RSS MAD

"He looks bad," the attending physician said. "Your father's blood pressure was through the roof when he arrived, and he couldn't breathe. Frankly, he had all the signs of someone who was going to die. We don't know yet whether there's brain damage."

He paused before continuing.

"It's possible that he will recover. It's also possible that he may not wake up. We have to wait and see. In the meantime, it's important for you and your family to prepare for all the possibilities. Did he prepare a healthcare directive?"

No, I said. He had no living will.

"Well then, you need to think back—and to think very carefully—about any conversations you or your family may have had with your dad. Did he tell any one of you that he would or wouldn't have wanted extraordinary measures to keep him alive? You don't have to tell me now, and let's hope you don't have to. But think about it."

Forty-eight hours later, my father surprised us by awakening from his coma. To me, that forty-eight hours measures how close—how unbearably close—I came to standing in Michael Schiavo's shoes.

By now, almost everyone knows the story of Terri Schiavo, the young woman who lies in a permanent vegetative state at a Florida nursing home. We've heard conflicting testimonials about her prospect for improvement. Perhaps we've formed opinions about her husband, Michael Schiavo's, loyalty or greed in suing to let her die because this is what he says she wanted, or about her family's optimism or selfishness in fighting to maintain her feeding tube.

I don't know any better than you do whether Terri Schiavo preferred death to the prospect of permanent catatonia; she never memorialized her choice. I can only surmise that no woman would wanted her loved ones to suffered a decade of anguish arguing about her wishes, that no woman would have wanted her spouse of five years to be estranged from her parents, and that no woman would have wanted 13 years of litigation to decide her fate.

Neither my father nor Terri Schiavo expected to suffer a stroke, but my father got a chance to learn from the experience. Once he recovered, he executed a healthcare directive stating whether and when we should prolong his life. When he is incapacitated again, his family's grief will not be compounded by the need to make assumptions about his intentions. We'll know what he wanted.

If Terri Schiavo's tragedy stands for one thing, it is this: We all have choices. Making and documenting the hardest ones can be one of our most important legacies.

• Now that they have beheaded more than a half dozen male and female non-combatants

• Now that they have kidnapped dozens more

• Now that they have executed scores of police officers in raids or by firing bullets into their brains at close range

• Now that they have exploded bombs outside mosques and hospitals

• Now that they have publicly applauded the beating and torching of American aid workers in Fallujah

• Now that they have threatened Iraqi citizens with death or torture for voting

• Now that they have called democracy an "infidel" process and have sworn to destroy it

• Now that they have executed a judge committed to bringing the former dictatorship to justice

• Now that they have publicly allied themselves with Al Qaeda

can we stop romanticizing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's thugs in Iraq with the label "insurgents" and substitute a more accurate term like "fascists"?

Apparently not. 

Alas, despite months of soul searching, I haven't answered these questions. But this weekend I discovered a slim volume called "Man's Search For Meaning" that casts the inquiry in a new light. Its author, Viktor Frankl, survived the four Nazi concentration camps that killed his wife, his parents, and his only brother. Cut off from the outside world, tagged with a number and stripped of all personal identity, beaten daily, worked to the point of physical collapse, and powerless to avoid further suffering in a world without apparent meaning, in a prison sentence without apparent end, Frankl watched helplessly as malnutrition, illness, and abuse slew hundreds of fellow inmates. Yet as a professor trained in neurology and psychiatry he also observed something clinically remarkable: that otherwise healthy prisoners died quickly if they lost hope that they had something to live for and that sickly inmates clung to life if they believed their existence held a purpose.

Frankl concluded that man's deepest need is for meaning and purpose. How men frame their own existence has as much to do with their emotional survival as good nutrition does with their physical well-being. Prisoners who used external cues such as wealth and education to define their status lost critical parts of their identity in the depersonalizing and dehumanizing environment of the camps. Those who learned to find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that could not be changed, transformed personal tragedy into triumph. Although they could not end their suffering, these prisoners resolved to suffer with dignity and thereby turned their senseless predicament into a series of small daily personal achievements that cumulatively made survival possible.

"Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influence alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp."

In the end, it seems, the lasting measure of a man is not what society thinks of him but what his actions teach him that he is. We forge our own destinies, take our own measures, and cannot face hardships or seek the meaning of life without by degrees becoming whatever we expect to find. 

It's funny how one thought like that leads to others. It wasn't just movies I was avoiding, I realized. It was all media. I haven't watched television or listened to the radio recently either. Or pored over books. Or skimmed magazines. Or mined Sunday newspapers articles like a giddy prospector the way that I used to. Outside the office, I've recently retreated into a sensory cocoon, preferring long walks and longer naps to more traditional forms of entertainment.
But why?

I'm usually a stimulus junkie. My working world swarms with voicemails, urgent email attachments, ringing Skype phones, and open IM windows. I can't remember the last time that I chatted with a colleague when one of us wasn't simultaneously monitoring a half dozen other electronic communications. And yet, I found that the very thought of watching television left me ... anxious.

This puzzled me until a colleague—with suspiciously good timing—gave me a copy of Edward M. Hallowell's article, "Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform" from the January, 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review. The author, a psychiatrist, theorizes that executives who desperately try to deal with more input than they possibly can suffer from an unrecognized neurological phenomenon called attention deficit trait, or ADT, the core symptoms of which are distractability, inner frenzy, and impatience. Hallowell writes:

Like the traffic jam, ADT is an artifact of modern life. It is brought on by the demands on our time and attention that have exploded over the past two decades. As our minds fill with noise—feckless synaptic events signifying nothing—the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and thoroughly to anything.

The result, the author says, is that as the brain's frontal lobes approach capacity, the lower brain interprets these signals as danger signs and shifts into survival mode, triggering fear, anxiety, impatience, irritability, anger, or panic. "In a futile attempt to do more than is possible, the brain paradoxically reduces its ability to think clearly," Hallowell writes. "The most important step in controlling ADT is not to buy a superturbocharged BlackBerry and fill it up with to-os but rather to create an environment in which the brain can function at its best."

Although the author offers few facts to prove his theory, his conclusions troubled me long after I set the article aside to answer 10 new emails and four new instant messages. Did ADT explain my own withdrawal, my own sense of having too many inputs, too much noise, and too little value attached to them?

The answer to that question implicates far more than my own awareness. If Hallowell is right, then his theory belies the worthiness of high tech's effort to serve us more information better, faster, in more media and to more places. If Hallowell is right, then psychonomics—my self-coined term for regulating technological stimuli—must one day take its place alongside ergonomics as a measure of healthiness in an office environment. If Hallowell is right, then Bill Gates is wrong. Business at the speed of thought is really business at the speed of nought because a barrage of unfiltered information slowly robs us of an essential capacity to reflect upon and reason from that information. If Hallowell is right, then devising technological means to filter information is as important—and perhaps more important—than creating technologies to deliver information. If Hallowell is right, then I may be one unwitting victim of the first computer virus that a human can catch.

If Hallowell is right.

Only time will tell whether he is on to something or not. All the same, I felt much better this weekend when I used an old and proven technology to end the constant data stream enabled by newer ones: I flipped the off switches, lay down, and read a book. 

Because I like Dean's passion, his commitment, and his drive. I liked the creative uses his campaign made of the internet. I even liked his rebel yell in the Iowa caucus and the many musical mixes it inspired. But Howard Dean represents the best of the left of the Democratic Party. And right now, that perspective is so far to the left of mainstream America that it abuts the Sea of Japan.

In the soul-searching that follows November 2, the Party can either swing to the middle or swing to the fences. A swing to left field is seductive and expedient. It would reaffirm hopes dashed last week and cater to many Democrats' longings for radical change. It would help preserve the coalition of disparate interests that comprises the Party's base.

A swing to the center, on the other hand, would mean making hard choices: What causes to champion, which issues to define the Party by, and which matters to abandon entirely or shelve for a rainy day. A swing to the center means reorienting the Party, rebirthing the Party. A swing to the center means rethinking what the Party stands for and who it represents. It means re-marketing the Party as the voice of reason, rather than the voice of radicalism.

One of these options has political future. One of them does not.

If the Democratic Party selects Howard Dean to lead it, if the far left comes to dominate its leadership, then the Party is toast. Democrats may go to New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. They may even go to North Dakota and new Mexico, to California and Texas and New York. But they're not going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House. Not any time soon.

They're going to the political Doghouse instead.

Dear Editor,

These observations were made on our 3,000 mile trip to north Idaho and back. I'm a codger, long-of-tooth male, 83, but still drive in the fast lane at the going rate of speed, between 70 and 80 mph, changing lanes (using the blinker) to accommodate high-speed travelers as they threaten to rise up over the rear of my car.

Over in the 'slow lane.' I can see, out of the corner of my eye, young males driving souped-up, humped-up 1,000-horsepower pickups doing 100 mph as they charge into vacancies in the faster lanes, ending up within inches of my front bumper, invading my three-second zone.

Yes, I know this is what we all put up with. Our blood pressure goes up, our middle fingers twitch, our teeth grind, but we don't allow this beastliness to get to us.

There is a solution: Instant castration. Surely, the state can set aside sufficient funds to hire surgeons with sharp knives, stationed at convenient off-ramps to perform the removal of the necessary organs.

The California Highway Patrol would merely be required to shepherd these miscreants to designated areas. The youthful, testosterone-laden males would then be snatched from their vehicles, zipped down, and voila—the job is done.

A few strips of bandage and they're off, on the road with an improved attitude.

Have I overlooked anything? Would your readers like to offer suggestions? One's ideas are never perfect.

But this one nearly is.

Watching Kerry's speech, I couldn't help thinking: Where was this guy during the election? It was if having suddenly shed the duty to seem human, at ease, strong, and likable, he was suddenly all four. I felt the same way about Al Gore's swan song in 2000. If the tenor of Gore's campaign had been embodied by the style of his concession speech, rather than by the essence of stale Milk Duds, I'd have flown to Florida to vote for him twice. Or maybe for Buchanan; I'm not so good with chads.

Let's face it, fellow Democrats. We don't just need better campaign strategies; we need campaign proctologists.

If we keep nominating men like Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry—secular, academics in love with ideas and particularly in love with the idea that they are men of significance—we'll lose the presidency every time. Those fellows aren't men of the people; they're men who think their destiny is to lead the people. They exude the stale mustiness of library bookshelves without the passion of the great literature those libraries contain.

"I don't understand," a radio caller complained on a local liberal talk show this week, "how with so many challenges in the world that require real solutions, Americans could vote to reelect Bush on the basis of moral values and his faith."

The simple answer: Faith matters. America was founded by the faithful, and Americans are still more comfortable being led by men who share their big ideals than by men who want to bring them big ideas. Americans favor politicians whose personal characteristics jibe with their view of the national character: mighty but generous, fallible but well-intentioned, independent but approachable, thoughtful but god-fearing. It's not that we want our presidents to be common men—we want them to be something greater than ourselves—it's that we never want them to act as if they know it.

We need to cultivate an entirely new breed of Democratic candidate.

One unafraid to show passion.

One willing to express deep and abiding faith.

One guided by a consistent set of moral principles.

One whose humility is as evident as its dipomacy.

One whose politics better represents centrist American ideals.

Because Americans don't see themselves as actuaries; they see themselves—for better or for worse—as a people of action and principle. And there is plenty of room for action and for principle in the Democratic platform.

"In an American election," John Kerry said as he conceded, "there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as Americans. And that -- that is the greatest privilege and the most remarkable good fortune that can come to us on earth."

Amen to that sentiment and idealism, John. Just a little too late.