I was very sad to see the demise of Muxtape as we know it. I initially wondered why the site wasn't shut down sooner, but it was, on the whole, pretty innocuous. It even linked to Amazon so you could buy tracks if you liked them (downright saintly compared to The Pirates Bay.) Muxtape will be reincarnated, according to the site's letter from it's founder, now gracing every old Muxtape page, and this time, it will be centered on independent musicians. Perhaps that is good news considering MySpace's recent troubles with the indie community.
It does make me wonder if Tumblr's music option will stay.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Electing the Vice-President
Today over brunch, a friend proposed that the way we elect the vice-president is one of the most undemocratic aspects of American politics. Perhaps this is true. I don't think it's ever a problem, given the vice-president's role as a glorified adviser and figurehead. But it might be a problem, or at least cause for concern, if the president dies or is impeached, in which case the vice-president surpasses the vote of the American public and takes command of the country (this is most poignant in the case of Gerald Ford, who was neither elected Vice-president or President). But then again, giving the vice-presidency to the runner-up was a disaster, as the vice-presidency of Thomas Jefferson proved. In any case, I don't know if it's a problem in this election, especially if McCain wins, as I suspect many people—the religious right, at least—will not be voting for him so much as Sarah Palin.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Courting the Women's vote
We here at Under Which Lyre have not blogged much on politics (or blogged much at all, really). I hadn't found the campaign too interesting (with the exception of Hilary v. Obama) until recently when I watched the both McCain and Obama at Saddleback.
I have also found McCain's recent choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate very interesting. The choice is a bit baffling to me—she has been Governor of Alaska for only two years, and before a brief stint as the chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, mayor of a town of about 9,000 people. She also has no strong background in foreign policy, which is troubling considering that the 72 year old McCain is a cancer survivor and may very well pass away in the next four years.
Of course, she's a social conservative and an evangelical, and McCain had not been that attractive to the religious right. (I would agree with Andy Crouch, and disagree with the folks at This Recording, that the best thing about Sarah Palin is her choosing have to have her child despite the diagnosis of Down Syndrome.) McCain has also decided to meet Obama on idea of change in Washington and has therefore nominated an outsider with a record of working against the political establishment in Alaska. And she's more attractive than McCain, Joe Biden, and even Obama. And then there's the idea of winning the women's vote, courting Hilary's disenchanted voters, which Palin made abundantly clear with her reference to Clinton's "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling. Which is a long way of bringing me to my point:
I think that the idea of McCain trying to help "break the glass ceiling," or even of McCain courting the women's vote, is humorous at best. Why? Courtesy of the Drudge Report:
There isn't really much to say after that, is there?
I have also found McCain's recent choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate very interesting. The choice is a bit baffling to me—she has been Governor of Alaska for only two years, and before a brief stint as the chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, mayor of a town of about 9,000 people. She also has no strong background in foreign policy, which is troubling considering that the 72 year old McCain is a cancer survivor and may very well pass away in the next four years.
Of course, she's a social conservative and an evangelical, and McCain had not been that attractive to the religious right. (I would agree with Andy Crouch, and disagree with the folks at This Recording, that the best thing about Sarah Palin is her choosing have to have her child despite the diagnosis of Down Syndrome.) McCain has also decided to meet Obama on idea of change in Washington and has therefore nominated an outsider with a record of working against the political establishment in Alaska. And she's more attractive than McCain, Joe Biden, and even Obama. And then there's the idea of winning the women's vote, courting Hilary's disenchanted voters, which Palin made abundantly clear with her reference to Clinton's "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling. Which is a long way of bringing me to my point:
I think that the idea of McCain trying to help "break the glass ceiling," or even of McCain courting the women's vote, is humorous at best. Why? Courtesy of the Drudge Report:
In his book The Real McCain, author Cliff Schecter claims that John McCain made extremely ugly remarks about his wife Cindy McCain during a tirade witnessed by three reporters and two aides. "At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, 'You're getting a little thin up there,'" Schechter writes. "McCain's face reddened, and he responded, 'At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.' McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day.
There isn't really much to say after that, is there?
Friday, August 1, 2008
Psychoanalysis, Theology, and the coming of Joel Osteen
From the Introduction of Theology, Psychoanalysis, Trauma: By Marcus Pound
Arguably [Frank] Lake was the first to understand that psychoanalysis needed to be practised within a participatory and liturgical framework—the argument of this book; yet if his work remains problematic it is not because of his liberal advocacy of LSD, but because in the end theology is subordinated to psychoanalysis and nt the other way around. For example, salvation seems to care less about God than achieving an autonomous and secure ego which is to be supplemented with supernatural 'fortitude'. God appears as the religious equivalent of a body-builder's steroids, providing extra muscle to a more general course of well-being.
Lake's problem arises because he assumes the ultimate autonomy of the secular sphere. Yet according to the work of John Milbank, the secular is not itself a given reality, a space of 'purely human' to be discovered once the cobwebs of superstition have been cleared away. Rather, the secular was imagined, discursively created through the emergent disciplines of the social sciences which are of themselves already bastardized forms of theology. Take natural law for instance. From the perspective of the political sciences natural law was no longer a means of mediating the divine, the basis of a participatory good. Instead, it was posited that humans, left to a state of nature, were self-seeking individuals whose sole motivation was the preservation of their own sphere of interest. Therefore, it was in their best interest to enter a mutual contract, curbing some of their rights at the expense of securing their sphere of influence. In this way the human subject was manifest within relations of pure immanence and the secular was constituted as a field of the formal power relations required to maintain the social order. What remained of religion was deemed utterly private, transcendent, and ineffable and as such banished from the social, thereby confirming the autonomy of the secular.
Yet as Milbank argues, theology is a social theory, one that seeks to promote mutual social relations, without being predicated upon the notion of the private individual or need to formally exercise power; but of neighbourly love, spontaneous charity, and learnt virtue; and it fails to challenge the autonomy of the secular it will inevitably be positioned by it, reduced to an immanent field of knowledge such as wish-fulfilment, or tucked away in some private ineffable realm.
It is not difficult to extend Milbank's project to psychoanalysis. After all, psychoanalysis was key in securing at the level of the individual what was posited of the social. Early interpreters of Freud such as his daughter Anna, Harry Guntrip, or Heinz Hartmann, all argued that the self was in origin a bundle of self-seeking drives, the primary expression of nature, a chaos which needed to be brought into social conformity through the rationalizing principle of the ego—the approach known as ego-psychology. And like Hobbes, man would pass from nature to society through a contractual agreement; only now the contractual agreement specifically targets the sexual relation: the ban upon incest. Moreover, like the social contract, it affords a certain compromise: one may not have exactly what one wants (i.e. the mother); nonetheless, one can always find a respectable substitute. Psychoanalysis was therefore a profoundly conservative project, aimed at helping the subject adjust to a reality defined in advance by wider secular and political thought. And it is perhaps for this reason that should theology fail to assume a meta-critical stance apropos psychoanalysis, it will inevitably be positioned by it, confined to existing social reality. Salvation will become indistinguisable from achieving a secure ego-identity, and the Church's ability to speak out against wider political and economic injustice will be seriously compromised.
Arguably [Frank] Lake was the first to understand that psychoanalysis needed to be practised within a participatory and liturgical framework—the argument of this book; yet if his work remains problematic it is not because of his liberal advocacy of LSD, but because in the end theology is subordinated to psychoanalysis and nt the other way around. For example, salvation seems to care less about God than achieving an autonomous and secure ego which is to be supplemented with supernatural 'fortitude'. God appears as the religious equivalent of a body-builder's steroids, providing extra muscle to a more general course of well-being.
Lake's problem arises because he assumes the ultimate autonomy of the secular sphere. Yet according to the work of John Milbank, the secular is not itself a given reality, a space of 'purely human' to be discovered once the cobwebs of superstition have been cleared away. Rather, the secular was imagined, discursively created through the emergent disciplines of the social sciences which are of themselves already bastardized forms of theology. Take natural law for instance. From the perspective of the political sciences natural law was no longer a means of mediating the divine, the basis of a participatory good. Instead, it was posited that humans, left to a state of nature, were self-seeking individuals whose sole motivation was the preservation of their own sphere of interest. Therefore, it was in their best interest to enter a mutual contract, curbing some of their rights at the expense of securing their sphere of influence. In this way the human subject was manifest within relations of pure immanence and the secular was constituted as a field of the formal power relations required to maintain the social order. What remained of religion was deemed utterly private, transcendent, and ineffable and as such banished from the social, thereby confirming the autonomy of the secular.
Yet as Milbank argues, theology is a social theory, one that seeks to promote mutual social relations, without being predicated upon the notion of the private individual or need to formally exercise power; but of neighbourly love, spontaneous charity, and learnt virtue; and it fails to challenge the autonomy of the secular it will inevitably be positioned by it, reduced to an immanent field of knowledge such as wish-fulfilment, or tucked away in some private ineffable realm.
It is not difficult to extend Milbank's project to psychoanalysis. After all, psychoanalysis was key in securing at the level of the individual what was posited of the social. Early interpreters of Freud such as his daughter Anna, Harry Guntrip, or Heinz Hartmann, all argued that the self was in origin a bundle of self-seeking drives, the primary expression of nature, a chaos which needed to be brought into social conformity through the rationalizing principle of the ego—the approach known as ego-psychology. And like Hobbes, man would pass from nature to society through a contractual agreement; only now the contractual agreement specifically targets the sexual relation: the ban upon incest. Moreover, like the social contract, it affords a certain compromise: one may not have exactly what one wants (i.e. the mother); nonetheless, one can always find a respectable substitute. Psychoanalysis was therefore a profoundly conservative project, aimed at helping the subject adjust to a reality defined in advance by wider secular and political thought. And it is perhaps for this reason that should theology fail to assume a meta-critical stance apropos psychoanalysis, it will inevitably be positioned by it, confined to existing social reality. Salvation will become indistinguisable from achieving a secure ego-identity, and the Church's ability to speak out against wider political and economic injustice will be seriously compromised.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
A few thoughts on The Dark Knight
I'm in Pasadena at the moment visiting a friend. Earlier in the day after we visited Silver Lake's hipsters at Intelligentsia (yes, it's spread from Chicago), we went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was incredibly sketchy to say the least. Among the myriad of jugglers, rappers hawking their CDs, and performers dressed like movie characters, I saw the Joker. Well, a poorer, taller imitation of him. But no mistake, he was Heath Ledger's Joker, not the iconic Jack Nicholson joker of the first Batman movie. My first thought: "Well that's awfully quick—the movie came out last week." The other characters—Gene Simmons, (a drunken) Spiderman, Captain Jack Sparrow, the Tinman—somehow seemed more appropriate, not only because the movies have been out longer, but because Ledger's joker, a sociopath, seems too dark, too psychotic to be juxtaposed with French tourists and vendors selling Maps of the Stars.
I saw the movie for the second time tonight (at double the price of my Illinois matinée), and I was as taken with it the second time as the first (especially the chase scene on lower Wacker Drive.) I won't review it for you here—there's a litany of reviews online. (I'm fond of Thomas Hibbs's piece in First Things). But in spite of Christopher Nolan's brilliance, I think he could have taken notes from the Coen Brother's film, No Country for Old Men.
As one reviewer aptly noted:
My second qualm with the movie is that the score can be a bit too much. I can only handle the dramatic music for, I don't know, 2 hours, not 2 and a half hours. There are moments, especially in the latter hour of the film, where the intensity or horror of the moment are detracted by the music, which depending on your theater's sound system may overpower the dialogue. Recall No Country, which had no soundtrack whatsoever, making the film somewhat less human. I do not think that Nolan should have jettisoned the entire soundtrack of The Dark Knight. On the contrary, I think the music is quite helpful at times. I do think that it could have been regulated more.
Of course, one could argue that subtlety is not the mark of a movie in which the main character is wearing tights. But Nolan's movie is too clever to be lumped with other comic book movies. His treatment of Two-Face, for example, He eschewed the heavy handedness of the George Clooney Batman films in which both villains seem to play an equal role, which led to the dismal failure of the characters. Allowing Dent to metamorphose into Two-Face in the last 1/4 of the film does not distract from the Joker, and more importantly, from Batman's internal struggle between good and evil and the sorrow and loneliness that accompany it. It would be foolish to say that the director was incapable of being subtle. I would perhaps be willing to buy the argument that the heavy-handedness was needed for the general audience of the film, though.
I saw the movie for the second time tonight (at double the price of my Illinois matinée), and I was as taken with it the second time as the first (especially the chase scene on lower Wacker Drive.) I won't review it for you here—there's a litany of reviews online. (I'm fond of Thomas Hibbs's piece in First Things). But in spite of Christopher Nolan's brilliance, I think he could have taken notes from the Coen Brother's film, No Country for Old Men.
As one reviewer aptly noted:
And while No Country for Old Men revolves around the same themes of chaos and destruction (though it should be said that the crushing blow it delivers to determinism manages to destroy any potential hope; The Dark Knight manages to keep hope alive, as Hibbs notes in the aforementioned review), it does so in a more subtle manner than The Dark Knight. Here I am referring to the scene between the Joker and Two-Face in which the Joker.....dare I use this line....seduces Harvey Dent to the dark side. The Joker says something to the effect of "Unlease a little anarchy," and "Chance is fair." In this scene, with both villains present, we have a glimpse of Anton Chigurh from No Country. But Chigurh's character is all the more disturbing because he never mentions the word anarchy, never goes into a detailed discussion of his morality of chance save to say that the coin he uses got there the same way he did.
Imagine No Country for Old Men, change the plot some and throw in people dressed up as bats and clowns and that's the sort of sandbox of ideas and areas of darkness that The Dark Knight plays in. Without a doubt, if you combined the film's interpretation of Two-Face and The Joker you would have Anton Chigurh.
My second qualm with the movie is that the score can be a bit too much. I can only handle the dramatic music for, I don't know, 2 hours, not 2 and a half hours. There are moments, especially in the latter hour of the film, where the intensity or horror of the moment are detracted by the music, which depending on your theater's sound system may overpower the dialogue. Recall No Country, which had no soundtrack whatsoever, making the film somewhat less human. I do not think that Nolan should have jettisoned the entire soundtrack of The Dark Knight. On the contrary, I think the music is quite helpful at times. I do think that it could have been regulated more.
Of course, one could argue that subtlety is not the mark of a movie in which the main character is wearing tights. But Nolan's movie is too clever to be lumped with other comic book movies. His treatment of Two-Face, for example, He eschewed the heavy handedness of the George Clooney Batman films in which both villains seem to play an equal role, which led to the dismal failure of the characters. Allowing Dent to metamorphose into Two-Face in the last 1/4 of the film does not distract from the Joker, and more importantly, from Batman's internal struggle between good and evil and the sorrow and loneliness that accompany it. It would be foolish to say that the director was incapable of being subtle. I would perhaps be willing to buy the argument that the heavy-handedness was needed for the general audience of the film, though.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Reading Lolita in Wheaton, Illinois
Is awful.
As this post hints at [and yes, here I am shamelessly shuttling you off to my commonplace book], Lolita is known as a dirty book. When I was in high school, not having read the book, I thought it akin to literary porn.
Of course, the old Vintage International Cover doesn't help:
[seen here as the cover of the audiobook]
So of course, I'm quite embarrassed when I take this out of my bag at coffee shops in Wheaton, Illinois, where it often seems like the majority of coffee shop patrons are there for Bible studies. I quickly break open the book, hiding the cover and the spine. I think that's easier than saying, "But no, no, no....do you know how beautifully Nabokov writes?"
As this post hints at [and yes, here I am shamelessly shuttling you off to my commonplace book], Lolita is known as a dirty book. When I was in high school, not having read the book, I thought it akin to literary porn.
Of course, the old Vintage International Cover doesn't help:
[seen here as the cover of the audiobook]
So of course, I'm quite embarrassed when I take this out of my bag at coffee shops in Wheaton, Illinois, where it often seems like the majority of coffee shop patrons are there for Bible studies. I quickly break open the book, hiding the cover and the spine. I think that's easier than saying, "But no, no, no....do you know how beautifully Nabokov writes?"
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
What it means to be human
Recently, at the World Science Festival in NYC, a group of scientists and social scientists gathered together to look at the question, "What does it mean to be human?" Wired has taken the panel's answers (or lack of an answer, in the case of Paul Nurse and Harold Varmus) and condensed them for readability. Here's they are:
Marvin Minsky, artificial intelligence pioneer: We do something other species can't: We remember. We have cultures, ways of transmitting information.
Daniel Dennett, cognitive scientist: We are the first species that represents our reasons, and can reason with each other. "The planet has grown a nervous system," he said.
Renee Reijo Pera, embryologist: We're uniquely human from the moment that egg and sperm fuse. A "human program" begins before the brain even begins to form.
Patricia Churchland, neuroethicist: The structure of how the human brain is arranged intrigues me. Are there unique brain structures? As far as we can understand, it's our size that is unique. What we don't find are other unique structures. There may be certain types of human-specific cells -- but as for what that means, we don't know. It's important not only to focus on us, to compare our biology and behavior to other animals.
Jim Gates, physicist: We are blessed with the ability to know our mother. We are conscious of more than our selves. And just as a child sees a mother, the species' vision clears and sees mother universe. We are getting glimmers of how we are related to space and time. We can ask, what am I? What is this place? And how am I related to it?
Nikolas Rose, sociologist: Language and representation. We are the kind of creatures that ask those questions of ourselves. And we believe science can help answer. We've become creatures that think of ourselves as essentially biological -- and I think we're more than biological creatures. I'm not sure biology has answers.
Ian Tattersall, anthropologist: It's not "what is human," but what is unique: our extraordinary form of symbolic cognition.
Francis Collins, geneticist: What does the genome tell us? There's surprisingly little genetic difference between human and chimpanzee. Yet clearly we're different. There's brain size and language. A language-related gene, FoxP2, evolved most rapidly in the last few million years. How did we develop empathy? Appreciate our mortality? And we should admit that there are areas that might not submit to material analysis: beauty, inspiration. We shouldn't dismiss these as epiphenomenal froth.
Harold Varmus, physiologist: Intrigued by our ability to generate hypotheses and make measurements.
Paul Nurse, cell biologist: Is excited about the ability of science to answer this question.
Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist: The critical unique factor is language. Creativity. The religious and scientific impulse. And our social organization, which has developed to a prodigious degree. We have a record of history, moral behavior, economics, political and social institutions. We're probably unique in our ability to investigate the future, imagine outcomes, and display images in our minds. I like to think of a generator of diversity in the frontal lobe -- and those initials are G-O-D.
Out of the panelists, Nikolas Rose, I think, gave the most satisfactory answer. I also found the answer of Francis Collins, who headed the human genome project, to be satisfactory. I've always gravitated to the idea that language was what made us human. That is, anyway, what most poets will tell us. However, I don't know that that answer will hold once A.I. develops to the point of language. I wonder, is it the knowledge that we will one day die, the knowledge of our own mortality? The Christian is obliged to say that humans are made in the image of God, but what does that mean?
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Burn After Reading
After finally seeing the Cohen brother's film No Country for Old Men last week, I was delighted to see that they're coming out with a new film, Burn After Reading. Here's the trailer:
It seems like it's more in the vain of Lebowski rather than the bleak No Country.
It seems like it's more in the vain of Lebowski rather than the bleak No Country.
The Right and Global Warming
I've just returned back from New York, where I didn't have a TV, so this might be old news, but I as I sat in my mom's family room where she keeps the Fox News Chanel running, well, pretty much all day, I saw this ad:
Now, I don't really like Pat Robertson, and I certainly don't like Al Sharpton, but this ad struck me for two reasons. First, and most obvious, is the non-partisan nature of the ad: we have both Republicans and Democrats getting behind a major cause. And it seems like that's been a while since that happened.
But what struck me more was Pat Robertson's presence in the ad. The Christian Right has been loathed to get behind the idea of conservationism, mostly, I think, because it has become such a political issue. To my mom, who if nothing else is a member of the Christian right, global warming smacks of Al Gore and leftists. The science of the matter (either way you look at it) doesn't interest her so much as the political nature of the problem. And I think that goes for many Americans, especially here in middle America. (Here I am reminded of my U.S. history class my sophomore year of high school, the same class in which we were forced to write an essay on why the Republican party was more biblical than the Democratic party, when I made some environmentally friendly comment and was accused by several kids of being a "tree-hugger.") S for Pat Robertson to get on board with climate change and global warming...well, that's a big deal.
Now, I don't really like Pat Robertson, and I certainly don't like Al Sharpton, but this ad struck me for two reasons. First, and most obvious, is the non-partisan nature of the ad: we have both Republicans and Democrats getting behind a major cause. And it seems like that's been a while since that happened.
But what struck me more was Pat Robertson's presence in the ad. The Christian Right has been loathed to get behind the idea of conservationism, mostly, I think, because it has become such a political issue. To my mom, who if nothing else is a member of the Christian right, global warming smacks of Al Gore and leftists. The science of the matter (either way you look at it) doesn't interest her so much as the political nature of the problem. And I think that goes for many Americans, especially here in middle America. (Here I am reminded of my U.S. history class my sophomore year of high school, the same class in which we were forced to write an essay on why the Republican party was more biblical than the Democratic party, when I made some environmentally friendly comment and was accused by several kids of being a "tree-hugger.") S for Pat Robertson to get on board with climate change and global warming...well, that's a big deal.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
We hereby award you this award
On Friday evening, after my school's baccalaureate services, I attended "Class Night." There the school handed out awards to the top achievers. There were 88 categories of awards, each with anywhere from 1-10 winners. I think at least 300 awards were given out. (The evening lasted 2 and a half hours, down from 3 and a half two years ago.) The upper and middle schools combined consists of only 350 students. Of course, many of the students won multiple awards. Many won none. But really? 300 awards for 350 students?
When I asked one of my colleagues why the evening lasted so long and we handed out so many awards, he smugly smiled at me and said that we don't want all the kids running around the dorms for hours on the last night before they move out.
When I asked one of my colleagues why the evening lasted so long and we handed out so many awards, he smugly smiled at me and said that we don't want all the kids running around the dorms for hours on the last night before they move out.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Viewing Violence
I think Benjamin's post raises some good questions. I must admit that I watched the video for "Stress," not once but twice. The first time I grimaced. The second time, I was more intrigued. Of course it helped that between viewings I read a blurb or two about the video and discovered that it was directed with actors. (To the director's credit, I thought it had looked very authentic, especially after watching the video that Jason posted.) But still, I think this video does raise the question of how we should respond to extreme violence. At my high school, which was run by the Assemblies of God, I was continually subjected to debates on stupid question, "Is it okay to watch 'R' rated movies?" If you're curious, the leadership and those deemed pious answered "no." (Jason, you saw your first R movie at Princeton, didn't you?) Having sworn off the fundamentalist subculture, I have been tempted to give myself carte blanche in what I watch and what I listen to. Everything, after all, can provide some sort of instruction, whether it be in how to live or how not to live. I don't know that that's a satisfactory answer, though.
Alan Jacobs wrote on the fad of Discovery Chanel animal carnage shows in his 1997 article, "In on the Kill." We're not talking about animals, per se, but I think the article is helpful in sorting out some of the same issues. Here's a couple passages:
There may at times be reasons for us to force ourselves to look at the killing and eating of animals by other animals (just as there may be, and indeed are, good reasons for forcing ourselves to watch films of the Nazi concentration camps). But if we do not have to force ourselves, if we look upon such scenes with pleasure and fascination, something is terribly wrong.
The difference between the two videos, then, is that the Russian Neo-Nazi video serves an educational purpose. Or, there is a good reason for watching it. The Justice video, "Stress," serves a primarily aesthetic purpose. And certainly it's goal, at least on some level, must be to inspire delight?
Jacobs's response, though, seems to be suitable only in the Christian context. I am curious as to how one might take an ethical stance against such videos outside of a religious framework.
Benjamin also raises the question of the medium being the message. While I initially cringed while watching both videos—and the Russian video I could not bear to even finish—I don't think that I would have been particularly shocked if I had read about what I saw. Text, what McLuhan would call a "cold medium," cannot so easily cut me. The same, I think, can be said for music.
DM
Alan Jacobs wrote on the fad of Discovery Chanel animal carnage shows in his 1997 article, "In on the Kill." We're not talking about animals, per se, but I think the article is helpful in sorting out some of the same issues. Here's a couple passages:
Such shows are, I believe, the modern equivalent of bear-baiting, or the educated middle-class counterpart to cock-fighting, only with several insulating layers between modern viewers and the violence they endorse:
1. We're just watching what others have filmed; 2. They're just filming what the animals are doing; 3. The animals are just following their instincts. This kind of argument is made possible by what Stanley Milgram called "the fragmentation of the total human act." Milgram's famous experiments on obedience revealed that people can justify participating in the most dreadful deeds if an authority commands their involvement and if they can understand themselves as caught in a chain of events over which they have no control. It seems to me that the modern display of nature's pornography is analogous: since we are neither the ones who kill nor the ones who film the killing, we have no moral stake in the events we watch. But by watching such programs we endorse what happens in them and bear a certain responsibility for them. We have not simply failed to turn off the TV; our sin is not merely one of omission. By watching we will the continuation of such shows and hence, inevitably, the acts represented in them.
Dante understood this peculiarity of human character perfectly well. In the eighth circle of Hell, he and his guide Virgil meet the Falsifiers- among them a thirteenth-century counterfeiter named Master Adam and the infamous Greek Sinon, who tricked the Trojans into allowing the fatal wooden horse into their city. Dante watches as Master Adam and Sinon fall into a bitter exchange of insults and vituperation. For thirty lines of verse they snarl at one another. Then Virgil, the personification of human Reason, turns to Dante and says, "Now keep on looking a little longer and I quarrel with you." Why is he troubled? Because, as he later explains, "the wish to hear such baseness is degrading." There are certain events and actions, Virgil seems to say, toward which the only proper response is to avert one's eyes. This need not be a denial of reality; in fact, it is an acceptance that reality is often terrible. Predation is of course unlike the bitter recriminations of Sinon and Master Adam in that there is no sin in it. But I cannot think of it as a good thing that some creatures live only by the dying of other creatures; and still less can I think a fascination with such killing good.
There may at times be reasons for us to force ourselves to look at the killing and eating of animals by other animals (just as there may be, and indeed are, good reasons for forcing ourselves to watch films of the Nazi concentration camps). But if we do not have to force ourselves, if we look upon such scenes with pleasure and fascination, something is terribly wrong.
The difference between the two videos, then, is that the Russian Neo-Nazi video serves an educational purpose. Or, there is a good reason for watching it. The Justice video, "Stress," serves a primarily aesthetic purpose. And certainly it's goal, at least on some level, must be to inspire delight?
Jacobs's response, though, seems to be suitable only in the Christian context. I am curious as to how one might take an ethical stance against such videos outside of a religious framework.
Benjamin also raises the question of the medium being the message. While I initially cringed while watching both videos—and the Russian video I could not bear to even finish—I don't think that I would have been particularly shocked if I had read about what I saw. Text, what McLuhan would call a "cold medium," cannot so easily cut me. The same, I think, can be said for music.
DM
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Justice - Stress
apropos the russian hate-clips. the french indie-electronica groups Justice's new music video is stirring up controversy. i don't want to say to much, just watch it.
the russian youtube violence and this video taps into the same phenomenon. what do these new media do with us as observers (a question which is adressed in the last few seconds of this clip)? the distance and anonymity of the internet creates a habit of distance and allows people to bring that distance into their real lives and violate other people. the medium is the message?
b.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
From Russia With Hate
Nearly three years ago, I had to make a decision. Either I would spend the next four years of my life studying Russian or German. Someone told me of the movement that was happening in Russia at the time, and now I'm ecstatic that I chose Germany. Does that make me a coward? Watch.
JMH
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
It's Official...
The United States is in a depression. The source? Sushi Park—Long Island's fusion of the American all-you-can-eat-buffet and Sushi. I drove several of my students there the other night, and as I entered the restaurant with its endless lines of overweight Long Islanders stacking sushi on their plates, I saw a sign announcing the restaurant's "Depression Sale," a drop of $5.
I have no idea if we're in a depression, but I do wonder if it's easier for an outsider or an immigrant to announce a depression. For many Americans, a depression is replete with the morbid connotations of the 1930's (or Prozac). Perhaps they're just not afraid to call it like they see it—they charge you extra for left-overs that you throw out.
I have no idea if we're in a depression, but I do wonder if it's easier for an outsider or an immigrant to announce a depression. For many Americans, a depression is replete with the morbid connotations of the 1930's (or Prozac). Perhaps they're just not afraid to call it like they see it—they charge you extra for left-overs that you throw out.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The avante garde/ art and miscarriage
The blogosphere (I hate that word) has been buzzing with news of Aliza Schvartz, a Yale senior whose art show was supposed to day. According to the Yale Daily News:
...Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
My moral qualms with this are many, but I think Michael J. Lewis, in the Wall Street Journal, has pointed out some of the artistic problems with the piece:
...Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
My moral qualms with this are many, but I think Michael J. Lewis, in the Wall Street Journal, has pointed out some of the artistic problems with the piece:
Immaturity, self-importance and a certain confused earnestness will always loom large in student art work. But they will usually grow out of it. What of the schools that teach them? Undergraduate programs in art aspire to the status of professional programs that award MFA degrees, and there is often a sense that they too should encourage the making of sophisticated and challenging art, and as soon as possible. Yale, like most good programs, requires its students to achieve a certain facility in drawing, although nowhere near what it demanded in the 1930s, when aspiring artists spent roughly six hours a day in the studio painting and life drawing, and an additional three on Saturday.
Given the choice of this arduous training or the chance to proceed immediately to the making of art free of all traditional constraints, one can understand why all but a few students would take the latter. But it is not a choice that an undergraduate should be given. In this respect — and perhaps only in this respect — Ms. Shvarts is the victim in this story.
I think that Lewis is right—the option to stray into "making art free of all traditional constraints" should not be granted to undergraduates. On some level, it's a matter of mastering the fundamentals before moving on. (I would say this should be the case for not only the visual arts, but for the performing arts and writing, as well.) On another level, it's a matter of maturity—Ms. Shvarts, I think, suffers from pretension. This is true of most undergraduates...but it becomes problematic when it leads to inducing several miscarriages.Sunday, April 20, 2008
from W.
"Some on the left compare W. to Hitler. Nothing could be more wrong. It is our embarrassing distinction in the United States to have acquired a follower as our leader. You don't picture him on the podium at Nuremberg. No, you see him in the third row of the crowd on the rally floor. Look for his face, there, among the other sons!"[from the story W. in n+1, a bi-annual journal you should subscribe to; photograph of young Adolf, 7 years old]
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Reflections from Psalm 23
Below is my chapel talk that I gave to the students and faculty at the Stony Brook School. I really wanted to say this, but I'm not on too good terms with the administration, so I went for a more orthodox approach. (Posting a chapel talk? So much for the group blog idea...)
Many of you have asked me what life is like for a single teacher here at the Stony Brook School. Though it is often phrased a bit mockingly: “Why don’t you get a life, Michael?” or “You need to get a girlfriend instead of sitting in your apartment all night,” it might be phrased, “You don’t have to change diapers at night like almost everyone else, so what do you do with your free time?” My hobbies, reading, writing, and running—yes, I do really enjoy these activities—all take considerable time, and as any teacher here can tell you from experience, there isn’t really any free time the first year of teaching. So in the twenty minutes that I find here and there, I read blogs. For those of you who don’t know what a blog is, let me clarify: A blog is a website that is regularly updated with articles. I peruse dozens, whose subjects range from education, theology, design, literature, or even, in the case of one of my favorites, graffiti and street art in cities across the world.
Yesterday, I stumbled across a discussion of the recent American Idol special, “Idol Gives Back,” a benefit show to raise money for causes around the world. From what I understand, at the end of the show eight of the remaining contestants sang the song “Shout to the Lord.” Apparently, the folks at American Idol, afraid to offend, decided that it would be better to substitute the word “Jesus” for “Shepherd” because the contestants sang, “My Shepherd, my savior.” The alleged secularization of the song didn’t bother me at all, but I was surprised that “Shepherd” was deemed secular enough. The Bible, after all, is filled with many references to God as a Shepherd, perhaps the most popular of which is the 23rd Psalm, which we heard yesterday in the lectionary reading. When I hear the word Shepherd, my mind generally darts to that passage: “The Lord is my Shepherd.” But I have, you might say, a difficult relationship with the Psalm.
When I buried my father, my uncle, my father’s older brother, read Psalm 23. “The Lord is my Shepherd.” As a sniper in World War II, my uncle had faced the cruelties of war, even spending 6 months in the hospital after a German mortar destroyed the French theater that his tank battalion was occupying. Now he struggled to mouth the words of the Psalm as he wept bitterly. The Psalm was read again a couple hours later at my Father’s memorial service. “The Lord is my Shepherd.” I sat silently in the front row, too numb to think about the meaning, too numb to hear any words of comfort.
The next few months went very poorly. Of course, I was at Wheaton College, the Protestant Vatican, so there was no shortage of people to remind me that God would care for me. But I didn’t know where God was. I tried to find Him, like a boy trying to swat at a thick fog with a stick. As the great Polish Catholic poet Csezlaw Milosz wrote:
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked you, you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But there was no miraculous sign. I thought God had abandoned me. In my “small group”—an odd phenomenon of the Evangelical sub-culture in which people share far too much of their lives and then talk about Jesus—I would sit silently, declining to pray with the others. I was alone. I plummeted into a deep depression and swore off God. But as John writes in the first letter, “for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.”
God does not bring about our pain intentionally to achieve his will, for he is perfect and is Love and need not...no, cannot...create evil to bring about some greater good. But he can use it if it should occur.
There is something redemptive in suffering, as the lectionary reading from 1st Peter Chapter 2 makes clear: “For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
In suffering, we learn to humble ourselves—willingly or unwillingly—just as Christ humbled himself to the point of a “death reserved for slaves.” In suffering we learn to empathize with others, to stop offering platitudes or catchy phrases or simple answers and instead, to listen. In suffering we learn that happiness is fleeting, but that the Lord can give joy in the midst of turmoil. But suffering can also be dangerous.
W.H. Auden said in an essay on Søren Kierkegaard that “the Christian who suffers is tempted to think this a proof that he is nearer to God than those who suffer less.” This is a peculiar temptation, the temptation to look upon others who may not have encountered difficulty and almost scorn them for living inauthentic lives. This was a temptation I have fallen prey to repeatedly. This is wrong. If suffering is to be beneficial, I think we must bear it humbly and meekly, not calling attention to ourselves or assuming that we are somehow more attuned to life than others.
Since autumn, I have spoken with many of you about suffering in your own lives. Some of you never had a father. Others have lost loved ones. Others have suffered the crushing weight of depression or anxiety.
It would be too easy to tell you that, in this lifetime, things always turn out for the best, that you may suffer now, but eventually you’ll be flourishing. Several years after the death of my father, I still sometimes struggle to believe the Psalm, to believe that God is constantly caring for me and looking out for my good.
This past summer , I buried two of my best friends, both committed Christians, both victims of suicide. I was studying on a fellowship in Berlin this summer, and I paused one weekend to go to Dresden to meet my friend Stephen, with whom I graduated college . We spent the weekend walking around the beautiful city, now rebuilt from the horrendous devastation that allied bombers wreaked upon it in 1945. On Sunday, after church, I took a train back to Berlin. Stephen, who was studying in a town called Gottingen, never made it back. I learned of his death a few days later when the American Embassy called to ask if I knew any details.
I came to Stony Brook in August, still grieving his death, though I don’t really think I had processed it. After my first day of teaching, I returned to my apartment wondering how I would make it through the year. I was greeted by a phone call from the mother of Luke, another of my best friends. A victim of bi-polar disorder, he, too, had battled depression for years, unsuccessfully attempting suicide a few times. During the week before I began teaching, I had spoken with Luke almost everyday as he spiraled further and further down. That Friday I called his parents to say that he was doing very poorly and that they should be watchful. On Monday, his mother called to say that “we had lost Luke.”
Let me be perfectly clear: I do not wish to convey the message that life is bad, that it is just a matter of riding out a long storm in which we are buffeted by wave after wave of hardship. No. Life is beautiful and holy. Though it can be difficult, life must be affirmed vigorously and joyfully.
There are, though, countless cases of people like this, people whose life seems to be marked by tragedy. The countless victims of disease or poverty who never see the rosy, halcyon days that we think are promised to us. And many are Christians. Where is the Shepherd, watching over his flock?
And this is where we must return to the end of Psalm 23. It closes with the beautiful declaration that we “will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” The idea of eternity is difficult to grasp. Indeed, I doubt that we can grasp it. We can try to graph it, to mathematically represent it—the curve forever approaching the limit of infinity—but we are hard pressed to understand, even imagine eternity, let alone an eternity with God, an eternity of perfect joy. But this is what we are promised. In the face of such incomprehensible joy, the struggles of this earth fade away.
The hope that we have in Christ is too much for me to communicate. I, a mere teacher, cannot do justice to what the Psalmist so beautifully describes. I can only gesture at it, and repeat the closing words of the Nicene Creed: “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
Many of you have asked me what life is like for a single teacher here at the Stony Brook School. Though it is often phrased a bit mockingly: “Why don’t you get a life, Michael?” or “You need to get a girlfriend instead of sitting in your apartment all night,” it might be phrased, “You don’t have to change diapers at night like almost everyone else, so what do you do with your free time?” My hobbies, reading, writing, and running—yes, I do really enjoy these activities—all take considerable time, and as any teacher here can tell you from experience, there isn’t really any free time the first year of teaching. So in the twenty minutes that I find here and there, I read blogs. For those of you who don’t know what a blog is, let me clarify: A blog is a website that is regularly updated with articles. I peruse dozens, whose subjects range from education, theology, design, literature, or even, in the case of one of my favorites, graffiti and street art in cities across the world.
Yesterday, I stumbled across a discussion of the recent American Idol special, “Idol Gives Back,” a benefit show to raise money for causes around the world. From what I understand, at the end of the show eight of the remaining contestants sang the song “Shout to the Lord.” Apparently, the folks at American Idol, afraid to offend, decided that it would be better to substitute the word “Jesus” for “Shepherd” because the contestants sang, “My Shepherd, my savior.” The alleged secularization of the song didn’t bother me at all, but I was surprised that “Shepherd” was deemed secular enough. The Bible, after all, is filled with many references to God as a Shepherd, perhaps the most popular of which is the 23rd Psalm, which we heard yesterday in the lectionary reading. When I hear the word Shepherd, my mind generally darts to that passage: “The Lord is my Shepherd.” But I have, you might say, a difficult relationship with the Psalm.
*
My father died when I was eighteen—my freshman year at college. In mid October, his stomach started to hurt. He was dead three and a half weeks later, a victim of cancer. He had spent the last week and a half of his life in our family room, wrapped in a blanket in front of the TV, barely speaking or eating. My sister had taped several Bible verses on the walls. Much like Psalm 23, they were encouraging verses, and my sister believed that if we prayed hard enough, if we believed the verses well enough, my father would live.When I buried my father, my uncle, my father’s older brother, read Psalm 23. “The Lord is my Shepherd.” As a sniper in World War II, my uncle had faced the cruelties of war, even spending 6 months in the hospital after a German mortar destroyed the French theater that his tank battalion was occupying. Now he struggled to mouth the words of the Psalm as he wept bitterly. The Psalm was read again a couple hours later at my Father’s memorial service. “The Lord is my Shepherd.” I sat silently in the front row, too numb to think about the meaning, too numb to hear any words of comfort.
The next few months went very poorly. Of course, I was at Wheaton College, the Protestant Vatican, so there was no shortage of people to remind me that God would care for me. But I didn’t know where God was. I tried to find Him, like a boy trying to swat at a thick fog with a stick. As the great Polish Catholic poet Csezlaw Milosz wrote:
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked you, you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But there was no miraculous sign. I thought God had abandoned me. In my “small group”—an odd phenomenon of the Evangelical sub-culture in which people share far too much of their lives and then talk about Jesus—I would sit silently, declining to pray with the others. I was alone. I plummeted into a deep depression and swore off God. But as John writes in the first letter, “for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.”
*
I think that one of the most powerful moments in the New Testament occurs in the Gospel of John. After many of Jesus’ followers have left him, he turns to the disciples and said “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter responds by saying, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Like Peter, I did not know where else to turn. By the grace of God, I eventually returned to my faith. I did not know why God had allowed my father to die, nor did I suddenly feel filled with happiness. I did, though, find my faith deeper and stronger, and I found that I was able to empathize with others who were suffering.God does not bring about our pain intentionally to achieve his will, for he is perfect and is Love and need not...no, cannot...create evil to bring about some greater good. But he can use it if it should occur.
There is something redemptive in suffering, as the lectionary reading from 1st Peter Chapter 2 makes clear: “For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
In suffering, we learn to humble ourselves—willingly or unwillingly—just as Christ humbled himself to the point of a “death reserved for slaves.” In suffering we learn to empathize with others, to stop offering platitudes or catchy phrases or simple answers and instead, to listen. In suffering we learn that happiness is fleeting, but that the Lord can give joy in the midst of turmoil. But suffering can also be dangerous.
W.H. Auden said in an essay on Søren Kierkegaard that “the Christian who suffers is tempted to think this a proof that he is nearer to God than those who suffer less.” This is a peculiar temptation, the temptation to look upon others who may not have encountered difficulty and almost scorn them for living inauthentic lives. This was a temptation I have fallen prey to repeatedly. This is wrong. If suffering is to be beneficial, I think we must bear it humbly and meekly, not calling attention to ourselves or assuming that we are somehow more attuned to life than others.
Since autumn, I have spoken with many of you about suffering in your own lives. Some of you never had a father. Others have lost loved ones. Others have suffered the crushing weight of depression or anxiety.
It would be too easy to tell you that, in this lifetime, things always turn out for the best, that you may suffer now, but eventually you’ll be flourishing. Several years after the death of my father, I still sometimes struggle to believe the Psalm, to believe that God is constantly caring for me and looking out for my good.
This past summer , I buried two of my best friends, both committed Christians, both victims of suicide. I was studying on a fellowship in Berlin this summer, and I paused one weekend to go to Dresden to meet my friend Stephen, with whom I graduated college . We spent the weekend walking around the beautiful city, now rebuilt from the horrendous devastation that allied bombers wreaked upon it in 1945. On Sunday, after church, I took a train back to Berlin. Stephen, who was studying in a town called Gottingen, never made it back. I learned of his death a few days later when the American Embassy called to ask if I knew any details.
I came to Stony Brook in August, still grieving his death, though I don’t really think I had processed it. After my first day of teaching, I returned to my apartment wondering how I would make it through the year. I was greeted by a phone call from the mother of Luke, another of my best friends. A victim of bi-polar disorder, he, too, had battled depression for years, unsuccessfully attempting suicide a few times. During the week before I began teaching, I had spoken with Luke almost everyday as he spiraled further and further down. That Friday I called his parents to say that he was doing very poorly and that they should be watchful. On Monday, his mother called to say that “we had lost Luke.”
Let me be perfectly clear: I do not wish to convey the message that life is bad, that it is just a matter of riding out a long storm in which we are buffeted by wave after wave of hardship. No. Life is beautiful and holy. Though it can be difficult, life must be affirmed vigorously and joyfully.
There are, though, countless cases of people like this, people whose life seems to be marked by tragedy. The countless victims of disease or poverty who never see the rosy, halcyon days that we think are promised to us. And many are Christians. Where is the Shepherd, watching over his flock?
*
Over the past few months, I have spent several hours talking with the parents of each friend. Both couples acknowledge that the great pain and destruction caused by the death of their sons—it will decrease over time but it will never disappear. At least on this side of eternity.And this is where we must return to the end of Psalm 23. It closes with the beautiful declaration that we “will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” The idea of eternity is difficult to grasp. Indeed, I doubt that we can grasp it. We can try to graph it, to mathematically represent it—the curve forever approaching the limit of infinity—but we are hard pressed to understand, even imagine eternity, let alone an eternity with God, an eternity of perfect joy. But this is what we are promised. In the face of such incomprehensible joy, the struggles of this earth fade away.
The hope that we have in Christ is too much for me to communicate. I, a mere teacher, cannot do justice to what the Psalmist so beautifully describes. I can only gesture at it, and repeat the closing words of the Nicene Creed: “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
Graphic Design and the War
I was reading an article on the future of Catholic Higher Education, over at the National Review. Now, though I imagine that the National Review is wildly unpopular in my generation (it is probably not much of an overstatement that all of the readers are probably over 40 and either work for defense contractors or make over $100,000 a year—and very educated), but I tend to fall into more of the conservative camp, at least on issues of religion and public life, and the magazine has thoughtful things to say here. However, I was bit turned off this afternoon when I gazed to the right of the text of said article and saw this add:
Of course, the people over at NRO are in favor of the war. But the design of this advertisement smacks of delight in war. And I don't even say "the war," as in the war going on now, but war in general. The stencil lettering above a tank shooting fire out of its barrel—its the sort of thing I might expect on the cover of a tank commander game.
I'm not wholly against the Iraqi war, but I do think that war, in general, is to be looked on with disgust, as a viable option but also as the last option. That is to say that it is perhaps necessary, at times, though it is never to be delighted in.
I understand that the graphic is mirroring the site's web address, but perhaps something a bit more tasteful is in order. It is the responsibility of the country, if it is to be in this war, to at least acknowledge the tragedy of war.
I'm not wholly against the Iraqi war, but I do think that war, in general, is to be looked on with disgust, as a viable option but also as the last option. That is to say that it is perhaps necessary, at times, though it is never to be delighted in.
I understand that the graphic is mirroring the site's web address, but perhaps something a bit more tasteful is in order. It is the responsibility of the country, if it is to be in this war, to at least acknowledge the tragedy of war.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Mild Case of Necrophilia
Let's talk Pygmalion. Ovidian sculptor. From Cyprus. Falls for this sculpture he carves from ivory. Eventually, Venus (what an incredibly sexy name) takes pity on Pygmalion and brings the statue to life. They copulate and produce two offspring, women, human: Paphose and Metharme, names to which, historians steadfastly agree, Cypriot middle school was not terribly kind.On a serious note (and what is not serious?), I mention this find because I think Shelly's account of a artist/artwork relationship much more devastating and far more realistic than Ovid's. Frankenstein's monster rebukes him, kills those he holds dear, and leads him on a chase that literally costs the troubled doctor his life. To see creation turning on its creator, one need go no further than the mall. Or any church. Or the art museum.
There is something about the artwork that makes the artist both wonder in awe and recoil in terror: its autonomy. It is not uncommon that the creations we make far outdo ourselves; that is, though they come from us, they can be far more powerful and catastrophic in singular capacities than ourselves (i.e. the atom bomb, the printing press, the machine gun, the song "Nobody Does it Better" by Carly Simon).
We cannot be taught to ask the question:
Can God sin? Is that sin, in fact, us? If we do ever get around to asking it, it is certain that no teacher can have asked it for us.
JMH
We're renovating...
Clay Shirkey, in a guest column for Penguin, wrote "Most user-generated material is actually personal communication in a public forum. Because of this personal address , it makes no more sense to label this content than it would to call a phone call with your mother "family-generated content." A good deal of user-generated content isn't actually "content" at all, at least not in the sense of material designed for an audience." The problem with this blog was that it was caught between offering up content and "personal communication in a public forum." Admittedly my job—teaching and coaching at a boarding school—has left me little time to write, but when I did stumble upon some time (usually by neglecting class prep), I was struck at the loneliness of the whole blogging bit. That is, there wasn't much of a conversation going on, which was my original intention for this blog, which I named after Auden's 1946 Phi Beta Kappa poem, "Under Which Lyre." The poem wittily describes the battle that Auden perceived on college campuses— the battle between the humanities and the sciences, the romantics and the pragmatists. The poem, which traces the success of the scientists, draws to a close with the resistance of the poets, the "sons of Hermes":
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.
Which, in some fantastical, delusional way, is what I originally wanted for this blog—a sort of cocktail party where ideas could be discussed. (Although in writing this, it sounds awful. I can taste the pretension, people casually alluding to books they've never read with an air of authority, the name dropping of professors or intellectuals that might have once said "hello.") But it didn't happen, really.
So I've decided to make this a group blog, a collective conversation, an idea I stole from a friend's similar endeavor, and the folks over at the American Scene. So I'm pleased to welcome Jason Harper, a student at Princeton and Die Freie Universität Berlin; James Hoey, a student at Chicago's divinity school; and Benjamin Ekman....who is from Sweden.
Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.
Which, in some fantastical, delusional way, is what I originally wanted for this blog—a sort of cocktail party where ideas could be discussed. (Although in writing this, it sounds awful. I can taste the pretension, people casually alluding to books they've never read with an air of authority, the name dropping of professors or intellectuals that might have once said "hello.") But it didn't happen, really.
So I've decided to make this a group blog, a collective conversation, an idea I stole from a friend's similar endeavor, and the folks over at the American Scene. So I'm pleased to welcome Jason Harper, a student at Princeton and Die Freie Universität Berlin; James Hoey, a student at Chicago's divinity school; and Benjamin Ekman....who is from Sweden.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Over at ayjay's, I found a humorous section of an article by David Brooks, "The Great Forgetting." Here's the excerpt:
Yes, David Brooks, I'm the bastard who peppers his speech with references to Auden, and, admittedly, enjoy gaining the upper hand in conversations with people by either remembering their name or casually pointing out the fact that we've met....several times.
Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship. On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.
This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.
Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.
A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.
Yes, David Brooks, I'm the bastard who peppers his speech with references to Auden, and, admittedly, enjoy gaining the upper hand in conversations with people by either remembering their name or casually pointing out the fact that we've met....several times.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Google does it again
I was about to write a blog questioning Google's introduction of "Custom Time," which the folks at Google say is a great way to pretend like you actually sent the email on time—helping solve the problem of missed anniversaries, etc. The opening page of gmail bragged about how useful it was, but then, paradoxically said that Google was limiting the number of custom time emails to 10 per year. Ah....so they know it's deceptive, thus the self-imposed limit. This is great, I thought—I haven't given anyone a self-righteous moral thrashing for a while. It's about time to utilize my wit in the service of morality and self-aggrandizement.
Then, as I read the testimonials, I came across that of Michael, an epistemology professor:
Then, as I read the testimonials, I came across that of Michael, an epistemology professor:
"This feature allows people to manipulate and mislead people with falsified time data. Time is a sacred truth that should never be tampered with."
And then I remembered it was April 1st—April Fools. And then I was filled with appropriate shame. Of course, I should have known better. Last year, on April 2nd, I tried in vain to access Google's paper email, was advertised, on April 1, as unlimited printing through Google.Saturday, March 29, 2008
Intensive Courses
There's a new article over at Inside Higher Ed., which states that a new poll shows students prefer intensive courses—"those [courses] taught on a tighter than normal schedule, with more class time each week, but fewer weeks."
This may be true, but I wonder if the same educational value exists in shorter, more concentrated courses. It seems to me that people need time and space to process what they learn. In my case, I don't know that I was able to learn that much in my concentrated courses because it was all so quick. The one quad class that I really benefited from—a course on W.H. Auden—was helpful because I returned to the material later, revisiting poems and themes discussed in the class. I look back on my term at Oxford, which was as concentrated as it gets, and I know that I learned how to write and think more effectively, but I don't know how well I learned philosophy.
Of course, concentrated courses are a great idea if one is just trying to jump through hoops—which is why they are so often used in for-profit education.
This may be true, but I wonder if the same educational value exists in shorter, more concentrated courses. It seems to me that people need time and space to process what they learn. In my case, I don't know that I was able to learn that much in my concentrated courses because it was all so quick. The one quad class that I really benefited from—a course on W.H. Auden—was helpful because I returned to the material later, revisiting poems and themes discussed in the class. I look back on my term at Oxford, which was as concentrated as it gets, and I know that I learned how to write and think more effectively, but I don't know how well I learned philosophy.
Of course, concentrated courses are a great idea if one is just trying to jump through hoops—which is why they are so often used in for-profit education.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Jim Lewis in Slate
Jim Lewis has an interesting article in Slate about Erich Auerbach's landmark book of literary criticism, Mimesis. Lewis (perhaps only partially facetiously) dismisses MFA programs, saying instead that writers can learn far more from Auerbach's book:
What emerges from all this is the idea that prose should be as dense as verse and as welcoming of close reading; that not a paragraph of real writing escapes the context of history; and above all, that style is philosophy, that a decision to use commas where others might use a semicolon, or to elide the word "afterwards," or to shift narrative perspective twice in a single paragraph, is as momentous as the decision to believe in the infinite, or to act in accord with the Categorical Imperative, or to endorse an inalienable right to privacy. They're all part of the same will to represent the world: Kings may stand or fall on the point of a period.
I use the word "interesting," to describe Lewis's article because I don't know what to make of it. He background as a novelist is all to clear when he dismisses the historical nature of Mimesis:
I would say that the grand structure of Mimesis, which is terrifyingly vast, is anything but uninspiring. But that's a minor detail. My main qualm with Lewis comes at the beginning of the article when he says:
Criticism is a conversation between critic and reader, to which the artist under consideration can neither add anything interesting nor take away anything useful. Writers' own remarks on the novel—Flaubert's letters, say, or Nabokov's Lectures on Literature—can occasionally be enlightening to anyone sitting down to write a book of his or her own, but studies by professors are entirely beside the point.
This sentence is odd because it seems that the rebuttal to the first sentence is unintentionally contained in the second sentence. Certainly Flaubert's letters or Nabokov's Lectures on Literature—and what of Auden's prose, perhaps the chief value of which is to illuminate his poetry—can add to the conversation. It is probably true that writers do not learn from critics (with the exception of Mimesis, perhaps), but I doubt that artists "under consideration can [not] add anything interesting" to criticism.
What emerges from all this is the idea that prose should be as dense as verse and as welcoming of close reading; that not a paragraph of real writing escapes the context of history; and above all, that style is philosophy, that a decision to use commas where others might use a semicolon, or to elide the word "afterwards," or to shift narrative perspective twice in a single paragraph, is as momentous as the decision to believe in the infinite, or to act in accord with the Categorical Imperative, or to endorse an inalienable right to privacy. They're all part of the same will to represent the world: Kings may stand or fall on the point of a period.
I use the word "interesting," to describe Lewis's article because I don't know what to make of it. He background as a novelist is all to clear when he dismisses the historical nature of Mimesis:
"The subtitle of the book is The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, which gives you some idea of its scope and ambition. "Real," of course, is an almost meaningless word in its standard broad use, but Auerbach has a something specific in mind; not the metaphysically real (as opposed to the fantastic) but the socially real—that is, the lives of more or less ordinary people engaged in more or less ordinary activities: the literary equivalent of genre painting.
To be honest, the overarching theme of the book may be its least interesting aspect. Realism of this sort is mostly a phantom concern, from a 21st century perspective anyway; daily life has been a part of our literature for so long that it seems quaint and forced to make a point of it. So, the grand structure of Mimesis is relatively uninspiring [...]"I would say that the grand structure of Mimesis, which is terrifyingly vast, is anything but uninspiring. But that's a minor detail. My main qualm with Lewis comes at the beginning of the article when he says:
Criticism is a conversation between critic and reader, to which the artist under consideration can neither add anything interesting nor take away anything useful. Writers' own remarks on the novel—Flaubert's letters, say, or Nabokov's Lectures on Literature—can occasionally be enlightening to anyone sitting down to write a book of his or her own, but studies by professors are entirely beside the point.
This sentence is odd because it seems that the rebuttal to the first sentence is unintentionally contained in the second sentence. Certainly Flaubert's letters or Nabokov's Lectures on Literature—and what of Auden's prose, perhaps the chief value of which is to illuminate his poetry—can add to the conversation. It is probably true that writers do not learn from critics (with the exception of Mimesis, perhaps), but I doubt that artists "under consideration can [not] add anything interesting" to criticism.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Lending Books
The limiting factor in how much I read is not money—books are cheap, probably cheaper than they've ever been (though I wonder how long they will remain so with the advent of electronic reading technology). Rather, how much—and what—I read is limited by time. The job I have now forces me to read quite a bit, though the books are not always the ones that I would choose. I do not have much time for "free-reading," though. Which brings me to my point: I really don't like it when people foist books on me, when they say, "Why don't you borrow this?"
I currently have at least 5 books that people have lent me. I will probably read one of them. The truth is that I have a stack of books that I would like to read and a stack of books that I *have* to read. Finding time for another book is not really an option.
I have never, except in one case, had the heart to say no. This is in part because I'm terrible at saying no, and in part because I don't want to insult the other person's taste (your favorite book is not worth my time.)
Asking to borrow a book is another matter, but now I think I would rather just buy the book myself so that I can underline in it and make notes.
I currently have at least 5 books that people have lent me. I will probably read one of them. The truth is that I have a stack of books that I would like to read and a stack of books that I *have* to read. Finding time for another book is not really an option.
I have never, except in one case, had the heart to say no. This is in part because I'm terrible at saying no, and in part because I don't want to insult the other person's taste (your favorite book is not worth my time.)
Asking to borrow a book is another matter, but now I think I would rather just buy the book myself so that I can underline in it and make notes.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Looking over past writing
To return to my writing—a year, two years, three years after the fact—is an odd experience. Occasionally, I feel a smug satisfaction of writing something so well. It's as if standing in a mirror admiring one's physique: very vain. More often than not, though, I am a bit embarrassed. I find a comma-splice here, a misplaced modifier there, and sometimes plainly horrid writing. Today I was re-reading an essay I wrote a year ago, trying to rewrite the ending in order to submit the essay as a writing sample for a job for which I'm applying. In the final page of the essay (on how I came to love poetry through reading Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts") I found this section:
"Perhaps Stevens is right when he says that death is the mother of all beauty. But if so, it is in a different way than the woman in “Sunday Morning” thinks. Milosz shows us this when he says in an interview that, “every poetry is directed against death–against death of the individual, against the power of death” (64). Death fosters beauty, but only insofar as the beauty is directed against death. But poetry cannot be relegated to books on grief or anthologies of poems for those mourning the loss of a loved one, although some are only read in such contexts. (I am thinking of Auden’s “Stop all the Clocks” or as it is now called, “Funeral Blues.”) In fighting against death, poetry embraces life. The poet and the poem exist not only to give us comfort in the time of need, but also to confront us with hard truths, truths that can sometimes only be uttered in the words of poetry."
What strikes me now is that what I wrote was probably a bit heretical—or at the very least, very Calvinist (perhaps they're synonymous.) Saying that death is the mother of beauty, in that beauty is directed against death, leads to the idea that death is necessary for beauty. This is one step away from saying that God (or the True, if you like) needs death to exist or at least needs it to bring about certain ends. Which is heresy.
Should one go back and rewrite old essays? I don't know....I don't know that much about writing. I tend to want to leave them alone after a few months; they become mile-markers in my past, then. In this case I'm going to rewrite the ending, if only because the recipient of the submission happens to be an ecumenical journal that would notice the conclusions being drawn.
"Perhaps Stevens is right when he says that death is the mother of all beauty. But if so, it is in a different way than the woman in “Sunday Morning” thinks. Milosz shows us this when he says in an interview that, “every poetry is directed against death–against death of the individual, against the power of death” (64). Death fosters beauty, but only insofar as the beauty is directed against death. But poetry cannot be relegated to books on grief or anthologies of poems for those mourning the loss of a loved one, although some are only read in such contexts. (I am thinking of Auden’s “Stop all the Clocks” or as it is now called, “Funeral Blues.”) In fighting against death, poetry embraces life. The poet and the poem exist not only to give us comfort in the time of need, but also to confront us with hard truths, truths that can sometimes only be uttered in the words of poetry."
What strikes me now is that what I wrote was probably a bit heretical—or at the very least, very Calvinist (perhaps they're synonymous.) Saying that death is the mother of beauty, in that beauty is directed against death, leads to the idea that death is necessary for beauty. This is one step away from saying that God (or the True, if you like) needs death to exist or at least needs it to bring about certain ends. Which is heresy.
Should one go back and rewrite old essays? I don't know....I don't know that much about writing. I tend to want to leave them alone after a few months; they become mile-markers in my past, then. In this case I'm going to rewrite the ending, if only because the recipient of the submission happens to be an ecumenical journal that would notice the conclusions being drawn.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The Eucharist and Non-Baptized
At a Vespers service on Sunday night, I stuck around for communion after the service had ended. I must admit that I was not delighted about the communion cups that the school uses or the Methodist pastor who was serving, but being forced to attend non-denominational free-Church/Presbyterian services had made me glad for any chance to take the Eucharist. I was a little uncomfortable that several avowedly non-Christian students had also hung around to take communion.
Growing up in the Free Church and then a Southern Baptist Church, the Eucharist was merely symbolic. Anyone who professed a commitment to Christ could take it, regardless of baptism. When I started to attend and Anglican church, I was initially dismayed that, since I hadn't yet been baptized, I could not partake. In retrospect, though, I think the prerequisite of baptism acknowledges the worth of the Eucharist.
Was what these students did wrong, or, perhaps better put, not the best idea? Or was it something beautiful? I suppose it depends on one's view of the sacraments. For that reason I do not take the Eucharist in Catholic masses, though I have often wanted to.
Any ideas?
Growing up in the Free Church and then a Southern Baptist Church, the Eucharist was merely symbolic. Anyone who professed a commitment to Christ could take it, regardless of baptism. When I started to attend and Anglican church, I was initially dismayed that, since I hadn't yet been baptized, I could not partake. In retrospect, though, I think the prerequisite of baptism acknowledges the worth of the Eucharist.
Was what these students did wrong, or, perhaps better put, not the best idea? Or was it something beautiful? I suppose it depends on one's view of the sacraments. For that reason I do not take the Eucharist in Catholic masses, though I have often wanted to.
Any ideas?
Friday, January 18, 2008
A poem
Since my year of teaching began, I have all but stopped writing. Which is unfortunate, to say the least. I managed to bang out this poem for Wheaton's yearbook next year, though. It's modeled on Milosz's "Elegy for YZ"
"Elegy for Luke Anderson"
Dear Luke,
At your funeral, I stopped crying
To marvel that a coffin could
Contain so large a man.
You suffered under the weight of caring too much
And I was amazed that a burdened
Man could laugh so beautifully.
You did not question your lot:
The boys whom you tutored in a Chicago
Ghetto whose hallways smelled
Of stale urine—they had it worse.
Once you told me your dream:
To feel that you belonged,
To know that you could be
Someone—a dream postponed by then
For well-meaning discussions with
White-coated men about imbalances
In your bile. Unruly, melancholy,
Witty, brilliant, you threw off authority
Like a Bolshevik—but in love, Luke,
Always in love. To escape your beliefs
You flew South like a bird
At the first sign of frost. There,
In a baptism of rum, a letter you wrote me:
"Too tired to debunk my faith. Relief."
Now your death is for many just the painful reminder
That suffering must be acknowledged,
Like a drought that strikes a fertile valley–
The farmers would love to ignore the heat,
The three rainless months, but hear the crunch
Of burnt grass with each step.
But lives cannot be reduced to lessons,
Or three part sermons, or elegiac poems.
Pray for us now, that we might bless
The banal, rejoice in our stodgy suburban lives.
That we too will one day gather at His feet
And join the chorus of Mercy. Of love. Of relief.
"Elegy for Luke Anderson"
Dear Luke,
At your funeral, I stopped crying
To marvel that a coffin could
Contain so large a man.
You suffered under the weight of caring too much
And I was amazed that a burdened
Man could laugh so beautifully.
You did not question your lot:
The boys whom you tutored in a Chicago
Ghetto whose hallways smelled
Of stale urine—they had it worse.
Once you told me your dream:
To feel that you belonged,
To know that you could be
Someone—a dream postponed by then
For well-meaning discussions with
White-coated men about imbalances
In your bile. Unruly, melancholy,
Witty, brilliant, you threw off authority
Like a Bolshevik—but in love, Luke,
Always in love. To escape your beliefs
You flew South like a bird
At the first sign of frost. There,
In a baptism of rum, a letter you wrote me:
"Too tired to debunk my faith. Relief."
Now your death is for many just the painful reminder
That suffering must be acknowledged,
Like a drought that strikes a fertile valley–
The farmers would love to ignore the heat,
The three rainless months, but hear the crunch
Of burnt grass with each step.
But lives cannot be reduced to lessons,
Or three part sermons, or elegiac poems.
Pray for us now, that we might bless
The banal, rejoice in our stodgy suburban lives.
That we too will one day gather at His feet
And join the chorus of Mercy. Of love. Of relief.
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