Conrad Memories from the Future

I grew up in Norman Rockwell's version of America, small town of 110, Grandparents one direction 20 miles away, the home of the President of the United States, Allied Commander who had just won the war a decade earlier, just 15 miles away.  Other than the atomic bomb and tornado drills, hope for the future knew no bounds, for migration through the huge middle class was open to everyone from that vantage point.  Life was so wholesome that there were no curse words hurled around or sexual situations on TV.  Lucy and Ricky slept in separate twin beds! Play was unrestricted.  We climbed anything we could find and rode our bikes all the time.  We were real Mark Twain characters, wearing no shoes in any weather allowing it, building snow forts in weather that allowed that, ever forming worlds from our imaginations.  One of our favorite pastimes was playing Cowboys and Indians when no one was available with a glove and ball to play catch.  A good guy ...

Heroes are such a part of the human psyche, everything from the pop culture heroes shown above to the real world heroes facing danger in the ER or the grocery store during a pandemic.  People need a sense of the heroic and it is a good thing.  It inspires us to consider what people are capable of under extreme circumstances.  It always brings us to consider our own capacity for greatness. No, I think an appreciation of heroism is a very good thing.  Worship on the other hand gives me much more hesitancy.  Worship connotes surrender of one's own judgment to a higher focus and that surrender of judgment is where I have a problem.  When, instead of worship, it is a genuine love that embraces the truth, then I am much more comfortable, for that allows new information, new input, acceptance of contradictions when they prove to be established truth. History unfolds new understandings of our heroes on a continuing basis.  If we allow ourselves, the u...

Emotional Investment It is interesting that in this time of pandemic crisis that the two gold standards evoked for mobilization and solution in America are the Manhattan Project and the moon landing.  I'm selecting the latter for today's topic of emotional investment, because it has elements very fitting for the theme I want to develop. President John F. Kennedy announced May 25, 1961 the goal of America going to the moon by the end of the decade.  He was charismatic and inspiring.  Most presidents in most times could not have excited or motivated a nation to try something so extreme, so dangerous, so expensive.  But, he inspired adventure in a culture hungry for adventure, a country inspired to do 50-mile hikes on his bidding for fitness, a country enamored with Camelot!  And a country locked in a harshly competitive cold war with the Soviet Union, a threatening nuclear rival. Kennedy admitted privately that he didn't give a damn about the moon, all ...

Individuality and the Common Good The excesses of individualism insulated from empathy. Greed and inequity are the negative hallmarks of individualism run amok.  America in its capitalistic system is prone to these problems and we are facing them as I write.  Winning, domination and acquisition become the rule of behavior, a Darwinian interpretation of incentive to achieve.  This is packaged as the best way to deliver succor to the needy and it actually is a half-truth.  After all, something must exist, an economic engine, to provide that which people need.  Incentivized effort is necessary to produce and those who work need reward to keep on going.  It really is only fair. The problem is that the rich would need to understand that they really are no longer feeding their needs when they devolve into greed.  They are a cult of individual excess that destroys significant portions of society.  It takes a while until the rot they generate rea...

Panic When I was 22, during my Hemingway adventure stage, I went on a mountain trek expedition south of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.  We really didn't know what we were doing, but we were young, healthy and in excellent shape, so full speed ahead! On one challenging mountain path, we literally had mountain rising on one side and immense drop off on the other side of an area about six or seven feet across.  It sloped toward the drop off side, but not badly and we were traversing it quite nicely … until some loose, gravelly rock broke loose beneath my right foot.  I started to slide inexorably toward the drop off, toward a fall that would kill me. I rolled to my side trying to get as much of my body engaged with the solid layer underlying me as possible, anything to get friction without accelerating the slide. As they say, although this took very little time, it etched in my memory as though it took a half hour. With my feet approximately 1-2 feet from the edge, ...

Courage Intuitively, we kind of know what courage is, don't we?  There is the soldier facing the threats of combat: Now, we also recognize the courage in  the grocery checker risking illness and possibly her life to provide food to the people sheltering in place in the age of coronavirus: But, our intuition is not always precise, accurate, sharply honed.  It is an impression, a feeling.  What do these two have in common and what differs?  Do we all agree on what makes these people courageous?  I decided to go to the dictionary - two dictionaries actually - to see what they would have to say about the precise definition of courage.  Here is the first definition of courage: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc.,  without fear. And here is the second definition of courage that I found: mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, ...

A Tale of Two Salesmen   In a past life, many years ago, I was working technical support in Silicon Valley for a very powerful, early entry, electronic publishing system.  We should all have ended up rich, but alas.  And I was associated with sales with my part being the demonstration of the capabilities of the product to prospective buyers.  We had a canned demo, but that sometimes changed mid course, especially demonstrating to the truly powerful. The first salesman I will mention was a real pro.  He learned the capabilities of the product and the market for which it was intended.  When we did demos, he dealt in a factual universe and let his clients know exactly what they could and could not get and the price if it was something they needed but not currently available.  We did extremely well. The second salesman was a bit less professional, definitely not as ethical, and he was not particularly bright.  However, he made up for al...