Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

How Critical Is Our Story

I love when I hear an amazing new perspective on something, a fresh way of seeing things that would never have occurred to me otherwise, or at least not anytime soon.

I listened to a podcast this week with Dana Gioia, in which he discussed the importance of arts education in the U.S. I’m always ultra-sensitive to this subject. It seems that, whenever I hear education or education reform discussed in the U.S., the emphasis is always placed on science, math, and technology. All of these disciplines and areas of expertise are very important, and I don’t claim that they’re not. I’m troubled, though…perpetually troubled…that so little emphasis is given to arts education. Most public schools have obligatory music programs (the marching band, after all, is a staple of half-time shows), and an old Broadway musical is often performed at the end of the year. In general, however, if a school board had to cut a position and the choice fell between a visual arts instructor or a physical science teacher…well, you and I both know who is most likely to be brushing up their vita.

For our empirical data-driven, evidence-based culture, there is hard data to quantify the increased odds of success in various aspects of life that connect with a history of music education. Theatre holds huge opportunities for learning team-work, teaching acceptance and self-esteem. The visual arts or photography hone visual acuity in huge ways. The list could go on. I’m struck by how we complain about the distress of our youth culture…or the distress of the adults in our culture, for that matter…while not investing in the artistic experiences that make us better as people.

Gioia connects this personal development with literature, as well. He talks about the importance of everyone growing up with a basic understanding of story and plot, and how they move. His assertion of this alludes to the fact that our lives are stories, and that the hopelessness and desperation that drive depression and extreme acts of self-harm, for example, are easily attributed to no longer being able to see a plausible and successful direction for one’s own story. Knowing that there are always a myriad of possibilities for every story gives the reader hope that the protagonist will still make it through…likewise in our own stories.

And this is to say nothing about the ability to effectively communicate our thoughts respectfully to each other.

This is more of the interdisciplinary thought process of which I’ve grown so enamored…the Burkian principle that every discipline serves as a lens through which every other discipline can be viewed and understood. I look forward, hopefully not in naivete, to when we weigh the arts (and humanities in general) as heavily in our support as the disciplines that make us financially and vocationally competitive with the rest of the world, because we realize that the humanities make us more mature as human beings, which makes us better able to use the skills that make us competitive vocationally.

Gioia spoke more eloquently of the interdisciplinary understanding of our lives and human condition than I have heard in some time. His call for an emphasis in arts education is something that all of us would do well to heed with whatever circles of influence in which we may find ourselves.

The Power of Words

I hadn’t quite had enough coffee to drink when I glanced at my Twitter feed on Monday morning. Had I been at least through my first cup, I think I would have realized more quickly that everyone was commenting on the events of Sunday evening in which President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American forces.

Eventually, the concept sunk in. I took time to digest it, not commenting or tweeting or updating statuses until I had unpacked the event a bit. I listened to some analysis from the BBC, and read some more from the New York Times. I read about the spontaneous gatherings at Ground Zero and in Washington D.C. of those cheering and singing the national anthem, and since then I’ve seen some of the more grotesque and uncivilized images and magazine covers that had bin Laden’s head rammed through by the Statue of Liberty’s torch as though on a pike (with all of the gore involved), or wishing him eternal damnation in large fonts. America is really, really good at getting caught up in mindless frenzies. Blame it on the overconfident knowledge that we have what is likely the most powerful military in the world. Many Americans don’t seem to care what the rest of the world thinks of them, or to take the rest of the world into much consideration…much to the chagrin of those of us who think more broadly.

My conclusion about the assassination of bin Laden is that celebrating victory in a war isn’t an appropriate thing to do, that we shouldn’t be dancing in the streets because we’ve successfully killed someone in the pursuit of justice. Just because someone loses a war, in no way means that anyone has won a war. Even eschewing pacifism as Bonhoeffer momentarily did in recognizing that great enough evils can exist to warrant warfare…to enter into the theological concept of a “just war”…involves recognizing that this is a grim task, one to be undertaken with solemnity, and even sadness, but never with jubilation.

My other concern from this historic event is the assumption by many that this brings closure to the horrific events of September 11, 2001. Despite a silent omission, or overt claim to the contrary, by government officials, the visceral reaction I sense from much of the media coverage is that this brings the war, or at least a major portion of the war, to a close. I fear this is inaccurate, not only because of tactical considerations that have been reported, but because there’s a larger issue at play, and that issue is a domestic, and historical, one.

Words have power, and the rhetoric of national leaders carry implications that can alter history. The war in which the U.S. and its allies have been engaged for nearly 10 years now, however you may feel about how just it may or may not be, has been tainted with erroneous rhetoric by former president George W. Bush that was simply not thought through as well as it should have been. The erroneous rhetoric that I fear will plague our country for some time to come occurred when Bush declared this to be “the war on terror.” The rest of the world has adopted this rhetoric…it is now solidified. I think that solidification will do much more harm than we could have imagined, because one cannot declare war on an ideology and ever hope to win. Should a country declare war on another country, an organization, or even an individual, then that effort will ultimately either succeed or fail, depending upon whether or not the target of that warfare is removed as threat, as bin Laden has just been. Ideologies do not die as quickly or as easily, if they die at all. They tend to multiply, spreading ideas with the fervor of the misled, far more contagious than nationalism or patriotism, and far more infectious should they be evil, as terrorism obviously is. In declaring this to be a “war on terror,” Bush essentially assured that it is a war that will never be successful, because the enemy will always change its shape and reappear in new forms. Unless we alter this rhetoric, unless we call this war something different and back down until such a new concept can take hold, we will be trapped in perpetual bloodshed that will be without end, only moving between varying degrees of victory and defeat, always without significant closure.

Constant warfare leads not only to the deaths of thousands of human beings, but also to the deaths of cultures, of ways of life, of intelligence, of language, of art. Continued warfare is something that no one wants, and to which we all have a right to call for an end. Rhetorical steps, of the kind that guide nations such as ours from our leaders’ lips, must be taken to ensure that the war in which we’ve been engaged begins to draw to an end with the death of bin Laden.

Otherwise, our children’s children of generations to come will be unable to recall a time in their lives when our country has not been at war.

I’d like to have entitled this post “And So It Ends.” I think I could have more likely entitled it, “And So It Goes.”

Photo Attribution: Rick

Physical Foundations

I keep coming back to this thought, it seems…actually, it keeps seeming to bring itself back to me, which perhaps is indication that I should be listening more carefully.

This week, it appeared in the form of a post over at Good Letters that you should take the time to read. The author is making a sound point. I previously had listened, in fact, to the interview conducted by Krista Tippett that Mr. Winters references, and it also launched this thought process into more serious motion.

Is our digital world, by definition, more at risk of being lost than a physical heritage?

In both cases, the thinkers in question speak of writing letters to their children. They argue that there is something more real to be experienced if their child is one day holding a physical letter or journal that they have written, with their perspectives, perhaps, on their children and life and any number of other things. As for me, I think of the photos and videos of mine and Karen’s adventures in our first few years of marriage. I want our child to have these as enormously important history of the family as it continues forward.

Just as Karen prefers physical books over my affinity for ebooks, so too she pines for physical photos. She fears the ease of misplacing digital files, and fears their fragility. However well and however obsessively I back up, she clings to the suspicion that they are only one hard drive failure away from being lost forever. And perhaps she’s right. We experienced a hard drive failure last year that was catastrophic in terms of data loss. Fortunately, our iMac, with a new hard drive installed, was able to easily restore from the backup I religiously make to an external hard drive. In the days it took for the repair to be completed, however…to say I was nervous that something in the restoration process would go wrong would be a severe understatement.

I suppose that this is especially at the forefront of my mind now, as I write this, because the amazing technology that we have created enabled the ultrasound image that revealed to Karen and I today that we are having a little girl. While I have been thinking of my unborn child for some months now, it is suddenly more real. That’s my little girl. I want her to have the memories of mine and Karen’s life together, of our parents’ lives together, after we are gone. That, after all, is how culture is preserved.

Tippett says she printed copies of emails for her daughter, and kept the hard copies to hand down to her later. I think it’s a bit unrealistic to return to days of hand writing letters, but I think that printing emails is a great idea, a great first step. I wonder about how my thoughts will be handed down to our daughter. Will she peruse this blog to trace my thoughts through years of life’s journey? Will she read about grad school? Will she read about when I first met Karen? Will this blog still be accessible? If not, she must have access to these thoughts, because my words are an essential statement of who I am. To know her father, she will have to know my words.

And I realize the weight of that statement, the impact that it will likely have on her, even as I type.

I’m thinking about beginning a physical journal, for her sake. A physical journal, if nothing more that type-written pages. I’m also considering loading up on printer ink and printing every single image that our iPhoto library holds.

Not for me. For her.

For us.

The future, after all, is only as solid as the past it is able to remember.

Photo Attribution: Orin Zebest

Greetings, Program!

From the first trailer forward, I couldn’t wait to get to the theatre to see Tron: Legacy. If, by some odd chance, you have haven’t seen it yet, I recommend you do so in 3D. Visually, the movie is spectacular. From a story perspective, though, it just doesn’t stand up to the original.

Now, in making the confession I’m about to make, I recognize that I will lose some serious geek cred with many readers. In the interest of truth, however, the admission must be made: I had not watched the original in so long that there were some nuances to the story that had faded from my memory. In fact, I knew that there were references going on that I should have been able to catch, but that were escaping me.

This prompted a search for a copy of the original, as I realized I could no longer be a true geek without the original movie in my library. I pre-ordered the most current re-release from Amazon, and watched with family and fellow fans last week.

And, oh, the things you see in things you haven’t seen for a while.

(I’m going to assume in what follows that you’ve seen the original Tron. If not, stop reading right now and go fix that. Seriously. Go.)

Immediately upon Flynn’s arrival in the world of the computer, one program asks another if he believes in the Users. The second program replies that he has to believe in the Users…otherwise, how could he be there if no one had written him? The “bad guys” of the MCP ridicule those who believe in the Users as engaging in silly religious superstition. Yet, Tron is driven (cheesy dialogue notwithstanding) to make contact with his User, the one that wrote him. This contact must take place at an I/O tower (Input/Output…remember, they’re in the virtual world when it was just beginning to be a virtual world). Upon making contact with his User, Tron is given the power to destroy the evil MCP and restore balance to his world.

Another critical element of the story is Flynn. Flynn is of our world, and is taken by the MCP into the world of the computer. Of course, the metaphor breaks down very quickly, but its difficult to not find incarnational imagery there.

The fact that Tron is about the triumph of faith over the attempts of those in power to destroy it escaped me when I watched the movie as a child. At that point, it was simply an amazing special effects extravaganza, the likes of which I had never before witnessed. Indeed, the movie was visually far ahead of its time. Moreover, though, Tron predicted, as good science fiction does, the world that was coming, and the danger of the computer world enslaving its creators to its bidding. This is not a new theme in science fiction, of course, but Tron portrayed it so much more realistically…futuristic, but so near-future as to be entirely plausible in the viewer’s mind.

The programs who are enslaved persist in their belief in the Users. When realizing that Flynn is a User, Tron assumes that everything he is doing is “according to a plan, right?” Flynn discounts this, saying that improvisation is his strategy. Tron is in disbelief, insisting, “That’s the way it is for programs, yes.” Flynn counters with, “Well, I hate to break it to ya, pal, but that’s usually how it is for Users, too.” At first blush, this would appear to be the writers advocating a less-than-sovereign theology of sorts. I think its more of a statement on man as a creator, though…a creator recognizing his limitations and confessing them to his creation.

The programs’ desire to communicate with their Users is essentially prayer, and the practice is prohibited by the MCP’s regime as the I/O towers, which function as temples or churches in that they are the places that this prayer occurs, are kept open but not in use. When Tron restores balance to the digital world, the first thing that the characters comment on are “all the I/O towers lighting up.”

Tron predicted a future that one could argue we’ve already realized. It also argued for the validity and perseverance of faith, as well as posing the scenario of man’s creation dividing into a good and evil: the evil attempting to rule its creator, the good taken captive but still clinging to a belief in man as its creator…and hoping for salvation from that creator. Moreover, it poses the age-old science-fiction question of, what would life look like when man creates it himself? The difference is that the image here is less fatalistic than Shelley, and much more realistic in its time.

I didn’t get half of that from watching Tron when I was young, but its so apparent now. That’s proof, I think, that the layers of a good story reveal themselves when you keep watching or reading.

Stormy Easter Silence

Easter this year involved a visit to my parents, who, living in a rural area several hours north of us, continue to experience the power outage issues that I’ve mentioned before when inclement weather arrives. And, as you might have imagined with the severe weather bands pushing their way across the U.S. lately, it arrived. The power subsequently left. There was some talk about how annoying severe weather in Spring can be, and how it has turned dangerous, especially of late…several friends and at least one family member have experienced near misses from the tornado activity in the American Southeast over the last two weeks. I commented that Spring is about re-birth, and birth is a violent event, so its fitting that the weather should be…well, passionate. Given what Easter celebrates, the tumultuous weather involved in this re-birth just seems appropriate.

A few years ago, when I walked through Passion Week in daily reflections, I came to the conclusion that Saturday was a very quiet day. Ironically, or perhaps providentially, our Saturday with the family became quiet, as well, right around 8:30 that night. That’s when one lightning flash too many plunged their street into a blackout, and we spent the remainder of the evening in candlelight and the occasional flashlight beam.

We also had the most amazing laughter. Laughter like I haven’t had with Karen since we were dating, to be honest…the entire family was rolling with one hilarity after another, and the conversation was the best of the weekend. There was no television, limited Internet (Karen wasn’t giving up the iPad for me to check Twitter), and leaving the room for this or that was significantly more complicated that usual. Even reading a book was difficult in the wavering candlelight, and there was no choice but to engage fully with each other for the remainder of our waking moments of the evening.

All because the superfluous stimuli had been removed.

Karen and I don’t do cable. The advantage to watching everything via Hulu or Netflix is that we watch intentionally: when we want to see something, its on, and when we don’t, there is no white noise. As my parents still do cable, I noticed that that it was difficult to have substantive conversation with the television on, because it was staying on in the background the entire evening of our arrival. A few weeks ago, I experienced a more exaggerated version of the same problem when Karen and I were at a sports bar with some friends. There were no less than twelve television screens surrounding our dining area, loud music notwithstanding. I was facing my friend from only across the table, but had significant difficulty understanding him because I kept being distracted by the hockey game appearing twelve feet tall on the projection screen across the room. And I don’t even watch hockey.

Even without the television, Saturday morning was spent with my father and I in the same room, him reading the paper and me catching up on news feeds and blogs over coffee. We didn’t really engage with each other for the better part of an hour after saying “good morning” (okay, that might be somewhat due to my not being a morning person).

Sometimes I think of the illegal off-switches in the world of Max Headroom, and think we might not be far off. I know that I had the opportunity to experience the quiet of the Saturday before Easter, celebrating a most precious holiday with our family, engaging with them at a completely different depth because the noise had been quieted for us, in a way that forced us to accept that quiet for several hours. I am thankful for that, because it made the celebration of Easter morning so much sweeter…as though the quiet had forced anticipation of the sunrise.

Imagine how blissful more quiet could be.

I hope you had a blessed Easter.

Photo Attribution: rsvstks