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.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Monday, April 18, 2011
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?
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?
Thursday, April 7, 2011
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?
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?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
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.
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.
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