Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Degrees of Separation

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I made my living in the behavioral sciences. My workday revolved around seeing people face-to-face. While it was quite exhausting for an introvert to spend most of a workweek conversing with others, I found that I knew the team with which I worked every day. We knew what was happening in each others’ lives, we celebrated career milestones with each other, we had each others’ phone numbers. In some cases, I worked in high-stress situations keeping very odd hours, and I knew what it was to see my colleagues more than I saw most of my other friends. We were, after all, the only ones who could really appreciate what the other was experiencing.

Now that I make my living in the digital realm, I mostly work for myself. I do work with clients from multiple states, most of whom I haven’t seen in person in over a year. In one case, I did a project for a client that I had never met in person. I’m currently doing work with a team that is spread out all over the world, from both coasts of the U.S. to Europe. As everyone in the world of digital content has the freedom to work from wherever they choose, I regularly have “meetings” with people that I have never met face-to-face. I speak with them every week, and know their personalities at some level, but I cannot say that I really know any of my colleagues on this current project.

That’s not to say that I never keep office hours in this line of work. I actually do on many projects, and, on the occasions that I have, I feel that I’ve gotten to be very well acquainted with my co-workers. On each of those occasions, I’ve kept in contact with those co-workers and carried at least some of those professional relationships forward.

This isn’t so much an issue of effectiveness. I’m an introvert, so I’m perfectly content to be alone with my work for long periods of time. I’ve found, though, that I feel more satisfied with the projects that I’ve completed alongside people with whom I’m connected, colleagues that I’ve seen in person and whose interests and personalities I’ve gotten to know.

It’s interesting how the human factor to doing our work is only effective up to a certain level of abstraction. Beyond that, while not, at least in my experience, a point of diminished returns, there’s certainly a point at which the work becomes more robotic, less…meaningful…in nature.

And we all want to do work with meaning, to not be subjected to drudgery.

Ultimately, we’re doing our work for people, for each other. I think that our work is done the best when keeping that in mind.

Photo Attribution: mark sebastian under Creative Commons

Batgirl’s Psychologist – The Atlantic

Flurries of Change

Screenshot of weather forecast on iPhone: 64 degrees in February

There was a time when I hated snow. Detested it. Loathed it.

Having grown up with more than my share of ugly winters, I jumped at the chance to move south for grad school. I still remember my first January in Virginia, driving around my new city with no jacket on and my sunroof open. I felt as though I had arrived in a paradise.

You see, somewhere around my sophomore year in college (the best that I can remember), I began to struggle progressively more with each winter. The grey skies brought with them a deepening depression with each year of my life. That’s why a southern move was such an enormous relief to me. Instead of attempting to cope for months on end each year, I was now faced with this struggle perhaps once each year, and then only for a day or two. This seemed like a good situation in which to be.

Fast forward several years…getting married, having our daughter, moving to the Boston area, and now having landed back in North Carolina. These moves and events have been a whirlwind of occasionally contradictory experiences. My first New England winter was brutal, but I learned to cope. I bought the gear, and I re-acclimated with the rituals of my childhood: shoveling, scraping, and leaving early (at least, in my new career, working from home is sort of the norm). You see, if you grow up living with winter hardships, it’s sort of like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to drive in these circumstances. You may be rusty for a few minutes, but when the white stuff starts falling, you just sort of know what to do. I found that these sorts of things aren’t things that many people know about in the South (like brushing off your car halfway through a storm in order to significantly lighten the workload when it’s over, or keeping a steady momentum at all costs when going up a slick incline).

That said, this has been a good winter to have spent in the South, as my friends back in the Boston area tell me about the six feet of snow that they have (with more coming each weekend, it seems). Last weekend, though, I had one of those moments in which your brain sort of…short circuits. In February…a month in which I’m used to wearing base layers and heavy wool…I was wearing a t-shirt and no jacket as I walked into our Sunday morning worship service. That day came in at just short of 70 degrees.

Now, as I write this, we’re in the grip of an ice storm, and life is forced to slow down a bit. This is the exception, though, not the rule at all. Life doesn’t slow down here. There is no season of rest, no season of early darkness in which to drink cider and talk with friends and family, no easy time to catch up on your reading by the dim light. All of those things that I never thought that I would miss, I now do. And, while snow is not among them, the quiet that results from it is.

Perhaps it’s an overly positive recollection of an area with which I was quite enamored. I miss New England so much it hurts some days, and I remember the times that we had there during the harsh winters…much harsher than the ones that I experienced as a child. It’s a season of life that’s important, one that I didn’t truly miss until I had experienced it. There’s much to be said for slowing down, for pausing, for appreciating the seasonal flow of the life around us.

Could it be that I miss the snow?

I should probably stop just short of admitting that…

A Review of “Black Widow: Deadly Origin”

Black Widow: Deadly Origin by Paul Cornell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Black Widow has long been one of my favorite characters in the Marvel Universe. Before the world at large was introduced to her in Iron Man 2, I was reading her adventures. I was thrilled to have her introduced into the cinematic canon because she’s a strong female character, a hero of tragic origin with a darkness that brings an enormous amount of depth to her stories. Natasha Romanoff has been involved in many adventures within Marvel comics through the decades, playing an important part in various continuities. I hadn’t read the Deadly Origin issues, though, and I was looking forward, as I always do, to reading anything Black Widow when I picked this collection up at my local bookstore.

How disappointing.

This story alternates between a plot called the “Icepick Protocol” to kill everyone that Romanoff loves and hinging around the man who was a father figure to her, Ivan…and flashbacks to her past, from her origins as part of the Red Room through her involvement in the Civil War story arc. This is the retconned history for the Black Widow, in which biotechnological enhancements prolong her life substantially, and thus she has lived through a great deal. We see her husband, the Red Guardian, and other interesting glimpses into the Widow’s past that has crafted her into the strong and fractured character that she is. The flashbacks seemed to be well-paced within the context of the rest of the story to me, but the dialogue seemed out of character in both present and past on many occasions. The sweep of the story is too broad for so confined a collection…we’re simply covering too much of Romanoff’s life because we have to see how it collides with present events. The present events are then reduced to a cacophony of violent confrontations that don’t leave room for the sort of character evolution that I would hope to see in an origin story.

Then, there’s the art.

Two different artists draw this collection: one the modern events, another the flashbacks. The flashback art by Leon is brilliant. The emotions of the characters carry far past the dialogue, and there are moments where I feel I know the Black Widow’s character better based only on her facial expression or posture in tableau from these flashback sequences. Comparing this to the majority of the collection…the current events…is striking enough to be painful. In modern day, Romanoff looks as though she’s seventeen rather than the woman she is, her apparent age completely incongruous with the skills she evidences in the fighting sequences. Which is sort of noticeable, as fighting sequences are really all we see in the present events.

Overall, I also find the events of the story a bit too steeped in the “off-camera” sex. Yes, the Widow is a product of the Red Room, but she has become so much more as a hero, and this just doesn’t do her justice. I think the motivation of the writer was to paint Romanoff as the woman she’s become, but this missed the mark entirely.

Deadly Origin’s writing is, unfortunately, a lot of failing to do the character of the Black Widow justice. Combined with profoundly disappointing artwork for more than half of the collection, and this is a book that will likely gather dust on my shelf without ever being re-read. If you love the Black Widow, you’ll want better.

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A Review of “Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul”

Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul by Mark D. White

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My curiosity has been easily piqued by books in this vein…that is, popular culture and philosophy examinations. I’m interested in them because the characters and worlds of the books that we read, and programs and films that we watch, provide so much insight into the philosophical and theological through-lines of our generation and culture. Batman has long been one of my favorite superheroes, because his existence on the edge between hero and antihero…the way in which he embraces the darkness in order to attempt to use it for good…is simultaneously disturbing and enthralling.

I anticipated Batman and Philosophy to be an interesting and fun read, but didn’t think that it would be quite as thought-provoking as it turned out to be. I’ll say up front that, if you’ve done any serious study of philosophy or theology, then you will likely, as I did, anticipate a more academic tone in the writing, but remember that this is geared to a more general audience. I think that’s a good thing, because it doesn’t become bogged down in the trappings of academic writing, but I don’t think that it will feel shallow to any reader. The writing styles, as with any collected volume, vary greatly, and are disappointing at times. While some of the contributors don’t shy away from the more formal tone of their discipline, others make attempts at interjecting humor that left me scratching my head more than laughing.

That said, there are extremely well-crafted analyses of the Dark Knight and his world lying behind that forced humor, and I found myself in deep thought more often than not as I worked my way through these pages. In fact, I’ll admit that, in all of the thought and exploration and appreciation that I have given the character of Batman through the years, some of the deeper questions raised by the writers of these chapters had never occurred to me. Moreover, once they’re presented for your consideration, you’re left with that wonderful feeling of having so much more left to think about on the topic.

My favorite chapter was “Alfred, the Dark Knight of Faith: Batman and Kierkegaard”, in which Alfred appears as the true hero through the lens of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (I’ve always had an existentialist tendency, I’ll confess). I also found the chapter, “Could Batman Have Been the Joker?” and it’s exploration of modal logic and possible worlds in relation to the genre of comic book literature at large to be absolutely fascinating. There are thought-provoking discussions of identity, as well…one of the central tenants of many superhero characters. And, of course, the discussion of whether or not Batman is better than Superman…well, that’s just fun.

Some chapters dwelt a bit too heavily in a humanist philosophy for my taste, and others left obvious holes in their arguments (debating whether or not Batman was ethically justified in permitting Robin to accompany him ducks the fact that Robin is a moral free agent).

What I found particularly engaging about this collection is that the authors are well-read in the literature. Not only do they display their expertise in their discipline, but each chapter is well-noted with specific Batman story-arcs, including examples and dialogue, to provide cases to which to apply their analyses. In many instances, I found myself digging back through my bookshelves to re-read these stories (and, in one case, purchased a graphic novel that had been glaringly absent from my shelf).

Batman and Philosophy is a surprisingly deep and provocative exploration of the Dark Night Detective and his world, as well as his place in the larger DC Universe and comic book history and thought in general. The book is a light read at under 250 pages, accessible while not boring, and I found myself engaged with each chapter. If you’re a Batman fan, and especially if you enjoy philosophical discourse at all, I would recommend you treat yourself to this collection.

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