Machina ex machina

Last week, I sat in a room in San Francisco with 40 of my colleagues for four days, listening to business school professors and start-up founders talk about Disruption and Transformation.  One presenter talked about how all of the innovation – as measured in companies with a market cap of $1 billion or more – is coming out of the US and China, and that Europe has been left way behind, presumably because the Europeans worry too much about the welfare of their citizens and not enough about their start-ups.  We visited a start-up incubator where young ambitious CS majors pitched us on their ideas to solve the problem of the “data abyss.”   We talked about how Wal-Mart – the largest private employer on the planet – is investing heavily in automation and AI, and that many of the 1.5 million people who work for Wal-Mart could be out of a job soon.*   

Outside, homeless people drifted around Market Street like zombies.  A leathery-skinned black man approached me on Monday as I was walking up to Chinatown and laughed as he punched himself in the jaw repeatedly.  Thursday I saw another man with a scraggly beard, prone on the sidewalk in front of the Nordstoms and flailing violently every few seconds, while a policeman and an EMT stood by, not quite sure how to approach him.  My colleagues reported encounters with people copulating on street corners and defecating in alleyways.

The weekend before, I took my daughters to Panera for dinner one night (highly recommend the blood orange lemonade, BTW).  Panera has always pretty operationally efficient as far as I could tell: the workflows are well organized and they give you the flashing tile thing that buzzes when your order is up so you can find a place to sit down in the meantime.  Now they’ve taken things up a notch and installed touch-screen ordering monitors, which are placed in offensive-line formation in front of the regular counter, which is at this point still manned by a human being.  Evidently, this is part of “Panera 2.0,” and the business press has unsurprisingly talked about this as a cost-saving measure and that people will lose jobs, all of which is true.  Perhaps more frightening is that most people would prefer interacting with yet another screen to having even fleeting, transactional contact with another human being.  But this shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point.

On the flight home, I read an article in the Guardian about how the Church of England has taught Amazon’s Alexa to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

* Not that Wal-Mart employees have it so great, but still.

Lent Rolling

I gave up eating meat for Lent this year.  To be honest, this wasn’t a major sacrifice, as I didn’t eat that much meat beforehand.  Still, inspired by a Bulgarian colleague whom I had dinner with during Orthodox Lent last year, I opted to split the difference between Roman Catholic (no meat on Fridays) and Orthodox (full-on vegan).  So 40 days of no meat or poultry, but fish and dairy were okay.

I encountered one unexpected benefit of not eating meat: it makes ordering in restaurants (or on airplanes) a lot easier.  Most of the time, when you redact all the meat dishes from the menu, you’re left with only a few things, or only one, to choose from, thus completely eliminating any choice-related angst.  (See also: Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice.)

I’ve heard about people whose lives completely changed after quitting meat – you know, “I have so much more energy now,” “I lost all this weight,” “Now I sleep a lot better,” etc.  I didn’t experience anything like that, but maybe one needs to go full vegan for the transformative effect.  I’ve also heard about people who were repulsed by even the thought of eating meat after a long time away from it, or who had some kind of gastrointestinal meltdown after their first meat post-vegetarianism.  That didn’t happen to me either, although the massive plate of spiegeleier mit speck I ordered in South Tirol on Easter Sunday might not have been the smartest way to break my meat-fast.

I suppose I can feel good about this from a certain ethical perspective, as eating less meat has all sorts of environmental benefits.  Although given the obscene nature of my personal carbon footprint, any ecological points I can claim are marginal at best.* 

But giving up something for Lent is not supposed to be about reducing stress, or about Getting in Shape for Summer, or even necessarily about doing something good for Mother Earth (although that’s probably closer).  It’s supposed to be about putting yourself in the right frame of mind, through prayer, mortification, and self-denial, to contemplate the death and resurrection of Christ, and to emulate, however poorly, his suffering.  Now I will be the first to admit that my opting for the tortellini rather than the beef tenderloin while sitting in business class is not exactly the Stations of the Cross.  But it was just inconvenient enough to make me think about what I was doing, and about what I was forgoing.  It was, in even the most modest way, a sacrifice, for someone whose life is pretty comfortable and abundant, and who spends most of his time chasing after even more comfort and abundance.  This seems to me like a gesture that is somehow good and right.  A reminder that the word “discipline” (which these days seems to signify only “punishment”) comes from the Latin discere (to learn).  Maybe even (bear with me) a feeble wave in the direction of the Eightfold Path, or to what JC was referring to when he spoke of the idea of losing one’s life in order to save it (Mk 8:34-35).  A means of learning that many of the things you do that make you feel good, many of which you don’t really ever think about, and which strong forces are often trying to get you to do even more of, are not necessarily the things that will bring you joy.

* I’m not even going to attempt to get into a discussion of the ethics of killing animals for food.  I can imagine a not-too-distant future when people look back on eating meat the way people today look back on slavery.  Meanwhile, suffice to say that I’ve come to terms with my hypocrisy on this issue.  

Book Swap

Last week, I came across a book exchange cart near one of the gates at Orlando International Airport (MCO).  None of the titles on display called to me (Nora Roberts and Outdoor Photographer magazine were heavily represented), and I hadn't yet finished any of the books I had on me, so I didn't take or leave anything.

I'm not sure who or what was behind this; there's no mention of this on the MCO website.  And I don't know if there's any connection between the book cart and the National Women's History Month display behind it, featuring Oprah and J. Lo alongside Amelia Earhart.  I thought for a minute that all the books on the cart might have been written by women in keeping with that theme, but I see Daniel Silva and Gordon Thomas in there, so that's not it, unless somebody else left those there.

Anyway.  This is not a revolutionary concept: there's a book exchange at our office in Amsterdam, and a couple more within a few blocks of where I live.  Still, this seems like something hopeful and good: an island of art and ideas and slowness and sharing and human connection (albeit anonymous), in a river of haste and commerce and transience.  Like a flower on a highway median.  This book cart will probably suffer the same fate as the flower, but we can appreciate it while it's there.

Airport Ceilings, Vol. 1

The architects who design airports seem to put a lot of effort into ceilings.  Maybe they anticipate that those of us inside will spend a lot of time gazing upward -- out of boredom, or exasperation, or in search of divine succor in one form or another. 

Paris Charles de Gaulle, Terminal 2, F Gates.  Beautiful, impressive, audacious, and generally uncomfortable to spend any amount of time in.  Not unlike Paris.  Although this is a step up aesthetically from the rest of of CDG, which has the design sensibilities of the Death Star.

Geneva International Airport, A Gates.  My home airport tries hard to be sophisticated and modern yet approachable, with little touches like the Rick and Ilse photo display here (Rhett and Scarlett are downstairs on the way to baggage claim).  I'm not sure if they completely pull it off, but I'm not complaining, especially as I can get from my front door to a departure gate in less than 30 minutes.  A direct to Boston would really be nice though.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Schiphol Plaza.  Steampunk mushrooms.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Terminal 1 Security.   Heh, heh, "grass," get it?  I sense a theme developing.

Boston Logan International Airport, Terminal E.  Going for the high school gymnasium vibe -- I expect to see a "State Champions, Girls Tennis, 1983" banner around the corner.  The nod toward internationalism is welcome, especially in a US airport, although the super-sized stars and stripes doesn't let you forget who's numero uno here.

I found this in my photo files without a label, and I'm actually not sure where this is.  I think maybe Porto, Portugal?   It's pretty though.

Aeroporto di Milano-Malpensa.  Not much to look at on the ceiling, but the floor looks like outer space, especially if you squint your eyes a little.

Flughafen Zürich, my Favorite Airport in the World.  Calm, quiet, well-conceived with earth-tone marble and high windows and the corny-but-irresistable tram to Terminal E with the cowbell / alpenhorn soundtrack and the Zoetrope Heidi.  Swiss Quality, indeed.

Belated Christmas

If you suddenly found yourself as VP of Marketing for Christianity, one of the "signature tactics" in your annual marketing plan would have to be the Nine Lessons and Carols service.  Originating in the Church of England in the late 19th century, it has since gained a foothold in other Protestant congregations, including mine in Geneva and many others around Europe and the US,  In roughly one hour, you pretty much get the Christian faith in a tight, energetic nutshell: nine Bible readings that span Genesis (the fall) to Isaiah (the prophecy) to Luke and Matthew (the Christmas stories you're familiar with), interspersed with nine or more carols.

The readings are the same every year, but the music playlist varies: this year we were treated with an anglicized version of the absolutely kick-ass Swedish carol "Jul Jul."  All leading up to a first-class climax in terms of depth, significance, and emotional power: "O Come All Ye Faithful," followed by John 1:1-14,* followed by "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."  John 1:1-14 is a tour de force, covering, in John's characteristic mystical tone, all the key ideas you want people to walk out with: light shining in the darkness, word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, grace and truth.  I imagine that "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" have popped up once or twice on your Spotify holiday playlist this year, but I would suggest that until you've heard them, and sung them, in full voice in a packed congregation, you haven't truly experienced them.

I realize that I do a lot of hand-wringing around here, about faith and what it means and how I try to get my head around it, and maybe this entire website is no more than an exercise in such hand-wringing.  In any case, the Nine Lessons and Carols are a good reminder and example of how essential the practice of faith is.  By its very nature, faith is not something you can simply talk yourself into.  Later on in the New Testament, James will make this point even more emphatically, claiming that “faith without works is dead.”  Just like thinking about running a marathon has very little in common with actually running a marathon, thinking and reading and writing about faith is different than practicing one's faith, whatever form that might take.




* Which your humble author had the honor of reading this year, and which, directly following "O Come All Ye Faithful," he was worried he would be too choked-up to get through.

 

Conquest of the Skies

Anyone seeking some divine awesomeness while on a long-haul flight could do much worse than spending a few hours in front of a David Attenborough documentary.

“Conquest of the Skies,” playing last night on LX52 (ZRH-BOS), was, I imagine, selected by whoever curates Swiss Air’s in-flight video collection for obvious contextual reasons.  And, I also imagine, with no small sense of corporate pride: as the painted lady butterfly (vanessa cardui) and peregrine (falco peregrinus) have conquered the skies, so have we at Swiss International Air Lines, a member of the Lufthansa Group.  I myself was not feeling quite so smug, casting several nervous glances out the window to confirm that the plane's wings were indeed proper airfoils, like those of the griffon vultures of Segovia (gyps fulvus).

One wonders if, 300 million years from now, similar films will be made by our cockroach ancestors’ version of David Attenborough, examining the fossilized remains of an Airbus 330-300, and speculating about the parasites it must have carried to and from their various colonies. 

Well I guess it would be nice

In case you missed it among the trick-or-treating and World Cup qualifying and steady drumbeat of mass murder in my home country, October 31^st was the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s famous door redecoration in Wittenberg.  Fortunately, his slim “Ninety-Five Theses and Selected Sermons” doesn't take up much space in my backpack, so it’s been riding along with me for trips to Amsterdam and Boston the past couple of weeks. 

Thanks to Mr. Moir, my leftist 11^th grade European History teacher, I’ve always been able to recall Luther’s main point about “justification by faith alone.”  To the extent that I had ever really thought about this, I had always interpreted it to be an easier, somehow more sensible position on Christianity.  It was, as Luther intended, a just rebuke of the abuses of an institution that was putting money and power ahead of the Gospel. To my 15-year-old self, it also seemed like a more user-friendly alternative to the Catholic Church, where I was baptized but never really felt at home.  Forget Catholicism with all the guilt and ritual and fussily keeping one’s spiritual balance sheet in order.  To be a good Protestant, all you had to do was believe!  Easy!

It turns out that “just believing” is, actually, incredibly hard.  I’m not talking about stuff like creationism, or feeding the five thousand,¹ or resurrection in the flesh.  I mean just believing in a loving and merciful God.  This kind of faith demands that you, without a whole lot of solid evidence, reject all sorts of rational arguments to the contrary: that this God of yours is no more than an opiate of the masses, or a neuro-biological phenomenon, or a myth perpetuated by certain power structures to keep people fearful and in line.  It demands that, in certain “progressive” socio-cultural circles, you risk appearing as a glassy-eyed, backward Pollyanna.  It demands that you reconcile your image of God with the aforementioned steady drumbeat of mass murder, and accept that your God is somehow okay with a bunch of poor souls getting murdered while they’re out riding their bikes along the Hudson River, or while they’re shopping at WalMart, or in a church on a Sunday morning while they are actively worshiping that loving and merciful God.

I don’t have a clever or reassuring conclusion at hand here.  Faith is hard.  Luther’s advice about coming to faith involves complicated, paradoxical concepts like being broken to pieces and rejecting our own merits and confessing one’s incapacity to do good.  Stuff that doesn’t play too well in the circles I usually travel in. 

¹ Although I think there’s a strong case to be made for reading the story of feeding the five thousand metaphorically, as the Gospels contain no descriptions of fish and bread magically multiplying, only that “they all ate and were satisfied.”(Mt 14:20)