Medium chill beats the bitch-goddess

In 1906 William James wrote to H.G.Wells of

“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That, with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word 'success' - is our national disease.”

He was a century ahead of David Roberts, who says the way to subdue the bitch-goddess is with an attitude and behavior he calls "medium chill":

"Medium chill" has become something of a slogan for my wife and me....We now have a smallish house in a nondescript working class Seattle neighborhood with no sidewalks. We have one car, a battered old minivan with a large dent on one side where you have to bang it with your hip to make the door shut. Our boys go to public schools. Our jobs pay enough to support our lifestyle, mostly anyway. If we wanted, we could both do the "next thing" on our respective career paths. She could move to a bigger company. I could freelance more, angle to write for a bigger publications, write a book, hire a publicist, whatever. We could try to make more money. Then we could fix the water pressure in our shower, redo the back patio, get a second car, or hell, buy a bigger house closer in to town. Maybe get the kids in private schools. All that stuff people with more money than us do. But ... meh..."

What Careerist Americans Can Learn From Ike, Dorothy Day and Jimmy Buffett - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic

And here's one of the ways I achieve medium chill:

#Happiness is a hammock, a mild June Sunday, & a good friend alongside. pic.twitter.com/Y1aYRWvf4h

James business

Some of the fun I'm missing (and was supposed to be commenting on) in Charlotte NC this afternoon:

Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy
2010 SAAP Conference Program
3:45 pm - 5:30 pm - Concurrent Session VII
C. Papers on William James, Business Ethics, and Richard Rorty, Magnolia Room

Vinny Rama (Fordham University), The Underlying Business Ethics in the Philosophy of William James

Roger Ward (Georgetown College), Therapy to Apocalypse: encountering the abyss of epistemology in James and Rorty


Aside from the opportunity to reconnect with distant friends and colleagues, what I miss most about not being present for this session today is an excuse to trot out again my favorite James statement on business ethics, and to say out loud and in public what he wrote to H.G. Wells in 1906: 


"The moral flabbiness born of exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS.  That - with the squalid interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease."  

epicurean success

Has anyone had a better idea about happiness in 2,000 years? What's more important than "pleasure"?

Rich and stupid

One of my favorite Nashville walks takes me to the top of a local reservoir called Love Circle, from which vantage it used to be possible to peer at my city and environs in every direction. I used to walk it every day and always enjoyed circling the overlook a couple of times while picking out memory-laden landmarks below - old abodes, old schools, the state capitol building, the Parthenon.

Now I live further out, and get there only occasionally... so I hadn't much attended to the hoopla surrounding country musician John Rich's ugly new manse on the hillside there, until an auto appointment nearby left me with some discretionary time to ramble this morning.

The damn thing dominates the neighborhood, especially when approached from Hillsboro Village to the east. It occludes part of what used to be a lovely view from the summit, and generally highlights the matching monstrosity of its owner's ego. Why do we tolerate this kind of garish abomination in our public spaces, just because some self-important guitar plucker can afford it?

But I'll continue to enjoy that walk, now supplemented with one more reminder that commercial music "success" can be one of the uglier Bitch Goddesses* on our landscape.

*William James to H.G. Wells:
The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word 'success' - is our national disease.)