Lex Anteinternet: A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

Lex Anteinternet: A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death...:

A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

A really old friend of mine and I were talking about it just last week.

I had to catch up with him as he was working on something for me.  It was Friday, but I was fairly formally dressed and he noted it. The reason was that I had just come from my uncle's funeral earlier that day.  He extended his sympathies, but I noted that my uncle had lived a long and good life.  Not a life free of troubles, as no such thing existed, but a long life, that was well lived, and he'd remained sharp right up until the end.  His health had declined in recent years, but only in very recent ones.  It was the last few months that were rough.

My friend and I, who first knew each other as National Guardsmen back in the 80s, are co-religious.  Neither of us was married when we first met, but both of us have, and have seen our kids grow up since then.  And of course, we've seen our parents pass away, his before mine.  He has siblings, which I do not, and one of his brothers died, only in his 50s.  I noted that in the Middle Ages, people often prayed for good deaths, and he noted that a prayer group that he's in now does that every week.

Prayer for a Happy Death

O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

I'm constantly amazed by people who work into old age, as I'd judge it, and keeping working.  A dear friend of mine, now in his 70s, noted that just the other day.  He doesn't have to, he just is.  Likewise, I know a collection of lawyers who fit that description.  The law is a hard job, surrounded by hard facts, hard people, and difficult scenarios

I think they just know nothing else, their real personalities, perhaps, burnt to the core eons ago.

In contrast, I'm also constantly amazed by those who have extensive plans for their retirements well before they can retire.  Another friend of mine fits this category, but when I look at him, I can tell his physical condition is so poor it'd be amazing if he lives long enough to retire.  It's one of those things where you don't know what to say.  If you were to be blunt, you'd say that the dreams of early retirement are probably forlorn, but that his dreams of retiring at all may be foreclosed by a bad early death, if some correction isn't made soon, and those corrections are harder to make once you are past your 30s.

The call came to my wife on Saturday.  I could tell from the tone what the topic was, without even being told.  A relative of hers was on his way to the hospital by helicopter.  Even though he was being sent in, in that fashion, I knew, but did not say it, that he'd not make it.  I'm not even sure if he wanted to.

And so another death.

In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger.  My age, in fact.  I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in.  He hadn't been able to adjust to them well.  The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.

I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement.  I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am.  Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement.  Not really.

Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced.  People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above.  Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow.  Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.

It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it.  The occupation itself is existentially human.  It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.

Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

What I can't imagine myself doing is imagining that age and decline don't occur, and that I should be in court in my 70s.  I don't think that the lawyers who do that realize that younger lawyers don't admire that, and most of the lawyers I'm running into in court are younger than me now.  

And indeed, frankly, it isn't admirable.  People who work a hard non-existential job and keep at it into their advanced old age, or at least past their 7th decade, have just lost something they were when they were young, and much of that is themselves.  They've lost who they were.

AN ACT OF FAITH IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HOUR OF DEATH

From the works of St. Pompilio M. Pirrotti

On my journey toward eternity, dear Lord,

 

I am surrounded  by powerful enemies of my soul.

I live in fear and trembling,

especially at the thought of the hour of death,

on which my eternity will depend,

and of the fearful struggle that the devil will then have to wage against me,

knowing that little time is left for him to accomplish my eternal ruin.

I desire, therefore, O Lord,

to prepare myself for it from this hour,

by offering you now, in view of my last hour,

my profession of faith and love for you,

which is so effectual in repressing and rendering useless

all the crafty and wicked schemes of the enemy

and which I resolve to oppose to him at that moment of such grave consequence,

even though he should dare alone to attack with his deceits

the peace and tranquility of my spirit.

I N.N.,

in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity,

the blessed Virgin Mary,

my holy Guardian Angel

and the entire heavenly host,

affirm that I wish to live and die under the standard of the Holy Cross.

I firmly believe all that our Holy Mother,

the holy, catholic and apostolic Church,

believes and teaches.

It is my steadfast intention to die in this holy faith,

in which all the holy martyrs, confessors and virgins of Christ have died,

as well as all those who have saved their souls.

If the devil should tempt me to despair

because of the multitude and grievousness of my sins,

I affirm that from this day forth

I firmly hope in the infinite mercy of God,

which will not let itself be overcome by my sins,

and in the Precious Blood of Jesus

which has washed all my sins away.

If the devil should assail me with temptations to presumption

by reason of the small amount of good

which by the help of God

I may have been able to accomplish,

I confess from this day forth

that I deserve eternal separation from God

a thousand times by my sins

and I entrust myself entirely

to the infinite goodness of God,

through whose grace alone I am what I am.

Finally, if the evil spirit should suggest to me

that the pains inflicted upon me by our Lord

in that last hour of my life

are too heavy to bear,

I affirm now that all will be as nothing

in comparison with the punishments I have deserved throughout life.

In the bitterness of my soul

I call to remembrance all my years;

I see my iniquities, I confess them and detest them.

Ashamed and sorrowful I turn to you,

my God, my Creator and my Redeemer.

Forgive me, O Lord, by the multitude of your mercies;

forgive your servant whom you have redeemed by your Precious Blood.

My God, I turn to you, I call upon you, I trust in you;

 to your infinite goodness

I commit the entire reckoning of my life.

I have sinned greatly, O Lord:

 enter not into judgment with your servant,

who surrenders to you

and confesses his guilt.

Of myself I cannot make satisfaction to you for my countless sins:

I do not have the means to pay you for my infinite debt.

But your Son has shed his Blood for me,

and greater than all mine sins is your mercy.

O Jesus, be my Saviour!

At the hour of my fearful crossing to eternity

put to flight the enemy of my soul;

grant me grace to overcome every difficulty,

for you alone do mighty wonders.

Lord,

according to the multitude of your tender mercies

I shall enter into your dwelling place.

Trusting in your pity,

I commend my spirit into your hands!

May the Blessed Virgin Mary

and my Guardian Angel

accompany my soul into the heavenly country. Amen.

We should all hope and indeed pray for a happy death.  And perhaps we should pray for a happy life, which is one worthwhile.  That doesn't, quite frankly, include the "I'm going to work here at my desk until I die".  That's surrendering to fear or meaningless, in most cases.

Again, there are exceptions.  People with Existential Occupations, people who own their own special business, and the like.  The list can't really be set out in full.

That doesn't include pouring through the latest edition of the IRS code for deductions, or reading the Restatement (Second) of Torts, or engineering an oilfield implement. 

Lex Anteinternet: A Stream

Lex Anteinternet: A Stream: 

A Stream

Some mental meanderings, if you will.

ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία*

1 Timothy.

I have to admit that I'm disappointed by the failure of Senate File 103, the bill that would have increased the number of hunting licenses reserved for for in state hunters.   That is, of course, open to skeptical retort as I'm an instate hunter, and I would have potentially benefitted from that.

But more than that, as I've noted here before, I'm basically a subsistence hunter and I'm serious about it.  I'm not a "head hunter".  Indeed, I don't personally grasp the amount of money that people will spend to hunt out of state, but I suppose that its based on retaining a connection with the wild they've lost through urbanization.  Maybe that is what makes sense of it.  What I think would make more sense, personally, is to hunt locally, and if that's too expensive, they should focus their efforts accordingly to make it less so.  But because they don't, and because their expenditures in Wyoming are part of the economy, we cater to that and the bill didn't pass. 

Setting aside the tourist dollars aspect of it, and just the monetary and subsistence aspect of it, this is one of those putting values over money type of judgments that seems to be lacking a lot in the modern world, and indeed, in fairness, is generally lacking in any one era.  The point of outfitters and the opponents of the bill in the legislature is that outfitting and out of state hunting is a business in the state, it brings dollars into the state, and we shouldn't hurt business.  And there's a lot to be sympathetic about in that argument, particularly as the state is really hurting for cash. But there's philosophical reasons to set monetary concerns aside on some things.  There are things that we should value over money in ways that are hard to define as they're all intellectual.

Also, pure monetary arguments can be really bad ones, and generally almost every really awful idea that has made the world worse has some economic aspect to it.  Henry VIII gained support fraudulently usurping Papal authority in the English church not so much by brilliant theological arguments, which were lacking for his campaign, but by driving monks out of monasteries and handing them over to his supporters.  It was devastating in every way and reverberates through society today, but when you get right down to it, temporal monetary considerations trumped the concerns stretching out to eternity.  Money often wins.

Still, it shouldn't.

Monetary considerations played into a legislative argument this past week on another topic.  Not that this is surprise, that plays into a lot of arguments in Cheyenne.  This one was about marijuana.  There's a bill to legalize it and regulate it basically like alcohol.  "The state would generate a lot of money from taxing it" came up as an argument.

That's true, but the state would also generate a lot of money by legalizing heroin and taxing it, or legalizing prostitution and taxing that.  You get the point.  Things aren't made illegal because they have a negative taxation aspect to them.

Indeed, most of the "we'll tax it" type of arguments for legalizing something that has as association with vice are not well thought out anyhow, as rarely does anyone balance the taxation against the costs the vice creates.  Nobody, that is, figures out how much caring for those who are permanently wasted on dope will cost, and contrary to what people assert, that will happen.

When I was a National Guardsmen I ran into one of my former soldiers on the street, after he was discharged.  He asked what I thought he should do as he was so badly addicted to marijuana he couldn't get off of it.  I guess it was nice to be asked, but still in my 20s, even as an NCO, I didn't really know what to tell him.  I offered some advice, but I don't recall what it was.  More recently somebody I know related to me how one of their daughters had gone to school, dropped out, and came home a wreck as she was addicted to it and in a state of severe depression.  They got her off of it, but she's now working in a hopelessly low paying occupation and likely will live a really marginal life.

I don't see a reason to encourage any more stupefaction of our society than we already have.  If it were up to me, I wouldn't have repealed prohibition in the 1930s, and I'm not a teetotaler.  

I know why we do these things, however.  We've built a world that we don't like much, and its easier to spend our cash blotting it out from our consciousness than to really address it.  Or, and probably more accurately, those who benefit from the society we've created are profiting mightily from it and they'd resist any changes.  It's easier for them to just hand you a joint.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. 

Edmund Burke

I was stunned this past week to learn that the United States has now authorized more money to be spent on pandemic relief than it spend on the New Deal.  It's also more money than the United States fought fighting every war we've fought since the end of the Cold War combined.

That's insane.

I get that something needed to be done, but that didn't need to be done. There's no way to spend that sort of vast amount of money well or wisely.  It will be wasted.  It will also be inflationary.

I'm not yet 60, but I can see it approaching and I pretty much figure, with this sort of vast injection of cash into the economy, inflation is inevitable  Goodbye retirement.

Now, that's sort of a selfish view, but at some point a person must be realistic.  In looking at the actual impact of pandemic on the economy it turns out that most of the economy was hardly impacted at all.  What was massively impacted was the service sector.  No matter, relief checks are going out to people who never lost their jobs and were never in danger of losing them.

The section of the economy that did find their work impaired is fairly large, around 10,000,000 people.  That's a lot of people, but it's actually a small percentage of workers.  And the money being thrown around to everyone won't help them much, as a large percentage of those jobs are never coming back.  Lots of people acclimated to working from home where they are comfortable, don't have to buy as many work clothes, can be around their cats, dogs and families, and don't have to put up with the guy three cubicles down who thinks that basketball is interesting.

Because they aren't coming back, not as many restaurants and bars are either. They just aren't.

Focusing that money where it was needed would have been a good idea. Throwing out checks to everyone on the assumption that people are going to run out and buy 500 cups of Starbucks doesn't make any sense at all.

As a further aside on this, the Democratic controlled House of Representatives seems set to act on a bunch of social policy bills of a "progressive" nature.  I haven't heard of their acting on a "Green New Deal" slate yet, but if they ever intended to, this probably shot their bolt.  It's not really possible to have any kind of New Deal when you just spent way more money than the New Deal itself cost, unless you are willing to super heat the economy.

The irony of all of this is that it can't really be said that the current occupants of Congress don't remember the inflation of the 1970s and how awful that was.  They must, as a lot of them were there then, or at least in politics.  The same generation that came up in the awful early 1970s has never left power.

 

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I had an interesting conversation with a coworker the other day who is somewhat obsessed about his graduating high school senior's plans.  I can understand that, the future of children when you have them, particularly those whose future you can not accurately foresee, is a constant and deep worry for parents.

It lead in a strange direction, however, and that lead me to ponder something further.

My father's father left home when he was 13 years old to go to work.  My mother's grandfather started working as an office boy, the same occupation my father's father started off as, when he was still a child.  I don't even think he was a teenager at the time.  My father's grandmother came to the United States from Ireland when she was 3 years old, accompanied by her 19 year old sister who raised her.  She never saw her parents after age 3 again.  My mother was descendant in part from Quebecois, which in turn means that she was also descendant almost certainly (and certainly my DNA would support that) from orphans from Ireland adopted right off the docks in Quebec, the survivors of Coffin Ships who lost their parents in the journey from Ireland and who would be raised as French speaking Quebecois.

I note all that for a tricky reason.

All of the people here I can identify went on to successful lives.  My father's father ultimately briefly came back to Iowa and then went on to Colorado as a businessman, married, and then pursued his career successfully to Nebraska and then Wyoming.  My father's grandmother moved, probably with her sister, to Colorado and married a shopkeeper in Leadville, and retired to Denver.  My mother's grandfather ultimately came to be the CEO of the company he started off as an office boy for.  They all had successful, and moral, lives and had successful families.

They also all lived in an era when the impact of immorality was pretty obvious and, while they were not the recipients of advanced degrees, the plain facts of biology were known and obvious to all.  We've lost all of that.

Wealth seems to be a lot of the reason why.  They all spent part of their lives living hand to mouth, although not all of them by any means.  Very few people do that now, which is overall a good thing.  But it's also the case that society has become so rich that there are now a lot of people who are made miserable by it.  Part of that is that people have a lot of time and money to spend on what are really basic urges, and to stray off in ways in which they come to try to self identify themselves by things that were in the background, but not self defining, in earlier eras.  People are now identifying themselves by their diets and sexual urges, for example.

Only a vastly rich society can spend so much time thinking about food and sex and define individuals in society that way.  If you move from Cork to Victorville Colorado and its 1890, for example, self defining yourself as a vegan would not only not occur, it'd be regarded as stupid, as it would have been stupid.

This doesn't mean that our vast wealth has liberated us from such things, but rather its seemingly enslaved us to our basest instincts.  Free from nature and distant from nature's God, we want to be gods ourselves, but can't seemingly think of a better way to do that than to redefine the most basic nature's that God has given us.  

That can't and won't go on forever, but the longer it goes on the worse the fall and recovery will be.

With luck, it might even snow for us.

Haruki Murakami

It wasn't snowing when I got up.

All the second half of this week the weather report has been promising a massive amount of snow.  The southeastern part of the state is supposed to get up to three feet of snow.

I'm really skeptical that will happen.  It isn't snowing here yet.  We'll see.  Anyway you look at it we really do need the snow or we're going to be in a severe drought this summer.

The thing that always surprises me in these circumstances are the reactions to the weather.  There's lots of complaining about it.  But other than drive to work in it, we don't really have to deal with it for the most part, unless you are employed in an outdoor profession, which is indeed totally different.

Lawyers who do litigation used to have to contend with the weather constantly, but now that everything is done via the internet, this isn't the case anymore.  The last major winter legal trip I made was to Baker Montana, and that's now over a year ago.  The weather wasn't great when I did that, to be sure, but I used to contend with winter travel constantly.  Not now.  And I wonder if the days of travel will really ever come back.  They probably won't.  It's changed much about work, including even the psychology of it.

Not that I haven't done some traveling, even during the pandemic.  And indeed, I've managed to catch bad winter weather twice while doing it, although both were daytrips.

Anyhow, for most people, winter snowstorms merely mean that you drive to work in the snow.  Not everyone does that well, however.  I was nearly killed earlier this week when some person on a snow day rocketed through a red light and nearly hit me.  They never slowed down.  And I've been seeing my fair share of out of state license plates on cars of what may well be new residents in which they're driving in an obviously scared condition.  If we get hit again COVID refugees will likely start rethinking their relocation.

Indeed, the weather in Wyoming is just flat out bad in ways that don't occur to most Wyomingites but which are actually bad and difficult to explain.  A Texas friend of mine once pointed out to me that Wyoming's northernmost latitude is still further south than northern France, which it is.  Indeed, much of Wyoming's latitude is on the same plain as northern Italy or southern France.  The reason he pointed this out is that he was convinced that because this is our latitude we must have the same weather than the south of France does.

Not hardly.

We're deep in the interior of the plains and our winters are long and summers short. We have wind constantly all year long.  Ft. Fetterman, outside of what is now Douglas Wyoming, had the highest insanity rate in the Frontier Army, and the wind and weather conditions are often blamed for that.  Every other year its noted that Wyoming has a high rate of depression and that this contributes to it as well, most likely for immigrants who come in here thinking that the nice conditions they saw in June are what we have all year long.  Indeed, I once read a deluded comment by somebody who bought some land outside of Bosler Wyoming about how they intended to retire there from their university job in California and then the only worry they'd have is which horse to ride that day.  Well, they don't ride horses outside of Bosler in January except by absolute necessity.  My guess is that person, if they moved out at all, hated Wyoming by March.

Be that as it may, our indoor life everywhere has insulated us from really dealing with the weather.  Last week the county shut its offices and the school district did as well.  I simply drove to work, not realizing that it was that bad.  Right now, the State of Colorado, which likes to have a massive fit about everything has mobilized the Colorado National Guard for the storm.

Well, like Dire Straits sang, "Money for nothing and kicks for free".

One thing that weather like this usually brings up is a comment to the effect that "on days like this it sure is nice to work indoors".  I've honestly never thought that.  Maybe its growing up here and being a semi feral person, but as long as I don't have to brave the highways, I like the big storms.

__________________________________________________________________________________

* "[F]or the root of all evils is the love of money."

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