Free the Cognitive Dissidents
I’ve never been one for ruthless consistency. I learned young the fine art of emotional doublethink, from the experience of being at one and the same time:
- An orthodox Catholic who mentally assented to official Church teaching on sexuality, according to its 1917 formulation in the old Catholic Encyclopedia.
- A teenage boy.
You needn’t read James Joyce to understand the game of existential Twister this entails. Incessant trips to confession (those poor, bored priests), sweaty brown scapulars, visions of hell-fire…. There are worse ways to spend one’s teenage years. At least I didn’t edit the yearbook, or sing in my high school’s peppy production of Godspell. Indeed, apart from founding the War Game Club, I avoided every extracurricular activity that might have advanced my college applications.
When the alumnus interviewing me for my long-shot, first-choice college asked me what I’d done throughout high school, I truthfully answered: “Not much. Mostly, I just prosecuted my religion teachers for heresy.”
He chuckled. “No, seriously.” Then he saw the look on my face—and whipped out his note pad.
I recounted how I’d compiled a dossier on two of our religion teachers, who’d repaid my parents’ tuition by denying… pretty much everything which any martyr has ever died to affirm—from the virginity of Mary to the authority of the pope, from the bodily Resurrection to the Eucharist. I explained how I’d moved from confronting them in class, to notifying the principal, then the bishop, then at last the Papal Nuncio—the pope’s ambassador to the U.S.
“What did your school do?”
“They threatened to expel me. But I had my attorney draft a letter warning them we’d sue. They backed down after that.”
“Where’d you get an attorney?”
“My mother met him at one of her poker games. You know, at the church.” I told him how at that time in Queens, the diocese made up its deficits by holding all-night, high-stakes poker games at Catholic grammar schools. The Irish cops wouldn’t crack down on them, so the games metastasized, and soon filled up every parish in driving distance. And my mother attended so many, that to this day when I hear phrases like “St. Sebastian” “St. Rita,” “Most Precious Blood” and “Corpus Christi,” my first thought is: “Oh crap, another poker game. We’ll be eating Spam again this week.”
All this took place in the late days of the long-lived, much-loved, semi-retarded Bishop Francis Mugavero—who died in 1991 with a spotless record: He’d never turned down an annulment.
I described how the cafeterias at schools from Astoria to Glendale filled up three nights per week—including Fridays in Lent. On one of these sacred evenings, when the priest who sold the chips started handing out bologna sandwiches, my mother rebuked him: “It’s bad enough you’re having this game two days before Palm Sunday,” she rasped. “And bad enough that I’m here. But now you’re serving us meat?” So the pastor stood up and gave every poker player in the room a “special dispensation” to eat his sandwiches. I described these lunchrooms filled with addicted housewives, compliant cops, and shady gents of Mediterranean background with pointy loafers. The middle-aged attorney was fascinated.
“Were they… Mafiosos?”
I shrugged. “Or wanna-bes. All I know is that whenever they used profanity, my mother would reprimand them: ‘Hey! Watch yer mouth! You’re in the presence of a lady.’
“They’d stare at her, swallow…then apologize. They realized what they were dealing with.”
He must have decided that I offered Yale something… distinctive.
Anyway, growing up in such environs—tormented on the one side by the fear of Hell, and on the other by butch, Sandinista nuns who denied that the place existed—taught me a certain psychological flexibility. You might call it cognitive dissonance. (My girlfriend, a one-time psych major, keeps on saying “cognitive dissidents,” which I like better since it evokes tiny Solzshenitsyns and Walesas running around inside my head.)
And such flexibility has served me well. If the only ideals someone is willing to defend are those he can actually (right now, today) fully attain, chances are good that he either:
- Is a scary inhuman ideologue out of Joseph Conrad, or Lenin in Zurich, whose mind work likes a meatgrinder.
Or:
- Has very low standards, and lives up to them quite easily. As Homer Simpson explained to Lisa when she urged on him an apple instead of a jelly donut: “Purple is a fruit!”
Neither type of hobgoblin appeals to me. Instead of a highly efficient Teutonic machine, my psyche works much more like one of Rube Goldberg’s old inventions, creaking along in the manner of the Habsburg monarchy, with Turks and Croats side by side, with Sigmund Freud and Karl Lueger smoking cigars at the same café. And that’s how I like things, thank you very much.
So it wasn’t really a shock when I discovered—during a rare moment of introspection—that in certain ways I’ve been leading a double life. Specifically, when it comes to technology, acquisition, and the accoutrements of bourgeois life.
On the one hand, I’m an old friend of Eric Brende, the funny, self-deprecating, and mostly persuasive critic of technology. A school mate of mine, he went on to study the history of technology at MIT, then chose to become beyond a doubt the lowest paid graduate of that school in its history. To make a living today, he writes books, and pedals a bicycle cab in St. Louis. And his wife crafts wonderful home-made soap, which he barters for other goods—for instance, he sent me a raft of the stuff in return for critiquing his latest book proposal. I was quite won over by Eric’s first book, Better Off, which details how he put his skepticism about technology to the test: He and his wife went off for a year and lived with the hard-core Amish. The book is witty and winning, and makes a persuasive case. It inspired me to resist acquiring more devices than I needed. Indeed, apart from essentials like rent, whiskey, and ethnic restaurants, I tried to spend no money at all.
I took a quiet pride in refusing to adopt the same doodads as my peers. As of 2007, when I still lived in New York, I would feel a tiny bit smug that I possessed:
- No cell phone
- No laptop
- No iPod
- No television
- No car
- No driver’s license
- No exercise equipment (beyond a bike)
- No wristwatch, and
- No comb.
I didn’t own a suit that cost more than $60 at the thrift shop, and slept on the same $300 mattress I’d bought reconditioned. Which means, I guess, that they deloused the thing and pulled out all the bullets, but it suited me just fine.
For many years, I got along comfortably—watching Netflix sometimes on the PC which I used to work from home. Using payphones when I needed to make a phone call while on the road. Cadging rides on those rare occasions when I needed to leave the City (for instance, to go pick up yet another rescue dog). At events that called for formal dress, I’d wear a turtleneck—and experience a tiny frisson of “artistic,” rebellious bravado.
I’ll admit, I even felt a little condescending towards my friends who carried Blackberrys to beaches and bars. When their pockets hummed and they had to interrupt our conversation to answer an email, squinting and pecking at that tiny little keyboard, I thought, “How free I am. How bohemian….” In fact, it simply meant that the work I did was neither urgent nor important enough for any boss to insist I be reachable. Whatever it was they needed from me, it absolutely could wait. Sometimes for days. If I died, they might never notice.
Of course, my ascetical attitude sometimes caused inconveniences to others. Once I was called down to visit Ron Maxwell (director of Gettysburg and Gods & Generals) to work on a screenplay project. When I spoke with his assistant who was to pick me up at Dulles, he asked for my cell phone number. “I don’t have one,” I said with a smile in my voice. “We’ll just find each other.” Annoyed, he pointed out that neither of us had ever seen each other’s face, and this process could last for hours. At last, I agreed to wear a green Tyrolean hat. Since this was springtime in Virginia, I explained, chances were that I would stand out. And indeed, I did.
My beloved has wasted, cumulatively, hours, driving around the Dallas airport waiting for me to emerge from baggage claim. Sometimes I would simply pester some stranger to use his or her cell phone. The person would always agree, but stare at me—suspicious that I was in fact an extraterrestrial or a pervert. Then carefully swab the phone with an antibacterial wipe.
And so on. Over the years, I have surely put friends and family to enormous inconvenience in my pursuit of simplicity. I have certainly overlooked a hundred subtle or blatant hints, and shaved a few months off their lifespans with the stress I blithely inflicted—all the while patting my very own, turtlenecked back for my Franciscan austerity.
But my regime has broken down—caved in like some post-Communist cabinet in Hungary. In the past six months, I was forced to surrender on every front:
- Trapped in a large house five miles from the nearest microbrewery, spending sometimes $40 daily on cabs, I have finally purchased a car—albeit a 1990 Chevy Caprice that would earn derisive snickers in Havana.
- Unable to drive it legally, I’m taking driver’s ed—paying $45 per hour for some guy to hold my hand as I merge on the freeway.
- For my teaching trip in Italy, I had to buy a Samsung. The pay phones in Rome look just like the condom dispensers, and are just as uncomfortable when you speak into them.
- For the same trip, I had to buy a laptop—and use it every day to pour out the 2,000 words I was writing then for Takimag. Since Internet access was hard to find, I even had to spring for a satellite modem—which let me upload my columns from Orvieto.
- Surrounded for three months in a foreign country by American college students, I had to buy an iPod to drown them out.
- Ordered by my doctor to lose some 40 pounds, I’ve bought an elliptical trainer, and set it up in front of my new… television. Which gets Dish Network. So I can bribe myself to work out with reruns of Law & Order. And by the way, I’ve found a less frightening doctor, one who will prescribe the harmless, wonderful appetite suppressant Meridia (instead of a trip to a concentration camp). I now only need to eat once a day, and am losing a pound a week.
But I still haven’t sprung for a suit.
Comments
Your an interesting character Zmirak.
BTW your knowledge of Hyper Text Markup Language is improving.
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There are worse ways to spend one’s teenage years. At least I didn’t edit the yearbook . . .
Using that remark alone I think you might win thousands of converts.
You should have sprung for wardrobe upgrades first. Jos. A. Bank has good sales. I still don’t own a cell phone.
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I vote Zmirak for writing the sequel to Orwells 1984.
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Why would you think the above would be of interest to anyone? -Teu
I would find it interesting if you wrote of your thoughts Teu.
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A good personal post, I enjoyed reading it.
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“Why would you think the above would be of interest to anyone?”
Because it IS, little Teu-teu. Stop being such a bore.
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I had to laugh, because I had the Episcopal version of your “visions of hellfire” over Confirmation. And like yourself I avoided owning a telephone or television for the longest time. Fast forward and my head swims at how much has changed, and so I’ll warn you that if you marry your girlfriend and children arrive, the dike fails and the flood follows.
Hilarious piece, many thanks.
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Move over Wendell Berry, Edith Stein, and Bill Kauffman. Zmirak’s my new hero, icon!
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Why would you think the above would be of interest to anyone?
TEU. Mr. Z is whip-crackingly fuuny, smart as hell, and an absolute delight to read.
Almost always, his posts ignite my memory and the ensuing warmth is a pleasure to luxuriate in far away from this crazy world.
Mr. Z is a damn treasure.
If you weren’t such an ass, I’d almost feel pity that you don’t have the capacity to enjoy his writing.
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What the hell is a Blackberry?
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John,
By itself, your devotion to rescuing dogs in need of homes should earn you a special place in heaven, maybe somewhere where you can chat daily with St. Francis!
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What the hell is a Blackberry?
It’s digital crack!
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I second Fletcher’s comment: anyone who rescues dogs can’t be all bad. I even speculate that
Heaven, albeit reserved from the Elect, must also have some arrangement for dogs, after all
Heaven is total perfection where we shall enjoy the Beatific Vision. I kinda think that
Our Lord would understand that our dogs act often as little barking angels, and, despite
having purely animal souls, He might find a place for them....
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Oops! I meant to write that Heaven is reserved FOR the Elect, and NOT “From” them! Bad
mistake....
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Love these autobiographical posts. Keep ‘em coming. They were a little...scary at first, until I realized that you’re just making it all up.
Right?
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Of all the people I know, I’m the most intrasigent to accept new technology… not because I see myself as a bohemian or a neo-Luddite purist, but because technology intimidates me. There is a tipping point where some new wonder box stops being a gimcrack for mallrats and turns into an indispensible part of our lives. Computers and cell phones are no longer luxuries - they’re near-necessities. A few years ago, I sent someone a packet of crucial documents and thought: “How did we ever get along without fax machines?” Now we scan documents and shoot them off via email; faxes are going the way of telegrams and the Victrolas. The unfortunate left-behinds in this light-speed future shock - like me bucket along, crippled by our eight-track minds in a CD world.
Convenience is a drug, baby.
But one thing I’ve learned: Never buy early. Prices fall on new technology as it grows in popularity. I learned this the hard way when I made a rare jump and bought a new offering early - a VCR in 1978. It cost $650, could not be programmed and was the size of a steamer trunk. A few years later, home video units could be had for around $100, and were of a size and weight a talented three-year-old could work into a juggling routine with some oranges and a few Indian clubs.
We Live. Learn.
...And learn to program.
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Mr. Zmirak,
You are a great source of joy for an otherwise humdrum day.
Godspeed to you.
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I think I had a comb once. Then I got married. Community property and all that. And if you can’t get there on a Metrocard it probably isn’t worth visiting. Except for Munich. Keep the nostalgia coming. What the world needs: a Catholic Jean Shepherd. (Before your time. Sorry.)
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MM I can nearly match this:
* Rarely used cell phone
* No laptop
* No iPod
* No cable for the 20+ year old television I own
* No wristwatch
---
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John, that is just a hoot! This will date me, but I graduated from college never having heard the word"marijuana." just think how much beer I had to drink to make up for ancient ignorance. Oh, and I had a phone that you cranked and asked the operator for a number.
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Zirmak I got thru 1/2 of it above. You’re on to something. Is there any way you can
tighten up your writing style. The content and perceptions are good & honest it seems
like to the reader but then due to style it becomes a tad long winded.
Another way to tighten up is write a movie script out of it. “Hey watch your mouth,
there’s a lady present.” When you write such a script no matter what scene or vignette
the viewer (i.e. reader) comes in on they get it in and of itself. Then they are
juxtapositioned and strung together so as to be coherent. The point is each one is
fresh and impactful rather than one long yaddah. What I’m saying is if you think in
those terms to make a movie out of it it also may have the effect of tightening up your
prose style. It’s also humorous.
What you didn’t get or understand as a kid, understandably is that the myth involved
with our catholicism helps to make what’s real in knowing the difference between right
and wrong colorful, impactful - sort of like going to the movies.
See you in church, see you at the movies?!
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A very enjoyable piece. Thank you, John.
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Zmirak you see, now Teu’s vignette directly above this
post is something in and of itself and makes a good
scene in the movie. When you write a movie it’s good to
do story boards, sort of like the 12 stations of the
cross if you see what i mean. All of this stuff is good
in and of itself if you understand what it is. Motion
pictures or moving pictures are relatively new in our
human experience only a number of decades old. But like
church they’re also very impactful and like church can
be used for good. Sadly they can also be used for evil.
Stalin said ‘put me in charge of moving pictures’ (once he
started viewing them, he immediately as an evil genius
saw their propaganda potential) ‘and i’ll conquer the
world without firing a shot.’ Same thing today here in the
u.s., an elite clique has complete control of our
mainstream media and look what’s happened to us.
It’s also funny, though not only funny.
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Teu and Jeff W.,
If you truly find Zmirak’s writing so intolerable, just go away.
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Doesn’t jeff w.’s & teu’s leaden prose rather vindicate the sweet breezes of Zmirak’s style? One might encourage Zmirak to ignore the pedants, save that mama seems to have taught him that sometime before his first crawl.
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A gem of an essay.
One pedantic aside: you indicate that your friend Eric “..went off for a year and lived with the hard-core Amish.”
Well, I’m guessing he more likely lived in a Mennonite community or a progressive Amish one. “Hard-core” Amish would be reluctant to indulge an outsider, especially for a year and a half. Most of them still speak low German. Morover, the “Amish” descended from the Mennonites(Anabaptists), in part, because they felt that “shunning” was an ordered part of their religious practices. While shunning attends today to insiders, it offers an insight as to how outsiders would be (un)welcomed.
Finally, any “hard-core Amish” today would likely consist of the old-order Amish, of whom the White-tops are perhaps the most conservative. Look for their straw hats.
Sorry for the overkill, but my grandpop was PA Dutch and a local (reknown)historian on matters thereof.
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John, you are at your best when writing this personal stuff. I still laugh about your nicotine gum addiction and your debilitating fear of merging. BTW, I like SPAM.
Anyway, my oldest daughter goes to a Christian School that is affiliated with an Independent Baptist Church. If a Bible teacher there taught something contrary to the “fundamentals” they would be out on their ears and a letter would go out to all the parents apologizing for the lapse. In your case, you were the troublemaker. Why does the Catholic Church allow Catholic Schools to contradict fixed dogma?
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John Z. - i ditto red phillips’ post right above. as for
my own posts above i thought i was complimenting you in a
similar if somewhat more diverse manner. not as some of the other
posters at this site thought i was putting it down.?
fletcher advises me to go away for example and others
loathe my ‘leaden’ style? i thought i was constructive in
what i said about your stuff saying that i think you’re
on to something etc., etc.
i guess to your credit you’ve got such a fan club they
say ‘don’t change a hair for them not if you care for
them.’ perhaps you’ve already found your niche. good luck.
p.s. i was also lumped in with Tue’s remarks. i guess we
really all are tribal, right.
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My apologies, Jeff, if I misunderstood the intent of your posting.
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I’m still chuckling. Please keep pieces like this coming.
They prove one doesn’t have to be Catholic to savor the grotesqueries
and serendipities of being a traditional Christian in contemporary America.
I’d love to hear John Zmirak’s take on evangelicalism but figure
it wouldn’t be ~politique~ for him to pursue such here ...
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NEWSFLASH: Teu doesn’t like Zmirak! We GET IT, Teu-teu, now GO AWAY.
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Did you have a pocket watch before?
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Teu: Write a complaint to Taki if you think that is the case. Writing immature insulting comments is not the solution, nor is it likely to result any improvement if that is needed.
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I am adopting a policy of not taking part in comments threads. Thanks to those of you who had kind words, or offered constructive criticism. As for Teu:
He wrote a nasty, anti-Semitic comment, in which he said that Anne Frank wasn’t murdered--but that she simply died of typhus. This is a common trope among Holocaust revisionists--who like to pretend that millions of innocent Jewish civilians ended up in prison camps thanks to poor Mapquest directions, or something. So I posed a little hypothetical for Teu, to probe how he would feel if a member of his own family were treated as Anne Frank was. Evidently he doesn’t like it much.
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Teu, you ask for everything you get. If I were in charge of the site, I’d delete every
comment you write.
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For godssakes, Teu, if your delicate sensibilities are insulted on this site, then GO AWAY! You are CONSTANTLY antagonizing writers and readers alike, then bursting into tears when they strike back. Every time you appear in a comment thread it degenerates into hate-filled rubbish.
Dr. Zmirak, I love your occasional light, breezy and a bit silly posts - they’re a wonderful escape from our depressing social, economic and political landscape. I do appreciate your commentary on those topics as well, but boy do I need a break every now and again!
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Teu, you’re going to have to accept that on other people’s blogs you are a guest and
must respect the rules of the host. One of the more humiliating lessons I learned as an
awkward kid was that I had no “right” to other people’s acceptance or friendship. The
more forcefully I tried to insert myself into an in-groups, the more derision and rejection
I merited, and rightly so. It was a humiliating lesson, but a necessary one. Apparently
the type of messages you have left at this site are unwelcome. You can either change or
leave. That rule applies not just to you but to every other guest on the forum, myself
included.
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I feel I need to set the record straight. I am John’s older, though much less intelligent sister and while I am reluctant to, I must let you all in on a secret. John’s stories are accurate. I don’t claim to be proud of most of them, but they are historically and hysterically true. Keep writing my dear brother, I see the world loves you as much as we do. Patty
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Thanks, Patty! Love ya’ll too!
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The Croats and Turks were in fact the most bitter enemies for some five centuries, and particularly while Croatia was part of the Habsburg Empire. One pope called the Croats “antemurale christiansis”, the first defense line of Christianity. Modern American rightists, generally just as intellectually comfortable as the MTV generation, believe it was the Serbs, which is not true. Get your facts from real books Zmirak.
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Why does the Catholic Church allow Catholic Schools to contradict fixed dogma?
It is the local Bishop who has jurisdiction and his authority, like that of the Pope’s, is Divinely-Constituted.
It is the Local Bishop who has the duty to Teach, Rule, and Sanctify within his own Diocese/Jurisdiction and,sadly, in this time and place, many Bishops are shirking their duty.
The Pope is right to stay out of the business of trying to administer each individual Diocese/Jurisdiction on the planet.
Besides, if he did administer each and every Diocese on earth, we laymen would be denied the joy of being forced to form committees to petition our local Bishop to discharge his duties faithfully and the joy of being ignored by that Bishop.
Each family in the Church is a Domestic Church and the Dad and Mom have the primary duty to educate their children in the faith.
And as for Bishops who do not discharge their duties faithfully?
At their particular judgment what applies are the words of Putty said to Elaine (when asked what hell would be like) “it’s gonna be rough.”
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Herr Zmirak, I may have found another dog for you in the pages of the Phila Daily News. A Beagle/German Shepherd mix pup was running loose on the Benj Franklin PKWY (not far from the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul) and some kind hearted cops rescued her. She is up for adoption.
Check it out.
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20080718_Jill_Porter__Cops_help_puppy_on_the_lam.html
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Terrific post. The references to both wargaming and Luddite tendencies, together with your age, make me wonder if you were an old Avalon Hill hexagonal cardboard gamer and, if so: (i) what games you liked best, and (ii) whther you regret the conversation to electronic wargames (as I do), however inevitable it may be.
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Dear Tom K:
Thanks for asking! I began with Avalon Hill, then moved on to play test for SPI. I am listed on the credits of “Empires of the Middle Ages,” which I playtested weekly for a year when I was a high school freshman. I was the one who pointed out that Venice was NEVER controlled by the Holy Roman Empire--so they created the province of Verona.
I must say, I don’t lament the move to PCs, since I could NEVER find anyone to play against in my neighborhood--and in college, we were all too busy. At least with Europa Universalis, when I play solo, I don’t have to try to “outwit” myself....
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