commencement speech by David Foster Wallace

sometimes it all seems so lonely and futile, like no one else gives a flip and who are you to try to care about anything, and sometimes you find something that makes everything seem ok, that reaches you across everything, that makes you feel like you aren't crazy, and tonite, this commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College that I found on my boy Joey B's blog is just that thing for me.

classicism: idealized ideals

My awesome friend at work found this article about an archaeologist restoring Grecian ruins to their original color, and makes a strong argument that the ancients would have seen bare marble as undesirable. It's funny, because we have embraced these things in their raw simplicity, accepted their luminous marble uniformity as a tenet of their character and idolized them accordingly. We value the elegance and restraint, the appreciation of the material's inherent qualities, the respectful honesty and wisdom of it. I suspect it played a role in our modern love of materials' innate qualities from frank Lloyd Wright's bare bricks to Mies van der Roe's exposed I-beams and polished concrete to Aalto's /Danish Modern wood. It's a fundamental part of our classical heritage, even though it is as imaginary as the 18th century belief in the Egyptian heritage of the British.

It's almost like we don't idealize just the ancient Greeks, forgetting their gaudy and foolish humanity, we idealize their ideals. We cherish an idealized history; as archaeologists flesh out more and more truths about their lives and times they paint the source of our ideals with humanity- and divorce them from the value that we find in them. These painted reproductions are unlikely to attract the reverence of their ghostly originals, splashed with the too-familiar indulgences of humanity, they are not nearly as compelling as their mute remnants. The humanity of it is amply available in ourselves; it's the idealized version of these ideals we need, the restrained, the purified; something other than, better than ourselves, truer even in their deceit as if time has washed away the foolishness of our predecessors and preserved for us only the best hidden within them.

all that 'empire' stuff form last year

The Boston Athenaeum has archived lecture series online and I noticed the author of a book I had seen a while ago, Cullen Murphy on his book Are We Rome?. What a better way to get the thrust of the book without having to wait until I wade through the seven other books I'm currently trying to read?

The author had a lot to say and a fascinating body of knowledge to draw from, and convinced me that the book is worth reading if just for that - a lot of interesting things about Roman cultural identity and the histories they looked back on to form it, details of society that we don't see, etc.

Comparing of the United States and Rome he highlighted a lot of parallels and gave meaningful background to them. Then he started down the road of "we are Rome and will fall like her because the government is too weak" and how we can learn from Rome how to make sure the government can 'work in concert' when it needs to, has enough power, ie is centralized, well-funded, etc... never addressing the obvious contradiction between demanding exhaustive governmental authority and criticizing an apathetic citizenry, and never addressing the danger of corruption in our own government despite mentioning some ripe parallels in the Roman system.

For 30 some years, the current generation has been beating this same drum, concurrently demanding ever-expanding governmental authority and complaining of abusive leadership, never admitting that the two go hand-in-hand. It seems that those that are running our world would sooner hand society over wholesale to bureaucrats, politicians, and the would-be emperors they harbor than concede that their may be some tiny flaw in their government-panacea ideology. If we are talking about emperors, this sounds like new clothes to me.

I was also surprised that he didn't explore the possibility that Rome began to fall as soon as the Republic was compromised, that the gains of the Empire were like the flight of a rocket whose engine has given out - the crash destroys it, but is not the true cause of the destruction. He didn't broach the subject of an American parallel to this might be the greatest danger of all; that the abdication of authority and responsibility to a centralized power, be it emperor or bureaucracy, creates a system ripe for the picking by any megalomaniac. That may be the true lesson from the fall of Rome; maybe we can avoid that fate.

preemption, one better: pop music's inanity and world peace

This post is not about Leona Lewis. It's really about the legions of young people we deploy across the globe, armed with beauty, talent, and inane love songs, and their crucial role in cultural mediation.

It also suggests the opposite: that every self-absorbed, hedonistic, nihilistic, drug addicted angst-monger we elect to that same role does incalculable damage to our nation and global peace.

In an attempt to stay remotely in touch with national culture, I was flipping through the 'top artist' pages on myspace and I ran across this girl that looked pretty seriously produced & promoted that I had never seen before. She looks and sounds completely American - "looks" in that she's green eyed, toffee skinned & dark blondish, "sounds" as in she's got a gorgeous voice singing the usual piano/synthesizer pop love song type stuff.

Turns out she's British, and it seems the British music industry lately is more integrated with our own, and at least on this level, British culture is largely indistinguishable from ours, basically it's the same culture.

Pop musicians represent the values of our nation's (-s'?) future decision makers; they idealize what we respect and admire. Leona Lewis's face, seemingly derived from almost every race on the planet, is a declaration by the teen hearts of Brittan that they are a modern nation, open and enlightened. Her messages are innocuous but largely constructive, moral. Her celebrity and sophistication broadcasts that British culture is the vehicle for achieving this, this girl that's got it all - beautiful, rich, good. The inanity of her music is actually an asset; only the strictest nationalistic cultures will be able to keep her out. Young girls in every culture with families rich enough for internet access will identify with her; she is one of our strongest ambassadors.

The reverse is true: pop music reinforces negative stereotypes too, fosters anger, justifies anti-westernism from both sides. It would be interesting to track US world popularity against pop-culture ideology: I wouldn't be surprised to see anti-Americanism rise globally with musicians' pseudo-intellectualism starting in the 60s and 70s. While pop lays the foundation for cultural cooperation and unity, gangsta rap, punk, and all the bastardizations of rock & roll lay the foundations for violence, anger, confusion, and ultimately war.

As we become more and more in the spotlight globally, we need to be conscious of these possible effects of our decisions, and we collectively must support constructive ideologies.

thoughts on the corporate problem: revoking coprorate charters

"It has no body to kick and no soul to damn."^[citation]

Lord Edward Thurlow, re: the corporation

Thinking back to my intro business classes, I remember learning that corporations operate under some kind of license from the people; the privileges of incorporation granted on the condition that the corporation act vaguely in the public interest (there are many permutations of corporations but I am referring to the common, public, Mircosoft/Enron type). How can that be quantified? The answer was to maximize shareholder value, which means doing anything that is legal (or, implicitly, will not incur legal costs greater than the revenue it generates) to deliver value to shareholders. It seems ideal, the corporation has a clear-cut mandate and the free shareholders make decisions on how to regulate the company through the democratic process and on how to morally distribute the proceeds of corporate activity.

We all know it doesn't work as well as it should. We have also been convinced that corporations can do whatever they want, and we can't stop them any more than we can issue commands to our neighbors.

But corporations are not our neighbors, they are not "natural persons". They come into being through a charter representing our collective blessing. Should we not be able to revoke that charter at our will?

The cost of corporate dissolution, and possibly the risk of assigning personal liability to the governing board & executives of corporations, would be enough to enable the inherent morality of these "natural persons" to overwhelm the psychopathy of the corporate entity. The stain of being kicked out of even one state would be enough; this could be a 'big stick' for the soft-spoken people of America, and may even be adopted internationally.

The format would be chosen by each state with the goal being a pure referendum, each vote counting.

this is a simplification of our system, a step toward a more raw democracy, where everyone's thoughts are counted, where injustice can't hide in pretensions of subtlety, and would serve to educate the public on corporate structure and behavior.

This would also empower states and highlight the ability of a federal system to act as a political incubator.

anyway I could probably bloviate on this issue for pages, but this is a blog so I'll stop now...

Beantown

on the t home today I was reading Bostons newest free paper, Boston Now, and after reading the two-t-stop article on Castro's resignation I found this little reflection on our city. Pinned to a quote from a PR person at BC, the article reflected on our position as an academic haven. This was charming and heartwarming reminder or why I like this place, and it got me thinking - in the emerging world order where we are increasingly the exporters of ideas and less and less of products , academic communities like ours could be very valuable things. The article made some surprising suggestions - specifically about beantown being the hub of academia, going as far as suggesting that there is no other city in the world that can offer the concentration and diversity that Boston can. It was shocking not to be able to name a city that can compete.

Could it be possible that the long tides are turning, that we still can become the city on the hill? Will our dowdy stoicism and fussy morality pay in the new century? Maybe. Of course, in a world where creativity wields authority, it is fluid and decentralized and cannot have a true "capitol" (compromised dominance - what else would Bostonians accept?), but certainly we would be a bright star in the new constellation, a fast-firing neuron in the network. Maybe the things we have cherished in our nerdy backwater will turn out to be the stuff of the new economy, and the specialized, corporatized, industrialized hedonism of the 20th century will recede, the filthy money that has washed over America since the first tobacco plantation will relent, and at least allow the other America, the wholesome heart that has kept us together, to be seen again?

As the red line rumbled out of it's tunnel and the sparkling skyline appeared before me, the slow-icing Charles running beneath my feet, I couldn't help feeling good about life, for the first time in a long while.

i helped!

two years ago, I submitted a bunch of photos to Great Buildings Online, a site I used all the time for research in college. They finally put them up! They seem to have gotten some much better features, like a google search embedded. i still feel cool.