Chivalry

To the woman who spoke with me on the bus this morning:

The bus was not crowded when I stepped aboard. It had reached that state where all the buffered seats are filled, though, and taking a seat meant sitting directly next to someone already on board. I took a seat next to a young woman, and the seat next to me was soon taken by you, a woman about my age -- no offense, but it takes a middle aged woman to address me as you did.

Soon the bus was full, and by the penultimate stop there were straphangers in the aisles -- including a couple of women, one of whom was standing in front of me. I kept my seat. I'll confess, I didn't really think about it, absorbed in my podcast and tuning out the morning world as best I could, so I was essentially speechless when you asked, once we had reached the station, why I didn't offer my seat to the standing woman. You asked very politely, clearly taking pains not to offend. I mumbled something about equality, and fled.

I searched my mind. Why hadn't I stood up? Was it just commuter lock? "I've got my butt in this seat, and come hell or high water..." Not consciously.

Maybe part of it was having grown up with the New York City subway, where equality has long since triumphed, and tough-as-nails women straphang with the men as a matter of course. Offer her my seat? Well, she'd likely turn it down flat. "What makes you think I need to sit. I'm no little lady, pal." (If she's in the mergers and acquisitions department, she might hold out for a better offer -- like my seat plus my lunch. She'd win, too.)

Perhaps I've internalized the progressivism of the current generation that states that gender is a social construct. If I wouldn't give my seat to an able-bodied male, why would I offer it to an able-bodied female? Isn't that sexist and patriarchal? And why would I make an assumption based on how they present? I have friends with penises who wear skirts, after all.

Perhaps it was just something to do with my state of mind this morning. I have stood up in the past -- though typically for someone elderly or disabled. 

Maybe it's a little bit of all these reasons, and maybe none at all. Maybe I don't know what to think any more. I live in an in-between time. My parents raised me to be chivalrous and courteous, though it seems very old fashioned today. (Aside from at a nice dinner, or when I'm meeting someone new, I've mostly given up on the idea of standing when a lady arrives or departs.)

There is a certain type of feminist who might respond, "Serves you right! Women have been the uncomfortable ones for years, suffering through physical domination, curtailed social and professional opportunity, and the "weaker sex" bullshit for generations ad incipio. You're complaining that you feel a little awkward in an abjectly low-stakes situation? Ha! Deal with it." And she wouldn't be wrong.

In the end, ma'am (if I may be so bold as to address you thus), something in that concatenation of conditions resulted in my not standing this morning. The result was a man conflicted about what he should do, taking refuge in a pair of headphones and some sunglasses to duck a hard choice. I'm not proud of this. In fact, it has prompted some soul searching this morning. Who am I? What am I? Am I a stander, or am I a sitter? And am I willing to take the consequences of my choice?

Meanwhile, I thank you for starting this train of thought, and I'm sorry I didn't have a better answer for you this morning.

The Obscure Morality of Charity

In a free and open society, we recognize that the right to trade freely is the bedrock of economic liberty. Individuals (or groups of them, in the form of corporations) can come together and make non-zero-sum exchanges. That is to say, the underlying characteristic of these exchanges is that both parties believe they are benefiting from the transaction. It is one of the miracles of capitalism that, often, they both are.

While we may legislate or regulate against certain categories of transaction, often times these restrictions simply recognize and attempt to surpress transactions that misrepresent the potential benefit between the parties. Disclosure regulation on Wall Street, the fine print on your mobile phone contract, and the FDA's drug approval process are all different examples of society's attempt to keep trade open and honest, so that parties trading can evaluate the benefits clearly.

In other words, mutual benefit is what we strive for, the most moral form of transaction. It is clearly better than deceit, where I convince you that a transaction will benefit you by witholding or manipulating information that could reveal an imbalance of benefit. If I roll back the odometer on my Honda before I sell it to you, deceiving you about the potential benefits (to you) of the transaction, I have made it a zero-sum exchange: I benefit at your cost.

Mutual benefit is also clearly preferable to force or monopoly, which both restrict the ability to look elsewhere for a beneficial transaction. Like deceit, force and monopoly can make a transaction zero-sum -- but the costs are out in the open. If there is only one cable company in my city, I may find myself paying a steep price for my service. I may be fully aware that I am overpaying, but I recognize that I don't have options in this case, so I pay up.

Within this heirarchy, the concept of charity sits precariously. Is it an exchange of mutual benefit? Is it an exchange in which I forego my direct benefit for someting else -- a deferred benefit, say, or a benefit for someone else? For if all the benefit of the transaction is to the recipient, then we have a zero-sum transaction, which would likely be immoral. I could not, for example, sell myself into slavery, even if I desired it. The goverment would intervene in such an unfair transaction.

In many cases, a chaitable transaction may in fact be mutually beneficial. I may choose to support the Red Cross, knowing that I might someday be the victim of a natural disaster. I want the Red Cross to be there for me. But in that sense, the transaction seems closer to purchasing insurance than to charity.

What about giving to an organization that can in no way benefit me -- such as donating to famine relief for a third-world country? I don't plan to travel to this country, and I'm unlikely to be impressed into citizenship there against my will. I simply want to help feed people who are starving. Perhaps the benefit to me is that one person does not starve. Maybe that good feeling is what I derive from the transaction. In that case, it is up to me to decide if that good feeling is enough to offset the cost to me.

I might, after all, make a donation to an ineffective charity. What if, for example, my donation to famine relief ended up spent on fancy cars and swanky offices for the NGO's officers? Or what if the donation went to rice that was expropriated by the government of the poverty-stricken land, put out on the black market, and sold at a price that none of the starving citizens can afford? This might steal some of that good feeling that made the exchange seem mutually beneficial.

So I am willing to give money to charities, but I will hold them accountable for results. The benefit to me comes in the form of the charity acting efficiently and effectively at its mission, whatever that may be. The benefit to the me, in other words, is essentially the guarantee that I can feel good about what I've done.

So we've established that even a charitable transaction has benefits to both sides, and that accountability, while a more nebulous type of benefit to one party, is nonetheless a benefit. But we don't need to postulate poverty-stricken countries to see this. It makes sense even in the everyday world. Imagine that I pay the rent for my unemployed younger brother. I'm going to expect the same accountability from him that I expect from the famine charity. It will make me feel good to help him knowing that he will he put that time and freedom I paid for to good use -- to get a job and pay next month's rent himself. But what If he spends it on drugs, does no job hunting, then returns the following month with a request for more money? Has he retroactively stolen that good feeling I paid for? And am I likely to help him again, or would that be simply enabling him in his poor habits and decisions?

It's worth thinking about this in the realm of public policy as well. I might support legislation that would take more of my money, through taxes, for increased housing for the homeless, or increased payments to welfare recipients. Again, I may be concerned about being in that situation myself. I may also believe that fewer homeless or poor in my community will mean a better quality of life for me. But let's put that aside for the moment and say that all I really want is to feel that I have truly helped someone, that paying my taxes is an act of charity rather than a strictly utilitarian bargain. What accountability do I require in this transaction?

It occurs to me that I should require the stewardship accountability that was an obvious responsibility of the famine relief organization -- that my money not go to padded budgets or irresponsible behavior. But I should also require the personal accountability I demanded from my brother -- that the recipient of charity use that gift toward ameliorating the problem that made charity necessary in the first place. Unless government assistance occupies another, unexplored realm of transaction, that seems reasonable. It would be immoral for the government to force me into a transaction in which I do not benefit or deceive me on the extent of that benefit.

We sometimes think of charity as freely given, unrestrained generosity; but in the real world, we make significant demands when we give. This strikes me as proper. There is nothing generous about throwing bad money after good, ignoring the direct or indirect consequences, or giving precedence to my good feeling above the benefit to the recipient. After all, if a charity -- or a government -- abrogates its duty to use my money to truly help a truly needy beneficiary, it has played out an immoral zero-sum transaction with both of us.

The Tyranny of Beef

When I was young, a night out for real meant a steak. I would go with friends to Arthur's, a North Jersey landmark with red-and-white-checked tablecloths, pickled peppers, roasted potatoes, and flags in the steak to indicate how rare it was. This was sophistication, we told ourselves. We had, after all, simply grown up in an era prior to Nouvelle or Fusion, when a steak dinner was simply what you ordered. No self-respecting man was going to go out and order chicken. As for fish, wasn't that a first course?

As the years went by, I had Chateaubriand at Maisonette, Wellington at Four Seasons, steak pie at Brittingham's, prime rib at Morton's, and onglet at Tewksbury Inn -- always believing that I was happy, that this was dining. (All except Morton's, perhaps, where the the whole vibe was a little too Henry VIII-meets-Disney for my tastes.

Then I had duck at Court Street. It probably wasn't the best duck anyone has ever had, but it was a revelation to me. There was another option -- not boring like chicken, and not silly and inconsequential like pasta. Then there was the salmon at the Sole Proprietor. Fish as a main course? Who knew!

By the time I was 30 years old, I had stopped ordering beef entirely at restaurants. I think I've had one steak in a restaurant in the past five years, and I didn't love it. I'm sure I was nearly the last one to figure this out. There are always hipper people than me. But most of the time they were eating pasta, and where's the fun in that? But I had discovered pork and lamb and organ meat and shellfish, and I wasn't going back.

I was late to the party on variety -- I didn't have Chinese food until my teens. I had sushi, but only because I was in Japan. Pizza was made at home, on cookie sheets, and had tomato paste from a can beneath the rubbery mozzarella. But then I grew up under the Tyranny of Beef. Oh, sure, people ate pork chops. At home. On Wednesday. Turkey was for Thanksgiving, ham for Easter, macaroni and cheese on Friday and during Lent. But beef ruled the world. That was a Saturday night dinner, dinner for company, dinner out. Like having a martini before dinner -- who would have thought we'd trade that for glasses of Chardonnay? (Wine came in a jug, with a handle, right?)

What's the point here? Not much really, other than to observe the culinary changes that came about under my watch, the way that a steak became no-longer-a-steak in a very short time. Three-pieced businessmen started to talk about the joys of ceviche with a minerally Gruner, and the manliness of Don Draper stepped aside to let in the manliness of Tony Bourdain.

It was thrilling, in many ways, to find it happening. Had I been older, I might have been the type who sniffed about such tastes being unmanly -- we don't call someone with simplistic throwback tastes a "meat-and-potatoes man" by accident. Had I been younger, I may have grown up never knowing the Tyranny of Beef -- like a kid born in the era of Facebook and smartphones can't imagine that people once lived -- for lifetimes on end -- without such things.

Graceland

Can I confess that I've struggled with this lyric?

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar

I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the Civil War 

I'm going to Graceland

I know it's idiomatic, but if you are "following the river down the highway," aren't you going south? And if you are going south to Memphis, you aren't anywhere near the Delta -- so what the f*ck would you know of how it is shining?

And if you are going north instead, and can see the delta, I don't think the cradle of the Civil War is anywhere nearby.  Charleston? Sure. Richmond? Might work. Atlanta? Maybe a stretch, but I'd hear the argument. The south side of Memphis? Nope. Hell, even Harper's Ferry has a better claim than Memphis.

Inferiority Complex in Blue

I think I'd trade every word I've written -- the hours and the cigarettes and staring at the blank page and the work of the right word to start with and the right word to end with -- for a little taste of what Ellington must have felt when he put down his pen, having finished "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart."

Earth Angel

David Geffen, when he came out, added the caveat that he could never be quite certain of his homosexuality while standing near Demi Moore.

In a similar spirit, I am moved to declare that this atheist's principles falter when he gazes upon Irène Jacob. She's appeared in little of note for the past 20 years, but I treasure her roles in two Krzysztof Kieślowski films -- Trois Couleurs: Rouge and The Double Life of Veronique -- so thoroughly that I'm in some ways disinclined to spoil that by viewing her in lesser art.  (U.S. Marshals, anyone? Help yourself.)

Although Veronique is the earlier performance, I saw Rouge first, and it remains my indelible image of her: young, beautiful, and unaware of a role in a drama that seems to operate above the human level. Veronique, not surprisingly, pursues similar themes. In fact, many of Kieślowski's stories explore that foreboding feeling of what Robert Frost referred to as "design." Even to consider that possibility is unnerving, disorienting.

Not to dwell on the themes, here, but it does make a difference. Jacob is not unaware in an innocent way. This is not a virginal thing. Her sexuality is explored quite frankly in Veronique. Nor is she simply an ingenue, in need of a man to complete her. In Rouge, the man who has the greatest effect on her may or may not be god (or perhaps an avatar), and he appears to need her more than she needs him.

But there is a delicacy in her beauty that seems to make her the angel of this ironically vengeful god. And in Veronique, the universe seems to be able to support only her beauty; twice that much seems to tip the scales too much. But delicate features without projecting weakness or meekness -- strong and distinct -- and not an oval-faced cherub, but the kind of angel who might be hiding a sword in her gowns. Her figure lean and elegant, but muscular. Her window scene in Veronique is stunning for that reason -- she is beautiful, but not willowy. Perhaps it is not even worth describing her. Let a thousand words be spared.








Amazing...