#661 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday May 16)
Good morning,
A potpourri of ideas and observations today…
MORE ON ANXIETY AND CHOICE
We live in the age of anxiety. We are worrying all the time about what might happen next. This is enhanced and encouraged by social media. We are led to believe that others are happier, that we are somehow lacking, and there are huge issues around the corner that require our decisions.
Anxiety has been with us for some time. Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard suggests that anxiety, in fact, preceded the original sin. In Genesis, Adam is challenged not to eat the apple from the tree of knowledge. What he suggests is that the first challenge to confront Adam was whether he would eat the apple. That choice created anxiety. Anxiety is a product of choice and freedom (“the yawning abyss of freedom”).
Here is a great summary from Anthony Storm’s Commentary on Kierkegaard:
“When God commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’, so says Kierkegaard, would have had no significance for him. His ignorance was indeed bliss. But the awful predicament of freedom, before and apart from sin, yielded anxiety…all individual persons are born with the same freedom and anxiety as a result of that freedom that Adam possessed…”
I think anxiety is the watchword of society today. We are anxious from what we watch on the news and what we read. We are anxious from being overrun by choices all the time. We are anxious about jobs, the economy, climate, and countless other big issues. I think our natural instinct is to fear choices. This, perhaps, explains why many people would willingly throw their lot in with autocrats. I fear that, secretly, most people want decisions made for them.
But we should take a step back and worry less. As a mindfulness expert noted, one can think about the future but one must return to the present and live life. To remain thinking about the future means that we can’t live in the present and suffer from anxiety—which gives rise to indecision, paralysis, and even more anxiety.
IMMIGRATION REFORM ONCE WAS A BIPARTISAN GOAL
Immigration reform was gaining traction when George W. Bush was President. Here is the broad plan he mentioned in the 2007 State of the Union: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/stateoftheunion/2007/initiatives/immigration.html. We can quibble around the edges but this was a meaningful attempt that could have brought reform 16 years ago. Most of it seems reasonable today. We need to protect the country’s borders, be kind to immigrants within our borders, be realistic, and stop devoting precious finite national resources and millions of column-inches to an issue that politicians would prefer to use as ammunition, rather than try to solve.
OLD MAN RANTS
My last rants focused on bad grammar, over-reliance on global positioning, and declining civility. A few of the responses:
Jen Petrovich: “Why don’t you include homonym errors in your rant? I’m so tired of the universal “there.” What happened to “their” and “they’re”?
Shane Bankston: “The reason they can’t read maps is the same reason they can’t read or write cursive…it’s called ignorance, and ignorance is only cured through education.”
Tony Soltis: “GPS might be more insidious than people realize. Eliminate the river’s space and time thinking/awareness and sequencing recall is weakened. Same with reading online. Turns out readers struggle to recall what info comes in beginning vs middle vs end without hardcopy.”
Melissa Licker: “You have every right to feel grumpy about the state of diminishing graciousness…basic civility and the language for it has become a relic of a bygone era.”
Peter Rich: “It starts with poor parenting and an even worse education system, which has eliminated grammar and syntax for ‘just express yourself…’”
BEST RESPONSE TO “NO PROBLEM”
I’ve been tired of often when one says “thank you,” the response is “no problem.” Sam Foster summarizes why this is so bad when he notes that saying “thank you” should be greeted with a response that also is kind, to wit, “you’re welcome.” When someone says “no problem,” it no longer acknowledges the thanks. It becomes about the speaker. “It is in no way giving me kindness in return for kindness…Talk about self-centered. Perhaps even a touch narcissistic.”
Have a great day,
Glenn
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