CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

by William H. Benson

October 15, 2009

     In 1995, James W. Loewen published a book he entitled Lies My Teacher Told Me, in which he released the results of his survey of a dozen different high school American history textbooks that each began with a similar account of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage west across the Atlantic.

     Loewen observed that these twelve texts presented an average of 800 words on Columbus, covered two and a half pages, and featured either a picture or perhaps a map. Loewen then provided a synthesized recap of those 800 words, and then observed that “unfortunately, almost everything in this traditional account is wrong or unverifiable.”

     He had two major problems with what the textbook authors said about Columbus: first, they underplayed previous explorers, such as the Viking Leif Erickson of the tenth century, and second, none of them provided any kind of analysis of the major changes going on in Europe then that prompted the response there after Columbus’s return.

     In other words, Loewen faults the textbook authors for failing to provide adequate explanations for what Columbus unleashed—not just an Age of Exploration but the Age of Conquest in the new World.

     Loewen wrote: “We must pay attention to what the textbooks are telling us and what they are not telling us. The changes in Europe in the fifteen century not only prompted Columbus’s voyages, but also paved the way for Europe’s domination of the world for the next five hundred years. Except for the invention of agriculture, this was probably the most consequential development in human history.”

     What were these changes in Europe? First, there were the advances in military technology, mounting bigger guns on bigger ships; in other words an arms race. “We live with this arms race still.” The Western nations, including the United States, continue to try to keep non-Western nations disadvantaged in military technology, i.e. Iraq and Iran.

     Second, there were new forms of social technology: the printing press, double-entry bookkeeping, and bureaucratic chains of command that allowed the Spanish to maintain and direct their far-flung empire.

     Third, a shift in the theology in Europe sanctioned the domination of other peoples and the theft of their wealth as a means to win esteem on earth and salvation in the hereafter. In other words, Europe now had a Christian faith that they could transport, and that faith “rationalized conquest.”

     Finally, the Europeans had diseases, especially smallpox, that would decimate the native tribes, rendering them vanquished, before mustering a fight.

     Loewen addressed then the issue of Eurocentrism, by asking the question—why was it that the nations of Europe rose to dominate the world? “It is rarely presented as a question,” Loewen wrote. “It seems natural, a given, not something that needs to be explained.” Furthermore, why must one group, race, culture, tribe, or state dominate another, for, Loewen argued, domination is not a natural phenomenon but cultural.

     Columbus dominated; of that, we are sure. As soon as he was off the boat, he claimed ownership of all he saw for the King and Queen of Spain. His style was world class “shock and awe.” His purpose was not exploration, writing better maps, sightseeing, or even establishing trade, but conquest and exploitation of the people and their land. 

     Michael de Cuneo accompanied Columbus on an expedition into the interior of Haiti in 1494, and said this of him: “It seemed to the Lord Admiral that it was time to put into execution his desire to search for gold, which was the main reason he had started on so great a voyage full of so many dangers.” Once he had found Haiti’s gold, he enslaved the natives to dig it for him until they dropped dead of starvation and overwork.

     Exploiting the Americas transformed Europe: Spain, with its enormous horde of gold and silver, became the envy of the world. Islamic power to the east was undermined, and Africa became the source for laborers in the New World.

     Lowen wrote that the Columbus account as presented in the textbooks “allows us to accept the contemporary division of the world into developed and underdeveloped spheres as natural and given, rather than as a historical product that began with Columbus’s first voyage.”

CHARLES SCHULZ

by William H. Benson

October 1, 2009

     On October 2, 1950, Charles Schulz first published his Peanuts comic strip, featuring Charlie Brown, his dog Snoopy, and the others: Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder, and Peppermint Patty. Schulz exaggerated all of his characters’ heads and then dwarfed their bodies, using what cartoonists call a “minimalist style,” primitive and simple, or as Schulz said, “Less is more.”

     The humor was soft, centering about Charlie Brown’s disappointments, his resentments, his inability to understand as quickly as did Lucy, and his feelings of humiliation. Schulz’s comic strip caught on and eclipsed all others. Over the course of the next 49 ½ years, he drew17,896 strips, almost up to the day he died, February 13, 2000.

     Along the way, he added books, television programs, and even music, until Schulz’s business was indeed very big, and yet strangely, he belittled all these accomplishments.

     To an interviewer, Schulz commented once: “What a waste of time. Well, you know: what have you done? Drawn a comic strip. Who cares? Now, I’m seventy-five years old.” The interviewer suggested that Schulz had built a “lasting legacy because of his achievement.” Schulz responded, “I think I’ve done the best with what ability I have. I haven’t wasted my ability. I haven’t destroyed it. I haven’t misused it in any way.”

     Known as a guy with a melancholy disposition, perhaps even a depressive, who harbored lifelong grudges originating from his childhood, Schulz had dared to admit what he, and others like him, have discovered: that in America, becoming a celebrity does not convert a commonplace, ordinary individual into a hero or even into greatness.

     The historian Daniel Boorstin explored this thought in his 1961 book The Image, in which he wrote the following: “We seem to have discovered the processes by which fame is manufactured. In the U.S., a man’s name can become a household word overnight. The Graphic Revolution suddenly gave us the means of fabricating well-knowness.”

     “Discovering that we—the television watchers, the movie goers, radio listeners, and newspaper and magazine readers—and our servants—the television, movie, and radio producers, newspaper and magazine editors, and ad writers—can so quickly and so effectively give a man ‘fame,’ we have willingly been misled into believing that fame is still a hallmark of greatness.”

     In other words, a woman or a man writes a book, the book becomes a screenplay, the screenplay becomes the movie, the movie includes music, the music is heard on the radio, and the magazine and newspaper writers submit the news of it to their readers. The forms of the media circle back upon themselves, and celebrities, who are long on luck or ambition but short on talent, are created, this way it seems everyday in America.

     But, Boorstin argued, it is all a hall of mirrors propped up only to reflect upon each other, without substance or reality at its center.

     “Movies and books mirror each other,” wrote Boorstin. “Both give us the fantastic, unreal image that which we wish to believe of ourselves. Music becomes a mirror of moods. Experience becomes little more than interior decoration.”

     What Charles Schulz did with Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Walt Disney did with Mickey Mouse, and what Jim Henson did with Miss Piggy and the other Muppets.

     And that is just the entertainment industry. Might we extend Boorstin’s arguments into other arenas: into politics, into religion, into business, or into government? Whom, among all those diverse viewpoints, do we trust? The Democrats or the Republicans; Catholic, Protestant, or Fundamentalist; business leaders; or government leaders? The mirrors that each holds up reflects back upon the other, and substance seems strangely missing. We believe some. We disbelieve others. We hope. We lose hope.

     On October 2, 1959, The Twilight Zone first premiered on television, and Rod Serling, the show’s host, began with these words: “There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.”

     We live today in a kind of Twilight Zone, where, on one side promises are trumpeted and fears are discounted, and on the other side, calamity and despair are shouted from the rooftop, and we lurch back and forth between them. Whom do we trust?

      At the end of the day, inside this hall of mirrors, this fifth dimension of imagination, we can applaud Charles Schulz’s created fictional world by shouting, “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown!”

EXPLOSION IN NEW YORK CITY

by William H. Benson

September 17, 2009

     At noon on September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn cart pulled up near J. P. Morgan’s headquarters at the corner of Broad and Wall Street at the south end of Manhattan. The driver quickly dismounted and dissolved into the crowd, but the wagon was loaded with dynamite and iron sash weights that exploded, sending flames shooting toward the sky as chunks of heavy metal rained down upon the people walking on the streets

     Thirty-eight people were killed, and 143 wounded. It was the worst terrorist action on American soil until the Oklahoma City attack in 1995, and the worst in New York City until the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. The explosion left a dozen or so pockmarks on the marble walls of the building, and those can be seen today. And yet the blast killed only one person inside the building, a 24-year-old clerk.

     Who would do such a despicable thing? J. P. Morgan’s bank had come under increasing attack in recent days for arranging a sizeable loan to help the Allies fight the Great War in Europe, but the public tended to think that it was the work of anarchists, radicals, Communists, foreigners, or labor officials. The public lumped together those segments of society and were incapable of differentiating between any of them.

     A crew of lawmen and detectives dug into the crime scene and found nothing. “But years of investigation yielded nothing—no indictments, no trials, no culprits. No one ever came forward to take responsibility for the crime, or to state what it was to accomplish.”

     Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale, has recently published a book, The Day Wall Street Exploded, in which she argued that this New York City attack must be understood “in the wider history of industrial warfare that proliferated in America.”

     It was truly a war, one fought between management—the owners of the businesses—and their employees—the workers. Decades of brutal labor policies and governmental repression had forced employees to resort to violence to draw attention to their plight.

     Between 1881 and 1905, there were 37,000 labor strikes in the U.S., and many of these were bloody, bitter struggles. Management met all attempts to unionize “with clubbings, shootings, jailings, blacklistings, and executions, perpetrated by company goons, police officers, deputies, and soldiers. Dozens were killed in these conflicts.”

     There was the strike in 1877 against the B & O Railroad in 1877 that killed 26 people, the Homestead Steel strike in 1892, the Pullman railroad car strike in 1894, and the Boston police strike in 1919.

     The federal and state governments often sided with management. Calvin Coolidge, governor of Massachusetts, sent a telegram to Samuel Gompers, the unionizer, that read: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” 

     What did the strikers want? They wanted the 8-hour working day instead of the typical 12. They wanted a decent wage, rather the pittance that management tossed their way. They wanted safer working conditions, and also the right to unionize, to strike, to collective bargain, and to address grievances. They wanted vacations with pay, and the elimination of child labor.

     Above all else, employees wanted respectability and a diminishment of the hopelessness, humiliation, and degradation that accompanies a man or woman who had hoped to provide a good life for a family but cannot when surviving on subsistence wages. Employees caught up in such a deplorable situation are paralyzed by the fear of losing their jobs, and so downtrodden, beleaguered, cornered, and desperate they will strike or turn to violence.       

     Samuel Gompers said it best: “If you wish to improve the condition of the people, you must improve their habits and customs. The reduction of the hours of labor reaches the very root of society. It gives the workingmen better conditions and better opportunities, and makes of him what has been too long neglected—a consumer instead of a mere producer.”

     A peace between management and labor was concluded at some point during the mid-years of the twentieth century, and “to no one’s astonishment civilization was not destroyed, nor did American industry collapse. Employees turned out as much as they had under the longer hours, and the businesses made as much and more profit.”

THOUGHTS ON PLANET EARTH

by William H. Benson

September 3, 2009

     Over the eons, our planet, Earth, has staggered violently between centuries of sweltering heat or brutal chill. Cycles of global cooling followed by global warming have been the predominant pattern of Earth’s geological history. The last Ice Age began to end only about twelve thousand years ago, but at its peak, around twenty thousand years ago, about 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface was under ice, whereas today it is 10 percent. 

     The Wisconsian ice sheet covered much of Europe and North America then, and in certain places was half a mile thick. Standing at its leading point, a person would have gaped in astonishment at a towering wall of glacial ice over two thousand feet high, and life in any form atop those millions of square miles of ice had to have been a struggle.

     The size of the Great Lakes and Hudson’s Bay, as well as the thousands of lakes spread across Canada and Minnesota are evidence that those glaciers were indeed colossal. That it is today water and not ice is a fact that we owe to “global warming.”

     Bill Bryson suggested in his 2003 book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, “that ice will be a long-term part of our future.” Ice, rather than global warming.

     What causes an Ice Age and what reverses it are largely unknowns, even though theories abound, such as that the ellipsis that the Earth follows around the sun changes shape, or that the pitch of the orientation of the Earth to the sun wobbles.

     What is most astonishing is that on this, at times, bitter cold planet, life began, and, according to Bryson, “it happened just once. That is the most extraordinary fact in biology, perhaps the most extraordinary fact we know.”

     Matt Ridley, a biologist, said that, “Wherever you go in the world, whatever animal, plant, bug, or blob you look at, if it is alive, it will use the same dictionary and know the same code. All life is one.” And life’s beginning happened a long time ago.

     A hundred years ago this week, early in September of 1909, at the end of the fossil-finding season, an American paleontologist named Charles Doolittle Walcott stumbled upon the Burgess Shelf 8,000 feet high in the mountains of British Columbia, above timberline in steep country, a hundred miles west of Calgary.

     His was an extraordinary and quite lucky find, for the fossils he found that day were later determined to be extremely ancient, from about 540 million years ago, and originated from what is called the Cambrian Explosion, when life was then quite young.

     The fossils were imprinted upon shale rock, and he noted that they were “bizarrely different,” for there were animals with five eyes, others that were shaped like a pineapple slice, and even others with stilt-like legs. Animal life, it seemed to Walcott, was then exuberant and daring, trying out all kinds of forms, and experimenting,

     The Burgess Shale, wrote Stephen Jay Gould in his popular book Wonderful Life, was “our sole vista upon the inception of modern life in all its fullness.”

     However, the fossils that Walcott found were of the small and innocent-looking variety, such as minute oceanic crabs, but life moved on, drifting toward the big, mean, and fierce variety, the dinosaurs, which ruled the Earth, in a multiple number of forms, for millions of years, while the cycles of hot and cold raged on about them.

     And then, about 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs and about half the world’s species were obliterated, it is believed, by the devastation following an asteroid or a comet striking the Earth, and allowing our age, the Age of Mammals, thus a chance to begin.

     Based upon all of this, Bryson suggested four points: “Life wants to be; life does not always want to be much; life goes on; and life from time to time goes extinct.”

     “It is a curious fact,” wrote Bryson, “that on Earth, species death is, in the most literal sense, a way of life.” Of all the species of life forms that have every lived—an estimated thirty billion to perhaps as many as 4,000 billion—99.99 percent are now extinct. “To a first approximation,” said David Raup at Chicago University, “all species are extinct.”

     The environment’s conditions may change—from glacial ice to burning desert sand, from a sea to a high mountain range, from a temperate climate to a cold and inhospitable one—and yet life continues everywhere on planet Earth, undaunted and daring to be.

CARTER’S NATIONAL MALAISE SPEECH

by William H. Benson

August 20, 2009

     The 1970s seemed a disaster for our country. It was a time of faltering American military power relative to the Soviets, productivity declines in our nation’s industries, galloping inflation, and high unemployment. The causes for this disaster were mainly political: a failure to control the money supply, excessive taxation, and government intervention. In a word, it was a weak federal government headed by Jimmy Carter.

     By 1979, Carter’s approval rating had dropped to 25%, which was lower than Nixon’s during the Watergate scandal.

     If it was Carter’s job to restore the faith in the nation’s political system, “here was his greatest failure—solving the economic problems of the American people.”

     Then, when it seemed it could get no worse, during the last week of June of 1979, OPEC, the oil-producing cartel, announced a series of oil price increases. Gas prices skyrocketed, severe shortages resulted in long lines and waits at the pumps, and the people were mad, focusing their outrage over a seemingly endless economic decline.

     Beginning on July 4, 1979, Carter disappeared for the next ten days to his Presidential retreat at Camp David, and there, he listened to teachers, preachers, businessmen, and government officials—people whom he had invited—as they explained to him what was wrong with America, and what he should do about the energy crisis.

     Millions tuned in to listen to his televised speech on July 15. Since then, it has been called his “national malaise speech,” even though he never used the word “malaise.” People had expected him to talk about his energy legislation, and he did, but only briefly at the tail end of his speech. Instead, he chose to talk mainly about the American people’s lack of confidence, even though Walter Mondale, his Vice-President had warned him.

     A frowning Carter quoted from those who were at Camp David: “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation—you’re just managing the government.” “You don’t see the people enough any more.” “Some of your Cabinet members don’t seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples.” “If you lead, we will follow.”

     Then, he began to sound as if he was giving a sermon, which in a sense he was: “We are losing our confidence in the future.” “Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.” “We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

     “This crisis of the American spirit is all around us.” “There is growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools.” “Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift.” “What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere is a system of government that seems incapable of action.”

     These were harsh words, and the people who heard them resented them. One commentator suggested that it was as if Carter had told the American public that they had bad breath, as if he had pointed an accusing finger at them and said, “It’s all your fault!”

     Two days later, on July 17, at a Cabinet meeting, Carter requested resignations from all the heads of the various departments. He only accepted five of them, but the damage was done: the public believed that the Carter Presidency was unraveling, and it was.

     Months later, the former Governor of California, sixty-nine year old Ronald Reagan, announced that he would run for President, and at that time he said, “I find no national malaise. I find nothing wrong with the American people!” Carter’s exact opposite, Reagan smiled, laughed, and joked. “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.” Reagan’s jaunty affability and folksy charm shone like sunlight upon the dark and gloomy mood, this so-called national malaise that Carter had dared to suggest.

     In a new book, What the Heck are You Up To, Mr. President?, the historian Kevin Mattson wrote that both “Carter and Reagan sprang from the same ideological impulse; both responded mainly to moral decline, but where Carter saw a need for humility and limits, Reagan saw a vacuum of optimism and determination. Reagan carried the day.”

      “The new President’s self-confidence, and confidence in America, soon communicated itself. It was not long before the American public began to sense that the dark days of the 1970s were over, and that the country was being led again.”

     The economic recovery that began under Reagan continued well into the 1990s, “the longest continual economic expansion in American history.”

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

by William H. Benson

August 6, 2009

     “Alzheimer’s disease is the number one neurological disorder in the United States today,” said Jeanette Worden, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt. One in eight people over the age of 65 show symptoms of the disease, and for those over 85, it approaches one in two.

     In 1906, Alois Alzheimer, a German doctor and medical researcher, gave a lecture in which he described a woman named Auguste D. who showed an “unusual disease of the cerebral cortex.” When just 51, Auguste began to suffer from memory loss and faulty judgment, and then she died at the premature age of 55. Dr. Alzheimer was surprised when the autopsy revealed that her cortex was thin, and that there were deposits of plaque and neurofibrillary tangles deposited within her brain, typical of people much older.

     Alzheimer’s disease is characterized primarily by the loss of neurons in the brain, especially in the neocortical region, that area associated with higher functioning thinking and emotional processing tasks. Victims of the disease can walk, talk, eat, and function normally, but what is missing is the human thinking apparatus. This loss contributes to behavioral changes that are quite sharp and that profoundly affect their family members.

     Dr. Worden says that “there is no direct cause, and no known cure, and that it can be only diagnosed by an autopsy.”

     Researchers have identified though certain factors that increase a person’s risk: age, a severe head injury, inheriting the E4/E4 alleles for apolipoprotein E, a high fat diet, elevated cholesterol levels, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, smoking, low blood levels of folic acid, and high levels of homocysteine.

     We have no control over some of the risk factors, such as our age or the alleles we inherit, but several factors we can control. In fact, Professor Worden commented that the same risk factors for heart disease and stroke are the same as those for Alzheimer’s, that they overlap. A researcher said, “Anything that increases your chances of developing a stroke or a heart attack also increases your chances of developing Alzheimer’s.”

     The factors that decrease a person’s risk include: a low-fat diet, including omega-3 fats in the diet, such as found in cold water fish; maintaining a healthy weight; exercise; drinking fruit and vegetable juices; and continually finding mental challenges.

     These factors were, in part, determined from a research project undertaken by David Snowden, a neuroscientist at the University of Kentucky. In 1986, he approached a convent of nuns, the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Mankato, Minnesota, and eventually 678 members agreed to allow Snowden to observe their lifestyles. The nuns further surprised Snowden when they agreed to donate their brains upon their passing.

     Religious groups are excellent for studying because of the members’ similarities, allowing a researcher to focus upon their minute differences. Snowden understood that the School Sisters were noted for their longevity and a low incidence of Alzheimer’s.

     Snowden continues his study today, and has written a delightful book—Aging With Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives. Of the 678 nuns, there are now 61 survivors, but some lived well beyond 100. They led low-stress lives, they had many friends with whom they shared similar ideas, they ate small portions of a low-fat diet rich in fruits and vegetables, they did Yoga daily, and they exercised often every week.

     But above all else, they kept themselves mentally challenged, learning foreign languages, reading philosophy, engaging in stimulating conversations, and writing to their Congressmen. By his nun study, Snowden concluded that normal aging does not have to be associated with major cognitive decline, but is often related to lifestyle.

     One of Snowden’s fascinating insights came from the nuns’ journals, which they had begun in their teens when they first entered the convent. Snowden read their journals and concluded that those nuns who displayed greater skill with written language—a complexity of ideas and emotional content—at an early age “were significantly less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s,” than those who displayed a deficiency.

     Dr. Worden suggests certain healthier habits. Avoid the sedentary lifestyle. Exercise everyday. Learn new things. Keep friendships strong and make new friends. Reduce stress. Eat smaller portions of a low-fat diet. Keep love strong, and laugh often.