driven to distraction

On balance, today's class was good. Wasn't it?

Sure, it threatenend at moments to degenerate into a "town hall," I think that was our moderator's frustrated judgment. As I said to her afterward: we humans could all do a better job of expressing our disagreements without implied rancor, and without trying to hog the arena. I include myself in that critique.

We should go out of our way to be explicit about this: our views may differ, but I'm open to what you can teach me. Jonathan Haidt is deliciously on target: "each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is." It's always the other guy who's blinded by interest and ideology.

But William James said it first and said it better in On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings: If you don't agree with me, you must be blind. That's the ancestral blindness we all inherit. Let's all try harder to remove the motes from our eyes, to speak in turn, and to give one another a fair and respectful hearing.

And that's exactly what we've been doing, during most of our class-time. Lots of interesting things came up again today, and while one of us thought we were in danger of going around in circles I think we were going up and down and all around, and I think that's cool.

So, can there be a false sense of happiness? Are we distracted from the real deal by our drugs and our families and our various worldly attachments (material and organic)? Can you be spiritually and relationally connected but not attached? What's "natural" for humans, and what's so special about being natural anyway? Isn't it sad when children are denied nurture, instruction, and bonded love with other humans who can show them how we live together? And most surprising to me: can feral children be happy, in human terms? So what, if they can't? I didn't know there was an issue here, but I happily await my re-education on the point.

I did a journal reply myself today, and will do so again. I wrote: since happiness is, whatever else it is-- a virtue, a trait of character, a myth,...-- an experience, we shouldn't be casually dismissive of happy episodes just because they don't last forever. What does? Sic transit, Gloria! Between never and forever there are lots of good moments and hours for beings like ourselves to savor and enjoy. Take your transitory happiness as it comes, don't de-value it just because it must go.

And, whatever else it is, happiness must be a feeling of at-homeness in the universe, in our communities, in our classroooms, in our homes. If that feeling is a distraction, distract me.

Anhedonia & consummatory experience

I commented in public on two philosophy papers this morning, one concerned with John Dewey's notion of "consummatory experience" and the other with the phenomenon of "anhedonia" -- the loss of zest, spring, joy, delight -- and what French philosopher Gabriel Marcel might have to teach William James about it. I was concerned to make just a couple of points:

1. Consummatory experiences are better had & enjoyed than talked about & analyzed.

2. The more consummatory experiences you have, the less likely you are to experience anhedonia.

I made those points, but not (of course) so concisely. This being an academic philosophy conference, and philosophy being a discipline that trades chiefly in words, I was expected to talk at much greater length about those two points and others besides. I did not disappoint.

But I hope my confreres will do what I did yesterday: go outside, breath the fresh air, take in some new sights, walk around... even if you don't have a consummatory moment, you'll still feel better and will be far less vulnerable to the dreaded anhedonia (which, btw, our French speaker pronounced not as rhyming with "Caledonia" but instead with the greater stress on the penultimate syllable -- so I learned at least one thing this morning).

I also related my experiences of the past week, which to my mind show that it is indeed possible to chase down your consummations (or at least become open to them) if you want to.

Next stop: the mountainous environs of Asheville, NC. Then, to invoke the inevitable baseball metaphor, I'll round 3d and head for home.

Greetings from sunny Florida!

Venice, FL. It's another lovely day in baseball paradise, at my friend's home south of Sarasota (where I'm meeting another friend at noon for the Reds' game at Ed Smith Stadium). Made my way here after yesterday's game at old McKechnie Field in Bradenton -- Reds whupped the Bucs, but Spring Training isn't about who wins & loses, it's about delighting in the atmospherics, the sun, the possibilities and the hope springing eternal... And here's the sort of thing that can only happen at a Spring Training game: on entering McKechnie Field I was greeted by a retiree renting seat cushions, who abandoned his spiel when he noticed my tee-shirt from "Chocorua, New Hampshire" -- he not only knew the place well, he also knew of William James and the fact that WJ had a summer home there (the place James loved because it had so many windows and doors, "all opening out"). We talked about James, Chocorua, philosophy, etc. for several minutes while his rental business took a holiday. That has never happened to me in a big league ballpark.

The roadtrip through Georgia was uneventful (if you don't count my purchase of pecan brittle made in Plains, GA and sold in Cordele) but not unpleasant. This was the trip when I finally fell in love with XM satellite radio, and (when at last I had to stop the music) was reminded of what a magnificent service is provided by audible.com. (If you haven't heard Richard Dawkins and his wife Lala Ward reading The God Delusion you have something to look forward to).

Lest I forget, I have three more days here and then it's back to the real world (or my version of it), specifically Columbia, S.C., where I am expected to have responsible things to say about John Dewey's notion of "consummatory experience" and William James's projected view of what French philosopher Gabriel Marcel said about the difference between problems and mysteries. More on that later, right now I have beaches and baseballs to attend to.