The ninth point of the Scout Law reads: “A scout is thrifty.” In recent years the idea of thrift has seemed to mean buy stuff cheap. But can it be thrifty not to buy stuff at all? Is it un-American, in the face of a recession, not to “do our part to fuel the recovery” (by buying cheap plastic crap manufactured overseas)? Oh dear, perhaps I reveal a bias. I’m into thrift, but not in the sense of accumulating more stuff at lower prices.

It’s the old theory: he who dies with the most toys wins. Except I always preferred the revision: he who dies with the most toys still dies. So— let’s journey to the heady days of the 14th century, when thrifty meant thriving and prosperity. Back then, if memory serves, “prosperity” might have been defined as not being among the one in three Europeans who died of plague.

The current recession is no Black Death, but it’s not so very cheery for many people who are suddenly discovering thrift in the stingy sense. If, instead of worrying about the quantity of stuff we may or may not be able to afford, what if we gathered up what we do have and made the most of that? One of my favorite tree huggers, Dana Meadows, often confronted this very dilemma and typically looked to the planet itself for guidance:

Take the desperation out of the picture, slow down and listen to the trees a while, and this concept of sufficiency doesn’t seem as crazy as its ugly cousin, the fear of scarcity. The panic of depletion is one that ironically escalates the entropy: people compete to hoard and consume scarce resources before they’re gone.

If, however, it’s possible that there really is enough here for all of us, then all of a sudden the perspective shifts from “git mine while I can” to “whoa, let’s make sure there’s enough for all.” This concept of sufficiency is not extreme: it’s not saying there’s more than enough; it’s saying there could well be just enough. In the same essay quoted above, Meadows continues in this vein. Here, she speaks to us as if in the voice of Mother Earth:

And while she has an earful for those who listen to the so-called laws of economics over the laws of the Earth, she is ultimately after thrift. She takes the word’s 14th-century sense, which may have hinted at simple survival, and adds a modern, joyous sense of thriving thriftily:

Any chance this was the intent of a law memorized by millions of scouts over the past century? Here’s what the Handbook says:

Hmm. Maybe the Boy Scouts in 1910 were on to something those plague survivors figured out in the 1300s?

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

P.S. The previous blog in this series was the cheeriest anti-scrapbooking rant you ever read.

Photo by SteamboatDigs

Blog 7 of 12 in tribute to a century of scouting worldwide.

After four months of fairly obvious virtues found within the 12 points of the Scout Law (“A scout is helpful, friendly, courteous, kind …”), we’re back to one that has that oppressively dogmatic ring of “law.” Ah, obedience. What, no love for freethinking creativity? No room for conscientious objectors here? We can’t be disobedient even if we’re civil about it? Is obedience really a virtue in today’s society? Read on and I will give you clear guidance that you must obey.

Intelligent disobedience is a trained virtue in seeing-eye dogs. Picture a blind woman trying to cross a street. A hybrid car approaches, too quiet for her to hear. She moves to cross the street. Her dog sees the car and disobeys his master’s command. And that’s a good thing.

To be fair, I know that this is actually the exception in dog training. As the owner of a puppy-school dropout, I know that most of the time it’s in a dog’s own interest to obey its master. Not all humans are dogs, though, and the concept of intelligent disobedience can actually be quite valuable for anyone with a shred of virtue. It’s akin to civil disobedience when thoughtful people decide society has gone astray. Or creative thinking, when everyone else seems stuck in a rut.

But anarchy only works as a minority approach. If we all disobeyed everything, there would be nothing left of substance. Without substance— well, what then are the anarchists supposed to tear down? You can only stomp on rubble so long before it starts to look merely like a teenage tantrum. So perhaps for every demolitionist, the world needs nine engineers building things back up?

Questioning, challenging, even tearing things down is important, but it’s also the easiest part of the equation because it’s reactionary. It’s always simpler to react to things than to create them in the first place. Frankly, I’m more interested in the act of creation. In my opinion, it’s a fascinating mix of obedience and disobedience. We obey proven principles to carry us to the limits of our current understanding of things. We obey right up to the edge of our comfort zone. Then we disobey certain assumed limits in order to achieve something new. That’s creativity.

I’m currently directing a film that’s all about that sort of balance. One of the personalities we’re profiling, for instance, is Mike May. He obeys certain principles that help him get around, in fact he has created a GPS system that provides a reliable resource allowing people with impaired vision to navigate like never before. Then, at certain opportune moments, Mike disobeys limitations that might seem imposed on him. The writer Robert Kurson named his book on Mike after these moments: Crashing Through.

While those dramatic leaps of faith are the stuff of great stories, even Mike acknowledges that much of life is preparation for those moments. While we were filming, he told me his speed skiing coach, the great Franz Weber, always said: “people say I’m crazy for going a hundred and thirty miles an hour. You’re only crazy if you don’t train for it.” That training, from the former World Champion, provided Mike with his own speed skiing world record: 65 miles an hour, completely blind (a record that still stands).

Preparation like that sounds a little like obedience, and is that really so bad? Obey what propels you forward; disobey what holds you back (unless a hybrid car is coming).

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Photo by walknboston

I know you. You’ve been reading a few of my blogs and now you’re curious how much of my own marital dirty laundry I’m going to wave beneath your nose. Or perhaps you’ve come across this book review through a web search and hope that I’ll get to the point in 800 words or less— so you can decide whether it’s worth reading this book from the author of the bestselling Listening to Prozac. Either way I’m happy to oblige.

The book’s full title is Should You Leave? A Psychiatrist Explores Intimacy and Autonomy— and the Nature of Advice. I came to it antsy for swift advice. Before a counselor recommended it to me, I even asked him something like: “Isn’t there something as quick as a Cosmo sex survey that will tell me if I’m making a mistake?” To his credit, and that of author Peter D. Kramer, I have been slowed in that sense of urgency. If you’re having some marital issues that you want to address before they get out of control, Couples Retreat Michigan can be helpful.

The book’s opening chapters were, for me, as thick and convoluted as the opening of a Tom Robbins novel (“This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper“? What the?!). Like my spurious tribute in this entry’s opening paragraph, Kramer tests out a disturbing—but eventually disarming— second-person point of view: he addresses me the reader directly. In Chapter 2 I am Iris, a “young middle age” magazine exec fed up with Randall, my frumpy husband. I’m sitting here before Dr. Kramer and I expect his clear advice in the space of our single one-hour introductory session. In Chapter 7 I am Asa, the eminently reasonable husband of the utterly frustrating Bianca. Or perhaps in Chapter 7 I am Bianca.

As presumptuous as his writing style may sound, this is more than just a clever conceit. In the first few chapters I found myself forced into a gender-bending empathy for a dozen or more different people, each of them— err, me (us?)— struggling in their/my (our?) relationships. Willing readers will find this a challenging journey akin to the actual process of marriage counseling: wives must walk a mile in their husbands’ stinky sneakers; husbands must don their wives’ strappy sandals for the journey.

Of course, “willing” readers is the key there: I suspect Kramer’s dense style and cerebral enthusiasm weeds out the most impatient readers before his technique pays off. And that may be OK: advice is not for everyone.

In essence, Kramer seeks immediately to calm the impatience that accompanies most requests for advice. He deduces what might bring a reader to his book—and there is indeed a singular level of commitment in someone who would risk being caught reading a book on relationship advice. Myself, I waited till my wife was out of town before checking it out from the library. Emboldened by the optimism I was building (from contrasting my situation to those of Kramer’s patients— and classic cases, such as those of Dr. Freud), I eventually brought the book out in the open.

Well, actually, I kept it face-down on the nightstand. Discussing this stuff openly takes time.

That is perhaps one of the book’s triumphs: for those who aren’t comfortable airing their intimate foibles with others (even with a counselor), this book attempts to replicate that process from the utter privacy of the typeset page. If you make it through the book (no small assumption), you will have journeyed through something like several sessions with a psychiatrist or psychologist, including sharing a few cups of coffee or pints of beer afterward.

This book has plenty of insight for an incredibly broad range of struggling relationships. Its advice is all the more salient because it is tempered with the author’s own ambivalence about the pitfalls of books, friends, or even professionals doling out advice. That irony might be said to be the central dilemma of advice-giving professionals: All advice is presumptuous; but without presumptions we might still be Neanderthals. Or, as William Hazlitt wrote, back when fountain pens and absinthe were all the rage: “Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room.”

My greatest personal takeaway from the book was its reassurance that seeking to be exceptional was OK. In psychiatry, a field that seems to be about normalizing the abnormal, it’s refreshing to hear from an expert who reveres your/my (our?) free-thinking ways:

Kramer does much more than simply pat us freethinkers on the back and say it’ll all work out. Every reader will find different advice for their particular situation, and certainly some may find cause to walk away. If you accept the inherent riddles of advice— that you’re probably the only one who can answer your questions, but you sure would like a little guidance— then you’ll find gems here.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Photo by You – err, Iris (me?)