KNOWLEDGE PICKER'S ARCHIVE: September 2012

Pick 36 - Silence

We Americans know the value of our constitutional right to freedom of speech. If that value is hidden to any of us, we are either living under a rock or are newcomers to the American way of life. However, there is a collateral value to freedom of speech that has remained well hidden. In fact, until the emergence of instant global communication this unofficial freedom has had a quiet life of its own. I am talking about the right to remain silent. As children growing up in the first half of the 20th century, we may have heard our parents or teachers admonish us that "speech is silver but silence is golden" Yes. We heard it but who of us ever promoted that pearl of wisdom. How could we pass that wisdom along to our children in an age sincerely dedicated to the proposition that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" This became ever more evident during the string of wars that have encrusted us since Vietnam. To remain silent about going to war was to remain unknown and even disenfranchised. So many of us spoke up for one side or the other. The same was true when the financial crisis of 2008 threatened the American Dream. Many of us protested and demanded accountability from our politicians and our bankers. We may even have expressed our views in the voting booth. A few of us chose to remain silent.

The hidden value in silence lies in its ability to clear the mind, to think before saying or doing anything. It is like the "pause" button on a media streaming application. The pause does not destroy the media itself. Silence does not destroy thoughts. Press the "play" button and whatever you were watching or listening to continues unabated. You can also "rewind" or "fast forward" and still retain the same media presentation. Silence works the same way for your mind. It provides time to rethink your stand on an issue or choose your words carefully. It also provides a level of privacy that is inalienable and has rarely been penetrated by tyrannical governments. That is likely to change if we continue to dilute our freedom of speech with banal, useless but addictive talk. Our only hope for rehabilitation may be to decode the hidden value in the admonition our parents and teachers once gave us: speech is silver but silence is golden.

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Pick 35 - Remain Silent

I have tried to avoid it but today I began to take an interest in the Presidential election. I confess that I do not have a favorite running in this race but I wish I did. In fact, it has been several decades since I was able to get really excited about one of the candidates. Usually it became clear by Election Day that I would have to pick the lesser of two incompetents--again. The person best suited to assume the Office of the President of the United States--in my opinion--was too smart or not crazy enough to seek the punishment this office is capable of dishing out.

In my lifetime I have voted in every Presidential election since Richard Nixon ran against Hubert Humphrey. I must admit that I envy those who can cut to the chase and go bonkers for the candidate their Party has selected to run. I cannot get past my skepticism to go down that road. Even when I voted for the candidate who offered the best solutions to the problems of the day, that candidate lost the election or worse yet, that candidate won, then proceeded to do the opposite of what he promised to do in the campaign.

If I actually vote in this election--I may still exercise my right to remain silent--I will not be able to decide until I am actually in the voting booth with my subconscious wisdom directing my finger toward the button I should press.

Sure, I tell myself, it would be a lot easier living in a country where the choice is not between two and sometimes three candidates but only one. That would be easy.
Just show up. Vote for that candidate and go home knowing that I had made the right choice because it was the only choice. And there would be no problem with Voter IDs or any other annoyances we Americans have managed to inject into a tradition that goes back centuries. NO. I am not talking about casting a vote. I am talking about the freedom to remain silent on Election Day. In fact, not only can I chose to remain silent without the fear of that ominous knock on the door in the middle of the night, I can even post a bumper sticker on my car the next day proclaiming: DON'T BLAME ME; I DIDN'T VOTE FOR HIM.

That is the hidden value guaranteed by our Constitution: Not only are we allowed to vote for whomever we want to lead us; we are also allowed to remain silent on that question without incrimination or censure from our fellow citizens.

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Pick 34 - Soft Lenses

I have worn glasses since I was 12 years old. Well, that’s not really correct. I started wearing contact lenses when soft contacts became affordable in the early 1980’s. I still remember the first time I attempted to pop a contact into my eye. My wife had them before me and she made it look easy. Just place the lens on the tip of your finger. Bring your finger close enough to your eye to let the lens jump off your finger and attach to your eye. So after 25 years of spraying, wiping, scratching, misplacing and sometimes cussing my eyeglasses, I decided to give contact lenses a try.

For some twenty years my contact lenses served me well. Then I developed cataracts in both eyes. In earlier times this might have spelled the end of my contact lens days. All of the "older" people I knew who had the cataract surgery spent the rest of their sighted days wearing eyeglasses that resembled the bottoms of Coke bottles. Even if these glasses allowed them to avoid the "legally blind" stigma, they were still prohibited from driving or doing any jobs that required good vision. But it turned out that my cataract surgery had hidden value beyond my wildest dreams. When my eye surgeon removed my clouded natural lens, he implanted a newly developed artificial lens in the muscle tissue left from the natural lens. Within a day of the surgery I had 20/20 vision. With these new implants, I could see better than ever. The only drawback was that my brain could no longer control the severed muscles to focus for reading or close work. But a $5.00 pair of reading glasses was all I needed to remedy that. About a year later, my Optometrist found additional value hidden in those implant lenses. They were evenly matched for the best focal plane. This meant he could prescribe a single contact lens for one eye that converted it to a "reading eye" and my brain would focus from the eye that gave the best results: left eye for reading, right eye for driving. This was hidden value as far as the eye could see!

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Pick 33 - Google Ads

This morning as I was checking my e-mail--I use Google mail--I noticed that the ads quietly and unobtrusively appearing beside my messages tended to track my thoughts. If I used the word vacation in my message I was reminded that XYZ Cruise Line had last minute get-away deals. If I admitted that I had another sleepless night, the ads offered several natural remedies for insomnia.

I had never paid much attention to these ads because they are mostly text and not animated like those that scream out to you on Facebook and similar sites. Also, I felt it was a reasonable trade-off since Google's e-mail service provides free features that I use frequently. They help organize the hundreds of personal and business messages I send and receive each week. However, now that these ads have gotten my attention I wondered if this intuitive approach might have some hidden value.

To my pleasant surprise, I discovered that I can use the Google ads preference manager, to change my demographic profile. If I am getting too many ads oriented to my mature senior status, I can make myself younger and more vibrant to Google just by changing my profile in the preference manager. No more ads for senior-friendly cruises or remedies for incontinence. Now Google will guide me to Club Med and encourage me to use protection during those unplanned intimate moments. Einstein was right; time is really relative.

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Pick 2 - Happiness

The search for Happiness is a universal one. And in the USA, our pursuit of it is guaranteed by the Constitution. Some of us seek it in material wealth. Some of us expect others to make us happy. Some wonder why happiness is so elusive. And some of us would not know happiness if it poked us in the eye. Most of us have learned that a smile does not necessarily mean that the person flashing it is happy. Many of us believe we have had a taste of happiness at some points in our life. But that might have been when we were children and had not yet encountered disappointments and cynicism in our life. So can there be any hidden value in happiness that would make its pursuit worthwhile?

Perhaps a better approach would be to search for the hidden key to happiness that lies within us. I believe that hidden key is our own attitude. We can choose to be happy. We can choose to have a positive outlook on the events that reality throws our way. Or we can choose to stew in our own juices. Either way: it is our choice to make. And that choice is the hidden value in our attitude. We must pause to remember that our attitude is under our personal control. If we misdirect it then the consequences are all ours.

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