the abundance of the rich

With the recession, I’ve been reading quite a bit of the rich becoming less rich. Many have suffered as a result of the downturn in the market due to real estate losses. Many of these rich struggle with maintaining their lifestyles: Some have refused to cut back on their $10,000/month mortgage because they don’t want to sell their dream home despite having lost a job. Or others who lament the fact that their bonuses are not going to be particularly big and must cut back on private jet plane rides.

I have had very little sympathy for their situations, as I know that the plight of the poor is much harder. The poor generally suffer more. For them, it is not a question of less hair extensions or less restaurant meals, but trying to decide whether to buy food or pay for gas, resorting to eating junk food because it’s cheaper than real food or losing their houses altogether.

Yet, reading this recent article in the New York Times has stirred pity and sadness in me, not for the fact that the wealthy now have less, but for the way that they are so controlled by their wealth. We think that wealth gives us power, but from these examples, it seems much more likely that wealth has power over us:

One of (a divorce lawyer)’s clients recently confessed that his net worth had decreased to $8 million from more than $20 million, and he thinks that his wife will leave him. He has hidden their fall in fortune by taking on debt to pay for her extravagant clothes and vacations.

“I literally had to sit there and tell him that he had to tell his wife that she had to stop spending,” she said. “He was actually scared she would leave him because their financial situation changed so drastically.”

~

“Even if they’re not in danger of not paying their mortgage, there’s still a psychological change,” said Chris Del Gatto, chief executive of Circa, which has watched its business jump by 50 percent in the last year as wealthy clients sell their spare diamonds and Rolexes. “The economy is an issue even for people who don’t need the money.”

Their spouses could leave them when they discover that their net worth has collapsed to eight figures from nine. Friends and business associates could avoid them as they pass their lunchtime tables at Barney’s or the Four Seasons. And these snubs could trickle down to their children
“They fear their kids won’t get invited to the right birthday parties,” said Michele Kleier, an Upper East Side-based real estate broker. “If they have to give up things that are invisible, they’re O.K. as long as they don’t have give up things visible to the outside world.”

So New York’s very wealthy are addressing their distress in discreet and often awkward ways. They try to move their $165 sessions with personal trainers to a time slot that they know is already taken. They agree to tour multimillion-dollar apartments and then say the spaces don’t match their specifications. They apply for a line of credit before art auctions, supposedly to buy a painting or a sculpture, but use that borrowed money to pay other debts.

~

The drop in wealth has also exposed other personal problems, like bad marriages. Money — which bought jewelry or extravagant vacations — helped smooth over many of these difficulties, said Kenneth Mueller, a psychotherapist in the East Village who works with many Wall Street bankers and real estate developers. Now, he said, his clients “catastrophize” smaller bonuses or shriveling stock portfolios. “You have to remind them that there’s something that has always been there,” he said. “All the money helped mask the anxiety.”

~

The very wealthy can’t hide anything from their nutritionists and personal trainers, because they see the weight gain. Heather Bauer, a dietitian who works with many Wall Street executives who pay $600 to $800 a month for her services, says her clients have been eating and drinking more in the last six months. She sees results of this indulging each time they step on a scale, and in their journals that record what they’ve eaten.

One Wall Street executive, Ms. Bauer said, snacks on nuts in her office all day to manage the stress of potentially losing her position, while another confesses to inhaling four bowls of cereal at 10 p.m. Even their sex lives are suffering, Ms. Bauer said, because of the stress or because the weight gain makes them feel unattractive.

~

No wonder it says in Ecclesiastes 5:12 that “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 admit that when I see the wardrobes and manicures of Sex and the City, or the sophisticated ladies shopping at the Burberry and Coach stores on the street where I work, a small part of me wishes and envies for that so-called “freedom” (to buy) and image of wealth. But an even deep part of me knows that if I had all that, I would not be satisfied nor content. “Whoever loves money never has money enough” (Ecclesiastes 5:11).*

*And I am thankful that I can say right now, I am very happy with what I have. And in fact, I have a lot (much much more than most people in the world have).

blablabla

I have been bogged down by unfinished blog entries. So to unload and start off on a fresh slate, I offer you some thought-provoking links and excerpts, and unfinished thoughts that have inspired me enough to write a few words, but perhaps not enough to write a full entry. This is long (four full screen lengths), so please browse….

Are YOU an African country ravaged by Aids and parched by drought? Fear not! Simply call Madonna! This fabulously wealthy white women from the West will solve all of your problems with a few fleeting visits, some looks of pained concern for the paparazzi, and a couple of million quid in donations…

There is something creepily colonialist in Madonna’s attitude to Africa. First we had the White Man’s Burden -– now we have the White Madonna’s Burden. More and more celebrities are treating Africa as a wide-eyed child that needs a Hollywood hug -– or as a wicked devil that needs a Hollywood hammering.

~ from the White Madonna's Burden

Sometimes, I wish people would stop whining about so-called “sexual oppression” in the United States. We have it pretty good in this country. Why do we keep complaining? Because apparently part of the answer to women’s sexual oppression, is to watch more porn:

Women bear the brunt of sexual oppression. While women have gained upward mobility in economic, political, and social realms, sexual liberation is the necessary key to open the door to full emancipation. Many women are not even aware of this insidious form of oppression. It is essential that women embrace their sexual identities. Women are entitled to enjoy sex and engage in any sexually activity that brings them pleasure without fear of punishment. This includes anything from thinking about sex to consuming pornography to engaging in sex acts that society still deems aberrant. If we find pornography, at large, to be degrading to women, then women must take charge of producing pornographic images that no longer cater to male desires through degrading depictions of women. Women, as consumers, have the power to transform the porn industry by creating a demand for porn that speaks to women’s interests.

~ from Canon Magazine

I hate the language of rights. It seems to imply that we have no responsibilities, only entitlements. It leads us to be complainers and whiners of our own situation, rather than people who are working to improve those of others. (A notable reflection on this can be found in White Courtesy Telephone.)

Who said “women are entitled to enjoy sex and engage in any sexual activity that brings them pleasure without fear of punishment?” Unless we get our tubes tied, we’re always going to have to worry about pregnancy. Our bodies are not entirely our own.

Yale student, Aliza Shvarts, created a scandal this year by creating artwork by collecting the blood from supposedly nine herbally-induced abortions—which in effect, is insulting to pro-choice and pro-life supporters alike for the manner in which she took so lightly human life. And this is the rhetoric she spews:

Among her "conceptual goals," she wrote in the Yale Daily News, was "to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are 'meant' to do from their physical capability." Shvarts wanted to show that "it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are 'meant' to birth a child."

Luckily, atleast some do not buy into the jargon:

Yale, of all colleges, never should have been blind-sided by such a stunt. One of the most astute critics of the humanities is on its faculty. Last year, Anthony T. Kronman, the former dean of Yale's law school, published "Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life." This superb book traces the historical rise and fall of the humanities, which, Kronman writes, "are not merely in a crisis. They are in danger of becoming a laughingstock, both within the academy and outside it."

~ both quotes from the Washington Post

And so while rich college-educated women rail on about abortion rights and pornography rights, there are lots of more significant ways that oppression is going on in the world:

We All Own Stolen Goods — and How Defending Property Rights Can Help the World’s Most Oppresed People by Leif Wenar
Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector by T. A. Frank

But of course, we don’t really have to worry about this because we’re adults in America. We only need to care about ourselves. Today, the signifiers of adulthood, the emergence from the so-called university “campus bubbles”, are framed wall art, dry-clean only clothing, studio apartments, even more casual sex, Coach bags and happy hour martinis. Welcome Sex and the City, our beloved four role models of young professional life. Even in later years, the true keynote of adulthood is not so much marriage, as the purchase of dream suburban home, or if you’re really high up on the achievement ladder, the urban luxury flat.

Barber argues that the new ethic of capitalism is one of ‘infantilisation’: money today is to be made in maintaining adults as needy children, who stuff down dumbed-down films, saccharine food and video games. While in the early stages of capitalism it benefited the capitalist system for everybody to save their pennies, now it benefits the system for us to splurge every penny and borrow more. While in the time of Franklin people were encouraged to restrain themselves and reinvest, now, says Barber, we are encouraged to act on every immediate whim, to be the grasping child in a sweet shop unable to say no...

If consumerism is emphasized more in our culture than production, play more than work, this is not only because consumption is what Western capitalism needs now – it is also because the production side of life is so lacking in ideological justification.

It is not so much that we have an ethic of consumption, but that – by default – it remains as one of the few meaningful experiences in our lives. There is a tangibility and satisfaction to buying – to picking out a new shirt or a new album and taking it home – that means that shopping remains for individuals a confirmation of their power to make things happen in the world.

The power of consumption has been usefully theorised by the Marxist sociologist Georg Simmel. In The Philosophy of Money, he looks at how buying an object is an act of individual subjectivity, the person stamping himself on a thing and claiming his right to its exclusive enjoyment. Shopping remains a way in which our choices have a tangible effect, in which we can make something in our lives new and different.

~ from a review in Spiked Online on the book Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole, by Benjamin Barber

I am quite saddened if shopping ends up being one of the few meaningful experiences that I can have in my life, and that it's one of the few ways that I can make an impact in the world and express myself. Is it not bad enough that I am what I do, that now I also have to be what I buy?

Today's American children, by contrast, get an average of 70 new toys a year, yet child development experts agree that the best toys are simple playthings such as blocks, balls and figurines that a child can play with over and over, in new ways. When I was growing up, a sticker was something precious that a stationery store owner would carefully cut off a roll and sell for 25 cents. Today, a made-in-China jumbo book of 600 stickers can be bought at CVS for $6.99. Something has been lost in this ostensibly positive development...

Far from inducing feelings of inadequacy, saying no to the parenting consumer culture should make parents feel all the wiser...

As for my husband and me, we hardly have unlimited resources, but we're still planning to go forth and multiply in the big city. The way we figure it, one day our children will be grateful for what we didn't give them -- and what we did for them instead.

~ by Pamela Paul, author of "Parenting Inc.: How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers -- and What It Means for Our Children."

the disappearance of time

The sprawl of highways, the hub and spoke of airplane trajectories, combined with the electronic network of telecommunications are monuments to our domination of space.

As we have dominated space, we have also rushed along. Consultants break the day at dawn to catch their next plane. Soccer mums shuttle their children back and forth from practices and playdates with her soup in a can in the cupholder of her SUV. A graduate student types away in the dim light of the library. Late at night, a corporate vice president frets over revenue and expense figures of his division, on which his compensation depends.

And it’s good news to hear that GDP per capita has gone up, because that means that our standard of living has improved.

In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective… To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

We like to live as though time does not exist, as though the ticking bomb of our mortality has been silenced. We live as though we can take all the things that we’ve acquired in our time here on earth with us when we die:

… to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the border of time. But time is the heart of existence.

Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face… Is joy of possessions an antidote to the terror of time which grows to be a dread of inevitable death? Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness, they are a threat to our very lives; we are more harassed than supported by the Frankensteins of spatial things.

Bertrand Russell writes that time is "an unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality… A certain emancipation from slavery to time is essential to philosophical thought… to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom."

But perhaps we have failed to enter the city of wisdom because we’ve forgotten about the importance time, and have only focused on space (Perhaps because we can control space, while time eludes us). And thus much of our labor is in vain, and we spend much of our time chasing forgeries of happiness.

~

Time and space are interrelated. To overlook either of them is to be partially blind. What we plead against is man's unconditional surrender to space, his enslavement to things. We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is a moment that lends significance to things.



* Unless otherwise noted, all italicized text is from Jewish writer Abraham Heschel’s book The Sabbath

the disappearance of place (2)

We celebrate the internet because it seems to connect us to a degree that we never could have imagined before: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, YahooGroups, Ravelry, Second Life, not to mention the numerous message boards and special interest, dating websites and chatrooms--- all the various networks tying us to people we’ve never met and locations we’ve been never been to. But the internet only links us via the “space of flows”, and not through an integration of place. It connects us conveniently and without real risk or vulnerability—we can choose to hide behind screennames and profiles, and there is always the easy option to sign off, and sign back on again with a new username.

While I do believe there has been value from the internet, especially in the trading of information and ideas, and the outlet for communication and dialogue—I sincerely hope our “Second Lives” here do not become our First Lives—that we do not choose to play our games in our online networks at the expense of loving our neighbours, as Jesus has called us to do. (While we think we are in charge of technology, sometimes technology is taking charge of us…)

In physical communities we are forced to live with people who differ from us in many ways. But virtual communities offer us the opportunity to construct utopian collectivities- communities of interest, education, tastes, beliefs, and skills. In cyberspace we can remake the world out of an unsettled landscape.

~ Stephen Doheny Farina*

~

Likewise with the television, we run similar risks of trading in the reality of our neighbourhoods, for the abstractions of our easy, low-cost (and unfulfilling) entertainment:

The American house has been TV centered for three generations. It is the focus of family life, and the life of the house correspondingly turns inward, away from whatever occurs beyond its four walls. (TV rooms are called “family rooms” in builder’s lingo. A friend who is an architect explained to me: “People don’t want to admit that what the family does together is watch TV.”) At the same time, the television is the family’s chief connection with the outside world. The physical envelope of the house itself no longer connects their lives to the outside in any active way; rather, it seals them off from it. The outside world has become an abstraction filtered through television, just as the weather is an abstraction filtered through air conditioning.

~ James Howard Kuntsler,

~

Speaking of which, some random tidbits about television gleamed from Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone:

- People who say they “Strongly agree” with the statement “Television is my primary form of entertainment” also have much higher incidences of giving the middle finger to another driver than those who say they “Strongly disagree” with that statement.
- Studies conducted on people’s moods throughout the day through different activities, discovered that people’s happiness/satisfaction in watching television was similar to that of doing laundry, cooking or other household chores.
- Nevertheless, researchers found it difficult to get people to give up television for their studies. One couple was paid $500 to give up TV for a month. The wife remarked “There was nothing to do. I talked with my husband” (paraphrase).

Sometimes I wonder: would I have turned out differently (a better, more knowledgeable person perhaps?) had I not watched my 1-4 hours of television a day growing up?

~

The Amish when asked about how they know which technological inventions to admit and which to refuse from Tay Keong Tan “Silence, Sacrifice and Shoo-fly Pies: An Inquiry in to the Social Capital and Organizational Strategies of the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania”:

We can almost always tell if a change will bring good or bad tidings. Certainly things we definitely do not want, like the television and the radio. They would destroy our visiting practices. We would stay at home with the television or radio rather than meet with other people. The visiting practices are important because of the closeness of people. How can we care for the neighbor if we do not visit them or know what is going on in their lives?

~

In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.

~ Benjamin Disraeli (1845)

*All quotes in this entry are from Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

the disappearance of place (1)*

Are we moving towards a world where there are no places anymore, only spaces and flows?

We talk about globalization as a way of promoting diversity, of connecting all the disparate places in the world. But I wonder: does it not just convert our cultural treasures into commodities? Will our saris grace the catwalks of Paris, Milan and New York, before trickling their way to sweatshops and Wal-Marts? Will our ancient mosques and cathedrals suffer the repetive flash of tourist cameras? Will our culinary delicacies end up in a fast food restaurant? Will our ethnic music become a special CD available for sale at the Starbucks at the corner of every block in New York City? Does globalization allow us to experience more? Or does it level everything to a sameness that gives us ever so more, but ever so less. Do we change places into spaces? Spaces where we can go visit, and consume, swallow up all we want from, and then leave.

I graduated from a program supposedly promoting international studies, global exchange and communication. I wonder if it does so much that… or whether it just opens the door for entrance into the “technocractic elite” of today’s global world, those who are disconnected from place, and only inhabit these in-between spaces and flows. When we studied abroad in foreign countries, very few of us took advantage of anything beyond the nightlife, the travel and other forms of consumption afforded to us by our American wealth. But it was easy—because more and more, the so-called globalized world has become organized as such:

"A second major trend of cultural distinctiveness of the elites in the informational society is to create a lifestyle and to design spatial forms aimed at unifying the symbolic environment of the elite around the world, thus superseding the historical specificity of each locale. Thus, there is the construction of a (relatively) secluded space across the world along the connecting lines of the space of flows: international hotels whose decoration, from the design of the room to the color of the towels, is similar all over the world to create a sense of familiarity with the inner world, while inducing abstraction from the surrounding world; airports' VIP lounges, designed to maintain the distance vis-a-vis society in the highways of the space of flows; mobile, personal, on-line access to telecommunications networks, so that the traveler is never lost; and a system of travel arrangements, secretarial services, and reciprocal hosting that maintains a close circle of the corporate elite together through the worshipping of similar rites in all countries.

"Furthermore, there is an increasingly homogeneous lifestyle among the information elite that transcends the cultural borders of all societies: the regular use of SPA installations (even when traveling), and the practice of jogging; the mandatory diet of grilled salmon and green salad, with udon and sashimi providing a Japanese functional equivalent; the "pale chamois" wall color intended to create the cozy atmosphere of the inner space; the ubiquitous laptop computer; the combination of business suits and sportswear; the unisex dressing style, and so on. All these are symbols of an international culture whose identity is not linked to any specific society but to membership in the managerial circles of the informational economy across a global cultural spectrum." (p. 417)

~ The Social Theory of Space and the Theory of the Space of Flows, Manuel Castells

As someone who enjoys the privileges of globalization, and who does enjoy globe trotting, I hope that we can come in contact with other parts of the world the world, without destroying the place, and transforming it into some exotic version of ourselves. I hope that we can tread gently on the different lands of this globe, conferring to each place dignity.

If we do travel, let us not confine ourselves to sanitary hotel rooms and guided tours; let us not turn a blind eye to the skinny, starving children on the streets. Let us not consume a place through the filter of our comfortable privilege, but instead make ourselves vulnerable, and allow ourselves to feel the pain (and the joy) of a location.

Because most notably, Castells’ information elite live far apart from the poor—it is becoming easier and easier for the rich to live in a simulated, safe environment, of their gated communities and airport lounges, far away from the filth and the danger of the streets:

"It is important to grasp that we are dealing here with a reorganization of metropolitan space, involving a drastic diminution of the intersections between lives of the rich and the poor, which transcends traditional social segregation and urban fragmentation…. Rodgers, following Anthony Giddens, conceptualizes the core process as a “disembedding” of elite activities from local territorial contexts, a quasi-utopian attempt to disengage from a suffocating matrix of poverty and social violence."

"Laura Ruggeri (discussing Hong Kong’s Palm Springs) stresses as well the contemporary quest of deracinated Third World elites for a “ real imitation life,” modeled on television images of a mythified Southern California, that “to succeed must be bounded – [i.e.], isolated from the ordinary landscape."

"Fortified, fantasy-themed enclaves and edge cities, desembedded from their own social landscapes but integrated into globalization’s cyber-California floating in the digital ether- this brings us full circle to Philip K. Dick. In this ‘”gilded captivity,” Jeremy Seabrook adds, the Third World urban bourgeoisie “cease to be citizens of their own country and become nomads belong to, and owing allegiance to, a superterrestrial topography of money; they become patriots of wealth, nationalists of an elusive, golden nowhere.”

~ Planet of the Slums, Mike Davis

And I wonder, what will become of the glitz and glamour of globalization, when its underbelly is anything but? What hubris will remain of our legacy? (Sameness? Simulation? The loss of the real?) Because we know all that rises to such Babel-like proportions must eventually fall.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~ Ozymandias, Percy Shelley

* Something that has been on my mind recently. These are scattered thoughts and interest tidbits I have been reading.

why do the poor always end up having to pay?*

While middle-class America may suddenly struggle with higher gas prices with their long highway commutes from suburbia to their workplaces, others in the world find themselves struggling to eat.

Food prices have been shooting up around the world, not because of any massive food shortages, but because demand has increased. Rising incomes in China and India have increased their appetites for meat and grain, but more notably, western biofuel** programs have been hoarding the harvest. The results have been devastating (for instance, the resignation of Haiti’s prime minister because of food riots):

We are the canary in the mine,” says Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Programme, the largest distributor of food aid. Usually, a food crisis is clear and localised. The harvest fails, often because of war or strife, and the burden in the affected region falls heavily on the poorest. This crisis is different. It is occurring in many countries simultaneously, the first time that has happened since the early 1970s. And it is affecting people not usually hit by famines. “For the middle classes,” says Ms Sheeran, “it means cutting out medical care. For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.” The poorest are selling their animals, tools, the tin roof over their heads—making recovery, when it comes, much harder.

~ from The Economist, The New Face of Hunger

The economist article seems to be a bit more optimistic about recovery—believing that market forces will eventually increase supply, but seems to ignore ecological implications of the limited availability of land (and that growing too much too quickly with too many chemicals can destroy valuable soil). Is it really possible to think that we could plant enough corn to satisfy our only-increasing appetite for biofuel? Are the rich countries going to enjoy their frequent flyer miles, their blueberries and pomegranates shipped from miles and miles away, while the rest of the world experiences a Malthusian catastrophe? And furthermore, even if we do recover from this catastrophe, how many people will starve to death or suffer from malnutrition in the process? Is it worth it? Of course, I guess the life of someone poor in a third world country is worth a lot less than my life.

Yes, alternative fuel options for the sake of environment stewardship and sustainability are probably a good idea. But when it involves disrupting agricultural markets in such a way, that we get our biofuel while the poor starve, then I can’t help but think/cry/wail injustice.

While we try to find some “sustainable” method to continue our SUV gas guzzling habits, we seem to be doing it on the backs of the poor. And that angers and saddens me deeply: how it seems that we are constantly getting more comfortable from the sweat and blood of the poor.

And somehow, I’m also implicated in this system. I feel dirty buying my airline tickets to return home, my Florida-grown oranges and Mexico-grown asparagus, that’s been shipped many petroleum miles to reach me in my supermarket so that I can have my diverse food options. Meanwhile, others starve.

I am trying to understand why I was born into privilege and abundance, and not another life that could be so different. And if it’s only to perpetuate the oppression of the poor, then I feel very very sorry for myself.

* In case you can’t tell, I am/was angry as I write/wrote this. Perhaps, I might have more hopeful/more practical to say later, but this is how I feel right now. I am trying to learn to feel my emotions more, because they give indication into what I care about. And this has been part of a long reflection in the past few months of trying to understand my economic and social privilege…. Trying to learn not to feel guilty about it, but to learn how I can live differently with it, so that it won’t be wasted on myself.
** Please read comments to this post for clarification about biofuel-- there are apparently different types, and not all of them rely on edible food (e.g. some apparently use waste products)

*** In the same vein as this, India has been displacing massive amounts of its indigenous population in the name of environmental conservation: Wildlife conservation in India has generally emulated the early American (Yosemite/Yellowstone) model which regarded forests as pristine wilderness, excluded human beings from national parks and other protected areas, and saw its aboriginal people as “marauders,” “poachers” and “encroachers,” all the while sanctioning the lifeways and hunting practices of elite sportsmen and urban tourists. Throughout rural India, tribal Adivasis, ancient forest dwellers who occupy thousands of villages, are routinely blamed for declines in local biodiversity. (from: Guernica, Eviction Slip)

book reviews first quarter 2008

this is my “quarterly earnings report"

(implicit question, if I were a stock, how much would I be worth?)

I thought I should post quarterly instead of twice a year, because the entries were getting a little unwieldly. Does anyone actually read through all of these? Please note that there are a few five star rated books! Given that I’m always complaining about how annoying writers’ tones are, or how I always find myself distracted because I read them on the trolley, this is something quite notable!

I’ve also stumbled upon PaperBackSwap, which allows you to mail swap paperbacks via mail with other people. I've just started using it, but it seems promising. Everytime you mail out a book, you get a credit, which you can then use to request a book to be mailed to you. I have on my way: Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala and Money and Power by Jacques Ellul.

I follow the Goodreads (which still has horrible navigation) rating system:
* didn’t like it
** it was ok
*** liked it
**** really liked it
***** it was amazing


Fiction

** Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys) ~ I was drawn to this book when I heard about its premise—it is about Bertha, the crazy wife of Mr. Rochester who is held captive in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The novel explores her life in the Carribean and her subsequent existence in England, as a way of uncovering untold narratives. As fascinating the premise was, the book was disappointing. The prose was very lyrical, with a dreamy and dazed tone, which made it beautiful but also very confusing to follow. Despite the strength of the prose, the story did not seem to hold that much emotional power—though the characters were at times vivid, you never got very attached to them. Perhaps one could argue that I’ve already participated in my own oppression by adapting the preferences of the colonizer—a Western imperial taste for reason, expressed in my fondness of the straight forward narrative of Jane Eyre, instead of the fragmented structure of Wide Sargasso Sea. I’m just kidding. Let’s not read into everything.

*** Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula LeGuin) ~ This book gained critical acclaim after its publishing because it was a “thought experiment” on what a society would be like if there was no gender. In this book, Ai Genly arrives as an ambassador from the galactic federation of planets, Ekumen, to the planet Gethen, where the humans that inhabit are hermaphrodites, able to take on either gender at monthly intervals. However, the book isn’t really explicitly about gender—the genderless society only serves as a background, a quiet meditation that appears here and there, rather than a driving plot element. I found it to be much more effective that way—instead of having commentary about gender thrusted at you awkwardly, the questions and thoughts surrounding a genderless society are embedded in the narrative, and appear in your mind here and there as you read the book. The novel’s been criticized for not elaborating sufficiently on this genderless society— for instance, how does child-rearing work exactly? For me, it seemed that LeGuin was less concerned with the practical considerations, but more with the abstract impacts of not having gender (e.g. does that society think less in binaries?) In any case, this is a well-written novel concerning trust, friendship and long journeys across cold landscapes. Despite some pretty awful cover designs, this is not trashy sci-fi. LeGuin is an excellent writer and this book was thoroughly enjoyed 

*** The Time Machine (H.G. Wells) ~ I heard the entire plot of this novel before I read it, but it was still very enjoyable. Contrary to what the title suggests, the focus of this book is not on time travel, but rather a commentary on class, and economic and social structures. I don’t want to give the plot away, but it’s a quick and excellent read, and gives plenty of food for thought.

*** The Day in the Life of Ivan Denosovich (Alexander Solzhenitsyn) ~ I should not have read this book while riding on the trolley, because it probably distracted me from being more immersed in Denosvisch’s world. This book traces a day in the life of a political prisoner in a Soviet gulag. This book is not a gory sensational horror novel as it is more concerned with the mundane repetition of everyday prison life, rather than any extreme situations of abuse and punishment. Solzhenitsyn describes vividly yet subtly the hunger, the cold, and the sensations and thoughts of Ivan as he goes through his day. The book explores the psychology of a man who must endure over 3650 days, which are all more or less, variations of a single theme; the book investigates where the prisoner derives, if any, comfort and hope.

*** Undying Fire (H.G. Wells) ~ This book is H.G. Wells’ rewrite of the Book of Job. This book is extremely well-written, extremely philosophical and extremely dense. Job and his friends debate (or rather, orate) on the destiny and intrinsic nature of humankind and of God, and the purpose and role of education. It wasn’t that pleasant to read on the trolley, nor is it a particular page-turner, but it does offer some really beautiful and thought-provoking prose to the reader.

***** Bone (Jeff Smith) ~ I burned through this graphic novel (aka, fancy term for comic book)in 3 days, struggling to resist the urge to stay up until wee hours of the night in order to finish it. It is absolutely delightful! The characters are so memorable—the protagonist loves Moby Dick, the greedy Phoney Bone, a rat creature obsessed with quiche, and a talking leaf bug just to name a few. While managing to be extraordinary cute, corny and funny, the novel is also incredibly thought-provoking, particular on the subjects of relativism, cultural imperialism and power. The drawings are beautiful. The dialogue is excellent. And the story a definite page-turner—the start of the novel can be a bit slow, but hopefully the wackiness of it will keep one’s interest. Three cousins are driven out of a town which resembles something of early 20th century and stumble into a valley that appears to be from the middle ages, complete with vicious rat creatures who are searching for one of the cousins and a mysterious guardian dragon who always seems to appear at just the right moment, and then disappear. Think Disney meets Lord of the Rings.

Non-Fiction

** How Luxury Lost its Luster ~ I probably shouldn’t review this book, as I’ve never actually been in possession of it. I read or skimmed through about 50-70 pages of it while going to Barnes and Nobles at lunchtime. In any case, the book traces the development of the luxury brand corporations, all the while lamenting the loss of fine artisan craftsmanship that once characterized brands like Louis Vuitton or whatnot. The author focuses a lot on the founding of various large fashion corporations, and the profit-driven motives that led them to become the mass market giants that they are today. While presenting plenty of information, the author ends up jumping around a lot and listing tons of dates, events and people without drawing a compelling narrative (a similar weakness of Fast Food Nation). However, what was more annoying was the author’s own snobbishness about conspicuous consumption, as she constantly laments that the luxury products once finely made for the aristocrats are no longer available. She’s ultimately still interested in upholding the social status that luxury brand products can confer to their owners, rather than dissolving the mystique and the power that they hold over us. In any case, maybe worth skimming but definitely not worth buying, and for me at this point, probably not worth hunting down from the library.

*** The Sandman Papers ~ As much as I enjoy reading literary criticism, sometimes this book reminded me of why the English department in universities seem mostly useless to me—petty debate and interesting observations that never seem to actually answer any questions. The wrong questions are asked. The answers are never satisfying, just good fodder for cocktail conversation. I read through about two thirds of this book (a collection of academic essays written about Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed comic book series the Sandman)—it was fun and entertaining, but not much more than that. And I think part of the enjoyment was derived from recalling and remembering parts of the original Sandman series.

***** Planet of the Slums (Mike Davis) ~ I was very deeply impacted by this book—it left me crying pretty violently numerous times, both as I read it and afterwards when I thought of it. Mike Davis writes about the situation of urban peripheral poverty in Third World Countries, illustrating their historical development and inhumane living situations (sanitary and physical dangers aside, Davis writes of diminishing solidarity, growing exploitation and competition; governments have also pretty much abandoned them, instead opting to criminalize these neighborhoods, and seeking to hide them, destroy them or relocate them) Davis draws on numerous other authors, studies and statistics to illustrate his point (though unfortunately, very few first-hand interviews). Unfortunately, this book offers no hope or no policy solutions, only a bleak vision of an impoverished and chaotic future (an appropriate question to ask though—is hope an appropriate timber of emotion when faced with the bleakness of the facts?). This book left me feeling both incredibly privileged in my situation, but also incredibly helpless. I hope that my raw emotions can be channeled into some meaningful action and direction. And perhaps this is what this book is most valuable for: opening your eyes to the reality of the world in such a way that it becomes very difficult to ignore or forget.

***** The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis) ~ I first read this book my freshman year, after receiving it as a gift from a roommate, a sweet and wonderful atheist. I’m now returning to this book after attending a play of this novel. I think I had a brief period where I didn’t really read C.S. Lewis—perhaps a slight aversion to his extreme trendiness in Christian circles—but sometimes trends are not always bad, and at this point, I’d call C.S. Lewis a classic, not a trend. His writing is so clear and concise (something that so many modern writers lack). His insight both into the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, and us humans who are stuck navigating between the two, is incredible. This book is a compilation of letters written by a senior demon to his nephew, giving him advice on how to tempt a recent convert to Christianity back into Satan’s camp.

commercializing care

While ribbons and RED products proliferate, have we really become a more caring society? Or is this just a new, fresh (or, same old) variation of self-absorption, one that so easily hides behind the rhetoric of care?

Excerpts from Untying the ‘ribbon culture’, a review written by Jennie Bristow on Sarah Moore’s book Ribbon Culture: Charity, Compassion, and Public Awareness:

For Moore, this is not an example of individual silliness, but a reflection of the extent to which ‘the pink-ribbon campaign is a thoroughly commercial exercise’, which carries the risk ‘that the products will fail to communicate anything meaningful about breast cancer’. It is the commercialisation of causes, which both empties them of all content and transmits messages that are negative and misleading, that Moore sees as problematic. In seeking to understand why the individuals she interviewed wear the ribbons or wristbands that they do, Moore’s account stands out through her refusal to pander to the rhetoric of ribbon culture, which emphasises ‘awareness’, ‘caring’ and engagement with a cause. In reality, these positive rhetorical sentiments mask an anxious, self-obsessed, depoliticised culture.

…

What is generally agreed, however, is that the privileging of personal ‘identity’ as a route to finding meaning in life is a fraught process, in which a constant state of anxiety becomes the norm: a process which individuals are never expected to resolve, only cope with. This is the background to the explosion of ‘Ribbon Culture’, in which, as Moore suggests, ‘ribbon wearers’ sense of awareness often manifests itself as worry, rather than a process of rational evaluation’.

The most powerful chapter of Moore’s book examines in depth the pink ribbon of the breast cancer awareness campaign, and ‘the implications of “thinking pink”’. Having already established the extent to which the pink ribbon has become a thoroughly mainstream concern and a consumer brand, Moore looks at what kind of ‘awareness’ is generated by the pink ribbon for those to whom it is more than a fashion accessory. Reflecting the group most likely to wear ribbons, Moore’s interviewees were predominantly young, white, middle-class women. Many, notes Moore, were ‘inordinately worried about breast cancer’. Their ‘awareness’ of the disease was such that they massively over-estimated the number of deaths claimed by it and the likelihood of women their age contracting it, and they were scarcely aware that deaths from breast cancer have been falling for several years.

The character of this awareness – which might more properly be called misinformation – is not surprising given the extent to which information produced by the breast cancer awareness campaign, as Moore shows, deliberately overplays the indiscriminate nature of breast cancer – that it could happen to anybody, that everybody knows somebody who has been affected by the disease, and so on. This plays off individuals’ residual anxiety about their health, lifestyle and mortality, causing them to wear their worry, if not on their sleeve, on their lapel. As Moore suggests, it is difficult to see what is gained by this ritualised anxiety:

‘It is… unlikely that cultivating a sense of worry about the illness is particularly health promoting for those women who do not have breast cancer… These women’s fear has manifested itself in burdensome routines and gestures (compulsory self-examination or wearing a pink ribbon, for example) which speak of a nagging, everyday sense of worry which refuses to be resolved.’

To fear death is one thing. To advertise that fear, in the form of a kitsch fashion accessory bought in department stores that is greeted by others as less controversial than wearing socks with sandals, speaks to the thoroughly morbid undertones of our modern culture of narcissism. Moore does a great job of exposing the orthodoxy of ‘awareness’ for what it really is; challenging the sickness of our ribbon culture requires that we think beyond the pink to care about something less selfish instead.

white people know what's best for poor people 2

I recently stumbled upon this excellent satirical piece from Gift Hub*:

As a reporter for The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Give and Take, you are sitting, knees crossed, and back straight, in a public relations event promoting a Double Bottom Line Social Venture Bakery in Detroit. From the window you can glimpse a prison looming like a fortress. The meeting is run by a Harvard MBA employed by Beaverton Social Venture Foundation funded with money from a Wall Street Wizard, Boverton Beaver, who made his billions buying and selling weapons manufacturing companies, including one that specializes in anti-personnel land-mines made to look like children's toys. He also served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and as a lobbyist for a defense contractor. He was indicted for fraud, but found innocent via a hung jury after a prolonged trial costing millions to litigate. He is best known for his trophy wife, a former Ms. Nude Miami Beach, now on the Board of a Conservative Think Tank, and for his contribution to the theory and practice of social venture philanthropy.

The bakery employs ex-cons and teaches them the skills needed to get a job: sweeping up, slicing bread, stoking the coal oven, running a cash register, and waiting on tables in the bakery's cafe. The artisanal breads are sold to wealthy friends of the funder. The loaves come with a picture on the wrapper of an ex-con smiling ingratiatingly and holding out a loaf of white bread in his black hand. The MBA is going over what she is calling "the balanced scorecard," showing how many ex-cons get jobs, what the bakery costs, what it earns, how much profit is makes, how much money it saves in social services. She is working her way towards the line called, "Total Net Social Return on Investment," some staggeringly large number, supported by 200 pages of spreadsheets and several metaphors. The cash on cash bottom-line shows that Boverton's Foundation is making 8% ("a Program Related Investment" as the MBA explains.) The Mayor who is active promoting "three strikes and you are out" legislation, and who owns a significant interest in the local for-profit prison business is next on the agenda, to give an award to his friend, and political funder, Boverton Beaver, for service to the community.

An ungainly Stranger, in a white leisure suit, neck open to the waist, bell-bottoms swinging, rises from the back of the room to say, "You know, my Fellow Friends of Philanthropy, I notice that all the ex-cons with brooms and other signs of servitude are black or brown. Talking to a few it was mostly crack that put them behind bars, and petty crimes. Yet, I notice that you, Boverton Beaver, have a daughter in rehab. I am glad for her that her needs are met, and crimes, if any mitigated. And you, Mayor, wasn't your wife at that clinic in the Hamptons? Boverton, what is the double bottom line on those land-mines you manufactured, that now litter Afghanistan? How do you net money and mayhem? And those sweat-heart deals with your cronies in DC? What was the Social Return on that? Has anyone asked whether giving these penny-ante felons a crappy job after 20 years in the slammer, is tantamount to justice? Maybe we got the right bars and the wrong gaolers? Maybe we trade sides, Boverton, and you and our Mayor push those brooms? And the ex-cons make money, 8% cash on cash, on your back and they call it philanthropy?"

Of course the Stranger is hustled out by the Security Guards. "Don't tase me, Bro!," the Stranger exclaims, before he starts screaming. As the door slams, the MBA swishes her fine mane of black hair and says, "Excuse me for the interruption. Where was I? O, yes, the balanced scorecard and our Social Return on Investment."

Suddenly, the Stranger, beaten, bloody, his white leisure suit torn, patches of it smoking, staggers back into the hall - "The scorecard? Balanced? Stacked, maybe, not balanced." Then the room goes black. There are confused sounds of a crowd trampling on each other headed for the Emergency Exits. When the lights come on, there you are, in the empty hall, wondering what you will write for the Chronicle. Something upbeat, something balanced, like that scorecard? Something noncommittal? Or a puff piece about Boverton Beaver? My suggestion is this: Ask your immediate supervisor for guidance. Keep your nose clean and your mouth shut. It is better to err on the side of caution, or like that Stranger, you might find yourself in small dark hole. He will be lucky if they even let him out to push a broom some day in that bakery he defiled with speech so open in a world so closed. Remember, the most important thing in any piece about philanthropy is what you know damn well, and refrain from writing.

~

From my previous entry on this topic, white people know what’s best for poor people, and the satirical piece selected above, it may appear that I am criticizing well-intentioned efforts of people who are genuinely trying to make a difference in the world. But I am not saying that their actions shall amount to naught, nor do I believe that everything they do will only make conditions worse.

I am simply trying to critique attitudes we often hold as we try to “save the world”. Do we genuinely love the people we help? Or, are we just going in with our sense of entitlement, our know-it-all attitude, and trying to pad our consciences (and our resumes too while we’re at it)?**
By more honestly acknowledging our incomplete knowledge, our past mistakes, our imperfect efforts, and the unjust systems we may support, we are in better position to be genuinely loving to those who we are trying to help.

My point is not to say that nobody should try to do anything good and beneficial towards others, because of impure motivations, poor outcomes and potential hypocrisy. My point is to say that we should continue to pursue what is good, but to do so with humbleness and kindness, not with pride, entitlement and self-righteousness.

If we truly wish to help, we need to listen and to serve, not just talk and direct.

We are not saviours of ourselves nor of others, but we can hope that through our imperfect actions, mixed intentions and clumsy efforts, a wiser hand can effect meaningful good.***

*Another blog that frequently writes intelligently on nonprofits and philanthropy is White Courtesy Telephone.
**I’ve heard far too many stories of rich donors who call up a nonprofit, furious, because their middle initial was omitted, or their name missing from the list of credits in the program (probably thinking the entire time, how incompetent and inefficient nonprofits are).
***I am no better than this hypothetical rich corporate executive who made his fortune from manufacturing landmines. I have probably accomplished less “good things for society” than him. But I hope that with the smallness of my life, I can do some good that extends beyond the immediate comfort of myself, my family and my close friends.

less meaty issues

The wedding is over. The honeymoon is over. And I find myself readjusting to a new rhythm of life, perhaps more traditionally known as practicing my “wife skills”.

Since indoctrination by Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and realizing that forever eating Trader Joe’s freezer, or food carts/take-out, or salad and baked fish, was neither sustainable nor satisfying, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to eat well and cook well, especially in light of the fact that I’m now cooking for a little family of two.*

I’ve been both appreciating and thinking critically about the way I ate growing up.** Plenty of stir-fried green vegetables, hearty soups, white rice, tofu and a little bit of meat. Most Chinese cooking use vegetables and tofu as the central elements—and meat serves more as a flavoring ingredient. Yet somehow in this country, Chinese food has been reduced to a plate full of deep fried chicken served on white rice. And while my favorite meals will probably always be the ones my mother cooks, I’m learning to venture nutritiously and flavorfully beyond oil and salt, and a bit of soy sauce and sugar.

In any case, I was pleasantly surprised a little while ago to see a NY Times article highlighting the fact that we eat way more meat than we need to. Thinking about the nutrition of my childhood, and what makes my body actually feel good after I eat, I completely agree with this.

Furthermore, of late, I’ve been feeling that meat/seafood-centered cooking can be downright boring. There is much more to be experienced in the land of culinary than a huge chunk of chicken smothered in sauce, with a side of potatoes and steamed vegetables. It’s been quite fun to discover the different flavours obtained by blending different spices, vegetables, beans and tofu. I don’t think I will ever actually become vegetarian, but I really appreciate the richness of cuisine without meat.

So here begins a new daily delight with the tangible (and edible)! There is something very enjoyable and meditative about eating food that you have carefully prepared (though having someone else to share the food with is integral to that enjoyment).

~

Yet as much as domestic matters and managing an apartment can easily and comfortably occupy my mind for days on end, there’s a deep itching inside me to pursue something more. And yet I don’t want to end up chasing after personal glory and societal acclaim, which I can sense is a desire in me. As C.S. Lewis noted in the Screwtape Letters—when we think we are finding our place in the world, the world is actually finding its place in us. Let’s hope that if given an option, I would choose to be unnoticed and humble rather than praised and proud.



* Clarification: I only cook half of the time. My dearly beloved husband has been wonderfully egalitarian about chores :)
** It’s amazing how much the food habits of our childhood impact the way we want and expect to eat today. This was clearly evidenced and experienced upon my drooling reaction to trying cream cheese and bagels for the first time in middle school to my disappointment and perplex with why people didn’t share their dishes in restaurants.

more than paper pushing

I just wanted to applaud the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, and the $45 million generous donations of Henry & Lee Rowan, and Gerry & Marguertie Lenfest. More details on their donation can be found here in this Inquirer article.

Recognizing the shortage of skilled technical workers, the Williamson School gives college-age students degrees in carpentry, power-plant operation, turf maintenance, and machining, with free tuition and board. Further details of this award and the school are found in a Philadelphia Inquirer Article.

Far too many college and job training programs emphasize the importance of the services industry, urging people towards research, law, administration, management and business.

But I wonder (and especially in light of the downfall of Bear Stearns and the real estate losses experienced by the "money-moving" industry): How much paper pushing is needed? In this material age, why do we value the abstract so much more than the concrete? Why is the services sector far more prestigious than skilled trades? Why is a lawyer higher up on the social ladder than a carpenter? Yes, I might be an Excel whiz, but I certainly don’t know how to fix a leaking roof.

"[Craft] knowledge confers authority on the one who possesses it, and, as Sennett illuminatingly argues, craft traditions have been as much under threat from the modern suspicion of authority in all its forms, as from the industrialisation of the productive process. Originality and "doing your own thing" have replaced obedience and perfection as the standards to live up to, and this is everywhere to be observed in the deskilling of modern societies and in the marginalisation of those who truly know their job, and know it as something more interesting than themselves."

~ a review by Roger Scruton on the book The Craftsman by Richard Sutton

white people know what’s best for poor people*

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s easy to cover up the dismal reality of a situation with a slur of fancy rhetoric (a few charts also don’t hurt). As the wealthy west continues to help save poor African children (as if we were the only ones that could save them), let us tread very carefully.

These excerpts below from the book, Planet of the Slums, by Mike Davis, criticize NGOs, which have been recently heralded as the hope for developing nations, since it has been very clear that various government policies have failed. However, the real picture is not quite so rosy.

What Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz in his brief tenure as chief economist for the Bank described as an emerging “post-Washington Consensus” might be better characterized as “soft imperialism,” with the major NGOs captive to the agenda of the international donors, and grassroots groups similarly dependent upon the international NGOs.

For all the glowing rhetoric about democratization, self-help, social capital, and the strengthening of civil society, the actual power relations in this new NGO universe resemble nothing so much as traditional clientelism.

…development economist Diana Mitlin, writing about Latin America, describes how, on one hand, NGOs “preempt community-level capacity- building as they take over decision-making and negotiating roles,” while, on the other hand, they are constrained by “the difficulties of managing donor finance, with its emphasis on shortterm project funds, on financial accountabilities and on tangible outputs…

… Lea Jellinek, a social historian who has spent more than a quarter-century studying the poor in Jakarta, in turn, recounts how one famed NGO, a neighborhood microbank, “beginning as a small grassroots project driven by needs and capacities of local women,” grew Frankenstein-like into a “large, complex, top-down, technically oriented bureaucracy,” that was “less accountable to and supportive of” its low-income base…

… Veteran Mumbai housing activist P.K. Das offers an even harsher critique of slum-oriented NGOs:

Their constant effort is to subvert, dis-inform and de-idealize people so as to keep them away from class struggles. They adopt and propagate the practice of begging favours on sympathetic and humane grounds rather than making the oppressed conscious of their rights. As a matter of factor, these agencies and organizations systematically intervene to oppose to agitational path people take to win their demands. Their effort is constantly to divert people’s attention from the larger political evils of imperialism to merely local issues and so confuse people in differentiating enemies from friends.

The unfortunate thing about nonprofit organizations as they grow, become more sustainable and access more resources(things that logically should allow them to accomplish more good), is that they risk alienating themselves from the community they were striving to help in the first place and end up getting caught in a tangle of funding streams, reports and board meetings.

As we professionalize “community organization” and “grassroots”**, do we give the impression to the people we are trying to help, that they aren’t really capable of anything?

* Implicit assumptions: poor people are not white; That title is also taken from an entry on the blog Stuff White People Like.
** I previously posted a series of entries on this topic of "professionalizing care": 1, 2, 3, 4

until death do us part

On March 1st, 2008, things too wonderful, things high and lofty, will occur in this life. Amidst flowers, bouquets, dresses and ribbons, two will become one flesh. I will no longer belong to myself, and no longer will Matt belong to himself.

But while I can wax eloquent about the abstractions of marriage, its physical instantiation may appear commonplace. Getting groceries, cooking dinner, doing dishes, brushing teeth and all the little bits and pieces of everyday life.

But we forget that the high and lofty, the wonderful and mighty, is to be experienced and lived in the very mundane. We’re foolish to think that the spiritual is something above and beyond us, that which cannot be experienced on an everyday (and tangible) basis. We will not be faithful with much if we cannot be faithful with little.

In plenty and in want… In strength and in weakness… in joy and in sadness

~

“He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least –sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.”

~ Uncle Screwtape, a wise old demon, to his novice nephew demon Wormwood in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters

of gold dust and cleavage

I didn’t think I would be posting on makeup again, but I stumbled upon this:

I know there are people reading this essay who will say that makeup is absurd, and I won’t quarrel with them. All esthetic activity is on some level absurd. By the same token, philosophers have argued since the dawn of time that there is an essential human need to engage in ostensibly useless and purely esthetic activity. Applying makeup is a small act of artistry, performed every morning and touched up throughout the day. It’s the same old canvas, to be sure, but it offers itself anew again and again. All art involves repetition with variations. Besides, the sameness of the face is belied by the fact that it contains a mutating consciousness, that it shifts in its relationship to the world, that it ages.

The return of youth that makeup promises is not really bought seriously by most women. We know that makeup is a frail stop-gap measure, a lame palliative. We don’t need Hamlet to tell us that we can “paint an inch thick, [but] to this favor [we] we must come” — we know it every time we look at ourselves in the mirror. We don’t expect it to stop us from aging, only to gussy us up a bit in the face of time’s relentless sickle.

One of the most poignant and wondrous spectacles I know is seeing a very old woman insist on having someone put on her makeup. It’s something I’ve seen numerous times in hospitals and nursing homes. I did it for my own mother before she died. Even as she knew she was close to death, she still wasn’t prepared to give up on art and succumb to nature. I loved that determination in her and cling to it in myself. If we are, as Shakespeare said, “this quintessence of dust,” let it at least be gold-flecked and luminous.

~ Paula Marantz Cohen, All Made Up

While Cohen tends to ignore the corporate behemoth that moves and shakes the cosmetic industry, she writes eloquently and thoroughly about the “art” of makeup. She writes about makeup as it were an act of play, of interaction with your face as a canvas, and not so much as a coverup, a crutch upon which we rely, a sign of a society where appearances are so often valued more than substance.

Meanwhile, this other article reviews a book that provides a slightly different perspective:

“Show me a woman with a good three inches of cleavage on display, and I’ll show you a woman who, rightly or wrongly, has little faith in her powers of conversation.”

~ Hadley Freeman in book The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable

While we may like to believe that clothing and makeup is all about self-expression and art, more often than not, it’s a matter of hiding parts of body we’re ashamed of, or of impressing the opposite (or the same) sex, and of a comfortable escape of deeper pains that afflict us.

the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning*

What is lost in an instant-fix society where there exists a pill to remedy every little discomfort there is to be had...

But does the American addiction to happiness make any sense, especially in light of the poverty, ecological disaster and war that now haunt the globe, daily annihilating hundreds if not thousands? Isn't it, in fact, a recipe for delusion?

And aren't we merely trying to slice away what is most probably an essential part of our hearts, that part that can reconcile us to facts, no matter how harsh, and that also can inspire us to imagine new and more creative ways to engage with the world? Bereft of this integral element of our selves, we settle for a status quo. We yearn for comfort at any cost. We covet a good night's sleep. We trade fortitude for blandness.

~ From The Miracle of Melancholia by Eric G. Wilson

*Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 ~ It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

skin deep

I don’t know if this entry is going to be of any interest to anyone—it’s essentially disjointed ramblings on makeup and the cosmetics industry. This has been on my mind since I’ve been spending the last two weeks roaming around trying to figure out what I will be wearing on my face on my wedding day. Because I haven’t really bothered with makeup recently—my usual grooming routine consists of deodorant, sunscreen, and lip balm or lip gloss—this has been quite a confusing and involved process.

My mother was not a makeup wearer so my initial forays into the world of cosmetics was guided by the mighty and trusted writers of Seventeen and YM magazine and my preteen insecurities, and provided adequate adornment for my not-so-great middle school years. Orangeish Cover Girl Foundation. Drugstore lipstick on the teeth (and uneven lip colouring—actually I still can’t get my lipstick to look even). Bonnebell Concealer that was too light for me. I don’t think I ever learned how to apply anything properly except eyeshadow and powder.

I used makeup more frequently in college, when I found foundations that actually matched my skin, because I went to more expensive stores where they actually let you try it. It was somewhat addictive—the subtle way that your face seemed to immediately brighten whenever you put the stuff on. However, I eventually reduced my makeup usage upon hearing that it wasn’t very good for your skin (It was pretty much reserved for when I wanted to impress certain ::cough:: people). Ironically enough, that came primarily as a result of Douglas Cosmetics Sales Associate telling me that “You don’t really need makeup! This stuff is bad for your skin anyways”.

Part of my avoidance of cosmetics stems from feeling like we have too much of a “pill society”.* In today’s mass customization consumer society, we’re always looking for a simple fix for all our problems. Wrinkles? Try buying anti-wrinkle cream. Want your eyes to be whiter? Try buying Visine. Want longer eyelashes? Try using a lengthening mascara.

Moreover, many beauty treatments seem to prompt an endless cycle of further purchases: You buy gel to style your hair—resulting in the need for clarifying shampoos to get the gunk out; You use a hairdryer to give it volume—you need to apply hair damage-treating conditioner to repair the heat damage. In fact, some women have been experiencing hair loss as a result of all the treatments they’ve put their hair through. Exfoliating face washes can irritate the skin, causing them to produce more oil, potentially leading to acne, or the need for powder, which may in turn clog the skin, producing the need for concealer…).

~

My recent experimentation in wedding makeup has made me less wary of make-up. The results have been fairly positive—eyeliner apparently makes my eyes appear huge, and though I can’t seem to tell the difference, mascara makes it look as though I actually have eyelashes. Part of me is tempted to undergo this beauty routine daily, but at what cost? I don’t want to end up being one of those people that can’t leave the house without makeup because they think they look terrible without it.

Do I look prettier with makeup because society has trained our eyes to see in certain ways? If I feel more attractive or more beautiful with painted colours on my face, am I participating and feeding into an industry that fuels women’s insecurities about their looks?

Make-up can make someone look really great, but when I look at myself more closely—it just seems all very bizarre to me—the painting of eyelashes, the eye lining, the blush. Call it my paranoia of cancer in this fabricated chemical world, but I feel uneasy with all this stuff on my face.

In the end, my approach to cosmetic beauty is much like my approach to taking exams: The best thing you can do is to sleep well, drink water, eat healthy and exercise. All else is smoke and mirrors. (Perhaps we can say, it’s what goes into your body that counts, not what you put over it).

~

I’ve been anxious, because I still have yet to figure out the “perfect makeup” for my wedding day, but I’m sick and tired of running around and trying products and returning them. Culture tells me that a bride must look absolutely perfect on her wedding day. My skin must be flawless. My makeup must be impeccable. But it’s time I stop believing in and stop fretting over the superficial elements of a wedding ceremony and concern myself with its transcendent meaning.

~

A few resources I’ve stumbled up on in my makeup adventures:

Cosmetic Database ~ rates different types of cosmetics depending on the content of the chemicals Makeup Alley ~ user reviews of pretty much every makeup product out there
Beauty Brains ~ two scientists provide some useful analysis and information on how makeup works; criticized for being little hokey/biased but there’s some useful information
Beauty Industry Who Owns What ~ Most makeup brands are owned by the same companies. Here’s a listing.


* Here’s a little humorous stab at our “pill society” from my brother's website

the eternal boredom of heaven?

“And I made him a man of the world. If it had not been for me, he would still be a needless gardener- pretending to cultivate a weedless garden that grew right because it couldn’t grow wrong- in ‘those endless summers the blessed ones see.’ Think of it, ye Powers and Dominions! Perfect flowers! Perfect fruits! Never an autumn chill! Never a yellow leaf! Golden leopards, noble lions, carnivores unfulfilled, purring for his caresses amidst the aimless frisking of lambs that would never grow old! Good lord! How bored he would have been! How bored! Instead of which, did I not launch him on the most marvelous adventures? It was I who gave him history. Up to the very limit of his possibilities. Up to the very limit… And did not you, O Lord, by sending your angels with their flaming swords, approve of what I had done?”

~ Satan to God in a conversation from H.G. Wells Undying Fire, a modern re-writing of the story of Job

"The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself. HE has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme."

~ Uncle Screwtape, a wise old demon, to his novice nephew demon Wormwood in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters

Getting a little (RED)? Embarrassed?

I’ve written an entry in the past, pondering on the effectiveness of the Bono's RED campaign. A recent NY Times articles reports on its successes and failures, notably a transformative improvement in the conditions and the care provided at the Treatment and Research AIDS Center in Rwanda. On the other hand:

Yet detractors say Red has fallen short. They criticize a lack of transparency at the company and its partners over how much they make from Red products, and whether they spend more money on Africa or advertising.

“Look at all the promotions they’ve put out,” said Inger L. Stole, a communications professor at the University of Illinois. “The ads seem to be more about promoting the companies and how good they are than the issue of AIDS.”

In its March 2007 issue, Advertising Age magazine reported that Red companies had collectively spent as much as $100 million in advertising and raised only $18 million. Officials of the campaign said then that the companies had spent $50 million on advertising and that the amount raised was $25 million. Advertising Age stood by its article.

Says Co-Founder of RED, Bobby Shriver:

“I hate begging for money. In most cases when you go and ask for a corporate donation, they’ll cut you a check and that’s it. We wanted something that was more sustainable.”

While I celebrate and am thankful for the change that the money raised has been able to bring, and while I can understand Shriver’s comment on the longer-term reliability of this type of corporate donation, I do not believe this is a truly “sustainable” method to help the world. The RED campaign is merely superficial, providing handouts and alleviating symptoms, instead of addressing the roots of injustice in the world. True corporate social responsibility needs to extend beyond passing off the bread crumbs of revenue to the poor.

religious ramblings

Atheist Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg once said in relation to the question of good and evil: "With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion."

But what makes a person good and what makes a person evil?
And what if I do both good and evil?
And what hope do I have if I do do evil?

~

Eagleton lets out a sharp laugh. 'I certainly hope I am morally superior to people who believe in slaughtering innocents. But what I object to is the dangerous fudging of the line between the Muslim world and the Taliban, and the easy moral superiority that leaves us blind to our own crimes, or the crimes done in our names. It is an obvious point, but one still worth making, that it was our own barbarism and colonialism in the Middle East that has helped to create these situations in the first place. Amis and Hitchens have become perversely silent on the crimes of Western civilisation. Western civilisation has produced enormous advances, but not to see the darker side of that, not to see the barbarism of the West, and not to see that at a time when we are killing thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems extraordinarily naive.'

~ from the Armchair Revolutionary

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

~

Below follows an excellent opinion article in the New York Times called Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love. While by no means will I excuse religion from being the cause of much conflict, hatred and intolerance in the world, I also would not agree with Bertrand Russell’s pronouncement from Why I am Not a Christian: “You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.” Props to Kristof for being able to examine his own position critically and for attempting to move beyond verbal mockery to meaningful action:

At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama’s race or Hillary Clinton’s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith.

Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.

Scorning people for their faith is intrinsically repugnant, and in this case it also betrays a profound misunderstanding of how far evangelicals have moved over the last decade. Today, conservative Christian churches do superb work on poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking, climate change, prison abuses, malaria and genocide in Darfur.

Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives. And the Democratic presidential candidate (particularly if it’s Mr. Obama, to whom evangelicals have been startlingly receptive) has a real chance this year of winning large numbers of evangelical voters.

“Evangelicals are going to vote this year in part on climate change, on Darfur, on poverty,” said Jim Wallis, the author of a new book, “The Great Awakening,” which argues that the age of the religious right has passed and that issues of social justice are rising to the top of the agenda. Mr. Wallis says that about half of white evangelical votes will be in play this year.

A recent CBS News poll found that the single issue that white evangelicals most believed they should be involved in was fighting poverty. The traditional issue of abortion was a distant second, and genocide was third.

Look, I don’t agree with evangelicals on theology or on their typically conservative views on taxes, health care or Iraq. Self-righteous zealots like Pat Robertson have been a plague upon our country, and their initial smugness about AIDS (which Jerry Falwell described as “God’s judgment against promiscuity”) constituted far grosser immorality than anything that ever happened in a bathhouse. Moralizing blowhards showed more compassion for embryonic stem cells than for the poor or the sick, and as recently as the 1990s, evangelicals were mostly a constituency against foreign aid.

Yet that has turned almost 180 degrees. Today, many evangelicals are powerful internationalists and humanitarians — and liberals haven’t awakened to the transformation. The new face of evangelicals is somebody like the Rev. Rick Warren, the California pastor who wrote “The Purpose Driven Life.”

Mr. Warren acknowledges that for most of his life he wasn’t much concerned with issues of poverty or disease. But on a visit to South Africa in 2003, he came across a tiny church operating from a dilapidated tent — yet sheltering 25 children orphaned by AIDS.

“I realized they were doing more for the poor than my entire megachurch,” Mr. Warren said, with cheerful exaggeration. “It was like a knife in the heart.” So Mr. Warren mobilized his vast Saddleback Church to fight AIDS, malaria and poverty in 68 countries. Since then, more than 7,500 members of his church have paid their own way to volunteer in poor countries — and once they see the poverty, they immediately want to do more.

“Almost all of my work is in the third world,” Mr. Warren said. “I couldn’t care less about politics, the culture wars. My only interest is to get people to care about Darfurs and Rwandas.”

Helene Gayle, the head of CARE, said evangelicals “have made some incredible contributions” in the struggle against global poverty. “We don’t give them credit for the changes they’ve made,” she added. Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense, said, “Many evangelical leaders have been key to taking the climate issue across the cultural divide.”

It’s certainly fair to criticize Catholic leaders and other conservative Christians for their hostility toward condoms, a policy that has gravely undermined the fight against AIDS in Africa. But while robust criticism is fair, scorn is not.

In parts of Africa where bandits and warlords shoot or rape anything that moves, you often find that the only groups still operating are Doctors Without Borders and religious aid workers: crazy doctors and crazy Christians. In the town of Rutshuru in war-ravaged Congo, I found starving children, raped widows and shellshocked survivors. And there was a determined Catholic nun from Poland, serenely running a church clinic.

Unlike the religious right windbags, she was passionately “pro-life” even for those already born — and brave souls like her are increasingly representative of religious conservatives. We can disagree sharply with their politics, but to mock them underscores our own ignorance and prejudice.

~

on the separation of church & state

In the State of the Union address, Bush advocated for Congress to permanently pass legislature to allow religious charities to more easily compete for federal funds. While I understand how something like this has the potential to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”), I do not believe that an elected official, making choices in policy based on his religious faith, is violating this clause.*

You cannot (and should not) draw a line between an individual’s faith and his or her actions. Faith is not something that can be compartmentalized and separated. For a true believer, faith is the foundation of one’s entire being. It cannot be discarded and put aside when making choices about how to lead a city or a nation. Likewise, an atheist in a government position will draw on his opinions on how to govern from his base assumptions about the world and human nature.

The First Amendment does not allow government to show preference or discriminate a certain religion or to establish an official state-wide church, but does nothing to forbid individuals serving in government to make choices in policy, based on values and beliefs stemming from their faith. There may be plenty of other issues or challenges to their policy decisions, but separation of church & state is not one of them.

"progress is a comfortable disease"

Excerpts from Thomas Lynch’s review of the book “Swimming in a Sea of Death” by David Rieff, written in tribute to his mother Susan Sontag who died of cancer:

Swimming in a Sea of Death" is Rieff's brief record of how high priests of the body and blood sort -- whether oncologists or monsignors -- must so often disappoint. And how they disappointed his mother. In the end, neither science nor medicine, reason nor raw intellect, "avidity" for life nor her lifelong sense that hers was a special case -- nothing could undo her death. Susan Sontag "died as she had lived: unreconciled to mortality." And there is the sadness at the heart of Rieff's testimony: that mothers die, as fathers do, regardless of what they or their children believe or disbelieve. It is our humanity that makes us mortal, not our creeds or their antitheses.

All of us swim in the one sea all our lives, trying to stay afloat as best we can, clinging to such lifelines and preservers as we might draw about us: reason and science, faith and religious practice, art and music and imagination. And in the end, we all go "down, down, down" as Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote, "into the darkness," although she did not approve and was not resigned. Some lie back, float calmly and then succumb, while others flail about furiously and go under all the same. Some work quietly through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' tidy, too hopeful stages; others "rage, rage" as Dylan Thomas told his father to. But all get to the "dying of the light." Some see death as a transition while others see it as extinction. Sontag studied in this latter school and tutored her only son in its grim lessons. What is clear from his book -- an expansion of an essay that first appeared in the New York Times Magazine a year after her 2004 death -- is that while she battled cancer, she waged war on mortality. That we get sick was acceptable to her. That we die was not. Pain, suffering, the awful losses her disease exacted, were all endurable so long as her consciousness remained animate

~

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

~ e. e. cummings