Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

After Glow

Yesterday afternoon I succumbed to Karen’s wishes in which movie we would be seeing at the local theatre. The final decision was a $1 showing of Star Trek, which neither of us had managed to take in at the time of its initial release. I’ll condense my overall feelings about the movie by saying it was well done, though slightly courageous in its far-reaching impact to the Trekkie universe specifically, and the science fiction genre at large, a genre which I happen to hold very dear.

This came after a long and occasionally heated debate between Karen and myself after adjourning to a nearby Starbucks to discuss what we had seen. Of the group of people that went, Karen and I were alone in our discussion. In retrospect that was the thing about the afternoon that stood out the most to me (I’ll save my conclusions about science fiction for another post), because I think its indicative of how we take in entertainment and treat art in our culture overall.

One of my acting professors in college said that part of the experience of theatre was going out for a cup of coffee after the show with the group you saw the show with to discuss the show. A play or a movie of any quality (okay, okay, I know that can be hard to come by in Hollywood) is going to present questions for discussion, hard issues with which we should wrestle, predictions or revelations of current and future cultural flaws that merit exploration. Should we fail to bounce these ideas around in our minds at least, and at best work them through in conversation with others, then they fall flat. A critical part of the experience is lost.

Similarly, think of the last time you read a good book. Did it not immediately produce a recommendation to friends? That recommendation likely included a synopsis of why you thought so highly of the book. If the person to whom you recommended the book read it, then you had a great deal of potential discussion in which to engage afterward. For example, I recently began exploring Salinger’s short fiction at the recommendation of a friend. After reading Nine Stories, we began discussing Salinger’s stories over our weekly coffee meeting. Not long ago, I recommended this same collection to another friend, who is reading it currently. He wants to talk about it as well. The cycle continues.

To be fair, some of those who watched the movie with us yesterday discussed it with us following lunch today. I’m glad…the movie is actually too good to waste by not discussing the story arc. Whatever the issues a movie or play or book presents, it merits discussion, whether you agree with it or not…discussion about whether you agree with it or not, and why. I’m hoping that this lack of discussion I’m observing is an exception rather than a rule. I hope that, if it is more commonplace, that it is not due to an eroding of critical thinking on a large scale. I’m more inclined to ascribe it to the passivity with which we consume art on demand, immediately leaving one story to latch onto another, without ever taking time to process what it is we just experienced. I think this passivity is more often the case because when I see friends become involved in discussion about a film or play or book, they seem to latch onto it hungrily, eating the thoughts ravenously and finishing with eyes that gleam in want of more.

This is indicative of how little it actually occurs, in any case. Let’s talk more over coffee, shall we? Besides, a cup of coffee after every movie may even boost our economy. See? Everyone wins.

Illusory Endeavors

The age-old question: if you could know your future, would you really want to? Would you want to know when you would achieve major milestones in your life? Perhaps you would. Would you want to know who you were going to marry? Sort of takes the fun out of the exploration, doesn’t it? Would you want to know exactly from what profession you were going to retire? Would you want to know exactly when your life would be over, and under what circumstances?

Of course, various artists have explored this topic in depth over the decades, and humanity appears largely void of this sort of precognition…lucky us, to not have to make the call.

This story, however, makes it sound as though we may be landing in the neighborhood:

The implications of this are frightening, unethical, a direct result of our God complex, and catering to the narcissism of the parents, to say nothing of the negative ramifications on the children in question.

A valuable part of childhood is exploration. Personality develops as exploration occurs. Exploration leads to multifaceted individuals…you know, the “Renaissance person” that seems so rare as our culture forces us to mold ourselves into a single label so that everyone knows where to file us in their heads. We are so desperate for these labels that we seem to now want to confine our children before they even have a chance to explore. The scientist interviewed in this video openly states that he will encourage a specific set of parents to push their child into business pursuits, because of quantified test results that would seem to indicate that the child will be strong in this area. As though we can quantify a human being, reducing a person to numbers and formulae in order to predict what they will be most successful in pursuing.

Two goliath ethical train wrecks present themselves to me here: First, the forcing of persons into categories. I’ve spoken here before of how everything in life interweaves, becomes a lens through which we can view everything else…essentially the Burkian principle of communication theory. From a psychological perspective, I’ve often seen…especially in adolescents…the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy take hold; that is, living out what someone has convinced you of because you aren’t aware that there is another alternative. Imagine a person with Harvard potential refusing to further their education beyond high school, even though they want to, because they have been told that their family is one of farmers, and that this person is capable of nothing other than agriculture. There is nothing wrong with agriculture…if that is what this person chooses to do. The point is that this hypothetical person’s not being encouraged to see outside of this box limits their potential in such a way that they may never even realize that they were robbed. There is a similar principal at work in diagnoses: while naming something gives you power over that thing (or problem), there comes with this power the danger of identifying yourself with that label (“oh, I can’t help it…I’m bipolar.”), and thus an absence of effort to improve or change.

This is what will be forced upon these children, based on some tests and numerical read-outs. This set of numbers, you’re an artist. This set, you’re a scientist. How about a set that indicates you should be a janitor? What happens when you know people…you know, have connections to those testing your child, who could make it really look like they could be a business administrator or national leader? Who will watch those watchmen? More practically, and from a less nihilist perspective, who will encourage the child who received numbers stating he/she should be a chemical engineer to pursue their passion for the violin? What if, in failing to do so, a future first chair for the London Philharmonic goes unrealized because the violin was considered taboo for a talented child as they were forced by parents toward being that chemical engineer?

And, at the risk of returning to my soap-box, who said you could sum up a human being in numbers, anyway? The children who are subjected to this testing are being robbed under the cruelest of circumstances: the premise that they are being given a gift.

The second ethical issue is our worship of success at the forsaking of all else. In an industrialized culture, and an increasingly industrialized world, East or West, we value people based solely upon what they can produce. The product is all-important, and if one cannot contribute, then they are less important to the society as a whole. Personal welfare and family time are expected to be sacrificed at the altar of the next business deal. Vacation? That’s for the weak. Sick time is for the weaker. After all, if you’re not at work producing something, then of what use are you?

The concept of viewing a man or woman as being of inherent beauty and worth simply because they are human has been lost in our rush to build, create, and accumulate wealth. While building and creating are natural human pursuits, and are good things in and of themselves, they are never justification for the harm of another human being. Ever.

Yet, mankind (at the risk of a sweeping cliche) now takes this one step further, not only pushing production at the expense of intrinsic human value, but programming a child from birth as to how exactly they will produce.

So, applaud this engineering marvel and scientific breakthrough, while looking at how it will benefit you, if you choose, but do so knowing that it benefits one at the expense of the humanity of another, and, in so doing, reduces the humanity of us all. I hope this is not a true prediction of our brave new world…

The Other Way Around

I like shiny new toys.

You’re probably thinking right now, “of course he does, he’s a guy.” And, well, its true…we really don’t grow up, its just that our toys really do get bigger and more expensive. More and more over the past couple of years, though, I’ve been questioning why it is that I like new toys so much. Doesn’t even matter so much what the toy is, it gives me a bit of a buzz. Yesterday, Karen and I were brainstorming ways to solve some ergonomics issues in our apartment. The short-term solution was to buy a Bluetooth keyboard for one of our Macs. I nearly tripped over myself getting to Best Buy. Forgot about what I had been contemplating earlier in the day, at least temporarily. The tools for our life briefly became ends to themselves, rather than means.

Today, I was having a conversation with a co-worker who had deactivated his Facebook page, and who refuses to have a Twitter account. He says that he did so because he wanted to be able to spend more time with his family…more human contact and less cyber-contact. We discussed the use of social networking as a tool. Its important that it stays there, remains only a tool. Similar is our hardware, especially with such slick gadgets to grab our attention and time like iPhones and (breathe deeply) the rumor of a new tablet from Apple by Christmas. Nothing is wrong with these things, and I value their excellent craftsmanship. At the end of the day, however, they are only tools.

We were created as creators. Every one of us, to some degree, experiences the creative impulse. Some paint, some write, some compose. Some solve engineering problems, some strategize how to most effectively teach their classrooms. Creativity takes many different forms, but it is ultimately present in all of us to one degree or another. As creators, it is easy for any of us to fall in love with our creations. A friend’s son recently had a publisher butcher characters he had written, twisting them to be more marketable to the public. My friend said his son felt ill at seeing what had been done to his characters, as though they were his kids that had somehow been mistreated. I can relate to that. When I began in journalism years ago, I remember feeling violated the first time my copy was flipped and re-arranged by the editor. While I eventually developed a tougher skin for that, it still stings a bit when it happens to this day. Those are my words they’re messing with!

The danger in this, as Lewis points out, is idolizing our creation. Just as the artist can idolize her art, so can the inventor idolize his invention. The New York Times recently ran this piece fretting over the possibility that the machines we’ve invented may some day control us instead of the opposite being true, a real life Asmovian fantasy…or perhaps prophecy…that has haunted us since we began inventing technology. A quote from Dr. Eric Horvitz about halfway down the first pages leaped out at me, claiming that “technologists are replacing religion,” and likening their inventive ventures to an eschatalogical importance.

The fact that we create makes us feel powerful. This is not the only reason we do so, at least not in our purest motivation (I hope beauty and social reform play in there somewhere), but it is an effect of creating, nonetheless. Let’s face it, we like to feel empowered. The same is true when I get to hold a shiny new electronic toy…I feel a new power because of the material symbol of lifestyle control in my hand. Art leads us to a feeling of superiority, perhaps, as we are so empowered by our pointing to a deeper truth that we become convinced our creation is the truth in itself. All of these lead to a de-humanization of ourselves, either by replacing humanity with tools intended to help it function more effectively, or by replacing it with the beauty that is intended to lift it to a higher level.

Invention and art have the power to become a religion, but not the spiritual substance necessary to complete our journeys. With creativity comes responsibility, a responsibility beyond quality in our crafts and attention to detail. There is a responsibility, while never permitting our endeavors to become utilitarian, to nonetheless hold our creations at their proper level, and that is in service of the humanity that created them, not the other way around.

And that is a delicate…and difficult…balance to be struck.

Hypothetically, Of Course

Let’s say, just hypothetically, of course, that a group of people recognizes something about itself that is really wrong. I mean, slap-yourself-on-the-forehead, can’t-believe-we-were-actually-that-stupid wrong. Okay. Recognizing the issue is the first step to correcting the issue. Now let’s say that this group of people makes positive strides, along with, to be honest, a few sizable mistakes even though motivations were good, and achieves progress. Let’s say that this group of people sees very pronounced moments of progress over the past few years, and understandably wants to keep putting them out there as proof that full resolution of the issue is being worked toward. Let’s say every now and then an incident occurs that receives substantial media attention. Then every body’s upset again, the whole thing is thrown into a disastrous spiral, and that group of people ends up thinking that they’ve actually made little progress at all, have a long way to go, and starts feeling as though its all hopeless and that there will always be ignorant bigots around.

Oops…I gave it away with that last sentence, didn’t I?

You see, the issue at hand with this (not-so) hypothetical group of people is that they kept the issue always near the surface. They never moved on. They never let it be. They talked about a solution, and attempted to enact a solution, but they never let the problem dip below the surface long enough to permit the solution to take effect. Hard to blame them, in a way…after all, the problem was, in fact, a horrendous one that led to the poor lifestyle and even deaths of many. Wars were fought. Battles were waged, families divided, tears shed. Difficult to let that die, after all. Except that, to not do so kept breathing life into the problem, perhaps just at the points where it might have been dead. Part of the reason for this was fear: to accidentally say anything that could in any way be construed as contributing to the problem was absolutely intolerable, because of the offense it could cause. In this (not-so) hypothetical society, after all, offense was quite possibly the worst thing that could happen next to death, and absolutely everyone had at least one thing that they were just walking through life daring everyone to offend them over.

Then, when a notable slip-up occurred, instead of treating it coherently and respectfully and working to find a solution, the leader of this group of people becomes flustered and says something…well, something that could have had better-chosen words, and something that, again, wouldn’t let the problem die, but perpetuated it into something even more severe.

Well…I guess I really gave it away with that one, right?

While our President apologized today for not choosing his words carefully and contributing to the problem that exploded into our national media when Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested after he apparently raised his voice to a police officer that was called to Gates’ home because of a possible break-in complaint, the point is that the situation was exacerbated, and continues to be, far beyond its actual importance. A mistake likely occurred on the parts of everyone involved, both Gates and the decorated officer who initiated the arrest. Perhaps, though, if the problem were just not empowered as much as it has been, then we wouldn’t have had such angst resulting from it.

I say empowered because we, all of us, continue to give racism more power than it should actually have. We keep it at the forefront, always tip-toeing around it, always bringing it back with reporting like the second Times piece above uses (this “tests” our faith in “racial progress”?), in which the same reporter constantly qualifies and references individuals quoted with phrases such as “who is black,” and then off-handedly mentions the point of view of one prominent source who describes raising his children as “post-racial,” to not see skin color.

Ironic, because that is the crux of the issue. We need to be, and should always have been, “post-racial,” since we once fell short of the ideal status of “non-racial.” I was raised by parents who treated everyone the same, regardless of ethnic origin or skin color. They rarely mentioned these as even identifiers when discussing an individual. I have friends and colleagues of many ethnic origins and skin colors. I see them as people, as individuals. I don’t think of their color or ethnic background when I think of them, except to be aware of how it positively impacts their personality. Perhaps if we all did this, and then raised the following generation without the knowledge of racism as anything other than an historical event…that is to say, if we declared it “dead” and left it that way….then it would be, because we would no longer empower it. To do this, however, a larger cultural issue would need to be addressed, that of our fear of offense. Every time we’re offended, the thing by which we have been offended becomes more powerful than it would otherwise have been.

What if we were created without a concept of race, but just diverse in really artistic ways? That would mean that we have thrust this concept on ourselves, crippling ourselves by intolerance of physiology which is different. To take that perspective would mean celebrating the differences that come with different cultures and ethnic heritages, while not even considering what has been misappropriated in the past. Let it stay in the past. A horrible mistake is a horrible mistake, and certainly racism falls into that category. However, it continues to thrive when we resurrect it every day, and begin to thrust errors into the spotlight in concern of some hypothetical apocalyptic connotation that they supposedly hold for our culture.

Knowledge of history must be maintained, lest it repeat itself. There is a balance to be struck, however, in maintaining that history in such a way that we do not repeat it in our zeal to overcome the problem.

Majoring on the Minors

My college years were tumultuous ones, at best. I began as a music major, was a music education major by my second semester, dropped out entirely, transferred schools, declared a communication major, then theatre, threw in psychology….makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Part of the issue was that I felt as though I had to fit myself into a specific category…that I felt pressured into thinking that I had to be singularly focused. Eventually I succumbed to the promptings of my family in focusing on something that could potentially earn a good income for me in the future, shying away from some of the things that I truly loved (“What are you going to do with a theatre major?”) in favor of an education that would be focused more toward a specific career. Certainly they meant well, and thankfully I have landed in a career in which I can make a difference and in which I can earn income. However, I often wonder what life would have been like had I remained on the path that I initially chose.

Today, my morning began with a post from my friend Catherine entitled “The Humanities Are Dead,” in which she discussed the trend toward adjuncts teaching at universities in higher proportions than tenured professors, and the negative ramifications this has on education. This began the turning of my mental wheels and led to an interesting conversation over on my Facebook page about the link, as three of us hypothesized what the core issue could be. I’ve come to a conclusion that is a bit of an explanation for the tumult I experienced in college (well, the academic tumult, at least), and perhaps even for a few other things as well.

In an industrialized culture such as our own, things tend to be forced into categories with labels by which they can be neatly defined and cross-referenced. Professional fields are victim to this just as is everything else. Thus, universities focus their education in these areas specifically in order to prepare someone to obtain employment in a specific field. In turn, areas of professional practice are able to set standards that force its members to obtain specific educational credentials in order to even the playing field, and (let’ s be honest) just because they can. As a result, education becomes utilitarian, focused only on a goal of earning income, and the concept of “liberal arts” becomes a loosely-utilized tag line to attract students to a school.

Combine this trend with the fact that science is deified and the humanities are treated as cultural events that are good only to have around for weekend entertainment, and we have an industrialized culture that has become enslaved to its industrialization. We major on the minors, obsessing with the physics of how a sunrise casts its light over the landscape before us, while ignoring the poetic contemplation of what it means that it does so.

Just as our culture has become marked by utility without meaning and money at the expense of substance, so has our education followed. As a result, institutions of academia are beginning to lean toward being degree factories that utilize a business model, looking to earn a profit while keeping costs low. Education, however, was never meant to be a business, and the students are losing, often without even knowing that they are losing, because they are blindly rushing into careers with prized pieces of inflexible paper in order to obtain something as fleeting as money. In doing so, they open themselves to life crises when they change careers (as most statistically will at least once), perhaps returning to school in order to begin the process over again.

Then again, that’s good for academia’s business model, isn’t it? Perhaps a coincidence, but…

To this we are leaving our future. I think we should be very concerned, don’t you?