Extra Napkins

Get a life. Strive for more. What else is there? Whether you envision a bowl of cherries, a bowl of Cheerios™, or just a toothpick, the festival of life is process, and more process is its raison d'etre.

If you accept the above premise, it behooves you to implement an optimization strategy. But first you must ascertain your preferences, which comprise a personal profile for a life worth living. There are two overarching disciplines available for guidance: natural science and philosophy. The former concerns the four dimensional framework of reality as we know it. The latter concerns the fifth dimension, the spiritual, the wholly other, that which can only be approximated by the real component of its fully unknowable complexity.

Through the millennia of intellectual discourse, a few general guidelines for a worthy fifth dimension have been distilled. These include the Decalogue of Moses and Hillel's Golden Rule. A further distillation provides the quintessential fifth dimension for a quality life: the Golden Rule and the preeminent social imperative of the Decalogue.

As for the four dimensional spacetime of perceived reality, centuries of scientific research have produced the ultimate survival guideline: natural selection. The concept of fitness is central to natural selection. And, although modern evolutionary theory defines fitness in terms of individual reproduction, fitness is sometimes colloquially understood as a quality that promotes survival of a particular individual, as illustrated in the well-known phrase survival of the fittest.

So, one's optimization strategy reduces to an appropriate fitness plan, of which there are many. But, again, there are two overarching schools of thought, which I will anthropomorphize as the School of Hearts and the School of Minds. The former subsumes all the fitness plans that stress the importance of physical and emotional fitness. The latter acknowledges the importance of intellectual strength, which is arguably the fitness edge responsible for human preeminence among the species.

I submit that most of the proven fitness plans from the School of Hearts will provide an adequate fitness base for survival. Choose components from every food group, including a sampling from food for thought.

But for crisis management, you must arm yourself with a carefully chosen regimen from the School of Minds. This then is where extra napkins come in. It is my whimsical characterization for a backup plan, a so-called Plan B for any occasion having significant downside consequences.

I was a Boy Scout for only several weeks of my childhood, but I managed to come away from the experience with an important insight: be prepared. My parents, survivors extraordinaire both, taught me many lessons, not the least of which was to have a rainy-day fund. And so, for a litany of good advice, we have: drink milk; begin planning for retirement when you begin your career; remember the cornerstones of investing (asset allocation, diversification, cost averaging, and rebalancing); don't gamble the rent money, and that goes for the health and liability insurance premiums too; backup your hard drive; don't drink and drive; etc.; etc.; etc. You've heard the drill many times. You need a backup plan just in case winging it doesn't work out. Are you listening?

There are those who relish the liberating thrill of living on the edge. I have known some, and that is a legitimate modus for life. Greater risk but a chance for perceived reward. Quality versus quantity. But every choice involves a risk/reward trade off, and 'strive for more' suggests greater weight be assigned to quantity (i.e., time) for there is no recovering from the point of no return, by definition. Moreover, risk without expectation of reward is analogous to 'hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop'.

Even Big Al got one wrong, because the Omnipotent One does roll the dice of quantum fluctuations. To the best of our knowledge it's all about process and probability. That is why I choose extra napkins.

The Implicit Commandment

Hillel's "Golden Rule", the passive statement of the ethic of reciprocity, anticipated it:

'What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.'

Tolstoy's Epigraph for Anna Karenina alluded to it:

'Vengeance is mine; I will repay.'

Little Boy and Fat Man were its metaphoric expression. It is the Implicit Commandment:

'Thou shalt not f*ck with America.'

Housekeeping

There is no reasoning with children. There is no reasoning with bluffers. There is no reasoning with morons. Give them what they say they want; within an inch of total anarchy. Then, when the stench of Holyshitwood has permeated the Land, declare martial law until National elections can clean the slate.

By virtue of the Twenty-Second Amendment a "lame duck" President of the United States is ideally positioned to accomplish a much needed housekeeping task for the Nation. Since its ratification in 1951, roughly half the Presidents (6 of 11) have been lame ducks, providing 20 years (Truman's, as well as Nixon's, "lameness" lasted only 2 years) out of 58 years (through 2008) for National housekeeping.

The process is straightforward. Today, for example, President Bush should be guided by polls that reflect the collective wisdom of Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Barbra Streisand, George Clooney, Sean Penn, the Daily Kos, etc., and implement by Executive Order whatever these worthies advocate for the Nation's well being. Pull all American troops out of Iraq. Raise taxes. Open all borders to all comers. Fix gasoline prices at 99 cents/gallon. Free health care for everyone. Not one but two cars in every garage, a chicken in every pot (make it turkey for a more festive atmosphere). Then, when all such actions have been implemented, check with Noam Chomsky to make sure nothing of importance has been overlooked. Perhaps we could have Hugo Chávez address a joint session of Congress.

I have faith in America. When all else fails, and the hand basket has descended to the gates of hell, the Benevolent Giant awakens from its temporary insanity and Americans get busy. The drunks hit the bottle. The imbeciles go back to making movies. And the holier-than-thous talk to the hand. The rest go to the polls and elect the likes of Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Truman, and George W. Bush. Then all becomes well in the Land, until it's time for another round of housekeeping.

Survival; Indifference; Postponement

If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? -- Hillel

This sage tripartite principle, together with the Golden Rule, comprises the essence of ethical living. And the first part of this essential tripleton may be redacted to a colloquial version of the Patriarch's allegorical precept for survival: 'Get a life. Strive for more.'

In a recent post I referenced the foremost among the human-relationship moral imperatives of the Decalogue, as I believe it to be a reliable prescription for living a good life. What I termed, facetiously, to be a modest prescription is only modest by virtue of its brevity. It is at least as consequential as the ethic of reciprocity. My purpose in this post is to elaborate what I believe to be some implications of such a prescription.

If one takes the Commandment to 'Honor your father and your mother' to its natural finality, it implies compassion for a dying parent. Sometimes, however, a parent dies suddenly, and one might think that such compassion can not be universally experienced. Certainly not if, perish the thought, a child predeceases a parent? But everyone is dying. Having compassion for a dying parent, therefore, is an appropriate expression of honor, always.

If a parent has a fatal illness, the subordination of one's compassionate feelings to common self absorption is the province of narcissism. And taken to its limit, such subordination constitutes indifference. To my mind, indifference to a loved one is the ultimate prescription for an unhappy life, for everyone but a sociopath; though even Stalin understood this, as he famously remarked, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

Finally then, 'if not now, when?' For as sure as God made little green apples, postponement is a one-way street to the house of regrets, with incomplete refuge through Atonement.