This isn’t going to be pretty, I’m afraid, but that’s no reason not to look at it. I’m reminded of the school child who was unhappy with something his teacher did and who, as a result, brought a gun to school the next day and killed the teacher with it. The child liked the teacher pretty well; it was just this one little tiff. The counselors were persuaded, on the basis of their conversations with the child, that he had no idea the teacher wasn’t going to be back at school the following day. Maybe he’d seen too many cartoons, where Wile E. Coyote is killed in every scene and reappears in the next scene. He didn’t want the teacher to be gone gone. He just wanted to say how unhappy he was at the moment.
We’re coming to next Tuesday’s midterm election. If that’s what you thought this post was going to be about, you were right. I ask your patience.
I always like to pay careful attention to people who make money for a living. They bring a clear focus and a relentless metric to their work. So you can believe or not in global warming, the message of tree huggers, Earth Firsters, and recently notorious VIP, Al Gore. But when businesses begin buying up control of non-navigable “rivers” of ice in northern Canada, it makes you wonder what they know. People are buying land for growing wheat which has never, ever, grown wheat.
And lobbyists are lavishing money of ranking minority members. This is a pretty astute group, so you all know that the ranking minority member of a committee, let’s just say, the House Armed Services Committee, is the most senior member of the minority party on that committee. He or she is the person who would, under normal circumstances, become Chair of the committee, should something untoward happen to the current chair, such as becoming a member of the minority party after the November 2 election, for instance.
Being wise in the ways of Washington, you also know that committee chairs are named by the leadership (principally the Speaker of the House) and that they are all of the same party. So every Republican you elect moves John Boehner closer to being the new Speaker of the House and moves the ranking minority members of the committees closer to being the chairs of the committees.
That might seem to be a logical stretch, something we don’t teach and perhaps shouldn’t teach in our civics classes. The question is, though, do you know what the effect of your vote will be? The lobbyists know what the effect will be in their areas of interest and they are working the process. That’s why they are dumping money all over Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, who would be chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Here's the full article from the New York Times.
“You don’t wait until Nov. 3 and say, ‘What is the plan,’ ” said Jennifer Bell, a former Senate Finance Committee aide who is now a health care lobbyist. She flew to Michigan last month in part to catch up with Mr. Camp while he was in his district. “Obviously, it is the majority that sets the agenda.
Can you think of any reason why a health care lobbyist whose living depends on changes in health care provisions would be alert to changes in the health care agenda? Neither can I. It isn’t really different in the area of military hardware. Howard McKeon, known as “Buck,” is in line to be the new chair of Armed Services.
“Buck is a great advocate for our war fighters and for the industrial capabilities that support their mission,” said Hanz C. Heinrichs, a former aide to Mr. McKeon who now represents military contractors like L3 Communications. Mr. McKeon has already said he wants to push for more spending on unmanned aerial vehicles, which could benefit contractors in his district. And, of course, why wouldn’t he?
And Doc Hastings would be the new chair of the Natural Resources Committee.
Clearly, he is pro-energy development,” said Michael D. Olsen, a former Natural Resources Committee staff member and Bush administration Interior Department official, who now is a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani, a firm that specializes in energy. (Today's New York Times quotes a lobbyist from the mining industry saying that some way is going to have to be found to call off the Obama administration's "regulatory jihad" against the mining industry. He's thinking, possibly of a "crusade" on behalf of pollution.)
So I could vote for Rob Cornilles for Congress. He doesn’t sound so bad. Doesn’t seem to foam at the mouth. I’m not a big fan of the incumbent, David Wu, so why not? Because I know something a lot of voters don’t know. I know that a vote for Cornilles is a vote Camp for Ways and Means, McKeon for Armed Services and Hastings for Natural Resources. I’m not sure what the implications of McKeon’s interests are since President Obama is a heavy user of the “unmanned aerial vehicles” which are made in McKeon’s district. It is clear, however, that Camp is going to take tax policy in a way I don’t want it to go and that Hastings is going to take environmental policy in a way I don’t want it to go.
From the standpoint of democratic theory, it wouldn’t be all that bad if voters had voted for a Democratic president and a Democratic House because they wanted the policies that the Democratic Party promised, but now, in 2010, they have changed their minds and want all those policies to go back the other way. It would be bad, because the executive branch, which has just finished assembling its teams for those three areas, are going to continue to do what they promised in 2008. So, to use an impossibly archaic metaphor, this would be like riding on a wagon being drawn by two horses and pulling back on the reins of one and goading the other into a gallop.
It would be bad, but it wouldn’t be that bad—from the standpoint of democratic theory. But, in fact, voters are angry because they economy has not recovered quickly and they are suffering. The only emotionally satisfying choice being offered them is to vote NO on anyone currently in office. So they are going to vote for the Rob Cornilles of the world, unaware that they are voting for the John Boehners of the world and also the Camps, McKeons, and Hastingses. Then, having put the legislative branch into a collision course with the executive branch, they will complain about “partisan bickering” and complain that “the bureaucrats” just don’t seem to be able to “get anything done.”
Oh dear. It turned into a rant. My point was that until we understand that voting on the basis of how we are feeling at the moment and that voting in a congressional election is a vote for Speaker and ALL the committee chairs, we are likely to shoot ourselves in our collective civic foot about every two years. And probably screw up our marathon time. That’s bad because democracy really is a marathon. It just has water stops every two years.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Intramural Spitball Just Isn't That Interesting
I'm going to begin by quoting myself. I'm sure there's something wrong with that. I wrote the Pages (as opposed to the Posts) with the idea that they would be an introduction to whatever ideas I would post later. Let's see if it works. Here's a cut from my Page, "Christian Praxis."
TEAM The first is that Christianity is a team sport. Solitary Christians labor under extraordinary burdens. We need to be part of a team or an ensemble or a group in order to ask the right questions of ourselves. There are two such. The first is “are we winning;” the second is “am I playing my position the way it ought to be played?” I probably should confess that I like team sports and “team” is my own first language, but I intend these questions to be available to people who have other first languages, as well, so I will meddle in other metaphors, say, drama and music, as a gesture of good faith.
Today, I am making my first reference to a very good book, American Grace, by Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell. It is a sort of "sociology of religion" approach to contemporary America. I'll put the crucial paragraph here, but I want to paraphrase it myself, because I want to feature something that I think is only hinted at in the analysis. I think what they mean is that a substantial number of Americans have walked away from the current religious debates because they think the debaters are disgusting.
Putnam and Campbell say, in the Hess version of this paragraph, that the sexually permissive 1960s upset the cultural apple cart. This development in the 60s was like an earthquake and it produced three aftershocks. In the first one, it brought conservatives out of their self-exile from politics and made them part of a new and very powerful Republican movement. In the second one, it brought the liberals into the new cultural wars, where they played to win. In the third, large numbers of young people walked away in disgust.
An unprecedented number of young people, who might, under other circumstances have been interested in questions of faith and life turned out to have very little interest in ecclesiological mud-wrestling. There are now more people in the United States (17%) who say "none" when they are asked what religious tradition they identify with than there are mainstream Protestants of all denominations combined (14%).
In my view of the Putnam and Campbell narrative, the "nones" have an idea of what people do when they are committed to the kind of life to which their religious values point. The Nones know how hard it is to walk by an obnoxious opponent so that you can attend to the things you yourself feel are more important. Feeding the hungry, for instance, is more important than instigating a court suit to remove the religious exemption from the IRS file of an opposing church. Providing good prenatal care is more important than a constitutional amendment that establishes that the health of the mother really isn't a concern in abortion cases.
People who claim to be patterning their lives after Jesus of Nazareth just don't do that. So the Nones, who might really have been interested in what Jesus taught about being forgiven a huge debt and being, as a consequence open to forgiving a small debt, found no interest at all in what looks, from the outside, like an intramural spitball war. In this version, "none" means, "If it means acting the way THEY are acting, I don't want any part of it.
And why would they?
The good news for Christians is that what we might do to re-engage the Nones in the kind of life we think is worth living is to start living that kind of life ourselves. This isn't a call for Christians to be better people. This is a call for Christians to get their public priorities straight and to refuse to follow leaders who promise no more than beating up on your opponents.
In the excerpt from my Page, I said the first question had to do with winning. I still like that emphasis. But the "we" I had in mind was Christians and the "winning" I had in mind is doing what has to be done, in public and in private, in public policy and in private conscience, to follow God's call in our lives. I am aware that following God call is going to look like different things in different contexts. And by "playing my position," I meant that the things liberals do ought to make conservatives more authentic Christians and more effective Christians. And vice versa.
I'm not talking about "the evangelical agenda" or "liberation theology." Topics like that are like an offensive lineman asking why HE has to do all the blocking when the running back is going to get all the credit for the touchdown? The answer is that if you win, each of you gets the same ring.
TEAM The first is that Christianity is a team sport. Solitary Christians labor under extraordinary burdens. We need to be part of a team or an ensemble or a group in order to ask the right questions of ourselves. There are two such. The first is “are we winning;” the second is “am I playing my position the way it ought to be played?” I probably should confess that I like team sports and “team” is my own first language, but I intend these questions to be available to people who have other first languages, as well, so I will meddle in other metaphors, say, drama and music, as a gesture of good faith.
Today, I am making my first reference to a very good book, American Grace, by Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell. It is a sort of "sociology of religion" approach to contemporary America. I'll put the crucial paragraph here, but I want to paraphrase it myself, because I want to feature something that I think is only hinted at in the analysis. I think what they mean is that a substantial number of Americans have walked away from the current religious debates because they think the debaters are disgusting.
Putnam and Campbell say, in the Hess version of this paragraph, that the sexually permissive 1960s upset the cultural apple cart. This development in the 60s was like an earthquake and it produced three aftershocks. In the first one, it brought conservatives out of their self-exile from politics and made them part of a new and very powerful Republican movement. In the second one, it brought the liberals into the new cultural wars, where they played to win. In the third, large numbers of young people walked away in disgust.
An unprecedented number of young people, who might, under other circumstances have been interested in questions of faith and life turned out to have very little interest in ecclesiological mud-wrestling. There are now more people in the United States (17%) who say "none" when they are asked what religious tradition they identify with than there are mainstream Protestants of all denominations combined (14%).
In my view of the Putnam and Campbell narrative, the "nones" have an idea of what people do when they are committed to the kind of life to which their religious values point. The Nones know how hard it is to walk by an obnoxious opponent so that you can attend to the things you yourself feel are more important. Feeding the hungry, for instance, is more important than instigating a court suit to remove the religious exemption from the IRS file of an opposing church. Providing good prenatal care is more important than a constitutional amendment that establishes that the health of the mother really isn't a concern in abortion cases.
People who claim to be patterning their lives after Jesus of Nazareth just don't do that. So the Nones, who might really have been interested in what Jesus taught about being forgiven a huge debt and being, as a consequence open to forgiving a small debt, found no interest at all in what looks, from the outside, like an intramural spitball war. In this version, "none" means, "If it means acting the way THEY are acting, I don't want any part of it.
And why would they?
The good news for Christians is that what we might do to re-engage the Nones in the kind of life we think is worth living is to start living that kind of life ourselves. This isn't a call for Christians to be better people. This is a call for Christians to get their public priorities straight and to refuse to follow leaders who promise no more than beating up on your opponents.
In the excerpt from my Page, I said the first question had to do with winning. I still like that emphasis. But the "we" I had in mind was Christians and the "winning" I had in mind is doing what has to be done, in public and in private, in public policy and in private conscience, to follow God's call in our lives. I am aware that following God call is going to look like different things in different contexts. And by "playing my position," I meant that the things liberals do ought to make conservatives more authentic Christians and more effective Christians. And vice versa.
I'm not talking about "the evangelical agenda" or "liberation theology." Topics like that are like an offensive lineman asking why HE has to do all the blocking when the running back is going to get all the credit for the touchdown? The answer is that if you win, each of you gets the same ring.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Want to Save the World? Get Out of the Way!
I’m going to call this post “politics,” but it’s really just a chance to laugh at myself. I’ve been frowning and chuckling at myself alternately since I read this article in the New York Times. I finally decided that chuckling was better.
The good people of Salina, Kansas don’t believe in global warming. This puts local environmentalists is the dilemma of the hellfire and brimstone evangelist preaching to a crowd that doesn’t believe in hell. My first great enemy is my frustration. I am aghast that they are unmoved by the nearly complete consensus among scientists. The logic by which they substantiate their beliefs makes me more angry than sad, since it draws on my own religious tradition. Here are some samples from the article.
It wasn’t hard for Nancy Jackson. Here’s the way the conversation went at dinner one night.
Those sound pretty good to me. We can change our use of energy and our source of energy so that it costs less, so that it serves the values and needs of our country, it reduces damage to the earth—which after all is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof—and it makes us all better off economically.
Does anyone see a lack of motivation there? These aren’t apathetic people. They want to leave the land better off than they found it. That’s as much a self-definition in Salinas as cultural conservatism. It seems to me that if you take those values and build a program that is consistent with them, you can have a very successful program. It was successful, as the Times article notes, reducing the use of energy by 5% where the standard for success has been 1.5%.
But the cost is high. At least it is high for people like Wes Jackson and me. You have to be willing to put down a tool that doesn’t work and pick up a tool that does work. That’s not cheap. You have to get past despising the views of these people and past being angry at how willfully ignorant they are. That’s not cheap either. How do I know I’m educated if I can’t make fun of people who don’t rely on the people I think are reliable, in this case, the climate scientists?
But if I really want to results these amazing Kansans achieved, my first job is to get past the motives I think they ought to have and let go my embarrassment—to get myself out of the way entirely—and do the things that work.
The good people of Salina, Kansas don’t believe in global warming. This puts local environmentalists is the dilemma of the hellfire and brimstone evangelist preaching to a crowd that doesn’t believe in hell. My first great enemy is my frustration. I am aghast that they are unmoved by the nearly complete consensus among scientists. The logic by which they substantiate their beliefs makes me more angry than sad, since it draws on my own religious tradition. Here are some samples from the article.
Only 48 percent of people in the Midwest agree with the statement that there is“solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been gettingWe see here that less than half the people in the Midwest—land of my birth—believe that temperatures are getting warmer. Intellectually, that’s discouraging. Further, they seem to take it as a way of defining themselves, so to believe otherwise runs the risk of being called up before the Un-Kansas Activities Committee. Neither of those is the difficulty confronting me. The difficulty confronting me is to get past questions of environmental logic and find a political logic. Why is it so hard?
warmer,”a poll conducted in the fall of 2009 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed— far fewer than in other regions of the country. The Jacksons already knew firsthand that such skepticism was not just broad, but also deep. Like opposition to abortion or affirmations of religious faith, they felt, it was becoming a cultural marker that helped some Kansans define themselves.
It wasn’t hard for Nancy Jackson. Here’s the way the conversation went at dinner one night.
Now there’s a thought, right? Identify issues that actually did motivate them rather than the ones you think should motivate them. And are there such issues? Sure. There was a lot of enthusiasm for other values: thrift, patriotism, spiritual conviction and economic prosperity.Wes Jackson: How can these farmers, who will suffer from
climate change, be unwilling to take steps to avoid it?Nancy Jackson (daughter in law): Why does it have to be
about climate change? Why not identify issues that motivate them instead of
getting stuck on something that does not?
Those sound pretty good to me. We can change our use of energy and our source of energy so that it costs less, so that it serves the values and needs of our country, it reduces damage to the earth—which after all is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof—and it makes us all better off economically.
Does anyone see a lack of motivation there? These aren’t apathetic people. They want to leave the land better off than they found it. That’s as much a self-definition in Salinas as cultural conservatism. It seems to me that if you take those values and build a program that is consistent with them, you can have a very successful program. It was successful, as the Times article notes, reducing the use of energy by 5% where the standard for success has been 1.5%.
But the cost is high. At least it is high for people like Wes Jackson and me. You have to be willing to put down a tool that doesn’t work and pick up a tool that does work. That’s not cheap. You have to get past despising the views of these people and past being angry at how willfully ignorant they are. That’s not cheap either. How do I know I’m educated if I can’t make fun of people who don’t rely on the people I think are reliable, in this case, the climate scientists?
But if I really want to results these amazing Kansans achieved, my first job is to get past the motives I think they ought to have and let go my embarrassment—to get myself out of the way entirely—and do the things that work.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Cheerleaders (Really)
There was a piece in the New York Times this morning that filled in a little blank spot in my mind and helped me feel I had something to say, finally. It’s about cheerleaders. Cheerleaders generally, I guess, although the article was about NFL cheerleaders specifically. I put the article here.
I do want to say some things about cheerleaders, I guess, but I am sure I want to write about how we think about cheerleaders. My mind was getting itself ready to read this morning’s Times when, last night, I watched some of the movie, The Replacements.[1] Part of the story has to do with the team recruiting extremely erotic cheerleaders from a nearby sex club.
These cheerleaders do things on the sidelines that nearly anyone would agree ought not to be part of a public performance, but the key to the movie’s treatment of this performance is the presentation of the mother who is scandalized and who puts her hands over her little boy’s eyes so he can’t see. All the other shots of crowd reaction are positive. The question here is whether we should disapprove of the mother (prudish) or of the cheerleaders (scandalous).
There doesn’t seem to be any way to make both judgments. Either the behavior of the cheerleaders is appropriate, in which the mother can be made an object of ridicule, or the behavior of the mother is appropriate, in which case the behavior of the cheerleaders can be criticized. One can imagine a middle ground in which some cultural consensus could be postulated. Then the cheerleaders could be said to err on one side of this consensus and the mother on the other. If you have hopes for such a strategy, you have not been watching how cultural arguments are made.
I didn’t know until I read the piece by William Rhoden that some NFL teams have cheerleaders and others do not.
Frankly, it isn’t part of my philosophy either. I remember from my own high school days that the cheerleaders did what they could to focus the student body on the upcoming game. At the game, they tried to coordinate or amplify the cheering that would otherwise have been scattered. They led offensive cheers when we had the ball and defensive cheers when we were trying to stop the other team.
Twenty years or so later, I was a faculty member at Westminster College in Pennsylvania. Westminster had some really good football and basketball teams while I was there, but the “cheerleaders” didn’t really lead any cheers. They performed little routines on the sidelines. They “gave” cheers. We all listened. They we went back to the game. There was a real cheerleader at Westminster during the time I was there. Whoever did the cheer I am thinking of was called Tommy Titan. He was, ordinarily, more than half drunk. He mimicked the letters T, I, T (gimme another T) A, N, and S and asked us several times afterward what that spelled. The response he got was thunderous and we returned to the game with a somewhat elevated sense that it actually mattered. He wasn’t performing except in the sense that he was performing a function.
The NFL cheerleaders--take this Dallas Cowgirl, the class of NFL cheerleaders--have no function I have heard of that has to do with football. Ditto for the NBA cheerleaders. They are something that happens during TV timeouts and called timeouts. As I write that, it occurs to me that there might be more objection to TV timeouts if there were no cheerleaders. Maybe that’s what they are for.
It’s interesting from a policy standpoint because the performance is public. It is what it is and everyone who is there gets to/has to watch it. It isn’t like the mother in the movie can take her son to wholesome places and the guys who like it hotter can go to strip clubs. If it’s at the game, everybody gets it or nobody gets it. That brings us back to the “sex is good fun” position taken by the men in the stands and the “this is disgusting” position taken by the mother.
As a policy-oriented kind of guy, I would like to see a discussion of the question, “Does this kind of display lead us in a good direction?” Does it say about “women” what we want to say? Does the association of women and violence say what we want to say? Do the 4th of July parades come next, after the football and basketball games? Should the norms of sexual permissiveness be permitted to evolve as sexual practices evolve?
I think those are good questions. They will not be asked so long as anyone who wants to ask them becomes the new subject of the debate. The debate will be about “The New Prudery.” The people who hoped to have the debate will be the killjoys who object to other people having a little fun. I can tell you how a debate on prudery will turn out. Really, I can.
Finally, a personal note. Just an asterisk, really. So I’m watching football on TV and they cut to a shot of the cheerleaders. What do I do? I watch and I enjoy it. These are gorgeous women and I am a man who grew up liking to look at gorgeous women. I don’t think I should be asked to do anything else and I don’t want to do anything else. I’d really prefer that there weren’t cheerleaders at these games. If there are, I would prefer that they didn’t put the cameras on them. If they put the cameras on them, I wish what they do weren’t so blatantly erotic. I would vote for those things if there were any way to vote.
Now this double-mindedness of mine could be called some bad things. Hypocrisy is what it is most likely to be called. But really, I don’t think so. I know what I would prefer. I would prefer my sports without the cheerleaders. That’s policy. Or philosophy. Or something. Trying to look away when they show the cheerleaders is something else. It’s a level of vigilance to which I do not aspire, for one thing. And it’s not what I want to do at the moment either. My policy preference doesn’t spare me from what the cameras show. My instant attraction to beautiful women doesn’t spare me from my response to them.
I take the resulting awkwardness as the kind of dish my culture has served up. I think I’m dealing with it pretty well, given the alternatives. What I’d really like is better alternatives.
[1] I will add this to my list of favorite “not very good” movies. I own it because it features Pat Summerall and John Madden, playing themselves as the play by play and color commentary broadcasters. There’s a good bit of John Madden going “Boom!” and going wild on the telestrator. Summerall has been called “the voice of Sunday afternoon.”
I do want to say some things about cheerleaders, I guess, but I am sure I want to write about how we think about cheerleaders. My mind was getting itself ready to read this morning’s Times when, last night, I watched some of the movie, The Replacements.[1] Part of the story has to do with the team recruiting extremely erotic cheerleaders from a nearby sex club.
These cheerleaders do things on the sidelines that nearly anyone would agree ought not to be part of a public performance, but the key to the movie’s treatment of this performance is the presentation of the mother who is scandalized and who puts her hands over her little boy’s eyes so he can’t see. All the other shots of crowd reaction are positive. The question here is whether we should disapprove of the mother (prudish) or of the cheerleaders (scandalous).
There doesn’t seem to be any way to make both judgments. Either the behavior of the cheerleaders is appropriate, in which the mother can be made an object of ridicule, or the behavior of the mother is appropriate, in which case the behavior of the cheerleaders can be criticized. One can imagine a middle ground in which some cultural consensus could be postulated. Then the cheerleaders could be said to err on one side of this consensus and the mother on the other. If you have hopes for such a strategy, you have not been watching how cultural arguments are made.
I didn’t know until I read the piece by William Rhoden that some NFL teams have cheerleaders and others do not.
“Philosophically we have always had issues with sending scantily clad women out on the field to entertain our fans,” said John Mara, the Giants co-owner. It’s just not part of our philosophy.”
Frankly, it isn’t part of my philosophy either. I remember from my own high school days that the cheerleaders did what they could to focus the student body on the upcoming game. At the game, they tried to coordinate or amplify the cheering that would otherwise have been scattered. They led offensive cheers when we had the ball and defensive cheers when we were trying to stop the other team.
Twenty years or so later, I was a faculty member at Westminster College in Pennsylvania. Westminster had some really good football and basketball teams while I was there, but the “cheerleaders” didn’t really lead any cheers. They performed little routines on the sidelines. They “gave” cheers. We all listened. They we went back to the game. There was a real cheerleader at Westminster during the time I was there. Whoever did the cheer I am thinking of was called Tommy Titan. He was, ordinarily, more than half drunk. He mimicked the letters T, I, T (gimme another T) A, N, and S and asked us several times afterward what that spelled. The response he got was thunderous and we returned to the game with a somewhat elevated sense that it actually mattered. He wasn’t performing except in the sense that he was performing a function.
The NFL cheerleaders--take this Dallas Cowgirl, the class of NFL cheerleaders--have no function I have heard of that has to do with football. Ditto for the NBA cheerleaders. They are something that happens during TV timeouts and called timeouts. As I write that, it occurs to me that there might be more objection to TV timeouts if there were no cheerleaders. Maybe that’s what they are for.
It’s interesting from a policy standpoint because the performance is public. It is what it is and everyone who is there gets to/has to watch it. It isn’t like the mother in the movie can take her son to wholesome places and the guys who like it hotter can go to strip clubs. If it’s at the game, everybody gets it or nobody gets it. That brings us back to the “sex is good fun” position taken by the men in the stands and the “this is disgusting” position taken by the mother.
As a policy-oriented kind of guy, I would like to see a discussion of the question, “Does this kind of display lead us in a good direction?” Does it say about “women” what we want to say? Does the association of women and violence say what we want to say? Do the 4th of July parades come next, after the football and basketball games? Should the norms of sexual permissiveness be permitted to evolve as sexual practices evolve?
I think those are good questions. They will not be asked so long as anyone who wants to ask them becomes the new subject of the debate. The debate will be about “The New Prudery.” The people who hoped to have the debate will be the killjoys who object to other people having a little fun. I can tell you how a debate on prudery will turn out. Really, I can.
Finally, a personal note. Just an asterisk, really. So I’m watching football on TV and they cut to a shot of the cheerleaders. What do I do? I watch and I enjoy it. These are gorgeous women and I am a man who grew up liking to look at gorgeous women. I don’t think I should be asked to do anything else and I don’t want to do anything else. I’d really prefer that there weren’t cheerleaders at these games. If there are, I would prefer that they didn’t put the cameras on them. If they put the cameras on them, I wish what they do weren’t so blatantly erotic. I would vote for those things if there were any way to vote.
Now this double-mindedness of mine could be called some bad things. Hypocrisy is what it is most likely to be called. But really, I don’t think so. I know what I would prefer. I would prefer my sports without the cheerleaders. That’s policy. Or philosophy. Or something. Trying to look away when they show the cheerleaders is something else. It’s a level of vigilance to which I do not aspire, for one thing. And it’s not what I want to do at the moment either. My policy preference doesn’t spare me from what the cameras show. My instant attraction to beautiful women doesn’t spare me from my response to them.
I take the resulting awkwardness as the kind of dish my culture has served up. I think I’m dealing with it pretty well, given the alternatives. What I’d really like is better alternatives.
[1] I will add this to my list of favorite “not very good” movies. I own it because it features Pat Summerall and John Madden, playing themselves as the play by play and color commentary broadcasters. There’s a good bit of John Madden going “Boom!” and going wild on the telestrator. Summerall has been called “the voice of Sunday afternoon.”
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Pac-12
It is Saturday. Good evening to you all.
When I moved to Oregon in 1980, I moved to Pac-8 country. That’s Pacific 8, although I don’t know how many Oregonians know that, and it was made up of a bunch of schools from states bordering on the Pacific Ocean. Some time ago, they added two Arizona schools and made it the Pac-10. We turned the corner and started heading east toward Texas.
By midweek we should have become the Pac 12, with the addition of Colorado and Utah. But 12 teams are too many to play each other, so some way of dividing them up began to be discussed. At that point, I began to have a quiet little hope. I didn’t tell anyone about it because I didn’t want to jinx it. It’s not that I’m superstitious, but I think sometimes not being superstitious enough can hex everything.
My hopes have been realized! There will be a northern division made up of the Washington schools (UW and WSU), the Oregon schools (UO and OSU) and the two northern California schools (Cal and Stanford). In short, they have reinvented Ecotopia as the northern half of the Pac 12. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
I propose that the southern division be called Dystopia, which I know is harsh to Colorado, but it does include all of southern California, all of Arizona, and Utah, which are fine with me.
We need a divisional mascot, I suppose. Ecotopia is a place of cooperation and environmental stewardship. Maybe a pet rock? A salmon? A hammock?
I hope I’m not the only one who is giving thought to this. It starts with the 2012 season and now is the time to start planning.
When I moved to Oregon in 1980, I moved to Pac-8 country. That’s Pacific 8, although I don’t know how many Oregonians know that, and it was made up of a bunch of schools from states bordering on the Pacific Ocean. Some time ago, they added two Arizona schools and made it the Pac-10. We turned the corner and started heading east toward Texas.
By midweek we should have become the Pac 12, with the addition of Colorado and Utah. But 12 teams are too many to play each other, so some way of dividing them up began to be discussed. At that point, I began to have a quiet little hope. I didn’t tell anyone about it because I didn’t want to jinx it. It’s not that I’m superstitious, but I think sometimes not being superstitious enough can hex everything.
My hopes have been realized! There will be a northern division made up of the Washington schools (UW and WSU), the Oregon schools (UO and OSU) and the two northern California schools (Cal and Stanford). In short, they have reinvented Ecotopia as the northern half of the Pac 12. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
I propose that the southern division be called Dystopia, which I know is harsh to Colorado, but it does include all of southern California, all of Arizona, and Utah, which are fine with me.
We need a divisional mascot, I suppose. Ecotopia is a place of cooperation and environmental stewardship. Maybe a pet rock? A salmon? A hammock?
I hope I’m not the only one who is giving thought to this. It starts with the 2012 season and now is the time to start planning.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Memo to Professor Harold Hill
Re: Relationship with your new librarian
Date: Saturday Night, October 9, 2010
I know you like Marian. She is a cutie, sure. But here’s something you might want to look at. Is she the kind of woman who can make a commitment?
I got to wondering when I heard her sing:
All I want is a plain man. All I want is a modest man. A quiet man, a gentle man. A straightforward and honest man to sit with me in a cottage somewhere in the state of Iowa...
That’s all she wants. You could do some of that, I think. I’m not sure about sitting in the cottage, but maybe it would grow on you. But…what do you get for sitting in that cottage. Do you get a commitment from your librarian? Noooo.
The commitment, it turns out, takes something else. This is where it really helps to understand that and is a coordinating conjunction and that a coordinating conjunction joins “words, phrases, or clauses of equal rank.” You get the “equal rank” part, right, Professor? Well then, consider this.
And …if occasionally he'd ponder what makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great. Him I could love 'til I die.
So there’s a culture test, too. That’s the test you have to pass to get to “as long as we both shall live,” which is the whole idea, right? And you have to approve a 16th Century Brit and a 19th Century German. If you were a John Keats, say, or a Heinrich Heine man, things would not be looking good for you at all. That’s the thing about the culture wars. It’s not just the Brits and Germans; it’s the right Brits and Germans.
So you have to wonder about Marian. Either she doesn’t know what a coordinating conjunction is…and she’s a librarian, right?...or she’s not serious about the “as long as we both shall live” part.
So think about it. Oh, and by the way, I got “as long as we both shall live” from my librarian. Removed her from Circulation and everything. Sorry.
Date: Saturday Night, October 9, 2010
I know you like Marian. She is a cutie, sure. But here’s something you might want to look at. Is she the kind of woman who can make a commitment?
I got to wondering when I heard her sing:
All I want is a plain man. All I want is a modest man. A quiet man, a gentle man. A straightforward and honest man to sit with me in a cottage somewhere in the state of Iowa...
That’s all she wants. You could do some of that, I think. I’m not sure about sitting in the cottage, but maybe it would grow on you. But…what do you get for sitting in that cottage. Do you get a commitment from your librarian? Noooo.
The commitment, it turns out, takes something else. This is where it really helps to understand that and is a coordinating conjunction and that a coordinating conjunction joins “words, phrases, or clauses of equal rank.” You get the “equal rank” part, right, Professor? Well then, consider this.
And …if occasionally he'd ponder what makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great. Him I could love 'til I die.
So there’s a culture test, too. That’s the test you have to pass to get to “as long as we both shall live,” which is the whole idea, right? And you have to approve a 16th Century Brit and a 19th Century German. If you were a John Keats, say, or a Heinrich Heine man, things would not be looking good for you at all. That’s the thing about the culture wars. It’s not just the Brits and Germans; it’s the right Brits and Germans.
So you have to wonder about Marian. Either she doesn’t know what a coordinating conjunction is…and she’s a librarian, right?...or she’s not serious about the “as long as we both shall live” part.
So think about it. Oh, and by the way, I got “as long as we both shall live” from my librarian. Removed her from Circulation and everything. Sorry.
Am I Tired?
It is my pleasure to introduce for your consideration, one of the most tangled questions I have run across in some time. I am coming at this question as I come at so many questions, viz. I have an idea about how to approach the question in a new way, but I have no idea whether I will be closer to a good answer than I was at the beginning. Let’s see how it goes.
I don’t know any way to tell whether I am tired than to know whether I am feeling tired. I think that is the best I can do, despite the fact that I know “feelings of tiredness” are, like all feelings, subject to misinterpretation. The question could easily be rephrased as “Do I know when I have feelings of tiredness?” The answer to that one is, “Yes, of course you do. But do you trust them?”
Why would I not trust my feeling tired? I have had the experience, and I’ll bet you have too, of “being tired,” and then having those feelings vanish in the flicker of an eye. You know as much about tiredness as I do. Can you get “un-tired” instantly? I don’t think so. What physical mechanisms would do such a thing? So what does it mean that “feeling tired” can vanish instantly? It means, at least, that: a) “being tired” and “feeling tired” are not the same thing, b) that they vary in their rhythms and c) very probably in their causes as well.
Since the fundamental concept is not clear to me, let me proceed by means of examples. When I ran a lot of 10K races, I noticed that there would come a time when my mind shifted over. It felt like gears being shifted in an automatic transmission. Since I was running so many races, I had a lot of opportunity to locate just where in the race that occurred and why. My conclusion, based on all this “research” (many races, but N = 1) was that at that point, my mind shifted over from monitoring how I was feeling to projecting whether I had enough stuff to finish the race.
I am quite sure that this shift in the focus of my mind’s continual audit of my energy coincided with “not feeling tired” any more. Now I am wondering whether that new question actually caused me not to feel tired any more. I’ve had the same lift in reading a demanding or dull (either one will work) article. I am slogging along, feeling slow, maybe feeling sleepy. I turn back to see how much more I have to read in that session. I learn that I am almost done and decide to finish up. I have “enough,” I find to finish. I discover, oddly that the tiredness has gone away. I have even found myself, to my embarrassment, turning back a few pages to see what I might have missed while I was slogging through the swamp and finding that what I had missed was really interesting. What is going on there?
So that’s the question, really. I said I have “an approach,” and I do, but the approach has problems of its own. What I think is that what I call “feeling tired” is not the result of a measurement like sticking a dipstick in the engine to check the oil. It is more like looking at the balance in your checking account to see if you have enough to cover the check you are about to write. It is, in other words, a comparison, but it seems to be a feeling.
But if it’s really a comparison—a ratio—then both terms need to be looked at. You can no longer ask whether you are tired; you must ask whether you are so tired that you really should not engage in X, attend Y, or attempt Z. And then you would need to know something about what X, Y, and Z are, since they seem to be substantially involved in whether you are feeling tired. What if X is something you really love to do; Y is something that feels “right” to you, it feels like a calling; and Z is something that needs to be done and you are the person who is there. What if?
Some of the people who read this blog—both followers and lurkers are welcome—are old and male. I want to talk to you for a little bit. Have you had the experience of lying in bed in the morning, trying to sort out your day or your relationships or your life? You feel just awful. Maybe you didn’t sleep well. Maybe some part of your body hurts. Maybe some feeling is worrisome; does it portend something dreadful? Then you remember that the first thing you need to do (after Starbucks has done its magic for you that morning) is to take the car in to get the oil changed. Without thinking about it, you find yourself asking whether you feel well enough to take the car in. This is a Z kind of event. You decide that you can do that and all of a sudden you feel better. Ever had that happen? It happens to me all the time.
As an experience—not this reconstruction I just did—it is the difference between feeling tired at 5:30 and not tired at 5:40. It feels like I surveyed my body at 5:30 and discovered a serious condition of some sort. I went back to check it at 5:40 and discovered that it was not there and, in my judgment as of 5:40, probably never had been.
So here’s a thought. I’m sixty years old and I am rich with X’s, Y's, and Z’s. Now I’m seventy years old and I am poor in X’s, Y’s, and Z’s. I don’t have very many and the ones I do have are moth-eaten or threadbare. Specifying, just for the purposes of this paragraph, that the actual condition of my body is the same in those two settings, I would guess that I would “feel tired” a lot more at seventy although I am “not actually more tired.” It feels like being tired,but it is, in fact, a slow decay of my reasons not to feel tired.
So here’s another thought. I’m seventy years old and I have these pathetic X’s, Y’s, and Z’s—these past their prime “reasons not to feel tired.” Something happens. A romance. A new neighbor. A new job. A stroke. A religious vision. Anything that will, just for the moment, restore this fund of “reasons not to feel tired.” Result, I stop feeling tired. Note that this is not the recurrence of reasons not to feel tired. All this processing happens off-stage, out of my awareness, and it happens very quickly. My experience has nothing to do with reasons at all. I stop feeling tired. So this is too good to be true, right?
Yes. It is. Certainly it’s too good for me to believe it. At least, it isn’t anything I’ve ever experienced. Let’s go back to 5:30 a.m. I feel tired. In the absence of my refurbished X’s, Y’s, and Z’s, I will go on feeling tired. I will say, “I AM tired.” But with these new X’s, I experience something else instead. I say, “Am I so tired that I can’t do X?” The answer is, “No. You feel good enough to do X.” So I get up and start getting ready to do X. As I get going, I either feel better or stop monitoring; I’m really not sure which.
So the “experience” of so many tired old men is, by this understanding, a calculation masquerading as an experience. It would be shown to be, if we had a camera fast enough and pointed at the right spot, an assessment of the value of the task, an assessment of the energy required (mental and physical) to address the task and a report, finally, to the part of my mind that I get to see, that I am not THAT tired.
By this account, you can feed stimulants to your body or to your available tasks. X’s, Y’s, and Z’s on steroids are pretty much the same as you on steroids, because it is the ratio that matters. And if you are diddled into thinking that “being tired” is an experience you are having and that as an experience it is “true,” or at least, “not likely to be challenged,” then you have thrown away the half of the ratio that could be most useful to you.
I want to end here. This argument is not essentially a religious argument. Whatever it is that beefs up the task to be done (or that summons you, particularly, to do it), will perform the same function. Hatred would do it if it were focused. Communist conquest would do it. The implacable blandness of bureaucrats would do it. The urgent goals of sects I have never heard of would do it.
But I think the reason this question has been buzzing around in my mind for so long came to me in the form of a prayer. Maybe it’s just a quip that is presented as a prayer. My brother Mark is the one who passed it along to me. Here it is: “Thank you, Lord, for giving me work to do that is so important that it doesn’t matter all that much whether I want to do it.”
I don’t know any way to tell whether I am tired than to know whether I am feeling tired. I think that is the best I can do, despite the fact that I know “feelings of tiredness” are, like all feelings, subject to misinterpretation. The question could easily be rephrased as “Do I know when I have feelings of tiredness?” The answer to that one is, “Yes, of course you do. But do you trust them?”
Why would I not trust my feeling tired? I have had the experience, and I’ll bet you have too, of “being tired,” and then having those feelings vanish in the flicker of an eye. You know as much about tiredness as I do. Can you get “un-tired” instantly? I don’t think so. What physical mechanisms would do such a thing? So what does it mean that “feeling tired” can vanish instantly? It means, at least, that: a) “being tired” and “feeling tired” are not the same thing, b) that they vary in their rhythms and c) very probably in their causes as well.
Since the fundamental concept is not clear to me, let me proceed by means of examples. When I ran a lot of 10K races, I noticed that there would come a time when my mind shifted over. It felt like gears being shifted in an automatic transmission. Since I was running so many races, I had a lot of opportunity to locate just where in the race that occurred and why. My conclusion, based on all this “research” (many races, but N = 1) was that at that point, my mind shifted over from monitoring how I was feeling to projecting whether I had enough stuff to finish the race.
I am quite sure that this shift in the focus of my mind’s continual audit of my energy coincided with “not feeling tired” any more. Now I am wondering whether that new question actually caused me not to feel tired any more. I’ve had the same lift in reading a demanding or dull (either one will work) article. I am slogging along, feeling slow, maybe feeling sleepy. I turn back to see how much more I have to read in that session. I learn that I am almost done and decide to finish up. I have “enough,” I find to finish. I discover, oddly that the tiredness has gone away. I have even found myself, to my embarrassment, turning back a few pages to see what I might have missed while I was slogging through the swamp and finding that what I had missed was really interesting. What is going on there?
So that’s the question, really. I said I have “an approach,” and I do, but the approach has problems of its own. What I think is that what I call “feeling tired” is not the result of a measurement like sticking a dipstick in the engine to check the oil. It is more like looking at the balance in your checking account to see if you have enough to cover the check you are about to write. It is, in other words, a comparison, but it seems to be a feeling.
But if it’s really a comparison—a ratio—then both terms need to be looked at. You can no longer ask whether you are tired; you must ask whether you are so tired that you really should not engage in X, attend Y, or attempt Z. And then you would need to know something about what X, Y, and Z are, since they seem to be substantially involved in whether you are feeling tired. What if X is something you really love to do; Y is something that feels “right” to you, it feels like a calling; and Z is something that needs to be done and you are the person who is there. What if?
Some of the people who read this blog—both followers and lurkers are welcome—are old and male. I want to talk to you for a little bit. Have you had the experience of lying in bed in the morning, trying to sort out your day or your relationships or your life? You feel just awful. Maybe you didn’t sleep well. Maybe some part of your body hurts. Maybe some feeling is worrisome; does it portend something dreadful? Then you remember that the first thing you need to do (after Starbucks has done its magic for you that morning) is to take the car in to get the oil changed. Without thinking about it, you find yourself asking whether you feel well enough to take the car in. This is a Z kind of event. You decide that you can do that and all of a sudden you feel better. Ever had that happen? It happens to me all the time.
As an experience—not this reconstruction I just did—it is the difference between feeling tired at 5:30 and not tired at 5:40. It feels like I surveyed my body at 5:30 and discovered a serious condition of some sort. I went back to check it at 5:40 and discovered that it was not there and, in my judgment as of 5:40, probably never had been.
So here’s a thought. I’m sixty years old and I am rich with X’s, Y's, and Z’s. Now I’m seventy years old and I am poor in X’s, Y’s, and Z’s. I don’t have very many and the ones I do have are moth-eaten or threadbare. Specifying, just for the purposes of this paragraph, that the actual condition of my body is the same in those two settings, I would guess that I would “feel tired” a lot more at seventy although I am “not actually more tired.” It feels like being tired,but it is, in fact, a slow decay of my reasons not to feel tired.
So here’s another thought. I’m seventy years old and I have these pathetic X’s, Y’s, and Z’s—these past their prime “reasons not to feel tired.” Something happens. A romance. A new neighbor. A new job. A stroke. A religious vision. Anything that will, just for the moment, restore this fund of “reasons not to feel tired.” Result, I stop feeling tired. Note that this is not the recurrence of reasons not to feel tired. All this processing happens off-stage, out of my awareness, and it happens very quickly. My experience has nothing to do with reasons at all. I stop feeling tired. So this is too good to be true, right?
Yes. It is. Certainly it’s too good for me to believe it. At least, it isn’t anything I’ve ever experienced. Let’s go back to 5:30 a.m. I feel tired. In the absence of my refurbished X’s, Y’s, and Z’s, I will go on feeling tired. I will say, “I AM tired.” But with these new X’s, I experience something else instead. I say, “Am I so tired that I can’t do X?” The answer is, “No. You feel good enough to do X.” So I get up and start getting ready to do X. As I get going, I either feel better or stop monitoring; I’m really not sure which.
So the “experience” of so many tired old men is, by this understanding, a calculation masquerading as an experience. It would be shown to be, if we had a camera fast enough and pointed at the right spot, an assessment of the value of the task, an assessment of the energy required (mental and physical) to address the task and a report, finally, to the part of my mind that I get to see, that I am not THAT tired.
By this account, you can feed stimulants to your body or to your available tasks. X’s, Y’s, and Z’s on steroids are pretty much the same as you on steroids, because it is the ratio that matters. And if you are diddled into thinking that “being tired” is an experience you are having and that as an experience it is “true,” or at least, “not likely to be challenged,” then you have thrown away the half of the ratio that could be most useful to you.
I want to end here. This argument is not essentially a religious argument. Whatever it is that beefs up the task to be done (or that summons you, particularly, to do it), will perform the same function. Hatred would do it if it were focused. Communist conquest would do it. The implacable blandness of bureaucrats would do it. The urgent goals of sects I have never heard of would do it.
But I think the reason this question has been buzzing around in my mind for so long came to me in the form of a prayer. Maybe it’s just a quip that is presented as a prayer. My brother Mark is the one who passed it along to me. Here it is: “Thank you, Lord, for giving me work to do that is so important that it doesn’t matter all that much whether I want to do it.”
Monday, October 4, 2010
Question: Where is Christof's Tent?
Answer: It’s hard to tell. It isn’t anywhere near where our tents are.
Let’s start at the movie’s final scene. Truman has been dissatisfied despite living in “paradise” all his life. When odd things begin to happen, he starts looking at everything more critically. Under his suspicious inspection, the whole charade of The Truman Show begins to unravel. Truman discovers that he is a prisoner and has always been a prisoner. He launches a daring escape and, right on the edge of success, he hears a voice calling him. Here’s what happens.
That, in any case, is where God’s tent is. Where is Christof’s tent? It’s not with Truman. It’s not anywhere in Seahaven. It is, in fact, on the 221st floor of the Omnicam Ecosphere, far above “the world” where Truman lives. Christof is, in the most literal sense, “the man in the moon.” Here, we see him "directing" Truman's life.
OK, so Christof is up there and Christ is down here. What difference does it make? Frankly, it’s hard to say when you take the question on directly. Fortunately, we aren’t doing that. We are going to look at Christof’s appeal in terms of its face value. In fact, there’s a good deal wrong with Christof’s position, but let’s just look at the argument. In answer to Truman’s question, “Who are you?” Christof says, essentially, “I am the producer of the most popular and remunerative television show ever made.” You’d have to say that‘s impressive. It will stand him in good stead when he goes looking for his next job. It doesn’t do much for Truman. Nor does his answer to Truman’s next question, “Then who am I?” The answer, “You are the star,” establishes no relationship between Truman and Christof. It establishes a relationship between Truman and The Truman Show.
Let’s say that relationship, the one between Truman and the show, is Christof’s first pitch. It is too high. Truman watches it go by.
The relationship question has been asked and answered. There is a distant and professional relationship from Christof’s side. From Truman’s side, there is no relationship at all. There are no funds in Christof’s bank, Truman Branch, and he will try shortly to withdraw some resources from that account. It doesn’t work.
Reality is Christof’s second pitch. It’s too low. Truman doesn’t go for it. It looks like this.
“So, if you’re the director and I’m the star, what in all my life was real?” Christof’s answer, properly understood, is, “Nothing was real. Nothing you ever experienced was what you understood it to be.” For Truman, the meaning of Christof’s answer—“You were real”—means only that Truman, naïve and misled, reacted authentically to the fraudulent life Christof gave him.
Safety here in Seahaven is the third pitch. It’s right down the heart of the plate. It’s true. Truman will always be “safe” on The Truman Show. Truman can’t let it go, but he fouls it off. It’s true he will be safe, but he doesn’t want safety. He will, after he has escaped, but not now. Christof contrasts the world where Truman has lived with the world outside. The world outside, Christof says, is filled with lies and deceit. Further, for those outside, the consequences of falling for those lies are painful. Here, as the star of The Truman Show, Truman is “safe.”
This much is true. To recognize the bitter truth of it, we need to remember that it was Christof’s idea to raise Truman on an island and give him a debilitating fear of water. It was Christof’s idea that Truman would be raised to “know his limits” (as his faux father said) and to give up being an explorer because everything has already been discovered (as his teacher said). So in offering Truman a life of safety, Christof also offers him a life of fear and radically downsized aspirations.
Clearly, this is not a good time for Christof to play this card. Truman is on the water in a sailboat (where he has always believed his father died) and heading for the real world as fast as the wind will take him. Truman has already foregone the kind of “safety” Christof can give him.
The fourth pitch—it is now two and one—is that Truman is not the best person to be making these decisions about his own life. It’s wide.
In this pitch, Christof recounts lovingly what of Truman’s life he has seen: the birth, the first step, the lost tooth. All seen from a distance, of course. Truman’s retort is sharp. It is the first anger we have seen from him. “You never had a camera inside my head!” What Christof knows, Truman charges, is what can be known by watching his behavior. You can’t delude a man completely and then form good judgments based on his behavior. “If you wanted to know me,” says Truman, essentially, “you would have to come inside my mind. You have never asked and I would never have agreed.” Christof has no empathy, having never pitched his tent with Truman. And further, says Truman, he has no insight either. Even Christof’s 5000 cameras have not captured Truman’s hopes and dreams.
Christof is now up against it. The count is three and one and this one has to be over the plate. He still has his best pitch.
You “are” a star. That is who you are. I “am” your director. That is who I am. You belong here…with me. What Truman has been learning in the last few days and what has been decisively confirmed in the last few minutes is that he does not “belong” with Christof. He does not belong “to” Christof. He belongs, for the first time in his life, to himself and, if all goes well, to Lauren.
Truman watches closely. The pitch is inside. And he walks. Out.
It has been said through the centuries that the notion of “incarnation,” of God’s pitching His tent among ours, is incomprehensible. An enfleshed spirit is like a square circle. It has been said that it is a scandal. The glory of the spirit should not be caged in a prison of mere flesh. It has been said that it is preposterous. The Creator of the world comes to live in a little town on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea? Please!
There are good things to be said for these objections and maybe someday I’ll say them. Today, I want to look at the other side of the argument. If the divine Word has, in fact, lived with us in Seahaven, then He knows what life is like in Seahaven. He is the answer the Incarnation gives us about why Truman, in a completely secure life, yearns for “something more,” something for which he has no name.
If the divine Word lived with us in Seahaven, then he knows how hard it is to continue to want to see the truth. He knows how easy it is to deny the deepest call and to settle for what is shallow and comfortable.
As a result of the Incarnation, God can look us in the eye and say, “I know who you are.” He can say, “I have prepared a place for you. It is not Seahaven.” He can say, “Going where you must go will not be easy. You will need, in fact, to leave the old Truman—who you thought you were—behind. But I will help. And you can do it.”
This is what I am calling “approaching the Incarnation” from the back side. I’m sure it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I see it differently when I do that. It seems new, somehow; more vivid, more appealing. For me, that makes it worth doing. You can make your own decision. There’s a door right over there marked Exit.
[1] Brown deals with this passage in the first volume of his The Gospel According to John, page 4. The translation of the passage is not in dispute. I cite Brown because I like the clarity of his phrasing.
[2] The only other use of this verb occurs in Revelation 21:3 “Behold the dwelling of God is with men; He will dwell (skenoun) with them.”
The theological current in The Truman Show isn’t very far beneath the surface. I saw, in the relationship between Christof and Truman, a new and exciting look at the Christian doctrine called the Incarnation. I want to talk about just that little piece of the movie, so if it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, you might want to consult the plot summary I have attached here.
I was ready to be excited about it. The Incarnation—the actual presence of God among us in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus—is squarely orthodox. It is also, when it has been referred to in your hearing many hundreds of times and never really cherished, just…well.. square. Christof’s final appeal to Truman falls in the “close but no cigar” category as a ploy, but it falls well short of the Incarnation and I found it clarifying to spend some time looking at just how short it falls and in what ways.
This post is a little on the long side. I apologize for that. I have three excuses; none really adequate. The first is that the dialogue itself is indispensable and takes up some space. Ditto for the textual basis of “incarnation.” The baseball metaphor isn’t strictly necessary, but I liked the outcome--“Truman walks”—so very much that I was not willing to part with it.
Let’s start at the movie’s final scene. Truman has been dissatisfied despite living in “paradise” all his life. When odd things begin to happen, he starts looking at everything more critically. Under his suspicious inspection, the whole charade of The Truman Show begins to unravel. Truman discovers that he is a prisoner and has always been a prisoner. He launches a daring escape and, right on the edge of success, he hears a voice calling him. Here’s what happens.
Christof: Truman. (Truman whips around trying to locate the voice. What he actually sees is a vast sky with a brilliant sun coming out from behind the clouds) It’s OK. You can talk. I can hear you.
Truman: Who are you?
Christof: I’m the creator…of a television show that brings hope and joy to millions.
Truman: Then who am I?
Christof: You are the star
Truman: Was nothing real?
Christof: You were real. There’s no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you. The same lies. The same deceit. But in my world, you have nothing to fear. I know you better than you knowyourself.
Truman: You never had a camera inside my head.
Christof: You are afraid. That’s why you can’t leave. It’s OK, Truman. I understand. I’ve been watching you your whole life. I was watching when you were born. I was watching when you took your first step. I was watching on your first day of school.
(Chuckles as he remembers)…the episode where you lost your first tooth. You can’t leave, Truman. You belong here. With me. Talk to me. Say something. (Agitated) Say something, goddammit, you’re on television. You’re live to the whole world.Truman: In case I don’t see ya’, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. (Truman takes a long theatrical bow, turns, and goes through the Exit door into the dark.)
So let’s return to the initial question, which is, “Where is Christof’s tent?” The imagery of the tent comes from John 1: 14. Raymond Brown translates it, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”[1] Brown points out that the verb here, skenoun, which he renders as “made his dwelling” is related to skene, “tent,” so it is, literally, “to pitch a tent.”[2]
A crude and common way to describe the Incarnation is to say that God (in the Book of the Revelation) or the divine Word (in the Gospel of John) has pitched his tent with ours. If our tents have bad drainage, then His tent has bad drainage as well. If the ground is hard to sleep on for us, it is hard to sleep on for Him. We won’t even talk about how far it is to the latrine.
That, in any case, is where God’s tent is. Where is Christof’s tent? It’s not with Truman. It’s not anywhere in Seahaven. It is, in fact, on the 221st floor of the Omnicam Ecosphere, far above “the world” where Truman lives. Christof is, in the most literal sense, “the man in the moon.” Here, we see him "directing" Truman's life.
OK, so Christof is up there and Christ is down here. What difference does it make? Frankly, it’s hard to say when you take the question on directly. Fortunately, we aren’t doing that. We are going to look at Christof’s appeal in terms of its face value. In fact, there’s a good deal wrong with Christof’s position, but let’s just look at the argument. In answer to Truman’s question, “Who are you?” Christof says, essentially, “I am the producer of the most popular and remunerative television show ever made.” You’d have to say that‘s impressive. It will stand him in good stead when he goes looking for his next job. It doesn’t do much for Truman. Nor does his answer to Truman’s next question, “Then who am I?” The answer, “You are the star,” establishes no relationship between Truman and Christof. It establishes a relationship between Truman and The Truman Show. Let’s say that relationship, the one between Truman and the show, is Christof’s first pitch. It is too high. Truman watches it go by.
The relationship question has been asked and answered. There is a distant and professional relationship from Christof’s side. From Truman’s side, there is no relationship at all. There are no funds in Christof’s bank, Truman Branch, and he will try shortly to withdraw some resources from that account. It doesn’t work.
Reality is Christof’s second pitch. It’s too low. Truman doesn’t go for it. It looks like this.
“So, if you’re the director and I’m the star, what in all my life was real?” Christof’s answer, properly understood, is, “Nothing was real. Nothing you ever experienced was what you understood it to be.” For Truman, the meaning of Christof’s answer—“You were real”—means only that Truman, naïve and misled, reacted authentically to the fraudulent life Christof gave him.
Safety here in Seahaven is the third pitch. It’s right down the heart of the plate. It’s true. Truman will always be “safe” on The Truman Show. Truman can’t let it go, but he fouls it off. It’s true he will be safe, but he doesn’t want safety. He will, after he has escaped, but not now. Christof contrasts the world where Truman has lived with the world outside. The world outside, Christof says, is filled with lies and deceit. Further, for those outside, the consequences of falling for those lies are painful. Here, as the star of The Truman Show, Truman is “safe.”
This much is true. To recognize the bitter truth of it, we need to remember that it was Christof’s idea to raise Truman on an island and give him a debilitating fear of water. It was Christof’s idea that Truman would be raised to “know his limits” (as his faux father said) and to give up being an explorer because everything has already been discovered (as his teacher said). So in offering Truman a life of safety, Christof also offers him a life of fear and radically downsized aspirations.
Clearly, this is not a good time for Christof to play this card. Truman is on the water in a sailboat (where he has always believed his father died) and heading for the real world as fast as the wind will take him. Truman has already foregone the kind of “safety” Christof can give him.
The fourth pitch—it is now two and one—is that Truman is not the best person to be making these decisions about his own life. It’s wide.
In this pitch, Christof recounts lovingly what of Truman’s life he has seen: the birth, the first step, the lost tooth. All seen from a distance, of course. Truman’s retort is sharp. It is the first anger we have seen from him. “You never had a camera inside my head!” What Christof knows, Truman charges, is what can be known by watching his behavior. You can’t delude a man completely and then form good judgments based on his behavior. “If you wanted to know me,” says Truman, essentially, “you would have to come inside my mind. You have never asked and I would never have agreed.” Christof has no empathy, having never pitched his tent with Truman. And further, says Truman, he has no insight either. Even Christof’s 5000 cameras have not captured Truman’s hopes and dreams.
Christof is now up against it. The count is three and one and this one has to be over the plate. He still has his best pitch.
You “are” a star. That is who you are. I “am” your director. That is who I am. You belong here…with me. What Truman has been learning in the last few days and what has been decisively confirmed in the last few minutes is that he does not “belong” with Christof. He does not belong “to” Christof. He belongs, for the first time in his life, to himself and, if all goes well, to Lauren.
Truman watches closely. The pitch is inside. And he walks. Out.
It has been said through the centuries that the notion of “incarnation,” of God’s pitching His tent among ours, is incomprehensible. An enfleshed spirit is like a square circle. It has been said that it is a scandal. The glory of the spirit should not be caged in a prison of mere flesh. It has been said that it is preposterous. The Creator of the world comes to live in a little town on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea? Please!
There are good things to be said for these objections and maybe someday I’ll say them. Today, I want to look at the other side of the argument. If the divine Word has, in fact, lived with us in Seahaven, then He knows what life is like in Seahaven. He is the answer the Incarnation gives us about why Truman, in a completely secure life, yearns for “something more,” something for which he has no name.
If the divine Word lived with us in Seahaven, then he knows how hard it is to continue to want to see the truth. He knows how easy it is to deny the deepest call and to settle for what is shallow and comfortable.
As a result of the Incarnation, God can look us in the eye and say, “I know who you are.” He can say, “I have prepared a place for you. It is not Seahaven.” He can say, “Going where you must go will not be easy. You will need, in fact, to leave the old Truman—who you thought you were—behind. But I will help. And you can do it.”
This is what I am calling “approaching the Incarnation” from the back side. I’m sure it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I see it differently when I do that. It seems new, somehow; more vivid, more appealing. For me, that makes it worth doing. You can make your own decision. There’s a door right over there marked Exit.
[1] Brown deals with this passage in the first volume of his The Gospel According to John, page 4. The translation of the passage is not in dispute. I cite Brown because I like the clarity of his phrasing.
[2] The only other use of this verb occurs in Revelation 21:3 “Behold the dwelling of God is with men; He will dwell (skenoun) with them.”
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Politics of Self-respect 1
I’ve worked on this one for a few weeks recently. As you see by the caricature, however, I’ve been working on it for a lot longer than that. The Politics of Self-respect is a course I designed and offered as part of my doctoral program in 1973.[1] So as I look at the topic, I see that I’m going to have to take it in two parts. This one will be about what “self-respect" is. The next, about how our need for self-respect affects our politics and, of course, how it affects us.
Self-respect. What is it? Particularly, how is it different from “self-esteem?” Let’s start with the etymologies, although there are only about one and a half to work with. Scholars are wary of saying what the roots of esteem are. The OED doesn’t even try. My old red Webster’s says it comes from a hypothetical root *ais-temos, “one who cuts copper,” so someone who mints money. The meaning given for the noun is “favorable opinion, high regard.” Respect is a word that is not about the value of the object; it is about the process of looking. The past participle respectus is formed from respecere, “to look back on, to look at.”
I think it would be easy to take “looking” as fundamental, when it is, in fact, a metaphor, but let’s take it seriously for just a moment. I recently posted a celebration of this year’s return to school and called it “The Eight Answers.” The conversation I am about to recount occurs in the same movie (Born Yesterday) just a few minutes later.
Billie, the Vegas dancer, has learned “the eight answers” and has used them very well at a party. As they are walking out, Paul, who taught her those answers, is giddy at their success. Billie is not giddy. She knows she is not the person she seemed to be when she delivered those answers, but in doing that little bit of theater, she had an experience no one could have foreseen. Here’s how it goes.
That’s not respect, certainly, but…pardon me, briefly…it is “spect.” The looking at her as if she knew things, as if they had “a high regard” for her, is a way she can not look at herself. She knows she’s a fraud. But the simple experience of being looked at like that raised in her mind the faint possibility that she could come to look at herself that way; that she could have that respect for herself. Which is what the rest of the movie is about, but we will have to leave it here.
Self-respect is a respect, a high opinion, you have as a result of “looking at yourself.” It is, in the beginning, an inference drawn. It isn’t “feeling like you are a good person,” so much as it is thinking you have done something well or, more generally, that you do that kind of thing well. You might value knowing how to repair a car engine or knowing how to project yourself at a meeting so that you will be listened to or knowing how to hear those wonderful dissonances that English-speakers produce, often accidentally, and how to enjoy them. If you value those things generally, and perform them well, you will have respect for yourself in that area. If there are other such areas, you will come to have respect for yourself generally. You will have self-respect.
I know there’s more to it, but sometimes you can’t say it all at once.
Clearly, you need to get enough distance from yourself to see what you are doing. You need to have a framework that allows you to evaluate your work in the same way you would evaluate the work of anyone else. All that seems clear to me. But how to do you get that framework in the first place? You have to choose a framework that enables evaluation and you aren’t competent to build that framework yourself. We turn here to Alisdair MacIntyre’s notion of “practices.”
I’ve hyperlinked a section from his best-known book, After Virtue, here, but I can summarize the point he makes. Then, after, a simple application and a modest little rant about the rage for self-esteem, and I’ll bring this part to a close.
MacIntyre says you have to value “goods internal to the practice.” It seems a very powerful argument to me. Here are three pieces of it.
If you can accept the standards, which may make no sense to you at first, then you can look at yourself from the vantage point they give you. And as you play up to the standards, you can appreciate your own work and value yourself—value your self—for doing that work. You value yourself by the same standards that you would value in anyone. It is the judgment of the standards, not of the insatiable inner “me first,” that are valued.
The question this raises, in the model of a “politics” of “self-respect” is this: can we have a politics that enables, recognizes, and rewards the development of self-respect by its citizens? Yes, I think we can. But the trip is going to lead us into some unfamiliar territory and it’s a trip we will have to postpone until next time.
[1] This caricature was drawn by Kathy Kriara, who was supposed to be taking a final exam, but who couldn’t remember anything at exam time. This is what she turned in instead of an exam paper. It’s a little odd of me, but the fact is I can’t remember anything about that exam except that Kathy gave me this picture.
Self-respect. What is it? Particularly, how is it different from “self-esteem?” Let’s start with the etymologies, although there are only about one and a half to work with. Scholars are wary of saying what the roots of esteem are. The OED doesn’t even try. My old red Webster’s says it comes from a hypothetical root *ais-temos, “one who cuts copper,” so someone who mints money. The meaning given for the noun is “favorable opinion, high regard.” Respect is a word that is not about the value of the object; it is about the process of looking. The past participle respectus is formed from respecere, “to look back on, to look at.”
I think it would be easy to take “looking” as fundamental, when it is, in fact, a metaphor, but let’s take it seriously for just a moment. I recently posted a celebration of this year’s return to school and called it “The Eight Answers.” The conversation I am about to recount occurs in the same movie (Born Yesterday) just a few minutes later.
Billie, the Vegas dancer, has learned “the eight answers” and has used them very well at a party. As they are walking out, Paul, who taught her those answers, is giddy at their success. Billie is not giddy. She knows she is not the person she seemed to be when she delivered those answers, but in doing that little bit of theater, she had an experience no one could have foreseen. Here’s how it goes.
Billie: But, Paul, there was a time right in the middle when I was sayin'
something and everybody was lookin’ at me like I knew what I was talkin’ about
and I liked it so much.
That’s not respect, certainly, but…pardon me, briefly…it is “spect.” The looking at her as if she knew things, as if they had “a high regard” for her, is a way she can not look at herself. She knows she’s a fraud. But the simple experience of being looked at like that raised in her mind the faint possibility that she could come to look at herself that way; that she could have that respect for herself. Which is what the rest of the movie is about, but we will have to leave it here.
Self-respect is a respect, a high opinion, you have as a result of “looking at yourself.” It is, in the beginning, an inference drawn. It isn’t “feeling like you are a good person,” so much as it is thinking you have done something well or, more generally, that you do that kind of thing well. You might value knowing how to repair a car engine or knowing how to project yourself at a meeting so that you will be listened to or knowing how to hear those wonderful dissonances that English-speakers produce, often accidentally, and how to enjoy them. If you value those things generally, and perform them well, you will have respect for yourself in that area. If there are other such areas, you will come to have respect for yourself generally. You will have self-respect.
I know there’s more to it, but sometimes you can’t say it all at once.
Clearly, you need to get enough distance from yourself to see what you are doing. You need to have a framework that allows you to evaluate your work in the same way you would evaluate the work of anyone else. All that seems clear to me. But how to do you get that framework in the first place? You have to choose a framework that enables evaluation and you aren’t competent to build that framework yourself. We turn here to Alisdair MacIntyre’s notion of “practices.”
I’ve hyperlinked a section from his best-known book, After Virtue, here, but I can summarize the point he makes. Then, after, a simple application and a modest little rant about the rage for self-esteem, and I’ll bring this part to a close.
MacIntyre says you have to value “goods internal to the practice.” It seems a very powerful argument to me. Here are three pieces of it.
I asked earlier how you can get far enough away to “look at” yourself, potentially to “respect” yourself. Here is the beginning of the answer. You accept “the standards of the practice” as right and your own performance, where it diverges from those standards, as wrong. You stand where the standards are; that’s how you get the distance.A practice involves standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the achievement of goods. To enter into a practice is to accept the authority of those standards and the inadequacy of my own performance as judged by them. it is to subject my own attitudes, choices, preferences and tastes to the standards which currently and partially define the practice.
Notice that questions of authority precede questions of respect. They do not precede questions of esteem. You can be taught that your performance is good because you are a good person or because you tried really hard or because, despite all the other things you might have done, you simply showed up.Practices…are not themselves immune from criticism, but nonetheless we cannot be initiated into a practice without accepting the authority of the best standards realized so far.
If, on starting to listen to music, I do not accept my own incapacity to judge correctly, I will never learn to hear, let alone to appreciate, Bartok’s last quartets. If, on starting to play baseball, I do not accept that others know better than I when to throw a fast ball and when not, I will never learn to appreciate good pitching let alone to pitch.This series of examples is what clinched the argument for me on first reading. Bartok and baseball. There is also an extension of the argument here. Not only will you never learn competent performance without accepting the authority of the practices; you will also never learn to appreciate the competent performance of others. And you know he’s right about that. How many times have you had to suspend your own initial judgment—you called it “my own judgment” at the time—to really hear a piece of music or really watch a ballet or fully appreciate a quarterback draw?
If you can accept the standards, which may make no sense to you at first, then you can look at yourself from the vantage point they give you. And as you play up to the standards, you can appreciate your own work and value yourself—value your self—for doing that work. You value yourself by the same standards that you would value in anyone. It is the judgment of the standards, not of the insatiable inner “me first,” that are valued.
The question this raises, in the model of a “politics” of “self-respect” is this: can we have a politics that enables, recognizes, and rewards the development of self-respect by its citizens? Yes, I think we can. But the trip is going to lead us into some unfamiliar territory and it’s a trip we will have to postpone until next time.
[1] This caricature was drawn by Kathy Kriara, who was supposed to be taking a final exam, but who couldn’t remember anything at exam time. This is what she turned in instead of an exam paper. It’s a little odd of me, but the fact is I can’t remember anything about that exam except that Kathy gave me this picture.
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