Perspective

I saw a particularly gruesome and vulgar episode of South Park that raised the bar on brilliant satire. The episode was about Britney Spears and was a commentary on celebrity obsession culture in the US media today. Britney is stalked throughout the episode and blows off the top 90% of her head. For the rest of the episode she is hustled around by a 4th grader (tongue loose) to escape te glare of the media. Nevertheless, not only does the media but an entre group of people finds Britney and shines the spotlight so bright that she collapses and dies. A conspiracy is revealed in the end in which US culture is compared to Mesoamerican cultures in which human sacrafice was done peridoically. It is said that we breed these helpless (hapless?) celebrities solely to destroy them in the end and maintain order.

What I find brilliant about thsi episode is not only the brillaint commentary about how obsessed with celebrity lives we are, but the comparison to human sacrafice. The creaters disregard any notion of political correctness and call out the hideous aspects of our culture in an explicit way.

This kind of look at our culture opens the door for a self-reflexive analysis that exposes our own culture as bare as it can get. It draws connections. Suddenly we see our own ways of life compared to something that we might consider both immoral and gruesome and savage.

This came to mind earlier this evening as I read a refreshing blog about the raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints in Texas. Most are quick to make judgements about polygamy and "cults," but are these things we define as wacko notions really so different from our own? The idea of mongamy in the US is fairly debunked. Serial monagamy at best, we might say. The fact is we change partners often and often commit to several at a time (even while enveloped in this sacred institution that is "marriage"). Placing celebrities on a giant public pedistal (TV) and watching their fall is tantamount to human sacrafice. We regulalry mutilate our bodies by injecting poison into our face and chopping up are breasts to conform to culturally accepted norms of beauty. Yet we are disgusted by female circumcision. We are quick to judge Muslim religious states, yet refuse to see the strong and often violent influence of Christianity in our own political and national actions. Plenty of various states are criticized for human rights violations while we practice state-sanctioned murder (death penalty anyone?) on a daily basis.

Who is more savage?

What do we need for the future? Money, success, a democrat in the White House? No. Hope? Ha!

Perspective. We don't need to discard our ideals and practice my level of moral relativism, but we do need perspective. A perspective to understand context and continuity.

Misanthropy, Anti-Intellectualism and the State of Things

As this academic year comes to a close in a frenzy of emotion and ideas and worries and hope, few things can prove as therapeutic as some good old fashioned dissenting (that and an hour long run without regards to pace that has left me sore and literally running from a thunderstorm).

Is it ironic to live and breath anthropology, yet abound in misanthropy? Humanity. Ur doin' it wrong! My days, of late, are bipolar swings from hope and camaraderie matched by despair and feeling lost in the deteriorating state of the world. I can't handle the media any longer. From the attitudes towards the church that was raided to the fact that the 2008 campaign is focusing on a man, Wright, who has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Time's 100 came out recently. Is it any surprise that Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie appear on the list alongside the Dali Lama? Is it any wonder that TV and movie celebrities appear on the "Heroes and Pioneers" list and that there is a section devoted to artists and entertainers? Not to say that art and music aren't important things in life, but that we attribute equal levels of influence to Barak Obama, George W. Bush, Lorne Michaels and Bruce Springstien boggles my mind.

Maybe I read too much into these things. But that's what anthropologists do, we treat the media and seemingly insignificant and harmless things as valid artifacts, symbols dependent on hegemonic systems of understanding and value. With the unrelenting presence of mass media and communication it is no surprise that Lorne Michaels wields as much influence if not more than, say, Vladimir Putin. But seeing that these two men operate within (what I would consider) completely separate spheres of reality, I am worried that we form our view of the world with shady boundaries between what we see on TV and what is going on abroad.

Separation of church and state (HA!)? Let's try separation of TV and reality first.

Anthropologists have interesting perspectives, a perspective that seems strangely lost on many (for it is not difficult to obtain). We are no better than anyone else; there are systems of belief and value that I cannot escape which influence how despondent I come off from day to day. However, what I witness from many of my peers all around is saddening.

Anti-intellectualism is very real. This is not an attack on "stupid" people or religious minded folk. Educations vary widely across the nation and I have no problem with religion and faith so long as it is accompanied with as little arrogance as possible. No, this is an attack on actions. Everyday people refuse to open their minds even an inch to explore something new. We are so entrenched in what is American and Moral and Traditional that we are closed to expansion. Now, things that are new (and often confusing) are not seen as opportunities to learn and understand (were they ever?) but are simply seen as threats to our very existence and being. Everyday people refuse to make up their own minds and instead heed the calls of TV anchors, "analysts" and rich celebrities.

I'm having difficulties communicating exactly what I mean; perhaps I have grown weary from my wild run. I'll just say how I came to think of this misanthropy. As I consider my future in archaeology, I must look to graduate school. Much of my looking is dependent on the fact that I want to leave the Midwest. Climate and landscape have driven me to the breaking point. My research into archaeological theory has shown me that archaeology in the US, as with all "American" things, seems to operate in a sort of vacuum. I had an epiphany. I need to get the hell out of this country and work with academics abroad. I am by no means naive and have traveled abroad for brief and extended periods, but leaving the country for grad school brings me to another level.

I have joked about Canada and fleeing there like the hippies of yore, driven out by a draft that never came to be for our generation. But, in my epiphany, Canada became a logical idea. The type of archaeology I want to study is found in this geographic location. This option is very much on the table and appeals to me.

Then I wondered if I really am being driven out. Certainly, my generation shares many things with the flower children of the 60s and 70s. Indeed, I am positive that we are entrenched in the same Cold War ideology. We've got the war, we've got the injustice and we've got the idiots in Washington. We're missing the draft. But, I am realizing now (having found myself in many uncomfortable spots like the Creationist Museum in Kentucky) that I am not welcome in the country.

This world we have created within the United States, one driven by greed and money and religion and self-riteousness has pushed me too far. Here I am, a young man with a great group of friends and a wonderful supportive family (and a hell of a lot of potential?), distrusting humanity. It's not right. Whilst navigating our world as one does nowadays through Facebook and CNN and "the tubes" I am angered and frustrated.

I see hope though, despite my dismal outlooks presented here, deep down inside of me I am an optimist, a humanist that knows there's potential. My hope now is that I can find my higher higher education abroad and flourish in an environment that embraces intellectualism and embraces the opportunities and challenges of the world today.

Will I come back? What will the climate of US philosophy look like in 10 years? Am I abandoning my country in its time of need? I'm not sure. Will I become another statistic of brain drain? I don't know. I probably won't find a way to change the world, I just hope that I will be able to find a place in it.

Acting Out

Hope and change has been the slogan of this political year. Unfortunately, politics has inspired little hope and has instead planted seeds of despondency that the United States is on a one way path to epic failure. All aboard the fail boat!

The immigration debate has inspired such despondency within me of late. It was highlighted by a small news story that slipped under the radar recently. Absolut Vodka ran an ad campaign in Mexico in which (in an attempt to celebrate Mexican heritage) it ran the slogan “In an Absolut World” over an image of 19^th century North American, where all the territory west of the Rocky Mountains was Mexico. Outrage arose, not from within Mexico, but rather from several conservative groups and journalists in the United States that called for a boycott of the brand. Absolut apologized for its campaign and stopped running the ads; A politically correct, profit minded and truly “American” response.

This reaction is representative of the deteriorating status of Mexicans and US/Mexico relations in light of the immigration debate. All politicians are dealing with the influx of illegal immigrants into this country, but the kind of rhetoric and ideas that are being thrown around reveal a dehumanizing of Mexicans.

In this debate Mexicans and Hispanic immigrants coming from the south are referred to as problems and often as “illegals.” Some might argue that terminology is harmless, but I think otherwise. Referring to fellow human beings in such negative ways creates immediate prejudice and devaluing. As a result the identity we project on Hispanic immigrants is one centered on notions of rejection, objectification and immorality. We refer to them, not as people, but rather as amorphous entities that exist in the realm of illegality and encroachment.

The discourse of solution is not a positive one. Illegal immigration (and the millions are human beings associated with it) is referred to as a problem that needs to be rectified. Immigrants are objectified and treated as commodities as we decide their worth in our economy and culture, or as we decide which ones to ship back and how to do so. There is not talk of moving forward, only of creating stasis by cutting off the routes and purging our country of these dirty, illegal and problematic bodies that are corrupting true American values.

Stephen Colbert joked with Mike Huckabee about building a catapult along the border to fire illegals back into Mexico. The idea seems ridiculous, but his satire is not far off. It highlights the dehumanization of Hispanic immigrants. Not only are their identities essentialized to that of “Mexican” but they are considered inherently illegitimate. Whether we agree with it or not, the immigration debate has stolen the status of equality from Hispanic immigrants. We are living in a world where “freedom and justice for all” is a farce and instead, human status is determined by economic worth and genealogy.

To be Freudian for a moment, can we examine the illegal immigration debate, and responses like those to the Absolut ad, as an acting-out of some deep seated problem? I think we can. The crisis we are facing here is not one of population, jobs, culture or globalization. No, what we are facing is an identity crisis of a national sort.

We are facing many problems as a nation, namely our economy and our political reputation. As the European Union and China grow stronger our role as super-power is being contested. We are accused of anti-intellectualism. Culturally we are divided over gay marriage, abortion, religion and wealth. Every day I see hopeless efforts to establish and secure the idea of “America” and a greater number of individuals and ideas that contest such an identity at fundamental levels.

The role of the United States and our future is uncertain and possibly quite bleak. As a result we are acting out and building fences on our borders to keep out those seeking better lives. As we become ever so deeply involved in contentious conflict in the Middle East, we are troubled and take our frustration out on those illegals that indisputably have broken the law and assailed our “American” values.

This debate is not about immigrants, they will continue to come and there’s nothing we can do about it. If we were a healthy nation, we would have confidence that our economics and culture would adjust accordingly. What I see through examples like that of the Absolut campaign, is that these crises we face are more likely unhealthy and counterproductive projections of our own cultural and identity crises.

We are freefalling downward into a pit of cultural crisis and shutdown. We are so insecure with who we are a nation that we are threatened by the Spanish language. Eventually, we will end our descent and hit rock bottom. We will be confronted with tumultuous and violent conflict as we run out things to cover our problems. Shall we focus of catapulting illegals back to Mexico? Shall we continue to obsess ourselves with the lives of celebrities? Shall we fill the voids of our political lives with debates over tiny and insignificant questions and comment? Or, shall we being to look deeper and find those bugs and irks deep within our cultural being and face our problems and the world’s problems head on?

I have not yet completely resigned myself to the bleak outlook I have defined here. I still have confidence that what we need is simple change on our own parts. Instead of breeding dogma, we need to breed understanding. I hope that one day we will be known as the generation of understanding that rose to the great challenges we are facing now and moved forward.

The Media, Inside Out

Well, it's been nearly a month since I last posted. I suppose my mind has been busy for more productive purposes.

Today, I shall focus on that brilliant entity that we all love, the media. The lovely Chelsea Clinton was at Butler University (my home) last week campaigning for her mother. Many are likely familiar with the incident that proceeded, the asking of the question about Monica Lewinsky. Likely because of a slow news day, this question and analysis of the question was everywhere.

I think that we students here have had an interesting opportunity to take a fine look at the media now. We have seen a simple little question blown into a huge national topic of discussion. We were also witness to all sorts of reaction to and reporting of this issue.

I think previous blogs here have shown my distrust and utter contempt for the media. Perhaps I'll reiterate anyway: far from informing us, I think the media does more to lull us into an ignorant acquiescence, where we are at the whims of emotion and sensationalism. And sensationalism, my friends, is exactly what we had here in the few days following the Chelsea question. I will not attempt to either refute or justify the question, it was asked and that's all we can really say about it. But suddenly the student who asked the question was being interviewed all over and CNN had the best political team on television picking over these words and Chelsea's words. For what? Because we need something to clamber over, something to divide, something to provoke empty rage and sympathy.

I also have another excellent perspective. I am a member of Butler's student newspaper, the Collegian. In one small report, the Associated Press reported that the student who asked the question was an editor for the Collegian. This is untrue, and I believe the confusion arose because one of our editors appeared next to the offending student on an interview. Nevertheless, we suddenly became the student's secretaries and we received hundreds of calls and emails from all the major new organizations as well as from citizens all around the country. Some were local Hoosiers who scolded us and said that they would never send their children to such a university. Others were full of praise for the student's bravery to ask the tough question.

What we see here is threefold. First, we see how an innocent mistakes occur can cause far-reaching consequences. I might also mention that our university was named incorrectly in numerous reports of Butler College, Butler in Pennsylvania and also Ball State University. Second we see the unruly reactions that we the people have been conditioned to have. How could this one student's moment of clarity (or lack thereof) in any way reflect on the education, environment and credibility of this institution? Were this the case, we must realize and take responsibility for the actions of our dear President. We didn't elect him you say? Well, we certainly did not choose the offending student to speak for our university. I am not contenting that we shouldn't have opinions and reactions to the things we see in the media, but we must consider the source of the material and why it has come to the media's attention in the first place before we attribute great value to our reactions. Finally, I combine these two insights and learn to further question the media in every way. We have seen how details become mixed up and changed, however minute they may be. After Chelsea left campus, life went on as normal, we certainly took note of the question, but we never expected to find it on national websites within hours.

Sensationalism. From a string of 20 words grows an unruly bush of misinformation, bad reporting, over-analysis and overreaction. In this world with the web, sensationalism breeds a careless sense of urgency, where it seems that fact checking is being passed up. I've gained new perspective on how realities are created within hours, realities that often vary drastically from creator to creator, person to person, news station to news station.

Think it out for yourselves. Realize that 90 percent of what you see on TV and read on any news source is bullshit, produced with corporate, political, personal and cultural agendas. Realize that very little of what is presented as fact, can be considered any sort of objective piece of information. For instance, from all the reports on the Chelsea question, I can assertain two things. One, that the question was asked. Two that Chelsea said what was quoted. That's about all the trust I put into this sort of thing. Any conclusions I come to are my own, perhaps to be shared, but not necessarily and certainly not to fill space on a dull day on the plant earth.

Perhaps most importantly, I beg that before we become emotionally charged over travesties, breeches of decency, tales of woe and of evil, that we consider the impact of our reactions, the far reaching impacts that your comments may have on a small collegiate newspaper bearing the brunt of a nation's outrage. These are consequences I have never considered before. Share the enlightenment.

Cuba Never Had A Chance

I've finished reading and article about this escalating situation in South America between Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. What infuriates me is the careless and harmful use of the words "rebels" and "Marxists." This is representative of a great irony in American history, that when we act as saviors and bringers of liberty, our legacy has brought just as much, if not more plight and struggle.
This is most clear in the case of US relations with South and Central America. Here we have funded ruthless leaders the likes of which we wish to dispose of in the Middle East. I think mostly of the ousting of Allende in Chile and the reign of Samoza in Nicaragua. Actions such as these were portrayed as valiant and necessary, but in hindsight can be seen as shallow, ill-informed and disastrous. Those two deeds resulted in much death and years of plight for the people of Chile and Nicaragua.
And to what do we owe these atrocities? Why none other than the glorious fight of communism. Indeed, actions in Central and South American during the cold war tended to support violent military leaderships in an effort to crush in popular socialist, or dare I say, communist movement.
US rhetoric during and after the Cold War despised communism. I have had people accuse me of being a communist as if it were an evil despicable name. Truly, these people haven't the foggiest idea of what communism or Marxism was about. Any mention of it is discredited due solely to rhetoric created by the US government. I think this is the greatest example of the anti-intellectual tendencies that have and are plaguing this country today.
Similar strategies have been deployed against Cuba. Fidel was hounded as a dictator, Cold War relic. We saw only of refugees fleeing the island and of the human rights violations. Many point to the poverty that has enveloped that nation.
I instead, being the good HumanihilSOCIALIST that I am, stand up for Cuba and mention some of its good qualities, benefits that only a socialized government can bring. I also point out that perhaps the reason Cuba as struggled so and has been forced into conservative actions is because of the ruthless, indeed heartless, neighbor to the North. We have had the embargo on Cuba since the Cold War and despite the fact that Communism and Democracy are no more a threat to each other than one cow is to another cow, we continue efforts to keep the little starving nation isolated from a rich world economy.
These are not philosophical principals we are talking about here. This is not a battle between good and evil. This is firstly about greed (that epitomizes capitalism) and political legacy. McCarthy is long dead and his movement mocked, but his legacy lives on and we dare not threaten the American way of life, indeed the free world at large, by working in cahoots with an evil communist nation.
Hugo Chavez is lumped into this category as well. His rhetoric against the United States is strong, offensive, but refreshing to me. In the news story I read he was portrayed only as a loudmouth preaching anti-American sentiments and harboring Marxist rebels. Without any detailed knowledge of the history of Colombia and US involvement there I cannot sort out this situation. However, for a general public trained to accept news documents as accurate, this has grave consequences of misinformation.
People may suffer in Cuba and Venezuela, but this really has nothing to do with Communism. Some call the communist experiment a mistake or failure. I say it never had a chance. Cuba never had a chance and Venezuela will likely go on suffering for decades because of the greedy actions of the US government and the US people. Had we attempted to understand Marxism and communism, we would likely sympathize with the dreams of an abused proletariat that wanted only to find equality. But no, we instead wanted to furhter cement our own inequalities and portray communism as evil and capitalism as good. I need not enter the discussion on weapons technology either which further complicates this mess.
Current rhetoric on dictators and communism and socialism is informed not by intricate understanding of social economic matrices and movements, but rather of soulless, empty patriotism based on the greed of the rich and powerful. Our knowledge and approach to situations that are often extremely delicate and deeply-rooted in local history, is greatly biased, sensationalist and shallow.
We fight evil and destroy evil men and empires. But in our wake we leave suffering military dictators funded by the US military as well as social and cultural chaos. God Bless America. We're gonna need it.

On Being

This blog is largely inspired by the same thoughts that spurred the previous entry. The past is an interesting thing. We think of it as a concrete thing, but what is tangible about the past? Sure, we have preserved monuments that haven't changed since the past, buy they are still very much in the present. Indeed, the meanings that we attribute to them are modern ones, for we can exist only in the space and time we live in and the meanings we conceive are products of now. More simply, we have the benefit of hindsight.

But hindsight is only relevant so far as our conception of the past is relevant. Our common idea of the past has become widespread and is assumed logical and "true." One event happens and leads to another and so on and so on bringing us to where we are in the modern day. I need only mention certain cultures with cyclical views of the past to complicate this hegemony. We can find multitudes of human understanding of the past. But nevertheless we, as your every day US citizen, conceive the past as linear and rationalize a lot on this assumption.

But I'd like to step outside the realm of humanity for second. I'll stretch post-modernity to its very limits. If indeed our past and the past of many other cultures are equally valid, then so to are the pasts of non-human creatures. Some might find this ridiculous. Can a dog be truly conscious of a past? I do not know. But if we can assume, for a moment, that human consciousness is one of many consciousnesses then we can take an example from the animal kingdom at large. We cannot get into their heads, true, but ideas of imprinting and adaptation seem to suggest a recognition of past conditions in relation to current ones. Even instinct may be some genetically owned conception or record of the past.

Some animals may have very short memories. What of the past for them? Radically different.

The point I want to make is that the past as we know it is an artifact. This has much to bear on my being. I have memories of my past, but they ways in which I formulate them and the ones I choose as pivotal are informed by who I am today. My memory is less representative of my past and more of my present.

Is there a true me then? Post modernists are often criticized for rejecting all truth, nihilism, oh my! This is not the case. There is a true me, it changes from day to day and reborn in every minute. I am at the whims of the present. I have been oft accused by a good friend and former girlfriend that I am not the way I used to be. That somehow I was veering from my true self. This also is not the case. At this point in my life I dedicated much time to figuring out who I am. I'm fairly confident in it and I can say that how I act is who I am. To create some idea of me may largely prove to be accurate, but when I act differently I am not less myself. I am always myself.

The past exists. But it should not be assumed as true or somehow verifiable. Any recollection of it is an artifact. The past is very real to me, but only as a creation of myself in the present. Tomorrow I will be different and so will my past.

As for the future: I'm still up in the air about that.

"There is no true America."

Is anyone else terrified that potential presidents are competing as to who is the most and truest conservative? I didn't know you could get a prize for being openly willing to persecute those who don't read the same books as you. To be willing to hunt down and murder men. To be uncompromising in the fight to preserve "America" whatever the hell that means.

What is "America." I problematize that word because America is a continent, and a rather big, on which lies many countries, with many people, many traditions and many languages. I continue to problematize the word because it really isn't anything concrete to being with. America is little more than a collective (and an exclusive collective at that) idea that doesn't reflect a certain truth or history, but rather reflects our modern world. Nationalism, dear friends, is not something inherent; it is not a logical modern outcome of history. There is no true America.

I hear a lot of talk about the Founding Fathers. I almost laugh out loud due to the absurdity that the, arguably, misguided men who founded this nation had a long term vision and idea of what "America" was, should be and will be. It is absurd the belief that the Constitution somehow holds sacred knowledge and fact about what America was and is. Our very recollection and recognition of the past is purely a creation of ourselves and a rationalizing of who we are and where we are today. Any idea of the past is informed by numerous parties, schools of though, personal motives, etc.

Sure the United States exists and has existed in the past. This is obvious. I'll go further, there are trends in action and image that link together different points in time. But this is not because there is some true "America" that keeps us from descending into anarchy, communism and Islam. Trends are simply durations of similar problems which elicit similar responses by similar people. These are subject to change and have changed and always will change. Can something really be considered "UN-American?" Is there some true America to conserve? Won't conservatives simply incite more change by purposely setting and altering America's great march through history?

Shouldn't we look for a leader who has the best ideas of how to help the dismal downward spiraling situation that we call America? I've asked a lot of questions so far. For an answer I'll say this: Adhering to (and believing it to be certain truth) a notion that we must conserve and protect an idea of America (that is as much at the whims of political climate as a leaf is to the wind) is not the way.