Environment as Home, as Whole

As part of defining environmentalism and radical environmental politics for my unwieldy Prosem/potential thesis project, I wanted to start with a discussion of environment and what it is about environment that people can get riled up about, what incites people to political action with intense feeling. After our most recent Prosem session, I had a discussion with one of my friends in the class about conceiving of the utter devastation caused to our planet over time, but especially since the incipience of industrialization, and about ways of understanding this depletion of resources, this havoc, so completely, in its grand scale, so much so that particular behaviors result and certain actions are taken to change that regrettable reality slowly, starting at an acutely personal level. She was worried that she couldn't picture water scarcity and water wars, especially affecting her, because water flows so freely, amongst regions, and so resource shortages of water are only evident in large scale, at least at present. But she admitted she already turns off the shower to lather, that she thinks about these things, that she's very aware of the issues. So it seemed that the real issue was conceiving of all environmental problems as a whole, viewing the environment holistically, seeing the connections, and therefore finding behaviors that can address these issues through multi-pronged approaches, covering several issues through one action, simplifying the intricate map of environmental havoc into a plan of action that is realistic, understandable, not quite so overwhelming as the problems themselves, in order that by not being overwhelming itself it won't go the way of the apathy that only contributes to the problem itself. I didn't know how to summarize such a simplification, where to start, so I'm picking up with the writing I did a month and a half ago, that I might eventually extract the main points, find the embarking point I can use when talking with others, without going speechless because I don't even know where to begin. With a note of caution that this is composed mostly of convoluted half-notes, here, then, is that earlier writing...

On Environmental Concerns. Due to the nature of human environment, that confluence of factors pertaining to the quality and safety of the air, water, soil, plant (matter) and animal species we encounter, weather patterns and geologic forces and formations that act upon and restrict us, as well as the quality and pattern of these factors when recombined by humans into our built environments, the politics, activism, ethics, and concerns issuing thereof/”therefrom" must address the totality of these factors, must take into account not isolated aspects but the whole of the unique sphere where they converge and form this very fascinating confluence, this wholeness, entirety, this entity, a swirling biosphere, that gives us life, nurtures and nourishes us.

The holistic approach I propose must be meticulously detailed, no doubt. In the process of outlining/elucidating/describing the necessary changes to our outlook, our mindsets (who is our?), changes we must make in order to strive toward this holistic approach, and introducing it into the mainstream environmental discourse on concerns and their accompanying policy suggestions, so as to influence/redirect the future dialogue about, and current flow of, environmental discourse, I hope to address the up-til-now, as-of-now silent issues and unnoticed-or-unknown philosophies of human (and) environment, to change the flow of discourse on this thoroughly weighty subject. I hope, also, to bridge the canon of Western philosophy and the young, seedling cannon of primitivist writing/ideology/thought, and especially to patch current intellectuals’ potholes/shortcomings/gaps on the topic of (radical) environmental politics.

What is radical environmental politics or what should it be, should it include, should it mean? Technically, taking into account the essence of the etymological anatomy of the word, it has to do with roots, which by definition then places the purview of radical environmental politics with the nutrient-channels that nourish living organisms/systems, which is a delightful allegory for contextualizing our discussion. Either it is a politics from the ground up, from the grass roots, or even better, it is a politics concerned with the very nourishment that categorizes/ epitomizes/encapsulates/ bases/roots/positions/situates the human environment totality/wholeness in its live-giving, nutrient solution; in its own definition, its most appropriate context, it essentializes our initial term, reduces it down to its essentials, the nourishment that is the core of human environment, of its meaning.

Often, due to the fairly recent phenomenon of greenwashing, we hear sound bytes from politicians and interviewable activists, those acceptable by the commercial media, who discuss singular focuses that cannot, in fact, be separated from the totality of human environment and the concerns that it generates on the whole. For instance, you might hear Barack Obama (or T. Boone Pickens, for that matter-- take your pick) discussing alternative energy in the form of wind power; Al Gore supra-publicizing global warming (Is it for his own gain? But how? Think harder if you don’t see it!); PETA protesting animal rights abuses; elementary school classrooms creating naïve posters about saving water or not polluting the air; protesters trespassing on military bases in attempts to protest nuclear armament and space warfare strategy conferences; mainstream supermarkets, including the not-really-a-supermarket infamous chain, Walmart, introducing organic/green living sections into their layouts; Apple Computers boasting the remedied/lowered/mediated/reduced/mitigated toxicity of their re-released iPhone product; or any famous office supply chain raving about their 10% post-consumer waste recycled paper products. None of these are actual accomplishments or that pressing of concerns (since the real priorities are more systemic, more likely to address multiple issues at once).

What are the implications of this view? Well, for one thing, guilt-laden middle class, moderately educated consumers, corralled by this guilt-weight into precisely programmed product/consumption decisions, can drop that weight, free themselves of the guilt, and no longer face the seeming necessity of their anxiety/worry/fear of impending environmental doom, as the supposedly logical next step in the unfolding/progression of culminating and ever-worsening environmental catastrophes and disasters appears to be. But, if this is the end result for the nascent “worrying class,” the renunciation of their ever-upward-spiraling anxiety, how should we feel? And what should we be prioritizing? How can we adapt our thinking to both the immensity/immediacy/gravity and the truth of the situation to best suit/facilitate the development/brainstorming of solutions? What are the real issues, the meatiest solutions, the most relevant concepts/thought processes/thought patterns/communication frameworks/mindsets we must elucidate, study, analyze, focus on, employ, utilize? How do we best respond, think, and act on the contemporary environmental situation, especially if it doesn’t hold any weight aside from that which we (however naïvely or unnecessarily) assign to it?

Since my concern doesn't entirely pivot around the accuracy or urgency of the issues that the prominent voices of the greenwashing movement bring up, I am still interested in discussing the role and force of global warming, recycling, alternative energy, toxicity of electronics, organic food, frugal lifestyle, etc.. But because I have been corrupted by philosophers from an early age, I see immense value in revealing the assumptions implicit in these alarm-causing issues (Cradle-to-Cradle design points out that recycling is just pointless downcycling; global warming alarmism relies on excluding scientific findings that look at geologic time, at the cyclical nature of Ice Ages, and that aren't compelled by a fear of any change to contemporary lifestyles to show that life on earth will end if, say, we don't buy carbon offsets--life on earth as we know it in our culture might end, but that really isn't such a big deal, in fact is perhaps a blessing; raw food advocates deny that cooked food was ever beneficial to peoples inside or outside of destructive civilization, etc.). If we start there, we actually have a stabler foundation from which to work because we aren't basing our actions on bogus notions.

As I just described my interest in still addressing the disparate issues that alarmists of environmental doomsday will highlight to the exclusion of any other issues in the whole of the environmental system, including human actions resulting from resource shortages (such as initiatives for feeding the starving children across the globe or turning to violence in Haiti because of extreme deforestation), etc., I want to share the elements of environmental politics and policy I wish to address in my future analysis of what a holistic environmental approach to world problems will look like. These elements include any (and, I hope, all) of the following, and most likely others that will crop up as I go:

Guerilla gardening, environmental terrorism- as separate from; ecovillages, communes; landscaping – misguided efforts; going off grid; beekeeping- colony collapse disorder/die offs/g.e. crops/ Monsanto/ research university politics; tree sitting; women's cooperatives; over-population? assumptions, resources, exponential growth, etc.; reservations, national parks, wildlife preserves, adverse effects; local currency/timeshares; child care- child rearing; radical environmental education as resistance?; biking/commuting/etc., walking; plant medicine versus pharmaceutical giants/mega-corporations – patenting, resistance; water wars; deforestation; conflicts over resources; environmental racism; toxicity – e.p.a. – prioritizing – superfund sites – remediation or lack thereof, activism, politics associated with those touchy subjects; gentrification or white flight keep good housing from being affordable housing; lack of parks, good parks, safe parks, ecological parks, green spaces, in many places; suburbs; community gardens; community building-organizing; natural building versus building codes – what is safe; nuclear armament, proliferation, Nevada test site, protesting; government and Our Stolen Future- hormone disrupters; carcinogens, toxins all around us; shade grown versus not; fair trade, free trade, resources, social justice, economic justice, well-being, disparities, safety, etc.; religious intolerance and links to resource availability, conflict, first world/third world widening gap; trash – artistic responses – recycling – cradle to cradle – waste – design – cycle – interconnections – upcycling, etc., good design; nature deficit disorder versus attention deficit disorder, education, education facilities, education methods; over-harvesting of fish, wildlife; air quality, indoor air quality – circulation – “death chamber” office buildings; fast food; good, healthy food unaffordable (if unaffordable for anyone, something must be horribly wrong, no?--I have some ideas what that horribly wrong is...); mental health, psychiatric facilities, pharmaceutical companies; symptomatic versus allopathic medicine; peak oil; solar cookers versus wood stoves; biodiesel, ethanol- politics of, economics of, lack of sustainability but impulse actions because assumed benefit of sustainability?; e-waste; feminine hygiene product waste; drug trafficking and monoculture, economy, health, delusion; needless waste; nuclear power, "clean" coal, etc.; plastic-paper-glass packaging etc.; animal rights -- popular and unknown (hermit crabs killed for medicine, etc.); birth control; healthy, drug-free, safe, "human" birth; orphanages around the world, what forces create orphans, adoption and well-being, home, resources, family and opportunities; conservation; "invasive" species; “whole” foods; nutrition – supplements; vegetarianism and cars, carbon footprint reduction; natural disasters, bad design, humanitarian aid, inaction, callousness, responses, solutions, minimizing devastation, assumptions about human life, resources; global slave trade and resources, health, children, women, social justice, earth as home, earth as unsafe home.......

Keep reading: Environment as Home, as Whole...

Turning Twenty, Turning Pages

Two weeks ago I turned twenty. I wrote about it a some days before the event, and my writing then is still indicative of the feeling of urgency I have about it:

I’m turning old, as in twenty, soon. For the last four and a half years of my life, somewhere between one fifth and one quarter of my life, my days have been, in a way, side-swept/cheapened by a peculiar phenomenon called, I suppose, not getting over myself, not accepting incontrovertible forks in the road. It has got to stop. I cannot live any more of my life in that way. If nothing else, apparently I must make some kind of way for myself in the world, must have an outlook that builds me up as I go rather than undermining me at critical moments or multi-dimensionally.

After all, I have spent my adolescence fearing that I would be lonely forever. As it turns out, this is an unlikely prospect. I have dated three rather interesting and mostly pleasant guys (when dating them, at least) in the last five years, nevermind that two were related. I have no idea where I go from there, where the threads of various relationships will take me, but at least I've learned a lesson in the extremism of self-pity.

I want the next, mirroring twenty years of my life to look entirely distinct from the last, tragic set. It has taken a rather protracted amount of time to make that observation, but it really has been tragic, and it is not surprising I have suffered much melancholy as a result in that time (Ahem. Editor's note: This pronouncement is obviously pre-birthday biased in favor of emphasizing the negative). Many unhappy circumstances have shaped my life up 'til now; I have made a great many mistakes/social blunders, stepped on people’s toes, insulted many, lived my life in somewhat socially unacceptable ways…and I cannot forgive myself.

I have bitten my nails to the brink of extinction; I haven't done as well in academic situations as I might have wished; and as I said, I have made many choices differently than many people expected me to make them, the social unacceptability of which, of many of these behaviors/actions, constantly calls into question my justification for doing so.

I have challenged my worldview many times, feared and tried to avoid solidifying my views by the time I maneuvered out of my teens, but instead I do have some solid views, including some solid views on perpetually questioning those views, a quirk that might at least, for some time yet, help to carry a younger person's lack of stubbornness with me for several more years, at advantage to me against my less open-minded peers. I’ve had some strange, half-fortuitous, spectacular, entertaining, though mostly unusual, moments in my life, but the cumulative effect is utterly unfulfilling. And that overall tenor to my life is precisely what I wish to break with for the next twenty years.

So what exactly do I want to happen in those two decades? I want to return to Brasil, to work and live there. I want to have children and raise them unfailingly continuum. I want to travel again. I want to publish different kinds of works (as in different genres, for different audiences). I want to provide for other people the kind of hope, support, care, attention, love, assurance that I felt resentment for not having in mine, and why not? How great is it if I can create that which doesn’t exist, if I can take what dissatisfies me and do something with it to enhance the lives of others, making mine better in the process, especially in the satisfaction of knowing that some of my behavior helped to steer others away from the paths I’ve been down in the urban landscape of melancholy?!

I want to complete a triathlon. I want to be happy for the most part, counter to the emptiness (though not really sadness) of the last twenty. I want to defend my views/statements well, solidly. I want to love. I want to finally be able to cook delicious meals. I want to write something that I can be proud of. I want to stay on top of things. I want to be successful, productive, but not because I am in search of success. I want to design nurturing, restorative, life-changing landscapes. I want to be a role model, mentor, important person in people’s lives. I want to create communities and ecovillages. I want to bring people together. I want to heal places like Omaha. I want to forgive my family for their failings and then avoid them and their deleterious powers in my life. I want to feel at peace in my own skin, in my own world, with my own decisions, with how things turn out. I want to live fully, simply, joyously.

I have edited and changed some of that writing, but the bulk of it still defines how I feel and what I am striving for or towards. I still feel the same. The last twenty years were mostly not up to me but rather up to my family, which experiences for a large chunk of that time I resented for that very reason. But now it is clear, the next twenty are certainly up to me.

I don't have to go to school if I don't find it valuable or worthwhile. I don't have to move across continents constantly if it seems to me a peculiarly wasteful habit. I don't have to adopt my parents' misanthropic view of their neighbors, their acquaintances, their peers. I don't have to visit random places sporadically, erratically. I can build genuine, lasting connections with people and places. I can break a cycle of familial gloom and dysfunction because I can harness a knowledge unavailable to my mother and her mother, or my father's mother and father, because I can use an inner sensitivity my parents and their progenitors seem to lack. I can create something affirming, beautiful, vibrant, something they are not capable of, something that no mellifluous tinkerings and breathy pipings could--except, of course, if used in ways for good, for something beyond individualistic projects, avenues that they would never think to use. I sound so pessimistic and flippant, and of course there have been pleasant moments with my family, but the recurring attitudes and indications of their beliefs and priorities have seared into my memory. I think of all my mother's scowls, my father's jarring tones, my grandmothers' insensitive words, my aunt's superficial goals, and I see that this need to break off and protect myself from their vapid negativity was decided long ago. It's kind of like getting stuck with the wrong family for your entire life so far. And though I've been jealous of other people's family bonds in recent years, especially their ability to deal with the people who life brought together into socially-recognized families, I have found my surrogates and, more importantly even than having my own semblance of such a socially-recognized family, will create my own tribal family over time. I simply can't give up, which I'm liable to do off and on in the somewhat lonely interim.

The "I'm not getting any younger" mentality is really getting to me. I'm filled with a kind of power surge to get everything done now. Why not? To read voraciously, an art I've never mastered--my readings always slow, pained, and meticulous, and therefore intermittent, infrequently sustained; to write intensely, constantly, spilling my ideas out of my cluttered head; to create what I want to see in the world not forty years from now but at this very moment...I didn't expect turning twenty to be much more than a lamentable aging milestone. Yet here I am, uncovering an energetic potential for manifesting goodness and hospitality that wasn't accessible to me before. I just don't know how long it will last until I crumble into a paralysis of indecision all over again. I mean, I expect that from myself, to move cyclically through my tumultuous emotions. My only hope, then, is that the energetic periods sustain themselves longer and occur more frequently than the fretting, immobile ones.

So...how did I actually spend my birthday, you ask? Well, the day before my birthday, a Sunday, my boyfriend took me to a restaurant serving Portuguese/Brasilian cuisine. The decor of the place was exquisite! There were brilliant (as in brilla - Spanish; brilhante - Portuguese) murals on the walls, depicting social dances, fishermen at sea, couples at dinner. They were painted in very earthy hues, but the dancers had bright clothing in reds and whites. Just a lovely surrounding to situate myself for a birthday dinner. I had sardines (which I tried to share with Peter, but he's a picky eater!), caldo verde, beans and rice, and mariscada (Peter took a hilarious snapshot of me on his iPhone, with me wearing a silly and childish plastic bib with a goofy lobster printed on it). I've tried being a vegetarian before, but I struggle with finding a way to balance my anthropological interest in meat and fish and an ethical position about animal rights and shrunken ecological footprints (because apparently the greatest environmental actions we can take in our society are renouncing cars and meat, a view I'm starting to find more than a little problematic!). What I can say for myself is that Peter and I looked up on the iPhone Safari the list of good, bad, and so-so fish to eat/not to eat. Check it out here. Apparently, the Monterey Bay Aquarium keeps more detailed guides by region. Also, if you're ever in the disgustingly well-to-do Westchester County, definitely make sure to dine at Aquario.

I spent much of the week of my birthday working on a brand-new Bookstore Blog for my favoritest bookstore ever, aside from fixing up the bookstore's website pages (not updating time-specific information, however, since I'm so far away and no longer involved in the daily life of the store; though perhaps I should have made some long-overdue information changes...but I barely had enough time that week, as it was!). My favorite part, of course, being the visually rich Holy Hardware page. Buying local (even if local is a long-distance loyalty) definitely adds up. Buying from Amazon, not so much. I'm really excited to have some more time to add other fabulous features to the website, such as a mini-catalogue of our incredible selection of meaningful children's books, a record of our resources for those interested in simple living, as well as adding even more photos and product information to the site. The thing is, I'd have to go home for that (to take photos, to come up-to-date with changes at the store and with new titles and items, to hang out in one of my favorite spaces in the world, with some of my favorite people and dog, etc.), and oh, how much I would like to do so! I just don't know when that will be possible. And I crumble in jealousy for those well-off folks who don't even have to think twice about arranging flights home, for vacation, etc.. Maybe I'm beyond hope, maybe I actually can't change for the better?

I'll try to keep up my spirits, my momentum and live within the exhilaration of having a hand in the crafting of the next twenty years of my life. If I'm lucky, I won't even recognize my current self, my current sour attitudes and sulking moods, my habitual languor and mediocracy, when I get there. I hope this new-found energy overtakes that prevalent sluggishness and that unnecessary pity-partying. And so a toast: To luck and momentum!

Keep reading: Turning Twenty, Turning Pages...

"We Don't Buy Adultery Offsets"

In Prosem today, when carbon offsets came up, I chimed in, "Yeah, we don't buy adultery offsets," and I mentioned that it's just a weird concept because of the implications. It doesn't make sense. Regardless, I, too, used to be a naïve supporter of this ridiculous notion, feeling guilty about my plane flight to Brasil three and a quarter years ago, knowing that I still needed to plant approximately 10 trees to make up for my carbon contribution or pay someone else to do it. I've since abandoned my support for the concept, and so have others, others who thought up the adultery offset idea for me:

Peter Schweizer's USA Today op-ed, "Offset Away Our Guilt: If we can buy 'carbon offsets' for our environmental missteps, why not for our others sins?"

Peter Schweizer's NPR interview

In trying to dig up (on google) the earliest comparisons of carbon offsets to adultery offsets, to try to figure out when I first heard the idea from my boyfriend, I not only found an interesting statement ("Critics of carbon offsets have compared them to the medieval sale of indulgences...Trouble is, the adultery is still committed, and the carbon is still pumped into the atmosphere. The only tangible benefit is that the sinner feels good about it.") at this Canadian Buddhist monk's blog (not bad of its own accord) but also this Media Matters article about a Fox News commentator who was making comparisons, along with a guest (also backed by a multi-million dollar corporation with definite interests in not changing the status quo on what might be causing climate change), of the two kinds of offsets as early as July 2007, which either means that Schweitzer snagged/nabbed the idea from the guest, Chris Horner, or was simply thinking along the lines of those critics who found an easy comparison to that severely out-dated commodity, indulgences.

The funny thing, of course, though certainly not at all out of character, is that the Fox News commentator bashed Al Gore for frequently buying offsets but abstained from criticizing his own boss, Rupert Murdoch, for intending to make Fox News Corporation "carbon neutral" by 2010--so it's all about whatever sells, right?, not about reality, both in Fox News Land and in Carbon Offset Land?

Incidentally...On the NPR website, I discovered an appalling thing. You can listen to just about any recorded NPR moment for free, straight from your computer, just as you could from your car or your alarm-radio or your living room stereo. But suppose you are deaf. You'd also like the benefit of accessing NPR's wealth of data, thanks to the feats of the digital age. You go to the NPR website and find news articles and talks you would like to be privy to. You click on the teeny black print, "Transcript," to the right. Then you suddenly discover that you must either choose to pay $3.95 for every story that interests you or pay for a $12.95 monthly subscription to their transcript services. How pathetic and cruel is that? If you can hear, NPR is free, but if you're deaf and have to pay extra expenses for all kinds of things as it is, NPR costs a fortune. Thanks, NPR, for making program-listeners automatically implicated in such injustices. I know that at least for election speeches, CNN will also provide transcripts of talks that are mentioned in articles on their website--free. NPR certainly accrues costs to pay for transcribers, but what about their web developers, their web-audio service providers, their broadcasting crews? They don't pass those costs along to radio listeners or web listeners. They use advertising. Hence, to force such hefty costs on deaf people ($155.40 a year) is ridiculously unfair, and I can't imagine any decent justification for their behavior. Obvious conclusion? NPR should offer transcripts freely just as they do audio.

Keep reading: "We Don't Buy Adultery Offsets"...

Postmodernism (question mark)

I recently was asked a very simple question that nevertheless blindsided me. I initially wanted to include my response here as a simple Q&A, but in the interest of the well-rounded dialogue I'm always talking about these days, well-rounded in that it is open and clearly communicated, I think I'd rather include the actual conversation, especially since it models so nicely the disclosure of motive that I'm so passionate about furthering in academic circles.

Actually, I've already written about this incident for Proseminar, stating,

"I wanted to hear about Dubois as a thinker and Reed’s perspective on him. Class discussion gave us a sense of Reed’s background, sort of, and then plunged into a definition of double consciousness (I liked one senior's answer that asking Rockers to define double consciousness was like asking us to define postmodernism; while I think double consciousness actually isn’t that hard to explain, I resonated with the assertion about postmodernism; a friend from the Midwest asked me to define it earlier in the week because she kept reading about it in anthropology articles but had no idea what it referred to; I penned, well, typed, an explanation, but I wonder if I even captured it at all, or accurately…planning on blogging the questions and my answers, as well as my concerns about the proper way to go about defining such a daunting term), and finally emerged with some dialogue about the canon."

The conversation, which, of all spaces, unfolded through facebook (uff):

Maria: "this is entirely random, and i'm sorry. late night + long paper + caffeine = are you a post-modernist?"

me: "Random entirely okay. Long nights, lots of homework, and caffeine = my life right now, too. I read a lot of writing for my classes that assumes a postmodernist viewpoint. I took a class on Foucault, and related thinkers get referenced a lot in class discussions (also at panels at the APSA politics conference I had to attend the first week of school). I did read and discuss a short piece by Bruno Latour the other day about actor-network theory--apparently we've never been modern? But I'm not really sure where I stand. I don't really know if I keep a fixed position with the different -isms. I try (trying being a hopelessly helpless kind of thing) to analyze arguments individually, on their own merits, logics, and weak points/strong points. I'm spending so much time figuring out what matters to me and what I think in relation to the swirl of thoughts in the world (academic and otherwise) that I can't say what I "am" as far as fitting into an -ism. But I can talk about postmodernism, sure."

Maria: "alright! to clarify: i have not the slightest idea what post-modernism is unless i happen to know it by a different term. far too early sunday morning i was reading an anthropology article that kept mentioning it, and i took a guess that you might know something about it! so if you don't mind, what is it?"

me: "Oh, okay. I'm still trying to parse it out myself, but let's see if I can do it justice. One of my entrance essays four years ago was about modernism and the experience of mystery, after all. This might take two installments--sorry I'm so wordy. The problem is that there are about a gazillion ways to define modern; apparently the Romans used the term. Most often, it refers to the period of the last 500 years or so since Columbus explored [or some other, more fitting verb?] his way to the New World. That powerful 1492 journey opened an era of biological genocide, colonialism, chattel slavery, independence movements, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Well, as if the havoc of colonialism and subsequently the colonized throwing off the oppressors wasn't enough drama, the Industrial Revolution gave us the machine gun and helped greatly to produce fleets of trains, planes, and cars, and lots of other brand new items. That's a lot of technology to shake up the world in a short time. And, well, it did.

Archduke Ferdinand is un-fortuitously shot, and off the countries of Europe go, galloping into the Great War, blaming each other for the tragic event. Ungodly amounts of people die. Thank you, machine gun creators (uff!). It's ugly, Europe's a mess, lots of post-traumatic stress disorder. Think Verdun, where plenty of bombs still haven't been dug up. Nobody really knows what happened, how it could be so horrible, what the world is coming to, how rationality, the greatness of Western civilization, could get us to this inhumane point. So you get post-traumatized artists taking up the banner of the German Expressionist art movement. You get Piet Mondrian and Neo-Plasticism. James Joyce's Ulysses. Intellectuals swearing off the apparent greatness of modernity because of the results. And then it happens again. Worldwide depression, widespread panic, Hitler takes advantage of it. The different methods used by the Nazis in the Holocaust are so deadly because of the technology. [Hitler’s staff is very efficient; they time the trains to maximize deportations. The killing squads tear through Poland in very little time.]

World War II, then, changes the nature of the widespread disillusionment. You get Existentialism, Hannah Arendt’s writing, the United Nations. Oh, and a bunch of people swear off God (Where was s/he amidst all this needless suffering and senseless violence? What is god’s ethic?). America emerges as a superpower, props up Europe, which is utterly devastated.

Whatever postmodernism means, as a reaction and casting off of modernism, in its nebulous forms of philosophy, art, literature, history, theory, etc., it attempts to dig deep, to uncover assumptions, to deconstruct, to expose the structure of institutions, to show what is a sham, to tell truths, to find meaning when there doesn’t seem to be much left in the world. Postmodern philosophers write about meaning, semantics, punitive systems, postcolonialism, sexuality, and a lot about power, about who has it, who has agency, and who it objectifies, makes voiceless."

Maria: "alright, that makes a lot of sense with what my anthro class did last week (theories on chimpanzee violence). it'll probably come into play this week, too--we're doing how morality vs. objectivity should be used in research. i love contentious issues classes! and a million thank-yous! i'm certainly not sure where i stand on any of it yet, but this is fun stuff."

me: "Yay! I'm intrigued... please, if you have a moment, will you share a bit about these theories on chimpanzee violence? I'm also interested to hear about your discussions of morality and objectivity as it relates to anthropological research."

Maria: "it's your birthday tomorrow--happy birthday! my brother's birthday is tuesday; he wants me to get him an expensive [Nebraska] hat. weirdo.

the chimpanzee violence stuff is mainly centered around chimpanzee warfare, general primate infanticide, and other such violent displays and whether such behaviors are natural or caused by human influence/pressure. there's even one anthropologist who denies they happen intentionally at all. and, of course, it all ties in to theories of how human warfare and violence evolved, though my class didn't discuss those much.

as for morality and objectivity, postmodernists have a tendency to claim that anthropology, by virtue of devoting itself to the study of human meanings, cannot be objective and therefore is not a science. if it is not an objective science, then it must be a bunch of generalizations lumped together by selfish interests (Western, white, and male are common candidates) to be used for the domination and oppression of minorities.

because oppression and domination are bad, generalizations are also bad, and so is anthropological science. some take this further to say that anthropology therefore has an obligation to take an active political and moral part in deciding issues surrounding native peoples. others disagree. that's a pretty general overview; if you want to know more, [i have a link to the class's website...] or if you want a more detailed overall summary i can send you my reaction papers. they're probably fairly dry, but they cover all the bases in about 4 pgs. my personal stance on each is that chimpanzee violence is natural; human influence in the cases where it applies is only causing natural behaviors that were already evolved to deal with similar stresses. and morality is an objective science; its use of the scientific method assures this as much as it can ensure objectivity for any science.

and i find active political/moral participation in ethnic issues by anthropologists to be at best risky and at worst imperialistic. but that's just me."

The conversation turns more towards the status of anthropology at the end, which is a perfectly adequate topic on its own, which I've been meaning to explore in these virtual pages anyhow, but I will probably be writing more on that later, not now, since there is just not enough time and too much going on.

So? Have I adequately defined the background of the term? I doubt it, since I was mostly just pulling ideas from what I already (think I) know, not intensely researching its etymology and different uses of the term. How would you define it? What would you say must be included to properly contextualize the term postmodernism? A definition of modernism, perhaps, in order to distinguish post-? Which architectural, literary, and otherwise cultural milestones, which historical and scientific shifts must receive mention? How to explain it more simply, differently? What rhetorical devices to use to achieve this aim?

The concerns I mentioned in the beginning about accurate definition center around that constant companion of late, inadequacy. I think it's all too unfortunate that students feel too overwhelmed by disparate threads of information that they can't weave together definitions of the simplest terms. Though it's no good having someone presume that you don't know a term, it is even worse if you actually cannot put it into words, even if simply on your own time, not under heated pressure. Inadequacy's grip cannot paralyze students so completely that they cannot complete even the simplest of academic tasks, reciting definitions. I am not claiming this is in any way an easy feat; I struggle with it myself, but neither do I want Academia to zap me of all the talent I might have. My only other concern is the one expressed above. Because it's such an unprepossessing term that nevertheless refers to a very broad scope, what to include and what to exclude? How do you actually come up with a definition instead of a five-hundred page detailed history? To what extent does it matter what you include? At what point have you lost some sense of sanity, lost some of the word's actual meaning and reach, lost your respectability because you have in some way failed to be honest, failed to stay committed to the truth? And does that matter, either?

Keep reading: Postmodernism (question mark)...

Some Notes on Non-Exclusive Dialogue

Here are some notes that I penned (during tonight's talk) out of the motivation that keeps coming with my frustration:

Conditions for Non-Exclusive Dialogue:

• Simplicity, Clarity, Occam’s Razor applied to logic, sentence structure
  

• Logical foundation: use of arguments with premises and conclusion, not messy thoughts that contradict themselves and perhaps even go on to deny such contradiction, ever so presumptuously; the parliamentary debate system is useful for building this skill for strong, non-cryptic argumentation

• *Vernacular language preferred; specialized language will certainly exclude (I prefer this vocabulary because it doesn’t require what debaters call “spec knowledge,” special knowledge available to a select few)

• Changing the tide: dialogue that includes “normal” people (non-academics) has somehow been debased, degraded, been thrown out of favor, which is unfortunate

*Students shouldn’t feel stupid (my notes confound me even if I return to them an hour after writing them. I can’t remember, but I believe I started writing down this principle based off a related comment made earlier in the day, but nothing in my notes could possibly demystify this for me) and neither should non-students…if we ever want to achieve inclusion, expand the currency of ideas and their usefulness, and yield a smarter population, how would we accomplish that if the majority of people aren’t part of the conversation? There seems to be more potential in a kind of hive mind, lurking in community dynamics, in connection. The World Café technique calls it “collective intelligence,” something acquired by cross-pollinating focused dialogue with other conversations. The technique is incredibly well designed, but there must be other ways to achieve similar purposes, though I don’t think constantly holding cafés, one a day or one a week, would be a bad idea. It might finally bring out the genuine subtext from those withholding it when they speak; if people come into the process humbly, willing to work with its simple rules, then perhaps finally everyone will not only be on the same page, but also more efficient. Perhaps we will even, with a shared purpose, start working towards achieving something remarkable.

Keep reading: Some Notes on Non-Exclusive Dialogue...