the life and death of... nonprofit organizations

For many nonprofits, to be striving towards are mission, we are also striving towards our own deaths as organizations. While this may not be the case for arts and cultures organization or childcare centers, it is often so for social service and community development oriented organizations.

A transitional foster care home ultimately wants less kids staying at its facilities, because it means that more children are finding stable families to live with. A homeless shelter ultimately prefers that the homeless find affordable housing instead of staying at their temporary shelters.

Currently, a community development corporation has been very successful in revitalizing the area where it is located. The region is beginning to attract more population, tourism and income, and appears to be thriving from its dilapidated abandoned-by-industry state. The organization has watched its loan and mortgage business dwindle as the private sector has found it profitable to move in and take over. Small businesses in the area are thriving with new stores and attractions opening all the time. The question ahead remains: What is its role going forward? Has it accomplished its mission?

Death is not always bad and growth is not always the golden touch. Let’s hope that very successful non-profit organizations can acknowledge and celebrate their successes, and gracefully bow out when their time has come, so that resources can be directed elsewhere. Because though some areas may see improvement, there are still many poor amongst us.

simulating nature

the life and death of great American suburbs

Part of the allure of the suburbs was that it promised an escape from the city. We wanted to be closer to nature-- we wanted green instead of concrete. But what we aspired for in our car-centric outer rings of cities, was rather some filtered simulation of the real thing. Jane Jacobs writes, that in the suburbs, “Nature is apparently assumed to consist of grass, fresh air, and little else.”

Nature is not the uniform, well-watered lawns and tended flowers of suburbia. Nature is not clean and tidy. It’s messy. Ticks, mosquitoes, mud, earthworms and beetles are all part of nature. And if you’ve ever camped out before, being in nature is not comfortable. It can be beautiful, breathtaking, enjoyable, amazing, but definitely not comfortable.

Jane Jacobs writes on the dangers of trying to recreate nature in the suburbs:

There are dangers in sentimentalizing nature. Most sentimental ideas imply, at bottom, a deep if unacknowledged disrespect. It is no accident that we Americans, probably the world’s champion sentimentalizes about nature, are at one and the same time probably the world’s most voracious and disrespectful destroyers of wild and rural countryside.

It is neither love for nature nor respect for nature that leads to this schizophrenic attitude. Instead, it is a sentimental desire to toy, rather patronizingly, with some insipid, standardized suburbanized shadow of nature—apparently in sheer disbelief that we and our cities, just by virtue of being, are a legitimate part of nature too, and involved with it in much deeper and more inescapable ways than grass trimming, sunbathing and contemplative uplift. And so, each day, several thousand more acres of our countryside are eaten by bulldozers and covered by pavement, dotted with suburbanites who have killed the thing they thought they came to find. Our irreplaceable heritage of Grade I agricultural land (a rare treasure of nature on this earth) is sacrificed for highways or supermarket parking lots as ruthlessly and unthinkingly as the trees in the woodlands are uprooted, the streams and rivers polluted and the air itself filled with the gasoline exhausts (products of eons of nature’s manufacturing) required in this great national effort to cozy up with a fictionalized nature and flee the “unnaturalness” of the city.

Jane Jacobs wrote this in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which was first published back in the 60s. She saw through the myth of the suburb during a time when the picket fence dream was still live and vibrant.

There are times when the clean lawns, tidy houses, pleasant gardens, and the comfort of car transportation is very appealing to me, but I also know that the suburban landscape is probably not sustainable in light of rising gas prices, and not the type of ideal living arrangement that I would like to see.* I expect to see the decline of the suburb and the rise of the city again. (Though what I fear, is that the rich will come to live in the city, and the poor will be forced out to the suburbs).


*And there are other things about the suburbs that rub me the wrong way—for instance, that the safety of the suburbs seems to rely upon socio-economic segregation and automobile transportation (which ironically enough, kills thousands of people every year).

on the uses of diversity (2)

or: the entry in which I reveal my political cards (not that it should be a surprise to anyone)

The Economist recently published an article on political segregation. More and more Americans are choosing to live in areas where their political beliefs are in line with everyone else’s:

For example, someone who works in Washington, DC, but wants to live in a suburb can commute either from Maryland or northern Virginia. Both states have equally leafy streets and good schools. But Virginia has plenty of conservative neighbourhoods with megachurches and Bushites you've heard of living on your block. In the posh suburbs of Maryland, by contrast, Republicans are as rare as unkempt lawns and yard signs proclaim that war is not the answer but Barack Obama might be.

At a bookshop in Bethesda (one of those posh Maryland suburbs), Steven Balis, a retired lawyer with wild grey hair and a scruffy T-shirt, looks up from his New York Times. He says he is a Democrat because of “the absence of alternatives”. He comes from a family of secular Jews who supported the New Deal. He holds “positive notions of what government actions can accomplish”. Asked why he moved to Maryland rather than Virginia, he jokes that the far side of the river is “Confederate territory”. Asked if he has hard-core social-conservative acquaintances, he answers simply: “No.”

In the back of my mind, I’ve been wondering for quite some time: do I currently support Barack Obama because I really do believe he’s the best choice for president? Or is it because almost everyone else around me also does (I’m surrounded by liberals :P)? There’s still many months until election time, so there’s time to assess thoroughly and decide. If I end up doing what everyone else is doing, I hope it’s not from following the herd. And if I do decide differently, I hope I’ll have the courage not to hide it from others, because I am worried about what they think of me.*

It’s a pity that there isn’t more contact and dialogue between people of different political preferences. It’s easy to become silo-ed in our own bubbles, comfortably feeling smug with our political opinions, and writing off those who different opinions as stupid/elitist/ignorant/absurd etc… If we are to find some viable solutions to the problems that we are facing, ones that will actually be implemented in Congress and not just dreamed about, we do need to be actively trying to dialogue with and understand others’ opinions. Instead of just writing off another's opinion as wrong, it’s good to ask: What are their assumptions? (As Nick has written about in his blog). And if those assumptions are different, we can ask: why are they different? how can we work through our differences? and how can we continue to respect them in light of their different beliefs?

All this is much harder when we socially separate ourselves from those who have different political preferences from us. Living as neighbors, colleagues or friends, humanizes those “liberals” or “conservatives” or “anarchists” or “socialists”. It becomes much harder to label them and see them under the stereotype of their political preferences.** It puts us in a position where we must at the very least interact with them, instead of having all our knowledge of them be mediated through the internet and the evening news.

The Economist article continues on the dangers of lack of diversity:

There is a danger in this. Studies suggest that when a group is ideologically homogeneous, its members tend to grow more extreme. Even clever, fair-minded people are not immune. Cass Sunstein and David Schkade, two academics, found that Republican-appointed judges vote more conservatively when sitting on a panel with other Republicans than when sitting with Democrats. Democratic judges become more liberal when on the bench with fellow Democrats.

“We now live in a giant feedback loop,” says Mr Bishop, “hearing our own thoughts about what's right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear and the neighbourhoods we live in.”

Voters in landslide districts tend to elect more extreme members of Congress. Moderates who might otherwise run for office decide not to. Debates turn into shouting matches. Bitterly partisan lawmakers cannot reach the necessary consensus to fix long-term problems such as the tottering pensions and health-care systems.

America, says Mr Bishop, is splitting into “balkanised communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible.” He has a point. Republicans who never meet Democrats tend to assume that Democrats believe more extreme things than they really do, and vice versa. This contributes to the nasty tone of many political campaigns.

Interestingly enough:
The more educated Americans become, the more insular they are. Better-educated people tend to be richer, so they have more choice about where they live. And they are more mobile.



* It’s also still up in the air whether or not I will be able to vote in this historical election. I’m still in the process of applying for US citizenship. My civics exam is next week, and if I pass, I’m not sure when I will be sworn in. I haven’t voted before in my life, and so there’s a certain excitement in me about this upcoming election. I think in the past, I’ve taken voting too lightly, or ignored elections altogether, because it was something that I couldn’t be part of. But now, I might actually be part of this so-called democratic system, and I feel this growing sense of investment and care that I haven’t felt before.
** It’s ironic how “liberals” who are so sensitive about intolerance and racism, are rather quick to make generalizing comments about “conservatives”.

in praise of economics*

I’ve always been skeptical of economics—the curves and intersecting lines depicting utility and preferences and other variables I no longer remember. It seemed so reductive, and it always seemed to rest on the shaky assumption that additional consumption was better (though with diminishing marginal returns).

While I have yet to be convinced that economics can explain all of human behavior, I’ve grown to appreciate its applications to real life situations. Understanding people’s preferences and their assessment of costs and benefits, enables the effective implementation of policies. It’s often not helpful to try to control and legislate the end result. Rather, it is often better to put in place the conditions that will make people inclined to choose that end result. To clarify, here are two examples:

In this article, referenced in Lee Huang’s blog, Krauthammer writes:

At $3 a gallon, Americans just grin and bear it, suck it up, and, while complaining profusely, keep driving like crazy. At $4, it is a world transformed. Americans become rational creatures. Mass transit ridership is at a 50-year high. Driving is down 4 percent. (Any U.S. decline is something close to a miracle.) Hybrids and compacts are flying off the lots. SUV sales are in free fall.

America's sudden change in car-buying habits makes suitable mockery of that absurd debate Congress put on last December on fuel efficiency standards. At stake was precisely what miles-per-gallon average would every car company's fleet have to meet by precisely what date.

At $4 a gallon, the fleet composition is changing spontaneously and overnight, not over the 13 years mandated by Congress. (Even Stalin had the modesty to restrict himself to five-year plans.)

In the Death and Life of American Cities, Jane Jacobs writes about how unsuccessful cities designed around car transportation can be (including the terrible traffic). She writes about cities often unknowingly enter a slippery slope in order to accommodate cars. As soon as the city makes room for more parking spaces, widens streets and build highways, even more people use cars, resulting in more traffic troubles, which demand further changes to accommodate cars. Eventually, the city becomes one large traffic sprawl where you can’t get anywhere without a car (e.g. Los Angeles).

In order to avoid this, Jacobs does not advocate complicated tax schemes or incentive plans (though she does acknowledge the need to improve public transportation). However, the primary measure would be to make the city more inconvenient for cars (e.g. staggering stoplights with frequent changes – inconvenient for personal cars but good for buses). As the city became more inconvenient to drive in, more people opted to walk, bike or take public transportation.

So yes, more and more, I’ve seen the effectiveness of policies that take advantage of the market system or that employ cost benefit analysis. (I feel like I'm supposed to write a better conclusive sentence to this blog entry, but that's really all I have to say...)


* I haven’t taken an economics course for about six years, except for one on Urban Fiscal Policy about three years ago … so if I am mistaken on a few items, please forgive me and clarify in the comments. Thank you!
** I was also very enthused to hear Mayor Michael Nutter’s commitment to “a pedestrian-focused urban form that would not be trumped by the design demands of cars.” Gas prices are not going to go down, and the age of automobile is waning. So what if Chestnut Street is always a traffic mess? It's a lively street that would be destroyed if the road was widened. It’s much eaiser to just walk or to take the trolley or the subway. For more details on Nutter’s speech reinstating powers to the Philadelphia Planning Comission, please see this article in the Inquirer.

sex and women's rights

two terms not to be confused with one another

I’m a little late on writing about the Sex and the City Movie. Part of me enjoyed the TV show because it was funny and part of me secretly envied the wardrobes of those four women, but whatever other part of me that remained resented the show for the way that it represented the supposedly ideal life of a female:

At least, you could argue, Miranda has a job, as a lawyer. But the film pays it zero attention, and the other women expect her to drop it and fly to Mexico without demur. (And she does.) Worse still is the sneering cut as the scene shifts from Carrie, carefree and childless in the New York Public Library, to the face of Miranda’s young son, smeared with spaghetti sauce. In short, to anyone facing the quandaries of being a working mother, the movie sends a vicious memo: Don’t be a mother. And don’t work. Is this really where we have ended up—with this superannuated fantasy posing as a slice of modern life? On TV, “Sex and the City” was never as insulting as “Desperate Housewives,” which strikes me as catastrophically retrograde, but, almost sixty years after “All About Eve,” which also featured four major female roles, there is a deep sadness in the sight of Carrie and friends defining themselves not as Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, and Thelma Ritter did—by their talents, their hats, and the swordplay of their wits—but purely by their ability to snare and keep a man. Believe me, ladies, we’re not worth it. It’s true that Samantha finally disposes of one paramour, but only with a view to landing another, and her parting shot is a beauty: “I love you, but I love me more.” I have a terrible feeling that “Sex and the City” expects us not to disapprove of that line, or even to laugh at it, but to exclaim in unison, “You go, girl.” I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist, my head a whirl of closets, delusions, and blunt-clawed cattiness. All the film lacks is a subtitle: “The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe.”

~ From the New Yorker

If this is the epitome of role models for my generation of females, then I am quite saddened. Sex and the City is occasionally lauded for promoting sexual liberation and freedom for women. These days, it seems that female liberation is only about sexual liberation and reproductive rights.*

And if Sex and the City represents this, then this female liberation seems rather intent on turning all us women into selfish, men-obsessed, materialist girls, comfortably living out an extended childhood.

Has female liberation also lost sight of the actual critical issues of our society? To cite from the article from my previous post:

… elsewhere, thousands of honor killings and millions of female circumcisions transpire yearly. In Saudi Arabia, feminism is not second-guessing the remarks of a college president, but simply wanting to drive a car; on the West Bank, it is not being murdered when dating someone your father and brothers don’t like; in the Sudan, it is avoiding genital mutilation; in Iran, it is escaping stoning when accused of adultery…





* If you use the words “rights” and “freedom” to defend any issue, you will certainly sound justified in your reasoning.

Notions of Oppression of the Dead White Male in Today’s “Institutions of Higher Learning”

Subverting Structures of Minority Privilege and Deconstructing Diversity

In this article, The New Learning that Failed (published in the New Criterion), Victor Davis Hanson explores (and criticizes) the reasons for the failure for academic institutions to promote the study of classics (in other words, the so-called Western canon of white male dead authors). He makes several valid assessments on the state of the humanities departments in today’s university. He touches upon the inability to recognize beauty:*

There is no vocabulary left to convey ugliness or near perfection in art or literature—at least none that is not instantly deconstructed to prejudices of race, gender, and class. In a university class, we read mostly poems without meter, rhyme, musicality, or an elevated vocabulary, and novels without heroes or protagonists or even much action; we view art that is far removed from what the eye sees or would wish to see. The result is that our students cannot recognize beautiful things around them or within themselves.

Having studied plenty of minority and post-colonial literature, there’s some really beautiful work written (of course, we never described it using that word) that is well worth studying. But that doesn’t mean that a dead white male cannot write something relevant to us today. And there are plenty of poems without meter, rhyme or musicality, and protagonist-less novels that are excellent, but that doesn’t mean the ones that have them are so antiquated that they are not worth reading.

It’s important to study the writings of dead white males (and yes, there are exceptions), because they have in large part shaped the structure and basis of our society today. If we are to understand who we are now, we need to go back and understand where we have come from. We also need to understand what relevance they might have for our current situation.

Of course, I do believe it’s important to understand other cultures and acknowledge the ways that the Western canon may have omitted them, but if that becomes our sole war cry, then we may soon lose sight of reality:

Theories of exploitation were divorced from the real world. While relatively well-off students anguished in class over perceived gender and radical oppressions, the United States remained the number-one destination of the world’s immigrants fleeing political bias, poverty, and religious intolerance. The first-generation Mexican national who ran as fast as he could from the oppression of Oaxaca, and clipped the bushes outside the tasteful faculty office, instinctively knew and appreciated the advantages of Western culture far more than did the leisured professor inside.

Feminists insisted that Harvard’s president Larry Summers must be fired for insensitive remarks regarding the under-representation of women on math faculties; elsewhere, thousands of honor killings and millions of female circumcisions transpire yearly. In Saudi Arabia, feminism is not second-guessing the remarks of a college president, but simply wanting to drive a car; on the West Bank, it is not being murdered when dating someone your father and brothers don’t like; in the Sudan, it is avoiding genital mutilation; in Iran, it is escaping stoning when accused of adultery. In contrast, Greek learning had emphasized that deeds must match words; otherwise, to paraphrase Aristotle, it is easy to be ethical in our sleep.


Language in the university has lost its connection with reality—a danger that Socrates warned about in his battles with the Sophists and we have seen in our own time with the communist attempt to remake vocabulary to further social and economic agendas. “Diversity” does not mean diverse anything, surely not differences in political thought or ethnic backgrounds, but rather a requisite number of different skin colors. A classroom with three offspring of affluent African-American professionals can be “diverse” while having children of Appalachia or impoverished immigrants from Eastern Europe is not. The “free speech” area may mean that radical pro-Palestinian groups can hand out anti-Semitic literature or Chicano activists may vandalize conservative newspapers, but it is not a place where one can talk safely and candidly about the problems of illegal immigration, or social contributors to the AIDS epidemic, or the need to calibrate affirmative action more on class than race.

…

We, in contrast, have lost all sense of proportion and simply use the self-absorbed yardstick of our own times versus all others. Thus Iraq—not the summer of 1864 or December 1950—is the worst (fill in the blanks) war, blunder, or quagmire in our history or of all time. A flippant campus slur is the most sexist thing ever heard, as if the frontier woman on the Colorado plains without electricity and with eleven sick children never had it as rough. Wounded Knee is tantamount to Okinawa, the loyalty oaths of the 1950s commensurate to the Inquisition. And why not, when the purpose of education now is not to train young minds in a method of disinterested inquiry supported by historical exempla, but to condition them to think in preordained, deductive fashion—in other words, as Sophists rather than Socratics?

We’ve prioritized these assumed values of diversity over the quality and influence of the work itself, and abstained from making value judgments about any pieces of work lest we offend someone. The academy, supposedly a place for honest intellectual inquiry and pursuit of truth, has been overrun by political correctness. As the study of literature becomes more concerned with the nitpicking about notions of gender construction in Dicken’s novels, it loses more and more of its relevance.

Then again, it’s not like this is anything new:

Only the learned read old books and we have now so dealt with the learned that they are of all men the least likely acquire wisdom by doing so. We have done this by inculcating the Historical Point of View. The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer’s development or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how often it has been misunderstood (specially by the learned man’s own colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the ‘present state of the question’. To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge – to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behaviour – this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded.

~ from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters

*Of course, that’s also because we’ve assumed, that literature is a rather subjective matter, like all other things… and therefore, we can’t really say that it reveals any truth of any kind, only that it perhaps produces certain effects and reflects certain notions of prejudices and etc…

bicycle safety announcement

My apologies for interrupting this blog's regular programming, but I believe this is an important public safety announcement:

Please check the street for cars AND bikes (and pedestrians for that matter), before you open your car doors:

The former general counsel of Comcast Corp. was killed yesterday as he bicycled down Main Street in Moorestown, police said.

Stanley Wang, 67, of the 500 block of Sentinel Road, was traveling east on Main Street around 12:20 p.m. when the driver of a parked Dodge Dakota pick-up truck opened his door. Wang struck the door and was knocked him from his bike into the street.

Wang was then struck by a passing Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Kellie Gifford, 19, of the 100 block of Winthrop Avenue.

Wang, the former general counsel of Comcast, was taken to Kennedy Memorial Hospital - Cherry Hill, where he was pronounced dead at 1:08 p.m.

Police are not releasing the name of the driver of the pick-up truck.

The accident remains under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to call Sgt. Randy Pugh at 856-914-3045.

~ From the Philadelphia Inquirer

Also, please don't honk at bike (or pass it too closely) that's somewhat in the center of the road. The bike is considered a vehicle and has a right to be there. It's also probably in the center of the road because it's trying to avoid potholes or car doors being flung open.

You can also consider doing the test.

on the uses of diversity*

When I first took a good look at some of the restaurants and shops on the street where I work (Walnut Street between Broad & 19th), I was concerned that this area was just going to be super ritzy: Burberry, Coach, Le Bec Fin, Occitane, Williams Sonoma, the Bellevue… I was afraid I’d feel frumpy and ugly walking around (as I do in Manhattan), because everyone is better groomed and dressed than me. However, as I have spent more and more time in this area, I have been able to see its diversity. This area may have its disproportionate share of overpriced bags and designer shoes, and may be residentially expensive and exclusive, but it also manages to be very diverse.

Take for instance, on a sunny day, Rittenhouse Square is brimming with people: students picnicking on the grass, mothers from the neighborhood and their children, fancily dressed women walking their dogs, old married couples taking walks, suburbanites who work in the city eating lunch, homeless men sitting on a bench, construction workers and bike messengers sitting on the railings and talking, an artist painting the park from the sidewalk… I have grown to love this park because it is so diverse- it is almost possible to see a snapshot of the entire city within the park and it is hard to feel like you don’t belong there because everyone is so different.

As Philadelphia grows to become “the next great city”, I don’t want more Upper East Sides and Midtowns appearing in the city—I want the diversity of Rittenhouse Square to extend residentially throughout the city, where neighborhoods can be mixed, instead of segregated. While it is good to retain the cultural characteristics of different neighborhoods, we need to resist the desire to displace the poor into housing projects and run-down neighborhoods, where their problems are exacerbated. How do we balance that with the market forces that come into play in the city? (I feel like I am watching my neighborhood gentrify by the day). I wish I knew…

A friend recently noted that there were middle dividers appearing in many of the benches in Rittenhouse Square. These dividers are generally designed to keep the homeless from sleeping on them. This saddens me as it is one step that the city is taking to exclude the homeless from the park (reminding me of the way Penn shuttles away the homeless when parents tend to visit campus)—to the detriment of the homeless, as they are shuttled off to temporary shelters and excluded from part of city life that they may very well enjoy, but also to the detriment of the rest of us, who may wish to hide conveniently away from dismal problems that our city has.

Promoting diversity in city use helps mitigate some of the problems of the city. When rich and poor can live alongside each other, safety is improved, as it is much more difficult for an area to be overrun by drugs, violence and prostitution. It also enables the poor to access the resources of their better-off neighbours and lessens damaging mindsets that crop up in lower-income only neighbourhoods (e.g. early pregnancies). And for the rich, it promotes awareness, understanding, learning, and hopefully friendships with people who are different from us.

All us college educated liberals love to tout the benefits of diversity and love to claim it for ourselves in the form of minority friends, gay friends and international travel. But how many of us are actually willing to engage in a friendship with someone from a housing project or a homeless man, without condescension, judgment or fear?


*Much of this entry has been prompted by my current reading of Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities, which has helped me see the city with fresh eyes. Written in the 1960s or 1970s, Jacobs launches a spirited critique of planned “garden cities”, pointing to the abject failure of housing projects and planned developments. Jacobs writes extensively on New York and Philadelphia and praises Rittenhouse Square highly for its diversity and variety.
** Can you believe it? I wrote an entry without quoting from another book or article!

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.