Oh, the amnesiizing excitement a new project. I imagine it’s like childbirth, without the excruciating pain. You endure it once, you swear, “Never again!” and a couple of years later, you’re doing it again!
I couldn’t help myself. The Cosby Show was too good to pass up. Now let me be clear here. I hadn’t the slightest idea the show would become a phenomenon. The euphoria at that point was not, “I’m working on a hit show!”, it was “I’m working on an amazing show!” Amazing shows aren’t always hits, though this one…well, you know what happened.
Ed. Weinberger and Michael Leeson, along with Cosby himself, had crafted the electrifying Cosby Show presentation. A number of lines had been lifted, I’m sure with permission, from the recent HBO special, a filming of Cosby’s stand-up concert. The presentation and the special, both chronicling the excruciating delights of modern day parenting, (defined, basically, as, “You try and survive till they go off to college”) were the seeds for the groundbreaking television series that was about to emerge.
Ed. and Michael decided not to accompany the show to New York, where the series would be produced. (The presentation had been filmed in Los Angeles.) That’s why there was an opening for a show runner. And that’s how I got the job. If Ed. and Michael had decided to run the show, I’d have missed this rollicking adventure in its entirety.
My introduction to Bill Cosby was on the telephone. I’m not good on the telephone. I like to see faces. I’m also not real comfortable with successful, famous people. It feels like a mismatch of power. And, of course, there was the obvious difference between us. Bill Cosby had been a football player. The man could beat me up.
So I was nervous.
At some point, Tom Werner, or maybe it was Marcy Carsey, filled me in on the backstory of this historic undertaking. Every year, the fledgling Carsey-Werner production company would call Cosby’s representatives and inquire if Bill was interested in doing a television series that season. The answer had always been, “No.” For some reason, this time, the “No” became a “Yes.”
In the early stages of the series’ creation, Cosby was to play a limo driver. Bill Cosby. Street corner philosopher, puttin’ the rich folks in their place – heh, heh, heh.
No, it was decided. Bill Cosby was beyond that.
It was suggested that since Bill Cosby’s real life involved wealth, education and social position, it would be more believable to the audience if he played a more sophisticated character. Enter Dr. Huxtable. And to sweeten the upwardly mobile pot, his wife, Claire, the corporate attorney.
I was happy Cosby had abandoned the limo driver idea. A doctor would be fine, a doctor who delivers babies, even better. But why did his wife have to be a lawyer? To me, this smacked over status overkill. Couldn’t she be, say, a highly respected college professor instead? Cosby’s response was simple and clear:
“I’m a doctor and my wife is a lawyer.”
I tried, diplomatically, to dissuade him of this arrangement, alluding to the mid-century Jewish miscalculation known as “conspicuous consumption” – oversized houses, gaudy accessorizing, block-long Cadillacs, with fins. I was lobbying for the same concept but with some tasteful restraint. There was a silence on the phone, where I imagined Cosby drawing deeply on an oversized cigar, and then he replied:
“I’m a doctor and my wife is a lawyer.”
Case closed. Moving on.
We started looking for writers to staff the show, a challenging task at the best of times, made even more difficult by the specialized requirements of the series. The submitted scripts I read had jokes aplenty and twisty storylines guaranteed to score. I understood why the writers wrote that way. That’s what other shows were looking for. But not this one.
I needed writers who could elicit laughs the way Cosby got them in his stand-up act. Cosby identified the insane happenings of everyday life and described them simply, accurately and hilariously. Unfortunately, that was not what I was reading. Script after script disappointed me with their formula constructions and their repetitive joke rhythms. I was feeling frustrated. Couldn’t anyone out there write like Bill Cosby? (No, Earl. Bill Cosby is a genius.)
I finally hired two women who were a team (one of whom would distinguish herself on Murphy Brown) and a guy named John, whom I had met before and whose audition script stood out from the formidable stack I had dutifully plowed through. I had made inquiries about other people, but for them, relocating to New York was a deal breaker. It was understandable. If I’d called myself, I’d have probably said no.
The writing staff was too small, but I wasn’t aware of that at the time. I was used to small staffs from my MTM, Taxi and Cheers days, but I forgot that those staffs’ efforts were supplemented by scripts from outside writers like Earl Pomerantz. Damn. Where was I when I needed me?
I remember my first “face-to-face” with Cosby. Tom Werner and I were invited to dinner at his house in Los Angeles. The other guests were a group of advertising people from Jell-o. Tom and I were the only people of our color.
I mention that fact for two reasons. It was only the second time in my life I had ever been racially outnumbered (the first was at a New York nightclub performance by Richard Pryor, where my female companion and I were also the only white people in the room. Remember, I grew up in a totally white country.)
The other issue was that Cosby was committed to trumpeting his other guests’ superiority. Throughout the evening, recorded jazz played on the sound system, and Cosby repeatedly challenged Tom and me to identify the performers. We couldn’t. The other guests could. By the time “Doctor John” came on, whom I did recognize, I felt too defeated to speak up.
Then Cosby handed out cigars. To the other guests. That was too much.
“I want a cigar,” I heard myself say.
Cosby took me downstairs to a huge wine cellar type of room whose shelves were stocked with quality cigars.
“Which one do you want?” he asked.
“Just give me one that isn’t too big for my face.”
As we left, I requested that Cosby and I meet, so he could give me notes on my script. Cosby said it could wait till we got to New York. There’d be too many other things to do when we got to New York, I insisted, the time pressure would be overwhelming. To accentuate my time-pressure concerns, I admitted something you don’t usually reveal to a person you’re meeting for the first time.
“I don’t want to die.”
A few days later, Cosby and I sat down and worked on the script together. The experience was exhilarating, the maestro and the kid. And I was pretty much keeping up. This may be bragging or just stupid, but early on, I named the Huxtables’ fifth child, Sondra, and the black college, Hillman.
Just a white guy, dipping his toe into unfamiliar waters. And happily, no “What do you know about that?” I admittedly knew nothing, but to my relief, my suggestions seemed acceptable.
I also asked to read Cosby’s doctoral dissertation (the subject: Fat Albert, and its effect on racial stereotypes.) I don’t believe anyone had previously made such a request. Doctor Cosby was hardly enthusiastic. Finally, he went upstairs and returned with a leather-bound volume, handing it to me, with the words,
“You don’t have to sit down to be a writer.”
I leave it to you to make the interpretation.
It’s remarkable now to remember that there was not much excitement concerning The Cosby Show before it went on. At a press junket interview, Cosby was asked what prompted him to get into the dying field of half-hour comedy. “We have thirteen televisions in our house,” replied Cosby. “It was either do a show I was willing to watch, or throw them all out.”
When I was asked to comment on the concept of the show, I was unprepared, and I offered a long and rambling response. After the interview session, I introduced Cosby to Dr. M. Cosby cordially greeted her and said, “I hope your husband can write, ‘cause he certainly can’t talk.”
Before I knew it, and much faster than I wanted it to be, the pre-production period was over and I find myself sitting in (Writers’ Guild contractually mandated) First Class, flying to New York. Tom and John are flying “Coach” on the same plane, Tom, to save money (this was the last time Tom Werner would have less money than I had) and John, to (as many writers did) pocket the difference between the First Class ticket he’d received and the “Coach” ticket he’d traded it in for.
Throughout the trip, the flight attendant came up from the back of the plane to deliver a series of notes, obviously from the abominably fed, legroom deprived Tom and John. “Any steak left over?” “How’s the sundae?” “Did you get your hot cookie yet?” They were determined to embarrass me in my luxury. They didn’t come close.
My family would be arriving later, and be staying with me through the summer. A woman who would later become a Carsey-Werner partner, had been assigned to locate appropriate accommodations. She’d rented us an apartment in the Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, a block from the United Nations – three bedrooms, three baths. The building included a concierge and a swimming pool. It was exactly what we’d requested.
My apartment looked very luxurious. I immediately started exploring. “Look! Art! And real sculptures!” They were all hideous, but they were art and real sculptures. I had a magnificent panoramic view, there was thick wall-to-wall carpeting in every room. And look at that! They filled up the refrigerator!
I had to hand it to them. My employers had done everything they could to make me feel comfortable.
It was almost midnight. Exhausted from the trip and the excitement, I decided to hit the sack, stopping only to avail myself of one of my three bathrooms. That’s when I discovered that none of them had toilet paper.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
"Story of a Writer - Part Fifteen"
I was writing for two different shows – Cheers and Newhart, the one where he owned an inn. (I also wrote for The Bob Newhart Show, where he was a psychologist. There was another series, Bob, where he did something else; I didn’t write for that one.)
Barry Kemp, the creator of Newhart – the show where he owned the inn – also employed me in another capacity. The opportunity resulted from my having helped Barry re-structure the final scene of his Newhart pilot script. Suggesting ways of enriching a story was something I was developing a facility for. I had learned story construction from a lot of talented people along the way.
More often than not, I can read a script and find ways of upgrading the story the writer is trying to tell. Infrastructure work, it goes totally unnoticed. But as a result of this non-glamorous story framing, the story is streamlined, and the jokes “miraculously” begin to “pop.”
If you clarify the moments, simplify the “build” to the climax, cut the jokes which, though funny, contradict other jokes or sell the storyline down the river, what’s left in the script, both the story and the comedy, come strikingly to life.
It’s like that story about the guy who asked the sculptor how he went about sculpting a pony. The sculptor explains:
“It’s very simple. I start with a big block of granite, I pick up my hammer and my chisel, and I chip away everything that isn’t a pony.”
If you take a step back, and you’re objective – it’s easier to do this with other people’s scripts than with your own – you can accomplish exactly the same task. What’s left is an unequivocal pony of a story.
Barry Kemp, not only a good writer but an astute show administrator in ways that many writers, including yours truly, are not, hired me to serve as, what he called, “a legitimate story editor”, as opposed to the writing staff rank of “story editor”. Every week, a script would be delivered, and I’d “study on it”, as they say – I don’t know who says, maybe Abraham Lincoln – and I’d do my thing.
The arrangement with Barry contained two of my favorite elements in a job: One, I was being paid to do something I was good at and liked to do; and two, I didn’t have to leave the house.
Throughout the rest of my career, I would serve as a script consultant on various shows, perhaps my most challenging and enjoyable being The Larry Sanders Show, starring Garry Shandling. I’ll tell you about that and Garry’s other show, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which I also consulted on, another time. I’m trying to stay chronological. Come back in thirteen years.
Okay, so that’s where I was at – I was writing scripts for two shows and consulting on one, along with working as a Warm-Up man during the second season of Cheers. (See the post entitled “Warm-up Man” from a week or so back. If I knew how to do it, “Warm-up Man” would be tinted in blue. I don’t know how to do it.)
As a Warm-Up man, one crewmember I’d focus on regularly was “Ed, the Stick Man.” You know how someone hits two sticks together before they film a scene in order to sync up the picture and the sound – that was Ed’s job. His only job. Hitting two sticks together.
It seemed to me like Ed was aiming kind of low in his aspirations, and I wasn’t shy about mentioning it. It turned out, however, that that was just me, being ignorant. “Ed, the Stick Man” was, in reality, the Second Assistant Cameraman, a position of no small importance. If the cameraman and the Assistant cameraman suddenly keeled over, “Ed the Stick Man” would be filming the show.
Until that unlikely eventuality, Ed would continue to hit two sticks together and bide his time. Quite a bit of time, it seemed. Ed appeared to be in his fifties.
(Digression: The best show business job I know of? “Standby Painter.” That’s an actual union job, with benefits and everything. Imagine, being a standby painter. If nothing happens, you may never have to paint at all. You may not even know how to paint. If you were lucky, they would never find out.)
As I mentioned in Story of a Writer – Part Fourteen, I was feeling kind of stale. I felt like a veteran sports reporter reading over his latest copy and thinking, “Didn’t I write this exact same story last year?” I needed an infusion of creative excitement. And one day, “Opportunity” showed up at my door. (It would most likely have had to. I almost never went out.)
My agent messengered me a tape of a pilot presentation. “Pilot presentation” means cheap pilot. Instead of filming the entire episode, budget-conscious networks order the production of selective scenes, which, hopefully, represent the essence of the series.
The presentation I received was produced by former ABC executives Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, for whom I had previously written an unsold hour pilot about summer camp. This was the producer team’s second series effort. The first was a one-year-and-cancelled series called Oh, Madeline!, starring the late and truly great Madeline Kahn.
To save money, the producers taped the presentation (the show was videotaped rather than filmed) using the Oh, Madeline! house set, which, though the show’s run had ended, remained standing on the soundstage.
The presentation was fourteen minutes long. When the show was picked up, eight minutes of additional material had to be added to complete the episode. You may not have noticed, but the second episode of the series is shot in an entirely different living room.
The series I’m referring to, of course, was The Cosby Show, and the presentation took my breath away. The jokes were funny, a minimally structured storytelling approach was employed, and the show had a masterful comic-actor genius in the lead role. On many levels, The Cosby Show, at least at its inception, offered a revolutionary way of doing a sitcom.
TV sitcoms were failing. People were writing about it: “The Death of the Sitcom.” That’s not really something you want to hear when you’re writing sitcoms for a living. But the truth was, I agreed with them. Sitcoms, especially family sitcoms, were growing painfully predictable. There are only so many times you can discover marijuana in a kid’s locker and find out later it wasn’t his.
There’s one moment in The Cosby Show presentation that suggested that something meaningful was about to change. The presentation episode contained a surprise that literally caught the audience off-guard. You can detect it quite plainly on the sound track.
The presentation story concerns a traditional sitcom storyline: the bad report card. Thirteen year-old Theo brings home a report card containing four D’s. His parents are very disappointed, and the father’s dispatched to speak to him.
Rather than apologizing for his sub-par performance, Theo instead goes straight to his father’s heartstrings. Okay, his Dad is a doctor and his mother’s a lawyer. But why can’t they accept him for who he is – a regular person – and love him anyway, because he’s their son?
Accepting people for who they are. A bedrock liberal principle. The studio audience is clearly conditioned to respond sympathetically. If you listen to the soundtrack, you can hear them starting to applaud Theo’s unequivocal plea for acceptance.
But just as the audience members are about to put their hands together…the doctor proclaims,
“Theo, that’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard!”
The audience members stopped dead in their tracks. And then, they went nuts!
I mean, the roof came off!
It’s like someone had opened a window, and a liberating truth had come rushing in. Theo wasn’t mentally challenged; he was lazy. And the doctor was calling him on it, accusing his son of being afraid to try, for fear that his brain would explode and come oozing out of his ear.
The audience was enraptured by the message of personal responsibility, refreshing only because it had been abandoned. Theo would do better. And so, not incidentally, would the sitcom.
The moment I saw that presentation, I wanted to be a part of that show. I had been a Cosby fan since his eye-catching standup appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Cosby had a childlike, questioning perspective; so, in my finer moments, did I.
Once, when I was lecturing at a college writing program, I’d surprised myself by falling into a Cosby-esque delivery. Though we came from totally different backgrounds, something about us was the same.
Tom Werner came to my house to discuss my participation.
“What do you want to do on the show?” he asked.
“I want to run it.”
I have no idea who it was that said that. It couldn’t have been the man who lived in terror through almost every moment of running Best of the West. True, a couple of years had passed; maybe I was a different person. I sure sounded like one. Nothing would stop me from working on that show.
“We’ll be shooting in New York. You’ll have to move.”
“Okay.”
That couldn’t have been me. I rarely say “Okay” to anything. Living in New York? I’d turned down Saturday Night Live partly because I couldn’t imagine living in New York. And now I’m saying “Okay”? What the heck had gotten into me?
What had gotten into me was a galvanizing excitement. This was an opportunity even terror and dread couldn’t stop me from accepting. How could I turn it down? The show was funny and different. I was funny and different. It was perfect match. Wasn’t it?
They gave me the job. We were about to find out.
Barry Kemp, the creator of Newhart – the show where he owned the inn – also employed me in another capacity. The opportunity resulted from my having helped Barry re-structure the final scene of his Newhart pilot script. Suggesting ways of enriching a story was something I was developing a facility for. I had learned story construction from a lot of talented people along the way.
More often than not, I can read a script and find ways of upgrading the story the writer is trying to tell. Infrastructure work, it goes totally unnoticed. But as a result of this non-glamorous story framing, the story is streamlined, and the jokes “miraculously” begin to “pop.”
If you clarify the moments, simplify the “build” to the climax, cut the jokes which, though funny, contradict other jokes or sell the storyline down the river, what’s left in the script, both the story and the comedy, come strikingly to life.
It’s like that story about the guy who asked the sculptor how he went about sculpting a pony. The sculptor explains:
“It’s very simple. I start with a big block of granite, I pick up my hammer and my chisel, and I chip away everything that isn’t a pony.”
If you take a step back, and you’re objective – it’s easier to do this with other people’s scripts than with your own – you can accomplish exactly the same task. What’s left is an unequivocal pony of a story.
Barry Kemp, not only a good writer but an astute show administrator in ways that many writers, including yours truly, are not, hired me to serve as, what he called, “a legitimate story editor”, as opposed to the writing staff rank of “story editor”. Every week, a script would be delivered, and I’d “study on it”, as they say – I don’t know who says, maybe Abraham Lincoln – and I’d do my thing.
The arrangement with Barry contained two of my favorite elements in a job: One, I was being paid to do something I was good at and liked to do; and two, I didn’t have to leave the house.
Throughout the rest of my career, I would serve as a script consultant on various shows, perhaps my most challenging and enjoyable being The Larry Sanders Show, starring Garry Shandling. I’ll tell you about that and Garry’s other show, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which I also consulted on, another time. I’m trying to stay chronological. Come back in thirteen years.
Okay, so that’s where I was at – I was writing scripts for two shows and consulting on one, along with working as a Warm-Up man during the second season of Cheers. (See the post entitled “Warm-up Man” from a week or so back. If I knew how to do it, “Warm-up Man” would be tinted in blue. I don’t know how to do it.)
As a Warm-Up man, one crewmember I’d focus on regularly was “Ed, the Stick Man.” You know how someone hits two sticks together before they film a scene in order to sync up the picture and the sound – that was Ed’s job. His only job. Hitting two sticks together.
It seemed to me like Ed was aiming kind of low in his aspirations, and I wasn’t shy about mentioning it. It turned out, however, that that was just me, being ignorant. “Ed, the Stick Man” was, in reality, the Second Assistant Cameraman, a position of no small importance. If the cameraman and the Assistant cameraman suddenly keeled over, “Ed the Stick Man” would be filming the show.
Until that unlikely eventuality, Ed would continue to hit two sticks together and bide his time. Quite a bit of time, it seemed. Ed appeared to be in his fifties.
(Digression: The best show business job I know of? “Standby Painter.” That’s an actual union job, with benefits and everything. Imagine, being a standby painter. If nothing happens, you may never have to paint at all. You may not even know how to paint. If you were lucky, they would never find out.)
As I mentioned in Story of a Writer – Part Fourteen, I was feeling kind of stale. I felt like a veteran sports reporter reading over his latest copy and thinking, “Didn’t I write this exact same story last year?” I needed an infusion of creative excitement. And one day, “Opportunity” showed up at my door. (It would most likely have had to. I almost never went out.)
My agent messengered me a tape of a pilot presentation. “Pilot presentation” means cheap pilot. Instead of filming the entire episode, budget-conscious networks order the production of selective scenes, which, hopefully, represent the essence of the series.
The presentation I received was produced by former ABC executives Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, for whom I had previously written an unsold hour pilot about summer camp. This was the producer team’s second series effort. The first was a one-year-and-cancelled series called Oh, Madeline!, starring the late and truly great Madeline Kahn.
To save money, the producers taped the presentation (the show was videotaped rather than filmed) using the Oh, Madeline! house set, which, though the show’s run had ended, remained standing on the soundstage.
The presentation was fourteen minutes long. When the show was picked up, eight minutes of additional material had to be added to complete the episode. You may not have noticed, but the second episode of the series is shot in an entirely different living room.
The series I’m referring to, of course, was The Cosby Show, and the presentation took my breath away. The jokes were funny, a minimally structured storytelling approach was employed, and the show had a masterful comic-actor genius in the lead role. On many levels, The Cosby Show, at least at its inception, offered a revolutionary way of doing a sitcom.
TV sitcoms were failing. People were writing about it: “The Death of the Sitcom.” That’s not really something you want to hear when you’re writing sitcoms for a living. But the truth was, I agreed with them. Sitcoms, especially family sitcoms, were growing painfully predictable. There are only so many times you can discover marijuana in a kid’s locker and find out later it wasn’t his.
There’s one moment in The Cosby Show presentation that suggested that something meaningful was about to change. The presentation episode contained a surprise that literally caught the audience off-guard. You can detect it quite plainly on the sound track.
The presentation story concerns a traditional sitcom storyline: the bad report card. Thirteen year-old Theo brings home a report card containing four D’s. His parents are very disappointed, and the father’s dispatched to speak to him.
Rather than apologizing for his sub-par performance, Theo instead goes straight to his father’s heartstrings. Okay, his Dad is a doctor and his mother’s a lawyer. But why can’t they accept him for who he is – a regular person – and love him anyway, because he’s their son?
Accepting people for who they are. A bedrock liberal principle. The studio audience is clearly conditioned to respond sympathetically. If you listen to the soundtrack, you can hear them starting to applaud Theo’s unequivocal plea for acceptance.
But just as the audience members are about to put their hands together…the doctor proclaims,
“Theo, that’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard!”
The audience members stopped dead in their tracks. And then, they went nuts!
I mean, the roof came off!
It’s like someone had opened a window, and a liberating truth had come rushing in. Theo wasn’t mentally challenged; he was lazy. And the doctor was calling him on it, accusing his son of being afraid to try, for fear that his brain would explode and come oozing out of his ear.
The audience was enraptured by the message of personal responsibility, refreshing only because it had been abandoned. Theo would do better. And so, not incidentally, would the sitcom.
The moment I saw that presentation, I wanted to be a part of that show. I had been a Cosby fan since his eye-catching standup appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Cosby had a childlike, questioning perspective; so, in my finer moments, did I.
Once, when I was lecturing at a college writing program, I’d surprised myself by falling into a Cosby-esque delivery. Though we came from totally different backgrounds, something about us was the same.
Tom Werner came to my house to discuss my participation.
“What do you want to do on the show?” he asked.
“I want to run it.”
I have no idea who it was that said that. It couldn’t have been the man who lived in terror through almost every moment of running Best of the West. True, a couple of years had passed; maybe I was a different person. I sure sounded like one. Nothing would stop me from working on that show.
“We’ll be shooting in New York. You’ll have to move.”
“Okay.”
That couldn’t have been me. I rarely say “Okay” to anything. Living in New York? I’d turned down Saturday Night Live partly because I couldn’t imagine living in New York. And now I’m saying “Okay”? What the heck had gotten into me?
What had gotten into me was a galvanizing excitement. This was an opportunity even terror and dread couldn’t stop me from accepting. How could I turn it down? The show was funny and different. I was funny and different. It was perfect match. Wasn’t it?
They gave me the job. We were about to find out.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
"Storm Warning"
It seems appropriate – at least for me – after a celebratory post such as my last one, that an ominous thought should emerge, like a hovering shadow. It's just how it is. All I have to acknowledge is “I’m having a ball!” for a poisonous inner voice to counter, “Not so fast.”
Yesterday, our family attended a wedding, arranged by a family in the arts. Not show business, real art – the mother’s a painter and the bride’s an art historian. The family’s talent, good judgment and unique taste were revealed in every detail of the proceedings, from the original content of the ceremony to the striking choice of the flower vases, the flowers selected from the downtown flower market by the bride-to-be herself.
That was the good part.
I found myself seated opposite a man whose wounded eyes disclosed that he’d never once received the birthday present he’d wanted. These people are dangerous. Especially to people displaying any sign that life is good.
The bride’s father, sitting nearby, asked me how my blogging was going. “I just wrote my hundredth post,” I proudly replied. That was a mistake. You should never show signs of happiness in public. Somebody’s certain to take it the wrong way.
My enthusiasm immediately triggered a barrage of probing questions from Mr. “His-Parents-Never-Understood-His-Deepest-Desires.”
“Do you know how many people read your blog?”
“No, and I don’t want to know.” (If you know, please keep it to yourself.)
“Do you make any money from your blog?”
“Not a dime.”
“Surely, this is a part-time activity.”
“I don’t do anything else.”
My interrogator seemed to take each of my answers as a personal affront. I pretended his hostility didn’t bother me. But it did, as reflected by the fact that I put off a post I had planned to write to write this one instead.
I want to say that, in America – but it may be everyplace – you do a thing that takes time and energy and effort and infinite care for one of two reasons: One – personal advantage, usually meaning money, or Two – “You’re out of your mind.”
At the core of the man’s curiosity about my blogging – besides an irrational resentment – is a reasonable wonderment: “Why on Earth are you doing that?” If he’d asked me that directly, I’d have replied, “I love it.” But a deeper response would be the Eastern-religionly tinged,
“I do it to do it.”
“I do it to do it.” A response of that nature carries with it one of two possibilities. One of them’s I’m a crazy person.
Spending hours a day crafting something that may be read by an infinitesimally tiny…
You know. That.
I’ve had enough therapy to understand that the hostile wedding guest who, objectively, meant nothing to me, wasn’t really the person who was talking to me. Who was talking to me was me. I’d simply placed my harbored reservations in his mouth.
It's a short and surprisingly swift journey from "Why am I doing this?" to "I've lost the ability to do this." What I'm chronicling here is the spiraling descent into “Writer’s Block”.
I once told a woman at this spa I go to that I’d written a book of political commentary called Both Sides Make Me Angry to which she immediately replied,
“Why should anybody care what you have to say?”
There it is. A writer’s scariest question, parroted on a stranger’s lips. I’m sure all writers have experienced these and even greater shots to their confidence. Maybe that’s why so many of them drink. (Not me. I remember a show runner who drank once asked me what I did to manage the anxiety of our chosen career. I responded without a moment’s thought: “I suffer.”)
If you know a writer, try and keep this in mind. Writers have plenty of doubts of their own. They really don’t need any assistance in that regard.
Early in my career, whatever time I was allotted to write a script, I’d spent the first half of that time writing nothing. Two weeks to deliver a draft of an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I’d spend the first week just shaking.
“How do I do this? I can’t do this. Who said I could do this? I’ll never be able to do this. Don’t make me do this!”
Mountains of negativity. Literally, in a figurative sense. I’d make a mountain out of a molehill, and then worry myself to death that I couldn’t climb it. On some level, I was just trying to make the undertaking I was – in another section of myself – certain I could handle, seem more heroic. The opposite view lacked the requisite excitement.
“Piece o’ cake!”
Where’s the glorious achievement in that?
But unlike the magician who is clearly aware that his trick is a trick, my trick would fool me, and I would actually feel scared. I believed I had good reason. People were counting on me. I had established a level of quality I was required to live up to. If I didn’t, what I loved to do more than anything in the world – making a living in show business – would be taken away from me.
There are reasonable responses to all of those concerns, but when you’re brain is aflame with self-doubt, you’re hardly a candidate for the “Clear Thinking” award.
After a while, I got on to my own game. Instead of agonizing and writing nothing that first week, I’d just take a little trip (“…along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip’”.) I’d simply take off. When I returned the second week, knowing I had no more time to waste, I’d just sit down and write the script.
In later years, the “I can’t do it” period contracted to a fleeting stab of doubt, or a troubled night’s sleep. It never totally disappeared.
I’m a writer. It comes with the territory.
And now it’s the blog. The pressure is self-imposed, but wasn’t it always?
Before it was scripts. Now, it’s five posts a week. And always trying to maintain the quality. And there it is, in the pit of my stomach. Hello Darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to block you up again.
Here, I’ll save you thousands in therapy bills. Whatever your negative tendencies – the ones that really mess you up – you can never overcome them. What you can do is this: Acknowledge your liabilities and minimize the damage. Write it down.
“Acknowledge your liabilities and minimize the damage.”
There. You’re cured.
(Digression: In my sillier moments, I like to believe that Minimize was Mickeymize’s Italian girlfriend.)
If you want to encourage me in my struggle, what would help most would be a cold-water-in-the-face dousing of the truth, along the lines of
“Stop worrying, Earl. Your quality level isn’t that great.”
I’d appreciate the support.
I want to keep doing this. But the demons are definitely lurking.
It’s a real-life cliffhanger.
Stay tuned.
Yesterday, our family attended a wedding, arranged by a family in the arts. Not show business, real art – the mother’s a painter and the bride’s an art historian. The family’s talent, good judgment and unique taste were revealed in every detail of the proceedings, from the original content of the ceremony to the striking choice of the flower vases, the flowers selected from the downtown flower market by the bride-to-be herself.
That was the good part.
I found myself seated opposite a man whose wounded eyes disclosed that he’d never once received the birthday present he’d wanted. These people are dangerous. Especially to people displaying any sign that life is good.
The bride’s father, sitting nearby, asked me how my blogging was going. “I just wrote my hundredth post,” I proudly replied. That was a mistake. You should never show signs of happiness in public. Somebody’s certain to take it the wrong way.
My enthusiasm immediately triggered a barrage of probing questions from Mr. “His-Parents-Never-Understood-His-Deepest-Desires.”
“Do you know how many people read your blog?”
“No, and I don’t want to know.” (If you know, please keep it to yourself.)
“Do you make any money from your blog?”
“Not a dime.”
“Surely, this is a part-time activity.”
“I don’t do anything else.”
My interrogator seemed to take each of my answers as a personal affront. I pretended his hostility didn’t bother me. But it did, as reflected by the fact that I put off a post I had planned to write to write this one instead.
I want to say that, in America – but it may be everyplace – you do a thing that takes time and energy and effort and infinite care for one of two reasons: One – personal advantage, usually meaning money, or Two – “You’re out of your mind.”
At the core of the man’s curiosity about my blogging – besides an irrational resentment – is a reasonable wonderment: “Why on Earth are you doing that?” If he’d asked me that directly, I’d have replied, “I love it.” But a deeper response would be the Eastern-religionly tinged,
“I do it to do it.”
“I do it to do it.” A response of that nature carries with it one of two possibilities. One of them’s I’m a crazy person.
Spending hours a day crafting something that may be read by an infinitesimally tiny…
You know. That.
I’ve had enough therapy to understand that the hostile wedding guest who, objectively, meant nothing to me, wasn’t really the person who was talking to me. Who was talking to me was me. I’d simply placed my harbored reservations in his mouth.
It's a short and surprisingly swift journey from "Why am I doing this?" to "I've lost the ability to do this." What I'm chronicling here is the spiraling descent into “Writer’s Block”.
I once told a woman at this spa I go to that I’d written a book of political commentary called Both Sides Make Me Angry to which she immediately replied,
“Why should anybody care what you have to say?”
There it is. A writer’s scariest question, parroted on a stranger’s lips. I’m sure all writers have experienced these and even greater shots to their confidence. Maybe that’s why so many of them drink. (Not me. I remember a show runner who drank once asked me what I did to manage the anxiety of our chosen career. I responded without a moment’s thought: “I suffer.”)
If you know a writer, try and keep this in mind. Writers have plenty of doubts of their own. They really don’t need any assistance in that regard.
Early in my career, whatever time I was allotted to write a script, I’d spent the first half of that time writing nothing. Two weeks to deliver a draft of an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I’d spend the first week just shaking.
“How do I do this? I can’t do this. Who said I could do this? I’ll never be able to do this. Don’t make me do this!”
Mountains of negativity. Literally, in a figurative sense. I’d make a mountain out of a molehill, and then worry myself to death that I couldn’t climb it. On some level, I was just trying to make the undertaking I was – in another section of myself – certain I could handle, seem more heroic. The opposite view lacked the requisite excitement.
“Piece o’ cake!”
Where’s the glorious achievement in that?
But unlike the magician who is clearly aware that his trick is a trick, my trick would fool me, and I would actually feel scared. I believed I had good reason. People were counting on me. I had established a level of quality I was required to live up to. If I didn’t, what I loved to do more than anything in the world – making a living in show business – would be taken away from me.
There are reasonable responses to all of those concerns, but when you’re brain is aflame with self-doubt, you’re hardly a candidate for the “Clear Thinking” award.
After a while, I got on to my own game. Instead of agonizing and writing nothing that first week, I’d just take a little trip (“…along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip’”.) I’d simply take off. When I returned the second week, knowing I had no more time to waste, I’d just sit down and write the script.
In later years, the “I can’t do it” period contracted to a fleeting stab of doubt, or a troubled night’s sleep. It never totally disappeared.
I’m a writer. It comes with the territory.
And now it’s the blog. The pressure is self-imposed, but wasn’t it always?
Before it was scripts. Now, it’s five posts a week. And always trying to maintain the quality. And there it is, in the pit of my stomach. Hello Darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to block you up again.
Here, I’ll save you thousands in therapy bills. Whatever your negative tendencies – the ones that really mess you up – you can never overcome them. What you can do is this: Acknowledge your liabilities and minimize the damage. Write it down.
“Acknowledge your liabilities and minimize the damage.”
There. You’re cured.
(Digression: In my sillier moments, I like to believe that Minimize was Mickeymize’s Italian girlfriend.)
If you want to encourage me in my struggle, what would help most would be a cold-water-in-the-face dousing of the truth, along the lines of
“Stop worrying, Earl. Your quality level isn’t that great.”
I’d appreciate the support.
I want to keep doing this. But the demons are definitely lurking.
It’s a real-life cliffhanger.
Stay tuned.
Monday, June 16, 2008
"My Hundredth Post"
I wrote a movie, and it didn’t sell. Then I wrote a TV pilot, and it didn’t sell. Then I wrote a spec script for a show I liked, and I couldn’t get the show runner to read it. Rejection by rejection, the message was coming into focus:
My career is not doing well.
At first, it felt odd to me. My career had always done well before, sometimes, very well. Studios paid me, networks were happy having me pitch them ideas, I’d made money, I’d won prizes, I was, you know, if not “up there”, ranked prominently in the category just below “up there.” Objectively speaking, that’s pretty “up there.”
And then it stopped. I wasn’t close to “up there” anymore. Suddenly, I was down there.
Ouch.
That “ouch” isn’t from a couple of years ago. That’s from right now, thinking about what happened a couple of years ago. It’s been some time now, but it’s still “ouch.”
I’m not complaining, and if I am, I’m aware that I shouldn’t be. I’m one of the lucky ones. Paying work is no longer a financial necessity. I’ve done well along the way, and it looks like money issues will not be a major concern.
Old joke: “I have enough money to last the rest of my life. But I have to die Tuesday.”
(That joke always makes me laugh. And it totally depends on “Tuesday.” “I have enough money to last the rest of my life, but I have to die Monday?” – nothing. It has to be “Tuesday.” I have no idea why.)
Being unwanted was disorienting to me. It’s like my employers were saying, “You know that thing we thought you did wonderfully? Well, we don’t think that anymore, so go home.” I didn’t understand it. I had what I had. It was wonderful before. Why wasn’t it wonderful now?
I realize this part’s depressing, but I promise, there’s a turn, and everything’s going to be all right. Just stay with me. One last depressing section, and it’s “happy” all the way to the end.
I tried writing other things. A book of humorous essays, a book about cowboy movies, a book of cultural commentaries. I even tried writing a novel. Among my posts is a series called, “Why I Can’t Be A…” comedian, a movie critic, a screenwriter, a lawyer. I’m just a fountain of negativity. You won’t be seeing a post, called “Why I Can’t Write A Novel.” It would be too short, basically, “I tried and I can’t.”
I had decided to write a novel about summer camp. I wrote six pages the first day. The next day, I read them over, and I rewrote every word. The third day, I read what I’d written the second day, and rewrote every word again. On the fourth day, I gave up.
I don’t know how you write a novel when, every time you read it, it feels like every word you put down could easily be something else. In scriptwriting, I was pretty successful finding the right words. Novels are a trickier proposition. The right words remain frustratingly elusive, dancing behind the words you thought were the right words yesterday. It’s a mystery. I don’t know how people do it.
Movies, pilots, spec scripts, books – none of them were happening for me. I wrote an occasional newspaper commentary, but it had to be about television. An editor named Fritz at a magazine called Television Quarterly generously assigned me books to review. But as the name “Quarterly” suggests, the magazine doesn’t come out that often.
Bottom line: I didn’t have a lot to do.
To keep my mind from turning to baby food, I began taking piano lessons and extension classes at UCLA on subjects that interested me. However, for the first time in a number of decades,
I stopped writing.
Completely.
For over a year.
Then….
I promised a turn, I’m delivering a turn…
I started this blog.
It was a New Year’s resolution. (A more successful one than “I’m cutting down on bread.”) Writing for money is great, but nobody was calling. Not writing felt wasteful – I have a gift and I was wasting it by refusing to work. Dr. M had suggested a blog a year earlier, and I’d snapped at her.
I'm a professional writer. I don't give it away.
Why did I finally decide to do it? It was time to get back to work.
Ken Levine, an acerbic angel, set my blog up for me. I call it “Just Thinking”, because that’s what I was eager to share – my thinking. Not just about sitcom writing, but about all the ideas that were rattling around my brain, the ideas that make me yell at my television.
I published my first two posts, and then went to a spa for a week. When, I got back, a commenter had left me this message: “So, is this going to be, like, a semi-annual thing?”
Since then, I’ve been posting five days a week.
(I’m easily swayed. Keep it to yourself.)
Writing this blog has been a joy for me from the outset. I like writing funny stuff. It feels good when someone writes, “I needed a laugh and you gave it to me.” I mean, you gotta feel good about that. Using your gift for good?
I also like talking about the Old Days. I hope, among other enjoyments, those “story of a writer” remembrances send struggling writers out there the message that success – to the degree that I’ve had it – is hardly a matter of just talent, and that by taking that in, you’ll be kinder to yourselves. A lot of what happens is not your fault. (And if you’re successful, a lot of it’s not your doing.)
I also like to promulgate my opinions. And I’m delighted at the opportunity to use the word “promulgate.” I hope to go on promulgating for a long time to come. You don’t have to agree with my promulgations. If you persuade me I’m wrong, I’ll happily change my mind. Of course, if I persuade you – vice versa. It’s only fair.
Everyone has a medium that best fits their communicating style. One person’s a talker. Another person’s a painter. Another person’s a dancer. And another person’s a writer.
Writing itself takes many forms, writers favoring the form whose defining rhythm best complements their nature. There are book writers, scriptwriters, pamphlet writers, letter writers, e-mailers, “post-it"-note writers, witty texters. Somebody’s dream medium is skywriting.
“I want to use a gigantic canvas and write about sunscreen.”
My communicating medium of choice is talking. Talking triggers my spontaneity. There was this line I heard once, I think in a play, where a character says, “How do I know what I think till I hear what I say?” That’s me, when I’m talking. Something pops out of my mouth and it’s like, “Wow! I think that? Really?” Talking surprises me with my thoughts and even more so with my way of communicating them. That’s why talking’s my favorite.
Blogging, however, comes really close. There’s this liberating spontaneity to blogging. Scriptwriting is akin to working a crossword puzzle. Your spontaneity’s hampered by the rigorous requirements of the structure. There’s no structure in a blog. You just say stuff. Not that I don’t edit and rewrite and shape and move things around. But compared to other forms of communication, the freedom here is exhilarating.
Talking allows more tools to come into play. There’s gesture, there’s facial expressions, there’s tone of voice, there’s timing. As liberating as they are, blogs are still sentences and paragraphs, and I’m still experimenting with way of immediacizing the moment. I also enjoy the opportunity for, hopefully illuminating, digressions. It’s a work in progress, but I’m excited by the possibilities.
Generally speaking – is what I’m saying – this form really suits me.
Okay.
This is my hundredth post. I hope there’ll be more. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your encouragement. And thank you for your wisdom.
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but his invention was meaningless until someone invented the second telephone, so that Bell could have somebody to call. For me, you guys the second telephone.
I really appreciate your taking my call.
My career is not doing well.
At first, it felt odd to me. My career had always done well before, sometimes, very well. Studios paid me, networks were happy having me pitch them ideas, I’d made money, I’d won prizes, I was, you know, if not “up there”, ranked prominently in the category just below “up there.” Objectively speaking, that’s pretty “up there.”
And then it stopped. I wasn’t close to “up there” anymore. Suddenly, I was down there.
Ouch.
That “ouch” isn’t from a couple of years ago. That’s from right now, thinking about what happened a couple of years ago. It’s been some time now, but it’s still “ouch.”
I’m not complaining, and if I am, I’m aware that I shouldn’t be. I’m one of the lucky ones. Paying work is no longer a financial necessity. I’ve done well along the way, and it looks like money issues will not be a major concern.
Old joke: “I have enough money to last the rest of my life. But I have to die Tuesday.”
(That joke always makes me laugh. And it totally depends on “Tuesday.” “I have enough money to last the rest of my life, but I have to die Monday?” – nothing. It has to be “Tuesday.” I have no idea why.)
Being unwanted was disorienting to me. It’s like my employers were saying, “You know that thing we thought you did wonderfully? Well, we don’t think that anymore, so go home.” I didn’t understand it. I had what I had. It was wonderful before. Why wasn’t it wonderful now?
I realize this part’s depressing, but I promise, there’s a turn, and everything’s going to be all right. Just stay with me. One last depressing section, and it’s “happy” all the way to the end.
I tried writing other things. A book of humorous essays, a book about cowboy movies, a book of cultural commentaries. I even tried writing a novel. Among my posts is a series called, “Why I Can’t Be A…” comedian, a movie critic, a screenwriter, a lawyer. I’m just a fountain of negativity. You won’t be seeing a post, called “Why I Can’t Write A Novel.” It would be too short, basically, “I tried and I can’t.”
I had decided to write a novel about summer camp. I wrote six pages the first day. The next day, I read them over, and I rewrote every word. The third day, I read what I’d written the second day, and rewrote every word again. On the fourth day, I gave up.
I don’t know how you write a novel when, every time you read it, it feels like every word you put down could easily be something else. In scriptwriting, I was pretty successful finding the right words. Novels are a trickier proposition. The right words remain frustratingly elusive, dancing behind the words you thought were the right words yesterday. It’s a mystery. I don’t know how people do it.
Movies, pilots, spec scripts, books – none of them were happening for me. I wrote an occasional newspaper commentary, but it had to be about television. An editor named Fritz at a magazine called Television Quarterly generously assigned me books to review. But as the name “Quarterly” suggests, the magazine doesn’t come out that often.
Bottom line: I didn’t have a lot to do.
To keep my mind from turning to baby food, I began taking piano lessons and extension classes at UCLA on subjects that interested me. However, for the first time in a number of decades,
I stopped writing.
Completely.
For over a year.
Then….
I promised a turn, I’m delivering a turn…
I started this blog.
It was a New Year’s resolution. (A more successful one than “I’m cutting down on bread.”) Writing for money is great, but nobody was calling. Not writing felt wasteful – I have a gift and I was wasting it by refusing to work. Dr. M had suggested a blog a year earlier, and I’d snapped at her.
I'm a professional writer. I don't give it away.
Why did I finally decide to do it? It was time to get back to work.
Ken Levine, an acerbic angel, set my blog up for me. I call it “Just Thinking”, because that’s what I was eager to share – my thinking. Not just about sitcom writing, but about all the ideas that were rattling around my brain, the ideas that make me yell at my television.
I published my first two posts, and then went to a spa for a week. When, I got back, a commenter had left me this message: “So, is this going to be, like, a semi-annual thing?”
Since then, I’ve been posting five days a week.
(I’m easily swayed. Keep it to yourself.)
Writing this blog has been a joy for me from the outset. I like writing funny stuff. It feels good when someone writes, “I needed a laugh and you gave it to me.” I mean, you gotta feel good about that. Using your gift for good?
I also like talking about the Old Days. I hope, among other enjoyments, those “story of a writer” remembrances send struggling writers out there the message that success – to the degree that I’ve had it – is hardly a matter of just talent, and that by taking that in, you’ll be kinder to yourselves. A lot of what happens is not your fault. (And if you’re successful, a lot of it’s not your doing.)
I also like to promulgate my opinions. And I’m delighted at the opportunity to use the word “promulgate.” I hope to go on promulgating for a long time to come. You don’t have to agree with my promulgations. If you persuade me I’m wrong, I’ll happily change my mind. Of course, if I persuade you – vice versa. It’s only fair.
Everyone has a medium that best fits their communicating style. One person’s a talker. Another person’s a painter. Another person’s a dancer. And another person’s a writer.
Writing itself takes many forms, writers favoring the form whose defining rhythm best complements their nature. There are book writers, scriptwriters, pamphlet writers, letter writers, e-mailers, “post-it"-note writers, witty texters. Somebody’s dream medium is skywriting.
“I want to use a gigantic canvas and write about sunscreen.”
My communicating medium of choice is talking. Talking triggers my spontaneity. There was this line I heard once, I think in a play, where a character says, “How do I know what I think till I hear what I say?” That’s me, when I’m talking. Something pops out of my mouth and it’s like, “Wow! I think that? Really?” Talking surprises me with my thoughts and even more so with my way of communicating them. That’s why talking’s my favorite.
Blogging, however, comes really close. There’s this liberating spontaneity to blogging. Scriptwriting is akin to working a crossword puzzle. Your spontaneity’s hampered by the rigorous requirements of the structure. There’s no structure in a blog. You just say stuff. Not that I don’t edit and rewrite and shape and move things around. But compared to other forms of communication, the freedom here is exhilarating.
Talking allows more tools to come into play. There’s gesture, there’s facial expressions, there’s tone of voice, there’s timing. As liberating as they are, blogs are still sentences and paragraphs, and I’m still experimenting with way of immediacizing the moment. I also enjoy the opportunity for, hopefully illuminating, digressions. It’s a work in progress, but I’m excited by the possibilities.
Generally speaking – is what I’m saying – this form really suits me.
Okay.
This is my hundredth post. I hope there’ll be more. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your encouragement. And thank you for your wisdom.
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but his invention was meaningless until someone invented the second telephone, so that Bell could have somebody to call. For me, you guys the second telephone.
I really appreciate your taking my call.
Friday, June 13, 2008
"Treats"
Sometimes, when you write something, you reveal more about yourself than you consciously intended. This may be one of those times.
Stop salivating, it’s not about that. And by the way, when I refer to “that”, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Though, apparently, if you were salivating, you do. Knock it off!
It’s not that, it’s this. Which, who knows, if you probe beneath the surface, may actually be “that.” This is considerably less embarrassing. Which is probably why I’m writing about this and not that.
Okay. Enough of that.
My cousin Herschel used to joke, “There are two kinds of bald people – those with hair and those without hair.” Inside cousin Herschel’s silliness lies an insightful observation. In any category you choose to mention – except for specifically defined categories, like baldness – there always appears to be two kinds of people.
For example:
There are two kinds of people: those who lavish themselves with treats and those who don’t. This choice of behavior is not necessarily connected to whether or not you have money. Not having money does not preclude you from lavishing yourself with treats. They just have to be cheap treats, like a lovely walk, or a deep, refreshing breath of air, or a stimulating peek at an attractive person of the opposite sex, or the same sex, if that’s where your eye goes.
My focus here is this: Are you the kind of person who overloads themselves with treats, or do you consciously modulate your treats?
I imagine I’ve given my hand away – as I inevitably do everywhere – by my choice of descriptives. When you choose the word “overload” to apply to people who lavish themselves with treats, you’re pretty much saying, “Those guys are pigs!” Conversely, “consciously modulating” your treats screams “discipline.”
I never promised I’d be objective.
I ration my treats. I just sighed after writing that. So it must have been a relief to get that off my chest. I’ll say it again. Maybe I’ll feel even better. I ration my treats.
I do feel better. I’d repeat it a third time, but there’s only so “good” I allow myself to feel. As I said, I ration my treats.
This division of people into those two categories is hardly unique to our times. I remember learning that in ancient Greece, there were the Stoics and the Epicureans. When it came to volume in treat allocation, the Epicureans said, “Everything, please. And then, more.” The Stoics said – not “No treats at all, ever!” – at the very least they enjoyed the, for some people – including me – the underrated pleasure of regulating their treats. Stoics simply believed in sensible limits.
I also have the vague remembrance of which camp you find yourself in having something to do with early toilet training, though it’s hard to see that could apply to the ancient Greeks – those guys didn’t have toilets. It’s possible, however, that you don’t actually need toilets for the principle to apply.
For me, limiting my treats has nothing to do with aligning myself with a bunch of tight-assed Greek philosophers. It just feels better. To me. To people like the Epicureans, “Everything, please, and then, more” feels better, and what I’m doing feels like those religious people who enjoyed whipping themselves.
It’s not at all like whipping myself.
I like great cigars. But I smoke them, maybe three times a year. That’s not because I’m cheap and it’s not because I have money problems. I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about buying a private jet. Great cigars are expensive, but they’re not out of my league. Especially if I only buy one three times a year.
Maybe you’re thinking right now, “If it’s not a money issue, Earl, why not spring for a great cigar, say, four times a year? Good point. I could do that. And I am not at all troubled by the “slippery slope” problem. You know, you start buying a great cigar four times a year and before you know it, it’s once a month, then it’s once every two weeks, then once a week, and blah! – you’re smoking ten cigars a day. I’m not concerned about that.
Except in this sense.
The way I see it, if you turn your three-times-a-year treat into “whenever I want it”, the specialness that makes a treat a treat inevitably disappears, the joyfully-looked-forward-to excitement unavoidably downgrading to “everyday routine.”
The exceptional becomes ordinary. It’s brushing your teeth. An emotional deflation from “Yahoo!” to “eh.”
I don’t usually feel sorry for fabulously wealthy people. That’s just my prejudice. In this case, however, I have to admit to a trickle of sympathy. Imagine being so rich – Bill Gates rich, though as rich as he is, he still doesn’t seem to be able to get a decent haircut – imagine you’re so incredibly wealthy that you could have as much as you want of whatever you want whenever you want it.
You get where I’m going here?
Where’s “treats”?
If “treats” devalues to “everyday occurrence”, what happens to “magnificently special?” I know a couple of really rich people, but they don’t discuss these things, possibly to spare me the envy
“You have no idea how out of your reach our spectacular treats are.”
I’m grateful for their thoughtfulness, but, you know, how exceptional can these treats really be?
“We have a personal chef who prepares us dishes nobody’s ever tasted before. And then we kill him.”
“We have season’s tickets to the Dodgers on first base. Not on the first base line. On first base!”
“On my way to work, instead of listening to the radio, I have the actual Rolling Stones entertaining me from the back seat. They sit in the car all day, and then they sing for me on the way home.”
[PLACE YOUR IDEA OF AN OPULENT TREAT HERE]
All those things are great. But they can’t stay great if you get them every day.
"'Satisfaction'? Again?"
I never want “the special” to become ordinary. Maybe I’m too careful in this regard – I may actually be miles from the line – but it’s important for me to protect those treats’ power to delight me. It’s a conscious choice. I allow myself less treats, not because I don’t like treats, but because I value them so highly.
And there’s also that toilet training issue.
-----------------
On Monday, I’ll be publishing my 100th post. That happened fast, didn’t it? People have informed me they can’t keep up with my posts, suggesting – or maybe I simply inferred – that I’m wasting material by writing too many posts too closely together. I don’t know what to do about that. I’m just happy to have stories (and ideas and opinions) I’m excited to tell you about.
If you have any general comments about this blog, or just want to, I don’t know, express an acknowledging “Way to go” or “Stop doing this” or something, I’d be honored if you’d take the time to pass your responses along. A cake will not be necessary. I’m trying not to eat sugar. And I don’t think my Hewlett Packard has a feature for printing cake.
Anyway, thanks a lot for reading.
Earl.
Stop salivating, it’s not about that. And by the way, when I refer to “that”, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Though, apparently, if you were salivating, you do. Knock it off!
It’s not that, it’s this. Which, who knows, if you probe beneath the surface, may actually be “that.” This is considerably less embarrassing. Which is probably why I’m writing about this and not that.
Okay. Enough of that.
My cousin Herschel used to joke, “There are two kinds of bald people – those with hair and those without hair.” Inside cousin Herschel’s silliness lies an insightful observation. In any category you choose to mention – except for specifically defined categories, like baldness – there always appears to be two kinds of people.
For example:
There are two kinds of people: those who lavish themselves with treats and those who don’t. This choice of behavior is not necessarily connected to whether or not you have money. Not having money does not preclude you from lavishing yourself with treats. They just have to be cheap treats, like a lovely walk, or a deep, refreshing breath of air, or a stimulating peek at an attractive person of the opposite sex, or the same sex, if that’s where your eye goes.
My focus here is this: Are you the kind of person who overloads themselves with treats, or do you consciously modulate your treats?
I imagine I’ve given my hand away – as I inevitably do everywhere – by my choice of descriptives. When you choose the word “overload” to apply to people who lavish themselves with treats, you’re pretty much saying, “Those guys are pigs!” Conversely, “consciously modulating” your treats screams “discipline.”
I never promised I’d be objective.
I ration my treats. I just sighed after writing that. So it must have been a relief to get that off my chest. I’ll say it again. Maybe I’ll feel even better. I ration my treats.
I do feel better. I’d repeat it a third time, but there’s only so “good” I allow myself to feel. As I said, I ration my treats.
This division of people into those two categories is hardly unique to our times. I remember learning that in ancient Greece, there were the Stoics and the Epicureans. When it came to volume in treat allocation, the Epicureans said, “Everything, please. And then, more.” The Stoics said – not “No treats at all, ever!” – at the very least they enjoyed the, for some people – including me – the underrated pleasure of regulating their treats. Stoics simply believed in sensible limits.
I also have the vague remembrance of which camp you find yourself in having something to do with early toilet training, though it’s hard to see that could apply to the ancient Greeks – those guys didn’t have toilets. It’s possible, however, that you don’t actually need toilets for the principle to apply.
For me, limiting my treats has nothing to do with aligning myself with a bunch of tight-assed Greek philosophers. It just feels better. To me. To people like the Epicureans, “Everything, please, and then, more” feels better, and what I’m doing feels like those religious people who enjoyed whipping themselves.
It’s not at all like whipping myself.
I like great cigars. But I smoke them, maybe three times a year. That’s not because I’m cheap and it’s not because I have money problems. I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about buying a private jet. Great cigars are expensive, but they’re not out of my league. Especially if I only buy one three times a year.
Maybe you’re thinking right now, “If it’s not a money issue, Earl, why not spring for a great cigar, say, four times a year? Good point. I could do that. And I am not at all troubled by the “slippery slope” problem. You know, you start buying a great cigar four times a year and before you know it, it’s once a month, then it’s once every two weeks, then once a week, and blah! – you’re smoking ten cigars a day. I’m not concerned about that.
Except in this sense.
The way I see it, if you turn your three-times-a-year treat into “whenever I want it”, the specialness that makes a treat a treat inevitably disappears, the joyfully-looked-forward-to excitement unavoidably downgrading to “everyday routine.”
The exceptional becomes ordinary. It’s brushing your teeth. An emotional deflation from “Yahoo!” to “eh.”
I don’t usually feel sorry for fabulously wealthy people. That’s just my prejudice. In this case, however, I have to admit to a trickle of sympathy. Imagine being so rich – Bill Gates rich, though as rich as he is, he still doesn’t seem to be able to get a decent haircut – imagine you’re so incredibly wealthy that you could have as much as you want of whatever you want whenever you want it.
You get where I’m going here?
Where’s “treats”?
If “treats” devalues to “everyday occurrence”, what happens to “magnificently special?” I know a couple of really rich people, but they don’t discuss these things, possibly to spare me the envy
“You have no idea how out of your reach our spectacular treats are.”
I’m grateful for their thoughtfulness, but, you know, how exceptional can these treats really be?
“We have a personal chef who prepares us dishes nobody’s ever tasted before. And then we kill him.”
“We have season’s tickets to the Dodgers on first base. Not on the first base line. On first base!”
“On my way to work, instead of listening to the radio, I have the actual Rolling Stones entertaining me from the back seat. They sit in the car all day, and then they sing for me on the way home.”
[PLACE YOUR IDEA OF AN OPULENT TREAT HERE]
All those things are great. But they can’t stay great if you get them every day.
"'Satisfaction'? Again?"
I never want “the special” to become ordinary. Maybe I’m too careful in this regard – I may actually be miles from the line – but it’s important for me to protect those treats’ power to delight me. It’s a conscious choice. I allow myself less treats, not because I don’t like treats, but because I value them so highly.
And there’s also that toilet training issue.
-----------------
On Monday, I’ll be publishing my 100th post. That happened fast, didn’t it? People have informed me they can’t keep up with my posts, suggesting – or maybe I simply inferred – that I’m wasting material by writing too many posts too closely together. I don’t know what to do about that. I’m just happy to have stories (and ideas and opinions) I’m excited to tell you about.
If you have any general comments about this blog, or just want to, I don’t know, express an acknowledging “Way to go” or “Stop doing this” or something, I’d be honored if you’d take the time to pass your responses along. A cake will not be necessary. I’m trying not to eat sugar. And I don’t think my Hewlett Packard has a feature for printing cake.
Anyway, thanks a lot for reading.
Earl.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
"A Very Close Call"
There are no guarantees you’ll be funny forever.
I don’t know what it is that makes a person funny. Chemicals in your head, family conditioning, an inability to play sports so you find a way to get acceptance another way, a quirk in your brain that causes your mind to make funny connections...
I really don’t know.
I explain what I do by saying I have a funny way of looking at things. This is ironic, because, due to some prenatal impairment – I was born with cataracts – I actually do have a funny way of looking at things.
I don’t know if that has to do with anything. It may be a coincidence. I just know I have a certain way of looking at things, and it comes out funny.
I also know this.
You can lose that “funny.” And on the day I’m about to tell you about, I did.
Or at least I misplaced it for a while.
Losing your “funny” is a disturbing feeling, to say the least. If “funny” is how you make your living and it’s suddenly gone, it’s like a surgeon, standing over an anaesthetized patient, the nurse slaps a scalpel into his hand, and he says,
“What’s that?”
Targeted amnesia. It only affects your talent. Ooooooh. (I just gave a little shiver.)
When I tell you what happened, you may think, “That doesn’t sound so serious.” Trust me. It was devastating. A chef with palate paralysis.
“I can’t taste savory!”
A trapeze artist with a sudden fear of heights.
“Get me down!!!!
A painter abruptly stricken color blind.
“I can’t tell blue!”
Are you getting the concept? It’s big!
Okay, so here we go. It’s the 90’s. We’re at the dry cleaners, my daughter and I. We’ve returned from an extended family trip, and we have tons of stuff to take in. Painstakingly, we begin the task. My daughter loads my arms with clothes, I carry them into the place, drop them off, and return to the car for more. I make half a dozen trips, our mountain of clothes rising on the dry cleaner’s counter.
I’m wearing sneakers and a t-shirt, emblazoned with the logo of a team I root for, or a place I want people to know I’ve visited. I’m also wearing what we call out here, gym pants. They’re really like pajama bottoms. One great thing about Los Angeles. You can wear pajamas in the street.
The pants fabric is a dizzying pattern of blue, white, black and red squiggles. They were the kind of pants you’d see at Muscle Beach on the Venice Boardwalk in the 80’s, their ballooney appearance heightened by the tight elastic at the ankles.
I’m passing through the dry cleaner’s door, carrying in my final load. During the entire process, unbeknownst to me, a female customer has, apparently, been watching me, as I accumulated this, by now, enormous pile of dirty clothes. Passing me on her way out, the woman turns to me and says,
“That explains the pants.”
That’s what she said. In retrospect: it’s funny. It’s actually really funny.
All my clothes are dirty, and I’m relegated to wearing those pants – that’s the joke. I might have made a similar remark about a person in that situation, maybe not out loud, but I would certainly have enjoyed it in my head.
“That explains the pants.”
A bulls-eye observation, and a four-word punch line, delivered in a dry, slightly amused tone of voice. The woman had executed it perfectly. Under normal circumstances, I would have laughed my head off, and possibly, at a younger age, have proposed marriage on the spot.
At the time, however, my reaction was not “Ha ha.” Instead, I turned to the woman and said,
”What’s wrong with these pants? I love these pants!”
That’s right. I defended my pants. Why shouldn’t I? A stranger had impugned my fashion sense. In Los Angeles. Where you’re allowed to wear anything!
“These are my favorite pants!” I insisted.
The woman looked confused. Backed into a corner, she tried to defend her remark.
“Well, they are kind of…”
No! You don’t attack me pants. Not my favorites. There was an impulse to strike back. Should I attack her clothes? Her sunglasses? Should I follow her into the parking lot and take shots at her car?
“A Volvo. No wonder!”
Fortunately, I did none of that. My wardrobe-defending tirade was interrupted in mid spittle spray by my daughter, who said,
“Dad, it was a joke.”
My head began to spin. I replayed the incident in my head. The setup – an enormous pile of clothes on the counter – the remark – right on the money….
It was a joke. A really funny joke. And I, who claim humor is my business, had missed it.
I snapped out of my stupor. I looked around for the woman. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to explain.
“I’m sorry. I had a lapse. That was funny. I know. I write comedy!”
The woman was nowhere to be seen. I felt devastated. Not for attacking her for insulting my pants, but because she was leaving with an impression of me that was achingly incorrect:
“That man had no sense of humor whatsoever.”
I took “The Dry Cleaning Debacle” as a wake-up call. I realized “funny” doesn’t come with a lifetime guarantee. You take yourself too seriously, and your “funny light” can fade, and eventually disappear.
You’re not funny anymore. And if you’re in the business of being funny, that can be very serious. If being funny is the only thing you do, and you can’t do that anymore, then you can’t do anything. And that’s not good.
Two consequences evolved from that experience at the dry cleaner’s:
I resolved to be always vigilant of my “funny light.”
And I never wore those squiggly pants again.
I don’t know what it is that makes a person funny. Chemicals in your head, family conditioning, an inability to play sports so you find a way to get acceptance another way, a quirk in your brain that causes your mind to make funny connections...
I really don’t know.
I explain what I do by saying I have a funny way of looking at things. This is ironic, because, due to some prenatal impairment – I was born with cataracts – I actually do have a funny way of looking at things.
I don’t know if that has to do with anything. It may be a coincidence. I just know I have a certain way of looking at things, and it comes out funny.
I also know this.
You can lose that “funny.” And on the day I’m about to tell you about, I did.
Or at least I misplaced it for a while.
Losing your “funny” is a disturbing feeling, to say the least. If “funny” is how you make your living and it’s suddenly gone, it’s like a surgeon, standing over an anaesthetized patient, the nurse slaps a scalpel into his hand, and he says,
“What’s that?”
Targeted amnesia. It only affects your talent. Ooooooh. (I just gave a little shiver.)
When I tell you what happened, you may think, “That doesn’t sound so serious.” Trust me. It was devastating. A chef with palate paralysis.
“I can’t taste savory!”
A trapeze artist with a sudden fear of heights.
“Get me down!!!!
A painter abruptly stricken color blind.
“I can’t tell blue!”
Are you getting the concept? It’s big!
Okay, so here we go. It’s the 90’s. We’re at the dry cleaners, my daughter and I. We’ve returned from an extended family trip, and we have tons of stuff to take in. Painstakingly, we begin the task. My daughter loads my arms with clothes, I carry them into the place, drop them off, and return to the car for more. I make half a dozen trips, our mountain of clothes rising on the dry cleaner’s counter.
I’m wearing sneakers and a t-shirt, emblazoned with the logo of a team I root for, or a place I want people to know I’ve visited. I’m also wearing what we call out here, gym pants. They’re really like pajama bottoms. One great thing about Los Angeles. You can wear pajamas in the street.
The pants fabric is a dizzying pattern of blue, white, black and red squiggles. They were the kind of pants you’d see at Muscle Beach on the Venice Boardwalk in the 80’s, their ballooney appearance heightened by the tight elastic at the ankles.
I’m passing through the dry cleaner’s door, carrying in my final load. During the entire process, unbeknownst to me, a female customer has, apparently, been watching me, as I accumulated this, by now, enormous pile of dirty clothes. Passing me on her way out, the woman turns to me and says,
“That explains the pants.”
That’s what she said. In retrospect: it’s funny. It’s actually really funny.
All my clothes are dirty, and I’m relegated to wearing those pants – that’s the joke. I might have made a similar remark about a person in that situation, maybe not out loud, but I would certainly have enjoyed it in my head.
“That explains the pants.”
A bulls-eye observation, and a four-word punch line, delivered in a dry, slightly amused tone of voice. The woman had executed it perfectly. Under normal circumstances, I would have laughed my head off, and possibly, at a younger age, have proposed marriage on the spot.
At the time, however, my reaction was not “Ha ha.” Instead, I turned to the woman and said,
”What’s wrong with these pants? I love these pants!”
That’s right. I defended my pants. Why shouldn’t I? A stranger had impugned my fashion sense. In Los Angeles. Where you’re allowed to wear anything!
“These are my favorite pants!” I insisted.
The woman looked confused. Backed into a corner, she tried to defend her remark.
“Well, they are kind of…”
No! You don’t attack me pants. Not my favorites. There was an impulse to strike back. Should I attack her clothes? Her sunglasses? Should I follow her into the parking lot and take shots at her car?
“A Volvo. No wonder!”
Fortunately, I did none of that. My wardrobe-defending tirade was interrupted in mid spittle spray by my daughter, who said,
“Dad, it was a joke.”
My head began to spin. I replayed the incident in my head. The setup – an enormous pile of clothes on the counter – the remark – right on the money….
It was a joke. A really funny joke. And I, who claim humor is my business, had missed it.
I snapped out of my stupor. I looked around for the woman. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to explain.
“I’m sorry. I had a lapse. That was funny. I know. I write comedy!”
The woman was nowhere to be seen. I felt devastated. Not for attacking her for insulting my pants, but because she was leaving with an impression of me that was achingly incorrect:
“That man had no sense of humor whatsoever.”
I took “The Dry Cleaning Debacle” as a wake-up call. I realized “funny” doesn’t come with a lifetime guarantee. You take yourself too seriously, and your “funny light” can fade, and eventually disappear.
You’re not funny anymore. And if you’re in the business of being funny, that can be very serious. If being funny is the only thing you do, and you can’t do that anymore, then you can’t do anything. And that’s not good.
Two consequences evolved from that experience at the dry cleaner’s:
I resolved to be always vigilant of my “funny light.”
And I never wore those squiggly pants again.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
"Free Will and Determinism"
Don’t run away. You’ll love it. I didn’t write it yet, but I’ve got a good reputation.
I took a UCLA extension course on this subject recently. Extension classes are what you do when your brain cells are dying and you don’t have a job.
Okay.
“Free will or determinism?”
At the beginning, it seems like no contest. I chose to come to that philosophy class, didn’t I?
Free will. It’s over.
“Free will” is a slam dunk. It’s Hillary before Iowa. I could have said “It’s Patriots over the Giants before the Superbowl.” That would have been just as suitable an example. I chose “Hillary before Iowa.”
Free will.
Examples of free will are all over the place. I could have said, “Examples of free will are everywhere.” I chose to say “all over the place.”
Free will.
“Free will” was defined in our class as whatever we do, we had the ability to do otherwise. Or, “We had the ability to do it another way.” I chose “otherwise.”
Free will.
I’m going to stop giving “free will” examples now; they’re getting a little tiresome. I could easily provide further examples, but I won’t.
Free will.
Oops, sorry.
On that first day of class, it felt like determinism didn’t have a prayer. Literally. Religious people believe in free will. And they’re the people who pray.
Religious people support the idea of free will. Is there any reason we shouldn’t believe them? Have they ever been wrong about anything before?
Okay, there was that “sun revolves around the earth” thing. They got that wrong. But their hearts were in the right place. To people of faith, it was totally reasonable to believe that the sun revolved around the earth. The human species is special. Made in the image, and all that. Great Godfrey! Why wouldn’t the sun revolve around the earth?
Because it doesn’t.
Okay, so they got one thing wrong. Cut them some slack, will ya? Oh, wait. Religious people – not all of them, but enough of them to scare me – believe that the theory of “Natural Selection” is a fairy tale. No way the human species evolved from the lower forms. Human beings are special. Made in the image, and all that. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that humans evolved from amphibians, making a stop at chimpanzee.
Except that people who study that stuff have persuasive evidence that we did.
So here we are. The guys who insisted that the sun revolves around the earth, and who continue to insist that the human species didn’t evolve – we just showed up – now insist that we have free will.
Hm.
I’m not saying they’re mistaken. Just because they got a couple of other things wrong doesn’t mean they’re wrong about this. But it does put a dent in their credibility.
Last weekend, I told my daughter’s boyfriend the NBA Finals would start on Tuesday. They started on Thursday. I told him the home-court schedule was two games – two games – one game – one game – one game. It’s two games – three games – two games. My daughter’s boyfriend should really stop listening to me. I’m thinking about not listening to myself.
Okay, so there are questions about the track record of some major supporters of free will. But come on, eh? I mean, it feels like we have free will, doesn’t it? I could have said, “Doesn’t it feel like we have free will?” I chose to say it the other way.
Free will.
I know. I promised I wouldn’t do any more examples. I changed my mind.
Free will!
Free will makes us the distinct people we are. Every human is the sum total of their individual choices, not merely reflexively responding biological organisms. Each of us freely determines exactly who we are.
Don’t we?
Well, there is genetics. That’s personal, in that we each have our own unique genetic code. But our genes are not in our control. You can “free will” your ass off, but if your genes say, “Short”, there is no way you can will yourself “Tall.” If your mother’s “pattern baldness” determines your hair to fall out, you will not be able to will it back in.
Brain chemistry? I know almost nothing about it. But I seem to recall when they cut serial killers’ heads open, they find a lot of untypical stuff in there. But forget the extremes. You can detect individual differences simply from observation.
You look at babies, lying in their cribs. Some babies are placid; others are nervous, others are bouncing off the walls. What’s causing these differences? Not free will. Babies don’t have free will.
“I think I’ll spit up now. Wait, maybe I’ll take a dump in my diaper. No, I’m spitting up.”
It doesn’t work that way. However it does works, we can determine from these observed differences that there are powerful “non free will” forces at play. It’s hard to believe that those powerful forces leave town when you stop being a baby.
Then there’s Dr. M’s area – the unconscious. Before Freud, nobody knew it existed; now, we pretty sure it does. Can a person control their unconscious? Give me a break. I can barely control my conscious.
You can’t be responsible for your unconscious. It’s like me grabbing all the blankets when I’m asleep. How can that be my fault? I’m asleep!
All these discoveries: genetics, brain chemistry, the unconscious – they’re new. Once, we didn’t know they existed; now, we do. This new knowledge keeps coming, and who believes there isn’t more new knowledge on the way, replacing the earlier knowledge that turned out to be wrong? Doctors once used leaches. Now, it’s “Get those things out of here!”
So.
What if our belief in free will is merely a matter of incomplete knowledge? Imagine this possibility. We believe in free will now, but once we obtain the necessary knowledge, we abandon that belief, as we abandoned the belief in the healing power of leaches, and we replace it with a belief that is verifiably true.
Determinism.
Whoh! Whiplash!
Determinism. Really? Is that the answer? Or have I freely chosen to believe in determinism?
Let’s say determinism is the real deal. If our actions are totally determined, can we still punish people who engage in what we perceive to be unacceptable behavior?
Yes.
Why?
Because we hate them.
And they’re dangerous. If we put them away, they won’t be able to hurt us anymore. Justice? Maybe not. But it’s still a really good idea.
If that’s not satisfying, here’s a story demonstrating that determinism, rather than precluding punishment, makes punishment inevitable. I remember this from my five weeks at law school.
The defendant stands before the judge, pleading for mercy.
“Your Honor, I am a product of my upbringing. My upbringing compelled me to rob that bank.”
“I have listened to your argument carefully,” replies the judge, “and you’ll be surprised to hear that I agree with you. I too am a product of my upbringing. And my upbringing compels me to sentence you to twenty years.”
It doesn’t look good. Determinism’s running the table.
Free will people:
Help me out, here.
I took a UCLA extension course on this subject recently. Extension classes are what you do when your brain cells are dying and you don’t have a job.
Okay.
“Free will or determinism?”
At the beginning, it seems like no contest. I chose to come to that philosophy class, didn’t I?
Free will. It’s over.
“Free will” is a slam dunk. It’s Hillary before Iowa. I could have said “It’s Patriots over the Giants before the Superbowl.” That would have been just as suitable an example. I chose “Hillary before Iowa.”
Free will.
Examples of free will are all over the place. I could have said, “Examples of free will are everywhere.” I chose to say “all over the place.”
Free will.
“Free will” was defined in our class as whatever we do, we had the ability to do otherwise. Or, “We had the ability to do it another way.” I chose “otherwise.”
Free will.
I’m going to stop giving “free will” examples now; they’re getting a little tiresome. I could easily provide further examples, but I won’t.
Free will.
Oops, sorry.
On that first day of class, it felt like determinism didn’t have a prayer. Literally. Religious people believe in free will. And they’re the people who pray.
Religious people support the idea of free will. Is there any reason we shouldn’t believe them? Have they ever been wrong about anything before?
Okay, there was that “sun revolves around the earth” thing. They got that wrong. But their hearts were in the right place. To people of faith, it was totally reasonable to believe that the sun revolved around the earth. The human species is special. Made in the image, and all that. Great Godfrey! Why wouldn’t the sun revolve around the earth?
Because it doesn’t.
Okay, so they got one thing wrong. Cut them some slack, will ya? Oh, wait. Religious people – not all of them, but enough of them to scare me – believe that the theory of “Natural Selection” is a fairy tale. No way the human species evolved from the lower forms. Human beings are special. Made in the image, and all that. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that humans evolved from amphibians, making a stop at chimpanzee.
Except that people who study that stuff have persuasive evidence that we did.
So here we are. The guys who insisted that the sun revolves around the earth, and who continue to insist that the human species didn’t evolve – we just showed up – now insist that we have free will.
Hm.
I’m not saying they’re mistaken. Just because they got a couple of other things wrong doesn’t mean they’re wrong about this. But it does put a dent in their credibility.
Last weekend, I told my daughter’s boyfriend the NBA Finals would start on Tuesday. They started on Thursday. I told him the home-court schedule was two games – two games – one game – one game – one game. It’s two games – three games – two games. My daughter’s boyfriend should really stop listening to me. I’m thinking about not listening to myself.
Okay, so there are questions about the track record of some major supporters of free will. But come on, eh? I mean, it feels like we have free will, doesn’t it? I could have said, “Doesn’t it feel like we have free will?” I chose to say it the other way.
Free will.
I know. I promised I wouldn’t do any more examples. I changed my mind.
Free will!
Free will makes us the distinct people we are. Every human is the sum total of their individual choices, not merely reflexively responding biological organisms. Each of us freely determines exactly who we are.
Don’t we?
Well, there is genetics. That’s personal, in that we each have our own unique genetic code. But our genes are not in our control. You can “free will” your ass off, but if your genes say, “Short”, there is no way you can will yourself “Tall.” If your mother’s “pattern baldness” determines your hair to fall out, you will not be able to will it back in.
Brain chemistry? I know almost nothing about it. But I seem to recall when they cut serial killers’ heads open, they find a lot of untypical stuff in there. But forget the extremes. You can detect individual differences simply from observation.
You look at babies, lying in their cribs. Some babies are placid; others are nervous, others are bouncing off the walls. What’s causing these differences? Not free will. Babies don’t have free will.
“I think I’ll spit up now. Wait, maybe I’ll take a dump in my diaper. No, I’m spitting up.”
It doesn’t work that way. However it does works, we can determine from these observed differences that there are powerful “non free will” forces at play. It’s hard to believe that those powerful forces leave town when you stop being a baby.
Then there’s Dr. M’s area – the unconscious. Before Freud, nobody knew it existed; now, we pretty sure it does. Can a person control their unconscious? Give me a break. I can barely control my conscious.
You can’t be responsible for your unconscious. It’s like me grabbing all the blankets when I’m asleep. How can that be my fault? I’m asleep!
All these discoveries: genetics, brain chemistry, the unconscious – they’re new. Once, we didn’t know they existed; now, we do. This new knowledge keeps coming, and who believes there isn’t more new knowledge on the way, replacing the earlier knowledge that turned out to be wrong? Doctors once used leaches. Now, it’s “Get those things out of here!”
So.
What if our belief in free will is merely a matter of incomplete knowledge? Imagine this possibility. We believe in free will now, but once we obtain the necessary knowledge, we abandon that belief, as we abandoned the belief in the healing power of leaches, and we replace it with a belief that is verifiably true.
Determinism.
Whoh! Whiplash!
Determinism. Really? Is that the answer? Or have I freely chosen to believe in determinism?
Let’s say determinism is the real deal. If our actions are totally determined, can we still punish people who engage in what we perceive to be unacceptable behavior?
Yes.
Why?
Because we hate them.
And they’re dangerous. If we put them away, they won’t be able to hurt us anymore. Justice? Maybe not. But it’s still a really good idea.
If that’s not satisfying, here’s a story demonstrating that determinism, rather than precluding punishment, makes punishment inevitable. I remember this from my five weeks at law school.
The defendant stands before the judge, pleading for mercy.
“Your Honor, I am a product of my upbringing. My upbringing compelled me to rob that bank.”
“I have listened to your argument carefully,” replies the judge, “and you’ll be surprised to hear that I agree with you. I too am a product of my upbringing. And my upbringing compels me to sentence you to twenty years.”
It doesn’t look good. Determinism’s running the table.
Free will people:
Help me out, here.
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