Ken's Blog

Today, for the first time in a long time, I found myself thinking back upon a particularly intense moment in my life, when I was about five years old, in day camp.

I and my fellow campers were playing in a sandbox. Within that sandbox, not all kids were equal. One or two five year olds were very powerful, easily lording it over the others. Another one or two were the weaklings in the group, treated with no respect and generally picked upon. I was, more or less, one of those quiet kids between these two extremes, who manages to fade into the background simply by doing a very good job of not being noticed.

I would not have remembered any of this, but for an odd thing that happened that day. A group of women happened to walk by our little sandbox. When they saw us playing together they immediately started cooing to each other, saying things like “Oh, aren’t they just adorable?”

I remember marveling at the time how odd it was that they could find us cute, feral little creatures that we were. This is a fairly precise description of how I remember feeling at that moment, although it would be quite a few years before I would even know about such words as “feral”.

That might very well have been the first moment in my life when I was exposed to one of life’s great mysteries: The vast difference between how life looks from the outside and how it is experienced on the inside.

If you were told that you could enter a contest, but that if you lost the prize would go to a total stranger, you might just say “that’s nice, but I’m really busy right now.”

On the other hand, if losing the prize meant that it would go to one of your professional peers, you might be more motivated. In this case, your status among your peers might be affected by the outcome (this is quite dependent, of course, on the nature of the contest).

But suppose we move even closer to home. Suppose your rival for the prize was your brother, or your spouse, or one of your own children. In this case you might have a disincentive to win. You could very well be happier to see your child win the prize, rather than yourself.

These scenarios seem to point to an odd non-monotonic relationship between competition and kinship. When people are very distant from us, their effect on our competitive drive is essentially neutral. As they get closer, competition starts to increase, until at some point — when they are extremely close to us — it can suddenly flip and go negative.

I have a sense that this kind of relation (more or less an (x-σ)/(x+1)² shaped curve) might show up a lot in quite a few contexts, from sociology to economics to biochemistry to astrophysics and beyond.

Recently I saw a package bearing the following sign:

My first thought was how clever it was that the label was showing which direction should be down, in bold defiance of the usual trend.

In a way this choice makes more sense. After all, down is the direction of Earth itself, toward solid stability. The bottom of a box is its supporting face, the one upon which it will ultimately touch down, after the carrier has relinquished his trusted burden.

How much more clever to orient according to this direction, rather than employing yet another tired sign that merely points upward toward the ethereal sky.

Just as I was congratulating both myself and the unknown label designer, I suddenly realized that the box was upside down.

Oops.

Today I learned from a colleague about the ecological concept of “adaptation”. Scientifically, this concept is very straightforward, but politically it can be devilishly tricky.

Adaptation relates to climate change. Most scientists agree that research results strongly indicate climate change to be a serious issue in the coming decades.

For the purposes of this discussion, let us agree to put aside arguments by people who refuse to even look at these research results, out of suspicion that scientists are engaged in some sort of vast conspiracy. Those people have their own blogs. 🙂

OK, back to the science. It’s one thing to agree on what is happening, and quite another to agree what to do about it. Politically it is relatively straightforward to say “we must stop the advance of climate change”. After all, even a small rise in sea level can cause flooding over vast coastal areas throughout the world.

My colleague told me that it is unclear at this point how effective such a strategy can be. The evidence suggests that even with our best efforts, there will be climate change. So a comprehensive response would logically also involve humans adapting to the Earth’s changing condition.

But to advance such a strategy of adaptation is, apparently, politically untenable. Imagine you are a scientist explaining what the evidence indicates about the more devastating effects of climate change. It is rather awkward if you then appear to say “Well, maybe we can live with it.”

Yet apparently some entrepreneurs are already creating business models for how best to capitalize on the advent of shrinking coast lines, displaced wildlife, ruined cities, and radically disrupted ecosystems. Whenever there is radical change of any sort, there is money to be made.

The argument has even been made that this sort of planning is better for everybody, as well as a boon to the economy, since active adaptation is better than passive waiting for devastation.

When I heard this, my very first, rather cynical, thought was: “A rising ocean lifts all boats.”

If we knew just why it’s true
That we do the things we do,
Would we still want to see them through
By and by?

You don’t need much erudition
To view all of this ambition
With just a slight suspicion.
Well, let’s say

That when our zeal implores us
To try out for the chorus
Or to slay that brontosaurus,
We knew why.

Would we still retain those fires
Which this ‘doing things’ requires?
Or would all of those desires
Fade away?

And we wouldn’t do a single thing all day.

When we’re climbing Kil’manjaro
On that path so steep and narrow
Would it thrill us to the marrow
To know why?

Or would climbing lose its gleam
And ambition come to seem
Like some half remembered dream
That flitted by?

Would we still swim across the sea
Get a doctoral degree
All while deftly brewing tea
Or just say “Nay!”

Perhaps the chorus, brontosaurus
Mountain rim, the longish swim
And all the sea, degree and tea
Would fade away

And we wouldn’t do a single thing all day.

Pretty much everyone experiences intense emotional experiences, of elation or sadness or just about anything in between. One thing that distinguishes artists (in whatever medium) is that they mine these very real emotions to create their art.

In many cases, some large group of people finds their lives enriched by this endeavor. Think of Mozart’s “Requiem”, or Plath’s “The Bell Jar”, or “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge.

But what then is the relationship between the artist and his/her own personal life? Does the artist have sole ownership over this source material? What about the other people who were part of whatever emotional turmoil was mined in order to create this art? Why don’t they have a say?

The artist might say to these people: “Because it is art, and art belongs to the world.”

It’s an odd sort of conflict. Perhaps if Shakespeare or Austen had been a bit more circumspect about exploiting the emotional crises of people they knew (and perhaps loved), today we would not have “Much Ado about Nothing” or “Emma”.

I’ve recently started writing songs. And was immediately struck by how much more user friendly they are than prose. A story requires each reader to actively participate, and the reader generally must do this alone.

A song, on the other hand, transmits its message on the wings of melody and harmony. It pleases the ear and soothes the mind, while requiring no effort at all to enjoy. And listening to a song is a really fun thing to do with friends. Best of all, people sometimes start singing your song, and then they become carriers for its message.

Think about it. When was the last time you memorized a story you had read, so that you could go around reciting it to other people? For songs this sort of thing happens all the time.

One could argue that songs have more limited idea bandwidth, since all thoughts must be compressed down to fit the severe constraints of the lyrical form. But sometimes that can work to increase the power of the message.

For example, it seems that every other day, when I walk into a store or a restaurant in Manhattan, they are playing John Lennon’s “Imagine”. This is a song that trashes religion, espouses atheism, disparages the concept of allegiance to one’s country, and even takes down private property and rights of ownership.

Yet everyone who listens to it gets a nice dreamy look on their face. After which, they sometimes walk around for the next few hours singing it, thereby repeating the song’s radical message for all to hear.

Try doing that with a story.

Today, upon looking up a quote I had read in the newspaper, I discovered the wondrous and deeply thoughtful poetry of Stephen Crane.

For some reason, we were never taught Crane’s poetry in school. I knew about him only as the author of “The Red Badge of Courage”.

This might be just as well. When I was in school, the below poem might have appeared incomprehensible. Now, of course, this poem makes perfect sense to me.

      In the desert
      I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
      who, squatting upon the ground,
      Held his heart in his hands,
      And ate of it.
      I said, “Is it good, friend?”
      “It is bitter — bitter,” he answered;
      “But I like it
      Because it is bitter,
      And because it is my heart.”

It is well known that socks eat other socks. That is the only logical explanation for why socks disappear whenever I do laundry.

Sometimes they disappear in the washing machine, and sometimes in the dryer. My theory is that there are two distinct phases of the food cycle of soccus domesticus, a “wet” phase and a “dry” phase.

On the evidence of today’s laundry results, I have finally realized what should have been obvious all along: Socks are not merely cannibals, they are beyond cannibals. For a sock will only devour its own kind — a sock of the same color. So in a sense, socks are to cannibals as cannibals are to other carnivores.

How else to explain why, no matter how many socks I purchase, sooner or later I end up with one of each color?

It might be interesting to create a story, or a collection of stories, with a hidden structural back-story borrowed from some other medium. This might be an intriguing way to infuse a story with the aroma, as it were, of another work — say, the lyrics of a popular song.

For example, the emotional beats or merely key details of a narrative might trace the imagery of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, or Jonathan King’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”.

The story would not literally represent the lyrics of these songs, but would merely use their mysterious imagery as a series of touch points.

Of course it would not do to be too obvious about this. If you are immersed in reading a story, and you suddenly notice that you’ve just read about a mulatto talking to an albino, and now a mosquito has shown up, I would consider that a fail. 😉