Tag: global warming

Heraclitus, Change, and an Elegy for Netflix DVDs

There was an article in the Opinion section of last week’s Sunday New York Times entitled, “Stop Resisting Change.”  Presumably, the author used the imperative tense to try to shake his readers loose from their attachments to things, rituals, schedules – you name it.  The essay was written by Brad Stulberg, who appears to be some kind of “performance coach” and wants to tell us that change is a “force for growth.” He reminds us that, even 2,500 years ago, Heraclitus knew you can’t step into the same river twice.  Stulberg asserts that “adopting an allostatic outlook acknowledges that the goal of mature adulthood is not to avoid, fight or even try to control change, but rather to skillfully engage with it.”  Allostasis/allostatic is apparently a new coinage for our times and posits “a healthy baseline as being a moving target.”  Sounds too much like dodge ball to me.

This is what performance coach Stulberg says in the end:

To thrive in our lifetimes – and not just survive – we need to transform our relationship with change, leaving behind rigidity and resistance in favor of a new nimbleness, a means of viewing more of what life throws at us as something to participate in, rather than fight.  We are always shaping and being shaped by change, often at the very same time.

I’m guessing that, in my case, it might be too late for a “new nimbleness,” but I certainly admit that change is a constant challenge.  Recently our smart TV lost some of its smarts, and I had to figure out how to reboot it and wasted almost an entire day before I decided it was a hopeless endeavor.  Like most baby-boomers, I have spent years of my working life learning new computer systems, trying to figure out the best way to use email or social media, and remembering that my cell phone needs to be charged.  I have been forced to change, but I am not convinced it has done good things for me.

Lately, I have been wondering whether society would be better served if we didn’t assume that change is good and that we should learn to “cope” with it.  Isn’t “coping” how we ended up with climate chaos and mechanical voices on the doctor’s phone line?  With children who hold conversations with one eye on their cell phones? Perhaps continued “nimbleness” is a mistake.  Perhaps a little resistance is in order.  Perhaps a lot of resistance is overdue.  Maybe we should just enjoy sitting by Heraclitus’s river and feel no need to wade into it.

I am particularly thinking about change today because I am mourning the passing of the Netflix DVD program at the end of this month.  For many years, we have spent many Saturday nights with a DVD movie, espresso, and dessert.  And yes, I have learned to stream movies over the past year, but there was something about that red envelope arriving in the mail and waiting on the counter to be inserted into a simple machine for Saturday night watching.  Once in while the disc was defective, but we never missed our movie because I didn’t know how to work the technology.  On the envelope was useful information – who was in the movie, how long it was, and whether it was too sexy for 17-year-olds.  It was, as far as I was concerned, a perfect technology.  When I went out to get the Sunday Times in the morning, I put the disc in the mail and waited until Thursday or Friday to discover what from our wish list would arrive for the next weekend.  Such are the simple date nights of seventy-somethings.

Plus, Netflix had a good selection of old movies including our favorite Powell and Pressburger productions and the silly 1950’s comedies that have picked up our spirits at the end of some hard weeks.  Our generation has seen the demise of tube televisions, rotor antennas, VCR’s, 8 tracks, cassettes, Walkmans, and I fear, eventually our CD’s and DVD’s.  In our lifetime, we learned to type on mechanical typewriters, then electric typewriters, then word processors.  We have learned to make our own travel reservations online and print our own boarding passes.  And those are only minor examples.  Make your own list of how you did things in the 50s or 60s.  Reflect on how life has changed, the new technology you had to learn in order to cope with that change, the continual upending of the patterns of daily life. I know I sound like the old lady that I am, but old people are supposed to have garnered a little wisdom over time.  My learnings include this:  some technology and related change was for the good, no doubt – but none of it was unalloyed good, and we should keep that foremost in our minds as AI creeps up on us.  How do we even know that so much change is good for us?  This assumption that constant adaptation is a good thing seems to be a social experiment on a grand scale (without a control group), and we are the white rats being encouraged to keep up with the program.  (Now I sound and feel like a grumpy old lady.)

It often seems that it is only when I finally learn to adequately use the new technology that it disappears.  I am sure we will not be the only ones who will be desolate at the end of the month when our last movie arrives.  The good news is that, rather than destroying their inventory, Netflix will empty its warehouses by sending multiple DVDs to their subscribers.  I hope they include our favorites.  And I hope someone keeps making DVD players.

To think about ways to resist change, you might try my story, “Nothing New.”

Old Karma, Instant Karma

I have heard the word karma tossed around a lot lately. There is a subtle thread that postulates that humanity is reaping what it has sown in terms of overpopulation, globalization, and racial inequities. Buddhists will tell you that there are many kinds of karma. I am partial to John Lennon’s kind of karma – but we’ll come back to that.

Karma literally means “action,” it is what we do or think. Because the world seems to work on a cause and effect basis, what we do has consequences. This is the good news and the bad news. It means we can get ourselves into trouble, but it also means we can get ourselves out of trouble. As older people, most of us are well experienced with this concept. The sins of our youth might still haunt us, but most of us have learned some lessons, overcome some of the consequences of our misjudgments, and carried on. Maybe not entirely, though. Cicero continually reminds us that a well-spent youth is the “best armor of old age,” but Cicero is not right about everything. Erasmus, on the other hand, quotes a common medieval proverb that a “young saint makes an old devil” and vice-versa. In any case, the good news about karma, even if you do not believe in multiple lifetimes in which to reap the consequences, is that as long as we can act, we can change our karma. And, I believe, this is even true on an individual daily basis and collectively over the long term.

None of this is to say that bad things (or good things) cannot happen to undeserving people; earthquakes and rainbows are indiscriminate as far as I can tell. And I am not saying we could even figure out the ramifications of our past or present actions very accurately – even the Buddha said such an effort would drive one to madness. But it would also be madness to think that our actions have no consequences. It is a kind of madness that we apparently have collectively, and the earth and its creatures are suffering for it.

Again, old people know all about this. We know it with our bodies – we are dealing now with the sins of our youth when we got too much sun, smoked, did drugs, or didn’t eat well or take good care of our teeth. And we know it in our hearts. It often occurs to me that I have far clearer memories of my mistakes than I do of my successes, that I can summon up the details of bad times more easily than I can remember the good ones. Karma.

You might remember one of Lennon’s last creations – “Instant Karma.” Here are the chorus and some of the lyrics:

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Every one, come on

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Every one you meet

This is the karma of conscience. Things I did, things I didn’t do (and should have); the guilt, shame, and remorse of such things don’t wait for another lifetime. They are, as Lennon says, instant. These pangs don’t disappear instantly, however. In the little book on conscience by Paul Strohm that I have been reading (highly recommended), there is talk about the “black book of conscience” that we must carry with us to present to the “Final Judge.” Oh boy.

What we’ve done or not done, where we come from, what we’ve thought, has repercussions throughout our life. Of course, we cannot change the past, and yet… one spends a lot of time with regrets and might remember Yeats words about remorse:

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest. (“Dialogue of Self and Soul”)

May it be so! But how to “cast out remorse”? And do we always want to?

But here’s the thing – I have remorse that I spent too much time in the sun, didn’t brush my teeth enough, didn’t drink enough milk. But I don’t spend any time berating myself about it – I just get a good dermatologist, a decent dentist, and take my Prolia shots for osteoporosis without complaint. So far, however, there have been no such “remedies” for the bad karma we have inflicted on the earth and its creatures. Covid and the Black Lives Matter have reminded me of this. And I know remorse won’t help unless it is fueling action (new karma) and a new heart (instant karma).

The story this week, “The Widow’s Dream,” is not so much about karma within one woman’s lifetime, as about how the past can cripple us if we allow it to. Let it not be so.