ALCStudies Journal

Advanced Labor & Cultural Studies Web Site & Blog

Category Archives: Consumers

Good-Bye to All This

During my time in the bosom of the United States, I have experienced friendship and kindness. I have shared laughter. I have admired the creativity and talent and hard work of my friends and colleagues, and savored the majesty of my adopted country’s purple mountains , its flowing rivers and golden fields, its deserts and rocky shores.

I have tried to learn how to be blindly, incessantly optimistic, how to be obsessed with the idolatry of wealth and success, how to be entertained mindlessly and obliviously while being exploited and distracted from living by the marketplace ; how to claim self-reliance even as our friends and colleagues, family and institutions fail us; how to be resilient in our solitude and loneliness even in the midst of a pandemic and collective anxiety. Because of course God or the universe or Bill Gates always gives us what we need.

Now I am returning to be with my people, to share their fate. It is interesting to reflect on the above given the recent news in Ukraine: I doubt they would agree they are getting what they need. Have human beings learned nothing from history? Must we constantly become prey to the insecurities and resentment of individuals in each period of history who react by imposing their chaos on others?

I hope that hope will prevail, that sense will be redeemed. I look forward to waking up tomorrow individually and collectively free to savor our lives in a world where we can look forward to the future, rather than being trapped in fear and uncertainty of the present.

удачи (Best of Luck)

– DA

From a colleague:

The Honorable Nebenzia Vassily Alekseevich

Permanent Representative

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

As a US citizen and student of history I have an appreciation for Russia’s history up through World War I and to the present day. I also value your country’s rich literature and culture, including the work of Tolstoy and one of my favorite writers, Anton Chekhov. My desire would be to learn enough Russian to read at least a small amount of his work in the original. I hope I will be still afforded the opportunity in my lifetime to do this.

It is clear to me that Russian concerns for it’s security need to be acknowledged and negotiated in the context of present realities. The latter include the existence of NATO and Ukraine’s sovereignty. While the recent unilateral and violent invasion of Ukraine cannot be condoned, it is clear that Russian concerns need to be respected and addressed. The question I put to you is this: What would it take to provide practical reassurance for Russia and the parties involved in a way that is sustainable? Has this been communicated? While it seems out of the power of ordinary citizens such as myself to achieve a resolution, I think you will agree that it is in the interest of everyone’s welfare for those bearing responsibility to achieve such a rapprochement sooner rather than later.

Consumers, Free Market, Health & Wellness, History, Mental Health, News and politics, Politics, Problem-Solving , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Not So Creative Commons

Many of us rely on the efforts of musicians, actors, painters and filmmakers these days to entertain us and fill the hours inside. Yet posts and articles abound lately about the challenges artists face finding forums for their work and getting paid. In a putative free-market economy, many of us take it for granted that musicians, artists, actors, writers and others of the creative class will continue to produce original work for the rest of us to be entertained and edified by, all the while struggling to pay their bills.

theatre-masks-drama-comedy-illustration-260nw-1266071665

Beyond this, there is the question of censorship. It is one thing if authorities in Hong Kong, or Moscow or even Washington D.C. take action to limit free speech. It is another if artists censor themselves, Creative expression depends on a willingness to confront uncomfortable, even politically-incorrect truths. The United States especially, like other liberal democracies, prides itself on a tradition of free speech without fear or reluctance to address difficult issues. Writers and artists produced work even under the emperors in ancient Rome. In the present polarized environment, this has become problematic.

Please see the following message from the director of a theater group canceling a sketch comedy performance on the eve of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Critical points are in bold. For the record, the performance parodied both candidates, as well as other political figures (including someone whose name starts with ‘P’ in Russia). The writer made the requested revisions. The reason given for canceling was not the quality of the script, but that the performers were not comfortable with the subject in the current political climate. We are all living with the results of the election. We’ll never know the consequence or worthiness of the performance.  — DA

11/9/16: 11-19 Opening Sketch Post-Election

Thank you for sending the updated script of the sketch and everything – I’ve read over it and like it a lot with the adjustments.

Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of a mess here. My actors are protesting performing the sketch. They are not comfortable doing anything Trump related currently, and are saying that they will not perform in the show if we perform said sketch.

As a producer, this is a really hard call for me. I love working with new and local artists and also the time that we have devoted to doing the sketch already, I would want to put it up on its feet to showcase your writing/work with all of the hard work and thought you put into it.

Due to the circumstance that I am in, combined with the issues with my actors/performers, we may have to put this sketch on hold and not perform it in November.

I apologize sincerely with this news – it feels as though it is the safest one to make currently. We would love to possibly have another sketch for another month in the future, though, that we could possibly do. I will be the one, if needed, to post on social media or any other source stating that we won’t have the sketch, but I doubt that it will be necessary.

Please let me know possibly if you have a sketch or anything you’d like to put up for December or January – that would be the best bet and I am sure after a month, things will have cooled down a bit since at least some time has passed.

My sincerest apologies and best,

On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 5:05 PM ___ wrote:

Please see attached first take allowing for the Donald’s election. Starts page 14. I’ll work up another ‘just a dream’ version. I’ll send tomorrow and we can decide.

You familiar with the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?   The BBC radio version from the late 70s/80s is is online and is outstanding .

Remember: Don’t panic, and always carry a towel.

Art, Consumers, Education, Entertainment, Film, Free Market, Literature, Live Performance, News and politics, Organizations, Storytelling , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On Volunteering at Quillette

Leave a comment Posted by on December 18, 2019

Please see a new essay published by our Director of Outreach, Chuck Lanigan, at Quillette, titled Something for Nothing — the Importance of Mindful Volunteering . — DA

Business, Consumers, Literature, News and politics, Organizations, Politics, Problem-Solving, Psychology, Storytelling, Travel, Work and Identity , , , , , ,

Those Who Can

Leave a comment Posted by on August 13, 2019

After twenty-seven years working in a corporate environment in the U.S., a colleague has taken a job teaching in a different country. He has left his own country, his own language, to travel 8000 miles away.

I am intimidated at the prospect of teaching kids who have grown up in a different culture with a different language. But they want someone to teach them English and other skills necessary to compete in the global economy. My friends here are supportive. But I am a guest. I have spent months (and a chunk of change) getting a visa, having my CV translated, becoming familiar with the customs, and gaining a basic knowledge of the language.

In the West we seem increasingly preoccupied over the complications and dangers of living in the civilization we have created over the last 2000 years. A lot of ex-pat sites on the web extol the virtues of living in a supposedly simpler third- (or second-) world country.

For all the benefits — and there are benefits, not the least of which is the weather here — the society around me has absorbed some of the worst lessons from the West. These include toxic consumerism, idolatrous worship of technology oblivious to its dysfunctional effects, and a view of urban development that still equates progress with larger cities, more cars and more buildings.

More Buildings

Competing for the Ugliest Building in the World


So why did he leave?

I spent years doing office work related to IT trying to convince myself (and allowing myself to be convinced) that it was meaningful labor. It’s increasingly evident it was a vain pursuit for a paycheck to support someone else’s bottom line. This was achieved by treating employees and customers as commodities. My ideas, goodwill and efforts were ultimately wasted to perpetuate the vast shell game of corporate capitalism.

What about volunteering? Or joining a commune, if he is against capitalism?

I’m not against capitalism practiced on a human scale. And I’m not a fan of communism, which historically has led to its own depredations. The fact  is in the West we recognize the value of work by paying for it. I and those close to me have volunteered in the past, teaching literacy, working with the homeless, and assisting with various causes. In some cases these efforts have enabled the very dysfunction they seek to ameliorate. I’ve paid my dues. At this point I want to be compensated for my time, talent, effort and experience. I want to enjoy what I do and feel rewarded. Plus, I can use the money. (The cost of living here is more modest, but not nonexistent.)

And will teaching accomplish that? Colleges and universities are tied up in knots nowadays over political correctness and questions about their relevance. Public schools are threatened as safe havens for children to learn and be nurtured. Society seems to celebrate being unenlightened and anti-intellectual. The public itself are increasingly treated merely as marks to be exploited by rampant consumerism and venal politicians.

I’ve passed my sixth decade and my life is still a work in progress. I look at this as an experiment. I’ve committed to the coming year. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t admit to being intimidated. The kids I’m teaching range from 11 – 14. The subjects covered in school range from English and history to humanities and science. As adults these kids will make decisions that will affect not only their own lives, but the direction their society (and maybe the world) takes. My desire is to instill some knowledge and perspective that will help them live their lives with a sense of agency. Why not try?

— DA

# # #

Business, Children, Consumers, Education, Free Market, History, Mental Health, Organizations, Politics, Problem-Solving, Technology, Tools, Travel, Work and Identity , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Wild Demise

Leave a comment Posted by on August 2, 2019

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been …

— John Keats

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

 

Thanks to Facebook Business for reminding us, no matter what (fire, flood, earthquake, chemotherapy, ecstasies, epiphanies, personal crises, or a bad day), we must produce fresh content for their – I mean our — ‘customers’:

Hi Valued Advertiser,

People visiting Advanced Labor & Cultural Studies haven’t heard from you in a while. Write a post or share a photo or video to keep people engaged.
Thanks,

The Facebook Ads Team

We unsubscribed from FB’s services a year ago. In any event I am happy to say my imminent demise has been exaggerated, so that I can share this blast from the past. Ladies & gentlemen (and everyone in between), please see a link to the Connections series from the 70s created and hosted by James Burke, and available on the Internet Archive, Enjoy. – DA.

 

Art, Consumers, Education, History, Organizations, Technology , , , , , , ,

We Need Some Human Help

Leave a comment Posted by on February 14, 2019

Welcome to the Valentine’s Day installment.

We navigate our days these days watched and prodded by our non-human talismans of technology1. These constant companions prompt us with questions or suggestions under the guise of being interactive. One not-so-subtly pops up on my phone lately, like an annoying partner in an old comedy routine (Didya see, didya see? What? Huh? What? Huh?), with the ironic phrase We need some human help.

Knowing our days are numbered to a suddenly-definable sum (whether the Biblical three-score and ten, shorter or longer) focuses our attention remarkably on what is important and what is not. Having been informed that I am scheduled to leave this earth sooner than I planned, I confess to a certain sensitivity to having my time wasted. In the past year I have confronted what seems more than my share of dysfunctional officials, health insurance that fails to reassure, and medical care that feels anything but caring. I know I’m not the only one facing an individual Gethsemane, but since when has that been a real consolation? I have watched my friends and acquaintances at home and abroad wishing the cup would pass for all of us: the lady whose son was diagnosed with schizophrenia last year, a former colleague staying in a dissatisfying job for the health insurance, men and women seeking love and connection amidst the wasteland and darkling plain of fraught relationships. For some it proves too much to endure. We try to live our lives with a modicum of peace and happiness amidst Dickensian bureaucracy allied with bad technology, dysfunctional workplaces [bullshit jobs, ‘open’ offices], alienated lives and absurd trappings of so-called civilization. Human help indeed.

In your life you will know trouble, Jesus said, a phrase curiously absent from the dogma of positive thinking. Like too much sugar, being optimistically (if not relentlessly) positive can sweeten the appreciation of life or make it almost intolerable. Troubles exist in our lives whether we are rich or poor, privileged or marginalized, mentally-challenged or on the genius scale.

There are plenty of reasons to feel cynical and hopeless amidst the dehumanizing juggernaut of technology and capitalism, including an apparent media obsession with bad news and human failure. But being optimistic does not mean suspending our critical faculties or our humanity. I think it’s about time we fessed up, set aside our fear (or meanness or just plain obliviousness which technology so easily aids and abets2) and did what we can to ameliorate or sympathize with, rather than marginalizing, fellow human beings.

I don’t much care if you text, blog, tweet, e-mail or use a carrier pigeon. Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes writes about the dilemma of globalization and the need for human (and local) connection. Globalization and technology used exclusively in the service of profit threaten to undermine our sense of agency and make individuals feel expendable. If community is to be more than a marketing ploy and love not just a slogan, the primary job each of us in this world of our creation is to take back hope from the ashes and connect to our own hearts and the hearts of others . ### — DA

1See Shoshanna Zuboff’s recent, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

2See emotional deskilling.

Business, Children, Consumers, Mental Health, News and politics, Politics, Technology, Work and Identity , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Words & Pictures

Leave a comment Posted by on December 18, 2018

There seems to be an overabundance of words recently: describing, explaining and inflaming our reactions to events from those in my previous home town to politics, to immigrants at the border.

Words seem to have lost their power to change anything. My own are no exception.

Emails, tweets, texts, blog entries, advertisements demand our attention this time of year and encourage us to buy and consume. We’ve all become desensitized to loquaciousness.

We send words out into the void, hoping for an intelligent reply, an acknowledgement from the common mass of men and women that we are not alone. Yet our own intimate conversations suffer. It’s obvious words have their limits. So I am drawing the birds in our garden.

Hummingbirds hover in the bamboo and sip nectar from the flowers. Doves land like B-52s and strut around like they own the place.

A pair of male and female gorriones (house sparrows) arrive each morning hopeful of finding breakfast if the doves haven’t eaten it all.

I stopped drawing and painting when I was younger, frustrated by a lack of skill and afraid of being a dilettante. The word dilettante is close to the more positive word amateur, with its root in the Latin amatore. You could do worse than to do a thing motivated by passion and love.

Drawing provides a different way of seeing. Cellphones allow us to collect images without looking, look without seeing. In our obsession with immediacy and sharing, we lose the interest and capacity for reflecting and appreciating the world around us in our own hearts and minds.

We all want to create and maintain an image of ourselves in the eyes of others. But our desire to be heard and noticed competes against all the other images and undifferentiated content, including cat videos.

At the same time our institutions seem increasingly in the hands of dilettantes, men and women who pursue politics, business, education and the arts serve mainly to fill their own hollowness; fulfilling an image but not the reality.

The Roman Empire fell because its citizens failed to create and support the substance beneath their institutions. Governing was given over to amateurs, or worse. The society maintained the image of civilization until reality intervened in the form of Goths, Vandals and internal corruption.

The Romans left behind wonderful sculptures, architecture, roads and aqueducts, and some not bad literature and theater. But ultimately their civilization failed to endure. – CDL

# # #

 

Art, Business, Consumers, Free Market, History, Literature, News and politics, Organizations, Personality, Politics, Storytelling , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Smart Machines’ 30 Years Later

1 Comment Posted by on July 15, 2018

‘Dave? Dave? What are you doing?’ (Image courtesy Amazon)

 

Thirty years ago a book appeared that anticipated the automation of nearly every aspect of our lives and the world we live in, including the promise and dilemmas of computers in the workplace, social networking, privacy and the recent debacle with Facebook.

The New York Times called In the Age of the Smart Machine ‘a penetrating study of how automation is affecting the workplace.’ But the implications go much further. The author, Shoshana Zuboff, based the book on her consulting work in the 1980s with business organizations installing personal computers in the 1980s and her Ph.D. research at Harvard. The book’s full title, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, belied its uniqueness and the breadth and depth of the material covered.

When the first PCs emerged from antediluvian garages and hobbyists’ living rooms1 in the last decades of the 20th Century, early businesses were not quite sure what to do with them. Before the Internet, before email, before Facebook, texts and Twitter, large mainframe computers dominated the marketplace. Apple’s IIc and Macintosh, lurking in the evolutionary underbrush with their revolutionary graphical user interfaces, were the domain mainly of college professors, designers and artists.

Zuboff went into paper mills, insurance companies and other organizations experimenting with the new technology. She investigated how the new technology implemented at the time affected employees’ and managements’ jobs and the ways they interacted. She combined her findings with research on communication theory, cognitive psychology and labor and social history. The result is one part oral history, one part case study and two parts social history accompanied by a plethora of citations.2 Along the way Zuboff coined several terms, including informating and intellective skills. The former she defined as follows:

… [informating] technology is used to reproduce and extend the process of substituting machines for human agency… Devices that automate by translating information into action also register data about those automated activities, thus generating new streams of information. (Smart Machine, page 9)

In comparison to 1970s and 1980s prognosticators of the future such as as Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt3, Zuboff’s writing is even-handed and thoughtful. Her work compares favorably to that of 90s writer Neil Postman.4 Why the book is not more widely known is somewhat of a mystery. Amidst the current hype over virtual reality, artificial intelligence and smart cars, Smart Machine still stands as the sine qua non toward thoughtful discourse on the place of computing technology in the workplace and society against the pessimism of writers such as Jaron Lanier and Evgeny Morozov5 on one hand, and the relentless promotion of technology by business and academia on the other.

Although retired from teaching, Zuboff continues to write on the vicissitudes and dilemmas of computing.6 Nowadays the vagaries of social networking, the abstraction of labor, deskilling, and monopolies of power are becoming abundantly clear. Zuboff shows that the seeds for the unchecked flow, control and consumption of data and digitization of our lives were sown in the factory system of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, including technologies such as the power-loom and Ford’s assembly lines. Contemporary dilemmas around the impact of computers on human agency, alienation and our fraught online interactions have their antecedents in the telegraph and telephone7. The radio and television brought information to the masses. The world wide web expanded the role of technology as a magnifier of thought and ideas8, for good or ill.

Advances in computing power and global networking since have led to 24/7 connectivity through our smartphones and the ubiquitous presence of applications like Facebook. Despite 1980s rhetoric promising a Third Wave of computing and mass empowerment through the free sharing of information, a digital age of Aquarius has not dawned. Unchecked social networking and social media also carry a danger of creating a more tribal, fragmented society9. We are increasingly subject in our daily lives to the Taylorization10 of our work, our thoughts, our bodies and our relationships and disconnection of our human from our virtual selves. We are sold the notion that we conduct our virtual lives through disinterested ‘bots and algorithms designed for smoothly-functioning utilitarian efficiency without messy emotion.11 In reality they reflect the predilections and character of their creators: business executives, programmers, government bureaucrats, and ‘thought leaders’ accountable to no one. Whatever opportunities they presume to offer toward enlightenment and realizing the better angels of our nature, commercial entities like Cambridge Analytics, Facebook, Uber and Google also reflect and feed off the fear, frustration, greed, anger, lust and chaos in our souls.

Zuboff is an insightful guide to the mundus novus of computing in the last century and a superb writer. She asks good questions of herself and her subjects, questions we should be asking still.

  • Is computing technology transformative, or just an extension of the automation of our lives and work that has occurred over the past 200 years?
  • What are executives’ and managers’ obligations toward workers and consumers in applying the new technology? Is it to to improve their productivity and happiness, liberating them for more creative ‘intellective’ tasks – or solely to achieve the lowest common denominator of efficiency?
  • Is technology ever merely neutral?
  • Are workers and consumers obligated to embrace possibilities of technology? Or do they have rights to obstruct and even undermine changes that may not be in their best interests?

Smart Machine offers a prescient guide toward developing a mindful, humane and sane approach to technology. However, it’s unclear who is interested in employing it thus. Corporations are driven by the same bottom line of optimizing profit that they have been since the 19th Century. Universities have become extensions of the corporate state and mere pipelines to employment. Government extols innovation for its own sake and as a spurious source of profit without regard for ethics or the public good12. The result (at least as far as computers and the web) is the expenditure of untold amounts of talent and money to develop trivial applications (think clickbait) which at best distract us from important matters and at worst separate us from our money, personal data and identity. Despite the cautionary mythology presented in films such as the Matrix, there is little relief today from an advancing tide of futurism, reductionist scientific thinking and technological determinism that sees all aspects of our existence as a nail for the same digital hammer.

The EU attempts to protect members’ privacy with it’s own bureaucracy. Writers such as Jaron Lanier and Evgeny Morozov are shrill counterpoints to unmitigated boosterism. Small groups such as the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, attempt a mindful approach through The New Atlantis to ensure the appropriate use of technology, ethics, and involvement of an informed citizenry in decision-making.

Technology is more than a device or solution. It it is a way of thinking which offers benefits and limitations in navigating this world of our creation. Far from simply being a benign extension of ourselves, the tools have the power to change the nature of the user and the manner in which we live.  -CDL

1Such as the Tandy TRS-80, which could be purchased as a kit (?) through Radio Shack.
2Including semiotics, problem-solving, the abstraction of work and media studies addressed in writing by Karl Polanyi, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman
3Authors, respectively, of the Future Shock (1970) and Megatrends (1982)
4Author of books including Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Technopoly (1992), Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (1995)
5Authors, respectively, of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now and To Save Everything Click Here.
6No escape from the Panopticon, ScienceNode, October 14th 2017
7See Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet.
8A machine is a magnifier of labor
9In Ill Fares the Land the late Tony Judt describes the ‘connected isolation’ that results.
10Named for Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henry Ford’s manager and promoter of ‘one best way’ for completing tasks.
11 Facilitating superficial, zipless interactions without emotional investment or accountability, to borrow a term from 1970s writer Erica Jong,
12The late Neil Postman, in Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, proposed we ask of technology, What problem does it solve; what problem(s) does it create? Who benefits? Who pays?

 

Business, Consumers, History, Literature, Organizations, Problem-Solving, Technology, Tools, Work and Identity ,

Bon Voyage, Tony

1 Comment Posted by on June 11, 2018

I enjoy cooking. I find it creative and practical, and I’m not bad it it. I used to joke that I wanted Anthony Bourdain’s job. Now I guess that’s more of a possibility.

His death Friday from apparent suicide hit me. He was my age. I have the usual thoughts and questions:

  • He had such a cool job
  • He had a girlfriend and a young daughter
  • He traveled all the world, talked to people, ate with them, got paid for it
  • He kicked heroin

What the hell?

As a survivor of someone who committed suicide, over the past year I’ve reached out to friends, family, strangers, professionals and colleagues. I sought comfort, peace and reconnection. With important exceptions what I encountered disappointed me. Our get-ahead go-ahead society turns our thoughts, feelings, need for intimacy, friends and acquaintances into commodities to be bought, sold and easily discarded. (And thanks for capitalizing on that Facebook.) Most people I tried to connect with did not have time or patience for the grief, loss, nagging thoughts and memories I experienced and am still experiencing. You may have spent a week with someone or a lifetime, known them casually or intimately, said hello at the office or woke up in the same bed, who was enmeshed in so much pain, confusion and despair in their head (or body) that they decided to leave this world. As you struggle to comprehend, to move on, people you’ve known for years throw a few clichés at you. They tell you to see a therapist, ask if you’re on meds, and are gone. No time for conversation, tears, laughter or reminiscences or even a meal together. And sure as hell not serious questions.

I don’t know why Anthony Bourdain killed himself. We’ve created a world that pushes our buttons and makes us constantly doubt and feel afraid and anxious about whether we fit in and at the same time makes us feel isolated. That requires us to do crazy things and pretend to like it. Then, when we act out and feel bad, we sell ourselves services and products and meds and therapy. Nice little business you got going on there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

I was told that people often don’t know what to say. Certainly this life (and death) can leave us at a loss for words. But people know what to say about plenty of other things, like politics or their sex lives (or other people’s sex lives if they don’t have one). My expectations are not high. Maybe I’m idealizing here (Thank you Big Chill), but give it a shot. Knock on the door of someone who’s experienced a loss like I and millions of others have. Take five minutes to give them a call. Invite them them to lunch or to take a walk or have a beer, or take a bicycle ride. And for the sake of whatever belief system you have, mention the name of the person they lost instead of pretending they never existed. Even if you’re afraid it might upset them (um, what, more?). Grow an anatomically-correct pair of ovaries or testicles. Or a heart. Dare to be brave. Don’t make them do all the work themselves in isolation, which helped create the mess we’re in in the first place.

I don’t know whether Anthony Bourdain was depressed (as if that explains anything) or narcissistic or had a personality disorder. I’ll leave the armchair therapizing to the self-appointed experts. To me cooking and enjoying good food and traveling and telling stories and getting people to share their stories and recipes around the world and having an ego does not mean you have a personality disorder. It means you contributed just a tiny part of the solution in this crazy mixed up world.

In my mind I imagine me and Tony drinking mojitos in Cuba and arguing baseball. Or sitting down in Istanbul for shish kebab or in Barcelona for tapas.

My sense from watching is that he could be a cranky son-of-a-bitch: standoffish, opinionated and garrulous. He also appeared witty, wry and self- deprecating, generous and kind. And to genuinely savor life. We could use more of that in the human species.

So for me now keep your tributes, your marches, your causes, your ribbons, your 1-800 suicide hotlines, your therapists on the clock, your platitudes and statistics, your by-the-book support groups, your medications that distance those of us left behind from our anguish and questions so we can work and buy groceries and feed the cat and ourselves and maybe our kids. Don’t ask me for money, or to write my congress-person.

Show up.

And I don’t want Anthony Bourdain’s job. I’ll skip the heroin, thanks. I think I would hate running a restaurant. But for a long while he seems to have recovered and turned it into a pretty good life and work. I want him back so i can continue watching him show us how it’s done.

Bon voyage, Tony. Buen provecho. – CDL

 

Consumers, Entertainment, Food and drink, Mental Health, Personality, Psychology, Storytelling, Travel, Work and Identity , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts