Thursday, December 11, 2008
for the Bible tells me so
A week ago a student showed a great film entitled for the Bible tells me so. The film chronicles the lives of five families who have a member of the family come out as a homosexual. Here is a link for the movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajBR0dq0XXk) and more information can be found at http://www.forthebibletellsmeso.org/indexa.htm. Eric's most recent post about religion and how rigid some could be brought me back to this film. If you have a chance to rent or Netflix this film I highly recommend it. It also includes Bishop Gene Robinson who is the Bishop of Vermont, a Sewanee graduate, and openly gay. Let me know if you watch it as I would love to discuss it sometime.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
ON RELIGIOUS MANIFESTOS, KEEN'S
These things are never easy. After months of being pestered by my questions about their religion, a couple fellow English teachers asked me to explain my religion. Here goes.
I hesitate even to use the term "religion," a) because I like to think that my "religion" is different enough to merit a less ambiguous, less history-laden, and less highly-qualified term, b) because I don't want anyone to think it is something they can join (find your own religion, that's the whole point!), and c) when taken seriously, religion equates to an explanation of your life and how your live it. A religious manifesto, therefore, is essentially a self-justification.
You won't find any pillars of faith or fundamental precepts in an outline of my "religion." Rather, it is best characterized not by what I "believe," but how. My religion is about method. I will, however, have to explain what I do not believe, because a) my own religion obviously has formed in reaction to the other beliefs in my intellectual environment, and b) you readers need some tangible grounds on which to place where I stand on certain ideas. This is frustrating, becaus it makes my religion out to be one of negation, when I like to think that it is the opposite, one of affirmation.
But before I explain the "how" of my religion, I should explain the "why." What drives my religiosity? "Religion," or the array of behaviors and psychological predispositions that compose our definitions of it, is a human word for a biological phenomenon with a biological basis. My genes and my culture have rendered me deeply desperate for life, deeply disturbed by death, and overwhelmingly appreciative for people, places and experiences. Consequently, I am hyperbolically curious, scared and thankful. These traits create in me (and, I think, in most of us) our emergent religious impulse. It is the single source of both our supreme joys and our supreme affliction, a bittersweet adaptation brought about by gene-culture coevolution. Religiosity: can't live with it, can't Live without it.
As a methodology, two of my religion's goals are intellectual honesty and responsible inquiry. It follows that I do not believe in metaphysics, the divine inspiration of any Holy texts, an afterlife, or gods of any sort. I do not find any compelling evidence in nature or in the pews that God is real. Yes, I understand that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," but there is also undeniable evidence - namely, the simple fact that ideas and people have real effects on each other and the earth - that compels me to take the accuracy of my convictions very seriously. In doing so, accepting the idea of God and commiting to an explicit faith becomes impossible for me. I do not think that theism, particularly that of the Abrahamic religions, is a responsible choice. From the goals stated above, it follows also that I consider it irresponsible to be a member of any religious organization that enables or encourages the reduction of critical thinking and the sense of adventure with which we engage the world.
The most unfortunate and intellectually destructive aspect of conventional religion is that it forces new experiences to fit into worldviews rather than uses them to add to or change a worldview. Within religions like Christianity, experience becomes complacent and subjugated to prior opinion, messily if necessary, rather than used to serve the much more exciting and adaptive purpose of being transformative. Conventional religion, at its lowest and most fundamental frequencies, has robbed the religious life of primal adventure. Discovery becomes a threat instead of an opportunity. I have no interest in that.
Do I concede that God may actually exist? Of course. To say otherwise is to be blindly dogmatic, which is precisely what I am reacting against here. Do I know what evidence could ever convince me of God? Honestly, I can't imagine what form convincing evidence could take, but I am willing to be surprised.
Clarifying religious terms: Rather than the word "truth," I like to use the word "accuracy." I don't think I could ever bring myself to make a claim about the way things actually are. I consider such an act, which is the tendency of all religionists and some scientists, as nothing less than arrogant. Rather than identifying truths, I am interested in recognizing patterns.
The words "faith" and "beliefs" are used today to mean "convictions based on recognizably insufficient evidence." These words equate shameless to the "license people give each other to continue believing in the absence of good reasons to do so." This is, after all, the basis of blind faith and why employing it is placed on a pedestal in our world. I am not interested in that. Rather than "faith" or "belief" I prefer the admittedly bloodless word "conclusion," or maybe "conviction." Do I believe in evolution? No. I am convinced by it enough to provisionally accept it.
Ideas like "eternity," "ultimate truth," "divinity," and "free will" are distracting and irrelevant (especially the last term). The words "sacred" and "profane" are helpful if we tweak their definitions by equating them to the words "relevant" and "irrelevant," respectively, and toss out any metaphysical associations attached to them. To calibrate these revised definitions, I'll use Christianity: that which is sacred, from a Christian perspective, includes God, human destiny, Jesus, his words, salvation, moral righteousness, love, ultimate truth, free will, sin, fellowship, Christ's return, the afterlife, wealth, the Bible's contents, evil, and in some cases, the Creation. That which is profane includes scientific discovery, personal pride, good deeds, other religious perspectives, and the birds of the field.
So, given the methods I've outlined for constructing a worldview, what conclusions or convictions have I arrived upon? Answer: not many. And that is OK. Religions like Christianity tend to emphasize the importance of decisions to an extent that can pressure people into irresponsible choices. These religions are what I like to call very "claimful." Such claimfulness is irresponsible and unneccessary for religious fulfillment. I have heard many people use the following observation as a reason to believe in a higher being (I am guilty of using this when I was a believer): "There's just something abut reality - about the world - that makes the idea of God fit. It just makes sense." Npw, consider the alternative, more accurate version, and note the crucial difference:"There's something about how I make sense of reality, of the world, that just makes the idea of God fit." We Homo sapiens have inexorably religious minds, inclined to mystical thoughts and powerful emotions. Mistaking these evolved neurological quirks as outside evidence of a higher being is both irresponsible and unfortunate. We, not the cosmos or its Creator, are our own fountainhead for religion, meaning, mystery and transformative love. Realizing and embracing that is key piece of my religious identity. The result of doing so is being more interested in my own religiosity that in what I am religious about. The experience of religion is what interests me. Outsourcing and externalizing one's religiosity by devotion to a god is not only a mistake, it is also a loss. I am grateful for life and people, to a religious degree, but I am not thankful towards any ultimate cosmic order or personality. I am certianly in great debt, but I am not in great debt to anything ultimate. My immense gratitude and wonder is aimless, and that's OK - in fact, it is preferred.
Some might read a statement like, "the experience of religion is what I am interested in," as advocacy for believing whatever you damn-well please. It is not. In fact, it's the opposite. Having convictions is important, but as your neighbor I beg you to arrive at them as carefully as possible. What the above statement does do is free us to "believe" in something that is ethically helpful. Since fulfillment is provided by the experience of religion, we can reserve the recipient of our religious energies to something morally defensible. Often, this translates to more love towards people around you. Why love God because you love your life or your mother? Why not love life and your mother because you love life and your mother? What I love about Christmas time is the family time, the carols, the colors, the cups of hot chocolate, the contra dances, the fellowship and the community. I don't need to distract myself from those things and think about a baby in a food trough to celebrate the season well. Why celebrate the mythical birth of a dude 2,000 years ago by spending time with family, when you can celebrate family by spending time with family? We don't need unfounded beliefs to justify religious levels of love and reverence and celebration.
So far, I have only explained one half of my religion. While the first half focuses on the construction of an ideology, its complement has to do with the application of that ideology to my actions and interactions. Religion, in general, I believe, consists of two parts: ideology and application. Ideas and action. The biological analog is the genotype (DNA code of an organism) and the phenotype (physical maifestation of a genotype, e.g. translated proteins, eye color, or less tangibly, more extended applications like behavioral predispositions and ecological footprints). Both complement each other, and a proper understanding of an organism can't be achieved by attention to just one of the two. Thinking about religion along similar lines grounds big ideas in a world of consequences, which is important to me. While my religion's genotype (convictions) are careful and bloodless - that is, scientific - my religion's phenotype (application to the real world) belongs to the realm of art. Creativity and adventure have a rightful place in what you do with your convictions, not in the convictions themselves - there is too much at stake for that. A careful assessment of reality deepens the well from which our inspiration for life in the grandest sense springs forth. The idea is that my religion magnifies the most redeeming virtues of human's religiosity: our intellectual engagement with reality and our passionate exploration of the margins of our creativity. In this sense, religion fuses science and art, allowing a responsible and fulfilling engagement with the world. It's about science, and it's about dancing. Shifting our religious focus from needless claimfulness to the experience of life is anything but bloodless. Rather, it is transformative, immense, overwhelming.
Jesus, Buddha, and Billy Graham are people I can learn alot from. But so is everyone.
The single-most celebrated worship event in the Bible, the Last Supper, took place not in a synagogue or on a mountan top, but over dinner with some friends. With bread and wine. Religion belongs at the dinner table with friends, at sunsets and in late nights, in naked swimming and in the classroom. We emit sanctity, we do not receive it from above. I am alive with affliction, gratitude and wonder. I dwell in amazement at my ability to make so much meaning out of a meaningless world, and to care so damn much. I am horribly sad and inexplicably happy. Religion is about dancing, laughter and saving lives. It needs a responsible (that is, scientific and ethical) foundation. The Earth, girls, the past, the future, biodiversity, humans everywhere, youth, and growth are sacred. Irresponsible beliefs are profane.
I hesitate even to use the term "religion," a) because I like to think that my "religion" is different enough to merit a less ambiguous, less history-laden, and less highly-qualified term, b) because I don't want anyone to think it is something they can join (find your own religion, that's the whole point!), and c) when taken seriously, religion equates to an explanation of your life and how your live it. A religious manifesto, therefore, is essentially a self-justification.
You won't find any pillars of faith or fundamental precepts in an outline of my "religion." Rather, it is best characterized not by what I "believe," but how. My religion is about method. I will, however, have to explain what I do not believe, because a) my own religion obviously has formed in reaction to the other beliefs in my intellectual environment, and b) you readers need some tangible grounds on which to place where I stand on certain ideas. This is frustrating, becaus it makes my religion out to be one of negation, when I like to think that it is the opposite, one of affirmation.
But before I explain the "how" of my religion, I should explain the "why." What drives my religiosity? "Religion," or the array of behaviors and psychological predispositions that compose our definitions of it, is a human word for a biological phenomenon with a biological basis. My genes and my culture have rendered me deeply desperate for life, deeply disturbed by death, and overwhelmingly appreciative for people, places and experiences. Consequently, I am hyperbolically curious, scared and thankful. These traits create in me (and, I think, in most of us) our emergent religious impulse. It is the single source of both our supreme joys and our supreme affliction, a bittersweet adaptation brought about by gene-culture coevolution. Religiosity: can't live with it, can't Live without it.
As a methodology, two of my religion's goals are intellectual honesty and responsible inquiry. It follows that I do not believe in metaphysics, the divine inspiration of any Holy texts, an afterlife, or gods of any sort. I do not find any compelling evidence in nature or in the pews that God is real. Yes, I understand that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," but there is also undeniable evidence - namely, the simple fact that ideas and people have real effects on each other and the earth - that compels me to take the accuracy of my convictions very seriously. In doing so, accepting the idea of God and commiting to an explicit faith becomes impossible for me. I do not think that theism, particularly that of the Abrahamic religions, is a responsible choice. From the goals stated above, it follows also that I consider it irresponsible to be a member of any religious organization that enables or encourages the reduction of critical thinking and the sense of adventure with which we engage the world.
The most unfortunate and intellectually destructive aspect of conventional religion is that it forces new experiences to fit into worldviews rather than uses them to add to or change a worldview. Within religions like Christianity, experience becomes complacent and subjugated to prior opinion, messily if necessary, rather than used to serve the much more exciting and adaptive purpose of being transformative. Conventional religion, at its lowest and most fundamental frequencies, has robbed the religious life of primal adventure. Discovery becomes a threat instead of an opportunity. I have no interest in that.
Do I concede that God may actually exist? Of course. To say otherwise is to be blindly dogmatic, which is precisely what I am reacting against here. Do I know what evidence could ever convince me of God? Honestly, I can't imagine what form convincing evidence could take, but I am willing to be surprised.
Clarifying religious terms: Rather than the word "truth," I like to use the word "accuracy." I don't think I could ever bring myself to make a claim about the way things actually are. I consider such an act, which is the tendency of all religionists and some scientists, as nothing less than arrogant. Rather than identifying truths, I am interested in recognizing patterns.
The words "faith" and "beliefs" are used today to mean "convictions based on recognizably insufficient evidence." These words equate shameless to the "license people give each other to continue believing in the absence of good reasons to do so." This is, after all, the basis of blind faith and why employing it is placed on a pedestal in our world. I am not interested in that. Rather than "faith" or "belief" I prefer the admittedly bloodless word "conclusion," or maybe "conviction." Do I believe in evolution? No. I am convinced by it enough to provisionally accept it.
Ideas like "eternity," "ultimate truth," "divinity," and "free will" are distracting and irrelevant (especially the last term). The words "sacred" and "profane" are helpful if we tweak their definitions by equating them to the words "relevant" and "irrelevant," respectively, and toss out any metaphysical associations attached to them. To calibrate these revised definitions, I'll use Christianity: that which is sacred, from a Christian perspective, includes God, human destiny, Jesus, his words, salvation, moral righteousness, love, ultimate truth, free will, sin, fellowship, Christ's return, the afterlife, wealth, the Bible's contents, evil, and in some cases, the Creation. That which is profane includes scientific discovery, personal pride, good deeds, other religious perspectives, and the birds of the field.
So, given the methods I've outlined for constructing a worldview, what conclusions or convictions have I arrived upon? Answer: not many. And that is OK. Religions like Christianity tend to emphasize the importance of decisions to an extent that can pressure people into irresponsible choices. These religions are what I like to call very "claimful." Such claimfulness is irresponsible and unneccessary for religious fulfillment. I have heard many people use the following observation as a reason to believe in a higher being (I am guilty of using this when I was a believer): "There's just something abut reality - about the world - that makes the idea of God fit. It just makes sense." Npw, consider the alternative, more accurate version, and note the crucial difference:"There's something about how I make sense of reality, of the world, that just makes the idea of God fit." We Homo sapiens have inexorably religious minds, inclined to mystical thoughts and powerful emotions. Mistaking these evolved neurological quirks as outside evidence of a higher being is both irresponsible and unfortunate. We, not the cosmos or its Creator, are our own fountainhead for religion, meaning, mystery and transformative love. Realizing and embracing that is key piece of my religious identity. The result of doing so is being more interested in my own religiosity that in what I am religious about. The experience of religion is what interests me. Outsourcing and externalizing one's religiosity by devotion to a god is not only a mistake, it is also a loss. I am grateful for life and people, to a religious degree, but I am not thankful towards any ultimate cosmic order or personality. I am certianly in great debt, but I am not in great debt to anything ultimate. My immense gratitude and wonder is aimless, and that's OK - in fact, it is preferred.
Some might read a statement like, "the experience of religion is what I am interested in," as advocacy for believing whatever you damn-well please. It is not. In fact, it's the opposite. Having convictions is important, but as your neighbor I beg you to arrive at them as carefully as possible. What the above statement does do is free us to "believe" in something that is ethically helpful. Since fulfillment is provided by the experience of religion, we can reserve the recipient of our religious energies to something morally defensible. Often, this translates to more love towards people around you. Why love God because you love your life or your mother? Why not love life and your mother because you love life and your mother? What I love about Christmas time is the family time, the carols, the colors, the cups of hot chocolate, the contra dances, the fellowship and the community. I don't need to distract myself from those things and think about a baby in a food trough to celebrate the season well. Why celebrate the mythical birth of a dude 2,000 years ago by spending time with family, when you can celebrate family by spending time with family? We don't need unfounded beliefs to justify religious levels of love and reverence and celebration.
So far, I have only explained one half of my religion. While the first half focuses on the construction of an ideology, its complement has to do with the application of that ideology to my actions and interactions. Religion, in general, I believe, consists of two parts: ideology and application. Ideas and action. The biological analog is the genotype (DNA code of an organism) and the phenotype (physical maifestation of a genotype, e.g. translated proteins, eye color, or less tangibly, more extended applications like behavioral predispositions and ecological footprints). Both complement each other, and a proper understanding of an organism can't be achieved by attention to just one of the two. Thinking about religion along similar lines grounds big ideas in a world of consequences, which is important to me. While my religion's genotype (convictions) are careful and bloodless - that is, scientific - my religion's phenotype (application to the real world) belongs to the realm of art. Creativity and adventure have a rightful place in what you do with your convictions, not in the convictions themselves - there is too much at stake for that. A careful assessment of reality deepens the well from which our inspiration for life in the grandest sense springs forth. The idea is that my religion magnifies the most redeeming virtues of human's religiosity: our intellectual engagement with reality and our passionate exploration of the margins of our creativity. In this sense, religion fuses science and art, allowing a responsible and fulfilling engagement with the world. It's about science, and it's about dancing. Shifting our religious focus from needless claimfulness to the experience of life is anything but bloodless. Rather, it is transformative, immense, overwhelming.
Jesus, Buddha, and Billy Graham are people I can learn alot from. But so is everyone.
The single-most celebrated worship event in the Bible, the Last Supper, took place not in a synagogue or on a mountan top, but over dinner with some friends. With bread and wine. Religion belongs at the dinner table with friends, at sunsets and in late nights, in naked swimming and in the classroom. We emit sanctity, we do not receive it from above. I am alive with affliction, gratitude and wonder. I dwell in amazement at my ability to make so much meaning out of a meaningless world, and to care so damn much. I am horribly sad and inexplicably happy. Religion is about dancing, laughter and saving lives. It needs a responsible (that is, scientific and ethical) foundation. The Earth, girls, the past, the future, biodiversity, humans everywhere, youth, and growth are sacred. Irresponsible beliefs are profane.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
ON THE TEACHING LIFE, MINE
Here are a few tales from my life as a teacher in Indonesia.
To set the scene: I live in what is nationally notorious as the most rude and obnoxious city in Indonesia. In this city, I work and live at an Islamic boarding school, called a pesantren. It is run like a boot camp. If the student's hair get too long (longer than a finger), the teacher cuts their hair in front of the whole class. If the student comes to school late, he or she has to crouch down in the "number 2" position for about 2 hours. If you do not go to the mosque at 4.30 in the morning, you have to sit in that position all day. Every night the students go to the mosque for 2 hours, listen to angry speeches and recite prayers from the Al'Quran. On Saturday mornings, a pair of teachers give a lecture from 4:30 until 8:30am, with no breaks (I kept time this morning).
The teachers at my school are currently on strike - it's really an exciting time. They stand up on desks and make speeches to other teachers. They are angry because the administration recently created a policy that stated this: "If teachers do not go to class, they will not get paid for teaching that class." The faculty are furious. I thought it was funny, until they started citing me as a reason that it is not fair. They say, "Mr. Keen is able to miss a day of class, but he still gets paid!" And I say, "No, I don't. I am not an employee of this school. I don't get paid by this school EVER." And they say, "Exactly!!!" So I am currently avoiding the teacher's office.
I usually do so anyways because everyday the teachers cook a big lunch in the office, and the lunch always involves deep fried sardines, bones and all, or some other kind of fish they got out of the local river. The local river is a poop-brown color, because there is an industrial fertilizer production factory right on the river that pumps excess poop into it. Somedays, the whole city smells like poop. Somedays, the fish they cook smells like poop. They always insist that I eat the meal they cook. So I try avoid the teacher's office, strike or no strike.
Another reason I avoid the teacher's office is because I keep accidentally stepping on all the cats that live in it. All cats in Indonesia, except the tigers, are tiny, malnourished mangy demons. They crave attention, so when I get out of my chair, the run after me and under my feet. I have permanently injured more cats than I like to admit. Some of the cats clearly have rabies, and sometimes they get in fights. It sounds like the gates of hell are screeching open against a chalkboard floor, but the teacher's don't mind. They don't seem to even notice it.
Another reason I avoid the teacher's office is that the teachers have been gossiping lately about a certain pattern they have noticed: wherever I seem to travel, there is flooding in that part of Indonesia immediately after, and therefore I caused the flooding. This isn't just a non sequitur, the pattern they seemed to have noticed just doesn't exist. Furthermore, it is currently the start of the rainy season in Indonesia, and it is flooding everywhere. This week, I walked into the office and the teachers fell silent, and a few glared at me. One came up to me and asked me to apologize, and when I asked why she said that her hometown, Padang, is experiencing bad flooding. When I asked why this is my fault, she said, "You travelled to Padang last weekend, didn't you?"
I still have one teacher who wants to be my friend, but she is insane. Like most Indonesians d0, they take befriending an American as an opportunity to loosen up and disobey the usual cultural rules they must adhere to so strictly. This insane teacher friend, a 30-year old unmarried woman (pretty rare in Indonesia) likes to talk to me about menstruation and flatulence - ALL the time. She updates me via text-messages about her menstrual patterns and farts out loud in my house when she invites herself over. She makes me promise not to tell anyone. I just can't resist.
In the afternoon, after classes are out and after I sneak into the teacher's office to grab a cup of Sumateran coffee, I walk the 50 meter path to my house, past the volleyball court, past the girl's dorm, past the entrance to a junior high school, past the mosque, and past some other teacher's houses. The students yell things at me the whole way down, and the teachers' children, playing in the front yards of the houses, yell things at me, like "You Crazy, mister!" or "You eat grass!", and I wave and smile and count the seconds until I get into my house.
Once in my house, I sit and listen to the junior high students standing at the stoop of my front patio, giggling and screaming as they dare eachother to run up to my door, knock, and run away. They treat me like the old witch of a small Southern town that the brave kids mess with in efforts to impress a girl. Sometimes I open the door and invite them in, and they run away screaming. Sometimes I wait until a kid runs up to my door, and right before he knocks-and-runs, I open the door and yell "BOO!" and they ALL freak out and don't come back for a couple days.
To set the scene: I live in what is nationally notorious as the most rude and obnoxious city in Indonesia. In this city, I work and live at an Islamic boarding school, called a pesantren. It is run like a boot camp. If the student's hair get too long (longer than a finger), the teacher cuts their hair in front of the whole class. If the student comes to school late, he or she has to crouch down in the "number 2" position for about 2 hours. If you do not go to the mosque at 4.30 in the morning, you have to sit in that position all day. Every night the students go to the mosque for 2 hours, listen to angry speeches and recite prayers from the Al'Quran. On Saturday mornings, a pair of teachers give a lecture from 4:30 until 8:30am, with no breaks (I kept time this morning).
The teachers at my school are currently on strike - it's really an exciting time. They stand up on desks and make speeches to other teachers. They are angry because the administration recently created a policy that stated this: "If teachers do not go to class, they will not get paid for teaching that class." The faculty are furious. I thought it was funny, until they started citing me as a reason that it is not fair. They say, "Mr. Keen is able to miss a day of class, but he still gets paid!" And I say, "No, I don't. I am not an employee of this school. I don't get paid by this school EVER." And they say, "Exactly!!!" So I am currently avoiding the teacher's office.
I usually do so anyways because everyday the teachers cook a big lunch in the office, and the lunch always involves deep fried sardines, bones and all, or some other kind of fish they got out of the local river. The local river is a poop-brown color, because there is an industrial fertilizer production factory right on the river that pumps excess poop into it. Somedays, the whole city smells like poop. Somedays, the fish they cook smells like poop. They always insist that I eat the meal they cook. So I try avoid the teacher's office, strike or no strike.
Another reason I avoid the teacher's office is because I keep accidentally stepping on all the cats that live in it. All cats in Indonesia, except the tigers, are tiny, malnourished mangy demons. They crave attention, so when I get out of my chair, the run after me and under my feet. I have permanently injured more cats than I like to admit. Some of the cats clearly have rabies, and sometimes they get in fights. It sounds like the gates of hell are screeching open against a chalkboard floor, but the teacher's don't mind. They don't seem to even notice it.
Another reason I avoid the teacher's office is that the teachers have been gossiping lately about a certain pattern they have noticed: wherever I seem to travel, there is flooding in that part of Indonesia immediately after, and therefore I caused the flooding. This isn't just a non sequitur, the pattern they seemed to have noticed just doesn't exist. Furthermore, it is currently the start of the rainy season in Indonesia, and it is flooding everywhere. This week, I walked into the office and the teachers fell silent, and a few glared at me. One came up to me and asked me to apologize, and when I asked why she said that her hometown, Padang, is experiencing bad flooding. When I asked why this is my fault, she said, "You travelled to Padang last weekend, didn't you?"
I still have one teacher who wants to be my friend, but she is insane. Like most Indonesians d0, they take befriending an American as an opportunity to loosen up and disobey the usual cultural rules they must adhere to so strictly. This insane teacher friend, a 30-year old unmarried woman (pretty rare in Indonesia) likes to talk to me about menstruation and flatulence - ALL the time. She updates me via text-messages about her menstrual patterns and farts out loud in my house when she invites herself over. She makes me promise not to tell anyone. I just can't resist.
In the afternoon, after classes are out and after I sneak into the teacher's office to grab a cup of Sumateran coffee, I walk the 50 meter path to my house, past the volleyball court, past the girl's dorm, past the entrance to a junior high school, past the mosque, and past some other teacher's houses. The students yell things at me the whole way down, and the teachers' children, playing in the front yards of the houses, yell things at me, like "You Crazy, mister!" or "You eat grass!", and I wave and smile and count the seconds until I get into my house.
Once in my house, I sit and listen to the junior high students standing at the stoop of my front patio, giggling and screaming as they dare eachother to run up to my door, knock, and run away. They treat me like the old witch of a small Southern town that the brave kids mess with in efforts to impress a girl. Sometimes I open the door and invite them in, and they run away screaming. Sometimes I wait until a kid runs up to my door, and right before he knocks-and-runs, I open the door and yell "BOO!" and they ALL freak out and don't come back for a couple days.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
ON BEING WRONG
In my last post I mentioned this topic and how I recently heard Bishop Kee Sloan of Alabama speak on this at Growing in Grace. This past summer he attended the Lambeth Conference in England, which brought together leaders of the Anglican Church from all over the world. One night college students attending Oxford from all over the world invited all the bishops out to a local pub to talk about life, religion, politics, basically shooting the breeze with students. Unfortunately only a handful of bishops even attended the gathering. Kee was one of those few. At the gathering a woman from Ireland, who supposedly could not get any more Irish with her freckles, red hair, thick accent, and affinity for the drink, approached Kee to talk about Adam and Eve. She asked when that story took place. Kee answered that the Jewish tradition dates that story at around 6,000 years ago or whatever the exact date is. She started bringing up the fact that we have found fossil records from long before that. Kee started sweating a bit, not because he believes the earth is 6,000 years old, but because it can be hard to convince someone that you believe in the spirit of something and not the actual historical truth of a story, especially while wearing a clerical collar.
It was at this point that Kee remembered directing a special session camp for the physically and mentally handicapped at Camp Bratton Green. A 30 year old man name Billy who had Down Syndrome came up at the end of an evening when everyone was enjoying the nightly milk and cookies and asked "Mr. Keys" (the name the man had given Kee) if he could go behind the chapel to smooch his girlfriend. Kee had never dealt with a situation like this, so the request seemed a bit fishy. He told the man, "I'm sorry Billy, but that's against the rules." Billy quickly replied with, "But the counselors do it all the time!" Kee was put off, yet he was quick on his feet and explained that he was the director of the camp and it was his judgement and that the rules were the rules. Billy sulked off to tell his girlfriend the upsetting news. Kee went back to talking to other campers and couselors, though his mind was still with Billy and the words he spoke.
On his way to the director's cabin, Kee came across Billy again. Billy stood with tear stained cheeks right in Kee's way. The 30 year old man then told the camp director, "You know Mr. Keys, you could be wrong." As those words hit Kee's ears they stung him harder than perhaps any message of his life. Kee thought for a moment and took Billy by the arm, "You have ten minutes behind the chapel and that's all. Only kissing." Then, Billy headed off gleefully to tell his girlfriend, while Kee headed off to inform both their counselors where they would be and to make sure they were back in 10 minutes.
Kee drifted back to the pub in Oxford and realized that he was still talking to this Irish student. He came again to the realization that sometimes he could be wrong and that what was important here was not so much whether or not Adam and Eve truly existed, but the truth that lies within the story. As Kee wrapped up his story in All Saints' Chapel several weeks ago, I began to think of instances in my own life where I held onto things that were proven elsewhere to be false. Perhaps the most valuable lesson that I continue to learn in conversation, in reading my fellow fishermen's posts, in hearing others speak, and in attempting to empathize with everyone I encounter is that I could be wrong. How then shall I correct my wrong?
It was at this point that Kee remembered directing a special session camp for the physically and mentally handicapped at Camp Bratton Green. A 30 year old man name Billy who had Down Syndrome came up at the end of an evening when everyone was enjoying the nightly milk and cookies and asked "Mr. Keys" (the name the man had given Kee) if he could go behind the chapel to smooch his girlfriend. Kee had never dealt with a situation like this, so the request seemed a bit fishy. He told the man, "I'm sorry Billy, but that's against the rules." Billy quickly replied with, "But the counselors do it all the time!" Kee was put off, yet he was quick on his feet and explained that he was the director of the camp and it was his judgement and that the rules were the rules. Billy sulked off to tell his girlfriend the upsetting news. Kee went back to talking to other campers and couselors, though his mind was still with Billy and the words he spoke.
On his way to the director's cabin, Kee came across Billy again. Billy stood with tear stained cheeks right in Kee's way. The 30 year old man then told the camp director, "You know Mr. Keys, you could be wrong." As those words hit Kee's ears they stung him harder than perhaps any message of his life. Kee thought for a moment and took Billy by the arm, "You have ten minutes behind the chapel and that's all. Only kissing." Then, Billy headed off gleefully to tell his girlfriend, while Kee headed off to inform both their counselors where they would be and to make sure they were back in 10 minutes.
Kee drifted back to the pub in Oxford and realized that he was still talking to this Irish student. He came again to the realization that sometimes he could be wrong and that what was important here was not so much whether or not Adam and Eve truly existed, but the truth that lies within the story. As Kee wrapped up his story in All Saints' Chapel several weeks ago, I began to think of instances in my own life where I held onto things that were proven elsewhere to be false. Perhaps the most valuable lesson that I continue to learn in conversation, in reading my fellow fishermen's posts, in hearing others speak, and in attempting to empathize with everyone I encounter is that I could be wrong. How then shall I correct my wrong?
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
ON THE MOST MEXICAN CONVERSATION OF ALL TIMES
Mexicans have several main concerns, two of which are saying hello to people and telling me how pink I am. Greeting people is of the utmost importance. Not doing it is a tremendous mistake and could seriously hurt some one's feelings. In the MBA class I am taking, every student who walks into the room goes one by one to every other student, shakes their hand and makes a comment about tacos, siestas or señoritas. Of course when they get to me they say something along the lines of "Hello, American. You're looking pink today."
So, today I had a conversation that was so typically representative of these two traits, I had to share it*.
Co-worker: "Hello you!"
"How come you no longer greet me?"
Pink American: "What do you mean?"
Co-worker: "The other day I passed by your desk and you didn't even turn around"
"Or do you think a lot of yourself because you're pink"
Pink American: "Well, did you say anything?"
Co-worker: "Yeah, but you didn't even turn around"
Pink American: "Maybe because I didn't hear you?"
"It wasn't on purpose."
Co-worker: "I forgive you....but only because you are pink."
Pink American: "Um, thanks."
*Although I usually lie in my posts this is the actual conversation, only translated into English. No exaggerations.
So, today I had a conversation that was so typically representative of these two traits, I had to share it*.
Co-worker: "Hello you!"
"How come you no longer greet me?"
Pink American: "What do you mean?"
Co-worker: "The other day I passed by your desk and you didn't even turn around"
"Or do you think a lot of yourself because you're pink"
Pink American: "Well, did you say anything?"
Co-worker: "Yeah, but you didn't even turn around"
Pink American: "Maybe because I didn't hear you?"
"It wasn't on purpose."
Co-worker: "I forgive you....but only because you are pink."
Pink American: "Um, thanks."
*Although I usually lie in my posts this is the actual conversation, only translated into English. No exaggerations.
Friday, October 31, 2008
ON BARACK OBAMA, HOW HE WILL DESTROY OUR FREEDOMS
A gem from James Dobson's Focus on the Family:
http://focusfamaction.edgeboss.net/download/focusfamaction/pdfs/10-22-08_2012letter.pdf
Whoever you choose to vote for, I don't think it should be because gay people will ruin the boy scouts (see page 3).
http://focusfamaction.edgeboss.net/download/focusfamaction/pdfs/10-22-08_2012letter.pdf
Whoever you choose to vote for, I don't think it should be because gay people will ruin the boy scouts (see page 3).
Thursday, October 30, 2008
ON POTATO CHIPS, THE IMPORTANCE OF
"The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips."
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/29/AR2008102903199.html
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/29/AR2008102903199.html
ON A POTENTIAL MIRROR CRISIS, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
This morning, I started getting worried. Maybe it was the financial crisis, maybe the wars. But whatever it was, it got me thinking worse case scenario. I thought: What if every mirror in the world breaks? How will we know what we look like?
I crammed myself onto the Metrobus (it's like a bus except called a Metrobus) and pushed my way past all the people who were sweating in the 100 degree heat, smashed up against each other by the door. I walked over to the window, opened it so the temperature would drop down a couple of degrees (body temperature is the new room temperature) and then found a spot about 10 feet from the door where there was room to stand. Then I went back to worrying. "What in God's name would we do without mirrors?"
I walked in to the office and was greeted with "Hey white guy."
"Hey"
"You're really pink today."
"Am I?"
Later, "Hey your eyes are really red."
And, "Hey, white guy...or should I say pink guy, your eyes are really red."
"Hey, what's that on your nose?"
"A zit."
"Oh. You have a beard. And you are white. And you are bald."
"You have a zit today."
"Hey white guy. You're 5'9" and weigh 152 pounds. You are growing a patch of hair on your left shoulder but not so much on your right. Your legs are fairly hairy, especially in comparison with the people of my race. Your moustache isn't all that impressive. Your eyes are blue. You have small ears. Is that a zit?"
And so on...
You see, despite my worrying, I realized that if all of the mirrors break, we will always have Mexicans to tell us what we look like. They are very aware of if you are fat, what color your skin is, how tired you look, what new zits you have, if you are attractive or ugly and they are happy to tell you all the time. So, among all the potential worries, rest assured that any sort of mirror crisis would take some adjusting, but would not affect the quality of our lives.
So to all you anti-immigration folks out there, remember: Mexicans are our insurance against a global mirror crisis.
I crammed myself onto the Metrobus (it's like a bus except called a Metrobus) and pushed my way past all the people who were sweating in the 100 degree heat, smashed up against each other by the door. I walked over to the window, opened it so the temperature would drop down a couple of degrees (body temperature is the new room temperature) and then found a spot about 10 feet from the door where there was room to stand. Then I went back to worrying. "What in God's name would we do without mirrors?"
I walked in to the office and was greeted with "Hey white guy."
"Hey"
"You're really pink today."
"Am I?"
Later, "Hey your eyes are really red."
And, "Hey, white guy...or should I say pink guy, your eyes are really red."
"Hey, what's that on your nose?"
"A zit."
"Oh. You have a beard. And you are white. And you are bald."
"You have a zit today."
"Hey white guy. You're 5'9" and weigh 152 pounds. You are growing a patch of hair on your left shoulder but not so much on your right. Your legs are fairly hairy, especially in comparison with the people of my race. Your moustache isn't all that impressive. Your eyes are blue. You have small ears. Is that a zit?"
And so on...
You see, despite my worrying, I realized that if all of the mirrors break, we will always have Mexicans to tell us what we look like. They are very aware of if you are fat, what color your skin is, how tired you look, what new zits you have, if you are attractive or ugly and they are happy to tell you all the time. So, among all the potential worries, rest assured that any sort of mirror crisis would take some adjusting, but would not affect the quality of our lives.
So to all you anti-immigration folks out there, remember: Mexicans are our insurance against a global mirror crisis.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
HAPPY HALLOWEENIES
For Halloween, I asked my English students to write a scary story. I gave them the first sentence ("It was a dark and stormy night,") and they took turns adding a sentence to the story. This is the result. Be warned: It is very, very spooky:
"It was a dark and stormy night. The black bats and ghost flew in the dark scary. The ghost girl hang on the tree. Scary face in the image in the wall. At the night day, many people girls pregnanting. In my dream I met an old man, he is actually werewolf is a man promise with devil to become rich. Every full moon he is become werewolf for drank blood girls. All girls direct die.
"Meanwhile, my friends meeting a zombie on the streets. The little boy saw Zombie with chainsaw and red blood in the forest and the little boy ran fast. Her face is very scary with the bloods. I saw a big bat! Oh my god, I was afraid. Wo....h...afraid!!! I feel the ghost in front of me in the night and I direct a scream. There's something who hide behind the tree! We are scream. Then the girl directed a scream. A...A...A...A....and the girl fainted. I said, "help! help! help! help!" No, I can't help you!!! hikshikshikshisks. My body cold. My tooth moved. I is cry. Then I cry and running to the toilet. And I sleeping in toilet.
"Finally, the girl remembered that today is Halloween day. The children said "Trick or Treat?" And the children have a candy from the people. They are very happy and make party together.
"The moment disappear.
"Halloween?
" *Story all true no slip of the pen."
In Indonesia, instead of candy people eat deep fried fish, bones and all. Everyone wants me to eat fish bones. All true, no slip of the pen.
"It was a dark and stormy night. The black bats and ghost flew in the dark scary. The ghost girl hang on the tree. Scary face in the image in the wall. At the night day, many people girls pregnanting. In my dream I met an old man, he is actually werewolf is a man promise with devil to become rich. Every full moon he is become werewolf for drank blood girls. All girls direct die.
"Meanwhile, my friends meeting a zombie on the streets. The little boy saw Zombie with chainsaw and red blood in the forest and the little boy ran fast. Her face is very scary with the bloods. I saw a big bat! Oh my god, I was afraid. Wo....h...afraid!!! I feel the ghost in front of me in the night and I direct a scream. There's something who hide behind the tree! We are scream. Then the girl directed a scream. A...A...A...A....and the girl fainted. I said, "help! help! help! help!" No, I can't help you!!! hikshikshikshisks. My body cold. My tooth moved. I is cry. Then I cry and running to the toilet. And I sleeping in toilet.
"Finally, the girl remembered that today is Halloween day. The children said "Trick or Treat?" And the children have a candy from the people. They are very happy and make party together.
"The moment disappear.
"Halloween?
" *Story all true no slip of the pen."
In Indonesia, instead of candy people eat deep fried fish, bones and all. Everyone wants me to eat fish bones. All true, no slip of the pen.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
ON SAVING THE WORLD, HOW SILLY
In newfound despair, Eric said this to Will yesterday: "The idea of changing the world is pretentious and naive. I'm talking to myself mostly here. Sure, it may be noble to commit yourself to such a cause, even if it is possible that doing so is within your means and capacities. But making that kind of promise is weird, because to whom are you making the promise, really? "The world?" The poor? The toucans? Hm. No one tangible. This wouldn't be too problematic if promising to change the world prevents you from promising to be a good man otherwise. I keep going back to the main choice here: Save the World or Be an Awesome Husband, Family Man and Community Member? The promise to do the former is a kind of Stepping Forward, a kind of "I'LL do it! Give ME your tired, your pour, your huddled masses...". Doing the latter is just fulfilling a promise already imposed upon you by living. None of us asked to be born in the first place, and none of us asked for responsibility, but we have it nonetheless, and more than enough of it as it is. So why do we go and voluntarily take the world off of Atlas' shoulders?
"All the stories of reluctant heroes: Odysseus, Aeneas, William Wallace, Eric Hartman: these are good men because they were afflicted with neglecting their homes and hearts to fight elsewhere. I say until we feel duty-bound to save something greater (like, for instance, when the English nobility kill our woman, or the Trojans steal a pretty girl from our town), we shouldn't go looking for it."
Eric said to himself today: "On the other hand: WHAT responsibilities am I talking about? We're all recent graduates who come from big towns with very tenuous residues of "community" still lingering. We don't have a home or a place to commit our hearts yet. The modern world is designed to push bright eyed kids like us OUT THERE (The final speeches of college graduation can be summarized thus: 'Go forth and kick ass'), and our fixation for saving the world is precisely because we've realized how badly it needs to be saved. We HAVE been called to arms, by mere education and world experience. Ecuador. Indonesia. Guatemala. Frat lords. The world is our home, because we have no other, and it is under attack. What choice do we have but to entertain the idea of saving the world?
"To be a part of this newfangled global community, and to fight for it when it needs to be fought for, is by mere fact of scale a quixotic quest. The problems in our own backyards now are just the problems that have been simmering in poorly reported corners of the world for decades. I spoke of Odysseus, Eric Hartman, William Wallace. They fought to preserve the places and people they cared about, and to do so they had to neglect them, leave them and fight the good fight elsewhere. They say, "Think Globally, Act Locally." But it appears that to Live Locally, sometimes you have to Act Globally.
"But how to do this in a losing battle? How to feel like you've saved anything when annual rates of forest loss are increasing, 90 million people are added kicking and screaming to our global population a year, and land conversion and population both will not get better until they get significantly worse over the next 40 years? How can we expect to make a difference when the vast majority of the people don't WANT us to? In Mexcico City Will has noticed that people don't care whether their problems get fixed. People don't want to be made whole again, students don't really want to learn, and everywhere moral myopia is embraced as bliss rather than sickness.
"In an earlier post, Will wrote: "I am interested in what works." As for myself, I have been interested in what Fixes. Now I see the naivety of my ways. We are to the point at which what fixes is not necessarily what works, and maybe the best thing we can do is go down with this ship willingly, but pass out as many life preservers as possible before it is too late. In which case, the blind idealists and social entrepreneurs out there have it right, and my focus on effective crisis management has been just as myopic as the morality with which we have governed ourselves since the dawn of time. Shall we throw up our hands, accept that it is too late to reverse the Ratchet of Progress, and focus now on losing together and with compassion?
"We live in a time of Odyssean tragedy, Faustian choices and Darwinian reckoning. How, then, shall we Lose?"
"All the stories of reluctant heroes: Odysseus, Aeneas, William Wallace, Eric Hartman: these are good men because they were afflicted with neglecting their homes and hearts to fight elsewhere. I say until we feel duty-bound to save something greater (like, for instance, when the English nobility kill our woman, or the Trojans steal a pretty girl from our town), we shouldn't go looking for it."
Eric said to himself today: "On the other hand: WHAT responsibilities am I talking about? We're all recent graduates who come from big towns with very tenuous residues of "community" still lingering. We don't have a home or a place to commit our hearts yet. The modern world is designed to push bright eyed kids like us OUT THERE (The final speeches of college graduation can be summarized thus: 'Go forth and kick ass'), and our fixation for saving the world is precisely because we've realized how badly it needs to be saved. We HAVE been called to arms, by mere education and world experience. Ecuador. Indonesia. Guatemala. Frat lords. The world is our home, because we have no other, and it is under attack. What choice do we have but to entertain the idea of saving the world?
"To be a part of this newfangled global community, and to fight for it when it needs to be fought for, is by mere fact of scale a quixotic quest. The problems in our own backyards now are just the problems that have been simmering in poorly reported corners of the world for decades. I spoke of Odysseus, Eric Hartman, William Wallace. They fought to preserve the places and people they cared about, and to do so they had to neglect them, leave them and fight the good fight elsewhere. They say, "Think Globally, Act Locally." But it appears that to Live Locally, sometimes you have to Act Globally.
"But how to do this in a losing battle? How to feel like you've saved anything when annual rates of forest loss are increasing, 90 million people are added kicking and screaming to our global population a year, and land conversion and population both will not get better until they get significantly worse over the next 40 years? How can we expect to make a difference when the vast majority of the people don't WANT us to? In Mexcico City Will has noticed that people don't care whether their problems get fixed. People don't want to be made whole again, students don't really want to learn, and everywhere moral myopia is embraced as bliss rather than sickness.
"In an earlier post, Will wrote: "I am interested in what works." As for myself, I have been interested in what Fixes. Now I see the naivety of my ways. We are to the point at which what fixes is not necessarily what works, and maybe the best thing we can do is go down with this ship willingly, but pass out as many life preservers as possible before it is too late. In which case, the blind idealists and social entrepreneurs out there have it right, and my focus on effective crisis management has been just as myopic as the morality with which we have governed ourselves since the dawn of time. Shall we throw up our hands, accept that it is too late to reverse the Ratchet of Progress, and focus now on losing together and with compassion?
"We live in a time of Odyssean tragedy, Faustian choices and Darwinian reckoning. How, then, shall we Lose?"
ON MISREPRESENTING MYSELF
I will probably misrepresent myself, but here we go with some stuff Joe and Eric think I think.
Joe: SETH’s comments that “I think weaning ourselves of the excessiveness that has become a cultural norm will help to bring us back towards sanity too.,” and “I wonder how many people would be willing and able to give up their cars altogether, stop buying goods made in sweatshops, or obtaining stuff they do not need in the first place,” make me believe that he also has anti-capitalist views (pinko).
Seth: When I read your statement that I have anti-capitalist views, it makes me believe that I will soon appear on a terrorist watch list and that my next move is to a hippie commune in Vermont. To use some of Barrack’s words you are using a hatchet when you should be using a scalpel. Yes, I think, much like Eric, that the world would be more sustainable living in smaller, more tightly knit communities where food is locally grown, houses are made of local materials, and no one travels too far from home. However, I understand that there is not a switch to turn globalization off, I also do not think globalization is a “bad” thing. There are problems that come along with globalization and implementing capitalism all over the world that I believe are wedded to cultural baggage, but connecting the world might just give us the chance to end extreme poverty for many, educate many more people and in particular more women, and cure or at least curb AIDS and/or cancer. I think globalization is like working on a group project in college. Yes, sometimes you are going to be the one that does a lot/all of the work and sometimes that might detract from your grade, while it improves another group member’s. However, if you continue to work with those group members, maybe they will catch up, maybe they will start carrying you along for the A+, or best of all maybe there can be legitimate collaboration when everyone is working instead of figuring out whose working hardest. Really, I don’t want redistribution of wealth, but I do want redistribution of education, redistribution of safety, and redistribution of opportunities. How do we do that?
Joe: SETH believes in God, believes in the usefulness of belief in God, and believes that others should believe in God (?).
Seth: I do believe in God and believe in the usefulness of the belief in God in my own life, but I also believe in the problems that have come from the masses believing in God. I will get to environmental problems and religion in a bit, but religions and especially Christianity have made following God and serving other “children of God” quite difficult. I say this because of all the harm that I have read about and have seen in my own life that Christians have caused other Christians, other people, themselves, and the world in which they live. Linking a concept like eternity with certain beliefs and following certain rules is a recipe to manipulate the actions of the masses. Luckily I grew up in a Christian Community that taught me to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your MIND*, and with all your strength” and to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:28 and 30, NRSV Bible) before it taught me that I better “get right or get left” as many church billboards read. Recently my goal has been to figure out with much greater clarity how Jesus lived and treated other “believers,” “sinners,” and the world in which he lived. I have been dissecting my way of living. The truth of the matter is the best advice I received in this search and dissection came from the Suffragan Bishop of Alabama, Kee Sloan, when he told a great story about being wrong. That advice was that, “I might just be wrong.” I hope to write a lot more on this topic in an upcoming blog post.
*my own capitalization
Joe: I think we all agree that more food, more medicine, more water, etc. for more people is a good thing.
Seth: Only one change...More food, more medicine, more water, etc. for [some]^ people is a good thing.
^some = everyone deserves all of these things, but the ones who need it the most are the ones typically the hardest to get these to and vice versa.
Joe: I think we’re all left-leaning idealists who assume that democracy is a good thing which can and should be implemented on a global scale (?).
Seth: I am a bit left-leaning on some issues and right-leaning on others. I don’t want to be pegged as a republican or democrat. I am more of a “maverick.” If democracy could only be implemented in a cultural vacuum I would be all for it. The problem here is that religion and government are tied in ways very foreign to my own understanding of democracy, so I am not in favor of more Iraq situations, but I am in favor of people having all the freedoms that I believe everyone deserves.
Eric: SETH: "The crisis is big and urgent, I don't see Christianity as a source of the problem and I think it can provide a solution. I think about this topic a lot."
I defended Christianity in the past Eric and I know you and I disagreed on a lot of points. Recently though, I have seen some flaws in my defense. I was hoping to talk more here, but it will have to come in my next post on being wrong.
Joe: SETH’s comments that “I think weaning ourselves of the excessiveness that has become a cultural norm will help to bring us back towards sanity too.,” and “I wonder how many people would be willing and able to give up their cars altogether, stop buying goods made in sweatshops, or obtaining stuff they do not need in the first place,” make me believe that he also has anti-capitalist views (pinko).
Seth: When I read your statement that I have anti-capitalist views, it makes me believe that I will soon appear on a terrorist watch list and that my next move is to a hippie commune in Vermont. To use some of Barrack’s words you are using a hatchet when you should be using a scalpel. Yes, I think, much like Eric, that the world would be more sustainable living in smaller, more tightly knit communities where food is locally grown, houses are made of local materials, and no one travels too far from home. However, I understand that there is not a switch to turn globalization off, I also do not think globalization is a “bad” thing. There are problems that come along with globalization and implementing capitalism all over the world that I believe are wedded to cultural baggage, but connecting the world might just give us the chance to end extreme poverty for many, educate many more people and in particular more women, and cure or at least curb AIDS and/or cancer. I think globalization is like working on a group project in college. Yes, sometimes you are going to be the one that does a lot/all of the work and sometimes that might detract from your grade, while it improves another group member’s. However, if you continue to work with those group members, maybe they will catch up, maybe they will start carrying you along for the A+, or best of all maybe there can be legitimate collaboration when everyone is working instead of figuring out whose working hardest. Really, I don’t want redistribution of wealth, but I do want redistribution of education, redistribution of safety, and redistribution of opportunities. How do we do that?
Joe: SETH believes in God, believes in the usefulness of belief in God, and believes that others should believe in God (?).
Seth: I do believe in God and believe in the usefulness of the belief in God in my own life, but I also believe in the problems that have come from the masses believing in God. I will get to environmental problems and religion in a bit, but religions and especially Christianity have made following God and serving other “children of God” quite difficult. I say this because of all the harm that I have read about and have seen in my own life that Christians have caused other Christians, other people, themselves, and the world in which they live. Linking a concept like eternity with certain beliefs and following certain rules is a recipe to manipulate the actions of the masses. Luckily I grew up in a Christian Community that taught me to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your MIND*, and with all your strength” and to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:28 and 30, NRSV Bible) before it taught me that I better “get right or get left” as many church billboards read. Recently my goal has been to figure out with much greater clarity how Jesus lived and treated other “believers,” “sinners,” and the world in which he lived. I have been dissecting my way of living. The truth of the matter is the best advice I received in this search and dissection came from the Suffragan Bishop of Alabama, Kee Sloan, when he told a great story about being wrong. That advice was that, “I might just be wrong.” I hope to write a lot more on this topic in an upcoming blog post.
*my own capitalization
Joe: I think we all agree that more food, more medicine, more water, etc. for more people is a good thing.
Seth: Only one change...More food, more medicine, more water, etc. for [some]^ people is a good thing.
^some = everyone deserves all of these things, but the ones who need it the most are the ones typically the hardest to get these to and vice versa.
Joe: I think we’re all left-leaning idealists who assume that democracy is a good thing which can and should be implemented on a global scale (?).
Seth: I am a bit left-leaning on some issues and right-leaning on others. I don’t want to be pegged as a republican or democrat. I am more of a “maverick.” If democracy could only be implemented in a cultural vacuum I would be all for it. The problem here is that religion and government are tied in ways very foreign to my own understanding of democracy, so I am not in favor of more Iraq situations, but I am in favor of people having all the freedoms that I believe everyone deserves.
Eric: SETH: "The crisis is big and urgent, I don't see Christianity as a source of the problem and I think it can provide a solution. I think about this topic a lot."
I defended Christianity in the past Eric and I know you and I disagreed on a lot of points. Recently though, I have seen some flaws in my defense. I was hoping to talk more here, but it will have to come in my next post on being wrong.
Friday, October 24, 2008
ON KEEN, WHY HE IS MISLED AND HOW HE MISREPRESENTS ME
First, how I am misrepresented in the previous post:
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
KEEN: Will thinks that "the crisis isn't really that big or that urgent, and its solution will come naturally through the shifting of economic incentives in capitalist systems."
HARPER: "I do think the crisis is big and urgent, but I am not as concerned about the imminent end of the world as Eric is. I think his misunderstanding of my position comes from statements I have made along the lines of 'the environment is not my issue.' We all dedicate ourselves to something. I am largely concerned with issues regarding poverty. The environment is an important issue, particularly for the poor, but I am going to leave saving the toucans up to Eric because, although I think it's important, I just don't really get worked up about it."
"The solution to our environmental problems will definitely not come naturally through the market. I think economic incentives will probably stop us from completely destroying the planet, but we of course would prefer to have a good, clean, toucan-filled working environment rather than one that barely enables us to eek out a living. I do think that the most effective means of accomplishing this will be to make the costs of goods reflect their true cost by taxing them. Thus, a gallon of gas should cost the costs to the business plus the green house gas costs plus the price of having and maintaining the highways, etc. "
Second, WHY I THINK KEEN IS MISLED:
In a previous post I spoke about the importance of doing what works rather than what we want to work, essentially the possible over the ideal. KEEN mentioned several times about reducing globalization to a minimal level, to focusing on local or regional economies, to giving a human face to our economic interactions. Whether we want it or not, that will not happen. Globalization has happened and is here to stay. Our solutions to issues must work within that framework rather than pretend we can reverse it. Yes, the environment was at its strongest when we lived in small tribes in the woods, but we don't any more. We live in large, dirty cities filled with millions of people creating tons of waste and shipping things around the world. Instead of wishing to cut the population by 6 billion people and go back to the woods method, we should think about solutions to problems we face today given our context and the tools we have to work with. Dealing with environmental woes by reversing globalization is like dealing with noise pollution by trying to get everyone to speak sign language.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
KEEN: Will thinks that "the crisis isn't really that big or that urgent, and its solution will come naturally through the shifting of economic incentives in capitalist systems."
HARPER: "I do think the crisis is big and urgent, but I am not as concerned about the imminent end of the world as Eric is. I think his misunderstanding of my position comes from statements I have made along the lines of 'the environment is not my issue.' We all dedicate ourselves to something. I am largely concerned with issues regarding poverty. The environment is an important issue, particularly for the poor, but I am going to leave saving the toucans up to Eric because, although I think it's important, I just don't really get worked up about it."
"The solution to our environmental problems will definitely not come naturally through the market. I think economic incentives will probably stop us from completely destroying the planet, but we of course would prefer to have a good, clean, toucan-filled working environment rather than one that barely enables us to eek out a living. I do think that the most effective means of accomplishing this will be to make the costs of goods reflect their true cost by taxing them. Thus, a gallon of gas should cost the costs to the business plus the green house gas costs plus the price of having and maintaining the highways, etc. "
Second, WHY I THINK KEEN IS MISLED:
In a previous post I spoke about the importance of doing what works rather than what we want to work, essentially the possible over the ideal. KEEN mentioned several times about reducing globalization to a minimal level, to focusing on local or regional economies, to giving a human face to our economic interactions. Whether we want it or not, that will not happen. Globalization has happened and is here to stay. Our solutions to issues must work within that framework rather than pretend we can reverse it. Yes, the environment was at its strongest when we lived in small tribes in the woods, but we don't any more. We live in large, dirty cities filled with millions of people creating tons of waste and shipping things around the world. Instead of wishing to cut the population by 6 billion people and go back to the woods method, we should think about solutions to problems we face today given our context and the tools we have to work with. Dealing with environmental woes by reversing globalization is like dealing with noise pollution by trying to get everyone to speak sign language.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
ON BREW, MISREPRESENTING KEEN
Kudos to Joe for his two posts, and like Will I think it is a good opportunity to clarify where I stand on a few of the issues he has raised, and maybe raise a couple more in the process.
ECONOMY:
Joe: "I can assume that [Eric] allies himself more with the redistribution camp. He thinks we should invest in less non-essential things and spend less money."
Eric: "I think that firstly we should be aware of the fact that money is being redistibuted all the time, more and more towards an affluent elite and less and less to the majority of employed citizens. Fixing this problem requires redistributing funds in a different way, not necessarily through political policy but through providing opportunity for the disadvantaged to compete as well (along Will's line of thought). But more importantly, I think that we should realign our economic aims to the empowerment of local, small-scale economies, that provide incentive not for growth but for a deepening and humanizing of the economic realm. All costs, monetary and environmental, should be accounted for in prices, somehow. International and even global commerce should be maintained at only a minimal, highly regulated level. Globalization of economy, and the international trade of manufactured goods is undeniably a poor idea, in light of current environmental circumstances. "
RELIGION:
Joe: "ERIC does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world."
Eric: "A misleading summary. While Will may have deemed religion as irrelevant rather than get angry about it, I think that religious beliefs have an undeniable, significant influence on how we participate in the world. And thus, on cross-cultural communication. Mostly, I think it inhibits it any substantive sense. My experience in predominantly-Islamic Indonesia has really galvanized this for me. Whether or not "religion" is an agent or effect of "culture," or both, it is very relevant to one's cultural vision and any change in cultural infrastructure necessitates change in the religious infrastructure as well. BUT, in agreement with Will, the existence of God and the particularities of belief are irrelevant to me. What concerns me in this world of consequences is the prevailing Religious Method, its counterproductive tendencies and the fact that currently, the irrational respect and authority we grant religious thought disallows discourse or progress entirely.
"To be clear, I think religion has been (part of) the problem, but I also think that within its influence lies the solution. In my eyes, humans are most notably religious beings - desperate for life, scared to death of death, able to die for ideas and create a bond with people, music and the earth in ways that we historically have tried to label as 'transcendent.' I think the current environmental problem is a religious opportunity to re-associate religiosity with relationships and landscapes, and in the necessary solution to it we will find a new religious identity that will be an improvement upon the current one."
HUMANITARIANISM:
See my earlier posts on the dangers of Idealism. Saving people is awesome, but only if it is in accordance with saving ourselves from what appears to be environmental catastrophe. To be more controversial, I think that if we had to prioritize, saving the world comes before saving poor people. Hopefully, in doing the former, the latter will follow suit naturally. Or maybe, by doing the latter the former will follow suit. Hm. I will post soon on cutting food production as a solution to environmental crises.
POLITICS:
Joe: "On a global scale."
Eric: "Hm. Universal human rights is great, as far as I know. But our goal shouldn't be to implement social change of any particular form on global scales. I say that any political movement now should be turned towards the local or regional levels of social order. I think we should decrease the size of governing states to a point that we stop trying to make laws that apply so broadly they might as well be termed "universal." I think that logistically, social order and political justice is only able to be administered on small scales with an attentiveness first and foremost to the contextual quirks of that population and the land on which they live. I think we tend to judge the quality of political systems by a pretty superficial index of standard of living, and that more attention to responsible food production and less attention to stock markets is a necessity for a healthy people with a healthy political system."
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Joe did not include this in his post, so I will do my best to summarize our various positions:
WILL: "The crisis isn't really that big or that urgent, and its solution will come naturally through the shifting of economic incentives in capitalist systems."
SETH: "The crisis is big and urgent, I don't see Christianity as a source of the problem and I think it can provide a solution. I think about this topic a lot."
JOE: "This certainly is a huge deal and the environmental crisis is flowing over into socioeconomic injustice as well. I'm not sure what to do about it."
ERIC: "The crisis goes beyond global warming. More alarming to me is rates of deforestation, the global food production system and the implosion of oceanic ecosystems. It signals a religious and socioeconomic crisis as well, and the solution must be religious in scale if it is to work.
ON THE UNITY OF THESE ISSUES:
Eirc: "If any effective solution is going to be found in any one of these subjects, it is going to have to include action in all of them. This is both daunting and exciting. "
ECONOMY:
Joe: "I can assume that [Eric] allies himself more with the redistribution camp. He thinks we should invest in less non-essential things and spend less money."
Eric: "I think that firstly we should be aware of the fact that money is being redistibuted all the time, more and more towards an affluent elite and less and less to the majority of employed citizens. Fixing this problem requires redistributing funds in a different way, not necessarily through political policy but through providing opportunity for the disadvantaged to compete as well (along Will's line of thought). But more importantly, I think that we should realign our economic aims to the empowerment of local, small-scale economies, that provide incentive not for growth but for a deepening and humanizing of the economic realm. All costs, monetary and environmental, should be accounted for in prices, somehow. International and even global commerce should be maintained at only a minimal, highly regulated level. Globalization of economy, and the international trade of manufactured goods is undeniably a poor idea, in light of current environmental circumstances. "
RELIGION:
Joe: "ERIC does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world."
Eric: "A misleading summary. While Will may have deemed religion as irrelevant rather than get angry about it, I think that religious beliefs have an undeniable, significant influence on how we participate in the world. And thus, on cross-cultural communication. Mostly, I think it inhibits it any substantive sense. My experience in predominantly-Islamic Indonesia has really galvanized this for me. Whether or not "religion" is an agent or effect of "culture," or both, it is very relevant to one's cultural vision and any change in cultural infrastructure necessitates change in the religious infrastructure as well. BUT, in agreement with Will, the existence of God and the particularities of belief are irrelevant to me. What concerns me in this world of consequences is the prevailing Religious Method, its counterproductive tendencies and the fact that currently, the irrational respect and authority we grant religious thought disallows discourse or progress entirely.
"To be clear, I think religion has been (part of) the problem, but I also think that within its influence lies the solution. In my eyes, humans are most notably religious beings - desperate for life, scared to death of death, able to die for ideas and create a bond with people, music and the earth in ways that we historically have tried to label as 'transcendent.' I think the current environmental problem is a religious opportunity to re-associate religiosity with relationships and landscapes, and in the necessary solution to it we will find a new religious identity that will be an improvement upon the current one."
HUMANITARIANISM:
See my earlier posts on the dangers of Idealism. Saving people is awesome, but only if it is in accordance with saving ourselves from what appears to be environmental catastrophe. To be more controversial, I think that if we had to prioritize, saving the world comes before saving poor people. Hopefully, in doing the former, the latter will follow suit naturally. Or maybe, by doing the latter the former will follow suit. Hm. I will post soon on cutting food production as a solution to environmental crises.
POLITICS:
Joe: "On a global scale."
Eric: "Hm. Universal human rights is great, as far as I know. But our goal shouldn't be to implement social change of any particular form on global scales. I say that any political movement now should be turned towards the local or regional levels of social order. I think we should decrease the size of governing states to a point that we stop trying to make laws that apply so broadly they might as well be termed "universal." I think that logistically, social order and political justice is only able to be administered on small scales with an attentiveness first and foremost to the contextual quirks of that population and the land on which they live. I think we tend to judge the quality of political systems by a pretty superficial index of standard of living, and that more attention to responsible food production and less attention to stock markets is a necessity for a healthy people with a healthy political system."
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Joe did not include this in his post, so I will do my best to summarize our various positions:
WILL: "The crisis isn't really that big or that urgent, and its solution will come naturally through the shifting of economic incentives in capitalist systems."
SETH: "The crisis is big and urgent, I don't see Christianity as a source of the problem and I think it can provide a solution. I think about this topic a lot."
JOE: "This certainly is a huge deal and the environmental crisis is flowing over into socioeconomic injustice as well. I'm not sure what to do about it."
ERIC: "The crisis goes beyond global warming. More alarming to me is rates of deforestation, the global food production system and the implosion of oceanic ecosystems. It signals a religious and socioeconomic crisis as well, and the solution must be religious in scale if it is to work.
ON THE UNITY OF THESE ISSUES:
Eirc: "If any effective solution is going to be found in any one of these subjects, it is going to have to include action in all of them. This is both daunting and exciting. "
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
ON BREW MISREPRESENTING ME:
In the previous Post, Brew made an attempt to briefly explain our opinions on a few issues, but didn't do me justice.
ECONOMY:
Brew: "WILL essentially believes that the creation of new wealth (more wealth) is a far more effective means of alleviating economic ills (poverty) than the redistribution of existing wealth."
Harper: "I actually believe that the inclusive creation of new wealth is the sustainable and more effective way of alleviating poverty. Redistribution of wealth may be effective at alleviating symptoms of poverty and serves important purposes, but is not a cure because:
BREW: "Economic responsibility, to Will, means getting rich, investing, and spending money on good things."
HARPER: "I'm not really sure what economic responsibility means, but if I had to say what it was to me, I'd shoot for something more like 'Don't spend more than you have.' I think what Brew is getting at is our conversations about liberal guilt and the idea that if you make a lot of money, its at someone else's expense and that the virtuous thing to do is to not make much money. I don't agree with that at all and think that making a lot of money provides for a lot of opportunities to do good. There are some rich people who are rich at the expense of others, but I think that's an overblown argument. The days of the Robber Barons are ending if not long since over."
RELIGION:
BREW: "WILL does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world."
HARPER: "I don't believe in God and already went through my period of anger at religion. One of the things I don't like about it is that it can tend to be divisive. As my dismissal of religion was leading me to be judgmental and dismissive of religious people, I have since given up being angry. Lots of people are religious and will continue to be. I have a deep understanding of religious faith and would rather work with people who are trying to do good through and because of faith than against them. I have no opinion about whether it is good or bad, because I think that's an irrelevant issue. It is, what do we do with it?"
HUMANITARIANISM:
BREW: "I think we all agree that more food, more medicine, more water, etc. for more people is a good thing."
HARPER: "Agreed. And I would like to point out that those are pie growing activities."
POLITICS:
BREW: "I think we’re all left-leaning idealists who assume that democracy is a good thing which can and should be implemented on a global scale."
WILL: "I'm not sure that I really lean in any direction. My main political concern is the lot of the disadvantaged. I think both democracy and capitalism should be implemented on a global scale as both are engines of incredible increases in general welfare, but obviously don't think its as easy as 'just doing it.'"
"As far as being an idealist, I am in the sense that I am an optimist and think that we have the potential to create and sustain tremendous positive change and still want to dedicate myself to that. I am not in the sense that I think we let "the ideal" get in the way of what actually works. I am chiefly interested in doing what works."
ECONOMY:
Brew: "WILL essentially believes that the creation of new wealth (more wealth) is a far more effective means of alleviating economic ills (poverty) than the redistribution of existing wealth."
Harper: "I actually believe that the inclusive creation of new wealth is the sustainable and more effective way of alleviating poverty. Redistribution of wealth may be effective at alleviating symptoms of poverty and serves important purposes, but is not a cure because:
- Redistribution of wealth will never reach the point that wealth is spread equally enough so that no one is poor.
- Redistribution of wealth is not creating many new opportunities enabling the poor to no longer need assistance meaning it will always rely on continued redistribution. When times are hardest and redistribution is most needed, it will be the hardest to come by.
- We've tried it and it's not revolutionizing anything. In the communist nations, the worst off may have been better off for a time, but everyone ended up poor. In the rich countries, to the extent that we redistribute wealth, it is assuaging some severe problems, but not making them go away. The poor are not poor because the rich don't share enough. In general the poor are poor because they lack the opportunity to be otherwise.
BREW: "Economic responsibility, to Will, means getting rich, investing, and spending money on good things."
HARPER: "I'm not really sure what economic responsibility means, but if I had to say what it was to me, I'd shoot for something more like 'Don't spend more than you have.' I think what Brew is getting at is our conversations about liberal guilt and the idea that if you make a lot of money, its at someone else's expense and that the virtuous thing to do is to not make much money. I don't agree with that at all and think that making a lot of money provides for a lot of opportunities to do good. There are some rich people who are rich at the expense of others, but I think that's an overblown argument. The days of the Robber Barons are ending if not long since over."
RELIGION:
BREW: "WILL does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world."
HARPER: "I don't believe in God and already went through my period of anger at religion. One of the things I don't like about it is that it can tend to be divisive. As my dismissal of religion was leading me to be judgmental and dismissive of religious people, I have since given up being angry. Lots of people are religious and will continue to be. I have a deep understanding of religious faith and would rather work with people who are trying to do good through and because of faith than against them. I have no opinion about whether it is good or bad, because I think that's an irrelevant issue. It is, what do we do with it?"
HUMANITARIANISM:
BREW: "I think we all agree that more food, more medicine, more water, etc. for more people is a good thing."
HARPER: "Agreed. And I would like to point out that those are pie growing activities."
POLITICS:
BREW: "I think we’re all left-leaning idealists who assume that democracy is a good thing which can and should be implemented on a global scale."
WILL: "I'm not sure that I really lean in any direction. My main political concern is the lot of the disadvantaged. I think both democracy and capitalism should be implemented on a global scale as both are engines of incredible increases in general welfare, but obviously don't think its as easy as 'just doing it.'"
"As far as being an idealist, I am in the sense that I am an optimist and think that we have the potential to create and sustain tremendous positive change and still want to dedicate myself to that. I am not in the sense that I think we let "the ideal" get in the way of what actually works. I am chiefly interested in doing what works."
On Things Written Over the Last Two Weeks
(A brief message from Joe Brew)
This is a two-part entry.
-Part 1: A brief response to recent posts / an attempt at framing the nature of our debates systematically.
-Part 2: Introducing recent email subjects into the blog conversation.
PART ONE
ON LIMITATIONS AND DIFFERENCES OF OPINION
Eric’s comments on “limitations” were right on. They also serve as a perfect intro to highlighting some of our differences of opinion (which could guide later conversation). As he pointed out, the basic premise of our economic thought, religious thought, humanitarian thought, political thought, etc. is that we must have more for more. More money for more people (economy), more salvation/life for more people (religion), more medicine/water/food for more people (humanitarianism), more democracy for more people (politics). These seem to be the basic tenants guiding our society.
Permit me, for the sake of stimulating argument, to lay down what I believe to be our disagreements regarding these 4 categories:
-ECONOMY:
WILL essentially believes that the creation of new wealth (more wealth) is a far more effective means of alleviating economic ills (poverty) than the redistribution of existing wealth. Economic responsibility, to Will, means getting rich, investing, and spending money on good things.
Based on ERIC’s “limits are good” theory, I can assume that he allies himself more with the redistribution camp. He thinks we should invest in less non-essential things and spend less money.
SETH’s comments that “I think weaning ourselves of the excessiveness that has become a cultural norm will help to bring us back towards sanity too.,” and “I wonder how many people would be willing and able to give up their cars altogether, stop buying goods made in sweatshops, or obtaining stuff they do not need in the first place,” make me believe that he also has anti-capitalist views (pinko).
Joe, the group’s archetypal communist, remains the group’s archetypal communist, but with many doubts.
-RELIGION:
WILL does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world.
ERIC does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world.
SETH believes in God, believes in the usefulness of belief in God, and believes that others should believe in God (?).
JOE does not believe in God, but thinks that believing in God might actually be good for the world.
-HUMANITARIANISM:
I think we all agree that more food, more medicine, more water, etc. for more people is a good thing. ERIC’s recent statement that we need to cut food production by 50% by 2050 call for more commentary.
-POLITICS:
-I think we’re all left-leaning idealists who assume that democracy is a good thing which can and should be implemented on a global scale (?).
PART TWO
ON THE NECESSITY OF BAD DECISIONS
Recent email discussion has been dominated by the questions of
-good decisions versus bad decisions
-planning versus impulsiveness
-letting things happen versus intentionality
These questions have been brought up in relation to several dilemmas, notably those of some of us having been in disagreeable situations which we chose to “ride out” despite the fact that we were unhappy with those situations. We have touched upon the pedagogical value of sadness and the importance of not giving up on situations just because we don’t like them. Likewise, we have brought up the value of re-making life in whatever image we like whenever we like (existentialism, baby!), and the silliness of trying to learn “life lessons” rather than enjoy ourselves when life is too short for lessons to be useful.
What I am wondering is this: are our life choices motivated by genuine internal desire (want) or by imposed external expectation (fear). In more concrete terms, has Eric chosen consciously to “eat rice, think alot, write alot, read alot, sing alot, sleep alot, and travel a lot,” or is he simply doing these things because he, like the rest of us, is trained to act like the person others think he is? Am I in France studying for a Masters Degree immediately after graduation because this is the life I want, or because this is the life I let happen to me?
We often evoke the “magic button” scenario as a litmus test for determining our satisfaction with the lives we lead. But in most cases, the “magic” button is in fact not magic at all. Religious or not, we all believe in our ability to choose*. What I’m essentially asking is, why don’t we exercise this power more often?
*maybe
This is a two-part entry.
-Part 1: A brief response to recent posts / an attempt at framing the nature of our debates systematically.
-Part 2: Introducing recent email subjects into the blog conversation.
PART ONE
ON LIMITATIONS AND DIFFERENCES OF OPINION
Eric’s comments on “limitations” were right on. They also serve as a perfect intro to highlighting some of our differences of opinion (which could guide later conversation). As he pointed out, the basic premise of our economic thought, religious thought, humanitarian thought, political thought, etc. is that we must have more for more. More money for more people (economy), more salvation/life for more people (religion), more medicine/water/food for more people (humanitarianism), more democracy for more people (politics). These seem to be the basic tenants guiding our society.
Permit me, for the sake of stimulating argument, to lay down what I believe to be our disagreements regarding these 4 categories:
-ECONOMY:
WILL essentially believes that the creation of new wealth (more wealth) is a far more effective means of alleviating economic ills (poverty) than the redistribution of existing wealth. Economic responsibility, to Will, means getting rich, investing, and spending money on good things.
Based on ERIC’s “limits are good” theory, I can assume that he allies himself more with the redistribution camp. He thinks we should invest in less non-essential things and spend less money.
SETH’s comments that “I think weaning ourselves of the excessiveness that has become a cultural norm will help to bring us back towards sanity too.,” and “I wonder how many people would be willing and able to give up their cars altogether, stop buying goods made in sweatshops, or obtaining stuff they do not need in the first place,” make me believe that he also has anti-capitalist views (pinko).
Joe, the group’s archetypal communist, remains the group’s archetypal communist, but with many doubts.
-RELIGION:
WILL does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world.
ERIC does not believe in God and thinks that believing in God is a major problem for the world.
SETH believes in God, believes in the usefulness of belief in God, and believes that others should believe in God (?).
JOE does not believe in God, but thinks that believing in God might actually be good for the world.
-HUMANITARIANISM:
I think we all agree that more food, more medicine, more water, etc. for more people is a good thing. ERIC’s recent statement that we need to cut food production by 50% by 2050 call for more commentary.
-POLITICS:
-I think we’re all left-leaning idealists who assume that democracy is a good thing which can and should be implemented on a global scale (?).
PART TWO
ON THE NECESSITY OF BAD DECISIONS
Recent email discussion has been dominated by the questions of
-good decisions versus bad decisions
-planning versus impulsiveness
-letting things happen versus intentionality
These questions have been brought up in relation to several dilemmas, notably those of some of us having been in disagreeable situations which we chose to “ride out” despite the fact that we were unhappy with those situations. We have touched upon the pedagogical value of sadness and the importance of not giving up on situations just because we don’t like them. Likewise, we have brought up the value of re-making life in whatever image we like whenever we like (existentialism, baby!), and the silliness of trying to learn “life lessons” rather than enjoy ourselves when life is too short for lessons to be useful.
What I am wondering is this: are our life choices motivated by genuine internal desire (want) or by imposed external expectation (fear). In more concrete terms, has Eric chosen consciously to “eat rice, think alot, write alot, read alot, sing alot, sleep alot, and travel a lot,” or is he simply doing these things because he, like the rest of us, is trained to act like the person others think he is? Am I in France studying for a Masters Degree immediately after graduation because this is the life I want, or because this is the life I let happen to me?
We often evoke the “magic button” scenario as a litmus test for determining our satisfaction with the lives we lead. But in most cases, the “magic” button is in fact not magic at all. Religious or not, we all believe in our ability to choose*. What I’m essentially asking is, why don’t we exercise this power more often?
*maybe
Monday, October 20, 2008
ON THE END OF OUR WAY OF LIFE
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but check this out:
http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/2008/10/confirmed-us-govt-will-collapse-before.html
If anyone feels they will be safer in Mexico, you are welcome to stay with me provided you can provide for your own food and protection.
(I'm not serious about this.)
http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/2008/10/confirmed-us-govt-will-collapse-before.html
If anyone feels they will be safer in Mexico, you are welcome to stay with me provided you can provide for your own food and protection.
(I'm not serious about this.)
Thursday, October 16, 2008
"The Age of Ambition"
From the New York Times, "The Age of Ambition," in an article by Nicholas D. Kristof:
'Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways. Bill Drayton, the chief executive of an organization called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs, likes to say that such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry. If that sounds insanely ambitious, it is. John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan title their new book on social entrepreneurs "The Power of Unreasonable People."'
The article goes on to talk about examples of social entrepreneurs, young go-getters who founded non-profits devoted to saving people who can't afford reading glasses and taking orphaned Thai children off the streets and onto the path to success.
This has everything to do with my previous post, about the blessings and dangers of young idealism in the absence of moral farsightedness.
Nothing can be more exciting than living in an age of ambition, and to be honest, nothing can be more frightening.
It is the age of social entrepreneurship, newly-grads heading out there to shake things up and re-vamp a clearly incoherent system. How many of them want shiny new teeth, and how many of them want shiny new teeth AND actual solutions?
Harper writes: "There is something wrong with a Welfare State. We've tried it and it doesn't work all that well, espceially for the people who are the hungriest with the achiest teeth."
This brings up an important point. It's an abrasive reality that what our welfare state consists of is the presence of semi-accessible dental care and the complete absence of the most critical criteria for a welfare system: environmental mindfulness, socioeconomic egalitarianism and justice. What we have is a tincture welfare state, in which "pretty good" is good enough, and those who are appointed to judge its goodness are those that tend to benefit from it the most.
The aim of the Fishing Group can be found in the above quote, "To revolutionize the fishing industry," with this small addition: "in a way that works."
Talk about ambition.
ON THE MEXICAN LUNCH (2) HOUR
In the United States of America, lunch hour last for one hour and usually involves ordering, recieving and eating your food promptly in a restuarant, a surprising preponderance of which have laminated menus that are exaclty the same at a number of franchises across the city, region country, etc.
In the United Mexican States, lunch (2) hour lasts anywhere from 2 to 10 hours and sometimes includes drinking in a slot machine-only casino.
In the United Mexican States, lunch (2) hour lasts anywhere from 2 to 10 hours and sometimes includes drinking in a slot machine-only casino.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
OLSON'S POST, ADDED TO
"Perhaps the big problem is not so much the Good Life, but a lack in vision to see the people living the not so good life right next to you or down the street." - Olson
Couldn't have said it better myself. So I will say different stuff, to add to it. Here I go:
Maybe the Good Life ain't so good after all. What we call the Good Life is only a fraction of what such a Life entails.
What my fellow Fishie is addressing here is what I have recently been referring to as our dire "moral myopia." We can't see past the end of our own nose. I think it's important to point out that this is nothing new, and it's certainly older than 6,000 years, and it has nothing to do with eating an apple poisoned with the evils of hell. We've had it ever since we were pseudopodous blobs in the primordial goo, over 2 billion years agoo, whoopidy doo. What I mean is, pretty much all of life has and does function under the philosophy that "what is immediate is what is relevant. I am only concerned with what effects me." But as our species demonstrates with such brash zeal, functioning like this can get you into trouble. How, then, have all the other species of the world, past and present, managed to deal with this fundamental quirk that we, supposedly the most intelligent and resourceful species on the planet, are having such a hard time with?
Well, it turns out the "selfish gene" is also the "subtle gene." The ecological drama, over the course of Deep time, has demonstrated that the self-inhibiting genes actually prosper in the long run over the go-get-em genes. This is because genes, on the micro scale, and life, on the macro scale, flourish in the midst of diversity, negative feedback systems, and interactions. This is simply how it works. The go-get-em genes are great at what they do and soon dominate the entire population, appearing to be successful. But when the environment finally speaks up and says, "Nope," that one go-get-em gene has nowhere to go but extinct. It's happened millions of time in life's history.
We are a go-get-em culture. We have been systematically (not necessarily intentionally...that's a complicated statement) removing every means of negative feedback interaction with the environment. First, and most profoundly, it was with food. 10,000 years ago, having discovered the technologies and practices to produce food at will, we function in this way: we have more food! Look, with all this food we can feed more people! Now we have more people, we need more food! To make more food we need more land! Cut it all down! Look, now we have more food! Hey, now we can feed more people! This is great!
And so on.
We are scared stiff, polemically at war with, and utterly obsessed with the eradication of: LIMITATION.
As it turns out, much to our dismay, limitation is what life is all about.
We didn't find this out while sitting in the pews. In fact, it is in the pews that our united fear against limitation - against functioning WITHIN context - is most clearly spelled out. What is the basic premise of Christianity? That life doesn't end when you die. How anti-limitation, anti-context can you get? Go to religion classes, and you will hear talk of Transcendence this, Transcendence that. Go to philosophy class, and you will find people trying to devise a universal ethic (that is, an ethic where NO MATTER where you act, it will be the right thing). What we are finding out is that if we keep transcending like this, soon there will be no one left to do the transcending. Transcending the bounds of context has been the theoretical fixation of our culture.
Furthermore, the world's theistic religions have brought ethics and morality out of the realm of context entirely. They say, essentially, "You do not have it within yourself to act morally. Your genes and your world cannot teach you how to be a good person. You must be guided by a divine hand from above." Most religious adherents think there really are gods out there, and that without them the world would be a moral wreck. Other religious sympathizers argue that "I may not believe in God, but I think the Christian ethic is great." The ethic to which they refer is this: "How about this: let's act AS IF there really is/are a/many god(s) who judges and punishes you for your mistakes and inspires you to love others as you do yourself." All "as if" religions and ethics are an inherent dismissal of context and its relevance.
We found out that life exists not in CONFLICT with, but BECAUSE of limitation from looking more closely at the earth and how it works. Our culture did it by using science. Indigenous cultures everywhere do it simply by living and interacting with the earth. They don't need test tubes or experiments. They GET IT because they LIVE IT.
Our go-get-em-ness is hyperbolically espoused in nearly every global initiative we see today: The less we know about the effects of our actions, the more likely we are to dish out more money, so we are made to believe that this really is the Good Life, and that there are no costs to our benefits, and we keep electing representatives who makes sure this system continues. Hyperconsumerism reduces economic (in other words, ecological) players to charicatures like "consumer" and "producer" with disregard for the complexities of the players and their relationships. We are all slave to all of our desires. It is in inherent in the fundamental economic terms, "Supply and Demand." "Our economy's a wreck! Ah, it's because we're not big enough! More money! More consumers!" "The People of the world need more palm oil! Quick, cut down 28 hectares of tropical rainforest per minute to appease their every want (in our culture, synonymous with need). Whoops! 1200 species went extinct in one year! Well, we better cut our losses and cut some more!" Global healthcare movements are guilty too, I'm afraid. As is the goal of better sanitation for all, which is said to be the main cause of infant mortality in the world, right up there with malnutrition. NGOs that go to Africa, teaching people better agricultural practices with one hand and handing out contraceptives with the other. The Global Fight to cure Cancer. World peace! More education! Anything and everything that is limiting the human race must be eradicated, and soon.
And, in doing so, we elect ourselves to become The cancer, the uncontrollable, density-independent plague upon the earth. Hmm.
All of the above humanitarian efforts are very important, and I by no means think the world-savers of the world should stop. People everywhere need help getting through this thing, whatever it is. More power to the world-savers.
The problem is that without some system of limitation in place, whether it be economic or principled, these people AREN'T WORLD SAVERS, they are the Dr. Kevorkians of the human race, makng our imminent end less frightening. I'd like to make them heroes instead. Morally-myopic Idealists that go out there "saving" may actually be condemning. A blind idealist, it turns out, is the most dangerous monster that faces our species. An institution like the University of the South can pump out graduating classes of idealists each year, but if they are not equally morally farsighted, what good has been done for the world?
Yes, I want global health care, and yes, I want to rid the world's population of hunger and toothaches. There's nothing wrong with a welfare state. But, there IS something wrong with OUR welfare state, if we can't manage to administer global health care and pro bono dentistry without killing ourselves in the end. Without disease, hunger, or limited access to food, there is nothing to stop us. The Go-Get-Em in us may think that is a good thing, but we now have the intellectual tools and the evidence to admit that it is not. Because, eventually, something will stop us (probably lack of food), whether we like it or not.
What will we devise to counter our moral myopia? And what will we do to make people care? I cannot doubt that it involves a return to the relevance of CONTEXT.
Why Transcend? Go deeper. Get dirty. In the words of Wendell Berry, "Lower yourself."
"Her O Everybody, love the world your earth with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength."
ON THE GOOD LIFE
One of the big topics of conversation among the fishermen has focused upon if religion, economics, both, or neither will help to save humanity from destroying the world. When I think about Christians and environmental issues my palms sweat, my stomach churns, and my head spins. I have grown up in the Episcopal Church and we have prayers and Eucharists in which we thank God for creation, from the cosmos to the caterpillar, but at what point do these prayers and these sacraments become actions and results. Protestant faith, I believe, has made too many people complacent. Instead of acting on the beliefs we hear about in those prayers, we sit in pews on Sunday mornings expecting to change the world. Now, there are of course exceptions to this blanket statement and communal times of worship help to build a structure that could very well act positively. However, in the age of the Good Life, when one can order everything from shotgun shells to shoes on the web or pick up almost anything at Wal-Mart and pay for it in the self-checkout aisle, we have lost contact with whom we purchase from, where our products come from, and what toll those products have on the world in which we live.
American culture has created a world of instant convenience, which on some levels is really cool, creates jobs for many, and makes almost anything available to anyone who has the plastic to pay for it. On the other hand though, we are putting tons of carbon into the atmosphere driving trucks and flying planes with all our precious packages in them. Now that we have made everything available at our fingertips, I believe breaking ourselves of the Good Life will be more difficult than it would have been 30 years ago, when some experts first pointed out our destructive manners. Yes, there are incentives for creating more "green" technology and this is part of the solution, but I think weaning ourselves of the excessiveness that has become a cultural norm will help to bring us back towards sanity too.
Christians talk a lot about sacrifice and supposedly resonate with the image of the cross and that sacrificial offering, but I wonder how many people would be willing and able to give up their cars altogether, stop buying goods made in sweatshops, or obtaining stuff they do not need in the first place (I include myself in this criticism). I am not saying we are necessarily consciously evil, but more evil through ignorance. If we are carrying leftovers in our hands and come into contact with a starving person it is quite easy to depart with our leftovers, but this becomes more difficult when we do not venture out of our house or when we do just sneak through the self-checkout aisle. Perhaps the big problem is not so much the Good Life, but a lack in vision to see the people living the not so good life right next to you or down the street. This could ultimately be a much more difficult problem to solve though, because as Americans, we value individualism much more than community, and when in community, I believe, it is much easier to see someone or some other creature next to you hurting.
So maybe my question is not whether religion or economics might coax humans into aborting this self destruction sequence, but whether we will turn to one another soon enough to see how we are hurting each other and the other creatures of the earth.
Friday, October 10, 2008
BADMINTON or BUST!
This is how I handled the inevitably common questions when I returned to the States after 10 months in Indonesia:
"How was your year in Indonesia?"
"17,508 islands."
"What did you do?"
"Farted around."
I didn't REALLY just fart around. No more than usual. It's just a phrase. I had to be careful if a Mexican was the one asking me, because, as Will pointed out, that second reply would translate to "Partied around," "Fought around," "Drunked around," or "Upped around." And, in the case of my life here, these translations would be misleading.
There is no partying, foughting, drunking or upping, because I am a English teacher at an Islamic boarding school, where I also live, sharing the same building with the girl's dormitory, and partying, foughting, drunking and upping are all strictly forbidden by the Al-Qu'ran, the holy text of the Islamic world.
Let me explain: I live 12 hours ahead of America's eastern time zone, give or take an hour depending on daylight's savings time. Living a life in the future, I have learned to become pretty good at freelance divination. In fact, I have become so good at telling the future that I am only able to talk about it as if it is already part of the past. Hence, the confusing (for you) tense of the verbs in this post's first sentences.
I'm in Indonesia right now. I haven't returned yet. I will be here for 8 more crazy months. I am here as an English Teaching Assistant under the banner of the Fulbright Program. I live in Palembang, a the second largest city in Sumatera, the second largest island in the country. Aside from teaching English, I am required to adopt a community project of my own design. My goal is to foster an appreciation of place, landscape and natural heritage among my students. To do so, I am starting a book club in which all the student members will read a science fiction novel that I am writing under the doofy pen name of "Fyodor Gramsci." Makes sense, right? How ELSE would you foster a sense of place and appreciation for natural heritage?
In Indonesia, things don't have to make sense.
Because I am a tall white American male, everyone thinks I look like Tom Cruise, and therefore everyone here loves me. In a way, I AM a celebrity, because I have already been on Sumateran television once, and I have already made friends with the family of a sultan who lives in an indigenous tribe in the interior of Borneo.
I get a lot of emails from students. They have a lot of questions. For instance, this one came today, from a student who signs his emails "Einstein":
"Oh my God you so profesional,may i know how you can be tallest?Do you want share to me how be tallest? - Einstein"
And I answer,
"Einstein, you get tall by eating a lot of pizzas and bananas. Have a good day! -Mr. Keen"
Sometimes they catch me in the hall and ask me questions like this:
"Can I have some money?"
or
"Will you be my girlfriend?"
or
"Sir, tell me, I must know, how to become a success person?"
And to them, I always answer truthfully:
"To be successful, you must be a tall, white American male who is good at taking tests and driving on the Interstate without crashing."
So, what exactly do I mean by "farting around" if I don't mean all the usual translations of the phrase? To put it briefly, I eat rice, think alot, write alot, read alot, sing alot, sleep alot, and travel alot.
Except for the last activity, the rest should come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I usually never eat rice, and I usually never give myself the time to think, write, read, sing, and especially not sleep.
But this is Eric M Keen in Indo N. Esia. UNPRECEDENTED!!! UNPREDICTABLE!!! Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I!
3 summers ago, I had a blog, called "This is what It's Like to Be Crazy." On that blog, I wrote like this:
"Remember: I am not exploding, therefore I am not living. The tenuous mantra of the desperate and disillusioned, yet tragically and inexplicably hopefull and tall! Good thing we have skin, or else we'd be flopping our innards all over the place when we walked!
"Keep in those juices!
"PeAcHeS!
"THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON IN THE WORLD! How can I remain calm at a time like this?! Every TIME rears its ugly urgent head. You are my density.
"To you, the adventurous and the intrepid: Ignore the reality of life and your life will be realized. The only things worth believing in are the things worth believing in. (?) ... Re-present the past, keep the present on its toes, and STRESS the future out. I still believe in flying, and (whether I do or not, whether I like it or not) I still believe in love, i still believe in LOVE...i still believe in love. It's hard to make the good times last.
"'He was the only person who ever understood me, and he didn't even understand me.'"
"Two or Three cheers for Indecision! The lion sleeps tonight..." -July 2, 2006, St. Catherine's Island
Three summers ago, I was thrashing. I was wild. Crazy.
Then, two summers ago, I was writing things like this:
"Luke was right when he said the only music that does justice to the Hell Creek Formation in northern Montana is intense opera music, and Jacques Cousteau was right when he said I have no right to deny leading an extraordinary life when I have the chance. Here I sit, tired, smelly, burnt out, lips sunburned, feet sore from too much running and dancing, here I sit in an extraordinary life worried that I don't deserve it, that I am not spending it right, that my investments aren't wise. The Great Misconception of my life: that 'time is a kind of exchange', in which I trade something for some other return, when in actuality I have nothing that I can actually give, and there is nothing to receive, because that's J U S T. H O W. I T. W O R K S." - July 23, 2007, Billings, MT public library
Two summers ago, I was still thrashing, but confused and a little more tired.
Then, this last summer, I was writing things like this:
"My butt REALLY hurts!" - July 13, Ontario, day 26 of my cross-Canada cycling trip.
This last summer, I was way too tired, and my butt was way too sore, to thrash. Still confused though.
And now, here in Indonesia, I have been writing things like this:
"Listen: For the rest of my life, I want my body to be active and my mind to be on food, love, land and community, maybe even in that order, both in an academic and practical sense, all the time. Any other questions?"
Sometimes I miss writing like I did back on St. Catherine's island. Sometimes I want to write like Jack Kerouac. Other times, I want to write like Wendell Berry or EO Wilson. Other times, I want to write like Ed Abbey, other times like Kurt Vonnegut. What I really want to do is find the great compromise between them all, write like a hero and make the ground tremble.
Here's the stuff I want to talk about. Harper already introduced a few topics, here are some more specific headlines that I am definitely thinking about and might write about here someday:
Headlines:
~ "SAVING THE WORLD" REVISITED: Keen turns his back on the question of his life!
~ THE FLUFFINESS OF HOPE, THE AUDACITY OF SOUP
~ WHAT WE HAVE AGAINST 'CONTEXT' AND WHY IT'S A RELIGIOUS ISSUE
~ NATURAL RESOURCE CONTROL AND THE ISLAM WORLD: There's a pattern here!
~ HOW LOVE WORKS IN INDONESIA: An Anthropological Account
~ KEEN CONSIDERING CONVERTING TO ANIMISM! NO FOOLING!
~ "BARACK"IN' N ROLLIN' ON THE INDONESIAN GRAVY TRAIN! Indonesian Perceptions of American Politics
~ KEEN WRITES ARTICLES FOR NATIONAL NEWSPAPER UNDER PSEUDONYM "LARRY JONES!" Just kidding. Just kidding.
~ KEEN PROPOSES WORLD-SAVING SOLUTION: Cut food production by 50% by 2050!
~ KEEN HAS MORE CONTROVERSIAL THOUGHTS ABOUT WORLD RELIGIONS!
~ KEEN'S 10-Step SOLUTION ON HOW TO BECOME MORE LIKE SETH OLSON: Being cool never came so easily!
~ THE 'HOW, THEN, SHALL WE LIVE?' LECTURE KEEN ALWAYS WANTED TO HEAR!
If you want to see the articles to any of these headlines in particular, write a comment and our staff will get immediately to work.
Sampai lagi...
"How was your year in Indonesia?"
"17,508 islands."
"What did you do?"
"Farted around."
I didn't REALLY just fart around. No more than usual. It's just a phrase. I had to be careful if a Mexican was the one asking me, because, as Will pointed out, that second reply would translate to "Partied around," "Fought around," "Drunked around," or "Upped around." And, in the case of my life here, these translations would be misleading.
There is no partying, foughting, drunking or upping, because I am a English teacher at an Islamic boarding school, where I also live, sharing the same building with the girl's dormitory, and partying, foughting, drunking and upping are all strictly forbidden by the Al-Qu'ran, the holy text of the Islamic world.
Let me explain: I live 12 hours ahead of America's eastern time zone, give or take an hour depending on daylight's savings time. Living a life in the future, I have learned to become pretty good at freelance divination. In fact, I have become so good at telling the future that I am only able to talk about it as if it is already part of the past. Hence, the confusing (for you) tense of the verbs in this post's first sentences.
I'm in Indonesia right now. I haven't returned yet. I will be here for 8 more crazy months. I am here as an English Teaching Assistant under the banner of the Fulbright Program. I live in Palembang, a the second largest city in Sumatera, the second largest island in the country. Aside from teaching English, I am required to adopt a community project of my own design. My goal is to foster an appreciation of place, landscape and natural heritage among my students. To do so, I am starting a book club in which all the student members will read a science fiction novel that I am writing under the doofy pen name of "Fyodor Gramsci." Makes sense, right? How ELSE would you foster a sense of place and appreciation for natural heritage?
In Indonesia, things don't have to make sense.
Because I am a tall white American male, everyone thinks I look like Tom Cruise, and therefore everyone here loves me. In a way, I AM a celebrity, because I have already been on Sumateran television once, and I have already made friends with the family of a sultan who lives in an indigenous tribe in the interior of Borneo.
I get a lot of emails from students. They have a lot of questions. For instance, this one came today, from a student who signs his emails "Einstein":
"Oh my God you so profesional,may i know how you can be tallest?Do you want share to me how be tallest? - Einstein"
And I answer,
"Einstein, you get tall by eating a lot of pizzas and bananas. Have a good day! -Mr. Keen"
Sometimes they catch me in the hall and ask me questions like this:
"Can I have some money?"
or
"Will you be my girlfriend?"
or
"Sir, tell me, I must know, how to become a success person?"
And to them, I always answer truthfully:
"To be successful, you must be a tall, white American male who is good at taking tests and driving on the Interstate without crashing."
So, what exactly do I mean by "farting around" if I don't mean all the usual translations of the phrase? To put it briefly, I eat rice, think alot, write alot, read alot, sing alot, sleep alot, and travel alot.
Except for the last activity, the rest should come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I usually never eat rice, and I usually never give myself the time to think, write, read, sing, and especially not sleep.
But this is Eric M Keen in Indo N. Esia. UNPRECEDENTED!!! UNPREDICTABLE!!! Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I!
3 summers ago, I had a blog, called "This is what It's Like to Be Crazy." On that blog, I wrote like this:
"Remember: I am not exploding, therefore I am not living. The tenuous mantra of the desperate and disillusioned, yet tragically and inexplicably hopefull and tall! Good thing we have skin, or else we'd be flopping our innards all over the place when we walked!
"Keep in those juices!
"PeAcHeS!
"THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON IN THE WORLD! How can I remain calm at a time like this?! Every TIME rears its ugly urgent head. You are my density.
"To you, the adventurous and the intrepid: Ignore the reality of life and your life will be realized. The only things worth believing in are the things worth believing in. (?) ... Re-present the past, keep the present on its toes, and STRESS the future out. I still believe in flying, and (whether I do or not, whether I like it or not) I still believe in love, i still believe in LOVE...i still believe in love. It's hard to make the good times last.
"'He was the only person who ever understood me, and he didn't even understand me.'"
"Two or Three cheers for Indecision! The lion sleeps tonight..." -July 2, 2006, St. Catherine's Island
Three summers ago, I was thrashing. I was wild. Crazy.
Then, two summers ago, I was writing things like this:
"Luke was right when he said the only music that does justice to the Hell Creek Formation in northern Montana is intense opera music, and Jacques Cousteau was right when he said I have no right to deny leading an extraordinary life when I have the chance. Here I sit, tired, smelly, burnt out, lips sunburned, feet sore from too much running and dancing, here I sit in an extraordinary life worried that I don't deserve it, that I am not spending it right, that my investments aren't wise. The Great Misconception of my life: that 'time is a kind of exchange', in which I trade something for some other return, when in actuality I have nothing that I can actually give, and there is nothing to receive, because that's J U S T. H O W. I T. W O R K S." - July 23, 2007, Billings, MT public library
Two summers ago, I was still thrashing, but confused and a little more tired.
Then, this last summer, I was writing things like this:
"My butt REALLY hurts!" - July 13, Ontario, day 26 of my cross-Canada cycling trip.
This last summer, I was way too tired, and my butt was way too sore, to thrash. Still confused though.
And now, here in Indonesia, I have been writing things like this:
"Listen: For the rest of my life, I want my body to be active and my mind to be on food, love, land and community, maybe even in that order, both in an academic and practical sense, all the time. Any other questions?"
Sometimes I miss writing like I did back on St. Catherine's island. Sometimes I want to write like Jack Kerouac. Other times, I want to write like Wendell Berry or EO Wilson. Other times, I want to write like Ed Abbey, other times like Kurt Vonnegut. What I really want to do is find the great compromise between them all, write like a hero and make the ground tremble.
Here's the stuff I want to talk about. Harper already introduced a few topics, here are some more specific headlines that I am definitely thinking about and might write about here someday:
Headlines:
~ "SAVING THE WORLD" REVISITED: Keen turns his back on the question of his life!
~ THE FLUFFINESS OF HOPE, THE AUDACITY OF SOUP
~ WHAT WE HAVE AGAINST 'CONTEXT' AND WHY IT'S A RELIGIOUS ISSUE
~ NATURAL RESOURCE CONTROL AND THE ISLAM WORLD: There's a pattern here!
~ HOW LOVE WORKS IN INDONESIA: An Anthropological Account
~ KEEN CONSIDERING CONVERTING TO ANIMISM! NO FOOLING!
~ "BARACK"IN' N ROLLIN' ON THE INDONESIAN GRAVY TRAIN! Indonesian Perceptions of American Politics
~ KEEN WRITES ARTICLES FOR NATIONAL NEWSPAPER UNDER PSEUDONYM "LARRY JONES!" Just kidding. Just kidding.
~ KEEN PROPOSES WORLD-SAVING SOLUTION: Cut food production by 50% by 2050!
~ KEEN HAS MORE CONTROVERSIAL THOUGHTS ABOUT WORLD RELIGIONS!
~ KEEN'S 10-Step SOLUTION ON HOW TO BECOME MORE LIKE SETH OLSON: Being cool never came so easily!
~ THE 'HOW, THEN, SHALL WE LIVE?' LECTURE KEEN ALWAYS WANTED TO HEAR!
If you want to see the articles to any of these headlines in particular, write a comment and our staff will get immediately to work.
Sampai lagi...
Thursday, October 9, 2008
ON LIFE, MINE RIGHT NOW
Since I have yet to send out any sort of massive email explaining what I am up to, that I live in
I live in
I was awarded a Fulbright-García Robles Binational Business grant, which is a 10 month grant awarded jointly by the U.S. and Mexican governments. As part of my grant I am working full time as the marketing director for a law firm in
So far, things are going great. I am having the time of my life. Mexicans are much friendlier than people in
After spending years being very impressed with my Spanish, I arrived here to find out that I in fact suck at Spanish. Last summer, while living in
Although it took a couple of weeks I have finally picked up on Mexican slang, which consists of some variation on the words fart or poop. Some quick examples:
To say “a party,” Mexicans say “a fart.”
To say “a fight,” Mexicans say “a fart.”
To say “he is drunk,” Mexicans say “he is fart.”
To say “what’s up?” Mexicans say “¿What fart?”
To say “what the heck?” Mexicans say “¿What fart?” (but angrily)
To say “he is funny” Mexicans say “He is pooped.”
To say “he drives me crazy” Mexicans say “He poops me.”
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
ON THE NEW BLOG:
We've been having intense email battles for months now:
- How do we save the world?
- What is love?
- How do we deal with privilege and responsibility?
- Isn't Joe wrong about communism?
- Isn't Joe wrong about everything?
- Which one of us is the girliest?
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