The emperor's clothes
November 27, 2001
By Peter Stair
Inexperienced in the ways of the world, can the young also be clear-eyed prophets? I think yes. And I think we young folks can help others by speaking out more often, more loudly and now.
Others agree that the fresh-minded are often wise. Many professors acknowledge that most of their best ideas come from students still unschooled by conventional thinking. Thomas Kuhn, in his history of science, took this even further, saying that every major shift in human knowledge has come when someone was willing to question the “paradigm” they lived in, whether that paradigm was the Ptolemaic universe or the divine right of kings. Buddhists say that we approach enlightenment by first approaching the world with a simpler mind, the mind of the Buddha. And, in the business world, firms hire consultants, and CEOs like Bill Gates and Andy Grove take sabbaticals in order to see things from a fresh perspective.
As youths it is especially easy for us to have this fresh perspective. Because we haven’t identified ourselves as a cog in the status quo, we are more free to criticize it without feeling we are criticizing our life’s work. We are less invested, less afraid and less indoctrinated. Remember, it was a child who said the king had no clothes.
It is no surprise that modern college students are often the leaders of social change. We have changed the world by starting up high-tech companies and by calling for civil rights for women and minorities.
What is surprising, though, is how easy we seem to think these changes can be. Especially in calls for social justice, we are easily discouraged by the eloquent and confident arguments of our commissars. To be sure, seeking knowledge from those with more experience is a smart strategy. But how often do we trample our intuition with uncertainty? How often do we defer to experts, intelligent people who are nonetheless worthy of suspicion by their very pre-eminence? At what point do we stop thinking for ourselves?
Nazism, slavery and feudalism were once eloquently explained by men of great prominent and respectability. Almost undoubtedly these men told young folks that they didn’t understand how the world worked, or that certain things were just human nature.
Which of our current customs will our grandchildren consider abhorrent?
I’m not sure, but I’m virtually certain that there are some. And I, a 21-year-old, am going to risk being wrong by saying what I feel.
We are deteriorating both the physical environment upon which we depend for survival and the human connections upon which we depend for meaning. Both are the result of our societal
infrastructure.
I think many of us realize this already. I think it is a big fat elephant in the room that few are talking about.
We may not say it, or even profess to believe it, because our understanding often lies below the level of our frontal lobes. But our bodies know: we are perpetually stressed, under-slept, over-fed and loaded with various drugs and synthetic poisons. We are aware of this strain somewhere in our consciousness.
Sometimes this awareness may manifest as a question. “Why am I always so busy that I don’t feel in control?” “Why am I 20 years old and saying that I don’t have time to date?” “Is this college, really ‘the best time of my life?’ ” And, for some, “Why do I feel guilty about my options for employment?”
We may question why we define prosperity as a time of increasing Gross Domestic Product, which says that clear-cutting a forest or hiring someone else to take care of our children is an unmitigated good.
Don’t people value more than priced “goods and services?”
Indices of social health that account for a broader ranger of variables, like crime, working and commuting hours, and environmental quality, indicate that our lives have been growing steadily more difficult since around 1970. I think we sense this.
In our times of “prosperity,” affording a nice place to live is becoming more and more difficult, so is finding a quiet place for reflection, or even a place not made of concrete. Traffic is epidemic. Our education system is failing. And our bridges and roads are falling apart.
As companies grow, workers and employers feel less loyalty towards one another. As we build more gated communities and jails, and hire more police officers, we indicate our fear of each other. Increasingly, we are going to bowling alleys alone.
Storing our elders in nursing homes doesn’t quite feel right, nor does always considering death a problem, rather than an essential part of life.
Biologists tell us that we are experiencing the greatest extinction event in tens of millions of years, that it’s possible, probable, that 90 percent of extant species will go extinct in a hundred years. Quietly, more and more authorities are saying the same thing: that we must act immediately and intensively to reduce more serious environmental degradation.
Global climate instability is already real, as the number of natural disasters serious enough to require outside help has increased from 20 in the 1950s to 86 in the 1990s. Meanwhile poor people deforest housands of acres of forest land in search of fuel, while Americans drive SUVs.
Americans are growing more and more obese. The number of us afflicted by Diabetes II has skyrocketed in only the last 15 years and grade school children grow more and more pudgy each year. Meanwhile McDonalds still spend billions of dollars pushing its products, and millions of non-Americans starve each year.
If the poor don’t starve, they contract diseases that might easily spread back. Or they grow angry with the disparities they see and so increase the building international rage against wealthy Americans.
These are serious problems, requiring serious introspection and something more than simple reforms. Yet only six companies — companies so large they are intimately invested in the current arrangement — control most of our news, music, books and movies. Together with their advertisers, these companies give us information that rarely mentions the disturbing trends that define our era.
We, for our part, are willing to believe everything is okay. We buy the distractions, turn off the (rare) upsetting programs and proceed as if our age were nothing but gilded. Some of us note problems, but have no satisfying solutions. Others are fanatical: depending on a blanket solution — like “more free markets” or “education” — for everything.
Who among us will protest what we feel today? There are many opportunities, in the dining hall, in class, with room-mates, to parents, on e-mail and via a handful of student groups.
Who among us, in making preparations for a career, are preparing to think outside of the narrow box of convention?
Who will be the accountants who insist that ignoring the environment is doctoring the books? Who will be the mathematicians who will say that a society cannot be dependent on perpetual economic growth (perpetually compounding interest) because there are no natural analogies ?
Who will be the psychologists who speak out against the endless blitz of sophisticated propaganda that is our information system, the advertising that comprises the largest social psychology experiment ever conducted?
Who will be the doctors who say that we’re becoming fatter not only because we’re eating more, but because we’re lonely, stressed or dissatisfied? Who will be the spiritual leaders who encourage us to find a more comfortable relationship with our natural environment?
Who will be the politicians willing to lose an election in order to make a public statement of principle? And who is willing to be a true leader by modeling their beliefs with more than words but with a integrated lifestyle?
Most importantly, whatever they stand for, who will be willing to say unpopular things?
I think many of these leaders might come from Stanford.
Peter Stair is a junior studying human ecology. For the record, he does not think the sky is falling. He is interested in what you have to say, so e-mail him at pstair@stanford.edu.
Tuesday, November 27, 2001
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
The sparks of revolution
The sparks of revolution
November 20, 2001
By Peter Stair
There is a truth lurking within our minds. We know it, but we don’t yet realize it. We’re afraid to believe it, but when we do, we are more joyful. If most humans realized it, there would be a revolution. We regularly tell each other its opposite.
It is this: we can have enormous influence on each other.
Consider standing ovations. They start when one, two, maybe five people stand after an applause begins. As others decide whether they agree with this assessment of the performance, a few more stand. Then a few more. All of a sudden, everyone’s on their feet.
Since there’s usually a pause before the whole crowd stands, we know the ovation could have just fizzled. This makes it particularly exciting if we stood at just the right moment — the critical point — so it feels as if we pulled the hesitant members of the audience from their seats. We probably did.
Because we fail to see, truly, that the world works like standing ovations — with critical points and sudden changes — we miss the critical opportunities we have to influence the world around us.
It’s not that we don’t have lots of evidence from the natural world. It is replete with examples of negative feedback loops (equilibrium) apparently tipping into positive feedback loops (self-perpetuating change). A neuron doesn’t fire until it receives just enough stimuli to push it over the edge. The chain reaction of an atomic explosion requires a critical mass of uranium. The ketchup sticks in the bottle until a single tap pushes it all out. The world’s population suddenly shot up from one to six billion. Colloquially, we even say that one straw of hay breaks the camel’s back.
The problem is that we prefer to view ourselves as powerless non-participants in a story of life. We attribute real power to characters like “inflation,” “Israel” and “General Electric,” forgetting that these are abstract names for the actions of millions of people. And we like to pit these characters against each other: The “Federal Reserve” fights “inflation” and tries to influence “the invisible hand.” “China” faces off against “Taiwan.” When we tell the story this way, it’s simple and exciting.
The few human beings that we consider characters in our story, we make into heroes — unrealistically glorified individuals. We like to say that Abraham Lincoln “freed” the slaves, that Charles Darwin “discovered” evolution and that Rosa Parks was “responsible” for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. How ridiculous! In saying such things we give these people credit for the actions of thousands of other people.
Take Darwin and evolution. His father and others had discussed the same idea around the dinner table, in the context of seminal thinkers like Malthus, Hutton and Lamarck. Indeed, the concept was ripe, as Alfred Wallace proved by independently writing of it a few years after Darwin. Did Darwin “discover” evolution or did he brush off the final traces of dust, the lucky man to have collected a critical mass of others’ ideas?
Or better yet, consider one of our favorite heroes, Rosa Parks, the black woman who famously refused to sit in the back of the bus. We so often play up the spontaneity and romance of her refusal that we ignore the real context. This was neither her first act of protest nor the first time a black person refused to sit in the back of a bus in Montgomery. Did she cause the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or was that the work of thousands of people? Isn’t it more accurate to say that she was the woman who refused to cooperate with an unpopular policy at the right time — the critical point?
Of course, these critical moments are noteworthy: they signal an important shift. But which is more important, that there was a standing ovation, or that John Doe participated?
When we talk about someone single-handedly causing the standing ovation, we concede our power to them. To say that “Rosa Parks caused the Montgomery Bus Boycott” is to suggest that others, including ourselves, didn’t have a role, that we were merely spectators. In the same way, we speak of “markets” as if they existed independent of people like us, or “the government” as if it weren’t a creation of citizens like us. So we feel small, to our own detriment. We complain about politics, but we don’t vote. We complain about single-minded pursuit of profit, but eagerly work for and own companies doing just that.
Advertisers — people whose livelihood depends on creating mini social trends — are not fools. They understand how powerful we can be as billboards. So, at every opportunity, they plaster messages on our chests, backs, butts, ankles, arms, foreheads, shoulders and legs. People who like our clothing, for example, buy their own and then advertise to the next customer.
But this advertising strategy only works when we don’t see what we signify to others. We’re not wearing five-inch letters spelling “Tommy Hilfiger” because we want to recommend the product to our friends; we’re wearing it because we feel powerless and want to associate ourselves with something we do consider powerful. We’re even willing to pay a premium for the association.
Why are we so willing to deny responsibility for our actions? Perhaps because advertisers try to convince us otherwise. Perhaps because we’d be ashamed to look at what we’re endorsing. Perhaps we’re scared, lazy or complacent. Ultimately we deny responsibility because we don’t want it.
But we are influential, and that means we’re responsible. Let’s recognize that we’re turning our planet into a sauna, depleting our water tables, fraying our social fabric and seeing thousands of symbolic “canary species” die in the mineshaft that we’ve made of our habitat. And the reason we live in a world like this is that we’ve diffused responsibility onto others, or onto “inflation,” “China” and “General Electric.”
Let’s also recognize that we each have the power to turn this situation around. Standing ovations don’t happen unless enough people stand at the right time, and now is the right time. We can take the Caltrain instead of driving. We can be friendly to strangers, eat less meat and sell our stock in Nike. And we can know that we’re having more than a microscopic impact, because others are watching.
We don’t even have to wait until we can agree on a policy or articulate a step-by-step vision. This will come — after we change ourselves. “Political infeasibility” is too often a euphemism for procrastination.
To paraphrase Mohandas Gandhi, we can BE the change we want to see in the world, starting today.
And once we take a stand, there’s a chance others will join us in ovation.
Peter Stair is a junior studying human ecology. He hopes the difference he makes is positive. He likes your e-mails at pstair@stanford.edu.
November 20, 2001
By Peter Stair
There is a truth lurking within our minds. We know it, but we don’t yet realize it. We’re afraid to believe it, but when we do, we are more joyful. If most humans realized it, there would be a revolution. We regularly tell each other its opposite.
It is this: we can have enormous influence on each other.
Consider standing ovations. They start when one, two, maybe five people stand after an applause begins. As others decide whether they agree with this assessment of the performance, a few more stand. Then a few more. All of a sudden, everyone’s on their feet.
Since there’s usually a pause before the whole crowd stands, we know the ovation could have just fizzled. This makes it particularly exciting if we stood at just the right moment — the critical point — so it feels as if we pulled the hesitant members of the audience from their seats. We probably did.
Because we fail to see, truly, that the world works like standing ovations — with critical points and sudden changes — we miss the critical opportunities we have to influence the world around us.
It’s not that we don’t have lots of evidence from the natural world. It is replete with examples of negative feedback loops (equilibrium) apparently tipping into positive feedback loops (self-perpetuating change). A neuron doesn’t fire until it receives just enough stimuli to push it over the edge. The chain reaction of an atomic explosion requires a critical mass of uranium. The ketchup sticks in the bottle until a single tap pushes it all out. The world’s population suddenly shot up from one to six billion. Colloquially, we even say that one straw of hay breaks the camel’s back.
The problem is that we prefer to view ourselves as powerless non-participants in a story of life. We attribute real power to characters like “inflation,” “Israel” and “General Electric,” forgetting that these are abstract names for the actions of millions of people. And we like to pit these characters against each other: The “Federal Reserve” fights “inflation” and tries to influence “the invisible hand.” “China” faces off against “Taiwan.” When we tell the story this way, it’s simple and exciting.
The few human beings that we consider characters in our story, we make into heroes — unrealistically glorified individuals. We like to say that Abraham Lincoln “freed” the slaves, that Charles Darwin “discovered” evolution and that Rosa Parks was “responsible” for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. How ridiculous! In saying such things we give these people credit for the actions of thousands of other people.
Take Darwin and evolution. His father and others had discussed the same idea around the dinner table, in the context of seminal thinkers like Malthus, Hutton and Lamarck. Indeed, the concept was ripe, as Alfred Wallace proved by independently writing of it a few years after Darwin. Did Darwin “discover” evolution or did he brush off the final traces of dust, the lucky man to have collected a critical mass of others’ ideas?
Or better yet, consider one of our favorite heroes, Rosa Parks, the black woman who famously refused to sit in the back of the bus. We so often play up the spontaneity and romance of her refusal that we ignore the real context. This was neither her first act of protest nor the first time a black person refused to sit in the back of a bus in Montgomery. Did she cause the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or was that the work of thousands of people? Isn’t it more accurate to say that she was the woman who refused to cooperate with an unpopular policy at the right time — the critical point?
Of course, these critical moments are noteworthy: they signal an important shift. But which is more important, that there was a standing ovation, or that John Doe participated?
When we talk about someone single-handedly causing the standing ovation, we concede our power to them. To say that “Rosa Parks caused the Montgomery Bus Boycott” is to suggest that others, including ourselves, didn’t have a role, that we were merely spectators. In the same way, we speak of “markets” as if they existed independent of people like us, or “the government” as if it weren’t a creation of citizens like us. So we feel small, to our own detriment. We complain about politics, but we don’t vote. We complain about single-minded pursuit of profit, but eagerly work for and own companies doing just that.
Advertisers — people whose livelihood depends on creating mini social trends — are not fools. They understand how powerful we can be as billboards. So, at every opportunity, they plaster messages on our chests, backs, butts, ankles, arms, foreheads, shoulders and legs. People who like our clothing, for example, buy their own and then advertise to the next customer.
But this advertising strategy only works when we don’t see what we signify to others. We’re not wearing five-inch letters spelling “Tommy Hilfiger” because we want to recommend the product to our friends; we’re wearing it because we feel powerless and want to associate ourselves with something we do consider powerful. We’re even willing to pay a premium for the association.
Why are we so willing to deny responsibility for our actions? Perhaps because advertisers try to convince us otherwise. Perhaps because we’d be ashamed to look at what we’re endorsing. Perhaps we’re scared, lazy or complacent. Ultimately we deny responsibility because we don’t want it.
But we are influential, and that means we’re responsible. Let’s recognize that we’re turning our planet into a sauna, depleting our water tables, fraying our social fabric and seeing thousands of symbolic “canary species” die in the mineshaft that we’ve made of our habitat. And the reason we live in a world like this is that we’ve diffused responsibility onto others, or onto “inflation,” “China” and “General Electric.”
Let’s also recognize that we each have the power to turn this situation around. Standing ovations don’t happen unless enough people stand at the right time, and now is the right time. We can take the Caltrain instead of driving. We can be friendly to strangers, eat less meat and sell our stock in Nike. And we can know that we’re having more than a microscopic impact, because others are watching.
We don’t even have to wait until we can agree on a policy or articulate a step-by-step vision. This will come — after we change ourselves. “Political infeasibility” is too often a euphemism for procrastination.
To paraphrase Mohandas Gandhi, we can BE the change we want to see in the world, starting today.
And once we take a stand, there’s a chance others will join us in ovation.
Peter Stair is a junior studying human ecology. He hopes the difference he makes is positive. He likes your e-mails at pstair@stanford.edu.
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
Big Game, Big Column
Big Game, Big Column
November 13, 2001
By Peter Stair
I wrote about sports last week. I’m going to write about sports again this week. If you think I’m repeating topics, you are correct. This is because sports, like the Civil War, is a subject which remains perpetually worthy of additional study, despite the intellectual energies of thousands — nay, millions — of scholars.
Sports are a way of upholding traditions and ways of life, bringing people together, and teaching us valuable lessons. This is exactly why I’m so concerned that Stanford students don’t take their rivalry with Cal very seriously.
Why, just this last week I heard fellow Stanford students utter comments like, “oh boy, we’re playing Cal [whom everyone knows is 0-9 so far] this week;” “Why are we made to feel like party poopers if we don’t want to pay $50 to watch a bunch of guys bump into each other for three hours?” and even, “I don’t care who wins. I’m not going.”
Do these students not understand that the Stanford-Cal rivalry has lasted for over 104 years?
I mean, Big Game is a Big Deal. Going is a critical part of the Stanford Experience. (It is our right and privilege: a privilege of the people who are right for Stanford, and a right for the privileged who go here.) Think of all the alumni who tirelessly attended football games in order to preserve our right to pay a fee to attend Big Game.
Even if the game itself is unexciting, we can take pleasure in the long tradition of sports that we are participating in. We can chuckle fondly as we remember the first hunting games of our ancestors, and we can smile distantly as we contemplate the great Olympic Games of the Greeks.
Modern sports as we know them probably began during the Roman Empire, where the Emperor would graciously sponsor exotic and elaborate games, called “Bread and Circus,” to appease the discontent masses. Distracted from their oppressed lives, the masses returned adoration to their Emperor. To do otherwise would be rude.
Today, we honor this tradition by attending Big Game. When we don’t attend, however, we are rude. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spit in the face of the Emperor of America!
More than a tradition or gift, though, sports are about the American Way of Life. Just list our virtues, and the connection will be obvious. We are violent; sports are violent. We are loud; sports are loud. We are sedentary; so are spectators at sports games. We like to eat; there is food at sports games. We are fanatics; sports “fan” is short for sports fanatic. We like colorful things; sports uniforms are colorful. We like variety; there are now almost 1,000 sports leagues in America.
Sports are what Americans think about. Some days, I don’t even read the “Business,” “International” and “Local” sections of the newspaper. I go directly to “Sports!” As the Sports section gets thicker and thicker, my work is getting harder, but I always know what the chattering classes are saying about Stanford.
Sports are what Americans talk about. They are the common ground we share. We cannot talk with Europeans about them (they have their own kinds of sports). And we cannot talk about third-rail issues like politics and religion.
Finally, sports are what bring us together. Can you think of any other cause that brings together 100,000 people in one place? Can you think of any other cause that does so on a more-than-weekly basis? No, not the orphaned kids, or the starving foreigners, not even cancer or love. No, like it or not, sports are the only cause that brings us together. And, of all our sports, football brings us together the most.
More than just numbers of people, think of all the resources that a football game brings together. If there are 100,000 people, and each person spends, say, $50 on a ticket, $2 on transportation and $2 on food, that’s $5,400,000 that could have gone somewhere else.
Think of it from another perspective, if we pooled the time and mental energy of the millions of people who either attend or watch a single football game on TV, we have the equivalent manpower of several medium-sized corporations for a year. What but football could focus so many valuable resources on one thing?
The only comparable concentration of people and resources that I can think of is a huge army, and I think that is an apt comparison. Armies fight to protect a people’s way of life. Sports crowds gather to honor the American way of life.
Moreover sports, like wars, are a manifestation of what Freud called thanatos, the drive to destroy. We like to break stuff (remember that game with the pencils, where you and your opponent took turns snapping your pencils against each other until one of them broke?). We like to watch other people break stuff (like sports records and bones).
We come together to break stuff, and we come together to watch other people break stuff.
It’s not only part of what makes us American; it’s part of what makes us human.
We must preserve our humanity. We must preserve our way of life. And the price of these things, so goes the saying, is eternal vigilance. Just as an army must not have deserters, sports crowds must not diminish.
Stanford students have a duty not to be apathetic during Big Game week.
Peter Stair is a junior studying human ecology. He thinks sports can be educational and that athletes can teach us things. This is why he wears only Nike apparel. When he’s serious, he says that coaches should be tenured faculty and that, if athletes have scholarships, every other department should offer scholarships too. He wants more people to e-mail him at pstair@stanford.edu. Remember the salty fields of Carthage.
November 13, 2001
By Peter Stair
I wrote about sports last week. I’m going to write about sports again this week. If you think I’m repeating topics, you are correct. This is because sports, like the Civil War, is a subject which remains perpetually worthy of additional study, despite the intellectual energies of thousands — nay, millions — of scholars.
Sports are a way of upholding traditions and ways of life, bringing people together, and teaching us valuable lessons. This is exactly why I’m so concerned that Stanford students don’t take their rivalry with Cal very seriously.
Why, just this last week I heard fellow Stanford students utter comments like, “oh boy, we’re playing Cal [whom everyone knows is 0-9 so far] this week;” “Why are we made to feel like party poopers if we don’t want to pay $50 to watch a bunch of guys bump into each other for three hours?” and even, “I don’t care who wins. I’m not going.”
Do these students not understand that the Stanford-Cal rivalry has lasted for over 104 years?
I mean, Big Game is a Big Deal. Going is a critical part of the Stanford Experience. (It is our right and privilege: a privilege of the people who are right for Stanford, and a right for the privileged who go here.) Think of all the alumni who tirelessly attended football games in order to preserve our right to pay a fee to attend Big Game.
Even if the game itself is unexciting, we can take pleasure in the long tradition of sports that we are participating in. We can chuckle fondly as we remember the first hunting games of our ancestors, and we can smile distantly as we contemplate the great Olympic Games of the Greeks.
Modern sports as we know them probably began during the Roman Empire, where the Emperor would graciously sponsor exotic and elaborate games, called “Bread and Circus,” to appease the discontent masses. Distracted from their oppressed lives, the masses returned adoration to their Emperor. To do otherwise would be rude.
Today, we honor this tradition by attending Big Game. When we don’t attend, however, we are rude. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spit in the face of the Emperor of America!
More than a tradition or gift, though, sports are about the American Way of Life. Just list our virtues, and the connection will be obvious. We are violent; sports are violent. We are loud; sports are loud. We are sedentary; so are spectators at sports games. We like to eat; there is food at sports games. We are fanatics; sports “fan” is short for sports fanatic. We like colorful things; sports uniforms are colorful. We like variety; there are now almost 1,000 sports leagues in America.
Sports are what Americans think about. Some days, I don’t even read the “Business,” “International” and “Local” sections of the newspaper. I go directly to “Sports!” As the Sports section gets thicker and thicker, my work is getting harder, but I always know what the chattering classes are saying about Stanford.
Sports are what Americans talk about. They are the common ground we share. We cannot talk with Europeans about them (they have their own kinds of sports). And we cannot talk about third-rail issues like politics and religion.
Finally, sports are what bring us together. Can you think of any other cause that brings together 100,000 people in one place? Can you think of any other cause that does so on a more-than-weekly basis? No, not the orphaned kids, or the starving foreigners, not even cancer or love. No, like it or not, sports are the only cause that brings us together. And, of all our sports, football brings us together the most.
More than just numbers of people, think of all the resources that a football game brings together. If there are 100,000 people, and each person spends, say, $50 on a ticket, $2 on transportation and $2 on food, that’s $5,400,000 that could have gone somewhere else.
Think of it from another perspective, if we pooled the time and mental energy of the millions of people who either attend or watch a single football game on TV, we have the equivalent manpower of several medium-sized corporations for a year. What but football could focus so many valuable resources on one thing?
The only comparable concentration of people and resources that I can think of is a huge army, and I think that is an apt comparison. Armies fight to protect a people’s way of life. Sports crowds gather to honor the American way of life.
Moreover sports, like wars, are a manifestation of what Freud called thanatos, the drive to destroy. We like to break stuff (remember that game with the pencils, where you and your opponent took turns snapping your pencils against each other until one of them broke?). We like to watch other people break stuff (like sports records and bones).
We come together to break stuff, and we come together to watch other people break stuff.
It’s not only part of what makes us American; it’s part of what makes us human.
We must preserve our humanity. We must preserve our way of life. And the price of these things, so goes the saying, is eternal vigilance. Just as an army must not have deserters, sports crowds must not diminish.
Stanford students have a duty not to be apathetic during Big Game week.
Peter Stair is a junior studying human ecology. He thinks sports can be educational and that athletes can teach us things. This is why he wears only Nike apparel. When he’s serious, he says that coaches should be tenured faculty and that, if athletes have scholarships, every other department should offer scholarships too. He wants more people to e-mail him at pstair@stanford.edu. Remember the salty fields of Carthage.
Tuesday, November 06, 2001
Our eyes: wide shut
Our eyes: wide shut
November 6, 2001
By Peter Stair
Three seemingly unrelated events happened last week:
First, a study was released showing that the amount students are willing to pay (and that universities have the courage to charge) for a college certification continues to increase faster than inflation.
Second, another wealthy guy has made another outrageously large, record-setting, hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars donation to an already wealthy and expensive university. This time it was $600 million and the university was Cal Tech. Last time it was more than $400 million and the university was Stanford.
Third, last Tuesday, a number of homeless people and advocates stopped at Stanford on their march from San Jose to San Francisco. They told us how difficult it has been for them to get proper health care or education for their children and how impossible it has been for them to compete with Silicon Valley millionaires for housing. They asked for “compassion” from an uncharitable economic system.
This is a column not so much about these three events, but rather about the absurd world in which they would happen, and then be considered separately.
But, I must note that last week was also a truly phenomenal week in the world of sports. Especially in times like these, how can I avoid remarking on the Stanford football team?
Now I know many people have already written many fine sports columns, and these columnists are often both observant and lyrical. But it wouldn’t right for me to stay quiet.
Why? Because I learned something important over the weekend:
After an incident in the kitchen, I realized that I bleed. I bleed Red. A Red that looks suspiciously like Cardinal Red.
And, man oh man, was I bleeding after the Card’s exceedingly painful loss to Washington this week.
Truly, we were all suffering as we saw our Stanford team-mates writhing in agony and blood on the field last Saturday after the Huskies scorched us, 42-28.
It was a miserable sight.
It was the site of a Great Power falling, a bloody moment we will probably never forget. Before our eyes, we saw it happening, the Stanford Cardinal — a team that could have Won It All — falling from the ninth-and-two-thirds best team in the country to the 15th-and-one-third best team.
Our loss to Washington, to put it simply, was nothing less than totally devastating.
At times like these it’s important to have a little perspective. We can take walks and call relatives and remember that we will all die eventually. But, perhaps most importantly, we can remember the bottom line: Stanford football still has a bright future.
To put it in other words, if Stanford were a city-state, and our football team were our army, we could expect many years of bloody conquest and pillaging. And, when we are powerful again, we can remember this loss.
Just as Cato once said, “remember Carthage,” we can say, “remember the University of Washington.”
Speaking of remembering, though, will anyone forget how God dramatically turned against the Yankees this weekend?
How ironic! The Team of Destiny failed to win the Series That Everyone Will Talk About, Forever.
It all came down to the blood-filled ninth inning. Actually, it was not just the ninth inning, it was also the ninth inning of the seventh game. And not only did it come down to the ninth inning of the seventh game, but it also came down to the last two outs. The last two outs!
And, not only this, but the pitcher was Mariano Rivera, a pitcher whose blood-lust for pummeling batters with strikes had not wavered in the postseason for at least 2,129,760 minutes. The batter, meanwhile, was Tony Womack, who gets a hit less than 30.0 percent of the time. How improbable that he would hit a single at that moment!
And, not only this, but the Yankees were clearly the team with Destiny on their side. God had indicated His blessing to this team by allowing the players to make otherwise Impossible Comebacks as frequently as if they were popcorn.
But, bruised and bloody as they were, the Arizona Diamondbacks were not giving up. The Yankees did not win, and therefore were not able to avenge the Taliban for its hurtful actions on Sept. 11. New Yorkers will thus have to wait a few months longer before their lives can return to normal.
However, in the other city attacked on Sept. 11, Washington, D.C., God was actively seeking to revive the spirit of the people last week. After months of speculation and rumors, He’s donned a Washington Wizards uniform in His Second Coming-back. And, in the face of a groundswell of doubt, He’s led them to a 2-2 record.
Truly, there’s no one who can dribble and throw an inflated rubber sphere better than MJ. Ever. Period.
Hero — “one who shows great courage” — is too trite a word for Him. Every player in the NBA demonstrates their incredible fortitude every night they walk onto the court. “Legend” is still not enough, nor is “Incarnation.”
No, “Supreme Deity” is the only name for Him. He has carried and fulfilled too many huge hopes on His shoulders to be called otherwise.
And so, the shaken, anxious District of Columbia has turned its eyes to Him, praying that He can restore peace and order. We’re all wondering: Can He save the Washington Wizards? Can He save Washington? Can He save us?
We’d certainly like to hope so. He and others have already saved us from having to pay attention.
What else can we hope for?
Peter Stair is a junior majoring in human ecology. In defiance of natural law, he gave this column 110 percent. He couldn’t have done it without Michael Jordan. Please e-mail him if you enjoy bread and circus at pstair@stanford.edu.
November 6, 2001
By Peter Stair
Three seemingly unrelated events happened last week:
First, a study was released showing that the amount students are willing to pay (and that universities have the courage to charge) for a college certification continues to increase faster than inflation.
Second, another wealthy guy has made another outrageously large, record-setting, hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars donation to an already wealthy and expensive university. This time it was $600 million and the university was Cal Tech. Last time it was more than $400 million and the university was Stanford.
Third, last Tuesday, a number of homeless people and advocates stopped at Stanford on their march from San Jose to San Francisco. They told us how difficult it has been for them to get proper health care or education for their children and how impossible it has been for them to compete with Silicon Valley millionaires for housing. They asked for “compassion” from an uncharitable economic system.
This is a column not so much about these three events, but rather about the absurd world in which they would happen, and then be considered separately.
But, I must note that last week was also a truly phenomenal week in the world of sports. Especially in times like these, how can I avoid remarking on the Stanford football team?
Now I know many people have already written many fine sports columns, and these columnists are often both observant and lyrical. But it wouldn’t right for me to stay quiet.
Why? Because I learned something important over the weekend:
After an incident in the kitchen, I realized that I bleed. I bleed Red. A Red that looks suspiciously like Cardinal Red.
And, man oh man, was I bleeding after the Card’s exceedingly painful loss to Washington this week.
Truly, we were all suffering as we saw our Stanford team-mates writhing in agony and blood on the field last Saturday after the Huskies scorched us, 42-28.
It was a miserable sight.
It was the site of a Great Power falling, a bloody moment we will probably never forget. Before our eyes, we saw it happening, the Stanford Cardinal — a team that could have Won It All — falling from the ninth-and-two-thirds best team in the country to the 15th-and-one-third best team.
Our loss to Washington, to put it simply, was nothing less than totally devastating.
At times like these it’s important to have a little perspective. We can take walks and call relatives and remember that we will all die eventually. But, perhaps most importantly, we can remember the bottom line: Stanford football still has a bright future.
To put it in other words, if Stanford were a city-state, and our football team were our army, we could expect many years of bloody conquest and pillaging. And, when we are powerful again, we can remember this loss.
Just as Cato once said, “remember Carthage,” we can say, “remember the University of Washington.”
Speaking of remembering, though, will anyone forget how God dramatically turned against the Yankees this weekend?
How ironic! The Team of Destiny failed to win the Series That Everyone Will Talk About, Forever.
It all came down to the blood-filled ninth inning. Actually, it was not just the ninth inning, it was also the ninth inning of the seventh game. And not only did it come down to the ninth inning of the seventh game, but it also came down to the last two outs. The last two outs!
And, not only this, but the pitcher was Mariano Rivera, a pitcher whose blood-lust for pummeling batters with strikes had not wavered in the postseason for at least 2,129,760 minutes. The batter, meanwhile, was Tony Womack, who gets a hit less than 30.0 percent of the time. How improbable that he would hit a single at that moment!
And, not only this, but the Yankees were clearly the team with Destiny on their side. God had indicated His blessing to this team by allowing the players to make otherwise Impossible Comebacks as frequently as if they were popcorn.
But, bruised and bloody as they were, the Arizona Diamondbacks were not giving up. The Yankees did not win, and therefore were not able to avenge the Taliban for its hurtful actions on Sept. 11. New Yorkers will thus have to wait a few months longer before their lives can return to normal.
However, in the other city attacked on Sept. 11, Washington, D.C., God was actively seeking to revive the spirit of the people last week. After months of speculation and rumors, He’s donned a Washington Wizards uniform in His Second Coming-back. And, in the face of a groundswell of doubt, He’s led them to a 2-2 record.
Truly, there’s no one who can dribble and throw an inflated rubber sphere better than MJ. Ever. Period.
Hero — “one who shows great courage” — is too trite a word for Him. Every player in the NBA demonstrates their incredible fortitude every night they walk onto the court. “Legend” is still not enough, nor is “Incarnation.”
No, “Supreme Deity” is the only name for Him. He has carried and fulfilled too many huge hopes on His shoulders to be called otherwise.
And so, the shaken, anxious District of Columbia has turned its eyes to Him, praying that He can restore peace and order. We’re all wondering: Can He save the Washington Wizards? Can He save Washington? Can He save us?
We’d certainly like to hope so. He and others have already saved us from having to pay attention.
What else can we hope for?
Peter Stair is a junior majoring in human ecology. In defiance of natural law, he gave this column 110 percent. He couldn’t have done it without Michael Jordan. Please e-mail him if you enjoy bread and circus at pstair@stanford.edu.
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Why save the daylight?
Why save the daylight?
October 30, 2001
By Peter Stair
Is it just me, or has everyone else been showing up late for things recently? For example, I went to a review session yesterday — right on time — but there was no one there. I waited for an hour before people started coming!
I went to dinner last night, I even showed up half an hour late, and…nothing. My dorm-mates were still cooking. And then, just this morning, I went to my mid-term. Again! No one, for a whole hour.
I’m baffled. I mean, I set my watch by calling Time on the phone, and she has told me many times before that my watch is correct to the second. It’s highly unlikely that, at the same time, all of my clocks could begin running fast by an hour.
It’s not that I really mind being “ahead of the game.” In fact, after regularly showing up slightly late, it’s been nice to show up enormously early. Having more than enough time to take care of my basics — get a drink of water, mindlessly shuffle papers — and without any people (or girls) to watch (or ogle), I can just sit, often alone in a empty room, waiting.
It’s been meditative. It’s like my early-ness is one big Present. Since I’ve had so much time, waiting for class to start, lounging around until friends arrive, pacing empty meeting rooms and sitting outside until the bagel delivery guy shows up, I’ve been able to indulge my curiosities. Mostly this has involved wondering,”why am I so frickin’ early to everything? “
I’ve had the time to ask the people who show up late what’s going on, but I don’t really trust their responses. They usually tell a strange and similar story, which goes something like, “Once upon a time, we were all farmers, and we liked to add an hour every fall. Today, we still pretend to be farmers, ergo we still add an hour.”
As far as I’m concerned this is a pretty weak rationalization for being late. But it remains the only one. And the crazies who advocate it seem to be becoming more numerous and persistent.
They even try to peer-pressure me into agreeing, using familiar tactics ranging from the Appeal to False Memory (“You loon, don’t remember that we do this every year!”) to the Good Joke Strategy (“You’re a weird guy, Peter.”).
But I resist, because I have some grave questions for them.
(1) First of all, to make everyone change his or her watch at the same time would be a huge and costly endeavor. It obviously would never work.
(2) Second of all, no one can tell me exactly why these ancestral farmers wanted to change the time at all. Do hoes not work unless you add an hour in October? Do the farmers just want an excuse to sleep in one Sunday? Are we supposed to believe they’re trying to squeeze an extra hour’s worth of energy from the Sun? I don’t think so!
Maybe these people would say the farmers were just trying to show nature who’s boss, by forcing “human time” onto “natural time,” and redefining, for example, what comprises “the end of the day?” Posh. That would be irrational.
Further, even if there were a rational explanation for time warping, no one can tell me why we would preserve such a moldy tradition, seeing as how we’re no longer farmers.
(3) Even if there were a rational explanation for regular time warps, how would these time warps occur?
If the Sun actually slows down, is it because the horses of Apollo’s Sun Chariot are on a one-hour vacation? If this is the case, when the sun sets earlier rather than later, is it because Apollo is trying to make up for lost time?
If so, why aren’t we outraged?
If the explanation is deeper than this, and has to do with the Universe, then is it possible for everything (the whole Universe) to cease expanding? If this happens, wouldn’t it stop everything, including us, thereby negating the theory? Also, how would be explain the Universe stopping for an “hour,” a distinctly human unit of measurement based on our heart-rate and the Sumerian affection for the number six?
If it is possible for the Universe to stall, excepting human activity, then why aren’t there scientists figuring out how to harness this capacity? It’s not because there would be no profit in it. When the person who figures out Eternal Youth sells their stock options, they undoubtedly be an infinity-aire like Bill Gates. So maybe the scientists aren’t looking because it is physically impossible to warp time.
(Speaking of which, didn’t Superman do an interesting experiment in this field in the 1970s?)
Clearly, those who advocate “time morphing” have some serious questions to settle before I’ll join them. I’ll believe it when I see it.
(And the only time warp I’ve seen is a negative one, and that was during the midterm I just took, if you know what I mean!)
In the meantime, I’ll continue standing for rationality by showing up on-time to all my engagements.
Peter Stair was a junior majoring in human ecology. He believes that he will still be a junior majoring in human ecology by the time you read this column, though he reminds you that, currently, the Peter of the Past is talking to the You of the present. Peter hopes to continue time traveling into the future, one second at a time, and claims to know the score of any game before it starts. When others say that the only way to be alive today is to be here now, he nods. Please email him at pstair@stanford.edu if you think you understand what he is or has been talking about.
October 30, 2001
By Peter Stair
Is it just me, or has everyone else been showing up late for things recently? For example, I went to a review session yesterday — right on time — but there was no one there. I waited for an hour before people started coming!
I went to dinner last night, I even showed up half an hour late, and…nothing. My dorm-mates were still cooking. And then, just this morning, I went to my mid-term. Again! No one, for a whole hour.
I’m baffled. I mean, I set my watch by calling Time on the phone, and she has told me many times before that my watch is correct to the second. It’s highly unlikely that, at the same time, all of my clocks could begin running fast by an hour.
It’s not that I really mind being “ahead of the game.” In fact, after regularly showing up slightly late, it’s been nice to show up enormously early. Having more than enough time to take care of my basics — get a drink of water, mindlessly shuffle papers — and without any people (or girls) to watch (or ogle), I can just sit, often alone in a empty room, waiting.
It’s been meditative. It’s like my early-ness is one big Present. Since I’ve had so much time, waiting for class to start, lounging around until friends arrive, pacing empty meeting rooms and sitting outside until the bagel delivery guy shows up, I’ve been able to indulge my curiosities. Mostly this has involved wondering,”why am I so frickin’ early to everything? “
I’ve had the time to ask the people who show up late what’s going on, but I don’t really trust their responses. They usually tell a strange and similar story, which goes something like, “Once upon a time, we were all farmers, and we liked to add an hour every fall. Today, we still pretend to be farmers, ergo we still add an hour.”
As far as I’m concerned this is a pretty weak rationalization for being late. But it remains the only one. And the crazies who advocate it seem to be becoming more numerous and persistent.
They even try to peer-pressure me into agreeing, using familiar tactics ranging from the Appeal to False Memory (“You loon, don’t remember that we do this every year!”) to the Good Joke Strategy (“You’re a weird guy, Peter.”).
But I resist, because I have some grave questions for them.
(1) First of all, to make everyone change his or her watch at the same time would be a huge and costly endeavor. It obviously would never work.
(2) Second of all, no one can tell me exactly why these ancestral farmers wanted to change the time at all. Do hoes not work unless you add an hour in October? Do the farmers just want an excuse to sleep in one Sunday? Are we supposed to believe they’re trying to squeeze an extra hour’s worth of energy from the Sun? I don’t think so!
Maybe these people would say the farmers were just trying to show nature who’s boss, by forcing “human time” onto “natural time,” and redefining, for example, what comprises “the end of the day?” Posh. That would be irrational.
Further, even if there were a rational explanation for time warping, no one can tell me why we would preserve such a moldy tradition, seeing as how we’re no longer farmers.
(3) Even if there were a rational explanation for regular time warps, how would these time warps occur?
If the Sun actually slows down, is it because the horses of Apollo’s Sun Chariot are on a one-hour vacation? If this is the case, when the sun sets earlier rather than later, is it because Apollo is trying to make up for lost time?
If so, why aren’t we outraged?
If the explanation is deeper than this, and has to do with the Universe, then is it possible for everything (the whole Universe) to cease expanding? If this happens, wouldn’t it stop everything, including us, thereby negating the theory? Also, how would be explain the Universe stopping for an “hour,” a distinctly human unit of measurement based on our heart-rate and the Sumerian affection for the number six?
If it is possible for the Universe to stall, excepting human activity, then why aren’t there scientists figuring out how to harness this capacity? It’s not because there would be no profit in it. When the person who figures out Eternal Youth sells their stock options, they undoubtedly be an infinity-aire like Bill Gates. So maybe the scientists aren’t looking because it is physically impossible to warp time.
(Speaking of which, didn’t Superman do an interesting experiment in this field in the 1970s?)
Clearly, those who advocate “time morphing” have some serious questions to settle before I’ll join them. I’ll believe it when I see it.
(And the only time warp I’ve seen is a negative one, and that was during the midterm I just took, if you know what I mean!)
In the meantime, I’ll continue standing for rationality by showing up on-time to all my engagements.
Peter Stair was a junior majoring in human ecology. He believes that he will still be a junior majoring in human ecology by the time you read this column, though he reminds you that, currently, the Peter of the Past is talking to the You of the present. Peter hopes to continue time traveling into the future, one second at a time, and claims to know the score of any game before it starts. When others say that the only way to be alive today is to be here now, he nods. Please email him at pstair@stanford.edu if you think you understand what he is or has been talking about.
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
Living the examined life
Living the examined life
October 23, 2001
By Peter Stair
I had a thought recently that I’ve been distilling for some time: Now that the world is changing faster than ever, it is more useful than ever to embrace flexibility as our worldview. And I’m not sure whether Stanford is encouraging this or holding us back.
Let me explain.
The earth’s population has doubled in the past 50 years. The human economy of goods and services has increased almost seven-fold. And one-fourth of the world’s mammal species have gone extinct.
The pace of change is increasing, especially in America, where we now have fast food, overnight delivery services, multi-tasking, instant coffee and “door close” buttons on the elevator. When our grandparents were our age, TV did not exist, male and female college students were separated by dorm, blacks and whites were separated by colleges, clothes were less colorful and wordy, music did not pervade the air, airplanes did not fill the sky, traffic was not really an issue, computers were abacuses and the Internet was hardly imagined by science fiction writers.
In the face of such change, we are realizing that the adaptive response is not to cling to old ideas. The life experience of old people often seems irrelevant to us, something we emphasis by our worship of youth and storage of elders.
Business leaders, too, are acknowledging the importance of quick adaptation. Goldman Sachs’ new slogan is “Minds Wide Open.” Apple’s is “Think Different.” Bill Gates wrote a book called “Business at the Speed of Thought.” Business magazines now list “intuition” as a key trait of good CEOs, because the marketplace is changing so fast that they must operate “by instinct.” The business mantra is “the only constant is change.”
Is Stanford responding well to the era of “Question Everything?”
We learn how much has changed since the time we were hunters and gatherers. We learn how different human cultures can be. Numerous professors would say that they encourage questioning. And those who study the scientific method understand that enduring uncertainty (open-mindedness) is a key element in the evolution of knowledge.
Willingness to question has long been a trait of successful leaders, because by separating themselves from dogma, they see possibilities. We know this. We are taught this.
We know that Genghis Khan conquered much of the world because he saw new ways of organizing an army and using horses. We know that Copernicus revolutionized our conception of the universe because he was willing to reconsider Ptolemaic dogma. And we know that Henry Ford succeeded brilliantly because he saw the possibility of using an assembly line in his plants. We learn about “thinking outside the box.”
We are even taught that institutions like Stanford have counter-productively resisted change. Universities and churches did not respond well to Darwin’s observations about evolution, to the calls of American abolitionists or to the emergence of chaos theory.
But, still, Stanford is a big and respected institution. And both those adjectives mean: “slow to change.” Almost without doubt, we will learn the ideology of our society here, and we will probably think that much of it is not worth questioning. Almost without doubt, by going to such a conventional university, we will limit our imaginations.
I’ve been surprised to find such a large number of students who are aware of the huge social revolutions of the past and vast differences in cultural ideologies but still confine themselves to fairly mainstream lives.
I’ve been surprised to find, in myself and others, such an unwillingness to question why we’re attending Stanford at all. Will my life be more satisfying if I go here? If so, why aren’t our professors more joyful? Are the billions of people who have no access to a college education condemned to less satisfying lives? If I want to learn engineering, why not just pay a professional engineer for an apprenticeship?
My point isn’t really that we shouldn’t be “mainstream,” or that Stanford is a waste. I just think that those who are serious about questioning everything end up living more successful lives. Psychologists talk about the “self-actualization” that comes from being a self-defined, often non-conventional, person.
And here is my real point: because we are on the verge of a “turning point,” or “tipping point,” or “revolution,” we live in a world of possibilities.
Whether we call it a transition from the Cenozoic to the Technozoic Era, or an Ecological Revolution like the Industrial Revolution, or a shift into the Information Age, we know we’re seeing big changes. And we have the chance to influence the direction of these changes if we are able to visualize new possibilities.
As change becomes more rapid, so should our questioning become deeper.
Peter Stair is a junior majoring in human ecology. Once upon a time, he lived in Alaska and worked for Ralph Nader. By attending Stanford, he thinks he experiences cognitive dissonance. He wants you to e-mail him at pstair@stanford.edu.
October 23, 2001
By Peter Stair
I had a thought recently that I’ve been distilling for some time: Now that the world is changing faster than ever, it is more useful than ever to embrace flexibility as our worldview. And I’m not sure whether Stanford is encouraging this or holding us back.
Let me explain.
The earth’s population has doubled in the past 50 years. The human economy of goods and services has increased almost seven-fold. And one-fourth of the world’s mammal species have gone extinct.
The pace of change is increasing, especially in America, where we now have fast food, overnight delivery services, multi-tasking, instant coffee and “door close” buttons on the elevator. When our grandparents were our age, TV did not exist, male and female college students were separated by dorm, blacks and whites were separated by colleges, clothes were less colorful and wordy, music did not pervade the air, airplanes did not fill the sky, traffic was not really an issue, computers were abacuses and the Internet was hardly imagined by science fiction writers.
In the face of such change, we are realizing that the adaptive response is not to cling to old ideas. The life experience of old people often seems irrelevant to us, something we emphasis by our worship of youth and storage of elders.
Business leaders, too, are acknowledging the importance of quick adaptation. Goldman Sachs’ new slogan is “Minds Wide Open.” Apple’s is “Think Different.” Bill Gates wrote a book called “Business at the Speed of Thought.” Business magazines now list “intuition” as a key trait of good CEOs, because the marketplace is changing so fast that they must operate “by instinct.” The business mantra is “the only constant is change.”
Is Stanford responding well to the era of “Question Everything?”
We learn how much has changed since the time we were hunters and gatherers. We learn how different human cultures can be. Numerous professors would say that they encourage questioning. And those who study the scientific method understand that enduring uncertainty (open-mindedness) is a key element in the evolution of knowledge.
Willingness to question has long been a trait of successful leaders, because by separating themselves from dogma, they see possibilities. We know this. We are taught this.
We know that Genghis Khan conquered much of the world because he saw new ways of organizing an army and using horses. We know that Copernicus revolutionized our conception of the universe because he was willing to reconsider Ptolemaic dogma. And we know that Henry Ford succeeded brilliantly because he saw the possibility of using an assembly line in his plants. We learn about “thinking outside the box.”
We are even taught that institutions like Stanford have counter-productively resisted change. Universities and churches did not respond well to Darwin’s observations about evolution, to the calls of American abolitionists or to the emergence of chaos theory.
But, still, Stanford is a big and respected institution. And both those adjectives mean: “slow to change.” Almost without doubt, we will learn the ideology of our society here, and we will probably think that much of it is not worth questioning. Almost without doubt, by going to such a conventional university, we will limit our imaginations.
I’ve been surprised to find such a large number of students who are aware of the huge social revolutions of the past and vast differences in cultural ideologies but still confine themselves to fairly mainstream lives.
I’ve been surprised to find, in myself and others, such an unwillingness to question why we’re attending Stanford at all. Will my life be more satisfying if I go here? If so, why aren’t our professors more joyful? Are the billions of people who have no access to a college education condemned to less satisfying lives? If I want to learn engineering, why not just pay a professional engineer for an apprenticeship?
My point isn’t really that we shouldn’t be “mainstream,” or that Stanford is a waste. I just think that those who are serious about questioning everything end up living more successful lives. Psychologists talk about the “self-actualization” that comes from being a self-defined, often non-conventional, person.
And here is my real point: because we are on the verge of a “turning point,” or “tipping point,” or “revolution,” we live in a world of possibilities.
Whether we call it a transition from the Cenozoic to the Technozoic Era, or an Ecological Revolution like the Industrial Revolution, or a shift into the Information Age, we know we’re seeing big changes. And we have the chance to influence the direction of these changes if we are able to visualize new possibilities.
As change becomes more rapid, so should our questioning become deeper.
Peter Stair is a junior majoring in human ecology. Once upon a time, he lived in Alaska and worked for Ralph Nader. By attending Stanford, he thinks he experiences cognitive dissonance. He wants you to e-mail him at pstair@stanford.edu.
Tuesday, October 16, 2001
Conversing with an ad
Conversing with an ad
October 16, 2001
By Peter Stair
I was biking to hum bio section yesterday when I passed a billboard carrying a gigantic bullhorn. “Hello Peter,” he said to me.
I skidded to a stop and turned around to face a smiling man wearing a large cardboard poster with a picture of a candy bar on it. There was another poster on his back, and all sorts of logos on his face.
“Did you just say my name?” I asked?
“Yeah, what’s up? You look fit, lean and hungry. Are you interested in buying one of those manly chocolate bars you really like?”
“Um, not really. I mean, maybe. How do you know me?” I said.
“It’s my job. I know a lot about you. I know, for example, that you once tried one of BMG’s buy-one-get-eight free CD deals. Which reminds me: I’ll bet you want to buy the new Radiohead CD for half price. Rolling Stone called it, ‘excellent.’”
He held a copy forward and smiled nicely. The billboards on his back transformed from an image of a candy bar to a picture of the Radiohead album cover.
“Who are you?”
“I’m your friend. I’m here to let you know about all the fun you could be having. I help people find what they want. I also like girls who wear Abercrombie and Fitch.”
He smiled again.
“Sounds like you’re a product pusher.” I said suspiciously.
“I prefer to see myself as a story-teller, like Dickens, or Homer, or even Jesus.” He paused, then told me, “I encourage people to live their dreams, and then I show them how simply they can attain these dreams by going to the store. People like my stories.”
“You’re not like Jesus!” I exclaimed ridiculously. I wondered why I was talking to an advertisement.
“No, you’re right. I’m much more exciting. Unlike Him, I fill otherwise drab public spaces with stimulating pictures and thoughts. I sponsor free giveaways and sporting events. I even provide you with free entertainment on the TV and in the newspaper.”
He was a good salesman.
He continued, “And, after all, isn’t life boring when you’re happy with what you already have?”
I paused and thought about all the ways advertising had improved my life.
“So, do you want this CD?” he prodded. “I have friends who say it changed their lives.”
“Wait,” I said, still thinking about story-telling. “Maybe city bus rides are cheaper because of you, but you also play on our emotions and stir our insecurities to create needs.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Like,” I continued, “You make people work 60 hour weeks at jobs they don’t like just so they can pay for a luxury car.”
He nodded thoughtfully, as if he had heard what I had said before.
“Here’s a better way of looking at it: I help people satisfy needs they previously didn’t even know about.” He enunciated the last few words with confident enthusiasm. “People are living with luxuries they wouldn’t even have dreamed of without me.”
“But do you think we’re all better off once we find these needs?” I asked.
“Isn’t it self-apparent?” he gasped, “Humanity is enjoying its blissful self-actualization! I mean, we’re beyond satisfying merely our basic material needs. Only now have we been able to spend so much time on higher pursuits, like working on computers, or driving cars.” As he spoke, his Nike swoosh mohawk shook enchantingly.
“I thought we were destroying our habitat and making ourselves miserable at the same time.”
“Well, I suggest you reconsider that opinion,” he said brusquely. Then he tried another pitch, “Surely, you’d at least agree that we help each other by buying more things.”
He looked at me dramatically. “Yes, if we weren’t always wanting more things, the economy wouldn’t grow fast enough, and there wouldn’t be enough jobs. Indeed, without ad guys like me, society would fall apart.”
“So you’re just doing your duty as a citizen?” I said, catching on.
“Precisely. And you would be too if you only bought this CD today!”
“No. That can’t be right.” I resisted, “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Not really. Unless you’re willing to talk about some pretty revolutionary things. . .” he tapered off. “So! Do you want this CD or not?”
I checked my pockets, pretended they were empty, and shook my head sadly. “Sorry,” I replied.
“All ri-ight, but don’t blame me when the economy falls apart.”
Bewildered, I finished biking to hum bio section.
Peter Stair is a junior human ecology major. If you dare him, he is willing to be the first person he knows of to write a column without declarative, imperative and exclamatory sentences.
October 16, 2001
By Peter Stair
I was biking to hum bio section yesterday when I passed a billboard carrying a gigantic bullhorn. “Hello Peter,” he said to me.
I skidded to a stop and turned around to face a smiling man wearing a large cardboard poster with a picture of a candy bar on it. There was another poster on his back, and all sorts of logos on his face.
“Did you just say my name?” I asked?
“Yeah, what’s up? You look fit, lean and hungry. Are you interested in buying one of those manly chocolate bars you really like?”
“Um, not really. I mean, maybe. How do you know me?” I said.
“It’s my job. I know a lot about you. I know, for example, that you once tried one of BMG’s buy-one-get-eight free CD deals. Which reminds me: I’ll bet you want to buy the new Radiohead CD for half price. Rolling Stone called it, ‘excellent.’”
He held a copy forward and smiled nicely. The billboards on his back transformed from an image of a candy bar to a picture of the Radiohead album cover.
“Who are you?”
“I’m your friend. I’m here to let you know about all the fun you could be having. I help people find what they want. I also like girls who wear Abercrombie and Fitch.”
He smiled again.
“Sounds like you’re a product pusher.” I said suspiciously.
“I prefer to see myself as a story-teller, like Dickens, or Homer, or even Jesus.” He paused, then told me, “I encourage people to live their dreams, and then I show them how simply they can attain these dreams by going to the store. People like my stories.”
“You’re not like Jesus!” I exclaimed ridiculously. I wondered why I was talking to an advertisement.
“No, you’re right. I’m much more exciting. Unlike Him, I fill otherwise drab public spaces with stimulating pictures and thoughts. I sponsor free giveaways and sporting events. I even provide you with free entertainment on the TV and in the newspaper.”
He was a good salesman.
He continued, “And, after all, isn’t life boring when you’re happy with what you already have?”
I paused and thought about all the ways advertising had improved my life.
“So, do you want this CD?” he prodded. “I have friends who say it changed their lives.”
“Wait,” I said, still thinking about story-telling. “Maybe city bus rides are cheaper because of you, but you also play on our emotions and stir our insecurities to create needs.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Like,” I continued, “You make people work 60 hour weeks at jobs they don’t like just so they can pay for a luxury car.”
He nodded thoughtfully, as if he had heard what I had said before.
“Here’s a better way of looking at it: I help people satisfy needs they previously didn’t even know about.” He enunciated the last few words with confident enthusiasm. “People are living with luxuries they wouldn’t even have dreamed of without me.”
“But do you think we’re all better off once we find these needs?” I asked.
“Isn’t it self-apparent?” he gasped, “Humanity is enjoying its blissful self-actualization! I mean, we’re beyond satisfying merely our basic material needs. Only now have we been able to spend so much time on higher pursuits, like working on computers, or driving cars.” As he spoke, his Nike swoosh mohawk shook enchantingly.
“I thought we were destroying our habitat and making ourselves miserable at the same time.”
“Well, I suggest you reconsider that opinion,” he said brusquely. Then he tried another pitch, “Surely, you’d at least agree that we help each other by buying more things.”
He looked at me dramatically. “Yes, if we weren’t always wanting more things, the economy wouldn’t grow fast enough, and there wouldn’t be enough jobs. Indeed, without ad guys like me, society would fall apart.”
“So you’re just doing your duty as a citizen?” I said, catching on.
“Precisely. And you would be too if you only bought this CD today!”
“No. That can’t be right.” I resisted, “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Not really. Unless you’re willing to talk about some pretty revolutionary things. . .” he tapered off. “So! Do you want this CD or not?”
I checked my pockets, pretended they were empty, and shook my head sadly. “Sorry,” I replied.
“All ri-ight, but don’t blame me when the economy falls apart.”
Bewildered, I finished biking to hum bio section.
Peter Stair is a junior human ecology major. If you dare him, he is willing to be the first person he knows of to write a column without declarative, imperative and exclamatory sentences.
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