Magic versus Magical Thinking, a Practical Guide (Part 1): Of Recipes, Rites and Action

 

In the beginning, when people were evolving, power was present in the place where one found oneself—by power, I mean the inherent dangers of a place, such as raging waters, sheer cliffs, and roaming gigantic flesh eating creatures. Survival, in such places, came to be seen as a certain sort of blessing, and the people who seemed to have better survival tools (or rather who seemed to make better choices) came to be revered. Some of those revered people, when asked to what they attributed their success at overcoming adversity, might have said something like, “I owe it to the benevolent spirit of the place,” by which they might have meant that they had learned by experience, trial and error, how to make good choices in a hostile environment. Indeed, some people are better suited to survival in certain places than others, and this can only be the result of an education by experience that teaches a type of discernment when it comes to making choices, especially when the unexpected happens. Such people, when they die, become the stuff of legends, and sometimes the legends of such people become so famous, they are turned into demi-gods.

Another scenario related to hero worship is the worship of forces of nature, such as water, air, fire, quaking earth, and the like, seen and unseen. Survival of the fittest when it comes to forces of nature is also an aspect of the power of place, where the unexpected happening can limit or endanger chances of survival.

Yet another scenario related to worship is the reverence of any thing or being that produces food. In such a scenario, corn is reverenced, wheat is reverenced, cows are reverenced, and so forth.

I will say that none of these models of reverence is inherently incorrect; these are all valid examples of reverence and respect. With reverence and respect to the powers of place, to the life-giving powers of food produced in the natural world, to exemplars of right discernment and choice, one is able to learn from past example, build on that with innovation, and survive, even to the point of producing offspring that carry the species forward in time toward newer innovation.

I will now identify an aspect of these primitive forms of reverence that I believe to be incorrect: magic.

This is not to say that magic and magical moments do not exist or that they are irrelevant. Magic is very real; it may be the most real thing there is. Magic goes back to the power of place and the power of the unexpected. Magic is an experience, an awesome and unexpected result. The error comes when people believe they can recreate a magical experience by performing a litany of rites, instead of living and experiencing, learning. The error occurs when people do not, as the heroic exemplars of the past did (or may have done), use and build on the knowledge acquired through experiences of surviving the powers of place and the unexpected to make choices, then accept responsibility for inauspicious outcomes. 

Simply put, one person’s choice might work for someone else, but this is not necessarily the case, and is most often not. In the words of a song Doris Day sang, but hated:

“Que sera, sera

Whatever will be, will be

The future's not ours to see

Que sera, sera

What will be, will be

Que sera, sera.”

The Great British Bake Off television series delivers a concrete example of what I am talking about. At some point, all the participants are given the same recipe to prepare. Amazingly, the results are different for every single participant. Why? They are all using the same ingredients in the same weather conditions, with roughly identical equipment. Why is it that the results can be so different?

Recipes (receipts, in old style) are scientific formulae from the realm of the practical cook. Someone made a tasty dish and invited friends to dinner. The friends really enjoyed the dish and wanted to recreate it in their own homes, so they asked for the receipt, which was a list of ingredients, most often, including a sketchy explanation of how the ingredients were to be combined. The cook had been preparing the dish for so long, it was second nature, and they figured another (experienced) cook would know what was intended.

Here is a recipe from “Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus [Estes]”:

Mushroom Sauce, Italian Style—(for macaroni, spaghetti, ravioli and rice)—a small piece of butter about the size of an egg. One or two onions, cut very small. About two pounds of beef. Let all brown. Prepare as you would pot roast. Add Italian dried mushrooms, soaked overnight in hot water, chopped in small pieces. Add about one-half can of tomatoes. Let all cook well. Salt and pepper to taste. Add a little flour to thicken. 

The beef, is it cubed or a slab of meat? Small, medium or large onions; yellow or red? What quantity of dried mushrooms? What size can of tomatoes are we talking about? Do you know how to make pot roast? Is this done in the oven or on the stovetop? What sized pot to use? Any added liquid, or do the tomatoes suffice? At what temperature? For how long?

The experienced, practical (that is, practicing) cook can take that receipt, procure the ingredients, and turn them into a delicious meal. In the hands of others, “results may vary.” And that is the truth of the matter, results do vary; life is not cast by lots, nor can the turn of a card predict outcomes—that is magical thinking. 

That’s all for now. Not sure when the next installment will be, but I can say that it will have something to do with praxis, religion, reason and governance.

Foresight 20/20; A Commencement Address for our Graduates

Parents, Friends and Neighbors, we stand here today to honor our 2020 graduates. 

It cannot go without saying that 2020 has been a strange year. I don’t think any of us was, nor could have been, prepared for the sudden arrival of a pandemic. Our lives have been turned upside-down. The norms and expectations of everything, including and particularly celebration, have been curtailed. The globalized economy has collapsed like a house of cards, and the highest levels of leadership have proven themselves to be insubstantial, even unfit, but certainly unready to meet such a crisis where it needs to be met – often treating this environment as though human needs are not an integral part of it.

Suddenly everything came to a halt, and we were mainly limited to being at home, really only going out for essential procurements or essential work. It doesn’t take long for people, so used to social commerce, to become bored, isolated, sad. On March 18^th, I awoke from a dream and these words lingered from it, so I wrote them down and gave them a title: 

Together, Alone

We hike along a way
we’d usually share abreast,
but right now, we each move
together, alone.

The distance is forced and,
as two pendulums in motion would,
we try to match our steps,
try to meet in mind,
mindful of the gap.

A contagion we can’t see
threatens to separate us;
to divide and conquer
by means of infection
is the metaphor of this age.

This disease might save us,
if we could embrace a truth
writ large by the threat:
we live webs of intersections;
as we go, it is together, all one.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

A year of promise begun in the Fall got the wind sucked out it in February and March. To borrow a book title from Judith Viorst, for many students this has been a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad” year. It is of little consolation that a year such as this is not unprecedented in the history of our nation and our world.

In 1918, the world, already in the grips of World War I for a full year, was hit by an avian H1N1 virus that came to be known as the Spanish Flu. Troop movement is thought to have been the primary means of spreading this virus, and there were three primary waves of infection. Then, as now, public heath officials recommended the wearing of masks, proximal distancing, and quarantine as the primary methods by which to slow the spread of the disease and allow it to play itself out. 

In his commencement address to the 1918 graduating class of the University of Indiana, Mr. Rough and Ready, Theodore Roosevelt, nine years out of office as our 26^thPresident, said:

We need institutions of technical teaching, of technical learning in the country; but in my judgment, we need more the institutions that teach broad, cultural development, which this nation needs more than it needs anything else. We need the kind of learning acquired not because it can be turned into money but because it is worth so much more than money.

Let [each person] remember that no nation ever yet amounted to anything or ever will amount to anything if it consisted simply of money-getters, and if the trophies and proofs of its success consisted merely in the symbols of successful money-getting. The money must be there as a basis, but by no means as broad a basis as most of the very successful… among us have made it in their lives. [Money] is only [a] foundation, and the foundation is worthless unless upon it you build the super-structure of the higher life, the life with ideals of beauty, of nobility, of achievement of good for the sake of doing what is good, the life of service and sacrifice in any one of a hundred lines, all directed toward the welfare of our common country.

I hope it isn’t trite to say that though this year has been tough, we’ve all learned that doing good, in the simple way Roosevelt defined it, is something that can be done by going to work or school, or even by staying at home—doing the best we can, whatever any specific circumstances demand. We’ve seen what works, and what doesn’t work has been unmasked– as façade or out and out fraud – for all to see, if they are willing. We’ve learned that “Being together, all one” is part of our social contract, an act of cooperation we agree to do as a group even if we are self-isolating.

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That you have arrived at this day is not, per se, a miracle. You’ve been nurtured and encouraged by parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers and coaches, ever since the day you were born. But that you have arrived at this milestone is an accomplishment—your accomplishment, a result of your hard work. Even, sometimes, boredom, contributes to growth, being the parent of invention.

You’ve spent so much of your life in school but, let me just say, school’s not over, yet – life is what some would call “Continuing Education.” I’m sure you’ve survived any number of “group projects”, during your time in Middle and High School, even College. When asked why students thought they were being given such assignments, at least 85% percent respond, “In order to lower my GPA.” As hated as these exercises are, there is a point to them; they are short experiments in the realities of cooperation. In these “controlled” experiments, the group you end up with must work together to produce a result. You get to choose who you hang out with at lunch and after school, but you mostly never get to choose who is going to be working with you on such assignments nor in any job setting. You and several or a bunch of others are thrown together to solve a problem and deliver a report or a product. Some members of the group have skills; some can organize, some are smart but flaky, while others might be excellent at avoidance all together. You have to find someone willing to take the thankless lead, and then together you have to plan meetings, benchmarks and goals, and each person has to agree to Do Their Part. This is nothing less than a social contract. Sometimes the results aren’t that great, but you can breathe a sigh of relief when your presentation is over, even if you were up until 2am making the PowerPoint presentation because you had to wait for one of your partners to email the data and another partner to email the text. This is a microcosm of real life; we all muddle along just like this, and every such experience offers an opportunity to observe people, and this contributes to your developing critical thought process. One thing you learn is that even people with the best of plans encounter issues that can cause them to change course. If there’s one rule of thumb you can live by, it’s this: Everything takes four times longer to accomplish than you think it should, from simple chores on up. And yet, there is art and grace to be found in all of this, and joy.

Perhaps, during our shelter-in-place, in our quiet meditations, we have made some important observations. Perhaps we’ve been able to breathe cleaner air. Perhaps we have been able to actually hear the birds singing without the continuous hum of traffic and construction to dampen their songs. Perhaps we have been able to see the moon and stars more clearly at night. Perhaps we have discovered – and maybe to our surprise – that a lifestyle of rushing around and being artificially busy is not required in order to live fully and productively. Perhaps we have thought about how much energy – personal energy, as well as resource energy – is wasted when everything and everyone is constantly turned on and in motion. Perhaps we have concerned ourselves with how isolation might be impacting others, because we know how deeply it has impacted us. Perhaps we have observed that all are not treated equally or based on truly demonstrated merit. Perhaps we’ve finally heard and identified divisive rhetoric and platitudes, and been upset by them. Perhaps, in thinking about all these things, we have thought of solutions to certain problems. 

What ideas have you had during this time that you think are worthy to pursue? Ideas that can help us do more than just muddle along? Such ideas are the capital on which every former society has been, and any newer society, can be built. 

In the words of a Fleetwood Mac song from my generation:

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Don't stop, it'll soon be here
It'll be, better than before
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone

Right now, we are still in a bit of a holding pattern, waiting for the pandemic threat to be “yesterday,” and some of us marching to demand greater social justice. As difficult as it is to be missing out on shared celebrations with your peers, I hope you realize that you are experiencing history first-hand, and that this moment is but a spring-board to the next phase of yours and all our lives. You are on the ground floor, and everything goes up from here. In the parlance of business, disruption is the fertile ground for innovation. Carpe diem, seize the day! This historic moment contains the seeds of opportunity that you and all your classmates can cultivate toward holistic and positive change so desperately needed in our world, changes that don’t treat humanity as if it is detached from the environment or subservient to money, changes that honor individual personhood. 

As we slowly return to a “new normal,” I hope that you will be able to safely rejoin your classmates and extended family in celebration of your collective achievements, and that those celebrations will be all the more fully experienced and cherished because of the crisis we have lived through. 

In the meanwhile, we congratulate you and the entire Class of 2020, and hope that the springboard of current events will catapult all of you to success in the fields of your choice, with the best wishes and continued support of all of us. We are confident that you and your generation have and will further develop and employ critical discernment, and with it the capacity to concentrate on those issues pertinent to the “common good,” and we have high hopes that every new construct you have imagined can be realized to make the world “better than before,” where each person has a place and a vital role. You have heard the phrase, “20/20 hindsight” – it is our hope that you and everyone in your generation will look on the year 2020 as a challenge to look ahead, to make leaps forward and to lead, leveraging your knowledge of the past and, now, new perspective and energy toward building a better, safer, more loving world for us all, a world with just a touch of 20/20 foresight.

Best to you always, 

Elisabeth Eliassen
your neighbor and fellow citizen

© 2020 by Elisabeth Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

This address is for all students who were unable to partake of a commencement gathering with their fellow students and families. I wrote this specifically for a young man, a neighbor, who grew up with my kids. I want all our graduates know that they are special and that they live in a special time, and that they can shape the world. I pulled out the more personal comments directed toward our young friend, but the message is the same for all.

Advancement Day

Warning: Political statements abound throughout, indicated by the presence of asterisks.

It is the very merry month of June, and we just celebrated advancements in the form of High School Graduation (times two). The twins, now 18 and having already voted in their first election, have completed High School, and their futures lie yawning ahead on the vast lawns and landscapes of time, as still do ours.

While I won’t, on this occasion, prognosticate on what lies ahead, I can reflect on what has happened to bring us to this springboard moment, perhaps offer a prophetic statement on where we are today.

Our babies, in addition to entering the political landscape of the world in the year before 9/11, were born at the digital crux, right before cell phones evolved into smart phones, just before the departure of analog ubiquity. Technology has been ever-present and ever demanding of their time, and ours, since the day our children were born.

Society cares less about children now than at any time in recorded history*. Let that sink in, for a moment.

I have always believed in public education. During the 1960s and 1970s, due to an explosion in population due to the post-war economic boom, there was such a demand for educated people, as well as a growing social ethos that dictated “bring everyone up,” that it was difficult to fill all the available teaching positions. Educating a generation of educators became extremely important. But the struggle to pay educators has not changed all that much from the one-room schoolhouse days, has it? Despite the fact that the public and industries of all types demand an educated populace, government (no matter what party is in power) shies away from providing for education, paying teachers a living wage, and maintaining school campuses. It is easier and more lucrative to sell guns and put people in jail.* Poorly educated people can be cajoled by charismatic demagogues into voting for anyone.*

But, still I believe in public education. I was educated in public schools. I turned out okay.

Private schools are well and good, but do they train our young people to question?

This is a genuine question, one that must also be asked of public education.* I am not actually bringing this up to suggest that public is better than private school. Do the students that come out of any school realize that there is a political or religious worldview and agenda predominating the information that has been taught?* Are students really given the opportunity and freedom to think for themselves, even if it goes against the grain of the institution?* 

Administrators at the public high school from which I graduated in the late 1970s turned off the microphone on this year’s valedictorian speech. They did that because the young woman dared to mention that one of the challenges students had to overcome was sexual assault on campus. As a graduate of that school, I am personally enraged that this occurred, and proud of the young woman’s courage to say what needed to be said, and that the incident made the news throughout the state, and was even reported in the Washington Post.**

Our institutions, public and private, do not own our knowledge, nor do they own our experience.* What they must own is their culpability in all the things that can and do go wrong, and how these wrongs are redressed.* We, and the young people we raise, are only as strong as our institutions. Right now, all our institutions are weak and hamstrung, too often self-serving, and as a result they fail too many families.* Institutions, public and private, that cannot redress wrongs or see where improvement is necessary, will bring us all down. Let that sink in, for a moment.

We are proud of what our children were able to accomplish from within a flawed and partisan system.* It was not easy for them or for their peers; they managed to do well despite a system that is rigged to highlight frequently questionable outcomes.* Ever-newer curricula provides a money machine that enriches someone who is not a student, rather than providing better tools for teaching, I have observed.* Technology, donated or purchased or otherwise forced into the schools, looms in every classroom, but often without proper IT backup, and as a challenge to families who cannot afford computers, creating a division.* Bullying is but one factor in the lives of our young students. Favoritism is but one other factor. Incompetent and/or biased teaching, yet another factor.* Entitled, bullying, helicopter-hovercraft parenting is another factor, oft paired with the demanding and argumentative, entitled student-child who “does not work well with others” to complete group projects.*

Health and wellbeing issues are said to be catered to at most schools, but if you look closely, all sorts of students fall between the cracks. How can I say this with assurance? It was reported to me by my own children. Some of their peers were sent to school without having had breakfast, with no lunch or lunch money. Some students had other issues at home. When we parents were made aware of a few situations with regard to our children’s friends and acquaintances, we went to the school on their behalf. Although we were told that the administration would solve the individual problem, we discovered later that they did not do so, and that nothing had changed for the student. Meanwhile, nothing could be done by the administration for the dozens of students who slept through their classes exhausted from all night videogame bingeing or from sheer boredom. 

Possibly, it is the same in every generation that many students just don’t give a damn about school or the importance of education. Student engagement must be inspired; this has always been true.* Not every teacher is inspiring, engaging or nice; that’s also always been the case. Perhaps also not every parent is inspiring, engaging or loving. We are all challenged, as we are all challenging*; we parents need be strong enough to advise our rising youth in how to ford the streams of characters, charlatans and crackpots, rather than interject with a lifeboat or leave them to their own devices, uninformed. But we, as a society, must demand more from our institutions, and give more toward their upkeep and evolution.* We must be better equipped and enabled to offer help beyond our own family units*, if we are able to do so. We need to bridge gaps so that no one is lost in the cracks.

I can honestly say that my children sat and stood with the bullied, fed the hungry. I can say this with pride, but the flipside of pride is shame, and I feel both in equal measure. I have found that society lavishes on, even worships techno-materialism, while not lavishing our children with proper care and proper education, and in no way “brings everyone up” in terms of housing-, healthcare- and food-security.* A great deal of practical knowledge has been removed from education*; this puts many young people at a disadvantage right away. Intimate engagement with issues of environmental degradation is lacking, but I applaud those parents and students who do engage and who advocate and demand that their elders do better, and who mentor and are role models.* (The future depends upon you!) When the institution looks away from the problems, this teaches everyone to look away, to avert eyes, to avoid asking questions or engage civically. This is a way to describe corruption.*

We had a party for a few friends and neighbors, over this weekend. We told them, “It takes a village to raise a child; you’ve been our village.” This is by no means cliché.

There are so many people who have touched our lives and the lives of our children in positive, if not in memorable, ways. We wish we could thank you all! The twins baked cakes for their favorite high school teachers during finals week. Some of the wonderful teachers they’ve had over the years have retired from their elementary and middle schools, but we remember you. Technology will never replace humanness; it cannot teach what it is to be human and humane or empathetic.* Education is not at all about machines and is less about books (although books can be excellent tools) than it is about humans caring enough to pass on human knowledge and humanity by example and by speech and by writing.

Our children have been gone from being Pisces Fish to Otis Owls to Lincoln Lions to Alameda Hornets, and now they Advance to the Next Thing (which is hopefully not Twitter Twits*).

Our institutions are flawed, weak and hamstrung, but we and others have persevered, and we hope all others will persevere, better yet thrive. We need to uphold and improve our institutions for the coming generations; there is so much work to be done, in this regard. The world of appearances, where it is more important to preserve the outward face of the institution than it is to own the realities, redress wrongs and make corrections, needs to be shed.* Schools are political tools; they should not be.* We cannot afford to be swayed by lip service, jerry-rigged statistics and cherry-picked “facts.”* Our children are not gadgets, and we cannot treat them like statistics or like things.* We need to care about and ensure that all people are recognized as unique and valued individuals, and accordingly need to be treated individually in the ways that best address, best resonate, best communicate to their individual needs.* 

“It takes a village to raise a child.” If we cannot care about other people’s children as much as our own, how can it truly be said that we care for our own?* If we truly believe the world is a better place because our children exist, we must be willing to model, teach and uphold goodness, fairness, peace and wellbeing for them and for others, and indeed the whole world, and we must improve and empower all of our institutions to support this at the highest level.*

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** https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/06/09/this-valedictorian-began-to-talk-about-sexual-misconduct-at-her-graduation-then-her-mic-was-cut/?utm_term=.523f34200f8d