THE NUMBER VS. THE WORD

by William H. Benson

January 24, 2008

     “Science is vastly more important than art, hands down,” so said a prominent writer in his most recent book. At first glance, and in light of what science and mathematics has accomplished over the past century, it appears that he is probably correct. Yet, I would contend that the liberal arts also deserve a prominent place in our lives.

     The numbers that live within the sciences and businesses are important, life-changing, the very bases for our technological breakthroughs. Without a working knowledge of mathematics, job hunters are at a serious disadvantage, virtually disabled and unable to compete for the better jobs within the workforce.

     But the words and ideas that make up our arts—literature, philosophy, theology, law, journalism, history, and psychology—are essential, a necessary component of our lives. Without words, without language, and the bodies of learning that words inhabit, we would live very poor lives indeed. I think it unwise to place the world of science and numbers superior to that of arts and words, or vice versa, for it seems that one compliments the other.

     We live in a world that includes both sets of knowledge—the number and the word, the equation and the sentence, the theorem and the paragraph, the graph and the explanatory footnote. There is number dexterity, and then there is word dexterity. Quantification is a necessary skill, but so too is qualification—the number’s explanations and meanings. Grade school students may groan, but math story problems incorporate both words and numbers, and adults daily apply numerical skills to their lives.

     Few people have successfully circumnavigated and made outstanding contributions in both worlds. Offhand, I can think of only two—Blaise Pascal and Pythagoras—both mathematicians and both philosophers.

     Numbers fascinated the ancient Greek mathematicians, men such as Pythagoras, who believed that numbers were austere, full of meaning and mysticism. They believed that all of mathematics and all science could be explained by numbers. A distinguished physicist once said, “An equation is the most serious and important thing in mathematics.” We are all richer because some brilliant minds of the past discovered equations, formulated theorems, and laid down algebraic and geometrical principles.

      Numbers do a great job of measuring the world about us, of identifying trends and projecting them into the future, defining the dimensions of objects within the natural world, and a myriad other tasks.

     But numbers do a very poor job in certain areas, such as sketching our own internal worlds. Human beings live in their thoughts, images, imaginations, dreams, emotions, and hopes, and outsiders are often in the dark as to what people are truly like on the inside, “in those places,” Charles Dickens said, “where the meanings live.” Only words and stories can even begin to diagram a human being’s internal software.

     We live in the Great Information Age. Information is in abundance, at our fingertips, easily and freely obtainable, in the form of graphs, tables, bar charts, and statistics. What is rare is “meaning” behind much of that information. Only a word person can provide that meaning or the explanation.

     Lee Iacoca once said, “There were a lot of guys a lot smarter than I was. They were engineers, design architects with lots of technical skill, numbers guys, and yet I surpassed all of them. I had something they didn’t—the ability to speak, to persuade, to convince, to lead, and to manage.”

     A student once asked the author James Michener what she should study at college, and he replied, “Unless I had extraordinary aptitude in the sciences, I’d stick with liberal arts every time. The pay isn’t as good. The jobs aren’t waiting when you graduate. But forty years from now the scientists in your class will be scientists. And the liberal arts men will be governing the world.”

ACHIEVEMENT

by William H. Benson

January 10, 2008

     I watched the presidential candidates debate the issues on television last Saturday evening, prior to New Hampshire’s primary vote on Tuesday, and I was impressed. Each of the Republicans first and then the Democrats next seemed intelligent, articulate, and determined to redirect our country’s future with definite plans.

     Of the four Democrats—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson—I thought that Hillary dominated the debate. As the campaign gears up, and even though I may not agree with her political views, I suspect that she will be difficult to beat. All four of the Democrats vowed that if elected they would bring the troops home from Iraq, a promise I was glad to hear. One of them, perhaps it was John Edwards, said, “To end the war, we must end the occupation.” How true.

     A clear winner did not appear among the Republicans, and yet, I would say that Mitt Romney appeared on the defensive. Mike Huckabee, the Arkansas Baptist minister who won in Iowa’s caucus vote, seemed intense, even wound up, whereas Fred Thompson and John McCain came across relaxed and confident. But, it would be a mistake to count Giuliani out, for the race among the Republicans is wide open; any of them could win the next handful of primaries, even though McCain and Thompson have the most experience.

     By the time you read this, we will know the two winners in New Hampshire, and I predict Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

     Any American who wants to run for the highest office in the land belongs to a select group of very driven and focused people, who must endure a lot of criticism and verbal abuse. Originating from ordinary backgrounds, they are now extraordinary people, and plenty has gone into making these people so driven that they strive for the Oval Office.

     Recently I re-read the book Profiles of Power & Success in which its author Gene N. Landrum identified the traits of the overachiever: intuitive-thinking, an exceptional amount of self-esteem and optimism, a talent for risk-taking, an obsessive will power, manic energy, a dedicated work ethic, plus tenacity and perseverance. In addition, there is usually at least one crisis in such a person’s background, possibly a whole series of them.

     The crisis is not a desirable episode in anyone’s life, and yet, “it appears from the research that such events are the catalysts for transforming average people into overachieving visionaries. The crisis becomes their inspiration.” People who have suffered a great trauma are imprinted by their experience; they are either destroyed by it or pushed into a higher gear and armed with a manic need to succeed.

     The crisis can appear in several forms: a disabling injury, the loss of a parent or sibling when a child, a bankruptcy, imprisonment, a divorce, or abandonment by family members. ”Psychological suffering, anxiety, and collapse can lead to new emotional, intellectual, and spiritual strengths—confusion and doubt can lead to new ideas.” And to new thoughts about who they are and what they will achieve.

     Their lives have become “a Horatio Alger story.” Upon this very theme—of rags-to-riches—did Horatio Alger, Jr. write over 100 books, selling 20 million copies, and once you have read one, you have read them all, even though the titles may change. There was Luck or Pluck, Sink or Swim, Ragged Dick, and Tattered Tom, fictional stories in which a street urchin who, through his own industry, honesty, and perseverance, rises to the top.

     Unfortunately, Alger failed to apply those same qualities to his own life. He wasted his book royalties living the fast life in New York, San Francisco, and Paris, and dying in 1899 in his sister’s home in rural Massachusetts, drained of any semblance of success.

     To throw your name in the ring, to declare yourself a candidate for president, to ask voters for their vote in a primary is to take a gigantic personal risk: it is not for the faint of heart. Few have the gumption to do it, and among those few, only one wins. It is more by pluck than luck and by swim than sink that anyone wins. In 2008 may the voters elect the best person—man or woman—for the job.

THE SELF-HELP INDUSTRY

by William H. Benson

December 27, 2007

     Advice-givers, distributors of visions of truth, and general all-around merchants of wisdom collectively belong to what I call the “self-help industry.” They all work at a printing mill that produces a tidal wave of books each year that supposedly offers the keys to success: finding the better job or the best husband or wife, making the top grades, getting a promotion, solving marital problems, and achieving the successful life.

     Joel Osteen’s smiling face adorns the cover of his best-seller, the newest entry in this literary genre. For decades, Robert Schuller and Wayne Dyer have written their own remedies for what ails people, and before them, there was Norman Vincent Peale, the father of the self-help industry, who burst on the scene in 1952 with his The Power of Positive Thinking.

     Peale’s chapter titles, in a nutshell, underscores his advice: Believe in yourself, Create your own happiness, Expect the best and get it, Don’t believe in defeat, Break the worry habit, and Use faith in healing. Within his chapters Peale quoted repeatedly from the Bible, such as this from Psalms, “The Lord is the Strength of my life, . . . in this will I be confident.” On occasion Peale borrowed from Marcus Aurelius or from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

     The bulk of his material though Peale built around people (first names only) whom he had met and counseled in his duties as a pastor at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. He described how those men and women had struggled and then found success, mostly by believing in themselves.

     I have read any number of these self-help books, but I find the best advice not from the current self-help output to hit the best-seller list, but rather from those words from nearly three centuries ago, from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. It was on December 28, 1732 in Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, that he first advertised his almanac, written by Richard Saunders, Franklin’s pseudonym.

     In the almanac, Ben offered his advice in carefully constructed sentences that were “both entertaining and useful.” In his Autobiography, he wrote, “I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurr’d between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences.”

     Franklin championed hard work: “There are no gains without pains.” “At the working man’s house hunger looks in but dares not enter.” “God gives all things to industry.” He detested fools: “It is ill manners to silence a fool and cruelty to let him go on.” “He that speaks much is much mistaken.” “Speak little, do much.”

     As for getting even when injured, he suggested, “If you would be revenged of your enemy, govern yourself.” “Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.” “It is better to take many injuries than to give one.” To achieve marital bliss, he advised, “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”

     Friends, he suggested, should be carefully picked: “The rotten apple spoils his companion.” “He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.” To the religious fanatic he said: “None preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing.” “How many observe Christ’s birthday; how few his passages! O! ‘tis easier to keep the holidays than the commandments.” “Many have quarreled about religion that never practiced it.”

     His diet would not attract many: “Eat few suppers, and you’ll need few medicines.” And neither would his child-rearing tactics: “Love well, whip well.” He promoted life-long learning: “If you think the price of education is high, try ignorance.” “There are lazy minds as well as lazy bodies.” He recognized the demon lurking inside the liquor bottle: “Drink does not drown care, but waters it, and makes it grow fast.” Happy New Year!

     Christmas is behind us, and the New Year 2008 lies before us. Time marches on, and it is the season to set some conclusions, record some resolutions, establish worthy goals. May 2008 reveal for you new and wonderful ideas, interesting friends, pleasant and comfortable surroundings. And my advice to you, good and faithful reader, is this: “Believe only half of what you see or read, and none of what you hear.”

DAY OF THE UNDERDOG

William H. Benson

December 13, 2007

     On December 21, 2007, we are expected to salute all of the underdogs and unsung heroes—the Number 2 people who contribute so much to the Number One people. We call it Underdog Day, and we are expected to honor certain characters, such as Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes, Friday to Robinson Crusoe, Tonto to the Lone Ranger, Robin to Batman, Lois Lane to Superman, Barney Fife to Andy Taylor, and Dale Evans to Roy Rogers.

     All of us begin life as underdogs: we are the children at home or in the daycare, then we are students at school, and then we start our first job. Ugh!

     Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, invented the term “granfallon” to describe a great bubble that someone must puncture in order to see the complexity or rot that dwells inside it. In every social group, every granfallon, there is a sorting and shuffling process that gives rise to a pecking order with clear winners, also-ran’s, and losers—both the powerless, as well as the guy who stands at the apex of the pyramid. Once “dug in” on the bottom, as is the underdog, it is the rare individual, who can find the path up and out, to the top.

     Who dares to start the trek upward, to puncture the granfallon, to reshuffle the deck?

Individuals often discover that it has to be done collectively, with the support of others.

     An example was the women’s liberation movement of the 1960’s. Alone, women felt powerless, but together in small local groups they began rethinking their traditional roles, rejected the premise of their inferiority, gained confidence in themselves, forged bonds with others who felt the same, and defied a system that had relegated them to the house and the kids. They asked for more.

     Gradually, the once secure bastions of male power and privilege were forced to open their doors to women—first Yale and Princeton, then the medical and law schools, the astronaut corps, and the Supreme Court. And someday the Oval Office. Betty Frieden, the author of The Feminine Mystique, said that, “The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.”

     At the bottom of the social heap in America are the tenants housed in the nation’s prisons. Long have they been isolated from the community that surrounds the prison. Little support within and without has created a most miserable life there. Underdogs without much hope. Howard Zinn, the historian, wrote that, “In general the courts have declared their unwillingness to enter the closed, controlled world of the prison, and so the prisoners remained as they have been so long, on their own.”

     Outside of the United States live the citizens of those countries which the President and Congress have decided to drop bombs upon. They are the true underdogs. Today it is the men, women, and children of Iraq. Forty years ago, it was the Vietnamese, and before them it was the Koreans. Who will suffer the wrath emanating from the Oval Office next time around?

     Robert Bowman, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, wrote in 1998 the following: “We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these same  things to people in Third World countries whose resources we covet. Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children. We should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear.”

     Zinn wrote, “Voices like Bowman’s were mostly shut out of the major American media after the September 11 attacks.”

     The Christmas season is upon us, a time when we should think about extending a helping hand to the downtrodden, the oppressed, the fallen, the factotum in a dog’s body, the underdogs. So many people who live near to us have been swept aside or are caught up in systems not of their own making, and thus they live lives that are stifled and utterly miserable. This Christmas, this year, do we dare puncture these granfallon?

LINCOLN AND STANTON

by William H. Benson

November 29, 2007

     Cyrus McCormick, the original inventor of the mechanical reaper, brought a lawsuit against the John Manny Company of Rockford, Illinois in the summer of 1855 for patent infringement. Because the Manny Company had begun manufacturing reapers similar in design to McCormick’s invention, McCormick sued the company.

   In turn, Manny hired the Philadelphia attorney George Harding. Because McCormick v. Manny would be heard before a Chicago judge, Harding sent his assistant, Peter Watson, to Springfield to find a lawyer who “would understand the judge.” Watson found the capable but unknown Abraham Lincoln, and offered him a retainer to present a case.

     Thrilled at the opportunity, Lincoln all alone went to work. He wrote Watson a series of letters, begging for information but never received back a single reply. Harding and Watson had not bothered to tell Lincoln that the venue had been changed to Cincinnati in Ohio, and that they had hired the prominent attorney Edwin Stanton of Ohio to prepare the legal brief and present the case, and that Lincoln’s services were not needed.

     At the last minute, Lincoln happened to hear that the case was to be held in Cincinnati. There he appeared with his legal brief in his hand and met Harding and Stanton. After introducing himself, he suggested, “Let’s go up in a gang.” Stanton could barely hide his disdain for Lincoln. He drew Harding aside and whispered, “Why did you bring that **** long armed Ape here? He does not know any thing and can do you no good.”

     Pushed to the sidelines and into the audience in the courtroom, Lincoln chose to stay the week to listen to Stanton’s presentation, and was impressed. He sat in “rapt attention, drinking in his words.” He had never before, he later said, “seen anything so finished and elaborated, and so thoroughly prepared.”

     And yet, Stanton continued to snub Lincoln throughout that trial. He refused to speak to Lincoln. He would not eat a meal with him. He never even looked at Lincoln’s brief, “so sure it would be only trash.” The trial ended, and Lincoln went back to Springfield.

     Six years later, voters elected Abraham Lincoln, this “long-armed Ape,” the President of the United States, startling everybody, especially Edwin Stanton, who continued to scorn Lincoln, something Lincoln knew. But then, shortly into his Presidency, Lincoln contacted Stanton and offered him the job as Secretary of War, and Stanton accepted.

     Thus, Lincoln demonstrated “his singular ability to transcend personal vendetta, humiliation, and bitterness” in order to get the best person for the job.

     Stanton took his job seriously, working fifteen hours each day at a stand-up desk. Gradually, his opinion of Lincoln changed for the better, and the two men forged a very close relationship. Stanton finally admitted, “No men were ever so deceived as we were at Cincinnati,” on the Reaper case. Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 shook Stanton deeply, and it was Stanton, who said of Lincoln, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

     Stanton made the same mistake all human beings make: basing our judgments upon first impressions. We casually dismiss the little, the small, the trivial, the awkward, and the insignificant, not knowing that it is these seemingly inconsequential items or people who can make all the difference, save our lives, or propel us forward.

     In Aesop’s fable, the mouse promised the lion that if he spared his life, someday he would do the same for him. That day came when the lion found himself entrapped in some men’s ropes. It was the mouse who gnawed and severed the ropes freeing the lion.

     King Richard III lost his horse in the final battle of his life. He understood what was at stake, when he cried out, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

     As an afterthought, the directors of Gettysburg’s dedication invited President Lincoln to attend and say a few remarks. On November 19, 1863, he stood and minutes later he finished and sat down. Then, the well-known orator Edward Everett stepped forward and presented his memorized hours-long oration. Lincoln took no offense at the disparity.

     Among the several human virtues, it seems that magnanimity is the one in shortest supply. In its place, lives resentments, wounded feelings, and damaged egos, and it is the rare individual—such as Lincoln—who can overcome them.

     Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward, said, “It is due to the president to say, that his magnanimity is almost superhuman. The president is the best of us.”   

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 

by William H. Benson

November 15, 2007

     On November 17, 1734, New York’s colonial authorities arrested Peter Zenger, a recent immigrant from Germany who had, upon his arrival, begun printing the New York Weekly Journal. William Cosby, the governor, charged Zenger with publishing articles about the governor that he considered libelous. However, the court acquitted Zenger on August 4, 1735, arguing that even though Zenger had written highly critical comments about the governor, everything he wrote was true.

     The case set an important American tradition, that those serving in public positions are valid subjects for public criticism, but that the criticisms must be true. The case paved the way for freedom of the press, which was then guaranteed in the First Amendment of Madison’s Bill of Rights in 1789: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press.”

     In 1798, during the John Adams administration, a Federalist-controlled Congress passed a controversial law, known as the Sedition Act, which prohibited the publishing or even the utterance of any “false, scandalous, and malicious” criticism of the government or its top officials. Ten Jeffersonian Republicans, mostly newspaper editors, were convicted, and three were jailed. An outraged Jefferson declared that the Sedition Act was a violation of the First Amendment. After a time, the Sedition Act was struck down.

     So we see that a certain tension has marked relations between public officials and the press throughout American history. Kennedy had a wonderful rapport with the press, probably the best of any modern-day President. The Washington press corps loved his charm and appreciated his wit during their press meetings. Nixon had the worst. After his failure to win the election as governor of California, he leveled them with his rejoinder, “You won’t have me to kick around anymore.”

     In a new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Frank Rich, a columnist for the New York Times, makes a strong case that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld artfully deceived the press in their run-up for war against Iraq, and “the press, by and large, took the bait.”

     The war was sold upon certain premises: that there was an official Iraqi connection with at least one of the 9/11 terrorists, that Sadaam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, specifically aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium, and that there was no reason to wait for the final proof—a nuclear explosion.

     We soon learned that none of these claims was even remotely true, and that this was not simply a case of incorrect intelligence. A British memo surfaced in July of 2002, months before the war, which said that “the intelligence and facts” about W.M.D.’s “were being fixed around the policy” of going to war.

     A biographer of Bush’s Presidency recently wrote: “Bush was not relying on intelligence to buttress his claims of Saddam’s dark fantasies of plotting attacks on America with Al Qaeda. . . . For no such intelligence existed.”

     There is plenty of blame to share for this failure, and some rests upon the newspapers and the reporters. They should have known better than to swallow all that Bush was saying. They should have dug deeper and not buried their concerns on the back pages.

     A reviewer of Rich’s book asked a series of pointed questions: “How could this have happened? How could some of the best, most fact-checked, most reputable news organizations in the English-speaking world have been so gullible? How can one explain the temporary paralysis of skepticism?”

     A writer to be worth anything must think unconventionally, and she or he must question everything, take nothing on faith until she or he has proved true what the political leaders are saying. Narrow-mindedness, prejudice, and narrow horizons can stand in the way of getting at the truth. That is the funny thing about facts; they keep getting in the way of our prejudices, and our own biased distortions of the truth.

     It is the duty of the press in a free society to certify as true that which the politicians publicly state, and if it is not true, to say that it is false. That was the premise of Zenger’s case, and in Bush’s geared-up campaign to take out Saddam Hussein, the press failed to attack, criticize, or even act skeptical.