www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com
Halfway through The Age of Innocence, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Edith Wharton that chronicles the life of Newland Archer and New York's upper class in the 1870s, I had categorized it solely with the other texts I have read and watched recently that revolve in one way or another around infidelity, which I have no patience for. It does, but among other things, like the shallow social society of old New York. But no matter. Inconsequential of the ending (which was a huge surprise to me), it addresses two of my biggest frustrations.
One, believing that the beauty and adventure is meant for someone else in a different place or time or circumstances:
"...we could sail at the end of April. I know I could arrange it at the office."
She smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he perceived that to dream of it sufficed her. It was like hearing him read aloud out of his poetry books the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in real life.
"Oh, do go on, Newland; I do love your descriptions."
"But why should they be only descriptions? Why shouldn't we make them real?"
The beginning of winter weather is the best time, for me, to remember that a stagnant life is not really life at all. Admittedly, it is ridiculously easy for me to declare the weather as the number one justification for reading a book by my window and not venturing out. Ever. Well, until April, at least. The tea kettle is 30 yards away; what more could I need? But. I read passages like those and everything in me wants to scream at May to jump in the boat before it's too late.
Two, living in the safety of a life prescribed. Newland's society is filled with hypocrisy and nonsensical tradition. He senses this and understands its ridiculousness, yet very much struggles to live outside of it--of course, at a certain point in the book comes the complex moral struggle of duty and passion (a common theme is this year's texts, as I've noted) becomes the forefront of the plot:
"You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring--that's all."
I don't understand why people--and these stupid fictional characters (!)--don't choose the poetry and adventure *before* they have made commitments. Apparently, that is not the kind of drama that readers/viewers are looking for--not in 1920 when this book was published, and clearly not now. Curses. Anyway. Wharton describes what happens when one ultimately chooses the safe and the prescribed over all else:
"Outside it, in the scenes of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent minded man goes on bumping into furniture in his own room. Absent--that was what he was."
Without the search for truth and beauty, poetry and adventure, one's reality fades into the imaginary--and the life one is living becomes increasingly incapable of sustaining life that is truly Life--for it is now only a shadow.
Absentia is a heartbreaking existence.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
I think I need a secret garden.
www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com
As much as I anticipate the glory of spring after the hated season, as much as I revel in late summer evenings, there is nothing that compares to the fall in my mind. Perhaps this is so because the house I grew up in was neighbors with three enormous, ancient maple trees and our backyard was yearly carpeted with the best piles to jump in EVER (which I'm sure my dad was not thrilled about...after all this is before his discovery of leaf blowers, snow blowers and electric pumpkins...ha...the good, old days). Maybe it was because my birthday was in the fall and for years we went to Hidden Valley Farm for hayrides and pumpkin picking. Maybe it was because I spent a fair amount of my childhood romping through the woods and the colors added a whole new element for my imagination.
This year's fall has been rainy nearly every weekend. My perfect fall moments have become few and far between and my midwestern heart is not quite sure what to do with the lack of romping through the leaves this year. Even though its been at Prospect, Central or Riverside Park the past seven falls, there is still plenty of space for proper frolicking.
I just finished rereading The Secret Garden and, not surprisingly, found myself longing for countryside. Mary and Colin start off the book as spoiled, selfish and neglected children who are ultimately healed emotionally and physically by spending time inside a garden untouched by adults and expectations, being changed by its magic.
As I read, everything inside of me wanted to run off to the woods and just be. Or be driving down the rural part of State Route 73 in southwest Ohio. Or laying in a pile of leaves in my backyard. Stuck in a long, frozen moment of crisp fall air and open spaces. I realized that I count on the fall to renew my spirit before the winter begins and in between the rain and the craziness of the first quarter at school, it just hasn't happened this year. This is not ok. So. Since there isn't a cloud in the sky today and since the high is 68, I am off.
As much as I anticipate the glory of spring after the hated season, as much as I revel in late summer evenings, there is nothing that compares to the fall in my mind. Perhaps this is so because the house I grew up in was neighbors with three enormous, ancient maple trees and our backyard was yearly carpeted with the best piles to jump in EVER (which I'm sure my dad was not thrilled about...after all this is before his discovery of leaf blowers, snow blowers and electric pumpkins...ha...the good, old days). Maybe it was because my birthday was in the fall and for years we went to Hidden Valley Farm for hayrides and pumpkin picking. Maybe it was because I spent a fair amount of my childhood romping through the woods and the colors added a whole new element for my imagination.
This year's fall has been rainy nearly every weekend. My perfect fall moments have become few and far between and my midwestern heart is not quite sure what to do with the lack of romping through the leaves this year. Even though its been at Prospect, Central or Riverside Park the past seven falls, there is still plenty of space for proper frolicking.
I just finished rereading The Secret Garden and, not surprisingly, found myself longing for countryside. Mary and Colin start off the book as spoiled, selfish and neglected children who are ultimately healed emotionally and physically by spending time inside a garden untouched by adults and expectations, being changed by its magic.
As I read, everything inside of me wanted to run off to the woods and just be. Or be driving down the rural part of State Route 73 in southwest Ohio. Or laying in a pile of leaves in my backyard. Stuck in a long, frozen moment of crisp fall air and open spaces. I realized that I count on the fall to renew my spirit before the winter begins and in between the rain and the craziness of the first quarter at school, it just hasn't happened this year. This is not ok. So. Since there isn't a cloud in the sky today and since the high is 68, I am off.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The House of the Spirits.
www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com
Isabel Allende's epic of the Trueba and del Valle families is filled with every provocative theme in literature: love, violence, betrayal, mysticism, wealth, poverty, and politics. My book club picked it in direct response to The Savage Detectives, whose author Roberto Bolano detested Allende along with the established canon of Latin American literature.
Stylistically and developmentally, they couldn't be more different. The thread that runs through both of them is a desire to have life restored to what we (first person plural because I think that this is in all of us to some degree) feel it should be: beautiful. The following passages serve almost as a call to action from Allende's voice herself: to tell the the stories that need to be told and to search for beauty in the broken. First:
"Cement walls were erected to hide the most unsightly shantytowns from the eyes of tourists and others who preferred not to see them. In a single night, as if by magic, beautifully pruned gardens and flowerbeds appeared on the avenues; they had been planted by the unemployed, to create the illusion of a peaceful spring."
This creating of an illusion is present in the smallest of ways in our lives like not admitting to failure, or being more concerned with image rather than person and not wanting to get mixed up with other people's messes. And in the largest: gated communities, displacement of people in the name of development, serving those with the most money to throw at the economy. I want to be a person who prefers to see the messes and know the people. Living in illusion to truth seems more dangerous than the other way around.
And second:
"Clara also brought the saving idea of writing in her mind, without paper or pencil, to keep her [Alba's] thoughts occupied and to escape from the doghouse and live. She suggested that she write a testimony that might one day call attention to the terrible secret she was living through, so that the world would know about this horror that was taking place parallel to the peaceful existence of those who did not want to know, who could afford the illusion of a normal life, and of those who could deny that they were on a raft adrift in a sea of sorrow, ignoring, despite all evidence, that only blocks away from their happy world there were others, these others who live or die on the dark side."
If we are to break down the illusion, we need books and art and music that are courageous enough to tell the story of the mess of humanity. And people who are not scared to steep in these stories for a while and be changed.
And I think that if we start letting grace seep into our own messes and of those closest to us, we'd be a step closer to abandoning the illusion and finding beauty and hope in the broken?
Isabel Allende's epic of the Trueba and del Valle families is filled with every provocative theme in literature: love, violence, betrayal, mysticism, wealth, poverty, and politics. My book club picked it in direct response to The Savage Detectives, whose author Roberto Bolano detested Allende along with the established canon of Latin American literature.
Stylistically and developmentally, they couldn't be more different. The thread that runs through both of them is a desire to have life restored to what we (first person plural because I think that this is in all of us to some degree) feel it should be: beautiful. The following passages serve almost as a call to action from Allende's voice herself: to tell the the stories that need to be told and to search for beauty in the broken. First:
"Cement walls were erected to hide the most unsightly shantytowns from the eyes of tourists and others who preferred not to see them. In a single night, as if by magic, beautifully pruned gardens and flowerbeds appeared on the avenues; they had been planted by the unemployed, to create the illusion of a peaceful spring."
This creating of an illusion is present in the smallest of ways in our lives like not admitting to failure, or being more concerned with image rather than person and not wanting to get mixed up with other people's messes. And in the largest: gated communities, displacement of people in the name of development, serving those with the most money to throw at the economy. I want to be a person who prefers to see the messes and know the people. Living in illusion to truth seems more dangerous than the other way around.
And second:
"Clara also brought the saving idea of writing in her mind, without paper or pencil, to keep her [Alba's] thoughts occupied and to escape from the doghouse and live. She suggested that she write a testimony that might one day call attention to the terrible secret she was living through, so that the world would know about this horror that was taking place parallel to the peaceful existence of those who did not want to know, who could afford the illusion of a normal life, and of those who could deny that they were on a raft adrift in a sea of sorrow, ignoring, despite all evidence, that only blocks away from their happy world there were others, these others who live or die on the dark side."
If we are to break down the illusion, we need books and art and music that are courageous enough to tell the story of the mess of humanity. And people who are not scared to steep in these stories for a while and be changed.
And I think that if we start letting grace seep into our own messes and of those closest to us, we'd be a step closer to abandoning the illusion and finding beauty and hope in the broken?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
anne shirley, you're my hero.
www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com
I joined a writing group and ever since have been absent from my blog. Ha. This is slightly ironic. But, my focus for the group has been fiction which I haven't seriously attempting since my junior year creative writing class at Miami, so due to my quasi ineptitude of writing a story and the craziness of the fall, I have been absent. But this kind of writing feels like home, so on day two of a three day weekend, here I am. I may have a few posts today.
Back in June I wrote about the opening reading assignment we're doing with the 8th graders: to reread a childhood favorite with new eyes, and to ultimately write "an appreciation" for the book. This idea was inspired by the redesigned children's classics by Penguin (see previous post for the link), which include an "appreciation" by a modern author (seriously gorgeous: I highly recommend checking them out).
This is my appreciation in honor of Anne:
Anne of Green Gables is a marker of lifelong friendships for me. I have been lucky enough to always have amazing friendships in my life and to have known Anne since age 8, but I didn’t know true kindred spirits until I was nearly twenty and met three girls who embodied not only the love of Anne, but the characteristics that make her so, well Anne: a longing for adventure, a lover of beauty, a desire to be completely moved to the core and an inescapable ridiculousness. These are girls whose friendship has spanned nearly ten years, four cities and two coasts, but we are able to pick up immediately where we left off.
I moved to New York City right after college with three great guy friends from Ohio, without a kindred spirit in sight. I spent many evenings as “one of the guys” but I can vividly place myself on the patio of Rudy’s in midtown (think duct tape seats and free hot dogs) with them and a girl I had just met. We realized we had similar stories prior to moving to New York and then in a burst of energy we both asked the other if she loved Anne . It was over. One of my best, best friends. Another time, I was introduced on the subway platform to a girl who had recently moved to the city. I kid you not, we found out within minutes that we were both lovers of Anne and were literally jumping up and down, much to the disturbance and confusion of those around us. But. Kindred spirits are one of the dearest parts of life, as Anne knows, and cause for celebration.
It’s difficult to name the enchantment that was placed over all of us that would continue to impact our lives well into adulthood and cause us all to return to her story on a regular basis. Anne chased adventure and the beautiful, got lost in her wanderings and loved learning. Anne is the perfectly imperfect heroine; the best kind. Her excitement for life was contagious and her theatrics and exaggeration wildly entertaining. Anne is smart, determined, stubborn, loyal, passionate. Not only that, but she gave name to what I didn’t know other people felt:
“Pretty? Oh pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough. Oh it was wonderful-wonderful…it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?”
“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill—several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room with them.”
I thought for a long time that finding a character who experiences the world in the same way I do was enough. But. C.S. says: “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”.To find someone who loves those same things…sigh. Anne was that person for me and gave me the word for others: kindred spirits.
I reread this book almost every year not only to transport me back to my own childhood and the early 1900’s Prince Edward Island (a time period and setting completely romanticized in my mind) but becauseAnne reminds me of my need to frolic: something that gets lost in my city life sometimes (save for the fall, when I, too am so moved by the trees on fire). It reminds me of my carefree days spent in the woods with flowers in my hair; days that need to be remembered as I sometimes bury myself in my to do lists. I need regular reminders to soak in small beauties and to “dust off my ambitions.” Anne reminds me of the things I love the most: my family, my friends and the tiny things in the world that make my heart soar that are easy to miss if you’re not looking.
As a teacher, I live my life closely watching children become young adults. I really believe that Anne and characters like her are the best guides into adulthood: strong, young women who do not take a backseat in adventuring, learning, imagination. Young women who do not feel entitled, but who work toward their goals and dreams. Young women who know that wealth and prestige are not the makers of happiness.
“We are rich,” said Anne staunchly. “Why, we have sixteen years to our credit, we’re happy as queens, and we’ve all got our imaginations, more or less.”
Sigh.
I joined a writing group and ever since have been absent from my blog. Ha. This is slightly ironic. But, my focus for the group has been fiction which I haven't seriously attempting since my junior year creative writing class at Miami, so due to my quasi ineptitude of writing a story and the craziness of the fall, I have been absent. But this kind of writing feels like home, so on day two of a three day weekend, here I am. I may have a few posts today.
Back in June I wrote about the opening reading assignment we're doing with the 8th graders: to reread a childhood favorite with new eyes, and to ultimately write "an appreciation" for the book. This idea was inspired by the redesigned children's classics by Penguin (see previous post for the link), which include an "appreciation" by a modern author (seriously gorgeous: I highly recommend checking them out).
This is my appreciation in honor of Anne:
Anne of Green Gables is a marker of lifelong friendships for me. I have been lucky enough to always have amazing friendships in my life and to have known Anne since age 8, but I didn’t know true kindred spirits until I was nearly twenty and met three girls who embodied not only the love of Anne, but the characteristics that make her so, well Anne: a longing for adventure, a lover of beauty, a desire to be completely moved to the core and an inescapable ridiculousness. These are girls whose friendship has spanned nearly ten years, four cities and two coasts, but we are able to pick up immediately where we left off.
I moved to New York City right after college with three great guy friends from Ohio, without a kindred spirit in sight. I spent many evenings as “one of the guys” but I can vividly place myself on the patio of Rudy’s in midtown (think duct tape seats and free hot dogs) with them and a girl I had just met. We realized we had similar stories prior to moving to New York and then in a burst of energy we both asked the other if she loved Anne . It was over. One of my best, best friends. Another time, I was introduced on the subway platform to a girl who had recently moved to the city. I kid you not, we found out within minutes that we were both lovers of Anne and were literally jumping up and down, much to the disturbance and confusion of those around us. But. Kindred spirits are one of the dearest parts of life, as Anne knows, and cause for celebration.
It’s difficult to name the enchantment that was placed over all of us that would continue to impact our lives well into adulthood and cause us all to return to her story on a regular basis. Anne chased adventure and the beautiful, got lost in her wanderings and loved learning. Anne is the perfectly imperfect heroine; the best kind. Her excitement for life was contagious and her theatrics and exaggeration wildly entertaining. Anne is smart, determined, stubborn, loyal, passionate. Not only that, but she gave name to what I didn’t know other people felt:
“Pretty? Oh pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough. Oh it was wonderful-wonderful…it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?”
“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill—several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room with them.”
I thought for a long time that finding a character who experiences the world in the same way I do was enough. But. C.S. says: “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”.To find someone who loves those same things…sigh. Anne was that person for me and gave me the word for others: kindred spirits.
I reread this book almost every year not only to transport me back to my own childhood and the early 1900’s Prince Edward Island (a time period and setting completely romanticized in my mind) but becauseAnne reminds me of my need to frolic: something that gets lost in my city life sometimes (save for the fall, when I, too am so moved by the trees on fire). It reminds me of my carefree days spent in the woods with flowers in my hair; days that need to be remembered as I sometimes bury myself in my to do lists. I need regular reminders to soak in small beauties and to “dust off my ambitions.” Anne reminds me of the things I love the most: my family, my friends and the tiny things in the world that make my heart soar that are easy to miss if you’re not looking.
As a teacher, I live my life closely watching children become young adults. I really believe that Anne and characters like her are the best guides into adulthood: strong, young women who do not take a backseat in adventuring, learning, imagination. Young women who do not feel entitled, but who work toward their goals and dreams. Young women who know that wealth and prestige are not the makers of happiness.
“We are rich,” said Anne staunchly. “Why, we have sixteen years to our credit, we’re happy as queens, and we’ve all got our imaginations, more or less.”
Sigh.
Sidenote: Well designed book covers are a joy of life.
www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com
For some reason, blogger won't let me post pictures anymore, so you'll have to go to this link and look at Penguin's Great Ideas series: I love the design for all four series and think I may start collecting them.
Also. Puffin relaunched children's classics with gorgeous covers and they are only $5!
These. I swoon over.
For some reason, blogger won't let me post pictures anymore, so you'll have to go to this link and look at Penguin's Great Ideas series: I love the design for all four series and think I may start collecting them.
Also. Puffin relaunched children's classics with gorgeous covers and they are only $5!
These. I swoon over.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
The Shock Doctrine and an english major's never ending existential struggle with economics.
www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com
My concession before you read this is that somehow I got away with never taking an economics class. I even got away with linguistics in lieu of statistics or calculus in college. But. Being a literature major enabled me to know pieces the human story. I'm not exactly sure of how to frame what I'm thinking, so bear with me and my apologies if I sound a bit scattered.
I am a fan of organization and productive work. I also work for New York City and am fully aware of how inefficient the system is. My hope is always that someday someone will be in charge who not only understands how to run the enormous school system with financial intelligence but who also understands education: children and learning are not equations where you can guarantee an certain outcome because life gets in the way. The variables in my job include broken homes, hormones, poverty, peer pressure, family pressure, teenage angst, the list goes on. But this post isn't just about education.
I hate the reality that in our society people are rarely, if ever, the bottom line.
While reading The Shock Doctrine I learned of countless examples of the government and the wealthy "shocking" a financial system with the hope that it would eventually create a healthier living environment for people, but that ultimately provided themselves with more wealth while the average person faced with huge struggles to make ends meet and reconfigure themselves in a different world while waiting for it all to get better.
In the introduction to the fourth part of the book, Klein includes the following quote: "The worst of times give rise to the best of opportunities for those who understand the need for fundamental economic reform" (Haggard/Williamson). My question is what kind of opportunities are being sought after? Opportunities to make our world sustainable? Opportunities to enable the majority of people to have peaceful, fulfilling lives? Who benefits? "Are they [free market idealogues] driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment...or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered freedom while still invoking an altruistic motive?" (297).
It's not that I don't understand capitalism. Competition and compensation provide motive. Communism failed. But money can't always be the bottom line, even in individual lives: if we accumulate wealth but then spend all of our time working, what is the point? Does a one or two week vacation make up for living life in an office? Having money makes life easier, but doesn't necessarily make life good. Good living is laughing with family. Eating with friends. Breathing deeply and looking for the beautiful. I'm sure at this point you may be laughing and calling me naive, old fashioned (or midwestern!) but I'm ok with that.
Klein talks a lot about the privatization of government jobs and current government responsibilities and I feel like this quote does a good job explaining my frustrations (from the introduction to chapter 15): "There's something civil servants have that the private sector doesn't. And that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good--the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all rather than the interest of a few. Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not to the country"(David M. Walker, comptroller). Privatization can provide greater efficiency, but is the value of life and the human narrative figured into the equation or just the financial bottom line? I just think that before policies are made, the policy-makers should look at the faces of the people it will affect and hear their stories.
I'll close with this: no matter where you fall politically, I feel like this was a highlight of Obama's speech last week:
"You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter – that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves."
My concession before you read this is that somehow I got away with never taking an economics class. I even got away with linguistics in lieu of statistics or calculus in college. But. Being a literature major enabled me to know pieces the human story. I'm not exactly sure of how to frame what I'm thinking, so bear with me and my apologies if I sound a bit scattered.
I am a fan of organization and productive work. I also work for New York City and am fully aware of how inefficient the system is. My hope is always that someday someone will be in charge who not only understands how to run the enormous school system with financial intelligence but who also understands education: children and learning are not equations where you can guarantee an certain outcome because life gets in the way. The variables in my job include broken homes, hormones, poverty, peer pressure, family pressure, teenage angst, the list goes on. But this post isn't just about education.
I hate the reality that in our society people are rarely, if ever, the bottom line.
While reading The Shock Doctrine I learned of countless examples of the government and the wealthy "shocking" a financial system with the hope that it would eventually create a healthier living environment for people, but that ultimately provided themselves with more wealth while the average person faced with huge struggles to make ends meet and reconfigure themselves in a different world while waiting for it all to get better.
In the introduction to the fourth part of the book, Klein includes the following quote: "The worst of times give rise to the best of opportunities for those who understand the need for fundamental economic reform" (Haggard/Williamson). My question is what kind of opportunities are being sought after? Opportunities to make our world sustainable? Opportunities to enable the majority of people to have peaceful, fulfilling lives? Who benefits? "Are they [free market idealogues] driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment...or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered freedom while still invoking an altruistic motive?" (297).
It's not that I don't understand capitalism. Competition and compensation provide motive. Communism failed. But money can't always be the bottom line, even in individual lives: if we accumulate wealth but then spend all of our time working, what is the point? Does a one or two week vacation make up for living life in an office? Having money makes life easier, but doesn't necessarily make life good. Good living is laughing with family. Eating with friends. Breathing deeply and looking for the beautiful. I'm sure at this point you may be laughing and calling me naive, old fashioned (or midwestern!) but I'm ok with that.
Klein talks a lot about the privatization of government jobs and current government responsibilities and I feel like this quote does a good job explaining my frustrations (from the introduction to chapter 15): "There's something civil servants have that the private sector doesn't. And that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good--the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all rather than the interest of a few. Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not to the country"(David M. Walker, comptroller). Privatization can provide greater efficiency, but is the value of life and the human narrative figured into the equation or just the financial bottom line? I just think that before policies are made, the policy-makers should look at the faces of the people it will affect and hear their stories.
I'll close with this: no matter where you fall politically, I feel like this was a highlight of Obama's speech last week:
"You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter – that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves."
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Shock Doctrine: A context for my brain of late.
www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein is one of the most fascinating--and frightening--nonfiction books I have ever read. It provides the well documented narrative behind "disaster capitalism" in a way that cannot be summarized in a blog post. But. What follows is a brief attempt and provides a context for where my brain has been for the past month and a half. Then I will write about where my train of thought has been as a result. I can do nothing but recommend that you pick this one up and then call me afterward to discuss, whether you agree with Klein or not (seriously).
Klein opens her book documenting the Cold War-era electroshock therapy research (financed by the CIA), with its purpose to create "the blank slate, cleared of bad habits, on which new patterns could be written" (37). This is the stuff of science fiction: the desire to create robots in human skin; to remove people's stories and therefore rid the country of those with "wrong" or "dangerous" opinions.
Shock therapy is used as a metaphor in documenting "the rise of disaster capitalism" (or making a profit in the aftermath of a natural--or man made--disaster. It revolves around the philosophy of Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago economics department and his belief in absolutely free, privatized markets. They associated political freedom and democracy with free markets. The two major actions that Klein traces throughout history are (1) their work with governments in fiscal crisis, teaching that socialistic and communistic societies must be shocked with privatization (which rewarded the rich quickly and left the middle and lower classes in utter confusion, waiting for money to trickle down) and (2) using natural disasters and mass disorientation as an opportunity to make money.
She reminds us of the goal of electroshock therapy and uses it as a metaphor throughout the book: to remove that which allows us "to know where we are and who we are." She also documents the history of torture in Latin American countries when socialist or communist activists fought against the ways of Friedman: "the point of the exercise was getting prisoners to do irreparable damage to the part of themselves that believed in helping others above all else, that part of themselves that made them activists" (139).
Klein takes us through the history of this line of thinking, from Chile and Bolivia, to Russia and Poland, to New Orleans and Indonesia, to Iraq. Individual human lives and collective human story weren't counted as cost. The aftermath of violence inflicted on countries wasn't a consideration. She writes: "The National Libray [of Iraq], which contained copies of every book and doctoral thesis ever published in Iraq, was a blackened ruin. Thousand-year-old illuminated Korans disappeared...'It was the soul of Iraq...the deep memory of an entire culture has been removed...like a lobotomy'" (425).
Thoughts to follow, mostly about my ongoing frustration with life that people are never the bottom line.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein is one of the most fascinating--and frightening--nonfiction books I have ever read. It provides the well documented narrative behind "disaster capitalism" in a way that cannot be summarized in a blog post. But. What follows is a brief attempt and provides a context for where my brain has been for the past month and a half. Then I will write about where my train of thought has been as a result. I can do nothing but recommend that you pick this one up and then call me afterward to discuss, whether you agree with Klein or not (seriously).
Klein opens her book documenting the Cold War-era electroshock therapy research (financed by the CIA), with its purpose to create "the blank slate, cleared of bad habits, on which new patterns could be written" (37). This is the stuff of science fiction: the desire to create robots in human skin; to remove people's stories and therefore rid the country of those with "wrong" or "dangerous" opinions.
Shock therapy is used as a metaphor in documenting "the rise of disaster capitalism" (or making a profit in the aftermath of a natural--or man made--disaster. It revolves around the philosophy of Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago economics department and his belief in absolutely free, privatized markets. They associated political freedom and democracy with free markets. The two major actions that Klein traces throughout history are (1) their work with governments in fiscal crisis, teaching that socialistic and communistic societies must be shocked with privatization (which rewarded the rich quickly and left the middle and lower classes in utter confusion, waiting for money to trickle down) and (2) using natural disasters and mass disorientation as an opportunity to make money.
She reminds us of the goal of electroshock therapy and uses it as a metaphor throughout the book: to remove that which allows us "to know where we are and who we are." She also documents the history of torture in Latin American countries when socialist or communist activists fought against the ways of Friedman: "the point of the exercise was getting prisoners to do irreparable damage to the part of themselves that believed in helping others above all else, that part of themselves that made them activists" (139).
Klein takes us through the history of this line of thinking, from Chile and Bolivia, to Russia and Poland, to New Orleans and Indonesia, to Iraq. Individual human lives and collective human story weren't counted as cost. The aftermath of violence inflicted on countries wasn't a consideration. She writes: "The National Libray [of Iraq], which contained copies of every book and doctoral thesis ever published in Iraq, was a blackened ruin. Thousand-year-old illuminated Korans disappeared...'It was the soul of Iraq...the deep memory of an entire culture has been removed...like a lobotomy'" (425).
Thoughts to follow, mostly about my ongoing frustration with life that people are never the bottom line.
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