bearing blog

Hot takes and small talk.

I read too much news, and not enough books.  Is it just that?  Is that the source of the writer's block?

+ + +

I don't know if there are any well-established "reasons" why it's so terribly difficult to sit down and dash off blog posts these days. 

It seems to be multifactorial, but not --- not --- because of a lack of time. I am pretty sure I get as much time sitting down, not attending to anything in particular, as I ever have. Maybe I should do another time study just to be sure.  But what it feels like to me is that I passed some threshold where, when I get a chance to sit down, all I want to do is take something in. 

I won't say that it's entirely passive.  I have thoughts.  I have reactions.  But... I don't desire to share them, at least not enough to do the work.

+ + +

What's going on here?  It could be a good sign, or it could be a bad one.

Is it humility?  Have I decided that the world doesn't need my fresh takes on the latest thing that has come over the transom?  Well, it would be nice to think so, and (perhaps for that reason) I'll say it might be part of it.   

This is true:  The last few years of revelations in civic and organizational politics have demolished a number of my assumptions.  Along with that, a very real awareness of how easy it is to be very wrong and (this is the tricky bit) nevertheless to think I am correct, or at least that I have a useful or interesting point of view that I ought to share.  I've done a lot more listening and reading, withholding judgment.   And the kinds of things I have been drawn to are less often the breathless takes and the analyses leading to a point, the kind of things that invite refutation and alignment.  More often they are personal recountings.    This happened to me, and this is how it affected me.   I have lost my taste for criticizing and analyzing these things.  Or at least, for putting them out into the world. 

 So much of the hot takes out there are worthless pap.   I am not employed to produce them honestly, so what do I gain from adding to the endless stream?   Don't I have something more productive to do?   

And the answer is nearly always yes.

I think this is true:  I don't want to write things anymore, even by accident, that aren't centering people as persons.   I used to think that all that was necessary was to step back and be perfectly reasonable, or at least as reasonable as possible, because right reason is never opposed to personalism.   

That's not wrong!  But:

(1) I'm not always right; and 

(2) right reason may omit truth about persons, without ever making false statements; and

(3) this omission is a kind of error that makes false pictures.

 

I don't intend to be wrong.  I don't intend to omit significant truths from my analysis.  But I'm less interested in centering my intent.  I'm more interested in the effects of my words.  And I've become less tolerant of error, more perfectionist.  To put it bluntly, I don't want to hurt people.  (Not don't want to hurt people's feelings.  Don't want to hurt people.  There's a difference.)

+ + +

That's the scrap that might be a bit of humility, borne of realizing how easy it is to be wrong about things.

There's a scrap that's pride too:  I have a strong aversion to being wrong these days.

One of the ways I figure things out is by writing them down, and often I've done this on the blog.  It's led to some lively conversations over the years, with back-and-forth between me and some of my favorite commentators, a number of which have become real friends.  I used to do this relatively freely and with an understanding that I might write something that turned out to be woefully boneheaded, but I was willing to do it because I wanted to put things out there to be tested for boneheadedness.

I mean, I can still figure things out by writing them privately, sending emails to myself or (still my favorite) clearing out space in a coffeeshop and putting pen to paper for hours in a journal, then later going back and assembling it into some sort of logical order.  It still works pretty well.  But it lacks quality control:  it lacks the sounding board of putting it out there where smart people who disagree with me, and care enough to explain why, might find it.  

Here is the easy, non-humility-based reason that I might say out loud in order to sound good:

Well, it's not fear of the smart and caring people that's made me unwilling to hit the 'publish' button.  It's all those other people. 

 Do I want to go viral?  Nope. 

Would it be okay if I went viral and suffered because I put out thoughts that were really true and really needed defending?  Ye-es....

  But am I actually sure that what I write will in fact be true enough, beautiful enough, or useful enough that it would be worth it?   

Actually... no.

There is, however, a strong possibility that I simply don't want to be wrong, and it no longer seems worth it (especially given that, truly, people jump on wrongness rather quickly these days) to throw out things that might be wrong on purpose, just so I could possibly make them better.

+ + +

One of the frustrations I have about leaving the academy in my very early stages, as much as I don't miss the stress and the politics, is that I am no longer in touch with serious work, critical work, slow work.  Mark will remind me that academic science, being made by human beings, throws up a great deal of weeds and tangles, in the form of literally bad (not just disappointing) results and even more damaging, in the form of perverse incentives.  These make the good fruit hard to come by.  

But that's nothing compared to the selection of articles that appear in the newspaper or come across one's social media feed.  I'm just completely tired of that being so often the way that information (or at least words) about research comes into my view.  I used to kind of like digging into those various news articles, tracking down the references, and finding out if they were really bunk or if there is anything to them, but I've lost my taste for even that.  It feels like a waste of time:  that it's better not to look at all.

A better source for feeding my interest in news about what's going on in the research world has been to follow individual researchers on Twitter.  It's a narrower feed; but it's a better-quality, curated one.  And---interestingly enough---it rarely makes me want to pound out reactions.  Instead, because I'm aware that I don't have special expertise and am following them because I am legitimately interested in what they are writing, I... listen and learn?  And sometimes ask questions.

+ + +

There's a real downside to this discrimination, and I shouldn't have been surprised to find that it's plaguing me, because it's part of a very old theme in my life.  

Issuing instant reactions to the latest passing Moment, as intellectually frustrating as it might be, now has social utility.

I have real friends (intelligent ones!  fun ones!  people whose takes I am interested in!) who have real conversations, online, sparked by news items diverted from the stream and shared in their own little tributaries.  If I disentangle myself from the stream, I miss out on those conversations.  The conversations are not always very deep, although they can be (it's a sampling frequency issue).  If I decide that the nuggets are too few and far between to make it worth dipping into the rushing stream of takes, then (for good or bad) I miss out on the nuggets.

And (this is crucial) even if the nuggets are not worth the effort... I would also be saying that the relationships are not worth the effort.

(here's the part that all this yammering has brought me to, which I literally did not realize until this very moment as a result of putting out all the verbiage above)

Hot takes are the small talk of intellectuals on social media.

+ + +

I do not like regular small talk in real life.  

I was embarrassingly old and educated before I came to an intellectual understanding of the purpose it serves and realized that I needed to make use of it as a tool.

It's where you start, for reasons of common humanity (maybe not ALL of humanity, but of a large enough majority that it's essentially everyone you run into in most organizations and societies).

Without it, you often cannot get at the deeper stuff, even if it seems like you should be able to.

+ + +

Do I need to come to a new understanding of the Hot Take?

Maybe.  Maybe I do.

Bots, trolls, and my fellow Americans.

One of the things that's bothered me since the rise of Trumpism:   I feel I've lost contact with a part of my identity that was dear to me, lost touch with a deeply held value.  

I value this:  I desire to take people at their word.  I don't want to have a strawman image in my head of the people that I disagree with on this issue or that.  I want to understand their arguments on their own terms.  I want to begin with the assumption that my political opponents are sincere; that their beliefs are based on values that I can respect, even if they are different from mine; that everyone has a story that is worth listening to; that people may have different priorities from me, but nearly everyone wants some vision of good to prevail.

I try not to be naive.  Sometimes the values and priorities people have are wrong, worthy of opposition.  Often people say and do things that are very, very wrong.  But the people themselves are worthy of consideration, compassion, and---well---of being taken seriously.  If I didn't think so, what would be the point of engaging, of trying to win people over?

I've always tried to make sure that I stated opposing opinions as fairly as possible, in the same words that the holders of those opinions would use for themselves.  I've always tried to deal with people in terms that they and I can agree on.  Above all, I've always tried to avoid dismissing people as beyond hope.  Everyone, I thought, has some hope of being reached, either with logic or with compassion.

I mean, there's a point beyond which you stop trying, to protect yourself and to save your energies for where they might do some good.  But still you try, at least a little, or at least you try to salvage that hope in human nature.

+ + +

Trumpism, I confess, has destroyed some of that in me.  I have lost all capacity to give any benefit of the doubt to, say, evangelical Trump supporters, or the purportedly conservative commentators who used to give the appearance of caring about classical liberalism, civil liberties, and subsidiarity.  Not to mention the xenophobia, racism, and venom spewed towards immigrants of all types.  I can't find compassion in me for any of that.  I can't see a perspective in which I share any real values with any of these people, even in the most obscured and smudged and tattered way.

And I feel, in that, that it's me who's lost something.  It's troubling.  I don't want to be in a situation where I have lost so much hope in any of my fellow citizens.  It's like we don't belong to the same country.

+ + +

Which is why I sense an odd sort of hope in the news that our various organizations and social media platforms had been infiltrated by foreign agents intent on sowing discord.

The odd sort of hope comes in this:   I have a new way to think better thoughts about my fellow Americans.  

It's very odd because once upon a time, I found hope by assuming that people who expressed wrongheaded opinions were sincere, if misguided.

Now I can find hope by assuming that people who express wrongheaded opinions are not sincere at all.

I find that as I tool around Twitter or idly click through the comments section in newspapers, the dumbest and vilest opinions no longer bother me because I assume that they have been produced in a St. Petersburg troll factory with the blinds over the windows, or generated by some bot programmer's machine learning algorithm.

I don't have to worry that a significant fraction of my fellow Americans are completely unhinged, because I can merely assume that the totally unhinged messages don't come from Americans at all.  I don't have to despair at being unable to detect good will, because I can simply assume that there is no one of good will behind the messages.  There are only algorithms, and pieces of silver. 

This assumption makes them easy to ignore.  And it has mostly done away with my despair about the condition of the American people (although I am concerned about the impact of said bots on the electorate).  

If this vile opinion is probably not real, but is generated by a bot, then I don't have to feel sick that my fellow citizens are holding it.  

I suppose some of them might be unusually gullible Americans, who are only parroting things they learned from troll farms and bots.  I can't get too upset about gullible people.  I can feel hypothetically sorry for these hypothetical real Americans who are generating multiply-exclamation-pointed, red-hatted tirades.  But I also can't tell them apart from the bots. 

And I'm not about to waste my time and compassion on bots.

+ + +

I feel like I'm missing something somewhere.  Messages are coming in.   Messages of ignorance and wrong.   If a human being were saying such things, it would be worthy of engagement and rebuttal, worthy of trying to seek someone's conversion of heart.   But it turns out that only some fraction of the messages are coming from real humans who could potentially be reached by a reply.  The rest are generated by a machine or by an industry.  Is it our duty to reach back with compassion or not?  Does it depend on what fraction of the messengers are human? 

Maybe I should go watch Blade Runner again.  Perhaps I'll get some moral clarity.

 

The seventh corporal work of mercy.

Philando Castile (whom I mentioned in a post the other day) was laid to rest here in the Twin Cities on Thursday. Mr. Castile's funeral was hosted by the Cathedral of St. Paul at the request of Valerie Castile, his mother. There are some moving photos taken outside the building here at this article from the St. Paul newspaper website. There you can also view photos of the program detailing the chosen readings and speakers.

At the end of the article are comments, which I in no way recommend you to read. Some of them gave me the impression that the Archdiocese has received some comments from persons identifying as Catholic who object to the Cathedral's welcoming the Castile family to bury their son at a public ecumenical service. Castile was not a Catholic, and a Baptist minister was invited to deliver a sermon, while the rector of the Cathedral delivered introductory prayers.

My impression was strengthened by the Cathedral's release of the following statement:

 

The Archdiocese was honored that Philando Castile’s mother, desiring that her son’s funeral be an opportunity for “people to come together in a new way,” thought our cathedral could be a fitting setting for an ecumenical service at which our community could unite with her family to pray for peace and reconciliation.

During his general audience on September 9, 2015, Pope Francis said “the assembly of Jesus takes the form of a family and of a hospitable family, not an exclusive, closed sect.”

At this difficult moment we feel privileged to have the opportunity to offer hospitality to the Castile family and to our hurting community.

We are praying that our cathedral might serve as a place where all might encounter a God who offers consolation and hope.

 

I endorse this wholeheartedly.

Some of the objections to Mr. Castile's burial from the Cathedral are of a character that I will not dignify with a rebuttal.

On the other hand, the question "Why can Mr. Castile, a non-Catholic, have a 'Catholic funeral?'" is a reasonable one, even if expressed--rather insensitively--during the funeral in question, to judge from the time-stamps on the various comments. So is the corollary continuation "....when my brother/dad/son/grandpa was not allowed to have one?"

Let me just offer some context for that one.

The term "Catholic funeral" is imprecise. There is such a thing as a Requiem Mass, which is the quintessential "Catholic funeral." It can only take place inside a Catholic church or Catholic chapel.

There is also among the ecclesiastical funeral rites a "Funeral Liturgy Outside Mass," which is also a type of Catholic funeral. If you have been to a "Catholic funeral" in a funeral home chapel, in a private home, or in a cemetery chapel, that is what you most likely experienced. Sometimes (for example, in families that include Catholic and non-Catholic members) this is deemed the most fitting pastoral choice regardless of the location of the funeral.

It is also permitted (in fact it is encouraged!) to hold ecumenical prayer gatherings inside Catholic churches, presided over by Catholic and non-Catholic clergy, for many different reasons. These can include funerals and memorial services. Mr. Castile's funeral would seem to fall into this category.

Finally, at any memorial service at all, at a gravesite, in another church, at a wake, in someone's home: if a Catholic priest happens to be in attendance, he might accept an invitation to offer prayers or a blessing.

The first two categories, because they belong to the ecclesiastical funeral rites, are properly called "Catholic funerals." The latter two are not.

 

The diocese and the pastor have leeway in deciding who may or may not be buried according to the ecclesiastical rites, anyway. In some dioceses, under some circumstances, a baptized non-Catholic may be buried with full funeral rites. In other dioceses and in other circumstances, it may not be allowed. It can seem as if the standards are looser for non-Catholics than for Catholics, because in some dioceses a so-called "non-practicing" Catholic might not be permitted a "Catholic funeral" while a person who never was a Catholic might be permitted one, or at least might be buried in a Catholic cemetery.

It is undoubtedly upsetting for a bereaved family, at a vulnerable time, to be told that their loved one cannot receive a requiem Mass, or that a requiem Mass cannot be held at the location and/or time that they are planning to have the funeral, or that the deceased is ineligible for the ecclesiastical rites at all. Some of the commentary and pushback probably comes from this place.

To that I can only say: This post is the short answer giving reasons why Philando Castile could be permitted a memorial service in the Cathedral. There really is no short answer as to why some particular person might not be permitted the type of funeral desired by his or her family. You would have to talk to the pastor, and listen to the explanation, and then possibly do a lot of reading, in order to understand that. No short answer. I am sorry I cannot help relieve that pain.

 

The purpose of Catholic ecumenism is to foster true Christian unity. When Valerie Castile called the Cathedral and asked that it host her son's funeral "for people to come together in a new way," this was precisely what she was asking -- and she asked it not just of the Cathedral parish, but of the whole local church, the diocese. In a sense she asked it of our universal Church.

Who are we to turn her son away?

If I had been the one to take that call, I would have wept in humility before Mrs. Castile. It was she who honored our church, not the other way around, by reaching out to us.

Furthermore, everyone knows that Mr. Castile's funeral was not just a funeral. It was also a gathering to call for peace, justice (in the Christian sense), and love in the wider community.

For what the Catholic Church has said about ecumenism, I encourage you to refer to the Pontifical Council's Directory for Application of Principle and Norms on Ecumenism (link). Here is an excerpt:

108. Where appropriate, Catholics should be encouraged, in accordance with the Church's norms, to join in prayer with Christians of other Churches and ecclesial Communities. Such prayers in common are certainly a very effective means of petitioning for the grace of unity, and they are a genuine expression of the ties which still bind Catholics to these other Christians. Shared prayer is in itself a way to spiritual reconciliation.

109. Prayer in common is recommended for Catholics and other Christians so that together they may put before God the needs and problems they share—e.g., peace, social concerns, mutual charity among people, the dignity of the family, the effects of poverty, hunger and violence, etc. The same may be said of occasions when, according to circumstances, a nation, region or community wishes to make a common act of thanksgiving or petition to God, as on a national holiday, at a time of public disaster or mourning, on a day set aside for remembrance of those who have died for their country, etc. This kind of prayer is also recommended when Christians hold meetings for study or common action.

110. Shared prayer should, however, be particularly concerned with the res- toration of Christian unity. It can centre, e.g. on the mystery of the Church and its unity, on baptism as a sacramental bond of unity, or on the renewal of personal and community life as a necessary means to achieving unity. Prayer of this type is particularly recommended during the "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity" or in the period between Ascension and Pentecost.

111. Representatives of the Churches, ecclesial Communities or other groups concerned should cooperate and prepare together such prayer. They should decide among themselves the way in which each is to take part, choose the themes and select the Scripture readings, hymns and prayers.

I see no evidence at all that Mr. Castile's memorial service was not a suitable instance of the sort of ecumenism discussed in this document.

(Incidentally, paragraphs 120 and 121 of this same document explicitly grant to the local ordinary -- normally the bishop -- the discretion of offering full funeral rights as well as prayers and blessings of other types to non-Catholics.)

For a deeper examination of the role of ecumenism, one could consult two documents of the Second Vatican Council in particular, Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio.

+ + +

I am grateful to Mrs. Castile for reaching out to our diocese, and I am glad that our Cathedral rector responded with welcome. I'm sorry that anyone calling themselves Catholic publicly objected to the rector's decision, which was entirely in accord with Catholic teachings. May Mr. Castile rest in peace, and may eternal light shine upon him.

Posted with Blogsy

"A little knowledge..."

I don't believe in putting bumper stickers on my car.

The caveat here, before I explain myself, is that I don't care if you want to put bumper stickers on your car. Do it as much as you want. It is a matter of personal expression, and I am cool with that. But I don't put them on mine -- I guess you could say that an unadorned bumper is my personal expression.

It isn't that I don't appreciate a well-turned, pithy statement. I am fond of KILL YOUR TELEVISION. I like very much WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME TO QUESTION AUTHORITY? I wholeheartily agree with LOVE THEM BOTH. I have a special appreciation for outrageously large window decals of Our Lady of Guadalupe. You have a lovely stick figure family.

I just ... don't want such things on the outside of my car. Not even the tiniest, most unobtrusive rosary sticker in the corner of a back window. Definitely not anything political. There may be a sticker out there that I would be comfortable putting on my car, but I have not yet seen it.

Once, without consulting me, Mark put a sticker on the Volkswagen supporting a particular vote on a local ballot-initiative. Given that he knew I was planning to vote the same way he was, I think he was probably surprised by how annoyed I was that I had to drive around town in a car with a political bumper sticker on it. I made sour faces, I drove the minivan instead as much as possible for the next several weeks, and I made him peel it off the car on the first Wednesday in November. I didn't just feel annoyed about it, I felt unreasonably angry, and I spent a lot of time behind the wheel trying to articulate to myself why. I didn't quite come to an answer.

The other morning when Minneapolis and St. Paul woke up to the viral video of Phil Castile dying of five bullets in the front seat of his car while a panicked policeman shrieked "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" I briefly wondered -- as I have wondered about various political and philosophical statements over the years as they became timely -- if it was maybe time to get a Black Lives Matter sticker. Some of my neighbors have the signs in their front yards. I don't mind signs in my yard as much, we've had candidate signs in the yard and that has never bothered me. I wondered very idly if I, bearing such a sticker, might be more likely to be pulled over. I wondered, too, if the same neighbors would see such a thing with appreciation or with derision, now that virtue-signaling is A Thing.

Two days later after the five Dallas murders I waded into one too many comment sections and I knew from my reaction to them that however sympathetic I may be to #BlackLivesMatter -- and even though I could still do the yard sign thing, like I said, I don't have the same feeling about yard signs -- I wasn't going to put any bumper stickers on my car, not of any sort. And I think I have figured out why.

It isn't that I don't want you to know what I think.

It's that I don't want you to think you know what I think.

+ + +

Last December Ken White, an attorney who blogs at Popehat, published an op-ed in the L. A. Times about "culture-bundling." He was writing about the unproductivity of most debates about gun control -- and it's a useful contribution to the discussion on that subject, too -- but what really stuck with me was just one of his three points, namely, the "bundling" concept. Bear with me, I know this passage uses gun control as its example, but I'm quoting it not for that particularity but because of the general concept that I have underlined.

We culture-bundle when we use one political issue as shorthand for a big group of cultural and social values. Our unproductive talk about guns is rife with this. Gun control advocates don't just attack support for guns; they attack conservative, Republican, rural and religious values. Second Amendment advocates don't just attack gun control advocates; they attack liberal, Democratic, urban and secular values. The gun control argument gets portrayed as the struggle against Bible-thumping, gay-bashing, NASCAR-watching hicks, and the gun rights argument gets portrayed as a struggle against godless, elitist, kale-chewing socialists.

That's great for rallying the base, I guess, but that's about all. When you culture-bundle guns, your opponents don't hear “I'm concerned about this limitation on rights” or “I think this restriction is constitutional and necessary.” They hear “I hate your flyover-country daddy who taught you to shoot in the woods behind the house when you were 12” and “Your gay friends' getting married would ruin America and must be stopped.” That's unlikely to create consensus.

The original blog post , not bound by external editorial standards, uses a bit more colorful language. I think I prefer it. About an example of a pro-gun-control meme, White writes,

The intended message may be "fuck the people who don't seriously debate gun control because they accept vast campaign donations and they are afraid of NRA-led primary attacks and who refuse to even consider whether there's something we can do about madmen spraying crowds of innocents with bullets." But your message is "fuck you and your flyover-country Daddy teaching you to shoot in the woods behind the house when you were twelve and fuck the church you went to afterwards."

And about an example of a pro-gun-rights meme,

Your intended message may be "the government doesn't get to determine my rights based on its assessment of what I 'need," nor do fellow citizens who may arbitrarily determine I don't 'need' a wide variety of things based on their concerns." But what you are conveying is that "the people who want gun control are God-hating, kale-chewing, coastal-elite socialists who want to imprison your pastor for not marrying gays."

I encourage you to read the whole thing there.

+ + +

Even for straightforward messages that one might think could not be misinterpreted, the phenomenon of culture-bundling means that people are tempted to make assumptions about each other. The Jesus Fish drags a trail of associations behind it like so much grimy seaweed. The Black Lives Matter sticker is smugly, mentally, made to bow and scrape as a mere corollary to All Lives Matter. Every car can be neatly shunted into the left and right lanes.

Such assumptions are not warranted, ever.

Yes, but...

No. They are not warranted. Not ever. The environmental-responsibility sticker doesn't also mean "People are bad and abortion is good." The second-amendment sticker doesn't also mean "Gay marriage is an oxymoron." The Jesus-loves-you sticker doesn't also mean "Keep evolution out of the schools." The support-our-troops sticker doesn't also mean "I -heart- the death penalty." The opinions behind the strawmen may be correlated one way or another, but human persons are not correlations.

The assumptions aren't warranted. They aren't warranted because when we make them we are seeing a human being as an object: an object of our own self-gratification, the pecular good feeling because it reinforces all the things we already think.

Bumper stickers tempt people to see each other as objects.

Bumper stickers tempt people away from compassion and toward derision.

And that is not even counting the occasional sticker that actually expresses something that's not just unpopular, a minority opinion, or countercultural, but actually vile.

+ + +

And what about Christian witness? Have I got something against proclaiming Jesus Christ on the outside of my vehicle?

Yes, I do. I do not deserve to prominently display the Holy Name on the outside of my car. I have a lead foot. I have a big scrape on my minivan door where I hit a pole in the co-op parking lot on the day before Thanksgiving. I accidentally cut people off while shouting at squabbling kids. The best I can do for a justifiably pissed-off fellow commuter is that super-apologetic "Sorry! My bad!" wave. I don't think my displaying a Queen of the Rosary sticker is going to do either the Queen of the Rosary, or myself, or the guy leaning on his horn, any good in that moment. My mishap may do more damage because of it.

There are shades here of Luke 18:9-14. Being a Christian behind the wheel should mean driving with awareness, attention, and courtesy, not driving the right car or having the right sticker. I need the mercy of God inside my car.

+ + +

And the world needs the mercy of God outside it, too, which is one reason I don't want to tempt anyone to think nasty thoughts. There are plenty of other places to speak the truth: places where, unlike on the bumper of my car, I get to speak the whole truth, put things in context, show my face, be seen as a whole person and not a hashtag.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. We have seen that this week, to our national grief.

Posted with Blogsy

Father's Day Twitterstorm.

I had an interesting experience on Twitter the other day.

I don't tweet much, as a rule, although it's becoming my preferred way to find political news, and I've gotten more active as the presidential race has gotten more... interesting.    I love Lin-Manuel Miranda's morning inspirational tweets and the Post-it Note conversations that Alton Brown puts up.  I follow the accounts my tween son follows, as a matter of parental prudence.  I retweet more than I tweet, I think.  I follow less than 100 accounts (a small enough group that I don't need to manage it with lists) and I regularly unfollow accounts as I get less interested in them or as their usefulness to me expires.  I do so little on Twitter that for a very long time, I had email notifications enabled for everything so that in the rare event that someone replied to a tweet of mine, I wouldn't miss it.

I don't tweet much, but I'm not above tweeting back at people who say things I think are silly  -- at first glance.

+ + +

So, on Father's Day, via someone else's tweet, I saw (not long after it had been posted) this tweet by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a think tank CEO and former State Department official:

Happy Father's Day! Let us all commit to expect fathers to be equal caregivers & just as competent in the home as mothers are in the office.

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) June 19, 2016

So, I read that, and I thought it was really, really funny.  And I dashed off a semi-snarky (but true) response and thought no more of it for a few hours.

+ + + 

A little background here, so you don't think I acted out of disdain for Slaughter herself.

A few years ago I read with interest and not a little empathy a longform article that Slaughter had penned for The Atlantic called "Why Women Still Can't Have It All."  It's a personal tale leading into the assertion that the existing structure is bad for both men and women, after which she calls for buy-in from organizations of all types to enact family-friendlier policies.  There isn't a whole lot there philosophically that is new to the great Working Mothers Debate, but I like reading personal stories, and hers was interesting.  She left her State Department job to be closer to her family (among other reasons), and she wrote about the condescending reactions of other women, and the hollowness of the "have it all" message, and the difficulty of living a reasonably human family life while serving in a high position in Washington.  

I thought I remembered Hillary Clinton throwing some shade back at her in response,  and a quick Google search turned that up: "Clinton said Slaughter’s problems were her own and that 'some women are not comfortable working at the pace and intensity you have to work at in these jobs ... Other women don't break a sweat,' according to the story."

 All this is to say that I have some good will toward Slaughter in general, and I really did think her article was important (which is to say, if there's a snark battle between her and Hillary Clinton, I'm going to be on Slaughter's side).  Work and family life do need to be balanced -- in my view, the best way to put this is to remember that the purpose of all labor is to support families, and not the other way around.  It is good for the rest of us if women are well represented in government, and academia, and think tanks, and all the other sorts of elite positions that Slaughter was writing about in her piece.  Slaughter was pointing out that it may be good for the rest of us, but it isn't always a good deal for the individual women (paycheck aside).

 I also get that one of the great annoyances faced by married, white-collar working women, is tension between themselves and their partners about the division of child-raising labor.   Some of that can't be helped much (if only one of you can breastfeed, for example); other parts are amenable to mutual agreement, but the nature of even the best compromises is that sometimes people feel cheated, and -- this is key -- not every compromise is actually a fair one, and sometimes people really are cheated, and that kind of stinks.

BUT.  

I read her post and I pictured saying to my spouse, wagging a finger:  " I expect you to be an equal caregiver and competent in the home!  Happy Father's Day!"

So I tweeted back:

@SlaughterAM Thanks, but I already told my husband and kids' dad I love and appreciate him unconditionally. It's more my style.

— Erin Arlinghaus (@erinarlinghaus) June 19, 2016

 

And then I went on my way and didn't think about it again until I checked my mail and found the hundreds of notifications.   When I noticed that Instapundit had retweeted me, I turned the notifications off.

Several days later, Twitter analytics tells me, the number of people who have seen this tweet is 46,559.  

Slaughter had replied directly to me:

@erinarlinghaus I think you are misunderstanding me in some way. But Happy Father's Day!

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) June 19, 2016

Another person replied:

@SlaughterAM She's not. You're using Father's Day to make a back handed criticism at men. @erinarlinghaus

— Kah Zuhl List (@kazoolist) June 19, 2016

Slaughter again:

@kazoolist @erinarlinghaus I'm not really. We're just coming from very different places on this. I'm PRAISING men. But enough; happy F Day

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) June 19, 2016

And then people really started piling on her.  I decided to tiptoe away slowly, metaphorically.

+ + +

As far as I can tell, nobody in all those retweets reacted negatively to my tweet, which is pretty damn amazing, considering Twitter.   I muted some likers who had racist handles, also some obnoxious MRA's and white nationalist types.  Ew.  

It's too bad some of the replies to Slaughter were terribly rude, because I wondered if she would listen to the more reasonable ones trying to explain to her why her original tweet was so laughable.  I kept thinking about how on earth she could possibly have thought that her expression, which recalled a schoolmarmish "I expect these papers to be neatly handwritten in ink," or a paternalistic "I expect this mess to be cleaned up when I get home," constituted praise?  I mean, I wouldn't have pegged her as the type.

Some days later, I have a theory.  

+ + +

The word "expect" has an ambiguity about it.

If I say "I expect" an event to occur, it might mean that I am confident that the event will come to pass.  I believe it will happen.  I anticipate, I may even take steps to be ready for it.

But in the very special case where the event is an action that may or may not be performed by another person...

...and I am speaking to that person...

...then "I expect" is tantamount to a demand that the person carry out the action.

It is an indirect way of saying "I will be very very disappointed if you don't do the thing."  It is an implied threat!  A mild one, but a  threat nonetheless.

+ + + 

I took Slaughter as meaning the latter:  as saying, "Let's commit to being very very disappointed in fathers who are not equal caregivers and who aren't competent in the home."  Apparently so did almost everyone else.  And they can hardly be blamed for it -- the evidence suggests that this is not an "unexpected" way to read the tweet.  The word "expect" is loaded.

But it does strike me as plausible, especially given her dismayed and incredulous response, that she meant it the other way, and doesn't understand why on earth people could have been offended.

In that reading, Slaughter might have meant to say:  "Let's commit to confidence in the competence of fathers -- that they are not second-class caregivers, and that they can succeed in roles traditionally designated as 'women's work.'"  

If that's what she meant to say, then it is praise for fathers.  And it's a message we need more of -- popular culture is full of dismissive images of the dumb, incompetent dad, burning the dinner and duct-taping the baby to the wall.  The ditzy dad is not a helpful corrective.  It doesn't help dads, and it doesn't help moms --- who go on bearing the brunt of society's disapproval for anything whatsoever that goes wrong within the family, because no one "expects" dad to be the equal caregiver.

Unfortunately, it was an inept way to phrase it, because of the ambiguity in the word "expect," and it wound up meaning the opposite.  That's because we use "I expect you to do it," so often, as a means of  communicating "I don't expect you to do it, unless I remind you."  So "let's commit to expect" sounds like "let's commit to remind."

+ + +

I still am not sure which meaning Slaughter intended, but I'm leaning toward the more positive interpretation.  I think we owe people the benefit of the doubt, to choose the most charitable of several possible interpretations.  However, it's reasonable to call her out on her wording.  She writes for a living, and she tries to make policy:  clarity is not optional.  I feel bad that so many people responded to her so rudely, but it is entirely unsurprising.  

 I stand by my tweet.   The ironic thing: my professed love and appreciation for my spouse and the father of my children is indeed unconditional, but it isn't unearned.  He earned it, as we should all earn it from one another, by being trustworthy, competent, and caring.  The two of us have our own spheres of responsibility, and each of us takes care of what we're particularly gifted at, but I absolutely would call him an equal caregiver.  He's made it clear to me -- from long before we were married -- that he would be.   So I think (if Slaughter meant what I think she meant) -- we don't actually disagree.

We all could use a little work on our tone sometimes, eh?

Jon Stewart, expertise, and homeschooling.

Even though I'm on the board this year and am supposed to be partly responsible for it, I left the homeschooling support group meeting before it was over; my nursling was at home without me.

Ever a well-appreciated meeting format and easy to throw together with a couple of weeks' notice, the Panel Of Four Experienced Homeschoolers had drawn an audience of a dozen or so.  

How do you make a seven-year-old just, you know, do her math sheet?

I don't understand why my curriculum provider has thirteen subjects for a fourth-grader.  It's ridiculous.  How do you do them all?

Is it okay that my daughter holds her pencil in this funny way?

I put my four-year-old in preschool one day a week for socialization, and he loves it and is thriving.  How can I homeschool a child who really likes to be around other kids?

What do you tell the naysayers?

How do you keep up with the grading when you have more than a couple of kids?

I'm not one of the Panel People yet.  My oldest is in ninth grade.  K on the panel has an oldest who is in tenth grade; but K is one of the grandest multiparas in our co-op, with eight children, a levelheaded former accountant.  Of the others, one has five children with the oldest a senior in high school, and the other two have graduated multiple children.  I'm not there yet.

Increasingly, although I still think of things I'd like to ask, I no longer feel like a questioning member of the audience either.  I know how to write my own curriculum, how to adapt a purchased curriculum to my needs, how to stay a few steps ahead of the kids learning a subject that's new to all of us.  We've tried things and discarded them many times, and so we've learned already what takes time and experience to learn:  

What works for one family won't work for another family.

You have to figure out how to make the curriculum work for you, not the other way around.

You discipline your children to do their schoolwork the same way you discipline them to do anything else they have to do that they don't want to do.

In some areas you must be firm, and in other areas you must be flexible, and figuring out which is which takes trial and error.

Some things that seem super important turn out, in the end, not to matter all that much.

Listening to a few members of the audience sharing stories of how they won over the children's grandparents with twice-yearly piano performances and poetry recitals, I felt like chiming in with my own perspective but didn't.  Especially, I was thinking of friends who have children with disabilities, and the many, many children who don't win national spelling bees or play instruments well or send the achievement-test bars into the ninety-ninth percentile, but nevertheless thrive at becoming themselves in their family environment.  I was thinking:

Some people in your lives will always be naysayers, and no amount of your children's accomplishments will ever win them over.  I say fuck 'em.

But I felt unsure that it was my job to deliver that message, so instead I went and poured myself another cup of decaf from the carafe on the counter, there in the parish school library.

+ + + 

I'm partway through my career:  not an expert yet (despite loving to share what I've discovered), and not a newbie either.  By the time my last child has finished homeschooling, I expect I will be rather skilled at teaching my own children.  I will have lots of experience, highly specialized to work with these particular five people.   

And when they are grown, my job (so to speak) will have entirely disappeared. I will be a highly specific expert with no outlet for my specific expertise.  

+ + +

In the cold car, I punched the radio button for NPR and found Terry Gross, the host of Fresh Air, interviewing the director of the new film Rosewater.  Oddly,  the director had the same name as Jon Stewart, the host of the comedy/news program The Daily Show.  A couple of minutes into the interview, I realized that both Jon Stewarts were the same person, and remembered that Stewart had been on an extended absence from The Daily Show with John Oliver subbing in, and of course it made sense that he was off making his documentary then.

Towards the end of the show (about 38 minutes into it here), Gross asked Stewart about whether he feels conflicted between moving on to new projects and staying on at his own show.  

TERRY GROSS:  I'm just thinking of the difficult spot that you're in... because maybe you're going to try something else... restless... on the other hand you're so darn good at doing The Daily Show! ... I was just wondering about the conflict that maybe you'd be feeling, about knowing how special this thing is that you created, and yet, perhaps, wanting to do something else.

JON STEWART:  It's always difficult. I do feel like I don't know that there will ever be anything that I will be as well suited for as this show.  That being said I think there are, there are moments when you realize that... that's not enough anymore, or that maybe it's time for some discomfort...

I'm certainly convinced I'll never be able to find the type of people that I've been able to work with in that environment... and be able to have that feeling of being able to utilize every part of something that I think I can do, like I utilize to full capacity on that show.  I'm still really proud... of the work that we do day in and day out...

That is the difficulty, is....  When do you decide, that even though it's this place of great comfort... when you feel plugged into something like you've never been plugged into anything else that you've ever done, you know, but there are other considerations, like family, or just... not wanting to be on television all the time! [laughs].

You can't just stay in the same place because it feels like you've built a nice house there.

I found myself listening to Jon Stewart more intently than I thought I would.  You can't just stay in the same place because it feels like you've built a nice house there.  It's so true.  He is talking, of course, about creative pull to do other things; but it's completely true that no matter how good he is at The Daily Show, he can't do it forever, and he won't.  And no matter how good I get at homeschooling, I can't do it forever, and I won't.

My favorite feeling is the feeling of competence, of flow, of being lost in my task.

The longer I do this the better I get at it; and the longer I do this the closer I get to when the job is simply done.  And then what?

+ + +

Maybe that's the day that I sit on a homeschooling-expert panel in the parish library and tell the audience: You'll have naysayers no matter what you do.   Fuck 'em.

Tiresome apologies for blogging.

No, not from me.  

+ + +

I don't have anyone in particular in mind today.  Ever since partway through my last pregnancy I've had trouble putting my butt in the chair long enough to produce decent blog posts at a decent clip.  I managed to blog about our European adventure reasonably well, but I've gotten out of the habit.  Or into the bad habit of throwing things up on Facebook, and then being rid of them and going blithely on my way.

I bring this up because... lately whenever I read some well-meaning mother blogger bemoaning how blogging is actually a Bad Habit that is taking her away too much from What Is Really Important, and she's really going to shut down the computer and go play with her kids, well, I've lost patience with it.  Not going to nod and say "I know what you mean" or "Good for you" any more.

+  + +

I mean, you do what you have to do, or what the Good Lord is leading you to do, by all means.   And sure, it's possible to make an idol of anything -- all can be done to unhealthy excess, including cooking fresh meals for your family, reading great literature, getting vigorous exercise, washing your hands after going to the toilet, and giving to worthy causes.  So yeah, can one blog too much?  Assuredly.

But.  Blogging as general bad habit that represents, by default, a retreat from the three-dimensional world, a failure to connect with real human beings, and an unhealthy choice to chronicle life rather than experience it?  Especially for mothers of families?

No.  Not playing along with that implication anymore, ever.

(I promise to keep my mouth shut about it during the three days before Lent starts when everyone logs on one last time to explain why they are giving up blogging for Lent.  It's a perfectly fine thing to give up for Lent, because Lent is a time for giving up legitimate pleasures and taking on voluntary sacrifices.  But other than that?  Done.)

+ + +

Personal blogs are nothing more, and nothing less, than a modern combination of three very old concepts.

(1) Diaries

(2) Letters

(3) Philosophical treatises.

The third category probably needs little comment from me, so let's turn to the first two.

Diaries and letters are of incalculable historical importance.  And they are especially important in the historical assessment of the lives of women throughout the ages.  Often it is letters and diaries that provide us with the clearest glimpse into the day-to-day existence of real human beings in that faraway country, the past.   

In the case of women, we're talking mostly about women of the intellectual elite, for most of history:  wealthy women who enjoyed the privilege of education, or cloistered women.  But not always, and less so as time went on and society cast a wider net from which to draw its literate citizens.

+ + +

Texts sent long-distance from one person to another, and texts sent back in reply, have been an established means of carrying on significant intellectual discourse since long before the mails were anything like reliable.  And we possess evidence of this, in the form of the physical texts that were physically sent from one place to the other.  

In all cases we take these letters as evidence of connection, as something that mitigated isolation or prevented it.  

We have letters to and from St. Hildegard of Bingen:  women such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, and men such as Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote to her seeking advice and consolation, and she wrote back.

We have letters of Hrotsvit, a tenth-century nun, who put the letters as prefaces to her volumes of plays and saints' lives, the result being that her audience is "her readers:"  she would never meet them nor know their names, but she wanted to address them with a kind of apology and explanation of why she phrased things the way she did.

We have many letters of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, who wrote on matters both practical and spiritual, corresponding with both men and women; and including a number of "circular letters" addressed to the other Visitation Sisters as a group.  

We have the letters of Queen Caroline of Ansbach, who was undoubtedly a busy person but who must have regarded her correspondence as a vital part of that busy-ness, as she kept up a lively dialogue with philosophers, physicians, and politicians as well as other royals, and served as a mover of public opinion -- for instance in her carefully researched and highly publicized decision to have her children inoculated against smallpox.

More recently we have the letters of other public figures.  One of my favorite volumes of letters is The Habit of Being, gathered from Flannery O'Connor's correspondence; but while O'Connor's letters are a good example here, let's remember the women who wrote to her, too -- in particular Betty Hester, whose identity was preserved only as "A" until recently, and who exchanged hundreds of letters on topics personal and spiritual with O'Connor over nine years.

Furthermore we have preserved the writings of many women because of their correspondence with historically important men:

 -- We have a reconstructed letter from an otherwise unknown widow named Hedybia, who wrote to St. Jerome (right to the source, so to speak!) with a list of difficult questions about events in the Gospels.  

 -- We have the letters of spiritual direction of St. Francis de Sales; many of his correspondents who wrote to him describing their situations and seeking guidance were married women, women who had busy lives, children to educate and households to run.  I daresay it was the vicarious experience that St. Francis acquired through acting as confessor and spiritual director to so many worldly, married, busy women that gave him the insight necessary to compose such a practical work as Introduction to the Devout Life, which advises the busy person living in the world on how to put God in first place despite so many duties.  Indeed, the Introduction is written in epistolary form to "Philothea"  -- and there was a real "Philothea," Louise de Châtel, Mme. de Charmoisy, whose correspondence with Francis de Sales led directly to the saint's composition of this classic of spiritual direction.

 + + +

We do not say of Queen Caroline, "She neglected her household duties and her social obligations by constantly writing."  We do not say of Betty Hester, "If only she had not spent so much time scribbling letters to celebrities, think how much farther she might have gone in her work."  We do not say of the women writing to their spiritual directors, "All that navel-gazing takes the mind off of the really important things."  We do not say of St. Hildegard, "If she hadn't spent so much time chronicling those visions of hers and recording them for posterity, maybe she would have been able to really experience them to the fullest."

 + + +

This is how we connect now.  

Yeah, I have dozens of Facebook friends too, and they can't all be my besties.

And they're not.  You know they're not.  It's the same with you.

 There are a handful, though -- some who read and comment on my blog, some who write blogs I read daily, some who exchange emails with me, a few of the people that I check in with several times a day via Facebook.  

You know who you are.  Hello, friends.  I've "exchanged letters with you" for years now.  I've "kept up a lively correspondence" with you.  I've sought advice, consolation, spiritual direction.  I've written treatises in response to your inspiration, and I've made queries that inspired treatises from you in return.

Blogs for sure -- but even Twitter and Facebook and whatever comes after those -- I know I am really connecting with real people.  Yes, I have a family.  Yes, I have responsibilities.  You have jobs and I have jobs.  And yet, making time for each other to meet one on one -- it's not just allowable; it's good.  Intellectual life is not something we must fit in the crevices of our "real" lives.  It is in some ways the realest life we have, the life of human beings being human together in the world of knowing and expressing.

So, no more apologies.  I'll stop my ears, until you have something more important to say.

"Strive for perfection; encourage one another."

Occasionally I manage to get back into the habit of praying one or more of the Hours -- rarely regularly.   Office of Readings one day in the morning; the thankfully short and repetitive Compline another day when I've already stayed up too late and am really too tired to concentrate.  Sometimes on a feast day I manage the daytime hours.

Office of Readings is my favorite because it has something new for me every day, even though it's long and I feel like I'm cheating by doing it instead of Lauds, which I feel like I "should" be doing.  

(I've been a little more inspired lately thanks to this book, by the way.  Highly, highly recommended, and not just for "beginners."  Will probably write more about it another time.) 

So, anyway, one really great thing about praying the Liturgy of the Hours is that you sink right into the Psalms.  Each one comes around again every couple of weeks or so (less often if you come to the Hours all haphazardly like I do), which over the course of months and years gives you plenty of time both to be exposed to lots of psalms, and to let the repetitiveness gently impress them upon your mind and heart.  There's always something new there.  

Today in Ps. 31 we encounter the fairly-common-psalm-theme of "I'm surrounded by enemies who are out to get me!" which sometimes seems a little overwrought to comfortable and fattened moderns as ourselves.

In your justice, set me free, hear me and speedily rescue me....

Release me from the snares they have hidden...

In the face of all my foes I am a reproach, an object of scorn to my neighbors and of fear to my friends...

I have heard the slander of the crowd... as they plot together against me...

And I'm a little leery of sinking too deeply into this theme of "enemies."  Possibly a bit risky, lest we start thinking of "people who merely disagree with me" or "people who mildly annoy me" as "enemies who are out to get me" in our prayer.   

But one modern interpretation came to me, an idea of "enemies" that works (for me in this season of life at least):  All those chattering faceless voices that bring distasteful news into my home, that peddle outrage and Schadenfreude.  The tearing of hair out over petty matters not worthy of attention; and, more insidious, the repeated indignation over grave matters, murmuring the conscience to sleep, spending outrage in cheap declarations of position, ever calling to action, never acting.

There are real people on the other side of those combox handles and bylines.  Let's not forget that.  Some of them may not know what they do.  If they met us in the street they might be perfectly pleasant.   Some of them claim to be allies, fellow believers.  But make no mistake, they are out there, enemies and quislings.  

Release me from the snares they have hidden, for you are my refuge, Lord.

Snares of despair and outrage.  

O God of truth, you detest those who worship false and empty gods.  As for me, I trust in the Lord; let me be glad...

Let me be glad; not angry, irritated, snide, or superior.

You have seen my affliction and taken heed of my soul's distress, have not handed me over to the enemy, but set my feet at large.

We are not, in fact, in prison to the unhappy state of the world today (nor the state of the country, nor the state of the Church).  We are at large.  We are free to act real acts, in our seemingly tiny sphere of home and work and friendships, where each act and word can have unimaginable consequences.

I have heard the slander of the crowd... but as for me, I trust in You, Lord...

My life is in your hands, deliver me from the hands of those who hate me.

Look, some of the voices you encounter out there... the ones that make you feel shame... they really do hate you.  Hate you for not buying enough stuff.  Sneer at you for having too many children.  Tear you down lest you feel pleased in the decisions you've made that are different from others.  Mock you so you'll feel inadequate without the snakeoil they're selling.  Nobody does negging like someone who wants your money or your vote.

How great is the goodness, Lord,... that you show to those who trust you in the sight of men.

You hide them in the shelter of your presence from the plotting of men; you keep them safe within your tent from disputing tongues.

I often wonder what it means to "trust in the Lord," which we're so often told to do without much practical advice on how to do it, and I think there might be a bit of a clue here in this description.

In part:  

To trust in the Lord is, perhaps, not to let "the plotting of men" worry you; to remind yourself constantly that the advertisers and the policymakers are not, actually, in charge.  

To trust in the Lord is to draw strength and protection from His Presence (his ever-present Presence) rather than be damaged by "disputing tongues."  

(I don't think this means we always have to leave every dispute; some disputes are worth having, after all.   Truth has to be spoken and sometimes it's us who has to speak it.  But we don't have to come to every argument we're invited to just in case.)

Love the Lord, all you saints.  He guards his faithful but the Lord will repay to the full all those who act with pride.

The bit about "acting with pride" is maybe a clue as to when we might not want to join in with those "disputing tongues," lest we reduce ourselves to one.

"I am far removed from your sight," I said in my alarm.

Yet you heard the voice of my plea when I cried for help.

In other words, what to do when we realize we've gotten in over our heads.

Be strong, let your heart take courage, all who hope in the Lord.

What is the world coming to, anyway?   It is coming to the same end it has been coming to for two thousand years, and today's viral video will not change it, nor tomorrow's.

+ + +

Good advice from Augustine in the second reading, too:

Rejoice in the truth, not in wickedness; rejoice in the hope of eternity, not in the fading flower of vanity.

Look out for that "rejoicing in wickedness" bit.  The invitation is everywhere, isn't it?  Let's not pretend that "rejoicing in wickedness" means "doing wicked things and enjoying it."  

It also means "hearing about wicked things and enjoying a sense of smug superiority over those who participate."  

Or "hearing about certain people doing and/or saying wicked things and enjoying a sense of satisfaction that they are behaving as I expect them to."  

Or "passing along news of wickedness and enjoying the recognition I get for having raised the alarm."

When you catch yourself rejoicing in wickedness, for heaven's sake, stop.

+ + +

And one more thought from Augustine:

Wherever you are on earth, however long you remain on earth, the Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything.

That's right, anything!

Don't sweat the small stuff.  But don't save your anxiety for the important things!  Just... don't be anxious.  Be not afraid.  Really.  That's what all this means.  

How are we supposed to do that?  We're imperfect.  We will feel anxious. We will feel unable to rejoice.  But:

Rejoice, brothers:  Strive for perfection; encourage one another.  

That's today's responsory to Augustine.

Encourage one another.

Encourage one another.

Encourage one another.

Remember that, next combox.  Strive for perfection... by encouraging one another.

+ + +

This is why I love the Hours.  Ancient and ever new.

Role-model time bombs.

In a friend's Facebook timeline I see the exchange:

"Its a shame what Miley Cyrus has turned into. She was so sweet and innocent during her Hannah Montana days...someone a child could look up to....NOT ANYMORE. I don't understand Hollywood kids that feel being good, pure and innocent is a bad thing."

---

"[My eight-year-old daughter] can't understand why I won't let her listen to her new song. It's a shame. With lines about dancing like you're in a strip club and getting in line for the bathroom to get a line."

---

I think a lot of it IS their own doing... They feel if they are hard and rough, it proves that they are no longer little goodie two shoes. Some come out of it though after they realize they have gone off the deep end (Hillary Duff comes to mind). But the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, and Miley Cyrus....not sure if they will come out of it.

Me? I think we've seen it happen often enough, and we've seen the lucrative outcome in terms of publicity, that we can conclude they are part of a larger pattern.

I suspect that the sweet/pure/innocent girl starlet image is carefully crafted by the entertainment companies as part of a master plan. Their young fans -- who are generally several years younger than the starlets themselves and especially their young fans' parents are being set up. The entire point of the sweet/pure/innocent/girl-next-door image is the Big Reveal, set for soon after the starlet turns eighteen: the nude photos come out, or the paparazzi images from the Hollywood party, or the mug shots, or the drug charges. The new album comes out with the suggestive dance moves and the explicit lyrics.

And all of a sudden, this adulation that seemed so harmless when your seven-year-old was wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and clenching a hairbrush microphone, lip-syncing to the lyrics of that wholesome, fifteen-year-old TV cutie? Now your daughter's ten, and her most beloved role model is dancing on stage in wet lingerie.

That got awkward fast, hm?

I have taken to viewing the "Disney sweetheart" phenomenon as a trap: a role-model time bomb, set on purpose to go off for maximum impact, maximum headlines, and to sell maximum copies of the first semi-nude photo shoot. In this model, the sweet-innocent-girl-next-door is an image carefully crafted and curated to ensnare as many hits as possible. The sweeter and more innocent the better, because then the more sensational the headline when she Goes Wild.

There is, as you know, a thriving and only partly underground market in the images of young women who appear to be anywhere from twenty-one down to about sixteen. When a young woman who was recently well-known as an underage star comes of age and hits the centerfolds, there is a valuable association -- "Is she even old enough for that?!" -- that her handlers must rush to exploit before it expires.

In other words: The Disney-Channel sweet and childlike girl next door is merely Phase I of "Hot, Wild, and Barely Legal." These girls are not going off the deep end on their own. They are being groomed to go off the deep end, because a lot of people stand to make money when they "discover" the next Britney, the next Lindsay, the next Miley.

Don't fall for it. If your daughters want to emulate the image, evaluate the branded merchandise -- it's glittery tee shirts and sparkly berry-flavored lip gloss now -- but what will it be in three years? And evaluate your own complicity -- could it be that by buying into the sweet and pure act now, you are already participating in an act of exploitation, just one that has not yet come to fruition?

 

Posted with Blogsy

Using persons as rhetorical means to an end.

The smart but acerbic Mark Shea has posted, believe it or not, an apology for his tone and attitude in writing in recent months. It's a beautiful example of a real-not-fake apology, and I am probably not the only person who is glad to see it; Shea is usually, I think, correct, but sometimes I can't stand to read him even when I agree with him because, well, he can be mean. Smart, but dismissive. So I am glad to see this apology, and sincerely wish him fruitfulness in his efforts to respect persons more.

I wanted to highlight part of it, which I think is a good statement of an error that many persons fall into when they write or post about politics (or entertainment or economics, for that matter). It has to do with the notion of "using persons as means to ends," which in Catholic moral theology is an absolute no-no. (It is probably also forbidden in other systems of ethics, and should be in more, as it's more protective of the weak than is your standard Golden-Rule-driven system). A pithy way of putting the same principle is "The opposite of love is not hate; it's use. The opposite of loving a person is using a person."

Mr. Shea writes that he has a strong compulsion to fight against any notion of reducing persons to a means to an end, and yet he himself is guilty of the same crime in the rhetorical arena:

Observant readers will grasp that this has more than a little to do with my intensely strong reaction to the notion of using people as means to ends–as though the person himself is merely a tool. Hence my intense reactions to such questions as abortion, torture and the whole Live Action thing[*], all of which involve reducing people to things or means to an end.

But there’s a bitter irony in all that too... I really saw this weekend that I have myself long had a habit of reducing other people to means to ends, depersonalizing them, and treating them with little or no respect. It works this way:

If I am arguing with somebody who seems to me to merely be in intellectual error..., I will treat that one with respect. But when I feel as though I am engaged with somebody who is wilfully refusing to get the point, I will generally reach a point where I decide “Okay, you refuse to listen honestly or reply honestly, so I will henceforth respond to you only for the sake of those third party bystanders watching the conversation who will listen. You have just been reduced to a Thing: a means to the end of talking to them.”

In addition, my attitude toward Public Figures is much the same. I tend not to see them as human beings, but as sort of semi-fictional characters. People who don’t fully exist but who are In the News and therefore symbols or representatives of ideas.

That last bit is significant: the Public Figure as a nonperson, someone who has surrendered part of his or her humanity. It is so common that we hardly think about it. Sometimes it may be naturally necessary, a simple consequence of being in the public eye; for example, our legal system literally strips public figures of some of the privacy and defamation protections that "private citizens" enjoy. That may be necessary to balance their rights against the rights of a free press in a country that highly values freedom of speech and information. But it's not generally necessary for individuals to treat public figures as nonpersons.

It's so very difficult, though, to avoid seeing them -- and using them -- as mere symbols. Look at the vitriol people spew towards political candidates from the party they oppose (yes, indeedy, it goes both ways). Spend a few minutes reviewing political posts from your friends on Facebook and ask yourself, "is the subject of this post being used as a means to score a political point?" Has your friend reduced a public figure's personality to the content of one statement or one political position? Has your friend extrapolated the figure's entire intellectual or moral character from the content of one political position? Is your friend mocking a politician or celebrity in a way that offends human dignity -- denying the individual humanity of members of a group because of their sex, sexuality, race, religion, or class? Has your friend singled out a particularly unattractive individual as a convenient representative for a whole group of people? Has your friend perpetuated an assumption of malicious intent behind an act, when a benevolent interpretation is far more likely to be accurate?

Yeah, I am seeing a lot of that. And over the past year or so, I have developed more and more distaste for it to the point that I don't enjoy posting anything with political content. I rarely even openly criticize them, because in social media, to criticize is to widen the audience (my followers see what I reply to on Twitter, my friends see whatever I comment on in Facebook).

It's surprisingly difficult to criticize public figures for their political stance without falling into the easy habits of mockery and, well, using people.

And yet, political speech is important speech, and moral speech is one of the duties of the Christian. So how do you post anything at all that involves a public figure without using him or her as a means to an end?

I think one important principle is to restrict your criticism to actions, behavior, and decisions without trying to see into someone's heart and criticize his character. Christians ought to be much better at this than the average person, and much better than we are. My observation is that it's very common for the general public to conflate identity and behavior, but we have a long tradition of distinguishing between "sinner" and "sin." We fall into this error too, and we need to catch it and root it out wherever it exists. It's difficult, because for various reasons right now, the conventional wisdom is extremely suspicious of the notion that it's even possible to "hate the sin and love the sinner;" right now, for instance, Catholics are engaged in defense of our beliefs about marriage, and a large number of people have an interest in portraying us as holding those beliefs not because of our theological convictions about marriage as an image of the life-giving reciprocal self-gift that is the relationship between Christ and the Church (pfft! who can follow all that?), but because the Catholic Church "hates gays."

Another principle is to take care with adjectives that modify the person rather than their actions, statements,or positions. This is one of my pet peeves. I occasionally follow a group blog about Catholicism in American Culture, but have mostly stopped reading it because one of the bloggers thinks it's fun to repeatedly refer to a particular Democratic politician as a "worthless hack." I don't care how odious her political positions are, and I don't care how intellectually vapid her justifications are for what she does. No one has any business describing any other human being with an adjective like "worthless," and for a Catholic blogging as a Catholic to do so is an offense against God to whom we are all beloved. Period.

Rooting out depersonalizing adjectives while still making a legitimate point is largely a matter of recasting the sentence. Does it sound like there's not much difference between "Smith is disgusting" and "Smith disgusts me?" Still, the first is a statement about Smith and the second a statement about your feelings toward Smith; the latter's more defensible, and represents a rhetorical habit that holds the line against depersonalizing adjectives. Still better, if it's an accurate characterization, would be something like "When I heard about Smith's vote on the House bill, I felt disgusted." To write something like this reminds you not to let your feelings generalize from action to person. If you find yourself disgusted by a person -- that is to say, by the sum total of all that they are -- then you have a beam in your eye.

I don't think the prohibition against using persons as means to an end entirely rules out satire as a rhetorical tool, but satire must be deployed carefully lest it devolve into dehumanizing mockery. We have a long history of trenchant political cartoons that make their point concisely by depicting real persons (or groups of persons) in symbolic or representational ways; by extrapolating certain general conclusions from specific statements; and by isolating specific political positions while at the same time putting a face to them. The same kinds of shorthand are at play in circulating memes and carefully selected unattractive photos. When is this okay and when is it not?

Unfortunately, I think a good deal of it has to do with how skilled you are at making your precise point. Let's say that you wish to make a point of your opinion that a certain politician's well-received statement "A," if taken to a logical conclusion, leads to the statement "B" which would not be so popular; you hope to show that holding "A" is equivalent to holding "B" and thereby convince many people to reject "A" who wouldn't otherwise see the connection. You have a tough line to walk: you need to show that the politician's position on "A" is consistent with "B," without actually mischaracterizing him as explicitly stating "B." Political cartoonists get a certain amount of leeway, I think, because we're supposed to understand that a cartoon is a form of shorthand. But the line can be tricky to draw. Take this cartoon that appeared in the Sacramento Bee soon after the still-under-investigation ammonium nitrate explosion in West, Texas:

 

The point of the cartoon is clear: Texas Governor Rick Perry promotes industrial deregulation as a means to encouraging economic development, but deregulation can reduce industrial safety and perhaps lead to incidents like large facility explosions (coming so soon after the explosion in West, the unstated implication is that loose industrial regulations may have been a factor).

Now I happen to lean toward erring on the side of deregulation in a poor economy, I support the notion of states being able to set some of their own levels of regulation according to local needs, and until the investigation is complete I am reluctant to jump to conclusions about whether the West explosion points to a need to tighten Texas's safety rules. That is to say, I ought not be inclined to cut this cartoon any slack. But I happen to think this is a well-crafted cartoon that makes its point very effectively. I think it follows the general tradition of political cartoon shorthand, arguing that the logical conclusion of reducing regulation is accepting more risk of industrial disasters.

But it's not so clear-cut. Other people (not surprisingly, including Gov. Perry) argued that the cartoon is beyond the pale: that it exploited the victims of the West explosion to make a political point, "mocking the tragic deaths of my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans." You could also argue that it is unfair to Governor Perry, if you think that it implies that Perry approves of industrial disasters; here's an example of another artist's cartoon that I think does cross that line.

The SacBee cartoonist, Jack Ohman, defended the cartoon, writing, "My job... is to be provocative." I think he's right, but we have to ask what the political cartoonist is supposed to provoke. Second thoughts about previously unexamined opinions? Yes. Dehumanizing or false beliefs about a person or persons? No.

+ + +

So how do we push back against dehumanizing political speech? The first step is, as always, attention to the beam in our own eyes -- the kind of self-examination and purging to which Mark Shea has just vowed to recommit himself. Refuse to return a blow for a blow, and commit yourself to scrupulous attention to the ethics of your own writings.

Only then can you turn your attention to charitable correction of others' failings. And even then, you have to distinguish between the bad thing So-and-so said, and the badness of So-and-so himself.

One principle is to remember to push back against dehumanizing remarks from the people on "your side" just as fervently as you would push back against similar remarks from the people on "the other side." Maybe more fervently, because the argument might carry more weight coming from you.

As much as I would like to, incidentally, I can't give up on anyone; can't roll my eyes and sigh, "You just can't argue with him." It comes down to that theological virtue we call Hope: no person is beyond reach. On the other hand, I might well be the worst person to try to reach a particular individual, so interactions with other's errors mean constant discernment of whether my decision not to engage is correct (because what I'll choose to say is unlikely to make things better) or cowardly (because I've given up on their ability to see reason at all). It's not easy, but then, staying true to truth often isn't.

 

 

 

__________

[*]Footnote for those who aren't familiar with this reference. "The whole Live Action thing" refers to the "stings" carried out in Planned Parenthood offices by the group Live Action, in which a young woman posing as a client who sought an abortion tried to catch PP workers violating the law; for example, she might pose as an underage girl pregnant by an older man. Shea has argued forcefully against these and other tactics that rely on deception to produce bad publicity.

 

Posted with Blogsy