Reflections

It's snowing. I can't help but think that in many ways I'm no closer to finding what I want out of life then I was at the begining of the year. What's more, it appears that people get places by floating along and getting lucky. After a semester of books and labs, I don't think any of us are any closer to answering the question of where we fit in as an indevidual in a community than we were when the year started. I for one spent the year learning what I don't know, which is a great deal. But that may have been the point.

This year was more about learning where I stand. I learned I was closer to the middle politically than I had thought (back home it was commonly assumed I was a god hating liberal). I discovered the sheer amount of crap on my desk could be hiding early life forms. I learned that washing machines do not work when you have to force the door closed with your butt. I learned that peoples' backgrounds greatly influence their views and that identity performances are universal, whether it's a professional trying to make an olympic struggle seem simple or a class trying to tack down the answer to an unanswerable question.

Some performances are better than others but, like an audition, everyone is trying to make the most of the same script.

Paths to Community

I, like many of my classmates have no clue what community I'd like to join later in life.

I don't know what I want to do with my life, where I want to go, or how I'm gonna get there. In this I think I am part of a community of not knowing.

We live in uncertain times and surely an uncertain community of non-belonging, non-commital people is in order. A group of wanderers, similar and yet different from those described in Joe's post. As our generation enters the workforce we are met by a defined lack of place for us in this world. Jobs are scarce and in many ways wandering the world with a backpack and hope is an attractive option. The current group of wanderers go form vocation to vocation searching for a rent check as opposed to truth.

If "good person" and "happy" are communities, I aspire to be in them. But when it comes to defined communities like workplaces and towns I'm at a loss.

Reflecting a pie

When it comes to Turkey Day festivities mine, and most families gatherings tend to run similarly to Joe's without the mad dash to a movie theater.

There's copious amounts of food and pointed remarks about my many short comings.

There's always something about family gathering that makes sibling rivalries comeback full force even without the siblings being present. Part of it is the ease with which we revert back to our old roles. Gathering the family together makes it easy to go back to the way things used to be. Pie and turkey or roast pork are traditions just like family sniping. It's as American as apple pie

Reflections of Honor

One thing that surprised me about our "military service as a condition for citizenship" discussion was how many of my peers had been raised to fear the military or at least military service. I was never brought up this way. The military took my grandfather, who grew up on a farm without indoor plumbing, put him through school and got him a doctorate in oceanographic geology to lay microphones on the ocean floor. The GI bill pulled my family off the farm and gave us a better life. We have never forgotten this fact.

My grandfather didn't want my dad to go into the military. When my grandfather went in, it was to give his children a better life. The military is great at moving people from poor to middle class. By the time my father was of age, his family was middle class. The military wouldn't move him forward, wouldn't give him a better life. So my grandfather pushed him to go to college to further advance himself.

What's more the culture of the south is very pro military. This almost militant attitude has roots all the way back to reconstruction. In the early years after the civil war (the war of northern aggression) the south was an occupied country. For many years joining the military was the only way to get ahead in society. Military service held a great deal of honor and respect.

I grew up playing army men and it has definitely influenced my opinions today.

Bonus of writing history

the pro of kicking the crap out of an entire race of people is the ability to write history books that you in a positive light. "It wasn't our fault it was Manifest Destiny!" The National Museum of the American Indian kinda calls BS on that idea. It highlights the wrongs done the American Indian people while still showing them as a persisting culture.

"We're still here" was emblazoned across the Cherokee section of "Our People"

The museum is designed to express the American Indian's side of the story. There was a focus on the tribes as individual communities as opposed to the whole as a culturally homogenous community. Artifacts were organized by tribe and each tribal area was organized so as to detail the individual tribe's fight against oppression.

At the entrances there is a big focus on community and the idea that we are all similar people. (the entrance of one exhibit is lined with video screens that show American Indians walking through as you walk through the entrance) The artifacts are organized to show the diversity of the different tribes.

Reflecting the future

I've noticed a pattern with all our speakers.

They all stumbled onto their current careers through sheer dumb luck. Yet several of them have touted the importance of specialized education. Almost none of them went into a career that naturally fit with their major (the economist excluded).

Their messages are contradictory. "Have a plan." "Don't stick to that plan." "Find Yourself." "Don't look too long."

The only thing all of them agreed on was "Get a Job!"

Great, me and a couple million of my unemployed friends'll jump right on that.

reflection and relaxation

When you are sick, there's a day about halfway through your illness when if you take it easy and nuke your illness with meds you could be better tomorrow. If you do anything fun however you'll be sick for another week.

I was at that point on Saturday. Saturday is the day for fun things but I knew if I went out and did anything I'd spend the next week paying for it.

Being the only person still on the floor gives you a lot of time to reflect on your week, like the themes of Antigone .

In many ways Antigone, all the Oedipus saga really, is like an illness. One action that seems relatively harmless, like a cough escalates into an unstoppable wave.

When Antigone begins Creon is in that crossroads day where you either sacrifice your social life or your health. He has the option of either allowing an honorable burial to an enemy of Thebes that would benefit his family and please the gods or attempt to unite Thebes through vilifying a common enemy even if it goes against the gods. Really it's a "screwed either way" set up.

Creon chooses the short game. By vilifying the brother who attacked Thebes he could temporarily unite the people against a common enemy but that kind of unity is short lived. In this case very short lived as Antigone goes on to disturb the peace. A better long game would have been to bury both with honors as "sons of Thebes" and say that "with this burial we put to rest the horrors of our past and through honor seek to rebuild for a stronger future." In the end uniting over building something is a better political strategy.

Creon was a bad king because he lacked an understanding of the long game.

the weakest link

The old adage of a chain only being as strong as its weakest link plays directly into how a society copes with poverty or rather a working class. A strong, well cared for working class allows for a strong, well cared for class of idle rich. Just like an expensive chandelier the weight of the rich is supported and saved from imminent demise by the chain of oppressed working class.

If this working class is fed regularly on the American Dream (tales of how relentless hard work allows for social and economic mobility) then the chain will continue supporting the ever more cumbersome and gaudy chandelier but as the chandelier becomes neglectful of its support structure small cracks will form in arrangement.

Like Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution, the lower class starved of food, health care, and opportunity and burdened by the ever growing economic weight of the idle rich and . . . well like I said a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It only takes one link sloughing off the burden of its oppressors to send the whole structure crashing to the ground.

Reflections of shiny objects

I must first apologize for the lateness of my reflection this week.

In my defense I spent my Sunday in a Howard County ER getting flu medication that, had I been at home would have been mine after a short visit to the doctor's office.

Sitting in an understaffed ER for roughly five hours gives one plenty of time consider the state of our health care system today.

For many of the uninsured, the ER replaces a primary care physician. In our current system the hospital is often forced to eat costs that go unpaid by those who can't afford to get sick. The elderly and uninsured are often forced to choose between medications with inflated prices or utilities payments. Recently free health care has been provided to those in some major american cities like LA by Remote Area Medical. They send Remote Area Medical to disaster sites and third world countries that barely have enough hospitals for their sick and health insurance doesn't even come into play.

Yet even those who are insured aren't being covered when they need it most. Dental isn't covered, Optometrists aren't covered, only certain hospitals are covered, only certain doctors. My mother's health insurance company tried to duck charges for the emergency caesarian section that saved both her and my little brother's lives. Apparently the anesthesia was unnecessary for the procedure.

One of the main argument against socialized medicine is that those needing vital procedures would have to wait to get them. They already are. They're waiting for their insurance companies to approve the life saving procedures that they can't afford but can't survive without. As it is our health care is controlled by the rich and vocal. All those people who stand in front of the capital with signs that say "Keep government hands off my Medicaid" while people die in ER's or drown in bills they can't pay. Only the rich can afford to stay healthy.

What kind of self respecting first-world country would have a system that put a price on health?

The Death of Tribes and the Rise of the American Dream

Starting over is as American as Apple pie but just like pie too much is bad for you. As individuality progresses people pull away from their communities. This is unhealthy. Humans are social animals and as we pull away from those around us we suffer.

When humans were still tribal animals, children didn't leave, they didn't start over. They made their tribes larger, more rich. In the tribal era cultures were less homogenized and groups were more tightly knit. As a result there was greater discrimination. Our engrained fear of what is different from ourselves made discrimination and oppression of those we could.

The advent of the individual is hardly a bad thing. It has allowed great leaps forward in human rights as well as innovation in diverse fields of study. The importance of the individual allowed our civilization to move beyond agrarian based societies. It allowed for increased class mobility in addition to giving us a wider web of interpersonal connections.

Where this individuality and self reinventing becomes unhealthy is when we are so fiercely independent and reinvented that we cut ties with those from our past. The movie Whip It said it best, "You don't give up your old family just because you found a new one."

Our Parents Reflections

Parents weekend was an interesting ritual to view.

For so long we have merely been add ons to our parents and in our first months of college we work to forge our own identities without them. Parents weekend pushes our old selves into our new world. We are forced to compromise between the people we were and the people we are.

The parents were uncomfortable in our spaces whereas when we return home we are comfortable there. Because we are the ones changing we force those who were used to us as we were (our parents) to adapt to the new person who can do laundry, feed themselves, and operate sans authority. I assume my reaction would be the same as the parents on parents weekend were I to return home only to find that my family had moved.

Matryoshka Communities

Communities are defined as groups bound by some uniting factor or commonality. In that sense yes American University is a community just like DC is a community or on an even larger scale America is a community. This is however only the roughest definition of a community.

An enrollment, temporary residency, or citizenship doesn't make a community if that is all we have uniting us. When we looked at bonds in class, even home state was a stronger tie than American University student. It also exhibited an interesting phenomena that tends to go hand in hand with communities. Often we don't fully realize how connected to a community we are until we leave it. In my case, I had always assumed that I was fundamentally different from my southern peers when I lived there but once I left and was out of my culture it became apparent that a great deal of my personality and beliefs were shaped by the community I grew up in.

Common experience is such an important part of making a community that large communities break down into smaller ones. Explorations breaks down into New Jersey people and Not from Jersey.

It also must be taken into consideration that we are new to the American University community. Perhaps with time it will seem more tight knit than it currently does.

A country reflection

This will probably kill off any of my remaining cool points but this weekend I discovered the musical stylings of one Taylor Swift and even though ever indie bone in my body is screaming is pain at my affinity for a mainstream artist she is actually very good.

Though her grasp on literature is a bit fuzzy, as seen in Love Story (neither Romeo and Juliet nor The Scarlet letter ended very well) her music shows a maturity that is beyond her teeny-bopper image.

Now this got me thinking about the stereotypes of country music. The first is that it centers around a few central story lines and subjects. (My wife left me, Booze, dogs, hometowns, cowboys or some combination thereof) While it is undeniable that "My wife left me for some cowboy and blew our hometown with my dog because I drink too much" would make a great country song and probably already has. There is more to it than that.

Country remains popular today because it reminds people of their roots. It makes them remember when a man's pride was rooted in his land alongside his crops or a man's honor was something to fight over. Things like this were mostly lost when the population moved from farms to the cities. Music can still remind us that what was left wasn't lost.

Reflecting the past

I really liked the speaker on Friday. She really reminded me of one of my favorite teachers from high school. She turned what would have been an almost painful subject, physics, into a fun class. Similarly our speaker's enthusiasm for her subject that I almost found myself wanting to take micro economics on the off chance that she'd be teaching it.

Teachers liek that really make you who you are. I learned work ethic and physics in that class and I get things done now because my teacher made me get things done then.

The Invisible Question

Invisibility is not just a question of class or race. When someone lacks direction they seem to drop from view. They float, ghostlike through the world without really impacting anything.

In the book the narrator seems to move from mold to mold without really fitting comfortably into any of them. When he becomes a communist pundit he can't quite comfortably fit into the doctrine and so what shines through to those who hear his speech is the mold not the man within it. Similarly when he becomes a factory worker he is unhappy and unmotivated he is invisible. People only saw a factory worker they did not see the narrator.

stitching together some crafty reflections

This weekend I went to the Crafty Bastards craft fair. I had a blast, spent way too much of my own money, and got a couple very cool things. I also got to see the mingling of different social groups that in other circumstances would cross a street to avoid each other but I saw little old ladies in floral prints talking to six foot tall medal heads with full sleeves of tattoos. They were even smiling at each other.

such is the power of craft. most everything available there could probably be found cheaper made by an underpaid child laborer form an impoverished country in an Urban Outfiters but there's something about shaking hands with the woman who sewed the garment your buying or baked the cupcake you're eating that makes the extra couple of bucks worth it.

and for the record Urban Outfiters marks up their merchandise so high that you're better off buying stuff at the craft fair (perhaps Target would have been a better example)

the difference between a memoir and a novel is in a million little pieces

Augustine's book has weight because he uses his own experience to explain his philosophy and give his it a frame of reference. Were it a work of fiction the philosophy gained through years of thought and experience could be dismissed more easily.

Similarly were Ellison's novel a true story readers wold be less likely to read deeper into it. The factual nature of an autobiography makes the use of metaphor and foreshadowing seem contrived. In works of fiction such literary tools is a mark of good literature and forces readers to look deeper than the surface for further allusions and hidden messages and themes.

basking in the warm reflected glow . . .

. . . of created lore. The kind of chilly and dark rainy days like the one we had yesterday beg for a cup of tea and a good solid horror movie.

The one I watched , Trick r' Treat, while not scary did present an interesting focus on identity. Trick r' Treat is essentially four short stories that inter connect. I didn't find scary at all but the cinematography was wonderful and the movie was full of dark humor and a pretty high level of Karma.

I know it's early to bring in Halloween, and I will definitely have another Halloween centered post but watching a Halloweeney movie made me think about the dichotomy of Halloween and identity.

When examined culturally, Halloween is really one of the few pagan holidays that Christianity was unable to infiltrate. Every October 31, without thought or question families go through the rituals of their pagan ancestors no matter what their current religious affiliation. They carve pumpkins and light candles (thought to keep away evil spirits), they dress in costume (to confuse evil spirits), and they leave offerings of baked goods and sweets, commonly known as Trick or Treating (to appease the spirits and honor the dead).

While our society touts its modern "enlightened" nature, Halloween highlights our habitual superstitious nature. It glows from behind the mask of modernist front like the candle in a Jack-o-Lantern.

On an individual level Halloween offers us the rare opportunity to be anything we want. The choice we make when we change our front for the night says a great deal about what Goffman calls our "backstage." Whether it's our wish to be immortal or wish to be an adored performer our costume says something about who we are behind our everyday facade.

Oh the horrors! My Reflection is a mess

Last night my friend and I went to a "Horrors" concert and the selection of bands and their stage persona versus their fan relation persona brought up some interesting identity issues.

The Horrors looked like they'd read The Sandman and said "I want to be Neil Gaiman when I grow up." As for their performance despite being high energy they didn't appear to be enjoying themselves onstage at all. The bassist in particular looked as though someone had taken a pee in his morning coffee and he'd never recover. In fact the only one who looked like he was having a good time was the drummer.

Upon meeting them, my friend wanted a picture, however it was clear the "I hate the best job on earth" thing was only an act to add to the angst of their Cure-like melancholy songs. When it came to fan relation they were all upbeat, friendly, and helpful.

When you consider their profession their dual fronts make perfect sense. Without their angsty, aloof stage front, their melancholy music and lyrics would seem hollow but that same front when used in fan relations loses fans. When a performer is aloof (a tool) to their fans, who essentially write their paychecks they lose fans. If a diehard fan works hard to meet the band and the band are jerks the fan goes home, smashes his/her CD's and tells all his/her friends to never listen to that band again.

It's bad for business and so bands cultivate a friendlier front with which they greet their patrons. Most performers do this but I hadn't really thought about it until I saw the extreme contrast between stage and fan presence of the Horrors. While it was nice to see that they weren't angsty all the time it did make their whole show seem more contrived.

horrors image is from thehorrors.co.uk

The Memory of You still hangs in the Air

As much as I'd like to deny it, in many ways what we do and how we remember it are huge parts of who we are. In cases of Alzheimer's many relatives say that their loved ones are still in there but I don't see how.

Everything you experience changes you. You are in effect a compilation of things you've done, people you've met, and the effects of those things on you. If, for example you met someone who drastically changed your views and then forgot that person. Would your views change back or would you simply forget you changed at all? That change is an important aspect of you and if it was lost how could it be said that you are the same person.

It's understandable that you could, at core be the same person but without the memories. In that way it could be said that without your experiences or the people in your life you are a purer form of yourself because you lack the memories of past performances.

take that Goffman!