What can I add to a post by Sue Ranscht about victims of the Uvalde mass shooting? Nothing beyond another place where Sue’s concise eloquence might be seen and pondered. Maybe even acted upon. Remember in November.
Category: ethics
Satori from a Consulting Gig
The who and how of sudden enlightenment might transcend ordinary logic. To illustrate my short story about a weird instance of satori, I edited a NASA image formed by combining data from five telescopes. While the image is for real, the story is neither the literal truth nor a bogus claim to tell it.
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Management consultant Frank Dow showed no surprise at the new client’s evident desire for a genuine consultation rather than a canned endorsement of plans already made. Though unusual, the client’s sincerity was still less surprising than the client’s identity. The client was God. Dow listened intently as God began to describe His problem:
“Forget any twaddle you may have heard about omnipotence and omniscience. The universe is too immense and diverse to be micromanaged, even by Me. Roughly speaking, I built a big machine and let it run. But it’s not boringly deterministic. The universe is all about probabilities.”
As God continued, the proud-parent joy in his voice was clear:
“The probability that a randomly chosen planet will be suitable for life to appear at all is tiny. The probability that creatures with any ability to understand and appreciate the universe will evolve is tinier still, but not exactly zero. On the other hand, there are a lot of planets in the universe. There’s no need to crunch the numbers right now. The bottom line is that a few planets luck out. On your little blue planet, life thrived and your species evolved advanced abilities to observe and learn, to imagine and reason, to build bridges and write poems.”
With joy replaced by sadness and frustration now, God explained what He hoped Dow could provide:
“While I mostly let things run, I am not absolutely hands-off when a planet has intelligent life that blunders into being cruel or stupid. I nudge them in good directions by inspiring a few of them. In your planet’s case, I have had a little success and a lot of failure. I keep it simple and age appropriate, but they oversimplify half of what I tell them and obfuscate the rest. The Golden Rule gets through as something to proclaim but not as something to practice. Absurdly, much of what they think has been revealed to them is just their own bigotry and bullshit. The way they distort My message is so alien to the corporate culture here that nobody has a clue about how to handle it. As someone who is closer to the problem without being part of it, you may be able to help us.”
Given a temporary office with read access to the case histories (and full access to a plentiful supply of coffee and nutritious snacks), Dow went to work. A recurrent pattern emerged:
Inspirations that did not fizzle attracted disciples, often with authoritarian personalities. Authoritarian disciples misinterpreted God’s nudges and stridently claimed they could speak for God on all kinds of topics, now and forever. Many of those who were strident were also willing to coerce people they could not convince. Many of those who were willing to coerce were also willing to kill people they could not coerce.
Poring over the case histories was depressing, but Dow kept at it (with the able assistance of good coffee and good snacks). Eventually, he was ready to offer God a suggestion:
“I believe there is a personnel issue here. You have been inspiring people who mean well but score high on credulity and low on humor. Maybe it would help to go outside the box. For example, You could inspire a nerdy atheist who digs sacred music and pushes the envelope of haiku poetry.”
God was skeptical: “Does anybody like that exist?”
Frank Dow smiled the enigmatic Mona Lisa smile that sometimes appeared when he was moonlighting as a Zen master. He leaned forward and spoke softly: “Does anybody like You exist?”
At that moment, God attained enlightenment.
Sources
How to illustrate the concept of satori? For this post, I cropped a NASA image of the Crab Nebula and told the Retouching tab in my photo editor that each star was a blemish to be removed. If there is intelligent life on any planets orbiting those stars, I hope that nobody will be mad at me for dissing their sun. Oh well, it’s a big universe. I will be long gone before they have a chance to find out.
In its present form, this post’s story first appeared in Volume 1 of The Rabbit Hole, an annual anthology of weird stories. None of the stories there are illustrated, and I had no good ideas for an illustration anyway. How I came to write a story about God hiring a consultant whose recommendations are outside the box is yet another story, somewhat weird but entirely true.
Be Precise, But Keep It Real
I am big on precise language. Why am I so damn mellow about whether a poem is a haiku? The answer hints at bigger things (like reconciling polished theory with rough-hewn reality), but there will also be a few jokes.
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Yes, there are short poems that are not haiku. Limericks are not haiku. Googling «one word poem» yielded more hits than I expected (and infinitely more than I would like). U can read about one that made national news here. One word poems are not haiku. (As candidates for a one word poem about one word poetry, words like [prank] and [scam] come to mind.) On the other hand, trying to say exactly what is a haiku is a lot harder than it seems to many people. It is also a lot less important, and we should be thankful for small blessings.
A list of several common characteristics of haiku is a good starting point as a tentative definition. Such a list can be good for introducing people to haiku. Whether it should be carved in stone is another question.
Here is a plausible list of things one might say about a short poem in English, such that the poem “should” only be called a haiku if they are all true.
- It does not rhyme.
- It has 3 lines, with a total of 17 syllables distributed 5-7-5.
- It includes some seasonal reference.
- It includes a poignant relationship between nature and humanity.
I got this particular list from a thoughtful comment by Sue Ranscht on a post with a 3-5-3 haiku. Amicably and implicitly, the comment posed the question that starts this post. It deserves an amicable (but explicit) reply.
§1: How Do I List Thee?
Let me count the ways. Hmmm. Do I have enough fingers?
There is a downside to defining the word [haiku] in a way that excludes much of what the best haiku poets actually write and much of what the Haiku Society of America considers to be a haiku. What are we to call that stuff?
Jane Reichhold (1937-2016) was among the many eminent haiku poets who do not adhere to our 4-item list. She was also an advocate (so am I) of haiku with a characteristic that is not in that list: juxtaposing 2 contrasting images (rensô in Japanese). Rather than import yet another Japanese word into English, she wrote about “fragment and phrase” as parts of a haiku, in an insightful essay that was nicely formatted in a CDHK episode. The juxtaposition may seem incongruous at first, and much of the fun comes from realizing how it does make sense. Sometimes one part clarifies the other. Sometimes the fragment (the shorter part) is the punch line of a joke set up by the phrase, as in the essay’s clever classic
Haiku © Jane Reichold superimposed on
Photo © Vladlena Azima | ShutterStock
Another criterion not in our 4-item list is interchangeability of lines 1 and 3. While Jane did not advocate interchangeability (neither do I), it matters to some people. Should we have a 6-item list? There is no need to consider here the whole multitude of criteria that are sometimes important to some people. There is no need to try wriggling out of the contradictions between some of these criteria. This section’s takeaway is simply that there is no single authoritative list. Do U find that conclusion stressful? Maybe a musical interlude will help.
§2: Musical Interlude
Back in 1800, Viennese concert-goers knew what a symphony was, with or w/o knowing much music theory. A symphony was an orchestral composition with 4 movements. Movement #1 might have a short slow introduction; otherwise, movements #1 and #4 were both at a brisk pace. Movement #2 was slower; movement #3 was a minuet at an intermediate pace. Performing the whole thing took a while, but well under an hour. And so on. That was before Beethoven began shredding the dictionary.
Did anybody abuse the new freedom by writing schlock that was long and loud? Of course. But some composers crafted some beautiful and enduring symphonies with great care and skill. Works like Dvořák’s From the New World are classics, tho in various ways they are not classical.
Saying that something is “a symphony” no longer says much about its length or layout. With no claim that they are all great symphonies, here are a few examples of the diversity.
- We have symphonies with less than 4 movements (Hovhaness; Schubert). More movements were apparently intended for Schubert’s “unfinished” symphony, but it is deservedly popular as is.
- We have a short strings-only symphony that does have 4 movements, but the 2 (not 1!) based on dance forms are not minuets (Britten).
- We have humongous symphonies with vocal parts (Beethoven; Mahler).
And so on.
Maybe it would be nice if the word [symphony] had a more specific meaning, but we get by. When Prokofiev revisited the old layout from before 1800, he did not claim to be writing the first “real” symphony in decades. He just wrote his Classical Symphony. The title’s meaning is clear enough.
§3: Back to Haiku
I wish those who advocate one of the narrower concepts of haiku would imitate Prokofiev. Speak of “classical” haiku or (better still) “traditional” haiku. Say which of the various traditions U have in mind. Want to make a discussion of a single tradition flow more smoothly by temporarily restricting the word [haiku] to that tradition? That might work, but it is hard to avoid any hint of permanently excluding other traditions in other discussions. Want to claim that working within your favored tradition tends to help people write good haiku? OK. I may well agree, unless U go on to claim that all haiku (or all good ones) are necessarily in that one tradition. Ain’t so.
Most of my own haiku (and many that I admire by others) do comply with at least 2 items in our 4-item list. Full compliance is common but far from universal. Want to be careful and focused when writing haiku? Pay serious attention to a list like this. But don’t let the tail wag the dog.
§4: Leery of Labels
The 6-item list briefly contemplated at the end of §1 is much like the 7-item list of rules that was actually used in a challenging CDHK episode. The main difference between the lists is in whether rhymes or words referencing the poet (like [I] or [dunno]) are forbidden. Neither is common in haiku; both do occur.
I responded to the challenge with a cheekily titled but fully compliant haiku (This Haiku Is Kosher), followed by one that breaks a few of the rules (Not Quite Kosher). Which rules? In the unlikely event that anybody cared, I could say. As it happens, my Not Quite Kosher is a wry lament (about crediting an image illustrating This Haiku Is Kosher). The title’s double meaning would be lost if it somehow specified which rules in the 7-item list were being broken.
Not Quite Kosher
Zen frog bronze sculpture
(credit lost, like casting wax).
Dunno who to thank.
Suppose we want to discuss partial compliance with a list of rules in some detail. Would it be helpful to have a noun as a 1-word label to pin on my partially compliant haiku, so as to indicate exactly which rules it obeys? Not really. With 4 rules we would need 16 nouns. That would be burdensome. With 6 (or more) rules, we would need an absurd 64 (or more) nouns. Better to just say what happens with each rule, if there is any need to say it.
Maybe a single noun for obeying all the rules would still be helpful? No, it is better to just plop a convenient adjective (like [classical] or [compliant] or [kosher] or [traditional]) in front of good old [haiku]. Remembering which rules are relevant at the moment is enough of a cognitive load.
A cluttered vocabulary is not the only downside of a profusion of special nouns, one for full compliance with each of several lists of rules. People tend to confuse pinning a fancy label on something with understanding it. They also tend to assume that labels are mutually exclusive. When the recipients of labels are other people, the results can be nasty.
§5: Takeaway
Tho willing to break the 5-7-5 rule, I obey it more than might be expected of somebody who knows about its origin in a translation error. I am especially respectful of 5-7-5 when I write an aphoristic haiku (as a zingy summary of some nerdy philosophizing) rather than a moment-in-nature haiku. With a linebreak after the comma, this post’s title could be a 2-line aphoristic haiku. (Yes, there are 2-line haiku.) Maybe a 5-7-5 aphoristic haiku will reinforce the point.
Precision < Accuracy
Speaking precisely
is great, if we speak about
what is really there.
Green Grass and Golden Rules
Like overeating, oversimplifying is something we should always try to avoid. Oops, that’s an oversimplification. Sometimes it is harmless (or even helpful, for certain purposes or as a temporary expedient) to oversimplify; sometimes it is hardly better than lying.
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Is grass green? Not if it’s Japanese blood grass in autumn. Does a bear shit in the woods? Not if it’s a polar bear. Is the sky blue? Not at 1:00 AM. Something important is hiding in plain sight here. Everybody and their uncle have always known counterexamples to the claim that the sky is blue, and some of them have been celebrated with striking photos. On the other hand, when cartoonist Garry Trudeau wanted to poke fun at reflexive Republican opposition to anything proposed by President Obama, he used this same claim in the Doonesbury strip that appeared 2015-05-24 in my local paper. Clinging to his tattered hope for bipartisanship, Obama responds to an aide’s disillusionment by announcing something he thinks will be utterly uncontroversial: that the sky is blue. The last panel shows a subsequent press conference held by the Senate’s Republican majority leader.
Reporter:
Leader McConnell, is the sky blue?
McConnell:
I am not a meteorologist.
Whether or not U agree with Trudeau’s take on the attitudes of those who pass for Republicans nowadays (and whether or not U found the strip funny), I trust that U did recognize the question about the sky’s color as a more polite version of the question about ursine defecation. Even tho U know about sunsets. Even tho U know that everybody else knows about them too. What is going on here?
1. Everything Is Oversimplified
Well, not everything. The black and white cattle living on the farm near my house are not oversimplified. They just are what they are. Much of what I might say about them is oversimplified. Indeed, it is hard to find anything nontrivial to say about them that is just plain true (like 2+3 = 5), w/o any qualifications or exceptions. From a distance, they are black and white cattle, lounging on green grass under a partly blue sky. Look more closely, and a few of them have brown instead of black. Does it matter? Not to me. Maybe it would matter to somebody who breeds Belted Galway cattle. I just admire the bu-cow-lic scene and stay upwind. Does a cow shit in the pasture?
Overeating is something people often do. They should always try not to, and many of us can succeed most of the time. Oversimplifying is more complicated. Sometimes it is harmless (or even helpful, for certain purposes or as a temporary expedient); sometimes it is hardly better than lying. Trying not to oversimplify is generally good, but the cure can be worse than the disease. It may be better to oversimplify, be honest about it, and remain open to working on a more accurate formulation as the the need arises. A more accurate formulation may well be good enough for a long time, but not forever. Scientific theories and engineering calculations are like that. Guess what? So are ethical principles.
2. Why Is “Golden Rules” Plural in the Title?
What we call “the” Golden Rule has been formulated in various ways by various cultures. A nice discussion appears on pages 83-86 in the book Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar by Cathcart and Klein. (The book is a great read, even if U aced Philosophy 101 and have already heard many of the jokes.) They use an old joke to illustrate how seriously oversimplified the rule is:
A sadist is a masochist who follows the Golden Rule.
It gets worse. Even when how people like to be treated is pretty much the same thruout a group, the Golden Rule stumbles. I was both amused and disturbed when cartoonist Scott Adams showed how badly it stumbles in a Dilbert strip I should have saved. The boss proclaims that company policy will henceforth be to follow the Golden Rule. Dilbert objects; the boss asks why. The resulting exchange goes something like this:
Dilbert:
Would U like me to give U $100?
Boss:
Um, yes.
Dilbert:
OK, follow the Golden Rule and give me $100.
The boss is reduced to sputtering indignation. Dilbert is clearly taking the rule too literally and ignoring an implicit consensus about exceptions. But what are they? I could not say where Dilbert errs.
Most of the formulations discussed by Cathcart and Klein are somewhat clunkier than our culture’s usual
Do unto others as U would have others do unto U.
They amount to saying
Do not do unto others as U would not have others do unto U.
Maybe people thought of the Dilbert objection and tried to get avoid it by prohibiting X rather than mandating Y. This does help, but there is still a problem.
Dilbert:
Would U be disappointed if I refused your request to give U $100?
Boss:
Um, yes.
Dilbert:
Please give me $100.
Boss:
No.
Dilbert:
I see. U are just as hypocritical about the Confucian version of the Golden Rule as U are about our usual version.
If U fall off a boat and I hear U shout a request to be thrown a life preserver, I will try to do just that. Just don’t walk up to me and request to be given $100. What is the difference? People can start with our usual formulation of the Golden Rule, admit that it is grossly oversimplified, consider what seems reasonable in thought experiments like this, try for a more explicit consensus about exceptions, and remain open to considering more adjustments as more situations arise, either in practice or in thought experiments. Can we do better?
Immanuel Kant tried valiantly to do better with his Supreme Categorical Imperative, which is a fun read if U like reading tax laws or patents. Cathcart and Klein have the details.
As a former wannabe mathematician, I would very much like to see a nice crisp formulation of the Golden Rule (or of any other important general principle) that just nails it, w/o exceptions or vagueness. Nice work if U can get it. If I ever get stuck with trying to help socialize a child, I will give the kid our usual version of the Golden Rule, say that it is a great starting point for thinking about how to behave, admit that real life is messier, and offer to talk about it more as the need arises. I will not mention Kant.
Mellow Curmudgeon 