There is an article in the Arts section of the NYT today which deals with a long-standing situation: the role of the humanities in education. And there is a connection between that discussion and this subject.

Suppose that a given person is situated to make a decent living, with enough of disposable income to be relieved of the constant pressure just to stay alive. The question that is not much considered is: what does such a person do with the money and the extra time it buys? This is an especially apposite question for retirees.

To save money for the health-care, Social Security, and pension systems, you could die. To those for whom money is the only measure, and economics the only relevant consideration, that is perfectly logical. After all if human beings are just units of production and consumption it makes sense to throw them away when they can no longer perform those functions adequately.

Or they could watch television, which in sufficient quantity is another version of dying, but more slowly. Or spend a lot of time and money in places like Atlantic City or Foxwoods, gambling away their fortunes and time and calling it entertainment. (I've seen a little of this up close, and it makes me so sad that I've never gone back. If my retirement comes to this, shoot me.)

Or they could, if they had acquired the taste and the skill do what and old friend of mine did when he was laid off from his printing job (this is back in the '60s): sit down for a couple of hours a day and read all of Shakespeare. Or something like that: becoming friends with some very interesting people who just happen to have been dead for a while, through what they left behind for us. (My own skills, training, and inclinations --- I am a retired professional musician --- give me the great privilege of a close and active acquaintanceship with Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. They are my BFF's and demanding though they are, I'm very lucky that they will always be there for me. Thus everything I am saying here is from a very biased POV...so be it.) It also might make them more interesting people, at least for those who have tried to do the same for themselves.

I think that is what a humanistic education should do: provide a viable framework for spending the time and money that work and some good fortune has provided, and therefrom deriving satisfaction (a concept I hear very little about any more, even in connection with junk food). If that were more common, such nonsense as Mr. Hemingway's wouldn't clutter up our discussions.

I believe that neglect of that dimension of education has contributed strongly to the moral malaise that is at the bottom of our present situation: a generation of managers to whom money and power are ends in themselves are just a cohort of broken people who can do nothing but try to fill their inner emptiness with more money and more power. But power increasing always encounters greater power at some point, so the only thing that you can do with power alone is try to increase it...which results in an "arms race" that usually ends in MAD, if not literal, than psychological and emotional. (For me Donald Trump is the poster boy for such a type.)

I spent a good deal of my professional life in a place named for one of the richest men of the 19th century, Carnegie Hall. I've always admired the gutsy Scottish cabin-boy, not because of how he made his money but how he spent it. He is supposed to have said "It's not a sin to get rich, but it's a sin to die rich." It should be emblazoned over the entrance. Undoutedly in his claw to the top of the financial pinnacle , he hurt many. But at least after he left, the money he piled up has provided pleasure and even fulfillment for many more. It's no coincidence that the Carnegie-Mellon Institute has not only one of the best engineering departments in the country, but one of the strongest humanities departments too.

Nothing is as uncool as trying to be when you're not. AS a lifetime exemplar of uncool (short, pudgy, Jewish violin player) I learned that early on.

But why is it that when these people try it, most of whom are ridiculous at best and contemptible at worst, I am embarrassed for them? After all, they are doing themselves in and saving the rest of us the trouble.

for the hell of it and now I'll take a shower. Hey Scomo, it's real easy to talk like a bad John Wayne character when you are not facing a person and you're not using your real name.

A few years ago, in the early days of Internet dating, there was a cartoon in the New Yorker (effete Eastern magazine, yech!). It showed a dog sitting at a computer and the caption read "When you're online you don't have to tell them you're a dog." Likewise, when you're online you can bluster all you like and don't have to tell them you're a wimp.

But we get it anyway.