A few weeks ago I came across an article in a magazine that I thought had at least a vestige of culture and sophistication.  The article claimed that rap singer Kanye West was an “American Mozart,” and I didn’t bother to finish it. Now, I will admit that I’ve only heard perhaps two songs, if that, by Kanye West, and I don’t care for rap, because every rap song I’ve tried to listen to comes across as essentially hip and violent with a monotonous driving beat.  I do know that the man has designed special Nike shoes that sell for something like $245 a pair.  But really, jumped up sneakers for $245?

The follow-up is that the latest edition of that magazine contained a letter to the editor objecting to the characterization of West as an “American Mozart,” to which the writer of the article had replied to the effect that West was indeed that, since he was appealing to the culture of today, just as Mozart had appealed to that of Vienna in the late eighteen century.

After I pulled my jaw back in place, I thought about the whole thing. To begin with, Mozart was never an eighteenth century “pop star,” even in just Vienna, or even just in the court of Emperor Josef.  According to compilations I’ve seen, four other composers had more performances of their works, and to greater acclaim and popularity.  The “pop music” hero of the time was more likely to be Salieri, not Mozart.

So, I wouldn’t have objected nearly so much, if the writer had characterized Kanye West as an “American Salieri,” here and highly popular, and then likely to be forgotten, because his work is essentially forgettable – not necessarily for lack of talent [although I will leave that judgment to others], but because the very form in which he works, like the popular works of Salieri and other popular composers of that time, lacks the breadth, depth, and sweeping sophistication of a Mozart or a Beethoven, or even of a Liszt [who was both a classical and popular sensation of the nineteenth century].

And what’s the point of this comparison?  It’s not a niggling about Kanye West, but a reflection of a far larger concern – that we are fast becoming a “flash” culture with little understanding of what is transitory and what may be permanent, and even less knowledge or understanding of our past, historical or artistic or technical. I understand that the person in the street, if you will, might not understand the historical nuances and references, but to me, it’s disturbing that a writer featured in a magazine which prides itself on reporting on “culture” apparently has neither that knowledge nor that understanding.

This lack of understanding, unhappily, goes well beyond culture.  According to surveys taken by  the American Revolution Center, sixty percent of Americans could identify the number of children of reality TV couple John and Kate Gosselin, but more than a third could not tell in what century the American Revolution took place. More Americans know the names of Michael Jackson’s hit songs than that the Bill of Rights is part of the U.S. Constitution. A shocking 70% don’t even know what the Constitution actually is. Only 20% of Americans understand the principle of the scientific method.  More than 40% believe that antibiotics are effective against viruses.  Forty percent believe dinosaurs existed at the same time as human beings, and forty-five percent don’t know how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun.

But ask them about pop songs, and they know… so long as they’re current. Most college freshmen in a popular music course in my wife’s university didn’t know who Frank Sinatra or Judy Garland were.

Welcome to the world of the flash culture.

For reasons I won’t go into, I do not have a personal Facebook page.  Nor will I join LinkedIn or any other social network or media. I have so far been able to respond to all emails, as well as any inquiries posted on the “Questions for the Author” section of the site — provided, of course, that a valid email address is provided.  I cannot and will not respond through Facebook or social media, however, and, since I’ve recently received some messages which can only be replied to by Facebook, I thought I should make this clear.

Modern technology is a wonder.  There’s really no doubt about that.  We can manipulate images on screens. We can scan the body to determine what might be causing an illness.  We can talk to people anywhere in the world and even see their images as they respond.  We can produce tens of millions of cars and other transport devices so that we aren’t limited by how far our legs or those of an animal can take us.  We can see images of stars billions of light years away.

But… technology has a price.  In fact, it has several different kinds of prices.  Some are upfront and obvious, such as the prices we pay to purchase all the new and varied products of technology, from computers and cell phones to items as mundane as vacuum cleaners and toaster ovens. Others are less direct, such as the various forms of pollution and emissions from the factories that produce those items or the need for disposal and/or recycling of worn-out or discarded items.  Another indirect cost is that, as the demand for various products increases, often the supply of certain ingredients becomes limited, and that limitation increases the prices of other goods using the same ingredients.

But there’s another and far less obvious price to modern technology.  That less obvious price is that not only do people shape technology, but technology shapes and modifies people.  This has worried people for a long time in history. Probably the invention of writing had some pundits saying that it would destroy memory skills, and certainly this issue was raised when the invention of the printing press made mass production of books possible.  In terms of the impact on most human beings, however, books and printing really didn’t change the way most people perceived the world to a significant degree, although it did raise the level of knowledge world-wide to one where at least the educated individuals in most countries possessed similar information, and it did result in a massive increase in literacy, which eventually resulted in a certain erosion of  the power of theological and ruling elites, particularly in western societies… but the impact internally upon an individual’s perception was far less limited than the doomsayers prophesied.

Now, however, with the invention of the internet, search engines, and all-purpose cellphones providing real-time, instant access to information, I’m already seeing significant differences in the mental attitudes of young people and the potential for what I’d term widespread knowledgeable ignorance.

While generations of students have bemoaned the need to learn and memorize certain facts, formulae, processes, and history, the unfortunate truth is that some such memorization is required for an individual to become a thinking, educated individual.  And in certain professions, that deeply imbedded, memorized and internalized knowledge is absolutely necessary.  A surgeon needs to know anatomy inside and out.  Now, some will say that computerized surgeons will eventually handle most operations. Perhaps…but who will program them?  Who will monitor them? Pilots need to know things like the critical stall speeds of their aircraft and the characteristics of flight immediately preceding a potential stall, as well as how to recover, and there isn’t time to look those up, and trying to follow directions in your ears for an unfamiliar procedure is a formula for disaster.

In every skilled profession, to apply additional knowledge and to progress requires a solid internalized knowledge base.  Unfortunately, in this instant-access-to-information society more and more young people no longer have the interest/skills/ability to learn and retain knowledge. One of the ways that people analyze situations is through pattern-recognition, but you can’t recognize how patterns differ if you can’t remember old patterns because you never learned them.

Another variation of this showed up in the recent financial meltdowns, the idea that new technology and ideas always trump the old.  As one veteran of the financial world observed, market melt-downs don’t happen often, perhaps once a generation, and the Wall Street “whiz-kids” were too young to have experienced the last one, and too contemptuous of the older types whose experience and cautions they ignored… and the reactions of all the high-speed computerized tradeing just made it worse.

A noted scholar at a leading school of music observed privately several months ago that the school was now getting brilliant students who had difficulty and in some cases could not learn to memorize their roles for opera productions. In this electronic world, they’d never acquired the skill.  And in opera, as well as in live theatre, if you can’t memorize the music and the words… you can’t perform.  It’s that simple.   This university has been in existence over a century… and never has this problem come up before.

And what happens when all knowledge is of the moment, and electronic – and can be rewritten and revised to suit the present?  When memory is less trusted than the electronic here and now? You think that this is impossible?  When Jeff Bezos has stated, in effect, that Amazon’s goal is to destroy all print publications and replace them all in electronic formats? And when the U.S. Department of Justice is his unwitting dupe?

But then, who will remember that, anyway?

Believe it or not, I really am a cheerful and optimistic sort, but the reaction to some of my latest blogs brings up several points that bear repeating, although some of my readers clearly don’t need the reminders, because their comments show understanding.  First, a writer is not just what he or she writes. Second, critical assessment, particularly if it’s accurate, of an institution or a societal practice is not always “negative.”  Third, solutions aren’t solutions until and unless they can be implemented.

Readers can be strange creatures, even stranger than authors, at times.  I know an author who writes about the experiences of a white trash zombie.  She’s a very warm person and not at all either white trash or a zombie.  And most readers have no problem understanding that.  Yet, all too often, some readers have great difficulty in understanding that just because a writer accurately portrays a character with whose acts or motivations they disagree it doesn’t necessarily mean the character represents the author.  I’ll admit that some of my characters do embody certain experiences of mine – especially those who are pilots of some sort or involved in government – but that still doesn’t mean that they’re me.  Likewise, just because I point out what I see as problems in society doesn’t mean that I’m a depressed misanthrope.

As I and others have said, often, the first step to solving a problem is recognizing it exists. On a societal level, this is anything but easy. Successful societies are always conservative and slow to change, but societies that don’t change are doomed.  The basic question for any society is how much and how fast to change, and the secondary questions are whether a change is necessary or inevitable… or beneficial, because not all change is for the best.

One of the lasting lessons I learned in my years in Washington, D.C., is that there is usually more than one potential and technically workable solution to most problems.  At times, there are several. Very, very, occasionally, there is only one, and even then there is the possibility of choosing not to address the problem.  And every single solution to a governmental problem has negative ramifications for someone or some group so that addressing any problem incorporates a decision as to who benefits and who suffers. Seldom is there ever an easy or simple solution.  And, of course, as voters we don’t get to choose that solution; we only get to vote for those who will, and often our choice isn’t the one who gets elected.

For that reason, my suggested course of action is almost never to vote for any politician who promises a simple or easy solution.  If two candidates promising simple solutions are running, vote for the one who incites less anger or whose solution is “less simple.”

This electoral emphasis on simplicity has always been present in American politics, but in the past, once the campaign was over, politicians weren’t so iron-clad, and didn’t always insist on a single simple answer/solution. I saw the beginning of the change in the late 1970s, and it intensified in the Reagan Administration. For example, when I was at the Environmental Protection Agency, there was a large group of people who were totally opposed to hazardous waste landfills or incinerators – anywhere.  In addition, and along the same lines, to this day, we don’t have a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel.  I’m sorry, but in a high tech society with nuclear power plants, you need both.  The waste isn’t going away, and the products we use and consume generate those wastes.  Right now there is NO technology that can generate high tech electronics without creating such wastes, and to make matters worse, the cleaner the technology, the more expensive it is, which is why a lot of electronic gear isn’t manufactured in the USA.  Likewise, the immigration problem won’t go away so long as the United States offers the hope of a better life for millions of people.  We can’t effectively seal the borders.  Nor can we deport all illegal aliens, not without becoming a police state along the lines of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. There are no simple solutions that are workable.  Period.

The current legislative gridlock in Washington, D.C., reflects the iron-clad insistence by each party, and especially, I’m sad to say, the Republicans, that their “solution” is the only correct one.  It’s not a solution if roughly half the people in the country, or half the elected representatives [or a minority large enough to block legislation], oppose it, because it’s not going to get adopted, no matter what its backers claim for it.  In practice, in our society, any workable solution requires compromise.  When compromise fails, as it did over the issue of slavery, the result can only be violence in some form. Unhappily, as I’ve said before, the willingness to work out compromise solutions has declined. In fact, politicians willing to compromise are being branded as traitors.  So are politicians who try to forge alliances across party lines.  So… my suggested solution is to vote for officials who are open to compromise and vigorously oppose those who claim that compromise is “evil” or wrong, or un-Democratic, or un-Republican.  No… it’s not a glamorous and world-shaking solution. But it’s the only way we have left to break the logjam in government.  Until lots of people stop looking for absolute and simple solutions and start agitating for the politicians to work together and hammer things out… they won’t.  Because the message given to every politician out there right now has been that compromise kills political careers.

So we can all stick to our hard and fast principles – and guns, if it comes to that – and watch nothing happen until everything falls apart… or we can reject absolutist politics and get on with the messy business of politics in a representative democratic republic.

The other day one of my readers asked, “Is there anything positive you can talk about or have you slid too far down the slope of elder grouchiness and discontent?”  That’s a good question in one respect, because I do believe that there is a definite tendency, if one is intelligent and perceptive, to become more cynical as one gains experience.

Psychological studies have shown, however, that people who suffer depression are far more accurate in their assessments of situation than are optimists, and that may be why optimism evolved – because it would be too damned hard to operate and get things done if we weighed things realistically.  For example, studies also show that entrepreneurs and people who start their own businesses invariably over-estimate the chances of their success and vastly underestimate their chances of failure.  This, of course, makes sense, because why would anyone open a business they thought would fail?

There’s also another factor in play. I spent nearly twenty years in Washington, D.C., as part of the national political scene, and after less than ten years I could clearly see certain patterns repeat themselves time after time, watching as newly elected politicians and their staffs made the same mistakes that their predecessors did and, over the longer term, watching as each political party gained power in response to the abuses of its predecessor, then abused it, and tried to hold on by any means possible, only to fail, and then to see the party newly in power immediately begin to abuse its power… and so on. It’s a bit difficult not to express a certain amount of “grouchiness and discontent,” especially when you offer advice based on experience and have it disregarded because the newcomers “know better”… and then watch them make the same kind of mistakes as others did before them.  My wife has seen the same patterns in academia, with new faculty and new provosts re-inventing what amounts to a square wheel time after time.

It’s been said that human knowledge is as old as written records, but human wisdom is no older than the oldest living human being, and, from what I’ve seen, while a comparative handful of humans can learn from others, most can’t or won’t.  And, if I’m being honest, I have to admit that for the early part of my life I had to make mistakes to learn, and I made plenty. I still make them, but I’d like to think I make fewer, and the ones I make are in areas where I don’t have the experience of others to guide or warn me.

The other aspect of “senior grouchiness,” if you will, is understanding that success in almost all fields is not created by doing something positively spectacular, but by building on the past and avoiding as many mistakes as possible. Even the most world-changing innovations, after the initial spark or idea, require following those steps.

I’m still an optimist at heart, and in personal actions, and in my writing, but, frankly, I do get tired of people who won’t think, won’t learn, and fall back on the simplistic in a culture that has become fantastically complex, both in terms of levels and classes of personal interactions and in terms of its technological and financial systems. At the same time, the kind of simplicity that such individuals fall back on is the “bad” and dogmatic kind, such as fanatically fundamental religious beliefs and “do it my way or else,”  as opposed to the open and simple precepts, such as “be kind” or “always try to do the right thing.”  I’m not so certain that a great portion of the world’s evils can’t be traced to one group or another trying to force their way – the “right way,” of course, upon others.  The distinction between using government to prohibit truly evil behavior, such as murder, abuse of any individual, theft, embezzlement, fraud, assault, and the like, and forcing adherence to what amounts to theological beliefs was a hard-fought battle that took centuries to work itself out, first in English law, and later in the U.S. Constitution and legal system.  So when I see “reformers” – and they exist on the left and the right – trying to undermine that distinction that is represented by the idea of separation of church and state [although it goes far beyond that], I do tend to get grouchy and offer what may seem as depressing comments.

This, too, has historical precedents.  Socrates complained about the youth and their turning away from the Athenian values… but within a century or so Athens was prostrate, and the Athenians never did recover a preeminent position in the world. Cicero and others made the same sort of comments about the Roman Republic, and in years the republic was gone, replaced by an even more autocratic empire.

So… try not to get too upset over my observations. After all, if more people avoided the mistakes I and others who have learned from experience point out, we’d all have more reasons to be optimistic.