and/or: word, image, provocation

The second volume of and/or is now out and I'm fairly happy with the results.  This journal was born out of a conversation I had with my colleague, Damian Hey.  We were lazing around my office one summer about two years ago, looking at a recent issue of Vulcan Magazine.  I've always been a fan of this quirky journal and greatly admire the funky sensibilities of those who put it together.

"We should do our own journal of experimental writing and art," Damian said wistfully to me as he flipped through the pages of Vulcan. 

"Ok," I said. "Let's do it."

Less than three months later we had a website up, a rigorous editorial process for reviewing submissions, and a few months after that our first issue was available on-line and in public and university libraries. 

Now our second volume is out and I think that it is even more interesting than the first volume. My criterion for really good art is simple: does it provoke me, excite me, shock me, challenge my perspective on life, or at least give me a good chuckle? If art does any of these things, then it's "good art." Based upon this standard, V2 is damned masterpiece!

Last week I was at the Poet's House in Manhattan, which is rapidly becoming my favorite hangout spot in the City.  I was rummaging through the bookcase filled with all recent poetry journals, and there under "A" was and/or.  Being an obsessively competitive person, I couldn't stop myself comparing the recent edition of our journal to the others on the shelves.  I'm delighted to say that and/or ranked right up there in terms of content and design with some of the most prestigious poetry journals in the country.  Credit for that has to go to Damian Hey, the Editor-in-Chief, and our four amazing literary and art editors (Orchid Tierney, Aimee Herman, Don Hazlitt, and George Kayaian) who spent an enormous amount of time going through the stacks of submissions that we received from contributors.  Great work, folks!

Update on Volumes 2 and 3 of and/or:

V2 has just received a very nice review from Camille Martin on her blog Rogue Embryo.   Many thanks for the kind words, Camille!

We are now beginning the process of going through the plethora of submissions that we've received for V3, and, once our editorial staff has selected the strongest pieces to include, I'll begin the process of laying out the journal.  Since the submissions that we've received for this issue are extremely good, I am going to make it my mission to design a layout for this edition that is as visually dynamic as it can possibly be.

A Tale of Two Americas

The following interviews were taped in Mississippi by Alexandra Pelosi for the HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher."  When you watch it, you begin to understand quite clearly that there is not one America, but two.  The first America is the one that I live in.  It's located on the coasts and along the Great Lakes and has citizens who are fairly well educated, somewhat secular, relatively tolerant of differences, and who for the most part believe that government has at least some role to play in ensuring a minimal degree of equality and fairness among its inhabitants. 

Then there's the other America that Pelosi captures in her video.  This is the America of the heartlands and the Bible Belt and is filled with some of the poorest, least educated folks in the country.  It also the place where people--let's not call them citizens, because to be a citizen implies some appreciation for the concept of the common good--have been persuaded to blame government (and liberal New Yorkers) for all their material woes and who are waiting with tremendous longing for the rapture to lift them out of this "veil of tears" that we call earthly existence. 

All I can say is thank God I live in the first America.

The Roots of Our Consumerism

 "Homo Consumens is the man whose main goal is not primarily to own things, but to consume more and more, and thus to compensate for his inner vacuity, passivity, loneliness and anxiety….He mistakes thrill and excitement for joy and happiness and material comfort for aliveness; satisfied greed becomes the meaning of life, striving for it a new religion. The freedom to consume becomes the essence of human freedom."

Erich Fromm. “The Application of Humanist Psychoanalysis to Marx's Theory" in Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. New York: Doubleday, 1965.

I like to think that I’m totally immune to the lure of consumerism.  After all, I’ve spent the past 15 years lecturing students on the importance of voluntary simplicity both as a means to prevent further environmental degradation to our planet, but also as a way to find greater happiness in life.

That latter benefit of reducing consumption is often lost on 20-something-year-olds who have grown up fervently believing that meaning and happiness in life are connected to the ability to buy whatever one wants, whenever one wants, whether one has the funds to do so or not.  I’ve found that, even when I show these students hard data from the field of human psychology clearly demonstrating that the “need to always have more” is linked to  personal unhappiness and that the happiest people on the planet are actually those who are the most immune to the lure of consumption, they simply don’t buy it (no pun intended). 

But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am setting a positive example for my students, right?  After all, I’m living in a house that is much smaller than I could afford, I drive a 17 year old car (by choice), rarely eat out in restaurants, and generally wear clothes till they fall apart (literally!).  On the surface of things, I am the poster boy for the voluntary simplicity movement.

And yet, deep in the marrow of my being, I am as easily seduced by the lure of American consumerism as the most fashion-conscious student in my environmental ethics class.    Just recently, for example, I found myself wanting to replace the perfectly adequate cell-phone that I had been using for about four years with a smart new Iphone.  The new phone cost hundreds of dollars more than the old phone did and that new plan that I had to take out to get it was also more expensive, but at least I could now say that I had the smartest, most sophisticated, most stylish cell phone on the market.  And I was ever so happy—that is, until I saw a colleague of mine with the new Iphone 4s with even cooler features than the model I had.  And then I found myself becoming envious and thinking that my own Iphone just didn’t seem quite as special any more.

Then there’s the issue of my car.  I am adamant about the fact that I will not buy a new car until the one I have—a 1995 Toyota Corolla—starts to become unreliable or cost more to maintain than it is worth.  17 years later, I still have the same car, and it is still chugging along perfectly fine.  There are absolutely no mechanical issues with the car, but it certainly doesn’t provide as smooth and quiet a ride as a new car would, and lately, the paint on the roof of the car has begun to wear off, making the car look rather shabby.  In fact, I’ve been told that I have the ugliest car on campus, and that’s probably true:  I doubt that even the most cash-strapped freshman would ever be caught dead driving a car as aesthetically challenged as mine. 

Now, when someone asks me about my car, I tell them proudly that I’ll be damned if I ever get suckered into buying a new car before I absolutely need one.  But, in fact, I’m starting to feel just a little self-conscious about being seen driving a car like mine or parking it at the Mall amidst all the shiny new SUVs that people on Long Island tend to own.  And this year, I’ve even begun fantasizing about getting a new car—not anything excessive mind you, but something small, cute, and fun like a Honda Fit.  Every time I see someone driving one of these cars, I almost automatically think to myself:  “Why should they get to drive a nice new car, while I am forced to drive this piece of crap!  “After all,” I reason to myself, “I am a college professor and do have a reputation to maintain.”

The Ugliest Car on Campus

So you see, although I would like to believe that I am impervious to the insatiable desire for more than I need, this really isn’t the case.  I am as much a part of the species homo consumens as anyone.  The only difference is that I’ve read enough to have some ideas about what the root causes of the consumeristic desires that drive our society might be.   I think that these causes are threefold:

1)      Contemporary Americans have come to identify who they are as human beings with what they own.  The more trendy things I own, then, the more worthy I am as a human being.  Conversely, if I live in a modest house, don’t wear the latest clothes, and don’t drive a nice car, then something is wrong with ME as a human being.   In 21^st century America we are judged, not by the “content of our characters,” but by the stuff we possess.

2)      We have been convinced by modern advertising that we should have as much as our neighbors do.   In the past, however, our neighbors could only afford to buy things if they saved for them.  But the advent of the credit industry means that ordinary people can buy things they don’t have the actually money for.  We don’t know, for example, that our neighbors really can’t afford to live in the McMansion that they recently built or drive their new Lexus, but we think they can, and that makes us feel inferior.  So we too are compelled to take out loans and live well beyond our means, just to “keep up with the Jonses.”  

3)      In the absence of authentic religious belief, Americans have made a religion out of consumption.  If we really believed in God and were convinced that this life is not all that there is, having so much stuff wouldn’t mean quite as much to us.  After all, how could owning even the most sophisticated things in the world—fancy jewelry, designer clothes, etc.—ever compare with what we have to look forward to in the next life?  Objectively, then, if Americans really believe in anything, it is that salvation comes from buying power—the ability to satisfy our insatiable desires with more and more stuff.  God is dead, but at least we have Walmart—or Neiman Marcus, if you prefer—to  provide us with ultimate meaning in life.

These are just a few thoughts that came to me as I reflected on the roots of our consumerism in the United States.  I’d love to hear what you think about this.  Is the problem of consumerism really as bad as I think it is (do you personally fall victim to it?)?  And what do you think that the ultimate root of this need to always acquire more and more is?   

This article originally appeared on EcoBlog

Latest Front in the Culture Wars

There’s a war going on as I write this post—a war that will determine precisely what kind of country we will become in the 21^st century.  And Sandra Fluke, a student at Georgetown law school, has emerged as the hero of the hour in this war.   

Ms. Fluke, former president of the Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice and an editor on the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, had been engaged in a struggle with Georgetown University over the university’s refusal to provide insurance coverage for contraception.  Prevented last week from testifying at the overtly misogynistic hearing Republicans held in the House of Representatives, she was given a forum to speak at a Democratic event, where she reported that students at her university often pay as much as $1000 a year for contraceptives.

That simple statement of fact prompted right-wing blow-hard and Oxycontin pill popper, Rush Limbaugh, to slander her in the most appalling manner possible.  “What does that make her?” he asked.  “It makes her a slut, right?  It makes her a prostitute.”  These comments provoked a slew of denunciations from Democrats, and even Republicans like John Boehner and Mitt Romney attempted to distance themselves from Limbaugh, knowing full well the violent reaction that these words would provoke, particularly among women.  

But Limbaugh himself was unrepentant.  On Wednesday, he went on to throw even more fuel into the fire he had started by offering this piece of advice to Ms. Fluke:  “If we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it.  We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.” 

It would seem that, according to Limbaugh and the conservatives who support him, any woman who uses birth control is not only a slut and a prostitute, but an aspiring porn star as well. 

Despite the equivocation of some conservatives on this issue, there’s no doubt in my mind that the right-wing agenda in this country is fixated on turning back the clock on women’s reproductive rights.   The problem for conservatives is that the war for control over reproductive rights was fought and won by women over 40 years ago, and there is no conceivable way that any reasonable woman is going to allow pasty old white men and clerics to strip them of the freedom that they now take for granted.   Indeed, when over 90% of all Catholic women use some form of birth control—despite their Church’s attempts over the years to demonize the practice—you know that contraception is not an issue any longer in most Americans’ minds.  It’s about as controversial as the question of what fabric softener to use. 

When reactionaries like Limbaugh or Rick Santorum start to challenge the validity of these rights, all they will really succeed in doing is completely alienating reasonable women around the country.  Furthermore, by continually harping on these sorts of issues, conservatives will ultimately drive women out of the Republican Party, just as they have driven out minorities, gays, and those who care about issues like environmental protection, civil liberties, and the separation of church and state.  The only people who will be left in the Party will be the most extreme reactionaries and fanatics, whose sole agenda will be to return the country to a time when women knew their place (i.e., in the kitchen and in the bedroom) and the good ole boys could run the country without interference from those with wombs or excessive pigmentation in their skins. 

So much thanks is owed to Sandra Fluke for providing progressives with a new weapon with which to fight the new fronts that are opening up in the culture wars.   Sometimes, it takes a woman of courage to remind the rest of us how easily freedom can be undermined without extreme vigilance. 

Ship, Horses, Beaver, Woman, Planet

I didn't make this film, but I wish I did. It is absolute perfection. You've got everything in it: a ship,  horses, a beaver, a woman, and a planet. The entire universe realized in the space of a minute! Watch it on full view and allow yourself to be swept away by that majesty of it!

Concerning Resistance to Repression in Our Current Age (With a Peculiar Digression into the Realm of the Proboscis)

The mechanism of repression and control are evident in every aspect of life in the 21^st century.  What we eat, how we communicate, who we vote for, how we entertain ourselves, and the like, are all completely programmed by our true overlords.  They want us to think that we have freedom of choice, and, indeed, we do perhaps in the most innocuous of matters.  But in the things that really count, freedom and self-determination are myths—illusions created by those in control to give the semblance of democracy and prevent open revolt.

And we, like the docile creatures that we are—more like cattle than puppies, because at least puppies become dogs and eventually develop fangs that can be used for self-defense—willingly agree to our own abject servitude.  We go through the motions of living, but we are not really alive; for to be truly alive is to be self-determined, to have a vision of the good life that is uniquely our own, and to act at times capriciously, wantonly, even imprudently, simply because we choose to do so.   And we have none of these abilities any longer.   

Dissent, resistance, and revolt are impossible, because the mechanisms of control are so total, so all-pervasive, that the dissenter would be annihilated before he utters the first word of critique.  And far from being able to count on the support of his fellow citizens, the dissenter would be carried over to judgment and tribulation by his own neighbor and his own child.   He stands alone, and therefore he stands in ruin. 

It is madness, then, to challenge the control of the elites, but it is equal madness to allow oneself to become part of the herd, to lose the only power that we have left as human beings—the ability to internally dissent and thus retain some small shred of our original autonomy.   And so I dissent, and in doing so, proclaim as loudly as any revolutionary that I am free, and will remain so as long as I refuse to give in to the overlords control over the workings of my soul. 

But what form shall my personal dissent take?  Curled toes and snarling lips are overplayed: the overlords would recognize them immediately as symbols of revolt.  The raised pinkie and furrowed eyebrow are too subtle: they could as easily bespeak a “come-hither” insinuation as a challenge to the status quo.  No, if there is to be true internal revolt, it can only be symbolized by the nose. 

The nose.

The nose.
The nose.

The nose.  It is so conspicuous, but so filled with mystery.  It sits happily on the surface of our faces, yet it is the true window to our human souls.  With every breath we take, the outer world mingles with the inner, the mundane realm conjoins with the spiral.  The nose is also the ultimate symbol of contempt for authority: I thumb my nose at you, I raise my nose in disgust at your malfeasance, I blow my nose in your general direction as the ultimate manifestation of my hatred for you. 

And so I create nose art.  And in creating nose art, I free myself from the control of the overlords.  I create nose art and I become the free man that I was born to be.   I create nose art and I expose my potestas animi  (my vital spiritual power) brazenly for all to see.

And thus with the nose, ends all tyranny!

Changing the Way We Do Business

I have to confess that the Internet often bugs me.  Most of us living in the 21^st century, after all, have become virtual slaves to web-based programs like Google,  Flickr, and Amazon.   These programs were supposed to make our lives easier and enhance our freedom, but the opposite has proven to be the case.  We are now poised to become a generation of Internet idiots—people who will no longer have the attention spans required to write great novels, study philosophy, or practice meditation, or who will no longer have the emotional intelligence needed to interact meaningfully with our fellow human beings.  And that’s mainly due to our addiction to the soul-sucking Internet. 

That having been said, every now and then I come upon a website that actually has the potential to transform human society for the better.  And when that happens, it slightly reaffirms my faith in the Internet as a tool for personal and social empowerment.

Change.org, I believe, represents what is best about the Internet, because it allows ordinary people like you and me to harass the powerful and mighty into changing the way they do business.  Last fall, for example, Molly Katchpole, a 22 year old nanny, was incensed that Bank of America wanted to charge a $5 a month fee for the use of debit cards.  Molly wrote a petition on Change.org, and 306,000 signatures later, Bank of America totally backed down on their plans. 

More recently, another ordinary American, Mark Shields, gathered 250,000 petition signatures to demand better working conditions at Chinese factories making Apple products like iPhones and iPads.  Conditions in these factories are so appalling that there has recently been a rash of workers—including child laborers—killing themselves out of despair.  A lurid New York Times  exposé wasn’t able to shame Apple into changing its practices, but Mark’s petition seems to be having some effect.  Yesterday, Apple’s CEO announced that the company will immediately be starting factory inspections in China.

As I was searching through the Change.org site, there were several petitions that I immediately signed (one being a petition to end corporate personhood) and I was inspired to begin writing my own petition for a cause that is near and dear to my own heart—calling for the end of China’s genocide against the people of Tibet. 

My question to each of you out there is:  is there some cause about which you feel strongly enough that you’d be willing to sign a petition or even start your own?  If so, what would this cause be? 

You know what my causes are… Now share yours.

Yes, But What Does It Mean?

According to a recent report issued by the Mercatus Center, a libertarian-leaning think tank out of George Mason University, one-third of all Americans received some form of means-based public assistance, like Medicaid or food stamps, in 2010. The report then goes on to say that when Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are included, nearly half the country—148 million Americans—were living in a household receiving some form of government benefits.

This comes at a time when less than half of all Americans are paying income tax.

It makes your blood boil, doesn’t it? Just think about it: half the country footing the bill for the benefits of the other half; the industrious ones being crippled by onerous tax burdens to prop up those who are too lazy or stupid to take care of themselves.

The problem with this report is that Social Security, Medicare, and even unemployment benefits are not “gifts” from the federal government. People pay into these programs throughout the course of their working careers, and, therefore, they can hardly be considered government entitlements. So the 50% number is pure propaganda designed to enrage those who look for any excuse at all to bash any and all government programs—even successful ones like Social Security and Medicare .

This is not to say that we don’t have a problem in this country, however. When one-third of the country is so poor that they require public assistance and when one-half of all taxpayers make so little that the government can’t even tax them, that should concern all of us, because it means that our country is on an unsustainable economic path. The question is how do we interpret this data.

Economic conservatives like those at the Mercatus Center and the Heritage Foundation would argue that the size of the American government itself is the issue. They would probably maintain that government programs designed to assist the poor actually create a perverse incentive not to work, while at the same time penalizing those who are the most industrious in the country. The solution, then, would be to dramatically reduce the size of government, thus lowering taxes, giving wealth creators (i.e., the rich) more money to invest, and creating jobs for those Americans who actually want to work. To do this, they advocate privatizing some current government programs (Social Security, for example) and entirely eliminating other programs (Medicaid) and troublesome government agencies (The Environmental Protection Agency, among others).

Progressives, on the other hand, would interpret this data as evidence that the middle class is being squeezed economically to the point of oblivion and that our public policies, which are skewed in favor of the top 1%, are creating a nation of rich and poor. If 50% of Americans pay no taxes, they would argue, it’s because they aren’t making anywhere near enough to be taxed in the first place. Cutting government programs like unemployment benefits, Social Security or Medicare is exactly the wrong thing to do, especially at this time, they would argue, because all this will do is push more Americans into the ranks of the poor. Taking their refrain from Franklin Roosevelt, progressives would argue that, especially during difficult economic times (i.e., right now), what we need is an even stronger safety net reestablished for the most vulnerable Americans and large-scale public spending to stimulate the economy.    

So what’s the right way to interpret the data put out by the Mercatus Center? This issue, I believe, gets to the heart of politics in the United States. It pits those who believe that “government is the problem” (conservatives/libertarians) against those who believe that government has an important role to play in insuring that all citizens have a decent minimum standard of living and have access to those goods that are vital for human flourishing—employment at a living wage, adequate health care, and some degree of economic security in their old age (progressives/liberals).

So which side of this issue do you come down on and why?

March of the Crazies

As I was reading the New York Times on Saturday morning, I happened upon two stories that give a good indication of just how dangerous the reactionary right-wing in this country can be.

The first story has been all over the news this past week. The Susan B. Komen for the Cure foundation is one of the country’s largest charitable organizations in the fight against breast cancer. You’ve undoubtedly seen their ubiquitous pink ribbons on the back on people’s cars, and may have even given donations over the years to help this organization in its important work.

Last week, Komen, caving under pressure from conservatives who are determined to kill off Planned Parenthood, made an announcement that it would no longer be helping to fund Planned Parenthood’s successful program of offering breast exams to low income women, because there was supposedly a question about whether they have used taxpayer funds for abortions (they don’t and never have). Fortunately, the sane majority of our country was outraged by this decision, and Komen received a barrage of hostile emails from people who, not surprisingly, were disgusted by the politicizing of this issue. Reeling from public pressure, the Komen foundation finally announced that they would, in fact, be continuing to fund breast exams through Planned Parenthood.

The other story that caught my attention was one that hasn’t been in the media much, but may even be more important than the Komen story. The Times reported today that over the past few years activists associated with the Tea Party have been using their clout to attack local programs to conserve energy, limit sprawl, and promote public transportation. Apparently, they view these green initiatives as part of a “United Nations-led conspiracy” to undermine the freedom of Americans to live as irresponsibly and destructively as they want. Although normal Americans might laugh off this type of activism as the by-product of the paranoid and delusional mindset of the typical Tea Party fringe lunatic, the protests that have occurred in recent years have actually caused some important environmental legislation on the local level to be undermined, according to the Times.

In a recent post, I argued that younger Americans are increasingly becoming more progressive in their politics, so you would think that the type of right-wing activism that is trying to kill off Planned Parenthood and eviscerate all decent environmental programs (not to mention deny women, gays, minorities, union workers, and immigrants their legal rights) would be doomed to fail. And, indeed, it will fail in the end. The problem is that the right-wing in this country is well funded, vocal, and highly motivated, and progressives, unfortunately, are not. In the short term that means that reactionaries like those who seek to cast doubt upon the reality of global warming, for example, can do a great deal of damage to our planet and the people who live on it.

Fortunately, progressives—and I speak of real progressives here, not Democrats, who haven’t stood up for their beliefs since the time of Lyndon Johnson—are learning to fight just as tenaciously as their reactionary counterparts. The efforts to defund Planned Parenthood have failed so far precisely because people on the left were able to shame the Komen foundation. This shows that political overreach on the part of the right in this country can be thwarted, but it will take constant vigilance on the part of everyone who considers themselves part of the sane majority.

Rabid reactionaries may score some victories in the short-run: they’ve already succeeded in causing grave harm to an environmental movement that has been teetering on the precipice of irrelevance for some time now. But the future is not theirs. It belongs to those on the left who have the courage and conviction to stand firm during the dark times that are undoubtedly ahead of us.

The Now

The only moment we really have in life is the present moment. Past is gone, future does not yet exist and may never be. If we are to live fully, we must by necessity live in the here and now.

And yet we spend our lives obsessing over the past and fantasizing about the future. In living in this way, we become shadows of what we could be--phantoms dwelling in obscure never-lands of the mind.

All wisdom, all beauty, all truth is contained in the present moment. To be able to tap into the eternal reservoir of the now is to achieve true liberation and ultimate enlightenment.