Quiet

I'm surprised this post has been so long in coming as it has its origins in a colloquium discussion on the Quakers just after spring break.

As nearly as I can remember, the progression went like this. In the Quaker service my friends attended, there was an extended period of quiet prayer, maybe 20 minutes long, broken only if someone felt the spririt move them to say something. There might have been a specific name for this, but I have since forgotten. To give us all a sense of it, the class as a whole was invited to participate in this. No one quaked or felt compelled by the spirit to say anything during our foray into Quaker prayer. After sometime it was ended, and we were asked to share our experiences and thoughts on it.

I eventually raised my hand and questioned what exactly we meant by quiet and silence. True silence, in that there is nothing to be heard, is an awfully artificial quality. In nature there is always animal life or wind to play upon the ears. And people frequently complain of the constant din of city life. The only way I know of to find it is through a purely human initiated sound-proof chamber.

I left my question at that, and a few people offered their suggestions. The only one I remember involved a person saying that they felt at peace in nature, even if there wasn't complete silence.

I've had some time since that presentation and would now like to offer my own answer to it. What I believe we are truly searching for when we say we are looking for silence, short of a retreat to that sound-proof chamber, is better described as stillness, being aware of and acknowledging all that audible information and accepting it. It doesn't shock us or distract us. It is simply there, alongside us, not to be resisted or understood as an irritation because we cannot control it. In this way, stillness can be found anywhere. Absorption into a forest or on the shores of some lake is not an atypical occurrence as one falls into their respective rhythms. Similarly, one can eventually fall into the pulse of the city as well. A friend of mine once told me a story about his younger brother. Their family had moved from a major city to the outskirts of my small town. That first night, the brother woke his parents and complaining that the crickets were too loud. I find it difficult to imagine that the crickets were truly louder than passing traffic, but their rhythm was different from what he was used to. Thus his personal stillness was broken. Some settings, though, are certainly more conducive to stillness. A piped truck can pass by one's home and disrupt any calm, and if one is in a state of fear because of an unfamiliar location, every sound indicates a possible threat and prevents any possibility for becoming still.

Perfection

All we can ever expect of perfection, not being able to improve something in anyway, in our own lives is a but a fleeting moment, if that. (I think that may be paraphrased from the novel Fight Club, but I digress because I can go on about Fight Club for a long bleeding time.) The most skilled and talented among us may be fortunate enough to experience more than a few such moments. Perfection in anything, moral action, creative works, athletic activites, whatever, is nigh impossible because it depends upon more than that which is within our ability to control. For a painting to be perfect the paint must be just right, and short of making one's own paints, there is very little one can do to guarantee this short of becoming intimately familiar with a specific type and producer. For a violin performance to be perfect, not only must the instrument and performer be at their best but the acoustics of the auditorium must be perfectly suited as well, and those are not odds I like.

We cannot guarantee perfection, no matter our own efforts. What then should our relationship be to it?

I say we continue to strive for it. We acknowledge its veritable impossibility but continue on because we can never attain it without trying. The moment striving ends, the opportunity for perfection is absolutely out of our reach. Because of this ultimate goal, we will fail again and again. We just learn the best we can from these mistakes and try again. Besides, the result is of secondary importance. It's in the process and means where true value lies.

In counter, perfectionists, those who put the most effort into finding perfection, are disdained. In my experience, many of these criticisms are directed against those who are fastidious in their homework habits and small work duties. At these times, such criticisms are warranted. In their pursuit of perfection on such small things, they waste time on items of little consequence, directing their attention away from greater matters like morality and artistic creation.

But what about those who pour their beings into charity organizations and enter politics to aid the downtrodden? Schindler broke down at the end of his movie because he could have saved more by selling his car and cuff links and whatever else he still had. Is it appropriate to direct criticisms of perfectionism against them as well? I say yes but must first define perfection beyond 'not being able to improve something in anyway.' Perfection is not found in a single element but a system. One can spend all of their time perfecting their individual skill with a paint brush or violin, but they must still have experiences outside of their craft as sources. They must still maintain their health to perform at the utmost of their abilities. Perfection, when it is found, is found through many practices, not merely some clearly identifiable, central thing like skill with a paint brush in painting.

To return to perfection in matters of social justice, at least my earlier examples were quantitative and could be said that one completed some assignment perfectly. Perfection in such matters is still dependent, even more so than artistic and creative endeavors, upon the choices of others, whether its people aiding in the improvement of their own situation or others choosing to act evilly. As such, failures of perfection here are even more common. One can still do everything in their own power and fail miserably. Thus, before they even begin to work towards that goal of perfect justice and goodness, they must come to grips with their inevitable failure lest they breakdown and entirely forsake the project.

Should I follow my head or my heart?

Another piece that wasn't originally written for "Spice of Life." This one was written in response to the above prompt for the Great American Think-Off. It's a trash question, one that can hardly be answered in 500 words or less and enraging to a philosophy minor, but hey, there was a chance at a $500 reward. Unfortunately, that reward was not mine. I still like this essay though. Enjoy.

REO Speedwagon asked that question in Hi Infidelity. Ilsa faced it at the end of Casablanca, and strands of the question can be found in The Odyssey when Odysseus attempts to reconcile his cunning and impulsiveness. Now the Great American Think-Off poses a close variant of it. It is fair to call it an enduring question, albeit a poorly framed one. The heart is a muscle and the mover of the circulatory system. Except for the potent combination of an increased pulse and the release of adrenaline that forces the mind into a ‘flight or fight’ response, the heart really offers no guidance in decision making. It is more appropriate to ask whether we should base our decisions upon reason or instinct, the former being the capacity to use logic and contemplate the distant consequences of a choice and the latter being an impulse to act firmly grounded in the present. Head, the center of thought, is reason, and heart, that organ to which we attribute those ideas not arrived at through logic, is instinct. These paired terms can be used interchangeably for the remainder of this essay.

Things exist for a reason. Reason and instinct are no different. Both are means of survival. Instinct, present in all forms of animal life, provides instantaneous decisions that increase the odds of survival in cases of immediate danger. There is no time for reason when one is pursued by a dangerous animal, so it is instinct that keeps one alive. For humans, whose physical capabilities are less than those of most animals, reason allowed for the creation of tools and other methods to overcome their physical deficiencies, thus increasing survival rates. An unarmed human stands little chance to defeat a buffalo, but working in tandem with others armed with weapons, humans can defeat the animal and enjoy all the benefits it provides.

Likewise, both instinct and reason have times and places where they are more useful. Instinct’s ability to provide one with a rapid response is critical in situations where time is of the essence while reason is necessary when one has adequate time and is attempting to find a solution that works in all situations and not just the present moment. In situations like sports and battle where time to react is measured in increments smaller than a second, decisions based on instinct are the only way to go. However, instinct will provide little help in finding a solution to a scientific problem because it only considers the present moment and cannot consider the full possibilities and limitations of different circumstances. In long-term projects reason dominates.

Clearly, both reason and instinct have their places in life and to give one such heavy preference that the other is completely excluded would be a grave mistake. As depicted in popular media, humans have a strong aversion to being reduced to a computer or animal, the respective epitomes of dominance by reason and instinct. But, as is the case of many dualities, granting greater weight to one is appropriate. Aristotle in his formulation of the Golden Mean, an idea that continues to inform our practice of virtue today, admitted that courage is not found square in the middle of foolhardiness and cowardice but more on the side of foolhardiness.

Thus I give priority to reason. Between it and instinct, reason is the only one that can take advantage of the benefits of each. Should the situation demand it, reason can recognize the instinctive choice, abdicate decision-making to it and take control again when the situation has changed. In contrast, should preference be given to instinct in the decision-making process, reason will not have the opportunity to surface and its advantages will never be known because instinct is instantaneous and offers no time for the reflection required for reasoned choices.

Furthermore, reason can form positive instincts, but instinct can never make reason sharper. For example, many aspects of the martial arts are antithetical to a natural, instinctive response; one steps into an attack rather than flees, attacks are carefully restrained to prevent a powerful counter. One fails in the martial arts not only if they trust completely to their natural instincts but also because they are too slow if they attempt to reason through every move. Through practices constructed and guided by reason, however, poor instincts can be replaced with superior ones. Thus instinct retains its usefulness through the use of reason.

Charter submissions

So, finals are over, and all those friends whom I will not see for the next few months have left, so I am not trying to spend as much time as possible with them anymore. Expect more frequent posts now, as long as the ideas keep coming.

Actually, this post is a bit of a cop out. I have a good idea fermenting and want to give it some more time to mature and not simply be blathering. Thus I offer links to already published work. Enjoy my submissions to the two lastest issues of Charter: Gonzaga University's premier journal of scholarship and opinion, Language and Machines. A bit more thought and time went into these pieces than my typical post, but should you have access to Gonzaga, hopefully you would have already picked up your own issues, which include a number of other fine essays and some wonderful graphic design.

An aphorism

"Change never happens one says, 'This will be,' but when they say, 'That was.'"

Take a person who is trying to stop eating so many cookies or whatever. If they keep saying, "This will be my last cookie," they have failed to create the change. It still exists in the future but not now. The person who says, "That was my last cookie," however, now looks upon their actions from a different vantage point. Their choices and actions are now cast in a different light because the change has been made.

You could make a compelling argument that this is simply a matter of semantics, but I disagree. It's a fundamental change in your structural understanding of a system because, as mentioned only two sentences ago, your choices and actions can be seen in a different way once a change has been asserted by saying, "That was." If one continues to say, "This will be," the structure they are operating within remains.

Of course, this still depends on the individual capacity to make choices. Either way of discussing one's choices is only as good as their ability to make the choices they want to make. I just feel that the second method provides a better structure to act from.

No meat

I gave up eating meat for Lent. For the most part, I succeeded in this, accidentally eating a slice of pizza with Canadian bacon because it was covered by cheese once and picking up a seafood wrap without thinking another time. Now it's Easter. I've already had lamb and am anticipating lasagna later today. What about it all then? What did it mean to give up meat? Could I live this way?

To begin, I have no compunction against killing animals. I've heard that there are some highly liberal colleges which have the freshman class communally raise a pig or something over the year and then kill it for a barbeque at the end of the year. Wouldn't bother me. I've gone hunting, though I never shot anything myself, and seen plenty of animals die. As long as it were killed quickly and with minimum pain, I would have no problem with it. Rather than ethical, my concern with vegetarianism is economic. The world population rises exponentially, and somehow everyone has to be fed. With respect to that, the amount of energy put into raising animals for their flesh cannot be defended. Personally, I believe that within my lifetime, barring a population stagnation or a drop, we will all become vegetarians for this very reason.

One question I was asked several times over the 40 days was if it were hard. I guess the implicit assumption there was that I missed the taste. Really, that wasn't such a big deal. Since I began cooking my own food at college, my meat intake in general has drastically gone down. Meat's expensive and a pain to store with my limited refrigerator space. I immediately have to do something with it, so it wasn't such a great change in the first place. The only times it became really difficult were when I was at a restaurant, there were maybe two or three vegetarian options and everything else looked so bleeding tasty. Good thing then I don't go out to eat very often.

On a related note, I could never go vegan. I could live as a vegetarian, but I like my eggs and cheese too much. Besides, when you need to take pills for vital nutrients, you've gone over the edge.

Night

In posts past I have written on sunrise and the snow. All of those came from my experiences back in Minnesota. None ever originated from Gonzaga, mostly because it's an urban school, in the middle of a residential neighborhood and only a mile or so from downtown. It's really not so bad. Spokane is hardly a metropolis, and the streetlights aren't so plentiful that they completely block out the stars. Still, the campus is such a controlled environment, so any time I'm able to completely remove myself from campus and the city itself, it's a beautiful experience.

This weekend, we had a retreat out at Bozarth, a mansion on the outskirts of Spokane. And I mean outskirts. Just down the hill from where Bozarth stood was a minor marsh, the kind of place where the trees weren''t transplanted, the terraforming is minimal, and there's grass that has never been touched by a lawnmower. The kind of place I could bike to in maybe ten minutes back in Baudette but need a car to reach now.

First of all, the sunset was beautiful. I'm so used to sunsets on the plains where I can watch the sun go all the way down and nothing obstructs the view, but here it fell behind the mountains first. The mountains were covered in trees made golden by the setting sun and cast shadows that seemed to be miles long. The colors caught by the clouds? Rich and warm, colors that would have taken Picasso out of his Blue Period early.

But that wasn't the capstone of it all.

Around midnight, I took a walk into the marsh, hoping for a little stargazing. I hadn't even reached the path down the hill when I realized that wasn't going to be much of an option. The moon was full and bright enough to cast shadows of its own. Freaking shadows. I've seen it before, but it still amazes me. Do people even know that can happen? Still, I felt the need for a walk, so continued my way down. The hill was steep enough to need switchbacks, and everyonce in a while the trees were open enough that I could get a decent view of the valley and marsh. It didn't so much take my breath away as make me forget to breath for a few moments, which really is funny. I had made the walk earlier in the day and commented to friend that it would have looked so much better had it been later in the spring or summer because it was still all drab and brown from the recent winter. But there is no color in moonlight, and all that remained was a magnificent intensity to the landscape. Details were lost, and the focus turned to other elements. A stream ran through the marsh. In the sunlight you could see all the way to the bottom and all the life and litter that were in it. At night I only had a sense of motion. I couldn't tell if it's depth were measured in inches or yards, but the light captured the little breaks in the surface and the rapid flow of the stream.

It was beautiful.

Further thoughts on volunteering

I'm going to San Antonio for spring break this year. In fact, I leave for the airport in two hours. Stereotypically, this vacation from college is associated with playing hard, blowing off steam and letting loose after an intense week of midterms and grade-making papers. That's not me, though. I'm going to San Antonio as part of Mission: Possible, a university program that places students in some city where they can offer community organizations and projects some help. My group, for example, will be helping out at the Good Samaritan Center, Children's Shelter and a third place that has yet to be determined as far as I know. Not exactly sure what form this help will come in, but those are who we'll be offering our services to.

Why do I do this? I bloody well know that I and my brief presence are not going to affect some great change that ends all poverty and unhappiness in San Antonio. Good grief, I'll be happy if all I manage to do is make someone's life a little more tolerable for a little while. Trips like these almost seem like a placebo, at times, for those of us who realize how materially fortunate we are, feel bad about those who lack our good luck and need to assuage our guilt somehow. On top of all that, it certainly was not cheap to participate. For the price, which I'm not exactly sure of but is several hundred dollars, I could have gone on a decent roadtrip, not that I paid any of it personally. The objects of my letter writing were very generous.

I found my answer earlier tonight, at Mission: Possible's spending-off ceremony. All of the participants gathered in the student chapel where we made bracelets with four beads to symbolize the pillars of this trip (simplicity, spirituality, community and social justice) and received T-shirts which boldly announced our participation. As may be expected, there was a speaker to guide us in reflecting on this trip, and what he said actually meant something to me.

Really, Mission: Possible isn't about our placements and those organizations we volunteer for. If we didn't come, they'd muddle through. No, Mission: Possible is about us, the participants. It looks to make us more aware of ourselves and others and develop our empathy, understanding and desire to offer help where it is needed. Sure, some people in San Antonio may benefit from my time there, but if that's all that comes from my participation in Mission: Possible, it'll have been a failure. I must become a better person as well.

Weather

I know I've spent time on the subject of nature's beauty before when I recently waxed poetic over snow and, to a lesser extent, when I wrote about watching the sunrise this summer, but I think I may have found the underlying principle, the one that ties my appreciation for all of these together. With respect to this post, three important things happened yesterday afternoon and last night. First, during a run I spoke with a friend about technology and what it has been to humanity. The second, I read this article about Disney World and the new American paradigm on NationalGeographic.com. On a sidenote, you should just visit the National Geographic Magazine Web page anyway because it is so well designed and the content is of such high quality.

Thirdly, I took a long walk outside as the snow fell. It was snowing again, but different from the last tiem I wrote about it. There were flakes, but they were very wet and didn't stick to the ground at all, melting almost immediately. Despite the fact that the air was full of snow, there was very little white on the grass, only a thin layer of slush. But I still thought it was beautiful. Really, it was cold, wet and disgusting to walk through, but the greatest painters in history would have been hard pressed to capture the beauty in that moment.

Like I said earlier, I think I now know why I appreciated it so much. No matter humanity's efforts, the weather is completely outside of our control, much less ability to predict judging by the many jokes made about weathermen. Yes, technology has allowed us unprecedented, unimaginable abilities to communicate, store information, create new realities and transform the land, but the weather is beyond us. If it weren't for the weather, humans could very nearly control every single aspect of their daily lives and lead them exactly as they wanted to with no surprises and nothing unexpected. Undoubtedly, humanity has impacted the weather through carbon emissions and everything else that makes environmentalists fear our future, but the weather will never be brought to heel.

And that's what I love about it. The weather is not something I can dominate or even slightly bend to my wishes. It simply is, and I must go with it. The person who can take any weather, no matter the situation, is one to be respected because they are aware of and comfortable with their own humanity and smallness.

Ethical disagreements

Currently, I am taking an Ethics class, something you would already know if you have been keeping up with this blog. Or keep in touch with me on regular basis. Or take the class with me. I guess it's also possible that you would know this if you had seen the class list at some point, but now I'm really digressing. So far our professor has attempted to convince us that an objective moral system does exist as our first few weeks have been spent reading about and disputing subjectivism (belief that morality depends upon the individual and their experiences), relativism (belief that morality is dependent upon culture and only discussed in that context) and egoism (belief that a moral action must spring from genuine altruism, where there is no reward, to be truly moral). Now we are getting into actual ethical theories, our next reading is on natural law.

Still, I have a metaethical concern that I'll probably ask my professor about tomorrow. How do we deal with those who act, as we perceive it, evilly? Ethics are a big deal. They're not some aesthetic judgment. I can't or, at least, shouldn't accept your endorsement of eugenics in the same way that I am willing to accept that you don't like Fight Club and may even think it's the most over-hyped movie ever. To take a concrete example, I fundamentally disagree with the death penalty and killing in general, but we'll need to focus upon capital punishment for this example. How can I still regard myself as a good person if I do not do all that is in my power to stop anymore people from being put to death for their crimes? How can I live in good conscience if I am not making every effort to stop the needle from being put into their arm?

I discussed this with a friend not so long ago. His suggestion is that my awareness of the situation is very likely limited in comparison to those who made the decision, and should I have their knowledge, I may agreement with what they did. In many particular ethical conflicts, I can agree with that, but I understand state-sponsored executions as an absolute evil. The situation will never justify it.

What then? I guess I can retreat to some form of "you have to pick your battles." My time and energy are finite. I am not enough to change the world to conform to all of my beliefs and ideas, and it would hardly be appropriate for me to do so were I given the opportunity since I have so little knowledge of some topics. I have to pick what I feel are the issues and situations that most need my participation and live with my choice.

When are we ourselves?

If my memory serves correctly, I remember Rachel of Animorphs fame was once described by Jake as a person who was always the same. No matter if she were in front of a teacher, her friends, her most dire enemy or her mother, you always got the same Rachel. I understood that as a compliment, and it's not hard to find examples of this celebration of the consistent in American culture. People who are willing to tell their bosses what they just told their co-workers are as heroic as it gets in the business world. People who double-talk and wholly change their personalities depending on they're with are despised.

Yeah, I can agree with this virtue to the extent that those who act differently when their society changes in order to benefit themselves do not deserve respect. But it bothers me too. Different people affect us differently. Some people command our respect due to their achievements and person, and others simply make us feel good because of how their zest for life comes out in their every action. Because of their pessimistic attitude and apathetic personality, others bring us down. Why shouldn't we be affected by them and thus see changes in our personality? What's wrong with that?

I believe many would suggest that my view on changing personality is wrong as well because it does not allow us to truly ourselves if our personalities are so easily altered. It's this sentiment that drives so many characters on television to leave their everyday lives and go on a journey to "find themselves." Humans are social creatures, unable to exist or even learn much about themselves unless they are put in contact with and form relationships with other humans. To go live alone by a pond or on some mountain is foolish as we are cut off from the living mirrors our self-image comes from. To know themselves, people need community and relationships.

Religion

Religion occupies that same ambiguous position as obscenity and culture do in our lexicon. We may not be able to define it, but we know it when we see it. Seeing as how I'm taking a religion class this semester that focuses on the many different denominations of Christianity that have appeared in the United States and how the two have impacted one another, I think it would be worth my (considerable) time and (infintie) space on this blog to try and define it.

In the broadest terms, religion is best defined against science and ethics all though the three are inextricably bound up. The primal religions see every event as a suprenatural one caused by divinities, science can become a religion unto itself and ethics cannot be separated from either. Science describes the world. Ethics inform us as to what we should do. Religion is purpose.

It's not hard to recognize Christianity and Buddhism as religions, but when you start to break them down and try to sift what makes them different from things like your job, it becomes difficult to see exactly what it is that separates them from something as ridiculous as sports. Rituals, community, mythology, rules, transcendence all of those can be found in both the major world religions and sports. Muslims have the Five Daily Prayers. Every team has a chant to get fired up before a game. Jews and Christians have church and synagogues to reinforce community. Even sports as apparently individual as distance running, one still needs teammates to set a strong pace and a coach to train them. Hindus have the Vedas, and Jews have the Torah. Baseball has its own origin stories. Jews have the Ten Commandments and Leviticus. Sports have rules. Religions seek to break out of the common and touch the divine. Sports movies set up the 'big game' as that place where ordinary people become superhumans and legends, outside the pale of the normal. As far as I can tell, it is as apprpriate to call football a religion as Sikhism.

Like I said, it's tricky. All you can really do is try and separate the good religions from the bad ones. Which then are good and which are bad? I'm copping out here because the right answer is whichever religion is true, but that is a topic for volumes. For me right now, the good ones are those that do not depend on humans, the ones that look beyond. Sports are a human creation. Every tradition, mythology and other aspect I identified earlier is derived from human actions. When sports are taken up as a religion, they proclaim the ultimate superiority of humans, something I do not accept. In contrast, religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism are good because they are exterior to humanity. Though they may not exist without our presence on earth, their origins would still be here. Sports, on the other hand, simply would not be.

For those of you who took World Religions with me at MITY (2002?), I own up to it that I owe a lot of this post's inspiration to that class. I remember my roots and give credit where it is due.

Snow

If you've been following this blog since early this summer, you may remember my post of a failed scholarship application to Marquette. In it, I had to make a list. I don't precisely remember what the theme was, something along the lines of the most important things I saw in this world, but there had to be seven items in it. One of them was the cold. I would like to expand upon that entry a little because the word limit on the essay didn't allow for a proper examination into one of the more beautiful aspects of the cold, snow.

It snowed Saturday evening. It was gorgeous. It began early and very lightly. You could hardly see the individual flakes they were so small. As it grew later though, the flakes came together, forming ones large enough to watch on their entire trip through the air, following their erratic paths to earth. Not that their beauty ends there.

Freshly fallen snow is clean and renewing. Walking through a snow fall, when you can see traces of only your steps, I do not know how to explain the feeling. There may be an experience of adventure as you are the first to see this new, fleeting scene or a feeling that but a sense of calm comes upon me.

In the winter too, it is quiet. What little sound is made by those animals too tough to hibernate or migrate south, is abosorbed by the snow creating a fragile silence, one that makes you take softer steps and kills any desire to shout that you might preserve the delicate quiet a little longer.

Culture

Culture is a funny thing. It gets bandied about so often and so carelessly that to actually find a good definition for it is near impossible. This came up last week during Ethics as we were considering a relativist ethical outlook (every society has its own distinct moral code and it cannot be compared to any others, tradition is its own warrant, yadda, yadda, yadda). To even make relativism viable, you have to be able to identify and differentiate between cultures and so my classes troubles began. I do not remember the specifics of the various theories on culture that were offered, but there was trouble in defining it as circular reasoning arose in calling it 'the beliefs and values one has' or culture became so atomized by examples of a person identifying with their gender, race, nationality, interests, ethnicity and whatever other myriad things that the term culture became useless.

So a friend and I went for a run afterwards and discussed culture on the way. In maybe fifteen minutes (the run was over twenty, but we switched over to a wholly new topic after a while) and after considering whether Star Wars fandom and fashion and other such things constituted a culture, we came to a conclusion that goes something like this. Culture is the set of prohibitions and prescriptions, written or not, that we follow or at least attempt to in our actions. Atomization is prevented because culture is bound by a finite number of actions, but belonging to multiple cultures is still possible.

Counter-arguments?

Webster suggests that culture is 'a : the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization d : the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic.'

Wikipedia says "Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate"), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance."

Yours?

Education

Our formal education begins very early and can continue for a long time. They (a rather nebulous concept that includes parents or other caregivers and the government) get their hooks into us early with pre-school and kindergarten, and the process does not often end until a decade has past and increasingly goes on even longer. Why? To turn us into productive members of society, responsible, socialized adults ready to enter into a skilled profession. What follows are personal reflections on the attainment of this goal.

When I was in my junior year of high school and talk about figuring out what I wanted to do after graduating began to circulate (I always knew I was going to college), I hated the very idea of community colleges and three-year programs. There is far more to education than getting a job and beginning to make money. A person should have a developed appreciation for music alongside their understanding of accounting or geology. Besides, a weak worker is one who understands only their own trade and not the context in which it exists. Intersections between diverse fields are common. Engineering and art? English and history? Yeah, there is an entire world outside every individual field and to better understand that field, you need to understand the world. I knew I wanted to go to a liberal arts school and be forced to take classes that I would never normally take because there is a big world out there, and journalism offers only a solitary perspective on it.

Now I am at that liberal arts college, and my thoughts swing more in the other direction. Some friends were recently discussing their plans for grad school and dismissed their current undergraduate education as the opportunity to study what they enjoy. Four years of learning amounted to nothing more than a stepping stone to their real education for them. A great deal of money is going into this necessary passage, and an opportunity to postpone taking responsibility and become a producer and not merely a consumer is extended.

Freak, I am 19-years-old, a physically mature male and in good health. In most any other nation today or at any other time in history, I could very well have been working a farm, supporting not only myself but a family, likely including my parents, or be in the army or something. My peers are planning on extending the lack of true resonsibility for a few more years. This is unacceptable. Besides, what's stopping them from learnign law now. Are their capacities for understanding and memory going to increase that much more between their sophomore year of college and entrance into graduate school?

Ideally, I guess I want elementary and middle school and high school to more closely resemble the liberal arts education I am now receiving. Teach us to write and read and do arithmetic, yes, but also teach us philosophy and how to think critically. Show us the basics of physics and biology. Expose us to every manner of art and music. Catch them young enough and they will not blow it off as something that does not matter to them or their future. Then let us learn a trade.

Movie trailers

A few days back I saw a trailer for Stomp the Yard on TV. The main draw of the movie seems to be the dancing because the plot of talented rookies in some sport taking on the established veterans has been done time and again in any number of settings. Likely, the hero is the one who jumpstarts the ragtag group of the rookies, falls in love with some girl with connections to the veterans, things fall apart and the veterans see if the hero would like to join them, he declines and brings the rookies together at the last minute to win and get the girl. I haven't looked into the movie anymore than this trailer, so I may be wrong about these predictions. Still, I find it hard to believe I'm that far off. What surprised me about this trailer, however, was that it revealed the ending so blatantly. In the final seconds you can see the hero kissing a girl while confetti falls and his team jumps around behind him with a trophy. I doubt anyone coming to this movie didn't expect a happy ending, but it was rather surprising to me until I began to think about it.

How often do people go into movies completely blind now? Likely, they don't go to a movie unless they've read some reviews or seen some trailers or at least seen a poster which reveals a bit about it. Even more, if the person manages to remain completely in the dark about plot details, once they begin seeing the movie they apply any number of structures they've observed in similar films and can probably make some good guesses about the ending after twenty minutes.

What I find fascinating is that filmakers know this and have changed the ways their movies are presented now. The general structure may remain the same, but the early parts have changed. Take Hitch which my mom and sister watched severl nights back. Even if one did miss the trailers or has since forgotten about them, it's hard not to imagine Will Smith getting together with the gossip columnist after their respective characters are introduced. However, they first appear together in a bar but with different people. At one point, they even cross paths but just miss each other. The audience was expecting their first meeting at this point, perhaps in an amusing instance of slapstick, but it doesn't. Of course it eventually happens, in the same bar ten movie minutes later actually, but audience expectations are played with. I find it interesting that filmakers are still able to practice some originality within these established structures and the associated expectations.

A final question on this subject. If some movie remains popular in future, and people can reasonably come into it without any expectations except that it is a good example of some genre, will they be missing some of these little tricks?

Habit and schedule

To obtain virtue, Socrates thought that the cultivation of good habits was necessary. In The Art of Being, Erich Fromm writes about the need for concentration in habitual activities.

Before I can progress in this post, there is a fundamental question that must be asked. What are habits? The definition my philosophy professor of this past semester gave is a good one. Habits are those things we do again and again that have a cumulative effect and lead towards a single goal.

My problem lies in distinguishing between the daily practice of habits and scheduling. This, of course, requries further distinctions to be made between kinds of habits. You simply can't schedule habits of a moral, ethical nature, the ones that Socrates was speaking of. You cannot say, "I am going to spend this morning being honest and practice altruism in the afternoon." These should be taken into account and practiced in all of our interactions, every day. Ultimately, we should strive to develop virtues like justice and patience to the point that we no longer think of their practice but simply live them.

Lying in contrast to these habits of moral development are those of skill development, habits that are better aligned with Fromm's treatment of habits. Learning a new language or how to paint or whatever, those require our full attention and concentration. To some extent, we can integrate these into our daily lives in the same way as moral habits by trying to translate some phrases into our chosen language or practice motions that mimic those of a paintbrush. Still, these are the types of things that time must be devoted to specifically if one wants to make true progress in them. So, in order to acquire these skills, we schedule time to work on them.

Is it possible to overschedule in this regard? Of course. At the heart of this lies my dispute with any form of overscheduling, be it on vacation or in anyother aspect of one's life, or too much control over one's choices. To the extent that we remain committed to our schedules, we remove chaos from our lives, necessary for discovery and growth. If we remain in complete control of every aspect of our lives, we can never mature beyond ourselves. We are our limit. It's the same problem that news and blogs consumers run into these days. People immerse themselves in those that reinforce their own beliefs rather than challenging themselves with intelligent works of differing politics. Their beliefs are thusly never tested, and good ideas, often the result of synthesis, may never be found.

This all leads to a rather simple principle with regards to habits: flexibility. Rather than saying, "I will read this work in a foreign language from 3:30 to 4:00 today," you try instead to read a chapter sometime today while still being prepared to take advantage of alternative opportunities.

I write beyond this blog...

On the off-chance that someone reads this blog who doesn't personally know me, I am pleased to inform them that I do write and am published outside of this blog. Mostly, that is through various Gonzaga publications; the student newspaper and the jounals of opinion and art. If you lack access to hard copies of these, the following are links to pieces I have written.

My Charter submissions:
Cultural enlightenment 101: Education through travel
Happy Crossings
Archetypes of a political persuasion
The Smart One

The Gonzaga Bulletin submissions:
Actually I'm just going to provide a link to the website, The Gonzaga Bulletin. I wrote a fair number of editorials that can be found in the archives. My pieces are the ones preceded by the title 'Editorial:' rather than 'Letter to the editor:' Most of them deal with what the opinion pages should seek to be and are of a more general nature that is hopefully of interest to more people.

Reflection submission:
Unfortunately, these are not up yet. You'll just have to wait to see the brilliant fiction I write.

What is journalism all about?

I want to be a journalist. I'm not sure in what capacity (reporter most likely considering my recent experiences as Opinion editor) or in what medium (not TV) or, much less, publication (it is my hope that more time in the field will lend some guidance on these paths), but it's what I want to do.

Why?

There are practical considerations. It's a field one can actually get a job in and make a living on, and it's something I think I could enjoy doing. Not that these matter so much. I find it hard to believe I could not find these needs filled in any number of other occupations. In all truth, it probably wouldn't bother me to be a janitor or secretary if these were the only preconditions I looked to in a job.

No, my desire to professionally enter into journalism is based on what it's all about. Thomas Griffith called journalism "history on the run" in his essay The Pursuit of Journalism. I don't know who he is, except that he was an editor of Time and Nieman Fellow in 1943. In that same essay he referenced Matthew Arnold's quote, "Journalism is literature in a hurry." I respect Arnold as a poet, "Dover Beach" hangs in my dorm room. But I take a different view from both of these men.

Journalism, in its best form, is information, and information is a tool. With newspapers and magazines and the like, people are given what is necessary to make better decisions. They can choose to support or fight specific courses of action because of what they learned from the news. Money obscures the energies that go into production. In its way, journalism can disrupt that veil. That is what I want to do in my career. Whoo.

Volunteering and charity

They're a big deal, volunteering and charity. The amount of time you unselfishly donate to others is a quantitative element that others often use to judge if you as 'good.' Besides that, material benefits have accrued alongside the less tangible identification of one as a good person. Charity work is really pushed at the high school level and participation in it opens up all manner of scholarships and gives your college applications a bit of a boost. Or not because it has become the standard. You want to win a Citizen of the Year award? I understand that coaching Little Leauge and the like does a fair bit towards endearing oneself to whatever committee makes those selections. For some businesses, philanthropy or the appearance of such has become a major component of their operations, Product (RED) being the current pre-eminent example.

This post isn't about the larger issue so much as its appearance in my life as of late though that would make for a decent post.

By accident of birth, I have never been in need of anything in my life. The essentials and necessities have all been taken care of for me. Life certainly isn't fair, but I can bloody well try to make it a little more so in some way. That's why I volunteer and try to do good.

At Gonzaga, I have given time to a local elementary school this past semester and, last fall, an organization which I prefer to call a homeless service center to a shelter because its sleeping program is minor and it mostly provides some necessities and opportunities to the homeless who take advantage of it. In the first case, I took care of some minor things like putting together papers for the students and helping them with their writing to the small extent you can when they're in first grade. In the latter case, I sat behind a counter and handed hygienic items out to those who asked for them. In either placement, my job could have done by most anyone. They were not what I am looking for.

No, I think the best example of what I'm looking for is a project I took part in towards the end of the semester. Operating under the name 'A Warm Welcome' the intent of the project was to provide student-made scarves to incoming Karen Burmese refugees. In ideal practical terms, for the amount of energy we devoted to making these scarves, we could have held jobs and devoted our earnings to the refugee placement service, World Relief, and done them far more good. In more practical terms, it's very hard to get college students to part with their money in this manner while they are more than willing to give of their time. Furthermore, though the quality of the scarves was largely of inferior quality to those which could be purchased commercially, these scarves were the first crocheting project for many students so they gained a new skill, and I hope that they demonstrated a greater sense of welcome to the refugees than simple purchases could.

That it was what I am looking for. Actions with both tangibly good results and strong meanings behind them as well. Time to start looking harder.