Of Ranks, Forks, and Britney Spears

“…Maybe they’d be O.K. if somewhere along the way they’d had true friends, defined as a group of people who share a mutual inability to take each other seriously…”

An article in the NYT titled “The Rank-Link Imbalance” really caught my eye. In short, it says that the training required to produce Leaders, in business or politics (and in geeks these days as well, I’d argue) produces intelligent, driven, get-ahead people who don’t know how to be human.

To paraphrase, they remember first names without effort, but can’t create/keep friendships. They know how to create a political alliance, but when it comes to, say, hitting on a woman with grace and style, they fail.

I’ve been the victim of this particular brand of nonsense far too many times, whether it’s the guy who’s pretty cool in the boardroom, but can’t hold a normal conversation, or the clumsy buffoon who assures you he’s a god in bed, and then is so insensitive a kisser, you wonder if all his other girlfriends lied to him, too…

Mostly, in my experience, these are men who don’t just miss the subtext, the hidden currents in a conversation or situation – they don’t even know the subcurrents exist. They want to talk, but they haven’t taken time away from their job to do other things, and therefore, everything’s about work; they know a lot, but not about too terribly many things. They lack social sensitivity. As the author (David Brooks) says,

…they have all of the social skills required to improve their social rank, but none of the social skills that lead to genuine bonding. They are good at vertical relationships with mentors and bosses, but bad at horizontal relationships with friends and lovers…

I haven’t gone out with any women, but I’d bet there are any number of modern women with the same issues.

This strikes a chord with me; I’ve been thinking a great deal recently about rank recently, about social or vocational climbing versus friendships, and the tradeoffs involved. I made a discovery/assumption sometime early in highschool; wealth means nothing without class, and class means a great deal more than wealth. In other words, it’s better to live frugally, but in good taste, than to win the lottery and blow everything on bigger and better Hawaiian shirts, Hollywood mansions, and giant suburbivans.

Race and class have a complex relationship in the US; the vast majority of the population shops at Walmart, works blue-collar jobs, and worries about health insurance, car payments, and a crashing economy. Then as we approach the top 1% of the 1%, wealth rises in a sharp and ever-steepening curve, until you reach the Bill Gates and Brangelina crowd, many of whom have been known to spend the equivalent of a college education on a red carpet gown. But let’s face it; after a certain point, money becomes immaterial. Certainly, millionaires and billionaires live differently, but – I’d argue – not as differently as people who make 30K vs. those who make 300K. As that curve rises, lifestyles are increasingly similar. They compress.

But humans are a tribal, stratified species. We need class and social status to tell us how to relate to one another, to tell us almost everything – from the kinds of jokes we tell to the eye contact we’ll make, the clothes we wear, the way in which we take care of our bodies. We differentiate amongst ourselves, not based on money per se, but on the status symbols money can buy. And when those symbols aren’t enough to produce strata, we call into play another set of criteria; class. Class, more or less, is inherited status. For example: having the right forks implies you have the resources to purchase them. Knowing how to use them implies stability in that inheritance (you’ve had them long enough to learn how). Knowing when to use them, on the other hand, implies a history of stability, implies one generates social standards, rather than simply acknowledging/adhering to them.

To take a more prosaic example, look at a teenage pop star like Britney Spears. Even before her devolution, you’d never put her in the same category as Paris Hilton (before her devolution, if you will). Spears and Hilton have vastly different backgrounds. Hilton’s family has owned hotels for decades; they’ve been in that top 1% for a long time – long enough for Hilton’s grandfather to have married a model (more on this in a bit), and her father as well. Hilton’s style, her body, her accent – all are the result of her family’s long acquaintance with wealth and power. When Hilton started acting badly, her grandfather disowned her; as I understand it, he said he was ‘ashamed’ of her behavior, and, in fact, she won’t receive an inheritance from him. But, let’s face it; Paris was never caught shaving her head. Her family wouldn’t let her be exploited by pimps/money-hungry ‘boyfriends,’ etc. She’s not been photographed (as far as i know?) flashing the world, time after time after time. Her relationships are public, but she’s not creating headlines every day with a pitiable custody battle. Hasn’t gotten pregnant. Wouldn’t be caught dead wearing half the outfits Spears shows in, all the time. In other words – and laugh, if you will – Hilton has an understanding of which boundaries she can push, safely, while retaining her status – and while she sets those boundaries lower than her grandfather, she’s still unlikely to start doing heroin. I submit to you that, on the other hand, Spears gained a great deal of money and status, but continued relating to it in the same way she had before she became famous. Remove the money and status, and her story looks much the same as a story we see playing over and over again on Cops. The custody battles, the screaming fights, the pregnancies, the younger sister getting pregnant, haircuts, drugs, rehab, drugs again, drinking, outfits that looked good on a seventeen year old girl looking ridiculous on a 25 year mother of two… So Spears and Hilton have similar careers, but their perception of what’s acceptable, and the kinds of actions they’re willing or permitted to take are very different.

Why? It’s determined by inherited, high-level (unconscious, if you will) behavioral norms – class, not status or wealth or power.

So am I saying that in the US, social climbing is a fallacy, that people are stuck with the class they’re born into, no matter what? Clearly, that’s not even close to true. How do people climb, socially, in the US? I’ll run over this quickly, so as not to bore the reader:

• Generationally. Immigrants work hard, their kids go to college and become doctors and lawyers, their kids are in business, and the great-grandchildren are millionaires when they’re born. Wealth and class are earned simultaneously, over several generations, and often as a group; Irish immigrants are a good example (they were the lowest possible class in NYC in the 1800’s, now everyone’s ‘just a little Irish,’ or Italians – or Indians and the Japanese. I’d argue we’re seeing a huge number of Mexican families starting this journey today.
• Marriage/Parents: Donald Trump earns a great deal of money, and marries a model 24 years his junior. Their (beautiful) child is born into a world of 5-star hotels and nice forks. Voilà le instant class.
• Instant money, the easy way: Ya win the lottery. You inherit from a grandparent ya never saw. Ya get a career selling (images of) your body. (Brittney Spears)
• Instant money, the hard way: You create a really cool business (like ebay), or inherit AND you’ve got enough brains to see the big picture, to change the way you’re seeing the world. (Bill Gates). They geeky kid creating computers in his garage is wearing power suits and handing over millions to help others. It’s the big picture thing that saves you from spending everything on nice cars.
• Education: This is a weird one; you can use education in the US to step yourself into earning more money. This is the generational approach; your father was a lawyer, so you get an MBA … the money and status increase at the same time. OR you can make a class jump without making a money jump. You can become a professor. This is, in many ways, an easier approach to class/social climbing; you don’t have to learn all the intricacies of class display and power. Professors are “supposed” to be absent-minded, right? They wear ratty clothes. They don’t comb their hair. They serve an important function; they facilitate generational climbing, and in so doing they attain an association with the rules of a higher class – even while they continue to live (as many, even most, do) outside the strictures of the white-collar world.
  • to put it more simply, your English professor, in giving up his/her life to creating culture, and to helping others take that generational step up, rises in class as well – but still walks to work every day. S/he gains status, but not (usually) money. They’re more or less outside of the class struggle. Moreover, their children will have access to everything at the university from a young age, can see the ‘big picture,’ and are better placed to have money and status, at once.

So why is the NYT article so interesting? Because, back before most universities became glorified trade schools, class was largely based on social abilities. Class was classy. Board members quoted Shakespeare at each other. Now, the MBA is more and more popular. Geeks are billionaires. The internet makes it easier and easier to make ‘instant money’ – if you follow the rules, play the game the right way, you may find yourself at the top of the Rank – but without any idea of the Links (relationships, friendships, class rules, whatever) to keep yourself there, to play at that level.

Perhaps this is why so many Harvard and Princeton grads have tried to stick their tongues in my ear….

Throw It Away!

A Clutter Too Deep for Mere Bins and Shelves http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/health/01well.html

But experts say the problem with all this is that many people are going about it in the wrong way. Too often they approach clutter and disorganization as a space problem that can be solved by acquiring bins and organizers…

“It isn’t a house problem,” he went on. “It’s a person problem. The person needs to fundamentally change their behavior.”

The NYT goes on, all woe-is-me style, to say that those who can’t clean might be sick or have “compulsive hoarding” disorder, or something. I gave up reading.

I suspect it’s a social/personal thing, but … it turns out one needs a lot less stuff than one owns or has on any kind of a daily basis. I’ve been trying to keep a steady number of ‘things’ (i buy one pair of underwear, i throw one out, etc), and I’m trying to cultivate a detatchment to stuff in general.

Unfortunately, I also have a raccoon-like interest in shiny things.

… but i’m working on it! The only thing i bought in NYC this weekend was Mangoes and Cherries and museum tickets…

Ah, and this reminds me: *note to self* – I’d like to write about this dichotomy b/t living at or above one’s means (to impress others) and living far below one’s means, so as to have space and time to do what one really wants … I suspect millionaires with small houses and infinite travel budgets are happier than those with the reverse. ..

Right Brain File

The author of “Create a Right Brain File” is a lawyer (and personal coach?), who suggests gathering things that ‘interest’ you, things that grab at you – even if you’re not sure why. You do this for a while. Then you look back at all the material and see what stands out, what kinds of patterns you get.

“Year End Review” suggests precisely the same thing, only retroactively.

So this is more or less what I was thinking when I started a blog; I wanted to practice writing, and I wanted to collect articles and ideas I found interesting, worthwhile. I wanted to have a way to see the arc of my thoughts over time. Kind of like a journal, but for my “public” thoughts.

As I move and start a new job, I’ll likely write a lot less – if at all – but I’m going to make an effort to put up articles I find interesting, keep – as Right Brain File guy says – a record of things, so that at the end of the year, I’ll have a better idea of the topics and areas that interest me. Might even find out a few things i didn’t know.

So here’s to you, and to me, and to us, and to the New Year. May it be better than 2007, but not quite as good as 2009. Happy (belated) New Year, everyone :)

Torture and objectivity

This is from the FBI’s website, witness accounts of detainees being tortured.

Guantanamo Bay Inquiry

A survey of 493 FBI personnel who were asked whether they observed aggressive mistreatment, interrogations or interview techniques of GTMO yielded 26 positive responses and several additional responses that were “not purely negative.”

Here’s one of the ‘positive’ ones:

W(itness) observed women crying near the river, their homes had been destroyed by planes. Trucks full of people trying to surrender were blown up by planes. On 2d day after capture, d(etainee) was put in a ditch by Northern Alliance people. Next day, he was allowed to jump into a truck and taken to Mazar-e-Sharif where he was forced into a metal “shipping”-type container w/about 100 men. The container was then closed and d blacked out due to lack of air. When he awoke, there were new holes in the container., The man next to him was dead. He thinks he was in the container 24 hours – only 20 men survived. When it opened he was at Sabergaan jail. The dead were put into a hole and buried, he heard that those too weak to get out of the container were as well. US soldiers arrived about a month later

I repeat: this is from the FBI’s website. It’s been released under the Freedom of Information Act. Here’s another:

on several occasions, witness (“W”) saw detainees (“ds”) in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor w/no chair/ food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves, and were left there 18, 24 hrs or more. Once, the air conditioning was so low that the barefoot d was shaking with cold. Another time, it was off so the unventilated room was over 100 degrees, d was almost unconscious on floor with a pile of hair next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out throughout the night). Another time, it was sweltering hot and loud rap music played – d’s hand and foot was chanined and he was in a fetal position on the floor. Upon inquiry, W was told that interrogators [military contractors] ordered this treatment. Took place in Delta Camp.

So those accounts have been told to the FBI and are under investigation; I can imagine one or two people giving a false account to the FBI for the shock value of it, but not 30+ military personnel, many/most of whom would certainly lose their careers – and possibly freedom – if it turns out they’re lying.

If you want to be (more) shocked, and along the same lines, read this article, posted on Salon, a San Francisc-based news source about which I know nothing whatsoever, except that they carry interesting articles. This one is (purportedly) by a Yemeni man who was held and tortured by the US for two years.

All of this, naturally, brings me to political philosophy.

The hardest thing to attain in life is objectivity; to see yourself, others, the world itself, without bias. This is as true for nations (and states) as it is for people. Perhaps objectivity is an impossible goal – but I’ve spent enough time outside of the U.S. now to say that the view from the outside frightens me

• Allegations of institutionalized, government-sanctioned torture all over the world.
• Unnumbered and hugely destructive nuclear weapons – more than most of the rest of the worlds’ combined – in the hands of an incredibly flexible, lethal army/navy/air force, with trigger-happy generals and Presidents at the helm.
• An intelligence community so advanced it can spy on its own citizens without disturbing either their consciences or daily lives.
• Surly airline security that repels and humiliates instead of inviting.
  (see this Salon article – an entertaining read, at least! – or my own thoughts on airline security/hysteria here).
• A ‘closed’ border so porous we’re enacting punitive immigration laws.
• Most US citizens – by far – don’t even have a passport. Those who do, likely have never been anywhere other then Canada or Mexico.
• Most don’t speak a second language, but if they do, it’s most likely to be Spanish, and they speak it at home.
• The highest murder rate – by far – among other industrial and first world nations, and one of the worst school age reading and math skill sets among that same group.
• Capable of holding an international grudge – and the world’s longest-running embargo (against Cuba) – for over 40 years.
• An upper class whose top 1%’s increase in income from 2003-5 was more than the total income of the poorest 20% – most of whom are black or Hispanic.

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

“Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster,”
NYT 12/17/2007

… shall I go on?

I’m not denigrating the United States here, merely pointing out that the view from the outside is quite different from that on the in. Every story has another side. The United States, like India, is a nation state where any statement you make about it will be both true and false.

Can we fix this? I don’t know. We’ve been running on massive deficits since WWII, and on a wartime economy since WWI. We are a nation of spenders – up to and far beyond our means. We eat, we drink, we enjoy life at home – and, hemmed in by oceans on either side, and by neighbors who have no reason for aggression – we feel (mostly) safe.

Most Estadonidenses (am I spelling that right, M?) are like people anywhere; they (we?, heh) simply want to have a home and community, to find a partner, raise our children safely, eat good food, enjoy life.

Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve gotten lost; we’ve forgotten that no one can have it all, no country, no person, no government.

• We cannot be the masters of war, the world’s arms dealer, the military innovators and be loved and respected as a peaceful, peace-making, mature nation.
• We cannot act like “ugly Americans” while in Paris, and expect to be welcomed with open arms at the European summit.
• We cannot refuse to deal with China – or, for that matter, with the rational Middle East – on realistic and equal terms and expect to be able to control the outcome of all action in the region.
• We cannot refuse to buy oil in Africa – on whatever grounds, be they morally correct or not – and then expect to have African oil when our Middle East wells run dry.
• We cannot torture criminals – of any stripe – and be regarded as purveyors of justice.
• We cannot ignore history if we wish to survive the present.

That is the bottom line, I suppose. When we say one thing and do another, we must eventually explain ourselves.
So how do we fix it?

I expect that eventually, we’ll have to face a choice – as the USSR did, just before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989. To let the outside states go, and sacrifice the heart, or to keep the heart of the nation, but let the empire crumble to pieces? In 1989, Gorbachev let the satellite states go, and, unable to fund both guns and plowshares, turned to inward economic development. Today, under Putin, Russia is emerging, a lean, confident Phoenix, triumphant from the ashes of her past.

Could we do the same? Could we let the empire go, withdraw from our bases, allow the rest of the world to muddle about as it did before we came on the scene? Could we take 50 years to revitalize our economy? Could we reinvent, reformat, reenergize, re-Constitutionalize (sorry) ourselves?

Do We, The People, have it in us any more?

Have we become too .. soft, too sedentary to take on the task of first, seeing ourselves, and second, affecting change in our own lives and backyards?

I’m no political analyst, and I don’t know shit about economics, but I do know we’re overextended in every way imaginable. If we don’t pull back soon, well .. something’s got to give.

Thinking: Action and reaction

When we distort our language, we may distort our thinking, and we hamper our efforts to find solutions to the grave problems we face…

George Shultz
Terrorism and the Modern World
October 25,1984

United States Department of State
Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, D.C.

This is a fascinating speech on terrorism (and the modern world), given by Secretary of State George Schultz in 1984. If you have the time and you’re (honestly) interested in terrorism, I recommend reading it. It’s only six pages, and you’ll be amazed; aside from a few extra USSR references, it might as well have been written last week. Check out these quotes:

We are attacked not because of some mistake we are making but because of who we are and what we believe in. We must not abandon our principles, or our role in the world, or our responsibilities as the champion of freedom and peace.

But part of our problem here in the United States has been our seeming inability to understand terrorism clearly. Each successive terrorist incident has brought too much self-condemnation and dismay, accompanied by calls for a change in our policies or our principles or calls for withdrawal and retreat. We should be alarmed. We should be outraged. We should investigate and strive to improve. But widespread public anguish and self-condemnation only convince the terrorists that they are on the right track. It only encourages them to commit more acts of barbarism in the hope that American resolve will weaken.

Clearly the democracies have a moral right, indeed a duty, to defend themselves.

The grievances that terrorists supposedly seek to redress through acts of violence may or may not be legitimate. The terrorist acts themselves, however, can never be legitimate. And legitimate causes can never justify or excuse terrorism. Terrorist means discredit their ends.

We now recognize that terrorism is being used by our adversaries as a modern tool of warfare. It is no aberration. We can expect more terrorism directed at our strategic interests around the world in the years ahead. To combat it, we must be willing to use military force.

This is a particular danger in the period before our election. If our reaction to terrorist acts is to turn on ourselves instead of against the perpetrators, we give them redoubled incentive to do it again and to try to influence our political processes.

What the public must know first (very end of the article)

• The public must understand before the fact that there is potential for loss of life of some of our fighting men and the loss of life of some innocent people.
• The public must understand before the fact that some will seek to cast any preemptive or retaliatory action by us in the worst light and will attempt to make our military and our policymakers – rather than the terrorists – appear to be the culprits.
• The public must understand before the fact that occasions will come when their government must act before each and every fact is known – and the decisions cannot be tied to the opinion polls.

Public support for U.S. military actions to stop terrorists before the commit some hideous act or in retaliation for an attack on our people is crucial if we are to deal with this challenge…

So I don’t know about you, but it looks to me as though whatever plan of action we have and/or are using isn’t working; we’re dealing with the same issues, in the same way, 20 years later.

So then I go to the historic New York Times (via Proquest on a university site) and pull this quote:

“Terrorism is adopted as the arm of the weak against the strong, deliberately chosen to goad and madden the bull so that he acts to weaken himself. The most effective retaliation is not sheer force but a resourceful strike at the terrorists’ own points of vulnerability, their need for secrecy and anonymity… terrorism isn’t a clear, identifiable enemy that can be overwhelmed by military means. It’s a technique, and it takes astute technique to counter it.”

From “The Technique of Terror,”
Flora Lewis, New York Times, December 28, 1984

I don’t know if secrecy and anonymity are the concerns of terrorists in 2007, but the point still stands; we’re pitting our weaknesses (our open societies, our need for complete information, action via the will of the people) against their strengths. We should be doing the reverse …

Sustainability and Technology

Summary: Humans use technological advance to support massive population growth. This is a temporary solution to what is, long term, a zero-sum game, and will end in catastrophe unless we can either (a) find a sustainable lifestyle and implement it across the board, or (b) introduce new elements into the game.

Humanity develops technology in response to population growth and the resultant crowding and struggle for resources. Technology (everything from fire to wheels to electricity to the internet) allows human societies to thrive at increasingly higher population densities and in in more inhospitable regions than ever before. This is a consistent historical trend, one which shows few, if any, signs of stopping.

(So says Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and I believe him. See page 104, etc).

One could liken this to a government consistently spending above its means, and supporting that spending habit via investment in increasingly byzantine loan and money-management schemes; eventually the creditors come due.

(or perhaps, she said, apolitically, to a nation that bases its seniors’ health-care on a pyramid scheme … or one that consistently hypercharges its economy via ‘wars,’ or…?)

The point: Whether we like it or not, we live in a closed ecosystem; there’s only so much space, there’s only so much fresh water, there are only so many natural resources to go around. As we evolve technologically (due to population pressures), we’re able access resources we couldn’t before (say, digging ever further to get to oil reserves, grain exportation far from the US Midwest, etc…). We’re also able to use the resources we already have more efficiently. Sometimes, we even discover new uses for previously underappreciated resources.

BUT — and this is a BIG but, ladies and gentlemen:

BUT WE’RE NOT CREATING NEW RESOURCES.

We’re playing a more clever game in the same zero-sum (closed) system. Without major lifestyle innovation, there will eventually be no more resources to exploit, our technological gains will not be able to keep up with our growth, and Very Bad Things will happen.

It’s worth noting that this may not come as a result of lack of food or water; we might (for example) fall behind in our struggle with bacteria and other diseases – crowding means faster, easier disease transmission, makes it almost impossible to contain a plague, etc. Also, we’re increasingly seeing drug-resistant strains of bacteria (and viruses) — tuberculosis and staph infections, etc. … Crowding produces all kinds of nasty things along with basic resource competition.

Thus, logically, there are only two conclusions:

1. We must find – and begin living – a sustainable lifestyle, one which damages the environment as little as possible (the environment, after all, being the buffer between us and starvation…)

2. We must find a way to escape the closed system/zero-sum game scenario. This means we have to get off the planet, or find a way to bring resources home — of these two options, I’m in favor of the former, just because I dislike having all our genetic eggs in one basket.

Also, I suppose it’s worth noting that (2) requires an advance in technology, and (1) will greatly benefit from the same.

Connection

Today, I drove to work in the rain and parked near a low curb, up against the hill. Schenley hill rising slick and green against the gray sky. Trees like sodden torches, leaves carpeting the grass. Stone steps. Marble hallway. Offices quiet and overheated. Pittsburgh has terrible weather, but I can’t help loving it, all the same…

…

So my boss is in Rwanda today for a Connectivity Conference.

I can’t find a link for that conference, but here’s one for a similar conference in March 2007… http://www.ustda.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/SubSaharanAfrica/SSAICTConfOpening_031907.pdf

It’s a conference about the internet in Sub-Saharan Africa, about how to bring developing African states into the 21st century as far as internet access is concerned. CMU was the most wired university in the U.S. before such things were popular, and it’s working hard to maintain that reputation, which is why (I’m sure) we’re there.

But it got me thinking: Today I was on the phone to the following places: Ohio, Chicago, Boston, China. Yesterday, Argentina and California. A couple weeks ago, a friend in Quatar. New York, Atlanta, Minnesota … And let’s not even talk about my IM destinations!

(Incidentally, for a really useful VOIP program, go here: http://www.jajah.com — good quality sound, extraordinarily low prices (.031 cents/minute to China this evening, 150 free minutes per month between Jajah members – and membership is free…)

I remember a fall morning, perhaps six months ago. I’m at the office at my internship in Argentina (their fall, spring here in Pennsylvania…). It’s early in the morning, white light coming through the windows. The office ceiling must’ve been 15 feet up, wooden floors, low desks, rolley chairs. I was in the office making coffee with Gustavo, and we were chatting in Spanish, shooting the breeze. He makes amazing coffee – something magical. I swear, if I could import people, he’d be the first. Knows his way around a coffee machine better than anyone I’ve ever met … Anyway, he was telling me that Argentines are much more family oriented than US citizens – that they live in one city, that they stay close to their families, that they don’t feel the same need to travel, that they don’t tend to go away.

I remember that when I first went to Buenos Aires, I somehow thought the city was all there was – as though you could have 11 million people living in a Manhattan environment – but then I started getting to know Argentines, started going into the neighborhoods. Went for a walk with Martín the one day, and it was like walking through a small town – wide, empty streets, low houses … and then driving out of the city, a thousand houses, a hundred neighborhoods. You can leave home and never be more than half an hour from your parents’.

I took umbrage at Gustavo’s generalization, at the time- but then I realized; we (in the US) are mostly descended from wanderers, nomads, people who leave for a new place and never return. Connectivity, culturally and perhaps even genetically (can i say this and stay politically correct? probably not. Is it late, and is it my blog, so will i? yes ;) – so perhaps even genetically, we’re predisposed to have more interest in travel.

Also, we have more large cities. Over 1/4 of Argentina’s population lives in what might as well be their only city.

So I’ve got these phone calls going. I’m texting all over the world right this minute. I was in California over the weekend. … How do we keep connectivity in a world like this?

.

I suppose I’m still trying to get a handle on why so much technology in the U.S., specifically, and why we seem to depend on it so much more than anyone else. Here’s a thought; we have the same need for connection, but we all have itchy feet. …

shadowplay

Doing research on modern terrorism (under Soviet war in Afghanistan), I came across this photo in Wikipedia:

Soviet soldier in Afghanistan, 1988. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev

Found myself thinking about light and shadow, about all the contrasts inherent in war. Soldiers giving peace signs to small children. A baby-faced 19-year-old screaming for his mother and trying to hold one arm on with the other. Silence before a mine explodes or a bomb strikes. Smiles on politicians’ faces as they proclaim victories we may never achieve.

A thousand shades of gray:

The study of policy is confusing, enlightening, embittering. Sometimes I get so far above the fray, into the theory, that I have a hard time coming back down to earth. There are so many ways to look at everything, it’s easy to get lost in ideology, or in points of view – as much value as each has, the older I get, the more I feel you have to see all the angles before you have any idea what something looks like …

The Vietnam War, for example:

• A “proxy” war - a way for the great powers/ideologies (USSR/Communism vs. US/Democracy)
• A rebellion/freedom struggle – the Vietnamese had been struggling to repel foreign invaders since the late 1800’s – the French, the Japanese, then us Estadonidenses…
• A massive terrorist action -I’m not saying this in an incendiary way, just as a way to look at it. Here’s a definition of modern terrorism:
  • “Terrorism is the capricious and illegal application of politically-motivated force or violence by a clandestine individual, small groups or cells claiming to represent larger bodies or communities, independent of the accepted conventions of the rule of law and international conflict.” (It’s from an article on the birth of modern terrorism, but I left the essay at work; I’ll drop the title in here on MondaySo “Terrorism” comes from the French, from the governmental massacre of dissidents, called “terrorisme.” (Now that I think of it, you might liken that ‘terrorisme’ to the killings by the Argentine Junta in the 70’s and 80’s … In any case, before modern terrorism, there was state terrorism, which basically involved killing a lot of innocents to frighten or intimidate the guilty (or the dissenters) and/or to get the citizenry to rise up against the guilty (as denoted by the state) in order to make the killings stop. This, of course, generally works best when the government is considered so strong as to seem unstoppable …) So: politically-motivated violence against the citizenry; that might fit the definition, eh?
• A ‘just’ war - this one’s easy. All U.S. wars are ‘just’ wars, wars considered ‘justified’ by the general public when initiated. In Afghanistan, we were chasing terrorists. In Iraq, WMD’s.
  • Please to note that this is not a normative statement. Term usage, not judgement made.
• A war to maintain U.S. internal stability – I don’t know enough about the Vietnam war to say for sure, but one could easily argue that this war, the Iraq war, came to exist, initially, due to a combination of factors including one president’s wish to remain in office, a U.S. economy that is largely a war economy (we need an excuse to power through on economic stupidity as we do)… anyone know it was the same w/the Vietnam War?

… and now i’m into the present …

• To give the army practice/To flex our muscles for the rest of the world/to say, “don’t step on me”/to gain a foothold in the Middle East
• To boost our national self-esteem/see if anyone wants to knock the chip off our shoulder …
• To divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’…/to show how bad ‘they’ were/to defeat evil in our time
  
• A war for religious freedom
• A war over resources
• A war to maintain control
  
• A war against religious intolerance
• A clash of ideologies/cultures/languages/traditions
• YourPointOfViewHere

Annnnd the bad guys and the good guys switch sides, depending on your starting point, your angle of view.

Shadowboxing.

My Wandering Ways: Explained?

Writes David Brooks in “The Odyssey Years,” an op-ed for the NYT (yes, I know, a lot of NYT posts, sorry! different next time..)

There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood…

I’d been feeling I was alone in this lifestyle thing; I have a part-time job (30 hours that’s really closer to 50) and I’ve moved six times in the last eleven months – twice intracontinentally – seems every time I have money, I have to spend it on something (blasted insurance, school payments, new shoes…) and then I’m back at square 1 again.

I’d like to be gainfully employed, at something beyond the poverty line, believe you me! And on top of that, for whatever reason, I seem to have the time, space, and freedom (and, yes, the parental “you can live at home for a while”) to look for something I truly enjoy, something I can stick with for a while, really get into, get good at. Something challenging!

I met a lot of people in Peru (I’ll update and post some pictures soon) who were odysseying ; a couple girls from the UK and a couple from Ireland, a guy from the UK with this amazing non-profits job, and on and on and on – basically people who’ve decided that they (we?) don’t have to worry about the typical 4-years, job, kids, retire thing; perhaps we’ll take a little time, things’ll come out alright in the end, who knows?

I’d been really worried about ambition, about changing the world, for a long time; just struck me the other day – either I will or I won’t get to run an NGO someday, I will or I won’t be able to do a lot of interesting business/policy connection/papers/graphs, I will or I won’t – and I trust myself, if I don’t, it’ll be because I’ve found something better.

Bring on the odyssey : )

Football/Futbol/Soccer

Have to admit that I’ve never really liked American football. Don’t get me wrong; when my home team won the Superbowl, I was out on the streets, trashed, hugging everyone else, and it was great … But the game itself? A bunch of guys somewhere between ultra-buff and ultra-fat in tight shorts, trying to work their way down a field. Guess I prefer grace over power. And not that football doesn’t take skill, but I suspect most Futbol (soccer) players have more brains left at the end of the day.**

Be that as it may, watching my brother’s high school team play, I was struck by the space in the game, and by the emphasis on force or tactics over cleverness or “grace.” Both teams also tended to back off a bit more than the South Americans I’ve seen play (or played with), and … how to put it? I felt like the Estadonidenses (‘USA citzens’) were trying to make the ball do something, instead of feeling like the ball dictated the course of action. Blah, this sounds silly! … Focus on the game and the team and on actions (passing, heading, etc?) rather than on the ball or each players’ personal expression. … Not better or worse, just different, eh?

There have been a lot of attempts to use soccer to explain the world–

For example, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, by Franklin Foer — really interesting for us US citizens to read, as we’re basically the only major country out there that isn’t obsessed with futbal – and therefore it’s one of the few global movements the US doesn’t really take part in .. sure, we play but we don’t really compete …

–but here, I felt I was seeing something else, something I’ve seen when watching the US play on the big screen too; it’s a personality coming out in the way the game is played, conceptualized, taught, whatever.

Just interesting :-)

** For confirmation of the football-is-bad-for-your-brains thing, check these articles on football head injuries…

• These women are all marred to football players who have dementia or other mental illness b/c of head trauma: Wives United by Husbands’ Post-N.F.L. Trauma
• Concussions Tied to Depression in Ex-N.F.L. Players
• This guy’s brain was found to have turned to mush: Lineman, Dead at 36, Exposes Brain Injuries
• Expert Ties Ex-Player’s Suicide to Brain Damage
• … and so it goes.

In highschool guys: Silence on Concussions Raises Risks of Injury

Can’t claim that futbol doesn’t produce similar injuries, of course (on HS female athletes: Girls Are Often Neglected Victims of Concussions) … I’d bet it’s a lot less, though ..