The Captured Perspective

There’s a fantastic scene in “Shrek,” featuring Donkey and Shrek discussing the many layers and complexities of an ogre.

Shrek: For your information, there’s a lot more to ogres than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example…ok, um…ogres (looks at onion in hand) are like onions.
Donkey: (Sniffs onion in Shrek’s hand)…they stink?
Shrek: Yes, NO!
Donkey: They make people cry.
Shrek: NO!
Donkey: Oh, you leave ‘em out in the sun; they get all brown, start sprouting little white hairs.
Shrek: NO! Layers! Onions have layers; ogres have layers. Onions have layers…ya get it? We both have layers (Sighs and throws onion to ground in frustration as he strides away.)
Donkey: OH! You both have layers…oh…Ya know, not everybody likes onions…CAKES! (Donkey chases after Shrek.) Everybody loves cakes. Cakes have layers!
Shrek: I DON’T CARE what everyone likes. Ogres are NOT like cakes.
Donkey: You know what else everybody loves? Parfait. Have you ever met a person? You say, “Hey, let’s go get some parfait.” They say, “Lookit here, I don’t like no parfait.” Parfaits are delicious.
Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden. Ogres are like onions. End of story. Bye-bye! (Whispers) See ya’ later.

I include this quote, in large part, because I love the movie Shrek; more importantly, however, I bring it up because it sheds light onto one of the more interesting aspects of Keith Roose’s book, The Unlikely Disciple. You might be asking yourself, didn’t Peter just blog on The Unlikely Disciple? The answer – yes – and you can verify this by quickly scrolling down the page. That being said, Peter didn’t finish the book, and I did (always room for a little friendly brother rivalry). Hopefully, I won’t cover everything that Peter touched upon. Rather I hope you as a reader will gain a little more insight into a rather thought-provoking book, and in turn, discover the many layers of Liberty University.

Peter did an excellent job laying the foundations for the premise of the book. Kevin Roose, sophomore at Brown University, transfered midway through his sophomore year to Liberty University to begin a semester long experiment. Roose, a nominal Quaker raised in a liberal home, yearns to discover what it must be like to live within the bastion of Evangelical culture, Liberty University. Founded by the late Dr. Jerry Falwell in 1971, Liberty started as a fundamentalist Baptist school to train and equip the next generation of Evangelicals. The school has quickly grown from its humble beginnings and is now considered one of the premier institutions for a conservative Christian education.

Liberty University's Law School

Before heading to Liberty for his semester, Roose enlists the help of his friend for a crash course in Evangelicalism – what to say, how to act, what books to read, and so forth. Armed with a variety of Christian devotionals, Roose sets foot on Liberty’s campus ready to begin his “semester abroad”. The semester takes Roose through classes like Evangelism 101, Creationism, Old Testament Bible, Theology, and a variety of other courses geared to stimulate the young Evangelicals. In addition to his course load, Roose joins the Thomas Road Baptist Choir to sing under the lights and camera every Sunday at the megachurch adjacent to Liberty University. Roose takes advantage of every possible course/extra-curricular offered at Liberty University to guarantee that he will walk away from his semester fully experiencing everything that Liberty has to offer.

Without any prior knowledge about the author, it is hard to discern that “The Unlikely Disciple” is Roose’s first foray into popular press. He brilliantly weaves his narrative, interjecting quick witted jabs at both the Christian Right and the Secular Left, while at the same time proposing challenging questions. The stories and situations Roose finds himself in are brilliantly depicted, allowing the reader to view each situation through the layers of self doubt and analysis that Roose constantly undergoes.

I appreciated the book for several reasons. First, as Peter mentioned briefly in his earlier post, he and I both attended a Christian liberal arts school, Calvin College. Early into the book, I was reminded how subjective the term Christian can be to groups from different backgrounds. By most accounts, Liberty University students would not view Calvin College as a Christian college because we do not fall under the Evangelical label. And yet, Calvin identifies itself as a Reformed Christian college, who according to their website is the “distinctively Christian, academically excellent liberal arts college that shapes minds for intentional participation in the renewal of all things.” An impasse – two groups claiming to be Christian colleges and yet one not recognizing the other. Despite the fact they may not see eye to eye, they are both Christian colleges and might be presenting something in an alternative fashion, but they affirm at the core the same beliefs.

This connects to my larger reason of why I like the book so much – Roose discovers for himself that appearances or steroetypes are not quite what they seem. To some extent, I think Roose entered Liberty preparing to meet young Jerry Falwell’s – students lashing out against gays and the dissolution of the family. And while he did meet some students that met this description, they were the minority. The deeper Roose entrenched himself in the culture at Liberty, the more surprises he found along the way. He encountered students at Liberty who were feminists, students that went against the larger Evangelical grain, and who openly questioned the teachings of Falwell. I am grateful that Roose entered Liberty with an open mind, that he didn’t simply go to condemn something that was unfamiliar to him, and most importantly, that he embraced a challenge most people would shy away from.

Read the book for yourself, as my words don’t do it justice. I hope you too take away similar lessons from this engaging narrative.

I am about halfway through Kevin Roose’s book “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester as America’s Holiest University.” It’s a moderately quick read about a Brown University student’s experimental semester at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. It is a book that, as Columbia University professor Randall Balmer suggests, “eschews caricature and the cheap shot in favor of keen observation and trenchant analysis.”

The book interested me for several reasons. From the perspective of personal biography, I went to a religious school for undergrad, and reading the book is like getting a take on a piece of my history from the outside. That being said, to Liberty students and professors, Calvin College probably looks like a bastion of progressivism/ liberalism, and the differences between the schools are in many ways more numerous than their similarities.

The second reason for my interest however is more theoretical; specifically, I find it fascinating to see how students from these two sub-cultures differ in how they approach the ethical domains of life. This is much more engaging analysis than the tried and true story of ‘look at what Liberty teaches in their biology classes (e.g. creationism),’ though this is also a major component of Roose’s book. In constrast to curriculum decisions, questions around ethics involve moving from the clearly descriptive (the earth rotates the sun at x mph) which can be derived from data, methods, and measurement, to the murky realm of prescription (I ‘ought’ to live this way), which do not as easily flow from this type of sensory data.This point is driven home in Wittgenstein’s famous lecture on ethics, in which he writes:

Although all judgments of relative value can be shown to be mere statement of facts, no statement of fact can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute value.

Given this ambiguity, there will obviously be great differences on what is entailed in a ‘good life,’ a point brought home in the contrast between Roose’s former life at Brown and his semester at Liberty. Let’s consider sexual ethics for example, one of the more interesting subplots of the story as Roose begins to date a Liberty student. The prototypical Brown student has a very different view of relationship etiquitte than Liberty’s ‘holding hands and 3-second hug’ rules.  In this relationship, Roose has to navigate anew what a ‘healthy’ relationship entails, and the role of goals/ rules/ norms in shaping his behavior.  Going back to the problems of identifying absolutes, while proponents of both sides can identify ‘facts’ that buttress their case (the risk of STDs or pregnancy, the role of intimacy in relationship health, etc.), in neither case does a clear ought flow out of such facts, at least not without risk and uncertainty.

The differences of ethics between students at Brown and Liberty extend far beyond sexuality– influencing job decisions, choice of major, the way to interact with friends, choices of what is a valuable use of time, etc. For example, at Calvin, I thought that being an education major garnered a higher level of ‘prestige’ than being a business major, especially when the former was geared towards private religious school education. Within business majors, the benefit of the doubt was given to those who chose to participate in small family-run enterprises. And for work in the social sector, many students felt that ‘international’ work was given a prestige bump over similar work stateside– the former having a higher degree of ‘sexiness.’ My friend Dave’s take on his decision to move to Uganda is a helpful description of how this intuitive stance influences decision-making. Its prominence in our cultural imagination is obvious as well, as seen by Angelina Jolie, international adoption-star, “rockstar economist” Jeffrey Sachs (ironic?), and musician turned Africa activist, Bono.

But when ethics are ambiguous, and decisions have to be made, how are specific behaviors decided upon? Festinger’s work on social comparison suggests that the less concrete reality to justify one’s views, the more one will turn towards observing and interacting with other to build certainty.  In this absence of absolutes that emerge from facts of the world, we look to others to form our own views.

And that is where Brown and Liberty, despite all their differences, share a characteristic that will influence individual ethical decision-making– their internal similarity of student bodies. Ivy League or other selective institutions, my school Washington University included, indubitably homogenize their pool of applicants by setting certain standards of admission. You are much more likely to get into WashU if you went to a prestigious private prep school, participated in school council and related scholastic activities, and grew up as a child of WashU (or similar institutions) alumni.  And while Liberty doesn’t discriminate on academic lines as stringently, you are much more likely to go there if you are the child of an Evangelical missionary, know the right ‘language’ to speak in your application and faith statements, and grew up attending private Christian school or similar home schooling environment. As a result, both schools have a great deal of similarity in their student bodies, even though the dimensions of this similarity differ greatly between schools.

When forced to wrestle with ambiguous ethical issues, students at both schools are able to see a clear perspective on how to live life when there is agreement amongst their peers, even if the final agreed upon standard at Brown and Liberty are drastically different. The ambiguity of ethical decision-making is hidden, and “how could you not live this way?” becomes the default position at both institutions. Psychologically, we experience ethics as an absolute, even if Wittgenstein suggests this view is a chimera.

What ultimately makes Roose’s book so interesting, is the shattering of individual confidence and certainty when individuals from isolated sub-cultures interact. The real ‘risk’ and ‘choice’ in these behaviors becomes apparent, when we, like Roose, realize the complexity of the task.  As Wittgenstein concludes:

The tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language… Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science…. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.

Who likes what?

Because I study networks and innovation, by default, I should love Google Reader’s recent changes to build in increased social integration/ networking into this rss feeder.  And, to be honest, I do… for the most part.

First, a bit of background. I have been obsessed with Google Reader for some time now, and I really as though it has made me a more informed ‘citizen of the world’ (probably more pretentious as well given that I use phrases like citizen of the world). As a supplement to main stream media, I love getting multiple takes/perspectives on the news, for the same reason I like getting multiple tweets on the Tour de France– diversity is bliss when it comes to perspective.

As for the new GR features, I like that I can search out interesting and intelligent people and see what they are reading. If Amartya Sen has a reader page, I would love to see the articles that he thinks are worth reading. Same goes for Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Cass Sunstein. You can learn a lot by seeing what these people think is interesting.  I also like being able to target my sharing of an article to a small group of freinds, rather than my entire set of followers. I think this is a decent way to simulate online ‘reading’ groups… something I see as especially worthwhile given the dispersion of close friends across the globe.

And yet, with all that on the table, one feature I am sold on is the new ‘liking’ tags. In the new reader, you can now link to articles you ‘like,’ and Google will compile everyone’s tags and list a count at the top of the post. For example, the Marginal Revolution post above had 6 ‘likes’ when I read it this morning. In a world where the bloggosphere can already be an echo-chamber of like minded voices, I wonder if ‘like-tagging’ only amplifies this problem by focusing our attention onto the attention of others.

As an example, when I get behind in my rss reader feel (multiple unread articles to choose from), I often look for find interesting pieces before I have to archive them all and start a fresh. Now, in scanning, if I can now find that a specific Marginal Revolution post is universally ‘liked,’ I will have a tendency to focus my attention there, using it as a shortcut to save time and effort of reading everything else. In this way, liking tags makes Google Reader function more like a market, ideally with high quality posts getting more attention.

But is this market rational? Or, more specifically, is it still a rational system to identify high value contributions if a majority of people– or even a significant minority– use short-cut strategy described above? Will highly liked posts be higher quality contributions, or just products of a short-cut search gone awry? And from a learning perspective, if I think a post is likable beforehand, will I be more predisposed to like it in reading? The research on the psychology of evaluation seems to suggest yes. Together, this means that we might all be more likely to read the same stuff, all the while tending to homogeneously view it as interesting, regardless of its content.

At the end of the day, I don’t think I would change Google’s approach, as I think it is an interesting addition to a nice free product. And the reality is, I will more than likely continue to pay attention to what everyone likes. I only fear that it will make me just like everyone else!

Only because life milestones make a blog more personal (and who doesn’t like personal?) I thought I would let you know that I sent off my dissertation proposal draft early this morning. And, because a massive document like that is no fun to read, I thought I would include a little visual tease instead. Enjoy! Hopefully a picture really is worth (twenty) thousand (plus) words.

Dissertation Wordle

It’s summertime, and that can only mean one thing: Le Tour de France is up and running, and along with it, all the drama and intrigue of arguably the most grueling athletic competition in the world.  Adding spice to the race this year is the return of former 7-time Champion, Lance Armstrong. Lance took almost four years off of racing and, according to Rick Reilly, “went through about 17 girlfriends, had a child in June (Max), raised God knows how much hope and money to fight cancer, and then decided, ‘You know what? I’m not done.’”

Lance & Alberto

Consequently, one of the more intriguing subplots of the Tour this year is the battle for leadership of Team Astana. And at the center of the debate, you guessed it, Lance Armstrong. Though it has been 4 years since his last multi-stage race victory on a bike, he is very much still the confident (cocky?) rider that he was when he retired. Look no further than his comments on last year’s Tour, on which he is reported to have said about the leaders… “The Tour was a bit of a joke this year. I’ve got nothing against Sastre … or Christian Vande Velde. Christian’s a nice guy, but finishing fifth in the Tour de France? Come on!” And thought we may not like his attitude, it’s hard to argue with his gusto when he currently sits 3rd at this year’s race, only 8 seconds behind the overall leader.

The problem is that Lance’s new team Astana also includes one of the best young riders in the tour… Alberto Contador… the winner of the 2007 Tour de France, and many experts pick to win this year’s race. And so, at the center of a talent-stacked team, Armstrong and Contador have been battling it out on the bike for leadership of both their team, their teammates, and the tour as a whole… all while hoping to assert themselves for their 8th or 2nd TdF victories, respectively.

So what does this all have to do with Twitter and social media? Twitter has been getting a lot of attention lately, with Steven B Johnson among its supporters, headlining his Time Magazine article with the audacious claim that Twitter, “will change the way we live.” Mega-blogger Andrew Sullivan has also become a big fan as of late, republishing relevant tweets from the Iranian political elections on his blog “The Daily Dish” to publicize individual experiences of the acts of Tehran Rebels.

At it’s best, this influx of chronicled personal experiences supplements the clear thesis-driven approach of the news cycle, adding what technology writer Clive Thompson calls “ambient awareness” to our experience of events halfway around the world. At the end of the day, the use of Twitter may not give you much more relevant content on a story, I think it is fair to say that the depth of what you know is enhanced by the way the technology paints a picture of how those facts are experienced first hand.

My experience with the TdF this year has only buttressed this claim. For example, I have seen George Hincape and his team escape for a Stage 3 victory, then read on his twitter account that night, “Wow!!! What a day. We crushed it. Still 3 weeks to go though…” I wonder what the team dynamics were like on the following day after their disappointing team time trial. Or, yesterday, to see Cadel Evans try and fail to break away from the peleton on a climb lead by the baby blue Astana engine, and then subsequently read his tweet, “another day done. I tried to play a few cards; Astana no’s and headwind made it a bit tough to make a difference.” Is he getting discouraged about the way that Astana has really mobilized the movement in the standings… what is he thinking is his best strategic approach?

But, in line with one of the more interesting battles of the tour– that of Lance and Alberto– I was interested to see how Friday’s Stage 7 was narrated on the twitter account of Lance Armstrong, one of the most prolific tweeters of the group. Specifically, with a few KMs to go in the race on a hos categorie climb to the finish, Astana was leading the charge up the mountain, pulling back a breakaway of non-contendors and working to drop the current yellow jersey, Fabien Cancellara.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Contador broke free from the Astana team and motored uphill to the finish line, catapulting himself past Lance in the overall standings by 2 seconds, and perhaps reasserting himself as the rider to beat in the race.

Lances’ response? “St7 done. Long and pretty tough. Final climb was very windy so negated the attacks a bit until the end. AC (Contador) attached in the final k’s and gained some time on the front group. He was going well.” Are those the words of a man accepting the role as the team’s number 2 rider, or someone playing the right political card before his own attack in the coming stages? We will find out over the next few days.

Signaling American’s continued fascination with all things religious, the most emailed article in the NY Times this past Friday was a piece on the Vatican’s forthcoming investigation of American Nuns. It seems that even the “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, liberal-elite New York Times readers” can’t get religous curiosity out of their veins– or at the very least, their email boxes.

Laurie Goodstein’s piece chronicles the upcoming investigation into “the quality of life” of women’s religious institutions in the United States. Specifically, the effort was initiated by the Vatican’s Cardinal Franc Rodé, who last year criticized one specific group of nuns for “opt(ing) for ways that have taken them outside,” especially on issues of “the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.”

While the whole article reeks of a ‘look at the mysterious Catholic church trying to prevent progress’ tone, it does raise some interesting questions on how religious institutions, with their communal nature, ought to deal with religious expressions that emerge in the a church member’s path to individual expression.

A few days back, the Times blogger Michele Madigan Somerville wrote of one such approach to living out this tension between individual needs and communal/ orthodox expression.  Of her place as a “Catholic under protest,” she writes:

My aims were practical and ethereal, metaphysical and physical. I wanted to transcend, but as the mother of three toddlers, I wanted convenience, too. I craved beauty, musica sacra, social justice work, and maybe a whisper of ancient tongues in my ear, but I also needed a church that would embrace the realities of motherhood. If the celebrant of the mass glowered or gawked when I jammed the baby up my shirt to nurse at mass, he failed the audition and I never went back.

To the orthodox believer, this will read like a cafeteria style approach to religion, inauthentic in its ability to hold to all the demands of the faith.  To the non-religious reader, this will seem like an inability to fully detach oneself from the irrational draw of religion and religious practices — build on a Freudian conception of religion as an inability to grow up in life.  I wonder, however, if both these perspectives are a bit simplistic in understanding the origins — and dare I say, potential– of this existential and institutional tension.

Across several of his books (The Ethics of Authenticity, Sources of the Self, and A Secular Age), philosopher Charles Taylor persuasively argues that an individual’s desire to be ‘authentically true’ to the self emerges out of a genuine moral impulse. In essence, the fact that we desire to be true to ourselves is not at the core a relativistic instinct, even if it sometimes diverges down this path.

Yet, while Taylor suggests we should celebrate healthy expressions of individuality, he also argues that there is an inherent tension in that the motivation to find authentic individual paths of meaning can only find their buttressing against larger communal frameworks of understanding. The belief that “something is meaningful ONLY because we choose it to be so” is authenticity in its most baseless form, but Taylor argues it need not end there.

Modern religious institutions are at an interesting place of having to navigate an understanding of such ‘motivations for authenticity,’  and deciding whether and when they ought to be given institutional legitimacy; specifically, are all such expressions ‘deviations’of orthodoxy, or is there a place for, as Taylor writes, ‘multiple itineraries’ towards faith, and thus a place for theological imagination and expression?  Any institution (religious or otherwise) has to find a way to understand the role of individual creativity and re-imagination in shaping an evolving, living tradition.  The Vatican’s investigation of American Nuns will be an interesting case study of how one very prominent institution handles such tensions.

Hi. I’m new here. My name is Adam, and I’m big on music and film.

Since we’re just over halfway through 2009, I thought it’d be appropriate to kick things off with a handful of albums I’ve enjoyed most this year. But instead of regurgitating information you’re likely already privy to (yes, the Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear records are top notch), here are five excellent releases from “underdog” artists, those who mostly continue to float under the radar:

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns [Parlophone / Astralwerks]

Try as she might, Natasha Khan seems destined to not be taken seriously. Perhaps its the gaudy album art, the lazer shooting wolf videos, the regular exaggeration of the “concept” behind Two Suns, or the fact that Kate Bush is referenced in every single review of her work. It is true that like Bush, Bat for Lashes transforms what might otherwise sound like cheesy electronic music into majestic songs, but Khan’s voice is much closer to Chan Marshall’s of Cat Power. Khan’s vocals on Two Suns are at times shockingly good (see: “Glass“), an enormous step up in range and ambition than what she displayed on her debut record, Fur & Gold. But more than the mere technical craft that went into this album’s creation, the most impressive aspect of its 45-minute runtime are its eleven songs. If Fur & Gold hinted at Khan’s talent as a songwriter, Two Suns announces it loud and clear from its kickin’ first single “Daniel” to the crescendoed “Siren Song,” her most ambitious track to date.

Visit Bat for Lashes’ official website here.

Watch the must-see performance of “Daniel” on the Late Show with David Letterman here.

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A-Trak - FabricLive.45 [Fabric]

A-Trak release reviews almost always mention his tenure as Kanye West’s tour DJ, among his many other impressive credentials (sample: youngest ever winner of the DMCs at age 15, and first ever to win all three major DJ competition titles). As they should; A-Trak should first and foremost be appreciated for his proficiency with his instrument. But where artists like DJ Shadow and The Avalanches pushed the envelope of what people thought turntables could be used for, A-Trak is simply doing what DJs have been doing for years, better than just about anyone else.

His Dirty South Dance mixtape was probably the record I listened to most in 2007. Despite consisting almost entirely of the most over-used and tired technique in the business, mash-ups, his layering of hip-pop and crate-dug electronic gems improved on every song in the bunch and flowed seamlessly from beginning to end. His newest mixtape, commissioned by London’s Fabric nightclub, is as simple as they come: save for a single mash-up to start the tape, FabricLive.45 is just 25 killer tracks and remixes, perfectly beatmatched and mixed. Even if you’re clueless as to the technical skill required to mix records as well as A-Trak does, his selection of bass-throbbing electronic jams will interest anyone hunting for the year’s best summer driving album.

Visit A-Trak’s official website here.

Preview tracks from FabricLive.45 here.

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Justin Townes Earle - Midnight at the Movies [Bloodshot]

The way I see it, music lovers can hope for two types of records, those that push boundaries or explore new territories and those that execute a style to a tee. Justin Townes Earle, son of prolific country musician Steve Earle, has perfected the latter technique. Eight months ago I posted on another blog about The Good Life, his debut album and one of the finest releases of 2008. Less than a year later comes his sophomore effort, Midnight at the Movies, which continues on down the “traditional but damn good” road. The thing is, “traditional” country music is pretty hard to come by these days. So when Earle’s twang takes front and center on “Walk Out,” or when the harmonica on “Halfway to Jackson” mimics a southbound train, I guarantee you’ll be more pleasantly surprised than you expect. Most impressive are the record’s early stand-outs, “Mama’s Eyes” and “Can’t Hardly Wait.” The former is a brief but sobering account of his dysfunctional relationship with his father, while the latter is a straightforward countrified cover of one of my favorite Replacements’ tracks. Both succeed because they’re exemplary of Earle’s forté: uncluttered, perfectly-executed, memorable country.

Visit Justin Townes Earle’s MySpace page here.

Watch the KEXP interview and performance, which includes “Mama’s Eyes” here.

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Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix [Loyauté / Glassnote / V2]

Of the five albums on my “list,” this is the one that doesn’t quite fit the theme of “underdog” records. Veteran French pop-rock group Phoenix are indeed garnering a good deal of praise for this, their fourth full-length release in their ten-year history; a much blogged about appearance on SNL, an 8.5 from Pitchfork, and a #37 spot on the US Billboard 200 are certainly not indicative of “lesser-known artists.” Still, few would have predicted Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix would be the album to bring the band the global fame they seemed to be made for.

Back in 2006, after Phoenix released one of my favorite albums of the decade, It’s Never Been Like That, I wrote in a year-end retrospective, “It’s utterly shocking that French alt-pop band Phoenix hasn’t been plastered on billboards, commercialized to no end, and replayed thousands of times on US radio stations.” Pitchfork placed that album at #13 on their top 50 of the year, doing their part to boost the group’s cred, but still it seemed no one would take them seriously.

What changed? First, they went bigger. Lead single “1901,” which rivals their best tracks (and they have some absolute monsters), adds giant electro-flares to their trademark guitar/kick drum rhythms. Second, they finally nailed the consistency/flow thing. While Never got the former right, without a dud in the bunch, it still somehow felt weighed down. Wolfgang, however, is more carefully ordered. Some critics have claimed it’s frontloaded, when in fact, the last four tracks, particularly the momentous closer “Armistice,” make up a better stretch than the middle chunk. Last, they took an admirable risk with “Love Like a Sunset,” a near-eight-minute, two-part behemoth that acts as an album fulcrum, that paid off immensely. Simply, Phoenix may be my favorite singles band of the decade, but this is pretty easily my favorite album of 2009.

Visit Phoenix’s official website here.

Watch Phoenix play “Lisztomania” & “1901″ live on SNL here.

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Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit - Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit [Lightning Rod]

In 2007, much fuss was made about Jason Isbell’s exit from Southern/alt-country band the Drive-By Truckers. Credit Isbell, formerly one of the group’s three lead singer/songwriters, for two of the band’s best tracks in their final two albums together, “The Day John Henry Died” and “Daylight.” As such, I wasn’t all that surprised that his debut solo record, 2007′s Sirens of the Ditch, was pretty damn tight. “Dress Blues,” in particular, which told the story of US Marine Corporal Matthew Conley who died in the Iraq War, was the type of tune that makes grown men cry.

I was surprised, however, to find his 2009 follow-up, named in honor of his new backing band, the 400 Unit, was twice as good. Even casual fans of alt-country — say, Ryan Adams, Neko Case, earlier Wilco, or My Morning Jacket — will be drawn to the sound of this album, which is more consistent than Sirens’ scattered recordings allowed for. More importantly, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit manages to do what so many of the Truckers’ albums have failed to: remain balanced from start to finish. From the uptempo “Good,” to the beautifully simplistic guitar lick in “The Blue,” to one of the best closing tracks of the year, “The Last Song I Will Write,” this is such a listenable record, I often find myself playing it two or three times in a row.

Visit Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit’s official website here.

Listen to the band perform on World Café Live here.

This November, I am moving to Uganda to manage AssetMap Uganda, a project in the start-up phase that aims to foster collaboration among NGOs. Last week, someone asked me, “Why are you leaving America behind? Isn’t the nonprofit sector in the U.S. just as much in need of an effort like this?”

The first answer that came to mind was a utilitarian one: We ought to produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The degree of need and the stakes of successful nonprofit collaboration are higher in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world. Leaving America behind makes a lot of sense within the utilitarian framework.

Here’s the problem: I hate utilitarian ethics. Human beings are more than utility consumers and producers, and our responsibilities to one another cannot be whittled down to simple formulas. A utilitarian worldview leaves little room for the demands that culture, kinship, history, faith, and other aspects of our lived experience place on us.

Outside of a utilitarian approach, I had no idea how to respond to this rather pointed question. Instead, I babbled on about conscience and experience, trying to avoid saying things like:

• They need my abilities (No, they don’t)
• Nobody else will do it (Yes, they will)
• I feel called (Sort of)
• The need is so great (Welcome back, utilitarianism)

In retrospect, I didn’t have a good answer. How, then, do I justify leaving the country that I love, the community I hold close, to invest my time and energy in a place that is entirely foreign? It comes down to mutuality and innovation.

The phrase “leaving America behind” assumes that the value of my traveling to Uganda is a one-way street, that the U.S. is losing an asset and Uganda is gaining one. This is not only arrogant but also wrong. Instead, I hope to add-value to Ugandan civil society and, at the same time, be informed and transformed by the ideas and lives of Ugandans. This cross-pollination of cultures and people is crucial for thriving in a globalized world, we must learn from Uganda and they must learn from us.

Innovation often stems from having people with multiple perspectives and skill-sets thinking about the same problem (e.g. when engineers work with anthropologists to design a new product). Imagine if Americans never left the country, never engaged with ideas and institutions around the world, do you think we could stay innovative? Also, if Ugandans are going to find better ways to do things, then it might be useful to have me at the table as yet another perspective thinking about the same problem. In short, AssetMap will not be innovating for Ugandans; we will innovate with them.

When next asked why I am leaving America behind, I will say that I am not, that Uganda is doing America a favor by allowing me to learn from and innovate with them.