essays for quiz one

7/24/2019 Essays for Quiz One

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ESSAYS TO READ FOR

QUIZ (1)


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Dina Ingber

COMPUTER ADDICTS

Dina Ingber (b. 1948-), a freelance author and editor, spent three years in Jerusalem, where she

worked for the Jerusalem Post. Her articles have appeared in Science Digest, Cosmopolitan, andAmerica's Health. In the following essay from a 1981 issue of Science Digest, she looks at thewhat was then a relatively new phenomenon: computer hackers, speculating that they may

represent the wave of the future.

t is 3 a.m. Everything on the university campus seems ghostlike in the quiet, mistydarknesseverything except the computer I center. Here, twenty students, rumpled

and bleary-eyed, sit transfixed at their consoles, tapping away on the terminal keys. With eyesglued to the video screen, they tap on for hours. For the rest of the world, it might be the middleof the night, but here time does not exist. As in the gambling casinos of Las Vegas, there are nowindows or clocks. This is a world unto itself. Like gamblers, these young computer hackers

are pursuing a kind of compulsion, a drive so consuming it overshadows nearly every other partof their lives and forms the focal point of their existence. They are compulsive computerprogrammers. Some of these students have been at the: console for thirty hours or more withouta break for meals or sleep. Some have fallen asleep on sofas and lounge chairs in the computercenter, trying to catch a few winks but loath to get too far away from their beloved machines.

Most of these students dont have to be at the computer center in the middle of the night.They aren't working on assignments. They are there because they want to bethey areirresistibly drawn there.

And they are not alone. There are hackers at computer centers, all across the country. Intheir extreme form, they focus on nothing else. They flunk out of school and lose contact withfriends; they might have difficulty finding jobs, choosing instead to wander from one computercenter to another, latching on to other hacker group. They may even forgo personal hygiene.

I remember one hacker. We literally had to carry him off his chair to feed him and puthim to sleep. We really feared for his health, says a computer-science professor at MIT.

Of course, such extreme cases are very rare. But modified versions are common. Thereare thousands of themat universities, highschools, even on the elementary school levelwherever young people have access to computers. One computer-science teacher spoke of histhree-year-old daughter who already likes to play endlessly with his home computer.

What do they do at the computer at all hours of the day or night? They design and playcomplex games; they delve into the computers memory bank for obscure tidbits of information;like ham radio operators, they communicate with hackers in other areas who are plugged into thesame system. They even do their everyday chores by computer, typing term papers and gettingneat printouts. One hacker takes his terminal home with him every school vacation so he cankeep in touch with other hackers. And at Stanford University, even the candy machine is hookedup to a computer, programmed by the students to dispense candy on credit to those who knowthe password.

At the high-school level, students have been known to break into the computer room afterschool and spend hours decoding other systems. By breaking the code, they can cut into otherprograms, discovering the computerized grading system of their school or making mischievous(and often costly) changes to other peoples programs.

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Computer-science teachers are now more aware of the implications of this hackerphenomenon and are on the lookout for potential hackers and cases of computer addiction thatare already severe. They know that the case of the hackers is not just the story of one person'srelationship with a machine. It is the story of a societys relationship to the so-called thinkingmachines, which are becoming almost ubiquitous.

Many feel we are now on the verge of a computer revolution that will change our lives asdrastically as the invention of the printing press and the Industrial Revolution changed society inthe past. By the most conservative estimates, one out of three American homes will havecomputers or terminals within the next five to ten years. Electronic toys and games, which cameon the market in 1976, already comprise a more than half-billion-dollar business. And though300,000 Americans now work full time programming computers, at least another 1.2 million willbe needed by 1990. Many of them are likely to come from todays young hackers.

The computer hackers who hang out at university and high school computer centers are,for the most part, very bright students. They are good at problem solving and usually good inmathematics and technical subjects. And they are almost always male.

There is a strong camaraderie and sense of belonging among hackers. They have their

own subculture, with the usual in jokes and even a whole vocabulary based on computerterminology (there is even a hacker's dictionary). But to outsiders, they are a strange breed. Inhigh schools, the hackers are called nerds or the brain trust. They spend most of their free timein the computer room and don't socialize much. And many have trouble with interpersonalrelationships.

Bob Shaw, a 15-year-old high-school student, is a case in point. Bob was temporarilypulled off the computers at school when he began failing his other courses. But instead of hittingthe books, he continues to sulk outside the computer center, peering longingly through the glassdoor at the consoles within.

Pale and drawn, his brown hair unkempt, Bob speaks only in monosyllables, avoiding eyecontact. In answer to questions about friends, hobbies, school, he merely shrugs or mumbles afew words aimed at his sneakered feet. But when the conversation turns to the subject ofcomputers, he brightensand blurts out a few full sentences about the computer hes buildingand the projects he plans.

Apparently there is a class of people who would rather use the computer than watch TV,go bowling, or even go out on a date, says Ralph Gorin, Director of Computer Facilities atStanford University. They find that the computer has a large number of desirable properties.Its not terribly demanding, and it does what its told, which is much nicer than human beings. Imean, when was the last time someone did what you told him to do?

People are afraid inside, explains Lizzy, a 16-year-old high-school computer-sciencestudent. Sometimes its easier to be a friend to a computer that wont make fun of you. It'seasier than the pressures of a peer group.

The computer will never insult you, says another youngster.Everyone has problems socially to some degree, and the computer can act as just

another escape mechanism, Gorin explains. The youngster feels like I just can't stand itanymore, so he runs down to the computer room. The computer doesn't care what time it is orwhat you look like or what you may have been doing lately. The computer doesn't scold you ortalk back.

Are the hackers just a group of social outcasts who hook up with machines because theycan't make it with people? That would probably be a gross exaggerationand yet, Most hackers


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do have problems adjusting socially, admits J.Q. Johnson, a graduate student at Stanford.Perhaps because they don't have much social life, they spend more time at the computer center.

Joel Bion, a sophomore at Stanford, explains how he got hooked: I've been workingwith computers since I was eight. I grew up in Minnesota and I didn't have many friends. I wasn'tinto sports and couldn't participate in gym class because I had asthma. Then I found a computer

terminal at school. I bought some books and taught myself. Pretty soon I was spending a fewhours on it every day. Then I was there during vacations. Sure, I lost some friends, but when Ifirst started I was so fascinated. Here was a field I could really feel superior in. I had a giantprogram, and I kept adding and adding to it. And I could use the computer to talk to people allover the state. I thought that was great social interaction. But, of course, it wasn't, because Inever came into face-to-face contact.

Joel managed to break his addiction after a few years and is now a peer counselor atStanford. But his lack of interpersonal relationships during the hacker period is common andthis problem has led Stanford psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo to take a closer look at thehacker phenomenon.

Hackers at Stanford have what is known as an electronic bulletin board that allows them

to send each other messages on the computer. What struck Zimbardo was that the programmerscould be sitting right next to each other at adjacent consoles, but rather than talking directly, theycommunicated via computer.

Zimbardo also noticed that the messages left on the bulletin board lacked emotion, andthe thoughts were expressed in formula like terms similar to programming language. It couldbe, says Zimbardo, that people who become hackers already have social deficiencies andbecoming a hacker is a way of copping out of having intimate relationships.

Ive known some hackers whose addiction to playing with the computer and thinkingexclusively in terms of information transmission makes it impossible for them to relate to anyonewho's not a hacker, Zimbardo continues. The danger is that they can come to think aboutpeople in much the same way that they think about computers. Computers are always consistent,so they begin to expect that consistency from people, which by virtue of human nature is notpossible or even desirable.

Zimbardo describes the case of a computer student who was working with him on aspecial assignment. The student interacted with excessive formality. He couldnt deal with smalltalk, and all his conversations were task-oriented: You will do this. This must be done. Hegave commands rather than making requests or suggestions. And he couldn't deal with thefickleness of human nature. All this, according to Zimbardo, was a reflection of the way thestudent interacted with the computer. Ultimately the student was dismissed because of hisinability to get along with others.

In some extreme cases, hackers exhibit elements of paranoid because people can't betrusted the way computers can, says Zimbardo. When people dont do just what he orders themto do, the hacker begins to perceive hostile motives and personal antagonism.

It would be absurd to label all hackers paranoid or even deviant. But it would also benaive to shrug off the hacker phenomenon as meaningless. Perhaps this attachment to a machinecould be viewed as just another side of man, the technological animal, who has always beenobsessed with tools, machines, gadgets and gimmicks.

There used to be a time when the term hacker referred to someone who was justenthusiastic about computers. It wasnt pejorative. Some people feel that way about cars ormusic to some degree, says Ralph Gorin.


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Certainly the outstanding members of any creative field the Picassos and theBeethovens spent extraordinary amounts of time at their craft and were considered somewhatodd. And as Gorin points out, the computer, by its very nature, has an even stronger pull.

Computers are attractive because, to a higher degree than any other object, they areinteresting and malleable.

Interesting and malleable: two key words if you want to understand the hacker's addictionand the increasing allure of the computer for all segments of our society.The computer can be almost as interesting as a human being. Like people, it is

interactive. When you ask it a question, it gives you an answer. And because it stores greatquantities of information, it can often answer more questions, more accurately, than humanfriends.

This interaction has led some to attribute human characteristics to the machine. Suchanthropomorphizing of inanimate objects is not unusual. Ships, trains and planes, for example,are often given human names.

But humanizing the computer seems much more natural because the machine does appearto think and talk like a person. As a result, some students form strong emotional

attachments to their computers. Some kids probably think the computer likes them, saysGeorge Truscott, a math and computer teacher in Palo Alto, California.Hackers are not the only ones interacting with the computer on a personal level. The

amazing powers of the machine have enticed even the most sophisticated scientists intowondering just how human it can become. The newly developing science of artificial intelligenceaims at programming the computer to think, reason and react in much the same way that peopledo. Computers can diagnose a patients ailments and recommend treatments. They can mimic thedialogue of a psychotherapist or the reasoning of a lawyer.

If computers can replace our most admired humans, the professionals, then why shouldn'tthe hackers feel close to them and invest emotional energy in them? After all, the computerseems to have unlimited potential. Already, with todays technology, tens of thousands of wordscan be stored on a tiny silicon chip measuring less than a centimeter square and millimeter thick.And any item of information on the chip can be called up and displayed on a TV screen in afraction of a second. So the computer user has access to worlds of information within reach,literally, of his fingertips. And the computer can rearrange that information and interrelate factsor draw conclusions at the programmers command. It is, as Gorin points out, extremelymalleable.

By programming a computer, a youngster can create a world of his own. That is, he feedsa set of rules in, and it acts according to those rules only. It is bent to the will of the programmer.

A favorite hacker pastime is playing computer games; these are not the games you see inpinball parlors but much more complex versions that hackers invent. At Stanford, for example,hackers stay up into the wee hours playing Adventure. The object is to find various pieces oftreasure hidden in different parts of a cave. To do this, you must instruct the computer (that is,type instructions into the console) as to what direction to take North, south, east, west, up, down,jump, run, etc.). After each command, the computer describes the area you have reached andwhat lies around you. You encounter obstacles along the waysnakes, dragons, darkness, slimypitsbut you also encounter magical objects that can help you overcome the obstacles.

With a computer, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination, Gorin explains.You can be a spaceship pilot, a great explorer or a treasure hunter. It can lead you into the worldof fantasy all of your own making.


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Joseph Weizenbaum, professor of computer science at MIT, thinks that the sense ofpower over the machine ultimately corrupts the hacker and makes him into a not-very-desirablesort of programmer. The hackers are so involved with designing their program, making it moreand more complex and bending it to their will, that they don't bother trying to make itunderstandable to other users. They rarely keep records of their programs for the benefit of

others, and they rarely take time to understand why a problem occurred.Computer-science teachers say they can usually pick out the prospective hackers in theircourses because these students make their homework assignments more complex than they needto be. Rather than using the simplest and most direct method, they take joy in adding extra stepsjust to prove their ingenuity.

But perhaps those hackers know something that we don't about the shape of things tocome. That hacker who had to be literally dragged off his chair at MIT is now amultimillionaire of the computer industry, says MIT professor Michael Dertouzos. And twoformer hackers became the founders of the highly successful Apple home-computer company.

When seen in this light, the hacker phenomenon may not be so strange after all. If, asmany psychiatrists say, play is really the basis for all human activity, then the hacker games are

really the preparation for future developments.Sherry Turkle, a professor of sociology at MIT, has for years been studying the waycomputers fit into people's lives. She points out that the computer, because it seems to us to be sointelligent, so capable, so . . . human, affects the way we think about ourselves and ourideas about what we are. She says that computers and computer toys already play an importantrole in children's efforts to develop an identity by allowing them to test ideas about what is aliveand what is not.

The youngsters can form as many subtle nuances and textured relationships with thecomputers as they can with people, Turkle points out.

Computers are not just becoming more and more a part of our world. To a great degree,they are our world. It is therefore not unlikely that our relationship with them will become assubjective as that of the hackers. So perhaps hackers are, after all, harbingers of the world tocome.

DictionLook up the definitions for the following words: delve, ubiquitous, paranoia, pejorative,malleable, anthropomorphizing, nuances, and harbingers

Suggestions for Writing:1. What kinds of people use computers today? Know any hackers?2. What do you know about addiction to anything(drugs, alcohol, TV soap operas)? Is computer

addiction a realaddiction, like alcoholism, or is that word a bit too sensational?3. What kinds of really new, innovative things can computers do these days?*4. Computer theft: what are the real, hard core hackers doing these days?*5. Computer chess champions: how do the programs really work? How were they developed?*6. Microsoft versus Netscape: whats the story? What are the issues?

*Note: these topics, especially, will involve some research.


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Gilbert Highet

DIOGENES ANDALEXANDER

Gilbert Highet (1906-78) was born in Scotland and educated at the Universities of Glasgow andOxford. In 1951 he became an American citizen. Among his best-known works are TheClassical Tradition (1949) and The Art of Teaching(1950). The following essay originallyappeared in a 1963 issue of American Heritage Magazine, which Highet edited. Here, he finds apoint of profound similarity between the lowly Cynic, Diogenes, and Alexander the Great, thelordly ruler of the Greek empire.

ying on the bare earth, shoeless, bearded, half-naked, he looked like a beggar or alunatic. He was one, but not the other. He had opened his eyes with the sun at dawn,

scratched, done his business like a dog at the roadside, washed at the public fountain, begged apiece of breakfast bread and a few olives, eaten them squatting on the ground, and washed themdown with a few handfuls of water scooped from the spring. (Long ago he had owned a roughwooden cup, but he threw it away when he saw a boy drinking out of his hollowed hands.)Having no work to go to and no family to provide for, he was free. As the market place filled upwith shoppers and merchants and gossipers and sharpers and slaves and foreigners, he hadstrolled through it for an hour or two. Everybody knew him, or knew of him. They would throwsharp questions at him and get sharper answers. Sometimes they threw jeers, and got jibes;sometimes bits of food, and got scant thanks; sometimes a mischievous pebble, and got a shower

of stones and abuse. They were not quite sure whether he was mad or not. He knew they weremad, each in a different way; they amused him. Now he was back at his home.

It was not a house, not even a squatter's hut. He thought everybody lived far tooelaborately, expensively, anxiously. What good is a house? No one needs privacy; natural actsare not shameful; we all do the same things, and need not hide them. No one needs beds andchairs and such furniture: the animals live healthy lives and sleep on the ground. All we require,since nature did not dress us properly, is one garment to keep us warm, and some shelter fromrain and wind. So he had one blanketto dress him in the daytime and cover him at nightandhe slept in a cask. His name was Diogenes. He was the founder of the creed called Cynicism theword means doggishness; he spent much of his life in the rich, lazy, corrupt Greek city ofCorinth, mocking and satirizing its people, and occasionally converting one of them.

His home was not a barrel made of wood: too expensive. It was a storage jar made ofearthenware, something like a modern fuel tankno doubt discarded because a break had madeit useless. He was not the first to inhabit such a thing: the refugees driven into Athens by theSpartan invasion had been forced to sleep in casks. But he was the first who ever did so bychoice, out of principle.

Diogenes was not a degenerate or a maniac. He was a philosopher who wrote plays andpoems and essays expounding his doctrine; he talked to those who cared to listen; he had pupilswho admired him. But he taught chiefly by example. All should live naturally, he said, for what

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is natural is normal and cannot possibly be evil or shameful. Live without conventions, which areartificial and false; escape complexities and superfluities and extravagances: only so can you livea free life. The rich man believes he possesses his big house with its many rooms and itselaborate furniture, his pictures and his expensive clothes, his horses and his servants and hisbank accounts. He does not. He depends on them, he worries about them, he spends most of his

life's energy looking after them; the thought of losing them makes him sick with anxiety. Theypossess him. He is their slave. In order to procure a quantity of false, perishable goods he hassold the only true, lasting good, his own independence.

There have been many men who grew tired of human society with its complications, andwent away to live simplyon a small farm, in a quiet village, in a hermits cave, or in thedarkness of anonymity. Not so Diogenes. He was not a recluse, or a stylite, or a beatnik. He wasa missionary. His life's aim was clear to him: it was to restamp the currency. (He and his fatherhad once been convicted for counterfeiting, long before he turned to philosophy, and this phrasewas Diogenes bold, unembarrassed joke on the subject. To restamp the currency: to take theclean metal of human life, to erase the old false conventional markings, and to imprint it with itstrue values.

The other great philosophers of the fourth century before Christ taught mainly their ownprivate pupils. In the shady groves and cool sanctuaries of the Academy, Plato discoursed to achosen few on the unreality of this contingent existence. Aristotle, among the books andinstruments and specimens and archives and research-workers of his Lyceum, pursuedinvestigations and gave lectures that were rightly named esoteric for those within the walls.But for Diogenes, laboratory and specimens and lecture halls and pupils were all to be found in acrowd of ordinary people. Therefore he chose to live in Athens or in the rich city of Corinth,where travelers from all over the Mediterranean world constantly came and went. And, bydesign, he publicly behaved in such ways as to show people what real life was. He wouldconstantly take up this spiritual coin, ring it on a stone, and laugh at its false superscription.

He thought most people were only half-alive, most men only half-men. At brightnoonday he walked through the market place carrying a lighted lamp and inspecting the face ofeveryone he met. They asked him why. Diogenes answered, I am trying to find a man.

To a gentleman whose servant was putting on his shoes for him, Diogenes said, Youwont be really happy until he wipes your nose for you: that will come after you lose the use ofyour hands.

Once there was a war scare so serious that it stirred even the lazy, profit-happyCorinthians. They began to drill, clean their weapons, and rebuild their neglected fortifications.Diogenes took his old cask and began to roll it up and down, back and forward. When you areall so busy, he said, I felt I ought to do something!

And so he livedlike a dog, some said, because he cared nothing for privacy and otherhuman conventions, and because he showed his teeth and barked at those whom he disliked.Now he was lying in the sunlight, as contented as a dog on the warm ground, happier (he himselfused to boast) than the Shah of Persia. Although he knew he was going to have an importantvisitor, he would not move.

The little square began to fill with people. Page boys elegantly dressed, spearmenspeaking a rough foreign dialect, discreet secretaries, hard-browed officers, suave diplomats,they all gradually formed a circle centered on Diogenes. He looked them over, as a sober manlooks at a crowd of tottering drunks, and shook his head. He knew who they were. They were


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the attendants of the conqueror of Greece, the servants of Alexander, the Macedonian king, whowas visiting his newly subdued realm.

Only twenty, Alexander was far older and wiser than his years. Like all Macedonians heloved drinking, but he could usually handle it; and toward women he was nobly restrained andchivalrous. Like all Macedonians he loved fighting; he was a magnificent commander, but he

was not merely a military automaton. He could think. At thirteen he had become a pupil of thegreatest mind in Greece, Aristotle. No exact record of his schooling survives. It is clear, though,that Aristotle took the passionate, half-barbarous boy and gave him the best of Greek culture. Hetaught Alexander poetry: the young prince slept with the Iliad under his pillow and longed toemulate Achilles, who brought the mighty power of Asia to ruin. He taught him philosophy, inparticular the shapes and uses of political power: a few years later Alexander was to create asupranational empire that was not merely a power system but a vehicle for the exchange ofGreek and Middle Eastern cultures.

Aristotle taught him the principles of scientific research: during his invasion of thePersian domains Alexander took with him a large corps of scientists, and shipped hundreds ofzoological specimens back to Greece for study. Indeed, it was from Aristotle that Alexander

learned to seek out everything strange which might be instructive. Jugglers and stunt artists andvirtuosos of the absurd he dismissed with a shrug; but on reaching India he was to spend hoursdiscussing the problems of life and death with naked Hindu mystics, and later to see onedemonstrate Yoga self-command by burning himself impassively to death.

Now, Alexander was in Corinth to take command of the League of Greek States which,after conquering them, his father Philip had created as a disguise for the New Macedonian Order.He was welcomed and honored and flattered. He was the man of the hour, of the century: he wasunanimously appointed commander-in-chief of a new expedition against old, rich, corrupt Asia.Nearly everyone crowded to Corinth in order to congratulate him, to seek employment with him,even simply to see him: soldiers and statesmen, artists and merchants, poets and philosophers.He received their compliments graciously. Only Diogenes, although he lived in Corinth, did notvisit the new monarch. With that generosity which Aristotle had taught him was a quality of thetruly magnanimous man, Alexander determined to call upon Diogenes. Surely Diogenes, theGod-born, would acknowledge the conqueror's power by some gift of hoarded wisdom.

With his handsome face, his fiery glance, his strong supple body, his purple and goldcloak, and his air of destiny, he moved through the parting crowd, toward the Dogs kennel.When a king approaches, all rise in respect. Diogenes did not rise, he merely sat up on oneelbow. When a monarch enters a precinct, all greet him with a bow or an acclamation. Diogenessaid nothing.

There was a silence. Some years later Alexander speared his best friend to the wall, forobjecting to the exaggerated honors paid to His Majesty; but now he was still young and civil.He spoke first, with a kindly greeting. Looking at the poor broken cask, the single raggedgarment, and the rough figure lying on the ground, he said: Is there anything I can do for you,Diogenes?

Yes, said the Dog, Stand to one side. Youre blocking the sunlight.There was silence, not the ominous silence preceding a burst of fury, but a hush of

amazement. Slowly, Alexander turned away. A titter broke out from the elegant Greeks, whowere already beginning to make jokes about the Cur that looked at the King. The Macedonianofficers, after deciding that Diogenes was not worth the trouble of kicking, were starting toguffaw and nudge one another. Alexander was still silent. To those nearest him he said quietly,


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If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes. They took it as a paradox, designed to close theawkward little scene with a polite curtain line. But Alexander meant it. He understood Cynicismas the others could not. Later he took one of Diogenes pupils with him to India as aphilosophical interpreter (it was he who spoke to the naked saddhus). He was what Diogenescalled himself, a cosmopolites, citizen of the world. Like Diogenes, he admired the heroic

figure of Hercules, the mighty conqueror who labors to help mankind while all others toil andsweat only for themselves. He knew that of all men then alive in the world only Alexander theconqueror and Diogenes the beggar were truly free.

DictionLook up the definitions for the following words:jibes, degenerate, recluse, contingent, esoteric,superscription, supranational, virtuoso, impassively, and magnanimous.

Suggestions for Writing:1. Have you known anybody who, like Diogenes, looks & acts like something other than what

he/she is?

2. Do opposites attract? Describe the most unlikely couple you ever saw?3. Who wasyourmost unusual teacher?*4. How and why did the word cynic change its meaning over time?*5. Are some wealthy people really free or are they, in fact, burdened with their possessions, as

some American romantic philosophers have argued?

Jerry Mander

THE WALLING OF

AWARENESS

Jerry Mander (b. 1936- ) was President of Freeman, Mander and Gossage Advertising Agency

from 1965 to 1972. He has contributed articles to numerous periodicals, including MotherJones, Ramparts, Scanlan's Monthly, and Penthouse. In the following excerpt from a chapter ofhis book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television(1978), Mander assesses some of theways in which human-made environments have alienated us from our world.

During a six-month period in 1973, The New York Times reported the following scientificfindings:

A major research institute spent more than $50,000 to discover that the best bait for miceis cheese.

Another study found that mother's milk was better balanced nutritionally for infants thancommercial formulas. That study also proved that mother's milk was better for human infantsthan cow's milk or goat's milk.


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A third study established that a walk is considerably healthier for the human respiratoryand circulatory systems, in fact for overall health and vitality, than a ride in a car. Bicycling wasalso found to be beneficial.

A fourth project demonstrated that the juice of fresh oranges has more nutritional valuethan either canned or frozen orange juice.

A fifth study proved conclusively that infants who are touched a lot frequently grow intoadults with greater self-confidence and have a more integrated relationship with the world thanthose who are not touched. This study found that touching, not merely sexual touching, but anytouching of one person by another, seemed to aid general health and even mental developmentamong adults as well as children.

The remarkable thing about these five studies, of course, is that anyone should havefound it necessary to undertake them. That some people did find them necessary can only meanthat they felt there was some uncertainty about how the answers would turn out.

And yet, anyone who has seen a mouse eating cheese or who has been touched by thehand of another person already knows a great deal about these things, assuming he or she givescredence to personal observation.

Similarly, anyone who has ever considered the question of artificial milk versus humanmilk is unlikely to assume that Nestles or Similac will improve on a feeding arrangement thataccounted for the growth of every human infant before modern times.

That any people retain doubts on these questions is symptomatic of two unfortunateconditions of modern existence: Human beings no longer trust personal observation, even of theself-evident, until it is confirmed by scientific or technological institutions; human beings havelost insight into natural processes-how the world works, the human role as one of the manyinterlocking parts of the worldwide ecosystem-because natural processes are now exceedinglydifficult to observe.

These two conditions combine to limit our knowledge and understanding to what we aretold. They also leave us unable to judge the reliability or unreliability of the information we goby.

The problem begins with the physical environment in which we live.

Mediated Environments

Most Americans spend their lives within environments created by human beings. This isless the case if you live in Montana than if you live in Manhattan, but it is true to some extent allover the country. Natural environments have largely given way to human-created environments.

What we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel and understand about the world has beenprocessed for us. Our experiences of the world can no longer be called direct, or primary. Theyare secondary, mediated experiences.

When we are walking in a forest, we can see and feel what the planet produces directly.Forests grow on their own without human intervention. When we see a forest, or experience it inother ways, we can count on the experience being directly between us and the planet. It is notmediated, interpreted or altered.

On the other hand, when we live in cities, no experience is directly between us and theplanet. Virtually all experience is mediated in some way. Concrete covers whatever would growfrom the ground. Buildings block the natural vistas. The water we drink comes from a faucet,not from a stream or the sky. All foliage has been confined by human considerations and


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redesigned according to human tastes. There are no wild animals, there are no rocky terrains,there is no cycle of bloom and decline. There is not even night and day. No food growsanywhere.

Most of us give little importance to this change in human experience of the world, if wenotice it at all. We are so surrounded by a reconstructed world that it is difficult to grasp how

astonishingly different it is from the world of only one hundred years ago, and that it bearsvirtually no resemblance to the world in which human beings lived for four million years beforethat. That this might affect the way we think, including our understanding of how our lives areconnected to any nonhuman system, is rarely considered.

In fact, most of us assume that human understanding is now more thorough than before,that we know more than we ever did. This is because we have such faith in our rational,intellectual processes and the institutions we have created that we fail to observe their limits.

I have heard small children ask whether apples and oranges grow in stores, Of coursenot,we tell them. Fruit grows from the ground somewhere out in the countryside, and then it'sput into trucks and brought to the stores.

But is is true? Have you seen that? Do you have a sense that what you are eating wasonce alive, growing on its own?We learn in schools that fruit grows from the ground. We see pictures of fruit growing.

But when we live in cities, confined to the walls and floors of our concrete environments, wedon't actually see the slow process of a blossom appearing on a tree, then becoming a bud thatgrows into an apple tree. We learn this, but we can't really "know" what it means, or that a wholecycle is operating: sky to ground to root through tree to bud ripening into fruit that we can eat.Nor do we see particular value in this knowledge. It remains to us an abstraction that is difficultto integrate into our consciousness without direct experience of the process. Therefore we don'tdevelop a feeling about it, a caring. In the end how can our children or we really grasp that fruitgrowing from trees has anything to do with humans growing from eating the fruit?

We have learned that water does not really originate in the pipes where we get it. We areeducated to understand that it comes from sky (we have seen that, it is true!), lands in somefaraway mountains, flows into rivers, which flow into little reservoirs, and then somehow it allgoes through pipes into the sinks in our homes and then back out towhere? The ocean.

We learn there is something called evaporation that takes the water we dont need up tothe sky. But is this true? Is there a pattern to it? How does it collect in the sky? Is it okay torearrange the cycle with cloud seeding? Is it okay to collect the water in dams? Does anyoneelse need water? Do plants drink it? How do they get it? Does water go into the ground? Incities it rolls around on concrete and then pours into sewers. Since we are unable to observe mostof the cycle, we learn about it in knowledge museums: schools, textbooks. We study to know.What we know is what we have studied. We know what the books say. What the books say iswhat the authors of the books learned from experts who, from time to time, turn out to bewrong.

Everyone knows about night and day. Half the time its dark, half the time its light.However, it doesnt work that way in our homes or outside in the streets. There is always light,and it is always the same, controlled by an automatic switch downtown. The stars are obscuredby the city glow. The moon is washed out by a filter of light. It becomes a semimoon and ourawareness of it inevitably dims. We say it is night, but darkness moods and feelings lie dormant


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in us. Faced with real darkness, we become frightened, overreact, like a child whose parentshave always left the light on. In three generations since Edison, we have become creatures oflight alone. . . .

Sensory-Deprivation Environments

The modern office building is the archetypal example of the mediated environment. Itcontains nothing that did not first exist as a design plan in a human mind. The spaces are square,flat and small, eliminating a sense of height, depth and irregularity. The decor is rigidlycontrolled to a bland uniformity from room to room and floor to floor. The effect is to dampenall interest in the space one inhabits.

Most modern office buildings have hermetically sealed windows. The air is processed,the temperature regulated. It is always the same. The bodys largest sense organ, the skin, feelsno wind, no changes in temperature, and is dulled.

Muzak homogenizes the sound environment. Some buildings even use white noise, adeliberate mix of electronic sounds that merge into a hum. Seemingly innocuous, it fills the ears

with an even background tone, obscuring random noises or passing conversations which mightarouse interest or create a diversion.The light remains constant from morning through night, from room to room until our

awareness of light is as dull as our awareness of temperature, and we are not aware of thepassage of time. We are told that a constant level of light is good for our eyes, that it relievesstrain. Is this true? What about the loss of a range of focus and the many changes in directionand intensity of light that our flexible eyes are designed to accommodate?

Those who build artificial environments view the senses as single, monolithic things, rather thanabilities that have a range of capacity for a reason. We know, for example, that our eyes can seefrom the extremely dark to the extremely bright, from far to near, from distinct to indistinct, from

obvious to subtle. They perceive objects moving quickly and those that are still. The eye is awonderfully flexible organ, able to adjust instantly to a dazzling array of information, constantlychanging, multi-leveled, perceiving objects far and near moving at different speedssimultaneously. A fully functioning visual capacity is equal to everything the naturalenvironment offers as visual information. This would have to be so, since the interactionbetween the senses and the natural environment created the ranges of abilities that we needed tohave. Sight did not just arrive one day, like Adam's rib; it coevolved with the ingredients aroundit which it was designed to see. When our eyes are continually exercised, when flexibility anddynamism are encouraged, then they are equal to the variety of stimuli that night and day have tooffer. It is probably not wise always to have good light or to be for very long at fixeddistances from anything. The result will be lack of exercise and eventual atrophy of the eyes'abilities.

When we reduce an aspect of environment from varied and multidimensional to fixed, wealso change the human being who lives within it. Humans give up the capacity to adjust, just asthe person who only walks cannot so easily handle the experience of running. The lungs, theheart and other muscles have not been exercised. The human being then becomes a creature witha narrower range of abilities and fewer feelings about the loss. We become grosser, simpler,less varied, like the environment.


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The common response to this is that if we lose wide-spectrum sensory experience, wegain a deeper mental experience. This is not true. We only have less nonmental experience sothe mental life seems richer by comparison. In fact, mental life is more enriched by a fullyfunctioning sensory life.

In recent years, researchers have discovered some amazing things about the connections

between mental and physical life by doing sensory-deprivation experiments. In suchexperiments, a human subject is cut off from as much sensory information as possible. This canbe accomplished, for example, by a totally blank environment-white walls, no furniture, nosounds, constant temperature, constant light, no food and no windows. A more thorough methodis to put the blindfolded subject inside a temperature-controlled suit floating in a water tank withonly tubes to provide air and water, which are also at body temperature. This sensory-deprivation tank eliminates the tactile sense as well as an awareness of up and down.

Researchers have found that when sensory stimuli are suppressed this way, the subject atfirst lives a mental life because mental images are the only stimulation. But after a while, theseimages become disoriented and can be frightening. Disconnected from the world outside themind, the subject is rootless and un-grounded.

If the experience goes on long enough, a kind of madness develops which can be allayedonly by reintroducing sensory stimuli, direct contact with the world outside the subject's mind.Before total disorientation occurs, a second effect takes place. That is a dramatic increase

in focus on any stimulus at all that is introduced. In such a deprived environment, one singlestimulus acquires extraordinary power and importance. In the most literal sense, the subjectloses perspective and cannot put the stimulus in context. Such experiments have proven to beeffective in halting heavy smoking habits, for example, when the experimenter speaksinstructions to stop smoking or describes to the subject through a microphone the harmful,unpleasant aspects of smoking.

These experiments have shown that volunteers can be programmed to believe and dothings they would not have done in a fully functional condition. The technique could be calledbrain-washing.

It would be going too far to call our modern offices sensory-deprivation chambers, but theyare most certainly sensory- reduction chambers. They may not brainwash, but the elimination ofsensory stimuli definitely increases focus on the task at hand, the work to be done, to theexclusion of all else. Modern offices were designed for that very purpose by people who knewwhat they were doing.

If people's senses were stimulated to experience anything approaching their potentialrange, it would be highly unlikely that people would sit for eight long hours at desks, readingmemoranda, typing documents, studying columns of figures or pondering sales strategies. Ifbirds were flying through the room, and wind were blowing the papers about, if the sun wereshining in there, or people were lolling about on chaise lounges or taking baths while listening tovarious musical presentations, this would certainly divert the office worker from the mental workhe or she is there to do. In fact, if offices were so arranged, little business would get done. Thisis why they are not so arranged. Any awareness of the senses, aside from their singular uses inreading and sometimes talking and listening, would be disastrous for office environments thatrequire people to stay focused within narrow and specific functional modes.

Feeling is also discouraged by these environments. Reducing sensual variations is onegood way of reducing feeling since the one stimulates the other. But there is also a hierarchy of


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values which further the process. Objectivity is the highest value that can be exhibited by anexecutive in an office. Orderliness is the highest value for a subordinate office worker. Both ofthese are most easily achieved if the human is effectively disconnected from the distractions ofher or his senses, feelings and intuitions.

With the field of experience so drastically reduced for office workers, the stimuli which

remain-paper work, mental work, business-loom larger and obtain an importance they would nothave in a wider, more varied, more stimulating environment. The worker gets interested in themlargely because that is what is available to get interested in.

Curiously, however, while eschewing feeling and intuition, business people often cannotresist using them. They come out as aberrations-fierce competitive drive, rage at smallinconveniences, decisions that do not fit the models of objectivity. Such behavior in businesssometimes makes me think of blades of grass growing upward through the pavement.

A more poignant example, perhaps, is that modern offices have proven to be such hotsexual environments. Aside from the occasional potted plant, the only creatures in offices withwhich it is able to experience anything are other humans. With all other organic life absent andwith the senses deprived of most possibilities for human experience, the occasional body which

passes the desk becomes an especially potent sensual event, the only way out of the condition ofsuspended experience, and the only way to experience oneself as alive. In fact, the confinementof human beings within artificial environments may be a partial explanation of our new culture-wide obsession with and focus on sex. . . .

Rooms inside Rooms

There are differences of opinion about what the critical moments were that led human beingsaway from the primary forms of experience-between person and planet-into secondary, mediatedenvironments. Some go back as far as the control of fire, the domestication of animals, theinvention of agriculture or the imposition of monotheism and patriarchy.

In my opinion, however, the most significant recent moment came with the control ofelectricity for power, about four generations ago. This made it possible to begin moving nearlyall human functions indoors, and made the outdoors more like indoors.

In less than four generations out of an estimated one hundred thousand, we havefundamentally changed the nature of our interaction with the planet.

Our environment no longer grows on its own, by its own design, in its own time. Theenvironment in which we live has been totally reconstructed solely by human intentions andcreation.

We find ourselves living inside a kind of nationwide room. We look around and see onlyour own creations.

We go through life believing we are experiencing the world when actually ourexperiences are confined within entirely human conceptions. Our world has been thought up.

Our environment itself is the manifestation of the mental processes of other humans. Ofall the species of the planet, and all the cultures of the human species, we twentieth-centuryAmericans have become the first in history to live predominantly inside projections of our ownminds.We live in a kind of maelstrom, going ever deeper into our own thought processes, intosubterranean caverns, where non-human reality is up, up, away somewhere. We are within a


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system of ever smaller, ever deeper concentric circles, and we consider each new depth that wereach greater progress and greater knowledge.

Our environment itself becomes an editor, filter and medium between ourselves and analternative nonhuman, unedited, organic planetary reality.

We ask the child to understand nature and care about it, to know the difference between

what humans create and what the planet does, but how can the child know these things? Thechild lives with us in a room inside a room inside another room. The child sees an apple in astore and assumes that the apple and the store are organically connected. The child sees streets,buildings and a mountain and assumes it was all put there by humans. How can the child assumeotherwise? That is the obvious conclusion in a world in which all reality is created by humans.

As adults, we assume we are not so vulnerable to this mistake, that we are educated andour minds can save us. We know the difference between natural and artificial. And yet, wehave no greater contact with the wider world than the child has.

Most people still give little importance to any of this. Those who take note of thesechanges usually speak of them in esoteric, aesthetic or philosophical terms. It makes gooddiscussion at parties and in philosophy classes.

As we go, however, I hope it will become apparent that the most compelling outcome ofthese sudden changes in the way we experience life is the inevitable political one.Living within artificial, reconstructed, arbitrary environments that are strictly the

products of human conception, we have no way to be sure that we know what is true and what isnot. We have lost context and perspective. What we know is what other humans tell us.

Therefore, whoever controls the processes of re-creation, effectively redefines reality foreveryone else, and creates the entire world of human experience, our field of knowledge. Webecome subject to them. The confinement of our experience becomes the basis of their controlof us. The role of the media in all this is to confirm the validity of the arbitrary world in whichwe live. The role of television is to project that world, via images, into our heads, all of us at thesame time.

DictionLook up the definitions for the following words: credence, mediated, archetypal, decor, bland,monolithic, atrophy, allayed, eschewing, aberration, maelstrom, and esoteric.

Suggestions for Writing:1. Were you ever in a less-than-mediated environment when the lights went out, or you got

lost in the wilderness, for instance?2. Can some mediated environmentsstimulateyour senses? How about virtual reality?

How does it work? Who uses it and for what?

3.

*How do TV programs or commercials change our expectations about the world?4.

*Does TV really cause more violent behavior in small children?5. *What is sick building syndrome and what causes it? Or does anyone know?



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Jessica Mitford

REPOSING IN THE

PREPARATION ROOM

Jessica Mitford (b. 1917- d. 1996), an Englishwoman who became an American citizen in 1944,has written about the American funeral industry, the Nixon presidency, and about the art of

muckraking in general. In the following excerpt from The American Way of Death(1963),Mitford describes, in grisly and satiric terms, the process of embalming and restoring the

human body in preparation for burial. The passage gives us insight not only into this procedure,but also into our own attitudes toward death.

mbalming is indeed a most extraordinary procedure, and one must wonder at thedocility of Americans who each year pay hundreds of millions of dollars for its

perpetuation, blissfully ignorant of what it is all about, what is done, how it is done. Not one inten thousand has any idea of what actually takes place. Books on the subject are extremely hardto come by. They are not to be found in most libraries or bookshops.

In an era when huge television audiences watch surgical operations in the comfort of theirliving rooms, when, thanks to the animated cartoon, the geography of the digestive system hasbecome familiar territory even to the nursery school set, in a land where the satisfaction ofcuriosity about almost all matters is a national pastime, the secrecy surrounding embalming can,surely, hardly be attributed to the inherent gruesomeness of the subject. Custom in this regardhas within this century suffered a complete reversal. In the early days of American embalming,when it was performed in the home of the deceased, it was almost mandatory for some relative tostay by the embalmers side and witness the procedure. Today, family members who might wish

to be in attendance would certainly be dissuaded by the funeral director. All others, exceptapprentices, are excluded by law from the preparation room.

A close look at what does actually take place may explain in large measure theundertakers intractable reticence concerning a procedure that has become his major raisondtre. It is possible he fears that public information about embalming might lead patrons towonder if they really want this service? If the funeral men are loath to discuss the subject outsidethe trade, the reader may, understandably, be equally loath to go on reading at this point. Forthose who have the stomach for it, let us part the formaldehyde curtain....

The body is first laid out in the undertakers morgue or rather, Mr. Jones is reposing inthe preparation room to be readied to bid the world farewell.The preparation room in any of the better funeral establishments has the tiled and sterile look of

a surgery, and indeed the embalmer-restorative artist who does his chores there is beginning toadopt the term "dermasurgeon" (appropriately corrupted by some mortician-writers as''demisurgeon'') to describe his calling. His equipment, consisting of scalpels, scissors, augers,forceps, clamps, needles, pumps, tubes, bowls and basins, is crudely imitative of the surgeon's asis his technique, acquired in a nine- or twelve-month post-high-school course in an embalmingschool. He is supplied by an advanced chemical industry with a bewildering array of fluids,sprays, pastes, oils, powders, creams, to fix or soften tissue, shrink or distend it as needed, dry ithere, restore the moisture there. There are cosmetics, waxes and paints to fill the cover features,

E


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even plaster of Paris to replace entire limbs. There are ingenious aids to prop and stabilize thecadaver: A Vari-Pose Head Rest, the Edwards Arm and Hand Positioner, the Repose Block (tosupport the shoulders during the embalming), and the Throop Foot Positioner, which resemblesan old-fashioned stocks.

Mr. John H. Eckels, president of the Eckels College of Mortuary Science, thus describes

the first part of the embalming procedure: In the hands of a skilled practitioner, this work maybe done in a comparatively short time and without mutilating the body other than by slightincisionso slight that it scarcely would cause serious inconvenience if made upon a livingperson. It is necessary to remove the blood, and doing this not only helps in the disinfecting, butremoves the principal cause of disfigurements due to discoloration.

Another textbook discusses the all-important time element: The earlier this is done, thebetter, for every hour that elapses between death and embalming will add to the problems andcomplications encountered.... Just how soon should one get going on the embalming? Theauthor tells us, On the basis of such scanty information made available to this professionthrough its rudimentary and haphazard system of technical research, we must conclude that thebest results are to be obtained if the subject is embalmed before life is completely extinct that

is, before cellular death has occurred. In the average case, this would mean within an hour aftersomatic death. For those who feel that there is something a little rudimentary, not to sayhaphazard, about this advice, a comforting thought is offered by another writer. Speaking offears entertained in early days of premature burial, he points out, One of the effects ofembalming by chemical injection, however, has been to dispel fears of live burial. How true;once the blood is removed, chances of live burial are indeed remote.

To return to Mr. Jones, the blood is drained out through the veins and replaced byembalming fluid pumped in through the arteries. As noted in The Principles and Practices ofEmbalming, Every operator has a favorite injection and drainage point a fact which becomesa handicap only if he fails or refuses to forsake his favorites when conditions demand it. Typicalfavorites are the carotid artery, femoral artery, jugular vein, subclavian vein. There are variouschoices of embalming fluid. If Flextone is used, it will produce a "mild, flexible rigidity. Theskin retains a velvety softness, the tissues are rubbery and pliable. Ideal for women andchildren. It may be blended with B. and G. Products Company's Lyf-Lyk tint, which isguaranteed to reproduce "nature's own skin texture . . . the velvety appearance of living tissue.Suntone comes in three separate tints: Suntan; Special Cosmetic Tint, a pink shade especiallyindicated for young female subjects; and Regular Cosmetic Tint, moderately pink.

About three to six gallons of dyed and perfumed solution of formaldehyde, glycerin,borax, phenol, alcohol and water are soon circulating through Mr. Jones, whose mouth has beensewn together with a needle directed upward between the upper lip and gum and brought outthrough the left nostril," with the corners raised slightly "for a more pleasant expression. If heshould be bucktoothed, his teeth are cleaned with Bon Ami and coated with colorless nail polish.His eyes, meanwhile, are closed with flesh-tinted eye caps and eye cement.

The next step is to have at Mr. Jones with a thing called a trocar. This is a long, hollowneedle attached to a tube. It is jabbed into the abdomen, poked around the entrails and chestcavity, the contents of which are pumped out and replaced with cavity fluid. This done, andthe hole in the abdomen sewn up, Mr. Jones's face is heavily creamed to protect the skin fromburns which may be caused by leakage of the chemicals), and he is covered with a sheet and leftunmolested for a while. But not for long--there is more, much more, in store for him. He has


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been embalmed, but not yet restored, and the best time to start the restorative work is eight to tenhours after embalming, when the tissues have become firm and dry.

The object of all this attention to the corpse, it must be remembered, is to make itpresentable for viewing in an attitude of healthy repose. Our customs require the presentation ofour dead in the semblance of normality . . . unmarred by the ravages of illness, disease or

mutilation, says Mr. J. Sheridan Mayer in his Restorative Art. This is rather a large order sincefew people die in the full bloom of health, unravaged by illness and unmarked by somedisfigurement. The funeral industry is equal to the challenge: In some cases the gruesomeappearance of a mutilated or disease-ridden subject may be quite discouraging. The task ofrestoration may seem impossible and shake the confidence of the embalmer. This is the time forintestinal fortitude and determination. Once the formative work is begun and affected tissues arecleaned or removed, all doubts of success vanish. It is surprising and gratifying to discover theresults which may be obtained.

The embalmer, having allowed an appropriate interval to elapse, returns to the attack, butnow he brings into play the skill and equipment of sculptor and cosmetician. Is a hand missing?Casting one in plaster of Paris is a simple matter. For replacement purposes, only a cast of the

back of the hand is necessary; this is within the ability of the average operator and is quiteadequate. If a lip or two, a nose or an ear should be missing, the embalmer has at hand a varietyof restorative waxes with which to model replacements. Pores and skin texture are simulated bystippling with a little brush, and over this cosmetics are laid on. Head off? Decapitation casesare rather routinely handled. Ragged edges are trimmed, and head joined to torso with a series ofsplints, wires and sutures. It is a good idea to have a little something at the neck a scarf orhigh collar when time for viewing comes. Swollen mouth? Cut out tissue as needed frominside the lips. If too much is removed, the surface contour can easily be restored by removingtissue through vertical incisions made down each side of the neck. When the deceased iscasketed, the pillow will hide the suture incisions . . . as an extra precaution against leakage, thesuture may be painted with liquid sealer.

The opposite condition is more likely to present itself that of emaciation. Hishypodermic syringe now loaded with massage cream, the embalmer seeks out and fills thehollowed and sunken areas by injection. In this procedure the backs of the hands and fingers andthe under-chin area should not be neglected.

Positioning the lips is a problem that recurrently challenges the ingenuity of theembalmer. Closed too tightly, they tend to give a stern, even disapproving expression. Ideally,embalmers feel, the lips should give the impression of being ever so slightly parted, the upper lipprotruding slightly for a more youthful appearance. This takes some engineering, however, as thelips tend to drift apart. Lip drift can sometimes be remedied by pushing one or two straight pinsthrough the inner margin of the lower lip and then inserting them between the two front upperteeth. If Mr. Jones happens to have no teeth, the pins can just as easily be anchored in hisArmstrong Face Former and Denture Replacer. Another method to maintain lip closure is todislocate the lower jaw, which is then held in its new position by a wire run through holes whichhave been drilled through the upper and lower jaws at the midline. As the French are fond ofsaying, il faut souffrir pour etre belle.

1If Mr. Jones has died of jaundice, the embalming fluid will very likely turn him green.

Does this deter the embalmer? Not if he has intestinal fortitude. Masking pastes and cosmetics

1One must suffer to be beautiful.


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are heavily laid on, burial garments and casket interiors are color-correlated with particular care,and Jones is displayed beneath rose-colored lights. Friends will say, How well he looks. Deathby carbon monoxide, on the other hand, can be rather a good thing from the embalmer'sviewpoint: One advantage is the fact that this type of discoloration is an exaggerated form of anatural pink coloration. This is nice because the healthy glow is already present and needs but

little attention.The patching and filling completed, Mr. Jones is now shaved, washed and dressed.Cream-based cosmetic, available in pink, flesh, suntan, brunette and blond, is applied to hishands and face, his hair is shampooed and combed (and, in the case of Mrs. Jones, set), his handsmanicured. For the horny-handed son of toil special care must be taken; cream should be appliedto remove ingrained grime, and the nails cleaned. If he were not in the habit of having themmanicured in life, trimming and shaping is advised for better appearancenever questioned bykin.

Jones is now ready for casketing (this is the present participle of the verb to casket). Inthis operation, his right shoulder should be depressed slightly to turn the body a bit to the rightand soften the appearance of lying flat on the back. Positioning the hands is a matter of

importance, and special rubber positioning blocks may be used. The hands should be cuppedslightly for a more lifelike, relaxed appearance. Proper placement of the body requires a delicatesense of balance. It should lie as high as possible in the casket, yet not so high that the lid, whenlowered, will hit the nose. On the other hand, we are cautioned, placing the body too lowcreates the impression that the body is in a box.

Jones is next wheeled into the appointed slumber room where a few last touches may beaddedhis favorite pipe placed in his hand or, if he was a great reader, a book propped intoposition. (In the case of little Master Jones a Teddy bear may be clutched.) Here he will holdopen house for a few days, visiting hours 10 A.M. to 9 P.M.

Diction

Look up the definitions for the following words: docility, intractable, reticence, rudimentary,somatic, stippling, loath, and raison dtre.

Suggestions for Writing:1. Have you ever been to an open-casket funeral? Perhaps youve been to more than one kind?

Do you have any preferences, based on what youve seen?2. Are there any other products we buy out of fear or hope, but that we might not really need?3. How (if at all) and why has Mitfords essay changed your mind about anything?*4. What was the publics reaction to Mitfords book when it first came out? Do you agree?*5. The way a society treats its dead says a lot about that society. What can we learn about our

own society by comparing our funeral practices to those of some other culture?

*6. Compare the level of violence and gore depicted in Mitfords essay with what we see on TVand in movies these days.



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James Harvey RobinsonON VARIOUS KINDS OF

THINKING

James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936) was an Americanhistorian and university professor whohelped found the NewSchool for Social Research in New York City. In the followingselectionfrom The Mind in the Making (1921), he defines four kindsof thinking and analyzes theirrelative frequency and importance inhuman life.

We do not think enough about thinking, and much of our confusion is the result of currentillusions in regard to it. Let us forget for the moment any impressions we may have derivedfrom the philosophers, and see what seems to happen in ourselves. The first thing that we noticeis that our thought moves with such incredible rapidity that it is almost impossible to arrest anyspecimen of it long enough to have a look at it. When we are offered a penny for our thoughtswe always find that we have recently had so many things in mind that we can easily make a

selection which will not compromise us too nakedly. On inspection we shall find that even if weare not downright ashamed of a great part of our spontaneous thinking it is far too intimate,personal, ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal more than a small part of it. I believe this mustbe true of everyone. We do not, of course, know what goes on in other people's heads. They tellus very little and we tell them very little. The spigot of speech, rarely fully opened, could neveremit more than driblets of the ever renewed hogshead of thought noch grsser wie'sHeidelberger Fass. We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as ourown, but they probably are.

We all appear to ourselves to be thinking all the time during our waking hours, and mostof us are aware that we go on thinking while we are asleep, even more foolishly than whenawake. When uninterrupted by some practical issue we are engaged in what is now known as a

reverie. This is our spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking. We allow our ideas to take theirown course and this course is determined by our hopes and fears, our spontaneous desires, theirfulfillment or frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our loves and hates and resentments. There isnothing else anything like so interesting to ourselves as ourselves. All thought that is not moreor less laboriously controlled and directed will inevitably circle about the beloved ego. It isamusing and pathetic to observe this tendency in ourselves and in others. We learn politely andgenerously to overlook this truth, but if we dare to think of it, it blazes forth like the noontidesun.

The reverie of free association of ideas has of late become the subject of scientificresearch. While investigators are not yet agreed on the results, or at least on the properinterpretation to be given to them, there can be no doubt that our reveries form the chief index to

our fundamental character. They are a reflection of our nature as modified by often hidden andforgotten experiences. We need not go into the matter further here, for it is only necessary toobserve that the reverie is at all times a potent and in many cases an omnipotent rival to everyother kind of thinking. It doubtless influences all our speculations in its persistent tendency toself-magnification and self-justification, which are its chief preoccupations, but it is the last thingto make directly or indirectly for honest increase of knowledge. Philosophers usually talk as ifsuch thinking did not exist or were in some way negligible. This is what makes theirspeculations so unreal and often worthless.


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The reverie, as any of us can see for himself, is frequently broken and interrupted by thenecessity of a second kind of thinking. We have to make practical decisions. Shall we write aletter or no? Shall we take the subway or a bus? Shall we have dinner at seven or half past?Shall we buy U.S. Rubber or a Liberty Bond? Decisions are easily distinguishable from the freeflow of the reverie. Sometimes they demand a good deal of careful pondering and the recollec-

tion of pertinent facts; often, however, they are made impulsively. They are a more difficult andlaborious thing than the reverie, and we resent having to make up our mind when we are tired,or absorbed in a congenial reverie. Weighing a decision, it should be noted, does not necessarilyadd anything to our knowledge, although we may, of course, seek further information beforemaking it.

A third kind of thinking is stimulated when anyone questions s our beliefs and opinions.We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, butif we are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We areincredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passionfor them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideasthemselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened. We are by nature

stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attack, whether it be our person, our family, ourproperty, or our opinion. A United States Senator once remarked to a friend of mine that GodAlmighty could not make him change his mind on our Latin-American policy. We maysurrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the intellectual world at least peace iswithout victory.

Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we havea natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomedto accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptionsleads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

I remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the Governor of the state wasbidden. The Chairman explained that His Excellency could not be present for certain goodreasons; what the real reasons were the presiding officer said he would leave us to conjecture.This distinction between good and real reasons is one of the most clarifying and essential inthe whole realm of thought. We can readily give what seem to us good reasons for being aCatholic or a Mason, a Republican or a Democrat, an adherent or opponent of the League ofNations. But the real reasons are usually on quite a different plane. Of course the importanceof this distinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely, recognized. The Baptist missionary isready enough to see that the Buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear carefulinspection, but because he happened to be born in a Buddhist family in Tokyo. But it would betreason to his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due to the factthat his mother was a member of the First Baptist church of Oak Ridge. A savage can give allsorts of reasons for his belief that it is dangerous to step on a man's shadow, and a newspapereditor can advance plenty of arguments against the Bolsheviki. But neither of them may realizewhy he happens to be defending his particular opinion.

The real reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as well as from others.As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as religion,family relations, property, business, our country, and the state. We unconsciously absorb themfrom our environment. They are persistently whispered in our ear by the group in which we


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happen to live. Moreover, as Mr. Trotter has pointed out, these judgments, being the product ofsuggestion and not of reasoning, have the quality of perfect obviousness, so that to question them

. . . is to the believer to carry skepticism to an insane degree, and will be met by contempt,disapproval, or condemnation, according to the nature of the belief in question. When,

therefore, we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of feeling which tells usthat to inquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable,bad form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a nonrational one, and probably,therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.

Opinions, on the other hand, which are the result of experience or of honest reasoning donot have this quality of "primary certitude." I remember when as a youth I heard a group ofbusinessmen discussing the question of the immortality of the soul, I was outraged by thesentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party As I look back now I see that I had at the timeno interest in the matter, and certainly no least argument to urge in favor of the belief in which Ihad been reared. But neither my personal indifference to the issue, nor the fact that I had

previously given it no attention, served to prevent an angry resentment when I heard my ideasquestioned.This spontaneous and loyal support of our preconceptions this process of finding

good reasons to justify our routine beliefs-is known to modern psychologists as rationalizing clearly only a new name for a very ancient thing. Our good reasons ordinarily have novalue in promoting honest enlightenment, because, no matter how solemnly they may bemarshaled, they are at bottom the result of personal preference or prejudice, and not of an honestdesire to seek or accept new knowledge.

In our reveries we are frequently engaged in self-justification, for we cannot bear to thinkourselves wrong, and yet have constant illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes. So wespend much time finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others, and shifting on tothem with great ingenuity the onus of our own failures and disappointments. Rationalizing is theself-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehensionor error.

The little word my is the most important one in all human affairs, and properly to reckonwith it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the same force whether it is my dinner, my dog, andmy house, or my faith, my country, and my God. We not only resent the imputation that ourwatch is wrong, or our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of Mars, thepronunciation of Epictetus, the medicinal value of salicin, or the [birth] date of Sargon I, aresubject to revision.

Philosophers, scholars, and men of science exhibit a common sensitiveness in alldecisions in which their amour propre is involved. Thousands of argumentative works have beenwritten to vent a grudge. However stately their reasoning, it may be nothing but rationalizing,stimulated by the most commonplace of all motives. A history of philosophy and theology couldbe written in terms of grouches, wounded pride, and aversions, and it would be far moreinstructive than the usual treatments of these themes. Sometimes, under Providence, the lowlyimpulse of resentment leads to great achievements. Milton wrote his treatise on divorce as aresult of his troubles with his seventeen-year-old wife, and when he was accused of being theleading spirit in a new sect, the Divorcers, he wrote his nobleAreopagitica to prove his right to


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say what he thought fit, and incidentally to establish the advantage of a free press in thepromotion of Truth.

All mankind, high and low, thinks in all the ways which have been described. The reveriegoes on all the time not only in the mind of the mill hand and the Broadway flapper, but equallyin weighty judges and godly bishops. It has gone on in all the philosophers, scientists, poets, and

theologians that have ever lived. Aristotle's most abstruse speculations were doubtless temperedby highly irrelevant reflections. He is reported to have had very thin legs and small eyes, forwhich he doubtless had to find excuses, and he was wont to indulge in very conspicuous dressand rings and was accustomed to arrange his hair carefully. Diogenes the Cynic exhibited theimpudence of a touchy soul. His tub was his distinction. Tennyson in beginning his "Maud"could not forget his chagrin over losing his patrimony years before as the result of an unhappyinvestment in the Patent Decorative Carving Company. These facts are not recalled here as agratuitous disparagement of the truly great, but to insure a full realization of the tremendouscompetition which all really exacting thought has to face, even in the minds of the most highlyendowed mortals.And now the astonishing and perturbing suspicion emerges that perhaps almost all that had

passed for social science, political economy, politics, and ethics in the past may be brushed asideby future generations as mainly rationalizing. John Dewey has already reached this conclusion inregard to philosophy. Veblen and other writers have revealed the various unperceivedpresuppositions of the traditional political economy, and now comes an Italian sociologist,Vilfredo Pareto, who, in his huge treatise on general sociology, devotes hundreds of pages tosubstantiating a similar thesis affecting all the social sciences. This conclusion may be ranked bystudents of a hundred years hence as one of the several great discoveries of our age. It is by nomeans fully worked out, and it is so opposed to nature that it will be very slowly accepted by thegreat mass of those who consider themselves thoughtful. As a historical student I am personallyfully reconciled to this newer view. Indeed, it seems to me inevitable that just as the varioussciences of nature were, before the opening of the Seventeenth Century/ largely Masses Ofrationalizations to suit the religious sentiments of the period, so the social Sciences haveContinued even to Our Own day to be rationalizations Of uncritically accepted beliefs andcustoms. It will become apparent as we proceed that the fact than an idea is ancient and that ithas been widely received is no argument in its favor, but should immediately suggest thenecessity of carefully testing it as a probable instance of rationalization.

This brings us to another kind of thought which can fairly easily be distinguished fromthe three kinds described above. it has not the usual qualities of the reverie, for it does not hoverabout our personal complacencies and humiliations. It is not made up of the homely decisionsforced upon us by everyday needs, when we review our little stock of existing information,consult our conventional preferences and obligations, and make a choice of action. It is not thedefense of our own cherished beliefs and prejudices just because they are our own mereplausible excuses for remaining of the same mind. On the contrary, it is that peculiar species ofthought which leads us to change our mind.

It is this kind of thought that has raised man from his pristine, subsavage ignorance andsqualor to the degree of knowledge and comfort which he now possesses. On his capacity tocontinue and greatly extend this kind of thinking depends his chance of groping his way out ofthe plight in which the most highly civilized peoples of the world now find themselves. In thepast this type of thinking has been called Reason. But so many misapprehensions have grown uparound the word that some of us have become very suspicious of it. I suggest, therefore, that we


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substitute a recent name and speak of creative thought rather than of Reason. For this kind ofmeditation begets knowledge, and knowledge is really creative inasmuchas it makes things lookdifferent from what they seemed before andmay indeed work for their reconstruction.

In certain moods some of us realize that we are observing things or making reflectionswith a seeming disregard of our personal preoccupations. We are not preening or defending

ourselves; we are not faced by the necessity of any practical decision, nor are we apologizing forbelieving this or that. We are just wondering and looking and mayhap seeing what we neverperceived before.

Curiosity is as clear and definite as any of our urges. We wonder what is in a sealedtelegram or in a letter in which someone else is absorbed, or what is being said in the telephonebooth or in low conversation. This inquisitiveness is vastly stimulated by jealousy, Suspicion, orany hint that we ourselves are directly or indirectly involved. But there appears to be a fairamount of personal interest in other people's affairs even when they do not concern us except asa mystery to be unraveled or a tale to be told. The reports of a divorce suit will have "newsvalue" for many weeks. They constitute a story, like a novel or play or moving picture. This isnot an example of pure curiosity, however, since we readily identify ourselves with others, and

their joys and despair then become our own.We also take note of, or observe, as Sherlock Holmes says, things which have nothingto do with our personal interests and make no personal appeal either direct or by way ofsympathy. This is what Veblen so well calls idle curiosity. And it is usually idle enough. Someof us when we face the line of people opposite us in a subway train impulsively consider them indetail and engage in rapid inferences and form theories in regard to them. on entering a roomthere are those who will perceive at a glance the degree of preciousness of the rugs, the characterof the pictures, and the personality revealed by the books. But there are many, it would seem,who are so absorbed in their personal reverie or in some definite purpose that they have nobright-eyed energy for idle curiosity. The tendency to miscellaneous observation we come byhonestly enough, for we note it in many of our animal relatives.

Veblen, however, uses the term idle curiosity somewhat ironically, as is his wont. It isidle only to those who fail to realize that it may be a very rare and indispensable thing fromwhich almost all distinguished human achievement proceeds, since it may lead to systematicexamination and seeking for things hitherto undiscovered. For research is but diligent searchwhich enjoys the high flavor of primitive hunting. Occasionally and fitfully idle curiosity thusleads to creative thought, which alters and broadens our own views and aspirations and may inturn, under highly favorable circumstances, affect the views and lives of others, even forgenerations to follow. An example or two will make this unique human process clear.

Galileo was a thoughtful youth and doubtless carried on a rich and varied reverie. He hadartistic ability and might have turned out to be a musician or painter. When he had dwelt amongthe monks at Valambrosa he had been tempted to lead the life of a religious. As a boy he busiedhimself with toy machines and he inherited a fondness for mathematics. All these facts are ofrecord. We may safely assume also that, along with many other subjects of contemplation, thePisan maidens found a vivid place in his thoughts.

One day when seventeen years old, he wandered into the cathedral of his native town. Inthe midst of his reverie he looked up at the lamps hanging by long chains from the high ceilingof the church. Then something very difficult to explain occurred. He found himself no longerthinking of the building, worshipers, or the services; of his artistic or religious interests; of hisreluctance to become a physician as his father wished. He forgot the question of a craeer and


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even the graziosissirne donne. As he watched the swinging lamps he was suddenly wonderingif mayhap their oscillations whether long or short, did not occupy the same time. Then he testedthis hypothesis by counting his Pulse, for that was the only timepiece he had with him.

This observation, however remarkable in itself, was not enough to produce a reallyceative thought. Others may have noticed the same thing and yet nothing came of it. Most of

our observations have no assignable results. Galileo may have seen that the warts on a peasantsface formed a perfect isosceles triangle, or he may have noticed with boyish glee that just as theofficiating priest was uttering the solemn words ecce agnus Dei, a fly lit on the end of his nose.To be really creative, ideas have to be worked u p and then put over, so that they become a partof a mans social heritage. The highly accurate pendulum clock was one of the later results ofGalileos discovery. He himself was let to reconsider and successfully to refute the old notionsof falling bodies. It remained for Newton to prove that the moon was falling, and presumably allthe heavenly bodies. This quite upset all the consecrated views of the heavens as managed byangelic engineers. The universality of the laws of gravitation stimulated the attempt to seekother and equally important natural laws and cast grave doubts on the miracles in which mankindhad hitherto believed. In short, those who dared to include in their thought the discoveries of

Galileo and his successors found themselves in a new earth surrounded by new heavens.On the twenty-eighth of October, 1831, two hundred and fifty years after Galileo hadnoticed the isochronous vibrations of the lamps, creative thought and its currency had so farincreased that Faraday was wondering what would happen if he mounted a disk of copperbetween the poles of a horseshoe ma

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