Essay from 8 May 2003

The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have done to you. ”Isn’t this the basis of all morality? The Rule, or something that sounds like it, is resonates in the sayings of Jesus Christ, Rabbi Hillel, and Plato, and this is just from freshman year readings. Hamurabi tried to legislate it, Phil Collins set it to music. Surely no one alive today can be unfamiliar with it. So why is this morality business so complicated? Let me simplistically try to boil down the all the squabbling to a matter of definition. Who exactly are those “others”? And what do we really mean by “as”? (And don’t worry – I’m not trying to pull a Clinton here. )

“Others”

Is an apple or an almond one of those “others”? If so, a person who wants to lead a moral life would starve or feel guilty. Come to think of it, the script-writer who put the “Fruitarian” meme in “Notting Hill” probably does go about his or her life feeling vaguely guilty. That’s what makes
a humorist funny, right? But, humor aside, what is a moral person to think? Are you so exceedingly secure that you cannot possibly imagine one of the following scenarios?

1. You are an apple dreaming that you are human.
   
   
2. Some Gargantuan out there will regard you as you regard an apple.
   
   
3. The Cosmos contains a finite risk that you will be reincarnated as an apple.
   
   
4. The God you believe in can choose to recycle your soul into the equivalent of a
   couple thousand apples.
   

If you possess absolute certainty that you never were and never could be an apple, then I do not begrudge you that certainty. In fact, I’d probably sleep better if I too
had your faith. You probably trust your God to reveal to you who the worthy “others” are, what the “as” implies, and I’m sure you have better things to do than finish this article. For the rest of you, hang on.

For an individual conscience with no outside reference,
there really is no way to keep out all guilt associated with combining the Golden Rule with a survival instinct. “To
be” necessarily implies someone else not being. It’s just a question of how much guilt you choose to tolerate. Sticking with the matter of food choices, I personally would eat a cow but not a chimpanzee. My wife would eat a chicken but not a cow. I’ve never tried starvation, or dog meat, but let us put aside the “Fressen” part of this discussion of morals[1], and move on.

The individual conscience is not, after all, the most
frequently consulted arbiter of morality. This is a good thing: who has the time to come to ten impossible
conclusions before breakfast each dayhref="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title="">[2]? More moral decisions are made by Hamurabi’s heirs than Plato’s. Slipping back into the real world without necessarily resolving the issue of it’s existence, we all agree that the
powerful decide what is right, and the rest of us argue about whether we agree with the powerful or not. We have no first-hand knowledge of the historical “Powerful” but second-hand evidence shows a strong historical need for a universalistic god to justify, this state of affairs. “If God made gave us dominion, then we must be superior. ”It
can be arguedtitle="">[3] only monotheists can make that case. The polytheists would counter-argue “Your god beat ours today, but this is no guarantee of tomorrow”. All the same, to cut short a fascinating historical review of power and religion, neither view is terribly relevant to most
powerful. In 2003, the viewpoint, insofar as one exists, of the most powerful United States of America, is that our power derives from our freedom, our justice, and our courage.

In simpler terms, we are powerful because we choose to follow and enforce the Golden Rule, and we choose to define “other” as inclusive of all human beings willing to live by the Rule. It takes some studying to realize just how
radical this view is. We beat the British in 1776 when we abolished the distinction between the homeland and the
colony. We beat the Germans in 1944 in part because the Einsteins and Oppenheimers of Europe felt assured, on coming here, of being done unto as the Mayflower
descendants would have had done to them (phew). We included the blacks, and that gave us even more power. We have a system with enough flexibility that any sub-group can become equal if it displays enough eloquence (e. g. a group which can give rise to a Martin Luther King Jr. ) to convince us that they are our equals. Brain drain is our secret weapon, and our back-up is the creation and export of universal human desirables: dance videos form the Italian Madonna, song lyrics from the black Michael Jackson, ludicrously symmetrical oversized photographs of the German-invented Big Mac, and so
forth. Those were the weapons that defeated Communism, that other universalist non-theistic morality, differing only on the “as” dimension described below. And those weapons will remain honed forever if we never lose track of our fundamental definition: “other” is anyone who can argue a case for being our equal. When a
chimpanzee writes “A Tree of One’s Own” or a dolphin writes “My Escape from Sea
World”, our system can and will bring them in.
Our system will remain powerful and our power will define morality for
the weak. But will they wee things “as”
we see them? This is our next major
topic.

“As”

As I almost mentioned before, I prefer beef to chicken, and
my wife prefers chicken to beef. Suppose
I belong to a society where women are part of the “other” unto whom to do
[…]. Would my socially imposed morals
dictate that I swap her chicken fajitas for carne asada
for her own good? After all, this is
what I would have done to me!style='mso-spacerun:yes'> But wait.
It is what I would have done to me, true, but it is not AS I would have
done to me. To my wife, chicken-for-beef
is AS beef-for-chicken is to me. This is
why it is important to have “others” who can communicate their preferences. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> It is not only more moral to give each person
their preferred basket of goods and not yours, but it is also the basis of
wealth creation on the capitalist system we (the powerful) hold dear.

Speaking of capitalism, what was it about Communism that led
to its demise? Easy. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> For communism, equality was a universal
quality and freedom was a relative one.
In other words, freedom for me is not necessarily “as” freedom for you,
but equality for me is by definition “as” equality is for you. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> It’s a point of view, so hear it out. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> If this point of view were valid for human
beings, then we might have had, as many in the 70s imagined we would, a
perpetual division between people like Orson Scott Card and Ayn
Rand on one side of the ocean, and people like Ted Kaczinski
andJohn Lennon
on the other. Neither would have been
ipso facto more powerful that the other.
The status quo would have lasted forever given either genetic
heritability of the preference trait ,or free
migration of adults between the two nations.

Well, as it turns out, it was pretty early on that one side
had to limit immigration and the other had to limit emigration. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> This should have been a tip-off, but somehow
to many it was not. And in the end, it
was only “Force and Lies”name="_ftnref4" title="">[4]
that held people in the social system that codified the communist definition of
“as”. We’ll never know (class=SpellE>Pixar and Dreamworks films class=SpellE>nonwithstanding) whether the tenets of communism might have
worked for ants, but they certainly were not for humans.

Is this the end of the “as” question? style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Not by a long shot. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> There are other differences about the “as”
which remain unresolved. Is admitting a
black person to Michigan State
with an SAT score of 1400 “as” admitting a white person with an SAT score of
1450? Is living in Amman
“as” living in Haifa for a
non-Jewish Haifan, whereas living in Warsaw
is not “as” living in Kiryat Shmona
for a Khazar Jew?
Is wearing a headscarf to a Sorbonne classroom to a muslim
woman “as” wearing a bra for a non-feminist atheist in the same classroom? Or is it “as” wearing a swastika armband to an exchange student from Waco,Texas? The list goes on, as do the arguments.

The truth is, we really do not have a foolproof way to deal with questions like these. We can count ourselves fortunate to live in a world where the most powerful society allows itself to be convinced by a sound argument that appeals to a majority of its very diverse voters. An idea can tip the balance, because any good idea will have its time come much sooner in such a society. And we can also derive some solace from knowing that today’s technology of power depends on a diverse population convinced of the morality of its government: scientists who will not hide their output and soldiers who will not hide their uniforms in battle and factory workers who need not hide a pregnancy to stay employed. But we have no way to unequivocally decide many questions, beyond the arena of pubic opinion and the arena of, well, the Arena.

But there are two questions on which I do want to throw an argument into the first arena.

I hear otherwise sane people argue that the citizens of a terror-abetting dictatorship are morally not entitled to the same rights as the citizens of a democracy. Does having an abusive parent give the school bully a right to take your lunch money? Only if the school teachers allow it. Either because they believe that since right makes might, then automatically might makes right. Or because the abuse resulted in a speech impediment and the teacher was too lazy to listen carefully enough to the victim. I wish the citizens of globo-schoolmarm America would listen harder to the abused child with a speech impediment rather than to the eloquent son of a Harvard lawyer. I personally am very glad that George W. Bush’s “roadmap” for Middle Eastern peace treats both sides as equally “other” both in rights and obligations. But I worry about his chances of holding his ground when people who normally would vote for him fail to see the fallacy at the root of their disagreement.

The other question is much simpler. I have read an argument that peace is “as” submission to someone who thinks in the Arabic language. I could recommend a course in Arabic morphology, but a simple analogy would make my point almost as well. Don’t “capitalism” and “capitulation” also come from the same root?

---

[1] Reference to Bertolt Brech’s “Erst kommt das Fressen dann Kommt die Moral” in “Three Penny Opera”

[2] Reference to Douglas Adams “Restaurant at the End of the Universe”

[3] See, for example, Karen Armstrong’s “Holy Wars”

[4] Partial title of book by Vaclav Havel

Update from 19 April 2002

Dear Friends,

I finally got around to it - a diary entry for one day in my life as Assistant Professor of Engineering Management.

I could see the minute hand of my watch through half-closed eyes. It Was at the top notch - on the hour. But which hour? If it's 8:00 am, then I'm late for my 8:00 am lecture. I squint and see that it's actually 6:00 am. I can sleep for another 20 minutes or so if I am going to have enough time to prepare a lecture between 7 and 8. I look around. Jetti seems to have once again eaten something that did not agree with her, and hence was sleeping in the other room to be closer to the bathroom. She has baby Zane, who breastfeeds in his sleep. Aidan has also left his room, and, in his usual 2-year-old value-maximizing way, was occupying all the space vacated by the two of them, sleeping sideways with his feet against my chest.

During the 20-minute nap, which drags on to 30 minutes, I repeatedly reassure myself that it is not 8 instead of 6. We were either too sleepy or too hot last night to close the windows, and now it was raining and cold. This finally impels me to get up and start closing windows at 6:30. I decide that this will be the day to write the long-promised diary for Kate. I have two hours between my 8-9 lecture and the 11:20 doctor's appointment where Zane will get his first vaccinations. That should get me started. I had planned to work on a paper due April 22nd for a July 15th conference in Italy, but the provost's secretary had called on Tuesday saying that I will not get funding to go to that conference.

Since for once I am up before Aidan, I have the luxury of taking a morningtime shower. I have to pick Aidan's bath toys up from the tub, and hunt for a sliver of soap that he has not dissolved for fun the day before. The late April rains outside attest to the richness of Lebanon's water resources. Being at AUB is a double bonus because we actually have a water distribution system that has not been ravaged by petty politics and amoral urban planning. I take a nice long shower without worrying (as I would outside at my parents') about running out of water.

What do I think of in the shower? I try to figure out why I am so worried about the events in the Palestinian cities. I philosophize in the shower (hey, it's more quiet than singing, except for those of you who wind up getting my emails on the topic) that the progress of humankind since the industrial revolution owed a lot to the widening perception that there is justice, rule of law, and individual accountability. In other words, I can only work at my full productivity when I am allowed to stop worrying that someone may either 1) assault me with impunity because there is no law, or 2) assault me with impunity because his person is above the law, or 3) assault me in retaliation of someone else's wrongdoing.

Even when all of the above principles were not operating, as long as enough people believed that they were, progress was possible. Now, hearing that 3 million Palestinians were individually suffering for the actions of a few thousand who had killed 300, I feel personally threatened. When terrorist bombs were going off in Beirut, I knew that I only had a one in 10,000 chance of being affected, so I could go on even when everyone else was panicking. But now, ....

My shower ended before I could articulate my thought. I decide to wear a tie for the first time in a month, since I am going to need a nice shirt to wear under the rain jacket. Nice shirts look cheap when the collar is open, and a closed collar without a tie evokes fundamentalism. On my way out, I grab a slice of the BEST sourdough bread this side of San Francisco, the product of several months of trial and error in our kitchen. It is still good.

The rain has stopped and the view of the Mediterranean on my 5-minute walk to the office is priceless. I idly wonder if I will have trouble getting into the building. I have the outdoor key, but I do not carry it. The concept of master keys is not unheard of here, but I guess it is a "special topic" in locksmith school, and few ever take it. I have a key to the office, a key to the corridor outside the office, a key to the faculty-only elevator, and a key to my mailbox. Not carrying the outside door key is my only silent protest against this medievalism.

Door is open. I get to the office at 7:15, and wonder if I should start the diary now before preparing my lecture. NO..... Must...... Have..... Willpower..... It's no use, I start compiling the list of names to receive the email. On autopilot, I fire up BBC-online, and laugh out loud at the headline: " The authorities in Milan are investigating why a light aircraft flew into the city's largest skyscraper, killing three people."

Three people died, I should not laugh. But the headline is comical. A new meme has entered the collective conscious. Well, time to do the lecture. I am learning this material as I go on, and I found a topic not in the book that I think they should cover, so I have to make some notes from another text. It's OK - I cover the material for the 5 or 6 students who are there. Do I have a moral duty, since the material is not in the textbook, to produce written notes for the 2 or 3 who are not in today? Or should I be lazy and not ask any exam questions on the topic? Can't decide, so I get on with the diary.

I have already told my graduate class that their term project will be a virtual construction project game, where they will play different contractors and I will play God. Many asked of more clarification because they wanted to know how to structure their teams. So one of my tasks for today is to flesh out my own thoughts to email to the class. I'm designing this course as I go along, so this exercise will be useful for me as well as for them. Another task is to investigate how I can teach in summer to earn some money, given that I still plan to travel to the US from June 21st to June 15th. I send out a couple of emails. It is now 10:20, and I realize that if this is to be a complete diary of today, the diary entry will read "today I sat down and wrote the words you see before you." Zeno's paradox (The spell checker wanted to make this Zane's Paradix but I did not share its sense of humor). Instead, I resolve to finish by 11:00. So, to make a full-day's worth of adventures, Let me tell you about the last time we went to get vaccinations.

We had made two appointments, one for Aidan's 2-year and one for Zane's 2-month check-up. We had forgotten which was Wednesday and which was Friday, so we decided to trek it up the hill (a flight of about 200 stairs) together. Vicky, the nanny, will then take the child who is not getting shots for a walk, and mommy and daddy will be there to comfort the one who is. I got home from my office 10 minutes before the appointment and find that Vicky and Aidan are still out and Jetti and Zane were still not dressed. I call Vicky at the house where Aidan has his play date and ask her to meet us up at the infirmary, grab Zane, and run up the hillside stairs to avoid having to wait a whole hour due to a missed appointment. Up at the infirmary, the nurse tells me it is Aidan's appointment. So I have to wait for them after all.

A pharmaceuticals sales rep sneaks in to see the doctor ahead of us. Not a patient, hence less wait time. We go in, and we show the doctor the vaccines we bought with her prescription from last time. Jetti wanted to get the US standard vaccines, which are not covered by our Lebanese health insurance, and the doctor was nice enough to give us the US list and a prescription for its contents. Well, what do you know, we forgot to bring Aidan's vaccination record, and no one can remember which shots are for Zane and which are for Aidan. In addition, the Diphtheria, Tetanus, acellular Pertussis (DTaP) vaccine that Jetti was so keen to get because it has a three-in-a-million complication rate instead of three in one hundred thousand for the old "DTP" vaccine was not what the pharmacist had given her! She only had a "DT", for Diphtheria and Tetanus, with no Pertussis component at all. She was mad because she clearly asked in English for the correct vaccine, but she was also sort-of happy because no one had had to get shots that day.

After we leave the doctor's office, I volunteer to go to the pharmacy myself, since I can speak Arabic with the Pharmacist and, more importantly, since I could read the fine print in English on the box. I took Aidan, who felt like a longer walk. The pharmacist heard my complaint, sent in the guy to replace my DT-VAX box, and promptly produced a DTP vaccine. I immediately pointed out to the "DTaP" on the prescription, and quickly obtained a refund (of US $1.25) for the vaccine that I had no use for. "Try the hospital pharmacy" they said.

I walked down the hill to campus, pulling Aidan away from tempting store displays of "oosh" and "bo" (shoes and balls) and a newly fascinating object, which I taught him to call "bade" (rollerblade). He was not giving as much of a hard time chasing after "bike" and "ban" (mopeds and minivans) while we navigated the two crowded streets. Once on campus, he wanted to play with a "tat" and look at a "beeg nook" (cat and snail - don't ask me how it became "nook".)

We got home and did not find anyone. I decided to get the new vaccine from a pharmacy I knew down the seashore road. Best way to get there: bicycle. I entice Aidan with cries of "big ba-bye, big bike" to keep him from wandering off and doing any damage. I move the plastic lawn furniture from our front balcony, where the adult bicycles are hanging from two pulleys on the ceiling. I bring down the bike and wheel it to the corridor outside our second-story apartment. I then get the baby trailer from the balcony and put it next the the bike. Somehow, while I am changing into a T-shirt, Aidan gets his baby tricycle stuck between the two massive objects now in the corridor outside out door, and he trips the bike's kick-stand. He spends the next minute holding up the bike that is about to fall on him, and crying "daddy, daddy". Strong baby. Note to self: always check before assuming that "daddy daddy" is a call for a playmate instead of a cry for help.

So off we go, baby in trailer, me on bicycle, scores of people on the sidewalk smiling at the unique sight of a consumer product not regularly imported into their third world nation. Cars too, but let's not get into that. The first pharmacy does not have it, but he know where to get any vaccine: another pharmacy at the top of the hill. Shift into low gear and climb climb climb. On the way, I see another pharmacy and wonder if they might have it, but it is too steep to park the bike and trailer. One guy offers to help me climb on the foot high sidewalk to park sideways. I do not want to block the whole sidewalk like one of the uncivilized cars I had to navigate around. Instead I ask for directions to the pharmacy whose name I have, and he says it's two more blocks uphill. By time I get there and ask for DTaP (which they have, at $14) I am ready to black out. Out of shape. I have to sit down to avoid falling down. I assume that part of my condition is due to dehydration, and they were kind enough to give me a drink of water.

Well, the rest is a bit of a blur. I could not go back home through campus because they do not allow bicycle traffic on their roads. The way I had come would have required an uphill portion which I was not ready to take on.So I had to finish a clock-wise circumnavigation of campus. No big deal, except that the elementary school next to the campus gate I need to get to was letting out just then. Had I been in a car, I would have preferred to take a 2-hour circular drive before going home rather than be stuck in the parent-child pick-up traffic. - and I did not mean that in a NAMBLA sense . In a bike, I decided to risk it. It took almost no time to get to the alleyway where the school was. There, with one car parked on the left sidewalk and one on the right sidewalk and one on the road, there was barely room for the bike and trailer to sqeeze by. Until, that is, we got trapped behind a late model Cadillac. Not quite pink, but light in color. And they of course were going even more slowly than the next car because both the driver and the passenger had to keep watching for scrape potential on the side view mirrors as the passed all the parked cars.

Luckily, by then, Aidan was asleep in his 5-point harness, so I took it easy and waited for he Cadillac. At one intersection, we decided to pull out and let an irate black Mercedes SUV through. The lady inside it now had to wait for the pink Cadillac, which was somewhat more insulated against her honking. We made it home 15 minutes later. I dropped the sleeping Aidan in his bed, made sure mommy and baby did not need anything, and walked back to the office to catch up with my grading.

Letter form 16 November 2001

Hi

Remember that it is just as easy to kill a thread by over-feeding as by starvation. Be glad that we are as sporadic as we are! Given the passage of time, only more of the same is happening. Aidan continues to be popular with all, form the butcher to the bookstore owner to all the girls on campus. Students tell me that they have fun with my assignment, although they take a long time to do, so I gave them a week off from homework. And, mom insists on buying jewelry and eveningwear for Jetti to make her feel as loved as the other in-laws. Samer is getting engaged next week, so now mom will have to daughters-in-law in addition to her three sons-in-law. Of course Jetti hates jewels and is reluctant to get clothes while in her current inflated state of girth, but maybe with the help of a tailor we can get something alterable. Not my headache.

How surprising that Thanksgiving is upon us again so soon. Jetti wants to host something at our new house, and we have an invitation from the Provost to a dinner at his house. I suspect the Provost's dinner will be on a Saturday, which leaves Thursday free for Jetti to play hostess for the first time. We have our fake hardwood floors and artfully repainted walls now, and curtains will arrive today. We exchanged our university-owned living room furniture for a less bulky set to make room for our old couch, and we will probably get the new stuff from AUB by next Monday, although the prognosis is bleak for delivery of our shipment from the US before Thanksgiving. The ship has already unloaded our belongings at the port, but the paperwork from the Lebanese Consulate in LA is still pending. They claimed I did not send them a copy of my green card when I mailed the packing list in September. They had just sat on the file and waited for my call, which I made last Friday. Monday I faxed them the missing copy, so maybe I'll have the packing list in two weeks, maybe three. And without that notarized, legalized list, the AUB fixers cannot clear the container from customs. So we wile away the time working on cutting, painting and installing molding on the walls of our empty living room.

I hope you too will discover the joys of entertaining. Hopefully and especially as part of a couple. How is Delphine, by the way? I wonder if she felt bad about the comment I made in your hotel room in Stowe about how I always considered her a physically warm and hug-friendly person. I later thought that I might have somehow either negated her own self-image in that regard, or maybe publicized something that was not appropriate for the audience. I did not give the matter much thought, but I have occasionally wondered why she was no longer in touch.

I do not know what to say about Afghanistan. I am reading "A Peace to End All Peace" about the end of the Ottoman Empire right now. The more I read about recent history, the more I realize how little things have changed. What used to be said and published in the days of overt colonialism is still being thought and acted upon today. I therefore value more than ever before the modicum of genuine universal humanist sentiment that echoes around in democratic debate. Most of the language is co-opted by sophisticated spin-savvy crypto-supremacist thinkers, but I cannot let go of my faith that some people of some real power really regard our part of the world as peers and equals, not as perpetual charges to the powerful. I wonder if your estimation of the darkening and hardening of American public opinion is based on a shift in the segment of the population that you are observing. I was initially more taken aback because I heard what the Limbaughs and Savages and Dr. Phyllis's of daytime talk radio were saying and what their callers were saying back. Those people do exist and do have a say in how your country is run, including actual (as opposed to publicly pronounced and possibly originally intended) selection of targets for military hostile action.

I cannot agree with you about the possible benevolence of Soviet colonialism in Afghanistan. They wanted first to mould the population in their image, and only second to heal and educate. My guiding principle in understanding human affairs is that people are people, so I shun any analysis that attributes political and popular decisions to mass hysteria, cultural inscrutableness, or inherited irrationality. People react badly to things they consider bad for them. Afghanis fought Russians because they wanted to keep their national identity. They are just as rational as the US foreign policy wonks who wanted to keep Russia from expanding, or as the Russian planning committees which wanted this expansion. Most horribly, I cannot stand the pronouncements of Israeli-paid public relations minders who propagate the idea that Arabs fight Zionist expansion because of an irrational hatred for Jews. Duh, here I go again. On to more pleasant topics:

Do give my love to Taylors and their guests. If you can convince Jeff to dial in to his AOL chat, maybe we can actually exchange live greetings at a pre-agreed time. Did you folks go off daylight saving time yet? If not, then I can come in at midnight and you'd have 6 pm. If you do "Fall Back" before the 22nd, then I'd still come in at midnight and you'd have 5 pm. Either way, what do you say?

Update from 6 October 2001

Dear Friends,

I finally got around to it - a diary entry for one day in my life as Assistant Professor of Engineering Management.

I could see the minute hand of my watch through half-closed eyes. It was at the top notch - on the hour. But which hour? If it's 8:00 am, then I'm late for my 8:00 am lecture. I squint and see that it's actually 6:00 am. I can sleep for another 20 minutes or so if I am going to have enough time to prepare a lecture between 7 and 8. I look around. Jetti seems to have once again eaten something that did not agree with her, and hence was sleeping in the other room to be closer to the bathroom. She has baby Zane, who breastfeeds in his sleep. Aidan has also left his room, and, in his usual 2-year-old value-maximizing way, was occupying all the space vacated by the two of them, sleeping sideways with his feet against my chest.

During the 20-minute nap, which drags on to 30 minutes, I repeatedly reassure myself that it is not 8 instead of 6. We were either too sleepy or too hot last night to close the windows, and now it was raining and cold. This finally impels me to get up and start closing windows at 6:30. I decide that this will be the day to write the long-promised diary for Kate. I have two hours between my 8-9 lecture and the 11:20 doctor's appointment where Zane will get his first vaccinations. That should get me started. I had planned to work on a paper due April 22nd for a July 15th conference in Italy, but the provost's secretary had called on Tuesday saying that I will not get funding to go to that conference.

Since for once I am up before Aidan, I have the luxury of taking a morningtime shower. I have to pick Aidan's bath toys up from the tub, and hunt for a sliver of soap that he has not dissolved for fun the day before. The late April rains outside attest to the richness of Lebanon's water resources. Being at AUB is a double bonus because we actually have a water distribution system that has not been ravaged by petty politics and amoral urban planning. I take a nice long shower without worrying (as I would outside at my parents') about running out of water.

What do I think of in the shower? I try to figure out why I am so worried about the events in the Palestinian cities. I philosophize in the shower (hey, it's more quiet than singing, except for those of you who wind up getting my emails on the topic) that the progress of humankind since the industrial revolution owed a lot to the widening perception that there is justice, rule of law, and individual accountability. In other words, I can only work at my full productivity when I am allowed to stop worrying that someone may either 1) assault me with impunity because there is no law, or 2) assault me with impunity because his person is above the law, or 3) assault me in retaliation of someone else's wrongdoing.

Even when all of the above principle were not operating, as long as enough people believed that they were, progress was possible. Now, hearing that 3 million Palestinians were individually suffering for the actions of a few thousand who had killed 300, I feel personally threatened. When terrorist bombs were going off in Beirut, I knew that I only had a one in 10,000 chance of being affected, so I could go on even when everyone else was panicking. But now, ....

My shower ended before I could articulate my thought. I decide to wear a tie for the first time in a month, since I am going to need a nice shirt to wear under the rain jacket. Nice shirts look cheap when the collar is open, and a closed collar without a tie evokes fundamentalism. On my way out, I grab a slice of the BEST sourdough bread this side of San Francisco, the product of several months of trial and error in our kitchen. It is still good.

The rain has stopped and the view of the Mediterranean on my 5-minute walk to the office is priceless. I idly wonder if I will have trouble getting into the building. I have the outdoor key, but I do not carry it. The concept of master keys is not unheard of here, but I guess it is a "special topic" in locksmith school, and few ever take it. I have a key to the office, a key to the corridor outside the office, a key to the faculty-only elevator, and a key to my mailbox. Not carrying the outside door key is my only silent protest against this medievalism.

Door is open. I get to the office at 7:15, and wonder if I should start the diary now before preparing my lecture. NO..... Must...... Have..... Willpower..... It's no use, I start compiling the list of names to receive the email. On autopilot, I fire up BBC-online, and laugh out loud at the headline: " The authorities in Milan are investigating why a light aircraft flew into the city's largest skyscraper, killing three people."

Three people died, I should not laugh. But the headline is comical. A new meme has entered the collective conscious. Well, time to do the lecture. I am learning this material as I go on, and I found a topic not in the book that I think they should cover, so I have to make some notes from another text. It's OK - I cover the material for the 5 or 6 students who are there. Do I have a moral duty, since the material is not in the textbook, to produce written notes for the 2 or 3 who are not in today? Or should I be lazy and not ask any exam questions on the topic? Can't decide, so I get on with the diary.

I have already told my graduate class that their term project will be a virtual construction project game, where they will play different contractors and I will play God. Many asked of more clarification because they wanted to know how to structure their teams. So one of my tasks for today is to flesh out my own thoughts to email to the class. I'm designing this course as I go along, so this exercise will be useful for me as well as for them. Another task is to investigate how I can teach in summer to earn some money, given that I still plan to travel to the US from June 21st to June 15th. I send out a couple of emails. It is now 10:20, and I realize that if this is to be a complete diary of today, the diary entry will read "today I sat down and wrote the words you see before you." Zeno's paradox (The spell checker wanted to make this Zane's Paradix but I did not share its sense of humor). Instead, I resolve to finish by 11:00. So, to make a full-day's worth of adventures, Let me tell you about the last time we went to get vaccinations.

We had made two appointments, one for Aidan's 2-year and one for Zane's 2-month check-up. We had forgotten which was Wednesday and which was Friday, so we decided to trek it up the hill (a flight of about 200 stairs) together. Vicky, the nanny, will then take the child who is not getting shots for a walk, and mommy and daddy will be there to comfort the one who is. I got home from my office 10 minutes before the appointment and find that Vicky and Aidan are still out and Jetti and Zane were still not dressed. I call Vicky at the house where Aidan has his play date and ask her to meet us up at the infirmary, grab Zane, and run up the hillside stairs to avoid having to wait a whole hour due to a missed appointment. Up at the infirmary, the nurse tells me it is Aidan's appointment. So I have to wait for them after all.

A pharmaceuticals sales rep sneaks in to see the doctor ahead of us. Not a patient, hence less wait time. We go in, and we show the doctor the vaccines we bought with her prescription from last time. Jetti wanted to get the US standard vaccines, which are not covered by our Lebanese health insurance, and the doctor was nice enough to give us the US list and a prescription for its contents. Well, what do you know, we forgot to bring Aidan's vaccination record, and no one can remember which shots are for Zane and which are for Aidan. In addition, the Diphtheria, Tetanus, acellular Pertussis (DTaP) vaccine that Jetti was so keen to get because it has a three-in-a-million complication rate instead of three in one hundred thousand for the old "DTP" vaccine was not what the pharmacist had given her! She only had a "DT", for Diphtheria and Tetanus, with no Pertussis component at all. She was mad because she clearly asked in English for the correct vaccine, but she was also sort-of happy because no one had had to get shots that day.

After we leave the doctor's office, I volunteer to go to the pharmacy myself, since I can speak Arabic with the Pharmacist and, more importantly, since I could read the fine print in English on the box. I took Aidan, who felt like a longer walk. The pharmacist heard my complaint, sent in the guy to replace my DT-VAX box, and promptly produced a DTP vaccine. I immediately pointed out to the "DTaP" on the prescription, and quickly obtained a refund (of US $1.25) for the vaccine that I had no use for. "Try the hospital pharmacy" they said.

I walked down the hill to campus, pulling Aidan away from tempting store displays of "oosh" and "bo" (shoes and balls) and a newly fascinating object, which I taught him to call "bade" (rollerblade). He was not giving as much of a hard time chasing after "bike" and "ban" (mopeds and minivans) while we navigated the two crowded streets. Once on campus, he wanted to play with a "tat" and look at a "beeg nook" (cat and snail - don't ask me how it became "nook".)

We got home and did not find anyone. I decided to get the new vaccine from a pharmacy I knew down the seashore road. Best way to get there: bicycle. I entice Aidan with cries of "big ba-bye, big bike" to keep him from wandering off and doing any damage. I move the plastic lawn furniture from our front balcony, where the adult bicycles are hanging from two pulleys on the ceiling. I bring down the bike and wheel it to the corridor outside our second-story apartment. I then get the baby trailer from the balcony and put it next the the bike. Somehow, while I am changing into a T-shirt, Aidan gets his baby tricycle stuck between the two massive objects now in the corridor outside out door, and he trips the bike's kick-stand. He spends the next minute holding up the bike that is about to fall on him, and crying "daddy, daddy". Strong baby. Note to self: always check before assuming that "daddy daddy" is a call for a playmate instead of a cry for help.

So off we go, baby in trailer, me on bicycle, scores of people on the sidewalk smiling at the unique sight of a consumer product not regularly imported into their third world nation. Cars too, but let's not get into that. The first pharmacy does not have it, but he know where to get any vaccine: another pharmacy at the top of the hill. Shift into low gear and climb climb climb. On the way, I see another pharmacy and wonder if they might have it, but it is too steep to park the bike and trailer. One guy offers to help me climb on the foot high sidewalk to park sideways. I do not want to block the whole sidewalk like one of the uncivilized cars I had to navigate around. Instead I ask for directions to the pharmacy whose name I have, and he says it's two more blocks uphill. By time I get there and ask for DTaP (which they have, at $14) I am ready to black out. Out of shape. I have to sit down to avoid falling down. I assume that part of my condition is due to dehydration, and they were kind enough to give me a drink of water.

Well, the rest is a bit of a blur. I could not go back home through campus because they do not allow bicycle traffic on their roads. The way I had come would have required an uphill portion which I was not ready to take on.So I had to finish a clock-wise circumnavigation of campus. No big deal, except that the elementary school next to the campus gate I need to get to was letting out just then. Had I been in a car, I would have preferred to take a 2-hour circular drive before going home rather than be stuck in the parent-child pick-up traffic. - and I did not mean that in a NAMBLA sense . In a bike, I decided to risk it. It took almost no time to get to the alleyway where the school was. There, with one car parked on the left sidewalk and one on the right sidewalk and one on the road, there was barely room for the bike and trailer to sqeeze by. Until, that is, we got trapped behind a late model Cadillac. Not quite pink, but light in color. And they of course were going even more slowly than the next car because both the driver and the passenger had to keep watching for scrape potential on the side view mirrors as the passed all the parked cars.

Luckily, by then, Aidan was asleep in his 5-point harness, so I took it easy and waited for he Cadillac. At one intersection, we decided to pull out and let an irate black Mercedes SUV through. The lady inside it now had to wait for the pink Cadillac, which was somewhat more insulated against her honking. We made it home 15 minutes later. I dropped the sleeping AIdan in his bed, made sure mommy and baby did not need anything, and walked back to the office to catch up with my grading.

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The End

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Back to updating with "Historical" writings

Wanderings from 18 Aug 1998

You wanted me to send you some wisdom. Professionally, I should comment that I'm in the information business, and academically my scope fits into the knowledge paradigm, but wisdom is something else entirely. Wisdom is what you feel in your bones. And in my bones, all I feel is an increasing awareness of my ignorance. My relationship with Jetti has affected deeply in many ways. One great influence was her unashamed criticism of all my shortcomings. Some she fixed immediately - like my fashion sense and personal grooming habits. Others of a more physical nature she gave up on immediately, but I picked up the chore and motivated myself by remembering her disappointment. Patient daily exercise for the past six months is finally yielding results, I'm glad to say. But that none of that is about wisdom.

Her biggest disappointment was discovering that I was weak. I had no "street smarts," no "fighting knowledge". And she was right: I never learned to cope with being yelled at, and I got through 32 years without ever having to make a split-second decision about anything. All my life I was trying to learn, to innovate, to think, to philosophize, to find the meaning of life, to live my life according to moral principles that I could justify. If that is your concept of wisdom, I have tons of old emails and letters I have written on the topic when I thought it was the most worthwhile use of my spare intellectual energy. I had swallowed the line that if you were secure in your moral beliefs and values, you could face any adversity: poverty, torture, loneliness. But that's only part of the story. The monks who faced abusive enemies were accustomed to hard labor; the prisoners of war who kept their sanity in the labor camps were soldiers who had gone through basic military training. Me, what did I have? Memories of physical ineptitude at soccer and other games when I was growing up, and subsequently a drive to stay in shape by working out. Alone at the gym. Memories of being reprimanded for forcing my will on my younger siblings, and subsequently a total absence of any experience in dealing with interpersonal conflict. Thought I was above it.

So where is my wisdom now? Perhaps Plato was right when he said that the young should spend their 20s practicing sports and warfare before starting to study science and philosophy. Or perhaps he was wrong to be so strict about the order. But he is certainly more right than the “self-esteem" school of upbringing that we read about so much in newspaper editorials about public education policy. I am certainly glad that I learned all the science I wanted to learn when I wanted to learn it, and I am proud that it was a difficult task that gave me patience and confidence in dealing with the world at large. But I strongly regret that I did not manage to do anything that gave me similar confidence in dealing directly with human adversaries.

I mastered the paradigm of proving yourself by sitting in a large hall with all one's competitors all facing the same way, being challenged by the same large impersonal authority. It took this past year to show me how vulnerable I was under slightly different rules of engagement. Rules that apply when the adversary stares you right in the eye and can only win by making you lose. School encourages you to think that you have to get along to get ahead. To view consensus as not only desirable but also possible. To wish away the zero-sum game from your thinking. School turns you into a cow. I am sick of being a cow. That is my new wisdom.

I do not necessarily agree with Nietzsche’s "That which does not kill us makes us stronger". What fails to kill us might leave us too weak to survive the next blow. We need love and admiration to thrive. But what meaning can love have if you cannot hate? How can you love your enemies if you refuse to acknowledge that there is such a thing as an enemy? A challenge is not challenging if it is one you face every day. You need to seek new types of challenges to stay strong. War is the art of focusing your greatest force against the opponent’s weakest point. Reinforcing only your strengths might win you a Nobel Prize and a higher standard of living, but it will also get you killed when your cattle master naps and the wolf finds your weak link.

I do not necessarily agree with Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive." The citizen warrior must yearn for peace and aspire to resuming his peacetime vocation. Gazing at your navel is a miserable way to live your life. But greater misery lurks for those who try to follow their star without first covering their flanks. I have charted a course that is noble and true, but I have set out in a leaky boat. I am grateful for the storm that showed me the leak. That is my new wisdom.

It's in my head now. One day, though, I will have gone out and gotten yelled at and ridiculed enough times. I will have yelled and disparaging others enough times. I will have jumped where cattle fears to tread, and injured my udder enough times. And when that day comes, the knowledge will be in my bones as well as in my head. And that, my friend, is my new wisdom.

OK, so this is not really a blog. So sue me.
I found a real blog by someone I actually know. Kirsten has one.