In a recent alarmist article warning of the dangers of energy drinks, the Huffington Post cautions symptoms of "irritability, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, seizures, and strokes." Ironically, these are the same symptoms of people who are overworked. Is it any coincidence that people who are overworked thus rely on energy drinks to get through their work? That's like saying people who have jobs risk making more money than those who don't. Really.
America is a land swimming in hypocrisy. We'll pull you in for an embrace and stab you in the back while you think you're getting love. We'll sell you cancer and withhold the cure so we can make more money off products that will just keep you in the pipeline for years. Energy drinks, really? In the land of minimal vacation, maximum hours behind the desk a week, and coffee shops on every street corner... energy drinks are the problem?
If America really cared about reducing the risk of diabetes (as the Japanese do), stroke and heart failure in its citizens, then it would adjust the conditions that contribute to developing such symptoms. I don't ever remember seeing a study that says "Americans work too many hours; maybe they should work less and companies should hire more workers". That would create jobs and improve worker health and happiness. But that's far too convenient. We're in a recession, so it's easier just to work employees to burn out or death since the pool of applicants gets increasingly full by the day.
But instead of actually solving problems, we cast blame on those things that actually would help us get past those problems. That's why Republicans so heavily sought the resignation of Congressman Weiner even though he didn't break the law and has done so much for our country, his state, and his district. Republicans have gotten away with worse. So has coffee.
So I sit here and sip my "all natural Amazon energy" acai berry drink, as I contemplate if I should end this article here, or move on to the mound of other work I should be doing. I don't drink coffee because I can't stand the taste, so I drink about one energy drink a day to get me energized enough to begin plowing through the endless amount of work I have. And these researchers really have the audacity to say energy drinks are the problem? I think not. I'll rest when I'm dead.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
The Right to Buy Beer
Being American is supremely about two things: convenience and responsibility. Convenience because we're an on-the-go culture and need whatever we want when we want it. And responsibility because, well, we have a surplus of laws that are anything but laissez faire and that dictate our life patterns and privileges to a certain extent. That's the reality, though we're often too self-involved to stop and realize the intersection of both of these truths. But what happens when responsibility precludes conveience? The result is decidedly unAmerican.
Yesterday was Father's Day. As an aspiring responsible son, I went out to a local grocery store to pick up a funny yet vaguely touching Hallmark card, some kabobs to barbecue, and enough beer to make the family gathering less awkward. When I proceeded to check out, the cashier, before even greeting me, took the beer and put in behind her. The conversation went something like this:
Me: What are you doing?
Cashier: It's Sunday.
Me: So?
Cashier: You can't buy beer on Sundays.
Me: ...
Cashier: It's the law.
Me: So can I have the beer?
Cashier: No.
No matter how many times I go to a grocery store on a Sunday – which may as well be the national day for getting groceries – it never occurs to me that it's illegal to purchase beer. The thought is absurd to me and being a rationale creature, such an irrational thought never presents itself no matter how many times my prior experience should tell me otherwise. It betrays the spirit of this country, of the first amendment's freedom of religion, and of the documented alcohol habits of our nation's founding fathers.
More over, it runs contrary to the principle of convenience that Americans have come to expect and take for granted. We're last minute people. We don't think a day ahead to get things like beer because yesterday we weren't planning on drinking. Today, we are.
Traditionally, actions may be considered illegal because they pose a threat to others or to self. Concealed weapons cannot be carried into a bar (unless you're in Tennessee or 37 other states) because, hey, someone could get drunk and angry and shoot up the place. But to make it illegal to purchase alcohol from a store (and not a bar) on a specific day of the week is ludicrous and cannot be justified.
The only good thing that can be said about the law is that the people you meet at a bar on Sunday afternoons tend to be far more interesting than on other days of the week. But don't take my word for it.
Yesterday was Father's Day. As an aspiring responsible son, I went out to a local grocery store to pick up a funny yet vaguely touching Hallmark card, some kabobs to barbecue, and enough beer to make the family gathering less awkward. When I proceeded to check out, the cashier, before even greeting me, took the beer and put in behind her. The conversation went something like this:
Me: What are you doing?
Cashier: It's Sunday.
Me: So?
Cashier: You can't buy beer on Sundays.
Me: ...
Cashier: It's the law.
Me: So can I have the beer?
Cashier: No.
No matter how many times I go to a grocery store on a Sunday – which may as well be the national day for getting groceries – it never occurs to me that it's illegal to purchase beer. The thought is absurd to me and being a rationale creature, such an irrational thought never presents itself no matter how many times my prior experience should tell me otherwise. It betrays the spirit of this country, of the first amendment's freedom of religion, and of the documented alcohol habits of our nation's founding fathers.
More over, it runs contrary to the principle of convenience that Americans have come to expect and take for granted. We're last minute people. We don't think a day ahead to get things like beer because yesterday we weren't planning on drinking. Today, we are.
Traditionally, actions may be considered illegal because they pose a threat to others or to self. Concealed weapons cannot be carried into a bar (unless you're in Tennessee or 37 other states) because, hey, someone could get drunk and angry and shoot up the place. But to make it illegal to purchase alcohol from a store (and not a bar) on a specific day of the week is ludicrous and cannot be justified.
The only good thing that can be said about the law is that the people you meet at a bar on Sunday afternoons tend to be far more interesting than on other days of the week. But don't take my word for it.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Happiness through Process, Fulfillment through Work
Over a century ago, William James wrote: "Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most good is not always most true, when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience." As one of the original pragmatists – even a humanist before the term was coined – his words resonate more loudly in today's world than ever before.
In yesterday's New York Times, columnist David Brooks wrote an op-ed piece on how recent college graduates are entering a world for which they are vastly unprepared. College provides a structured environment and inculcates students to succeed in that structure. The real world, he contends, is unstructured and open. Graduates will thus begin searching for a role with little guidance and may spend up to a decade or more finding that niche that suits them – or rather, suiting the niche in which they find themselves.
Brooks offers that at such a young age, we likely don't know ourselves well enough to know what we want to do with our lives. Yet we must start paying back those college loans, so we get that first and second job. Eventually, a problem in one of those jobs becomes a vocation, and it becomes our mission to fix the problem. He summarizes: "[Our] cultural climate... preaches the self as the center of life. But... [we] discover that the tasks of a life are at the center." Spoken like a true apologist of the American machine, though perhaps still in line with James. But am I the only one who sees a glaring problem with the gospel of Americana running contrary to its reality? I've never been a Christian, so I can't relate to the cognitive dissonance of realizing such lies. I still believe in the Dream.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, famous for his book Authentic Happiness, has come to recant his assertion of its importance. His most recent studies demonstrate limitations to the importance of happiness and instead point to values of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. He explains this by questions such as why billionaires continue to pursue making more money, or why do people play games that they don't even enjoy the act of playing? His response is the value of a composite phenomenon he calls flourishing, which pertains to relationships with others and sense of accomplishment in life. Better, what's important is "your sense of 'earned success' – the belief that you have created value in your life or others' lives."
If we were all simply hedonists, our great civilization built upon social contracts would hardly have taken root. Therefore, foregoing pleasure in favor of progress, as evocative of the Enlightenment as that is, must have some merit. Brooks is right so far as he speaks of American culture – a culture largely obsessed with success and finding meaning in an otherwise meaningless life. Gone are the days in which we inherited our professions from our fathers, Sartre's being-in-itself. A free world is a realm of fantasy, Sartre's being-for-itself. We can become whatever we wish, but at the peril of getting lost along the way in what we find meaningful. Maybe that's the point. Maybe happiness cannot be measured in progress, but in process. The act of doing, the proverbial labor of love, is what's at stake. I think William James would agree. I just wish America was more honest about it.
In yesterday's New York Times, columnist David Brooks wrote an op-ed piece on how recent college graduates are entering a world for which they are vastly unprepared. College provides a structured environment and inculcates students to succeed in that structure. The real world, he contends, is unstructured and open. Graduates will thus begin searching for a role with little guidance and may spend up to a decade or more finding that niche that suits them – or rather, suiting the niche in which they find themselves.
Brooks offers that at such a young age, we likely don't know ourselves well enough to know what we want to do with our lives. Yet we must start paying back those college loans, so we get that first and second job. Eventually, a problem in one of those jobs becomes a vocation, and it becomes our mission to fix the problem. He summarizes: "[Our] cultural climate... preaches the self as the center of life. But... [we] discover that the tasks of a life are at the center." Spoken like a true apologist of the American machine, though perhaps still in line with James. But am I the only one who sees a glaring problem with the gospel of Americana running contrary to its reality? I've never been a Christian, so I can't relate to the cognitive dissonance of realizing such lies. I still believe in the Dream.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, famous for his book Authentic Happiness, has come to recant his assertion of its importance. His most recent studies demonstrate limitations to the importance of happiness and instead point to values of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. He explains this by questions such as why billionaires continue to pursue making more money, or why do people play games that they don't even enjoy the act of playing? His response is the value of a composite phenomenon he calls flourishing, which pertains to relationships with others and sense of accomplishment in life. Better, what's important is "your sense of 'earned success' – the belief that you have created value in your life or others' lives."
If we were all simply hedonists, our great civilization built upon social contracts would hardly have taken root. Therefore, foregoing pleasure in favor of progress, as evocative of the Enlightenment as that is, must have some merit. Brooks is right so far as he speaks of American culture – a culture largely obsessed with success and finding meaning in an otherwise meaningless life. Gone are the days in which we inherited our professions from our fathers, Sartre's being-in-itself. A free world is a realm of fantasy, Sartre's being-for-itself. We can become whatever we wish, but at the peril of getting lost along the way in what we find meaningful. Maybe that's the point. Maybe happiness cannot be measured in progress, but in process. The act of doing, the proverbial labor of love, is what's at stake. I think William James would agree. I just wish America was more honest about it.
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