Freedom - Jonathan Franzen

I finished reading a novel for the first time in years. I read Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections about a year ago, and Freedom was his next effort. The combination of family dynamics mixed with contemporaneous political and social issues is where Franzen has staked out a brilliant and illuminating home turf.

In Freedom , he puts a Minnesota family under the microscope, bouncing for a time into the 1970s, but spending most of the time in the late 90s and the first decade of the 2000s. Patty Berglund is the main protagonist - and the "author" of a significant section of the book - an athletic woman who is committed to her family but unclear about some major issues in her life.

She is married to Walter Berglund - a native Minnesotan who met Patty at Univ of Minnesota and who is characterized by his "niceness". Walter is a lawyer who worked for 3M - ending up eventually in outreach and philanthropy due to his commitment to causes. He left 3M to become a development officer for the Nature Conservancy, allowing him to focus his commitment to nature on a full-time basis. `

Of all the interesting characters, I resonate most with Walter so would like to focus on his development in a couple of posts.

Energy, Passion, Drive, Determination

In a couple of articles over the weekend I saw references to passion. In a thoughtful tribute to his friend, Ian McEwan writes of the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens "His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade."

I'm a relatively reserved guy, so in some settings I can come across as a bit passive. It's interesting, first of all, that passive and passion both come from words meaning "to suffer or endure."

What I'd like to do here is capture observations of energy, passion, determination, drive,... As I see it or read about it or feel it or think about it, I hope that I can record some useful insights.

In Basel for Christmas

It's December now and the first snow of the season is on the ground. A lovely snow is falling now. The kids are out of school and we're getting ready for Christmas. Nancy has sent out our Christmas cards all over the world. We bought The Tree from a local farm and it is up and decorated now. Tara is feverishly cutting out paper chains, snowflakes, and all manner of decorations to cover her room in Christmas spirit. We've been to the Basel Christmas markets in Barfusserplatz and Munsterplatz. It's a wonderful way to celebrate

Switzerland is a beautiful country and is successfully stretching us out of our comfort zones. But for this holiday season we are not planning too many big trips or challenging objectives. Just enjoying the sights, sounds, smells (and a little stress) of the holidays. Well maybe we'll take a quick trip to Paris...

Here's some nice music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42ieABEY-A

Now we need to pick up a couple of gifts...

Book Notes: All Things Shining - Moods

Homer invokes the gods in order to account for the observation that a central form of human excellence must be drawn from without. A god, in Homer's terminology, is a mood that attunes us to what matters most in a situation, allowing us to respond appropriately without thinking.

Dreyfus and Kelly argue that a "polytheistic" way of framing our existence was present during Homeric Greece and was lost for a couple of thousand years. Melville, writing in the early 1850s, begins to revive this mindset in Moby Dick.

In a disenchanted, secular world, how do we build a foundation for leading our lives? I am not sure how satisfied I am with a paradigm that establishes moods as a foundation for determining the best course of action. I suppose Heidegger might argue that I am approaching this too deliberatively, rather than letting the appropriateness of the moment dictate the "determination". This does seem so slippery that a wide range of actions can be explained and justified as appropriate to a certain mood that prevailed at a particular time with a particular actor (or set of actors). The idea of being prepared and then receptive to the demands of a given situation does strike me as a reasonable aspiration. But receptivity does imply a passivity that is quite counter to the culture that dominates today. Don't we value action, decisions, progress toward a goal? To what extent do we drive our environment in a direction and to what extent are we driven?

Basel Bound

On Friday, I received an offer to take a position in Basel, Switzerland for Roche. After being away from Europe for 20 years, Nancy and I will be returning for an extended adventure in the land of chocolate, cheese, and cuckoo clocks. We have many questions and some concerns, but we are very excited to transition into a new world with our family. What follows are a few of my hopes for our time in Switzerland:

• I hope that the children will warm to the place, and that the opportunities to experience Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy will spark a sense of curiousity and wonder about the languages and cultures that they will be seeing.


• I hope that we will have the resources and time to explore the new world, to understand more about that world, and appreciate the ideas and practices that help to shape the world.


• I hope that we can all learn German quickly so that we can get closer to the allegedly closed and cold Swiss.

I ordered an intellectual/cultural history titled Basel in the Age of Burckhardt by Lionel Gossman. The city has a rich cultural history, attracting some of the brighter lights of Europe over the last several centuries. I am so excited to be there!

Being in the moment

In All Things Shining by Dreyfus and Kelly, at the beginning of the book they refer to Wesley Autrey, the 50-year old construction worker who leaped in front of an oncoming 1 train in NYC to save a young man who had fallen on the subway tracks. Aubrey commented afterward that he didn't feel like he did anything heroic - he simply saw someone who needed help and he helped.

Dreyfus and Kelly are driving at the importance of situations and context in determining how we behave. When we are practiced at the behavior that is required in a situation, we do little conscious deliberation, we ACT in a way that's appropriate for that moment.

Another example today near our home in the East Bay.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_17465843?source=most_viewed&nclick_check=1

In terms strikingly similar to Mr. Aubrey in NYC, Brad Smith commented: "I just did what I was supposed to do. I had a big fire extinguisher, and I know what to do with car fires. I never really even thought about it."

This kind of openness and receptivity to what the moment demands is the state that I think we should be striving for. And if we have experiences and skills that will prepare us to act appropriately when the situation demands, maybe we can make a difference in the universe afterall.

Embodiment and context

As I work through possibilities for a leadership development program, I have consistently insisted that "experience" be at the core of whatever process we use. I would like to explore the issue of experience through some sources that I think speak to how we learn (change) less through thinking than through "embodying" the change we seek.

Embodiment refers to a structural change in one's life that disrupts the status quo, alters the context, and requires "learning" in order to deal with the new context that's been created. In Moby Dick, Ishmael's decision to go out to sea is an embodiment of change. He is dramatically shifting his context and will be exposed to new rhythms, people, technical skills, group dynamics, etc. What it is Ishmael is hoping to learn from this embodiment of life on the sea may be the subject of another post, but it's clear that he sees values, ways of life that attract and repel him over the course of his adventures. His experience forces him to deal with profound questions of what is most meaningful in life, and how we live a life that is full of meaning.