20 August 2008
Lamenting the Bestsellers
Tom Shone, in Intelligent Life's Summer 2008 issue, laments bestsellers lists in the UK and the U.S. The NYT bestsellers list looks pretty erudite compared with the UK's top sellers, which consist mostly of books by celebrities and reality-show has-beens, until we realise that the NYT shunted off the self-help and advice books to a separate list more than 20 years ago. When those are merged back in, the U.S. non-fiction bestsellers list is littered with books such as Stop Whining Start Living, Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?, How Come That Idiot's Rich and I'm Not?, and books with "you" in the title, such as Become a Better You, You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty, Are You Ready! To Take Charge, Lose Weight, Get in Shape and Change Your Life Forever. Then there's the wildly popular The Secret, whose main message is to think positively. ("To those who object that they have been thinking positively ever since Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking in 1952, you haven't really been trying. Really concentrate: 'Look at the back of your hands, right now. Really look at the back of your hands: the colour of your skin, the freckles, the blood vessels, the rings, the fingernails. Take in all those details. Right before you close your eyes, see those hands, your fingers, wrapping around the steering wheel of your brand new car...'")
(This article was written a couple of months ago. Now topping the NYT bestsellers lists are two books decrying presidential candidate Barack Obama as an extreme leftist, at least three books decrying the Bush Administration as liars and killers, a book about actress Tori Spelling by Tori Spelling, a book about Madonna by her brother, a John Grisham book, another "you" book -- Just Who Will You Be? by celebrity Maria Shriver, and of course, The Secret.)
Noting the celebrity-heavy UK list, Shone suggests that narrative fiction can no longer hold a candle to reality and the squalid details of real life. He speaks of "the weakened power of fictional story lines to hold the public's attention," contrasting story and storybook characters with the punch-power of in-your-face life and death: "Say what you like about someone whose first instinct on seeing her dead grandmother is to whip out her camera-phone and take a picture of her in the casket, she certainly registers more vividly than the wan lawyers and downy movie stars who troop through the fiction of John Grisham and Danielle Steele." For those of us who get lost in some works of fiction, I'm not sure this is true.
11:40 Posted in booklists , books and reading , media, film, tv, radio , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
18 August 2008
Leroy Died (1955-2008)
As I've mentioned, I've read the NPR blog of journalist and Nightline producer Leroy Sievers' battle with cancer for a couple of years now. (I wouldn't call it a battle but he did.) I was away all week and when I returned home on Sunday afternoon, I found that Leroy had died rather suddenly on Friday night at his Maryland home, at age 53, just three days after he and his wife decided to contact hospice. It was a shock. I knew he was dying but I hadn't expected it this soon. His last post, the day before, was about a stuffed Bernese Mountain dog, sitting on the bed with him.
More at ABC News. And NPR. And NYT. There's a memorial fund set up.
(Photo of Leroy with his wife Laurie Singer.)
17:20 Posted in death , health and medicine , media, film, tv, radio | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
07 August 2008
Which is Greener: Renting DVDs Locally or From Afar?
We have long rented DVDs from a local independent source (semi-local: a 20-mile round trip) but a few weeks ago began renting through NetFlix as well, for videos the local store doesn't have and won't buy -- notably, Julia Child's "The French Chef" episodes, which our local DVD provider considers a "How-To" DVD and which I consider instructional humour. Julia Child is a trip. (How about a last-minute dinner party for 300 people?)
Anyway, in case you wonder whether it's more sustainable to rent locally or from a company like Netflix that mails DVDs direct, Slate's got the answers (although they compare NetFlix with Blockbuster, a chain). They look at transportation, packaging, and computer use.
Transportation: "Even just a two-mile drive to the video store will consume a few hundred times more energy than the Netflix delivery from a distribution center 200 miles away [ours is about 35 miles away]."
Computer Use: "30 minutes spent reordering your queue -- in a well-lit, climate-controlled room with the computer running -- will use far more energy than the actual Netflix delivery and about as much energy as it would take to drive your hybrid to a store a half-mile away." Does anyone spend 30 minutes on their queue?
Packaging: "It takes a significant amount of energy to make the lockable polypropylene case that you might get at a video store. ... And compared with a mail-order Tyvek sleeve, a video-store case takes up more space when it's shipped from the main distribution center."
10:10 Posted in consumption , earthcare and environment , food and drink , media, film, tv, radio , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
06 August 2008
Evolution and Conversion, cont'd (7)
(Previous posts on this topic: here, here, here, here, here and here.)
Chapter 7, Modernity, Postmodernity and Beyond
There's a lot of content in this chapter, and quite a lot that I couldn't assent to or felt wasn't consistent with what I know of mimetic theory (which, obviously, is a lot less than Girard knows!). It's very hard to articulate those differences -- my brain gets a little unhinged trying to follow the logic that some other part of me intuits, accurately or not -- and I may not be able to go into much detail there.
Finishing the book, I felt as I always do when reading Girard or listening to him in a video or audiotape: I have so many different questions from the ones he's addressing or is asked to respond to!
For instance, in chapter 6 he says that in myths there"always seems to be a good cause for hating the victim, but in reality it is a spurious, illusory cause." He never says in this book or anywhere else I've read/heard whether it's possible to be a victim and be guilty. Are no victims guilty or hate-able? Are we all innocent? To clear this up seems fundamental to me. I'm thinking in part of the mob violence incidents that go on all the time -- granted, the charges often seem trumped up and rationalised (or not even) by the perpetrators, but sometimes the victim actually has killed another person or done the crime of which they are accused -- It seems different to me to say that that person doesn't deserve to be attacked by a mob or killed for their crime than to say that they are innocent. Is there a way to be guilty of what one is accused and still innocent (in the eyes of God, perhaps)? Even the idea of accusation (at least the mimetic accusatory gesture) in mimetic theory is seen as Satanic. So this is very unclear to me. I easily understand that we are all perpetrators; what I don't understand is how we are all innocent victims. Or is Girard saying that innocence or guilt simply doesn't matter for the mechanism -- perhaps some are guilty of what they're accused of, but others are not (for one, Jesus) and they will be seen as guilty anyway, because they have to be seen as guilty for the mechanism to work?
That's just one clarification I'd like made. There are dozens more, several about issues he addresses in chapter 7. And then there are real-life scenarios I'd like him to explore, to help me see where the mimesis is, how the doubles are similar, whether the seeming self-sacrifice is Christlike or simply mimetic, i.e., done in a spirit of competition to seem better (more sacrificial) than the other. I have a lot of questions about the "good" uses of the mimetic mechanism to hold violence at bay. And so on. And on.
Anyway, here are my notes on chapter 7, the final chapter.
** Apocalypse (more about how we're to fare now that the mimetic mechanism has been revealed)
"For me, any understanding of the contemporary world is mediated by the reading of Matthew 24. The most important part is the sentence 'where the corpse lies, the vultures shall gather' ... because it seems to be a decomposition of the mimetic mechanism. The mechanism is visible, but it doesn't work. ... Any great Christian experience is apocalyptic because what one realizes is that after the decomposition of the sacrificial order there is nothing standing between ourselves and our possible destruction. How this will materialize, I don't really know."
The Anti-Christ is nothing but "the ideology that attempts to outchristianize Christianity, that imitates Christianity in a spirit of rivalry. ... You can foresee the shape of what the Anti-Christ is going to be in the future: a super-victimary machine that will keep on sacrificing in the name of the victim."
Wow.
One (or at least, I) can immediately envision the scenario of people who feel they are well-meaning who will do anything to ensure that the human race is not destroyed and who will see to it that victims are saved -- even if they have to yell and scream at the perpetrators and their allies, even if they have to use propaganda against the perpetrators, even if they have to expel, dehumanise, or destroy the perpetrators. The only thing they (we) won't do is recognise that they/we are the perpetrators, that they/we can't save humanity by destroying those who don't agree with us, those who are so clearly wrong and who are so clearly destroying everything we love. I can imagine that, and, it's been tried.
"Ideologies are not violent per se, rather it is man who is violent. Ideologies provide the grand narrative which covers up our victimary tendency. They are mythical happy endings to our histories of persecution. ... The Cross has destroyed one and for all the cathartic power of the scapegoat mechanism. Consequently, the Gospel does not provide a happy ending to our history. It simply shows us two options ... : either we imitate Christ, giving up all our mimetic violence, or we run the risk of self-destruction. The apocalyptic feeling is based on that risk."
Later, he speaks about this again:
"[T]he more there is an opening in the world where ritual is dead, the more dangerous this world becomes. It has both positive aspects, in the sense that there is less sacrifice, and negative aspects, in that there is an unleashing of mimetic rivalry. As I said, we live in a world where we take care of victims in a way no other society or historical time ever did, but we are also in a world that kills more people than ever, so we have the feeling that both the 'good' and the 'bad' are increasing all the time. If we have a theory of culture, it has to account for this extraordinary ambivalence of our society."
He suggests that the world is, paradoxically (as secularism increases, as the Bible has been abandoned by most) becoming ever more Christian, in a way: "Because the victimary principle of the defence of the victims has become holy*: it is the absolute. One will never see anyone attacking it. They do not even have to mention it. So we can say we are all believers in the innocence of the victims, which is at the core of Christianity. ... Of course, very often Christian principles are prevailing in a caricaturist form, whereby the defence of the victims entails new persecutions! One can persecute today only in the name of being against persecution. One can only persecute persecutors. You just have to prove that your opponent is a persecutor in order to justify your own desire to persecute." (Earlier, in chapter 6, Girard has briefly made a distinction between sacred (God of violence) and holy (God of non-violence), which I'm not sure obtains here. I don't read it to obtain.)
Our acceptance of the persecution of those who are seen to persecute 'victims' is what has become largely invisible to us; this is what has become so fundamental that we don't even notice it anymore ("they do not even have to mention it") -- it's assumed that victims are sacred and that to defend them is sacred; this is what is behind mob violence (or mob justice, as some have it) and its justification.
As Girard says a bit later, in talking about why we are still so violent in these many days since the Christian revelation: "Man has a tendency to relapse into the sacred, prompting violence to defend any idea of principle seen simply as sacred."
And, finally, "The compassion for the victim is the deeper meaning of Christianity. We will always be mimetic; but we do not have to engage automatically in mimetic rivalries."
** Individualism in the Modern (post-1500) World
"Regarding the emergence of the modern individual, I would say that it is important not to completely dismiss this as being exclusively an illusion of mimetic desire. This is a very important point. Undoubtedly, ... there is a real individual. This is the one who goes against the crowd for reasons that aren't rooted in the negative aspects of mimetic desire. ... The Christian individual contradicts the crowd; he or she doesn't join the multitude in the scapegoat resolution of the mimetic crisis, and moreover denounces the very scapegoat mechanism as a murder through the declaration of the innocence of the victim."
But there are also individuals who are not autonomous, whose judgments are not their own. "In other words, it is to do with fashion: no one is conventional today, everybody wants to be more original than the next person. The only way modernity can be defined is the universalization of internal mediation [i.e. desire that is influenced or created by peers], for one doesn't have areas of life that would keep people apart from each other, and that would mean that the construction of our beliefs and identity cannot but have strong mimetic components."
** Kathecon: Holding Back Violence with Violence
Girard suggests that at least in the U.S., social mobility helps to reduce violent mimesis. He also seems to feel that the U.S. and other western countries have found other means to reduce violence mimesis and maintain stability without resorting to hierarchies (which offer fewer opportunities for internal mediation and more for external mediation, which is not so conflictual because comparisons are made with people who we know will never be our equals).
Some of these other means are the legal system, judicial institutions, technology, and free market economic competition. Girard seems to see the 'free market' as a 'good' while he also admits that "this mimetic competition produces high doses of resentment, that might be socially 'stored' and could become harmful at some point." (Later, he notes that "if it is true that inequality is growing between the First and Third World countries, [violence] is bound to become explosive.") About technology, Girard again finds it to be useful to "diminish the impact of mimetic impulses" though "it also increases the power and possible harmful actions of aggression and violence." (Yeah.)
Antonello and Castro Rocha push Girard quite a bit about the sacrificial nature of the free market economic system: "Econometrics is the calculation of the tolerable number of sacrifices in a given market. Could we say that economy and market are founded on the principles of exclusion?" Girard says that's excessive; he believes (as does Eric Gans, he says) that globalization "produces wealth and helps in stabilizing society" and that it has no "central agency." He takes it even farther:
"For me, globalization is mainly the abolition not only of sacrifice, properly speaking, but also of the entire sacrificial order. It is the encompassing spread of Christian ethics and epistemology in relation to every sphere of human activity."
He would have to elaborate much more thoroughly here for me to see how this is true, either that globalization abolishes the sacrificial order, or that it's a system run by a Christian ethic. All he does say, after more pushing, is "I am not claiming that our world is not unstable, and above all, I am not saying at all that ours is an ideal world! I think it is a very fragile one, and still very unjust, but it has elements of stability that replace the external mediation once provided by the sacred order."
When the questioners insist that "the market appears as a system which produces a 'tolerable' amount of victims," Girard responds that "it also saves more victims than any previous historical movement ever did! One cannot balance these accounts, and balance them against what? We do not have a clear model to compare with. It is the first time in world history that a society cannot be compared with any other since ours is the first to encompass the whole planet."
He goes on to say that "I don't think we can fully equate the victims of a system as complex as the global market with the deliberate slaughtering of a human being by other human beings involved in sacrificial rituals. The market is not a technical apparatus devised to kill people" like the Nazi gas chambers were.
Maybe they're not equivalent, but if the economic system isn't set up intentionally to sacrifice -- or if through meconnaissance, the mechanism is covered in a cloud of unknowing -- are we saying that it can't possibly be involved in sacrificial ritual? I feel Girard is being thick here, very narrowly defining the idea of a sacrificial system (technical apparatus? devised?) and unwilling to consider how an economic system can be sacrificial.
Particularly as he then goes on to speak of economics as completely religious (i.e., sacrificial) in origin! (More on that in a moment)
Still speaking of economics, he says that "the kathecon [containing nature] of these systems still relies on false transcendence, and they are inevitably bound to produce injustice and violence, but we live in a world where the Satanic power of the mimetic mechanism is unleashed, so we have to take into account that this system is also protecting us, albeit temporarily, from the explosion of even greater violence. ... I am not an advocate of globalization or the so-called new international order. I am just trying to see the complexity of the contemporary situation without reducing it either to an irresponsible celebration or to a complete condemnation."
Then he talks about Roberto Calasso's idea that "economics was born within a sacred space." Girard says that
"In our society religion has been completely subsumed by economics, but precisely because economics springs from a religious matrix. It is nothing but the secularized form of religious ritual."
I ask again, then how can economics be devoid of sacrifice?
Originally, "trade was really an offering to the foreigner, in order to placate the foriegn god, who was seen as a possible threat. ... Even etymologically the word money is related to the goddess Juno Moneta and her temple, in whose proximity coins were minted."
In a paragraph about mass media, Girard has a bit to say about the TV show "Seinfeld," "which uses mimetic mechanisms constantly and depicts its characters as puppets of mimetic desire." It gets away with it for the same reason Shakespeare did: it gets close enough to painful social truths that people identify with the characters, without fully understanding the mechanism; "they recognize something that is very common and very true, but they cannot define it."
** Democracy -- Apathy instead of Conflict?
Elena Pulcini and Jean-Michel Oughourlian both think that "contemporary democray is dominated by conformism, which is produced by 'the passion for equality,' and which engenders apathy and indifference instead of conflict." Oughourlian feels that "contemporary individuals aren't strong enough to have mimetic desire. They aren't passionate about anything." Girard used to believe this could never be but now is more open to the idea:
"Consumption society, which was 'invented' partially to cope with mimetic aggressive behaviour, has eventually created these socially indifferent human beings unable to communicate with each other and mainly concerned with what is strictly accountable in their life, in the sense of self-interest. This is a radical form of nihilism ...."
** Gifts and Generosity
Pulcini speaks of the emergence of a homo reciprocus, where gift-giving will be the center of social activity. Girard is wary of this, both because the act of generosity she's talking about (dépense) has its origins in an orgiastic victimary mechanism and because "the notion of gift, as everybody knows, is extremely ambiguous, because of the reciprocity it implies; any form of mimetic reciprocity may trigger negative effects. The paroxysm of gift-giving is clear in the phenomenon of the potlatch as described by Marcel Mauss, which is nothing but a ritualized form of mimetic rivalry on a social scale: what is important is not the object that you offer, but the humiliation that you want to inflict on the rival tribe. ... I think we should move towards an ethics of generosity, but going beyond the notion of gift. ... A good relationship cannot be anything but reciprocal. This reciprocity should be spontaneous. If there is an obligation, it means that we are approaching bad reciprocity."
Interestingly, it is right here that Girard brings up Matthew 5:39. where Jesus instructs us that if someone strikes us on one cheek, we should turn the other cheek to him also. He says that Jesus isn't advocating masochism but is warning of the danger of bad reciprocity, of the escalation of violent mimesis. I've heard this instruction and the others with it explicated differently, as advocating shaming the other by offering even more than is demanded (the other cheek, the inner cloak, to walk more miles) in order by our sacrifice to somehow 'show' the other the error of his ways. That rendering seems to me to be similar to the 'gift' one gives the rival in order to humiliate him or her.
12:25 Posted in books and reading , community , consumption , finance and business , girardian anthropology , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
02 August 2008
Mob Violence, 'Fluid Morality' and Sociopathy
The NYT Magazine is running an article this weekend titled "Malwebolence," about internet 'trolls' who enjoy causing harm to others, either because it's just fun -- they speak of "the joy of disrupting another's emotional equilibrium" while "you chat with friends and laugh" -- or perhaps because they have the notion that they are helping others learn how to handle explosives by blowing them up in their faces. One troll says his passion is 'pushing peoples' buttons' and he "frames his acts of trolling as ... sociological inquiries into human behavior." He also says: "'It's not that I do this because I hate them. I do this because I'm trying to save them.'" It seems fairly obvious through the article that this particular troll is trying to save himself, as well, though it may be too late: "'Am I the bad guy? Am I the big horrible person who shattered someone's life with some information? No! This is life. Welcome to life. Everyone goes through it. I've been through horrible stuff, too.' 'Like what?' I asked. Sexual abuse, [he] said." At age 5 he was molested by his grandfather [his mother confirms this] and three other relatives.
The article's author, Mattathias Schwartz, asks his readers at one point:
"Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying 'uncle'? Is the effort to control what's said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?"
Free speech may be one issue to consider; it's not what immediately interests me reading this article. My interest is primarily in the proliferation (or so it's asserted) of mob violence online, what motivates and triggers it, and how it proceeds. As Schwartz says, attempting to respond to his own free speech query:
"Why inflict anguish on a helpless stranger? It's tempting to blame technology, which increases the range of our communications while dehumanizing the recipients. ... But while technology reduces the social barriers that keep us from bedeviling strangers, it does not explain the initial trolling impulse. This seems to spring from something ugly -- a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that's a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There's a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well."
Online mob violence, imo, is no different from in-your-face mob violence except perhaps, as Schwartz points out, it's considerably facilitated by anonymity and breadth of coverage. But the motivations, the triggers, and the process are the same in either case.
That 'trolling' is highly mimetic and is often mob violence is evidenced several times in the article:
- The Internet is "a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and to others." Yet another way to explore and express who we are, vs. everyone else, through blogging perhaps more than through message boards, at least as the boards are used by most people.
- "Trolling has evolved [perhaps the wrong term] from ironic solo skit to vicious group hunt." "Technology, apparently, does more than harness the wisdom of the crowd. It can intensify its hatred as well."
- The victims are seem as utterly deserving of their fate, complicit in it, inviting it -- "You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you" -- as is shown in this interchange between a troll and Schwartz:
"'You have green hair,' he told me. 'Did you know that?'
"'No,' I said.
"'Why not?'
"'I look in the mirror. I see my hair is black.'
"'That’s uh, interesting. I guess you understand that you have green hair about as well as you understand that you're a terrible reporter.'
"'What do you mean? What did I do?'
"'That's a very interesting reaction,' [he] said. 'Why didn't you get so defensive when I said you had green hair?' "
If I were certain that I wasn't a terrible reporter, he explained, I would have laughed the suggestion off just as easily. The willingness of trolling 'victims' to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it."
Another troll put it even more bluntly and graphically:
"'Trolling is basically Internet eugenics. ... I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. ... We need to put these people in the oven!'"
No one else is seen as innocent, therefore no one else is seen as a true victim and no one is seen as a perpetrator. Everyone else is seen as deserving of destruction at the hands of trolls, who, in some cases, see themselves as performing a meritorious service.
- That same troll implied that the mob (or a segment of it) is ripe for a leader and is waiting for a sign:
"'We're waiting,' [he] said. 'We need someone to show us the way. The messiah.'
"'How do you know it's not you?' I asked.
"'If it were me, I would know,' he said. 'I would receive a sign.'
"Zeno of Elea, Socrates and Jesus, [he] said, are his all-time favorite trolls. He also identifies with Coyote and Loki, the trickster gods, and especially with Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction."
Beyond the indications of mob violence and mimesis, there's also an indication of antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy) -- an individual personality disorder, quite apart from the group phenomenon of mob violence -- in some of their comments about what's right and wrong, though even these might be echoed (often not out loud) by 'normal' people. It's the rationale, the feelings (or lack thereof) and the destructive actions, unchecked by any sense of true compassion for others, that together paint a particularly disturbing and illuminating picture:
"I asked [one troll] whether a person is obliged to give food to a starving stranger. No, [he] argued; no one is entitled to our sympathy or empathy. We can choose to give or withhold them as we see fit. 'I can't push you into the fire,' he explained, 'but I can look at you while you're burning in the fire and not be required to help.' [Metaphorically, though, according to this article some trolls have pushed some people into the fire -- their actions, usually en masse, have contributed to the deaths, job losses and relationship losses of others. They haven't simply sat passively by. They've set the fire, fanned it and then watched others struggle and writhe. Examples in the article.]
Asked "Is there anything that can be done on the Internet that shouldn't be done?," he didn't have an answer.
Another troll justified his desire to "kill four [billion] of the world's six billion people in the most just way possible" with his fear that "we are headed for a Malthusian crisis." (He's the one who said he's waiting for a messiah.)
Schwartz ends the article by quoting some message board commenters trying to discern what makes people bad or good. "Finally," he says, someone types: "'I'd say empathy is probably a factor.'"
13:45 Posted in community , crime , girardian anthropology , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture , science and tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
23 July 2008
Not Many Dead - Volume II
A magazine I read monthly has a reader write-in column titled "Not Many Dead: Important Stories You May Have Missed." The column is made up of headlines or snippets of 'news' stories that are hardly news. As part of an ongoing series (first one here), I offer these recent non-news stories:
"A study by an independent nonprofit research group, The National Sleep Foundation, found that more than 65 percent of moms drink caffeinated beverages to get through their day." [CNN, 24 June 2008]
Headline: "If Gordon is our Heathcliff, who or what is his Cathy?" First paragraph: "[British PM] Gordon Brown apparently thinks voters are right to compare him to Heathcliff, the brooding figure at the centre of Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Political Editor Tomos Livingstone wonders whether this is one question he should have laughed off instead, while, below right, Catherine Jones explores the true nature of the character the Prime Minister is comparing himself to." [11 July, Wales Online]
"Rapper 50 Cent is free to take a vacation with his son after passing a court-ordered drug test." [18 Jul, NYT]
"Plans for a large human trial of a promising government-developed H.I.V. vaccine in the United States were canceled Thursday because a top federal official said scientists realized that they did not know enough about how H.I.V. vaccines and the immune system interact." [18 July, NYT]
07:05 Posted in media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
13 July 2008
Solutions: Politics (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). The book generally aligns with mimetic theory and Girardian ideas; I've added a G near comments that seem to do so particularly.
This is the ninth post on this topic; the first is here.
PART II: Solutions
CHAPTER 3 - POLITICS
"Every society holds certain groups of people in high esteem while condemning or ignoring others, whether on the basis of their skills, accent, temperament, gender, physical attributes, ancestry, religion or skin colour. Yet such arbitrary and subjective criteria for success and failure are far from permanent or universal." G It's the job of the status quo to make them seem absolutely universal and permanent.
Rather eccentric timeline: of who and what has been held in high status:
400 BC Sparta: Soldiers: Men, aggressive, vigorously bisexual, not family men, not business men.
Western Europe 476-1096: Saints: followers of Jesus Christ, shunning of material goods, suppression of sexual feelings, extreme modesty.
Western Europe 1096-1500 (after first Crusade): Knights: Wealthy, killed people and animals. Lovers, poets. Prized virgins. Loved money but not from trade, only from land.
England 1750-1890: Gentlemen: Dancing, dabblers, not merchants. Supposed to like families but OK to have mistresses. Cultivation of languid elegance. Hair. Women seen as taller children.
Brasil, 1600-1960 (Cubeo tribe): Men who spoke little, did not dance or play a part in raising children, and were good at killing jaguars. High status - hunters; low status - fishermen. Shameful to even be seen helping wife make a root-based meal.
London, Sydney, New York, LA, 2004: Anyone who can accumulate money, power and renown through their own accomplishments in some sector of the commercial world. Because culture is now seen to be meritocratic, financial achievements are understood to be deserved. The ability to accumulate wealth is proof of creativity, stamina, intelligence. Other virtues, like godliness and humility, don't matter much.
By what principles is status distributed?:
(1) by threatening and bullying
(2) by defending others (strength, patronage, control of resources, etc.). Where safety is in short supply, soldiers and knights are celebrated. Where the livelihood of the majority depends on trade and high-tech, entrepreneurs and scientists are celebrated.
(3) by impressing others with goodness, talent, skill or wisdom (saints, European footballers)
(4) by appealing to conscience or sense of decency of peers - by moral authority.
Ideals are not cast in stone; the process by which they alter is politics.
For us in the western world now, prosperity = worthiness. And poverty = moral deficiency. Money is ethical. This equation of prosperity and worthiness seems "natural" to us but it only came into being as "the way it is" in the mid-1800s.
Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899): "Wealth has become the conventional basis of esteem." Material goods confer honour (hence conspicuous consumption, to give evidence to one and all of one's 'true' worth).
Some have fought the idea of meritocracy, the idea that wealth = virtue, including most notable John Ruskin, and also George Bernard Shaw, Michel de Montaigne.
Modern life also posits a connection between making money and being happy. This connection rests on three assumptions:
(1) that we know what we need to be happy and so we know what careers and projects will help us flourish as humans. Rousseau refutes this (in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1754): We are actually, he says, "dangerously inept at deciphering our own needs. Our souls rarely articulate what they must have in order to be fulfilled, and when they manage to mumble something, their requests are likely to be misfounded or contradictory .... Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied...." G
(2) that all of the occupational possibilities and consumer goods available to us are actually a helpful array that's capable of satisfying our essential needs.
(3) that the more money we have, the more goods and services we can afford, which increases our odds of happiness.
(de Botton writes more about this here: "Americans Were the First People to Worship Work")
Current Events Tie-In: "Will economic growth make Americans happier?" (23 June 2008, Chicago Tribune)
Some posit, in contrast to the money-happiness connection, that those who live in a "natural state" understand themselves much better. (Part of the 'noble savage' idea) E.g., the native Americans, who lived with little yet were reputed to be content. But within only a few decades of the arrival of the first Europeans, what came to matter to the Indians was the amassing of weapons, jewellery and whiskey. This didn't happen spontaneously; the European traders deliberately sought to foster desires in Indians to motivate them to provide animal pelts for the European market.
In 1690, the English naturalist and minister John Banister noted that the Indians of Hudson Bay area had been successfully tempted by traders to want "many things which they had not wanted before." As the volume of trade increased, suicide rates and alcoholism also rose, fracturing communities. Indian leaders called on tribes to renounce their addiction to European luxuries.
Defenders of commercial society argue that no one forces anyone to buy anything. Rousseau emphasised how strongly predisposed humans are to listen to others' suggestions about how to think and what to value. G
Advertisers et al. actually insist that their trades are ineffective because the population is so independent-minded. This is not shown to be true, based on what people once said were luxuries that they quickly came to see as necessities:
Percentage of Americans who say these are necessities:
2nd car in 1970: 20% / 2nd car in 2000: 59%
dishwasher in 1970: 8% / dishwasher in 2000: 44%
A/C in car in 1970: 11% / A/C in car in 2000: 65%
A/C in home in 1970: 22% / A/C in home in 2000: 70%
more than one telephone in 1970: 2% / more than one telephone in 2000: 78%
(Salon article about marketing -- "commercial persuasion industry" -- and consumerism: We Are What We Buy: "'We can talk all we want about being brand-proof ... but our behavior tells a different story.'")
"Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another" and we're not aware of it. G We think achievements and acquisitions will satisfy us but they don't. Not only can we not stop envying, but we envy the wrong things!
John Ruskin excoriated 19th-century Britons for being wealth-obsessed. He said he was, too, but he was obsessed by being wealthy in kindness, curiosity, sensitivity, humility, godliness, and intelligence -- which in the aggregate he called "life."
In his conception, the wealthiest Britons would not be automatically merchants or landowners but rather those who felt the keenest wonder gazing at the stars or who were best able to alleviate the suffering of others. (in Unto This Last)
Ideology and Political Change
Lots of ideas have been seen as so immutable as to be 'natural', e.g.,:
- men's rule over women (Earl Percy, 1873)
- European people are better than Africans (Lord Cromer, 1911)
- women don't have sexual feeling (Sir William Acton, 1857)
- Africans are naturally subordinate to whites (Alexander Stephens, 1861)
Dominant beliefs are at great pains to suggest that they are no more alterable than the orbits of the sun. They are ideological -- "a statement that subtly promotes a bias while pretending to be perfectly neutral." The ruling ideas of every age are those of the ruling class; but they can't seem to rule too forcefully. The ideas have to seem natural and unforced, just "the way it is."
Ideology, like a colourless, odorless gas, is pervasive and yet unnoticed as what it is. It makes light of its perhaps unjust or illogical take on the world and meekly implies that it's only presenting age-old truths.
"When institutions and ideas are held to be 'natural,' responsibility for whatever suffering they cause must necessarily either belong to no specific agent or else to the injured parties themselves."
Virginia Woolf, when not allowed into a college library in England on the basis of being female, became sceptical of the feminine role model she grew up with, the image of a woman who was always charming and utterly unselfish. The model woman sacrificed herself daily. She took the worst piece of meat, the most uncomfortable seat, etc. "She was so constituted that she would never have a mind or wish of her own, but prefer to sympathise always with the minds and wishes of others."
"The enthusiasm for materialism, entrepreneurship and meritocracy that saturates the newspapers and television schedules of our own day reflects nothing more complex than the interests of those in charge of the system by which the majority earn their living."
06:45 Posted in books and reading , community , finance and business , girardian anthropology , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
11 July 2008
Not Many Dead
A magazine I read monthly has a reader write-in column titled "Not Many Dead: Important Stories You May Have Missed." The column is made up of headlines or snippets of 'news' stories that are hardly news.
Examples from the magazine include:
"An overheating lightbulb triggered a fire alarm in the City Art Gallery in York yesterday afternoon. Fire crews were not needed."
"Top jockey Frankie Dettori told the Daily Mirror that he had never had sex in a stable."
"Prince Andrew has worn the same tweed jacket twice in five years."
I'd imagine many of us come across these sorts of items ourselves with jarring regularity, these 'news' stories, or tidbits embedded in news stories, that we read and think "wtf?" or "slow news day, eh?" I'd hate to keep the non-news I stumble across to myself, so I'll share it here from time to time; feel free to contribute others.
"John Mayer admitted on Tuesday night to 'hooking up' with a fan in the past." [10 July]
"Thousands of canceled flights may vex travelers: Fliers should be ready to be flexible as airlines cut capacity and schedules" [10 July]
"Swastika ('卐') tops Google's search list, then disappears" [10 July]
"An initial examination of the plane that had maintenance problems while carrying Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama found no evidence of missing parts or tampering, federal investigators said Thursday." [10 July].
"An elderly Indonesian woman famed nationwide for supernatural skills in lengthening penises has died, reports said Thursday." [10 July]
and
Court: Wisconsin Law Bans Sex With the Dead, which is unfortunately not as superfluous at it sounds ... [Reported today]
11:20 Posted in media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
23 June 2008
RIP George Carlin (1937 - 2008)
Comedian, political humourist, anti-censorship crusader and thinker George Carlin died yesterday of a heart attack at age 71. He released his first comedy album, Take-Offs and Put-Ons, in 1967, acted in 'That Girl' and the movie 'With Six You Get Egg-Roll,' and by the end of the 1960s, "he was one of America’s best known comedians." In 1970, feeling he was "living a lie," he ditched his clean-cut, conventional image and material for the long-haired look and seven-words-riddled, edgy patter he's known for. That switch resulted in the cancellation of a 3-year-contract and "he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club"!
Time magazine already has "How George Carlin Changed Comedy" on its website.
Transcript of "The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," from his 1972 album Class Clown. (NSFW)
An editorial cartoon featuring Carlin, printed in today's Chicago Tribune, which went to press before news of Carlin's death.
10:05 Posted in death , media, film, tv, radio , language , silliness and humour | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
13 June 2008
Stuck in My Head
From House MD, #320, "House Training":
Foreman to a patient he's been disparaging: "I only put distance between you and me because I know there isn't any."
(Photo (c) Greg Gayne, Fox)
From Elvis Costello's "I Want You":
"The truth can't hurt you, it's just like the dark / It scares you witless / But in time, you see things clear and stark."
Also: I'm currently reading Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety and finding much to reflect on. Will post on that later.
14:04 Posted in books and reading , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
27 May 2008
House Rules Booklist: If You Like House MD ...
... you might like these books, suggested by members of various library listservs.
The query I sent out was:
I'm looking for fiction that will appeal to someone who likes the FOX TV show, House MD, starring Hugh Laurie. The appeal factors could include medical diagnostics or medical mystery, interesting dynamics among medical professionals, cynical smart doctors, close co-dependent friendships between male doctors or men generally, an underlying belief that 'everyone lies,' and so on.
Here are the suggested authors, series, and titles. I haven't read any yet. I'd love additions, and comments if you have read them:
Ariana Franklin (pseudonym for Diana Norman). New historical thriller series set in the 12th century about cynical, smart female physician Adelia Aguilar who is brought to England to solve murder mysteries for King Henry II. She's a coroner. First in the series: Mistress in the Art of Death (2007). Last (and second): The Serpent's Tale (2008).
Eileen Dreyer. Standalone medical mystery thrillers featuring cynical, world-weary nurses and EMTs. Also writes a series featuring Molly Burke, forensic nurse and death investigator in St. Louis, MO. First in series: Bad Medicine (1995). Last: Head Games (2005).
Sequence (2006) and The Silent Assassin (2007) by Lori Andrews, medical thrillers featuring geneticist and forensic specialist Dr. Alexandra Blake, described as smart and edgy. (Reviews compare the books to the popular TV series NCIS).
CL Grace's series featuring Kathyrn Swinbrooke, a female doctor in medieval times when only men could be doctors. Titles: 1. A Shrine of Murders (1992); 2. The Eye of God (1994); 3. The Merchant of Death (1995); 4. The Book of Shadows (1996); 5. Saintly Murders (2001); 6. A Maze of Murders (2003); and 7. A Feast of Poisons (2004). Some romance. (Grace is a pseudonym for writer P.C. Doherty.)
Echo Heron's medical thriller series featuring nurse Adele Monsarrat, who has a quirky sense of humor. Titles are Pulse (1998), Panic (1998), Paradox (1998) and Fatal Diagnosis (2000).
Lifelines (2008) by C. J. Lyons. Set in a Pittsburgh hospital, involves the new attending physician whose first night doesn't go well. When she's accused of negligence in the death of the son of the Chief of Neurosurgery, she starts investigating to save her career.
The Bugman novels by Tim Downs: 1. Shoofly Pie, 2. Chop Shop, and 3. First the Dead. The main character, Dr. Nick Polchak, is a forensic entomologist in North Carolina who helps solve crimes based on what the bugs say. He has a wry sense of humor. The books are marketed as Christian fiction but are not preachy; values are implicit, not explicit.
06:00 Posted in booklists , media, film, tv, radio , health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
29 April 2008
I said I was an addict -- I didn't say I had a problem
Watched most of the first season of House MD in the past two days:
Cameron: Is that rhetorical?
House: No, it just seems that way because you can't think of an answer. (Pilot)
"I'm bad at search parties and I'm bad at sitting around looking nervous doing nothing." (Paternity)
Wilson: You want to come over for Christmas dinner?
House: You're Jewish.
Wilson: Hanukkah dinner. What do you care? It's food, it's people.
House: No thanks.
Wilson: Maybe I'll come to your place.
House: Your wife doesn't mind being alone at Christmas?
Wilson: I'm a doctor, she's used to being alone. [House raises his eyebrows] I don't want to talk about it.
House [quickly]: Neither do I. (Damned if you Do)
Wilson: "I'm not gonna date a patient's daughter."
House: "Very ethical. Of course, most married men would say they don't date at all." (Fidelity)
"Life sucks. Your life sucks more than most. It's not as bad as some, which is depressing all by itself." (DNR)
Wilson to House: "You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the Rubik's complex; you need to solve the puzzle" (DNR)
House: How do I abuse you?
Foreman: How do you not? If I make a mistake...
House: I hold you accountable, so what?
Foreman: Dr. Hamilton forgives, he's capable of moving on.
House: That is not what he does.
Foreman: I screwed up his case. He told me...
House: He never said you were forgiven. I was there -- he said it was not your fault.
Foreman: So?
House: So, it was. You took a chance. You did something great. You were wrong, but it was still great. You should feel great that it was great. You should feel like crap that it was wrong. That's the difference between him and me. He thinks that you do your job, and what will be will be. I think that what I do and what you do matters. He sleeps better at night. He shouldn't. (DNR)
Wilson: "Did your pager really just go off, or are you ditching the conversation?"
House: "Why can't both be true?" (Histories)
"I take risks, sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die, so I guess my biggest problem is I've been cursed with the ability to do the math." (Detox)
"Very noble gesture. My favorite kind - dramatic, yet completely empty." (Sports Medicine)
House to Wilson: "I'm not the cancer doctor who's lying about the cancer dinner." (Sports Medicine)
House to Cameron: "I'm twice your age, I'm not great looking, I'm not charming, I'm not even nice. What I am is what you need. I'm damaged." (Love Hurts)
House (talking about himself and visions he had): "The patient was technically dead for over a minute...."
Wilson: "Do you think he was dead? Do you think those experiences were real?"
House: "Define real. They were real experiences. What they meant, personally, I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see, visions, this patient saw: they're all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down."
Foreman: "You choose to believe that?"
House: "There's no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting."
Cameron: "You find it more comforting to believe that this is it?"
House: "I find it more comforting to believe that this isn't simply a test." (Three Stories)
If you can fake sincerity, you can fake pretty much anything. (Honeymoon)
Wilson to House: "Be yourself. Cold, uncaring, distant."
House to Wilson: "Please, don't put me on a pedestal." (Honeymoon)
15:00 Posted in media, film, tv, radio , health and medicine , other people said it , silliness and humour | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
13 March 2008
House (TV)
Hate Hugh Laurie's 'American' accent but love the Fox TV show 'House' he stars in. It's a medical show, but really more of a detective show, as House and his interns hunt for the right diagnosis for baffling symptoms, and a character-driven soap opera, combined with quick, witty dialogue and an unrelenting engagement with truth and lies.
You can watch whole episodes, and clips, online, at Hulu -- excellent quality but only a few episodes; I watched the season 4 Christmas show, "What A Wonderful Lie," last night, before that episode 'expired' (why??) -- or at TV.com if you have iTunes (oops -- since Dec., the episodes are no longer available via iTunes), or HouseMDvideos (some have Japanese subtitles and the quality is middling). You can also rent the first three seasons through your local or non-local dvd rental store.
Each episode is reviewed in detail for medical correctness here -- don't look if you have illusions about it -- and they also rate the show's soap opera quality (i.e., how compelling the narrative is, depth of character development, etc.).
If you haven't seen the show, I recommend "Don't Ever Change," still up at Hulu. ("It's A Wonderful Lie" was better, though, IMO.)
This user-created clip at YouTube, pairing The Fray's "How to Save A Life" with shots of House doping and Wilson wanting to help, unable to help, is also worth the watch if you're already a fan.
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is connected with House clips by several users, including one about House and Stacy and one about House and Wilson (both with Rufus Wainwright singing).
(Dr James) Wilson: What's with the Secret Santa? You trying to bring them together?
(Dr Gregory) House: I want to drive them apart.
Wilson: With gift-giving?
House: Conflict's built right into the name -- Santa's about sharing, secret's about withholding.
House: Gifts allow us to demonstrate exactly how little we know about a person, and nothing pisses off a person more than being shoved into the wrong pigeon hole.
(Have I mentioned how fab Hugh is singing 'Mystery'?)
Wilson: "You can be a real jerk sometimes, you know that?"
House: "Yeah. And you're the good guy."
Wilson: "At least I try."
House: "As long as you're trying to be good, you can do whatever you want."
Wilson: "And as long as you're not trying, you can say whatever you want."
House: "So between us, we can do anything. We can rule the world!"
Wilson: "You're my friend."
House: "Oh, jeez. Have some backbone. If you think I'm wrong, do something."
Wilson: "Wait, you're getting mad at me for sticking up for you?"
House: "You value our friendship more than your ethical responsibilities."
Wilson: "Our friendship is an ethical responsibility."
< Photo c. 2005, Dean Headner/FOX >
11:00 Posted in media, film, tv, radio , health and medicine , neuroscience, psychology, the mind , other people said it , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
12 March 2008
BergmanFest!: Cries & Whispers
I've uploaded another PDF file for anyone to use, a backgrounder for Cries & Whispers (1972), the last in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting now.
21:00 Posted in art and photography , death , dreams , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , pop culture , sexuality , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05 March 2008
BergmanFest!: Winter Light
I've uploaded another PDF file for anyone to use, a backgrounder for Winter Light (1962), the third in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting now.
15:59 Posted in art and photography , community , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
28 February 2008
BergmanFest!: Through A Glass Darkly
I've uploaded another PDF file for anyone to use, a backgrounder for Through A Glass Darkly (1961), the second in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting now.
09:59 Posted in art and photography , media, film, tv, radio , other people said it , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
23 February 2008
BergmanFest!: Wild Strawberries
I've uploaded two PDF files for anyone to use, an Ingmar Bergman backgrounder and a backgrounder for Wild Strawberries (1957), the first in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting this coming month.
20:50 Posted in media, film, tv, radio , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
26 January 2008
Untraceable
I haven't seen the thriller film Untraceable, and having read the synopsis, I very likely won't see it (I can read about horrific events but adding audio and visual cues to the mix makes it something I wouldn't willingly endure), but I still found interesting and useful Nancy Hitt's summary of the film and especially her analysis of it in light of mimetic theory. The film's central idea is that anonymity changes people's behaviour and in fact allows people to participate in murder without feeling they're doing anything wrong. Check it out. My favourite bit:
"The film's most obvious conclusion is that law and order are the way to salvation from violence and death, yet it also points to the missing factor that could have inhibited the entire process. The gospel call to love one's neighbor as oneself, not being careless of the feelings of others even if they are unknown to us personally, is present through its absence."
13:50 Posted in community , crime , death , media, film, tv, radio , girardian anthropology , neuroscience, psychology, the mind , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
16 January 2008
Access to Knowledge: The Place of Libraries and Books
(I published this at Worth Reading today and am repeating it here.)
Two articles on the related topic of libraries and access to knowledge:
From The Independent, Michael Savage asks "The Big Question: Does the decline in book lending spell the end for the public library?" He notes that figures just published show that the British "are taking out fewer books from libraries than we were 10 years ago. Library users in England borrowed just under 269 million books in the last financial year, according to official figures compiled by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. That is down 34 per cent on the amount borrowed back in 1997."
It may not be that Brits have lost any interest in reading; in fact, "2007 was a record-breaking year in terms of the amount the British spent on a good read," with book sales up 6.2 per cent over 2006.
Savage suggests that factors involved in libraries' reduced book borrowing include lower book prices (cheaper than ever for people to just buy the books), comfier digs at bookstores than libraries, changes in social structure, and perhaps most likely, library patrons using the library for reasons other than borrowing books, as the number of library visits has remained roughly the same at least over the past 3 years.
Savage ends the column with the question "Do libraries still have a role in 21st-century Britain?" and answers it with some pros and cons.
===
A second column at Times Online, "Reference books? Give me Wikipedia" by Magnus Linklater, argues against Tara Brabazon, professor of Media Studies at the University of Brighton, who "has banned her own students from using Wikipedia or Google as research sources, and insists they read printed texts only. In a lecture, she argues that only thus will we produce the critical thinkers that the nation needs."
Linklater embraces "the new socialism" (a bit tongue in cheek) of "offering equality of information to everyone." He views students' lack of critical thinking as a function of "the way they have been taught to think -- and the way their written work is marked." He says that if students "learn that they have a gateway to knowledge unprecedented in the history of man, and that this opens up access to sources of information that they might never have glimpsed as they struggled with poorly equipped libraries, unhelpful staff and unimaginative lecturers, then they will realise that, far from blunting curiosity, it sharpens it."
In his haste to praise quick, easy, and often very good information found online, Linklater, it seems to me, makes the common error of exaggerating or taking as universal the negative aspects of that which she seeks to argue against -- in this case, in part, libraries. I agree with his argument that Wikipedia and other online sources offer a great opportunity for finding information to anyone with internet access and the ability to read the screen, and I agree that critical thinking is not a function of the medium but rather of being taught how to use the medium and the content. I also value the library, and the librarian, many of whom are excellent discerners of knowledge and are willing to share their insight with library users.
At rhetorically speaking, Scottish blogger 'bookdrunk' thinks that Linklater misunderstands or misinterprets Brabazon's point and essentially argues against a straw man: "Tara Brabazon isn't opposed to wikipedia or google in principal, but [is] concerned that the ease with which information is made available has not been matched with a critical appreciation of different sources. The revelation that what you read online in or in a newspaper can't be taken at face-value (or that a columnist might completely misrepresent someone's views) is probably not news ..." He (?) quotes Brabazon: "We need to teach our students the interpretative skills first before we teach them the technological skills."
Why not teach interpretive skills before, as, and after technological and reading skills are taught?
10:05 Posted in books and reading , community , education , media, film, tv, radio | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06 January 2008
Miscellany
If you want something to think about, listen to David Weinman's 1-hour presentation on how we classify things, a sort of engaging A/V subset of his book Everything Is Miscellaneous (2006).
Basically, the idea is that the organisation of the physical world* (its taxonomy - how something is either a fruit or a meat, it's either red or blue, etc.) isn't sufficient to organise the world of ideas -- and the online world liberates us in some ways from having to organise ideas in an either/or way. Think metadata, like tags, hyperlinks, mashups.
He covers a lot of overlapping ideas and themes, so I really recommend listening to the presentation if this kind of thing appeals to you.
Just a few excerpts that got my attention, and my responses to them; each green box is a different(ish) idea:
"It used to be that the people who owned the stuff also owned the organisation of it. Now, we do. We own the organisation of it. And so obviously one of the most fertile fields around is developing the tools by which we the user get to organise other people's stuff."
In other words, we get to make our own taxonomy trees, based on what interests us. His example is a university library using a feceted system, where the user can search for books based on century published, then country of birth of author, then gender of author; or the user can browse first by gender, then by language, and so on.
"We're changing the basic idea which used to be, you want to exclude all of the crap, because who has time, and so we have experts who filter and show us what we need to see and they organise it into categories for us, which is takes experts to do. ... Now the best strategy in most instances is include everything. It costs more to delete stuff than it does to save it, which you know from looking in your digial camera folders. ... You don't even know what's in there. In order to go through and delete that, you gotta look at the pictures and make decisions., It's just easier to preserve than delete. So capture everything."
I feel caught between worlds. I love tags and being able to place ideas in multiple categories at once. I hate trying to categorise my print photos in binary categories because of the millions of stupid questions I have to answer for most of the photos: Are photos of our dog "Family" or "Animals," or should I make a new category called "Dogs"? What if the photo is of the dog with the Christmas tree? Does it go in "Xmas" or "Dog"? Do photos of my garden go in "Gardens" or "House"? and so on. My photos are still languishing in cardboard boxes, uncategorised, though I spent about a month last winter working on their taxonomy.)
BUT, having all these photos on my hard drive, taking up space (even if it's space I don't need), leaves me feeling irrationally anxious. Likewise, almost all my bookmarks are in categories, with only a few "miscellaneous" ones, and not having them in categories makes me nervous. Yet I like del.icio.us mainly because a bookmark can belong to not just one category but many categories. (My anxiety surfaces there when I start to generate tag synonyms and realise they're almost infinite.) Likewise again, gmail's non-folder way of handling mail also makes me nervous, even though I can quickly search by someone's name or a topic and actually find the email I'm looking for more easily than with a traditional email file system.
It all feels like so much distracting clutter -- the photos on the hard drive, the multiple bookmarks in multiple categories, the 'hundreds and hundreds' of emails free-floating in my virtual 'all mail' box at gmail. Somehow, "including it all," as Weinman suggests we do, feels the same to me as physically saving every magazine, newspaper, paper photo of any quality, news clipping, recipe, decorating idea photo, etc., that I've ever come across and thought "Oh, that's interesting! I might want that some time" -- it feels the same as saving all those things in big piles throughout my house. I know it's not quite the same -- for one thing, online tools like tags provide enhanced search capability that's absent when one is keeping 8-foot piles of paper in the house -- but to me, it feels roughly the same in terms of mental and perhaps emotional clutter.
Weinman talks a lot throughout the presentation about authority and expertise. A little after the 43-minute mark, he says: "Bugs get driven out of ideas through discussion, through the public negotiation of conversation -- that's where knowledge is."
Mailing lists are the example he gives: "It's very clear that the mailing list itself knows more than any of the experts on it do. ... One of the consequences of this is that we end up having to let infallibility into our notion of knowledge, which has been driven out until now, well, pretty much." He cites Wikipedia here, as a source that he says "becomes more credible because they're willing to admit their lack of credibility, their lack of authority. It's not trying to convince us that it's the world's greatest authority; it's trying to help us know. And the fallibility metadata [Wikipedia's many notices about how an article may have gone wrong -- not neutral, contains weasel words, reads like an ad, etc.] is crucial to that. The question is why you will never see this here" -- as he points to the front page of the New York Times. "And it's because these sources have a vested interest in appearing authoratative."
The reason I pulled this out is because I think it has resonance not only in media but in every sphere of life (religion comes to mind) and in every moment of life (stupid arguments with my spouse come to mind) where the individual or corporate ego has a vested interest in appearing expert, in being right, or even in appearing infallible. It reminds me of the Buddhist notion I am trying very fallibly to live: "Nothing to defend." (I find that keeping in touch with my curious nature helps me to relax those defenses.)
Sidenote: In the Q&A, someone references Jorge Luis Borges' Classification of Animals, which is hilarious.
* Looking to organise your immediate physical world?
20:35 Posted in books and reading , community , media, film, tv, radio ,