conspicuous consumption

It may turn out that the life of idiotic ostentation makes humanity quite as despicable as the life of a drunkard, and that the image of God is less defaced in a saloon of the Bowery than in those jeweled birthday parties for dogs with which the New York Four Hundred disgust all civilized mankind. That much of this is, in the face of the world's needs, an enormity for which all defense is mere shamelessness no conscientious person will deny... Take the advertisement of a present-day 'millionaire's hotel,' with the assurance it gives of 'the very last word in sumptuousness.' Is this not one of the features of our time upon which we all trust that a wiser age will look back, not only with condemnation, but with a sense of nausea?

~1918 article in the American Journal of Sociology by Herbert Stewart, professor at Dalhousie University in Novia Scotia

If we allowed ourselves to see what we're doing every day, we might find it too nauseating. I mean, the way we treat other people-- I mean, you know, every day, several times a day, I walk into my apartment building. The doorman calls me Mr. Gregory, and I call him Jimmy... Now already, what is the difference between that the Southern plantation owner who's got slaves? You see, I think that an act of murder is committed at that moment, when I walk into my building. Because here is a dignified, intelligent man, a man of my own age, and when I call him Jimmy, then he becomes a child, and I'm an adult. Because I can by my way into that building.

~ Andre Gregory in 1981 Film My Dinner with Andre

~

It appears that I'm back. That may have been a record length hiatus. Sometimes real life takes over. In any case, I thought I'd ease back into blogging by posting these two quotations found in Rachel Sherman's Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels, an excellent book for the record (which also reminds me, I'm about a year behind on book reviews). Blogger's Amazon Associates Integration ads has also reminded me that I should stop patronizing Amazon. If you click through the book link above, it'll take you to a social enterprise firm, Better World Books, a B Corporation... but I feel like a hypocrite because I just made an order of books off Amazon...

*Note: For professional reasons, I'd like to keep my blog anonymous. I'd appreciate it if you refrain from mentioning my name or identifying characteristics in the comments. Thanks! I am also contemplating getting rid of all my labels. They don't make any sense!

fruits of my labour

In the case of the white-collar man, the alienation of the wage-worker from the products of his work is carried one step nearer to its Kafka-like completion. The salaried employee does not make anything, although he may handle much that he greatly desires but cannot have. No product of craftsmanship can be his to contemplate with pleasure as it is being created and after it is made. Being alienated from any product of his labor, and going year after year through the same paper routine, he turns his leisure all the more frenziedly to the ersatz diversion that is sold him, and partakes of the synthetic excitement that neither eases nor releases. He is bored at work and restless at play, and this terrible alternation wears him out.

~ C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes

As white-collar worker in a nonprofit institution (which inevitably has its bureaucraucies), I understand my craving and my need for my manual creation. A desire to touch and hold the product of my labour—to contemplate it with pleasure. To partake in an activity that is not mere diversion, but creation that eases and releases. A comfort from the haunting sense that my work is disappearing into a labyrinth of papers, emails and electronic files and meetings.*

Finished product:
Collared Wrap from Sally Melville's the Knitting Experience Book 2: The Purl Stitch. Knit as a mother's day gift. I can't say I enjoyed four months of knitting with dull green worsted-weight acrylic wool. But I am so pleased with the final result that I am tempted to make the same item for myself...





Finished product:
Garter Rib socks from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks
Knit as a father's day gift. I am concerned that these socks are going to be too big for him.... but he will probably wear them anyways. Aren't fathers great?




* Though for the record, for the most part, I do believe my work is valuable. I just have occasional melodramatic days. :) Or perhaps, I posted this to have an excuse to present pictures of my knitting-- Why must the intangible justify the tangible? Actually, to be honest, I'm just crazy about C. Wright Mills. Everytime I read something by him, I end up highlighting every other sentence and resisting the urge to type up his entire book in a blog entry...

subjecthood vs. objecthood

towards an ethic of integrity
(unfinished*)

I’ve ranted for quite some time about the need for integrity in our professional lives, which has become more evident with the recent economic crisis. Our society has functioned by obeying the letter of the law, with no regard for its spirit. We do what is legal, not what is right.

Martin Buber, a Jewish theologian, provides a principle that may be used to establish a framework of integrity. He describes two modes of relating with word pairs in his book I and Thou. The word pair “I-You” “establishes the world of relation”, which involves encountering the other as a subject, whereas the word pair “I-It” treats the other as an object, a thing to be experienced. This can apply to any sort of relationship, including between human and nature, and between human and God. In Buber's words:

The Life of human beings is not passed in the sphere of transitive verbs alone. It does not exist in virtue of activities alone which have some thing for their object.
I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something. The life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone.
This and the like together establish the realm of It.
But the realm of Thou has a different basis.
When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds.
When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; he has indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation.

Buber’s "I-Thou" relation suggests Jesus’ bold command to “Love your neighbour as yourself.” To love another as ourselves, we must first behold another as ourselves, not just another thing to serve us. (And Buber later suggests that the “I” in the “I-It’ relationship is not as fully “I” as the “I” in the “I-Thou” relationship. To be fully “I”, we must fully behold “Thou”)

Our modern life is ordered to maximize the “I-It’ relationships and to avoid the discomfort of “I-Thou”. We buy from anonymous employees of large multi-national corporations, sit in front of the plasma screen to receive our daily dose of information and entertainment and travel by enclosed climate-controlled vehicles. Commodification is the theme of our generation and perhaps its most insidious impact is not obscuring people with things, but turning people into things. And as such, we have lost integrity in the professional world and failed to nurture authenticity in life.

How would this past year differ if we had aimed to treat others as subjects, instead of objects in our professional life? "I-Thou" instead of "I-It". The recognition of a common humanity, of the image of God.

Yet the implementation of “I-Thou” does not merely entail treating people we encounter extra nicely, it goes deeper. To fully redeem relations between people, social institutions that structure the relationships between people also require reform. “I-Thou” relationships cannot be created by some elusive ideal social institution, they ultimately require personal transformations. But institutions can be structured to enable “I-Thou” relationships to be more easily established and realized. Could slave-owners, even the really nice ones, truly have been in an “I-Thou” relationship with one of their slaves? Could a CEO making millions of dollars a year truly treat a minimum wage worker in his company as a “Thou”? Could I ever treat a homeless man on the street as a “Thou” rather than an “It”? We do not meet each other in a vacuum—an entire societal structure props up our encounters.

Whether we are traditionals who don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, or revolutionaries who’d like to burn everything, or reformers who value gradual change, we should seek to reshape society, its culture and its institutions, so that “I-Thou” can flourish, and integrity and virtue can be recovered.


* I keep a Word document on my computer named dl_MONTH with unfinished blog entries. “DL” stands for “delete later,” suggesting that I will finish using the notes and delete the document. Scrolling through my unwieldy 24-page document, I find this prospect unlikely and am contemplating a less misleading name for the document. In any case, I am attempting to polish up and post some of these unfinished blog entries and atleast reduce the number of pages in the file. Funny enough, I recall having tried this once before without much success—the more reliable alternative is to save the unfinished “DL” file as BlogIdeas_2008 and start a new file called DL. Rinse and repeat!

when giants come tumbling down

another mad rant

It’s a strange, eerie feeling, reading about the demise of two Wall Street giants, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, following soon after the federal takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the earlier demise of Bear Stearns.

Perhaps what’s so striking about the recent failure of these large financial services firms is that they signal a death of a myth that I and so many other prestigious university graduates bought into.

Two or three years ago, all of us impressionable college graduates would have lusted after offers from Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch. A job at one of these firms would most likely guarantee entry into the country’s best law schools and business schools. A year ago, my former consulting firm, Oliver Wyman Financial Services, was still aggressively recruiting a larger incoming class for projected growth in consulting services for financial services industry. What did we really believe in? A bunch of managerial jargon about entrepreneurship, meritocracy, innovation, prestige and intelligence.

I do feel sorry for all of those analysts and associates who are now without a job, because I did tread that path for awhile. Perhaps now we can better know the price of being an “organization kid”, a lowly member in the network of the technocratic-managerial-financial elites – where more often than not, success is fleeting and power can quickly become powerlessness. Perhaps we will now know better than to trust in financial markets and lucrative job offers. And perhaps we will realize that we are ultimately responsible for our actions and decisions whether or not we are fully cognizant of their impact.

There is obviously a role for financial markets in today’s economy, and banking services are necessary to provide the liquidity needed to make today’s economy work. But I didn’t quite gain a sense from these Wall Street executives that they were trying to provide a valuable service to companies and individuals – that somehow got lost in the jumble of future trades, credit swaps, mortgage-backed securities and debt derivatives—which are somehow all subsumed under the interest of short-term profits.

I don’t particularly feel sorry for the top executives of these firms. In fact, I feel angry that though many may not have received any compensation packages, they still made their millions with timely stock sales and savings.

Who bears the true cost of these poor and risky decisions? The many who were lured into mortgages they cannot afford, those who are now watching their neighbourhoods deteriorate because of the growing number of foreclosures, and the working class who faces even more dismal job prospects. Many will feel the hurt of these far and distant decisions made in fancy boardrooms a lot harder than those who made the decisions.

(Do you feel powerless? Of late, I have been feeling that way. Powerlessness coupled with hope results in humility. Powerlessness without hope results in pragmatism.)

unequal measures of inequality

My most recent blog entry related to how the manner in which knowledge is produced within the university system is subject to a set of assumptions and methodologies. This became quite evident in this example drawn from my first class in Professor Lamas’ Community Economic Development.*

In looking at these statistics relating to income, taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, what would you conclude about equality in America?

Income of Households 2002

Race/Ethnicity	Income
White alone or in combination	$45,350
White alone	$45,390
White alone, not Hispanic	$47,194
Black alone or in combination	$30,032
Black alone	$29,982

Now take a look at these statistics concerning wealth in America, now what would you conclude?
Median Value of Assets for Households 2000

Race	Net Worth
White	$58,716
White Not of Hispanic Origin	$67,000
Black	$6,166

Percent Distribution of Household Net Worth 2000

Race	Net Worth
	Zero or Negative	$500,000 and Over
White	12.7%	9.3%
White Not of Hispanic Origin	11.3%	10.0%
Black	29.1%	0.6%

In the first case, inequality America is significant but is not of an outrageous proportion. However, looking at wealth, this picture is dramatically different. The median wealth of a white American household is over 10 times that of a black household. Furthermore, three times as many blacks than whites have zero or negative net worth.

The poverty debate both in America and around the world has been framed around the question of income (what one earns) rather than wealth (what one owns less what one owes). Two professors can both earn the same amount each year, but their lives may look very different depending on the inheritance they may or may not have received from their parents.

Because the poverty problem is framed in terms of income, the policy solutions suggested are also directed towards raising income. Our grand solutions to poverty in America seemed centered around raising minimum wages and providing better education (so that people can receive higher paying jobs). But if we were to think of the problem differently, how would our solutions change?

Interestingly enough, the major wealth-based solution to poverty has not been particularly successful. Home ownership has often been promoted as a way of increasing wealth and gaining economic success. However, this has played out into the context of income segregated neighbourhoods, disparate quality of education in public schools, and foreclosures. Home ownership has not created additional wealth especially in cases of stagnant or declining real estate prices or growing costs of maintaining a home.

I'm sure there will be more to follow on this subject.


*In fact, this entire entry is drawn from the discussion in today’s class. I guess you know it’s a good class if I come home and immediately write a blog entry.

imagining china

If cities have gods, then so must nations. With the 24 hour NBC coverage of the Olympic Games, I can’t help but think what mythical being presides over the vast land of China? What is the spirit that guides this imagined community?*

Let me caveat all this by saying that I make this sketch of China from my very biased and limited viewpoint, amalgamated from my own impressions of the country, conversations with upper middle-class Chinese family and friends and perhaps a few taxi drivers and shop owners, and my reading of American media, which seems quick to pounce on China's weaknesses. Nevertheless, this is my opinion of China, a country for which I still feel a strange affinity for, perhaps indicated by my slightly inability to fully cheer for the American nearly all blond women’s gymnastics team.** The faces of the Chinese women’s gymnastics teams strike me both as familiar and foreign, reminding me of my elusive birthplace that I have only visited as a tourist.

On the surface, China’s deity stands proud. It has come a long way since the devastating mass famines of the 1950s or the social upheavals (the closing down of schools, the relocation to the countryside) of the Cultural Revolution. My parents left China in the mid-eighties. At that time, few families possessed any common household appliances that marked America’s successful 50s: microwave, refrigerator, television set, washing machine etc… However, when my parents returned in 1993 and 1994, they were amazed to find that nearly all their relatives owned them. They remarked that there was little they had that the Chinese did not (aside from having two children!). In little more than a decade or so, many, my extended family included, have risen out of poverty and have decent middle class lives, no longer living cramped six people to a room with no running water.

And visually, China’s cities reflect this economic success-- the impressive glowing skylines, the rapidly expanding network of highways, the sleek shopping centers and lively nightlife. As a result of both this and the continued nationalistic propaganda (if I’m not mistaken, elementary school textbooks still include numerous flattering portraits of Mao ZeDong and other key revolutionary heroes), many feel proud of what China has been able to accomplish from so little.

But China’s pride may also prove to be its downfall. Pursuing some unrealistic vision of modernization, China has been demolishing historic slum-like inner city neighborhoods and replacing them with sleek high rises and shopping malls. While America tries to lower automobile usage, China promotes it, restricting bicycle usage on certain streets. Its rapid industrialization has also filled the skies up with smog. Some may have profited from the economic development, but many remain left behind, supplying the labor for the sweatshop factories and filling in the informal economy.

Its nationalistic pride also suggests hidden insecurity. Though China lavishly demonstrates to the world its success and power, it also seems to yearn for praise and acceptance. Its previous attempts at manufacturing and coordinating a utopian society have failed. Communism in China was a disaster that killed millions. Previous state-down attempts at controlling the population with the one-child policy have created a new set of problems, with the increased pressure on only children to support their parents, and the outnumbering of males to females.

Perhaps China is so quick to curb criticism and repress free speech because it needs to continue to sustain its own myth. Exiled Chinese author Ma Jian, as cited in this article, comments that in China, there is "inflated pride; the fusion of years of nationalistic propaganda, with the economic powerhouse China has become, has created a feeling that it's now the centre of the world, and that foreigners come to them with begging hands." However, "the root of this desire to put on a great show stems from the authorities' own loss of faith in themselves. And they also realize that, despite the great rise in nationalism, the people don't believe in this empty ideology either."

And so China’s shiny, proud exterior façade (like the recently erected walls designed to hide Beijing slums) conceals an interior disillusionment and insecurity. While Chinese Olympic athletes who win gold take home glory and wealth, what happens to the 249,550 (with injured bodies and insufficient education) who do not?*** What other bodies are lost in the spectacle of those chiseled, carved and engineered Olympic bodies?

The state already disappointed the people with the collapse of the communist dream. Along with that, many promises, including health care, state pensions, welfare, jobs, justice, and equality, have been broken. Individual well-being is always curtailed for some purported collective good and elusive nationalistic glory. (Service and sacrifice for the nation is always enforced, rarely voluntary). While China celebrates hosting the Olympic games, factory owners are forced to close up shop, slum-dwellers suddenly find walls surrounding their neighborhoods, and students are told to stay away from Beijing during this time. When China was awarded the privilege (not the right) of hosting the Olympic games, it was partly for the hope of improving the human rights situation in the country. But many have commented that the situation has only worsened.

The Chinese people may rhetorically display plenty of nationalist pride in their imagined community, but their actions suggest otherwise. A spirit of practicality dominates the real China. From my aunt who questioned me on why I did not take a job with a higher salary, to a Chinese Chinatown bus companion who kept insisting that I must do business with China because I spoke both Chinese and English and could become very wealthy, it all comes down to money and security for oneself, and one’s family.

Students spend their childhoods and adolescence confined to classrooms and study halls, preparing for their college entrance exams. Other families make huge personal sacrifices in order to send their children abroad. Factory workers choose to work long, grueling hours in order to provide better for their families. Individuals rarely make true financial sacrifices for the sake of their nation. Over one billion people scramble to try to make ends meet, and improve their standard of living, perhaps without any thought as to whether or not they are serving or bettering their country.

And so perhaps China really is just an imagined community—a story , a fable, a myth, a distant deity to whom one pays homage, but certainly not a god who will come to one’s rescue, no matter how desperate the prayer.****



* The term “imagined communities” comes from Benedict Anderson’s definition of nations. He describes nations as imagined "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion".
** Okay, I wrote that before the gymnastics all-around. I’ll admit it-- by the end, I was cheering for Nastia Liukins. After all I am a newly minted U.S. citizen! And if I don’t cheer for the US, what country can I cheer for? I can’t quite cheer for China, and Canada’s performance at this Olympics has been rather disappointing. “You have to be ambitious to win the Olympics,” says my mother, “The Canadians! They’re too laid-back!”. I also asked my mother which country she was cheering for more—US or China? She said it was tough, but the US more.
*** I’m averse to China’s state training of athletes where children as young as 3 can be taken from their families. But then I wonder about how sports often work in America—Children aren’t forced to train by the state, and yet only those who can afford the classes, the practice and the coaching make it to the top. I could spin it and say that atleast China gives children and families who have never had an opportunity a chance for Olympic Success. But once again, I must wonder about all those athletes who didn’t quite make it to the top but still had to subject themselves to the years of grueling training, injuries and separation from family. The New York Times article also suggests that even former medalists don’t always fare too well after the Olympics and the glory has faded.
**** I am cognizant of China’s demonstration (both government and individual) of care and compassion after the SiChuan earthquake, so I’m not saying that the government will not assist people at all. Once again, I am speaking of in general terms, so naturally exceptions exist.

garbage dump

I’ve just returned from vacation in cool California and am returning to the humid weather of Philadelphia and my overflowing “Word Document” where I amass all the articles and quotes for this blog. So I thought I would clean my plate as I did previously before posting again (currently in the pipeline are some scribblings on the birth, adolescence and middle age of Philadelphia, crafting and consumerism, and rather reluctantly, on the topic of being Asian American, since I am technically now an American. I suppose I could consider taking topic suggestions as well).

First of all, this cartoon is incredible, though I can’t seem to remember where it is from:


A similar graph from this White Courtesy Telephone blog post also suggests the inanity of much research.


Also, on an academic note, it’s been all over the news that Peter Enns has resigned from Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) in what appears to be a theological difference. In my completely amateur opinion, it marks WTS’ move away from academic scholarship and more as a denominational training ground. Institutions, like cities, have personality and character. They are born, they change, they age, and eventually they also will die.

There’s been more talk about the students who are receiving elite educations. An adjunct faculty writes about the spirit of entitlement that dominates Harvard University. The article has been hotly contested and debated, so if you’re interested, run some searches on it or check the additional links on aldaily.com.

So given the state of today’s academic environment, the recent passing of Russian writer Alexander Solzhentisyn should merit attention. Solzhentisyn was a bold writer who openly criticized and denounced the Russian communist regime, in particular writing about the horrors of the gulags. Articles from the Inquirer and the Economist.

It was also refreshing to see an SFMOMA exhibit on China “Half Life of a Dream”. The artwork seemed meaningful because it actually seemed to have something relevant to say – perhaps because China has more of a contradictory national narrative, than the postmodern fragmentation of the American narrative in recent years. The Philadelphia Inquirer has featured three stories spanning two decades about a Chinese woman who has now become a corporate executive. 2008, 1999, 1987.

Speaking of China, the Olympic Games are coming up. I’ve never been super into watching these competitions—and part of me is always devastated by the amount of havoc it can wreak upon a city—economically and ecologically. For the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, the city plans to bulldoze through a rare forest. There’s more coverage of China’s Olympic Games and the corresponding environmental and societal issues at the same site.

On the environmental note, as gas prices hike, bicycling has also finally been gaining the spotlight. There’s a useful Philadelphia Inquirer article with practical tips about bike commuting, as well as an Economist article on bicycling and its implications on street planning and safety.

My few words of advice from my on year of experiencing the indignities of commuting by bike: it is okay to wear skirts that are longer than skirt length, changing after you get to work is highly advisable, and it’s better to be slow and safe. Be respectful of motorists (e.g. don’t run red lights when they are trying to get through the intersection) but remember that you have a right to be on the road. However, if your safety is threatened (e.g. angry, aggressive driver), you may need to slow down and get off the road.

Meanwhile, I am reminded of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities with a recent Mercedes hit and run accident in the Philadelphia area. Hit and run accidents make me very angry. However, the murder of a four year old this week strikes an entirely different level of emotion, something akin to numbness.

Despite the violence in this area, Philadelphia still remains a great city to live in. Surprisingly, it is a lot safer than what one might imagine. Props to this recent college graduate who wrote for the Inquirer why he has decided to stay in Philadelphia and contribute to my continued ambivalence about the gentrification of this city.

Speaking of Philadelphia, I have been fairly satisfied with Nutter as our mayor, but that did not prevent me from feeling saddened about reading about the death of Jesus White, a homeless man who ran in the mayor primaries last year.

It’s especially striking that Jesus White worked a regular job, but still had no home. It saddens me that when the economy does well, it takes years for the minute benefits to “trickle down” to the poor. Yet when the economy suffers, the impact is felt immediately and most severely by the poor.

Speaking of policies, Barack Obama’s recent support of faith-based programs has also been on the minds of many. This Opinion article Why Obama seized the faith-based mantle by Amy Sullivan from USA Today traces the history of faith-based initiatives, something that surprisingly despite being one of Bush’s signature policies, stemmed from the Democratic party.

This other opinion article from the Baltimore Sun makes a argument against more funding for faith-based programs, but instead advocates more collaboration between religious congregations and secular nonprofit organizations. The writer’s argument is solution-oriented and forward-looking, which I appreciate, but he also assumes the necessity to professionalize care, something that I am not entirely comfortable with. While professional help may be valuable and important, we run the risk of evading responsibility ourselves, and pushing it off to a third party, outsourcing compassion if you will. While Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism’ has not been successful, I am pretty sure that putting the burden of caring for the poor entirely on the shoulder of the government will also fail. Institutionalized compassion will not bring about transformation. (Does institutionalized care even qualify as true compassion?)

All this talk about politics makes me remember once again that I am now a U.S. citizen and will be voting in the upcoming election! Perhaps more significantly, I have almost been married to this man for 6 months.

On a lighter note, Wordle.net is quite amusing. I ended up with this for this blog:

I'm also tired.

what if philadelphia ceases to be philadelphia?

In his novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino writes about changes to the city of Maurilia:

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one’s eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

I find myself with a funny set of wants—I want more college graduates and professionals to stay or to come to Philadelphia, to work here and contribute to the economy, and to make this a better city. Yet I also know that this very revitalization is playing an integral role in the gentrification in my neighbourhood, destroying historic black communities in West Philadelphia.

I deeply desire to see this city revitalized, to become the “next great city”—for its “soul-stirring desolation” as Jonathan Franzen put it, to be turned into soul-stirring hope and community. But when does Philadelphia cease to be Philadelphia? When does some other minor deity saunter in and takes its place and its name, while the old Philadelphia is put in a body bag and dumped into the Delaware River? In hoping for Philadelphia’s life, am I also wishing its destruction?

As Philadelphia changes, the spirit of this city will change. But I want to see the soul of Philadelphia grow out of its sighs and tears and into something wise and beautiful, with history and complexity, rather than see it squeezed out and left to die, while some other young, fashionable imposter comes to stretch its personality over these streets.*


* There’s been an interesting series in the Philadelphia Inquirer on homeless men sleeping, eating, bathing and having sex in Rittenhouse Square. I’ve blogged about this park and my appreciation for the diversity of its users. Sometimes, when I try to imagine what Philadelphia would look as a person, I picture a homeless man, dirty and filthy, staggering through the streets (I have other images too). I don’t want this homeless man shut away in a shelter far, far way—I want him to find a job, build a family and live in a home. As for the Rittenhouse Square issue, I understand the local residents’ aversion to having their local park overrun by homeless at night, and I also understand the need to provide the homeless with more permanent housing options than park benches, but something about excluding before including, hiding before healing, and ultimately separating without ever integrating, strikes me as being the wrong approach. And I hope that we do not take the same approach to the poor (of pushing them out to suburbs rather than including them in a vital way) as we try to bring new life to Philadelphia.
** On a lighter note, I think I may be breaking a significant trend with this post. Have you noticed that I will post frequently for a month, and then I will go on hiatus for the next month before resuming frequent posts again? Somehow, I’ve managed this time to only wait about two weeks before the posts resume again.

I am gentrifying my neighbourhood

It’s frightening how we find ourselves swept up in large social changes. We act, thinking that our actions are our entirely own, only to find that so many others are making the same decisions. I begin to wonder to what degree are my decisions my own (or God’s) and to what degree have I swallowed the ideas, values and assumptions prevalent in society.

I watch the rapid gentrification of my neighborhood—I knew it would happen eventually but I would not have anticipated the speed. To put it bluntly, six months ago there were not this many white people walking around. So property prices are increasing, rents are rising, and houses are being renovated. While I can say that I am part of the neighbourhood’s revitalization, I am also displacing plenty of lower income families, and representing the arrival of yuppies and hipsters.

The gentrification in many ways seems inevitable. And if Matt and I had not chosen to live where we are now, and opted to live in, well, an already gentrified area, the neighborhood would have changed anyways. But that does not take away from the fact that we are part of urban process now that is moving lower-income, underprivileged families further out to the periphery.

So what do we do when we recognize that our actions, by no evil intent, are hurting others? To what degree do we go with the flow and recognize that this may not be one of the battles that we are called to fight and that we are not responsible? (Is that resignation?) Or, how do we stand up against the river when we feel like a little pebble being tossed about in the current?

In some ways this question is a moot point for the time being, as Matt and I have already signed our lease. For the time being, we are called to love and care for our neighbors, whatever ethnic or class background they may be from. But when it comes to buying a house* (something that is on the radar for the next few years), how are we to tread? Even if we try to tread softly, our footprints seem to sink far deeper than we would ever want them to.


* We can’t really afford a house in the wealthier sections of the city. Do we buy a house in this already gentrifying area and continue to contribute to this inevitable process? Or, do we buy a house in a predominantly black lower-income neighborhood and risk setting off gentrification there, because our very presence will change the way that the neighborhood is viewed? (And I question the latter option critically—it can easily be done with a sense of pride and self-righteousness, instead of faith, love, and a specific calling).

simulated opportunity (golden handcuffs)

on elite education, prestigious jobs and privilege

I just made a visit up to Manhattan this past weekend, and quickly find myself ushered back into the contradictory world of long work hours coupled with late nights out consisting of $50 dinners, multiple cab rides, and bar hopping.

I was saddened to find so many people who disliked their high-paying, prestigious banking and consulting jobs, but could not find the momentum to leave. Why do so many intelligent and talented people feel trapped in their jobs? (It’s so easy to end up in these jobs—the process is on campus and they give you an offer fall of senior year. It takes courage to turn down a secured job offer in exchange for the unknown).*

Is it because you have already built your life around a lifestyle that requires your current salary? Is it because all your friends make a similar salary and in order to continue living the way that you do, you can’t really take a job that pays less? (Would you be able to attend all those $100 birthday dinners? Would you be able to continue paying $1500 in rent for your apartment?)

Or is it more a matter of security and prestige? A sense that this New York finance job is a good opportunity and it would be a waste to throw it away?

For those of us who hail from immigrant families, this question becomes very real, because our parents worked so hard in order to give us good opportunities in this country. And for those of us who attended costly Ivy League or private universities, our parents have provided even further for us financially. I’ve been perceived as spoiled, because I tossed out a good opportunity in the corporate world in order to take a lower paying position at a nonprofit organization. Apparently, I couldn’t tough out the long hours and tough environment of the corporate job, so I did the irresponsible thing and quit.**

Have I thrown away my privilege? Am I not spoiled and have I not appreciated the sacrifices my family has made on my behalf? I remember the frustration of being drilled by my aunt: “So why did you quit your higher paying job to take a lower paying job? Why couldn’t you have found a job in Philadelphia that paid as much as your previous one?”

I probably still have a long ways to go to truly understand, appreciate and be grateful for the sacrifices my parents have made for me, but I do not believe that I have tossed out my privilege. In fact, it is my privilege that has given the freedom to change jobs and pursue something that I love.

In the very thought-provoking article, The Disadvantages of an Elite Education, Deresiewicz writes***:

If one of the disadvantages of an elite education is the temptation it offers to mediocrity, another is the temptation it offers to security. When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhattan or a mansion in L.A.; you have to drive a Honda instead of a BMW or a Hummer; you have to vacation in Florida instead of Barbados or Paris, but what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you’re suited for, work you love, every day of your life?

Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.

My parents sacrifices have afforded me a better life—one in which I have plenty and one in which I have the freedom to choose a satisfying job that will not leave me in poverty. They have brought me to a country where I don’t have to fight tooth and nail to survive. They have given me an education that puts so many resources and options at my disposal. It would have been a waste to end up trapped in a job that made me feel dead on the inside, and to end up living a life that I never wanted to live.

* Obviously, this is generalization. Some do love their jobs and stay in the field and maybe they are meant to be there, while others tough out the travel and hours in order to learn what they can and then leave after a few years to follow less traditional paths. And some have chosen to stay in the job for a few years in order to honor their parents, but then go on to do something closer to their heart. I don’t know whether these people are right or wrong, nor should I be the judge of their decisions. (I will say that I do have special respect for the latter group). I am merely speaking in defense of my own decision, and against the mentality of “Since I’ve been given this great privilege and opportunity, I guess God wants me to take it.” There is opportunity in turning down opportunity.
** There is distinction between choosing a more satisfying job vs. just being lazy and continuing to live off your parent’s income. One is responsible and the other is not.
*** In fact, I like this article so much, I think it should be required reading for anyone who has or is considering an Ivy League education.
**** For related writings on this topic, please click on “new york city” in the archive by topics section.

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?"