of making many books

Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

~ Ecclesiastes 12:12

Today’s elite educational institutions often seem more intent on churning out more books (publish or perish as they say), than teaching students how to become good citizens. So it was refreshing for me to stumble upon this blog entry. Below is an excerpt from sociologist Monte Bute's column in the American Sociological Association's official newsletter, written in 2004. His blog, entitled Backstage Sociologist, is worth following.

An outsider to the disciplinary canon, Alfred Schutz, developed a sociology of knowledge that poses an alternative to this elitist paradigm of practice. He distinguished between scholarship aimed at the “expert” and scholarship directed to the “well-informed citizen.” American sociologists once saw the well-informed citizen as their primary audience. Conversely, the disciplinary elite today sees fellow experts as their only audience.

How do we restore sovereignty to that large majority of sociologists who toil under a more populist paradigm of practice but remain second-class citizens within the profession? The state professional association is one important venue. As an apprentice to the craft, I found congenial homes, first in Sociologists of Minnesota (SOM), and later in the National Council of State Sociological Associations (NCSSA).

I was welcomed by colleagues who refused to be constrained by the “expert” model but were engaged in scholarships of integration, application, and teaching. I was mentored by master teachers who prided themselves in conducting three to five sections of undergraduate classes each semester, devoted to developing a sociological perspective in students who may never take another course in the discipline. These folks practiced service the old-fashioned way; a “good citizen” took on those often-thankless tasks on campus and in the community that needed doing.

~

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

~ Proverbs 22:6

when words lose their meaning* (6)

Christians love the word “community” and we like to use it liberally in our conversations, our blog entries and our prayers. There’s just something about the phrase “building community” that seems to justify any activity or desire.

It’s not just Christians who are fond of the word. Nonprofit mission statements often reference “serving the community”. We talk of the artistic community, the anarchist community, the gay community etc… The Internet has further nurtured the growth of various communities. For instance, sites like ravelry.com, craftster.org and personal blogs have contributed to a vibrant knitting and crafting community.

But what do we really mean when we say we build community or that we are part of a community? What is the nature of this community that we refer to? What exactly is our commitment to it? Is it just a group of people who share conveniently common interests, tastes and perhaps even religious beliefs? Or is it, or should it be, something more interdependent and inclusive?

Whereas a community attempts to be an inclusive whole, celebrating the interdependence of public and private life and of the different callings of all, lifestyle is fundamentally segmental and celebrates the narcissism of similarity. It usually explicitly involves a contrast with others who “ do not share one’s lifestyle.” For this reason, we speak not of lifestyle communities, though they are often called such in a contemporary usage, but of lifestyle enclaves. Such enclaves are segmental in two senses. They involve only a segment of each individual, for they concern only private life, especially leisure and consumption. And they are segmental socially in that they include only those with a common lifestyle. The different, those with other lifestyles, are not necessarily despised. They may be willingly tolerated. But they are irrelevant or even invisible in terms of one’s own lifestyle enclave.

Even those of us who are trying to create true community inevitably find ourselves in a lifestyle enclave:

(Wayne) sees his life as that of a full-time activist contributing to the community by organizing its members in efforts to create a more equal and just society…. It does not denigrate Wayne’s aspirations to point out that Santa Monica (where he lives) is a very special kind of place with a very high concentration of people like Wayne. Even more to the point is that Campaign for Economic Democracy activists share a lifestyle, even down to similar tastes in music, wine and food. Thus even those who would most like to think of our society in organic communitarian forms cannot avoid the lifestyle enclave as the effective social expression of our personal lives.

We say we go to a certain church because we enjoy its diversity. But when we embark on our church-shopping, we’re most likely intent on finding a church where there are like-minded people who we would enjoy spending time with.

To be fair, "most groups in America today embody an element of community as well as an element of lifestyle enclave". But it bears asking whether the activities we conceive of as “community-building” are more about lifestyle and preference than interdependence and commitment.


*Despite caring deeply about what words mean, I seem to use the wrong words ALL THE TIME. For instance, a few entries ago, I initially used the word "mulch" instead of "munch". And at home, I always say one noun when I really mean another: I'll say "cup" instead of "plate" or "downstairs" instead of "upstairs". Sigh. I have some bizarre form of verbal dyslexia.
**All italicized sections of the above blog post are from Habits of the Heart, a book that I am enjoying immensely in case you haven't picked that up yet. It might even get 5 stars.

can means justify the ends?

The first great fact which emerges from our civilization is that today everything has become “means.” There is no longer an “end”, we do not know whither we are going. We have forgotten our collective ends, and we possess great means: we set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere.

~ Jacques Ellul

Thus all four of the persons whose voices we have heard assume that there is something arbitrary about the goals of a good life. For Brian Palmer, the goal of a good life is to achieve the priorities you have set for yourself. But how do you know that your present priorities are better than those of your past, or better than those of other people? Because you intuitively appreciate that they are right for you at the present time. For Joe Gorman, the goal of a good life is intimate involvement with the community and family into which he happens to have been born. But how do you know that in this complicated world, the inherited conventions of your community and your family are better and more important, and, therefore, more worthy of your allegiance, than those of other communities and families? In the end, you simply prefer to believe that they are better, atleast for you. For Margaret Oldham, the goal of a good life is liberation from precisely the kinds of conventions that Joe Gorman holds dear. But what do you aim for once you have been liberated? Simply what you yourself decide is best for you. For Wayne Bauer, the goal of a good life is participation in the political struggle to create a more just society. But where should political struggle lead us? TO a society in which all individuals, not just the wealthy, will have power over their own lives. But what are they going to do with that power? Whatever they individually choose to do, as long as they don’t hurt anybody.

The common difficulties these four very different people face in justifying the goals of a morally good life point to a characteristic problem of people in our culture. For most of us, it is easier to think about how to get what we want than to know what exactly we should want. Thus Brian, Joe, Margaret, and Wayne are each in his or her own way confused about how to define for themselves such things as the nature of success, the meaning of freedom, and the requirements of justice. Those difficulties are in an important way created by limitations in the common tradition moral discourse they- and we- share. The main purpose of this book is to deepen our understanding of the resources our tradition provides- and fails to provide- for enabling us to think about the kind of moral problems we are currently facing as Americans. We hope to make articulate the all-too-inarticulate search of those we have described in this chapter to find a moral language that will transcend their radical individualism.

~ Bellah and others, Habits of the Heart

I am falling behind (2nd quarter + July books reviews)

I have read around 10 books in the last quarter + July and have failed to keep up with the reviews after I read them. Buying a house, going on tour to Europe and moving may have had something to do with it. But now I am backlogged, so I will be brief.*

I had briefly considered abandoning the practice of reviewing books, but for an unapologetic skimmer like me (my favourite justification “It just wasn’t worth my time to read more closely”—blame it on the Twitter pace of contemporary life), this is critical in helping me retain atleast some small fraction of what I read.

Sociology/History
**** Forgive and Remember (Charles Bosk) ~ I was delighted to discover that one of the judging criteria (atleast according to Wikipedia) of an ethnography is “aesthetic merit”. While this book is not primarily aesthetic, it is a well-written and compelling scholarly work. It is an ethnography of surgeons-in-training, with a focus on medical error—which errors are considered normative and forgiven, and which errors are not. Bosk also reflects on his research methodology and choices.
** The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Max Weber) ~ This is perhaps one of the most quoted and most famous works of social science. Unfortunately, it can be tedious and dense to read as Weber traces the development of the spirit of capitalism from the protestant understanding of work and labour. He spends quite a bit of time explaining the different religious sects of Protestantism, setting up his question and justifying his conclusions. His most compelling chapter is the final one, entitled, “Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism”, which traces the transformation of the protestant work ethic into its modern secular instantiation.
*** The Overworked American (Juliet Schor) ~ An approachable, mostly statistics-based analysis on American work habits over the past century. Schor demonstrates that American work hours, both at home and at the workplace, have increased. Though most households have appliances such as washing machines and microwaves designed to save time, Americans now spend more or the same amount of time on housework as they did before. And generally speaking, most employees will prefer higher pay as compensation rather than more flexible or reduced hours. In addition to making these observations, Schor provides reasonable explanations: higher standards (e.g. cleanliness etc...), labour market competition, corporate incentives and consumption habits.
**** White Collar: The American Middle Classes (C. Wright Mills) ~ As always, I enjoy C. Wright Mills. In White Collar, he explores the transformation of America’s middle class from small property-owners or entrepreneurs to white collar workers, cogs in the bureaucratic corporate machine. The introduction is absolutely fantastic to read. The rest of the book is more methodical, but remains enjoyable, informative and thought-provoking. Mills describes the old middle class, the bureaucratic structures of corporations, common white collar professions, but also reflects on the changes in the meanings of work, success and status.
**** The Illusion of Freedom and Equality (Richard Stivers) ~ This book is extraordinarily well-written, easy to read and understand. Yet because of the subject matter, it requires rereading to fully absorb the extent of Stivers’ ideas. Stivers traces the transformation of Freedom and Equality as conceived by 18th century thinkers to its modern day conception. I considered trying to summarize his book in my own words, but using some of his chapter sub-headings would be more helpful. Freedom and Equality as the Modern Ideology: Freedom as Consumer Choice and Abundance, Freedom as Individual Right, Freedom as Technological Possibility, Plural Equality, Cultural and Communicative Equality. The Reality of Freedom and Equality: Freedom as Forced Consumerism, Freedom as Legal Process, Freedom as Technological Necessity, Equality as Group Conformity and Competition, Equality as Uniformity.
**** The Cold War (John Lewis Gaddis) ~ An excellent, well-written and balanced book about the cold war. Gaddis manages to be honest about America’s numerous failures and shortcomings without idealizing other countries or cultures. Gaddis also ties chapters together with thematic interpretations rather than chronological ordering. I found this book enjoyable to read and informative for someone who usually finds history books boring.
** People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (David M. Potter) ~ The beginning half of this book addresses the difficulties in assessing and describing “national character”. The second half explores how the specific characteristic of economic abundance has affected some aspects of American character. Potter indicates that his analysis is only a sampling and by no means comprehensive. He explores how the nation’s economic abundance affected democratic ideals, social mobility and consumption practices. The book’s ideas are well-thought out and fairly interesting, but there were several sections that were a bit tedious to read.
*** Organization Man (William Whyte) ~ Written in the 1950s, this book is a classic study of American middle class conformity. Whyte describes the organization man—his aspirations, his training, his workplace and his residence of choice—the suburbs. Whyte’s journalist background is evident—the book reads well, with the exception of the first section, a theoretical reflection on individualism and conformity.
*** The Power Elite (C. Wright Mills) ~ Mills describes the various cross-sections of the American elite. He explores each group’s characteristics, but focuses mostly on the influence they have in decision-making. Mills particularly highlights the close connections between corporate, military and executive power as well as the gridlock of Congressional, representative government. He asserts that most decisions that affect American lives, are made without democratic assent.
*** The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (Joan Jacobs Brumberg) ~ A historian explores the changing attitudes of girls towards their bodies by reading diaries from the 1830s to the present day. Brumberg particular highlights how girls’ relationships to their bodies were once primarily mediated by their family and relatives, while now it is mostly affected by the media and their peers.

Christian
*** Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God Given Potential (Gordon Smith) ~ I read this book over a 24-hour women’s retreat and remember that it was calming and reassuring in my never-ending struggle to figure out what to do with my life. If I remember correctly, the book explored the idea of vocation—that God calls us to specific tasks (not necessarily in the form of career) in different seasons of our life.
*** The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics (Ched Myers) ~ A set of essays on economics in God’s kingdom, reflecting particularly on what regular debt forgiveness and repatriation of land would mean in today’s society. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s an excellent introduction for those interested in the topic.

Fiction
? Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (Yu Hua) ~ Sometime in April, I felt compelled to read a novel about China. There was nothing available in English so I picked up Chronicle of a Blood Merchant in Chinese, because the author Yu Hua, is known to write in very simple Chinese. Yu Hua’s other novel, To Live, which has been adapted into a movie, is one of the most depressing books I have ever read. So far, Chronicle is much more light-hearted, though not as good…. Then again, I haven’t finished reading it yet… and I’m not sure when I will. I guess I will re-review it later.
** Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi) ~ This graphic novel narrates the childhood of a girl living in Iran during the political unrest of the 1970s to 1980s. I wanted to like the novel but to be honest, I was disappointed. If this wasn’t a graphic novel written about Iran by a female, I doubt it would have gained quite as much acclaim. The story is simple narration via a child’s perspective. I found it interesting from a factual and historical perspective, but did not find it emotionally moving. It reminded me of Art Spiegelmann’s Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, but not quite as compelling.

* After completing these reviews, I noticed that very few of them were actually brief. Once I started, I guess I couldn’t stop. But I did use the same words over and over again: "enjoyed", "well-written", "tedious" etc...
** Enough with the computer screen, off to read and contemplate. I am currently munching on: Habits of the Heart.

cleaning and purging

I have finally admitted that it takes me longer to figure out what to throw away than it does for me to just pack it up. Fortunately, I have discovered that it's easier to throw things out after you move, when you realize that despite moving into a larger space, there's still not enough space for all your crap.

So continues my constant struggle not to hoard, lest I become this Asian woman. (There are better photos here and here). I know I already have a tendency to hoard up plastic bags because they’re so “useful”.

Going through my stuff and living in a lower-income neighbourhood reminds me of how wealthy I am. (And it's about what you own, not just what you make). And I am trying to think about what I actually need versus what I think I need.

In addition to recognizing my wealth, I also have to acknowledge my snootiness. Apparently, I like smart people books.

Then again, what makes a good life is rarely tied with wealth or worldly achievement, but rather relationships and social adjustment. I’m sure a healthy marriage would help to that effect.

But if history and statistical research determines my life, then I may have a few more husbands in store. In the meantime, I am thankful to be in an egalitarian marriage and not an extreme complementarian one.

But I’m still glad I’m a girl, just not in the way that this book would suggest. The book now sells for $270 on Amazon.

And if you can’t get enough of learning more about your gender, you can try the Exciting Career Game for Girls. Your options are endless: model, actress, ballerina, nurse, teacher or airline stewardess! Sure beats becoming a fallen Disney princess.

And a random list:

• Another call for duty and virtue
• Day in the life of an elderly folks care home
• American Apparel ingenuity, hipster stupidity
• And censorship does not always come from the government
• And as always, remember to care for the introverts in your life

life on hiatus

(written last week)

After 14 days on tour with my husband’s band, it’s a bit of a shock to be back home. While the first few day were challenging, I grew accustomed to packing up my bag every morning and moving on to the next location every night. Towards the end, I felt like I could continue indefinitely. Wake up. Walk around and explore. Pack my bag. Get in the van and go on to the next location. Repeat. Again and again.

Life is simple. Everything I needed fit into one bag. The immediacy of each location kept me from worrying about the elusive future. So despite constant change and movement, and little sleep, the trip ended up being mentally refreshing.

And now I’ve returned to my boxes upon boxes of possessions, a 9-5 desk job, a mortgage, and all those other lovely American dream promises that seemed so distant while I was gone.

"centrally-administered materialism"

David Warren wrote an excellent editorial in commemoration of the Tiananmen massacre and D-Day:

The Second World War ended in split decision. There was victory in the West, and nominal victory in the East, but as Churchill said, an Iron Curtain fell, and those to the east of it were abandoned to a Communist tyranny little different from the daily Nazi tyranny that had preceded the war; indeed, worse for being prolonged. Two generations were condemned to slavery: whole lives passed under the twitching thumbs of party apparatchiks, with only the briefest respites, in Berlin, in Warsaw, in Budapest, in Prague. And each of those respites, bloody.

It was a mixed result also within the West, for it seems today that we learned nothing, and the principles for which men and women once died have been progressively abandoned in our public life. Yes we have democracy, of a sort: mass democracy, and rule in the name of numbers. But the numbers have been used to establish Nanny States that deeply impinge our freedom, and to advance the very cause of atheist materialism that once marked Nazi, Fascist, and Communist regimes as exceptional.

The people of China are now passing out of the third generation of Communist tyranny. Outwardly, it has eased. The Red Chinese state has relaxed its controls over minor arrangements in everyday life, to the extent of permitting the kind of "capitalist" consumerism that can enhance its own power.

We have been left with less to choose than we think, between the two systems, for we now have centrally-administered materialism in both East and West.

The soldiers who fell in Normandy were not fighting for swimming pools and home entertainment centres. They had before them a view of the dignity of man: of things worth more than life itself. The students who stood in Tiananmen Square -- who raised the home-made statue of Lady Liberty -- did not die for the sake of cellphones, and skyscrapers in Shanghai. They faced the tanks and bullets of the "People's Revolutionary Army" with something more substantial in their hearts.

Yet the generation after them, there as here, has been largely bought off with the false promise of material prosperity. There, as here, we have agreed to become a kind of indentured labour, on the promise that we will be taken care of, cradle to grave.

Let us at least celebrate, for a moment in time, men and women who were better than we are.

But perhaps more revealing about modern China was a joke made by a Chinese visiting scholar– “Nobody’s thinking about Tiananmen in China, they’re all thinking about Gao Kao.”

Gao Kao is the National Higher Education Entrance Examination that takes place over 3 days in China every year. It is basically SAT on steroids. If I’m not mistaken, it occurs only once a year and it completely determines where one goes to college. It conveniently occurs in and around the week of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.


*On an unrelated note, here are some more encouraging slopes relating to the decreasing incidence of bike casualities in NY.

the slippery slope

Improved technology and more goods and services have raised the standards for what is acceptable in our culture. While there is more to choose from, we also have more to live up to. The introduction of indoor plumbing, electricity and household appliances into our homes have only pressured us to maintain higher levels of cleanliness. While wrinkles were once an accepted symptom of aging, we are now pre-occupied with anti-wrinkle creams and Botox treatments. The greater variety and availability of clothing has only raised expectations for our appearances (It’s not terribly acceptable to wear the same thing every day, unless you’re my husband. He somehow manages to get away with it).

The odd thing about the constancy of (housework) hours is that it coincided with a technological revolution in the household. When the early studies were done, American homes had little sophisticated equipment. Many were not yet wired for gas and electricity. They did not have automatic washers and dryers or refrigerators. Some homes even lacked indoor plumbing, so that every drop of water that entered the house had to be carried in by hand and then carried out again.

By 1950, the amount of capital equipment in the home had risen dramatically. Major technological systems, such as indoor plumbing, electricity, and gas, had been installed virtually everywhere. At the same time, many labor-saving appliances also came into vogue- automatic washing machines and dryers, electric irons, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and freezers, garbage disposals. By the 1990s, we had added dishwashers, microwaves and trash compactors. Each of these innovations had the potential to save countless hours of labor. Yet none of them dead. In terms of reducing time spent on domestic work, all this expensive labor-saving technology was an abject failure.
…
Laundry provides the best example of how technology failed to reduce labor time... Laundry that had previously been sent out began to stay home. At the same, standards of cleanliness went up… In the (colonial) days, washing would be done once a month at most and, in many families, much less—perhaps four times per year. Nearly everyone wore dirty clothes nearly all the time. Slowly, the frequency of washing rose… Standards have crept up for nearly everything that housewives do—laundry, cooking, care of children, shopping, care of the sick, cleaning…

One 1920s housewife realized: Because we housewives of today have the tools to reach it, we dig every day after dust that grandmother left to a spring cataclysm. If few of us have nine children for a weekly bath, we have two or three for daily immersion. If our consciences don’t prick over vacant pie shelves or empty cookie jars, they do over meals in which a vitamin may be omitted or a calorie lacking.

But we were not always like this. Contemporary standards of housecleaning are a modern invention, like the vacuum cleaners and furniture polishes that make them possible. (The culture of cleanliness) was delayed because it was expensive. The labor of colonial women was far too valuable to be spent creating spic-and-span…

~ Juliet Schor in The Overworked American

Likewise, more freedom around what parts of our body we can display has resulted in more concern for how those parts of our body appear.

By the 1920s, both fashion and film encouraged a massive “unveiling” of the female body, which meant that certain body parts-such as arms and legs- were bared and displayed in ways they never had before. This new freedom to display the body was accompanied, however, by demanding beauty and literary regimens that involved money as well as self-discipline. Beginning in the 1920s, women’s legs and underarms had to be smooth and free of body hair; the torso had to be svelte; and the breasts were supposed to be small and firm. What American women did not realize at the time was that their stunning new freedom actually implied the need for greater internal control of the body, an imperative that would intensify and become even more powerful by the end of the twentieth century… cultural pressures have accumulated, making American girls today, at the close of the twentieth century, more anxious than ever about the size and shape of their bodies, as well as particular body parts.

~ Joan Jacobs Brumberg in The Body Project

No doubt we have made progress since the early twentieth century. And while most of these accomplishments have materially improved our quality of life, we continue to expect more. Improved technology designed to make life more convenient has not given us more leisure and rest time. And more freedom to choose what we wear and how we appear, may have only increased anxiety and worry.


* Somehow I feel a bit better that my apartment is not Real Simple-worthy. There are piles of books and papers stacked up in the corners collecting dust. Our bathtub is developing a ring of soap and scum residue and I believe our sink is building a lovely layer of grime. Yes, I would like my home to be cleaner, but I’m just too damn lazy to do it myself or to nag my husband to do it. But now I can say something elitist like I’m intentionally being counter-cultural and protesting the absurd standards of hygiene in our society… or tell everyone that I’m saving the environment. But don’t we often discover that our practical decisions end up being political? We didn’t buy a car, because we’re cheap. We line-dry our clothing, because there was no room in our apartment for a dryer. We try to reduce our meat consumption, because I don’t like cooking meat…
** Did you see this study that asked households to rank appliances as luxury or necessity? Fascinating!

fashion victim

Before World War I, girls rarely mentioned their bodies (in their diaries) in terms of strategies for self-improvement or struggles for personal identity. Becoming a better person meant paying less attention to the self, giving more assistance to others, and putting more effort into instructive reading or lessons at school. When girls in the nineteenth century thought about ways to improve themselves, they almost always focused on their internal character and how it was reflected in outward behaviour.

In 1892, the personal agenda of an adolescent diarist read: “Resolved, not to talk about myself or feelings. To think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self restrained in conversation and actions. Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more in others.”

A century later, in the 1990s, American girls think very differently. In a New Year’s resolution written in 1982, a girl wrote: “I will try to make myself better in any way I possibly can with the help of my budget and baby-sitting money. I will lose weight, get new lenses, already got new haircut, good makeup, new clothes and accessories.” This concise declaration clearly captures how girls feel about themselves in the contemporary world. Like many adults in American society, girls today are concerned with the shape and appearance of their bodies as a primary expression of their individual identity.

~ Joan Jacobs Brumberg in The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls

Not to suggest that life was better back in the nineteenth century, but merely to point out that we really do follow the fashions of our time. And when it appears that we have the greatest abundance of choice, we are often less free than we think we are.

confession: I like clothes*

Lotus Dress

Question: Is it less superficial and materialistic to like clothes if I make them myself?

I’ve spent a lot of time recently altering and reconstructing thrift and consignment store clothing that I’ve purchased in the last few years. (In some ways, I’m on a permanent Wardrobe Refashion Pledge—I only buy used clothing). While this activity is a creative and technical process, it also conveniently gratifies my constant craving for new clothing.

I may escape some elements of shopaholism, but some minor (or major) spirit of clothing consumption still holds me captive.

In any case, I have been working on a blog post or series of blog posts relating to fashion and clothing, which may eventually see the light of the internet. As luck would have it, I got stopped on the street today, photographed in an awkward pose by SnapGlow TV from Philly.com because my outfit “was fantastic”. Now I am the laughing stock of my husband, if I wasn’t already.


* And I suppose I have to add purses and shoes to that list.
** The dress above was sewn by yours truly using Amy Buter's Lotus Dress pattern. Sewing your own clothing from new fabric is unfortunately not terribly economical. I probably spent $50 on the fabric for the dress, though there is plenty left-over. The pattern also cost about $10 or $15. Sewing clothing using fabric from thrift store clothing, however, can be quite budget-friendly.

the chief end of man...*

Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for satisfaction of his materials needs.

~ Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In the words of the English historian E. P. Thompson, time became “currency: it is not passed but spent.” As employers consolidated control over their workforces, the day was increasingly split into two kinds of time: “owners’ time, the time of work”; and “their own time, a time (in theory) for leisure.’ Eventually, workers came to perceive time, not as the milieu in which they lived their life, but ‘as an objective force within which [they] were imprisoned.'”

~ Juliet Schor in The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

(The source of the last passage should be fairly self-evident. And in case there is any confusion, it is not from Philip Pullman's Golden Compass)


*and a different sort of iron cage.

sharing time

A glimpse into my soul: this is a fitting representation of my computer desktop. Women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines always recommend that if you haven’t worn a piece of clothing for over a year you should throw it out. I am beginning to wonder if the same rule should be applied to half-written blog entries and articles on my computer desktop.

But seriously:

“the religious right was not good for religion”

“when scientists are silenced by colleagues, administrators, editors and funders who think that simply asking certain questions is inappropriate, the process begins to resemble religion rather than science”

“marriage actually works best as a formative institution, not an institution you enter once you think you're fully formed”

“laws aren’t supposed to be enforced only when convenient”

And not so seriously (or perhaps, more seriously):

interactive knitting

obamanomics

the recession is great!

the course I would someday like to teach

the sociology of scrabble letters

is it uncool to hate on American Apparel?

food is the new sex

and sex still sells. especially in france.

when words lose their meaning (5)

I stumbled upon Kasmeneo’s fashion photo stream via the Sociological Images blog. Kasmeneo regularly wears women’s clothing and posts photos of his outfits on flickr. While I have no objection to him wearing women’s clothing**, I am disappointed with his choice of vocabulary to express his opinion on the matter:

Fashion is one of my major hobbies… and mainstream men’s fashion is much too boring. So I take most of my clothes and shoes from the women’s department, as there’s just much more items, styles, colors, and materials to choose from.
That’s also my personal statement regarding equal rights - they include the right of clothing choice. What you see here is what I wear everyday, at work, in town, for shopping, whatever. And I hope that publishing my pics here can convince some men that nice clothes and shoes are not a girl’s privilege. It’s all there, you just have to take it - just like the girls do with our stuff.

The term “rights”, whether “equal rights” or “human rights”, is constantly co-opted for the purposes of demanding or justifying our desires. The line between our postmodern consumer wants and the “basic rights and dignities to which all humans are entitled” is gradually blurred.

I don’t know a single politician who doesn’t mention ten times a day “the fight for human rights” or “violation of human rights.” But because people in the West are not threatened by concentration camps and are free to say and write what they want, the more the fight for human rights gains in popularity, the more it loses any concrete content, becoming a kind of universal stance of everyone towards everything, a kind of energy that turns all human desires into rights.

~ Milan Kundera, quoted in Richard Stivers’ "The Illusion of Freedom and Equality"

If right implies choice, choice suggests desire. Indeed, right as an expansionistic concept is a metaphor for desire… Rights easily become the desires that advertising presents to us as needs, the fulfillment of which is left open to our choices.

~ “The Illusion of Freedom and Democracy” Richard Stivers

* In order to keep up with trendy summer blockbuster movies (Terminator Salvation, Star Trek) I am officially rebooting this series.
** To be fair, he makes the clear point that women do wear men’s clothing and it would be unreasonable to impose a double standard for matters of fashion. Furthermore, he actually pulls off the look fairly well. I really don't think men look that bad in skirts.

my destiny*

Sometimes I feel like I will spend my entire life longing to go back to Torres del Paine.

It’s been over a year since Matt and I flew halfway around the globe and trekked Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. The memory of being there – instead of fading with time--- has grown to mythical proportions.

I think about the place a lot. I can still hear the thunder of ice breaking off from the glaciers during the night. The stream water still tastes refreshingly cold. And I remember that even though I felt exhausted each night from the hours of hiking, I felt restored and cleansed from breathing the fresh air. But I most vividly remember the sense of awe I felt as I was surrounded by the towering mountains and endless pampas. Confronted with something I had no category to understand, I felt small and frail. And yet, I felt safe and comforted within something so much greater than myself.

There are very few times in my life where I actually behold the immensity of God’s power. And when I do, I long to live those moments again.






* This entry is melodramatic. Except it’s not. I actually feel this way.
** Photos were taken by Matt. More of his photos can be found here. Maybe I'll post some more on my flickr photostream, but it will have to compete against my knitting pictures for bandwidth. It'll be a tough battle.

late night thoughts

David Brooks' article Genius: The Modern View echoes the great words of wisdom of Thomas Edison: Genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration. Genius is not produced by inherent, divine talent, but by methodical practice. Which is to say, that my aspirations to be come a world-famous writer will not be realized unless I blog more often :P.

But seriously, my knitting has improved significantly since I first started over two years ago, but I spend anywhere from half an hour to three or four hours knitting every day. To be fair, most of those hours are spent knitting during movies or Star Trek The Next Generation episodes, but I am still practicing. It makes me wonder: How would the quality of my ideas and communication improved had I made a similar commitment to writing?

If Edison's words are true, then I am not sure if we are to be encouraged or discouraged. It is encouraging to know that anyone with slightly above-average skill in some area can become a "top performer", but it is discouraging to confront the amount of time and discipline required to develop that excellence. It makes me wonder if it's too late for me to excel in any area and to reverse my current trajectory of becoming jack of all trades and master of none. But it also makes me wonder how much is it worth sacrificing to become the best of the best?*


* A professor once told my friend that she was capable of becoming a leading history scholar. She would just have to pick a good area and master everything written on that topic. Of course, her research may also require her to spend several months away from her family each year. Not an easy price to pay.

I'm yellow!

and I like yellow butterflies

I have neglected this blog. I suffer from on average month-long writer’s block and this recent one has lasted longer than usual. Perhaps I’ve been distracted by more immediate things—work, house-buying ambivalence, obsessive knitting and hemming my ten gazillion skirts that are too long and hit me at the unflattering mid-calf length. Garbage in garbage out, so I suppose I can complain about nonprofit bureaucracy or ramble at length about the lengths of my dresses, but I won’t put you through that torture. That’s reserved for my husband (who is quite wonderful in case you were wondering).

Today I stumbled upon the Circle Ventures (somehow related to Circle of Hope church) blog post on white guilt concerning this history of the United States with regards to African Americans. It reminded me of how foreign America’s history is to me—the American Revolution, the westward expansion, the Civil War, the Great Depression, WWII, the Vietnam war – all this could be the history of another country. The history of my “nation” is a jumble of Communist and Cultural Revolution stories, the fall of the Berlin wall via our TV set in British Columbia (mildly upsetting because I wasn’t allowed to watch cartoons), Quebec separatism and a president south of the border notable for his extracurricular engagements. When I watch British or American period movies, I might as well be watching a movie about Sri Lanka, or Chile or Malawi.

My ethnicity, my family culture, whatever convenient label you might want to use, pops up in surprising but subtle ways. My husband and I have a now-resolved dispute about the “magic realism” in Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (one of my favourite books by the way…), most notably the yellow butterflies that follow around a character in the novel. These yellow butterflies offend my husband’s rational, INTJ sensibilities! For him, they are excessive ornamental flourishes because insufficient information is given to determine what they might mean or symbolize. And I know of a few others who feel the same way. But for me, it completely makes sense that this magic is embedded in the way of narrating a story or of seeing reality and no explanation is needed. While my family did not subscribe to Chinese folk stories, my mother practiced Chinese medicine. In the world where I grew up, sticking needles in a person’s face can relieve paralysis, too much “yang” in my system caused my colds and feeling one’s pulse could discern temperaments and long-term illnesses. And for the most part, I hold that all of this is true. Not true in the Western, rational, scientific sense, but true in another sense. We believe in truths in different ways. And so the fact that the yellow butterflies in the Marquez’s novel didn’t mean anything per se, never bothered me, because it corresponded with my cultural hybrid way of seeing (I can’t believe I just used the word hybrid...).

It’s funny how I’ve come to embrace my Chinese-ness recently, as I generally dislike acknowledging my ethnic background. I’ll smile if someone asks me about China, but the moment someone says something along the lines of: “Maybe you do that because you’re Chinese”, the smile becomes forced and my irritation becomes palpable. I will stiffen even more if someone says something like “You need to understand how being Chinese impacts who you are.”

This annoyance may stem from reading far too many “What’s my identity” “I’m a hybrid” minority novels in college (some of which were actually excellent), but it is primarily a strong reaction against the expectation that I must understand who I am in the context of my ethnicity. White people are not confined to conceive of their identities in terms of their ethnicity, then why must ethnicity be my starting point? What if my race is not the defining characteristic of who I am? Why must we limit the driving factors of our formation to race, gender and class when there may be influences that matter far more?

But I’m lucky. Because though I might occasionally receive awkward comments and rude questions, I have not been significantly marginalized because of my ethnicity. Fortunately for me, the privileges of education and wealth were also handed down to me along with my skin colour at birth. And so I am here and not elsewhere. And this is who I am, not someone else. Mostly Canadian-American well-educated wealthy Christian but with bits of Chinese weaved into the holes.

~

There I did it! My crowning contribution to minority literature. New genre: Chinese Canadian American. CCA literature. Memoirs of my childhood amongst huckleberry bushes, chopsticks, francophones, and ice rinks. Maybe they will even have a CCA studies department!

another first quarter

I noticed that every book I’ve read this quarter is one that I physically own. Our post-marriage bookshelf (or more appropriately, our bookshelves plus random piles of books), are a gold mine, especially after Christmas, birthdays, routine trips upon my insistence to the Last Word Bookstore and a year of using Paperbackswap. Two books are missing from this photo because they are at my office. I’ve started keeping personal books at my office, because there’s really no space in our current apartment. Sigh. (Wait, three books are missing. I suppose one has just been misplaced....)

Seeing all these books stacked on top of one another reminds me of how much I love the physicality of books—the binding, the texture of the cover, the smell of the pages. Hannah Arendt describes the printed book as the “transformation of the intangible into the tangibility of things,” something that is lost in the gadgetry of Kindles and the liquid crystals of internet text. From Christine Rosen’s People of the Screen:

As he tried to train himself to screen-read—and mastering such reading does require new skills—Bell made an important observation, one often overlooked in the debate over digital texts: the computer screen was not intended to replace the book. Screen reading allows you to read in a “strategic, targeted manner,” searching for particular pieces of information, he notes. And although this style of reading is admittedly empowering, Bell cautions, “You are the master, not some dead author. And that is precisely where the greatest dangers lie, because when reading, you should not be the master”; you should be the student. “Surrendering to the organizing logic of a book is, after all, the way one learns,” he observes.

So for now, no Kindle for me. Let me submit to the mastery of the printed text! I’m already susceptible to skimming. Besides, I don't get along with gadgets-- I drop my cell phone frequently and lose it for days on end...

In any case, in the past, I usually review books right after I read them. This time around, I procrastinated and ended up writing most of these in the last two weeks, so they may be a little lacking in quality. At the very least, I hope they can give you an idea of what the book is about and whether or not you might want to read them. Italicized books are the ones that I did not finish.

Rating scale from Goodreads
* didn’t like it
** it was ok
*** liked it
**** really liked it
***** it was amazing

Fiction

* or ** The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass) ~ I wanted to like this book, as it’s been compared to two of my other favourites: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. With a trip to Europe planned for the summer, I was also excited to learn about Poland and Germany, as the novel recounts a midget drummer’s childhood and coming of age during the Nazi’s rise and fall of power. But what can I say? I didn’t really like the book. The novel’s language lacked the narrative fluidity that made me love the other two novels (perhaps because it was originally written in German?). The novel’s surreal details were less magic realist (which resonates more with me) and more absurdist in the line of Pynchon (which perhaps because of my cultural background, doesn’t make any sense to me). The novel had several funny and/or insightful passages and I can understand why it has been acclaimed as one of the greatest pieces of German literature since World War II, but to be honest, I can’t say I enjoyed reading it very much.

*** China Men (Maxine Hong-Kingston) ~ I didn’t really get into this book as much as I had hoped. I wrote on Maxine Hong-Kingston’s The Woman Warrior as my senior thesis so I am familiar with her work and style. Hong-Kingston weaves together myth and fact as she recounts the stories of Chinese male immigrants to the United States, from as early as the gold rush and railroad construction to the 1990s. The narratives are detailed, vivid and suggest a mythical historical memory. Her descriptions of the railroad construction by Chinese men and the confusion of the Communist revolution are particularly compelling, but some of the latter stories in the novel were less interesting.

**** Beasts of No Nation ~ After reading the first chapter, I wasn’t expecting to like the book. It was very “loud”, full of yelling and violence and what you’d normally expect from a book about child soldiers. Fortunately, the book did not turn out to be the usual narrative about the horrors of war. Instead, the book explores the psychology of a child soldier amidst the violence of war. What does it mean for someone so young to kill? What does it mean to be both perpetrator and victim?

*** Black Hole (Charles Burns) ~ This graphic novel depicts the spread of a mysterious STD amongst high schoolers in Seattle in the 70s. The disease manifests itself in bizarre physical mutations—tails, mouth, peeling skin etc… The graphic novel is as much as about the initial AIDS as it is about high school social politics, isolation, boredom and rebellion. The artwork is also remarkable as the drawings are also entirely done in black and white strokes (no gray-scale). As a warning for those who are sensitive, the novel has graphic depictions of male and female genitalia.

Non-Fiction

**** On Writing Well (William Zinsser) ~ The first section of the book covers general principles for writing well, while the second section describes guidelines for specific types of writing, including business writing, sports-writing, memoir-writing etc.. The book helped me think about how I can better improve both my business writing, my blog writing and my elusive in-my-head magazine articles that have never actually been written. It is also very enjoyable and readable—much less dry than Strunk’s Elements of Style, which I don’t think I ever finished reading.

***** Engaging the Powers (Walter Wink) ~ I haven’t had a five star book in awhile, but this book definitely qualifies as such. Walter Wink writes about the domination system of the world and the spiritual interiority of institutions. Though Wink may fall on the more liberal end of scriptural analysis, his ideas concerning the spiritual core of institutions and the role they play in society, the significance of Christ’s death and the power of nonviolent action provide a much more comprehensive understanding of the world.

*** Reclaiming Capital: Democratic Initiatives and Community Development (Christopher Gunn) ~ Similar to his other book Third Sector Development, Gunn explores ways to reclaim capital for investment and use within a community. To set the context, Gunn describes the way in which capital is internationally mobile and flows to the area of greatest return. Communities who wish to attract firms often do so at their own detriment—lax labour and environmental standards or tax incentives. Frequently, firms who do locate within a community do not provide the benefits promised. For instance, Gunn assesses how little of the economic benefits generated by the opening of a new MacDonald’s restaurant are actually retained by the community. For the rest of the book, he describes the efforts of different community institutions in reclaiming capital for improving their own communities. This book is clear and well-written even for those unfamiliar with economics or development. It is an excellent introduction for thinking more critically about how capital flows in the world and how it affects different communities.

**** Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (William Webb) ~ Through the examination of three controversial issues in the church historically and/or currently, Webb provides a framework for “the hermeneutics involved in distinguishing that which is merely cultural in Scripture from that which is timeless." He presents a set of 18 or so criteria that can help us determine how scripture texts apply to our current context. He explains each of the criteria and then assesses the three controversial issues in his title in light of those criteria. While his final conclusions on the three controversial issues are important, the book is most valuable for providing anyone with a framework of distinguishing what is cultural and what is transcendent in scripture.

** The Financial Ascent of Money (Niall Ferguson) ~ When I read non-fiction books, I tend to get irritated at the author’s tone after about 100 or so pages. It was a bad sign when I got annoyed at the Ferguson’s writing style after about one paragraph. He writes like a slick modernist, one that firmly believes in greatness of our Western cultural and economic trajectory. However, I decided to give the book a chance and ended up reading/skimming most of it. It turned out to be okay. I expected the book to be focused on currency specifically, rather than all sorts of financial instruments. The book covers the historical development of bonds, stock exchanges, insurance, real estate and derivatives (including the crash of Long Term Capital management). Ferguson’s final chapter describes the influence of finance on the British empire and international relations, including the recent development of Chimerica (China + America). Ferguson goes into great narrative detail describing specific events and/or people—not surprising given that he is a historian. I don’t think he goes into sufficient detail in explaining how the different financial institutions and instruments work. As someone with a business education (is that an oxymoron?), it was okay for me to understand but it may be more challenging for someone who isn’t as familiar with these terms. Not bad, not great. The writer’s tone also became slightly less annoying over the course of the book. He makes a good point of indicating that despite all our mathematical models, our current form of capitalism is subject to extreme volatility—bubbles and crashes—and that history may be as important a lesson as statistics.

*** Eichmann in Jerusalem (Hannah Arendt) ~ I expected this book to be a philosophical and psychological exploration on the nature of evil, but it turned out to be more about the trial of Karl Eichmann in Jerusalem and a historical overview of his rise to power and his orchestration of Jewish deportation in each of the German-occupied nations. The book reads tediously at points, but other sections are fascinating—the Denmark resistance to Nazi orders, the significance of Eichmann’s kidnapping from Argentina by the Israeli Mossad, the desire for Eichmann’s sentence to deliver justice not just for the crimes for which Eichmann was individually responsible but for also for all Nazi crimes against Jews, and the contested fairness of a trial where the judge was Israeli and no defense witnesses were available because no former Nazi would come to testify in Israel. The last chapter provides the best overview and commentary of the trial, with a particular focus on legal and judicial philosophy. If you don’t want to read the whole book, but are interested in the ideas—I would suggest reading the last chapter.

**** Money and Power (Jacques Ellul) ~ From the title, I thought this book would be about people with money and power. However, the book could be more appropriately named the power of money. Ellul first explores wealth in the Old Testament. He examines instances when God used wealth as a reward or blessing, emphasizing that the riches were a gift and a material demonstration of God’s power. Ellul then elaborates on how Jesus completely transforms our relationship to money, especially as He becomes the “Poor One”. Why are the poor amongst us? How must we relate to them? Ellul’s final conclusions are challenging—that Christians should not be in the practice of saving or hoarding, and that everything beyond what they need should be given away. This practice allows one to be freed from serving Mammon (the system of selling and buying) and to “enter” the kingdom of God, where grace and giving reign.

** The People’s History of the United States of America (Howard Zinn) ~ I had read some excerpts from this book earlier and enjoyed them and was hoping for a insightful critique of the mainstream reading of American history. However, the book (or atleast the parts I read) seemed to list the usual liberal grab bag of events and facts combined with a hefty dose of lefty rhetoric. While a decent introduction to the injustices committed by America to its own people and to others, I don’t think the book provided any astute or significant commentary on either American history or the writing of American history.

*** Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (Mike Davis, Daniel Bertrand Monk, editors) ~ This book is a compilation of essays on the urban and spatial developments of the wealthy in the world. I have read about half the essays-- most of them elucidate not just the stark contrast between the rich and the poor, but also the economic, social, environmental and moral cost of these “dreamworlds” to the poor and to humanity.

**** Commager on Tocqueville (Henry Steele Commager) ~ Despite a somewhat self-preoccupied and unenticing title, the book is excellent. Commager assesses American history in the last century through the set of questions raised by Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French aristocrat who wrote about America in Democracy in America. Tocqueville primarily was concerned with democracy – especially the tensions raised between liberty, order and equality. He examines issues of slavery and justice, centralization and democracy, military vs. civil power and political equality and economic inequality in America.

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...

the inverse kingdom

Traditionally, creditors wielded more power than debtors. Creditors charged exorbitant interest, resorted to intimidation and violence, and seized land and possessions of their debtors.

Strangely enough, today in America, if you’re willing to take a loose definition of creditor and debtor, the debtors often wield more power than the creditors. This idea was suggested in Jacques Ellul’s Money and Power in application to the modern corporation: … the ancient reality of the superiority of the creditor. Obviously in our society, the debtor is often much more powerful than the creditor. The corporation cannot be compared with the hundreds of shareholders who compose it.

To further complicate matters, the corporation is not an individual and a corporation does not just consist of its shareholders or its board of directors or its employees. It takes on a life and a spirit of its own. And then we find ourselves faced with an unwieldly monster whose actions and decisions can have enormous impact on our lives.

The injustice of the debtors’ superiority is what angers us so much about the AIG bonuses as billions of taxpayer dollars trickle into the banking system.* I feel sympathy for Edward Liddy and those who received bonuses who were not directly responsible for credit default swap transactions that were the downfall of AIG.** Yet I am also outraged at the debtor’s entitlement—but it’s not Edward Liddy nor the bonus recipients who are the actual debtors to America, it’s AIG the corporation. And how do we understand how AIG’s employees are both part of and yet distinct from the corporation? And as a result, though they may have no personal wrongdoing related to the credit default swaps, they may have to uphold the moral responsibility of a powerful debtor before less powerful creditors.

So for better or for worse, the 90% tax may get passed and we may feel a little bit better.*** But the larger problems still remain unsolved…



* Compared to the total amount lent to AIG, the bonuses were a drop in a bucket. Dealing with large amounts of money can have two contrary psychological impacts—either you start penny pinching and counting every little cent or you figure since the debt is so large, little savings won’t make a big difference in the long run. Clearly in this case, the American public as the creditor feels the former. No creditor would like to see a debtor living the good life if there is no evidence of repayment.
** I’m sympathetic to the fact that many of them are the wrong target of the angry mob. That being said, I personally find large bonuses rather distasteful wherever, but that stems from a larger critique of American capitalism and compensation.
*** Has it been passed already? I don’t think I’ve been paying that close attention to the news in the last few days.

the tyranny of private enterprise

History has always been one of the hardest subjects of me to understand. It’s either a muddle of events that I cannot understand or a simplistic narrative that I do not believe. Perhaps I relate to how Hayden White sees historical narrative: “translations of facts into fictions” as “the events are made into a story by the suppression or subordination of certain of them and highlighting of others”.

The motives and actions of presidents and prime ministers, of ambassadors and representatives. The handshakes made behind closed doors and the secret chain of command through bureaucractic institutions. What story can you spin out of the sparse paper trail of letters, memos and communiqués? Or out of Obama’s Blackberry log? What do you believe?

I have been making an effort to learn history better, since I have been, historically, rather ignorant of it, precisely because I couldn’t make sense of it. It wasn’t until I read two books, the Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills and funny enough, the children’s book , A History of US All the People that history finally began making sense.*

These books presented history or insisted that we study history from a more sociological standpoint—looking at the impact of historical events on the consciousness of individuals in society. I don’t really care about what country was a world power or what conferences and negotiations took place, but I am fascinated about how people living in that country felt amidst the whirlwind of headlines and changes. And recently, I’ve also become intrigued by what history has to say about various philosophical questions: How do you reconcile order and liberty? Equality and freedom? Justice and law?

This newfound fascination came as a result of a book recommended to me by my husband, called Commager on Tocqueville (one of the benefits of marriage is that you get more books and if you’re lucky, your husband has similar tastes to yours). Despite a somewhat self-preoccupied and unenticing title, the book is excellent. Commager assesses American history in the last century through the set of questions raised by Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French aristocrat who wrote about America in Democracy in America (who I vaguely recall having to read in my US AP History class). Tocqueville primarily was concerned with democracy – especially the tensions raised between liberty, order and equality. In Commager’s words:

Would democratic majorities destroy liberty? Would centralization of power, which democracy made almost inevitable, prove incompatible with liberty? Would individualism—so ruthlessly being exercised on the vast North American continent- be compatible with either democracy or with liberty? And what of justice? There can be no liberty without justice and no justice without order. Can individualism tolerate order? Can democracy be trusted to safeguard justice?

Published in 1993, Commager’s conclusions still speak relevantly to what is happening today:

... in the interaction between two forces that (Tocqueville) himself thought the most powerful: majority rule and individualism. He was fearful that majoritarianism would take over the surrender to its natural propensity for tyranny with catastrophic consequences. In that event, it was not the majority that imposed its will on desperate minorities, but the spirit of individualism and private enterprise that permeated majorities and persuaded or seduced them into supporting even the most extreme manifestations of private enterprise. The danger today is no more from majority tyranny than it was in the 1930s when Tocqueville first sounded the alarm. It is rather in that excess of virtue of individualism that we now call private enterprise, but which is no longer private but public, and which, for that matter, is no longer very enterprising. The operation of military-industrial-financial-labor-academic-scientific complex is an example of this. This group or complex does not constitute a majority, but it appears to represent a majority. And to speak for it, it does not formally exercise what we call tyranny, and as for all its triumphs and conquests, these have been brought about legal means and are not therefore tyrannical. But its character and conduct takes on more and more the character of tyranny. In all this, Tocqueville’s fears may yet be vindicated.

I wonder how history will write this past year—the demise of banking as we know it, the economic crisis, the first black president, the new uneasy alliance between banks and government.... What is happening? What does it mean? And how does all of this make us feel? Do we feel powerless as each company announces its own round of layoffs? Do we feel hopeful because there is now a president who seems to be intelligent and concerned about the people and because we may be able to rebuild new and better institutions? Or do we feel angry, ready to charge forth with our pitchforks and flames, because this military-industrial-financial-labor-academic-scientific-governmental complex has failed to demonstrate that it knows what it is doing, though it has justified its privilege and power on that very basis?



*So I am attempting to link to Goodreads more often, rather than Amazon. After all my ranting and railing about large corporations and all my lamenting about the demise of small bookstores, I really should stop giving Amazon free advertising. At the very least, I should sell out and have them pay me.
** For a progressive/liberal reading of American history, I recommend Commager on Tocqueville over Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States of America. This post was originally intended as a rant against Howard Zinn, but I decided to write something more positive instead…