Apathy

The assignment, as it were, is to find a topic that I am prepared to write about at a future date. Hmmm. See, that’s a tough one, because I am passionate about so many things. Perhaps the field is too open. I suppose that I am most fundamentally interested in why people are so apathetic about their situation, socially and politically. They have the power to change their lives, and yet, they wallow in misery and claim they are ‘powerless.’ Apathy is kind of the antitheses of aggression and greed. While others are out robbing us blind of resources and riches, everyone else just scrapes by day to day, not interested in the bigger picture because they feel either helpless or that the problem is too big. Nonsense! It is time for us, the people who want great things of ourselves and our country, let alone this world, to claim what is ours!

Orwell and his accuracy

George Orwell

A Hanging (1931) & How the Poor Die (1946)

I read this short story and have to respond that it is essentially about the way in which a man goes to the gallows as he lives. The narrator observes how he is a living human being and full of his faculties and how strange it is that they are executing the man by hanging him. Never is his crime revealed. At the end of the story, everyone is relieved that the man’s anxiety is over and becomes jovial. Strangely, they begin to joke about executions gone wrong, and the narrator joins in. I suppose it is a commentary on how cheap life is and how fast opinions can change, even on the subject of the reverence of life.

If this story doesn’t make you think of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and the people responsible for it…I don’t know what will. Granted, for the most part, we weren’t talking executions, but rather brutal torture and murder, but that’s kind of splitting the political hair, isn’t it?

Suffice it to say that Orwell is a masterful orator, and his How the Poor Die, is also a fine example. The story is about a man in a hospital for the poor and the actual conditions and treatments there. Sadly, he witnesses much that you would not see if one were at a paying hospital. “Well into this century it was usual for ‘free’ patients at the big hospitals to have their teeth extracted with no anesthetic. They didn’t pay, so why should they have anesthetic – that was the attitude.” Obviously, Orwell is talking about the difference between the have and have-nots. The rich and poor, and how they are treated accordingly. When one considers the American model of Capitalism and Democracy, coupled with our tax system, there really isn’t a good reason we don’t have a national health care plan. Oh wait. I forgot. Capitalism!

Lessons from suffering

StoryCorps: A Father’s Memory of Auschwitz

http://www.npr.org/templates/story.php?storyId=4467864

Morning Edition, January 27, 2005

This is a short story on a woman, Debby, who has grown up asking her father repeatedly about his experiences in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Her whole life he has deflected the pain and sorrow, not wanting to burden it upon his children. Now, upon him being very ill, his daughter realizes it might be her only and last chance to finally extract the truth of the experience from him.

Essentially, he asks her if she really wants to know the ugly truth, because once you know it, there is no going back to what you once were. She asks him to go on, and she affirms that indeed, felt as if “a part of me had died.”

To talk about the obvious here, is, well, the obvious. Certainly WWII and the Holocaust was a shameful event. Beyond tragic. The irony is that tragedy happens every day to many people. I suppose it hurts more when it is personalized or happens to someone close to you. Two things stood out to me about this. First, how could people like white supremacists actually be in favor of the torture and killing of anyone to this day?

Secondly, it harkens the idea that the only people who seem to actually care about particular issues (for the most part, there are exceptions, thankfully) are those who are affected by them. It’s kind of sad really. In one way, it’s to be expected, and in another it’s predictably human. And not just for the people who are actually doing the good works, for those who do nothing as well.

What I’m getting at is that for the most part, no one does anything unless it directly affects them. Say your mother dies of cancer; you jump on the bandwagon to support breast cancer awareness. You couldn’t have cared less about it before she became ill with the disease, but now you’re an activist. Better late than never, I suppose, but only on the issue that directly relates to you and your family. The world would work so much better if people cared outside of their respective blinders.

If anyone had cared about what was happening to the Jewish people, the homosexuals, the gypsies, the blacks, etc…in Europe during the Nazi witch hunt, we wouldn’t be talking about it all these years later. Instead, for example, the U.S. Government sat on its collective asses until prompted by a Japanese attack midway through the war. If you think this kind of horror happened only once in history, guess again. It happened in Tibet from the 1950’s until now. China has a terrible human rights history. But they make our DVD players, so it’s okay. Ethnic cleansing is happening in Darfur right now. Guess what the U.S. Government is doing about either of these issues? You guessed it, nothing. And President Bush has the nerve to actually mention Darfur in his State of the Union speech. Please. When you actually stop killing people in the “name of Democracy,” then we’ll talk about your right to even mention Darfur.

I can sympathize that a part of you dies when you read, listen to or understand the bad news of the world. This bad news happens every day and has always happened. This isn’t to delineate these occurrences, but rather, to illuminate the fact that we should be doing something to ease human suffering because it is ongoing.

Newspapers and blogs

http://www.rsa.org.uk/audio/lecture160306.mp3

After reading and listening to Alan Rusbridger speak about the new important role of blogging in the media and its challenging of traditional newspapers, I think that the thing that comes to mind is access and networking. Networking and streamlining what you want, or customization, for lack of a better word, is the thing that makes the Internet such a powerful resource. Couple that with the ability to read news from a variety of sources, quickly, instantly. Or better yet, write your own if you have something intelligent to say.

What is frightening is that the media of newspapers might be engulfed by digital media. I don’t think it should, there is still a thriving market for books and magazines that were all but predicted a downfall as well due to digital media and paper shortages. That not only didn’t happen, it increased. Now there are more magazines on the shelves than ever. I just hope someone is recycling them all. At any rate, newspapers by Rushbridger’s estimation have two options: grow with the times, or face an uncertain future. I think that it doesn’t get much more instructional than that.

Quarrel & Quandary: What is a Public Intellectual?

Quarrel & Quandary, Essays by Cynthia Ozick, it occurred to me that the idea of a Public Intellectual differing from a private intellectual is simply their level of involvement and accountability. I was especially interested, as it takes on the previously used title of Thinker, as well as the role of the artist. I have been a Public Intellectual my whole life, and not ashamed to admit it. I have, as it were, found that there were much fewer rewards based upon my own experiences and circumstances than I would claim outward gains. Be that as it may, I did gain helpful insight into not only situations, but myself, and that above all is what is important. But my goal was always to help others with my artwork, my writing and my voice; to lend a magnifying glass on a particular issue, if only for a moment, to illustrate the world’s inequities and perhaps issue an alternative method. This proves challenging as an artist because you want your work to stand out among your peers and not be derivative. Second, you must focus on an audience. Who are you speaking to, the converted or the unconverted? Next, will they listen and how will you convey your message.

The next part is the scary part. If they do listen, not only are you open to ridicule, but violence, attack and professional retaliation. This becomes especially problematic in a techno-savvy world and workplace, where a prospective employer need only “Google” your name to find anything you have ever done, or has been posted about you on the web. While this may sound like an innocent practice among Human Resource professionals, it is not. It steals anonymity from you, regardless if you have posted something under your name or not. When you’ve posted something on the web, you are expressing yourself and your identity. I take issue with someone specifically looking you up to disqualify you for positions because they disagree with your political standing, the fact that you have embarrassing photos on your MySpace page, blog, etc…this is already causing, and will be causing a great many problems for this younger generation of adolescents and adults who use these kind of tools on the web. Granted, an employer may just find something they like when they look you up, but then, wouldn’t that be on your résumé in the first place? I find it especially hard, because as I am political, and my artwork is political, I have to keep a separate identity, which isn’t good for my artistic vision, merit or name. I don’t want to have them separate because I WANT people to know I am the same person. To further my trouble, a professional wrestler and porn star have adopted my unique name, down to the actual spelling. So, if you Google me, guess what comes up? You guessed it. Can’t really tell a prospective employer, “Please don’t Google my name…” That would just pique their interest, or they wouldn’t hire you on principle. My wife works in HR and is pursuing a Masters in Public Policy. She reads me lots of ethical papers on the subject and we cross reference this with news information. All of this has supported this ethical dilemma. I know what I’m talking about.

So, what does this have to do with being a Public Intellectual? Everything! How can you express yourself if you have to live in fear of being fired because your boss is a Republican and you wrote a piece in the local paper against them that she didn’t appreciate? The era of technology just makes all of this that much easier. While the world can find your information out there, they generally won’t put two and two together unless they’re looking for it, like an employer would.

Ozick states that, “The responsibility of intellectuals includes also the recognition that we cannot live above or apart from our own time and what it imposes on us; that willy-nilly we breathe inside the cage of our generation, and must perform within it. Thinkers – whether they count as public intellectuals or the more reticent and less visible sort – are obliged above all to make distinctions, particularly in an age of mindlessly spreading moral equivalence.” I think that statement nails it down pretty well. Those who understand and care are more involved and more publicly so. They risk ridicule and have been the first to be eradicated in many cultures (think China, Russia during Communism). That’s a scary thought indeed, but no reason not to learn. And not a reason not to do what is right by speaking up. More specifically, being a Public Intellectual is being in the here and now. Living in the moment. Understanding it, unafraid of it. Wanting to engage with it while understanding the implications of the nuances of each act around them, and how it affects the larger picture historically.

A Blogger, finally: so now what?

On Tim Dunlop’s “If you build it they will come” 

One important thing to note about Dunlop’s piece is that he points out that Public Intellectual’s are using blogs to fact check, citing The Guardian Wolfowitz interview as an example. To be more specific, he is really talking about bloggers having strength in numbers and resources.

There is certainly something to the idea that we’ve lost the air of civility in this country. I find it hard to reconcile the fact that American’s (most of them blindly believe this to be true) think that this is the best country in the world, but have no facts to back that up with and no experiences in any other nations. Political pundits scream at each other because they don’t want to learn from each other, they just want their face time on television. Whoever controls the microphone wins.

The idea behind argument is growth, both for a body (say legislature) and individual. Neither benefits when both parties simply refuse to be civil. Furthermore, I think that it might be a bit Jeffersonian, but we ought to be trying to bring our social consciousness to a higher level. When the only thing that people are seeing is filtered news from sources that have political interests, the individual, thus the country suffers because of a loss of knowledge. Extend that thought and the world suffers from a lack of discourse and ideas.

Christopher Lasch says, “It is the act of articulating and defending our views that lifts them out of the category of ‘opinions,’ gives them shape and definition, and makes it possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own as well. In short, we come to know our minds only by explaining ourselves to others.” In essence, “Know Thyself.”

Dunlop also makes note that blogging could be killed if people were afraid to make unpopular statements. Perhaps that is the role of a Public Intellectual, not their definition, but what they do. Making unpopular observations, that is. Pointing out the frivolities and idiosyncrasies of our press, government, society and the like. Obviously participation in these is essential for a Public Intellectual, and one would emphasize that all take part in their civic duties. Judith Brett echoes some of my thoughts I posted earlier in the Ozick piece about audience and having something to say. I suppose what I left out is the obvious, which is passion. I left it out, because for artists, it is a non sequitur.

Dunlop’s argument is essentially that blogs give public intellectuals an opportunity and means to lend their voice to matters of importance in civic interest. Since I am new to this and have shied away thinking that the idea of the software might be too complicated or too time intensive, I suppose I can see his point. I am fairly apt to find articles of interest, and am cerebral but not to be bogged down in lingo to the point of boredom. I’m glad to be on board, finally.

Range of opinions on what is a Public Intellectual

I had first thought about expounding on an article regarding Cornell West. A man I look up to in terms of his academic and linguistic prowess let alone what he represents. It is how he speaks and writes that captivates me. However, since the assignment is supposed to be more about the term than an individual, I opted for this article:

http://pkp.sfu.ca/files/PublicIntellectual.pdf

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy December 22, 2006

How To Be More of a Public Intellectual

by Making Your Intellectual Work More Public

John Willinsky

University of British Columbia

Willinsky quickly states that he did not anticipate that so much academic knowledge would be of interest to the general public, nor would there be a need years ago. However, he has found that there are now both in increasing demand. I find his synthesis of data on par with that of the Library of Alexandria, a storehouse of information in the old world until it was destroyed by fanatical Christians and Muslims who deemed knowledge “dangerous,” and plummeted us into the Dark Ages. An online repository of knowledge (and backups in the “real world”) is a great idea. I am all for it, without censure, globally.

“Having access to this work, when critical issues arise in a community, will not assure greater coherence, as the world of scholarship represents a diverse range of positions and approaches to any given question in education. It may, however, increase the level of deliberation.”

I see no reason why deliberation is a bad thing. A diverse range of positions looking over issues from every perspective to ensure all concerns have been addressed is perhaps of utmost priority, but relegated to armchair historians instead. I submit that these tools help arm our citizens in civic debate. An informed citizen is one that is not deceived in the media or in elections. Or at least as much. Let’s face facts, everything is filtered and never the whole truth.

Hello! Welcome to my blog.

Wow, my first blog. A little late on the blog scene, but better late than never. Welcome to my diatribes of social commentary and political discourse. So as such, we may not agree, but we can do it with civility, to be certain.

I work in Marketing and Advertising. I am an artist and writer of all sorts.

I don’t pull punches, so don’t expect me to. I’ll tell you “what I really think.” That might come off a bit crass to the untrained ear or eye, but the world could use a dose of truth instead of sugar coating, I think. But then, that’s just my opinion. You don’t have to read or listen. No one’s forcing you to. You’re here of your own free will. Democracy in action. It’s a beautiful thing. Let’s get started, shall we?