ThomStratton.com

Last night I saw a meme pic on social media claiming that the USPS is not losing money, along with few other points, to back up the claim that it’s all a GOP smear campaign. I had some doubts about it (as anyone should with any meme pic you see), but I didn’t have time then to validate the claims.

Well, today someone else did some of the work for me:

USPS reports $586 million net loss

If they couldn’t get that one basic claim right I see little reason to believe the rest of the meme pic is valid either.

I was not selected to be a beta reader for Michael J. Sullivan’s upcoming “The Death of Dulgath.” Part of me is disappointed. Part of me is relieved.

Part of me is sad because I might have been able to learn a few things from watching how the novel transforms. Seeing it in a less-than-final state might have given me hope and ideas for my own writing, and perhaps given me some ideas for what to look for in my own editing efforts.

But part of me, with all the anticipation I have for this book, wants to only read it in final, polished form. I want to be able to dive in and enjoy it, not paying attention to whether it was completely clear or could have been better.

Nor do I want the big release in November to be anti-climactic. After all of the excitement of the Kickstarter and the regular updates it would be sad to get there only to find I have no desire to read the book again so soon, no matter how cool my copy is.

They had close to 900 people volunteer to be proofreaders. They only wanted maybe 50. They’re taken care of. I hope they get good readers, but I’m kinda relieved I won’t be one of them.

I witnessed a situation over the weekend that got me thinking about humanity and how different we can be. Our church organized a work group to help out a neighbor whose back yard had gotten away from her. She had re-landscaped the entire yard last year. The front still looks great. But evidently that back yard ran into some problems. Even though initially the sod had looked great, there was no sprinkler system (or it was broken–I’m not sure which), and the lawn died out. Then it became overrun with weeds, some of them as tall as me. It was well beyond anything any one person could hope to tackle by herself.

And so perhaps about two dozen of us showed up on Saturday morning to see what we could do. I took my three kids with me. We were just a little late and people were already working. Everyone started from the gate area at one side of the property. But from there it got interesting.

There was little coordination, not much discussion about objective or methodology. There was some discussion that the property owner planned to lay down sod again, so we didn’t need to worry about getting out all the roots, necessarily. But the ground was soft from a gully-washer rainstorm the night before, and in many cases they would come up fairly easily just pulling.

In lieu of a coherent plan everyone just did what came naturally. For some it was to start pulling the bigger weeds, bearing straight for the middle of the yard. Others went home and returned with weed-wackers, wading out to do battle in the deepest weeds. Some people got hedge trimmers and began attacking the overgrown vines along the fences. Some began meticulously pulling weeds around the perimeter, or clearing specific areas of every weed they could find. Some, considering that the gate was made up of two swinging halves, and realizing it might be useful to get both sides open, cleared the other half of the gate area others had quickly left behind.

Still others noticed that we were creating large piles of weeds quickly, but that we needed them hauled out to the trailer parked out at the street. Someone organized the younger helpers and began collecting the pulled weeds, transporting them to the trailer, and getting them compacted down to make room for more. After a while some noticed that those with the weedwackers had cleared a sizeable area, but it was still full of short stubble. They left and came back with rototillers to dig it all under.

Eventually someone contacted someone we knew who owned a medium tractor with a tiller deck, who promised to come over and bring their tractor. We were quickly instructed to finish taking down any large weeds that the tractor might not be able to handle (or might tangle up the mechanisms), and when the tractor arrived they were able to make short work of the entire yard, tilling all remaining weeds and roots under.

After about four hours of work the yard looked pretty good. Some people left after an hour or two. Others arrived after a few hours. Me and my kids hung in there for three and a half hours. We all agreed it had been satisfying to help out, and felt good about our efforts.

But as my mind returned to the project throughout the day it occurred to me how everyone had responded differently to the initial task, likely in keeping with their personalities. Some just started blazing a way forward. Others lingered behind to clean up more thoroughly. Still others looked for ways to make the work more efficient. And some just quietly supported the others by getting the downed weeds out of the way.

I suppose someone experienced with the work of clearing weeds would tell you we did it wrong, or less than right. Our varying efforts likely resulted in a hit-and-miss approach wherein some areas of the yard were cleaned better than others, leaving some areas more likely to regrow weeds quickly than others. Some might say we only postponed the problem.

But the property owner was overwhelmed by the support. We accomplished in a few hours something she never could have done by herself. Regardless of whether the weeds come back, we’d given her another chance to get things under control long enough to implement a more final solution. We didn’t solve her problem, but we made it solvable. There was no way she could have even done that alone.

I wonder what might have happened if the various groups of people working on the weeds had decided that their way was the best and that everyone else should adopt the same approach. Might the whole effort devolved into chaos and bickering? Would people have become upset and stormed off, refusing to help at all? What if some of the groups had become obsessed with making sure the other groups didn’t succeed, lest they make them look bad? What if the guy with the hedge trimmers had to spend half his time running back to plug his cord back in after someone else kept pulling it out to spite him? What if the guy who brought a machete had decided to use it on the fuel line of the guy with the weedwacker?

That didn’t happen here. In spite of the fact that our approach wasn’t unified and coherent, the job got done well enough for what was needed. Everyone worked, and no one worried about whether someone else was doing it wrong unless they were very clearly doing something wrong. People tried different things, and whatever didn’t work, they stopped doing. People helped and supported each other. No one griped if someone took a break (there was food and drink provided by some wonderful souls) or stopped to chat with someone else for a few minutes. No one counted how long someone disappeared for. No one got upset if someone else used their tools.

I could extrapolate further on this experience and what it might mean, but I’m not going to do that. I leave it to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions. You shouldn’t have to look far, however, to find some aspect of modern life to which you may equate this analogy. I will say this, however. I believe my experience, though not without its problems and perhaps unintended conesquences, was at least one example of how things can get done.

We’re a race of copycats. We don’t even have to think for ourselves. We’re outsourcing our thinking, our content, and even our outrage to other people.

This occurred to me today while wading through my Facebook feed. Yes, I know, those two words together usually presage a rant. This is probably no exception. Anyway, I read post after post from someone that was really little more than reposting someone else’s meme pic, chat, or on rare occasion, actual post. Sometimes, also on rare occasion, the reposter would add a statement of their own that required some thought beyond, “Yeah. What he said.”

It’s the anti-critical-thinking. Something pleases our particular slant? Pass it on! *Click* Done! We just parroted someone else’s five minutes of thought and writing/editing and saved ourselves the trouble of doing any thinking at all.

Now, I’m not saying that all reposting is bad or a sign of laziness. Sometimes someone comes along with a meme pic or post that is exceptionally well done. But more often than not, these are not on complex issues, but more just a quick mental time-out or pick-me-up. Pictures of cute puppies, nature scenes, a funny joke…nothing wrong with those.

But if you’re going to equate anything to Nazi Germany, for example, you really should consider putting more thought into it than is going to fit in 140 characters or less. If you’re going to deride someone else’s character, ideals, beliefs, thoughts, or actions I would highly encourage you to do something other than click “repost”. At best you’re showing yourself as an intellectual lightweight. At worst you’re showing yourself as a mindless drone without an original thought to be found in your cobwebbed cranium.

I’ve yet to see a soci-political meme pic that could stand up to much critical analysis. I’ve seldom seen a reposter who could defend their decision to repost very well should anyone call them on it. And sooner or later, unless you’ve succeeded in completing your echo-chamber, you’re going to encounter someone who actually knows something about what you’re reposting on, and they will reveal you for the mindless clicker you are.

I hate to be judgmental, but it’s next to impossible. We make decisions every day about people we do not know well enough to make any kind of a decision. I don’t care who you are, or which side of an issue you’re on. Repost something that shows your understanding of the topic is severely limited and I will think negatively of you. Do it often enough and I will cease to consider you someone worth paying attention to. I don’t mean to, mind you. And it’s certainly not fair, and probably not true. But I can’t help it. It’s what happens when you outsource your social media feed to everyone else.

I would prefer to know what you think, not what some unknown person with a pithy quote and a copy of Photoshop has to say. If you just repost someone else’s post I can’t help but think you agree with them 100% and see nothing wrong with their logic. As I said above, if the logic is “these puppies are cute!” I probably won’t see a problem with their logic either. But if it’s “political group X are sadistic cuss-words because they believe Y” I’m going to have serious doubts. There is always more to every issue than what most people are willing to read through on social media. There is always another side.

I know. It takes time to read through something of substance. It takes even more time to think it through and look for both validity and holes in their thinking. And it takes more time still to sit down and write up something of substance describing what you think, rather than just click “Share”, “Send”.

But even if you don’t want to spend too much time thinking, it’s okay to precede a repost with something like “I saw this and, while I don’t agree with everything this person says, I can’t help but think she’s got a point when she says X. What do you think?” This, I believe, is a better approach for several reasons. First, you’re not, by your silence, issuing a blanket endorsement, making it harder for someone to rush to judgment about you. Second, you’re calling attention to the point you agree with or find interesting without throwing down the gauntlet. You’re suggesting you’re open to contrary information (even if you’re not).

Third, you’re opening the door for others to see you as rational and therefore respond in a rational way in exploring your premise. And fourth, you’re showing that you at least took the time to think about before sending it on, signaling that you’re a more serious human being. And last, and not least, you’re giving more insight into who you are as a person, from the source most reliable, whereas simply parroting others’ thoughts makes it far too easy to assume you’re like them. And let’s face it. Far too few meme-writers come across as sensible, open-minded people. Clever, pithy, smug, and arrogant perhaps, but seldom sensible and fair.

So don’t be a parrot. (Being a Parrot-Head is okay, though!) Don’t just share-n-forget. Show us who you really are. You’ll be much more true to your reputation than faceless meme generators will ever be. Don’t outsource your thinking to others. Retain your brain!

To say there has been a lot going on in my life lately might be a bit of an understatement. At least partly as a result I’ve become rather disorganized and detached. Whether I have an excuse or not is largely irrelevant. I’m a big boy now, or I like to think so most of the time. People depend on me. Things need to get done. Instead I largely bounce from day to day doing whatever is in my face at the moment. I’ve become a muddled mess.

There comes a time when I finally wake up and realize I don’t want to keep living this way. And usually, when it gets to that point, there’s only one thing to do: Allen-ize.

I know at least one of you know what I mean, considering it’s my older brother who put me onto David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” in the first place. Allen’s book outlines an organization program that can really boost one’s productivity. And, I’ll admit, even at my best I don’t follow it. I like to believe it’s because life just doesn’t lend itself to the disciplined routine required, but it’s more likely just that I lack the discipline and determination necessary. I just can’t tell other people to take a hike and leave me my habitual organization time.

But there’s one technique/tool Allen teaches that has always been a big help, and that’s probably more an indicator of my personality than anything else. Allen’s process begins with what he calls a “mind sweep”. The idea is to spend some time going over every aspect of your life and writing down every little thing, no matter how big or how small, that you need to do (or at least feel you should do). The next step is to organize and prioritize that list based on what is most important and where you need to be to do it. In many cases you need to identify those items that are projects rather than tasks, and further break them down into tasks.

For example, “Fix the Drywall” is a project, unless you’re weird and you have everything you need to do that. For me it would require multiple steps, such as “get patching material”, “watch YouTube tutorial”, “patch hole”. Otherwise, whenever I go to fix the drywall I’ll run into the fact that I don’t have anything to patch it with and don’t really know what I’m doing, and I’ll talk myself out of doing it. This instead makes it easier to connect it with other projects and, next time I’m at Home Depot, pick up everything I need for all those separate little projects at once.

Anyway, I know that for some people creating this exhaustive list would be depressing, even overwhelming, and convince them to just give up and go back to bed. For me it’s the opposite. Creating that list makes me feel in control. Not tracking things leaves everything nebulous and overwhelming, fearing at any moment something I’ve forgotten is going to blindside me and turn my life upside down. While that does legitimately happen from time to time, when they’re things I should already know about and I’m just not remembering them–well, that’s self-inflicted chaos, and that just makes me feel worse knowing it was avoidable.

Creating the mind sweep is liberating. Even if I don’t use it for very long, it’s nice knowing that I know what’s hanging out there. I feel in control because there are no surprises. I can prioritize, and can give myself permission to stop caring about some things on that list because they’re clearly not as important as some other things and really can be put off indefinitely. Knowing is half the battle.

The other half is remembering, and for some reason, once I’ve written something down in order to remember it I usually no longer need that list to help me remember it. Not always, and usually not for more than the top five to ten items, but it usually make a big difference.

So anyway, yeah. It’s time I did a mind sweep. I’m losing control of my life, and it’s time I did something about that. I don’t like being a muddled mess.

This is the kind of story that keeps believing that humanity is not yet lost. A waitress overheard two firefighters talking about how hungry they were after fighting a fire for 12 hours straight. So the bought their breakfast. But the story doesn’t end there. The firefighters did some checking and found out the waitress was in need of a little help herself. They went to work, and what went around, came around–in spades. People can be awesome.

Speaking of awesome things from people, most of us know how a transmission works…kind of. In case you’re in need of a refresher, here’s a useful video. Quite frankly, I didn’t remember it to this level of detail:

http://youtu.be/aFvj6RQOLtM

You have a right to disagree on the awesomeness of this particular video, not to mention the sanity of the man therein:

But here, as an example of more beneficial feats of engineering, I present the Newport Transporter Bridge:

Last week we had to put Sofie to sleep. Feelings are tender still, and were we not about to open our home to another needy dog I’d probably not even write about it now. But it might be confusing if I introduce a new member of the family without explaining what happened to the previous one.

Sofie came into our lives a little over five years ago. We had just had to put Lady, our first dog, down after prolonged illness. I didn’t think we’d be getting another dog for several weeks to months. The feelings were too raw. Lady was a sweetheart, and while she was clearly no longer enjoying life, you still can only hope they understand why you would let them go like that. But Sofie soon came onto our radar through the local Humane Society where Terhi volunteered at the time. She was an older dog, a rotweiler-hound mix, and she hated being cooped up at the shelter. She hated it so badly she was going nuts, and the staff were convinced she wasn’t adoptable.

Fortunately for us all, a volunteer took a liking to her and offered to take her home and foster her to see if she could get her to relax in a more calm environment. It worked, but she couldn’t keep her. We got the news and decided to check things out.

We soon took Sofie home with us, though one of the first things we did was to change her name from Riley to Sofie. She fit right in. She was energetic and sociable, something Lady was too old and sick to be very often, and the kids took to her more. She shared Terhi and I as her main people.

There were some quirks, of course. We have no idea what her previous life was like, but she didn’t like being touched. She was generally happy and easy-going, but she liked a bit of distance. She occasionally liked to play, but somewhat distant games, like tug of war, catch,  and it usually wasn’t her idea. She would endure being petted for a moment, then walk away. She never bit–she would growl at the kids a little–but she wouldn’t stick around and put up with it when she was uncomfortable. The exception was playing with a flashlight. If you had a flashlight out, invited or not, she would chase the beam. It was her most favorite thing on earth.

She changed over time. As she grew to trust and love us she began to initiate playing and petting. She would still slink off and hide if any of us started yelling, even if it wasn’t at her, and she was extremely sensitive about our examining her, even visually. But more and more she enjoyed being with us, being petted, and getting attention. She developed her favorite foods that she would relentlessly beg for whenever we had them, like oatmeal and pancakes. She became one of the family, and always insisted on being wherever we were.

She was not a loud dog by any means. She was always just there. That’s probably why I grew so fond of her. She was company. She clearly liked being near me. She’d come check on me from time to time, even if she was hanging around Terhi primarily. She’d meet me at the door when I came home. She’d sleep by our bed. And she was always forgiving if I stepped on her accidentally getting up in the night.

She was just a calm, loving soul, content to be in our lives and join in our fun. She liked walking with Terhi and I, but if the entire family was going for a walk and invited her along she’d start jumping with excitement. Or if you offered her her favorite treats. Or offered to let her come on a car ride.

She also had long, goofy ears that drooped when she was relaxed, but perked up like radar dishes when she was happy, curious, or excited. She had a big, goofy grin, full of big, wet tongue. Now and then she’d play a most undignified game where she’s roll on her back, bending herself to one side or the other, and flick her tail toward her mouth until she caught it. It was hard not to laugh to watch, but she would get a little self-conscious if she realized you were paying attention. She was a happy dog, she showed it, and it was contagious.

Gradually we noticed signs she was starting to slow down. She wouldn’t pull as hard heading out on her walks. She’d tire quicker playing flashlight (her nightly non-negotiable activity). Her hearing began to go. Her eyesight became increasingly questionable. But through it all she remained the same old Sofie. She was aging, but she still loved life.

Then a few weeks ago things really headed downhill fast. She began throwing up every other day or so, sometimes more often. Her appetite diminished. So we took her to the vet, who decided she had stomach ulcers. But the ultrasound also showed that she had a cancerous mass in her spleen. We approved surgery to have it removed. While the vet was inside he found another cancerous spot in a complicated place that would require more delicate surgery, so he needed to check with a specialist. Meanwhile we made her comfortable while she healed from the surgery. Things seemed to be progressing well.

Then suddenly a lump of fatty tissue she’d had for years began swelling, making it painful for her to lay down. She took to pacing the house, panting, until she couldn’t stand any more, then lay down and sleep, then repeat the process. We took her back to the vet, who decided it had become cancerous, too, and gave us some medication to try to reduce the swelling and make her comfortable while we got more information on our options. They medications didn’t help, and soon her entire side was swollen and sore. We took her back again, and it was decided that she would not get much better than that, even if they could operate successfully. It was time to let her go.

It’s a terrible decision to have to make. We watched home videos over the weekend of how Sofie was when we first got her, running around like crazy chasing after us, running up and down the play gym at the park. Contrasting that with how she was at the end, head down, slowly and painfully pacing around and around, trying to lay down only to have it hurt too much and get back up again, panting and panting, drinking water constantly, but eating only when she couldn’t stand the hunger any more…

She’s at peace now, and no longer in pain. We like to think she’s comparing notes with Lady, and the two of them are looking down on us, curious to see who we take into our hearts next.

Goodbye, Sofie, you wonderful dog. You were the epitome of everything good about dogs. We love you, and we know you loved us. Until we’re together again…

I’m a mass murderer. I’ve killed too many sentient and semi-sentient creatures to count. I’ve sent numberless men and women to their deaths in wars on a thousand battlefields. But that was in video games. I try really hard not to confuse that with real life. I try to remember that everyone is a real person with flesh and blood, dreams and desires, good habits and bad.

And I still forget.

Lee Modesitt, Jr. recently posted about the dehumanization of the “other”:

Given all this, it seems apparent that, because humans actually have a tendency to cooperate, dehumanization has become a cultural tool for overriding the cooperative trait and for gaining personal power. We don’t necessarily think of it that way, but even I find myself doing it, for instance, by calling people “idiots” when they do something stupid or thoughtless. Admittedly, individuals can be idiots, as we all know, but idiocy is generally individual, not cultural, and there’s a very fine line between accurately assessing someone’s lack of ability on an individual basis and applying that “lack” to an entire group in order to dehumanize them, yet dehumanization persists,and it’s usually used in pursuit or maintenance of power.

I’m not so sure it’s even a conscious effort these days. Technology, ironically in the guise of bringing humanity together, is inserting an electronic distance between us all. Living, breathing people–even our friends–become vague concepts, sporadic collections of words and pictures rather than actual beings with feelings. Nothing is real. We’re living in the Matrix. Someone captures video of an abortion doctor selling fetal tissue and the world shrugs. It’s not real, and even if it were, it’s happening “out there somewhere.” It’s easily dismissable as a disinformation campaign by The Other Side. We don’t want to be bothered by it, and so we’re not.

Someone shoots a lion in Africa, baited off a preserve by a desperate farmer improverished by his own country’s destructive policies. Normally no one would notice. But the lion had a name, so suddenly it matters. Across the globe people press “Player One – Start” to help play a game of “Search and Destroy”, this time against a dentist from Minnesota. We can’t be certain law enforcement will find a way to punish him (what he did may have been completely legal, but who cares about that?), and even if they do it won’t be as much as we know he deserves, so we’ll make sure he doesn’t escape true justice. We’ll bombard him with death threats and force him into hiding. Famous people will reveal his address (and we can only hope they actually got it right, but even if they didn’t and innocents are impacted–oh well, it’s not really real. It’s not anyone we know). People who claim to be pacifists and anti-gun activists will nonetheless call for the man to be shot, stuffed, and mounted, apparently ignorant of the contradiction. But will they lift a finger to actually change the laws that make such things possible? Will they take time to think about their own daily habits, and what difference there is between hunting lions and eating cows?

And even if we find out later we screwed up and most of what we thought was true proves false? Plausible deniability. We were just one person–what can we really do? We can’t verify everything! Hey, we all make mistakes (except the person we’re attacking–that was so on purpose, the evil $&%*#). We move on, paying no penance for our rush to judgment, our participation in destroying someone’s life, and our willingness to be misled by a compelling narrative.

We live in Game World now. Everything is narrative. There is no true reality outside the small bubble of our physical existence. On our computers and devices everything is a game, and if real people get hurt, so what? We don’t have to see it. A child suicide bomber killed dozens in a busy African market? Who cares. If it didn’t show on our feed, it didn’t happen. Tell us more about the lion and how the Forces of Righteous Vengeance are making Game World a better place!

Will Mia Farrow feel the slightest remorse if her doxxing gets one of the dentist’s family killed? Maybe. But until that happens it won’t cross her mind that she’s jeopardizing the lives of real people, most of whom never even went to Africa. She’s only playing The Game, and that was a high-scoring kill-shot. Some would even award her bonus points if a cop dies trying to defend the dentist’s property. Cops are not real people, either, and all they do is kill innocent people, right?

Life has become the ultimate VR game on the world’s biggest screen. Our own life is the only reality. Everything else is Game World. And out there nothing has real consequences. Mess with people’s lives. Destroy people’s reputations. Do your part for your Game Clan. Only listen to those sources of information that conform to your view of Game World. Ignore anyone or anything that might suggest your actions could actually hurt a real person. They were the enemy. They disagreed with you, so they have it coming!

Sleep peacefully at night knowing that the Game World is a better place for your having helped rid if of undesirables. Neo and Trinity just wasted a lobby full of guards, but it’s all just the Matrix. Nothing is real, except for us. Welcome to War of Worldcraft. Please choose a name for your avatar.

I just switched to Windows 10. Why? Because it was free, and because I didn’t have to do anything except click a few buttons saying essentially, “Yeah, sure.” I’ve been hearing for a while that it did away with some of the annoying things in Windows 8, and lately I’ve even been hearing that it’s better than 8. So contained in that brave-but-innocuous “Yeah, sure” is a year an a half of loathing over Windows 8. I was willing to risk all my data to get away from Win8 and move to…well, anything different.

To be sure, I’ve yet to have a Windows upgrade destroy data (at least that I noticed). And so far the only problem I’ve seen there is that Edge, the new web browser, didn’t automatically import bookmarks from IE. I’ll bet they’re around somewhere, but I haven’t had time yet to look for them. And the home page I had set will need to be re-set.

I have to admit, though, that Microsoft really caught my attention when they offered Win10 for free. That’s…just not something Microsoft does. And better yet, I wouldn’t have to go get install disks or anything. It would run overnight and I’d have a new upgrade in the morning. The only problem there is that I told it I wanted to upgrade at 10 pm and it started pressuring my wife at 9:30, confusing her into running the upgrade then instead of doing what she needed to do first. But when I woke up this morning (blues riff) my computer was fine (blues riff) it took some time for setups (riff), and then I was online (riff). I’ve not had much time to check anything out, except Edge does indeed seem faster. For now. Their picture browser seems better somehow. I think it’s the screen utilization–less visible UI, more focus on the picture.

The breathing blue screen of waiting was a little creepy. I don’t want a computer that breathes.

I probably shouldn’t even write a review until I’ve had more time on the computer to try things out. But I will say this much: the upgrade was smooth (I literally did it in my sleep) and, so far, relatively painless. The only problem I’ve found is that whenever I turn on the wireless card on my XP laptop, Windows 10 loses its connection to our wi-fi network. Something’s not playing nice, and I’m not sure what’s going on. The good news, I suppose, is that I can control my kids’ internet access from anywhere in the house.

I just can’t help but find Camille Paglia interesting. Perhaps it’s just because she seems to agree with me on many things. I mean, who doesn’t like an attractive face in the mirror! But many times with her I find myself learning from her as well, as if she’s thought about some of things even more deeply than I have. She’s certainly able to communicate her ideas effectively.

I recently read an interview with her in Salon, in which she takes on snark:

The real problem is a lack of knowledge of religion as well as a lack of respect for religion. I find it completely hypocritical for people in academe or the media to demand understanding of Muslim beliefs and yet be so derisive and dismissive of the devout Christian beliefs of Southern conservatives.

But yes, the sneering is ridiculous! Exactly what are these people offering in place of religion? In my system, I offer art–and the whole history of spiritual commentary on the universe. There’s a tremendous body of nondenominational insight into human life that used to be called cosmic consciousness. It has to be remembered that my generation in college during the 1960s was suffused with Buddhism, which came from the 1950s beatniks. Hinduism was in the air from every direction–you had the Beatles and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Ravi Shankar at Monterey, and there were sitars everywhere in rock music. So I really thought we were entering this great period of religious syncretism, where the religions of the world were going to merge. But all of a sudden, it disappeared! The Asian religions vanished–and I really feel sorry for young people growing up in this very shallow environment where they’re peppered with images from mass media at a particularly debased stage.

There are no truly major stars left, and I don’t think there’s much profound work being done in pop culture right now. Young people have nothing to enlighten them, which is why they’re clinging so much to politicized concepts, which give them a sense of meaning and direction.

But this sneering thing! I despise snark. Snark is a disease that started with David Letterman and jumped to Jon Stewart and has proliferated since. I think it’s horrible for young people! And this kind of snark atheism–let’s just invent that term right now–is stupid, and people who act like that are stupid…

She seems to bring a refreshing intellectual honesty to the table, which I appreciate, even when she’s skewering me, too:

Now let me give you a recent example of the persisting insularity of liberal thought in the media. When the first secret Planned Parenthood video was released in mid-July, anyone who looks only at liberal media was kept totally in the dark about it, even after the second video was released. But the videos were being run nonstop all over conservative talk shows on radio and television. It was a huge and disturbing story, but there was total silence in the liberal media. That kind of censorship was shockingly unprofessional. The liberal major media were trying to bury the story by ignoring it. Now I am a former member of Planned Parenthood and a strong supporter of unconstrained reproductive rights. But I was horrified and disgusted by those videos and immediately felt there were serious breaches of medical ethics in the conduct of Planned Parenthood officials. But here’s my point: it is everyone’s obligation, whatever your political views, to look at both liberal and conservative news sources every single day. You need a full range of viewpoints to understand what is going on in the world.

Yeah, I do. It’s just hard to get without risk. It’s painful to spend too much on the side you disagree with because of how polarized things have become. You can’t just get the alternative viewpoint these days, you have to subject yourself to incessent character assassination to get it. Perhaps we do need our whole grains, but I’d rather not have to go through a weed-wacker to get them. Paglia seems to be willing to go through it, but then perhaps it’s because she doesn’t feel too connected to either side? Or perhaps it’s just the cost of intellectual honesty, and she’s willing to pay it? If so, good for her.

Anyway, read the whole thing. Whether you like her or not, agree with her or not, she’s got an interesting take on the world, and an interesting way of expressing it. Granted, she also says many things I just have to shrug off, and she does like to pin on her “persecuted intellectual” badge a little too often. And she does have a rather high opinion of herself (that seems to go with the territory on columnists, writers, and intellectuals.) But her knowledge if broad, her ideas thoughtful. I think she would be one of the most interesting dinner guests you could hope to find.

Update: That was part two of a three-day series. Here’s Part One. And Part Three.