Ideas & Personal & Strategizing Posted by christian h., 02 Jun 2007 05:39 am

Connections

By Dr. Free Ride

On Memorial Day, because I really needed to do something beside grade papers for awhile, I decided to go to the nursery to buy some plants. First, though, because the kids (who had the day off from school) were actually entertaining themselves pretty well, I poured myself another coffee and decided to actually read some of the articles in The Nation issue on climate change.

Confronted with the news that jets are evil and carbon offsets probably don’t work as well as one might hope, I decided that there was no way in hell I should be driving (my hybrid) to the nursery. I consulted Google Maps and discovered that the nursery was precisely one mile from my house — a reasonable walk so long as I didn’t get a big bag of manure — and, surprisingly, that the “driving route” Google recommended (not the obvious driving route) would make a really nice walking route, as it skirted a park and followed streets lined with shade trees.

As I readied my wheeled urban grocery cart (sometimes referred to as “the old lady cart”), my six-year-old asked if she could walk with me, even though a mile sounded like a long distance to her. It was a beautiful day, and there was no particular place we had to be later, so I agreed.

My child chattered about school and nature and sibling relations as we walked. I really was listening, but I was also thinking about the intersection near the school with the four way stop, where an alarmingly high proportion of the cars blast right through the stop signs without even slowing. I was thinking about the monster comment thread at Pandagon where public school partisans and homeschool boosters were arguing about what kind of education kids need and whose duty it is to provide it. I was thinking about how very dry it’s been in California this year, and whether there’s a sensible way to recycle our bathwater to water our plants without sloshing it all over our carpets. I was thinking about how to explain Memorial Day to a six-year-old who, lately, is freaked out by human mortality, and whether that explanation could possibly omit the ever-growing body count in a war that I think is pretty dumb.

Because we were pedestrians, walking past houses and yards and apartment balconies and patios, we were drawn into waves and hellos. We read the “Happy B-day Pop!” sign, smelled the grills, stuck our hands out for the doggies to sniff. Out of the climate-controlled metal cocoon of the car, we could not escape the fact that we were connected to the other people in our path, the other people in our community.

And I wondered, as we paused for my child to propel herself on a swing, how we have gotten ourselves to the point where the default is for us to see ourselves as individuals floating free of connections to others.

Unless the scores of drivers who habitually ignore the stop signs near the school are evil, I can only think that, snug in their cars, they have entered a state of consciousness where other people don’t exist. We pedestrians are invisible, mere blobs of paint on the backdrop of their ultimate driving experience. Or maybe they are not quite this tuned out, and they’ve simply decided that their interest in getting to their destination without delay trumps some hypothetical pedestrian’s interest in being able to cross the street safely. (That the police response to reports of drivers blasting through the stop has been, “Sorry, we just don’t have the resources to enforce it” has not left me with warm and fuzzy feelings about how this organ of the “community” prioritizes the interests of some of its smallest members.)

Do drivers in a hurry owe it to anyone to stop at a stop sign?

In my neighborhood, the majority of the motor vehicles are minivans, SUVs, pick-up trucks. My hybrid marks us as weirdos. If I were to tell a neighbor that I felt it would be wrong to drive my gas efficient vehicle two miles when I could walk it, they might well keep their children away from me and my crazy ideas.

You have a right to drive whatever you want, wherever you want, don’t you?

In the homeschool vs. public school thread, I ventured that there might be a cost to the public schools if too many parents opted out and devoted their time and efforts to teaching their kids at home. A number of commenters noted that homeschooling was the option they pursued after significant time and effort spent trying to get the public schools to deliver the education their kids needed had not succeeded. You have to do what’s right for your kids. You can’t sacrifice your child to an ideal. I can’t be responsible for saving your kids, since I have my own to look after.

I know that we have to pick our battles, and that even having done so our energy is not unlimited. Even Cindy Sheehan hit her wall. She made protesting for peace her life’s work, but the war continues and she’s been attacked by the right and the left for her trouble. Sheehan’s public protest is over, and she’s left with her private grief at the death of her son. Probably, she’s also left asking herself whether she was foolish to hope that other people would feel connected to the death of one soldier and the grief of one mother.

I don’t understand how it has become so easy to deny it, but I know in my bones that we are all connected. If your kids come to love learning or come to despise it, it comes back to me (and would even if I were not teaching some grown-up kids at the public university). What you drive, whether you leave the tap on, how far your produce is shipped, all have an impact on the air and water and land we have to share.

Whether you feel that your obligations extend beyond yourself and your family impacts whether we can even have anything worthy of the name “community”.

We are all individuals, and we have diverse interests and agendas. But none of us come into this world alone, and I fear the extent to which we seem headed for navigating it as if we were on a solo mission.

I can’t make you care about my interests. I don’t want to make you do anything. But even if you can’t see them glinting in the sun, there are strands that connect us. My choices have consequences for you, and yours for me. So I choose to resist the cocoon, to see our connectedness, and to try to act accordingly.

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Responses to “Connections”

  1. on 04 Jun 2007 at 8:42 am 1. JP Stormcrow said …

    A few years back, I came upon (while in my car) a colleague walking along a road near our place of work. It was not really a “safe” walking road, so I offered him a ride and he accepted (he had had car trouble further down.) Getting into the car, he matter-of-factly stated, “Cars are fast.” For some reason, in its directness, it struck me as about the truest thing I had ever heard.

    Speed. The blessing and curse of our age. And in gaining that speed, I do think we encase our souls as well as our bodies in a protective shell. Here is a thought experiment, imagine a world with voice-programmable digital bumper stickers (I know VW has demo-ed one), somehow you just know that it won’t be “Thanks” and “No, please, after you”. I don’t think homo motus(?) ever shows the best side of homo sapiens.

    However, I will take the opportunity to repost, from a comment I made to Zeus’s last, a bumper sticker I saw on my bother-in-laws car:
    We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness
    (Of course, that might well be the bumper sticker on the next car to go speeding through the 4-way stop.)

  2. on 04 Jun 2007 at 8:59 am 2. Dr. Free-Ride said …

    I hadn’t thought of it initially, but the pace of things is definitely an issue that makes noticing and cultivating our connectedness challenging. This is, undoubtedly, why we know very few people in our (painfully) suburban neighborhood — everyone is in a rush to work or school, or to soccer practice, or to lay in groceries for the next frantic week. Hardly anyone seems to have time to hang out in their front yard and shoot the breeze. In contrast, when we lived in San Francisco (in the Mission), we seemed to know most of the people who lived on our (big) block — and many on the blocks on either side of us — within just a few months. While part of this was due to the community-building efforts of our landlords (whose apartment was two floors up from ours) and our nextdoor neighbors, I’m now thinking part of it was that we had street parking and babies. This is to say, we needed to get out of the house frequently (to avoid insanity) but we did it on foot. A slow-moving parent pushing a stroller is someone you’re going to talk to.

  3. on 04 Jun 2007 at 9:17 am 3. Zeus said …

    I think that the car is simply an “enhancer”, an extension, of an individualistic metaphysics played out in people’s daily life. It pounds home the point, not so much that we choose to live quickly, or choose to drive a few blocks, but that we choose to live separately from one another AS PREFERABLE to living together.

    I grew up in a family with six kids, and there was nothing more I desired at the time than to have my own room, my own space, etc. This is understandable and needed. Without solitude, reflection is difficult, conversation with your deeper self is difficult. I must also add, I am very thankful to have fought and argued and lived with and developed bonds of affection with my siblings as I grow older. I have my roots about me.

    But your average car riders and citizens are not seeking solitude; they are seeking their own universes, their own escapes from the entanglements of life and “having to” actually commune with others. What does this say about us? I think it says that we see each others as burdens, threats, annoyances, instead of as people, partners, neighbors. I could speculate what gives rise to this unattractive mindset (consumerism, American individualism, lack of social intelligence and norms, etc.), but I think ultimately it boils down to a practical metaphysics which says not that “I” am separate (the illusion of separateness), but that “I” should be the center of the universe.

    Even something as simple as choosing to walk instead of driving a car, places you IN the universe, its constellations and goings-on, as a citizen, and not at its center, looking out over your “realm” as a master. Most people would reflexively rather be a master of the universe than a mere participant, but on further reflection (which one Catch-22edly cannot get to without stepping out of the rat-race of masterhood), it is much more preferable to a high quality life to be a participant than a tin god. One any significant (and even insignificant) level, one is placed closer to the universe, to the stuff of life.

    And perhaps this is the question: Do I want to be closer to life, or would I rather view it through a windshield? The choice is up to soul who asks the question. I’d rather be closer to life, and I have spent my recent life trying communicate how good the taste of that life can be. If the handmaidens of comfort and fear are to predominate, I don’t believe people could be pried out from behind their metaphorical steering wheel. But the breeze is gentle, the air is fresh, and the sun is shining, and in a moment of suspended suspicion, maybe a few will wander out into the world and wonder about what they have been missing.

    Citizen Zeus

  4. on 04 Jun 2007 at 9:21 am 4. Zeus said …

    Oops, important typo:

    I meant to say, recognizing rather than contradicting the points before me that:

    “I think ultimately it boils down to a practical metaphysics which says not ONLY that “I” am separate (the illusion of separateness), but that “I” should be the center of the universe.”

    Sorry for the confusion,
    Zeus

  5. on 04 Jun 2007 at 9:27 am 5. Oaktown Girl said …

    There’s so much rich territory here to mine, unfortunately for my part, it’s going to have to wait until my lunch break or after work.

    For now I’ll just say how frustrated I am at the economic barriers to buying fuel efficient cars and organic, locally grown produce. Instead of giving tax subsidies to the oil companies making the largest profits in human history, let’s subsidized the hybrid cars so more people can actually have the opportunity to purchase them.

  6. on 04 Jun 2007 at 10:20 am 6. Oaktown Girl said …

    [Another very quickie from work]

    I’ve always been bothered by the disconnectedness that comes with the whole walking around with headphones/earpieces and being in one’s own private music world. I used to think it was a problem when portable CD players came out. Ha! That’s nothing compared to the iPod phenomenon we see now. It’s almost like you’re a freak if you don’t have one.

    I think in a lot of ways it’s even worse than the car thing. You have people out and about who actually are walking, and in most cases, they’re more disconnected from other people than ever.

  7. on 04 Jun 2007 at 1:18 pm 7. Seattle said …

    OH don’t get me started. Ok, get me started. Earpieces are the work of the devil. Do you hear me? ; ) All of the electronic devices that allow us to narrow our experiences to EXACTLY what we want, when we want it, are allowing us to create a society where nobody compromises over a single issue. Why should they? They can always get what they want, when they want it for a time as short as their attention spans at least somewhere else. A mother told me that her child had been watching Thomas the Tank Engine on on demand TV at home. Being 2 or 3, the child didn’t understand when they went to someone else’s home where they didn’t have on demand TV, why the TV wouldn’t play Thomas.

    Cars are a pain in the ass. Zoned out drivers focussed on getting to the destination are way too common. Of course, the other issue occurs too. I was driving along a bus route the other day and the car in front of me came to a halt. It was easy to see why-a father with a child on his shoulders was standing just off the curb on a corner. So the good driver duly stopped, only to come to the realization that there was also a bus stop there and the guy was actually waiting for the bus. The kind of moment that makes you want to slap your head in exasperation. Right up there with byciclists who can’t decide if they are going to ride like they’re a vehicle, or a pedestrian. In Washington State, pedestrians have the right of way because as I like to remind my sons, “People soft and squishy, cars hard and crunchy…” Makes sense to me, but there’s nothing like coming to a halt for a pedestrian in 4 lanes of traffic while the other 3 lanes just keep ignoring the ped. As you and the pedestrian consider the good odds of death occurring…

  8. on 04 Jun 2007 at 2:26 pm 8. Kiera PSI said …

    My neice wears her iPod earplugs constantly. It’s insane. Why pay for her to go to an event when she’s going to miss it anyway because she’s listening to the same music she can hear anyplace else? She’s not a stupid kid…but she will zone out to listen to the same stuff over and over again and miss half of the life going on around her.

    So when is that fireball due? Bring it on! Might as well, there’s fewer and fewer people really living out there anyway. (deep resigned sigh)

  9. on 04 Jun 2007 at 3:09 pm 9. Dr. Free-Ride said …

    Nah, we’re going to take back our sense of community, rugged individual mythos and consumer culture be damned! I’m turning my kids into walkers and talkers. In our household, the only proper use for an iPod is to get through a sink full of dishes or a pile of laundry when there’s no one around with which to have a conversation.

    We will employ guerilla tactics (talking to others in lines, making eye contact, etc.) to shaking people out of their cocoons. We can win this one!

  10. on 04 Jun 2007 at 3:36 pm 10. christian h. said …

    We will employ guerilla tactics (talking to others in lines, making eye contact, etc.) to shaking people out of their cocoons. We can win this one!

    Thanks! I needed some positive energy today. I agree - I am optimistic that we can re-communize (that a word?), without going too far and landing in Pleasantville, of course (I have to admit that one reason I’m happy about moving to a big city is precisely because it’s somewhat more anonymous).
    To do this, however, requires more than just personal choice (although that’s important) - it requires political-economic change, too. In particular, we need to roll back a society in which so many people either have to spend insane amounts of time working (and commuting), or choose to do so. And, work itself must be re-adjusted into a communal activity. Will everything be less efficient? Maybe. So what. Might be someday we can’t afford all those iPods anymore… too bad.

  11. on 04 Jun 2007 at 5:00 pm 11. Oaktown Girl said …

    Kiera - So when is that fireball due? Bring it on! Might as well, there’s fewer and fewer people really living out there anyway.

    Dr.Free Ride - We will employ guerrilla tactics (talking to others in lines, making eye contact, etc.) to shaking people out of their cocoons. We can win this one!

    People, people! remember: one of the beautiful things about the WAAGNFNP is our Big Tent policy. We can have lots of fun employing guerrilla tactics until the Glorious Giant Nuclear Fireball arrives and we fall into the warm, eternal embrace of Gojira. Huzzah!

    Oaktown Girl
    Minisiter of Justice
    WAAGNFNP

  12. on 04 Jun 2007 at 5:59 pm 12. JP Stormcrow said …

    One more “car”-related point, I think the trend to SUVs is another expression of the missplaced desire for separateness. To me they are the vehicular equivalents of gated communities, expressions of a desire for control in a “scary” world. (How do I know this? Because I want one for basically those reasons, not my most noble sentiment - so far have been able to satisfy the urge with Subarus.)

    And once you own one, you sure as hell want to use it. Two illustrative SUV stories. The Blizzard of March 1993 was one of the few snows that did leave us unable to get around for about 1/2 day. Late morning on that Saturday, while I was shoveling my drive, our SUVed neighbors (they were much rarer then) after much effort had pioneered the road - they stopped by to say they were “just” on their way to get some milk and bread and did we need anything. Neighborly gesture sure, but I had to bite my tongue to not reply that “Surprisingly enough, we had enough food in the house to get us through until afternoon” when as I expected, the township got the roads passable. A few years later I was coach of an 8&under indoor soccer team (nearly all SUVers) that had a game scheduled for 7:30 AM Sunday morning (Indoor soccer gets like hockey, oversubscription of facilities leads to practices/games at horrific times.) In the event there was an ice storm, as I called people to cancel (at 6:30 AM) many were severely dissappointed, rather than relieved, that they would not be drving through an ice storm to a attend a 7:30 AM soccer game.

  13. on 04 Jun 2007 at 7:11 pm 13. James Killus said …

    Now see, here is where I’m obviously some kind of monster. I read Dr. Free Ride’s description of her situation and it looks for all the world to me like an individual at odds with the standards of her local community. She drives a different kind of vehicle, complains about the standard behavior of the local drivers, and that the police don’t enforce a number of laws (which makes them exactly like every other police force on the planet), but specifically, she wants the police to enforce certain laws in order to change the character of the community.

    That’s her geographic community, of course, but she’s not actually confined to her geographic community. No, she is a member of a number of other communities of varying cohesion, each of which she has joined primarily as a matter of individual volition and choice. Then other members of this particular voluntary, online community, deride “individualism” and cry out for more “community.” The “community values” in each case, corresponds rather closely to what each individual wishes to see exhalted above other community values such as conformity to existing norms of behavior, as, for example, the belief that automobiles have the right of way over pedestrians because they are bigger. This, by the way, encapsulates “might makes right” which is certainly a major component of practically every real community I’ve ever encountered, as opposed to various utopian dream communities I’ve read or heard about.

    Now please realize that I am an atmospheric scientist, at least by history and training, and I do believe that global warming is probably the most important political issue of the coming century. But I must confess that I think this is going to come down to major technological pushes and a lot of raw political muscle in the end, and watching people go on about iPods and cell phones (either of which you will pry only from my Nuclear Fireball seared remains) and other Kumbaya sentiments just makes me want to crank it up to 11 and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

    Of course I’ve also been driving all day, and that always makes me cranky. Keep up the good work and have a nice day.

  14. on 04 Jun 2007 at 8:19 pm 14. Dr. Free-Ride said …

    I bitch about my (geographical) community because I actually see glimpses of promise that it can function more like a community. People just seem to have … set their sights lower?

    I like my iPod too, but unlike Philip J. Fry and his Lucy Liu-bot, I am not willing to use it to the exclusion of all else, sacrificing the company of other people in the process.

    But, as you point out, perhaps that’s just my kink.

  15. on 04 Jun 2007 at 8:47 pm 15. Oaktown Girl said …

    watching people go on about iPods and cell phones (either of which you will pry only from my Nuclear Fireball seared remains) and other Kumbaya sentiments just makes me want to crank it up to 11

    Sweet! When the GNF comes, and my spirit is floating upward toward the eternal embrace of Gojira, I’d absolutely love to look down and see the remains of people with iPods and cell phones Fireball-seared to their heads.

    My iPod complaints are hardly pure enough to be all about Kumbaya community connectedness. In fact, I’d settle if people’s iPod usage would just stay the hell out of other people’s space. So many inconsiderate a-holes crank their iPods up so loud, you can hear them at over 10′ away. And you can’t even enjoy or tune-out what they’re listening to because all you can hear is little better than extremely loud static.

    Of course I’ve also been driving all day, and that always makes me cranky.

    You’re allowed to be cranky from time to time. I bet you’re cute when you’re cranky. I can’t wait for the WAAGNFNP ‘08 Worldwide gathering. (But I’m not car-pooling up with you).

  16. on 04 Jun 2007 at 9:54 pm 16. The Constructivist said …

    Anyone remember which Piers Anthony novel it was in which he got his hero in a time loop such that as a pedestrian, driver, and something else (pilot?) he interfered with himself without knowing it until he got out of the loop? I think realizing something about p.o.v. and empathy was what was needed for him to pass this (maybe magical?) test…. Anyway, seems relevant to this post and thread. Even if the actual book is thousands of miles away from me now!

    Speaking of which, we’ll be returning to our small-town, need-a-car-to-get-anywhere-or-do-anything mode of existence in just over two months. We’re getting a new Prius and going to try the 1-car-family thing (having sold and given away our two old vehicles right before we left for Japan). We’ve been a pedestrian/public transportation family for 10 months and while it’s tiring, we love it. Big adjustment coming up!

    Still don’t have iPods, but have grown attached to the cell phones (free email between the tsuma and I can’t be beat), not wanting to go through the hassle and expense of setting up a land line in our apartment. Never had them in the States and might not get them, either, on our return.

    Here in Fukuoka, I’ve been seeing many more people doing the cell phone email/game/music or iPod thing on the subways than reading manga–seems like a loss to me, if only of my image of Japan! The subways aren’t sardine-crowded like in Tokyo, but people still are looking for that space of privacy, even in public. Only people who will talk are parents with kids. And yet my students in class in an hour are going to be doing a presentation on how American visitors to Japan we’ve been reading have represented and reacted to Japanese community- and cooperation-mindedness….

    Which is another longstanding discussion topic between the tsuma and I. More on that later!

  17. on 04 Jun 2007 at 10:15 pm 17. JP Stormcrow said …

    Anyone remember which Piers Anthony novel it was in which he got his hero in a time loop such that as a pedestrian, driver, and something else (pilot?) he interfered with himself without knowing it until he got out of the loop?

    Lem has a very nice take on this theme (but not out in the street) in The Star Diaries. Does put a whole new twist on our potential “connectedness”.

    I’m not altogether sure whom I hit and who hit me … between the Thursday, the Friday and the Wednesday me’s, all of whom I was in turn. My impression is that because I had lied to the Friday me, pretending to be the Sunday me, I ended up with one blow more than I should have, going by the calendar. But I would prefer not to dwell any longer on these unpleasant memories; a man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.

  18. on 05 Jun 2007 at 12:29 am 18. Oaktown Girl said …

    Back to being serious. I want to follow up on Christian’s comment about the economic factors as relates to this topic, but that will have to wait for tomorrow. For now I just want to say that understanding that change is inevitable does not mean you have to like it, nor that you have to accept all changes. And just because you don’t like or accept a certain change, does not make you a Kumbaya “back to the good old days” social Luddite. There were no “Leave it to Beaver” good old days. We all know that.

    But I do know that my corner of the world here in Northern CA has become significantly colder in my lifetime, markedly so since Reagan got into office. I don’t like it, and it makes me very sad when I think about what we’ve lost. (iPods being so prevalent in the public space are just a symptom). And in my opinion, the loss has been far greater than any gain we may have had in technical advances or “convenience”.

    I’m not willing to just roll over and say, “Well, change happens”. And I don’t believe that by doing so I’m trying to enforce my world view on others, nor that I’m judging them. (Although I do recognize that a hell of a lot of judgment goes on, and that’s an entire post to itself). But if I can do my part to help foster the possibility for different options and choices to be available for people, then I think that’s a good thing.

  19. on 05 Jun 2007 at 8:48 am 19. James Killus said …

    In partial atonement for lobbing a snark-bomb, I’ll attempt some seriousness, albeit along the same lines of thought.

    Practically every automobile in the U.S. currently possesses an advanced pollution control system, including a moderately expensive catalytic converter and various sensors, combustion chamber modifications etc. that do a very good job of reducing tailpipe and evaporative emissions that combine in the presence of sunlight to make that dandy stuff called “smog” the study of which paid my bills for many years.

    The thing is, very few people would spend the money for those smog control devices voluntarily, and the laws that mandated those controls did not come about because of “community involvement” by any resonable definition of that term. There were state and federal initiatives, mediated by political horse trading, scientific expertise, and court action, including court actions initiated by “activists” or, more accurately “activist organizations.” Each of these groups could be considered a “community” in the volunteerist sense, but the agglomeration that resulted in political change not only lacked community spirit as such, but many of the groups were continually at each others’ throats. I know this; I watched it happen and had hands around my own throat (and vice versa) more than once.

    When I hear the word “community” I have flashbacks to phrases like “school spirit.” “Family” is another word that can send chills up my spine, and as I saw someone write recently, when a company begins to speak of community and to think of it as a “family” you know that they are installing the rec rooms and food court so their employees need never go home, because they’re hoping for 80 hr. work weeks.

    That’s a relatively benign downside actually, because Manson had himself a family and Jonestown really was a tight community, and that may be unfair, but when the hunger gets large enough, people aren’t that particular about what sort of “family” or “community” they wind up in.

    I do not think that the Big SUV and McMansion syndrome is a symptom of individualism; it looks to me like those folks are competing with each other, and competition is definitely a value in many communities, as any observer of High School Football in the South can tell you. I think that the kids who opt out into their own little worlds, be it iPod, or role playing games with people on the other side of the world, or books, or daydreams, or text messenging their friends, in short, anyone who has realized that their own local geographic family/community lacks some necessary nutrient for their own psychic health, those are the mutants who are my natural allies, and I want to get to them before the Mansons or Jim Jones’ do, or if not me (and my own appeal is, let us face it, a very specialized taste) at least someone who has a benign program for the world, no, not the world, but rather for those new mutants as individuals, as something new under the sun.

    But saving the world is something else entirely. I think it’s very unfair to enlist someone’s help in saving the world before they’ve even learned to save themselves.

  20. on 05 Jun 2007 at 9:32 am 20. Sven DiMilo said …

    Know what I want? An iPod jammer. What if you could broadcast some sort of…electromagnetic signal, I guess (OK, it won’t work but still) that overrode all headphone-piped music? Imagine the looks on the faces of the earbudded when they’rte suddenly listening to the Art Ensemble of Chicago, or Coltrane’s Ascension or something–ha!

  21. on 05 Jun 2007 at 10:38 am 21. Kiera PSI said …

    I kind of agree, James…except about the iPod and text messaging. Those are both symptoms of being lost. They don’t do it to find anything, they do it to be part of the crowd…it’s totally mindless (have you read the messages?). The role-playing, the books, the daydreaming all require cognitive thought…and that is a good sign. Unfortunately, there are not enough of those kids around anymore.

    Memory flash…sitting around a table, playing AD&D, learning diplomacy and battle tactics on the fly. Having to use not only my imagination, but to plan out strategies and anticipate results. What was really interesting is that I played with a group of military folks (including an army major and a marine ltcol) who had a lot of strategic experience. You can guess who generally came out on top. Hmm, this might explain our problems in the middle east.

  22. on 05 Jun 2007 at 12:37 pm 22. Oaktown Girl said …

    It’s a big problem - people getting stuck in fixed (and often negative) ideas and definitions of very fluid and broad-ranging concepts such as “community”, and of course, throwing their own projections into the mix. It stalls and often prevents a lot of good ideas from moving forward. And to adapt an old saying to the purposes here, negative spin travels halfway around the world before positive spin even gets its pants on.

    For me, “community” can be as simple and basic as people functioning together in some way as to make at least some things easier for everybody, or at least for the majority people involved. And it certainly doesn’t necessitate lots of involvement or interaction with other people to accomplish this.

    Sven - I love your iPod jamming idea. I’d like to use that power to change people’s radios from Rush Limbaugh and the other right wing blow hards to Air America (even their crappier shows would be a huge step up), Democracy Now, or even National Petroleum Radio.

  23. on 05 Jun 2007 at 1:24 pm 23. James Killus said …

    Also, to Dr. Free Ride:

    I would never refer to anything as “just your kink.”

    In the philosophy of science, isn’t “chemistry is just complicated physics” known to be substantially different from “chemistry is complicated physics?”

    I believe that philosophical individualism has a place at the dinner table, but individualism is not the same as solipsism. Believing that individual experience and opinion matters is not the same as believing that only my own experience and opinion matters. I do acknowledge that most of those who classify themselves as “individualists” may be more the latter than the former, but we are no more obliged to honor those self assessments than we are to honor the assertion from Movement Conservatives that they are actually the only true Liberals.

    So Kiera, that speaks to my answer to your postulation. I might very well judge any given set of text messages or iPod play lists to be totally mindless and puerile. But in the end, my opinion is my opinion and not theirs, and I do not believe that my opinion trumps theirs in the living of their own lives. And while I might derive some amusement from imagining the power to override others’ iPods, radios, etc., to actually have and use such a power would make me wonder how I differed from, say, the FCC or the Family Research Council. And even granting that I would be different from those entities, in whose opinion would I be “better?” Or “worse?”

  24. on 05 Jun 2007 at 8:31 pm 24. James Killus said …

    Well, I thought I had another comment lost in moderation, but apparently it’s just lost. I’ll reconstruct the gist, less elegantly than the ideal of memory, no doubt.

    Dr. Free Ride, I believe you think I judge you too harshly. “[J]ust [your] kink” does not have the shape of a criticism I would make. As a philosopher of science, I’m sure you know the difference between the statements “chemistry is merely complicated physics” and “chemistry is complicated physics.” In my world, personal experience and personal judgement does not deserve the words “only, just, or merely.”

    Whatever complaints may be made of philosophical individualism, it does not deserve to be confused with solipsism. An individual who does not recognize the existence of other individuals is a solipsist or a sociopath. But what about the individual who does appreciate the experience and opinions of others, recognizing that such recognition and appreciation often goes against “community standards?”

    So be arrive at my reply to Kiera. There are, no doubt, text messages or iPod playlists that I would identify as mindless, or worse, and I might even enterain a fantasy or two about intruding my own sensibilities upon such things, unasked, and I might even convince myself that it was for their own good. Certainly it would be for my own entertainment.

    But to actually do such a thing seems perilously close to behaving like the FCC, or worse, the Family Research Council. I lack the legal authority of the former and the authoritarian conviction of the latter, it’s true, but if my fantasies were to become reality, I’m not altogether sure that the objects of scorn would be able to tell the difference.

    Persuasion seems like such an ineffective tool, but I see no other alternative to coercion, and I know my weaknesses, and I’m just not very good at coercion. That, or course, is just my own kink.

  25. on 05 Jun 2007 at 8:33 pm 25. christian h. said …

    James, sorry about the comments - dang spam filter somehow must not have liked something about them…

  26. on 05 Jun 2007 at 8:37 pm 26. James Killus said …

    So now we get to compare and contrast two different versions of the same reply. This fuckup has been brought to you by the great intertubes and your humble servant, who has somehow gotten on a system that simply does not clear its cache when asked.

  27. on 05 Jun 2007 at 8:39 pm 27. James Killus said …

    Oh, okay. As you can see, I was blaming my local cache. I’ll continue to play along with that, in fact, since I like to Maintain a Fiction from time to time, just for the practice.

  28. on 05 Jun 2007 at 10:01 pm 28. Oaktown Girl said …

    I don’t know that there’s really anyone here who would actually use the awesome power, if they had it, to impose their tastes and sensibilities onto anyone else’s radio or iPod against the recipient’s will. I think we’re all too aware of the impact and hypocrisy of that action.

    But those sorts of things are fun to fantasize about, and the WAAGNFNP and its Ministry of Justice is totally in favor of those kinds of fun fantasies, and encourages them. In fact, that’s a good idea for an Open Thread/Fun Thread post. And there’ll be no kill-joy Cranky Pants allowed!

    Who knows, a wild, ridiculous “fantasy” may be the seedling that grows a very real life, potentially revolutionary idea.

  29. on 06 Jun 2007 at 6:31 am 29. Kiera PSI said …

    I’d just like to shut the iPods down and make their users all deal with their immediate environment and fellow travelers for a change, not impose a choice of content on them. I don’t think I’d like to listen to Sven’s choice of music (and certainly not Oaktown Girl’s), so I wouldn’t subject anyone else to mine.

  30. on 06 Jun 2007 at 8:41 am 30. The Constructivist said …

    JP, that Lem story is one of my all-time favorites–I still think it’s one of the funniest things ever written. And it inspired his Sealab 2021 episode! That summary is terrible, btw, but the only thing I could find on teh youtubes was in Russian, which, if you squint your ears, can be made to sound a bit like Lem’s native language. Don’t know how to squint your ears? Ask Yoda!

  31. on 06 Jun 2007 at 8:55 am 31. The Constructivist said …

    While my Lem–>Sealab 2021 (in Russian!) comment makes its way through the spam filter (or not), let me add that one of the great things about the Fulbright this year has been NOT being part of a departmental community. If all “part-timer” academics (I prefer “contingent academic workers,” myself) got the pay and perks I’ve gotten this year, we’d all want to be that contingent! Heading off to Tokyo for an American Studies conference and family time, with limited internet access and 4 talks to write, so will be out of touch for a little while, but have some impressions of what community means here in Japan and what being here means to me I hope to get around to sharing soon.

  32. on 06 Jun 2007 at 10:10 am 32. Oaktown Girl said …

    James - sorry about the spam filter problem. If you’d like, I am happy to “clean up” your contributions to the thread in any way you see fit. Just email me.

  33. on 06 Jun 2007 at 11:47 am 33. JP Stormcrow said …

    Back to being serious

    Aw, gee Mom do we hafta?.. but before that here is Lem slightly modified.
    a species who for an entire millenium does nothing but each other over the head (or worse) has little reason to be proud.

    Beyond my car comments above, I was going to say that to me the whole question of how far that your obligations extend beyond yourself and your family is really at the heart of much political and religious debater, i.e. it is a central and not peripheral concern to humankind. So I think it is quite legitimate to discuss what are basically extensions to what is already encoded in laws and social norms or exactly how they are “enforced”. I do have some sympathy for “The Suburbs: Love Them or Leave Them”, but realistically it is not like people have completely voluntarily “joined” all of the communities they are part of.

    And I don’t mean trigger any kind of evo psych v. anthropology tiff - but will just say that the whole area of how I determine my behaviors in regard to others in various “groups” has interesting evolutionary and very early human social development components. (I sometimes wonder how would a non-social animal that developed intelligence - or if it ever would or could - see the world and what institutions it would develop. Any Sci Fi in this vein?)

  34. on 06 Jun 2007 at 12:08 pm 34. Oaktown Girl said …

    Back to being serious

    Aw, gee Mom do we hafta?. Absolutely not. I was just talking about me.

    I don’t think I’d like to listen to Sven’s choice of music (and certainly not Oaktown Girl’s), so I wouldn’t subject anyone else to mine.

    What?! You gotta be kidding me. You love my music. You just love, love, love it.

  35. on 06 Jun 2007 at 12:43 pm 35. Kiera PSI said …

    [What?! You gotta be kidding me. You love my music. You just love, love, love it.]

    Absolutely. As much as you love the music on “The Heart” satellite radio station.

  36. on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:07 pm 36. James Killus said …

    Nah, just leave them as is, OG. If nothing else, it’s interesting to see the almost same sentiments expressed twice. Compare and contrast and see if I’ve managed to put myself in a logical contradiction, although I always have my trusty alibi that I was being ironic.

    Later, when I have more time, I obviously need to put in some time and writing about how “community” can be as much of a trap as “revolution” was. It’s worth considering the idea that Napolean, Stalin, and Mao, are what revolution looks like, and that high school and small towns are what community looks like. What we want something to be is seldom what it actually is.

  37. on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:26 pm 37. Oaktown Girl said …

    OK, James. Will do.

    And message to everyone: For the record, I’m cool with almost every shortening of the name “Oaktown Girl” you can think of except “OG”.

    Don’t bother asking why, just one of those things.
    (And you shouldn’t be questioning the Minister of Justice anyway!)

  38. on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:40 pm 38. Oaktown Girl said …

    Oops - I thought I had to go to a different thread for this next part.

    On the “community” thing, I hear you, James. However, I still get a sense you’re kind of boxing everyone who speaks of “community” into a limited definition of the word, and to an airy-fairy near-Utopian mind frame about it. And certainly there are those sorts of people who speak of “community” in almost those terms, but it’s certainly not everyone (as I’ve already stated in my comment above at #22).

    All I’m saying is that while it’s a good to take a close look at the ideological trappings of “community”, it’s important to remember that people talking about “community” do not comprise one big monolithic thought-form on the subject.

  39. on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:48 pm 39. Kiera PSI said …

    So, then, we CAN call you Oakie Girl? No? Snicker.