Fatuous But Possibly Thoughtful Game

Alright, the game is pretty simple. Turn on your music on shuffle and see how long it takes for the music that comes up to disqualify you from being a Presidential candidate.

1. George Carlin - Foole. Luckily, this isn't "Seven Dirty Words," and Carlin keeps his language decisively un-blue. It's an analysis of the history of comedy in general and Carlin in particular. Some of Carlin's most acceptible work, I suppose. So I'm still in the running. Maybe even a boon: showing I have a genuine sense of humor (rather than, for instance, having Seinfeld come up) without offending. Also, it plays to Carlin's blue-collar urban background.

2. The Section - Karma Police. A beautiful contemporary work rendered in the style of an old string quartet. I'm proud this came up: if it came up in an interview I'm sure I'd use it to mention about how art is enriched by being responded to by other artists. After all, if Thom Yorke and Radiohead wanted to rigidly enforce copyright, this song would be driven into the ground. Thom Yorke/Radiohead is rich enough. They don't need to. We're all better for having heard this song. I'm also proud of it aesthetically: Radiohead is a progressive, forward-moving band, and counter-pointing that with a beautifully nostalgic sense of tone like The Section really shows both sides of the equation.

3. Quincy Jones and his Swinging Orchestra - Soul's Bossa Nova . Well, normally I would have thought that Austin Powers is a little beyond the mainstream, but I heard this being played by a Jazz Band in Prague's Old-town Square the other day. The tourists really seemed to love it. It might raise questions about my hippy-ism and tie me a little too closely to the 1960s.

4. Hans Zimmer - The Might Of Rome. It's a good thing that this came up right after Soul's Bossa Nova. After all, this is a nice, manly, imperialist-expansionist right-wing sort of soundtrack, the sort of thing you might preemptively invade a foreign country for a valuable resource for. I might have alienated both sides a little.

5. RJ-D2 - Airbag. Radiohead comes into my playlist once again! Also, after having started out with the word-heavy Carlin, instrumentals have dominated the playlist. I love language, so it's a little rough that I'm being represented to tunes without words. I refer to the whole copyright point here; and I guess this further instruments my point by showing how different interpretations of the same artist can be if they come from different artists.

6. Rodrigo Y Gabriela - Tamacun. Fantastic guitar. Still instrumental. Dunno why Amarok is insisting on instrumentals, but it's keeping me in the game, I guess. The Tom Tancredo/Lou Dobbs crowd will probably grumble about me having latin-influence in my shuffle, but hell--I bet Lou Dobbs has some Ricky Martin on his iPod. Eh? At the very least, he has Cher. And to people on the other side, at least I'm interested in different musical styles and influences. Musicians will be happy to hear that, at least.

7. Me First And The Gimme Gimmes - Nothing Compares 2 U. Oh boy. Well, it won't put me out of the race (any more than ABBA disqualified McCain), but the retro song won't endear me to the young, and the less-than-aesthetic rendition will not endear me to the older. Ironic hipsters and illegal downloaders, on the other hand, will smile when they see it come up. It fits in with the earlier copyright point, but not in a very compelling way.

8. Thievery Corporation - Shadows Of Ourselves. Ah, some words. What are the words? French. Again, the Tom Tancredo/Lou Dobbs crowd might frown a little. This is a chiller, more electronic vibe--a little connected to RJ-D2--and it's on the border of being instrumental. I'm still in the running. I don't think this helps or hinders.

9. Lord of the Rings- Hope Fails. Ah, instrumentalism again. Another film score, which might have me pegged as a "Hollywood Elite," although if someone thought I was picking this music deliberately, it might look like a jab at Obama. Seriously, though, it's just another sorrowful, reflective song. If it wasn't for the George Carlin right off the bat, I'd look like a sad, pensive kind of President. Maybe an Abraham Lincoln, if I'm lucky, or (more likely) a Joe Lieberman.

10. We Are Scientists - Can't Lose. Ho boy. This song comes dangerously close to addressing teen alcoholism. I could try and cast it in the light of being a song that warns against alcoholism (it takes a very dour view of alcoholism), and the lines "I'm breaking my own rules/I'm turning into someone else" might not make good political fare. Still, since I don't drink, I have some plausible deniability. Close call? Also: the dour disposition continues to hang over the air. Can we go back to instrumentals?

11. Magnetic Fields - 10,000 Fireflies. Well, I'll stand by this song any day. Granted, it makes me sound like a wimp ("I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me") but it is among a compendium of witty and beautiful love songs, so I think that criticism will be muted. Maybe indie-rock folks will like me more?

12. Earth Wind And Fire - Touch The World. Hippy idealism strikes back! Alright, so I've lost anyone who doesn't want a sappy president, but this is something with a beat and funk, and nobody can take umbrage to it. Notice: this is probably on Obama's shuffle, and he's doing okay. It addresses social issues! "God gives hope and Jesus is the way!" with the choir effect might do something to some of my left wing; on the other hand, I'm not religious, and yet I'm willing to listen to religious-toned music. Open-mindedness is the key.

13. The Rolling Stones - Get Off Of My Cloud. Well, I guess this is 60s cynicism, to follow up on EW+F. But both of these bands are pretty solidly in the canon of music. If "Cloud" means "America", I guess this might be an attempt to reach out to the Tancredo-Dobbs Bloc. But otherwise, I'm still in the running.

14. Art Brut - Formed A Band. Moving swiftly from classic rock to indie rock. I'm proud of this one, and would make sure I say so. The tone finally has returned to tongue-in-cheek humor, after having left George Carlin so long ago. Absolutely harmless, and might pick up some of the young folks! "Yes, this is my singing voice/It's not irony/It's not rock n' roll/I'm just talking/to the kids!" Also: "We're gonna be the band/that makes Israel and Palestine gets along", thus putting peace on my agenda. Not seriously enough, obviously, but yeah.

15. The Darkness - Thing Called Love. The music itself is well within the mainstream, although a little too mainstream -- thank God Art Brut came first. The album cover, and its parental warning, might be a little leery with people, but this was a radio hit.

16. Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Outta My Head. Eh. Really pop. Utterly inoffensive. Just a "meh" all around.

17. The Gorillaz - Punk. Thank God! The Gorillaz were well-timed. I have a high appreciation for Albarn, and I'm sure he'd take me far. It's completely inoffensive, although social conservatives may not like the music.

18. The Gorillaz - 19-2000. Oh man. This is a chill, positive vibe, but it's sooooo close to being about drug use. I can hear the social conservatives on Fox News mocking me now. Bill Clinton and "why didn't you inhale." Luckily, I can unequivically say I don't imbibe (I have quite the reputation as a Puritan when it comes to ingestion). Thankfully, "It's the music that we choose" is pretty apt here...

19. Bloc Party vs. Death From Above 1979 - Luno. There's something vaguely wrong about this song, but I don't know exactly what to make of it, and I doubt anyone who wants me not to run for President would have anything better to add.

20. Martin Luther King Jr. - I Have Been To The Mountaintop. YES! MARTIN LUTHER KING! I don't have to say how this works. The only people this alienates are people who I don't want on my side. Thank God! "I wouldn't stop there..." Hopefully this would tie into my love of good language and oration; this would probably bring up the whole Obama-"elitist"-style/substance kerfuffle again.

21. Better Than Ezra - Juicy. I like the song, but I think it wouldn't really bear on anything.

22. They Might Be Giants - We're The Replacements. Again, not a very insightful song. I'm being pushed more towards rock and roll.

23. Stan Kenton - Concerto To End All Concertos. A big-band jazz orchestra piece, in the Public Domain (discussing again how that's good--no need for Stan Kenton to keep making money). Seriously, don't I have any controversial music? This is a little ridiculous.

24. Toad The Wet Sprocket - Begin. Melancholic bland rock.

25. Barenaked Ladies - Peterborough and the Kawarthas. Tancredo-Dobbs might be mildly irritated by the Canadian band, but it's got a kind of heartlandy-feel without actually being stereotypical country. Eclectic, nostalgic, nature imagery. Not bad.

26. Lord of the Rings - Return of the King. Aside from the previously-mentioned Lord of the Rings stuff, I don't see much change. I'm doing really well for President! By now the public would have gotten bored scrutinizing my music, and gone and done something else. I'm kind of considering turning on the "More Cowbell" application and adding some Christopher Walken over it.

27. The Killers - Somebody Told Me. God, this got overplayed. I mean, it's good, but I got heartily sick of it. It's nice that Amarok reminded me of it. Again, I doubt it'll really move people one way or the other. Jeez, I'm tame. Of course, it scared the crap out of me after Return Of The King. Unless this song is actually about sex change, which I've privately considered it might be. But since even I'm not sure of that, I'll leave myself on the table.

28. Harry James - Ain't Misbehaving. One of the most standard of jazz standards. I could use it to make a cheap point about infidelity and public officials (I'm saving my loving for my wife, Spitzer!). It's instrumental, which again minimizes the impact.

29. Microprose - Heroes of Might And Magic Track ??. Eh... a song from a video game might lose me the Hilary Clinton crowd, but it's instrumental, it's old, and it's calm. I can't see people taking umbrage at it.

30. The Clash - Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Just a classic. I'm opening myself to the attack of "flip-flopper" but, c'mon, lighten up. It's a classic, and it links me to an older generation that might not get Art Brut or The Gorillaz, without losing me the people who do get Art Brut or the Gorillaz? There's a faint Spanish call and response, but I doubt Dobbs-Tancredo would even notice.

31. Louis XIV - Pledge of Allegiance. Allllllllright, well, that was a nice long campaign and I made it through the Primary season, but this is a dealbreaker. This is an entirely sex-obsessed song, with some women moaning, some light s+m, and a discrete tryst (which might hint at indiscretions in my private life). Also, a blasphemous invocation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The word "Bitch." "She said oh come on boy aren't you tired of talking about sex/I said little girl what do you really expect?"


Well, that was interesting. I made it surprisingly far, considering how much seedy music I've got elsewhere on my computer. But Louis XIV would get me out of the race any day. I guess this exercise has proven how contrived the "playlists" of our politicians are: if they were genuine, they would make a lot less sense than the playlists we are presented in magazines like Blender.

Identity/Ethnicity in Europe

Another issue which being in the Czech Republic has given me some ideas about is about race/ethnicity, and what's going on historically right now in terms of race.

Firstly, I suppose, it's interesting to note the incredibly intolerant history of race and ethnicity in Europe. It is probably equally prevalent in every other continent, but previously I had sort of been of the notion that Europe was, at the least, given more to ideological/religious feuds, and due to the ethnically homogenous nature of Europe hadn't really distinguished racially between Europeans.

Well, it seems that the question of the "ethnically homogenous nature of Europe" is what I had missed. In the era passing forward from the Middle Ages, people lived in small villages, tribes, small city states and Duchys. Many spoke their own regional dialects and languages. But all had "Christianity," as it was united by the Church under the Roman Empire. The exception was the tribes of Jews that were throughout the land.

During this period, it seems to me (from an admittedly not very highly studied vantage point--my knowledge of history crystalizes much more clearly after 1900) that there weren't very many huge ethnic feuds. Now, partly this has to do with the fact that it is impossible at that point in history to actually destroy an entire ethnicity. The tools of mass murder were yet to come. But overall, people mostly kept to their small, local communities. The "other" was out of sight, and out of mind.

This changed after the Schism. Although this didn't create "ethnic" divisions, it did create another major identity division: Catholic or Protestant. And what, I suppose, is key is that the people who were divided were previously people who were in close proximity. And this is during the period where Europe is getting slowly smaller: the Kingdoms have mostly gotten large and intertwined through trade (during the trade revival of the 1600s), so suddenly these people were in close divisions. If you want to imagine what such a world looked like, imagine if all of Europe was Northern Ireland in the 1950s - 1980s.

I'm ignoring, of course, examples of "top down" persecution. It's one thing when King Ferdinand signs the order to persecute Jews, I'm focusing on mass movements of intolerance.

So at the end of the Schism, a peace is signed, which tells each King/Prince that where they rule, they decide the religion. And what that does is enforce homogeny in each community. There is a brief and catastrophic period of exoduses as Catholics flee to Catholic countries and Protestants flee to Protestant countries.

Nationalism, during this, has been on the rise. During the 1800s, it really peaks. The 1800s is the peak of nationalism. And this nationalism is not based on kings or kingdoms; the intellectuals of the time are trying to base it on something "historical" or "scientific." Hence you have the great frauds (neanderthals spoke German! ancient texts referring to the Czechs!), attempting to define the countries as more than just a temporary boundary created by history: countries are collections of a certain kind of people.

And they decide to use language as the identifier, and that identifier becomes race. Now, at the time of the 1800s, there were many Germans outside of Germany; some in Czechoslovakian regions, or in Austrio-Hungary, or in Prussia; and all of those people were mixed as well. As well as the French, or the Italians. Switzerland still represents that sort of mixture: after all, thanks to its long reign of peace, its ethnic makeup hasn't changed much since the 1400s, when the peace was first crystalized.

Eugenics enters the scene, and tells people that race is absolute. Meanwhile, there is a great rush of people to the big cities: cities which are much more ethnically complex than their home villages. They see The Other every day. And when they hear about Germany's actions, for good or for worse, they're constantly seeing Germans. Nationalist propaganda at the time (until pretty much World War II, sometimes even later) was based on vilifying the people who lived in those countries. It's not just that Kaiser Wilhelm is evil: the Krauts are evil. So how do you treat those nasty krauts who are in your workplace? What if one of those Krauts is your boss in the factory?

These people are, for many other reasons (see previous post) very unsatisfied. And a racial politics suits the up-and-coming Hitler. And during World War II, Germany, and various lands Germany held, became very very ethnically homogenous. Jews, gypsies, and other misplaced minorities were liquidated. Then, at the end of World War II, the counter swing: Germans were evicted from all the lands outside of Germany. Germany responded by evicting whatever non-Germans existed. Jews were still persecuted in areas of Poland. Poles were resettled thanks to the moving of the borders of Poland; Hungarians and Romanians settled within their own borders too.

The result of World War II is that all of the nationalist boundaries of the 1800s became ethnic boundaries. And since at the point of World War II, your community is your nation, that was enough to bring a sort of ethnic peace in Europe.

The exception is Yugoslavia, under Josef Tito, which did not go into that repopulating mode. But as soon as Tito's rule fell, Yugoslavia quickly tried to match the rest of Europe (not deliberately, I don't think) in creating nations based on language-ethnic homogeny. And of course, because of the very interspersed nature of these communities, it meant a lot of repopulation and depopulation.

None of this, to be clear is a good thing. All of the events which lead to the ethnic homogeny of Europe today (even the former Yugoslavia is homogenous to a degree which it never was to the past) were catastrophic, traumatic events for Europe.

But something reverse is happening now. But before I get into that, a word about colonies.

The biggest exceptions (there are a few) to the homogenization of the 20th Century is a side-effect of the collapse of the British and French Empires, where many of the peoples of the colonies came to their mother country to settle permanently. This is seen in "Londonstan," the part of England which is more culturally diverse than all the rest of the island combined. The suburbs of France have the same effect with many of its African colonials. And the racial tensions these have created are huge. The only ethnic hot-spots in Europe today are precisely those places that have races in contact.

Going back to the process of reversal that is going on now:

Previously, these conflicts have occurred every time the "horizon" of what your community was expands. The reason that World War II set off Europe's repopulation is that Germany, not content to sit in its own borders, intersected with all of the other nations. And where it went, it tried to ethnically homogenize. This created a lot of ethnic tension in Europe. Which, by the way, led to people distrusting Germany for half a century, not based on any one leadership, but based on the concept of Germany as a whole. "Germany" is dangerous if united.

Globalization is expanding the horizon of one's community again. The Schengen Free-Movement Zone makes it as easy for a Bulgarian to live in London as it is to live in Bulgaria. There is a huge movements of people to wherever it is that they can make the best living. This has, of course, created a lot of anxieties in areas where, previously, "the other" was elsewhere rather than here. Europeans have come to live with the idea of "the other, elsewhere" but as yet has not learned to deal with "the other, here." This is like the aftermath of the Schism's peace: other religions will be tolerated in other countries, but not in our own. Out of sight, out of mind.

This is a very complicated question, one which nobody has really solved anywhere. But it is the problem of Europe in the 21st Century. You'll notice that this question sort of bubbles near to the surface whenever the entrance of Turkey into the E.U. is discussed. After all, Bulgarians and Poles may be ethnically "other" from Brits and the French, but they're not considered religiously other; and especially today, there is a much more sour history between the West and Islam. This is an "other" which Europe is clearly not prepared to engage with ("here", at least: they're good friends with Turkey when Turkey is "there"). They will stall Turkey's membership into the E.U. until they're ready to have "the other, here."

And we need to figure out "the other, here" very soon.

Identity Politics

Today, in my Culture of Dissent class (taught by the inimitable Jan Urban, a Czech dissident from the Velvet Revolution and an excellent journalist in Bosnia, and Kosovo), we discussed the rather difficult question of why Communism proved to be popular.

The answer, from my point of view, is one having to do with the nature of identity in the 20th Century. There are many people who don't believe themselves to be very philosophical in their everyday life (philosophy being a very 'elite' passtime), but in point of fact, everyone has philosophical ideas and worldviews. And one of the big philosophical questions is, "Who am I? What is my identity?"

People base a surprising amount of their political convictions and idealisms based on who they think they are. For instance, one of the reasons that Americans have consistently voted for tax cuts for the wealthy is an array of polls which show that Americans consistently think that they are wealthier than they actually are (which corresponds to the way that they think they're thinner than they actually are).

We talked about the appeal of communism in the Industrial Revolution era. In order to understand it, you need to take a village-eye view of the change. The poor serfs, living in small rural communities, lived in an era with very little mobility. They were engaged in occupations passed down to them from generations, among a small community of people they knew. As the industrial revolution came to pass, serfdom was abolished: they were not necessary anymore. A vacuum formed, which sucked these serfs into the city. Suddenly they were in a huge community, much larger than themselves. Whatever they had previously been known for, through their family, was no longer a mark of identity. They passed by nameless and faceless masses everyday; they worked alongside nameless and faceless masses that did exactly what they did. There was no honor in their new work: they were (proverbially) just another cog in the machine; just another brick in the wall. They had been robbed of their identity, their purpose, and their security.

It was rather like going to a large college after being in a small high school.

At any rate, they needed a new identity. Communism provided that. It gave them a name for themselves: proletariat. It gave them a cause for their misery: bourgoisie. It told them that not only were the proletariat powerful, they were the single most powerful force of history: and that it was historically determined that they must succeed.

So, to turn to contemporary politics: during the Cold War, these identity politics broke apart into large dualisms: Communists and Capitalists on the world stage, and Democrats and Republicans on the American stage (note that third parties were still a noticeable force until World War Two). Ideology became, for one of the few times in American history, a primary source of identification: Democrats, Reds, Anti-Communists, Republicans, Socialists, Peaceniks, Hippies. All of these tags were ideological in nature. They gave people a sense of identity.

Today, these two grand coalitions seem more fractured. At least, the Republican camp seems to have split decisively into moderates, libertarians, neoconservatives, and social conservatives. A messy primary season filled with candidates who did not fully appeal to any of these groups (with the exception of Mike Huckabee for social conservatives and the Ron Paul movement for Libertarians) left people on the right with a lack of a sense of direction. Many of these people identified themselves as Republican strongly, without being on board with many of the actions or beliefs of other Republicans.

A big tip-off to me that this identity politics is coming apart? Obama has a large following of so-called Obamicans (Republicans for Obama). Notice, of course, that they are still calling themselves Republicans despite voting for Obama. I'm not necessarily saying that they aren't actually Republicans, but I'm noticing that their insistence is on defining themselves by a party affiliation which, in this election, may not be entirely accurate.

One of my favorite sayings to hear is "I've been a life-long Republican, but I'm considering voting Democrat." Notice the phrase "life-long." This is put forward as a positive, even though being a life-long Republican might imply that you've supported characters like George W. Bush, Nixon, or Reagan (in the same way that a life-long Democrat must have supported Carter, Dukakis, McGovern).

But this is the way people have previously identified themselves.

But with a hyper-specification of polls, there is a new level of identification going on. We hear it today on the news all the time. Demographics. Very small clusters of identity. How are middle-aged women going to vote? What about older men? Young black men in rural towns? These statistics can all be coallated. And apparently, they matter. And although women's groups have been condemning Palin since she was first put on the ticket, the latest poll shows that McCain has indeed spiked among women.

The question, I suppose, is whether we can move past identity politics. Barack Obama (in my opinion) has a way of addressing that. He appeals to people to vote not as Democrats, or Republicans, or as black and whites, but as Americans. This isn't just a trite slogan of identification: he's asking us to identify ourselves as America, and vote in such a way that doesn't just benefit my group or your group or any group, but benefits all of America.

And the question is: will it work.

Words, Words, Words, Words, Words II

If confusion is the sign of the times, I see at the root of this confusion a rupture between things and words, between things and the ideas and signs that are their representation.

The quotation above is from Theater and Its Double, by Antonin Artaud. To a devoted fan of The Daily Show, I sympathize with that statement. We watch the political cycle today, and it feels as though words have become meaningless. Take, for instance, "time line." The Bush Administration, unhappy with the concept of a "time line," branded it as "cutting and running," saying that an "arbitrary time lines" would shackle them from responding to conditions on the ground, and would embolden the terrorists.

Then Obama laid out his 16 month time line, and very shortly afterward, the Prime Minister of Iraq echoed it. And the Bush Administration said that they would begin drawing down troops, to end in about sixteen months.

Was this a time line? No, it was a "time horizon."

To anyone with an understanding of the accepted meaning of words, that's clearly some jiggery-pokery. Both of them imply the same thing. But the point is that the phrase "time line" has become an ideological symbol, rather than a linguistic symbol. The tags "pro-choice" and "pro-life" mean the same thing; certainly the ambiguous tag "change" has. "Torture," "message force multipliers," "patriotism", etc. are words which have their original meaning erased, and replaced with an ideological meaning.

Take Mitt Romney (and others') use of the word "liberal." He is not talking about a person whose viewpoints are slightly left of average, he is talking about a charicature: the ideological imprint of liberal in the conservative mind (namely, a tax-and-spend elitist plutocrat with little interest in family values or faith).

This is dangerous, because it corrodes something even more fundamental than our politics: it corrodes our language itself. And, in fact, it corrodes our thought.

Intelligence is often distinguishable from unintelligence by the proper use of symbolic logic. If the brain can assemble symbols in a correct fashion, it answers questions and creates solutions better. If we confused the internal logic of our brain, muddling facts and decaying the links between language and thought, we are corroding our thought-process. This is a fairly extreme case, but in point of fact, if you cannot clearly interpret facts, and if the landscape of your assumptions are ideological rather than reality based, then you cannot properly think. And if you cannot properly communicate, you cannot properly exchange ideas and thoughts. Corroding language corrodes the marketplace of ideas.

This phenomenon can be seen in totalitarian societies: a perfect example is the Communist world. Take from Havel:

From being a means of signifying reality, and of enabling us to come to an understanding of it, language seems to have become an end in itself.

And further:

When we lose touch with reality, we inevitably lose the capacity to influence reality effectively. And the weaker that capacity is, the greater our illusion that we have effectively influenced reality.

He illustrates these points (in the essay On Evasive Thinking) very clearly when he relates the story of a window-sill which breaks off, falls, and kills a person. This has happened many times, he writes, and a newspaper person writes an article which raises the question of whether better care must be taken of window sills, but then proceeds to pat the communist regime on the back for being the sort of free and open place where one can question to state's upkeep of window-sills. The newspaper is forced to contort and bend over backwards to match the ideology.

I say all of this as a prologue for an excellent Czech play I saw yesterday on this very subject. It was called Tika Tika Politika (translated as Ticks Ticks Politics). It was a four-part experimental vocal score made up of syllables and proto-language (in the first part, for instance, it is entirely repetitions of different syllables of Politika) in such a way as to render all of the vocal language meaningless.

This is, to a certain degree, the way the words in our political language have been treated. In an era of talking points, the constant repetition of ideologically charged phrases redefines those phrases permanently. The only way to reverse this is to remove the content of the language entirely, and to analyze the other communication provided.

In Tika Tika Politika, the analysis comes mostly through body-language and tonality; seeing how they say what they say is the important part. You learn to follow the narrative outside of the message. In real life, this takes a strong ironic mind, and you need all the help you can get.

Which is why, right now, I'm watching the Daily Show.

Words, Words, Words, Words, Words

Language is very important to me. I'm a deep believer in the idea that language itself is the way that our brain is tied together; its the rules and the logic which gives it form. Nietzche once said "I fear we still believe in God because we still believe in Grammar." It seems to me to be strangely apt, despite the fact that I can't unravel the relationship. If I were any sort of a religion, it would be the blind-watchmaker vision of God (perhaps--it's hard to talk about a hypothetical version of me). The formulae and the logic that exists is existence, is the reason and the end, and therefore, would havve to be God.

There's a Czech saying:"Kolik řečí znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem" which translates into "You are as many times a human as languages you know." I agree. Today, I was walking to my apartment through Prague, and I heard a German, an Englishman, and an American outside of a bar, talking in English. And I heard a Frenchman and a Czech person also debating in English. How much more they must learn about each other and the world, being able to communicate like that?

I've had a very positive experience with language in Prague. People have told me that they find Czechs rude. I've heard the same about the French. I found neither to be the case, either here or in Provence. The reason is because I always try very gamely and very positively to speak their language. My French is passable if fairly vocabulary-dry, but my Czech is only marginally better than a phrase book.

Don't ask them, "Do you speak English?" Ask them, "Parlez-vous francais" or "hablas ingles?" or "mluvim anglicky." It puts it on their turf, and it allows them choice. Several times now, I've had conversations with Czech people who don't know English. I barely know Czech. But using the few words I know, and the few words they know, and tracking intonation and gestures, I've managed to get by. And just the effort of communication has been greeted with smiles and indulgence for me.

Perhaps this is not everyone's experience. I tend to smile a lot and say "prosim" and "dekuju" a lot, just to make sure I'm in people's good graces.

Also: translation is an exceptionally fun way of learning meaning. I'm right now translating Artaud's journals when he was in a mental asylum in 1948. It's very, very simple French (which is good because I'm fairly lame at it), but it's fascinating. The tiniest of adjustments creates a totally different sense of what's going on. George Carlin once said that thoughts are airy and undefined, and then it gets attached to a word, and then you're stuck with that word for that thought. Translation defies that. You really have to know the person's mind to know what they were saying, and you have to know what they were saying to know their mind. It's rather like sculpting away at rock until you see the statue that was hidden beneath.

This is why I have a great respect for Eric Bentley, who most theater people in America do not pay proper homage to. Bertold Brecht is considered one of the top ten theater aestheticians of all time. He is often put in opposition to Aristotle in the very most basic theater classes, as a way of framing all of theater. Alienation, and empathy. But Brecht wouldn't have that privileged place in society if it wasn't for the tireless translation and promotion of Eric Bentley. Brecht would still be a small event in German history (and a freak Broadway success) if Bentley hadn't really placed Brecht on the map.

Words. They're the most important thing we have. I get very distressed when we damage words' meanings. The Bush administration has signalled the most vicious attack on the concept of language since Ernest Hemingway made the American dialect so word-impovershed. I can't list it all now, but concepts like "torture" or "time table" or "victory" have been so damaged, so needlessly... it signals terrible times for us. When your language unlinks from reality, you have lost your way: Vaclav Havel has written impressive things on that score.

This thought is short, because I'm still pretty chill from the Jazz Club I went to (music being the language we all speak and most of us can't read), and I have a less defined point than usual.

Guns, And The People Who Own Them

A group of friends and I sat in an Afghan restaurant today, and a rather awkward and usually upsetting thing happened: we started talking about politics. Not the usual sort of college talking-about-politics, where everyone has the same opinion and basically makes jokes at the other side's expense. I mean the kind of discussion where two people express opposing sides, and express them.

It was not an argument. As a matter of fact, when I said "rather awkward," I only mean to say that it was rather tricky to negotiate: because a polite, informed discussion is difficult to maintain, and it requires everyone involved be very careful about their words. But everyone was, and Thank God I learned a great amount about guns and gunowners.

There were six of us--five "liberals" (whatever that means in this context; we're not liberal when it comes to gun laws) and one "conservative" (see previous). And when the tides were so imbalanced, we wanted to proceed carefully so as not to trample him with the collective might of our passions.

A note about why the conversation worked before I get into the subject: everyone was actually very careful to stay within their own experience. Most people would love to throw out statistics or news articles or declarations about how the other half should live.

Instead, I got to hear the story of a young man who lives in an affluent neighborhood outside of Boston who has a gun license, and carries with him at all times (when he's in Massachusetts, where it's legal) a concealed weapon. He is my age, and in a lot of other ways not that different from me.

I'll try and introduce the issues that came up.

• Why guns: The first, obvious question is, why carry a gun at all? There are, in general, two arguments as to why you would want a gun. One is hunting, the other is self-defense. Now, those are two very different kind of weapons (most people don't shoot elk or ducks with a handgun, nor do they defend themselves with a shotgun or a scoped rifle). We focused, in this discussion, on the latter, because that's the reason our case study focused on.
• Legality: We agreed, immediately, that the two extreme positions are not plausible. There is nothing wrong with the occasional duck-hunt, so guns should not be completely banned. Nor should assault weapons or anti-tank weapons be free to any bloke off the street.
• Regulation: The young gentleman bristled a little at the amount of regulation that he had to go through. He had to apply, separately, with the local police, the state office, and the Federal government. Each one had the capacity to say no. This is in addition to a safety exam and a background check, neither of which he objects to. But even then, that license that he is granted only applies to about seven states: in others (New York for instance) this is not legal. And what he suggested, and we immediately agreed, is that a single weapons regulatory body would be more effective: it would create less unnecessary hurdles, but strengthen the government's ability to track those who have weapons. Ironically, we could agree on this regulation, because it seemed to make gun ownership easier for those that should have weapons while making it easier to track those who don't have weapons.
• Enforcement: He noted, quite rightly, that the people who do the worst things with guns typically get them illegally, and that many of those issues are not addressed by banning guns. How to address that issue is a completely different matter, but banning does not increase safety. Nor does relaxing regulation. Ironically, in our bipolar universe, the idea that neither increasing nor decreasing regulation makes the country safer is a little bit surprising.

He discussed with us, candidly, about how freely he moves around with a gun, and then he finally reached the sticking point: the point at which people on one side of the issue are distinguished from people on the other.

Sticking points are present in our most controversial issues. They're the points which are so important they cannot be compromised and very difficult to resolve. Unfortunately, sometimes the sticking point becomes the entire issue. For instance, if you make "pro-gun" or "anti-gun" the sticking point, it has much worse consequences (in terms of ruining bipartisanship) than if you make a more specific issue a sticking point. Those who cling to the 2nd Amendment in whole, allowing no regulation of gun ownership at all, are taking that sticking point to an extreme. These people should be reminded that the 2nd Amendment was provided to allow the people of the United States the right to overthrow their government by force.

The sticking point here was: should a human being be trusted to judge the situation in which a life must be taken?

This is a major issue.

Interestingly, you'll notice this framing is more wide-ranging than just this gun issue. This is because sticking points are philosophical-emotional, not political.

Issues that this sticking point intersects:

• War: When we go to War, we judge ourselves right in taking lives, and in ordering people to die.
• The Death Penalty: The death penalty states that we have the right to condemn people to death.
• Abortion: if you consider an unborn child to be alive, then the right to abortion means you judge yourself worthy of killing that unborn child.
• Gun Ownership: people who carry weapons in self-defense are preparing themselves, if need be, to kill.

Obviously, this doesn't mean that people who are in favor of any of the above are necessarily murderers. Almost everyone will concede that these issues are never actually black and white.

Some will look at those and say man cannot decide whether or not to take a life. But the truth is, man does have to decide. On the other hand, saying that man does have to decide does not mean that individuals have to decide. Society (or culture), may have to make that choice. Sometimes we decide it is necessary to take the right to choose death out of the hands of the individual. On the right, it is removing the right to choose abortion: on the left it is removing the right to choose war.

And people may rightly say that in such-and-such a case it is better to take a life (it never is right, but it might be better). But the question is, do you know.

The reason that I opposed the Iraq War was not necessarily because I was against war (World War II was a war that, on the whole, made things better in the world; Vietnam made things worse; Korea was merely a huge waste of life... etc.). But when the President embarked on a campaign of misinformation, he took away our right to make an informed choice.

That right is crucial. One of my favorite quotations about morality, which I use as my own moral compass when everything else fails, is Albert Camus' The Plague.

The narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to the praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy and the general rule. The narrator does not share this view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness.

What Camus is saying is that in order to judge the morality of an action, you need to have an accurate understanding of its effects. We tend to judge actions based on their impact. For instance, it is common knowledge that if this Iraq War ends in a stable, democratic Iraq, George Bush's legacy will be rehabilitated in the same way that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt are forgiven their various crimes because of their successes. One quality of leadership is having to make those difficult decisions, based not on the here-and-now but on the long-term impact.

This is very difficult. Many people who mean well will make bad decisions because they are missing facts. And people will be unable to see their transgressions for the same reasons that they make them in the first place: a lack of understanding of the situation.

Now, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army (read: the President) will have to make that decision, whether he likes it or not. Both Barack Obama and John McCain have proven that. The question will remain: who will be able to see the picture more accurately?

That's not the question I set out to answer. The opinion I wished to express was merely that I don't carry a gun for self-defense because I have significant doubts in my own ability to judge a life-or-death instantaneous situation. I have doubts that I will, in the less than half a minute I will have to respond, make the right choice concerning the person whose life is my responsibility, if I take a gun into my life, whether that be the people who might come to be hurt in an accident or the person I might have to decide whether or not to kill.

This was a very fruitful discussion. The Afghan food was also very good. I recommend both to you heartily.

Theater and Interactivity Pt. 1

I'm trying to lower my word-count for posts here, so as not to kill anyone foolish enough to try and read my ideas.

I was talking with a friend of mine here in Prague (I'm here studying temporarily) about theater, and he told me that the kind of theater he wants to create isn't so much him creating theater as it is him creating a pretext for theater to be created in the community.

What with my whole "culture is conversation" and "art should be responsive to the community" stances, I was very pleased, and enjoyed the idea. It has inspired me to look at that aspect more. I don't know if that's all I want to do, and I don't know how to do it entirely, but it's a lead that I'm really interesting, and that's that.

But it got me thinking about responsiveness in theater, which has come up for me at various times. Responsiveness in this case means responsiveness in the moment, not a general sort of metaphorical responsiveness.

We've always had this kind of responsiveness. After all, improv is an art form built around audience response. Whose Line Is It Anyway could be seen as the biggest success of theater on television. It takes what we love about theater: watching the actor think and feel in real time, and simply puts them in front of a camera. Whose Line Is It Anyway is for improv what SNL was for sketch comedy.

In the brick-and-mortar theater world, improv also continues to be a successful and lively part of action. Most comedians on television have come from a strong background in this--and the brick-and-mortar pedigree is still a mark of talent. The fact that Stephen Colbert comes from Second City Improv counts for a long way with people, in the way that other people's brick-and-mortar theater experience doesn't in the film/TV world.

And I am starting to think that this success is only going to get bigger.

We talk about theater's losing share in public culture often in terms of its competition. People have ruminated on the ease, comfort, and privacy of watching television. When I talked to my dad about theater, he (a software engineer) looked at theater and came to one conclusion: theater is struggling because it doesn't scale.

But what was he comparing it to? He didn't look to the world of television or film. And he was right not to. After all, statistics seem to show that movie-watching is stagnating. Television, on the other hand, is a little harder to assess. Why? Because television is moving to the internet. Internet is the growing source of entertainment and culture (I say culture as well) so Internet is the biggest competition to theater.

Talk about the 'competition' is not new: George Bernard Shaw was talking about what a theater needs to do to compete for the attention of viewers (one solution: comfy seats). Bertold Brecht argued along similar lines (one solution: let them smoke cigars).

At any rate, if there's one clear defining change between the Internet and what has gone before, it is the internet is interactive. This parallels the growing love of video games. We enjoy engaging our mind into what we're doing, and interaction lets us influence what we're doing. But theater is interactive too. So the theater has an opportunity: to stand as an interactive, communal entertainment.

Now, the internet will always win points over us in convenience. But then again, don't DVDs and films win over movie theaters in convenience as well? What we win over the internet is a sense of life and community.

But at the moment, our habits of theater aren't interactive. A playwright creates a play (usually alone), he takes it to a theater company, which decides everything in advance, and this is presented to a silent audience in the dark part of the theater. So the challenge of theater is how to combine the ingenuity of the artist with the contributions of the audience.

I'll leave it there for now, and think about where I've seen it applied and such, and discuss more tomorrow.