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.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
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.
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.
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