I recently watched a video of the hot dog eating competition at Nathan’s on Coney Island, New York. (2) Disgusting would be an understatement. Now I am not conservative when it comes to extreme events. I am as titillated as the next person when I watch someone jump out of an airplane without a parachute fall into an enormous net, and survive. (3) But, the food thing, I don’t get.
As parents, we plead with our children to develop their table manners. Your social class, and therefore your business or matrimonial acceptability, is still determined by how you hold your knife and fork. What is this sort of nonsense saying to our young people? Upwards of 30% of Americans are obese. (4) Is gluttony cool? This acceptance of the base and obscene is not the correct way. Why not hold ourselves to a higher standard of taste and quality? We do not have to be pompous and condescending, but surely there is a social level, a litmus test of decency, that must exist. If we do not want to be wage slaves, we must affect some style, some poise. We must develop our personal brand.
Some suggest that the Internet is pulling us to the lowest common denominator. “The assimilation of taboo images to the everyday language of doing business produces a strange effect. It domesticates the taboo while at the same time making the everyday transactional world more porous, and more open to the forbidden. The wolf of unbridled appetite slips into everyday convention in the sheep’s clothing of commercial language. … Every private thought is performed for public consumption, and every leisure moment (from toilet training to lovemaking) is a highly focused search for a specific gratification, guided by experts serving you in their field. No unexpected events or unanticipated human contact need apply.” (5)
At a recent small talk session, a young woman asked, “What is true wisdom?” It must be associated with the ability to think lucidly about what is good for you, your society, and mankind. Ask anyone, “Is the world a violent place?” and they will answer in the affirmative. This is all without any personal experience — pure falsehood. The world is not comprised of violence, anger, and fear. It is comprised of good, kind, and loving people and experiences. Yes, bad things do happen, but not usually, not to most people. Therefore, when our behavior is elegant and sophisticated, we advance the good and minimize the moral violence in the world.
Rabbi Harold Kushner (b. 1935), the author of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, leaves us with a thought: If you have been brave enough to love, and sometimes you’ve won and sometimes you’ve lost; if you have cared enough to try, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t; if you have been bold enough to dream and found yourself with some dreams that came true and a lot of broken pieces of dreams that didn’t, that fell to earth and shattered, then you can look back from the mountaintop you now find yourself standing on, like Moses contemplating the tablets that would guide human behavior for a millennia, resting in the Ark alongside the broken fragments of an earlier dream. And you, like Moses, must realize how full your life is and how richly you are blessed. (Parts of this essay were first published in 2017)
A closing thought: There is a concrete planter next to our building. It is filled with aquatic plants — lily pads and the like. Recently, I noticed two young children, a boy of around three and a girl of close to two, staring intently at a dragonfly nestled on one of the fronds. It was a scene from a Claude Monet (1840-1926) painting. Now, as we all know, time is irreplaceable. This magical moment will never happen again. Did their father catch it? No, he was too busy on his cell phone.
To sum up: This week we spoke about the danger of the Internet and the acceptance of the most banal, the most basic. This is not human nature, hopefully. We, as people, want the best for ourselves, our loved ones, and our society. Through education, we will develop the necessary thinking skills to confront an ever-changing world.
To be noted: I pride myself on remembering names. Recently I had the humbling experience of confusing not one name, but two. I somehow transposed the name of one person onto the figure of another. The Taiwanese, of course, are always extremely polite. It was not until the end of the evening that a kind soul was good enough to tell me that I had been misaddressing these two people the whole time. To “rub salt in the wound,” this was after I had been complimented on my excellent memory, by the same people.
Just for fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWx_HlL3k24&ab_channel=TotalBaroque
For reflection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKENclPUUBc&ab_channel=Bite-sizedPhilosophy
This week, please reflect on your control over your Internet usage.
Every day look for something magical and beautiful.
Don’t be a wage slave – critical thinking is great!
Quote: Goodness and kindness await all those who seek. The universe is just: perhaps not always fair, but just.
Footnotes:
1) http://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/what-are-seven-deadly-sins
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAXXy75msQM
3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qF_fzEI4wU
4)https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-
Obesity
5) Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, by Lee Siegel