G as in Good H as in Happy

What and How We Think

June 10, 2005

Clifton at Cruciform Axis is beginning a dissertation on Aristotle. His erudition far outstrips ours, but we understand just enough to find his/Aristotle's allusion to the ultimate form or means of happiness provocative:

Thinking the divine thoughts [is] the highest end of human happiness.

Is that what it comes down to? Training or submitting the neurology to the thinking of divine thoughts? One suspects "thinking" is not a disembodied matter of linear ratiocination: If A then B. B is not C.

The sidebar hints at full-contact sport.

Do not trust your mind too much; thinking must be refined by suffering, or it will not stand the test of these cruel times.
--Letters from Father Seraphim (Rose) of Platina

Suffering. Distinct from masochism.

Defined: To undergo or sustain (something painful, injurious, or unpleasant); to experience, undergo; to endure or bear, stand [for]; to permit, allow.
From Latin sub- + ferre, to carry, ultimately Indo-european bher: To carry; also to bear children. Derivatives include birth, fertile, suffer, furtive, and metaphor.

Engagement with reality, not all of which seems pleasant to one's superficial hedonistic reflexes. Deriving, becoming, a living fruitful metaphor-in-motion, a simile by which to see the world, and call it good.

[The wise person is] willing to go to school to the facts provided all the facts are included. Ideally he would not willingly fall short of the Apostolic maxim to "fall in love with reality." --Frank Gavin, writing on The Oxford Movement

Via Titusonenine.

How to Act Before Two Audiences

Roland Fryer has published a paper using a model he calls "two-audience signalling," discussing the pressures on African-American students in mixed-race environments to avoid "acting white." Interesting, practical, and as usual for Fryer, brave and candid.

The principal idea is that individuals face a two-audience signaling quandary: signals that beget labor market success are signals that induce peer rejection. The model’s two distinguishing predictions – racial differences in the relationship between peer group acceptance and academic achievement will exist and these differences will be exacerbated in arenas that foster more interracial contact or increased mobility.

It's a fierce dilemma. Who wants to live without either love or work?

Via Marginal Revolution

Beauty Queen, the sequel

May 31, 2005

The long arm of the bounty hunter. The world is so full of a number of things.  Grumpy, as we so often demonstrate, can be good.

See Marginal Revolution.

Rich Person, Poor Person

May 20, 2005

Fortunately, the New York Times firewall scheduled to go up in September for editorials and op-eds won't obstruct access to the occasional densely-reported piece, such as this series on social class that does not purport to be all-inclusive or the last word on class. (For once, we agree unreservedly with something the Times says...)

Yesterday, there were two stories. One described the marriage of Dan and Cate, a working-class-origin car salesman and a 54-year-old Westchester doctor's daughter. Our own opinion is that the "class" issues outlined have more to do with a spoiled and oblivious maturity-challenged way of looking at life on the part of the relatively moneyed partner, an approach not necessarily tied to class or wealth, though of course subsidized by it. No wonder some people are so hostile to "the rich," if this is typical of what they mean. Read it and decide for yourself.

The second report, a young woman who has become a lawyer and returned to the Kentucky area where she grew up, has more poignant notes. Her experiences and emotions capture the remarkably barren conceptual landscape of a deeply isolated and unimaginative culture, contrasted at rapid pace and high volume with the chatter of the upper middle class who engage in allusive conversation at a well-laid dinner table. If you, like we do, collect seemingly hopeless moments, "foster care" in Della Mae Justice' childhood is about as dreary as it gets. That, of course, is not the end of the story.

As is usually the case, if we only let it happen.

Crunchy Con Papal Knight Commander...

...meditates on Blue and Red.

Whew!

April 5, 2005

Mark Steyn assures us he's not a candidate for Pope. A joke of course, but his vocation lies elsewhere, as here, in asking his readers to ask themselves whether John Paul II was right about Communism but clueless about social virtue and deeply physical honor.

'Twould be a shame to see Steyn wasted in a biretta, just as no one would want Hans Kung on Hell as a "harsh-sounding metaphor" to be our best bet for trenchant humor. Surely there's some ancient Latin tag about the shoemaker sticking to his last.

Via Relapsed Catholic.

So Easily Assimilated

March 12, 2005

Sincere good wishes to our Romanian friend who competes nationally next week as a boxer. Her English, including apparently her body English, is flexible and accomplished. She still can't get over it that Americans smile so much.

It's hard to stifle one.  We're very fond of her, and look forward to her safe and successful performance and return home, assimilating in this best of all possible worlds.

Celebration

A tour with Architect Witold Rybczynski of  Disney's planned town,  Celebration, FL. Gets some credit for success with buyers, pleasure of walking around.

If anyone's feeling generous, Gutem&glücklicHem (the tax-sheltered  European-offshore subsidiary of Good&Happy) would willingly take title to one of the Caribbean-flavored downtown condominiums. A sunny little blogger confab could be arranged, writer's-blocked bloggers could retreat there to recover flow  & facility, rich targeted philanthropy flowering with the oleander.

Via kottke.   

Common Inheritance

December 24, 2004

A music teacher at a children's conservatory in the NYC area (Westchester) reports

I had the opportunity to discuss, with some veteran teachers, what we have all perceived just over the last few years: the complete absence in young children of any familiarity with the great Christmas song literature, maybe the last repository of (natural voice) amateur singing left in this country outside of the Church.

"The only tunes that got consistent recognition from my 5-to-9 year old charges were 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' and 'Jingle Bells'.

"Occasional recognition, by churchgoing or very well-rounded kids:
'O Christmas Tree', 'Deck the Halls', 'Silent Night', 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas', 'Joy to the World', '12 Days of Christmas'. Little knowledge of the words.

"Songs NONE of my 60 or so students recognized:

'Hark the Herald Angels Sing', 'Here We Come A-Wassailing', 'Angels We Have Heard on High', 'We Three Kings of Orient Are', 'O Holy Night', 'Good King Wenceslas', 'It Came Upon a Midnight Clear', 'Adeste Fideles'/'O Come All Ye Faithful', 'White Christmas', 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire'...

"In the past, music teachers would sometimes even go to these songs in the middle of the year, if in need of melodic examples, to make a point, since they were so universal. As far as I can tell, this body of common knowledge has been obliterated."

Via The Corner.

Let us hope it is not entirely so, that there is a parallel stream of music geeks coming alongside.  These are beautiful melodies, Mendelssohn, Handel, antique Latin and English airs.  And the shared imagery has until now passed under the partisan radar as one expression of the common human drive to "regain...the life, the inner Man," the faithful expectation of a Good Resolution to the shared condition of our species.