Dear Representative Graves:
I'm JF, a constituent of yours here in Baton Rouge. I write to register my support for the articles of impeachment currently moving through the House Judiciary Committee.
A quick perusal of your website does not yield any information about your stance about impeachment. I assume, however, that like most Republicans you lean toward voting down the articles.
I don't know the extent to which your eventual vote on this issue will stem from a personal conviction (you sincerely oppose impeachment) versus a political calculation (it would be political suicide for you to vote for impeachment). Thus, I'm not sure what kind of argument, if any, you or your staff would find persuasive.
To be frank, I don't have a lot of hope in writing this note.
Polarization around
this issue, as around so many others, makes rational discussion of this
issue seem impossible. The question seems instead to boil down to pure
tribalism: whose side are you on? Reds or blues? This fundamental question, this basic animosity, seems to determine all other political actions and interactions. Blues like me in districts with red-leaning politicians wonder whether our representatives truly represent us, just as I know reds who live in blue districts do. I don't know how a democracy functions with such mutual distrust.
It seems plain that the President has at least attempted to use the power of his office to benefit his personal political interests. It likewise seems incontestable that he has flatly refused to cooperate with House inquiries into this attempt by ignoring subpoenas and using lawsuits as delaying tactics.
I would like to think that, were the President a Democrat, I would support the House taking steps to hold him accountable for these same actions.
I don't know, though. That's a high ethical bar to hurdle, to move against the political fortunes of my own party. It might be that in such a hypothetical reality I would fall back on rationales that preserve my sense of integrity while letting my President's unethical acts slide. I'm only human, as motivated by tribalism as anyone.
Challenged to hold a Democratic President accountable, I might complain about the process, pointing to longstanding and vocal anti-President sentiment by many in the opposing party. I might insist that we must wait until the next election. I could equivocate about whether the President can be held accountable for a manipulation attempt that did not succeed. Perhaps I would argue against all evidence that the President was merely interested in combating Ukrainian corruption generally rather than targeting his primary opponent specifically. Most cynically, I could just declare that using the Presidency to advance personal interests over national interests is something everyone does now. "Just get over it."
Or if all else fails, I might concede that, yeah, the President's attempt was problematic, but it doesn't justify impeachment.
In that hypothetical scenario, though, I would be stuck with an uncomfortable question: would I be OK if the other team's President did exactly what my own did? I would not. I am not.
The only hope I have in writing you, Representative Graves, lies your own basic answer to that ethical question: would you be perfectly OK with the President's actions if they had been committed by a President Clinton or a President Obama? Failing to hold the President accountable now all but guarantees that the next administration--Republican, Democrat, or otherwise--will have carte blanche to maneuver against their personal opponents in whatever way they wish while simply ignoring Congressional checks and balances.
I hope you will vote to support impeachment. But beyond hope, I recognize my duty to communicate my convictions to you. President Trump has committed impeachable offenses. It is Congress's job to function as a check and balance. I hope you will do so.
Sincerely,
JF
Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Epistemic Crises on the Run
I ignored an inner voice of conscience today. Prepping to run around the lake today (about four miles, which has been my plateau/limit for a while), I was trying to choose between things to listen to. I could continue the "Christmas Present" playlist I've been using for running workouts. Or I could hear the latest episode of On the Media, which promised a dire report on the "epistemic crisis" we face.
My inner voice groaned at the thought of the media show. Don't you know pretty much everything they'll say already? Do you really need this hit to your sense of hope and well-being? Can't we just enjoy some more Christmas music?
I chose the show, ignoring my inner voice.
And yeah, it's depressing. The episode's title says it all: "The Disagreement is the Point." The first segment, featuring Vox writer David Roberts hits a lot of the points I've been making about the impeachment hearings. It seems obvious to me and to many within the "legacy media" (neat term, better than "mainstream media," perhaps) that Trump has done exactly what he's been accused of. Heck, he and his staff have admitted it, reveled in it.
Every witness, even those that were expected to be amiable to the President, supported the same story: Trump, via Giuliani, was pursuing his on shadow diplomacy and intelligence-gathering with and in Ukraine, efforts that had as their goal not national interests but Trump's personal need to embarrass his political enemies. He delayed military aid approved by Congress to Ukraine with the understanding that this would pressure Ukraine into opening investigations into the Bidens and into (again, multiply debunked conspiracy theories about) Democratic servers. He only ended the delay and (in a call with Sondland) cried "no quid pro quo" when it became clear that the gig was up.
I find it necessary to reiterate this narrative, even if only for myself, because it seems like the facts involved just aren't apparent to everyone.
The GOP response has been largely one of obfuscation, throwing up disinformational chaff in the form of multiple (and multiply debunked) conspiracy theories about how Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 election meddling. Or that Joe Biden, not Trump, is the person who really deserves investigation (amazing how this became a pressing issue only as Biden emerges as a front-runner in the Democratic presidential primaries).
The problem here, Roberts stresses in the On the Media interview, isn't that Republicans make different conclusions based on the facts. It's that they operate from a completely different basis, a Trumpian basis, for what kinds of information should be valued. The show quotes Rep. Devin Nunes crowing that the impeachment hearings are a failure for Democrats because their ratings aren't very high. In any sane world, Roberts notes, the question of how entertaining an investigation like this would be ridiculous. Are these facts true? Did the President and the President's operatives do these things, and why?
But whether an allegation is true seems to have taken a back seat to the question of whether an allegation is damaging to my team. It's a "tribal epistemology," says Roberts. We decide ahead of time which side we're on and then represent or evaluate facts on that basis.
The Republicans don't have facts on their side here (as even many conservative writers not supporting impeachment concede). The best they can do, then, is make the process of fact-finding seem boring, overly complex, or purely partisan. They want people who aren't especially engaged with the facts of this case to dismiss the entire thing as Democratic pique. They want people to get angry at and tired of the process, the very question of whether Trump did something wrong.
And it looks like they might be succeeding.
Senator John Kennedy (Louisiana, alas), this morning asserted that "no one can know" for sure who was behind the 2016 election interference. It's the "you can't prove it's not [Ukraine]" defense beloved of people arguing for indefensible positions.
My question, aside from how to sustain some kind of hope amidst this epistemic divide, is whether I reach out to my representatives, of whom Kennedy is one. Is it worthwhile to call and leave a message? Is there any chance whatsoever that they'd listen?
Would I be "entertaining" enough to be heard?
My inner voice groaned at the thought of the media show. Don't you know pretty much everything they'll say already? Do you really need this hit to your sense of hope and well-being? Can't we just enjoy some more Christmas music?
I chose the show, ignoring my inner voice.
And yeah, it's depressing. The episode's title says it all: "The Disagreement is the Point." The first segment, featuring Vox writer David Roberts hits a lot of the points I've been making about the impeachment hearings. It seems obvious to me and to many within the "legacy media" (neat term, better than "mainstream media," perhaps) that Trump has done exactly what he's been accused of. Heck, he and his staff have admitted it, reveled in it.
Every witness, even those that were expected to be amiable to the President, supported the same story: Trump, via Giuliani, was pursuing his on shadow diplomacy and intelligence-gathering with and in Ukraine, efforts that had as their goal not national interests but Trump's personal need to embarrass his political enemies. He delayed military aid approved by Congress to Ukraine with the understanding that this would pressure Ukraine into opening investigations into the Bidens and into (again, multiply debunked conspiracy theories about) Democratic servers. He only ended the delay and (in a call with Sondland) cried "no quid pro quo" when it became clear that the gig was up.
I find it necessary to reiterate this narrative, even if only for myself, because it seems like the facts involved just aren't apparent to everyone.
The GOP response has been largely one of obfuscation, throwing up disinformational chaff in the form of multiple (and multiply debunked) conspiracy theories about how Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 election meddling. Or that Joe Biden, not Trump, is the person who really deserves investigation (amazing how this became a pressing issue only as Biden emerges as a front-runner in the Democratic presidential primaries).
The problem here, Roberts stresses in the On the Media interview, isn't that Republicans make different conclusions based on the facts. It's that they operate from a completely different basis, a Trumpian basis, for what kinds of information should be valued. The show quotes Rep. Devin Nunes crowing that the impeachment hearings are a failure for Democrats because their ratings aren't very high. In any sane world, Roberts notes, the question of how entertaining an investigation like this would be ridiculous. Are these facts true? Did the President and the President's operatives do these things, and why?
But whether an allegation is true seems to have taken a back seat to the question of whether an allegation is damaging to my team. It's a "tribal epistemology," says Roberts. We decide ahead of time which side we're on and then represent or evaluate facts on that basis.
The Republicans don't have facts on their side here (as even many conservative writers not supporting impeachment concede). The best they can do, then, is make the process of fact-finding seem boring, overly complex, or purely partisan. They want people who aren't especially engaged with the facts of this case to dismiss the entire thing as Democratic pique. They want people to get angry at and tired of the process, the very question of whether Trump did something wrong.
And it looks like they might be succeeding.
Senator John Kennedy (Louisiana, alas), this morning asserted that "no one can know" for sure who was behind the 2016 election interference. It's the "you can't prove it's not [Ukraine]" defense beloved of people arguing for indefensible positions.
My question, aside from how to sustain some kind of hope amidst this epistemic divide, is whether I reach out to my representatives, of whom Kennedy is one. Is it worthwhile to call and leave a message? Is there any chance whatsoever that they'd listen?
Would I be "entertaining" enough to be heard?
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Hopelessness in Lote Bravo
Sometimes, while hacking away at the endless and ever-renewing pile of papers to grade, I run into a student analysis that makes me re-think a play I thought I knew. I'm going to ramble through some thoughts here.
The play in question is The Ghosts of Lote Bravo by Hilary Bettis. Set in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the play tells the story of a mother, Juanda, searching desperately for her lost daughter, the 15-year old Raquel, whom she calls "el toro bravo," the brave bull. Actually, as the play starts, the audience sees Raquel dying in the deserts outside of CD, her body beaten, her hands bound. She's met there not by her mother but by La Santa Muerte, the Holy Lady of Death in Mexican Catholic culture, patron diety of sinners and desperate people. Raquel asks for release; Santa Muerte offers only presence and some comfort, telling Raquel the story of Juanda searching for her.
The play unfolds from there in nested flashbacks. We see Juanda, a malquiladora (American-owned factory) worker, appealing in vain to Pedro and Roberto, corrupt police detectives, to help find Raquel. She spills her frustration and desperation to Camille, a co-worker at the malquiladora. Camille insists that Juanda pray to La Santa Muerte, giving her an icon of Lady Death. Scandalized at first--Juanda insists she is a good Catholic--she nevertheless takes the figure.
At home, as her young sons sleep, Juanda prays to La Santa Muerte, who enters in a supernatural flash. She scorns Juanda's ignorance (the proper prayer to her involves offerings of tequila), demanding payment in exchange for Juanda's request for knowledge. Juanda promises anything. La Santa Muerte presses her:
From there, the play consists of scenes where Juanda purchases--and then steals--ever more expensive alcohol--and finally her own blood--for her ritual entreaties. Each time, La Santa Muerte shows here a bit more of Raquel's past--her growing relationship with El Reloj, her work selling her body for money, their plans to escape Ciudad Juarez, El Reloj's fear of his gang's boss. Ultimately, after an unsuccessful duel (a bullfight) with Reloj's boss (the Man in the Black Hat), Raquel is beaten. Reloj, struggling to get her away, is stopped by Pedro, the police officer who we learn is both his own father and in the service of the gangs. to spare the rest of his family from reprisal, Pedro says, El Reloj must end Raquel's life, and Pedro must end his. This happens. Pedro and Roberto then dump the bodies in the desert.
Thus we rejoin La Santa Muerte comforting the dead Raquel as Juanda enters. Cradling her daughter, she narrates a tale of her and her sons' escape over the Rio Grande into the USA.
The student's paper suggested that the action pattern for the script is pillaging the light, stealing away hope and replacing it with hard, dark, pragmatic survival. At first I objected. Action patterns in plays generally do not describe merely the starting conditions of the script; they must account for the arc of the play. The play starts in hopelessness, I said, with light already pillaged. What's left for the play to do? The student, however, argued effectively that the play takes us through that loss of hope, the replacement of idealized fantasies (the Virgin Mary) with crimes of survival and, finally, with blood. The play ends just as it began, in the desert, with a woman crooning a tale to a corpse.
It is a grim play, a play where a religion that preaches hope gets supplanted by a religion of gritty reality. "I was a naive child once," the Man in the Black Hat says as he begins to duel Raquel, "filled with dreams of escape." Juanda's ending vision, which I originally read as prophecy, now seems like a kindhearted dream, a final comfort to a daughter who died for nothing.
The real antagonist, Bettis suggests, is the world itself, a NAFTA-created world of exploitative factory work and violence-ridden gang life, all for the benefit of invisible Americans. (The factory Juanda and Camille work in makes USA flags. At one point Camille catches her finger in the sewing machine and without missing a beat wraps her bloody finger in a flag so that she can keep working.)
In an interview, Bettis says she wanted to write a play that would make white Americans, upon watching it, start rooting for Mexicans to cross the border illegally--do anything to escape that world. In this, I think, she succeeds.
But I'm caught by the odd sort of hopeless hope represented by La Santa Muerte, the one everyone in the play--antagonist and protagonist alike--prays to.
At one point, a desperate Juanda steals a bottle of añejo to summon La Santa Muerte.
The play in question is The Ghosts of Lote Bravo by Hilary Bettis. Set in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the play tells the story of a mother, Juanda, searching desperately for her lost daughter, the 15-year old Raquel, whom she calls "el toro bravo," the brave bull. Actually, as the play starts, the audience sees Raquel dying in the deserts outside of CD, her body beaten, her hands bound. She's met there not by her mother but by La Santa Muerte, the Holy Lady of Death in Mexican Catholic culture, patron diety of sinners and desperate people. Raquel asks for release; Santa Muerte offers only presence and some comfort, telling Raquel the story of Juanda searching for her.
The play unfolds from there in nested flashbacks. We see Juanda, a malquiladora (American-owned factory) worker, appealing in vain to Pedro and Roberto, corrupt police detectives, to help find Raquel. She spills her frustration and desperation to Camille, a co-worker at the malquiladora. Camille insists that Juanda pray to La Santa Muerte, giving her an icon of Lady Death. Scandalized at first--Juanda insists she is a good Catholic--she nevertheless takes the figure.
At home, as her young sons sleep, Juanda prays to La Santa Muerte, who enters in a supernatural flash. She scorns Juanda's ignorance (the proper prayer to her involves offerings of tequila), demanding payment in exchange for Juanda's request for knowledge. Juanda promises anything. La Santa Muerte presses her:
La Santa Muerte: Are you a virgin?Raquel, La Santa Muerte informs her, has prayed to the Lady Death since she was five. It's Raquel's prayers, not Juanda's that lead her here. La Santa Muerte demands the Mary statue Juanda has. She gives it. La Santa Muerte takes her into Raquel's past. We (along with Juanda) see Raquel meet a young wannabe tough, El Reloj ("the clock"), who promises her a job at the bar where he works. Both he and Raquel, Santa Muerte says before departing, pray to her.
Juanda: I have four children.
La Santa Muerte: Were you married before you let a man fuck you?
Juanda: I don't like you accusations or your language. It's disgusting.
La Santa Muerte: You can't even answer me honestly.
Juanda: I was...I've prayed for forgiveness. I've confessed.
La Santa Muerte: Confessed what?
Juanda: Eduardo and I did the honorable thing. We married before I was showing . . . Raquel was born in wedlock
La Santa Muerte: You're a very good Catholic woman.
Juanda: I try . . .
La Santa Muerte: I've never liked her. Your holy virgin. I've never understood why anyone prays to her. A virgin knows nothing about the sins a woman must endure for survival. Get her out of my sight.
From there, the play consists of scenes where Juanda purchases--and then steals--ever more expensive alcohol--and finally her own blood--for her ritual entreaties. Each time, La Santa Muerte shows here a bit more of Raquel's past--her growing relationship with El Reloj, her work selling her body for money, their plans to escape Ciudad Juarez, El Reloj's fear of his gang's boss. Ultimately, after an unsuccessful duel (a bullfight) with Reloj's boss (the Man in the Black Hat), Raquel is beaten. Reloj, struggling to get her away, is stopped by Pedro, the police officer who we learn is both his own father and in the service of the gangs. to spare the rest of his family from reprisal, Pedro says, El Reloj must end Raquel's life, and Pedro must end his. This happens. Pedro and Roberto then dump the bodies in the desert.
Thus we rejoin La Santa Muerte comforting the dead Raquel as Juanda enters. Cradling her daughter, she narrates a tale of her and her sons' escape over the Rio Grande into the USA.
The student's paper suggested that the action pattern for the script is pillaging the light, stealing away hope and replacing it with hard, dark, pragmatic survival. At first I objected. Action patterns in plays generally do not describe merely the starting conditions of the script; they must account for the arc of the play. The play starts in hopelessness, I said, with light already pillaged. What's left for the play to do? The student, however, argued effectively that the play takes us through that loss of hope, the replacement of idealized fantasies (the Virgin Mary) with crimes of survival and, finally, with blood. The play ends just as it began, in the desert, with a woman crooning a tale to a corpse.
It is a grim play, a play where a religion that preaches hope gets supplanted by a religion of gritty reality. "I was a naive child once," the Man in the Black Hat says as he begins to duel Raquel, "filled with dreams of escape." Juanda's ending vision, which I originally read as prophecy, now seems like a kindhearted dream, a final comfort to a daughter who died for nothing.
The real antagonist, Bettis suggests, is the world itself, a NAFTA-created world of exploitative factory work and violence-ridden gang life, all for the benefit of invisible Americans. (The factory Juanda and Camille work in makes USA flags. At one point Camille catches her finger in the sewing machine and without missing a beat wraps her bloody finger in a flag so that she can keep working.)
In an interview, Bettis says she wanted to write a play that would make white Americans, upon watching it, start rooting for Mexicans to cross the border illegally--do anything to escape that world. In this, I think, she succeeds.
But I'm caught by the odd sort of hopeless hope represented by La Santa Muerte, the one everyone in the play--antagonist and protagonist alike--prays to.
At one point, a desperate Juanda steals a bottle of añejo to summon La Santa Muerte.
LA SANTA MUERTE: Shit. This añejo, this bottle…So many mouths that have tasted this have called my name. Desperation. Loneliness. And yet a lingering taste of hope. Subtle. If you didn’t know what hope tasted like you’d miss it completely.JUANDA: La Santa Muerte…Forgive me. I…I’ve never stolen anything in my life.LA SANTA MUERTE: That guilt just eats away at your insides, doesn’t it. You should know by now that I don’t forgive. I listen.JUANDA: What good does that do…LA SANTA MUERTE: Whose sin is worse. The one who sins to pay or the one who pays to sin?JUANDA: I don’t…I don’t know anymore.LA SANTA MUERTE: Good.
"If you didn't know what hope tasted like you'd miss it completely."
I'll have to think more on this.
Friday, November 1, 2019
Neither Hope nor Nihilism but Fear
So, I whipped up a roundtable submission--six powerhouse scholars (well, five plus me) each talking about a collective affect such as joy, love, or outrage. I was concerned about whether I should choose hope (life-affirming, important, but kinda done before) or nihilism (fascinating, but very dangerous for me).
As it turns out, I didn't have to say in the proposal. I had decided, though, that if pressed I'd say I'm talking about fear.
If there's a roundtable about motivating affects, fear just has to be on the menu. I had hoped that another scholar (JS) would have written about it. But she's not going to this conference. I have a few others who might write about fear. But if they don't, I have to.
Fear, I think, attends both hope and nihilism in that both are reactions to fear. Hope reacts by putting a brighter possibility in front of or just beyond the zone of anxious, threatening uncertainty that is fear. Nihilism embraces it, refashioning the worst possibility into a certainty; the nihilist seeks some psychic support by recognizing that certainty as such.
Fear might be the way out of the rock and the hard place of hope/nihilism.
I do, after all, find myself talking a lot about fear. When I encounter conservative folk at Better Angels events, for instance, the primary emotion I get from them isn't (as many blues would have it) anger and hatred. It's fear. They're afraid of a world that seems to be barrelling headlong into a zone they don't recognize. They're afraid of being displaced, of having nowhere to go. ("Why are white people scared about becoming a minority in 2040?" tweets Levi Ackerman sardonically, "Are minorities treated badly in America or something?") They're afraid that liberals hate straight white Christian people and want to see them rounded up and shot. They're afraid of losing their jobs, of no longer knowing how to navigate the world for themselves and their families.
This fear leads them to place hopes in a big strongman like Trump, a bully--but for us!--who by virtue of his bullyhood has the power to quash those who threaten them. He'll drain the swamp. He'll build the wall. He'll put judges on the federal judiciary that'll protect unborn children and stand up for the rights of Christians.
Or it leads to nihilism. Trump is a force of chaos, less a bully than a kaiju imported into the porcelain world of DC so that he can smash everything. He won't drain the swamp; he'll burn it to ash. He is, in his chaos, the cleansing fire, the revolution out of which (somehow, magically) a new and better world will be born.
Obviously most reds are much more nuanced than this. And obviously blues like me have our own fears, which lead to our own mad hopes and grim nihilisms.
It's not easy, however, for many blues to hear about reds' fears, especially when those reds are white, straight, Christian males. Compared to the real (as in, statistically substantiated) precarity of black and brown young men in the US, white people's worries (on average, statistically) can seem trivial. Add to that the factor that aggrieved white entitlement exacerbates the forces that endanger black lives and the room for empathy for white conservatives' fears shrinks to zero.
That would be itself a rather pessimistic/nihilist take on a different fear--the fear of terminal polarization. I wonder what a more hopeful take might be?
As it turns out, I didn't have to say in the proposal. I had decided, though, that if pressed I'd say I'm talking about fear.
If there's a roundtable about motivating affects, fear just has to be on the menu. I had hoped that another scholar (JS) would have written about it. But she's not going to this conference. I have a few others who might write about fear. But if they don't, I have to.
Fear, I think, attends both hope and nihilism in that both are reactions to fear. Hope reacts by putting a brighter possibility in front of or just beyond the zone of anxious, threatening uncertainty that is fear. Nihilism embraces it, refashioning the worst possibility into a certainty; the nihilist seeks some psychic support by recognizing that certainty as such.
Fear might be the way out of the rock and the hard place of hope/nihilism.
I do, after all, find myself talking a lot about fear. When I encounter conservative folk at Better Angels events, for instance, the primary emotion I get from them isn't (as many blues would have it) anger and hatred. It's fear. They're afraid of a world that seems to be barrelling headlong into a zone they don't recognize. They're afraid of being displaced, of having nowhere to go. ("Why are white people scared about becoming a minority in 2040?" tweets Levi Ackerman sardonically, "Are minorities treated badly in America or something?") They're afraid that liberals hate straight white Christian people and want to see them rounded up and shot. They're afraid of losing their jobs, of no longer knowing how to navigate the world for themselves and their families.
This fear leads them to place hopes in a big strongman like Trump, a bully--but for us!--who by virtue of his bullyhood has the power to quash those who threaten them. He'll drain the swamp. He'll build the wall. He'll put judges on the federal judiciary that'll protect unborn children and stand up for the rights of Christians.
Or it leads to nihilism. Trump is a force of chaos, less a bully than a kaiju imported into the porcelain world of DC so that he can smash everything. He won't drain the swamp; he'll burn it to ash. He is, in his chaos, the cleansing fire, the revolution out of which (somehow, magically) a new and better world will be born.
Obviously most reds are much more nuanced than this. And obviously blues like me have our own fears, which lead to our own mad hopes and grim nihilisms.
It's not easy, however, for many blues to hear about reds' fears, especially when those reds are white, straight, Christian males. Compared to the real (as in, statistically substantiated) precarity of black and brown young men in the US, white people's worries (on average, statistically) can seem trivial. Add to that the factor that aggrieved white entitlement exacerbates the forces that endanger black lives and the room for empathy for white conservatives' fears shrinks to zero.
That would be itself a rather pessimistic/nihilist take on a different fear--the fear of terminal polarization. I wonder what a more hopeful take might be?
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Monsters, Trust, Nihilism, Hope
Newt: My mommy always said there were no monsters--no real ones--but there are, aren't there?
Ripley: Yes, there are.
Newt: Why do they tell little kids that?
Ripley: Most of the time it's true.
Aliens (1986, James Cameron, dir.)
Most of the time, it's true.
I concluded yesterday that trust may be a precondition for hope. When we tell young kids that everything's going to be all right, we're not offering a literal prediction of the future. We know, being humans who have lived for a significant amount of time, that things are often not all right. There are monsters. But "everything's going to be all right" isn't a factual description. It's a performative gesture. It brings into being the reality of love and trust. I love you and will do my best to be with you and protect you.
That trust, in turn, enables hope. I knew you would come, Newt says as Ripley rescues her. There are real monsters. But I hope. I hope.
As I waver between hope and nihilism, I wonder whether the passively or actively nihilist forces animating so much activism on the right and the left stems from a loss or lack of trust. I can well see how strains of Afro-Pessimism have at their root the charred remains of trust in whiteness. Trusting whiteness, from this point of view, has repeatedly proven lethal to black people. Whiteness is the zombie-bit person who swears they won't turn, only to savage you at the earliest opportunity. We have (collectively, generally) squandered any right to request or expect the trust of black and brown people.
Lack of trust subtends an absence of hope. There's no hope of a racial utopia, the realized dream of the beloved community. Whiteness is, from the Afro-Pessimist view, definitionally about maintaining and deepening the oppression of black people. It will never get better so long as whiteness exists. And whiteness--like captialism, misogyny, greed, bias--seems immortal.
That certainty itself resembles a kind of trust, however. The nihilist trap lies in its own smug-depressed-more-cynical-than-thou surety. I trust that there is no hope. I thus hope for nothing. Such a view founds the thanatopian urge reflected in the nihilist political bumper sticker: Giant Meteor 2020. As in The Neverending Story, the Nothing acquires substance, agency. It becomes a kind of dark deus ex machina for intractable situations, an anti-miracle, salvific entropy. When in doubt, trust nothing. Put your trust into the Nothing. Hope in the Nothing.
That's a bit more Cthulhu-esque than the average Afro-Pessimist, I'll wager.
What creates trust? Philosopher Keven Vallier distinguishes political trust--our trust in the institutions of government, our faith in peaceful transfer of power after elections, etc.--from social trust--our trust in strangers to abide by the codes that keep society more or less orderly. I wonder if that insight leads to distinctions in hope and nihilism. Is there a meaningful difference between political hope and social hope? Between political nihilism and social nihilism?
Maybe, in other words, I can find a way to talk about hope and nihilism, have my cake and eat it too.
There are monsters, after all. But, at the end of the film, Newt asks if she can dream. Ripley, knowing that monsters exist, affirms that "we both can."
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
The Preconditions for Hope
Roundtable-planning for my proposal about the affective drives for performance continues apace. I've sent out invitations; I'm waiting on yeses or noes. Love and outrage are onboard. We'll see about joy, patriotism (or nostalgia), devotion, and whatever LF wants to do (if she says yes)/
And I'm delaying committing to hope or nihilism.
I should do hope. What gets me out of my doom spirals, I told my therapist yesterday, is teaching. When I'm teaching students, I cannot project pessimism and nihilism to them. I may loathe myself for my white male Americanness, but I cannot stand self-loathing in my students. It's Fred Rogers all the way: There's no one else in the whole world like you, and you are capable of loving and being loved just as you are.
There are few things I hold for certain. When I say that Rogers message to students, though, I deliver it with as much certainty and conviction as I can muster. There's no room for hedging. There's no room for doubt or exceptions.
I once asked my sister (wisest person I know, mental health counselor) about the ethics of assuring small children that everything's going to be all right. It's literally not true. She allowed that, of course, bad things happen to everyone, children included. Of course, telling children that nothing unpleasant will ever touch them their whole life long would be a recipe for dysfunction. But when a parent tells a frightened child that they'll be OK--most of the time--it's not a literal prediction of the future. It's a promise: I love you. I am with you. I will do my best to stay with you and protect you.
She reminded me of a snippet from Won't You Be My Neighbor (the excellent documentary on Mr. Rogers). Mr. Rogers (very young in this clip) tells of one of his first encounters with a group of small children. One of the kids shows him a stuffed animal, telling him that its arm came off in the wash. This was a test, Mr. Rogers reflected. They waited to see how Mr. Rogers would respond. Would he swoop in and save them from their fear? (But your mommy fixed it, didn't she? It's all better now!) Instead, he asked a question: Our arms don't fall off when we wash them, do they? The kids, delighted that someone pinpointed their real fears here, responded enthusiastically.
The point, my sister said, isn't the factual status of Mr. Rogers's statement. Sometimes, indeed, children do lose limbs. But what the kids are asking isn't Do bad things ever happen? but Can I trust you to love me? Children need a foundation of trust and consistent care in order to thrive.
So do my students need something other than the yawning nihilism of my own pathologies. They have troubles aplenty. They're stressed, busy, going into debt, and terrified of the future. They're struggling to discover who they are apart from the family patterns they've learned throughout their childhood.
They aren't children. They know bad things happen. But they can all use a bit of Mr. Rogers certainty, the thing that is true by virtue of its affirmation: You are precious. You are loved. You can love just as you are.
There's a hope in that, or at least the preconditions for hope.
And I'm delaying committing to hope or nihilism.
I should do hope. What gets me out of my doom spirals, I told my therapist yesterday, is teaching. When I'm teaching students, I cannot project pessimism and nihilism to them. I may loathe myself for my white male Americanness, but I cannot stand self-loathing in my students. It's Fred Rogers all the way: There's no one else in the whole world like you, and you are capable of loving and being loved just as you are.
There are few things I hold for certain. When I say that Rogers message to students, though, I deliver it with as much certainty and conviction as I can muster. There's no room for hedging. There's no room for doubt or exceptions.
I once asked my sister (wisest person I know, mental health counselor) about the ethics of assuring small children that everything's going to be all right. It's literally not true. She allowed that, of course, bad things happen to everyone, children included. Of course, telling children that nothing unpleasant will ever touch them their whole life long would be a recipe for dysfunction. But when a parent tells a frightened child that they'll be OK--most of the time--it's not a literal prediction of the future. It's a promise: I love you. I am with you. I will do my best to stay with you and protect you.
She reminded me of a snippet from Won't You Be My Neighbor (the excellent documentary on Mr. Rogers). Mr. Rogers (very young in this clip) tells of one of his first encounters with a group of small children. One of the kids shows him a stuffed animal, telling him that its arm came off in the wash. This was a test, Mr. Rogers reflected. They waited to see how Mr. Rogers would respond. Would he swoop in and save them from their fear? (But your mommy fixed it, didn't she? It's all better now!) Instead, he asked a question: Our arms don't fall off when we wash them, do they? The kids, delighted that someone pinpointed their real fears here, responded enthusiastically.
The point, my sister said, isn't the factual status of Mr. Rogers's statement. Sometimes, indeed, children do lose limbs. But what the kids are asking isn't Do bad things ever happen? but Can I trust you to love me? Children need a foundation of trust and consistent care in order to thrive.
So do my students need something other than the yawning nihilism of my own pathologies. They have troubles aplenty. They're stressed, busy, going into debt, and terrified of the future. They're struggling to discover who they are apart from the family patterns they've learned throughout their childhood.
They aren't children. They know bad things happen. But they can all use a bit of Mr. Rogers certainty, the thing that is true by virtue of its affirmation: You are precious. You are loved. You can love just as you are.
There's a hope in that, or at least the preconditions for hope.
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Caught between Hope and Nihilism
Every year around this time I wake up and realize that the deadline for proposals to the Big Summer Conference is November 1. And every year around this time I brainstorm madly for some kind of session that matches the Conference's yearly theme ("Drive" this time, since it's in Detroit).
After today's wake-up and brainstorm, it looks like I'm going to be pulling together a roundtable about the deep, enduring emotions (affects) that drive social movements in performance. My idea is to have each roundtable participant write/present something about a particular emotion. I have a friend who's researching fear. Another writes about outrage (a favored topic of mine in the past). Someone else is doing love.
Eventually I need to decide what to do myself. I'm caught between hope and nihilism.
Just put that on my tombstone: "I'm caught between hope and nihilism."
Actually, I don't want a tombstone. Or a funeral, really. I'd prefer to leave no trace and disappear from human memory as quickly as possible. Nihilism FTW! Except--I feel guilty thinking that. Can nihilism ever be anything other than a mental pathology? (There's my paper, probably.)
There's already a go-to performance scholar for hope: Jill Dolan. Hm. I should ask her. She's a super-star, of course, and likely already engaged. But it's worth a shot. I hope she says yes! LOL.
Nihilism and pessimism aren't safe topics for me, really. They're fascinating in the way that unhealthy-for-me things often are, like chocolate fudge ice cream sundaes from Baskin-Robbins. Or chocolate pudding. Or chocolate anything. I can get into really, really bad spots thinking too much about pessimism.
I have a pessimistic bent and a tendency to depression. This is both a neutral fact of my brain/personality and a complication for me as a Christian. The second fruit of the Spirit, we're told, is joy. It's right after love. Christians should be joyful, hopeful, cheerful. I'm not by nature a cheerful person.
I strive for pragmatism tempered by humble gratitude. The more I can recognize my kneejerk pessimistic thoughts as reactivity, the better. But even after that, it is often hard for me to discern reason for hope (as my recent posts have illustrated). When obliged to be a leader or a teacher, I can shift into an optimistic gear. It's a fake-it-til-you-make-it kind of gesture. Sometimes it works to get me out of a spiral.
But we'll see.
After today's wake-up and brainstorm, it looks like I'm going to be pulling together a roundtable about the deep, enduring emotions (affects) that drive social movements in performance. My idea is to have each roundtable participant write/present something about a particular emotion. I have a friend who's researching fear. Another writes about outrage (a favored topic of mine in the past). Someone else is doing love.
Eventually I need to decide what to do myself. I'm caught between hope and nihilism.
Just put that on my tombstone: "I'm caught between hope and nihilism."
Actually, I don't want a tombstone. Or a funeral, really. I'd prefer to leave no trace and disappear from human memory as quickly as possible. Nihilism FTW! Except--I feel guilty thinking that. Can nihilism ever be anything other than a mental pathology? (There's my paper, probably.)
There's already a go-to performance scholar for hope: Jill Dolan. Hm. I should ask her. She's a super-star, of course, and likely already engaged. But it's worth a shot. I hope she says yes! LOL.
Nihilism and pessimism aren't safe topics for me, really. They're fascinating in the way that unhealthy-for-me things often are, like chocolate fudge ice cream sundaes from Baskin-Robbins. Or chocolate pudding. Or chocolate anything. I can get into really, really bad spots thinking too much about pessimism.
I have a pessimistic bent and a tendency to depression. This is both a neutral fact of my brain/personality and a complication for me as a Christian. The second fruit of the Spirit, we're told, is joy. It's right after love. Christians should be joyful, hopeful, cheerful. I'm not by nature a cheerful person.
I strive for pragmatism tempered by humble gratitude. The more I can recognize my kneejerk pessimistic thoughts as reactivity, the better. But even after that, it is often hard for me to discern reason for hope (as my recent posts have illustrated). When obliged to be a leader or a teacher, I can shift into an optimistic gear. It's a fake-it-til-you-make-it kind of gesture. Sometimes it works to get me out of a spiral.
But we'll see.
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