Emotion, Elasticity and Paucity

The last 45 minutes has been personally significant. I came home from work (which evidently is a bastion of out-of-the-loop-ed-ness and "what was that?"), fixed a snack (crackers and cheese) and a cocktail (The Fifty-Fifty Cocktail, from The Savoy Cocktail Book) and turned on a rerun of The Daily Show, as I am wont to do.

It was the May 3rd episode, featuring an interview with Peter Bergen, recent author of the book Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abottabad.  As I sat and watched, I was in a pretty good mood - as I always am.  Jon Stewart is (no matter what he says about it) the foremost voice of critique of the 24-hour cable news culture in America.  Bergen, who is doubtless the most well-informed person outside of the current administration about the killing of Usama Bin Laden, pretty clearly stated that...

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Update: 1/10/13 - I have no idea what the Bergen interview clearly stated, but here - you should watch it, because i trust my then-self:

!!!!

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Some thoughts on "Pre-Occupy"

Yesterday afternoon UW-M's Center for 21st Century Studies hosted a Pre-Occupy Symposium, examining various potential roots of #OWS*.  The talks, and in particular the subsequent Q&A reaffirmed my reticence to get much-involved with the world of leftist activism and organizing.  I am, of course, generally sympathetic and supportive (not to mention appreciative) of the work they do, but the conversations become a bit too predictable ofttimes.


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Update 1/10/13 - I never really got too far with my write-up of the event.  Needless to say, I was somewhat disappointed by the proceedings.  I am, certainly, sympathetic for the radical Marxian desire of those taking part in the event, but the whole imaginarium of the event.  The people presenting at the symposium seem not to live in the same world as most people - as real people.

*Though #OWS is also, ultimately, unsatisfying as a name for the 2011 (and subsequent?) movement, Annie McClanahan's excellent pre-pre blog post on the symposium submits the term for our consideration and I find it a useful catch-all.

Ayiti e poblem a pale

text here


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October 2018

This post was a title, and that's it, but there was a lot here.  Written not so long after I had studied Haitian (Creole) and 2 years after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince.  The title is a pun - a joke - but also a sad truth.

Pale in Haitian Creole (or what i like to call Haitian, because it is the language of Haiti) means language.  It also means speaking or conversation.

Haitian is a language of double and triple (and more) entendre.  Haitians love to speak in adages, cliches, old knowledge.

Haiti's (Ayiti) problem (poblem) is largely a problem of language.  Haitians speak Haitian (Creole or kreyol).  Rich Haitians are taught French at school when they are young, and hold it against the rest of the population.

This was going to be a post about this central reality of Haiti, but also that Haiti's central problem is honest conversation.  

As yet unused pun names for hair salons

Please feel free to make use of the names below for your own future endeavors for a small, one-time fee*:

• Hair Brains
• Hairstory
• Ken Sideburns': Haircut
• Locks, be a Lady Tonight!
• The Mane Idea
• You Want Mane-Ease on That!?

* Please deposit $8.35 into the Paypal account associated with this blog for use of any of the above names.  Fees are to be paid only one time and you will then own all rights associated with the name of your particular shop.  Note, if your shop goes out of business and you open another shop by the same name, you will need to pay the fee again, but if you relocate your business without dissolving the business, you may use the same name at the second shop.  Also, you may add "II" or "Too" to any of the above names when opening a second location for no additional charge.

On the Dangers of Nostalgia (and Apocalyptic Thinking)

Last night I attended my annual foray into reminiscing musicality and general old time-i-ness at the Badger Chordhawk's annual Barbershop Show in lovely Janesville, Wisconsin.  This year's theme was "remember the good old days" (which is it's theme every year), but this time, on the radio.  Live Radio - See it with your Ears! was a collection of classic Americana tunes interspersed with schlocky vignettes inspired by early radio programs.

This morning, reading Michael Chabon's Maps & Legends, it occurred to me that this mode of nostalgic thinking is the candy-colored cousin of the dystopian fiction of science fiction films, novels and graphic novels.  Chabon examines Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!, which is set in a post-apocalyptic, corporate-ruled world, where anyone who can afford to has relocated to the suburbs, as it were, on the new Mars colony.

His next chapter (about Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and two chapters after that (about Ben Katchor's Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer) further explicate Chabon's theories of dystopic and nostalgic thinking.  He never says so (and may not realize), but these two modes of thinking are the

Source: ComicsAlliance.com

same.  The nostalgia packed into the Chordhawk's erstwhility is an effort to ignore the present by idealizing the past.  The "good old songs" (some of which are great songs and others that are best forgotten) essentialize and simplify the era they come from just like songs today do.  The function of this nostalgic thinking is to focus attention on the non-existent past rather than the all-too-real present.

So too, post-apocalyptic stories (stories about how the future is so bleak and we are so doomed that we may as well just accept the present as is and distract ourselves while we wait for the inevitable collapse) are arguments for stasis, for inaction.  On the surface, dystopian stories (zombie narratives, say) might be read as warnings of what might come to pass if we do not take some course of action or do take another, but on further examination they are typically peopled with future nostalgialytes, pining for what's been lost.  In these narratives, characters re-enact the pre-apocalyptic traits and activities responsible for the blindness that causes the fall in the first place: empty bourgeois sentimentality (as in Terra Nova), rampant (also empty) consumerism (as in Dawn of the Dead), misplaced loyalty to institutions that lose their meaning once the world changes (as in The Postman or Jericho).

Nostalgia is a mode of remembering as we want to, with little attention paid to actualities.  There's a comfort in the past because it is untouchable.  The now (jetzt-Zeit) is hard, because of its potentiality and the future daunting because of its uncertainty and fluidity.  Then is easy because it can't come back and contradict you.  Apocalyptic thinking also negates the present by forsaking it, giving up on it.  If the future is certain (not necessarily defined, but certainly lost) then the now is drained of its revolutionary potential.  It is jetzt without jetzt-Zeit. 

When in, of course, the human events...

, being "necessarily" dissolved by some people (if, indeed, corporations are people), we assume it among the powers of the earth.  That is to say, natural - "that's life" - sort of stuff.

I was reading Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" this morning and it occurred to me that it occurred to him how arbitrary our form of government is (or forms of government are).  In his tracing of the formation of governments out of the state of nature*, Paine sets out a natural progression from absolute, direct democracy to a representative form of government once the number of people makes everyone attending the meetings untenable.

This got me thinking, though, how a truer form of democratic republicanism might be found in the form of a selected government, rather than an elected form.  If all representatives were randomly selected during each (s)election cycle I wonder if we would do no worse (and possibly a great deal better) than where we find ourselves right now.  Rather than a nation of the people (if corporations are people), by the people (if corporations are people), and for the people (if corporations are people) we would guide ourselves with a random sampling of our peers making decisions for a predetermined length of time (six, four or two year terms).  We would be guided by polling data in a much more real and meaningful way - that is, the "deciders" would themselves be that polling data, a random, statistically significant set of data, each with their own individual motivations (but without the motivation of fundraising, pandering or party loyalty.)

7/31/11 - Jefferson Memorial

If memory serves, this idea has been posited before (I'm thinking perhaps of Plato's Republic or Sir Thomas More's Utopia - anyone remember?) and I'm quite sure of it myself, but in the spirit of Jeffersonian renewal of government, I put it out for discussion.  I was reminded this summer of just how selective our collective memory has become when I saw again for the first time the Jefferson Memorial in DC.  I was there with JP and George Etwire who we met on the bus into the city.  George is from Ghana and was travelling to Utah on business.  Like us, he had several hours to kill in DC before his next flight so we saw some sites.

Jefferson (and I would argue the rest of them, too) never intended for this to be The Constitution, in perpetuity.  It must be a living document, both in how we read it and amend it, but also in the sense that it might (must?) grow, give birth to new ideas and eventually even die.  The real Tea Party (the one before it was co-opted by corporate interests) might have known this, but the idea was lost in the ideological fervor of originalism.  The Occupy Movement may also know it, but not admit to knowing it because of its efforts to appeal to the "middle of the roaders."  (Calling the Occupy Movement extremist makes about as much sense as calling Barack Obama a Left Winger - while, as with anything, there is some fringe there, the majority line is fairly tame.)

What surprises me, though, is that it's been right in front of us since at least 1943 - 8th Graders have been carted past it for years - this is not a historical "argument", it's history.


* Very interesting is Paine's formulation of the state of nature as a "group of emigrants" come together (presumably as a displacing force of whatever happened to live there before) in a new, untouched land.  This of course presumes a certain modern (or at least enlightened) sensibility in the people of the hypothetical age, whereas Rousseau's "state of nature" hearkens back to an earlier, more innocent humanity.  Paine's Founders are always already colonizers (and therefore need governments to reign in their baser nature).

Occupied

I think what might be most revealing in the “Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Everywhere” Movements is the extent to which we begin to understand that these young people, here there and everywhere protesting “get it”. They’ve seen through the façade that is work-a-day life and are opting out.

That is, I’m sure, making several assumptions on their behalf, but what I have earlier diagnosed as a certain flakiness amongst young people today (and I use that phrase with full knowledge of the codgi-ness that it seems to assign to me) is in fact nothing more than a state of recognition and scorn. Throughout our lives we are presented with a series of hoops through which we must jump – Do well in school; Get into College; Get a Job; Get a Wife; Get a “Life” (which might be translated “loan”); Have some Babies; Wait to Die.

These arbitrary hoops are not enough of an account for the Occupiers. For generations the fact that “this is what you do” has been enough for folks, but this lot now says, not necessarily “No”, rather “Really?”