THE MINDSET LIST OF HAVANA SYNDROME

Other than UFO sightings, few unexplained events have gotten as much attention as has the so-called HAVANA SYNDROME, a series of incidents reported especially by American (and some Canadian) diplomats all over the world. These personnel and their families say that they have experienced a wide array of symptoms, including disorientation, imbalance, nausea, confusion, concussion, deafness, and fatigue. A few of them have been unable to return to work, and a Congressional bill, bi-partisan, and signed by the president, has supplied benefits for American government employees who experience brain and heart injuries, Havana Syndrome is a cause for alarm and mystery. But it has not happened in a vacuum but in a mindset. It maps onto pre-existing American mindsets, which include the clashes of scientific authorities, conspiracy theories, post-Cold War politics, national security politics, and the silo-ing and rivalries of government agencies. Hence, THE MINDSET LIST OF HAVANA SYNDROME traces how a great enigma maps onto typical American assumptions, attitudes, and practices. It’s been said, of Scotland, that a country capable of producing Braveheart and Rob Roy can certainly produce a Loch Ness Monster. Is there anything about America that could produce a Havana Syndrome?  We have had a lot to say about the syndrome, but the syndrome has also had a lot to say about US. 

1 Just as the Spanish Flu got its name because Spain was the site of an early outbreak, so has Havana Syndrome gotten its moniker due to a high number of reported incidents among diplomats in Cuba’s capital city—but the Spaniards were never blamed for the flu. 

2 The second highest number of incidents has occurred in Vienna, but the term “Vienna Syndrome” has not caught on. 

3 Donald Trump said the Cubans were to blame for Havana Syndrome but has never said the Russians are. 

4   A major advisor to Trump said microwave ovens could easily be used for spying, 

5 A reputable group of scientists has concluded that microwave energy, possibly used for eavesdropping or stealing information stored on computers or phones, is the most likely cause of Havana Syndrome, 

6. HS, reportedly affecting about a thousand persons, has been investigated by the State Department, FBI, Department of Defense, CIA, NSA, and the Royal Mounted Police. 

7   HS sometimes begins with strange noises, which have been compared to those heard when driving a car with the window down. 

8 The Cuban government’s scientists have concluded that these sounds likely come from a species of cricket native to the island and that there is no scientific basi whatever for the idea that the alleged symptoms of HS come from some outside source of “directed energy.” 

9   Experts in electromagnetic energy say that a microwave oven could theoretically be used to eavesdrop on one’s neighbors, sine microwaves amplify sound, but that it would be essential to have a microphone inside the oven, 

10 Reputable scientists have also identified ultrasound as a possible source of HS symptoms.  

11 Reports of HS symptoms have come from American diplomats and spies from all over the globe, from China to Austria to Colombia, to Uzbekistan. 

12 Various government agencies in the Unit3d States have accused others of lack of cooperation and collaboration—a silo effect—and one Defense official said of the State Department that “they aren’t taking this shit seriously.” 

13 One Stat3e Department report concluded that the vast majority of HS symptoms came from “natural causes” but that a few probably did not. 

14   Reputable scientists have concluded that HS is most likely a “psychogenic disease,” which a hundred or so years ago bore the label “hysteria,” triggered by emotional stress., 

15   Some reputable scientists claim that HS in Cuba was probably triggered by the overuse of pesticides on the island against a persistent and damaging sub-species of mosquitoes. 

16   Some observers believe that attributing HS to psychogenic illness is “blaming the victim,” a phrase first used by William Ryan in 1971 to explain how social injustice against African-Americans was blamed on African-Americans themselves. 

17   Sixty years before the “pesticide” theory of HS was expressed, Rachel Carson said that the pesticide DDT caused sudden death, birth defects, chronic anemia, and leukemia in children. 

18   After World War II Soviet school children presented American Ambassador Averill Harriman with the Russian Great Seal to hang in his office, which he did, but not for six years was it discovered that it contained a microwave microphone for eavesdropping.

19   Liberal journalists have opined that HS has been a device used by “anti-Cuban hawks” and that a likely health problem has been weaponized with accounts of non-existent Russian and Cuban “ray-guns.” 

20   There have been different findings about the existence of actual brain damage, with some neurologists stating that a causal nexus is impossible to establish so long after reported symptoms. 

21 Washington, DC itself has not been immune from reports of HS, with sudden bouts of headaches and dizziness in both DC suburbs and on the Ellipse near the White House: sudden loud noise and painful headaches. 

22   Havana Syndrome is not the world’s first rodeo:  there have been thousands of claims since the 1950s of alien abductions, a puzzling blend of vivid descriptions, personal sincerity, and scientific mystery. 

23   Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the new name for UFOs, have been attributed to advanced technology by the Russians or Chinese—or by extraterrestrial aliens—but HS has so far not been blamed on ETs. 

24   A United States government task force has recently said that it has more or less solved the mystery of HS but that the findings are not quite ready to be made public. 

25   Averill Harriman, the American diplomat bugged by the Russians for six years, eventually developed hearing loss, sometimes associated with HS, but this was attributed to old age. 

26   93 percent of American diplomats have reported no HS symptoms since they first appeared in lat3e 2016. 

27    The Trump Administration, hostile to the previous administration’s attempts at closer ties to Cuba, reduced diplomatic staff in Havana due to what it called Cuban responsibility for HS. 

28 In a suit still pending, 14 Canadian government employees sued their employer for not protecting them from HS, while the government has said that the causes of these maladies has yet to be determined. 

29   The Journal of the American Medical Association has editorialized against the confusing and contradictory methods used to analyze HS symptoms. 

30   Despite the popularity of such acronyms as UFO and UAP, so far, no government agency has dubbed HS a “UHI,” or Unexplained Health Incident. 

THE MINDSET LIST OF MICROMANAGING PARENTS 
There’s nothing quite like starting a 40year trend. And, even better, doing it quickly. By the end of Regan’s first term Stranger Danger, Play Dates, Bike Helmets, and Satanic Panic were all big cultural trends, and they have yet to exhaust themselves. By the 90s “Velcro Parents” and “Helicopter Parents” had entered the lexicon.  They’re still growing strong, with children’s self-esteem and safety on the line, and a growing trend towards consumerism in daycare, summer camp, grammar and elementary schools, and even colleges and universities. So far, it seems, graduate and professional schools have escaped. Such parents and guardians have mindsets. Read on. 

1 Stranger Danger has always been a thing. 

2 A Play Date is rarely a bad idea. 

3 Maybe they should wear helmets when learning to walk, too. 

4 HOME ALONE and FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF were Hollywood cautionary tales about parental irresponsibility. 

5 The car seat is the greatest invention since the wheel. 

6 Satan in daycare is unlikely but can’t wholly be ruled out.. 

7 What’s wrong with anti-slip booties in the winter time? 

8 Bubble Wrap protects everything, inanimate or otherwise. 

9 Isn’t finding the missing piece of the puzzle for her a boost tyo her self-esteem? 

10 See-saws can be really dangerous sometimes. 

11 Lots of Mozart piped into the crib could be worth five points extra on the SAT someday. 

12 Who was that dreadful Senator Buckley who made it impossible for me to get my child’s college grades without his permission? 

13 My first duty is protection; my second one is vetting. 

14 BEST IN SHOW would have been even better if they’d made it about kids. 

15 “OK” is an oratorio to my ears when my kid texts me. 

16 “Empowering” is my most important product. 

17 Sometimes it’s really hard not to answer the preschool teacher’s questions myself. 

18 I wasn’t really writing her paper for her–just showing her how to do it better. 

19 Eternal overscheduling is the price of security. 

20 I can’t buy this Marcus Aurelius stuff about Stoic acceptance–I have a child to raise while he just had an Empire to run. 

21 My child is not a student but a consumer, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.22 The true moral of ABOUT SCHMIDT is that children who don’t listen to their parents marry nincompoops.23 The real hero of TONYA ws the mother., 24 Brittney Spears’s father probably isn’t all bad.

25 Comparing us to helicopters or velcro is an insult to the power of both. 

26. What are those teachers up to with my MY child?

THE MINDSET LIST OF AMERICAN BIBLICAL ILLITERACY 

By Ron Nief and Tom McBride (niefr@beloit.edu and mcbridet@beloit.edu)

There was a time when bible stories were taught in school as literature. No more.

Surveys confirm a dramatic decline in church membership and attendance, particularly among young people. Biblical illiteracy is up there with financial illiteracy. “People revere the bible but nobody reads it,” concluded a Gallup poll.

Our concern does not relate to a decline in faith and morals. Our issue is that, today, with little exposure to the hymns and classic stories of Joshua, David, Paul, and Lot’s wife, generations are coming away with little understanding of important scriptural references that fill great literature and pop up in rock lyrics and platform speeches.

The Pew Research Council has found that nearly half of adult Americans hardly, if ever, read the Bible. As for these Americans: 

1. They have never met a bad Samaritan.

2. Loaves of bread and a few fishes have always made for a smelly picnic lunch.

3. They have always assumed that being called “prodigal” when they came home late was a compliment.

4. They have read the writing on the stall but not on the wall unless it was a Power Point presentation. 

5. The Burning Bush is what starts all those California wildfires. 

6. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a rock band.

7. Noah’s Ark has always been a waterpark.

8. Eternal life is accomplished when your brain’s neurons turn to digits and are uploaded into your grieving laptop. 

9. The Lions’ Den has more likely offered liquor than man-eaters.

10. He who is without sin has never lived in a glass house.

11. Adam’s Rib is an old movie they keep showing on TMC. 

12. The Arcs—Noah and Joan d’—are related.

 13. They don’t realize that Catholic is to catholic as Democrat is to democrat.

14. The Road to Damascus is a two lane backroad in Georgia

15. The Tower of Babel is where social media was developed. 

16. East of Eden was James Dean’s first movie. 

17. Moses is a former spokesman for the NRA. 

18. The parting of the Red Sea must be attributed to climate change. 

19. A Plague of Locusts comes to Africa every so often and is covered on CNN and PBS. 

20. John, Paul, George, and Ringo are the four gospel writers. 

21. “Walking on water” is an impressive move in surfing, 

22. The Cedars of Lebanon is the hospital where all the Hollywood stars went to die. 

23. “Talent” has always been something you were born with, not a coin given out by masters to faithless servants taken to hiding theirs “under a bushel.” 

24. Good Friday includes happy hour at TGIF’s.

25. Isn’t the 23rd Psalm the one that starts, “Fourscore and seven years ago?”  

A TRIP DOWN CENTURY LANE: On Being a Teen-Ager in 1922

Suppose it were a hundred years ago, you were eighteen, and trying to get your life out of the blocks. Well, there was reason to be optimistic. Sure, Germany had hyperinflation and Italy had something new called “fascism,” but the major powers were disarming, the “movies” were getting longer, the presidents of the world were talking on something called “radio,” and Ireland and Egypt were free states at last. Edward, that dashing new Prince of Wales, promised to be a great king someday. That League of Nations would keep mega-destructive wars from ever happening again. And if you were an American, then your president was as handsome as a young Rudolf Valentino. Credit is cheap, something called “chain stores” are popping up, and “consumerism” is the hot new word. Even Jesus is being touted as a great salesman.

SO: IF YOU WERE 18 A CENTURY AGO, THEN……

1 Congrats: You survived the Spanish flu, were too young to die in the Great War, and can reasonably expect to live another thirty-five years.

2 Little Betty White, Doris Day, Bea Arthur, Pierre Cardin, Judy Garland, George McGovern, Redd Fox, Dorothy Dandridge, and Ava Gardener have just been born, but you haven’t heard of any of them, yet.

3 You’d have shared the world with an Irish writer—whose wife said he had a dirty mind—who just re-told the story of Ulysses in modern Dublin pubs. Your grandchildren will be told that this is the greatest novel of all time.

4 You might have played around with a naked crystal receiver called a radio, therefore revolutionizing that fine old word “reception.”

5 There’s a 96 percent chance that you won’t be going to college and about a hundred percent chance that you won’t need to.

6 You may be mourning the loss of Marcel Proust, the writer who made gossip and madeleine cakes famous; Cap Anson, the baseball superstar with the Chicago “White Stockings;” and the indefatigable Nellie Bly, who went around the world in fewer than 80 days.

7 You will encounter a world where once-dominant Turkey has at last been kicked out of the Middle East, thus setting up years and years of sectarian conflict and desperate disputes over oil.

8 A sweet guy named Joe Stalin, a former theology student, has become number 2 in the Russian Communist Party,

9 You’d have emerged the same year that a St. Louis-born poet wrote a fragmented poem about a long drought in some waste land.  Your grandchildren will learn that this is the greatest poem of the twentieth century.  

10 Ireland has always been a free state, with Ulster remaining loyal to the British crown much to the dismay of its Catholic citizens and launching years and years of “Troubles.”

11 Some strutting political force called “fascism” has risen in Italy, but no one will have thought it would last long,

12 Some “moving pictures” now last over an hour—they still don’t talk, but the organ music is great.

13 An Austro-English philosopher has written a perplexing little book whose main idea seems to be that we should all spend more time remaining silent. Your grandchildren will be told that this is one of the greatest philosophical works of all time.

14 A new party in Britain, called Labor, has emerged as the number two political force, becoming the party of workers and intellectuals.

15 If you have diabetes, there’s a new treatment called insulin.

16 Major powers have just signed a disarmament treaty, thus guaranteeing that there will be no more wars like the last one (your male child will likely fight in World War II).

17 Egypt has just become an independent nation one again.

18 A small city in Holland hosts the first-ever international court of justice—outlaws on the world stage should beware, but they don’t seem to be nervous.

19 A severely frightening film about a vampire has premiered in Berlin.

20 President Harding has made it official: there is now a radio in the White House.

21 A scrawny lawyer named Gandhi has been arrested for sedition in the big Indian city of Bombay. Everyone knows his quest for Indian independence is futile.

22 There’s a new-fangled United States ship that they call an “aircraft carrier.” Japan has one, too.

23 Planes from the new commercial airlines are now crashing in mid-air.

24 The American Secretary of the Interior has just leased a Federal oil reserve to private interests—the area in Wyoming has the strange name of “Teapot Dome.”

25 The state of Massachusetts has recently opened all its public offices—to women.

26 The Prince of Wales, not thinking at all of divorced American women to fall in love with, is taking his duties seriously with a one-month tour of Japan.

27 Eight priests have been executed in Russia for opposing confiscation of church property.

28 The foreign minister of the democratic government in Germany is assassinated, but most folks think that the bitterly-defeated nation will settle down, even though it takes 3,000 marks to buy one U.S. dollar.

29 The great experimental artists Stravinsky, Joyce, Picasso, and Proust have dined together in Paris, but there is no record of anything said other than perhaps “more snails, si’l vous plait.”

30 There is now actually a woman senator in the American Congress, but she was appointed by the governor of Georgia and will not serve long.

31 Big doings in California: the new Rose Bowl stadium has just opened, an open-air Hollywood Bowl is available for concerts, and the last grizzly bear in the state has been shot to death.

32 A radio broadcast license in the United Kingdom now costs ten shillings, but there is talk that the whole business is going to be merged into something called the BBC.

33 Folks are now able to see inside old King Tut’s tomb for the first time in over 30 centuries.

34 Ukraine has just joined the new “Soviet Union.”

35 Bucking bronco addles are now hornless: better for rodeo sales.

Tom McBride (mcbridet@beloit.edu)

Ron Nief (niefr@beloit.edu)

Tom McBride and Ron Nief called them “Mindset Moments.” They are the settings in which you have made a witty point or perceptive observation, yet you have been met with blank stares. The message is clear that your inciteful observation has fallen flat. And your audience doesn’t know what you are talking about.

These “moments” provided the impetus, 25 years ago, when Tom and I were still of sound mind at Beloit College, for the creation of the Mindset List and several books. It was a list we shared initially with faculty colleagues and, eventually, with audiences around the world with the warning: 

                         BEWARE OF HARDENING OF THE REFERENCES.

An intriguing setting for these Mindset Moments today has come from late night comedians whose humor has missed the mark with their younger audience. Johnny Carson used to thump his microphone and ask “Is this thing working?”; Stephen Colbert looks to his band leader and they both shrug.  In both cases they elicit a laugh out of the silence.

So, as a public service directed at family members, teachers, and employers of the next generation, we offer an occasional list of useful references that make a point but which should be used cautiously or footnoted in discussion.

We hope this improves the conversation.

The following, which have changed in meaning OR have no meaning at all anymore, are offered with a few afterthoughts.

The Enemies list – Richard Nixon wasn’t the first or the last president with such a list but he was the only one dumb enough to share it with colleagues and discuss it on an open mic.

Bankers’ hours — Hard to imagine when banks staying open after 3 p.m. or for two hours on Saturday morning were considered revolutionary marketing moves.

Corner office — Is anybody climbing the ladder of office real estate?

“Quarter to” or “Quarter past” — Choose an hour and add or subtract 15 minutes. Not easy to do digitally, and don’t bother tapping your wrist with a quizzical expression. You won’t get the time from a watch-less generation.

 
Coming on like gangbusters – While it has its foundation in a mid-20^th century radio program that used excessive sound effects to welcome the busters of crime, it has fallen into the vernacular to describe anything that offers force, speed, effectiveness and success, anything going gangbusters.

 “Just the facts ma’am” – Not surprising that it pops up frequently since every boomer knew Sgt. Joe Friday’s straight forward get-down-to-business approach to crime solving on Dragnet.

Ladies who lunch — From a 1970s Sondheim show, Company, it is, sadly, a dated reference to well (high) heeled, socially comfortable women who, mid-week, relaxed over negronis and salads at proper noon gatherings in order to plan the next social event.

Tin Pan Alley — This stretch of Manhattan’s 28^th Street was the precursor of the “Garage,” Abbey Road, and the “yacht” as the center of popular music publishing. It remains the reference point for the “standards” of the past century.

The Collyer Brothers – OK, they’ve been dead a long time, but my mother always told me my room looked like the famed hoarding Collyer brothers lived there. I had to look it up and eventually read E.L. Doctorow’s imaginative telling of the Collyer brothers story in his book Homer and  Langley)

The three-martini lunch – MadMen really happened in the sixties and seventies. Nobody noticed the bleary afternoon because everybody did it and thought that that was what the rest of the day was supposed to look like.

Twenty questions – Why 20? Not sure, but the 20-question format established mid 20th century on a hit radio show (that failed to fly on television) has remained part of the conversational limit in proper company. It pops up regularly snarled by cops and crooks in noir films: “What is this, a game of 20 questions?”

Is it bigger than a bread box? – One of the favorite opening questions of the panel on the aforementioned Twenty Questions show, the size and shape are lost to posterity.

The Last Dance – Once a slow romantic punctuation of the evening on the dance floor  that could mark the beginning of something special, it has become the last gasp for an era or tradition ( e.g. Michael Jordan). Good Night Ladies.

Onion Skin – The delicate but highly durable and critical second sheets that preceded copiers. They may still be found tucked into books and files when cleaning out the folk’s attic.

Dialing a telephone — To the digital generation, the technique and physical process of using the digits for dialing is confounding. It was one of the first items in the original Mindset List: “They never dialed a telephone.”

The Third Degree, The Fourth Estate, The Fifth Column – The first is probably grounds for a judicial appeal; the second, the media watchdog of society, has been called “the enemy of the people” by a recent president; and the third has shifted from the communists to domestic movements, designed to undermine the government.

Monsters of the Midway – OK, everybody knows that they are the Bears, but they weren’t always. The term originally belonged to the University of Chicago football team which played right near the first “Midway” in the country, the Midway Plaisance built for the 1893 World Columbian Exhibition that now runs through the University campus.  You won’t confuse the two since U. of C. gave up footfall about a century ago.

The Gay Ranchero – Best to avoid the term unless you know who to whom you are talking. Term came from a film — not Brokeback Mountain—and it is now a dance club in LA.

Like a broken record – Vinyl is coming back but it just doesn’t scratch and crack like  the old records did, catching the needle and jumping back each revolution to repeat itself.  CDs just make strange sounds.

45s – Make sure you are not talking to the police or overheard if you tell someone that the box you are carrying or the trunk of your car is full of 45s.  These “compact discs” of another generation are fine for target practice however.

THE TEENS-TURN-50 LIST

Today’s New College Kiss in Thirty Years

BY Tom McBride (mcbridet@beloit.edu)

And Ron Nief (niefr@beloit.edu)

Today’s high school graduates will have their adjustments cut out for them as we confront a period of sometimes wrenching change. As they set a course in life, they might well consider that in the next 30 years, as they approach middle age, they will find that….

1 India will be the most populated country in the world. 

2 Populations in Europe will be old, those in Africa, young, and the populations of Canada and other northern tier countries will have doubled and tripled.

3 Covid will have been forgotten as climate change, forcing people and animals to live closer and closer together, and the constant movement of populations may well engender an ever-changing series of deadly pathogens. 

4 Self-monitoring of personal health will rival 4shopping, messaging, and sex as the major activity on the internet.

5 Despite returning with muscle atrophy, enhanced cancer risk, and psychological problems due to prolonged isolation, more than ten Earthlings will have taken the two-year round trip to Mars with some choosing to reside in one of the new lunar colonies.

6 Russia will continue to be a petro-power, tough their customer base will be India and China, not Europe.

7 Highways and roads will offer a symphony of required infused noises emanating from electric cars, nearly half of them driverless. 

8 Water usage will be regulated and restricted almost everywhere and fine lawns will be supplanted by extravagant rock gardens.

9 Gene-edited animal organs will be transplanted into humans and will lengthen their lives markedly, thus sparking an array of religious and moral issues.

10 Dramatically enhanced battery storage will become the key to global hope. 

11 “Cash” will become unnecessary, but currency will be more important than ever. 

12   Population growth in China will shrink, the care of its old people will become an enormous challenge, and its burgeoning middle class will at last demand more political freedom. 

13 The US, China, and Europe will duke it out for dominance in the commercial production of green energy.

14 Due to populist pressure, goods will be produced more locally for nearby populations, but ideas and services will continue to move around the planet at the speed of light. 

15 The frequency of UFO sightings will climb markedly and become increasingly linked to religious experience. 

16 Breezy Britain will seek to become the Saudi Arabia of wind energy, while sunny Spain will seek to become the Iran of solar power

17 Rich American states will increasingly support poor ones, with the latter’s ingratitude equally on the rise. 

18 To mitigate human unemployment in an age of robots, independent researchers, armed with access to digital information and supported by guaranteed annual incomes, will become common in all developed countries. 

19 It will be hard to name an appliance that is not controllable by a smart phone. 

20 With global population nearing 10 billion, skyscrapers will become small cities. 

21 The rich will tour space, the middle class will take virtual vacations, the poor will be stuck. 

22 Climate crises will be ongoing:  a marked rise in deaths from dirty air, the transformation of a cup of coffee into a luxury, and the increasing extent to which great national parks will, from time to time, become unvisitable, and beaches will have overtaken vacation communities.

23 There will be intense philosophical debates about whether it is possible to live a meaningful life while wearing virtual reality headset most of the time.

24 Home robots will no longer be chic but as common as microwaves are today.

25 Los Angeles and Beijing will be experimenting with super high-speed transport, where cargo and passenger pods speed with magnetic force through friction-free tunnels.

It’s difficult to unteach old dogs old tricks, and this applies particularly to the creators of The Mindset List, Tom McBride (mcbridet@beloit.edu) and Ron Nief (niefr@beloit.edu). Each year about this time we just naturally start thinking about the world we know and how it compares to the world of this year’s high school graduates preparing to head off to college, voting booths, and other great adventures. Their’s is a different world from their mentors and even from those just a few years older.

Therefore, we offer a few of our thoughts drawn from…

THE 18-ER FILE

If you were born in 2004 and turned 18 in 2022, THEN:

1. You may be the last generation to prefer reality to the metaverse.
2. You are living on a planet that is two-thirds of a degree warmer than it was when you made your debut on the globe. 
3. You have probably picked up a little Farsi and Albanian from Google Translate. 
4. Facebook, hatched the same year you were, hasn’t aged as well as you have and is now a platform frequented by oldsters.
5. You were born just as the bans on assault style weapons were lifted.
6. There’s only about a 50/50 chance that you are convinced going to college is a sound investment. 
7. You are one-third less likely to have a religious affiliation than your parents and grandparents.
8. You can’t recall when Wikipedia was anything other than reliable and thorough. 
9. Tablets, whether the ones you turn on or the ones you swallow, have been getting smarter and smarter. 
10. The United States has lost about 270,000 manufacturing jobs for every year you’ve been alive—increasing pressure to find a job that a robot or algorithm can’t do.
11. You may be the first generation to conceive a child in the backseat of a self-driving car. 
12. Your first word might have been “blog,” the word of the year when you were born. 
13. You have never had the burden of living in a world without highly intelligent watches. 
14. You are a mammal whose species is not yet extinct, unlike the black rhino, clouded leopard, monk seal, and Banji river dolphin. 
15. You have no memory of Saddam Hussein. 
16. You are coming of age when the new “big boxes” are Amazon warehouses. 
17. Pop-ups have become the digital fruit flies of your generation. 
18. Your parents were learning how to text while you were learning how to nap. 
19. You have never lived in a world where “Kindle” was just something you did to a fire. 
20. You began your days at about the same time that seven countries in Eastern Europe joined NATO—if Vladimir Putin, then 52, had been your dad, he’d have been in a bad mood that day. 
21. You were in diapers when state senator Barack Obama said with great charisma that he saw one America, not two. 
22. You might have slept more soundly in your pram if you’d been aware that there never were any WMDs in Iraq to disturb your slumber.
23. Part of your techno-inheritance is 3-D printing of mini-escalators, Oreo boxes, guns, or your next house.
24. A spacecraft has been on Saturn as long as you’ve been on Earth. 
25. One Hour Photo would have always been a little slow for you. 
26. You barely recall when the family waited for the Netflix envelope to arrive in the mailbox. 
27. You might, if some prophecies hold up, own a laptop by your 30^th birthday that is faster and thinner than the one you have now and that can tell a joke, turn romantic and loving, and even get sexy. 
28. Inter-racial marriages in the United States have increased by close to ten percent during your lifetime. 
29. You have never shared the planet with an American president once known as “The Gipper” or with that moody mumbling genius Marlon Brando. 
30. You can expect to see the inside of an office with ever less frequency, and won’t hold the same job at the same company for more than a few years. 
31. You’ve made history, having grown up with both the country’s first black, and first autocratic, presidents. 
32. You’ve thrived, one hopes, in a world where Blockbuster, Lehmann Brothers, Nokia, Borders, and Blackberries have not. 
33. You can look forward to fewer UPS and Fed-Ex trucks and more drones. 
34. “Friends” has not “always been there for you,” so you’ve had to settle for re-runs.
35. Three years before you spoke up, Nancy Pelosi started speaking for the Democrats. 
36. For your generation, identity affirmation has always been no small thing. 
37. You can hardly remember when stealing bases was an important part of baseball. 
38. You’ve grown up on a globe where “Rummy” is not just a card game but also a contentious Secretary of Defense. 
39. Regrettably, you missed being aware of a Red Sox comeback that had to be seen in order to be believed—but, less regrettably, you also missed a Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction. 
40. While you were throwing up your formula, water, capable of supporting life, was found on Mars.
41. Flickr selfies were born the same year you were. 
42. You may not know that the actress murdered in the shower by Norman Bates (or his “mother”) has been deceased for as long as you’ve been alive. 
43. You’ll try to refrain, but there’s a fine chance you will be following your exes on social media. 
44. Fracking went mainstream about the same time that your parents were getting used to you.
45. In order to be fashionable, you may need to ditch the skinny jeans in favor of leggings or yoga pants. 
46. Lucky you made your world premiere on a globe with satellite radio, DVRs, HDTV, and I-Pods just waiting for you to ignore them later on in life. 
47. Between the occasions for your infant needs, your parents might have been following symbologist Robert Langdon trying to determine if Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a baby of their own. 
48. You have arrived in a land where many of your fellow citizens honor their constitutional liberties by starting their mornings with a true crime podcast.
49. If you’d been able to blend American TV on the day you were born, you’d have had CSI agents investigating Desperate Housewives while they were addicted to American Idol. 
50. Little did you know as a new born that Grand Theft Auto V awaited you. 
51. Climate change may have welcomed you to the world with the first ever tropical cyclone in the South Atlantic. 
52. Whether to share your password with your partners will become, if it hasn’t already, an existential decision. 
53. In the digital age you plan to control your healthcare options by using your own digits to punch a smartphone keypad. 
54. Your birth year saw one of the rare times in recent memory when a Republican actually won the popular vote for president. 
55. The only credit card receipt on carbon paper you will ever see will be as a bookmark in an old paperback in the attic. 
56. You have never breathed the same air as did the major Superman star of the 80s. 
57. If born in Massachusetts, you have always had the right to same-sex marriage as part of your heritage. 
58. Your parents might have found your birth astounding, but even more so was the documented UFO sighting off the aircraft carrier Nimitz the year you were born. 
59. You’ve shared the world with thieves who would stoop so low as to filch a painting entitled “Scream.” 
60. You got an early course on marine biology in Bikini Bottom with Spongebob. 
61. You are very careful and discriminating about what emojis you use. 
62. The Europeans were celebrating their first moon satellite as your parents took pride in their newborn. 
63. You can’t remember a time when you couldn’t speak to someone on the other side of the globe at a moment’s notice. 
64. You want “exclusivity” more than you want marriage. 
65. You may well have grown up wondering, along with the experts, why tsunamis of gamma ray bursts from outer space are getting stronger and stronger. 
66. As your years have increased, so has the percentage of those who believe President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, a number that has now reached an all-time high. 

04/23/2023: What Might Confucius Say About the Trans-Gender Controversy?

During a recent debate in the Montana State legislature, the gathered senators refused to acknowledge the body’s one trans-gender member, who represents 11,000 people in her district. Most of the members are anti-LGBTQ rights and felt that those who uphold these rights should not be called upon even if they have their hands up and are duly elected. In this context, some might think that they who would call upon the member for her remarks are “progressives” or “radicals” or “liberals.”  But what if they are actually CONSEERVATIVES? Confucius and his followers have said, “Review the past in order to create the future.” What is the conservative (past) wisdom of acknowledging a trans-gender member of the Montana Legislature?  First, there is kindness and humanness—are these not traditional values? And then there is the old wisdom of enlarging the freedom of others in order to CONSERVE one’s own.  “They came for the Jews, but I wasn’t Jewish, so I said nothing—but then they came for me.” And finally, there is the ancient wisdom of democracy: many voices are better than a few in the pursuit of truth and prudence. You may not agree with any of this, but it is worth thinking about the following proposition: that those who want to give trans-genders a voice are not liberals—but conservatives.

When it comes to the twisted gyre of human identity, what would Hamlet be like on social media? He would be a lot like Hamlet, and a lot like you and me.

Facebook has turned us into an electronic village. TV had already done that, of course, but on Facebook we can not only be held together but chat about what we’ve seen and heard. I grew up in a village and can recall just running into people on the sidewalks and exchanging news and views. Now I bump into people on Facebook. I used to walk around in order to encounter people. Now I place my bottom on a chair and scroll down. In my village I might tell someone I’d not seen them in a while. On Facebook I might tell them I’ve not had a post from them in a long time. This is my Comment, and I Like the fact that they have resurfaced. In my village I would tell them it was good to see them again. Facebook, as Marshall McLuhan would say if he were around, has thrown us back to the village of olden days,

There are differences. In my village, if I didn’t want to talk to someone but saw them coming, I could change routes or stop by Mrs. Rogers’ house for a cup of coffee in order to avoid them. Still, the boring or unlikeable fellow villager might see me trying to escape. On Facebook, if I wish to ignore a fellow villager from Facebook, The World, I can simply do so without anyone knowing. If one of my fellow villagers of old and I exchanged gossip or opinions, it would for a while at least be just between us. If it happens on a Facebook thread, it will be there for all FB villagers to see, In the old village if I told a fellow denizen I liked Pepsi, the town grocer wouldn’t be eavesdropping to learn that he’d better order fewer Cokes. Facebook village, on the other hand, is a giant surveillance service for corporations much larger than the town grocer.

A village is a small, circumscribed place. In a big city one rarely notices visitors. In a village, visitors are a novelty, not unlike an unexpected Facebook Friend request. So it was in the Danish court of Prince Hamlet and King Claudius. Norwegian ambassadors paid a call, and it was a big deal, as Claudius needed to negotiate a territorial understanding between himself and

Fortinbras, the upstart and aggressive Norwegian prince. In such a courtly “village”–a great big castle–people would have run into one another all the time. But the Danish court is no ordinary village, as most of the inhabitants conspire to run into one another, Polonius acts as though he has just bumped into Hamlet, but in fact he has deliberately done so in order to spy for King Claudius, who knows that Hamlet has seemed to be acting funny of late and wants to know why. As Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father and married his mother, Claudius wants to keep close tabs on Hamlet., It is as though Hamlet’s social media posts have been angrily daffy and the government wants to know why. So someone in the top echelons tells Polonius, “Friend him and feel him out.” In the Facebook village Polonius would have needed only to read Hamlet’s posts, but in the Danish village he has to eavesdrop. This gets him killed. Facebook lurking is safer.

Most of us would prefer to live in a village where people don’t plot to run into us in order to find out our secrets. That’s the difference between a good village and a bad one. There’s little privacy in an everybody-know-everybody type of town, but on Facebook we give up our privacy in order to get our ideas and photos “liked.” There would have been little privacy in the small Danish court, but Claudius goes a step further and seeks to invade Hamlet’s privacy in any way he can. He discovers that Hamlet is not mad due to love sickness and concludes that Hamlet must know something incriminating about Claudius himself. He plans to get rid of Hamlet one way or another,

It seems fanciful to imagine this whole drama of duplicity and spying and murder playing out on Facebook village, as opposed to the Danish court village. It may not be so outlandish. In the course of things Hamlet takes on several different identities: melancholy cynic, incoherently angry avenger, focused avenger, duplicitous counter-intelligencer, brave and resigned stoic. On Facebook we sometimes project multiple and shifting identities. We like our “likes” on Facebook and feel we must constantly maintain our reputation for: being witty, being liberal or conservative, being a good amateur photographer, being a lover of pets, being sympathetic, being a teller of sentimental family stories. We wish to maintain our standards, and if Hamlet were on Facebook instead of on soliloquies, he would understand, as he has his own internal reputation to uphold as a competent agent of revenge and upholder of the family honor and judge of his mother’s transgressions. We worry in the Facebook village about our brand. Hamlet has been branded by his father’s ghost and must now live up to the trademark. On Facebook there is no forgetting: posts are cyber spatially immortal. In order to move on with his life after the tragedy

of his father’s sudden death, Hamlet needs to forget him. But the ghost of his father tells Hamlet he cannot forget his duty to put things right. It is as though Hamlet, Sr. had his own FB account and has posted orders that can never be erased If Hamlet were to put his own maturation ahead of his revenge, someone would find old Hamlet’s posts on the web and remind Hamlet of unfinished business, It is like something you or I said ten years ago that now haunts us,

In my traditional village they never forget what you did, but because bumped into exchanges are just between the two of you, what you say can get forgotten, Not so with the Facebook village or the village of the ghostly Danish court.

Hamlet finds the dormant programming of his inner stoic. Instead of looking for the occasion for revenge, he lets it come to him. “Let be.” This is a story with a progression and turning point- -life with the dull parts omitted–whereas Facebook is more like life itself as we experience: a series of frames. Still, on Facebook we strive to convey our impressions of ourselves, present a unified front, or, contrarily, express different facets of ourselves. For most of the play, until he returns from his near-death experience on the ship to England, after which he accepts his as yet unknown fate with the cheerful adjournment of previous anger, he grapples with his identity every bit as much as does a villager of Facebook. In thinking he should be in control, as we try to be on social media, he sees himself through a glass darkly. Facebook itself may be just such a clouded mirror of identity dynamics.

Hamlet’s identity issues are impression management, standards maintenance, discontinuity of the self, and necessity to forget but the impossibility of doing so. These are all played out on Facebook every minute of every day. The electronic village is different from the “real” one. But the overlap in identity issues between the two suggests that there is something about the human quest for the self that transcends media more than we think. Hamlet on Facebook is not quite so preposterous as it seems at first thought. Something there is about the divided human self that doesn’t care what the medium is and just wants to do its thing, aspiring and confused. Did some potentially perfect deity outsource human identity to an ingenious but myopic, miscalculating architect? What an excellent question for a Facebook post.