Wednesday morning amateur philosphizing

Walking the mile from Penn Station NY to my office this morning, looking at the hundreds of faces that pass the other way in twenty blocks, I found myself thinking that the quality of a life is the sum of the emotions we experience each moment (and the cognitive therapists would add that what we feel is driven by the thoughts we think -- cf. Charlie Brown's mantra, 'nobody likes me, everybody hates me...').

Then I thought, of course that's not right -- it measures only the impact of our lives on our own selves. Most of us would want to be measured by our impact on other people and the world (and in fact our self-assessment on this score might largely shape how pleasurable our thoughts are moment-to-moment).  That impact is determined by characteristics (other than luck, and shaped largely by luck) such as intellect, and emotional intelligence, and effective aggression (there's got to be a better term for that...), and will or discipline or the power of concentration.

Then there's the religious perception that the ultimate value or quality of those "powers of impact" depends entirely on love -- of other people, or creation, or a god understood to make creation lovable.  That is the famous assertion of 1 Corinthians 13: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal ² And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing."

Which brings us back to point A. What you feel moment-to-moment is largely shaped by how you feel about everyone and everything that most commands your attention. The Beatles boiled it down to a Dr. Seuss rhyme: "And in the end the love you take/is equal to the love you make."

That's comforting, but not necessarily true in any simple sense.  I recall the novelist John Gardner, who is perhaps most famous as a teacher of writing and writer about writing, raising the question of the value of the  work of a writer who by any ordinary measure is a terrible person.  He wrote, if I may paraphrase from memory, that that writer may be a much better person when he's writing than when he's doing anything else. And that may be true for any productive concentration of human energy -- including fighting (physically, legally, bureacratically -- most of us would acknowledge the value when we approve the cause), or hitting a baseball (Ted Williams wanted only to be the greatest hitter whoever lived and more or less succeeded) or bond trading (which in a well regulated market does have a productive function). 

Ted Williams advises Dems on HCR

Word comes that Jim Bunning has a message for House Democrats: beware passing the Senate health care bill, because the reconcliation "sidecar" could fail, in which case the unaltered Senate bill will become law. That means voting for the unweakened excise tax, relatively stingy subsidies for middle class families, etc.

House Democrats will doubtless be touched that Jim Bunning has their best interests at heart.  Presumably, too, they won't note that the odds of that Senate bill will pass the House and that no reconciliation bill will also pass both chambers are approximately equal to the odds that all 41 Republicans will vote in favor of the reconciliation bill.

If House Democrats need a psyche-up (and they do, they do!), they should take one from the late great Ted Williams, who knew how to deal with Bunning.  I'm surely not the only observer who recalls this scene from Jim Bouton's baseball memoir Ball Four every time Bunning comes snarling into the national news:

Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

He'd go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, "My name is Ted fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball."

He'd swing and hit a line drive.
"Jesus H Christ Himself couldn't get me out."

And he'd hit another.

Then he'd say, "Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his."

Wham!

"He doesn't really think he's gonna get me out with that shit."


Blam!

"I'm Ted fucking Williams.",

Pow!

Nancy Pelosi, you're on deck...