Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

To Dream a Dystopian Dream

In the before times, and certainly when I was a grad student, I wrote in this space weekly, if not more often. Contrast that with the present, when I never cease to surprise myself with the gap of time between one post and the next whenever I return here. The intention is there…my traveler’s notebook is packed with things to write out…but the time seldom is, although that’s a work in progress. Part of the problem, though, is that when I think of writing…here or anywhere else…I struggle to be positive. I want to write about the cool things I’m reading and watching, the spiritual insights that being a parent gives me, the random thoughts that drift through my head. Certainly, all of those things are still there. They’re tempered, though, with this spectre of dread in our current age.

Don’t get me wrong, I have little about which to complain. I would never presume to say that we are not blessed as a family. I have never been in a position to wonder where my next meal is going to come from. I woke up this morning to a wonderful family, and will go to bed thinking about the job I return to tomorrow and considering retirement and vacation plans. I’m living the suburban dream, in all of its tragic grace.

Regardless, though, we seem to live in an age (whether by true degree, or just because I’ve started noticing more) in which the darkness comes knocking.

Early in our marriage, my wife lovingly pointed out how much time I spent reading the news. I’ve gotten better about this, and one of the ways that I have is that I do my best to avoid news on weekends. I take a sabbath. This morning in church, though, as I was chatting with a friend, he mentioned a major international event that could spiral into a war. I, of course, had to pull out the curse that is having the Internet in my pocket and check the details. I tried to avoid it, but it found me.

At some point in my adult life, my dreams of creative and academic pursuits dissolved in favor of doing my best to provide our children with the loving stability that I had as I grew up. That was more a decision of instinct than anything else, and at times I question it, especially as I’ve come to realize that we live in a system that is designed to be able to yank the table-cloth of stability from beneath you at any moment and for no reason…a system almost sentient in its malevolence at times, and growing more so as we dare to create the AI that science-fiction authors have spent decades warning us about. Also, a quest for stability brings with it, by necessity, a certain degree of striving for financial success. And yet, I am reminded that we are to cease striving, to know that He is God.

Tying these threads together, I have difficulty writing anything positive because I’m scared. Despite our blessed state and relative freedom from worry, I am scared of the world that we leave our children, that they have to grow up in this mess. The excitement and optimism that I experienced at their age is potentially not even possible now as a faceless, opaque algorithm makes critical decisions for us without accountability, when money and science are worshipped as the gods of our age, when corruption is obscured by an inability to think critically, and when objectification of human beings is normalized. At least, when I grew up, we had a sense that we would learn and gain wisdom from our experiences, and be able to pass that down to our children in predictable environs. For the last decade, though, I’ve watched that vanish, progressively crumbling as we do things simply because we can, without ever questioning whether or not we should. Work and good intentions stand for nothing. We’re just waiting for floor to fall out.

So, I suppose I don’t write as much because my head is always full of…that.

Perhaps I’ve gotten it out, now.

Perhaps there’s something positive to hope for.

Perhaps…

Hello? Is This Mic On?

Where have all the blogs gone?

I was thinking this this morning as I was perusing my RSS reader. Being a sucker for fond remembrances of days gone by, I’ve gone through many iterations of RSS readers through the years. Each time, I port over all of the feeds that were in my previous reader. As a result, I have…well, a lot…of feeds in NetNewsWire at the moment, only a fraction of which are ever currently updated. As I scroll down the sidebar list of blogs that I have subscribed to through the decades, I remember so many fondly. I’ve met some really cool people and made friends through blogs, back when blogs were at their prime. Most of these, however, have been dormant for some time. The feeds that update on a weekly basis belong to certain prolific and popular bloggers, or larger publications. Those like this one? People who were passionately contributing their thoughts to the public sphere? I suspect that only a few of us remain.

As a rule, I’m not a trendy person. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given that I use an RSS reader to collect my feeds, as I’m guessing there are some out there who are even questioning what that is. As social media was introduced and eventually evolved to do irreparable harm to our social fabric, most readers outsourced their reading preferences to the Algorithm and stopped (perceiving themselves as) having the time to look for good writing. If something isn’t being thrust in front of our faces, we forget that it exists. My friend, that’s not a byproduct of the technological evolution. It’s by design.

So, I suppose that writers such as myself are, if not a casualty of the Internet’s impossibly fast and unhealthy evolution, then certainly relegated to a niche. In the before times, I posted two or three times weekly, and now struggle to post monthly, so this is in part a self-fulfilling prophecy. I miss those days, though, don’t you? Back before the web was weaponized?

I think that part of the phenomenon, though (and I’m being intentional to not call it a “problem”) is less engagement. I actually have little insight into who reads this as I don’t invade your privacy with analytics, so there could be hundreds of readers on each post who simply don’t comment. That would actually make sense, because I think that commenting died before engagement did in the blogosphere (and yes, I’m aware at how much I just dated myself by using that term).

I suspect that things may change though, and that this will be reflective of a cultural change. I say that because I hear…feel?…rumblings of discontent at being a culture comprised of those who consume rather than those who engage.

The first time I heard the phrase “consume media,” I had a visceral reaction. This should not be the case and has become a sad state of affairs. To consume is passive, to sit back and allow one’s brain to be flooded with entertainment without that entertainment having any substantive impact on them…the equivalent of elevator music. And, while there is a conversation to be had about minimizing the vision of the artist by refusing to look longer than 10 (metaphorical) seconds at their work, the point I’m making here is that engaging media, and, by extension, art, is an entirely different experience than simply consuming. Engagement involves thinking, unpacking, permitting oneself to be impacted by the story.

When I was in theatre, the experience of seeing a play was twofold. There was the experience of going to the show, of course, which is magic in itself. Beyond that, however, was the experience of going for coffee with your friends after and discussing what you had just watched. What did you see in the show? What did it make you think? How did it make you feel? Layers of substance are revealed in these conversations that begin to get us closer to what the playwright was trying to convey.

To some degree, that happens today in discussion forums, but not in the same way. After all, it would be impossible to meaningfully watch or listen to the amount of media that various platforms prefer us to consume in an endless stream, which maximizes the profits of them and their advertisers. One would think that, with all of this volume, smaller and more independent voices would be able to have a better chance of getting their work to you, but you see, their work doesn’t rank in the Algorithm, and we long ago ceded those RSS feeds because we didn’t want to think for ourselves.

Were blogs a solution to this? Hardly. In the days when we aggregated our own reading, though…when we went looking for things that interested us…new work had a better chance of making its way to the top.

So, I think the winds are changing, because readers and viewers and listeners are willing to pay for what they like, and are pushing back on the so-called attention economy. As they do so, and culture hopefully begins to go back to a better way of doing things, I think that blogs will regain some popularity. I’m hopeful, not because its better for the bloggers, but because its better for everyone.

Please engage. Don’t consume.

Relatively Speaking

Rewind the clock with me about 19 years. I was just married. I had been writing here for a while, as well as other places, and I was a full-time grad student. I wrote a lot of critiques…that’s the nature of being a grad student, after all…and I enjoyed doing so. To this day, if I’m thinking through a concept or a problem, the process doesn’t feel finished until I’ve written it out. That’s something about being a student that never goes away, I guess.

I wrote…and still write…reviews of movies and books here and other places. I’ve noticed a shift in my tendencies, though. When I critiqued things back then, I was…well, critical. Sometimes overly so. In reading some of the things that I wrote from that time, I sometimes feel that the me from that time didn’t feel as though he was thinking about something if it wasn’t completely torn down, many faults exposed. That’s changed, I think. Don’t get me wrong, I can still be quite critical, but I’ve noticed that if I re-read or re-watch something now that I read or watched then, I tend to receive it with a more positive attitude overall. There was at least one case in which I finished a series that I had abandoned then because I thought so critically of its writing, and was happy I did so, because it turned out to be quite worthwhile.

I heard a stunning statement recently on the Theology in the Raw podcast. The guest on the episode in question, a Dr. Miller, stated that we as a society have reached the end of postmodernism. For someone who did their graduate work in religion, like me, that’s a breath-taking statement. The theological and philosophical implications are huge, and the way that those implications inform the rest of our lives possibly even more profound. Miller states that he had come to this conclusion because he (rightly) identified deconstructionism as a hallmark of postmodernism, and felt that he had observed a loss of interest culturally in deconstructionist thought in recent years. He particularly tied this to our political moment, but I want to think more broadly than that here, because this statement, if true, leaves me with so many questions.

I recently was in a conversation with some friends around the falsehood of the idea that “the ends justify the means.” As part of that discussion, we agreed with the rejection of the concept that the means are also completely inclusive of meaning…in other words, “it’s all about the journey” rings equally hollow. There was easy agreement there, and I think now about how much of a shift that is from early 19th century thought, such as the lingering echoes of Hegel’s dialectic and how the process was most important, because truth is not static. When I think of those foundational thinkers, I think of the birth of postmodernism in the sense that postmodernism’s primary characteristic in my studies, beyond deconstructive pessimism, is moral and theological relativism. The influence of postmodernism today is felt in the pervasive…and empty…idea that there is not an absolute truth. Think of statements that encompass this:

“You do you.”

“That’s what’s right for me, it may not be what’s right for you.”

“Find your own meaning.”

“Jesus is my way.”

And, the interjection that I find so repulsive, “…for me…”.

If postmodernism is fizzling…and the longer I think about the argument, the more I am open to the idea that it’s true…the societal shift, marked by a necessary exhaustion with these sorts of rudderless drifting, are huge. An openness to a defined reality…that there has to be a truth, that it is a knowable truth, and that it would give us a common starting point for discussion…would be a positive shift, perhaps just the shift that we need culturally. If Generations X and Z, and Millenials, have been defined by postmodern relativism and cynicism, what would this mean for an up and coming Generation Alpha? What would it mean for the scientific enterprise? For education? For politics?

I’m slightly concerned that Dr. Miller’s hypothesis presented on the podcast episode may be correct…that we’re a culture that is so exhausted with denying everything that we arbitrarily choose something to be true. There could be a rebound period here in which that happens, but, if postmodernism truly is passing away, I’m excited overall to see what replaces it. Like my old critiques, I think a bit less cynicism and a bit more definition would do all of us good.

Losing Letters

Maybe I’m missing something, but there seems to be a dearth of dads writing about being dads on the Internet, at least in thoughtful, long form ways. Perhaps this is because there is a dearth of anything long form on the Internet in its current sound-bite, social-media poisoned iteration, but I digress…

This is particularly noticeable to me because I think being a dad is hard. I know that I’m not alone, because every dad I know recognizes that being a dad is hard. Like any experience, there are things that only other dads would understand. There’s also a common ground that’s formed immediately, regardless of age or culture, in being a parent. Other dads just get it. We understand and sympathize.

I very much appreciate dads writing about being dads. In a society in which we’ve actively chosen to eschew the wisdom of our elders, I think that gaining whatever insight I can from others who have already been through whatever parenting challenge that I might be experiencing is of paramount importance. That’s why this post stood out to me in a very real, very poignant way, because it is insight into parenting from the son’s perspective instead of the parent’s. The son has recently lost his father, and speaks of the importance that the father’s letters have in his life now. The encouragement is for fathers to write more letters to their children. I encourage you to take a moment to read that post…it’s well worth your time.

We’ve taught both of our daughters to write letters. In some cases, this was seen as a curious novelty by their friends, and certainly the practice is often replaced by digital channels now in the case of our oldest. Still, letters and hand-written cards frequently enter and leave our mailbox, because we feel that this is an important social activity that should not become extinct. I also notice that both of our daughters, like us, keep journals of ideas and important thoughts. Like us, these aren’t digital journals, but hand-written pages. Like us, these journals are prized possessions, not because of the items themselves, but because of the ideas and memories contained within them. I’m actually quite proud of the way both of them hold onto this much more civilized and polite manner of communicating and keeping record of their musings.

And yet…

When I think of the written communication between my oldest and myself, it’s almost exclusively digital. I’ve thought often about this blog, and about how I hope that my kids will read it at some point when they’re older. I’ve even pondered if they will be able to gain insight into my thoughts and motivations after I’m gone by reading this space (I’ve been writing here long enough for it to be an actual record in many ways). That makes many assumptions, though, not the least of which is that someone will keep this around once I’ve passed for anyone to read it. Perhaps the Pulse will have happened by then and nothing of the digital realm will exist anyway. My point is that, I take the wisdom of the writer I linked to above. I need to write more letters, or at least notes, to my kids. Physical, hard copy letters. Things that they can keep with them and treasure if they so choose, because those are permanent, or at least more permanent than a URL. They also carry more meaning, because there’s something…spiritual…about taking the time to physically write out your thoughts for someone to read. The intentionality of that act is emotionally and mentally heavier than typing on a keyboard, if for no other reason than someone took the time. That, in a frenetic society starved of free time, is a valuable currency, and thus a valuable gift.

A year or so ago, I went hiking on the coast. This is a regular trip for me during the summer months, a day when I get away, be near the ocean, and center myself. As I sat down for lunch on that hike, overlooking the ocean on a beautiful summer day, and opened by backpack, I discovered a note written by our kids. It was simple…a heart drawn with the words “we love you”, and signed with both of their names.

Simple, but profoundly powerful, because they had taken the time to write this together, to slip it into my backpack when I wasn’t looking, to send their love with me for the day in such a real, tangible way. I saved that note. It is immensely valuable to me.

I need to learn from that. We need more notes and letters. We all do.

Go write them.

A Review of “Babel”

A photo of the cover of my copy of Babel by R.F. Kuang. — A photo of my copy of Babel.

Last year, I was looking for a fantasy read. I’m steeped in science fiction most of the time, but I’ve been toying with some fantasy world-building of late, and so I wanted to switch genres for a bit. I first saw Babel in a marketing email from Barnes & Noble and, while I almost always opt out of any and all marketing emails, I’m glad that one specifically escaped my opt-out attention because this novel was a fascinating read.

Part of what made it fascinating is the background of the author. Kuang is a scholar as well as a best-selling novelist, and her writing carries the weight of academic rigor that one might expect with that background. I’ll also admit that I was living vicariously somewhat, because I miss the days of being a student and writing, although none of my published work ever became best-selling.

That’s the sort of the nostalgia that the dark academia subgenre dives into, though…a wish for the simplicity and exercise of the mind that comes with the life of the university student. Books, libraries, close friends and late nights studying or writing papers…these were experiences that I, and many others, ached to reclaim once we graduated and entered this dreadful thing known as the “real world.” Mix in some magic and alternative history, and already one has a compelling world in which to base a novel. That’s only the beginning, though…Kuang gives us so much more in Babel.

Part of what is so engaging in this story is that the academic life that the reader may remember so fondly is critiqued so heavily here. Kuang gives no quarter in her critique of an ivory tower elite refusing to engage in the lives of the rest of the world at a meaningful level. If anything, the real world in which most academics find themselves upon graduation is the more meaningful reality for Kuang, as, in Babel, the academic elites shape that world for their own gain, and at the expense of those who live and work there. Read into this a critique of capitalism if you wish…one easily could…or simply sit with the encapsulating phrase from the book jacket’s summary that “knowledge obeys power,” and you begin to look back and question not only so much of your own education, but also ponder what is happening in the halls of academia today.

What is admirable is that Kuang doesn’t approach this from a condemning viewpoint, or at least not at first (it is fair to say she becomes a bit heavy-handed later). After all, we’re experiencing a higher education through the eyes of students, albeit students who arrived at Oxford through less than conventional means. Our protagonist, Robin Swift, is raised by a mysterious professor after being seemingly rescued from certain death in his homeland of China. As we progress through the first half of the novel, we discover that this rescue does not make him unique, nor did it occur with benevolent intent.

This part of the book moves slowly, perhaps too slowly at times. I’ll confess that I began reading the book in earnest over summer vacation, and ended it just in time for the new year to begin, after putting it down several times in between. This may be seen as a weakness, but its also a symptom of its strength. Kuang delivers not only an engaging fantasy story here, but also an academic treatise on translation as a discipline. This is complete with footnotes throughout the novel, which I’ll admit were a bit jarring to me in a work of fiction, but succeeded as a structural device in returning me to my grad school days of citing sources. The exploration of language here is beyond fascinating, both at a micro-level (I journaled multiple insights as to etymology as I read), but also at a broader, philosophical level. People and cultures are to be experienced through their languages here, and the impossibility of knowing someone deeply without engaging their language is made evident in a way that I had not previously considered.

A through-line of the novel, for good or bad, is violence. Every translation is seen as a betrayal, an act of violence against the original language (and yes, that is a concept that I had to sit with for a while). As the pace picks up dramatically in the last third of the book with Kuang unpacking a thesis of colonialism, our characters ultimately arrive at the conclusion that change to a corrupt power structure can only occur by means of violence. This is not accomplished in a one-dimensional sense. The characters involved in the final struggle wrestle deeply with this idea, and we walk through their thought processes with them in ways that make a reader question themselves, regardless of which side of the debate one might hold. Not every character arrives at the same conclusion, and this is part of what makes Babel a remarkable piece of fiction. Where I fault the novel is in its ending, for it is the final conclusion, and indeed the final act, in which violence is deemed as necessary, and enacted. Initially my reaction is one of deeply held pacifism…this doesn’t solve the problem! my mind screams in protest as the final chapters progress. I think, though, that this reaction is the point. As I’ve unpacked Babel over the subsequent days, I think that the goal is to present a tragic story of people desperate for change who are unable to see any other way. As their gifts of language are discovered to be turned against them, I’m reminded of a quote about the connection between language and conflict:

“War is what happens when language fails.”
– Margaret Atwood

Ultimately, we are meant to grieve at the end of Babel, not celebrate. There is no cause for celebration…a victory for our characters is no victory overall, but rather a loss for everyone. For all of their gifts and knowledge, their languages have failed them, because they were forced to weaponize what was meant to only ever be good.

Dark academia, indeed.

Babel is a heavy read, coming in at around 500 pages. While the pacing is a bit slow in the beginning, this makes way for meticulous world-building that creates a brilliant backdrop for the story. Rarely do I say that a novel is unlike anything I’ve read in the past, but I can truly say this about Babel. While the ending leaves me torn and unsettled (which I believe is the point), I would find it difficult to not recommend this novel. Babel should find a place on your bookshelf.