Moscow.

It has taken me awhile to get to writing about Moscow. There is no particular reason for it; busy, as always. But rather than doing a flowing narrative, I am going to go over my trip through moments.

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Arrival, when the plane touches down. I’m excited, thrilled to finally be landing and relieved that this has actually happened. Looking through the window I see buildings go by with Russian script; the fact of where I am starts to sink in, and my heart races with excitement. I feel validated, as though all the abstract reasoning I had for coming here is finally vibrant and alive within me.

Thirty minutes later, in the cab. The man who was waiting for us, holding a sign with Amanda’s name on it, has kind eyes. He looks strikingly like Yuli Daniel, the dissent whose serious visage stares out at people from the wall of my bathroom sink. On the ride into Moscow, he talks about the architecture; this building was from the Stalin period, this other from Khrushchev. It is startling to hear someone speak of these rulers not as part of a pop history quiz nor in the loaded political vocabulary of the pundit, but simply as leaders of their own country in which they live. People who left their mark. Russia becomes real.

Fifteen hours later. It is two o’clock in the morning, and Amanda and I are out in the middle of Moscow. We slept for twelve hours upon arrival, and now we are starving. We spent at least an hour charting a Google map to the nearest 24 hour diner; it doesn’t seem that far away, and even has an American name, so perhaps just out of the sheer momentum of being here we go. The streets are all blanketed with snow, and they are almost completely empty. Everything is strange in its stillness, an odd way to be introduced to a city. The entire time I am figuring this is not the brightest idea, and yet am strangely calm. We are unable to find the street we are supposed to turn on, so we give up and walk back to the hotel. We end up ordering room service.

Around eight hours later. It’s snowing. Amanda and I can’t figure out how to get over to Red Square. We can see it, but a river of a street divides us, cars bellowing down the road without a cross walk in sight. Jay walking is completely out of the question. Finally, we find a place to cross. Wondering about in what looks like a major shopping district when it isn’t a cold, snowy morning, we’re about to get frustrated. Then suddenly Amanda cries out “Oh, shit!” and I turn to see the cathedral of St. Basil’s looming down at us. “Oh holy fuck,” comes my response, about half a second after Amanda’s. It is the first time either of us have been genuinely startled by a building.

That evening. I wake up at four in the morning. I can’t go back to sleep. I e-mail my parents, Daniel. I take a warm bath in the luxurious bathtub in our hotel room. I turn on the TV and watch some program on the Discovery Channel, which is British in audio but with Russian script for all the commercials. Odd. I do not know that this will be what I am doing almost every night here.

The next day. We are in the subway. We found the circle line and are now getting out at every stop, eager to see the famous Moscow metro. I’m staring up at the ceiling, looking at a huge mosaic of Lenin in Red Square. There is one of Stalin too, and a bust of Lenin at the end of the station. The bust sits next to what looks like rough scaffolding, plywood walls that seem to hide some sort of construction project. Lenin sits there as though he is tacked on, just another neglected part of the rubble. I do not think many Russians stop to look at him anymore. I think they have not even bothered to remove him.

That night. I am sleepless again, and frustrated about it. I take three baths. But I do learn some interesting things about the Amazon, and discover a charming BBC show where people try to make a certain amount of money by selling off old antiques.

The next afternoon. Amanda and I are in this strange marketplace that the flight attendant in Atlanta told us to come to. From a distance it looks like an imitation of Disneyland, with tall fairytale castles and whimsical buildings. Up close it is quite dilapidated, a wooden, themed marketplace stacked with peddlers. Amanda buys a babushka that starts with Obama and works its way down to Reagan; I get one with Lenin to Putin, and the woman selling them to us laughs when I quickly make my choice. The booths sell a lot of Soviet tourist trinkets, from flags to pins with the hammer and sickle. A nice man helps Amanda choose out one of the pins. The people are friendly and eager to please you with a purchase. All the Soviet Union seems to be to them is an opportunity to make some money.

The last day. Walking through Red Square, wedding receptions are all around us. Amanda and I see an old woman in front of Lenin’s mausoleum. She is hunched over, talking to her grandson and pointing towards Lenin. She must be telling him the story of the Revolution, and what Lenin did afterwards. She must be trying to instill in him the values she holds so dear, the values she sees slipping away every time a new mall replaces an old government building or her granddaughter asks for the trendiest new coat. It is perhaps the saddest and yet the most beautiful thing I see on our trip. I wonder about how Lenin failed her, how humanity failed her. I think about the limits on our dreams and what can happen when we can see nothing else. I think about the irony that the Bolsheviks thought they were bringing on the salvation of man. And yet I still think it’s beautiful that there is something in all of that in which she still believes.

An hour later. I’m wondering through the statue garden. I was determined to find this place, and the project will fill almost the whole day. The garden does not only have old, torn down statues of Soviet leaders, but dozens of other artistic projects. Perhaps the most striking is Jesus crucified on a missile. Not too difficult to put that one in context. Some of the statues are so haunting as to be difficult to look at; leave it to the Russians to produce the visual equivalent of existential angst. I go to see Stalin, whose nose is chopped off. Nearby there is a cage of stone heads, lanced behind barbed wire. They are supposed to represent his victims. Stalin’s victims. I am glad we came here last. This was the right place to come at the end.

An hour later. Amanda and I walk through Red Square for the last time. Gum, the largest mall in Moscow, is lit up behind us. Its light reflects in the shiny, polished stone of Lenin’s mausoleum. The irony seems almost purposeful. What a strange, silent and aching place.

The next morning. We say goodbye to the man from the taxi service. He is the same one who picked us up, and he brought us into the airport to show us how the gates work and where to watch for our flight status. Amanda gives him a nice tip, and his whole face softens into clay as he thanks us. His eyes seem to sink into his face, and I wish I had the courage to ask for a picture with him. It was such a beautiful face, and I never want to forget it. I will try always to keep it in my memory, placed alongside the dark eyes of Yuli Daniel.

And it all looked so good on paper.

The class I TA for just covered affirmative action, and as a result I had to listen to some of the students weigh in on the topic. One student found the admission policies of one school to give excessive weight to race; 20 points out of a possible 150 point system. Race, he said, is not something one can help; and therefore, it is wrong to admit anyone on anything other than “the merits.” He was also annoyed with giving points for poverty, since he failed to see how this relates to anything.

Another student responded that poverty and minority status have a high correlation, and so it is wrong to suppose that a merit based system is really colorblind considering the poor quality of schools in inner-city neighborhoods. But her opponent insisted that wealth, unlike race, is mutable, and so should not be taken into consideration (this would imply that he reversed his original reasoning about why race shouldn’t be considered, but they didn’t plan this out, clearly).  She asked how one gets a good job when you can’t go to college? He retorted that you work hard for a while and then you go. Much to my relief, this drew aghast laughs from about a third of the class.

But I do extend some sympathy towards his position, not because it is right, but because it is quite seductive. I only vaguely remember my views on affirmative action when I was an undergraduate, but considering my conservative political outlook at the time it probably ran something much like that. The injustices of the past are in the past; to take them into consideration and reward those for their skin color is to perpetuate the old injustice in a new direction, and if anything encourages racism and discourages merit. The idea is so simple, so pure; so how can it be wrong? Who could argue against a “merit based” system?

The problem with this is that it assumes a merit-based system has, or ever could exist. It never has, it never will. That is not to say that someone with nothing to show for his high school education can make it into a quality university – hard work and dedication usually do play a role in the outcomes of our endeavors. However, I wonder if the student against affirmative action ever stopped to ask himself how he managed to do well in high school. It probably had something to do with going to a good school, because he grew up in an affluent suburb. It probably had something to do with having parents who not only could provide him food, clothing, and education but whatever else he needed to keep himself ahead of the game. It probably had something to do, in short, with not growing up in a broken neighborhood filled with crime and steeped in a culture which offers no encouragement to bright students. And I then wonder if he figures he deserved all of this from the start, from the moment of his birth, if he earned his privileges and advantages. The obvious answer is that he did not. From the beginning of his life, everything about his circumstance gives the lie to the idea of a “merit based” world.

Some people would continue to insist, of course, that the lack of an equal starting line is just a part of the great American struggle; hey, the Asians overcome racism, so really you’re not fully American until you accept the status quo while simultaneously triumphing over it.  But the problem with the self-made man is that he is quite rare – more rare than our politicians and media machines would like you to think. If you think it happens all the time, that’s because those are the stories you hear about – you hear about the Colin Powells of the world and not, as it happens, the millions of others who don’t happen to have extraordinary talent or inspiration on hand. And that’s why I would characterize the conservative excuse of “pull yourself up by your own boot straps” as absurdly unrealistic. How it is that an essentially negative view of human nature couples with an insistence that we organize society around the exceptional few is beyond me. It is just plain inconsistent; and it does not offer any effective solution for dealing with reality, in the meantime, of humanity on both the aggregate and individual level.

But that’s all an aside. For the student in the class, it is all still perfectly clear. It’s all about merit, man. And if the supposed “merit based” system without any affirmative action just happens to be of benefit to the people with privilege built-in, then all the better. How convenient that philosophical purity backs up class and racial purity as well.

I want to go home.

From my paper for my minor project, designing a course on early modern Europe, in this case specifically on:

Philosophy and Governance in Western Europe: 1640-1800

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As a whole, the course finds no singular narrative convincing – while the history of early modern Europe is not, as Hegel would have it, a history of conflicting ideas ultimately producing progress, neither is it, as Marx would have it, merely a story of materialistic determination in which ideas only play the part of window dressing. Rather politics, government, economy and philosophy all mutually shape and compel each other towards new realities. Yet the course is at heart sympathetic to the goals of the Enlightenment, and insistent upon the fact that reason remains the primary tool with which Western society attempts to determine what it will become. Ultimately we will return to Habermas, on a perhaps sad note, asking not what we regret losing from pre-modern Europe, (as the discussion is often cast), but what we regret losing from early modern Europe. Today, our contemporary Western culture hosts a public sphere that is a sad and shallow reflection of the critical debate once inspired by the Enlightenment.[1]

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[1] Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Chapters 5-6

The invisible community.

There has always been a tension within me between the poet and the clear headed rationalist. The former stalks about in-between intense musical chords of string instruments and her personal struggle beside a wine glass cements her place in history – the latter rises above the usual folly of humanity by clearing her mind of the clutter of sentimentality and insincere thought.

Depending on my state of mind, which I favor at any given point, and in what combinations, varies. Yet overall it is fair to say that ever since college I have usually tried to hold my poet-side down; to reign in that primordial urge inside of me to communicate my subjective experience of life to others, and to receive either commentary or admiration in return. I usually fail, however, to contain the beast, and the results vary as well. However, when they are bad – when I have made a fool of myself or simply appeared foolish – my other self rears up mercilessly, and I can feel nothing but an overriding contempt for that stupid girl who so stupidly opened her mouth, or picked up her pen.

I come to think of this not because the conflict has been acute lately – quite the contrary. I have been finding my emotions, meanings and passions to focus increasingly on, and join with that which preoccupies my rational mind most of the time. This has, as already discussed, led me to start seriously considering how to best lay plans for making my best attempt to matter, somehow, to this world. But therein lies the question at hand – in order to do so, how must I present myself to the world? How do I go out and argue for ideas, while those ideas are being transmitted, not purely as though out of ether, but from a human being, full of – amongst other things – poetry?

The model I see all around me is one of limited restraint – the intellectuals I know and admire do not seem particularly afraid of letting their human sides show, but they do not offer them very often for consumption. There is a tacit understanding that for ideas to really convince, they need to be separated, at least in principle, from subjective experience. I would certainly concur – but I am not sure it helps explain why the ideas are worthy, valuable, and powerful to rip them from the context through which they are spoken. In other words, I do not know that I can better advance my idea of what would make a better world if I cannot explain how it is for me living in the current one.

And this of course, means perhaps much will come out in this act of conveyance that the most austere among us will define as strictly “personal,” and perhaps it is only this. But I hope not only to be a writer of facts and logic, but of consciousness and experience – I hope to keep and include my poet. And if I am going to do that – if I am going to aim for that larger net, that wider goal – I have to go ahead and give myself up to the world, whatever they might end up doing with these sides of myself or however they might judge me. For once I have wedded my fate to history, there is no part of myself that does not rightly belong to it.

And if you think about this, inevitably this happens to all participants in the moving of society, whether minor or major – their family, relationship and mental histories are looked over and researched articulately, some of the top names earning entire books solely on the matter of their psychology and how that contributed to the thoughts and deeds they gave to the world. Why not simply make it easier for everyone by giving them the book, handing over the diary – it would at the least satiate that poet yearning for connection to an audience, and would do so in the long run goal of satisfying much more than merely my overly reflective self.

“That echo chorus lied to me.”

A significant portion of my consciousness is occupied by an awareness of suffering. But not only the immediately conceivable injustice of politics or oppression, but of personal suffering — existential suffering. This personal suffering is rarely if ever given political expression or cultural legitimacy; it is a suffering regulated to the corridors of silence, where it stifles without an audience, and equally without a solution.

Where better to clarify what I am talking about than Oprah? In her book, The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby pinpoints what has always made me anxious about Oprah. Central to her show is a narrative – one narrative – about the meaning of human trial and suffering. Suffering which arises out of misfortune is an opportunity in disguise to learn some new profound, spiritual lesson; and if you only have faith in this design of providence — often explicitly referred to as God’s providence — one will find the path to internal peace and, if your misfortune was due to some personal defects, redemption. There is, in other words, no meaningless sufferings. Every guest on Oprah’s show follows this script — and it is a script — of salvation through pious suffering. To my knowledge, she has had no one on the show to counter this narrative with the denial of providence, or an ultimate moral reason behind suffering.

Now, I am all for making lemonades out of lemons. But the pervasiveness of this doctrine, epitomized not only by Oprah but pretty much any media outlet that comments on existential questions, results in the condemnation of those who fail to find such edifying meaning in their suffering. There is something fundamentally wrong with people, in other words, who are depressed despite the best medication and therapy available, who persist in denying God or any objective meaning to human experience. They are the ungrateful, the weak, the failed and the arrogant.

What is responsible for the fact that what is in fact very historically rich experience is virtually ignored in American culture? I could probably research and write a whole book on it, so I hardly have an answer to offer immediately — but I would suspect it has a bit to do with stoicism, and a bit more to do with stoicism mixed with Christianity, and then a whole lot to do with the general belief in God that such Christianity has engendered, whether or not this providence is understood in strictly Christian terms. Throw in a bit of capitalist contempt for those deemed unproductive and unappreciative members of society, and you have a rich recipe for collective denial of persistent, unaccountable suffering — a denial of our own powerlessness over the human condition – and this denial makes life for those who dwell in it all the more isolated and unbearable.

Put simply, our culture usually denies that sometimes life just sucks, hard, painfully and long, and without any good reason. For sure you can learn things to your benefit from this suffering, and much art of great worth has been produced out of it, but this by no means is a reason for arguing that ultimately all the sad should reach some level of happiness, or that all sadness ultimately finds purpose and was intended for it. For those who believe they do not measure up to the level of control and happiness our Oprah-consuming world posits is waiting for all those sincerely seeking, there is nothing but a endless well of self-loathing waiting for them; there are hardly any voices to tell them that such is the human condition, and those who experience and realize its harsh realities cannot, through sheer mental exertion, do anything to change it.

I do not argue this in the cause of nihilism, or to bring despair to the world. Quite the opposite. For it seems to me that in light of this, all we can do is love and support each other, to help each other through. For some people, life is mostly the struggle, a sometimes continuous one that lacks storybook moments of triumphs. That does not mean it cannot have personal meaning or joyousness for them; but rather our society says to them persistently: “You ought to be happy as I am happy. Something is wrong with you if you are not.”

I believe that this attitude in fact brings much more suffering, much more loneliness upon the world than would otherwise be so if our culture as a whole lived with a consciousness and acceptance of the reality of existential suffering. But to stigmatize the unrepentant or unreformed individual who persists, and remains in an existential crises is merely the culture’s way of avoiding such a general shock to itself. In America, at least, the possibility that there is no ultimate, objective meaning haunts our deepest nightmares; it casts in doubt all we work for, strive for, believe is right and moral. It does not necessarily have to – but it does force us to bring our own souls to bare when formulating meaning, and it does mean we cannot demand of others the same experience, mission, or experience. And for those who have not been there, and fear both the darkness and know not the beauty of the endless internal universe, this is an idea worth all their anxious energy to deny.

Compared to some I’ve been around, but I really tried so hard

That echo chorus lied to me with its hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

–Neko Case.

What have I been doing?

So, what the fuck have I been up to the past, er, two or three weeks or however long it has been since I have blogged?

Quite a lot actually. I’ve started attending AGASA meetings on campus where a bunch of nonbelievers get to engage in lively debate about all sorts of yummy nonbelieving topics. I’ve also been attending a lot of talks hosted by the Department et al.,which have given me some hope for improving the public discourse in this country, although not too terribly much.

But any sign of improvement is encouraging considering that I’ve pretty much decided to go into the business of doing just that. Although not just when it comes to the public discourse surronding history, but the public discourse surrounding politics, culture, and oh yes, even religion. This has something to do with the possiblity that I might switch my dissertation topic to the twentith century, since that would be much more relevant to you know, now. But as I’m having trouble seeing what I would want to do in this very depressing century devoid of white, virtuous old men in wigs I’m not too confident about that yet.

But in order to make sure I can at least make something ultimately relevant out of my dissertation to someone beyond Gordon Wood and…well yes just Gordon Wood, I’m taking a seminar on non-academic job searches for that time in the future where I’m going to try to make my living off of being clever, making arguments, and writing well.

So what I have been up to? A hell of a lot, as I’ve basically decided to seriously start embarking on my life goal to basically change the world. Yeah. Wish me luck. On that.

But oh, the excitement and the beauty of it all. Really, it can just astound me sometimes.

Global warming is real (DUH).

Here is the majority of an e-mail I sent to my father many months ago in the midst of the election, on why his statement that there is still disagreement within the scientific community on global warming was fundamentally mistaken:

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The confusion about whether scientists agree or not comes about thus; of course, in any large, free community there will always be at least a few dissenters on the consensus, no matter what. This is the consequence of the incalculable effects of personality and unknown intent; always someone will say, “I don’t quite agree,” usually for the thrill of being the contrarian. In political issues today, a lot of the scientists that go against the grain of what the *vast* majority of the scientific community considers solid fact — such as global warming and evolution — are often either 1) scientists paid for or in the service of other interests, or 2) crusaders with another goal, such as Christian scientists who find one or two “gaps” in evolutionary theory and thus conclude it must all be a lie.

Now, no one in the scientific community finds bad science convincing. These scientists become ostracized in the world of empirical data and fact and the damage goes no further there. However, in the political world the dissenting scientists are picked up on, and put on radio talk shows and the “issue book” of the month and those who want to believe in a vast liberal conspiracy within the scientific community go “Look!, see!, they don’t all agree cause this guy says the human eye is irreducibly complex!, or that the earth is actually getting *colder*, not warmer!” But what the radio listeners and book readers don’t know is that nobody in the scientific community takes that scientist’s opinions seriously – and not because it goes against their agenda, after all there are plenty of conservative, especially fiscally conservative if not socially, scientists — but because they are not sufficiently (or at all) supported by empirical data.

Yes, liberals do the same things with results they find more pleasing to their agenda and plaster them up all over; but on the whole, which side the scientific community as a *whole* comes down on is the most important barometer of what is really happening (or has happened, in the case of evolution) because the scientific community has absolutely no reason to guide a complex public relations hoax with bad science. Again, this would be akin to historians writing collective fiction or a pilot not bothering to keep care of his plane.

The beauty about science is that facts don’t lie, they don’t have agendas, and they don’t pontificate. When it comes to these issues those that say “this is all up in the air” or “the facts are not fully in” are really just saying, “well, most of the facts go against us but, we don’t like those conclusions so, we’re gunna go find random dude number 1 and even more random dude number 2 who disagrees and say that therefore, ‘the jury is still out’”. But there will always be people who decide to interpret the data differently, even when they are a quite a minority, as they are — because it always feels good to go against the grain and depict yourself as a persecuted crusader for truth, even if your truth it based more on politics and/or religious belief than facts. Therefore, looking at the majority scientific opinion is really the place to go for your best bet. And if the scientists end up being wrong, the great thing is that they will change their theories when they realize the data has been misconstrued; because as a whole, the scientific community is interested in doing good science, and nothing else.

Like Michael Shermer has said (who by the way is another fiscally consverative, socially liberal skeptic, like a lot of scientists), the question should not be “do you believe in evolution?” but “do you accept evolution?” because it is in fact so established as empirical reality that that is like asking, “do you believe in gravity?”

Academics (not) in society.

I attended a lecture from guest speaker David Merli today entitled “How do we know what to do?” From the title, and from the advertizing for the event, I thought I was going to attend a discussion of how to engage in debate with those who have different value systems than yourself, but are nonetheless worthy and intelligent opponents.

This ended up being a misunderstanding, and fortunately I was not the only one who made the mistake. While Merli’s talk had some interesting points which I found intriguing to think about, he did not really address the issue I imagine most of us were in the room for – how this conundrum applies to contemporary politics, and what to do about the social conflicts it produces, such as the debate over abortion, gay marriage, secularization, etc.

This was revealed when he answered a question concerning the beliefs of a Taliban member. The structural background assumptions that lead a radical Islamist to believe in specific things like say, the subordination of women, is something we can dismantle on rational grounds, said Meril. Well absolutely. But his talk had been dealing with situations where the fundamentally different assumptions people bring to an argument cannot be put in competition with each other on shared rational grounds or, that is how I understood him. The rest of the talk was therefore focused on what to do next, which to be honest I am not entirely clear about. But it seemed these situations, with two opposing value systems which cannot be proved, revolved mostly around elaborate philosophical quandaries and systems which pretty much only professional philosophers have any idea about. So quite frankly, very little to none of the talk was applicable to the real world as we encounter these issues in our day to day life.

That is no fault of Merli’s; again, I think the advertizing created some false expectations. He did what he intended to do well. But it made me think about the power of academia to remove those who administer to it from present day concerns and actual problems that are presented to us. Even something that seems as immediately relevant as, what to do with value systems opposed to ours, ended up focusing on ideas and circumstances that the average or even thoughtful person is rarely presented with in the public sphere. How difficult would it be, I wonder, to get someone to come to give one of these lectures and actually talk about gay marriage, actually talk about the problem of the religious right and the anti-science attitude of much of this country?

Part of the avoidance is built into the culture of academia itself; there is always this subtle suggestion that “contemporizing” historical processes or, in this case, philosophical concepts, is a project for the short-attention span of the masses, whose interests stop once the discussion moves beyond material appropriate for cable news. For example, Merli said that in any lecture concerning the question of clashing value systems, one is always expected to talk about abortion and Hitler, and by mentioning this, he joked, he had disposed of this obligation with one sentence. And to a large degree this is a totally valid bias, and something I complain about quite frequently myself.

But it goes too far when it keeps us from discussing how our thoughts and discoveries are relevant to our contemporary situation – because after all, if we want anybody to be throwing their two cents into these debates, shouldn’t it be the trained, intelligent and thoughtful people who might really know what they are talking about? The fact of the matter is that most people are quite interested in abortion and Hitler, and for good reason. To shrug these issues off as tainted with the shallow discourse of the masses is to give up the chance of making it even better, and therefore I don’t quite understand the hesitancy of so many academics to dive deeply into contemporary issues.

Of course, I should have been alerted to the fact that this was not going to be something applicable to the current situation when it was clear that the talk would be concerned with debating those of equal intelligence and thoughtfulness. While there are, obviously, intelligent and thoughtful Christians, those are not really responsible for the mess our public discourse is in.* The people we are dealing with are fundamentally irrational, unreasonable, and thus even if they are intelligent in terms of their mental capacity, are not really putting their brain power to any intelligent use.

I am comforted by Meril’s assertion that the crazy religious beliefs of Jihadists – and, I assumed, other religious beliefs including those of Christianity – do not even require us to take both value systems as equal in weight, since religious belief is so easily dismantled by reason. However now we still have this question, the question I came in with and then realized wasn’t going to be touched upon, let alone answered: what the fuck do we do about these people? Seriously? We need to start thinking about it and doing more about it more often, even if the wall of irrationality seems impossibly unresponsive. It would irresponsible, as enlightened individuals, not to at least try.

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* Sure, the “moderate Christians” who just like to have something to believe in bug me too, just for the fact that they choose to subordinate reason to something else when the reasons not to do so are so compelling, but those aren’t the folks who get out there with Yes on Prop 8 signs, but rather the ones that stay out of the debate entirely, perhaps aware that their faith is too fragile to take a beating, and they prefer to keep it as one likes to hold on to an old sentimental sweater.

Hope and despair in the midst of The Fear.

I’ve been reading Habermas this week, a German historian and political theorist who originated the elaborated concept of the “public sphere.” The public sphere has origins in the seventeenth century and really took off in the eighteenth. Fundamentally bourgeois, the public sphere was a space (figuratively speaking) of rational debate where the private citizens of a state met to publicly debate relevant issues and, hopefully, subject existing authority to the dictates of reason.

Sounds nice, yes? Sounds wonderful to me. And for a little while, it seemed, the reality came pretty close to the ideal. But all of this fell apart pretty quickly; the public sphere soon became as much an instrument of control as emancipation, especially through the use of culture to advertise rather than criticize existing (especially class) structures; consequently you end up with a mass public culture, constantly shifting and technically open to anyone, but merely geared towards supporting a consumerist society which has nearly lost the ability to think really critically about received wisdom and structures.

Thinking about all this brings me back into the twenty-first century. How everytime I turn on the TV, I get crap. About how standing in line for groceries, I read crap across every magazine cover I see. About how even I, notoriously confident among women, look at myself in dressing room mirrors and feel fat. And when I think about all of this at once, I feel almost despairing. The state of our society has gotten so truly sick, so far removed from that which is truly nourishing and joyful, that I wonder if I am in the end days of reason and happiness. It frightens me, and makes me feel ever so alienated by this place, this space that I must move within.

However today I came across two things which gave me some cause for hope. The first is a song by Lily Allen which I first heard in Moscow on TV, liked it right away, and heard again last night in the pet store, reminding me to download it today. I think the lyrics will speak for themselves bellow:

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever, I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuck loads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them.

And I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cause everyone knows that’s how you get famous.
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m onto a winner.

Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore.
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.

Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic.

And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah we’re onto a winner.

Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner.

Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.

This assures me that, at the least, we have not reached the point where critical voices are absent and it is not clear to a lot of people that there is a very serious problem here. Of course, recognizing the problem is different from acting to fix it, and recognizing that it is much, much more pervasive than we realize, and is in fact working its evil magic in places we deem to be free from excessive consumerism, shallowness, or oppression. But we’ll save that discussion of our society’s split personality for the post I’ve been planning forever on Oprah. The point here is that it could be worse. We could be in a situation where a song like this might not hit a chord; however, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people appreciate the blunt social criticism going on here.

The second thing that I came by was the much talked about performance of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. This is one of those times where it would be shallow of me to even attempt to avoid being cliche — this video moved me, more than I can say. I recognized my own young, childhood dreaming in this entire moment, but I saw it through a woman who, unlike me, has probably felt knocked down several times for having the dreams she does and appreciating the woman she is. And while you see the sickness, and indeed The Fear in the initial reactions of the audience, again at least, at least we can still recognize beauty when it strikes us starkly, sharply, and with complete assurance in its being.

What is wrong with American media and political culture: an example brought to you by Good Morning America.

A few weeks ago, while indirectly watching Good Morning America* over a bowl of cereal, they ran a preview segment for a 20/20 John Stossel segment on universal preschool, which has apparently been proposed by the Obama administration. Now, I cannot say that I watched the full 20/20 program; but apparently from reviews from those who did, what I saw from the “preview” pretty much covered the content of the whole program. Stossel lined up a bunch of angry, tax paying mothers and had them sound off on the waste of money universal preschool would be. After all, they argued, there are already subsidy programs for those who cannot afford preschool. All this will be is a big waste of money.

There was, not surprisenly, no interviews — at least in this preview, but for how long it was it could have at least included balance if it existed in the longer format — of Obama officials who are responsible for advocating the idea of universal preschool, or interviews of federal employees who administer such benefits as already exist and might be able to explain why the current system is inadequate. Rather we just had livid mothers, complaining about how silly and stupid Obama and such politicians must be; it’s plain common sense to anyone that such a system is a pointless waste of hard earned tax payer’s money.

Now this alone justifies the title of this post. But what made this really golden was the segment that followed immediately after it, a fluff piece with Diane Sawyer in Finland. ** Mostly Sawyer just talked about how much those Fins love saunas and, how cute their traditional dances are; but there was also a lengthy segment on their health care system. Apparently, I learned, all major towns in Finland have a health clinic which, for $50 a year, they can have full access to. And apparently, the Fins have gotten a lot healthier in the past decade or so, due to many public initiatives and awareness campaigns. Impressive, the report seemed to say. And yet, no mention of how this is made possible. Sounds nice, why don’t we do that here? Oh gee, do you think it might have something to do with the fact that, according to this source at least, as of 1999 private sources accounted for only 24% of Finland’s health care system? Hmmmm. Maybe? That might? Have something? To do with it?

Or honestly, maybe not. To be honest, I’m not sure how Finland’s statistics square up with comparable countries, or ours, on how exactly they cover their health care costs.*** And perhaps they will end up revamping it to make it more private.**** But the larger point is that, when covering one of those suspect European countries that are branded negatively in the minds of most Americans as “socialist,” no one even thinks to ask where these charming qualities come from. What, do they just figure the simple and endearing Fins are more thrifty with their primitive medical supplies than Americans? That ought to be the first question on any serious reporter’s list — how do they pay for this, and why can’t we do this here? — but instead, the glaring question is not even asked.

Coming after a typical John Stossel piece, where the government is portrayed by ranting taxpayers as inherently incapable of understanding any simple issue in the simple manner that simple common sense obviously dictates, this very simple (read, thoughtless) piece on Finland came across as even more starkly disturbing. Often the idelogical threat of socialism in Europe is dealt with by demonization; but perhaps ignoring the fact that such altnerative options even exist, or subtely insinuating that they only work in supposedly simple and bucollic countries, is a more effective way to prevent the American pubic from even questioning their by-your-own-boostraps ideology.

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• I am never sure if I am supposed to italicize TV shows, but then decide to in any case because really, doesn’t it just look weird if I don’t? And I dislike quotes as a substitute.
• * And if you’re looking for the health care coverage on the website link, tell me if you find it; cause I couldn’t. Apparently it wasn’t quite newsworthy enough to make the cut, and they replaced it with Sawyer’s chilly dip instead.
• ** And quite honestly, I am too lazy and too busy to embark on that kind of research at the moment, especially considering that 1) no one reads this and 2) it’s not the main point of my argument in any case.
• *** I say this because, judging from my brief Google search, Finland might be revamping its health care system some time soon.