February 10, 2008

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Aggregaphobia

February 10, 2008 in Ideas | 9 comments

Who likes being categorized, unless the category flatters them in a way that agrees with their soul’s sense of who and what they are?

Woody Allen famously said* (in the great Annie Hall), “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member”. I see that statement (do they get any more ironic than that?) as a twisted corollary to Category Error Discomfort (let’s call it CED), which is what we sometimes feel under labels others give us, even when the label isn’t wrong.

My earliest CED came in First Grade, when I was put in the slow reading group, because I couldn’t stand reading out loud. After that I lived with the syndrome — thanks to no achievments at all (or worse, the opposite) in academics, sports and dating — until I was a senior in high school. That was when I put on my suit and tie, walked down the street to the dorm of the prettiest girl in the neighboring college, and successfully asked her out. (It didn’t go anywhere, but it didn’t matter. I was now qualified — among other things — as a breeder, which I began to prove only four years later.)

As Dr. Weinberger writes, Everything Is Miscellaneous. I don’t know if he treats the exceptionality in every human’s nature as something equally so (I don’t have his book around here to check against, though I should), but I believe Everybody is Miscellaneous as well. (A phrase that so far comes up with zero on Google… surprising.) Except for that, we wouldn’t have CED.

Anyway, as “social media” (a too-inclusive kinda non-miscellaneous label) , and a zillion groups aggregate (clot?) all over the place, we are faced not just with too many “friends”, but too many choices of virtual clubhouses and too many labels laid by others on who and what we are, might be, and ought to belong to. Kinda brings out the CED in all of us.

So that’s what I was feeling last night, still with a mild fever and lacking sleep, when I blogged a peevish reaction to being labeled and grouped among “” at Guy Kawasaki‘s new site.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, except toward exceptionality: that which in each of us is unlike anyone else. And that isn’t just ego. It goes deeper than that, to who and what we are — to our soul.

What we call integrity is more than just consistency, or what geologists call competence when they talk about sturdy rock. It’s an anchor in our own souls.

I don’t know how to make that relevant in the social storm currently raging over Web X.x. Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps it’s in territory so personal that only Whitman can make sense of it.

So I guess we just keep walking on our clay feet, just because it’s the only way to get around.

* As Dr. Weinberger points out below, Woody was actually quoting Groucho Marx.

Fractal footprints

February 10, 2008 in Art, Photography, Travel | Comments closed

The interesting thing to me about the footprints above, aside from their nature as photography fodder, is that they resemble the layout of the two intersecting paths at Winthrop Park, where I took the shot.

You can see the paths on Google Maps if you look for the intersection of JFK and Mt. Auburn in downtown Cambridge — one block south of Harvard Square (which isn’t), or you can hope that clicking on the “Link to this page” link for the park itself will work; but for some reason Google Maps (on this laptop, at least, in two different browsers) shows you the park while it’s loading, then jumps to another part of Cambridge. It’s 2:33am, however, and I’m not going to try to debug whatever I might be doing to cause that.

In any case, the pidgeon prints drew a map of the park paths.

The park is also Wintrop Square. Unlike most squares in Boston, it actually has corners that are right angles. It was the city’s original marketplace, and therefore dates, as does the city, from 1630. It was called Newtowne then. It became Cambridge eight years later.

Will the Clinton Era come to a graceful end?

February 10, 2008 in News | 9 comments

In Can Mrs. Clinton lose?, Peggy Noonan writes,

  We know she is smart. Is she wise? If it comes to it, down the road, can she give a nice speech, thank her supporters, wish Barack Obama well, and vow to campaign for him?

  It either gets very ugly now, or we will see unanticipated–and I suspect professionally saving–grace.

  I ruminate in this way because something is happening. Mrs. Clinton is losing this thing. It’s not one big primary, it’s a rolling loss, a daily one, an inch-by-inch deflation. The trends and indices are not in her favor. She is having trouble raising big money, she’s funding her campaign with her own wealth, her moral standing within her own party and among her own followers has been dragged down, and the legacy of Clintonism tarnished by what Bill Clinton did in South Carolina. Unfavorable primaries lie ahead. She doesn’t have the excitement, the great whoosh of feeling that accompanies a winning campaign. The guy from Chicago who was unknown a year ago continues to gain purchase, to move forward. For a soft little innocent, he’s played a tough and knowing inside/outside game.

  The day she admitted she’d written herself a check for $5 million, Obama’s people crowed they’d just raised $3 million. But then his staff is happy. They’re all getting paid.

  Political professionals are leery of saying, publicly, that she is losing, because they said it before New Hampshire and turned out to be wrong. Some of them signaled their personal weariness with Clintonism at that time, and fear now, as they report, to look as if they are carrying an agenda. One part of the Clinton mystique maintains: Deep down journalists think she’s a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched.

She concludes,

  The biggest problem for the Republicans will be that no matter what they say that is not issue oriented–”He’s too young, he’s never run anything, he’s not fully baked”–the mainstream media will tag them as dealing in racial overtones, or undertones. You can bet on this. Go to the bank on it.

  The Democrats continue not to recognize what they have in this guy. Believe me, Republican professionals know. They can tell.

I don’t know. Obama hasn’t had an embarrasing blow-up yet, as most campaigns eventually do. He’s not perfect. It’s going to happen.

And on the bus last week here near Boston, I overheard a lively political discussion among acquaintances that was all about the comfort they felt with Hillary, and even their affection for her. I’m reluctant to dismiss that.

But my gut says Peggy’s right. And I think it has to do with the matter of “change”. It’s hard to say “change” is what you’re about when you’re proposing a series of four presidents with just two surnames between them.

One thing I didn’t expect to see, going into this election, was how absolutely smart Hillary is, and how much she knows about pretty much everything that comes her way. I’ve never been a fan; but I’ve been truly impressed by her.

But it *is* time for a change. We all know that. Most of us want it. And there’s just one candidate that actually represents it, and is likely to make it happen.