Drafted But Not Published Letter to the Editor

As I listlessly leafed through recent articles on courses on religion and editorials regarding ‘ISIL’ in the Bee, I thought...

How tempting it is to explain 'extremism' with religious fundamentalism, even if doing so opens up a space for a not-so-hidden racism to rear its ugly head again, ignoring our co-participation in a tennis-ball-like-volley of the means of force which has exponentially increased the use of violence overall.

And while it’s easy to blame the opposing party (and I agree that some really don’t want to share the world with us), I still wonder: will annihilating them really create the environment of cooperation and liberty for which we, as a community, strive and stand?

Moreover, I think: are not the “zings” and “bangs” and flashes-in-the-night that make the news like Rambo-in-the-theater real scenes of death? Of real pain, of real destruction, of real, irrevocable annihilation for countless anonymous millions?

While I worry about our future, too, I still ask: who is the enemy anyways? and what do we win in this escalation of death and debt? Victory may seem to cover irreparable loss - even if another bears the cost - but is war really just a game to be played like any other?

On Writing, Critique and Audience

I don’t want my writing to merely become a stale indictment of my frustrated being in this place and unequivocal evidence of the fact that I feel poorly adjusted: I want to explore and think and test out and adventure and develop as a thinker, critic and writer. To this end, I feel I should hold letters to the editor to once a month in order to prevent my critiques from becoming too expected, unnovel and irritating to the general public.

Moreover, I’m looking for someone to vet my writings before I post them, because I do have a tendency for being far more critical than what is generally considered as such (and sometimes even unfairly, bitterly and meanly in ways I do not originally intended); or, possibly, I should always give an additional read (at least one) for meanness or for crotchety-ness: this will help me work through some ideas without going to far to alienate my audience. For maintaining a strong rapport with one’s audience is as key to being considered a credible speaker - of maintaining a status of being someone to whom others continue to listen – as saying the thing that might cause the rift.

The difficulty is knowing how to strike that balance, wherever or however one chooses to, not to mention being willing to - at the cost of fully indulging oneself in critique of the world – still say something that means something without being written off as a mere contrarian or an irreconcilable opponent. Working to maintain ties of community while still honestly publicizing one’s critiques is the name of the game, but doing it in practice is what presents obstacles.

Thinking about the possible effects of one’s utterances is also bound up with this practice of stating in public something of or about the world that may seek to highlight certain problematic, criminal or inhumane aspects in need of redress.

Friends can help us figure what might well become alienating, even if being alienated is sometimes the cost of distancing oneself from the problematic nature of the status quo. What one needs, above all, however, is an anchor: something to remind oneself that one can get through, that at least one other in the world “understands.” Without this person, however, the project can ultimately and finally be futile, doomed and fated to annihilation at the ends of lacking the very community it seeks to produce and engender.

The skill I need to work on, I think, amongst so many others, is identifying when I should say what I want to say and how so as to remain

Origins of An Organizer

It interests me as well how the social position of Community Organizer received far greater attention with the rise of the Obama spectacle. He effectively called attention to its importance, not permitting that people in high school, junior high school and elsewhere might note his ‘accomplishments’ and use them as a model for themselves, their own activity. I remember back to junior college myself, feeling as if there wasn’t quite yet a social position, a category for what I wanted to do, but increasingly, I see there is. Still, many have been left out in the singular scrutiny and credit Obama has received. So many Organizers who will remain unknown and unconsidered. 

It is a trend of the spectacle to fixate on a handful of individuals (possibly) in order to displace an explanation which suggests far greater participation in such activity or merely for the purposes of commercial and political concision, relegating those who do not cleanly fit the bill to official and written and archived historical oblivion.

On a more personal note, I feel the yearning for academic life has not yet deserted me, even if I have relatively little time to dedicate to it (while I do, certainly dedicate every non-committed waking hour to these questions and matters nonetheless). 

Other questions that continue to interest me - what do we mean when we say 'organizer; what and who are they organizing exactly and what qualifies them to determine the standard for organizing? That is, to what end? These questions remain marginalized as pundits and advertisers look for expedient ways to simply frame and circulate a superficial understanding of what it may be - assuming a lay appreciation of the term - in order partially to avoid a more complex discussion of what is assumed but not explained or explored.

Hopefully I'll return to them in up and coming posts.

Moreover, it's not just with his rise in notoriety that we begin to care further about the position of those who work to solidify, furnish and fabricate necessary community relationships within, inside of and between different local, regional and global communities, but with a more broadly felt sense that, perhaps the way that we've created this world - as result of the structures of political economy that predominate and are routinely reproduced - has directly resulted in the absolute demolition of community, or at least the production of a false or hollow sense of it that systematically fails to provide that which we hope to produce.

That we have people paid to fix, arrange and produce Community says so much about the tragic state of the world, and, forebodingly, a lot less about what we might actually be able to do to go about changing it.

Politics and What It Is Not: Letter to "Democracy In Decline," 08/10/2014. Submitted 08/25/2015.

Weighing in on the statewide report on Civics, the Bee’s “Democracy In Decline” squanders a momentous opportunity to criticize the report’s limited reflections on Politics while failing to appreciate persistent institutional disdain for popular participation.

Crucially, the article and the report neglect that Politics is just as much about how we manage, share, and mediate the space between us in (ideally) mutually-beneficial ways as it is about policy or law or institution, something Jefferson knew well.

And while the report and the article boringly continue to unreflectively worship ‘our’ “forefathers” for being “extremely adept” at turning their radical privilege into productive “Civic” conversation, it hardly notes Jefferson’s ultimate inability to Constitutionally-furnish (and protect) forums known as Wards (spaces of communal, popular participation).

Finally, the article – like many – painfully scapegoats “complainers” as a primary enemy of a verdant democracy, disregarding that they are a byproduct of a polity that systemically fails to provide its own citizens with ample, gainful and accessible participatory opportunities, remarkably suggesting we could achieve Ultimate Citizenry status by voting regularly-enough on other's initiatives or by more religiously showing up in court, all welcome prescriptions but which still, nevertheless fail to effectively involve Me and You.

Gravity: A Familiar Yet Foreign Force

As a kid, gravity made sense. It was what kept me from falling up when I looked at the sky, upside-down, from the school play bars. Yet what perplexed me was what I read about it in textbooks. I wondered: why did I find this concept so un-attractive? It seemed like there was a ‘gravity’ that we felt and then a ‘Gravity’ that we studied. And so my curiosity was seeded.

Mathematically, ‘Gravity’ is the force between two objects, measured by ‘G,’ the universal gravitational constant, multiplied by the mass of the two objects, and divided by the square of the separating distance.

But where do I fit? Am I lodged in between ‘G’ (gravitational force) and ‘R’ (distance)? Or perhaps, am I some product of the two? Perhaps I’m object 1 or 2, then. But how can I tell? And which one? At this problem, I felt the dizzying need to consult a physicist to prescribe a formula for my existential-physical crisis.

These ideas plagued me. Intuitively, they felt limited, but any freshmen ‘physician’ would tell me that I’m crazy to distrust the Gravity formula: I mean, something keeps me on the ground, right?

However, it all made sense when I read Merleau-Ponty’s, Eye and Mind. Sure, he admits, science is “admirably active, ingenious, and bold” but, it also “manipulates things and gives up living in them”. Was he implying that scientific language, while useful, might actually obscure what I immediately see and feel? Might not be my personal language for understanding my everydayness, my world?

I realized that I am more than what a scientist tells me; I have and am a physical body, but I also experience this body, and my experience and what it tells me are my own.

Still, the answer left me wanting.  What about the growing distance - and diminishing gravity - between scientific descriptions and my felt experience? Maybe it wasn’t that one framework was right and the other was wrong; perhaps something else was happening here. Another thinker, Hannah Arendt, helped me work through some of these complex feelings. In her view, science’s complex language prevails for its utility and universality, for being useful and applicable to many spaces in the world (This same language that vaulted us into outer space and endowed us with the super human power to annihilate ourselves irrevocably). Scientists created these symbols (like G (gravity) and R(distance)) to ease the process of speaking with one another about complex concepts, and while it originated in ordinary language, it have since departed from it, along with the resemblance it once had to individual experience. This explains what I was feeling as a child.

So, how do we reconcile the gravity-defying, skyscraper-building capacity of science with the hollow feel of its calculations? How can we meet science’s cumbersome language with our everyday? My answer: we can’t. They’re speaking different languages in different frequencies, like Chinese and English, and it’s not that one is right and the other is wrong: they just both have their purposes, each of which is necessary to fashion our shared, human world. Moreover, we couldn’t bear to lose either, so we have to compromise in mindfulness of when to use the one language and when to use the other. Like being in San Francisco or Beijing.

In this way, I’d like to think (perhaps self-satisfyingly) that my childhood intuitions weren’t wrong after all: ‘gravity’ is not ‘Gravity’.  But, lemme tell ya, none of this made that fall from the school ground playbars any softer when I hit the ground.

Thanks gravity. And science.

References

1. Tipler, Paul A. 1995. Physics For Scientists and Engineers. Worth Publishers. 3rd ed.

2. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, “Eye and Mind.” The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie, trans. Carleton Dallery, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Pg.1,2 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, “Eye and Mind.” The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie, trans. Carleton Dallery, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Pg.1,2

3. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pg. 4

On Our Engagements

I concern over how quickly many of us purport to digest and/or comprehend something, when often that very judgment prevents us from taking the third or fourth read that might yield other insights, the sort that might incite a much more radical revaluation of our previous thoughts. It is in and through the first or second engagements that we apply and reproduce (or insinuate) cliched and established paradigms and judgments; but it is in and with third, fourth, even ninth that we begin to how a text is constructed, what makes it unique, where it comes from and how riddled with contradictions it is. Now, we cannot all be experts in everything we read (and hence give such time), but it is worth noting what we lose when we read an SAT passage and pretend that five minutes will tell us 'enough,' which may be sufficient for the questions but is not at all what we need to think ourselves back to health.

Benjamin considered the superficiality of our engagements in his essay on technological reproduction. Popular art often exhibits the trait of closeness, of being readily accessible to us by fitting within established artistic and literary conventions: pictorially and otherwise; while it often also exhibits the trait of being supportive or elaborative of predominate ideologies, although, admittedly doing so with new flares or flourishes (that intrigue and entrance new readers but do not seek to fall from the tree). Novelty is avoided, while 'newness' is praised. And the novelty that is quickly fades.

I think this thought as I read through Adam Fell's Dear Corporation, his latest poetry compilation. The book, which I won't describe here at length in anticipation of a later review or consideration, is embraced by a dark cover that ends with an inscription by him, observing sublimely: "some choices are not really choices at all." What appears to be is not always is, and when we come closer to something, we begin to see its details, its fissures, its blemishes and wrinkles. And when we think more narrowly on our own paths, we begin see the outlines of anticipation and predictability, where one moment follows from the next, although always with the possibility of new and different iteration present within the germs of preceding ones. Nevertheless, however, the germs of the novel and of beginnings must from somewhere. And that somewhere is someone: it is us and where have been and will be.

A Long Day In The (Sub)Mines

No blogging today, but I'm thinking about getting a Subtips (and gripes) website going. We'll see where it goes (and I'll keep you updated of and about its progress).

On this sub site, I would discuss best practices, helpful quieting techniques, ideal conditions, what to bring to prepare, how to avoid overpreparing, how to avoid coming off as too self-aggrandizing and how to focus less on yourself and more on the overall maintenance of the class (which should be the vanishing point around which all actions take place for all teachers but might be even more difficult for subs). I'm still relatively inexperienced myself, but perhaps I could speak with others to see what they think, too, and then maybe I can put something together.

Toodles.

Ali on War, War on Ali

In an indignant and defiant defense of his draft orders refusal, Muhammad Ali comments "I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Congs," and his refusal - and justification for the refusal - continues to chill me, even today, when we feel that it is now all the more risky to put forth one's political views or to name ourselves as public owners of such views for fear of their consequences.

Ali's act shows us what it means to stand on principle, while his selfless, risky act shows us that it is not only the politicians who need and should be political.

In so few words, Ali says much about the content of his disapproval for a body politic that instrumentally utilizes and deploys its citizens in pursuit of removed, questionably justifiable geopolitical projects and political machinations for which we may neither personal involvement nor care.

Being a boxer, a fighter, he is paid to face off against those with whom he often has little actual dispute. But in this case, he desires to take off his gloves and does so to show his unwillingness to perpetuate unjust, unfair processes that coerce individuals into obedient and 'justified' violent acts in order to preserve a polity (or any system or organization, really) that polices them at every turn.

For this reason, politicians, in fact, should hardly be the only to justifiably dispute the regrettable decisions that a state, and its legislators make. It takes little more than an understanding that there is no personal dispute here, on Ali's part (not to mention the moral prescriptions of his religious obligations), that the issue is fabricated or constructed in one way or another. There is also the more than likely explanation that their work is the product of parochial interests who exercise political will, a power dynamic that persists even today.3

He hints also at his own pacifist leanings, implying that any kind of force would need heavy justification, and in his case, nobody has provided sufficient reason for feeling as much, just legal obligations and coercive force. Just as importantly, Ali appears to lament our own ability to make these decisions for ourselves, as our country reserves the right to decide what a legitimate enough cause is for us to perish in its wake

"No," he succinctly elaborates "I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end."

He acknowledges the profound importance of making a stand where he can, wherever that might be, and, given his own image-capital - the fact that he is very well-known - he is able to wield a kind of persuasive, personal-brand-logo-infused power that another making the statement might lack.

Ali's is a reading of the state, and the ability of the individual, however defined, to oppose it (but to do so nonviolently) when their respective priorities are incompatible and when the state charges its citizens with violent, deplorable, condemnable acts and utilizes its own powers of coercion to advance these interests, often even at the cost and to the disadvantage of its own people.

Ali is a model for us all, to do what we can with what we have at the right time in order to stand on what ideals we hold dear, for we are as much our principles as we are anything else. Forsaking those for some other ends, then, is a way of forsaking ourselves.

Granted, we must accomplish this strategically, and this is our particular challenge, something that few others have felt like us before. Knowing when and for what to expend our personal capital in the service of our ideals is essential, as expending our capital means thrusting ourselves into the public sphere where we may be scrutinized, but also means subjecting ourselves to possible examination and policing by enforcement bodies that hold sway over our futures in some way or another.

In this way, Ali shows us that we both have an obligation to our community to disclose ourselves and our beliefs, not to mention a dear fidelity to them. This is not to say that we should do so fundamentally, but by bringing them to the public realm, we effectively do the opposite: we are subjecting them to scrutiny and welcoming the discourse that might come with conversing with others on the matters.

I am the Greatest that ever was?

I really tire of this "greatest novelist" or greatest anything talk: it is neither accurate - in that no such standard could ever really be created, because creating a standard for greatness would have to be created by someone greater (most likely) - and because it has all the worst effects:

it appears to make us feel that we need all aspire to such things, exactly the realization of the failed dream of productive, constructive competition that capitalism's logic continues to furnish.

Moreover, it fails to acknowledge that any kind of greatness is the outcome of no eternal, objective judgment but largely suffused with irrefutable political alliances. That is, what becomes known and great is that which is acceptable within prevailing standards and political persuasions of the day: the result of that which is considered worth recognition based on the existent distribution of the sensible (what is shown and what is kept invisible).

It is again the logic of capitalism rearing its deceitfully distant head, convincing us of the need to become something we may not be, possibly losing ourselves and our aspirations in the process of being teased by the temptations of 'Greatness.'

On Poverty

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/22/264850945/almost-no-poor-nations-by-2035-thats-what-bill-gates-says

Can we merely assume that time and economic projection will obliterate poverty altogether?

Should we instead talk about poverty as persistent and recurrent social equality produced by particular relations of capital?

Why are some nations labelled 'poor,' and what are the effects of this rhetorical assignation?

How is Gate's advancing a particular view of the global economy in this seemingly inert declamation of poverty?

Knowing Luigi: Art Critique Submission

Knowing Luigi

Fausto Podavini, in his 2013 photo series entitled “Mirella,” explores the personal and social dimensions involved less with the 'combat of' and more with the 'living about' Alzheimer’s. In this way, Podavini examines the everydayness of this particular form of dementia, and bestows it an unmistakably familiar and palpable visage, couched in scenes of birthdays and lazy in-the-bed afternoons to which we can all relate. But as he invites us in - as they did - he also strikes us with questions about what it means for society to cope with dementia, and what it means for those with dementia to cope in society.

To teach the rest of us what it is like, Mirella - the namesake - and Luigi, Podavini’s muses, welcome us kindly and warmly into their most intimate moments, where Podavini captures some of their most private interactions and displays them publicly.

The representative photo depicted here is the second of twenty-five. At first glance, we see a familiar scene, a restroom, but then we quickly realize we are voyeurs of a steamy, post-shower embrace. Notably, the moment is set in the restroom, one of the most private places, a place of reflection, nakedness and rejuvenation. That Luigi and Mirella share the space together speaks to their deep bond and to Luigi’s increasing precarity. Blank space dominates the photo as well. Ordinary objects speak to the routines of daily ablutions, and to the humdrum of Alzheimer care.

It is tempting to observe that a woman and a man are the subjects of the scene. But if we continue scanning, we realize that it is actually just their entwined and mirrored likenesses that draw our attention, their mutual, reflected appearances which captivate us. On the left, the larger of the two images beckons our probing gaze first: we see the two figures enmeshed, in a way, but in a particular kind of way. The woman is clearly assisting the man. He is, as we soon realize, very much dependent on him, framing her gestures as all the more endearing.

Fixing this moment are ostensible furnishings of vanity - the mirrors - but here they instead stand witness to something paradoxically inspiring: a profound and selfless act of care. Mirella, the woman doesn’t even feign a glance into the mirror to admire herself (as we see in the second and smaller of the mirrors); instead, she focuses on Luigi, aiding him in his attempts to wash. But the mirrors serve another purpose as well, beyond her revealing kindness: they provoke us to question “who are we and what do we become when we have Alzheimer’s or other conditions of dementia?” And: “Do we become mere reflections of ourselves, and how do our relationships to those around us change when in the wake of the developing, enveloping [so-called] ‘disorder’?”

It’s hard to say whether Podavini answered these questions, but he nevertheless labored enough to try. To capture the ordinary, chilling, sad, and happy moments of Luigi and Mirella’s final six years together, Podavini lived closely with the couple for nearly four, following a series of stints with a number of other NGOs and different organizations to extend a shrinking tradition of Social Reportage photography.

But this series is more than artistic and personal accomplishment: it calls attention to the increasing cost and challenge society faces in caretaking for loved ones with Alzheimer’s, and provokes critical questions about its persistence. Moreover, Podavini’s work is additionally groundbreaking for how he de-medicalizes the life of the Alzheimer’s patient and the language used to describe it: he inspires us to see ourselves there with Luigi and Mirella, to think of ourselves as part of a human community with which we must brave these troubled waters, as much as with love and kindness as with any medicine or policy recommendation.

Hopefully, as Podavini may have intended, his series has the partial effect of generalizing these queries and habits to the point that we all become more involved in a national - even international - conversation on the matter, in addition to becoming more interested in the lives of those around us and how we might work together to engender human kindness on a global scale.


My original blog post submission to the Art Writing Comp by Find Your Art School, a great resource for finding top advertising photography schools near you!

If it wasn't lost then, it's a Lost Ark now

Previously, I hadn't thought much on this concluding scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first in the Indiana Jone trilogy, but upon a second watch, this depiction of the final resting place of a mysterious, powerful and nearly-mythical object that comes under government purview is little more than a commentary on what and how bureaucracies in particular and bureaucracy theoretically render hidden and nameless, obscured by nondescript packaging and placed alongside so many similar objects, processes, documents, people and applications that receive similar inattention.

Official denial of these operations is what further obfuscates them, although, in this case, we are, it should be well noted, referring to an ostensibly unreal object, corroborated only by various biblical verses.

But there is nevertheless much to be read from this scene about bureaucracy, or how it is popularly declaimed and characterized. Seen as little more than a cavernous space of indiscriminate action, classification and storage, it may well be inferred that few items leave the literal space, the figurative implication being that bureaucracy consumes in its complicated, obfuscatory procedures, taxonomies, euphemisms, and institutional practices.

Hannah Arendt would delight to watch such a scene (and just may have, if not for all of the man-handling that Indiana Jones and his accomplices and antagonists are so often for their repugnant liberalities).

What is even more funny to think about is that the Ark is probably more lost now, under blankets of institutional obscurity than it ever was in a purported remote desert location, secured and protected by lost knowledge and separated objects. Removing it from such a resting place may be all but near impossible.

It's Not About Who "Cared Enough to Ask;" It's About The Fact You Did

I'm so tired of hearing this cliched, unthought observation percolating around legitimate publishing institutions:

"Even the most ardent academic must concede that there’s something darkly funny about devoting years of one’s life to a thesis question so abstruse that no one else had ever cared enough to ask it—and then answering it at such great length that few will ever care to read it."

'Abstruse' thesis topics (and their realization) should worry little about their popularity. Writing is about exploring and realizing ideas, personal experiences and intuitions, connecting and combing them, following them to wherever they may lead. Writing is a deeply personal process that has social dimensions and implications, and the introspection involved can often have profound effects once we've followed the trail long enough.

But if we all just read this line, like so many that resemble it, we might be persuaded otherwise, because our individual actions 'should' be guided by a sense of immediate social validation that, if lacking, should correct us to return to the realm of what is considered 'useful' and 'relevant' by others for whom we might feel little obligation or regard. This, too, is what the market teaches erroneously teaches us as well.

Instead, we should be faithful to ourselves and explore our individual difference, which we then bring to the shared dining place of our social world.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/31/lolmythesis_tumblr_college_students_summarize_their_thesis_in_one_sentence.html