I Have Nothing to Say Today

That heading is not some clever shtick. It’s the literal truth. I am writing a blog post with nothing to say.

I just love writing, playing with words and ideas, it’s an itch I have to scratch. So here I am scratching it, even without actually having anything to say. I just picked up a pen and paper with no plan, to see what would come.

And now I’ve already managed six sentences. Tempting to title this, “My Best Blog Post Ever.”

Of course there is sooo much to write about. Trump, Trump, Trump, Putin and Ukraine, Middle East, religion, AI, culture wars, Trump, consciousness and the self, China, death, Trump. Et cetera. But I’ve been there, done that. Endlessly.

So complex are human life and the world, endless might the topics indeed seem. Yet even for such a polymath, a Renaissance man, like me, they’re actually finite.

Notice I wrote “me” where many people would say “myself.” They’d be wrong, at least per traditional grammar. But language evolves. Oh, and I’ve written before about this too: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/me-myself-and-i/

Well, I’m struggling here to gin up content for this essay whose point is writing about nothing. Nineteen sentences now, so I guess I’m succeeding, sort of.

Actually, nothingness itself is a topic. Philosophers have wrestled with what it really means, especially in the context of how the universe came to be; why there is something rather than nothing. But that too I’ve already written about: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/why-does-the-world-exist/

Now maybe there’s something rather than nothing in this blog post. If you call this something.

Say, did I tell you the one where a guy walks into a bar every night and orders three drinks? Yeah: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2018/01/06/paul-auster-travels-in-the-scriptorium-the-prisoner-of-time-and-a-bar-joke/

Or the one where the guy walks into a doctor’s office with a frog on his head? Yes, that one too: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2022/09/19/my-birthday-gift-a-marriage-culture/

Or my favorite, the masochist in the bar who meets a sadist? Yup: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/im-not-making-this-up-dave-barrys-greatest-hits/

So, what does one do, writing a disquisition with nothing to say?

This.

And now that I’ve scratched my itch, I can move along to wasting time in other ways. And so, dear reader, can you.

Too Much Moralism

I’m very moralistic. Not a claim of personal morality; rather, another applicable word is judgmental.

Some decades ago, non-judgmentalism was the thing. We weren’t supposed to judge people; this was especially true in academia. I considered that loopy, because humans are evolutionarily programmed to be judgment machines; distinguishing good from bad, right from wrong, being needful for our living in social groups.

Of course — especially in academia — nonjudgmentalism has since been supplanted by its antithesis — a harsh short of moralistic judgmentalism. That’s “cancel culture.” Such moralism has also infected our politics, with growing numbers of both Democrats and Republicans deeming the other party not just wrong but evil.

At one time I considered Democrats the chief culprits, their demonization of Republicans reflecting caricatures. But then Republicans went on to actually fulfill those caricatures; while also going one better in their own demonization of opponents —based again on caricatures, this time rather more fantastical.

That, at least, is my view of things, recognizing that others may differ. I see an asymmetry: while Republican hate for Democrats is based largely on lies, Democrats’ hatred for Republicans reflects the reality. Of great evil, activating my own moralistic judgmentalism.

The same applies to Russia’s Ukraine crime; and to Israel’s Gaza atrocity. More great evils, triggering my moralism.

One is led to invoke Burke’s line that the only thing needed for evil to triumph is good people doing nothing. And I feel justified in my moralistic judgmentalism by a long lifetime of thought and study, giving me a body of knowledge and understanding, a contextual framework for valid judgments.

But recently we watched a YouTube conversation between two of my favorite writers, Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt, moderated by Jordan Peterson. A key point was that there’s too much moralism, which can itself be an evil.

Most wars in history, it was noted, have been fought not for material aims or real interests, but for moralistic motivations. That’s very true of Russia’s war on Ukraine, driven by a witch’s brew of perverted moralism.

The problem, as the discussants observed, is that when you think your opponents are not merely wrong but evil, then that can seemingly justify the most extreme measures to defeat them. Especially when, as so often, God is in the picture. A proven recipe for horrors.

We’re not quite there, yet, in America, but we’re getting there. The January 6 insurrectionists were acting with moralistic fervor (however misled and misguided). It’s true of the whole Trump cult. Many literally believe themselves God’s warriors. That’s why our democracy is endangered — their moralism trumps democracy — hence they won’t accept being beaten by votes. The “stolen election” lie was a pretext to legitimize that stance. But even if electoral defeat is incontestable, they still won’t accept it.

As for my own moral fervor, it’s undimmed. But I’m content to vent it by writing, and won’t go out and shoot anyone. Yet, joining a throng to storm the Capitol, if necessary to save democracy, is not inconceivable.

I’m no pacifist. Some things are worth fighting for.

My Jan. 2 book talk: “The Democrat Party Hates America”

On Tuesday, January 2, I will critique Mark Levin’s book, The Democrat Party Hates America. In the context of our whole political landscape, I promise a rock-‘em sock-’em barnburner review. 

Location: Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Ave., Albany

NEW TIME for these talks: 2:00 PM

Light refreshments served. 

Happy Holidays!

Frank S. Robinson

My Failed Psychedelic Quest

“We should do this,” I told my wife, watching a Netflix documentary about psilocybin and other psychotropic substances, their growing therapeutic use, and mind-expanding capabilities. I’d read about this. The film, featuring food writer Michael Pollan, showed such drug use in controlled settings, shepherded by knowledgeable professionals. That’s what I suggested we try.

I was 21 at the time of Woodstock. I missed it. In fact, missed the ’60s altogether, so socially out of it that it all passed me by. In the ’70s I did hang out with some users, but never joined in. I liked reality well enough.

But what the film talked about seemed different. There are two aspects.

One is therapeutic, helping people with problems by reorienting their minds. Like an older woman featured, facing terminal cancer. And Ben, a young man plagued by OCD. Which basically just went away after a single drug session — resetting his brain so it would say, “I don’t need that nonsense any more.”

But the other aspect is mind expansion. People described psilocybin experiences as powerful and transformative, providing new insight into their own consciousness and selfhood.

That’s what intrigued me. I don’t have “problems;” I think I’m at the far end of the spectrum on mental health. No past traumas needing work. I feel pretty clear-sighted about myself and my reality.

Indeed, one qualm about trying psilocybin was “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” However, I considered my mental edifice strong enough to withstand whatever this might involve. One person in the film likened the power of the psilocybin experience to having a child or losing a parent. I reflected that I’d experienced both, and powerful as those were, they did not discombobulate my psyche.

But I’ve long tried hard to understand consciousness and selfhood. We know consciousness somehow arises from the functioning of our neurons, but how exactly seems to defy scientific explanation (so far). Likewise the self: Philosopher David Hume said it was futile trying to catch hold of his self through introspection. The problem is using the self to search for itself. Some thinkers say the self is an illusion.

I didn’t imagine psilocybin would provide a “eureka” resolving this. Yet it did seem to hold some promise of enlarged insight. I was not seeking a “mystical” or “spiritual” experience, being the ultimate materialist, firmly planted in reality.

But I understand (albeit imperfectly) how a psychotropic substance alters physical brain operation, and since our perceptions and what we make of them are functions of those brain workings, thus might psychotropics alter one’s consciousness (temporarily, one assumes) — opening a different window upon reality. That’s what I hoped to experience.

Some psilocybin trippers report it left them feeling more okay with the prospect of death. I’m pretty free of fears and anxieties, and that applies to death. I accept the inevitability. And while the idea of nonexistence is terrifying of course, the matter is muddied by the fact that I won’t ever consciously experience it.

After the film, some cursory googling found that kind of guided experience not readily accessible. But then, for my 75th birthday, my amazing wife presented me with a done deal, in Santa Barbara, thanks to one of her poetry contacts. We duly made travel and lodging arrangements.

But two days before departure, the session was cancelled because its leader got Covid. We went to Santa Barbara anyway and had a lovely time exploring the place. The thing was supposed to be rescheduled. But reading the latest stuff they sent out, it seemed a lot more “woo woo” than we were comfortable with. So we gave up on that. And decided to just go for pot.

Neither of us had ever been stoned. I had tried toking, a few years prior, late one night with an octogenarian woman friend. It had no effect, though supposedly, that’s sometimes true the first time.

Meanwhile now, legal shops were opening in Massachusetts. My wife, while traveling, stopped at one, but they required cash only, which she lacked. New York was supposed to open the floodgates, but that program, typically for this state, got bunged up by bureaucracy and litigation. However, another of my wife’s poet friends, with much drug experience, came through for us with a whole buffet of products.

First we tried smoking with her. Once again, repeated puffs did nothing for me; or my wife.

Next, gummies — putting our toes in the water, cautiously, we each ate half of a low dosage one. Nothing. Then we tried whole ones. Still nothing.

Another kind was supposed to be stronger. My wife tried that by herself, lest we both go kablooey. This time, the effect was pronounced, and not in a good way. She had a very unpleasant few hours.

So we finally decided to pull the plug on the whole thing.

When we were smoking together with the poet friend, she suggested that maybe my problem was that my mental baseline was already a natural high. Could be right.

Trade Wars: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot (and Elsewhere)

Free trade is bad — for some people — but good for most. Protectionism is good for some, bad for most. But those profiting from it know it, and reward politicians catering to their special interests. While most who get screwed don’t even realize it.

For most of U.S. history, Democrats opposed protectionism as a scam benefiting a few at the expense of the many. But then they lost their way on this, pressured by unions in certain industries.

Republicans were traditionally the protectionist party, at the behest of business interests. In the late 20th Century they saw the light and plumped for free trade. But that turns out to have been an aberration, and now “populist” protectionism scores cheap political points from voters who don’t know better.

Leaving free trade an orphaned idea. And it’s happening worldwide, populists and special interests ganging up together everywhere to hobble free trade.

Adam Smith centuries ago observed that if another country can sell us widgets cheaper than we can make them ourselves, we should buy theirs, and put our efforts instead into producing stuff where we enjoy our own “comparative advantage.” Economist David Ricardo showed how every nation benefits by doing this, making the whole world richer. And during most of the past century, such free trade globalization hugely boosted world living standards, lifting literally billions from poverty. Now tragically we’re turning away from that.

It’s true that some jobs can be protected from being “shipped overseas” by keeping out cheaper competing foreign goods. But then consumers pay more. Competition in a free market forces producers to accept the lowest possible prices, with most of the potential profits actually captured by consumers. And if they’re allowed to buy cheaper foreign imports, they have more to spend on other things. Which creates jobs. So “protectionism” does not mean more jobs overall.

Then too, some “protected” goods are raw materials used by other businesses. When protectionism makes those inputs costlier, prices must rise, hurting in turn anyone buying the end products. When Trump imposed tariffs to keep out cheaper foreign steel, a study reported by The Economist calculated that this cost users of steel (like auto companies) $650,000 for every steel job “saved.”

And remember the controversy over NAFTA, a free trade deal with Mexico and Canada? We did lose some jobs to Mexico. But it made Mexico much more prosperous — enabling Mexicans to buy more stuff from us. Again creating more U.S. jobs. A richer Mexico is good for America.

Trump’s tariffs and trade wars were idiotic policy that hurt America. He was obsessed with our trade deficit — the excess of imports over exports — as if that somehow makes us poorer. But (per Adam Smith) it really shows how much we’re taking advantage of the economic bargains on offer. We’ve run a trade deficit every year since 1975 and we’re still the world’s premier economic powerhouse. (And the trade deficit actually grew by nearly 25% under Trump.)

Meantime Trump cast his Chinese tariffs — a tariff is a tax on imported goods — as costing China money. One of his biggest lies. In fact it was American consumers paying, because of course the tax amount gets added to an item’s price on store shelves.

Now Trump is doubling down (tripling, actually), promising 10% tariffs on all imported goods (raised from a current 3% average). It’s been calculated this would cost U.S. households $2000 annually on average. But the whole world would suffer from this further blow to the free trade ethos that improved living standards for billions.

Just one more way in which another Trump presidency would be catastrophic.

Unfortunately the Democratic party can’t call out this economic madness because it’s complicit. The very words “free trade” are now politically toxic, so President Biden has pretty much retained Trump’s tariffs. And his “green” agenda centers upon protectionism in one guise or another, full of government subsidies and tax breaks to coddle chosen U.S. businesses, with “made in America” requirements to keep out imports of gizmos that might (Heaven forbid) be cheaper — and thus more efficient at climate mitigation. It’s a bass-ackward approach that shoots itself in the foot (if I may mix anatomical metaphors).

Anti-semitism and Cancel Culture

Here’s a letter to the editor I sent the local paper yesterday:

First, criticizing Israel is not necessarily anti-semitism. I’m of Jewish ancestry, my mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany. But I think Israel has a government of extremist zealots, its treatment of Palestinians has long been atrocious, and Hamas’s October 7 atrocities don’t justify the crimes against humanity Israel now perpetrates in Gaza.

But protests against them too often do veer into anti-semitism, tarring all Jews with Israeli government crimes. (An echo of the ancient “blood libel” propelling Jew hatred.) The frequent chant, “From the River to the Sea,” is virtually an explicit call for wiping out the whole Israeli nation — i.e., genocide.

Yet — to avoid deeming this unacceptable — several major University presidents, testifying before Congress, tied themselves in Talmudic knots. The great irony here is that such universities have no trouble condemning, banning, suppressing, punishing, and “cancelling” speech far less objectionable — indeed, often expressions really within the American mainstream that nevertheless transgress “politically correct” or “woke” dogmas. Yet anti-semitism somehow isn’t politically incorrect??

Another huge irony here is that those University leaders had to be called out by . . . wait for it . . . Representative Elise Stefanik, notorious for herself defending the indefensible, including Trump’s attempt to overthrow our democracy.

Why do I increasingly feel the world is going nuts?

How Do We See Things?

I’m not one to take anything for granted. That includes existence itself.

It’s been observed that if some physics parameters, like the precise strength of gravity, were even slightly different, stars and planets (and humans) could not exist. As though the Universe were designed for us. This is called the “anthropic principle” arguing for a higher power — or the anthropic fallacy. The simple refutation is that if the Universe were not conducive to our existence, we wouldn’t be here to know it. And it’s reasonable to posit the Big Bang wasn’t some unique event. That universes are birthed repeatedly, with perhaps varying parameters; many stillborn. That ours has parameters enabling our existence is no surprise.

Yet as I experience the world, in all its dazzling complexity, I’m often struck by its seeming unlikeliness. That includes not only my own existence, but my ability to perceive it. I originally scribbled this sitting out on my deck surrounded by a visual phantasmagoria of foliage.

While reading a book by Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment. Largely a history. I was stopped by a chart of “Central Events in Physics,” listing one in Arabia in 1025 by Alhazen who, addressing the properties of lenses, “correctly states that the object seen is the source of light rays.”

In other words, photons. I thought to myself: So we see things because they spew out these particles that hit our eyes? All those leaves on all those trees in my constantly changing visual field are doing that, how many times per second? And how, pray tell, are these photons created? Is every molecule of matter somehow constantly manufacturing them? From what? Just so we humans can see them? Sounds like an absurd, ridiculously childish theory.*

Yet of course it’s science. (Amazing that that Arabian guy figured it out a thousand years ago.) I’m no physicist; maybe if I were it would make more sense to me. Maybe I don’t actually understand what I’m talking about here. But still, it does seem awfully strange.

Then there’s the problem of how we turn that bombardment of photons into visual images. Not so simple. Is there a little being in one’s brain (a “homunculus”) seeing the pictures as though projected onto a screen? That’s been called the “Cartesian Theatre” after philosopher Rene Descartes. But how would the homunculus see? Is there a smaller person in their head? And so on . . . .

No. But how does it work? How do our neurons process those signals to create what we see as a coherent visual picture? In fact, we do it even without photons — we can see pictures in our minds with eyes closed. Science does not actually have a solid explanation.

We started with the anthropic fallacy, concerning our existence. But imagine a physics that didn’t include this weird crazy thing we call photons. Actually very easy to imagine. And what seems even crazier is that we have brains that can convert photons into pictures. Without that — without vision having evolved — nothing like our kind of life could have developed. Blind people do function, but a blind species could never have built the kind of technological existence we enjoy.

So I don’t take it for granted. Rather, it seems practically impossible.

*A more plausible one might be our eyes sending out beams that come back with information. If this too seems silly, remember that bats navigate exactly that way, using sound pulses.

Bar Trump from the 2024 Ballot?

A movement’s afoot to block Trump’s candidacy. Based on a 14th Amendment provision barring from federal office anyone who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States. Adopted in 1868, this targeted former Confederates, but it’s still in effect. Some believe it should apply to Trump due to his culpability for January 6, 2021 and related events; and legal proceedings are unfolding accordingly.

Recently a Colorado state judge, Sarah Wallace, issued a 102-page decision rejecting such a ballot challenge, which Trump hailed as a big victory. But, not so fast — in fact Wallace ruled that January 6 was an insurrection, and Trump was culpable. Only on a technicality was he not disqualified: Wallace deemed it unclear that, in this context, the president is considered an “officer of the United States.” A dubious (if not weird) cop-out likely to reach the Supreme Court.

The plain language — and intent— of the 14th Amendment’s insurrection disqualification should surely apply to Trump. It was aimed at keeping out of government people disloyal to this nation. Despite Trump and his cultists plastering the word “patriot” all over themselves, his actions in question, amounting to an attempted coup, showed a fundamental disloyalty to the institutions central to what America is all about. (Trump has also mused about “terminating” the Constitution.) These people cannot be loyal to something they don’t even seem to understand.

Nevertheless — and much as I fear electing Trump would be the end of the world — keeping him off the ballot is an extremely terrible idea. (Also highly unlikely to happen in Republican-controlled states.)

The Trumpian threat to our democracy is something that must be resolved by that democracy. We’ve been having far too much decided by courts (like abortion, gun rights, gay rights, voting rights) rather than politics. This is a consequence of our civic dysfunction, with our political vehicles for resolving issues being paralyzed. And over-reliance on courts is itself a contributor to that political illness, making many people feel the whole idea of democracy is a charade or sham.

Keeping Trump off the ballot would aggravate that, bigly. We’ve already had one presidential election, in 2000, that many felt was inappropriately decided by judicial fiat. At least in 2000 voters did get to vote. Most Trumpers swallow the lie that their idol was cheated of victory in 2020 — and will believe likewise even if he loses in 2024 by another fair-and-square vote.

Yet that’s the only possible way to lance this boil. How much more societally toxic it will be if there isn’t even actual voting, with Trump kept out of office by other means. No matter how legally appropriate that might indeed be, folks already conspiracy-minded will go batshit wild. Many have guns. A recipe for literal civil war.

Yes, Trump’s election would be a catastrophe. But have this vote we must. If Americans cannot summon up their civic soul and with our sacred ballots vomit out this poison, then there’s no saving us anyway.