THE human SCALE

Posted on by alhenry

In 1970, Alvin Toffler published a little book that rocked the world: Future Shock. As we passed from an industrial to a “super-industrial” society, he predicted, change would no longer be the steady plodder it had been, but an exponentially increasing cruise missile. People would be left feeling disconnected and stressed out—wandering disoriented like victims of a bad hangover.

As is true for all restless, brilliant people who peer into the future (Orwell, Marx), Toffler got some of it right and some of it wrong, But he was dead on about the shock we would get from the rapid, large-scale technological and social changes we face today. We find ourselves in a world that has completely outstripped the human scale. We want to act, but how? Where to start? If you’ve ever tried to straighten out a problem with Google, you know exactly what I mean. It’s like that moment in Paddy Chayefsky’s Network where thousands of New Yorkers open their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” But the question is: Who’s listening?

“The average individual knows little and cares less about the cycle of technological innovation or the relationship between knowledge-acquisition and the rate of change. He is, on the other hand, keenly aware of the pace of his own life—whatever that pace may be.”
Toffler Alvin. Future Shock. 1970.

Some years ago, I moved into a house across from the Quabbin Reservoir, a massive water supply source for Boston that was built in the 1930s, forcing the inhabitants of four communities from their homes. I did a lot of research on the subject for a piece I was writing at the time. It reminded me that throughout much of human history, the most common experience was to be born, grow up, and die in one place. This certainly has its drawbacks, but it also provides people with an identity, a stable community, and lifelong friends—three basic human needs that are currently on the endangered list.

In those Quabbin towns, you were a known quantity to your neighbors and they to you. You were also likely a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. You did work you could accomplish with your own hands, the rewards of which were tangible and immediate. You planted tomatoes, you tended tomatoes, you harvested tomatoes, you ate tomatoes—or sold them at your local fresh air market. If carpentry was your thing, you bought the boards from your friend who owned the local sawmill, spent some days sanding, fitting, joining, and varnishing. Then you sold the finished product–a dresser, a cupboard–to your neighbor across the meadow. That’s human scale.

Many of our surnames also reflect our ancestors’ connection to their work. Names such as Smith, Wainwright, Baker, Funar (Romanian: rope maker), and Bagni (Italian for public bath house attendant—love that one) once told people who you were. If this naming principle applied today, who would we be? Mr. Clouddeveloper? Ms. Derivatives? Weirdly enough, we have invented a world where we feel small and indistinct. A global society where corporations are people, and people are non-entities: consumers, website clicks,  data points on an algorithm.

Argh croppedThis devaluation of human beings has its roots in the industrial revolution. I mentioned Marx at the beginning of this post. The thing that stuck with me most from Das Kapital was the example of the guy who worked at a spinning machine in a factory. The man worked the machine, a treadle affair, with his right hand and foot. Until some bright boy of industry came up with this idea: If spinners can produce X amount of yarn in twelve hours with one hand and one foot, they could produce 2X that amount if  they worked a second machine with their left hand and foot. It had everything to do with expanding profit margins and nothing to do with people. I’ll cut to the chase: Marx’s poor spinner went bonkers. People have limits. They grow tired. They get frightened. They waver, uncertain. They require tenderness.  This is not a sign of redundancy. It is the sine qua non of our humanness.

Recently, there’s been a lot of whining about our “age of narcissism,” evidenced supposedly by the craze for “selfies” and a surfeit of oversized egos who (how dare they!) demand to be respected as people. I admit, the guy with the selfie-stick in Florence got on my nerves a bit, as he filmed himself prattling about every place he was walking away from. But, I think the narcissism-cops may be missing a crucial point. What if all those selfies are a validation: “I’m still here!” What if the Facebook posts and the Tweets are really a cry: “I’m a person. I need to be known.” What if those “egotists” insisting on respect for their personhood have got it . . . exactly right?

I don’t buy that we’re a narcissistic or apathetic lot. I think it’s just that we often feel like we’re on a treadmill without a pause button. We can’t even slow the speed. I go to my local supermarket. I check out through an automated line. At the bank, a machine swallows my paycheck, then regurgitates my cash. I try to make a $10 online donation for Syrian refugees. I get rejected because there’s a $5 minimum. (I know—this doesn’t make sense.) I hit the “contact us” button. A form pops up, but it’s impervious to all my attempts to enter my info. In frustration, I try the e-mail reply button, and type a detailed message to someone named Ken. I never hear from Ken.

Globalization certainly offers a lot of positives. People like Malala Yousafzai have a world stage to champion human rights and female education. Rapid response to hurricanes and other natural disasters, made possible by computer technologies, brings life-saving aid to millions. But global awareness also brings everything rushing in—the painful plight of Syrian refugees, mass shootings, the melting of the Arctic ice cap—like some mad tidal wave. As we struggle to swim faster and faster, post-modern life can feel a lot like drowning. Not being able to address everything can wind up making us feel we can effect nothing. In this vast world, spinning at digital speed, all we have is our humanity. And each other. But if anything can save us, it will be exactly that. We can each do some one thing, one piece of meaningful work to reclaim our world. Together, we can do many things. In the spirit of Steve McQueen’s Papillon, we must link arms as we jump into the swirling waters of this crazy planet, and affirm, in unison, “We’re still here!” That will, indeed, be a brave, new, human world.

we are not redundant cropped

Moving Fast/Moving Slow

Posted on by alhenry

Capture PAUSE symbol

                                PAUSE: A Nod to Tortoises

When adding the Goodreads “Currently Reading” widget to my website, I wavered over whether to include Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation: The History of England, Volume I. In the months to come, wouldn’t some alert follower wonder why I was still reading that book? Oh, maybe not in October, but by Thanksgiving surely someone would notice. Perhaps take pity. Poor girl, a shame she can’t finish that book. Maybe she’s dyslexic. Such a challenge for a writer. A tad self-conscious, I wondered: Should I nudge it over to my “have read” shelf? Treat it as a total aberration (“How did that get there!”)? Plead its excessive shelf-life as necessary background for the book I’m now writing—and how to square that with the fact that Ackroyd starts somewhere in prehistory and ends 80 years before my characters step onto page one?

The truth is I’m a slow reader. I flip back to page 36 to recall exactly what Aunt Fanny told Little Marcie about the stranger living in the attic. I pause to look up an obscure reference to the mud volcanoes of Italy (messy but fascinating!). I muse on the motives of a shape-shifting, time-travelling Transylvanian crossdresser (or would, if I ever encountered one in a novel). I like to sip a good book. Roll its words and images over my tongue. Taste its meaning.

Before I give the impression that I’m impossibly dysfunctional, let me assure you: I can prepare a salad without pausing to research the history of the avocado, devour a slick thriller without stopping to ponder its ruses (well, almost), and empty the garbage with only a brief reflection on how much trash 7.3 billion people generate and where it all goes.

It’s just that I’m . . . a tortoise. I savor the journey. Many things intrigue me as I travel through this life and, like any self-respecting three-year-old, I have a zillion questionsstockvault-turtle114902 I’d like answered. “Need to Know” is not just an espionage term bandied about by James Bond. For savorers, it’s where we live.

I approach most things this way. After buying a century-old house situated in the middle of a small, but entrenched urban jungle, I spent four years digging up every weed, root, and rock on the lot. The black plastic tarp laid over the yard to discourage weeds became a standard joke in our annual holiday letter. There were certainly days—and years—I was tempted to fling my shovel far into space.  But, as I battled thorny bushes and cursed the tenacity of bindweed, I developed a connection to this plot of earth. From its untamed weediness, I imagined the shape it could assume. In year five, I brought in rail ties and terraced the front for a tiered garden. Last year, we laid down pavers in the back, leaving islands of lilac and rhododendron, and a large rectangle of naked dirt—this year’s new garden. I’m okay with the slow struggle. I like to see what emerges in its course.

Savorers have taken a serious dive in status since the invention of the nano-second, but history owes much to its tortoises—those contemplative slowpokes who just kept on. Wondering. Thinking. Envisioning. Inventing.

Case in point: atomic theory. About 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Leucippus, gazing at the visible dust drifting in a ray of sunlight, came up with the idea that all matter is made up of bits that move in a vacuum. He called these bits “atoms.” Inspired, his pupil, Democritus, started wondering what would happen if a piece of matter was divided repeatedly. Would there come a point where it couldn’t be divided anymore? Would it finally yield an indivisible particle from which, as Leucippus suggested, all things were composed? Democritus called it his “theory of the universe,” and it became the foundation of atomic theory. You can see a very simple, cool little timeline here that shows the progression. It’s a tortoise masterpiece.

Tortoises probably miss a lot of meals, or eat them cold. They see something, and they just have to keep following it—a thought, a sunbeam, an oddity. Ivan Pavlov, the Russian physiologist, was studying stomach acid secretions and salivation in dogs in response to the amounts and kinds of food they ate, when he noticed something odd: sometimes, stomach secretions and salivation were present even though the dog had not yet eaten. Pavlov could have said, “This has nothing to do with my experiment,” or “It’s late, and I’ve got tickets for the opera,” but instead, he asked, “What’s going on here?” The thing that was going on was that the dogs had learned to associate the sight of their feeder—even the sound of his tread—with chow. Feeder sighted → chow is on the way → salivation. We know it today as classical conditioning, one of the basic learning processes.
Michelangelo The Delphic SibylOne more. In 1508, the pope had this room at the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel. He wanted 12 giant apostles painted on its ceiling, so he hired Michelangelo. But Michelangelo, gazing at that ceiling, began to develop other ideas. He argued for his vision, and spent the next four years laying down wet plaster, applying the paint inch by inch, creating 343 figures to tell the stories of the Old Testament, and centering it all on that amazing image “The Creation of Adam.” Would 5 million people still visit the Sistine Chapel each year if he’d simply slapped on the apostles, taken the money, and run? Of course, they come because it’s Michelangelo, but then again, if Michelangelo hadn’t been the sort of inquisitive, determined, visionary tortoise that he was, would they come at all?

The rewards for the speedy in this world are obvious and instantly measurable. Fast track promotions. Bigger houses. More money. Loads of prestige. Less obvious are the attractions that drive the savoring tortoise: the pursuit of curiosity; the joy of knowing; the articulation of a dream; chance encounters with the unexpected, the counterintuitive, the just plain odd.

In some imagined universe, a sign hangs above my door: “Everything takes longer than you think, so come in, have a seat. I’ll make tea and we’ll gaze at the dust motes drifting through sunbeams. Let yourself be a tortoise and savor this marvel that is your life.”

The journey goes so fast.

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Posted on by alhenry

BECKONINGS

(Why Study The Past?)

What continually calls us to the past, those of us who feel compelled to cast a backward glance? What do we seek, turning the yellowed leaves of a journal penned in faded hand?  With what expectations do we unpack the moth-riddled contents of a grandmother’s trunk?

As a child, I was fortunate to be twice present at the gathering of my geographically far-flung aunts and uncles. Distance wasn’t the only thing that separated these five siblings. My eldest uncle had been twenty, married, and out of the house when my mother (the baby) was born. But collectively, they possessed a remarkable fount of memories. Variously, they had ridden in rumble seats. Rolled their own cigarettes. Listened to baseball on the radio.  Been devotees of the Saturday matinee film serials. Jitterbugged to Benny Goodman on 78 rpm vinyl. Coveted zoot suits. Worn saddle shoes. Listening to them reminisce, I hunkered low, barely breathing, so that I might not break the spell they cast. I was happy to be wrapped in the blissful cocoon of their nostalgia. It was only much later that I wondered how these memories reflected the larger, darker forces that had shaped their young lives: the Great Depression, World War II.

While still a college student, writing for a local paper, I covered Angela Davis’s visit to our campus. A powerful speaker, she cautioned us: “Never forget from whence you came.” It was all too seductive, she said, the shiny elitism of the university. It could blind you to your humbler origins, make you forget your roots. Her words resonated with me. Despite the suburban affluence of my childhood, my mother was the only one in her family to finish high school. My grandmother’s education had ended with grade eight.

Recently, I googled Davis’s warning, certain it must be part of some larger quote. My search turned up the African “Sankofa,” both an Asante Adrinka symbol, and a word from the Akan language of Ghana that has been translated literally as “reach back and get it,” and more meaningfully, “If you don’t know from whence you came, you will not be able to move forward.”

As Americans, we pride ourselves on moving forward. We are a nation of chameleons, re-inventing ourselves, shedding former skins as fashion and desire dictate. Why look back when anything/everything is possible in the future? In the abstract, it’s true: anyone could grow up to be president. But in reality, we all carry our baggage forward. We can’t invent our future from whole cloth; can’t simply wish it into existence. We are awash in our personal and collective history and helpless to look away from it, for the past keeps moving into the present. Much of the conflict in the Middle East today has its roots in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which redrew the map of the Middle East, carving up ancient empires in ways that suited the European victors, but not the region’s inhabitants. The same treaty’s harsh demands for war reparations from Germany helped elect a mediocre Austrian painter with a funny little mustache who went on to occupy most of a continent, murder millions, and start a second world war. Closer to home, the decision in 1619 to bring the first Africans to work as slaves in the tobacco fields at Jamestown led to a civil war more than two hundred years later, and haunts us still in the headlines of Ferguson and Charleston. We are each the product of many things, many experiences—the current expression of a long, tangled strand of lives. Far from being irrelevant, the past holds out to us the opportunity to understand ourselves, our times, this world. The chance to use the wisdom of the ages to better our future. We ignore it at our peril.

As a child, I would beg my grandmother, “Tell me about when you were a little girl.” Her life was a story I needed to hear. She died when I was thirteen. My only regret is that I did not ask more questions.