In Praise of Idleness

If I were around to advise myself when I was young I would have urged myself to relax, take a little more time, don't work so hard.  I would have encouraged my young self to finish college later, start law school later, travel more, study languages for a while.  I would have tried to get myself to drive less expensive vehicles (if any at all) and definitely not buy any houses.

I would try to send myself to St. John's College in Santa Fe where my son went instead of rushing through UT.  I would tell myself to go to Thurgood Marshall Law School where my daughter goes, instead of UT Law.

I would try to keep myself from running for any office (I ran twice) and not get involved in anyone else's campaign.  I would tell myself to avoid politics.

There are also a number of clients and lawsuits I would advise against.   Life is too short.

Of course, I probably would not have listened.  All of that ambition came from somewhere and I lacked the wisdom to let it go.  Not that it has come to much.  That is the trick, of course.  Dr. Faustus and many of us sell to this devil and then what we get in return is a bag of tricks.

Why has my life been so plagued with work ethic?  From where springs this foolish notion that work and achievement should have value?

Does anyone talk about Max Weber any more?  Once we could safely blame the work ethic on Protestantism.  Also, we talked about cold weather, warm weather differences.  The Puritans who went to the Caribbean were said to be soon happily munching tropical fruits in leisure while their New England cousins worked hard to prepare for the winter.  We talked about the ant and the grasshopper.  Why in the world did I ever want to be an ant?  Or for that matter someone who lived where there are winters?  Or even a Protestant?

Now there is a modern proponent of Idleness.  Tom Hodgkinson has a magazine, blog and book.  The blog is called The Idler.  http://idler.co.uk/

My I especially recommend the quotes he has posted in the left hand corner of each page.

Siesta

Thank goodness I got my nap in today. I haven't always managed to get a daily nap, but those periods of overly ambitious co-counsel or judges are part of the wastelands of my life, looking back. The productive periods, the joyful periods, the sane periods have all included the afternoon nap.

My Grandpa Casebier climbed down from his tractor and took a nap every day. Grandma Casebier called him lazy for the sixty-plus years he did so.

In the early 80's, I tried a workers' compensation case in front of an elderly judge who broke each day at noon. Now it is true the "two day trial" lasted a week, but I still think the quality of justice was higher than usual. My opposing counsel was not rested; he complained all week and drove an hour back to his office to work the rest of the day. I took a nap and a swim and read over the work for the next day. I recommend this approach to the judiciary; most of the rest of the week after a two day trial is needed for recovery anyway.

I love nap stories. When George McGovern called LBJ to ask Johnson for advice in his campaign for the presidency after McGovern won the democratic nomination, Johnson told him to take nap in his pajama's every day.

I was discussing naps with Dan Boyd today. (We once were young enough we talked about girls, then politics, then law and now naps-are these the passages in life?). Dan relates John Kenneth Galbraith nap stories. Galbraith who died at 97 took daily naps, even during busy periods such as when he was John Kennedy' ambassador to India. President Lyndon Johnson called Galbraith during a nap and Galbreath's housekeeper refused to interrupt his nap.

So do naps help you live longer? I don't know, but I like this quote:

The recent study following nearly 24,000 people for on average 6 years found that those who regularly took midday naps were nearly 40% less likely to die from heart disease than non-nappers. Researchers suggested siestas might protect the heart by reducing stress hormones levels. They found "people who took at least three naps per week lasting 30 minutes or longer had a 37% reduced risk of death from heart disease than their non-napping counterparts. Those subjects who occasionally took short naps lasting less than half an hour had a 12% lower risk than people who never napped... The results suggest that taking naps might be
just as important to protecting the heart as other measures, he says, including eating right and taking cholesterol-lowering drugs... http://ajpendo.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/292/1/E253

My friend Paul, the Lebanese Arabic Scholar, regularly slips away for his naps. He seems to me one of the saner guys in either courthouse.

Apparently there is some contrary evidence. Retirees who sleep a lot during the day don't seem to do very well.

But over all, nappers appear to be more productive, healthier, happier and longer lived than non-nappers. Of course there is a difference between causation and correlation. It may be that people who are productive and happy, give themselves a break and take a nap. It may be that those who work in the meat packing plants and field labor and other hazardous jobs don't get a chance to nap.

What is the downside to spending all that time napping? I hear plenty of anecdotes about super-achievers who slept three hours a night for a lifetime and used every waking hour to do things like cure cancer, write the great American novel or win the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe so.

My sense, though, is that no normal lifespan is really long enough to accomplish much. Certainly, not without extraordinary skills (I may have some, but they have not yet surfaced in the first 57 years). So, barring the tyranny of man or circumstance, I'll be napping every day at about 3 pm.

State Subsidized Usury and the End of the Republic

Although many things may batter this poor former Republic, I think usury may deliver the fatal blow.    Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who swung through the revolving door from Goldman Sachs now proposes a $300 billion promise to save Fannie Mae stock prices by having the government buy up the stock.  This drops decades of right wing propaganda that markets make wiser decisions than governments right down the toilet, but likely few will notice.  

William Greider advocates solutions in the most recent issue of The Nation.  One is:  "Nationalize Fannie Mae and other government-supported enterprises instead of coddling them. Restore them to their original status as nonprofit federal agencies that provide a valuable service to housing and other markets.  Make the investors eat their losses.  Buy the shares at 2 cents on the dollar.  Without a federal guarantee, these firms are doomed anyway."

Another I like is:  "Re-enact the federal law against usury.... Maybe in the deepening crisis, Washington will begin to grasp that money is also a moral issue."

Money is a moral issue.  Probably the most important.  

Anyone who has ever sat down at a poker table knows that the guy with the biggest bankroll can dominate the game.  That is why tournaments set the amount to buy into the game.  That is why the kitchen table player does not want to accidentally wander into a game where everyone else has a fat bankroll.  The kitchen table player may know the exact odds of drawing to the flush in a given hand and be the most skilled player in the room, but if everyone else has a lot more money, he likely won't last long enough to show he's better.

Every poor guy trying to get a house or a car or groceries until the next check is completely at the mercy of the lender with the big bankroll.  Especially when, as now, that lender can also buy up enough influence to be able to take the poor guys' taxes to replenish his bankroll if the lender makes a mess of things.

Over time, the people with money who will lend it out for interest will eventually get everyone else's money.  Societies must build in a correction.  Moral societies must prohibit lending for interest and have periodic forgiveness of debts.  

On this cycle of government sponsored extortion and usury leading to debt slavery and wage slavery, we have only begun to see how bad things can get.  People have maxed out the credit cards and are upside down on houses and cars.  People have borrowed all there is to borrow on the next pay check.  It will get ugly.

Can there every really be a Chigurh?

Are there any Anton Chigurh's in real life?  Anton Chigurh, the villain in No Country for Old Men, is now and newly one of my favorite villains ever.  

My first is still Alex from Clockwork Orange:  Ho, ho, ho! Well, if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou! 

Isn't Burgess' invented argot great?  I especially liked the (I believe more realistic) novel version of Clockwork Orange in which Alex and his three droogs just get too old and tired for the foolishness.

So, Alex is still my favorite, but Chigurh is high on the list.  Up there with Hannibal. 

And of course I liked the movie, No Country for Old Men.  So these musings are not criticism.  This is the type of movie of which I will watch ten minute snippets for a long time during sessions of mind-numbing channel surfing.

But can Chigurh really live outside of the movies or is he more like Superman and Batman and Shrek?  That is,  possible, perhaps, but highly unlikely.

I have never run into anyone remotely like Chigurh.  The murderers I have known have been more sad than frightening.

I have raised this question many times since seeing the movie.  There is a certain type of response in which the answerer will nod sagely and with a certain sympathy and contempt for my naivete assure me that human evil has no bounds and Chigurhs are all around us.  

I doubt it though.  The people who I have asked who likely would have encountered such as Chigurh don't see him as likely to grow in real life.  Old criminal lawyers, forensic psychiatrists and priests would perhaps be the best ones to ask.  Among that group, from my limited polling, no one has met Chigurh.

There are serial killers in real life who have killed more than Chigurh.  But the nature of Chigurh is what makes him frightening.  He is not grabbing prostitutes and skulking away, but can be (albeit uncontrollable) a weapon.

My hunch is the reason Chigurh seems impossible to me is that serial killer types (Bundy, Gacy, Lucas) are always so damaged otherwise, that it seems unlikely they would function at the level of a Chigurh, attacking a drug lord power structure and winning.

One theory that I like that makes Chigurh believable is that he is the invention of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.  Sheriff Bell creates Chigurh to sweep the trash out of his county:

Bell on the nature of Chigurh:

El Paso Sheriff: He's just a goddamn homicidal lunatic, Ed Tom. 
Ed Tom Bell: I'm not sure he's a lunatic. 
El Paso Sheriff: Yea well what would you call him? 
Ed Tom Bell: Well, sometimes I think he's pretty much a ghost.

Free Will and Determinism

I have been chewing on the idea of "free will" since I had a conversation with Mark Bennett last month. An abridged version of Mark's argument is presented in one of his blog postings: http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2008/07/congratulations.html#comments

Mark raised the issue of Free Will and my initial response was to agree with him that there is none. Of course, as is my wont, pondering the question, I have waivered back and forth a dozen times. I can't decide if I have the power to decide if I have free will. Oh well.

I first resolved this issue in my mind in high school. I read Skinner's Walden Two and was persuaded that we become what we are because of heredity and environment.

I think I have been especially tolerant of other's foibles as a result of this view, but I am open to the possibility that I wanted to set the bar low for forgiveness for my own foibles. In this case, the philosophy would have followed the personal need, which of course would say less about the truth of the philosophy than the nature of the believer.

Other beliefs I have held, though at some times to me the pellucid truth at other times seem only a convenient justification for my shortcomings. I have often doubted the existence of hell, but was this because I could not face the prospects of finding myself there? I have long had socialistic tendencies, but has this arisen because of a suspicion that I have no knack for making money?

Anyway, determinism (at least by heredity and environment) has had its appeal for me. It helped me love people I was supposed to love although they were severely damaged human beings. It let me off the hook on my own damage.

My problem with determinism of the heredity and environment type is it appears to have lot in common with determinism of the Calvanistic, God has chosen us but not you people, type.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church endorses free will:

1704 The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection "in seeking and loving what is true and good."7

But the teaching of the Church seem to be more complex than this. As I recall my muddled reading of Augustine, he rejected free will. And I have previously written about Pascal's dispute with the Jesuits in which Pascal defends something very much like determinism.

Lord, why have you not blessed me with the environment and heredity to give me a better mind to figure this out? Or even prearranged environment and heredity would keep my friends who understand this better than I do alive and healthy and nearby, so they can explain it to me?

Mark Bennett says,

I’d like to congratulate the lawyers who prosecute, and the judges who sentence them, for the “choices” that they’ve made that put them at the top and my clients at the bottom. . . . and, for that matter, anyone else who is smugly self-righteous about his lot in life.

Generally, he views the determinists as tolerant and the free will crowd as intolerant. I'm not sure this is true. Even winning the argument that heredity and environment has put us where we are, what is to keep the winners in society from fighting to hold that position?