About "Arab Spring," the phrase and its resilience.

Here's a story of mine published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's about the "Arab Spring" phrase and the various objections to it. 

Privacy, ownership, and the e-book aesthetic

Here’s a story of mine in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the shift in ownership and privacy risks associated with the e-book aesthetic. Hope you like it.

http://bit.ly/xd4LPu

Sharia-Chat

Here are a few pieces about Sharia in the American context.

Robert K. Vischer writes in First Things, a rather conservative magazine, about "The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws" in the US. In The New York Times, legal scholar Samuel J. Rascoff reminds us that "Uncle Sam Is No Imam," based on a more extensive argument he writes in the Standford Law Review, "Establishing Official Islam?"
 

Embarrassingly Bad

Interesting piece in the London Review of Books.

Embarrassingly Bad

Douthat's Two Minds

If you have an ounce of sincerity, it's difficult to write a thousand words without tipping off some of your intentions. An overrated opinion writer for the New York Times wrote yesterday a column ("Islam in Two Americas") in which he starts out surprisingly well, but then the dark spirits take over. Essentially, as Joan Walsh of Salon remarks correctly, "Not surprisingly, Douthat made his astonishingly ignorant remarks in a column defending prejudice against the so-called 'ground zero mosque,' which, again, isn't a mosque, and isn't at ground zero. The controversy, ginned up by Republican opportunists and kept alive by cowardly Democrats (thanks, Harry Reid!) is bringing out the 'Know-Nothings' in American politics again -- and I mean that in both senses of the word."

Walsh takes down Douthat in good and convincing manner. You may read it here.

Seriously, just when you think the political tenor of America can't get worse ... 

What did Orwell really do?

What did George Orwell's prognostications ultimately do? Like many people, I like to cite him and even leave Orwellian quotes at the end of an email and stuff. But what did his "big brother" warnings and tales of the seductive relationship between power and corruption (among once subjugated talking animals) really achieve? Seriously. The last time I checked, big brother ignored Orwell—not even bothering to slow down to show the man contempt. Without much resistance, Brother's cameras, listening devices, search engines, tweets, legal cover, and public complacency are all over the place. The penetration is more than what we think. In a given work day, for example, the image of a law abiding person is recorded dozens of times and possibly kept in some digital archive in perpetuity. If he carries a cell phone, his whereabouts can be traced easily. Does privacy have much meaning?

We are familiar with Animal Farm and 1984, insightful stories of human vulnerabilities and manias. The question though comes down to this (ok, maybe): do good ideas really matter as active forces that direct and reset courses of life and that expose unexamined presumptions? What recent narrative can we recall that really changed things beyond integument? Civil Rights perhaps? Not sure really.

Orwell did not waste his time. I'm not saying that. His non-fiction work (his essays and personal experience narratives) remain quite moving ... but only for a few people, elitist as this may sound. Beck and Limbaugh have broadcast pulses because they are supported by millions of viewers and listeners. If Orwell had a radio show today, he would be unplugged in a week. He couldn't compete with these guys. In the same vein, I don't really think the Tea Party movement will really last long (if it does, well the Mayans maybe on to something after all), but look at how the movement is changing the political game. Listen to their "ideas" and notice their racist bearing (Civil Rights really change the essence of things?), the dribble of their inspiration sources (Sarah Palin, for example), their unfocused and highly generalized aims (details disable things in a heartbeat), and the political fear they provoke.

What good idea out there today really matters as a challenge to our disabling paradigms?

More Amish

Apparently the population of Amish communities and, in fact, the number of Amish settlements have increased in recent years. I read this in a year-old National Geographic magazine as I was waiting at a doctor's office with ailments that are almost certainly stress induced and happily supported by habits of modern requirements of earning. Later that week, I visited a friend in far western Wisconsin, where Amish folks have been thriving for generations. To be honest, when I see the Amish, I almost envy their way of life. I know that they toil hard, working the land and taking care of routine amenities of life; but that kind of work does not grate the soul or offend it, nor does it stress the mind and heart. That's what I think. And from what I hear from my friend, it's sounds true.

At first glance, it seems counter intuitive to see the number of Amish settlements increase (and all that this may mean), but when you think about it, it's really something to expect. Something has to give. Our over mechanical and pixel world would naturally drive people to seek out simplicity. Not the casual kind of simplicity, but simplicity as a way of life. No one lives without complexity or trial, but you have to suspect that some of the nonsense and subjugation we have to deal with is derived from an outlook that's alien to our Adamic natures.

I see good folks on their horse-drawn carriages, and, as I zoom by in my motor car, I try to imagine that kind of life. That's imagination speaking. Not sure how I would really react if I were suddenly in suspenders holding on to the reins. Something to think about.

"The Lottery" and Its Author

I don't remember exactly when I first read the short story "The Lottery," but I know that I was young enough to think it was interesting and a bit confusing. I had to ask questions about the ending because in my mind I could not understand why people would willingly accept this game of choosing who would be killed. Really, why didn't anyone do anything about the practice; you know, social opprobrium? (The question is still urgent for a bunch of things in our world.) So then in school I learned about metaphor, even those that the author did not intend.

Here's an interesting short essay in TNR about "The Lottery" and Shirley Jackson, who wrote it in a single sitting. Now that is more mind-boggling than the short story itself. The essay begins like this:

The idea for “The Lottery,” first published in 1948 and now one of the most widely anthologized works of American fiction, came to Shirley Jackson while she was pushing her baby daughter in her stroller. When they got home, she writes in an essay included in the new Library of America collection of her writings, she put away her groceries, put the baby in a playpen, and in a single sitting wrote the story ...

Our Contemporary Disaster Movie

Essayist Rebecca Solnit says that we're in a disaster movie but we're not following the script. As an asteroid tumbles toward earth, the earthlings of all shapes and persuasions tend to rally together around a single leadership to solve a global problem, according to fiction. But according to nonfiction, suggests Solnit, today we're not so good at rallying or solving. She says, "The movie is called 'Climate Change,' and you can tell its plot in a number of ways. In one, the alien monsters taking over the planet are called corporations, while the leaders who should be protecting us from their depredations are already subjugated and doing their bidding. Think of Chevron, Exxon, Shell, and the coal companies as gigantic entities that don’t need clean water, or food, and don’t care much if you do (as you can see from the filthy wreckage in their extraction zones and their spin against the science of our survival)."

Most people I know rail against corporations mainly because they don't own one. But there is something to say about the reach and calamity that global warming represents. And there's something to say about demystifying the potential of leaders making boneheaded decisions that truly ignore the drama of our day and that genuflect before the loins of political interests that blind and bind.

Speaking of disasters, I've blogged about this before, Solnit's article in Harper's magazine a few years ago made this very interesting observation about human reaction to disaster:

In his 1961 study, “Disasters and Mental Health: Therapeutic Principles Drawn from Disaster Studies,” sociologist Charles Fritz asks an interesting question: “Why do large-scale disasters produce such mentally healthy conditions?” One of the answers is that a disaster shakes us loose of ordinary time. “In everyday life many human problems stem from people's preoccupation with the past and the future, rather than the present,” Fritz wrote. “Disasters provide a temporary liberation from the worries, inhibitions, and anxieties associated with the past and the future because they force people to concentrate their full attention on immediate moment-to-moment, day-to-day needs.” This shift in awareness, he added, “speeds the process of decision-making” and “facilitates the acceptance of change.” 

The state of mind Fritz describes resembles those sought in various spiritual traditions. It recalls Buddhism's emphasis on being in the moment, nonattachment, and compassion for all beings, and the Christian monastic tradition's emphasis on awareness of mortality and ephemerality. From this perspective, disaster can be understood as a crash course in consciousness.

. . . . The aftermath of disaster is often peculiarly hopeful, and in the rupture of the ordinary, real change often emerges. But this means that disaster threatens not only bodies, buildings, and property but also the status quo. Disaster recovery is not just a rescue of the needy but also a scramble for power and legitimacy, one that the status quo usually-but not always-wins. The Bush Administration's response after 9/11 was a desperate and extreme version of this race to extinguish too vital a civil society and reestablish the authority that claims it alone can do what civil society has just done-and, alas, an extremely successful one. For the administration, the crisis wasn't primarily one of death and destruction but one of power. The door had been opened and an anxious administration hastened to slam it shut.

Reading Wallace in Qatar

I revisited recently a volume of essays edited by the late postmodern writer David Foster Wallace. I was living in the Arab Gulf for less than two months when I read about his suicide back in 2008, late summer. The 2007 volume of "Best American Essays" remains current, its essays urgent, and questions raised unanswered.

I wrote this review essay called "Reading Wallace in Qatar." In the review, published in one of my favorite book review and essay sites (The Millions), I mention my response to the volume and the pathologies it alludes to. I hope you like it.