Another Brick in the Wall of the Tower of Babel

There exists an ideology of the American Dream – a creative symptom of the Protestant Work Ethic brought to the New World. It has since taken the form of what sociologist Robert Bellah, echoing John Locke, calls utilitarian individualism, or the idea that one should maximize self-interest respective to an intended telos. It is this ethos that built America into the “stuff dreams are made of”, yet unmoderated and unchecked, it has degenerated the dream from a recipe for success to plutocratic-controlled socioeconomic stagnation.

Yet there is a solution to this problem – and it is a problem – of which the Occupy Wall Street protests are only the beginning. The first step is the same as with Alcoholics Anonymous: getting people to admit that there is a problem. Except it must be admitted not just by those adversely affected, but also by those who do the affecting. This is called social responsibility.

But this obviously is not so easy, for why would individuals act against their own interest? Basic economics have long demonstrated that there is a symbiotic relationship between the now proverbial 1 and 99% in the exchange between consumers and owners of the means of production: if consumers don’t consume, then producers don’t make money. An article “What happened to upward mobility?” in last week’s issue of Time adduces academic research that income inequality and lack of social mobility are deleterious to everyone, not just those at the bottom. So why would the 1% stand in the way of their own interest?

The answer is that they don’t know it’s in their own interest. David Brooks in last Monday's New York Times column “Let’s all feel superior” called this myopia Motivated Blindness, in which individuals actively don’t see what they don’t think is in their interest to see. Barry Ritholtz came closer in his Washington Post article “What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral”, calling out the plutocrats for cognitive dissonance, which is when a failed belief system is confronted by evidence of its implausibility.

His evocation of the Big Lie is key here, for this is a phrase that Hitler coined in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, and made the central tenet of his strategy for ascending to power and advancing his agenda. In fact, if you compare the current pro-Wall Street Tea Party and Republican agendas, they bear a striking resemblance to the US Office of Strategic Services’ psychological profile of Hitler in their absolute and uncompromisingly self-serving catechism. I realize any comparison evoking Nazism is acerbically hyperbolic, but I do so only to draw attention to the modest beginnings that allowed him to blitzkrieg his way through politics.

But Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who came to America to encourage the protesters during the early stage of the movement, hits the nail on the head in what he calls the fallacy of ideological fantasy. This builds on the Marxian (can we print his name in America without getting arrested yet?) observation that “they know what they do, yet they do it anyway.” This is to say that individuals recognize the inherent problem of conforming to a flawed system, but its ideology has so fully shaped their realities that they shirk away from that momentary, seemingly alien discomfort when their subconscious wants to prod their awareness with the truth it recognizes. But the mind’s power to believe is formidable, and it can convince itself of anything. This is the Big Truth that Ritholtz called for in response to the Big Lie.

The cornerstone by which the Big Truth can be heard has been laid in the form of OWS. Its resonance can be seen by how many cities across the world have citizens who have taken up its cause. And according to a LiveScience finding published in July, it only takes 10% of the population to espouse an idea for it to be accepted by the majority of the population. If the finding is true, then given 2011’s U.S. Census’ report, the critical mass for public opinion to be changed is 31 million Americans (not including those under 18, it shrinks to 26 million). If 9% of Americans (on the low side) are unemployed and divert their efforts toward advancing OWS, then we’re almost there. We just need, ironically, 1%.

Robert Bellah also posited an idea of civil religion, which, crudely put, unites all Americans not by our love of country, but by our allegiance to a superstructure far greater than ourselves. That ideal is, through the smoke and mirrors of politics, a common moral purpose toward the welfare of all citizens and consequently the nation as a whole. If I might extend Bellah’s religion metaphor, God in the practical sense is the President of our nation. Each and every group lobbying congress to advance its interests is, in a manner of speaking, a nation unto itself speaking its own language, sharing construction in a Tower of Babel to have its message heard. But with so many groups laying bricks and not unifying behind the one cause that really, underneath all different interests, brings them all together, then nothing will get accomplished. But if the churches and mosques, labor unions and PTA, and especially students on college campuses – who were so essential in resisting the Big Lie during the Vietnam era – congregated toward their mutual self-interest in support of OWS, then we might actually do our founding fathers justice in upholding their principles. As Bellah points out, when our individual sensibilities prove inadequate, we have historically resorted to those cultural traditions – religion, which transcends class boundaries; and civic organizations – by which to overcome our limited individual impact.

America was founded on political dissent; its imperative is our national birthright. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.” Thus protests naturally must occur when representative democracy fails to represent the will of the people.

Most importantly, we are all American before we are for a given political party. It is due time that we remember the American Dream that we were promised and unite toward making it realizable again by backing OWS. Otherwise, all in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.

And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost

I used to really enjoy hip hop, but I haven't avidly listened to it in about a decade. When asked why not, I would usually attribute this to it largely having little content anymore. After the 90s, beats displaced lyrical content and street cred as the selling point for a song – and even for an artist. If you pushed me harder, I might tell you that there is nothing original being produced in hip hop anymore. The trope of growing up in the hood and making it, while resonant in their own American Dream sense, have become blasé to my desire for originality. And the all too common motifs of sex, drugs and guns has become has long since ceased to perk up our desensitized ears.

In truth though, I'm disappointed to say that there never was much of anything original about hip hop except the style itself and its art form as a normative outlet for black expression. Maybe I'm over-reducing it. But in terms of content, the beats have all been sampled, and even the lyrics call to mind those of blues – the cultural antecedent to hip hop. Even the messages in what are regarded as some of the deeper songs are repackaged to a generation not only that hasn't been exposed to their earlier forms, but doesn't even know they exist. The result is a culture that keeps re-inventing the wheel and as such never really makes much progress.

Take the recent song "No Church in the Wild" by Jay Z, Kanye West and newcomer Frank Ocean. It's definitely catchy, but it's hook is what get people talking:

"Human being to the mob/
What's a mob to a king?/
What' a king to a god?/
What's a god to a non-believer?/
Who don't believe in anything?/"

Woah, pretty deep right? It's saying that there's a hierarchy in the world that everyone is subject to, but non-believers throw it all off because they don't subscribe to the same system of values that orders the universe. Or, looking deeper, the object of each line has the capacity to supersede its subject... a mob can overthrow a king, a king can command his subjects to worship a different god, the non-believer can have a religious experience by the grace of God. Analysis aside, this isn't really new. Machiavelli has discussed this classically, as have other thinkers. But what makes this song so profound to a number of people is the fact that they likely weren't exposed to the literature in which such sentiments have historically been expressed. And if they were, hip hop (knowingly or not) repackages such truths in a concise, catchy and mnemonic form.

I suppose there has to be merit in this. In the literary tradition of writing with one's audience in mind, so too must the vocative mediums of truth and cultural expression similarly adapt to an audience that not only doesn't know history, but doesn't have the attention span to learn it. Maybe history is irrelevant as long as its truths are preserved. But what are truths without context, and what is context without resonance? As Galadriel tells in the opening of Lord of the Rings, "...some things that should not have been forgotten were lost." One merely has to read or see this trope played out in its numerous extrapolations in book and cinema to see how it ends. Or, if one lacks the patience to read a book or watch a movie, just listen to any real ballad. The real message is inscribed in the riffs between verses.

iGrieve

I wrote this last week, but didn't get around to posting until today.



I never knew Steve. Not personally. Yet I grew up on Apple. My dad's black and white Macintosh SE in our basement was my first exposure to a computer, something I use every single day. A mac, of course.

Steve has inspired me since I was old enough to be inspired by things. In the same room that the Apple II was connected to the old printer with those things on each side of the paper that you had to tear off, there was a poster on the wall – the only "decoration" in the entire room. It said "Think Different" on it. Those two words have stuck with me and sustained me throughout high school, college and graduate school. I remember my parents encouraging me to "Think Different" all my life. I've been tempted to drop out like Steve many times – to pursue my own ideas wholeheartedly. I only didn't because in addition to imparting the value of thinking different, the other main value my parents ingrained in me was education. Yet even in the academy, I am the "that guy". You know who he is. He's Steve.

It's kind of crazy to think about it – how despite never having met Steve or even being personally connected to him, I am who I am today because he dared to challenge the status quo. He dared not to sell a product, but an ideal – truly the only thing worth buying [into] these days. He has been a living beacon of hope for an entire generation of Americans. Now he joins the greats like Edison and Franklin in the history books – to be learned about in school by future generation of Americans.

And I don't know why, despite never having met him, that I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I can't say I'll miss him. I never knew him. Yet I've always looked up to him. Now, I suppose, I literally will continue looking up to him.

It's premature at this point to speculate what he will be remembered for the most. He changed the world with numerous innovations in Apple and Pixar, and set an example for CEOs everywhere by refusing a "normal" salary. But I think his greatest contribution to humanity has been simply himself. He is a brand in and of himself. He has inspired an entire generation of Steve Jobses, and who knows what impact he'll have on future ones?

I'm proud to be a Steve Jobs. If it wasn't for him, I'd probably think I was someone else.

So here's to the crazy ones, the misfits... the famous commercial that solidified the Apple brand as being tantamount to brilliance. It's time Apple released it with his picture in it as well.

Thanks for everything,

An Informed Idea ≠ An Idea about Information

Thirty years ago, British rock band Iron Maiden declared their refusal to be reduced to information – to be rendered into a number and stripped of their identity. In the present day, thinker Neal Gabler has assiduously diagnosed the most prevalent symptom of the information age as just that – obsession with attaining information irrespective of its importance or practical value. Informationists is the term he uses to refer to such novel brand of consumers – at least novel so far as it has become pandemic phenomenon.

We – those of us who subscribe to and engage in social media exchange – are all informationists. We cannot escape it, unless we refuse reality. We cannot escape that which yokes us constantly... the need for information – like insatiable, obsessed fiends – we devour voraciously and leave trace amounts of it as a byproduct in our boastings of cultural – or rather, informational capital. Cliché though this example is, we share in 140 characters or less – insufficient to present an argument or back up claims – but only helpful in directing attention toward deeper sources of information. We participate by funneling traffic to a third party site, that others might be exposed to something we found compelling enough to broadcast. But who actually takes the time to digest and ruminate over the swallowed information before thoughtlessly and robotically regurgitating it out for hungry chicks or worse – forgetting about it since most of it is, by relative definition, useless?

If we are living in a post-idea world, as Gabler states, then what actually could be left to generate innovation? Saying that is tantamount to saying we live in a post-life existence. And maybe we do. The truth is, innovation has for the most part evolved to take a different form. Rather than novel, revolutionizing concepts and technology, innovation has largely been delimited to software development for extant hardware, or the equivalent of such a metaphor for other spheres. It seems the exponential growth of our techno-culture is fast reaching the asymptote of complacent status quo – or at least slowing down.

In the movie Wall-E, the narrative illustrates how self-contained narcissism can thrive through a system designed to cater to the personalized needs of everyone. For a long time, narratives have been wonderful mediums for allegorical cultural commentary. Sometimes, however, the allegory is too real and resonates startlingly close to home. This is one of those times. This is the direction we're heading, replete with developed software for facial recognition while one is shopping so as to customize the experience and maximize purchases. Food delivery already makes it possible for someone to never actually have to leave home.

Resistance is futile. The Borg made this assertion abundantly clear in the early 90s. There can be no retrogressing with technology like we can with religious ideologies. It's far too profitable anyway for the government or anyone in a position of power to seriously consider something so outrageous as banning it. So what is left to be done; or is this really just a high brow critique of the promulgation of low brow culture?

I know it's passé, but here's a idea: post considerately – both for content and for the time of your derivative consumers. If you can't beat them, join them. The old adage still applies. But that doesn't mean join the rampant whoring of information; it means if you choose to partake, at least do so sensibly in a manner that transcends self-awareness but actually brushes up against a virtual awareness of others. In an age when we socialize from the isolation of our home computers, it's still important to deny solipsism from taking hold and acknowledge at least the fabled presence of other Users.

A Religious Political Rally in Texas, or Another Sunny Day in Hell

I came to The Response – Texas governor Rick Perry’s “call to prayer for a nation in crisis” – because my mentor told me it would help situate my thesis on the shifting soteriological beliefs of Evangelicals. But after attending and asking plenty of questions, I don’t even know what to think. As a Jew in Bible Country, I was in way over my keppie.

As I made my way through the throng of believers (Americans) at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas (New Jerusalem?) Saturday, I stopped in my tracks as I heard the unmistakable trumpeting of a shofar, a ram’s horn traditionally blown during Jewish High Holy Days and in Biblical times to signify the start of a war or procession. Tikee-ah! No, it wasn’t Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. We’re still about a month away. What was going on? Sharu’ah! I zoned out as I droned through the human thicket, hoping that my time in graduate school had granted me enough Biblical literacy to figure out what was happening. Nothing. I turned to my Catholic friend, a professor of religion, who exclaimed, “Duh, this is from the Book of Joel. They think they’re ushering in the end of the world!”

“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming” (Joel 2:1). Oh I get it: Zion has become America, and Texas is the mythic city upon a hill upon which heaven will meet earth? –Maybe through a subjective, self-righteous hermeneutic. I wonder if the rest of the world’s Christians believe that? But for all of Christendom’s historical and especially modern proclivity for eschewing the Hebrew scriptures in sermons, preachers tend to only evoke them when it serves their purpose such as mentioning homosexuality, abortion, or prophetic material regarding end times. There is also the assumption that the New Testament provides Christians with an “authoritative interpretation of the Old” after the premise that the Old came to fulfillment with Jesus Christ, thereby removing the need to cover superseded material. Some say divine allegory, I say selectively convenient eisegesis.

I make my way through a lax security and through the entrance. The numerous signs for “prayer teams” and the color-coordinated bowling shirts declaring congregational allegiance often with not so witty witticisms on the back made the whole event seem like more of a try out for the spiritually elect than a unifying prayer for America.

I arrive in the stadium proper a little late. A resounding hallelujah is heard from the upper deck as I pass the Maui Wowi shaved ice concession stand. My prior experiences with paying for parking, cheering and concessions tell me I should be in for a good show.

As I advance further into the arena, evocative Christian music sounds forth. Take me out to the ball—game. Take– me out to the park! I can’t tell which teams are playing, as all the festive shirts seem to evoke the same one: Team Jesus. Even with the different colors and slogans it’s not hard to recognize the affinity. Maybe it’s an outward display of which church can bring the most supporters and thus demonstrate their devotion? Maybe it’s just easier to keep track of one’s kin? A man walks by with a brown shirt that says infidel on the front and has an American flag on the back.

Thousands of fans have come for their spiritual entertainment.

Another shirt proclaims: “my God is bigger than your God.” It seems out of place, even there, in an event of, by and for Christians. Perhaps he’s lost in a sea of moral relativism.

There are people selling themed shirts on the outskirts. Food or drink cannot be brought in but can only be purchased from approved venders. How to feed the 5,000? Didn’t Jesus overturn the tables and throw out everyone who was selling and buying in the temple? I struggle to understand how Jesus’ lessons have materialized in such an aberrational form: Would he want this? How would he react to such a fray assembled in his name? The Bible doesn’t ever mention him gathering his followers to pray for Judea (or Rome?) or any other land.

Hands are outstretched to receive the spirit. Some people lie prone in their reverence. Others sway like Hassidic Jews at the Western Wall. Every single person there seems to be completely oblivious of anyone else present. Collectively, they are left to their own self-expression. I couldn’t help but wonder if the displays were genuine or put on for others to exhibit one’s faith – one’s religious capital. For whom is it real? Does it even matter? I spot one man sporting a Jewish talit, the prayer shawl worn and earned by becoming b’nai mitzvot. Why in the world would a Christian choose to wear a Jewish prayer shawl? For the first time since setting foot in the palaestra, I’m surprised to find myself offended. The yarmulkes… fine. There is precedent for Christian head-covering, but usually only among Catholics and Orthodox… and clergy at that. But a talis? I can’t fathom where the guy got the idea. Must everything sacred be co-opted? Was the covenant not enough? I have no words.

A woman pantomimes a ballet-yoga – scooping and parting her arms. Other women begin to join her on the floor – dancing and waving around. Two of them, seemingly unaware of each other, gradually lock hands and begin twirling each other before transitioning into a high school slow dance. The background song assures the audience that “he loves us.” An inward and outward display of religiosity: a demonstration to others and proof to oneself that Jesus is with them. In another setting, perhaps in another life (or maybe just outside of church), this same archetype of women are those rolling on ecstasy, dancing rhythmically. All that were missing were glowsticks. As a fellow scholar next to me glibly remarked, “The hippiness is like Woodstock, only not… and with presumably less rape.”

Rick Perry takes the stage. He tells the phalanx of warriors for christ what they need to hear to affirm his identity as one of them and his role as their leader: “The only thing you love more [than this country] is the living Christ.” We all should pray for “the American Dream and pursuit of finances” to get closer to our “first love.” Jesus through America. America through Jesus. We are a nation of Christians. We are a Christian nation. What about everyone who isn’t? What about those without an ascribed role (not saved?) in this encompassing Us versus an implied conquered or impotent Nobody typology? What about me? I’m sure there would be a place for me too if I would but convert. After all, they didn’t check my cross at the door.

As other speakers took the stage, the circular message was clear: The Church must model the way for a united nation. “God can use the church to fix America.” The church must be delivered in order for America to be delivered. It doesn’t take a political pundit to recognize the America = Church rhetoric. What better way to pander for votes than to equate religiosity with patriotism? In America’s hyper-religious society, there isn’t. There is no sincerity in politics – only the leveraging of power and influence.

For all the controversy that The Response has drawn, I don’t find fault with a political leader organizing a prayer meeting as an expression of his faith. Questionable, yes, but he was well within the confines of the first amendment. However, I do find problematic the implicit message given Perry’s presidential ambition that if we vote to elect Perry, he will work as an agent toward American revivalism by following his religiously motivated agenda. A nation of Christians. A Christian nation. If what I witnessed on Saturday is any indication of the kind of America Perry would like to actualize, then the oppressive humidity of Houston forebodes many more sunny days in Hell unless we as Americans actively work for otherwise. Prayer is great, but without works, it’s insufficient in effecting change.

When the American Dream is Displaced out of America

What makes America 'America'? Is it the melting pot? Is it the skyscrapers and pretty lights? Is it democracy? From the very beginning, when American began to carve out its own identity amid the vestiges of Native American civilization and across the world stage, American identify has been personified in the American Dream. This idea – a vague promise, an unbacked standard, a looming possibility – this alone makes America the country that it is. So what happens when that chief signifier no longer applies? We become as Old World as the nation that birthed us.

If you're American, you have a stance on illegal immigrants in our country. Maybe it's tighten our borders to not let as many in. Maybe it's deport all those we find. Maybe it's actually sympathetic because hey – they're doing jobs that other Americans wouldn't do and contributed $11 billion in taxes last year while tending not to pursuing tax paid benefits out of fear of being discovered. It doesn't really matter so much what your view is. What matters is that many illegal immigrants are returning to Mexico because they can better find the American Dream there – sueño mexicano, if my high school Spanish is still good.

America's unemployment rate is 9.4%. Mexico's is less than half that. It's easier to purchase a home on credit, get a job, and attain higher education in Mexico than in the States. Mexico has a growing middle class, strong and stable banking system, and a rising standard of living. But this article isn't about Mexico. It's about America. Is Mexico becoming the New America? Give me your tired, your weak and your poor... hardly.

While I give kudos to Mexico for doing it's thing, the fact that we are failing at reinforcing our identity not just as the birthplace but the definitive bastion of the American Dream is a tremendous blow to America. When you lose your identity, you lose everything. With the economic crisis and everything else, this is really the icing on the cake. This is really the one thing that should scream "HEY, AMERICA, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!" But it's overlooked – under-appreciated. There are numerous other more pressing things to worry about right now, but this one is, I think, the most symptomatic of the collective all. The Comedian in the movie Watchman said it tersely when asked what happened to the American Dream. "It came true,' he retorted. Indeed. Maybe that's why it's about time we wake up to the America we've created.

Hemingway: A Golden Calf in a Mythic Golden Age

It has forever been the preoccupation of man to idealize the ways of the past, as history has a way of highlighting modern values in their "purest" forms. This is the mythology we tell ourselves in an age when Biblical stories are regarded as parables and those who cling to them are regarded as nutty. But then there's the truth: there was no Golden Age. There was no time when things were done perfectly. Cultural memory becomes selective and occludes those facts that might threaten our lionized account of history.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

We are raised to be discontent, as Duryodhana exclaims in the Mahabharata. We are reared to be self-deprecating. We are acculturated to compare ourselves to others -- to size others up -- even if they're no longer living. What do they have that we don't? Which of their characteristics do we admire and how can we cultivate them in ourselves? Why is it so much harder to attain those qualities today than it was back then? The stories we tell ourselves condemn us to misery.

In an article lamenting the lost manliness and braggadocio of Ernest Hemingway, author Marty Beckerman illustrates this false nostalgia well. He paints Hemingway as a man's man, both a knower and go-getter -- the perfect combination of sophistication and ruggedness. Every civilization has its gods; and the gods of the postmodern era are no more real or false than those of foregone civilizations. But their veracity or fictitiousness never mattered; what matters is what it tells us about their followers and consequently ourselves.

Despite the compelling nature of Hemingway's larger than life persona, psychologists and biographers have deconstructed him to who he was rather than who he portrayed himself to be. This isn't to say that who he portrayed himself to be wasn't who he was... it's just half the story. However, reconciling these two constructs is hardly my point. Rather, my point is to illustrate the suggestive nature of the stories we tell ourselves and our predisposition for gullibility and the lack of relevance of authenticity in them. The Golden Age. Gods. Idyllic romance... our map is not our territory.

The very idea of a golden age is embedded in and founded on principles of discontent. It supposes a fall from grace or a degeneration of how things once were. But Duryodhana's claim that "only discontent leads to happiness" is not founded on an idealized past, but an idealized future. He seeks to gain for himself an unrivaled kingdom and forge his own history, rather than seek to revivify a time past. The idea of a golden age is thus only helpful so far as it provides models for one to emulate one's actions after; but we would do well to note that even these models are simulated constructs manipulated by historians, the media and those who would seek to rediscover them. If we maintain that a golden age has passed, then what hope have we for which to reasonably look forward? It is therefore better, I think, to imagine a golden age only as it could exist, not how it may have existed. Otherwise, we condemn ourselves looking backwards to reliving history, at best, rather than developing the future.

What's Real about Religion Anymore?

This past Sunday, I went with a friend to her Baptist church. I had never been to one before, and she assured me that the people there were quite friendly and wouldn't attempt to proselytize me (which is why I usually give my "Christian" name whenever I go to church). She was right, but I had no idea how right she would be.

What struck me as odd wasn't the rainbow decorations and how LBGT friendly the place was -- it was surprising, but not offputting. It was the language used throughout the entire service. Everything was symbolic. Nothing actually "was" -- but rather represented an idea or ideal. Everything was fluffy. Everything that should have been sweet tasted of Splenda. Ever unable to turn my critical thinking cap off, I began to deconstruct what was transpiring and why the service felt so inauthentic to me.

In my musings I was reminded of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, in which he writes:

"...with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation or duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-curcuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself--such is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection, that no longer even gives the event of death a chance."

While deeply abstract and intricate, Baudrillard contends (so far as our example is concerned) that the institutionalization of signification is vaccuous of identity and wreaks of the relativism indicative of our postmodern age. More over, something that signifies rather than simply is cannot be real, for it is nothing in itself. Instead, it only references something else -- an object long gone, far removed and "dead". By seeking to elicit the symptoms of the real by depicting what should be its characteristics, the church offers but a simulation of religion, not religion itself. Of course, this lends itself to Baurdrillard's claim that religion began when God died, so there never could have been religion as we think it to be, but only its ghost, its simulacrum.

I don't mean to debase the church I attended, but I can't help but find Baudrillard's argument compelling. Is it all just ritual devoid of content? Are we just going through the motions, trying to evoke the real that William James confessed or that Durkheim posited? Mystical experience and collective effervescence, without rubrics that seek to replicate experiences but rather originate them, may be the only way to resurrect and access the long-dead real that religion tries so convincingly to depict. A church service is at best an elaborate and habitual homage to a time passed. Perhaps there's truth to Serendipity's quote from the movie Dogma: "You people don't celebrate your faith, you mourn it." But I suppose Baudrillard would say that's really all you can do.

Energy Drinks are Godsent

In a recent alarmist article warning of the dangers of energy drinks, the Huffington Post cautions symptoms of "irritability, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, seizures, and strokes." Ironically, these are the same symptoms of people who are overworked. Is it any coincidence that people who are overworked thus rely on energy drinks to get through their work? That's like saying people who have jobs risk making more money than those who don't. Really.

America is a land swimming in hypocrisy. We'll pull you in for an embrace and stab you in the back while you think you're getting love. We'll sell you cancer and withhold the cure so we can make more money off products that will just keep you in the pipeline for years. Energy drinks, really? In the land of minimal vacation, maximum hours behind the desk a week, and coffee shops on every street corner... energy drinks are the problem?

If America really cared about reducing the risk of diabetes (as the Japanese do), stroke and heart failure in its citizens, then it would adjust the conditions that contribute to developing such symptoms. I don't ever remember seeing a study that says "Americans work too many hours; maybe they should work less and companies should hire more workers". That would create jobs and improve worker health and happiness. But that's far too convenient. We're in a recession, so it's easier just to work employees to burn out or death since the pool of applicants gets increasingly full by the day.

But instead of actually solving problems, we cast blame on those things that actually would help us get past those problems. That's why Republicans so heavily sought the resignation of Congressman Weiner even though he didn't break the law and has done so much for our country, his state, and his district. Republicans have gotten away with worse. So has coffee.

So I sit here and sip my "all natural Amazon energy" acai berry drink, as I contemplate if I should end this article here, or move on to the mound of other work I should be doing. I don't drink coffee because I can't stand the taste, so I drink about one energy drink a day to get me energized enough to begin plowing through the endless amount of work I have. And these researchers really have the audacity to say energy drinks are the problem? I think not. I'll rest when I'm dead.

The Right to Buy Beer

Being American is supremely about two things: convenience and responsibility. Convenience because we're an on-the-go culture and need whatever we want when we want it. And responsibility because, well, we have a surplus of laws that are anything but laissez faire and that dictate our life patterns and privileges to a certain extent. That's the reality, though we're often too self-involved to stop and realize the intersection of both of these truths. But what happens when responsibility precludes conveience? The result is decidedly unAmerican.

Yesterday was Father's Day. As an aspiring responsible son, I went out to a local grocery store to pick up a funny yet vaguely touching Hallmark card, some kabobs to barbecue, and enough beer to make the family gathering less awkward. When I proceeded to check out, the cashier, before even greeting me, took the beer and put in behind her. The conversation went something like this:

Me: What are you doing?
Cashier: It's Sunday.
Me: So?
Cashier: You can't buy beer on Sundays.
Me: ...
Cashier: It's the law.
Me: So can I have the beer?
Cashier: No.

No matter how many times I go to a grocery store on a Sunday – which may as well be the national day for getting groceries – it never occurs to me that it's illegal to purchase beer. The thought is absurd to me and being a rationale creature, such an irrational thought never presents itself no matter how many times my prior experience should tell me otherwise. It betrays the spirit of this country, of the first amendment's freedom of religion, and of the documented alcohol habits of our nation's founding fathers.

More over, it runs contrary to the principle of convenience that Americans have come to expect and take for granted. We're last minute people. We don't think a day ahead to get things like beer because yesterday we weren't planning on drinking. Today, we are.

Traditionally, actions may be considered illegal because they pose a threat to others or to self. Concealed weapons cannot be carried into a bar (unless you're in Tennessee or 37 other states) because, hey, someone could get drunk and angry and shoot up the place. But to make it illegal to purchase alcohol from a store (and not a bar) on a specific day of the week is ludicrous and cannot be justified.

The only good thing that can be said about the law is that the people you meet at a bar on Sunday afternoons tend to be far more interesting than on other days of the week. But don't take my word for it.

Happiness through Process, Fulfillment through Work

Over a century ago, William James wrote: "Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most good is not always most true, when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience." As one of the original pragmatists – even a humanist before the term was coined – his words resonate more loudly in today's world than ever before.

In yesterday's New York Times, columnist David Brooks wrote an op-ed piece on how recent college graduates are entering a world for which they are vastly unprepared. College provides a structured environment and inculcates students to succeed in that structure. The real world, he contends, is unstructured and open. Graduates will thus begin searching for a role with little guidance and may spend up to a decade or more finding that niche that suits them – or rather, suiting the niche in which they find themselves.

Brooks offers that at such a young age, we likely don't know ourselves well enough to know what we want to do with our lives. Yet we must start paying back those college loans, so we get that first and second job. Eventually, a problem in one of those jobs becomes a vocation, and it becomes our mission to fix the problem. He summarizes: "[Our] cultural climate... preaches the self as the center of life. But... [we] discover that the tasks of a life are at the center." Spoken like a true apologist of the American machine, though perhaps still in line with James. But am I the only one who sees a glaring problem with the gospel of Americana running contrary to its reality? I've never been a Christian, so I can't relate to the cognitive dissonance of realizing such lies. I still believe in the Dream.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, famous for his book Authentic Happiness, has come to recant his assertion of its importance. His most recent studies demonstrate limitations to the importance of happiness and instead point to values of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. He explains this by questions such as why billionaires continue to pursue making more money, or why do people play games that they don't even enjoy the act of playing? His response is the value of a composite phenomenon he calls flourishing, which pertains to relationships with others and sense of accomplishment in life. Better, what's important is "your sense of 'earned success' – the belief that you have created value in your life or others' lives."

If we were all simply hedonists, our great civilization built upon social contracts would hardly have taken root. Therefore, foregoing pleasure in favor of progress, as evocative of the Enlightenment as that is, must have some merit. Brooks is right so far as he speaks of American culture – a culture largely obsessed with success and finding meaning in an otherwise meaningless life. Gone are the days in which we inherited our professions from our fathers, Sartre's being-in-itself. A free world is a realm of fantasy, Sartre's being-for-itself. We can become whatever we wish, but at the peril of getting lost along the way in what we find meaningful. Maybe that's the point. Maybe happiness cannot be measured in progress, but in process. The act of doing, the proverbial labor of love, is what's at stake. I think William James would agree. I just wish America was more honest about it.

Rapture Happens, Millions of Hindus Missing

In an odd and unexpected twist of fate, Harold Camping, Herald of the May 21st rapture, expressed his complete surprise not that he wasn't raptured, which the world expected, but that thousands of Hindus in India and the rest of the world have been reported missing. "I'm flabbergasted" and "looking for answers," he told a San Francisco Chronicle Reporter today.

Camping, who has previously conceded that he was wrong in predicting the 1994 rapture, nevertheless maintains that the fact that he and none of his followers have been raptured is "absolute proof that [he] is correct. The rapture definitely took place, but there just wasn't a soul worth saving so it went unnoticed." But not in India.

In the Times of India and the Hindustan Times, reports of Hindus having vanished into thin air have shocked and rattled the subcontinent. Indian Prime Minister Manhohan Singh has declared a state of emergency and has cautioned that it does not yet know how many have gone missing, but that he estimates the number to be in the tens of millions.

Those missing have reportedly tended to be younger children, cow-herders, and religious holy men. In the Mathura region in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, nearly everyone has disappeared. The area is mythologically believed to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna, but local authorities say that it is too soon to attribute a correlation between belief in Krishna and the disappearances.

When asked to comment on the numerous disappearances of Hindus, an ironic contrast to his belief that elect Christians would be raptured, Camping curtly said that he was "very surprised" and refused further comment. Michael Garcia, the special projects coordinator for Camping's Family Radio, offered: "Maybe this had to happen for there to be a separation between those who have [true] faith and those who don't." This would mean that the fluffy liberal idea that "it doesn't matter what god you believe in so long as you believe" is incorrect.

Von Harringa, president of Black Ministries International, commented that "[w]e're still searching the Scriptures to understand why it didn't happen." But judging by the fact that millions of Hindus have vanished and that every Christian remains accounted for, he could be searching in the wrong Book.

UPDATE 8:54 PM: On tonight's Family Radio, Herald Camping has explained the Hindu disappearance by citing that the "first shall be last and the last shall be first", explaining that the first are those who have had access to the Bible for the longest and the last are those who have not been exposed to it. This only serves to corroborate why so many Hindus have disappeared and Christians remain on earth.

Living in the Moment

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why I call it the present." I disdain this quote, as it at once affirms both the American preoccupation with "the moment" and the practical impossibility of living in it. While the original quote, of which the aforementioned populist phrase is but a segment, comes from Alice Morse Earle's 1902 book Sundials and Roses of Yesterday", it speaks acutely to the present era and what I'll call the information-overload generation. The quote, is naively optimistic. It beseeches that we make the most of today because it is the only time we have, for we know not what tomorrow brings -- if it comes at all. It's lovely, really. It's a great mantra for the summer months when school children have little to do. But for most of us, unfortunately, its impractically fails at resonating.

We live in a society that values clinging to the moment -- a tryst with carpe diem -- but it's a fantasy that must exist to ironically distract us from its inverted reality. Our society runs on deadlines. It requires planning and preparation, management and oversight. It requires thinking again and backtracking to make sure that everything is taken care of. Often, it requires multitasking, which by definition precludes one from giving full attention to one task. Unless one is a guest at an event and good at compartmentalizing the bottomless To-Do list we all accrue, then living in the moment, as the apposition would infer, is culturally inconceivable.

Money Buys Experience, but does it also buy Education?

If I was to write an essay contesting or debunking the so-called value of an education in American colleges, I wouldn't expect many people to read it. Such articles are as common now as hipsters in independently owned coffee shops. Yet, such articles still continue to pour forth across the nation's top news outlets – as if there was something new to be said... something more than the silently affirming nod of empathy automatically elicited from reading something we know to be true. There isn't. Yet, perhaps there is something to be said about the frequency that such articles appear in print – namely, that nothing breakthrough has been done to combat the dismal state of public education in primary, secondary and post-secondary school. Visiting the Federal Dept. of Education's website drew my eyes to one link on their bulletin board from this past week entitled "Increasing Educational Productivity: Innovative Approaches & Best Practices". Upon scoping it out, I was disappointed to discover that it was about "doing more with less". In other words, given the recession and budget cuts, how can we strain our resources further? It doesn't take an economist to point out that along the indifference curve of educational output measured against resources allocated, one simply can't expect a comparable output with limited resources. Drawing from the well known maxim from Charles Swindoll that life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react to it, then an underfunded, under-qualified, test-driven and over-ambitous education curriculum is what happened; how are you supposed to react to it? Optimism doesn't educate; good educators do.

So why do we not have good educators? It's not that we don't, but that we don't have enough – an ongoing budget problem that The Onion alludes to in a cutting piece of satire. Of course there is Teach for America, the privately funded organization that recruits some of the top students from the best colleges to teach in the worst school districts in the country, but a study done a few years back proved that on average they were no more effective in the classroom than their peer, professionally certified teachers. Maybe it's not a fair comparison given the lack of thorough training with respect to going to school to be an educator, but we're after results here, and they speak for themselves.

It's a moot point by now to speculate as from which areas of spending the federal government could re-appropriate funds to education, so I won't mutilate that dead horse here. Instead, I'll talk about turning it into glue as many more affluent American families do. I'm talking of course about private schools. Privatized education allows for a curriculum to be independently created based on values of the investors and may actually be the saving grace of education in America. Of course, the problem is the cost, which many American families cannot afford. But what if, hypothetically, the entire budget of the department of education gradually went toward outsourcing the education of the American public to private schools with proven results in the form of heavy subsidization? In a globalized era in which greater specialization allows for more opportunity for outsourcing, it only seems logical to let the experts handle the education of our nation's youth. I don't have the figures to estimate the feasibility of the proposal and I'm sure it would be exorbitantly expensive, but it would be an investment in the America of tomorrow. If we can continue to go into bottomless debt to fund our security and military expenses around the world, then why not put a small dent in that debt and acquire enough funds to rectify the educational problems in this country? Or is the future less of a priority than the present – the immediate danger more pressing than the looming one? Life shouldn't be so black and white, especially when human lives are on the line.

As things stand right now though, at least at the collegiate level, the value of an education is dubitable. One glaring difference between most universities in America and those in Europe is that American universities collectively foster a nurturing value of the student experience. This has led to a whole field, Student Affairs, in which individuals can learn how to best meet the holistic needs of the student body – everything from activities to discipline. This includes a Dean of Students position – a specialized role under the Dean of the College. American collegiate culture also rather uniquely offers the opportunity for Greek life, which I am unabashedly a part of. While the value of fraternities and sororities has been hotly contested over the years, I won't go as far to say that it is without value – as it directly contributed to improving my college "experience" and introduced me to a number of opportunities to which I likely may not have been exposed. However, despite the alleged value of Greek organizations as purveyors of social opportunity, doers of community service, and conduits for leadership – all of which I can attest to from my own experience – Greek life has an unfortunate symptom that has pervaded American society. That symptom is the proverbial "it's not what you know, but who you know" culture endemic in the private sector. While it is also to some degree true in other sectors and also among non-Greeks – as well as in other nations – my point is that a society that values relationships more than objective qualifying knowledge (Note: not independent of, but more than) lends itself to a culture that places less value on erudition and individual achievement and more on political allegiances. I could segue here into tirade against the inefficiencies of our two-party system, but I'll save that for another time. The take away here, as we return to the point, is that perhaps it's time we re-evaluate what we would like our children to walk away from college with. Are we paying for them to have an experience that allows for them to take easy classes and still walk away with a degree, or are we paying for them to receive a scholastic education? Unfortunately parents cannot just decide what they would like for their children, as the institutions dictate the horizon of possible experiences.

If change is to happen – if change is indeed desired – it has to happen up top at the federal level, that it will a nation-wide effect. But first, the federal government must recognize the urgency and magnitude of the problem of the American education system and commit to actually doing something about it. Otherwise, we're destined to live in a bleak idiocracy.

The Story Never Ends

For a while now, I've had the random, recurring urge to watch the 1984 movie Never Ending Story. It must have been 15 years since I last saw it and it left little impression on my memory as a child except for having a boy who rode a flying white dog. Last night, some friends came over and after a couple drinks, I got the urge again. So I pitched it to them as follows: "Would you like to see a movie that will blow your mind?" It was a compelling enough ploy to cover up for my complete ignorance of the film. We watched it, and much to my unsurprised dismay, it was terrible. Poor dialogue, abrupt and poorly rationalized plot developments, and the cheesiness of the whole thing caused us to cut it out 2/3 of the way through and go to bed. The next day, however, I watched the remainder of the film and was blown away – not by the film itself, but the creative framework in which the writer constructed to communicate several very profound ideas that are worth sharing.

In the storyline, a boy picks up a book and begins to read it, thus framing the rest of the narrative. The Nothing, a seeming placeholder for a diabolical destructive force – imagined as a hurricane of sorts – encroaches on the world of Fantasia, the Alice-in-Wonderland-meets-Middle-Earth mythological realm of the story's setting. Only the empress can stop The Nothing from destroying the world, but she is sick, so a young warrior must venture out to find the cure for the empress that the world may be saved. That's the plot, and its execution is rather boring, in my opinion. What is fascinating, however, is the symbolism employed and to some degree explained at the very end.

The Nothing is explained to be the metaphysical manifestation of the lack of hope and imagination in humanity. The implication is that because people are reading less, they lead dull and unimaginative lives. Fantasia is revealed to be a composite land of the the human imagination, and so the encroachment of The Nothing signifies the death of human imagination and capacity to dream. While it's a brilliant allegory signifying the take over of the technological age and the eschewing of classical pastimes such as reading, the kicker is even better.

The first lair of the kicker is that boy reading the book is as much in the book as every other character, and the feels all the emotions and thoughts of the characters. This is a wonderful and rare Western rendition of one of the themes in the Mahabharata, that the reader is every character in the book. Not only that, but the reader can influence and interact with the story to the extent that the empress at the end reveals that she can stop The Nothing if the boy will but give her another name. As inane as this sounds, it signifies the reader's admonition that he is not just a passive observer, but an active participant in the story. By acknowledging this in the act of orally naming the empress, the boy accepts his role in the story.

The second lair of the kicker is that the reader is the writer of the story itself! This goes further than simply imagining what the words play out in unillustrated pictures, but that the story being read is but one of as many stories as the boy chooses to imagine. This message is signified when the boy finally yells out the name of the empress, all goes dark, and the boy continues to converse with the empress as he was struggling with her suggestion that the story was in fact real and the boy, Bastion, could therefore impact it. As the light returns, the empress and the boy continue talking for a few moments before the boy realizes that she materialized in front of him – rescued from her immanent destruction. The implication I draw from this is in the power one has in imagining the possibilities. The empress then presents the boy with a grain of sand – the last remnant of the realm of Fantasia – and tells him to make a wish. He asks how many he can make, and she says as many as he wants. The half-stated implication of this is that we all live never ending stories so long as we're willing to imagine new adventures and possibilities.

It's a thoughtful lesson of which America would do well to be reminded.

Lastly and as more of a tangent, the film reminded me of the power of names. While the old Shakespearean query comes to mind – "What's in a name? Were a rose called by any other name would it not smell just as sweet?" – we see in this film why it doesn't hold true. As I learned in studying Hinduism, names convey power, often in the form of access. By this I mean that when you see something and don't know what it is, and then it is named, you suddenly can place the object or event in an existing schema from which you can draw upon to understand the already learned properties of the object or event. Put differently, let's say you have a cough, a slight fever, and several other symptoms. You then search online for illnesses that match your symptoms, and upon finding the name of one, can then look into treatment for it. Similarly, in many mythologies, knowing a character's name gives you access to the reputation and lore of that character. The more names a character has, the more powerful and important he or she tends to be. Sometimes characters also have secret names that, when learned, give access to some vulnerability or control over them. In Never Ending Story, every character is named, and with each name we learn something about them. When the warrior reveals his name to the wolf, the wolf acknowledges his mission to kill the warrior, and so attacks. More tellingly, when the empress beseeches Bastion to name her and he does so, the acknowledgement of the act of naming brings forth a reifying power that saves the empress from destruction. It is romanticized, to be sure, but the trope of the power of names is a valuable and often overlooked literary device embedded in the narratives of our lives.

When the celebration of life succumbs to the celebration of death

We are America, paragon of civilization. We are America, exemplar for the world. We are America, who rejoices at the death of our enemies. Are we really? Is that really US? Since the recent slaying of wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden, the general response of the American people and media has been one of celebration. While as a country we are celebrating the death of a terrorist, latently we are affirming our inferiority to the ideal of civilization. We are no better than than enemy who celebrates the deaths of innocent victims of terrorism. No, Osama was not innocent, but we as a nation should have more dignity than to celebrate his death – as if it meant anything more than a case closed on an open file that hasn't been relevant for years.

The fact that Americans are celebrating is not bad in itself, but that they are celebrating for the wrong reason. They celebrate because they still think Osama had an active role in commanding Al-Qaeda schemes, when more likely the significance of his death is closer tantamount to the enemy killing a former US president – emphasis on former. What Americans should be celebrating is the felling of a symbol – of the face of the enemy, of the vulnerability of America, of grievance from the tragedy of 9/11. The death of a symbol is far more powerful than the death of a person.

That is really what was at stake in Obama's directive to kill bin Laden. Sure, there likely was political capital involved as re-election draws near. But his directive wasn't to kill bin Laden the person, it was to eradicate bin Laden the symbol. When the fear is gone, the object feared still remains. Yet lacking cognizance of it by removing the face of the fear, Obama has done Americans a great service in implicitly making the world a safer place by terminating America's arch-nemesis and erasing the possibility of his direct legacy from influencing the annals of the future. No, it is not true that we are any safer when we go abroad; yet I'm sure that at least at a subconscious level each and every one of us are sleeping better at night knowing that the face of American fear has literally been effaced.

My Soul Education, Part I: The White Folks' Burden

I remember the first time I became aware of race: I was coming home from my first semester at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, a dying town just outside the Rust Belt in Western New York. As I was walking through Los Angeles International Airport, I realized that I was, for the first time that I could remember, mentally identifying the race of the people milling around the terminals. To add insult to injury, there was a mariachi band playing Christmas music (it was a few days before Christmas, after all); something that had been so familiar to me during my childhood now seemed wholly alien and out of place.

I hated it.

Going to school at the U of R was actually an eye-opening experience, because it was the first time I had been really confronted with ignorance and racism. My freshman year roommate openly wondered if there were any fat asians, because "all of them are just so thin" (I looked at her, shook my head, and said "Sumo wrestlers?"); later on in the year, her then-boyfriend went on a disparaging rant about "migies", or migrant workers. I lost my cool in my freshmen writing course, a course on Terrorism and Intervention, because the other students were making essentialist claims about Muslim Palestinians over and against the rights and sovereignty of Israel. My sophomore year, one of my suitemates, while drunk, confided in me that he didn't know how Black students got into the university, because they simply weren't as smart as white students. Another suitemate, a young man from Colombia, told me how when he drove back to school from his homestate of Florida, he had to duck in the backseat through the Carolinas to avoid the law enforcement. Finally, I got in a huge screaming match with a guy I dated in that same year, in which he told me that my cosmopolitan mindset, acquired from living in a huge, multicultural city, was not the norm for "everyone else" and that I just had to "deal" with the fact that many of the people I was surrounded with were ignorant at best and racist at worst. I spent an hour in my advisor's office, crying, asking him for advice in dealing with these people, because I was completely out of my element.

Looking back, I know that I was unique in my friend group (at that time, anyway; I found new friends for my junior and senior year) in that I was the only one who was Caucasian and from a big city. Growing up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, I attended public school from kindergarten through 12th grade, and my high school was not only overcrowded and on the year-round system, it was also 90% Hispanic. My best friends were a rainbow of color, and none of us really cared, save for the fact that we knew that so-and-so's Korean mom made the best kimbap or that one girl's parents were making her go to Japanese school and learn kendo and another was doing traditional Indian dance and that my best girlfriend couldn't eat some cookies because it was Passover and yet another friend was unusually tall for a Mexican. Aside from things like this, none of us really gave any mind to the color of our skin, because it was mostly inconsequential for our friendships.

My parents found this sort of interaction remarkable. I remember both of them being shocked after a particular incident where I was having trouble with some co-workers at a day camp I worked at. I was 17, but I was running the camp's dance camp and had run it the previous two years. However, due to my age, I legally could not be the only counselor with the children, and so they had some older counselors to meet the guidelines. Of course, these older counselors bristled at the fact that a younger girl was running something they were nominally in charge of, and I was struggling with how to talk with these women in a professional and constructive manner. I went to my parents for advice, took it, and was able to resolve the situation. But what was remarkable to my parents, is that one of the women in question was Black. I didn't mention this to them because I didn't think it was important. My parents later told me that if they had known that one of the women was Black, they probably would have given me different advice, because they had been raised to be hyperaware of race.

On one hand, this sort of colorblindness can be seen as something of a success: in the years after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the telos is for children to grow up not being overly aware of race or thinking that people are inferior or worse depending on the concentration of melatonin in their skin, or for what religion they practice. In this way, my childhood upbringing was a success. But all of this came crashing down around me and my friends when it got to be time to go to college. The while males I went to high school with were suddenly aware that they were at a disadvantage when it came to college admissions; it became a well-known joke that you couldn't get into UCLA if you were white unless you managed to cure cancer or something equally momentous while in high school. Several graduates of my high school publicly stated that they didn't think they would have gotten into Stanford, where they were currently attending, if it hadn't been for the fact that they were Hispanic. Suddenly, my white friends became sullen and resentful about college admissions, but felt terribly for it.

What I mean to do here is underline a problem that is having somewhat serious repercussions in today's society, something that is being caused by a two-fold problem in America's consciousness, at least on the part of white folk: we are raised to treat everyone equally, to believe in true equality. I believe in this; I believe that my children, and everyone else's children, should be able to do things and go places and not have their gender or their race or their religion be held against them, to prohibit them or bar them from doing what it is that they want to do. But these white children are suddenly faced with the reality that they are, in a way, being punished for the fallacies and mistakes made by their forebearers, and are often left wondering why they are not afforded the same opportunities of others on the basis of the color of their skin.

To be perfectly clear, I am not against affirmative action, nor am I apologizing for the way in which white people have made the world their own personal playground for thousands of year. I think that while the end goal of all this is to "level the playing field", but I think that the process of actually leveling it involves lots of work, often painful work, that needs to be done by whites for the benefit of everyone else. Namely, it necessitates sacrifice. But somewhere along the way, the work that was started, but not finished, by the Civil Rights Movement was obfuscated. "People are equal now," they say, "so why do some people get benefits and others do not?"

The answer to this issue, I believe, lies in education, and nowhere did this become more obvious to me than in my first semester of graduate school, an experience I will explore in part II of this post. For now, though, I would just like to raise the point that despite America insisting that everything is "all good" now, things are decidedly not all good, and with the budget cuts and tax cuts, things are only going to get worse as time goes on unless we do something to stanch the bleeding.

Oh, Girl.

"What a bitch."

How many times have you heard a phrase like that, describing the actions of someone, usually male, doing something that wasn't deemed appropriate within the boundaries of American masculinity?

"Is it that time of the month for you?"

For my fellow females out there, how many times has an act of independence, outspokenness, or really, anything that was wasn't deemed appropriate within the masculine approved and conceived boundaries of femininity provoked this comment?

While I'm sure that there are things that frustrate me more than this casual put-down of women, I am hard pressed to think of one at the moment. I guess this sort of dismissal of behavior stems back to ancient anxieties over being unable to assert one's masculinity. Classical and Biblical scholars alike believe that the proscriptions against homosexual behavior in antiquity had more to do with it being the ultimate act of submission/lack of masculine authority and power rather than any perceived immortality in the act itself.

And don't even get me started on the hackneyed (and sexist) maxim that compares and contrasts male and female sexuality: "a key that can open many locks is called a master lock; a lock that opens for multiple keys is just a terrible lock." (This point always makes me laugh, because anyone who says this in any seriousness has just betrayed their utter sexual insecurities and stunning inability to allow women the same sexual liberation that they themselves enjoy -- and yeah, I've never heard a female state this phrase in any sense of seriousness; only males have brought this up, usually to me, and then pause and wait for me to acknowledge the sheer genius of the statement. Yeah, ok.)

But back to being a "bitch".

As a fairly outspoken, confident, and rather boundary oblivious female, I have been called all sorts of things by both men and women. I was called a bitch in middle school and called a cunt in the workplace for -- get this -- not sharing my music while testing video games. As a female who seems to always find herself in male-dominanted occupations, like video games or the academy, becoming cognizant of gender and how gender is treated can be a humorous exercise. But it's also deeply critical for professional survival.

My video game job, for example, was complicated by my gender and my age. For whatever reason, the women I worked with (very few of them) considered me to be a threat to their dominance in the particular office we worked in. What made it worse (or at least hilariously ironic), was that one of the women who made it her personal mission to malign my reputation, if not get me fired, was the HR manager. I was accused of sleeping my way into a promotion, preferring married men, and hooking up with every semi-attractive male in the office. My performance was almost a non-issue: no one cared what I did at work, because I did my job very well. It was my alleged activities outside the office that garnered the most attention. And that was just something I didn't understand.

Sadly, the academy is not immune to these issues, either; the recent interactions over a book review between its male author and female reviewer, is eye opening and a little more than disturbing. I can't really comment because Black feminist/womanist thought is not something of which I can come even close to claiming I have a deep or even adequate understanding. But the tensions between this entire exchange underscores the way in which we, as human beings, are constantly trying to define the boundaries of what constitutes appropriate behavior in regards to gender, let alone how we can speak about it, or even conceive it.

I realize that something like gender is deeply ingrained into the subconscious of a society; these preconceptions are reflected and even promulgated by the current Miller Lite campaign, in which women verbally emasculate men who ask for light beer that isn't Miller Lite. These are the sorts of things that change slowly, but I wonder how many men stop and think about what they actually mean when they call another male a "bitch", and if they really can champion women and gender equality on one hand and tacitly disrespect and demean females when they deride a fellow male's behavior.

Modern American Slavery

Slavery did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation, the historically forgotten event that Juneteenth commemorates, or with Maj. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler's acceptance of Southern runaways as war contraband into Fort Monroe in Virginia . The history books, written by the winners of the winners and for the winners, are all misleading. Sure, slavery as an institution that trafficked humans as commodities to be bought and sold has constitutionally been abolished with the 13th amendment. Despite this, slavery in America today is more rampant than ever. As a friend of mine recently griped, "a country built on slavery cannot exist without it." Just because it's not obvious to most people doesn't mean it isn't there. After all, as the saying goes, isn't the greatest trick the devil pulled convincing the world that he doesn't exist?

The past institution of slavery was embedded in a greater system known as free market capitalism which, today, is booming. We are slaves to that system. We are born into it, unable to opt out. We are naturalized into a culture of materialism and consumption, expectation and normativity, mortgage and debt. By the time most of us graduate college, we have accrued much debt. By the time we have finished graduate or professional school, we enter contractual de facto indentured servitude. We had no idea. Of course, we knew the loans we took out would eventually have to be paid back, but we had no idea how much they would be and how long they will take to pay off. We get a job and begin saving. We meet someone and decide to get married. Then we have kids. By the time it looks like the loans will be paid off in a matter of time, we realize suddenly that we need to begin saving money that our kids can go to college. With inflation, a recession and rising tuition costs across the board, this spurs an existential moment. Colloquially, it's known as a midlife crisis. At this point, we realize, in full self-pity, that we never had a chance.

We are victims of what Marx called false consciousness, a phrase indicating that the material and institutional processes by which a capitalist society is run misleads and alienates its members. This is to say that we go about our lives more or less unaware of how we relate to society at large and other members in it, which when realized, shatters the shallow, smug security we felt thinking we were in control – the captain of our ship. As Marx elsewhere observes, "they do not know it, but they are doing it." We dreamed and bought into the lies of the American Dream, of self-actualization, of being all we could be. We bought into them and set to work, but we were too late, for we were deceived by what Zizek calls our ideological fantasy. This is to say that our social reality is an illusion guided by an illusion. In other words, we acknowledge the system in place, yet still refuse to really reconcile with its implications, so instead we simply accept the illusion that it offers under the compelling facade of an American life.

Thus convincing the disempowered of our empowerment, the insecure of our security, the hopeless of our hope, the human psyche, so fragile and desperate for refuge, embraces the lies. It's easier and everyone else seems to be doing it, so by way of collective effervescence we all conform to the perceived norm. The problem arises, as I mentioned before, when the midlife crisis strikes and the illusion is laid bare. As Zizek contextualizes, "...they know that their idea of Freedom is masking a particular form of exploitation, but they still continue to follow this idea of Freedom." We have the freedom to purchase with the money we've saved up, and so the crisis is temporarily abated as we wallow in our great achievement of acquisition... until the repressed reality behind the illusion creeps to the surface once again. Alienation at its finest.

Escape from Eden

It's not every week that Time Magazine does a cover story on one's master's thesis. While Pastor Rob Bell's new book Love Wins isn't the subject of my thesis itself, it speaks to the perceived paradigm shift in the Evangelical climate that I'm currently exploring. The premise of the book comes from a note Bell saw that basically says that Gandhi is in Hell because he wasn't a Christian. Naturally, given Gandhi's acclaim for good works and the incompatability of his religious disposition with the Evangelical credentials for salvation, this gave Bell cause to reflect on the imperative behind Evangelism's soteriology and *POOF* out comes Love Wins (not creatio ex nihilo, but *POOF* just for dramatic effect. Only God could create from nothing, obviously..). The book contends generously and thoughtfully that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal, and therefore everyone gets saved. Hooray! Why would anyone have a problem with this is everyone wins?

Well, for starters, we live in a competitive individualistic culture that disdains the idea of everyone winning. We like winning over others, knowing that we are better, superior. We like the idea of middle class, knowing that there is something to aspire to, and something to avoid. Thus, Bell's suggestion of soteriological universalism not only doesn't sit well with many Americans, but they find it outrageous! Hell (no pun intended), its indiscriminate equal appraisal of all stinks remotely of socialism or communism (for those who don't know the difference). Maybe Bell is in league with Obama? Maybe we should check his birth certificate to see that he was born to Christian parents... I hope sarcasm can be conveyed via text.

Needless to say, the book has not had a very positive reception among Bell's pastor peers from around the nation. And with good reason. Of course, there is the logical theological implication that if one facet of Evangelical theology is undermined by calling it into doubt, then every other facet of Evangelical theology can fall under scrutiny. It's a serious concern, but given Christianity's history of recantations and adaption of its theological position – specifically relating to science (since it can be proven) – the hegemony will find a way to reconcile heretical ideas with dogma. And if it doesn't, defectors can simply form another church with reformed beliefs; isn't that why there are so many of them?

But this line of thought is only secondary to what's truly at stake. As R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theology Seminary (as quoted in Time) fears: " When you adopt universalism and erase the distinction of between the church and the world... then you don't need the church, and you don't need Christ, and you don't need the cross. This is the tragedy of non-judgmental mainline liberalism., and it's Rob Bell's tragedy in this book too." What Mohler really is saying in the first part of the quote is that if Bell's sympathetic hermeneutic is true, then many pastors and others in the field will be out of jobs, as the shares of a private industry will have gone public. After all, religion is very much a business. Those who run it would do well to drive its demand that they can continue to profit off of supplying it. The pejorative reaction against Bell is a classic case of the what Robert Bellah in Habits of the Heart recognizes as the politics of accommodated interests superseding civic virtue (with the understanding that civil virtue might signify salvation for everyone...). The second part of the quote mentions the tragedy of "non-judgmental mainline liberalism". This could be taken in a number of ways, but I'm going to go ahead and say that NJML (for short) is competition and bad for business. Obviously, given the reduction of what I'll call Soul Capital (to borrow from Bourdieu), it's understandable that a Baptist leader might find the Other as tragic. Plus, until a survey comes out correlating how happy religious liberals and conservatives are with their traditions and in general, any defamation against the lack of merit in the other is moot

As quoted in Time: "Bell insists he is only raising the possibility that theological rigidity – and thus a faith of exclusion – is a dangerous thing." And so it is, as the Crusades, Pogroms, Inquisition, and numerous other Holy Wars have demonstrated to the point at which one would think someone would realize that exclusive religion is a bad idea – or at least comes with steep costs. And Bell does. Raised on C.S. Lewis as a kid, Bell is aware of the eschatological relativism illustrated in the epilogue of the Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan's sacrifice redeems them all. So too does Bell propose to reform Evangelical theology so that it's no longer a contentious Us vs. Them binary, but simply an Us monism. As his book title concisely and aptly summarizes, love wins. But if people are too attached to their exclusive imperative of confessing Christ and reaping all the mythologized rewards associated with His confession, that's ok. It would be unbecoming of us in this age of tolerance, diversity and free thinking to impose such a myopic view on our citizenry. Even though many believe in the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, we can safely assume that their piety is being channeled to Aslan anyway, thus we need not concern ourselves over ownership of the salvation conferred by Christ's sacrifice. After all, a couple siblings finding a talking lion on the other side of a wardrobe is just as plausible as a virgin birth, right?

I only speak the Truth

When I first took a job as a video game tester, I didn't realize that the way I experience video games would forever change. Instead of being a mode of escape or entertainment, I found that I couldn't play or watch a video game without constantly scouring the game for bugs. Instead of playing the story, I found myself saying, "I wonder what happens if I..." and then did just that, trying to break the game.

Needless to say, my experience, if not my enjoyment, of video games grew much deeper.

Since my (triumphant?) return to academia, I find that I am now constantly analyzing everything. One night I was trying to relax and hangout with Moonshynn. After dinner, we watched a kung fu movie, and I found that no matter how hard I tried, I could NOT turn my brain off. I was watching the movie, noticing implicit nationalistic undertones, pointing out frameworks -- basically, I was treating the movie as if it were some theory of religion I had been assigned to poke and prod until I could get it to all tumble down.

This deeper understanding of life has led to some interesting encounters over the last year, but none have been so thought-provoking as the bold assertion of an undergraduate in one of my courses. Two of the students, both undergraduates (I doubt this would have happened if it were graduate students), were discussing working at a museum and art in general. One of them asked if the other had seen the new art exhibit at the local art museum on Vishnu. The second student sighed and basically ended up saying that she had not, and did not intend to, because "it just isn't the Truth."

Now, this wasn't the first time that this particular student had made a comment regarding non-Christians and their apparent sin. The first time, she had mentioned that Haitians actually worship the devil, and that this was the reason for the recent calamities in that region. This was in a discussion, so I was within my rights to say, "Wait a second, that's not correct. They have a different religion; just because it's not Christianity does not make it devil worship." But this time, her statement was in the context of a personal conversation during a break in class. I wasn't about to interject and stir up some trouble because I took issue with her statement, especially since that statement came in a class where the students are charged with acknowledging and respecting viewpoints and interpretations that may not jive with our own.

I found her statement to be problematic because it has been my experience that whenever someone (or a group of people, for that matter) believes they have a monopoly on the Truth, they think that they can go and start doing horrible, terrible things to do those they can't get to agree with them. I someone without faith, I find that I do not have a readily available answer to what "Truth" is, or what the best path for discerning it, either (recently, I've been having an existential crisis, so I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer any of this, anyway).

But what really got me thinking was the response I got from people who did have faith. Relativism is a dirty term in the study of religion, apparently, but scholars and students alike are constantly kept in tension with maintaining the veracity of their own faith and espousing tolerance and attempting to build an interfaith community and dialogue. We are still employing our frameworks, but now loudly claiming that we are acting to promote tolerance of the Other we so recently (and violently) despised. So, while it may have been socially (and institutionally) inappropriate for this young woman to say that Hinduism did not represent the Truth, it may have been fully consonant with her beliefs...and the beliefs of Christians, generally.

So I find that I am now questioning the ability of interfaith dialogues to be well, actually interfaith. Do we say, as theologians and academics, that there are many things that hold Truth for the individual because of (insert theory here)? Or do we promote tolerance while tacitly asserting that our beliefs or way of living is more True than others? Can we actually participate in interfaith dialogues genuinely or are there some hard questions that we need to ask ourselves and one another to keep the entire enterprise honest?

On the Nature of Whoredom

A friend casually remarked today that a whore is one of the oldest "occupations" in human history. While it certainly calls into question the variable objects of exchange for a certain service predating currency, more broadly understood, I think my friend was far more right than he knew with his cavalier comment.

Though it clearly has a sexual connotation, the term whore today has come to broadly refer to anyone who abuses a commodity of sorts. An attention whore. A crack whore. A shopping whore. These are all acceptable usages of the word by today's colloquial understanding. For those of us who truly do appreciate the contextual role of words, we mourn the liberal application of them to the expressive folly of juvenile whims. Slang has degenerated the nuances of semantics.

Even so, such a liberal adoption of the term indicts the critical mind to discover what nuanced pith has been widely recognized, even if not consciously, that it has been re-appropriated so successfully. Without mulling it over much, the answer seemed self-evident – embedded in our nuanced cultural understanding of the word itself. What it comes down to, as far as is clear to me, is a compromise of integrity as a means to an end. Put differently, a whore is someone who does something that he or she would not normally do in order to attain something subjectively important. Mutatis mutandis, a whore is someone who unabashedly offers an illicit service that would not otherwise be offered for personal leverage. Therefore, an attention whore is such because he or she would not act in a manner demanding attention in order to feel good about his or herself if there was no one else around from whom to demand attention. So it is with the objects of other whores across the typology.

With this understanding, I wonder how pervasive the ethos of whoredom is in our capitalist society? How often do we do things that we don't want to do in order to attain something greater? I don't mean paying taxes so the IRS doesn't come after you or taking your child to daycare so your wife doesn't badger you, but more along the lines of things that don't actually need to be done but that you do for a personal boon. For instance, for those of us in the academy, how many will stay up extra hours, reading extra books to write this extra paper to try to present at a conference just so your CV looks that much better. It doesn't need to be done, especially when you have a full load of courses, a significant other, and a part time job. But you do it. You're an academic whore.

Playing politics, maintaining superficial pretensions, and pandering to the interests of others all fall under the umbrella of whoredom. Sure, maybe it doesn't have the nuanced illicit quality previously mentioned, but the means-to-an-end, immolating character of the action screams whore to me. Just as with pornography, you know it when you see it. Just as our adolescent culture has been desensitized to violence and sex, so too has the concept of whoredom been so seamlessly naturalized into our culture. Our capitalist democracy is an entire culture of whores governed by those who have best mastered the erotic art of political seduction.

What Really Matters?

The Buddhists were right about one thing when they said that nothing really exists, but only relationships give things meaning. It's a curious metaphysical argument that never really resonated with me, because, after all, relationships must exist between "things", right? But maybe it gets at something deeper. Look at the proclivity of the American religious milieu. Our utilitarian individualistic culture has isolated ourselves from our communities so much with valuing the pursuit of self-actualization above all other things. As a result, communities have become what in Habits of the Heart Robert Bellah calls "lifestyle enclaves," which is to say that while individuals have privatized many of the meaning-making aspects of their lives, they can engage others publicly through the venue of shared interest. Think fantasy football or a local bowling team. Sadly, religion sometimes falls into this category as well. What we are seeing, however, is a rejection of utilitarian individualism, what has been called expressive individualism, which is to say a feminization of our culture in which the innate human longing for community, companionship, nurturing support, etc. can newly be found in Protestant churches catering to such a constituency. Catholics confess that they would like more accessible, warmer priests. Even Evangelicals are seeing a paradigm shift as indicated by Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins. When Evangelicals no longer believe in Hell, it truly has frozen over!

My point though is that relationships are what really matter. We are, what David Brooks has correctly identified: the social animal. We thrive for human contact and a family setting. This backwards, misguided culture of ours that seems to want to have its cake but eat it too – that is, self-actualize yet remain tied to the family/community – cannot continue this way before it has a collective breakdown: a mid-capitalist crisis, if you will. Individuals who go off on their own – monks, affluent bachelors, etc. – are not normal humans. They betray the intrinsic drive for community found in all of us and while they have achieved success in their ambitions, how many can be said to be actually happy? That's where the culture of historical materialism comes in. Individuals try to make up for what they lack (and often what they are unaware that they lack) by purchasing new toys to occupy their free time until they go back to work. Sooner or later, with enough pregnant moments, the illusion will collapse. That is why the self-help industry in America is not just so successful, but is largely unique to American culture.

I wonder if this speaks to a greater problem: America as a collective has isolated itself from the world community. We are largely so desensitized to violence going on in other countries, so indifferent to foreign affairs, so self-serving and myopic in our interests that the malady of selfishness can be said to afflict the whole nation. Europe can be said to be a union of sorts, despite the vast differences between and within its countries. They are largely civilized and maintain a higher quality of life, with less depression, less general anxiety, and less work than in America. Yet over here, we are more a confederation of often backward states that couldn't care less about our neighbors unless we want to make examples of their moral degeneracy to assert our our own shallow, moral superiority. If only morals mattered! And when I say morals, I mean those grounded in the biblical tradition that evangelicals seek to impose normatively on the rest of the population. If we did indeed live in a biblical society, that is, a society more or less driven by those values, then it would be one thing. But this is America, birthplace of pluralism. It is true that religious pluralism presents a challenge to Americans, as Peter Berger states in his article "From the Crisis of Religion to the Crisis of Secularity", but the real challenge is in the moral pluralism embedded in the religions and then polarized through the two-party system. Religions can co-exist peacefully. They have done so for many centuries despite a rich history of religiously-charged bloodshed. However, in a civil society, it is not religions that conflict with each other, but variance in morals. The two-party system doesn't help either, because as one party panders to one side of an issue, in order to get support for that side, those who feel strongly for it must join the party and thereby co-opt the rest of the stances espouses by the party. Generally speaking, of course. It's an odd example of people thinking they are standing on the shoulders of giants when those giants are actually dwarves compared to the true giants of united civilizations with citizens who actually identity with each other over the same issues and work together toward progress – and not some false notion thereof as purported by the Enlightenment and still fully infiltrated into the American ethos. This country was built on lies even before politics usurped the rights to the art. Eminem may have said it best when he called us the Divided States of Embarrassment.