Sanity Hearing

Seeds

Recently I have become overwhelmly addicted to sunflower seeds.  I sit at my desk all day and try to nonchalantly spit the empty husks into a styrofoam cup.  The whole process is much much harder than you probably think, as I have a high standard of decorum people expect from me so even if they do see my sunflower husks, they need to see them in a classy and intelligent light, which is of course challenging.

Eating sunflower seeds has several attractions for me:

1.  I am never full yet I am never not full.  It's as if I have achieved what those breatharian whackos are aiming for where I get all the nutrients I need just from breathing the air.

2.  I look a baseball manager.  Or at least I think I do.  Chances are I do not, but it makes me feel less nerdy and a lot cooler and tough about looking at government contracts all day in a cube, so whatever works right?

3. Some people think I am "dipping". I know, two seconds ago I said I was aiming to NOT look like I am dipping, but so what- even if I DO, I still think that is pretty cool and it has the side effect of intimidating the other interns in my office...or grossing them out.  Either way...

The only real problem I have run into is the decision between Planters brand and David Brand.

The advantage of the planters is that the seeds come in a resealable bag that does not have Derk Jeter on it.  The downside is that occasionally there are tiny wooden things in the bag that are seemingly not seeds, which I am not totally crazy about. Also Planters only comes in original flavor, which can get boring when that flavor is in your mouth approximately 8 hours a day minus when you're drinking coffee.  To recap:  Positives: resealable bag, Jeter-free.  Downsides: foreign objects, limited flavors.

David Brand is probably what people recognize and what I started off with eating recently.  I stopped eating them and tried the planters for the obvious reason that I was tried of having Derek Jeter's evil gaze stare at all day on my desk.  David seems less salty and the flavor is generally better than any other brands I've tried, plus they come in alternative flavors like BBQ and Jalepeno, which are obvious pluses.  Also I have yet to find any foriegn objects with the frequency I've found them in the planters,. though I am sure I have consumed pounds of dried and roasted microscopic insect parts.  My biggest gripe with the David seeds is that the bag is made from a flimsy material that rips too easily and is not resealable.  To recap: Positives: Generally Foriegn object free, flavors.  Downsides:  Questionable bag material, Jeter.

Is Specialization Good for the Soul?

This idea has been sploshing around in my head for a while now and as a knee-jerk reaction to Matt's "Bug Theory" post I've decided I am going to type up some semblance of an idea.

Modern economic theory teaches us that specialization is good.  If there are two nations that each make guns and butter and nation one is better at making both guns AND butter than nation two, nation one should nonetheless specialize in making the product in which they have the comparative advantage and buy the other product from nation two, which presumably will specialize in the other product.  Sorry if I have done an abysmal job of trying to explain this, but if you are confused then email Hyde, I am sure he can explain it better than I can.

Regardless, the point is that modern economic theory teaches us that nations, states, corportations, etc. are better off specializing.  Through out our society today we find people being herded into specializing in a specific career at a very young point.  Think about your high school guidance counselor sitting you down when you were 17 years old and asking you where you would like to go to college and what for, "What do you want to do?"  Frankly, my response was always something vague:  I wanted to be a lawyer, a stock broker, etc.  I figured reading and business both interested me, but my main interest was getting smarter, getting a good job, and meeting cute girls- and really, what does one expect to dominate the mind of a 17 year old.

The result in my own case was to attend a liberal arts college, which following my time at Loomis, a place that pretty much screams to the world that it follows a liberal (and I stress the liberal) arts doctrine, means that pretty much my entire education up to this point has been liberal arts.  Certainly there were people at each of these two institutions that were specializers, people interested in getting into their parents diamond business and going to business administration classes or people interested in majoring in french or biology.  However, I think a lot of people were more like myself.  I often look back and think, "What the hell do I actually know about?"  The answer is a little bit about a lot of different stuff.  I suppose this disqualifies me from work as a surgeon, a mathematician, or in some instances even a lawyer.  In my experience, the modern work place basically stresses a worker's ability to perform a set of highly specialized tasks and abilities and intelligence outside these tasks is essentially of little or no value to the employer.

Thus, I contend that the modern workplace has taken an unfortunate turn into the realm of specialization.  While in the past I believe this "factory" style ethic had little application to the professional world, I think a quick glance at the rise of massive corporate style law firms and hospitals ought to signal that this no longer is quite so much the case.

The the question I have is:  perhaps this ethos is good for production, for the bottom line, GDP, and overall profits-- but is it good for the soul?  Matt's recent post about the "Bug Theory," while a perfectly good theory, presumes that the best overall purpose of humanity is production, to achieve "great things" etc.  Personally, I disagree.  This may sound ridiculous but, look at going to the moon.  It was pretty cool right?  But what exactly did that do for my overall enjoyment of life?  Not a whole lot, except seeing Tom Hanks in a pretty good movie about a poorly produced rocket.  Which is not to demean the achievements of the National Air and Space Administration, but I do think it is important to make the point-- what is this all about?  Is the end goal to have the most efficient law firm that bills the most hours at the cost of making the attorneys involved people with little or no outside life? 

Studies by the ABA have shown that the switch to hourly billing in the last twenty or so years has had highly negative effects on the lives of attorneys.  Now days a new associate at a large fim is often expected to bill around 2300 hours a year.  The ABA's recommendation is about 1900 of these hours are dedicated strictly to hours billable to the client, the rest being dedicated to pro bono and professional education, etc.  Most people do the math and realize that these 1900 hours comes out to about 40 hours a week and end up saying, "Oh well, that's not too much."  No it isn't except that the assumption is that those are all completely productive hours- that means no time to deal with administration, education, new business development, etc.  What's ironic is that this fairly oppressive suggestion by the ABA was made in response to a study that showed that many firms were (are) requiring associates to bill far in excess of this amount and that the results were highly detrimental results in the non-professional lives of attorneys: increased complaints of depresson and mental illness including alcohol and substance abuse, increased divorce rates, etc.  I would extrapalate that this probably also results in plenty of other less quantifiable negative effects. 

I submit to you that the purpose of life is to do great things if possible, but I think more likely than not those great things come at us incidentally.  Billing 2500 hours is not really that great, if you ask me, but hour culture seems to be shifting towards saying that it is.  But I ask-- at what cost?  The obvious costs to me seem to be the demise of the family, the demise of culture other than mass media culture, and the loss of personal identity. 

Follow up on last post

Well, maybe I am feeling the effects of some sort of paranoia, but I feel the need to make a serious follow up on the last post.

I hope people understand that truthfully I have nothing wrong with smart or intelligent people, or even with very good students.  There are many of my classamates who I can say with absolute confidence are naturally brilliant people who I feel lucky just to be in class with every day.  These people are smart, but they are also still cool, in their own way.  When I have made posts about "the Striver," or "How to Annoy Smart People," this is mostly just me poking fun at the people who take school too seriously (probably take life too seriously) and can honestly make things pretty miserable for the people who are unlucky enough to believe they should follow suit.

So-- maybe I am just being paranoid that people from school other than a select few I know about read this page, but in the event that you are reading it and I don't know about it-- well first of all you are reading this page so obviously you are cool.  Also, I do not want people to believe I am against being smart.  I am at best only average, but I try each day to get a little smarter, with varying success, and I definitely admire a lot of smart people around me. 

Anyways-- hope no one takes any of my rambling personally, it's just supposed to be funny.

Heroes

It seems you can tell a great deal about a person by who their heros are at any given point in time.  I would divide the heroes into three seperate camps: 1, are the objective heros.  Although I realize in reality this is not such an "objective" determiniation, but for the sake of keeping this succinct, let's just call it that.  The objective heros are people like John McCain, a war hero who survived as a POW in Vietnam (or was it Korea?) and refused to be released before his fellow prisoners when his captors offered to do so because they found out he was from a prestigious military family.  McCain then returned home, etc., and became a respected U.S. Senator.  Maybe another example in this camp would be George Washington, Mother Teresa, etc.   This group tends to espouse ideals that you find as just generally admirable and upstanding behavior.  People who deserve the respect and love of everyone.  I suppose what these people tell you is what someone believes society as a whole should have to offer as its very best.

The scond group what I will call the personality heroes.  These are people who have such a close effect on your life that it's difficult to tell why they are even heros.   I am calling them personality heros because for one thing you tend to know them personally as opposed to respecting them from afar and their main influence on you is how they shape your life in terms of first hand contact.  For me these people tend to be my parents, professors, various people I have viewed as "adults" throughout my development and whose beliefs and behaviors I consciously or unconsciously modeled my own behavior after.  I cannot say that in reality I wanted to be exactly like them, nor can I tell you now why I thought it would be such a great idea to hold them in such high regard- it just happened that way.  You don't pick your parents and frequently your favorite professor is someone who stumbles into your life- you do not pick him out of a catalogue.  I do think though that this tells you a great deal about a person's personality and what they respect, hold in high esteem, and feel comfortable with.  People may dislike some of their parents behavior, may even claim to have little in common with their parents, but their choice of what behavior to model their own after (or to completely abhor and avoid, as the case may be) says a lot about them.  The same goes for the subsequent strong relationships with professors, bosses, etc.  If you admire friendliness and goo d humor combined with a strong work ethic, chances are your favorite law school professor will have these qualities.

The final group are the heros that are the personal heros (not personality heros).  I think this group is most open to fluctuation.  At any given point this group tends to shift given what a person would most like to do with their own life.  Unlike the first group, this group has little to do with what a person believes is the greatest value for society (unless that is their particular bag of doritos), bur rather has more to do with what they want to achieve with their own life.  I reflect on this in the sense that there were times in my life where I might have cited Henry Kravis or some other self made millionaire, Alan Greenspan, or even Bill Gates.  Earlier times where I was intensely interested in mainstream politics where I may have picked some Senator or judge or former president that I admired.  Recently I would probably pick the authors of books I most recently read and liked like William Styron or Hunter S. Thompson  or perhaps comedians like Bill Murray or Steve Martin who I particularly admire.  I might even say John Grisham-- the lawyer turned best selling novelist.  This is not a tremendous departure for me I suppose since in grade school I had a devotion to Dave Barry books that was near fanatical. 

I am not sure what it all means, but I do think it is a window it the person we are and the person we would like to become.

Music Insights

Sometimes I get the impression  that much of the progress made in the sixties has largely been lost.  Granted, America is more tolerant of racial minorities and people with "alternative lifestyles," but I have this knawing sense that much of the changes made has slid back into an Eisenhower-age acceptance of a universal capitalist goal for the country.

I think part of the trend hinges on the fact that in American society it is not a question of whether you sell out, but when sell out.  And of course, I actually find this quite reasonable.  Cultural revolutionaries who have rejected the opportunity to eventually go commercial and make money have died pennyless and tragic deaths, often overdosing on nasty varieties of illegal narcotics, which most of us in fact do not find that attractive.  If you are Bob Dylan, eventually you need to appear in moisturizing soap commercials, because afterall you are getting on in years and you need to put some cash away to pay for depends and nicorette.

The problem as I see it though, is that there are very few of these cultural innovaters any more-- in the first place.  Instead, the music industry pre-fabricates stars who have all the trappings of rebellion and innovation, but in fact offer no societal message except that you should purchase their rebel-esque clothing at the Nordstrom nearest you. 

In some ways this is why I believe the recording industry is so opposed to the file sharing networks and free music exchanges going on over the internet.  I think the true fear is not a loss of record sales, as in fact there has not been a drop in record sales since the inception of the MP3 format and the proliferation of file sharing networks rather a rise, but instead a faced with a nearly unlimited choice of artists of which to be fans music listeners will no longer be interested in the highly contrived music being pumped out of the traditional music labels.  The history of the culture of "cool" or "hip" in America is the story of the little guy, the underground artists, the renegade music labels putting out something new and becoming immensely popular because it is different.  All of these stories end with the eventual absorption of these new trends like, jazz, hip hop, rock and roll, into the main stream.  Eventually everyone needs to sell out or go hungry.  The problem for the existing music industry though is that the internet offers an almost infinitessimal number of possible new artists-- too many for them to buy out.

Gin and Tonic and an Ounce of Chronic

My quote of the day comes from Matt.   

J.P.: "Why the hell would anyone want to go to that 'law school prom'  anyways...I mean seriously- does this require elaboration?"

Matt: [this is the quote of the day part] "Please.  I mean if they were promising strippers were going to be there then...maybe I would consider going."

On Selfishness

The thing about selfishness that strikes me first is how convieniant it is.

And that is the thing you have to ask yourself when someone is asserting a position which is inherently selfish- are they only supporting this because it is inherently more convieniant for them?

For example, "Sure I would like to marry someone I am in love with, but think how much greater it would be if he happens to be obscenely rich as well- that would be wonderful!"  Really? Or would it just be more convieniant than not being so materialistic?

 

"A flat tax is better for society than the progressive rate structure that penalizes people who work hard."  Really?  Or are you just middle class already and hopefully on the road to being a bourgious lawyer making above the top tax bracket and it is more convieniant for you to support a system that gives you more money than thinking about what is really good for society?

"I want to tell the Law Review kids to go F#$% themselves."  Really?  Or are you pissed that they are better at school than you are  and you have spent your whole life telling yourself what a great student you are- in fact have defined yourself that way- and all the sudden that may not seem so true, so it is more convieniant to hurl overused epithets at a group of mildly pathetic law-nerds?

The truth is we can all be selfish, but for the sake of convieniance let's just acknowledge it's generally not a good thing.