Being Or Feeling Double

"Sometimes I'm totally introverted.

Sometimes I'm a complete extravert.

I just don't get it."

 

Some enjoy the experience of being double.

For others being double feels wrong, weird, disturbing, scary.

 

Here are a several different attitudes toward different variations on being double.

•    •    •

This filmmaker enjoys being double, at least sometimes. His films make the most of it and his attitude toward the big questions appears mellow:

            "I don't believe in Heaven but I'm packing a clean shirt just in case."

Woody Allen, quoted in The New Yorker

•    •    •

Wheeler-Bennett's way of being double feels as if this is what makes him whole. You know he's not panicking when he's with friends at his club and not working, and you know he's not resenting it when he's working and not with his friends are at the club.

John Wheeler-Bennett was

"- on the surface, a stately Establishment figure, gliding, impeccably dressed, through the social scene, belonging to all the right clubs, knowing all the right people, present at all the right occasions, a character almost worthy of Proust. But  underneath, in spite of persistent ill health, he was ceaselessly at work, ploughing his way through records, documents, memoirs, and till the very end getting at and interviewing the people who had made the history that he wrote."

Victoria Schofield "Witness to History: the life of John Wheeler-Bennett" (Yale University Press; reviewed by Michael Howard in the Times Literary Supplement, October 26, 2012

Wheeler-Bennett's doubleness works together much as one's right and left hand work together. Two hands make something bigger than either one alone; each hand makes possible what the other is doing; they complement each other. Both hands are "doing their own thing." Something whole and complete gets done.

Observe your hands when you iron the shirt you'll wear at  your daughter's wedding; watch your feet when you are dancing, or watch the feet of the Cathedral organist when both feet are dancing out Bach's Passacaglia --even as the two hands on the keys above are also "doing their own thing."

•    •    •

Sometimes, perhaps often, too many involvements, attitudes or commitments are thrust on us, or for the wrong reasons we embrace too many. Here is Marilyn Monroe in a thicket of being double:

"It isn't hard to understand how a person could be sensitive and insecure but also determined and assertive at times, could be driven to succeed but disturbed to see herself packaged and sold, could want to be looked at and desired while also hating and resenting it. Nor, ideally, should it seem such a stretch to imagine that a world-famous sex symbol from a difficult background could also be witty, intelligent and politically radical."

Lois Banner, "Marilyn: The passion and the paradox"  (Bloomsbury; reviewed by Lidija Haas in the Times Literary Supplement, October 26, 2012

•    •    •

The French poet, Paul Valery, expresses it well:

"Do not events, desires, ideas interchange within us in the most necessary and incomprehensible ways?...What cacophony of causes and effects!..."

Paul Valery, "An Anthology", selected and with an Introduction by James R. Lawler (Bollingen Series XLV-A, Princeton University Press 1977; from "Two Dialogues, Dance and the Soul")

•    •    •

Sometimes being double has practical uses. Here it's a question of choosing to be double, choosing to entertain two ideas at once. (It's always tempting to find a reason to dismiss the harder or most challenging of two ideas.)

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."                                             

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

•    •    •

But being double can be a terrible trial. One feels torn apart. And yet strangely, one's attitude toward doubleness and contradiction does not necessarily determine the quality of the committed work. Could Beethoven have been a still greater composer if he had not experienced the conflict of so many contradictions, such a wealth of doubleness?

"--Beethoven dealt with his life as a precarious juggling act: obedience versus rebellion, worship of a deified father versus hatred of the man's memory, altruism versus crass self-interest, quasi-religious Romantic yearnings versus the secular humanism of the Enlightenment, desire for women versus aversion, fearless voyages of the imagination versus a travel phobia, visions of artistic and moral beauty versus personal ugliness and dishonesty, preternatural hearing versus eventual deafness -and on and on."

from Donald Henahan's review of "Beethoven Essays" by Maynard Solomon (Harvard University Press 1988)

•    •    •

Of course there must be the dark side of being double. Here is President Richard  M. Nixon's expressed opinion:

"When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."

(David Frost, "I Gave Them A Sword", 1978, chapter 8)

•    •    •

Typical Personal Doubleness of the 21st Century:

equobenity: unique/alike              

Context: having the knowledge, or feeling, that there's no one else like you, done what you've done, suffered as you have. Others are content to be part of a family, a group of friends or like-minded people, doing as they, suffering as they.

T.

sometimes you know you are unique

sometimes you're glad you're like everyone else

either way it's not a big deal

 

e. I am unique, myself, authentic                  q. I am like others

             Benefits:                                                        Benefits:

              1.self-confidence                                          1.self-confidence

              2.                                                                   2.

              3.                                                                   3.

              etc.                                                                etc.

 

because we have such diverse responses to everything

the extra numbers and the etc.

are foundational to equobenity

u. always feeling unique, never feeling yourself to be like others,  results in: 1. hubris  2. islolation 3. uncalled for risk taking 4. 5. etc.

o. always feeling oneself to be like others, never feeling set apart, unique, results in: 1. boredom, being boring 2. stunting of individuality 3. possible trivialization   4. 5. etc

           

                                                                  

 

g.

how arrogant, lordly, useless you are

how uselessly supine you are

pity all your unhappy and confused offspring

•    •    •

Internationally, from country to country, we are all doubled many times. The United Nations Development Program has a human development index that includes many social variables. Here is one set:

For the Japanese "taking holidays is regarded as nearly sinful", and for Americans vacations are a given; leisure and relaxing are high in value. Southern Europe gives "enormous importance to the rituals of eating and drinking and prides itself on stylish clothes and good conversation;" the work ethic does not reign supreme. But for the Japanese free time is called yoka and it means "time left" ---when we could be working.

Quotes are from two separate articles in The New York Times, June  7, 1991, the one on the Japanese by David E Sanger, the one on Europe by Alan Riding.

Nearly everything has changed since 1991 but national and international differences have not gone away merely taken new directions. And even an attitude that feels like an equobenity could become a troublesome impoverished mode. One can imagine a movie turning on just such an issue. Or imagine two diverse groups meeting without a mediator to build a national center of environmental information. No wonder we are a civilization of consultants. In equobenities gone bad lie plays and films, novels and the subjects of biographies.

           •    •    •

Our doubleness is pervasive.  To know how many are the central paradoxes of existence does not bring solution. To accept both the indissoluble oneness of an equobenity and also its insoluble twoness does not lessen the misery and challenge.

Furthermore, to understand and distinguish between the equobenity of either side versus the impoverished mode of either side, will not bring harmony to the normal dissonance of the equation 1+1=1. (e. and q. come together in one T. although the reverse can happen. The T. position is not set in stone. It can break down into e. or even into a u., or it can break down into a q. or even an o. A little neglect of either side has huge consequences.)

The paradox is already solved. Just by being the way it's always been.

To relax into entertaining this notion eases the irritable groping for Answer. When the two sides clash, to know this dreadfully opposed two-as-one, bound together like two sweating wrestlers, at least relieves the feeling that something is wrong.

Nothing is wrong. Everything about legitimate opposition is right. Don't condemn the situation. Don't walk away.

It will come untangled when we remain present --as referee, as witness, as reporter, as the person standing under that tree over there, the person who is leaning forward.

Like the 75 trillion atoms each of us possess, every atom creating 2000 proteins every second, this busy Stuff of which we are made --like these we perform our "precarious juggling" as our own particular part in an endless and universal dance.

 

and then there is

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

and

Tony Soprano

 

one masterpiece given us at the end of the

nineteenth century

 

the other given us at the beginning of the

twenty-first century

we pay attention

 

Equobenity is always and only context driven.

With one exception:

ethics

Because of ethics

there is a Tilt of favor toward either e. or q.

whenever

one is dealing with the dilemmas of an equobenity.

 

 

In desperate times, an equobenity is viewed quite differently from living without threat, without fear of defeat or death. In the following excerpt the reader is carried into the hills. Anti-Batista forces are preparing a revolutionary military overthrow of a long despotic government. The choices of these fighters must be understood in the context of ongoing revolution. Their context is far removed from the reader's context.

"Carreras came to the hills angry, with no empathy for supporters of Batista's regime, stoically resigned to his fate, whatever that might be. There was an element of hard danger and pragmatism about the man that frightened some of the younger, more fun-loving and idealistic Cubans. Carreras, for example, volunteered to execute the spies and traitors who threatened the Second Front's position. Though executions of traitors were not uncommon in either the Sierra Maestra or the Escambray, Ramarito, for one, refused the task that Carreras was willing to perform."

"The Americano Fighting With Castro For Cuba's Freedom" by Aran Shetterly

(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007; page 49)

 

Is there a tougher equobenity to be found? It is common however, in situations of war. The ethic, thou shalt not kill is set to one side and ignored. So is justice and loyalty. Fidel Castro, for example, admired and had become true friends with Morgan, the American fighting so effectively with the revolutionary forces and the hero of Shetterly's book. Nevertheless, at the first and unsubstantiated rumor, Fidel had Morgan executed. The equobenity in time of war:

 

            e. to have mercy                      q. to be merciless

 

When making life and death judgments the context is all important.

•    •    •

 

Political quotes --when they are taken out-of-context

"We've all seen political ads that attack opponents through edited, out-of-context quotes. It's not every day, however, that a campaign admits that its ad is deliberately deceptive. 'All ads do that,' a top Mitt Romney operative told Thomas B. Edsall of The New York Times this week. 'Ads are propaganda by definition.' "

THE WEEK, editorial by William Falk, 12/16/11

 

A Romney 2011 ad was taken from the campaign of three years previously, 2008. In a news story President Obama quoted Senator McCain about the economy. So the words in Romney's ad are not only three years old, but they are not Obama's. The words were spoken by Senator McCain and it is these three- year-old words that Romney has attributed to Obama.

Is America so deeply mired in political cynicism that it accepts with a shrug and turns away when Romney, running for President, excuses himself and his spokesperson, and declaring that "ads are propaganda by definition"?

No, ads are not "propaganda by definition." If new medications have been forced to list all their possible bad side effects, why can't the same transparency be required of our politicians? Does the elevated context of a hot political campaign really qualify for an exemption from ethics?

•    •    •

Context: the rules for Japan's most ancient songs

Equobenity:

                       

e. to have no rules                   q. to have many rules

 

            "We must recognize the wisdom of considering each song –whenever at all possible—in two lights. First, the song should be cut free from its narrative and appreciated entirely by itself as an independent piece of verse. By comparison with other ancient Japanese verse and by an analysis of the text, one can frequently determine that the song had a meaning quite different from that attributed to it in its narrative. Second, the song should be replaced into its traditional context in order to discover why it was that the compilers of the ancient books should have regarded such-and-such a situation. The way in which a song is woven into a narrative frequently provides us with important clues about the history of a song, its functions, and the role it played in the life of the ancient Japanese."    

"This Wine of Peace This Wine of Laughter", A Complete Anthology of Japan's Earliest Songs; translated by Donald Philippi (A Mushinsha Limited Book, Grossman Publishers; Distributed in Japan by Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc.; 1968; page xiii)

 

To have rules or not have rules can be more nuanced than would appear on the surface.

Context: rules in the writing of poetry (sonnets), rules in painting (see Orhan Pamuk's novel, "My Name Is Red"); rules for music, architecture; rules in for this season in fashion--

Equobenity:

e. rules in the arts Benefits: 1. you know where you're at 2. challenge: can you say what    you want withinn the confines of rules?  3. if you can't, do you perhaps  find something different to   say? that is worth saying?   4. do rules sharpen skills?      5. 6. etc.

q. no rules in the arts Benefits: 1. choose anything you want 2. as hard without rules as with 3.freedom itself as challenge 4. does freedom sharpen skill? 5. 6. etc.

                      .

because all opinions are valid

there must be free lines left

at all times, as well as etc.

u. always working within rules never being free of rules,  results in: 1. a kind of dry sameness    2. it gets boring                                       3. 4. etc.

o. always working without rules, never within the challenge of rules results in: 1. it gets boring 2. a kind of dry sameness 3. 4. etc.

It should be strongly noted that (Mozart) never found  "dry sameness", never wrote "boring" music. There is the equobenity of "extreme" as real and vivid as there is the impoverished mode of "extreme". One could argue that one of the deep joys of all the great arts is the feeling of freedom found in their extreme expression of rules, of their own, self-chosen, "free" rules.

•    •    •

There's another angle to context:

Anything At All Can Become An Equobenity

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry  flew the mail back and forth across the Sahara desert in the late 1920s. He was a pilot who knew all the distant outposts and all their lonely inhabitants, sometimes one lone commandant in one lone handmade "fort." These men were always waiting for the little plane that brought mail and provisions every six months. Only every six months. It is no surprise this particular lone commandant was eager to talk.

"One evening we  had dined at the fort and the commandant had shown off his garden to us. Someone had sent him from France, three thousand miles away, a few boxes of real soil, and out of this soil grew three green leaves which we caressed as if they had been jewels. The commandant would say of them, 'This is my park.' And when there arose one of those sand-storms that shriveled everything up, he would move the park down into the cellar."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "Wind, Sand and Stars" (Time reading Program, Special Edition, Time Incorporated; NY 1940, page 89)

 

Where's the equobenity?

Well, moving your park into your cellar would become one half of an equobenity if you had been asleep when the storm arose and there is not enough time to save yourself if you are going to take your food supplies into the cellar as well as your park.

           Context: sudden storm requiring cellar safety

           Equobenity:

                        e. save the "park"        q. save the food supplies

Still another equobenity might arise if you knew the pilot is soon to arrive but you've heard this time it is not your friend, but the dreaded pilot who is always snooping and always critical. This one will think your "park" a joke. Shall I risk leaving it around, be casual, but have to obey him if he says to get rid of it? (Yes, there are lots of people who would do this.) Or should I secure it in the cellar behind the extra sand-screen and hope he doesn't find it?

Dilemmas find horns to climb on everywhere.

Any two things can come together in the tension of an equobenity, in the requirement that a choice be made.

 

Equobenity resembles the color blue in many ways. It is simple, only itself, straightforward, exact; it is familiar to everyone and because it is familiar we rarely have to talk about it. We don't notice it sometimes. And sometimes, even if we are looking for it, it isn't there. We have to move and find it in some other place. All this is true of equobenity.

Blue doesn't push itself on you. It doesn't need to. It won't go away if it is not noticed. It stays put. Equobenity also stays put --causing worry, hope, ulcers.

Blue has no mass. The Higgs Field and Boson never got around to giving blue any mass. Perhaps because blue is so fluent, it becomes  immediately invisible. When an equobenity is resolved it too becomes invisible.

Blue gives great pleasure and the pleasure of blue is aesthetic. In its flexible and unalterable simplicity the pleasure of equobenity is also aesthetic.

But equobenity's pleasure is also the pleasure of relief. This happens when you've been looking for the exact equobenity whose impoverished mode has really got to you and suddenly you find it. Once the equobenity is found you adjust the balance between e. and q. and --the whole thing goes away. 

Example: Let's say you are a basically modern western person with modern western tastes and your job has been to understand and design the windows and doors for modern office buildings. But lately you've been so grumpy. You snap at your secretaries, you refuse your boss's invitation to a Christmas party. And you're getting worse and worse.

You know all about equobenity so you start looking for the source of your trouble.

I must be tired (equobenity might be enough/never enough! i.e. much too much)

Maybe I'm jealous because my younger sister's getting married (equobenity might be being first matters/being first doesn't matter, finding the right spouse matters).

Or perhaps the equobenity is this familiar trouble maker: self/others and I know I am in the impoverished mode of too much doing for others and not enough time just for myself. I say to yourself, " It must be this one."

But no. After a weekend in the country with an old friend and absolutely not one thought of work, I've come back to the city even more irritable, even more impatient. Yes, but hey, there's something else going on I haven't thought about. Something happened this weekend. What was it? What did we do? Did we go any place?

Yes, we drove to an old house my friend was restoring. I didn't pay much attention. I wandered around, thinking more about the abandoned old garden than about window framework and depth of porch risers. But something about it got to me. I can tell. I can feel myself wishing I'd paid more attention, asked questions. Something soothed me in that place.

To make this long story a little shorter, the equobenity that was causing the trouble was this one: traditional/modern

Yes, that's it. My job is always "Modern", modern windows, modern this, modern that. What I discovered was: I was longing for the traditional. Would you believe that this was the equobenity which had dropped me down into an impoverished mode? I didn't know what was eating me and I was taking it out on everybody else. Believe me, it can happen!

Out of the blue the right equobenity appeared.

Behind those clouds there's blue. Behind that refusal to go to a party there's an equobenity waiting to be found.  But it takes the impoverished mode to tell you about it.

The equobenity of an impoverished mode is that it's upsets you, creates disarray, is disagreeable enough to send you looking for the reason.

Unless of course you're one of those who find pleasure in the impoverished modes.

 

 

Once you know what the equobenity is, you do it.

Action is required.

You take action or the equobenity takes you.

 

You don't have to tell anyone what you are doing

or how you are doing it

or why

 

What you are doing: you've glanced quickly at the map of equobenity

How you are doing it: you see exactly the position you are in but you also see the position the person you are talking to is in.

Why you are doing this: the conversation, discussion,  debate, or the article about which you are writing a letter to the editor, is of some importance. i.e. it's not chit chat. To be very clear, and in a position to make fine distinctions, you need to know what the overall issue is and how this issue breaks down into smaller issues. With each issue you need to be clear about what is its upside, its equobenity, and which is its downside, its impoverished mode. If you are not wanting to be competitive and defeat the other side of the argument, you can add your own true understanding of the other side and what its benefits might be in a different context.

•    •    •

Stark example: something controversial comes into a conversation.

Two socially acceptable reactions:

            give a deprecating laugh and move on

            attack its impoverished mode

For instance: the republicans in 2013

            yes, one can move on but perhaps more likely:

            one attacks the shameful things both parties have been doing

However: if you are aware of equobenities hovering in air you don't change the subject and you don't attack. You ask, "What's it all about anyway? What do they care about? Why are they so willing to attack the government that protects them?"

If no one you are with knows the e./q. structure, each with its own impoverished mode, there will be a short polite pause and the attack will resume.

It's a thousand times easier to attack the impoverished modes than to ask what the equobenities might be. And if someone accuses  you of being in an impoverished mode, your defense is to say, "What is the equobenity?"

•    •    •

One evening my phone rang and it was one of my daughters reporting from college about a dinner with her best friend. They'd gotten into a discussion about zero population growth versus having a family.

Almost immediately my daughter's friend, who was a strong zero population person, began to attack the impoverished mode of my daughter's position: "So you don't mind adding to the problem? Am I hearing you right?"

My daughter realized what was happening and knew if she retaliated by attacking the impoverished mode of her friend's position, that the two of them would end up having a real battle and a stupid evening. Once emotion gets attached to the other's impoverished mode, it is impossible to bring reason back into the discussion. Only a complete substitute will interfere. "Waiter! I said rare, not cold and purple!"

So my daughter stuck to her e. position and only spoke to her friend's q. position. This involved asking a lot of practical and non-emotional questions such as: "Who would make the decisions?" or "What is the role of prospective parents in the decision process?" or "What about countries where there are not enough children to begin with (or, too many children to begin with)?" These are the questions that are destroyed if the only thing that happens are attacks on each other's impoverished modes.

My daughter said to me on the phone later that evening, "You don't have to say anything about equobenity. You just do it."

•    •    •

Edw. finished a biography of Mozart and went to his friend's house for dinner. He asked the table if there was any way parents could tell when supportive love was the right thing for a child, and when tough love was the right thing. Edw.'s friends, Mr. and Mrs. F. didn't know about equobenity but their daughter Phoebe was home and she did. She'd been at the University of Chicago and mailed Edw. all the many equobenities she had found in her history and economics major. When Edw. asked the question about raising children this is what happened:

Mrs. F. said, "Of course there should always be supportive love."

Mr. F. said, "This would weaken the child. There'd be no challenge."

Mrs. F. said, "Well, if all she got was tough love she'd feel unloved. She'd grow up emotionally stunted."

Phoebe and Edw. exchanged glances and forbore to shrug. They both knew the conversation was at an end. Mr. and Mrs. F. had attacked each other's impoverished mode and now there was no going back. And yet what could be more important than this subject? Are there, actually, any conclusive answers as to when to give a child love that is supportive and when to give the love that is labeled "tough"?

No discussion, no action was now possible. Pass the chicken and change the subject .

Why didn't Edw. and Phoebe take up the subject and between them start a discussion about the e. and the q. positions? Mr. and Mrs. F. are very intelligent people and would have responded to issues like these. What if the child is just testing? What if the child is the eldest and used to getting h/is way? What if the child is a stepchild and the other children are favored? Since what is tough love for one child is supportive love for another, is there an easy way for the parents to stay in communication over this issue?

How can anyone not want to try and answer such questions?

(or: q. of o.)

and

u. of e.

(or o. of q.)

 

nothing Bad escapes being an equobenity (sometimes)

just as

nothing Good escapes being an impoverished mode (sometimes)

 

although

these occur only in specific and unusual circumstances

 

•    •    •

 

equobenity of the impoverished mode

e. of u.

e. of u., equobenity of an impoverished mode: being slimy

Many people, and for many reasons, would consider being slimy an impoverished mode. One really needn't go into too much detail. But consider the snail:

"Being slimy is a complex defense system that goes well beyond the ability to repel a Homo sapiens. Large predators can't get a grip on a slippery creature, and smaller parasitic insects may get stuck in the ooze or have their mouth parts gummed up. If the usual slime recipe isn't enough of a deterrent, a special batch with particular toxic and bad-tasting chemicals can be copiously produced on the spot. For a gastropod, survival of the fittest often means survival of the slimiest.

"The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating" by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, NC; a division of Workman Publishing, NYC, NY; 2010, page 115)

•     •    •

e. of u. or equobenity of an impoverished mode: plagiarizing

Amos Oz quotes his father, " 'If you steal from one book, you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books, you are considered a scholar.' "

•    •    •

e. of u. or the equobenity of an impoverished mode: being nearly blind

This example is very unusual and very specific and in no way implies that it is, actually, all the time, better to be nearly blind than it is to have good eyesight. This is true of the examples that follow.

 

"The genetic literature is full of examples of 'bad' genes with 'good' effects, especially genes for autosomal recessive diseases like achromatopsia." (Oliver Sacks see below) With only a rod and no cones, people with this disease can only see normally when it is nearly dark."

But Sacks

"mentions that achromatopic homozygotes on [on the island of] Pingelap are reported as seeing better than normal people under dim light conditions at dusk and dawn and on moonlit nights. Specifically, the achromatopes are outstandingly successful at night fishing because they can detect fish underwater in dim light. That’s vital skill for an island population heavily dependent on fish for protein. And as night fishers, Sacks writes, 'the achromatopes are preeminent; they seem able to see the fish in their dim course underwater, the glint of moonlight on their outstretched fins as they leap--'"

Jared Diamond reviewing Oliver Sacks, "The Island of the Colorblind"; March 6, 1997

•    •    •

e. of u.  or the equobenity of an impoverished mode: deliberate facial disfigurement two 

true examples

the equobenity of not only an impoverished mode, but of a g. position

Here is a truly horrifying example of something terrible being a good thing --for a particular salvation, at a particular moment. I don't have the exact reference for this, though I believe it took place in 1979 when the Shia Ali-Khomeini came to power in Iran.

Foreseeing the bloodshed that would ensue, a father slashed his son's face and the two escaped safely across Iran's national border. This was reported in The New Yorker and immediately became the most dramatic and telling proof that there is nothing that can't, under extreme and specific circumstances, become an equobenity. The facial disfigurement of the young son meant the boy would not be kidnapped, would not be sold into sexual slavery.

e. of u.  equobenity of deliberate disfigurement

This is the equobenity, not only of an impoverished mode, but of a g. position. (Although, as this is self inflicted it perhaps belongs in another category altogether.) This is an incident like the above but under vastly different circumstances. It took place in early 19th century America, and again I haven't the reference. It is a true story and it goes like this:

A young doctor, a woman, wishes to open a medical practice in the American far west. She accepts that she'll be dealing with a lot of tough people. Nevertheless, in order to be safe from the sexual predations of outlawed men whose wounds she will be healing, she disfigures her face and dresses like a man. Her daring ruse is successful. She establishes herself as the doctor for a small town. She lives in her own house part of which she rents to a Japanese man. The two fall in love and live as man and wife until she dies. I greatly regret not being able to quote the disbelieving words of the coroner when he is called to the house on her death and discovers her to be a woman.

•    •    •.

e. of u. or the equobenity of an impoverished mode: struggle, rejection, despair, loss—      

"I gave up on Christmas when I was 16. It wasn't Christmas' fault: in the throes of puberty, a series of disappointments had left me in existential despair. Awkward and acutely self-conscious, I measured myself against my peers and found myself wanting. My friends had done some measuring of their own, and their repeated small rejections broke my heart. On Christmas Eve, with the mocking lights of the houses across the street twinkling through my windows, I lay in bed, recalling with bitterness the simple joy that this night used to bring, before my belief in magic withered and I saw the world as it truly was. Life, it was now abundantly clear, was full of suffering and injustice. In desperation, you could pray for help and no help would come. We were all ultimately alone.

"I was wrong about most of that, or at least about the conclusions I drew from the hard realities. Paradoxically, it wasn't just wonderful experiences that gradually transformed my perspective, but also the most painful ones: loving and losing. Enduring the death of my brother some years ago and of my father this year. Witnessing my teenage daughter's own encounter with despair. It was through these and other struggles that I came to understand –was taught, somehow- that despite its cruelties and suffering, life is hardly pointless, but rich with meaning. Our bonds with each other, I learned, are stronger than our isolation, stronger even than death. I came to appreciate the heroism and nobility of every individual life, and of the light humanity chooses to shine even in the darkest hour. Merry Christmas, my friends, and happy Hanukkah." (italics mine)

William Falk, editor of THE WEEK, 12/26/08 – 1/9/09

•   •    •

 

Impoverished mode of the equobenity,

u. of e.

 

                       u. of e.  or the impoverished of an equobenity: being a success

"—the [Village] Voice was doing what the Internet does now long before there was an Internet. The Voice was the blogosphere –whose motto might be 'Every man his own Norman Mailer'—and Craigslist fifty years before their time. The Voice also helped to create the romance of the journalistic vocation by making journalism seem a calling, a means of self-expression, a creative medium. It opened up an insecure and defensively self-important profession. Until its own success made it irresistible to buyers who imagined that they could do better with a business plan than its founders had done from desperation and instinct, it had the courage to live by its wits. " (italics mine)

The New Yorker, 1/5/09 page 45

•    •    •

 

u. of e. or the impoverished mode of an equobenity: spring

Usually excess is what gets us into trouble but not always. Here there is no trouble at all. Spring being capable of having an impoverished mode is all in the mind of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, a pre-eminent poet of love. (Although only humans have impoverished modes we no doubt will continue to say things like, "These damn boots. Look how wet my socks are!" or "Not one of those damn arrows came anywhere close!"

 

from Ode to Fall

"Spring was so annoying,

a nymph

flaunting shameless

nipples

on all the trees

in the world!

 

For Pablo Neruda at this moment, summer, with its "endless fields/of wheat", is no better than spring. Only in fall will he "breathe" again.

Pablo Neruda, "Odes to Opposites" (Little, Brown and Company, 1995; page 29)

 

•    •    •

e. of u.  the equobenity of an impoverished mode: cowardice as taught by the devil who relishes cowardice and loathes courage. It is the Devil himself who is recommending cowardice.

"Affectionate uncle" Screwtape writes letters to a much younger devil, a-devil-in -training. Screwtape is teaching his "nephew" how to manoeuver a young human-non-devil away from the Enemy. Screwtape's enemy, like the enemy of all devils, is of course, God (although the word God is never used).

"The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, is that we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility. And in fact, in the last war, thousands of humans, by discovering their own cowardice discovered the whole moral world for the first time. In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them. There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy's hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behavior, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral torpor.

 "This indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world -a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on condition. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

"For remember: the  act of cowardice is all that matters; the emotion of fear is, in itself, no sin and, though we enjoy it, does us no good."

Lewis, C.S., "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S.Lewis (Bantam Books, 1982; 86 and 87)

 

 

Historically, children had no choice --about anything, big or small. As late as the mid-twentieth century children were not asked which kind of cold cereal they wanted this morning much less what clothes to wear or what school to attend. As a mother in the fifties I read "Dr. Spock" and had an innate sense of what would make my children happy; children's choices were not on my mind.

Also, from hour to hour, month to month I knew there were exact things that had to happen. (I had to shop that day or there'd be no dinner.) Sometimes reality checks and happy kids coincided. If they didn't coincide I had to make the choice. I was doing everything. It was the 1950's.

Thus, although choice itself underlay every single action, big and small, no one much used the word.

Skip to the late sixties, early seventies. Everyone was ready for something liberating and suddenly there was the word "option". Option is not a new word and in my mid-century education it was mostly a business word. Nevertheless, "options" flew out of Wall Street and onto Main Street.

And as soon as everyone had options, everyone acquired "alternatives". As soon as everyone had alternatives they were beset by "ambivalence". The seventies were beset by ambivalence.

In the late seventies the paralysis brought on by over-used and over-simplified ambivalence, was further beset by an understanding of "projection". Not only did every choice drag around its ambivalent memories of the options it had now lost, but anyone with an opinion of any kind was accused of projecting.

Bad enough to be ambivalent, now you could no longer even be yourself. Every statement, no matter the subject, was actually only about you. If you met someone in the street and said it was a nice day you would hear in response, "Well, you're feeling pretty good today!" Or if you wondered what in the world Nixon was thinking about, you'd be told, "You have a dark side too you know."

No wonder communication shifted away from individuals prattling away over the proverbial fence, and into the industry of technology and our present culture of "distraction".

Maybe projection was just an interim idea to give us time to get used to what the words ambivalence and ambiguity really meant. Accusations of projections diminished about the time that we borrowed two more words from business: "upside" and "downside". Ambivalence and ambiguity were solved. What's the upside of this? What's the downside of that? We all know it's ok again to have options.

Equobenity, early 21st century

Options don't indicate two good things. Not necessarily. Someone can quite logically say, "So. Shall we trash the bitch's kitchen? Or shall we go to the flicks?" (conflation of one impoverished mode and one equobenity. Not judging, just sayin')

"Option" doesn't tell you that all attitudes, all choices come twinned with an equally valuable "other." "Downside" gives no indication that when a person has fallen into a downside s/he and all of us, are potentially dealing with human tragedy, the impoverishment of something that was once supremely beneficial. A great loss is inferred. The crop fails because the soil was overused and is now impoverished. The impoverished mode has the color of a warning; downside has no color.

Downside doesn't tell us that impoverishment is the source of human-caused evil: the impoverished mode of one, two, or a thousand different kinds and degrees of choice.

Meanwhile, upside only speaks of the present and doesn't indicate there are two upsides in every attitude, in every choice. Two upsides (the e. and the q. ) and two downsides (the u. and the o.) Worse still, upside is deprived of knowing how important s/he might be: s/he might be one half of the equobenity that is about to put a T. up on the top of triangle.  ("Synergy" is still not in common use.)

The landscape presented by "options", "upsides" and "downsides" is limited. They are strong unemotional words for the business world of money and figures, deals and gain, risks and loss. Business needs words that stay put; they will be used to strike or to force a pact. But while swift and to the point for finalizing a local or transnational deal, the wider view comes closer to the confusions of human life and these get cut out with the use of business language. They do not point to an overall structure where words like  "danger", "recovery", "tension", "spiritual death" and "creation" are nouns that better describe the sorrow and joy of daily human choice-option-ambivalence-projection.

At any given moment, the great playing field of battle between the equobenities and the impoverished modes lies ready to receive the next set of oppositions. But these three excellent business words will not show how the next set of oppositions fit into a structure greater than this single opposition, this single choice you are now destined to struggle with.

You will not see a structure that tells you if you choose well you will produce a "new thing"; no T. will be visible up at the structure's top. You won't see the often heart-breaking but always creative triangle:

A business vocabulary does not put before your eyes a structure which informs you that both sides of your choice have much to say in their defense and that both sides have impoverished modes. You will not see where the g. hangs morosely off the bottom end of a lower triangle, harming everything it touches: itself,  individuals,  communities and the planet itself.

 

"Options", "downsides", "upsides" don't come with a structure. And they don't come close to expressing the human dimension.

 

The Greeks saw human life as being played out on a great stage (not on a playing field). The Gods observed us from above. Depending on how we do, we will rise toward Paradise --or oblivion will break our fall.

No dramatic issues like these are inferred in the business world of "options", "downsides" and "upsides". Nevertheless we are forever grateful for the introduction of the concepts. They gave us, and they still give us, breathing room.

•    •    •

Plato, Socrates and the nature of sophrosyne

Ancient Greeks believed their Gods had given them a stage on which humans would enact the play of life and the Gods would be the critics. Being both producer and critic, the Gods needed a lively play. From a read of Greek literature, it would appear that at least in the beginning, what the Gods most wanted was action: revenge, murder, betrayal etc. But at some point they must also have decreed that equality and compassion, reliability and altruism all get to play major roles. After all, the Gods wanted their play to have a long run. The Gods knew their audience, the actors, the writers and producers. And Athens was the place of choice to mount an important play.

The search for sophrosyne occurs in one such action. Plato did the writing --with the penetrating help of his old mentor Socrates who lived by questioning but eschewed the role of author.

Greeks had identified one human quality valuable above all others. They called it "sophrosyne" (sah phrá zi knee). They recognized it when they encountered it in person, but they didn't know of what it consists or how it comes into being. Plato's fourth Dialogue, Charmides, is his attempt to understand exactly what sophrosyne is.

The work of Athens born Plato (c.428 BC to 348) is found in his twenty-eight Dialogues. The title of the fourth Dialogue, Charmides, takes its name from a young man of that name for Charmides is reputed to possess sophrosyne, this most valuable of human qualities. Will Charmides reveal the secret of how he acquired sophrosyne?

The reader of the Dialogue quickly learns that Socrates, the interlocutor, understands part of equobenity's structure. He understands the link between two opposing but good things. And he clearly understands that they each have their own impoverished mode.

But  because there is no vocabulary to help put all his thoughts in order -- no vocabulary to indicate the connection between the e. and the q., to distinguish between an e. and its u. or between a q. and its o.-- Socrates’s intuitions about these three connections fail to coalesce into a comprehensible explanation.

The Dialogue is forced to describe what one or two specific vocabulary words would  have made clear.

Examples from the dialogue put in structural terms of equobenity

 

1. Equobenity:

e. temperance, slow and quiet        q. quickness, fast and agile

Charmides, the youth who is endowed with sophrosyne, is reputed to be temperate. When asked by Socrates to define temperance Charmides says he thinks it is “doing all things orderly and quietly –for example walking in the streets and talking, and indeed doing everything that way. In a word,” he says, “I should answer that, in my opinion, temperance is a kind of quietness.” (105 b) Charmides also agrees with Socrates that temperance is noble and good. At this point in the dialogue, temperance is considered to be sophrosyne.

However, with Charmides’ definition nailed to the mast, Socrates rushes to prove just the opposite. To read or write quickly, to play the lyre or to wrestle quickly and sharply, to box, leap, run quickly and with agility --all this, Socrates says, also achieves both the noble and the good.

Charmides agrees. “Quite true.”

And Socrates sees how complex both temperance and quickness are. For instance, in the case of learning, if it is easy, it’s good to learn quickly, but if the subject is hard, it’s better to learn quietly and slowly, that is, with temperance. Socrates goes from q.(quickly) to e.(slowly) but concludes that q. is better than e.. Although he refers to context, he does not use the word and he doesn’t refer to it later when it would have established a certain ground for discussion.

In spite of his awareness of nuance, Socrates is looking only for a black and white answer to the initial question. He says “Well then, in all that concerns either body or soul, swiftness and activity are clearly better than slowness and quietness?”

And Charmides answers, “Probably.”

But Socrates is still on a roll. He continues describing sophrosyne, rapidly and with no demonstration of temperance.
 

“Then temperance is not quietness, nor is the temperate life quiet –certainly not upon this view, for the life which is temperate is admitted to be good. And of two things one is true –either never, or very seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and energetic ones, or supposing at the best that of the nobler actions there are as many quiet as quick and vehement; still, even we grant this, temperance will not be acting quietly any more than acting quickly and energetically, either in walking or talking or in anything else. Nor will the quiet life be more temperate than the unquiet, seeing that temperance was placed by us among the good and noble things, and the quick have been shown to be as good as the quiet.” (106 c and d)

With these words, Socrates seems to be bringing in the fraught issue of time: how context sometimes demands rapid changes between the e. and the q..

Time is an ever-present and volatile aspect of how the equobenities work. An equobenity can shift in the blink of an eye. It often endures for the course of a meal. And it can endure for years, right up to the moment when the impoverished mode of one or more of its e.s and q.s begins to worm its self-serving way under the quilt of satisfaction. An equobenity can last a century: Baroque giving way to Classical, or Representational to Abstraction or, in politics The Age of Enlightenment eventually requiring the Romantics.

However, we are now in Athens, Greece, about 2500 years ago. Socrates knows a lot and is wise in the learning of more. But at the moment, the rapidity with which an equobenity can change is not on his mind.

By sticking to the generalities of slow/quick, only the rapid fire of his own speech indicates how futile it is to try and nail the flag of “the good and noble” to one side and not to the other. Nor does Socrates indicate that he knows how the other side will be found waiting patiently (or impatiently) offstage, always ready to come on again.

Charmides is unfailingly polite but he also thinks for himself. He admits that Socrates presents temperance as sometimes not appropriate and indeed,  something for which one could be ashamed. (106 e) But rather than exploring the idea of temperance as an impoverished mode, he shifts the issue altogether and says he has heard that “temperance is the same as modesty.” Still later in the Dialogue, there is notice taken of  "the pretender in medicine" and "the true physician" and of course, the issues of wisdom versus science.

quotes are from "The Collected Dialogues Of Plato, Including the Letters", edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, translated by Benjamin Jowett  The Introduction was written by Huntington Cairns, the Prefatory Notes to each dialogue by Edith Hamilton; (Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton University Press, 1961; pages 99, 101-106)

One last note:

Not being able to immediately pinpoint the interrelationship between the four positions, between which all choice is made, e. q. u. and o., neither Plato or Socrates observed that the correct use of e. and q. would produce "the new thing", the T. position, the transcendent.

Nevertheless, the Greeks did have that noun, sophrosyne, whose presence indicates a mysterious and most valuable human quality. Plato and Socrates were a breath away from knowing there is something over and beyond the relationships between e.s and q.s. They almost noticed that since slow and quick are both good, that maybe going first to one and then to the other, has something to so with the quality for which they are searching. But no, there were always those impoverished modes to confuse things.

What if the two philosophers had gone about their investigation into the nature of sophrosyne another way? What if instead of asking, "What are the qualities of sophrosyne?" they had looked more carefully at Charmides himself, inquiring who he was, what he did, how he changed and did the opposite when a context made it appropriate. They might have noticed how he did things fully, even went to extremes (in sports, laugher, in caring), but always pulled back at the sign or feel of excess. If they had done that --

•    •    •

From the serious to the light-hearted, from sophrosyne to frivolity and who would deny that we need both. In fact, since anything at all can truly be an equobenity why not choose one that is a long long distance from what Plato or Socrates would have chosen:

Equobenities:

e. serious                                            q. light-hearted

or

           e. having purpose                                q. having no purpose or even beautiful

                                                   

e. pretty                                       q. beautiful

                                                          

Jessica K. Jenkins has written a book about frivolity and she is clear about the difference between the impoverished mode and its equobenity. Although many people judge "frivolity" in its impoverished mode, Jenkins goes the other direction and sees frivolity as essential.

"This book is an homage to frivolity --though again, I don't mean the empty gesture of spending too much: doing something frivolous means doing something pretty and purposeless. And what better reason to do something than for no reason at all? I believe it's essential."

"Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights", by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, a division of Random House; 2010, page 3)

Usually, you get stuck between a rock and a hard place because of something  a person or persons has done to you.

History

Your small country is about to be invaded. You know history, you know the nature of these particular invaders. You know there will be burning, raping, looting, murder.

But your ancestors have farmed this land for centuries; your children are small, your parents old. Do you leave? Do you stay and hope for the best?

Do you even contemplate appearing to get on with the conquerors?

This is what life is presenting you with right now. This event is about to overtake you.. You must choose. If you don't, someone or some event, will choose for you. Remedy:

Choose the least bad. When all is finished which choice leaves you with more of what you most deeply care for?

•    •    •

Example:

Someone else's impoverished modes have inflicted their own situations upon you.

You are forced to choose between two bad things. Perhaps you made a bad choice awhile back and this bad choice is why you are now where you are. However, when you make this choice, one of the bad things will have gone away but you'll have the one truly good thing that remains. At least you'll have that.

When Eleanor of Aquitaine was told her son, Richard the Lion-Hearted was imprisoned in the Holy Roman Empire and would be killed unless she paid the ransom, she thought about her alternatives. The only way to pay the huge sum was to strip England of its wealth. The ransom would take all of it. A rock and a hard place.

                  e. pay the ransom                    q. let my son be killed

She thought, After it is all over, which outcome will be the most bearable?

She stripped England, paid the ransom and had her son alive who would some day be king. She also began immediately on the long project of rebuilding the wealth of England.

The above are two reasons why two bad things fall into the pattern of equobenity. The first and obvious one: when you lose one side you gain the other side. You have saved the other side.

The second reason why Hobson's choice is an equobenity: when you make the required choice you are dealing with the real, with reality. Knowing and acting on what is real is a value in its self. You are not catering to illusion. There are some people who would say, "Oh well, perhaps Richard won't be killed. After all, they know he is to be king of England. It seems extreme to pay the ransom. I won't do anything." Then when he is killed, Eleanor could have spent the rest of her days making her courtiers and lady's maids feel sorry for her, the terrible tragedy of losing a son.

But Eleanor took the threat as real. She chose and she did not lose her son.

•    •    •

Example:

Context: Eleanor Melrose, at the end of her life, wishes to die. Or does she? Her son, Patrick is caught between wanting to help her and his own scruples.

 

      e. rock: do as his mother wishes         q. hard place: above all, not to do as his mother wishes

" He rang Switzerland, his pulse racing. The calm voice which answered the phone in German turned out to speak English as well, and promised to send some information. (662) He breathed out slowly. He was feeling way too tense. He was going to give himself a heart attack, finishing off the wrong person by mistake. He could see he was breaking into fragments because the simplicity of his situation --son asked to kill mother-- was unbearable; and the simplicity of her situation  --person dreads every second of her existence-- was more unbearable still."

Edward St. Aubyn, "At Last" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2011; First Picador Edition, NYC, NY; January 2013; page 662 and 663-664)

In the full reading of the novel Patrick will be understood to be far more complicated than what is so clearly expressed above. In addition to the killing/preserving equobenity Patrick was also feeling a "rivalry between revenge and compassion." This complexity is what Components #5 tries to make vivid. #5 is Don't Talk About It (meaning equobenity) Do It! Patrick's turmoil here, as in the rest of the Patrick Melrose novels, seems to be the dominating turmoil of current psychological literature. As if two reasons for inner tension were not enough, he is also experiencing at tension between being in America/wanting to return to England, tension concerning his relationship to his wife, his two sons and his own life, plus: what to do about it when he is doing nothing about it. It takes more paper to list the equobenities of such a complex, highly conscious person, than it takes to describe every aspect of a wonderful poem.

•    •    •

History has given, and is still giving, many horrendous choices like the one thrust upon Eleanor. It often seems as if calamity and cruelty rule the world.

Your mind is fine, the rest of you has fallen into hopeless disrepair. Your children have abandoned you to a corrupt nursing home. You are drugged, left in filth for hours, and the cancers in your throat prevent a expressed complaint, much less an open rebellion. But your grown children have chosen for you to be here and that's that.

Equobenity: your Hobson's Choice:

e. be calm and smile

q. throw things

 

or

e. turn inward and await death

q. write letters to the papers etc.

 

or

e. be interested how others handle the situation

q. write down your good memories

You do still have choices. Unlike Queen Eleanor's choices (she who had to refinance here entire kingdom) you can choose any side of any of the above three equobenities. And add your own of course. If you are calm and smiling for three days you can choose to throw things on the fourth. In fact, let's add a fourth equobenity right now:

Context: filthy, corrupt assisted-living establishment into which your (probably exhausted) children have placed you and gone home to other concerns.

Equobenity: your Hobson's Choice:

e. be consistent Benefits:  1. more relaxing 2. nurses don't like surprises and you don't like nurses   3. more time to your own thoughts and memories 4. 5. etc.

q. be inconsistent Benefits: 1. challenges keep you awake 2. nurses get bored; you keep them awake 3. you are creative again! 4. 5. etc.

     

         

and they all have their own ideas about things

we must hear all their ideas

we leave empty slots for their thoughts

especially we end with an etc.

u. always being consistent never being inconsistent results in:  1. horrible boredom   2. loss of self 3. loss of caring 4. 5. etc.

o. always being inconsistent never being consistent results in: 1. boredom 2. self feels diminished 3. no one cares; you're lost 4. 5. etc.

 

Having choice and exercising it is good for you and feels good. Total passivity is a killer, psychologically and medically. It is in the nature of choice to provide you with choice until you are brain dead. Not the choices you want but still: choice.

•    •    •

There are Hobson's Choices in which it cannot be truthfully said that one outcome is "better" than the other. "Sophie's Choice" is the iconic example. A son and a daughter. The death camp Nazis would let Sophie keep only one of these. The other child would be stripped and go to the crematorium. Sophie was forced to choose. How many are there that would prefer to take both little ones and go with them to that unconscionable death? Who could fault her?

Sophie chose. She lost her daughter. She had her son. She lived with it. It was what life presented her with at that moment.  Other people's g. positions had forced the choice upon her.

Today, if such a choice presented itself (in the ER sometimes daily) someone would say, "Suck it up." They might be sympathetic and be good at gentle comforting. But "at the end of the day", to live with it, and to really live, not to spend the rest of your days in unquenchable sorrow, is a necessary way to go. It will bring self-respect. And you have your son.

"I Never Promised You A Rose Garden"

•    •    •

Sometimes we bring a Hobson's Choice on ourselves.

e. goes down to u.

Our self-confidence, e., has soared too high and fallen to its impoverished mode. We have become arrogant, entitled, or both. But we are good people and didn't mean this to happen. So when a friend suggests that it has happened, we recognize it, feel badly, and do one of three things.

First and best thing we can do:

go u. diagonally up to q.

Since self-confidence is part of an equobenity, the e. position,  we know the q. position is up there waiting for us: modesty perhaps?  An inquiring humility? Perhaps some gentleness in one's judgments?

We start to teach ourselves of what this side consists, how it feels, what actions grow from it.

We tone ourselves down and after awhile we feel a renewal of self-confidence. But it is better grounded. We know the importance of both sides. (Actually, we are now heading for a T.)

Second thing we can do, not a good move:

go u. down to g.

But what if the very last thing we want to hear is any kind of criticism? Not from blogs, not from Jon Stewart, not from our boss (if we still have one), not from our spouse or grown up offspring, not even from our oldest friend, and certainly not from our father!

The arrogant person presses on. Harder and higher, accumulating accumulating. Position, control, money, subservience. Maybe this hypothetical will become so autocratic h/is life will collapse about h/is unheeding ears. Maybe the government gets him or maybe he's so smart that only Paul Krugman can get to him. Surely h/e's gotten into the g. position, at least with regards to h/imself. As h/e's only a hypothetical we don't know if h/e has a spouse, children, parents etc. We don't know how many employees, or even whole villages depend upon h/im. If h/e has any or all of this h/e has surely done harm to all of them as well as to h/imself.

Third thing we can do:

He goes not to g. but from u. over to o.

But there is a third way h/e could go. Instead of listening, watching and learning, instead of flashing off into angry denial, h/is friend's words make h/im feel so terrible, so embarrassed about falling into the impoverished mode of q., into o. that he tumbles sideways from u. into o. In the o. position h/e practically tears h/s hair out with self blame and self pity.  Emotional apologies pour from h/is lips.

(This might have benefits for the families and villages.)

But self punishment also feels awful and h/e goes into denial. H/e insists h/e is not arrogant and entitled. (H/e's trying to be back in e.) But h/e avoids h/is friend (and the friend is surely beginning to avoid h/im). H/e now arrogant once more, in u.. But this time h/e plays it both ways. To impress certain people h/e returns to eating humble pie and self-castigation. And to impress certain other people h/e's arrogant, the unhearing, uncaring Boss.

Then h/e wonders why h/is friends stop calling, why h/is family always has more important things to do than visit, why work isn't working?

H/e has caught himself in a Hobson's Choice. Only it isn't --quite. There is at all times the choice of the e. and the q. But some of us learn to prefer the drama in the impoverished modes. We certainly love the attention.

Perhaps our Hobson's Choice is between choosing to stay in the impoverished modes or choosing to do the harder work and wrestling our self up to the two sides of the equobenity, the e. and the q. (It is not in their power to desert you --ever.)

Where are we on this structure:

T.

one can be self-confident

and modest at the same time

But when you speak in a self-confidant way, you don't sound modest

unless you are

When  you speak modestly, you don't sound self-confident

unless you are

The impoverished mode of e. (always modest): if you sound like a wimp you may be becoming a wimp.

The impoverished mode of q. (always self-confident): if you sound self confident you may be in danger of being arrogant

An important equobenity:

            e. we do as we are                   q. we are as we do

 

•    •    •

It is the nature of choice to sometimes be mean and arbitrary. We get out on the "horns of a dilemma", or "between a rock and a hard place", and there is not enough information to make the choice that is the right one; sometimes nothing can be the right choice.

Sometimes the choice must be made and you die inside to have to make it, choice like Sophie's choice between her two small children: whichever lives the other must die. We look into the grim future and try to estimate which choice will leave the overall situation better.

Between a rock and a hard place is not a choice between two opposing goods, two opposing benefits. Unless --

Unless, like the Hindu prayer, "Lead me ever more deeply into reality", you feel the benefit of living in what is the real, the tangible. And when the choice has been made, the reality that Sophie at least has one of her two children, is no small good. And for Sophie to "live in the equobenities" will be no small task. But at least it is real; it is not illusion.

In a Hobson's choice there is only one justification for calling either side an equobenity. Both sides are undesirable, bad, treacherous or otherwise horrific. The only justification for the use of the word "benefit" or "good", is that when one side is chosen the other is not chosen. We have claimed it. It, or he, or she, is in our territory.

And we have refused illusion and false hope; we have faced into the bitter wind of reality and come out strong.

"My wife called and asked me what she could cook for me," says New York City firefighter Louie Cacchioli. "I said, 'Honey, I just want to come home and hug everyone. ' "

"The FDNY douses the flames." Caption without a  photograph or any other identification found on the floor of author's bk.rm.

 

What does it mean "to live in the equobenities"?

It means when you take good care of your self you also have another individual, a group of individuals, our own country, in mind and care for h/er or them as well. You are moving, always, between the e. and the q.

e. I take care of myself                         q. I take care of h/er also, and my parents

It means when you're really mad at your teenager today you love h/im anyway, you respect h/im and back h/im up tomorrow.

e. No! That was wrong wrong wrong!             q. Bravo! Yes, yes, yes!

It means when you have to choose between the cheaper version and the better version you make the right choice.

It means, when enough time has passed you can look around and see you have been part of making a really good family, a happy workplace, a school that has involved parents. It means you have solved a difficult relationship, a long term distrust between nations, your own ill advised but stubborn desire to be President.

If that is too simple, here's a good example of so many e.s and q.s that it would take many hundred of pages to sort them all out. You'd have to follow this person into every detail of every choice, second by second, minute by minute. The results tell the tale just as well.

" If there was ever a prodigy of travel, in the sense that there are prodigies of music and mathematics, surely it was Patrick Leigh Fermor. Others have hit the road earlier and followed it farther, but nobody has manifested a genius for meaningful travel as precociously as Leigh Fermor, who as a teenage spent a year walking across Europe and squeezed more out of it than an ordinary mortal could get from ten lifetimes. Despite having almost no experience of life beyond England, he stepped ashore in Holland in December 1933, pointed his feet towards Istanbul, and instantly became the perfect traveler. His toughness and stamina, in league with insatiable curiosity and a photographic memory, made him a sort of marching camera, while his knack for languages and for extracting, assimilating and cross-referencing vast quantities of information --historical, cultural, architectural geographical-- made him a proto-Wikipedia. But it was Leigh Fermor's personal qualities that served him best. Handsome, clever, sweet-tempered, bibulous and game for anything, he was rarely at a loss for company, and nearly everyone he met, from swineherds to countesses, was disarmed, drawn out, and often seduced, resulting in a series of friendships, romances and virtual adoptions that put him in the thick of things and gave him a panoptic view of the old life of Central and Eastern Europe just before its annihilation. He had no need for Baedekers.

from a review by Ben Downing of Patrick Leigh Fermor's "The Broken Road; from the Iron Gates to Mount Athos" (Travel: Times Literary Supplement [TLS] September 27, 2013, page 21 column 4)

Perhaps the over arching equobenity is this one:

                                    e. personal qualities                             q. talents

•    •    •

To convince anyone that the vast majority of the world's peoples live in the equobenities just about all the time, is a confounding task. Why? Because the everyday gossip of the world and all its news media, concentrate on what is wrong, on people who, out of ignorance or desperation have fallen deeply enough into the impoverished modes to do something unusual. The unusual is newsworthy, and usually bad.

A daughter brings a six-week old kitten to her mother and when later they take a train for a week's visit outside the city, the kitten is put in a box and comes too. When the train reaches their destination the two women stand and one reaches for the kitten. But the kitten has his tiny pink nose against the bars of the box and his face is distorted with fear and anger. The mother turns to her daughter who as yet has no children, "There. That is why there's no such thing as "good" parents. If we'd left that kitten in the city he'd be dead by  the time we got back. He can't possibly know we've taken him with us for his protection. When he's grown up he'll be telling his therapist about this terrifying abandonment and you and I will be branded as "bad parents."

Just about everybody is always doing the best they can. As this is so often harmful to others there's only one remedy. Talk. Kind, empathetic talk coupled with a willingness to listen --just as kindly, just as empathetically.

Talk these out: two competitive sisters, parent struggling with child, husband and bored wife, private and over-the-top sergeant, about-to-retire headmaster and end-of-her-rope homeroom teacher, doctor and patient, decorated general and brand new NGO director, overbearing peasant and underage overlord, newly converted Catholic and agnostic Protestant, good Christian and good Jew, good Christian and good Moslem, war-weary Shia and war-weary Sunni, stellar Presidents and stellar Vice Presidents, the many rich and the many-more poor, the hero technocrat and the invisible poet.

"They won't talk."

"Why not? How many ways have  you tried?"

Why not? Everyone's too busy proving himself better than his neighbor, different from his neighbor? Much too busy just surviving? Liking to have someone to complain about or to hate? "Stick with your own kind!" sings Bernstein's  sorrowing mother of a gang leader. "Marry up or marry down, but don't marry out of your class." "Be more liberal or less liberal but don't leave the Democratic party."

So many paths to keep straight, too little time.

So no one feels duty bound to listen to the "enemy" they haven't stopped to hear.

And yet at least 99% of the world is living in the equobenities, making the right choices to do well in whatever world is their own, whether it's the world of new, working and unmarried mothers, whether it's the world of the starvation-tent-living in the African desert. Or maybe it's the desks of the CEOs that have to be polished every night, in the middle of the night just in case one of the CEOs stays late or comes in real early.

•    •     •

Proof that most people are making the very best choices they can, that most people are living in the equobenities nearly all the time: there's no one you can't connect with

and in a real way, if you happen to meet as complete strangers while waiting in line for (a ticket, a fresh loaf of bread, an appointment with the supervisor). How come there are wonderful sharing smiles between strangers --of two nationalities, two races, two vastly different income levels, two languages --and no hope of verbal sharing?

There's a huge thing going on in America right now. Young people are leaving the safety of familiar places, people and income level in order to fill a perceived need that matches their own preferences and abilities.

•    •    •

Most of the time we are operating out of more than one equobenity. We are complex enough to be able to do this creatively. We can be in the equobenity of "order", in the impoverished mode of "impatience", in the impoverished mode of "supportive love" and in the equobenity of "telling people what they want to hear" and do this all at the same time.

We could add another four equobenities to that list of just four, and the person juggling all these things would be perfectly sane, capable, able to drop what h/e was doing and greet you with pleasure.

We do our utmost to live in this triangle:

 

and not in this triangle:

The top triangle is the hard one to live in. People in the bottom triangle, if you can't get away from them, make the top triangle a lot harder. (It's so sloppy-easy to live down in the lower triangle).

Here is a man who does, "live in the equobenities". It sounds as if his lawyer does also, but for that we haven't enough information.

"A man wrongfully convicted of murder has rewarded the lawyer who helped him get off death row by founding a scholarship in her name. Anthony Graves spent 18 years in jail before Houston attorney Nicole Casarez helped prove his innocence in 2010. The Texas legislature awarded him $1.45 million for his wrongful conviction, and Graves has used part of it to create a University of Texas Law School endowment in her name. Graves said he hoped students would emulate Casarez: 'Nicole exemplifies what everyone should try to be: someone who fights against injustice.' "

Headline: It wasn't all bad. (THE WEEK, November 1, 2013 page 2)

•    •    •

"Good week for: having a heart, after Miami-Dade police Officer Vicki Thomas decided not to arrest a penniless mother who was shoplifting groceries, and bought her $100 worth of food instead. Seeing the mom's hungry kids open the bags of food 'was like Christmas,' Thomas said. "That $100 to me was worth it."

THE WEEK November 1, 2013 page 4

•    •    •

I.I. Rabi  said of Albert Einstein after he died in 1955:

"His real love was the theory of fields, which he pursued with unremitting vigor to the very end of his more than 50 years of active scientific life. ....Beyond that, his guiding principles were his esthetic and philosophical urge for simplicity and symmetry."

Scientific American 1955

•    •    •

John Rabe was a German businessman working for the Siemens China Company when Japan invaded China in 1937. This invasion created "one of the ugliest landmarks of an ugly century." The massacre of the Chinese by the Japanese is now called the Rape of Nanking, (current nomenclature: Nanjing.)

 Rabe could have fled Nanking with other foreigners but wrote in his diaries that he was not ready "to save my skin just yet." Instead, being a Nazi who originally supported Hitler, he invoked Hitler's name and "gained tacit approval from the Japanese to set up a special safety zone that ended up sheltering a couple of hundred thousand Chinese from the rampaging Japanese soldiers. The zone lasted about four months." But Rabe remained and described in his diary what he witnessed of massacres and rapes.

After that "the Japanese began burning down the city and the people in it....But he couldn't get approval even to bury the dead, and he pointed to 'the danger in which we are all exposed as long as perhaps a thousand corpses are lying about the city unburied.' He continues: 'These corpses have been partially eaten by dogs. At the same time, however, dog meat is being sold by the Chinese in the streets.'

"As Nanjing starved, the crops outside the city walls lay rotting because no one was allowed to go out to harvest them. Rabe surmises that the Japanese wanted the Chinese to starve to death. He compares the Japanese to the hordes of Genghis Khan writing, 'Normal people do not behave this way.' "

Rabe returned to Germany but "when he tried to send a report of the atrocities to Hitler he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo. The reviewer of Rabe's diaries says of him:

"Rabe is modest, unpolemical. He is, by turns, naive and cynical, generous and materialistic, outraged and calm. His account is compassionate and, at times, humorous, with an understated horror that seethes through the straightforward delivery."

source: A New York Times book review by Sheryl WuDunn, December 13, 1998. Headline: The Good Nazi; The diaries of a German civilian who saved thousands during the Rape of Nanking. The book: "The Good Man Of Nanking; The Diaries of John Rabe", by John Rabe (edited by Erwin Wickert.Illustrated. 294 pages. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p.26)

•    •    •

Sisters getting on with each other, e. and q.

Context: two very different sisters who appreciate each other

Equobenity:

                        e. orientation: mind, facts,      q. orientation: emotion, story,

                         loves explanations                 loves mysteries

"She arrives in Rome prepared, as ever. She brings five guidebooks, all of which she has read already, and she has the city pre-mapped in her head. She was completely oriented before she even left Philadelphia. And this is a classic example of the differences between us. I am the one who spent my first weeks in Rome wandering about, 90 percent lost and 100 percent happy, seeing everything around me as an unexplainable beautiful mystery. But this is how the world kind of always looks to me. To my sister's eyes, there is nothing which cannot be explained if one has access to a proper reference library. This is a woman who keeps The Columbia Encyclopedia in her kitchen next to her cookbooks --and reads it , for pleasure."

and a further description of the same thing:

"This is Rome, Catherine-style. Full of facts and dates and architecture that I do not see because my mind does not work in that way. The only thing I ever want to know about any place  or any person is the story, this is the only thing I watch for –never for aesthetic details."

"Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert [Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Books; paperback 2006; page 90 91 and on]

From a theater review:

              "There are some lines that are so ripely in the [Tennessee] Williams vein that they might have been written by a parodist. Billy is described as being 'fresh out of a southern greenhouse for delicate plants.' Babe announces, ''Before sundown, I intend to gratify  everything in me as the luna moth dies at dusk.'

              "For such dialogue to work, it has to be delivered with either grotesque comic flair or the kind of audacious sincerity that dares you to go ahead and laugh. For all its excesses, this production inhabits some tepid, in-between realm. Though its location is never identified, Gideon’s Point winds up in the state of boredom. That's a territory that Williams's work, good or bad, usually stayed miles away from." (italics mine)

review by Ben Brantley of The New York Times , April 17, 2012, of Tennessee Wlliams's last play, "In Masks Outrageous and Austere"

This a good example of a production falling between two stools, trying to be both serious ("Austere") and not serious ("Outrageous") during the course of one play, and succeeding in neither --at least for the Times theater reviewer.

W are not fully successfully doing two things at once, or trying to have your cake and eat it too, especially when we're trying to squirm out of making a commitment. This is true whether we are texting and doing homework at the same time, or whether we are in the middle of an important public speech and someone in the audience calls out an extremely worthwhile and nuanced question having nothing to do with the speech.

•    •    •

Going part way, taking a little from this side and a little from that, does not create  "a good balance" even though many people tell themselves that this is what they are doing.

True balance is found long after the decisions have been made. True balance, like perspective and like happiness, is the result of appropriate choices.

That said, there are many times when a little of this and little of that is just what's called for. And yes, it is hard to know the difference. And yes, it's probably a good idea to be transparent and to signal when you're not ready to make the decision.

Here is Richard Feynman and Steven Connor on this difficult subject

Richard P. Feynman won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work with the theory of quantum electrodynamics. The following is quoted from a series of lectures he gave at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1963.

"---in any organization there ought to be the possibility of discussion. That fence sitting is an art, and it's difficult, and it's important to do, rather than to go headlong in one direction or the other. It's just better to have action, isn't it, than to sit on the fence? Not if you're not sure which way to go, it isn't." (italics mine)

Richard P Feynman, "The Meaning Of It All Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist" (Perseus Books 1998, page 100)

Here's the same thought but from another angle. Connor hears too many absolutes, too many "I hear you. Not to worry. It will be there." And then the promises aren't fulfilled. The certainties turn out to have something else attached.

"Amid the hiss and clang made by the falling blades of these either/ors, the thin squeak of a word like 'sometimes' or 'probably' has little chance of making itself heard." (italics mine)

Steven Connor reviewing "Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism" and Sean Sheehan "Zizek: A guide for the perplexed" in the Times Literary Supplement, October 26, 2012; page 22

And yet:

"There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision."

William James (1890)

All equobenities, all pairs of opposites, can be impossibly subtle.

Is decision/indecision the only equobenity that is always impossibly subtle, delicate, nuanced, sensitive? (No, it isn't)

•    •    •

The lead in the fall 2013 movie, "Good Enough" has had no trouble getting by; she's pretty, funny, young and a massage therapist. What's not to like? But she does begin to really like a guy who turns out to be the ex-husband of one of her clients, a client who, to make things worse, has become a friend.. Our heroine recognizes the trouble she's in and she just gets in deeper and deeper. Of course it all blows up. She hasn't grown up enough to deal with it openly, to take the reality check seriously, or take her pretty head out of the sand.

One wonders if Logan Pearsall Smith had something like this in mind when he wrote:

"Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God."

"Afterthoughts: Other People", 1931, by Logan Pearsall Smith 1865-1946

•    •    •

Here is Alexander the Great getting into trouble in the fourth century BC

"He (Alexander) made his Companions -much against their will in some cases- wear purple-bordered white Persian cloaks, and (when all else failed) tried to silent his more vociferous critics with increasingly lavish hand-outs and bonanzas. However, any ruler who made so blatant an effort to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds could hardly avoid trouble in the long run. A few of Alexander's close friends, such as Hephaestion, together with the usual clique of court toadies, actively supported his new integrationist line. The professional career officers -Craterus is a good example- were indifferent so long as their own status prospects did not suffer. But Philip's hard-lining veterans bitterly resented the whole experiment. The sight of their young king parading in outlandish robes, and on intimate terms with the quacking, effeminate, barbarian nobles he had so lately defeated, filled them with genuine disgust. The idea of accepting their ex-enemies as comrades-in-arms was equally repugnant to them. So far as they were concerned, the war had ended with Darius' death, and Alexander's grandiose dreams of further eastern conquest left them cold. The sooner they got home, the better." (italics mine)

"Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 BC, A Historical Biography", by Peter Green (University of California Press 1991; Chapter 8 "The Lord of Asia" pages 334-335)

Our vocabulary is unable to distinguish quickly between an e. (the equobenity) and its u. (its impoverished mode).  The same is true of course, between a q. and its o.

Examples:

"How come you always have something nice to say?"

In order to figure out if the speaker thinks saying nice things is a good thing (an e.) or if h/e thinks it's really being hypocritical (which would be its u.) you have to listen to the tone of h/is voice. You even have to take in h/is body language. If h/e means it as a genuine compliment you will respond differently to the question than if you detect irony and/or condescension.

There's a lot to be said for the subtleties of this; one learns to hear the least fraction of an innuendo. But what if it's your boss and s/he's telling you to do something:

"Here, take these papers for Mr. McCarron and while you're over there, don't forget to ask his wife to the office party. Maybe she'll come  this time."

This is a double whammy. First, does your boss think you are apt to forget? Perhaps s/he herself, did forget and only just thought of it. Did you let your boss down and you can't remember when? Not knowing whether or not you did is going to bother you, maybe make you over-enthusiastic when you speak to the wife about the party. Which brings up the second whammy. It sounds as if maybe your boss doesn't really like the wife that much, maybe s/he even hopes the wife won't come. (Weren't invitations sent out to couples?) But maybe your boss (or the wife) has just been forgetful. So, just how friendly should you be when the wife answers the doorbell? What if the wife doesn't come to the party and your boss really wanted her too, and, "Once again you've let me down!"

•    •    •

Being clear about an e. and a q. can also be tricky. People often don't see both sides of a question with both being valid.  It's easy to see the bad side of anything.

Example of the failure to see the validity in both sides of an equobenity:

After many months of tough negotiations between two warring religious neighbors, a settlement has been agreed upon. Divided families have all known bloodshed will sit together and forge a relationship for the future. Well known and respected elders who observed but did not participate in the ever escalating events, will lessen the initial impact. They will remain present as hatred gradually changes to tolerant disagreement. The two most popular and troublesome people whose fanatical support for their own side has been the cause of this escalation will not be invited to the negotiating table. As leaders shouldn't they be?

T.

several meeting should be scheduled

sometimes the participants of meetings

are carefully chosen in order to find agreement among themselves

sometimes everyone should be invited

the times and durations of all meetings should be known to all

                                                         

e. to invite the two leaders  Benefits 1. everyone is heard 2. 3. 4. etc

q. to exclude the two leaders Benefits 1. only the peacemakers are heard 2. angry leaders can't disrupt the negotiations 3. 4. etc

                         

u. always everyone is heard, peacemakers are  never given priority. This results in: 1. the negotiation will come to nothing 2. peacemakers appear weak 3. 4. etc.

o. only the peacemakers are heard, angry leaders are never heard. This results in: 1. future divisions are prepared 2. angry leaders keep their power 3. underground resentments will fester 4. 5. etc.

 

No matter how carefully the meetings are prepared, the following will occur:

"Invite those two hotheads? Not on your life. They'll get everyone all stirred up again and ready to go to war again." (The speaker has immediately attacked the impoverished mode of e.)

If the hearer realizes this h/e can explain and defend the e., thus turning the speaker away from the impoverished mode and to its equobenity.

And of course, "No matter how carefully the meetings are prepared, the following will occur":

"Not invite our two leaders? People love them! They follow them! You think anyone will pay any attention to those old fellows who never even took a proper stand, much less fought."

Here the impoverished mode of q. has been attacked. Again, the hearer, knowing this, can attempt to talk the speaker up to an understanding of the q. position.

•    •    •

If you find something useful in equobenity how are you going to describe to somebody what an equobenity is? It will be too complicated for another person to follow if you say an equobenity consists of two sometimes unrelated nouns, actions, attitudes, historical and geological periods, that each side can go bad, but that if all goes well you have created something that was never before in this world, even if it was something as simple as a shower. If you don't have the specific words that refer to specific things and actions it would be better to know all this (as many do) but for the sake of sanity not talk about it.

Context: the mail arrives in northern Alaska. Simon has been the head man a long time.

 

                        e. no terms on leadership        q. strict terms for political office

T.

if everyone gets their due

and attention is paid

rational decisions

about leadership are made

e. if someone is willing to take on being head man, and does it with justice, then let it be Benefits: 1. there is need for a diversity of talents, therefore, jobs 2. everyone is needed, everyone gets their due praise   3. 4. etc.

q. everyone should have their turn being head man Benefits: 1. it's good practice 2. if everyone learns how hard it is to be head man there will be less complaining and more empathy 3. 4. etc.

 

 

The two impoverished modes are not hard to see: the head man my get to think it's his due, may not recognize his faults, become lazy, entitled.

On the other hand, if the position of headman is changed every few years several degrees of expertise and wisdom will be lost.

The Transcendence only appears over a very long period of time as we become able to see how any one community's pattern works out, whether for the benefit of the people, or for their harm. Also, of course, there are many possible variations for the q. side.

"It was the day the sched arrived from Inuvik, bringing mail and who knew what Sears catalogue surprises for individuals and dry goods and groceries for the store. Her older brother Simon would, as usual, empty the mailbags on the store floor after the plane had left and hand out letters and packages as if they were presents from himself, called the recipients to step forward and often making jokes about what their letters and packages might contain."

 "Midnight Sun" by Larry Osgood (Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada;  2005; page 27)

What is the best way, the least hurtful way, to warn Simon that his long rule may be starting to grate on some of his constituents? The laughter is gentle still, he has not really fallen into an impoverished mode. But the reader senses that with time he will. And how will the small and close-knit community handle the need to have him leave? Is this a situation where the vocabulary of neutral questions would help? Help suggest the impoverished mode, which, after all, in one way or another, everyone falls into? Help with the search for the next relevant equobenity?

•    •    •

The suicide of a twelve-year-old girl hounded to her death by cyber bullying provoked highly articulate letters.

Most of them bemoaned "excessive sarcasm, bilious remarks, soft bullying and anything that degrades another individual," "humiliations routinely showcased on reality TV, the snarls of call-in shows and the acidic tone of popular blogs," and the normalization of the uglier and less empathetic side of human behavior (all from Mitch Horowitz, NY).

Others spoke of the many ways in which the personal has been downgraded, and how the rise of anonymity has emboldened many who would otherwise be silent, learn or grow up. But Robert Eisinger of Bristol, Rhode Island where he is the dean of the Feinstein Collage of Arts and Sciences at Roger Williams University, warns that:

"-a highly sanitized discourse is also problematic, especially within a country that values free speech.

            The philosopher Judith Butler has described the merits of 'excitable speech.' And the sociologist Michael Schudson has argued that democracy 'may sometimes require that your interlocutor does not wait politely for you to finish but shakes you by the collar and cries 'Listen! Listen for God’s sake!'

            While cultivating civility is admirable and valuable, we also must consider how much civility (and incivility) we as a nation both need and desire."

Mitch Horowitz whose book, "One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life" is about to appear, answers Dean Eisinger saying that "conducting instant communication at an emotional remove ...seems to heighten recklessness...and that round-the-clock, impersonal say-anything communication has hastened our decline into coarseness."

Would this civilized exchange be clearer if the writers had the vocabulary of equobenity to distinguish between, for example, the passionate cry, "Listen! For God's sake listen!" and "impersonal, say-anything communication"? Could the argument have been more incisive? How about a discussion of the effect of cultural coarsening on people too sensitive but with no recourse?

all the above quotes are from The New York Times, Sunday, October 27, 2013; Letters; Sunday Dialogue: "The Rise of Incivility"

•    •    •

Headline in The New York Times for November 27, 2012:

            A Moment to Be Sentimental, but Not Mushy

       

The article was from the arts section and reporter Zachary Woolfe wrote glowingly about the New York Youth Symphony --although who hasn’t experienced genuine sentiment go too far and become mushy? Curiously, there are not enough words like this one, this "mushy." So often one has to describe an impoverished mode because there is no one word that will do the trick.

•    •    •

Would the following be clearer if we could quickly distinguish between what is an equobenity and what is an impoverished mode? The "antagonist" in what follows is not understood to be doing harm. The definition of the impoverished mode is doing harm. An antagonist, an opponent challenges Spirit. Whether Spirit freely chooses to meet the challenge of the antagonist or is forced to do so, the result is the same: both gain -- in capacity, in breadth.

And here, as always, our vocabulary can't stretch wide enough to say what all the gains might be. We need context, always context.

"Many of us know, or think we know, how history goes according to Hegel. At each point in history, 'Spirit' (us, in a way) meets with its limiting or negative antagonist in the form of matter (as it might be, the world). The resulting conflict is resolved by a synthesis in which Spirit assimilates to itself the very conflict between itself and its antagonist, thereby both preserving and overcoming the opposition. By this means, Spirit steadily increases its repertoire, and matter is steadily engrossed by Spirit. The Hegelian story of the engorgement of Spirit through history --the 'dialectic'-- has been held responsible for every kind of modern totalitarianism, fascist or communist."

Steven Connor reviewing "Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism" and Sean Sheehan "Zizek: A guide for the perplexed" in the Times Literary Supplement, October 26, 2012; page 21

 

T.

Spirit accepts

revels

in the material world

at the same time

as everything which is

material

accepts and holds

to the high and rewarding values of the

non-material

Spirit

 

                                    e. the spirit, the soul                q. the material world

 

The impoverished mode of e., the spirit without the material world,

without the love of the material world, indeed hating and despising the material world, counting it as less than nothing in comparison with the spirit, indeed the material world as evil --this truly does harm. A warped human being, crushing those nearby, crushing h/imself.

The impoverished mode of q., the absence of all that is spirit, all that is infectious with hope (even in desolation), with enthusiasm, with love, love constrained or unconstrained, here is a dry miserable, greedy-grubbing world of money, collections, jealous ambitions. (Are there actually people like this?)

Doesn't everyone rise to the appearance of spring, that yearly manifestation of possibility applying itself equally to both greening "matter" and to our spirits, spirits so beautifully and unalterably separated from that greening matter?