In the 70s, when I lived in Italy, there was a lot of talk in books and magazines about the dystopia of modern life. People of the 20th century no longer experienced the daily earthiness that had in the past come from working the land or some other wholesome physical endeavor (which was of course romanticized, since working the land must take a harsh toll, not that I would know, and many people, including in Italy, are still busy every day doing just that) but were instead stuck with the crassness of modern culture, where daily life was reduced to a constant barrage of billboards, products, traffic, high rises, smog, and other blaring insults. There was a popular TV ad in Italy that illustrated this concept: a man sat at a small cafe table, blissfully enjoying a glass of vermouth, but he was smack in the middle of traffic, with a river of honking, lurching cars speeding around him. The tag line was: “Stop the world, I want to get off!” (This line was often repeated to great merriment on the bus to school: “Stop the bus, I want to get off!”)

In the 21st century, we have now become postmodern. We don’t, as a culture, fight or rail against modernity but accept it as the fabric that makes up our experience. Billboards, advertising, CNN, the minute details of the lives of celebrities: everything that makes up our media-driven culture are our collective experience. In Times Square, there are so many lit-up, animated, enormous advertising screens that being there is exactly like being inside your TV, as if you were Alice and had stepped through the looking glass, but no one seems to register much of a disconnect.

We accept now that our daily experience is pretty humdrum, and that our excitement, and even our musings and fantasies, as well as serious thoughts, come from what we read in books and magazines, or maybe the internet, and hear and see in movies and TV. And I think that’s generally a good thing, since I don’t want to have only what’s in my physical life to think about. Otherwise all I would think would be: “Should I go to the store?” “What can I eat?” “Wow, my apartment is really dirty.” Frankly that stuff takes up more of my attention than I would like it to.

When I was a kid, I was not aware of being postmodern, but I always found myself comparing my experience to what I read in books, which I took to be guideposts of some kind for how to live. I don’t think that’s necessarily unusual. I think it comes from our modern culture, which is so tame and bland compared to almost anything that would make a story in a book even mildly interesting.

And I usually felt that when my family and I did something in a way that was not like in books and movies, we were doing it wrong. This may have been compounded by the fact that I grew up in American culture without having ever been to the United States. I went to American schools in Brazil and Italy, starting at age six and through the eleventh grade, and school almost instantly became the culture I lived in and associated myself with. I talked and thought in English. I read American books. But these books were full of things I had never seen: yellow school buses, suburban neighborhoods, kids riding bikes to each other’s houses, holding bake sales, building forts, buying penny candy from the corner shop. In Sao Paulo, children do not wander around neighborhoods by themselves. Houses are surrounded by iron fences or brick walls topped with broken glass. I just read a statistic that in Sao Paulo someone is kidnapped every two days, and the murder rate is four times what it is the US.

But even among grown ups who grew up in their own culture right here in the United States, there’s a sense that our lives don’t count or are somehow lacking validation if they don’t conform to what’s on TV. Juliet Schor is quoted as saying one of the reasons Americans tend to overspend (and I would add the corollary that it’s probably one of the reasons people feel cheated and dissatisfied — not that there isn’t plenty of reason to feel that way anyhow) is that TV tends to portray a wealthy upper class lifestyle as the norm, whereas the reality is that the majority, even in the US, which is a relatively very wealthy country but where the wealth is very unequally distributed, has only a very modest income.

I’m not particularly concerned about material wealth in my own life, so I don’t care that people on TV live lavishly, but there are so many ways in which one can feel she’s missed the boat. It’s a constant struggle to try to keep some perspective. When you read a book and the person writing it seems impossibly brilliant, you have to keep in mind that’s their best foot they’re putting forward. Right? There are probably other times when they can’t think of anything to say, or can’t remember where they parked? I’m not really sure.

I think it’s okay to just be whatever you are, and that the antidote to anxiety and self doubt is acceptance. It’s good to be content, but striving doesn’t only lead to stress, it also leads to accomplishments. But I’m not sure if accomplishments are important or if they’re only vainglorious?

I think I had a point somewhere when I started writing this, but I’m not sure what it is anymore. Oh well.

As many as three billion people are food-insecure, and of those, one billion routinely don’t get enough food. Fifty thousand die from poverty every day, including 18,000 children who die daily from lack of food or related issues. Global food prices have risen recently, making matters worse, but this is not a new problem.
[Sources: 1, 2.]

The Global Conference on Food Security was held in Rome this week, and the results don’t seem to warrant much optimism. There were pledges of aid to relieve the short term impact, but there doesn’t seem to be any will, among those who might be able to do so, to change in the conditions that contribute directly to chronic poverty and malnutrition.

Some of the reason for that is that there isn’t enough demand for change from the public in developed nations, in part, it seems, because the issue is not an easy one to explain. When people talk about the free market system, they seem to think the options are to either make the market freer or impose restrictions, and that those are the two dueling camps. But as I understand it, the issue is who controls the flow of goods and capital. The market is “free” and made freer when it’s useful to those who have the most power. They are then free to exploit developing nations for their resources and, at the same time, make it so poor nations have to accept their goods, services, and prices on their terms. When it’s convenient for rich nations to protect their own interests, then they impose restrictions in those areas.

So discussing whether trade should be free or regulated is not exactly hitting the mark. What needs to happen, and this has been proposed by people who are far more knowledgeable about these matters than I am, is for local producers and consumers of food in developing countries, where food insecurity is a pressing issue, to be able to work in the way they think is best, without being forced to accept conditions from the outside, a concept known as “food sovereignty,” if I’m understanding it correctly.

The goals are well summarized in this article about a community group in Sri Lanka: “Work with local farmers to develop sustainable farming techniques and regain control of production systems. Establish food sovereignty on the local level by coordinating the sharing of food produced by farmers, and selling surpluses locally.”

Two essays in The Guardian were enlightening on the issues:

Certainly the world would welcome an end to the EU and US farm subsidies which lead to the dumping of agricultural produce on developing country markets, yet anyone who still believes that the WTO is going to deliver this has not done the maths. More importantly, agriculture needs a radical reorientation away from the mess that globalisation has made of it. In the current crisis, the food sovereignty model that puts local producers and local markets first is winning over more and more followers.

The Associated Press, on the other hand, reported on the squabbling among world leaders at the conference without giving much of an indication of which statements might have been somewhat factual and which entirely self interested and misleading.

For example, the president of Brazil and the US representative disagreed about the effect each of their countries’ policies on biofuels have on the food market. The concern is that using food crops for energy may divert agricultural resources away from producing needed food. Brazil makes ethanol from sugar cane, which is an extremely efficient method of producing alcohol and which, the Brazilian government argues, does not undercut food production. In fact, no rise in the price of sugar has been reported as a result of using sugar cane to make fuel. In addition, sugar is arguably not a food staple, since it doesn’t offer much in the way of nutritional value. The US makes ethanol from corn, which is badly needed for food and is a very inefficient crop to convert to alcohol. So inefficient that if it were not for heavy government subsidies, the US production of ethanol would be unsustainable.

As it happens, I have first hand knowledge about this. I used to live in Brazil, and for several years in the mid 80s my parents lived right smack in the middle of sugar cane fields. I mean that quite literally. There was a low fence around the house and the yard, and on the other side of the fence, in front of the house, there was a small cow pasture, and, beyond that, sugar cane fields as far as the eye could see. We were on top of a hill overlooking a broad valley, so the eye could see for miles.

(We were nowhere near the Amazon, I might add. We lived in the state of Sao Paulo, about 200km from the city of Sao Paulo. I don’t know whether the push to grow sugar cane has encroached on the Amazon or not: Brazil has a great deal of usable land that is not in the rainforest, but that doesn’t seem to have halted the inexorable destruction of precious forest land, so my guess would be that, among many other factors, it probably has.)

Behind the house were the factory and headquarters of a company that manufactured steam turbines, which were primarily used in sugar cane processing plants. That was where my dad worked as an executive. Virtually everyone we knew was in the sugar cane business.

The processing plants were entirely energy self-sufficient, so they were often in remote locations. We took a trip once, the whole family, to visit one of these plants, which may seem odd, but it was marvelously interesting. The directions we had were along the lines of, “Follow the dirt road that crosses the coffee plantation. When you get to a mango tree, turn right.”

The sugar cane stalks were first unloaded from the trucks, which ran on 100% alcohol. These were trucks with gasoline engines, not diesel engines, that are easily converted to use ethanol. Cars that ran on 100% alcohol were very common in Brazil. They are essentially identical to cars that run on gasoline. I think that the only modifications needed are that some parts have to be replaced to keep them from rusting, because alcohol contains a small amount of water (I don’t feel like looking up the details). The cane juice was squeezed out of the stalks by a grinding machine and was then fermented and distilled into alcohol (a process that is possibly even simpler than crystallizing it into sugar), and the woody stalks were then set aside to be burned to produce steam, which ran the steam turbines, which in turn powered the generators that provided energy for the entire plant. It was wonderfully simple.

Producing ethanol from corn, on the other hand, is so inefficient that the process consumes more energy than it produces. A peer-reviewed scientific study proved this, debunking a USDA report that claimed a very small net gain in energy when corn is processed into ethanol, but only if the by-products that can be used as animal feed are included in the equation. The US corn-to-ethanol industry exists only because it is heavily subsidized by the US government. In addition, the US imposes tariffs on imported Brazilian ethanol — so essentially it is not imported into the US — in order to protect this unsustainable domestic industry.

In spite of these well-established facts, the biofuel debate rages on, without the mainstream media seemingly willing to shed some light on who is telling the truth and who is intentionally obfuscating it.

Not that sugar cane ethanol is a panacea. There was a recent article in The Guardian about converting the harvesting of sugar cane to mechanization because of concerns about human exploitation. The article worries about the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Having seen the sugar cane harvesters myself, I have to say their working conditions were very bleak. The sugar cane fields were set on fire prior to harvesting, which was quite spectacular. An entire field blazed, at nighttime. This was to burn off the excess foliage. After the field had cooled down for a couple days, trucks of people were brought in (news reports about truckloads of human beings being involved in accidents, with no seatbelts or protection of any kind, were not uncommon). They were covered in cloth from head to foot, I’m not sure if it was to protect themselves from insects or the heat. Then they proceeded to cut down the sugar cane stalks, which are tough and woody, like small trees, entirely by hand, with machetes. We were told at the time that the process could not be mechanized because most of the sugar is at the base of the stalk, and machines would cut too high and miss the most crucial part of the harvest. This explanation was probably disingenuous.

But as far as people standing to lose this terrible job, it’s an ongoing dilemma: whether it’s better for people to have access to some kind of job, exploitative and harsh as it is, or not have any means at all to survive. The answer of course lies in changing the conditions. But unless people in developed countries take the time to inform themselves, and agitate for change alongside those most affected, change will be slow to come.

It strikes me that every wrongheaded sentiment in society ultimately derives from the culture of inherent, unconditional rightness. As I grow older, I find myself less prone to have an opinion about anything, and to distrust just about anyone who does…. I refuse to discuss abortion with anyone who is pro-life or pro-choice; I refuse to discuss affirmative action with any unemployed white guy or any unemployed black guy. All the world’s stupidest people are either zealots or atheists. If you want to truly deduce how intelligent someone is, just ask this person how they feel about any issue that doesn’t have an answer; the more certainty they express, the less sense they have. This is because certainty only comes form dogma.

From the book, Chuck Klosterman IV.

I don’t mean to pick on Chuck Klosterman, who is a hip music critic and essayist on mundane cultural minutiae and doesn’t claim to be a political commentator. I wanted to write about this because it’s such a common sentiment, and this was the closest example at hand, since it’s a book I happen to be reading.

Certainty, though it isn’t the word I would choose, since I think it’s generally a good idea to remain open to the possibility that one could be wrong, doesn’t only come from dogma, it also comes from knowledge. Having an opinion is only foolish if it’s an uninformed opinion. And while abstaining from forming an opinion because one is insufficiently informed is laudable, and rare, taking the time to learn the facts underlying an issue so that one can come up with an educated opinion is much more laudable — and responsible, as a citizen of the world — than simply choosing ignorance.

I can’t count how many times I’ve come across the belief that a reasonable person’s duty is to consider both sides of a political or social issue — and the assumption is nearly always that every issue only has two sides — and then stop there, refraining from coming to any conclusion. Anyone who does otherwise is “biased.” Nowhere in this belief is there an acknowledgment that facts are involved, because facts are considered unknowable and therefore suspect. I was talking to someone not long ago who is training to become a social studies teacher, and this is what she said is expected of her in the classroom: teach “both sides” and step back.

Facts may not be easy to ascertain. It takes work to dig them up, and enough background knowledge and understanding of the issues to distinguish them from half-truths and propaganda. One can be misled by facts that are presented in a particular light, and one may have to revise one’s understanding as one learns more information. But facts do exist, bizarre as it is to have to say it.

Listening to self-interested lies coming from various corners, however, is not going to take one any closer to learning facts. Hearing both sides, or any of various sides, of an issue is only useful in trying to understand why different factions hold the positions that they do: it’s not a particularly useful way to figure out where the truth lies. Basing one’s opinion on someone else’s opinion is actually the wrong thing to do if one is interested in being fair-minded.

Yet opinion is virtually all of the media coverage that is available on important political issues. There’s the bombastic opinion of the right, which is delivered with a loudness that’s meant to drown out all other thought, and the apologetic, mildly worded opinion of the center-left, that’s always stumbling over itself in an effort not to offend. Politicians that are mildly left-leaning are accepted by the media, and by extension the public, only when they promise to build bridges and unite opposing viewpoints. Personally, I’m not interested in the building of bridges with liars and demagogues whose aims are to oppress the many and create prosperity for the few. Greed and self interest need to be exposed, not coddled. But if you start out with the premise that the fair-minded embrace all points of view equally, and that insisting on facts and forming strong opinions according to one’s knowledge of the facts makes one strident, that’s what you get: the politics of mildness and inoffensiveness, which are offered up as the only possible antidote to the politics of unbridled rapaciousness.

I’ve often wondered why there are so many people who are kind and generous in their personal lives, even selfless toward family and friends, but seem indifferent about broader social justice or the suffering of billions in faraway places, and who will even support policies and ideologies that cause or perpetuate harm to their fellow humans. Some will even respond angrily, at times with contempt, to those who speak out for what would seem to be fairly unassailable values, like equality, human rights, or providing for the weaker members of society.

Yet these are some of the same people who will stop to help you if your car breaks down, go out of their way to comfort a neighbor, or donate generously to charities. Studies have shown consistently that conservatives give more money to charity than liberals, and not just to their churches.

Are they just uninformed about the repercussions of their political choices? Misled by the misinformation and obfuscation in the profit-driven media? Duped by politicians’ use of appealing but meaningless buzz phrases like “family values” that don’t refer to any actual platform or policy position? Driven by outright prejudice and intolerance?

Maybe, but I came across a fascinating theory, in this article [via Arts & Letters Daily]: Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, by Jonathan Haidt. And then I looked up more information about the theory itself, which is laid out here: When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize [pdf], by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham. It’s linked to from the Moral Foundations Theory Homepage, where there is more reading on the subject, and even an offer of $1000 to anyone who can improve on or refute the theory.

The theory goes something like this. I hope I’m not mangling it too much with my paraphrasing and condensing. Liberals recognize two basic foundations of morality: one is based on notions of fairness, justice, reciprocity, and equality and the other on the belief that people should take care of the weak and not do each other harm. By that measure, the stance of conservatives who oppose, for instance, gay marriage and social welfare, or support preemptive wars, would appear not to be driven by morality. But the theory goes on to posit that conservatives have three additional foundations that make up their moral domain: loyalty to one’s inner circle, respect for authority, and the imperative to preserve purity and sanctity. Both conservatives and liberals place a high value, implicitly, on fairness and not doing harm, but for conservatives those values only make up two fifths of their gut-level intuition of what is right and proper.

Haidt and Graham explain that the five moral foundations are to a greater or lesser extent common to nearly all human societies, both historical and current, and are believed to be evolutionary adaptations, while the moral underpinnings of liberalism, which recognize only two of the five foundations, are a modern phenomenon found only among secular Westerners. Since these moral foundations are hard wired into our evolutionary make up, they function as instincts and are not necessarily subject to change by applying reason.

So while it may be disconcerting to try asking a conservative why he doesn’t question the validity of a bloody war waged on lies only to get bluster and anger in response, and maybe an accusation of being unpatriotic, it may be that the very question, from his point of view, was first and foremost an affront to his instinctive moral sense of loyalty and respect for authority.

I’m not suggesting that this theory should give conservatives a free pass for supporting harmful and unfair policies. But it’s a useful way to understand what often seems like willful intransigence and rigidity.

On the other hand, the implications are more troubling to me than comforting. If it’s true that authority, loyalty, and purity are hard wired moral foundations that exist deep in the psyche of conservatives, by their very nature they conflict with ideals of openness, public dissent, and acceptance of difference.

The view of many social justice researchers is that “political conservatism is a form of motivated social cognition: people embrace conservatism in part ‘because it serves to reduce fear, anxiety, and uncertainty; to avoid change, disruption, and ambiguity, and to explain, order, and justify inequality among groups and individuals.’” (Haidt and Graham) Haidt and Graham offer the moral foundations theory as a caveat, an addition to the social cognition theory, but it seems to me that the deeply held instincts of conservatives, assuming the theory is correct, only reinforce and justify the “motivated social cognition.”

It seems to me that if you embrace a solid and inflexible point of view, one that conveniently and neatly coincides with your existing moral construct, you don’t have to ever worry about feeling jostled or unbalanced by new information, because you can feel free to dismiss it out of hand as irrelevant to your insular worldview. And if one of your essential moral foundations is staunch loyalty to your group, even the possibility of changing your stance so that it no longer conforms to the group’s would in itself be fundamentally disloyal.

The smiling church ladies who seem so polite and friendly when you see them at the rummage sale may be showing you their best face only because it’s an imperative within their social group to show courtesy and respect to strangers. Just underneath that veneer they may very well be deeply offended and contemptuous of your very being. It could be that you have tattoos, an untidy appearance, a revealing outfit, a same-sex partner on your arm: if this theory is correct, then any of those factors, it seems, would constitute a breach of their deeply held moral foundation of purity and sanctity. So that if we perceive a tightness to their smile, it may not be all in our imagination.

So is there any hope? Haidt theorizes that Western liberals have shed the core foundations of authority, loyalty and purity through movement and exposure to diversity: how can you hold on to the values of your inner circle when there is none to speak of, because you and many of the people around you have moved from thousands of miles away? He explains that those who voted for Kerry in 2004 live primarily near coastal areas and waterways, where there is the most movement and diversity, while those who voted for Bush tend to live in central parts of the country where there is less movement. If there’s any lesson from this, it seems to me that it should be on the importance of increasing diversity and mobility, and fostering the open mindedness that comes from stepping outside one’s comfort zone.

From The Guardian:

“I remember the day I learned Ringo’s drumming was “bad”. So bad Paul had done some of it for him…. I read somewhere the beautiful thought that Ringo’s role was to be our surrogate in the band, the Beatle who was also a fan of the Beatles, in awe of the “real ones” from the nearest possible proximity….

“So the sham notion of a “democracy of talent” within these great groups, with its analogous utopian implications for collective action, could dissolve into sour cynicism: the presiding genius probably could have done just as well with any other supporting cast. Or, paradoxically, the reverse: the urge to pronounce the solo careers so thin and cheesy that the magic was proven to be in the lucky conjunction of a bunch of ordinary blokes, raised temporarily above their station as much by history and our love as by any personal agency; if the Beatles didn’t exist we’d have had to invent them, and perhaps we did….

“Maybe the search for the Fifth Beatle was always destined to end … with the conclusion that the Fifth Beatle is YOU. For evidence, one only needs to listen to The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. Here was music to ride like a froth of sea foam atop a tsunami wave of adulation and yearning for, well, itself. What were little-girl-screams if not the essential heart of the Beatles’ true sound, the human voice in a karaoke track consisting of the band itself? Getting by with a little help from my friends indeed….

“A real music would have some modesty, and we’d have a proper reverence for its history, a proper sense of its distance from ourselves. Our pop life, then, is maybe the collapse of musical expertise into raw expression - the collapse of singing into screaming, even when it’s only the possibility of screaming, or the audience’s screaming, or the guitar’s….

“We try to cover our embarrassment at how much we believe. For this whole story really is a naked egalitarian dream, isn’t it?”

My own embarrassment is not at what I believe. If anything I’m more embarrassed by my sense of devotion and love when it comes to popular music (and by that I mostly mean Green Day). I don’t feel taken in by the sham of talentless bands who manage to make me feel exhilarated in spite of their ineptitude, nor by the realization that loving popular music is a kind of collective suspension of rational sense and taste. I don’t think of myself as someone who has taste, and I’m indifferent to whether or not the members of the bands I love have “talent.” I’m grateful for their unabashed faith and perseverance: had they been self conscious or even sensible they may have felt too stupid and embarrassed to be up there in front of people, screaming like idiots, and just quit, and that would have been a shame. A tragedy, even.

The Beatles don’t exactly do it for me, even though I think they’re pretty wonderful. But that doesn’t matter. I think you can read Lethem’s piece and substitute The Beatles with whatever kind of popular music has an effect on you.

Popular music isn’t thought of as great because it’s a high art form: it’s great because it’s so simple, like screaming out loud. Or falling down hard and having that moment of raw sensation, where there’s no thought but, “Ow! Damn that smarts!”

I think Lethem is talking, among other things that I’m not exactly sure I understand, about the conflation of genius and stupidity found in popular music when it’s good enough to knock you over. We want to believe in the genius and specialness of something we hold so dear, but then we look closely and find ordinariness. We find out that Ringo is a lousy drummer, or that Billie Joe doesn’t read music, but why that should matter to us I’m not sure. It’s a kind of comfort, actually. We think: If they’re ordinary then they’re just like me, and I could be them, and in fact I am them: I’m just as good and just as important. Which in a real sense you are, because everybody is good and important. But then the genius is in there too, undeniably, even though it’s hard to pin down: is Billie Joe a genius when he drops his pants and waggles his pee pee? Could you make that argument with a straight face? You can revel in the stupid and endearing things he does, and gawk at him lovingly like he’s someone you might know, but then he also has this completely intimidating and inscrutable part to him that creates this music that makes you feel something indescribable.

I keep meaning to get back to writing here. I’ve been feeling discouraged, frustrated, and angry, and it’s been a reason not to write, because what could I offer besides bitching and moaning? But on the other hand, perhaps I would feel less defeated if I were to send my little electronic packets of words out to the cyber-ether, where not many will read them but at least they won’t be sitting around here at home, festering and smelling like sour milk.

Did you know that there are people — reasonably intelligent and normal people — who think that global warming is not real? Sure, I knew that was the Bush administration’s position for some time, but even they had to give it up in the face of the overwhelming consensus of the world’s climate scientists. Yet there are those who insist that environmentalists have a self-interested agenda. And it’s not just environmentalism they look on with skepticism, though that’s the most glaring position it would seem very difficult to justify being against: how can you be against the preservation of clean air and water, open natural spaces, plant and animal species, and a reasonably stable climate? It makes sense for corporations to be against all that is good, of course: they have a financial interest in engaging in practices that harm the environment. Yet they’ve successfully taken average citizens onto their platform, citizens who will happily spew venom on those who would dare speak out for the air, water, and soil.

How can this be? I know that power and money provide access to all sorts of means of persuasion, but have people simply taken leave of their senses?

I always hear this mantra that there are two sides to every issue, that each side’s viewpoint is only a matter of personal opinion, and that furthermore each side is, of course, biased. Where do I begin to poke holes in this theory? First of all, there are frequently more than two sides to any given issue. There is the matter of which goals are considered most pressing and which strategies are likely to be most successful in achieving them. Some of those considerations may in fact be a matter of opinion, but fundamentally those opinions come down to: do you think that humanity should be shit on or do you think it should be saved? If you think that humanity should be shit on so that someone — who is not even you — can get rich, then frankly your opinion sucks.

And bias? Does no one understand what bias is anymore? For a statement to be biased, meaning it cannot be trusted at face value, there has to be a reason for the person making the statement to want to lie. There has to be self-interest. A corporation that wants to continue selling cars or oil, and the politicians who are supported by that corporation or own substantial stock in it, have a great deal of self-interest in saying that the corporation’s products do not harm the environment, so their statements cannot be accepted at face value as true. They have to be verified, or at the very least approached with skepticism. On the other hand, a poor shmuck who is trying to get you to recycle doesn’t have anything to gain personally or financially, so when she tells you that recycling your newspaper will help spare a couple of trees, she has no hidden agenda. She could be wrong, but not intentionally, because she has no reason to lie; therefore she has no bias.

And if you think she’s simply mistaken, then you can consult the empirical evidence collected by the world’s environmental scientists to verify her claims. If you don’t trust the scientific consensus because you think the scientists are just plain lying, what could possibly be their motive? What self interest do they have in making up false claims? None.

The self interest test is especially easy to apply in today’s grim political climate: since there are almost no left-leaning politicians or parties in the U.S., any private citizen who speaks out strongly for environmental protection or social justice cannot be parroting or supporting anyone’s political agenda, since almost no one who is in power or has any hope of getting into a position of power is relying on those views as their political platform. Only former politicians who are safely out of the running will touch these issues. It’s political suicide to care about what happens to humanity, or even to talk about it. And we the people are the ones who are letting it happen: people in power are not going to suddenly decide to do what is right, we have to collectively make it impossible for them not to.

“Milan Kundera argues that the special virtue of the novel lies in its ability to part the “magic curtain, woven of legends” that hangs between us and the ordinary world. The curtain has been put there to cover up the trivia of our lives, the forgotten old boxes and bags where “an enigma remains an enigma” while ugliness flirts with beauty, and reason courts the absurd. These neglected spaces were redeemed for literature, according to Kundera, at the moment when Cervantes got his readers to imagine Don Quixote as he lay dying while his niece went on eating, the housekeeper went on drinking and Sancho Panza went on being “of good cheer.” By inventing a narrator through whose consciousness such dumb events could be worked up into an affecting “scene,” Cervantes created a form of literature that could do justice to “modest sentiments”; and so a new kind of beauty—Kundera calls it “prosaic beauty”—was born.”

When I was in junior high school there were occasional book fairs, and at one of them a well-meaning parent volunteer, in an effort to help me pick out a book to buy, asked me what kind of books I liked to read. I would have been too embarrassed to say so, even if I had been able to articulate the thought, but what I liked to read were books about me. Preferably books in which I was plucky and daring, two things I was not at all in real life, and in which the other characters could act as substitute friends and companions, two other things also somewhat lacking in my real world. So I told her I liked books about animals.

I’m pretty lazy when it comes to reading about subjects that are not close to home, unless there’s a particular question that’s been nagging me, in which case I’m willing to slog through quite a bit to find the answer. That’s my motivation for reading any books about politics or economics or the state of the world, which lately I’ve done very little of. Mostly, though, I still prefer to read books about me, and by that I mean the work of authors who talk about the mundane minutia that rattles in their head, and who are preferably somewhat cynical and acerbic, and generally lost at sea rather than successful or ambitious. Like me, only more eloquent and interesting, and with a better sense of humor.

It’s all well and good to come across startling insights, but they’re never as satisfying as when you have the sense that you could have come up with them yourself, if only you hadn’t been so dull-witted and hadn’t been devoting ninety percent of your thinking capacity to musing about Billie Joe’s hair, and they’re at their most comforting when you agree with them completely, so much so that you realize you had in fact thought those things all along, but only now that they have been articulated for you on a page have they at last crystallized in your own mind. Frankly, I love it when other people do my thinking for me, and if they can do my feeling and imagining too, well, there’s a writer I can fall in love with.

I read an interesting article on the origin of the term “white trash,” which eloquently points out once again how deep classism runs in our society, and how, like racism, continues to be alive and well, but, unlike racism, rarely gets even so much as a mention in public discourse. Looking down on those who are suffering, and blaming them for their own victimization, acts like a relief valve: it means we don’t have to do anything to change the system, because it’s not identified as the cause of the hardship and degradation of untold millions. And of course it keeps the most oppressed classes in society apart, since their members don’t want to be identified with or mistaken for one another.

“The term white trash dates back not to the 1950s but to the 1820s… And best guess is that it was invented not by whites, but by African Americans. As a term of abuse, white trash was used by blacks—both free and enslaved—to disparage local poor whites…. The term registered contempt and disgust, as it does today, and suggests sharp hostilities between social groups who were essentially competing for the same resources—the same jobs, the same opportunities, and even the same marriage partners.

“While white trash is likely to have originated in African American slang, it was middle-class and elite whites who found the term most compelling and useful and they who, ultimately, made it part of popular American speech….

“Southern secessionists and proslavery apologists countered that it wasn’t the lack of access to good farm land, nor the lack of compulsory education, nor the lack of religious influence that made poor white trash so worthy of the contempt heaped upon them…. That is, the cause of poor white depravity was not attributable to any economic or social system—it was to be found in their inherited traits….

“The long and disturbing history behind the term white trash reverberates with meaning today…. Those who use the term today would do well to consider its history.”

I used to write about consumer spending and personal spending here sometimes, because I think there’s a broader political issue in there somewhere about opposing capitalism and creating a fairer, more balanced world, but I found it increasingly hard to put my finger on exactly what I think that might be. The anti-consumerism movements that exist out there tend to be either patronizing and moralistic, many going so far as to indulge in a kind of competitiveness as to who can mortify their own materialistic, and therefore debased, desires the most, or they only look at what’s wrong with overconsumption from an environmental standpoint, which is valid but doesn’t address the issue of uneven distribution of resources and wealth, or they are content with just making fun of yuppies (Adbusters comes to mind…).

I’m thinking about the issue again because I’m reading a book called Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, by Judith Levine. She writes:

“Part of me is disgusted by Americans’ sense of entitlement to vast quantities of everything. At the same time I am loath to ally myself with any movement, right or left, that starts by telling people not to desire. I don’t want to tell the girls in the store that it’s wrong to want those frivolous shoes, because I don’t want to risk suggesting they give up the sexy dream of dancing the night away.”

And I agree with her. Of course it isn’t anyone’s place to tell anyone else what they should or should not enjoy. And even if it were somehow acceptable to do so, asking people to deprive themselves of the small pleasures is entirely beside the point and serves no political purpose. What frustrates me is that I think there’s a valid political issue hiding in there, in the disgust at excessive consumption and the knowledge of its consequences — reinforcing inequality, further enriching the already-rich, squandering resources — but I’m not aware of a political philosophy that articulates why making one choice rather than another matters, or how it matters, and to whom, or how a movement based around that issue can be shaped and its message disseminated.

Moralizing is the wrong way to go. It’s not a moral issue, it’s a political issue. It isn’t wrong — it’s not “a sin” — to enjoy a nice pair of frivolous shoes, nor is forgoing them a meaningful political act. Does it become meaningful if one goes a few steps further and makes a conscious choice not to amass hundreds of pairs of shoes to go with every possible outfit? Or when one chooses to ride a bike, walk, or take mass transit rather than drive a gas-guzzling SUV? Maybe, but it seems to me those choices can only become significant as a political statement when they are a part of a broader movement that includes not only an ideological and philosophical underpinning but also achieves some kind of critical mass. I’m happy not to contribute my nickels and dimes to Wal-Mart, and that does literally constitute, I believe, a tangible non-support of that company, but I don’t think I’ll be bringing down capitalism and global inequality any time soon by doing so.

There’s an aspect of the feminist movement that places a great emphasis on recognizing that the personal is political. Sometimes I think that’s taken to excess: focusing obsessively on the personal can easily slide into becoming all about me, me, me and risks losing sight of broader issues. But even when arguments about whether or not it’s okay to shave your legs become bogged down in details that can come to seem tiresome or trivial, there’s a meaningful core issue there: when you don’t shave your legs and you’re not alone in making that choice but part of a larger movement that has written volumes about the political implications of leg shaving, you’re making it more acceptable for other women not to shave their legs, and are therefore adding to the choices at their disposal, and allowing them, in the process, to add themselves to the chorus of hairy voices letting society know that women don’t exist only to be stereotypically attractive to men.

If the feminist movement can make it acceptable to be hairy, why doesn’t the anti-capitalist movement take a page from their book and work to make it acceptable to be poor? We’re poor already — the median income in the US is $23,000 a year — we just aren’t allowed to walk around looking like we’re poor without being made to feel ashamed. The feminist message that you are acceptable just the way you are is fundamentally a compassionate message. It’s not that you can’t doll yourself up if you enjoy doing so — though there are some who take that stance — what’s important is for you to have a choice: being dolled up is not an imperative, and it isn’t shameful to just go out in public looking like yourself.

Movements like Voluntary Simplicity, which Levine discusses, are very much centered on the individual, not on society’s responsibility to address inequality nor to help make the outward appearance of poverty socially accepted. They offer a sort of spiritual pep rally aimed at convincing individuals that not having stuff, and not having to work as hard to acquire it, is more satisfying than having it. I happen to agree, but not for any lofty spiritual reason: I don’t like stuff and I don’t like spending money, which I don’t have anyway. And if simplifying my life means I’m supposed to create a plan to declutter my home, as the simplicity movement recommends, honestly I find lying on the couch watching TV and eating ice cream to be way simpler. (The ice cream doesn’t cost much, especially if you consider how delightful it is, and I think that as long as you watch TV with a critical mind it does not in fact rot your brain.)

Then there’s a whole slew of experts writing about the psychology of consumer spending, whose premise seems to be that consumers are craven, lustful souls who are helpless before the irresistible lure of a shiny gadget. Hmm, sounds reminiscent of anti-feminists who love to say that women can’t resist pretty dresses and perfumes…. Granted that corporate advertisers are at fault for their shameless attempts to manipulate the public with their relentless and dishonest pitches, but I don’t believe that we the public are by nature hapless fools who can’t resist the siren song of a wide screen TV. Corporations are doing their damndest to enrich themselves in any way they can, but the broader culture is helping them by reinforcing the message that having nice stuff not only makes you happy but is necessary to gain the respect and admiration of your peers — and the culture is, collectively, us! It’s up to us to create and disseminate an alternative message which, it seems to me, could start with fostering acceptance of one another as we really are.

Several of the blogs I read frequently are written by strong, outspoken feminists. And I enjoy their writing and respect them. I myself have considered myself a feminist for as long as I can remember. I can scarcely imagine thinking otherwise: it seems to me it would amount to saying, yep, I think men are better than women. How could any woman choose to say that about herself and her sisters-in-arms? Yet there are very many women, including very young women, who don’t count themselves as feminists.

I’m sure the reasons for this are varied and complex and have been studied by people much more versed in the subject than myself. Certainly the mainstream culture has encouraged negative stereotypes of feminism, and there is also a barrage of attitudes throughout society that reinforce sexism, prejudice, and even self-loathing on the part of women. But what has been bothering me lately is how off-putting feminist rhetoric itself can be. To the point where I think it becomes part of the problem rather than a means to a solution. And part of what makes it so off-putting, which also makes it very hard to talk about, is that offering dissenting views or even raising questions is often not very welcomed, to put it mildly.

There are a number of widely-read feminist blogs that have formed a kind of online community: they often reference one another and are hosts to extensive discussions in the comments sections. I read them at times, sometimes with interest, but I tend to find the tone extremely grating, and I’ve struggled to put my finger on why that is exactly.

I can appreciate tongue-in-cheek humor and sassiness, but there are a number of examples where humor is not used to kid around with readers in a friendly way but to deliver a pretty strong and quite unmistakable put down. If you consider yourself to be an insider to the club, then you can have a good laugh along with the author at all the stupid bastards who don’t get it, but if you don’t, then you are clearly a stupid bastard who doesn’t get it. There’s not really any possibility of a gray area: either you’re with us, or you’re an asshole. The premise that would seem to make this kind of outright nastiness okay is that, given that patriarchal and sexist attitudes are hateful and deplorable, it’s perfectly all right to make fun of those who hold them, since misogynists can scarcely be considered deserving of sympathy. That’s fine as far as it goes, but frankly it doesn’t go very far: everyone who is not in lockstep with the strictly defined parameters of a given acceptable orthodoxy is not by definition a laughable buffoon, nor a hate-monger. That holds true regardless of the belief system being espoused.

Looking more broadly at the community of feminist bloggers, the problem with the belief system being put forth there is that it is so narrowly defined that it excludes anyone who does not embrace it in every last, most minute nuance. I share nearly all of the core beliefs of feminist theory, I just happen to find some of the current tactics alienating even to myself — a natural ally! — as well as to a very large segment of women, and, therefore, counterproductive to the cause. That earns me a defiant boot at the door.

What tactics? Well, things like obsessing over terminology, or finding fault with even the most subtle or trivial of remarks that could remotely be interpreted as having sexist overtones. Throwing around graduate-school jargon and scoffing at — or even demonizing — those who don’t adopt it in its most gradated nuance. Interpreting the phrase “the personal is political” to mean one should engage in incessant, self-obsessed, and obsessive ferreting out of the misogynist sub-context in all of the most minute details of one’s personal experience, and then scoffing at or demonizing anyone who dares suggest that sometimes it’s possible that plain rudeness, cluelessness, or mundane, unconscious gestures like wiping one’s nose are not always in fact meaningful examples of hatefulness [though at times they certainly may be].

One might say, okay, even assuming it’s excessive or obsessive to behave that way, where’s the harm? One might also say: since it helps some people to think this way in order to better understand their oppression, then why in the world would anyone want to stop them from doing just that? Well, I would say, for three reasons: The first one, which is the most subtle and probably most controversial [meaning I’m gonna get spit on for saying it], is that what I outlined above is not fundamentally a search for truth and insight: it too easily devolves into a hunt for hidden clues in which the reward comes in the cleverness of uncovering the most hidden clue, not the most relevant or truthful one.

The second reason is that this prattling and fussing over terms and minute behaviors takes away the focus from more fundamental issues: the feminist struggle is not the struggle to make sure everyone uses the most correct and most sanctioned language, nor is it the struggle to make sure everyone can call out the most minute manifestation of sexism in their everyday lives. It is a struggle for equality, dignity, and respect, among other things. Which brings me to the third and what seems to me most obvious point: carrying on about the nuances of terminology makes us look silly. It makes us a very easy mark for our detractors, who love to point out how we waste our time on fatuous “political correctness.” I don’t think that any and all attention to detail is fatuous, but when it reaches a level of absurd extreme, it certainly begins to tend that way. More importantly, isolating ourselves and our movement with academic jargon and strident insistence on conformity of thought makes us seem irrelevant to the very people who most need to be reached by the message of feminism: for instance, the teenage women who think they need to look like Britney Spears in order to be loved.

If this were a subculture, and not a social movement, I could just say, well, it isn’t for me: I don’t fit in, so I’ll leave it alone. But this is FEMINISM. Not something you can just give up on.