She's 13. It's a silly list of things I guess 13 year-old girls hope their future boyfriends will do for them. To be honest, it's kinda' cute - I actually DO try to these things and more often then not still lose the girl. Which makes me think - am I still stuck in behaving like a 13 year old boy? Thing is, to change my tactcis, would mean, I guess, being an asshole.
37 years old and still can't figure out this love thing.
GIVE HER ONE OF YOUR T-SHIRTS TO SLEEP IN.
LEAVE HER CUTE TEXT MESSAGES.
KISS HER IN FR0NT 0F Y0UR FRIENDS.
TRUST HER 0VER EVERY0NE ELSE.
TELL HER SHE L00KS BEAUTIFUL.
L00K HER IN THE EYE WHEN Y0U TALK T0 HER.
LET HER MESS WITH Y0UR HAIR.
MESS WITH HER HAIR.
JUST WALK AR0UND WITH HER.
INCLUDE HER IN ALL THINGS Y0U D0.
F0RGIVE HER F0R HER MISTAKES.
L00K AT HER LIKES SHE'S THE 0NLY GIRL Y0U SEE.
TICKLE HER EVEN WHEN SHE SAYS ST0P.
H0LD HER HAND EVEN WHEN Y0U ARE AROUND Y0UR FRIENDS.
WHEN SHE STARTS SWEARING AT Y0U TELL HER Y0U L0VE HER.
LET HER FALL ASLEEP IN Y0UR ARMS.
GET HER MAD, THEN KISS HER.
TEASE HER & LET HER TEASE Y0U BACK.
STAY UP WITH HER ALL NIGHT WHEN SHES SICK.
WATCH HER FAV0RITE M0VIE WITH HER
KISS HER F0REHEAD.
GIVE HER THE W0RLD.
WRITE HER LETTERS.
LET HER WEAR Y0UR CL0THES.
WHEN SHES SAD, HANG 0UT WITH HER.
LET HER KN0W SHE'S IMP0RTANT.
LET HER TAKE ALL THE PH0T0S 0F Y0U SHE WANTS.
KISS HER IN THE RAIN.
CALL HER EVERY NIGHT.
AND WHEN Y0U FALL IN L0VE WITH HER, TELL HER.
AND WHEN Y0U D0 TELL HER. L0VE HER LIKE Y0U NEVER L0VED BEF0RE.
9.12.2006
I have not (yet) abandoned this blog!
I've noticed that people have been chekcing the blog a lot over the last few days (prob as a result of my writing to so many freidns that I have arrived in Chicago finally). I'm sorry for the neglect, I have just been overwhelmed with packing, moving, setting up and trying to rememeber caclculus (what's an anthro student doing stdying calculus? for the chicks man, the chicks - uh, yeah). I will take pix of my new place and write more about Chi-town this weekend. I hope.
8.24.2006
So it's been a few weeks...
...Since I last posted here. I've needed some decompression time and I'm definitely feeling better than i was a few weeks ago. Hell, i leave for chciago in two weeks and I am simulateously excited and terrified. It's an intersting place to be. But I am looking forward to it, and excitement is outweighing trepidation more and more each day. I've decided to post one of my last papers from UMASS bsoton below to make up for the alck of posts over the alst few weeks. It's a fairly lenghthy diatribe that talks about my shifting political views over the alst two years and how it is anthropology gave me the tools to self examine my own personal take on the world. Might bore you to tears, might shed some insight, fell free to comment...
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Why I am not a Libertarian (anymore)
While many of the faculty in the anthropology department are aware of my time as a journalist and my co-founding of the alternative weekly newspaper Boston's Weekly Dig, few here at UMass are aware of my fairly extensive activist work in Boston over the last 15 years or so. And almost no one is aware of my long and close involvement with the Libertarian Party during my 20s. While the Libertarian party is usually cast as a fairly conservative group, I was a rarity among their members, that is, a "liberal" Libertarian. I saw within their ideology much worth investigating, but, simultaneously, I was always in conflict with some of their dogmatic beliefs about small government and their desire to reduce government to almost nothing – instead relying on charity and on the smallest and most local of taxes to fund a tiny government. Their desire to privatize education, eliminate the EPA, dissolve social welfare programs and rely solely on private and corporate donations to assist the economically disadvantaged didn't always sit well with me, but at the same time, I understood that the EPA often failed in its job to prevent pollution, that property taxes were a less than fair way to fund education, and the US welfare system had not had the same success in reducing poverty in the same way that European programs had.
Libertarians also stood up for issues of individual rights that were of paramount importance to me. They were the only official party in Massachusetts to include drug law reform (and marijuana legalization) in their platform, they unquestionably supported a woman's right to choose, they insisted upon full separation of church and state, championed free speech and, they opposed rent control.
Now, opposing rent control might seem like a particularly conservative position. But as a journalist, the more research I did on rent control the more I discovered a policy that had primarily failed in its attempt to curb the concentration of capital in the hands of a few and reduce rents for the poor. Instead, the vast majority of my research showed me that rent control had become a fairly corrupt policy, with middle class folks benefiting from it as often if not more often than the poor, and that small home owners were often the ones most hurt by its policies because it made it difficult for them to eek out a profit on their property with low rents after paying taxes, high interests rates and basic upkeep. My research showed that small homeowners, more often than not, could not afford to improve their properties or maintain them as well as they might have without rent control. Furthermore because rent control made small home ownership less than attractive, only a handful of two and three family homes were built in Boston during its existence (since the end of rent control approximately a decade ago, considerably more one, two and three family homes have been built in Boston, particularly in neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, than during the approximately 25 years rent control was in effect. An MIT study of the last decade showed that across the board from affluent to modest income neighborhoods investment in neighborhood housing has increased by 20%). Large property owners like those that owned multi-unit buildings in Allston and the Fenway (often called “student ghettos” by those who dwell there because the high-turnover by non-permanent residents who are not nearly demanding or community oriented as long-term family residents, allow for poor maintenance of these units and result in a less than stellar housing stock), were primarily the landlords best capable of making a profit through volume during the years of rent control. Rent Control, a policy meant to help the poor and prevent property concentration had accomplished quite the opposite. It was a boon to folks who actually could afford to pay more rent but managed to network and find a cheap apartment and then never moved out; it inhibited small home ownership, and encouraged property concentration in the hands of developers and other wealthy landlords most capable of making a profit. Yes, it kept rents low, but it was not exclusively or specifically people in need who benefited from the low rents, nor did it encourage home ownership by working class families, warping to some degree the demographics of residential Boston.
I discuss rent control in detail because it will provide some foundation in understanding why it was that I was initially attracted to Libertarian philosophy, but also how it is that anthropological training has let me lift the veil on the short-sightedness of such an ideology and situate it in a historical and global context. While the Libertarians may have been right that rent control had been a failure in urban areas in Massachusetts, their belief that an unfettered laissez fare economy was the best solution was equally flawed. But I did not see this at the time. I wasn't entirely won over by the Libertarian solution of unfettered competition for capital, but as a small businessman and a strong believer in individual rights, I was intrigued and saw their ideas as superior than Republicanism or a Democratic party that was centering itself more and more each day. Libertarianism, as radical as its small government ideas were, was at least arguing for a change in systems that seemed to be stagnating at best, and at worst, failing the very working people funding it.
However, I never quite agreed that education, healthcare and the environment should be left to charity and privatization. A part of me felt that there were certain aspects of society that should not and probably could not be measured by their propensity to return a profit. Their importance was of a completely different kind. Money never has been particularly important to me personally and Libertarian philosophy wholly revolves around an unfettered capitalist system being the status quo.
If you had asked me 10 years ago at age 26 what I thought of capitalism, I would have answered that I thought it was a pretty good idea. Any flaws that might have been suggested to me by friends (who were often surprised that an otherwise leftist from the punk rock scene embraced capitalism), I would chalk up to “individual action.” "Capitalism," I once explained, "Simply allows one to charge as much as he can get for a product, it doesn't insist upon it. It allows a proprietor to set a wage as low as he can, but doesn’t insist upon it or require a worker to take the wage.” I felt the flaw was in individuals and not the system. “Some individuals are greedy and it is their lack of ethics that results in disparity, not an inherent aspect of Capitalism." Adam Smith would have been proud.
As someone who had been working-class himself, a hard-worker, a small businessman, and politically active as well, I felt that the most basic way one could improve his or her social and economic position was through self-reliance, pulling one up by their own bootstraps so to speak. But I wasn’t asking an important question, a question that my study of anthropology would lead me to recognize as perhaps the most important question regarding social conflict, a question that I plan to pursue through the study of archaeology for many years to come; I realized that you can’t pull yourself up by the boot straps if, like billions of people on the planet, you are born without boots: Why do some people have endless pairs of expensive boots for every occasion while others go barefoot?
At this point in my life I lacked an understanding of how culture, and racism played enormous roles in who held the preponderance of the capital, who set the wages, and who needed the jobs, particularly during the advent of the industrial revolution. I didn't understand how this basic imbalance, an imbalance rooted in racism, slavery and the exploitation of the indigenous people from less technologically advanced societies, had shaped how wealth and poverty would play out in the US and around the world over the course of colonialism and the industrial revolution. I knew little of Colonialism and its role in increasing the wealth of some parts of the world through the violent oppression and exploitation of much of the rest of the world. And, entrenched in Libertarianism’s dogmatism, I didn't recognize the simple logic that if a system failed to benefit most people, and instead repeatedly benefited only an elite, then those people whom the system did not benefit had every right, and should make every effort, to change the system to one that worked more fairly.
Libertarianism is dogmatic and static – not dynamic and capable of change. It sees the US Constitution and the basic precepts of capitalist economies as universally the best and only answers to all social ills. Again, I recognized this as troubling but was unsure of exactly what the flaw was. From an idealistic or theoretical perspective, allowing every person to fail or succeed by their own motivation and skills, and promoting a charitable society that voluntarily assists those who are victims of bad luck and/or possessed of less marketable talents wasn’t entirely unpalatable. But still I questioned, who decides what a marketable skills is? Currently MTV commands a far larger market than NPR and this reality influences to a great degree for instance how folks looking for employment in the media focus their talents – while this is good for Viacom, is it good for society in the long-term? My study of evolution in biological anthropology and evolutionary biology classes would help me understand more fully my conflict with Libertarians lack of dynamism. I began to make a connection between diversity providing adaptability and progress. Libertarians would always answer accusations of conservatism and stagnation with, “The Constitution can always be amended if enough people agree.” But, I saw a strange parallel between the lessons learned about biological evolution and diversity with political evolution. Amending the constitution is a slow, rare and almost impossible task. Those species that evolve too slowly as their environment changes usually go extinct. I worry in a similar fashion about our society. While Libertarians hold no sway in our legislature, some of their thinking is echoed in the conservative agenda that rules the roost in DC. I worry that indeed, if we are not dynamic, diverse in our political options/traits, we might experience the same plight as a species that cannot adapt.
I also lacked a sense of political cultural relativism, so to speak. I instead, saw some sort of universal "correctness" about capitalism and had a hard time understanding that any socioeconomic or political system is essentially arbitrary. It was in my sociocultural theory, and my readings of thinkers like Edward M. Said that I came to understand that these systems are indeed social constructions, not handed down from a higher power; rejecting one in favor of another that offers more benefits to more people is not unethical, "evil" or in anyway irrational. In fact, quite the opposite: to ignore inequality, its history, its roots, and its current manifestations, and to pursue and recreate cultural practices that only succeed in creating disparity and conflict is hardly successful, productive or adaptive – or rational. Take that Ayn Rand.
As I said, I was not entirely persuaded by Libertarian philosophy. I had my doubts, I had my questions, and these internal conflicts would only widen during my four-year tenure at the helm of my own newspaper. The following passage written for one of my graduate applications describes rather aptly this period of my life and how it lead to my studying anthropology:
Always having been fascinated by the underdog’s story (and in a way that may have been part of my attraction to Libertarianism – they make up some one or two percent of the voting public), we tended to pursue stories that showed iconoclasts, innovative artists, political underdogs, or under-funded activists fighting against a dismissive status quo. During these years I met a number of passionate caring and compassionate people whose work relied on a combination of funding and support form myriad sources. More often than not, if these people had 1/10th of the financial resources their "competitors" had, their successes and impact would have been tremendous.
I frequently investigated the plight of individuals who had somehow been slighted or forgotten by bureaucracies. I found myself analyzing cultural, political and other mechanisms that make up both real and perceived social barriers. I noted how official policies and cultural practices often, without apology, favored one class, race, neighborhood, gender, etc. over another. I struggled to understand the “hows” and “whys” of this inequality. I was also often disappointed that so many smaller sources, non-profit organizations, local activists and artists would go untapped for input on issues. The sources and “experts” used by major media seldom came from lower classes, non-profit organizations or third party politicians and instead tended to represent corporations, banks, dominant political parties and other established institutions. Where were the minority and alternative voices?
But the economic realities of the media industry (entertainment vs. information) and the limitations of journalism as a discipline only allowed me to scratch the surface of issues of social inequality. I was forced to ask myself whether or not journalism was the right place for me.
Less than five years after founding an independent newspaper, it was sold to an out of state corporate player. But I wouldn’t be there by the time that happened. Conflicting visions between my business partner and I and internal dissatisfaction with commercial media in general on my part had resulted in my leaving the company I helped start. After more than a decade of writing for primarily independent publications, I still felt I lacked the tools to investigate inequality satisfyingly. I was no longer interested in honing my writing skills or trying to sell my skills to an industry that was less and les interested in any writing that did not first serve the interests of profit, circulation and shareholders. So, I returned to school where I discovered that it was possible to do more than scratch the surface on important questions regarding inequality. Alternative and activist journalisms, I came to recognize, only look at the current permutations of social inequality, but anthropology, and archaeology in particular, provide tools to research deeper causes for social inequality.
My study of archaeology would combine the questions and skills I had developed in media with anthropological training. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the archaeology courses here at UMass tend to focus on issues of social inequality, relativism, and the search for lost or ignored perspectives – minority voices in the past oft forgotten or thought unimportant. Professors I have studied with here often turn away from “great man’s history” and give than a nod to “people’s history.” A strong interest in the cultures of those dominated define the intellectually challenging (and satisfying) examinations of the archaeological record at UMass Boston. A few paragraphs from another draft of my personal statement for grad school I think best illustrate this:
At the end of my first semester, I was accepted to a National Science Foundation funded field school at Sylvester Manor in Long Island, NY. While one of the field school’s stated goals was the discovery of the Manor Lord’s home, the director of the field school, Stephen Mrozowski, often gathered the crew together to discuss other research questions. On one of these occasions he spoke of a complete lack of archaeological evidence for the presence of African slaves on the plantation. Documentary evidence indicated several dozen slaves had lived on the plantation in the latter half of the 17th century and large numbers of artifacts attributed to Dutch and English colonists as well as the Native Americans who occupied the island had been unearthed. But not a single artifact conclusively spoke to the presence of Africans at the site. The slaves, Mrozowski told us, were “archaeologically invisible.”
This absence of data spoke volumes about the lives the slaves led. Research has shown that slaves maintained and preserved elements of their cultural heritage even under the most adverse conditions, and that a variety of African traditions were preserved (ie: Leland Ferguson’s study of Colonoware, Uncommon Ground). And yet, at Sylvester Manor, there was not a shred of evidence in the material remains pointing to the presence of slaves. How completely stripped of their culture were these African slaves? What was the effect of such a process on their identity? Did they attempt to recreate any part of their formerly free lives in the colonies with the material at hand which was escaping our investigation? My head swam with questions, and this was only my first dig.
And it has been during my studies of anthropology and archaeology that I realized something peculiar about by former comrades in the Libertarian party. If you asked a Libertarian what three things were most criminal in their mind; what three things might be the only crimes punishable by law, the only reasons to fund a police force, the only things that a state or people should consider punishable and the practice of which should be abhorred, they would be: Violence upon another individual, the theft or destruction of another's property, and deceit, particularly in regards to contractual agreements.
The US was founded on all three of these abhorrent practices and the resultant social stratification formed during the founding of our country plays an enormous role in the social problems we face today. The class system we live with is not one born of some sort of natural balance struck by the “gifts” bestowed upon us from on high, but by the clash of cultures possessed of unequal shares of power and wealth over time. While history can tell us a great deal about slave trade and the chronology of Colonialism, anthropology has shown me to look far deeper than question of what happened when, and instead ask, what happened to whom and why?
Studies in immigration and the histories of revolutions, as well as Historical Archaeological classes I have taken have clearly illustrated social developments that I was only vaguely aware of. A tremendous amount of the wealth in the US was built upon the violent practice of slavery and, to a lesser extent the racist exploitation of immigrant workers (i.e. Asians in the West and Italian and Irish Immigrants in the east during the 19th century). The labor provided by slavery and racial exploitation built tremendous wealth for an elite, primarily white, northern and western Europeans. And while slavery was less directly impacting in much of the north of the US, the factories there benefited from the wealth of the south. Mills in Lowell industrialized, shutting out the smaller manufacturer as elite-owned mills strove to supply huge volumes of cheap shoes and other products to slaveholders in the south. This wealth both allowed for a hyper-growing financial system within the country that again, favored whites of certain European descent and also allowed the US to establish a global financial superiority that allows it to this day to have undue influence over the economy of much of the world. While England and most other western nations abolished slavery and moved towards economies that required at least some wage for workers, the US out-competed much of the rest of the world in the early 19th century on the backs of slaves violently kept in that position. In the US, slavery allowed an enormous economic advantage for certain cultures, races and classes. Globally, Europeans did gain a similar, but somewhat less financially profitable advantage over what are now developing nations through rampant colonialism and oppression of people living in much of the global south. What I never factored into the idealism of Libertarianism is the fact, that historically, the world over, violence, oppression and land grabbing by the militarily powerful over the militarily less developed lead to an imbalance in power and wealth that still continues and is enormously unresolved today.
No one class opened my eyes to the flaws and omissions of Libertarian philosophy regarding violence and oppression past and present. I was as equally amazed at what I learned in a US Immigration class with professor Aparicio as I was with reading Kathleen Bragdon's analysis of Native Americans in the Northeast for a Historical Archeology class. In that same class Steve Mrozowski had us read papers by archaeologists analyzing the ideology of the powerful through the analysis of elite flower gardens, factories and even the division of British farmland and other landscapes. The simplest analysis of how capital, space and labor is managed, divided and exploited shone tremendous light on various methods of exploitation that have been used. And, while Libertarian philosophy gives tremendous lip service to its abhorrence of violence, to suggest to Libertarians that the current division of wealth was unfairly precipitated by violence and that it isn’t fair to say, "all bad forgiven, let's just have an open competition with the cards dealt the way they are, ok?" often results in claims by Libertarians of blaming the society of the present for the faults of the past.
What I've come to realize is that in understanding inequality and proposing solutions it seems less important to "blame" anyone in the past, and more important to understand that less than idealistic methods have been used in sharing the resources of the world and accepting the diversity of its cultures, and that moving forward, we should acknowledge and recognize damaging ideas of the past, and make every effort to use these lessons to build better relationships, polices and social systems in the future.
I have been involved in various types of activism most of my adult life. What I practiced in these efforts, without realizing it, is that working on social change requires considerable anthropological understanding. Being able to bridge gaps between people with diverse and sometimes opposing perspectives on the same topic requires an understanding not only of the topic in dispute but also of the cultures that each side have been living in and how these biases affect their conclusions. I wish more politicians had anthropological training because such training allows one to uniquely understand the necessity of community, the importance of accepting cultural difference and the necessity of letting people live the way that best works for them.
I now see government as simply an extension of community – one that can be corrupted but one that can also be directed. I believe that my study of anthropology has allowed me to see new questions to situations. In regards to the rent control issue that I opened this essay with, I no longer simply ask, doesn't a homeowner have the right to charge whatever price s/he fails is fair for renting space in his or her home? Instead, I am intrigued by what I feel to be deeper questions: has property been concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy developers fairly? Does anyone have a right to hold more property than they need for themselves? What advantages have certain races, cultures, classes, ethnicities had over others that has not allowed the level playing field that so many financial conservatives, Libertarians among them, claim exists in America? Do we truly educate all of our children equally and is such a goal something that we as a society value? Rather than scream, “taxation is theft” I ask questions now that acknowledge that all communities need to share resources and that not all members are willing or capable to equally contribute – how do we go about resolving those conflicts and problems?
I don't claim to have answers to these questions, but I do finally have the questions. I can, at last, verbalize the internal conflict in thought that often plagued me in my 20s. The study of anthropology has provided me with the vocabulary, the intellectual background and the passion to dig deep into the roots of conflict that mainstream politics seems to be unable to address. My undergraduate education has provided me the skills to question every premise and not accept any answer as necessarily complete, but relative to an infinite number of temporary conditions and unique biases. While this may seem more like a curse than an advantage, it is leaps and bound beyond the intellectual frustration and confusion that was so much a part of my internal dialogue previous to pursuing my degree. And, ultimately, the last two years have motivated me to continue to look for answers, to broaden my education even further, and I am grateful for the motivation that every professor in this university whom I have studied with has helped to instill in me.
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Why I am not a Libertarian (anymore)
While many of the faculty in the anthropology department are aware of my time as a journalist and my co-founding of the alternative weekly newspaper Boston's Weekly Dig, few here at UMass are aware of my fairly extensive activist work in Boston over the last 15 years or so. And almost no one is aware of my long and close involvement with the Libertarian Party during my 20s. While the Libertarian party is usually cast as a fairly conservative group, I was a rarity among their members, that is, a "liberal" Libertarian. I saw within their ideology much worth investigating, but, simultaneously, I was always in conflict with some of their dogmatic beliefs about small government and their desire to reduce government to almost nothing – instead relying on charity and on the smallest and most local of taxes to fund a tiny government. Their desire to privatize education, eliminate the EPA, dissolve social welfare programs and rely solely on private and corporate donations to assist the economically disadvantaged didn't always sit well with me, but at the same time, I understood that the EPA often failed in its job to prevent pollution, that property taxes were a less than fair way to fund education, and the US welfare system had not had the same success in reducing poverty in the same way that European programs had.
Libertarians also stood up for issues of individual rights that were of paramount importance to me. They were the only official party in Massachusetts to include drug law reform (and marijuana legalization) in their platform, they unquestionably supported a woman's right to choose, they insisted upon full separation of church and state, championed free speech and, they opposed rent control.
Now, opposing rent control might seem like a particularly conservative position. But as a journalist, the more research I did on rent control the more I discovered a policy that had primarily failed in its attempt to curb the concentration of capital in the hands of a few and reduce rents for the poor. Instead, the vast majority of my research showed me that rent control had become a fairly corrupt policy, with middle class folks benefiting from it as often if not more often than the poor, and that small home owners were often the ones most hurt by its policies because it made it difficult for them to eek out a profit on their property with low rents after paying taxes, high interests rates and basic upkeep. My research showed that small homeowners, more often than not, could not afford to improve their properties or maintain them as well as they might have without rent control. Furthermore because rent control made small home ownership less than attractive, only a handful of two and three family homes were built in Boston during its existence (since the end of rent control approximately a decade ago, considerably more one, two and three family homes have been built in Boston, particularly in neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, than during the approximately 25 years rent control was in effect. An MIT study of the last decade showed that across the board from affluent to modest income neighborhoods investment in neighborhood housing has increased by 20%). Large property owners like those that owned multi-unit buildings in Allston and the Fenway (often called “student ghettos” by those who dwell there because the high-turnover by non-permanent residents who are not nearly demanding or community oriented as long-term family residents, allow for poor maintenance of these units and result in a less than stellar housing stock), were primarily the landlords best capable of making a profit through volume during the years of rent control. Rent Control, a policy meant to help the poor and prevent property concentration had accomplished quite the opposite. It was a boon to folks who actually could afford to pay more rent but managed to network and find a cheap apartment and then never moved out; it inhibited small home ownership, and encouraged property concentration in the hands of developers and other wealthy landlords most capable of making a profit. Yes, it kept rents low, but it was not exclusively or specifically people in need who benefited from the low rents, nor did it encourage home ownership by working class families, warping to some degree the demographics of residential Boston.
I discuss rent control in detail because it will provide some foundation in understanding why it was that I was initially attracted to Libertarian philosophy, but also how it is that anthropological training has let me lift the veil on the short-sightedness of such an ideology and situate it in a historical and global context. While the Libertarians may have been right that rent control had been a failure in urban areas in Massachusetts, their belief that an unfettered laissez fare economy was the best solution was equally flawed. But I did not see this at the time. I wasn't entirely won over by the Libertarian solution of unfettered competition for capital, but as a small businessman and a strong believer in individual rights, I was intrigued and saw their ideas as superior than Republicanism or a Democratic party that was centering itself more and more each day. Libertarianism, as radical as its small government ideas were, was at least arguing for a change in systems that seemed to be stagnating at best, and at worst, failing the very working people funding it.
However, I never quite agreed that education, healthcare and the environment should be left to charity and privatization. A part of me felt that there were certain aspects of society that should not and probably could not be measured by their propensity to return a profit. Their importance was of a completely different kind. Money never has been particularly important to me personally and Libertarian philosophy wholly revolves around an unfettered capitalist system being the status quo.
If you had asked me 10 years ago at age 26 what I thought of capitalism, I would have answered that I thought it was a pretty good idea. Any flaws that might have been suggested to me by friends (who were often surprised that an otherwise leftist from the punk rock scene embraced capitalism), I would chalk up to “individual action.” "Capitalism," I once explained, "Simply allows one to charge as much as he can get for a product, it doesn't insist upon it. It allows a proprietor to set a wage as low as he can, but doesn’t insist upon it or require a worker to take the wage.” I felt the flaw was in individuals and not the system. “Some individuals are greedy and it is their lack of ethics that results in disparity, not an inherent aspect of Capitalism." Adam Smith would have been proud.
As someone who had been working-class himself, a hard-worker, a small businessman, and politically active as well, I felt that the most basic way one could improve his or her social and economic position was through self-reliance, pulling one up by their own bootstraps so to speak. But I wasn’t asking an important question, a question that my study of anthropology would lead me to recognize as perhaps the most important question regarding social conflict, a question that I plan to pursue through the study of archaeology for many years to come; I realized that you can’t pull yourself up by the boot straps if, like billions of people on the planet, you are born without boots: Why do some people have endless pairs of expensive boots for every occasion while others go barefoot?
At this point in my life I lacked an understanding of how culture, and racism played enormous roles in who held the preponderance of the capital, who set the wages, and who needed the jobs, particularly during the advent of the industrial revolution. I didn't understand how this basic imbalance, an imbalance rooted in racism, slavery and the exploitation of the indigenous people from less technologically advanced societies, had shaped how wealth and poverty would play out in the US and around the world over the course of colonialism and the industrial revolution. I knew little of Colonialism and its role in increasing the wealth of some parts of the world through the violent oppression and exploitation of much of the rest of the world. And, entrenched in Libertarianism’s dogmatism, I didn't recognize the simple logic that if a system failed to benefit most people, and instead repeatedly benefited only an elite, then those people whom the system did not benefit had every right, and should make every effort, to change the system to one that worked more fairly.
Libertarianism is dogmatic and static – not dynamic and capable of change. It sees the US Constitution and the basic precepts of capitalist economies as universally the best and only answers to all social ills. Again, I recognized this as troubling but was unsure of exactly what the flaw was. From an idealistic or theoretical perspective, allowing every person to fail or succeed by their own motivation and skills, and promoting a charitable society that voluntarily assists those who are victims of bad luck and/or possessed of less marketable talents wasn’t entirely unpalatable. But still I questioned, who decides what a marketable skills is? Currently MTV commands a far larger market than NPR and this reality influences to a great degree for instance how folks looking for employment in the media focus their talents – while this is good for Viacom, is it good for society in the long-term? My study of evolution in biological anthropology and evolutionary biology classes would help me understand more fully my conflict with Libertarians lack of dynamism. I began to make a connection between diversity providing adaptability and progress. Libertarians would always answer accusations of conservatism and stagnation with, “The Constitution can always be amended if enough people agree.” But, I saw a strange parallel between the lessons learned about biological evolution and diversity with political evolution. Amending the constitution is a slow, rare and almost impossible task. Those species that evolve too slowly as their environment changes usually go extinct. I worry in a similar fashion about our society. While Libertarians hold no sway in our legislature, some of their thinking is echoed in the conservative agenda that rules the roost in DC. I worry that indeed, if we are not dynamic, diverse in our political options/traits, we might experience the same plight as a species that cannot adapt.
I also lacked a sense of political cultural relativism, so to speak. I instead, saw some sort of universal "correctness" about capitalism and had a hard time understanding that any socioeconomic or political system is essentially arbitrary. It was in my sociocultural theory, and my readings of thinkers like Edward M. Said that I came to understand that these systems are indeed social constructions, not handed down from a higher power; rejecting one in favor of another that offers more benefits to more people is not unethical, "evil" or in anyway irrational. In fact, quite the opposite: to ignore inequality, its history, its roots, and its current manifestations, and to pursue and recreate cultural practices that only succeed in creating disparity and conflict is hardly successful, productive or adaptive – or rational. Take that Ayn Rand.
As I said, I was not entirely persuaded by Libertarian philosophy. I had my doubts, I had my questions, and these internal conflicts would only widen during my four-year tenure at the helm of my own newspaper. The following passage written for one of my graduate applications describes rather aptly this period of my life and how it lead to my studying anthropology:
Always having been fascinated by the underdog’s story (and in a way that may have been part of my attraction to Libertarianism – they make up some one or two percent of the voting public), we tended to pursue stories that showed iconoclasts, innovative artists, political underdogs, or under-funded activists fighting against a dismissive status quo. During these years I met a number of passionate caring and compassionate people whose work relied on a combination of funding and support form myriad sources. More often than not, if these people had 1/10th of the financial resources their "competitors" had, their successes and impact would have been tremendous.
I frequently investigated the plight of individuals who had somehow been slighted or forgotten by bureaucracies. I found myself analyzing cultural, political and other mechanisms that make up both real and perceived social barriers. I noted how official policies and cultural practices often, without apology, favored one class, race, neighborhood, gender, etc. over another. I struggled to understand the “hows” and “whys” of this inequality. I was also often disappointed that so many smaller sources, non-profit organizations, local activists and artists would go untapped for input on issues. The sources and “experts” used by major media seldom came from lower classes, non-profit organizations or third party politicians and instead tended to represent corporations, banks, dominant political parties and other established institutions. Where were the minority and alternative voices?
But the economic realities of the media industry (entertainment vs. information) and the limitations of journalism as a discipline only allowed me to scratch the surface of issues of social inequality. I was forced to ask myself whether or not journalism was the right place for me.
Less than five years after founding an independent newspaper, it was sold to an out of state corporate player. But I wouldn’t be there by the time that happened. Conflicting visions between my business partner and I and internal dissatisfaction with commercial media in general on my part had resulted in my leaving the company I helped start. After more than a decade of writing for primarily independent publications, I still felt I lacked the tools to investigate inequality satisfyingly. I was no longer interested in honing my writing skills or trying to sell my skills to an industry that was less and les interested in any writing that did not first serve the interests of profit, circulation and shareholders. So, I returned to school where I discovered that it was possible to do more than scratch the surface on important questions regarding inequality. Alternative and activist journalisms, I came to recognize, only look at the current permutations of social inequality, but anthropology, and archaeology in particular, provide tools to research deeper causes for social inequality.
My study of archaeology would combine the questions and skills I had developed in media with anthropological training. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the archaeology courses here at UMass tend to focus on issues of social inequality, relativism, and the search for lost or ignored perspectives – minority voices in the past oft forgotten or thought unimportant. Professors I have studied with here often turn away from “great man’s history” and give than a nod to “people’s history.” A strong interest in the cultures of those dominated define the intellectually challenging (and satisfying) examinations of the archaeological record at UMass Boston. A few paragraphs from another draft of my personal statement for grad school I think best illustrate this:
At the end of my first semester, I was accepted to a National Science Foundation funded field school at Sylvester Manor in Long Island, NY. While one of the field school’s stated goals was the discovery of the Manor Lord’s home, the director of the field school, Stephen Mrozowski, often gathered the crew together to discuss other research questions. On one of these occasions he spoke of a complete lack of archaeological evidence for the presence of African slaves on the plantation. Documentary evidence indicated several dozen slaves had lived on the plantation in the latter half of the 17th century and large numbers of artifacts attributed to Dutch and English colonists as well as the Native Americans who occupied the island had been unearthed. But not a single artifact conclusively spoke to the presence of Africans at the site. The slaves, Mrozowski told us, were “archaeologically invisible.”
This absence of data spoke volumes about the lives the slaves led. Research has shown that slaves maintained and preserved elements of their cultural heritage even under the most adverse conditions, and that a variety of African traditions were preserved (ie: Leland Ferguson’s study of Colonoware, Uncommon Ground). And yet, at Sylvester Manor, there was not a shred of evidence in the material remains pointing to the presence of slaves. How completely stripped of their culture were these African slaves? What was the effect of such a process on their identity? Did they attempt to recreate any part of their formerly free lives in the colonies with the material at hand which was escaping our investigation? My head swam with questions, and this was only my first dig.
And it has been during my studies of anthropology and archaeology that I realized something peculiar about by former comrades in the Libertarian party. If you asked a Libertarian what three things were most criminal in their mind; what three things might be the only crimes punishable by law, the only reasons to fund a police force, the only things that a state or people should consider punishable and the practice of which should be abhorred, they would be: Violence upon another individual, the theft or destruction of another's property, and deceit, particularly in regards to contractual agreements.
The US was founded on all three of these abhorrent practices and the resultant social stratification formed during the founding of our country plays an enormous role in the social problems we face today. The class system we live with is not one born of some sort of natural balance struck by the “gifts” bestowed upon us from on high, but by the clash of cultures possessed of unequal shares of power and wealth over time. While history can tell us a great deal about slave trade and the chronology of Colonialism, anthropology has shown me to look far deeper than question of what happened when, and instead ask, what happened to whom and why?
Studies in immigration and the histories of revolutions, as well as Historical Archaeological classes I have taken have clearly illustrated social developments that I was only vaguely aware of. A tremendous amount of the wealth in the US was built upon the violent practice of slavery and, to a lesser extent the racist exploitation of immigrant workers (i.e. Asians in the West and Italian and Irish Immigrants in the east during the 19th century). The labor provided by slavery and racial exploitation built tremendous wealth for an elite, primarily white, northern and western Europeans. And while slavery was less directly impacting in much of the north of the US, the factories there benefited from the wealth of the south. Mills in Lowell industrialized, shutting out the smaller manufacturer as elite-owned mills strove to supply huge volumes of cheap shoes and other products to slaveholders in the south. This wealth both allowed for a hyper-growing financial system within the country that again, favored whites of certain European descent and also allowed the US to establish a global financial superiority that allows it to this day to have undue influence over the economy of much of the world. While England and most other western nations abolished slavery and moved towards economies that required at least some wage for workers, the US out-competed much of the rest of the world in the early 19th century on the backs of slaves violently kept in that position. In the US, slavery allowed an enormous economic advantage for certain cultures, races and classes. Globally, Europeans did gain a similar, but somewhat less financially profitable advantage over what are now developing nations through rampant colonialism and oppression of people living in much of the global south. What I never factored into the idealism of Libertarianism is the fact, that historically, the world over, violence, oppression and land grabbing by the militarily powerful over the militarily less developed lead to an imbalance in power and wealth that still continues and is enormously unresolved today.
No one class opened my eyes to the flaws and omissions of Libertarian philosophy regarding violence and oppression past and present. I was as equally amazed at what I learned in a US Immigration class with professor Aparicio as I was with reading Kathleen Bragdon's analysis of Native Americans in the Northeast for a Historical Archeology class. In that same class Steve Mrozowski had us read papers by archaeologists analyzing the ideology of the powerful through the analysis of elite flower gardens, factories and even the division of British farmland and other landscapes. The simplest analysis of how capital, space and labor is managed, divided and exploited shone tremendous light on various methods of exploitation that have been used. And, while Libertarian philosophy gives tremendous lip service to its abhorrence of violence, to suggest to Libertarians that the current division of wealth was unfairly precipitated by violence and that it isn’t fair to say, "all bad forgiven, let's just have an open competition with the cards dealt the way they are, ok?" often results in claims by Libertarians of blaming the society of the present for the faults of the past.
What I've come to realize is that in understanding inequality and proposing solutions it seems less important to "blame" anyone in the past, and more important to understand that less than idealistic methods have been used in sharing the resources of the world and accepting the diversity of its cultures, and that moving forward, we should acknowledge and recognize damaging ideas of the past, and make every effort to use these lessons to build better relationships, polices and social systems in the future.
I have been involved in various types of activism most of my adult life. What I practiced in these efforts, without realizing it, is that working on social change requires considerable anthropological understanding. Being able to bridge gaps between people with diverse and sometimes opposing perspectives on the same topic requires an understanding not only of the topic in dispute but also of the cultures that each side have been living in and how these biases affect their conclusions. I wish more politicians had anthropological training because such training allows one to uniquely understand the necessity of community, the importance of accepting cultural difference and the necessity of letting people live the way that best works for them.
I now see government as simply an extension of community – one that can be corrupted but one that can also be directed. I believe that my study of anthropology has allowed me to see new questions to situations. In regards to the rent control issue that I opened this essay with, I no longer simply ask, doesn't a homeowner have the right to charge whatever price s/he fails is fair for renting space in his or her home? Instead, I am intrigued by what I feel to be deeper questions: has property been concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy developers fairly? Does anyone have a right to hold more property than they need for themselves? What advantages have certain races, cultures, classes, ethnicities had over others that has not allowed the level playing field that so many financial conservatives, Libertarians among them, claim exists in America? Do we truly educate all of our children equally and is such a goal something that we as a society value? Rather than scream, “taxation is theft” I ask questions now that acknowledge that all communities need to share resources and that not all members are willing or capable to equally contribute – how do we go about resolving those conflicts and problems?
I don't claim to have answers to these questions, but I do finally have the questions. I can, at last, verbalize the internal conflict in thought that often plagued me in my 20s. The study of anthropology has provided me with the vocabulary, the intellectual background and the passion to dig deep into the roots of conflict that mainstream politics seems to be unable to address. My undergraduate education has provided me the skills to question every premise and not accept any answer as necessarily complete, but relative to an infinite number of temporary conditions and unique biases. While this may seem more like a curse than an advantage, it is leaps and bound beyond the intellectual frustration and confusion that was so much a part of my internal dialogue previous to pursuing my degree. And, ultimately, the last two years have motivated me to continue to look for answers, to broaden my education even further, and I am grateful for the motivation that every professor in this university whom I have studied with has helped to instill in me.
8.01.2006
Thoughts on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah
So I’ve had way too much time to watch CNN these days, and as a lot of friends know I’m a bit of an NPR junky. As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on what’s been going on for the last few weeks regarding the conflict between Israel, Hezbollah and Lebanon. I’ve spent the last few days working on the following essay and if any of you should take the time to read this and want to offer any feedback, I’d love to hear from ya. Oddly enough, I did consider sending this to the Weekly Dig, my old stomping grounds. They still have an opinion column that use to be written primarily by readers or non-Digsters, called Soapbox. I clicked on the link at their site and came across a variety of articles including the Savage Love column, which I don’t think is a “Soapbox” column so I’m not sure if the “Soapbox” link links to more than just “Soapbox” pieces, or if that one Savage Love column is an isolated error or if the term "Soapbox" has a different meaning there then it use to during my tenure. Whcihever, the type of material they’ve recently run, a satire on the “Dummies” series mascot, a gay conversation on “faggotry” and a writer's odd lament to an ovary she is having removed, suggested to me that I am still not quite right for that paper. If anyone reading this thinks I’m just being self-defeating, let me know, maybe I’ll submit it for kicks…
***
In the last few days Israel’s military has killed UN observers, dozens of women and children in an apartment building, damaged hospitals, interfered in humanitarian aid convoys and now this: Israel causes 'worst environmental disaster' in Mediterranean. Granted, the source is Tehran Times, no fan of Israel, and Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israel daily, but I am hardly convinced that Israel's response has been proportionate to the threat or can accomplish its stated goals of breaking Hezbollah. Furthermore, the more intensely Israel seems to attack, the more intensely Hezbollah seems to respond, and additionally, the more intensely Israel attacks, the more disasters that befall the region (the aforementioned deaths of women and children, UN observers, the oil spill, etc.).
Israel is surrounded by nations that would love to see it disappear. Of this there is no doubt, but what is also undeniable is that its current actions against Lebanon are not increasing its long term security or opening up opportunities for dialogue with the many enemies Israel faces in the region. While nationalistic hyperbole like, “we must secure our borders” seems like practical justification for the attacks, the results of these actions carry with them long term emotional and political impact that, in my opinion, outweigh subscribing to the simplistic notion that protecting one’s border through military violence against a threatening neighbor is always justified. There is no question that all nations have the right to protect their borders but it is more than prudent to ask, what is the best way to protect those borders? Israel’s use of overwhelming force on Lebanon is hardly looking like the best way.
A question not being discussed very much in media is: where is the Lebanese army in all this? This article, from Bloomberg Financial of all places, indicates that the Lebanese army is avoiding the conflict for fear of putting the country into a civil war. The government apparently lacks the political will to remove Hezbollah because the militia/political party has such widespread support from many Muslims in Lebanon. Additionally, the Lebanese military is not strong enough to face off with Hezbollah according to experts in the region. Given this knowledge, which Israel Defense Forces must have and in far more detail than Bloomberg Financial, what is Israel thinking? If it is well known that the nation of Lebanon can’t displace Hezbollah, even under peacetime conditions, why have we heard Israel so often critical of Lebanon for not having removed Hezbollah? And, if Hezbollah is as popular and powerful as it appears to be and have been for years, does Israel really think it can break Hezbollah by laying waste to the infrastructure of what little democratic power there was in Lebanon? Is it not plainly clear that for every few dozen rockets or launchers that Israel takes out, it is doing far more damage to any possible stable government in Lebanon? And wouldn’t a growing and progressing democracy centered in Beirut be the best long term solution to preventing hostility by Hezbollah towards Israel? Even if it is technically possible for Israel to break Hezbollah militarily, at what cost will such a victory, if it can ultimately be called that, be won? Already the list of unintentional atrocities is very high, and Lebanon has been set back decades in both its political and economic progress, and this is only after three weeks of conflict.
While Syrian and Iranian support of Hezbollah is a given, such an accusation is a red herring in regards to seeking a cease fire and an end to the current violence. The wider political problems of the region are immense and complex, and the US perspective of seeking political solutions before a cease fire be implemented sounds perplexingly like Bush and Co. would like to somehow solve centuries of conflict over the next few days before asking Israel to stop bombing Lebanon. Furthermore, while much has been said about Hezbollah’s kidnapping of several soldiers a few weeks ago that sparked this offensive by Israel, little has been said about exactly why Hezbollah committed such an act – and it should be noted that this initial attack by Hezbollah was not on civilians, but on a military target; soldiers, not civilians, were the intended victims of Hezbollah at the time. One thing I have found myself wondering about is that although several sources have stated that Hezbollah has demanded the release of all Lebanese prisoners held by Israel in return for the Israeli soldiers they abducted, I can’t help but think that Israel’s arrest of 100 Hamas politicians in Palestine, including the speaker of Palestine’s parliament and several sitting ministers on June 30th, can hardly be discounted as motivating anti-Israeli factions all over the Middle east to consider action against Israel as justified. I can not think of any nation on earth that would sit back and watch as its prime minister and other members of its parliament were rounded up by a foreign country and do nothing. In fact, I think the most reasonable assumption is that any nation facing such action would immediately strike back and if incapable of doing so itself, would look to its allies to move on its behalf. Israel had to have known this when it made the arrests in June.
What I am suggesting, as many others have as well, is a Chicken or Egg argument for the violence in the Middle East. At this point, there appears to be no fair way to determine which came first, the violations of Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel – but what is known is that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon appear to be doing as much, if not more damage, to the innocent civilian population of a formerly burgeoning Lebanon, and to other innocent bystanders (the UN, the environment) than they appear to be damaging Hezbollah.
Israel, by any logical appraisal of the situation, can neither break Hezbollah nor win the return of its soldiers via its current tactics. It can however further worsen relations in the region, and, even distance itself from some of its western allies. Given this, an immediate cease-fire is not only the humane thing to do, but also in Israel’s best interest in that it will then allow Israel to focus on other potentially more fruitful solutions to its impasse with Hezbollah.
Will Hezbollah accept a cease fire? There is only one way to find out – and that is to give it a go. If Hezbollah does not abide by an offered ceasefire, than Israel would be far more justified in launching another offensive and/or working with a multinational force to protect the border and seek out Hezbollah strongholds. If Israel offers an olive branch and Hezbollah refuses it, there is little justifiable criticism that could be brought towards Israel for resuming military actions against an aggressor that refuses a peace offering. If Hezbollah does agree to a cease fire, than the world at large could work to both assist in resolving the current conflict with Hezbollah (and Israel may have to concede that its tactics of arrests in Palestine and widespread bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon were disproportionate in order to genuinely protect its borders) as well as begin humanitarian aid efforts in Lebanon, along with the slow rebuilding, yet again, of a country shattered by war for far too long.
***
In the last few days Israel’s military has killed UN observers, dozens of women and children in an apartment building, damaged hospitals, interfered in humanitarian aid convoys and now this: Israel causes 'worst environmental disaster' in Mediterranean. Granted, the source is Tehran Times, no fan of Israel, and Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israel daily, but I am hardly convinced that Israel's response has been proportionate to the threat or can accomplish its stated goals of breaking Hezbollah. Furthermore, the more intensely Israel seems to attack, the more intensely Hezbollah seems to respond, and additionally, the more intensely Israel attacks, the more disasters that befall the region (the aforementioned deaths of women and children, UN observers, the oil spill, etc.).
Israel is surrounded by nations that would love to see it disappear. Of this there is no doubt, but what is also undeniable is that its current actions against Lebanon are not increasing its long term security or opening up opportunities for dialogue with the many enemies Israel faces in the region. While nationalistic hyperbole like, “we must secure our borders” seems like practical justification for the attacks, the results of these actions carry with them long term emotional and political impact that, in my opinion, outweigh subscribing to the simplistic notion that protecting one’s border through military violence against a threatening neighbor is always justified. There is no question that all nations have the right to protect their borders but it is more than prudent to ask, what is the best way to protect those borders? Israel’s use of overwhelming force on Lebanon is hardly looking like the best way.
A question not being discussed very much in media is: where is the Lebanese army in all this? This article, from Bloomberg Financial of all places, indicates that the Lebanese army is avoiding the conflict for fear of putting the country into a civil war. The government apparently lacks the political will to remove Hezbollah because the militia/political party has such widespread support from many Muslims in Lebanon. Additionally, the Lebanese military is not strong enough to face off with Hezbollah according to experts in the region. Given this knowledge, which Israel Defense Forces must have and in far more detail than Bloomberg Financial, what is Israel thinking? If it is well known that the nation of Lebanon can’t displace Hezbollah, even under peacetime conditions, why have we heard Israel so often critical of Lebanon for not having removed Hezbollah? And, if Hezbollah is as popular and powerful as it appears to be and have been for years, does Israel really think it can break Hezbollah by laying waste to the infrastructure of what little democratic power there was in Lebanon? Is it not plainly clear that for every few dozen rockets or launchers that Israel takes out, it is doing far more damage to any possible stable government in Lebanon? And wouldn’t a growing and progressing democracy centered in Beirut be the best long term solution to preventing hostility by Hezbollah towards Israel? Even if it is technically possible for Israel to break Hezbollah militarily, at what cost will such a victory, if it can ultimately be called that, be won? Already the list of unintentional atrocities is very high, and Lebanon has been set back decades in both its political and economic progress, and this is only after three weeks of conflict.
While Syrian and Iranian support of Hezbollah is a given, such an accusation is a red herring in regards to seeking a cease fire and an end to the current violence. The wider political problems of the region are immense and complex, and the US perspective of seeking political solutions before a cease fire be implemented sounds perplexingly like Bush and Co. would like to somehow solve centuries of conflict over the next few days before asking Israel to stop bombing Lebanon. Furthermore, while much has been said about Hezbollah’s kidnapping of several soldiers a few weeks ago that sparked this offensive by Israel, little has been said about exactly why Hezbollah committed such an act – and it should be noted that this initial attack by Hezbollah was not on civilians, but on a military target; soldiers, not civilians, were the intended victims of Hezbollah at the time. One thing I have found myself wondering about is that although several sources have stated that Hezbollah has demanded the release of all Lebanese prisoners held by Israel in return for the Israeli soldiers they abducted, I can’t help but think that Israel’s arrest of 100 Hamas politicians in Palestine, including the speaker of Palestine’s parliament and several sitting ministers on June 30th, can hardly be discounted as motivating anti-Israeli factions all over the Middle east to consider action against Israel as justified. I can not think of any nation on earth that would sit back and watch as its prime minister and other members of its parliament were rounded up by a foreign country and do nothing. In fact, I think the most reasonable assumption is that any nation facing such action would immediately strike back and if incapable of doing so itself, would look to its allies to move on its behalf. Israel had to have known this when it made the arrests in June.
What I am suggesting, as many others have as well, is a Chicken or Egg argument for the violence in the Middle East. At this point, there appears to be no fair way to determine which came first, the violations of Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel – but what is known is that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon appear to be doing as much, if not more damage, to the innocent civilian population of a formerly burgeoning Lebanon, and to other innocent bystanders (the UN, the environment) than they appear to be damaging Hezbollah.
Israel, by any logical appraisal of the situation, can neither break Hezbollah nor win the return of its soldiers via its current tactics. It can however further worsen relations in the region, and, even distance itself from some of its western allies. Given this, an immediate cease-fire is not only the humane thing to do, but also in Israel’s best interest in that it will then allow Israel to focus on other potentially more fruitful solutions to its impasse with Hezbollah.
Will Hezbollah accept a cease fire? There is only one way to find out – and that is to give it a go. If Hezbollah does not abide by an offered ceasefire, than Israel would be far more justified in launching another offensive and/or working with a multinational force to protect the border and seek out Hezbollah strongholds. If Israel offers an olive branch and Hezbollah refuses it, there is little justifiable criticism that could be brought towards Israel for resuming military actions against an aggressor that refuses a peace offering. If Hezbollah does agree to a cease fire, than the world at large could work to both assist in resolving the current conflict with Hezbollah (and Israel may have to concede that its tactics of arrests in Palestine and widespread bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon were disproportionate in order to genuinely protect its borders) as well as begin humanitarian aid efforts in Lebanon, along with the slow rebuilding, yet again, of a country shattered by war for far too long.
7.31.2006
Self-fullfilling prophecy?
So, no sooner did I post that old piece of writing below, than I found myself afflicted with the worse case of insomnia I have ever had in my life over the past few days – kinda ironic given the opening few lines of that old piece and the title I gave it. I’m working on getting over it still, but man, the sleep deprived brain brings one to weird places sometimes. One upside of it all is I have finished the first short story I have written in ages and I’m thinking of posting it here after I have a couple peeps do a read through. The first draft wasn’t quite right, and this new draft might have fixed the probs, but I don’t want to reveal it for public consumption until I’m sure it has enough kick.
More soon…
More soon…
7.25.2006
The more things change...
So when Ashley and I exchanged things a week or so back, one of the most important items I needed to retrieve was a collection of early writing from way back in the day when I wrote for the Noise ‘zine. I only have a hardcopy of these writings, the big ass 5.25” disk that had the text files on them has long since been lost and I don’t even know where I would find a 5” disk drive even if I had the disk. While thumbing through these writings, I found one particularly disjointed piece that I msut have written for my monthly column, “Infinity Plus One.” It is hardly a literary masterpiece, but in it’s own awkward clunky way it described what my life was like some 14 years ago, mostly unemployed and a local rock vagabond perpetually in search of the next wonderful party, amazing band, beautiful woman, and free beer.
A couple of things strike me about this piece and may also bear some explanation, particularly for blog readers who are not familiar with the last 20 years of Boston rock history. I wrote this in October of 1992 (at least I think it was ’92). And one of my escapades described below is an evening at an open bar shmoozefest celebrating the opening of the new Middle East Downstairs club. Not only was this a nostalgic moment, to reread about the opening, but it also answered a burning question I’ve had for years. I’ve always known that I have only vomited as a result of excessive drinking on three occasions in my life. Problem is, I cold never remember the three occasions. I know that I puked on my 21st birthday. I know I puked on my wedding day (and what a day that was). But I have not been able to remember what the third occasion was, only that I have always been quite sure there were three times when drinking led me to pray to the porcelain altar. Well, after re-reading this piece, the question has been finally answered. I puked at the open bar, and, if I am to believe what friends told me that night, I was the first person to ever puke in the Middle East Downstairs. Now there’s something that deserves a gold star.
Most important though is the very last line of the piece. It still resonates with me today, particularly as I wrestle with the sadness of losing what I’ve had with Ash, but truth be told, I don’t have as much fun as I use to. I’m not suggesting I need to drink like a fish again, but with the move to Chicago, I feel the need to make a serious effort to live, and enjoy life more than I have the last few years. While grad school will no doubt be as demanding as pursuing my undergrad was, I won’t be overloading courses every semester, and perhaps I can allow myself to get an A- in trade for a night out now and then. I use to have so little free time, and what little I had, I tried to always offer to Ash. Not a bad thing mind you, but a limiting thing, and I think she too was suffocated as a result.
In addition to retyping this piece (I only fixed minor typos and punctuation and did not change a word otherwise - there are a few notes in carats "<>" to explain some obscure shit), I also finished a draft of a short story that I might post here soon enough (I also still need to upload photos – yikes). A buddy of mine wrote to me a few days ago and suggested that I immerse myself in projects to keep the sadness at bay. I’ve always written and it’s often been cathartic. I think I found my project – make words…
********
Mindfuck (written October 28, 1992)
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls welcome to the latest installment of the workings of my mind. I sit here today on October 28th at 6am – sunrise. I have not slept tonight but this is nothing new for me; sleep is for the weak I say and perhaps it is the lack of dreams that I suffer that keeps me on a fine line between sanity and insanity. Today is the rapture, have you seen the flyers allover town proclaiming October 28th to be the rapture, the second coming of Christ? How about the ads in the papers? Even more bizarre was a conversation I overheard at the Middle East earlier tonight, where someone tried to explain – seriously – that it would probably be aliens beaming us up and not holy intervention. And I wonder, if I slept more and drank less, would I still over hear these conversations? Not to worry, neither habit will be altered in the near future.
I want to make love to you dear readers. To all of you. I want to share myself with each and every one of you but time will not allow it and some of you have better taste anyway. However, I’ve always felt the pen to be an instrument of foreplay and a damn obvious phallic symbol as well. So instead I shall take you to all the beautiful places I’ve been to in the last couple of weeks and hopefully you will share in the goodtime and mutual enjoyment and fulfillment will be had by reader and writer alike.
It all began two weeks ago when I was mindfucked in the front seat of a friend’s car. Some people have purely physical relationships, I have a purely cerebral one and this particular mindfuck was so intense that I woke to finally realize that the chains of obsession were holding me down and only when I found love of myself would I find the key to release this trap. So to Bunratty’s I flew to witness a stunning, breathtaking band from Chicago called Big Hat. Words and music swoop and dive and spun me in a surreal world of chimes and windy notes and a beautiful violin player with golden hair and a smile that would light the darkest pits of hell came to me and thanked me for dancing and told me stories of sea creatures and their teeth that she had in her possession. She flew away to Maine, angel that she was, and I partook of more ale and Orangutang'smusic and danced with Mikey Dee as I heard the O’boys scream that they’d be whatever I wanted them to be.
I received a letter a day or two following; a man told me he may vote for my dad after last month’s column. I smile and while driving home from FNX after spending a few pleasant moments with Duane and Juanita, I watch the clouds blanket the moon and for some reason feel a little more secure than usual that the sun will rise again in the morning.
I meet Jeff, my bass player, after he finishes work and we grab a few beers and play pinball at the Bow and Arrow pub in Harvard Square. Two girls approach us, Heather and Michelle - I remember their name because their faces were so alive. They wore “Seattle” shirts and baseball caps backwards and boots from LL Bean. They are from the University of new Hampshire here in town for the weekend. They play Jane’s Addiction on the Jukebox and dance. Jeff and I fail at pinball. It is not the beer breaking our concentration. Their ride is about to leave. They ask us if we are going to the “Head of the Charles” the next day. Jeff works - I won’t get up til at least four that afternoon. I watch faces clean with country air, not weathered by 2am closings like Jeff and myself, walk out through the door. An hour later I am at the Rat and discover Dave the doorman went to the same Catholic High School I went to. My reunion is coming – he talks about his, we drink and smoke and I wander back to my loft. As I take a seat and glance at the time, 1am, the phone rings. A friend, who I will be angry with in a few days asks if I still have half a keg left. I say yes. She comes over, we take it to Allston and are heroes at a party til the wee hours of the morning. I watch a video; cheap effects make a kitten’s face multiply and bleed away into a Technicolor puddle. I’m drunk and I laugh and hurt my arm carrying the keg into my loft at the end of the night.
The Middle East now, back to back, upstairs one night, downstairs the next. Gothic hell with Shadow Project from somewhere west and Holy Cow from Providence – scene gossip – who did what to whom – don’t tell him but so and so is here with so and so – hey wait, this ain’t Man Ray – great pot. Earlier at the Bradford Jeff and I with three beautiful women drinking Long island Iced Teas and White Russians – being frowned at by a huge barmaid. The World Series blares, Canada will win America’s favorite pastime and I score a 215 on a bowling arcade game in the back of the bar. The walls are so thin I can hear women peeing.
Next night Middle East underground – open bar sort of. Schmoozin’ with Mikey Dee and T-Maxx himself. Kay from Letters to Cleo in a translucent shirt talks about various pop-grunge-industrial cliques with me. It’s all music to me but she’s right, the cliques exist and they sick. I meet a guy from Tribe and we talk about growing up in the suburbs. He leaves and Kay and her beautiful shirt are also gone. All alone now – time to vomit – I throw up free beer, first puke in the new Middle East Club, a dubious honor. Stumble around the corner to Brookline Ave, fall down. Kris, my savior. Kris, she gives me gum and a cigarette and a ride home. I want to fall alseep in her hair, I owe her multiple orgasms. Best part – no hangover.
I’m in drag at a Halloween party and I like it and Garry my drummer spends most of the night puking out a window. I walk him around the block in the rain. His speech becomes coherent again and I take hi home and get angry at a friend whom I care about greatly. I’m an egotistical bastard and no one will ever be good enough for her in my eyes, which makes me, admittedly, an asshole in this friendship. I have spoke barely a word to her in five days since.
A Bentman bought me a shot of Jack last night at Bill’s bar and I heard a chain snap somewhere and I wondered if handcuffs should be sued instead of wedding rings.
Life offers so much that I will not duck out of the way of pain because I might miss catching something beautiful as well.
A couple of things strike me about this piece and may also bear some explanation, particularly for blog readers who are not familiar with the last 20 years of Boston rock history. I wrote this in October of 1992 (at least I think it was ’92). And one of my escapades described below is an evening at an open bar shmoozefest celebrating the opening of the new Middle East Downstairs club. Not only was this a nostalgic moment, to reread about the opening, but it also answered a burning question I’ve had for years. I’ve always known that I have only vomited as a result of excessive drinking on three occasions in my life. Problem is, I cold never remember the three occasions. I know that I puked on my 21st birthday. I know I puked on my wedding day (and what a day that was). But I have not been able to remember what the third occasion was, only that I have always been quite sure there were three times when drinking led me to pray to the porcelain altar. Well, after re-reading this piece, the question has been finally answered. I puked at the open bar, and, if I am to believe what friends told me that night, I was the first person to ever puke in the Middle East Downstairs. Now there’s something that deserves a gold star.
Most important though is the very last line of the piece. It still resonates with me today, particularly as I wrestle with the sadness of losing what I’ve had with Ash, but truth be told, I don’t have as much fun as I use to. I’m not suggesting I need to drink like a fish again, but with the move to Chicago, I feel the need to make a serious effort to live, and enjoy life more than I have the last few years. While grad school will no doubt be as demanding as pursuing my undergrad was, I won’t be overloading courses every semester, and perhaps I can allow myself to get an A- in trade for a night out now and then. I use to have so little free time, and what little I had, I tried to always offer to Ash. Not a bad thing mind you, but a limiting thing, and I think she too was suffocated as a result.
In addition to retyping this piece (I only fixed minor typos and punctuation and did not change a word otherwise - there are a few notes in carats "<>" to explain some obscure shit), I also finished a draft of a short story that I might post here soon enough (I also still need to upload photos – yikes). A buddy of mine wrote to me a few days ago and suggested that I immerse myself in projects to keep the sadness at bay. I’ve always written and it’s often been cathartic. I think I found my project – make words…
********
Mindfuck (written October 28, 1992)
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls welcome to the latest installment of the workings of my mind. I sit here today on October 28th at 6am – sunrise. I have not slept tonight but this is nothing new for me; sleep is for the weak I say and perhaps it is the lack of dreams that I suffer that keeps me on a fine line between sanity and insanity. Today is the rapture, have you seen the flyers allover town proclaiming October 28th to be the rapture, the second coming of Christ? How about the ads in the papers? Even more bizarre was a conversation I overheard at the Middle East earlier tonight, where someone tried to explain – seriously – that it would probably be aliens beaming us up and not holy intervention. And I wonder, if I slept more and drank less, would I still over hear these conversations? Not to worry, neither habit will be altered in the near future.
I want to make love to you dear readers. To all of you. I want to share myself with each and every one of you but time will not allow it and some of you have better taste anyway. However, I’ve always felt the pen to be an instrument of foreplay and a damn obvious phallic symbol as well. So instead I shall take you to all the beautiful places I’ve been to in the last couple of weeks and hopefully you will share in the goodtime and mutual enjoyment and fulfillment will be had by reader and writer alike.
It all began two weeks ago when I was mindfucked in the front seat of a friend’s car. Some people have purely physical relationships, I have a purely cerebral one and this particular mindfuck was so intense that I woke to finally realize that the chains of obsession were holding me down and only when I found love of myself would I find the key to release this trap. So to Bunratty’s I flew to witness a stunning, breathtaking band from Chicago called Big Hat. Words and music swoop and dive and spun me in a surreal world of chimes and windy notes and a beautiful violin player with golden hair and a smile that would light the darkest pits of hell came to me and thanked me for dancing and told me stories of sea creatures and their teeth that she had in her possession. She flew away to Maine, angel that she was, and I partook of more ale and Orangutang'smusic and danced with Mikey Dee
I received a letter a day or two following; a man told me he may vote for my dad after last month’s column. I smile and while driving home from FNX after spending a few pleasant moments with Duane and Juanita, I watch the clouds blanket the moon and for some reason feel a little more secure than usual that the sun will rise again in the morning.
I meet Jeff, my bass player, after he finishes work and we grab a few beers and play pinball at the Bow and Arrow pub in Harvard Square. Two girls approach us, Heather and Michelle - I remember their name because their faces were so alive. They wore “Seattle” shirts and baseball caps backwards and boots from LL Bean. They are from the University of new Hampshire here in town for the weekend. They play Jane’s Addiction on the Jukebox and dance. Jeff and I fail at pinball. It is not the beer breaking our concentration. Their ride is about to leave. They ask us if we are going to the “Head of the Charles” the next day. Jeff works - I won’t get up til at least four that afternoon. I watch faces clean with country air, not weathered by 2am closings like Jeff and myself, walk out through the door. An hour later I am at the Rat
The Middle East now, back to back, upstairs one night, downstairs the next. Gothic hell with Shadow Project from somewhere west and Holy Cow from Providence – scene gossip – who did what to whom – don’t tell him but so and so is here with so and so – hey wait, this ain’t Man Ray
Next night Middle East underground – open bar sort of. Schmoozin’ with Mikey Dee and T-Maxx himself. Kay from Letters to Cleo in a translucent shirt talks about various pop-grunge-industrial cliques with me. It’s all music to me but she’s right, the cliques exist and they sick. I meet a guy from Tribe and we talk about growing up in the suburbs. He leaves and Kay and her beautiful shirt are also gone. All alone now – time to vomit – I throw up free beer, first puke in the new Middle East Club, a dubious honor. Stumble around the corner to Brookline Ave, fall down. Kris, my savior. Kris, she gives me gum and a cigarette and a ride home. I want to fall alseep in her hair, I owe her multiple orgasms. Best part – no hangover.
I’m in drag at a Halloween party and I like it and Garry my drummer spends most of the night puking out a window. I walk him around the block in the rain. His speech becomes coherent again and I take hi home and get angry at a friend whom I care about greatly. I’m an egotistical bastard and no one will ever be good enough for her in my eyes, which makes me, admittedly, an asshole in this friendship. I have spoke barely a word to her in five days since.
A Bentman bought me a shot of Jack last night at Bill’s bar and I heard a chain snap somewhere and I wondered if handcuffs should be sued instead of wedding rings.
Life offers so much that I will not duck out of the way of pain because I might miss catching something beautiful as well.
7.24.2006
Dear Leader's Daily Thought
Check it out - is good for a few luaghs indeed: Dear Leader's Daily Thought
7.20.2006
So it looks like this is where I'll be living in Chicago...
I just got my apartment assignement in the mail. I'm also looking at a co-op where 15 grad studetns live together, but the only rooms they have open are either in the basement or rooms where you have to go through someone else's room to get to your room (or vice versa, someone has to go through your room to get to their room). And I think I may be past those days. I wish I could meet the folks who live there and check it out, but no go, I'm stayin' put in Boston for the rest of the summer.
Plus, the aprtment they have assigned looks pretty cool. It's #510, so if you click on the floorplan and look at the specs for room #10, that's what i got. An 11' x 16' living space and a 5 x 16' dining area. Looks pretty good - but no pix of the actual rooms and layout of the kitchen/bathroom. If I get any, I'll post.
And hey - how about this crazy war in the Middle East, huh?
Oy vey. So self-absorbed I am these days.
Plus, the aprtment they have assigned looks pretty cool. It's #510, so if you click on the floorplan and look at the specs for room #10, that's what i got. An 11' x 16' living space and a 5 x 16' dining area. Looks pretty good - but no pix of the actual rooms and layout of the kitchen/bathroom. If I get any, I'll post.
And hey - how about this crazy war in the Middle East, huh?
Oy vey. So self-absorbed I am these days.
7.18.2006
Italy did not go as planned...
For those of you following this here blog (and I know there are a few), I am saddened to say, that I had to cut my trip in Italy short. In a nutshell, I was too heartbroken and homesick to travel around Italy all by myself for two weeks, and just a few days after getting there I knew I wasn't in the right place to deal with the depression I have been feeling over the breakup with Ashley. The hotel I was at had no internet, no phones, no TV (except one in the lobby) and I had way too much time to just sit around and get sadder and sadder and lonelier. A very good friend of mine said that sometimes when you are sad, being alone in a beautiful place doesn't really help, and just amplifies the loneliness, and indeed that's what happened. Worse part is, I feel more depressed now than before I left. On the plus-side, I had an excellent time in NYC before I left for Europe with my old friend Nina, I did see Herculaneum (I still need to dump photos to some photo hosting website and link to it) which was amazing and I was in Italy when Italy won the World cup last Sunday night - the partying was amazing - even in a smaller city like Pompei. I didn't have my camera that night when I went out on the town, but I'll never forget the fireworks: not only did the city and the citizens of Pompei each have a variety of fireworks displays, but the whole valley at the foot of Vesuvius, each little village/town, seemed to compete with one another with fireworks displays. In the Pompei town square, cars, trailing Italian flags, ceaselessly paraded through throngs of people, horns blasting, music playing, people shouting, "Italia" or "Azurri!" ("Blue!" The name for the Italian National Soccer team). The partying went on for hours. And it was a family affair. Parents and their children milled through the square with couples, shirtless young men and groups of old men nodding in approval. From the balconies, old women, who were obviously not going to get any sleep due to the noise, looked down on the madness in the streets with more of an air of memory than resentment, as if they remembered a time decades back where they might have (or did) join in such festivities. The drunken jock mentality that seems to manifest itself at similar events in the US and the heavy police presence that also seems to come with such celebrations in the US (consider that when the Patriot won the Superbowl and the Red Sox beat the Yankees to advance to the World Series, the partying was so insane that on both occasions, someone died) seemed mostly absent at the celebration in Pompei. The police were very laid back, and parents felt completely comfortable taking even infants out into the madness. It was a remarkable night.
But, unfortunately, despite moments like these, insomnia, sadness and loneliness overtook me and by Wednesday, I decided that spending another week alone in a country where I knew no one and could barely speak the language, while having no way to just call a friend while I was feeling down, was too much to bear. I exchanged my ticket and flew home. I have been home a few days now, and I am feeling a bit better. I did finally see Ashley this past weekend so we could exchange some things we still had of each other's - it's the first time she and i have seen each other in months and that was tough - lots and lots of mixed emotions. And that's what I'm dealing with - so many emotions right now. My time in Boston is coming to an end, my relationship with Ashley will never be the same again, and I need to get my shit together to embark on the next part of this journey called life.
Hopefully in the next few days, I'll post a link to some photos of Herculaneum and Pompeii and start filling people in on things not pertaining to sadness.
But, unfortunately, despite moments like these, insomnia, sadness and loneliness overtook me and by Wednesday, I decided that spending another week alone in a country where I knew no one and could barely speak the language, while having no way to just call a friend while I was feeling down, was too much to bear. I exchanged my ticket and flew home. I have been home a few days now, and I am feeling a bit better. I did finally see Ashley this past weekend so we could exchange some things we still had of each other's - it's the first time she and i have seen each other in months and that was tough - lots and lots of mixed emotions. And that's what I'm dealing with - so many emotions right now. My time in Boston is coming to an end, my relationship with Ashley will never be the same again, and I need to get my shit together to embark on the next part of this journey called life.
Hopefully in the next few days, I'll post a link to some photos of Herculaneum and Pompeii and start filling people in on things not pertaining to sadness.
7.10.2006
Alive and almost well in Italy...
MADE I TO \pOMPEII / WAS THERE TODAYA ND TOOK LOADS OF PIX, UNFORTUNATELY, INTENET ACCESS IS A JOKE IN THIS AREA which baffles me cuz when I was in Europe a few years ago I ha dno troubol finding places to ge tonline. BUT AT THE MOMENT, i'M SUFFERING SERIOUS jetlag and insomnia and won-t likley post much til Saturday when \I get to Benevento where I know that hotel has internet access. So, pix and prose in a few days - promise. sorry about the typos but thsi \european keyboard is a pain in the ass. Oh yeah, whoever sucked at the sex test below posted anonymously - we can only help you if we know who you are.
7.04.2006
6.29.2006
Midsummer drunk driving down
And all I did for the solstice was have a cigarette while I watched the sunset late in the evening. Gots to move myself to Latvia: Midsummer drunk driving down
Do Not Resuscitate
So I just got a phone call from a very old friend. He sounded a little drunk. “Joe,” he says, “Are you home? I need a favor, like right now.”
Where the fuck am I going to be? I think to myself, I’m trapped in the suburbs with no car and the girl I thought I’d be spending the summer with is marrying a guy she met a few weeks ago. I’m home you motherfucker, and you’re drunk, and there’s a girl with you, why do you sound worried? “Yeah, I’m home,” I say.
“Are you near a computer?”
I’m always near a computer – I’m friggin’ addicted to my computer, I have nothing else to do these days except read about other people’s lives cuz I am sorely lacking one and jerk off to porn. “Yeah,” I say.
“I need you to look up the word ‘resuscitate’ and tell me how it’s spelled.”
“You want me to look up the word resuscitate?”
“Yeah, I just got ‘Do not resuscitate’ tattooed on me and I think the motherfuckers spelled it wrong.”
“You got … who did this?”
“A friend.”
Right, drunken friends who can’t spell should never be asked to tattoo anything, let alone words that have spelling bee candidate written all over them. “Hold on, I’m looking it up right now…” I was pretty sure I knew how to spell it, but since this seemed rather important I wanted to make sure I got it right.
‘Yeah, tell me how it’s spelled , I’m gonna write it down and then go look in the mirror and see what they did…”
“Ok, here you go .. r – e – s – u – s – c – i – t – a – t – e . Got it?”
“Ok, r – e – s – s –“
“No, bro, r-e-s u-s-c i-t-a-t-e.”
This time he repeated it back correctly. ‘Ok, now hold on, I’m gonna go check.” His voice grew distant but I could still here him, and some woman’s voice, who all along had been saying, “I can’t believe you don’t believe me.” But now she was getting quiet and I could only hear his voice, “I don’t know how to spell looking upside down!” Apparently neither could the tattooist: “Oh my fucking god.” His voice grew louder and I heard him pick the phone back up, “Oh my fucking god.”
“They misspelled it?”
“Oh my god. Yeah. Thanks buddy, I gotta’ go.”
I’m not sure if he heard me tell him I’d give him a ring tomorrow, and I have a hunch his solution to the problem was going to be to drink more of whatever he’d already been drinking. Hopefully, he’ll wait til he’s sober to get the problem fixed. It may be of little consolation, but he’s not alone: http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/26/fringe/tattoo.update/
Where the fuck am I going to be? I think to myself, I’m trapped in the suburbs with no car and the girl I thought I’d be spending the summer with is marrying a guy she met a few weeks ago. I’m home you motherfucker, and you’re drunk, and there’s a girl with you, why do you sound worried? “Yeah, I’m home,” I say.
“Are you near a computer?”
I’m always near a computer – I’m friggin’ addicted to my computer, I have nothing else to do these days except read about other people’s lives cuz I am sorely lacking one and jerk off to porn. “Yeah,” I say.
“I need you to look up the word ‘resuscitate’ and tell me how it’s spelled.”
“You want me to look up the word resuscitate?”
“Yeah, I just got ‘Do not resuscitate’ tattooed on me and I think the motherfuckers spelled it wrong.”
“You got … who did this?”
“A friend.”
Right, drunken friends who can’t spell should never be asked to tattoo anything, let alone words that have spelling bee candidate written all over them. “Hold on, I’m looking it up right now…” I was pretty sure I knew how to spell it, but since this seemed rather important I wanted to make sure I got it right.
‘Yeah, tell me how it’s spelled , I’m gonna write it down and then go look in the mirror and see what they did…”
“Ok, here you go .. r – e – s – u – s – c – i – t – a – t – e . Got it?”
“Ok, r – e – s – s –“
“No, bro, r-e-s u-s-c i-t-a-t-e.”
This time he repeated it back correctly. ‘Ok, now hold on, I’m gonna go check.” His voice grew distant but I could still here him, and some woman’s voice, who all along had been saying, “I can’t believe you don’t believe me.” But now she was getting quiet and I could only hear his voice, “I don’t know how to spell looking upside down!” Apparently neither could the tattooist: “Oh my fucking god.” His voice grew louder and I heard him pick the phone back up, “Oh my fucking god.”
“They misspelled it?”
“Oh my god. Yeah. Thanks buddy, I gotta’ go.”
I’m not sure if he heard me tell him I’d give him a ring tomorrow, and I have a hunch his solution to the problem was going to be to drink more of whatever he’d already been drinking. Hopefully, he’ll wait til he’s sober to get the problem fixed. It may be of little consolation, but he’s not alone: http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/26/fringe/tattoo.update/
6.27.2006
It might be time for another road trip
So I haven’t written in a while, as I suspected would happen. I’m wrestling with some serious depression, but if I watch any more episodes of Star Trek, LOST and Battlestar Galactica I’m gonna’ lose my mind. Ideally what I need to do is hit the road for awhile. Italy can’t come soon enough – although I’m sure I’ll think of her while I’m there – but at least we never traveled there together. It’s my place of sorts and if you gotta be lonely, I guess Italy is a pretty fantastic place to be melancholy. When I get back, I may have to take a ride across the country like i did a few years ago - and maybe make it to the west coast this time? In the meantime, it’s time to play some catch up on this here bloggy thing.
Back in early June I came home and graduated. Managed to pull off a 4.0 in my 2 years at U Mass Boston. Summa Cum Laude and distinction within the department.
To top it off, Senator Barak Obama was in the house and gave a speech that I can only describe as Kennedy-esque.
Someone has to tap him for VP in ’08. His message will resonate with working class America. And while some of the US may still not be ready for an African American a heartbeat away from the White House, if Obama gets a chance to debate at that level, he will win far more hearts and votes than the color of his skin might lose him. He has the intellect of Kerry, but the charisma of Kennedy, and a sincerity I haven’t seen since Carter. He is down to earth, and speaks with an understanding of working class hell and poverty that seems to escape most politicians. I’m excited to be moving to Chicago and have him as my Senator.
Before coming home, I had some fun times during my last couple of weeks in the Everglades. I came across my first rattlesnake. Can you spot the Rattlesnake?
Now I know the picture is a bit blurry and all, but trust me, even when I was standing some six or seven feet away from the damn thing, I could barely see it and lost track of it while staring right at it. The camouflage that these animals possess is mind bogllingly perfect for their surroundings and environment. Evolution in action – those snakes with the mutation for the best pattern survive the most and have the most baby snakes likely to also carry the trait. Coincidentally, I’m reading a book called Nature's Numbers that talks about why certain patterns (definable by mathematical formulas) appear in nature so often. For instance, snake pigmentation and the growth pattern of bushes and weeds and such – how is it that camouflage evolves? Professor Ian Stewart describes how patterns rise out of breakdowns in symmetry, and that the breakdowns happen with some predictability. When wind blows across the desert, the sand does not settle uniformly, but in patterns related to windspeed, angle of winds and a myriad of other factors (including the fat that sands of grain are not perfectly round and collide with each other, knocking each other in every direction, but within a confines and limited area dictated byt the strength of the wind). Similarly, the chemical game that goes on in creating an animal’s pigment is also beset my a myriad of factors that often prevent a uniform distribution of pigment throughout an animals skin. Like the asymmetrical patterns of sand dunes that arise in the desert, patterns can arise in pigment distribution. Those conditions that allow for a pigment distribution that results in better camouflage are at least in part often controlled by genes, and those animals with the better camouflage survive far more often and pass on the genes for those traits that result in the camouflage.
Enough evolutionary Biology for now, so here’s the rattlesnake:
Back in early June I came home and graduated. Managed to pull off a 4.0 in my 2 years at U Mass Boston. Summa Cum Laude and distinction within the department.
To top it off, Senator Barak Obama was in the house and gave a speech that I can only describe as Kennedy-esque.
Someone has to tap him for VP in ’08. His message will resonate with working class America. And while some of the US may still not be ready for an African American a heartbeat away from the White House, if Obama gets a chance to debate at that level, he will win far more hearts and votes than the color of his skin might lose him. He has the intellect of Kerry, but the charisma of Kennedy, and a sincerity I haven’t seen since Carter. He is down to earth, and speaks with an understanding of working class hell and poverty that seems to escape most politicians. I’m excited to be moving to Chicago and have him as my Senator.
Before coming home, I had some fun times during my last couple of weeks in the Everglades. I came across my first rattlesnake. Can you spot the Rattlesnake?
Now I know the picture is a bit blurry and all, but trust me, even when I was standing some six or seven feet away from the damn thing, I could barely see it and lost track of it while staring right at it. The camouflage that these animals possess is mind bogllingly perfect for their surroundings and environment. Evolution in action – those snakes with the mutation for the best pattern survive the most and have the most baby snakes likely to also carry the trait. Coincidentally, I’m reading a book called Nature's Numbers that talks about why certain patterns (definable by mathematical formulas) appear in nature so often. For instance, snake pigmentation and the growth pattern of bushes and weeds and such – how is it that camouflage evolves? Professor Ian Stewart describes how patterns rise out of breakdowns in symmetry, and that the breakdowns happen with some predictability. When wind blows across the desert, the sand does not settle uniformly, but in patterns related to windspeed, angle of winds and a myriad of other factors (including the fat that sands of grain are not perfectly round and collide with each other, knocking each other in every direction, but within a confines and limited area dictated byt the strength of the wind). Similarly, the chemical game that goes on in creating an animal’s pigment is also beset my a myriad of factors that often prevent a uniform distribution of pigment throughout an animals skin. Like the asymmetrical patterns of sand dunes that arise in the desert, patterns can arise in pigment distribution. Those conditions that allow for a pigment distribution that results in better camouflage are at least in part often controlled by genes, and those animals with the better camouflage survive far more often and pass on the genes for those traits that result in the camouflage.
Enough evolutionary Biology for now, so here’s the rattlesnake:
6.20.2006
I've picked a hell of a school to go to after a nasty breakup:
Are people at the University of Chicago actually as ugly and unsociable as we think?
and someone actually did a study to find out and, well, yes...
collegecuteness.com
Thankfully, I'll be living in the 3rd largest city in the country. So, I just have to remind myself every so often to leave campus. However, I've been told that's basically not an option for the first six months of so.
One grad student told me to be prepared for 700 pages of reading in some weeks.
So what's a few more months of celibacy. It's not like I'm anything but damaged goods these days. Yes, i am a broken toy. I am fragile and should not be played with. Does anyone have any duct tape.
Just keep on smokin'...
and someone actually did a study to find out and, well, yes...
collegecuteness.com
Thankfully, I'll be living in the 3rd largest city in the country. So, I just have to remind myself every so often to leave campus. However, I've been told that's basically not an option for the first six months of so.
One grad student told me to be prepared for 700 pages of reading in some weeks.
So what's a few more months of celibacy. It's not like I'm anything but damaged goods these days. Yes, i am a broken toy. I am fragile and should not be played with. Does anyone have any duct tape.
Just keep on smokin'...
6.16.2006
6.14.2006
There is little joy in my life at this moment
Ashley, the person I have cared about most in my life, told me today that she plans on marrying the man she met six weeks ago.
If I don't post here for awhile, well, I'm feelin' a bit wrecked these days.
So much I planned on posting here about Florida, and Italy asnd such, but I'm lacking the motivation. Who knows though, eventually I'll probably get manic and then we'll see what I come up with.
Somewhere, I am angry, but the sadness and loss I feel is overwhelming.
And to think, I hoped to come home and maybe patch things up.
Add foolish to the things overwhelming anger.
If I don't post here for awhile, well, I'm feelin' a bit wrecked these days.
So much I planned on posting here about Florida, and Italy asnd such, but I'm lacking the motivation. Who knows though, eventually I'll probably get manic and then we'll see what I come up with.
Somewhere, I am angry, but the sadness and loss I feel is overwhelming.
And to think, I hoped to come home and maybe patch things up.
Add foolish to the things overwhelming anger.
6.08.2006
cant sleep cant sleep cant sleep cant sleep
I have been: a bike courier, a writing major, an ice cream scooper,
proprietor of an underground bar/snack shack, a musician, an activist,
an events producer, a Master of Ceremonies in front of 100,000
stoners, a toker, a smoker, a magazine publisher, a journalist, a
small businessman, an editor, an anthropology major, an organic
farmer, a construction worker, and soon I will be a PhD student. I
have been ecstatic and brokenhearted, and at the moment I am writing
this I am both. I am healthier now than I was 10 years ago. I can be
stubborn or passionate depending on whether or not you agree with my
position. I have been a hero and a dissapointment. I have had hair of
every color of the rainbow, dreads and a mohawk. Now my skull is
simply adorned wih a tattoo of "Aum". I have attended pagan rituals,
Catholic Masses and played drums in a circle with West African
Masters. I have played guitar poorly onstage, and bass well on one or
two occasions. I have been beat up after a gig, and graduated summa
cum laude. I am confused.
proprietor of an underground bar/snack shack, a musician, an activist,
an events producer, a Master of Ceremonies in front of 100,000
stoners, a toker, a smoker, a magazine publisher, a journalist, a
small businessman, an editor, an anthropology major, an organic
farmer, a construction worker, and soon I will be a PhD student. I
have been ecstatic and brokenhearted, and at the moment I am writing
this I am both. I am healthier now than I was 10 years ago. I can be
stubborn or passionate depending on whether or not you agree with my
position. I have been a hero and a dissapointment. I have had hair of
every color of the rainbow, dreads and a mohawk. Now my skull is
simply adorned wih a tattoo of "Aum". I have attended pagan rituals,
Catholic Masses and played drums in a circle with West African
Masters. I have played guitar poorly onstage, and bass well on one or
two occasions. I have been beat up after a gig, and graduated summa
cum laude. I am confused.
6.04.2006
5.29.2006
Scientific American: Large Study Finds No Link between Marijuana and Lung Cancer
I had read that a British study came to a similar conclusion but haven't been able to find a reference to that study in years so it was goo to read this today. Scientific American: Large Study Finds No Link between Marijuana and Lung Cancer
In defense of assasination
I'm glad Bob said it...(this page may chacne on June 1 '06 and if it doesn't have a brief passage about assassinating world leaders than read the text below - but I recommend checing out the site anyway...) Robert Anton Wilson Home Page
Just as a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, even a Christian Fundamentalist gets a savvy notion every now and then. I think rev. Robertson had a good idea when he suggested replacing war with assassination in one case, on economic grounds. He merely didn’t carry the concept far enough.
I suggest that we should abolish war utterly and replace it entirely with selective assassination. Think about the savings this would mean, in this age when even our “little” wars cost billions of dollars a year, and rememer the cogent observation of the late Senator Dirkson: “A billion here, a billion there – pretty soon you’re talking about REAL Money.” We’ve already gotten our national debt so high that our posterity “unto the seventh generation” will never pay it off; do we really need to enslave the whole future to the international bankers?
On the moral side, killing a few dozen foreigners a year instead of a few hundred thousand should seem less messy, to say the least of it, especially when you consider the collatarel damage to our own side. How much blood and death do we need?
Reversing a sentimental error of the ‘60s, the new anti-war slogan should be MAKE ASSASSINATIONS, NOT WARS.
And, best of all, if this idea catches on internationally we can expect at least 50 contracts on George Bush the first week.
Just as a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, even a Christian Fundamentalist gets a savvy notion every now and then. I think rev. Robertson had a good idea when he suggested replacing war with assassination in one case, on economic grounds. He merely didn’t carry the concept far enough.
I suggest that we should abolish war utterly and replace it entirely with selective assassination. Think about the savings this would mean, in this age when even our “little” wars cost billions of dollars a year, and rememer the cogent observation of the late Senator Dirkson: “A billion here, a billion there – pretty soon you’re talking about REAL Money.” We’ve already gotten our national debt so high that our posterity “unto the seventh generation” will never pay it off; do we really need to enslave the whole future to the international bankers?
On the moral side, killing a few dozen foreigners a year instead of a few hundred thousand should seem less messy, to say the least of it, especially when you consider the collatarel damage to our own side. How much blood and death do we need?
Reversing a sentimental error of the ‘60s, the new anti-war slogan should be MAKE ASSASSINATIONS, NOT WARS.
And, best of all, if this idea catches on internationally we can expect at least 50 contracts on George Bush the first week.
5.28.2006
A surprisingly good movie...
I wrote the grafs below in a letter to a friend and thought it worth repeating. Something weird is going on with me this weekend. It must be because I've had such a shitty Memorial Day weekend; a friend came to visit but she was sick as a dog, left early, and now I'm sitting around the golf course for the rest of the weekend with, no car, othing to do, my thumb up my ass and the one-hitter in my teeth. I keep thinking about war and death. The post below this one, this post, the fact that I've also just rented Lord of War
to watch tonight. I have pretty pix of a sunset and finally got those canoe pix I mentioend earlier off my phone and onto my laptop. I'll post those later and leave this theme of war behind...
I watched Jarheadas a nod to Memorial Day weekend. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Not at all what I expected. I felt it was neither preachy or glorifying, neither pro or anti war or military. I saw it as a darkly humorous portrayal of the training of marines and the many things, some incredibly mundane, some terribly sad, that they are asked to do - as well as some insight on the many reasons as to why kids join the marines (my favorite, "I got lost on my way to college sir!"). There was a moment where afeter months of waiting in the Saudi Desert, they finally are deployed for action against Iraq, and I could feel the excitement and relief they must have felt - and the very fact that a film could, even momentarily, make me feel excited about going to kill, was impressive. I think the film accomplishes to some degree providing some ability for those who have not experienced the reality of war, some empathy for those who have. Not approval, but empathy, sorta', if not for the grace of god, there go I, kinda' shit.
And I thought it was just well directed and written too.
And hey, since they raised the enlistment age to 37 <actually, I just found out, it's been raised to 39> recently, maybe I'll watch this movie a few more times and join up before my birthday in August. Then my resume could read:
Journalist
Publisher
Editor
Advertising
Middle Management
Organic Farmer
Archaeologist
Bike Courier
Rock Musician
Event Producer
Cook (I told you I ran my own underground bar and one man restaurant right?) Activist
Baby sitter
Contractor (framing/painitng/sheet rock)
Soldier
Nah, I'd rather add "professor" instead of soldier. Everyone should read Edward M. Said's Culture & Imperialism, then, perhaps there'd be less war. And books are cheaper than bullets, bombs and aircraft carriers last I checked.
Wow, this is odd, I'm actually thinking about war on Memorial Day - I wonder how many people do? And I'm apparently stoned enough to continue writing down all my thoughts about it while convincing myself you give a shit.
to watch tonight. I have pretty pix of a sunset and finally got those canoe pix I mentioend earlier off my phone and onto my laptop. I'll post those later and leave this theme of war behind...I watched Jarhead
as a nod to Memorial Day weekend. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Not at all what I expected. I felt it was neither preachy or glorifying, neither pro or anti war or military. I saw it as a darkly humorous portrayal of the training of marines and the many things, some incredibly mundane, some terribly sad, that they are asked to do - as well as some insight on the many reasons as to why kids join the marines (my favorite, "I got lost on my way to college sir!"). There was a moment where afeter months of waiting in the Saudi Desert, they finally are deployed for action against Iraq, and I could feel the excitement and relief they must have felt - and the very fact that a film could, even momentarily, make me feel excited about going to kill, was impressive. I think the film accomplishes to some degree providing some ability for those who have not experienced the reality of war, some empathy for those who have. Not approval, but empathy, sorta', if not for the grace of god, there go I, kinda' shit.And I thought it was just well directed and written too.
And hey, since they raised the enlistment age to 37 <actually, I just found out, it's been raised to 39> recently, maybe I'll watch this movie a few more times and join up before my birthday in August. Then my resume could read:
Journalist
Publisher
Editor
Advertising
Middle Management
Organic Farmer
Archaeologist
Bike Courier
Rock Musician
Event Producer
Cook (I told you I ran my own underground bar and one man restaurant right?) Activist
Baby sitter
Contractor (framing/painitng/sheet rock)
Soldier
Nah, I'd rather add "professor" instead of soldier. Everyone should read Edward M. Said's Culture & Imperialism
, then, perhaps there'd be less war. And books are cheaper than bullets, bombs and aircraft carriers last I checked.Wow, this is odd, I'm actually thinking about war on Memorial Day - I wonder how many people do? And I'm apparently stoned enough to continue writing down all my thoughts about it while convincing myself you give a shit.
Top veteran official joins pentacle debate - Yahoo! News
Oddly enough, I thought this debate had already been settled and that the pentacle had been added to the list of approved religious symbols for vets. But what confuses me is that there is an "approval" at all. I would think that if a vet wanted a symbol of a nose being picked, then, hey, s/he died for his/her country, give a soldier what s/he wants in death, dammit. Gotta' admit, I feel more protected when wearing a pentacle, and I stopped wearing one just before I came down here (belt buckle broke) and I ya’ know, things have been very tough since then. I concede that wearing such icons may simply offer a placebo effect, a psychological boost, a Samson effect, instilling confidence and motivation which can lead to healthier, better decisions than if one is unsure, insecure, what have you. But whether supernatural, or psychological, that particular symbol does bring me comfort and I think I will endeavor to wear one regularly again.
Top veteran official joins pentacle debate - Yahoo! News
Top veteran official joins pentacle debate - Yahoo! News
5.25.2006
The End Is Near
As I feared, depression and chaos have made it difficult to maintain this blog recently, but, I think I'm getting a handle on things, particularly because it's getting very close to the end of this job. As beautiful as the Everglades have been, as swank as the pad here has been, and as enriching as the work experience has been, I’m tired. The emotional toll of being quasi-homeless and on the road for some six months has been much heavier than expected. It’s not just the break-up, which has left me heartbroken no doubt, but there’s also a pervasive loneliness that surrounds work on the road. No doubt there are good people around me on this crew, but to be going through such emotionally upending times, the breakup, the upcoming move to Chicago, the trip to Italy .. and to be alone, to have no close friend to grab a drink with, to not be able to stop by my folks, to not even have Ashley to call now – all this has become exhausting.
The end is near and I am grateful for it.
I had planned on posting a few pictures of a rattler we saw in the field a few days ago, and, a possible several hundred year old canoe. But once again Verizon is fucking me in regards to getting pix off my phone and onto my laptop. As soon as I get this fixed, prob sometime over the holiday weekend, I will post – the canoe is intriguing and I’ll write more about that and the sometimes controversial aspects of interpretation within archaeology when the pix are freed from the phone
I have a few more posts/rants in mind too (like, why I think Artifical Intelligence won’t become a reality until digital copying becomes less perfect). So, I think that over the next week or so I’ll be blogging more regularly.
Just in case anyone actually reads this.
The end is near and I am grateful for it.
I had planned on posting a few pictures of a rattler we saw in the field a few days ago, and, a possible several hundred year old canoe. But once again Verizon is fucking me in regards to getting pix off my phone and onto my laptop. As soon as I get this fixed, prob sometime over the holiday weekend, I will post – the canoe is intriguing and I’ll write more about that and the sometimes controversial aspects of interpretation within archaeology when the pix are freed from the phone
I have a few more posts/rants in mind too (like, why I think Artifical Intelligence won’t become a reality until digital copying becomes less perfect). So, I think that over the next week or so I’ll be blogging more regularly.
Just in case anyone actually reads this.
5.17.2006
Google "immigration debate"
And you'll come up with some very interesting websites. I'm too busy at the moment to comment much on this but I am stunned as to how opposed so many people are to immigration, veen among the anthropologists I work with - very strange. I plan on wiritng more on this alter, as well as adding links to the dioatibe on the spiritual gene pool below. I should have time this weekend to do all this. No car, no girlfriend, nothing to do except hang out on the golf course.
5.13.2006
The forest is beginning to turn green again indeed!
I took some really nice high-res photos of the forest I'm working in turning greener by the day, but Verizon disables the ability for its customers to upload some high res images from Motorola phones - this is the source of a lot of customer outrage, and I'm looking at fixes so that I can show you all some of these pix.
The Spiritual Gene Pool Or Why I’m None Too Happy With Organized Religion And Christianity In Particular.
Note: The following post will be revised serval times over the next day or two. I am still leanring how to fromat within blogspot and I have many links I want to add ot this page but have not yet had the time to include:
Spirituality, a belief in the afterlife, a cosmology of the universe’s creation and what happens after our personal demise, dreamworlds, heaven, gods, goddesses and the religions that describe their deeds and expectations of their created. There’s nary a culture in history or prehistory that we are aware of that did not have a supernatural belief system.
Sure there have been cultures that did not have a word for “god” or concept of a single all powerful creator. A paper here discusses a Mexican indigenous culture, the Huichol, that has no word for God. But even these cultures possessed a concept of the supernatural, in this case a nature based pantheon of deities and ritualistic sacrifice cult.
Obviously atheistic beliefs have existed in small minorities of populations, usually only in those cultures that have developed and/or have access to science and philosophy. But such belief systems are not inherently, in my opinion, non-spiritual. Both atheists and those of far more theistic beliefs are of the same ilk in many ways; the same questions burn in all of us, and even among atheists there are disagreements as to the best answers to these most base of questions regarding the origin of the universe and life, or the nature of consciousness. And this cosmological debate, whether atheists amongst themselves, or between any of the spiritual practices throughout history, provides the diverse characteristics of what I have oft considered to be a “Spiritual Gene Pool.”
I have come to believe that a spiritual gene pool works like a biological gene pool. In other words, increased diversity usually results in a healthier population.
Just as in an animal population a diversity of traits means more likelihood of survival in a changing environment (if you have no hairy elephants, then, when an ice age comes, you have no elephants at all, whereas some hairy and some hairless mean a greater chance for at least part of a species to survive regardless of the environment), I’ve come to believe that a diversity of spiritual practices allows the human population to better adapt to the rapidly changing moral issues that exist among us. With this in mind, I suggest that organized religions dilute the spiritual gene pool and leave us less and less adaptable to moral challenges in an ever more complex world with challenges and decisions that effect not only the individual but vast societies and across many cultures. Economic globalization, the proliferation of nuclear power, gender and sexual orientation issues, etc. all offer enormous shifts and complexity to the “moral environment” and the fact that a greater and greater percentage of the human population participate in fewer and fewer types of religions leaves us less adaptable to these ever increasing changes.
In particular the spread of Christianity, particularly from the old world to the new world over the last 500 years, as well as into Africa, has done more to dilute the spiritual gene pool than any other turn of events in recorded history. Consider that the Romans, as they expanded their empire over centuries, more often than not, allowed the cultures they conquered to continue practicing their religions. This lack of cosmological hegemony proved both useful in preventing constant rebellion by conquered peoples, as well as allowing a bidirectional influence of spiritual and cultural practiced. I think this may have allowed both the dominator, the Romans, and the dominated to continually evolve, rather than one set of spiritual genes being eliminated, and replaced with the dominators genes only. In effect, the Roman method of allowing local spiritual practices to perpetuate themselves and coexist with other practices (occasionally “interbreeding” as well) resulted in a more diverse, not less diverse spiritual gene pool. While I don’t claim, through this example, that as a result, Roman culture was inherently more moral than other cultures (for how can one measure “more” or “less” moral if one necessarily as a social scientist assumes a relative position on morality) it does beg the question, could this particular factor of Roman conquest been a major factor of at least Rome’s political success? In other words, were the Romans successful in dominating economically and militarily, so much of the world, at least in part, because for such a long time they created, knowingly or not, an extremely adaptable and diverse society that could face various crises better than homegenous cultures could?
I propose that a diversity of spiritual practices allows for a more adaptable society than a spiritually homogenous population does, and, by extension, that today’s world has a far less diverse collection of spiritual practices combined with a far more complex moral environment and as a result, we are less capable of solving these problems, that is, adapting to the new landscape.
In proposing such a hypothesis, I can think of at least a couple questions that I need to answer or at least address before even suggesting that the hypothesis could be tested through experimentation.
Spirituality, a belief in the afterlife, a cosmology of the universe’s creation and what happens after our personal demise, dreamworlds, heaven, gods, goddesses and the religions that describe their deeds and expectations of their created. There’s nary a culture in history or prehistory that we are aware of that did not have a supernatural belief system.
Sure there have been cultures that did not have a word for “god” or concept of a single all powerful creator. A paper here discusses a Mexican indigenous culture, the Huichol, that has no word for God. But even these cultures possessed a concept of the supernatural, in this case a nature based pantheon of deities and ritualistic sacrifice cult.
Obviously atheistic beliefs have existed in small minorities of populations, usually only in those cultures that have developed and/or have access to science and philosophy. But such belief systems are not inherently, in my opinion, non-spiritual. Both atheists and those of far more theistic beliefs are of the same ilk in many ways; the same questions burn in all of us, and even among atheists there are disagreements as to the best answers to these most base of questions regarding the origin of the universe and life, or the nature of consciousness. And this cosmological debate, whether atheists amongst themselves, or between any of the spiritual practices throughout history, provides the diverse characteristics of what I have oft considered to be a “Spiritual Gene Pool.”
I have come to believe that a spiritual gene pool works like a biological gene pool. In other words, increased diversity usually results in a healthier population.
Just as in an animal population a diversity of traits means more likelihood of survival in a changing environment (if you have no hairy elephants, then, when an ice age comes, you have no elephants at all, whereas some hairy and some hairless mean a greater chance for at least part of a species to survive regardless of the environment), I’ve come to believe that a diversity of spiritual practices allows the human population to better adapt to the rapidly changing moral issues that exist among us. With this in mind, I suggest that organized religions dilute the spiritual gene pool and leave us less and less adaptable to moral challenges in an ever more complex world with challenges and decisions that effect not only the individual but vast societies and across many cultures. Economic globalization, the proliferation of nuclear power, gender and sexual orientation issues, etc. all offer enormous shifts and complexity to the “moral environment” and the fact that a greater and greater percentage of the human population participate in fewer and fewer types of religions leaves us less adaptable to these ever increasing changes.
In particular the spread of Christianity, particularly from the old world to the new world over the last 500 years, as well as into Africa, has done more to dilute the spiritual gene pool than any other turn of events in recorded history. Consider that the Romans, as they expanded their empire over centuries, more often than not, allowed the cultures they conquered to continue practicing their religions. This lack of cosmological hegemony proved both useful in preventing constant rebellion by conquered peoples, as well as allowing a bidirectional influence of spiritual and cultural practiced. I think this may have allowed both the dominator, the Romans, and the dominated to continually evolve, rather than one set of spiritual genes being eliminated, and replaced with the dominators genes only. In effect, the Roman method of allowing local spiritual practices to perpetuate themselves and coexist with other practices (occasionally “interbreeding” as well) resulted in a more diverse, not less diverse spiritual gene pool. While I don’t claim, through this example, that as a result, Roman culture was inherently more moral than other cultures (for how can one measure “more” or “less” moral if one necessarily as a social scientist assumes a relative position on morality) it does beg the question, could this particular factor of Roman conquest been a major factor of at least Rome’s political success? In other words, were the Romans successful in dominating economically and militarily, so much of the world, at least in part, because for such a long time they created, knowingly or not, an extremely adaptable and diverse society that could face various crises better than homegenous cultures could?
I propose that a diversity of spiritual practices allows for a more adaptable society than a spiritually homogenous population does, and, by extension, that today’s world has a far less diverse collection of spiritual practices combined with a far more complex moral environment and as a result, we are less capable of solving these problems, that is, adapting to the new landscape.
In proposing such a hypothesis, I can think of at least a couple questions that I need to answer or at least address before even suggesting that the hypothesis could be tested through experimentation.
- Couldn’t the spread of Christianity be considered a prime example of survival of the fittest? That is, if Christianity weren’t best adapted, how could it possibly come to dominate?
a. One possible conclusion: My theory is bunk, and spiritual practices are not Darwinian and do not come to dominate a population according to similar laws as survival of the fittest.
b. The Spread of Christianity is more akin to the spread of Dwarfism in a small population. In other words, Dogmatic Monotheism is some sort of recessive gene that usually only pops up once in a while but somehow, due to a set of specific circumstances became widespread in the current population. In Biological evolution, such a set of circumstances involves a small isolated population with a high number of fertile members possessing the recessive gene and then interbreeding resulting in a predominance of the recessive gene over time. This is difficult to apply conceptually to the whole population of the planet, unless we abandon the notion that humans are alone in the universe and instead we look at this planet as a small island in the vast population of the universe. Then indeed, a rapidly spreading but potentially maladaptable spiritual trait such a Dogmatic Monotheism centered around a specific deity could be considered a type of allopatric speciation, and over time a genetic drift of sorts is going to lead us to an extremely homogenous spiritual evolution
i. Of course the problem with such a hypothesis is that it is untestable in that we have no alien population to compare ourselves against, or no opportunity to view, say, one part of the population that has become homogenous spiritually and another part which is far more diverse and witness how they adapt to similar moral challenges.
ii. In the interest of playing Devil’s Advocate, it might be interesting to try to find a parallel. Maybe we could look at political schemes within democracies. For instance, the two-party system of the US, is nearly homogenous, with only two dominating political philosophies (whose differences are, arguably, minimal and abrely diverse, more akin to “what color of hair” rather than hairy vs. hairless) vs. the multi-party (diverse) parliaments of Europe which have to build consensuses between many often contradicting philosophies on various social issues in order to reach a majority decision. In Europe, the diversity and requisite consensus building results in very different approaches between the Europe and US on issues of taxation, the governing of property and natural resources and the funding of higher education and health care. - Is there really any way to test such a hypothesis? Can we, though a multidisciplinary approach, using the four fields of anthropology (archaeology, socio-cultural, linguistic and physical), history, philosophy, theology, and environmental and geological sciences, look at the different ways that different societies deal with similar problems and in any way define what a “moral” crises or conflict really is as well as hierarchically evaluate the success of various cultures facing such conflicts while determining to what affect if any, spiritual practices, and the diversity of them amongst various populations, played a role in these populations adapting to the conflicts?
a. Are there examples throughout history of say widespread environmental shifts affecting a wide number of societies, where we can both accurately measure the success how well various cultures survived the shift as well as have access to information on the types of spiritual practices that existed among the various population affected?
Ultimately, what I wonder, is, if Christianity had not wiped out the many smaller, localized, clan based, and indigenous spiritual practices of pagan Europe, North and South American cosmologies, African pantheons, etc. what might the world look like today? For example:
- What might the discourse on homosexuality look like? Many Native American tribes had a culturally accepted and oft revered third gender status for homosexuals. And the notion that “traditional” marriage exists is all but absurd given the near infinite ways people have “coupled” over the millennia and of the vast varied versions of culturally sanctioned mating – many of these traditions now all but lost.
- Welfare and childcare: How many different clan based methods of child rearing have been all but rejected in the mainstream and legal landscapes of the Western modern world, while at the same time, particularly in poor inner city environments, extended clans, similar in many ways to egalitarian and indigenous social structures rarely found elsewhere in the first world today (cousins and brothers and aunts and uncles who are not always blood related but fulfill similar roles and are accepted as such) often evolve due to the necessity of mutual cooperation in order to face economic hardships as well as insure and improve the survival and rearing of children.
This question of a Spiritual Gene Pool is one that has dogged me for several years, and this essay offers a glimpse into the questions that I have developed, and more specifically, a preliminary outline on how one might go about answering some of these questions. While it will not be at the center of either my MA or PhD papers while I’m at Chicago, I have a hunch that the research questions I do develop there (more on those at a later date), will, in some part, be influenced by these questions and conversely my research at Chicago, may offer me some insight on how to better explore these questions. Perhaps someday, when grey(er) and semi-retired, I may come back to these questions as an eccentric professor and write a book or three bout these things, to be honest, the aforementioned pirate story is not just a story of a broken heart but of a man with this same burning question, a man, who takes his wealth and skills as a navigator and confronts the slave trade, the inquisition, and colonialism, for fear that the Church and Europe in the 16th century are wiping out people, cultures and traditions that are both irreplaceable and necessary for the ongoing health of humanity.
Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that I’m bored out of my mind on weekends down here at the golf course.
5.10.2006
More news on the rain or lack thereof and the fires...
Saw this on CNN last night and thought it was a far more up to date description of just how dry things are here in Florida (but, like I said, the fountains are still on here and the golf course looks beautiful).
5.09.2006
It finally rained today...and that made me think of revolution.
I've been working here for over two months now, here in Naples FL, and until today there has been rain on only 3 or 4 occasions, and all of it quite minimal. This is apparently one of the driest springs on record. As a result, there have been endless forest fires, including in the Picayune Strand Forest where I am working. Today I worked in an area that had burned only a few weeks ago. When the wind blew, it still smelled like a barbecue.
It looks like an alien landscape. Despite their trunks being burned severely – some of them so much that they are bound to blow over during hurricane season – the trees are all still alive, and sprouting green leaves. The underbrush was mostly burned away, and already new sprouts are coming up. And, as one walks through this burned forest, there are green oases, small wetlands and ponds that didn’t burn during the fire.
Some of these fires have been so large and damaging that they have made the national news, and in a way I feel bad. The whole crew down here wants the rain to hold off because A) we can't work on rain days B) with the rain comes the flooding of the forest we work in potentially ending our work sooner than we hope and C) No rain = no mosquitoes and, conversely, rain = mosquitoes. And, according to the guys on this year's crew who worked last year, we've all been lucky bastards that there hasn't been any bugs just yet. Apparently, by this time last year, one had to work wearing a mosquito net and all day long all one ever heard was the hum of bugs. Lunch was taken in the trucks to get out of the bugs for 30 minutes a day. So, while I am glad that the rain has held off, for all the above reasons, the drought down here was starting to get a little unnerving and I always am curious as to what the power of intenstion can create. All the reading I've done about "magic" always warns that before you ask the universe for anythng, consdier the repercussions. Now I'm not trying to say that my crew's wishes has led to Florida's drought, only that I've been forced to refelct on a very simple lesson about the environment that needs to be repeated: what's good for a few humans, is not always good for nature as a whole.
The local NPR station ran an interview today with folks from the state water department and they touched on several of interesting points about how much water is consumed just watering lawns – millions of gallons a day. There have been a number of lawn watering bans of various types in SW Florida, but no matter how many brown dry lawns one might see in front of houses, the golf courses are all still immaculate. The swimming pools here where I am living is always full, and the grass is always green around here, It’s a little unnerving. I don’t know if these types of businesses pay a special surcharges, tax, what have you for the right to use so much water to service so few people, but it reeks the type of short-sighted thinking that gives me grave concern about the future of the human race.
All of this water talk around here along with catching an HBO documentary on the environment last night, got me to thinking about two things regarding water shortages. The first is how much water it takes to produce meat. Several sources differ on just how much water it takes to raise cattle, ranging from 4000 to 12000 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef. The number varies between whether you count just the water used by the steer for drinking (lower end) or also include all the water it takes a to produce all the grain that is also fed to the animal (high end). If there was one single argument to reduce meat consumption, I think the environmental one is the strongest.
But this also made me think of the movie Life and Debt (Netflix users can rent it). This documentary takes a scathing look at how the US, IMF and World Bank have encouraged Caribbean islands, in this film, Jamaica, to squander away natural resources, prime land, and the very labor of it’s people for short term gains that ultimately leak most of the profit out of the island. Hotel developers have been handed over prime coastal lands to develop resorts that hire locals for low wages while consuming massive amounts of natural resources. Much fo the land handed over had been prime fishing and living space for indigenous people. Furthermore, with fewer people now working farms and many people converted to a dollar economy from low wages supplied by the tourism industries, agriculture has all but stopped on the island and almost all the foods available to locals are foreign goods. I can’t do the movie justice, but water is big part of the problem. These islands have limited access to clean water being tropical islands and all, and the tourism industry both consumes massive amounts of water and produces far more waste than the island’s ecosystem can handle. I have to admit, before watching this movie I was never quite clear on what Bob Marley was singing about, after seeing this film, I can’t help but see him as a passionate revolutionary poet.
Check out this flick.
It looks like an alien landscape. Despite their trunks being burned severely – some of them so much that they are bound to blow over during hurricane season – the trees are all still alive, and sprouting green leaves. The underbrush was mostly burned away, and already new sprouts are coming up. And, as one walks through this burned forest, there are green oases, small wetlands and ponds that didn’t burn during the fire.
Some of these fires have been so large and damaging that they have made the national news, and in a way I feel bad. The whole crew down here wants the rain to hold off because A) we can't work on rain days B) with the rain comes the flooding of the forest we work in potentially ending our work sooner than we hope and C) No rain = no mosquitoes and, conversely, rain = mosquitoes. And, according to the guys on this year's crew who worked last year, we've all been lucky bastards that there hasn't been any bugs just yet. Apparently, by this time last year, one had to work wearing a mosquito net and all day long all one ever heard was the hum of bugs. Lunch was taken in the trucks to get out of the bugs for 30 minutes a day. So, while I am glad that the rain has held off, for all the above reasons, the drought down here was starting to get a little unnerving and I always am curious as to what the power of intenstion can create. All the reading I've done about "magic" always warns that before you ask the universe for anythng, consdier the repercussions. Now I'm not trying to say that my crew's wishes has led to Florida's drought, only that I've been forced to refelct on a very simple lesson about the environment that needs to be repeated: what's good for a few humans, is not always good for nature as a whole.
The local NPR station ran an interview today with folks from the state water department and they touched on several of interesting points about how much water is consumed just watering lawns – millions of gallons a day. There have been a number of lawn watering bans of various types in SW Florida, but no matter how many brown dry lawns one might see in front of houses, the golf courses are all still immaculate. The swimming pools here where I am living is always full, and the grass is always green around here, It’s a little unnerving. I don’t know if these types of businesses pay a special surcharges, tax, what have you for the right to use so much water to service so few people, but it reeks the type of short-sighted thinking that gives me grave concern about the future of the human race.
All of this water talk around here along with catching an HBO documentary on the environment last night, got me to thinking about two things regarding water shortages. The first is how much water it takes to produce meat. Several sources differ on just how much water it takes to raise cattle, ranging from 4000 to 12000 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef. The number varies between whether you count just the water used by the steer for drinking (lower end) or also include all the water it takes a to produce all the grain that is also fed to the animal (high end). If there was one single argument to reduce meat consumption, I think the environmental one is the strongest.
But this also made me think of the movie Life and Debt
(Netflix users can rent it). This documentary takes a scathing look at how the US, IMF and World Bank have encouraged Caribbean islands, in this film, Jamaica, to squander away natural resources, prime land, and the very labor of it’s people for short term gains that ultimately leak most of the profit out of the island. Hotel developers have been handed over prime coastal lands to develop resorts that hire locals for low wages while consuming massive amounts of natural resources. Much fo the land handed over had been prime fishing and living space for indigenous people. Furthermore, with fewer people now working farms and many people converted to a dollar economy from low wages supplied by the tourism industries, agriculture has all but stopped on the island and almost all the foods available to locals are foreign goods. I can’t do the movie justice, but water is big part of the problem. These islands have limited access to clean water being tropical islands and all, and the tourism industry both consumes massive amounts of water and produces far more waste than the island’s ecosystem can handle. I have to admit, before watching this movie I was never quite clear on what Bob Marley was singing about, after seeing this film, I can’t help but see him as a passionate revolutionary poet.Check out this flick.
I'm a geek, but this rocks...
It's a NASA Mars Pathfinder animation set to NIN's "Sunspots". The subtle re-editing of the video to sync with the song is excellent - look for the "whipcrack" synced to a parachute opening about 2/3 of the way into the song. Recommended herbalized. YouTube - NIN to Mars
5.06.2006
I don’t know how to be my best me without her
So Ash and I broke up again. It isn’t my intention to pine about personal matters here, but just a few days ago I did decide to make an effort to maintain this site far better than I have in the past, and this sad turn of events is bound to dismotivate me and make maintaining an online travel and thought journal a bit difficult. I mean, I could write pages and pages about how sad I am and the loss I feel, but such writing would probably only interest me and at the moment I don’t feel that I have any particularly brilliant insights on love and relationships that could be of any benefit to anyone.
That being said, it’s nice to know that Yin and Yang are still fast at play in my life. On the same night that Ash and I had what will probably be our last conversation for quite some time, a friend whom I have not heard from in years sent an unexpected e-mail letting me know she was alive and well (two things that, unfortunately, I wasn’t sure were true).
Additionally, yesterday I found out that we will definitely be working until the end of the month (yay guaranteed money) and may work through part of June as well (yay more money). Which means that today I send in my final payment for the mapping project in Pompeii that I have wanted to go to for the last two years: Pompeii Food and Drink.
And, to distract me from sadness and serendipity, I think I am going to a Pirate Festival today. Oddly, about three years ago, before I met Ash, I began work on a novel (that I have barely touched in the last two years) that is about a pirate. A very special pirate, who, ironically, falls in love with a much younger woman, who, though she loves him dearly, leaves him at the end of the book.
Arrrrgh! A pirate’s life is not for everyone.
That being said, it’s nice to know that Yin and Yang are still fast at play in my life. On the same night that Ash and I had what will probably be our last conversation for quite some time, a friend whom I have not heard from in years sent an unexpected e-mail letting me know she was alive and well (two things that, unfortunately, I wasn’t sure were true).
Additionally, yesterday I found out that we will definitely be working until the end of the month (yay guaranteed money) and may work through part of June as well (yay more money). Which means that today I send in my final payment for the mapping project in Pompeii that I have wanted to go to for the last two years: Pompeii Food and Drink.
And, to distract me from sadness and serendipity, I think I am going to a Pirate Festival today. Oddly, about three years ago, before I met Ash, I began work on a novel (that I have barely touched in the last two years) that is about a pirate. A very special pirate, who, ironically, falls in love with a much younger woman, who, though she loves him dearly, leaves him at the end of the book.
Arrrrgh! A pirate’s life is not for everyone.
4.30.2006
SF Gate: Multimedia (movie)
This guy has got to take his car to Burning Man: SF Gate: Multimedia (movie)
Home Sweet Home...
I was filling out the application form to become an Amazon.com affiliate and couldn’t remember my parents’ home address, which I am currently using as my billing address. I sat here, pipe in one hand, and a silly but shocked grin on my face unable to remember my address. I’d like to blame the brain-fart on herbal relaxation therapy but the truth is, I am beginning to feel a bit homeless and forgetting what it was like to have a permanent place to lay my weary head. And I’ve been gone for less than six months.
In fact, loneliness is beginning to set in. I miss Ashley more than I can possibly explain. I miss my folks, I miss being able to see friends and go to museums and see a friend’s band. Living among colleagues rather than friends and strangers, and interacting with primarily the same group of people day in and day out, and almost only those people, is tiring, monotonous and weighs heavy on the soul after awhile.
Miami was a bit different. I saw a bit more of Ashley because she has family there, and also, my good friend Bill Shaffer was there and my roommate. I have met few people who are as easy to get along with and so damn positive as Bill. Bill and I went to UMass together and bunked together at field School at Sylvester Manor. His personality is infections in its optimism. He is an energetic and energizing soul who is also sincere. Miss ya’ bro’. Bill made the insanity of living out of a hotel for three months in Miami a vacation.
Here in Naples, I have no close friendship like Bill’s. There is not nearly as much to do here as there was in Miami. I learned the subway, bus routes and commuter rail fairly well in Miami and got around whenever I wanted to. Museums, shopping, beaches, movies, the occasional nightclub (Churchill’s and the infamous Tobacco Road, immortalized by David Lee Roth, were both a good time), were all pleasant diversions. Here in Naples, not only are there far fewer options, but no public transportation and since I am car-less here, I spend most of my time sitting around the pool, or otherwise trapped here at the Golf Course where New South, the firm I work for, is putting us up.
Obviously things could be a fuck of a lot worse. The accommodations are luxurious, the wages are good and there are worse things to do for a living than play in the dirt (although at some point in the near future I need to post some insights on commercial archaeology, CRM/shovelbumming, and this project specifically, but that’s for another night where I find myself too bored to read). But I miss home. I miss a life of variety and options. I miss being in control of my own ability to travel locally. I feel trapped and separated from the places and people I love on nights like this and it can be hard to remember all the wonderful things I have and have to look forward to.
It would be nice to hug my lady though.
Recent Reading: Holy Blood Holy Grail (current), Bible Unearthed, Guns, Germs & Steel,, Flatland, Farenheit 451, Prego (Italian Language Textbook - current)
Listening/watching at the moment: 12 Monkeys
In fact, loneliness is beginning to set in. I miss Ashley more than I can possibly explain. I miss my folks, I miss being able to see friends and go to museums and see a friend’s band. Living among colleagues rather than friends and strangers, and interacting with primarily the same group of people day in and day out, and almost only those people, is tiring, monotonous and weighs heavy on the soul after awhile.
Miami was a bit different. I saw a bit more of Ashley because she has family there, and also, my good friend Bill Shaffer was there and my roommate. I have met few people who are as easy to get along with and so damn positive as Bill. Bill and I went to UMass together and bunked together at field School at Sylvester Manor. His personality is infections in its optimism. He is an energetic and energizing soul who is also sincere. Miss ya’ bro’. Bill made the insanity of living out of a hotel for three months in Miami a vacation.
Here in Naples, I have no close friendship like Bill’s. There is not nearly as much to do here as there was in Miami. I learned the subway, bus routes and commuter rail fairly well in Miami and got around whenever I wanted to. Museums, shopping, beaches, movies, the occasional nightclub (Churchill’s and the infamous Tobacco Road, immortalized by David Lee Roth, were both a good time), were all pleasant diversions. Here in Naples, not only are there far fewer options, but no public transportation and since I am car-less here, I spend most of my time sitting around the pool, or otherwise trapped here at the Golf Course where New South, the firm I work for, is putting us up.
Obviously things could be a fuck of a lot worse. The accommodations are luxurious, the wages are good and there are worse things to do for a living than play in the dirt (although at some point in the near future I need to post some insights on commercial archaeology, CRM/shovelbumming, and this project specifically, but that’s for another night where I find myself too bored to read). But I miss home. I miss a life of variety and options. I miss being in control of my own ability to travel locally. I feel trapped and separated from the places and people I love on nights like this and it can be hard to remember all the wonderful things I have and have to look forward to.
It would be nice to hug my lady though.
Recent Reading: Holy Blood Holy Grail
(current), Bible Unearthed, Guns, Germs & Steel,, Flatland, Farenheit 451, Prego (Italian Language Textbook - current)Listening/watching at the moment: 12 Monkeys
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