, for example, you would kill their son to exact revenge.

     But there are many problems with revenge-based social systems:

     1) Revenge tends to escalate. If someone kills my son, I might likely, in my anger, kill their entire family. Then, in revenge for that, they might start a war against my entire village. And so on, until all-out tribal or national warfare results.

     2) Revenge is economically inefficient; it wastes resources. If someone kills my son, revenge requires me to gather weapons and perhaps warriors to exact vengeance on his son (or family). In the end, even if I succeed, my son is still dead, and I have used up time, material, and personnel with nothing gained—economically—as a result. (The satisfaction of the revenge impulse and perhaps a measure of deterrence has been gained, certainly. That may be enough emotionally and may even offer some protection against hypothetical future threats, but again, this hypothetical gain is at the expense of current actual resources.)

     3) Revenge-based social systems tend to stress family and tribal loyalty at the expense of larger social goals. If someone kills me, I need assurance that my killing will be avenged by someone else still alive—most likely, my family or my tribe—even if that means the larger community loses resources or, worse, ends up facing outright warfare on a larger scale for a cause in which it may have little at stake. Likewise, revenge-based social systems encourage, on a larger scale, nationalism verging toward chauvinism—a kind of mindless reaction to what are perceived as insults or injuries against one’s nation.

     4) Revenge-based social systems place huge emphasis on the concept of personal, family, and tribal honor, as opposed to larger social loyalties and principles. If my family or tribe is central to my security, and if my strength and protection relies directly on my family or tribe’s strength and the respect it commands, then any insult or slight to my family or tribe is a threat against me. This means that the revenge spiral might begin with something as trivial as name-calling or a social snub.

     5) Revenge-based systems are unstable. Once you have a strong family or tribe, for example, you might be more likely to murder your neighbor’s son or steal his horses because you know he cannot take revenge. In such a system, only the strong are safe, so all sides waste more and more resources in escalating—and destabilizing—shows of strength.

     6) Bottom line: Revenge is irrational. Not only does it waste resources and ignore what the economists would call “sunk costs” (my son whom you killed is a sunk cost), but it also encourages emotions that might lead to a worsening situation: anger, grief, frustration, and reckless, even suicidal impulsiveness.

     Because a revenge-based social system is so dangerous and economically inefficient, more “advanced” societies devised laws to, as Posner puts it, “channel” the revenge impulse. Again, the simplest system involves direct retribution: an eye for an eye. You kill my son; the law allows me to kill yours. Three problems with this: 1) What if you don’t have any sons or other family loved ones for me to kill? 2) What father is going to let his son die for something the father did? 3) Why should an innocent son die, even if his father allows it? 
     Another revenge-channeling system involves compensation: if you kill my horse, you must pay me something for my loss—money or something else of value—to be determined by the courts. In some nations, even today, of course, money is allowed to compensate even for the killing of a person. In fact, the U.S. has paid such “blood money” when it has accidentally killed civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.

     In most countries today, some form of compensatory law exists to “balance” harm that comes to you through the negligence of another (see the complexities of American tort law). And of course, both criminal and civil penalties apply to those who harm you intentionally.

     All of which is by way of saying that in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world today, simple revenge no longer is the basis of legal action for citizens.

     But that is not the case for nations. Nations create laws that channel their citizens' desire for revenge but, almost by definition, the nations themselves are outside, or above, those very laws. For nations, revenge is still the only law they can apply so that "justice is served.” If you fly planes into our twin towers and our Pentagon, killing 3,000 of our citizens, there is no court our country can go to for compensation. There is no blood money you can pay to satisfy our desire for revenge. Our desire for revenge cannot be channeled. Vengeance must be ours.

     And so we come to today. We have killed Osama bin Laden, and we are cheering.

     Looking back over the last 10 years, since the 9/11 attacks, I can see that we, as a nation, have behaved like a pre-legal, revenge-driven entity, with all the failings that implies. We have sunk huge amounts of resources into two wars—in Iraq and in Afghanistan—without resurrecting one of the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11. One of those wars—the war in Iraq—was almost certainly more a war based on some kind of national “honor” than a war of military usefulness. Since 9/11, the U.S. “tribe” has sent thousands of our own military personnel to die, primarily in the name of revenge; tens of thousands of our soldiers have been seriously injured; hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign civilians have been killed. This is how revenge escalates violence and wastes lives and resources.

     Many claim that all of this military action was done to prevent future attacks on the U.S. That is open to question. (I question it.) But no one can deny the role that simple vengeance has played in it all. Just look at how America is behaving today, with the news that bin Laden is dead. All of the shouting—“USA! USA!”—strikes me as nothing more than a brutal primitive assertion of tribal loyalty in the name of successful vengeance. Even the President and the Secretary of State are indulging in chauvinistic chest-thumping: This proves, they say, what America is capable of! Don’t sell us short! We don’t give up! No one gets away with hurting us!

      It is very much as if they are responding, not just to a physical attack, but to a simple insult to our honor. (“These colors don’t run!”)

     As an atheist, I don’t believe that vengeance belongs to some god, and I don’t feel obliged to believe that it is realistic to ask people to love their enemy, though I find that sentiment morally superior to “get your revenge.” I do wonder, however, at all the Christians I know who today are cheering the death of Osama bin Laden. I wonder: Is that what their New Testament tells them to do?

     The death of Osama bin Laden does not strike me as very important. I don’t believe it will lessen the number of terrorist attacks we’ll face in the future. It doesn’t bring dead people back to life or heal the injured. I suppose it has some small, temporary morale-building value (look at all those cheering crowds!), but that will go away with the next big terrorist attack—and we all know there will be such an attack somewhere, someday, again. I’m mildly pleased that Barack Obama, a President I admire, will experience a jump in the popularity polls next month, thanks to the killing of Osama bin Laden, but that certainly seems the wrong reason to celebrate.

     The irony, of course, is that Osama bin Laden and his terrorists were themselves acting out of a long history of escalating revenge: they were taking revenge on the West and the Israelis for injuries done to Palestinians and other Muslims. And of course the Israelis have acted to avenge injuries done to them. And so on, back through the centuries, all the way to the Crusades and before.

     Our enemies in the Middle East are often depicted as driven by such “primitive” principles as tribal honor and eye-for-an-eye revenge. Today I have to ask: Have we, as a nation, acted any differently?

     Osama bin Laden is dead. So? The cycle of revenge lives on.