COMMERCE VERSUS JUSTICE : A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE

A REFLECTION

It took me a while to name this blog. I wanted to make it memorable. At the same time, I wanted it to reflect my life philosophy. I didn't want to sound pretentious; rather, I wanted to alert the reader to the big questions that animate me. And I also wanted to hint that I am at heart a "satirical rogue." That's why I added "free beer" at the end.

I chose "Reason," "Commerce" and "Justice" because those subjects focus my critical energy. Everything I write in some way relates to those three concepts. No matter what style I choose, those concepts unite my work.

Reason interests me because it encapsulates the human capacity for thought. Reason allegedly separates human beings from other animals. I write about reason's limitations, as well as its less-than-reasonable corollaries: Emotions, reflections, memories, impressions. My fixation on language also involves "reasoned" analysis. No matter the specific subject, however, I cast a critical eye on reason. I do not praise it as an inexorable pathway to truth. Indeed, I maintain a healthy skepticism for reason. I am a qualified empiricist: Reason is just one tool to help me understand existence. But I certainly don't put all my money on it. Too much unreasonable stuff happens in life. In that light, putting full trust in reason is not only unadvisable; it's also really disappointing.

Commerce offers me plentiful material for both satire and commentary. I define myself against commerce. Its values repel me. I do not like promoting myself. I do not like circulating resumes or kissing ass in interviews. I don't like wearing little costumes and going to work for private employers. I also don't like unfairness, inequality and hypocrisy. Commerce is rife with all three. Commerce also interests me because it is all about instrumentalism; and that clashes with my steadfast respect for the individual. In commerce, people play roles to make money: Master, servant, employer, employee, officer, director, customer, client…the list goes on. In the process, they lose their humanity. They also tend to exploit one another for crass personal gain. Commerce is the stage upon which to showcase my ruthless cynicism. It allows me to ironically brandish my own colors while criticizing things I fundamentally don't like.

Moreover, commerce is the perfect context in which to explore the tension between flexibility and principle. I often write about principles and honor. Commerce weighs against both. And sadly, my satires take doubled strength from the unfortunate truth that most people live for commerce rather than honor. Just listen to the radio or watch television. You will see and hear a lot more commercial messages than honorable ones.

Finally, justice draws me because it represents something larger than commerce. Justice has obsessed philosophers for millennia. I am just continuing down the road. In my work, justice stands as something hopeful, something better than ourselves, something transcendent, something to achieve. Justice is that great, intuitive feeling that something is right, not wrong. I do not identify a source for it. It just "is." I am no theologian. But in my heart I know when a situation is just. And I know when a situation is unjust. Injustice reeks. It seems to revolt against nature.

Justice is about ideals. It is about striving for something more than mere convenience or comfort. In that light, I use justice to champion my zeal for principle, honor, equality and "better" things. I use it to underline the key distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, because justice is largely subjective and cannot be objectively measured.

I also use justice as a backdrop to criticize the law. My fascination with ethics relates to my suspicion toward law. Justice and ethics go hand in hand. Ethics clashes with law. Therefore, law and justice clash, too. If you've spent any time studying my writing, you will know that I have very little respect for the law. If anything, I relegate law to the "commercial" category. And that it is ultimate insult, because law claims to advance justice. I make a few exceptions in my criticism for law, especially in cases where the law protects individual rights and enforces principles that restrain commerce. But I castigate everything else. In fact, law in most cases does not serve justice at all. To the contrary, in most cases it serves commerce--my perpetual theoretical foe.

In essence, then, my writing boils down to a battle between justice and commerce. I even thought about renaming my blog "Commerce Versus Justice," because that dichotomy really dominates my arguments. Something is either "just" or "just commercial." No matter what subject I address, chances are good that it involves hopeful ideals and crass realities. I lament the crass realities and wish for the hopeful ideals. The hopeful ideals are "justice." The crass realities are "commerce." In the "real world," commerce usually wins. In my eyes, it is usually an "unjust victory." And that "injustice" provides me fuel for criticism, commentary and satire.

But I decided against renaming my blog. Although I consistently allude to the struggle between commerce and justice, I refuse to abandon my commitment to "reason." There is a significant self-exploratory element to my writing. I write about people, their motivations, thoughts, dreams, hopes, happiness, unhappiness and machinations. While these things often involve commerce, they also implicate reason. I need to retain my focus on "reason" in order to continue writing about human beings--myself included. That is why I am going to keep my original three-part title. Well, four-part when you drink the free beer.

I sketch my thoughts about my blog's title in order to provide background for an important story. After all, one of the reasons I opened this blog was to therapeutically resolve difficulties that began to arise in my mind around 2006. In 2006, three critical events occurred in my life: (1) I finished my legal education; (2) My father died; and (3) I rejected law practice on principle. In essence, my life expectations completely changed. For one, I began thinking about death more than I ever had before. Second, after spending three years submerged in legal study, I recognized that I had no place in legal practice. That forced me to reevaluate my life in a very basic way. Beginning in 2006, I started to understand the distinction between commerce and justice. And when my father died, I used my reason to reflect on life. My philosophical fixation on reason, commerce and justice had begun.

I was not a child anymore. I was suddenly an adult. And life was full of trouble. Wrenching, inscrutable trouble.

In 2007, my focus on reason, commerce and justice sharpened even more. As I have written in several other contexts over the years, 2007 was the year in which my life partner, Steve, suffered a life-altering accident. I have not gone into great detail about the event. Neither has Steve. Yet I am painfully aware of it because I lived through its aftermath. And in truth, Steve's story perfectly illustrates the tension between commerce and justice. In this sense, Steve's story cemented my theoretical focus with a real life example.

Late on August 1, 2007, Steve went to work out at an all-night gym in Chicago. Back in those days, we used to go our own ways. We stayed out late alone sometimes and it never mattered. I went to bed about midnight. At about 2:15 AM, I got a phone call from the Illinois Masonic Hospital. "Are you Steve's partner?" someone asked. Half-asleep, I replied: "Yes. What is it?" "Steve has been badly burned. He wants you to visit him." I could not really understand what that meant, but I was stunned. "I'll be right over," I think I said. Then I hung up. I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute or two thinking. Then I got up and pulled on my jeans. I had no idea what was in store.

I got to the emergency room about 3:00 AM. Steve was laying on a cot, incoherent, drenched in sweat. They had wrapped a huge bulky bandage on his right arm. I could see dark-red bloodstains on the upper part. It looked like his skin had peeled right off midshoulder. Steve managed to tell me that he had been burned in the gym's steam room. He said he had just walked in when suddenly a jet of steam burst from the wall and scorched his arm.

I did not really know what to make of his story at the time. He was delirious. He must have been in shock. He talked about our dog and his clothes. I stayed with him in the emergency room for about two hours while the hospital arranged a transfer to a burn center outside town. I dozed for a while on a folding chair. I remember when the emergency room staff wheeled him away and put him in the back of the ambulance. He was smiling. He said he would be fine. He told me to go home and get some sleep. He told me to meet him at the hospital the next day. Then they closed the ambulance doors. The ambulance rolled off into the brightening summer dawn.

I had a meeting with my law school dean later that morning. I think I wanted to talk to him about getting a job with a federal judge. I somehow managed to attend the meeting with a straight face. At the time, I thought Steve would be all right, so I don't think the meeting went badly. The dean told me he would "put a word in" for me with several judges. I was out within an hour. I immediately hopped in the car and went to visit Steve.

Steve was fine when I arrived. They had his arm suspended above him in a sling. The doctors said they were going to perform skin graft surgery on him at 9 AM the next day, August 3. I spent about 8 hours in Steve's hospital room, assuring him that everything would be all right. Steve was cheery that day. He was happy that I was at his side. I went home about 8 PM. At 9:30 PM, he called me and thanked me for being at the hospital during the day. I told him I wouldn't abandon him for the world. I also told him I would be there as soon as he came out of the recovery room after his surgery. He cried when I said that.

I went to bed that night confident that Steve would be fine. I thought they would just do the surgery, then he would be home in a week or so. I was tired, sure, but I did not think life would be much different after that day.

I got up on August 3 waiting for a phone call to let me know I could visit Steve after his surgery. At about 11:00 AM, I got a call from a nurse who told me the surgeon needed to speak with me. I figured the surgeon was just going to tell me that the surgery had gone well and I could visit. So I called the surgeon back. I didn't reach him. After two more tries, I did reach him. He told me to come to the hospital right away. That was all he said.

I was a little nervous at this point. I had never really spent much time around hospitals. I did not know the procedure for getting news about surgeries. I thought maybe the surgeon could only tell me details about the surgery in person, not on the phone. So I headed back over to the hospital. It was about a 40-minute drive. I remember George Benson's "Affirmation" was on the radio during the trip.

I made it to the hospital and parked my car. First I went to the gift shop. I bought Steve a "Get Well Soon" balloon and a teddy bear. Then, holding the balloon in one hand, I went to the main desk. I said I was here I visit Steve. The guard tapped the keyboard and said: "Burn ICU. Seventh floor."

Now I was getting more nervous: Why is he in the ICU? Why isn't he in the recovery room?

I followed the signs to the Burn ICU. I went through a few automatic double doors into a large room with a nurse's station in the middle. Patient rooms lined the walls in a big circle around the station. I asked one nurse: "I'm here to see Steve."

She pointed to a room on my left. It was full of doctors, nurses, interns, even executives in suits. I pushed my way in. Steve was unconscious on a bed, angled up. He was on a respirator. A thick silver tube stretched from the respirator into a hole punched through his throat. There were two tubes lined into his nostrils. More tubes funneled out from his arms. Wires were tacked on to his chest and legs. There must have been about twenty wires and tubes attached to his body. His mouth was wide open and his eyes were as if glued shut. His tongue was protruding from his mouth slightly and it looked completely parched. There was blood caked on the edges of his lips. Bleeping, whirring machines and monitors ringed his bed.

I let go of the balloon and covered my mouth with my hands. I left the room for minute to reflect on what I was seeing. At that moment, the anesthesiologist approached me and explained nervously that something went horribly wrong during the surgery. Apparently, Steve had a strong reaction to a particular anesthesia and it stopped his heart. He told me that he had jumped on top of Steve to perform CPR and that he finally got his pulse back after 53 seconds. After reviving him, they stabilized his blood pressure and rushed him to the ICU. He told me he was in an induced coma. They wanted to keep him motionless until they could place a stent in his heart. Apparently, his body had convulsed uncontrollably after his heart stopped.

I could not believe what I was hearing and seeing. Here was the man I had loved for seven years, reduced before me to a motionless vegetable. Here was the man who just two days before was strong, enterprising and courageous; and now he was on the verge of death. I felt utterly broken. I immediately thought about my father. Was I going to lose Steve, too, just a year later? What was this life? What was the point? Was I doomed to lose everyone I loved?

At that moment, I thought that Steve would die. At the very least, I thought he would never recover his brain function. The doctors were all very grave. They said: "We have no idea what will happen with him. But he did go without oxygen to the brain for over a minute." I just paced around the ICU all day. I made phone calls. Our best friend was flying in from New York that day. I took a break and picked him up at the airport. That was a good distraction; I needed support that day, and he gave it to me. We spent the rest of the day staring hopelessly at Steve on the respirator. We worried every time a machine made a noise. Finally, we left at about 8 PM.

Over the next two days, Steve was in critical condition. He could not open his eyes. I just sat at his side for hours at a time listening to the respirator and the other beeping machines that kept him alive.

On the third day, however, Steve suddenly opened his eyes. The paralytic had worn off. He looked around as if in a panic. Then he turned and saw me. His face glowed for an instant, then it crumpled into tears. He grabbed for my hand as the nurses struggled to keep all the tubes attached to his body. Tears streamed down my face. I clenched his hand and told him everything would be all right. I tried to explain what had happened, but it was obvious he could not comprehend what was wrong. He could not speak. He could mouth words, but the tracheal tube blocked his throat. Still, as pitiful as he appeared that day, I knew he would survive. It was a huge relief.

Ultimately, Steve stayed 33 more days in the hospital. I was there every day from morning to night. He got the stent he needed in his heart. He underwent three more skin graft surgeries to repair the arm. They had to shear skin off his thighs to replant it on his arm. At one point, the graft did not take; so they had to put cadaver skin on his arm as a "bedding." Toward the end of his stay, they took out the tracheal tube and he could speak again. His voice had changed and he lisped, but he could speak. There had been no brain damage. He was handicapped and slower, but he had survived. He went home September 5, 2007. The hospital bill came to something around $2,000,000.

In the months that followed, Steve pursued a legal case against the gym that caused his injuries. We hired a law firm to investigate and prosecute the claim. As a former trial lawyer, the case seemed a winner to me. There was nothing wrong with his arm before he went into the steam room on August 2. When he came out, he was permanently injured. His "special damages" amounted to at least $2,000,000, not to mention the "loss of a normal life," "disfigurement," "pain and suffering" and "mental anguish." There was no quarrel that the gym's facilities caused these injuries and Steve had no control over those facilities. Based on my experience, I estimated Steve's case at around $7,000,000.

Despite these compelling facts, the case went poorly. For its part, the gym denied it had done anything wrong. It actually came forward with some questionable "incident reports" that said that Steve "laid down in front of the steam vent" and "caused his own injury." The gym manager--who was not there on August 2--claimed that Steve must have "passed out in the steam room," then fallen in front of the vent for a long time. Yet the medical records all corroborated Steve's story. And the emergency responders who took him from the gym said nothing about "fainting" or "falling." They did not treat him as they would have treated someone who had just fainted. Steve's surgeon even said there was no evidence of a fall.

Still, our lawyers found the gym's self-serving reports troublesome. For some reason, they thought that if the gym's story were true, then Steve could not win the case. Yet Steve always told the same story about how he was injured: He walked into the steam room and a jet of steam suddenly burst from the wall. The gym did not provide warnings anywhere about steam vents. It was a very big steam room with several blind corners and crannies. I had been in it myself and often found it difficult to determine where steam was coming from. That is why it did not surprise me when Steve said the steam took him by surprise.

And no matter what story people believed, the logic of the case seemed obvious to me: You shouldn't allow access to something on your property that can cause an injury as bad as Steve's. It's almost like letting a wild animal loose in your house during a dinner party.

But our lawyers did not see it that way. They said they could never sell Steve's story to a jury. They said they could not convince people that steam could emanate from the wall when the pictures showed the vents were only at ankle level. They did not acknowledge the fact, however, that they took the pictures almost a year after the event. Who knows what "improvements" the gym had made in the intervening time.

Yet all these rationalizations took a back seat to an even more compelling problem for our lawyers: They discovered that the gym did not have any liability insurance. Liability insurance means that an insurance company pays if someone gets injured on your land. If you don't have liability insurance, an injured person can go directly after your assets. But if you have no assets--or if the assets are insufficient to cover the injury--it makes little sense for an injured person to pursue you. After all, it takes years to win a judgment, let alone collect on one. Insurance companies shorten the time needed to get money from an accident. Without insurance, most injury lawyers don't waste their time on cases, even if they are meritorious. After all, they don't get paid until they win. If they spend 5 years working a case, then discover no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they will have wasted 5 years for nothing. That is a terrifying prospect for a lawyer trying to pay his rent.

So our lawyers fired us. They never said that the gym's insurance situation was the reason they turned us away. But it was obvious to me. The gym got away scot-free because it strategically decided not to buy liability insurance. The gym knew that no personal injury lawyer would waste his time pursuing an entity without insurance, so it just did not buy insurance. In essence, it insured itself against lawsuits by refusing to insure. It understood that civil litigation is a time-consuming, expensive business. So it correctly guessed that most lawyers would avoid a case that does not promise a quick insurance payout.

In short, the gym acted in a commercially prudent manner. It minimized its liabilities. It saved money.

But Steve suffered injustice for it. Steve's life changed because of the gym's conduct. It offered its facilities to the public for a fee. Those facilities nearly killed Steve and gutted his entire existence, not to mention mine. And due to the gym's strategic failure to buy liability insurance, Steve will not even receive the psychic satisfaction that the law avenged the hurt he endured. Put simply, Steve did not get justice. The law failed him.

Or did it? Steve's case confirms me that the law does not serve justice. If it did, lawyers would have flocked to represent him. Yet none did. From an intuitive perspective, Steve suffered a gross injustice due to another's negligence. No one should ever have to endure such clear wrongs in life.

But the lawyers did not flock to his aid because justice does not motivate them. Avenging injustice, after all, does not necessarily pay the bills. Paying the bills is a quintessentially commercial function. And lawyers did not take Steve's case because they could not assure themselves that it would be "worth the investment." It did not matter that he suffered injustice. Rather, his case was not "commercially viable" because the gym did not have insurance.

In Steve's case, commerce won out over justice. That's a lesson in law for you.

I have no more illusions about the law. It is a business like any other. If a case doesn’t promise a quick profit, no lawyer will take it, even if a person has suffered obvious injustice.

LIFE, DEATH, ABORTION, SCARFACE AND HAMLET

AN ESSAY

I grew up in a ferociously pro-choice household. From my earliest memory, my mother told me that abortion was a woman's right. It was her choice to decide what to do with her body. Those ideas filtered into my mind. I never thought much about it. I never thought abortion amounted to murder. In fact, I remember my mother used to say: "It's nothing but a clump of cells. It's not even a person. You're not hurting anyone when you pull it out of there."

I was satisfied with her explanation. It passed my empirical scrutiny. After all, I had no memory about my own life before I was three years old, let alone memory about my time in the womb. I recalled no pain from that time. In that light, I perceived no moral problem in terminating a pregnancy: It just didn't hurt anyone.

I could not identify with a fetus; I may have once been a fetus, but if someone had rooted me out before I was born, I would not have known the better. There seemed to be no suffering in abortion. I had no problem with it.

When I was a little older, my mother told me that she had had an abortion three years after I was born. That made me understand why she so fiercely advocated abortion rights: She had needed an abortion and she got one. She told me she could not have supported another child. I completely agreed with her. I did not want another sibling, either. I liked my mother's undivided attention. So we both had some self-interest in our beliefs about abortion. I never regretted the idea that I "may have lost a brother or sister." I supported my mother's decision. In fact, I fully endorsed her main argument: That no one has a right to tell a woman what she should do with her own body.

I carried these beliefs with me to law school. They informed my understanding about the Constitution. I read Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), as if I already knew what it said. In essence, Roe held that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy at any time before "viability." It reaffirmed my own belief that the State has no right to interfere with a woman's reproductive choices because we all have a right to "privacy" in our bodies.

But there were people in my class who strongly disagreed with Roe. They thought that abortion was a crime. They thought that there was such a thing as "potential life," and that the State had a right to protect "lives that did not yet exist." My own values clashed with that argument. I had always believed--thanks to my mother's explanations and my own empirical conclusions--that fetuses were not people. They were just "clumps of cells." I did not consider them "alive." And even if they represented "potential life," that concept was far too nebulous for me to defend.

Still, many people vociferously believe the opposite. In fact, there are probably some people out there who would kill me for my belief that abortion is acceptable in virtually every circumstance.

In recent years, I have been obsessed with death. When my father died suddenly in 2006, it forced me to reevaluate every assumption I had about life. I pondered life's meaning, its "rewards" and its expectations. After all, I saw that life can end without warning. And all the things that we learn to expect from life can evaporate in an instant. We are all just going to die--in fact, we might even die tomorrow--so why stress out about little things, like careers and money? What do they gain us in the end? Why waste time on them? Why waste a single day on something unappetizing? If all we have are our bodies, why torture ourselves doing things we would rather not do?

I developed a contempt for life. I am still quite contemptuous about it. What does life really have to offer, anyway? Food? Sleep? Orgasms? Comforts? Feather beds? Money? Joys? Is this everything? Are we mere slaves to our senses until the day our senses cease functioning? What difference will food and orgasms make once we die? None, none, none. In fact, those are only the good sensory things that can happen to us in life. More often, life inflicts unbelievable sensory suffering on us. We endure physical pain and emotional turmoil. We endure heartache, delay, disappointment, rejection, boredom, stress, betrayal, mockery, abuse and frustration. The bad moments usually far outnumber the good ones. Then we die. Taken as a whole, then, life is a losing proposition.

That's not to say that I do not sometimes like living. It feels good to eat, sleep, have sex, talk with friends, love people, be loved, sit in a comfortable chair, listen to music and read books. I like being alive in those moments. But is this all there is? And do I have to endure all the bad stuff for these few good moments?

Many others have come to these same sad conclusions about human life. In Brian de Palma's Scarface (1983), drug kingpin Tony Montana achieves the height of earthly success. He has a beautiful wife. He has untold riches. He has a huge villa in Florida. He has a massive hot tub. He throws mammoth parties. He wants for nothing. Yet after an argument at an expensive restaurant one night, he turns to his best friend and despondently says: "Is this it? Is this what it's all about, Manny? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking, snorting, then what? You're 50 with a bag for a belly."

Tony Montana developed a contempt for life. He did not care about what it had to offer, even though he had it all. And he did not mind dying after he saw how little life really matters.

Shakespeare's Hamlet thought the same thing. In several scenes, Hamlet rues the crude banality of human existence. Like Tony Montana, he says: "What is a man,/ If his chief good and market of his time/ Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more." Hamlet, Act IV, sc. iv, l. 31-33. Hamlet understands--as I do--that life's so-called "good things" add up to little more than "[b]estial oblivion." Act IV, sc. iv, l. 38. In fact, Hamlet grows so disenchanted with life's petty potential rewards that he prefers death to living: "O that this too too solid flesh would melt,/ Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!/ Or that the Everlasting had not fixt his/ Canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!/ How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!/ Fie on't! O, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed; things rank and gross in/ nature/ Possess it merely." Act I, sc. ii, l. 129-138. Later, he dismisses the world as "no/ other thing [] than a foul and pestilent/ congregation of vapors." Act II, sc. ii, l. 308-309. And he dismisses man, too: "What piece of work is/ man!...what is/ this quintessence of dust?" Act II, sc. ii, l. 309-310, 314-315.

Is this what it's all about, Manny? A "quintessence of dust?" "Bestial oblivion?" An existence "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable?" "An unweeded garden that grows to seed?" "A foul and pestilent congregation of vapors?" Taken in the abstract, Hamlet is dead on. Life pretty much sucks. And even the good stuff is a pretty poor palliative for the endless difficulties it inflicts upon us.

I am permissive toward abortion because I really could care less whether another person enters this brutal world. After all, earthly life offers little more than "bestial oblivion," anyway, so why should I care whether some new beast gets to eat, sleep or feed? It just doesn't matter to me. If a woman chooses to end her pregnancy, good for her: She's saving the little tyke a whole lot of trouble.

But what about abortion opponents? They must have different expectations from life than I do. They must not really ponder human existence. They must genuinely like what life has to offer. They must really like eating, sleeping, fucking, sucking and snorting, even if they wind up with bags for bellies. After all, they are willing to kill doctors in order to defend potential life. Let me say that again: Potential life. They like life so much that they are willing to commit murder so that a clump of cells may one day eat, sleep, fuck, suck and snort. They are committed not just to an existing person's right to eat, sleep, fuck, suck and snort. They are also committed to a non-existent person's right to do so. Now that shows real dedication to earthly life. It's a dedication I certainly do not share. To each his own, I suppose.

In my experience, life is no bowl of cherries. It is hard. It is full of misery and pain. When we do enjoy good moments, they are precious. But how rare they are! And viewed in the abstract, how petty! Is this why we're alive, then? To undergo endless difficulty punctuated by a few slender moments of bestial joy? We cling to life like any other mammal. We fear death because we do not know what awaits us. So, as Hamlet says, we "bear those ills we have/ [rather] than fly to others that we know not of." Hamlet, Act III, sc. i. l. 83-84.

We are the only ones who can create meaning in our lives. Hamlet found meaning by finding a purpose: Taking revenge for his murdered father. He did not seek mere "bestial oblivion" or "worldly comfort." He impressed his soul on his existence to transcend his "mortal coil." His life took on greater significance. And fittingly, he died in the process.

I have not died yet. I know that life does not offer much. Yet I try to do what Hamlet did. I am trying to live for something greater than bestial oblivion. I like bestial oblivion as much as the next man (beast). But my real joy flows from the idea that I am doing something beyond the flesh: Writing. I had to find something to make this maddening journey bearable. It was my choice.

Even then, I do not hold my own life in high esteem. On the whole, life is more trouble than it's worth. Only instinctual self-preservation holds me in check.

So from my view, so what if a woman gets an abortion? I have no philosophical problem with any activity that saves another from this harrowing sphere of pain.

HEALTH INSURANCE BILLERS REFUSE TO GO QUIETLY

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA ON BEHALF OF ALL PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE BILLING PROFESSIONALS NATIONWIDE

Dear President Obama,

For months now, my colleagues and I have watched you with trepidation. We watched as you and your Democratic majority in Congress rammed through a health care reform bill that threatens to upend Americans' control over their lives. Although Scott Brown's amazing Senate victory in Massachusetts promises hope for the future, we nonetheless feel it necessary to voice our concerns as Americans and health care professionals.

During your State of the Union Address last night, you vowed to continue the fight to reform health care in America. You said that millions of Americans remain uninsured. You declared that "private health insurance companies" reap "massive" profits while "common people" struggle to pay inflated bills. You claimed that privately-administered health insurance is the reason why America fell into a "health care crisis." You even suggested that America must move closer toward government-run health care to curb the influence of insurance companies and lobbyists.

Mr. President, you are gravely mistaken. Government is never the answer. Only private enterprise can deliver quality goods and services to Americans at reasonable prices. Only vigorous competition between rival economic interests can ensure the innovation Americans expect from any industry. Just because the health care industry deals in human illness does not make it different from any other business enterprise. People who work in health care need incentives like anyone else. If government starts meddling in health care, doctors might not earn what they deserve. Inventors might not enjoy the protection they need to profitably guard their discoveries. And every day Americans will certainly lose the cherished freedom to choose where to seek health care. As Americans committed to liberty, we find this appalling.

But health care reform will not just destroy liberty. Health care reform will also destroy jobs. Mr. President, our American health care system works because it runs like a well-oiled business machine. Like any good business, the American health care system has great accountants. Everyone pays what they owe; no expense ever falls through the cracks. This encourages both responsibility and financial discipline. Americans know that they must pay for everything they receive in a hospital or at a doctor's visit. That encourages them to be judicious in seeking medical care, as well as to make prudent economic decisions when addressing their health care needs. Health care is a consumer product in America. And stringent health care billing practices are the reason why American health care is so good.

Health care reform will curtail private health care opportunities. If the government intervenes to pay medical bills, there will be little need for private health care insurance billing professionals. If government suddenly steps in and says: "This man has diabetes. We are handling his care and paying the bill," that man will not receive a private bill. Consequently, there will be little need for hospitals and insurance companies to employ hundreds of accountants, actuaries and typists to draft thousand-page itemized bills for every patient. Yet thousand-page itemized bills are precisely the things that make the American health care system so wonderful. Thousand-page itemized bills make the health care world go around in America. If health care reform succeeds, thousand-page itemized bills will become unnecessary. And so will the millions of American workers who make them possible.

We are Private Health Insurance Billing Professionals. We refuse to allow President Obama to destroy our jobs. We refuse to allow Obama-Care to eradicate our livelihoods. We refuse to stop itemizing charges for 5g of hospital pudding on 4/3/08 ($459.90), 30cc of Titrium Chloride on 4/4/08 ($1,983.08), one night, hospital room (standard special rate) on 4/4/08 ($7,000), and lower rhomboidal surgery plus anesthesia on 4/5/08 ($497,632.26). We went to school to do what we do. Billing is not easy. Yet it is essential to run any business, including the American health care business.

Mr. President, screw your health reform. As professional health billers, we say now: "Hell no, we won't go." If health reform means giving up our Excel® spreadsheets and expense logging software, we say: "Hell to the naw-naw, mah niz-aw."

Leave us alone. We are productive American workers. We stay up for days at a time tabulating hospital meal costs, hospital linen charges, surgery costs, financing charges for doctor visits and outpatient anesthesiology service payment schedules. We even tack on progressive interest rates for all this shit. We do not have an easy job. But we receive good wages and we pay good taxes. We support families on the wages we receive from sending angry collection letters to penniless amputees. We send children to school on the cash we receive for mailing book-sized bills to destitute underinsured cancer victims. And our taxes help keep this Nation strong. How dare you introduce reform that threatens our jobs?

Mr. President, you must not reform health care because reform impacts private health insurance billing professionals. American life is all about paying bills. Some even say that the meaning of life in this country is making timely monthly payments on this, that and the other thing. If you attack health insurance billing, you attack the very meaning of life in America. Where would Americans be if they no longer had to fret over insurmountable medical bills? What reason would they have to live? Health care bills dominate American lives. If your "reform efforts" sweep them away, you will open a tragic void in every American's life.

What good will flow from that void? After all, bills keep Americans honest. It keeps them at work. It keeps them responsible. If Americans no longer live to fear bills, they will lose all respect for authority. They will no longer look for employment. They will begin leading debauched, wasteful lives. Only bills maintain order in our society. Think seriously on it, Mr. President. Any effort that reduces the influence of bills on Americans chips away at our country's very core.

And any effort that eliminates bills means that important people don't get paid. When that happens, God help us: I quake to think what a radiologist would do if he knew he would no longer receive $925,000 a year due to "health care reform." Radiologists are not schmucks. As a Nation, we cannot allow radiologists to receive a meager $800,000 a year for their work.

Stop disrespecting professionals. We are private health care billing professionals. We might not be as important as radiologists, but we are nonetheless professionals. We learned how to meticulously track fees and expenses. We even read textbooks, listened to lectures and took exams. We went to school and we learned how to bill like pros. We don't deserve unemployment for our toil and study. No, we deserve a place in the economy. More to the point, we deserve a hallowed place because our efforts keep every American responsible. Our work reminds every American that there are no free lunches in this country. In fact, we remind every American that every little piece of the lunch has a specific price--and they need to pay every penny to avoid financial ruin.

Mr. President, we urge you to scrap health care reform at once. It makes no sense to sacrifice America's commitment to responsible free market principles in order to grant charity hospital stays to a few stinking beggars. More pragmatically, it makes no sense to destroy the private health insurance billing profession. Professions are valuable; government should support them, not destroy them. And our profession is much more significant than most people realize. Without us, no doctor would get paid and no American would fear bills.

For a moment, think about how dangerous our society would be if every American suddenly stopped worrying about bills. It is too terrifying to even consider. That is why you must abandon health care reform once and for all.

Defend private health insurance billers. We remind every American that everything has a price. We keep every American fixed on his duty: Paying prices. The next time you get a thousand-page bill for a two-day hospital stay, thank us. We are actually doing you a favor by maintaining the American economic system as we know it. And you have to admit: It's pretty damn good.

That's because everyone fears bills and works to pay them. You can thank professional billers for that.

Mr. President, forget about reform. Think about jobs and responsibility for once. Enough with the justice rhetoric. Americans don't want hope. They want accurate bills, secure services and competitive prices.

Think about your poll numbers. If you really want to be popular again, drop this foolish health care crusade. Give power back to the private health insurance billers. It is the only way to save America's economic soul.

Yours very sincerely and truly,

Prof. Gabriella F. Trackett-Goode, B.S. (Health Care Billing Systems)

Assistant Professor, Medical Accounting & Billing Science
Amboy Community College, Perth Amboy Twp., N.J.

Consultant, The Bayer Group LLC (a Fortune 100 Company Specializing in Effective Billing Strategies for the Pharmaceutical Industry)

SHAME OR GUILT : WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

AN ESSAY

I tried to answer this question during a conversation I had with one of my best friends. We often talk about philosophy and power, and we both agreed that "shame" and "guilt" are "kindred spirits." They are both strongly negative words. No one likes to feel guilty or shameful. They both imply that you have done "wrong." But are they really the same? That's the question.

Both "shame" and "guilt" flow from an acknowledgment of power. We only feel shameful or guilty when we recognize that we have failed to conform to a standard that we probably did not make. Someone else made the standard, someone we recognize as "superior" to us. In this sense, both guilt and shame emanate from below; the person who makes the rules that induce guilt or shame at most feels "disappointed" that his "subject" broke a rule. Shame and guilt, then, are for those who occupy an inferior power position. This is why Nietzsche called shame and guilt Sklavenmoral--Slaves' Morality. The rule-maker (or "master") does not feel them. Rather, he causes others to feel them because they do not adhere to his standards. They solidify his grasp over them.

But this does not mean that a single "superior person" causes others to feel guilt or shame. While a "superior person" may have originally laid down external standards, in most cases today external standards proceed from institutions. After all, power is deeply entrenched. It emanates from manifold places. It operates in virtually every conceivable manner, whether subtle or overt. Power radiates in families, in schools, in laws, in social settings and in professional relationships. It exists in commerce and in property. Most relationships involve a party with advantages and a party without them. That disparity provides an opportunity for dominance by one party over the other. And this is the setting in which guilt and shame flourish.

Guilt is more extrinsic that shame. Although both guilt and shame flow from an acknowledgment of power, the power that induces guilt is predominantly external. When we feel guilty, we feel bad because we know we have transgressed against some common rule or understanding. Our negative emotion springs from our awareness that we have violated an external expectation. This includes everything from the criminal law (an external authority about which we are conscious) to our parents (an external authority whose commands we respect). A person feels guilty when he steals or when he knowingly fails to attend a dinner he promised his parents he would attend. In both cases, the person knew he was obligated to do something by some external authority, yet he failed to adhere to the obligation. That conscious failure creates guilt.

With guilt, then, the inquiry is external. We feel guilty only when we acknowledge that some external authority holds power over us. When we break its rules, we feel guilt to the extent that we deviate from the "expected standard." Guilt requires an acquiescence to "superior" people or ideas. It necessarily makes the subject "inferior" to the standard he violates. And unlike shame, it can be objectively measured: The "superior" party can declare a subject "guilty" because the subject verifiably deviated from an external standard. This is why the law uses the term "guilt" rather than "shame." Guilt is a conclusion as well as an emotion. You just need to see whether a person met the standard.

Not so with shame. Although shame might feel similar to guilt, it flows from an entirely different conceptual source. Shame has internal origins. A person feels ashamed when he fails to meet a standard that he expects from himself, not a standard some external authority set for him. An external authority might encourage a person to expect certain behavior from himself. But in the final analysis, only an individual can decide whether to adhere to certain principles or beliefs. In this sense, shame intertwines with honor. An honorable person swears to himself that he will not act in a certain way to achieve certain results. He expects certain behavior from himself. He commits himself to certain principles and beliefs. When he fails to act in the way he expects, he feels shame, not guilt. He failed to meet his own standard, not an external one.

Consider a man who commits himself to respecting others and telling the truth. He makes these commitments because he personally believes that respect and truth are honorable principles. If one day he lies and disrespects a competitor to win a job, he deviates from his own standard. If he truly has honor, he would feel ashamed for breaking his own commitments to good principles. He might also be guilty of violating some external standard against perjury or untruthfulness, but that has nothing to do with his own internal transgression. And that internal violation creates shame. In short, shame is ethical (internal), while guilt is legal (external).

But shame still requires an "inferior" mental outlook. Although an honorable person decides for himself whether to believe in certain principles, in many cases he does not decide freely. The decision whether to believe certain things often depends on social circumstance and expectation. An external rulemaker has as great an interest in creating strong internal shame in his subjects as he does in crushing them under external guilt. A rulemaker wants his subjects to decide to believe in principles that could induce individual shame. All this inures to his benefit. For example, a person learns to believe that "it is good to respect private property." He also learns that it is "illegal to steal." If he steals something, he suffers both shame and guilt: On the one hand, he failed to meet his own internal standard about respecting private property; on the other, he knowingly violated the external command not to steal others' property.

Both emotions are negative. They flow from different sources. But in the end, they both serve to reinforce the "superior rulemaker's" control over his subjects. Guilty and shameful people are easier to manage than willful ones.

Shame seems purer than guilt. It is more individual than guilt because it depends on the individual's own moral ordering. But if a person's own moral ordering is not voluntary--and if individual moral ordering merely substitutes for external rulemaking--then the net effect of shame is no different than guilt: They both reinforce dominant values by inducing negative emotions in those bold enough to "transgress."

RECRUIT OR HIRE? WHEN DID PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT BECOME A MILITARY CAMPAIGN?

AN ESSAY

Our language is organic. Words that meant something 50 years ago mean something completely different today. Even words that meant something 10 years might have changed. "Gay" and "epic" come to mind. So does "fail." All this interests me because it shows that language is never static. I might complain when words degenerate or mutate because I became accustomed to their older usages. But words change by nature. Language evolves much more quickly than we do. In many ways, we should be thankful for that.

But many linguistic changes deserve condemnation. In particular, I do not like changes that weaken a word's impact or meekly skirt a concept without piercing its heart. Euphemisms fall into this category. To say "collateral damage" when you mean "bombs veered off target and killed 42 children," you are not conveying reality with your language. Put simply, euphemisms reveal discomfort with language. They also reveal a discomfort with the truth, to the extent that we can all agree that something happened at a certain time and place. When a speaker resorts to euphemism, he fears what will happen if he uses truthful language. Euphemism, then, sacrifices linguistic accuracy for the speaker's comfort. In the end, everyone loses; only historians and investigators will find the truth behind meek language.

Euphemisms are not the only linguistic dilutions that obscure truth. In recent years, a nauseating "corporate" language has developed that not only obscures truth, but also fundamentally betrays traditional etymological meaning. This development coincides with rising corporate influence on American government, as well as the hypnotic "career myth" that permeates modern American society. Corporations wield far more power than they like to admit. And they do not just wield economic and social power. Through language, they wield a power over meaning that transcends generations.

In the movie "Into the Wild," the main character is a wanderer who rejects a "traditional approach" to life by venturing into the wilderness. Along the way, an old man encounters him. The old man says something like: "Son, you're 23 years old. Don't you think you should start thinking about getting a job and making something in this life?" The young man responds: "I think the whole modern notion of a career is a 20th Century invention. I choose not to partake in it."

What an interesting line. It matches my view that corporate power in America increased at the same time Americans convinced themselves that "careers were essential" to individual happiness. The wanderer in "Into the Wild" correctly observed that the meaning of the word "career" fundamentally changed in the mid-20th Century. Before 1950, very few people went to college to prepare for a "career" at a private corporation. Instead, they got a basic education and went to work for small businesses (if they lived in cities) or in agriculture (if they lived in the country). A tiny minority went on to college and entered learned professions.

After 1950, however, more and more people abandoned those "old ways" and began following a new paradigm: Go to college, get a job at a private corporation, make lots of money, buy a home live in the suburbs, raise a family and live in relative comfort until pension and death. This was a new life path in 1950. Yet it took hold very quickly; it completely altered America's social landscape. And as more and more people embraced this lifestyle, America's private corporations assumed their commanding influence in American life. Corporations generated the wealth that propelled this new lifestyle. Without them, it would all fall apart.

Against this background, it should come as no surprise that corporations began wielding more power after 1950 than they did before. As America's overall lifestyle changed, so did its habits. Since 1950, the United States has become a voraciously consumer society. Americans spend more money than they have, and that is just the way corporations (and banks) like it. All the while, they depend on private employment with corporations to sustain the money flow necessary to buy all the wonderful things consumer culture has to offer. It is an endless, spiritually vacuous cycle. At the same time, corporations rake in all the profits. They bombard the airwaves with advertising. They speak all the words. And Americans have listened for about 60 years straight. It is no wonder that corporations have assumed power: They have a captive audience that wants to buy all the things they sell.

But I am not writing about advertising or commercial power today. I am writing about language. To illustrate just how much corporate "culture" has infiltrated American life, consider two words: Recruit and hire.

Today, corporations proudly talk about their "recruiting efforts." In 1920, employers used to say: "Doggone it, Joe, we need to hire someone to replace the cashier who quit last week." Now, they say: "Call up the recruiting agency. We need to recruit someone to assume the junior sales associate position following the previous junior sales associate's withdrawal due to personal pressure." In both instances, the employers want to do the same thing: To find a person to do a job for pay. In 1920, the employer says "hire." In 2009, he says "recruit." Why the change? Shouldn't different words have different meanings?

Of course they should. Strictly viewed, "recruit" and "hire" are not synonyms. They are not the same as "crimson" and "red." They involve fundamentally different concepts. "Recruit," for instance, has a genuinely military connotation. The word stems from the Latin "recrescere," meaning to "grow again." According to Webster, the transitive verb "recruit" means: "1. To raise or strengthen (an army, navy, etc.) by enlisting personnel; 2. To enlist personnel into an army or navy; 3. (a) To enlist (new members), as for a party or organization; (b) To hire or engage the services of a person." Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.). The dictionary defines the intransitive verb "recruit" to mean: "To enlist new personnel, especially for a military force." Id.

In this light, what does "recruit" have to do with private employment? A quick look at the dictionary shows that "recruit" has an almost universally military meaning. It involves "enlisting personnel" for military purposes. Only Meaning 3(b) hints that it might involve private employment. In that meaning, we see a link to the old concept "hire." There is a distinction between "hire" and "recruit." The distinction is a military one. Our language delineates between military "regrowth" and private "hiring."

Yet private corporations have co-opted the verb "to recruit." They like to say "recruit" rather than hire. Why? Is private employment a military campaign? Armies recruit when they suffer casualties in battle. Do private corporations fight battles and incur losses? Certainly not. But this example precisely illustrates how private corporations have infiltrated and plundered the English language. "Recruit" no longer has a distinctly military connotation. Now, it is nothing more than "hiring."

On the other hand, corporations have also stolen another military word in order to describe resignations and firing: "Attrition." The military justifies "recruitment" when "attrition" thins out the ranks. Corporations "recruit" when "attrition" results in open job spots. In the military, "attrition" means guys got their heads blown off and need to be replaced. In private corporations, "attrition" means some guy got up from his desk at the insurance company and said: "Fuck you, I'm outta here." He, too, must be replaced. So the corporation "recruits" a replacement.

What about "hiring?" Why is "hire" insufficient for private corporations? In my view, "hiring" much better describes what private corporations do to replenish their work forces than "recruit." "Hire" is a pure English word with Germanic roots. It is related to the Dutch word "huur" and the German "heuern." Both kindred words mean to "rent out" in a commercial setting. They do not involve the military, nor do they involve "regrowth." No, "hiring" is a commercial word, and it has always been a commercial word. It is only fitting that corporations--as the ultimate commercial actors--should use commercial words to describe their activities. The dictionary defines "to hire" as: "1. To get the services of a person or the use of a thing in return for payment; employ or engage; 2. To give the use of a thing or the services of a person in return for payment." Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.).

What could be clearer than that? "Getting someone's services for payment" or "employing" them: That's hiring. That's what corporations do. So why must corporations say "recruit" when they mean "hire?" No matter how intensely corporations might pursue "market success," they do not wage military campaigns and they do not suffer casualties in battle. They have no right to use the specialized word "recruit" to describe their purely commercial quest to obtain people's services for a paycheck. The army "recruits" at the "recruiting station." Corporations "hire" at their "offices." There is a distinction in the language that should remain intact.

In my view, corporations have corrupted the word "recruit" and robbed its unique meaning in English. They have succeeded. They hold much more power than Americans care to admit. After all, corporations represent the pathway to "career" and all the miraculous consumer goods that flow from a career's cumulative paychecks.

Most Americans could care less whether corporations commandeer the English language. They just want the paycheck. They don't care whether they are "recruited" or "hired."

I care. I think deeply about language and its transmutations. It saddens me when powerful interests can change our language at will. But I am not normal.

OUR URGE TO BE FREE IS NOT ENTIRELY REASONABLE

AN ESSAY

We always hear about doomed criminals running away from the police. Chases always make the news. They seem to happen in California more than anywhere else. But no matter where they happen, the key element remains the same: Some desperate person tries frantically to delay the moment at which he will be physically restrained. He wants to be free. He wants control over his own body. So he thrashes with incredible energy to maintain that control. He even puts himself and others in mortal danger for a few more free moments. Even the most insignificant infractions put people to desperate flight. They even cause fatal car crashes while trying to escape from a traffic stop. In other words, men love freedom; and they cling to it no matter the cost or the danger.

Freedom has many meanings. It is a common word. George W. Bush used it ad nauseam as shorthand for a complex, biased political value system that had nothing to do with "a lack of restraint on physical movement." But today I want to examine the word's base, bodily meaning, not its metaphorical or rhetorical overlays. "Freedom" is an old English noun that stems from the adjective "free," which in turn relates to the German "frei." In essence, it implies a "lack of physical restraint on bodily movement." At base, it is corporal. It suggests an ability to move the body without being held back. It also suggests an ability to "go where one pleases" without facing opposing physical forces. In this sense, a "lack of physical restraint" intertwines with mental tranquility. People like to go where they want. No one likes to know he could be physically stopped from going somewhere. Physical "freedom," then, closely relates to mental "freedom," and even happiness: You can't be happy if someone prevents you from using your body as you please. Emotional satisfaction flows from physical freedom.

I like the words "free" and "freedom" more than "liberty." I am partial to hard-hitting, German-based words over obscure, imported Latin ones. "Liberty" is a Latin refinement on "freedom." At times, "freedom" and "liberty" mean the same thing. Yet "liberty" sounds somehow more grandiose than mere "freedom." During the Enlightenment, philosophers opted for majestic "liberty" over plebeian "freedom" when discussing man's "natural rights." In the process, they transformed "liberty" into a technical term. "Liberty" was no longer a simple synonym for "freedom." No, "liberty" carried its own theoretical weight. It became shorthand for an entire economic and social value system premised upon "individual choice, conscience and enterprise." John Stuart Mill named his famous ode to free market economic choice "On Liberty," while Adam Smith based The Wealth of Nations on the fundamental assumption that man must enjoy "economic liberty." In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously asserted that man's "inalienable rights" included life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In all these examples, "liberty" took on a meaning far beyond "lack of restraint on bodily movement." It was something more than just "going where you want when you want." It was something freighted with metaphysical assumptions.

But today I am not writing about Mill's "liberty conception" or even "economic liberty." I am writing about pure, animal "freedom:" The subjective desire to be free from direct bodily restraint. Based upon my own observations, I believe that human beings have a natural desire to be free. There is both a physical and emotional dimension to this desire. Human beings--like their mammalian forebears--relish the ability to move as they please. They feel at ease when nothing constrains their bodies. By the same token, they hate the emotion that arises when some superior power prevents them from moving their bodies as they please. Dogs and monkeys scream when caged. They become agitated and violent. They obviously do not like limitations on their freedom to move. When restrained, their behavior shows they hate it.

Human beings hate being confined, too. Unlike animals, they know when others seek to confine them. That is why they struggle to avoid capture and "maintain their freedom," even if there is no prospect for success. They know how they will feel when they lose their bodily freedom, so they resort to anything to hold onto it. Human beings anticipate the emotional pain that flows from losing freedom. That explains why doomed criminals flee in desperate attempts to remain free. Even when they have no chance to succeed, people will always try to escape, if only for a few minutes.

But how is that reasonable? If there is no chance to succeed in an endeavor, why bother attempting it? In my view, the "urge to be free from bodily restraint" trumps human reason. After all, if human beings trusted their reason in all events, they would never try to avoid inevitable capture. They would not jump over electrified fences or drive 85 miles per hour the wrong way down a one-way street if reason guided their actions. No, something else guides their actions when they feel something threatens their freedom. Human beings will resort to utterly unreasonable behavior to avoid physical restraint. The "urge to be free" transcends virtually all reasonable imperatives. It overwhelms rational calculation and leads men to engage in dangerous behavior that is almost bound to fail.

In my eyes, all this proves that human beings are not purely reasonable creatures. No matter how much we applaud our ability to triumph over nature through reason, we retain extremely unsettling instincts. Our "urge to be free from bodily restraint" illustrates the lengths to which human beings will go to maintain their ability to move their bodies as they wish. Viewed rationally, who would think that mere bodily movement could trigger such intense emotional responses? But that is exactly the point: Reason cannot account for men's violent emotional responses to certain stimuli. For better or worse, men want control over their bodies, just as chimps and dogs want to roam uncaged. And just like chimps and dogs, they rage uncontrollably when anything constrains their ability to roam.

Physical confinement touches a base nerve in our minds. That explains why human beings resort to anything to avoid it, no matter how unreasonable or ineffectual. This has nothing to do with complex coinages like "liberty." It is just a fact of nature. And we will never escape nature.

LEGAL "VICTORIES" : PURE EXAGGERATION, AND A BAD WORD CHOICE

AN ESSAY

Law firm websites amuse me. I get priceless satirical material from them. Generally, they take themselves extremely seriously and want to show that they are “winners.” They toss around words like “success,” “results,” “every time,” “reliable,” “professional,” “result-oriented,” “highly successful,” “preeminent,” “unique,” “client-focused,” “team spirit,” “effective” and “experienced.” This all makes me laugh because I know what law firms are like. There is nothing rarefied or glorious about them. They are profit mills in which lawyers pool their efforts to twist the law in their favor. Their “experience,” “results” and “success” flow from their dogged ability to wear down their opponents, then either make money or save money for their clients. For all concerns and purposes, American law practice is an elaborate game. One side wins. The other loses. It is adversarial. And it is seethingly bitter, as all competitive games are.

Big law firms like to report their “recent victories.” After all, “victories” show that the law firm has “won many games,” and potential clients want to win “their game,” too. When betting on a sports team, you want to choose the team most likely to win. You can tell whether a team is more likely to win if you know how often they have won in the past. A law firm’s “past victories” create the impression that it can defeat the opposition again, make money and deliver “success” to a new client. The “victory” metaphor is sport-like, even warlike.

But is law practice supposed to be sport-like? Are legal problems really nothing more than games to be manipulated and won? Or are they miniature wars in which the “enemy” must be hunted down and destroyed? Is this really appropriate rhetoric? After all, law is supposed to provide a rational framework in which to resolve civil disputes. It is supposed to provide reasonable, neutral rules by which to adjudicate problems that might otherwise spur violence. Civilizations invented law to neutralize private violence among citizens intended to redress perceived grievances. In that sense, there is nagging irony in the assertion that lawyers should pursue “victory” for their clients. If law is just and neutral, results should flow as a matter of principle, not as a matter of martial triumph. Law, in other words, is supposed to replace armed conflict as a means to solve problems. Yet the rhetoric of “winning” and “victory” suggests that law is no different from uncivilized, violent struggle. Armies win “victories” by killing those who oppose them in battle. Is this what we expect from lawyers in their “legal battles?”

Let us examine the word “victory.” The word has a decidedly martial connotation. There is nothing detached or nonviolent about it; it involves prevailing over another person or group after a fierce competition or struggle. According to Webster, “victory” means: “1. final and complete supremacy or superiority in battle or war; 2. a specific military engagement ending in triumph; or 3. success in any contest or struggle involving the defeat of an opponent or the overcoming of obstacles.” Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.). Two of the three meanings deal specifically with war. The third mentions “success” after “struggling with” and “defeating” an “opponent” in a “contest” with “obstacles.” Victory is a hypercharged, even romantic word. It implies the euphoria that flows from armed triumph over an enemy. It feels good to defeat “opponents” and “overcome obstacles.” It feels good to display “complete supremacy or superiority” over an “enemy in battle or war.” There is nothing more primal than proving domination over an opponent through force. It is crude, animalistic and base. Strong lions overpower weaker ones. They win “victory” over their competitors after a “struggle for supremacy.”

But should lawyers be no different than lions in the wild? Or conquering generals bent on defeating their opponents in battle? I thought law was supposed to elevate us from such violent impulses. I thought law was supposed to replace war with rational principle and reasonable discussion. By using the word “victory” to describe legal “success,” however, lawyers debase themselves. They misunderstand the law. They use it as an arena or a battlefield, not as a rational platform for resolving differences. They approach legal questions like battles, not as opportunities to show their civilized ability to transcend warlike thinking. “Victory” is alluring because everyone likes to “dominate,” “defeat” and “succeed” over a recalcitrant foe. But the question remains: Is law really the right forum to pursue that quest?

Perhaps it is. In the English legal tradition, after all, law functions in an “adversary capacity.” Two sides “face off” against each other. Each side has diametrically opposed interests. One wants land; the other one refuses to give it up. One wants compensation for an injury; the other one refuses to pay. One claims he had a contract; the other says there was never a deal. No matter the facts, “adversary justice” places each side in a “competitive” position. The law assumes that people will make the best arguments—and, ironically, “tell the truth”—in order to satisfy their threatened self-interest. Lawyers step in to vindicate each side’s self-interest. They have only one goal: To defeat the opponent’s arguments and convince the court to grant whatever the client wants.

In this sense, we see that “adversary justice” is profoundly “game-like.” Just as two competitors yearn for “supremacy over the other” in a game, two sides in a legal dispute square off to achieve the same thing. Just as sportsmen must adapt their play to acknowledged rules in their quest for victory, lawyers, too, must contend with “court procedures,” “discovery protocols” and various other “steps” on the road to ultimate success. Each side tries to manipulate the rules to obtain an edge over the other. After all, when “victory” is at stake, you do everything you can to increase your chances to win. In the “adversary system,” competition is fierce. After all, only one side can win; and someone has to lose, too. When money is on the line, the gloves come off. Victory becomes an obsession. Just as two generals struggle violently to obtain an edge over each other in battle, so too do two lawyers savagely grapple with one another for the court’s favor. In all these cases—games, war and “adversary justice”—the breathless quest for victory engenders ruthless competition and narrow-minded commitment to one’s cause, even if it is unjust.

This is all very ugly. We all know who people who insatiably pursue victory in all life’s pursuits. We recoil from those who seek in all things to defeat us. True, sometimes we all enjoy competing for accolades and laurels, whether in games or in life. But there is a limit beyond which we refuse to compete for decency’s sake. Those who compete in everything come off as barbaric and swinish, even if they ultimately win. There is something disgustingly selfish about an endless thirst for victory. After all, victory implies a violent struggle for domination. That is a primal, overweening, animalistic impulse. If we live in a civilized community, we seek to avoid coarse brutishness. Yet the insatiable thirst for victory requires exactly that. Those who publicly broadcast and flaunt their “victories”—like so many law firms—appear wretchedly selfish, even gluttonous and shameless. After all, they are advertising their ability to struggle, fight, brutalize and ultimately dominate their opponents in savage conflicts. That is something Genghis Khan might do, not someone who claims to live in a civilized community.

I think lawyers should excise “victory rhetoric” from their vocabulary. “Victory rhetoric” stems from war. In my view, law should replace armed conflict, not imitate it. But this might be asking too much. After all, even “civilized” human beings retain a lurking instinct to dominate their fellow men. They like the euphoria that springs from “victory,” whether in war, sport or commerce. This is why so many things in our lives—including the law—are “gamelike.” Victory in games provides a primal, emotional charge that humans crave. If they can’t get an emotional charge from battle and physical supremacy over other men, they turn to substitute sources, like games, careers and other competitive fields. All these things provide an opportunity to dominate others, even if without violence.

Yet there is nothing noble about “pursuing victory” and the basely euphoric emotions associated with it. Saint Augustine wrote extensively about games and competition in his Confessions. He confessed before God that he routinely pursued the bestial emotions that flowed from “victory in games” as a child: “In competitive games, I loved the pride of winning…even in [these children’s games] I was overcome by a vain desire to win and was often guilty of cheating. Any breach of the rules I would not tolerate and, if I detected it, would fiercely denounce it, though it was exactly what I was doing to others.” Confessions, at pp. 12, 22 (Oxford University Press 1992). Tellingly, Augustine observed that children are not the only ones who seek “victory in games.” He writes: “Behavior does not change when one leaves behind domestic guardians and schoolmasters, nuts and balls and sparrows.” Id. at p. 22. Rather, adults play games, too, and they seek the same base emotions as children. Just like children at play, they cheat, manipulate rules and engage in hypocrisy. He writes: “[The] amusement of adults is called business.” Id. at 12.

Against that background, should lawyers really crow about their “victories?” Are they no better than children? In sum, we should be very wary about transforming life’s pursuits into competitive games. When we do, we lower ourselves into something resembling animal squalor. I find it both sad and ironic that lawyers—through their ugly “victory rhetoric”—bring the law down to the level of children’s games.

I thought we had come further than this as a civilization. I thought law was supposed to elevate us from violent competitions. Apparently not, at least in the American “legal market.” It’s all just a “win-loss column.” Reason and principle have nothing to do with it, especially if you get an “L” for following them. When you thirst for victory, you do anything for a “W.” Principle is an impediment on that path, not an advantage.

ARTISTS IN DEBT : THAT'S JUST THE WAY THEY ARE

AN ESSAY

Sometimes I genuinely identify with stories I read in the news, especially when they involve credit, hardship and creativity. You might think that those three issues do not arise in tandem very often. But they certainly have in my life, and apparently they have for photographer Annie Leibovitz, too. See For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture, N.Y. Times, July 31, 2009. The article tells us that Annie is wrangling with a bank for control over her intellectual property catalogue, which she pledged as collateral for a $24 million loan last year. It looks like she will lose. After all, law favors the creditor; and Annie hasn’t paid her loan back. Pretty soon, a New York County sheriff will escort bankers into Annie’s home. Armed with clipboards, BlackBerries and appraisal books, they will seize her priceless works—all pursuant to contract, of course.

How did Annie sink so deeply into debt? How could such a “successful” artist be so dissolute? The article offers a striking answer: “The mind that can take these extraordinary pictures is not necessarily the same mind that is a perfect money manager.” Put simply, Annie Leibovitz doesn’t think about money. Her head is in the proverbial “artistic clouds.”

And there is nothing wrong with that. Annie may not get along well in this world, but she will live on long after she dies. In the end, people will remember her majestic portraits, not her petty disputes over loans and cash advances in fiscal year 2009. Put simply, “money managers” die and no one cares. Annie Leibovitz’s lender will die one day and be forgotten the next. But “flighty artists” with “money issues” die and leave behind a transcendent testament. It is true: Creative minds do not sit well with the banal concerns of money, credit and day-to-day management. The same gifts that make them unique make put them at a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to “everyday administration.”

Yet it may not be fair to simply assume that Annie’s money woes derived purely from her “artistic nature.” Although sources in the article say that she had always been “notoriously bad with her expenses,” that she “never turned things in on time” and “forgot to pay bills,” apparently she faced some genuine hardship, too. According to the article, Annie lost both her parents, her life partner and gained two children within five years. Perhaps she let her finances go because she really didn’t give a shit after losing the most important people in her life.

I can understand that. My father died three years ago and I will never be the same. His sudden death completely undermined my belief in “traditional life pursuits” because I saw that they all come to nothing in the end. Losing one parent is a cataclysmic psychological event, even if you don’t recognize it when it happens. Losing both multiplies the impact. And losing a life partner intensifies it even more.

I identified with Annie because I have suffered similar personal losses in a relatively short time. Within a year after my father died, my life partner suffered a catastrophic injury that landed him in the ICU for over a month. His heart stopped twice on the operating table and his doctors said he probably would not live. He recovered, but he has never been the same and will remain permanently disabled. I have been at his side ever since I received the dreaded 2 AM phone call alerting me that “your friend in the emergency room” two years ago. All this happened before I had fully processed my father’s death. It confused and deepened my grief. More importantly, the two events combined to make me deeply question every path I had chosen in life. They made me question assumptions I made about money, career and happiness. In a word, personal calamities—especially the death of parents and loved ones—force you to fundamentally reevaluate your life. Things that once seemed important suddenly seem ridiculous. After all, when your life’s foundations can suddenly evaporate in an instant, you can never really take anything for granted again. And you learn to doubt every plan, because nothing is certain.

I am a bad money manager, too. Even before I suffered my personal setbacks, I recoiled from money because it always struck me as “petty.” “Making money” requires careful, unexciting, mundane daily administration fraught with threatening financial consequences. Basically, it requires disciplined attention to profoundly boring subject matter, like scheduling and checklists. I certainly do not claim to be an artist on Annie Leibovitz’s level, but I understood what the article meant when it referred to her mind’s natural hostility to “management.” My mind does not naturally germinate toward daily administration, either. I have trouble making phone calls. I hate making appointments. I forget things on the “to-do” list. I detest doing laundry and running errands. Yet I do these things because I must: Left to my own devices, I would probably ruin myself. Why? Because my mind naturally germinates to “more substantial” things, like philosophy or the next satire I want to write. My mind dwells on the absurdity and foolishness of existence. Money and “administration,” however, typify that very absurdity and foolishness. That is why I can’t stand either one. I intellectually abhor them. I push them out of my consciousness as much as I can, even if it makes me “irresponsible.”

I suspect that Annie Leibovitz does the same thing. She doesn’t think about debt; she thinks about the next grandiose photo shoot she wants to do. She is thinking about the exquisite details and social commentary she wants to express through the image. She is thinking about aesthetics, color, lighting, shading and beauty. She is not thinking about outstanding bills, credit scores or whether a loan is 45 days past due. These are “insignificant matters” to an artist’s mind. Of course, this is not a healthy prescription for survival in a commercial world that exults daily administration over creativity. It may lead to artistic achievements that transcend the centuries, but it renders the artist an outcast during his own lifetime.

Mozart was no different. He generated monumental artistic works during his life. But he was a “notoriously bad money manager” who constantly racked up debts and died penniless. His mind was elsewhere. He didn’t think about commerce and administration. He thought about the beautiful melodies in his head. He worked to express his creative impulse, not to satisfy petty creditors and bankers. His commitment to creativity ruined him in life, but it made him immortal after his death. Of course, fame after death pays no bills. Yet artists, like Mozart and Annie, really could care less whether they pay their bills. After all, that is mere administration—who has time for that? In short, artistic genius rarely translates into earthly success because the free-ranging mental state necessary for artistic genius typically rules out the mundane mental state necessary for financial “responsibility.” Artistic geniuses simply do not attach importance to matters they consider trivial or petty, even if they suffer for it.

Many great artists die worthless. Then their creditors move in, seize their works and exploit them for all the money they never earned during life. I always find it ironic when banks play Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 when I’m on hold for an agent ready to take my payment. That’s a debtor’s song they’re playing!

It is hard to live a “responsible” life. It is hard to hold your emotions together long enough to survive childhood, go to college, get an education and please private employers. If any substantial misfortune strikes during the journey upward, success becomes progressively more difficult. If anything derails your focus, you will not achieve great commercial goals. If you are creative, you stand a greater chance to be distracted from the “traditional life program.” Success in the “traditional life program” requires unswerving discipline and rigorous attention to administrative matters. Yet those matters are revolting to creative people. They attend to them with grudging resentment, if at all. And if they don’t attend to them, they come to ruin. In a word, creativity is a “handicap” in the quest for “responsibility.” Some, like Annie Leibovitz, achieve success on their own terms. They get patrons and stipends without selling themselves into the “traditional life program.” Creativity may impose a disadvantage on most people struggling to “live responsibly.” But a few break through despite their creative handicap. Nonetheless, they remain uneasy with the demands of “responsible life.” It is only a matter of time before commerce smacks them down. After all, they are not “responsible” enough to fend off creditors and avoid debt. They blunder into financial straits because they do not even really think about what they are doing. This is what happened to Annie.

Combined with personal hardship, artistic creativity makes commercial success virtually impossible. Genuine artistic creativity interposes a natural aversion to the administrative tact necessary for commercial success, while personal hardship undermines the very motivation to seek commercial success in the first place. Taken together, personal hardship and creativity combine to form a recipe for commercial failure. I know this because my own creative impulses predominate over my commercial impulses, and my own personal hardships showed me that seeking “success in the traditional life program” is really a quest for meaningless shadows. For me, “responsibility” and “management” are a chore, not an opportunity. And my personal hardships make me see that success really yields nothing in the end anyway. Recognizing that, I am happy simply to live and to give voice to the ideas in my mind. That may not make me rich, but it gives me a feeling of more lasting significance in a world that actively rewards insignificant lives.

In sum, I was not surprised to read that Annie Leibovitz is in debt. Artists usually are. They simply do not attach importance to “everyday administration” the way “responsible people are supposed to.” Artists just don’t “fit” in the “normal commercial value system.” Their minds dwell on larger issues, not just property. And when I read that Annie suffered profound personal losses, I understood even more. When creative, thoughtful people suffer hardship, money management is the last thing on their minds.

But perhaps that is a compliment. In commerce, it is a cruel truth that uncreative, forgettable people always prevail over creative, memorable ones. Forgettable people know how to handle money and die unknown. Memorable ones are scatterbrained, irresponsible and live forever. No one will remember the banker who seized Annie Leibovitz’s photographs and “owned” them. Yet everyone will remember Annie Leibovitz, the great photographer.

LIFE, DEATH, HAPPINESS, SENSE, MONEY & OTHER UNCOMFORTABLE WORDS

AN ESSAY

Several weeks ago, I wrote about why human beings fear death. All living organisms cling doggedly to life. But only humans can articulate the reasons why they want to live. I concluded that people fear death because they are “sensory creatures” who derive enjoyment and meaning from their senses. Their senses allow them to stimulate their bodies, affording opportunities for pleasure and satisfaction. Death, however, causes “irreversible sensory shutdown,” precluding any further sensory input. Death cuts short our ability to experience the world with our senses. It eliminates our potential pleasures at the same time it spares us potential agonies. No matter the result, we fear it because we cannot imagine an existence without sense; we simply don’t know “what it’s like.”

Sense is everything. Generally speaking, human beings live for their senses. They want to see, hear, feel, taste and smell things that make them feel inwardly happy. Although some people profess to find happiness through the spirit or by some other intangible route, these are exceptions. For the most part, human beings work, struggle, contend, compete, strive and wrangle in order to bring joy to their senses. They engage in commerce to earn sufficient money to spend their time in a manner that allows them to positively stimulate their senses. Success in commerce allows “sensory success.” Of course, achieving success in commerce takes a very long time. Ironically, those who ultimately succeed in commerce usually do not have much time left to placate their senses. Life for most people follows a predictable pattern: Strive at all times to win in commerce, because success in commerce will provide a reliable means to positively stimulate the senses, thereby minimizing negative emotions and maximizing positive ones. Put simply, it is a race against time. People know that they only have so many days to find happiness. With every passing day, their potential for positive sensory stimulation dwindles. Life is a closing door.

This is why people fear death. Death cancels their ever-dwindling opportunity to achieve positive sensory stimulation and happiness. Death shuts down the senses: Obviously people will fear something that threatens the very capacity that makes it enjoyable to live. In modern American life, people do not just fear death; they try their best not to even think about it. They push it away with all their might. After all, American life follows a program, and death is not on the agenda. The program teaches worldly success, sensory satisfaction and happiness through material acquisition. Sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell are essential to find happiness along this path. American success means success in life and through sense. The tangible world before us is not opaque. In American life, the best things in life are right in front of our eyes: Houses, electronics, cars, bulging bank accounts, boats, overseas vacations. We can possess these things. We can see them; and so can others. Americans tailor every day in their lives to ultimately acquire these things. They work their whole lives without them for a chance to live with them. Sadly, most people do not get all the tangible items they want. But they don’t want to die because that would preclude their opportunity to get them. Still, even if they live, they probably won’t get them, either. But they can’t know that. So they prefer life to death. They want the chance to stimulate their senses in the way they always wanted—which almost never happens.

Death just does not fit in the American life program. Americans have too many other things to do. They have to get jobs, go to school, purchase land, impress their friends, make enough money to retire, go on the right vacations, find health insurance, buy the right stereo equipment, go to dance clubs, watch movies, save money on phone plans, buy a second home and send their children to college. Their goals lie in this world; they are right there for the taking. All these goals involve the senses. There is no time to think about death. It is incomprehensible. No one sees what happens after death, nor can anyone receive a report about it. Put simply, death cannot be achieved, won, savored, acquired or known. That is why it does not fit in the American life program. In a world stuffed with perceptible, achievable, tangible goals, death is the great unknown. It takes people out of the race for good. And when winning the “sensory race” is all that matters, is it surprising that death strikes terror into the competitors? People fear death because it forces them to come face to face with a startling new reality after living their lives believing that sense was the only reality.

Americans manifest their death fears in many ways, both overt and subtle. Overtly, they emotionally react when threatened with death. The law threatens death to the “worst criminals” on the assumption that death is the “worst thing” that could happen to anyone. Because no one wants to die, the law assumes that no one will engage in behavior that could lead to the death penalty. When Americans see violent events in which others die, they feel traumatized. It reminds them they don’t want to die, either. They recoil from the thought that they will not have a chance to stimulate their senses anymore or to follow their life program to potential happiness. Pain plays a role in this fear. But pain is not the main reason why people fear death. People fear death because death cuts short their anticipated life program and its opportunities for sensory stimulation. Americans overtly manifest their fear in this regard when they see others die.

Yet subtle death fears are much more interesting than overt death fears. To some extent, we can explain overt death fears on a crude biological level. Even dogs become terrified when some overpowering force threatens them with death. Self-preservation is not unique to lower mammals; human beings are no exception. Living organisms want desperately to live, and when they perceive that something might end their life, they manifest emotions consistent with a desire to live, including overt death fears. But human beings express their death fears in more subtle ways. We are the only species that uses the mouth, palate and tongue to create intelligible speech. We tend to presume ourselves “superior” to all other creatures because we can do this. We use our speech to do great things as well as treacherous things. We use our speech as much to inform as to confound. We use our speech as much to unite as divide. Although speech may set us apart from other life forms, we certainly do not always use it for abstractly beneficial purposes.

We voice our emotions through speech. Through the words we choose, we indicate how we subjectively feel about certain phenomena. We can use direct words, such as: “I am afraid.” Or we can “circumlocute” our true feelings because the truth makes us uncomfortable. We might say: “I am concerned” when we really are terrified. This is a conscious obfuscation, a self-delusion. But there are other ways in which language itself changes to reflect a pervasive, universal fear, even if the individual speaker does not experience it at the moment he says the words.

Death is a prime example. In recent decades, Americans have almost universally replaced the verb “to die” with “to pass.” George Carlin placed this “word shift” into the growing catalogue of issues about which Americans simply can no longer speak honestly. See Parental Advisory : Explicit Lyrics (1990). He was absolutely right, and for a significant reason: Because death is anathema to the American life program. American language has changed in order to express a prevailing social discomfort with—and even disapproval of—death. Because death stands in such stark philosophical opposition to the entire sense-oriented program under which most Americans live, Americans deliberately refuse to confront the uncomfortable implications. “To die” means to “cease to be.” It refers literally to the moment in which a living person—with senses, ambitions, dreams and a “life plan”—becomes a dead person—with no sensory capacity or potential for sensory stimulation at all. But “to pass” does not literally refer to that biological event. No, “to pass” implies “physical movement through, around, toward or beyond something.” It derives from the Latin word “passus,” meaning “step.” It refers to movement involving tangible objects, places or obstacles, as in: “I passed by the store this morning on the way to my mother’s house,” or “I passed through the door on my way into the office,” or “We passed each other in the hallway.” There is nothing biological or existential about it. It is about banal movement.

Metaphorically, “to pass” can also mean “to end.” But this meaning traditionally refers to events and circumstances, not to death. A wise uncle might say to his nephew: “Dear boy, fear not. For this, too, shall pass.” This did not mean someone died. It meant that some adversity would soon “go away.” And this metaphorical meaning derives from the “physical movement concept” implicit in the word “to pass.” Circumstances—like living beings—can “move through or beyond” fixed points or obstacles. In this sense “pass” does not have an existential meaning.

So Americans now say they “pass” to mean they “die.” Why? To avoid using the scary word “die.” “Die” is a simple word. But it is disconcertingly honest. It goes to the heart of existence and non-existence. It is too honest for American discourse, in which everything depends on life. Only the living can achieve success, acquire property, make lots of money, enjoy sensuous pool parties and go on vacation without financial worry. Only the living can reap commercial rewards because they have senses that those rewards can stimulate. Everything in America depends on life, because everything revolves around sensory stimulation. Death permanently removes a living being’s capacity to experience the world though the senses. Death ends any hope to achieve “success” as conceived under the “American life program.” Americans strive their whole lives to achieve that success; death undermines the entire enterprise. It even renders the enterprise absurd. It is thus little wonder that Americans refuse to even countenance the word when talking about the event to which it refers. So they choose a meaningless, harmless substitute: “To pass.”

I hate to break it to these folks. But when we die, we do not “pass” or “go” anywhere. When we’re dead, our passing days are over. Our bodies are done. They ain’t going noplace, at least under their own power.

Yet some Americans truly believe that “we never stop thinking about money or success.” Last week, I read a few pages from a book written by a “professional money coach” who counsels “executives” struggling to balance their obsession with money with “normal lives.” She wrote about some company Vice President who had to take a day off from work in order to visit his dying mother in the hospital. He felt guilty because he didn’t want to leave work or make a bad impression on the company President. The “money coach,” however, told him that his guilt was natural—and his mother would understand that he couldn’t stay long—because his mother hadn’t stopped thinking about money, either. “We never really stop thinking about money, no matter what our circumstances may be,” she wrote, referring to a dying woman she never met.

I found this shockingly asinine. As much as the “American life program” demands that we fixate our attention on “this world” and the “success” it can bring to our senses, death renders everything moot. I found it preposterous for this “money coach” to presume that a woman facing death had not stopped thinking about money when she was about to die. I can say that I do not always think about money or success, and I am not dying. And I was with my father when he was dying three years ago; I know for a fact he was not thinking about money, success or his job when confronted with non-existence. In fact, he entered an extremely reflective state in which he deeply questioned everything he had done in his life. He wondered why he spent so much energy chasing things that did not really matter. Money and success are among those things that “don’t really matter” when death looms. Yet they are the cornerstones of the “American life program;” and they entrench themselves so deeply in us that many people cannot fathom an event that makes them irrelevant.

But there are ways to accommodate both this world’s fixation on success and the existential fears that spring from contemplating death. Commerce and gain are not the only ways to stimulate our senses. We can achieve sensory happiness without material acquisition or winning a competition for limited resources. After all, these are merely external stimuli. If we can find strength within ourselves, if we can cultivate our own personalities and thoughts, then we might find value beyond commerce. To be sure, this is not a popular path to happiness. Like death, it does not rest easy with the “American life program” because it focuses on subjective meaning rather than objective material acquisition. But by looking within ourselves, we determine who we are, not what we have. And when we stop worrying about what we have, the thought of dying no longer seems so daunting. After all, if “having things” is not so important to us, what does it matter whether we leave “the world of having things?”

If we make that discovery, we are unafraid to say “die.” We do not need to delude ourselves by saying we “pass.” We “pass” the McDonald’s on the way home from work. We “die” when we stop breathing.