Brooklyn Book Talk

God is Complicated: Kabbalah

2012-02-14T00:25:00.000-05:00

My initial exposure to Kabbalah came when I was taking a Jewish folklore class, and decided to write a paper on the Angel of Death. This caused me to research the Sitra Achra (or "other side") which in folklore and the Kabbalah is associated with evil, the demonic, and the negative. I read many folk tales and Jewish legends. I also read Chaim Potok's "The Book of Lights" about a young rabbi who studies the Kabbalah as a way of making sense of the world after returning home from war. The protagonist has discussions at night with an agent of the Sitra Achra, who is trying to sway him from the lights of wisdom.

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, the basic ideas of Kabbalah are:

God and creation
Will
Thought
Nothingness
The Three Lights "the root of all roots"
The Problem of Evil
Prayer and meditation

While Luria spent much time walking and discussing Kabbalah with his disciples around the streets of Safed, most Kabbalist study is solitary. Enlightenment comes from meditating on a passage or in the folktales from dreams. Personal experience and meditation brings about an understanding of Kabbalah texts and of God.

Safed is

Why Safed?

2012-02-12T23:26:00.000-05:00

I had planned on saving the Kabbalah discussion until later in the month. However, all the recent publicity about Madonna (America's most famous Kabbalah student) inspired me to reread the Kabbalah chapter of the book. As a result, I decided to move up the posts.

Weiner decides to study Kabbalah in an Israeli city named Safed (or Tzfat). For the record, I found his decision to be disappointing. For nearly a decade I have lived near a house that is the Queens headquarters for Kabbalah Center International. I frequently see their huge truck, emblazoned with Live. Love. Kabbalah. in the streets. I eagerly turned to the chapter in the hopes of finding out what goes on in that house (besides constant Fresh Direct deliveries). I had hoped that Weiner would spend some time in the US before going to Israel. I guess that studying on the highest point in Queens doesn't compare to Safed.

Safed has been a center for Kabbalah studies for centuries. After the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, many Jewish scholars moved to Israel and settled in Safed. One of the most famous was Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (known as the Ari) who spent the last years of his life in Safed. He spent much time walking the streets of the town with his followers.

Twenty-first century Safed is extremely proud of its Kabbala heritage. The official city site is: http://www.safed.co.il/city-of-kabbalah-html. The city website has a nice overview of the history of Kabbalah and the famous rabbis who studied Kabbalah while they lived in Safed. It also provides information about some of the current residents who make the city unique, such as a doberman-raising man and a woman who formerly had 30 cats.

God is Personal: Franciscans

2012-02-04T14:33:00.000-05:00

Weiner decides to spend time in a Franciscan homeless shelter in the South Bronx. This particular order is a throwback to the thirteenth century:

"Over the centuries, the Franciscan vow of poverty has slipped, and this order, formed only twenty-five years ago, is intent on correcting that. They own nothing. No private bank accounts or credit cards or cellphones or, according to their charter, "popular electric gadgets manufactured sinply for amusement and recreation." No beds, either. They sleep on the floor. The friary has no Internet connection, no TV, no dishwasher, no air-conditioning. All of these things, the Franciscans believe, are obstacles that stand between us and God" (p. 127).

Not only does Weiner have to deal with culture shock from being the only white person in the neighborhood (aside from the Franciscans) but he also has to cope with living in an earlier world - one without technology.

At the shelter, Weiner takes part in a Catholic mass and is refused Communion because he is not a baptised Catholic. He also makes a half-hearted attempt to confess to a priest but is told to come back at a future date because the priest must hold a mass; Weiner is relieved and never returns. He is struck by the personal relationship between Franciscans and God - they speak with God, ask for His forgiveness, and remain cheerful in His service. He spends his days helping the Franciscans in the simple daily tasks they do in order to run the shelter. He also joins them when they picket an abortion clinic - an activity that makes Weiner completely uncomfortable.

Weiner's discomfort is most extreme when he writes about one friar, Brother Louis. The son of a devout Italian-American mother, Brother Louis was a "former saxophone-playing weight-lifting woman-chasing Wall Street executive and owner of a used-car dealership" (p.125). Brother Louis's mother asked him to go on a pilgrimage to a Catholic shrine in Bosnia. Louis went, asked a personal question of Jesus, received Jesus' personal reply from a woman who was known to talk with Jesus, and became a Franciscan friar. This was a good fit because it allowed him to use his energy and intensity in an order that values "active contemplation." It is Brother Louis who organization the anti-abortion protest.

Weiner admits "More than any of the other friars here, Father Louis displays the conviction of the converted. I find his intensity unnerving. I worry that at any moment he might hug me, or kill me. It could go either way" (p.136). He later admits that Brother Louis scares him, and refers to him as "quasi-satanic" (p.145). My impression is that Brother Louis's personal intensity and his miraculous conversion are genuinely medieval in character, which may be why Weiner finds him so threatening; Brother Louis is a reminder that similar comments were probably made about St. Francis himself in the thirteenth century.

Do you think that it is necessary to disconnect entirely from the material world in order to better connect with people?

Is intensity a characteristic despised in 21st American society?

Would you spend time in a Franciscan retreat?

Man Seeks God - Who are the Franciscans?

2012-02-02T10:45:00.000-05:00

The Franciscans are NOT a religion. They are a Catholic religious order of friars started by St. Francis of Assissi in the thirteenth century. St Francis was a wealthy young man in Tuscany who was made a prisoner in a war between Assissi and Perugia. After he was ransomed, he began to rethink his former existence of wine and song. A turning point in Francis' life came when he heard the voice of God telling him to restore a ruined chapel. Francis sold valuable cloth belonging to his father in order raise the money he needed. When confronted by his father, Francis dramatically stripped off all his belongings, which he returned to his father, and took up a life of poverty and good works.

Franciscans are expected to serve God through action - to serve others. At the same time, they are also expected to contemplate God and spirituality. Francis placed much emphasis on practical actions - feeding the hungry, ministering to the sick, providing shelter to the homeless. He also encouraged periodic spiritual retreats to speak with God and refresh the spirit.

Stories about Francis always emphasize his happy nature. In his youth, he was known for his music, singing, and what today would be viewed as partying. As a friar, he encouraged his friars to be happy and cheerful. There is a collection of stories about St. Francis and his early followers called "The Little Flowers of St. Francis:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ugolino/flowers.toc.html

One of Francis's followers was Brother Juniper, known as the "jester of God". When I first read the Brother Juniper stories, I was hit with a realization that Brother Juniper is a more extreme version of St. Francis. Francis himself in the stories is sometimes frustrated by Juniper; at this this time Francis is the leader of a growing Catholic order (in fact three orders according to the Catholic Encyclopedia) sanctioned by the pope and has been forced to become more practical and less spiritual. Brother Juniper's actions make Francis remember what he himself was like before he had to deal with Church beauracracy.

In one Brother Juniper story, Juniper is ministering to a sick man who has a craving for pigs' feet. Juniper runs out to a nearby herd of swine, which is not owned by the Franciscans, grabs a pig, cuts off a foot, and makes soup for the sick man. The man eats the soup and becomes much healthier. The swineherd finds the injured three-footed pig and immediately reports it to the pig's owner. The owner is outraged and complains to Francis. Francis realizes that this is a potential PR nightmare - his friars are known for constantly begging for the poor, asking for work so that they can use their wages for the poor, and now people will accuse them of not respecting private property. He immediately sends for Juniper and berates him for his actions.

Juniper, however, insists that he has done the will of God. He wanted to help a sick man, there was a nearby pig, he made the soup, and the man was cured. The pig was obviously sent by God. Juniper was so convincing that the pig's owner kills the pig (who probably wasn't going to live much longer due to blood loss and the loss of a foot) and gives the meat to the Franciscans. Francis praises Juniper for reminding him of the true meaning of the Franciscan mission.

An interesting aspect of this story is that St.Francis does not berate Juniper for the pain that he caused the pig. In the Little Flowers, Francis is very compassionate towards wild animals. He preaches a sermon to the wild birds of the field. He persuades the town of Gubbio to agree to feed a wolf so that it will stop eating people. However, he seems unfazed by Juniper's removing a foot from a live pig. Today St. Francis is the patron saint of environmentalists. Churches thoughout the world hold a Blessing of the Animals on October 4th where pets can be brought to church for a special blessing.

Additional information about modern American Franciscans can be found here:

http://franciscans.org/index.php/en/

The Catholic Encyclopedia has information about St.Francis and the Franciscans at:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06281a.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06217a.htm

My next post will be about Weiner's experiences with an NYC Franciscan order.

Introduction to Man Seeks God by Eric Weiner

2012-01-31T22:33:00.000-05:00

Author Eric Weiner explains that his quest to find God began in an emergency room. While he was waiting for innumerable tests and several doctors to tell him that his agonizing medical problem was really gas, Weiner was accosted by a nurse. In my several emergency room experiences, nurses have either told me to fill out medical forms, move, or stop drinking that coffee in here - comments that would not warrant a book. Weiner's nurse asked him "Have you found your God yet?" Instead of viewing this comment as just another part of the typical depressing emergency room experience (along with the screaming, the blood, and hours stuck in a hallway because there were too few doctors and too many patients), Weiner was precipitated into a spiritual crisis. He decided to explore eight religious faiths in the hopes that he would, indeed, find his God.

During the next two months, I hope to lead discussions (or at least make some posts) on all eight of these religions which include:

God is love: Sufism
God is a state of mind: Buddhism
God is personal: Franciscans
God is far out: Raelism
God is nothing: Taoism
God is magical: Wicca
God is an animal: Shamanism
God is complicated: Kabbalah

I don't plan on doing them in the order in which Weiner wrote the book, but just as inspiration strikes. I will do a post as an overview of the actual religion, and then one or more posts on how Weiner chose to experience it.

For those blog readers who have not read the book, reviews and info can be found at :

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2017112817_br01divine.html

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143057528/man-seeks-god-finds-wayne-of-staten-island

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/july-dec11/manseeksgod_12-26.html

My first post will be about Catholic religion and the Franciscans.

What is Literature?

2011-12-20T12:56:00.004-05:00

There are three major theories associated with the definition of literature: mimetic, expressive, and didactic. Literature is conceived as holding a mirror to nature and is thus considered mimetic. The expressive theory regards literature as stemming from authors inner being, and hence similarly depends on a notion of mirroring, though here literature reflects the inner soul rather than the external world of the writer. The didactic theory sees literature as a source of knowledge, insight, wisdom, purgation, and perhaps prophecy, and is compatible with both the mimetic, and the expressive theory i.e., literature can depict external and internal realities while at the same time, disseminating valuable knowledge and clarifying emotions.

The Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism suggests that the dominant view of literature as mimetic and didactic is alive today and it rose with ancient Greeks, and was later challenged by the Romantics and then the moderns. Hence, it is important to develop a historical perspective on the idea, activity and definitions of literature.

The idea of literature from the Renaissance onward has for the most part focused on two issues: the moral worth of literature and the nature of its relationship to reality. At the end of the 16th century Sir Philip Sydney argued in The Defense of Poesie that it is the special property of literature to express moral and philosophical truth in a way that rescues them from abstraction and makes them immediately graspable. Matthew Arnold also asserted that the cultural role of literature should be to take over the sort of moral and philosophical functions that had previously been fulfilled by religion. Then we have William Wordsworth's notion that the object of poetry is "truth carried alive into the heart by passion." Besides, John Dryden in Of Dramatick Poesie (1668) put forward the less idealistic view that the business of literature is primarily to offer an accurate representation of the world "for the delight and instruction" of mankind.

The idea of delight sounds fine but when literature encompasses "instruction," it becomes problematic. Perhaps that is why the writers and theorists during the 19th century often felt that to justify literature by pointing to its accuracy and realism was to put it in competition with the sciences, social sciences, journalism, and photography---a competition they believed it could not win. However, by emphasizing the literariness of literature, they would accord it a distinctive and elevated aesthetic status over competing fields and domains, ensuring its survival and dignity in challenging times.

The later 19th century saw a development towards an aesthetic theory of literature, i.e., literature for literature's sake. Literature has also been conceptualized in the light of critical and theoretical literary perspectives which were in vogue at various points in history. In formalist theory of literature or poetics, neither depiction of external or internal reality nor knowledge about existence or refined emotion distinguishes literature from ordinary and scientific discourse: instead literariness (or poeticity) renders literature distinctive and special. This kind of definition of literature was a turn away from the notion of literature as simply a reliable recorder of nature (mimetic); or as stemming from the author's inner being/soul (expressive); or as a source of morality (didactic).

The premise of the New Critics school of literary theory, on the other hand, was that a work of literature should be studied as a separate and self-contained entity, which set the New Critics in opposition to biographical criticism and to those schools of criticism such as Marxist, psychoanalytical, historical -- that set out to examine literature from perspectives external to the text.

Modern theorists often insist that the language of literature, unlike that of newspapers and science, foregrounds (i.e., a position of prominence, as opposed to background) poetic effects (particularly tropes and figures) that range from alliteration, assonance, metaphor, and paradox of rhythm and rhyme.

Hence, the question, “what is literature?” can be answered by imagining literature with such terms as representation, expression, knowledge, poetic or rhetorical language, genre, text, or discourse. As in most situations and contexts, it is always helpful to be more specific about the self, the text, and the culture, when it comes to defining literature.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Introduction

2011-12-01T20:49:00.005-05:00

Reading literature skillfully is a complex and crucial endeavor but Thomas Forster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor makes it lively and entertaining. In an accessible and non-academic prose, Foster creatively engages a variety of genres of literature (novels, short stories, plays, poems, movies, song lyrics, and cartoons), focuses on diverse literary models (Shakespeare’s plays, Greek mythology, fairy tales, the Bible) and enlists some of the major narrative devices (form, irony, paradox, plot, symbol, simile, metaphor, among others) to make reading of literature a gratifying and educational experience.

Please join us on Brooklyn Book Talk and share your approach to reading as we explore this widely acclaimed and insightful guide to literary education.

Hoarding and the Holidays

2011-11-27T10:39:00.001-05:00

This will be my final post about Stuff. I spent much of yesterday morning discussing the recent spate of crime on Black Friday by crazed bargain hunters. While I spent little time discussing hoarders who are also compulsive shoppers in previous posts, Frost and Steketee do talk about them in the book. Some people are addicted to the high that they get when they make a purchase. Other people are obsessed with how the item will make their life better, or help them to prepare for some kind of disaster. F & S encourage the shopper/hoarder to take non-buying trips to shopping malls and analyze how long it take him/her to get over being upset when s/he does not buy an item. This treatment is a form of desensitizing the hoarder so that s/he will not be driven to buy so easily.

As we all know, American society is obsessed with bargains and shopping. After 9/11, our government essentially asked us to strike a blow against terrorism by hitting the mall. We are told that spending money will help the economy to revitalize itself.

As we enter the 2011 holiday season, it might be a good idea for everyone to reflect and regroup. Look at the possessions that you own, and decide whether you need more, or whether you can donate some to others who have less. Look at your bank account, and reflect on how much happier you will be with less debt and more money saved. Think about whether people really should spent their holidays selling items in a mall rather than with loved ones. While this won't cause hardcore hoarders to have an epiphany, it is a good start for the rest of us.

Hoarders and Enablers

2011-11-11T12:27:00.001-05:00

I just finished reading Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean about her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding by Jessie Sholl. Sholl's mother was a nurse who worked many hours of overtime, was distanced from both her birth family and children, and was a shopoholic addicted to thrift stores. During Jessie's attempts to clean out her mother's house, she would find unopened bags from thrift stores containing multiples of the same item.

Despite Jessie's attempts to declutter her mother Helen's house and her attempts to persuade her mother to keep the house uncluttered, she was not successful. She even tried to encourage Helen to go to therapy for her hoarding, but Helen refused. Eventually Jessie learned to separate herself from her mother and to lead her own life, not to continue to clean up after her mother.

Ironically, Jessie was confronted by one of Helen's neighbors, who implied that Jessie's neglect was causing Helen to live in squalor. When Jessie eventually joins the site "Children of Hoarders", she meets a woman online who had a similar experience. This woman realized

"after years and years of pleading with her mother, and after countless unsuccessful cleanup attempts - each involving verbal abuse (and threats of physical abuse) by her mother- Starlene has finally given up. As difficult as it is, she knows that she has to detach emotionally. She has to give up the hope of saving her mother in order to save the one person she can: herself." (Dirty Secret, p. 226-7).

Both Jessie and Starlene realized that their mothers needed to make the decision to get help, not them. They also had enough sense to move to other states and reduce contact with their mothers in order save themselves. In Stuff, Frost describes attending a social services-mandated decluttering in Manhattan. The coop to be decluttered was owned by an elderly widow. She lived there with her adult son and her elderly sister. While the widow's husband was alive, he had banned her brother, Daniel, from visiting. Once the husband died, Daniel moved in; his own apartment was so filled with clutter that it was unliveable, and he moved on to cluttering up his sister's apartment.

Frost's description of the apartment was out of a nightmare. When he first approached it, the doorframe was completely covered by roaches because Daniel hoarded objects that he found on the streets of NYC. The owner took a nap on the coach one day, and found herself completely encased in a wall of junk that Daniel had built around her as she slept. The apartment was decluttered four times by city orders, and still she allowed Daniel to return with his clutter.

Do family members enable the hoarders by walking away and allowing them to hoard undisturbed?

Do they enable them by staying and cleaning up after the hoarders, again and again and again?

Is it fair that the burden of decluttering frequently falls on local government?

Is the local government responsible because it is too difficult (and unsafe) for family members to get their loved ones treatment and aid?

Hoarding and Security

2011-11-03T22:09:00.001-04:00

A re-occuring idea in Stuff is that hoarders hoard as a way of creating a safe environment. Frost and Steketee have one patient who had been sexually assaulted in her own home. She began to fill up the room where the assault had taken place with hoarded items. Eventually the room became so full that she no longer could enter it, and moved onto other rooms. She married, had children, and sought help only after her house was too crowded for her family.

Madeline, Ashley's mother, began to hoard after her own mother threw out items in an attempt to clean up Madeline's room. When Madeline first married Ashley's father, she rented a studio apartment where she stored her hoard. After Ashley's father divorced her, Madeline could no longer afford the studio. Instead, she filled her house with her items. When Ashley went on vacation, Madeline took over Ashley's room, and Ashley returned to find it full of hoarded material that she could not move. Ashley was forced to sleep with Madeline until she could get away to college; Madeline then stored more clutter on Ashley's side of the bed.

Both these examples demonstrate that the hoarder needs her/his hoard to be secure. The hoarder views these items as treasure, and feels a sense of security within the hoard. The needs of other individuals, whether children, spouses, or pets, are immaterial in relation to this need to feel secure.

American society places a great emphasis on possessions. Back in the 1980's t-shirts emblazened with "He who dies with the most toys wins" were popular. What you own defines your worth as a person. One of the most horrifying moments (to me) in the wildly successful first "Sex and the City" movie was when Carrie was given a closet larger than my studio apartment to hold her designer shoes; she was successful because she could not only afford dozens of pairs of pricey footware but could also house them in style. While most hoarders are not piling up designer handbags or clothing, they do define themselves by their possessions, even if the value of these items is not apparent to anyone other than the hoarder.They are what they hoard, and having it around them makes them feel secure.

Animals and Hoarding - Part 2

2011-11-03T12:54:00.000-04:00

I find myself wondering if animal hoarding is something that developed in the 20th century. No one could have hoarded animals in the Middle Ages. They could not have afforded to feed the animals. Most people lived in a communal space with relatives who would not have tolerated hoarding. Also, any woman with 200 cats in her hovel would probably been executed as a witch along with the cats.

Why do people hoard animals? Frost and Steketee profile some people who feel that love from animals is purer than that of people. Some do it because they view it as a humanitarian mission. Others feel that they have a psychic bond with animals that draws them to needy animals. Oddly enough:

"One of the most puzzling features of animal hoarding is the lack of recognition of a problem that is way out of control. Many animal hoarders can be standing amid their sick and dying animals, with feces covering the floors and walls, and still insist that nothing is wrong. This type of assertion, in the midst of clear evidence to the contrary, suggests a distorted belief system- a delusional disorder. Delusional disorders are usually highly specific and do not accompany distorted thinking in other area's of the person's life. Perhaps animal hoarding represents a delusional disorder with a special, almost magical connection with animals as the predominant theme." (Stuff, pp. 131-132).

While I am not an expert on hoarding, I wonder if animal hoarding really represents an ability to depersonalize the animal, to turn it into a thing rather than a living animal. Dogs and cats would prefer to be in homes or free in colonies, not stacked into piles of cages. The better animal shelters try to get the animals adopted because they know that a long time in a cage is psychologically destructive for the animals.They also know that large free-ranging packs of animals can become destructive to themselves. Perhaps animal hoarders mentally turn the animals into objects that they can then stack around themselves for protection.

About a year ago, I read an article in an ASPCA publication about how they were working with an animal hoarder. They began by getting him to relinquish a few animals, then analyze how he felt about them being gone. They also worked on cleaning his apartment and getting him pyschological treatment. After reading Stuff, I realized that the ASPCA agents were using a modified version of the decluttering methods further detailed by Frost and Steketee in Buried in Treasure. The ultimate goal by the ASPCA was to get the hoarder down to a few animals and to make sure that he no longer hoarded them in much the same way that treatment of non-animal hoarders hopes to get them down to few possessions and no future build-up.

More from the ASPCA at:

http://onlinedigitalpubs.com/publication/?i=68523&p=2 (article on page 8).

Animals and Hoarding - Part 1

2011-11-03T12:25:00.003-04:00

An entire chapter of Stuff is devoted to an animal hoarder. The woman profiled by Frost and Steketee struck me as a somewhat unusual hoarder. She had been going to a therapist for a number of years. The therapist hoarded cats (she ended up with over 200 in cages) and gave the woman free therapy in exchange for cat care. The woman herself ended up hoarding cats and was eventually raided by the ASPCA.

Animal hoarding has received much publicity in recent years. In addition to New York hoarding/torture cases, a non-kill shelter was recently shut down because the caretakers could not care for the large number of animals. There is a TV show on Animal Planet:

http://animal.discovery.com/tv/confessions-animal-hoarding/profiles.html

that profiles pet hoarders. The ASPCA has even begun an intervention program to identify hoarders, get them to relinquish their animals, and go for treatment for themselves:

http://www.aspca.org/aspca-nyc/animal-rescuers/animal-hoarding.aspx

While I have have owned multiple cats over the past 20 years, as have members of my family, I'm not a hoarder. I've rescued kittens and cats and adopted them out to good homes. My own cats receive individual attention, medical care, and a clean living environment.

My only personal experience with someone who I would view today as an individual with hoarding tendencies occurred over 10 years ago. I went to visit a friend in another state.She and her boyfriend were living with eight cats. One of the cats was an adult cat who had been trapped from a feral colony. He had an extremely difficult time adjusting to life as an indoor cat away from his colony, and spent all day crouching in the bathroom behind toilet. He did not interact with the two "owners" or with the other seven cats in the apartment. It was clear to me that the cat would have been happier neutered, ear-tipped, and returned either to his original colony or to a new colony. His "owners" seemed to think that all he needed was food, water, and an indoor shelter in order to have quality of life. They viewed the animal as an abstract rather than as a cat who deserved some quality of life. They had rescued him from the streets - he didn't need anything else.

Hoarding and Creativity revisited

2011-10-24T00:08:00.003-04:00

"Maybe hoarding is creativity run amok."(Stuff, p. 211)

" "She's like a savant", Ashley said. "Her brain can see things mine can't. I can see the beauty in objects, but it's like she sees the atoms of objects. She sees more than anyone I know and attaches more meaning to each piece of it." "(Stuff, p. 221)

A common characteristic of hoarders in Stuff is their creativity. Alvin, Irene, and Madeline all have the ability to make rich connections between people and objects. Daniel saved items in the hopes of someday building with them. Madeline made "stuff structures" - three-dimenional art, out of how she left her clutter.

Unfortunately, hoarders never make final creations with their clutter. They are able to conceptualize in their head but not act upon their creative ideas. Something causes a disconnect between the desire and the will.

Apology for not posting recently

2011-10-22T10:43:00.004-04:00

I will post on both hoarding and creativity and hoarding and safety by tomorrow morning.

Please be sure to check back on Sunday.

Hoarding and Creativity

2011-10-18T00:22:00.003-04:00

Several of the hoarders mentioned in Stuff were creative people. In one chapter, the daughter of a hoarder described how thanks to her mother, she was able to see the beauty in tree bark; her mother had rapsodizedabout the blues and red of the milk cartons that she hoarded. The two brother hoarders had strong aesthetic senses and hoarded art. Even Daniel hoarded items because he saw their creative potential,although he never utilized them.

All of these people possesed strong, creative impulses that they instead channeled into hoarding. In a sense, hoarding became an expression of their creativity. Once again, I found myself wondering what these people might have done in the MIddle Ages. Irene could have become a librarian in a convent or monastery, and spent her copying books and organizing them in the convent library. The girl's mother could have become a weaver or embroiderer, which would have let her use her strong sense of color. Daniel's ability to find potentially useful objects could havebeen utilized by a military quartermaster. Is it possible that the emphasis on consumerism in American society, missing in warlier societies, helped encourgage these people to hoard because they lacked the willpower to focus on their art instead of consuming and buying?

Hoarding and the Middle Ages - Part 2

2011-10-16T23:53:00.003-04:00

Baumeister and Tierney start off Willpower with the comment that

"We have no way of knowing how much our ancestors exercised self-control in the days before beepers and experimental psychologists, but it seems likely that they were under less strain. During the Middle Ages, most people were peasants who put in long, dull days in the field, frequently accompanied by prodigious amounts of ale. They weren't angling for promotions at work or trying to climb the social ladder, so there wasn't a premium on diligence (or a great need for sobriety). Their villages didn't offer many obvious temptations beyond alcohol, sex, or plain old sloth. Virtue was generally enforced by a desire to avoid public disgrace rather than by any zeal to achieve human perfection. In the medieval Catholic Church, salvation depended more on being part of the group and keeping up with the standard rituals rather than on heroic acts of willpower." (p.4)

While I am not a scholar of the Middle Ages, this struck me as somewhat simplistic. A key feature of the Middle Ages was war - in the Holy Land, among the Italian city-states, against the King of France by his vassals, among different claimants for the throne of England. At any point in time, men could be called up to fight for their liege lord, or endure armies trampling their crops and looting their houses.

Farming itself is stressful. A drought, too much rain, or a freak hail storm could quickly destroy a crop, create hunger over the winter, and lead to deaths from starvation or disease brought on by malnutrition. It is also physically taxing in a time when there were few ways to relieve pain from arthritis or poorly-set broken limbs. A simple cut could fester and cause death. A cold could bring on pneumonia. Childbirth fever killed many women.

What may have made a difference in the Middle Ages was diet. Everyone ate unprocessed, organically grown, local food. Peasants could afford few sweeteners (such as honey) or sweet fruits, and subsisted almost entirely on whole grains. If they did eat meat, it was from a free-range, organically fed animal. They may have had little food, but it was healthy. The lack of sugar, the quality of the carbohydrates, and the protein would have led to fewer glucose spikes. This would have led to less depletion of willpower due to inadequent glucose. Diet, not lack of stress in daily life, could have given our medieval ancestors more willpower.

There were few material goods in the Middle Ages. The average person wore home-made clothes, ate home-grown food, and rarely set foot in a shop or even browsed at a marketstall. Members of religious orders were sworn to poverty. The emphasis in society was not on consumption, in part because of religious teachings and in part because resources were so limited. A person who hoarded rocks might find that family members confiscated the rocks to mend walls in pastures. A woman who hoarded cats would be prosecuted as a witch (along with the cats).

Procrastination and Health

2011-10-13T17:44:00.001-04:00

One of the constant themes in Willpower is the fact that willpower is depleted when a person's glucose level gets too low. Baumeister's lab tests involve giving people sugar-filled drinks to boost their glucose levels quickly to help with the study results. Outside of a lab, he suggests "it's better to use protein. Get some healthy food into your body, wait an hour, and then the decision won't seem so overwhelming" (p. 247).

Baumeister also reviews studies done on the health of extreme procrastinators. At the beginning of the studies, the procrastinators were healthier than the non-procrastinators, but the situation reversed as deadlines approached (p. 242-3). Interestingly enough, procrastination has increased over the last four decades, and about 20% of the international population describes itself as procrastinators (p.240).

Many hoarders have kitchens so cluttered that they cannot cook or eat in them. This would definitely impact their ability to eat healthy food as most takeout (in my experience) is considerably less healthy than what people cook at home. As such, hoarders through cluttering may have created situations that acerbate their inability to decide what to discard. If the hoarder views him/herself as a procrastinator, this could affect his/her health, which would once again affect decision-making. If you know that you have trouble making decisions, and putting them off is affecting your health, the lack of energy may cause you to put them off even further.

Strategies to Unclutter

2011-10-13T17:26:00.001-04:00

Frost and Steketee offer some strategies for hoarders to use to declutter in Stuff. However, their second book, Buried in Treasures, is a workbook for hoarders and the family, friends, and social workers who want to help them declutter. In both books, the authors encourage the hoarder to sit down with a helper. The hoarder then begins to decided whether to keep and item or to discard it. At the beginning, each decision is very time-consuming for the hoarder, but eventually, as the hoarder declutters, s/he can spend more time decluttering with less time spent on each decision.

An earlier commenter on a post suggested that one reason hoarders don't declutter is because s/he overestimates the amount of time spent on the decluttering process. Frost and Steketee's exercises are a good way to develop a more realistic idea of how long it will take to declutter. In addition, the exercises are also a good way to build willpower.

Baumeister and Tierney devote an entire chapter in Willpower to the famed explorer Henry Stanley (of Stanley and Livingston fame). Stanley early in life came up with some habits (such as shaving daily even while trecking through a rain forest) that enabled him to lead a disciplined and successful life. While others in his party were going crazy, starving to death, or getting killed in the bush, he perservered. Baumeister and Tierney eventually concluded that you should "use your self-control to form a daily habit, and you'll produce more with less effort in the long run"(p.159).

An ingrained habit requires no decision, and thus uses no willpower. If Irene, for example, spent a month separating her mail into bill and recycle on a daily basis, she will eventually not have to think when she opens those envelopes - she will instinctively start to sort. This will conserve her willpower and let her made additonal decisions.

Hoarding, Willpower, and Possibilities Revisited

2011-10-09T19:15:00.000-04:00

In their chapter on decision fatigue, Baumeister and Teirney revisit the idea that people have trouble making decisions because to do so eliminates options. "This reluctance to give up options becomes more pronounced when willpower is low. It takes willpower to make decisions,and so the depleted state makes people look for ways to postpone or evade decisions" (Willpower, p. 99)

Several of the hoarders profiled in Stuff hoard because they see creative possibilites in the things they hoard. When they look at an egg carton, they see a craft project. When they look at a six-foot stack of magazines, they see decoupage materials. Some of them, such Daniel in Stuff, take it to extremes and appear to view everything as of potential creative use. Frost and Steketee give a horrifying description of Daniel's sister's coop, which is overrun by roaches from the garbage that Daniel is hoarding in it; he has already filled his own, and is now taking over her apartment.

For the creative hoarders, throwing something out means a loss of a creative opportunity. They think of themselves as potential artists or inventors or handymen. To thow out the stuff that they have collected means that they have admitted that they are not artists or inventors or handymen. They cannot bring themselves to face this impact on their self-image, this loss of an option of self, so they hoard.

Hoarding, Willpower, and Decision Fatigue, Part 2

2011-10-09T18:58:00.000-04:00

As I discussed in my previous post, many hoarders appear to be complex thinkers. When they think A, they then think B, C, D,and E. Irene in Stuff, for example, was unable to throw out her mail because she broke it down into over a dozen categories (instead of bills to pay and to recycle) which tired her out so much, she could not finish deciding what to do with the resulting categorized piles

According to Willpower:

"The link between willpower and decision making works both ways: Decision making depletes your willpower,and once your willpower is depleted, you're less able to make decisions.If your work requires you to make hard decisions all day long, at some point you're going to be depleted and start looking for ways to conserve energy. You'll look for excuses to avoid or postpone decisions. You' ll look for the easiest and the safest option, which is often to stick with the status quo: Leave the prisoner in prison."

Complex thinkers make decisons all the time because sorting through their mind is so complicated. This in itself is tiring. As a result, their willpower is depleted very quickly. It is not to decided about clutter, and to leave it alone. When Frost and Steketee work with hoarders, they have the hoarders declutter for small amounts of time and work their way up to longer periods in order to avoid decision fatigue.

Hoarding, Willpower, and Decision Fatigue Part 1

2011-10-06T07:41:00.002-04:00

Several of the hoarders profiled in Stuff display what is described by the authors as "complex thinking". One hoarder, Alvin, complained:

"that his mind was "too difficult to navigate." He went on, "I'ts like a tree with too many branches.Everything is connected. Every branch leads somewhere, and there are so many branches that I get lost. They are too thick to see through." He said that his thoughts came so rapidly and spun from topic to topic so fast that he couldn't keep things straight." (Stuff, p.201)

Frost and Steketee observe that this "getting lost in the complexity of his thoughts is common among hoarders" (p. 202). They seem to more attentive to details, and to retain the details longer than non-hoarders. Irene commented "I'm a detail person, not a big-picture person, but I've been saving the details for so long. I need to put them together" (p. 202). This complexity of thinking also manifested itself in long, rambling speeches, not just in hoarding.

In Willpower, Baumeister and Tierney discuss something called "The Zeigarnick Effect" (p. 80-84). According to a possibly mythical story, a group of researchers went to a restaurant and placed an order with a waiter who remembered their large amount of complex orders perfectly without writing them down (in my personal experience very rare - I usually get nervous if I don't see an order pad). One of the group went back to the waiter after the meal, and he admitted that he didn't remember any of the researchers or their meal. Once the party was served, he forgot them.

Zeigarnick was intrigued by this and began experimenting with this situation. She eventually came up with the Zeigarnick Effect - "Uncompleted tasks and unmet goals tend to pop into one's mind. Once this task is completed and the goal is reached, however, this stream of reminders comes to a stop" (Willpower, p. 81). Addition studies on the Zeigarnick Effect have shown the person does not actually have to complete the task - just make a plan. The unconscious mind accepts the plan of action, and lets conscious mind move on (p.83-4).

What if hoarders are somehow trapped in a Zeigarnick effect gone wrong? Are they unable to make a plan, to process the details into the big picture, so that they can move on?

In the second part of this post, we will explore decision fatigue.

Hoarding, Willpower, and Possibilities

2011-10-05T10:09:00.000-04:00

One of the individuals (Irene) studied in Stuff has trouble throwing things away because to do so would be to limit her possibilities. Frost and Steketee admit that when they experiment in how treat her "one goal of the experiment was to teach her how to tolerate uncertainty regarding unrealized opportunities"(Stuff, p. 42). She needed to learn to accept the fact that she could not take advantage of all possible opportunities. Eventually, Irene learned to give up items although when she did so, she told a story of why she had kept the items. For Irene, "often just telling that story loosened her connection to it and allowed her to let it go"(Stuff, p. 43).

In Willpower, Baumeister and Tierney devote an entire chapter to the to-do list. One of the people they consult for this chapter is man named David Allen, who has come up with the "Getting Stuff Done" method, for which he apparently charges thousands of dollars from celebrity clients like Jim Carrey. According to Allen:

"'When we're trying to decide what to do with our stuff or what movie to see,' Allen says,"we don't think to ourselves, Look at all these cool choices. There's a powerful thing inside that says, If I decide to do that movie, I kill all the other movies. You can pretend all the way up to that point that you know the right thing to do, but once you're faced with a choice, you have to deal with this open loop in your head: You're wrong, you're right, you're wrong, you're right. Every single time you make a choice, you're stepping into an existential void." (Willpower, pp. 86-87).

Each choice will create a new timeline, space/time continuum, etc. In order to choose, people either have to deliberately stay unconscious of the consequences of their choice, or accept them.

Is it possible that hoarders are more attuned to this existential void?
Are they just more aware of the consequences of their choices?
Or, as Stuff seems to imply, are they are unable to distinguish between consequential and inconsequential choices, and treat all of them as consequential?

Hoarding and Willpower - Part 2

2011-10-05T00:50:00.000-04:00

Bauermeister and Tierney discuss, in Willpower, the results of years of study on this subject. What they've discovered is that everyone has a certain amount of willpower, which the person then proceeds to use up during a day. If you use up lots of willpower trying to get through the day at a job that you hate, you will have less willpower at other times of the day.

One study followed college students at finals time. The college students (not surprisingly) wore dirty clothes, ate junk food, and neglected to bathe or clean their room. Instead, they either studied or wasted time procrastinating before studying. The exam preparation took all their willpower, and did not leave enough for them to maintain more reasonable standards of cleanliness.

Other studies dealt with decision fatigue. People forced to make many decisions(such as deciding what to add to their bridal registry) tended to finally break down in fatigue. They broke down even more so if they have nothing invested or lacked real control in the answer.

Finally, Bauermeister and Tierney looked at the effect of possiblity on willpower and decisions. I will discuss this more in the next post.

Hoarding and Willpower - Part 1

2011-10-04T07:14:00.002-04:00

Frost and Steketee also mention that Irene has trouble making decisions about what to keep and what to discard. While everyone has the problem at various times, it is an extreme problem for Irene and other hoarders. One of the ways that the authors train the hoarders who come to them for help is to teach them to make decisions. They have the hoarder analyze how s/he feels after s/he discards an object. S/he rates her level of anxiety immediately after s/he discards the object, then at various times over a week. The hoarder eventually realizes that while s/he initially cannot live without the discarded object,s/he will get over it quickly. This realization is an incentive for her/him to discard more items.

I was recently listening to WNYC and heard a segment about a new book called
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. While my initial reaction was dubious (it seemed to justify dumping sugar in my coffee as well as the muscular Christianity of the Victorians), I soon realized that Baumeister is a reputable social psychologist who based his theories on many different studies. Chapter 4 of his book is entitled "Decision Fatigue", a problem that is affecting most Americans and not just American hoarders. The WNYC discussion can be found here:

http://www.wnyc.org/people/roy-baumeister/

I draw parallels between Stuff and Willpower in my next post.

Hoarding and Associations

2011-10-04T06:55:00.000-04:00

Frost and Steketee's first subject is a woman named Irene. Irene, a librarian by occupation, came to them for help. She was in the middle of a divorce, and was afraid that her cluttered house would lose her custody of her children. The two authors spent much time with Irene. It became apparent that every item that she saved had some kind of strong association for her. Because she was an extremely social woman, Irene often kept these items because she wanted to give them to other people. In some cases, she thought the items could eventually become useful.

To Irene, every item represented an opportunity, either for her or a friend. Throwing away the item would destroy the opportunity, elimimate a potential life path. Since each item contained such potential, it was difficult for Irene to discard it because to do so would be to also discard a possible future. Frost and Steketee hypothsized"perhaps the idea of a potential opportunity...was better than the reality..." (p.37) Irene also had trouble sorting through mail because she became too involved into sorting it into categories rather than reading it or recycling it.

What I found interesting was that Irene could remember so many associations for the items that she saved. She apparently had an excellent memory, and was capable of creating a complex series of connections for the random objects in her house. By saving clutter, she was building a literal memory palace in her house or a giant scrapbook. The difference between Irene and the average scrapbooker is that she took it to an extreme, and didn't throw in funky colored paper, stickers, or little charms.

DId people hoard in the Middle Ages?

2011-10-02T12:12:00.001-04:00

I chose Stuff for this online book discussion nearly two months ago. During this time, I've had numerous discussions with friends about hoarding. Questions that came up were:

has the number of hoarding cases increased in the past decade or is hoarding just recognized and reported more?
did hoarding really exist prior to industrialized society?
if so, what did people hoard?
was hoarding bad in pre-industrialized societies, or viewed as necessary for survival?

Stuff begins with a quote from Dante, where he describes hoarders and wasters battling it out in The Inferno. Although I am not an expert in medieval & Renaissance history, I am assuming that Dante is referring to the wealthy aristocrats and merchants, who accumulated lands and goods in order to advance their families, reward their followers, and who would have been horrified by family wastrals. Nevertheless, did ordinary people hoard before consumerism became the driving force behind society? If not, what drove them to begin doing so? Was the hoarding impulse precipitated by changes social class and structure?

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O.Frost & Gail Steketee

2011-10-02T11:56:00.000-04:00

Introduction to Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding
and the Meaning of Things by Randy O.Frost & Gail Steketee:
I am not a hoarder, but I several relatives who are hoarders. As a child, I was terrified of our family basement. It was dark, damp, cold, and crammed full of books, old toys, unused construction material, garish china animals, and furniture belonging to relatives who had moved to Florida and died. I was afraid to let my kitten go down into it because there was a chance that he would never return. One day, my mother gazed upon this disorder in horror from the safety of the stairs, uttered the immortal line “I see dead people’s furniture,” and donated most of the clutter to charitable institutions.

Over the years, I’ve spent much time assisting family members with clutter removal and organization. As a result, I’ve become overly conscious of the amount of type of possessions that I do own; I knew I had a problem when my movers told me, as I paid them off, to go buy some furniture. I became fascinated with why some members of my family hoard, and other are neat and minimalistic.

Frost and Steketee revolutionized not only the study of why people hoard, but also how to treat hoarders. While Stuff was written for the general public, they also co-authored a second book, Buried in Treasures that is a workbook for hoarders, their family members, and anyone who wants to help a hoarder declutter. The case studies in Stuff reveal the positive impulses behind the actions of hoarders – impulses that ultimately become twisted and potentially hazardous. This October book discussion will focus on issues – both biological and environmental in origin - raised about hoarders in Stuff.

The Politics of the Armed Lifeboat

2011-08-24T11:00:00.004-04:00

Early on in Tropic of Chaos, Parenti identifies the two main strategies by which human civilization must confront the effects of climate change: mitigation and adaptation. He writes, "the watchwords of the climate discussion are mitigation and adaptation - that is, we must mitigate the causes of climate change while adapting to its effects." (10)

Mitigation entails the reshaping of the political economy of energy production in order to drastically cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as well as a shift away from carbon-based forms of energy toward renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal power. "It means closing coal-fired plants, weaning our economy off oil, building a smart electrical grid, and making massive investments in carbon-capture and -sequestration technologies." (10)

By contrast, adaptation entails exactly what you might think it would - changing the patterns of everyday life in order to deal with the effects of climate change that are already happening or are going to happen in the short to medium term. Parenti distinguishes between two basic forms of adaptation - technical adaptation and political adaptation.

Technical adaptation "means transforming our relationship to nature as nature transforms: learning to live with the damage we have wrought by building seawalls around vulnerable coastal cities, giving land back to mangroves and everglades so they can act to break tidal surges during giant storms, opening wildlife migration corridors so species can move north as the climate warms, and developing sustainable forms of agriculture that can function on an industrial scale even as weather patterns gyrate wildly." (10) A recent story in the New York Times highlighted some of the ways in which Chicago is already taking steps to prepare itself for a climate future that will make it feel much more like Baton Rouge than the cold, windy city it is today. City planners are beginning to plant trees native to the South, adding vegetation to roofs, and replacing concrete and asphalt with more permeable, reflective pavements that will allow the city to breathe easier and trap less heat.

Political adaptation, on the other hand, poses a far bigger challenge to states and societies around the world. It will entail, Parenti writes, nothing less than "transforming humanity's relationship to itself, transforming social relations among people. Successful political adaptation to climate change will mean developing new ways of cintaining, avoiding, and deescalating the violence that climate change fuels. That will require economic redistribution and development. It will also require a new diplomacy of peace building." (10-11)

The alternative to such adaptation is what Parenti calls, in a pungent phrase, the "politics of the armed lifeboat." One can easily imagine the rich countries of the Global North respond to the climate crisis by repressing and excluding climate refugees from the Global South and carrying out long-term, open-ended counterinsurgency operations to contain the fallout produced by failed states and societies. While it does not explicitly address the climate crisis, the essential 2006 film Children of Men offers a chilling depiction of what this kind of society might look like.

Somalia and "The Catastrophic Convergence"

2011-08-01T14:59:00.010-04:00

In a world filled with crises, the current conflict-exacerbated famine in Somalia is perhaps the most dire. The entire Horn of Africa - Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti - is in the throes of an historic drought that threatens the lives of hundreds of millions throughout the region. But no country has suffered worse than Somalia, where the effects of the drought have been made drastically worse by the ongoing conflict between a barely functional central government and an Islamist militant group known as the Shabab. According to reports, tens of thousands of Somalis have already died, and an estimated 500,000 children are on the verge of starvation. As the New York Times reports, Somalis are faced with the kind of Hobson's choice that will become more prevalent in an era of climate change:

This leaves millions of famished Somalis with two choices, aside from fleeing the country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia, where there is more assistance. They can beg for help from a weak and divided transitional government in Mogadishu, the capital. Just the other day there was a shootout between government forces at the gates of the presidential palace. “Things happen,” was the response of Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, Somalia’s new prime minister.

Or they can remain in territory controlled by the Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have tried to rid their areas of anything Western — Western music, Western dress, even Western aid groups during a time of famine.

While the entire region struggles to confront the drought, two areas controlled by the Shabab are the only two in the region where the United Nations has declared a famine. Somalis report that the militants are diverting rivers away from poor villages to farmers who pay them taxes, and have forced many to live in camps outside Mogadishu. According to reports, the camps are violent, squalid places almost completely cut off from international food aid.

The disaster unfolding in Somalia is a prime example of what Christian Parenti calls "the catastrophic convergence":

Climate change arrives in a world primed for crisis. The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already-existing crises of poverty and violence. I call this collision of political, economic, and environmental disasters the catastrophic convergence. By catastrophic convergence, I do not merely mean that several disasters happen simultaneously, one problem atop another. Rather, I argue that problems compound and amplify each other, one expressing itself through another.

Societies, like people, deal with new challenges in ways that are conditioned by the traumas of their past. Thus, damaged societies, like damaged people, often respond to new crises in ways that are irrational, shortsighted, and self-destructive. In the case of climate change, the prior traumas that set the stage for bad adaptation, the destructive social response, are Cold War-era militarism and the economic pathologies of neoliberal capitalism. Over the last forty years, both these forces have distorted the state's relationship to society - removing and undermining the state's collectivist, regulatory, and redistributive functions, while overdeveloping its repressive and military capacities. This, I argue, inhibits society's ability to avoid violent dislocations as climate change kicks in. (p. 7-8)

Somalia and the Horn of Africa was ground zero for the Cold War struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet bloc (with the Cubans playing a key role) in the late 1970s. The dueling powers intervened war between Somalia and Ethiopia, now on one side and now on another, in an attempt to set up a sphere of influence in a strategically important region. Parenti details the history of the war, the machinations of the superpowers, and the disintegration of the Somali in Chapter 7 of Tropic of Chaos.

Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence

2011-08-01T11:57:00.005-04:00

While a band of hardcore denialists continues to question the existence of human-induced climate change, almost all scientists agree global warming is real, that it is driven primarily by human activity, and that it threatens the stability of the ecological systems that sustain life on Earth. Many climatologists concur that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide above the level of 350 parts per million (ppm) is the threshold at which disruptive and irreversable climate change becomes very likely. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) estimates that we have reached 390 ppm, the highest concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 10,000 years, far higher than the approximately 280 ppm the atmosphere contained before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. With so much carbon dioxide in the atmopshere, a rise in the planet's temperature and the ecological disruptions that will accompany it may already be locked in place.

As Christian Parenti warns in Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, a very grim future awaits humanity if the current carbon-based global energy economy is not radically changed, starting now.

This month at Brooklyn Book Talk, we will use Parenti's book as a starting point to discuss the climate crisis, how climate change threatens to make existing political, economic, and social conflicts even worse, and what our country and the world need to do in order to avoid potential catastrophe.

Brooklyn Public Library currently has one copy of the book in circulation, so if you'd like to read it you will have to place the title on hold through our catalog.

Christian Parenti has written widely on this topic, so while you are waiting for your copy of the book, check out some of his other publications and appearances on the Internet. He recently appeared on Democracy Now! to promote the book and talk about climate change:

He's also been on the excellent Against the Grain radio program on Berkely's KPFA 94.1, in addition to the also excellent Behind the News program on WBAI 99.5 in New York.

How to Interpret Literature: The Future

2011-07-29T16:22:00.010-04:00

In the twentieth century, several new approaches to the study of literature have challenged some of the most enduring philosophical assumptions behind literary criticism that had persisted since Plato and Aristotle.

Some of the major new approaches are: Structuralism, Formalism, Semiotics/Linguistics, New Criticism, Feminism, Marxism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Hermeneutics, Reader-Response/Reception, Psychoanalytic, Archetypal/Myth, Deconstruction, Post-Structuralism, Post-Modernism, Avant- Garde/Surrealism/Dadaism, New Historicism, Post-Colonialism/Race/Ethnicity, Gay/Lesbian/Queer, Cognitive Poetics, Ecocriticism/Green Studies, Ecofeminism, Genre Criticism, Autobiographical, Stylistics, Narratology, Travel Theory, and Cultural Studies.

Julian Wolfreys in Literary Theories: A Reader and Guide, notes that “now different voices could be heard, different identities come forth other than those implicitly understood (Christian, humanist, western, male, European) in the conventional institutional approaches to literary study.” Diverse approaches to literary studies, claims Wolfreys, have developed themselves not without some often bitter struggles which still persist, as a means of comprehending, acknowledging and respecting heterogeneity and difference, rather than seeking to reduce the difference to one identity which is either a version of ourselves, or otherwise as an other which cannot be incorporated into a single identity; in the face of modern literary theory, adds Wolfreys, it is impossible to maintain a calm, undisturbed vision of a ‘single community.’

Wolfreys also cites Michael Payne who points out that theoretically informed approaches to literature have led to both the broadening of the literary canon, the texts we study, and to the raising of questions, concerning race, class, creed, color, gender, sexuality, national identity, which previously had not been asked—which could not be asked because of the implicit ideological and philosophical assumptions behind the study of the “great literature.” Payne points out that forty years ago it would hardly have been appropriate to raise the issue of either Shakespeare’s or Dickens’s depiction of Jews or women.

All questions of what has been termed ‘literary theory’ come down therefore, as Martin McQuillan suggests in the above mentioned anthology--to “questions of reading.”
Claims McQuillan: “Reading suggests a manner of interpreting our world and the texts which comprise that world. No one single manner of reading will do, so heterogeneous is the world, so diverse are its peoples and cultures, so different are the texts, whether literary, cultural or symbolic by which we tell ourselves and others about ourselves, and by which others speak to us about their differences from us, whether from the present, from some other culture, or from the past, from whatever we may think of as our own culture.”

Similarly, the most current edition of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism suggests that “this transaction which we provisionally call ‘reading’ or ‘interpretation,’ typically involves such activities as personal response, appreciation, evaluation, historical reception, explication, exegesis, and critique. Not surprisingly, the master words interpretation and reading are themselves debatable.”

The Norton Anthology also offers selections which differ markedly in how they characterize interpretation and reading: “Friedrich Schleiermacher draws a detailed account of interpretation both as historically informed grammatical explication and as psychological identification with the author. His view contrasts with the perspective of Fredric Jameson, who advocates an elaborate three-phase process of interpretation focused specifically on ideology critique of social contradictions, class antagonisms, and historical stages of social development manifested in texts. And Paul de Man instead pictures reading as a mode of exegesis wherein the reader's rewriting or restaging of the text replaces the original with an interpretive allegory: reading for him unavoidably becomes ‘misreading.’ That highly competent theorists can propose completely different models of reading fuels continued theoretical debate about interpretation.”

The complexity of literary phenomena is not easy to tame but what Plato suggested about an unexamined life, not only provides an enduring article of faith for all philosophers but also for all true lovers of literature.

How to Interpret Literature: The literary legacy of ancient Greece

2011-06-09T14:33:00.005-04:00

Scholars of literature suggest that one can find instances of literary criticism as far back as we can find poems such as epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod, and the lyric poetry of Alcaeu and Sappho in ancient Greece. Homer began his epics with an invocation to the muse, thereby acknowledging that they were written with the help of “divine inspiration”—an idea which will play a considerable role in subsequent history of poetics. Instances of literary criticism can also be identified in critical remarks of Greek dramatists and rhetoricians such as Simonides, Solon and Pindar (that poetry is instructive, that it comes natural to a genius, that it has to be learned by art, that it consists of clever use of words), or in the dramatic festivals of Athens (500 B.C.), which were organized as contests requiring an official judgment about the best drama.

The Athens of 500 B.C. is also the period of great dramatists Euripedes, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, and the philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the schools of rhetoric, and the rise of Athenian democracy and power. In one contest, Aeschylus’ drama is pronounced victorious as it “embodied a peculiar kind of intelligence required for the art of tragedy,” which is deliberately contrasted with the “idle talk” and “fine-drawn quibbles” of the philosopher Socrates. The quarrel between poetry and philosophy is as old as classical Greece, which also means that the considerations of truth and beauty, emotionality and practicality are issues of much contention in matters literary. Pascal was right: “The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.”

Thought, motive and emotion, indeed are fused in complex (conscious and unconscious) ways in literary creation and criticism. The creative act itself, argues Habib, is a critical act, not only involving inspiration but some kind of self-assessment, reflection, judgment and social pragmatics. In composing his poetry, a poet would have made certain judgments about the themes and techniques to be used in his verse, and what reaction they might evoke in a particular audience.

The Greeks, however, were not entirely focused on the purely technical dimensions of a given text. They wanted to know why a text was written, for whom it was written, and what religious, moral or political purposes motivated it. They also considered historical and cultural circumstances implicit in the text, in addition to issues of its style, language, structure, and the deployment of rhetorical and literary techniques. Literature for them was an important element in the educational process and its ramifications extended over morality, religion, and the entire sphere of civic and political processes. Moreover, in the Greek democratic process, only the adult male citizens were eligible to participate in the decision-making process while women, resident aliens, and a vast number of slaves were permanently excluded. The "creatively conflicting" literary theories of Plato and Aristotle were shaped in the context of these specific epistemological, ethical, political and economic struggles in ancient Greece. The legacy of the two great philosophers still endures in one form or another, which made Samuel Taylor Coleridge say that "one is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian."

How to Interpret Literature: Introduction

2011-06-02T14:10:00.027-04:00

In our world, where political propaganda is wide spread in all cultures, it has become increasingly more important that we read and interpret more critically, and be progressively more mindful of the self and the world, the text and the context, the conscious and the unconscious, the past and the present, and their inevitable inter-connections.

As M.A.R. Habib in his critically acclaimed book, A History of Literary Criticism and Theory, claims: "To study the Bible, Plato, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, or Roman Law, to study Jewish of African American History, to examine the Quran and the long history of the Western world's fraught engagement with Islam, is to study the sources of the conflicts and cultural tendencies which inform our present world.”

To evolve our understanding of the self, the texts, and the world, it is therefore imperative that we look skillfully and critically, at the multitude of underlying texts--religious, economic, historic, cultural, social, political, literary, aesthetic—and especially those which furnish our identity, our worldview, and not infrequently, our significant reading choices. The dangers of misreading, miseducation and misinterpreting can not only lead to personal stagnation but sometimes cultural conflict and world wars.

And I would argue that identity, reading choices and interpretations, are quite frequently intertwined. We are what we read, and often, we read what we are. Mark Twain, one of the keenest observers of humanity at large, noted the relationship (sometimes unconscious) between identity and reading choices:

"If you know a man's nationality you can come within a split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion: English--Protestant; American--ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman, Italian, South American, Austrian--Roman Catholic; Russian--Greek Catholic; Turk--Mohammedan; and so on. And when you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants. In America if you know which party-collar a voter wears, you know what his associations are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he reads to get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge, and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its doctrines with brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are around seeking after truth. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen."

But since reading choices, and hence, identities can evolve--from egocentric, ethnocentric to worldcentric--so can the interpretations of texts and the world. Evolution of consciousness means evolution of meaning and vice versa. Human history is saturated with mostly identity-based (ethnocentric meaning system) conflict and our species is still spending trillions on technologies of violence across nations, at the expense of health, education and well-being of all. And in most cases, not without the consent of the majority of its citizens (even Hitler was democratically elected). And consent is usually based on some interpretation of the texts and rhetoric deployed which "in-form" and empower the will. Whether one believes in "free will" or not, the propaganda chief of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering was uncannily predictive when he stated: “Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along to fight a war. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

War has been a constant in history and modernity, which verifies Goering's hunch about humans. Hence, it should be indisputably clear that learning to interpret more critically and think more humanely, is no longer a luxury but a necessity, which could be vital to the survival of the human race. As African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates recently said, "the challenge of mutual understanding among the world's multifarious cultures will be the single greatest task that we face, after the failure of the world to feed itself."

Gates challenge can only be adequately met with a truth-seeking, tribe-transcending, growth-oriented (rather than identity-fixated), and planetary-conscious education across-cultures. No matter what identity one subscribes to, or what philosophy one follows, in the end what really matter is: "has human consciousness evolved?" An educated mind is difficult to define but perhaps a capacity to think critically and compassionately, and a willingness to apply multiple perspectives on matters meaningful, regardless of one's political, ethnic, national or religious identity, should be among its major attributes.

So please join us for an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and open minded exploration of some of the major literary theories and their influence on interpretation and education. Excerpts and insights will be posted from some of the major texts on literary theory and criticism.

"We cannot be good citizens,” stresses Habib, “either of a particular country or of the world--by succumbing to the endless forces operating worldwide that encourage us to remain ignorant, to follow blindly, whether in the form of blind nationalism, blind religiosity, or blind chauvinism in all its manifold disguises. One of the keys to counteracting those forces which would keep us in darkness lies in education, and in particular in the process of reading, of close, careful, critical reading."

Acquiring the knowledge, practicing the skills, and continually cultivating the attitude to read diverse texts more openly and critically, could not be more urgent. Hope to hear from you--the why and the wherefore of your reading choices, values and interpretations.

Gentrification & Illegal Conversions

2011-05-16T12:14:00.008-04:00

One of the themes in the book (which is is that illegal conversions are the start of gentrification. In one chapter, the author describes how she lived in an illegally converted loft, and lied to inspecting firemen. In another section, businesses complain how families living in illegal conversions are driving them out of the neighborhood because the renters complain about noise and truck exhaust.

This was an interesting contrast to recent local news articles about illegal conversions in the outer boroughs. Due to a lack of affordable housing, many homes in Queens and Brooklyn are being broken up into illegal SRO's or multiple-person apartments which lack suitable fire exits. Several of these houses have recently burned down, killing tenants and endangering firemen. as a result, there is great public outcry for crackdowns on illegal conversions:
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-26/local/29492030_1_illegal-conversion-building-inspectors-apartments

Is the proliferation of outer borough illegal conversions a sign that the outer boroughs are gentrifying? Or are they a sign that housing has become so expensive that they are no legal alternatives for people who want to have a place to live off of the street? Please comment.

Street Fairs

2011-05-13T12:50:00.006-04:00

One example of suburbanization put forward by the book is the blandness of NYC street fairs. These fairs are apparently run by a few companies and tend to showcase the same merchants. This is why last weekend, when I went to the Union Square street fair, I saw three booth selling fries, arepas, grilled corn, etc. Most fairs don't have local merchants because they aren't hired by the fair organizers. The sole exception at the fair that I attended was a small cannolli booth run by Williamsburg's famous Fortunato Brothers (I bought a chocolate one).

Street fairs were originally run by churches and local groups, such as block associations, to raise money for these organizations. People who lived in the neighborhood arranged the event, reached out to local artists and vendors, and actually worked tables. The money was then spent locally by the organization and by the vendors. Now that they are being contracted out, much of the money from the fair goes to the street fair company, and less to the organization and the vendors.

There are still some more locally oriented street fairs throughout NYC. A listing of a few, as well as ideas of how to revitalize the street fair are contained within this report by The Center for an Urban Future:

http://nycfuture.org/content/articles/article_view.cfm?article_id=1266

How do you feel about street fairs? Do you love them, hate them, avoid them, enjoy the fires? Please comment.

Help - my neighborhood is changing!- The Rise of Real Estate and the Decline of the Industrial City - Part 2

2011-05-04T22:30:00.014-04:00

A commentor on my previous post mentioned that gentrification problems were not just confined to cities. Noel Perrin wrote an essay called "The Rural Immigration Law" (reprinted in his collection Best Person Rural) about this very problem. He describes a hypothetical couple named Don and Sue who move to a small New Hampshire village where previously they and their children had spent weekends in their summer house. After a short period of time:

"But there are some problems. The first one Sue is conscious of is the school. It's just not very good. It's clear to Sue almost immediately that the town desperately needs a new school building -and also modern playground equipment, new school buses, more and better art instruction at the high school, a different principal. ...only about 40 percent of the kids who graduate from that high school go on to any form of college. The rest do native things, like becoming farmers and mechanics, and joining the Air Force.

Pretty soon Sue and Don join an informal group of newcomers in town who are working to upgrade education. All they want for starters is the new building (2.8 million dollars) and a majority of their kind on the school board." (p52.)

While Perrin aims his comments at rural gentrification, the same process takes place during gentrification in cities. While it is currently chic to raise chickens in the city and start rooftop farms, noisy uncullled roosters, the smell of unclean pens, and an future avian flu epidemic could lead to an eventual anti-farming backlash.

Oddly enough, one of the first anti-gentrification backlashes is coming from Greenpoint and Williamsburgh, which may stop issuing liquor licenses in an attempt to prevent those neighborhood from taken over by bars and drunken partiers (as opposed to crowing roosters and pooping hens):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576271263033640144.html

Help - my neighborhood is changing!- The Rise of Real Estate and the Decline of the Industrial City

2011-05-03T21:45:00.006-04:00

Matthew Schuerman discusses in this chapter how industrial areas (such a Williamsburg's Schaefer Landing, which the Royal Wine Company wanted to use for its expansion) were turned into residential housing. This comes at a price, since small businesses are being displaced and luxury housing is being built where they used to stand. Often these small businesses (like Royal Wine) leave the state, taking with them jobs and NYC tax revenues. Others, like the businesses that will be displaced by the Willets Point project, may go under.

Small businesses in NYC are endangered by developers who want to turn their land into condos or malls. They are also endangered by the expectations of the people who move into the gentrifying neighborhood:

"After a few years of illegal conversions and BSA gerrymandering, the manufacturers that remain in these areas start fielding complaints from the neighbors - idling trucks, bad smells, noises late at night - and parking tickets suddenly increase. City planning commissioners then jump in with a broad rezone, arguing that they are merely codifying what is already taking place on the ground." (p.133)...'The cop writing a ticket for one of your trucks is just doing his job. He doesn't know that the person who called to complain is upstairs in an illegal conversion." (p.136)

Back in 2002, I read an article about how the gentrification of its surrounding neighborhood was causing troubles for the Gillies Coffee Company roasting plant. Apparently the people who had moved into the neighborhood were shocked to find that the coffee plant was causing the air to smell like coffee.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/nyregion/cup-of-kafka-coffee-roaster-cited-for-coffee-smell.html

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/03/20/a-trip-to-gillies-ne.html

Since I lived across from three power plants, one known officially as the most polluting power plant in NY State, and my air was smelling more and more like something burning, I envied the Gillies neighbors. I would have loved to smell coffee.

I was also somewhat stunned to find that one of reasons that the Fulton Fish Market was moved to the Bronx was that they tourists complained about the smell of the fish:

http://www.fordham.edu/academics/colleges__graduate_s/undergraduate_colleg/fordham_college_at_l/special_programs/honors_program/seaportproject/essays/FultonMarketMoves.pdf

My questions:

Is the city actually encouraging illegal conversions (currently a hot topic) by reducing its industrial and increasings its residential zoning in areas where this is prevalent?

Should people be expected to do some research before they move into a neighborhood?

Please comment!

The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? Ed. Jerilou Hammett and Kingsley Hammett (and happiness)

2011-05-03T21:30:00.003-04:00

For the past month, I have been reading about, blogging about, and discussing happiness. One of the factors that contributes to happiness is a sense of place. New York City has traditionally been a city where people have tried to find happiness through a sense of belonging. Some people emigrate from small towns in the search of endless sources of culture, or acceptance of alternative lifestyles. Other people emigrate from another country in the hopes of leading a more fulfilling life.

I moved back to NYC in 1994. In the seventeen years that I have lived in the city, I have seen many changes in not just Brooklyn, but also in Queens and Manhattan. The essays in this book are not only personal accounts by people about how they have seen "their" New York change, but also analyses of how forces within the city have caused the city to change. For the next month, we will discuss how the changes in the city are increasing and decreasing its inhabitants senses of happiness.

Happy Ever After - Happiness & the Royal Wedding

2011-04-25T00:53:00.006-04:00

Nick Duerden, a Guardian UK reporter (and twenty-first century dad) is upset over the message being sent to his daughter by the upcoming Royal Wedding.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/23/princess-fairytale-daughter-royal-wedding

His daughter is in her princess phase, when she spends her free time reading about princesses, dressing like a princess, watching movies about princesses, etc. He appears to be waiting it out for her to grow into a sane phase. Unfortunately, her princess phase is coinciding with the Royal Wedding.

Why do girls think that becoming a princess will help them to live happily ever after? The unhappy life and tragic death of Princess Diana and the high rate of divorce in the British royal family alone is evidence that marrying into royalty does not lead to happiness. Other royal families don't seem to have better marital track records.

The most frightening part of the article was when Duerden discussed an American woman who runs a very pricey princess camp for American pre-teen girls. Her students might be better off taking an American etiquette course to help them in the American business world (for starters, we handle a knife and fork differently than a European). Their chances that they will have to support themselves are much higher than their chances of marrying into royalty. After watching Fergie fall into major debt, these girls would be better off if they got decent jobs and found a fiscally responsible partner. I was raised to believe (possibly erroneously) that as American citizen, I don't curtsy to royalty; I find it very disturbing that these pre-teens are being taught to do so.

In fact, even these princess camp attendees face a possible future of poverty. According to the many publications on the non-profit Wiser Women's website:
http://wiserwomen.org/

a large number of American women have not saved enough for retirement, are postponing retirement, and face lives of poverty after they stop working. Many of these women lacked the financial knowledge and impulse control needed to build up retirement savings and to keep themselves out of debt. They had expected their husbands to provide them with financial security.

Why do women pay to attend princess camps? Should parents support their daughters' princess phase, or try to cut it short? Please comment.

Buy Some Happiness- Indulge in a modest splurge

2011-04-24T22:07:00.007-04:00

When I when went on line today to post, I noticed an artcle written by Katherine Rosman, a Wall Street Journal Finance writer:

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/112526/dollar-here-dollar-there-so-what-wsj

The author's husband had criticized her need to incorporate a $4.00 latte into her daily commute. My initial reaction was the daily latter could fall into Rubin's suggestion of "Indulge in a modest splurge" (p.174) However, Rosman's husband calculated that she was spending $1000/year on lattes. This moved the latte out of the modest splurge category and into the somewhat pricey passion category.

As I read the article, I realized that in addition to the drink, the whole Starbucks experience was important to the writer. It was, in a minor way, her equivalent of going to the mythical "Cheers" to buy a drink. Entering the Starbucks, being waited on, possibly even that caffeine jolt made up for her grueling morning commute. She wasn't spending money on the item but on the experience.

All the books that I've read about happiness assert that spending money on experiences, not objects, will bring you more happiness. Can little indulgences, like coffee, be viewed as experiences rather than as material consumption? Or will the author ultimately be happier if she put that money aside and invested it monthly in an IRA rather than spend it on a decadent beverage?

Please comment.

Happiness is Pursuing Your Passions

2011-04-24T21:21:00.005-04:00

In September, Rubin decides to find happiness by pursuing a passion. In her case, her passion is reading:

"Although reading was one of my most important priorities and certainly one of my greatest pleasures, I never really gave it much thought. I wanted more time to read-more books, with more enjoyment. To do so, I gave myself permission to read at whim." (p.228)

She decided to stop reading a book if she finds it uninteresting, rather than force herself to finish it. She weeds her bookcases, and donates unwanted books. She realizes that she hates books about people who have been unjustly accused, and resolves that she won't read them.

This chapter had a great impact on me. For years, I have felt guilty for reading books when I am not commuting. I have always felt that my time off a train should be spent more productively - i.e. socializing, vacuuming (a big need in recent years), doing laundry, balancing my checkbook, etc. Whenever I did read a book, I always had a thought in the back of my mind about what I should be doing instead of reading. Now that I view it as pursuing a passion, I am definitely happier.

Rubin also inspired me to weed my books. While I do this annually, I realized that I still owned many books that I hadn't read in years but did not want to get rid of because to do so would be to admit that my priorities have changed. I have become a different person, one who is NOT going to rereadthe several dozen books currently sitting in a corner of my living room. I'm just not that interested in the Kalevala or Greek philosophy or certain kinds of medieval poetry. Admitting this does not mean that I am a bad person or that my brain is rotting - I've just changed. While I am not happy about the effort that it will take to lug the books into to my branch so that BPL can sell them online to earn money, I am happy that they will be gone soon and not silently reproaching me whenever I sit on my couch.

Last weekend, I helped my sister with her final decluttering. Today, I urged another sister to go through her books and donate them to declutter HER house. I realized that getting rid of books is a way to become a new person. I give myself permission to move away from past interests in order to pursue new ones. I also give myself more free time since I now longer have to dust the books.

Why do people feel guilt over getting rid of books? Is it because of respect for the written word and the ideas they contain? Or is it a refusal to admit that they have changed and moved beyond these books? Please comment.

The Joy of Work

2011-04-18T23:00:00.004-04:00

Yesterday's New York Post had an article about the joy of working: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/why_we_love_the_rat_race_93i0tIPOA4TF5t9cuRMiCK

According to the author (who is reviewing a book called "Rush: Why you need and love the rat race" by Todd Buchholz), Americans are actually happiest when they are at work. This is because work gives them a buzz - they get into a flow that amkes them happy. He contrasts this with men in France, who are more likely to be retired in their 60's and whose cognitive function has decreased as a result of not working.

Rubin also discusses the "flow " concept (taken from Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's book "Flow." However, she ties it into the creative process. The NY Post author seems to view any intellectually engaging work as causing "flow." One of thereasons that I found this article interesting is that I am currently reading Robert B. Reich's "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future".

Reich does not appear to be a fan of the rat race:

"The harder we worked to buy these things, the less time and energy we had to enjoy what we bought. American culture sent an increasingly mixed message: Work like mad but enjoy life to the fullest...The argument on behalf of hard work has always been premised in something of a lie. People are led to believe that one day they will find satisfaction, if not in the work itself, when they have finally worked hard enough to afford and accumulate what they desire. But that day never seems to arrive." (p. 87).

Reich's premise is that people will never be satisfied because the economy is stacked against the middle class. The middle class has developed an idea of how should live to be happy. Unfortunately, the growing class divide, and the outsourcing or elimination of jobs will prevent the middle class from reaching these standards. As a result, people will work themselves to death and die, miserable, unable to achieve their perceived economic goals.

Buchholz, in return, is encouraging people to work just for the joy of working. While this sounds puritanical, Buchholz may just be a practical guy. More and more baby boomers are having to postpone their retirement because of the recession. Why not make it a virtue (a way to keep your brain healthy) rather than as a necessity.

Yet more decluttering

2011-04-18T22:52:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, I helped my sister with her final decluttering. We drove a huge carload of clothes, craft supplies, and school supplies to a family shelter in Queens. They were somewhat staggered by the amount of donated items, but they seemed happy.

Then today, I read one of my favorite blogs by an authro named Vivian Swift:
http://vivianswiftblog.com/?p=4100#comments

Vivian also decluttered, but did it with much more style. She donated her tiems to an animal shelter thift shop, then went for a hike with a shelter dog, and then bought loads of tasty Dutch baked goods. I knew we should have celebrated our final decluttering trip with a coffee run.Vivian's commenters have some interesting ideas about what makes them happy (it isn't always decluttering).

Happiness & Decluttering

2011-04-11T18:24:00.006-04:00

As part of her project, Rubin decided to declutter her apartment. She started with her own closet and gradually worked her way through her house. The decluttering actually provided her with a great deal of satisfaction. The visual emptiness of the space cleared her mind. She also felt as if she had more clothes since she had kept only the ones she lived and wore, which she could easily find.

I am a big fan of decluttering. Over the years, I've assisted family members in decluttering their houses and apartments. Every time I do so, I then return home and do a quick declutter of my apartment. Every season, I go through clothes and donate unwanted ones. However, I do think decluttering can be taken to an extreme. I always wait a day before I finally donate or discard an item to see if I'll change my mind.

The perceived need to live in a spartan environment can cause as much unhappiness as living in an overly cluttered one. Sometimes we need some clutter or disorder to humanize our environment. One of the few places where I've seen this need acknowledged is on a voluntary simplicity blog that I follow: http://www.choosingvoluntarysimplicity.com/less-stuff-doesnt-equal-happiness-either/

During the course of Rubin's decluttering, She offers to clean out the closets of her friends. At one point, her husband even chastises her for immediately offering to declutter the apartment of their dinner hosts.While I think that it is great that Rubin wants to share happiness with her friends and loved ones, she also might want to look at the several compassionate and sensible posts on decluttering in that voluntary simplicity blog.

Memories and Happiness

2011-04-10T21:54:00.006-04:00

One of Rubin's happiness resolutions involved creating "a treasure trove of happy memories". Since she is apparently an extremely organized person as well as a devoted mother, she creates memory file boxes for her daughters. She builds her own scrapbooks with lulu.com. She hires a professional photographer to take family portraits.

I am not photo person. With the exception of my brother and some friends who are talented photographers, I can tolerate very people who show me large amounts of personal photos. My happy memories are triggered by a certain angle or shade of light, by music, and by food.

However, I realize that (in the US at any rate), I am abnormal. Many Americans greatly value family movies, photos, and scrapbooks. Whenever I walk into a Michaels, I am dazzled by the complexity of American scrap booking. My photos are tossed into a plastic milk crate on a high shelf in a closet. As I read Rubin's book, I found myself wondering if I am missing out on the happy memories because I am not a photo person.

My questions are:

do people actually use these keepsakes to remind themselves of happy memories?

are tangible treasure troves needed to create memory treasure troves?

is the need to always catch that moment a cause of unhappiness for some people?

Please comment. My next post will be on decluttering.

Money & Happiness

2011-04-06T08:44:00.007-04:00

Rubin's July chapter, "Buy Some Happiness", focuses on the relationship of happiness and money. She looked at studies about the subject and concluded: "...studies show that people in wealthier countries do report being happier than people in poorer countries, and within a particular country, people with more money do tend to be happier than those with less. Also, as countries become richer, their citizens become less focused on physical and economic security and more concerned with goals such as happinesss and self-realization. Prosperity allows us to turn our attention to more transcendent matters - to yearn for lives not just of material comfort but of meaning, balance, and joy." (p.166)

Back in 2008, I led a discussion on this blog about Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss. Two of the happiest countries in the book, countries who actually had Gross National Happiness Indexes, were Nepal and Thailand. Neither country is rich, and their inhabitants make considerably less than Americans, who scored much lower on the happiness scale in Weiner's book. This may be connected to Rubin's finding that people are happier when they live in a neighborhood with people who make similar salaries and have a similar level of job achievement. Like is apparently happier with financial like.

Rubin eventually concludes that "both money and health contribute to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of them brings much more unhappiness than possessing them brings happiness." (p.169) She also decided that indulging in a modest splurge will help increase her happiness provided that she spent it in a way specifically designed to do so, but that eventually the happiness buzz will wear off and she will have forgotten about it.

I personally don't agree with Rubin about some of her conclusions about money and happiness. I spent a number of years living in a cheap studio apartment in a very nice (but still inexpensive at the time) neighborhood. I paid little rent. I also had almost no natural light due to a dearth of windows. When I moved to my current apartment, I was overwhelmed by actually seeing sunlight. Every day, I feel happinees and gratitude over the fact that I had enogh money to move to an apartment with more than one window. I have friends who years afterwards still talk about how moving to their current (and more expensive) apartment changed their life for the better. None of us are living in luxury, but our current abodes are much better than our old ones. We are still grateful for the fact that we had enough money to move.

In July, Rubin decides to spend her money on needful things that will make her happy. For example, she buys some new shirts that are her dream shirts. This lets her have a small number of clothes that she wears regularly rather than many that she ignores because they aren't right. She also buys an expensive blender, which she uses ever day. In short, she tries to spend on quality items that will also improve her quality of life. However, she also seems to focus mostly on how these things and consumption in general cause happiness.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin - Is the quest for happiness overrated?

2011-04-02T16:52:00.010-04:00

Last night, I was describing to a group of friends why Rubin wrote this book. I began with the quote that I cited in my earlier post, where Rubin has an existential crisis while riding on a bus. One of my friends commented that life, is indeed, just that. That is basically all there is to life, so accept it and move on. I, myself , wonder sometimes if happiness is not overrated. I've seen people spend a fortune on interior decorating, buy designer pets whose lives they have then made miserable, or leave a spouse all in the quest for happiness. People might actually be happier if they accepted the need for unhappiness. Was the quest for happiness a source of unhappiness? Do we need the dark to appreciate the light?

With this in mind, I decided to look for any comments that Carl Jung had made about happiness. I found this: "So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled."

With some further searching, I found that Rubin had done a post on Jung's Five Basic Factor's for Happinees: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-rubin/carl-jung-5-happiness-factors_b_784945.html

I plan on discussing one of these factors tomorrow when I discuss Rubin's attempts to see if money can buy happiness. As of now, I'm wondering whether happiness is overrated and must you be miserable to realize when you are happy? Please comment.

Introduction to The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

2011-04-01T14:14:00.018-04:00

I am actually not a great reader of self-help guides. In fact, they often make me so stressed out by emphasizing my own inadequencies that I am forced to make myself a relaxing cup of coffee to drink while reading Terry Pratchett. I still have nightmares about one guide to the simple life that I read in the late 1990's - the author donated everything she owned to charity, then went out and bought entirely new possessions to compliment her scaled-down life. The mere thought of all the packing and shopping gave me a genuine anxiety attack.

I was therefore initially dubious about The Happiness Project. Rubin starts the book with a description of why she decided to embark on her Happiness Project:

"One April day, on a morning just like every other morning, I had a sudden realization: I was in danger of wasting my life. As I stared out the rain-spattered window of a city bus, I saw the years were slipping by. ""What do I want from life, anyway," I asked myself. "Well...I want to be happy." But I had never thought about what made me happy or how I might be happier." (p.1)

Rubin then decided to embark on a year-long experiment to make herself happier by making herself into a better person.

In the next two months, I hope to lead a discussion about

-the nature of happiness

-the possbility of achieving happiness by following Rubin's techniques,

-whether the cause of unhappiness is, indeed, other people.

Rubin's own blog can be found here: http://www.happiness-project.com/

Wisconsin & the Future of U.S. Labor

2011-02-28T11:25:00.004-05:00

The dramatic, ongoing protests by unionized public employees and their allies in Wisconsin and around the country mark a turning point in the history of the U.S. labor movement. As noted in an earlier post, public employees now make up the majority of union workers in the country, and if Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other governors around the country are successful in winning substantial curtailments of union benefits and collective bargaining rights, we could soon witness the end of the U.S. labor movement as we know it.

It's no coincidence that the confrontation is Wisconsin has been likened to President Reagan's 1981 confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). By firing striking the striking members of that union, Reagan signaled that the postwar bargain between labor and management was over - and it's no coincidence that unionization rates in the private sector (where workers have less legal protections) have plummeted since that event. As such, it is appropriate that Jefferson Cowie uses the PATCO firings as the place to end his narrative of the decline and fall of the New Deal working class in Stayin' Alive.

The struggle in Wisconsin is primarily a struggle over whether or not public employees should have the right to engage in collective bargaining with their employer to define wages, benefits, and working conditions. Since the 1935 Wagner Act legalized collective bargaining in the private sector (various states have legalized collective bargaining for their employees in various years), collective barganing has been the defining feature of unionism in the U.S. While recognizing the value of collective bargaining in winning material advances for working people, Cowie argues at many points in the book that an overreliance on collective barganing as the primary means of exercising workers' power on the job contributed significantly to the decline of the labor movement. On p. 9 he argues that collective barganing and other features of the postwar industrial relations system "were both srouces of power as well as systems of constraint on the future fortunes of the American working class." And in his concluding paragraph on p. 369, he argues that "whatever working class identity might emerge from the postmodern, global age will have to be less rigid and less limiting than that of the postwar order, and far less wedded to the bargaining table as the sole expression of workplace power."

I want to use these considerations as a jumping off point for discussion of these important questions about the future of the working class and the labor movement in the U.S.:

1) Is it sustainable politically and economically for remaining unionized workers to try to hold on to workplace-based benefits that most workers do not share? Should unions and their allies strive to maintain what has been called a "private welfare state" for their members or fight for universal social programs not tied to the workplace or to union membership?

2) If so, how could this be done?

3) Has the fight over public sector collective bargaining affected your views on the question of public sector unionism? Recent polls seem to suggest that a majority of the public supports public sector union rights. What do you think?

4) While the mid-20th century industrial working class has largely been eclipsed, as Cowie notes on p. 362, "Those steel mills and their surrounding communities may be gone, but the workers are still out there - part of the new Wal-Mart working class." Is unionism still relevant to these workers, or is it a relic of the New Deal era that should be scrapped completely? If not, what might a labor movement defined by a different kind of working class look like?

"We're All Devo!": Blue Collar Dada

2011-02-18T16:14:00.004-05:00

It's likely that most people who were around in the late 1970s and early 1980s remember the band Devo as little more than a New Wave novelty act, a quirky band whose videos showed them wearing strange headgear and whipping the clothes off women in barnyard settings (I'm sure we've all seen the video for "Whip It" at some point in our lives). But Devo was way deeper than that. Hailing from Akron, Ohio, a blue collar city wrecked by the decline of the U.S. auto industry, these art-damaged kids offered the world an unsettling post-industrial vision of dysfunctionality and regression they called "de-evolution" - hence the name Devo. In songs like "Jocko Homo" and "Secret Agent Man," they looked into the abyss of late '70s disintegration and decay - and saw their hometown looking back at them.

The world that Devo made drew from two sources: sci-fi schlock and the social and economic decay they observed all around them. As Cowie explains:

For Devo, the common horde of their hometown, Akron, resembled the evolutionary disasters of the Island of the Lost Souls. “Those mutants were [bleeped] with,” the band explained. “They looked like people from Akron.” By the 1970s, the city’s decline had given it a “hellish, depressing patina” and the people’s “spirits were depressed; they were desperate…In other words, they were just ready to go over the edge at any moment.” The shuttered landscape, where the tire industry’s glory days once meant sweeping up black rubber dust from townspeople’s front porches, served as the backdrop to their innovative video creations. The scene fit “in with the early twentieth-century art movements—Expressionism, Dada and others that were influenced by those kinds of environments in Germany and England,” explained band member Jerry Casale. “We had our very own backyard version of it. A rubber version.”

Yet buried in the city’s growing rubble was a completely different history: that of Akron’s role as the birthplace of the working-class hero. There, in the midst of the Great Depression, dramatic sit down strikes, mass pickets, and guerrilla warfare against the rubber tire magnates of the 1930s made the tirebuilders “the first to fight their way to freedom,” in the words of one chronicler at the time. The Akron workers’ struggles blazed the path for the rest of industrial America to join the leap forward in labor organizing and then the blue-collar prosperity of the postwar golden age."

By the 1970s, Devo could find no traces of such working-class nobility—just militancy regressing to corporate stasis, blue collar fading to grey, “Solidarity Forever” disappearing into the “Devo Corporate Anthem.” Working-class activism spawned consumerism, and consumption generated apathy. Industrial and consumer cultures turned out to be as vacuous as the empty tire factories and boarded-up buildings of their hometown. “Look we are spuds,” explained one of the band members. “We’re very average looking, normal gene pool. In Akron, it’s the Goodyear Museum and the Soapbox Derby and McDonald’s and women in hair rollers beating their kids in supermarkets. We were products of it and used it.” The band neither criticized nor shied away from the socio-economic failures of the seventies; instead, they took it as fact, and embraced the decline.

Blue Collar: The Working Class Against Itself

2011-02-14T11:20:00.005-05:00

As Cowie makes clear in Stayin' Alive, the story of the 1970s is in many ways the story of the working class and what to do with it in a time of massive political, economic, and cultural change. The concerns, problems, and aspirations of working people inevitably bled into the popular culture of the era, which abounded with widely varying representations of the working class. It's no coincidence that many of the enduring cultural productions of time - All in the Family, Saturday Night Fever, Rocky, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Norma Rae, the music of Bruce Springsteen and Merle Haggard, among many others - revolved around the trials and tribulations of working class life in a period of transitiion.

In my last post, I noted that the 1972 Lordstown strike best captured the rebellious blue collar spirit of the early 70s. Paul Schrader, a veteran of the New Left who made a name for himself for writing the Taxi Driver screenplay, saw in Lordstown a rich source of material for his blistering 1978 film Blue Collar, starring Yaphet Kotto, Harvey Keitel, and Richard Pryor in a rare dramatic turn. But by the time Schrader wrote Blue Collar, the optimistic mood of the early 70s gave way to a profound pessimism about the future, and this shift is reflected in the film. As Cowie observes:

The original Lordstown dispute contained all the variables of the new labor politics: youth, inter-racial solidarity, and protest against the quality of production rather than the quantity of compensation. In the hands of filmmaker Paul Schrader, the event was reinterpreted from one of hope and agency to one of the bleakest meditations on blue-collar America ever made...Schrader believed that the film was an exploration of the 'self-destructiveness' of workers who 'attack the organization that was supposed to defend them [their union]. And how that kind of dead-end mentality is fostered and engendered by the ruling class in order to keep the working class at odds with itself'...In a complete inversion of 1930s proletarian drama, however, the working class is in the midst of meltdown, not unification...If we accept Blue Collar as more allegorical than literal, the confusion of identity, the questions of agency, and the dissolution of the limited racial solidarity make it one of the more succesful explorations of working-class identity of the decade."(p. 334-337)

The final moments of the Blue Collar trailer posted above capture the vengeful, inward looking mood that came to define working class life to a significant extent in the final years of the decade. Keitel and Pryor, whose characters were great friends on and off the job earlier in the film, grab their tools and lunge at each other in a murderous fury as the voice-over intones, "The American Dream - if you're rich, you can buy it. If you're anything else, you gotta fight for it." The scene echoes a line by columnist Jimmy Breslin quoted by Cowie on p. 6 of Stayin' Alive. As the economic horizons of working people, black and white, began to shrink, the result was a "'Battle Royal' between 'two groups of people who are poor and doomed and who have been thrown in the ring with each other.'"

Strike Out

2011-02-11T23:28:00.007-05:00

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on strikes and work stoppages. Considering the long and continuing decline of the organized labor movement - the unionization rate in the U.S. hit an historic low of 11.9% of the workforce in 2010 - the numbers were not very surprising. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

Over the course of 2010, there were only 11 major strikes or lockouts involving 1,000 or more workers...The lowest year for work stoppages was 2009. Last year’s work stoppages “idled 45,000 workers for 302,000 lost workdays, a large increase compared to 2009 record lows, with 5 stoppages idling 13,000 workers for 124,000 lost workdays,” the report noted.

While work stoppages rose last year, they were historically low and can be seen as yet another signal of a highly challenged employment sector. High levels of unemployment resulting from the worst recession in generations have evidently made many workers gun shy in taking major action to secure better employment conditions.

The diminishing pool of organized workers also likely has something to do with what the BLS noted is a long decline in the trend for strikes and lockouts. “From 2001-2010, there were approximately 17 major work stoppages on average per year, compared with 34 per year from 1991-2000, 69 from 1981-1990, and 269 from 1971-1980.”

The government noted that work days lost to major work stoppages over 2001 to 2010 have fallen 90% from 1971-1980 period. Work stoppages were far more common before 1970. For example, there were 470 such events in 1952.

A quick look at the nearby graph tells a lot about the history of the American working class since World War II. An unprecedented strike wave hit the country after the war, when workers sought to make up for the sacrifices made by their unions to support the war effort. As labor-management relations calmed down and became institutionalized through widespread collective bargaining, the number of strikes went down during the 1950s and early 1960s. But as the system began to break down in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the number of large-scale strikes went through the roof. In 1970 alone, there were about 5,700 strikes involving some 3 million workers, many of them unofficial (often illegal) "wildcat" strikes called by the workers themselves without the permission of a union.

Workers weren't just responding to the pressures of inflation, which became one of the biggest socioeconomic problems of the 1970s. In many cases, they rebelled against the whole postwar deal between the unions and management, what Cowie calls the "unwritten rule" that "higher compensation and thus consumption could be promoted but the organization of production was not to be touched." (p. 43) In exchange for decades of soul sucking work in a dirty, noisy, dangerous factory, the industrial worker of the postwar years received a golden ticket into the world of middle class consumerism. By the early 1970s, more and more workers wanted more than just a steady paycheck - they wanted to make the conditions of their work less alienating and more humane. The "blue collar blues" gave rise to a rebel rank and file.

As Cowie tells it in his first chapter, these rebellions broke out in a number of different industries all over the country, but the strike that most clearly embodied the spirit of the time was probably the strike at the Chevy Vega plant in Lordstown, Ohio in 1972. The assembly line at the plant was the fastest in the world at the time, cranking out a hundred cars per hour (one every 36 seconds). Unsurprisingly, the toll on the workers on the line was enormous, and many responded by doing drugs and drinking on the job and by engaging in acts of sabotage. At one point before the strike, there were 5,000 outstanding grievances against the speed of the line. As Cowie describes it, the workers at Lordstown combined the class militancy of the 1930s with the countercultural impulses of the 1960s, a combination that terrified their bosses:

Like the other insurgencies, the Lordstown conflict was generational as the young, hip, and angry began to take over. The average age at the plant was only twenty-five years. As the treasurer of Local 1112 [the Lordstown United Autoworkers local], J.D. Smith, explained, 'It's a different generation of workingmen. None of these guys came over from the old country poor and starving, grateful for any job they could get. None of them have been through a depression. They've been exposed - at least through television - to all the youth movements of the last ten years and they don't see the disgrace of being unemployed.' Encapsulating a package of desires that simultaneously rested upon and challenged the accomplishments of the previous generation, Smith noted, 'They're just not going to swallow the same kind of treatment their fathers did. They're not afraid of management. That's a lot of what the strike was about. They want more than just a job for 30 years.' (p. 46)

The strike lasted for three weeks, and the results were mixed at best. Read Stayin' Alive to learn the details of the Lordstown strike and the other rebellions of the period - as you'll see, while many people at the time thought that they might be the harbinger of a new and more humane deal for working people, by the end of the 1970s it was clear that they were little more than the death throes of the golden age of the American working class - if they have been remembered at all. Cowie quotes the assessment of a labor lawyer who worked for Miners for Democracy, an insurgent movement within the United Mine Workers of America:

An attorney friend once asked labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan, 'What do you think historians will say when they try to figure out why, in the seventies, these guys in the Mineworkers and the Steelworkers rose up the way they did?' Looking at him as if he were 'nuts,' Geoghegan replied, 'What historians? It's as if the whole thing ever happened now.' (p. 260)

Let's Discuss
1) Have you ever been on strike? If so, what was it like? Did you live through any of the famous strikes in New York history, like the 1970 postal strike or the transit strikes of 1966, 1980, or 2005? Do you think that going on strike can ever help workers in today's circumstances, or is the strike just another embarrassing fad from the 1970s like bell-bottoms or pet rocks?

2) In response to the first post on Stayin' Alive, an anonymous commenter made the following observation: "A lot of economists and historians have pointed out that the decline of the economic power of the middle class may have caused a lot of economic stagnation over the past thirty years." I agree with this statement, as does the International Monetary Fund, one of the institutions that governs the global economy. The commenter recommends continuing education and as the best remedy for working and middle class Americans struggling to keep up with economic changes. Do you agree, or would you advocate other kinds of policies to improve the economic fortunes of American workers?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Class

2011-02-01T11:16:00.011-05:00

Before proceeding to a more in-depth discussion of the main themes of Stayin' Alive, it is necessary to structure our discussion by attempting to arrive at a common understanding of what exactly we mean when we talk about the concept of "class" broadly and the "working class" in particular.

The concept of class is at the heart of much sociological and historical study. One of the first writers to engage in class analysis in a systematic fashion was Karl Marx, who along with Emile Durkheim and Max Weber is considered one of the founders of sociology in addition to his more well known role as the intellectual godfather of the modern socialist movement. From a Marxist point of view, a class is a group of people who have a common relationship to labor and the means of production (the tools and raw materials used to make things) and who therefore share a common way of looking at the world - a "class consciousness" - based on that relationship. In his earlier writings, Marx identified two main classes in society - the capitalists (those who own the means of production and make decisions as to how it will be employed) and the working class (people who do not own the means of production and need to sell their ability to work to a capitalist in return for a wage). Marx argued that the relationship between these two classes is inherently antagonistic and would result in conflicts for power and resources - and that this class struggle was the basic motive force of history. But as capitalism became more complex in the later part of the 19th century, he revised his view to incorporate the middle classes that occupied a space somewhere between the capitalists and the working class (this category can include small businesspeople, professionals, and white collar workers). This development has complicated the class structure as well as the nature of class conflict in advanced capitalist societies in North America, Europe, and elsewhere.

Like Marx, Max Weber was one of the most influential social thinkers in modern history. Unlike Marx and many later Marxists, Weber did not think that one's position in society should be conceived primarily in economic terms, but should be supplemented other considerations, namely status and power. Status derives from one's popularity, prestige, or honor in society, and power derives from one's ability to achieve one's goals despite opposition from other groups (typically conceived in political terms). Both of these factors may not necessarily be tied to one's economic position, and one's class position may not necessarily depend on one's earnings - is a unionized blue collar worker who makes around $100,000 per year to be considered part of the working class or the middle class?

Toward the end of the 20th century, the late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu advanced a theory of social class based on questions of aesthetic judgment. He argued that one's class position is defined by how one presents his or her mode of being to the world. This would include one's clothing, reading and eating habits, furniture and interior decoration, and other lifestyle choices associated with one's class position. In such a view, the most important difference between a worker and a bourgeois would not be their different relationships to the means of production but rather their differing tastes. Integral to this concept is the idea of cultural capital - the knowledge, skills, and education that a person has that gives them a higher staus in society. For example, a CUNY graduate may be just as smart or have the same skills as a Harvard graduate, but the cultural capital confered by a degree from the former simply does not measure up to that of the latter in the eyes of society.

The view of class that I would like to emphasize, however, comes out of the Marxist tradition and was best summarized by the historian E.P. Thompson in the preface of his classic book The Making of the English Working Class. There he argues against the more rigid Marxists who saw a class as an objective structure that necessarily had to produce a certain kind of class consciousness, and not coincidentally, tended to be at least somewhat authoritarian in their politics. In contrast, Thompson's perspective was much more open and fluid:

By class I understand an historical phenomenon, unifying a number of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, both in the raw material of experience and in consciousnes. I emphasize that it is an historical phenomenon. I do not see class as a "structure," nor even as a "category," but as something which is fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships...Like any other relationship, it is a fluency which evades analysis if we attempt to stop it dead at any given moment and anatomize its structure. The finest-meshed sociological net cannot give us a pure specimen of class, any more than it can give us one of deference or one of love. The relationship must always be embodied in real people and in a real context. Moreover, we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with one another. We cannot have love without lovers, nor deference without squires and laborers. And class happens when some men (sic), as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men (sic) whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs...Class is defined by men (sic) as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition.

Jefferson Cowie, the author of Stayin' Alive, adopts a similar view when he defines his conception of class in footnote 4 on p. 376, one that also draws from an approach to knowledge called social constructionism: "this study uses 'the working class' as a socially, politically, culturally, and economically constructed category with multiple possible meanings, expressions and outlets. The elastic nature of class in politics and social life - especially in the elusive American context - is, arguably, more important than defining the term with statistical accuracy."

I will talk about class in this sense in the course of this discussion, but I don't mean to imply that this is The One True Way of thinking or talking about class. How do you define class generally, and the working class in particular? What class would you place yourself in? How do you think class works in America, and do you think this differs from the way it works in other countries?

Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by Jefferson Cowie

2011-01-31T22:11:00.008-05:00

While many most of us are keenly aware of the sometimes painful realities of class in our everyday lives, and open and honest discussion of the nature of this country's socioeconomic class structure remains perhaps the most taboo subject in American politics.

From the end of World War II to the early 1970s, the fruits of economic growth were broadly shared across class lines. There were still noticeable gaps between the very wealthy and everyone else, but as long as the economy kept growing, working and middle class people could expect their living standards to increase steadily - in the words of President John F. Kennedy, a rising tide lifted all boats. Many Americans look back on this period with a deep sense of nostalgia for a time in which anything seemed possible, defined by the existence of a broad middle class that could expect its children and grandchildren to lead ever better lives. As the title of a popular TV show from the 1980s put it, these were The Wonder Years.

But the wonder years did not last forever. Since the early 1970s the incomes of working and middle class people have stagnated or declined while the upper classes and the super rich have increased their shares dramatically. From 1980 - 2005, over 80 percent of income growth in the U.S. went to the top 1% of the population. The ongoing economic slump has made these trends worse. By 2009, income inequality in the U.S. reached the highest levels ever recorded: the top 20% of the population took home half of all income while those living below the poverty line took home only 3.4%. The number of people living in poverty and the number of people without health insurance increased dramatically. The prevailing mood seems defined not by a sense of boundless optimism, but rather a profound anxiety about the future.

How did we ever get to this point? And why don't politicians and the media seem to ever talk seriously about the sorry state of the working class in this country? Historian Jefferson Cowie gets at the root of these questions in his valuable new book Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, which we will be discussing on Brooklyn Book Talk this month. By chronicling the unraveling of the New Deal order and the unionized working class that supported it, Cowie unearths the meaning of a much-maligned decade in which the world that we live in today was created.

As you wait for your copy of the book, check out the author's Stayin' Alive blog, where he comments on politics, class, and culture. Also, I recommend listening to the author's recent appearance on the excellent Behind the News radio show hosted by Doug Henwood. The Cowie interview begins at 30:15, but the whole hour-long program is excellent and well worth listening to:

Behind the News with Doug Henwood - January 15, 2011 at 10:00am

Click to listen (or download)

One of the main threads of Cowie's book is a consideration of how representations of the working class in the popular culture of the period both reflected and shaped the political and economic trends of the decade. So in addition to more "serious" talk, get ready for plenty of YouTube clips of Bruce Springsteen, Merle Haggard, Johnny Paycheck, Devo, Saturday Night Fever, Norma Rae, Blue Collar, Rocky, All in the Family, and other great cultural products from the period.

In my next post, we will talk about two important questions that will help to underpin our discussion of the book: what exactly do we mean by "class," and how do we define the working class?

The Integral Approach

2011-01-03T20:10:00.034-05:00

In the first 32 pages of Integral Spirituality, Wilber gives an overview of his Integral Map, also called the Integral Operating System (IOS). Based on cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of diverse human potentials – spiritual, psychological, social – the map can be distilled into 5 major factors: quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types.

These five factors are not abstract theoretical concepts but salient and verifiable aspects of our being-in-the-world, claims Wilber. Without confusing the map with the territory, and by learning to identify these factors in ourselves, and in the world, we can harness them more effectively, thereby accelerating our own development to “higher, wider, deeper ways of being.”

Let’s look at the five factors briefly by beginning with the quadrants.

Quadrants combine the most fundamental distinctions in the world: interior/exterior and individual/collective. The four resulting intersections give us the interior and exterior of the individual and collective ( See figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ). In the Upper-Left quadrant (I: the interior of the individual), one can find one's thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, memories, all described in 1st-person terms. When we look at the individual from the outside, not subjectively but objectively, that will be the Upper-Right quadrant (it: exterior of the individual), which can be described in 3rd-person terms such as neurotransmitters, neo-cortex, limbic system, matter, energy, physical behavior etc. We can also observe that every "I" is a member of many "we's" which represent the collective in a given culture. This is described by the Lower-Left quadrant (we: the inside awareness of the group), which characterizes shared worldview, shared feelings, shared values etc. Just as the "I" has an interior (subjective) and an exterior (objective), likewise, every "we" has an exterior which is indicated by the Lower-Right quadrant (its: systems, networks, technologies, government, natural environment etc). In other words, quadrants simply refer to 1st person (I), 2nd person (you/we), and 3rd person (it, its) realities, which we can verify in our every day experience of the world as any occasion possesses an inside and an outside, as well as an individual and a collective dimension. More importantly, all 4 quadrants show growth or evolution, which happens in levels or stages.

Levels (or stages) are higher order structures that emerge as evolution breaks into new territory. Each level represents a level of organization or in other words, a level of complexity, and emergence in a given domain of development, termed as line of development in the IOS. These developmental lines occur in all four quadrants but in the context of personal development "I" (Upper-Left quadrant), for example, one of the lines --the "self-identity" line-- unfolds from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric, or from body to mind to soul to spirit. Correspondingly, in the Upper Right quadrant terms, felt energy phenomenologically expands from gross to subtle to causal to nondual. The levels or stages can apply to any line of development i.e. self, cognitive, emotional, moral, spiritual, values, needs, worldviews etc. ( See figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ).

Lines are specific areas (cognitive, emotional, inter-personal, moral, spiritual etc.) of our being-in-the-world in which growth and development can occur. They are called developmental lines because they unfold in progressive stages such as pre-conventional, conventional and post conventional. The level of a particular line simply means the "altitude" of that line in terms of its growth and consciousness. Hence, it is only when states are converted into stages of consciousness that genuine development occurs. However, one can be highly developed in one line (i.e., cognitive) and not so developed in another (i.e., moral). Wilber gives the example of Nazi doctors as a phenomenon of high development in cognitive line but low in the moral ( See figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ). He also identifies some 31 specific lines of development, with each line unfolding with respect to stimulation by the corresponding information-energy inputs i.e., to stimluate bodily-kinesthetic line one can resort to hatha yoga. Similarly, to evolve in the cognitive line one can embark upon extensive reading, reasoning and research, and so on. The 31 lines are: affective/emotional development, altruism, bodily-kinesthetic, care concern, cognition, communicative competence, conative/motivational drives, creativity, dance, epistemic mode, forms of death seizure, ideas of the good, interpersonal capacity, intimacy, level of defense mechanisms, linguistic/narrative thought, logico-mathematical thought, morals, musical, object relations, openness, psychosexual, religious faith, role-taking, self-identity, self-needs, spiritual development, sports, values/worldviews, and visual-spatial thinking.

States mean states of consciousness or subjective realities within us, which could be natural or altered or trained. They could be temporary, changing, and sometimes powerful (especially of the transpersonal realm) forms of awareness, the most familiar being waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. But there are other such as meditative states (induced by yoga, zikr, breathwork, tonglen, contemplative prayer etc); altered states (induced by drugs etc); and a variety of peak experiences (induced by listening to exquisite music, or walking in nature etc). The great wisdom traditions maintain that the three natural states of consciousness—waking, dreaming, deep sleep—potentially contain a treasure trove of knowledge, experience, and wisdom, only if we know how to train them properly. The meditative states such as unio mystica, sahaj or satori can give knowledge or awareness of an ultimate reality. Thus, states of consciousness can house several different levels (or stages) of consciousness. States of consciousness come and go but stages of consciousness are permanent ( See figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ).

Types are horizontal differences (such as masculine and feminine expressions, yin, yang, or Myers-Briggs, or enneagram etc). For example, the main types within Myers-Briggs are feeling, thinking, sensing, and intuiting. The main types within enneagram typology are helper, achiever, reformer, and so on. One can be any of those types at virtually any stage of development. ( See figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ).

With these five fundamental factors of the Integral Approach (also called AQAL, which is short for "all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types) in mind, we will delve more deeply into more complex ideas (please see these diagrams) discussed in the book.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber: Introduction

2010-12-01T23:32:00.013-05:00

Is there a book which can serve as an antidote to the religious animosity of our times, a book which can unite spiritual traditions without compromising their essential message? There seems to be a fervent agreement among some of the most well-respected religious scholars and philosophers of our time that Ken Wilber's latest work, Integral Spirituality, fits the bill.

Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi, a Zen teacher from Brooklyn, and creator of the widely acclaimed "Big Mind process" suggests that anyone serious about "raising the level of consciousness on this planet should read this masterpiece.” Sally Kempton, a teacher in the Saraswati order of Indian monks, and the author of The Heart of Meditation, says that Integral Spirituality is a book that "literally shatters spiritual confusion." Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, who is considered one of the major founders of the Jewish Renewal movement, asserts that "the Kabbalah of the future will rest on Ken's work." Professor of Psychiatry and Philosophy at University of California, Irvine, Roger Walsh, who is also renowned for his best selling masterwork, Essential Spirituality, claims that Integral Spirituality is, "quite simply, the most encompassing account of religion and spirituality available in our time.”

Not many books on spirituality can claim to have received such superlative recommendations from celebrated scholars of diverse traditions. Let’s find out for ourselves if such recommendations are justified. Please join us for the next two months as we discover how the great religions of the world can be reconciled, and at the same time, integrated with science and philosophy.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture - Conclusion

2010-11-25T08:13:00.008-05:00

In this final post for our two month discussion of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture and of the cause and effects of cheapness in general, it seems fitting that I share with all readers this link (courtesy of my friend David):

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/11/firstness_insane_florida_woman.php

A woman in Flordia has been camping for three days in order to be the first person into a Big Box store for Black Friday. She has set up a tent in the store parking lot and is essentially living there for three days. In the meantime, the rest of us are quietly preparing our holiday food, planning to spend time with our loved ones, or looking for a shelter that will provide a holiday dinner.

When I read this article, I found myself trying to calculate if she will be saving any money. The cost of the tent, her food, and even the time of the three days itself must be factored into the equation. I ended up deciding that she must be planning on doing a lot of shopping in order for the savings to justify the upfront expenses.

However, she also seems obsessed with being the first person in the store - it is some kind of major achievement or personal best for her (she mentions that "Firstness" is her main priority). Shopping, for her, appears to be the only thing that gives her a sense of accomplishment and validation. She has been completely consumed by the consumer mentality. Maybe she will be a happier person when she staggers out of the door with her loot, but how long will this happiness last?

I would like to end this two month discussion with a final quote from Angelo Pellegrini:

"Instead of getting something as the traditional measure of one's personal success, we shall have the unexplored opportunity of becoming something: better citizens, better members of the human community. Given the means to live in decency and comfort, free of the fear of want, happiness is ...always the necessary consequence of being esteemed as a good human by one's fellows...The unfailing source of life's enrichment must be sought within the self...And while we are here, given adequent food, clothing, and shelter, we must explore the virtue of self-reliance and seek happiness, felicity, tranqility in symbiotic relationships with our fellows rather than in the mere acquisition of material things. (Lean Years, Happy Years, pp. 18-19)."

Happy Thanksgiving to all readers and commentators!

Cheapness, layoffs, and small businesses

2010-11-20T09:54:00.011-05:00

As mentioned in frequent previous posts, in Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture Ellen Ruppel Shell emphasizes the need for small local businesses to stimulate local economy. However, she also emphasizes the need for workers to have salaries that provide them with a decent standard of living (she references a few times Henry Ford's decision to pay his employees enough to be able to eventually buy cars). The small businesses put more money back into the local economy and help create a sense of place within a community.

On December 18th, the mayor's office released the city's financial plan:

http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2010b%2Fpr477-10.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1

Over a thousand city workers will be laid off as in attempt to balance the budget. In the short-term, this will save NYC money. In the long-term, the layoffs may have a more adverse effect on the city economy. As of October, 2010, the NYC official unemployment rate was 9.2%, the lowest in 18 months:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/nyregion/19jobs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

However, the actual poverty rate in NYC as of 2009 was 21%:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/economy/20100927/21/3372

The layoffs will increase the rates of both unemployment and poverty by unemploying city workers. However, they may also cause additional unemployment among non-city workers.

In my previous post, I linked to an announcement that Saturday, November 27th is Small Business Saturday. The NYC small businesses have been hard hit by the high rate of unemployment in the city:

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4207/the-life-and-death-of-the-mom-n-pop

While discretionary spending went up around the country last quarter, it dropped 3% in NYC:

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20100922-906779.html

New Yorkers are spending less money on restaurants, clothes, and pets (the NYC shelters are filling up with pets from people who can longer afford to feed them). This is affecting small local businesses, who have had to lay off employees and even close.

These businesses will be impacted even more by the layoffs. Many city employees shop in the neighborhoods where they work while at lunch or after work. They also shop where they live (and most live within the five boroughs). In addition to the city employees, the cultural organizations have also had money cut, and may have to lay off employees, which will increase the unemployment rate even further, and erode the discretionary spending population even further.

Many laid-off NYC workers will apply for unemployment. Many will have to move out of the city, and even the state, leaving a smaller economic tax base and fewer people who are shopping locally. As of October, 2010, 37,000 people were living in NYC shelters, including 9600 families:

http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/pages/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city-data-and-charts

These homeless individuals obviously have limited discretionary spending.

It is obvious that NYC must balance its budget and reduce its expenses. This is a time when cheapness and thrift are needed. However, the short-term solution of cutting employee salaries may have more expensive long-term effects.

How can we cut the NYC budget and help the city get back on its feet? If you have any suggestions, you can submit them to the city at:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/misc/html/2010/ideas.html

This is your opportunity to make the money-saving suggestions that you've always secretly thought!

Support Small Business Saturday - Nov. 27th

2010-11-17T22:38:00.003-05:00

In Cheap:The High Cost of Discount Culture, Ellen Ruppel Shell defends local small business owners in defiance of big box stores.On November 27th, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, NYC asks all New Yorkers to support local small businesses by shopping at their local small business:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/sbs/html/pr/2010_11_08_Small_Biz_Sat.shtml

in order to boost our local economy. NYC, including Brooklyn, has many small restaurants, clothing and craft-based businesses, and bodegas and 99 cent stores. Help keep neighborhood industry diversified by shopping small.

Is Cheapness Always the Best Policy?

2010-11-15T23:34:00.009-05:00

Nancy Mitford, best known for Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love wrote an early novel entitled Highland Fling. Two of the main characters, Walter and Sally, were a young married aristocratic couple trying to lead the life of gay young things in post WWI Britain. Sally, the more practical of the two, periodically attempted to make Walter economize when they overspent their quarterly allowance. Unfortunately for Sally,

"On the other hand, Walter seemed to have a talent for making money disappear. Whenever he was on the point of committing an extravagance of any kind he would excuse himself by explaining: "Well, you see, darling, it's so much cheaper in the end." (p.14).

In order to save money, Sally volunteered for the two of them to chaperone a house party for some relatives who would be out of the country. Unfortunately, in the middle of the party, the house burns completely to the ground. As Sally comments in a letter "It's too awful all our things being burnt; as Walter says, it would have been cheaper in the end to go to the Lido." (p.154)

Over the years, when I've bought shoes that fell apart, clothes that ripped or shrank, and horrible coffee, I've found myself thinking "it would have been cheaper in the end to go to the Lido". We've all had experiences or purchases where we've regretted compromising and/or settling for second best. Cheapness does not always come without a physical or monetary price.

Who pays for the freegans?

2010-11-14T14:00:00.004-05:00

A previous poster brought up an interesting point. Who pays for the freegans? When you pay rent or a own a home, your money goes to:

property taxes (paid by landlord if you rent)
utilities (if paid by landlord & included in rent; paid for directly by some renters and all homeowners)
police, fire, sanitation, emergency services (included in property taxes)

However, squatters and freegans presumably do not pay into the tax bases that fund these services. While it is great that people are leading cheap lives off the grid, it is not so great that those of us with more conventional lifestyles are funding these alterna-lifestyles. Also, are any of these people paying income taxes? If not, is this fair to those who do pay taxes?

While I have no problem with people dumpster diving, I do have some questions about the ethics of people who use city services without paying towards them. Somewhere along the line, it is not just the big government who gets taken advantage of, but also your fellow citizens. Legalizing squatters so that they can (and must pay into into local services) may be the cheaper way of supporting semi-alternative lifestyles.

Cheapness, Aesthetics, and Deprivation

2010-11-11T11:50:00.011-05:00

Shell and Weber appear to have different ways of defining cheapness. Shell seems to encouraging people to buy quality items that will last for some time, not just investing in something flimsy for temporary gratification. In the long run, buying quality will save money because the item can last for a long time and be repaired. For example, Shell tells the story (p.148) of a friend who bought a wooden bookcase at a flea market; it was somewhat more expensive than a comparably sized-one at Ikea. It was solid oak "sturdy and distinctive" and is still holding books ten years later without its shelves buckling as happens to bookcases made of compressed wood. Since the bookcase is real wood, she can easily strip and refinish it if desired. Although the friend is now wealthy, she has no plans to get rid of the bookcase since it is still so useful.

Weber, on the other hand, seems more attuned to price. She'll walk half an hour to get to an ATM without a surcharge. She reuses tea bags. She worries "If you dine at gourmet restaurants every week, how much will you savor and remember each individual meal?" (p. 264) While writing the book, she "lived on lentils and beans but swore off canned beans (79 cents for four servings) for dried beans ($1.49 for twelve servings."(p.266)

I find this interesting from an aesthetic point of view because tea is literally one of the cheapest drinks in existence, and it tastes terrible if you reuse the grounds. Also, to anyone who is a foodie, it is common knowledge that dried beans taste much better than canned beans. The cooking and canning process destroys much of the bean's taste and texture. Whenever I open a can of beans, I feel guilty not because of the cost but because I am committing a foodie desecration - I am too lazy to plan ahead and boil a several meal's worth of beans.

What is most disturbing is that idea that eating cheaply must be a miserable experience. About a year ago, I read a book called Urban Hermit by Sam Macdonald. Macdonald paid off thousands of dollars in debt and lost over a hundred pounds by eating rice and lentils for a year. His descriptions of his meals, particularly lunch, were the stuff of nightmares. I found myself thinking continously "why doesn't he go to the town library, take out some vegetarian cookbooks from different ethnic cuisines, and stock up on spices at the 99 cent store?" I found myself wondering if any of his co-workers, forced to watch him eat his apparently unappetizing lentil slush during the course of a year, thought of planning an intervention.

Back in the early 1990's, I read "The Unprejudiced Palate" by Angelo Pellegrini. Pellegrini, a University of Washington professor, grew his own vegetables, made his own wine (with someone else's grapes) and advocated living the good life cheaply. In his book "Lean Years, Happy Years," he devotes two pages (p. 79-81) to instructions on how to make an inexpensive and nourishing minestrone with beans and any available vegetables. Earlier in the chapter, he comments that he was

"puzzled at first by such a bland, limited [American] cuisine, I learned later, as a student of American history, the reason for it. Its sobriety, the lack in it, beyond nourishment, of what is pure pleasure, reflected the austere ethic of the early Anglo-Saxon settlers. In that somber view of life, the Puritan ethic, all that contributed to purely sensuous pleasure, such as a glass of wine and pleasantly seasoned food, all that urged one to abandon Calvin and follow Epicurus and seek a measure of redemption in joyous living, was severely censored...So boil the potatos, cook the meat without erotically stimulating seasonings, fill the dinner goblets with water, and let each one rejoice in the austere pursuit of business, the work ethic." (p.64).

For some reason, living cheaply in America has come to mean living joylessly. It has become acceptable (even fashionable) to starve the senses in order to save money.

Cheap: The High Cost & In Cheap We Trust

2010-11-10T14:29:00.017-05:00

Squatters Equal Freegans?

Lauren Weber, in In Cheap We Trust, devotes a chapter to Adam Weissman and his freegans here in Brooklyn.She went on a trash tour with them in 2008 and even met some women from New Jersey who were inspired to check trash tours after seeing them on Oprah (p. 242). Freegans:

"practice an extremem version of low-cost living. A freegan (the term is a play on vegan) might Dumpster-dive for her food, squat in an unoccupied building rather than pay rent, bike or walk instead of drive, give away and optain clothes at Really Really Free Markets, grow an urban garden, and share skills like computer repair and wild-food foraging." (p. 231).

Squatting, in fact, is a time-honored NYC tradition. The brother of one of my oldest friends lives in a formerly abandoned apartment building that originally began as a squat. The squatters (he was one of them) successfully persuaded NYC to accept their occupation and they now legally live in the building. However, since this took place before the 21st century, my friend's brother was referred to as an illegal squatter rather than a "freegan".

There are also some lower-profile squatters in Queens. I've read online articles about impoverished and homeless individuals who moved into foreclosed homes in Queens. They are growing their own food and living a communal, although off-the-grid, existence. Since I have also seen people in Queens living in public parks and in Amtrak tunnels, I am inclined to be supportive of the communal households, which provide a measure of protection against the weather and starvation.

As I see it, the difference between the freegans and the Florida squatters is that the freegans use the media in an extremely sophisticated fashion. According to Weber:

"Freegan.info welcomes news crews and reporters, even when the coverage ends up being tawdry or hostile. It's kind of working; the website at one point has six thousand subscribers, and trash tours regularly attract twenty to fourty newcomers on top of a rotating groups of a dozen or so regulars." (p. 242).

The Floridians, in contrast, appear to be working families with small children. The man in the NY Times photo is mowing a conventional lawn, not weeding vegetables while clad in a t-shirt bearing an ironic statement. The squatters pay rent and have signed lease agreements acknowleging the fact that they know that their landlord does not legally own the property. Instead of openly proclaiming that they want to become a full-fledged political movement, the Floridians are quietly living off-center values (they are legally squatting)within externally conventional lifestyles under the guidance of a Christian real estate agent rather than a Brooklyn radical.

Is it cheaper for states to allow people to squat in foreclosed house? It is expensive to house individuals and families in shelters. In addition, children in particular are affected by having to leave their home, their friends, possibly their school. In the long-term, these children may lead better lives if allowed to grow up in a secure living environment. Furthermore, empty houses can destroy a neighborhood by serving as havens for wildlife or criminal activity. In the end, the cheapest and best way to boost the economy may be to allow squatters to take over and improve abandoned homes.

But what do we spend on?

2010-11-09T07:19:00.002-05:00

There seems to be much agreement that we should kickstart the economy by spending. However, no one seems to be very clear about the type of spending that we need to do. I don't think that shopping at a mall is the best way to kick-start the economy. The stores may do well but the individuals just end up back in debt.

However, today's article in the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/us/09foreclosure.html

suggests a new way to promote spending while keeping people off the streets and out of shelters. I have thought it would have been cheaper for the government to pay off the mortgages of the millions of foreclosed Americans andd told them that they owned their house. This would have kept the banks solvent and freed up the homeowner to spend money that would otherwise have gotten to an inflated mortagage on home repair, education, retirement savings, shopping in local stores, etc. Those of us who actually paid our mortgage could have been given a bonus for actually paying it. Let these squatters keep their houses and spend economy-boosting money on them!

Does anyone have other suggestions on good ways to boost the economy by spending? Please post.

Kickstarting the economy by spending

2010-11-07T21:56:00.009-05:00

Weber's chapter "Spendthrift Nation" discusses in depth the theories of spending our way out of a recession versus increasing our savings level:

I asked Ron Wilcox, author of the book Whatever Happened to Thrift? ...whether he would suspend his passionate advocacy of thrift in favor of Americans buying their way out of recessions like the one that began in 2007. A new emphasis on saving "will make the recession deeper and longer," he acknowledged. But if people keep spending at very high rates, it'll just kick the problem down the road. I've come down to the view that it still makes sense for American families to save money." (p.207)

The problem is that no one wants to discuss what will happen if we DO NOT save money. The baby boomers will deplete social security.
Gen X and the Millennial Generation may not be able to count on social security in old age. We may see an enormous increase of poor, elderly Americans who spent in their youth (as they were told to do in order to improve the economy) only to be left to starve in old age.

While I am not a student of economics, it seems to me that too many people are trying to apply the model of the economy of the 1930's and 1940's to the 21st century. The country has changed too much for Roosevelt's solutions to work for us.

We have effectively outsourced most of our manufacturing and not come up with any industries to replace it. There is also has also been a major erosion of the American middle class:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html

Encouraging people to recycle tea bags as Weber does will save at most $10/year (you can buy a box of 100 bags for $3 at Trader Joe's). Perhaps individuals should focus on wide-scale financial reform in addition to restarting personal habits of thriftiness.

A previous poster suggested that we spend more. Back in 2008, I expected the government to spend money on the development of solar power in the US and the repair of US infrastructure. I hoped to be able to buy cheap, American-made solar panels by 2012 so that my building could afford to get off the grid. I expected to see bridges repaired, roads resurfaced, loads of solar street lamps making my neighborhood safer, and an end to classroom overcrowding in NYC through the construction of new schools. I expected, in short, a 21st-century version of Roosevelt's WPA program. Because of the great changes in American society, I did not get one.

Do Americans need to spend more?
Will spending more improve our economy?
Is the emphasis on personal thrift a way of escaping from the need to advocate for major reform in the US economy?

Pyschology of Spending versus The Psychology of Cheapness

2010-11-02T22:29:00.003-04:00

Like Shell, Weber examines the psychology behind consumption:

"The marketing analyst Victor Lebow summed up the official ethos of the era when he wrote, in 1955, "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate." (p.177)

Although this was written about the 1950's, it also sounds like the early 21st century way of life. As I read Weber's book, I found myself wondering:
Is conspicuous consumption a fixed trait in the American national character?

Is it tied into being a nation of immigrants - people who have to prove that their lives are better than those they left behind?
Will the American economy always be consumption based?

At the same time, I do know Americans who are as cheap as Weber and her family. While they would not necessarily walk half an hour to save an ATM fee, they do cut back in ways that many Americans would find excessive. Yet this extreme thriftiness could be viewed as part of the American character:

"Americans [Ben Franklin] hoped, would forswear the types of luxuries imported from Europe, directing their savings instead toward investment at home. Those investments-in land, labor, and equipment-would increase the productive capacity of domestic farmers and craftsmen. Household, in his view, should make as much as their clothing, furniture, and food as possible, and what they couldn't produce at home, they should purchase from trained artisans who would themselves earn enough to employee apprentices and journeymen at good wages." (p. 35)

People would lead lives of creative, self-sufficient thrift in order that more of their country-men could have better-paying jobs.

Is thriftiness a way to get an equitable lifestyle for all?
Or is it dependent on cheap foreign labor?
Is it possible for something to be affordable but not exploitative of cheap labor?

In Cheap We Trust - Lauren Weber

2010-10-30T11:18:00.005-04:00

For those of you interested in learning about Weber's book while eagerly awaiting my next real post, here are some sites with reviews and comments on her book:

http://bookstove.com/book-talk/summary-and-review-of-in-cheap-we-trust-the-story-of-a-misunderstood-american-virtue-by-lauren-weber/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/books/review/McArdle-t.html

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-26T12:50:00.003-04:00

I am currently reading In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue by Lauren Weber in the hopes that it will give me additional insight on Shell's book. I will have a new post by Friday about the issues raised in both books.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-19T22:58:00.004-04:00

Outsourcing and Fashion:

In the book, Shell connects the ephermeral nature of products with outsourcing. In the past, clothes were bought with the expectation that they would be an investment - something that would be worn for a long time. However, as fashion evolved, courtesty of the marketing industry, clothing became ephemeral. People bought clothes to stay in fashion, not as a long-term investment. Once again, clothing manufacture was outsourced in order to keep prices down.

Today at noon, a rally was held in the Garment District as part of an attempt to fight the dissolution of that area as clothing manufacture is outsourced:

http://mas.org/join-the-rally-for-garment-district-jobs-tomorrow-at-noon/#more-6650

A panel discussion about the rally (which is supported by several designers) as well as the outsourcing, will take place on the 22nd.

Some questions:

If you recycle your clothes when you're bored with them, then is ephemeral fashion OK?
Is it possible that people will be willing to pay more for ethical clothes and resign themselves to buying fewer?
Is vintage really more ethical - is it OK to buy used clothing because it is one more step away from a factory?
should NYC focus on something besides the fashion industry and resign itself to the days of the Garment District being those of the recent past?

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-18T23:52:00.004-04:00

Outsourcing:

Shell discusses the outsourcing of jobs from the US to other countries. Because the US pays higher wages than many other countres, it is cheaper for companies to have their goods made outside of the US. This, in turn, reduces prices for American consumers, which is good in the short-term. However, it also puts many Americans out of jobs, which is bad in the long-term.

A previous poster notes that s/he always looks at the hidden costs. Outsourcing has hidden costs - the destruction of the American workforce and increased unemployment. Questions to consider:

why do American companies continue to outsource despite its negative effect on the US economy?
why do they continue to outsource customer service centers when so many Americans are unsatisfied with their experience with such centers?
Is it all tied to a growing lack of empathy in US society? See:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/oct/18/empathy-deficit

does the desire for cheapness conflict with and stifle empathy?

Once again, let the debate begin.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-17T10:40:00.007-04:00

Big Box Stores - Walmart, Trader Joes, and saving money

Shell devotes a chapter to the destruction of mom-and-pop stores by big box stores such as Walmart. Small stores go out of business because they cannot compete with Walmart's low prices. The big-box store provides less customer service because it dehumanizes its employees.

Up until about a year ago, I would agree with Shell's assessment of Walmart. However, in the past two years, Walmart is selling locally produced food (grown within the state) in its store. While some people might quibble that within a state is not local, it is still more local than Mexico, Holland, or Canada, and it does boost the economy of the state. It also may provide a higher quality product at a lower price.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/business/15walmart.html?ref=dining

In addition, while I do not shop at Walmart (I've never been in one) I do know people who are regular Walmart customers. Last night, as I was buying cat litter in my local supermarket, a man checking out bird seed told me that he normally buys a month's worth of pet food at Walmart and only comes into the supermarket if he runs out of food before the next shopping day. We discussed a local pet food warehouse where I shop for cat food, and he told me that the Walmart prices are still lower. He estimated that he saved $500/year at Walmart - a significant savings. We both agreed that the supermarket was twice as expensive as the other stores and that it was taking unfair advantage of the many people in the neighborhood who own pets and did not have cars or time to take the highly unreliable bus to the petfood warehouse.

On one hand, I agree that big box stores can be soulless. On the other hand, $500 saved could make a difference between getting veterinarian care for a pet or waiting out a potentially fatal pet illness. The same issue can apply to people who buy their medicine from Walmart- they may want to buy at a small store but they may need the savings they get from using Walmart. It is easy to advocate using more expensive local alternatives if you have a good income.

The same issues can be applied to Trade Joes. There have been recent protests outside of NYC Trader Joes because of the ethics of their produce suppliers (suppliers who also supply the NYC area supermarkets). Once again, the issue (at least here in Queens) is whether to buy pricey goods at local supermarkets who are using the same suppliers but have a lower media profile, buy cheaper items at Trader Joes, or resign yourself to a lengthy trip via subway to a farmers market to buy a week's worth of produce. Is it wrong to look for the cheaper alternative when there is no real viable ethical alternative?

In addition, it looks as though supplying health care for employees under the new health care plan may make it even harder for mom-and-pop store to stay in business. Big box stores will have an easier time although their profits may drop. With this health care bill, consumers may have little say in the survival of small stores in their community.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-13T14:15:00.004-04:00

IKEA: Evil Empire - Part 2

Ikea keeps its prices down by having its goods made in countries where wages are extremely low and there is less oversight of working conditions. As Shell points out, a US carpenter could not get the raw materials for a table for the price that IKEA sells the table. While part of IKEA's lower costs are due to their buying raw materials in bulk, their cheap labor also keeps costs down.

In addition, IKEA deliberately designs its items to be ephermeral. Buyers are paying for the attractive design, not for the quality of the workmanship. As Shell correctly notes, IKEA furniture does not move well (I've heard this from other people) from apartment to apartment. Most IKEA products end up in the trash and ultimately in landfills. It does not reuse or recycle well.

On the other hand, in the current bedbug plagued NYC, cheap and disposable furniture may be necessary. Is IKEA furniture the forerunner of an era when we must be prepared to throw out our furniture (or burn it)?

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-06T01:40:00.005-04:00

IKEA - Evil Empire? Part 1

Brooklyn recently became home to an IKEA. While I have not been this particular store, a friend of mine has happily taken the trip many times. She raves about the product design and the price. She even remembers some product names. (I do own an IKEA bed and stool, but had to unload the down comforter because it terrified a cat.)

Shell devotes an entire chapter to IKEA. She visits the corporate headquarters, where upper management appears to be doing its best to indoctrinate the employees. She gives a detailed description of an IKEA commercial about a homeless lamp (my response was totally opposite the one that IKEA wanted - I felt the urge to rescue the newly abandoned lamp).

More importantly, she casts doubt on its environmentally-friendly reputation. It is possible that the wood is being logged from the rapidly depleting forests of Siberia. It is hard to document the origin of the wood, and in fact IKEA ignores a local downed forest in seach of foreign woods. It did, however, hire Brooklyn locals to work at the store.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-03T11:09:00.005-04:00

Cheapness and Unions

In order to reduce the price of an item, it is necessary to cut the cost of producing the item. Traditionally, the easiet way to cut production costs is to cut the cost of labor. Replace the people with machines. Replace the people with people who are paid less. Replace the people with not only people who are paid less, but with people who cannot complain about the unsafe conditions in which they work (making the conditions safer would, of course, cost money and thus raise the price of the item).

Unions exist to insure that people make what they view is a reasonable wage and to insure that they work in safe working conditions. In the Middle Ages, craftsmen's guilds existed. These guilds trained their employees to industry standards through a master/apprentice relationship. They provided some assistence to elderly craftsmen and their widows and children. A master craftsman produced work of a certain quality although not necessarily at a low price. These guilds evolved into labor unions.

Unions can beviewed as a double-edged sword. If you are a union employee, you are guaranteed a certain protection from being fired (although not from being laid off), safe working conditions, usually a decent health plan, and a pension. On the other hand, all of this drives up production costs, which is why companies have begun outsourcing and union-busting. While this trend means cheaper items, it does come at a price. To quote Shell:

Wages and benefits were sinking, and job security a happy memory. A focus on deregulation and unfettered free markets had made unions and their protectors almost a thing of the past, particularly in the private sector. Global markets, in which goods were produced far away from the eyes and sensibilities of those who purchased them, made it difficult or even impossible to enforce environmental precautions, worker protections, or health and safety regulations. Few of us knew where our food was being grown and processed. But this ignorance was not so much a matter of not knowing where to look as of our simply averting our eyes." (p. 184).

However, Shell goes on to point out (also on p. 184) that while we are not subsidizing people through their union benefits, we are subsidizing giant agrobusinesses . These agrobusinesses are passing on the subsidies to consumers through lower food prices. However, their workers are not well-paid, and there have been numerous example of environmental harm from agrobusiness farming techniques.

Some questions to consider:

Can subsidizing agrobusinesses be viewed as the good of the many (cheap food) outweighing the good of the few (the employees, the environment).

Is the lack of job security and the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs actually good for the American economy? Is it forcing us to become a more creative, technologically-driven culture?

Is there anything really wrong with buying cheap stuff? It does let us save money.

Let the comments begin!

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

2010-10-03T10:44:00.004-04:00

Introduction:

Shell begins her book with a quote from the late US president William McKinley:

I do not prize the word "cheap". It is not a badge of honor.

However, cheapness has become ingrained in the American character. Even before the 21st century recesssion began, paying full price for an item was almost viewed as a sign of stupidity or laziness. With 10% unemployment around the country, imminent layoffs, and rising utility bills and taxes, people are economizing more than ever by refusing to pay full-price.

However, this obsession with cheapness is what led to the undermining of the American economy. Shell's book documents the destruction of American industry due to conspicuous consumption of the cheap. At the same time, she offers some remedies for the situation.

“The Hidden Spirituality of Men: ten metaphors to awaken the sacred masculine,” by Matthew Fox

2010-08-12T09:06:00.005-04:00

“The Hidden Spirituality of Men: ten metaphors to awaken the sacred masculine,” by Matthew Fox, continues to fascinate me in its calm, thoughtful, soul searching, intellectually stimulating delivery of a griot.

To Matthew Fox, our crucial task is to open our minds to a deeper understanding of the healthy masculine than we receive from our media, culture, and religions. Popular religion forces the punitive imagery of fundamentalism on us, pushing most men away from their natural yearning for spirituality and toward intolerance and domination. Meanwhile, many men, particularly young men, are looking for images of healthy masculinity to emulate and finding nothing.

To awaken what Fox calls, “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Grandfatherly Heart to the Spiritual Warrior. He explores archetypes of sacred marriage, showing how partnership becomes the ultimate expression of healthy masculinity. By stirring our natural yearning for healthy spirituality, Fox argues, these timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to reinvent the world.

It is the conversation I’ve always wanted to have with men about man's role in our lives and one that I hope both women and men will be able to explore. Let’s all read and chat shall we?

The Dangers of Regulatory Capture

2010-06-28T12:36:00.005-04:00

Adam12 makes a very important point in a comment on the previous post. In response to frequently made calls for increased or better regulation of banks and other private interests, he writes:

People recognize that increased regulation or state control of banking, however well-meaning, is not the answer. The track record of American regulators is not inspiring. See the SEC's mishandling of Bernie Madoff as an example. Wall Street has found ways to circumvent regulations for decades and isn't going to stop now.

What Adam12 is getting at is the concept of regulatory capture, a longstanding problem of government that has been studied for decades by political scientists and economists. Regulatory capture occurs when an agency charged with protecting the public interest by regulating the activities of private entities becomes a tool of the entities it is supposed to regulate. In turn, the private entities become embedded in the state and exercise unwarranted power over the policymaking process concerning the industry or activity in question. As the Wikipedia entry for regulatory capture explains:

The idea of regulatory capture has an obvious economic basis in that vested interests in an industry have the greatest financial stake in regulatory activity and are more likely to be motivated to influence the regulatory body than dispersed individual consumers, each of whom has little particular incentive to try to influence regulators. As well, we would expect that when regulators form expert bodies to examine policy, this will invariably feature current or former industry members, or at the very least, individuals with contacts in the industry.

An article in today's New York Times shows how this problem will likely affect the new financial reform bill:

The bill, completed early Friday and expected to come up for a final vote this week, is basically a 2,000-page missive to federal agencies, instructing regulators to address subjects ranging from derivatives trading to document retention. But it is notably short on specifics, giving regulators significant power to determine its impact — and giving partisans on both sides a second chance to influence the outcome...

...Regulators are charged with deciding how much money banks have to set aside against unexpected losses, so the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents large financial companies, and other banking groups have been making a case to the regulators that squeezing too hard would hurt the economy.

Consumer groups, meanwhile, are mobilizing to make sure that regulators deliver on promised protections for borrowers and investors. They worry that the shift from Capitol Hill to the offices of regulators could put the groups at a disadvantage.

“It’s out of the public eye, so a natural advantage that we benefit from — public outrage — we lose that a little,” said Cristina Martin Firvida, a lobbyist for AARP, which advocates for older Americans. “We know there’s still a lot here left to do.”

The ongoing fiasco of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is another powerful example of the dangers of regulatory capture. Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency supposedly in charge of regulating companies engaged in deepwater drilling, was completely captured by the industry. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that an MMS office in Louisiana accepted gifts from oil companies and let oil company employees write up inspection reports, all against a backdrop of general corruption and mismanagement within the agency.

Such considerations raise a very important question: is the effective regulation of massive private corporations by the state possible, or is regulatory capture an inevitability in a capitalist political economy?

Wall Street Rising: 1980 -

2010-06-24T18:20:00.004-04:00

In this chapter, Johnson and Kwak briefly sketch the story of how from 1980 until today, Wall Street burst free of the regulatory restraints of the postwar period and became the economic and political behemoth it is today.

The authors begin their discussion by comparing the wealth of Salomon Brothers, the paradigmatic 1980s investment bank, and today's JPMorgan Chase, headed by "President Obama's favorite banker," CEO Jamie Dimon:

At the time [July 2009], JPMorgan Chase had over $2 trillion in assets...$155 billion in balance sheet equity; and it earned $4.1 billion in operating profits in the second quarter alone. By comparison, the 1985 Salomon Brothers, even after converting to 2009 dollars to account for inflation, only had $122 billion in assets, $5 billion in equity, and $2 billion in operating profits for an entire year...Although Dimon voluntarily took no cash bonus for 2008, his total compensation including stock awards was still $19.7 million, more than three times Gutfreund's (the former head of Salomon) inflation-adjusted earnings of $5.8 million. And this was in a bad year for CEOs; in 2007, Dimon earned $34 million, Blankfein $54 million, John Thain of Merrill Lynch $84 million, and John Mack of Morgan Stanley $41 million. (p. 57-58)

Meanwhile, politicians friendly to the financial sector work hard behind the scenes in Congress to stand in the way of financial reform, and bankers balk at proposals to rein in compensation schemes that encouraged the kind of big-time risk taking that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

How did we ever get to this point? Johnson and Kwak frame their discussion around the transition from "boring banking" to "exciting banking," which has produced banking on a much bigger scale than was the norm decades ago. This shift began in the 1970s, when a general push toward deregulation in finance and the economy generally began during the Carter administration. Deregulatory legislation began to erode the firewall between commercial and investment banking created by the Glass-Steagall Act. Just as importantly (perhaps even more so), the emergence of academic finance and the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which held that financial products are always correctly priced by the market, provided intellectual justification for the shift toward deregulation, even though many other economists pointed out that this assumption stood on very shaky ground.

The push for deregulation kicked into high gear with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, whose administration vigorously sought to loosen restrictions on the financial sector and consolidate the ideological dominance of free market economic theories like the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Even so, the Reagan administration's deregulation drive was not entirely successful, at least partially because both houses of Congress had Democratic majorities during his entire tenure. Wall Street's economic and ideological power certainly grew during the decade of the yuppie, but at the time there were still countervailing political forces challenging its desired dominance. They would be swept aside before long.

As Johnson and Kwak argue, Wall Street's rise to political predominance through economic power was facilitated by the creation of what they call "new money machines": high yield debt , securitization, arbitrage trading, and derivatives. These new products fueled the growth of big banks capable of investing in the computing technologies and highly educated mathematicians and scientists that make this kind of banking possible. These developments, in addition to further deregulatory legislation enacted under the Clinton administration that broke down barriers between investment and commercial banking and encouraged a wave of bank mergers, facilitated the formation of a handful of megabanks that comprise today's Wall Street.

Questions for discussion:
1) The authors pay a lot of attention to the importance of ideology in facilitating the shift from the highly regulated postwar financial system to today's deregulated environment. Considering how deeply shaken and seemingly delegitimated the system was in 2008, why do you think that a similiarly powerful ideological countermovement advocating increasing regulation (or even more radical measures like bank nationalization) has failed to come to prominence?

2) The authors briefly touch on the question of homeownership in this chapter while discussing the effects of high inflation in the 1970s: "homeowners...profited while their debts were inflated away - helping to convince a generation of Americans that houses were the best investment they could possibly make." (p. 66) This is true, but I would argue that the appeal of homeownership is a deeper and fundamentally ideological concept - for decades, homeownership has been touted by almost everyone as the key to the American Dream, an indication of one's worthiness to be considered a full, contributing member of society. Indeed, the obsession with promoting home ownership was one of the causes of the current recession. Do you think that what I consider to be the cult of homeownership has delegitimized at all by the recent crisis? New York City has always been a city of renters and continues to have very low homeownership rates in comparison to the country as a whole (30.2% versus 67.1%), so our local perspective may be a bit skewed, but it doesn't seem to me that most people are rethinking the alleged superiority of owning your own home. What do you see and hear?

Other People's Oligarchs

2010-06-14T14:09:00.004-04:00

After offering a brief history of the American financial sector in chapter one, Johnson and Kwak take on the history of financial crises in "emerging markets" from the 1970s through the 1990s. Why the abrupt change in focus? As they write at the end of chapter one,

the 1990s were a decade of financial and economic crises, but they were taking place far away, on the periphery of the developed world, in what were fashionably known as the emerging markets. From Latin America to Southeast Asia to Russia, fast-growing economies were periodically imploding in financial crises that imposed widespread misery on their populations. For the economic gurus in Washington, this was an opportunity to teach the rest of the world why they should become more like the United States. We did not realize that they were already more like us than we cared to admit.

(p.38)

It may be hard to remember now, but the 1990s were a time of euphoric optimism not just among economic elites, but the mass of the population as well. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War seemed to prove the ultimate triumph of free market capitalism and liberal democracy over all other competing systems, as Francis Fukuyama argued in his enormously influential 1992 book The End of History. The expansion of the high-tech sector and the emergence of the Internet seemed to portend a future of endless economic growth and productivity gains, which allowed for some growth in working people's wages. All this produced a dominant ideology that Thomas Frank called "market populism" in his book One Market Under God - the belief that the free market was the true expression of the people's will, not government, and that entrepreneurs were revolutionary figures with almost divine powers. Through the workings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Treasury Department, the U.S. sought to remake nations after our own image in the wake of financial crises because we had supposedly avoided all of the problems that give rise to them, notably the "tight connections between economic and political elites" (p. 55) that plagued countries like South Korea (chaebol), Indonesia (Suharto's crony network), and Russia (the oligarchs).

But as Johnson and Kwak argue, by 2008 the U.S. economy looked increasingly like those of the emerging markets in the 1990s, and the government's policy response to the crisis - bailing out major banks with strong political connections like Goldman Sachs, while letting smaller and less well connected banks fail - was almost completely at odds with the kind of advice it gave to other nations in the 1990s. "It began to seem as if our government was bailing out its own, uniquely American oligarchy." (p. 56) How we got to this point is the question taken up by the authors in chapter three.

Question for discussion:
For years, the United States dispensed advice (whether it was wanted or not) to other countries about how their economic and financial systems should be structured. Is there anything that the United States could learn from other nations that have not been so adversely affected by the recent crisis and recession? As commenter Larry M. said in response to the previous post, "we might look to the Canadian model of tightly governed, state-supported banks as a basis of comparison to our system," though he personally does not advocate that our country adopt such a model. What other options might we be able to turn to?

Thomas Jefferson and the Financial Aristocracy

2010-06-08T13:18:00.003-04:00

In the first chapter of 13 Bankers, Johnson and Kwak briefly trace the history of the relationship between financial and political power in the United States from the beginning of the Republic through the 1990s. The authors frame their discussion around the post-Revolution conflict between political tendencies represented by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamiltion, the country's first secretary of the Treasury. Jefferson and his followers in the Democratic-Republican party (the forerunner of today's Democratic party) wanted the new nation to remain a primarily agrarian society based on a broad middle class of small farmers living under a limited government. Opposing them were Hamilton and the Federalist party (one of the forerunners of today's Republican party), who wanted a strong central government to create the financial and legal frameworks necessary for the creation of a modern, urban, industrial capitalist economy.

As Johnson and Kwak argue, Hamilton was likely right on the basic economic issues. It's hard to imagine a modern society built mainly on small-scale farming. But Jefferson was prescient in recognizing that the economic power gained by the new concentrated financial and industrial interests could potentially give them undue influence over government and warp politics and policymaking, threatening the premises of American democracy. This ideological conflict reached fever pitch in the 1830s, when Democratic president Andrew Jackson, an inheritor of Jefferson's mistrust of concentrated financial power, sought to revoke the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, based in Philadelphia and managed by the prominent banker Nicholas Biddle (the First Bank's charter quietly expired in 1811). After a protracted struggle, Jackson ultimately prevailed and the United States remained without a central bank or much of a coherent financial system until late in the 19th century, when the rise of large financial and industrial corporations raised new questions about the relationship between economic and political power.

The financial crises of the late 19th and early 20th century, notably the Panic of 1907 - which ended when the banker J.P. Morgan organized financial capitalists to lobby Washington for a multimillion dollar bailout (sound familiar?) - ultimately led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The Fed was supposed to regulate finance so that crises would be less rare, but financial interests made sure that the agency would remain basically under the control of private banks. This lax regulatory structure encouraged the wild speculation that helped to cause the Great Depression. In response, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal banking regulations, notably the Glass-Steagall Act that separated investment from commercial banking, created a legal regime that heavily regulated banks and prevented major banking crises until the 1970s. The pendulum began to shift back toward less government regulation in the 1970s, but that's a story that Johnson and Kwak will address in later chapters.

Questions for discussion:

1) Do major concentrations of financial power, such as Wall Street banks, threaten the basic premises of American democracy as Jefferson and his followers argued? If so, then how is private control over big investment decisions that affect all of our lives justifiable?

2) Why do you think we have not seen the same kinds of financial reforms in the wake of the current crisis that we saw during the Great Depression? Financial interests were very powerful then as well, but Roosevelt took them head on. In contrast, it's difficult to imagine President Obama saying something like this:

"They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred." (FDR 1936 campaign speech)

3) Do you think that the bailouts given to many banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis were justified in any way? Should government be expected to step in to prevent the collapse of the financial system, or should the banks have just been allowed to fail?

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Crisis by Simon Johnson & James Kwak

2010-06-01T13:33:00.003-04:00

In June and July, Brooklyn Book Talk will be devoted to a discussion of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Crisis, an important new book by financial journalists Simon Johnson and James Kwak. In 13 Bankers, Simon and Kwak tell the story of how Wall Street grew into the political and economic powerhouse it is today, and how it has come to exercise vast influence in the White House and the halls of Congress. While you wait for your hold to arrive, I recommend taking a look at the book's introduction, which is freely available on the 13 Bankers promotional website. In the introduction, Johnson and Kwak begin to explain why they think the near collapse of the global econony brought on by the 2008 financial crisis hasn't yet resulted in the kinds of far-reaching reforms that many economists and politicians thought were necessary to avert future crises. Their argument is fairly disturbing:

Why did this happen? Why did even the near-collapse of the financial system, and its desperate rescue by two reluctant administrations, fail to give the government any real leverage over the major banks?

By March 2009, the Wall Street banks were not just any interest group. Over the past thirty years, they had become one of the wealthiest industries in the history of the American economy, and one of the most powerful political forces in Washington. Financial sector money poured into the campaign war chests of congressional representatives. Investment bankers and their allies assumed top positions in the White House and the Treasury Department. Most important, as banking became more complicated, more prestigious, and more lucrative, the ideology of Wall Street— that unfettered innovation and unregulated financial markets were good for America and the world—became the consensus position in Washington on both sides of the political aisle. Campaign contributions and the revolving door between the private sector and government service gave Wall Street banks influence in Washington, but their ultimate victory lay in shifting the conventional wisdom in their favor, to the point where their lobbyists’ talking points seemed self-evident to congressmen and administration officials. Of course, when cracks appeared in the consensus, such as in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the banks could still roll out their conventional weaponry— campaign money and lobbyists; but because of their ideological power, many of their battles were won in advance.

The political influence of Wall Street helped create the laissez-faire environment in which the big banks became bigger and riskier, until by 2008 the threat of their failure could hold the rest of the economy hostage. That political influence also meant that when the government did rescue the financial system, it did so on terms that were favorable to the banks. What “we’re all in this together” really meant was that the major banks were already entrenched at the heart of the political system, and the government had decided it needed the banks at least as much as the banks needed the government. So long as the political establishment remained captive to the idea that America needs big, sophisticated, risk-seeking, highly profitable banks, they had the upper hand in any negotiation. Politicians may come and go, but Goldman Sachs remains.

The Wall Street banks are the new American oligarchy— a group that gains political power because of its economic power, and then uses that political power for its own benefit. Runaway profits and bonuses in the financial sector were transmuted into political power through campaign contributions and the attraction of the revolving door. But those profits and bonuses also bolstered the credibility and influence of Wall Street; in an era of free market capitalism triumphant, an industry that was making so much money had to be good, and people who were making so much money had to know what they were talking about. Money and ideology were mutually reinforcing.

Over the next two months, we will cover a new chapter each week so that we might fully explore the many important issues the book raises. I hope many of you will stick around for the ride!

You are not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-05-06T00:50:00.002-04:00

Censorship, the hive mind and a changing meaning of friendship:

A responder to the previous post asked what Lanier thought of censorship.Lanier does not explicitly deal with censorship, but he does discuss the growth of a "hive mind" among the young. This hive mind presumably practices censorship since the thoughts of the individual will be overcome by the will of the many. Lanier is anti-hive mind and pro individuality.

At the same time, he is very much against open source software, which could be construed as censorship. It is very important to him that individuals get paid for their ideas. Giving other access to these ideas only after payment can be viewed as censorship.

The commentor to my previous post apparently views anonymous posting as a way of speaking freely in an environment where it is dangerous to openly identify oneself; it is a positive way to communicate. Lanier sees anonymous posting as the beginning of the hive mind, where people eventually hound someone to destruction but do so anonymously.

This viewpoint seems to have been shared by the British historians outraged by Orlando Figes; although Figes' comments appear to consist mostly of calling these people dull writers, they still viewed these anonymous negative comments as harmful and even dangerous. I myself view anonymous postings as the modern equivalent of complaining after a few beers in a bar. Today it is actually safer to complain anonymously online since otherwise you might find your drunken rant on Youtube with links sent to your co-workers in their email. Is the ability to share too easily with others drivng people to the safer anonymity of on-line anonymous posting?

You are Not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-04-26T18:32:00.001-04:00

Jaron Lanier in NYC:

Jaron Lanier will be in NYC on October 3 for the New Yorker Festival.

You are not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-04-25T21:35:00.005-04:00

The Perils of Anonymous Posting:

Last week a very timely case shook British academia when a noted British historian was accused of posting nasty reviews of his colleagues' books anonymously on Amazon.com:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/23/poison-pen-reviews-historian-orlando-figes

Oddly enough, he signed the posts with his first name and the name of his college where he works, which one tends to believe would impede his anonymity. Also, his negative reviews were relatively mild (in my personal opinion), such as asking why someone had written the book. However, one of his colleges hired a forensic investigator and traced years of negative Amazon.com reviews back to historian Orlando Figes. Figes first claimed that his wife had written the reviews, then admitted that he had done so.

This incident ties in beautifully with Lanier's contention that the anonymity of the web encourages the darker side of humans to emerge. Figes, a historian, could be expected to do his best to attribute his ideas to the proper sources. He would also be well aware of the dangers of anonymous accusations (look at the fates of people anonymously accused in Venice, Europe during the Inquisition, pre-WW II Europe). However, when faced with the ability to post anonymously on (arguably) the world's biggest online bookstore, he decided to savage his fellow historians.

When I mentioned this incident to a fellow librarian, she told me that authors can actually delete negative reviews from Amazon. In fact, she had written a negative review of a book and had it deleted. As a result, she was very suspicious of books that had only positive reviews on Amazon. While I do look at Amazon reviews, I generally also try to look at a book, either by looking through a physical copy or by the virtual look ability to look inside a book. I take all reviews with a grain of salt, even by reviewers in respected journals.

My questions are these:

Reviews on moderated sites can be as biased as those on unmoderated sites. Should we really allow reviews to determine what we read or watch?

Are internet reviews by anonymous posters really any worse or less legit than those in print publications? Do reviewers in print publications has less of an agenda when they write reviews? Or do they just have better editors and legal departments?

If the internet did not exist, would Figes have written negative (and signed) reviews for academic journals? Did the internet indeed encourage his negative behavior?

You are not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-04-15T21:57:00.004-04:00

Information Should Not be Free

Lanier is not a big believer in free information/media/services of the internet. On one hand, he does have a point - people do need to be paid so that they can fulfill their basic needs for living. Also, it is not fair to have one's ideas stolen and to not be given credit. However, as a a poster on this blog noted, not everyone is after fame. Many people believe that putting their ideas out in the open will benefit others and help make a better, more creative world. As such, they view any licensing as restrictive of personal freedoms:

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm

Questions to consider include:

Is it possible for people to support themselves as artists and/or creators by supplying their work for free on the internet?

Is this supplying merely a way to lure people into supporting the artist in a traditional way (such as buying their book or music)

Will software that restricts users to conforming to copyright be viewed as violating users' rights?

You are not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-04-08T23:28:00.006-04:00

The Internet and Creativity

Lanier comments that the internet is destroying creativity because it does not ackowledge individual creativity. He discussed the theory that all books, for example, will be mashed up into one uber-book. This uber-book will become, like the Bible, the only official book allowed (or at least on the web). At the same time, the individuals whose creativity is mashed up will be unable to support themselves by their creative endeavors.

I disagree with this statement bacause the internet has actually started the careers of some creative people. The woman whose blog became the book and movie Julie & Julia started as a blog writer before she was signed by a traditional book publisher. Without the blog, the author would have spent her life as a miserable woman in LIC with an inexplicable Julia Child obsession. The creators of the blogs Orangette and Chocolate & Zucchini both began as bloggers before they signed books deals. While Lanier doubts that people will be able to support themselves by blogging, historically very few artists were able to support themselves by their heart.

Will the internet destroy personal creativity?
Will mashups replace individual creativity?

You are Not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-04-03T11:16:00.008-04:00

Creativity and humanity threatened as people are forced to act like artificial constructs

Lanier discussed how artificially reproducing music through electronic midi has forced musical notes to fit into a static, unchanging pitch as opposed to the warm, irregular, organic sound of live instruments. He believes that the Web 2.0 formats such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, are forcing people to change their thoughts to fit these artificial formats. On one hand, I tend to agree with him about Facebook. I (possibly erroneously) think that my daily experiences and thoughts cannot be fit into a brief Facebook post, especially one that could be used against me in the future. In fact, I now try to post as boringly as possible with the exception of the odd interesting link.

However, most art forms form creative people to fit into artificial constructs. Poets are constrained by the sonnet or the haiku. Musicians are constrained by the symphony. Writers of Broadway musicials are constrained by the need to write snappy songs that will be hummed once the show is over. Is the haiku any different from the Tweet?

You are Not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-04-01T14:16:00.006-04:00

Anonoymous Posting

One of Lanier's criticism's about the web is that it encourages irresponsible behavior. It is possible to post your comments anonymously and not have to take any responsibility for them. He views this anonymity as creating a hive mind, where people gang up on posters or even individuals who don't post whose ideas they don't agree with until they drive the poster out of the forum or make the individuals life miserable. He gives the example of a Korean TV star who committed suicide after being trashed online. He also mentions a case in the US where a teenage girl committed suicide after she was cruelly dumped by what she thought was an online boyfriend but was in actuality the mother an a teen enemy. Oddly enough Lanier comments that the mother was hounded online but does not comment on the mother's actions, which caused the initial tragedy.

Lanier advocates thinking before you post on a blog, and signing your name to the post in order to take responsibility for your actions. I have mixed feelings about this idea. I am a relatively outspoken person in "real life" and take responsibility for my actions and speech. However, I read librarian blogs, newspaper blogs, and book discussion blogs where people post anonymously. I can tell that for many of my fellow librarians, their anonymous posting is a way of venting to a sympathetic audience about their job. It is in the online equivalent of grumbling in a bar with colleagues but safer since the physical colleague may tip off your bosses about your conversation.

My questions are:

Does anonymity encourage hostile posts and trollish behavior?

Do people think that online posting is a relatively harmless way of getting out their anger and hostility without destroying their possible relationship with their target?

Do they deliberately post to destroy the reputations and possibly the lives of others?

Do these people behave in this hostile and destructive fashion in face-to-face, non-internet life?

Do you prefer to post anonymously, sign your name, or do a mixture of both. If so, why?

You are Not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

2010-04-01T14:09:00.002-04:00

Reviews and sources of Information about You are not a Gadget:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/books/15book.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574652341134015738.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103897.html

Lanier's FAQ about his book and additional links can be found at :

http://www.jaronlanier.com/gadgetwebresources.html

"It's Ideology, Stupid!"

2010-02-18T18:00:00.005-05:00

That's the title of the first half of First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, and it also conveniently summarizes the main purpose of Žižek's entire intellectual project: subjecting the dominant ideology of liberal capitalist society to wide-ranging criticism. By ideology, Žižek does not simply mean the ideas or beliefs held by specific individuals or groups of individuals. In the Marxist framework in which Žižek operates, ideology is the "common sense" of a society that serves to justify the interests and power of its dominant group(s). It is the shared set of often unquestioned assumptions about the way the world is supposed to work that gives a social system popular legitimacy by conditioning subordinate groups to freely accept their inferior position as natural. As such, ideology attains a status similar to our knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow morning - it is simply taken for granted and seems beyond question. Žižek gets at this paradox on page 39:

"On account of its all-pervasiveness, ideology appears as its own opposite, as non-ideology, as the core of our human identity underneath all the ideological labels."

For Žižek, the political figure that embodies the nature of ideology today is Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister and media mogul who is probably more well known for his many tawdry scandals than his political accomplishments. On page 50, he writes:

Oriana Fallaci (who was otherwise rather sympathetic to Berlusconi), once wrote: "True power does not need arrogance, a long beard, and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm, and intelligence." In order to understand Berlusconi, one has only to add to this series a talent for stupid self-mockery.

We're about to head deep into Žižek-land with his somewhat bewildering comparison of Berlusconi to the animated film Kung Fu Panda, so bear with me here:

Kung Fu Panda, the 2008 cartoon film hit, provides the basic coordinates of the functioning of contemporary ideology. The fat panda bear dreams of becoming a sacred Kung Fu warrior, and when, through blind chance (beneath which, of course, lurks the hand of Destiny), he is chosen to be the hero to save his city, he succeeds...However, throughout the film, this pseudo-oriental spiritualism is constantly being undermined by a vulgar-cynical sense of humor. The surprise is how this continuous self-mockery in no way impedes on the efficiency of the oriental spiritualism - the film ultimately takes the butt of its endless jokes seriously. Similarly with one of my favorite anecdotes regarding Niels Bohr: surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the door of Bohr's country house, the fellow scientist visiting him exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief regarding horseshoes keeping evil spirits out of the house, to which Bohr snapped back: "I don't believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn't believe in it at all." This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them. This is why Berlusconi is ou own big Kung Fu Panda. Perhaps the old Marx brothers quip, "This man looks like a corrupt idiot and acts like one, but this should not deceive you - he is a corrupt idiot," here stumbles upon its limit: while Berlusconi is what he appears to be, this appearance nonetheless remains deceptive.

If one accepts Žižek's critique of politics under contemporary capitalism, then you're led to the conclusion that it has all become something like a Japanese kabuki dance. The proceedings are highly stylized and and imbued with high drama for the purposes of media consumption, but we all know from the start how things will end. But this begs an important question: if we all know that the show is rigged, then why doesn't anyone seem to want to get up and leave the theater? What do you make of Žižek's critique of contemporary ideology?

Žižek on the big picture and the bailouts

2010-02-08T11:02:00.003-05:00

Before delving into the specifics of Žižek's argument, it's worth summarizing his analysis of the broad contours of the contemporary world and where he thinks it's going.

For Žižek, the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks and the ongoing financial crisis that began in 2008 are signs that the liberal-democratic capitalist order thought to be eternal after the fall of the Soviet empire is slowly making its exit from the stage of history. This development, however, should not necessarily be interpreted as a positive development for the anti-capitalist left. The left itself will be the main victim of the crisis, as it has been exposed as incapable of presenting an alternative to the system in a moment in which it was highly vulnerable to a serious challenge. Instead, something like Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine will prevail, and the system will become stronger than ever while morphing gradually but unmistakably toward a form that combines China’s capitalist authoritarianism, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s mediagenic populist buffoonery, and officially sanctioned libertarianism in private matters. Politics will be hollowed out and rendered meaningless. If we have any hope of avoiding such a bleak fate, we must drastically alter the ideological background of society so that the spirit that animated the emancipatory movements of the past can be revived in a new form suitable to the conditions of 21st century life. Considering the magnitude of the problems we face, if we fail to do so the train of history will drive us all off a cliff.

What do you make of this analysis? Is Žižek more or less on the mark, and if not, where does he go wrong?

Now that we have a better understanding of Žižek's ideological position, let's consider his analysis of the Obama administration's Wall Street bailout. Considering the fact that Žižek is a man of the radical left, his critical support of some sort of bailout might be a bit surprising. On pages 13 through 17, he differentiates himself from populists on both the left and the right who share a tendency to view the problems of capitalism itself as primarily financial in origin and try to separate the "real" economy (i.e. manufacturing and other tangible activities) from the supposedly parasitical and non-productive financial sector. According to Žižek, this supposedly radical stance misunderstands the nature of capitalism and is politically counterproductive:

But what if "moral hazard" is inscribed into the very structure of capitalism? That is to say, there is no way to separate the two: in the capitalist system, welfare on Main Street depends on a thriving Wall Street. So, while Republican populists who resist the bailout are doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, the proponents of the bailout are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. To put it in more sophisiticated terms, the relationship is non-transitive: while what is good for Wall Street is not necessarily good for Main Street, Main Street cannot thrive if Wall Street is feeling sickly, and this asymmetry gives an a priori advantange to Wall Street...The paradox of capitalism is that you cannot throw out the dirty water of financial speculation while keeping the healthy baby of real economy. It is all too easy to dismiss this line of reasoning as a hypocritical defense of the rich. The problem is that, insofar as we remain in a capitalist order, there is a truth within it: namely, that kicking at Wall Street really will hit ordinary workers...When we are transfixed by events such as the bailout plan, we should bear in mind that since this is actually a form a blackmail we must resist the populist temptation to act out our anger and thus wound ourselves. Instead of such impotent acting out, we should control our fury and transform it into an icy determination to think - to think things through in a really radical way, and to ask what kind of a society it is that renders such blackmail possible.

Does Žižek have a point here, or is this little more than radical-sounding sophistry that actually encourages political passivity? If you disagree with him, what counterargument would you make to Žižek? Was there justification for some sort of Wall Street bailout, or should it have been completely rejected?

First As Tragedy, Then As Farce by Slavoj Žižek

2010-02-01T12:58:00.007-05:00

In recent years, Slavoj Žižek (pronounced SLAH-voy zhee-ZHEK) has emerged as the most famous (or infamous, depending on one’s view) of Continental European philosophers. Hailing from the tiny former Yugoslavian republic of Slovenia, Žižek combines Marxism, the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, and the ideas of the great 19th century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel to analyze political theory and history, films, popular culture, theology, and almost any other field one can think of. The results are provocative, frustrating, hilarious, opaque, and brilliant, often at the same time. Whatever one thinks of the man’s ideas, they address many of the central questions of our time. They are worth grappling with.

Over the next two months, we will be discussing Žižek’s latest book, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce. The book is rather short but ranges widely across a number of different fields. As such, it is difficult to encapsulate it in a sentence or two. So to give you an idea of what the book is about, let’s listen to what the book’s publisher has to say:

In this bravura analysis of the current global crisis following on from his bestselling Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Slavoj Zizek argues that the liberal idea of the “end of history,” declared by Francis Fukuyama during the 1990s, has had to die twice. After the collapse of the liberal-democratic political utopia, on the morning of 9/11, came the collapse of the economic utopia of global market capitalism at the end of 2008.

Marx argued that history repeats itself “occuring first as tragedy, the second time as farce” and Žižek, following Herbert Marcuse, notes here that the repetition as farce can be even more terrifying than the original tragedy. The financial meltdown signals that the fantasy of globalization is over and as millions are put out of work it has become impossible to ignore the irrationality of global capitalism. Just a few months before the crash, the world’s priorities seemed to be global warming, AIDS, and access to medicine, food and water — tasks labelled as urgent, but with any real action repeatedly postponed.

Now, after the financial implosion, the urgent need to act seems to have become unconditional — with the result that undreamt of quantities of cash were immediately found and then poured into the financial sector without any regard for the old priorities. Do we need further proof, Žižek asks, that Capital is the Real of our lives: the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing problems of our natural and social world?

That’s all in the book, but it’s kind of like saying Moby Dick is just a story about a guy chasing a whale. Besides the economic crisis, Žižek takes on the state of the Left, popular film, Barack Obama and the debate over healthcare reform, ecology, communism, and a number of other subjects. We’ll try to cover as many of them as possible in the coming weeks.

While you wait to obtain your copy of the book (place your holds here) , begin to familiarize yourself with Zizek’s perspective by checking out the following links:

Žižek in the New Statesman: “I am a Leninist. Lenin wasn’t afraid to dirty his hands. If you can get power, grab it.”

Interview with Slavoj Žižek – full transcript

20 Years of Collapse - New York Times editorial on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

Žižek's homepage

Alfred Adler's Theory of Personality

2010-01-29T16:56:00.003-05:00

Like the theories of Freud and Jung, many of the ideas in Adler's theory are also not defined precisely enough to validate his findings. Moreover, his contention that “everything can also be different” makes it practically impossible to make a falsifiable prediction using his theory. It is therefore difficult to determine the impact of such Adlerian concepts as inferiority, superiority, social interest, and creative power in human personality. But unlike Freud and Jung, Adler relied most exclusively on social factors in explaining personality, minimizing biological hereditary factors. His research methods mostly included the study of birth order, first memories and dream analysis. Adler ardently believed that it was subjective reality that determines behavior, not objective reality, and suggested that heredity and experience provide only the raw materials of personality. Each person is free to interpret life in any number of ways owing to our inherent creativity. The creative self acts on hereditary materials to mold a unique personality. Therefore, if a person develops a personality unlike the one that is supposed to characterize his or her birth order, it can also be attributed to the person’s unique perceptions of the situation.

Adler also claimed that it is often a few early experiences that determine adult personality, and if a person’s interpretations of the world based on those experiences could be changed, an unhealthy lifestyle can be changed into a healthy one. A person’s family constellation (birth order) is one variable that can significantly influence his or her world view. In the earliest version of his theory, Adler believed that people were motivated to compensate for actual physical weaknesses by emphasizing those qualities that compensate for those weaknesses or feelings of inferiority. In some cases, he thought a person could overcompensate and convert a weakness into a major strength. But later, Adler extended his theory to include not only actual physical weaknesses but imagined ones as well.

Having an inferiority complex, however, is not necessarily a bad thing in Adler’s view. In fact such feelings are the motivating force behind most personal accomplishments. Adler also held that humans must insert meaning into their lives by inventing ideals or fictional goals that give them something for which to live and around which to organize their lives. Such fictions are called fictional finalisms or guiding fiction. Healthy persons use such fictions as tools for living a more effective and meaningful life.

Adler’s views have been quite influential but not without opposition. Many modern personality theorists consider Adlerian assumptions about personality overly optimistic. Besides, with his belief that all humans are born with the innate potential for social interest, Adler will have trouble explaining the widespread occurrence of war, murder, rape, crime and other human acts of violence. Many believe that the theories of Freud and Jung are far more useful in explaining the more unseemly aspects of human behavior.

Despite such criticism, Adler is rightly considered by many as the first humanistic psychologist. He stressed holism, goal-seeking, and enormous importance of values in human thinking, emotions and behavior. According to Albert Ellis, it is difficult to find any leading therapist today who does not owe a great debt to the Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. Similarly, in the words of Victor Frankl, man can no longer be considered as the pawn, product or victim of drives and instinct; on the contrary, drives and instincts form the material that serves man in expression and action. Beyond this, Alfred Adler may well be regarded as a forerunner of the existential-psychiatric movement.

Discussion Questions: Given your birth order, would your personality have been different than a child with a different birth order?

Adler identified four basic types of people: the ruling type, the getting type, the avoiding type, and the socially useful type. Do you think your own personality type fits into any of these categories?

Carl Jung’s Theory of Personality

2010-01-08T17:27:00.001-05:00

Biographical information about Jung portrays him as a complex person who had a troubled childhood and tense relations with his father. He originally intended to study archeology but a dream motivated him instead to study medicine. No wonder he suggested that recurring dreams were of special relevance to understanding personality and its growth. If Freud was pessimistic about human prospects, Jung was optimistic. Unlike Freud who professed atheism, Jung gave strong importance to religion, spirituality, mysticism and occult in his understanding of human beings. He argued that the techniques used to study humans had to reflect human complexity and uniqueness but the scientific method was only of limited value in understanding that complexity and uniqueness. However, he accepted both, causality by which he meant that personality is determined by past experience, and teleology, which suggests that what we do, is determined by our anticipation of the future. In addition he believed in synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence, as a major influence in a person’s life.

But Freud’s influence on Carl Jung is undeniable in the early stages of their relationship. In Jungian psychology, the human psyche contains an ego (similar to Freud’s concept of ego), a personal unconscious consisting mainly of repressed experiences from one’s life, and the collective unconscious, which is a phylogenetic or racial memory. The collective unconscious is made up of archetypes that are inherited predispositions to respond emotionally to certain categories of experience and aspects of the world. Archetypes result from common human experiences through eons of our evolutionary past.

The more highly developed archetypes include the persona--the tendency to select only a part of ourselves to offer to the public. Another archetype is the anima—the female component of the male psyche, and correspondingly, the animus—the male component of the female psyche. The shadow is another major archetype which is that part of our psyche that we share with non-human animals and is characterized by our darkest propensities. Because of the shadow, humans have a strong tendency to be immoral, irrational and aggressive. And most important of all the archetypes is the self which attempts to harmonize all other components. Self represents the human striving for unity and wholeness. All the archetypes taken together make up the collective unconscious. According to Jung, not unlike Abraham Maslow, the primary goal in life is to approach self-realization, a state characterized by a fully integrated and harmonious psyche which results when an individual has come to grips with his unconscious mind. Self-realization must be consciously and seriously sought. It does not occur automatically. In this regard, spirituality was to Jung a major vehicle in the journey towards self-realization.

Discussion Questions: How do you evaluate Freud’s and Jung’s theories in the light of your personal understanding of your own self?

Describe how synchronicity might have played a role in your life?

Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory

2009-12-09T15:51:00.003-05:00

Sigmund Freud belongs to a group of select few who have generated work so creative and provocative that it has had a revolutionary impact on the course of human values, thought and behavior. Freud’s fundamental assumption about mental life is that it is divided into three parts: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious operates merely on the surface of personality and plays a relatively minor role in personality development and functioning.

While it is true that psychologically healthy people have a greater awareness of their experiences than do unhealthy ones, still Freud believed that even relatively mature people are governed by unconscious needs and conflicts. Unconscious can consist of repressed memories of which we are not aware and bringing them to awareness can cause tremendous anxiety. A key point in his theory is that such repressed memories seek expression in various defensive, disguised and distorted ways. Unconscious ideas, memories, and experiences may continually interfere with conscious and rational behavior.

Traditions of Western thought which emphasized human rationality and the virtues of ethical conduct, were shocked to learn that human beings are often irrational and that they continually engage in internal struggles to keep their sexual and aggressive impulses in check. Freud removed humans from their narcissistic pedestals and forced them to examine the dark side of their natures. At first he was publicly reviled and scorned but eventually investigators in many disciplines started taking his ideas seriously. Today Freud’s influence is world wide. Scholars in literature are fond of using psychoanalytic constructs to explain motives of fictional characters, and many Freudian concepts such as Oedipal conflicts, “ego trips,” “Freudian slips,” denial, repression, regression etc., have been adopted by laypeople. Whether we ultimately reject or accept his view of human personality, Freud has clearly earned his place in history.

Discsussion Questions: Freud thought that the major conflict experienced by individuals was between their needs to gratify their impulses (id), and society's need to control (superego) the expression of such individual needs. What do you think can be the best possible solution to this problem?

Do you agree with Freud that psychologically healthy people are adjusted satisfactorily in two major areas of life--love and work? Can you think of any other areas in which satisfactory adjustments must be made if people are to be psychologically healthy?

Personality & its Development: Introduction

2009-12-01T17:55:00.006-05:00

Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown,
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

The Player King in Hamlet

Personality psychology is a flourishing area of research and offers valuable insights for understanding why we are the way we are, and if and how can we change. The phenomena encompassed by human personality, however, are far too complex and diverse for any one theory to unite them into a single theoretical framework. Thus no theorist so far has been able to come up with a comprehensive theory of personality; there are as many definitions of personality as there are personality theorists.

Please join us at Brooklyn Book Talk as we discuss in December through January, some of the major theoretical perspectives on personality such as psychoanalytic, trait, cognitive, humanistic/existential and social-behavioristic, and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. Understanding personality of self and others in a more objective manner can not only help satisfy our curiosity but can lead us to make adaptive changes, wiser choices and live more satisfying lives.

Green Metropolis by David Owen

2009-11-14T10:46:00.006-05:00

David Owen and Nature & Parks

David Owen has what seems to me to be contradictory views on nature. On p. 192, he discusses the growing trend toward "videophilia" - Americans, particularly children, stay home and watch movies rather than leave their homes and exert themselves in the natural world. This is connected to the growing rise of obesity (which is at 42% even in Manhattan, the island that Owen views as the model for the rest of the world). At the same time, Owen also advocates:

"A sensitive person's first reaction to the mounting evidence that Americans. especially young Americans, may be losing interest in directly experiencing the natural world is likely to be of regret and loss, or even despair. But is it necessarily a bad thing, globally speaking? It seems perverse to say so, but sitting indoors playing video games is easier on the environment than any number of (formerly) popular outdoor recreational activities, including most of the ones that the most committed environmentalists tend to favor for themselves. In the end, it may not be a bad thing for the earth or the human race if increasing numbers of Americans would rather watch our shrunken wildernesses on TV" (p. 199-200).

It is this quote that drove me out of the hour into a two-hour trek in the park across the street from me. What Owen appears to not consider is this mentality will lead to the destruction of the parks. If you can just watch them on TV or experience them in a virtual environment, then why keep the actual park? Sell off the land and build condos on it, flood it with a dam, strip mine the mountains into plains. Shoot all the animals in canned hunts.

I recently went to a community board meeting where someone present at the meeting complained that raccoons were getting into her garbage and couldn't the board put down poison to kill all the raccoons in the neighborhood. I see raccoons all the time - in the spring, I see raccoon babies with their mom. I also see possums, chipmunks, and smell skunks. It would never occur to me to kill these animals; watching their families enriches my life and those of my neighbors. We simply keep the garbage safely contained until garbage day to minimize problems. Since we have less of a disconnect with wild animals, we are able to see the value of their lives and to work to preserve them.

Owen also seems to prefer sanitized parks. In his comment on Central Park, he notes:

"Central Park covers 843 acres. Those acres would work far better, and function less as a barrier to the overall human flow, if they had been situated somewhere other than in the center of the city, or were penetrated by many more artificial attractions (concession stands, restaurants, sports facilties, museums, playgrounds, theaters) designed to generate and sustain an unbroken chain of lively interaction all the way across the park" (p. 169-170).

My reaction to this passage was, once again, to go for a walk in my park. I live next to Forest Park. Forest Park, along with Central Park and Propect Park, were all three designed by Frederick Olmstead. Olmstead's park designs usually include a wild area (in Central Park this is called The Ramble) that recreates the original forest. In Forest Park, this area is an oak wood crossed by dirt paths. When you enter this oak wood, you enter the Queens of four hundred years ago, before Henry Hudson sailed to Manhattan. All you can see are trees with birds flitting around and chipmunks and squirrels scurrying at your feet. You can smell the rich loam of the forest floor. Invariably I (and whoever is with me) get lost for an hour or so before I locate a trail marking that leads me to the perimeter of the forest and one of the perimeter paths that border the street. My visits are sometimes mildly frightening as I have no sense of direction, but always refreshing.

The beauty of Central Park is that it allows Manhattanites to have a similar experience. Anyone who lives in Manhattan can easily visit a concession stand or museum or theater - they trip over them on the street. Entering a bird-filled forest where for an hour you can get away from people only to re-emerge into Manhattan is an enormous luxury for people who spend their lives in extremely small apartments. Owen, a suburbanite, doesn't want a park - he wants an open-air mall in the middle of the city. I doubt that most city-dwellers will agree with him.

In my next post, I will discuss the pros and cons of sprawl.

Green Metropolis by David Owen

2009-11-04T12:09:00.012-05:00

Urban Farms and Locavorism

On pages 300-304, David Owen gives a compelling argument about why locavorism is actually an energy-intensive, inefficient way to produce food:

"The distance that a particular food item travels between its grower and its ultimate consumer is not a accurate measure of the amount of energy that was required to put it on the table...The California raspberries I purchase at my grocery store have a smaller carbon footprint than the local raspberries I picked recently at a farm just a couple of towns away, because the California raspberries crossed the country in a shipment containing tons of other produce and therefore represent a minute expenditure of fuel per berry, while the local raspberries were obtained by my wife and me during a thirty mile round-trip in a car whose only other cargo was ourselves" (p. 300).

Owen goes on to further develop the idea that costs other than those of transportation such as labor, fertilizers, etc. must be counted when the cost of locally-produced food is calculated. He also criticizes Dickson Despommier's idea of "vertical farming" for creating wasteful infrastructure needed to build vertical farms in the city since Owen feels Manhattan land could be used for more valuable things than farming.

Interestingly enough, Despommier was one of the speakers at the Municipal Art Society Urban Farming panel that I attended on November 4th and he discussed vertical farms (his book about them will be published next year). He advocated building the farm as a working component of the building design. For example, greenhouse gases from the farm would be used to heat the building. One building being discussed would have a cafe that used only food grown in the building's farm.

Another speaker on the panel mentioned that if all the yards in the five boroughs were used to grow food, then 750,000 people could be fed from it. Despommier talked about the enormous amount of grey water that NYC produces every day - enough, if treated (in my opinion) to water those yards while growing water-hungry vegetables. Other panelists talked about rooftop gardens but warned that the structure of the roof must be able to accommodate the weight of wet soil. While it would be pricey to retrofit roofs, it is possible for new buildings, like the one being discussed, could be designed with the idea of a roof garden. However, as Owen points out, the increased load-bearing capacities of the roof design would be an extra cost to be factored into the cost of any food that it produces.

Green Metropolis: What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability by David Owen

2009-11-02T17:52:00.010-05:00

Introduction and disclaimer:

I read this book last month when I was on vacation. I had just stayed up to six AM because of a twelve hour marathon of season 4 of Doctor Who, slept for eight hours, and awoke at 2 PM with a migraine. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the sky was blue, and I had not yet gotten out of bed. Overcome with guilt, I decided to read an educational book with my coffee and picked Green Metropolis since it appeared to advocate cities. Amazingly enough, after one hour I felt the need to go to my nearby park and commune with nature in its relatively wild oak forest. I'm not sure how happy that urge would make David Owen.

In the first chapter, David Owen admits that he and his wife, empty-nesters, live in a large house in a small town in Connecticut. He uses a huge amount of heat and energy. He drives everywhere and uses big box stores. I appreciated his disclosure of his lifestyle, which directly contradicts what he advocates in his book. As such, I wish to make a disclosure statement about myself before I lead this virtual discussion.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens in a pre-war building. I use lots of paper towels, strip-mined cat litter, and plastic bags daily while taking care of my elderly cats. I don't feed them organic cat food (they refuse to eat the expensive food or use PC cat litter). I also don't use energy-saver light bulbs since the day when one of the cats broke a lamp, and ran in with a piece of broken light bulb as a present for me. Since these bulbs contain mercury, I don't want them where the cats get mercury on their mouths or paws. I recycle, I am not a vegetarian, and I can rarely make it to a farmer's market because there are few in Queens and I usually work Saturdays. I decided not to join a CSA since there are none where I work and I would have to take time off from work to pick up my order at a distant location.

Tonight I will be attending a Jane Jacobs Forum lecture at the Municpal Art Society about urban farming:

http://mas.org/designing-urban-farms-to-feed-new-york/

Tomorrow will be my first post where I discuss David Owen's views on urban farms as well as what I've gathered from my own research and the lecture.

Self, Identity and Free Will

2009-10-21T19:44:00.007-04:00

Self and Identity have great relevance when we think of ourselves in terms of our political and social identities and their implications. We consciously or unconsciously, adapt to our given identity at various stages of self-development. Self-development can be conceptualized in a variety of ways depending upon which developmental psychologist you refer to i.e. from pre-conventional to conventional to post-conventional (Lawrence Kohlberg), or from egocentric to ethnocentric to world-centric (Jane Loevinger), or from mythic to rational to pluralistic (Gene Gebser) etc. Identity or perhaps more accurately, our current stage of development, influences us in our everyday life choices--choices that can range from mundane to momentous, from love to hate, from peace to war. For instance, religious, national and ethnic identities have been and continue to be major factors behind choices which lead to conflict and violence. But our choices may seem to us as if they were based on reason and “free will” rather than some unconscious or rationalized aspect of our identity. Since identity we are born into is a chance of birth, and every choice we make has a predominant unconscious dimension to it, how can we be sure that our choices are rational and optimal? Murathan Mungan, contemporary Turkish poet asserts that "all types of identities--ethnic, national, religious, sexual--or whatever else, can become your prison after a while. The identity that you stand up for can enslave you and close you to the rest of the world." Do you agree?