Monday, December 28, 2009

Reflections on Chronicles

I just finished reading Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. I. Not written like any other autobiography but he plays it close to the chest. He talks about the things that matter to him, it is easy to tell. It resonated at a strong frequency for me. Here is a guy who saw what he wanted to do and did it. The insight he sees the world with is incredible and I'm scared to think whether I could ever share it. At times he seems to have just chanced on things by blind luck, and it is hard to tell whether things come about because of or in spite of his vision. I can't put it in words but this has all come at the right time for me--a dose of the good doctor's medicine for a malady without a name. It all just makes me want to bust free but it also reminds me of the virtue of patience. No thing worth having comes before its time. Bobby waited but when it was time he was ready. It's okay to be alone; I've had my Suze Rotolo and it seems like that's all in the past. Now I need people to think with. Maybe that's not the way it works; we're always alone and there's not much to be had either way. But there's the rub: perhaps the only thing we have in common is our uncommonness. We share aloneness, and that aloneness is the foundation for all communicable thought. Other takeaways: history isn't worthless, read Rimbaud, go to the action, everyone's got something to contribute, there's no sense in fighting the things you can't change or in standing by the wayside when you can.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Happy Christmas

Got
Harry Potter & the HBP DVD
Tom's shoes
Socks
Plain t-shirts
Boxers
A black tie
The Times They Are A-Changin'--Bob Dylan vinyl album
500 GB external hard drive
REI gift card
Target gift card
Harmonica
Chronicles, Vol. I--Bob Dylan autobiography
Typewriter
Embryonic--The Flaming Lips
American Stars 'n Bars--Neil Young

Christmas is a big deal around here, and that's a lot of stuff. Grateful as always.

Do you really know what it's like up there?

Do you really know what it's like up there? 
Must it be an abode without compare?
Do you really know what it's like up there?
It must feel nice knowing you're headed where
No one is fleeced because all are fair.
Do you really know what it's like up there?
It must be an abode without compare.

Around and about the interweb

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/
http://www.howeverythingworks.org/
http://www.dinosaursounds.com/home/index.html
http://www.tedgonder.com/
http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
http://www.livemocha.com/
http://butwhoisthehusband.wordpress.com/
http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1fdCdW/www.marcandangel.com/2009/07/13/50-questions-that-will-free-your-mind/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2qoRDj/bethe.cornell.edu/
http://www.thekavreproject.org/
http://www.writerhymes.com

Check them out.

Winter break projects

Read From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Beirut_to_Jerusalem)
         Ethics & the Limits of Philosophy by Bernard Williams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Williams)
         The Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy
         Clash of Civilizations (article) by Samuel Huntington
Apply to LSE, Pembroke College-Cambridge University for summer
Apply to Davidson in India program for fall junior year
Apply to spend year following Nicholas Kristof (of the NY Times--http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/)

Read whatever books I may receive for Christmas (best bet: Chronicles Vol. I by Bob Dylan)

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Phoenix airport at night


            I missed my connection.
            I really didn’t miss it; I missed it because my flight arrived an hour behind schedule, which happened because of something else which happened because of something else. There are no more flights to the Bay Area until 0725 tomorrow morning, and it is 10 p.m.
            I have ascertained all of this because I am savvy. I successfully found a US Air customer service kiosk and—surprise!—yelling is not the best way to get things done at such a place. I am always surprised by how surprised people are that their flights don’t go exactly the way they expect them to. It’s like betting on all the high seeds in the NCAA tournament; even though it should, by all means, happen, it never does.
            At the customer service desk I talked to a woman who looked uncannily like my grandmother, if she were ten years younger and had blonde hair instead of grey. I spoke frankly and respectfully and was responded to in kind, which is something I do not think they are used to. I spoke with my parents on their phone, and she seemed to find it refreshing that I didn’t share my father’s attitudes towards my difficulties. The truth is that I find it refreshing about myself; when recently asked what I liked about myself, I had to say that I like that I tend not to give meaning to meaningless events or things. In this case, this means not insisting that my case was special and I just have to be on this next plane and the airline industry is in a conspiracy with the Illuminati to prevent me from getting home. My decade-younger grandmother printed me a new boarding pass, $30 worth of vouchers for the flight (how am I going to spend $30 on an hour-and-a-half flight in the morning?), and told me I was “very mature for my age.” I really think that it’s just that most kids my age are not very mature for their age, but this could be wrong. Though this metaphor could be inappropriate, it struck me as sublime at the time: this experience was a lot like my doubts about school. A lot of people in authority told me that I was great and was going to go far and even that I was beyond my years, but I was still stuck, just like I’m stuck sleeping at Gate A4 in Phoenix tonight.
            If there is such thing as liminal space, surely the airport is an example. It’s a place of mingling, where tourists from Japan rub elbows with American businessmen and crying children. No one owns the airport, really; airports are sterile and full of only the most carefully preconstructed notions of culture, like People and gift shops selling the hats of the local sports franchises. Sometimes there is a token store dedicated to local culture, but commoditization renders it impotent or at least dilutes it. The store across from me—Indigenous—sells mostly hand-crafted jewelry made on Indian reservations in Arizona, and this is a good thing. I support Native American jewelry, on the whole, as a concept. But I’m quite sure this is a huge market for them (tourists, and, more generally, non-Natives) and as such their target audience has shifted from internal to external. They make jewelry not because that is what they have done for centuries but because it is how they get the money to feed their children. Moreover, these days literally a sizable chunk of the world’s population is alienated from the U.S., and so ethnic minorities tend to hide their ‘otherness’ for fear of the ‘random’ checks that become routine to some. I have a friend who is a Punjabi Sikh; this means he wears a turban and has a beard. Even though Sikhs have pretty much never done anything wrong, he’s random-checked every time. Does that keep us safe? I really have no idea. It feels wrong, but I can’t objectively know because I can’t experience both realities.
            Everyone is equal in an airport; what that means in practicality is that no one cares about anyone. Notably, this changes once you get on the plane, in which case you have something in common with someone (a destination, at the least) and therefore have a topic of conversation. Inside the airport, though, no one looks anyone in the eye. It could be one in the morning and I could start doing shirtless calisthenics in the terminal and people who were thoroughly concerned would pretend I was not there. Try it sometime, I guess. Businessmen are the funniest. There was a stereotypical upper-middle class guy across from me, doing the Blackberry dance who absolutely would not look up even though I was staring at the seat next to him like Harry Potter was sitting there with Hedwig. Just to test this theory, I started air-drumming to Pearl Jam’s ‘Dissident.’ No reaction.
            A woman in uniform passes by, and it comes to mind that stewardesses are the most paradoxical creatures. For one thing, they all seem to be the same ages (either 35 or 50; it’s like they come in waves). I also swear that I get the same ones all the time. This could be the truth; I almost always fly US Air (I don’t know why), but I don’t think I fly often enough for this to be the case. I think that it is because it must take a particular breed of person to become a stewardess. Their job is vaguely matronly, but it’s paradoxical in that they are the definitive authority figures for hours at a time on a flight but they spend a lot of that time serving others. They’re simultaneously authoritative and subservient. I think that a lot of stewardesses do consciously propagate the stewardess-as-sexpot myth. A lot of them are vaguely attractive, in a way that mostly works if you don’t actually look at them but rather at the way they carry themselves. This must be a devastating way to live your life, because I’m quite sure there is a lot of disconnect between that myth and reality.
            Strangely enough, I just had an unreasonable hankering to listen to the Stereophonics’ ‘Maybe Tomorrow,’ which I now realize contains the principal lyric ‘Maybe tomorrow/I’ll find my way home,’ which is exactly what I hope happens to me. Music in airports is an interesting topic. I guess a lot of places use Brian Eno-inspired Muzak, but the sole redeeming quality of this sort of music seems to be that one doesn’t realize that it is playing. What does that say about our society, that in one of our most shared locales we play entirely sterile music that can’t possibly offend anyone because it’s designed to be forgettable?
            A lot of videogames have a feature like this (in fact, this basically characterizes why people like Grand Theft Auto), but in GoldenEye for N64 you used to be able to run around and keep playing even after you failed a mission. ‘Abort Mission’ would flash in red in the middle of the screen, but this was really often a very liberating experience. Since you’d already screwed up it was a no-lose situation, and you could experiment with things in ways you’d be too scared to do while you could still fail the mission. What I’m trying to say is that I often wish life were like this—I think a lot of us do—and I particularly wish this were true right now. I basically did fail the mission, having missed my connecting flight and getting stuck here all night, but I could still get sent to jail or something.
            I am definitely getting tired. Not only did that last paragraph make very little sense, but I keep having flashbacks—the kind where you start to address someone who isn’t there. Finally, the designs on the floor are flat out ridiculous. I want to know who came up with this… it’s a hypnotic mix of concentric circles and plane-shapes flying in every direction. I wonder if there is some sort of symbolism going on with the circles. At this point, to me they symbolize why I need to go to sleep: because if I am awake much longer these circles will turn into eyes and I don’t want to be around for that. 
            After speaking with some people, I wonder if there is something wrong with me. I’m essentially unconcerned about this, and my attitude doesn’t seem to be normal. Everyone else is full of advice and worries: sleep with your shoes on, use your laptop as a pillow, put your wallet in your pants (not just in a pocket, but in your pants). I’m just worried about whether I’ll wake up on time tomorrow morning (cell phone battery as dead as Kurt Cobain). Though I’ve been assured I will wake up due to the morning hustle and bustle (or that I won’t sleep at all), I am definitely worried about this.  To this end, I wrote on a paper towel requisitioned from a bathroom, “PLEASE Wake Me Up at 06:00 A.M. Thanks!” (Also: why hasn’t “Hey Hey, My My” been on a Guitar Hero game?)
            Why are all the damn lights on? There is no one here. There are no flights landing. CNN is playing everywhere and I want to kill Larry King (who, I’ve realized, has switched to more contemporary glasses in a conspicuous effort to stay current). US Air is now serving Oslo, Tel Aviv, and Birmingham, and I will be reminded of this 8941 times before I can fall asleep. I would right now if I could.
            There are an extreme number of cleaners in this airport. Speaking of specialization of labor, there are vacuumers, sweepers, and polishers (that I am aware of), as well as cleaning people particular to each restaurant. Working in an airport must be a real suck on someone’s zeal for life; I think I would rather be a taxi driver than have just about any job involved with airlines. Despite all my overbearing pessimism, I think there is a shadow of romance left in the airport. Men at payphones calling their loyal (or not-so-loyal) beloveds. People go places, I assume, because they think the grass is greener on the other side of America. Whether or not it is or isn’t probably isn’t as important as the fact that people still have hope.

A flight is a quietless eternity

A flight is a quietless eternity
A symptom of power in modernity
I will not rush this fraternity
I will not ride
I will only fly
If no one claims paternity.

L'Anthropologie


Hayden Higgins
ANT370
Dr. Lozada
21 October 2009

Review 1:
“Then everything includes itself in power”: circularity in the exercise of power

            Societies change; this is not in dispute. How they change is, on the other hand, a matter of much contention, but any mechanism by which social change is willfully enacted can be termed a mechanism of power. Just as social theorists speculate as to long-term and unwilled processes such as rationalization, communism, and social evolutionism (which are fixed in direction), they have similarly varied ideas about the residency, mechanism, and application of power. Nonetheless, examination of works by Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault demonstrate some commonalities, including Marxist influences and the idea that the application of power is a reciprocal process suggestive of a tautological, circular relationship between culture and power.
            Weber’s most famous case study, outlined in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber 1930), follows the real social effects—namely, the rise of new capitalist economies in Protestant Europe and the New World—following the advent of the ideas of the Reformation. The paradoxical situation of Protestants, who were taught that excellence in vocation and austerity in consumption were twin ideals, led to the rise of investment-driven capitalism. Ideas such as the sacralization of the calling are the real source of power to Weber; ideas, for Weber, are power. Ideas (power) lead to changes in culture, which produce new ideas (new power), leading to new changes in culture. In this example, Protestantism gives rise to capitalism, which engenders new capitalistic thought systems contributing to the decline of Protestantism. Power, therefore, originates in the individual, effects change through ideas, and is reified in institutions, especially those which reinforce those Protestant ideas that led to economic success. “The Protestants wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so” (Weber 1930:123). In Marxist terms, Weberian superstructure precedes and determines infrastructure.
            Bureaucracies were a favorite topic for Weber, and provide a launching-off point for describing the process by which power might serve not only to change society but also to reinforce its core. Bureaucracies, as we know, make laws, which, according to Bourdieu, “no more than symbolically [consecrate]…the structure of the power relations between groups and classes” (Bourdieu 1977:182). If bureaucracies symbolically consecrate power, what does so realistically? In Bourdieu’s terms, ritualization of practices internalizes a definition of doxa, the realm of legitimate discourse, and in so doing necessarily gives power to some groups over others. This structure is embedded in the social subconscious, becoming habitus. While Weber grounds much of his analysis in hermeneutical examination of spoken and written word, for Bourdieu power resides in that which “goes without saying because it comes without saying” (Bourdieu 1977:163). Habitus reinforce existing power relations as mythologized in collective belief. This collective belief may include a misrecognition of truth; whereas Durkheim might say that religion/culture is society worshipping itself, Bourdieu might qualify this to say that culture is society worshipping the existing structure of power.
            If it be true that “the whole of society pays itself in the false coin of its dream,” (Bourdieu 1977:190), that currency is not always in the form of economic capital: social, cultural, and symbolic capital are all also forms of power legitimized by particular institutions. These sorts of capital are linked circularly with economic capital: as an example in contemporary society, economic capital is required to obtain symbolic capital (by paying for a college education to obtain a degree) which in turn is required to obtain economic capital (no one will hire a doctor, for example, who does not have a doctorate). Power, therefore, resides in symbols. To a Marxist, the misrecognition of symbolic capital constitutes a mode of cyclical, self-perpetuating repression that furthers the dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. This hegemony is maintained over time by overt violence, which may establish the initial conditions that lead to domination, and symbolic violence, “through which the dominant groups or classes secure a capital of ‘credit’ which seems to owe nothing to the logic of exploitation” (Bourdieu 1977:191). One can only surmise that this credit feeds into the ouroboros of economic/social capital. The bourgeois ability to maintain its position of power is due to the process by which arbitrarily designated social/cultural/symbolic capital is converted into economic capital, which has real social effects, whose feedback effect is the recreation of the original conditions. The game of society is rigged.
             “Power is essentially that which represses,” claims Foucault, going one step further than Bourdieu and emphasizing that power exists only in exercise (Foucault 1972:208). He shares Bourdieu’s understanding of the constant struggle for power, a ‘war continued by other means,’ and Bourdieu’s symbolic violence might be located in Foucauldian disciplinary power, “disciplinary coercions whose purpose is in fact to assure the cohesion” of society (Foucault 1972:219). This coercion is masked by the distraction of the power of right—the contract-oppression schema characterized by formal juridico-political institutions. Subjugation is made possible by misrecognition of the power of right with disciplinary power, which, unnoticed, homogenizes society by suppressing alternative knowledges; this mechanism is comparable with the symbolic violence done to the slave in Bourdieu’s example, in that the slave sees his status as a product of the contract (the power of right) rather than repression (disciplinary power).
            Misrecognition, or perhaps incompleteness of knowledge, continues to play a central role in allowing certain mechanisms of power to function. One of these mechanisms is panopticism. In Foucault’s analysis of the Bentham’s Panopticon, the Panopticon serves as a metaphor for the manner in which disciplinary societies project the sense that the individual has incomplete knowledge but some higher individual may have complete knowledge, including of the actions of the first individual. The sense of being watched is enough to compel the first individual to conform, and can enable a system of power “to operate, on the underside of the law, a machinery that is both immense and minute, which supports, reinforces, [and] multiplies the asymmetry of power” (Foucault 1979:223). This asymmetry of power ostensibly troubled Foucault, who gave much of his life over to liberal activism; he does, however, suggest a way out of this asymmetry. Through the insurrection of subjugated knowledges—the same that were before suppressed by disciplinary power—one might speculate that minority groups can rebel against domination-repression and ostensibly escape from economic poverty.
            In application Foucault’s insurrection of subjugated knowledges, like other mechanisms of applied power, is not without a feedback effect. Cornel West speaks of the commodification of black music in twentieth-century America as a feedback effect that negates the redeeming effect of the discovery and appreciation of black music on an international scale (West 1993:396). In a postcolonial situation, Susan Reed argues that, even as tango is lifted up as a symbol of Argentinean identity, it is dependent upon centers of the dominant culture for approval, which ultimately comes only with exoticization and compromise rather than acceptance (Reed 1998:515).
            A synthesis of the positions of Weber, Bourdieu, and Foucault would have interesting implications for the understanding of power. Power is born of ideas and reified in institutions in Weber, and born in overt violence and reified in symbolic violence in Bourdieu. Both of these describe genesis of power as resultant from conflict, a conclusion suggestive of Marxist overtones. Bourdieu and Foucault especially rely on Marx’s view of society as divided into dominant and subjugated groups. Indeed, all three of these theorists maintain Marxist underpinnings, even while expanding on Marxism: Weber argues the materialist approach is inadequate, Bourdieu argues that economic capital is only one manifestation of capital, and Foucault asserts that not all phenomena are reducible to being caused by the dominance of the bourgeoisie.
            Broadly, it is clear that the state of a culture at any given point in time is the result of the powers that have acted upon it. At the same time, the current state of a culture defines where power resides in a society. Weber demonstrates how power changes culture; Bourdieu and Foucault demonstrate how culture defines and reinforces power. These processes are not exclusive; at any time, power changes culture even while culture defines power. The conflict between these processes is contradictory but makes sense holistically: though the cycle between power and culture is not in any way stoppable, when any one of the mechanisms enumerated above—idealism, misrecognition of knowledge or violence, or panopticism—is set into motion, power is exercised and culture is in flux, either speeding up or slowing down processes of real social change.

Works Cited

Bourdieu, Pierre.
            1977. Structure, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power. In                                   Culture/Power/History, Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, Sherry Ortner, eds. Pp.                       155-199. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Foucault, Michel.
            1977. Two Lectures. In Culture/Power/History, Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley,                                        Sherry Ortner, eds. Pp. 200-221. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
            1979. Panopticism. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, pp. 195-                                  228. New York: Vintage Books.
Reed, Susan.
            1998. The Politics and Poetics of Dance. In Annual Review of Anthropology 1998,                       27:503-32.
Weber, Max.
            1930. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Routledge                                             Classics.
            1922. Class, Status, Party. In Anthropological theory: an introductory history, Jon                       McGee, Richard Warms, eds. Pp. 115-127. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield                                              Publishing Company
West, Cornel.
            1993. Black Culture and Postmodernism. In A Postmodern Reader, Joseph Natoli                                   and Linda Hutcheon, eds. Pp. 390-397. Albany: State University of New                                   York Press.



Note: the quotation in the title is from the play Troilus and Cressida, by William Shakespeare.
           


Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I ought to do a lot of things

But firstly in the conscience of this nation is the maintenance of said repository for thoughts unspoken.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

I knew a girl fine and mysterious
Whose eyes were brown and deep
A glance from her could make me weep
A dance with her, and I would leap!
At a chance for something serious
Edging closer, I'll take the fall
And wrap myself within her thrall

Friday, August 7, 2009

I want to it to be the way it is in the movies
I want to wear dark sunglasses and look mysterious
Look serious

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

What is a man?

What is a man?
Need he a purpose,
A reason to be?
A blueprint,
A perfect plan,
A purpose heaven-sent?
Is he an Aesthete to whom all is an Art
Or is his life just the throw of a dart?
Does man believe in the triumph of Love,
does man think all is ruled from above?
All in all does he think it is a balancing act,
Or does he find it none too abstract?
Seek he fame or glory, passion or peace,
His lease on this life surely will cease.
Regardless of virtue, experience or belief
He'll find himself victim to a most equitable thief.




Thursday, April 16, 2009

by Rudyard Kipling

http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/kipling.html

He always wrote in purple ink and invented the game of ice golf.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Undefined

Through the confines of my mind

Course wispy trails of time

Blindly searching out mankind

Sorting out what's left behind

And what is left to win


Set out looking for someone refined

Someone who'd respond in kind

Someone whose values already been assigned

Someone who'd be disinclined

To offer up his soul


On my way I got in a bind

It was a fix, I was entwined

A problem with a solution I could not find

Sure it really was a grind

Looking for minutiae


But what I got was not aligned

And all I found was not resigned

All of a sudden I was unconfined

I could finally unwind

And offer up my soul

Undefined


Tuesday, April 14, 2009

While I eat, I think of you

Crazy wormeaters in rectangular coordinates eat by the crystalline dispensers of death. They douse the squirmers in pig’s blood—or that is how it appears—and stab with distustingly tinged quadblades of gray metal in order to deceitfully drop it dangling and undeserving into each undissenting mouth, dank and warm finally inside while the outside is yet a dark December. The inveterate invertebrate droops down slithering into esophageal wonder to dethrone the daemonic determinations of an unkind machinehead.

Amateurish Spanish Poetry

Yo te diré que soy fotógrafo, y dirás

Que has visto la obra mía: es el cuerpo del muerte en el primer página de la revista

Yo te diré que soy un padre, y dirás

Que has oído que yo tengo una cosa para los niños pequeños

Yo te diré que soy un químico, y dirás

Que has tomado la droga nueva—es el mejor para la cita-violación.

Yo te diré que soy un abogado, y dirás

Que has leído sobre el criminal que yo he defendido con la defensa de Twinkie.

Yo te diré que soy un médico, y dirás

Que has mirado mientras yo no pude salvar su hermano.

Yo te diré que soy poeta, y dirás

Que realmente yo no contribuyo a la sociedad. 

Hypocrisy

A plane is a place held up by God’s feathery grasp

A plane is a place where no one talks to you for six hours

A plane is progress

A plane trip is getting progressively worse

A plane is made of plastic and wires and cold steel

But what makes it go is hot invisible air

And at the airport they sell Men’s Health across from the Bojangles.

How long, babe?

How long, babe?

Til the end of time?

Did you think it’d be all that sublime?

I’m not going to go on keeping up this mime.

I’ve got to get me some shine, Lord,

I’ve got to get some shine.

How many, hey?

A baker or a butcher’s dozen more?

Acting like a bit of a whore,

By now you got to be sore.

Sore of paths so known, Lord,

Sore of paths so known.

What’ll it take to move you out?

What’ll it take to move you?

More than the rape and murder of Mary Sue?

More than me, your dead boy scout?

I’ll be goin’ south, Lord,

I’ll be goin’ south.

You’d best move it up north, Bess

Where the winters are cold

Like your friend King Leopold

Where the nights are long, Bess

Where the nights are long.

Address Upon Eagledom, Sardonic

It is strange to me that, after all these years, I might be the one behind the podium instead of the one sitting patiently in the audience waiting for this shit to be over so that I can eat some cookies. Since you now know my sentiments, and know that I might understand yours, you will know that I intend to keep this address as brief as possible while avoiding the possibility of disrespect to the establishment—the Boy Scouts of America—which has given me the opportunity to be here today.

There were, at last count, 18, I think, youth that joined Troop ### in the same year that I did. I among them stood alone in lacking the coveted Arrow of Light, and the nakedness of that particular portion of my uniform perhaps can explain my earnestness to fill up the rest of the shirt as much as possible. At first, then, you might understand that I still saw the Boy Scouts as an achievement-driven organization. When any one of you thinks of a Boy Scout, you think of these confounded uniforms, adorned with badges and bling commemorating this or that minor accomplishment, in reality achieved with less effort than we might have you believe. So you might now see that, even if my sash suggests otherwise, I do not believe it is not all about the badges.

What I am trying to say, you see, is that there is no badge to signify that a Scout has the respect of his peers, or the trust of his friends, or the compassion to help a stranger. Scouting’s foundation lies in abstract morals—duty, honor, and morality—and the attempt to concretize such virtues is ultimately futile. Our strength comes from our fluidity, our ability to adapt the universal virtues that characterize the Eagle to the individual cases of each Troop and each Scout. I cannot help but think this; I have seen my troop fragmented and unified, small and large, in blank and—yes—in blank, but it has been my troop throughout all these permutations. I would like to take this opportunity to thank those individuals who made my experience possible: my first Scoutmaster, Mr. Blank; my guide at my first Blank, Blank; Mr. Blankety-blank, who lent me a backpack; Mr. Blink, who never was unable to help; my second and third Scoutmasters, Mr. Blunk and Mr. Blonk, whose combined efforts guided my way on this path; Mr. Blank-Blank, who introduced me into the inner workings of the Order of the Arrow, and the estimable Mr. Blynk and the kind Mrs. Blounk, who tirelessly worked on behalf of the Apanuc during my time as Apanuc Chief; Mr. Blaink, always willing to pitch in for a laugh; the numerous other adults who have always worked selflessly for the Troop; my  fearless Senior Patrol Leaders; my mother and my father, and my brother, who was gracious enough to wait until I was gone to put into motion his own coup d’etat. Most of all I thank my fellow Scouts for everything they have contributed to my experience, whether that has been pointing a loaded shotgun at someone, throwing an axe at someone, pretending to be a bear, lighting Blank on fire, breaking a window at the Clubhouse, getting altitude sickness, making me carry your shit, tenting Blank, or even tenting me: thank you, and thank you. Eat some damn cookies.

Platitudes (I)

I know nothing. I have, however, numerous suspicions.

 

Doubt exhibits exponential growth.

 

Just because you cannot win does not mean you should not play.

 

Know thyself.

 

If there is no possibility of death, there is certainly no life.

 

Life is imperfection continually striving for perfection.

 

When no mystery remains, the story ends, does it not?

 

The faithful man knows the parachute doesn’t work and jumps anyhow.

 

Love means trusting another not to scorn the deepest recesses of one’s soul. Love is trust; it is spiritual and perhaps intellectual, but not limerent.

 

There is not a place I would not go once.

Cotard's syndrome

I don't have Cotard's syndrome, exactly

Rather, I am still alive

But others are long dead


I took Kierkegaard's leap

But it's lonely on the other side

And there is a chasm between us


I need to run unbridled

Luckily for me, your guts

Stretch for miles and miles

These are the circles we ride

These are the circles we ride

Concentric, I must admit

Searching without subsiding


These are the things we lied

Vainly, I do proclaim

Hoping and never deciding


These are the men that died

Alone, I really fear

Funerals where no one cried


These are the laws we abide

Pointless, I know

Tying but not presiding


These are our girls and brides

Sold, the lot of them

Imitation or bona fide?


These are our fears inside

Silly, perchance

Yet there are homicides worldwide


These are the circles we ride

Concentric, I must admit

Searching without subsiding

Memo on splitting

Self in head and self in action are not the same thing. Maybe nirvana makes it so, but until then dissociation rules the day. I am not who I think I am? or who I want to be, and ergo, I'm that autistic kid who's friends with Denzel Washington and a snowglobe. Two worlds internal/external, should be and is,--Freud would be proud--superego and ego. For that's it, isn't it? Reconciling desire with reality. Should I desire reality? Isn't that unsettling... like a breeder reactor, making its own fuel, like Oedipal dreams realized? If you fear so much you hide in the cracks and don't get enough vitamins and die, how self-realizing it is. Where are the fora to debate such paradoxes? Decisions split split split into parallel universes there and there, and such and such goes yonder into that and somesuch by whosoever and abstraction.


Go, be merry and drink. Tomorrow never dies, even without you. 

Angst: A Bipolar Analysis, indirectly Kierkegaardian


Angst is the tearing of hair and the splitting of mind. It is most usually associated with the teenage years. I will speak in a very simplified and amateur manner, for this record is exclusively for my own benefit, and is constructed solely as a basic lens through which I may analyze some of the existential crises of my own existence, and I do not advise its application on any individual other than myself. This is because I am of the fundamental view that it is impossible for one individual to exactly relate to another—at least that is my understanding for now (these things fluctuate). I herein posit the analysis of existential crises as the result of the tension caused by the biplanar existence of the individual, fundamentally represented on the one hand by the body and on the other hand by the soul.

 

BODY                                                                                                            SOUL

 

The Body, as it is equipped with eyes for perceiving light, and ears for perceiving sound, and so on and so forth, is best equipped to perceive what may be called the material world, commonly known in science in its four dimensions. From the Body arises our Aristotelian faculties, and our tendencies to analyze reality based on sensory perception. The body has no reason to see this perception as faulty, and so tends to believe it in almost all circumstances. The Body is also home to the mind, which is the controlling entity in the body and which houses Reason, which is the governing principle of the material existence.

 

REASON,

 

The philosophy of which may be termed,

 

RATIONALISM

 

The body, when confronted with a crisis of the material world, responds in a material fashion, and Reason is the mechanism of the deduction of the response. Consider: A man must escape a cubic box. He uses reason to figure out how. He touches one side of the box, and it is prickly. He learns not to touch that side, for fear of physical pain. He touches another side of the box, and it is cold and hard. He reasons that this is metal, which he has learned to associate with things cold and hard, and reasons that he will not escape through that side. He touches a third side, and it is rough and not so hard to the touch. He reasons that it is wood, and kicks through it successfully. He is guided in the pursuit of physical freedom purely by the faculty of Reason.

 

The Soul, however, resides outside of the four dimensions of science, and is the source of irrationalities and immaterial strivings. Its governance is less perfectly understood, but is explained well by Plato. The Soul is what the poet seeks to speak to, as when Huidobro says, “(Las palabras poéticas) deben elevar al lector del plano habitual y envolverlo en una atmósfera encantada.” The Soul is concerned primarily with the way that things should be, whereas the Body has no motivation to see things in any other way than the way they are. The guiding principle of the Soul is Emotion.

 

EMOTION,

 

The philosophy of which may be termed,

 

ROMANTICISM

 

It is easy to see why the childhood is governed primarily by Emotion, and the adulthood by Reason: in childhood, one is cared for by others, and does not have to worry about survival, and so enjoys the privilege of living primarily in the sphere of emotion, and so is enveloped in dreams. In adulthood, one must fend for oneself, and so is inclined to be forced to confront the needs for sustenance and shelter, both of which lie squarely in the physical world. Most individuals seek wealth because it will offer them a respite from this constant anxiety; however, most do this only subconsciously, and end up forgetting that there is any other end aside from the pursuit of material wealth, which is a grievous sin.

One might now see why the teenage years are a time of momentous angst for many. It is the time in which Romanticism, which is like a garden of marvelous flowers that is without end, is deconstructed as children become teenagers and confront the realities of life, such as sex, which will at first be conceived of as a purely physical act (which is sinful) but in the balance of Body and Soul can become virtuous. Other realities which contribute to the deconstruction of Romanticism and the haphazard imbalance of the teenage mind include the initial confrontations with mortality, and the new willingness of parents to bring their children into cities (the centers of Rationalism) rather than to places like Disneyland (which are highly Romanticized, though they are also a very false version of Romanticism). During this period one of a few reactions may develop:

1)   The youth tends towards absolute Reason. This is manifest through a misguided affinity for material things, and a desire to attain adulthood.

2)   The youth tends towards absolute Romanticism. This is often termed regression, as the youth clings to his childhood, but is in reality no more misguided than the first response.

3)   The youth experiences angst—as the Romanticism of his childhood is destroyed, a vacuum develops in his governing philosophy, and he becomes confused and torn between the two philosophies, unsure of which is applicable in which instances (I am not yet sure whether this whole construct constitutes a zero-sum problem or not). 

A Novel Proposal

The American nation, it is often said, is a nation founded on compromises. The art of compromise, a skill adroitly applied by statesmen from Washington onwards, seems, however, to have fallen out of vogue. According to the ostensibly contemporary Wikipedia, “In the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries the word "compromise" has a positive meaning (as a consent, an agreement where both parties win something); in the USA it may rather have negative connotations (as both parties lose something).”

            Whatever notoriety ‘compromise’ earned as a politically weak maneuver is probably due in large part to the inflated ideologies of recent party politics. Despite the relative proximity of Democratic and Republican thought when compared on a global scale, and despite their shared inheritance of the classic liberal tradition, neither can ever seem to admit that they are more alike the other than they are different. During the recent election, liberals seemed to be fond of swearing they would ‘move to Canada’ if McCain triumphed, and one conservative I talked to spoke of buying guns in case they needed to revolt against the coming oppressive liberal regime. I speak so much of compromise because there is an arena where its calming influence is sorely needed—a significant American populace has suffered too long for their rights. I speak, yes, of the roughly 5% of Americans who are gay.

            During the recent election, perhaps the second most closely-watched result nationally was that of Proposition 8, in California—the Marriage Protection Amendment. Without bringing my personal beliefs about the question to the table, it is apparent that the fundamental crisis at stake was one of personal liberty versus popular belief. Gays would like to marry—but now they cannot (in California) due to the religious (not political) beliefs of the majority.

            What is required is a moderate dose of two of the founding principles of the United States of America: the rule of the majority with the preservation of the rights of the minority, and the separation of church and state. I propose a basic enough solution, which I hope I am not the first to have thought of, because I find it very simple, very elegant, and very obvious (and also very similar to the successful European way of dealing with this problem).

            Marriage, as a word, should be removed from the political jargon. If marriage is a religious sacrament—as most will well agree that it is—it should be governed by the individual religious entities, which may independently decide whether to approve of same-sex couplings. Do a find-and-replace on government documents, replacing ‘marriage’ with ‘civil union,’ and thereby preserve the societal rights gained by married individuals at the state level. Civil unions will be gender-blind.

            Under this proposal, conservative religious groups need not feel threatened—homosexuality will not be forced upon them. They may still preach against the sins of the flesh and so on and so forth as much as they like, until the metaphorical trumpet sounds and they are proven either right or wrong in their judgment of others. Complete separation of church and state will be achieved, insofar as that a religious institution—marriage—will be removed from the political sphere, while retaining the recognition that the union of two individuals provides important, even integral social benefits (thus the granting of civil unions). The bywords of our time—freedom and change—will be achieved. I think that both political parties can agree on the maximization of self-determination, and that is exactly what is achieved by this proposal, whilst recognizing the capacity for each congregation to decide what is acceptable in its particular religion with regards to homosexuality. Furthermore, this arrangement allows for the application of one of the central facets of conservatism: minimal governmental intrusion into the lives of its citizenry, an idea that the last administration seemingly failed to recognize at all.

            This is a change that will need to be achieved at the level of each individual state, per the 10th Amendment. It is, however, a commonsense proposal, and one that cannot be accused of being persecutory or too difficult to administrate. I recognize the aversive nature of this solution with regards to the underlying tension present; it is my intent, however, that this measure be the first step towards a more open dialogue pervaded with tolerance and understanding rather than homily and discontent. The actual resolution of this issue will take more than rhetoric or legislation, but I yet hope that others will join in conversation about this particular issue, and that reconciliation and compromise allow the American people to quell this unseemly quandary once and for all in a desirable and progressive manner.

 

 

 

Sell, R. L., Wells, J. A., & Wypij, D. (1995). The prevalence of homosexual behavior in the United States, the United Kingdom and France: Results of national population-based samples. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 24, 235–248.

Anarcho-Socialist Commentary for the Youth Intelligentsia

Hereby resolved, to probe the workings within and without in hopes of resolving the defining crisis: tension between the Cartesian spheres. Sans pretense, we move, onward and upward.