Jan. 20, 2010

on aging

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Education, Psychology
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There are several interesting things that happen as people move from the college years to their professional 20s.

Let me start with the premise that college is the Mecca of idealism, and in many ways, idealism of a somewhat selfish variety. People dream big in learning environments that reward asking big questions with little in the way of personal set-backs. By saying selfish, I am not trying to say that people don’t have genuine dreams of wanting good things to happen (e.g. “I want international public health projects to flourish”), rather, I am arguing that such goals are often rooted in the self-reference (e.g. “I want a job at Partners in Health”). These pursuits give us meaning, and we’d like to think in our heart of hearts that their success is dependent on our involvement.

For example, while this might be a cynical way of looking at the following statistic, I have a hard time explaining the record enrollment in Teach for America from the 2009 graduating class (16+% of Yale’s 2009 graduating seniors for example) solely as a function of a massive increase in the number of people deeply concerned with education. Rather, I start by assuming people are interested in living a PERSONALLY meaningful life, and TFA has grown in exposure as a route that meets those criterion. This idealism is optimistic in college in that such needs can be partly fulfilled when one envisions one’s future life in these roles, apart from any actual involvement.

Fast forward a few years. Recent graduates are now neck-deep in their first or second job, and along with this often come some feeling of misalignment between reality with the past’s idealistic expectations. Not everyone will be the rock-star investment banker that they thought they would be… nor will everyone get to marry the cutest girl in their high school because that girl gets to choose only one spouse (usually)… and not everyone will have the salary or leadership opportunities they envisioned. Others feel a similar misalignment between their idealist goals (e.g. educational reform) and the resulting desired outcome. To use the previous example, TFA teachers, many of whom are my close friends (and family), begin to see the way in which the systems undergirding problems like educational inequality are difficult to move, and thus their individual pursuit of meaning/ purpose a bit blocked. At the very least, their agency in accomplishing this goal seems minimal.

So what happens to this group psychologically/ existentially, and how is this same world experienced differently? Though depressing for me to admit, I believe these experiences tend to push people from hopeful idealism to negative cynicism. To ease the tension between goals and outcomes, we lower expectations so our small contributions don’t feel so meager, or sometimes stop pursuing a goal all together. I can’t help but wonder if these reactions– let’s call them naïve optimism and negative realism– are the only ways forward, or if there might be a third way.

Let’s first consider if these two options are really that different at their core. I would argue that, though very different in behavioral manifestations, these ways of viewing the world share quite a bit in common in terms of motivation. Specifically, at the center of each impulse is a radical centering on one’s self, a radical sense of the necessity of finding PERSONAL meaning, achieving PERSONAL enlightenment, living with a tangible personal purpose. In his fascinating book “Saving God: Religion after idolatry,” Princeton philosoher Mark Johnson argues this self-oriented worldview emerges primarly from the structure of our consciousness:

Constantly finding oneself at the center, one finds oneself to be privileged– as something to be protected, as something to be prized. Thanks for our extended self-consciousness and our capacity to articulate what we find, what we in the higher animals merely an organizing form of animal self-protectiveness now becomes something more. It becomes a more or less explicit deliberative theme, a default starting point in one’s practical reasoning: one’s own interests just seem paramount (2009: 86)

When the self is radically important, optimism reigns when these goals seem achievable (college), and pessimism takes the stage when obstacles emerge (the professional 20s). I can almost hear Ernst Becker screaming out from the grave… “Can’t you see what I have been saying all along… your life is often a work in self-promotion, a project emerging out of your deep down fear of death, the death of all meaning.” The ancient sages roll over in their tombs, “Why didn’t you listen” asks the writer of Ecclesiastes, “when I said vanity of vanity, ALL is vanity!”

But hold up, before all seems lost. Might there be another way? Might there be a way to live between the tension of idealism and realism? Do we have to close our eyes to reality in order to dream? Johnson continues later in the book:

There is an experience– some would say it is a metaphysical experience; some would say it is inchoately religious- of being, as Ludwig Wittgenstein once put it, absolutely safe. (Wittgenstein appears to have had experiences of this sort when, as a medical orderly in the trenches in WWI, he was in danger of being shot, gassed, or blown up. Marcus Aurelius, another man of the trenches, describes a similar experience in his Meditations). Part of the content of this experience, as opposed to the content of its subsequent interpretation, is that no matter what happens, everything that is fundamentally precious will remain intact (p. 110).

Is not this the way forward, between the false forced dichotomy of idealism and realism? Specifically, it is not by achieving everything we expect for ourselves that we break free of this tension, but rather we grow by a fading of the self from the forefront, where we can finally stumble upon this realization that ‘everything precious’ often includes things outside the self, and thus is worth pursuing apart from our potential personal gain.  Is it not only with this posture that the TFA teacher can sit back and passionately engage rigid structures of educational injustice, even though their role in that change might be small? Is not this the only way to have the mind of the realist, and the heart and soul of a romantic?

 

Jan. 12, 2010

unconditional love and incentives

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized
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image from http://farm1.static.flickr.com/58/220279254_17c20cbec5.jpg

Consider the contrast of the following two quotes:

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – e.e. cummings

* * *

“Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.” – nikita khrushchev

Two quotes, and two very different view on the role of incentives (rewards as conditional on who we are) and unfaltering support (rewards as unconditional on who we are or what we do) in shaping behavior. Let’s consider the difference with regards to one common and important human emotion and behavior… love.

The Khrushchev quote is what underlies much of our market economic system (pay for performance, etc), and also often underlies much of the way we interact with others. Speak all we want about the joy of unconditional love, we are highly conditional with how we interact with each other. We love our spouse… if they take out the trash. We trust our friends… to the extent that they prove trust worthy. We seek out the companionship… of those who seem interesting. We seek people conditionally. We stay with people conditionally.

E.E. Cumming’s quote displays a different logic. We cannot fully be ourselves until we feel something unconditional. Until we feel full support, the logic goes, we can never be true friends, real lovers, great parents. In this way, our behavior is not fundamentally moved by constraint (you do this because you fear what happens if you do not), rather it is enabled by the fact that we feel unconstrained, and more free to be ourselves. In other words, two lovers approach “curiosity, wonder, spontaneously delight, or any other experience which reveals the human spirit” not because they are afraid failing doing so will result in punishment, but rather because something relationally allows them to pursue the behavior. This is not to say that relationships don’t have incentives and punishment, but that there is also something deeper at work in such situations.

* * *

But how does this develop? Take a relationship. Two people go on a first date. They posture, they pose, they wear their best clothes. The other person likes them, in part, because of such moves. Charmers are more likely to get second dates, as well as those who are physically beautiful. In this way, liking and eventually loving grow out of a structure of conditionality. The relationship grows in trust as each person proves trustable. Love emerges in some pattern of exchange.

But life changes, doesn’t it? Fast forward 30 years and you now have two individuals, not 21 and fluttery with feeling, but 50+ with many things changed through the years. What sustains them now? There love is still in some way conditional (if you cheat on me, I will leave), but in other ways, it extends beyond conditionality. Consider North Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson and his decision to forgive and stay with his wife after her public extramarital affair.  His speech, viewable here, is not one of his love being a result of her good behavior (it obviously was not), but something at least approaching unconditional love (i love you because i love you, because you are worth loving despite your mistake). Or what about an even more common example– the fact that as everyone ages, they look different, and often less “attractive” by normal standards of youth-centric beauty. While some couples obviously split for this reason, many couples obviously stay together. Yet, had they met looking their worst, its very likely the relationship wouldn’t have developed.

Two questions:

  1. What is the process by which conditional liking changes to (more) unconditional love? Is there a clear tipping point? When does it tip back and why?
  2. In a relationship, what are the ways in which conditional liking (incentives) and unconditional love enable or constrain behavior, respectively? In other words, why is cummings right, and in what ways is khrushchev on the ball?
 

Jan. 9, 2010

entrepreneurial education as (guided/random) emergence

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Education
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Animal Collective’s record “Marriweather Post Pavillion”  is arguably one of the top albums of 2009 (listen here). According to Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson:

With their constantly evolving sonic identity, in-your-face vocal mannerisms, and open-ended ideas about what their music might “mean,” Animal Collective seem designed to inspire obsessive fans and vociferous detractors in equal measure.Merriweather Post Pavilion, their latest full-length, has been anticipated to an almost ridiculous degree, with blogs and message boards lighting up with each scrap of new information or word of a possible leak. No one who’s been looking forward to it should be disappointed. Everything that’s defined the band to this point– all those strands winding through their hugely diverse catalog– is refined and amplified here.

So, what is it about them as individuals that makes their work so effective? What allows them to create music that has a sense of ‘strands winding through their hugely diverse catalogue’? Let’s briefly consider one aspect of their biography:

In parallel with his environmental policy and marine biology studies, Weitz hosted a noise show at WKCR, Columbia’s college radio station. On weekends, he and Portner borrowed Avantgarde music records and listened to them all night at Weitz’ dorm room which rapidly broadened their musical horizon

In other words, it seems that it was not primarily their formal music education that enabled their musical creativity. While they needed musical knowledge/ training to be able to integrate what they learned, it seems that the learning that really enabled their unique sound took place in a more fluid/ random environment. To put it another way, their formal education was necessary but not sufficient to the development of their unique music stylings.

If this is indeed the case, it seems to suggest that there is in fact something emergent about the way our learning takes place in our stories. But do our university systems allow for this type of natural emergence? Do the carefully crafted educational paths we prepare for our selves/ children/ students (going from prepatory school, to top university, to top graduate programs, etc) really  facilitate this type of development?

In the following article, Louis Menand suggests that there is something antiquated about our educational systems with their primary focus on knowledge transfer. It is an approach which I would argue crowds out the potential fluid nature of learning, while simultaneously failing to teach the creativity necessary to solve the more interesting social problems, and/or to make the most interesting music:

The American university is a product of the nineteenth century, and it has changed very little structurally since the time of the First World War. It has changed in many other ways–demographically, intellectually, financially, technologically and in terms of its missions, its stakeholders, and its scale–and these changes have affected the substance of teaching and research.

But the system is still a late nineteenth-century system, put into place for late nineteenth-century reasons. The extraordinary series of transformations of higher education after 1945 have strained it. To the extent that that system still determines the possibilities for producing and disseminating knowledge, trying to reform the contemporary university is like trying to get on the Internet with a typewriter, or like riding a horse to the mall.

If there is something emergent about the ways our minds learn, something non-linear about the development of authenticity in our own stylings (music or otherwise), might it be true that we don’t become true selves and unique in style through following a predefined path. Rather, might it not be possible that we could best develop authenticity in styling (music or otherwise) by following paths, in fits and starts, towards some gradually (but consistently) emerging personal mission.

So can this be built into educational systems, and specifically into classes that are to teach something about the creative/ entrepreneurial process? What if the best way to teach entrepreneruship is not the way we have tended to organize such courses (example here) but rather by providing a space to minimally guide the non-linear emergent learning situations, while also providing the theory and tools to harness such visions into successful businesses (or albums, or art pieces). It is the challenge of finding the right balance between chaos and structure.

 

Jan. 2, 2010

a resolution…

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Uncategorized
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“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
—DANIEL BURNHAM, CHICAGO ARCHITECT. (1846-1912)

 

Dec. 16, 2009

parentheses

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture | Tags: , |
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“You’re an escape from real life… a parentheses.”

-Alex Goran, “Up in the Air”

I finally saw “Up in the Air” last night, a movie that I previously endorsed, pre-release, as a film that would resonate strongly with my generation. Having now seen the entire movie, I can only reiterate my previous sentiments. “Up in the Air” is a poignant story that succeeds in striking up questions of what gives us meaning, what encapsulates excitement, and how we ought to approach a life filled with ambiguity and risk.

At several few key points in the film, the main characters grapple with whether the specific things we pursue with life with commitment– relationships, job, rootedness in a place– constrain or enable personal meaning and happiness.

In one especially relevant scene, Ryan (George Clooney) and Alex (Vera Farminga) comfort the younger Natalie (Anna Kendrick) after she is hearbroken from a text-message dumping by a long-term boyfriend. Over drinks, and in response to the question of whether he was “the one,” Natalie begins to chronicle what it is that would make her feel as though her life was fulfilled– corner office, children, and a husband who likes the outdoors, works a great finance job, and drives an SUV. When asked what her criterion were in a man, the older Alex responds by saying she is looking for someone who wants to have children, who has a great smile, who listens and cares for her– someone who is not an ‘asshole,’ to use her exact words. Natalie retorts that this feels a bit sad, and too much like settling.

In this moment, we find one of the most personally uncomfortable points of both the movie, and I would argue, of our own lives. Like Natalie, we often think we will find meaning in life through some glorified version of ourselves in it… the living out of a Garrison Keiler’s Lake Wobbigonian world “where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are above average.” More to Natalie’s sentiment, a world where “I am strong, my spouse is good-looking, and my children are above-average.” It is THIS life that will give us meaning, and it it from such a place that we will finally find the holy grail of personal fulfillment. It is the hope of this potential world that keeps us pushing through the mundane, so long as we can convince ourselves that these are but stops along the way to greatness. Consider the following poem by David Slavitt (2006):

Each morning, as I confront my closet’s array,
I have to admit again that the life I lead
is hardly good enough: I have not been named
ambassador to Malta; I am not on the board

of any college or large corporation; I shall not
receive a major prize today and pose
for photographers. Those suits, the shirts, the ties
are ready, but I am not, and the shoes are shined

as they wait for different occasions than I imagined
on the tailor’s block, when I shopped for a dandified
future brighter than what I expect or deserve.
Even for weddings and funerals that require
a suit, I choose from the second best, reserving
that one for the dream into which I yet hope to awake.

On the other hand, Alex’s ‘settling’ story seems to suggest the potential of something a bit more modest, where life is not defined by the perfection of various dimension, but rather by finding some beauty in the ordinary (in wanting imperfect kids who are loved, a job one finds meaningful in some fashion or another, and in loving someone who likes to listen and finds us interesting).

<NOTE: Spoiler Alert>

But can we really take Alex’s articulated life philosophy at face value without wrestling with the fact that the story feels too tight, perhaps too idealized, and maybe more livable on paper than in reality. In one of the latter scenes of the film, we find out that Alex does have all those things– the ‘important job,’ a kind husband, the cute Chicago brownstown filled with laughing children– and yet, still pursues the escape of this life in her jet-setting relationship with Ryan. He was to her, a ‘parentheses’ in life, which provided a (route towards meaning and excitement) amidst the mundane of her husband, her kids and the life she lived at home.  As an audience, we are left with the uncomfortable realization that what Alex outlines as meaningful to Natalie did not seem to provide her with enough meaning in reality.

And so, are Alex and Natalie really that different when we get down to it? One (Natalie) yearns for something to give her life meaning– a crafted dream ripped from the page of Restoration Hardware. Another (Alex) has what might seem meaningful from the outside, and yet she yearns for some escape, some parentheses to interject (meaning) into the everyday.

In his magisterial text “A Secular Age,” Charles Taylor begins to articulate and explore what it is that these characters might be missing. Drawing from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, Taylor articulates how the best poetry often captures the ‘inscape’ of a particulate thing– the deeper ‘oneness’ of an object or a life, the way in which it is located within some larger framework of meaning. As Taylor writes, such poetic approaches are needed because, ” our language has lost the power to Name things in their embedding in this deeper/ higher reality” (761). The film, in my eyes, is a profound articulation of our inability to ‘see’ the inscape of things, the inner beauty of the ugly, the preciousness of the mundane, and our failure to name such things as part of a ‘higher’ space/ framework of values.

While it is easy to love the beautiful— be that Natalie’s dreamed or Alex’s realized life of idealized job, model spouse, and perfectly individualized lifestyle– beauty alone is not inscape, as Hopkins outlines. In fact, identifying beauty alone as value might be a poor excuse for learning to find beauty in the everyday and thus engaging people and things in their broken reality. Ryan Bingham pursued shallow relationship because they were fun, because these people were beautiful. In his work, he could give an engaging motivational speech and still dash out the door before the motivation halts in the face of the inertia of the everyday. Alex Goran pursued Ryan Bingham because he provided an escape from what had become mundane about her family.  Ryan made her feel desired, and provided her with comfort on the road away from her family and self-declared ‘real life.’And Natalie Keener could only see her life as having meaning once she found the right job/ husband/ kid/ fill in the blank. But were any of these characters really able to ‘name things in their embedding in a deeper/higher space”? At the very best, these moments were fleeting, and peripheral dimensions of their character. Maybe that is why, while partly turned off by these characters, in the end we cannot turn away. Their struggles are fundamentally our struggles, and we are not so far from the sentiments that prevented them from capturing and/or creating fragile meaning in life.

The canned-line used by Ryan and Natalie’s firm when firing an employee is that, “anyone who has ever built empires or changed the world has sat where you are sitting today.” Delivered well by the charming George Clooney, this line does make the fired feel better, if even for but a moment. It quells our troubled souls to think that we might yet be the ones to build up worlds which will be remembered far after we are gone. And yet, I can’t shake off the feeling that such advice is like throwing salt to the thirsty. Maybe what Ryan, Natalie, and Alex all needed to hear in their own sort of way, is that all of us already stand on something worth naming as an empire, even if formed by the dust of the earth and wrapped in the reality of imperfection.

 

Dec. 4, 2009

recapture ‘tag’

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Miscellaneous
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Tag

You're it!

Volkswagen has a great experimental project called the fun theory. The idea behind the endeavor is that “something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better.” They encourage visitors to the site to “be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

One of the examples I like the most is making stairs into a piano keyboard to make people take the stairs over taking the escalator.  Check out the video below… I think its ingenious.

And yet, while I love the idea, here is the problem… I already take the stairs. In fact, I usually work out, I generally eat pretty healthy, and shower with a good deal of regularity. I even recycle moderately frequently, and brush twice aday. Heck, I keep floss in my shower so I remember to do that with increasing regularity.

The things I struggle with are more interpersonal. Telling people that I care about them. Getting bogged down by the day to day and failing to see those moments of transcendent in the everyday. Moving day to day, and then realizing that time has too quickly slipped by without having pursued things that really matter. Or maybe not thinking about what matters to us enough. How do we pursue those things with ‘fun’?

In line with VW, I think we should all go out and play ‘tag’ with someone today. You know… tag, the things that kids play. Go, find someone you care about and leave them a note. Tag them. And make sure they know the game doesn’t end there. Maybe they have to get you back, maybe someone else. Regardless, maybe living like a kid for a bit allows us to recaptured that “period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth — two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age” (Ambrose Bierce). Maybe there is something to that.

 

Nov. 25, 2009

pro-market, pro-business and public health

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Economics, Politics | Tags: , |
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In a recent article in National Affairs, University of Chicago finance and entrepreneurship professor Luigi Zingales maps out the following distinction between pro-business and pro-market and its relationship to entrepreneurship:

When the government is small and relatively weak, the way to make money is to start a successful private-sector business. But the larger the size and scope of government spending, the easier it is to make money by diverting public resources. Starting a business is difficult and involves a lot of risk — but getting a government favor or contract is easier, and a much safer bet. And so in nations with large and powerful governments, the state tends to find itself at the heart of the economic system, even if that system is relatively capitalist. This tends to confound politics and economics, both in practice and in public perceptions: The larger the share of capitalists who acquire their wealth thanks to their political connections, the greater the perception that capitalism is unfair and corrupt.

In other words, when the government is constrained, but with a pro-market orientation, entrepreneurship can flourish because there is some link having the right idea and the right initiative and market success, however tenuous. In contrast, with greater government involvement, market success is primarily facilitated by government support, thus giving greater weight to having the right connections, having the right financial support, etc.

In the United States, a system which Zingales calls highly pro-market without being pro-business until recently, 1 in 4 American billionaires were self-made in 1996. In contrast, in many other countries with a capitalism mix more pro-business than pro-market, “the wealthiest people tend to accumulate their fortunes in regulated businesses in which government connections are crucial to success… energy, real estate, telecommunications, mining. Success in these businesses often depends more on having the right connections than on having initiative and enterprise.”

Zingales

As of late, I have been thinking a good bit about this idea of systems that enable or constrain entrepreneurship, and its application to specific social sector markets. Take health care as an example. Stripped down to the basics, health care quality is jointly a function of 1) access, and 2) quality of care. Debates on the merits of different systems center on the right or wrong mix of these two factors, with people seeing overall quality by differently weighing one factor over the other. “People can’t get care!” scream those calling for health care reform, to which the opposition says “but we have the highest quality services out there, and our innovation is off the charts.” Other countries are praised for their universal coverage, but criticized for lower quality of care, treatment, and services.

David Brooks recently framed the trade-off as such:

Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.

Apart from the contrast in values, the question still remains how the system enables movement towards (or away) from each of these goals. Put simply, the question remains how each of these systems enables or constrains the emergence of innovation related to the goals of access and/or quality.* For an organization like Partners in Health, who works in Haiti, Peru, Russia, USA, Rwanda, Lesotho,  and Malawi, are there specific aspects of certain markets that allow innovation to flourish over others, and if so, what are these, and towards what end do they allow growth?

Starting with Zingales’ guiding framework (pro-market, pro-business as related to ease of entrepreneurship), in the next post I will attempt to map out some thoughts on what such a framework might mean for entrepreneurship and innovation related to health care access and quality.

* By systems, I mean the mix of government, culture, incentive structure, etc that all might influence the ability of a system to improve in health care access or quality.

 

Nov. 22, 2009

story and action

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Psychology
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“we moderns not only continue to be animals who make stories but also animals who are made by our stories.”

-Christian Smith “Moral, Believing Animals“

In a recent op-ed in the Georgetown Hoya, Professor Patrick Deneen makes the following claims about the personal impact of studying economics:

Much of the explanatory strength of economics rests on a narrow and even unrealistic understanding of human behavior, particularly an understanding of the human creature as a utility-maximizing rational actor. Stripped of conflicting devotions, shorn of history and culture, reduced to a few basic motives (especially fear and greed), economic man became highly analyzable data point, but arguably only insofar as he has ceased to be truly human.

Far from being merely “descriptive,” the basic assumptions of economics – that human beings are acquisitive individual utility-maximizers living in a world of scarcity – deeply shape modern humanity’s view of itself.

Stories and theories do shape us, and they profoundly shape our action by making certain actions more plausible, or certain routes more appealing. Such stories shape what type of work we want to pursue, the priority we give to relationships, what we see as the value of place, or whether we primarily see necessity or limitations in rootedness of various forms. A student who studies political science, or literature, or philosophy might arrive at a different set of assumptions about the ‘goods’ of life than those who study economics. To fit in with a certain guiding narrative, we often homogenize, muting aspects of ourselves which do not as easily cohere.

But if we acknowledge the problems of this, and desire to be ‘authentic’ to something deep in ourselves, how do we live into different narratives, build into our lives a different set of stories?  I deeply believe that such changes only happen when we root ourselves in certain traditions and routines, and cultivate a sense of awareness of the ways in which our actions and stories do not leave us untouched.

Take cell phones as an example. I love having my blackberry, and especially the way in which it adds convenience to my life in being connected with, and connecting with others. But what are my actual physical behaviors with this phone? I constantly check my pocket for emails. I wait patiently for text affirmation, often sending out a note and judging its worth (my worth to others), by the speed and content of their response.

Consider as well the pursuit of self-development in education. How does buying into the notion of building a brand to distinguish oneself on the market shape the way I see and interact with the world. For the past several years, I have been trying to pursue the  right set of activities in high school, the right set of leadership opportunities in college, being at the ‘right school,’  pursuing the ‘right graduate degree at the right institution. And while this has obviously set me up to do interesting things, can I really claim being untouched with regards to what I deem as interesting and worthy of pursuit?

I agree wholeheartedly with the quote from Christian Smith on the way the stories we tell shape us and our understanding of the world. I doubtlessly clap my hands in approval of Deneen’s assertion that certain stories, namely economics, radically simplify the complex and conflicting set of desires that we hold, making us self-improve frameworks that conceivably limit such our ability to see what is worth experiencing in life. But I know from personal experience that ‘ratioal-emotive’ therapical approaches have sometimes fallen short with me. Telling myself to be a better person, or to pursue things that matter, or to be more vulnerable in relationships (or any other number of things), often leaves me feeling the post New Years Resolution of failed goals and similar behavior.

But stories are deeper than words we embody them within. Being different and living different narratives requires rooting oneself not only in certain tales, about also concrete sets of behavior which help cultivate in us a posture towards the world that is deeper than theoretical knowledge. In my previous post on Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” I noted philosopher Jamie Smith’s characterization of humans as needing and being formed by such quasi-litergies. I then brought up one such moment in the book where the father physically pursues keeping his son safe:

He kicked holes in the sand for the

boy’s hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat

holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it.

All of this like some ancient anointing.

It is these actions which shape us, these behaviors which orient us desired ends, and cultivate in us a posture towards what matters. These behaviors, these rituals are more forming than reading a book about how ‘parenting is important,’ or conceptually realizing that “love is difficult.’ It is a deeper kind of knowing/feeling which, though potentially spoken or theorized about, must be felt, must be lived, must be embodied in routines. To use McCarthy’s words, we must “construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them,” a breath which acknowledges the transcendence of the everyday, of the profane, of the mundane.

 

Nov. 19, 2009

Cormac

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Culture, Film, Psychology | Tags: , , |
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This past weekend’s Wall Street Journal has a fascinating interview with Cormac McCarthy, the author most recently known for his book “No Country for Old Men” made in the award-winning film by the Coen Brothers. Among other things, McCarthy also wrote “The Road,” set for release in film version of November 25th. If you are not familiar with “The Road,” it is a post-apocalypic story of a father and son journeying towards the coast, their only potential place of survival in a world nearly destroyed by some past, yet rarely spoken of cataclysmic act.

The Road is a poignant, heart-wrenching tale.  It pulls out emotion that are severely unpleasant in experience: specifically, the dull sense of loneliness and the profound experience of potential loss. While these are not emotions we actively seek out, it’s fair to say we are better from their experience. Recalling a recent conversation with Krista Tippet of NPR’s “Speaking of Faith,” my good friend Dave expressed that one of the most important things Tippet expressed was the sentiment that we are limiting ourselves when we seek a narrow version of ‘happiness.’ Rather, she suggested that we ought to seek a type of flourishing that encompasses a wider set of emotions and experiences, all which speak to the varied experience of humanity in both its good and bad forms. Cormac pulls you into these moments, highlighting the importance of relationships and the ways in which we often experience them most profoundly with the potential of their loss.

In the interview, McCarthy suggests that the story comes in large part out of his own attachment to his young son. And yet, the love between father and son in the book is different than often portrayed in traditional Hollywood love stories. For example, in The Road, the father and son never explicitly say “I love you.” About this, McCarthy states:

“A lot of the lines that are in there are verbatim conversations my son John and I had. I mean just that when I say he’s the co-author of the book. A lot of the things that the kid says are things that John said. John said, “Papa, what would you do if I died?” I said, “I’d want to die, too,” and he says, “So you could be with me?” I said, “Yes, so I could be with you.” Just a conversation than two guys would have.”

Similarly, McCarthy’s complex relationship with religion comes out in the the way his characters wrestle with the notion of god the seeking of transcendence, even while not ‘stating’ religious words, or calling to mind a ‘religious’ book or film. But like the love never stated, religious imagery and themes pervade his work. For example, near the end of The Road, the narrator states that the father, “knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.’” While not traditional religion in the sense of sitting in mass, reciting creeds, or experiencing prayer, there is something spiritual in how the father feels a certain duty to his son’s protection, and acknowledges of the beauty in the world admidst the ugliness of the post-apocalytic setting of the novel.

Cormac’s own religious committment has seemingly adjusted over time, even if it appears his connection to religious orthodoxy was never very very strong. In the interview, speaking about his Irish Catholic upbringing, and religion in his life today, McCarthy summarizes:

I have a great sympathy for the spiritual view of life, and I think that it’s meaningful. But am I a spiritual person? I would like to be. Not that I am thinking about some afterlife that I want to go to, but just in terms of being a better person.

It seems that the type of spirituality that interests McCarthy is profoundly about an existential commitment to living out love in the world, all the while acknowledging his own impotence in this matter. Cormac, like the father in the novel, feels a certain pull of duty, and desires to see the transcendent in the profane. For McCarthy, this duty and transcendent comes in relationships and his desire to find in narration transcendent relationships in contexts typically narrated devoid of them. This posture towards life commits McCarthy to writing novels that, “take years of your life and drive you to suicide.”

It is this existential relationship to all things religious that ultimately makes McCarthy’s novels so profoundly gripping. He calls up religious questions, but doesn’t feel confident in the traditional institutionalized answers. To use the words of philosopher/ theologian Miroslav Volf, McCarthy is reacting against the ‘thin’ view of religion that often rely on cliches, acknowledging the importance of a thick meaningful framework, all the while simultanously doubting its existence.

But isn’t this in itself a TYPE of thick religious understanding, even if not orthodox in the traditional sense? In a review of the book, philosopher Jamie K.A. Smith weaves together the actual practices of father and son and what the mean for the characters, ultimately suggesting that they participate in a form of world-building through the nearly litergical nature of their interaction. Smith writes that, “the book is suffused with ritual and thus a kind of sacramentality. Quasi-liturgies both make and hold together the remnants of a “world” for father and son.” For two men depending on each other in a severely broken world, they needed a way to construct meaning, and live into a ‘reality’ not yet present. Smith highlights one such moment of life re-narration, recast in liturgical form:

The boy sat tottering. The man watched him that he not

topple into the flames. He kicked holes in the sand for the

boy’s hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat

holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it.

All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the

forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out

of the air and breathe upon them

Perhaps it is such ‘quasi-liturgies’ that we, as the religious and non-religious alike, need more than anything.

 

Nov. 13, 2009

what makes a life beautiful?

Posted by Peter Boumgarden under Uncategorized
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Megan FoxI have a good friend who is doing his final interview for this year’s Rhodes scholarship next week. The other day over coffee, he told me that one of last year’s final interview questions was ‘what is beauty?” Imagine answering that on the fly, in front of 7 former Rhodes Scholar, all with a full-ride to Oxford on the line…

Given the recent dabbling into the philosophical/ existential on this blog, I want to take this question a step further… specifically, what makes for a beautiful life? What does it mean to be a beautiful person?

Though it is a hard question conceptually, I think we often know beauty of this type when we see it, don’t we? We know people whose lives seem worth living, who we want to know better and be around? Isn’t this is some sense a beautiful life?

At the core, maybe beauty is constructing, finding, and building a story with one’s life, a story worthy of the title beautiful. The late French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote: “The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character.” For example, is it not beautiful when we see someone hop out of the normal logic of give and take, or transaction and transaction costs, to pursue something virtuous, however defined. Is that not a beautiful life? As Wendell Berry writes: “Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” Maybe it is those narrative arcs that give us potential of beauty.

*               *               *

Given this discussion, it’s interesting to look at the forthcoming NY Times Magazine article on the rise of Megan Fox. In this profile, Laura Hirschberg chronicles the following quotes of the sex-symbol of Transformers fame:

“When I sit down to talk to men’s magazines, there’s a certain character that I play. She’s not fully fleshed out — she doesn’t have her own name — but she shows up to do men’s-magazine interviews. There’s something so ridiculous about always being in your underwear in those magazines, and you know the interview is going to run opposite those pictures. So, there’s a character that talks to all of them.”

“All women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. You’re sold, and it’s based on sex. That’s O.K., if you know how to use it.” Fox paused. “It’s been a crazy year. I’ve learned that being a celebrity is like being a sacrificial lamb. At some point, no matter how high the pedestal that they put you on, they’re going to tear you down. And I created a character as an offering for the sacrifice. I’m not willing to give my true self up. It’s a testament to my real personality that I would go so far as to make up another personality to give to the world. The reality is, I’m hidden amongst all the insanity. Nobody can find me.”

Fox is clearly living out a narrative which plays to the masses, but one that she clearly is aware lacks a certain kind of beauty worth pursue whole-heartedly (ironic given the ‘beauty’ these magazines celebrate). The rest of the article goes onto show how Fox’s real life constrasts with the images she plays in the magazines (she is relatively mild, she has a long-term boyfriend, etc.). This is a distinction Fox believes she can maintain as seen by the final quote, feeling
“nobody can find (her),” this true self.

I can’t help but wondering whether is it really possible to forever remain distant from the stories we live in, from the world-views we swim deep within? In our own lives, do the roles we play and the narratives we buy into leave some type of lasting imprint on our lives? If these stories are not worthy of a beautiful existence, are we are clearly able to shake them off when we want to pursue such ends?

*               *               *

My favorite song on The National’s 2007 “Boxer” album is Fake Empire. The song ends with the following lyrics:

Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire

I do not know what the artists were intending lyrically with this song, but I read it as an indictment of the way we often live half-heartedly with stories not worth living for. With our actions, we buy into stories that we only half-heartedly believe, because we think they are the stories that matter to others. They are stories whic we fear, in the depths of our souls and the in the moments of profound vulnerability, do not hold the promise that we ascribe to them. We’re half-awake in fake empires…

It’s an indictment worth letting reverberate deep and long if we desire living lives of beauty.

 

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