Letters to the Editor
pacificwhim
Published Letters: 201 Editor's Choice: 37
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To: Howard
[Read the article: Java panic: Starbucks closing all stores Tuesday evening]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Re: Your soul
How about sourcing the baked goods and other products in your stores from local sources whenever possible, rather than buying them by the shipload from whatever mass marketer gives you the lowest price? That would a) Help you contribute something to the local economies, b) Improve the quality of your wretched baked goods and c) Be great PR.
Also, how about letting each local manager decide how the stores will look, maybe by working with local artists or interior designers to create a look that reflects the history of the city or neighborhood? You could keep some elements consistent (after all, you are a formula retailer with a brand to protect), but otherwise allow some local soul to seep back into things.
Yes, it will cost more, but so what? Quit whining, Schultz. You built this behemoth. If you don't want it to be so soulless, suck it up and change it. Otherwise, please shove your coffee roaster into a place that, like Seattle, doesn't see the sun.
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Multiple personality article
[Read the article: The certainty epidemic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was cruising along with this piece, digging the author's thesis on uncertainty, which I agree with, when suddenly we dive down this rabbit hole into a multi-paragraph diatribe in which he riffs loudly and repeatedly on his atheist, materialist mindset. What have you got against the placebo effect, Bob? Have you considered that in your cosmos, where the mind is supposedly a bottom-up system of neural illusions that has no causal power, the placebo effect represents a contradiction of that: the effect of the "mind" on the body from the top down? Don't dismiss the placebo effect so lightly; it's one of the more fascinating mysteries of mind-body medicine.
Anyway, I thought some editorial judgment was called for here. The guy's book may be brilliant, but his application for membership in the Daniel Dennett/Steven Pinker "we're meaningless bunches of neurons" club was irritating. Yes, we know you were trying to establish your scientific street cred, Dr. Burns, but I don't care. I just want to know if I should bang down $20 for your book.
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@ Alkaline
[Read the article: The certainty epidemic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, I think that's an exceptionally clear and apt description of religion. Bravo.
One must be careful to segregate that from spirituality, however, which is a different, non-doctrinal kettle of fish.
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@palindromebeta
[Read the article: The certainty epidemic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, IMHO, spirituality is the recognition that there is a truth to existence that is beyond the confirmatory power of objective observation; i.e., it's purely subjective and dependent on one's own perceptions and experience. It doesn't have to be supernatural. For Einstein, it was science and the incredible complexity of the universe. For others it could be organized religion, nature, music, the ineffable nature of consciousness, the concept of a holographic cosmos, or the idea that all the wisdom of the ages is contained in Stephen Colbert's cockeyed right ear (what is UP with that thing, anyway?)
The key points (and again, this is just my view): spirituality recognizes and respects the reality and significance of subjective psychological and mental experience, rather than just dismissing it as an epiphenomenon of the brain, and it is individual, rather than shaped by, as Alkaline said, a deliberate dogmatic desire to create false certainly. Unless I subscribe to a religious creed, my spirituality will be like no one else's——and maybe not even then, since I know Catholics whose beliefs diverge completely within the framework of the church.
I'm spiritual, but I'm an atheist. The two are completely compatible. One can deny the existence of a Big Daddy deity that's clearly an outmoded human construct while acknowledging the astonishing realities of consciousness, quantum mechanics and other mysteries that may bind us all together in ways we don't yet understand. I do think that organized religion, at least as it stands now, is dying and deserves to have the plug pulled. Exceptions might be made for groups like the Quakers, a tiny sect that in their history have become symbols of all the good religion COULD do if human egos could be divorced from it.
One thing Burns certainly reminds me of: not knowing is exhilarating. Mysteries are what drive humanity's passions.
Howzzat, Homey?
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Been there, David
[Read the article: Die, Daddy, die!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thank you, thank you, Salon commentarians for pointing out how tiresome Shields' writing is. I found this book relentlessly self-indulgent. It comes from the "I've had my revelation that I and everyone else in this world are mortal and I'm going to shove my newly gained wisdom in your face and demonstrate how brave I am to look at this reality unflinchingly and how deep and wise it makes me" school of authorship.
I know because I've been there. I had my shuddering memento mori two years ago after a near-miss with my wife, faced down my own post-traumatic death obsession, and learned to live with the fact that we are all temporary leaseholders here. Not only has the experience not made me morbid, but the awareness of death has truly made me appreciate every moment of my wonderful life even more richly: my daughter's recent first-ever potty in the potty at the L.A. Zoo, my wife's triumphant first-ever marathon seven months after giving birth, my own hobby wailing the blues in front of drunk bar patrons. It's all rich and silly and marvelous.
The experience also made me more open-minded and spiritual, less dogmatic about what I thought I knew about reality and less judgmental about those who believe in a higher power, even though I rarely share their belief, especially if it's born of an institutionalized religious creed. And since I'm a professional author, I've started a book on my journey. But it's not this kind of leaden, faux-wise existential tract. Death is not the point, kids. Life is the point, and not everyone ages according to your statistics, Shields. I have a famous friend who's 94 and still skis, for God's sake. He's young. You write like you're old at 51.
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@AJ Calhoun
[Read the article: Die, Daddy, die!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]May you never lose your piss nor your vinegar, Chief. You're not old. You're classic.