Six things you may not know about me

My sister Cherie, a self-confessed stone smeller, tagged me. I am to write six things you may not know about me. I thought of coupling this blog with my New Year's resolutions blog (soon to come), but then thought the better of it. You may know about some of these, but maybe not details.

1. I have been a reluctant vegetarian for almost a year. On Jan. 1, 2007, I made a resolution to replace all my meat calories with "wisely chosen" plant calories for at least a year. I refer to it as my "well-informed plant-based diet." It hasn't been as difficult as I thought, especially with all the mock meat around now that tastes just like meat (sometimes not as good, sometimes better). I replace milk with soy or hemp milk and butter with coconut or olive oil. It is a tad inconvenient to not eat meat whenever I go out to lunch with friends, participate in potlucks, go to friends' houses for dinner, and so on. Surprisingly I hadn't committed social suicide, especially having an Argentine wife and many Argentine relations and friends. I do try and avoid talking about this diet most of the time; there are a few meat eaters with such strong convictions about eating meat that they truly believe God made it a moral sin to choose not to, which is ridiculous. Anyhow, now that my meatless year is about to expire I have a dilemma of whether or not to go on. Yes, I borrowed the word "dilemma" from Michael Pollan's excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma, which you should all read. No, the book is not designed to turn you into a vegetarian, but it will give you a better sense of where food comes from.
   
   My resolution did have everything to do with health, and, yes, ethics too. There are too many scientific studies that confirm that eating animal foods is cause for diseases, and that plants appear to have all the answers. Why not just replace the meat calories with more calories of these beneficial plants? I'm not talking just more pasta, but lots of nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables. In addition, I want to be part of the next wave of human ethics. I imagine that years from now our great, great grandchildren will look at us the same way most of us now see slave-drivers and wife-beaters as long as we keep making cows and chickens live lifetimes of suffering just so we can get some tasty protein. Surely our great society can come up with a more moral way to live and still get all of our amino acids. But wait, what about happy, pasture-fed cows and free range chickens? If they lived well, haven't we acted out our moral obligation? What about specific nutrients that only animals can produce for us (such as vitamin B12, DHA and phosphatidyl serine)? Doesn't the nature of our own evolution (or design) suggest the best diet is to allow our animals to forage and consolidate all the nutrients of healthy plants so they can convert them into what will do us good? That's how this discussion always goes. Wrestling with these issues, I've gone from vegan to lacto-vegetarian to lacto-ovo vegetarian to pesco-vegetarian to being an omnivore and back again. Patricia has endured a great deal of culinary indecisiveness.
   
   
2. I confess that I can be incredibly indecisive—a test of patience for all around. Maybe you've figured that out. I blame it on there being too many problems in my world and not enough answers. (That's a joke.) Yes, I know I have a problem and I've been trying to get better. I am trying to make better decisions and make them more quickly with the help of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. But nothing helps me make better decisions faster than first enjoying a competitive chess match.
   
   
3. I happen to believe that chess can cure just about any psychological problem. Call it "zero-sum game therapy". Any sport or game of mental strategy would do as long as you can apply Sun Tzu's Art of War: martial arts, some video games, paintball, soccer, basketball. I have theories on this subject yet to be clinically tested. Someday I'll prove them right and all males will rejoice!
   
   
4. Contrary to my liking of competition, I dislike arguing with people. I hate it so much that I tend to just avoid them or agree with whatever they say. I do like a good debate (in fact, I think it's therapeutic), but if you're going to come away from a debate with someone hating you, then it's an argument and you can't win. I especially dislike it when someone has no intention of understanding any one else's point of view.
   
   For example, the other day I was reading Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence when a friend came up to me with full intention of starting an argument.
   
   He said, "Are you enjoying that book?"
   
   I said, "Yes, it's amazingly informative. I read a biography on Greenspan years ago and loved it too."
   
   He said, "Is that the financial idiot who criticized Bush?"
   
   "Oh what do I do?" I thought. I was already stumbling on my words when I blurted, "Greenspan was the Fed chairman for many years, arguably the most powerful man in the world. He's not just anybody. I haven't finished the book, but I believe he criticizes the way Bush lowered taxes and increased spending. Historically, Republican presidents would lower taxes and decrease spending. He says one without the other is just not good fiscal policy. Anyway, that's only a small part of the book."
   
   My friend was so heated at this point, his face went tomato red. To the distraction of everyone around us, he came back at me with, "You shouldn't believe any of that liberal garbage!"
   
   I wanted to say, "But Greenspan is a Libertarian Republican!" Instead I just closed the book and answered, "Yeah, you're probably right."
   
   
5. I tend to distrust and to avoid any kind of blind devotion to any institution, company, political party or anything of the like. Politically, I feel inclined to be a centrist. Computer company? I own a Mac and a PC and I use both interchangeably. Religion? I take my family to an LDS (Mormon) ward for church, but then I study and encourage my family to study all kinds of world religions/mythologies. Like the "anti-theist" atheist Christopher Hitchens, I believe unthinking loyalty to a single religion/mythology leads to ignorance and sometimes war. But unlike Hitchens and more like the mythologist maverick Joseph Campbell, I believe our innate nature tells us we need transcendental heroes and, thus, our own mythology. Stories that teach morality help us live better and longer, and are the reasons why we still create them in forms of literature, plays and films. A friend of mine told me once, "But it's sad you don't have any kind of deep personal conviction of faith." I did not feel sad, more like liberated. I'm exercising a deep personal conviction that lies in freedom of personal moral choice.
   
   
6. Lastly and on a lighter note, I'm a Barnes & Noble junkie. Explanation? I just like reading a lot. I have a social life there with the greatest minds of the world. When my wife says (in Spanish), "David, do you want to go to dinner and a movie?" I try very hard to not disappoint her by answering, "How about we eat dinner here, I drink an extra protein shake, and we go to Barnes & Noble instead?" She'd say, "Again!?" I'd answer, "The works of all the greatest minds in the world are there, and besides, there's this new book I want to read!" At this point, she'd shrug and say my name really loud, "David!" And I'd say, "OK a movie, but please not Harry Potter and the Order of how Gryffindor wins and everybody claps at the end." (I happen to think Harry Potter's good fortune in every book/movie is way too contrived to have kids consider him an actual "hero". But my kids love the books anyway. Their own personal choice.)
   
   Whenever I have a choice between doing one thing (like laundry) and going to Barnes & Noble, I usually pick the latter. I get there at least twice a week. I also have an overused Amazon credit card. I have bought so many books from Amazon, that the company has perfected its way of "recommending books" to me that it knows I'll be interested in buying. Mom told me I should switch to a credit card that gave me points or airline miles instead. I told her, "But I get free books!" She told me quite rightly, "There's no more room in your house or garage for more books."
   

Oh... there's so much more. One can never get enough of talk oneself. I didn't even get to my continual absent-mindedness, my granola meditations, my love for the sound of running water, my dislike of anything in my house that looks like it belongs at the office, etc. I'd be happy to bore you to death, if you'd just ask me for more. "Six things" was a wise choice.