Spoof Article puts words in the mouth of Pope Francis

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A satirical article in Diversity Chronicle was reported as if it was fact (in the style of pieces in The Onion).  For a while I believed that Pope Francis had actually said what was reported there, but it is all a hoax.

The article was well-written, except that it would be impossible for any pope to come out and say the stuff he is supposed to have said without calling upon himself the ire of perhaps the vast majority of Roman Catholics today, or at least a significant number.  Among the fictitious statements are

 “Through humility, soul searching, and prayerful contemplation we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas. The church no longer believes in a literal hell where people suffer. ...”  Only were it so!  Few in The Vatican may believe in a literal hell, but many of the faithful certainly do.

“All religions are true, because they are true in the hearts of all those who believe in them. What other kind of truth is there? ... We all love and worship the same God.”  This is a lovely sentiment, and the kind of thing that a pope might say someday, but it would destroy the Catholic Church as it exists today.  The one principle that in fact holds the Roman Catholic Church together today --not the principle that should hold it together-- is that it has the Only Truth.

“The Bible is a beautiful holy book, but like all great and ancient works, some passages are outdated.”  !This would delight some people, but again ... he didn't say it.  In this passage, the author makes him say that they are about to ordain women as Cardinals.  It is truly cruel to write a piece that is so convincing, and extends such hope to a gender that has been held back so long from pursuing their ambitions in church leadership.  But then, again, what merit is there in leading an organization founded in myth?

Honestly, it is very likely that the inner leadership of The Vatican subscribes to no mythology at all, and understand almost all religious dogma in a philosophical light.  The demythologizing of Orthodox dogma has been going on for centuries, but the Church probably thinks that it would not be humane to declare it publicly.  The myths of the church provide comfort to those of limited intellectual capacity, they probably think, and they're probably right.

Arch, not alarmed any more.

Modulation in Music: How about a few examples?

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And now for something completely different.

I've had it up to here with all the depressing stuff going around, so I'm going to write about something that might be interesting to those who have not had a lot of musical instruction.

The whole engine of large scale musical pieces is the idea of harmonic modulation, which is a curious term for moving to other keys.  A key, you might remember, is both a collection of notes (a scale, except that it is the collection of notes, not the particular order), and a note, which is called the tonal center of the key.  The tonal center of the key of C is C itself.  As early as the 11th century, it was recognized that a piece could move away, or "travel" to another key, without harming the identification of the tonal center of the piece.  I just thought I might give you some examples of pieces modulating to one key or another.

Here is a fragment of a little tune (attributed, erroneously, to Haydn, but actually recognized to have been written by a certain monk whose name escapes me at present), which stays in the same key, in this case, G major :



Next, we will show a slightly different part of the same little tune which modulates to the key of D major.  The home key is G, and D is five notes up: G, A, B, C, D (we always count both the first note and the last note; this is a tradition in musical notation).  D is also called the dominant degree of G.  In any key, the fifth note is the Dominant.

This modulation is very minimal.  It sounds as though we just stepped into the neighbor's house for a second, just to get a cup of sugar.  A really good modulation almost makes you forget the home key; e.g. you went next door for the entire week.  But this one is just a passing modulation.  The fact that it modulates at all is something you should hear.  But if you don't trust your ear, you look for a note in the music that does not belong to the key of G, but does belong to the key of D, in this case, C#. There are C naturals up to measure 7, when C# appears.  So the modulation takes place at the last second.  (This is typical for little examples like this, because once you're in the other key, what are you supposed to do?  Usually you fool around a little in the other key, and then make your way back.)


The other most popular destination is the subdominant.  In the case of a tune starting out in G, the subdominant is C major, which is Four notes up from G.  The tune we're using actually does go into C very briefly.  I'm going to try and change the tune significantly enough that the modulation is less fleeting:



Fanilly, (or finally, if you prefer,) we have a modulation to the Relative Minor.  In this case (starting in G) it is E minor, which is a third down.  You should hear, again, that the tune is going seriously minor, but again, if you need notational proof, look for a D#.  There are D#'s all over the place, beginning at bar (or measure) 5:


Unfortunately, these examples were not written to be combined into one grand piece (which someone like Bach would most certainly have done, or even Benjamin Britten), so there is no grand finale.  Just several examples that start out with the same four bars, more or less, and go in different direction.

Gotta run!

[Added later:

Here is a sort of fantasia written on the same little tune as the examples above.

It first goes into D (D major, to be precise), then into A minor, then into E minor,  A second of A major, then D major, then C major, then home to G major, briefly into D major, then back in G to the end.  Musical analysts don't even notice these brief visits into keys, because composers of the 19th Century did that all the time.

This tune is firmly in the classical style, which is about the time of Haydn and Mozart.  In fact it is nearly a folk tune, so normally it would not have much harmonic adventuring at all.


Now, this tune still doesn't have a composer that I know of.  If anyone knows who wrote the tune--the original tune is the last 16 bars or so, and the melody is in the oboe--please let me know.  You can either leave a post on the YouTube page, or make a comment right here.]

Arch

Atheists and Agnostics on Campus!

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A significant number of students in colleges today are non-believers.  True, trouble-makers and a$$holes everywhere are seldom truly religious (though we know that some of the folks who represent themselves as extremely religious are among the most terrible people in society today).  But college campuses today are the theaters of a intense battle to conscript students to spread religiosity and christian observances, with the aim of bringing young people "back" into the church, or into the church anyway.

Part of the reason for this is a common belief that bad morals and bath ethics, violence, irresponsible behavior, all stem from general godlessness.  Another reason is that churches are seeing unprecedented fall-offs in membership and attendance, and young people are sorely needed in the pews.  Another reason is that organizations that have their origins in churches have been well organized to provide outreach to lonely foreign students and troubled teens traditionally, and they continue to do what they have done for decades: grab aimless college kids and pull them in.  Yet another reason is quite cynical: the conservative right needs to battle the liberals, who are typically not religious.

Young college students who have never considered the political aspect of proselytation, or even the subtle intimidation of being invited to prayer meetings, or to a 9-11-memorial pray-in, or a memorial service for this or that, find themselves hauled into these events, even if they feel uncomfortable in an environment that has nothing to do with their beliefs.  To counter this, activist atheists who call themselves Secular Students have formed various groups for mutual support in resisting religious advances!  One such is the Secular Student Alliance, a group about which I know just as little as you do (though perhaps the little I know probably predates the little you know).

These organizations are, in some ways, just as evangelical as religious groups!  This is the problem; I just don't feel comfortable being pushy about atheism.  I do like to push back, but mostly I like to be left alone.  What would happen if I were to be asked to serve as faculty advisor to a secular student alliance chapter at my school?  I would ask to be excused, because I just don't feel energetic enough to have to face militant secularism on a daily basis, though goodness knows I get mad with religion on a daily basis.  So I live a contradiction.

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Diversity of Opinion: Conservative Thinkers Perceive Liberals as Philosophical Oppressors

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In a recent article, Jonah Goldberg wrote in the National Review Online that liberals on campus are out to squelch conservative thinking, and specifically, to strangle financial support for research (politics, economics and business) that pursues conservative ideas and goals.  You should follow the link to read about the particular instances that got Jonah Goldberg all fired up.

The obvious response is that diversity is an idea that means different things to different people; to those who perceive themselves to be the underdogs, it means that the Powers that Be should consider minority views.  To the Powers That Be and their philosophical allies, it means that we're all going to be civilized about considering all points of view, even if the philosophical underpinnings of The Powers That Be are pretty slim, and the liberal opposition has held the high ground on campus, but the Powers have hung on to the money and the power.

Diversity is an extra.  It is an important extra, because a certain sort of conservatism, a very good part of conservatism, is to preserve as much as possible.  To conserve.  Conservatism as a philosophy is not about preserving anything except the right of those who have amassed a lot of wealth to keep that wealth.  To be fair, that's just modern conservatism; it used to mean slowing down change, and hanging onto tradition.  Once a certain sector of society has got an enormous part of the wealth of a society, the two kinds of conservatism have identical goals, right?  Let's allow the people who traditionally have all the money to continue to have all the money!  That's only fair!

In an unequal society, diversity must be viewed in a political light; the right of those who are in a position of power in society to demand diversity can't be taken seriously, unless they're working to minimize poverty and hardship in the population at large.  In the USA today, they are not.

Those in power are conspiring to consume the resources of society, while denying them to the poor.
Those in power are conspiring to enable themselves to have greater economic and political power, and to ensure that the poor and the disadvantaged can never elect their champions into positions from which they can alleviate hunger and poverty and powerlessness.
Those in power flood the media with propaganda to subvert the power of the people.
The minority that controls the majority of the wealth of the nation consumes the resources of the people recklessly, in the name of encouraging "business."
The minority that controls the majority of the wealth of the nation continues to destroy the environment, without regard to how it affects the population at large.
The minority that controls the majority of the wealth of the nation uses religion and superstition to control the minds of the ignorant, and to bend them to their will, and to cloud their thinking about scientific causes and effects.
The affluent minority wages reckless wars in order to further its programme of consumption, destruction of the environment, and intimidation of foreign nations and groups, and to keep open its channels of exploitation, and to fuel its business interests.

In the face of such irresponsible recklessness, how can we take accusations of denying "diversity" seriously?

Having said all that, it is nevertheless true that conservative thinking has to be allowed, and, occasionally, to be heard.  Civil discourse must continue even in times when so-called "Conservative Thinking" is under siege, just as it is during times when "Liberal Thinking" is under siege.  Intellectuals who pander to the powerful financial interests of the wealthy minority are only to be pitied, as intellectuals.  It is amusing to hear these pseudo-intellectuals whining about being heard in public forums, as if there could be any intellectual substance in their thinking.  But their thinking has to be countered with logic, rather than with mere rhetoric.

Today, conservative thinking is under siege, but there is a lot of conservative propaganda that is flooding the media, making it appear as if conservative thinking is current, and prevalent.  Remember: there are millions of faces behind liberal thinking and demands.  Behind conservative thinking there are millions of dollars, but few people.

Unfortunately, the economic theories favored by conservative thinkers has different axioms than the thinking of leftist, or socialist scholars, therefore the only way to counter their arguments is to look at the practical outcomes, and, where possible, to point out the falsehood of common aphorisms that they quote.  But it is harder to give a logical response to a slick economic presentation than to lose one's temper.  But, out in the media, the battle is being waged with emotion rather than logic.  More emotion will not help.

Arch

Spelling: A Clue About Why Some People Spell Wrong(ly)

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In a recent post, Australian commentator Misty Adoniou might have put her finger on the roots of poor spelling.  It brings together several things things that I’m interested in: poor spelling, cultural continuity, etymology, and elementary education.

I keep talking about how important elementary education is, but I don’t think I usually succeed in making my point: we have to take a greater interest in elementary education.  Why we fail has slipped through the cracks, and I think I can answer this a little more effectively at the end of the post!

Anyway, Ms Adoniou addresses the problem with English spelling head on.  We all know that English spelling is notoriously inconsistent; there’s no percentage in deploring that.  But what I had not really noticed is the connection between spelling, speech, and etymology.  Sister Misty points out that if a kid focuses on how he or she pronounces the word that she is trying to spell, she is at the mercy of yet another problem with English, namely the notoriously enormous variety of pronunciation styles that exist across the globe.  This is the price we pay for popularizing this incredibly disorganized language among such a variety of peoples (and putting such morons in front of the TV cameras.  Just don’t get me started ...)

The example she uses simply makes the whole point.  She was describing how, in a memo, an adult spelled the word “resident” as resadent.  The man (or woman) had been taught to spell phonetically, so he or she chose the wrong unit of spelling to represent the syllable ‘si’.  The point here is that the poor numskull is not thinking about the meaning of the word, which means to live, or reside somewhere.  What’s the point?  The origin of the word "resident", which is the word reside, helps us choose among possible alternatives for the troublesome syllable here, which appears to be the middle one, and pick "si" over "sa", which many Americans pronounce the same way.  (In other countries: who knows?  I say "rez-ee-dent," but I’m funny that way.)  Studying the origins of words has such great uses, and spelling is just one of them.  In these days of every tom, dick and harry coining his own word, and words becoming current based not on their importance, but just on how catchy they are, it is good to spend some time looking at words that have persisted in use for centuries, and have brought the connotations of their origins with them, to add richness to English.  The decline of interest in etymology (the study of the origins of words) probably correlates perfectly with the rise in bad spelling.

Shortest-path, Least-resistance minimalists among our educators have little patience for etymology.  But think: etymology is an enormously useful tool for teaching a child how to connect itself with the past, and with the roots of words.  Some of us may have no Italian ancestry whatsoever, but linguistically we are the descendants of Nero and his buddies, and more importantly, the Romans who colonized Britain.  We may have no Greek ancestry, either, but intellectually we’re descended from Pythagoras, and Archimedes, and Aristotle, and Alexander, and Socrates.  A little at a time, we can teach spelling and history, and entertain our students with stories.

Here’s the idea to which I was trying to give birth.  Just because a young person loves kids, it does not qualify him or her to be an elementary school teacher.  I think this is where we fail.  An elementary teacher must be, first and foremost, an intelligent, knowledgeable, wise, well-informed adult.  Some of the pre-service elementary teachers I see should not be in the classroom.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that I don’t like these people.  Most of the young people presenting themselves for elementary teaching are lovely, but their interests are too narrow.  Elementary school is too hard and too important to hand over to well-meaning, lovely people who love kids.  Keeping them out of elementary school ensures that they continue to be this way; the elementary classroom can turn such an innocent into a homicidal maniac.

A visit to a typical elementary school will reveal a population of elementary teachers that is an interesting mix.  There are a few who could take on almost any job anywhere: engaged, aware, skilled, able to talk intelligently with anyone (but perhaps not willing, after decades of dealing with people with a mental age of 5), capable with literature, mathematics, social sciences, history.  But the vast majority are people who could barely function outside an elementary classroom, and who would be at a loss with kids of even slightly above average intelligence.  We must stop thinking that people who can barely function in society, and barely function even in college, should be safely channeled into elementary classrooms as teachers.  This is what has to stop.

At the secondary level there are other difficulties: there is a tendency to put methods specialists in secondary classrooms, rather than content specialists.  We need people who are both good at their subject, and good at handling students, but that’s another fight for another day.

Testing teachers constantly does not help too much, once someone who does not belong in a classroom has been hired.  It simply annoys the poor misfits, and forces them to keep memorizing the same material that they never really understood, and still don’t understand.  I suppose it is possible to annoy a frustrated adult who should never have been forced into teaching in order to earn a living, into giving up a career in education, but it is unlikely.  Many adults continue in education because they have an enormous capacity to tolerate frustration.

It is time someone tried to discern whether teachers in Finland and Japan and places where education proceeds beautifully were better students themselves than their counterparts in the USA.  If Sunday-School teachers were better paid, we might have a better education system; it would be something to do, for someone who can’t do anything else!  But it might spell death for religion.

Arch

The Time Has Come To Resuscitate the Cooperative Movement

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Everywhere we look, we see Big Business getting their way.  All this T-Party stuff might look like grassroots action, but it is ultimately Big Business, and Big Businessmen pulling the strings to get the laws changed to suit their ends.  (All this was foreseen centuries ago, when observers of the political scene predicted that government would eventually be subverted by financial interests.)

In the Sixties and the Seventies, the Cooperative Movement was active everywhere.

As a poor grad student, I remember buying a membership in the local Cooperative Store, working so many hours a week, shelving, packaging, labeling, and fetching local produce from our supplying farmers.  The Cooperative Movement owned a large central warehouse, leased their own trucks, and volunteers brought raw milk from the dairy farms, other volunteers put it in bottles, and yet other volunteers delivered the milk to the doorsteps of Cooperative members who subscribed to the milk plan.  Doesn’t this sound like heaven?  These days it is so difficult, and so expensive, to obtain raw milk!  I don’t want to be overly critical of our local health-food store, which has made a comfortable business out of health foods, and without whom we would not have certain types of supplies here at all.  But, unfortunately, it caters to high-end customers, and we cannot afford some of the stuff they offer.  (Some of what they stock is actually very inexpensive.)

Since what a 21^st-Century consumer is on the lookout for is different from what a shopper in the Sixties and the Seventies was on the lookout for, and of course, since Big Business of the present day is determined either to not supply what consumers need, or to mis-educate consumers to demand goods that ─in our humble opinion─ breed bad consumption habits, it will be both challenging and interesting to create a new Cooperative Movement to produce and provide what might be useful to both the consumer and the environment, and possibly the economy.

* People still need healthy food for reasonable prices.  Starting retail food outlets in the old model is still a viable and useful thing to do.  We just have to brazen out accusations of being communists, which Big Business will surely orchestrate.

* It is going to be important to either support small farms, or to create Cooperative farms that can afford to farm according to best practices, or to ignore "Best Practices" that have been established by BB.

* Computers.  Generally speaking, computers deliver what most of us have been accustomed to wanting.  But it is well known that, the Internet being controlled by BB, we're only given what is in the interest of the providers to allow us to have.  On a mobile device, such as a Tablet, all you can get is a few tiny pieces of information, and LOTs of advertising.  But the Linux OS and open source software delivers so much, if more of us were to use it, it would become better, and cheaper.  Can you imagine a Cooperative Computer Store, run by volunteers?  With so many young people looking for work, we could make such a thing happen.

* Fabric and clothing.  By and large, most of us probably have the sort of clothes we want to have.  But the great tradition of sewing your own clothes, which was admittedly something easier for women to do than for guys, is dying out.  And the fabric stores don’t make it any easier; have you checked out the prices recently?  It is high time we invested some interest and effort into helping home sewing make a comeback.  And who better than a Cooperative Fabric Store to do such a thing?

* Health Care.  Generally speaking, members of the Health Professions are divided on the issue of health care; some deplore the recent innovations in health care, others are enthusiastically for it, though opponents of Obamacare are at pains to depict the health care profession as united in their criticism of the ACA.  But in my travels, I have seen Cooperative Hospitals functioning beautifully in the Third World.  It can happen here!

* In many places, there is Animal Care; generally speaking, animal lovers are quite willing to provide help, advice and training at a modest cost.  I don't quite see how this sort of thing fits into the Cooperative Movement, but it’s something to keep in mind.

* Education and Child Care.  This is tricky; while I’m uncomfortable taking resources away from the public schools, I have to admit that some accusations of school teachers that they are incompetent, might well be true.  Generalizing is very dangerous, and counterproductive.  Until everybody: parents, teachers, and the public, joins together to move away from thinking of education as a necessary evil, which one brings out only at election time, to thinking of education as the primary engine for social betterment, we can’t get anywhere.  But I’m beginning to think that the education of the very young might be better done in a community, volunteer environment.  The emphasis should not be on teaching, though children are happy to learn in the ages 4-6.  But a holistic approach is important, rather than a sort of tiny-tot version of "College Bound".

There are already Cooperative Movement Outposts in forward-looking cities throughout the country, especially in the NorthEast, and the NorthWest.  Most established Coops are interested in spreading the gospel, and will offer help to set up Coops in any location.

If anyone reading this has information, please write in!

Arch

The Gap

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This is about the gap between the rich and the poor.

Robert Reich: "7 lies"

A voice that has been crying in the wilderness for several decades, and which does have a significant number of converts, is that of Robert Reich, the diminutive former Secretary of Labor (in the Clinton Administration).

His principal point has been that Ronald Reagan began a trend to lower taxes in 1980, which resulted in two things: (1) the ability of the very wealthy to retain a larger proportion of their wealth than before, which has given them power, in particular, to influence government; and (2) the loss of purchasing power of the middle-class and the working class, which has driven them to turn against each other.

He has appeared on the Jon Stewart show on Comedy Central; at UCLA, on Bill Moyers, and on MoveOn.org.

The American Dream, he says, is based upon economic mobility; that is, the ability of a person to move out of the economic circumstances of his or her birth, into a higher one, through education, savings, and hard work.  But now, says Robert Reich, not only has the net worth of the highest sector on the scale of affluence in the USA moved greatly beyond that of the lowest sector, the earning capacity of the extremes of the population has spread apart as well, which means that economic mobility has come absolutely to a stop.

This analysis is based on the effective purchasing power of each layer of the American 10-layered party dip.  Subtract the cost of energy, gasoline, transportation, education, health care, food, clothing and shelter, what a person can buy, apart from the necessities, is almost nothing at the lowest level, and almost everything at the opposite end of the spectrum.  This leaves the political process almost entirely in the hands of the top 1% and its supporters, says Reich, which enables the ultra-rich to dictate the agenda of Congress.  The dream has died.

He goes further, to claim that the under-employed and the unemployed are so burdened that they dare not appear to be opposed to the wealthy, or business interests, or anyone who might label them as troublemakers.  Don't look for political activism among the  downtrodden, Reich seems to say; they're too afraid to do it.  The Tea Party is not the voice of the truly downtrodden, I have observed; it is a movement mobilized by the 'Have's, filled by the 'Want More's.

This leaves the more determined elements among the middle class (it hardly deserves to be capitalized any more) responsible for any and all political activism.  Of course, I suppose, we're being watched, and our names put in lists of People We Must Keep an Eye On.  The Christian churches, such engines for renewal and change in the sixties, have been quietly annexed by the protectors of the Status Quo.  What is the Quo of this Status, you might ask?  Low taxes, reduction in Government Services, raised prices for utilities, privatization of education, neglect of resources used by the middle class and the working class, such as the roads, bridges, playgrounds, libraries, and Federal and State Parks, recreation facilities; reduced hours for government offices, reduced free clinics, the rise of For Profit hospitals and Universities.  The Golden Age of the Ordinary American is gradually being put in the archives, and the Golden Age of the off-shored tax-sheltered millionaires is being strengthened.

Robert Reich does not offer an easy route to regain the power and independence of the middle-class and the working class.  He only asks that, if you're convinced that he is right, you should pass the message on.

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How to be Happy in an Imperfect World

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This isn’t so much a solution to this question as a careful rephrasing of the problem itself.

I’m not sure how old my readers think I am, but I have a grown up daughter, so that should give you an inkling!  Oh jeeze; here I go, giving advice again.

I grew up listening to a lot of advice.  This is unusual, because most young people make a religion of studiously ignoring all the advice they’re given.  I think what happened was that very early on, a grandparent here, an aunt there, gave me such good advice that I decided to weigh the tons of advice that came my way, and not toss it out indiscriminately.  (This is good to remember: be careful with the volume of advice you give.  Too much carelessly given advice can completely ruin a young person’s attitude towards advice in general.)  I certainly did notice that not all the advice that I received was good, because─well, because of lots of reasons, but mostly─ because I observed that advice was relative to the circumstances of the person to whom the advice is being given, and the experience of the advisor might not be too similar to the experience of the advisee.  On the other hand, as I grew up, and noticed myself dispensing advice, I realized that some folks observe life very carefully, and are in a position to dispense the fruits of vicarious experience.  (If you were a Roman Catholic priest, for instance, this is pretty much the only legitimate way you could possibly gain most sorts of experience.)

You have to realize that, for most of our lives, which might stretch from, say, the 1950's through the 1990's, we did live in a perfect world; at least in a world a heckuva lot perfecter than the one we live in now.  I mean that we could really afford to be picky about what we did.  This is why I’m suspicious of my own beliefs about how to be happy in an imperfect world.

[I got sidetracked; ok here is what I was trying to say, added later.]

In the Sixties, people began to subscribe to the belief that the biggest single investment in happiness was to get into the right occupation.  Unfortunately, somewhere in the 80s, it got turned around, especially with a lot of bright young people (e.g. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates) rising to national attention, and it was thought that the thing to do was make a lot of money, and own your own business.  (This was falling back on the beliefs of the forties and the fifties: make a lot of money, and you'll be fine.)  People who invested in happiness outside the definitions of happiness through affluence were called hippies, with a derogatory connotation.

In the last few years, young people are realizing that being selective about the perfect job or the perfect career is asking for trouble.  So you have to fall back on a more working-class idea, that if you couldn't find the perfect job, at least find the perfect hobby. 

I still think finding the perfect occupation is very much up there in happiness goals.  But one may have to compromise. 

Despite my warnings to the contrary, there is a checklist of ideas that you might want to consider.  Your mileage may vary. 

(1) If you’re the marrying sort, marrying the right person is probably the single most important thing that could influence your happiness.  Unfortunately, when you’re ready to marry, you seldom have the experience to know what sort of spouse is likely to be a good choice.  What can you do?  There’s a sort of principle of diminishing returns in waiting too long, because there are so many things that you can do with a partner (and let’s not go into too many details) that waiting too long can put you in all sorts of trouble.  So let’s leave this one, and come back to it, if we have the courage!

(2) Getting into the right occupation is still a huge part of how to be happy.  However, you have to look at a number of things:
(2 a) Where this occupation is.  [Can you stand to live there?]
(2 b) What the particular occupation involves doing.  [Can you stand to do that all the time?]
(2 c)  What sort of people will be around you in your work.  [Can you stand them?]
(2 d)  As time goes on, in what way the occupation will develop.  [Is it a dead end?]

I was unbelievably lucky, because I found myself in the occupation of a college professor quite by accident.  My parents were both teachers, but I didn’t really take much notice of that fact, except that they were well respected, and of course I wanted to have a minimum of respect.  Actually, I was interested in the recording industry─not pop music, exclusively, but all sorts of music─and I thought: a degree in engineering is what I need; but somehow, I ended up this way.  If I were a religious sort, I would have been extremely superstitious about the whole thing, and suspected divine interference.  But growing up among teachers, it was fairly likely that I too would end up a teacher.  There are good things and bad things about being a teacher; sometimes there is just too much responsibility.  One also gets an unfair proportion of students who are not prepared for your material, or aren’t really interested in it (a special little bonus for being a mathematics teacher), but there are also some really great rewards.

In an economy, and a culture, in which most young people of working age just do not have a lot of control over their occupation, it is hard to tell them to select that first job carefully, and I'm thinking, we just shouldn't.  It is such a challenge to get employment at all.  Just get a job, to start with.

If one has any choice in one’s employment at all, it is probably wise to have half an eye towards moving into a job that is likely to make you happy.  But being preoccupied with getting just the right job is, in my humble opinion, too risky.  Just go out, and find a moderately good job.

(3) Having wide interests is supremely important.  Why?  Among the things that are the most fun in life are the people around you.  At a bar, with everybody yelling at the tops of their voices, you cannot really find out enough about a person you might meet, except that they’re good at yelling, or they like the same football team.  But in another environment, if you’re trying to talk to someone, to find out what sort of stuff they’re interested in, it really helps if there is at least a 5% probability that you might have an interest in common.
If you want to get married someday, and have kids, you want to make sure that you have something to talk about with your future spouse (other than just money and sex, fascinating though they are,) and your offspring!  I cannot overemphasize too much the importance of developing a number of interests: sports, the arts, food, architecture, education, the theatre, music, literature, reading, collecting, politics, current events, game shows, movies, people watching, kids, religion, philosophy, your city, your local schools, your neighbors!  Pumping iron, health, celebrity gossip ... okay, maybe we ought to stop now.

(4)  Start early in trying to live a healthy life.  Nothing ruins things as much as getting some ailment that you could have avoided.  You need not go overboard; keep it moderate.  But making sure you eat moderately, exercise moderately, and get a good night’s sleep, is something that will pay off in the long run.

Also keep an eye on the health of your immediate family: your parents, your brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews.  Obviously, not everybody has a good relationship with their immediate family, and your interest in their health might not be welcome.  OK, fine.  But they must realize that, if they’re receptive about preventive health measures, you’re more likely to be receptive to being consulted if and when they get into health difficulties.  If they completely ignore your pleas that they should stop binge drinking, they know that there’s no point coming to you when they’ve got cirrhosis of the liver.  This is a mean position to take, but there’s obviously a limit to how much you want to help irresponsible relatives.

(5)  Learn to cook.  You aren’t going to believe how much pleasure you’re going to get from just cooking food for yourself and your family and friends.  If you learn to prepare healthy food that tastes good, you’re going to enjoy eating healthy food, which can only help.

(6)  Take an interest in the Arts, especially classical and ancient art.  It is so important to know what people of many centuries ago did to make their communities culturally rich, their cities beautiful, and their gatherings fun and exciting.  Most of us need not be convinced about how important we are to the universe!  But being connected to the rest of humanity, sideways, to our fellow creatures across the country, and throughout the world, but also backward in time, to our forebears, and our philosophical and cultural ancestors is very important.  As a part of this, keep in touch with your favorite teachers from grade school and high school, and even college.  They’re sort of our ancestors, too: our intellectual ancestors.

(7)  Try to reestablish a relationship with your parents.  Many folks have so looked forward to escaping the clutches of their parents, that they don’t see them as fellow-adults, but only as their parents, that is, people who had been in authority over them during their childhood.  If it is possible to reestablish an adult-to-adult relationship with your parents (or even with just one of them), you will find it more significant than your relationship with most others.  It has to be done in such a way that there isn’t any longer the authoritarian aspect of it; you’re no longer going to be talked at.  But you must be willing to be talked with.  It might not be easy, but it is absolutely worth at least ten tries, at five year intervals!

The same is true for your siblings, brothers and sisters.  Some people have a wonderful relationship with their brothers and sisters, others have siblings that only give them pain, anxiety, and intestinal gas.  The happier people I know get along well with their siblings.  It’s hard to tell whether it is cause or effect!

(8)   Consider having children.  Children can most definitely be an absolute curse, but that is the less probable situation.  If you were a problem child, or if you grew up with siblings who were difficult people, you’re likely to assume that having kids is going to destroy you.  Sure; it could happen.  But you might also have an enormous amount of fun with them, or if you choose to have just one, with him or her.  I can only advise from my own experience: it was a blast!  And it still is.  She just called me up and yakked about her dog.  (You have to listen to a lot of chitchat about pets.)

(9)  This is probably the hardest advice to give, but focusing just a little bit more on the happiness of others can make all the difference in your own happiness.  I don’t want to elevate this principle to the level of a religious belief, but you have to admit that the big humanitarians and philanthropists out there seem to have so much more of a good time than the stingy businessmen who constantly whine about being overtaxed and cheated by their employees.  Coincidence?  I think not.

(10)  A sense of humor.  Anyone who reads this, and doesn't know that he/she doesn't really have a good sense of humor, is likely to get immediately pissed off.  This is one of those crazy things that is so difficult to quantify that it is better left alone: if you've got a sense of humor, good for you; if you don't: what can you do?

Coming back to (1), I myself have been fortunate to find someone who is just as big a kidder as I am, and we laugh our way through life, and the big Pennsylvania snowstorms, which frustrate us Pennsylvanians, leave those in the South shuddering, and make people in Upstate New York laugh themselves sick.  But you can't stop with a partner who is just a bag of chuckles; you have to find someone who is on board with your attitude to the world.  If you like the Arts, don't try to make a partnership with someone who does not understand that.  If your destiny is to die on a speedway, don't try to partner with someone who hates taking risks.  If you like to drink, a teetotaler* is going to hate living with you.  

A beautiful partner is wonderful, but I think it's best to look on a potential partner as we're told that women do:  evidently most (straight) women seek a man who would be the best possible father to their children.  (I learned this is from someone who has studied human evolution, but perhaps I haven't remembered the conclusion accurately; I certainly cannot give you a reference.  The take-away was that males try to optimize the number of females with whom they have sex, thus ensuring that their genes are cast as widely as possible.  This was taken to mean that males were innately promiscuous.  In contrast ─said this obnoxious study─ females are concerned with the success of their offspring, and are thus perceived, by the study, as innately monogamous.  Remember, this was a poorly remembered conclusion from a theoretical study.)

To conclude, there are certainly many ways, some of them more effortless than others, in which you can improve your chances of being happy.  Many of them, it will be seen, involve making others happy too, as a by-product!  (You might prefer to ignore that observation, in case you hate to make others happy.)

*Someone who does not approve of, and doesn't use, alcohol.