The Magistrates Should Be Elected By The People

Why I will boycott the Olympics

2008-07-03T11:33:00.003-04:00

Two reasons why I will not watch the games being held in the Chinese capital (and how disgusting that they can be held in a police state!):

From the Financial Times, July 2, 2008 (excerpt from "China tries to muzzle quake victim parents" by Jamil Anderlini):

Chinese security forces are putting pressure on angry parents to abandon demands for a full investigation into why so many schools collapsed in the May earthquake in Sichuan province and have rounded up human rights workers in the earthquake-ravaged region.

In tent cities that have sprung up throughout the region, soldiers carrying batons patrol the streets and security agents and police have stepped up efforts to muzzle any sign of “social instability”.

An atmosphere of anxiety reigns among the parents of children killed in school collapses in the towns of Mianzhu and Dujiangyan as government and security officials apply increasing pressure on them to drop demands for a full investigation.A parent in Dujiangyan said that officials had said “not to make trouble” and to quietly accept cash compensation of Rmb 12,000 ($1,750) per child with the promise of a further Rmb 20,000 ($2,917) to come later.

Police have harassed and followed journalists trying to interview parents in the town of Mianzhu who openly discussed their grievances at first but later asked to be left alone after meeting with local government officials…Beijing ordered a nationwide crackdown on dissent over the weekend, calling on all officials to ensure “zero mass petitions to Beijing, zero petitions to provincial capitals and no mass incidents during the Olympic Games period”.

From The Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2008 (excerpt from "In China, a Show of Force" by Shai Oster):

An attempt by a Wall Street Journal reporter to converse with a group of Tibetans who said they were from Ganzi, a heavily ethnic Tibetan region in the western part of Sichuan, abutting Tibet proper, was quickly interrupted by police Sunday. About a dozen men wearing helmets and holding their fingers on the triggers of machine guns surrounded the group and ordered the Tibetans aside while they checked the paperwork of the foreign reporter. Any photos showing monks or police were ordered erased.

World Monuments Fund and Modernism

2008-06-26T15:09:00.000-04:00

I have been working at the World Monuments Fund since January 2008. WMF is a nonprofit international organization dedicated to preserving architectural/cultural heritage sites around the globe. Our biggest advocacy tool is the World Monuments Watch, announced every other year, which highlights 100 of the ‘most endangered sites’ across the globe. We collect hundreds of nominations (from governments, organizations, individuals, etc.), and the top 100 are selected by an independent panel of experts.

At the moment, I am knee-deep in Modernism. We have a “Modernism at Risk” initiative here at WMF, to bring attention to and help save important works of Modern architecture. Our first Modernism Prize, to be awarded biennially, is being presented to a German architecture firm (Brenne Gesellschaft von Architekten mbH) on July 10 in New York. The firm restored the ADGB Trade Union School designed by Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer of the Bauhaus. It was designed and built between 1928-1930. In 1933 the Nazis took it over and used it as an SS training facility. It was used as a trade school again after the War, but then was abandoned, being saved from demolition in 2001. It has been restored and is now functioning again as a school.

At first, I found it difficult to love the Modern buildings I was researching and writing about, especially the Brutalist ones (basically anything by Marcel Breuer!). However, the ideas behind Modernism won me over, and I am proud to be taking part in this effort to preserve the recent architectural past.

Verticality

2007-09-25T14:05:00.000-04:00

[two bikers on the subway.]

I did something very new to me today. I’ve been lately worried about the state of my computer.

Isn’t it new?

Yes, and nothing’s broken yet, but it’s slower than you’d expect a new computer to be. So when I opened iTunes after deciding to download and watch a show, I closed Firefox.

What else was open?

Nothing. Just iTunes. Isn’t that weird?

Wow. You’re talking about verticality and straification.

Yeah. Applications that aren’t about the internet anymore, they’re about the information you’re looking for.

That’s right. All these programs are coming into being that are going to totally negate search engines, because they pull, alter, and create a fixed scope of ideas much more quickly and efficiently, depending that you’re looking for something within that fixed scope.

So anarchists like search engines and hate iTunes and Google Earth.

That would be a reasonable hunch.

Religious extremism

2007-08-07T12:41:00.000-04:00

I posted this as a note on facebook first, but it had such success in creating a debate (admittedly only between three people thus far, but still good stuff) that I thought I would post it here. It is not profound insight, merely the result of deep my frustration approaching anger towards radical Muslims/Islamists who utilize the freedoms of liberal democracies to promote hateful, misogynistic drivel:

It concerns me greatly that these people preach such ridiculous and dangerous drivel in this country, yet would probably be banned from doing so in their own country of origin. Ah, the wonders of free speech. They take advantage of that right, yet if their model society came into being, such a liberty would vanish in an instant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/world/europe/06hizb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

These people have to be challenged and fought (hopefully with rhetoric and the law first) so that their ideas do not reach any more of the populace and poison any more minds. I am sick of these kinds of calls to destroy secular society/societies and impose a backward, misogynistic ideology. (Note that in the article the speaker did not say he was against the idea of imposing a Sharia-based caliphate in Britain, just claimed he would focus first on areas that would achieve the fastest results - i.e., the Middle East.)

*The photo comes from a piece by Christopher Hitchens in a recent issue of Vanity Fair.

Quantum Leap.

2007-07-28T01:10:00.000-04:00

[Halloween party:
John and Devon, middle of party. Devon is dressed as a lounge singer; John is dressed in white navy dress uniform, has a cigar in his mouth, hat under right arm.]

++Discussion is about relationships, it breaks from the abstract with Devon’s line:++

God, imagine if we actually tried picking people up?

I’ve tried. It’s entertaining, then all of a sudden they expect to sleep with you.

I’m going for it. He’s cute like people like. [takes a pull on beer.]

I think he looked over here once or twice. [left hand into jacket pocket]

What are my odds? Objectively.

[John pulls Ziggy out of coat pocket. Devon takes another pull, shoots a smile across the room. John Punching buttons. Slaps unit, punitive glare on face.]

They’re alright.

Oh, boy. [walks out of frame]

[Adam steps into frame, dressed as Han Solo. Next frame is over john & adam’s shoulders from back, they’re slightly out of focus, Devon is across room talking to guy, who’s dressed as Peter Pan.]

You told her the odds? Never tell her the odds.

Last Gasp for Tommy

2007-07-05T15:01:00.000-04:00

In my year abroad, my year of following the birds, I did not make a study of living in foreign countries. I know it fails to do justice to the scope and difficulty of other Watson projects, but I did not make a study of renting an apartment in Paris, or buying a car in India, or falling in love with the cafe waitress in Buenos Aires who brought me my coffee each morning as I sat and watched the people passing in the street. No, in my year abroad, my year of following the birds, I made a study of only one thing: movement. I learned an infinite ocean of truths and half-truths and maybe-truths about people and light and bursts of feeling and rain, and anything else you can imagine, but I made a true study of only one thing: movement. At one point, maybe in southern Africa or South America, I sat on a bus and watched the world wash by like a river of living paint, and had a thought: ‘the only permanence in my life is a constant of state of impermanence’. And that thought, it seems, held true for almost the entire year of my project – a study of movement, a study of trains, of boats and buses, of dust clouds enveloping smooth-soled shoes. In my year abroad, my year of following the birds, I never saw the same cafe waitress twice, and in some places, that was fine by me.

In my year abroad, my year of following the birds, it was my study of movement that set me subtly and sometimes deeply apart from other travelers, often in a way that was on the surface totally non-apparent. At guesthouses, backpackers, auberges, hostels, alojadas, and budget hotels I met the bold and adventurous cohort of the world: Australian, German, British, Canadian, Irish, Israeli, Argentine, US-er [more commonly known as American, a term which rightfully angers some people from South America who see its use by people from the United States as a usurping and monopolizing of continent and identity], South African, Singaporean, Pakistani, Columbian, Japanese, Mexican; aged 18 to 60 years; homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, transsexual, sexually ambiguous, sexually devious, sexually repressed, sexually indifferent; over weight and under weight and sometimes just cosmic drifting weight; black, white, brown, red, ochre, pallid, burnt to a crisp, cinnamon-brown, coffee-brown, nut-brown, freckled, pock-marked, pure-skinned, tanned-just-right.

While the eclectic motley crew of travelers, wanderers, vacationers, refugees, road warriors, amblers, ramblers, and drifters are not all bold and curious adventurers, but are in fact sometimes bored, boring, vacuous, terrified, disinterested, ignorant, and obnoxious, they all almost unanimously share one condition: they are entering a world - their travel destination - that is different, vastly or minutely, from their known comfortable world, the place from which they departed. Despite the myriad human and experiential differences that travelers possess, the fact that such people are capable of forming mystifyingly close and firm friendships over a period of hours or days is testament enough to the strength of such a commonality. These travelers have all left their houses and apartments; their boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses; their plants and children and cats; their driveways and walkways and set-ways; their morning commutes and cigarette breaks and overtimes; their white walls and white noise and white picket fences; and they have all traveled to somewhere different.

For many of the travelers I met, however, the life they had left behind was their ‘real’ life and was a constant, intact entity often carried in the back of the mind as a source of comfort and security. Every aspect of traveling for such individuals could be faced with the knowledge that an intact sphere of existence, identity and, for some, normality awaited their return. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, this return was liberatingly available at any time after their departure, completely dependent on the traveler's health and state of enjoyment and general well-being as the adventures progressed. For some such travelers it even appears that the life left behind was simply and perfectly paused, to be resumed at the push of a button or the drop of a hat (or bag in this case), almost without a beat being missed.

Now, I have painted a picture of the world's sphere of traveling and travelers in which I existed, moved, and studied during my year abroad, my year of following the birds. Such an arena only exists in the context of its colorful community of characters, since traveling itself is actually something of a relative, abstract concept that can be defined by an infinite number of activities and experiences, and can occur at any given place or time. I have already mentioned that as a group, travelers represent an immense diversity of cultural and experiential backgrounds, and by individual comparison, each is vastly unique. I also mentioned, however, that despite this uniqueness a commonality essential to the very nature of traveling itself allows firm, fierce bonds of friendship to be instantly formed among even diametrically opposed individuals, as unlikely as it may initially seem. I have taken the time to elaborate in such detail on the traveler's sphere so as to more clearly describe my own passage among its rooms of faces and corridors of voices.

My study of movement set me apart from other travelers not because it made me more unique as an individual than any other wanderer, a claim that would be preposterous and ridiculous at the very least, but because it created conditions in which I could not claim to share some aspects of the fundamental commonality that unites travelers independent of individual identity. For me, traveling was never a 3 day, or 3 week, or even 3 month affair – a reprieve perhaps – capable of being continually juxtaposed with a separate, comfortable, distant, and permanent sphere of existence, an alternate life. My movement was everything I had: traveling my job, traveling my study, traveling my vacation, traveling my normality, traveling my waking, eating and sleeping, traveling my life, traveling everything I knew for a year. If I got tired of bus rides and hostel beds after a month, I could not sigh with a resigned smile and say, "Oh, well, I'll be back in New York in a couple of days!". Within the sphere of constant movement, of continual shifting and changing and flux, of traveling and travelers taking a reprieve from whatever they had left behind, I had to develop a sense of normality. Within a sphere of people fleeing their working life with its usual routines, its day-to-day habits and systems of existence, its stresses and victories, I actually had to create exactly such a working life with all the qualities just mentioned, because I had nothing else and no other choice. And within that sphere of travelers, this difference is what set me apart.

The truth is that several days or weeks can be wrestled with in the mind and subdued with ease, but a year for all intensive purposes can seem, feel, and be an eternity. When I left for a year, with no opportunity to return to the US for the duration of that time, I left with nothing for my mind to fall back on: no apartment, no lover or spouse, no dog or cat or rhododendron bush, no job or finger-wagging boss. I left only my parents and brother - that family living in a strange new house that my father's employer had provided for us. So now you are uncontrollably curious: in a sphere where traveling is not an escape from a 9-to-5, but is in fact the 9-to-5 itself, and one with no apparent escape from its stresses and hazards, how then does one possibly survive? Listen now, and I will tell you.

At first, when the traveling really began, I didn't know if I would survive. The first month when my project was focused on the birds' breeding grounds, I experienced a semi-permanence that would not be repeated for the remainder of the year. Following this easing into things, there was the whirlwind, sleepless bus hopping down the coast of England; and the train to and through France and Spain; and the ferry to Africa, to Morocco, to the coastal city of Tangiers; and then the train to Marrakech and the bus to Agadir; and I had started to take the malaria pills and exhaustion and stress and doubt and horrible dreams and shock were really settling in; and dear god there were 8 months more of this nightmare of back aches and insomnia and sweaty, mind-numbing bus stations and solitude and dirty looks; and I felt my strength leave me.

If there was no project binding me to a path, I think in southern Morocco, in the coastal city of Agadir – in the cockroach-infested dank hotel where I confronted the darkest – I might have given up entirely. Maybe adopted the aforementioned traditional mantle of Vacationer and spent two weeks seeing the sights – camera always in hand, white line of sunscreen always drawn proudly and perfectly like a badge on the nose's pale bridge – before hopping back on the plane with a sigh, ordering a glass of Scotch, and planning Monday's return to the office. Part of me hated the project in Agadir, but in the end it was probably the project itself that saved me, forcing me to stay focused and dedicated and, above all, to keep moving. It was in Morocco that on some below-conscious level for which I had no words at the time, my mind and body were facing a necessary decision: adapt or break down. Just as the environment brutally enforces the laws of natural selection on all its various inhabitants, so did my project in providing a path and forcing me to keep moving leave me no choice but to evolve.

In northern Africa, I began to develop a mindset and certain practices that now appear to be startling related to some aspects of Zen Buddhism, of which I must confess to know very little. I focused at times on the present, the moment, the 'now'; and on the surety of the fact that everything comes to pass, everything is transitory, everything that is as we know it ends in time. This was a battle against the aching yearnings for permanence – for being in a place for longer than a few days or a week – that were already beginning to ebb and flow in my mind's ocean. This was Africa: a struggle, frustration, a rebirth, pain, beginnings, growth, change, reflection, confusion; learning in the ravages of a scorched, torn mind to make a home in the foreign and the different and in a state of transience, of pure and unadulterated impermanence.

In South America, I found with a searing sense of elation and pride during occasional self-reflective moments – moments which had grown rarer and rarer as I moved south through Africa and eventually left that continent behind – that I had made something of a beautiful, refined art – or science, perhaps – of planning for no more than the current day and the next. It had become instinctual to stop thinking and simply react and run with the currents of the world as they suddenly welled up across my path to pull me in an unseen direction. I had stopped questioning and fighting and trying to wrestle the world into fitting a certain conception of it that I might have held. I embraced the embrace of the universe and even began to love the uncertainty and the state of being an electric elastic particle spinning and flying from one moment and experience to the next. I was almost permanently exhausted and sore but I mostly stopped noticing or feeling it. In any case, weakness stopped mattering, since there was no time for it. Some days, seizing a moment did come to mean staying in the hostel and sleeping all day, even if that resulted in permanently foregoing certain 'not-to-be-missed' sites of a country, and perhaps simultaneously choosing self-afflicted isolation from fellow travelers that had all joined together for a day of adventures. I conditioned myself to the dangerous point of finding – almost seeking – normality and comfort in twenty hour bus rides and hard, stained bus-station benches. I had become impervious and I was having fun, and I loved it all, the beautiful, depraved, and gritty. The project suffered in South America but I had found a new strength. I was intoxicated with a new power of becoming the human embodiment of a verb: movement, action, the 'just do'.

By the time I reached northern South America, however, I began to find a sobering and a mastery of my transformation, and a return to the project with fresh mind and eyes. In my new form of being, and of being movement, I could manage and perform the project with infinite more depth and proficiency and make it just another part of the drifting. Like a modern Renaissance man, I could banish fear, and learn to do anything – nothing could stop me or stand in my way. This is how I ended the year: strong in mind, strong in body, and strong in project. I had come full circle.

Despite yearning for something constant and static and unmoving during my year abroad, my year of following the birds, I felt distinctly uncomfortable when I returned to the United States and arrived at my parent's house in Connecticut, letting the bag thud dully to the ground for the last time. I felt out of place there, anxious and restless. Like a train derailed, my constant movement of a year was suddenly and abruptly halted, thrown off course into a purposeless directionless void of fixedness. There were other strangenesses as well, those little things that always stand out in the mind more than anything else. I had left with a conscious philosophy of simplicity in mind, carrying only 1 pack, with only 1 T-shirt and 1 pair of shoes for the year, and when I took a box of my clothes from the basement and pulled on a shirt I'd left behind, I felt like I was wearing someone else's cloths. I realized after a few days in the same bed, the same house, and the same town that I was still brushing my teeth with one of those two-part, collapsible, convenient, disposable travel-toothbrushes. I realized that this specific travel-toothbrush was one I had received for free, along with a bar of soap and a pair of earplugs, from an overnight train through France nine months back. Perhaps I should scratch disposable from the prior list of adjectives and commend the French on the durability of their travel-toothbrushes, even though I'd bet an entire case of them that they are made in a factory somewhere in China or Japan. But that is neither here nor there. Anyway, the soap: a veritable menagerie of compact, miniature bars – single-serving soap, as Tyler Durden might call it – that I horded from every hotel that gave them out, and now find I can’t throw away, even though I know I won’t ever use them. There’s the circular one from the same French train where I received my toothbrush, bearing in the same red letters the name of the line: ‘renfe’; the rectangular pink ones from that quiet guesthouse in northern Argentina where my brother I stayed when he visited for New Years; the one with the blue wrapper – ‘Danubia: Contra Bacterias’ – from the towering decrepit Salinas hotel on the southern coast of Ecuador; the other ones in white paper emblazoned with the words ‘Gold Coast’ and a picture of a beach and a sailboat, given out by a hotel somewhere in the Virgin Islands, maybe St Croix. Soap with hygienic properties now lost, sacrificed to serve a more noble cause as memories trapped in crumbling bar form, the jigsaw pieces littering my bag of toiletries like jumbled road signs marking different stages of a long journey. I guess after all it is in fact exactly those little things – the toothbrushes and shirts and bars of soap, those things that for some reason always stand out in the mind more than anything else – that can speak with the simplest lucidity if given a chance. It’s clear now that after a year of drifting and plunging and transforming, my life as an act of movement and traveling will not fall back so easily into a relaxed state of stasis, of bulging stuffed wardrobes and pack-free shoulders and big fat lasting bars of green Irish Spring soap. Besides, I have a hunch that before it does, I’ll find myself picking up the bag and hitting the road again.

Pitch-poling

2007-06-21T01:31:00.000-04:00

do you know what I would be afraid of?
dot dot
keeling.
listing to sides off any teleological track.
it's over and that's not me as nihilist but all as how we are.
gosh, i should text message this.
instead
like so.

It's Borges!

2007-06-05T01:40:00.000-04:00

I know what it is, it's Borges.
Much of me had really done away with the comforts of metaphysicalisms, which are no joke but more than a trouble. Then I found myself lost!
See, like that. It could have been a joke about Ariadne but that would have been phonetical, a pun surely, and rather less dependent on signifieds.
I feel like I'm carrying baggage around--my desire isn't interstitial, it's damn near anthropomorphic.

Ishmael the gorilla, Don Juan the sorcerer, Anne the Australian, Biological determinism, and me

2007-05-28T15:34:00.000-04:00

According to Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael, and other historians and anthropologists, 'modern-day' humans and their recent evolutionary ancestors existed for almost 3 million years prior to commencement of the event that has come to be known as the agricultural revolution. Quinn claims that prior to this momentous and still ongoing event, humans lived 'in the hands of the gods', or, in other words, lived at the mercy of the world. A simplified way of stating the same is to say that prior to the agricultural revolution humans lived without trying to control - in the dominating, mastering sense of the word - the world around them and its course, but, for the most part, existed as any other organism on the planet, ie by following the same biological/ecological rules, particularly those concerned with competition between species.

The agriculture revolution has now persisted for several thousand years - since approximately 900 BC, a small fraction of the time humans and their ancestors existed on the planet without its associated concepts or the practice of tilling the earth. The agricultural revolution clearly involved not only technological changes for humans but also moral and ethical, social and cultural, and religious and philosophical shifts as well. A deeply important potentially far reaching aspect of these changes lies in the power of control, or the illusion of the power of control.

For hunter-gatherer groups, those Quinn calls Leavers, prior to the birth of agriculture, 'living at the mercy of the world' often meant having little or no control over food supply and availability. Food, while often plentiful, could almost certainly be encountered each day but one had no ability to predict the type or the amount, nor the ability to store/preserve any excess food that was hunted or gathered. Naturally such a limitation would create a situation in which one was forced to take only what one needed for oneself and one's immediate community, and no more. The crucial aspect of this situation to remember, however, is that because food was often so plentiful, it made no difference that storage or production of an excess was impossible. There was, at least for the 3 million year majority of human history on the planet, simply no drive or incentive for technology such as agriculture, most likely because of the abundance of food available for a top-of-the-food-chain omnivore like a human creature.

Thus the point I am driving at: control of the world around us or the illusion of such control. Being able to produce and store certain types of food in quantities that exceed necessity essentially puts our species' fate and survival directly in the apparent power and mastery of humans, creating a sense that we control our world and our place in it, and, as Quinn says, taking us out of the hands of the gods. In other words, the dawn of agriculture marked the moment when humans no longer lived at the mercy of the world, but began to believe that they could make the world live at the mercy of humans. I don't remember if these words are Quinn's or my own.

This idea, that of perceiving to have the ability to control the world and our own lives, was most likely instrumental in the early days of the agriculture revolution, and as this time seems also to hold the birth of much of the culture of the first world today, it is not surprising that the concept of control over our selves and the world is now entrenched so deeply into almost all aspects of that culture. Self-help guides entitled 'Control Your Own Destiny' have never sold so well as today, but I'm willing to bet most of the consumers of such guides don't think of the agricultural revolution as they stand in the line next to the check-out counter. The idea that the ability to control our lives - and the microcosm of the world in which we revolve - might be an illusion may seem preposterous, but such incredulity may only be a testament to the depth of saturation that that idea has reached in our system of beliefs.

Three different things have come to convince me that the concept of controlling ones' self and the world is indeed almost entirely an illusion: Australians, my own experiences, and biological determinism. While my own accounts are by no means conclusive evidence of the notion that humans should perhaps live like other species at the mercy of the world, these personal testimonies provide a convenient stage on which to discuss the recent findings in neurological research that lend strength to the proponents of biological determinism.

I spent one year immediately after graduating from college traveling outside of and often far from home, following a bird on its migration route through Canada, Europe, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. An inexperienced traveler at the outset, I attempted to plan in advance and control all aspects of my journey in my first few months on the road - transportation, lodging, where I'd eat, what I'd do, every hour of every day used to maximum efficiency - and the stress of it nearly left me with a broken body, mind, and spirit. I discovered, to use Quinn's words once more, that living outside of the hands of the gods - continually fighting to shape the world to meet my preconceived expectations and destiny as I moved from place to place - was not only unnatural but destructive and painful. It took an unexpectedly serious conservation on a long train ride through the Moroccan desert with an Australian girl who had been alone on the road for months to reveal the error of my traveling ways, namely that I trusted too little, feared too much, and tried to control all steps of the way.

In all the countries I've visited, I've encountered more Australian travelers than wanderers from any other place, and incredibly, each of them, without exception, has possessed a profound depth of character with regards to one particular trait: their open outlook of joy at the wonder of the world - dark and light - is unflaggingly strong. They greet the world each day, waiting eagerly for the blinds to be yanked open and her colors and secrets revealed, with no thoughts of the future and its pitfalls; they seem to go almost childlike to the unknown, with an awe-inspiring, near-inconcievable, boundless faith that everything really will be all right - no matter where they are (potentially dangerous) or what they are doing (potentially foolish).

Perhaps more amazing to me, as I've found ever since the train ride in Morocco, when I really began to let my own constructs fall, is the degree to which the Australians have been justified: even when attempts at total control are almost entirely abandoned in exchange for traveling at the mercy of the world, everything usually does turn out all right. Of course, any one who manages to free themselves from our culture's demand that we master our daily lives and all the possibilities those lives might face tomorrow won't be surprised at all that the zen-like unflappable characteristic of the Australians is hardly ever flouted by reality. It only seems so unreal and inconcievable to those who have taken the lesson of control to heart as much as it seems I did.

My path recently merged with an older Australian woman, also traveling alone, who had taken a month off from her elementary school teacher position, left her two teenage daughters behind, and set out on a three month jaunt across North America, from Alaska to Nova Scotia, then down to Florida and beyond. For several days, our routes along the south coast of Nova Scotia were perfectly and unintentionally in synch and when we found ourselves in the same hostel again in the town of Yarmouth, we laughed aloud, again, and then went out for a drink at the local brew-pub. On the walk to the bar, she talked breathlessly about her adventures and travels, and I saw immediately that she possessed the same approach to the world as her all her fellow countrymen and -women. She paused then, and said something that struck me. When I travel, she said, I live in the embrace of the universe. I didn't have to ask her what she meant, as I'd seen it countless times before. That moment, however, was the first instant when I had heard an Australian verbalizing so clearly what they all seem to hold in common.

In anticipation of an argument that may arise here, I must make an additional point. Living at the mercy of the world does not mean to live in a state of unimaginative, uncritical apathy. The individual relinquishing control over the creation of the path followed must still be an active participant in the moment or the immediate future as it is presented to that individual by the universe. The individual must always work to know its self and be prepared to be open wide to the world as the world continually opens up to the individual.

The reason that it can feel so natural and invigorating to relinquish attempts to control all aspects of our surroundings and our relation to those surroundings might be because natural is exactly what such renunciation is. A highly controversial theory called biological determinism has persisted in the fields of neuroscience and psychology for some time. The idea behind biological determinism is that higher systems of morality and law do not actually exist, and that seemingly complex ethical choices made by individuals are no more than simple, predictable, chemical processes (or biological faults in processes) in certain parts of the brain. According to a radio program I recently heard on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, recent findings in neurological studies seem to be offer more and more support to the theory of biological determinism.

In one such study, it appears that researchers have isolated that portion of the brain which is associated with morality and ethical decisions. This study involved several groups of participants. One group was made up of individuals who had at some point in their lives had received injuries to a specific fraction of their frontal lobe, that portion of the brain directly behind the eyes. The frontal lobes of another group - the control group - were intact and uninhibited. The groups were presented with several situations that involved difficult moral choices and then asked to respond. In one situation, the participant is told that an oncoming train is going to hit and kill 5 people on the track unless the participant chooses to throw a switch, diverting the train to a new track, where it will only hit and kill 1 person. The second situation is outwardly similar: an oncoming train once again is on a collision course with 5 people trapped on the track. This time, however, the participant can only save the 5 people by actively pushing 1 person in front of the train, causing the conductor to slow down and stop before the 5 are reached.

In the latter of the two situations, the hesitation and/or inability by the control group to conclude that they would indeed feel compelled to actively push a person in front of the train represented a moral dilemma completely un-faced by the group who had received prior injuries to a section of their frontal lobes. In this and other tests, the group with slightly damaged brains showed a complete absence of any kind of complex system of morals whatsoever.

It seems clear why such findings would meet with heavy resistance. We as human beings have spent the last several thousand years - again since the birth of agriculture - convincing ourselves that as beings in total control of our fate and future and that of the world, we have a choice in everything we do, we have the final say in creating ethical creeds, in raising them to their seats atop marble pedestals, and in ensuring that every man, woman, and child follows them, under even penalty of death. To even begin to consider that we are essentially the same creatures that existed for almost 3 million years before the agriculture revolution began - biological entities with no rigid, sanctified, holy writ of morals ruling our minds, guiding our actions, and setting us apart from the other beings on the planet, but simply with the ability to imagine and believe in such an illusion - would be an unthinkable admission, one that our culture does not allow.

At some point in Ishmael, it becomes clear that the book is about how humans are meant to live, and all the deepest implications and facets of this seemingly simple clause. The clause refers of course not just to the mechanical process of survival every human undergoes on a daily basis to ensure the presence of food, water, and shelter, but also to the more profound concept of by what rules or systems should humans be guided in their development and behavior and thinking and relation to the rest of the world. Carlos Castaneda, early in his story, "The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge", quotes the diablero don Juan as urging the young anthropologist Carlos to see that his teachings of knowledge and an alternative life style to that offered by first world culture are about discovering how humans are meant to live. In many ways, Castaneda's depictions of don Juan's world begin to create a possible diametrical opposite to Quinn's Mother Culture of the Takers, an opposite that starts to reflect Quinn's conception of the story of the Leavers.

It appears that answers to the question of how humans are meant to live seek to take shape not only in these two stories and other tales, but also in the continually developing world of science and the study of the human brain, psyche, and system of behavior. Schrodinger predicted at one point that "all science is liable to do violence to common sense". If one sees common sense as those aspects of our belief system that have persisted for long enough to be ingrained in almost all individuals adhering to that culture, then his portentous statement, in light of this discussion, gains more solid form. If findings in the scientific communities do systematically break down the notion that human beings are higher entities worlds apart from the rest of the organisms on the planet, perhaps then, to end with the words of Daniel Quinn, humans can begin to enact a completely different story, and the next chapter in evolution will unfold.

How I Learned to Love the Greeks, Or, Why I was Wrong about 300

2007-03-27T13:21:00.000-04:00

This is a little late in coming, but considering the amount of traffic this blog has had recently, I don’t think any of us can be too choosy.

Like I promised, I saw ‘300’. In fact, I saw it on opening day, at 3:00 P.M. in downtown D.C.. And for the most part, I was delighted by just about everything I had expected: lots of blood, some overtures to dark comedy (though not nearly enough), dreamy sets and nightmarish foes. Even a little nudity in the part of Queen Gorgo, played by Lena Headey-Lebeaux (I’m hereby instating the It’s-OK-To-Discuss-Nudity-In-Your-First-Entry-In-A-While rule, and if you disagree, then please dear god let me hear it or post your argument!).

Despite that which I boyishly anticipated, I was also slightly worried about the film’s easy East vs. West theme, one that could be quickly corrupted as a modern take on the War on Terrorism—I think I was too hasty in worrying about this: the blogosphere erupted with discussions about this very topic before the movie premiered (“Leonidas as George W?”), thereby inoculating most from (and maybe enticing some to) the awful connections between the Current Administration and the Noble Spartans, the Despotic Persians and the Fundamentalist Terrorist, and perhaps even the Corrupt Oligarchs with the Democratic Congress.

(In fact, this film already has been re-presented in some forms of political discourse, just not in the ways that I was expecting. A recent political cartoon featured in Time Magazine shows a grotesque—well, more grotesque—Vice President Cheney dressed in the Spartan’s crimson, arrow shafts protruding from his body, as one of the last men defending the White House. On the other side of the aisle [or maybe winner’s circle], Al Gore invoked the film when he visited Capitol Hill, imploring all US Senators and Representatives to stand together as ‘the 535’.)

But so far there’s really been nothing new. The film lasted the better part of a month atop the #1 spot (only to be knocked off by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles last weekend), made some cash, introduced Gerard Butler to the world and dug up Faramir from Lord of the Rings (who should be in good movies, but instead opted to play the awful Monk/Q hybrid in ‘Van Helsing’).

Maybe I should have actually waited to have seen the movie, but that’s not a lot of fun. Or maybe I should have just waited for The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart to tell my opinion to me: yes, Iran got upset about this film (and probably deservingly so). But even if ‘300’ is a not-so-veiled allegory to the War on Terror, there are plenty of absolutely blatant uses of the war in everyday media. Need I invoke ‘24’? I shouldn’t been so worried about the more subtle forms of vilification/brainwashing: I should have been more worried about the parade of Baddies that simply march right pass allegory on their way to blowing something up whilst ululating.

So that allegory, while it does probably exist, isn’t something we’re not used to. But—and as Alexander W. said in response to my original post—war films are always simply about conflict. And if it’s not about the war on terror, than it has to be something.

Enter the strange interpretations of ‘300’ that have tried to torture the film (and haven’t those poor, waxed actors been tortured enough?) into some allegory of something it clearly isn’t: Wesley Morris’ review (The Boston Globe, 3/9/2007) eventually spiraled into an analysis of the film as allegory about homosexuality—his evidence: Persian emperor Xerxes wears makeup and has a private nightclub-like tent wherein certain women…erm…cavort.

This film is not about that. Were it, the Spartan Heterosexuals would be quickly undone by a fifth column back at home: the Spartan Priests are depicted as depraved and degenerate in their lusts for a young oracle, and even Queen Gorgo (again, played by Lena Headey-Lebeaux) has to, quite literally, sleep with the enemy at one point. Moreover, three hundred waxed, buffed (Jon Stewart referred to their 1800 abdominals), preening men does not make for the strongest of heterosexual stand-ins.

Assigning allegorical value to ancient wars is nothing new: J.R.R. Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings” eventually became an allegory for whatever conflict its readers/viewers imagined it (at once the films were about nuclear proliferation, the return of traditional) Catholic values and the struggle of the Green movement). ‘300’ hardly stacks up against LOTR, but the public’s need to unveil the film’s allegory interests me. Why do they bother?

Are we trying to verify our oftentimes nerdy interest in battle movies? Or is it because modern warfare demands a more nuanced understanding, causing us to anachronistically complicate ancient (and fictional) depictions? Can’t these films just be about ancient peoples hacking and stabbing the bejesus out of each other? Can’t we all just get along with slaughter? Because I really think that that’s how the Spartans would have wanted it.

Injuries

2007-03-24T03:04:00.000-04:00

Addictions to exercize can start with simple obsessions of technique, or preoccupations with the day's happenings, or cetera.

My father raced my family (&me) down Mt. Killington in '94, when it was a snowless summer, and he was on foot and we in chairlift chairs.

Once he began swearing (Dad got awfully embarrassed the time his 7-year-old son hissed "horseshit!" in a crowded store upon stubbing his toe on a set of shelves) -- once he started swearing we knew he was okay, though he did have to limp down 600 vertical feet or so with his busted left knee.

I'm a solid runner, (though I look faster than I am) and when I and my meticulously-placed-feet come up on some overpronated dilettante, passing as quickly as possible is the only way to remain comfortable in this therapeutic routine. Doing that with our knees would mean therapy we can't afford, me and my uninsured knees.

Today I cooked a loaf of banana bread and in tandem a loaf of orange bread. I programmed in Visual Basic until my eyes got dry. My bank account is going to give me digestive problems. And some dude who looks like a marathoner fucking housed on me halfway into my route, right at the big hilltop, before the Botanical Gardens.

Big big clicker.

2007-03-23T09:44:00.000-04:00

It's not like I'm really committed and I still can't stop what I'm doing!

I need a way out, a toning down at the least and god to just sit and drink a chocolate milk or something with the Simpsons muted is all it would take, if I could pull it off to do that forever.

"Hey, John."

"Oh, hi, Nate. I didn't see you there. This infinitely filled glass of Hershey's chocolate syrp in milk is really hard to peer around. And the silent cartoon in the sky washes out a lot of the other colors."

"Nice setup. So what are you up to?"

I will also have thought-controlled lightning bolts.

My couch is bigger than the horizon and I've been thinking of turning off my phone so you can't call me back.

A mother told me in high school that after you give birth you forget how much it hurt you, probably so you'll get pregnant again. --And that you remember it all in a moment when you're pushing out subsequent children.

That pain is a secret, is depth, only relates to itself and to you. To be fair, she didn't say that last bit, but I've got stuff I'm trying to keep out of mind.

Mostly terror.

2007-03-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

Read these two articles with each other. Their suppositions comingle in a very unsettling way. One. Two.

This is a story that must be followed. Absolutely brilliant.

A Chat with a Caracas Taxi Driver: The Venezuela of Hugo Chávez that You Won't Read about in the New York Times

2007-02-27T15:48:00.000-05:00

His name is Giovanni* and soon after we leave the airport we find ourselves imbedded in a barely-moving mass of cars, mopeds, and trucks, a traffic jam he had resignedly prophesied before our progress was so heavily forestalled along the main road between the Venezuelan coast and the urban-sprawl of Caracas. Giovanni owns two cars and is the boss and only employee of a transport service he began years ago. He is part of a small, slowly growing middle class in a country where according to him 80% of the people live in stark poverty, governed by a very wealthy elitist minority. Such a scenario is far from uncommon in South America, a continent where for many corruption is the norm and simply a way of life, a seemingly monolithic obstacle contributing in large part to the persistence of the gap between the very rich and the very poor (and the associated near-absence of a middle class).

The burgeoning Venezuelan middle class, Giovanni suggests, is confused, afraid, and somewhat unsure of their identity, capitalizing in part on the wealth of the now-nationalized petroleum industry, but feeling the effects of Chávez 's ever more openly socialist and dictatorial regime. Moving against privatization of all forms, Chávez has according to Giovanni begun reclaiming some peoples' land and homes, and Giovanni says he and other entrepreneurs like him are worried the government will soon come to claim their cars and houses as well. Chávez - apparently paranoid of being killed by the US government and a CIA coup to the point of refusing to live in the presidential palace like each of his predecessors, or even to tell the public where his residence actually is - hasn't yet begun any major acts of violence to maintain his power. Giovanni is sure, however, that it won't be long until people who speak and act against the regime start disappearing. Peaceful demonstrators and casually outspoken citizens have begun to suffer jail time in some instances, and the media is starting to fall completely under government control. Already there are times, Giovanni explains, when all radio and TV stations broadcast only the voice of Chávez for hours on end. In these broadcasts, the president speaks nationalistically about public works projects and community development tasks that Giovanni claims aren't actually being conducted but are instead one aspect of a broader project of propaganda used to create an illusion - nationally and internationally - of the Chávez regime as one concerned with and actively engaged in improving the welfare of the Venezuelan people.

Giovanni points to the garbage-strewn barrios with their ramshackle houses spewing over the hills surrounding Caracas and explains that the people struggling to survive here have no quality water or sewage system, and that gang violence over drugs, for example, results in countless deaths on a weekly basis; the money that Chávez claims is being directed to stem this suffering is in fact only being used to line the pockets of his friends and purchase Mercedes and BMWs for his political allies. Giovanni laughs somewhat bitterly and recalls a point when he talked on the phone with his sister, who has lived in France now for sometime. His sister spoke highly of Chávez , claiming that people in France were impressed with how much he was accomplishing in Venezuela. She initially refused to even believe her indignant brother when he protested that the apparent self-proclaimed successes of the Venezuelan president were no more than a well-crafted and well-presented mirage.

Now, Giovanni continues, with complete control of the military and the congress, Chávez can start being more bold and public in his moves to establish his vision of socialist Venezuela. Giovanni believes that Chávez will mirror the future Venezuela after the Cuba of Castro's golden days; apparently Chávez has already regaled Cuba with free petroleum (a gallon only costs 10 cents here) on several occasions in an effort to develop and maintain good relations with the Castro regime. Most recently in Chávez 's alarming and ever-more extreme leftist but internationally obscured decisions has been in relation to the food sector: Giovanni says exasperatedly that with no sense of the economy or the logistical effects of his actions, Chávez has begun taking over the meat and dairy industry. Within the last year, certain distributors and sellers of chicken and eggs, for example, have been shut down by the regime so the products can be sold in other venues, sometimes even abroad, leaving the Venezuelans at times with a complete a lack of food or with produce so expensive that it is completely unaffordable. Just yesterday, Giovanni grumbles, his wife went to buy chicken but found that all the local grocers had been unable to secure any poultry or eggs from the distributors, whose operations had had all their produce recently seized by Chávez.

As we near the address of my lodging in Caracas, Giovanni says that to understand how Chávez achieved his position of power, and why nobody will currently do anything concrete to prevent the despot from pursuing his agenda, I must understand the history of the president's predecessors. During the reign of the Venezuelan dictators Gómez [Juan Vincente Gómez**, 1908-14, 1922-29, 1931-35] and Jiménez [Marcos Pérez Jiménez, 1952-1958], Giovanni says, major, highly visible developments were achieved in the Caracas area and elsewhere. He takes one hand off the wheel to motion to the overpass arching above his taxi and the modern highway under the tires and explains that these are the same roads that were constructed under the direction of the regimes of those previous dictators. Their actions and devotion, in small part at least, to Venezuela and its people (in addition to the fatness of their own pockets) left the Venezuelans in a position of knowing a feeling of hope for their country and partial faith in its rulers, making it easy now for Chávez to convince the people that his views are in their best interest. Even if Chávez starts taking a more violent and militant stance to maintain his position of power and affluence, the precedent set by those previous despots might suggest to those yearning for a feeling of peace and prosperity here that Chávez will still bring to the country more money and perceived progress than it possess now, a big enough dangling carrot to keep the mule of the Venezuelan people struggling along even under back-breaking conditions.

Giovanni pulls up to the apartment building of the friends I'll be staying with in Caracas, hopping out to unload my pack with a sense of relaxed professional confidence; I can tell he likes being a chauffeur and being his own boss, but more than that he likes that he got to where he is on nothing but hard work, his own hands, and long hours. Without another word, he jumps back in his cab and drives off, as if our intense conservation over the course of the hour and a half start-and-go ride from the airport to the city was as ordinary as the run-of-the-mill "how about the weather" chit-chat. Maybe the Venezuelans are getting that kind of talk out of their system while they still can, before they start worrying about the fists pounding on their doors late at night, or the unmarked government vehicles screeching to a halt along the curbs outside their houses when they step out to leave for work in the early hours of the morning.

In the subsequent days after my conversation with Giovanni, with a certain curiosity about the accuracy of his words swirling around my mind, I began working for my project in the international American school in Venezuela where my friends have been teachers for several years. When those friends told me they had decided this would be their last year teaching in Venezuela because they were worried about the Chávez regime, I began to realize that Giovanni's complaints were not restricted to one person and bore more accuracy than my scientifically-trained, persistently-doubting mind had allowed. I've now had a chance to speak earnestly with other teachers at the same international school, and one after another each has told me they had come to the same decision as my friends: this will be their last year teaching in Venezuela. Sitting here now in the sun in the courtyard of the school, adding the final touches to this essay, this institution feels like a bastion of sanity and intellect that Chávez's paranoid socialist agenda will never be able to touch. But the teacher's are afraid and growing more unsure of their safety all the time. When they leave and go back to the US, where many of them come from, or to other international schools in South America, what will become of this school and its students? Some of the students here are part of the vast majority of the people in this country: Venezuelan by birth with no where else to go, with insufficient means to leave and no where to run when these pristine white walls finally come tumbling down.

*His name isn't actually Giovanni. I decided to use a different name because I don't think he'd want me to use his real name.

**According to Wikipedia, Gómez was granted by the Venezuelan Congress the title of El Benemérito (the Meritorious One) for his large-scale public works program and his role in Venezuela's development. Certainly the discovery of petroleum in Venezuela in 1918 provided Gómez with an enormous amount of monetary resources for the pursuit of development projects and, of course, for the benefit of his own fortune. Despite his contributions to the Venezuelan infrastructure, Gómez did use brutal tactics to maintain his position of power, "ruthlessly crushing his opponents through his secret police in a way that earned him the reputation of a tyrant".

Jorge Luis Borges, Struggling to Write in ‘Bedeviled Times’: Must an Artist Be the People’s Voice?

2007-02-22T15:04:00.000-05:00

[this one is a little long; I recommend, with apologies in advance to the trees and to the Lorax, who speaks for the trees, printing it out and enjoying it over a cup of coffee...]

In a Slate article on Jorge Luis Borges, entitled, "Can a Great Writer Be Blind to The World around Him?" (February 7, 2007), Clive James questions the lack in Borges' writing of open, direct, unambiguous criticism of the Argentine junta. James opens with a quote that Borges made in 1979, late in this writer's career and life, when, according to James, "the Argentine junta was doing its obscene worst". Using (or misusing) the quote to establish Borges as an author who thought that "what was happening to his country was of secondary importance, because his first loyalty was to the world", James forges his stance: Borges was disloyal, almost non-Argentine; detached from the human situation and the concepts of "truth, justice, and mercy"; hiding and taking "refuge in an invented world; writing only as a means of escaping reality. I seek to elucidate not only certain basic historical facts that James omitted in order to strengthen his points but also the apparent political ambivalence of Jorge Luis Borges with a deeper, more thorough examination of his writing and philosophy.

Before constructing a comparative analysis of Borges' writing, I pose a few basic points (and counter-points) on Clive James' commentary. Jorge Luis Borges did live from 1899 to 1986, and most of the major violence characterizing Argentina's Guerra Sucia [Dirty War] did begin in 1976 when Jorge Rafael Videla took control of the country after the ousting of Isabel Martínez de Peron. During the period, however, of 1976 to 1983, when the Argentine junta was conducting its genocide, and, according to James, when Borges was walking the streets of Buenos Aires in a state of oblivion to the suffering all around him, this author was for the most part not even in the country. Borges' mother, his personal secretary, scribe and literally his eyes since he went completely blind in the mid 1950s, died in 1975. After her death, which must have been a serious blow to his writing capabilities, Borges began traveling all over the world, up to the time of his own death in Geneva, Switzerland. If he was even in Argentina for the 1979 writing and publishing of his homage to Victoria Ocampo, he probably wasn't even there long enough to 'hear the screams of the torture center near his house'.

James’ depiction of and attitude towards Borges' career - his citation of Borges’ works published only after 1962 and his use of only the later Argentine violence as a backdrop - creates a misleading and false image of this author. James states that "Borges openly loathed Perón, but fell silent on everything that happened after Perón was ousted - fell silent politically, but artistically came into full flower, an international hit even as his nation entered the tunnel of its long agony". This overly dramatic, hyperbolic statement contains a claim that is delusion bordering on blatant lie. Juan Perón died in 1974 and Isabel Martínez Perón was ousted in 1976, approximately 30 years after Borges actually "came into full flower", and 10 years before the death of, at that later time, that old man. Borges' most famous and acclaimed work - considered by him and others the pinnacle of his career - was Ficciones (1944), for which he received the Gran Premio de Honor de la Sociedad Argentina de Escritores [High Honor Award of the Society of Argentinean Writers]. Labyrinths (1962) is actually a compilation of works written mostly in the mid 1950s earlier, and the first 13 pieces in this compilation represent Ficciones (1944) in its near-entirety. Ten years after Ficciones was first published, Borges was almost completely blind in both eyes, and "because of his near-blindness, Borges ceased to write stories after 1953...and since then has concentrated on even shorter forms which can be dictated more easily" (1). In the prologue of A Personal Anthology (1961), published in the year in which he and Samuel Beckett jointly received the Formentor Prize and in which his international fame really began, Borges writes "My preferences have dictated this book. I should like to be judged by it, justified or reproved because of it, and not by certain exercises in excessive and apocryphal local colour which keep cropping up in anthologies and which I can not recall without a blush" (2). This statement is not one made by a writer who is still 15 years shy of blooming and 'coming into full flower', and though such a statement does not prevent Borges from accomplishing subsequent great works, it does seem to suggest that after consistently publishing his writing for almost 40 years, he had by 1961 begun to reach a certain level of comfort and satisfaction with his literary career. While it doesn't necessarily excuse him from or explain the apparent political ambivalence 15 years later that James wishes to focus on, it is crucial to understand that Borges’ literary mind was much more vibrant decades before Perón was ousted, and not during the latter ten years of this Argentine writer's life, as James falsely suggests.

With those historical corrections in mind, I move to the issue of artistic political silence. James states that "his [Borges'] name and growing international renown were lent to the regime without reserve, either because he approved or - the best that can be said for him - because he was clueless". James is wrong on both counts and neglects to pose the most obvious alternative, namely that Borges simply chose, as I believe any artist is entitled to do, not to write directly and openly about the political situation of his country in the latter years of his career and life. One could potentially claim by 1983, when the juntas led by Videla had disappeared 9000 people at minimum, 30000 at maximum, and when Borges was 3 years from his own death, that the absence of political commentary on the part of this author was the result of old age, fatigue, blindness, and a comfortable feeling of accomplishment with the literary achievements of the previous 60 years. Indeed even by 1940 his "failing eyesight and other crippling afflictions made him more and more a semi-invalid, more and more an incredible mind in an ailing an almost useless body, much like his character Ireneo Funes" (3). One might also contribute Borges' apparent political ambivalence during the most violent epoch of Peronísmo to the fact that he was rarely in the country after 1975 and was most likely out of touch with the events of his country, whether or not he read the newspapers. In my mind, however, the best explanation of Borges' political silence comes as should be expected from his own writing and through a thorough examination of his personal philosophy, an examination which James fails to undertake.

James leads into his discussion of Borges' "apparently detached political position" with the mention of disgruntled Argentines who expected Borges to take a more active anti-Peronísta role. In the introduction to Labyrinths (1962), James Irby discusses this dissatisfaction as well, but also begins to pose a counter-argument: "In Argentina, save for the admiration of a relatively small group, he [Borges] has often been criticized as non-Argentine, as an abstruse dweller in an ivory tower, though his whole work and personality could have emerged only from that peculiar cross-roads of the River Plate region, and his non-political opposition to Perón earned him persecutions during the years of the dictatorship" (4). It was apparently even "speculated that Borges was considered unfit to receive the award [the Nobel Prize in Literature] because of his tacit support of, or unwillingness to condemn, the military dictatorships that were being established in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and elsewhere,....[despite the fact that] he was granted the Jerusalem Prize in 1971, awarded to writers who deal with themes of human freedom and society" (5).

To those Argentines grumbling at the absence of active and engaged political commentary on the part of Borges, this literary behemoth might have said that such malcontents fail to understand that "history, true history, is far more modest [than traditionally accepted 'historical' days and dates] and that its essential dates may well be, for a long time, secret as well" (6), an idea that Borges explores in the essay The Modesty of History. Earlier in the same essay, Borges writes (perhaps somewhat cynically and bitterly) that "one of the tasks of modern governments (most notably in Italy, Germany, and Russia) has been to fabricate or counterfeit them ['historical' days and dates], with the help of previously accumulated propaganda and of persistent publicity" (7). Further in the The Modesty of History, Borges states that "such 'historic dates' [referring for example to a famous battle that occurred on Sept 20, 1792] bear less relation to history than to journalism" (8). Newspapers and historians alike it seems to Borges do no more than record certain mundane superficially critical days and dates, and fail to actually chart the progress of man's humanness - the evolution of the human situation - over the centuries. For Borges, writing openly and distinctly about the Argentine junta would have been to submit to the unimaginative role of simple reporting, of journalism, an unacceptable shift for Borges that Irby detects to some degree as well: "Apparently, many of his [Borges'] countrymen cannot pardon in him what is precisely his greatest virtue - his almost superhuman effort to transmute his circumstances into an art as universal as the finest of Europe - and expect their writers to be uncomplicated reporters of the national scene" (9).

Borges' approach to the concept of history begins to provide insight on how he might have viewed the actions of Videla's junta. His outlook suggests that even if he did read the newspapers, as he claimed he didn't, he wouldn't have ever felt obliged to react - literarily or otherwise - to any articles contained therein, independent of whether they were written in times of peace or in times of violence. The truth is that Borges' political ambivalence is not an emotional neutrality or frigidity with respect to such times of violence, cruelty, and destruction, or even with respect to times of peace, harmony, and productivity, but in truth is more a lack of concern with all aspects of the traditional concept of time. In A New Refutation of Time, Borges follows the idealist logic of Berkeley and Hume to present an associated postulate on time: “Outside each perception (real or conjectural) matter does not exist; outside each mental state spirit does not exist; neither then must time exist outside each present moment” (10). Borges then goes on to mention a section of the treatise Sanhedrin of the Mishnah which states 'whoever kills one man destroys the world', and then writes, "That is the way I understand it, too. Clangorous general catastrophes - conflagrations, wars, epidemics - are a single grief, multiplied in numerous mirrors illusorily" (11). Borges supports his view on human suffering with a quote from Bernard Shaw: "'What can you suffer is the maximum that can be suffered on earth....Do not let yourself be overcome by the horrible sum of human sufferings; such a sum does not exist'" (12). Would even the genocide of thousands of Argentineans over the course of 6 years at the end of Borges' life overcome this philosophical point of view? I think not. Would such physical dates of mass murder in Argentina, the period 1976 to 1983, stand out in man's long repetitive history of torture, self-destruction, and war that has played out from one corner of the earth to the other, among all peoples, all civilizations, races, and nationalities, at one time or another? I think not. Borges may indeed have heard the screams issuing from the torture center that was apparently within walking distance of his house, but the precedent for one human being torturing another had unfortunately been set long ago. To Borges the 'true' historical moment would be have been the date on which one human first tortured another; or to plunge even deeper, the date on which one human first tortured another without suffering sickening feelings of guilt, horror, and remorse; or deeper still, the date on which one man tortured another and only at the death of the tortured realized that it was in fact his own brother. This is the core of the human situation and this core is what interests Borges most.

Failing to see what drives Borges writings, James makes the mistake of analyzing Borges' quote on the 'Patriot of Heaven' literally. Borges, who traveled all over the world and lived for a number of years in Spain, Switzerland and other places in addition to Argentina, truly was a citizen of the whole world. As André Maurois says in the preface to Labyrinths (1962), "Argentine by birth and temperament, but nurtured on universal literature, Borges has no spiritual homeland. He creates, outside time and space, imaginary and symbolic worlds" (13). James sees as Maurois would also have seen that Borges' "first loyalty was to the world", but James fails to comprehend the symbolism that Maurois touches on, namely that 'the world' to Borges is merely a representation for all its human inhabitants and the play of humanness through all time (or through the infinity of moments constituting the human experience). James sees a literal allegiance to the world as synonymous with and necessitating a physical, actual abandonment of one's own country and one's "loyalties to truth, justice, and mercy", but this point of view is gravely short-sighted. Borges was concerned in his writing with the human situation, with Man, not just the Argentinean man or woman, and if his writing is not a directly obvious discussion of his own country, of the political situation in Argentina, then it is at times, at the least, an indirect one, a commentary that can be applied to the human situation in Argentina as anywhere else. In an almost unforeseen and unplanned response to James, Irby wrote, "Borges' stories may seem more formalist games, mathematical experiments devoid of any sense of human responsibility and unrelated even to the author's own life, but quite the opposite is true. His idealistic insistence on knowledge and insight, which means finding order and becoming a part of it, has a definite moral significance,...and all his fictional situations, all his characters, are at bottom autobiographical, essential projections of his experiences as writer, reader and human being" (14).

This idea, that Borges' imaginary worlds and shrouded mysterious fables were actually deeply pertinent, not only to the Argentine people during the junta but also are so to people at all times, was also touched on by Anthony Kerrigan, one of the translators for A Personal Anthology (1961). He states in the foreword to that book, "Jorge Luis Borges is most poignantly and hauntingly interested in what men have believed in their doubt: Siddartha, Josaphat, the Face of Christ; Duns Scotus, Averroes, Berkeley, Hume; Judaism, its offshoot Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Idealism. His equivocation regarding heresies and dogmas renews them all, though he may be the unique evocative source of his own nostalgic non-belief in Belief or prescient belief in non-belief" (15). For the Argentine citizen, the era of Peronísmo, beginning when Juan Perón first came to power in 1946, was certainly a time of tremendous doubt, and thus in light of Kerrigan's quote, it is really no surprise that Borges thrived as a writer in this environment as much as he did. Irby expands these ideas, rather verbosely, beginning with a question similar to that originally posed by James:

"It could be asked what such concerns of a total man of letters [Borges] have to do with our plight as ordinary, bedeviled men of our bedeviled time. Here it seems inevitable to draw a comparison with Cervantes, so apparently unlike Borges, but whose name is not invoked in vain in his stories, essays and parables. Borges’s fictions, like the enormous fiction of Don Quixote, grow out of the deep confrontation of literature and life which is not only the central problem of all literature but also that of all human experience: the problem of illusion and reality. We are all at once writers, readers and protagonists of some eternal story; we fabricate our illusions, seek to decipher the symbols around us and see our efforts overtopped and cut short by a supreme Author: but in our defeat, as in the Mournful Knight’s, there can come the glimpse of a higher understanding that prevails, at our expense. Borges’s ‘dehumanized’ exercises in ars combinatoria are no less human than that (16)".

It seems in the unimaginative, institutional mind of James there can be only two polar and immutable sides: a black or a white; a loyalty to the world, or a loyalty to one's country and the standards of truth, justice, and mercy; that "Borges either hadn't noticed it [the junta's genocide] or...he knew something about it and thought it could be excused". As a related side note, Borges was raised by "parents of the intellectual middle class [who were] descended from military and political figures prominent in the struggles for Argentine national independence and unity that occupied most of the nineteenth century" (17). Brought up then undoubtedly with a mind politically aware, Borges was actually fired from his position at the Miguel Cané branch of the Buenos Aires Municipal Library in 1946 when Perón first came to power and was subsequently 'promoted' to the position of poultry inspector for the Buenos Aires municipal market, a position from which he immediately resigned, presenting the Argentine Society of Letters with the following statement at the time: "Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy" (18). Late in his career, Borges didn't write openly or directly about the killings occurring in Argentina but that doesn't mean he was "blind to the world around him", or that "he should have tried harder to use his ears", as James suggests.

This latter idea, the question of what Borges should or should not have done in reaction to the political situation in his country, leads this discussion into new territory. It seems fairly clear from his writing why Borges chose to abstain from political commentary, namely because of the philosophical belief that the pain of his countrymen was not a new phenomenon, for Argentineans or humans in general (a silence and ambivalence NOT to be confused with quiet approval of Peronísmo or Videla's actions). The question of what Borges should have done is clearly a relative matter. James seems to think Borges' decision to abstain from political commentary an inexcusable course of action and feels justified in subsequently painting this artist as a blind, deaf, clueless, doddering potential advocate of the Guerra Sucia genocide. Like James, however, I too am stirred by the excerpt from "Homage to Victoria Ocampo", perhaps because I too, continually traveling from place to place - homeless in a certain sense of the word - feel like a "displaced person", to use James’ words (though his adjective seems to bear more negative connotations than those used by Borges to describe something seemingly so noble as a 'citizen of the whole word', an advocate for the entire human experience). Unlike James, though, I feel that an artist, no matter how widely read or acclaimed, can dedicate themselves to whatever subject matter they feel moved by, be it political or otherwise. I also feel that the greater the distance that this chosen subject diverges from the expectations, imagined or real, of an apparent audience base, then the greater the awareness of self and confidence of independence possessed by the artist in question. Countless artists are motivated and inspired by monumental (according to the traditional sense of 'history', not Borges' notion of that word) social, cultural, and political events in their country, but I am mystified as to the time and place when such action or pro-action or reaction, as it may be, became a requirement for the successful work and accomplishment of anyone considered an artist by the masses (if they exist at all). I am venturing close to a point in this discussion where I must define the word artist, and I want to avoid such territory, save for the following thought. I would say that being an artist is about expression of ideas, images, thoughts, and beliefs that have no where to go and need an outlet, but that in a sense already violates an aspect of Borges' philosophy and leads me into contradiction. So I'll let Borges speak for himself on the matter:

"Croce held that art is expression; to this exigency, or to a deformation of this exigency, we owe the worst literature of our time. True enough, Paul Valery was able to write with felicity:

Comme le fruit se fond en puissance,
Comme en delice il change son absence
Dans une bouche ou sa forme se meurt

and Tennyson could write:
...................................and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bore the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.

verses which reproduce a mental process with precision; but such victories are rare and no one (I believe) will judge them the most lasting or necessary words in literature. Sometimes, I too, sought expression. I know now that my gods grant me no more than allusion or mention" (19).

It seems to me that an exigency only appears to be an intrinsic aspect of expression when there is for the 'artist' a perceived audience with perceived expectations, and that such perceptions and the associated yoke of feeling obliged to meet such expectations is the point at which the expression itself becomes warped and the exigency proven to be deformed. I believe when Borges speaks of the 'worse literature of our time' he is speaking of such expression so bent to meet the will of the 'masses' (a term Borges doesn't even believe in) that it is no longer the voice or expression of the artist. Thus would Borges have most likely wished to avoid the title Artist at all, and avoid the dubbing of his work as Expression. Thus would he come to feel in this wisdom, most likely only gained after so many years of writing, that he achieved no more than 'allusion or mention'.

I will say no more on what art should or shouldn't be, or what Borges should or should not have done, but will let his words stand on their own. Any opinion I pose on questions such as those will be contested as easily and quickly as I contested the opinions of Clive James. I sincerely desire to end this ramble with the words of Borges himself, and I feel that the following quotes can do more to reveal the rashness and ignorance of James' criticism, and to defend Borges' own philosophy and apparent political ambivalence, than anything I said in the previous paragraphs:

Firstly:
"I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as 'The Masses'. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time" (20). — Introduction to The Book of Sand (1975)

And lastly: "[Un autor] debe tratar de ser un amanuense del Espíritu o de la Musa (ambas palabras son sinónimas), no de sus opiniones, que son lo mas superficial que hay en el. Así lo entendió Rudyard Kipling, el más ilustre de los escritores comprometidos. A un escritor - nos dijo - le esta dado inventar una fabula, pero no la moralidad de esa fabula. Ojala las paginas que he elegido prosigan su intrincado destino en la conciencia del lector. Mis temas habituales están en ellas: la perplejidad metafísica, los muertos que perduran en mi, la germanística, el lenguaje, la patria, la paradójica suerte de los poetas" (21). - Prólogo de Nueva antologiía personal (1980)}

{Translated by me: "[An author] should attempt to be a scribe of the Spirit or the Muse (the two words are essentially one and the same), not of his own opinions, which are the most superficial aspects of his nature. Rudyard Kipling, the most distinguished of the committed writers, understood this endeavor. The writer - he tells us - is given the power to invent a story, but not to invent the moral of the story. I can only hope that the intricate unforeseeable path of the pages I've chosen persists and develops in the minds of the readers. These pages contain my usual themes: metaphysical perplexity, the dead that live on through me, Germanistics, language, the mother-country, and the paradoxical luck of the poets (21)". - Prologue to A New Personal Anthology (1980)}

1. Borges, Jorge Luis, Labyrinths, New Directions Publishing Corporation, USA, 1962, pg 22
2. Borges, Jorge Luis, A Personal Anthology, Editorial Sur, S.A., Buenos Aires, 1961, pg xi
3. Borges, Labyrinths, pg 17
4. Borges, Labyrinths, pg 23
5. Wikipedia contributors, "Jorge Luis Borges", Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, DOLR: Feb 20, 2007, PL: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jorge_Luis_Borges&oldid=109490746
6. Borges, Pers Anth, pg 151
7. Borges, Pers Anth, pg 151
8. Borges, Pers Anth, pg 151
9. Borges, Labyrinths, pg 23
10. Borges, Pers Anth, pg 46
11. Borges, Pers Anth, pg 41
12. Borges, Pers Anth, pg 41
13. Borges, Labyrinths, pg 9
14. Borges, Labyrinths, pg 20
15. Borges, Pers Anth, pg ix
16. Borges, Labyrinths, pg 21
17. Wikipedia, Borges
18. Wikipedia, Borges
19. Borges, Pers Anth, pp xi-xii
20. Borges, Jorge Luis, The Book of Sand, Emecé Editores, S.A., 1975, pg 2
21. Borges, Jorges Luis, Nueva Antologia Personal, Editorial Bruguera, S.A. , Barcelona, 1980, pp 8

Cherubs.

2007-02-18T16:52:00.000-05:00

Tell me if this sounds odd to you, that my friends and I often joke about being autists. "Mulligan, the evidence you've got Asperger's is mounting day by day," is not an uncharacteristic example. Often this sends me--don't know about the others--into a careful reconstruction for reevaluative purposes of the events leading up to the gybe in order to figure out when I went too far (out).
For a bunch of smart kids, we exhibit an uncommon--no, unexpected--frequency in our faulure to get just what's going on in a given social setting. In an earlier, Romantic world, such outsidership would be marked as a sign of giftedness--but we've been told we were gifted since grade school--as a sign of uniqueness--but everyone we went to school with was unique and all the unique kids quite often failed to get it, only the uninteresting ones never at a loss for words--as a sign of an unexpressable knowledge--but again, the point here is that we're not getting something.
This is the tricky bit, because we're not punished like an Eckbert or Werther but smiled at with mild worry and wonderment for not being so common--with an expectation, though, of our ability to get it--they think either that we refuse to or are not ready yet. But either way, it's an issue of maturity, wherein our inabilities are used to fend off societalization.
Becauase when we do get it, when the game is explained to us, there's the sort of dawning of realization that made older metaphysicians believe in a priori truths, the, "yes, I feel I knew that all along," feeling.
And the point is that we are postmodern angels, we genius incapables, who are children to our parents whose failures, we in our latent abilities and material unsubstantiations, seeem to make choices, who simulate asceticism in our apart-ness and casually validate truth in our joy at understanding, who are the survivors because when the shock goes down the chain of everyone jostling won't we be distracted, just a little aside, and this unelectrocuted by accident? We who are the glimmering dead who will have to become those who died when they then do not care for us anymore.

Work Keeps Me Busy

2007-02-08T23:25:00.000-05:00

ART

The great American writer Herman Melville says somewhere in The White Whale that a man ought to be "a patriot to heaven," and I believe it is a good thing, this ambition to be cosmopolitan, this idea to be citizens not of a small parcel of the world that changes according to the currents of politics, according to the wars, to what occurs, but to feel that the whole world is our country.

—Jorge Luis Borges, "Homage to Victoria Ocampo," in Borges en Sur

A reverse of the standard order today, if only because I quite like the sound of that quotation. Reminiscent of Kant and Hegel I suppose and a nice reminder that postmodernism must not always be so terribly dense and obfuscatory. Romance persists.

Even if it is a self-exculpatory romance used to shirk moral duty in a world of human atrocity. Or so Slate argues. I do need to get through more of “Labyrinths” one of these days, and I’ll be curious to see whether Borges’ political ambivalence doesn’t make his map of the world easier to distinguish from the world itself.

A follow-up to bad politics with yet another piece on Amis, though this one contextualizes his most recent work better within his own bibliography. Particularly interesting to see the author suggesting that Amis is going down the road of Hitchens, especially since the two are such virulent enemies (and I thought there split was over Hitchens’ conservatism). Regardless, ignoring Amis’s new book, I must insist that all seek out “London Fields”. Such a vision of the contemporary city I have not seen elsewhere.

I must admit I’ve yet to finish this next essay – time at work is limited these days – but despite not reading “Homage to Catalonia”, I’m always interested in Orwell’s relationship to those who co-opt him. Smectymnuus, you’d enjoy I suspect.

Slate posted this gorgeous slideshow of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs adjacent to a brief biography. I’ve always been partial to Bresson, no doubt from fond memories of looking through his works whenever trips to the attic would yield an exploration of my Dad’s photography books.

CULTURE

One of the more interesting pieces I read over the weekend was from NYT’s Week in Review on Biden’s terrible blunder last week in calling Obama the first “articulate”, mainstream black politician. Yikes. This essay moves beyond the political firestorm and does a nice job of explaining the racism inherent in “articulate” and the terrible inequality in expectations it demonstrates.

From the subtle persistence of racism to the unflinching brazenness of homophobia and intolerance: a blurb from Slate that summarizes shamed former preacher Ted Haggard’s road to “recovery” (from being gay). There are also some other interesting blurbs in this piece related vaguely to science, health, etc…

Also, two profiles of note: one from NY Magazine on RFK Jr, the always impressive environmentalist attorney who bleeds privilege in an entirely forgiveable way; and the other of Milton Friedman by Princeton economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman, which is very critical of Friedman but also interestingly fond. My unfamiliarity with most things related to economics (or money really) is hampering my speed on this one, but Friedman is always an interesting case study in the evolutionary history of contemporary American capitalism.

And finally, well not really, two articles regarding culture in foreign countries (not very patriotic, I know): the first is quite old, but I recently re-read it for my job and it is terribly depressing – a New Yorker piece on India’s growing water crisis. And continuing with theme of catastrophe in the developing world: an article on Cambodia’s destruction by tourists. Angkor Wat is being overrun, but don’t worry, there are still responsible ways to see it.

Last for real: rooting out anti-Semites. Take this quiz to see whether you dislike the Jews, tolerate them, or are perhaps part of the flock.

POLITICS

To get this out of the way: Dinesh D’Souza is absolutely f%cking insane. I know I’ve posted reviews of his new books previously, but this one speaks more to the content, and he is absolutely mad.

The primary political news of late has of course been the Senate resolution against Bush’s troop surge, or rather its failure to even see debate. Article One, and Article Two on why the debate didn’t happen, and then a Newsweek interview with our favorite Maine celebrity and political maverick Sen. Collins (R). Written prior to the resolution’s failure, it is nonetheless interesting to see the schisms and fields of power within the GOP camp these days.

Also, all of these articles have little quotes from or references to Joe Lieberman, who I continue to nominate as the most obnoxious fucking person on earth. Even Dinesh D’Souza didn’t get the “u”. This lengthier piece from the New Yorker only confirms my sentiments.

And to make you hate Lieberman and the pro-surge camp even more, here is a well-done breakdown of Bush’s new defense budget by Slate. Once again, billions for a failed missile defense system and absolutely redundant and superfluous military technology. Also, make sure to notice the total price tag of the Iraq ware. Now that is terrifying. No wonder populism is taking root. (The Nation, however, argues that rhetoric is going to need substance soon, and I think I agree. Speaking is only courageous for a little while when you live in a democracy. Speak out in an authoritarian regime, perhaps more leeway).

Speaking of the Iraq war, Hitchens, (oh, Hitchens) wrote a piece for Slate I can almost get on board with, which argues that, although this is tacit, perhaps an exit strategy isn’t so morally reprehensible, as Iraq would’ve very likely collapsed anyway. Anyhow, I think it articulates his position on the war better than how I recounted it several days ago and affirms Mr. H of Durham’s opinion on the matter.

Lastly, a brief synopsis of the ’08 campaign trail. Another article, this one more nuanced and thorough, on women and humor relative to a Clinton attempt at a joke. I think it makes a nice point about how women in power are not allowed to have “normal” personalities.

Over the weekend, Edwards announced his new health care plan and was grilled on Meet the Press about his position on Iraq. A decent job in general pivoting away from the subject, but I think he could stand to be a bit more firm in his regrets. He doesn’t quite have the rhetoric down yet. Not sloppy entirely, just not entirely cohesive. Hire me Edwards, hire me.

Also, another piece in the Obama as Jesus series, this time with a journalist portraying Obama as an esteemed and impressive physicist.

And finally, a brief bit from the Economist on why so many people are running in 2008. To influence policy sure, but it sounds like ego is still the driving force behind it all. And now we’ve approached the intersection of (my)self with (the) world.

'300' and the Sum of its Parts

2007-02-06T00:32:00.000-05:00

(I used to do semi-serious work, reading difficult articles on critical theory [I have Barthes and Baudrillard collecting dust on my bookshelf right now]. Now it seems all I do is write about television. Or movies.

I tell myself that I’m interested in the stories that society wants to tell itself, and I am. But it also absolves me of a lot of the heavy lifting. Especially when I wind up talking about a movie that I haven’t seen yet. On with the rabid speculation!)

I am giddy for ‘300’. I have the trailer on my iPod. I’ve downloaded the song featured in that trailer (Nine Inch Nail’s “Just Like You Imagined”) and have also put that on my iPod. I’m planning on getting tickets to see it, but not just on your run of the mill movie screen. I want IMAX. I want the carnage to swallow me. I want my ears to bleed.

Watching the previews, there’s absolutely no downside to this movie. The filmmakers seem to have crammed in every shot with of the stylized hyperviolent as possible. It looks like the beautiful, glossy, slow-motioned, musically-synched, jaw-(and body) dropping, twisted son of Quinton Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. Which is why I’m going to hurl my money at it.

In fact, ‘300’ will attempt to solidify a new branch of the hyperviolent films, those created on the page by comic book artist Frank Miller. Miller’s comics served as the inspiration for the surprise hit ‘Sin City’: the actors in that film (Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba-Lebeaux, Elijah Wood, etc.) acted against a green-screen throughout the film, enabling the filmmakers to perfect a seedy, sickly and beautiful world behind them, the world that Miller had inked long ago (there’s a sequel in production).

And ‘300’ uses the same green-screen technique (this could lead to an interesting trend: artistic adaptations have always integrated previous works of art, but films that successfully adapt any work of literature have to interact with that literature, transforming it for the medium of film [while we’re on comics, think the well-adapted ‘X-Men’ against the terribly or not-really-adapted-at-all ‘Batman and Robin’]. With Miller, the films succeed, or at least the films’ gimmick has worked, because they preserve so much of the original work).

Because I’m excited, because I enjoyed ‘Sin City’, I bought Miller’s comic book, the print version of ‘300’ that will serve as the principal, if not sole, inspiration for the coming movie.

Unlike the uber-noir ‘Sin City’, Miller’s ‘300’ has an added and nerdy historical layer (yet another reason for my excitement): The coming movie is based on the comic; the comic, however, is based on Herodotus.

Written some time in the 440’s BC, Herodotus’ Histories chronicles the Greek city-states’ war with Persia. Considered the first work of western history, Herodotus has earned the nickname ‘the father of history’, an interesting nickname, and in some ways an interestingly accurate one: if, as the name implies, Herodotus fathered history, then it also puts Herodotus outside of his progeny, separates Herodotus from the current and ‘accepted’ practices of that art. As Herodotus’ work can not be verified, can even rarely be checked against any opposing sources (indeed, in many instances, he is the source), and as his work sometimes smacks of the supernatural (god’s routinely broadcast instructions into the heads of kings, etc..) separating Herodotus from history seems pretty fair.

Regardless, among the various myths/legends/folkloric tales/actual events that Herodotus relates is the battle of Thermopylae, in which three hundred Spartans fought against a horde of invading Persians. The Spartans channeled the invading army into a narrow canyon to negate the advantage the Persians had in terms of numbers. In perhaps the very first underdog story The Spartans, supposedly the very best of the best at fighting in ancient Greece, fought long and hard and gloriously against the Persians but were eventually slaughtered to a man; still, their sacrifice bought the rest of Greece some time and eventually Greece repealed the invasion

(For those of you with a copy of The Histories lying around, check around in book seven).

Throughout his Histories, Herodotus returns to the theme of Greek reason and democracy versus Persian despotism. It wasn’t just a war of conquest, it was a clash of ideologies.
If this sounds familiar, look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On the fifth anniversary of September Eleventh, President Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office refering to the war on terror by saying “This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization. We are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations. And we're fighting for the possibility that good and decent people across the Middle East can raise up societies based on freedom and tolerance and personal dignity.”

Miller’s comic book, again, the main inspiration for the upcoming movie, emphasizes this ideological clash again and again. The Spartans are fighting for reason, for equality before law, and they’re fighting against a ruthless tyrant.

Miller of course tends to ignore the fact that the Spartans were such good soldiers because they trained all day instead of say, well, farming. And they had the time to train all day instead of farm because they had an enormous slave population that did their dirty work and farming for them. But that’s besides the point.

I really think that the studios releasing ‘300’ are doing because its going to earn them some cold hard cash in an off-movie month. I think they’re doing it because comics in general and Miller in particular have set a precedent of being high-earners (plus the fact that ‘300’ is being filmed with relative unknowns in the lead roles…). I really do think that.

But I’m curious as to what its influence will be, if any. I’m curious how eager the audience will be, and for what reasons. I’m curious why they’ll see it: will it be because they’re obsessed fanboys trying to legitimize the comic books of their youth like me, or is it because the film will serve as some kind of safety valve, some release where we get to see Us Versus Them, where we get to see westerners die for a reason, for the rest of us in a war that we’re absolutely going to win. For the Homeland, even. For our way of Life. A lot of that is being promised from our politicians, but considering the recent election, it doesn’t seem as if most Americans have been delivering.

‘300’ isn’t America fighting the terrorists by any means, but it is the west fighting the east. It is our cultural ancestors versus darker-skinned people from Northern Africa and the middle-east. And, like the current war on terror, that war of invasion was dubbed as an ideological clash.
I have transgressed many a crime in Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City, so I really hate writing this next sentence: but I’m a little worried. I’m a little worried about watching westerners engage in the wholesale slaughter of easterners in a cinematic way. I think a part of it will have to resonate with the war that we’re fighting, with our xenophobia, with our starring contest with fear. I really am. But it’s not going to stop me from seeing it.

Rusty, or, Notes from the Echo Chamber

2007-02-05T10:54:00.000-05:00

Thirty years from now, I don’t think I’ll be sitting around and saying ‘I was there’. I really haven’t told many people in the eight days since it’s happened, so I doubt that I’ll be recounting it decades from now. But I was there, in DC, watching and sometimes (mainly through a combination of chance and police barricades) marching around the Senate. I was there.

And I wasn’t the only one. There were a lot of them (‘us’?) on Sunday. The obligatory hippy crowd was there, and yes, they were drumming and dancing. But most of the crowd was pretty clean-cut; one marcher raised his DoD badge in front of him. There were some grandparents there as well. There were lots of people: I hesitate to put a number on it, because whatever I say, I’ll be wrong. Tens of thousands. Maybe a grand?

Yet despite its size, despite the behavior of the crowd, despite the cross-generational representation that marched through the streets, the entire protest seemed like a giant tree falling in a forest. The Senate is surrounded by other Federal buildings and a neighborhood to the east. The marchers seemed to be marching for themselves, seemed to be marching in an echo chamber. The lack of an audience—not necessarily of an opposition force but of anyone—seemed unnatural to me.

I don’t have much protest experience (the best I could do was think about what Hunter Thompson was thinking in Miami during the Republican National Convention) as reported in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72) and I admit that I didn’t really understand the goals of this march: despite its grandure, despite the spectacle of watching an idea marshal itself or a common cause becoming animated by possessing its acolytes, it all seemed, well, self-reflexive at the time. Marching for marching’s sake. Marching for the marchers.

I knew that the idea was to send a message to the Democratic congress (This Is Why We Put You In That Building, And Should You Forget It You Will Be Removed) but without an audience there, and, indeed, with the likes of Danny Glover and Jane Fonda speaking, it didn’t seem like a message that would necessarily permeate the capitol dome.

But the Democrats seem emboldened. This might be the after-effect of their sudden victory, and the persistent numbers that are transforming President Bush into a lame duck—indeed it might have nothing to do with the march. But something’s gotten into them. I can almost feel it now, can almost see the winds changing. And I think everyone can: Democrats, in power, and not making complete jackasses of themselves.

The Democrats can’t continue to attack the war in Iraq: eventually that chorus will turn into some distorted version of the ‘Remember 9/11’ that won 2004 for President Bush. Americans seem to have finally woken up from the effects of that incantation, so the Democrats will have to win at home. And they’re off to a good start. Their first 100 hours realized a Minimum Wage increase and a stem cell package. Personally, I think the Democrats should put a stem cell package across the President’s desk every week and make him get in front of a podium every week and explain why he vetoed it. Eventually the children that he used as a backdrop during his first explanation will start getting ill, and each week we’ll have to hear why it was his moral obligation to veto the bill, right up until 2008, right up until the voting public has seen how crippling a Republican President has been to biomedical research. But I digress.

It all feels too good right now, all feels like the other shoe is about to drop (Joe Biden has come close to letting it go). But if the last few years have taught us anything in politics, it’s that if you’re not playing offense, you’re playing defense. And for now the Democrats seem to have learned.

A Question of Journalistic Integrity

2007-02-04T12:39:00.000-05:00

A denizen of St. Louis, Missouri for the moment, I have followed, at times unwillingly and at times with interest, the story of the recent discovery of kidnappees Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck in St. Louis County.

To begin, a brief summary:
In October 2002, Shawn Hornbeck, then 11, mounted a bike in Washington County, Missouri, with the ostensible intention of visiting a friend. Despite the persistent efforts of his parents (the Akers), Hornbeck was unseen for over 4 years - and believed by many to be dead. Then, on January 8, 2007, in nearby Franklin County, 13-year-old William "Ben" Ownby turned up missing. A classmate provided the lead that a large white van was seen near the site of the kidnapping, and it was this van that eventually led the FBI investigators to Kirkland, Missouri - a reasonably wealthy suburb in St. Louis County - where not merely Ownby, but also Hornbeck, was "found in the residence of Michael Devlin, alleged kidnapper, who was promptly arrested and is being held at $1,000,000.00 bail under the charge of kidnapping Ownby.

"Among the most notable aspects of this case, if one can detach it from the human interest elements and the emotional pull of the boys' return, is how "classically" villainesque it paints the alleged kidnapper. Michael Devlin, gratuitously described in The National Ledger as a "300-pound pizza shop employee," grotesque and seedy with the requisite oversized glasses and greasy hair (forgive my editorialization). The gigantic white Ford Van with its sliding door, complete with tales of a gun (in Hornbeck's case) and duct tape (in Ownby's), is exactly what Mommy warned us about when we were little. Hornbeck, brainwashed in a classic manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome, seems to have been granted a modicum of freedom during the years of captivity, even seen by his neighbors riding his bicycle, and some less cautious media sources suggest that he may have aided in the kidnapping of the younger boy.

On the surface, the joy is all. Hornbeck is reported as clutching his grandmother's hand and burying his face in his mother's shoulder upon the initial reunion - and his stepfather chuckled that he knew that Shawn would be all right when he asked for McDonald's on their first drive home. Ownby reportedly made his first request in front of the media - he wanted to go home and play his video games, which reportedly consumed him for a large portion of his first 24 hours home. The Ownbys and the Akers thanked God for hearing their prayers; the Akers criticized the false psychics whose aid they sought but who ultimately "foresaw" Hornbeck's demise; they felt legitimized for having sacrificed career and financial stability for their son.

I must be careful, here. I do not want to appear crass. I have full confidence in the joy of the two families' reunions; I vicariously share their delight and shock in the conclusion of the four years' story. The long mental recovery to which Hornbeck, at the least, must look toward seems daunting, and I wish both of the boys the best in recovering some normalcy in their lives.

"Normalcy," however, may be a while in coming. Short of the boys' changing their names, the families' relocating, and a great deal of psychological care - in addition to re-socialization and intensive education for Hornbeck - sensationalism may triumph. This is really the source of my discomfort. After my initial joyful reaction, my first comment upon hearing about the case was that if the captivity did not break the boys, then the media attention would. This was a bit ignorant, but I stand by part of its portent. Unbelievingly, I saw a TV advertisement for an Oprah episode devoted to an interview with the survivors. I became very angry: how could this be in the best interest of the boys? I begrudgingly accepted that there might me something gained by one "final" statement, so as to eschew hosts of other reporters potentially waiting around the proverbial corner.

Oprah, however, begins to inspire the tension I feel about journalistic integrity related to this case. She did not lack integrity herself; most people felt she handled the interview with grace. However, her probing of the Akers about whether or not they feared that their son had been sexually abused began to blur the line that tends to exist in situations involving minors. On one hand, minors' names tend to be concealed in the media, particularly in cases of such a sensitive nature as sexual abuse. But on the other hand, the names are already out - the cat is out of the bag, as it were. I suspect that few people with any familiarity with the case have failed to pose the question, however briefly. There seems to be little chance of the families avoiding like questions, certainly. My question is: when does media sensationalism move from inevitably probing and "rude" toward an almost unethical embracing of human misery? Can we draw this line?

I think the line is better articulated in another interesting side-story, which I initially heard debated on NPR but which has found its way to many articles as well. The accused, Michael Devlin, imprisoned not far from St. Louis, Missouri, is isolated in his own cell, and reporters are barred from visiting him. However, some time around January 20th, a young woman named Susannah Calahan appeared at the prison, identifying herself to guards as a "family friend." To Devlin, Calahan described herself as a college student interested in the case, and he provided her with an interview, even being quoted as confessing that "It's much easier talking to a stranger about these things than your own parents" [see quoted article].

Calahan, however, was not a family friend, nor an interested stranger. She was, in fact, a news correspondant for the New York Post. A student at the prestigious Washington University in St. Louis, Calahan is a former university music- and sex-column journalist. She obtained an interview, though it is unclear whether or not she deceived Devlin in order to do so, and the Post printed the article. Although they certainly have the perogative to protest, Devlin's lawyers and their objections to the interview concern me less than the overarching question of journalistic integrity. Journalists so often walk the fine line of invasion and truth-seeking; this is familiar. When deception becomes a question, however, the integrity of the journalist herself is less alarming than the related dilemma about the integrity of journalists in general. Suddenly, a college student becomes, like Rita Skeeter, symbolic of all that many people find loathsome about journalism. Now, don't get me wrong. A large percentage of people were probably more thrilled with the new quotations and the new aspect that Calahan's interview obtained than concerned with its implications. And there are educated persons who have argued for the "guts" Calahan displayed in her dogged pursuit of the truth. Others, however, have a grimmer perspective.

We already knew that the media was inherently biased and truth inevitably ambiguous. We already knew that our society's attraction to the sensational tends to overshadow its desire for the "facts." But now, we start to wonder if in employing its ability to shape a societal consciousness, the media holds some clear responsibilities to maintain ethics to protect us from ourselves - ethics that Calahan was shirking. We may want to know everything at any cost - but are these costs eventually going to take their toll on journalism, if Machiavellian journalism ignores the ethics of honesty in order to obtain the ends of full disclosure?

I have likely taken this too far. After all, Devlin's account to Calahan was far from "full disclosure," and Oprah was hardly "immoral" in her questions to the Akers. Perhaps this particular story has inspired people to toe the ethical line but, ultimately, to remain on the better side. Regardless, it raised some important questions. When does it become ethically "wrong" to eschew truth in order to discover the truth, and when will it become dangerous enough threaten the ethereal ideal of Journalistic Integrity?

I'll let you know when I've gotten the scoop.

To Trust or not to Trust, a Traveler's Question - A follow-up to The Great Mustard Ruse

2007-02-02T16:07:00.000-05:00

When one travels for a great length of time, alone, one finds that it is a physical and mental impossibility not to place deep trust in complete strangers. In other words, the lone wanderer often has no choice but to rely on and have faith in people totally unknown. Learning to take strangers at their word and to have confidence that their intentions are in one's best interest, independent in some cases of their appearance or dress (and assumptions made thereon), flies in the face of indoctrination that began, at least in the course of my own education, in kindergarten, when I was 5 years old. That of course was the most-likely standardized "don't-accept-the-cookie-from-the-smiling-man-in-the-large-unmarked-Ford-van-with-the-open-sliding-door" lesson. Thus it began for my cohort in our very first year of schooling, a message that would be repeated in various forms countless times throughout the subsequent 8 years of education. If such drilling of children's minds occurs on a wide scale throughout the US, this practice might incidentally serve to explain in part the apparently rampant mentality of fear that seems to persist in the minds of many people in that country, in my country. This mentality of fear is explored to some degree in the movie Bowling for Columbine, and though Michael Moore approaches the concept in something of an over-dramatic and self-alienating manner, I think there is some truth in the points he makes.

It is natural to assume that inexperienced travelers from the US will bring their fear and mistrust of strangers with them when they leave home - if they leave home at all - and make for far-away lands, but this extra baggage strains the mind worse than any heavy backpack can break the back or crush the body. Living on the road in a state of fear produces an exhausting stress that one feels grinding down on the spirit, pulverizing the will to move and see new things and meet new people. My own well established mistrust - at least eight years of virtually unrecognized unconscious skepticism of others - was unraveled and undone in one month in Canada, probably the only country in the world where such a feat can be accomplished in such a short period of time. My interactions with the people of that nation replaced my lack of trust and lack of hope for humanity with the first seeds of a boundless faith in people and a conviction that humans as a whole are at heart marked by a certain goodness. My encounter with Stephi Graf's cousin in the Winnipeg train station on the very first day of my journey (I think I wrote about this on my website) exemplifies the mentality of openness and goodwill that is not a surprising or unusual human trait in Canada, as it appears to be in the US, but is rather the norm, an aspect of humanness commonplace and taken for granted there. After having my impressions of my fellow humans broken down and reshaped in Manitoba and Newfoundland, I left Canada with an outlook on the world that I had never possessed before: one of hope for Mankind (pardon the political incorrectness). Some of you who read these words will not understand or think I exaggerate or over-dramatize, but the fresh peace and happiness of mind that inevitably follow the discovery of new hope cannot be denied. Mr. John A Atchley III will appreciate that he introduced me to Couchsurfing (couchsurfing.com) at exactly this moment in my journey.

Despite, one, a burgeoning trust in strangers; two, a rising conviction that there are enough like-minded, good people in the world to seriously affect change; and, three, a blooming realization that allowing one's path to be partially shaped by apparently random interactions with foreigners is in fact the only way to mentally survive the experience of long-distance, long-term migration; despite all these things I found when I arrived in Africa and traveled through developing countries where the language was to me unknown and incomprehensible, that I still had much to learn in terms of my outlook on the world and its human inhabitants. I encountered fellow travelers - at cafes, in the desert, on trains - from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada who bore with absolute certitude the belief that people are good and a bone-deep sense of everything-will-be-all-right. After passing through Morocco, Senegal, and South Africa, I came to find this stance, this outlook, was held universally with a strength that can only be described as enviable by all travelers from the aforementioned first-world countries, without exception. It is either a testament to the truth behind the convictions of the traveling Aussies, Kiwis, and Canucks, or to my own deaf, dumb, and blind luck, that my refusal to relinquish or compromise my new-found faith in strangers didn't have drastic consequences for the first eight months of my journey, through Canada, Europe, Africa, and southern South America. Minor setbacks were not uncommon: the instant sourness shattering a relationship, for example, when an apparently friendly, helpful person who, claiming at first he wants nothing from you but is simply going in the same direction as you and would be glad to point out what you are looking for, suddenly begins after some time to demand money and gifts for his services and trouble, and grows angry when you turn your back on him and walk away.

But no, it wasn't until eight months had passed of traveling alone, burdened down the entire time with items of great monetary value that make me even more of a target than the simple fact of my skin color, that I suffered any real material loss, that I was legitimately robbed and taken advantage of. As I mentioned briefly in The Great Mustard Ruse, the loss of gear is not important. Being robbed and replacing the items - wading through muddy bogs of bureaucracy filled with paperwork snags and the rank rotting stink of long lines - is an annoying and in my case humiliating and humorous series of events, certainly, but one that was actually expected to take place much earlier in the course of my journey. Far worse is the potential undermining of eight months of mental, spiritual, and philosophical dedication to a simple but previously unconsidered and unimagined principle: that the majority of people in the world are kind, caring, individuals, often with an interest in their fellow human beings and in the world around them. I don't want to mislead people into thinking that I live in a fairy-tale land, that I go skipping through the bad neighborhoods of Johannesburg or Paris or Guayaquil with my camera and binoculars dangling from my neck, $100 dollar bills spilling from my pockets, and gold watches jangling on my wrists. I am not naive to the presence of advantageous human predators of all forms, those people (actually true capitalists in the purest sense of the word) who recognize an influx in their region of visitors from wealthier areas as an opportunity to potentially increase the standard of their own living conditions; and I have made a constant effort to learn increased discretion and awareness on the streets, to minimizing my status as a target as much as possible.

It is instead simply that I have come to feel that the these predators - in particular the small percentage of which that actually seek illegitimate and illegal means to gain access to that the wealth of foreign visitors - are far outweighed by individuals who, once actively and sincerely engaged in conversation and cultural exchange, reveal many more common interests and similarities to me than I ever would have thought possible; and who subsequently open doors to me that I could never have conceived of existing. In constantly traveling from region to region, country to country, first to third to first world and through everything in-between, one discovers that not only time but also place, movement, momentous experience, and all aspects of the human experience begin to rush and rage and flow like a river that is swollen by snow-melt and rain-fall in the spring and crashes along like a juggernaut. Attempts to control this river single-handedly, to organize and plan its course, to do anything in some cases but enjoy (or try to survive) its insane currents, to ignore a stranger's simple suggestion and kind voice and try to bend the bed-rock of the river itself with constant strength of will and mind, all this began to threaten my very sanity. Today in Cuenca, Ecuador, I know that the only way I have come as far as I have without suffering a complete breakdown of mind, body, and spirit is through trusting, listening to, following, and believing complete strangers, often despite intuition and preconceived notions that are, of course, mostly inaccurate and wildly false. One of countless examples: in Cape Town only several days before driving to Johannesburg and flying to South America, I still had not organized my project for that continent - where I would go, who I would seek, how I would travel. Still focused on my project in South Africa, I called the university and discussed my work with a professor of conservation biology. He suggested I visit an associate of his at a field station north of the city along the west coast of South Africa. I had been looking forward to seeing what a weekend in Cape Town was like, but on a whim on a Friday morning I left the city and drove to Vredenburg. Andy Winder, a friend of the professor's, owns a hostel near the field station and although there were no free beds, their daughter had just moved to the city to live with her boyfriend, so they let me sleep in her room for the weekend at no charge. I conducted work for my project on Friday and Saturday, planning to return to Cape Town on Sunday morning. Andy and his wife, however, convinced me stay on Sunday and attend their West Coast Bird Club luncheon, a standard brai. In the course of drinking and eating with the west coast birders, I met a woman whose son had recently married an Argentinean and just happened to be living in Ushuaia, which was incidentally and most likely the next destination in my journey, and what I hoped would be my disembarkation site for Antarctica. To make matters more unbelievable, the son's Argentinean wife worked for a tourist company associated with trips to the Antarctic peninsula. This stage of my travels manifested itself like many other stages have done: I had very little part in carving my path, but instead found it like a separate living organism taking perfect shape before me, a shape I could have never designed independent of how much time in advance I had begun planning.

I was conned yesterday by a man who by all rights should have been trust-worthy, whose appearance played off of my first-world upbringing and my still partially unchanged value system. Like the car-thieves and con-artists in South Africa who dress in perfect replicas of police uniforms, the smartly-dressed businessman who first alerted me to the mustard on my legs and led me, knowingly, I'm convinced, to the bear-trap, has probably learned that people from the first-world will be more eager to follow someone they can perceive as official and safe than someone wearing more common street clothes. If he had so soundly defeated my own street-smarts, intelligent rationality, keen awareness, and first-world notions at the outset of my journey, before I gained conviction that his kind were a minority opposed by individuals who desire the opposite and seek instead a strengthening of human contact and interactions, then my mistrust, fear, and skepticism might not have broken down as quickly as they did. I feel, however, that this process of reshaping values and perceptions is unavoidable when traveling alone. For some it might require more time on the road, for other's less, but I do not think that the world will permit a nomad dedicated to that world to pass through seas of people without seeing a common thread, a mutual humanness, a shared-ness of hopes, loves, hatreds, fears, strengths, desires, pains, dreams, and pleasures. I found myself at dusk on the same day of The Great Mustard Ruse walking back to my hostal with the sun on my face, tired from filling out forms and being bounced from one office to another all across the city and completely oblivious to the fact that I was on the same block of the same street where I had been robbed earlier in the day. Awareness dawned as I passed the same kiosk where I had been mustard-ized and found myself suddenly arrested by the voice of the shop clerk who had sold me needle and thread calling me over to his counter. This time his eyes and the lines on his face assured me more than his words that he had had nothing to do with the earlier con, and after chatting for a time about what had happened, comparing the events of the morning from our two different angles and perspectives, he gravely took my hand, locked his eyes on mine, and implored me to be more careful and take care of myself. As I walked away, I felt even more strongly than before that everything really was going to be all right.

From Our Compatriot Mr. Ryan

2007-02-01T22:54:00.000-05:00

Neo-Luddism in the NFL, or Why the Chicago Bears will win the Super Bowl

In the late 1700s, outside the village of Lancaster, two British schoolchildren mocked a

worker named Ned Ludd for his apparent stupidity. In a fit of rage, Ludd pursued his antagonists to their very home and gained entry by force. The wily youngsters managed to disappear, and the scorned curmudgeon, seeking an outlet for his fury, set upon the nearest object- a knitting machine. By incident’s end, the implement lay in ruin, and Mr. Ludd (somewhat becalmed, we hope) stalked away.

The event garnered local attention, and history, as it is wont to do, enacted a gradual distortion. The misrepresentation culminated thirty years later, when a group of disenchanted mill workers crowned Ludd a folk hero, interpreting his act as defiance against the burgeoning technological infrastructure. Though their version was apocryphal, it succeeded in spurring the momentum of the cause. For three years, the self-proclaimed ‘Luddites’ defended the working class by engaging in ‘industrial sabotage,’ a mission which mostly comprised attacking factories and assaulting mill-owners. Eventually the powers-that-be grew weary, hung a few of the instigators, and deported the rest to Australia.

Though the original incarnation dried up around 1815, philosophical strains have persisted in the succeeding 200 years. Luddite culprits usually act on an individual basis, the most famous and recent example being Ted Kaczynski, alias ‘The Unabomber.’ But the strength of the market, it seemed, was too great for any kind of unified opposition. This January, however, the group phenomenon has experienced a resuscitation in the most unlikely of places: The National Football League.

It may seem bizarre to accuse the NFL of Neo-Luddism, but once we consider the symbolic evidence from this year’s playoffs (derived by victorious nicknames), it becomes clear that the organization is not merely against the industrial framework. No, the truth graver yet; the NFL appears to have drifted into the far-left reaches of ecological extremism, dedicated to complete demolition of human structures and the restoration of animal supremacy. In turn, they’ve tipped their hand, and the act of Super Bowl prediction becomes mere formality. Behold, the round-by-round corroboration!

AFC, Wild-Card Round:

Patriots defeat Jets: The Luddite manifesto couldn’t have said it better- any man who loves his country must destroy manmade machines- in this case, airplanes.

Colts defeat Chiefs: Young horses, a species so long enslaved by man, usurp the very leaders who once rode upon their backs. What fitting imagery!

NFC, Wild-Card Round:

Seahawks defeat Cowboys: Birds topple humans, and humans, no less, with a history of poor treatment toward animals.

Eagles defeat Giants: Birds unseat the largest, most powerful men in existence. The message from the NFL is clear- even the greatest of our species stand no chance against the animal kingdom.

AFC, Divisional Round:

Patriots defeat Chargers: Again, pure Luddism. A country-loving man must destroy all chargers, making it impossible to power any electronic devices, thereby stymying technology.

Colts defeat Ravens: Here we are confronted with two animal species, and the difference is clearly made by a raven’s similarity to an airplane. Both fly, after all, and association renders them inferior.

NFC, Divisional Round:

Bears defeat Seahawks: As with the preceding example, a ground animal must triumph over its airborne counterpart owing to the latter’s resemblance to man-made flying machines.

Saints defeat Eagles: At first glance, this result appears to buck the trend. However, as noted by my good friend Brian, the eagle has come to represent America, the world’s foremost industrial power. Surely a Luddite group as subtle as the NFL could not tolerate this symbolism. The Eagles, as it were, had to land.

AFC Championship:

Colts defeat Patriots: Animals over man. The noblest of mankind cannot hope to match immature equines.

NFC Championship:

Bears defeat Saints: Perhaps the strongest example. The bear- fierce, solitary symbol of nature- triumphs over humanity’s best. Even canonization, the NFL asserts, is no retribution for the crimes of man.

The undeniable logic of the theory poses serious questions, the most pressing of which concern the future. Will the NFL’s propaganda ever spread beyond coy metaphor? Time will tell. There is one certainty, however, and it pertains to the impending match on February 4^th. The playoff pattern seems to long for a return to nature, whose main precept is survival of the strong. The obvious conclusion, then, is that Chicago must emerge victorious. The only possibility of a colt defeating a bear is with a vicious, well-timed kick. Therefore, in the absence of Vinatieri heroics, I predict the following:

Bears 24 – Luddism began with Ned Ludd’s act in 1779- simply add the digits.

Colts 17 – Luddism ended in York, where 17 instigators were tried and executed by the crown.

The Great Mustard Ruse

2007-02-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

After months of traveling without incidents of any kind, my luck was bound to run out. The way odds and percentages work, I figure the probability of something unpleasant happening was getting higher and higher each day, combated only by my slow but continuously growing knowledge of the streets. Early this morning, though, perhaps because I was still groggy from a less than sufficient amount of sleep, that knowledge did nothing to avail me. A block and a half from my hostal there is a small kiosk, and it was there that I stopped to purchase a needle and spool of thread on my return from an early, casual birdwatching walk along the river that runs through downtown Cuenca. As I began to walk away from the kiosk, a smartly-dressed businessman - jacket, tie, slacks, well-polished shoes, briefcase, clean-shaven face, neat haircut - tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to my pants with a look of concern and a string of Spanish words that I didn't understand at first. I glanced down and noticed that the backs of both my pant legs were covered with mustard from top to bottom. I had been walking all morning along a tree-lined river, and that fact alone should have first eliminated the possibility that I had sat on or leaned against a massive mustard mess, and then served as the first clue that I was being drawn into an elaborate con. I was so surprised however to see the morning sun reflecting off of such a large quantity of condiment smeared across my legs that I let the kind and helpful businessman lead me across the street to a cafe. The day still early, the cafe was empty, and the owner - a middle aged, slightly overweight, dark-skinned Ecuadorian woman - took us to the bathroom at one end of the single-room, small establishment. I left my bag, newly-purchased hat, and binoculars along the wall next to the bathroom, and the kind and helpful businessman, still in tow, made an effort to assist me in wiping off the pant legs. I thanked the kind and helpful businessman and told him that I could clean the rest myself, and as he left, I returned to the work at hand, noticing out of the corner of my eye two men - or only boys, perhaps - entering the cafe at the same time. I thought nothing of it but looking up a short time later noticed the pack was suddenly gone (though the hat and binoculars were untouched). The woman, still watching attentively over the empty seats and tables in her empty cafe, produced a look that my cynical mind pegged as contrived naivety and explained that the two men had claimed they were taking the bag to have it cleaned. Shrugging at my look of anger and incredulity, she went back to staring blankly at the empty cafe. I dashed into the street and made a circuit of several blocks around the cafe, but the 'bag-cleaners' were nowhere to be seen, having probably jumped on the nearest bus. I walked slowly back to the hostal and assessed my losses en route. I may be a gringo tonto, but I'm not as tonto as some. As has become my custom, I had left my wallet, passport, ATM card, and cash in the hotel room, carrying only a few dollars in my pockets. My little orange notebook - filled with email addresses, poems, phone numbers, people to visit and places to see, ideas, and bird lists, and more precious to me than anything I own - was securely in my pocket. My travel insurance should cover the pack and its contents - raincoat, water bottles, jackknife, small camera; perhaps this is why I wasn't as upset or animated when I arrived back at the hostal and explained to the desk attendant what had happened. She offered to call the police but we both knew they wouldn't be able to do anything, so I declined. More upsetting than losing the replaceable pack filled with replaceable stuff was having my sense of trust and faith in my fellow humans - a crucial and wonderful feeling I've developed, built up, and relied upon over the last eight months of solitary travel (partly out of necessity and partly because I've discovered that there really are a lot of good people in the world) – most upsetting was having this feeling infringed upon, damaged, and partially destroyed. The businessman, the cafe owner, the man at the kiosk all seemed kind and helpful, and I want so badly to believe they truly are good people, but on another level I know they were all part of the con, or at least don't care enough about one ´rich´ gringo who lost his pack. This is the feeling I hate most of all: that of being turned against my fellow human beings, potentially unjustly, by a small number of 'unofficial re-distributors of first-world wealth', by a pair of bad apples who I have come to feel are inactuality just a minority in the world. At least the thieves left me my new hat and binoculars, and at least they robbed me using mustard and a clever ruse, instead of knives and brute force. How many people that you know can actually say they've been held up in downtown Cuenca by a tube of bright-yellow, delicious-smelling mustard?

Weekend into a computerless Monday

2007-01-30T00:34:00.000-05:00

A bit of a weekend roundup, with some bits and pieces of today’s occurrences, skimmed and poorly characterized.

Politics:

Beginning with what I consider to be politics proper, (election-related news, really), NYT’s Week in Review had this interesting piece on the recent assent of populism as a central strategy of contemporary liberalism. It focuses on the disparity between the relative health of the economy and this ideology borne out of fiscal anxiety, but is particularly prescient in its closing paragraphs where it undercuts the supposed momentousness of recent congressional bills (minimum wage, college loan rates, etc…) and points to the necessity of more progressive, truly comprehensive reforms in order to preserve populism as a legitimate and powerful tool for Democrats.

This article from The Nation profiles a more neglected facet of populism: its notable resurgence in the South. The midterm elections revealed the traditional Democratic comprehension of the South as a place of homogenous, religiously zealous, conservative politics to be terribly inaccurate, with Democrats winning critical seats in those places where, instead of ignoring the South all together or placating some imagined body politic, they managed to effectively re-contextualize the economic and political concerns of even moderately evangelical Southern voters. I think this is a powerful lesson as 2008 looms: Democrats can win when they move beyond standard Beltway and Mainstream Media generalizations and draft strong, inventive and nuanced policy. It’s all about re-containment. The epistemological gap has been opened by the violent decline of Bush. All we need is the advantage-taking narrative. Insert and go.

Speaking of 2008, the Washington Post argued today that Hillary’s recent campaigning in Iowa did more to question her candidacy than affirm it. Though not entirely surprising, (there’s never been anything wholly electric about Hillary), it was interesting to see the brief references to Edwards and a host of other candidates as fairly uninspiring. Don’t know whether that’s a worrisome indicator or nothing at all. The sample size of those interviewed was, after all, 14.

While Sen. Clinton may not be unimpressive, the Slate is prepared to argue that Obama is Jesus. This oughta make the xenophobic evangelicals happy.

For some good discussion of 2008, I read the Fix, which every Friday ranks various races.

Now for the more serious political articles:
1) From the New York Review of Books, analysis of how and why the ending of tyranny worldwide became America’s mission and why it will ultimately fail.
2) From Harpers, a lengthy (really lengthy) essay about how fundamentalism is co-opting American history, as well as terribly misappropriating Orwell quotes (and attributing them to the wrong person). Most interesting in this piece is the introduction of the term “maximalism” to describe today’s religious culture as one that attempts to link as many social institutions to Biblical word as possible.
3) Who rules Iran? the NYT asks. It seems that popular support for Ahmadinejad is eroding over questions of his ability to lead Iran into the future (or the past, as it may be).
4) This is very exciting to hear: a columnist for the Guardian suggests it may be time, based on California and host of other states’ recent legislation, for universal health care. (Mind you conservatives, universal does not equal federalized).
5) Lastly, from the LA Times, a columnist argues that 9/11 as a watershed moment in history may be little more than a myth and one worth reexamining critically in our culture of terrorist-related hysteria.
6) Nearly forgot about these: a collection of China related cartoons from Slate. Easily plays to my pet foreign policy interest.

Culture:

Quickly now, because I’m getting tired:
1) Prince Charles comes to Harlem, and makes a basket, in a blue suit, with black shoes. Also, amusing comments from children.
2) The 100$ laptop is back in the news, this time as billionaires at Davos squabble over how to best wire the third world. I’m partial to the $100 laptop as you all know, particularly because it caters to children, whereas Intel and Microsoft seem so technically oriented.
3) And in Britain, porn is replacing sex-ed proper. It seems the yobs are winning.

Art:

1) Nielsen ratings will now account for college audiences, which will hopefully mean that good shows (i.e. NBC’s lineup, in general) will finally get their due.
2) Feminist art actually is getting its due, with several enormous exhibits in the coming months. I particularly like the assessment of feminist art as critical precisely because of its outright rejection of modernism and its pretensions of avant-gardism.
3) I haven’t read 100 Years of Solitude. To feel less like a philistine, I post this retrospective by Hitchens on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. I’ll pretend to know.
4) Slate finally gives Tina Fey her due with a profile of her character Liz Lemon on 30 Rock. Though I agree that Alec Baldwin steals the show, so to speak, its nice to see Tina Fey get at least some of the credit she deserves for the shows critical success.
5) Nymag.com does an interview with paterfamilias of indie-everything, David Byrne.
6) Lastly, something that should be art, as it belongs in cinema and nowhere else: the military has developed a heat ray that makes people feel like they are on fire in order to disperse unruly crowds. Let history cycle on.

Thursday and Friday at Once

2007-01-27T00:54:00.000-05:00

With both yesterday and today spent traveling and at home, an abbreviated entry must suffice.

Politics:

It seems Bush made a strategic error in his State of the Union address. By so significantly emphasizing his stubborn stance on Iraq, which has been largely played in the media, he left his few domestic promises open to meticulous analysis and criticism. Especially in regards to his energy promises, with so many large corporations announcing this week their desire for a comprehensive cap-and-trade emissions program Bush’s agenda seems not only timid, but ultimately empty. That being said, some issues, like global warming and fuel standards are at least on the table, but it remains to be seen exactly how they will be tackled, and whether Detroit especially will continue to wield unfortunate and discouraging power in Washington. The NYT ran this editorial yesterday, which gives a sufficient summation of the immediate flaws of Bush’s “ambitious” programme.

To make matters worse, instead of letting the Iraq issue die, Bush petulantly announced today that he is the “decision maker” on Iraq matters in an attempt to rebuff the bipartisan congressional efforts to derail his ultimately flawed escalation-via-troop-surge. The media seems to playing the story against Bush right now, but I am growing increasingly concerned that Bush’s inflexibility and monomania is actually a strategy meant to turn the issue against the Democrats again. It occurred to me after reading this otherwise unexciting editorial from the Rocky Mountain Times about the dangers of populism for the Democrats.

I now worry that the more hyperbolic and extraordinary Bush’s resistance to change seems, the more it will encourage Democratic lawmakers to speak out against him in public. Once the media starts to run this story, the next story is “what will the Democrats do?” And while America may be opposed to Bush’s escalation, there is no indication that they are for a Democratic plan, the reason being that there isn’t one. There is a hodgepodge of theories about how to withdraw, and what seems now a strong, unified congressional body against Bush, will quickly seem a divisively syncretic and fragmented heterogeneity with little answers once the story has flipped. Be careful Democrats, be very careful. Best to stay quiet for the time being on this one (while surreptitiously working on a plan of course).

More frightening than the prospect of Bush regaining power on the Iraq issue, is this story from the National Journal which seems to suggest that there is a behind the scenes escalation occurring with Iran and that it is only the efforts of some rational Executive Branch insiders who are keeping the hawks away from the military planning rooms. I’ve always considered Iran to be merely the coy mistress of the Mideast, constantly testing limits, playing games, but with little momentum or ambition towards real conflict. Pretense, all pretense. Either way, anything beyond diplomacy is a frightening endeavor.

Last, two brief pieces regarding 2008. One, from the NYT, details the recent rush of states to obtain early spots in the primary calendar, meaning that elections will increasingly be about media budgets and money in general with far less of a chance for darkhorse candidates, which is a shame, because they are often the strongest candidates and most successful leaders. Finally, the central election story these days seems to be Barak Obama’s appeal to black voters. To appease this interest I provide a Washington Post article on the subject, though, to be honest, I’m not sure this all amounts to more than racial cold feet or, at the very least, just an attempt to fill the airwaves with something.

Culture:

Women aren’t funny, says the self-reflexive iconoclast Christopher Hitchens. And the requisite rebuttal by mildly amusing female author who, no doubt, Christopher Hitchens, misogynist extraordinaire alongside Martin Amis, will respect greatly.

In a follow-up of sorts to Tuesday’s article about the so-called “wild child” found after being raised in the jungle, Slate features an equally problematic brochure offering Baudrillardian vacations to the ultra-rich. Tour the indigenous cultures of the world. A cross-cultural Disneyland for the rich. Its like the Trail of Tears all over again, only this time the smallpox is delivered by a private jet and comes in an epistemologically bacterial form.

That being said, this is quite a brilliant article I think about the dissolution of group structures in the Western, postmodern state. I think it tacitly makes a nice space for some sort of Nietzschean collective politics, and also makes a strong analysis of radical Islam as a reaction to “deterritorialization” and the leeching effects of diasporic movement.

Closer to home, the Unabomber is in the news again, this time making constitutional arguments in order to keep his writings, which prosecutors are attempting to sell in order to recoup the civil settlement money he owes his victims’ families. I’ve always found the Unabomber fascinating and remember reading his manifesto in highschool and finding it surprisingly lucid. Obviously he’s a psychopath, but nevertheless.

Lastly, the Japanese filmed a weird creature, which then died and is now extinct. And when I say weird creature, I mean nightmarish fish-thing that will keep me from the oceans for the rest of time.

Wednesday

2007-01-24T22:32:00.000-05:00

A busy day, and thus an especially laconic survey of Wednesday’s news-of-note.

Politics:

With little time to move beyond the New York Times, I offer you only the articles of note from their front page, with last night’s State of the Union obviously dominating coverage. The Times ran a transcript of the speech online with mildly interesting audio commentary attached for those wishing to interface their sensorium more properly with the marvels of technology. And, from the other side, Senator Jim Webb’s response was made available by the Democrats today for perusal, though oddly it was nearly impossible to find by the end of the day, buried beneath several press releases and responses from Chairman Dean, which perhaps attests to rumors that Webb tore up his party speech last night in favor of his own. Maybe he upset the party elite?

Lese majesty or not I think Webb’s rebuttal was quite impressive last night. His rhetoric certainly captured the bold romanticism of Democratic populism at its best, without falling into overly sententious or cloying language. He certainly outdid Bush, though that was mostly predicted. Bush’s speech was underwhelming in both content and form – somewhat stilted and certainly unevenly weighted. His overture to Speaker Pelosi was certainly admirable and he does in my opinion deserve credit for the seeming sincerity of that gesture, but the rest of the speech seemed an entirely weak and disingenuous attempt to appear bipartisan before launching into another public, lengthy defense of his failed “surge” in Iraq, which again suffered rebuke today. Where Webb was good to avoid platitudes, I’m actually surprised Bush didn’t resort to more in an effort to guise his failures with mellifluous chatter. Stubborn ‘till the end though, it seems.

In other political news, I was made euphoric by the late afternoon news that John Kerry has made the decision to not run for President. Hopefully reason will continue to trump hubris and he will focus more of his not-insubstantial energies on the Senate where he does have a reasonably powerful position and a reasonably strong track record of legislative accomplishment. In other 2008 news nymag.com was reporting today that Giuliani is selling off some of his political liabilities. This doesn’t bode well for Giuliani, because if he is worried enough about something to get rid of it, then it must be really, really sordid and awful. After all, nearly every moment of Giuliani’s life is somehow connected to scandal, and for this to stand out as urgent is alarming. And yet he still polls the strongest for the GOP, again and again and again. I hope the national stage crushes him, because I couldn’t bear for the country to be run by someone whose entire political career was rescued and rebuilt around his being in the right place at the right time, especially when that right place was perhaps the most gruesome and tragic day in our nation’s history.

Three final items of note: it seems the 100 Hours stands to become irrelevant as one of the first major house initiatives before the Senate, raising the minimum wage, stumbles and stands to be watered down significantly in floor debate. Hopefully the Democrats can leverage enough support from their GOP counterparts to get a few of the 100 Hour initiatives through in the Senate. As always, I’m skeptical. Secondly, an interesting article from Slate about sentencing guidelines and a number of recent and upcoming cases that stand to greatly change the constitutional interpretation of the 6th amendment among other things. And lastly, a front page story from the NYT today paints a far bleaker picture of Iraqi Democracy than I had originally imagined.

Culture:

First, meat stealing. Attention piqued?

Second, an amusing piece from McSweeney’s that almost perfectly captures my own relationship to the world of sports, football in particular.

Arts:

Can’t remember if I posted this in my barrage of film-related pieces yesterday, but perhaps my biggest surprise upon reading the Oscar nominations was the notable absence of both Pan’s Labyrinth and Children of Men from the major categories. As such, I was pleased to see this Slate piece when I awoke this morning.

Perhaps the most compelling film story of late however, is the furor over 12 year old Dakota Fanning’s rape scene in recently-premiered Sundance film, Hounddog. The usual collection of religious zealots and conservative psychopaths is demanding a federal investigation and alleging child pornography. This article succinctly disagrees and makes a strong argument for the film’s legal and proper exercise of free speech.

Switching towards design, or urban planning really, the NYT ran a piece early this week about a host of Robert Moses exhibits around the city in the upcoming weeks. Interesting to read even without the ability to see them. Moses was the principle architect behind the city’s last major growth period, especially notable for pushing through major highway systems in the five boroughs and especially dubious for having left out public transportation from most of his “greatest” work and for forcing thousands of residents out of their homes in the process. As the article mentions, with New York’s current push towards development, a close analysis of Moses is quite timely.

As for criticism, Slate had this interesting biopic on art critic Robert Hughes, notes for his vicious, outside attacks on the art world and its indulgent veneration of less than deserving artists. (I’ve also been desperately searching for a copy of the poem mentioned in this piece, “SoHoiad: or, The Masque of Art”, which sounds like a terrifically amusing and sardonic take on one of Pope’s finest works).

And, in finding this review of Martin Amis’s new book in New York Magazine, I found myself wishing some of Hughes’s shrewd iconoclasm was mandatory for reviewers. Too easy to dismiss Amis, I say. Yellow Dog may have been a literary failure, but to attack his bibliography with such gratuitous self-indulgence (ironic really, given the subject) is irresponsible and terribly, terribly ignores the acute level of narrative awareness in Amis’s books. To accuse him of anything is to deny his narrative near-omniscience which is always masterful and disconcerting at once.

John and Marx talk about art

2007-01-24T02:36:00.000-05:00

The idea of art as the mark of “civilization” inasmuch as it arrives out of leisure, the ability to be capable to produce all which one needs without expending all of one’s energy, relies on a class-based subordination of all necessary labor, and either issues from or begets an existential neurosis wherein the dominant class effectively denies the very necessities of living and expects to receive the necessities of life, the fetishized items of an apparitional commodity world.

This reminds me of a passage in Agamben about the eccentricizing of the artist type and how this enforced distance allows people to live in the presence of art without feeling any necessity or responsibility to create it themselves.

Tuesday's Suggestions

2007-01-23T23:23:00.000-05:00

Politics:

Remiss in my posting, I am now after the State of the Union and thus irrelevant. Unless of course the State of the Union didn’t articulate a revolutionary political paradigm for the next century and promise to bring us into a new future of rejuvenated Democracy. In which case I’ll be ok.

Nevertheless, I offer you a pre-State of the Union assessment that, as might be expected emphasizes the lemmas standard to Presidential ceremony, those of respect and bipartisanship. Evidently universal assent is needed to guide our nation through these treacherous times, and even the impotent symbolism of the Democratic moiety failing to clap while their Republican (and now lesser) moiety does so (or vice versa of course) is detrimental to our project of Universal Freedom.

In some respect, this pre-State of the Union peacemaking irritates me especially this year as it only compounds Washington’s recent fascination with so-called centrism. It seems, and more on this later, I promise, that our cultural and political institutions have abandoned that key premise in democracy, or in any plural system – that of the dialectic, or mutual impact. Perhaps it’s a loss of courage, the ease of articulating the status quo in favor of invention and a will-to-power. But either way, the loss of true ideological contest and dialogue is the most glaring deficiency of our contemporary, degraded political system, and I was glad to see Alterman tackle the issue in his piece for The Center for American Progress.

Despite increasing concern (on the left, of course) over the disappearance of dialogical democracy, today’s news that Hillary Clinton will forego public election monies in favor of her own fundraising certainly sounds some sort of death toll for a system that, at its best, encourages diverse, syncretic, heterogeneous, whatever politics in an election cycle by allowing those without personal millions or close friends with personal millions to participate in a presidential race on a national scale.

The New Yorker had an interesting piece this past week, prior to Hillary’s announcement, regarding the foreign policy stances of the top three Democratic candidates (Hillary, Obama, Edwards) but through the lens of Bayh’s concerns over a liberal base made reluctant to confront real international problems (Iran) with military force by the failures in Iraq. In a way, it substantiates the commonalities of the three major candidates, though nuances do appear, all of which are threatening to the candidates, in my opinion. That being said, Edwards seemed to take the most pragmatic line, with Clinton appearing overly hawkish and Obama appearing, well, immature and undecided (and perhaps also a bit duplicitous, if a split between rhetoric and action can be said to be that).

Also in the vein of 2008, Slate has a fantastic article currently that argues that Obama is, for white bourgeois voters, a sort of safe “black”, or, to use the article’s preferred language, a “white” “black”. While I typically cringe at such essentialist and metaphysically rooted descriptors, this article makes strong, strong arguments about the phenomenon of Obama’s stardom and its relationship to the particularities of his racial background and context.

And, of significant personal interest as I go to work writing speeches, a Slate interview with a so-called Republican “word-doctor”, though I think architect is the more apt euphemism. He’s not entirely intolerable, especially since I really do revere his profession in the abstract as something critical to politics, (my politics anyway).

Finally, something depressing: a BBC study that shows international opinion of US’s global role is at its lowest ebb. But, to compensate, two mildly amusing items: one, this profile from last week’s NYT Style section about several senators rooming together in a Washington, DC apartment; and two, a cartoon on the “surge”.

Culture:

The items here are only vaguely related to one another, and thus grouped under the equally vague subheading “culture”. Make of them what you will.

First, from New York Magazine, Jack Welch’s ire at the media’s obsession with overly-high CEO pays. Leave them alone, he says, and even suggests that they are deserving of more. Oh, NBC, how I would resist you if you didn’t have some of the only good television programming in the country.

Second, a Center for American Progress article on somewhat new FCC Chairman Kevin Martin whose ethics seem dubious and thus will no doubt herald another new era of media conglomeration and homogenization. Hooray.

Thirdly (awkward diction, yikes), some mildly philosophical (academic, even!) items. The Guardian today had an article ripe for dissection by even the least apt cultural theorists. Baudrillard is no doubt crying (if he’s read the article), though given the self-importance that permeates his essays, its difficult to tell why. But in all seriousness, ethnography kills its subjects. And as a reprieve from praxis, we shift to the abstract and this article on Pessimism vs. Existentialism. Nietzsche will have his day yet.

And lastly, David Sedaris deals with birds.

Arts:

From my favorite design blog, an interesting piece on an old book “Quintessence” which examines the social value certain products accumulate. What with the 100% likelihood of me owning an iPhone and my refusal to buy generic cereals, the post seemed relevant to me.

In television - no doubt all of you have seen this on youtube or elsewhere: O’Reilly’s appearance on Colbert’s show and vice versa. If not, read this review from the NYT. And maybe tomorrow I’ll muster the energy to seek out the video clips for you.

Monsieur Mulligan wrote about OJ’s book several weels ago, before it was abandoned by its publishers. Somehow, however, Vanity Fair managed to find a copy (and I believe Newsweek printed a chapter last week). Anyhow, Vanity Fair has an interesting review of what still seems to me a disturbing, disturbing piece of…literature.

Now for film. First, a review of Doug Aitken’s “Sleepwalkers” exhibit currently at MoMA. I have promised myself I will see it before it closes, but with the knowledge that many such promises have been broken. But now I’ll feel the collected guilty of this readership (does it exist?) if I don’t. So that’s something.

Last, suggestions for movies here, and here, and, if you’re way behind in things, here.

Farewell:

Farewell.

Some things worth looking at...

2007-01-22T22:01:00.000-05:00

Politics:

Hillary Clinton and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson announced their presidential aspirations over the weekend, following Obama’s announcement last week and Edwards’ immediately after Christmas. Clinton, Obama and Edwards are polling the highest thus far, though that is likely to change, and especially in the 2008 election cycle as the early intensity forces candidates to speak out on issues sooner and a proliferation of debates and forward-shifted primary schedules demand vicious fundraising and near-profligate expenditures of campaign coffers in key media markets.

The Democratic side is especially crowded this year, and with significant talent at that, though it remains to be seen if any of the top contenders truly have the gravitas to endure the ferocity of the campaign trail. Lucky for the Dems, polling this week shows that Bush’s “major” policy shift on Iraq has had little effect on his support, which is now at an all time low.

I still say, and this NYT Week in Review article suggests its concurrence with me, (always a dubious honor), that this election will be about re-describing the American political landscape, or, to be more academic, inventing new discursive practices. Whoever can describe the future best, wins. In accordance, a similar piece from Atlantic Monthly on several ex-politicos determined to disrupt and transform America’s increasingly polarized two-party political system using that much-touted panacea of our generation: the “internet”, formerly known as the “world wide web” and prior to that, the “information super highway”. (Such euphemistic aplomb.)

On the foreign policy front, I think the ascent of China makes an interesting case study for this post-baby boomer paradigm sketching (as well as good populist politics), and, luckily enough, has almost nothing to do with the Middle East or Islam.

Culture Wars:

Now onto Islam: two recent pieces from the Guardian, one analyzing a racist remark made on popular British program “Big Brother” which has caused substantial furor in Southeast Asia, and another looking at the embedded, though not always subtle racism of Western border policies. On the opposite side of things, another Guardian essay, (how dialogical of them), about the failures of contemporary liberalism and, in particular, its increasing blindness to the danger of “contemporary Islam”, whatever that may be.

And for the true xenophobes in our midst, something closer to home as American Conservative Magazine does violence to the discomforting and somewhat alarming (though not altogether surprising) results of a Harvard professor’s research that shows multicultural communities bear more prejudice than homogenous ones. And to really make you, liberal readers, angry: a review of Dinesh D’Souza’s new book which blames September 11th on the opulent, carefree lifestyles of the American left. Yes, he continues to be an asshole, and an idiot. And, to turn his rhetoric against him with parodic self-awareness, also probably responsible (in the abstract of course) for much anti-Americanism in Western Europe.

But, lest you think now that sectarian violence is inevitable and our world is headed for chaos, a letter from ex-patriot Iranians condemning their country’s recent (sort of) sponsorship of a Holocaust Denial conference.

Education:

It seems the university system in America is languishing, as evidence by the proliferation of articles offering suggestions for its rehabilitation or complete overhaul. Three from the Wall Street Journal: 1 | 2| 3 ; and one from the Hoover Institution, which critiques our college’s contemporary state through the lens of J.S. Mill. Also, it seems there is a burgeoning trends towards the elimination of middle school as such. Will it make that time any less awkward for those enduring it? Probably not. (An erection is an erection after all). But maybe, just maybe, kids will learn more.

Culture:

Note: elision of “wars” from above subtitle by no means suggests my complicity with the hegemony of Western aesthetic and discursive practices or the intentional burying of the political charges of such practices.

With that out of the way: Pynchon vs. Pynchon. Personally, I think New York does a better job here, though I am consistently impressed by the brevity with which London articulates a point.

To contextualize Pynchon in the narrative of narratives, Zadie Smith offers this somewhat pessimistic assessment of fiction and what makes great novels great (and what makes most “great” novels failures if not just plain shit). And for all those former literature students in our midst, an impressive though ultimately and significantly flawed critique of Theory’s hegemony in the academy. (I will offer this caveat though: while the author’s assessment of theory in general is quite flawed, I will say that his assessment of the way it has come to be understood beyond the academy is quite accurate – all those hipsters out there paralyzed by the infinite web of deferred meaning within which Derrida has so violently placed them. Such melodramatic and self-indulgent rationalizations for apathy. My the masses have matured.)

From literature to movies, a historically doomed shift. Pan’s Labyrinth and Children of Men. Saw them this past week. Extraordinary the both of them. A zealous, though belated, (I’ll never quite be in the vanguard, will I?) recommendation on both counts. See them NOW. Though be warned: fascism in all its forms (historical and predicted) is absolutely fucking terrifying. And if you can’t find any of these films near you, this article conveniently dissects why.

Finally in culture this week, an article from New York Magazine on the reborn and evidently flourishing art scene in the Village (in Manhattan for those further than a few miles from me). Frankly, I think the artists profiled seem transparent and quite unimpressive, but I’m no art critic. I just judge people personally.

Finality:
I leave you with these two stories (one, two) which I found interesting are beyond the conventional boundaries of my knowledge base. That is, they are vaguely scientific.

One Good Thing About Gore Losing in 2000...

2007-01-11T23:33:00.000-05:00

One more thing: this man needs to go.

The Politics of Failure

2007-01-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

Thus began President Bush's address to the nation last night. Anticipation of the address arose from two well-circulated and well-confirmed rumors: that Bush would admit the failure of existing Iraq policy and that he would propose a significant troop increase in Baghdad and other insurgent strongholds.

Strategically, it seems, the Bush camp hoped to allow the latter by offering the former. By admitting to failure, admitting to mistakes, for once seeming unsure and humble before the camera, Bush seemed to be offering a political gift to his opponents: vindication, and smug vindication at that. But the strategic magnanimity was not limited to the Congressional elite, to politicians and public figures. The rhetorical pivot was really meant for the nation.

It was well-orchestrated artifice - a convincing simulacrum of remorse and human frailty juxtaposed against a noble belief in the eventual perseverance of American values and an unwavering support and love for American troops toiling in this far off war. Or so it read anyway, as the quote above so artfully demonstrates.

Look at how wonderfully Bush expresses his frustration, framing it within the constellation of American ideals. He is frustrated because America is not all she can be - despite trying so hard, America is failing in its construction of equal democracies abroad. But wait, he says, we as Americans must not feel badly, must not bear the burdens of this failure, this inability to be perfect. He, our President, our Commander-in-Chief will bear it - he will strap himself to the crucifix and suffer for all of us, as long as we promise to, upon resurrection, support this final endeavor. And thus, we are inducted into the cult of Bush, or such was the plan anyway.

Not surprisingly however, his resurrection was transparently hurried, unconvincing in the speed of its arrival. His toes had barely touched the fire before the delusional monomania resurfaced (it had never truly absconded had it?). And boy, did it resurface with undue vengeance.

Admittedly, there seems to be no workable solution to problems of Iraq. To summarize grossly and with little nuance: we can leave, or we can stay. Both options are fueled by the knowledge that, whether leaving or staying, we can't stay as we are now. So, staying hinges upon something more – additions, multiplications, exponents.

Leaving is fraught with problems, both logistically and ethically. In terms of the former, leaving is always a dangerous military proposition. Its when our troops are increasingly likely to be killed and, more avariciously, though perhaps justly so, its when we lose a fuck-ton of money, leaving it to depreciate in the acrid heat and sectarian violence of a once-promised (though never all that promising) democratic state.

Ethically it's about guilt and human connection (a Freudian romance, it seems). Do we feel comfortable leaving behind a situation that will undoubtedly devolve into a murderous, structure-less abyss or, worse, a murderous, over-structured Shiite autocracy whose only motivation seems to be vicious recompense against their historical oppressors? We once cared enough about the Iraqi people to free them from tyranny and build them a fancy-new Democratic state. Has that all evaporated? Doesn't seem quite right to me. (Though perhaps it wouldn't look all that bad sitting on top of the historical pile I call " America's Geo-Political Misadventures" just above Vietnam, CIA Activity in South America, Neo-Liberal Trade Policies and the like.)

And so we return to the something more, the offering of yester-evening. 21,500 more troops to be deployed to Iraq's most bitterly conflictual areas. Most to Baghdad itself where even America's Green Zone is looking perilously contested. 96,000 more troops added to the military over the next 5 years. Billions of dollars invested in Iraq's economy. Increased diplomacy with Mid-East neighbors, especially Iran and Syria.

In some ways, it actually sits quite well, but then gastronomically this Adminstration has never sat that well and perhaps our expectations have just been lowered. Either way, last night's change of course wasn't gruel.

With Rumsfeld gone, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense actually had a joint-press conference, significant in its actuality but also in, well, its signification. No longer it seems is Iraq strictly a military problem to be approached with strictly military solutions. The complex, syncretic nature of the problem is reflected in this new plan: diplomatic, economic, political and military efforts will work simultaneously towards the same end. Monomania gives way to mature nuance, though mind you, this is still as teleological as ever. It's all channeled through the same religious visions of triumph as before; we're just now getting to heaven a different way.

I don't mean for my distaste to be so pointedly brusque here. I think these are all positive developments, some of them significantly so. But before I get too congratulatory, let's list everything that's wrong:

- How is a "troop surge" not escalation? The stated objective is to root terrorists out of violent neighborhoods, and then occupy those neighborhoods to ensure terrorists won't return. This means American troops will only leave once terrorists disappear, completely. Afghanistan is the most valuable example of this: after claiming to have defeated the Taliban, increased opium crops this year led to their resurgence and significantly increased violence in the once nearly restful state.

- We aren't wanted in Iraq. Maliki and his Shiite political elite want us out. Though this hasn't been voiced publicly, NYT has top Maliki aides on record expressing his discontent with increased American involvement in Baghdad. This means, like our attempts to make Baghdad safe this summer, that Iraqi promises will probably fall through and the needed level of troops, if we can suppose for a second that such a level exists, won't be provided.

- Iraq is too sectarian. Maliki is a Shiite who garners the majority of his political support via the religious and military muscle of al-Sadr, the radical cleric behind the most violent Shiite militias in the country. Saddam was not allowed to be executed on a religious holiday according to new Iraqi law. Guess which holiday he was executed on? That's right, a Sunni one. The new government in Iraq is too willfully sectarian and all past Iraqi police/military surges have been infiltrated by various militia organizations: in sum, it is impossible for the United States to occupy a position in Iraq that doesn't exacerbate religious and tribal tensions.

So, where does this leave us? Nowhere I suppose, but where we already were. Answerless, on the precipice of a more violent, protracted, and altogether dangerous epoch in the war. It seems that all there’s left to do is play politics.

Bush is hoping to solidify (or rescue, at this point) his political legacy. Democrats are secretly hoping this is a failure so as to more ably condemn John McCain’s foreign policy record in the 2008 election cycle. Moderate Republican’s are diverging from the Bush camp to avoid a Chafee-esque defeat in the future.

Sadly enough (and somewhat disappointing too, after reading this long), I don’t have a better solution. The politicking all seems a bit disingenuous if no material gain is possible, but perhaps in some divine dialectical fashion a solution will emerge from the political squabbling in Washington.

But what does emerge, and returns us to the title of the post, is the possibility of a new political discourse in American politics. While Bush’s admission of guilt, failure, etc… smacked of disingenuous artifice and Machiavellian strategy-making, I do believe it is an epistemologically interesting gesture. The ability to start-over, to rethink is something that rarely exists, but perhaps should in Washington.

There is the odd perception in our democratic, pluralistic society that our political culture must be absolute, that it must be steadfast and resolute, must be inscribed indelibly in the history of our nation, with all the metaphysical, originary pomp of the Constitution.

But failure allows change. It gives us the opportunity to reformulate language, to invent new discursive fields, to revolutionize the way politics are discussed, and hopefully, to ultimately shift the way politics are done. The moment of failure is the moment of revolution. Without such moments we remain in bed with our sordid past, unwilling to call it the letch it is.

Particularly in this moment of “warring cultures” where the absolutism of religion confronts the contingency of democracy, or so it is said, we need to abandon our old diplomatic, political, rhetorical, economic, historical tools. They need to go. Wholesale.

If the world truly is a different place, it needs to be re-described as such, instead of defined according to its deviation from a moment in the past. Rooting out terrorists and waiting for them to disappear from the face of the earth in this case is just waiting around for the world to go back in time to when there weren’t terrorists. American cannot be involved in such a Beckettian farce.

I still don’t know what the answer is, but I know its not going to come from politics as usual.

All for Public Execution!

2007-01-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

Apparently we all are.
Here's my thought: one of the 'practical' objections to the institution of capital punishment is just how much it costs to put someone to death. The lengthy appeals cost the taxpayers of a given state a staggering amount. Take this case study:
"The North Carolina study estimated that a capital trial takes roughly four times longer than a non-capital murder trial. Based on the data collected by the authors of the North Carolina study, they found that less than a third of capital trials resulted in a death sentence. Nevertheless, each of these trials had the extra expense associated with death penalty proceedings. The trial costs alone were about $200,000 more for each death penalty imposed than if no death penalty was involved." (full article)
Crazy, huh? Why would we spend so much to put people to death?
Because apparently, our society thinks it's right, thinks it's worth it.
Hell, you want a democratic look at it? Well over 400,000 people have viewed some incarnation of it on YouTube (No, I'm not counting the SouthPark cartoons) at the time of this writing. So I got interested. Why is nobody advertising on YouTube on these pages? It's all search-term sensitive: you buy up keywords and your ad appears on relevant videos. That's a lot of hits with no competing bids! Lots of bang for one's buck.
Aha. There we are. Try this on for size: if our society wants so badly to murder its deviants, and if it's already paying for it through the nose, why not lessen that burden by showing these as pay-per-view specials? We could even have the broadcast limited to residents of a certain state, to make sure that only those who were benefiting from the security guaranteed by the executions were watching, that nobody was taking any questionable or even pornagraphic pleasure out of it.
Sponsorships would help, too. It could be "the Army Air National Guard execution of Willie Mack Moddon, this Friday!" or, "This sloppy lynching of ex-iraqi president brought to you by British Petroleum."
We've already done it. Commercials were running, though I haven't been able to figure out whose yet, during the major news outlets' airing of the execution, and don't think people weren't pouring over the numbers after the fact.

Here's a serious article on Saddam, by someone a little more controllably disgusted.

This is a preview of my novel.

2006-12-30T15:20:00.001-05:00

Stacking my books up in the corner of my room, largest to smallest on the top in spite of my wish to put a large Asimov or White Teeth in the most visible place possible, I fit two piles up against the step leading to my dilapidated porch, must kee them under or equal to its height of about eleven inches, and I realize that it’s a slight precursor to shame I’m feeling, knowing that I can fit my books to certain dimensions. I should be in school right now, reading reading, I only ever picked up books over the last ten years of my life in order to find that last book I’d ever read. I can’t control that urge to stop my compulsive reading with a book, I can’t stop the flow with Pynchon, even, though it’s large enough to trouble the passage in my mind with very nearly full blockage. I’ll be lost as an old man in piles of books about me with my own face effeminate behind one stack—oh, never sure which—when I do find that last book, a levitational act of one tower, a gap halfway up a four foot monolith of pages, just the size of a quarterly academic journal, where the books above it can’t fall into and the books below can’t rise, a total failure of all the books about it to fill it, and I’ll either turn away from it or maybe even pick it up. The last book I read will have no weight whatsoever, and no one else will ever see it.

Blackmail in Your Stocking

2006-12-27T23:05:00.000-05:00

Christmas sucks.
That's right, I'm going to do it.

The virtual blackmail members of a family inflict upon one another by recoursing to well-established social norms so they can extract as much as possible from those from whom they should demand as little as possible in terms of exchangeable tangibles.

That's really what irks me, the exchangeability and the tangibility of the objects demanded, and not so much the demanding.
Here's why:
I will forgive people who are in love with each other the grand pains they can inflict upon one another, but not the small ones. Because however much all pain people do one another must be stopped, one is performed as a desperate mark of uncontrollable love with no thought of the ego (which is presumably already shattered: "Charlie, you bitch, let's work it out!"); the other is performed underhandedly by a sick ego that cuts the other 1) in order to avoid cutting itself, 2) with the hope in mind of not being injured itself in retaliation (it always hides behind a sophist-icated justification).
And the Christmas programme, the structure it provides set rules by which one can determine who got the other the best gift. Even if it isn't the case that each one wants to see the other lose as much money as they have in the purchasing (and this is highly suspect), then the very fact that each weighs the other's gift against their own on these finely calibrated scales which allow for the expression of will in ratio of money spent to income and 'thoughtfulness'--this boils down to two lovers using a well-crafted societal mechanism to attempt to best the other.
Gift giving is not always like this: the ego can be inflated in the giving of a gift without the diminuation of the other so long as it happens outside an exchange-based system.

If people are to give gifts, they should not do so during Christmas, or at least should not do so by exchanging them at Christmas with someone they love. Maintain your ability to love above all else, and give them to the poor, or someone else you don't like or whose face you won't see when they open the present.

There we are.

But seriously. However mediated by society all our relationships may be, we do need to reserve the right to declare the medium a poisonous one.

Synchronicity

2006-12-22T14:40:00.000-05:00

Sitting in a bar in Trelew - at 2 in the morning after 18 hours on a bus from Rio Gallegos through the endless repetition of the flat unchanging plains of coastal Patagonia - I ate a large pizza, drank a beer, and thought about the concept of synchronicity. More to the point, I had four thoughts related to this concept, thoughts which stood out from the continuous monkey-like chatter of a mind mostly numbed by a long bus ride, and each of which produced a moment of clarity - a brief refreshing silence in my own inner monologue and an equally refreshing sense of oblivion to the noisy, chaotic, smoky Argentinean bar. I scribbled each of the thoughts in my best cursive on the place-mat - a dirty-white paper square bordered by a simple design of green grass and red, yellow, and blue flowers - in front of me and took great pleasure in the act of writing in cursive and in the way that words, when written in this font (even the worst most messy attempts at cursive), have a habit of flowing together and running with immense ease from each to the next. The first realization was that one could sit and observe a hunched, middle-aged balding Argentinean - slightly overweight and wearing thick glasses - eating a hamburger in a bar with his family in the middle of the night, in the same instant that one could rest in a modest, simple kitchen in southern Chile talking to the owner - a woman named Chila - and a campesino - slightly drunk on wine and with an obsession for John Kennedy and Elvis Presley - whose greatest pride is his calloused, rough hands and whose greatest love is the forest, the land. If you choose to view time as a consecutive series of moments, then these two moments, in being timeless, violate such a series. Such moments, when experienced, feel limitless, as if being simultaneously possible at any given chosen instant. This for me, then, is synchronicity: that two such moments as these could be occurring simultaneously not only with each other but with the rain falling softly on a window of a red farm house in a gray morning in the tiny Fair Isle in the Shetland Islands; and with a couple - holding hands and standing completely still and close - in a moment of silent reverence in front of a painting in the Louvre in Paris; with bread baking in Barcelona and a street market in Tangiers and a child coming into the world in Dakar...

Strictly speaking in terms of the definition of synchronicity (described as the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection), there must be an apparent relation between the events in question. It seems to me that if one can see beauty in all events occurring in the world, or in those that might occur (as I believe is an aspect of eastern religions like Hinduism), then this common quality is enough of an apparent relationship to meet the above definition. If one takes no stock in the ethos of eastern religions, then perhaps the above definition needs to be modified.

The second thought that bubbled up like a small ephemeral sphere of mountain air appearing at the surface of a sulfurous rank tar pit was the following: So inextricable how deeply beautiful and wonderful, and at the same moment sad and terrible, the world can be. Each of these two extremes is capable of feeling deeply blinding to the point of apparent absolutism. Thus for some is suicide the solution to depression, to briefly cite an example. The fact that these extremes are capable of occurring simultaneously, or even of being experienced in the same instant, defies human reason and rationality. Memories of the 'Sorrows of Young Werthe' come now, unbidden, to the mind.

The third thought: In the time that it takes to write these words, someone has been killed or hurt with malicious intent in an atrocious and brutal manner, and in this same brief period of time someone has been loved or has loved with epic selfless passion and purity of heart. Realization of the truth of this synchronicity, it seems to me, leads to a vision of beauty great enough to bring a tear to the eye of even the stoniest and statuesque of solemn stoics.

The final: If I had loved and never been hurt, or been hurt but had never loved, I would say let the universe persist with its infinite and infinitely random and chaotic collection of possibilities and impossibilities indefinitely. But in both worlds have I dreamt and raged and thus I say let it all come to an end - disintegration, collapse, ruin - without reason or warning (as it will); I welcome it with a smile and a sigh.

Because of the unavoidable fact that transferring thoughts to words can only be done in a progression from one letter to the next, and from one word to the next - the simple process of which thus creating the illusion of a beginning, a middle, and an end - it seems that the above four thoughts arose in the order that they are now posed. Upon reflecting, however, I really can't claim that the thoughts didn't all occur in the same instant, a small microcosm of synchronicity, serving as a model, perhaps, for the thoughts of all mankind.

Eight months ago...

2006-12-16T23:22:00.000-05:00

Stumbled across this the other day, as I was feeling depressed about the decline of my writing post-college. This didn't necessarily help, but I do feel it is a nice iteration of what I've liked so much about this blogging project. To contextualize briefly: it was written for the Bates Student as a farewell piece for the Arts Section. I reference some of the columns I wrote, but not to a degree where it is necessary to offer further explanation of them. Anyhow, to lengthily quote myself (is this this apex of egomania?):

"As the academic year comes to a close, it seems appropriate for us all to reflect upon my articles over the past months. Brilliant at times, exceptionally so at others, my pieces for this paper cautioned against the baleful currents of traditionalism and naïve historical longing that obfuscate the potential of our generation, that stigmatize us as divergent or deviant and as complicit participants in a systemic apostasy of “culture.”

In short, my pieces attempted to satirize this antediluvian way of thinking, imagining popular culture, that much maligned discursive nexus of society, as an object of traditional nostalgia. I intended this representational juxtaposition to reveal the relationship between an engrained elitism and the divisions and judgments by which the value and quality of art and culture are determined.

Despite the frequent verbosity of my sentences and the impossibly ridiculous choice of subjects, I am deeply invested in the intellectual exercises my pieces exemplify. Reading a Cameron Diaz film as a rigorous deconstruction of metaphysical gender politics in American culture, or Kelly Clarkson’s music as a potential locus of post-industrial dialectical radicalism is not merely an attempt at humor but the concerted effort to reveal the narrowness within which contemporary political and academic disciplines seem to operate and the social potential that arises from an increased willingness to engage popular or mainstream culture seriously and powerfully.

Too often corporate or capitalist culture is fallaciously counterposed against the academy or against a properly liberal political culture, a counterpositioning promulgated and justified primarily by members of these institutions, members who use supposedly radical academic jargon and theory to legitimate an ideological stance fundamentally rooted in classism or, at the very least, significant disdain for and distrust of the so-called “masses.”

This includes the relatively arcane, (Marxist professors who vilify an entire cultural epoch by narrowly and tenuously relating something as vague as “postmodernism” to “consumer culture” and the evaporation of idealism), and its reoccurrence as the relatively commonplace, (the disappointing installment of personal attacks and wearisome jokes as the primary forms of political critique emanating from much of the left.)

The articulation of these differences or relationships between academic culture and popular culture is not necessarily problematic, but when difference becomes oppositionality or polarity, conflict ceases, democracy stagnates, and the gap between self-demarcated groups widens threateningly. My emphasis on conflict stems from a specific conception of democracy as fundamentally plural.

The contemporary equation of plurality with provincialism marks a divergence from a more properly Nietzschean conception of pluralism as fundamentally conflictual. It is not enough for a nation to contain differences within itself and maintain these differences as distinct—these differences necessarily undergo constant negotiation and revision. To foster a culture of hermeticism and fragmentation ignores the complexity of institutional and personal relationships within society while ignoring and effacing the dynamic histories out of which contemporary institutions emerged. Furthermore, it fuels the processes of alienation by increasing the disconnect between public systems of representation and private experiences.

Sealing off academia or “high-culture” from popular culture fails and erodes American democracy. It obstructs dialectic processes within society and participates in a tragic ahistoricism, an ahistoricism that denies existence in favor of essence, to employ a famous existential dyad.

This ahistoricism becomes apparent in an anti-corporatism that critiques contemporary capitalism without ever wondering why these mechanisms persist at all, or a liberalism that attacks conservative values without wondering why these values are able to accumulate power and influence, or, in an example from my own writing, a hipster sentiment that maligns popular culture without ever examining or explaining the reason why popular culture is just that.

What I am suggesting is not a laissez-faire way of being in the world in which anything that exists is ok because it exists. Instead I am proposing a movement beyond criticism and a rebirth of truly democratic dialogue in which difference is not taken as fixed and unchanging, but instead as a site of potential, and a place for re-articulating the way in which we present our beliefs to the world.

That is, criticism must begin to be comprehended only in coordination with its positive obverses: invention, creation, writing, construction. Without this “will to power” the political system falters and is replaced by an economic system that attempts to engage popular culture by catering to those tepid, “neutral” commonalities that exist between all citizens.

To end what has been, in the end, a lengthy digression from my frequent rage over the way in which my (our) generation is discussed by those in power, I return to this initial point and propose a powerful reversal of this stigma in which, if any link can be drawn between our generation and its fervent embrace of popular culture, this strong relationship edifies popular culture as a sort of meeting hall of the post-industrial state, a commonality that, if manipulated properly, allows for the insertion of radical new discourses and narratives into these networks of near-universal vested interest and participation.

The cultural convergence presented by mass culture very formally represents a new beginning and the re-emergence of a conflictual and dynamic democracy. In effect, the cultural homogeny bred by capitalist mechanisms prophesies and determines its own end: the very idea of homogeny always teeters precariously on the brink of fragmentation, co-option, and plurality. But to push it over the edge we have to stop hating it at least enough to work through it. Make Kelly Clarkson a symbol of the revolution in a way that people believe, and mass culture becomes yours to imagine and determine."

The Nightmare Palace of John Derbyshire

2006-12-09T16:09:00.000-05:00

Wandering through Arts and Letters Daily today, an article caught my eye. Called "The Dream Palace of Educational Theorists" and written by a John Derbyshire in the New English Review, the article infuriated me to the point that I found a response necessary. My essay here will make little sense without Derbyshire's as context. It can be found here.

Before I comment on Derbyshire's article, in which he is far angrier than I could ever be, I want to note that his point about college education actually gave me pause. While his comparison between college and Chinese women's foot-binding or German men's duels is overstatement to the extreme, His point that college-educated persons wind up able to "get low-paid outsource-able office jobs, instead of having to descend to high-paid, un-outsource-able work like plumbing, carpentry, or electrical installation" had some merit. As a recently-unemployed college graduate with all the storebought accolades, I have been surprised at the dearth of well-paying positions for which I am qualified, and aside from singing "What Do You Do With a BA in English?" from Avenue Q, I am also dismayed. Does this excuse Derbyshire's blasting of the "college racket" from which, no doubt, he has likely benefitted (admittedly I can find no bio to affirm this), however? Certainly not--if only because his calling this "a racket" while refusing to consider the achievement gap in education anything so cohesive is inconsistent and unnecessarily derisive.

As for the rest of Derbyshire's post: I have to be careful not to take this all too personally. It is tempting to revolt for personal reasons, knowing many of those whom he calls "saints and masochists" personally. However, it is because of my personal knowledge that I can not intellectually excuse him for noting, "I am sure there are some people who enter the teaching profession with the desire to crunch their way daily across the crack-vial-littered streets of crime-wrecked inner-city neighborhoods in order to put in 15-hour working days, but I doubt there are many such." Certainly, his depiction of urban education is accurate in some instances; in fact, it fails to go far enough. He is also correct in assuming how few would be willing and desirous of this challenge (though, I should add, an organization like Teach for America does receive over 19,000 applicants a year). What bothers me, though, is his use of this black-and-white depiction as an excuse for the achievement gap, which might best be described as the difference in achievement between poor students and students of color and their wealthier and/or white peers, in public schools.

This is not all that bothers me. Derbyshire evidences his clear sexism and other biases when he exclaims that in public schools "boys are pressed to act like girls, and dosed with calming drugs if they refuse so to act; girls are encouraged to act like boys by taking up advanced science, math, and strenuous sports, which few of them have any liking or aptitude for; and boys and girls alike are indoctrinated in the dubious dogmas of 'diversity' and political correctness." I will let this statement speak for itself.

What bothers me most about Derbyshire's article is how easily he dismisses every shred of public education as we know it and the attempts to improve it -- without attempting to offer any form of an alternative or even a coherent, unifying critique. Even someone who agrees with Derbyshire that teachers in unions are overpaid and underworked and that asking parents to help with homework is like forcing them to do the teacher's job might leave Derbyshire's article asking: "So now what?" The man has an easy time blasting "leftists" and insinuating that education is a crock run by Democrats (ever heard of No Child Left Behind, the latest crock of them all?), but he falls into the same trap that many claim afflicts Democrats: criticizing to the point of attacking without offering an alternative solution.

It's popular to criticize public education--or better yet, American education in general--and until recently I fell into the same trap of solutionless ranting. I think I might have a solution, and I'm currently drafting a 10-year plan for a non-profit I plan on founding as early as 2007 that will possibly help me to attack some of the problems in American education. It is a stopgap solution, but I'm also a proponent of small victories in lieu of waiting for the perfect solution to come. I can criticize with the best of 'em (a rank I do not ascribe to Derbyshire), but what will happen if we all stop there? Probably more than merely the pollution of the blogosphere.

Blair's Speech.

2006-12-09T06:10:00.000-05:00

There has been a significant amount of talk over Tony Blair's recent speech in which he essentially said 'conform to our tolerant society or get out of/stay away from Britain'. It was certainly refreshing to see Blair come out and say something that obviously has been on his mind for a while - at least since the 7 July bombings - not masked by political correctness. The Muslim Council of Britain called the PM's speech 'alarming', but I think that's rubbish. Certainly this isn't just a case of extremist Muslims spontaneously emerging in Britain - they have to be reacting to something (such as the Iraq war) - but I can't help but agree with Blair this time. It's about time that he told extremists who come to Britain and use their right to free speech (which they would be denied in most Muslim countries) to violently denounce their adopted home. (I'm referring to calls to arms and incitement to murder, not simply criticism of the government.) What I find so ridiculous about the Muslim Council of Britain's comment about Blair's speech is that Blair was very specific in describing exactly whom he was addressing. Blair said the threat came from 'a new and virulent form of ideology associated with a minority of our Muslim community'. I think that anyone with a brain understands what he means. I think it is a failure of responsibility on behalf of the Muslim Council to overlook this and pretend to not understand exactly who is being condemned.

What do you all think? Is there/should there be a limit to freedom of speech?

There is a link through this article to a video of the full speech: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6219626.stm

Scalia V. Breyer

2006-12-07T16:31:00.000-05:00

Interesting debate between the two Supreme Court justices with transcript here. Haven't read it through entirely myself, but its proving quite interesting thus far. For an overview, see the Slate article from today.

Also from the legal world, I urge everyone who has an online subscription to the NYT to read Stanley Fish's blog. He posts about every week, and often times the discussions are interesting and attract a peculiarly diverse range of comments, for the NYT anyway. The debate that has held my intellectual attention and still confounds me to a certain extent is one that began with Fish's October 22 blog entry about professors bringing politics into the classroom. In standard Fish fashion, he deviates from the liberal norm, though this time it seems less like self-indulgence and more like an attempt to lay-out something substantial and nuanced. For those without NYT access, e-mail me and I will send you the resulting 225 or so pages worth of criticism, responses, and discussion.

Chewing the Fat

2006-12-07T11:17:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, the New York Board of Health unanimously voted to ban trans fat in all of New York restaurants. The ban will not take effect immediately, but the Board expects all of New York’s restaurants to be trans fat free as of July 2008.

Nutritionists across the country have applauded the decree, and have claimed that trans fats are worse than saturated fats as they both increase bad cholesterol and simultaneously decrease good cholesterol. Considering the disastrous effects of obesity as well as our national failure to combat the disease, the ban might just be the start of something both remarkably healthy and necessary: indeed, the city of Chicago has proposed a similar ban. Even multi-million, multi-national fast food chains have either already voluntarily stopped cooking with trans fats (KFC) or have begun researching trans fats alternatives (Wendy’s, I think).

Despite these obvious and admitted benefits, I’m still grappling with the Board of Health’s recent decision. Perhaps some form of libertarianism initiates my discomfort. I think this decree reeks of over-governance, perhaps of the worst kind of hold-your-hand liberalism. I felt the same about the V-chip push years ago, those cute little substitutes that let parents off the hook and keep their children from stumbling across sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. But V-chips never became law.

The Board of Health and other nutritionists have defended the ban, equating trans fats with slow-acting poisons. In some of the reports I have read, defenders will say that arsenic might taste good in food, but it’s the responsibility of the government (municipal, state, federal, what have you) to protect its citizens from a known poison. The same, they reason, goes for trans fats.

But interestingly, as of right now there’s nothing illegal about trans fats at all, at least outside of New York. The Food and Drug Administration has approved trans fats. I imagine that somewhere in the FDA’s tomes there’s a clause or section barring restaurateurs and chefs from lacing their food with arsenic (and if not, there probably should be). But as of right now, Washington says it’s OK to cook with. The National Restaurant Association says that banning trans fats sets us on a slippery slope, and that slope might be slippery because it’s been greased with cooking oils. Precedent could push municipal, state or federal government to ban (beloved) bacon, or as Nick Naylor had it in “Thank You for Smoking”, Vermont’s cheddar cheese. These fatty foods, not necessarily made with trans fats but certainly high in saturated fat, could be reasoned to act as even slower-acting poisons like their recently-banned cousin. Depending on how you look at it, this precedent might lead to fitter Americans or to an unnavoidable infringement on our inalienable rights.

This, of course, might all change. Considering New York’s move, Chicago’s potential move, the federal law mandating the labeling of all trans fats in commercial food and restaurants’ voluntary move away from trans fats, the oil might be, well, cooked. And if so, well, good riddance. Voluntary moves towards a healthier product and a healthier lifestyle are commendable, and if the free market demands a healthier product then that’s saying good about us as consumers (both economically and digestively).

An abrupt change here, but I think an important one that should reconnect with some of the ideas I’ve explored later on: The way, not ways, the bill is being covered is fascinating. More often than not, news agencies will say something to the effect of “Mayor Michael Bloomburg, who banned smoking in New York bars and restaurants during his first term, signed the bill today.” I simply don’t believe in the implied equation between smoking and trans fats. The push behind the smoking bans tends or tended to focus on the deleterious effects of secondhand/involuntary/passive smoking, that exposes ‘innocents’ to carcinogens that can lead to lung cancer. Yes, trans fats have obvious and maybe irreversible effects, and, like secondhand smoke, can increase the chances of cancer. But short of someone cramming a donut in your mouth or you slipping on a greasy French fry, I doubt that the same goes for fatty foods. A family can be effected by a family member’s poor eating, but a family can also effect the family member’s poor eating. And if we want to eat poorly for a meal or two or three or as many as we want, and if we understand the consequences of that meal, then, as adults, we should be entitled to. Right?
Maybe not. Like I said, the coverage of the bill is fascinating, and reveals something ugly about us as humans pre-politically. In order to stretch the article, news agents have gone to New York fast food joints and interviewed the patrons about the bill. More often than not, every patron supported the trans fat ban (I only read one complaint, wherein the patron worried that the price of his lunch would go up because of the costlier cooking oils). The patrons that supported the measure all discussed the obvious health benefits to the ban, were all eager to be eating healthier and realized that the change in the oil would probably improve their lives. Reporters, augmenting the quotes that they received from these patrons, noted that they received their quotes as the patrons fed their children McDonald’s French fries, gnawed on hamburgers, chewed on donuts.

As I said, most of the patrons expressed some understanding that trans fats were bad for them. Then why go and eat the damn food? Why put it in your children’s hands? Why wait for the government to come along, hold your hand, and smack the French fry from your mouth? If these patrons were concerned, truly concerned with what they were eating, were aware of what it could do to their bodies and so readily welcomed the enforced change, then why did they wait for the Board of Health? Like I said, the coverage reveals something ugly, something lazy, about us. In spite of our understanding, more often than not we won’t save ourselves. But we’ll happily wait for and let someone else do it for us.

Famine

2006-12-04T06:57:00.000-05:00

I probably read five or six articles on climate change per week. This one in particular, however, really struck me. I'm posting it for all of you to read. First, though, take a look at this map of North America with the projected wheat-growing regions in 2050 compared with now. Jesus.

Here's the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6200114.stm

Review of independent film on Radical Islam

2006-12-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

[I have to run and catch a plane to Buenos Aires so I don't have time to post my own reactions to the article and interview, but I'll try to add my comments when I get to Argentina...]

The following are excerpts from an article by Christina Gallagher in the Johannesburg Saturday Star entitled 'Islamic fundamentalism gets REEL - An independent film analyses the hatred of fundamentalist Muslims for the West'. The film in question is 'Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West', and Saturday Star's interview with the maker of the film is also quoted in this blog post. Most interesting, I believe, is Kopping's perceptions of the role that should be taken by the international liberal media in the conflict between radical Islam and the rest of the world (including the non-radical Muslim world).

from the article:

"The most disturbing parts of the movie is the footage of how Muslim children are being indoctrinated by radical Islamic rhetoric to feel hatred. On Abu Dhabi Television, a sweet-faced girl from Bahrain says unemotionally: 'I hope Bush dies in flames, and I want to go to Ariel Sharon and kill him with a gun and stab him with a sword [she tucks her hair behind her ears and adds] because of the poor Palestinians.' Obsession also sets forth compelling evidence about the connection between Islamic fundamentalism and Nazism - specifically ,the use of similar propaganda." [http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/trailer.htm, scroll down until you see the link containing the word Hitler]

from Saturday Star's [SS] interview with Johannesburg-based film-maker Wayne Kopping [WK]:

"SS: How did you find such poignant clips?
WK: There are two organizations that record hundreds of hours of Arab television and scour the newspapers. They watch for incidents of propaganda and also moderation. Any time they find something that is overt or subtle propaganda, they take it and they translate it and those transcripts are available on the internet. It's been out there for years.

SS: Why do you think the mainstream public has not accessed this information?
WK: I just don't think people have been made aware of it. And even many of the news reporters living in the Arab world can't speak the language. They see some guy ranting and raving on TV and they don't know what he is saying. Some immam says 'Kill the Jews' or 'Kill the Americans' on some religions programme and that isn't a news story to them."

....

"SS: In the film you say that after the September 11 attacks, the Americans were asking 'What did we do to them to provoke such action?' For the Islamic extremists, is it simply a hate against everything that is Western or is it more about a hatred of a belief system that is inherent in people?
WK: First of all, it must be said that American and UK foreign policy is not necessarily the greatest. They have caused pain in the Middle East and the Arab world. As far as the hatred of the West, they don't hate our foreign policy. I am talking about the radical Muslims who see the world according to the literal translation of the Qur'an. You have to see it from their point of view. Islam means 'submission'. We [the West] don't submit to Allah. Who the hell are we to turn around to the Almighty God and say 'We reject your laws'? That is an insult of the highest order. It is their religious mandate to correct that. We are the ultimate sinners and insulters of Allah. So when they hate the West it is not because of something we have done but because of who we are. "

...

"SS: What do you think is needed in order of there to be some type of change?
WK: What it will take to tip it is when we realize that majority of the Muslim population does not want to live under or be associated with these regimes. We must find a way for them to determine their own future and help them fight this war. I really believe that Islam as a religion is compatible with democracy as long as they don't interpret it in the way that the radicals do, which is the hardline, literal interpretation. What the liberal media should focus on is broadcasting those moderate voices in the world and help to support them. It is all going to come down to an enormous body of Muslims who are going to choose on way or the other. Do they feel that West is the greates threat to their religion? Or do the believe that the religions leaders are the greatest threat to their religion?"

2 poems

2006-12-03T03:14:00.000-05:00

Slightly irresponsible, but if you all want something on Amy Hempel, I do assure you it's coming. So 2 new poems for now, and lucky audience, these got titles:

FIRE IS FUCKIN' DANGEROUS!
It's bad when too many things do it

and so many things can do it!

---------

[illocuted profanity]
the perversity of this is not due to the actions described per se but instead the banality
the unremarkability of the gross violence in the book is what disgusts, that we already know what he is telling us.

Some Things of Interest...

2006-12-02T15:37:00.000-05:00

1. The New York Times has released its annual Top 10 list for fiction/non-fiction. Of particular interest are The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, if only because John M. has so assiduously reccomended them to me. (Assiduous make me sound insouciant, which I'm not.) Diction aside, he seems quite confident of her literary abilities and I certainly plan on obeying his praise, which, no doubt will ripple with equivalent actions throughout this increasingly large community. Also, I've just begun Emperor's Children, which I'm finding quite impressive. It offers a critique of middle-class liberalism nearly as incriminating as Yates's Revolutionary Road or Smith's White Teeth, and yet there seems to be a nearness to the irony and wit that, in my thesis days, I might have called pastiche, or parody without depth. It's such self-indulgent parody of self-indulgence that it's strongest emotive quality is its ability to resonate with my own anxieties over distance, namely my inability to believe the delineations my interior monologue establishes between my imagined self and what I fear becoming (but perhaps know I already am?). Affectionate postmodernism perhaps, or just ambivalence?

2. The $150 Laptop. A number of you may remember my temporary fascination with this early last year. Seems it has made more progress. I still have a guilty interest in owning one myself but remain aware of ethical/theoretical/economic implications of such fetishism. What's interesting in this particular article is the so-called debate the journalist seems to create between the designers and their detractors. Wonder what is thought of the Microsoft argument, "we shouldn't do in the developing world what we do in the rich world"? Reminds me of the life-boat argument and all its self-righteous morbidity, especially when spoken by the voice of he-trying-to-make-a-buck, but perhaps its a discussion that must take place pragmatically.

3. For those who haven't seen it: Ronaldinho's goal vs. Villareal last weekend. A think of astonishing beauty, really. As I've been told, "something even us Yanks should appreciate".

4. The Show with Ze Frank. My most recent internet addiction. He posts a new video every day of the week, and they are all quite entertaining or, at the very least, interesting. He's a surprisingly adept social critic (and I only say surprising because of my preconeptions of the medium), ranging from a Jon Stewart-esque critic of political culture, to a more properly Barthesian critic of cultural systems of meaning, etc... Be sure to check out his "Popular Shows" link, and, for an example of his mental agility at its best, the Jon Benet episode. The various terms he employs can be a bit confusing at first, but no doubt you'll all become fond sportsracers in no time.

5. Evidently people read this. Not an enormous amount. But not a paltry amount either. John M. will comment with specifics.

Anyhow, my best to you all. I've enjoyed reading everything over the past month or so and encourage you to continue telling all you can of our fine internet endeavor.

Farcical Football Awards???

2006-11-28T09:22:00.000-05:00

While football may not seem the most worthy topic to be discussed on this board, I believe the philisophical nature of the disagreements that have sprung forth since the awarding of the Balon d'Or today warrant an exception. The Balon d'Or is the award given to the best player in the world (the merits of assigning the award to a single player in what is possibly the world's most team oriented sport are dubious, but i will leave that debate for another day). This year's winner is the italian defender Fabio Cannavaro. He played his club football for Juventus of Turin before they were relegated to the italian second division for match fixing. He then captained Italy to world cup glory this summer and joined Real Madrid this fall.

Now that we have the background over with I will air my gripes. In the history of professional football only one defender has ever one the award. His name was Franz Beckenbauer and he was the tall grey haired gentleman that you saw in the stands 2 or 3 times each world cup match. not only was the world's most accomplished defender, but his charges upfield with the ball earned him the nickname der kaiser. he was a complete player who's dribbling and passing were second to none. Since then we have seen other great defenders with the skills to play anywhere on the field such as Carlos Alberto, Fernando Hierro, Roberto Carlos, and Paolo Maldini (who started playing professionaly for AC Milan before we were born and still plays there today). None of them have won the award. There are even contemporary examples of complete defenders such as Gianluca Zambrotta, Rafael Marquez, Eric Abidal and Rio Ferdinand. This year's winner has little in common with these players. He is a tough, fast, take no prisoners type of player. He is the archetipical defender, but nothing more. he lacks the skills to control, protect and pass the ball. When pressured he uncerimoniously boots the ball into the stands. And when he is beaten he resorts to fouls. I have no problem with this type of player (I am this type of player). The skills required to stop the Ronaldinhos of the world are just as important to victory as attacking finesse. Should all players be judged within the sphere of thier vocation, or should they have to transcend it? should 'the best' be the decisive player of the skillful player? Is Cannavaro's selection a victory for all hard working, self sacrificing football players like he claims it is? or is it the imposition of heartless resultism that misunderstands the emotions of the game? Does the Balon d'Or in a world cup year need to be on the winning team? This would be a nice return to the team ethic for this paradoxical award, but that makes it hypocritical. To call him the world's best player and base that status on being arguably the best player on the best team is markedly unjust.

I invite your opinions on all of these questions and of course on the parallels in the world in general, because the beauty of football is that football is life. Everything that exists in life and the world is present in football. It includes men of every size, shape and origin. It has fair play and cheats, an imperfect justice system, tribalism, nationalism, political alignments, history, globalization, a winner, a loser or neither all within 90 minutes.

A post NOT about capitalism, democracy, or war...

2006-11-27T06:58:00.000-05:00

...but about the Islamic faith, and, all things considered, probably still pertinent. I have sincerely found great pleasure and moments of deep thoughtfulness in reading your posts about various aspects of (and faults in) Uncle Sam's great land, but I must confess, dear friends, that I feel I have grown more removed and out of touch with our home every day. Forgive any burgeoning ignorances or naivete. Here's something from the other side of the planet, another side of the coin, the Other side of our world...

I was resting one day in my hotel room in Agadir, in the company of the flies and cockroaches that happily shared my living space and probably enjoyed the viciously scorching midday heat as little as I did, when Mohammed Farai, a manager of that particular establishment, knocked on my open door and announced that I had a visitor. I had not been expecting any one and indeed knew not a soul in the city, so you can imagine the surprise that slowly emerged in my dozing mind like the head of a turtle sedately protruding from the confines of its shell to investigate its surroundings. I followed 'M' (as I took to calling Mr. Farai, whose behavior on more than one occasion had me convinced that he was a Moroccan mob boss with the hotel gig serving as a convenient cover) down the stairs to the dingy hotel lobby. Seated at one of the tables was a plump smiling Arab man wearing a white robe and a red fez, and as I approached he stood and greeted me in English (to my relief, as my French is pitiful and my Arabic even worse). He introduced himself as Aomar Saadaoui, a devout Muslim and a man who knew something about birds, and we talked for some time about various aspects of my project and of people and places I should visit while in the area. Possibly because the important month of Ramadan had recently begun, but possibly because he was simply a devout Muslim, Aomar also frequently slipped off onto tangents about the Islamic faith, especially the importance of Ramadan as allowing people to remind themselves of the Outer World, a realm of the spirit that has no regard or business with the physical, material sphere of which food and human hunger is an integral part and a powerful symbol. In relation to the habit of seabirds like terns to fold their wings back and plunge-dive from great heights into the ocean in the hunt for fish, Aomar related to me a Berber fable that I found particularly pertinent and interesting. His translation conducted on the spot certainly left the parable only partially complete, but in my mind its power still stands. According to Berber tradition, in the impossibly brief fraction of a moment directly after a seabird like a tern sees a fish and decides to dive, but before it folds its wings and lets itself fall like a stone from the familiar world of air and light to the foreign dark wet world of the ocean, an affirmation passes through its head with absolute certainty: 'Life is limited and must come to pass, and the living of this moment is intimately connected with that life in its whole form'. With the realization that life is limited and that God controls all, the bird relinquishes all humility, accepts no humiliation, and dives into the waves, knowing, accepting, and believing with complete totality that the only fears worthy of being faced and overcome are a fear of death and a fear of hunger.

For someone like me, traveling on a tight budget, devoting myself to simplistic living and a near-ascetic diet, often living in or passing through places that have gained a reputation (sometimes misconstrued) of being dangerous, the concept of overcoming fear and plunging into the unknown with such grace and courage naturally holds a great deal of attraction [in case you are wondering why I decided to do the bungy jump off the Bloukrans bridge, the highest jump in the world, the answer may lay in the desire to approach a real understanding of a seabird's dive]. Interestingly, I have always been awestruck when I have watched seabirds plummet into the sea in search of food, but my envy and fascination has generally been of a scientific nature (speed of the dive, depth of the plunge, etc), without ever drifting into the realm of considering any spiritual potentialities of the birds' bold lifestyles. Unbelievable, no, to think that a discussion of Ramadan could allow a different understanding of seabirds' predation strategies?

Hell, no.

2006-11-20T23:27:00.001-05:00

Wouldn't sacrificing yourself in a war on behalf of a liberal government be dying for the government that wasn't supposed to kill its citizens? If that liberal government buries you in a gigantic, monolithic supercemetary well-garnished with flags, doesn't its monolithic presence feed on your blood just as thirstily and debasedly as any authoritarian regime that gets a standard-raising erection from public executions? Shouldn't any liberal government which requires that its citizens die to maintain its dominance be ashamed of and shaken by this gross contradiction? The moment liberalism requires a 'patriot', it has failed as an ideal.

Take WWII. We beat the Nazis. But they didn't lose. They pissed in the well of human decency, and we firebombed Dresden, we conducted scientific experiments on minority populations and even servicemen, and we still profit off of the information gathered by Nazi scientists (ever wonder how, when your teacher in elementary school tells you how long humans can survive without food on the one hand versus water on the other, we know that? Or regarding overexposure?). Liberalism, that permanent refusal to give shame to another, truly can't exist without being a totalizing ethos.

So do we act 'like them' and engage in dirty tricks in a 'war to end war' mentality? Or do we act the purists and refuse to do anything that even slightly resembles causing another any suffering? We can't do either. We need to do both. We need to be the United Nations in this country of mine that can't stop killing.

So when Charles Rangel suggests we reinstate the draft to make politicians "think twice" about going to war (bullshit: politicians are always thinking about going to war), I immediately think of previous wars for which there was a draft, and especially WWI, where there was massive dissent and public opinion weighed heavily against it… and how we went to war. The problem is that if you can force a person to do something, they will rationalize by recasting that action as being of their own election. Hazing makes people part of a team by putting them through trauma so ego-shattering that they have to incorporate that trauma, that violence into themselves, like flesh growing over a bullet that can't be removed. This is why the 'ignorant' underprivileged lay down their lives so readily for the country that wrongs them and kills them: it's not stupidity but Stockholm syndrome. And as a privileged white young man, I've been lucky enough to have been kept with one foot outside of the door to the kidnappers' safehouse.

This is why I don't want a draft, is because people need to be kept free of patriotism, and subjecting the many to it (even as a stake in a gamble) does not free any from it. If the powerful want to go to war, they will go to war, and thank god that this time—unlike the real Vietnam—our volunteer-driven corps allowed for an entire middle class basically freed from the war which could look at it from a distance and object. The people on the inside were given no voice with which to object so long as the media was on the fence, so all we knew was jingoistic yokels. They were wronged ideologically and quite materially as well inasmuch as they got fucking shot to death in the desert. And nobody should be wronged like that. Including me.

General drafts do not deter war. They encourage righteous wars. And that's why that mother------- ways & means chair was on the side of nobody good when he proposed reinstating the draft. He can't conceive of a world without war, but only a world with just wars. He figured himself as George Bush's inverted double, as a philosopher king. That's still a king, that's still a demagogue. Sic semper tyranus, bitches.

He SOOOO Did It

2006-11-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

From our friend at work, John Mulligan:

The daily publishing newsletter from www.shelf-awareness.com had an article on OJ Simpson's If I did it. I was mildly appalled by certain booksellers' opinions on whether or not to carry it. One bookseller on OJ Simpson's If I Did It:

"Do we take a 'stand' on such a book, thereby sending our customers who want to buy it to our competitors? Is this a form of censorship? Or do we make it available without displaying it other than having it on the shelf?" She added, "I'm disturbed to be put in such a position. Freedom of the press notwithstanding, the way they're marketing the book raises huge ethical questions. We all know the publishers are desperate to make money on commercial books, but this takes the cake." Late yesterday, Olson said, the store decided to sell the book but donate proceeds "to Interact, a nonprofit here that shelters battered women and children."

Okay, I have some serious problems with this:

Not selling something is only "censorship" if the vendor is the only vendor to have access to the product, i.e., if their decision dictates the success or failure of that product. But obviously, this vendor does not think that is the case, as her other concern is "sending [their] customers who want to buy it to [their] competitors." If someone wants a product today, the free market is… well… free enough that they can get it anywhere, anytime. Thank you, internet and PayPal.

This is the 'bad' side of the late capitalist market economy. We have so much freedom within the system as a whole, everything is so level, that we make the mistake of thinking ourselves copresent with its totality (was it forty percent of Americans who think they're in the wealthiest 1%?). What we have is freedom, but only if we realize that we don't have the freedom to influence anyone else to an undue degree. Because otherwise, if you feel you have a huge amount of power (I can buy anything I want!), you feel obligated to act in a certain way (if I don't buy this, the economy will suffer!), and so are completely trapped by a false model of the economy and your place within it. Whereas you would really have individual power if you realized the extremely limited horizons of that power: whether or not you support company X, your forty dollars aren't going to sink it or float it, so why not decide which is the moral decision and make yourself a freestanding moral entity?

In this case: OJ's book, definitely an abomination. Honestly, who would want to give any money not simply to him (though apparently he's not getting any of it, it's unclear where it's going), but to the publisher who would profit in such a craven way on the sufferings of other human beings. Because two people did die. And OJ did do it. And playing in hypotheticals effaces them—doesn't kill them, but totally erases their fact from history and places them in a permanent state of limbo.

And finally, aside from the issues of false consciousness, that store is going to make money by trafficking OJ's book—it'll increase traffic to the store, especially if they put it in an out of the way spot, because then people will have to browse for it. And then they'll buy another book. Hypocrisy or stupidity? One is just a moral stupidity.

DON'T BUY OJ'S BOOK. (steal it)

Curry, Wells, and Armageddon

2006-11-16T03:59:00.000-05:00

Thought this might stir up some discussion. Forgive its ultimate tendency to be a bit pedantic.

Curry, Wells, and Armageddon

Even the name sounds fictional. Dr. Oliver Curry would be the perfect nominative for a wise but too-oft disregarded scientist who convinces the world too late that it is bound for disaster in a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster in the style of “Jurassic Park” or “The Day after Tomorrow.” Or wasn’t he a character in “The Time Machine,” ye olde grim statement of the distant future, by H.G. Wells?

Hardly. Curry is real, and better than that, he’s British and bearing a PhD, some attributes that likely had some bearing on how closely the world listened when he proclaimed the latest results of his research: in as little as 100,000 years, humanity will have divided into two separate species, one tall, brilliant and attractive while the other is equally short, dim, and ogrelike.

All right – perhaps Dr. Curry does belong in a Wells novel.

The truth of the matter is, there are a thousand reasons that I should disregard this supposedly researched theory. For starters, I first heard about it in that most reliable of news sources, the Onion (all right, so I haven’t been keeping up with my pseudoscience lately). And then there was the forum in which Curry made his grand announcement: Bravo television, a British men’s network that boasts of, among other things softcore porn. There was also a great deal of news that should have, in fact, pleased the more stereotypical of men: the next thousand years should hold both great promise for the, erm, endowment of the male sex as well as the smoothing of females into pornographic proportions, if we are to believe Dr. Curry. To cap it off, there is a grim prediction coming straight out of turn of the century sci-fi; and frankly, it was better in The Time Machine (well, unless you count the shoddy movie version).

The thing is though, Curry is a political scientist, not a physical scientist. We could have figured –that- out by his prediction that in the next 1000 years, inter-racial mixing will lead to a world of copper-skinned neutral types (pigmentation doesn’t work that way). Most of the literate world is laughing at Curry, and it is easy. I mean, he says people are going to become more sexually selective, antisocial, longer-living, computer-dependent… well, tell me something I didn’t know. However, we didn’t laugh at Wells. We knew Wells was no scientist; he was an author, and the point of the Time Machine was to entertain – and to make a statement about the current trends he saw in the world. Maybe the humorous “Dr.” before Curry’s name distracts us from the fact that we ought to treat him similarly—less as a prophet, and more as a man who is making a point about current events. What alarms and then, with consideration, amuses us about Curry’s theory is more its air of pseudoscience, I propose, and less its novelty. The ideas of classism, economic/achievement gaps, sexual selectivity, increased longevity: these are less original than tedious. The demise of humanity as we know it may be impending, but it is old news.

In fact, what might be more alarming than the idea of a human subspecies is the amazing display of apathy that most educated people have for the trends we as humans are showing. This does not seem merely to apply to the trends of which Curry took note. The other day, a friend remarked that we never hear about the depleting ozone layer or killing rainforests anymore. My response: sure we do; it just doesn’t catch our attention these days. Chalking this entire trend up to aging and its proportional decline in idealism and naïveté doesn’t cut it; I for one am still petrified by extinct animals, AIDS, and global warming. The problem is, my idealistic attention tends to turn to things that are most immediate, either in chronology or proximity: the genocide in Darfur, a proposed tax cap, presidential candidates, or uneducated children joining gangs. The longer something is with us, and the farther away it seems, the less likely it is that it will hold our attention.

I’m not accusing the media for being at fault with this tendency, but I do think the same phenomenon makes the media search anywhere, desperately, for something new, also makes us shift our attention from familiar threats. A love for novelty is probably genetic. I don’t know much about genetics (…apparently neither does Dr. Curry…), but I think that this is as much of a threat to our species as anything else. I think the whole of human inattention to our greatest long-term problems is worse than the sum of its threatening parts. Curry’s 100,000 years is a long way off, after all. I’m no fool. Before the human race will subdivide, we’ll be killed by global warming, the AIDS pandemic, nuclear holocaust, street violence, the loss of the rainforest, acid rain, famine, and avian flu. I don’t list these disasters to prove myself blasé to their threat or to render them mundane. Au contraire, I am reminding us of their cumulative hazards to make the point that the greatest peril of all may be our world’s sheer multitude of problems – and our own human distraction from many of its worst.

But then – disasters are kind of like clichés; both are undervalued. Like this one: don’t believe everything you read. One apocalypse is plenty. Before we start distracting ourselves with our collective fate in the distant future, we might do well to consider the world in the present tense. This does not mean just watching the news; just as in our children, there seem to be increasing occurrences of ADHD. We may have a host of problems, but we also have the manpower; last I checked, we were at the 7 billion mark. It’s much easier to focus on the impending disaster due to the world’s problems than it is to realize that the first step each of us might take toward solving them… is to pick one.

A Rambling Prelude to Midterm Elections

2006-11-06T23:40:00.000-05:00

To properly address today's midterm elections, we must return (and regrettably so) to John Kerry's gaff of last week. I don't want to anatomize intentions as much as I want to focus on the trajectory of the story itself, especially within the Democratic party.

Let's begin with a simple synopsis.

What Happened:

- John Kerry misspoke, so that a joke intended to darkly and viciously criticize the Bush Administration instead seemed to criticize American troops.
- Kerry initially made a strong statement in which he refused to apologize and quite nicely shifted attention to the original intentions of his joke, hoping to begin a conversation about the war in Iraq instead of a diversionary conversation about troop intelligence and Democratic patriotism, which was what ultimately ensued.
- Prominent Democrats and Republicans alike demanded that Kerry apologized.
- As a result of mounting political pressure and the failure of his own statement to initiate public discourse, Kerry eventually apologized and retreated sheepishly to one of his many homes.

What Did Not Happen, Why It Didnt Happen And Why This Fills Me With Rage:
- Democrats did NOT promulgate a unified message that stood behind the intent of Kerry's original joke and attempted to direct the media towards the more significant errors and missteps of the Bush Administration in Iraq. This indicates the serious and continued lack of a functional Democratic media machine. This also indicates increased divisions within the Democratic party, especially in this election cycle as Democrats have been forced to run moderates in order to pick up key Congressional seats. Moderates in close elections were forced to run to the right in order to avoid aligning themselves too closely with a prominent Democratic leader like Kerry. This does not bode well for a party just months away from a potential Congressional takeover.

- This enrages me because: Democrats or, more broadly, liberals, have failed to author and promote a grand vision for change in this country. Democrats may win individual seats across the nation and there may be significant pickups for the party nationally. But without a unifying theme, message, vision, etc..., these victories will remain isolated, fragmented: they will fail to coalesce into the sort of movement that is truly necessarry to shift public opinion in a significant and lasting way.

I don't want to belittle or deride the gains that will be made possible by a Democratic takeover of Congress. These gains will not be insignificant, but they will be insufficient.

To move the country towards the left, the Democrats need to abandon politics, as it were. The political landscape in this country is, in a way, fully mapped. Without the invention of a new language, a new way of speaking about our values and speaking to people about these values, any movement left or right will be temporary and small.

The sort of grand vision I'm speaking of is a progressive one, a new cultural narrative that recaptures the romanticism of the American dream, a narrative of broadd gestures and rhetorical flourishes that fills the country once again with a sense of urgency towards an abstract but emotive end. I understand why progressives are frightened of broad, romantic gestures because of the violence that has occurred beneath the flourishes of language and because of the socio-political nuance that romance inevitable overwhelms. But history should not be a reason for inaction, it should merely fill us with an increased sense of caution and responsibility.

If progressivism takes hold in this country, it will be because of a political leadership able to make American believe in them, a political leadership able to make seemingly disparate issues and causes coalesce within a single, synthetic, dialectical vision of the future.

We need a political leader who can talk about the future as a time of promise, who can be honest about the challenges we will face as we move towards these promises, and who can bridge the gap between private and public lives so that politics might once again become the charge of America instead of a task left to those in power.

I think the next president will be someone who can perpetuate the story of America's greatness without resorting to isolationism or ethnocentrism. It will be someone who can talk about economic competition and the rise of power in Asia, and someone who can define these new areas of the world as foreign policy priorities. It will be someone who can talk about the nation's infrastructure and get people to support its wholesale improvement so that our nation can become a symbol of innovation and efficiency. It will be someone who can talk about diversity as a foundation of democracy and borders and walls as antithetical to this foundation without resorting to the tired metaphors of multiculturalism.

America needs a new vision. Only once we have a vision, an imagined future, can we begin to talk about how to get there. Without a telos, imaginary (and dynamic) as it will inevitably be, all politics are moot, only tepid adjustments to the status quo.

More on this later, but allow me to close with a bold pronouncement: Russ Feingold will be the darkhorse candidate in 2008.

Thoughts on 2008? On how the next two years will influence 2008? On Obama or Clinton or even Gore? And maybe even on who will get the Republican nomination? (You don't need to be registered to comment, by the way).

I honestly can't tell you about my best poem because of a nondisclosure agreement.

2006-11-04T02:44:00.000-05:00

I see that guy holding his
grocery bag full of food
across on the other platform,
it's plastic.

This is where the fun ends, this

is where you come
to understand just
enough of what's
going on for the
knowledge remaining
to be gained to be
not worth the efforts so expended.

My poem titled:
Aaron Sorkin films all his shows from the P O V of an overeager intern.

Democracy's Eleventh Hour

2006-11-01T11:13:00.000-05:00

A question that arises from Ben's similarly titled post of several days ago:

Is democracy the only value that can exist absolutley in a democratic society?

A somewhat poorly-constructed and vague question, yes, but purposely so as to have the answers originate in questions of what absolutism even means and how absolutism relates to or is the same as "ordinary" belief. Another question then: what does it mean to believe (in anything) in a democratic society and when do these beliefs (if ever) become opposed to democracy and when (if ever) does it matter or even become problematic?

Watching the Watchers

2006-10-31T23:05:00.000-05:00

As of this post I’ll have broke out of my recent tie with my globe-trotting friend, the recent historicist and the red-haired poet. Competitive as I may be, that isn’t the sole reason for writing. However, as I am vaulting into first place post-wise (I have a lot of catching up to do in the replies, which I have loved reading and especially loved seeing some new names attached to them) I suppose I should begin by apologizing. With this post, I will become the lead contributor, which means that with this post there will be way too much TV being discussed on this fine web-based experiment.

I don’t want to apologize too much. Our instigator did write in his mission statement that we are “here” to, among other things, share our “musings on culture,” and as it should have it, recently my muse has found amusement therein (and in puns, evidently).

But with any luck, this post will do a little bit more than critique one specific show. Maybe with a little luck, patience and attention (and, as Focault said, as long as the “courage” does not desert me) I can do a little better, and perhaps even start to muse about, as our instigator put it, examine a portion of the “diverse elements of our community’s collective imagination.”

There’s been a trend of late, it seems to me (and to someone else who wrote about this first: I think it was about the show “Smith”, which I’ll discuss later, and it appeared in The Boston Globe) that lots of TV and some movies have tried very hard to romanticize suburban life. For the sake of argument, I’ll start the trend at “American Beauty” (it doesn’t really start here): in “AB”, Chris Cooper’s ex-Marine is a closet homosexual, his son Wes Bentley famously finds beauty in filming a plastic bag (and everything else), Annette Bening has an affair with the guy with the huge eyebrows on “The OC”, etc.. As normal and predictably yuppy/suburban as almost everyone seems, there’s always something dramatic happening behind closed doors. There’s a degree of romance to it: something special, something hidden, buried deep within the mundane.

But the ‘special’ in “American Beauty” doesn’t seem so special when it’s compared to the romantics of its descendents. Now we have Zach Braff and Natalie Portman trekking through the woods in garbage bags, destined for a ship hanging precipitously over a rock quarry, or peering through pin-holes in a hotel. Some of “Garden State”, I think, says that there’s more to the homes that we’ve left than we thought.

There’s also “Desperate Housewives.” “DH” loves showing us the back-stabbing, two-faced nature of suburbia (if anything, that’s not Romanization, its reality). But in order to flush out the narrative of niceness and normalcy (and to keep us watching), there’s always a layer of the truly bizarre waiting just beneath the suburban and everyday (Betty Applewhite locking up her son in the basement is probably at once both the best and worst example of this, and also probably bears some further examination).

There was “Sleeper Cell” and its movie-cousin “Arlington Road,” both about terrorists living next door to us. There’s “Smith”, the recently-cancelled Ray Liotta drama wherein the Goodfella played suburban dad by day, master-thief by night. And, hey, speaking of cancelled shows dealing with the same premise, there was even “Thief.” There might even be an element of Tyler Durden in there as well.

It’s not in everything that’s out there: “Lost” doesn’t romanticize everyday suburban life at all. “Heroes” takes us to the city, not the suburbs. And there’s “CSI” and its cousins, “House,” “Grey’s”, etc..

But there’s some sort of pattern here, some sort of general movement that these shows have either created or been pulled in to. I want to ask why: why this sudden urge to not just show how the difference between the performed public and the reserved private, but also to romanticize the everyday.

An uninteresting answer is that there’s a market for it. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, but I should note it: obviously, Hollywood feeds on itself. There’s a reason why there’s fifteen “CSI’s”: TV has found a formula that works and wants to make the most of it. Relatedly, there might be a demographic pattern that TV is following to the suburbs. I don’t have any stats that say this is even a phenomenon, and I realize that suburbanization has been going on since the close of World War II, but maybe there’s been a recent surge, and maybe people want to watch what they identify with.

Certainly possible, certainly plausible. And certainly, I should recall these plausibilities as I start to get a little more interesting as I wonder why.

Why feel this maybe recent need to tell stories about ourselves in this manner? Why coat the everyday with the extraordinary? Entertainment, not just television, has always returned to examine its audience and their shared world. Sometimes it’s showed the audience in the happy-go-lucky way it saw itself (think “Leave it to Beaver”) and sometimes it tried to do just the opposite (“The Crucible”, etc.).

What might be at issue, what might cause today’s writers to apply the romantic ‘veneer’, is what they’re trying to show us (in the same way that Miller wanted his audience to do the work for him: he didn’t want to put Cotton Mather on the Supreme Court, instead he put 50s America side by side with Salem and let the audience draw their own conclusions). Maybe TV needs this gild to hide the audience from itself, from what is beneath their shared world, from what is inevitably beneath a gilded veneer: nothing.

Do we need this kind of romantic TV? Not just as a means of entertainingly exploring the public versus the private, but to substitute for something (I hate to say it) existentially missing? Do we have to have this possibility for the extraordinary? These aren’t rhetorical questions, I’m really asking: is it that bad?

Maybe it’s something else entirely. Is that lacquer slapped on top of normal life as a further means of self-delusion, or does it represent instead something optimistic, some attempt to beautify, improve or even dislodge the ordinary? Maybe these shows try to deregulate the sensible, or at the very leas suggest that we are all far more interesting than we ever let on. Maybe they’re suggesting that we should do away with whatever institutions encourage such insecurities in one another so that we may discover just how worthy we are of each others’ attention. Paradoxically, if this is the case, then the message is being conducted through the very institution of insecurities, like a secret code reverberating against the walls of a prison cell, sent by a desperate inmate tapping out against the walls of his own cell, praying that his neighbor will listen and understand. These show might be meant as encouragement (again, might be), but they themselves are not the answer to whatever root dissatisfaction we might feel. Instead, they only locate the problem and identify a possible point of rupture.

(Whether you believe our esteemed TV writers are covering something hollow (the pessimists) or encouraging better behavior (obviously the optimists; I really don’t want to suggest one or the other, or to even limit this to an either/or issue) I think that at the root of this (at least the present either/or issue) is dissatisfaction: with life, with suburbia, with normalcy, with our jobs, with what we have compared to what we wanted, to what have you. This root dissatisfaction, endemic of something bigger than how TV writers are feeling (because TV audiences are watching) might result in these shows I’ve been discussing. And our interpretation of these effects (i.e., whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist) might say more about how likely you imagine a satisfactory resolution to this ‘root dissatisfaction (if indeed we’re willing to admit that such a thing exists) than the effects themselves.)

Even “Heroes” and “Lost,” shows that aren’t located in the suburbs and have more admittedly fantastical elements still contain bits of this romantic salvation. On TV ordinary people wake up one day and find out they can fly and that the world suddenly needs them, or the island that they’re trapped on is paradoxically connected to the rest of the world—and maybe that's the only chance we get.

Real-Life Poetry from John's Real-Life Poetry Vault

2006-10-30T22:42:00.000-05:00

A man who made the movie sitting in the theater and the jokers in the front laughing and cackling, and a young woman several rows before him who is crying just a little, then shivers, and turns around, and their eyes meet.
----------
breathing outward and wind accelerating objective correlative--not causative--does still make us wonder how we did that.
but thre is no cause from you to it but only horizontality between you two progeny of a prima causa--is god--says one philosophy.
( ):
but then nothing i do can affect anything else, even causes I'd bet, until action could never be located because it left no clues/footprints or tracks on its proxmal lexes.

and the woman is wearing the mask.
----------
In real life, eerybody rides in the sky-world on their magical glow-worm dragon partners, but in this allegory of the cave, you and me live in bubbles in this sky, whose limits are well within theirs, and yet infinite enough to contain us forever. But for someone who could measure our infinity as a calculable finitude--able to count, unable to count--, the limits and edges of our space, apparent to them, would allow them to pop in seemingly "in the middle of things" (yes...)
Fault lines and Jazz Music.

The historian's job

2006-10-30T09:03:00.000-05:00

Every Thursday I have a historical methodology seminar-like class. So far, we have only examined medieval historiography, but we always end up discussing contemporary issues concerning the writing of history. I came out of the most recent discussion feeling somewhat pessimistic about the prospective course of my life. We delved into some excellent issues and had some very enriching discussions about the historian’s supposed purpose. One point stuck out in my mind, and is the basis for this post: if history is the pursuit of Truth about the past, isn’t the historian’s job inherently antisocial? As it goes without saying that no historian – or indeed anyone – can ever reach an objective truth about anything, it is, fundamentally, the historian’s duty to continuously destroy old myths by replacing them with new ones that supposedly offer a ‘better’ interpretation of the past. Do I really want to be a historian if my job is, when it comes down to it, to make people less comfortable with the accepted views of the past? Good historians have to be anarchists. Do I want to be an anarchist?

I understand that in many cases clarifying the past for people is useful for their own edification. But it’s difficult to reconcile a mentality that it’s all for the greater good without feeling like it’s just being nitpicky. I can certainly see how some view the quest for historical truths as being an antisocial activity. One example to support this immediately comes to my mind: my neighbors from across the street in South Hadley visited Scotland a few years ago. When they came back, they told my family all about it, and how they especially liked Stirling, where they saw William Wallace’s sword! I almost said ‘well, that isn’t really his sword...’ but thought the better of it. Millions of people have seen that sword and believe it to be authentic – is it my job to tell them it’s not? Should it matter? I suppose that that’s a rather benign example, because were it widely publicized that the sword on display at the Wallace Monument isn’t actually Braveheart’s, I don’t think it would radically change anyone’s worldview. But you get my point. A slightly more potent example is that Churchill never actually delivered some of his most famous speeches during the ‘dark days’ of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain. An actor was hired to impersonate him on the radio, possibly because he was drunk. Should everyone know that? Does it matter?

What is the purpose of history, really?

Haikus

2006-10-28T10:52:00.000-04:00

Almost back to Belford

Home for me is dust,
Rising from a nameless road
Where wind's fingers play.

On the concept of Freedom

2006-10-28T10:43:00.000-04:00

"Why are his feet so dusty?"...."Cause he's ripping up kilometers!" (K'Naan).

When BJ invited us to join this blog, he called me a man of freedom. I want to comment briefly on the concept of freedom. Certainly I will not astound anyone when I say that freedom is a relative term. In first world nations like the United States one has the freedom to get in a car and drive on a well-paved smooth road to a well-lit, bright super market, and fill a plastic cart with bulging red perky tomatoes. Similarly (or perhaps conversely), in a place like Dakar, Senegal, one has the freedom to walk along the edge of a dirt road ankle-deep in mud and lined with mounds of baking refuse to a hunching complex of damp dingy stalls lined with corrugated tin and covered with plastic sheets where in the half light one chokes on the stench of rotten meat and dried fish while picking through reed baskets of tomatoes for one or two that are still fresh.

Contemplating these two freedoms, one might eventually come to realize that in the light of the recent French colonial presence in Senegal, the second freedom is in fact much richer and more deeply colored than the first, as the freedoms in Dakar to walk where one wishes, to build corrugated-tin-walled markets, and to grow and sell and buy tomatoes are all relatively recent and new phenomena. Having experienced the freedom of buying tomatoes in each of these two worlds, one might also come to view certain freedoms of the United States less as freedoms and more as luxuries or aspects of easiness; and then to wonder where in these 'freedoms' sleeps the passionate actualized liberation of 1776 from the economic and military tyranny of Great Britain (the good queen of which now, I'm sorry to say, has our good brother Haley comfortably in her pocket), that liberation having served as a catalyst in the spawning of all other American freedoms. Perhaps in the imaginations of some individuals in those founding years, the then-unnamed creature capitalism would involve certain bold, inventive entrepreneurs starting their own economic ventures (perhaps with names like CBS, IBM, Simon and Schuster, or EPA) and employing and training people with the hope that those underlings would come to create similar businesses that could compete with the original in a way that would strengthen the economy on a whole and cultivate creativity, analytical thinking, and bold calculation of risks within each individual.

It seems today, as some of you have begun to grumble cantankerously of the chains that you worry are beginning to grow between your ankles and the legs of large wooden desks, that the disjunction between the actualized liberation from economic oppression over 200 years ago and the realization of the imagined possibilities of capitalism as perceived by our founding fathers and their kin could not grow any larger. Frustration with this and other fissures in the American social, political, and economic systems drove me to leave the country and to seek freedom elsewhere, and while easily romanticized (I am guilty of this myself) I urge you to realize that freedom is never necessarily synonymous with ease of living (and neither should ease of living or a quality of excessive luxury ever be equated with freedom - therein lies the strength of advertisement campaigns).

It is true that I have only myself to answer to, and have no pin-stripe fake-smile hair-grease whips driving me to pour my life into slobbering giants like CBS, IBM, Simon and Schuster, EPA, etc, but as some have said before, no freedom comes without a price, and I have met the cost in my own way. Still I would say that no easiness of living is worth a sacrifice in freedom, in the gift that is one's ability to think and act and feel and move entirely on one's own, no matter the cost of walking a self-conceived self-pursued alternative path, but I think you all know that already. I miss you all dearly and sincerely hope you will be able to join me for some stretch of my long-legged rambles.

System infiltrated

2006-10-28T01:10:00.000-04:00

Few Americans would be surprised to discover that our educational system is flawed, perhaps irreparably. But fewer realize the extent to which these flaws are binding themselves, as if carefully, with society, so that the institution’s very defects are crucial elements in a kind of symbiotic relationship between this particular institution and the whole of our society.

When I bought myself a college education and walked off to join Teach for America, I never fashioned myself their poster-child. I have far more sense than that, I suppose. Although I could never have predicted the extent of my classroom management challenges or my principal’s malice, I certainly predicted my own skepticism for anything with a brand name. The “this is why I teach for America” stories are so formulaic that they could probably be synthesized with the aid of a computer program, a la The Postmodern Essay Generator. Or Madlibs. No: what drew me to accept the job (they refer to it as “the challenge”) was the twofold mission that the organization professes: to make immediate impact on students in my own classroom, and to make long-term systemic change with the positions that my experience would afford me.

I will leave the verdict on my “immediate” impact to the statheads (as prominent in this organization as in sabermetric baseball chatrooms) and the children – immediate impact, after all, does not really evidence itself immediately. However, the hope for long-term systemic change is, ironically, the one thing I feel that I can already judge. My studies have not been exhaustive, so whether systemic improvement is possible or the best means toward reaching it are not my aim. Rather, I can speak to the current trend that Teach for America, scrambling school systems, the government, and most other factions of whom I’m aware are perpetuating.

Depending on which study you read, the experts measure the achievement gap as something between three and four years. In other words, as a group, students of color (well, black and Latino) in our country at, say, age 17, have attained the basic educational skills of a white student of 13 or 14. No Child Left Behind, the revised version, has professed to address this issue with its bold statement that it will not consider schools to be meeting their AYP (Average Yearly Progress) unless certain at-risk subgroups, like racial groups and families that are economically disadvantaged, meet the same standards as their privileged peers. Similarly, Teach for America trains its corps members to set high “Big Goals” for their students and cites various studies to support the success of this, similar to the studies of Vincent Rascigno (1998) that proved that high teacher expectations had positive effects on students (while, for example, the effect of per-pupil expenditure was statistically insignificant). Struggling school systems have allowed many charter schools to crop up like bacilli, often scoring as dismally as their public school neighbors – who claim that the difference is that they, at least, make high achievement and high expectations their business.

However, each of these, which sometimes seem to be at odds, are equally distant from some brutal realities. I do not claim to have the monopoly on insight because of some newfound welcome-to-the-real-world skepticism. Nevertheless, this experience has showed me a few things. The first is that almost every faction is attempting to educate these students on the wrong side of the achievement gap by teaching them how to succeed in a system that has been designed so that they will fail. Setting the same “high expectations” is not enough if it is not accompanied by a serious reexamination, perhaps re-creation, of the standards by which we are forcing our children to use every effort to attain. Standardized tests are so flawed that my alma mater has garnered recent publicity for forswearing them in admissions requirements. ESL, still pervasive despite studies that argue for bilingual education, forces students to write in English before students have mastered their native language. And the ideals of our educational system are so distant from the realities of our society that many students in less-than-idyllic neighborhoods create two separate identities in order to survive (but rarely to thrive) at school.

Paulo Freire, educator and theorist from Brazil, is best known for his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which opposed “banking” education – akin to the idea of the tabula rasa. Among his many criticisms of contemporary education was his disapproval of the dichotomy between teacher and student, and he found that the mutual respect between equals contributing to an educational experience with the whole self proved more successful than the more frequented methods of education. Other theorists have supported the view that community-based education is the most successful, particularly with struggling student bodies; they have also evidenced the deleterious effect of an education that denies the full investment of the self. However, the system as it currently exists – the same system that most institutions and organizations encourage students to submit to in order to emerge successfully – denies the full investment of the self in its very nature. Certainly, the aims of education should include the attainment of literacy, mathematical and technical knowledge, and a breadth of other subject understanding. These aims, however, too often are positive side effects of American meritocracy. And well-meaning institutions and educators – carrying the message of “high and equal expectations” – too often stand for serving in a role akin to that of a cheerleader, one who ignores the fact that his candidate has been forced to amputate his limbs while, unlike his competitors, he has not been granted wings.

In other words, as long as our system is a meritocracy (and what else could those entrenched in capitalism imagine?) and as long as that meritocracy continues to deny “wings” – equipment to succeed – to its least educated – we can not expect equal and high expectations to be met. This is true, at least, as long as we pander to those with so-called social capital, who set the standards for success. In this black-and-white pass-fail dichotomy, the social capital and whole personhood that persons of color and impoverished Americans of all races possess is relegated to a curiosity commodified by the mainstream culture. It is the stuff of entertainment, not of education. Thus are the children of this side of the proverbial track forced into a split-identity existence if they are to succeed at all. It can be done, and it might be true that a few of these students will emerge stronger, but the system continues to relegate the vast majority of them to failure. Teachers, too, are forced by the system into pseudo-superior roles because standards and objectives are ours for the distribution – and because American culture forces us to be disciplinarians before we are educators.

Oddly, this is why I teach for America, but it’s not the message I’m supposed to be giving. I am not teaching because I want to create a system-wide change in which all teachers hold these sought-for high expectations, per se. I am not teaching merely because of the students in my school, though indeed they are an incentive. Rather, I am teaching because I don’t want to be part of the problem. I don’t want to be one of the privileged who collects diverse acquaintances and habits like charms on a bracelet – and this is more than mere vanity. My goal is that I can learn from my students and from my experience so that maybe I can neither pander to the system nor fight it. My goal is to recreate it, from the ground up – even if my contribution is only in the form of a much better-informed essay I’d be able to write two years from now. When I was in school, I learned a lot of fancy language that enabled me to write this essay, and students will generally be considered successful if they learn to do the same. I don’t want my students to write an essay, though – unless they write one because they mean it.

The Eleventh Hour

2006-10-27T20:51:00.000-04:00

I was at work this morning, relegated to a conference room with some other new hires when, somehow, someway, and through no fault of my own, we began discussing religion. It was nothing more than a brief skirmish, perhaps even less, not even a flaring of tensions but maybe only a drawing of battle lines. It was brief and it was civil and I imagine that both its brevity and its civility are relatively lacking in similar conversations across the country.

One of the participants concisely and intelligently proclaimed his faith. That this gentleman was religious did not surprise me—statistically in today’s America, it’s always going to be the safe bet. What surprised me was the security he demonstrated with his own beliefs: he believed, and if others didn’t, fine, that was their decision. This statement (here presented in brutal paraphrase) generated a relative agreement from all parties involved, ending in a general consensus that this was one of the benefits of being an American.

I’m still inclined to agree with what this gentleman said. Indeed, in today’s America, I think this kind of relativism might just be the best all-around compromise between two sides that hate each other so much that usually in discussions with the opposition, their vile tends to impede them from forming sentences. Though I’ll be grappling with what my co-worker said throughout the rest of this post (grappling, mind you, and not answering) I want to offer this caveat: what he said might be the best we could possibly ask for nowadays. Might.

But on this site, except when its contributors digress to explore primetime TV shows and seventeenth century printing trivia, we must keep our eyes on the prize: the poorly-defined, cozy-feeling liberal cornerstone that is social justice (the term still evades me, and I challenge anyone to find any two liberals to agree on a definition. I honestly think the challenge would cause them both to combust: liberals conforming to a binding and finalized definition! GASP!).

In all seriousness, I’ve always been curious about the faithfuls’ interaction with what I think we’d all call ‘the good fight’. How do we (and by ‘we’ I mean your garden variety northeastern or coastal, private college suburban white kids who have rejected just about any form of God that’s come across our paths) team up and do business with them (for the sake of simplicity, by ‘them’ I mean progressive Christians, those who are light on dogma but high on interpretation and faith and willing to agree that some parts of the Bible might be a little outdated). We shouldn’t underestimate this ‘us and them’ relationship: indeed, ‘them’ came first. The abolitionist movement gained its momentum through the faithful, as did woman’s suffrage, as did civil rights.

Now I realize that for every item I list demonstrating the faithfuls’ contribution to social justice, we could all probably list fifty reasons where faith has either curbed, halted or crushed the progression of social justice. I don’t debate that. Moreover, even for those items which I just listed, there’s still a lurking unease that the anti-essentialists and/or post-Nietzscheans (whose name, unlike Locke’s, is very difficult to spell) amongst us might have trouble ignoring: white abolitionists thought that the slaves should be freed because all men were equally inferior to God. Likewise, some of the reasoning that drove the women’s suffrage movement presumed that because men were spiritually superior beings whose minds were focused on the realm of ideas, women, more connected to the earth and the day-to-day, were better suited to make decisions on earth. Obviously, this presumption reeks of ol-fashioned essentialism.

Regardless of their reasoning the faithful were there, and they were pushing for social change. In the 60s they were joined by us (re-visit the definition of ‘we’ two paragraphs ago). I’m not saying all of those 60s Northern carpetbaggers were atheists or even agnostic, but chances are some of them were.

After we meet, after we work together (and sometimes, God willing, after we succeed together), what then? Nietzsche would have us believe that, just as the faithful should be committed to saving souls, we should be committed to re-directing their energies back to earth (a similarity that has always quietly bothered me). Should we presume that we have some type of ‘responsibility’ to ‘save’ the faithful from themselves, even the extremely progressive ones? Or should adopt the relativism that the gentleman with whom I work demonstrated?

And what about that relativism as exemplified by the faithful gentleman? My initial, gut reaction to his display of secure faith was pleasure, if not pride: I was proud of him for being able to, if not accept, then at least allow (or allow himself to allow) the presence of differing theological perspectives. And I still wonder if that relativism is the best, if not the only way of dealing with one another. But as a Christian, as one of the faithful, is he really allowed to do that? Does his faith allow him to do that? And if so, then how can he accommodate this leniency when, more often than not, there is only ‘one way’, and every other ‘way’ is not only wrong, but will get you landed right in H-E-Double Hockey sticks? From the outside, as I admittedly am, it’s hard to allow for any evolution within a faith when, well, evolution itself tends to be summarily rejected.

_________________

These are all personal questions for me: I’m not a progressive Christian, as a matter of fact, I’m not an anything Christian, but I am related to progressive Christians. I’ve recently ‘outed’ myself to them, not because of a recent anti-epiphany but instead just because of an increased ability to argue my point. They don’t pray at dinner, they rarely go to Church, they’re all for gay rights and, with a little wine, tend to declaim that the current President is the worst in history. But they still believe, and maybe for the most infuriating of reasons: because it makes them feel good.

I’d feel uncomfortable telling them that Freud would say this is childish (if only because usually my default position on Freud is to just say ‘Wrong’). The argument ended when I asked why they didn’t believe in Unicorns as, just like God, there’s no empirical evidence supporting their existence (in the spirit of the season, it’d be convenient if I suggested the Great Pumpkin). But for me, that’s what it comes down to.

These types of the faithful, good people whose hearts and minds struggle along with ours to achieve a better world, who don’t allow themselves to be entagled in dogma and superstition, always provoke a two-headed reaction in me, and this is the best way I can explain it:

Think of undertaking a twelve hour car ride with someone. For eleven and a half hours, they’ve been rock solid. Never asked to stop, were always good with the directions, volunteered to drive and when they did they kept the car on the road. For eleven and a half hours, you couldn’t have asked for a better co-pilot.

But in the eleventh and a half hour, they insist, they demand, that you stop the car. They’re hungry or they have to use the bathroom. And so you stop the car, because they’ve been so rock solid for so long. And a part of you wishes that you weren’t in such a damn hurry, that they have a right. But at the same time you think home is just half an hour away, and Jesus couldn’t they hold it for just half an hour?

Bartlett at the Improv

2006-10-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

Aaron Sorkin never troubles himself with the final product. It’s always the process that makes his shows special, and for the most part he explores it wonderfully. The long shots are glossy, and the dialogue--though sometimes admittedly a bit of a caricature of itself--remains some of the smartest on TV. Mix in a cast of smart, good-looking people working hard at what they love, and for the most part, you’re all but guaranteed success.

But, and maybe this is a cherry of Sorkin’s past shows, the end-product always winds up being really good, always winds up becoming the actual product of those smart, good-looking people whom you’ve been watching working hard at what they love. Sure you only see clips of Sportsnight, Sorkin’s first and very underrated show, but when you do it feels real, feels like you’re watching any two anchors chatting sports on ESPN. And when Martin Sheen delivers a speech it sounds—hell it even feels—like how a President should sound.

And I guess that’s why I’ve been grappling with Sorkin’s latest, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” It has big, beautiful, Goodfellas-esque long shots. It has snappy dialogue. It has an emphasis on writing (a TV show with a self-conscious emphasis on writing, let’s all marvel at that for a second or two) and, while I miss Toby and Leo, it does have smart, attractive people working hard at what they love.

But now, and for the first time, it’s what they make (and not how they make it) that has unfortunately eclipsed the Sorkin magic. The skits, or at least what we see of them, never seem to click with what everyone is working on. Unfortunately, this new show feels like a clearing-house of all the lefty topics he wanted to address during his time on ‘The West Wing’ but never got around to; ‘The West Wing’ was a perfect launching pad for all of Sorkin’s gripes with the right and the left. It was even great at suggesting policy based around those gripes, policy that remained congruent with the drama’s setting. But it can’t work like that in a show about a comedy show. Studio 60 has become a sketch show, but its Sorkin’s sketches that we see aired, and never the characters’.

Why? Because the skits simply aren’t funny. Sorkin has pulled a Dennis Miller like mistake it seems, trying to prove how smart he is while ignoring the only—I repeat: the only—rule that everyone has to abide by while writing comedy: Be Funny.

In comedy, you can be political, you can attack pop culture. You can air out social, economic and national tensions in a healthy and safe way. But before you do you have to earn it, and you earn it by making us laugh. Remember that while those great and original SNL episodes? Yes, they had Pryor and Chase screaming racial obscenities at one another. But they also had Ackroyd and Curtain donning cone heads and chugging six packs. They had landsharks. They had Belushi slicing through hoagie with a samurai sword. And eventually they even had Gumby, damnit.

But Sorkin gives us ‘Science Schmiance’, a watered-down game-show intent on attacking the religious right’s oftentimes tenuous relationship with the physical universe. He goes after CNN talking heads, easy targets sure, but Jon Stewart can do more with just one mug to the camera in response to the discussion of Sadaam’s “hidey-hole” than Sorkin can with five hundred words of scripted dialogue going after Nancy Grace. They even have another cast member appearing in a nearly suicidal role as a medieval warrior-Queen alluding to ancient battles while dealing with modern life. Yikes.

It might have started with the very first bit, the first ‘revolutionary’ skit that Matthew Perry’s character was going to use to revitalize the fictional Studio 60. So he puts on a musical send-up of ‘Modern Major General’. Cute. Clever. Predictably Sorkin. But not funny.

(I said ‘predictably Sorkin’ and I meant it: I really wonder if Aaron is trying to write himself in to what used to be the duo of Gilbert and Sullivan. Sorkin displayed his infatuation with G&S already in The West Wing with Ainsley Hayes’ character. Enough, Aaron. We get it. You like musical theater. Maybe you should put on a show about the backstage goings-on of a musical theater troupe and get it over with. Enough already. Just stop it.)

Perhaps what’s most disappointing about it all is that Studio 60 is funny: Nathan Corddry’s character walking around in a lobster suit, Matthew Perry reacting to the ‘cocktail napkin’ of a bat that Sarah Paulson hands him, and Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford squabbling are all funny. But the show-within-the-show never clicks the same way that Jed Bartlett’s speeches would click with Jed Bartlett.

Maybe Sorkin is trying to write Studio 60’s skits poorly to more accurately mirror SNL. But I doubt it: Sorkin gives us bad comedy when he means to (the most recent episode showcased two terrible Black comics) and Perry’s and Whitford’s characters are meant to resurrect the show, not dig it into a deeper hole.

Sorkin and SNL should both follow this advice: just turn down the politics. Our elected officials will always be ridiculous. That staple of American comedy isn’t going anywhere, so be patient. Come back to ridiculous caricatures, awkward situations, or just plain goofy for a little while and make Studio 60 the example for sketch comedy in the same way that President Bartlett was for American politics.

Mis-enfranchisement: a dialogical poem by a native son of New Hampshire

2006-10-25T22:40:00.000-04:00

(Settler's Green shopping plaza, North Conway, NH, at the base of the White Mountain National Forest)

My state has grown so quickly in the last few decades. We went from the richness of the lumber barons to the poverty of those who really were the state’s population in those preceding rapine years, and from there, well, to farming and then tourism and IT in the southern part of the state. The tourism is new enough, but the IT is very recent indeed, and however long the IT industry lasts, the tourism can last longer if we’re intelligent about it.
But now we’ve got all this money from the tourism in my generation and the next generation, wow, the amount of wealth they have comparatively, they’re really out there. And with all this money, we’ve got always in the top five of public school systems in the country.

It’s not that high.

It is. And these schools are so good that they train the kids for the world at large exceptionally well. If you’re smart, you can get a top-notch education in one of New Hampshire’s public schools and if not good enough than certainly enough in one of its excessively numerous private schools.

It’s always difficult to go home, you know when I visit the town where I grew up, I realize that I’ve got noone there who I know, they’re all graduated from out-of-state colleges. And your friends who are there aren’t your friends anymore. I guess it’s all out of the possession of power.

And when you’re raised and educated so well in a state whose main source of money has been applied so responsibly and charitably to the betterment of the society in the development of the institution of public schooling, that its industry has not been developed proportionally to accept the influx of talented young people into its work force, and so we have to leave. What are you going to do, if you graduate from an NH public school? Go to UNH? Which is really an amazing school, but that question seems like a legitimate one to all the people who state it—staying around at UNH appears as a failure to many.

It’s got a great honors program.

One of my friends is in the civil engineering program, and it’s a really amazing set she’s taking. [pause]
And we’ve really got nothing else to do, except work in IT. Only that there can only be so many people predisposed to being IT professionals.

So they could maybe be ski-lift operators or instructors?

Right, exactly. So what I’m saying is that we’ve got a perpetual diaspora of talent in our society. Picture like our ancestors in the beginning stages of capitalism, with free cities run by associations of leagues, generally. And from there to stronger mercantilisms and the formation of wealth centers, cities. Now the heirarchical structure would make it presupposable that the strongest members of a society, of a family, would go to where the opportunities were best. So the eldest or smartest son would go to the town to make his fortune. And the smartest would always be lured away to the cities by its promise, just power naturally wanting to consolidate itself and this facilitation of it in the free(er) transportation of goods and wealth generally.

You know, my house up in the country it’s some neighbors I see who are you think the talented are always lured away from the country to the profit of the city. [double entendre, unrecognized] It shows after five, ten generations of this.
Yeah.

Yeah.

[pause]

So basically what you’re describing is a darwinian skimming off of the gene pool.

Yeah.

But what I – But what if it’s this, that [pause] it’s a defense mechanism, that since the ‘smartest’ are lured away to the cities from the countryside, then the actual ‘smartest’ one would be the one who, if we’re okay that humans evolutionarily require contact with other humans, like Marx’s species beings, then the smartest one is the one who finds a way to remain in the community, which is the one who appears to the powerful one who steals the poor community’s children, who is apparently stupid to the hegemonic in order that he might avoid them taking him from his community.

You’re promoting the slave mentality.

I think it’s just the opposite, beause I’ll allow that the slave mentality is an entirely real phenomenon, this is more counterposed against the hegemonic. I’m saying that the dominant has no conception at all of its subaltern. That the dominant did not ever completely form the subaltern because it is a history that insists on the pre-heirarchy stage, and the dominant have no access to this history because they are always themselves-plus-history, so while I do not defend any transcendental historical element, I say that the dominant’s attempts to understand what it controls and creates are always one step behind the subordinate’s. That even if one group ‘creates’ the history of another, it cannot decode the present.

Case Study

2006-10-25T03:31:00.000-04:00

The other day as I was reading about the explosion of print culture in the mid-seventeenth century, I came across the origin of the terms 'upper case' and 'lower case'. In a seventeenth century printer's shop, the arrangement of letters was organized so that the compositor could locate all the letters necessary by reflex - and invariably the capital letters were in a tray higher on his desk than the uncapitalized ones.

A Temporary Introduction

2006-09-19T16:32:00.001-04:00

The Magistrates Should Be Elected by the People, a 1798 essay by Hegel in which he writes:

Peaceful satisfaction with the present, hopelessness, and patient acceptance of an all-too-vast and omnipotent fate have given way to hope, expectation, and courage to face the new. A vision of better, juster times has come to life in the souls of men, and a longing and yearning for a purer and freer destiny has moved all hearts and alienated them from the present reality."

And yet he delineates between "everyone who, in the midst of change or in preserving the old, seeks only his own limited advantage or the advantage of his class" and "men of nobler aspirations and purer zeal", recognizing the inextricable implication of the former in the political order of the present and locating the possibility for change within the disaffection of the latter, those already ideologically dislocated from the present.

The importance of this distinction becomes evident in Hegel's existential diagnosis of conservativism: "If a change has to happen, then something has to be changed. So banal a truth needs to be stated, given the difference between fear which must and courage which will; for whereas those who are driven by fear may well feel and admit that change is necessary, they nevertheless display the weakness, as soon as a start has to be made, of trying to hold on to everything they possess."

Conservativism then as a tension between public and private imaginations, a tension between a recognizance of what change society must undergo and a failure to reimagine the self within this new future. To extrapolate, liberalism becomes the locus of Hegelian courage, the point at which public and private imaginations become synchronized and coherent, perhaps even interchangeable.

It is this project of liberalism, more than two centuries later, that I hope this blog can address, with all the apocalyptic urgency of Hegel's own essay. ("The feeling that the political edifice as it still exists today cannot be sustained is universal and profound. The anxiety that it may collapse and injure everyone in its fall is also universal.")

This blog is, in some way, an effort in imagination itself, an attempt to invent the discursive practices, the languages and the ethical infrastructures that will allow liberalism to accumulate cultural significance. This includes philosophical discussions, musings on culture, analysis of the political melee, but especially conversations that attempt to synthesize these diverse elements of our community's collective imagination into something of a coherent, though constantly and necessarily shifting, nexus of thought.

In particular, I hope we can begin to bridge the gap between private and public belief, between theory and praxis, and move beyond the various aporias and sites of apathy that have plagued young academics since that imaginary moment in which meaning dissolved and we were forcibly entered into the post-industrial, post-modern, apathetic world.

More to come later, but hopefully this offers a meaningful introduction to the project at hand.