Saturday, March 3, 2007

Saturday and a Question about War and Peace

After today I have sixteen Saturdays left before I retire. Or maybe fifteen, if you don't count the last one, since I'm not working that day.

All week I've been getting up earlier and earlier to make sure I get some writing done before school. And I've been telling people that when I retired I was going to get up even earlier.

And then the crash came. I slept until eight, and then laid in bed and watched a movie about Caesar and Rome and Paul. Paul was an advocate for peace and Caesar was an advocate for war. Caesar fell in love with a woman and, rather than winning her over with kind words and flowers, wanted to "own" her as a slave.

Yesterday a supervisor was lamenting that so many of his employees were at war. Another was lamenting that we have a "them and us" mentality. Even with the Gideons putting a book about peace in every hotel room, and even with some of the worst offenders going to church each Sunday, we still fight to the death to main our territories and our prides.

My college has twice the number of students in Criminal Justice than we do in Teacher Education. Yet most of us know that education is the means to keep people out of the criminal justice system (i.e. jail). As in Caesar's time, more choose to fight than to be an agents of peace like Paul.

Why?

Friday, March 2, 2007

Ideas, Digestion, and Garlic

All day long I think of ideas for the next blog. I try to write them down, but often they fleet out of my mind as quickly as they appear.

And yet, it is against my rules to look back at my list for an idea. The list is just a safety net. Suppose I wake up one morning without an idea. All I would have to do is to check my list and pick one of the ideas.

I could write about my rules, i.e. the fact that I make rules (perhaps some brand of mild autism) so that I don't have to make choices about the little things in life...like what to eat.

Or I could write about being lost. I was talking with a friend yesterday that I'd rather be lost than found. Someone asked (trying to be friendly) if I was lost, and could they help me? I replied that I'd rather be lost. For me, it is the process of finding one's way that makes life exciting. Who wants to be told how the book ends?

But instead I want to write about digestion. Or maybe about garlic. Both of these are not proper subjects for discussion. For me, the more garlic I eat the less I sleep. When I go to a dinner I ask for a vegan or vegetarian selection. Chefs must be trained to think that garlic is a favorite among vegetarians. And unfortunately, most of the recipes in vegetarian cookbooks contain garlic, by the cloves. And most of the vegetarian selections at Whole Foods have garlic. Buddhists do not eat garlic (or onions). Why don't we listen to them?

Remember, though, that I'm not going to write about garlic either. My wife doesn't like it when I eat garlic, and this is her computer, so I have to honor her wishes.

It is digestion that interests me. It is digestion as a metaphor for how we process experience. And it is digestion as one of those very elemental processes (like sex) that we should only mention to our very best of friends.

Except, that is, if your parents were psychoanalyzed by a Freudian. Then it is fine to make reference to the entire eating process, and since eating is really sublimated sex, the only subject we really can talk about (either directly, or by inference) is sex.

Hey wait, this was going to be about digestion. A friend used the word "digestion" in the sentence "art is good for the soul and the digestion" and her friend thought she shouldn't have used the "d" word. I suspect her friend's parents are not psychologists, so she doesn't quite understand how the word was used. These "bodily" processes are for some the elephant in the room. We all know they are there, but we should never mention them.

I took someone to see some drawings I am exhibiting. They immediately were taken aback because the figures were sexual beings. At an attempt to explain, I told him that we were all made that way (with sex).

One of my creative writing teachers in college told me that I needed to get rid of the toilet paper. I never asked him what he meant, because I understood that this was more about him and the fact his parents weren't Freudians.

The challenges remain. How do I tell the host that I eat everything except food with eyes, cheese, wheat, eggs, sugar, onions, and garlic without seeming a little bit overbearing and obnoxious? And, in a world of non-Freudians, how can I mention words (or images) about digestion and sex without making the reader a little (or a lot) uncomfortable?

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Continuum

Photographers (my mindset) have a special affinity for grays. That is, photographers raised in the black and white tradition abhor pictures with too much contrast because they lack in detail. We never really meant black and white as the only tones. In fact, when there is excessive contrast we take the appropriate measures to lower the contrast (add a fill light, reduce the development, etc.).

Yes and no are parallel in many ways to black and white. I'm not sure if yes should always be associated with one or the other. In the question, should we be in Iraq? (one of my proposed topics for the day), yes may be black (we fight until one side is dead) and no may be white (we leave, the smoke clears, and the sun shines brightly).

One of the problems with yes or no is that it polarizes two people in a debate. One says yes, and another says no, and neither acknowledges that gray (somewhat, maybe, sometimes, often, etc.) is probably a much better answer. Often I'm asked a "yes/no" question, and I give a maybe answer. I'll say that "I'll look into that" or "we'll see" or even "that's a good idea." Then the requester will go away thinking the answer was yes, and all sorts of confusion and disappointment may ensue.

Will John Edwards be a good candidate for the Republicans? He'd probably be better that the dumber of my two dogs, and he'd probably be worse than an ideal candidate that we might imagine. So why don't we ask "how good will he be" or "how bad"? Photographers speak of high key (predominately white) and low key (predominately black) images. Suppose the debate became more about the tones of gray rather than about black or white?

Even such seemingly absolutes like marriage are continuums. We know of people who are "married" to the extent that they hold a license and occasionally go out to dinner. And there are others you can not imagine life without the other person and desire a simultaneous death should the other decease. When we get down to our knees, perhaps we should be asking, "how much will you marry me?" Marriages all end up as a range of tones (perhaps high or low key), though we often don't discuss "what kind of marriage" from the start.

I believe that compromise and continuums may not be good friends. Compromise comes from black and white and often comes with disappointment. It is not always the win win that it is touted to be. Instead of saying, should I work today? should we say, "how much should I work today?"

Is this now the end of this defense of the gray scale? Maybe, somewhat, close, yes, for now.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Problem With Awards

"Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need." (Emily Dickenson)

Though I grew up in a privileged world, we didn't have many awards ceremonies. I was in the Boy Scouts for a short time and remember going to an Order of the Arrow ceremony, but that was it. I believe that the prevailing philosophy was two fold: 1) that our accomplishments were minimal and 2) that the "reason" for learning was the joy of the process and not for the awards.

When my kids were growing up, I noticed a shift. There were awards everywhere. Kids would get awards for going to award ceremonies. And they (and their parents) seem to buy these accomplishments as milestones in their lives.

One of my teachers used to tell the story that when he was young he won a number of blue ribbons in an art exhibit. His teacher came up to him and said, "remember, you're paintings are never be any bigger than you are."

I called up this teacher one day when I was a hotshot senior in college and complained, upon submitting my work to some art competitions, that I had received a number of rejections. He brilliantly answered, "you must not be any good." That was the last time I complained about not getting an award.

There was a study done a few years ago about the self-esteem of students versus their chances of success in school. It was found that Asians had the lowest self-esteem but the greatest chance of success...and Americans the opposite.

A pet peeve of mine is that the award ceremony often focuses on the individual and not on their accomplishments. I like it when the MC tells what this person did to achieve such divine status. And not that their accomplishment is that they survived for 30 years. Awards should be for more than longevity.

My grandson learned to crawl yesterday and was able to investigate a silver ball in the corner of the room that he has eyed for his entire life. His award is that he gets to touch the ball and explore his own image in it. But suppose his parents pick him up and congratulate him for his accomplishment. Then will he start to explore for parental approval? And suppose he is an adolescent and wants parental disapproval. Is he going to then start on negative behavior?

Grades (especially inflated grades) are part of this culture of awards. Not once has a student said that they deserve an "A" because they've learned so much. Instead they argue that the teacher didn't give them the questions in advance, or that the teacher came late to class, or that someone else got an A so they should as well.

We just had the academy awards. Did any movie become better or worse because of the award(s) it did or didn't get? Of course not.

Another problem with awards is the way that it puts one's accomplishments above others. We achieve in so many ways, that sometimes we think less of ourselves because we didn't do as well in what someone else believes deems most important.

I remember how I squirmed when my great niece (who is truly great) told me that she was the second or third smartest kid in her class. How are these kids being rated and what damage is being done? Don't their teachers realize that we are all good (and bad) at different activities. And that the "story is not over until the end."

Well, to all those who received an award yesterday. Please put it away in the back of your deepest closet and today crawl toward that silver ball just because you want to see the funny little kid reflected in its shiny surface.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Boundaries

"Setting boundaries is not a more sophisticated way of manipulation - although some people will say they are setting boundaries, when in fact they are attempting to manipulate. The difference between setting a boundary in a healthy way and manipulating is: when we set a boundary we let go of the outcome." (Robert Burney)

One of my favorite teachers used to describe space as being a variation of densities. There are no real edges to objects because molecules fly in to and out of objects at all times. These molecules do not just fly out a few inches or feet, but actually reach to the edges of the universe.

In order to move through the universe we need room or we will start exchanging molecules with other dense objects. And everywhere there are molecules (parts of our self, so to speak), so we can only bump into parts of ourselves.

Be that as it may, we do feel crowded when others are on top of us, either physically or mentally. Setting boundaries ranges from the octopus hiding in a cloud of ink to someone telling their mate that they'd like to have a few minutes alone in the morning when they wake up.

The expression "don't cross me" doesn't exactly refer to boundaries, but does infer that one desires to go down a specific path without any obstructions.

Some people fall apart when we get too close to them. They get angry and make us the culprit, even though they are the ones who create the discomfort (in their own minds). Others, when crowded, can simply move away a little, or ask another for a little more space.

What are boundaries made of? Are they lead, or are they "ether (believed at one time to be the common matter of space)?" How can we move from having lead boundaries (that no one can cross or see through, to transparent ether boundaries? If we are all congregated masses of the same thing then having bullet proof boundaries make less sense. We are open because we are everything. Everything embraces us because we are everything.

Denying this doesn't accomplish much more than the ostrich does by putting their head in the sand.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Conflict

Making choices are internal conflicts. I'm speaking here about external conflicts. Are they a proof for the validity of post-modernism, i.e. that there are different ways of perceiving a situation?

Often conflicts seem to be power struggles. Someone is in a position of power over another and the other does not like how they are being treated. The "worker" feels that they are being pushed around. They feel that the "boss" (as in dean, teacher, supervisor) is abusing their power, and/or not listening to them. For example, the boss says "sit down" and the worker says "there is a scorpion on my chair." Each comes to the situation with a different perspective, and with different information. The worker wants to explain. The boss wants to get started with the class, the job, etc. Then the worker gets loud., "but there is a scorpion on my chair!" The boss is focused on his/her job, so he gets agitated and tells the worker to be quiet and sit down. He says "it is just a small scorpion, and what am I paying you for anyway?" Or maybe he will chastise the worker, asking if they have read the "rights and responsibilities of the worker" or maybe a union resolution. Neither party has much respect for each other, and neither is listening to the other's viewpoint.

Some say that the internal conflicts in Iraq are not about religion but about land. Everyone wants their fair share. Again, from a post-modern perspective, each is viewing the situation differently. They may spend more in resources (including lives) than they would to agree on a compromise. They illustrate the saying, "you'd rather be right than alive." And religion does play a role here. We tend to stick together with our own kind. When an outside aggressor shows his/her fangs, we identify even further with our own people. We grow up learning the difference between "us and them." And whenever "them" steps out of line, we take up arms. Many die, many are injured, and love is squelched.

I love the story about the blind man and the man without legs who lived in a forest. They argued continually until a fire started to sweep through the forest. Then they joined ranks and fled, taking advantage of the blind man's legs and the other man's eyes. For me, how we move from conflict to interdependence is the key. Perhaps as we align goals (like getting out of the forest, learning, making a profit) we can start to see that cooperation will only benefit both parties.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Literacy, Social Justice, and Privilege

Travis commented in the post about Paula Hoffman that literacy, social justice, and privilege may be mutually inclusive or exclusive.

Wikopedia gives a common definition of literacy, though some say that it is not the tools commonly referred to (reading and writing), but it is using these tools to understand oneself and his/her world (which, in a post-modern sense, is not the same as "the world" (which probably is meaningless)). Tomorrow I will sit in the middle of a dispute of two parties, both of whom believe their perception of the situation is correct. Is one more literate (and correct) than the other because they are the teacher and have multiple higher degrees? Or is one more literate because they have not grown up with "privilege" and they understand what it means to be disenfranchised? I would maintain that there are different literacies and that the most we can do is to try to understand each other's.

Social Justice plays into the mix because some believe "it is not fair" that some have privilege and others don't. Social Justice seems to be an effort to reduce or eliminate the gap between the haves and the have nots. One of my friends thinks that it is sinful that CEOs get paid 6000 times more than their workers. Social Justice, for him, would be to figure out a way to not pay these SOBs (his words, not mine) so much.

The concept of privilege seems to have come from the French Revolution where some wanted to abolish privilege, i.e. laws that were applied to one group and not another. We still have many privileges (and privileged people) in our society even though the many laws that legalize the injustices are gone. Some can take a walk around the block at night in safety and others cannot. Some can pay George Washington University $50000 a year for an education, and others cannot. And some say that it is not fair that we have so much discrepancy. And others, like the Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker, says that without these discrepancies there would be no incentives for the have nots to get educated and improve themselves. Is it social justice that the privileged have more opportunity to improve themselves?

One can make the argument that everyone is literate, but that some literacies don't avail the opportunities of the privileged, and that social justice is the idea that we need to equalize the playing field so that all have an opportunity to succeed. Should we pay the CEO less and/or pay the coal miner more? Should we provide health care for everyone? And great housing? And transportation? And incentives, as well?

I don't know.

Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"