Beatnik Babies

 

We'll get you through your children!

― Allen Ginsberg

In April 1996, I dragged my three then-school-age kids to "Rebel Voices Speak Again," a 12-hour poetry slam hosted by the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

Poetry slams were all the rage at the time, and this one promised to be a whopper: a day-long marathon of readings and reminiscences starring slam poetry's originals, the bards of the Beat Generation (the living ones, anyway).

My kids—by far, the youngest listeners in the auditorium—seemed reasonably attentive and were, thank goodness, exceptionally well behaved throughout. 

It probably helped that we went for lunch to the museum cafeteria, where they could eat hot dogs and potato chips.

I sometimes wonder whether that countercultural cavalcade of cool cats and hot chicks—Corso, Creeley, Elmslie, Ginsberg, Jones, Koch, Lauterbach, McClure, Ferlinghetti, Padgett and a half-dozen others—converted my kids from would-be conformists into the three strong, wildly independent, free-thinking adults they are today.

Did the Beats "get me" through my children?

Maybe it's true: poetry is dangerous.

Paris under Lockdown

Never were we freer than under the German occupation.

— Jean Paul Sartre

The exhibition 1940: Parisian Exodus, now on view at the Musée de la Libération de Paris, marks the 80th anniversary of the invasion of the city by Hitler's army.

On June 5, 1940, from positions along the Belgian frontier, the Germans advanced against France's Maginot Line. Hitler's objectives: the capture of Paris and the annihilation of France's government. Panicked by the onslaught, two million French men, women and childen—three-quarters of Paris's population—left the capital in a harried 10-day flight that journalists came to call the "Parisian Exodus."

The exhibition has prompted many Parisians to compare 1940's Exodus and the subsequent German occupation of the city to today's Covid-19 pandemic. Both saw mass flights by civilians, followed by severe lockdowns.

One Parisian who witnessed the German occupation was the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In an article in The Atlantic, Sartre wrote in 1944, "Never were we freer than under the German occupation." Living “nakedly”—experiencing isolation, hardship, and continuous police surveillance—brought to light Parisians' authentic freedom, Sartre said. "At every instant we lived up to the full sense of this commonplace little phrase: ‘Man is mortal!’ And the choice that each of us made of his life and of his being was an authentic choice because it was made face to face with death."

Contemporary philosopher Julian Baggini, one of the Parisians who likens the current lockdown to the German occupation, believes "the pandemic offers an opportunity to relearn what it means to be free."

Writing in Psyche, Baggini says Covid-19 has driven home for Parisians the fact that, normally, we're trapped. We do most things "wantonly"—on a whim or out of habit; or due to peer-pressure; or because we've been manipulated by media and marketers. 

"Very little of what we do every day is the result of a considered decision," Baggini writes. "Being able to do what we want without constraint, but also without thought, is the lowest and least valuable form of freedom."

But the lockdown has taught Parisians, constrained and facing death, to consider their every choice.

"When my options shrunk and any activity required more planning, the choices I made became more authentic because they had to be more thought-through," Baggini says. "This capacity for reflective decision-making is the highest and most valuable form of freedom a human being can have."

In short, Parisians were never freer than now.

The Happiness Museum

Rules for happiness: something to do,
someone to love, something to hope for.

— Immanuel Kant

Wonderful Copenhagen has opened a Happiness Museum.

Established by the Happiness Research Institute—I want a job there—the museum comprises eight rooms dedicated to the science of joy.

One room features an atlas of the world’s happiest—and unhappiest—nations. Another explores how money and politics contribute to happiness. And still others examine merriment's connection to comfort, pleasure, laughter, and smiling.

“Our hope is guests will leave a little wiser, a little happier and a little more motivated to make the world a better place,” museum director Meik Wiking told Hyperallergic.

Civil Wars

It is possible for highly intelligent people to have a useful but mistaken theory, and we don't have to pretend otherwise to show respect for these people.

— Daniel Dennett

I've given up arguing with reactionaries; I can hardly anymore argue with liberals.

Mistaken theories abound nowadays. 

If you're struggling like me to stay civil, take the advice of Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett.

"Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent?" he asks in Intuition Pumps.

Dennett offers four rules, based on research in behavioral psychology:

1. Restate your opponent's position clearly, vividly, and fairly—so much so, your opponent thanks you.
   
   
2. List any points of agreement, unless they're points of widespread agreement (such as, "Politicians aren't always candid").
   
   
3. Describe what you've learned from your opponent.
   
   
4. Rebut you opponent only after you've taken Steps 1, 2 and 3.

This four-step process warms your opponent, so she listens to you. You might actually advance your discussion.

And if she doesn't warm to you, remember what Oscar Wilde said: "In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."

The Tent Angel

Navigating the streets of downtown Washington, DC, you might think the Boy Scout Jamboree is in town.

But the hundreds of tents pitched on every square inch of public land house the homeless, pushed out of shelters by Covid-19.

They're the work of one man, nicknamed "The Tent Angel."

Arnold Harvey is a 58-year-old veteran who grew up dirt poor. He promised God that, if his life ever improved, he’d help others.

His life did improve. Today he's a trash truck driver with a pretty home in the Maryland suburbs.

As he makes his nightly rounds of DC in his trash truck, Harvey drops off new camping gear whenever he spots a homeless person.

He started a tiny nonprofit called "God’s Connection Transition" a decade ago, to seek in-kind donations, so he's learned how to acquire things. 

When the pandemic hit in March, Harvey went to his local Costco and struck a deal: he'd take all the tents shoppers returned opened.

Now he delivers them in the dark to DC's homeless.

“When we get someone a tent, everything gets better,” Harvey told The Washington Post.

Suddenly homeless people are visible, and other angels come to their aid.

“I guess people don’t always see them sleeping in the grass,” Harvey said. “But you can’t ignore a tent."