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It seems each year, some organization ropes in another one of our fifty-two weeks and lays claim to it. Scanning Epromos’ list of these occasions, you might not be surprised to notice weeks have been designated for “Administrative Professionals,” “National Head and Neck Cancer Awareness,” Be Kind to Animals,” “National Tourism,” et cetera.

And yet, there are still some surprises out there - you might be surprised to read, for instance, that today, April 19, is the official start of Cowboy Poetry Week. In fact, this week hasn’t even made a blip on Epromos’ radar. You might think a week is overkill for honoring what sounds like an imaginary medium but, in fact, Cowboy Poetry Week has been steadily gaining steam and its sponsoring organization, CowboyPoetry.com is entering its tenth year. Although Epromos hasn’t caught onto the craze, Gov. “Ahnold” Schwarzenegger seems to be a fan.

Although the website isn’t a webcrawler’s dream in terms of navigation or pizazz, you might stumble on some gems. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll realize soon that there’s a new sheriff in town.

At my father’s insistence, I’m reading Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. While lounging with the book today, a passage caught my attention, especially in light of recent news from the Pew Research Center:

“Perhaps miracle is the wrong word. I was simply trying to speak your language.”

“My language?” Langdon was suddenly uncomfortable. “Not to disappoint you, sir, but I study religious symbology - I’m an academic, not a priest.”

Kohler slowed suddenly and turned, his gaze softening a bit. “Of course. How simple of me. One does not need to have cancer to analyze its symptoms.” (page 27).

In August of last year, I wrote “Emptying Pews Cry for Leadership,” in which I discussed my perception of religion as a dying institution, but one that’s dying needlessly, from a preventable disease. The quotation from Angels & Demons I’ve included above is a propos because I’m not particularly religious; I’m just fascinated by religion and how people engage themselves with it.

In these dire economic times, you’d expect more and more people would be going to church. After all, aren’t we used to seeing church attendance rise when tough times or hurdles lie ahead or when the future becomes cloudy and overcast? Furthermore, going to church is more or less free, so it’s not like you can use less cash as an excuse from attending.

Despite what you might expect, the Pew Research Center released findings on March 13 which suggest that people are just as unconvinced by the value of going to church now as they were before this crisis started.

From the Pew Research Center, March 13, 2009

From the graph to the left, you can see that church-goers remain at the same small handful in January 2009 as they did in January 2007.

I don’t know about you, but I fully expected that as the Dow Jones plummeted, church attendance would climb, a testament to our ability to ignore the good things in our life until all we’re surrounded by is the bad.

So what does this mean, that the flagging economy has failed to revive our interest in religion? Maybe, just maybe, it’s an dead horse that’s not worth beating anymore.

I’m probably crossing a line with this post. I’ve been sitting on this one for about a week now, discussing this with friends and reflecting on it. My opinion hasn’t changed.

By now, you probably have heard of the sexting phenomenon. If not, in brief, it is the act of sending nude or semi-nude pictures of yourself to others via your mobile phone. Here’s the shocker: according to a survey performed last year by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 20 percent of teens “said they had sent or posted nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves” (MSNBC). Split out by gender, this was true for 22% of girls vs 18% of boys.

In the last couple of months, three sexting scandals have launched onto the media’s radar.
Continue reading The Sexting Phenomenon and Accountability

I haven’t had much time to write in the last couple of weeks, but I still wanted to capture this train of thought somewhere.

At the turn of the month, I made my rounds to Talking Philosophy, where Jean Kazez had just written (competently, I feel) about the perils of caring too much and the virtue of indifference, especially as it pertains to religious matters. Although I’m taking it out of context, one of the passage which stirred most concerned a topic I’m passionate about:

“At least in the US, we are rather fond of definining ourselves clearly.  Each person practically has a brand (huge exaggeration–but think about facebook pages, blogs, ring-tones, and the like).  There’s also high intolerance for non-belief, making it more important to “come out” defiantly as a non-believer.  Atheism has developed something akin to a gay-pride movement, because there is in fact a high level of misunderstanding and prejudice in both cases.”

Jean says that considering Facebook pages, blogs, ring-tones, etc as a personal brand is a “huge exaggeration.” But is it really? In recent years, authors, prominent businesspersons, and media mongols have been pushing the idea that the main ingredient in success is creating a strong, irresistible brand of “You.” Considering that:

1) Are artifacts like Facebook, MySpace, ring-tones, blogs, twitters, etc precursors of the Brand-of-I mentality, or symptoms?

2) Are these precursors/symptoms healthy? Useful?

3) Where should we draw the line with our personal brands?

4) Perhaps more than anything, are we creating the brands, or are the brands creating us? (Corny, I know, but chew on it: Is the effort of perfecting our image for consumption causing us to burn away something more important?)

I’m reminded of Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm. He suggested that we relate to people most through narrative. This trend is exemplary evidence to support that theory. Further more, this trend may end up showing just how constructive - or destructive - narrative can be.

To some, it’s simply ”to drink or not to drink.” To others, it really is “to [die] or not to [die].” For the first time in twenty-five years, it seems now is the time to rehash the question. But, before considering whether or not the current drinking age of 21 years should be adjusted, it is best to examine this issue from its roots to its shoots, so to speak. After a brief historical survey, I’ll opine away.

The History

While popular opinion would have you believe that this saga began in the 1920’s, contention on the topic began brewing much earlier. In 1629, the Virginia Colonial Assembly ruled that “Ministers shall not give themselves to excess in drinkinge, or riott, or spending their tyme idellye day or night.” In 1637, Massachusetts decreed that no one should stay in a tavern “longer than necessary occasions.” Meanwhile, Plymouth Colony outlawed the sale of alcohol to newly arrived strangers which cost “more than 2 pence.” These efforts to control excessive drinking are humorous, considering that Puritans took 42 tons of beer and 10,000 gallons of wine with them on the trip to Massachusetts - and only 14 tons of water.

Throughout the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries, the spectre of prohibition made its presence known only in efforts to control individual consumption. During the last quarter of the eighteen century, prohibitionists realized their efforts might be more successful if they attacked the source. Thus John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, denounced distilling as a sin and called for its Prohibition in 1773. Despite a burgeoning number of people denouncing alcohol altogether, the camp in favor of alcohol remained staunchly unconvinced. When Harvard students were “left ‘wanting beer betwixt brewings a week and a week and a half together,” the first master at Harvard was fired.

Continue reading Drinking Age Debate

In the March 2009 issue of The Atlantic, writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh reviews Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System on its 25th anniversary. She finds it prescient and relevant, despite the two and a half decade gap between its publishing and now. Apparently American society hasn’t changed too much in the intervening years.

In any case, out of my continuing interest in self-hood, identity construction, etc, I was intrigued by the following:

• “It’s not just that Romantic Selfhood—Walter Pater’s notion of burning with a “hard, gemlike flame,” which is the true emotional underpinning of bohemia—has become commodified. Fairly harmless is the $4 venti soy latte purchased amid Starbucks’s track lighting, Nina Simone crooning, and a story about Costa Rican beans that have sailed around the world just to see YOU! It’s that Selfhood has its own berth now in the psychiatrist Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs,” a generational shift presaged by American sociologists who, as early as the 1970s, posited that, while hungry people are concerned about survival, those who grow up in abundance will hunger for self-expression. In the relatively affluent post–Cold War era, the search for self-expression has evolved into a desire to not have that self-expression challenged, which in turn necessitates living among people who think and feel just as you do. It’s why so many bohemians flee gritty Los Angeles for verdant Portland, where left-leaning citizens pride themselves on their uniform, monotonously progressive culture—the Zipcars, the organic gardens, the funky graphic-novel stores, and the thriving alternative-music scene.”
• This economic catastrophe is teaching the Xers that their prized self-­expression and their embrace of personal choice leads to … the collapse of capitalism. Time to inculcate not those self-satisfyingly hip and rebellious values—innovation! self-fulfillment!—cherished by the creative class (a class, after all, that includes in its ranks those buccaneering entrepreneurs who’ve led us down the primrose path), but those staid and stolid values of the bourgeoisie: industry, sobriety, moderation, self-discipline, and avoidance of debt. Out with the grungy baseball cap (cheap on its own, but not so thrifty when accompanied by those other accoutrements of formerly affluent hipdom—the iPhone, the rain-forest-safari vacation, the richly appointed LEED-certified house) and in with the dowdy JCPenney suit. The age of narcissistic creative-class strivers has brought this country cool new neighborhoods and an infinitely better selection of coffees and greens, but it has also brought shameful social stratification and a consumer binge that our children’s children may well be paying off. The Xer is dead. Long live the burgher!

They certainly can, according to a study recently performed by researchers at the University of California, Berkley and reported on by Jeffrey Kluger at Time.

More on this, later.

What were you doing at midnight on February 4, 2009? Sleeping? Chomping down a late-night snack? Facebooking? If the latter, you were unwittingly celebrating Mark Zuckerberg’s creation on its fifth birthday.

The evolution of Facebook since 2004.

Five years and 150 million users later, Facebook is still the topic of heated debate. What does this construct say about our society? What impact is it having? What social mores is it changing? These questions, and others, will continue to be posed and considered for years to come and, fortunately, Facebook will keep delivering material for speculation. Take, for example, the “25 Random Things” note racing through this social network’s veins like some epidemic virus. The object is to fill out a list of 25 things about yourself, a blend of the private and the personal, and publish it to your friends. They are then supposed to fill out a list about themselves in turn, and pass it on. As John Timpane of the Philadelphia Inquirer observes, after one person sent this note to ten others, and those ten sent the note to ten of their friends, “soon Facebook - a virtual living room where people hang out and tell everyone else what they’re doing and thinking - is awash with personal revelations, admissions, info once kept private.”

The question here is, is this practice evincing narcissism or simple hyperconnectedness? A sin indulged, or a new virtue evolving? As Timpane so astutely noted, you can call this narcissism if you want, “but it might be that the train left and you weren’t on it.” What then? If we take this hyperconnectedness as a new, evolving virtue, what does it mean, you know, for the future? Some “old garde” critics might see this and demonize it as the unhealthy practice of a group of individuals gone wrong. However, we can no longer dispute that this bandwagon is a vast majority of individuals; not just a faction which can be chatted about idly but largely ignored. They carry real weight.

Still a DoubtingThomas? Just direct your doubt to Detroit, where automakers are realizing that their only hope is to beg and plead for the attention of the “Millennial” generation: individuals to whom connectedness is the primary virtue for a life lived well. Whereas Baby Boomers sought out “horsepower, wide tires and dual exhausts,” carmakers are now recognizing that in order to appeal to millenial consumers - those born between 1982 and 2000 - they have to turn out models which emphasize technological connectedness, like “email capabilities, hookups for iPods, laptop computers and other gizmos.” And the time to make these appeals are now: “Ford estimates that by 2010, the 16-31 demographic will make up the largest chunk of the car-buying public,” and these unsuspecting millenials are not brand-loyal yet, so they make easy prey.

While I was researching and writing a thesis entitled “Facebook: Encouraging Authentic or Inauthentic Identity Construction?,” I have to admit belonging to that “old garde” I mentioned earlier. I couldn’t help but look around and see so much gone wrong; healthy communicative praxis abandoned; narcissism abounding. But, I’m willing to concede I may have been wrong. Perhaps what I, and others, saw as egocentrism might have been the individual lens refocusing on community. John Timpane demonstrates he has sharper eyes than mine as he chastises, “That communal aspect is what so much commentary misses about ‘25 Random Things.’ It’s not just a list; it’s a communal exercise.” Timpane quotes an unscientific survey of 30 such lists, and notes that it uncovered nothing “vicious or unkind.” Instead, one of his sources characterizes the 25 Random Things list as ’surprisingly supportive, sweet, even encouraging…’ [a nuturing thing friends do].”

Or was I wrong? Timpane quotes an email he received from Christine Rosen (whose work I respect a great deal), in which she affirmed “narcissism is narcissm: ‘For all of their apparently casual tone, these lists are not filled with random things. They are carefully and deliberately crafted efforts to market their makers as quirky and appealing people. The revelation of one person’s quirks can be endearing, but the broadcasting of hundreds of thousands of people’s quirks quickly devolves into tedious mass solipsism.’”

Of course, her logic is unassailable on at least one count: these 25 “random” things couldn’t possibly be random. In order to make that true, each individual would have to write down a host of personal things piled up in their closet and then somehow - by roll of the die, a random number generator, or spin the bottle - randomly select things to publish. I sincerely doubt anyone took that much effort into constructing their list, so we have to regard the “25 Random Things” note as a persuasive, meticulously articulated artifact.

Timpane also quoted family therapist Sara Kay Smullens, who suggested “people can fly to Facebook or other sites to avoid their flesh-and-blood family and friends. ‘It can be a substitute, one that doesn’t work, for an intimacy they can’t find in real life.’

I have to beg your forbearance as I reveal that for a handful of years, I was addicted to science fiction novels. I’m convinced everyone has that phase sooner or later. In any case, this situation reminds me of a motif running throughout Joan D. Vinge’s sci fi novel, Dreamfall. This book involves a struggle between futuristic humans and an alien race of humanoids with psionic powers (telepathy, telekenesis, etc - what good sci fi thriller doesn’t?). The main character of the book is a half-breed, partially human, partially endowed with some telepathic ability. As a result of his half-breed composition and a history of abuse from both camps, he has a mental “shield” erected constantly. When walking among groups of his mother’s people (the telepaths), he is snarled at, criticized, and avoided, because his mind is “closed off” from everyone else. Through this exchange, readers learn that this alien community has survived for generations with open hearts and open minds, total exposure between and among people, with nothing hidden.

Now, jumping back from science fiction into reality, I can’t help but notice some similarities here. Pre-Web 2.0, we were as disconnected as disconnected could be. We spoke on the phone, wrote letters, enjoyed each other’s physical company, but that was more or less it. Since the launch of Web 2.0, we have felt a compulsion to dig deeper, to find intimate secrets about ourselves and reveal them, whether through away messages or status messages which speak to our emotions at the time (and who can hide their emotions when in the throes of them, and when there aren’t any repercussions - such as judgement - from physical contact), or from blank “About me” and “Interests” sections which beg to be filled with details about our identity. No matter that we never had to address these questions before, and that maybe we were giving in too much (after all, just because a question is asked does not mean you have to answer it - but that’s a sickness the human race has faced in aeternum, and a topic for another day). We had questions to answer and we were damned if we weren’t going to give in, without due hesitation and deliberation to determine what is “right.” In the last twenty years or so, we have been two totally different species of humanity.

But back to an earlier question, where I asked: what does all of this mean for the future? This is where my science fiction reference come into play. The issue I’m most intrigued by now is: Who’s going to be the outcast? The one who shares all, or the one who shares none? Turn to Ayn Rand’s Anthem if you want, or the hundreds of novels written about the struggle between individualism and community. I, myself, will turn back to Psion, the first Joan D. Vinge novel in the trilogy which produced Dreamfall: In that book, the protagonist is taught an aphorism he can never quite shake, and which has haunted me from the first time I read it 12 years ago:

“In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is stoned to death.”

I’m a regular reader of about two dozen blogs. One of my favorites is Talking Philosophy, which recently featured a really compelling post by Jeff Mason, entitled “Philosophy and the Good Life.”

I’m not sure what inspired it, but I’m glad Mason indulged himself. A couple of excerpts intrigued me:

• “Religion, as it were, does the thinking for the people who do not have time to think things through for themselves. Philosophy, however, asks people to think for themselves, to question doubtful premises and assumptions using reason, logic, and experience to provide the best arguments for their own position, while being able to put forward objections to rival arguments, and to answer objections to their own.”
• “Finally, there are some people who appear to pursue truth and wisdom rather than pleasure, riches, fame or power. These, of course, are the philosophers. To be honest, when philosophers talk about the good life, they stack the deck in their own favor. Whenever they discuss it, the good life is the philosophical life. This does not mean that they are wrong, but we should be cautious how we receive their arguments. There is no such thing as the good life for everyone, and neither philosophers nor religious expositors have any right to lay down the law about it.”
• Mason mentions how Aristotle suggests the philosophical life begins, which I think would be a good way to begin each morning: “in wonder at the universe and the spectacle of life.”
• “The good life is a life devoted to the discovery and communication of truth within a community of like-minded people possessing moral integrity and a genuine desire to learn.”

That last quotation seems more appropriate to me as the definition of an ideal society: a society of leaders.

Yesterday a friend of mine pointed out Stanley Fish’s review of Frank Donoghue’s The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. According to his publisher, Donogue, a professor at The Ohio State University, uses this book as an opportunity to take “a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last twenty years…[and] outlines a web of forces - social, political, and institutional - dismantling the professoriate.” Having sat in on a class of Donoghue’s and spoken with him about my own aspirations to join the professoriate, I paid special attention to this review. One excerpt sent chills down my spine more quickly than any other:

“Donoghue begins by challenging the oft-repeated declaration that liberal arts education in general and the humanities in particular face a crisis, a word that suggests an interruption of a normal state of affairs and the possibility of restoring the natural order of things.

‘Such a vision of restored stability,” says Donoghue, “is a delusion” because the conditions to which many seek a return – healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have largely vanished. Except in a few private wealthy universities (functioning almost as museums), the splendid and supported irrelevance of humanist inquiry for its own sake is already a thing of the past. In “ two or three generations,” Donoghue predicts, “humanists . . . will become an insignificant percentage of the country’s university instructional workforce.’”

My interest in all of this, of course, traces back to the cultural factor. I agree with Donoghue’s logic, and his evidence is enough for me to be onboard with the idea that the Academy’s original, humanist, liberal arts roots are rotting from the inside out, from xylem to phloem. However, I’m less concerned about the fact that this is happening, than why it is happening. And I’m less concerned about why it is happening, than determining what societal elements have changed to allow this shift. What values have we set aside and which have taken their place? Is this a sign that we are comfortable ignoring our souls, so long as we fatten our wallets?

Essentially this issue raises the question (and requires an answer to): What is the purpose of life?

Comfort or inquiry? Body or mind?

The irony, to me, is that while this issue begs the question, it also represents our diminishing capacity to answer it.