Submission 139 / Day 138

VALU-MART to Next Act, Milwaukee.

Next Act's play selection is fascinating because it practically invites a guessing game as to how much their choice in scripts is driven by artistic considerations and how much by economic ones. After the production of LOMBARDI: THE ONLY THING, a home-grown play about the legendary Packers coach that has a cast of six, the three remaining plays in Next Act's season (Hatcher's MURDERERS, Blessing's GOING TO ST. IVES, and Wright's THE PAVILION) contain a total of eight roles. And, if you add in two other "non-season" shows that Next Act is producing, WINTER TALES by John McGivern and ROBESON IN CONCERT, both of which have a cast of one, we have, in all, six productions with a total of sixteen roles . . . or two and two-thirds of an actor per play (I'm pretty sure that "two-thirds of an actor" has appeared in the productions of many of my plays).

THE CRUCIBLE alone has 22 speaking roles. How times change.

The fact that LOMBARDI has six roles demonstrates that Next Act's space can accommodate shows of that size, so we're left to ask whether the fact that none of the other plays contains more than three roles is purely coincidental and represents a simple artistic judgment -- after all, we're talking about three well-regarded plays by three equally well-regarded playwrights -- or whether economic considerations were a major factor.

I'll be grateful if anyone can share with me analyses of the evolution of "average cast size" in plays written and produced over the last few decades. And, if the data shows what I expect it will, I'll be happy to hear opinions about the "chicken or egg" question: did theatres start demanding smaller-cast plays or did playwrights simply start preferring to write them?

No submissions today (Day 137)

Submission 138 / Day 136

REVOLUTION to State of Play Theatre (NYC)

REVOLUTION hasn't received many submissions because, although it is arguably my best play and unarguably my most amibtious, it is at odds in many ways with current aesthetic orthodoxies and, more importantly, with certain economic imperatives.

Aesthetically, REVOLUTION is a plot-driven play at a time when character-driven plays are far more popular. The dialogue is consciously heightened at a time when realism is the rule of the day. And the play is set in 1930's Spain during the Spanish Civil War, an event of immense cultural and political importance in its time, but which is largely without meaning to people today. That makes REVOLUTION a "period piece" . . . a designation that automatically disqualfies a play in the minds of many artistic directors. And it's in three acts. Did you know they once made plays that way?

These issues are more ones of fashion than they are of substance, but when it comes to the marketplace, fashion matters and, when the issue comes down to an artistic director's simple binary judgment -- yes, I'll produce it or no, I won't -- any one of these characteristics is enough to spell doom.

Then, there is the economic problem. REVOLUTION has twenty-three speaking roles and, even with doubling, requires 15 actors or, more to the point, 15 people who must be paid from a house that seats no more for a play of this size than it does for a simple two-hander. When Heather Helinsky at Pittsburgh Public invited me to submit the script, I warned her that REVOLUTION is "big" both dramatically and financially. She replied confidently that Pittsburgh Public can handle big plays -- right now they're mounting a production with ten actors and an in-ground pool. So, I guess this submission will put to the test the question of which costs more, five additional actors or a temporary home for Flipper?

Submission 137 / Day 135

CLAUDIE HUKILL to Milwaukee Chamber Theatre

There are special qualities I look for in theatres where I send CLAUDIE. They tend to be places that have a fascination with family dynamics and relationships. The Keen Company in New York is an example. MCT meets the "family criterion" by producing three plays in this season alone that fit that description. But, for those who would rather take a shortcut, a single production of Brian Friel's DANCING AT LUGHNASA will suffice.

It's fascinating how some plays seem to be joined at the hip and that's certainly been the case with CLAUDIE and DANCING AT LUGHNASA. Of CLAUDIE'S six productions, four have come at theatres that previously produced LUGHNASA. And, for all I know, MCT may have produced LUGHNASA as well in some past season. I'll be sure to ask . . . if I get a response.

. . . . . . .

VALU-MART was rejected today by Luna Stage, where I had sent a synopsis and query letter.

Submission 136 / Day 134

VALU-MART to Pillsbury House Theatre (Minneapolis)

God bless Pillsbury House Theatre. The people there are a gift to playwrights. Not only do they accept full script submissions from unknowns such as myself, but they prefer to receive them via email! That more theatres do not allow email submissions, especially those that accept only queries and synopses, is silly and wasteful. If a theatre is going to accept submissions, it ought to do so in the most efficient way possible. And the only beneficiary of requiring hard-copy scripts to be sent throught the mail is the U. S. Postal Service.

I realize that many people prefer to read plays in hard-copy form rather than on a screen and that printing emailed scripts requires effort and incurs cost . . . but, if that's the problem, then theatres should simply charge playwrights five dollars or some nominal fee. A five dollar fee would significantly exceed the theatre's actual cost to print either a script or a synopsis and it would represent a significant savings for playwrights for whom the combined costs of printing, envelopes, covers, binding, and postage are around $10 per script . . . and that doesn't yet take into account the time required of the playwright to do the assembly and deliver to the post office.

Of course, an unstated truth is that many theatres rely on the costs playwrights must bear to discourage submissions. But, if using cost as a means managing submissions is sensible (and I have doubts) then it would be far better for the penalty to be paid to the theatre rather than the post office and envelope manufacturers.

. . . . . .

Also, in response to a couple of comments I've received concerning my play submission campaign. The campaign isn't about me wanting to become a playwright -- I already am -- and it's not about a desire to become famous or gain notoriety. It's about the plays. I believe they have worth . . . value, not just for me, but for audiences, and they should be seen.

I understand that there is a certain degree of presumptuousness, even arrogance in that statement. But, it contains no more arrogance than is exhibited by anyone who writes a play or a book. Merely doing so carries with it the implicit assumption that what is being written is worth other peoples' time and money. So, having gone to the trouble of writing these plays in which I profoundly believe, it would be nonsense for me to do anything but make as much of an effort to see them reach the largest possible audience.


That said, there is a reason for the comments I received. There are in fact people . . . just go to any writers gathering . . . whose only aspiration is to be "published" or "produced", regardless of what they have to write to achieve that exalted status. Some people would happily write the labels for soup cans if soup can labels were considered a form of "publication". Even the redoubtable Moss Hart was driven more by a passion for being "in theatre" and specifically "on broadway" than he was by any aspiration to produce work of intrinsic or edifying value.

That doesn't mean Moss Hart's plays aren't wonderful. They are. But , as I read his autobiography and discover that he wrote six plays that went unproduced before delivering his first hit and also learn that he was able to set those plays aside without feeling as though something of value had been lost, I realize that we're cut from different cloth. And I say that in full recognition of the fact that in any comparison with Moss Hart, I lose.

One other thing. Today BENEATH SHELTON LAUREL got the ziggy . . . the black spot from the folks at Geva. For those keeping count, that's rejection #24. But, there are still 112 other theatres that may say "Yes!"

Submission 135 / Day 133

BENEATH SHELTON LAUREL to Pittsburgh Irish & Classical.

All right, I know a couple of days ago I said that I can't submit to PICT because I'm neither Irish nor classical. But, then over the weekend I learned that they're producing a fair number of equally non-Irish, non-classical pieces including Shanley's DOUBT next season and recently HISTORY BOYS.

So, for reasons of theme and style, this is a very good submission, but it's a difficult one for me because I know Andrew Paul, PICT's AD. Please don't misunderstand me, Andrew is a wonderful person who has done remarkable things in building an excellent, excellent theatre company and he's also attended and complimented my plays. That's why this submission is hard.

People who are true "networkers" know how to gracefully exploit acquaintances and friendships in a way I do not and, when I try, I feel every bit the awkward 15-year old stumblingly asking Cindy Dusch for a date (She refused, but had the grace not to laugh).

I simply have a hard time getting around the feeling that in making this kind of submission I'm also administering a test of whether prior expressions of regard were sincere and the truth is I don't want to know and I feel like a shit for making Andrew tell me.

Submission 134 / Day 132

POUND to the Jungle Theater, Minneapolis.

I'm going to curb my natural loquaciousness today . . . or, more precisely, my right ankle is . . . because it HURTS. I sprained or fractured the damn thing again and the only reason there's doubt about which is that it's difficult to tell from the X-rays whether the fissures that appear on my fibula are the result of this episode or the ones (yes, that's plural) that preceeded it.

A guy sitting next to me in the emergency room asked why I keep doing the same thing (in this case, running) that produces this recurring problem. And all I could say is what Sports Illustrated said of a frustratingly inconsistent basketball player many years ago, "He never makes a mistake that he doesn't repeat at least two hundred times." . . . But then, you already know that about me.

Submission 133 / Day 132

VALU-MART to Dobama Theatre.

Dobama describes itself as edgy, intimate, and provocative and it produces plays -- many of them world premieres -- that explore contemporary issues. In short, this is a place and an audience that VALU-MART should thrill. There are not as many of those places as you might think.

One of the benefits of concentrating my submissions on professional theatres is that, generally speaking, they're able to produce plays that require multi-racial and multi-generational casts. But, not all theatres can and, if the aperture is opened wide enough to take in community theatres, it's fairly stunning to see how many see the challenge of finding black actors not only great, but sometimes I fear, unwelcome.

I'm not suggesting that racism is rampant in theatre. In fact racism is probably far less prevalent in most theatres than it is in the communities where they reside. Still, the next time you're in an audience, take a look around and then take a look at the plays the theatre is producing that season. Some of you will find quite a lot of diversity, but more of you I suspect will not find much. And, at a time when theatres need to attract new audiences and the arts generally should be helping to bridge cultural gaps that separate us, it's a shame.

No submissions today (Day 131), but . . .

The other day in my entry about submitting POUND to the Gamm Theatre I mentioned that, based on Gamm's production history, we may share aesthetic sensibilities. Shared and, more often, unshared sensibilities account for a great deal that goes on or doesn't in this business.

One of the more humbling aspects of being a playwright, or at least one who is not yet commercially successful, is the discovery of how few other people may share the sensibilities expressed in my plays, which constitute after all what I value, what excites me, and what humors me. It drives home as few other things do just how different I may be and, while we all admire originality and individuality, even they can be enjoyed only within the context of community and relationships. Originality or individuality that's so extreme as to be alienating is not a happy situation. Look up the poet, Ezra Pound (the subject of my play, POUND), who spent a painful life dancing on the edge of that precipice.

Shared aesthetic sensibilities can also be vital in the relationship between a theatre's artistic director and the public. It's too much to say that shared sensibilities between AD's and the public are necessary, because it's possible and commonplace for theatres to comprise their seasons entirely of plays that are reliably popular based on the reputations and equity they've acquired elsewhere. I don't know that there are any cases of AD's selecting a play for production without actually having read it and based purely on the reviews, descriptions, and box office receipts from productions in a dozen other towns . . . but it could be done.

There are some artistic directors though who earn the trust of their audiences to the degree that people will enthusiastically come to the theatre to see plays they've never heard of and that are written by playwrights they've never heard of. They do so just because the AD, the person whose judgment they trust . . . whose judgment they willingly substitute for their own, has chosen that play.

The best example that I know of is Karla Boos, founder and AD of Quantum Theatre, who has a genius for finding plays that are unheard of outside the suburbs of, say, Dubrovnik and delivering them to a grateful audience. Karla would be embarrassed by this description, but can you imagine the importance and value to theatre of AD's like Karla who can command a public and who choose to use that power to deliver new art? I don't mean to diminish the value of theatres that restrict themselves to producing plays and playwrights whose reputations are already established --they are the means by which plays reach the broad public and not just the narrow public -- but that can't be all theatre is if it's to have any more relevance and impact than an oldies radio station.

PS. Please do not construe this as a puff-ball blown Karla Boos's way. She's already delivered her rejection.

Submission 132 / Day 130

BENEATH SHELTON LAUREL to Barebones Productions (Pittsburgh)

When I was growing up in Wheeling, WV, Pittsburgh was and in many ways still is "the big city" for me. Today it offers half a dozen or more Equity companies that do challenging theatre, among them:

• Pittsburgh Public
• City Theatre
• Pittsburgh Irish & Classical
• Quantum Theatre

And there are "up and comers", like Barebones. I admire companies like this one, so even though it's a stretch to call Barebones a "prominent theatre", it's making a serious and sincere effort to make a mark . . . like I am. So, off BSL goes.

Sending BSL to Barebones may be an act of sentiment as much as logic, but to the degree possible, the other Pittsburgh Theatres are already in play. Pittsburgh Public is considering another of my plays, REVOLUTION. Pittsburgh Irish & Classical is a wonderful company, but my options there are limited since, my name notwithstanding, I'm neither Irish nor classical (although I do now qualify for AARP membership!). And I've already solicited City and Quantum. Also, two of my plays, POUND and CLAUDIE HUKILL, have been produced in Pittsburgh in the last few years, which takes them off the table.

Submission 131 / Day 130

POUND to The Gamm Theatre

There are some theatres that I hope will do my play simply because they're prominent and because of the opportunities that might follow a success. But sometimes I come across a theatre where the body of work suggests an aesthetic sensibility so close to my own that, regardless of the theatre's prominence, I think, "I want to be part of that". For me, Gamm Theatre of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is just that. And I had never heard of it before stumbling upon the web site.

Gamm's play selection suggests a persistent fascination with the human beast -- as a spirit, as a machine (frequently a broken one), and as any number of other things. It's a fascination I share and that's best represented in my play, POUND . . . which is now on the way.

Having never seen a production at Gamm, I can't swear that their reach doesn't extend their grasp, although the reviews suggest it does not. But, at the very least, it's a joy to encounter a theatre whose production history if anything exceeds the promise expressed by the theatre's mission statement.

Ah, yes, the "Mission Statement". For a document that, in theory, is supposed to serve as both a guiding beacon and as an attainable goal, the amount of nonsense spouted in these missives is quite amazing. I say this as a playwright who tries to align my submissions with the aspirations expressed in these documents and that often means I give mission statements more attention than some of them can bear.

The most common fault is that they're simply absurdly grandiose, but I don't fault theatres or anyone else for grandiosity or even pomposity because that's the unfortunate label nihilists of all varieties use to condemn aspiration . . . and I'm a big believer in aspiration as my project demonstrates. Still, it doesn't take a nihilist to see the occasional gaps (chasms?) between aspiration and practice.


Not long ago I came across a theatre whose mission statement proclaimed its aspiration to "explore the full range of dramatic possibility". Wow! Then I went to the script submission guidelines which advised, "Cast limit of 4 and the majority of roles should be for women in their late twenties". The full range of dramatic possibility must not be as vast as I had imagined.

Submission 130 / Day 129

BENEATH SHELTON LAUREL to CentreStage, South Carolina.

BSL would be a thunderous success, commercially and artistically, at this theatre. CentreStage is located in Greenville, SC near the region where BSL is set and the public there has an obsessive interest in the Civil War that will only be magnified by the war's upcoming sesquicentennial. Plus, the quite successful Executive Director of Centre Stage, B. J. Koonce, is an accomplished actress who should adore the role of Patsy Shelton.

In a rational world those factors plus BSL's considerable success at Southern Appalachian Rep and its recognition by the National Endowment for the Arts should be sufficient reason for CentreStage to give the play serious consideration . . . wouldn't you think? We'll see.

In the meantime, another sobering line from Moss Hart's remarkable autobiography, "Act One" (I recommend it highly). "Nepotism runs through the theatre with the grandeur of the Mississippi at flood time." Ouch.

Submission 129 / Day 129

BENEATH SHELTON LAUREL to the Delaware Theatre Company.

DTC is a LORT theatre which, under the leadership of Anne Marie Cammarato, has instituted a welcome policy of producing at least one world premiere each season. Plus, the prevailing aesthetic there apparently includes a taste for the "historio-literary" (current season includes PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE and COPENHAGEN), which should run in my favor. In fact, I'm sorely tempted to submit POUND, my play about the poet Ezra Pound, who happens to have grown up in the nearby Philadelphia suburbs (another mark in its favor).

However, with a half dozen productions already, POUND would not be anything close to a world premiere and, I can't help but also note that DTC's productions of what I termed the "historio-literary" happen to be plays written by exceedingly well known playwrights . . . which I am not. There's also the problem that DTC's web site contains no "submissions policy", which suggests they may not be particularly receptive to unsolicited submissions. That being the case, I'm going with BENEATH SHELTON LAUREL this time on the grounds that it:

• Should appeal strongly to audiences (and, God willing, artistic directors) with historio-literary sensibilities.
• Is not a world premiere candidate, but it's close with only one prior production and a highly successful one, suggesting that BSL is a strong candidate to move to a more prominent stage.
• Is highly orginal creatively and structurally (whereas POUND is more conventional), which I think will make it a noteworthy production for the theatre that takes BSL on and that I hope will allow it to trigger curiousity in Ms. Cammarato.

Finally, I can always submit POUND the next time. Notes: Not sending a full script this time . . . just a query letter, bio, and brief including dialogue samples. Too expensive and, more importantly, too presumptuous to send a full manuscript to a theatre without a published submission policy.

One other thing unrelated to DTC and this submission. Someone recently suggested that I must be "grimly determined" to keep this up. Well, I am determined, but not at all grim. I think I have more of the "happy warrior" aspect, which thankfully makes me appreciative rather than resentful of the absurdities that accompany my quest. For instance, what do you make of a theatre that for many months fails to acknowledge in any way a carefully prepared submission, but which uses the submission to harvest my email address for its fund raising list?

For the record, I do contribute annually to a number of theatres, and I understand the need for fundraising, but yeesh!

Play Marketing Update: Day 128

Now that Gary Garrison has taken note of my play marketing efforts in his Dramatrists Guild e-newsletter and the Guild's magazine, The Dramatist, intends to reprint my original blog entry, many people are becoming aware my "submission-a-day" campaign to gain a foothold on prominent stages for my plays. Initial reactions from colleagues and others are mixed. Most people are supportive or, at least, sympathetic. Some simply don't believe it and a few dismiss my efforts as a stunt to gain notoriety.


So, to make it clear to all who may be interested that my efforts are sincere, I'll maintain a running account here of my activities so that you too can share in the frustrations and triumphs, although I haven't yet enjoyed any of the latter. And from time to time I'll discuss why I'm determined to see my plays succeed. For the record:

• This is day 128 and I've made 128 submissions.
• 23 of my submissions have been rejected.
• 10 have elicited requests for scripts and/or confirmation that my plays are being considered for production.
• 96 have produced no response.
• And, as I mentioned above, none have yet resulted in productions.

Note that about 75% of my submissions haven't elicited a response at all. That ratio has held almost from the beginning leading me to suspect that I may have discovered a law of play marketing physics. If so, it's a bewildering one, because it suggests that I'll end my year-long effort with about 270 "no responses", a figure which ought to drive a person to either sanity or insanity, depeding upon the state in which he started. But, I comfort myself that no less an authority than Moss Hart remarked in his autobiography that theatre people are congenitally negligent when it comes to correspondence. Still, 270? Please don't let it be so.

To give you a flavor of my activities, here is a summary of my last ten days:

• 1/18: 3 submissions (BSL to Ensemble Theatre of Santa Barbara, Third Rail, Writers' Theatre)
• 1/19: 1 submission (BSL to Next Theatre)
• 1/20: No submission
• 1/21: No submission
• 1/22: 1 submission (REV to Pittsburgh Public)
• 1/23: No submission
• 1/24: 2 submissions (POUND to Colorado Shakespeare, VM to Kitchen Dog)
• 1/25: 2 submissions ( POUND to Circus Theatricals, BSL to St. Louis Rep)
• 1/26: 1 submission (BSL to Oregon Shakespeare Festival)
• 1/27: 1 submission (BSL to Tabula Rasa)

The abbreviated play titles translate as follows:

• BSL -- Beneath Shelton Laurel
• VM -- Valu-Mart
• REV -- Revolution
• POUND -- Pound

A fifth play, "Claudie Hukill" (abbreviated "CH") failed to show up in this time window, but is occasionally submitted. Links for PDF downloads of all the scripts can be found in the column to the right.

As I mentioned above, I'll update my blog more or less daily with recent submissions and responses. So, please feel free to visit.

Shanley's "Doubt"

Football coaches are fond of portraying their sport as a microcosm of life – an endeavor that tests and builds character by demanding dedication, perseverance, sacrifice, and humility among other qualities. But, the analogy only holds to a point because football, unlike life, is a contrived struggle in which the question of which team wins and which team loses is devoid of moral significance. An uninterested observer has no reason to prefer either the home team or the visiting team in football any more than he has to prefer white over black in chess or black over red in checkers.

That absence of moral significance is important because it relieves the players of games of responsibility for doing what all of us must or should do in life: question the virtue of our endeavors and struggle with the necessary and inevitable uncertainty . . . or doubt.

On the face of it, that seems to be what John Patrick Shanley’s play and movie, “Doubt”, is about. He gives us two characters – a pedophile priest and a suspicious nun – upon whom circumstance thrusts far more than the usual amount of reason to engage in serious reflection and self-assessment. Yet, strangely neither do.

The priest, Father Flynn, is perfectly comfortable with his pedophilia, although he dares not acknowledge it no doubt fearing what he views as the irrational reactions of intolerant people such as the nun. And the nun, whose evidence of what Father Flynn has done is circumstantial and weak at best, none the less is so convinced of her accuracy in judging others that early on she declares her certainty of the priest’s abuses when such a declaration is unnecessary even as ploy. And so these two bull elephants of certainty clash each trying as football players do to achieve their purpose without once questioning the virtue of their chosen tasks.

Only in the play’s final scene, after the battle has ended with the priest having been removed to a higher post at another parish by the Monsignor, does the nun finally exhibit doubt and then it is doubt about her faith in a God and a church that would allow, even enable such an outcome. But, of course, her crisis of faith, the first real doubt to be witnessed in the play, is one that will be played out only in a fictitious future.

Shanley has not given us a play about doubt or conscience. He has given us a premise for such a play, which if it is to take place at all, will do so only in our imaginations.

West Virginian of the Week: Tim DeChristopher

He wandered into a Bureau of Land Management auction of public lands for oil drilling and walked out . . . er, was escorted out . . . holding rights, although not the title, to 22,000 acres of southern Utah. Not that he has the money to acquire title, but that really wasn't his point. DeChristopher didn't attend the auction to accumulate property or drilling rights. He was merely there in a supremely simple act of civil disobedience to drive up prices and throw a spotlight on a characteristically duplicitous sell-off of public lands by the Bush administration, which carefully delayed the announcement of the auction until election day so as to avoid any electoral fallout for Republicans (That worked well, didn't it?).

Tim DeChristopher is a native West Virginian who along with his mother founded the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club and he frequently cites lessons learned here about corporate abuse of the land as inspiration for his advocacy. The success of Tim DeChristopher's efforts in Utah can be measured by the extensive media attention his crashing of the BLM auction has generated. Stories can be found in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Daily Show to name just a few major news outlets that have run the story.

You can read more about DeChristopher and see an interview at http://www.bidder70.org/, where you can also donate to his legal defense.

He has no philosophy

What follows is an excerpt from a letter to a friend -- a wise and learned friend who, after a highly successful business career, transitioned to teaching at the graduate level at a prominent university. In an email I had mentioned that his thinking is remarkably free of cant and dogma which caused him to reply that a dean at his university had seen things somewhat differently and suggested that he simply had no philosophy.

"I was struck by your story of the University Dean who averred that you have no philosophy. Did the comment sting just a bit? Because, if it did, I’d like to share three anecdotes about others who “lacked a philosophy” and then a more lengthy than usual sermon.

On the occasion of one of his birthday celebrations, Baron Hilton of Hilton Hotel fame was asked by a reporter if he had any words of wisdom he would like to share with young people. Hilton replied, “The shower curtain goes inside the tub.”

In the 1950’s American acting was swept up by enthusiasm for “the method” invented by Stanislavsky and popularized in the US by Lee Strasburg. When the playwright Noel Coward, who was famously dismissive of the method, was asked about his theory of acting he said, “Learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.”

Finally and most importantly, George Orwell was certainly one of the most astute, perceptive, and persuasive political and social thinkers of the 20th century, but he had no fixed philosophy and he was in no way a systematic political thinker. It’s true that he was a fervent believer in the promise of socialism, but its practice bedeviled him to no end and what emerged was the peculiarly idealistic pragmatist who despite his lack of a “philosophy” managed to tell us more about ourselves collectively and individually than any thousand philosophy professors could if they were dumped in a bag and shaken.

“Philosophies” are I think a requisite in academe because they are the clothes one wears – one’s identity – and they form the basis for publication and consequent prominence. It’s true that, if a philosophy happens to be very good, it can be a powerful intellectual tool that transcends the value of random insights to achieve a more basic and far reaching understanding. But, I think good philosophies are rare.

Most are borrowed and tweaked in one form or another to give them a veneer of originality and the improvements in understanding they yield are usually incremental (or ornamental). In fact, more often than not, I think philosophies are calcifying for their holders because those poor souls become so invested in and identified with particular theories or beliefs that they imperceptibly accept a change in intellectual status from that of explorer to that of defender and, as a result, find themselves seated on a terminal branch of the evolutionary tree, which is what most theories become.

Think about it. Is there any academic so scorned as one who has the temerity to change his mind? Even his colleagues who think his theories are complete bullshit will think even worse of him if he dares change his thinking because to do so implies flimsiness where there must be conviction . . . . and we must, must, however nonsensical our beliefs, always be men and women of conviction.

I say this as a former philosophy major who, had things worked out as I wished at the time, would have followed the academic route. In large part my career as a marketing consultant is built on my ability and willingness to adopt different and multiple perspectives from which to examine a situation, not because any of those perspectives is “true” in any absolute sense or intrinsically superior, but merely because the act of looking at a situation from multiple perspectives yields different insights and the collection of insights can sometimes be woven together to form a new, more coherent picture that produces new approaches.

That doesn’t mean I think that in business and in life all philosophies and theories are equally true (or untrue). Quite the opposite. I probably have more than my share of set beliefs. But, there is a difference between convictions, of which one may have many, and a systematized philosophy, which is by definition a theoretical construct devised to ground and link convictions together. And, as such, philosophies are contrivances, which might be useful and even true, but they’re not the part of our belief system that makes us better people . . . or I suspect in most cases better thinkers."

Not enough change, eh?

The Boston Globe is reporting that Barack Obama will select Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University, to lead the Office of Legal Counsel, a fairly obscure office until John Yoo and his ilk got into the business of enabling those who wished to subvert constitutional checks and balances and issuing get jail free cards to torturers.

If any of you find this description of what went on at OLC under the Bush administration to be immoderate, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Because Professor Johnsen's take is not only more acidic than mine, it's infinitely better informed. Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon.com has the lucious details.

My favorite line from Johnsen:

"We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest
with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and
reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy
cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation's honor
be restored without full disclosure."

401(k) -- That's "K", as in strikeout

Recently I’ve been hit by people from both sides of a rather large argument. One side makes the case that any prosperity we enjoy beyond that of a subsistence level existence is attributable to free market economics. The other side argues that capitalism and free market economics are inherently exploitative and undermine our intrinsic cooperative and compassionate natures.

There are many points in between these two extremes, but at the very least, most people can agree that free markets have a few shortcomings.

• They are not self-sustaining. Government is required to defend free markets against those who would corrupt or destroy them in the interest of greed or ideology.


• Some problems require collective rather than market-driven solutions because individual incentives do not in and of themselves produce the necessary consensus and consequent investment and sacrifices.


• Our ability to make good economic choices is undermined by ignorance and flawed decision processes.


• Free markets can, from time to time, produce results that simply shock our consciences.

All of these shortcomings can and should be mitigated even though doing so results in something less than optimum economic efficiency. The question societies and governments have to grapple with is how they should be mitigated and to what degree?

This is a particularly difficult question with respect to the third problem – people are sometimes unable to make good economic choices due to ignorance and flawed decisions processes. Ideally this problem would be addressed through education, but that solution runs into the problem that some choices are so complex and technical that many people lack the time and resources to become educated or acquire expert assistance. Therefore, the only alternatives are ones that reduce personal freedom and choice – anathema to market purists.

An example of the problem seems to be the management of personal 401(k) investment accounts, which even before the recent economic meltdown have performed abysmally as compared to the defined benefit plans that 401(k)’s largely replaced. Defined benefit, or pension plans, are of course managed by professionals and, while they are more costly for employers to administer, they produce better returns and cost employees significantly less.

That is the argument made by New School professor Teresa Ghilarducci whose math I will trust to be accurate and whose prescribed solution, Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (as in guaranteed by the government) managed by the federal government, would, she argues, generate greater returns at lower cost. I’m not qualified to assess the validity of all this, but a necessary result of implementing Ms. Ghilarducci’s prescription is that personal freedom to control how retirement funds are invested would be largely overridden.

Is it a worthwhile tradeoff? And is the choice purely pragmatic or one of principle? I would say, both, while reminding myself that the free market is a tool that we wield (presumably to our benefit) and not a deity to be worshipped.

Evildoers

Not long after the movie “Psycho” gave us evil as the product of derangement, which other movies soon dumbed down even further to become evil as a crazed indulgence of baser instincts, the philosopher Hannah Arendt in her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil”, gave us an almost diametrically opposite view of evil. A very civilized one – evil as a product of bureaucratic habit, an averting one’s attention from the meaning of what one is doing.

Those types of evil do occur as do, I’m sure, many others. But, I suspect the most commonplace form of evil and probably the one with the greatest destructive capacity (ax murderers may be scary, but their victim counts rarely reach double digits), is an evil that doesn’t involve either crazed madmen or nebbishes who avert their eyes. Rather, it is evil looked at squarely by the perpetrator and then rationalized into insignificance or, at the very least, justified on the grounds that it is done in response to a greater evil.

As examples, how about the sanctioned practice of torture as well as the terrorist incidents that supposedly justify it? There’s no avoidance going on in either of those cases, nor are those responsible dismissing conscience altogether. Instead they employ our immense powers of rationalization that, as George Orwell showed us, can turn war into peace, hatred into love, and black into white. And the beauty of rationalization is that it doesn’t require psychological mayhem or disorientation, which can be difficult to arrange and even harder to sustain. Even the factual and logical underpinnings don’t have to overwhelming. They merely have to be sufficient to create doubt . . . just enough to allow us to give the benefit of the doubt to that which we want to do anyway.

That seems to me the to be the thread that runs through four books, three of which are reviewed by David Cole in the current (January 15, 2009) “New York Review of Books” – “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” by Philippe Sands, “The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book” by Michael Ratner, and “Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond” by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh. Also mentioned is Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side”, which I recently completed.

What frightens me is that in many ways, those involved don’t seem very different from you and I and, if that’s true, how are we to stand against a power as great as that of our own reasoning? And how will we know when we fail?