In this country, a republic, I have been taught that my vote is important, that my health is up to me and my doctors and pharmacists pocket book, that I shouldn’t pay “high” taxes. That I deserve to have a house, 2.5 kids, a dog and two vehicles; one suv, one sedan. A summer house, a yearly vacation, and tax free luxuries. That I shouldn’t have to pay for criminals to stay in jail, or lazy women to go on welfare. That I should work a 40 hour work week to get by, an 80 hour work week to succeed. And that I should accept the GMO, pesticide sprayed food that the government provides me to keep me voting, paying low taxes and working my 80 hour work week so I can take an 80(?) hour vacation week while thinking about my 2.5 kids, house and the cost of gas for my suv and sedan. Did you follow that?

Me either. Here’s the thing. I used to feel strongly about voting. Especially in this last election. As a US expat who has returned to the states and been living here for almost ten years, I felt it was my patriotic duty and an honor to vote in every election that I have received a ballot for. Spending up to two or three days researching every candidate and issue that was to be voted on or for. But I must admit, I’m feeling very jaded.

Not that I am disappointed in our president. Or that G.W.’s office time suddenly turned me against government. My disenchantment with our political system has been a slow process starting with my father’s stories of being drafted to the current state that our socialistic, tea throwing, democtratic country has become.

And to be perfectly honest about it I’m the one to blame.

Now before I get to what I am going to do about it let me ask you one question? How often do you vote every year? For me the answer is about once or twice. That is 0.0054794 times a day. (If I am generous and go with the two times a year.) Okay, I lied. I have a second question. How many times do you go shopping every year? Not sure? How about every week? My week consists of at least one grocery store trip. Often two because I forgot something. How about clothing, movies, dinning out, gas, coffee… The list keeps going. So I’m going to say that I probably shop at least 4 times a week.

Ready to hear how that plays into my new way of thinking?

I may live in a country that is a republic, and it may go by the nick name of democracy, and some people are afraid that it is on the verge of being a transpolitical sociopublicrat. And, whatever this country may be to some, there is one thing that I know about it for sure. It is a capitalistic country. You know how we can tell? We stayed the same during republican and democratic president alike. We have withstood wars, and mother nature. But the one thing that scares us all, that really changes how we live, the identity that when ripped away causes us to forget who we are and have to figure it all out again is a RECESSION. Yup, we can fight about politics all we want, but the one thing that really gets our patriot hats, burnt bras and rubber band cause bracelets in a twist is money.

So what does that mean for me?

It means that instead of putting so much stock into my vote and so much worry into the aftermath I have moved on to something that makes a difference. Shopping.

I’m not talking about racking up debt or silly spree’s. I’m talking about my day to day spending of money. Who is it going to? Is it going to support a cause that I agree with? Is it going to further a company that lines up with my ideals? Is it going to support the local economy? Is is going to a product that is kind to the earth and animals? Each one of these decisions is a vote. Each dollar I (and you) spend is being marked on giant ballots somewhere behind the economies doors. And what I think about now is that I vote 0.569863 times a day. At least. That can make a difference. And that is what I want to do.

How do you decide where you shop? Does your social paradigm factor in? I’d love to hear your thoughts on your shopping habits.

As for me, I’m handing over my dollar bill and yes, I would like change.

Two weekends ago in yoga training we discussed the Yamas, the five Moral restraints. The first one is Ahimsa, or nonviolence. Of course this brought up several questions and discussions as to what nonviolence actually means.

To go veggie or not, to go organic or not, to be a fruitarian, to sweep the ground in front of you as you walk so as not to kill any insects, to buy only items and clothing that are made in people friendly work environments. And that is just a few of the concepts that automatically spring to mind.

So I’m curious. What does living a nonviolent life mean to you?

First off, I found myself responding to the film in ways I didn’t expect. Avatar wasn’t a story about how amazing it is to switch consciousness between bodies. If it had been, I’d have been bored for 3+ hours. Instead, I found myself getting drawn into a world that still had some “green” left in it.

This was a compelling story line, not because it reawakened some smoldering environmentalism in me, but because it invited me into another possibility of world.

I couldn’t help but read the film through the lens of Heidegger’s language of Enframing. In a Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger suggests that the posture of human being has been taken over by technology. We don’t see the world anymore when we look at it, we can’t. Rather, in the place of trees we see lumber. Rivers become hydroelectric power. Animals become meat, etc.

This Enframing extends even to human being: as we grow accustomed to ordering the world (into what he calls a “standing reserve”) we begin to re-order ourselves as well. If we’re not careful, we become resources too.

According to Heidegger, this is our destiny. Cameron challenges this outcome, not by disagreeing with Heidegger, but by offering a vision of a different world. This vision serves as an interruption to our frame. It creates the space for us to shift our posture toward the world.

The question remains: what frame do we choose for our world?

“Hence, I concluded that trouble is inevitable and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it” (GT vii)

So writeth Judith Butler in the introduction to Gender Trouble.  Here, she tells us that when she was a youngster she gained her first “critical insight into the subtle ruse of power” (Ibid.).  What insight?  That authority threatens you with trouble, even puts you in trouble, in order to keep you out of trouble.  Like when a parent spanks a kid for climbing a high wall, because the kid might get hurt.

Butler goes on to apply this notion of “being in trouble” to identity, and specifically to gender (for a blog dedicated to these aspects of “being in trouble” check out Trouble).  Her analysis is bangarang, and worth checking out, but this quote also inspires me on a general level.  First, it suggests to me that I should accept that I am “all up in it,” in so many ways.  I am enmeshed in webs of power: society, family, history, etc.  There’s no way to avoid it.  And the networks that I find myself in are troubling and put me into trouble (from Walmart to sexism to my dry skin).

However, it’s the second part of the quote I like most–how best to make trouble, what best way to be in it.  My position in these webs of power gives me a certain power, a way to make trouble.  It’s like gravity.  NASA aside, I can’t escape it.  But without it I could not run, sit, or bungee jump.  Gravity limits me, but it also puts me in a position to take action.

What I like about Butler’s expression is the sense of mischievousness and playfulness I get from thinking this in terms of “making trouble.”  What does it mean to view my power and freedom in terms of “making trouble,” in terms of play?  If trouble is indeed unavoidable, we should accept it and have a little fun, n’est pas?

What is the best way for you to make trouble?

It is ten years now since I cut my faith, whole cloth, out from the fabric of my soul and handed it back to the universe.

I went to bed one night a Christian, fully confident in Heaven, the resurrection, creation and a host of dogmatic details specific to my Adventist heritage. By two a.m. I was standing on the beach, looking at the sky and knowing that God did not exist.

That night sky, which had always before seemed such perfect evidence of a loving creator, a wondrous, crystalline dome between me and heaven, now expanded dizzyingly into what it really was. The dark void of  existence. My grip on the sand seemed so fragile as I tipped headlong into that void. And the stars? They suddenly became just places I would never go.

And I swear to you, the night sky had never been so beautiful.

There is a metaphor common to the christian life. A favorite sermon theme. The core goes like this. You’re on a ship in a storm. The storm is life and the ship is Jesus, or sometimes the church or faith. There’s also an anchor. That’s Jesus/faith/church/prayer/the Bible. Somewhere out there in the rainy dark are rocks and cliffs and waves you cannot hope to survive. So please, for the sake of your soul, stay on the boat.

It just so happens that this parable is true. True, but incomplete.

When I abandoned the ship of my faith I was tossed around like a doll by the waves. I was beaten against the cliffs of reality. I was torn to pieces, obliterated by the rocks waiting there.

And then?

Well, then I became the storm.

Why are people in the U.S. so afraid of homosexuality?  [Anyone who doubts that people are afraid of gay should watch a few Brüno clips.]

Disclaimer:

1. I do not think that homosexual people are poop.  Rather, I think that this is the position the heterosexual matrix puts them in.  This is tragic and terrible.
2. However, I think this position can be described otherwise, and appropriated as a site of power from which to destabilize discussions concerning homosexuality.
3. Read on!

One possible answer to why many fear homosexuality, following Judith Butler, has to do with identity and social excrement.  So . . . Identity is not something innate.  Identity is formed through “regulatory practices” –the laws, interactions, and discourses that try to regulate social life.  One of these regulatory practices is “sex” (you know, binary, hetero, sex).

In order for “sex,” or lets say, “the heterosexual matrix,” to regulate identity, it has to define itself against something; it has to refuse what it is not.  So, homosexuality becomes refuse, excrement.  It is the necessary remainder, the deviation, the “outside” of the matrix.  In order to maintain a heterosexual identity, there must exist powerful forces that guard the constructed boundary between inside and outside, in this case, between hetero and homo.

The catch is that these boundaries are never absolute.  After all, we know that where there is excrement, there is orifice.  Where there is orifice there is the potential for things to both go out AND come in.  To follow the metaphor, there are many orifices, or weak points, that threaten to disrupt the heterosexual matrix.  On an individual level, for a “heterosexual,” this means that homosexuality is doubly threatening: 1) it threatens the person’s very identity 2) because, it undermines the entire matrix of practices that constitute heterosexuality.

In short, homosexuality is so scary because recognizing it means that the stuff you worked so hard to push out is coming back in, and that puts the whole system out of whack.

Fuck you!  You have to come up with the good idea!

This little nugget of negative inspiration came to me via a video of an interview with the (in)famous philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek (for the bit on the video go to about 9:28).

Here, Zizek is speaking about EGS, The European Graduate School based in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.  In explaining why he likes working at EGS, Zizek contrasts it with “the worst American way” of teaching, in which professors help students find a direction of study.  He says that when students come to him and ask him for direction he simply says, “Fuck you! You have to come up with the good idea!”

Now, I have certainly benefited from the guidance of my teachers at every step of my education.  And when I first heard this clip it put me off a little, especially because I have entertained thoughts of studying cultural theory and philosophy.  Yet, there are days when I wake up and realize precisely that I still don’t have a direction; I still don’t know what I want.  That’s when the wisdom of Zizek’s words hit home.  There comes a time when a person has to stop relying on surrogates to suggest where to go and what to do.  Sometimes you have to find out who YOU are and what YOU want, by yourself.

In roughly rejecting students’ overtures, Zizek refuses the role of a god and takes on the role of a mirror.

So thanks Zizek!  I will come up with a good idea, and when I do I will steal your job.

What is it that you want?

So many “inspiring” quotes or phrases have the glow of positivity.  From motivational posters to famous orations, rhetoric designed to rev our engines usually speaks to the dignity, possibility, and meaningfulness of human being.  But as I reflect on those phrases that have had the most “positive” impact on my life, I realize that many of them are negative.  This is a blog series dedicated to those things that inspire me in spite of and because of a their negativity.

Negative Inspiration #1:

Raising kids is not always a joy.

This one came from my Dad.  He told me this on a train ride from Italy to Switzerland when I was fourteen.  It immediately created a split within me.  I was crushed.  My Mom’s side of the family had always told me I was the greatest thing since Ang the Last Airbender.  My fourteen year-old ego staggered at the thought that maybe my Dad did not consider me the blissful center of his universe.

But I was simultaneously exhilarated.  Not being the center of the universe really takes a load off.  I caught a glimpse of the fact that I am part of a larger network–something bigger than me, with many centers.   It’s not up me to hold the entire fabric of my friends and family together.  It also told me that I could be both a joy and a pain, so I should weigh how my actions might affect those around me.

Still inspiring.  Thanks Dad, for bursting my bubble.

Recently I have started to read The Coming Insurrection (TCI), a revolutionary manifesto written by a french group named “the invisible committee.” I’ve been compelled by what TCI has to say about identity.  But first, a little context: TCI has been labeled a terrorist document by French authorities.  Recently they have arrested nine individuals on charges of terrorist acts, also claiming that this group authored TCI (check out the story at adbusters).  MIT press gives the following description of the work:

The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.”

I am currently working my way through the French version.  So far the committee gives some compelling diagnoses of some of the ills that plague capitalist society.  However, I find their call to a violent uprising simplistic and unimaginative.  When you start a creative nonviolent revolution, then you can count on me to throw my hat in the ring.  Back to identity.  One of the first worthwhile sections in TCI describes how capitalist society programs individuals to spend great quantities of energy maintaining their identities.  Here’s a taste (my translation):

If ’society’ had not become this final abstraction, it would designate the ensemble of existential crutches that are offered to me for the price of my identity.  The handicap has become the model of the coming citizen . . . the pervasive injunction, “to be someone,” maintains this pathological state that makes this society necessary  (14).

Against this model of identity, where the self is the black hole that swallows one’s attention and keeps one reaching for new products, TCI proposes a net-worked view of identity, a worldly view:

The ‘me’ is not that which is in crisis within us, but the form that they seek to stamp on us.  They want to make us into “Me’s,” delineated, separated, classifiable and assessable by our qualities, in a word: controllable, when we are creatures among creatures, singularities among likenesses, living flesh weaving the flesh of the world.  Contrary to what we learn from childhood, intelligence, is not knowing how to adapt–or if this is an intelligence, it is a slave intelligence.  Our in-adaptation, our fatigue, are problems from the point of view of those who want to oppress us (17, 18).

I have become increasingly convinced that this is correct. Identity is something weaving and woven. We can only understand it in terms of systems.  The “I” is not autonomous or static, and it is not something that we accessorize.  The I is a fluctuating nodal point in a sea of overlapping systems.  I don’t think that this should lead us to attempt the “loss of self.”  But I do think it should push us to think of ourselves as more than just our favorite color, more than our actions, and more than our bodies (and less than the world).

[To check out TCI, you can download a French translation or a rough English translation here.  Or you can buy an english translation from Semiotext(e) here.]

And that’s the thrust of this blog. It seems more and more self evident to me that meaning is connected to resonnance. That I matter here–wherever that here is. That there is some way (call it tao, or now, or love, or the accumulation of capital–not that I would call it that) of living that centers us with a resonant space where we experience meaning in life.

I asked myself a simple question this morning: What do you want to do in your life? The answer was also simple. I want to write a treatise on domestication, I want to finish the science-fiction series that I’ve started, I want to finish the novel that I’m working on… And part way through the list I saw a couple of patterns emerging.

First, I like writing. And writing is somehow connected to the way I think about meaning in my life. And second, none of that writing involves the living of the life that I want to have. Where are my wife and my unborn child in that list? Where are my friends and family? This social matrix is my meaning in life. I am not only defined by it in practical terms (who am I?), I am defined by existentially (what do I mean?).

Then it hit me. The first list left me thinking of life in terms of moments that I could parcel out in order to accomplish everything that I thought defined me. It’s very human of us to think that way. “How am I useful to my tribe?” is so deeply ingrained in us that we often tend to think of meaning in terms of punctilliar accomplishments. And this is not untrue. Social matrices, at least the strong ones, the healthy ones, are predicated on reciprocity.

In a capitalist culture where Nietzsche’s will to power (secure and enhance in Heidegger’s terminology) is not only inherent to our being but extrinsically reinforced as well, it is easy to expect meaning to follow from usefulness. But our existential anxieties run deeper than shelter and calories.

It strikes me that our decisions in life, though often couched in terms of meaning, are counterproductive because we fail to realize what actually matters. I would love to write books. And hope to throughout my life. There is a significant part of me that finds fulfillment through the process of writing (and hopefully publishing). But when that desire is placed within the larger context of me, it becomes a part of life rather than its sole trajectory.

Choosing meaning, choosing to live a meaningful life, is terribly difficult because we are so often deeply conflicted about the way of it. As I said at the outset, it strikes me that act divorced from symbol is part of the trouble. Meaning is predicated (yes I used the word twice in one blog, sorry) on having acts centered within their symbolic resonant space. That means coming to terms with culture. It means knowing yourself. It means paying attention to your larger social matrix and the affective ties therein. When these “means” start to make sense, meaning–at least the way of it–starts to become self evident.