FOURTEEN
On the off chance one of the local luminaries might say the magic words that could heal him, Robin headed toward UC Berkeley, and sat in on lectures. Maybe the pundits could suggest a method he could employ to feel whole again.
The latest foray into the classroom, like all the prior stratagems, seemed equal parts avoidance, of just not being able to reflect on and integrate the incidents at the Hartman massacre scene into his psyche, and equal parts confrontation. He was being as active as he knew how to be with managing his psyche.
He might have to be open to the fact that therapy was going to be very multi-modal for a while, with no one approach likely to be one-hundred percent effective. Time itself had become a chain of prayer-beads he rolled over and over again with respect to these various remedies.
Poli-sci professor Laura Bradford was lecturing on Acemoglu’s and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. The week before she had discussed Thomas L. Friedman’s, The World is Flat. This chick had more answers for what was wrong with the world and how to fix it than Al Gore with his An Inconvenient Truth, the subject of her lecture just two weeks back.
Right now, it was all talk therapy delivered straight to Robin’s ears, helping him to detox from Hartman and to flush his memes out of his mind. Maybe if he could manage to be less impressed by Hartman in the Berkeley scheme of things, by doing the lecture circuit, he’d be less inclined to hold on to the traumatic memories as well, less intent to keep reliving them in hopes of extricating the hidden gems of wisdom not even Hartman could see. Less inclined to take up Hartman’s life mission for him, sans the psychopathy, after determining where the short-circuit occurred between his fascinating psychology and his even more sublime philosophy with respect to his enviable and noble aims. Because honestly, teasing the two apart, studying the many subtle interactions between his psychology and his philosophy, was proving far too fascinating for Robin’s own good. And that was keeping his healing from progressing. If anything, he was getting worse in the sense that to study a thing this intensely is to become it.
The other students all had a copy of Why Nations Fail on their desktops. Robin had a copy of the DSM-IV, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Not exactly subtle. Then again, Robin was using the book to supplement his reading in the class of hard knocks. Moreover, it was helping him to separate Hartman’s psychology from his philosophy, to see how much each was affecting the other. Somewhere along the line, fixing the broken mechanism of Hartman’s mind, tinkering with the virtual model he had up in his head like a car mechanic, had become synonymous with his own healing. He wasn’t yet sure if that was because he expected to abstract lessons learned that could be applied to himself or to anyone’s psyche, or because he was starting to over-identify with Hartman, losing himself in the process. He never would have thought the latter would be all that easy to do. But they were both bleeding hearts out to save the world, neither of them able to take halfway measures as an answer.
Robin questioned how many people were actually here for the lecture, and how many to see the striking figure Laura Bradford presented in that outfit. But, judging from the turnout, beyond the ones in the front rows, the students pressed to the far back of the auditorium by the sheer numbers in attendance had to be there for the former motivation; they just couldn’t see her figure that well, not even with binoculars.
Working the stage with the presence of a celebrity, Bradford said, “Among the biggest questions of our times is why are rich nations rich and poor nations poor, and what can we do about it? The conservatives will tell you it’s because the laggards lack free enterprise, suffer from too many governmental regulations. The liberals will tell you it’s because they don’t have enough governmental protections in place to level the playing field.
“And the debate doesn’t end there. As one of the most contested issues throughout history, nationwide poverty has been blamed on poor geography, i.e. lack of sufficient natural resources and disastrous weather patterns. Not to mention inferior cultures. You know, “‘Mexicans are just lazy.’” She paused to give the laughs a chance to subside.
“Other pundits are big on extolling how rich nations keep poor nations poor by exploiting them. Like many sound theories before them, however, these ideas have bitten the dust one and all of late in lieu of new, more penetrating research methods, such as utilized by Acemoglu and Robinson, the authors of your text.
“They created an extensive computer data base with historical facts pertaining to every country on Earth. They then searched that data base, with algorithms meant to expose previously unseen connections. You know what they found?”
She waited until she could hear a pin drop; she didn’t have to wait long. “That it’s politics that matters most. Take, for example, South Korea, one of the most successful economic powerhouses on the planet. Its people and its culture are fairly homogenous. All that separates it from North Korea is that North Korea’s political system does not reward small businesses and entrepreneurial efforts. They thwart inventiveness and the human spirit at every turn, removing all incentives for people to bootstrap their own economies.
“Shift the focus to Africa where geography has often been used as an explanation for poverty, along with the exploitation argument of rich countries over poor, and we’re suddenly just as unable to explain the success of Botswana, one of the most rapidly growing, healthy economies in the world. What does separate them from their neighbors in Africa, however, is a political system that allows for sharing of the wealth.”
Students shifted in their seats uncomfortably, Robin suspected, as much from the pains of agreeing with her as disagreeing with her.
“Acemoglu and Robinson take us on a far wider reaching tour of history, citing not just more contemporary examples, but examples dating back to the Mayan civilization, reviewing thousands of years of human civilization, and again and again, the same pattern emerges.
“So if politics is all important, it’s time to start asking more tough questions. For instance, are America’s best days behind it? As we witness the concentration of power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and the manipulation of political interests to entrench the powers of that minority further, can we really hope for a lasting economic recovery of any kind? Or are we destined to see countries that enjoy the political freedoms and rewards for the middle class we once did continue to outstrip us, as we watch from the sidelines, and sink day by day into Second World and finally Third World status? Already, we’re witness to the bankruptcies of virtually every city, and state, and even the federal government. I don’t know about you, but I’m finding the question regarding our downhill trajectory increasingly rhetorical.”
The standing ovation was deafening. And Bradford hadn’t even journeyed past her overview of the text. Robin found the remaining hour, as she delved into the details of Why Nations Fail even more riveting.
She wrapped up with a request for a ten-page essay from her students outlining how to take Acemoglu’s and Robinson’s thinking to the next step.
By the end, Robin, situated in the front row of the auditorium, sat slumped in his chair. So, in other words, Hartman was right. If Robin were handing in that essay, he couldn’t think of a better way to build on the authors’ work than by studying the interplay of their psychologies and their philosophies, seeing how they informed one another, to identify the cracks in their reasoning. What’s more, he’d look for how the writers’ thought-streams could be enriched by including even more perspectives and disciplines, using Hartman’s Renaissance man approach.
Robin couldn’t breathe. He felt like a child locked in a coffin until his parents came home and let him out again, feeling safe by the very strictures that imprisoned and tortured him, but that also generated some first rate thinking time. Hartman’s troubling legacy might be that Robin couldn’t see how to improve on his thinking, other than by becoming a better Renaissance man himself. That would keep
Hartman forever centermost in his mind, someone to gauge himself and his progress against.
He decided to ambush Laura Bradford after class, see if talking with her in person offered a way out of his dilemma. The police were entitled to seek out consultants, after all, and this being Berkeley, it seemed sensible to tap the brain trust of the UC campus pundits.
***
Once inside her office, Laura proved every bit as charming and able to hold court in person as she did in front of a large auditorium, and strangely down to earth. Unlike Hartman, her genius didn’t come packaged with a mountain of neuroses. Her manner struck Robin as spritely and upbeat, essentially happy and well-adjusted. She must have been the only one in Berkeley. Maybe she was a visiting professor from out of town? That would explain it. When he suggested as much, she laughed. “No, no, Berkeley born and bred. From a family of scholars, so I guess we’ve all been walking the walk and talking the talk long enough to get comfortable with both.”
“That was quite a performance you put on.” Robin nearly choked on his own foot-in-mouth syndrome. But Laura didn’t appear the least put off.
“These days you have to give the students a show to hold their attention. Kids are raised on TV and video games and so have the attention span of gnats. If you don’t stimulate them at a level they can achieve in virtual reality, they’ll tune you out before your message can even reach them.”
Great, another reminder of Hartman, speaking of attention-getting showmen. “How do you deal with students who are so traumatized from their living situations at home, or from what they encounter on the streets, that they can’t concentrate on what you’re saying?”
Without missing a beat, she answered, “They all come in that way. It’s the price we pay for our anything-goes society, an existential angst that won’t quit. Who are they? What do they stand for? Unless you buy Alan Bloom’s argument that a lack of an agreed-upon social contract creates just the opposite, an inability to aspire to or give a damn about anything. So instead of feeling traumatized by the overstimulation of trying to assimilate so many discordant world views, they’re numb to the under-stimulation of treating everything like white noise.
“In the post-modern era, where it’s politically incorrect to look down your nose on anybody, whether for discordant cultures, lifestyles or worldviews, coming up with a boogieman has proved difficult. Nothing to push off, nothing to react against, the kids are losing any sense of edginess.
“I guess the Occupy movement is the first thing to come along in a while to give everyone a boogieman they can get behind. We may need that. Not just as Americans, but as citizens of the world. Something everyone feels they have a right to rebel against may be an essential part of character formation, at least according to Bloom.”
Robin was definitely moving this woman up to the front of his thinking. In time, she could role-model genius for him without any of the scary funhouse aberrations jumping out at him in the night. Over time she could sell him on the idea that genius and inspiration flowed even better sans the labyrinthine psychologies. And that’s what he needed.
That and a dose of patience. He was not going to get healed all in one visit. As painful a revelation as any he’d faced recently.
He bid her adieu, and took his leave before the lineup of students awaiting their tune-ups.
FIFTEEN
Drew had a part-time psychotherapy practice she ran out of their home in the Berkeley Hills. The house and the setting were therapy in themselves amidst the congestion and urban mayhem, which provided a far less filtered lifestyle with none of the crime and crazies and cranium-crushing drugs screened out. Drew’s manner completed the picture.
She saw Wilfred Grimes past the bougainvillea crawling up one side of the house, currently showing itself off in a riot of red and purple, and underneath the trellis of wisteria blooming a bluish violet. The trail hike to the side entrance was enough of a safari to qualify as ecotourism. Robin was convinced the yard had made it on to numerous safari websites in the guise of adventure travel for the less faint-hearted. The yard sloped in areas that made it a child’s delight in winter if the snow fell heavily enough.
They afforded such accommodations courtesy of Drew’s trust-fund. Her codependent alcoholic parents hadn’t left her much outside of early childhood trauma besides an ungodly sum of money, which, factoring into account Drew’s tastes, was compensation enough. Robin wasn’t beyond sucking up the good life himself as a necessary countermeasure for a life lived in the trenches slugging it out with psychologically deranged sociopaths. He was frequently in need of their home’s healing ambiance more than Drew’s patients.
Robin tried not to eavesdrop, but watching Drew do her thing passed for high times.
“Have a seat, Wilfred,” Drew said. “So good to see you again, it’s been too long.” Robin loved to hear Drew turn on her Berkshire, England aristocratic charm for the benefit of her patients who specialized in beating up on themselves. Drew role-modeled the superego they needed to replace the one they’d been living with until they could get it right on their own. So, far from being the typical therapist who refused to interject her opinions, and kept forcing the patient back to conclusions of his own, Drew’s technique played to her strengths.
Wilfred’s cold clamminess was already benefitting from the annex to the house that doubled as a solarium and as Drew’s therapeutic space in the fall and spring, where she worked the beauty of the backyard in order to factor nature therapy into the equation. She was certainly not beyond some sleight of hand when working her magician’s tricks on the psyche. Wilfred’s shivering quieted down, and he was soon not rubbing himself quite so much to warm himself up. He seemed to suffer from a circulatory impairment, because Robin never noticed him treat life like anything but a walk-in refrigerator.
As he nervously rubbed his hands together, Wilfred went on about the evils of Chevron. It had become clear over the last few visits that he was a high ranking corporate exec tortured by guilt, but even that much he wouldn’t confirm. “Chevron’s presence in Richmond has led to periodic bad air alerts and the omnipresent threat of fires, flares, and explosions. They’re the number one greenhouse gas purveyor in California. But they have a formula for continuing with impunity. Against the two pro-green Richmond legislators they throw millions of dollars to ensure those who support them continue to steal office.
“Meanwhile Chevron’s working to secure legislation to reimburse them for the hundred million in taxes paid to Richmond over a six year period. If Richmond and other counties have to pay this money to Chevron it will have a devastating impact on social services.”
“Instead of torturing yourself over your corporate complicity, why don’t you join the protestors?” Drew said.
Wilfred chuckled at the idea. His laughter decayed rapidly into a moribund cough. “The fact I’m here now could get you killed, not just me. The idea of being photographed in a mob of that sort— Don’t make me laugh.”
“Is there anything they can do to you that you haven’t already done to yourself?”
“I picked you because you were more socially sophisticated than the rest of your kind. Don’t make me out a fool.” Robin knew Wilfred was referring to Drew’s high-society polished manner, which ran rampant through the executive ranks of corporate America. Wilfred figured he’d exhaust himself less with explanations and rationalizations around Drew, who would understand his psychology and the implicit reason for it.
“Fair enough, but have you thought of applying that political savvy to the People’s Movement agenda? You have to have your own political alliances within the corporation you work for. Maybe you could use it to splinter off, create a startup to act as a go-between for Chevron’s interests and the community’s, functioning in essence like a CSO.”
Robin reminded himself, struggling to keep up with the acronyms, CSO stood for Civil Service Organization, replacing the more tried and true moniker of NGO or Non-Governmental Organization. The shift in termino
logy was secondary perhaps to the influence of Jeremy Rifkin’s The European Dream and The Empathic Civilization, to say nothing of his The Third Industrial Revolution. All books Robin had alighted on in Drew’s library. But he could as easily have stumbled upon them at work. While most cops toed the line, refusing to do “meaningful” for fear of drowning in the deep end of the pool; this was Berkeley, where even intellectuals occasionally donned the uniform. They were found largely on the swing and night shifts where their intellectualism could be kept out of sight from the more orthodox powers that be. Being as intellectualism was treated among the boys in blue like the rest of “Berkeley color.” The swing and night shift boys took flak for being there solely to arrest perpetrators of social injustice.
Wilfred seemed to struggle with Drew’s suggestion, as if part of him wanted to leap at the idea, and part of him was currently holding his head underwater just for thinking about it. Robin was grateful for the wall the vegetation put between him and Wilfred that allowed him to snoop unseen. Wilfred was already anxious about his every move being studied for possible treachery.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 49
