The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant

I have a love/hate relationship with philosophy. In the abstract, I love it. Thinking about the meaning of life is the pastime of the ages, after all, but often -- too often -- when I sit down to read someone else's thoughts on the subject -- especially someone who lived before the European Renaissance -- I find myself bored, then confused, then intolerant. Remember my pull quote from my recent read of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

What I find in Aristotle is mainly a quite dull collection of generalizations, many of which seem impossible to justify in the light of modern knowledge, whose organization appears extremely poor, and which seems primitive in the way old Greek pottery in the museums seems primitive.

Yeah, that.

Maybe my problem is that I don’t really understand the history of philosophy -- the long story of growth and progression of the philosophic art. I tend to pluck a philosopher out of the maelstrom of history without a true understanding of his place or position in what has to be an evolutionary tale. Sure, that philosopher looks like a fossil, but only because I’m looking at him with my modern eyes. If I better understood what was revolutionary about him in his time, I might have a better appreciation of his achievements.

It is with this spirit in mind that I picked up a copy of The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant in some dusty used bookstore somewhere. I was looking for a review course, and I more or less got one. Early on, it included a definition of our subject.

Specifically, philosophy means and includes five fields of study and discourse: logic, esthetics, ethics, politics, and metaphysics.

Logic is the study of ideal method in thought and research: observation and introspection, deduction and induction, hypothesis and experiment, analysis and synthesis -- such as the forms of human activity which logic tries to understand and guide; it is a dull study for most of us, and yet the great events in the history of thought are the improvements men have made in their methods of thinking and research.

Esthetics is the study of ideal form, or beauty; it is the philosophy of art.

Ethics is the study of ideal conduct; the highest knowledge, said Socrates, is the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of the wisdom of life.

Politics is the study of ideal social organization (it is not, as one might suppose, the art and science of capturing and keeping office); monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, socialism, anarchism, feminism -- these are the dramatis personae of political philosophy.

And lastly, metaphysics (which gets into so much trouble because it is not, like the other forms of philosophy, an attempt to coordinate the real in the light of the ideal) is the study of the “ultimate reality” of all things: of the real and final nature of “matter” (ontology), of “mind” (philosophical psychology), and of the interrelation of “mind” and “matter” in the process of perception and knowledge (epistemology).

This seems a handy reference to keep at your elbow whenever diving into a philosophic work. If true and complete, we should be able to trace trajectories of philosophic thought along these radial lines -- unless, of course, they wind up intersecting at some point beyond the central hub of their creation.

The rest of Durant’s book, subtitled “The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers” presents a more or less chronological review of some of the most famous philosophies. Beginning with Plato, then moving through Aristotle, Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and Nietzsche, and then wrapping up with a few “contemporary” philosophers of note: Bergson, Croce, Russell, Santayana, James and Dewey.

It is not my intention of summarize Durant’s take on every one of these figures, merely to capture the more compelling reactions I had to some of them. So, instead let me try to organize them around the five mentioned domains of philosophy.

Logic

Essential to the domain of logic is the issue of definitions.

“If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.” How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task.

I’ve made this remark many times myself -- usually in political conversations with friends and colleagues. If we can’t agree on our terms, that this collection of words has this specific meaning, then how can we hope to agree on anything else? And closely related to this concept is this insightful criticism from Francis Bacon:

“For men converse by means of language; but words are imposed according to the understanding of the crowd; and there arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind.” Philosophers deal out infinites with the careless assurance of grammarians handling infinitives; and yet does any man know what this “infinite” is, or whether it has even taken the precaution of existing? Philosophers talk about “first cause uncaused,” or “first mover unmoved”; but are not these again fig-leaf phrases used to cover naked ignorance, and perhaps indicative of a guilty conscience in the user? Every clear and honest head knows that no cause can be causeless, nor any mover unmoved. Perhaps the greatest reconstruction in philosophy would be simply this -- that we should stop lying.

Amen. I think its was a contemporary philosopher not cited in Durant’s book that said “that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” Many philosophers, in Durant’s book and out, fall victim to what I see as an essential logical construct. If something cannot be defined, you are not in a position to assert that it exists. To wit:

What is this underlying reality? Spinoza calls it substance, as literally that which stands beneath. Eight generations have fought voluminous battles over the meaning of this term; we must not be discouraged if we fail to resolve the matter in a paragraph. One error we should guard against: substance does not mean the constituent material of anything, as when we speak of wood as the substance of a chair. We approach Spinoza’s use of the word when we speak of “the substance of his remarks.” If we go back to the Scholastic philosophers from whom Spinoza took the term, we find that they used it as a translation of the Greek ousia, which is the present participle of einai, to be, and indicated the inner being or essence. Substance then is that which is (Spinoza had not forgotten the impressive “I am who I am” of Genesis); that which eternally and unchangeably is, and of which everything else must be a transient form or mode. If now we compare this division of the world into substance and modes with its division, in The Improvement of the Intellect, into the eternal order of laws and invariable relations on the one hand, and the temporal order of time-begotten and death-destined things on the other, we are impelled to the conclusion that Spinoza means by substance here very nearly what he meant by the eternal order there. Let us provisionally take it as one element in the term substance, then, that it betokens the very structure of existence, underlying all events and things, and constituting the essence of the world.

And wholly asserted, I suppose. Is there any evidence that Spinoza’s substance, fought voluminously for eight generations, even exists? When it comes to so many of the other domains of philosophy, this essential underpinning of basic logic seems so easily ignored.

I’m not the only philosopher who has noticed this. Here’s something amusing from Voltaire, which may more appropriately be positioned under metaphysics.

Metaphysics

“The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women.” It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” “I do not know how I was made, and how I was born. I did not know at all, during a quarter of my life, the causes of what I saw, or heard, or felt. … I have seen that which is called matter, both as the star Sirius, and as the smallest atom which can be perceived with the microscope; and I do not know what this matter is.”

He tells a story of “The Good Brahmin,” who says, “I wish I had never been born!”

“Why so?” said I.

“Because,” he replied, “I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost. … I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands. … I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.”

The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment on her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:

“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yeards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?”

“You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire.”

This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than anything that had passed.

Even if Philosophy should end in the total doubt of Montaigne’s “Que sais-je?” it is man’s greatest adventure, and his noblest. Let us learn to be content with modest advances in knowledge, rather than be forever weaving new systems out of our mendacious imagination.

To me, this anecdote is amazing, and refreshing, after the so many attempts I have made to wade through the speculations of so many other philosophers.

Of course, when it comes to exploring metaphysics, one is bound to stumble into the various traps associated with free will. It may provide a helpful bridge to the domain of ethics, since the issue of whether or not we have free will either relates to the true underlying reality of our existence or to our ethical obligations to others or both. You should be free to pick you own poison.

Either way, Spinoza had a lot to say on the subject.

There is, consequently, no free will; the necessities of survival determine instinct, instinct determines desire, and desire determines thought and action. “The decisions of the mind are nothing save desires, which vary according to various dispositions.” “There is in the mind no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined in willing this or that by a cause which is determined in its turn by another cause, and this by another, and so on to infinity” “Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and desires, but are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and desire.” Spinoza compares the feeling of free will to a stone’s thinking, as it travels through space, that it determines its own trajectory and selects the place and time of its fall.

This seems like such a key point to understanding ourselves and our place in the world around us. Our consciousness observes our behavior, it does not determine it. Disagree with me on that, and you and I are destined to disagree on almost everything else.

Ethics

And here comes the ethical side of that reality. More Spinoza, addressing the key ethical dilemma of determinism.

And let no one suppose that because he is no longer “free,” he is no longer morally responsible for his behavior and the structure of his life. Precisely because men’s actions are determined by their memories, society must for its protection form its citizens through their hopes and fears into some measure of social order and cooperation. All education presupposes determinism, and pours into the open mind of youth a store of prohibitions which are expected to participate in determining conduct. “The evil which ensues from evil deeds is not therefore less to be feared because it comes of necessity; whether our actions are free or not, our motives still are hope and fear. Therefore the assertion is false that I would leave no room for precepts and commands.” On the contrary, determinism makes for a better moral life: it teaches us not to despise or ridicule any one, or be angry with any one; men are “not guilty”; and though we punish miscreants, it will be without hate; we forgive them because they know not what they do.

Determined might mean free from will, but it does not mean free from moral responsibility. The evil which ensues from evil deeds is not less to be feared because it comes of necessity. The determined moral agents in the community around the evil doer still have the responsibility to prevent further evil.

But many philosophers have disagreed on this point. And those on the other side of the argument usually try to summon something more profound than simple human free will out of thin air. Here’s a snippet from Immanuel Kant.

And again, though we cannot prove, we feel, that we are deathless. We perceive that life is not like those dramas so beloved by the people -- in which every villain is punished, and every act of virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew every day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he steals enough. If mere wordly utility and expediency were the justification of virtue, it would not be wise to be too good. And yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that we ought to do the inexpedient good. How could this sense of right survive if it were not that in our hearts we feel this life to be only a part of life, this earthly dream only an embryonic prelude to a new birth, a new awakening; if we did not vaguely know that in that later and longer life the balance will be redressed, and not one cup of water given generously but shall be returned a hundred-fold?

Read that section again. “X” is true because I feel that it is. Does his reason go any deeper than that? If it does, I cannot see it. And I’m not the only one. As scientific naturalism began to get its feet under it in the years after Darwin, the very meaning of good began to change.

The nineteenth century dealt rather hardly with Kant’s ethics, his theory of an innate, a priori, absolute moral sense. The philosophy of evolution suggested irresistibly that the sense of duty is a social deposit in the individual, the content of conscience is acquired, though the vague disposition to social behavior is innate. The moral self, the social man, is no “special creation” coming mysteriously from the hand of God, but the late product of a leisurely evolution. Morals are not absolute; they are a code of conduct more or less haphazardly developed for group survival, and varying with the nature and circumstances of the group: a people hemmed in by enemies, for example, will consider as immoral that zestful and restless individualism which a nation youthful and secure in its wealth and isolation will condone as a necessary ingredient in the exploitation of natural resources and the formation of national character. No action is good in itself, as Kant supposes.

With respect to Kant, I far prefer the thoughts of Voltaire, who earned a special place in my heart when he offered the following as his rationale for writing his Essay on the Morals and the Spirit of the Nations from Charlemagne to Louis XIII.

What Voltaire sought was a unifying principle by which the whole history of civilization in Europe could be woven on one thread; and he was convinced that this thread was the history of culture. He was resolved that his history should deal not with kings but with movements, forces, and masses; not with nations but with the human race; not with wars but with the march of the human mind. “Battles and revolutions are the smallest part of the plan; squadrons and battalions conquering or being conquered, towns taken and retaken, are common to all history. … Take away the arts and the progress of the mind, and you will find nothing” in any age “remarkable enough to attract the attention of posterity.” “I wish to write a history not of wars, but of society; and to ascertain how men lived in the interior of their families, and what were the arts which they commonly cultivated. … My object is the history of the human mind, and not a mere detail of petty facts; nor am I concerned with the history of great lords…; but I want to know what were the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilization.”

Speaking as someone currently slogging through a work of history too focused on kings and their struggles for dominance, Voltaire’s “moral history” sounds ideal.

Politics

And that leads us to politics. When it comes to many of the philosophers in this book, it is democracy that seems to win the day among our many political choices -- albeit a very rarefied kind of democracy.

Democracy is the most reasonable form of government; for in it “every one submits to the control of authority over his actions, but not over his judgment and reason; i.e., seeing that all cannot think alike, the voice of the majority has the force of law.” The military basis of this democracy should be universal military service, the citizens retaining their arms during peace; its fiscal basis should be the single tax. The defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power; and there is no way of avoiding this except by limiting office to men of “trained skill.” Numbers by themselves cannot produce wisdom, and may give the best favors of office to the grossest flatterers. “The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduced those who have experience of it to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not by reason.” Thus, democratic government becomes a procession of brief-lived demagogues, and men of worth are loath to enter lists where they must be judged and rated by their inferiors. Sooner or later the more capable men rebel against such a system, though they be in a minority. “Hence I think it is that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies”; people at least prefer tyranny to chaos. Equality of power is an unstable condition; men are by nature unequal; and “he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.” Democracy has still to solve the problem of enlisting the best energies of men while giving to all alike the choice of those, among the trained and fit, by whom they wish to be ruled.

Among the trained and fit. These are Spinoza’s words, but they echo similar passages written by Plato and Aristotle before him. Philosophers of many stripes seem to have landed on the idea of “checked” democracy as the ideal political system.

But on another level, it may not really matter which political system one is forced to live under. Force, and its use, after all, tends to blur all the distinctions.

The great evil of the state is its tendency to become an engine of war, a hostile fist shaken in the face of a supposedly inferior world. Santayana thinks that no people has ever won a war.

“Where parties and governments are bad, as they are in most ages and countries, it makes practically no difference to a community, apart from local ravages, whether its own army or the enemy’s is victorious in war. … The private citizen in any event continues in such countries to pay a maximum of taxes and to suffer, in all his private interests, a maximum of vexation and neglect. Nevertheless … the oppressed subject will glow like the rest with patriotic ardor, and will decry as dead to duty and honor anyone who points out how perverse is this helpless allegiance to a government representing no public interest.”

This is strong language for a philosopher; but let us have our Santayana unexpurgated. Often enough, he thinks, conquest and absorption by a larger state is a step forward toward the organization and pacification of mankind; it would be a boon to all the world if all the world were ruled by some great power or group of powers, as all the world was once ruled by Rome, first with the sword and then with the word.

It is an idea worth developing. As I heard a libertarian friend once say, what does it matter which group of criminals taxes us? And to extend that thought -- which is better, a bunch of small criminals, using their citizens in an eternal fight for dominance, or one large criminal, taking his due, but otherwise leaving all citizens in peace?

Santayana continues, again leading us back to where we started:

What form of society, then, shall we strive for? Perhaps for none; there is not much difference among them. But if for any one in particular, for “timocracy.” This would be government by men of merit and honor; it would be an aristocracy, but not hereditary; every man and woman would have an open road according to ability, to the highest offices in the state; but the road would be closed to incompetence, no matter how richly furnished it might be with plebiscites. “The only equality subsisting would be equality of opportunity.” Under such a government corruption would be at a minimum, and science and the arts would flourish through discriminating encouragement. It would be just that synthesis of democracy and aristocracy which the world pines for in the midst of its political chaos today: only the best would rule; but every man would have an equal chance to make himself worthy to be numbered among the best. -- It is, of course, Plato over again, the philosopher-kings of the Republic appearing inevitably on the horizon of every far-seeing political philosophy. The longer we think about these matters the more surely we return to Plato. We need no new philosophy; we need only the courage to live up to the oldest and the best.

Esthetics

The only piece of esthetics I found worth noting is this bit from Schopenhauer.

This deliverance of knowledge from servitude to the will, this forgetting of the individual self and its material interest, this elevation of the mind to the will-less contemplation of truth, is the function of art.

Very much the same Schopenhauer I stumbled across in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art.

Epilogue

I’ve occasionally stumbled across historical anecdotes that seem to beg me to write them up a short stories. To date, I’ve only acted on one of those entreaties -- when stumbling across the anecdote of Teddy Roosevelt’s fevered brush with death on his expedition up South America’s River of Doubt -- but others probably loom somewhere in my future. Here’s another to add to that list.

[Voltaire] was now eighty-three; and a longing came over him to see Paris before he died. The doctors advised him not to undertake so arduous a trip; but “if I want to commit a folly,” he answered, “nothing will prevent me”; he had lived so long, and worked so hard, that perhaps he felt he had a right to die in his own way, and in that electric Paris from which he had been so long exiled. And so he went, weary mile after weary mile, across France; and when his coach entered the capital his bones hardly held together. He went at once to the friend of his youth, d’Argental: “I have left off dying to come and see you,” he said. The next day his room was stormed by three hundred visitors, who welcomed him as a king; Louis XVI fretted with jealousy. Benjamin Franklin was among the callers, and brought his grandson for Voltaire’s blessing; the old man put his thin hands upon the youth’s head and bade him dedicate himself to “God and Liberty.”

Wow. Just imagine the scene. Poor Richard’s grandson, shaking hands with Voltaire, the bridge from European to American enlightenment encapsulated in this one small human gesture. That’s a story worth writing.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 50 (DRAFT)

The rest of the conference day went pretty much like that. Something would happen and it would be bad and I would feel like the world was about to crash down all around me. Then something else would happen and it would be good and I would feel like I had redeemed myself in the eyes of all the ever-watchful judges. And then something else would happen and it would be bad again and I would feel like I was back in the soup. To borrow a term, it was bipolar, but that’s what working that conference was like. You were juggling more balls that you had ever juggled before and surviving on four hours of sleep a night.

The truth, of course, is that everything -- the good and the bad and everything in between -- was all in your sleep-deprived mind. No one was watching what you were doing. They were all too busy juggling their own balls.

I had a few spare moments before having to babysit the evening sessions, so I went back to my hotel room to use the restroom and splash some water on my face. There were plenty of restrooms in the convention space, of course, but they were always full of conference goers, and sometimes I just needed a break from all their questions and demands. I’ve been accosted in the men’s room before, attendees recognizing me or my staff badge and deciding the urinals were a great place to lodge their complaints. Really? Can’t you even wait until I’m done peeing?

Before relieving myself I fished my phone out of my pocket I saw that I had a text waiting. I flipped it open I saw that it was from Jenny.

Quest Partners. 617-345-8721. Call Pamela Thornsby.

I looked at my watch. It was 5:37 PM. Florida was the same time zone as Boston so there was a chance that Pamela might still be in the office.

“Hello, this is Pamela Thornsby.”

“Hello, Pamela. This is Alan Larson calling.”

“Alan! How are you? Your wife said you were working a conference this week?”

“Yes,” I said, her voice and the pressure in my bladder suddenly reminding me of how badly I had had to urinate the last time I spoke to Pamela Thornsby, and how badly I thought I had screwed up her interview. “I’m in Miami Beach.”

“Lovely! I hope you’re finding a few moments to enjoy yourself.”

“It’s been pretty busy,” I said, “but I wanted to make sure I returned your call.”

“I’m glad you did. Listen, we’d like to bring you out to Boston soon to meet with the members of our Search Committee. Would you be able to do that sometime shortly after you get back from your conference?”

“I think so,” I said, already moving out of the bathroom. “Let me look at my calendar.”

“We’d be looking for about four hours of you time,” Pamela said as I found my briefcase and pulled my calendar out. “Either a morning or an afternoon. Whatever works best for you.”

“Uh huh,” I said, flipping pages until I found the right week. “It looks like next week Thursday and Friday are fairly clear. But I haven’t looked at any flights yet.”

“Well,” Pamela said, “we can accommodate almost any itinerary you can set up for next week Thursday or Friday, so why don’t you look into flights and email me all the details when you have them.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, flipping my calendar closed and stuffing it back into my briefcase. I should have peed before calling her, I realized belatedly.

“Email me a copy of your receipt for the airfare, too. Quest Partners will reimburse you for the expense.”

“That’s great,” I said quickly.

“And if your itinerary requires an overnight stay, let me know that, too. We can book a reservation for you at the closest hotel.”

“Okay,” I said. “Will do.”

“All right, then, Alan,” Pamela said, her voice signalling that she was about finished with her business. “I’ll watch for the next message from you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call.”

“I will.” Questions? Did I have any questions? “Thanks.”

“Good luck at your conference. We’ll see you next week.”

I might have said good-bye, I might not have. There were suddenly so many things flying through my mind I would never be sure. The line clicked off and I was alone with those thoughts.

Where in Boston was Quest Partners? Would I have to rent a car? How many people were on the Search Committee? Who were they? What questions were they going to ask me? Should I bring anything? What should I wear? Was I going to wet my pants? How badly was I going to screw up this time?

I didn’t have long to stew, nor even to pee. I hadn’t even dropped my phone back into my pocket before it rang again. Looking down at the tiny screen, I could see that it was Mary calling.

“Hello?”

“Alan?”

“Yes?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in my hotel room.”

Mary paused. Then slowly, “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m just freshening up.”

“Are you coming down to the evening sessions?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Eleanor and I would like to talk to you.”

Fuck. “Where are you?”

“We’re outside the junior ballroom.” Where you’re supposed to be. “Can you meet us soon?”

“Yes. Give me five minutes.” Or ten. I really had to go.

“Okay.”

This time I was sure I didn’t say good-bye. Neither did Mary.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

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http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

The Enemy of the People by Jim Acosta

I don’t envy members of the White House press corps. Things move so quickly in our current environment that today’s headline is often tomorrow’s forgotten story.

That was one of my primary reactions in reading this book by CNN’s chief White House correspondent. Published in June 2019, it describes many events that occurred in President Donald Trump’s first two years in office -- many of which I had either forgotten about entirely, or for which many of their relevant details were only roughly sketched out in my mind.

Of course, there’s no discussion of impeachment in this book. That drama didn’t enter the public consciousness until September 2019. And that reality creates another kind of challenge for me. As I type these characters, it is December 20, 2019, a few days after the House of Representatives formally impeached President Trump. And given the tremendous backlog of posts I have for this blog, you’re not likely to be reading these words until sometime after November 21, 2020. What all has happened since Acosta stopped writing his book and I started writing this post? And what all will happen after I stop writing this post and before it gets posted on my blog? If the narrative pace of The Enemy of the People is any indication -- the answer to both questions is: quite a lot, indeed.

But, nevermind. Onward. Here’s an event that happened in August 2017 that already seems like a distant memory. As Acosta describes it:

Two days later, on August 14, Trump tried again. Stung by the intense criticism he had received in response to his remarks immediately following the violence in Charlottesville, he addressed the nation. I was in the pool that day, as it was CNN’s day to represent the TV networks. The press gathered in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, where we awaited the president’s latest comments. The story, of course, was whether Trump would strongly condemn the white supremacists behind the melee in Charlottesville, as he should have done from the very beginning. Reading from prepared remarks, he did just that:

“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” he said to the nation.

I hope you remember the event that I’m focusing on here. Because Trump’s management of it is emblematic of his presidency and both those who support and oppose him.

Later in the day, Trump held a separate event where he called for an investigation into Chinese trade practices. Still in the pool for that afternoon, I asked him about the contrast between his remarks from earlier in the day and his initial response to what had happened in Charlottesville over the weekend.

“Can you explain why you did not condemn those hate groups by name over the weekend,” I asked.

“They’ve been condemned. They have been condemned,” he replied.

They were. In the scripted press conference the president held earlier in the day, but not in his comments immediately following the event. That’s the source of the confusion.

I then followed up and asked why he wasn’t holding a press conference on Monday, as he had promised that previous Friday, before the events in Charlottesville.

“We just had a press conference,” he answered.

“Could we ask you some more questions?” I inquired.

“It doesn’t bother me at all, but I like real news, not fake news,” he said, and then pointed at me. “You’re fake news.”

“Mr. President, haven’t you spread a lot of fake news yourself, sir?” I responded.

Ah, the old “fake news” line. It was back. I’ve learned that’s become one of his “tells.” Like a poker player, Trump has a tell, giving away what kind of hand he’s holding. If he’s screaming about “fake news,” he’s almost always losing. And he was losing on Charlottesville. Trump clearly didn’t like the fact that he had been compelled by his advisers to revise his botched response to Charlottesville. That was as bad, in his view, as admitting a mistake. And in Trumpworld, as I’ve been told time and again by his advisers, you don’t admit mistakes. You double down on everything, even the stuff you did wrong.

This comment has such explanatory power. If you’re ever confused about Trump’s actions, this simple rule may be as close to a rosetta stone as you’re ever going to get. No matter what happens, never admit you did anything wrong. Combine that with the mixed messages that came out around the Charlottesville event, and you can begin to understand why it -- like many of the things he does -- was so polarizing.

Which brings us to his third crack at commenting on the events in Charlottesville, this time at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Trump had traveled to his office tower and residence in the city to meet with some of the top officials in his administration about the need to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, and a new member of the team, Chief of Staff John Kelly (who had just replaced Reince Priebus), were all in attendance.

After what had occurred the day before, I traveled up to New York with the hunch that Trump would not be able to help himself and would dive back into the Charlottesville issue. As we had so often during the campaign, we gathered in the gold-plated lobby of Trump Tower to await Trump. It felt like old times. (It should be noted that his aides told us in advance that he wouldn’t take any questions.) Trump came down the elevator, made some remarks about his hopes for an infrastructure bill, and before he could turn to exit the lobby, a question on Charlottesville was shouted his way by my NBC colleague Hallie Jackson, and we were off to the races.

It’s often that way with President Trump, especially in the first two years of his presidency. He seemed both unable to control his encounters with the press and to enjoy the verbal sparring that inevitably came about. Acosta refers to this dynamic frequently in his book. Falling off script, thinking we could win an argument, even when it is stacked against him, was one of Trump’s hallmark temptations.

It is still stunning to read the president’s remarks from that day. As of this writing, remarkably, they remain on the official White House website. In them, Trump returned to blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville. And that’s when I jumped in, mainly because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

TRUMP: Yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. If you look at both sides -- I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And if you reported it accurately, you would say.

ACOSTA: The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest---

TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group.

ACOSTA: No, sir, there are no fine people in the Nazis.

As you may have noticed, I didn’t put my questions in question form. That wasn’t necessary in this case, and here’s why. I suppose I could have asked him, “Sir, isn’t it true that there aren’t any fine people in the Nazis?” But that would have suggested that this notion was open to debate. I’m sorry, but there aren’t two sides when it comes to Nazis. I think we have reached the point where we can state, definitively, that Nazis are bad people. It kind of goes without saying. But I will: If you are a Nazi, you aren’t a fine person. You’re bad. So, yes, I felt well within the safe bounds of reporting to state back to the president “there are no fine people in the Nazis.” When it’s a matter of right versus wrong, there are not two sides of the story.

I agree with Acosta. I agree with both his statements that there are no fine people in the Nazis and that when it’s a matter of right versus wrong, there are not two sides of the story. But, I still wish he would’ve asked the president, “Sir, isn’t it true that there aren’t any fine people in the Nazis?” If he had, one of two things would’ve happened. Trump would have either disagreed, and gone on to argue unequivocally that some Nazis are very fine people, or he would have clarified, as I think he believed, that not everybody marching in Charlottesville was a Nazi. That might’ve created some needed granularity in everyone’s interpretation of what was going on.

Acosta, however, wasn’t thinking that way. His next several paragraphs illuminate a different, but still very serious battle, that he was fighting.

There’s another point to be made here, one going back to the idea that a different kind of president requires a different kind of press. If a president is trying to bully his way through some tough questions, interrupting and shouting, “Excuse me, excuse me,” what do you, as a reporter, do? This is when it’s probably time to throw out the old rulebook. Trump was likely not going to candidly volunteer a comment that there are “very fine people” on both sides had I not challenged him. Sometimes the sparring he craves can be his own undoing; that’s when he often shows who he really is. And at that bizzare news conference at Trump Tower, that’s exactly what he did.

In responding to Trump’s attacks, my thinking is you have to be measured and choose the right moment. Opinions vary as to whether I have met that standard, but there are very clear moments when challenging a president’s thinking is the right choice. Who am I to judge when his thought process goes off the deep end? I think that’s fairly obvious. Whether it’s an attack on the press or a blatant lie about policy or a betrayal of American principles (e.g., that Nazis are the scum of the earth), a more restrained reaction from a reporter sets a precedent that what had been said is now acceptable in our democracy. The same goes for the president’s unrelenting assault on journalists in America. Yes, Trump’s attacks on the press are designed, for the moment, to elicit a response. And yes, that response excites parts of his base. And yes, the Trump people sit back and say, “See? It works.” And yes, some news editors say, “See, that’s why we shouldn’t respond.” But Trump’s apologists and propagandists are going to go on the attack and make our lives miserable no matter what we report. That’s what they do. If we tailor our coverage to appease them, we’ve already lost. Their reaction shouldn’t change the essential calculus that attacks on the press, if left unanswered, are just going to get worse. So the question becomes: do you take the bait or take the knife?

More often than not, I opt for the bait, which bothers some people -- both in the media and in the White House. But to those critics, I ask: does every president lie and attack the press as Trump does? No. As new presidents come along and return a state of normalcy to dealings with the news media, will there be as great a need to stand up for ourselves? Of course not. Playbooks for individual journalists and news organizations will be adjusted accordingly, as we will no longer be under attack.

This, obviously, is where the title of Acosta’s book comes from. “The enemy of the people” is a phrase used by the president to describe the “mainstream media,” which he believes is biased against him and against the views of conservative Americans. I think it’s important for the media to push back against this kind of treatment, as Acosta describes, and more than that, I even think it’s time for them to drop the pretense of fairness and go back to reporting what they think is right and what they think is wrong. But that’s a subject for another day. My larger fear, however, is that Acosta is being too optimistic about returning to some kind of normalcy after the Trump presidency. As loath as I am to admit it, I think the Trump view of our politics, even the parts that give rise to “the enemy of the people” comments, are here with us to stay, regardless of who the next president is.

But let’s get back to Charlottesville.

After our exchange about “very fine people” that day in Trump Tower, Trump then tried to change to subject back to the grievance that drew the Unite the Right protesters to Charlottesville in the first place, the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee. When it came to sides, guess which one Trump chose? The president said in all seriousness that somehow George Washington would be next, as if federal workers would dismantle the Washington Monument.

TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

ACOSTA: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.

TRUMP: George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his statue? Are we going to take down -- Excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?

A few moments after that “very fine people” comment, Trump tried to clean up his mess by adding a bit of a disclaimer. “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally,” he said. “But you had many people in the group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

As I said previously, in Trump’s mind, the “very fine people” comment was not directed at the white supremacists who led the protest, but other (perhaps imaginary) people in the crowd who were not neo-Nazis nor white nationalists, but who had come to protest the removal of a statue represented what they viewed as an American hero.

But whether or not Trump was serious about this nuanced point, he definitely wasn’t serious about his comparison between George Washington and Robert E. Lee. In making that comparison, I believe, Trump was yet again engaging in one of his favorite rhetorical devices, what others have called “whataboutism.” Oh yeah? Well, what about [insert someone the person you’re arguing with holds in esteem]? He did the same thing as [the person I’m defending]. Whataboutism isn’t about rational, reasoned debate. Its purpose is to create confusion and false equivalency in people’s minds, and its use is very intentional. Trump doesn’t actually think George Washington is the same as Robert E. Lee. Trump simply wants Acosta to entertain the possibility that George Washington might be the same as Robert E. Lee so that he can undercut Acosta’s argument.

But, relative to how the president handled this event, Acosta makes an even more important point.

The president’s defenders like to point to this final comment as an exoneration of his performance on Charlottesville. I call bullshit. In my view, a president of the United States should get this right the first time. It shouldn’t take four or five (or whatever number we are on) tries to get it right. Within a matter of four days, Trump had equivocated on the violence in Charlottesville, reversed himself to condemn the fascists, only to pull another about-face on the issue, basically landing where he started, essentially siding with the white nationalists who had touched off the violence. The epic fail at Trump Tower was written all over John Kelly’s face as the chief of staff hung his head in full view of the cameras.

I’ve gone at length on this particular excerpt because I think it is illustrative, both of the tone of Acosta’s book, and the way this president and the press he hates keep talking past each other. There’s a lot to learn from both illustrations, both for the people of this republic and for future presidents.

Let me close with two other penetrating observations from Acosta’s book. First...

Portions of the GOP, it seemed, were willing to compromise themselves in favor of achieving long-term party goals. If you wanted your tax cuts, you had to swallow Trump’s highly questionable behavior. Same thing if you wanted conservative judges. Trump and the Republicans may not believe in compromising with Democrats, but there was compromising going on inside their own party. They were horse trading, all right. The party was achieving a few of its policy goals in exchange for looking the other way.

I think this is spot on, and it is the same dynamic I see among my own friends and colleagues with a track record of voting Republican. They don’t like Trump. But they like what the Republicans have been able to do since he came into office. As long as they had the presidency, the House, and the Senate, they could do as they wished legislatively. And now, as long as they have the presidency and the Senate, they can do as they wish in terms of judicial appointments. For the party and its partisans, that’s what matters most.

And second, with regard to the domestic abuse scandal surrounding personal staff secretary to the president, Rob Porter…

The code of ethics of the Trump White House had revealed itself yet again, as the president fell back into a familiar pattern. When it comes to allegations of sexual misconduct, Trump almost always stands with the accused and not the accuser. He had done this before; he would do it again. Speaking to reporters, Trump expressed sympathy for his former staff secretary, noting that Porter had proclaimed his innocence.

“He also, as you probably know, says he’s innocent and I think you have to remember that,” Trump said. “He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent so you have to talk to him about that, but we absolutely wish him well, he did a very good job when he was at the White House.”

That statement, siding with Porter, was another reminder of just how Trump didn’t seem to understand the president’s role of providing moral leadership in a situation like this. This would not have been tolerated at a Fortune 500 company, and yet it was happening at the White House.

There’s one thing that the Trump presidency has made clear to me -- and that is how important it is for presidents to bring people together rather than split them apart. I think Acosta understands that, too, and that represents a deep measure of the distrust that exists between Trump and the press corps. Trump’s natural tendency is to take sides, so much so that every interaction and every kind is hardcoded into immutable “us’s” and “them’s”.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 49 (DRAFT)

When the keynote session was over, close to two thousand people had to get themselves out of the ballroom and off to their chosen lunch activity. For a great majority of them, that meant attending one of the twenty lunch sessions that we had planned as part of the conference schedule. These were highly coveted opportunities, both for the meal provided, but also for the small, discussion-based nature of the activity. We’d recruit in a recognized expert in one of twenty topic areas and limit attendance to no more than twenty participants, all in an attempt to preserve an environment where a kind of roundtable discussion could take place.

Twenty sessions of twenty people each meant that only 400 people could be accommodated, leaving 1,600 or more to fend for themselves, seeking lunch in one of the hotel outlets, nearby restaurants or food trucks, or hospitality functions organized by the exhibitors. With so many people heading off in so many different directions, the foyer outside the ballroom frequently resembled a busy subway platform, and through the years we had come to understand the value of placing staff members at strategic flow points to serve as guideposts and gatekeepers.

“Where’s the session with Dr. Maplethorpe!” one conference-goer shouted at me as she quickly approached, seemingly pulled along more by the current of bodies than her own volition.

“Up one level and down the hall to the left!” I shouted back, pointing towards a flight of escalators where a bottleneck was already forming.

Like a lot of the staff, I enjoyed complaining about the herd mentality that possessed otherwise intelligent people in these circumstances. To control access to the twenty lunch sessions they were ticketed, with each ticket costing the ticket holder forty dollars in addition to the conference registration fee they had already paid. This caused a lot of grousing, the average conference attendee oblivious to the fact that the lunches that came out of hotel banquet kitchens could easily cost forty dollars or more. On each ticket, which we painstakingly stuffed in the registration envelopes each attendee received at the start of the conference, we printed all the information they could possibly need about the session they were attending. The day, the time, the room location, the session number, the session title, the discussion leader -- they were all there in their laser-printed glory. And, if anyone cared to turn the little piece of cardboard over, they would see a miniature reproduction of the appropriate floor of the convention hotel, where some underappreciated human being had actually affixed a small red star in the box that represented the session’s room location.

But no one, it seemed, looked at these tickets, or tried to decipher the curious markings they contained. Why bother? When it was so much simpler just to shout “Where’s the session with Dr. Maplethorpe!” at the nearest idiot wearing a staff badge?

I and four other staff people served in this capacity for fifteen minutes or more, and, when the flow of people out of the ballroom slowed to a trickle, we all rushed off to our next assignments. The lunch sessions would be starting in another ten minutes or so, and we had to make sure the rooms, discussion leaders, and participants had everything they needed. With five staff people and twenty sessions, we had each been assigned four rooms to monitor. My four were down the same hallway as those assigned to Caroline Abernathy, and when I turned into the corridor I saw her engaged in a heated argument with an attendee.

“Get out of my way!” the attendee, who I could only see from behind -- a man in a wrinkled sport coat with frizzy white hair -- was shouting at Caroline, who stood, along with the redcoat we had hired to collect the session tickets, in the doorway of the room.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Caroline said, her voice a strange kind of shaky calm, “this session is for ticket holders only. Do you have a ticket?”

“NO I DON’T HAVE A TICKET!” the man shouted.

Both Caroline and the elderly redcoat who could have been her grandmother seemed to tremble under buffeting winds of his angry voice.

Knowing there was nothing I could do that Caroline wasn’t already doing, but wanting to take some of the pressure off her young shoulders, I stepped into the fray.

“Can I help you, sir?”

The man whirled like he was in a street fight. “What? Who the hell are you?”

His appearance gave me a momentary pause. I recognized him, and it took me half a second to remember from where. He wasn’t wearing the Pink Panther tie he had been wearing the last time I saw him, but it was the same guy. The goofball that had tried to derail Eleanor’s chosen speaker at the leadership meeting I had attended earlier in the year. I looked at his name badge, hanging from a string of Mardi Gras beads around his neck. Roger Rockhammer.

I told him my name and my title, and then took him by the elbow to try and steer him out of the flow of traffic that was still trying to get down the hallway to the other lunch sessions.

He shrugged me off. “Get your hand off of me!” he shouted. “Now, you listen to me. I came all the way from New Mexico to attend this session, and you’re not keeping me out of it.”

“But, Mr. Rockhammer,” I said as politely as I could. “This session requires a ticket and you didn’t purchase one.”

“I’ll buy one now,” he said, reaching for and producing a wallet that, I kid you not, had a cloth decal of the Tasmanian Devil stitched on it.

“The session is already sold out,” I told him, not bothering to check that fact with either Caroline or her grandmother. All the lunch sessions were always sold out.

“But there are empty seats in there!” he pleaded, his arm shooting out to indicate the interior of the session room and almost hitting Caroline in the forehead.

I instinctively looked into the room and saw the expected conference table set for twenty, the ensemble practically filling the small meeting room, with perhaps fifteen or sixteen people sitting shoulder to shoulder in fifteen or sixteen of the chairs, some already munching on a salad that a beleaguered banquet captain struggled to place in front of each. None of that surprised me. Not the tight set and not the handful of empty chairs. What did surprise me was the person who was sitting at the very head of the table, in the position typically reserved for the session’s discussion leader.

It was Eleanor Rumford. She was sitting there, silent and unmoving, a fork in one hand, but her salad as yet undisturbed. For a heart-stopping moment, her eyes locked with mine, and I knew what I had to do.

“Mr. Rockhammer,” I said, turning back to him. “I’m very sorry, but this session is sold out and those seats are reserved for ticket holders.”

He quickly inhaled and opened his mouth, but I raised my voice and rushed into my next sentence.

“No, I’m sorry. I’m going to have to ask you to leave this session before you create a disturbance.”

His face turned red with the insult, but before he could sputter another protest, another attendee approached from my right. As if I had pre-arranged it, he held up a ticket and I took it from him while Caroline stepped slightly away from the doorway to allow him into the room.

“There, you see,” I said. “Ticket holders are still arriving. Every chair will be full in the next few minutes. Now, really,” I said, taking him more firmly by the elbow, “why don’t we go down to the registration desk and see if we can accommodate you in one of tomorrow’s sessions.”

“I came here to attend this session!” Rockhammer cried, but offered no other resistance to my coaxing. In a moment I had him moving back down the hall, and a moment after that we were on the escalator together, practically alone in going down while a swarm of people were still jostling each other to go up in single file. When his legs stopped moving his lips started moving again. He protested the treatment he was receiving, loudly, I thought, more for the benefit of the friends and colleagues he might be passing on the escalator than out of any true sense of injustice.

I let him have his say, standing as stoically as I could on the escalator step just above him. We were moving in the right direction, after all, and I suspected that I might have already scored the necessary point. Down the upstairs hallway, in a small and cramped meeting room without any windows, I could imagine Eleanor Rumford starting her session, pleased that someone had delivered her from contact with her boorish nemesis.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

This is one of those books that everyone has heard of, but few have actually read -- at least few born after 1980. And maybe that’s a good thing. For me, it was a frustrating read.

You go through a heavy industrial area of a large city and there it all is, the technology. In front of it are high barbed-wire fences, locked gates, signs saying NO TRESPASSING, and beyond, through sooty air, you see ugly strange shapes of metal and brick whose purpose is unknown, and whose master you will never see. What it’s for you don’t know, and why it’s there, there’s no one to tell, and so all you can feel is alienated, estranged, as though you didn’t belong there. Who owns and understands this doesn’t want you around. All this technology has somehow made you a stranger in your own land. Its very shape and appearance and mysteriousness say, “Get out.” You know there’s an explanation for all this somewhere and what it’s doing undoubtedly serves mankind in some indirect way but that isn’t what you see. What you see is the NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT signs and not anything serving people but little people, like ants, serving these strange, incomprehensible shapes. And you think, even if I were a part of this, even if I were not a stranger, I would be just another ant serving the shapes. So the final feeling is hostile, and I think that’s ultimately what’s involved with this otherwise unexplainable attitude of John and Sylvia. Anything to do with valves and shafts and wrenches is a part of that dehumanized world, and they would rather not think about it. They don’t want to get into it.

John and Sylvia are a couple that our author goes on cross-country motorcycle adventures with. The author here is noodling on their apparent hostility to the mechanics of the machines that carry them around the country, and is obviously trying to make it symptomatic of a larger societal trend -- away from the human and towards the machine as the center of our philosophic life.

That’s well and good. But this is where the frustration begins for me. Because when the author talks about technology, he’s talking about the industrial technology of another time. And although his book was published in 1974, when he waxes against technology like this, I have a hard time not envisioning the technology of turn-of-the-20th-century dystopian epics like Metropolis. I can almost hear the Giorgio Moroder music playing.

And that really leaves me flat. So even though he talks a lot about the isolating effects of technology...

Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices -- TV, jets, freeways and so on -- but I hope it’s been made plain that the real evil isn’t the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It’s the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil. That’s why I went to so much trouble to show how technology could be used to destroy the evil. A person who knows how to fix motorcycles -- with Quality -- is less likely to run short of friends than one who doesn’t. And they aren’t going to see him as some kind of object either. Quality destroys objectivity every time.

...he seems to be speaking about another time -- a time in which humans still had a predisposition to objective dualism between themselves and their technology. In the late 2010s, after social media and smartphones have effectively reprogrammed our brains, I’m not sure humans still see themselves as separate from and hostile to their technology.

What he complains about with regard to Aristotle...

What I find in Aristotle is mainly a quite dull collection of generalizations, many of which seem impossible to justify in the light of modern knowledge, whose organization appears extremely poor, and which seems primitive in the way old Greek pottery in the museums seems primitive.

...is exactly how I feel about him and his ideas. Through long sections of the book, which he unironically frames as his own Chautauqua, the modern reader has to patiently wait for the author to come to conclusions that philosophers much more ancient than him have already reached and moved past.

If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.

About this Einstein had said, “Evolution has shown that at any given moment out of all conceivable constructions a single one has always proved itself absolutely superior to the rest,” and let it go at that. But to Phaedrus that was an incredibly weak answer. The phrase “at any given moment” really shook him. Did Einstein really mean to state that truth was a function of time? To state that would annihilate the most basic presumption of all science!

But there it was, the whole history of science, a clear story of continuously new and changing explanations of old facts. The time spans of permanence seemed completely random, he could see no order in them. Some scientific truths seemed to last for centuries, others for less than a year. Scientific truth was not dogma, good for eternity, but a temporal quantitative entity that could be studied like anything else.

The Phaedrus mentioned above is not the fictional character from Plato’s dialogue. It is instead the alter ego of the author himself. We eventually come to learn that the author was once a professor of philosophy for whom these mental meanderings became so shattering to his sense of identity and permanence that his personality split and his world fell apart. The motorcycle trip that he is on -- and during which he is evidently writing his Chautauqua -- is an attempt to pick up the pieces and repair the breach.

But to me, with no wish to diminish his real suffering, the author’s journey to nihilism and back is tedious and boring. Again and again while reading his text, I found myself scribbling in the margins comments like: “I’m sorry that you started with the false understanding that the world is permanent. But just because the revelation that it is not shatters your fragile ego, it does not mean that others have not comfortably built their own stability in what you now call chaos.”

And when he starts talking about Zen, the Buddha, and Quality, he frankly loses me entirely. The most salient piece of wisdom in the book comes long before those complications. It goes like this:

Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world. He then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. … He makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and serenity which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

And those aren’t even the author’s words. They’re Einstein’s. The world as it is and the world as we perceive it are two different things. That’s the only dualism that matters -- now and forever. For those who wish to lead an examined life, they can either build their castle on those shifting sands, or they can contend that nothing can ever be built, and destroy themselves in the process.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.