Monday, December 25, 2006

how to be merry

The assumption under the advertising and the money that flows around this season is: consume more and you will be merrier!

But we should all know better than to believe advertisers...

some alternative suggestions from the economists:

What sumptuary advice do they offer? In general, the economic arbiters of taste recommend “experiences” over commodities, pastimes over knick-knacks, doing over having. Mr Frank thinks people should work shorter hours and commute shorter distances, even if that means living in smaller houses with cheaper grills. The appeal of such fripperies palls faster than people expect, they say. David Hume suggested that “the amusements, which are the most durable, have all a mixture of application and attention in them; such as gaming and hunting.”

That, it turns out, is not easy. Happiness, as measured by national surveys, has hardly changed over 50 years. The rich are generally happier than the poor, but rich countries do not get happier as they get richer. The Japanese are much better off now than in 1950, but the proportion who say they are “very happy” has not budged. Americans too have remained much as Alexis de Tocqueville found them in the 19th century: “So many lucky men, restless in the midst of abundance.



a few thoughts from scripture:

Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

~ excerpt from Ecclesiastes 4

Whoever loves money never has money enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.

As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?

The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.

I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner,

or wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when he has a son
there is nothing left for him.

Naked a man comes from his mother's womb,
and as he comes, so he departs.
He takes nothing from his labor
that he can carry in his hand.

~ excerpt from Ecclesiastes 5

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

complications of choice

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I just stumbled upon this from my friend Angela's blog and the thought that popped into my mind was 'democracy'. Especially the part about "We do not know what we want", because perhaps, we don't know what's good for us.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

race to the top [2]

race in the academy

Just some interesting excerpts from two articles I stumbled across last week…. I don’t really have any particular responses to them right now, other than I do agree that they pose interesting questions that can’t be answered easily:

Is race just a scapegoat for the problems of society when we should actually be looking at class? Is race an excuse for us to not talk about economic inequality? Would it ever be possible to extricate class from race, as history has inexorably intertwined the two? And how does the ‘framing of the question’, the vocabulary of interpretation, the lens of analysis, or whatever you want to call it, alter our conclusions? [And perhaps also, if you could really eradicate identity politics, or racial understandings of society and history, what would that solve? By erasing race from our discourse, and insisting on avoiding it altogether, do we deny something valuable about ourselves?]

This first article in the Chronicle addresses Princeton’s new African-American studies department and discusses race in higher education:

My point, then, is that the commitment to African-American studies, like the commitment to Asian-American studies, is a commitment to describing our social problems in a way that will make all of us — teachers as well as students, alumni as well as parents — feel comfortable. It does this by racializing injustice at a moment when race is less relevant to injustice — at least to the injustice done by elite universities — in America than it has ever been. Rooks quotes Orlando Patterson as saying, "The doors are wide open for ... black middle-class kids to enter elite colleges." The relevant term here is "middle-class." African-American- and Asian-American-studies programs tell us that, from the standpoint of social justice, the crucial thing about us is our identity, at the very moment when, again from the standpoint of social justice, the crucial thing about us is our wealth and what the upper middle class sees on that television show is not the image of its own virtue (that's what make us comfortable), but the reverse face of its own success.

Another reason is that these programs are the places where questions about the meaning of race (and its handmaiden, culture) get raised. No assertion is more common in American intellectual life today than the insistence that race and class (and gender) are inextricably intertwined, and, in a certain sense, this is obviously true. Everybody has a household income; everybody's descended from somebody; everybody's male or female or some combination of the two. But one of the things that thinking seriously about race makes possible is not just the imbrication of race with class, but the disarticulation of class from race. We live in a society where the struggle to achieve racial equality is not the most profound of the challenges that face us. A program in African-American studies that helps us to understand not just the importance of race but its limits (not just its relevance but its irrelevance) will be well worth the money Princeton plans to spend.

This article in The Nation reviews the books The Trouble with Diversity:

The Trouble With Diversity is a bracing jeremiad, an all-out assault on the way identity in general, and race in particular, is used to organize society. It is also a thought experiment in which Michaels invites us to remove our race-tinted glasses and view the world in the class-based terms that, he argues, actually define it. For Michaels, there is no middle ground, no room for compromise: Race shoved class out of American consciousness, and he wants to reverse the situation. "We love race--we love identity--because we don't love class," he writes. The alternative is not to "love" class, since Michaels knows that class, unlike race, is distinctly unlovable. Class inspires no "National Museum of Lower-Income Americans on the Mall" in Washington, and no special holidays celebrating the culture of the poor (indeed, the "culture of poverty" is a sociological epithet); while some poor people inherit their poverty, we would all agree with Michaels that it would be perverse to think of it as their "heritage." The only area in which we are sentimental about poverty is in studies of working-class culture and literature, in which class is considered a form of identity.

Furthermore, Michaels accused contemporary champions of postidentity theory--those who envisage identity as contingent, performative and fluid--of employing the very racial essentialism they oppose. The more we emphasize culture and diversity, he scolded, the more we become mired in race. We inevitably answer the question "What should we do?" in terms of "who we are"--an appeal to racial/ethnic identity. The quest for identity is a vicious circle in which one can never escape the nineteenth-century notion of race. "For racial identity to become a project, it must turn to culture; for cultural identity to become a project, it must turn to race," he wrote.

Friday, December 15, 2006

i'm so proud of my brother

Despite the fact that I have to spend all of tonight editing my brother's college essays, I'd just like to say that I'm super proud of him.

He recently made a Nintendo Wii joystick that is selling on Ebay currently for $86 bucks, check it out :)

His blog is Project Wonderland.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

ME (consultant bio)

For my job, I recently had to write a biography of myself in order to help give more information about myself for project staffing. This was the end result*:

L. Lu graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. She was part of the Huntsman Program for International Studies and Business. L. studied Spanish and spent a semester abroad in Buenos Aires. [In addition to avid traveling, she volunteered with a church located in the slums, and conducted independent research on poverty demographics.]**

L. was involved with a variety of groups throughout college, including Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, and Propaganda Silk (a literary magazine). After her junior year, L. interned with ABC Company. She then spent two weeks in Honduras, teaching Excel and Word classes in Spanish and helping reorganize a bookstore’s inventory systems. Upon graduation, L. spent six weeks living in a lower-income neighborhood in North Philadelphia, volunteering at a homeless shelter for women and children.

In her free time, L. enjoys reading, watching movies, and writing. She is also beginning to dabble into photography and knitting.

I was quite disgusted with the result. Despite the fact that all the information in it was true, the impression that it gives bears no resemblance whatsoever to myself. As my beloved NT boyfriend would put it:

The bio makes it sound like you're an experience junkie who can't possibly be a whole person, and who is riddled with affluence-guilt and trying to compensate for it, while simultaneously feeding the experience-idolatry with a continual fodder of the exotic Other.

What disappoints me most about this bio is that it says nothing about my motivations and values. It makes it seem as though I care about poverty as some sort of ‘cool identity’. As though I did the things I chose to do because it would make me more ‘interesting’. Though I do confess that I have brought up these things in conversation in hopes of making myself slightly more interesting and more appealing to talk to, I don’t think that was ever the motive for doing those things.

But if you take the bare bone events of my life, and fail to apply the appropriate framework to interpret them, I do become a farce, an empty shell of a person…

Once again, have I been betrayed by words?
(Or rather, are words more powerful than we think they are?)***

*My name is initialed, because I’m really paranoid about having my full name online even though it's out there in the comments section. Same goes for the company I work for… That’s what Facebook is for, not my blog.
**That sentence was cut out of the final version I submitted. It was a little too disgusting for me.
***This line should be revised. Please read comments to this post.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

consultant life


in between spaces

Monday, December 11, 2006

profiting from the non-profit

I confess to having an occasional (well, perhaps frequent, but often repressed) affinity for fashion magazines (e.g. Vogue, In Style, Lucky etc…), and am momentarily allured by the pages of fashion and glamour -- the illusion, that perhaps if I bought the right clothes, and wore the right make up, I might actually look socially adept.*

In recently looking at the “Improper Bostonian”, a humor/fashion/rich people magazine that proliferates on the doorstep of my far-too-expensive corporate apartment that I do not pay for, I was glancing through an article on the “10 with style: Meet 10 stylish Bostonians”.

For one profile, the reporter writes “The wife and collaborator of best-selling mystery writer Robert B. Parker is a supporter of numerous charitable causes and always appears looking smashing at fundraisers, receptions and opening nights.

This little snippet reveals the culture surrounding philanthropy—social status, fashion, and the purchase of morality. Sometimes, it seems that there is much less concern about the actual charities (and the various challenges and problems associated with the causes they are supporting), than about the people who are giving and what they’re wearing.

This seems to further confirm conversations I’ve had with people who currently work or have worked in philanthropy and non-profits. Donors are often insistent on the importance of having their names recognized according to the amount of money they’ve donated. Non-profits often are forced to function as corporations, with donors as their customers. The products they offer are social status, moral righteousness and personal acclaim. As a result, so many well intentioned non-profits are forced to spend time and energy on pleasing their donors than focusing on their actual causes.

[By no means am I saying that it is bad that money is given towards various good causes (nor am I implying that every philanthropist is like this), but it’s sad to see generosity tainted by the pursuit of status and personal glory. Since when did your clothes matter more than the organization that you’re giving to? It makes it seem as though the only part of ‘anthropy’ being loved in philanthropy is oneself. And it makes me wonder if philanthropists ever really experience the rewards of humble and anonymous giving.]

* I usually stop reading once I realize that first of all, they’re rather high school and every issue says the exact same thing; and that second of all, the more I read them, the less content I am with what I have and who I am.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

l'enfer, c'est nous (hell is us)

unbearable lightness / burdensome weight

an interesting observation from Zach's blog:

I think it's a very sad fact of the human condition that we cannot conceptualize a state of being in which we would enjoy living forever. Our existence is fundamentally flawed - paradoxically, we are terrified of both death and eternal life.

... which in my mind touches upon some points made in C.S. Lewis passages (and the thesis of his book The Great Divorce):


"Christianity asserts we are all going to on forever, and this must either be true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse so gradually that the increase in my lifetime will not be very noticeable- but it might be absolute hell in a million years- in fact, if Christianity is true, hell is the precisely correct technical term for it... Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, alwyas blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no
you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us, there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."

"Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put seecond to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself."

Perhaps Jean Paul Sartre is in part right: "L'enfer, c'est les autres" (Hell is other people). Except that, hell isn't just other people- it is us.*

*Or perhaps, more correctly, it is in us.

people you meet

After my flight today, I ended up sharing a cab with this other woman, Lorna Sass. Is she famous? Am I supposed to know who she is? She makes herself seem all important on her website, and earns enough money from cookbooks and cooking classes to live on the Upper West Side alone. Maybe she was offended because I didn't know who she was...

I also met someone who made a comment about never being able to teach at a community college (vs. being a researcher at a top university), because people would look down on him, even if he enjoyed teaching far more than doing research-- Would you rather have better social status and hate what you do than have lesser social status but love what you do? I should hope not. I guess I can detect the same hungering for status inside me, but I've never had the boldness to say it so bluntly: "Wouldn't you not want to teach because people would look down on you?"

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

SMART goals

The staffer at the company I work for recommended some three months ago that I should make a set of 5 SMART goals.

Goals that are SMART are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Tangible. Being the P that I am (that’s P according to the Myers Briggs personality types), I have failed to even come up with one goal, but I’d like to try to make a few now (and see if I ever actually follow through):

1. Posting weekly on this blog, instead of monthly. This means being a little more spontaneous with my entries, and allowing them to be more open ended and slightly more personal. And hopefully the posting can actually be more than weekly, but it’s hard to predict the eb and flow of workload. For awhile, I really wanted my entries to be polished, but this is a blog, not graduate school.

2. I would also like to finish knitting the sweater that I’m working on …. by February. And then start knitting socks. En route to becoming what Armine’s girlfriend has dubbed ‘kninja’. (I’ve already knit two scarves that are soon to be gifts! Pictures are below, modeled on Matt. I think he should pursue a modeling career—he's certainly mastered the aloof and distant facial expressions).

3. Call my family twice a week, instead of once.

4. Write atleast one meaningful letter or email to someone each week.

I can’t think of anything more right now. Let’s see if these goals stay SMART, or whether they will become SMRT (Specific, Measured, Realistic, Tangible, but not Attained).



Tuesday, December 05, 2006

the problem with education

Nothing coherent here since I'm not sure how I feel about the issue, but here are couple of dangling thoughts and responses to things I've been reading*:

John Derbyshire critiques educational theorists in his article "The Dream Palace of Educational Theorists" in The New English Review for making faulty assumptions about human nature, namely that we are a blank slate, on which nurture is everything, and nature is negligible.

[Do I want to believe his assertion that the course of our lives are already inscribed into our DNA? Not really, though I will admit that freedom as conceived by postmoderns, is an illusion and a farce (appropriately so, that freedom has no essence). Is then my only other option to be one of those crazy left-wing liberals who believe more government funds means social transformation? I hope not.]

A few noteworthy excerpts unrelated to John Derbyshire's main point, that take a jab at today's "education" system:

"Towering over all these lesser scams is the college racket, a vast money-swollen credentialing machine for lower-middle-class worker bees. American parents are now all resigned to the fact that they must beggar themselves to purchase college diplomas for their offspring, so that said offspring can get low-paid outsource-able office jobs, instead of having to descend to high-paid, un-outsource-able work like plumbing, carpentry, or electrical installation.**"

"Professionals have their own credentialing systems: You may have graduated law school, but you’ll still have to pass the bar exam, and so on. Then why make aspiring lawyers go to law school? Presumably for the same reason we insist on cube jockeys having bachelor’s degrees from accredited four-year colleges. Why not let them study up at home from Teaching Company DVDs, then sit for a state-refereed common exam when they feel they’re ready? Why not let lawyers learn on the job from books and as articled clerks, the way they used to? I don’t know. College-going is just an irrational thing we do, the way upper-class German men used to acquire dueling scars, the way women in imperial China had their feet bound. Griggs vs. Duke Power probably has something to do with it. Since, following that decision, employers are not permitted to test job applicants to see how intelligent they are, the employers seek a college degree as a proxy for intelligence."

It's beginning to resemble the corporation***. Creating needs that were not there before so that the organization can justify its own existence. How very cyclical (it's almost like a perpetual motion machine!) and meaningless.

* I've finally realized that if I wait until I have coherent thoughts before making a posting. I NEVER post anything. And when I do, someone always manages to refute my argument, rendering it as obsolete and useless as a undergraduate degree :)
** A good article on this very subject is Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford in the New Atlantis
*** And by corporation, I mean the EVIL CORPORATION. I have to write that in caps because I can't take myself seriously when I say that. That terms been thrown around so much I'm not sure what it means anymore.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Atheism the New Religion

Below are some excerpts from a recent article in Wired magazine examining atheism as an intellectual movement. Gary Wolf conducted interviews with several famous atheists including Richard Dawkins.


If trained theologians can go this far, who am I to defend supernaturalism on their behalf? Why not be an atheist? I've sought aid far and wide, from Echo Park to Harvard, and finally I am almost ready to give in. Only one thing is still bothering me. Were I to declare myself an atheist, what would this mean? Would my life have to change? Would it become my moral obligation to be uncompromising toward fence-sitting friends? That person at dinner, pissing people off with his arrogance, his disrespect, his intellectual scorn – would that be me?

~

Among the New Atheists, Dennett holds an exalted but ambiguous place. Like Dawkins and Harris, he is an evangelizing nonbeliever. He has campaigned in writing on behalf of the Brights and has written a book called Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. In it, the blasting rhetoric of Dawkins and Harris is absent, replaced by provocative, often humorous examples and thought experiments. But like the other New Atheists, Dennett gives no quarter to believers who resist subjecting their faith to scientific evaluation. In fact, he argues that neutral, scientifically informed education about every religion in the world should be mandatory in school. After all, he argues, "if you have to hoodwink – or blindfold – your children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, your faith ought to go extinct."

When I arrive at the farm, I find him in the midst of a difficult task. He has been asked by the President's Council on Bioethics to write an essay reflecting on human dignity. In grappling with these issues, Dennett knows that he can't rely on faith or scripture. He will not say that life begins when an embryo is ensouled by God. He will not say that hospitals must not invite the indigent to sell their bodies for medical experiments because humans are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. Ethical problems must be solved by reason, not arbitrary rules. And yet, on the other hand, Dennett knows that reason alone will fail.

We sit in his study, in some creaky chairs, with the deep silence of an August morning around us, and Dennett tells me that he takes very seriously the risk of overreliance on thought. He doesn't want people to lose confidence in what he calls their "default settings," by which he means the conviction that their ethical intuitions are trustworthy. These default settings give us a feeling of security, a belief that our own sacrifices will be reciprocated. "If you shatter this confidence," he says, "then you get into a deep hole. Without trust, everything goes wrong."

It interests me that, though Dennett is an atheist, he does not see faith merely as a useless vestige of our primitive nature, something we can, with effort, intellectualize away. No rational creature, he says, would be able to do without unexamined, sacred things.

“Can intelligent robots be religious?" it occurs to me to ask.

"Perhaps they would," he answers thoughtfully. "Although, if they were intelligent enough to evaluate their own programming, they would eventually question their belief in God."

Dennett is an advocate of admitting that we simply don't have good reasons for some of the things we believe. Although we must guard our defaults, we still have to admit that they may be somewhat arbitrary. "How else do we protect ourselves?" he asks. "With absolutisms? This means telling lies, and when the lies are exposed, the crash is worse. It's not that science can discover when the body is ensouled. That's nonsense. We are not going to tolerate infanticide. But we're not going to put people in jail for onanism. Instead of protecting stability with a brittle set of myths, we can defend a deep resistance to mucking with the boundaries."

This sounds to me a little like the religion of reason that Harris foresees.

"Yes, there could be a rational religion," Dennett says. "We could have a rational policy not even to think about certain things." He understands that this would create constant tension between prohibition and curiosity. But the borders of our sacred beliefs could be well guarded simply by acknowledging that it is pragmatic to refuse to change them.

I ask Dennett if there might not be a contradiction in his scheme. On the one hand, he aggressively confronts the faithful, attacking their sacred beliefs. On the other hand, he proposes that our inherited defaults be put outside the limits of dispute. But this would make our defaults into a religion, unimpeachable and implacable gods. And besides, are we not atheists? Sacred prohibitions are anathema to us.

Dennett replies that exceptions can be made. "Philosophers are the ones who refuse to accept the sacred values," he says. For instance, Socrates.

I find this answer supremely odd. The image of an atheist religion whose sacred objects, called defaults, are taboo for all except philosophers – this is the material of the cruelest parody. But that's not what Dennett means. In his scenario, the philosophers are not revered authorities but mental risk-takers and scouts. Their adventures invite ridicule, or worse. "Philosophers should expect to be hooted at and reviled," Dennett says. "Socrates drank the hemlock. He knew what he was doing."

With this, I begin to understand what kind of atheist I want to be. Dennett's invocation of Socrates is a reminder that there are certain actors in history who change the world by staging their own defeat. Having been raised under Christianity, we are well schooled in this tactic of belated victory. The world has reversed its judgment on Socrates, as on Jesus and the fanatical John Brown. All critics of fundamental values, even those who have no magical beliefs, will find themselves tempted to retrace this path. Dawkins' tense rhetoric of moral choice, Harris' vision of apocalypse, their contempt for liberals, the invocation of slavery – this is not the language of intellectual debate but of prophecy.

In Breaking the Spell, Dennett writes about the personal risk inherent in attacking faith. Harris veils his academic affiliation and hometown because he fears for his physical safety. But in truth, the cultural neighborhoods where they live and work bear little resemblance to Italy under Pope Urban VIII, or New England in the 17th century, or Saudi Arabia today. Dennett spends the academic year at Tufts University and summers with family and students in Maine. Dawkins occupies an endowed Oxford chair and walks his dog on the wide streets, alone. Harris sails forward this fall with his second well-publicized book. There have been no fatwas, no prison cells, no gallows or crosses.

a simulated person

There is no real Paris Hilton
(Killing yourself to live)


Paris Hilton said to hell with her private self. She erased the boundary between her life and her career and turned her entire existence into a public story and herself into a “brand,” as she has put it. She deliberately and programmatically offered herself up to us as an “It,” a being without an inner life, a personality whose only value is to be seen and known by all. She is, in other words, the total incarnation of postmodern identity, the individual who has disappeared completely—and happily—into her image.


As my former fridge magnet once said, “It’s not discovering your identity, it’s about creating it.” Though this slogan appears initially appealing, its instantiation comes at a cost. Paris Hilton created her identity. She annihilated her private life for the pursuit of her public image. She pursued fame and became the epitome of fame, but now that’s all she is (we usually become the things that we pursue).

[So if we create our identities in such a way that does not accord with our intrinsic identities*, then we risk losing or perhaps even destroying ourselves.]


*That is, the identity that we discover, if it does indeed exist.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

too little religion*

CNN reported a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls said of the killer on the day of the murder: "We must not think evil of this man."

Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained: "I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts," he told CNN.

The Amish have reached out to Roberts' family. Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them.

An article in a Canadian newspaper the National Post stated that the Amish have set up a charitable fund for the family of the shooter.

The Amish do not normally accept charity, but due to the extreme nature of the tragedy, donations were being accepted. Richie Lauer, director of the Anabaptist Foundation, said the Amish community, whose religious beliefs prohibit them from having health insurance, will likely use the donations to help pay the medical costs of the hospitalized children.


~ from a Wikipedia entry on Amish school shooting

Despite the horror and tragedy of this event, the Amish response to it has been one that offers hope. It's so refreshing to see religious belief manifesting itself in action and not in the way the media usually portrays it -- long political debates about the Ten Commandments on government buildings, prayer in schools, dealth penalty, marriage or abortion. It is good to see an example of Jesus' radical words "Love your enemy" being lived out because people believe in Him.

There are times when I feel like Jonathan Swift's words are true: "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."And perhaps that is the answer, not that we have too much religion, but that we have too little-- we keep the superficial rules and regulations and take God and bend Him to conform to our own notions of who He is and we forget the heart (and the person) behind all of it. Jesus isn't about comfort and convenience and feeling good about yourself because you're moral and righteous. Rather, he tells you to give your other coat to the person that steals from you, he exhorts you to turn the other cheek to the one who slaps and asks you to love and provide for your very enemies.

*I wrote this entry soon after hearing about the Amish shooting and response to it. Posting it now seems slightly outdated. With today's media, it seems that news gets old fast and old news isn't really worth talking about. I disagree with that and thus, am still posting this.

The God Delusion

For those of you unfamiliar with Richard Dawkins, he is a biologist and adamant atheist. His most famous work is probably the Selfish Gene, which does a very good job of explaining natural selection (though, there is a very bizarre chapter on Memes at the end). His most recent publication, The God Delusion, apparently critiques religion and attempts to argue that the world would be a better place without religion.

A good critique of Richard Dawkins, Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching written by Terry Eagleton, Professor of English literature at Manchester University is found in the London Review of Books. He basically points out Dawkin's error in considering all religious beliefs irrational and to believe that all religiously motivated behaviour ressembles those of the 911 hijackers as opposed to those of Mother Teresa. Eagleton is a fairly prominent academic and does not believe in the Christian faith, but I highly appreciate his critique of Dawkins. Much more valuable criticism, dialogue and debate could emerge if only religious people took more time to understand atheists and agnostics, and if only atheists and agnostics took more time to understand religion. If we spent less time lunging and flailing at each other, maybe we can actually have a conversation, instead of a bloodshed.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

official declaration

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

the question of evil*

Who is more corrupt?
The robber, who plunders a village, killing and raping
Or the mastermind genius, methodically working out the logistics of a mass concentration camp?

Is evil the crime of the visceral kind, or is it actually rather banal?
[Can we even draw a comparison between the two?]

What entails an even great disregard for human life?
The foot soldier, who injures and kills with his own two hands
Or the fighter pilot, who with a flip of a switch bombs entire neighbourhoods?

What entails more corruption of the heart?
To know right from wrong but still do what is wrong
Or to no longer be able to discern the distinction between the two?**


*just some general questions stirred by the comments on the previous post
**i plead your forgiveness for engaging in some cultural anachronism. i know that right/wrong as moral categories have debatably(sp?) lost their trendiness a few decades ago. but perhaps that in it of itself is indicative of the moral fiber of our age. i believe "moral fiber" is also an outdated term.

Monday, September 18, 2006

race to the top

So why do all the black people get all the rap for being criminals?*

Yes, it's true. Some do steal a few hundred dollars to help put dinner on their plate (or in some cases, a birthday present for a daughter).

Yet on the other hand, I'm reading through databases of hundreds of hundreds of cases of mainly rich white males in large corporations engaging in criminal and improper business and market practices to earn a few extra million to pad their already gold-lined yachts and country houses.

*Please read comments to this post.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

simulated happiness

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."


~ Ecclesiastes




New York yuppie life is an opiate for the masses.


Meager pleasures and pathetic comforts to anaesthetize the soul to overwhelming sorrow and overwhelming joy.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

compassion is abnormal

isn't it bizarre...

...that nobody finds it odd when someone is crying after a movie with some sad ending.

However, if you find someone crying in the bathroom in the middle of the day because he or she feels broken and hurt for all the suffering and injustice that goes on in the world, be it here in America or elsewhere, it's very odd. By most standards of sanity, that person would probably be regarded as somewhat strange and abnormal.

But maybe it's just the rest of us that are not normal.

Friday, August 25, 2006

a carefree society part 4*

"The effectiveness of the mass media, however, as the key agent of psychological totalitarianism is not based on political or religious ideology. Rather it rests upon a base that I have described elsewhere as the myth of technological utopianism. Unlike religious myths in which meaning was spiritual—nature or the gods —this myth is thoroughly materialistic. Technological utopianism substitutes the perfect health and happiness of the human body for the spiritual well-being of the human soul. This meaning is ineffective because it is based on individualistic consumerism. For meaning to be effective it must be shared meaning that binds people together in common responsibilities and reciprocal moral relationships. Consumerism is a shared belief but it leaves one psychologically isolated, for it is based upon freedom without responsibility. The attempt to create meaning in consumerism, to spiritualize consumerism, fails because its utopian promise of perfect happiness and health cannot be achieved in this world, and therefore happiness and health remain transitory, as anxiety, suffering, and death constantly remind us."

~Richard Stivers, from Ethical Individualism and Moral Collectivism in America

Along with the contemporary fragmentation of our selves (Stivers' description for what a Biblical scholar might see as the sundering of community in the Fall---resulting in distrust of other people and fear of manipulation), our "collection of idols" has become equally fragmented, and as such, far more insidious and difficult to specifically identify. Perhaps it is not too far a stretch to say that our Molech is consumerism, and that which we fear is simply isolation as punishment for non-conformity to public opinion. The lie that real freedom is "freedom from responsibility" directly undermines the promise of a restored, redeemed community which results from taking responsibility and laying down one's life in purposeful sacrifice---the essence of true Freedom is a Choice, yes, but more specifically, it is the ability to choose that which is Good (permanently) versus that which is pleasing or pacifying (transiently). It is this dream of mutuality through sacrificial exercise of moral agency, in purposeful community, not mindless collectivism, that the words in Isaiah hold out: "inherit the land and possess my holy mountain."

*an excerpt from an entry on Anchor States

Friday, August 04, 2006

a carefree society part 3

what would Jesus say to a nation of professional servants?

The traditional summation of Christ's reversal of the given order has been defined by Christians as the imperative to be a servant- not a lord. The highest vision of Christian purpose is to reverse the order, to fulfill a mission of service. We serve Christ by following His example in washing the feet of His disciples. We are Christians, people who have it backwards, as we serve rather than rule- act as servants rather than rulers.

...

As Christians we could celebrate the institutionalization of the good servant. Ours is finally a society of caring, helping, curing servanthood. We laud the value of professional servanthood and pay for it generously.

In our society of servants, it is interesting to consider what Christ might see with all His tendency toward getting things backwards? .. Would He even reject a society of good servants?

The answer is, probably not, unless He saw good servants becoming lords. Probably not, unless He saw help becoming control, care becoming commericalized, and cure becoming immobilizing. On the other hand, if He found servants involved in commercialized, immobilizing systems of control, He would certainly insist that we still have it backwards- that our servanthood had become lordship.

The question, then, is whether we are a nation of good servants or the lords of commericalized, immobilizing systems of service that actually control.

...

I wonder whether the human reality is always to make servanthood into lordship. It may be that there is no way to define service so that we will not get it backwards and make it a system of control. With all our Christian devotion to the idea of service, could service be an inadequate ideal- a value so easily corrupted that we should question its usefulness?

At the Last Supper, Christ was telling the disciples those things of greatest importance. It was His final opportunity to communicate the central values of the faith. In St. John's report of Christ's concluding instruction, Christ said, "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing. I call you friends for all that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you."

Finally, Christ said you are not servants. You know. You are friends.

Perhaps beyond the revolution of Christian service is the final revolution, the possibility of being friends. Friends are people who know, care, respect, struggle, love justice, and have a commitment to each other through time.

Friends are people who understand that it is not servants- the professors, the lawyers, doctors, and teachers- who make God's world. Rather, friends are people who understand that it is through their mutual action that they become Christians.

Christ's mandate to be friends is a revolutionary idea in our serving society. Here we are, a nation of professionalized servers, following Christ's mandate to serve. And here He is, at the final moment, getting it backwards once again. The final message is not to serve. Rather, He directs us to be friends.

Why friends rather than servants? Perhaps it is because He knew that servants could always become lords but that friends could not. Servants are people who know the mysteries that can control those to whom they give "help." Friends are people who know each other. They are free to give and receive help.

In our time, professionalized servants are people who are limited by the unknowing friendlessness of their help.

Friends, on the other hand, are people liberated by the possibilites of knowing how to help each other.

~ excerpt from The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits by John McKnight
(the only chapter that actually deals with Christianity and Jesus directly)

a carefree society part 2

why GDP per capita is a poor measure of quality of life and standard of living

just a few examples:
*a professional counsellor who talks to you about your problems counts in GDP while a good friend who will listen and be supportive and encouraging does not
*paid work hours are in GDP but volunteering is not
*driving a car to work requires gas that counts in GDP but walking to work and getting exercise in the process does not
*fast food sold counts in GDP but food eaten from home grown gardens does not

Has it ever occured to you that perhaps the more GDP/capita increases, the more poor our life is? The more we switch the professional services for counselling and troubles, the less we are able to rely on friends, the more isolated we become and the more dependent we become on professionals to solve our problems. The more we pay toxic containment companies to clean up the pollution we've made, the less we are preventing damage to the earth. The list continues...

I have a harrowing image of what society might become like: individuals sitting in sterile, whitewashed cell-size rooms, pushing grey buttons for the delivery of all the products and services that could give them happiness. And that is life.

But wait, hasn't that already happened? Think of the internet.*

individual cells in a city.
connected by the gentle blaze of the lcd screen.
thinking, dreaming, yearning for some magical unity
only to find themselves alone.
a web of simulated connections
a web of simulated community
individual cells. imprisoned. in the city.**


*I guess you can't buy happiness at the supermarket, but I believe it can be purchased on the internet
** I am thinking of this quote by V.S. Naipaul in The Mimic Men: "How right our Aryan ancestors were to create gods. We seek sex, and are left with two private bodies on a stained bed. The larger erotic dream, the god, has eluded us. It is so whenever, moving out of ourselves, we look for extensions of ourselves. It is with cities as it is with sex. We seek the physical city and find only a conglomeration of private cells. In the city as nowhere else we are reminded that we are individuals, units. Yet the idea of the city remains; it is the god of the city we pursue, in vain. "


Thursday, August 03, 2006

simulated compassion

Movies such are Hotel Rwanda are designed to make us feel compassion. It humanizes the people involved in the genocide, shows harrowing scenes of their emotional turmoil and as a result, brings their suffering to a closer and more personal distance. Instead of just 30 second news clip, the genocide in Rwanda becomes an immersive 2 hour experience.

Yet sometimes I wonder if the increase of such movies have made us less compassionate. (I am speaking of movies that are designed to make us cry and weep over tragedy as opposed to those that tend towards glamourizing death and violence. i.e. think Hotel Rwanda, Schindler's List, vs. Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill)

Movies take months to years to come out, whereas everyday we are bombarded with real news and tragedies concerning real people that we do not feel compassion towards. As Hotel Rwanda pointed out, we say "how awful" and go on eating dinner.

On one hand, this can definitely be attributed to our own need for comfort-- it's easier to detach ourselves from horrible things happening around the world because we can ignore the nagging inside to do something about it. (Such action is often costly and too often inconvenient). By detaching ourselves, and not viewing the people who are suffering as actually human, we can continue living our comfortable lives.

But in addition to this, I think we have the unspoken expectation that anything truly tragic must appear the way it does in movies to produce an emotional response. Absent in real life situations where compassion would be appropriate responses, are the signifiers that mark movie scenes where we are to cry-- closeups of tears, sorrowful music, meaningful and well scripted lines.

In contrast, when we hear basic news broadcasted or hear about a friend's suffering, it does not appear as tragic as it does in movies. But we consumers of movies and simulations are not used to doing the mental legwork ourselves-- we are not used to imagining ourselves in another person's shoes, because we have relied so much on simulated signifiers in movies to make us cry or to make us feel.

Even one of the most beautiful emotions that we are capable of experiencing, compassion, has become simulated and rendered unreal. Our heart wrenches at the movies, tears gush out and then we walk away, perhaps silent for a few minutes, but then in almost all cases, doing nothing different except perhaps talk about how good the movie was. They make us feel compassion but afterwards, it's over. Holocaust. Genocide. It's over. And yet we've become accustomed to all the signifiers that mark sadness and times where we are supposed to feel compassion. And, we perhaps end up even more desensitized to the real people out there and nearby for whom we should have compassion, because we've become accustomed to only have compassion on Hollywood glamourized tragedy.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Gateway book review

interesting books read (or partially read) during Gateway

on poverty and development
****The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits by John McKnight ~ if you haven't noticed, several of my entries are based on an alteration of this title. basically, the book offers a fairly poignant argument for the destruction of community by the emergence of the professional service industry. it has an almost foucault-ian (is that word?) critique of "needs" and "wants" that the service industry produces. definitely a worth-while read! it is written by a Christian but the entire book except for the last chapter, is based on secular research and written for a secular audience.
***Renewing the City: Reflections of Community Development and Urban Renewal by Robert Lupton ~ offers a similar vision of what actually builds community. this book basically proposes a way of renewing the inner, impoverished city: for middle income families to move in (not to gentrify) and become part of the inner city communities. it offers both scriptural and anecdotal support for this vision.

on prayer and spiritual discipline
****With Open Hands by Henri Nouwen ~ at first glance, this book appears a bit like those new age self-help/feelgoodaboutyourself, but if you give it a few more pages, it is full of insightful comments and thoughts about prayer and knowing god. the language is simple, almost child-like, but very thoughtful and profound.
***The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster ~ a lot of people have been reading this book this summer-- divided into sections on various spiritual disciplines (i.e. prayer, service, solitude, fasting). the book explores activities that can be pursued not necessarily to get anything out of God, but to lay ourselves open to what God wants to do with us.

on gender
***Men and Women in the Church: Building Consensus on Christian Leadership by Sarah Sumner ~ i haven't read too much on complementarian/egalitarian perspectives of gender, but this book was a really helpful start for me to think through the issues. it supports neither a complementarian (men and women are created equally, but are designed to take different roles within the church and marriage) nor egalitarian view (men and women are created equally and for the same roles within the church and marriage), but leans more on the egalitarian end. it does some thorough investigation of troublesome and difficult passages in the Bible and also illustrates some of the damaging effects of twisted notions of gender on women and men in the church.

a carefree society part 1.5

another example

perhaps a more poignant example of how professional services have tried to replace community is the grief counsellor.

generally speaking, when someone suffers a death of a close family member or friend, neighbours, families and friends would gather together to comfort and provide for the mourner. nowadays, the grief counsellor is called in. instead of being surrounded by friends and family, one can pay someone to talk about his sadness.

the implicit message is: we're not capable of helping someone out. we lack the expertise to care for someone who has suffered a close death. instead of caring, let's call in the expert and let him take care of it, when in fact, it would probably be more beneficial for the mourner to be surrounded and cared for by close friends, family and neighbours.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

a carefree society part 1

"People in rural communities used to take care of each other. If someone's barn burned down, the entire community would turn out for a barn raising. Everyone would work at an assigned job: some doing the site preparation, some doing the heavy constructions, others cooking and watching the children. Before long, a new barn would stand where the old one had burned down.

The most important feature of the barn raising was that everyone would chip in something, so that no one would have to suffer a large and uncompensated loss...."*

Today, insurance companies have taken the place of barn raising. Instead of contributing labour or materials when someone's barn burns down, we pay an insurance premium to some sterile corporation. Instead of asking our neighbours for help when we suffer an unexpected loss, we file an insurance claim and receive money.

In one case, we depend on the market system, on the insurance company contracts. In the other case, we are called to depend on each other, on community and we ourselves are called to care for our neighbours.

Insurance companies have made us more carefree, but they have also deprived us of opportunities to care.


*Getting a Grip on your Money by William Wood (not that great a book actually--- I have issues with it-- it is very practical about how to manage your money but fails to address the Biblical tensions and concepts that should underly our spending and saving)
** recommended reading: The Careless Society: Community and its Counterfeits by John McKnight

Thursday, July 20, 2006

I am Puerto Rican

Some snippets of conversations about race/appearances at the homeless shelter where I am volunteering

Conversation between Bryanna, a Puerto Rican-white mix and Skyye, a black-white mix after Bryanna sees Skyye's mum:
B: How come you're Puerto Rican when your mum is black?
S: I'm not Puerto Rican. I'm mixed.
B: No you're not! You're Puerto Rican!

Then Sally, a Puerto Rican mother of four kids-- two who look hispanic, one who looks white, and one who looks black but without the nappy hair replies:
"I'm Puerto Rican and so is she and she" (as she points to the girl that looks white and the girl that looks more black).

Then I ask the kids: So what do you think I am?
Kids: You're Puerto Rican. And if you're not Puerto Rican, you're white.
Me: No, I'm Chinese.
Kids: No you're not! You're Puerto Rican!
(This happens numerous numerous times)

Apparently my very white friend who taught kindergarden in the past encountered similar difficulties with explaining his race.
Kids: What are you?
White Guy: I'm white.
Kids: So are you African American or Jamaican American?

*In general, the kids are a bit confused too. Devin (white), Olivia (Filipino), and I (Chinese) are all volunteering and we're known as the "sisters". We told them we're sisters because we're all part of God's family, but I think they still believe that we're biologically related even though we told them that we don't have the same parents.

Sean says to Olivia: You and that other girl (aka me) look alike but you and Devin don't look alike.
Sean (after two minutes of staring): Actually, you two do kind of look alike.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

God is not

God is not white.
He is not male. (Nor has he created female to be inferior to male).
God is not American.
He does not hate gays, transexuals, lesbians or women who have had abortions.
God is not a capitalist.
God is not a tyrant.
He does not want to deprive us of joy.
He has made sex to be good.
He turns water into wine.
God wants us to enjoy life and enjoy Him.
He wants to serve us.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Jesus hates religion

this is what Jesus said about and/or to the religious establishment of his day:

"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

"Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries[a] wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them 'Rabbi.'

...

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

...

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

...

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.

...

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

~ Matthew 23

as christians, and today's religious establishment, we must very wary that we not end up committing the same sins and injustices.

and if not religion, then what is jesus about?

Thursday, June 08, 2006

shoppers in praise of sweatshops

"Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops . . . . If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program. . . . [A] useful step would be for American students to stop trying to ban sweatshops, and instead campaign to bring them to the most desperately poor countries."

~ excerpt from an op-ed article by Nicolas D. Kristof "In Praise of the Maligned Sweatshop" in the New York Times*

So I don't know enough about development to know whether sweatshops are good for development or not. In fact, professors at universities probably have varying opinions about this. Yet even if sweatshops are able to combat poverty, are they necessary the best way to combat poverty? (it is true that there are so many qualifiers for best: effective, efficient, humane, just-- perhaps what is best is a combination of all of them?)

But let's put campaigning and such theoretical questions aside and instead put the question this way, personally:

Would you rather spend 30 bucks buying tshirts from Adidas who probably uses various South Asian sweatshops to lower costs on production and then spends millions of dollars on celebrity endorsements? (and whose eventual profits go to line the pockets of already-rich stockholders and executive managers with yachts and mercedes)

Or would you prefer to spend that money buying a tshirt (or even two) from Nueva Vida, a worker owned cooperative in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Central America? (whose eventual profits go directly to the pockets of the workers to help pay for food, health and education for their families?)

Would you spend 20 bucks on a tshirt from JCrew that manufactures their clothing in various locales in Southeast Asia with workers at the machine 12-16 hours a day, while JCrew earns a ridiculous profit off each shirt and spends its extra money on huge marketing campaigns with chiseled ab models (that also happen to create unreasonable expectations for what the human body should look like, setting a standard of beauty based on superficial qualities instead of the content of one's character and breeding discontent amongst various relationships because outward appearances do not match up to these absurd ideals)?

Or, would you rather spend 20 bucks buying a tshirt from a store like American Apparel who manufactures all its clothing in LA, paying its workers twice the minimum wage while also providing health care benefits?

In today's consumer culture, you send a message with what you buy-- where will you spend your money?

Companies definitely create jobs in developing countries with their involvement there-- but there may be better ways to be involved than others. And spending so little to pay sweatshop workers and paying so much to use celebrity endorsements and models for their advertisements or for building their brand name is not a business model that I feel comfortable supporting.** If consumers are unwilling to buy from companies who follow such a business model, eventually they will have to change it and find better ways to produce. Or on the flip side, if consumers buy from fair trade and worker-friendly clothing labels, then these labels will thrive, allowing them to expand and hire more workers that they can benefit with their high wages.

(It's like recycling-- sometimes you don't want to do it because you feel like it doesn't really make a difference especially if noone else does it. But if everyone does it, it will make a difference.)

I would rather not campaign for sweatshops in third world countries, but rather campaign for and buy from companies who are willing to forgo corporate profits as their only motive for existence in order to run socially responsible businesses in third world countries.***

Why support something questionably good when you can support something undoubtedly better?



*The article is found here but it's only for Times select members. There's a commentary on the article called Something to Cheer at the New York Times written by Gregory Reisman-- the commentary is in support of the Times' article (kind of obvious once you read it).
**On a more personal note, I don't want to hold myself up as some sort of free-trade saint that doesn't buy anything manufactured in a sweatshop. I actually probably own plenty of stuff that have been manufactured in sweatshops. This is a new and recent question that I have been dealing with and struggling with-- and these are some of my thoughts pertaining to it. Still very much in the process of thinking things through.
***If I'm not mistaken, the book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid offers some sweatshop-alternatives to third world development that still allow for corporate profits. It is possible to help the poor and earn a profit without making them work 14 hour days without health care benefits on a wage that barely allows them to survive.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

a quick quote

"The curse of the godless man can sound more pleasant to the ears of God than the hallelujah of the pious"

~ Martin Luther (thanks to John)

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

the simulated experience of sex

"Having sex can also complicate the way you perceive a potential partner. After sex, the brain releases oxytocin, which results in the warm, companionable feeling of love and the creation of the social bonds that facilitate co-operative child-rearing. Watch out: sex on a whim can lead to feelings of love for a person who is entirely wrong for you."

~ excerpt from the article Sexual attraction: the magic formula

Sometimes having sex with a person at the wrong time can make the experience of sex a pure simulation. Having sex generates these "warm, companionable feelings of love". This biological effect of sex can simulate all the biological signs of love without any love actually being there. It can simulate something that may not exist.

Sex is a beautiful gift because it can enhance the commitment and feelings that two people have for one another in the proper circumstances. Yet sex is also incredibly dangerous, because it can create the sensation of love without the substance. It makes you think you have what is real when you really don't.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

the simulated experience of travel [1.b]

a little addendum

this notion of travel being a completely simulated experience is quite evident in this following passage from don delillo's white noise. the passage is quite funny and worth reading and the book itself is also fantastic! :

Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in AMerica. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides-- pictures of the barn taken from the eleveated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No ones sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

'Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.

"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colours our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."

Another silence ensued.

"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now."

He seemed immensely pleased by this.

Monday, May 29, 2006

the simulated experience of travel [1.a]

"Indeed, in most cases it would appear that souvenir hunting is not a meaningful examination of place so much as it is a litmus test of our own whims and preconceptions as travelers."*

The passage above puts souvenir hunting in the order of simulation. Souvenirs are now mass produced to litter the shelves of various locales across the world. And we know that. We buy souvenirs, not because they are actual real artefacts from the location where we have travelled, but because they are something we buy in order to complete the experience of travelling-- absurd is the concept of going somewhere without returning with something. Our souvenir consumption exists on the order of simulation because we do not seek anything real in it, yet we do it anyways because it is part of our "whims and preconceptions as travelers." It is practiced in order to fit a societal concept of what travel should be.

Yet this article suggests that while much of our souvenir hunting exists in the order of simulation, our travel experience can still stand true and authentic. But I cannot help but be skeptical of that: today's travel getaways of tried-and-true locales like Paris or even to less frequented exotic locales have the scent of simulation to them. Numerous travel agencies sell "authentic travel experiences" for us to bottle, distill and possess as our own. A few photos of us standing in front of phallic-shaped monuments, token "native peoples," identical-to-postcard scenery confirm and seal the package. Even the itinerant backpacker goes, perhaps more to escape, more to have the "experience" than to truly be in a place.

What is travel? Does true travel still exist? Can we meaningfully examine a place? Or has today's consumer society completely eradicated any trace of the real. We go to places not to find a real locations populated by real people, but rather discover spaces completely dedicated towards recreating the experience of travel. The real world has been replaced by a world of simulation.

There are no longer places to go to, only simulated spaces. And so we cannot really go about a meaningful examination of a place, only consume the repetitive sensory perceptions of a space.

*this post responds to and quotes from Rolf Potts' article Why We Buy Dumb Souvenirs.
http://travel.news.yahoo.com/b/rolf_potts/rolf_potts4230 It's not necessary to read the article though to understand the post.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

book reviews

looking for summer reading?

here are some lovely suggestions from my past reading.... i've sorted them by categories for your convenience :) if you do read any of these books, please talk to me about them. i like books. and i like talking about them :) if you are in my near vicinity, let me know and i can lend books to you (since most of these books were for class, i pretty much own all of them). and my books are happier if they're being read.

a pedestrian rating scale
4 stars- you really really really should read it
3 stars- it's probably worth the read whatever your interest
2 stars- it would be enjoyable to read especially if you have interest in the subject.
1 star- it would only be worthwhile to read if you're interested in the particular themes or subjects. the book would be useful for knowledge, for gaining an idea of the literature in that area but probably will not be all that enjoyable to read.

from spanish class
*** la bella durmiente (rosario ferre) | trans. sleeping beauty ~ a montage of tabloid articles, letters, photo album captions and interior monologue. a scathing attack against gender roles in puerto rican culture through the story of a ballerina and her eventual demise. i should just post my essay here...
*querido diego, te abraza quiela (elena poniatowska) | trans. dear diego, hugs quiela ~ about diego riviera's abandoned mistress in paris. told through letters written by the mistress, it tells the story of a growing and twisted obsession, an inability to get over someone and move on. i found it rather annoying and whining. i wanted to hit the girl on her head and tell her to get over it and get a life.
***ardiente paciencia (antonio skarmeta) | trans. burning patience. also published as el cartero de neruda, neruda's postman. ~ this was made into an italian film called the postman. it tells about the relationship between an ordinary postman and the famous chilean poet pablo neruda. it's an incredibly fun and entertaining read, serving both as a homage to neruda and poetry as well as giving a glimpse into chilean society and politics during salvador allende's (socialist) rise to power in the 1970's.
***las batallas en el desierto (jose emilio pacheco) | trans. battles in the desert ~ stream of consciousness-like retelling of mexican history. very short and very concise. a bildungsroman. a nostalgic tale for a past, that was just as corrupt, but where hope existed.

from asian american literature class
***dogeaters (jessica hagedorn) ~ an incredibly entertaining and delightful to read panorama of phillipine society-- a glimpse into everyone from a the biggest movie star to a male prostitute, and seeing the strands that link all these facets of society together.
coffin tree (Wendy-Law Yone) ~ about two refugees, brother and sister, escaping from Burma. i didn't particularly enjoy this book-- it was rather heavy handed and did not appear in any way out of the ordinary for me.
***blu's hanging (lois-ann yamanaka) ~ a fairly disturbing yet well-told story of three children who are trying to survive after the death of their mother. gives a good snapshot of hawaiin culture and social politics.
*the gangster we are all looking for (le thi diem thuy) ~ about refugees from vietnam. i actually never finished reading this book so i can't say much other than that the writing style is very simple, lyrical and almost detached.

from postcolonial literature class
**confessions of an english opium eater (thomas de quincey) ~ rather fun, entertaining and British. it is as the title states, but does a job on elaborating a British national identity as well as the role of opium and sympathy and the ability to access and experience that which we normally would have no access to. on a side note, here's an interesting article that actually discusses the influence of this book and other writers (i.e. coleridge) and on the actual addictive qualities of heroin.
*lucy (jamaica kincaid) ~ i highly enjoyed jamaica kincaid's novela a small place, but lucy was in all honesty a drag to read. the main character lucy was rather annoying and far-too-brooding and complex. there were some interesting passages though that are worth reading in order to rethink our historical reflex--the attitudes we have towards third-world nations that we consider normal, and yet when illuminated in the correct light, appear strange, bizarre, injust and absurd.
*lord jim (joseph conrad) ~ unless you are a liker of conrad, this is a heavy-read, but worth getting through-- like anything conrad, it is incredibly rich in commentary on truth, on life and existence. i heard it often takes two reads before you can really get it. about a man's tragic boating accident and how it affects him thereonafter-- a romantic's determination to live up to his ideals in a world that does not care about those ideals.

from my thesis (if you read either of these, you can talk to me and i can blab endlessly about them)
***hunger of memory (richard rodriguez) ~ written by a mexican american, a bildungsroman about his assimilation into america, centering around his attitudes towards language (along with, some interesting reflections on religion and politics). his theoretical abstractions are eloquent and enjoyable to read, and the book is also haunted by a beautiful but sad mood of mourning and nostalgia.
****the woman warrior (maxine hong-kingston) ~ a beautiful blend of fact and fiction constitutes this "autobiography". this book is well worth the read whether you are asian or not, whether you care about identity politics or not. it is basically a sort of asian american magical realism that tells about the delicate and complicated relationship between a mother and her daughter.

comics (what a narrative lies behind this! this is a private shoutout)
****sandman book #9: the kindly ones (neil gaiman) ~ the climatic book of the sandman series. i don't want to say too much, but despite the initially unsatisfying flat artwork, the book completely carries away. and it does an amazing character development of morpheus, touching upon a variety of different themes: unbearable weight, the desire to escape the mistakes one has made, the inability to change, weariness... anyways, this book is REALLY GOOD. you SHOULD READ IT! (but in order to do that, you need to read the first 8 books of the series.... remember: finish book 2 before deciding whether or not to go forward because book 1 is a somewhat awkward oddity, that is not representative of the rest of the series).
***sandman book #10: the wake (neil gaiman) ~ the denouement of the 10 book sandman series. a glimpse at funerals and contemplations on the meaning of death. and, most notably, a final particularly impactful glimpse at shakespeare's the tempest that can only be really appreciate if you've read the whole comic series, which you should do by the way.
***v for vendetta (alan moore) ~ the book behind the movie and in many ways, better than movie. evey's character had a much more a desperate yet naiive and innocent touch to her. her transformation even more striking. but what i loved about this book was its markedly ambiguous ending.

the suspicion of binaries [2.bb]

either unbearable weight or unbearable lightness part 2.b

just an addendum to the previous entry.

here are lyrics from a song by pedro the lion in his album control that capture "a christian's cry of burden in sin-separation from jesus".*

Wouldn't it be so wonderful
if everything were meaningless.
But everything is so meaningful,
and most everything turns to shit.

Rejoice
Rejoice
Rejoice




*quoted from a friend who is quite proficient at word mechanics and sounding smart

Friday, May 26, 2006

the suspicion of binaries [2.b]

either unbearable lightness or unbearable weight part 2

given Kundera's binary in the previous post, we are seemed to be left with two alternatives:

either, we choose the utter meaninglessness of unbearable lightness, accepting that this life is ephemeral, the consequences of our actions transient and that nothing really matters: everything is pardoned in advance and cynically permitted.

or, we choose to accept the concept of eternal return, where our actions do have consequence, but one of eternal impact-- an idea that is both immensely desirable, for it gives us a purpose, it endows us with significance, yet also incredibly terrible for the amount of responsibility it weighs upon us.

most of the time, we seem to live under both curses. we feel weighed down and burdened, perhaps not by the sense of the responsability, but by the constant need to prove and to find our self-worth, our significance in the world and in the lives of other people. yet, this is paralleled by the haunting feeling that perhaps all this is really just meaningless.

yet in jesus we find freedom from both these curses. he can both alleviate us from the unbearable lightness of being while also freeing us from the heavy burden of eternal return. he says:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

we are no longer airy, ephemeral, misty beings, passing through this life, to leave nothing more than an alteration of the breeze. rather, our actions can have eternal significance, everlasting weight. we share jesus' yoke-- we partake in his purpose, in his meaning.

at the same time, this purpose is not burdensome. we are not judged according to how much we accomplish, how much we gain or earn or change, but rather we carry this burden in full dependence of god. because we share jesus' yoke, it is not heavy for jesus is gentle and humble in heart. in fact, he carries our yoke precisely because we have already stumbled and fallen and proven ourselves unable to bear it. instead, it is he, not us, that sustains its eternal weight.

it is unbearable weight made bearably light.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

the suspicion of binaries [2.a]

either unbearable weight or unbearable lightness part 1

The idea of the eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?


Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.


Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?


It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable.


If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.

Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.


...


... the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.


~


If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).

If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.


But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?


The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.


Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.


What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?


Parmenides posed this very question in the sixth century before Christ. He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/nonbeing. One half of the opposition he called positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative. We might find this division into positive and negative poles childishly simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness?


~ excerpts from the opening chapters of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being


to be continued...