Bread and Circus

Editors — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:38:03 +0000

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Making a Mountain Out of an Anthill

Editors — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:31:08 +0000

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY

Making a Mountain Out of an Anthill: The Inner Drive for a Social Contract

By Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard

I have been reading Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (NY: Harper and Row, 1975), and gotten as far as his third section, “Thought.” His premise is fascinating, that consciousness underlies all matter. Consciousness is thus omnipresent, and ever-increases with biological complexity. It flows from geosphere to biosphere, then—with the advent of intelligence—the noosphere. On its evolutionary journey it rises from elemental chance to reasoned choice. Père Teilhard attempts to reconcile divinity with evolution, teleologically pointing life towards what he terms the “Omega Point:” a sort of Mobius strip for life whereby all life eventually folds back and returns to its origins in God.

Interestingly, this morning’s NY Times ( July 15, 2008 ) carried a somewhat related story about the Harvard scientist, Edward O. Wilson, who studies ant social behavior and extrapolates lessons for humanity. Wilson is currently writing a treatise on “social evolution,” a controversial argument that connects of social behavior and genetics.

Wilson sees an evolutionary impetus for cooperative, selfless behavior that favors the group over the individual. The Times article states, “In humans, these may include genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior.” It goes on to say, “Morality and religion, [Wilson] suspects, are traits based on group selection. ‘Groups with men of quality — brave, strong, innovative, smart and altruistic — would tend to prevail, as Darwin said, over those groups that do not have those qualities so well developed,’ Dr. Wilson said.”

Wilson and like-minded colleagues have come under fire from others in the Sciences, such as Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene [Oxford U. Press, 1976] and The God Delusion [Bantam Books, 2006]). Dawkins and his camp narrowly see genetics, the “survival of the fittest” and natural selection in individual terms, as an organism’s single minded (”take no prisoners”) drive to survive and reproduce at all costs. Wilsonians, on the other hand, believe that natural selection works on many levels, including “multi-level or group-level selection”: in essence, an evolutionary process favoring the survival of the group over the needs of an individual.

For many reasons, I am most tempted to agree with Wilson’s view, not Dawkins’, as I’ve made abundantly clear elsewhere in other articles, such as “Turtles All the Way Down” and “Krishna’s Dictum.”

I’m not yet sure how closely Père Teilhard’s thesis overlaps with Wilson’s, but if Wilson can prove an evolutionary theory of morality, his work would certainly seem to harmonize with Teilhard’s belief that something greater than mechanical evolution is “afoot in the world.”

When I complete The Phenomenon of Man, I will surely have further observations to add. Stay tuned.

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This item originally appeared in the blog Percyflage.

Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard, Ph.D., is a senior contributing writer & contributing editor of Bread and Circus Magazine and an Independent Scholar of Art History, Specializing in Northern Renaissance and Baroque. Click here to send her email.

Image (above): Cover of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (Harper Colophon, 1976 edition), available at Powells.com and other online booksellers.

A Shattering of Voices

Editors — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:55:16 +0000

SOCIETY

A Shattering of Voices: A Generation’s Silence

By Jessica Miles, contributing writer

When I think of what defines my generation, I immediately think of New York City’s Times Square, splashed with a blur of cluttered confusion, littered with images and words; a statement of where we are in all aspects of our cultural spectrum. It is characterized by a scene of ever-changing advertisements and symbols controlling the wide-eyed society which makes up this generational hub. Below, people flood the streets as if on a roller coaster, in a constant rush and in constant need for more-more action, more modernization, more excitement, and more media-inspired innovation. This overwhelming nature has drastically morphed since my pre-teen years when it was a crime to miss that latest quarrel in the Tanner household on Full House and when Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop were considered celebrities. However, simplicity is no longer momentous in our media-saturated environment, as new demands are constantly being met in the most fixated ways.

Affluenza, an affliction characterized by seeking happiness through materialism, is hypnotizing us into believing this is what we desire, but a growing dependency on consumption does not seem to be getting us any closer to the top. As we relentlessly question our needs and demands we descend in our own trepidation and continue to lack answers. Instead we are falling further into dismay and drowning in our own misconceptions of where we expect our lives to lead. Imagine if Times Square was stripped of commercialization, the lights and the movement that drive us to attain bigger and better things. We would be left to rely on individual uniqueness to paint the scene, instead of concentrated corporations chasing endless profit.

I’m living in a generation characterized by disarray and fabricated, ill-minded emptiness. Unfortunately, this has emerged as the cultural norm. I’d hate to think we are viewed as scantily clad midriffs or uncaring mooks who find some muddled inspiration from the iconic, pop culture “role models” of the world. But my hope may be futile. Image and fantasy have trumped education and literacy. This status quo has become a sort of mutilated yet somehow captivating reality, and with it comes the deterioration of individualism, eccentricity, and voice.

Where have all the voices gone? It may have been somewhat before my time, but I still enjoy the sounds of raw, yet true talent. It is disappointing to think that John Mayer’s, ‘Waiting on the World to Change’ is this generation’s muted version of ‘What’s Going On?’ I grew up looking forward to being mesmerized by my generation’s rising voices and experiencing a real sense of camaraderie that would be inspired by these voices. The bellowing echoes of infamous celebrities flooding media outlets are a far cry from the voices that define past generations.

The media may be the source of what seems to be our generation’s bewilderment. It fascinates me that in spite of the vast spectrum of media sounds and images, we still struggle to find substance in content. Our choices are limited to exaggerated headlines suggesting inappropriate sexual content consistently splashed across magazine covers like Cosmopolitan and an endless number of disgraceful reality shows based on everything from celebrities to fear tactics, sports competitions to dating shows, and makeover shows to renovation shows. Furthermore, headline news has turned into a baffled mix of sensationalism. Should the daily lives of celebrities be deemed important information? In our endless desire for sensationalism have we given media moguls justification in further developing what Newton Minnow termed “the vast wasteland?” I don’t believe these are the stories for which society tunes in. It seems unlikely that mass media can become a serious, trustworthy, honest form of communication because of the tabloidism that bounds our generation.

Reality is no longer based on truth; it is based on convergence, profit, perception, and hyper-commercialism, which are overwhelming all means of communication available to us, and because of this, there is by no means any sort of control or solidity holding this generation together. We have successfully blinded ourselves from realism and authenticity and allowed a failed sense of idealism to dictate our existence. This has led to a fragmented culture with no common goal, a remote comparison to previous generations who upheld democratic principles and stood together to fashion a voice. So what will ultimately define us?

With such variability it seems our generation will continue on this cycle of pursuance - waiting for the world to change, instead of proactively changing the present for the sake of the future. The shallow insights which perpetually influence our generation’s way of life have eroded our sense of dignity. We continue to be dependent on a deficient media structure instead of using our own voices. This is my generation, where lessons will not be learned until our children are even more embedded in this artificial culture than we are. Only then will we realize what we have failed to say.

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Jessica Miles currently attends Bryant University as a junior majoring in Communication and is preparing to act as Assistant News Editor for the Bryant University newspaper, The Archway. She is working toward a future in the Journalism field.

Image (above): Cover of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, by John deGraaf, et al. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005)

Russia, still rising

Editors — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:33:39 +0000

WORLD POLITICS

Russia, Still Rising

By G. Arnold

American news media have not paid much attention to Russia for many years, but developments in that nation do occasionally get noticed. National Public Radio, for example, recently reported about Russia’s apparent efforts to reassert itself among the world powers. A new NPR Morning Edition story takes particular note of the Kremlin’s renewed attention to its military. As the story suggests, many people see this as evidence that Russia is determined to return, in some way, to the glory days of the Soviet Union, when it was clearly a superpower. The NPR story is largely dismissive of such views, however, and makes generous use of quotations from Pavel Felgenhauer, a well known critic of the Russian government and a writer on military issues for Novaya Gazeta, an opposition paper in Russia. After hearing the piece, one does not get the sense that there is much cause for concern. Indeed, Felgenhauer is quoted as saying, “This [Russian] system is unworkable, and this military is not very good for anything at all.”

The NPR piece is respectable journalism, and stories such play an important part in bringing developments in Russia to national attention. Still, the way the story is presented may unintentionally dampen what little American interest there is in Russia’s quickly changing place in world affairs. And that would be unfortunate. (See a previous Bread and Circus story here.)

Americans are not exactly overflowing with knowledge about Russian affairs. Indeed, the picture that many Americans have of a chaotic, beaten, and toothless Russia from the period immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union has not been very accurate for some time. To the contrary, there seems little doubt that Russia has the capacity to assert itself much more than has been the case since the early 1990s. It has infrastructure, highly developed research and development capabilities, enormous (and largely untapped) gas and mineral wealth, and a population with a strong sense of national identity. And what’s more, published reports indicate it still has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads that are still operational. (The United States has just over 4,000.)

Still, Russia is not the Middle East and it is not China. So it receives scant attention in the news. I suspect that Americans know far, far more about Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears than they do about the vast Russian nation.

Perhaps Americans largely ignore developments in Russia because they feel secure in the knowledge that it would be difficult for any other power to catch up to the U.S. in military terms. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recently concluded that the United States alone accounted for roughly 45 percent of the world’s total military spending last year. The Institute calculated that total worldwide military spending was $1.34 trillion (that’s $1,340,000,000,000 ). That’s a lot of cash. The breakdown, as reported in Forbes, listed American spending on weaponry at $547 billion, compared to Russia’s comparatively paltry expenditure of $35.4 billion on weaponry.

But Russia is on the move, and appearances can be deceiving. Considering that the American press pays practically no attention to Russia these days, I wonder if the few recent news stories about Russia will shed much light on what little discussion there is about the topic in the United States. It is surely seems true that the Russia military machine has many problems. But it seems equally true that the Russian government’s emphasis on its military in recent months — combined with its ongoing assertiveness in foreign affairs in Europe and the Middle East, its abundant resources, and its national will — represents more than a casual development.

But the United States remains focused on other things. There’s a strong sense of complacency with regard to thinking about Russia. Too many Americans seem to think that nation is only a concern of the past. But what is needed is more, not less, awareness of Russia’s evolving place on the world stage. The time for the United States to develop and articulate a better way of interacting with Russia is now, not later when some unanticipated new crisis presents itself.

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G. Arnold is an editor of Bread and Circus on-line magazine. A version of this article appeared in his VCB blog.

Giving voice to animation

Editors — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:37:16 +0000

AT THE MOVIES

GIVING VOICE TO ANIMATION: LIVELY VOCAL PERFORMANCES ADD LUSTER TO KUNG FU PANDA

By G. Arnold, Bread and Circus editor

Computer-generated animated films are now one of the staples of the movie business. Pixar was the first Hollywood studio to draw worldwide attention to animation’s new look, courtesy of movies such as Toy Story and a string of titles. Other studios also got into the act, and now such movies appear with great regularity. Considering that the feature-length animated film was once all but relegated to the dustbin of history, the popularity of new-generation animated movies is an interesting story by itself.

A new title in the animation arena is Kung Fu Panda, from Dreamworks Animation, creators of the hugely popular Shrek franchise. Early reviews, such as one by Elizabeth Weitzman in The New York Post, are generally favorable.

The look — especially the three dimensional appearance of images — in most current computer-generated is one of the features that draws viewer attention. Starkly different from earlier incarnations of animated film, the new “look” can be a visual treat. The rendering, full range of motion, and visual depth allow visions of extreme fantasy and imagination to take on an almost tangible look and feel.

But the novelty of this look has worn off somewhat. The large crop of films has partially contributed to this, but perhaps more importantly, the ubiquity of computer and video games makes this sort of imagery and animation available on a daily basis to a worldwide audience. To really succeed in this environment, the new animated movies need more than a great look and state-of-the-art animation.

And that means compelling stories and on-target casting decisions in casting the actors who provide voices for the animated characters. The studios still have trouble with the story part, which is much harder to pull off than most people imagine. Like writing for children’s or youth-oriented books, many people wrongly assume that anyone could write the story or script for an animated film. (Read about misconceptions in writing for young audiences here.) Yet, it is plainly true that writing these films, like writing for for any audience, is much more difficult than it may seem. Hollywood does not usually deal in perfection, of course, and so most productions, animated or otherwise, go ahead even when scripts still have flaws.

This makes the voice casting even more crucial. Obviously, the actual animation in a film such as Shrek (Dreamworks) or Ice Age (Twentieth Century Fox Animation) or Finding Nemo (Pixar) is critically important. Yet, the voice performances can almost make or break a film. A great voice performance may not be able to salvage a movie with a bad script and lackluster animation, but it can make it better. And similarly, poor voice casting and performance can dampen the success of an otherwise solid animated movie.

This brings me to Kung Fu Panda, which seems to have made a number of right moves in the voice talent department. There are many actors who have contributed their talent to the film, including Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, Ian McShane (Deadwood), and many others. It is an impressive cast, indeed. There are two other casting decisions, however, that caught my attention.

The first of these is the casting of Jack Black, currently my favorite film actor, as the voice of Po, the lead character. Already, Black’s performance in Kung Fu Panda is getting attention. I’m not surprised. Black is a force of nature, it seems to me. Even in roles that seem fairly ridiculous, he somehow manages to provide superbly entertaining over-the-top performances that are also oddly authentic. The seeming ease with which he does this, combined with the apparent light-weight nature of the films in which he appears, may obscure how good many of these performances are. But he’s a comic actor, and like the many fine comic actors before him, it is unlikely that his performances will get the same sort of respect that an actor of similar ability would get for work in dramatic roles. Still, the casting of Black in Kung Fu Panda will certainly increase the odds for the movie’s ultimate success.

The other casting decision that caught my attentions perhaps more personal. I refer to the casting of veteran actor James Hong in the supporting role of Mr. Ping. As a student of and fan of both film and television, I find the appearance of James Hong in yet another production a pleasing development. I suspect that the name James Hong may not mean much to many people, but if you’ve seen a lot of film and television since the 1950s, you know his work. Indeed, Hong is surely one of the hardest working, least appreciated, most satisfying actors in the business. I, for one, am very happy to have the opportunity to encounter him in another new production.

James Hong is one of those actors who have often been cast in so-called “ethnic” roles, a fate that many actors of non-European ancestry faced since the beginning of the movie business. He was born in Minneapolis in 1929, but was often cast to play Chinese or other Asian characters. Hong did appear in many television series and films that are very admirable, but I remember his performances even in those instances in which the material was sub-par.

And it is true that some of the roles have perpetuated ethnic stereotypes. In many of his performances, however, Hong’s acting has transcended these stereotypes. This is a significant accomplishment that deserves recognition. To me — and I am a product of the so-called television generation — he seemed to add an air of dignity and intelligence that was often not apparent in the actual scripts. He has always been, in my opinion, better than much of the material he had to work with.

And we should not fault him for the material. After all, it is an actor’s job to act, and one can only act in those parts for which one is given the role. An actor also has little control over the messages that films and television show convey. I give Hong a lot of credit for rising above the material in the cases where the writing was less than ideal. Indeed, his understated performances often showed up inferior material.

James Hong has appeared in over 300 television shows and movies, according to the useful Imdb.com. website. Among his credits are Chinatown, Kung Fu , Seinfeld, Blade Runner, Bound for Glory, The Sand Pebbles, The X-Files, Perry Mason, Hawaiian Eye, The Outer Limits, and many, many more. I literally grew up watching James Hong, and over the years my appreciation for his performances, as well as for the performances of other unsung actors and actresses, has deepened. I’m happy to encounter his work once again.

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G. Arnold is an editor of Bread and Circus. His writing about film and television includes the books The Afterlife of America’s War in Vietnam (McFarland 2006) and Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics, coming this fall from Praeger Publishers. This article previously appeared in his VCB blog.

Image (above): King Fu Panda, Dreamworks Animation. Used in accordance with Fair Use provisions.

Academic Ronin

Editors — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:48:25 +0000

THE ACADEMIC LIFE

ACADEMIC RONIN

By G. Arnold

There are few careers as unique, or as misunderstood, as that of the professional academic. The path to such a career is long, and in the journey from undergraduate study to advanced graduate training there are many opportunities for it to go astray. Some people get sidelined early along the way; others make it through years of coursework and preparation, but can never manage to finish their dissertations.

But a substantial number of Ph.D. students successfully run the gauntlet and earn their doctorates. For some of these people, careers in industry or applied professions await. For those seeking the traditional academic career, however, the journey is just starting.

For the many Ph.D. recipients seeking a traditional academic career, the road ahead is uncharted. The search for a full-time appointment, preferably on the tenure track at a prestigious university, is often long and arduous. Frustration, anxiety, and self-doubt lurk not far away for many who are undertaking this voyage.

A few will land a coveted spot on the faculty of a top-notch institution. Many more will eventually settle — though they may not call it this — for a tenure-track position at a so-called second tier college or university, thankful that they will at least get to do what they spent so much time preparing to do. A growing number of others will accept full-time teaching offers that do not include a tenure option. Indeed, tenure has never been a popular idea with the general public, and in the interests of cost-saving more and more universities and colleges are creating positions that don’t have it.

But for others, no offer of a full-time appointment is forthcoming — not this year, not next year, not the year after that. Perhaps it will never come. The disappointment can be hard to take. After all, academics train quite literally for years, learning highly specialized (perhaps even obscure sometimes) pieces of the intellectual landscape. And typically, throughout this training the goal has been one thing and one thing only: Prepare for a scholarly life in the professoriate. When that does not pan out, what then?

People react differently to this situation, of course. Some decide to embark on a different path, perhaps using their skills in a different type of educational setting or perhaps not in an educational setting at all. Academics are creative people, and although the things they learn are highly specialized by nature, academics can often figure out ways to apply the skills and knowledge that they have acquired in very different setting. Some people do this and never look back — or don’t look back very often, anyway.

Yet, many academics who do not land a full-time teaching position still wish to pursue their original idea: They want to teach. If a regular full-time position is out of the question for the immediate future, then there are other options. The most common of these involves adjunct and part-time teaching.

There are many, many people who are pursuing this option. If you’ve attended college within the past few decades, you have very likely had such a person as an instructor for at least one course. The reasons are not hard to fathom. For the past several decades, the United States has been producing many more Ph.D.s than it can fully employ. Therefore, in any given semester there is a huge number of people pursuing –with varying degrees of enthusiasm — part-time faculty work.

From the perspective of institutions, adjunct faculty are an attractive proposition. They are cheaper and their temporary status means that they pose little financial risk. American higher education benefits tremendously from the dedication and perseverance of academics who are willing work part-time. Unfortunately, too many institutions take that dedication for granted.

While working as a part-time adjunct, an academic does get to teach college and university courses and get paid for it, just as they had always hoped. The work can be challenging, rewarding, and intellectually stimulating. But the pay is meager, and the work is unpredictable. As for pay, it is usually a modest fee per course with few, if any, fringe benefits.

It is difficult to survive financially solely by adjunct teaching. To get by, many adjuncts also have other, non-academic jobs. Others, however, do find a way to put together a working life composed only of teaching. This is challenging, and not many do it for an extended period of time. They may work for two or more institutions, teaching perhaps twice as many courses as a professor with a full-time appointment. (There are various explanations for this situation, which space precludes discussing here.) And there are usually no guarantees of employment from one semester to the next, and so it is difficult to plan even a little ahead.

As they are piecing together an adjunct’s hectic academic life, many, perhaps most, are still looking for a full-time position. To have any hope of getting such a position, they must also keep up with their scholarly activities. Yet, it often becomes ever more difficult to get to the research and writing they need, and have been trained, to do. All of this can lead to a life that reminds me somewhat of the ronin of feudal Japan, the so-called masterless samurai. With no master to serve, the ronin lost their social standing and, more importantly, were deprived an understandable context in which they could perform the work for which they were trained.

And the traditional academic career needs the stable context that permanent, full-time attachment to a university or college provides. Yes, it is possible for the occasional person to be a successful scholar without a full-time appointment in an academic community, but that is rare. And so many academics, if they desire to continue the academic life without a permanent appointment, continue to work at their calling as best they can, however they can. And they continue to search for a permanent academic home.

It can be a very long journey, indeed. It is not always successful, but it is very often quite interesting. And happily, sometimes the journey ends with success, even though it may or may not resemble the type of success that was originally envisioned.

POSTSCRIPT: With this as a starting point, future articles in Bread and Circus will look at the academic life in both its positive and negative aspects.

If you have thoughts or experiences to share, we invite you to become involved. You can submit a comment to this or any post, suggest a resource that you think is enlightening, or propose an article of your own. Contact us using the information listed in the sidebar.

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G. Arnold is an editor of Bread and Circus and author of several books, including The Politics of Faculty Unionization (Bergin & Garvey, 2000).

Image (above): Picture of a ronin. (Source: Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

Academic “Job”

Editors — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:47:16 +0000

ACADEMIC “JOB” — A Bread and Circus Column

Edited by the Staff

This column chronicles the perspective of intrepid, underemployed academics as a springboard for open discussion. Perhaps Alcofribas Nasier described this endeavor best: ‘However important it may be for all men to know the Truth, very few, nevertheless, are acquainted with it, because the majority are incapable of searching it themselves, or perhaps, do not wish the trouble.” De Tribus Impostoribus (Ch.1).

First Installment: The Secret to Selling Yourself: Advertising Meets Academe

A mutual friend has sent us the following –

I live in a “mixed marriage” of sorts. At least, it became one after our move from grad school to our current locale and my partner’s segue into the corporate world.

Before that time—about eight years ago—we were both grad students, finishing up terminal degrees and considering our career options. We knew that living apart for the sake of academic postings was out of the question; it’s not us. We also knew how hard it would be to settle down and start a family on one academic salary. So, my partner made the move into the world of web-advertising and I decided to stick with academe. Surely I would get a full-time position before my student loans began to outpace my income. That’s why the loan companies create those schedules. How long could it take?

A house, his and hers Ph.D.’s, two kids and almost a decade later, my part-time adjuncting has both been a blessing and a burden. Blissfully, I have passed those years spending priceless time with my kids as they crawled, toddled and began their own school careers. And, with control of my own part-time schedule, I have been able to independently write and research.

Without a doubt the last sentence sticks a lump in the throats of all hopeful, yet currently underemployed scholars. We live each day making peace with the “publish or perish” conundrum of higher education: to get the full-time job you have to be published, yet, (as some of you may be aware) publishing can be fraught with great monetary output. Adjunct teaching on a contract-by-contract basis—however well it provides flexibility—does not pay well. Thus, time may be cheap, but money is still at a premium.

Luckily, my longstanding “temporary” college-home graciously supports me the best it can monetarily—and definitely with moral support. Thus, for each of my five “on-the-road” public lectures, and my online and traditional articles, I kept telling hubby (and myself!) that I was on the right path, inching closer and closer to the full-time finish line.

Unfortunately, I guess, eventually all dreams must come to an end. Or, at least, I might have to admit that my original bargain with the “adjunct-devil” is coming due. Every year my loan payments have increased on-schedule, and my commuting-, daycare- and living costs have risen without a significant pay raise. And, all this without that ever-elusive, crowning achievement of a full-time posting with its benefits and pay. My spouse has become less well-able to maintain a Zen attitude about my quest. He is woefully aware that he’s carrying us; I make a tenth of his salary.

My family has tried to understand my position. But, because I am the first academic in my family of business-people (my dad’s an MBA, my mom’s an Executive Assistant), I suspect that deep-down they think I’m absolutely crazy. Scratch that; I think they know it. They’ve seen my incredible outlay of “sweat equity” and resources without a tangible dividend.

Our conversations on the subject often sound like this:

“How much are they paying you to give that speech?”

“It doesn’t work like that. I’m traveling there on my own. I’m paying for it out-of-pocket.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know, but if I meet people, and/or get published I will probably get a job at…[fill-in the blank with imagined job offers at the countless schools I've unsuccessfully applied to- and interviewed for in the past ten years.]“

“You’re wasting your time.”

“I know it seems like that…”

So, here I am. Still trying. Still crazy for academe, still clinging to the dream. It’s become a Patsy Kline love song between me and my discipline. And, this torch song metaphor brings me to the most recent domestic clash between Advertising and Academe, when my spouse came close to demanding I end the affair.

Yesterday I went on a job interview at a VERY PRESTIGIOUS university, albeit for yet another adjunct position with—you guessed it—no hope of becoming a full-time job.

As I was parting with my delightful, engaging host, for some reason I felt compelled to be frank about my prospects for the fall: including a temporary one-year full-time position that I’ve been pursuing since November of last year. To me, laying my cards on the table was the opposite of leading these people on. I was at once telling them that I am extremely excited about the possibility of working there, while making it clear that things are still “in-play”. I knew I didn’t want to disappoint them, and inconvenience them in the event of “if and when…” I felt using candor was taking responsibility.

I hopped in the car, excited about how well things went and celled my better half. My elation quickly died, however, as I explained the end of the interview to my partner’s chagrin. He was utterly flabbergasted at my unflinching honesty, which he sees as a character-flaw at best, the ultimate in career naïveté at worst.

He blurted out: “When you’re closing the deal, you NEVER give them a reason to not hire you. ‘A bird in the hand…’ You know what I mean?”

“I don’t get it. I was trying to be polite.” (Confession: Over the years, it’s somehow been ingrained in me to treat colleagues as (formal) social contacts. Perhaps this is a relic of my particular discipline’s Old World, aristocratic roots.)

My courtesy was—to hubby the advertiser—a deal-breaker. Ouch.

And now, I feel totally confused.

For my partner, the corporate manager, the interview process is a nuanced, personal commercial where you hold back your true hand. To me, it is a High Tea predicated upon witty repartee and a hope of a court appointment.

But, why the psychological warfare angle? Is that chess-component as important in academe as the corporate world? When I think high-stakes chess, I think of a world-weary crusader and Death in plague-ridden Sweden—but I never think of academe.

So, my end of the semester question to you readers is: why is it that one has to be cagey about personal reality in a job interview? Aren’t we all adults? Isn’t it common courtesy to make the situation as transparent as possible?

I’m stumped and would love some feedback about your experiences with job interviews, career advice and strategy.

This will help me in answering that difficult decision, whether it’s time to cut the cord with academe—watching it drift off towards the horizon without me—or to keep on fighting for the brass ring.

Perhaps with my training and temperament, the conclusion is inevitable.

***

Sticks and Stones

Editors — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:46:12 +0000

CULTURE

Sticks and Stones - for Jean

By Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard

I went to the funeral of a childhood friend’s father last week. And, rather unexpectedly, what I read this week helped me to put it all in a more global perspective.

The funeral was eclectic—a just reflection of the man. He was both wickedly funny and wickedly serious, a Scotsman by descent and very proud of that fact. The presiding minister at the service was of Scottish descent too, and his eulogy combined anecdotes about their witty sparring over inherited traditions as well as those of the man’s childhood, military service, and his deep-rooted love for family and community.

The moment from the service that stays with me most was the reverend’s pointed mention of an easily overlooked detail in the church bulletin. I, like most, pay little attention to the dash that separates a person’s dates. But, it is precisely that dash, that line, which represents a lifetime. It symbolizes time shared with family and friends, and the impact that one person can make in the world. Simple yet profound.

Following the funeral, the long string of cars processed to the cemetery. There, a continued celebration of the blended traditions that weave through an individual life played out. My friend’s father had been in the Air Force, and two servicemen did the honor of ritualistically folding the draped flag and then handing it to his wife at graveside.

After several verses of “Auld Lang Syne” sung by the mourners, and the final words of comfort, a friend of the family (in his kilt and full Highland regalia) played traditional Scottish music on his bagpipes. The music echoed through trees and field. It was a beautiful service that truly reflected the interwoven threads of a single life.

If he were still with us, my friend’s dad likely would have been pleased to pick up the latest (June) issue of National Geographic (as I did) and read that they are still discovering new information about the ancient people who lived and worshiped in his ancestral homeland of the British Isles. The cover article (“If the Stones Could Speak: Searching for the Meaning of Stonehenge”) relates new findings at Stonehenge in Salisbury, England. (If you’re wondering, a “henge” is an earthwork circle, like the ditch and embankment that surround the uprights at Stonehenge.) The article provides firm evidence for things long suspected — for example, the distant, Welsh origins of the mystical “healing” bluestones and megaliths that make up the sculptural part of the monument. And, it adds some new twists to the mysterious tale.

The romantically-named field archaeologist (Mike) Parker Pearson has attempted to carefully reconstruct what the surrounding local housing and domestic lifestyle looked like. He asserts that the 300-odd Neolithic houses surrounding the site make it the largest such settlement yet found in Britain: Firm evidence of its hitherto assumed cultural import.

Parker Pearson also has an astounding new interpretation of the landmark, based upon his fieldwork in Madagascar. He believes that Stonehenge was a sacred monument ritually linked to related wooden henge sites in the immediate area (such as Woodhenge and Durrington Walls). He suggests that the ancient tribes may have processed from one monument to the other, down long avenues connected to the intermediary River Avon, thus tying the monuments together in an axial fashion.

He believes that—like the Malagasy culture of Madagascar—the ancient Britons revered deceased ancestors with stone monuments, while celebrating life with nearby wooden ones. According to this plausible theory, across human cultures sacred stone is “ancestral and male,” representing the passage of the body into hard bone, while sacred wood is “transient and female,” representing birth and growth. Though there is currently no local evidence for this theory, Stonehenge is indeed ringed by burials. And, as Parker Pearson notes in the article, today in the West we perform a similar ritual by placing flowers on a grave, later to be replaced by a headstone.

Linked together with its nearby sites, therefore, Stonehenge seems to have been a physical marker of the symbolic ties between the beginning and end of life for ancient people—the comforting, liminal parentheses around the dash. No doubt in their rituals those ancient celebrants also played their pipes, sang and reflected upon memories shared with their loved ones.

The timeless human need to cope with life-transitions through ritual thus reaches across the millennia, changed, but still known to us today.

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Image (above): Public domain photograph by Matthew Brennan, 2007. Used in accordance with terms posted by Wikipedia.

Let Tall Poppies Grow

Editors — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:10:21 +0000

CULTURE & SOCIETY

Let Tall Poppies Grow: The Pressing Need for a Culture of Creativity

By Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard

“In present-day America, so it looks to me, the affluent majority is striving desperately to arrest the irresistible tide of change. It is attempting this impossible task because it is bent on conserving the social and economic system under which this comfortable affluence has been acquired. With this unattainable aim in view, American public opinion today is putting an enormously high premium on social conformity; and this attempt to standardize people’s behavior in adult life is as discouraging to creative ability and initiative as the educational policy of egalitarianism in childhood.”

—Arnold J. Toynbee, On the Role of Creativity in History, 1967

Though the above quotation sounds as though it was written today, it is—in fact—forty years old. Writing in the turbulent late Sixties, Toynbee’s call for encouraging creativity in American (and, indeed global) culture attempted to legitimize creativity as humankind’s ultimate capital asset. As he wrote, “To give a fair chance to potential creativity is a matter of life and death for any society.” Toynbee’s point of reference, the history of human civilization that he chronicled in his masterful twelve-volume work, A Study of History (1961).

For Toynbee, creativity uniquely exists as a human faculty; working in tandem with our consciousness, our will and our ability to hand down our way of life from one generation to the next via education.

Though we hand down our knowledge and experience to our children, Toynbee notes, creative souls routinely notice that the available social and cultural heritage needs retooling in order to solve unforeseen problems and find innovative solutions to new situations.

As Toynbee points out, this younger generation of “non-conformists” inevitably comes into conflict with “the establishment” which he defines as those in power; rulers elected by the majority who view the established order as the natural order; and, because preserving that order raised them to power, the establishment sustains it.

Completely in character for a historian, Toynbee proffers several historical figures as examples of “non-conformists” who launched paradigmatic shifts in the established cultural order. He cites Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Benedict, the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi as creative people and thus natural cultural critics. In each instance, each nascent movement began in negative repudiation by the establishment. In some cases, the families of these men rejected their ideas (in whole or in part), as happened with Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi and the Buddha. Occasionally, the religious or political authorities chose to be patient and tolerant with their ideas, as with St. Francis and Gandhi. In other cases, those in power outright condemned them, as with Jesus. In either case philosophic creativity can spill into social revolution, a peaceful one when patience is marshaled, and when met with persecution and martyrdom, one resulting in entrenched sectarian conflict.

Usually, establishment forbearance is in short supply because, as Toynbee writes, “it requires not only tolerance and discernment but also great moral courage…” These are evidently qualities bred out of bureaucrats, victims of their own political success.

As Toynbee once wrote: “Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.”

Certainly, personal creativity is often rejected (or at least strongly discouraged) in American culture, a lesson introduced in our public schools. Our schools are the relic of the nineteenth-century industrial age where conformity and intellectual egalitarianism were written into the curriculum. How else to produce patriotic children and indoctrinate immigrant children into conformity with “the American way of life?” This school system, which has been little-updated, and—with No Child Left Behind—can even be said to be regressing, was predicated upon national homogeneity and distrust of intellectualism.

This subject has been explored in many circles lately, and from many angles. I will only name a few which recently came to the level of national news.

Robert A. Weisbuch, president of Drew University and former president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, recently unveiled a plea for a wholesale makeover of the American educational system with what he termed “a Third Culture.”[1]

Weisbuch’s atypical career has spanned what he calls the “entire educational landscape” from higher education to K-12 public school culture. In his latest Chronicle of Higher Education article, Weisbuch aptly draws attention to the often-ignored artificial chasm that divides primary and secondary education: a profound disagreement about the merits of an intellectual approach to education. Weisbuch writes, “[In the public schools] we’ve tried military-style discipline, standards and tests. We’ve tried vocational ed…We’ve tried using college admission as the carrot, so that our kids are always living the present only in terms of flattering the future…Might we instead begin with the assumption that curiosity is a native aspect of being human? Could we now give inspiration a try?”

Weisbuch’s revolutionary Third Culture? To create partnerships between academe and schoolteachers to allow “the rich life of the disciplines” to flow freely from childhood through maturity. He quips, “May I join with distinguished colleagues…to propose an approach that is directly and unashamedly intellectual? We’ve tried everything else, so how about giving ‘thought’ a shot?”

Garnering the attention of the popular media, the scholar, blogger and author Susan Jacoby recently published The Age of American Unreason (Random House, 2008), a sort-of sequel to historian Richard Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). Along with a few other cultural trends, in her book the previous Washington Post reporter harshly criticizes the failing American educational system for undermining “the intellectual life so essential to functional democracy.”

Back in 1967 Toynbee, too, remarked on the clear link between education and democracy: “People are increasingly troubled about the change in relationship between the individual citizen and the structure of society…the whole idea of a democratic government is simple enough and straightforward enough that the individual citizen should be able to understand the essentials of it. Therefore, he should be able to elect a president or, representatives who will represent what he believes to be the right policy of that country; also he should be able to keep track of what his elected president and representatives do and to influence them or perhaps impel them by peaceful methods to change their policy.”

Toynbee continued, “[A politically unchallenged president] is a sign of some shift in the balance of power, due to the increasing scale of society and the increasing complication of all social and political transactions. I think we’ve got to find some way of making the individual citizen effective again, under these new and much more difficult conditions.”

Toynbee warned against the knee-jerk reaction of some citizens to “just give up, fold his hands and say, ‘Well, it’s beyond me.’…” Toynbee says that is tantamount to the German people’s reaction to their government post WWI—with hindsight—a grossly fatal mistake.

Unfortunately forty years on, as American culture continues devolving into anti-creative, anti-intellectual conservatism, many citizens have indeed given up hope in making any difference. As the Associated Press reported yesterday (3/31/08), local workers in Muncie, Indiana reacted to the destruction their abandoned, local GM plant with statements like:

“Politicians sold us out.”

”We’re the past.”

”We’re ghosts.”

”We’re nothin”’

”It’s not just us, people. It’s everybody in this godforsaken country.”

”When I was growing up in Muncie there was a great middle-class way of life and everything was black and white. Now, it’s become this gray blob — a very large area of gray and it confuses me, I miss my blacks and whites.”

But, how can the populace become engaged if they are uninformed, misinformed, and/or taught to blend in to our homogeneous, incurious culture from the time they enter school?

The answer may be to shine a spotlight on this phenomenon and to change our state of education.

To that end we should be aware of a pervasive trend in English-speaking countries, often called the “Tall Poppy Syndrome.” Or, as my parents would call it, “getting too big for your britches.” Typically “TPS” is seen as a societal means of undermining those with natural gifts by openly criticizing and resenting them because they have risen above their peers. The original saying comes from Livy’s History of Rome (Bk. 1) where the tyrannical Roman King, Tarquin, gives his son Sextus Tarquinius advice on how to handle a newly subjugated nation. In front of a messenger, Tarquin took a stick and swept it across a flowerbed, lopping off the heads of the tallest poppies growing there. The clear message: eliminate all the eminent people in that culture to maintain control.

As many have argued, this phenomenon has particularly penalized America’s gifted students: kids who show a natural, genuine ability in the area of creativity (read: cultural innovators). Currently these students are being forced to sink to increasingly mediocre standards in the public school classroom, only to grow-up with a defeatist mentality and lack of innovative drive.[2]

Rather, as Toynbee and others have illustrated, we should be supporting them and cultivating them, not least because we should strive to produce a generation of global leaders who care for humanity and foster peace and prosperity. Furthermore, what a tragedy it would be to produce “merely proficient” citizens that eventually work for the empowered leaders and intelligentsia produced by other nations, perhaps accepting their status as inevitable.

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but as some more ambitious goal beyond it.

–Arnold J. Toynbee

Let’s turn America into well-tended fields of beautiful Poppies, and let the Tall ones excel.

Notes
[1] “Creating a Third Culture,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/26/2008.

[2] Daniel Golden, “Initiative to Leave No Child Behind Leaves out Gifted,” Wall Street Journal, 12/29/2003; Susan Goodkin, “Leave No Gifted Child Behind,” Washington Post.com 12/27/2005, Derek Neal and Diane Schanzenbach, “Left Behind By Design: Proficiency Counts and Test-Based Accountability,” University of Chicago Study, 7/2007; Susan Goodkin and David G. Gold, “The Gifted Children Left Behind,” Washington Post.com 8/27/2007.

Loving the Skin We’re Almost In

Editors — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:51:43 +0000

POLITICS & CULTURE

Loving the Skin We’re Almost In: Casting out Cynicism in Favor of Change

By Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard

In my last Bread and Circus article I wrote about the very real possibility that our current global culture is in a moulting phase, a new “Axial Age”. As unsavory as that image might be, the regenerative construct of a snake sloughing off its old skin is rife with mythic symbolism and rich metaphors. It represents a natural process of rebirth and growth of an epic, cyclical nature, one at odds with our increasingly literal-minded, sterile, industrial culture.

To my mind, such a stagnating lack of cultural imagination is currently playing itself out in very distasteful ways in our political process. Personally, watching the downward spiral of the tenor of the presidential debates recently I feel compelled to condemn the ludicrous negative attitude of establishment figures towards hope, change and renewal-–an entrenched stance found on both sides of the aisle. And I’m not alone. On Saturday morning (March 1, 2008)—a couple days after I wrote the first draft of this article in fact—the New York Times ran two op-eds that shared my dour assessment of the current presidential race. Both Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich decried the dirty pool and grasping tactics of Barack Obama’s main competitors in pieces that pulled no punches.

Belittling Obama’s popular momentum with derogatory phrases like David Brooks’ “the Pope of Hope” or Clinton’s mockery of “everyone getting along” is nothing more than petty calumny and reeks of sour grapes. Though populist candidates scoff at them, eloquence and inspiration are not in and of themselves hollow. I will concede that hollow rhetoric of course exists and is reprehensible. But, as history proves, charisma and imagination paired with wit and wisdom are admirable, and seminal to unifying leadership and communitas.

I believe that Obama’s detractors gain traction in the media because, in the Western tradition, we regularly perceive a false dichotomy between passion and intellect thanks to our ancient Greek cultural roots. Any sense of emotional display in Classical Antiquity was thought to negate the cool, calm and collected intellect. One false move in Greek society and you became no better than a “xeno,” lumped in with the pool of inferior cultural outsiders that included all non-Greeks (i.e. barbarians) and even the mythological figures of drunk and randy centaurs and satyrs.

I would argue that in the Oriental tradition, conversely, this separation was never supported. In the Chinese civil service exams that began under the Han Empire (206 BC-220 AD) in the first Axial Age, for example, students were tested in the highly diversified “Six Arts”: music, archery and horsemanship, arithmetic, writing (including poetry) and knowledge of public and private Confucian rituals and ceremonies. If a gentleman was to enter “la crème de la crème” of Han society, he would have to be a courtier not entirely unlike Baldassare Castiglione’s ideally balanced, or contrappostic figure, complete with an emotive, aesthetic and rhetorical sense. On the surface at least, in this way the Chinese notions of yin and yang might be likened to the West’s contrapposti, or balance of opposites. This discounts, however, the very big exception of the prevalent Western aversion to public flamboyance which limits a true expression of exuberance.

The West’s privileging of dry intellect further reminds me of a salient comment of Pope Benedict’s. In his now infamous Regensburg address the Pope said that faith without reason gives rise to fundamentalism. Reason without faith, meanwhile, produces an impotent secularism, unable to answer human questions of origin, destiny and meaning. As I’ve demonstrated in other articles, in principle I feel that this is sound judgment, one that forms a corollary to the debate at hand. For without a doubt we need both head and heart to make our way through the world—especially in the fractured, hurting world we’ve inherited. And, I must say, Obama’s opponents have not brought both head and heart to the table.

Admittedly, in some ways it is probably true that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Plus ça change…n’est-ce pas? Without a doubt, human beings are deeply conventional creatures. After all, how many centuries did the ancient Egyptians wake up to the same outward markers of culture and political might? Or, the Catholic Church for that matter? That said, what makes us survivalist organisms is our adaptability, our protean ability to meet physical and cultural challenges with biological and intellectual creativity and aplomb. Humans are not an ageless presence, but a constantly evolving species with amazing potential.

If we are entering into a “new Axial Age” as some have suggested, change will sweep the globe with or without our consent—dramatic change which already seems afoot. It is likely that the members of our government bureaucracies will nonetheless continue to wage a war against the new wave of democratization and globalization in order to hold onto their perceived power. They’ll continue to embrace the devil they know rather than the one they don’t. Among friends and colleagues I’ve even heard arguments made that voting for the establishment candidate ensures that the boat won’t rock, that we’ll maintain course and find safe harbor. We’ll relive “the good ol’ days”. This is naive thinking at best, head burying at worst. We cannot afford to cater to fear of the future, to lockstep politics or to the post-modern form of antidisestablishmentarianism—maintaining the legacies of two ruling clans as a state-sanctioned religion. There is too much at stake.

Voters have already seen a foretaste of what a lack of inspired leadership looks like. We’ve seen alarmist television ads with middle-of-the-night attacks, xenophobic pictures of people in traditional Somali costume, or harping on a foreign middle name (which has the “insidious” meaning of “good looking”). Such tactics are cheap, and do not elevate or further the dialogue. They are means that scheming opportunists throughout history would recognize as low-down and dirty weapons (however effective).

Honestly, I had expected better. Now, I know better. As ancient Hercules at the crossroads of Virtue and Vice taught us, the high road may be steep and narrow, but the low road will inexorably lead to moral obliteration-a fate worse than death.

Sometimes change is thrust onto us, as when an unanticipated event occurs, or a seminal discovery made. Usually, however, the winds of change blow for many moons while some choose to sense them, and others to ignore, downplay or ridicule them. In any event, this change will arrive. We must, each of us, make the decision to embrace it and ride the wave, or to founder in our quotidian paralysis. I say, “carpe spes!”

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Image credits: [upper] United States Senate photograph of Barack Obama, public domain; [lower] Han dynasty image, public domain courtesy Wikipedia.