Brain Dead

 

Shot between the eyes at Chickamauga, Indiana Private Jacob Miller’s chances of surviving the Civil War were infinitesimal.

As his company fled a Confederate battalion of sharpshooters the morning of September 19, 1863, it abandoned Miller on the battlefield.

"I was left for dead," he later told a newspaper. "When I came to, I found I was in the rear of the Confederate line. So as not to become a prisoner, I made up my mind to make an effort to get around their line and back on my own side."

Miller sat up and probed his wound with a dirty finger. "I found my left eye out of its place and tried to place it back, but I had to move the crushed bone back first. I got the eye in its proper place and then bandaged it the best I could.”

Miller was so blood-soaked, the Confederates he encountered didn't recognize his blue uniform. He managed, half blind, to escape them and hobble back to the Federal lines, where he was carried by stretcher-bearers to a field hospital. A nurse helped him climb onto the operating table. "The surgeons examined my wound and decided it was best not to operate and give me more pain, as they said I couldn’t live very long," he said.

Miller decided to take his life into his own hands. He snuck from the hospital and followed a road heading "away from the boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry." But he soon collapsed from exhaustion.

"Monday the 21st I came to and found I was in a long building in Chattanooga, lying on the floor with hundreds of other wounded. I raised myself to a sitting position, got my canteen, and wet my head. While doing it, I heard a couple of soldiers who were from my company. They could not believe it was me as they said I was left for dead on the field."

Because he was able to walk, Miller was told to leave Chattanooga and find his way to Nashville, 130 miles away. He left with the men from his company. They crossed the Tennessee River that night.

"Tuesday morning the 22nd we awoke to the crackling of the camp fire that a comrade had built to get us a cup of coffee and a bite to eat," he said. "While eating, an orderly rode up and asked if we were wounded. If so, we were to go back along the road to get our wounds dressed. We had to wait till near noon before we were attended to. That was the first time I had my wound washed and dressed by a surgeon."

Miller was told to walk to Bridgeport, Alabama, only half as far as Nashville. From there, he could catch a train.

"We arrived at Bridgeport the fourth day out from Chattanooga at noon, just as a train of box cars was ready to pull out," he said. "The next thing I remember, I was stripped and in a bathtub of warm water in a hospital at Nashville."

The surgeons in Nashville also refused to operate and shipped Miller to a hospital in his home state of Indiana. "I suffered for nine months, then got a furlough home and got doctors to operate on my wound" he said. "They took out the musket ball."

Miller recovered in three months and was discharged from the army with a $40 monthly pension ($680 today). But his wound didn't close. Family and friends, shocked to learn he was alive (he'd been listed as dead), could see his pulsating brain through the hole in his head. "Seventeen years after I was wounded, a buck shot dropped out of my wound and thirty-one years after, two more pieces of lead came out," he told the newspaper.

Although he suffered constant pain and never again held a job, Miller married and had a son. Occasionally, in the years following his mishap, he would suffer spells of "stupor." Miller would tramp around town for two weeks, shouldering a stick and insisting he was on picket duty. He lived to the age of 88.

This Memorial Day weekend, please consider a fact: although a tad loony, Jacob Miller survived his war. His service should be honored, yes, but on Veterans Day. 

On Memorial Day we honor soldiers who didn't survive. It should be clear from the former holiday's name: you can't become a veteran if you die before your discharge. 

But Americans—without benefit of a musket ball in the head—are so brain-dead, they conflate the two. I blame poor teachers, sloppy journalists, and cheesy advertisers for their confusion.

If you're unsure of the difference, learn Memorial Day's origin story. It's touching.

From Béarnaise Sauce to Socialism

In France this day, celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Commune de Paris are wrapping up.

The Commune, a brief but world-historical uprising of Paris's working class, still rankles conservatives today.

That's because—from start to finish—it was a socialist uprising: a time of class warfare and revenge; of workers' rights, women's rights, and immigrants' rights; of living wages, debt forgiveness, rent control, cheap mass transit, and plentiful food.

Karl Marx loved (and inspired) it.

The two-month Commune didn't rise from nowhere.

It was triggered by the trauma of the four-month Siege of Paris, Bismarck's campaign to cripple the city, throughout which the working class had been corralled into a single arrondissement to starve to death. 

As Parisians' food dwindled, "siege cuisine" became popular.

Working-class people ate rats, cats, and dogs to survive, while the wealthy ate horses and mules and animals they took from the zoo—including camels, zebras, antelopes, and ostriches.

To make the wealthy's meat palatable, Parisian chefs experimented with fancy dishes like pâté de rat; stuffed donkey’s head with sardines; broth of elephant; and kangaroo stew. 

Sauces—first popularized by Chef Carême—came into particular use. 

Paris's chefs served meat cooked in burgundy, tomato puree, pepper sauce, truffle sauce, béarnaise sauce, and sauce chasseur (hunter’s sauce).

Without money for bistros, the working class had to settle for boiled, fried or baked rat, cat, and dog. No wonder they rebelled, once Bismarck's siege ended.

Like all of Paris's poodles, the Commune came to a terrible end. 

After a two-month reign over Paris, the Commune was crushed by soldiers rushed from Versaillais. 

They killed over 70,000 workers in the streets, executed another 30,000, and burned down a third of the city.

So much for socialism. 

But at least we have béarnaise sauce.

POSTSCRIPT: Learn how artists depicted the Paris Commune here. 

HAT TIP: Thanks to historian and gourmand Ann Ramsey for inspiring this post.

Comparing

Look for the similarities, not the differences.

— Alcoholics Anonymous

AA members believe "comparing" is the sure path back to the bottle. 

Comparing leads the drunk to minimize his problem-drinking ("I was never as bad as he was") and exaggerate his ability to control his drinking ("He drank every day; I'll only drink on weekends").

Instead, the drunk is supposed to "identify" with fellow members—accept that he's also an alcoholic and admit he can't control his drinking (it controls him).

My experience working with hundreds of different businesses has taught me that comparing—in AA's sense—is one of executives' worst habits—and an equally certain path to self-defeat.

I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every time an executive told me "we're different" (a statement often followed by "we're the industry leader").

Business strategists would call that attitude "optimism."

I call it drunk-think. 

Executives who believe "we're different" are drunk, drunk on a special flavor of Kool-Aid known as "Cheery Red." 

Drinking too much of it causes comparing.

For a decisionmaker, that's a terrible self-handicap.

Drinking too much Cherry Red, like drinking too much alcohol, blurs vision, slows cognition, and impairs judgement. 

And, like drinking too much alcohol, drinking too much Cherry Red can bring on denial—even deliria.

You hear examples of drunk-think in businesses every day. 

"That's unnecessary."

"That's untested."

"That can't be done." 

"We tried that, it doesn't work."

"That's too expensive." 

"That's too risky." 

"That's fine for other companies."

"That's for start-ups."

"That's for losers."

"That's irrelevant."

"I've never heard of that."  

"That's not how we do things here."

Drunk-think distorts reality because it's always way-too overconfident. 

Like the abusive drinker who believes he's different—that he can control his drinking—the executive afflicted by drunk-think believes that, compared to others, he is awesome—he can pull it off. He's peerless, after all, exempt from the ordinary constraints all his competitors suffer; exempt from the laws of economics, too. He has no need to rock the boat; challenge the company status quo; look outside for new ideas; or adopt others' proven strategies. He only needs to stay calm and carry on.

Eventually, drunk-think will take its toll on the executive. 

He may not destroy the company car, but he's sure to destroy the company's value.

Resistance is Futile

Such argument is hardly worthy of serious refutal.

— John Harvey Kellogg

Like the Borg, "physicalist" philosophers are a hard-nosed bunch.

Physicalists hold that there's absolutely nothing that's supernatural: the only real substance is physical, and everything that's real is nothing more than its physical properties—the mind included.

By extension, one day the mind will be explained fully by neuroscience, according to physicalists.

For a century, physicalists have dominated debates about the 2,500-year-old "mind/body problem" in philosophy.

But—despite a century of vaulting advances in neuroscience—the tide of opinion is turning.

More and more philosophers today resemble Hegelians, the philosophers who dominated the mind/body debate in the 19th century. (Hegel believed that "All that is real is rational and all that is rational is real.")

One example is Galen Strawson. He believes everything is mind—that electrons are conscious.

Strawson is a new breed of physicalist, one who holds that, while everything is indeed physical, mind pervades it, a view known as panpsychism.

Strawson arrived at his opinion by realizing four truths:

1. Each of us knows for certain that he, she or they exists—that minds exist.

2. There's only one kind of substance—physical substance. 

3. Therefore, mind must be physical.

4. But there actually is no "substance," according to contemporary physics; there are only "vibratory patterns in fields." Mind must reside therein. It is latent in the energy that composes electrons—every electron, everywhere. Mind is everywhere.

Strawson's argument has merit because, like Hegel's, it's simple, positing neither all-natural nor supernatural substances. Everything is a unified one. 

And there's no longer any cause to debate where body ends and mind originates. Body ends nowhere. Mind originates everywhere. 

Debate over.

If panpsychism sounds whacky, it's not. It's mainstream.

Resistance is futile.

Polymaths

You know you're old when you're asked, "Do you have hobbies?"

— Warren Beatty

Bob Lowry, a blogger I enjoy, recently asked whether the search for a "perfect passion" in retirement isn't a fool's errand.

"There is no doubt that a passion or hobby that is meaningful to you is one of the keys to a satisfying retirement," Lowry says, "but searching for those things that inspire and motivate you might be a waste of time."

You'd be better off, he says, trying your hand at a lot of "imperfect" pursuits.

"Don't allow yourself to stagnate just because you haven't stumbled onto the one thing that lights your fire," Lowry says. "Try all sorts of activities. If what you are doing doesn't grab you, drop it. 

"When you find that passion, the thing that pushes you out of bed each morning, you will know it. In the meantime, you have had fun, learned something new, got your blood pumping, or at the very least gotten off your butt."

Lowry's spot on: there's nothing wrong with polymathy—in fact, quite the opposite. Polymaths are often the ones who connect dots we would never, ever connect—or notice in the first place.

The late motivational speaker Barbara Sher called polymaths scanners, people "unlike those who seem to find and be satisfied with one area of interest." 

Unable to latch onto one or two imperfect passions, scanners are "genetically wired to be interested in many things," Sher believed.

That polymathy makes scanners disturbing to others. 

"Because your behavior is unsettling, you’ve been taught you’re doing something wrong and must try to change," Sher said. "But what you’ve assumed is a disability is actually an exceptional gift. You are the owner of a remarkable, multi-talented brain."

One of my favorite polymaths was Winston Churchill. We remember him as a politician, but throughout his life he devoted equal energies to writing (the greatest source of his income), painting, horse breeding, and bricklaying.

Yes, bricklaying.

As he found painting (and brandy), Churchill found bricklaying a remedy for the "worry and mental overstrain" (i.e., manic depression) that dogged him most of his life.

In pursuit of the hobby, Churchill built brick walls, walkways, fish ponds, patios, a swimming pool and a child's cottage, all on the grounds of his estate. 

He also became a member of the local mason's union—despite his vocal opposition to unionized workers' wage demands and the right to strike.

Churchill had little interest in the betterment of the working class.

Even a polymath has his limits.