The Cycle of Life

While in Arizona, my sister graciously let me borrow her book, enabling me to avoid finishing my own before the plane ride to Oregon. She is reading Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Unfortunately it is less a book about history, something which I find quite interesting, and more a book about teaching history, something which I find less interesting, but it still had nuggets of interest which kept me reading through the first half of the book. And, as is my wont, I got to thinking.

One of the author's, James Loewen, theses is that history is edited to portray advances through time as an inexorable development. Supporting this point he mentions the suppression of oceanic crossings prior to Columbus, which would indicate that reaching the "New" World was, in fact, old news. He also argues that portrayals of Native Americans as primitive peoples stems from urge to portray history as directed toward continual advancement, otherwise known as a teleological interpretation of history.

If the native peoples were uncivilized, then their eradication and assimilation into European culture can be explained as progress towards increasingly civilized society. However, if there were already societies as complex and, in some ways, more advanced than European societies then one runs into dual problems of justification. Without appealing to a notion of "advancement," how can one justify the treatment of Native Americans at the hands of Europeans, and how valid is the notion of "advancement"?

It is interesting to note that one can examine these questions separately. Consider the "noble savage" narrative, whose attraction we can observe in the popularity of the movie Avatar, the one about the blue Indians, not the one about the final airbender. Although such interpretations condemn European aggression, they still portray Europeans as more technologically advanced. This seems to send the message that European victory was barbaric and unjustified, but technically predetermined, still in keeping with a teleological interpretation of history.

So then, one might ask how accurate a linear perception of human achievement truly is. Arguing against this notion are things like the pre-Columbian landings which did not lead to colonization, indicating that some factor other than technical know-how spurred European aggression in the late 1400's. One might also remark on the tragic losses of knowledge and local "dark ages" which seem to counter-indicate a linear growth of human civilization. One might remark how common life remained for the most part unchanging over vast stretches of human history.

The modern person has strong motivation to interpret history as linear advancement, not only are we the, current, culmination of said advance, we are always being told of steadily advancing technology. However, one might give some consideration to how true this steady advance is. Certainly advertising agencies have motivation to convince us that technology is improving, whether or not it is even changing. Take, for example, the e-Reader; whenever airlines announce that all portable devices, readers, et al. need to be shut off, I simply smile into my book and continue reading. While an e-Reader is certainly a "high-tech" (notice the way that term alone implies the continual improvement of technology) form of book, one can certainly ask if it is superior. It's very electronic nature places limitations on its usage, on planes, in places without electricity, that do not constrain books. Furthermore, producing e-Readers is more resource and technique intensive than producing printed books. The first first point leads one to question whether the e-Reader is actually technology worse suited to modern realities than the printed book. The second raises issues of privilege, what societies can produce e-Readers and which people can employ them.

Another interesting place to consider "progress" is computer/video games. Although graphics have gotten "better" without question, where "better" simply means that they have become more accurate portrayals of what we actually perceive and one lesson we may learn from art is that more accurate portrayals aren't necessarily better, one can question whether games themselves are improving. Insofar as games are intended to provide an alternate reality plagued with problems possessing obvious solutions into which we may escape to avoid dealing with the problems without obvious solutions plaguing our current reality, I suppose better graphics do lead to a better game. However, if one takes the somewhat less cynical view that games are intended to provide fun, I would like to see evidence as to improvement in current games. Of course, since new games need to be bought, and "better" graphics require "better" hardware to be purchased, there is a large incentive for new games to be touted as ever improving, so we may find older games disappointing now, the right question to ask is whether we were having any less fun when they were "cutting edge" (again implying continual advancement) than we are now with current new releases. And, of course, the continual consumption of new games and hardware presents the same resource and technique requirement questions as the e-Reader.

I am not pretending to present answers in this post. I just wish to highlight the, I believe, interesting question of whether our modern lifestyle does constitute an actual improvement over historical lifestyles and, if so, for what reasons? Furthermore, if one discards the notion of historical advancement then practices and beliefs from historical societies become sources for suggestions of ways we could improve our current society back to lost standards, a curious notion for a progressive like me to be espousing, I know.

Some Fine Avocados!

I was curious how to store avocados, so I used the miracle of modern technology to ask all my Facebook friends, or at least the ones who bother to read my statuses. Of course, I knew that I could look the information up directly on the internet, so why did I ask people? To emphasize this point, as I was walking to school it occurred to me that I should figure out how to store the avocados, and I thought of asking FB, then I wondered why I wouldn't just look it up, and spent a few minutes wondering about that. So it was a thought out choice, even if I'm still not exactly sure why I did it.

One initial thought was that it helps one judge the reliability of the information. After all, how do I know if FoodFreaks dot net has any idea what should be done to store avocados? Note: I do not know what is at the url FoodFreaks dot net, so explore that at your own risk. On the other hand, people with whom I have interacted and will interact with again in the future develop some measure of trust, yes, even my sister.

On the other hand, I don't think that is entirely accurate. I actually have developed a relationship of trust with Google, through past associations and expectations of future interactions, much the same as another human. So if I were to get a site recommended by Google, I would feel fairly confident that the information was fairly accurate. The same could be said of Wikipedia, with which I have a fairly trusting relationship.

No, I think the biggest reason that I ask humans rather than internet sites is that, while we may have a relationship, there can be no sense of sociality with an internet site. When you ask a human they share information, which is fundamentally different than when you ask a computer and they simply present information. I am actually tempted hypothesize that we are not yet adapted to the sheer volume of information available online and we actually prefer it to come in by dribs and drabs from personal sources. This seems like it would be the start of a very interesting conversation with an evolutionary biologist or psychologist, or maybe a sociologist. But, more importantly, if I ever ask you something that I could definitely look up myself, it is probably because I want some human interaction with you. And, on a related note, I don't ever remember being irked when looking up information online to answer someone else's question.

Bully For You

I have been hearing about Michigan's Anti-Bullying bill from many people, and now that multiple Oregonian friends have contacted me regarding it, I felt like it might be good for me to clarify my position regarding the bill. This was not a simply thing, because while the legal issues are simple enough, the surrounding cultural issues, which are really the issues here, are quite complex. First, here is the text of the bill as passed by the senate and here is the article that I think best explains the situation.

I am not sure why the exemption section was written in, because it doesn't do anything. I am not sure why people are reacting in shock or horror, because it doesn't do anything. I am not sure why Senator Whitmer felt the need to go Senator McCarthy on us. As far as I can tell, even if the exemption did something, it would not permit the type of bullying experienced by the student for whom the law is named. Because, although the student happened to be gay, it appears that the bullying occurred as part of a hazing, with no relation to his sexual orientation or the tormentors religious beliefs or moral convictions. I'm not sure why we think we can legislate civility, and I think it exposes a fundamental flaw in our society that we should try.

If I had to guess what reasoning led to the exemption I would guess the following. I doubt that they wanted to protect "religious" students who proceed to beat the stuffing out of a gay student, or an atheist, or a Christian of another denomination. In fact, despite rhetoric from opponents indicating that the law does this, section 8 specifies that it protects, "a STATEMENT of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction," (emphasis mine). Note that this does not apply to calling people of any group by a derogatory label, using the word "gay" as a derogatory euphemism, or holding an atheist's head in a toilet (unless one interprets "statement" in an incredibly lose sense). Rather, I would guess that some people are feeling defensive after losses experienced in areas such as voluntary school prayer and freedom to perform religious works in school and are seeking to prevent this legislation from being used to suppress statements such as, "due to your lifestyle you are going to Hell." While I do not feel that such statements are civil, or even Biblicaly sound, I do not believe that the should, in and of themselves, be prohibited. Should teachers be permitted to say them to students in a specifically educational setting, probably not, but I don't think that students need to be kept from saying that.

Understanding the shock and horror of the response is much easier. Many people have been exposed to the rhetoric that this will protect gay bashers, in the euphemistic or even literal usage, as long as they utter a perfunctory, "God's will be done," before they lay into their victim. If I thought that this bill did that I would be shocked and horrified too. So, let us focus on why people who probably ought to know better, such as our legislators, are appalled by this bill. Part of it might be that our political system doesn't necessarily tend to produce politicians with more ability to understand law or motivation to try than the average journalist. But another factor is that it does kind of, sort of, look like a religious group is trying to codify their persecution of another group as legally protected. But that perception stems from a persistent failure of churches to deal with the public perception that they are bastions of violence against homosexuals, which is not entirely relevant when writing legislation.

Underlying all of this has been my belief that our lives and the realm of legalities are two very separate things. Supporting this belief is my having lived my entire life without directly interacting with the courts nor being able to recall a single instance where fear of legal repercussions caused me to do something I didn't want to. While the law fashions an overarching penumbra on our society, I do not think the two directly interact too often. As such, I would encourage the consideration of cultural solutions to problems of incivility. Teachers have a job, and that is to educate their students. While they should model appropriate behavior to their students, I do not think the current education system is structured in such a way that they ought to be responsible for instilling such behavior in their students. Specifically, the low teacher to student ratio and the lack of institutional support for teachers attempting to discipline their students lead me to believe that teachers cannot adequately identify or respond to all the social problems that their students may exhibit.

The decline of a stay at home parent also seems problematic since this reduces the opportunities that a child has to interact with an adults in a smaller child to adults ratio where undesirable behaviors can be better identified and addressed at greater length. While there are regrettable economic realities behind this decline, I also think there are social improvements that have contributed to it. As such, I do not feel that simply rolling back the legal gains that divorce has made is at all a satisfactory solution. Rather, let us examine other societal changes we might effect. Reaffirming our nation's commitment to marriage might be one of them, and I don't mean trying to keep same sex couples from having it, or forcing battered women to endure it, but examining why so many frivolous marriages occur. Improving our access to contraception might be another, having a child unintentionally does not bode well for one's preparedness for parenthood. Examining the nature of our communal bonds might also be worthwhile, as it may not necessarily be a child's own parents who need to provide their adult supervision, as the saying "it takes a village to raise a child," indicates.

Finally, we need adults who are more exposed to the variety of lifestyles that exist in our nation. "Advances" in transportation and telecommunication have actually precipitated declines in human interaction. Because we CAN communicate with more people we tend to actually communicate with with people who are more like us, as we have a wider pool from which to find them. To offset this I advocate for the dual responses of more integrated communities and more local, on the neighborhood level, government and social groups. Of course, these solutions are entirely inappropriate to enforce through legal methods, but that doesn't mean that they are not the solutions we need for the problems that we are facing.

Note, this does not express a dislike for the bill in either of its forms, as all the bill does is require schools put policies into place to deal with bullying insofar as it is detrimental to the educational environment.

Identity

Identity, it's who we are. But it isn't just who we are to ourselves, it is also who we are to other people. I shall try to keep my thoughts reasonably linear, but this is a topic that has come up in a variety of facets recently, so it may be difficult to isolate it from the surrounding context to discuss in a stand alone fashion.

One important facet of our identity is our cultural heritage. This, in some sense, grounds us to a specific place or places in history, "our ancestors were these people and came from here." It might be argued that many people in the United States lack this sense of heritage, but I think that it would be more accurate to say that they have incorporated the American ideal of settlers and intermixing as their heritage.

The question arises, what must be done to lay claim to a cultural heritage? I would assert that the act of laying honest claim to such a heritage validates itself. Of course, if I were to jokingly claim to be heir to the royal traditions of the Incas, this would not carry a lot of weight. However, if someone genuinely believes themselves to be an inheritor of a specific culture, then it is self evident that their identity is shaped by a sense of inclusion in that culture.

On the other hand, one might hold that, in order to possess a cultural heritage, one must take an active role in exploring that culture. While this is a perfectly valid way to organize people into culture groups, I think it is unnecessarily restrictive. At the risk of seeming ego maniacal, I will provide an illustrative example from my own life, simply because it is the only life with which I am familiar enough to say things with confidence.

Among my mix of European ancestors, I have some Germans and some Italians. And, while this has led me to study a little bit of German and put some effort into learning about German culture, I identify more strongly as Italian, despite having invested less effort in my Italian identity. I believe this is simply because my last name, if you unravel some Ellis Island mishaps, is Italian. So, just by identifying myself by name I am asserting my Italian identity, and it has caused people to react to me differently, thus further reinforcing my "Italian-ness."

And here we see how one's self identity and the manner in which others construct identity groups have such tricky interrelation. As I mentioned earlier, I think organizing people into identity groups based on putting effort into claiming a cultural identity is a valid way of organizing people, by which I mean that the groups that one obtains from such organization will likely share some distinguishing characteristics of interest and this organization doesn't seem to inherently promote ethnic cleansings. However, it may be quite at odds with how other people think about themselves, and indeed, how other people organize the world into cultural groups. So, it seems important to acknowledge that people can come to their identity through a variety of methods.

Further confusing the matter is the practice of assuming identities. For example, a European manga/anime enthusiast who feels their hobby confers a cultural legacy from Japan. First, let me note that this does not apply to every manga/anime enthusiast, just those who feel their hobby includes them in the penumbra of Japanese culture. Secondly, while this notion of cultural heritage may be at odds with the traditional notion of culture as inheritable from one's parents, it is entirely in keeping with both my criterion and, it seems to me, with the contrasting criterion from above, as the person in question both self identifies with Japanese culture and is investing effort into the cultivation of this cultural identity.

This highlights a further complication, in that essentializing Japanese culture down to anime and manga; or even anime, manga, and quirky gadgets; does Japanese culture a disservice, and, depending on one's views, may even be insulting. However, otaku are a part of Japanese culture, so one perhaps should not say that this view of Japanese culture is incorrect, insomuch as it is incomplete. So, toward what concept of a culture ought we direct our efforts in order to "earn" cultural inclusion?

So far we have mentioned three reasonable but incompatible methods for assigning cultural heritage; self identification, cultural participation, and parental inheritance. These are by no means exhaustive, geographical inheritance (Italians are people who have lived in Italy for some duration, which varies from person to person) and nationalism (Italians are citizens of Italy), for example, also have adherents. In light of this complexity, I am inclined to broaden my original position. While I still believe in accepting how others identify themselves, I also believe that we should accept that other people will have other ways of organizing people into cultural groups. That said, not all such organizations are "reasonable," which I would like to address at a later date.

Occupy the Middle!

Before I grow fully involved in talking about identity groups, I would like to finally hash out this post about Occupy Wall Street that I have been trying to write for over a week. Despite, or maybe because of, nebulous and conflicting concerns and desires, the Occupy Wall Street movement has inspired a plethora of related movements, occupying things across the United States and even internationally.

Ideally I might open with what the goals of the movement are. However, as I have noted, such a thing is not easy to formulate. I think it is safe to say that the movements are characterized by an anti-capitalist sentiment, and an accompanying dissatisfaction with the growing economic disparity within the US. The proposed solutions are, unfortunately, less homogeneous.

I think that this is a necessary characteristic of the movements. In order to enjoy such broad popular support, I don't think one can afford to commit to a more specific plan. Ironically, one can witness the same phenomenon within the very political structure that, many of, the protesters vilify. There, just as with the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is arduous to nail down exactly what a politician plans to do, simply because it is easier to garner support by pointing out what problems exist than by proposing specific measures by which one intends to correct them.

By no means to I consider this to be a scathing criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I think it is inherently valuable to gain a platform from which we may air our grievances and question whether practices historically considered social necessities are, actually, contingencies put into place to tailor the system to the benefit of one group or another. However, I believe that true change will not be effective until people develop a plan of action more sophisticated than sitting in a public place until someone else gets sufficiently fed up and fixes the problem to make you go away.

While some have likened Occupy Wall Street to 60's era activism, the movement that most reminds me of Occupy Wall Street is the Tea Party. While they evolved out of radically different ideologies, I think at the heart of both movements is a deep sense of broad dissatisfaction with current domestic affairs. Contrast this with peace protests, civil rights movements, and even religious demonstrations, which all have much more definite goals to which they aspire.

Of course, there are significant differences between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements. I think that the plans of the Tea Party were much more concrete, even if the underlying goals which they hoped to thereby accomplish remained quite nebulous. Perhaps correspondingly, I think the aims of the Tea Party translate better into the language of policy and legislation. Unfortunately, I do not particularly believe the change for which the Tea Party advocates can jar our society out of the malaise in which it currently lingers.

While I may not identify with"the 99%," I think their call for a re-conceptualization of "the good life" and our fundamental societal systems is a needed one. That said, I do not see how it is a matter of policy. One cannot legislate what people value, nor an ethic of individual accountability and responsibility. Of course, one might be able to, through legislation, encourage such a culture to develop. Personally I would like to see our nation take moral education and civic involvement more seriously, but that is just my opinion.

But G+ Doesn't Support Titles

This is cross posted from a status I posted on G+. Yes, this whole thing is one status post over there, and this is rather long even for my blog posts, because putting blog length comments out in the stream for public consumption is apparently something which one can do now. This is sort of the topic of this post, that we now have a site that behaves like a social network but offers the opportunity to blog within it's structure. Don't worry, I'm not planning on abandoning my own personal parcel of the internet to do all my blogging there, but it is an interesting thing to try. That said, if this is the sort of thing about which you worry, you may want to talk to a professional about your anxiety.

There is a saying, "form follows functionality." Apparently it means that what something, originally a building, looks like should reflect what it is supposed to do. I think it can also be interpreted as meaning that what shape something takes reflects what it is able to do. For example, there is a reason Twitter is a morass of twits, with messages limited to 140 characters and all communication broadcast to the entire community this shapes the dialogue that occurs on Twitter. Another interesting, although too detailed for me to go into here, example is Facebook. As the user base and available tools have changed there have been fundamental changes to the type of community that exists within the "Facebook" structure.

By implementing statuses unbound by pathetically small 140 or 420 (500?) character limits, Google is implicitly making a statement about the community it desires to grow in G+. Of course, how exactly this functionality will play out in the community built on top of it remains to be seen, but one interesting G+ phenomenon is Tom Anderson. Yes, this is MySpace Tom, and yes, he is a one man phenomenon.

I have mentioned before that following Tom is a quite worthwhile thing to do, because he tends to say interesting, thought provoking things. Due to the Twitter-esque asymmetric subscription mechanism (recently implemented on another large social networking site I believe), it is possible for large masses of people to follow what essentially become social networking celebrities. On twitter these people are usually meat space celebrities and we get to hear about their new sunglasses or how trashed their hotel room is. On G+ these people are Tom Anderson and, because the different functionality, we get to hear insightful thoughts (rather than one-liners) about social networking, computing, and perspective.

Unfortunately, I think that some of the same functionality that enables Tom to reach such a large audience hinders the appreciation of his posts. Inevitably Tom's posts become inundated with hundreds of comments. Although a post might provide an interesting lead in to the idea that all "reality" insofar as we can perceive it, is necessarily subjective rather than an objective presentation of some external truth. However, if such a conversation actually took off, I couldn't find it due to the low signal-to-noise ratio within the comment stream. It is wonderful that Tom has so many well wishers, but the culture of a G+ comment stream is quite different than that of a blog where, even on the more popular blogs, comments, for the most part, are a continuation of the discussion began in the original post. To borrow a nautical metaphor suggested by G+'s own nomenclature, what we have here is a stream; toss something in and it pretty quickly moves on, lost in the bustle. A blog is more of a lake, or in my case maybe a pond (puddle?), if you chuck something into it, you can still come back and revisit it a couple of times before it eventually sinks.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with G+ as it is. A fun community is taking form, and if more people from my circle of friends become active on it, I'm sure I shall enjoy whatever it becomes. However, if the fine folks over at Google want to provide a platform for discussions that are simultaneously public and substantive, I would recommend providing authors some way to organize comments into multiple threads. This way substantial responses can be organized into a separate discussion, or even multiple discussions, and other encouragement could be stored separately and perused by those who find it to be of interest. That said, what extent public, substantial discourse is possible is something of an important and unresolved question among philosophers of democracy, so that's something about which we could talk ;)

Response to a Washington Post Article

The title says it all, here are some thoughts in response to this Washington Post article about five things they believe the public erroneously perceives about public education. You may have noticed that education is something that interests me, and although I teach at the college level, the status of K-12 education affects me non-trivially as it forms the foundation for the students I see in my classes. Since it really is a response, you ought to read the article if you want my thoughts to make the most sense, but it is an interesting article.

1) I think this bullet point glosses over a major source of the turmoil in the realm of higher education. Our high school diploma rates are rising, our college attendance rates are rising, so we are, ideally, expecting a larger segment of our population to perform at college level. Whereas in the past college attendance was, for the most part, restricted to the highly motivated or those for whom academic achievement came naturally, who are probably still doing fine in our education system, nowadays we are attempting to serve a wider clientele. (The word choice "clientele" in purposeful, laden with meaning, and an entirely different point which I have made elsewhere.)

While increasing access to higher education, and education in general, is laudable, and even perhaps necessary, from a democratic point of view. It does put additional strains on the system. At the K-12 level we find ourselves needing higher levels of preparedness than has previously been necessary. The phenomenon of the "social pass," while understandable from the point of view of a teacher, will hurt the student in the long run if they eventually progress to a level where they are evaluated on ability in any subject wherein they have been allowed to skate past with an insufficient understanding previously. Additionally, the influx of different types of students to higher education correlates with changes to the public perception of higher education, which in turn affects what people expect to obtain from their education, as I talked about in slightly more detail here. Long story short, it seems plausible that, while the average high school student has improved, the average college student is actually at a disadvantage to her historic counterpart due to the increased attendance at college.

So what? If we are "better educated" "on average," measured by some absolute scale of educational level, aren't we doing well? This goes back to the changing social meaning of education. Having better educated high school graduates now is less impressive if the a bachelor's degree is nowadays the societal equivalent of a high school diploma. Of course, some of this is entirely artificial, and I have read various articles talking about the over-emphasis on college education in today's society. Part of this is a reflection of societal values, while we want people around who fix our plumbing and build our houses, these positions are not glorified in our society. One could also argue that we are simply degree crazy, and some positions where a college education is not strictly necessary have become, be default, jobs for the college educated. For example, it seems many types of engineering could be done by graduates of a trade school, not recipients of a classical academic education, even more extreme, do Park Rangers (Outdoor Recreation Management) and PE teachers (I don't know what degree, Kinesiology?) NEED college educations to do their jobs well? And, if not, why do they need college degrees?

2) The only thought that the second bullet inspires is that I wish were observed and supported by a seasoned veteran teacher. I, of course, consider myself to be an underperforming educator.

3) I think the article overstates its case when it asserts that cooperation is necessary for education and performance based bonuses negatively incentivizes cooperation. The grounds for this opinion is the simple fact that cash bonuses appear to have no effect on educational preparedness, rather than a negative one. That said, I have never been a fan of evaluating a teacher's merit based on their performance on standardized tests. Among other reasons, classes are unique and it incentivizes training students to take the standardized test, rather than teaching them the material in question.

4) Once again, I think the article almost breezes over the most important point of this bullet. Motivated students are important! Furthermore, motivation cannot start in the classroom, especially if social value of education is already in question in the minds of students. After all, if teachers are percieved to be uncool and "out of it," then why should a student trust one when they try to explain why their subject is interesting?

That said, separating out the high performing students may not be such a bad idea, in order to challenge them at their own level rather than shackling them to the level of the "class average." However, there are a lot of very bad ways to separate students, and some of them even end up looking like accurate measures of their ability, such as self fulfilling determinations of ability and separation along socio-economic lines.

5) I don't know what to say to the 5th point, not in the least because I don't know how much of my class's performance reflects my efficacy and how much reflects other factors. Even when students persistently do not attend class I develop the feeling of having "failed them." (Which, by contrast is not the same as having flunked them, which I definitely do.)