Reasons to Have Hope

“More than three-quarters of Americans saythe United States is headed in the wrong direction. This year, for the first time, America dropped out of the top 20 happiest countries in the World Happiness Report. Some couples are choosing not to have children because of climate threats. And this despair permeates not just the United States, but much of the world.

This moment is particularly dispiriting because of the toxic mood. Debates about the horrifying toll of the war in Gaza have made the atmosphere even more poisonous, as the turmoil on college campuses underscores. We are a bitterly divided nation, quick to point fingers and denounce one another, and the recriminations feed the gloom. Instead of a City on a Hill, we feel like a nation in despair — maybe even a planet in despair.

Yet that’s not how I feel at all.

What I’ve learned from four decades of covering misery is hope — both the reasons for hope and the need for hope. I emerge from years on the front lines awed by material and moral progress, for we have the good fortune to be part of what is probably the greatest improvement in life expectancy, nutrition and health that has ever unfolded in one lifetime…”

Nick Kristof

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HDT on words

But he'd still agree: Life and reality cannot and must not be reduced to "talk talk talk, words words words…"

"A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself."

Henry David Thoreau, who died on this day in 1862

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It’s gonna take way more than a day

"Saturday, May 4, is the National Day of Reason!

With Christian nationalist influence in Congress, and with the threat to our judiciary looming large, it has never been so important to affirm our commitment to the constitutional wall of separation between religion and government, and to celebrate reason as the guiding principle of our secular democracy. Learn more"

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The Holdovers

 We saw this last night. Good message for all teachers, especially those on the edge of burnout. Young people really are our future. We need to prepare them for it. And trust them.

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Hoping for a sea-change

My mostly-retired philosopher pals, having (like my semi-retired minister pal) too much time on their hands, started another too-earl-in-the-day text thread.

The discussion of academic presidents who are also humanities scholars led one of us to say “there won’t be many Shakespeare scholars in [U.S.] presidential suites in the future…”

That led me to point out that Potus likes to quote Seamus Heaney:

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change…

Another of us said that’s pretty highbrow.

And someone said something about Ted Lasso.

So I said Heaney’s not so highbrow (Joe’s definitely not), his poem can be rephrased in Ted Talk:

“So I’ve been hearing this phrase y’all got over here that I ain’t too crazy about. ‘It’s the hope that kills you.’ Y’all know that? I disagree, you know? I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you. See, I believe in hope. I believe in belief.”

 

 

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The Battle for Attention

The pre-eminent philosopher/psychologist of flights and perchings would be fascinated by the “Birds” who make a deliberate effort to guide and manage their thoughts and “reveries”…

“…In many people’s view, it is William James, Henry’s brother, who supplied the first comprehensive American model of attention. In a chapter devoted to the subject in his “Principles of Psychology” (1890), James portrayed attention as a restless thing. When we think we’re holding it, our mind is winging out on errands and returning; sustained attention is, in effect, a stream of attentional moments. Thus, despite the complexity and multiplicity of the world, “there is before the mind at no time a plurality of ideas.” (This insight went on to frame James’s philosophical work.) When we look at a statue, the stone doesn’t change, but the art work we see does, because we are continually noticing different things. James’s model pushes against the idea that attention is something you pay out, free of wandering thoughts and individual reverie…”

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“Rain”

The Beatles tribute show Saturday night at Belmont’s Fisher Hall was great fun. Beautiful performance space, great acoustics, colorful costumes, dazzling multimedia, timeless music accurately replicated. They showed us, as the song says, “everything is the same”… well, not really. But still  a marvelous trip to yesterday. 

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Steve Gleason’s good life

What’s the last great book you read?

When I was diagnosed [with ALS], one of the first questions I asked in a journal entry was, “Can I discover peace of mind, even if this disease destroys my body?” That inquiry has been a guiding light for me the past 13 years. “The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness,” by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, has real-life stories I could relate to, providing insights which have helped illuminate the path for me to live longer, and be grateful and content.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/books/review/steve-gleason-a-life-impossible-als.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

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An indulgent thought at semester’s end

But it's also the thought we began with, and will begin with again next semester.

Socrates said it first, long before the Devi'ls Dictionary said it this way, when he heard what the oracle had said about him:

"Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." — Ambrose Bierce

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Yes, Homer. But…

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There is also a time to be wordlessly wakeful and aware.

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep. Odyssey, XI, l. 379”

Less talk, more attention. Then, words. Only then.

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