One Note Timeless: Allan F. Moore's Song Means: Analyzing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song*

The text of this post has been changed to reflect corrections both in spelling and construction.

It is of course a mistake to think that an artwork or cultural product is the expression of certain feelings, ideas or values which exist independently of the creative product and which simply result from the intention to communicate them . . . What is felt is mediated by the lyrics, rhythm or beat as a form of creative expression . . . we do not have a fully formed, reflexively comprehended experience which we then reproduce in the verbal or sonic form. What this experience means to us, and how we may value it, is usually only discovered in the form of utterance or figuration that is given to it. The expressions not only forms the experience but also transforms it, makes it into something whose meaning changes our understanding of it.

Keith Negus and Michael Pickering, "Creativity and musical experience", Popular Music Studies, p. 184, quoted in Song Means: Analyzing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song, p.210

If Rock: The Primary Text (R:PT) by British musicologist Allan F. Moore was, as I wrote in my review, "focused, one might almost call it lean", Song Means: Analyzing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song, (SM) Moore's latest addition to the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series, is nothing less than a huge, ambitious, sprawling, and ultimately successful attempt to move forward the argument set forth in the earlier work. Expanding the "primary text" - the recorded song - from rock to "popular song", Moore offers nothing less than the possibility of fruitful interpretation within the locus of what he calls the "track", a particular recording of a song.

There was not a page I read that I did not find myself closing the book around a finger, sitting and considering something I'd read. More often than not, at least initially, it was a series of "Yeah, but . . ." scenarios, as Moore offered exemplars of particular analytic categories in traditional musicology, and how they function in particular tracks. I realized that I was engaging in a favorite sport: offer a possible counter-example as a way of challenging a clear definition and its demonstration. I detest when others do this to me, so if I caught myself about to do that I stopped and gave Moore the benefit of the doubt.

Other times, when I stopped, it was because the overwhelming detail, the breath-taking breadth and depth of his knowledge of popular music and the sheer mass made me want to catch my breath. When I did, I would open the text again, perhaps read again a particular passage, and then I'd have to stop and think, "Wow." It is rare I come across a work I believe is not just important in a particular field of study, but might actually be important for larger audiences who want to know why it is music is so important; Moore shows us why by showing us how, over and over and over. Whether it's a particular rhythm or harmony, the use of timbre and pitch, or melodic surprise or the lack thereof, even the traditional analytic categories of musicology offer the opportunity to come to a more clear understanding of what a particular track means.

Before I get to some critical comments, I think the most important analytic category Moore offers is what he calls the soundbox. The best way to describe the soundbox is, first, to have the reader put on a pair of headphones and play a song. Any song will do. Listen carefully to the exact spacing of the sound sources. How far to the left or right are particular sources in the mix? Usually the voice, the kit, and a lead instrument are centered, but there is the matter of how these are placed vertically in that center that offer clues as to what we are hearing. Finally, some sources sound closer, suggesting either intimacy or, perhaps, confrontation while other sound sources, mixed further back, suggest a distancing. Considering a track as occupying a particular space in particular ways offers opportunities for all sorts of questions that come back, again, to the meaning of a particular track.

I must admit, however, that I was struck for the first time - the concepts aren't new to me; it was, perhaps, using word "Form" as the title of Chapter 3 that lit the light - with what might be called a kind of Aristotelean essentialism in the description of "song". There is the formal structure of song - the rhythm and harmony and melody - and the material substrate that takes the empty form and makes it what it is. Timbre and voice and pitch and volume fill out the formal structure, which, going back to the Peripatetic, are the constituent elements of all things. I think this kind of essentialism is inescapable due to Moore's two-decade old decision to make the song the locus of consideration for the study of popular music.

Moore is quite clear in R:PT that he is not interested in the creative process that led to the song. He takes a further step in SM, quoting Paul Ricoeur at length on page 10:

What is indeed to be understood - and consequently appropriated - in a text/ Not the intention of the author, which is supposed to be hidden behind the text; not the the historical situation common to the author and his original readers; not the expectations or feelings of these original readers; not even their understanding of themselves and historical and cultural phenomena. What has to be appropriated is the meaning of the text itself, conceived in a dynamic way as the direction of thought opened up by the text. in other words, what has to be appropriated is nothing other than the power o disclosing a world that constitutes the reference of the text. in this way we are as far as possible from the Romanticist ideal of coinciding with a foreign psyche. If we may be said to coincide with anything, it is not the inner life of another ego, but the disclosure of a possible way of looking at things, which is the genuine referential power of the text.

I am somewhat sympathetic to this as an interpretive stance, at least as the second stance. The first stance should consider the text - however that word may be understood; in this case, of course we have the recorded song or "track" that functions as the text - in all its particularity. It is the product of this person or group and not that. This person or these people create the track out of their experience, their understanding of how best to communicate through this track a particular idea or narrative thread. The track first appears in time, along with other tracks, offering to potential listeners a unique possibility for incorporating this song in to their own lifeworld. Once the song has been recorded and made available to the public, it becomes a thing, to be sure, an object for analysis and understanding; these analyses and interpretations then become a part of the track's own life as an on-going part of the larger culture.

Perhaps an example will help. Over the winter, we purchased the Beatles for Rock Band for our home game system. My older daughter, at 14, loves music, but she told me she didn't like playing that particular game because she just doesn't like The Beatles. I have to admit I was shocked; I don't know if I've ever heard anyone ever say such a thing. Yet, she was adamant that the songs just didn't say anything to her. While this might be the case because, at 14, she hasn't been exposed to them as much as I was (my two oldest sisters had enough Beatles music around our house that at 10 and 11 I was listening to their greatest hits LPs over and over again). More to the point, however, their whole aural texture, from rhythm through timbre to the particular lyric concerns just don't resonate with Moriah. As much as it pains me to admit it, The Beatles are, at least for some young people, just no longer meaningful because they are . . . well, they're old.

This is a not-unimportant observation to make. If we take song seriously as a vehicle for shaping our lives, then those songs have to be relevant in some way to the listener. Reifying "song" the way Moore does makes an observation like Moriah's incomprehensible. I think the same kind of reification - or, from another angle, perhaps: positivism (I consider Aristotelean realism and positivism flip-sides of the same coin) - accrues around Moore's discussion of style.

I'm thankful for several matters in his discussion of style, including a history of popular music from a British perspective as well as distinguishing "style" from what he calls "idiolect". In the former case of the historical survey, it was nice to have a corrective to the American-centered histories of rock and pop that abound. Popular music in Britain formed in completely different circumstances, and for all there are affinities and cross-overs, the music is, and continues to be, very different from American music. Idiolect refers to what might be thought the particularities an artist or group brings to crafting tracks. We recognize, say, a song by Tool or James Taylor not only because of the styles but because of the particular approach these artists bring within the markers of the styles within which they work.

At the same time, "styles" are just conventions. I think they have become, in particular in the minds of music company executives and marketers, hardened, unbridgeable categories. In the late 1980's, it became impossible to classify the band Faith No More. They had a heavy metal guitar sound, a bass style brought over from 70's funk, drumming heavily influenced by reggae and dub through a band like Bad Brains, a keyboard player who was classically trained, and a lead singer who alternated between singing, shouting in the style of hardcore punk, and rapping. What, exactly, was Faith No More? Even labeling them "nu-metal", the genre that emerged in the late 1990's with Korn and Limp Bizkit, didn't do them justice precisely because their stew of sonic elements, under the very categories of musicological analysis, rendered them "unclassifiable". While they were, for a while, marketed to the then-large heavy metal audience, it just wasn't sustainable because their music was NOT heavy metal. Unable to put them under any stylistic heading, their output subsequent to their debut The Real Thing, while having a great deal of merit, wasn't classifiable under any style heading precisely as Moore describes. Without the support of their label, they foundered for a while then broke up, without, perhaps, defining their sound more clearly. Precisely because we need to recognize the contingency of style labels, I am personally wary of spending a great deal of time wondering whether a track is heavy metal, progressive metal, symphonic metal, or perhaps progressive death metal (Opeth). How about, "Hey, listen to this really awesome song?"

I agree with Moore that songs are things; if we are going to make the case that music provides meaning for listeners, then we have to have music to provide that meaning. This obvious point is, I think, all too often missed, especially by critics and journalists who are unfamiliar with music qua music, preferring to limit their discussions to matters of personal style and presentation that create an empty space where the song actually is. All the same, I would much prefer a less positivist approach, in which a song becomes a thing detached from the human agency that created it. Music is an artificial medium, and we need to recognize that artificiality for what it is, giving some due to those who produce a particular track. Not pride of place, certainly; all the same, at least a nod in the direction of the conventionality of everything from the analytic categories of musicology through matters of style would, at least for me, be preferable.

One more issue related to this whole matter of the conventionality of musical analysis. After Levitin, it is important to remember that those elements of music that have the most emotional resonance with listeners, namely timbre, pitch, and volume, are not real, inherent qualities of sound. Sound is a physical thing, and one can speak of frequency, to be sure, of sound. While there is a physical effect to extremely loud and low sounds - I will always remember feeling my pants move against my legs to the rhythm of the beat as I stood at a Rush concert - "loudness", "high" versus "low", and "guitar" or "keyboard" are only the ways our brains interpret the sound waves that impact our ears. They are qualities that do not inhere in music itself. Manipulation of these secondary characteristics is an important part of song-construction; accepting them as secondary is important to analysis so we don't go too far in making of these secondary qualities something real in and for themselves.

Finally, a note on the construction of Moore's text. He writes on p. 16 at the close of the first chapter, entitled "Methodology":

[W]ith the proviso that this is a methodology rather than a theory, I believe that what is offered here does have wide applicability, across the whole discursive field that was, is, and for some time will be popular song. While how something operates is dependent on the way the style within which it is couched operates, the rules of such a style are only ever implied and incomplete. This methodology, a process of discovering, can be applied irrespective of style.(italics in original)

What struck me most about this particular line was a previous discussion in which Moore was quite clear there were certain theoretical debts he owed, most especially to Ricoeur, as quoted above.  I believe he is making clear he is not setting out a "theory" of popular music; rather, he is  working within a broad scope defined as "recorded popular song", spanning decades of time and myriad styles, he is demonstrating that analysis can offer up questions that can only be intelligible this way. All the same, it is rather bold to make the case that one is not setting out a theory.

Starting in Chapter 6, Moore moves through a set of interpretive categories, successively "Friction", "Persona", "Reference", and "Belonging". Here, he sets aside his disclaimer that he is just explicating a method and dives, yet again, in to theory. Most helpful was his long discussion on the ineffectiveness of semiotics as an approach for understanding popular song.  Precisely because these categories are contested space, it becomes necessary to make clear how they function as interpretive schema; how they intersect and, perhaps, contradict, thus creating variant meanings. In particular, separating "Persona" from the dual matters of authenticity and intertextuality explored in "Belonging" seems to me a bit of theoretical sleight-of-hand; while perhaps convenient for reasons of explanation, the much-contested matter of authenticity impacts directly on the question of persona in any number of ways, not least the trustworthiness of the persona's voice. While Moore recognizes this, continually cross referencing various passages to make several points across these chapters, it is the return of theory that interests me here. While not arguing with his inclusion of the theoretical sections of these chapters, it might have served his readers to have at least some of these explored, at least tentatively and generally, at the start. Further, had the quoted sentence on page 16 included the qualification that he is offering a methodology of analyzing and a theory of interpretation, would, perhaps have made the sudden appearance of theoretical discussions less surprising.

These, however, are quibbles. This is an important work that offers readers the tools to understand what is going on when they hear a particular track. For all that capitalism reduces music to a product without meaning or purpose, part of the struggle against the totalitarian tendencies of capitalist ideology occurs precisely in music's refusal to be denuded of meaning. In this, it is a glorious testimony to the human refusal to surrender meaning to the demands of the market. For that very reason, making clear for ourselves not only that songs are meaningful, but how they are and why they are, is a necessary task. Moore's work goes a long way in that regard, and I have no doubt will bear much fruit not just within musicology, but in the study of culture in general.

*I am very grateful to Allan F. Moore for sending me a review copy of this book. There is no way a review can do justice to it, and I'm quite sure this has failed.

The Lady Or The Tiger

Ahead of the NATO summit just up the road, Mitt Romney had an op-ed published in Col. McCormick's bird-cage liner, complaining about cuts in the US military budget that, specifically in context, do not match with the expansiveness of the uses of military power.

Last year, President Obama signed into law a budget scheme that threatens to saddle the U.S. militarywith nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. President Obama's own defense secretary, Leon Panetta, has called cuts of this magnitude "devastating" to our national security. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has plainly said that such a reduction means "we would not any longer be a global power." Despite these warnings, the Obama administration has pledged to veto an attempt to replace these cuts with savings in other areas. This is reckless. We have a military inventory composed of weapons designed 40 to 50 years ago. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic bombers 34 years. Our Air Force, which had 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War, has been reduced to 39 today. TheU.S. Navy, at 285 ships, is at levels not seen since 1916. Should our air, naval and ground forces continue to age and shrink, it will place the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies at risk.

Think Progress is correct to criticize Romney putting the onus on Obama alone for signing that bill. Part of the far larger deal that avoided a default on our sovereign obligations, those cuts were reached after negotiations between both parties, and the Executive and Congress. Of course, the House partisan leadership scuttled that deal, dumping eight billion dollars worth of extra goodies in to the Pentagon budget in the version of the NDAA they passed on Friday.

The thing is, Romney - or his ghost-writer - is right. Since the Cold War, NATO has been lurching and grasping for a reason to exist. When one got plopped in Europe's lap in the form of the series of wars as Yugoslavia collapsed, everyone clucked their tongues, shook their heads, and turned away. At that point, the Brussels headquarters should have been shuttered, and folks sent on their merry way. Yet, NATO is in titular control of the current coalition in Afghanistan. Last years ridiculous air campaign in Libya was a NATO affair. Yet, again, as Romney points out, calling these "NATO" missions is a bit like calling the Normandy invasion a Brazilian mission.  Further, specifically in regard to Libya, such a mission, without serious thought regarding monetary cost, the cost in wear on our military equipment and weapons platforms, to say nothing of the political and diplomatic damage, was an example of the over-extension of the military that is not reflected in our DOD budgets. In that regard, Gov. Romney is quite right.

So, what's the solution? I think we need to ask ourselves a couple questions. Since the attacks on the United States in 2001, we have continued to carry on our politics here at home much as if our troops, engaged (after March, 2003) in combat on two fronts - since expanded to several of varying intensity and commitment - existed in a realm apart. Both invasions, Afghanistan and Iraq, were accounted largely off-budget, i.e., the money spent was not counted in normal fiscal requests and appropriations. For over a decade now, we have conducted our domestic affairs with the pretense that it is possible to do so without any reference to the economic, social, and political cost of fielding two pretty substantial armies in combat. We've been through not one but two economic downturns in that time, the second historic in size and scope. We've had two Presidential elections, conducted by and large with little reference to the actual circumstances the country faced. We've had long, drawn-out discussions on taxes and spending, with a large and vocal voting bloc within one party insisting on the necessity of fiscal probity, always, however, with the money set aside for the Department of Defense somehow magically excluded from any such discussion.

Do we wish to admit that we are, and have been for a while, a country at war? Whether or not any formal declaration has been made, the reality is we continue to act as a belligerent around the world. Whether it's central Asia, Yemen, Uganda and neighboring states in central Africa, or Latin America, our military posture is one of a nation ready and willing to put our troops in harms way. Please notice I didn't add "able", the matter Gov. Romney addresses in his op-ed. That, of course, is the $1 trillion dollar question. The President, the Joint Chiefs, and the Congressional leadership of both parties need to face the reality that, as large as our military is, as overwhelming as our power becomes, as well-trained and disciplined as our troops continue to be after years in combat - and despite abundant evidence of the psychological toll years of repeated exposure to combat has wreaked upon our men and women in uniform - we have constructed, and live within, a fiscal and political fantasy land in which these things do not cost any money; do not play havoc with the economy; are separate from our day-to-day existence. In other words, we do not act as a country at war.

Which are we? Are we a nation at war, willing to make the sacrifices - fiscal and monetary, political and structural - to support the military as many both in the civilian leadership and the uniformed services envision? Or do we continue to pretend that we can somehow make it all work out without recognizing the links between the struggles our military faces to accept the challenges they are given by civilian leadership? Do we reorder our entire national life to support a military that can continue a variety of missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Uganda/CAR/DRC and, perhaps should the President feel the need to "do something", Syria? Or do we prefer to insist on fiscal probity and thrift, not only reducing the size and scope of the military, but redefining its mission accordingly? 

These, it seems to me, are questions we just don't want to ask, let alone actually consider. The old story of the man facing two doors, while perhaps not perfectly appropriate, exemplifies in a larger sense, the situation within which we find ourselves. We face stark choices, and we must choose carefully and thoughtfully. We have not been either careful or thoughtful in a very long while. It would be nice if we at least started.

Something Old, Something New

I expect, very shortly, there will be a surprise coming here. Please don't be like my kids who insist on my telling them what that might be. See, doing that makes it, you know, not so much a surprise anymore, now does it.

History Is Bunk!

I was going to title this post "Shit Really Does Happen!" but I thought that might offend people. Instead, employing Ford's quote in an ironic way might make the main point more clear - events occur, things happen, things happened in a certain way, things happened because other things happened (albeit not in a simplistic cause/effect way; rather, there are relationships among various events that make sense). We can have debates and discussions over, say, the relative importance of the British enclosure laws on the growth of poverty and decline of religious practice because we are so far removed in time and space from the events in question that the weight and relevance of various matters are less clear. The financial collapse and the matter of regulating the financial industry, however, is not a process that occurred hundreds of years ago in a foreign country of which we know nothing. It is something that occurred within our lifetime, within the past few years. The documentation is both clear and available.

We had an inquiry commission that released a final report. I even wrote about it.

I was listening to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered - the website does not include a mention of the dueling interviews so I have no clue if I dreamed it or not - and there were back to back interviews with Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, on his latest piece on the horror that is Dodd-Frank. 

Immediately after interviewing Taibbi, there was one with Peter Wallison, who, among other things, insisted there are "competing narratives" about the 2008 economic collapse, one involving the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1998, the other seeing what happened as little more than one of the bumps in the business cycle that occurred, in part, because banks made a bunch of bad loans. I was wracking my brain while I was in the car, trying to remember why the name "Peter Wallison" was so familiar. I came home and discovered why.

T]he fourth dissenter, Peter Wallison - who uses his own dissenting report's title page for purposes of self promotion as ARTHUR F. BURN FELLOW IN FINANCIAL POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, and helpfully appends his email address to the bottom of the page - wrote 98 page [dissent], all on his own! Right away, Wallison's dissent seems to contradict, in a fundamental way, the conclusion of the majority. Specifically, he places the onus of responsibility for the financial collapse not upon the myriad of factors sited by the majority, but to a single cause - the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.

The post from which this comes offers competing "narratives" from the FCIC report. The differences could not be more striking. Wallison insists on defending a prior conclusion that it was a series of government policies that led, directly, to the economic collapse. The majority report, however, investigated the actual facts of the matter and concluded that, since the specific government-backed home loans were both a negligible proportion of the high-risk loans involved, and that these loans were less than half as likely to have gone in to default, there is no way they could have played any significant role in the economic crisis. Toward the end, I sum up what any sane person reading the competing reports would conclude:

So, the majority agrees with Wallison that housing policy was far too aggressive in its pursuit of ever-greater home ownership. Yet, this in and of itself hardly could have led to the other causes the majority noted as contributing causes - everything from lax corporate oversight to outright illegality, predatory lending practices, and the dismal failure of what little financial regulation was left. In this regard, citing federal housing policy, and in particular the Community Reinvestment Act as the prime, or perhaps even sole source, of the financial crisis disregards the rampant risk-taking, disregard for financial solvency and fiduciary responsibility, and outright criminality that is a part of the public record.(emphasis added)

"[P]art of the public record." A record, I might add, Wallison studiously ignores as he doggedly pursues the ever-elusive goal of proving that CRA was at fault. Now, NPR treats this fabulist to a solo spot interview in which he sings a completely different tune, inventing "competing narratives" as a way of showing how silly it is to have different views on what is, clearly, an open-and-shut case of too much government regulation. This flies in the face of ninety-four pages Wallison wrote not that long ago; it also flies in the face of the reality that no one that I know of has said there is some kind of direct connection between the 1998 repeal of Glass-Steagal and the financial collapse of 2008. I have said, on several occasion, this odd correlation of events is interesting; I think the evidence in the FCIC Majority Report, however, shows a far more complex, but far more chilling, case of a combination of idiocy, criminality, and simple incompetence within the private sector.

As a side note, it might have been nice if the folks at NPR had prefaced the interview with Wallison by noting that, as a member of the FCIC, he wrote a dissenting report that ignored significant and highly salient facts of the matter all the while pushing a case that was wholly false on the merits. Coming out now, saying an entirely different set of things - things, I might add, that bear no relationship either to the reality just a few short years ago, let alone in subsequent discussions of the events of late summer and early fall, 2008 - makes Wallison look, at least to me, not only like an ideologue, but a liar as well.

Ford was wrong. History isn't bunk. Especially when we have access to abundant material to discover what happened and even in some way why, this is important. People like Wallison play off a public that has largely forgotten not only the details of the events in question, but the subsequent investigation and conclusions by a committee appointed to find the sources of those events. If I had no conscience, I could go out in public and just make stuff up like that. It must be fun to get paid for it.

The Offensive Politics Of Defense

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the next fiscal year (here's a summary). With American troops still in combat in Afghanistan and Yemen and Africa, even as the United States faces an historic economic downturn - a situation that no one in a position of authority seems to address in any coherent, comprehensive way - the matter of funding the Department of Defense is of no little concern.

Over the past few years, as the military has disengaged from forward combat operations in Iraq; expanded its role in Yemen and central Africa, sending special operations forces and military advisers to Uganda to pursue international criminal Joseph Kony; begun the readjustment to the full acceptance of open sexual minorities in its ranks; continued large-scale operations in Afghanistan, with multiple forays in to Pakistan including a special forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden; wrestled with on-going problems with some combat systems, most notably the F-22 fighter; struggled to create better standards of care for combat veterans wounded either physically or psychologically in a decade of war; in the midst of all this, there has been an on-going debate, domestically, concerning fiscal probity. The senior officers at the Pentagon understand this reality, and have repeatedly offered plans for near-term and long-term funding that recognize these fiscal and political realities without harming or even threatening our security.

The House Republicans, however, would far prefer to play election-year politics with the Pentagon's budget. While recognizing the realities that there is a political dimension to every budget, as they are as much a statement of priorities and plans as a rundown of spending requests, the document the House passed yesterday deals not at all with the requests the Pentagon has made. For example, it strips further funding from a long-range plan to create jet fuel from bio-fuels, a plan that not only is cost-effective in the long run, but also creates a more effective military capability.

On Monday, the Navy will announce the ships for its demonstration “Great Green Fleet” — an aircraft carrier strike group powered by biolfuels and other green energy sources — but, as reported by Wired’s Danger Room, the House Armed Services Committee is banning the Pentagon from buying alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel” in its report on next year’s budget. That’s a standard that the upstart biofuel industry will find hard to meet and could well spell the end of the Pentagon’s early efforts to end a dependence on fossil fuels.

--snip--

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey made the case last October that military use of green energy technologies “saves lives” and an Army study in August found “A fighting force that isn’t restricted by the reach of a tanker truck or weighted down by heavy batteries is more nimble and, as a result, more lethal.”

What's hysterically funny about this is it was done in the name of cost savings, in a budget that was eight billion dollars more than the caps set in a budget resolution passed last year by this same Congress. That resolution, however, has been rescinded as the House prepares for an election year game of chicken over spending and the debt ceiling in hopes of making the President look bad. Doing this by spending more money, forcing the Pentagon to scrap a multi-year effort to refit our forces in ways that are both better for the environment and better for the military, should, were ours a more sane country, make clear how little House Republicans care about what the Pentagon wants and doesn't want.

There are many other tidbits in the NDAA, including expanding the powers of indefinite detention of American citizens, a provision that has already been suspended by a federal judge because it is so expansive it violates the First Amendment.

Lost in all of this is any sense that the Republican members of the House of Representatives care a jot or tittle for what the Pentagon might actually want. Were I in a position of authority, I would be spending long hours banging my head against anything solid because it has become impossible in our current political climate to know what is going to be funded and what isn't; whether or not it is possible to deal with contractors on various items because the projects might well simply cease to exist; and, finally, wonder if someone in a position of political power would at least make clear they understand the Pentagon's first priority is the safe and successful completion of our current military operations.

This last would mean that, rather than just spout off whatever nonsense enters their heads about taxes and priorities and on-going threats not only to our troops but to the nation as a whole, Congress would get serious about reordering our fiscal priorities such that they reflected the reality that we are a nation that continues to send tens of thousands of its young men and women in to combat - sometimes with our supposed allies (considering the increasing threat Afghan military forces pose to American troops, including those who are supposed to be training them). If we started any and all our discussions of our fiscal and economic problems with that in the forefront of our minds, we might well have a very different discussion, no less political, but far closer to the realities we face.

Making A Short Story Long

I've been in the midst of one of those occasional bouts when I wonder if this whole thing is worth the time and mental energy. Several things came in to play, bringing on a week's worth of near-paralyzing existential angst. For one thing, I passed the 3500 post mark. That's a whole lot of stuff I've put out there. Day in and day out, with a few breaks here and there, for over five years. Speaking for myself, I think there have been a few of the posts that are actually quite well done; not just well-written, but transcend the typical commentary, trying to say something important and actually succeeding. A person can't produce this amount of material without doing seriously mediocre stuff, though, a charge I accept. I'm guessing Rod Serling's self-assessment of his output on The Twighlight Zone - overall, equal thirds quality, place-holders, and stinkers - is a good overall judgment on my output over the years.

With absolutely no humility at all but in all honesty, I think when I've done stuff that's really good, there aren't many who can touch me. That's rare, though. Most of the time, I do the best I can within the restrictive bounds of the format and medium. I hit that 3500 mark when I was writing my little series in which I described my intellectual development over the past thirty years. That was a lot of fun, quite a bit of work chasing down various texts, arranging memories, aiming for clarity of narrative as much as explanation. The end was, I think, a bit anti-climactic (at least as I thought about it as I read and re-read it), and missed a vital part of the whole story. While it may well be the case that, for me, the world and human existence aren't so much a series of questions to be answered - always with the only right and true answer! - but, rather, experiences and events and things and people and creatures that are funny and sad and strange and terrible and beautiful and sorrowful, to be understood without getting to caught up in worrying about what any of it means. What does my love for my wife and children mean? Beyond some personal and existential realities, it means little to nothing. Lest you think I'm downplaying my own life here, remember: I think the same thing about your life, and yours. Yours, too, there in the back. It doesn't mean anything. Which doesn't mean it isn't important, that you aren't a creature of worth and importance, worthy of love and acceptance. It just means that I'm just not all that fussed about the whole idea that any of it has any meaning. That's something we human beings, or at least some of us at various times in history, thought was an interesting question to ask. It turns out, though, not to be all that interesting or fruitful at all. So, why ask it? We stopped wondering about all those cycles and epicycles of the planets when we realized it just didn't work as an explanation; so, I've given up asking about meaning without ever once surrendering my wonder and fascination and joy at the panorama.

That's the thing I forgot to mention. I was talking to Lisa last night, trying to work through some of what I was feeling, and I said, "Nothing is unfascinating to me." It's true. Back in February, I wrote a review of Alan F. Moore's Rock: The Primary Text. When Feodor came around troubling me with questions that seemed, to me, to be less about my post than about the book, I did the easiest thing in the world: I emailed Moore. A few weeks back, I received an email response, very gracious and kind, and he made a casual offer of a review copy of his latest book, Song Means: Analyzing and Interpreting Popular Song. In my reply I included my mailing address, never thinking I'd really get sent a free book. Well, it arrived a couple days ago, and I'm enjoying this far larger, more detailed book, and you can expect a review when I've finished it. This immersion in musicology is a symptom of that endless fascination with pretty much everything. It's really quite fun, at 46, to be learning something new, to be offered a new way of thinking about something I love so much.

Having said all that, however, saying that I just don't believe I have any special competencies, any particular gift, and that I cannot communicate any reason why my particular point of view should be something others consider was made pointed in large part by my conclusion. It is one thing to say, "I really like lots of stuff!" It is quite another to turn, then, and shout at the world, "Pay attention to MMMMEEEEEEEE!!!!" I am convinced that, since all the things in which I am interested are out there for anyone to discover, it really isn't any big deal. I hear Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men at this point, growling at Robert Redford, "Someone read a book! So what?" Exactly. So what? Anyone can read books and figure out, even if only partially and in a rudimentary way, what the author is trying to say. Which has always been part of my point; it isn't about knowing stuff, or thinking stuff, or believing stuff. It's about living out of love for others, surrendering one's ego for the sake of others. That's the whole point of this thing called life (quoting Prince may not be a good sign). All the rest, as Parke Godwin wrote, is either bullshit or treacle.

Saying all that last night, Lisa asked me, "So, why do you want others to read you or hear you?"

"I don't have an answer to that, which is what I'm going through."

That is the whole thing, right there. If none of it has any meaning; if I really mean what I say when I write that I do not believe I have any particular gift or competency or perspective to which others should pay attention, it does kind of invalidate not only this little hobby of mine, but my efforts over the past six months at fiction-writing. If I can't articulate any reason for others to hear what I have to say, then . . . um . . .

The specific event, however, that triggered all this was asking for advice about getting started in public speaking. I was bombarded with some pretty traditional advice, most of it sounding like every cliche in every bad business advice book and column ever written. Then it hit me. This stuff, as horrible as it is, is the way people actually think about these things. The world expects us to behave in particular ways, all the while knowing they are shallow and ridiculous. I find vulgar the very idea of promoting myself to others; there is nothing I despise more than people parading around telling the world to pay attention to them, that others need to hear what they have to say (or read what they have written). My encounters with this kind of self-marketing have been pretty consistent - their self-advertising convinces me I need to steer as far from them as possible. Yet, it is impossible, it seems, to break out without doing this very thing to which I am constitutionally and principally opposed. So, yet again, why carry on?

I realized, however, that precisely because I cannot give a justification for carrying on, I don't have to! I am quite happy carrying on without either reason or justification because, well, this is who I am. Despite the occasional internet troll, which is little more than a hazard of life, I get a great deal of personal satisfaction out of this whole thing.

All the same, it would be nice if I got some feedback on occasion. I toss these things out there for the world to see, and wonder if it matters; I may suffer from too little ego, but that doesn't mean no ego. So, I guess I'm asking now for folks to let me know: Am I doing this right? Are my words, is my perspective, something that gives you even a moment's pause? I have no illusions that I've made a difference in the workings of the world; it would be nice, however, to hear from one or two of you that, yes, I have said something that made you angry enough or happy enough or surprised enough to think about something - anything - in a way you might not have before.

Offered With Introduction And Without Comment

Eberhard Jungel was a student of Karl Barth, an accomplished theologian in his own right, and took the opportunity to provide as concise a summary of the verbose Swiss's thought as any can find. The following passage, which I stole from here, says everything anyone needs to know about how I understand God and Jesus and the passion and how we can and do come to understand God and Jesus and the passion. Without forgetting Bonhoeffer's criticism of Barth's "positivism of revelation", Barth's single-minded insistence that revelation is not a thing we consider, but a person whose life and death and resurrection sets the boundaries and categories for our working out of our encounter with this person and the event his life presents to us clears away so much of the muddle from so many seemingly contested arenas as Biblical interpretation, ethics, even Church polity. Enough from me. Here is Herr Jungel:

[God's being] is a being in a becoming threatened by perishing. For humanity in opposition to God is condemned to perish. And in the existence of Jesus Christ God suffers this very condemnation. 'The more seriously we take this, the stronger the temptation to approximate to the view of a contradiction and conflict in God Himself.' Barth takes the passion of God very seriously. 'The Almighty exists and acts and speaks here in the form of One who is weak and impotent, the eternal as One who is temporal and perishing ... The One who lives for ever has fallen a prey to death. The Creator is subjected to and overcome by the onslaught of that which is not.' But he categorically rejects that we must draw from this the consequence of a contradiction through which God would come into conflict with himself. For Barth this consequence is blasphemy. However, his rejection of this consequence does not lead to any toning down of his discussion of God's suffering, but conversely, to a critique of the traditional metaphysical concept of God, according to which God cannot suffer without falling into conflict with his being. In this critique, Barth's opposition to every kind of natural theology received its most pointed statement. No concept of God arrived at independent of the reality of Jesus Christ may decide what is possible and impossible for God. Rather, we are to say from what God as man in Jesus Christ is, does and suffers: 'God can do this.' For 'who God is and what it is to be divine is something we have to learn where God has revealed Himself and His nature, the essence of the divine. ... It is not for us to speak of a contradiction and rift in the being of God, to reconstitute them in light of the fact that He does this. We may believe that God can and only be absolute in contrast to all that is relative, exalted in contrast to all that is lowly, active in contrast to all suffering, inviolable in contrast to all temptation, transcendent in contrast to all immanence, and therefore divine in contrast to everything human, in short that He can and must be only the "Wholly Other". But such beliefs are shown to be quite untenable, and corrupt and pagan, by the fact that God does in fact be and do this in Jesus Christ.

Eberhard Jüngel, God's Being is in Becoming, 99-100

Moral Cowardice

Like Tom Junod, I was somewhere toward the bottom of the pecking order, but discovering someone a bit further down, I vented my frustration, rage, and need to make another feel the way I had. As with so much else in my life, it is something that weighs on my heart every single day. Not least because, in the grand scheme of things, I realize I was not so much "bullied" as I was teased because I was different. Flaming red, curly hair, on top of soft features we usually associate more with a feminine physiognomy than masculine, it was a combination of curiosity and the kind of humor at the expense of another that does, indeed, hurt, but is not, alas for me, "bullying".

That I had my feelings hurt was more the result of me being a far-too oversensitive child. I watch my daughter and I see the same thing; being far too willing to wear my heart out on my sleeve, I had to learn the hard way that friends sometimes use humor at one another's expense. Not one understanding nuance, on a couple occasions I remember far too vividly, I took that bottled up rage (quite a bit of which was directed inward) and opened it up on another boy. The memory is full of bile for me, a disgusting reminder of what we can do to others. The one thing for which I am thankful is that sense of responsibility and self-loathing over my actions was almost immediate; understanding what I had done was cruel and wrong, while I didn't pursue the poor boy for forgiveness, I did make it a point never, under any circumstance, to act in such a way again.

I have no idea what Mitt Romney thinks about the alleged incident in question. I also don't care. I am far more interested in the fact that, yet again, we have a national representative of a political party that demands personal responsibility from everyone except themselves. Not just Romney's claims that he doesn't remember, or that the incident in question was just a "prank"; much the rest of the political and chattering classes are insisting that the entire matter be dropped as both long ago and far away.

How hard would it have been for Romney to say, "I do remember that. It bothers me. I was never strong enough or adult enough to admit it, let alone seek forgiveness, but it does haunt me." Or words to that effect. Why is it people faced with losing their homes due to economic circumstances far beyond their control are told to suck it up and deal, while an individual confronted with an incident from his past that paints him in a less than gleaming spotlight cannot find the moral courage to accept responsibility for his actions? And people wonder why I hold the whole conservative movement in so much contempt. 

Personal responsibility begins with one's own life, not turning around and telling the rest of the world how horrible they are. That's little more than running away from the horror that the real villain in one's life may well be . . . one's very own self.

Not Our World

I'm part of a small group that meets the last Tuesday of each month at Cornerstone UMC. Called "Pushing the Envelope", the structure is simple. There's a bag filled with envelopes. Inside the envelopes are articles from the net on any topic whatsoever. The only rule is we discuss the topic. It's really that simple. Free-ranging, with only our sense of etiquette and mutual respect as guides, the group is a wonderful opportunity for a small group to tackle important matters without the distance and anonymity provided by the Internet for people to be assholes.

At the end of April, there was an article about complaints from the city of Crystal Lake, IL about their Wikipedia page. I chuckled to myself while the person read the article, because, well, it's Wikipedia. The discussion moved to the way information is shared on the internet, through the technological changes through which we've lived over the past decade and a half, to some personal reflections on those changes. I forget precisely what the specifics of the complaint were, but one person complained of the way the combination of technology and the evolving rules of interpersonal interaction were something this person refused to accept. In February, we had a marvelous exchange on the propriety of vulgarity. 

In both instances, I came down on what I tend to think is the anti-curmudgeon side. While I certainly do not understand all the intricacies of our on-going high-tech revolution, I consider myself a huge booster of all the ways the Internet provides the opportunity for more people to share with more people all sorts of things. Some of those things are false, sure. It isn't like there was never false information spread far and wide for a variety of purposes in the past; the only change, really, is the pace at which all this information sails around the planet then back again. If you don't believe me, look up The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Shoot, you can check that out on Wikipedia!

As for profanity, the specific was a bit of harrumphing about Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel telling either the city's school superintedent or a member of the school board to "shut the fuck up." Not surprising at all, at least for those who know a bit about Emmanuel's history and reputation. He is, after all, known as Rahm "Fucking" Emmanuel for the liberality with which he sprinkles his speech with that particular gerund. I have to chuckle at people who search for the fainting couch whenever they read or hear such language. Are they such children? I grew up, like most everyone my age, hearing that such language betrays a certain cast of mind, a paucity of thought, a meanness of mind, on and on and on. 

Bullshit.

Seriously. Grow. Up.

These two, somewhat related, phenomena are signs that the world, changing as it is, is doing so in such ways that it will not at all resemble the world in which people my age came of age, let alone grew up. Even more than the old saw that the world is something one generation holds in trust for the next, the "next generation" is already taking that particular bull by the horns and making it ever more in to a world that more accurately reflects their concerns, preferences, fears, and hopes. Even someone my age is, to be honest, quite out of touch with all the details of the ever-changing technological, social, and cultural landscape. And that's OK.

One part of this understanding of the world as changing that troubles me a great deal is this:

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers.

The United Methodist Church recently adjourned their quadrennial General Conference. Among the many things they did, two stand out. First, General Conference struggled with various competing, contradictory plans for restructuring the denomination. Finally passing one, most folks present in Tampa and reading news reports, felt far too much energy was expended on these matters. At the same time, they reaffirmed some sentences in the Book of Discipline which state, without qualification, that homosexuality is contrary to the teachings of the Church.

Even more than bureaucratic bloat, this single act may be costly to the future of the denomination; while the delegates in Tampa were insisting the United Methodist Church proclaim it continue to discriminate, they were simultaneously wringing their hands over falling membership and participation in various church-related groups and activities. That there might be a relationship between these two things didn't come up, unless by some of the delegates who voted to remove the offending passage. I know there are people who think the Church, any church, should continue to uphold bigotry and discrimination on the basis of some alleged doctrinal and Biblical "principle". Except, alas, as Christians, we aren't people who act on principle. Nowhere in any of Church history does it say we Christians make mountains out of molehills, then make our stand there.

Martin Luther didn't take his stand at Worms because of priestly concubinage or Papal politicking; he did it because the Mother Church had forgotten the basic Gospel message of salvation by grace through faith, which frees believers from the burdens laid upon them by a system of indulgences that had become onerous. Jonathan Edwards preached a Gospel of beauty and grace as the Divine attributes that prevent an otherwise just God from dropping us sinners from the hands of an otherwise angry God. These and so many more offered a vision of God as open, loving, accepting, and the people came.

Some in the Church of today are demanding we exclude, with words filled with hatred, some people. This has become so prevalent that the vast majority of non-Churched and non-Christians in the world think this is our defining characteristic. Considering that the United States as a whole - despite the Tampa vote and the passage of Proposition No. 1 in North Carolina - is becoming more and more tolerant and accepting of same-sex marriage, we are under a very real threat of losing an entire generation, at least from denominations that continue to practice discrimination and preach and teach exclusion.

The world is not ours. This is not some bland cliche but a very real social and cultural phenomenon, and we in the United Methodist Church owe it to ourselves to live out the Gospel of love and acceptance of all persons, precisely because we are principling ourselves to irrelevance and, perhaps, our collective demise.

All Those Sevens Are Lisa's Fault

Not the wife. This one.

She succumbed to that dreaded internet virus, the meme. Struck with wonder at her prose, I thought the worst I could do is show the world how horrid my own attempts at fiction are. The rule is simple. Page seventy-seven of the the latest work-in-progress. Go to line seven. C&P the next seven lines/sentences/paragraphs. I've decided not to use my latest WIP, but rather the first draft that I am going to begin a rewrite on Monday. Remember, as you read - this is a FIRST DRAFT.

 Her eyes seemed to bore through Kelly now. “The two of you, sitting there, him saying, ‘That’s right, Kelly! See, you can play whatever you want!’ I hated that thing, I didn’t want you growing up thinking it was something special, like he did.”

“Then why did you get me that guitar when I was fourteen?”

“Because I thought, ‘Well, he’ll pick it up and realize he can never really play it, and then I can get rid of it.’ Sure enough, you were just like him, you could play it, couldn’t you. So you wanted all that other stuff, and I kept thinking, ‘Better to let him get it out of his system now.’”

Her eyes were filling with tears, now, but her voice showed no emotion other than obvious anger. Anger at him, anger at his long, lost, musical father.  “Then you hooked up those, those others, Jamie Tolliver and Davey Shea, a drunk just like his wastrel father, and that Harlan Truesdale with all his money. And Melissa Ericson, I know what kind of girl she’s always been. Always had her nose up in the air because she was looking up at people from being on her knees. Any girl who’d spend all her time with a bunch of boys, wasting their time, had only one thing on her mind.

“I put up with it, though. Even when you decided to be a bum, and drive around in that awful Tolliver boy’s car and play your music I thought being broke for a few months would teach you a lesson. You were like your father that way. You earn a few bucks, you get people whispering in your ear, and the next thing I know you’re on TV and the radio and now you’re living all alone in Arizona, and it’s all because you think music is a way decent people earn their living.”

The wind seemed to go out of her sails for the moment. Kelly was too stunned, just too goddamn overwhelmed to respond. She was breathing harder than normal, her thin cheeks flushed.

“The day your father died, he was on his way home from one of those horrible auditions he was always going to. Did you know that? Someone had called someone who had called someone else who had called your father, and off he went. He was going to New York, he said. Broadway, he said. All he had to do was go to this audition and play and sing and he said we would have it made. All that he had made was dying under some truck and I was stuck with a three year old child to raise on my own, who ended up just like his father."

You can tell me it sucks. It won't hurt.

A Mountain: Final Note Toward A Medium Opus XIV

I was thinking this would never end, if that's any comfort.

It all began with two distinct thoughts after reading an article nearly thirty years ago: How is it possible I cannot grasp the meaning of the phrase "one billion kilometers"? How is it possible the "laws of celestial mechanics" could be completely wrong? Over the ensuing years and decades, I've ventured far and wide as the initial path branched off, sometimes several times, until the relationships among the variety of things I was studying started to look nonexistent. What possible relationship exists among the theology of Jurgen Moltmann, the philosophy of Isaiah Berlin, the cosmology of Hawking, and the detailed description of the life and times of the ai-ai?

It wasn't a flash of light that illuminated the many dark paths. It wasn't some marvelous book of wisdom or thought or insight that made me stop and think, "Wow! So that's it." Rather, it was the realization that all these shared one thing in common: Me.

I say that with absolutely no boasting. They were meaningful and important precisely because they were meaningful and important to me. That did not and does not mean I am under any obligation to make any other individual care about any of them. Their importance for me shaped the way I thought and, more important, how I communicated my sense and understanding of the world to others. Beyond that, well, so what? The tie that bound them together is the language I choose to use to describe my understanding of the world, but that is hardly a big deal. That's all any of us do.

Far from something that brought a sense of pride, this coalescing understanding made me understand even more how little I had about which to boast. After all, what had I learned? That the world exists quite independent of me and my concerns; that we human beings, in trying to make our way in the world, run up against obstacles to our understanding that are impossible to overcome; that the world, and the larger universe in which we exist, is filled with all sorts of strange and beautiful things and creatures and events and none of it has anything to do with me. Even those things that seem so intimately connected with human life - the need for clarity in matters of social life, for example; an understanding of the faith I claim as central in my life - do not concern themselves with me, in particular. All these things, even the far less certain realities of human society and religious practice, exist without me being a part of them. They existed before I came a long. Centuries after I'm dead and dust, they will continue in ways that I cannot, now, imagine.

The only thing that really matters for me is how I make my way through this life. Living with others, being with those I love, struggling against those things I understand dehumanize and are otherwise detrimental to the full flowering of the humanity of others. These matter; even then, however, they only matter to me and for me.

There's a famous saying that describes the way of wisdom in Zen Buddhism: "First, there is a mountain. Then, there is no mountain. There is a mountain."  I spent a very long time indeed denying the existence of the mountain, insisting there had to "be" "more". Understanding that meaning was nothing more than the way we human beings put words together about things started to clear the haze. I started to see that mountain, but I wasn't sure if I was really seeing it.

A couple weeks ago, though, when those photos from the Cassini Spacecraft showing the geysers on Enceladus flashed on my computer screen, I understood that it was, in fact, just a mountain. That lack of understanding about what "one billion kilometers" might actually mean? Nothing more than a specific instance of human wonder, undamaged even by the mathematical detail. It is more than possible to look at the night sky, or listen to the rustling of the leaves on a forest floor, or look in to the face of another person, and for all that we can describe what we know and understand about these things, still let what we don't understand be a part of our understanding. As for those "laws", well calling them "laws" is a bit presumptuous. Mathematical descriptions of possible resolution of the movement along the arcs circumscribed by the ellipses to which certain objects are restricted are not "laws"; they serve as ways not only of understanding and interpreting the variety of things we encounter, but also of predicting how we should interpret our encounter with events of a similar class under similar conditions. When those Shepherd Moons were found to trace a mutually orbiting double helix - the path around which both revolved in a spiral motion was itself an elliptical line; that spiral, though, was nothing the understanding of celestial mechanics could have predicted - the scientists encountering the phenomena came to the conclusion pretty quickly that our understanding of celestial mechanics, for all it had been pretty well developed (we got a spacecraft from Earth to Saturn, right on schedule after all) was also fairly primitive. That understanding had to change precisely because the data encountered didn't fit our understanding. Again, no big deal.

Everything's connected because we human beings have to understand all this stuff, and so much more, to make our way through life in this world. None of it is any big deal. Our understanding of it is no big deal; it's all there, for the taking, should any of us be so inclined. Not being so inclined, however, doesn't make one somehow less human.

All that is, well . . . it just is. That's it and that's all. No big deal, no mystery, no deeper meaning or significance to any of it. We do not lose a scintilla of awe or wonder, fear or joy, when the clouds lift and the mountain stands there, clear and real. It is just as worthy of celebration as before; it just doesn't mean anything, is all.

Growing Beyond Yourself: Some Thoughts On Rob Horning

It was 1985 when the professor from whom I was taking American History I made sixty people look stupid. Having just moved through the election of 1800, and celebrating the victory of Jefferson and the democratic idea over the hemi-aristocracy of John Adams and the Federalists, Gary Ostrower said a few words about the power and strength of Jefferson's ideas on the power of the sovereign individual, on the potential of such sovereign individuals to successfully guide a nation to greatness, and on the persistence of individuality as part of the necessity for our republican form of government. Heads were nodding around the room; had it been a church service, I probably would have heard some "Amen!"s.

Ostrower turned and asked us if we agreed with these ideas. Did we think that America was a place that, perhaps unique among other nations and cultures, created opportunities for self-expression and disdained conformity. With one voice, the congregation affirmed this solemn declaration of American greatness.
"How many of you are wearing blue jeans?"

Everything in the class stopped. Like that, Ostrower had produced the pin that pricked the balloon of our self-conscious, conformist individualism.

I got to thinking about that moment when I was reading Rob Horning's "Outgrowing Oneself". I can't think of a more persistent, thorough, insightful, engaging cultural critic than Rob Horning.

“Dance the Night Away” by Van Halen was playing, and next came “Mysterious Ways” by U2. The transition was seamless and unremarkable, only I can remember when I was in high school, when listening to U2 and not Van Halen was of intense social importance, when the difference was glaring, and it dictated how one wanted to perceived and whom one felt comfortable hanging around with. It seems incredibly silly now, but growing up in semi-rural, semi-suburban Upper Bucks County, the discontinuity between Van Halen and U2 created a space in which to exist, and a hope that one might turn out to be something other than what the suburban environment seemed to promise. You could listen to something like the Beastie Boys and think your friends were the only other people who got it — them and maybe some idealized people out there who also would have been your friends if you weren’t so isolated. The special few who would redeem the future.

--snip--

With its veneer of conformity, suburbia imparts a sense of aggrieved, threatened individuality, but more important, it gives its children a constitutive myopia about it, making it impossible for them to see that the ambitious discontentedness, the certitude that one is far more special than the mediocrity of shopping malls and chain restaurants and the rest, is part of the code for reproducing the suburbs, not a disruptive mutation. In short, it would be weird if you didn’t feel alienated.

As with so much of Horning's work, I find myself nodding in agreement. At first. Then, I might say, "But, wait . . ." It was this piece that made me understand the source of that persistent "but". For all that we exist within webs that reduce even that by which we define ourselves, individually and collectively, to bits of stuff that can be replaced without thought with other bits of stuff, the relationships among culture, the capitalist manipulation of culture, and individuals and groups for whom various cultural referents become touchstones is less one-sided that the picture Horning presents here.

Even Marx, for all his persistent dwelling on the insidious ways social relations not only create the economic conditions in which the warring classes find themselves, but also the larger superstructure by which the classes understand themselves in broader cultural contexts, would never insist on a description in which there is so much fatalism, such a pervading sense of powerlessness in the face of the relentless drive to commodify all reality. These relationships were dialectical precisely in the sense that there existed sources of power on both sides, even if not acknowledged or used, that created the dynamics of social and cultural conflict, apart from the central conflict over the means of production. 

Horning's position has far more in common with strands of Marcuse's idea of "totalitarianism" in which the dialectic has completely disappeared. In particular, One-Dimensional Man paints so gloomy a portrait of human beings under late capitalism, one wonders how Marcuse could see fit to argue a way out from under such a regime.

There is most certainly more than an element of the totalitarian spirit in the way capitalism seeks to strip meaning from human life, reducing even those elements for which "meaning" is intensely subjective and ill-defined (albeit not in the way Horning so aptly defines in the first paragraph) to items to be bought and sold, traded and interchanged without thought precisely because they are products which can, in the final analysis, find their only real intersubjective value in the price one is willing to pay for them. Without yielding one inch in agreement with this, I think it is also important to add that part of the possibility of resistance, whether it is social, political, or cultural, lies precisely in individuals and groups who are unwilling to allow such simplistic commodification and reduction. The kind of overweening totalitarianism described by Marcuse, and hinted at by Horning, is just the place where such systems show their inherent weakness. Resistance to being defined in the many ways capitalist ideology demands begins with the "No" we utter when we realize it has happened.

Were we powerless in the face of the relentlessness of such power, we wouldn't even be able to recognize it for what it is, to name it, and to mourn our powerlessness in the face of it.

It is precisely because social groups refuse to allow our lives and our culture to be reduced to marketable entities that are interchangeable with other, seemingly similar, entities that cultural conflict, in an at least quasi-Marxist way, is even possible. For all that I find something fatalistic in Horning's work, a view of the powerlessness individuals and groups have in the face of the unrelenting demands of capitalist ideology, I am very glad we have someone doing the work Rob does.

Words Mean Things II: Notes Toward A Medium Opus XIII

Moriah is taking European History in school. A couple weeks back she asked me to review an assignment she had due. For each major event, she had to produce a list of terms, related photographs, and major points for each term used. She confessed she was unclear about the names of the major antagonists in the First World War; were France and Britain and Italy the Triple Alliance or Triple Entente? I told her that they were the Alliance. "So, the Triple Entente were the bad guys," she said. 

"No," I said. "They weren't 'the bad guys'. There aren't 'good guys' and 'bad guys' in the world."

In the wake of the September 11th attacks, there was much ballyhoo over President Bush's use of the phrase "Axis of Evil" to describe the regimes of Libya, Iran, and North Korea, none of which had anything to do with the attacks on the United States. Throughout much of the rest of his Presidency, Bush would often call terrorist groups "evil doers". The use of this word became a focus of some debate among some on the right who claimed that "liberals" and others were somehow unable to call evil by its name; by using the words he had, Pres. Bush had not only correctly called out al Qaeda, but had stolen a march on domestic political opposition. Who would want to oppose an Administration that was actively opposed to evil and those who do it?

Calling the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington "evil" is, indeed correct. Technically, those who envisioned the attacks, planned them, funded them, hired those who would carry them out, actually did carry them out, then celebrated their accomplishments are, indeed, evil. My on-going problem with this formula is simple enough to state: So?

"Evil" as an epithet adds absolutely nothing to our understanding of the root causes of the rage against the United States. As a practical matter, it became a way of avoiding doing the far more difficult work of understanding al Qaeda and related groups. What need do any of us have to understand "evil". It is, by definition, unintelligible, existing solely for its own sake, in need of neither justification nor intelligent analysis.

Moral understanding is a peculiar form of clarifying particular events.  Unlike other ways of understanding the world, moral pronouncements are absolute.  There is no such thing as "less evil".  Whether rooted in religious commitments or some general sense that certain acts lie beyond the pale of acceptability, once such judgments are made, further investigation is no longer needed.  Even the shorthand of such kinds of labeling, "good guys" and "bad guys", makes analysis superfluous.  It is also morally questionable; why attempt to understand what is clearly outside acceptable norms of human conduct?

Our ways of describing and labeling events and persons and groups have weight; they carry implications for how we move forward together.  Seeing a world abounding in evil-doers and bad guys certainly makes it easy enough to find one's place in the world; it makes understanding the world impossible.  Our moral sense, a product of our collective sense of how best to live together in big and small ways, is an important part of what makes us human. Compassion, empathy, the fellow-feeling that leads us to mourn with those who suffer even if we share no immediate connection with them are necessary personal and social attributes; their expression is often what people understand as their greatest asset.

We humans also have a horrible penchant for cruelty and depravity, expressed interpersonally and socially in any number of ways.  While it may well be necessary to understand instances of the expression of these tendencies as "evil", we cannot allow that to call a halt to the necessary work of understanding the why's and wherefore's of them.  Precisely because the judgments embedded in our moral vocabularies, whether the simplistic one my daughter used or the more sophisticated-sounding ones used by the varieties of our moral scolds, are absolute, we need to take care their weight doesn't prevent us from the important work of understanding what brought about the events in question.  Precisely because "meaning" resides not in events or persons or object, but only words, the weight of meaning in moral judgments, far too often, removes our ability to find any other meaning in those we call evil.

Shaken: Notes Toward A Medium Opus XII

You lethargic, waiting upon me, waiting for the fire and I attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty Shaken by your beauty Shaken.

William Carlos Williams, Paterson

The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

Wallace Stevens

Some people find themselves overwhelmed by this life and the many ways it undermines our confidence that living, not just surviving but thriving, is its own reward, offered to those who are willing to risk. Whether because of personal tragedy, perhaps, or being caught in the crossfire of forces beyond our control or even our ken, so many people find themselves, as an old phrase has it, "too much with this world."

An odd turn of phrase, I think, because it suggests that "this world" is a place so filled with darkness and depravity that to sink in to it is to mire oneself without hope of escape, except death. I would be the last to claim there is no such thing as evil in the world. I just wrote quite a bit about some of the horrors we encounter when we look around us. If this all this life had to offer, I wonder how it is possible any of us move forward, day to day.
Life, however, is not just strange and terrible; it is also punctuated by moments of such power, to which we assign a variety of words such as love and grace and even beauty, they can come close to breaking us. It is often suggested that the power of beauty and love are so much greater than evil is demonstrated precisely because such moments are rare and brief.  Imagine, if you will, existing for all time in that single moment when you held your new-born child in your arms for the first time. Or perhaps that eternal second when you gazed in to the eyes of the first person for whom you felt real, honest love.

Even speaking of the possibility of the existence of such moments leaves us struggling to find the words to do them justice; they become smaller, somehow, less vital if we try to describe them, or even narrate them. The world is more than just the terrors we know far too well. It is also, occasionally so filled with joy and wonder we can find ourselves staggering to grasp the events we have experienced. 

The human need to understand the world as best we can, a survival strategy all living creatures possess to some degree or other in order to succeed, includes an ability, unique to Homo sapiens sapiens (so far as we can know), to experience singular events as qualitatively distinct in a way for which our normal means of communication has only limited descriptive power. We speak of them as ineffable, perhaps; transcendent is another word, implying that for all their uniqueness, their singularity in time and space they also, in some way we cannot understand, spread beyond those moments, filling much of the rest of our lives with some kind of meaning that is, yet, beyond our ability to articulate. Beauty, joy, the peace that comes with sharing a moment with a beloved Other, love - these are things that, in whatever form they present themselves, offer the opportunity to say, "Yes" even in the midst of all the clamoring voices demanding only "No" as a response.

After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.

Wallace Stevens

For all that there are strange and terrible things in our Universe, perhaps a near infinity we cannot even imagine yet, to concede either to ignorance or fear the final judgment on these matters is an act not only of moral and existential cowardice; it is an act of singular, perhaps even purposeful, amnesia. Even as death takes our loved ones, sometimes a bit at a time, are we going to yield the field in the face of those moments, much shorter by some temporal measure of events, that nevertheless weigh as much in the scale as these drawn out times of pain and loss and suffering? We human beings have a gift, as I say, unique in the Universe. We can experience joy and beauty so powerful it leaves us shaking, mute in our attempts to convey the events and their import, yet assured that existence, for all its terrors, also holds moments that defy our sometimes overwhelming preference to give in to fear. 

Stripped of the slightly indigo prose, love and beauty and joy exist as much as hatred and ugliness and sorrow; these experiences of the better things life has to offer are so fleeting precisely because of the immense power they hold, the danger that power poses to our equanimity. Human beings can survive long bouts of depression; I do believe living too long in those moments when happiness overwhelms us would leave us a husk, unable to function.

Understanding this reality was a necessary part of coming to grips with my changing understanding of the world. Even something as technical as physics contains a kind of beauty that cannot be reduced to equations or their interpretation. All of life shares in this singular quality: From the array of experiences and events through which we human beings live, we find meaning and purpose, always with the occasional surprise that at any moment, something that breaks the bounds of our ability to make clear may yet occur. We may be left shaken by the experience, but it will always remain with us, these defining moments that escape our ability to define.

Behaving Badly

Monday was graduation at my seminary alma mater. The commencement address was given by the President of The University of Notre Dame.

So of all the questions posed in this campaign season -- the most important one is rarely asked. Now, when the country is increasingly diverse, when the number of disputed moral questions is rising, when citizens have deep and opposing passions that neither side will give up for the sake of civility -- Can citizens of the United States learn to express their convictions in more skillful, more respectful ways?

"Neither side will give up for the sake of civility". Right there is the nub. "Civility", whatever else it might mean, has somehow been elevated as a high social good; that people hold passionate, convicted views on any number of issues is nothing compared to the demand that we not let these passions override the need for civility.

What a load of crap.

With all due respect to the Rev. John Jenkins, CSC, I fail to see how some arbitrary understanding of "civility" overrides other social goods. Like, oh, social justice and compassion. Or maybe racial justice and economic democracy. Perhaps the multiple violations of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights from government intrusion by both the Bush and Obama Administrations are important, but nearly as important as being civil? Seriously? At what point did it become more important that we disagree without rancor than pursuing justice? At what point did we suddenly understand it was a far better social good not to get all upset when some people say things that violate what others feel are basic social or personal moral rules? Why, if I may be so blunt, should I be civil with those who advocate positions that I find not only socially disruptive but morally reprehensible?

Then, of course, there's the construction in which this is set. "Neither side" will yield, therefore both sides - because there seem to be only two sides - are equally at fault. Never mind Nixon's Southern Strategy, combined with the demand for "law and order" were little more than continuing the politics of racial division, but expanding them beyond the borders of the old Confederacy. Never mind the decades in which people critical of this or that policy of the United States government were not only in error, but enemies of the state. Never mind the on-going vilification of the incumbent President for his race, the religion of his father (in which he was educated for a time); the insistence that his politics pose not only a danger to the smooth operation of the economy, but are actively antithetical to our traditions and principles and laws. All this, and so much more, did not emerge from "both sides".

This odd point-of-view, that we all have to play nice in the sandbox of the public square, even when some who wish to play by the rules are constantly harassed by a band of bullies who will stop at nothing to take the sandbox for themselves, believing it to be theirs and theirs alone, is not limited to persons in positions of authority like President Jenkins. An FB friend, a United Methodist minister in Indiana, made a point of calling out "hateful" comments on a story about Sen. Richard Lugar's defeat in the Republican primary on Tuesday. The problem is, the comments in question just aren't that hateful. While there is certainly a certain amount of disdain sprinkled with sarcasm, in particular at the notion that Lugar, facing his first serious primary challenge in his career, wasn't up to the task of actually campaigning, there is nothing hateful about them. Yet, as the op-ed in question makes clear, a career like Lugar's isn't necessarily a good thing, particularly in a participatory democracy. Not only should Lugar's age, 79, be a legitimate issue for voters, but far more generally it's a good thing that folks challenged him. Our politics had become sclerotic not least because the same people held the same offices year and year after year. Lugar, for example, first won election to the United States Senate when the parents of children voting for the first time this year were in grade school. I do believe, for all that he deserves the thanks of a grateful state for his years of service, being defeated in a primary is hardly a sign of the decline of the West. Chiding Lugar for his complacency isn't "hateful". It's just politics.

I am quite tired of calls for civility in our public discourse. For some reason, it is believed that if we disagree with an air of comity, that might lead to a willingness to act in the nation's best interests. This belief, shared not least by our current President who continues to act as if giving the Republicans something will induce them to return the favor, is demonstrably false. Yet, here it is yet again, on display as a prominent cleric and academic advises matriculating seminarians to observe the rules of civility, even when faced by opponents who share none of our social, political, or moral priorities. 

Seriously. No.

It is far better to speak our minds, even if this violates someone's notion of "civility", than it is to adhere to these rules (whatever they might be) for one simple reason: People disagree about stuff. These disagreements are important, because they impact our lives, the lives of our fellow citizens, and the state of the nation as a whole. Disagreements get ugly because people care about these things a great deal. It would be nice, I suppose, if folks who honestly and fervently believe that gay marriage will destroy the social fabric of the United States and those who think a country that discriminates against a class of citizens for no reason justifiable under law is not only acting against its principles but promoting ongoing bigotry and even violence against some of its citizens could sit down, agree to disagree, and try to work something out. They can't, however, because, however you come down on the matter of same-sex marriage, your opponent promotes a position that violates one's sense of personal and social morality. How is civility possible?

How is waving goodbye to a politician who many feel outstayed his welcome "hateful"? Did anyone in the comments linked above accuse Lugar of a crime, accuse him of some horrid violation of moral conduct? Are there accusations not rooted in fact about Lugar's personal background, political philosophy, or actions as a United States Senator? Had any of those things appeared, I might go along with the description. As they stand now, though, I found the comments slightly amusing, and rooted in notions with which I share some agreement. If that makes me "hateful", then I suppose I'll wear the badge with pride. When simple disagreement, and the fact that important matters are sometimes discussed with volume and emotional involvement, become social vices, I do believe the cure is worse than the alleged disease.

Here There Be Monsters: Notes Toward A Medium Opus XI

If you don't think there are horrors among us, check this out:

 The parasite, Leucochloridium paradoxum, takes over not only the physiognomy of the snail, but its behavior, leaving the snail vulnerable to predators in order for the parasite to continue its reproductive cycle. The first time I heard about this, I was terrified. Not quite as disquieting as the previously mentioned parasitic wasps - the eggs are hatched inside a caterpillar and, when they hatch, devour it from the inside out; I once watched two burst out of a large, green caterpillar on a tomato plant in our garden in Virginia, not the most pleasant experience - but certainly disquieting. Evolving together, the flatworm had developed the ability to strip the snail of its usual behavioral patterns in order to further its reproductive ends. There is just something unnerving at the thought of a creature taking over another in this way.

It was watching some documentary on parasites when it all started to come together for me. There are monsters in this world, and they are not unearthly horrors or supernatural beings. They, like us, are creatures who have evolved strategies to survive and thrive at the expense of other creatures. This is a nice description of some more things that could make anyone uneasy.

They aren't the only monsters on the planet.

The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans—at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. The murders are so named because two of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor, with a third grave also being discovered there in 1987, over 20 years after Brady and Hindley's trial in 1966. The body of a fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also suspected to be buried there, but despite repeated searches it remains undiscovered.

Brady and Hindley recorded one of their victims, a sixteen year old girl, begging for her life, screaming in horror at the things they did to her.  They would sit and listen to the tape as sexual foreplay.

Then, there are the monsters that gather in packs.

In the light of long-established and heavily "gendered" strategies of intercommunal conflict in the Balkans, it was hardly surprising that the gender-selective massacre of non-combatant males would emerge as the dominant and most severe atrocity inflicted on the civilian population in the modern Balkans wars. Regardless of their often-atrocious maltreatment of other population groups (including the destruction of entire cities and the mass rape of women), Serb forces -- and to a lesser extent Croats and Muslims -- concentrated their attention systematically on "battle-age" men. As the Bosnian Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic described the Serb strategy in 1996, "Wherever they [the Serbs] captured people, they either detained or killed all the males from 18 to 55 [years old].

While the line from parasites to psychopaths to genocide might seem nonexistent, it was in fact the parasites that convinced me the link exists. After reading Mayr, I went back and read both The Origin of Species and The Voyage Of The Beagle. Then, I perused various of Gould's articles from Natural History. This late education in the surprising and marvelous details of the contemporary theory of evolution not only tamped by enthusiasm for some broader, comprehensive "philosophy of science". It also demonstrated that, by and large, all the odd phenomena for which we continually assigned some odd, metaphysical source - whether it was comets bringing disaster; illness brought on by an invasion of creatures; the destruction of whole populations for political reasons - were little more than instances of events for which mundane explanations existed.

It is a commonplace of discussions in the history of ideas that the emergence of the mechanical understanding of the universe, then the theory of evolution by natural selection "disenchanted the world." No longer a domain where causes for events included unseen spiritual forces, the world and the larger universe all became little more than puzzles to solve, questions that would yield answers without an appeal to invisible beings or moral forces that had been, up until then, reified in everything from the plague to the famous Lisbon earthquake in 1755. Not only was the world a place open to human understanding; the ability to understand the world through the various tools human beings had developed had removed the sense of wonder and awe from the phenomena under investigation. No longer beautiful points of light in the night sky that form pictures as we gaze upward, the telescope revealed thousands, tens of thousands, more such lights, which were discrete objects an unknown distance from us, similar in kind to the sun we human beings see each day. Nothing marvelous about that, right?

Rather than the punishment, just or not, for sins known or unknown from the hand of God, diseases and other natural disasters were removed from the arena of moral casuistry and set down, firmly and fully, within the world as events to be studied, phenomena to be understood and, as Bacon pointed out, if understood they could be controlled. We no longer live in a world filled with agents of evil who manipulate objects, animals, people, or even nations to pursue whatever nefarious purposes they might desire. It's just stuff. It's animals, even creepy animals, living their lives as they've evolved over the millennia; we no longer need to wonder if, say, an earthquake struck a city, killing even those nominally faithful when the roofs of their churches collapsed upon them (a point in the discussions over the theodicy of the Lisbon earthquake) that might be some kind of judgment upon the dead. It's just the plates that make up the earth's crust, jerking loose after getting stuck together. The jolts are pretty horrific. They are not, however, a judgment from God.

Ours is a world no longer filled with monsters, at least in some transcendent sense.

The one joker in this deck of disenchantment, it has always seemed to me, is the infinite capacity human beings possess to visit massive violence on other human beings. While we may be able to remove all sorts of natural occurrences, from disease to the occasional disaster, from the realm of moral judgment and metaphysical causation, surely the existence both of individuals and groups willing not only to cause massive pain and suffering but to take pleasure in it leaves room for transcendent evil. A realm exists, it seems, in which our moral judgments, emotional responses, and the facts of the matter justify not only some kind of juridical determination of moral viciousness, but the implication that the source lies outside the normal range of human action. While horrifying, parasites are nothing more than critters doing what critters do, living out their lives. Whether the individual or paired psychopath killing for sport or sexual release or simple joy, or a political organization that uses mass death and terror as a tool of policy, how is it possible to understand these events without an appeal to external, metaphysical evil?

Part of the problem with this question is confusing our obvious and justifiable revulsion at the persons responsible for these events, and our refusal to place such monstrous events within the realm of human possibility, which results in the insistence that no human being would act these ways without an impetus from outside. Except, of course, the acts these individuals perform are intelligible within wholly natural categories of understanding. Disgust at the acts is certainly understandable; excluding those who perform such deeds from the human race, calling them "monsters", creating an unbridgeable gap between them and the rest of us in order to insulate ourselves from the corollary that flows from the insistence that these acts are both intelligible and fully human. If these are people just like us - although, perhaps in the case of the psychopathic or sociopathic murderer missing something key in their emotional make-up - then what separates us from them? Are we capable of such terrifying acts against our fellow human beings? Sad to say, frightening even, the answer is yes.

While there is nothing wrong with pronouncing some kind of moral judgment upon the individuals and groups involved in such deeds, we must be cautious not to separate them from the realms of possible human action, agents not of psychological dysfunction or political calculation but rather of forces from some agent of outside evil. The category error here is clear: the line connecting the parasitic worms, serial killers, and politically motivated mass death is just this: they are "natural" occurrences, wholly intelligible within categories and frames of reference that need no external, metaphysical source for our innate revulsion.

Dragging The Monsters Into The Light

I've never spoken about this, but I had occasional bouts of insomnia as a child. Nothing major or disruptive. Just, once in a while, I'd awaken at three-thirty or four in the morning and, unable to sleep, would pull the chain on my lamp and reach for a book. I had the top part of an old Hoosier cabinet converted in to book shelves, on which sat among many titles, The Little King, The Little Queen, and The Little Monster, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and Where The Wild Things Are.

While the first two stories had their charms, it was Sendak's marvelous tale of a little boy who conquers the monsters who inhabit his room at night that always had pride of place. Not that my childhood was a time of monsters. On the contrary, I think I was a cossetted, if not spoiled, child, with a large area of security around me provided by parents who pushed and prodded in many areas, all the while giving me time and space to be a child. Far from a place filled with worry and fear, my room at night was a space of comfort and safety; in this, I now know, I was in a distinct minority. Far too many children, when the light goes out at night, see and hear in the darkness far too many disturbing, hurtful things. Sendak's refusal to sweep this aspect of childhood under the rug, but face it head on, perhaps in the process offering children the tools for beginning to gain control over those parts of their lives that only came out after dark, is among the masterful acts of artistic courage in our lifetimes.

With his passing, Sendak has left us not only the marvelous creatures who inhabit their own land, ruled over by a child who refuses to be cowed by them, but a large legacy of children's literature that never once flinched from telling children the often painful truth that the world is a difficult, sometimes even horrible place. All the same, it is a place where children, who are and understand themselves to be among the most powerless people nevertheless have resources to confront these ugly realities. Perhaps, given time and imagination and courage, they can even master them. We offer our children great possibilities when we hand them works of literature like this, works that do more than just entertain. Through the power of Sendak's prose and images, we tell children that the dark need not be feared, but can in fact be conquered on their own terms.

Adults forget the many fears children face, the way a whole new world comes in to existence when the light switch is flicked and the door snicks shut at night. Sendak remembered, though. Rather than reassure children with the unknowable comfort of adult realities (I tell my girls all the time, "There's nothing in the dark that isn't there in the light."; surely a sign I, too, have forgotten what it means to lie huddled under a blanket because of a noise, a passing shadow, or sad to say, far worse), he offered them a way through the fear to the possibility of freedom and that most elusive and dreamed-of adult state of affairs: control over the things that terrify us.