Story Time

This week, I participated in a story-telling event at USD. The theme was "Bang," but that was to be interpreted however one wanted in the context of some personal story. Here is the prepared text—I diverged and embellished and cried—of that story:

When Professor Bowman asked if I’d be willing to tell a story, I said, “yes,” because that’s what I tend to do. I agreed to do Mortar Board’s Last Lecture one year without knowing what it was and went to the end of the year celebration for Beta without realizing that I was being honored. But, I didn’t know what story to tell. I have a lot of stories that I tell students in class, but those tend to be very short and everyone has heard them multiple times.

I finally figured out what to tell you today when I was reading The Shining at the end of the summer. I’m not going to tell you a horror story, but my story will be about a little boy and family and it partly takes place in Colorado.

And, I’m not sure the story is going to have the kind of bang the theme calls for,  but it does deal with something that has hit me with a bang several times throughout my life.

When I was a very small boy, my parents broke up. They never really should have married each other and everyone around them knew that before they got married. But they did and if they hadn’t, there’d be no me. So it’s a good thing, I suppose, that they did. They were separated when I was still a baby and divorced when I was two. Not long after they divorced, my dad moved out of our small hometown to the “big city” of Fort Wayne, Indiana, about a half hour away. I would visit him every other weekend and sometimes he would be in town seeing his family. But, already there was a good deal of distance between us.

After a few years, he remarried and he and his new wife moved to Denver. The emotional distance was enhanced with physical distance.

The summer after kindergarten, he arranged for me to come and visit for two weeks. I should say that I have never liked being away from home. I still find even the best vacations difficult because I’m not in my own bed around my own things following my routine. Still, this was a big adventure for a little kid.

So, my mom and grandparents drove me to the airport in Fort Wayne. I flew for the first time. This was when flying was a lot more pleasant than it is now: big seats, full meals with real plates and flatware, the whole deal. And, if you were a kid flying alone, you got wings and to visit the cockpit and the cabin crew checked up on you all of the time, like a VIP, all of it very exciting for six-year-old towheaded me. I remember being excited and I remember the man who sat next to me. He talked to me through the whole flight and entertained me. I remember him teaching me how to write my name in Korean, even though it must have been exasperating being seated next to a little kid.

Anyway, I got to Denver and my dad picked me up at the old Stapleton airport. I don’t remember much about the time I was there on that visit. I remember more about later trips, including one where the trip out was by Greyhound, but I do remember going to work with him a few times on that first trip. He was a schoolteacher, but he hadn’t found a teaching job yet, so, at the time, he was driving a bookmobile. I can still picture the old school bus that had been painted sky blue with a scene of clouds and balloons and filled with shelves of children’s books.

What I can remember vividly is how miserable I was. I didn’t like what I was fed; they made me eat breakfast and it always involved both eggs and syrup either on pancakes or waffles or French toast, none of which I was used to eating. I’m still not much for a daily breakfast. And, my dad’s wife really like to attempt Chinese food. Nothing was like I was used to and I wasn’t at home.

I cried. A lot. I cried when I was trying to fall asleep at night, but I also cried a lot during the day. I was homesick and there was nothing my dad could do about it. We aren’t a particularly demonstrative or talkative people; I don’t think he knew what to do or what to say. And, though we’re obviously related, we just weren’t family to each other.

He had tried as well as he could, but it didn’t work. And, he was mad.

We’ve gone through long periods, once almost two decades, where we haven’t talked to each other at all. But now we’re perfectly happy to be in the same room almost talking.

So, he called my mom. That wasn’t easy. She had gone to the lake cabin of a coworker, a pretty big vacation for her. In the era before cellphones or even answering machines, it took some effort to get ahold of her and to arrange my early return. Instead of a two-week stay, I was on my way back home after just a week.

I remember getting home, after the flight and the drive from the airport, and getting back to my neighborhood. I grew up on a street that only ran two blocks between the two main streets in my small hometown. It was a quiet street and I was an only child of a single mother when that was still an uncommon thing, so I spent most of my free time going from house to house and hanging out with adults. Next door to us lived the Tacketts, Uncle Ben and Aunt Ginger, and their two daughters who used to watch me when mom was at work. Next to them were the Dolbys, who I called the Doblys. She taught me to read when I was three. There were other Dolbys across the street, his brother. Mrs. Johnson whose husband had gone to prison forty years before—a thing no one forgets in a small town—was directly across the street.  She used to give me the toys out of cereal she bought for her visiting grandchildren. Then there was the house on the corner with old Mr Ray. He had had a stroke and I would walk over on summer nights and sit with him on their front porch and talk to him. He never talked back, but he’d smile at me with his eyes. And, I haven’t thought about him in four decades.

Anyway, the first thing I asked for when I got back home was to see Uncle Ben. I had gotten a new bicycle earlier in the year, for my birthday I think. It was a sweet red Schwinn, with a sparkled paint job. We’d gotten it for free because the owner of the bike shop had a habit of not cashing checks. But, the bike still had its training wheels. 

I wanted Uncle Ben because I wanted him to take them off. I wanted to really ride my bike. And, he did. And, I did. I don’t know whether I wanted to show that I was growing up even though I hadn’t been grown up enough to go away for two weeks, but it was super important to me to show that I could ride that bike.

It wasn’t just my mom that I had missed, though I’m sure my dad thought I was a mama’s boy. She lives in San Diego now, so maybe. It wasn’t just my house or my things or my routine. It was my family that was missing. And, that family wasn’t just people I was related to. It was the people around me who mattered and to whom I mattered. They were the people I belonged to. They were home.

Through most of my life, I’ve felt like I didn’t quite belong in the way I was supposed to, but there’ve always been people around who felt like, and were, family. At least sometimes, to bastardize Madonna, family’s where you find it. 

Thoughts on jury duty

This last week I went to jury duty. I think I’ve been called four times now. Only once was I selected for a (civil) jury, a two-week experience that was a waste of the time of everyone involved. This time I was called to a courtroom together with seventy-two other people, but I was dismissed in a peremptory challenge on the second day. This last experience got me thinking about a number of things, some having to do with local circumstances, others with the way we think about the law more generally.

In San Diego, you can be called every year, though you get a three-year break if you are selected for a jury. When you get your summons, assuming you don’t ask for a delay or have an excuse, you have to show up at 7:45 AM at the courthouse downtown. You sit around for two hours, during which you watch a movie about the jury system bordering on fantasy and hear a short presentation by one of the judges and fill out a very short form. The actual randomized selection of people for jury selection doesn’t begin until almost 10:00 AM. Two hours are spent doing what could easily be done in twenty minutes on a computer at home or in a public library. Of course, this makes jury duty a burden, one that people with children or other responsibilities are likely to be unable to undertake, whatever claims we might want to make about civic duty.

If someone is selected for a jury, they are reimbursed for their time, at a rate of $15 per day, starting on the second day. That is about enough to buy lunch in the vicinity of the court house.  The first day you get nothing; likely this is because they make many more people show up than they could possibly need, because it all must be done in person, rather than online or on-call. There is no law in California that an employer must pay an employee for time they are on juries, so that means again that many, many people are simply unable to sit on juries. In San Diego, you also get reimbursement for travel, at a rate of $0.34 a mile, again starting on the second day.  The first day, you’re on your own. There is also no free parking. Alternatively, you can get a transit pass for each day that you serve, again starting on the second day.

What effect does this have on the court system? It is obvious when you look around a court room after prospective jurors have been seated. In my courtroom the majority of prospective jurors fell into one of the three groups: college students, retirees, or middle-aged professionals. Almost all appeared to be upper-middle-class and the group skewed heavily white. San Diego is, however, a very diverse city and county. It was a room of lawyers, doctors, nurses, a few academics, executives, a whole bunch of engineers, and the retirees and students. Many others had been excused from service because of economic hardship. Those who remained are those who could afford to be there.

The defendant in the case for which I was in the selection pool was a young, heavily tattooed Latino man who appeared to be working class. He didn’t look like much of anybody in the jury pool. Once anyone who had ever had a negative experience with police officers was removed for cause, the pool looked even less like the defendant.

This all connects to the other thing I was thinking about during selection and after. Prospective jurors are asked again and again whether they can be objective and impartial. The answer that is expected is a resounding, “Yes.” A response of even, “I can try to be,” results in an admonishment from the judge. The pool is further instructed that they cannot feel or be guided by sympathy or feeling either for the defendant or his victims. Nothing about the appearances or backgrounds or anything else about any participants can have any bearing. They must be guided only by evidence. And, importantly, they cannot let any thought of possible punishments effect their judgments. Nor, of course, can they think about the law, only the facts. This was perhaps most striking when several prospective jurors who were lawyers, including one who was an Assistant Attorney General, were asked whether they would be able to look at the evidence as laypersons.

It seems to me that this is very high-minded bullshit, but it’s bullshit nonetheless. It is asking us to go behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance to make our judgments. How precisely will the lawyer cordon off her legal knowledge when hearing the case? How will the juror for whom tattoos are a sign of gang affiliation forget that? How will I make sure that my sympathies, identity, concerns about the justice of prisons, etc., do not touch on my judging the evidence? I don’t mean to say that I can’t work to minimize those effects, but I can’t do that by pretending that I am capable of absolute objectivity and impartiality, as if I were retreating to my heated room to consider the Evil Demon. Rather, I’ll have to be aware of my subjectivity to fight it. Pretending that I am capable of absolute objectivity and impartiality will only make me more likely to act on my unexamined prejudices. And, if we were capable of objectivity and impartiality, we wouldn’t need a jury of twelve. One would suffice or maybe three to be on the safe side. Nor would we be concerned that the jury be a jury of one’s peers. Any old people would do. This is absolutely essential, I think: if we are going to treat defendants as innocent until proven otherwise, they need to be judged by their peers. 

It’s not a jury of his peers that this case’s defendant ended up with. The economic incentives guarantee that it can’t be. In a system where the resources of the “people” are much greater than those of the public defender system that matters. He was at numerous disadvantages.

In the end, I was dismissed. I had been Juror 36 and then I was briefly Juror 8 before the defense thanked me for my service and dismissed me. I don’t know whether it was because I had shared that family members of mine had been victims of crimes similar in some respects to those he was accused of or because a middle-aged, white, gay man who generally looks angry, in spite of his actual emotions, didn’t seem like a sympathetic juror. 

I don’t know what they outcome will be and he may very well be guilty, but I’m not more trusting in the fairness of our system—the orientation film explaining the benefits of our unique(!) system just wasn’t enough—especially towards those without power, wealth, and influence.

Some other time I’ll worry about what a reasonable doubt is. 

Thinking about absurdity and individualism

I was thinking this morning about the role of the absurdity of human life in the existentialism of Sartre and the absurdism of Camus and those around and influenced by and influencing them. At least for Sartre and Camus, the non-existence of God plays a large part in the account of absurdity. Because there is no God, there can be no objective meaning to our lives. Because there is no objective purpose—and because all our plans and accomplishments come to an end with our deaths and disappearance into nothingness—our lives are absurd. They serve no purpose. And, we are, at best, like dear old Sisyphus.

But, can we hold onto this kind of absurdity for more than a moment, if we avoid the modern trap of seeing ourselves as atomistic individuals? (I’ll merely mention here that there’s also something precious and luxurious in this flavor of concern with absurdity.) What I mean is just this: My life undoubtedly appears or is absurd if it begins ex nihilo—in effect, though not in fact—with my conception or birth or first choice and ends wholly and finally at my death. Leaving aside questions of religion and survival, this is an extremely impoverished idea of a human being or life. Regardless of whether there is a God or whether I go on in some personal way after death, I am part of something larger than myself. I come from a family and a community and I contribute to at least one of those in ways that will continue after I am dead and long-forgotten. I’m unlikely to be remembered for long, but even if that’s correct, some almost-almost-indiscernible effect of my having been here with remain in what does remain. If that’s right, the idea that my life is absurd or a cosmic joke is harder to maintain.

Some thoughts about the Queen and her piano

We live in a time when people get upset about a lot of things. People always got upset (or, outraged) but we share it more often, so maybe we're just more aware of others' grievances and griping. Sometimes the increase in anger may be a good thing; there were many intolerable things that people were made to tolerate for too long. Sometimes we may just be addicted to the outrage itself; some sorts of upset are really silly at best or nefarious at worst.

At the moment, some corners of the world are upset at the appearances of the Queen's Christmas address. The problem is supposed to be the opulence of the setting and the golden piano in the background in a time of inequality and unease in Britain and the world in general and, of course, in a speech in honor of the poor Babe of Bethlehem. On the other side, people are saying that, of course the Queen is wealthy, and that without such display tourism would fall and the point of the monarchy would, in some important senses, be lost.

One such defense the other night got me thinking about the broader implications. The comparison was to the "stripping of the altars" that occurred during the Reformation. My initial response was to say that it mattered that in this case we have a secular rather than religious stripping, and that matters.

That response might have been to quick, though I think something almost like it is correct. There's a common kind of argument made, usually by atheists or agnostics or certain types of utilitarians, that concludes that it is manifestly unjust, for instance, that there are great treasures in the Vatican while there are people who are starving. The claim is that all these goods (the Pietà, Bernini's baldacchino, St. Peter's itself, ...) ought to be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. If taken to its logical conclusion—and uncolored just by anti-religious feeling—this argument should also mean that all museums should be emptied. The Louvre also should sell the Mona Lisa and give that money to the poor.

In that latter case, we tend not to draw that conclusion. I think we're right not to. We don't for two related reasons: 1)We think that there is a common good that is served by keeping great artworks available for the public; and, 2) We think that art has a value beyond just the economic or what the economic value could do to help even the worst off. There's a little bit of "you will always have the poor with you" about it.

But those two reasons apply also in the case of the Vatican's treasures or those of any beautiful church or synagogue or mosque or temple. The beauty is shared among many more people than could ever appreciate it were in private hands and—at least for the believer—there is a transcendent value; it points to something beyond. For what it's worth, I think it can be seen to point to something beyond even for the non- or other-believer, if only the Kantian sublime.

All art, of whatever sort, is extravagant and profligate.

So, what about the Queen and her art and golden pianos and all the rest? It depends entirely on what we think the Queen is. If she is just a person, then there can be little question that her wealth is obscene. If, instead, she is the Crown or the embodiment of the same, something that not only transcends the particular individual but also transcends the citizens over whom she reigns and something whose beauty or wealth or existence or style-of-life can be enjoyed either vicariously or as spectacle by many, then there's nothing out of sorts about her pianos or pictures or palaces.

I'm not saying that the Queen does play this role, nor am I defending her lifestyle—or that of popes or cardinals or presidents or anyone else—but I do think we can oversimplify these cases in ways that ignore the complexities of our relation to institutions and values beyond the utilitarian or, even, beyond the merely moral.

The Rottweiler woman

There's a woman in my neighborhood I call "the Rottweiler woman." She lives near me, but she doesn't have a home. She lives on the street, napping during the day in a parking lot near a pharmacy and grocery store and storage facility, and sleeping in entryways of banks or the patio of a coffee shop. She has a unit in the storage facility, so she's able to change clothes and keep some goods. She must get some sort of disability or social security or other form of income. She's able to keep body and soul together. She neither begs nor scavenges. At least, I've never seen her doing either.

I call her "the Rottweiler woman," because she has the sweetest—he's also a bit scary if you don't know them—middle-aged Rottweiler. She also has a beautiful parrot who lives in his cage on her cart. She loves them and feeds them and grooms them. The Rottweiler sleeps beside her on the ground when she's napping or bedded down for the night. He watches over her and protects her, as any dog would do.

The Rottweiler woman isn't visibly more ill than most of the people I see every day, though I don't know all her problems or history. She reminds me of people I knew and worked with in the year between university and grad school, when I volunteered at a clinic for the homeless and a soup kitchen. So many of those people were just on the edge of keeping their lives together. They could make it if they got the right sort of support, but if too many demands were put on them, things would fall apart.

I don't know if that's her situation or not. I talk to her regularly. We talk about our dogs and she lets me see glimpses of her past, but it's not my place to pry. I hope I do get to know more about her, maybe even her name.

Yesterday, I stopped to talk to her as she was eating her lunch and I was on my way to mine. We chatted for a few minutes about her dog and the younger of mine and injuries they've suffered. She talked to me of the efficacy of her prayers in the past. And, she apologized for taking up my time, as if my time were more valuable than hers or she wasn't worth human interaction. (It's perhaps worth noting that she doesn't seem to have a network of other homeless people as many on the streets do.) As I left my lunch, she was still on the patio and I chatted a little more. Her dog came to smell my pants, picking up the scent of my dogs. She apologized again. As I was leaving, she chided the dog softly for not letting her talk to people.

I don't have some overarching point in this story, except to remind myself and whoever might read this of two things: a society in which people live on the streets is objectively a bad society (this is something Plato recognized in the Republic) and those people who live on the streets are people.

There is a tradition in at least some forms of Buddhism to see the Buddha-nature in everyone you meet. There is a tradition in at least some forms of Christianity to see Christ in everyone you meet. There are, I take it, similar tropes in other religions and traditions. I think they get something both very right and a little bit wrong. What they get right is to see the inherent value in every human being—that kernel of Kantian dignity that Schopenhauer couldn't find—and I think it is all too easy to look past certain people—the homeless, the suffering, the elderly, the disabled, the unloved, the discriminated against, the stranger, the poor, the prisoner—and by averting our eyes deny them their dignity and their place in community with us. I'm not sure the right way to do this is by seeing Christ or Buddha in them, though. That's too abstract, too mystical. We need to see the them in them, the particularity, but also the value in that particularity.

I think a lot about loneliness. I think it's perhaps the defining characteristic of human life. Maybe it's not the only one. Maybe it's only a characteristic of a certain kind of modern, deracinated life. But, we are the kinds of beings who need connection and, I think, we're the kinds of beings who realize that we are individuals. That is, we are self-conscious in a way other animals don't seem to be.

I'm lonely and I'm surrounded with people much of the time. These are people who are required to pay me respect and attention. I go home to a comfortable home—I live in comfort while others live on the streets—and I have a husband who loves me. And, there are the two dogs.

We have a duty not only to see the dignity in others, but to bridge our divides and help the lonely to be less lonely. To help all of us be, at the least, alone together. Or, as EM Forster had it, to "Only Connect."

Another semester in the books

Another semester draws to a close. In the brief time between the last class and the deluge of assignments and exams to be graded there's space for reflection. What did I do well? What did I do poorly? How did I connect and fail to connect with students and their concerns and needs?

I tend to focus most on the ways things haven't gone well. I'm usually better at thinking about failures than I am successes. Imposter syndrome—assuming it's a syndrome and I'm not really an imposter—also has a role here.

This post isn't about being maudlin, though. There's a lot more end-of-the-year reflection to come and much of that will be penitential in nature. Instead, I want to say a couple of things about the beauty of doing what I do.

I don't know that I'm a great teacher. I know I get things wrong. I know I can bore students. I know I care deeply about things that don't interest them. I said this wasn't going to reflect on my failings, so I also know that I get to interact with young, creative, reflective, curious minds. I don't know how much of an impact I make. I don't necessarily think that many of my students will remember me particularly after a few years. 

Someone I follow on Twitter who teaches theology mused this week on how being forgotten was a sort of blessing; it also requires a certain kind of discipline. But, as Freud noticed, transience enhances rather than detracts from beauty, from value.

I hope, though, that some little thing we've talked about or some discussion we've had or some comment one of them has made will rest in their minds or in their memories and germinate later in their lives or careers. Even though I teach one of the more useful parts of philosophy—most of my classes are ethics of one sort or another—it is still part of one of the clearly least useful disciplines. Hell, we even pride ourselves on that fact. So, it's not as if they will be consciously using what we've talked about as they design new vehicles or logistical systems or command troops or make hiring decisions or do whatever it is that people in the real world do.

What I know is that every semester my students touch and change me. If there's anything like grace, that's a bit of it. 

Class thoughts on desire and impermanence

In one of my classes yesterday, we were finishing up our much-too-quick discussion of the basic Buddhist account of the human condition. It’s a class in which students are always asking the right sorts of questions. As I was reiterating the purported relationship between desire or craving and suffering—one that almost appeals to me for Stoic reasons—a student offered the objection that desire can also make our lives better. 

I had been using as an example the way social media and our exposure to the perfectly curated lives of others can make us unhappy. For instance, I had been arguing, when I see the perfect vacation another has taken or I see the interminable post-gym selfies, I can be made unhappy because I have no such vacation but now I desire it or I think my body doesn’t look as good and my desire to look better makes me unhappy.

His response was that, desire at least in the latter case, can be a drive to improvement. Seeing someone else’s success in the gym—though it might also be in a dozen other ways: the publication of their book, a new job, an award—and the desire that follows from it can serve as a goad to effort. That effort itself can lead to greater fitness and the attainment of what one had desired. Surely, in that, there is nothing to cause suffering.

He was right, in a way. There is nothing wrong in ambition or desire insofar as it can lead us to the better if not the good. Epictetus says somewhere in the Enchiridion that we ought to strive but we ought to be realistic about what that striving will cost us and how likely it is that we might fail (and how we will feel if and when we do).

There remains another problem, I said, and that’s impermanence. 

Now, I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently because I injured a shoulder almost three months ago and, though I think it’s finally on the mend after a late trip to the doctor, it has caused me no end of problems physically. And, because the gym plays the role of therapist for me—it is the one hour of the day when I feel totally in control and where I feel like I achieve something—it has caused me quite a bit of emotional distress. It’s not good to be the not-funny kind of obsessive-compulsive.

Whatever your desire leads you to achieve won’t last. The better body will fade with age. The book will be forgotten or surpassed. The next promotion might not come. You will die.

What’s the answer? To enjoy what you have while you have it and even when you’re striving, I suppose, but not to be so attached that you will suffer when it’s gone, or in the case of love to accept the future suffering as part of the enjoyment now. Is that possible? Dunno.

Anyhow, the student had been concerned that the outlook was too pessimistic. I probably took it further.

Tomorrow, for what it’s worth, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, and Ecclesiastes are on tap. Always uplifting!