When are we not being brainwashed?

The question is not so intuitive as what stands behind it: the nature and purpose of communication is to convey a message. An argument seeks to advance a particular point, often grounded in an ideology or worldview. What then is brainwashing if not an argument communicating a message that you don't like?

The connotation itself betrays its subjectivity. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as "mak[ing] (someone) adopt radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible pressure." These beliefs can only be "radically different" with respect to other beliefs taken to be normative. A cult, for instance, is thought to be an institution of brainwashing. But what is a cult other than a religion we don't like or recognize as valid?

Any religion or philosophy or governmental institution can be taken to be brainwashing by those who view it as deviant from the norm. We are fed arguments in the form of propaganda each day toward enculturating us to accept a particular agenda. The more seemingly innocuous forms of it assail our sensibilities as advertisements. We see people enjoying a product or identify with a situation or emotion on display, causing us to associate it with the product. Marketing is subtle and often subconscious. We don't need to be told something directly in order to fall sway to suggestion. The catechism or liturgy found in religions or fraternal rituals, though overtly suggestive, has largely become passe in a culture with an aversion to direct fronts. As with bacteria, however, the fact that we don't see it doesn't mean it isn't affecting us.

But brainwashing is more than simply an argument that we oppose: it's an argument that we fear. If we were stoical and objective in our rationale, brainwashing would just be regarded as an opposing argument. Instead, because we feel threatened due either to ignorance or hatred, we demonize our opposition's argument by labeling it as brainwashing. Insecurities cause us to take comfort in the sanctity of our convictions in contradistinction to what they are not.

Beware anyone who accuses of brainwashing. They are very afraid and want you to be as well.

Political Ideology – narrow-minded or not?

Yesterday for the first time in my life I was accused of being narrow-minded. This comment has arrested me in the most interesting way, for it has prompted me to step outside myself to view how it could be applicable. For a long time, since before I knew what diversity was, I have had friends of different races and cultures. I remember my first gay friend in 7th grade and my other friends who made fun of me for associating with him. But the accusation of my narrow-mindedness came in the context of ideology – more specifically, my sharing the observation that I have very few friends who identify as republican and my refusal to associate with anyone who does. Does this make me narrow-minded because I refuse to associate with others on the basis of politics? The answer, I would argue, depends on the politics.

Modern Republican politics are entrenched in negative ideology rather than the positive ideology of liberal politics. What I mean by negative is that Republican politicians position themselves against something rather than for something. For instance, they are not pro-life so much as they are against pro-choice. They are not for “preserving the sanctity of marriage” so much as against same-sex civil unions. In contrast, modern Democratic politics, by and large, position themselves for the greater good of all Americans rather than against the 1%. They want taxes to be income-based rather than against those who can afford to part with more. The difference is not merely negative versus positive, but self-serving versus civil.

Why would I refuse then to associate with Republicans? Not just because of the maxim that you become the company you keep and the sociological research that supports this, but because I believe that all relationships are grounded in respect. My democratic friends, even the ones who are white and straight and come from upper-middle class families understand that not everyone has it so easy; so out of respect they support policy that benefits the now proverbial 47%. They respect differences. But Republicans by and large do not share such a respect, for their ideology countermands all respect for those who don’t share the same beliefs as they do. They are uncompromising in believing that their beliefs should be normative for the rest of the population.

So does my refusal to associate with Republicans – to not respect their ideological differences – make me narrow-minded? Let me rephrase the question with a metaphor to illuminate the rhetorical answer: Would my refusal to associate with the Taliban – to not respect their worldview that desires Shariah law be imposed on all civilizations and to destroy those who will not submit to their will – make me narrow-minded? I think it makes me one who knows better than to waste time conversing with terrorists. To respect such differences would invite the annihilation of our society, though that is in effect what the Romney plan would do. It invokes terror in those who cannot afford health care without government subsidy; in those who do not have a heteronormative disposition; in those who wish to get an education but weren’t born into affluent families; in anyone who cares about the environment. Can Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, be said to threaten the livelihoods and dreams of any American citizen? Only of those whose dreams enact privileged elitism and subjugation of the least of these.

I do not identify as a Democrat, for I do not agree wholly with their whole ticket. But I sure as hell do not identify as a Republican, for I have conscience. If you would require I self-identify, I am a humanist – one whose agenda eschews political allegiance and instead embraces what favors the common good. I believe in equal opportunity and the right to an education. I believe no individual because of his or her sexual, gendered, racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic disposition should be disenfranchised from the civil liberties promised in our nation’s constitution. Could I be narrow-minded? Those who are might tell you so.

Success in America

What does success mean in the 21^st century? Is it putting your kids through college so they have better opportunities than you did? Is it working hard and getting the promotion that you wanted? Is it turning your phone off and taking an hour to yourself to read a novel or go for a walk? Yes. Success is all these things. As society would tell us, a “success story” is someone who worked hard to get to where he or she is. But that is not the only definition of success.

The truth is that people define success based on their values. While working hard and achieving a goal is very much America’s classic definition of success and internalized by many Americans, such a definition merely reflects the value of hard work. But for those of us who do not value work as the be-all and end-all of existence – for those who value time with family or reading Tolstoy, for example – success is time spent in such activities as our values designate.

Author of The Black Swan and philosopher Nassim Taleb posted recently: "What we commonly call ‘success’ (rewards, status, recognition, some new metric) is a consolation prize for those both unhappy and not good at what they do." There is much truth to this, but we need not be so cynical about human nature. He grounds his argument in that most people do not enjoy their work, but make it meaningful by setting goals and celebrating their accomplishments as successes – effectively taking recourse in surrogate enjoyment though it is a thin veil over the truth of their feelings of inadequacy in failing to self-actualize. Why else would midlife crises be so commonplace?

But I think rather than reducing success to a consolation prize it would be more helpful to draw attention to the fact that success is relative and based on personal values. In our society, when asked about ourselves, we commonly give our name followed by our occupation. This directly reflects our work as the highest social value since it follows directly after our name. Naturally, we identify by what we hold dear. Yet if we can learn anything from the late Senator Bobby Kennedy, who said that the gross national product “measures everything… except that which makes life worthwhile,” perhaps we should adjust our values to reflect that which actually is worthwhile instead of what we tell ourselves or let society tell us is worthwhile. A job is a means, not an end. We as a nation would do well to remember that. Maybe then we will come to define success not in terms of occupational work, but in terms of personal fulfillment in the various facets of life.

A favorite professor of mine in college often warned his class never to confuse passion and happiness with ambition and success. One is real and the other is an illusion. But if we alter the way we define success in such a manner and are passionate about life, happiness can be our greatest success.

Why Online Journalism Falsely Reports the News to Make Money

Remember that game called telephone that you played as a kid in which someone whispers a phrase or sentence into your ear and you in turn repeat what you heard to the person after you? The more people you played it with, the more likely the wording changed drastically by the end. If it was ever explained, it's an exercise in demonstrating how facts get skewed. But did you ever play that game with an asshole who purposely distorted the wording so that at the end when the last person yelled the phrase and the group tried to figure out where it went wrong he (it was always a he; girls were never that immature) would gleefully yell or smugly confide in one student that he did it? That's what Internet reporting is like.

The more traffic a site gets, the more it can charge advertisers more money since that translates into a greater likelihood of people clicking their links. Naturally then Internet reporting (and plenty television and radio "news" as well for the same reason) would seek to sensationalize as much as possible to maximize traffic reducible to ad revenue. Essentially, if the syllogism is sound, Internet reporters are assholes.

But they're actually far worse than that. They're propagators of propaganda without an actual subversive agenda. They just do what they do because they hope it will have the desired effect which in turn will earn them a shoddy income. But there's an epiphenomenon as well that goes unconsidered and if realized becomes ignored just like pouring toxins into rivers. And that is the spread of misinformation causing a grossly misinformed public.

There are of course other factors. Marketing and PR certainly do their share, as well as the agendas of institutionally-backed studies and political rhetoric, but these are to be expected. Each seeks to further its employer's interests, so why should the news be any different? The sad answer is that these journalists don't report the news so much as twist it to make it more sensational and thereby more interesting. Their reporting is a travesty of journalism so far as it compromises the integrity of actually covering a story in favor of maximizing viewership. The story still gets conveyed, but it's filtered through the lens of sensationalism.

On one hand I can't fault the news-entertainment industry for creating such a niche, though it should be pointed out that less baseless news sources such as NY Times, CNN, and BCC rank among the top news providers. But on the other hand, when I consider how the proliferation of utter falsities and misinformation has contributed both to infecting a largely gullible population and making the unadulterated truth harder to discover, I lament what the implications it has for our culture. People are more informed today than ever before, but they are largely misinformed and therefore dumber (although one could argue that being dumb increases the likelihood of being misinformed, the causality is probably dialectical).

The satirical, dystopic movie Idiocracy was scary to me because its projected future reality didn't seem too far off. I could guess at the missing pieces in the causal chain that could lead us from our current society to one in which idiots abound and the policies reflect the values of the people. And while it's a bit of a stretch to say that the relatively recent trend in misleading journalism is indicative of greater societal degeneration, I wouldn't rule it out as a non-factor.

More Human than Human: Can Androids Elicit the Best in Humanity? A tangential review of Blade Runner

30 years after its 1982 release I finally got around to seeing the sci-fi classic, Blade Runner. Despite its age, I found the film, which is based on the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", to be exceptionally relevant to our present age of questionable humanity. To situate it briefly, the dystopic plot resembles a kind of inverted Nazi Germany in which genetic engineers created a superior kind of human, Replicas, that are generally used for menial labor and dangerous missions on other planets. Banned from Earth for a vague reason (presumably fear of takeover), special police called blade runners hunt them down. The leader of a band of fugitive replicas, with blond hair and blue eyes, immediately calls to mind Aryan perfection as the Nazis might have idealized. This character, Roy, personifies Lucifer in his quest to meet his maker – that his maker might modify his biological structure to undo the four-year lifespan afforded to replicas as assurance that they won't overtake humans. Practically speaking, Roy desires to transcend his mortality by bargaining with God. Ascending into what the trope indicates should be heaven, Roy attempts to persuade Tyrell, his architect, to make the desired modification. Tyrell explains that it is impossible, for a living organization cannot be modified without immediately dooming it. He then caresses Roy's head as a father might sympathetically treat his "prodigal son". Realizing that he is powerless to transcend his mortality and that his other-worldly hope in beseeching God failed, Roy, now a lapsed ubermensch, seeks a Nietzschian "death of God". Roy gives Tyrell a kiss of death before gouging out his eyes – the windows to his soul – and ending Tyrell's life. As his maker's existence could no longer provide meaning, Roy had to destroy the source of false hope. Roy now descends from Tyrell's home ponderous of what meaning his life now has. He is met by the blade runner Deckard, whom he chases and playfully yet insidiously castigates – sporadically expounding on the ephemerality of life. Realizing his own imminent death as signified through unprompted contractions of his fingers, Roy places a stake through his hand in the manner of stigmata, effectively declaring his redemption. While Deckard is about to drop to his death, Roy catches him and, while Deckard cowers at Roy's mercy, he launches into a brief soliloquy on the transience of life and the imperative to live before finally expiring and releasing a dove from his hand. All moments are lost to time, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make the most of it – as Tyrell previously advised Roy. In the end, Roy internalizes Tyrell's purpose for him in making the most of his remaining time as he makes the choice to save Deckard instead of culminating his destruction.

The theme of the reckless search for meaning and destruction begetting knowledge of creation plays out time and again throughout the great narratives of history and fantasy. We are presented with characters who so desperately want to live that they destroy everything in their paths searching for what purposive living entails. Then, when they finally realize it, they discover that they have destroyed the one thing that held the key to that realization through reification. It makes them all tragic heroes. They fail to realize, as Douglas Brooks has beautifully written, that life should be "an affirmation of the radical claim that the human experience is the point of having been born human. You are the point the universe has decided to make. Own that experience, receive that as the gift, never stop wanting to become more human: that is divine." Perhaps that is why so many of these tragic figures are cast as inhuman roles: to more aptly illustrate that we all aspire for humanity yet so few actually achieve it. Anakin Skywalker in Starwars; Agent Smith in The Matrix; Roy in Blade Runner; Ernest Hemingway in real life... the list can go on.

One of the appeals of seeing this dynamic play out on the screen is so that we don't have to do so ourselves. We are vicarious aspirants, not exactly living through others, but seeing how their stories play out so we can learn from them. It is the fan-crafted mythology that informs our lives as perhaps more temporally relevant retellings of classic motifs. Only through the perceived imminency of death and destruction does one have sufficient perspective to contemplate life. Georges Bataille reportedly spent hours a day for some time gazing at an image of a tortured Chinese man, quartered and bloodied, so as to inform his own isolated mortality. He writes that the man in the image "communicated his pain to me or perhaps the excessive nature of his pain, and it was precisely that which I was seeking, not to take pleasure in it, but in order to ruin in me that which is opposed to ruin." By this he means that he spent so much time studying the tortured image that, ignorant of such hopeless pain in his own life, he might come to know it vicariously and thus inform his lasting perspective on mortality.

The question of what makes one human has dominated the philosophy of science fiction for over half a century now. For the replicas of Blade Runner, one of the cardinal aspects that designates their inhumanity is their inability to genuinely experience human emotions – although Roy cites fear of death as his motivation for seeking to transcend it. We can perhaps see a modern version of such inhumanity in the driven obedience such attention-demanding drugs as Ritalin and Adderall have on mechanizing children into memorization and robots of directed control to the tasks at hand. This practice, as an article in today's NY Times argues, stymies and stultifies the development of children in the interest of societal expectations, thereby dampening their creative [and therefore human] development. Children are effectively re-programmed, as are stray programs in the movie Tron, or they face its equivalent of de-resolution – failure to make oneself useful to the system and sinking into unmitigated poverty. At stake here is the beginning of de-humanization and robotization of our species in the greater interest of societal values. How much humanity can be sacrificed before a person is only recognized as human aesthetically, but not by one's actions? How far before such humans stop identifying as humans and see themselves more as automatons?

Faced with such questions and realities in which much human labor has been outsourced to machines, we must attend to the existence of clones. A clone is by definition an imitation of an image – a picture of an image. As with the replicas in Blade Runner, some do not even know that they are replicas, as being programmed with the memories of their images and not told otherwise, they have no reason to suspect not being human. Even more terrifying is that they bleed just like humans. They are thus indistinguishable externally – through human appearance and actions – and internally – through the production of human blood. This fact makes clones effectively terrorists, as W. J. T. Mitchell argues in his book Cloning Terror. They look and act, modern cultural stereotypes withstanding, exactly like us until they reveal themselves to be otherwise. Thus unrecognizable even through familiar recognition, clones most grotesquely pervert humanity not due to their inhumanity, but because they would drive us to be paranoid about our own and that of our neighbors.

In the same spirit that we often must find out what we dislike in order to find out what we do like, so too is the maxim true of humanity in the science fiction age. We learn what it means to be human by negative definition of those characteristics that defy our intuitive conception of humanity. I _____, therefore, I am human, as this brief essay has indicated, could best be filled with verb forms of inclination toward creativity and avoidance of rote activities, elicitation of complex emotions, and acute awareness of and discomfort with one's mortality. With such an understanding, however, we could contend that Roy, despite being a replica, is the most human character in the film. Malcontent with his militant programming and dreading his biological expiration, he creatively thinks to beseech God for more life – as numerous characters have done across mythologies. Though it is never overtly spoken and only signified through imagery and action, Roy alone yokes himself religiously. He alone demonstrates the human proclivity toward meaning-making that has been the occupation par excellence of humankind from the earliest recorded histories. And when he finds his maker inadequate, he follows suit of countless individuals who have discarded insufficient theodicies in search of better ones.

Unless this understanding of humanity is misinformed, then the parabolic nature of much science fiction would appear to be well met. That is, by painting a picture of flawed non-humans striving for humanity, the audience can relate to their own imperfections – how none of them is an ubermensch – with respect to striving for meaning in a broken world (the telos of homo religiosus). Identity is constructed through the creative power of naming. By vocalizing his insecurity, Roy informs his telos, yoking it toward action and shaping his existential identity.

This dynamic might better be explicated through Tron. At the end of the film, CLU, Kevin Flynn's tyrannical turncoat surrogate, exclaims that he created the perfect system just as Flynn instructed him. Flynn responds, "The thing about perfection is that it's unknowable. It's impossible, but it's also right in front of us the entire time. You wouldn't know that because I didn't when I created you." This is all to say an obvious and very blasé point: that to be human is to be imperfect; but to be content is to recognize the perfection of imperfectability. And to embrace this radical view of humanity is, as Douglas Brooks said earlier, divine.

The eminence of distance in a moment

Riding home on the bus this evening, I was reading a book – trying to make the most of my time – when a woman a few seats up exclaimed how beautiful the sunset is. I looked up from what was admittedly an enthralling read (on mindful silence, nonetheless) and to my subdued, high school romanticism there across the sky lay the most breathtaking sunset I had ever seen. It beamed bruised blood orange before subduing into a pastel gradient that at last adumbrated the foreboding saturated stratus clouds. I was eminently present in the distance – not wanting to look away.

Then a degenerate thought crept into my mind: I should take a picture and capture this radiance for all time. Yet I hesitated, critical as I am about reproduced art and the beauty of a captured image as being inauthentically inferior to the unanticipated and thus unprimed transcendentalism of the pregnant moment. I hesitated, yet pulled my phone out anyway. I fumbled through the dallying commands to pull up the camera – being sure to look up with every operation so as not to lose the moment. But the moment was already lost the instant I looked away, entering a new moment and betraying my embodying gaze as my eyes readjusted to what was right in front of me. Sure enough, by the time the camera function was engaged, the bus was already rolling. I tried to snap a picture but it came out blurry.

I tried to retain the picture of the image in my mind, but it was already lost to inefficient descriptors – trying in vain to reconstruct what words always fail to precisely signify. Near my stop the bus came into line of sight with the sunset again, but now it had morphed into a goldenrod aura set atop an apricot horizon. Just as delicious, yes, but a totally different sunset; and I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.

Because it's not right in front of us, it's easy to look away to our foreground. But by doing so, we lose focus so that if we return and attempt to re-gain focus, the object in the distance, not being subject to our immediate, intimate scrutiny, may very well have changed. So too with life.

Work and Play

Hospice workers report that one of the top regrets of people on their deathbeds is working too much and not spending enough time with their family. In the spirit of “living more”, what exactly, if not work, would people do? Looking outside right now it is sunny – a nice day for a brisk walk. But were I to walk, I would likely be thinking of the work I need to do. If my work was done, then I could walk calmly – a serenity produced from a sense of accomplishment. We relax and partake in recreational activities as contrast to our time working. We can only enjoy them with respect to work, for if we had no work to do and had all the time to do recreational activities, then boredom would surely afflict us sooner or later. We are not such a ludic species that, even if independent of economic factors, we could spend all our time reveling and enjoying. Living life, as the superlative phrase has come to mean, signifies breaching one’s comfort zone and doing fun things. But breaching one’s comfort zone can only happen with respect to having a comfort zone, and likewise doing fun things only has meaning with respect to things that aren’t fun. Thus the live-your-life imperative demands that we balance work and play – recognizing the role and necessity of each. It’s not simply that work gives one purpose and play gives one diversion; but that work necessitates play and play necessitates work. Only through appreciating the binary dynamic can, I think, one truly become content with one’s life in the face of a society that demands both that we continuously strive to climb the ladder of achievement while also exhorting us to take the time to enjoy the boons life offers. The best boons of all, if they don’t remove us from the world, teach us how to live meaningfully inside it – those that make sense of an otherwise latently entropy-yoking system.

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.