Alter Ipse Amicus - A Friend is Another Self

My apologies for neglecting this blog over the last couple of weeks, my Teach for America training has kept me busy, and so has blogging about TFA on my other blog. For what feels like the nth time in my life, I recently left a group of friends and a home to go make new friends and a new home. This has led me to think about friends.

As our lives move us around, we have lots of different kinds of friends. For today’s purposes I am going to split them into two groups. Friends of choice, and friends of circumstance. I am often struck as I meet up with old friends or extended family members how much easier it is to distinguish between these two groups. At some happy times when I meet up with an old friend or family member, it is as if the time and distance that has separated us physically hasn’t put any distance in our friendship. We are friends not only because of shared experiences, beliefs, interests, but also a general enjoyment of each other’s company and a feeling of mutual understanding. Even if we haven’t seen each other or talked to each other for some time, we are able to catch up quickly on each other and quickly enjoy our previous friendship. Meeting up with my close friend from Paris days here in L.A. has been precisely such a meeting.

Other times, meeting an old friend turns very awkward when I feel that I have nothing to talk to them about, and sometimes I wonder why we were friends in the first place. I call these friends of circumstance. We were friends because we shared some experience, were members of a common group, or shared an interest. Once those commonalities are no longer shared, our friendship can easily dissolve. Once we stop communicating, our friendship dies. Our understanding one for the other does not stretch beyond simple circumstances.

I think that friends of choice are the friends that we would choose, and indeed do choose among alternatives. Sometimes in any given social group, I have a hard time distinguishing who are merely my friends due to circumstance, and who are my friends because we have literally chosen each other. Because we don’t have the time in this life to stay closely connected to everyone we meet and would like to befriend, I think that time can reveal some of the character of a friendship.

Pleasant Beggars

Beggars across the world have a lot in common I think; In every country and continent they seem to me to have an air of beaten down quiet desperation coupled with a persistence born of necessity sometimes mixed with a tinge of madness. As I’m writing this, I realize that most people don’t talk to a lot of beggars… I usually don’t carry on conversations with them, but as a missionary in Italy, I felt a mandate to talk to everyone, superstars, cardinals, and beggars a like. Given that there are a lot more beggars than there are cardinals I seemed to talk to a lot of them.

Today I walked out of a pharmacy and a beggar at the exit greeted me with the usual desperate beaten down tone “good morning” could you spare any change? I had run from my dorm, and had only brought my credit card, and so I told him that I didn’t have any. His response surprised me. “Oh that’s ok man, don’t worry about it man, you have a good day man, and God bless man.” I smiled and started the walk back up the hill. Walking out of the grocery store I was greeted by another beggar: “Hey could you spare any change?” I gave the same response, and the beggar responded in the same warm tone as his colleague that I had encountered earlier “Well you go and have a good day then”

These beggars treated me better than the people cashiers in the stores whose wages I was helping to pay! I wonder what makes L.A. beggars so cheery?

"Classic Case of Deviant Behavior"

I have always been very amused by my sporadic encounters with The Onion. The article pasted below cuts pretty close to home though…

GREENWOOD, IN—Sitting in a quiet downtown diner, local hospital administrator Philip Meyer looks as normal and well-adjusted as can be. Yet, there's more to this 27-year-old than first meets the eye: Meyer has recently finished reading a book. Yes, the whole thing.

"It was great," said the peculiar Indiana native, who, despite owning a television set and having an active social life, read every single page of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. "Especially the way things came together for Scout in the end. Very good."

According to behavioral psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Schulz, Meyer's reading of entire books is abnormal and may be indicative of a more serious obsession with reading."Instead of just zoning out during a bus ride or spending hour after hour watching YouTube videos at night, Mr. Meyer, unlike most healthy males, looks to books for gratification," Schulz said. "Really, it's a classic case of deviant behavior."

One Ring to Rule Them All

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them…

I started reading Tolkien when I was seven or eight, and since have read everything in his Middle-Earth saga. Since then I have always wanted to see, and maybe even have the One Ring*. Last night was my first exposure to Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle operas. I was struck by the many similarities between Tolkien's and Wagner’s work. Before talking about them, I want to note that Tolkien would not appreciate the comparison. He hated being compared to Wagner, and didn’t like the man much either. When the Sweedish translator for The Lord of the Rings compared the rings in Tolkien and Wagner’s works, Tolkien responded “Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases”. However, the similarities between the two, on the surface at least, are obvious. Both storylines include: rings that bring untold powers to their possessors, moral and physical stretching, pain, and change for those who bear the rings, broken swords are remade; grey deities wander the earth, dragons with vulnerable spots guarding treasures, etc.

The idea of a ring of power is not original to either of them, we can trace it back through the corridors of time for quite a distance. Both Tolkien and Wagner cite Norse and other mythologies as sources of inspiration. Indeed the Norse Volsunga Saga (13th century I think) contains the story of the Andvaranaut ring that was stolen from its owner, brought riches and power to its bearer, and was cursed to bring tragedy to any who wore it. The Austrian Nibelungenlied and the similar Icelandic Poetic Edda and Völuspà (6-7th century) also contain stories of rings, dragons, treasures, etc that both Wagner and Tolkien draw from. Greek Mythology also has a story about a ring of power. The story of Gyges’ Ring is cited by Plato, Herodotus, Plutarch, and Cicero. Gyges was a sheepherder until he stole a solid gold magical ring that made him invisible when he put it on, it also enabled him to seize control of Lydia and become the first tyrant of the ancient world. Historical records show that Gyges really was king of Lydia in the 8th century BCE, so I might have to go back a long ways to find the original one ring.

Finding the ring is less interesting than tracing the idea through history. I certainly don’t know and haven’t touched on all of the legends that contain this idea, and it may be that many of the myths and stories mentioned evolved independently of each other. Indeed literature often manifests this repetition of themes; there is even a school of literary criticism that studies how various archetypes are woven in stories throughout the ages. Tolkien himself was one who believed that stories, legends, and myths were reflections of archetypes. Unlike some in the school of thought, Tolkien believed that literary types are reflections of true eternal archetypes. Tolkien said “History and Legend taken together lead us to the true myth: the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.” Indeed Tolkien’s conversion of the then atheist C.S. Lewis came about largely along these lines of reasoning. Lewis saw that many, even almost all cultures have creation, flood, and other common myths. He concluded that everyone made them up to explain questions that they couldn’t or didn’t want to answer rationally. Tolkien took the opposite position, and eventually convinced Lewis that each of these legends and explanations is really only a reflection, of one True Myth. I tend to agree with Tolkien that the great themes of myth, legend, and literature have their birth in real human experience. Thus I believe that so many cultures have myths about a flood because at some point there was a huge flood. This belief leads me back to the original question of this post … where is the original Ring of Power? Has there ever been a ring that gave its bearer great power and wealth?

Well the only answer I can find to that isn’t very romantic, but indeed, ancient ruler’s rings, especially solid gold rings, came to symbolize their power. In many instances, the King’s signet was used as a stamp to mint coinage, thus whoever had the King’s ring could create wealth and buy power. In ancient Greece and Persia, rings were sometimes used as money prior to coins. I conclude this post with a fitting poem about the search for the ring from Bilbo Baggins himself:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

--Bilbo Baggins

*While I don’t think I ever really believed in a ring of power’s concrete existence, a comical family anecdote may have fueled this search: My mother was never much of a Tolkien fan until she met my father, who is a Tolkien fanatic. He converted her thorougly enough during their courtship that she had the words “My Precious” inscribed on the inside of his golden wedding band that he wears to this day.

David Bednar vs Oprah Winfrey?

My sister and I both graduated in the last couple of weeks. I attended the commencement ceremonies both at BYU and at Stanford. The commencement speakers at the two events appeared to be about as different as possible. David A Bednar, the calm academic LDS Apostle was asked to speak at BYU, while Oprah Winfrey, the lively Chicago native talk show host was asked to speak at Stanford. Their styles of delivery could not have been more different. Elder Bednar speaks very correctly, succinctly, and concisely – like an academic well trained in public speaking. Oprah is also well trained albeit in a very different style. She is boisterous, hip, and engaging in her tone and diction. She sounds anything but academic, and appealed much more to the emotion of the crowd than Elder Bednar did.

Elder Bednar’s speech focused on learning to love education, and on learning to serve using our education, he also touched on following the spirit and being happy. I could not have been more surprised when Oprah stood up and said that she wanted to talk about three things: following your feelings, serving with your education, and being happy. Despite their radically different modes of presentation, their basic message to the graduating class of ’08 was exactly the same! In speaking with a few others who attended both ceremonies they confirmed my feeling that the two speeches were really harping on the same exact themes.

This has given me cause to reflect on the various costumes and make-up that truth can wear around us and has taught me a valuable lesson about learning that neither Elder Bednar not Oprah touched on. I am used to receiving truth wearing a certain style of clothes. Generally I find the way academic and religious truth is presented to me help me to understand and internalize their relative weight and importance. However, what a tragedy it would be for me or anyone else to shut out entire other modes of presenting ideas, and truths merely because the ideas are dressed up differently with perhaps more make-up. I don’t mean to imply that all modes of presenting ideas are equal, or that the presentation doesn’t matter – I believe that it does – but filtering through the presentation to determine the merit of the message is important. In the words of Dallin Oaks, tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to isolate it from careful inspection. In our daily peripatetic, we ought to react with tolerance to various modes of presenting information, and subject them all to careful inspection. Certainly we ought to the allocate our time and efforts into those studies that appear more profitable, but never to the out right exclusion of other possibilities for learning.

Bush, Irresponsability, and Money

As we are coming up on the elections, I want to air the grievance that has bothered me the most about our last eight years of government. This isn’t something that any of the candidates are talking about much, largely I fear because they plan to continue the alarming trend towards governmental and fiscal irresponsibility.

As of April 2008, The US National deficit stood at $9.5 trillion. When President George W Bush’s administration took control in January of 2001, the deficit was $1.2 trillion. Staggering! While small, modest national debts are actually good things for governments, this has gotten out of hand. Just prior to Bush’s election, the nation had recorded a series of record budget surpluses, and the economic forecast looked rosy. Bush had based his campaign promises on the likely continuation of strong economic conditions. The three heads of his campaign promise monster were cutting taxes, strengthening national defense, and adding prescription drug benefits to Medicare. In 2000 these were reasonable promises, and spending the almost embarrassingly large surplus was an important priority. Almost immediately after Bush took control, post 9/11 America greatly changed the reality of the situation. In one year, a $127 billion surplus became a $158 deficit. While some spending was necessary in anti terrorism measures, and economic stimulus, the administration failed to adjust spending and the programs needed by the nation in accordance with prevailing conditions, and worse, our government fell in love with spending irresponsibly.

A few examples will highlight the fiscal mess our capital has become. In Dec 2001 a $60 billion transportation bill past that most of us remember as an airline bailout. That portion of the bill was needed, but much of the spending in the bill was political “pork” – that is spending on Congressmen’s pet programs for constituents. The bill passed almost unanimously with a blind eye turned to the bill’s latter half. Worse was to come. Congress approved a bill for $250 billion in spending on agricultural subsidies that reversed earlier legislation to scale back government involvement in agriculture. Bush approved $2.35 trillion of tax cuts over ten years, one trillion of which came in his second term, well after the surpluses turned to deficits. Also after the surpluses disappeared, bush approved a $500 billion dollar prescription drug bill, which further cripples our social security and Medicare situation instead of improving it. John McCain actually led a group that tracked the use of “earmarks” which are basically ways congress directs money into congressman’s individual projects – the above mentioned political pork. Some of these projects are probably justifiable and needed; however, they are also notorious for the corruption often involved in their appropriation – this is what the scandal over lobbyists and corruption in 2005 was all about. McCain found that during Clinton’s years there were about 3000 a year. During Bush’s second term, we have seen an astonishing 16,000!

What has caused such irresponsibility? In 2002 the Budget Enforcement act was set to expire. This bill basically ensured that congress used pay as you go methods, and was seen as a bulwark of congressional restraint. It was allowed to expire, and congress has basically had the attitude that deficits don’t matter since. This is tremendous short-sighted political gaming with our nation! The antidote for congressional excess is normally the presidential veto, but Bush has been afraid to use it. In his first six years in the white house he did not veto one bill! Every previous president vetoed dozens of bills, but not Bush. A Whitehouse official stated that the president did not wish to challenge house speaker Dennis Hastert because “He thinks he can control him better by not antagonizing him” so instead he lets him walk all over him and in essence has cost the nation billions of dollars that my taxes will eventually have to pay for, but has also cost us a precious check in our checks and balances system.

What I’m looking for in the 2008 election is some restraint, some control, and some governmental responsibility. Someone willing to look down the road and do what is best not for my political party now, but rather for my nation in the long run. Asking something so simple is unfortunately unrealistic.

Top 10 Things I like about Italy:

A disclaimer is probably warranted: this list is certianly incomplete, quickly thought through, and at times perhaps somewhat romanticized.

10) Strange Diseases: Italians have some fanciful ideas about fictional sicknesses that one can catch in weird ways. The two that I am most familiar with are colpo d’aria and mal di fegato. Colpo d’aria literally means hit of air. Italians, especially older Italian women, will tell you that if breeze hits you on the back of the uncovered neck, you will catch a cold. Even on hot summer days some will not allow you to open a door and a window in the same room because the resulting breeze could cause the dreaded colpo d’aria. I have been scolded more than once for failing to realize that I was creating slight air currents by opening a window or door. One especially entertaining example of this phobia came on the top of Ischia. Three of us had just reached the top all hot and sweaty when we were joined by a middle aged Italian man wearing what I only know by the French word “cagoule” – a thin hat that covers the neck and head with a large hole for the face. It was all I could do not to laugh at his precaution for the wind that often blows at the summit of climbs. Mal di fegato is just as fun as colpo d’aria: it means literally bad of liver or liver ache. Lots of things can give you liver ache: water that is too cold, water that is too hot, mixing pasta -- like putting penne and rotini in the same pot, too much oil, salty foods followed too closely by sugary foods etc. While I have never caught either of these diseases during my time in Italy, I have talked to plenty of perfectly rational Italians who are altogether convinced of their veracity – I find this so endearing.

9) Dress: Italians are vain and I love it. They look at your shoes to guess your socio-economic class, and some of them really do pour hundreds and thousands of dollars into a few articles from top designers like Gucci, Armani, Prada, Valentino, Versace etc. Even the men, perhaps especially the men, go to great lengths to care for their hair. Anecdotally, I got my hair cut in Napoli last week, and the guy out of the chair before me paid $60 for whatever he had done. On the way out, he told the barber that he would be back in 11 days. I asked if he really came back that often and the barber said of course, and that many of his clients did. Wow.

8) Beaches: I haven’t been to too many beaches, but the coolest ones I have been to have been in Italy. Just to list a few, the emerald coast in north eastern Sardegna is amazing. Lush green vegetation stops abruptly at white sand beaches that are constantly lapped by short light green water. Pescara on the Adriatic sea looks somewhat similar with miles of sandy beach stretching as far as the eye can see. Taormina on Sicily is a little rockier, but it is beautiful because of the huge cliffs that fall into the beaches just yards away from the water. Ischia has a small beach with hot springs flowing into the Mediterranean creating a unique sensation of warm water getting cooler as you swim away from the shore. Beyond the beaches themselves, there is a beach culture somewhat different from ours that is very relaxed and familial.

7) Opera: I never liked Opera before living in Italy but after a few years here it has really grown on me. The plot line of almost all operas goes something like this: a series of characters meet each other, deceive each other, fall in love, and die. While this seems simplistic perhaps, it is so Italian: highly emotive and dramatic, basically an exploration of the range of possibility in the human voice and human experience.

6) Clever Sayings and Idioms. The history of Italy is so tightly woven with the history of the Catholic church that many sayings and proverbs are related to the church: to say “too bad”, Italians say “che peccato” which means “sin”. There are scores of such examples where bible speak is integrated into Italians daily speech; however, my favorite saying comes from the heart of Rome. If someone is being two-faced, Romans unabashedly exclaim “Tu sei falso come un prete” – you are as false as a priest.

5) Museums, Churches, and other Monuments: Italy has an incomparable wealth of these as far as I know rivaled only in France and England, which it still out does. The Vatican as a whole is a remarkable masterpiece. Its museum is my favorite museum on earth with its unique blend of artifacts from the Greek and Roman world, the richest treasures of the renaissance, a wealth of gifts to the Pope from around the world, and the unforgettable Sistine chapel. Florence is remarkable; it seems to have more museums than streets, and every museum is bursting with precious art. The cathedrals in Milan, Venice, Orvieto, and of course Rome are remarkable and renowned world wide. Perhaps most amazing is that every corner you turn in Italy seems to have some treasure just waiting to tell its secrets. For example, in Genova, we ducked into a tiny little theatre to see the painted ceiling. When the man there saw our interest, he proceeded to give us a full hour tour of the small building that had a 2000 year history just as interesting and varied as her mother city’s.

4) Walks: Every Italian city, from Rome to the lowliest hamlet has a street, or several streets, designated by years of tradition as the city walk. School children, adolescents, college kids, families, couples, and the elderly all gather almost nightly around 8-10 to walk slowly up and down this street. They walk in small groups, sometimes chatting softly, but often not saying much at all, and will walk up and down the street at a snails pace ad nauseum. The younger Italians will buy a gelato and sit down in the piazza for hours. Even the partying college kids will participate in this ritual before finally hitting the bars at 1 or 2 in the morning. The walk, gelato, and piazza is really just a reflection of how they like to spend their time, and I confess to feeling somewhat the same way.

3) Gli Italiani – the people: Their almost ubiquitous dark olive skin and dark hair hints at some of the similar personalities that lay behind their Mediterranean fronts. Italians, especially in the south have an impulse towards hospitality and generosity, even with near strangers. One of my favorite things about them is their remarkable bluntness: when I gain weight here, everyone will tell me “Hey, Adam, you are getting chunky” It isn’t a joke, and they aren’t mocking, merely pointing out what they see. This doesn’t make for good negotiators, but sure is a breath of fresh air in a world starved of transparency.

2) La Dolce Vita: The Italian way of life differs greatly across Italy, but it shares many commonalities that are very attractive to me. Italians care deeply about their families, and often live with or very near their extended family their whole lives. They value friendship, and are fiercely loyal. They also value food, soccer, beauty, comfort, and pleasure. They don’t work nearly as much as we do, and are comfortable in smaller homes and with smaller cars – two things we Americans love to spend our money on. Italians would rather buy a nice dinner and a nice vacation once a year. Italians are generally all extreme pacifists, with good religious intentions, but little true commitment. Their way of life is laid back, and seeks to enjoy the dolce in life.

1) Food: if it is shallow to put food at the top of this list, so be it. Food in Italy is much more than edible materials that get put into mouths; rather food is a philosophy, a daily celebration of life, a nearly sacred ritual. The great food in Italy is generally the poor or the layman’s food. Many of the best dishes only have 3 or 4 ingredients and are incredibly simple to make. The variety from region to region is large, but everywhere, Italian cooking is the center of the day. They are proud of their food, and just as proud of the way they enjoy it. I have been at lunches that lasted six hours. I will never forget they day that we never got up from a lunch when an Italian woman who had graciously invited us for lunch said, “well, its about dinner time, should I put the water on to boil.” When I first arrived in Italy as a missionary I made the mistake of saying something that lumped all pasta in the same category, Angelo Melone who was driving us somewhere promptly let me know that “Tortellini and Tortelloni and not at all the same thing” -- in all actuality, they are only different by about a half an inch of diameter, but to an Italian each food has a specific way of being prepared and served that differentiate it from all others. One of the things I most appreciate is the pace of eating. When you go to an Italian restaurant, you don’t eat, you rent a table. That table is yours as long as you care to stay. Today after we finished eating, the waiter took the plates, and we chatted for a half an hour or more, but had we not asked for the check, no one would have bothered us until closing time some hours later. Food in Italy is about being together and enjoying the simple pleasures of life.