Clocks and Time

New post at http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com

New Post on the New JP Survey

In case you didn't see already - The JP Survey has moved to http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com, where there is a new post on the similarities of coffee and literature.  If you use a reader, please redirect it to that new address or just re-subscribe on the new page.  I'm unfortunately not tech-savvy enough to know how to redirect automatically.

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The JP Survey Is MOVING!

The JP Survey will be moving from Blogger to Wordpress as of the next post.  Actually, it has really already moved.  Why?  Because I like Wordpress more- easier to use, no limits on comment length, and all sorts of behind the scenes benefits that will not matter to you at all but matter a lot to me.  So reset those readers to the following site:

http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com

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Education in America

My wife and sister are studying to become teachers, my brother is a teacher, my mother-in-law is a teacher, and I have many close friends who are teachers.  I really believe that they are all excellent educators, but unfortunately I don’t think they are representative of teachers in general.  The current administration agrees, which is why they are pushing for education reform that aims to weed out bad teachers and reward good ones.  It is undoubtedly true that the education problems in America are at least partially caused by teachers with inadequate knowledge of the subjects they teach.  I have heard many stories of educators, particularly in elementary and middle schools, who cannot perform basic math or who consistently misspell simple words or who even teach completely false information because they are unaware of the truth themselves.  These stories always make my teacher friends cringe, and rightfully so.  If we really want better teachers, we must make their training more rigorous, focused more on the subjects they plan to teach and on student teaching, much less on educational theory.  Perhaps one or two education courses on the side would be helpful, but we should not be so easily qualifying those who are responsible for training up the next generation. 

Although improving the quality of our teachers is a prominent topic in the education discussion, it is only one step, and only a small portion of the problem.  While we could bring up all sorts of things – inadequate funding (which is huge), teaching to standardized tests, demographic issues – I would like to discuss two things that are often neglected in the discussion.  The first is the students themselves; the second is the overall implicit reasoning behind the American education system.

Having recently been through high school and college, and having a wife who teaches high schoolers every day, one thing is imminently clear: rich or poor, many students in America are not motivated to learn.  It seems that much of the arguing and disputing that goes on about how to fix education ignores this fact.  We cannot just assume that better teachers, more funding, or more appropriate curriculums will fix education – these will do nothing if the students do not want to learn.  To me it appears that the younger the child, the more his interest in learning is influenced by his teacher.  Great teachers can make a huge difference on young children.  But by the time a student reaches high school, it is much more difficult to reestablish respect for authority and a belief in the value of education if they have been lost throughout the previous years.  And it seems that more and more high schoolers have lost these values.

This lack of willingness to learn is at least partially due to the sense of entitlement that is growing among America’s youth.  The wealthy and middle class students often believe that everything will be provided for them, that every problem can be solved with the application of money, that their money gives them intrinsic superiority over others, and that they will always have money.    Ironically, I began writing this post, and then the next day I saw a post on Discovery News that discussed a recent study showing that narcissism and feelings of entitlement have been on the rise for the past fifteen years among US college students. I would wager that studies would find similar trends among younger groups as well.  Obviously, if students have tricked themselves into thinking they will advance in life without work, they have no reason to think education will help them.

Regardless of affluence, in all cases I believe that both the lack of immediacy of future needs and the collapse of the American family have combined to contribute to students’ lack of motivation.  For many kids, it is difficult to see the connection between doing an English worksheet today and achieving success tomorrow.  We live in a culture of instant gratification, and it is hard for them to see that education is a long task with equally long payoffs.  They want short tasks with current payoffs and little else.  Additionally, with more and more single parent homes or homes with absentee parents because of workaholism, many children are not receiving the guidance and discipline necessary to push them in the right direction.  They are never taught that money does not give them the right to be lazy or that the lack of education will often lead to ruin.  In fact, they may be implicitly taught the opposite of what they need, for many parents act as if money is all that matters or that they deserve certain things because of their place in society.  Sometimes teachers can work miracles on these kids, but we should never expect teachers to do so.  Lazy students and their sense of entitlement can only be cured by strong guidance and discipline at home.

Secondly, America does not seem to recognize what its real strengths are.  Whenever I hear a politician speaking about education, they always focus on our deficiencies in certain subjects, and they seem to hone in especially on math and science.  They say that these two subjects are important for the rekindling of innovation in America.  In focusing on innovation, they are headed in the right direction.  America has always valued free-thinking and creativity, and while math and science may be the realms in which we need our innovation to bloom, the creativity itself does not come from focusing on math and science.  What we should really be focusing on is achieving a greater breadth of education that exposes students to ideas from all realms of study.  It is in the intersection of various fields or in the application of ideas from one field into another where many of the greatest ideas dwell.  When it comes to innovation, focusing on anything too much is detrimental.  I know there is only so much money to go around, but if we really are going to produce innovative leaders, we should think twice about cutting the fine arts and other “superfluous” subjects that often focus more than other subjects on the development of creativity. 

I recently ran across a report that discussed the importance of a comprehensive education and how dedication to breadth in teaching seems to be one of very few traits that countries who consistently rank better than the US in education have in common.  Here is a list quoted from their website of some of the expectations in other countries:

·         Fourth graders in Hong Kong visit an artist’s studio, study Picasso’s Guernica, and analyze the works of modernist sculptor Henry Moore.

·         Finnish 5th and 6th graders study how the invention of writing changed human life and the impacts of the French Revolution; they trace a topic such as the evolution of trade from prehistory until the 19th century.

·         Seventh graders in Korea are expected to know not just about supply and demand, but about equilibrium price theories, property rights, and ways to improve market function.

·         Japanese 7th to 9th graders “conduct experiments regarding pressure to discover that pressure is related to the magnitude of a force and the area.”

·         Eighth graders from the Canadian province of Ontario are expected to create musical compositions, conduct, and know musical terms in Italian.

·         Dutch 12th graders must know enough about seven events connected to the Crimean War to be able to put them in chronological order.

·         Canadian 12th graders in British Columbia are expected to identify the author of the words: “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and to what Admiral Nimitz was referring when he said: “Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged.”

·         On a Swiss examination 12th graders write an essay analyzing JFK’s October 1962 proclamation that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Source: Common Core website

I am college educated, and I only ever dealt with Guernica, the musical tasks, and the economics, and the last two mostly in college.  But what tremendous thinkers we could develop if we taught students with the breadth of education that many other countries employ.  I am not an education expert, and I know there are tremendous hurdles to overcome, but I think we should begin to think more about a broadening of education rather than a narrowing of it.  Innovation in technical fields is not the result of producing workers who excel only in math and science.  Innovation will flourish when we produce more workers who are able to draw on education in many other fields to develop ideas.

The federal government may be able to reform education to help improve the quality of teachers and curriculum, but nothing will be very effective if families do not begin to invest more time in the encouragement and discipline of the young.  Especially in suburbia, children are often so pampered that their work ethic is eradicated by the time they reach high school.  Advocacy for a breadth of content in education must also start in the home, where children can be led into a wide variety of topics by parental encouragement.  In this age when America is accustomed both to being the best and to thrusting off responsibility for its actions upon others, we as a nation must admit we are stumbling and attack the root of the educational problem in the home.

(Parentheses)

The library is my favorite room in my apartment.  (Just so you will know how vexing my life is, I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out how to bring my wife and both her joint ownership and her preference for the library into that sentence without it sounding awkward.  I did not succeed, partially due to the horrible construction of “my wife’s and my” and partially because of the lack of antecedent for the use of “our.”  I was not about to use the former, and the latter just wouldn’t do without the former, so I just gave up.  How troubling!)  One of these days I’ll learn how to write paragraphs that do not include lengthy parenthetical asides. 

Hopefully I will learn that skill while seated in my library (what a segue!).  (Speaking of segues, I thought they were spelled “segway” until sophomore or junior year of college.)  The room, as one might guess, is walled in books.  Even just thinking about it makes me joyful, but being there is “a whole nother” experience, as some would have it. 

Until this point I was planning to talk about something completely different, but now that I have made this many asides and pointless comments, I might as well talk about how much I like them.  You’ll just have to wait until a later date for my original thoughts (which I really haven’t given away at all yet).  In multiple settings, I have heard that the use of parentheses (other than for citation) is a sign of a weak writer.  My pride tells me to deny this, but I cannot.  My wife and I are unable to think of any authors who conspicuously love parentheses.  Apparently, being tangential is not something many writers aspire to. 

Yet I cannot deny my love for the aside, even a multitude of asides.  I view them as a more organized form of stream of consciousness.  They allow the reader into the twisted meanderings of the brain, the ephemeral connections elicited by a visual clue or a long-forgotten memory, the complex interactions of the current state of the writer, his environment, his history, and his work.  And yet the necessity of clarity is obvious to me because of its merits both for the reader and the writer.  A focused writer keeps the reader entranced in an idea or a story, and the further that story develops, the more the reader becomes a participant.  This generally also helps the writer by retaining his readership.  I most certainly do not want to lose all of my readers, but to some extent I also write just because I want to.  If I was entirely concerned with pleasing my reader, I would never write half of what I do, I would have a much more attractive site, and I would feel like a failure as an artist (to whatever extent I grant that blogging is art, which is certainly a stretch at times).

When it comes to writing for pleasure, the aside is one of the most enjoyable aspects my work.  I think this is because the essay than resembles a conversation more closely, or at least one side of the conversation.  Most people restrain their inner voice in conversations, though their thoughts are often more interesting than what they say.  They do not say, “How are you today?  [What is that thing on his shirt?  Is it some sort of manly brooch? Oh, no, looks like some silver paint – or maybe it is a piece of stray aluminum foil from his Moe’s burrito.] Yeah, I’m doing pretty well too.”  For the sake of keeping one’s friends, some thoughts, like the ones above, are better left unsaid.  But often we arrive at the most stimulating conversations only after a long series of less awkward tangents.

It is not uncommon for me to begin a blog on one topic and learn after a few paragraphs, as in this blog, that I really want to talk about something else.  I have a long list of jottings where I keep all my ideas for blogs, and I generally glance through it before I start writing any blog.  But despite the thoroughness of my list, which truly captures nearly all of my random thoughts for writing, nothing compares to the wide array of topics that can shoot onto the page between a couple of curly brackets once I have begun writing about one of the topics already on my list.  It makes blogging all the more exciting.

(All this time I’ve been trying to fit in this comment, but it doesn’t fit anywhere:  Have you noticed how some people put nearly everything in quotations?  They have some sort of “problem” understanding that quotation marks indicate utterances, irony, or risqué-ness, and very few other “things.”)

I will try for you, reader, to chain up the tangential tiger that lurks within me on future posts, though I will probably use weak chains, because I like it when he occasionally escapes.  But perhaps I have already begun to tame that side of me by forcing it to be a topic in its own right.  It is terribly ironic when one focuses on divergence.

Heresy

I have created my own religion.  It is founded on Christianity, but it contains one major addendum.  That addendum is the wonderful book of Hesitations.  I have been compiling it since birth, and it has proved its usefulness on many occasions.  Here’s an example of where I might employ it.

Ashley: “Let’s have lima beans with dinner.”

Me: “I can’t.  It’s against my religion.  It says so in the book of Hesitations.”

Or perhaps

Ashley: “Why don’t you clean out the bathrooms today?”

Me: “Unfortunately, it is written in Hesitations 37:4 that ‘wicked is the man who scrubs and washes on his knees on his day off.’”

Ashley: “Well then do it standing.”

Me: “That’s covered two verses later.”

Ashley is particularly good at catching me in heretical acts, though.  I try to use other verses from the book of Hesitations, but she remembers them better than I do, and she often quotes previously referenced verses back at me.  Then I have nowhere to run (except maybe the apocryphal book of Necessitations). 

Recently I have been thinking what it would feel like to be a real heretic, though.  Truthfully, some would already consider me one.  For starters, I believe in evolution; I don’t believe the Flood was global; I don’t believe Adam and Eve were actual people; and many are shocked when they hear my thoughts on heaven, hell, and the devil.  But I do believe every sentence in the Apostle’s Creed, so I don’t think I’m a heretic. 

But it is a strong word.  Originally, its ancestor was used to describe any particular religious sect.  For example, it was used in the Greek New Testament in reference to groups of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Christians as sects of Judaism. But today, as we all know, it is used to refer to someone whose beliefs are in opposition to the doctrine of a particular church, whether it be Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, though certain members of these groups are more likely to talk about heresy than others.  I grew up in one of those sects, the Southern Baptists, who seem to use the word more than members of many other Protestant denominations.  (I have twice in my life happily been a member of a Southern Baptist church, but it is nonetheless true that they can often be overly dogmatic.)  I learned the word from an early age, though I didn’t quite understand its meaning for many years.  In fact, I often used it myself simply to describe, perhaps in intentionally exaggerated fashion, those who I perceived did not believe in the true version of religion, which was of course what I happened to believe at that moment.  Sometimes the word is intended as jest or as a precise explanation, but most of the time it is more pointed. Now that I am sometimes on the receiving end of the word, I have begun to think about it more.

Even were I to become an official heretic, I wouldn’t be terribly troubled.  After all, the great reformers of the church were often heretics in their time, and many other “heretics” died for beliefs that are staples of the church today.  John Wycliffe, for instance, preached the authority of the Bible over the authority of the church and was a proponent of having Bibles available in the vernacular (I believe his was the first Bible translated completely into English).  After his death, his body was exhumed and burned as a heretic.  Jan Hus, an admirer of Wycliffe, furthered Wycliffe’s ideas and also attacked the use of indulgences and the idea of the Crusades.  He was burned at the stake for his heresy.  Martin Luther was also a heretic, despite his love of the church.  Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” for his support of the Copernican idea of heliocentrism and died under house arrest as a result.  It took more than one hundred years for books related to heliocentrism to come off the Catholic banned book list.  But those who were heretics to the Catholics eventually caught on to the old ways as well.   John Calvin, an influential Protestant, also had heretics put to death in Geneva when he was there. 

Thankfully, heretics are no longer put to death today, but some traditions of Christianity, whether overtly or covertly, are still eager to brand dissenters as heretics.  We don’t often use the word anymore, but the mindset persists, especially in the US.  It is inherently ostracizing and unloving; it says “You no longer belong and we don’t want you.” Depending on the group, this mental label can manifest itself around all sorts of topics: evolution, hell, communion, speaking in tongues (or the Baptism of the Spirit), prayers of healing, music.  The list could go on and on.  When a person finds themselves in conflict with some particular beliefs of a church, he is rarely cast out by the pastor or priest.  Instead, the modern heretic is shunned by the church body for his beliefs, and even if he is eager to worship with those who shun him, eventually he despises the fact that no one will be his friend, and he leaves. 

While I think it is important for the church to stay true to its core, which I would define as the beliefs mentioned in the Apostle’s Creed or other similar creeds, I would argue that ostracizing people in the church for “heretical” beliefs is largely ineffectual, unnecessary, and damaging to the Christian faith.  Many atheists and agnostics today were once not opposed to religion, but a bad experience with the church pushed them out of it forever (I could list half a dozen that popped into my head within a few seconds).  When people were booted from the early church, it was normally for saying things like, “Jesus isn’t God,” or “Zeus is just as good,” not things like “I’m not sure that hell exists,” or “I believe in evolution.”  The things that often constitute heresy in the minds of some Christians these days are not central to the faith.  What is central to the faith – love – is conspicuously absent in these cases. 

I am glad that we have come as far as we have in our understanding of heresy.  It would be much worse if we were still killing people for having different beliefs.  But the idea of heresy still thrives in the mind.  We are all taught from an early age what we ought to believe, and this information is extremely specific – from what kind of clothes we should wear to the proper way to speak to views on religion in general to whether or not the body and blood of Christ are actually or only symbolically present in the host.  At some point, though, we must exit our tunneled view of religion and realize that there is considerable room in the church for differences of opinion. 

Showdown

When I was in high school, I was an uber-nerd (perhaps I still am now).  I sang in chorus, was on the student council, took piano lessons, got good grades, did academic bowl, and honestly never did anything illegal.  I was the kid who, upon running into a teacher in the hall without a hall-pass, would receive a wave and a smile instead of an interrogation about my destination.  “Oh, it’s Jonathan.  He’s probably going to a study session or something.  And if not, he’s definitely not doing anything bad.”  It was a safe assumption.

I remember I once received detention for forgetting some homework.  It was mortifying.  I think my teacher thought it would be good for me to feel like I had been bad for once in my life.  She was a chain-smoker, and while I don’t think she was a very good English teacher, the class was entertaining.  She would regularly break down into coughing fits and say things like “Oh [hack hack] this chalk dust is really [hurl] terrible!” or “[Spasm] I can see you are all [fit] struggling with the ragweed [attack] today too!”  She loved talking about sex scandals, and it was extraordinarily easy to get her side-tracked as long as you had some juicy comment to make.  English was always one of my best subjects, but this teacher simply would not give me an A.  She just laughed when I once asked her why I had gotten a lower grade than expected on a paper.  I didn’t like it, but I can’t deny that she has proved to be the English teacher I refer to most from all my years of schooling.  Her life would undeniably make a great movie.  God rest her soul.

But the real showdown of the century came two years later in my senior year English class. I actually loved the class.  The teacher helped me develop tremendously as a writer, but our class gave her some trouble from time to time.  We did a project near the end of the year that was intended to be a fun, though serious, activity.  We were to write a reflective essay concerning something of personal significance and read it aloud to music of our choice.  On the day I was to go, I stood up and read mine.  It was terribly grave and was accompanied by a depressing Shostakovitch string quartet that was written shortly after the composer was forced to join the Communist Party.  A few other classmates read theirs, also serious, often melancholy.

Then one of the quietest members of the class, though also one of the most comical, stood up with somber face to read his essay.  He hit the play button on the CD player, and what should grace our ears but the theme song of Pokemon, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.”  He launched into a long and colorful explanation of how Pokemon had changed his life, how every little furry creature inspired him to greatness, how it didn’t matter if your opponent was big and bad if you could be like Pikachu and zap them with lightning.  I was inspired.  So was the rest of the class, and we all struggled to restrain our mirth which grew at the same rate as the rage upon our teacher’s face.  The speech ended; we didn’t dare applaud; steam rose from my teacher’s ruby face.  She then launched into an invective as livid as our classmate’s speech was comical.  We left the class unsure if we should laugh more or feel ashamed.  I think most of us opted for laughter.

While this was the most notable conflict during the class, it certainly was not the only one.  But I doubt she anticipated any trouble from someone like me.  This teacher gave me more Cs and Ds than I have received in any other class.  All year you would write short, timed essays and get them back ripped to shreds.  But it seemed that the final grades always rose substantially at the end of the year.  The mid-year grades were more for motivation to do well on the AP exam than for anything else.  For me, though, Cs and Ds were to be avoided at all costs, even if I knew my class average would precipitously jump before grades came out. 

At the end of a long train of bad grades on these essays, I received yet another unsatisfactory grade.  Apparently so had many others, so our teacher decided to write us a sample essay on the same topic we had all just dragged through the mud.  She went up to the overhead and began to write.  As she wrote, she talked about how she would frame her thesis.  The first point was one I included in my own thesis.  She discussed it for awhile and I thought I must have really messed up the next two points.  Then she got to her second point – also identical to mine.  Then I was beginning to think my grade was too low.  Finally, we reached her third point, and it too was in my own thesis.  I sulked in pity for a few moments as she expounded, but I finally raised my hand, heart pounding, mood black, and said, “I wrote exactly the same thing you did and you gave me a 72!”  I also thought I had written it more eloquently. 

She expressed her doubt, and I could have left it there.  But I couldn’t let go.  I fired back.  There was no turning back now.  I hurled myself in headlong, expostulating on my seventeen-year-old brilliance, succinctly summing up all my paper’s merits with force and persuasion.  My teacher calmly responded saying something that I did not really hear.  I immediately retorted, and she again responded calmly.  After a few more of these passes, she began to become frustrated.  It continued, building, my classmates looking on in dread, wondering what was going to happen to me, until finally, I heard what my teacher said.  “What do you want?  Would it make you happy if I gave you a 96?” she spoke with passion and a red face.  Not really expecting her to have actually given in, I said, pausingly, “Yes?”  “Fine!  Have your 96!”  She slammed down her pen, came to my desk, took my paper, crossed out the old grade with my pen and wrote a large 96 atop it, her upper lip twitching in fury.  The bell rang, thankfully, as we all sat in stunned silence, or in my case, fearful silence.  My grade had just risen 24 points; my stature had fallen much further. 

I later ran into my English teacher from the previous year, who happened to have in her possession at that time one of my college recommendations, uncompleted.  She also happened to be very good friends with my current teacher.  “So, Jonathan, I heard you had a little run-in today?”  I blushed, never having considered that this would undoubtedly get around.  At that point I knew I couldn’t just let the incident go.  I ended up apologizing to my current teacher, and we finished the year on good terms, and I still got my college recommendation from my former teacher.  But it was surely an episode to be remembered: the day the good kid went bad.

I have always been very concerned with being right.  I will argue my point until I am blue in the face and I get my 24 points.  Even if I don’t get the points, I will still argue.  I must be right.  I must be logical.  You must listen to reason.  Regardless of the topic, the most important thing to me is the cogency of the argument, and if I am convinced that my own perspective is cogent, then yours must not be.  It is fortunate that I have a wife who is similarly logical and who is not easily hurt.  We don’t really ever argue, not in the traditional sense.  But we have epic debates.  Whenever someone asks us if we fight, I always refer them to our multi-day standoff on the intent of the Framers with regard to the Second Amendment.  It was legendary.  I ended up being wrong.

Sometimes it is important to stand your ground on an idea, especially when it comes to moral issues.  For instance, I will always be opposed to racism, regardless of who encourages me to accept it.  But more often than not, life is not about being right.  For the more common interactions in life, the wise path is more subtle.  The argument with my English teacher probably only endangered our mutual amity.  At worst, I might have gotten a detrimental college recommendation from my former teacher.  Today, my interaction with authority has greater ramifications.  A similar encounter with my boss could easily lead to the loss of my job.  In certain places in the world, the unwillingness to stand down could land me in jail.

I have been learning this reality slowly and painfully for the last several years of my life.  I am passionate about truth, so it has been difficult for me to back down.  Sometimes the need to be correct only leads to the deterioration of a relationship, and relationships are much more important than a trivial fact or two.  In business, if you don’t know the right people, you can’t get anything done.  You look high and low until you find someone who knows what you need.  But it’s even worse when you know the person who can help you, but that person stymies your efforts because of a broken relationship.  The same is true in almost every realm of life.  Knowing truth is important, but it only leads to progress if you can convince someone else of it too.  So when it comes to everyday interactions, the people who are able to achieve great things and push the world in the right direction are always more concerned with being effective than with being right.

Mugs - A Sonnet

I was a little lazy this week, so I decided to write a poem rather than a normal post for this Wednesday.  Here is the fruit of my labor:


Mugs

They hang on walls in precincts, fortune’s lost

Souls: the drear and drooping, grim-faced, low.

Nor wealth nor penury will change the cost,

(They say) of being caught in badge’s tow.

There is another, too, that often glooms,

For lack of fullness in the joys of life.

Now here, now there, perchance, there blooms

A trodden darkness, waiting with a knife

To snuff me out and send me ere away

From others still that hold a different brew

Of tea or sweet or bitterness in clay,

All of which will remedy the blue.

The varied scope of palate, mood, or wall

Will prove the canvas for these three mugs all.

Religion, Story, and Truth

When I grow up, I want to be a writer.  That is why indulge in this blog.  I enjoy it, and it’s good practice.  And though I am currently focusing on nonfiction, my goal is to be a novelist as well.  Regardless of whether I ever attain this goal, I love story, and I have a certain passion for defending it against all attackers, be they family, friends, acquaintances, or people I do not know.  Unfortunately, I often find myself defending story from fellow Christians.  This week, I find the need to do so once more.

Before I saw Avatar, a number of Christians told me that they enjoyed the movie…but the religion was weird and distasteful; in fact, it was downright evil.  This is not the first time I have heard a similar argument.  Most recently, there was all the hubbub about witchcraft in Harry Potter, which continues to this day in some circles.  Similarly, even works by Christians, such as A Wrinkle in Time, Lord of the Rings, and even The Chronicles of Narnia have come under fire for their elements of magic, which many conservative Christians view as inherently evil.  Some of you may be surprised to hear this, and if that is the case, I am very glad.  But I assure you these groups exist and in larger numbers than you might expect.

So I was not really surprised by the backlash against Avatar, which went as far as to include the Pope.  But the Christians who bash Avatar for its religion are just being ridiculous. Regardless of any political, religious, environmental or other motives, Avatar was first and foremost a story.  Stories must keep your attention; they must be believable and cohesive.  If they do not accomplish these tasks, they fail in any other more complex motives.  And James Cameron is a master of making a story cohesive.  In fact, for every plant seen in the movie, Cameron and company developed a full description of history, ecology, manner of reproduction, relationship to the Na’vi, and names in Latin, English, and Na’vi.  Na’vi itself is also a completely functional language, created just for this movie.  And the way in which the Na’vi learn English, while perhaps sped up to prevent the audience from becoming annoyed with their errors, is representative of the process we all go through when learning a foreign tongue.  So why did Cameron include religion in the first place?  He did so probably because we humans are historically religious, and we are thus able to identify with the religious tendency in the Na’vi.  It is another detail that reinforces the story, making it more cohesive. 

So if there was going to be religion, why isn’t it something closer to Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism, the three largest human religions?  Pantheism was the earliest of human religions.  It was the natural first perspective for the primitive man who was so mystified by the forces of nature.  The Na’vi obviously have some basis in early man (bows and arrows, loincloths, face paint), so it would be appropriate to use a primitive religion in the story.  Given the other aspect of the Na’vi biological connection to nature, pantheism seems not only reasonable, but almost required for credibility. 

One may retort that Cameron could well have written the screenplay any way he wanted to prevent this particular form of religion from being appropriate.  But who knows what struck Cameron first in the development of this story?  Perhaps he developed many of the themes about nature first and then realized that pantheism fit well in that scheme.  Regardless of the process, though, I think if we were to consider it, we would all realize how absurd it would have been to throw any sort of complicated theology into that story.  The Na’vi are simple, living in harmony with nature.  Christian theology would have been extremely awkward, if not terribly destructive, on the story as a whole. 

The backlash against Avatar reveals a common trend.  All stories are capable of revealing truth, regardless of their religious affiliations.  But conservative Christian groups are often unwilling to accept truth unless it is explicitly stated in the Bible (even if out of context) or unless it comes direct from the mouths of certain far-right editorialists (who often call themselves newscasters).  These same groups then bring their dogmatic ideas into the realms of science and politics.  Evolution can’t be true because it’s unbiblical, so is global warming, and, in case you had forgotten, so are democrats.  Their mindset of a Christian exclusivity of truth permeates all they do.

Once when I was travelling in Scotland, I met a young man in a hostel in Edinburgh.  We had both been separately to see the display of Rembrandt etchings at the National Art Gallery earlier that day, and we found ourselves discussing it that evening.  After only a few minutes, he brought up the fact that while he loved Rembrandt, he wasn’t terribly keen on many of the etchings in this display.  I asked him why, and he replied that most of them were on religious themes, and as an agnostic, he just couldn’t relate.  I found this odd because most of the etchings were not obviously religious.  If there had been no descriptions, I would have only guessed one or two of them were on religious themes.  I told him this, and he agreed, but somehow when he found out they were religious, they lost all relevance.  I tried to persuade him of how illogical that was, but he would not be won.

I found this incident to be terribly sad, for the etchings were beautiful, and this man could not enjoy their beauty because of an unfortunate association.  But I realized later that this is exactly what Christians are doing when we spurn truth because it lies beyond the familiar language of Christianity.  In both cases, the viewer of truth or beauty does not just maintain the status quo after his experience.  Rather, he is worse off than he was before, for he has seen something good and rejected it. 

Veracity On!

Facebook is a fascinating creature that seems to be on evolutionary steroids.  I remember when it had first come out and it was only for college students.  We all had a chip on our shoulders back then.  Only certain schools had access originally, and you had to write in with requests to get new schools added.  And you couldn’t actually do much on the site, just put in your interests, get as many friends as possible, and write on everyone else’s wall.  Then before you knew it, anyone in college could have an account, then anyone in high school (of which we all highly disapproved), then anyone at all.  And along the way there were groups, applications, a privacy scandal involving extraordinarily large e-petitions, and about three hundred different layouts, each of which confused me.  I am yet to grasp the most recent layout changes in their entirety. 

As Facebook became larger, security became a more important issue.  At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, Zuckerberg and friends introduced word verification as a way to fight spam.  Most of you are probably aware of this process, but for those who are not, when you post something on your status or on someone else’s wall, you now often must type in two words that are randomly generated for you to copy.  They are displayed in such a way that is supposed to ensure only a human could actually read them.  So you type in the words and then your message is displayed.

Well, I have always been a fan of these often ironic or otherwise comical word pairings.  So I have recorded the last few verifications I have had to enter, and now I offer you a tribute to the irony of random word generation.  The following story is fictional, and the word verifications will be the only dialogue.  This is probably going to be a little random, but indulge me.

Persephone was not easily crushed.  All her life she had been told she had no sense of expression, but she could not abandon her dream of acting.  She wanted more than anything to express ideas on stage, to open up the door to new possibilities, to explore the fuzzy boundary surrounding truth and reality.  Now she had her chance.  She had heard of an independent film that was looking for a few actors and actresses in town, so she drove down one day to a large warehouse near the Perimeter where much of the production was going to occur. 

She found the warehouse, verifying the address on a print-out she had brought with her, though she knew she was in the right place by the eclectic group of people milling around in the parking lot waiting for the doors to open.  They looked like dramatic folk.  It must have been the greasy hair. 

She got out of the car and walked up to join the small crowd.  After standing around for a minute or two, she plucked up her courage and asked the person next to her what this was a movie of.

“Of evacuees,” he replied.  She wondered how he had discovered this, for it not been listed on the ad. She also thought his answer was odd – who puts the word of at the beginning of an answer?  But she was pleased that the topic was substantial, one that could use some exposure in the world.

After a few more minutes, during which Persephone began to grow anxious, unconsciously curling and uncurling her flowing black hair, the doors finally opened, and the crowd flooded into the building to the gratuitous welcome of a young man.  As they piled into a small antechamber, the man receded to the back door of the room, which presumably opened into the larger production area.  The crowd’s murmuring and motion began to die down, and Persephone noticed a short woman discreetly come through the door behind the man.  She was so short that had it not been for the door opening and closing, it would have looked as if she had just appeared out of thin air, so effectively was she hidden in the young man’s shadow before moving next to him.  To the general surprise of the crowd, as soon as she stood next to the young man, she began chiding him for something, and the man’s previously strong demeanor faded into meekness as he tried to apologize through a gushy mixture of sycophancy and touchy gestures (the woman was obviously his girlfriend).  After nearly a minute of this spectacle, which was now being keenly observed by the whole crowd in silence, the woman tersely commanded the man back inside the production area, and he quickly obeyed.

“He whipped,” Persephone heard an indiscreet voice mumble, which brought out a small cascade of snickers and restrained laughter.  The woman, also apparently catching the remark, glared in the general direction of the speaker, though she could not make out who was responsible.  Without a word, she motioned for all of them to follow her through the door behind her.

Inside they found a large room with two small occupied areas.  There was a portion just ahead cordoned off with ribbons where large pieces of electronic equipment still resided unpacked.  To the left and beyond this first station was a stage room, well lit, which looked like a sitcom set from the seventies.  The film crew was going to revamp it soon, but it would serve the purpose of their audition space today. 

The woman was now passing through the ranks handing out pieces of paper, one color for the men, another for the women.  She explained that each scrap had a number on it.  They would be trying out in groups of two, one woman and one man, in some sort of prelude to a love scene.  Apparently the greasy man who suggested the topic of evacuees had been wrong; it was a romantic comedy, and a fairly risqué one at that.  Persephone became all the more nervous when she heard the woman say something about breaking new ground in love scenes. 

Just then she received her scrap of paper and, unfolding it, saw the number one on it.  She would be going first!  Great.  Without wasting any time, the woman called the number ones forward.  Persephone was smitten with fear, and when no woman moved, a few of the actors around Persephone pushed her forward, seeing her piece of paper.  The woman handed her a script and told her to read, pushing her further onto the stage.  The man was waiting.

Persephone glanced down at the script and saw she had the first line.  Gathering herself, she spoke, “Vacuous Mr…” She was immediately cut off by the male role, who launched himself into a passionate monologue about how lovers should never refer to each other as mister or miss.  Apparently he missed the fact that Persephone had just called him vacuous to his face.  And apparently the female roles in this movie were solely focused on providing flesh for the audience to slobber over: she had only one other line, and here it came.

She missed it.  Silence reigned.  She peered confusedly at her script.  Was this really all she was supposed to say?  The woman who wore the pants came stomping into the light looking irritated.  “Remember ‘and!’” she growled.  Persephone had not forgotten.  She just didn’t think and was much of a line worth saying.  But she uttered her single syllable answer to the opposing man’s constant stream of emotion.  And must have been inviting some response from the man, though Persephone was not sure exactly what, as she hadn’t really been listening.

The man got a strange look in his eyes.  To Persephone it looked like he might throw up any second, and she turned her head away in disgust, throwing up her arms for protection.  The man lunged at her, as a lion pouncing on his prey, and the director again came forward, this time throwing her stool into the scene, which quite startled the two on stage.  She yelled and cursed for a moment then told the man to go back to his original position.  The look in his eyes was supposed to be one of deep love, and Persephone had missed it.  But the director had advice for the man this time.  After all, the woman was just there to be pretty.

“Advance steamier,” she said with emotion to the man, making some grotesque motion with her hands about her middle, seeming to indicate that she was being disemboweled.  Persephone didn’t bother to say her one line – she knew it was pointless.  Even were she a terrible actress, she was above this pitiful excuse for a movie.  As the man began to lunge once again, this time looking like he had just crossed a desert and was about to fall on top of the well of Persephone, she dropped her script and walked off the stage toward the exit. 

The man missed his target, crashing into the wall and bringing down a deluge of old lights and props.  Amid the chaos that ensued, Persephone could hear the director shouting hysterically about truth and art and how Persephone clearly did not understand the ideals of artistry, otherwise she would recognize what a great film she had just flouted.  The screams grew more and more intense as Persephone realized the director was truly enraged at her.  She picked up her pace, and finally reached the door to the antechamber.  She turned around briefly and saw the livid director, her boyfriend crouching behind her in panic, pick up a defunct light casing and hurl it towards Persephone, shouting in her rage.

“Veracity on!”

Persephone squeezed through the door and heard the casing crash against the other side.  Maybe it was time she started trying to express truth in another field after all.

Avatar

As a kid, I loved getting up every Saturday morning to watch cartoons.  There was Batman, the Ninja Turtles, Scooby Doo, Darkwing Duck, Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, Tailspin.  Then there were the renowned Disney movies of old – Aladdin, The Lion King, and Toy Story probably being my early favorites (later to be followed by the best of them all – The Emperor’s New Groove).  These were all created to appeal to someone like me – your average kid.  But many of them, especially the classic movies, still appeal to me today.  This is partly due to nostalgia, but it is also due to the fact that they all present the same basic story, the heroic ideal that has been with us since the dawn of legendary human exploits, which is to say, since the dawn of humanity.

That being said, Sunday I finally saw Avatar.  First of all let me expound upon its greatness.  It was absolutely dazzling.  It is perhaps the only movie I have ever seen that I am considering seeing again in theaters. Vivid and creative, it certainly deserves the hype it has received.  I had been told a variety of things about it beforehand.  But the most frequently heard comments were that the visual effects were amazing, the plot was terrible, and the religion was weird.  The last of these I will address in my next post.  As for the others, I agree completely with the first point, and disagree with the second in spirit.

Maybe the plot was terrible to the detached viewer, but I simply was not detached.  From the moment I acclimated to the stunning picture before me and saw the gorgeous landscape that Cameron had created, I let down my guard and immersed myself as I did in those Saturday morning cartoons.  It was the sort of movie that, in my opinion, easily sucks you in.  It was so familiar: boy begins a task with wrong motives, boy gets girl, things start getting complicated, boy loses girl, boy fully repents of his former ways and commits to doing what’s right, boy proves himself and gets girl again, boy helps save the “world” from evil, they all live happily ever after.  Some may call it overused.  And indeed, this could just as easily have been a summary of The Lion King.

But this is the classic hero story, and we have a passion for them.  Hero stories of old tugged at the hearts of Greeks, Romans, and Elizabethans, and they continue to intrigue us today. Recasting the model in new ways is one of the great traditions of art.  Avatar succeeded at this task by introducing enough visual novelty to make the willing viewer trade his critical mindset for the perspective of an eager child who glories in the story for its own sake. I knew what was coming by instinct, but like the child who has heard his favorite story over and over and still fears it might turn out differently this time, so I was caught up in the excitement, allowing myself to wonder if it would actually work out in the end or if everything would fall apart. 

I’m glad it worked out.  But as confirmation that the movie had really succeeded, I was sad too.  I left the movie theater faintly wishing that there was such a story, that Pandora was real, that I had won my own girl through courage and danger, that I was a part of that story.  When you approach a story just as it is, a story, with a hero and a villain, with love and hate, war and peace, it is easy to project yourself into it.  But you never think of those fallen warriors or unrequited lovers; you view yourself as the hero who gets the girl and saves the world from destruction.  For a few hours, the screen is your portal into heroism.  You become the hero, experiencing all his ups and downs, and in this case his ultimate triumph and joy.

Then you leave.  And it’s over.  You feel the joy being stolen away as you acquiesce to the fact that you do not live on Pandora, you have not just protected a species from their doom.  You exit the building into the vast asphalt parking lot, squinting in the glare of a thousand windshields.  You see no pristine jungle landscapes.  Even if you have the girl, you remember that relationships are more than just perfect romance.  That world in which goodness and love have so thoroughly triumphed has vanished, and this world where death and decay loom large returns. 

The melancholia sticks around for awhile, perhaps until dinner time, and then life gets back to normal.  The perfunctory essentials return.  You realize the kitchen still has to be cleaned; you must still go to work; your bathroom scale still shows a number too high for a hero.  But we fight our own heroic struggles.  Some decide to fight for their marriage that has been falling apart around them, a decision sometimes more heroic than going to war.  Others decide to continue helping that seemingly hopeless child at school, though all others have abandoned him.  Many decide to face the next day, though there is no hope for a better life anywhere in sight.

I did not learn anything new about human nature when I saw Avatar, nor did I leave with any surprising or revelatory new ideas about truth, beauty, love, or joy.  But I was reminded that justice is worth fighting for.  I was reminded of how similar have been man’s faults all through the ages, and how similar they will likely be into the future.  Once my movie melancholia had faded, I also remembered, trite though it sounds, that I could be a hero too.

And it was just awesome.

A Day in the Life of a Paranoid

Flames shoot in all directions, not just up, but down, left, right, diagonal.  Various objects of affection careen out of the inferno like scorched animals, still carrying bits of fire on their tails.  There is my copy of The Complete Icelandic Sagas, churning its weighty way through the air, 700 of the 1000 pages already burnt to a crisp.  There on the left I see my Brahms recordings balanced on a charred wooden precipice.  They plummet into a seemingly endless abyss as their support finally gives way.  I feel a burning sensation on my neck and swat away a chard of a memory on a piece of glossy, evaporating paper – my wife and me on our wedding day.  The conflagration rages ever on, and Chopin’s Funeral March fades in, growing louder and louder, its ominous tones pounding their way methodically into my desperate soul.  Louder, louder, the dirge pulses and throbs, bursting in and receding again.  It grows harsh, cacophonous, in and out, over and over…

“Jonathan!  Turn off your alarm!”

My eyes open slowly as I fade into reality and I hit the alarm, grateful to find myself in my comfortable, unoxidized bedroom.  Safe, I lay back down to sleep a few more minutes.  I doze in and out again, dwelling in that place between waking and sleeping where dreams can be manipulated.  I masochistically bring back the image of my burning apartment and wallow in its depression.  I vaguely sense my wife walking around the room, bringing with her faint spines of peace piercing the raging fires of my dream.  I hear myself starting to snore, pulling me further into reality, and the fires begin to melt away, drifting as on a piece of paper in a gentle ocean swell, now near at hand, now distant, now near again, until the dream has vanished on the waning tide. 

I get out of bed and begin to go about my day.  I shower and eat, check my email, putter around the place doing nothing in particular.  I turn on the coffee pot while I get dressed for work, and I hear it gargling and purring from my bedroom.  The smell lazes its way through the rooms, finding me and lifting my spirits.  By now, all I remember of my dream is that it ended very peacefully.  Dreams only seem terrifying when you wake from them suddenly and permanently.

Now I am ready for work.  I have seen my wife out the door to her school, and I prepare for my own departure now.  I pour my coffee and prepare it, gather my few other effects, put on my coat, and head to the door.  Then I turn back around and make for the master bath.  “Is Ashley’s curling iron is off?”  I find everything in order and verbalize it, “Off.” 

I march back toward the door but make a stop by the kitchen.  “Off, off, off, off, off, off, off.”  That covers the coffee pot, the toaster oven, the four stove eyes, and the oven.  Now running a little late, I quicken my pace as I remember to check the library for any lights that are still on.  I find them off and take a shortcut through the guest bath on the way out, or so I tell myself, though really I’m checking to make sure Ashley did not leave any other hair paraphernalia plugged in there either.  “Good.”

Finally I walk out the door when I realize I have not checked the heat!  I unlock the door and find the dial in the hallway, turning it down a quarter of a degree to make myself feel better about the fact that it was already set where I intended.  I scan the lights on the stove one last time, just in case, and then head outside once more.  I lock the door and jiggle the handle in and out several times.  “Locked.”

I hesitate on my way down the stairs, torn between the idea of going back up to make sure I really turned off the coffee pot, but I force myself on.  Ten minutes after originally heading to my apartment door, I finally make it to the car.  Inside, I start the car and simultaneously start worrying that I didn’t lock the door completely.  But I know I’m paranoid, so I drive to work.

On the way there, I think of how much I dislike being this way.  I blame the American way sometimes, and its obsession with security.  Other times I settle on the notion that I’m just that way, buying into our culture’s perverse idea that we can pass the blame for any of our unsavory aspects onto our genes, stymieing personal responsibility.  On occasion, though, I make some lofty goal of eliminating my paranoia.  I give myself a pep talk, ending with a rousing call to action, a declaration that “I can do it,” and a loud battle cry as I charge against the menace of anxiety.  But then I have arrived at work, and I have to calm down.  The will to fight fades as I walk the path into work, and by the time I scan my card at the door, I have forgotten my determination to improve.

The day goes smoothly.  I give that big presentation on the work I’ve been doing for the last six months.  It goes well, and I’m glad to have finally finished it.  I am mostly free of paranoia while I’m at work, and after a tiring day, I return home. 

As soon as I step in the door, fears that had been lurking somewhere in the corners of my mind pounce upon me.  What if my numbers were off in that presentation?  What if I was mistaken about the entire premise of the project?  I could have made some tiny error that threw off the whole process.  Then I would have to go in and tell everyone who had heard my presentation that it was all wrong.  The foundation of the project was an error, and I just wasted six months of time.  My wife assures me I am being crazy, and I settle down to dinner, Jeopardy, and some reading. 

Bed time rolls around and I am fatigued from fighting with my mind.  I brush my teeth, read a little more, take my allergy pill, and then prepare to turn off the lights.  Picking up my alarm, I check that it is set for the right time, assuring myself that the alarm is set for AM, not PM, and that the current time says PM, not AM.  Then I turn the alarm on and off several times, just to confirm that the little symbol of a bell I see appearing is actually related to me pressing the alarm button.  I hit the snooze button, which is also the light, and then worry that by doing so I may have disengaged the alarm, just like snoozing does in the morning.  So I repeat the whole process again.  Finally, when I feel confident that all is well, I stare at the display for at least thirty seconds, looking for any sign that my confidence was ill-founded.  Then, doubly-confident, I put the clock down, turn off the light.  The peace of the night and the comfortable bed soothe me.  I sigh pleasurably, and roll over.  Maybe I can beat this worry after all.  Maybe I can slowly free myself from its net.  But then I wonder, “Hon, is your alarm set too?  Just in case?”

Judging a Book By Its Cover

“Never judge a book by it’s cover.”  So the saying goes, at least for those who do not know how to use apostrophes correctly.  Regardless of who is telling me this trite wisdom, be it an expert grammarian or an illiterate yeoman (though that would be a rather ironic thing for an illiterate yeoman to say), I never take their advice.  I might try to, but I know covers affect me.

I recently read Lord of the Flies for the first time, and I absolutely loved it.  I expected to, and I’m glad it did not have a grotesque cover to spurn me.  Then on my last trip to the library to buy used books, where we buy nearly all of our books that we always meant to read but never did, I picked up another Golding book, The Inheritors, and thought, “What the heck – it’s only twenty five cents.”  I say that a lot when I’m at the little used book shop at the library.  I buy them in droves, flocks, mountains, hoards, heaps, clans.  Thankfully, there is no border control to stop me even when adopting in such quantity.  But I assure you I provide a loving home for my books.   

So anyway, I picked up that Golding book, barely glancing at the cover because I had just read his other book and enjoyed it so much.  I fanned through the pages to test the extent of defacement (which is a great burden to my soul, especially that caused by grisly highlighters), and seeing that it was mostly free of such sin, I gathered it into my herd, where it quickly lost itself amongst its comrades. 

I then led them to the checkout, where I paid nearly six dollars for about twelve books, deciding that one particular collection of essays was worth the hefty price of ¾ of a Starbucks Latte.  (I later decided it was worth at least five Frappucinos, so I was rather pleased.)  I left the library with a pleasant mien and a heavy sack.

Later, when I was distributing the new gaggle amongst the various sections of the library, I had a small, involuntary twinge when I placed The Inheritors upon the shelf.  I wondered at it for a moment, and then thought nothing of it and promptly left the feeling stranded.   But it returned with a vengeance when I later pulled the book from the shelf to sample it. 

There on the front of my vintage copy, which cost less than a stick of gum, was a hideous drawing of a Neanderthal, or something like it, hunched over naked in shades of brown and chartreuse, sniffing and poking at some unknown plant.  Like the sculptures of the Greco-Roman world, whose paint has long since faded, the androgynous creature has no pupils.  But ancient sculptures did not choose to let their painted eyes fade away.  The “artist” who created this cover, on the other hand, purposefully left the creature to look soulless and evil.   Opposed with this depiction is the fact that the Neanderthal is hunched over in the most polite of manners, kindly remembering to shield us and our fragile sensibilities from the private nooks and crannies of his body.  I guess in this aspect he decided to rise above the artist’s implications of his nature.

And then there is the looming question of why there is a name written in the ground next to the Neanderthal.  Did someone named Charles travel through time, perhaps like one of those hunters in The Sound of Thunder, dropping his name randomly about the landscape, hoping that it would be noticed in one of these artistic book covers?  Or is the Neanderthal merely posing in this posture, feigning ignorance, while all along he has left us a clue that he can actually write his own name?  Perhaps, like so many, he is an oppressed being, grasping at any chance he has to reveal his true potential. 

Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this Charles chap and his book cover, but can I help feeling repulsed when I pick up the book?  When I bought it, not having really noticed the cover, I could not wait to read it.  Golding was my new territory in literature, a fresh and verdant landscape I had just discovered.  But this cover could not help but remind me of vomit. 

About once a week I now pick up the book, hoping I will find in my heart some pity for its wretched estate.  But as of yet, I have been unsuccessful.  I know this is all very sophomoric of me, but I can’t help but feel distaste when a great artist like Golding is paired with such mediocrity.  I remind myself, when I think of the harm that has been done Golding’s name in publishing a book with such an abysmal cover, that I did not used to enjoy green beans or asparagus but I now like them both.  I doubt I will ever like this book cover, but I hope to one day push beyond the foul taste it puts in my mouth and arrive at the story mostly unscathed.