On Two Recent Health Headlines

1. There's a Fat Switch!
2. There's a Test to Predict When YOU WILL DIE!

Between pharmacology for all and everyone, and so-called DNA discoveries, we are right back to the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th century with hawkers of tonics to fix damn near anything that's wrong with us including maybe death. I mean, if you can predict when death is supposed to occur and if there's a drug for everything than surely there's a cocktail to cheat death?

I'm not making this up. Google it...tweet it...go online or watch the evening news and you can't avoid the latest greatest discovery or new drug or new application of an old drug.

I'm not saying it's bad for drug companies to find new uses for theirs drugs. Except when marketing not medicine drives the mission.

Nor am I saying DNA shouldn't be used to decode humans. I am after all more in the Hawkings camp than the Pope's.

I probably shouldn't snark. I need to lose weight. Extra weight has all kinds of negative health consequences. That hasten death.

But there are two wickedly pernicious undercurrents at play here.

The first is the ever present denigration of humanity by advertising designed to make us feel less worthy and in need of a product to make use more acceptable. Playing on people's self doubts - creating and feeding them is the unsurprising consequence of a consumer economy. When spin doctors set out to expand markets by manufacturing want, they have to play on emotional needs. The constant picking on that nerve has led to a want culture. Not just in the sense of materialism but also in the pervasive sense of lack many Americans seem to feel which is inexplicable in some ways since most of us don't lack for the basics or anything else. But psychologically completely understandable.

The second destructive factor at play is the idea that we can predict and therefore possibly cheat that which makes us human: death. The fact that we die and that we are conscious of the fact is arguably the only thing that makes us humane and unlike the other animals (although the jury's out on the latter). If we take that away, we will either:

1. live our best lives possible (like those who have near death experience often report);
2. live the way we are right now (thoughtless, aimless, foolish):
3. or go buck wild in the misapprehension that it doesn't matter because I'm gonna die on X date anyway so I better live it up now.

The good news is those outcomes are exactly the same as life today so no better, no worse. The bad news is, those outcomes are exactly the same...

My point is, a finding like that - that DNA can help predict when a person will die - should do something to elevate and illuminate the meaning of life. The moral, ethical, religious and philosophical considerations (along with the scientific, technological and legal ramifications) should be thoroughly debated.

Everyone who might die (that would be all of us), all of humanity should sit up, take notice, discuss and debate this and determine individually, as the individual owners of our destinies, what we think, want and will do with this knowledge.

Instead, what will probably happen is that advertisers will exploit our fears to sell more products, insurers will find new ways to limit coverage, big brother will manipulate the data to serve its political ends and whole populations will be written off as less than due to shorter life spans in spite of the few hand wringing liberals who will lament the immorality inhumanity of it all.

Most important, in light of clear evidence to the contrary, we still will not face the fact that we are born dying, that death is a central fact of life and that it defines what it is to be human. Knowledge of an expiration date probably won't change a thing.

Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe it's not death that makes us human. Perhaps it's the collective amnesia of stupidity. To quote a famous Homer, duh!

Split Personality

Last night body shaving and putting on make up were described as acts of vanity. We should just present our (natural) (face) selves to the world. It was pointed out that the speaker spends more time than any other at the table in the bathroom in the morning. That in response to another who suggested that good hygiene (grooming) is not the same as vanity.

Later on it occurred to me that we all present different faces of ourselves in different situations. I was thinking specifically of my online personas - the occasional and opinionated blogger, the saucy tweeter, the alternately edgy, outraged and whimsical facebooker and the professional observer of all things marketing and social media on linkedin.  Never mind that the real me - my truly favorite personal interests of writing, reading and jazz and trance music only show up in the privacy of my home or the subway but not online. Sometimes in the office but except for the infrequent book update on linkedin, strictly in the offline world.

Is there any meaning here? I am deliberate in what and how I show up online because I can be. Similarly for me words and music are mostly private inner life experiences. Is this vanity? I think it just is.

Consider another aspect of this: external perspectives of ourselves. People only see slices of other people. Based on what we show, what they want or expect to see and the nature of the interaction. At work colleagues may see the cool, rational self. At home the family may see the bitter, angry, frustrated, tired self. In the grocery store perhaps the gracious self shows up. Behind the wheel the aggressive road warrior. All different aspects of same person. None fully representative.

I think Hannah Arendt said something about the story of one's life cannot be told until her death. After death one might be able to put a life in perspective. Granted there's a lot of biographical and autobiographical evidence to the alternative. Just look at Mark Twain's bio published on his express orders 100 years after his death in order to quell controversy at the time of his death.

Still the who and what we are and our motivations and intents are never fully knowable either internally by our selves or externally by other peoples views of us.

So why the characterization of grooming as vanity? Or I should say more precisely the view of an act as grooming by one yet vanity by another. A mourning for the loss of a child to young adulthood? A disagreement of values? A projection of a perception?

I'm not sure the question is answerable. Each participant saw and heard what they saw and heard just as each presented what they wanted to show. It's never possible to know the full truth of a person.

Missive #20: Eisenhower's Revenge - Endless War

I really wanted to write a nifty pithy piece on the prescient president Eisenhower. There was a small article in the New Yorker a few months ago about newly discovered evidence that "military industrial complex" and "permanent arms industry" were actually his fears (and not those of his speech writers or other influencers).

I quote the article in the Dec 10 issue that discussed Ike's farewell address:

"Speaking three nights before the end of his Presidency, in 1961, Eisenhower warned of a “scientific-technological élite” that would dominate public policy, and of a “military-industrial complex” that would claim “our toil, resources, and livelihood.”

If you aren't worried about what people with think of your reading choices (according to my kids I'm an elitist for reading the New Yorker but that's okay because they're hipsters for listening to NPR & indie freak folk rock), there's more at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/12/20/101220ta_talk_newton#ixzz1ITjY5h4r

That little piece got me thinking about the ridiculous number of wars in which we are ensnared and how over extended we are militarily.

And then the March Harper's Index had an interesting tidbit about the increase in defense spending in the last decade:

Estimated percent change since 2000 in the U.S. defense budget, not including the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq: +80%.

Outrageous. In 10 years, the defense budget grew 80%. If that's not evidence of Eisenhower's prescience, I don't know what else we need as proof although someone, I'm sure, will take issue with my conclusion. (Hint, how much did entitlement spending grow over the same period? I assume it's not 80% but I'm also not going to look for the stat.)


Back on Feb 25 I posted a facebook status about this and asked why the current budget debate was so silent about defense spending. It all seemed to be about defunding NPR and shutting down the government.

Well liberals got their backs up over entitlement program cuts and have come out guns ablazing with the cut defense spending argument. I'll do a separate little post full of facts and figures about the budget and setting up the cut defense spending argument in a couple of days. Wouldn't want all my research to go to waste.

But, today we have this wsj piece on the GOP plan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576240751124518520.html#articleTabs%3Darticle. Read the comment from Gabriela Sbarcea for a nicely encapsulated liberal view of the proposal. Lines sharply drawn. Guns drawn. Shot's fired.

I spent all weekend working on this post. I researched the budget and defense spending. I looked for debates and dialogues about the current proposals. You know what I've ended up with so far?

Nothing but frustration. I can't work up any outrage on this topic any more.

I'm really tired of America being the world's cop. And I'm sick of being bamboozled by politicians set on transferring wealth to fewer and fewer hands while bankrupting our country.

Outrage is difficult where serious anger exists. Outrage requires detachment. Anger implies attachment. I'm too attached. I'm going to go watch some un-reality television.

Missive #19: Forgive me for I have sinned

I have failed to maintain my blog and for that I should be flogged. But today I am pissed. I mean moved to write. Did anyone see my FB post yesterday? I shared the insightful (and well established if little known) observations from the current MJ article: It's the Inequality Stupid. The folks at Mother Jones have started a Plutocracy Now series that's got me riled (I must remember the reason why I stopped subscribing - not good for the blood pressure!!!).

But okay, the MJ article showed up in Yahoo News as I was checking my email. And then this morning I'm reading Thomas Frank's piece in the February issue of Harpers called "Servile Disobedience" which addresses issues of class and the psychology of the very very rich and some characteristics they apparently lack like the ability to listen, read facial expressions or empathize. It is reminiscent of the diagnosis of the corporation as sociopath (for those of you who have yet to watch the documentary The Corporation, you must). Is it any wonder than that our society is so heartless? Those in charge lack the basic human ability - emotion - to care.

So it got me to thinking. Who am I to be? Crusading fighter for justice? Passionate advocate for peace and compassion? Cowed cog content in the lower ranks of the upper 10th? It gets harder and harder to resist clamp down on ignore the call of the soul.

Courage is the mantra for the new job. But courage to what? of what? My convictions? Which ones? To be a passionate advocate for my team? To be a voice for the people?

Is my self-interest best served by speaking truth or by ensuring my kids educational and economic future? And why does it have to be such a stark choice? Where is the third way? Do no harm and live your life empathetically (although not necessarily philanthropically in my case which seems a bit of the pot calling the kettle...)?

An educated citizenry is necessary to the just functioning of democracy so my choice is not faint. The education I want for my children is both to think and to earn. I am to doom them to my dilemma. (And in defense of my philanthropy, I do pay for the best in public education both in my taxes and through my support of public radio and magazines like Harpers & Rolling Stone which have one of the best political reports out there in MT). (And unlike the really really rich I have no options to hide my income).

I am angry and riled and cannot see the way no matter that I can see the true and authentic. We are being absolutely lied to by our media and in our education systems. We are economically threatened or marginalized if we speak or choose activism. Plutocrats - even those like George Soros still exist to serve themselves and their own. He cannot be playing a truly altruistic game can he?

So I am left with only my questions and my fears and my doubts. It sucks to be a liberal and a thinking person.

Missive # 18: Wildly Improbably Options

There is a legend in my husband's family about the time pop quit the ad agency (he's an artist) in frustration, left all four kids with his mother in law and took his wife to Mexico for six weeks. I'm trying to treat this period as my Mexico. 'Cept I'm not in Mexico (Martha's Vineyard this week, vacationing with the Obamas). Also, my kids are not with my mother, my step mother or my mother in law. And also it's only for a week. But whatever. I am still contemplating wildly improbably options.

I just wrote to a friend that I am practicing insight meditation to open my mind to these previously unconsidered notions. Perhaps I should explain my method. The first four days here it rained and the wind blew. Nor'easter style. You would think the god who is our president would order up better weather for his vacation. But perhaps like me he just wanted an excuse to read ceaselessly. I wonder if he is also on book # 5.

As a minor digression, here's what I've read this week:

1. Anita Brookner's Strangers (heartwrenching loneliness)
2. Jeanette Wells' memoir The Glass Castle (affirming)
3. Jayne Ann Krantz Burning Hot (trashy mindlessness has it's place)
4. Bad Things Happen which is a first novel by an author who's name escapes me but a first rate mystery
5. Menonite in a Little Black Dress, also a memoir by another forgotten author but funny

If my friend Elise ever finishes the current Janet Evanovich I'll read that next. Otherwise it's Ian McEwan's Saturday. And actually since tomorow is Saturday perhaps that's as it should be.

That digression was not in fact a tangent but the point. How I practice insight meditation. I read. I also sit in the sun, at the beach, on the porch and watch the sky water clouds letting random thoughts pass through. Wildly improbably options.

Just this morning I was thinking about how much I love music. It is my mother's greatest frustration that I don't have a piano because despite years since the last time I touched a piano, I can sit down and play simple pieces well. I love the piano. And listening to music of any sort. I would truly enjoy being a programmer or producer or musicologist for Muzak or some other company that programs the sound track of your life. I'm one of those people who actually listens to the music in the grocery store Urban Outfitters Buddha Bar and tries to identify the songs I have in my collection. Is it too late for me to go back to school for music? I hear Columbia has a great program.

Missive #17: A Vacation of the Mind

This is my Mexico. It's a legend of the family myth type. In my version of the story I don't actually get to decamp to the desert southwest surfing coast flutterby land. In the true...accepted? version of the legend, the protagonist and his lovely wife leave the kids with gramma and jet to the mexican riveria for six weeks. Soul searching meaning of life insight seeking experiences follow until the path forward to follow the bliss is revealed.

My mexico is all in my mind. Forty days in the desert, sweet as it sounds, never gonna happen. But bliss searching meaning of life insight seeking might be kind of interesting.

Or I could just go to the beach (check), read a trashy novel (double check) and drink wine (no doubt) until the fog lifts and awareness descends.

Missive # What? Life in the Country

Creak. Groan. My daughter beat me at Scrabble today. We shopped for antique postcards and chocolate. Patrick Wolf, Edward Sharp, Florence's Machine and Debbie Reynolds entertained us. Life is my employer and I am a free agent.

Will get back on track with a new and improved message soon.