While away (one can, but not very effectively, go thru powder with shot knees and east coast carving skis), I found myself flipping thru Ezra Klein's new tome in a bookstore.
I decided I probably wanted to read it cover to cover because it seems well done (just as soon as I finish Schiller's
Narrative Economics). So I read some reviews.
One was
Ross Douthat's. Normally, I avoid Douthat. He's backward looking, too religious for my tastes, and has no sense of humor. But his review, in which he suggests reading Klein's new book alongside two other books equally if not more compelling and insightful, Michael Lind's
The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the New managerial Elite, and Christopher Caldwell's
Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, lists most if not all of the forces creating modern "conservatism."
One of the books, Lind's, actually attempts to answer the question you often raise: What can be done about conservatism? (How can its adherents be reconciled with those on the other side of cultural/political divide to restore a functioning republic?)
Anyway, you popped into my head when I was reading Klein, and this review.
. . .
You did not pop into my head in the snow. Nothing does, except fear of falling. Post run, spying the pleasant sorts running the lifts (wondering if they were well-heeled retired sorts, or lifers, and concluding, Why would that matter?), and comparing them to the preening movie folk in town, I was left to wonder to myself: Why does one bother with the treadmill? Why would anyone desire complexity in life?
I know it's fleeting romance, but I can't help but wonder if the grizzled rental shop owner, face worn from sun and wind exposure, suggesting demoing the Völkls to anyone who asks, and never having done much more than what he's doing at that moment, didn't have it all figured out from the start.
Then I take the call from a client, a new dispute, and that cancerous analytical architecture takes over... All the pleasant noodling fades and The Processing begins. The "challenge"... That mindless delusion that to be moderately intellectually stimulated by connivance and rule manipulation in the most banal of endeavors should take precedence over the moment.
I make the assessment that these stupid games pay for the lunch. I've done that for a long time. And it's getting harder and harder to do. Lately, I've developed this rationalizing calculation: We're headed into a dire future for those without higher skills... Thank god you have one.
It's always a rationalization. It's always been one.
Alone on a lift, your mind can wander. And it wanders often to this when facing a majestic landscape: If you aren't and haven't been doing that which you really love, that which makes you insanely happy (and no, this does not include doing something you can tolerate because you've become good at it, or something that's "as pleasant as any well paying job can be," or something that seems great because it provides better pay than dad or mom enjoyed and puts you a rung or two higher on the class ladder) you've probably not really lived.*
But, then, you can find yourself looking at the TV in the corner of the bar, watching the banner headings about the impeachment, and you are reassured... It's all just a cosmic farce of no consequence, so who's to say, or care, what you or anyone else has done or not done?
Ram Dass, or whoever is now curating his feed on Instagram, is telling me to kill my ego. Trump is on the TV, ejaculating his id across every inch of the screen, even with the sound off.
What work do I have to sleepwalk through next week?
I wonder if they have openings for bartenders in town? I could make bloody marys for brokers, lawyers, professors, and orthodontists on holiday. Eavesdrop on their indefatigable wisdom. Recall that past when I too Knew So Much. Then catch a fast few runs before the lifts close. Maybe see where those patrons fit in the latest Klein book about polarization in the 2028 election.
I still can't believe Don Jr. inched out Hunter Biden... And it was all based on 400 votes in Idaho.
___
* Logically, if time is the most important asset, then in spending it on any endeavor other than what suits your true inner talents and desires, you are arguably quite irrational. The counter to this is a market based argument that one must do what is valued by the market in order to succeed. This is the same logic reversed. “If all you have is time, it is best to amass the most resources so you may optimize enjoyment of it.” Okay, but then one has essentially said comfort trumps self actualization. Some would argue you can live in accordance with market dictates and moonlight in your real passions (Kafka was a clerk by day, etc.). This is untrue. One must pick and live with the compromise. There is only so much bandwidth and time.
These considerations leave it impossible to say one has led a rational and optimized existence. That’s a tough fact to swallow, but if there’s a silver lining to seeing the bankruptcy and idiocy of those Lind would call elites, and the folly of the similarly unlearned populists fighting with them, it’s a recognition that no one - not the emperor, or any of his subjects - has any clothes. They are know it alls and know nothings, neither of whom have any reverence for or understanding of the law of unintended consequences. To be self actualized in accordance with the rules of a giant kingdom of people none of whom know a hell of a lot about anything seems the most futile of booby prizes.
I enjoy this inescapable conclusion watching the endless charades in our culture, economy, and politics: This must be a simulation, and us a giant punchline for some superior programmers with a very mean sense of humor.
Linear Mode
