Happy Days for Hitler

Nicole Fox got to India last fall. Once she found an apartment and started her American India Foundation Public Service Corps placement at Y.R.G. Care, an AIDS research and outreach clinic, she signed up for a few extracirriculars. “Mondays and Fridays are my gym days, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my hip-hop/Bollywood dancing days… and Wednesdays are Tamil lessons,” she wrote to her stunned friends and family. After a quick stop in Hanoi for a World Health Organization conference on dengue, she returned to work, took trips all around the subcontinent, and found time for a little rockclimbing. That’s who Nicole is.

Hitler… well, let’s start right there. “English people are not liking my name, because of German Hitler long time ago,” he cheerfully explained to Nicole the day they met at a busy tea stand. “But people here are not knowing,” he reassured her, “so Hitler is okay in India.”

Fearless and forward, Hitler drives an autorickshaw, a kind of motorized taxi, around the streets of Chennai. In his effusive “smoker’s gargle,” he delivers pronouncements like, “All life good life. Happy days!” He has a unique gift for loving life, and passing on that appreciation. Everyone who gets on his auto leaves smiling.

A few chance encounters turned Nicole into a fast friend. Once, Hitler spotted her at the bus stop and pulled over. As they drove, “fast even by normally crazy rickshaw standards,” he filled her in on his sick wife, the school for handicapped children where he sometimes works, and his life philosophy, dodging streetlife and livestock the whole time. Numbers and invitations were exchanged. “I think God think very well of Hitler today, to see my friend again,” he said. “I very thankful for good luck and wonderful life. All good life always!”

You can read Hitler’s story at Happy Days for Hitler, where Nicole is chronicling his struggle to purchase his own auto; about $660 USD would change his life. His wife’s medical bills, the debts from renting the rickshaw, and a new baby on the way won’t make it easy, but Hitler is unflappable. He will write “Happy Day” across the front of his auto when he gets it, he says. “Because now is today, and today is happy.”

“If you can spare a few dollars, all of them go so far here,” Nicole writes. You can donate here. “No matter what else I do this year, I would be most proud if my last view at the airport was Hitler waving from his own auto.”

Not Alone Anymore

When we find out we might be alone in thinking something, we tend to remember the sensation. Surprise, followed quickly by worry, or curiosity, or pride, can overshadow the actual topic of conversation. I remember one moment like this. I had just described to a friend how those unofficial, packed dirt trails that you find curling through every park are fascinating to me.

You see why, right? These trails are created by many people over many months if not years. The finished product looks intentional: there are clean lines between the path and the grass around it, the route confidently heads towards the place most people want to go, and it’s well maintained, routinely reinforced, sometimes in contrast to neglect, very close by, visible in some less popular park features. This is a collaboration, but the collaborators rarely see each other, generally don’t know each other, and never actually communicate about their shared project. It is an accident and unintended consequence of thousands of actions that this path gets made.

What struck me is how path makers are separated not by space but in time. When I walk down one of these paths I imagine all the people I’m following, and all those who will follow me. We influence each other, affect the steps others choose. Unseen, unknowingly, we transmit information across time, coordinating our efforts to produce an inviting little walkway. Membership in this secret, silent club tickles me. No one is aware of having joined or what their contribution was. Our members cannot be gathered by any imaginable technique or technology, because time moves only in the one direction, and the world soon forgets who made the first footfalls and where that person was headed. And without aiming to, we’ve created an informal institution, a monument to decentralized decision making. Dear reader, I give you: the well defined yet unsanctioned path, a whimsical and determined thing, fixture of parklands everywhere.

My unprepared attempt to communicate this and my wonder at it to a friend was halting, but after getting it out I saw immediately that my fascination wasn’t shared. Other people just don’t think like this, I realized, surprised. I was torn between feeling proud of how my clearly insightful observation separated me from the unwashed masses and being disappointed, like when a joke isn’t laughed at, or the personal anecdote you expected to be recognized as embodying something universal, isn’t. It was disappointing to find that the busy, complicated world I lived in was a lonely place. It’s not just paths in parks. I’m often paralyzed by visions of the countless roles we play, the endless connections and interactions between us, the infinite consequences of our smallest actions. I’m not infrequently dumbstruck with awe at the products of our undirected and unplanned efforts, overcome in public places with mute delight. I stare at the city around me like a caveman.

Although I never seriously believed that I was the only person with an active imagination and a ferocious curiosity about the world around me, I did feel separated from fellow awestruck path watchers by my inability to put my wonder into words, and therefore lonely. A path maker might feel the same way were one to become aware of his or her diffuse coworkers and wish to speak with them, if only to share introductions over a beer and pass around congratulations on a job well done. But while there’s no hope of traveling though time (except the usual way), there should be a way to overcome my less fundamental isolation. There must be others in the world with a passion for self organization and its power. Now just how do I meet one?

Podcasts. When it comes to emergent order, I recommend reading The Price of Everything by Russ Roberts, who I first heard as the host of the essential EconTalk and who also writes a great blog, Cafe Hayek. For more, and please trust me on this, it is never a bad idea to read Hayek himself. Discovering that there exists an entire academic discipline devoted to exploring the mechanisms, mediums, properties and consequences of our species’ constant creative interaction has been one of my life’s greatest pleasures. It turns out that not only am I not at all uniquely brilliant, but the men and women who have been thinking, writing, researching and debating about exchange, incentives, and externalities for centuries have so much to teach me that my learning will safely last my lifetime.

To complete this happy ending, I need to develop the ability to communicate my curiosity. A lifelong project to be sure, but one I want to start today. Writing, this past week, has engaged me terrifically, been welcome work of the kind my life recently has been sadly lacking. It’s hard, and for now, feels rewarding. My busy imagination is already telling me that if I really keep at it, by the time I’m sixty-four I might actually publish something valuable. I’m really looking forward to that.

Reading about writing, I ran across this lovely passage in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird:

I remember reading C.S. Lewis for the first time, Surprised by Joy, and how, looking inside himself, he found “a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds.” I felt elated and absolved. I had thought that the people one admired, the kind, smart people of the world, were not like that on the inside, were different from me…

The moments we discover we’re not alone, like the moments when we first fear that we are, get glued in our memories by adrenaline, and then stuck where we’re sure to see them, like favorite pictures on our wall. Remember this. We forget, of course. Like all important lessons in life, we have to learn it again and again. Fear of being the only one like you in the universe is, famously, universal.

Share your stories about the conversation where you discovered that you’re on your own. It’s a familiar beat: talking to a friend, the easy assumption that you’re on the same page is suddenly questioned. This tends to happen most frequently when the topic being discussed is certain superstitions, the status of a relationship, or Israel. The moment tends to be memorable. I can recall a half dozen conversations I’ve had that fit this description.

Alternately, share your stories about the time you suddenly no longer felt alone. Although it has taken me a thousand words to get around to it, the story I had in mind when I started this post falls into this category. Today I was listening to The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe and they were discussing several recent articles in mainstream sources that are big wins for skepticism and evidence that an important campaign in Britain is having an impact. The mood was high. Then Rebecca said this, about the podcast’s audience:

There are 60,000 of you our there right now. I know that right now, like, you’re listening to this and it’s just you, riding the subway, but there are actually 60,000 of you…

The story of how I came to find the SGU, and organized skepticism, and how it felt and what it meant to me is another post entirely, if not a dozen. It’s quite something, discovering how powerful it is to name yourself, to share passions and fears, and to belong. It would be a large, heavy, dreadfully earnest story. Hearing Rebecca’s words this afternoon was different: the moment was delightful, simple, and deliciously specific.

I’ve often imagined that there are others who, like me, ride the subway with earbuds in not to drown out the crowd or zone out to music, but to learn about scientific breakthroughs, technological achievements, the latest paranormal claims, quackery, what is fact and what is, in fact, fiction. Looking around as I ride, however, it never seems like I’m sharing a subway car with one of them. Instead as I listen I feel like there’s an unfortunate chasm between me and my fellow riders, growing wider with every moment I absorb information which I seriously doubt they have, as I sure wouldn’t were I not standing there with the rogues in my ear. Our common ground is thin and our disagreements untowardly deep, my imaginary fellow passengers and I. It’s not a good feeling. Most people separate themselves from the city around them by simply ignoring it, distracting themselves, or through small harmless acts of rudeness, but here I am actually shoving a planet-sized ideological wedge between myself and all those around me. What a sad, bitter old man I will become!

In a species as numerous as ours, a club consisting of sixty thousand is not in the business of setting cultural norms or writing policy. But put sixty thousand people in a room and you’ve got yourself quite a party. A big thank you to Rebecca for a truly neat moment, when I allowed myself to imagine my friends and allies, in hundreds of different subway cars in dozens of cities across the world. I smiled, then, picturing us, we who are excited about the future, we who love and cherish “the Universe as it really is.” At once, we all hear “right now you’re listening to this and it’s just you, but” and look up, all thinking the same thing.

I know podcasts are not listened to simultaneously. I know my habit of inventing visuals to stand in for the intangible things I’m awed by can get more than a little silly. I’ve been known to picture the myriad cell phone conversations going on around me as long strings arcing through the air, attached at the other end to far away towns and other continents, wrapping around the world a dense, tangled ball of string. And ask me sometime about the make believe Kingsbridge Tofu Club. Still. Explaining what’s going on in my head makes me feel elated and absolved, and even if this never reaches the right person, I’m confident someone out there thinks the way I do.

Science is a great path making project, the greatest decentralized collaborative effort there will ever be, with partnerships spanning the globe and reaching across time, accumulating results step by step that shape our emerging understanding of reality. It is the undertaking of the human race, discovery, and no one is truly alone who understands that they belong to this great and curious species. I will never be a scientist, but I long to contribute something to the discussion, if only to stand to the side and remind people how beautiful it all is. I will talk science over dinner and over drinks, inviting more people to share in our collective accomplishments, reminding everyone, you need not be alone, and look at what we can do when we work together.

On The Street, Pt. 1

In the short time I’ve actually lived in the city I have had the privilege to work in eight different neighborhoods. There are pages to write about each of them. I’ll start with Wall Street.

I do not work in finance. I make a meager hourly wage standing in a doorway, watching the financial district change. The asphalt in front of me is being ripped up and replaced with paving stones. Real estate brokers are steering dozens of curious young couples through the buildings to either side of me. Sometimes the young prospective tenants are chaperoned by parents, busy and nervous like they’re visiting colleges. These new condos were built as office buildings. The high end boutique I work in was a Starbucks not six months ago.

I have not been familiar with this neighborhood long, and have never done any substantive research into its recent history, so my sense of the street’s demographic and economic shifts is based on anecdotes, stories, and assumptions. What I can do is record the people I see walking past me over the course of a day.

The simplest story is that of the tourists. They flatter me. I charm them. They mistake me for a knowledgeable, native New Yorker, and I do my best to live up to their hopes, simultaneously aiming to convince them that this city is reasonably friendly after all. If you are walking slowly in a subway station hallway, especially if you are answering your phone at the top of the station stairs, you are unforgivable and I will glare at you with all the glare I can muster. If I am not doing anything, and you approach and ask politely for directions, I will forgive you your ignorance, and in fact be grateful for the opportunity to be appear magnanimous and expert.

The Americans I see I automatically assume are from “The Midwest,” wherever that is. I think for our purposes it includes every corner of the country outside of California, New England, Pennsylvania and Jersey. They seem easy to please. They drift, in family groups, leaning back to take pictures of the towers and the church. Everyone loves posing with the Tiffany & Co. sign, which features large golden letters at a height that allows the cheesy smile to be brought right alongside it with only a slightly ridiculous crouch. I’d guess that one out of every three groups that pass it feel compelled to snap the photo.

Our international visitors look to my untrained eye to be largely Germans, Scandinavians, and other broadly blond, odd yet attractive Northern and Central Europeans. We also get a generous sprinkling of Italians, French, Spaniards, and Canadians. The Asians, mostly Chinese and Japanese, are the most likely to be walking down the street with a camcorder recording uninterrupted, a practice that I find slightly less distasteful than boiling children alive. Some pose for still photographs of their companions every few feet without placing any identifiable landmarks, or indeed anything nice to look at, in the background.

They all ask for the bull. American, foreign, embarrassing and savvy, they all came to Wall Street to see the bull. The bull, dear readers, is not on Wall Street. This fact causes endless frustration. I am in charge of directing the travellers to he statue, east two blocks and down three, throwing in hand gestures, directional markers, and occasionally the Spanish word for “left,” izquierda, which I was delighted to discover I still remember from high school.

A diminutive Asian man, in a thick accent it took me a few attempts to decipher, once asked me directions to “the golden cow.” Another time a portly American gentleman (a Midwesterner, I believe), told me he was looking for the bull to punch it. It is strange to watch kids from a dozen countries hang on the horns, fondle the testicles, and generally lap up this oddest of symbols while the Street itself is in such disarray, actively cannibalizing the ancient office space for luxury apartments. Most tourists give no indication that they understand that Wall Street is no longer Wall Street. If they know, it doesn’t seem to affect their behavior. I point the way to the bull a half dozen times a day, closely followed by the stock exchange and the federal reserve. That one I had to look up. It’s an imposing stone building two or three blocks north of the Street, and since I’ve identified it, every time I pass I stare. There’s little hope I’ll learn anything about the confusion, fear, and hubris percolating within by watching the walls. Still. It seems now an ominous, quiet building. The cocky men in flashy suits who still, though their numbers are thinned, strut down Wall like hedonistic teenage Greek gods, would be preferable masters of the world. Their ugliness seems simple, honest, their behavior predictable and sure, compared to inscrutable bureaucrats and civil servants hiding just out of sight up William.

The young men of Wall Street are easy to spot. They are tall, with good posture, broad shoulders, and brute good looks. They wear their hair clipped close against their skull, and they wear their shirts open, no tie, their collars stiff and cut close and angling out instead of down the front of the shirt. Their biceps are large and their dogs are tiny. We see about five or six of them a day. Many of the visibly successful neighborhood regulars work in real estate, which has a more varied fashion palette. The guys in the mesh-back jackets with the branding numbers, who wander out of the stock exchange looking like fat horse jockeys, are mostly middle aged and exhausted looking. They are even fewer than the bright young pricks. The crowd is half tourist, a quarter residents.

Apparently the converted office space is not terribly expensive for Manhattan. Young people rent these apartments, often young adorable couples or absurdly attractive young women. I see the residents with dogs much more often than the rest, because they have a reason to pass by several times a day. Some look like students, most look like young professionals, all seem unconcerned by money, preoccupied by fashion and tiny dogs and whatever exactly it is that they do.

There’s another long essay to be written on what the young of my city is wearing these days. I won’t get into it here. Also awaiting the second installment: a description of the particular street personalities I’ve watched. There are a few so regular I’ve developed cute, judgemental monikers for them. Tune in next week… the adventures of Twitchy!

The simplest story is that of the tourists. They flatter me. I charm them. They mistake me for a knowledgeable, native New Yorker, and I do my best to live up to their hopes, simultaneously aiming to convince them that this city is reasonably friendly after all. If you are walking slowly in a subway station hallway, especially if you are answering your phone at the top of the station stairs, you are unforgivable and I will glare at you with all the glare I can muster. If I am not doing anything, and you approach and ask politely for directions, I will forgive you your ignorance, and in fact be grateful for the opportunity to be appear magnanimous and expert.

The Americans I see I automatically assume are from “The Midwest,” wherever that is. I think for our purposes it includes every corner of the country outside of California, New England, Pennsylvania and Jersey. They seem easy to please. They drift, in family groups, leaning back to take pictures of the towers and the church. Everyone loves posing with the Tiffany & Co. sign, which features large golden letters at a height that allows the cheesy smile to be brought right alongside it with only a slightly ridiculous crouch. I’d guess that one out of every three groups that pass it feel compelled to snap the photo.

Our international visitors look to my untrained eye to be largely Germans, Scandinavians, and other broadly blond, odd yet attractive Northern and Central Europeans. We also get a generous sprinkling of Italians, French, Spaniards, and Canadians. The Asians, mostly Chinese and Japanese, are the most likely to be walking down the street with a camcorder recording uninterrupted, a practice that I find slightly less distasteful than boiling children alive. Some pose for still photographs of their companions every few feet without placing any identifiable landmarks, or indeed anything nice to look at, in the background.

They all ask for the bull. American, foreign, embarrassing and savvy, they all came to Wall Street to see the bull. The bull, dear readers, is not on Wall Street. This fact causes endless frustration. I am in charge of directing the travellers to he statue, east two blocks and down three, throwing in hand gestures, directional markers, and occasionally the Spanish word for “left,” izquierda, which I was delighted to discover I still remember from high school.

A diminutive Asian man, in a thick accent it took me a few attempts to decipher, once asked me directions to “the golden cow.” Another time a portly American gentleman (a Midwesterner, I believe), told me he was looking for the bull to punch it. It is strange to watch kids from a dozen countries hang on the horns, fondle the testicles, and generally lap up this oddest of symbols while the Street itself is in such disarray, actively cannibalizing the ancient office space for luxury apartments. Most tourists give no indication that they understand that Wall Street is no longer Wall Street. If they know, it doesn’t seem to affect their behavior. I point the way to the
bull a half dozen times a day, closely followed by the stock exchange and the federal reserve. That one I had to look up. It’s an imposing stone building two or three blocks north of the Street, and since I’ve identified it, every time I pass I stare. There’s little hope I’ll learn anything about the confusion, fear, and hubris percolating within by watching the walls. Still. It seems now an ominous, quiet building. The cocky men in flashy suits who still, though their numbers are thinned, strut down Wall like hedonistic teenage Greek gods, would be preferable masters of the world. Their ugliness seems simple, honest, their behavior predictable and sure, compared to inscrutable bureaucrats and civil servants hiding just out of sight up William.

The young men of Wall Street are easy to spot. They are tall, with good posture, broad shoulders, and brute good looks. They wear their hair clipped close against their skull, and they wear their shirts open, no tie, their collars stiff and cut close and angling out instead of down the front of the shirt. Their biceps are large and their dogs are tiny. We see about five or six of them a day. Many of the visibly successful neighborhood regulars work in real estate, which has a more varied fashion palette. The guys in the mesh-back jackets with the branding numbers, who wander out of the stock exchange looking like fat horse jockeys, are mostly middle aged and exhausted looking. They are even fewer than the bright young pricks. The crowd is half tourist, a quarter residents.

Apparently the converted office space is not terribly expensive for Manhattan. Young people rent these apartments, often young adorable couples or absurdly attractive young women. I see
the residents with dogs much more often than the rest, because they have a reason to pass by several times a day. Some look like students, most look like young professionals, all seem unconcerned by money, preoccupied by fashion and tiny dogs and whatever exactly it is that
they do.

There’s another long essay to be written on what the young of my city is wearing these days. I won’t get into it here. Also awaiting the second installment: a description of the particular street personalities I’ve watched. There are a few so regular I’ve developed cute, judgemental monikers for them. Tune in next week… the adventures of Twitchy!

Mindful Self Indulgence

Virginia Postrel wrote a wonderful little piece in The Atlantic a while back which clears up something I’d never been able to articulate. If rich people spend their money on things they don’t need to signal their wealth to others, why is so much of the luxury market focused on intimate things like spas, bathrooms, kitchen counters, vacations, and meals consumed in the privacy of one’s own home?

The caricature of the first wealthy Americans, those who gathered their assets as industrialization, modern transportation, and urbanization turned us into an economic powerhouse in the 1880s, has them both stupidly flashy (at the expense of real comforts and useful amenities) and grossly overweight. For these memes we have the writings of Thorstein Veblen and the cartoons of Thomas Nast to thank, as well as the relationship of these simplifications to reality; I’d love to find some real numbers on the subjects, but I have no doubt that members of our first leisure class did weigh more than their parents and did spend a sizable portion of their assets on visible, status enhancing symbols of wealth. The Victorians had the sitting room, a space expensively and impressively decorated to receive visitors, which contrasted with the lack of expense devoted to the interior rooms the family would privately live. In a world where everyone would pretty much fit our description of poverty, those who could afford to spent a good portion of their energies proving to others that they deserved a different status. The contrast of a thin, malnourished working class with a lazy, obese ruling class is also repeated over and over in culture for a reason. Those for whom wealth was no longer a limiting factor on caloric intake overindulged, sometimes in epic ways, not having any models of moderation or culture of sustainable indulgence. Taft, famously our fattest president, actually exemplifies the attempts to learn how to become and remain healthy in a world of temptation. He dieted several times over the course of his life, careening from 243 to 320 pounds, then back down, then back up, then back down.

Since then, the wealthiest Americans, while retaining their love of luxury, glamor, and comfort, have radically shifted their consumption habits. Privacy seems to trump visibility, even in such incredible purchases as islands and multi-million dollar estates tucked away from the world. In a world where the majority of adults can afford a car, many millionaires make themselves inconspicuous on our roadways, choosing luxury sedans indistinguishable from or identical to middle class transportation, unlike their predecessors who set themselves far apart with their carriages. The hidden heart of the luxurious home, the designer kitchen and the custom bathroom, became the destination of more expense than any other rooms. The waistlines of the rich slimmed, and we arrived at the current reality: being overweight is a concern of the poor and lower middle class, and those who live well connected to good food, gyms, a variety of experience and diverse opportunities for outdoor and otherwise physical pursuits, the rich, are fitter overall than the average American.

Simultaneously, we have reinvigorated the conspicuous consumption meme with the coinage of “bling,” a near-ubiquitous shorthand for purchases whose sole purpose is to be seen and to display the wealth of the buyer. Interestingly, those doing this buying, and this displaying, are not the most wealthy, but the recently wealthy, and their imitators in middle America. Our new caricature, of the rapper quickly elevated into the luxury class by an album contract, is strikingly similar to that of our robber barons: obviously expensive cars, jewelery whose lack of beauty just serves to heighten the focus on its cost, and flashy domiciles proudly presented on television.

Postrel reviews the latest research into consumption patterns and unearths a seemingly obvious truth: “The less money your peer group has, the more bling you buy – and vice-versa.” Conspicuous consumption is not the degenerate desination of capitalist wealth accumulation, but a stepping stone, a phase, through which cultural groups pass as they seek to solidify in the public mind their distance from their former peers. In this stage, wealth is famously mismanaged, as in the case of MC Hammer or nine out of ten lottery winners. It is spent primarily on things that lose value (cars) as opposed to things that gain in value (investments). Overindulgence, whether of the quaint caloric variety or the more damaging phychotropic kind, is widespread.

This seems to be good news for two reasons. One: conspicuous consumption, in its most damaging, value-destroying form, is largely temporary. It seems to last a generation. The children of the newly rich are the always rich, for whom strategies for managing great wealth and great opportunity are de rigueur. Their worries are not so much how to prove to other that they have wealth, but how to enjoy it and live with it; their peers are not poor. Spending shifts “from goods to services and experiences.” Two: in the 1880s we were really poor! This is fantastic. Those robber barons, those masters of the universe, were recent arrivals to the world of wealth, whose lives starkly contrasted with those of their parents and peers, and must have wasted so much correcting for this. Most middle class Americans have, least in large part, already moved beyond that “bling” culture. We now value economy and luxury in an interesting mix. We’re healthier, too, and it looks like the future will only offer more of the same.

Maybe we will all be so fit someday as to make one piece jumpers a sensible military uniform. Then again, maybe that’s just too much to hope for.