Why I Was Never Invited to Great Books Camp

I was chuffed to read Molly Worthen's article in the New York Times about how she wants to start a great books camp for liberals. I sympathize acutely, having watched most of my grad school colleagues journey off to retreats to discuss great books with fellow young conservative/straussian/hayekian intellectuals. (They came back with such great gossip!) And I too wondered, why don't the non-conservatives throw their own book party? (And invite me!) Then eventually it dawned on me: they can't.

All great books camps are conservative (no matter what Yuval Levin says) because they are funded by people who think old books are important, even more important than new ones. This is an essentially conservative argument--studying the great books is a way to conserve certain ideas because you think they are important and perennial. If you are a progressive, even a progressive who is studying the history of political thought, you must acknowledge that new ideas are just as important, if not more so, than old stodgy ones. If they aren't, then what's the point of progress??

Cue a whole chorus of undergrads yelling, "so WHY do we still have to read Plato?!," a question I got more times than I can count. While a progressive can agree we should read Plato, he would also argue we should read everything else important, from Confucius to Rawls to Sayyid Qutb to Ta-Nehesi Coates to....infinity. Worthen includes Obama and MLK on her reading list, but I'm certain those additions would not satisfy. (Remember the controversy over the Trump syllabus? Sigh.)

So while the reading list for progressives could easily grow into the thousands and still not keep everyone happy, conservatives agree that the canon is really just a relatively short list of stuff written by dead white men. No liberal is going to sponsor a reading camp for that, unless they want to be hounded into oblivion. And it's too bad, because dead white men have written a ton of amazing stuff. Including, you know, all the foundational texts of liberal western democracy.

So while I sympathize with Worthen and also dream of starting a great books camp, until either she or I earn enough to pay for it ourselves I think we're going to be disappointed.

Relatedly: what is a person who is neither conservative nor progressive? Is that just a confused person?

Sunday Afternoon

In one of the more bizarre episodes of my life, a guy with an assault rifle walked into my favorite local pizza joint yesterday. The pizza joint in question has been the focus of crazy online conspiracy theories linked to the election. The man with the assault rifle went in to "investigate" whether the conspiracy theories were true. He fired one round before the cops arrived, and, thankfully, no one was hurt.

Josh and I happened to be in the area at the time. We saw cop cars really booking it up Connecticut Ave for over an hour and actually guessed what had happened. We had just been to this pizza place the day before. We had pizza and salad and beers, and remarked on how much more crowded it was than usual, surmising that the neighborhood had come out to support the restaurant in light of the online insanity. And the next day, somebody walked in with an assault rifle and fired.

I can't quite wrap my mind around this. Regular street crime is not something I worry about, probably because I've lived relatively closely with it my whole life. I can't excuse it, but I do understand something about the logic of it and what it feels like. But this is an adult man who, by his own admission, drove up from North Carolina with multiple weapons in his car to investigate rumors of a child sex trafficking ring run by a presidential candidate and her advisors out of the back of a neighborhood pizza restaurant. He walked into a restaurant full of children with an assault rifle because he believed this lie was the truth. This is simply beyond my comprehension. My first instinct is to make a joke out of it, it's so ridiculous.

But it's not funny. Whatever this man's individual issues, this happened because of a depth of ignorance that is terrifying. I don't see how there can be any antidote to it. 

I quit facebook back in April 2012, and at the time I thought the break would be temporary. I was fairly certain that my need to keep up with lapsed friends, random acquaintances, and middle school crushes would, eventually, lure me back. It has not. I don't miss it at all. Turns out, falling out of touch with people is often a natural consequence of time and distance, and it's really ok to start forgetting the names of people you knew in high school.

At the time I quit facebook, you couldn't actually delete your account, you could only "suspend" it. This basically made you invisible; your profile would remain forever in hibernation somewhere in the ether of the internet. Last week I learned that this changed, and you can now delete your profile forever. So I can now confirm: my Face has been deleted from the Book.

Mostly everyone I know is on facebook, except for Josh and my parents. (Or it seems like everyone is on it; I have no way of checking.) What strikes me is that, whenever I mention I'm not on facebook, the response is always some version of "Oh, I wish I could quit!" I never suggest that people should quit, but they seem compelled to tell me they want to. Then they invariably explain why they can't: they use it to stay in touch with family/friends/former nemeses, they enjoying being voyeurs and don't post anything personal, the connections are more valuable than the timesuck, etc, etc. All fine reasons, I can't quibble with them.

The strong implication, however, is that I have done something noble and good by (mostly) exiting the social media landscape. (I say mostly because you can find me on instagram and linkedin, though to say I fly under the radar there would be an understatement. And of course I write this blog, which has 4 readers. (Hello, friends!)) I know that not being on social media is good for me personally, but it's hardly a noble sacrifice. If you're worried about facebook rotting your soul, here's a pro tip: it's optional. Just click "cancel." And similarly, I don't get all the hand-wringing over social media in the wake of the election—misinformation and uncivil discourse aren't exactly new. This is not to minimize our current societal problems, which I think are great; I'm just pretty sure that something as superficial as facebook is not the cause of them.

The best metaphor I have for social media is that it's like sitting at a cafe and overhearing the totally mundane conversation of the couple sitting next to you. Some people love to eavesdrop, and others will immediately put on their noise-canceling headphones. Some people love to be overheard, and others want privacy. I'm in the latter category on both counts. At my most basic level, I don't care that much about what the hive mind is thinking, and I certainly don't want the hive mind to be thinking about me. I also don't have much of an interest in what most people are up to in their daily lives. I don't care about my second-cousin's political opinions, or the new house the dude I sat next to in calculus just bought, or that pie my middle school acquaintance baked for Thanksgiving. I do care about my family and friends and coworkers, though, and I like to know what they're up to. I also enjoy receiving pictures of their babies/pies/pets/new houses.

And I care what you're up to, Dear Reader. Write me a letter! Give me a call! I'm pretty sure you all have my number.

From a New York Times article, referring to the 2016 presidential candidates:

"Perhaps the biggest drags on voter turnout in Milwaukee, as in the rest of the country, were the candidates themselves. To some, it was like having to choose between broccoli and liver."

This is testament to the fact that you can't write anything without irking someone: broccoli and liver are two of my very favorite foods. Choosing between them would only be hard because I like them both so much; not a problem for anyone this election. They are also both very high in iron, so if you are anemic I encourage you to write an impassioned letter to the editor about their lack of sensitivity to anemia issues. Every voice matters, right? 

the &*^%$ side of history

There are a lot of trite and meaningless phrases in the world, but "the right side of history" is by far my least favorite. I detest it. Probably because the whole point of my dissertation was that it's a lazy, useless idea. And probably more so because no one ever read my dissertation (not hyperbole) so no one understands why I care so much. Or why I get so frustrated when they try to argue with me about it and I inevitably descend into rant-mode.

(As an aside: I don't understand why some people ask me about a point of political theory, listen inattentively to my answer, and then immediately disagree with me. A general rule of thumb: if someone has a PhD in a particular esoteric subfield, please assume that they know a bit more about it than you do. And yes, this applies equally to quantum physics and political theory. Really.)

Why am I blabbering on about this now? Because the detestable phrase seems to be everywhere this week. I understand why; many people just got slapped in the face by the present and they are trying desperately to assure themselves that history (whatever that is!) is still gonna come out right (whatever that means!) in the end (whenever that is!). Sorry, folks, but there are no assurances that tomorrow is even going to happen, much less happen the way you think it should. You can run all the regression analyses that you want: the future (or providence or kismet or whatever you want to call it) does not issue advance warnings or moral directives. I mean, it's possible that you will find a burning bush tomorrow, but until that happens you're down here swimming in uncertainty with the rest of us. 

Here's what I do know: First, history does not have sides. Second, history itself is not a moral force. Third, I'm not certain about either of these premises, but because we are living in history we cannot, unless we transcend time itself, comprehend the entire narrative arc of human existence as being right or wrong. If history does have sides, not one of us mere humans is capable of comprehending them. And if you are outraged at these blanket assertions, I invite you to read my dissertation. It has citations and everything. 

Better yet, read Augustine. I totally stole the argument from him. 

When I was awake at 2am this morning, I was thinking about this passage from the opening of The Federalist:

"It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may, with propriety, be regarded as the period when that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

I have always thought this was a beautiful, uplifting passage about the capacity of men to determine their political destiny based on informed reason and reflection. But earlier this morning I was thinking about it in a...somewhat different light. It reads more like a warning than an affirmation. 

Also: one of the best parts of writing a blog is that you get to revisit what your past self was up to in, say, November 2008. Quite a different time, and yet I don't disagree with anything I wrote then. Here's to 2020, I guess?  

gchat, circa 2008.

Date: June 18, 2008

Players: Me and a friend, who shall here remain anonymous should she object to me printing this heretofore private conversation.
Context: This is a very small excerpt from a very long gchat conversation. My friend and I were both about a year into our first post-college jobs, and thinking about applying to graduate school. We were discussing our future plans. I was reading Camus and Nietzsche at the time. (I have no idea what my friend was reading.)
Disclaimer: I found this chat while searching for something else in my gmail, and it amused me. I fixed some typos so as to appear smarter than I actually was at the time.

me: …weren't you going to enlighten me about the void?

friend: ah yes…ok, so the void

me:  i am interested in the void

  considering i am living in it

friend: no

  you are employed

  and have a home

  the void is the uncertainty

 

me: no, no, i am in the void

  there is uncertainty

  it is not like school

  where the end is clear, and the parameters set

  i could quit my job and wander through asia

  no one would stop me

  void

friend: no, that's not the real void

me: as long as there are no rules, there is void

friend: that's some other void

me: no, void is when you have to make up the plan as you go along

   unlike the transition from high school to college

friend: that's like the void of generally having a lot of time before death

 me: yes! VOID

She knows there’s no success like failure / And that failure’s no success at all

If you had come to me yesterday with a wager that Bob Dylan would win a Nobel prize, I would have bet good money against it. And I think Bob would have done the same. Once he's over the surprise, though, I bet he'll start planning a cryptic and cutting speech full of biblical allusions, designed specifically to make everyone in the audience feel awkward and confused. It's gonna be so great.

I think everyone who loves Dylan has a story about how they started listening to him. Here's mine: when I was about 15, back in the age of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, I went over to the CD Exchange in Tenleytown (RIP) and bought The Essential Bob Dylan, a two-volume greatest hits collection. I would have been better off buying Bringing it All Back Home or The Times They are A-Changin', but at the time I didn't know anything about Dylan, except that my mother hated his singing voice and that he was almost never played on the radio, not even the oldies station.

As a teenager it was my job to clear and wash the dishes after dinner, and I would sometimes put music on while I was doing it. One night, I put on my newly acquired Dylan album. As I remember it, I got about halfway through the first CD when my father came into the kitchen and started singing along. "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was on. If you know that song, then you know it's really, really hard to sing along to (it has a lot of lyrics and no chorus). But Dad sang along, taking particular relish in the beginning of the fourth verse:

Get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift

After we listened a few more songs, he asked me if "With God on Our Side" was on the album. It wasn't, but thanks to Napster (RIP) I quickly found it. I played it for him later, and he sang along to that one too. I'd never heard anything like it. It wasn't a song! It was just words spoken with the occasional guitar strum and some harmonica. It's seven minutes long! And, even more astonishingly, it had a point. That song is basically an essay. It's not my favorite Dylan song, not by a long shot, but it was quite an introduction.

I remember asking my father whether a song like this could even be considered music. I don't remember what he told me, but I think the Nobel committee just answered my question. 

Hannah Coulter

After trying for almost two years to find a book club that I could talk or otherwise finagle my way into, I've found myself in two different ones, both of which are meeting next week. For one, we are reading Medea, by Euripides, which apparently everyone read in high school except me. In the other, we are reading Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry. And despite both featuring women as title characters, two more different stories do not exist.  I was reading them simultaneously for a day or so and it was a very strange place to be, mind-wise. So I gave up and just focused on Hannah this weekend. Medea and her badass revenge may be the subject of a later post.

(I have accepted that this blog is really only about books. My apologies. If you need an excuse to stop reading, you now have one!)

So. Hannah Coulter. I've only ever read Berry's essays in The Art of the Commonplace, which I found thought-provoking but not particularly persuasive. I'm just too much of a feminist urbanite to buy into most of what he's selling. He is a beautiful writer, though, so I was happy to sign up to read one of his novels. I was unprepared, though, for this novel to make me cry, like, twelve times. (It's only 190 pages long, so that's tears about every 16 pages.) It's a simple story about the life of a woman on a farm in Kentucky, but it made me cry more than novels I've read about war. It's possible that my reaction is more a comment on me than the book, but...I would like to think it's the book.

Basically, if I can distill it down, the novel is about time, place, and membership. In the theological sense. It reminded me of Gilead, though, in that it would have been fairly easy to miss the theology. Fiction is a good medium for this kind of work, I think, because what would otherwise be academic to me (like reading John Calvin) ends up being a good story that makes me cry. I don't want to move to Kentucky and become a farmer, but I did end up loving Hannah as a character and admiring the way she lives in the world and thinks about time. I wonder if it's ever possible to separate the goodness of Berry's characters from their rural Kentucky setting? Probably not. It seems like he believes urban life, at its essence, creates character defects. If so, then there is no hope for me.

What I kept thinking about while I was reading Hannah Coulter was, weirdly, Pascal. The way Berry writes about time and expectation and memory reminded me so much of this passage from the Pensees: 

Examine your thoughts and you will find them wholly occupied with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do so, it is only to shed light on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; only the future is our end. So we never live, but hope to live, and, as we are always planning to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

Hannah spends her whole life trying not to dwell too much in the past or future. She tries her best to live, rather than always hoping to live. It's an admirable pursuit.

the impure beings

Under the absolute government of a single man, despotism, to reach the soul, clumsily struck at the body, and the soul, escaping from such blows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics that is not at all how tyranny behaves; it leaves the body alone and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: "Think like me or you die." He does say: "You are free not to think as I do; you can keep your life and your property and all; but from this day you are a stranger among us...When you approach your fellows, they will shun you as an impure being...I have spared your life, but it is a life worse than death."

Democracy in America, Volume One, Part II, Chapter 7

academic institutions are, quote, workplaces

“The sweep of this decision is so broad that it’s really likely to transform many, many academic institutions into, quote, workplaces.”

Um, yes, Mr. Lawyer Dude, of course academic institutions are workplaces. How on earth could this be new information? What is an academic institution if it's not a workplace? A studyplace? A thoughtplace? A place where people walk around in monk's robes, eating only berries and reading Kant 16 hours a day?

I so love when people assume that professors and teaching assistants do their work purely for the love of it. If people get paid to work someplace, then it's a workplace. 

The Repairer of the Breach

In Reverend William Barber's DNC convention speech, which I enjoyed a great deal, he references Isaiah 58:12, the passage about "the repairer of the breach":

"If you take away from the midst of you the yoke,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your desire with good things,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters fail not.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in."

And who among us does not want to be a "repairer of the breach and a restorer of streets to dwell in"? Who among us does not want to take away the pointing of the (twitter) finger and the speaking of (cable news) wickedness? I'm sure the Bible has many other passages that speak to our present situation, but I found this one particularly wonderful.

the freedom of mediocrity

Two things, unrelated to each other (except in my mind, as will become clear):

1. The cake I made last night for a baby shower tomorrow
2. An essay by Rufi Thorpe, Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid

The cake: a disaster. First, never bake with egg whites from a box—even in an effort to save yourself from wasting egg yolks—boxed egg whites don’t whip up the way egg whites from an actual egg do. Second, and this part is crucial: never use baking powder that expired five years ago.

In retrospect, both these of these things seem obvious. Alas. I spent five hours baking two cakes, each of which failed to rise. The first cake failed, or so I thought, because of the egg whites (which also failed to whip up for my first batch of icing). My assumption about the egg whites turned out wrong, though, because—to my utter despair—the second cake I made also failed to rise. The true cause: my baking powder, which no longer retained any of the properties of baking powder. 

(Fun fact: you will know whether your baking powder is dead if you put ¼ teaspoon in ½ cup water. If there is no fizz, go buy new baking powder.)

So you may assume that tonight I am, yet again, making another cake. Not so. After tasting one of the four very thin cake layers I made to make sure it was edible, I put three layers together to form a reasonably normal-looking cake. I covered its imperfections with my second batch of (successful!) icing, and finally went to bed.

And here’s where we get to the essay by Thorpe. There are a great many things I sympathize with in her essay, and since I have no idea what it’s like to be a mother, I can only guess what my own experience would be. I do, however, have some experience as a wife, so those are the parts of the essay I’ll comment on. As Thorpe describes, her husband does not cook and he leaves his underwear on the floor of the bathroom. He also shrinks clothing in the wash. This means that she cleans up the underwear, and she does the cooking, and she does the laundry. She is unhappy about this, which is not surprising. 

And yet, reading this all I could think was that it’s really ok for the food to be mediocre and the underwear to remain on the floor. I know this because my food is often mediocre and I too leave my underwear lying around. I still do my fair share of the cooking, and no one picks up after me. (And when Josh leaves his clothes lying around, no one is picking up after him either.) None of this is ideal, but we muddle along regardless. 

So I would like to make a recommendation to Thorpe and everyone like her: imperfection and mediocrity can be wonderful. Not caring can be truly, truly liberating. Is our house the cleanest? No. Do the dishes always get put away immediately? No. Have I shrunk clothes in the wash? Yes, yes I have. Do I eat too much boxed mac and cheese? Yes, I certainly do. Is this the way I would prefer my life to be? Not really. But are we still doing ok? Still enjoying ourselves? Yes, yes we are.

It’s fine. Not great, not perfect, but totally ok. Sort of like the cake I made last night. I know that with fresh baking powder and another carton of eggs, I could make a perfect, fluffy, beautiful cake. But I don’t want to. I’m tired of baking. The cake I made is good enough.

An Open Letter to my 1998 Nissan Sentra

Dear Simon,

Technically, you were my sister’s car first. You were purchased for her, used, in 2000, after she almost wrecked the Volvo trying to learn how to drive stick shift. And you are named after a boy she had a crush on in the 9th grade. But after 15 years of driving you and replacing your rusting parts, it’s safe to say that you’re all mine now.

I mentioned that are you named after a boy my sister had a crush on. This does not make you all that special—all cars in our family are named, and all names begin with the same letter as the model of the car. Victor the Volvo, Harry the Honda, Simon the Sentra. And yes, all the cars are “male.” In our family, the cars and pets are always male (and we like to anthropomorphize). We know we're strange.

Naming may not have made you special, Simon, but you are nevertheless quite special indeed. You are 18 years old, with only 65,000 miles. When I registered you at the Maryland MVA last year, the lady behind the desk thought this was a joke. It’s not.

You once had mice living in your air conditioning, unbeknownst to me, and I neglected to get the unit checked out for a whole summer. Back in 2002, I knocked your side mirror off while backing out of a garage, and I reattached it using duct tape and drove you around like that for months. (My high school friends call you “El Ghetto” because of this. Not PC at all, but give us a break—we were only 17.) Your top is peeling off and rusting. It looks pretty gruesome. Josh, when he first met you, asked if I had tried to cut out a sunroof for you. (I hope you forgive him for that—sometimes he makes bad jokes.) 

And just a few weeks ago, someone hit your front driver-side door, and now it makes a terrible crunching sound when it closes. In high school, my sister sat in you with liquid cement on her pants, and there has been a weird splotch on your upholstery ever since. In the winter, your power steering sometimes fails. Water now leaks into your trunk. You are missing two hubcaps. You have never, ever been broken into.

Once, driving up Broadway in Manhattan, someone pulled up next to you and shouted: “Hey, I know where you can get that bumper replaced for a great price!” I was confused by this at first—usually men shouting in cars are referring to my bumper and not yours, Simon. But then I was insulted for you. What was wrong with your bumper? It may have looked (as it does now) like I had played bumper cars with you, repeatedly and for many years, but what of it? Isn’t there a saying about scars giving character to a face? No? Well. I still told that guy to get lost. I hope your feelings weren’t hurt.

Simon, you have been an important part of my young adult life. You were the car I learned to drive on, and the car I drove during my driving test back in 2001. You allowed me to sneak in the house way past my curfew in high school. You came to college with me, and got me safely from DC to Chicago to New York and back again, several times. You have helped me move six times. We have spent many, many hours driving around together with the windows down, listening to bad pop music at a ridiculous volume—this is one of my favorite things to do. 

You took me and Alex and Rita to Depot late at night for hamburgers. You took me and Marta and Alex (and sometimes Adam) to many, many delicious cheap ethnic dining establishments. You took me to the library to write my dissertation when I was too lazy to take the bus. You helped Josh out when his car broke down. You got me all the places I wanted to go without ever leaving me stranded by the side of the road. I couldn’t have asked for a better car.

And now, after 15 years together, soon it’s going to be time to say goodbye. You’re old and not in great shape. I don’t drive you as much as I should. Last time I took you to the mechanic, he told me he was worried about replacing any of your parts because you are so rusty and brittle.  And he needs to replace many of your parts.

Selling you (or more likely, giving you away) will be hard for me, because I think of you as a friend—a great friend who is always ready for a trip and never gives me a hard time. We’ve grown old together, Simon, and I’ll really miss you when you’re gone.

Love,

Julia

Spring

Something new in the air today, perhaps the struggle of the bud

to become a leaf. Nearly two weeks late it invaded the air but 

then what is two weeks to life herself? On a cool night there is 

a break from the struggle of becoming. I suppose that's why we

sleep. In a childhood story they spoke of the land of enchant-

ment. We crawl to it, we short-lived mammals, not realizing that 

we are already there. To the gods the moon is the entire moon 

but to us it changes second by second because we are always fish 

in the belly of the whale of earth. We are encased and can't stray 

from the house of our bodies. I could say that we are released, 

but I don't know, in our private night when our souls explode 

into a billion fragments then calmly regather in a black pool

in the forest, far from the cage of flesh, the unremitting "I." This was 

a dream and in dreams we are forever alone walking the ghost

road beyond our lives. Of late I see waking as another chance at

spring.

> Jim Harrison, Spring

My one-year work anniversary is coming up next week, and as with any anniversary, the year seems somehow to have taken forever and also no time at all.

12 months ago I had just gotten a permanent job offer, but I'd been working in temporary positions off-and-on for over 6 months, since before I even defended my dissertation. I was hugely anxious anyway, though—being without steady work for a few months felt like I would be without a job forever. In retrospect everything seems like it was obviously going to work out, but I was right to be anxious, and very, very lucky to find steady work just 6 months after defending. Especially considering how thoroughly, and for so many years, I had avoided thinking about what I was going to do after school.

Overall, though, what I've learned (remembered?) this year is how much I enjoy working. I miss grad school for many reasons, not the least of which are the friends I made there who have now scattered, but I don't miss being a grad student at all. The work was engaging, but I didn't enjoy it. By the end I was so frustrated, I could barely suppress my disdain for the entire system and everyone who had a hand in maintaining it. And after I'd finished, I was so anxious I'd never work again it seemed impossible that I'd ever find anything satisfying to do. After a year at work, though, I can say that I have occasionally been useful to individuals who have appreciated it. (And paid me adequately for it.) That is a modest accomplishment, but one that I've found surprisingly enjoyable.

By that measure, though, I probably should have been a plumber. There's still time!