How to be Happy — Excerpt The Conquest of Happiness (1930) often cited as
one of Bertrand Russell’s most accessible and favorite books.
'Whatever we may wish to think, we are creatures of Earth, our life is part
of the life of the Earth; and we draw our nourishment from it just as the
plants and animals do. The rhythm of Earth life is slow; autumn and winter
are as essential to it as spring and summer, and rest is as essential as
motion. To the child, even more than to the man, it is necessary to
preserve some contact with the ebb and flow of terrestrial life. The human
body has been adapted through the ages to this rhythm, and religion has
embodied something of it in the festival of Easter.
'I have seen a boy of two years old, who had been kept in London, taken out
for the first time to walk in green country. The season was winter, and
everything was wet and muddy. To the adult eye there was nothing to cause
delight, but in the boy there sprang up a strange ecstasy; he kneeled in
the wet ground and put his face in the grass, and gave utterance to
half-articulate cries of delight. The joy that he was experiencing was
primitive, simple and massive. The organic need that was being satisfied is
so profound that those in whom it is starved are seldom completely sane.
'Many pleasures, of which we may take gambling and drink as good examples,
have in them no element of this contact with Earth. Such pleasures, in the
instant when they cease, leave a man feeling dusty and dissatisfied, hungry
for he knows not what. Such pleasures bring nothing that can truly be
called joy. Those, on the other hand, that bring us into contact with the
life of the Earth have something in them profoundly satisfying; when they
cease, the happiness that they have brought remains, although their
intensity while they existed may have been less than that of more exciting
dissipations.
'The two-year-old boy whom I spoke of a moment ago displayed the most
primitive possible form of union with the life of Earth. But in a higher
form the same thing is to be found in poetry. What makes Shakespeare’s
lyrics supreme is that they are filled with this same joy that made the
two-year- old embrace the grass. Consider “Hark, hark, the lark”, or “Come
unto these yellow sands”; you will find in these poems the civilized
expression of the same emotion that in our two-year-old could only find
utterance in inarticulate cries.'
Love to all,
Mike
Hi friends,
Sad news this morning. Lou Cassella, Claire Szabo-Cassella's husband and
one of her main caregivers, died last night. David Ziegler is with Claire.
He told me he would give more detail on this list later, but I could let
people know.
Lou came to the 45th Reunion with Claire so she could participate. He was a
loving, gentle presence with us that week.
If you do not already follow Claire's Red Scooter Diaries
<https://redscooterdiaries.com/>, please have a look. You can read Lou's
contributions under Confessions of a Caregiver
<https://redscooterdiaries.com/2018/02/21/confessions-of-a-caregiver-vol-1-f…>.
The website also offers ways to support Claire.
Claire, we are all sending you so much love. David, thank you for being
there for both Claire and Lou.
Much love to all,
Madge
--
*Madge Darlington, M.F.A.*
mmdarlington(a)utexas.edu
(512) 627-6038
*Assistant Professor of Instruction*
The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Theatre and Dance <https://theatredance.utexas.edu/>
*Interim Director*
Shakespeare at Winedale <https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/winedale/>
Hi all,
On Saturday, Jeff Larsen and I are going to meet at the Theatre Barn at
Winedale to do a few projects in preparation for the summer. I plan on
being there from 9:30 am - 3:30 pm.
I'm sorry for the short notice, but if you can join us, please do. You can
let me know if you plan to drop by for all or part of the time at
mmdarlington(a)gmail.com. That will help me determine the scope of what we
are trying to accomplish and how many kolaches we'll need to fuel us.
If it is just Jeff and me, we are going to work on setting up a tool
pegboard in the barn. If others can join, I'll have a few more projects we
can tackle.
Thanks for considering. If you can't make this one, there will be other
opportunities in the future.
Best,
Madge
--
*Madge Darlington, M.F.A.*
mmdarlington(a)utexas.edu
(512) 627-6038
*Assistant Professor of Instruction*
The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Theatre and Dance <https://theatredance.utexas.edu/>
*Interim Director*
Shakespeare at Winedale <https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/winedale/>
I thought you all might be interested in my little contribution to a
colloquy in Reason magazine's 2024 issue. You can find the whole thing
here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240506084929/https://reason.com/2024/05/05/ai…
AI Is Like the Dawn of Modern Medicine
By Mike Godwin
When I think about the emergence of "artificial intelligence," I keep
coming back to the beginnings of modern medicine.
Today's professionalized practice of medicine was roughly born in the
earliest decades of the 19th century—a time when the production of more
scientific studies of medicine and disease was beginning to accelerate (and
propagate, thanks to the printing press). Doctors and their patients took
these advances to be harbingers of hope. But it's no accident this
acceleration kicked in right about the same time that Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley (née Godwin, no relation) penned her first draft of *Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheus*—planting the first seed of modern
science-fictional horror.
Shelley knew what Luigi Galvani and Joseph Lister believed they knew, which
is that there was some kind of parallel (or maybe connection!) between
electric current and muscular contraction. She also knew that many would-be
physicians and scientists learned their anatomy from dissecting human
corpses, often acquired in sketchy ways.
She also likely knew that some would-be doctors had even fewer moral
scruples and fewer ideals than her creation Victor Frankenstein. Anyone who
studied the early 19th-century marketplace for medical services could see
there were as many quacktitioners and snake-oil salesmen as there were
serious health professionals. It was definitely a "free market"—it lacked
regulation—but a market largely untouched by James Surowiecki's "wisdom of
crowds."
Even the most principled physicians knew they often were competing with
charlatans who did more harm than good, and that patients rarely had the
knowledge base to judge between good doctors and bad ones. As medical
science advanced in the 19thcentury, physicians also called for medical
students at universities to study chemistry and physics as well as
physiology.
In addition, the physicians' professional societies, both in Europe and in
the United States, began to promulgate the first modern medical-ethics
codes—not grounded in half-remembered quotes from Hippocrates, but
rigorously worked out by modern doctors who knew that their mastery of
medicine would always be a moving target. That's why medical ethics were
constructed to provide fixed reference points, even as medical knowledge
and practice continued to evolve. This ethical framework was rooted in four
principles: "autonomy" (respecting patient's rights, including
self-determination and privacy, and requiring patients' informed consent to
treatment), "beneficence" (leaving the patient healthier if at all
possible), "non-maleficence" ("doing no harm"), and "justice" (treating
every patient with the greatest care).
These days, most of us have some sense of medical ethics, but we're not
there yet with so-called "artificial intelligence"—we don't even have a
marketplace sorted between high-quality AI work products and statistically
driven confabulation or "hallucination" of seemingly (but not actually)
reliable content. Generative AI with access to the internet also seems to
pose other risks that range from privacy invasions to copyright
infringements.
What we need right now is a consensus about what ethical AI practice looks
like. "First do no harm" is a good place to start, along with values such
as autonomy, human privacy, and equity. A society informed by a
layman-friendly AI code of ethics, and with an earned reputation for
ethical AI practice, can then decide whether—and how—to regulate.
*Mike Godwin is a technology policy lawyer in Washington, D.C.*
Glen teaches writing and is a semi-professional science-fiction writer. (He
made me say "semi-professional" there.)
He's at engelcox(a)gmail.com or gengelcox(a)icloud.com.
Mike