32 posts from March 2008

The Documentary of the night was Declining By Degrees: Higher Education At Risk. I would write more about it but after a 12 hour day today in my higher education job, I don't have a lot of energy. A.  portion of the documentary is about the lives of the adjunct faculty who often teach 8-9 classes a semester to make a living. Wasn't hard to relate to that. A portion was about universities full of students who can't be bothered to read their assigned texts. Wasn't hard to relate to that. A portion was about University basketball teams and how coaches are paid many times more than the University Professors and even Presidents; athletes that spend 80% of their time practicing; professors who say that for $65,000 it is insulting to tell them they need to teach kids how to write; college students who don't study more than an hour a night; professors who have to decide between promotion and educational quality.

All of this makes "sense" to me as colleges become more market driven and students are making choices about where they are going to go to college, often doing so on the basis of non-educational factors like work-out facilities, sports teams, landscaping, and dorm luxuries. As one President described it, "It's an arms race and we are going to win". Meanwhile cuts in state funding and increases in tuition are beginning to drive a selection process that places students, by means of an economic "sorting hat" regardless of merit (unless they are at the very top), in a caste system of schools based on their financial situation.

It is hard to know how to go about complaining. The documentary makes it clear that so many students are not applying themselves, are using college as a patio on which to drink and party. There is NO WAY that I want to fund their irresponsibility. No way. And yet on the other hand, you have exceptionally bright kids who are working their buts off to make it through who are being forced out or into Community Colleges.

I need to get some sleep. I have a long day of teaching ahead of me tomorrow. Its almost 2:00 in the morning. 

Question for Comment: How would you best prepare a smart kid to get a free college education?   

A controversial new anti-Koranic video was recently produced and banned in Holland. It demonstrates the problem that Islamic people are having everywhere.  It is called FITNA. I will let you go find it if you want. It essentially superimposes specific verses from the Koran advocating violence against unbelievers with images and sound files of Islamic extremists advocating the same in contemporary society.

Interestingly, the film was mentioned by a student in the Netherlands who is taking one of my online classes right now. This week, we are studying McCarthyism.You can, I think, see the connection:

"Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!" Geert Wiliders.

This guy so reminds me of Dr. Pfander in my Masters Thesis:

"AMSTERDAM – Faction leader for the Freedom Party Geert Wilders is not considering making any apology to Saudi Arabia for his recent comments on the Koran. He said this on Sunday in response to a report in the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, which wrote that the Islamic country has complained to the Dutch government about the comments.

A spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs in The Hague said on Sunday that the Saudi ambassador had in fact done so “informally.” There has not been any official complaint however, he said.

The newspaper claims that the Saudi embassy in The Hague demanded that Wilders recant his comments and apologize to Muslims. The MP said he would not even consider it.

“Are they completely mad? It is scandalous that a country that does not recognize freedom of speech is telling me what to do. They had better learn that as an MP here you are allowed to say what you want.”

Wilders said earlier this week in an interview with newspaper De Pers that Muslims should tear out and discard half the Koran if they want to live in the Netherlands."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1787609/posts

Would the Dutch tolerate the forced censoring of large portions of the Christian Bible in the Netherlands? W hat is the difference? I suspect that Christians have, whether they admit it or not, come to the place where they no longer think that King  David's conception of God was entirely accurate. Muslims are still, apparently having that argument. I suspect that it is very unfair to produce a video that pretends that they are not and FITNA may be that video.

Questions for Comment: have you ever read the Qur'an for yourself? How does one balance its advocacy for jihad with its advocacy for peace? Is it in a different category altogether from the scriptures that Christians appeal to?

Tonight's movie was Goya's Ghosts. I will just say with a critic at Rotten Tomatoes that it is a movie that should have been "put to the question" before being released. The sets are cool. The art is cool. The inquisition reminds one of the bumper sticker "Mean People Suck", and the moral of the story may well be, unlike Goya's art, too obvious to be artistic: Karma works only once in a while but if you find it working on you, the effect can be quite arresting. You just never know when that wheel of fortune will turn.

I also learned that Goya, when he did portraits, could be "visually undiplomatic" - In short, sometimes he painted powerful people somewhat too much as they are for his own good.

All criticisms aside, one cannot watch this movie without an awareness that it is a movie that is about more than a period and place in time. It is about Nazi Germany and it is about Abu Ghraib. It is as much about Guantanamo as it is about Madrid. It is as much about the Patriot Act as it is about the Inquisition and the French invasion of Spain under the guise of liberte'. The opening scene  shows us the Inquisition determining that "desperate times demand desperate measures" so to speak ... and it is a reminder that anyone who is going to be the sort to take a job torturing people, is going to be the sort of person that is not going to care about the morality of going beyond what is permitted.

For all sorts of reasons, torture and brutality in the cause of some sort of "good" is just a bad idea and artists like Goya (and no doubt this film director) did the right thing when they exposed it in all its ugliness.

"Goya's causes for discouragement were not confined to personal misfortunes [He had lost his wife and his hearing]. In 1808 his beloved country was overrun by the hordes of what was possibly the most ruthless invading army of modern history. He has left notes in letters, and in his works, of the scenes of which he was an eye-witness-murder, and rape, and cruelty to children. "I saw this," he writes on the margin of his sketches. He saw his fellow citizens shot down, unarmed, without trial-by platoons, one crowd after another. He saw the mutilation of the dead. He saw the heroic and desperate resistance of his people, "ferocious and admirable," beyond all telling, where women fought as savagely as men and died resisting. And his soul was filled with despair, and pity, and with horrible, demoniac laughter at the senselessness of war-and of mankind."

A Self-Portrait by Goya

Alfred Vance Churchill
The Art Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 1. (Mar., 1931), pp. 4-11

Question for Comment: Why is it that some movies simply do not fool you - that that you see actors playing parts - not characters when you watch them?

Tonight, the boys and I watched some episodes from E2, a series of documentary videos about architects and how they makes use of environmental studies to create sustainable building designs.

It is an important reminder of how knowledge can so often be, but shouldn't be, disconnected from problems solving, and even more, service to a community. knowledge was never intended to be known to pass a test. it is there to be used as a tool of service and it was refreshing to see creative, intelligent, well-educated people using their assets for the good of communities, some, as in the first episode are some of the world's wealthiest. Some, as in the second episode are among the world's poorest.

That word, SUSTAINABILITY is gaining traction everywhere. It implies that a paradigm shift is occurring whose principle feature is a change from thinking twelve months out to twelve decades out.

Sustainability may be understood by referring to a set of five core principles:

Respecting life and natural processes. Sustainability commits us to explicit considerationof the effects of our decisions and actions on the health and wellbeing of the entire community of life.

Living within limits. Sustainabilityinvolves an awareness that natural resourcesare finite endowmentsto be used with care and prudence at a rate consonant with their capacity for regeneration.

Valuing the local. Sustainabilitycommitsus to show respect for the natural components of our neighborhoods and bioregions;to preservation, restoration,and use of local knowledge; and to creation of strong, selfreliant
local economies.

Accounting for full costs. Sustainabilityrequires that we become aware of the costs generated by our products from "source to sink-to the environment and society. Product prices must reflect this awareness.

Sharing power. Sustainability demands we recognize that we are all interconnected-people, biota, and physical elements. Problems are solved by each individual assuming a share of the responsibility.

Green Destiny: Universities Leading the Way to a Sustainable Future
Christopher Uhl; Amy Anderson
BioScience, Vol. 51, No. 1. (Jan., 2001), pp. 36-42.

It makes me sit back and ask, "How will the teaching of history contribute to or inhibit the speed with which we convert to this new way of thinking? How have historians contributed to the lack of sustainability in the way we have been living? is there a historiography of sustainability yet?

The most interesting of the episodes in the series to me was about sustainable archetecture in China right now. See the trailer at: CHINA: FROM RED TO GREEN at PBS.

Question for Comment: How sustainable is your life at the moment? Is it a life that your children and grandchildren could continue living? Why or why not?

I am presently involved in online discussions with Jordanian Students in Amman and one of them shared a video with the class that just moved me to tears. I suspect that the reasons will be self-explanitory.

 

 

OK ... so I call my insurance company to see if I can have a therapist I am seeing approved. She says she used to be "in-network" but could no longer remain so because she works out of her home and does not have a separate bathroom dedicated to clients. Apparently, the insurance company thinks this is the sure sign of competence in a therapeutic practice.

So, I am on the phone talking to an automated inhuman receptionist-bot for about five minutes, you know, the kind where they give you four options to chose from and none of them are the one you are calling for but the receptionist-bot voice, in a  tone that almost sounds as though she cares, says "you have selected  'the problem is alienation, correct?"  Eventually, I am connected to a human being who asks me my story after asking my my ID Number ... which is about as long as pi. I tell my story and she connects me to another person who asks me my story after asking my my ID Number ... which is about as long as pi. This information allows her to tell me that I will be connected to a customer care associate. The customer care associate asks me my ID number (pi squared) and name and I tell her my story. She says that I can now be connected to a benefits specialist of some kind. I wait, listening to the awful music, afraid that I may miss the all important service if I don't. It is like an elevator music impersonation being done by Humpback whales broadcast from Mars. High call volumes I am told by the recording may cause me to reconsider this transaction today. I am told by the recording that Wednesday might be a better day given the high call volumes. But I hang in there.

Eventually, I am connected to another "soul" - I think I can use that term here without being misunderstood - who requests my ID number (pi squared plus the national debt to the third power). We don't have anyone with that number she says. Do you have a social security number? Fortunately, I do. I wonder, "if these people can find my file by using the nine digit social security number that I do remember, why do they keep on asking for my gazillion digit ID number that i can't remember? Again I tell my story. I think this is the fifth time now and she explains to me that the therapist I am calling about is indeed out of network and then goes on to explain that they will only pay 70% ... as though I was not calling because I knew that.

I think about trying to explain that the nature of my call is to ask that a good therapist not be considered out of network because they don't provide me my own bathroom but I am told that a counselor will have to call me back.

So I am sitting here wondering just why there is any mystery behind why we need to go to therapy in this alienating world we have created.

As Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once said,

“I suppose that at first, it was people who invented borders, and then borders started to invent people.”

This past week I have been discussing the writings of Abraham Lincoln and Ambrose Bierce with my American students and a group of  students from Amman, Jordan. Someone in the class mentioned that there must have been someone who first decided that the African slave trade had to go. I responded that this particular "someone" was William Wilberforce, a British MP who worked tirelessly to end the slave trade in the British Empire.

It seemed as good a night as any to watch the movie AMAZING GRACE and since my internet was down most of the evening, I did.

William Wilberforce: No one of our age has ever taken power.
Pitt the Younger: Which is why we're too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway. 

"He did not know he could not fly, and so he did" as the Guy Clark song, The Cape puts it. The alliance between William Pitt and Wilberforce is an enviable one. Anyone who wants to attack an institution that makes people money needs to have a William Pitt somewhere in the hierarchy to support them. Pitt was (is) England's youngest Prime Minister but he had a sort of John F. Kennedy enthusiasm about reform it seems and Wilberforce was his Robert.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." William Pitt, Speech to Parliament 1783

An article in the journal of the History of Ideas (September 1970) makes it clear that Wilberforce knew the central argument of his case against slavery hinged on his ability to make people see that these Africans were not inferior beings, animals that looked like men, or mutant-scions of Noah's son Ham. He had to prove that it was the institution of slavery itself that was creating the illusion that slavers and plantation owners were arguing as cause. This is made clear in a History of Ideas article by William Baker entitled, William Wilberforce on the Idea of Negro Inferiority;

 

"William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the English parliamentary spokesman for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, saw clearly the importance of the belief in Negro inferiority. "The advocates for the Slave Trade originally took very high ground; contending that the Negroes were an inferior race of beings," Wilberforce wrote in a pamphlet in 1807. "It is obvious," he continued, "that, if this were acknowledged, they [the Negroes] might be supposed, no less than their fellow brutes, to have been comprised within the original grant of all inferior creatures to the use and service of man." If the blacks were incorrigibly stupid and morally depraved to the level of mere beasts, "then all, except perhaps a few stubborn advocates for justice in the abstract, would be content to leave them to their fate."

"In the course of his labors to abolish the slave trade, Wilberforce exposed the sham logic in the idea of Negro inferiority. Arguing as a politician for specific laws of abolition rather than as an intellectual seeking to make
an abstract point, he instinctively believed the transplanted African to be fully human and a victim of abusive circumstances. But as he listened to the advocates of slavery defending their position, he saw that their prejudices concerning the intrinsic nature of the Negro served as the moral and intellectual bulwark of their system. . . .

If Wilberforce's arguments against the old view of Negro inferiority now appear to be obvious, it is because he and his fellow English abolitionists (along with their American counterparts) did their job well.

... In 1789, eighteen years before the cessation of the slave trade and almost half a century before the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, Wilberforce urged the House of Commons to consider the real meaning of the fable
of Negro inferiority. "It is we ourselves that have degraded them to that wretched brutishness and barbarity which we now plead as the justification of our guilt."

And yet, money was stuffing the ears of anyone who might have their consciences pricked by Wilberforce's rhetoric. One apologist for the slave trade argued,

"The impossibility of doing without slaves in the West Indies will always prevent this traffic being stopped. The necessity, the absolute necessity then, of carrying it on must, since there is no other, be its excuse."

 

William Wilberforce on the Idea of Negro Inferiority
William Baker
Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 31, No. 3. (Jul. - Sep., 1970), pp. 433-440.

Someone once told me that individual people could not influence whole institutions. I feel like buying them a copy of this movie.

Question for Comment: if you were to take on some cause greater than your ability to achieve it on your own, what would it be?

Engaging the Powers by Walter Wink

In the Chapter, “The Myth of the Domination System”, Wink describes the fundamental ideas about human nature and violence embedded into the earliest creation stories. Using the Enuma Elish he shows how these myths reveal that all creation was the result of an act of violence. The universe is a result of a deicide [god-murder] and human beings are created from the blood of an executed demi-god. “Killing is in our blood”. Thus, he writes, “Human beings are naturally incapable of peaceful coexistence; Order must continually be imposed on us from on high.”

‘The ultimate outcome of this type of myth, remarks Ricoeur, is a theology of war founded on the identification of the enemy with powers that the God has vanquished and continues to vanquish in the drama of creation. Every coherent theology of Holy War ultimately reverts to this basic mythological type.”

Wink goes on to show how this myth is embedded into popular culture. One can see it in sitcoms and cartoons, rehearsed over and over. “An indestructible good guy is unalterably opposed to an irerformable and equally indestructible bad guy. Nothing can kill the good guy … Nothing finally destroys the bad guy or prevents his reappearance, whether he is soundly trounced, jailed, drowned, or shot into outer space.” One might think of road Runner and Wile E. Coyote or Tom and Jerry or Popeye and Bluto for examples but the list would be long.

“This structure cannot be altered. Bluto does not simply loose more often. He must always lose. Otherwise this entire view of reality would collapse. The good guy must always win. In order to suppress the fear of erupting chaos the same mythic pattern must be endlessly repeated in a myriad of variations that never in any way alter the basic structure.”

He notes that these cartoons serve a psychological purpose. They allow children to identify with the forces of chaos and disorder for most of the show and then identify with the forces of law and order just before it is over. They are glad to be the Coyote coming up with a way to eat the roadrunner and they are glad to be the roadrunner outwitting the Coyote because both sides of their own natures are represented. In these recreations of the original archtype mythologies, there can be no compromise with evil and evil cannot change or reform or repent. Villains are never redeemed.

“The basic attitude is summed up in an episode of the ultimate spoof on the spy thriller, ‘Get Smart’. As I recall the scene decades after viewing it, the show ends with the villain being tricked by a loaded cigarette and blown off a cliff to his death on the rocks below.  Agent 99 watches in horror, then comments, ‘you know Max, sometimes I think we're no better than they are, the way we murder and kill and destroy people.’ To which Smart retorts, ‘Why, 99, you know we have to murder and kill and destroy in order to preserve everything that's good in the world.”

“And who are 99 and Smart fighting, week after week? An international conspiracy of evil intent called KAOS. And for whom do they work? CONTROL.”

The link between the Enuma Elish and Get Smart may be chronologically distant but they tell the exact same story: order and chaos will always coexist and they must not get confused and stop fighting one another.

Question for Comment: Wink argues that the repetition of a mythology is what makes it a compelling force in any society.

“Illusion requires incessant repetition in order to mimic the appearance of reality.  Propaganda works only through constant iteration.  It is only in quantity that corrupt values, false perceptions, and bogus facts can be sold.  Truth, by contrast, though its lot is never easy, makes its way with but a few friends, or even a single utterance.  It does not need the apparatus of salesmanship, because reality itself is waiting to confirm it.”

What messages can you see being reinforced in cartoons today. Are they different than the ones you were raised on?

Adam’s Game

Now I know how Adam felt
Walking woods alone
Naming pairs that
Always came in sets
Until he began missing . . .
Or was it, brother Adam, aching
For the counterpart he’d never seen.
Indeed who was not even there yet.
I have to think that the task
Began as such a blast.

“Sun” God had said pointing at the round thing in the sky.
“Moon” God had said, pointing at another round thing later.
“Sky” God had said, pointing at the blue heavens.
“Land” God had said, pointing at the ground.
“Sea” God had said, pointing at the water.
“Ish” God said pointing at Adam

“Now you try” God must have said to his bright-eyed pupil.
“Worm” said Adam, pointing to the ground.
“Oh Good,” said God. “Jolly Good! We’ll call that little thing a worm. Do it again.”
“Zebra” Adam must have exclaimed all proud of himself.
“Zebra it is,” God laughed. “Excellent”
And then he would have pointed to a female Zebra and named that too,
Adding the feminine suffix.
“Ez” [goat] said Adam. “and ezah” God responded.
“Nesher” [eagle] said Adam. “and Nesherah” said God.
“ahh,” Adam would have noted after working through the process for several animals.
“How cool is that!” Everything has a counterpart.”
“Shual . . . and shualah” he would have said looking at a pair of foxes.
“Dob . . .” said Adam, looking at the brown furry thing in the brush.
“. . .  and dobbah” he chuckled a moment later when he caught a flash of
the same brown fur on the other side of the clearing.
“Dob and Dobba it is then,” said God laughing, “Brilliant. Exactly. Can you find another pair?”

And so the game went for the rest of the afternoon.
Oh Brother Adam, brother Adam!
When did the game stop being fun for you?
How many of those animals did you name before
The game became a search for isha?
The bone of your bone.
The flesh of your flesh.

Counterpart.

Eyes peeled, brother Adam.
Don’t settle for a barnacle.

----snip----

What if I AM the barnacle?

Since it is the night before Easter I figured I would give Frederich Nietzsche a chance to tell me what he thinks about life and death tonight. The movie of the night was When Nietzsche Wept. I can't say that it will come to you highly recommended but there was at least one interesting scene where Nietzsche convinces his Dr. that one should never live a life that they would not live over and over forever - That no one should live their lives from a sense of duty if to do so would mean condemning themselves to a life they would not chose to live. Its an excellent philosophy for abandoning someone and I am sure I probably have been the victim of it more than once. Maybe we all have.

Rather than talk about the movie though, I thought perhaps I would offer some short reflections on some favorite Nietzsche quotes:

“For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.” Frederich Nietszche

Is this misogyny or observation? Do all men sense this is the truth? In the movie, the Dr. I believe is convinced of it. He longs to be told that he will be the only man in a woman's life (his obsession says it to more than one man in the movie). But his own wife resents him for not spending more time with the children and later loves him only after he does. I do think this "spousification" of the child is something women should think about even as men should worry about  the "spousification of their work" perhaps.

 “Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.” Frederich Nietszche

I wonder if this is the result of his attitude towards women ... or if his attitude towards women was the result of experiences like the ones that led to this observation?

“Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.” Frederich Nietszche

I need to remember this one this week. Because it is true. Be a speaker of truth for people. Someone in that crowd will appreciate it. Emerson understood this. Pretend that if you don;t speak the truth to power no one will because it is probably the case.

 “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” Frederich Nietszche

Is insanity a matter of not knowing something one should know or a matter of knowing something before others do? This quote reminds me of that song about Vincent Van Gogh ... even though I can never figure out what the lyrics mean. It also connects nicely to W.H. Auden's poem, The Unknown Citizen.

“He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.” Frederich Nietszche

This is a problem for thinking people for usually they can't survive without others in a system who deal with the more mundane but necessary aspects of existence. A smart person without connection to a community is likely to be, well, like Nietzsche, a brilliant conductor on a deserted Island. Of what use are his skills?

 “I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually — the memory yields.” Frederich Nietszche

I like this one. I see it in other people all the time. Grin. 

“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” Frederich Nietzsche

 "History teachers rule and dictator's drool" I always say. I hope, in the way that I teach history, this is not the case. I hope that students leave my history classes with their opinions about history based on their exposure to sources and not based on my favorite way of seeing things. I am not to be thought of as the teacher but as a fellow student who often happens to be right. grin.

“Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.” Frederich Nietszche

In short, in a world where "God is dead" because we killed him (as Nietzsche would argue), nothing we do is wrong - Nothing worthy of guilt? Try to tell a conscience that. I read Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and  Punishment a few weeks ago and his whole point is that this escape from moral accountability is a novel concept and liberating perhaps - but delusional. If we think we will not care what we do to people, we deceive ourselves.

“Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.” Frederich Nietzsche

Ahhh ... the ubermensch. This is not a man like other men but better. It is a man unlike other men. He is better because he declares what bad, good, and better is. A man who declares a new doctrine ... a new set of rules. a man not limited by the ideas of men who came before. It is a modern way of saying to a man "And you shall be as gods" - you shall declare your own set of rules and rule men because the rules of the game you play with them are your rules. I don't know ... the set of rules the original ubermensche set out seem like they don't need a whole lot of revision. I am not sure I could do better. 

“A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.” Frederich Nietzsche

Is in-loveness a disease worth curing? It seems only to make us sick when we are cured of it?

Question for Comment: If you had to live your life the way you have over and over forever, would you be cool with that? does the thought frighten you?