MacArthur Park

The other day, I was listening to an oldies radio show that plays songs that used to be hits, but that are not played very often. The song "MacArthur Park" came on about the same time my older daughter came in to the room and started crocheting. I thought that I might ask her what she thought about the song, because I can remember when it was played on the radio all the time. I think that some people perceived the song as being a bit overwrought, but I can't remember anybody suffocating in laughter over how ridiculous the song is. Meanwhile, we have been exposed to a couple of decades of Dave Barry columns in which he mocks the song as being the "worst ever." So now, of course, the song is more likely to inspire laughter - or at least a wry smile - rather than the sorrowful loneliness it was meant to evoke. So I wondered if a person from my daughter's generation were to hear the song "fresh," how would she respond.

While I was thinking of a way to ask my daughter to direct her attention to the song on the radio without tipper her off to what I was wondering, she started shaking with laughter. I asked her what was up, and she said, "Are you listening to the lyrics?" (Actually, since she is starting to talk in teenagerese, it sounded more like, "Are you listening? To the lyrics?") So my question was answered without me ever having to ask it.

This question seems to point to a deeper question. When this song came out, why didn't we laugh about it? Was the nation in some sort of delirious trance in which lyrics like these - "MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark/ All the sweet, green icing flowing down. / Someone left the cake out in the rain. / And I don't think that I can make it / because it took so long to bake it / And I'll never have that recipe again, oh no" - actually seem somewhat moving. Did it take Dave Barry to snap us out of a haze that our civilization will never fall into again? What songs are on the radio now that my daughter's children will laugh about?

Los Alamos on Fire - Again

A large wildfire is currently threatening to burn through my hometown. I have been obsessively checking news to see what is going on. The fire started in the Las Conchas area of the Jemez Mountains, which is where we used to go when the summer was getting too hot. I always considered it one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Check out these photos from another blog: http://woodswanderer.blogspot.com/2008/07/las-conchas-canyon-pretty-canyon-in.html

Delusional mensapsychosis

Here is another term we need. It refers to a person who receives a high score on an IQ test and so decides there is no longer any reason to think about anything. Any crazy notion this person has must be true because it comes from a clearly superior intellect. There is no need to argue with people who disagree, since it is obvious that they are inferior and simply do not understand.

Fideopsychosis

I have been somewhat reticent to post this, because I am afraid somebody is going to misinterpret what I say and take offense at it. If you are that person, please post here so I can have a chance to respond.

I have long thought that we need a word for the type of insanity that some people demonstrate when they talk about religion. Everybody has probably met somebody who is perfectly reasonable, only to be warned not to talk to that person about religion. If you do engage the person on religion, you find yourself lost in a maelstrom of bizarre ideas and find rational discourse impossible. I don't mean to say that all religious people are insane, only that certain people seem to lose their capacity for rational thought when discussing religious topics.

I know some people will say that these are likely people who have such a sublime understanding of ultimate truths that they cannot communicate them without seeming insane. Perhaps.

The word I propose is "fideopychosis." I will take other suggestions.

Insouciant

This isn’t a big deal, but it is something that I have been wondering about. There are two French words that we use rather frequently in English: “insouciant” and “nonchalant.” It occurred to me that these words mean roughly the same thing. So I looked them up, and sure enough “nonchalant” is given as a synonym of “insouciant.” So my question is, why do the French have two words for an attitude that English-speaking people have not come up with a single word for? I guess “carefree” is kind of close in meaning, but not exactly. Please respond with any thoughts you might have.

Linear vs. Global Thinking

I took this interesting assessment: http://www.onionmountaintech.com/files/Global-Linear%20Activity.pdf. I scored a +10, which puts me squarely in the "global" category. I fit pretty well into this category, although I really cannot work on more than one thing at once. I do like to work on one thing for about five minutes, then switch to something else. I tend to have five or six tasks I am working on, but I can only concentrate on one at a time. For example, I can't talk and type at the same time. It is also hard for me to talk and to monitor miscreants in the class at the same time.

I think that one of the challenges I have had as a teacher is trying to adapt to teach linear thinkers. I try to use outlines, although this becomes less useful as the classes advance and we depend more on seminar. Seminar is, in fact, my favored way of discussing ideas. What I am working on is summarizing what we said in seminar to make it more accessible to linear thinkers.

I think it might be informative for you to take this assessment, although I cannot ask for your results, as that would violate your privacy. After you are done, read the descriptions of the two types of thinking. Let me know if this was useful to you.

That is so unprofessional

There is something else that disturbs me, but it is beyond being a “pet peeve.” The more I think about this phenomenon, the more I think it is a symptom of a dying civilization. This is the recent custom of using the term “unprofessional” as a catchall adjective to describe all sorts of behavior that we do not like. Maybe this is not something that junior high students hear very often, but it is ubiquitous among adults. I rarely hear somebody’s behavior, particularly behavior that occurs while at work, criticized with any other adjective.

A “profession” is a person’s job. If something is “unprofessional,” then it breaks some rule of the marketplace. Have we really become so diminished as a culture that the only concept of good or right that we have is based on suitably for a commercial undertaking? What happened to things being “wrong”? Or “demeaning”? “Mean-spirited”? “Cruel”? Even milder terms – such as “careless” or “unconventional” – are disappearing from our vocabulary.

Some of the behaviors that people term “unprofessional” are simply wrong. For example, I once worked at the same company as a man whom everyone described as behaving unprofessionally. He would rarely criticize a person in private, but he would save up whatever he wanted to say and humiliate the person in front of the whole department. He also would make demeaning jokes about people who worked for him. I did not work in the same department as this guy, but I did talk to people in his department. They complained about him a lot. They never described him as “cruel” or “demeaning,” but always as “unprofessional.”

The fact is that this man’s behavior WAS all these things. Why wouldn’t somebody call it by the correct term? The badness of his behavior is minimized by using a term that indicates that the only thing he is guilty of is breaking some rule of business etiquette. It seems in cases like this, you should reserve “unprofessional” for behaviors like showing up to work with your shirt untucked or forgetting your tie.

The other sense in which the word “unprofessional” is used is more pernicious. This is when the word is used to describe actions that are not wrong in any real sense, but which seem strange to you or make you uncomfortable. This can become a way to squelch innovation. Was it professional for Galileo to question the established notion of the nature of the world, which was believed by most scientists and based on generations of thought? Probably not – it got him into a world of trouble and upset a lot of people. Was John Woolman unprofessional when he jeopardized his livelihood by confronting his friends and neighbors about owning slaves? What about Albert Einstein questioning the linear concept of time? (Have you ever seen a picture of Einstein where he looked professional?)

It seems that the function of creative and innovative people is to ask questions and make observations that make other people uncomfortable. If this is “unprofessional”, then maybe that word should be seen as an appellation of honor. That is why I am creating the “Unprofessional of the Year” prize, to be awarded right here. Nominate people by responding to this post. I haven’t come up with a prize yet, but I am sure the honor of being mentioned in this blog will be the most exciting part of it. The prize probably will, in fact, be totally comprised of seeing your name here.

To qualify, all the nominee needs to do is to do something or say something that is called “unprofessional,” but that is not wrong in any other way than it calls into questions established views or methods. Take the time to type up the story and post it as a reply to this blog essay.