Going Around

Dear Readers,

We hope you are well, because our dear professor is not. I'll be posting tomorrow in his stead. Stay warm, everyone and wash your hands...and get well soon, Professor J!

Farewell, Pioneers Part II

Professor J,

As usual your nitpicking has made me think deeper about my ideas. I always find myself mentally clarifying, detailing things you've misunderstood, or backtracking on this or that because you've found an error in my thinking. Honing my thinking over and over. All of which are some of the reasons why I keep showing up. :)

But allow me a clarification: I'm sure the original inhabitants of this country would take issue with much of my phraseology and underlying ideas. I was however speaking to a particularly "American" idea and way of thinking that is ingrained deeply not as to whether or not it is correct to hold such a one sided historical view.

And thank you for pointing out Frederick Jackson Turner's writings to me. What I was looking for, though, was something related not to the spirit of the image but how the words and phrases related to it are used in political speech. I was on the hunt for research into how often that kind of terminology is used, by candidates holding which kind of views, and perhaps a study showing that certain words seem to pop up when particular things are happening in the culture or economy. Are there national events or cycles that cause speech writers to trot out certain words? And if we looked at all the correlations would there appear to be something formulaic about it?

This probably exists somewhere and everyone knows about it but me, if so please share. ;)

A few years back when the Army changed it's slogan from "Be all you can be" which was simple, direct, and inspiring to "An Army of one" I thought how inappropriate the motto was for the organization. If any group represents the idea of team building and camaraderie, it's the armed forces. Generally almost nothing about it says "go it alone" or "you don't need anyone else." I think it's a pretty good indication of just how pervasive the thinking is. The current, "Army strong" is probably the result of someone realizing that an army of one is an oxymoron.

We may be waking up to the psychological as well as physiological importance of connection to others. Any article or book about how to live a long, healthy life includes a focus on the importance of having a small group of friends who you can share problems and celebrate victories with. The lone wolf is much more likely to be depressed in his isolation, and I suspect stuck in his ideas which will remain unchallenged and therefore likely not well thought out, because he will never have to explain them or have them questioned by anyone else. The same danger exists in having relationships solely with people very much like one's self.

In one of my favorite books, Howard's End, E.M. Forster uses the phrase "Only connect!"  to emphasize the value of relationships. The phrase sounds almost comical with today's constant connection to others carried with us at all times. But of course Forster was referring to real connections with people, and not what sometimes passes for connection today. It seems he would have recognized what we've done though, even before the technology for it existed:

 "The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them," Margaret sighs. "It's one of the curses of London." 

So if scientists and mental health experts, doctors and healthy living experts are telling us that we need more connection for our overall physical and mental health is it possibly just a matter of time before we acquiesce some of our independent spirit for our own good? The hyper individualistic thinking may be something that cannot effectively be changed once it's is entrenched. If that is the case our best hope may be the next generation which is already much more adept at sharing and collaboration.  Companies that study trends are turning up the millenials' penchant for sharing instead of owning. They are more interested in access than ownership. Which will probably mean they'll clamor for things like better public transportation. Something their parents cared little about. So the value of us and the power of we may gain strength with time.

But of course, the constant companion question: How to do it optimally without tipping over into group think and rigid conformity?

One May Be The Easiest Number To Defeat

Madame M:

Excellent analysis.  Although I would think many Native American tribes could take issue with your terminology and some implications, the overall legacy problem seems to have tremendous validity.

The literature, while perhaps scant, is not entirely devoid of reference to the effect of pioneer thought.  Frederick Jackson Turner’s classic essay on it is practically required reading for many graduate school historians (and occasionally political scientists).  And you would find a number of congruent ideas to yours.

Sociologists talk about how we are atomizing, each expecting his own freedom and minimally concerned or unconcerned about the freedom of others—and often minimally concerned or unconcerned at all about others outside of very immediate family or a small circle of “friends”.

One too frequently hears this expressed in terms of the rest of the citizenry (not FELLOW citizenry, note) similar to “F’ them.  I earned my way, and they can too.”  Even though the circumstances are usually far different from when the individual supposedly “earned” his or her own way.  But even more importantly, there is no desire to change the underlying conditions that generate poverty. 

As you alluded to, the real powers sit back and feel comfortable every time they hear the talk they have seeded echo back to them.  They know they don’t need to do the conquering.  Divide, disconnect, and isolate, and the people—or more accurately, the fractured groups or disempowered individuals—will conquer themselves.

Aristocrats and now plutocrats have been using that technique throughout history.  And we keep falling for it.  Human emotions and psychology change too little or too slowly, it would seem.

I therefore applaud and support your standing in the middle of the tide of individualism to be a breakwater for cooperation.

Excellent thinking to start us off in 2014!

Farewell, Pioneers

 

Professor J, 

Staying home, and spending hours in bed with fun gadgets like humidifiers gives a girl time to think. I was a bit surprised when I tried to find research about the use of pioneer and cowboy imagery in American political speech no one seems to have written about it. (I'm talking to you, political science majors.)

I wonder if our self made man, every man for himself, pioneer spirit is killing America. And if we just don't see it yet. We are still enamored by the idea of cowboys and rags to riches stories. Work hard, don't give up, and keep chasing the American Dream.

The thing that made us great under completely different circumstances won't keep us great under the new interconnected conditions.

While reading about how standardized testing is harming our students' ability to think, discussing the sad concept of community our culture has (thanks, Rush), and wondering how we became such a great nation and achieved so many miraculous things something began to sink in. That pioneer spirit was grand. And necessary. It's part of our national psyche and identity still used in advertising and political speeches and we think it's a good thing. Much has been written about the image of the cowboy on American society. We are tied to it. Just think how often the term "pioneer" gets thrown around as a description of anyone who does anything unusually new. Except that now we are tied by it. The time for it (warning: sacrilege to follow) may have passed.

Here's why: A nation born out of a desire for liberty and personal freedom needs pioneers. A country with vast expanses that need to be tamed needs those willing to live alone with their families and be self sufficient. There was much hard work to do early on, nearly impossible work it seems at times, and a particular attitude of independence was necessary. Frontiers are opened up by those who are willing to forgo the comforts of community. Winds howling across open plains without a single other person must have whispered "You don't need anyone."

The problem is the frontier is gone, unless you are going to space. We live in well run cities and towns where people have been living and working together for over a hundred years. The pioneer spirit that was a necessity is now holding us back from finding solutions and working together. But the idea of it is tightly bound in our popular self image. I suspect it's the underlying attitude behind things like Doomsday Preppers, where people actually seem to look forward to an event where they envision they could ward off disaster for their families, alone.

In worst case scenarios, however, it isn't that you won't need anyone, it's that you'll need everyone.

I see this attitude as contributing to the polarization we are seeing as well. It's hard to be proven wrong in your own little fiefdom. You can insulate yourself from those who think differently while finding a channel to get your views reinforced. Not knowing anyone different than you, because your frontier (front yard) insulates you is convenient for maintaining those maverick attitudes. It keeps all of us from getting together to pinpoint real problems and forming alliances for solving them.

The people with the real power must love that. 

I love the picture I've included with this post. The solitude, toughness, and independent spirit it captures aren't bad things. But it may be time for that not to be worn on our collective sleeve anymore. We need that attitude deep down inside, to know that when things are really bad we have what it takes to go it alone if we have to.  But in our day to day lives the more valuable skill may be collaboration.

The time has come to embrace the power of us. 

How to do that without people succumbing to group think or losing their sense of individuality is an entirely different can of worms. :)

Intellectual Driftwood

12-26-13, Pope Francis: “True peace is not a balancing of opposing forces.  It’s not a lovely façade which conceals conflicts and divisions.  Peace calls for daily commitment.”

As Miss Manners has reported, the epidemic of people who don’t listen to their voicemails is actually pandemic, and the numbers of who don’t listen all the way through even higher.  Granted, some message-leavers talk too much and waste your time, but when it is a school calling to leave an important message and the parent doesn’t listen to it all the way through…

Yes, we have wasteful spending in the federal budget.  At least $30 billion a year in readily identifiable (Sen Tom Coburn’s annual list), but that’s a drop (unfortunately) in the budget bucket. 

No better example of how contractors have won economic control in government than the train-wreck roll out of the health.gov website, which went to a contractor with a notoriously bad track record who made a ton of money "doing" it.

I watched “The Wolf of Wall Street.” While one need have little to no sympathy for the despicable cast of characters, it begs one question: Why concentrate on him and his firm, who were (incredibly) small potatoes compared to the giant rip offs and fraud taking place? 

The generous answer would be that one made do with what resources one had.

The better answer would be that plutocrats don’t get investigated, unless they are serving one of their own up for some reason (diversion, satisficing of popular anger, or internecine struggle).  So the Crimes of Colossal Scale go uninvestigated and unprosecuted.  There’s never “enough resources,” and other lame excuses that divert from the real reason—they are the henchmen and allies of the masters the public wants them to investigate.

We summon up the energy to dispute or support comments by a “celebrity,” but have no energy or drive to move for change about the things which affect our lives deeply.

Sickness Interruptus

ATTENTION READERS:

Madame has been temporarily felled by the flu bug and will not be making even a late post this week.  She plans to return to these pages next week.  You will of course get me the blowhard again on Sunday!

They Give "Love" A Bad Name

Madame,

I join you (and the Black Eyed Peas) in asking, “where is the love?” 

And Anne Rice echoed your sentiments when she announced that she was still a follower of Jesus, but no longer wanted to be known as a Christian, due to so many giving the title a bad, bad name she wanted no affiliation with.

Jesus and his disciples would well recognize the same twisters, the same selfish deceivers, the same obeisance to elite servitude (and the same attitude that everyone else is on their own), and the same cultural adherence to unexamined (and often corrupt and deliberately self serving) “laws”—religious or otherwise—in our modern day.  And how deeply, bitterly, ironic that the two greatest commandments of the Bible as summed up by Jesus in Matthew 22 are so readily ignored, especially the second.

The lack of reading on the part of people, and their resulting susceptibility for being “taught” twisted ideology by self-serving demagogues who tell them what “The Good Book” says—what the people themselves should have read—leads to the abysmal situation where religion is twisted to cause evil effects, precisely the kind that Bill Maher and others rail so effectively about.

But even all the criticisms of biblical chapters and their possibly questionable robustness do not detract from the emphasis on the poor, the sick, the hungry, the weary.  Even a cursory reading of the New Testament Jesus would give pause to true believers.  Pause, because most of the words are about love, tolerance, brotherhood, forgiveness.  Further pause when they discover the few words of condemnation that Jesus uses, and the few instances of great anger, are reserved for precisely the same types of proselytizers of the ‘prosperity gospel” and their plutocratic allies.

Even unbelievers can see how good a world it would be if people would mimic Jesus, or Katie Davis, or anyone who lives out those two commandments, including and especially the second.  When we don’t live out the second, we don’t really live but merely exist, for we feel the emptiness of it all deep inside us from  the disconnection from our neighbors.  And maybe, just maybe, sense that true change for lasting good means we must live out fully that second commandment.  A good reminder in this “most wonderful time of the year.”

Because in a globalized world, we’re all neighbors.  And really, always have been.