Disturbing Mathematics – Urban Foraging

This image shows the packaged food I was able to forage in less than one hour in the garbage during RISD move-out this past month. Additionally, I found a bushel of apples, two pounds of carrots, four pounds of onions, and two complete cloves of garlic. All of the food was fresh, and much of it was organic, though the packaged food seen here is largely processed.

The packaged food (minus the Korean groceries, which had no english nutritional data) amounted to a calorie count of 10,275 calories, enough for a little over five days, assuming one lives by the 2000 calorie diet the FDA uses as its baseline. And that isn’t even counting the fresh fruits and veggies.

Think about it. Almost a week’s worth of food in less than half an hour. And if I had a car or even a bicycle, I could have doubled or tripled my take.

This is nothing against RISD – they did, after all, have a food drive where students could leave unopened, imperishable food. This is also not meant to be a burn against the RISD students: many of them don’t want to lug cans of tuna on cross-country or international flights, and many of them were in a hurry to get home. The presence of so much food in the trash says much more about our culture of food generally.

Other people have said it before, and said it more elegantly, but we in the US have a seriously warped attitude about what we eat and how we eat. My generation gets a lot of flak in the press for ‘obsessing’ over food: I have read articles analyzing this as everything from snobbery to a Freudian oral fixation on a massive scale. But looking through the garbage and seeing beautiful Fuji apples from East Side Market gave me a new perspective.

We in the US are on the cusp of remembering how wonderful it is to eat, to be fed. We can see this in everything from the growth of gourmet culture (brilliantly satirized in the South Park episode “Creme Fraiche“) to the backlash against GMOs and processed foods (for example, this amazing rap video). The ‘food is fuel’ mentality is slowly falling away, but old habits about food – such as throwing out fresh but ‘unattractive’ produce – are still deeply entrenched.

Groups like Food Not Bombs hack the food culture from a different angle. They raid the dumpsters of supermarkets, bakeries, and groceries, cook it up, and serve hot meals to passers-by on the street, often giving away the remainder of the groceries. We have been trained to think that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but our wasteful practices ensure that for the enterprising few, there will always be a free lunch.

I don’t know what the solution to our chronic wastefulness will be, but in a country like the US where half of the calories we produce are thrown away, there is a definite gap between the lofty goals of the foodie revolution and the day-to-day practices of everyone from farmers to distributors to retailers and consumers.

You might ask me what someone like me – employed, educated, white, male, and all the rest of it – is doing digging around in the garbage for food. My parents didn’t raise me to do it, and it sure isn’t some kind of journalistic stunt. It is something I do to save a bit of money, have a bit of an adventure, and remind myself of the absurdity of our economy and our culture.

Will I stop? Depends. Will we stop throwing away perfectly good food?

Virtues versus Values

I am an absolute geek about all things ancient, so when a dear friend linked me to this list of ancient Roman virtues, I was elated! I looked it over, and it made a lot of sense to me. The list is divided into two sections – personal virtues, which the people strive to achieve personally, and public virtues, which are the broad goals of society.

Looking at the list as I would a mirror, I saw myself proficient in some virtues- exemplo gratias: Comitas, Humanitas, et Frugalitas; while in others I feel somewhat lacking: Firmitas, Severitas, et Industria. I felt an emotional cocktail of pride, dissatisfaction, and hope, because this list gives me a veritable smorgasbord of ways to be good and the freedom to decide for myself which ones I would … value.

Now there is a word that has gained weight in the last few years. I have never lived in an era where that word has not hung over every social issue of any importance like the sword of Damocles, the not-so-silent majority’s sucker punch. Some of the moralists who wield the idea of “Values” hearken back to Ancient Rome, and some think of the empire and its eponymous capitol as an archetype of perversion and decadence, but what both parties fail to see is this:

The virtues as presented here are not weighted. No one virtue is inherently better than any other. Values, one might say, are rubrics that give weight to certain virtues, let’s say Pietas (piety) and Salubritas (health and cleanliness), while placing less emphasis on Severitas (seriousness). Values tell us which virtues to pursue.

Let’s pretend for a moment that instead of a limited list of the virtues of ancient Rome, but all the virtues that humanity has ever and will ever consider virtues. Leaving aside the questions of what makes a virtue virtuous, we would have the stuff that every culture is made of. Using a culture’s values as a recipe, we would select ingredients from the cultural pantry in the correct proportions and arrive at that culture’s model of goodness. Here is my original Facebook post on the subject:

“Let’s say the list of human virtues is like a list of ingredients. Each society implements them differently, in different proportions, and may exclude some entirely, and thus serving up many dishes to a hungry humanity. One pantry, many meals…”

Whatever you value, remember that everyone aspires to some kind of virtue. Every counterculture or subculture is a response to some kind of perceived deficiency in the prevailing society, and an attempt to serve up a new cultural dish that corrects those imbalances. You can find virtue in anyone …even your local coffee house hipsters.

 

Likewise, cultures that seem foreign to you may value one trait over another, but the traits themselves are still valuable. So even if their aesthetics weird you out, even if you feel like their values are completely backwards, whoever you are and whomever they are, look for their virtues. If you really can’t find any virtues, you’re not looking hard enough.

 

Goat Song

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims

This ceaseless mantra, the charitable nod to the bereaved, is a shield behind which the pundits cower.

A time that should shake people out of business-as-usual, a trauma felt nationally and internationally, is being used as an excuse not merely to hate but to prop up business-as-usual, which appropriates all human emotion as raw material.

Imagine a factory that sucks in love and spins it into trinkets, trade goods to fascinate the natives while around them the land is poisoned. Imagine a firm that turns ignorance into guns, and fear into ammunition, and fights tooth and nail to get their products into as many hands as possible, hands dirty and clean alike. Imagine a company that plays every string of the human heart, bending the notes as it pleases, and strums out songs of praise for pre-selected candidates, pre-digested news, and pre-screened ideas.

I see all this and I want to run into the forest.

I saw Copley Square the other day, still cordoned off. Traffic was diverted around it, cars and pedestrians, and I realized then that there are no more goat songs. No more tragedies. We are told to think about them as tragedies, we say the word, but it has hardly any meaning anymore because for most of us, we feel the hurt of it, but we don’t set it loose. We allow the tragedies to change our lives, but only from the top down. We let the politicians and the pundits and the business interests who fund both decide what the outcome will be and go on living in as much the same way as we can. We cling to our sense of self, and shore it up with purchases, investments, small talk. We keep calm and we carry on. 

If they could outlaw philosophy, they would. Any philosopher worth their sodium chloride can see the premium placed on control, on neurotypical thoughts and behavior patterns, on pluralistic conformity and the distrust of fringe ideas and those who make or hold them.

If you can, turn off the television and step away from the computer. Find a corner of Nature- if you can – and think about what happened in Boston as the person you are when nobody is looking. Ask the dangerous questions, the sensible questions, the questions you haven’t heard. Break the half-conscious taboos of Mother Culture in the palace of your mind. Or simply sit and let the wave fully break over you. Get caught up in the emotional undertow and allow yourself to fully empathize with all the victims of this cruelty, and all the cruelty you have ever seen or heard of. Either – or both- will be a first step.

To own our thoughts, our feelings, and to begin to change ourselves and the world, there is nothing like a tragedy fully realized. You don’t need a camera or a microphone, a blog, a stage, or a mask. You do not need a degree or a necktie or high heels or a black beret. You do not need a knife, a chalice, a coin, or a staff. All you need is time, space, focus, and your own thoughts and feelings.

All of our actions in the company of others can be thought of as a performance. Every actor needs some time in the wings to prepare. Give yourself that time and use it. Become who you are not because I tell you to but because the tragedies around us call for authentic actors, not hams and hacks phoning in their performances or reading cue cards. The victims sing out from hospital beds and gurneys and graves in a goat song, and we all have a place in that choir.

And I will sing along from a battered heart.

Divide and Conquer

While we bicker back and forth about social issues like queer rights, business as usual goes on unhindered.

The so-called Monsanto Protection Act, really a clause hidden inside a larger bill, got signed, and for the first time, the Tea Party GOP has taken a stand against the infamous agribusiness giant. Granted, their objections to crony capitalism differ from my objections to their products, such as the herbicide Roundup and the GMO crops like corn and soybeans made to resist the poison, but the facts surrounding these have had very little publicity, and resistance to Monsanto and their ilk has been easily marginalized. Perhaps now that the public spotlight has found them, the time is ripe to spread a little wisdom.

The Monsanto Protection Act is an interesting document because it is almost as if the brains behind it know that Monsanto’s is promoting products and practices harmful to all of lifekind. They acknowledge the need to cover their asses, so they make a bald-faced grab at legal immunity. Meanwhile, by distracting us from the people, like Monsanto (remember, “Corporations are people, my friend!”), who are making millions from poisoning the land, popular culture stands as a tacit collaborator. It may not be anything sinister or premeditated, but it’s certainly easier for us to watch Honey Boo Boo than to fight to protect the planet that we take for granted, and that is very convenient for those who pull the strings.

But what about the culture war? What about equal rights? Are we supposed to wait until the trees stop falling and the oceans are clean to gain equality?

Human chauvinism is an ugly thing. When we put ourselves above the natural systems that gave rise to us and give rise to all lifekind, we do the rest of the life forms on the planet a grave injustice. At the same time, the chauvinism born of religious intolerance, blind traditionalism, and sheer slug-brained apathy is also an ugly thing. We, the free thinkers, the gender anarchists, we the creative and transformative, we the inventors of new traditions, we the people who decide for ourselves what values are valuable, we must win the culture war. That is clear to me. But what is also clear is that we are going to also need to fight for a habitable planet for all lifekind to share. Queer rights, the fight against rape culture and State-sanctioned violence as well as many other social battles must not wait, because without an equitable society, even the cleanest, greenest planet imaginable will be Hell to those under the thumb of the powerful. Which brings me back to Monsanto.

When I first saw this documentary, my blood boiled. I told everyone with an ounce of environmental sentiment I knew, but to no avail. The World According to Monsanto shows a fight that has mostly been confined to the Global South, a fight that straddles the divide between social and environmental issues. The starving farmer and the poisoned earth both stand to gain from toppling Monsanto, or at the very least curbing its rampage and setting it to a better task.

As individual activists, we must decide what fights get priority in our own lives. Doing so is an exercise in philosophy-that-walks. But just as the biosphere is a closed system, society is an interdependent web. Environmental and social justice both point to an equitable human society bound up with a thriving biosphere. There are many threads in the tapestry, and they are all connected. Every battle won frees up people to fight the next one. Every battle lost causes some few to lose interest or faith in the struggle. If we can get people to widen their focus a tiny bit, even people who are one-issue activists may be made to see the bigger picture.

Let’s look actively for the connections between issues rather than their differences. Every fight that takes us closer to equality and ecological health is worth fighting, and more often than you might think, the two fronts are in fact one and the same.

Will Polyamory Save our Asses?

I remember my first sex scandal. I was in the third grade when Bill Clinton’s indiscretions with Monica Lewinski were brought to light, and the usual schoolyard rumors were running riot. It didn’t mean all that much to me, being so young. All I knew was that the President was a Democrat, which means we (Mom, Dad, and the rest of our family) were behind him 100%. As for the rumors, I had very little idea what they meant when they said the President ‘did it’ with this Monica Lewinski character. I do, however, remember feeling that whatever he did, the news and the schoolkids alike were blowing it all way out of proportion. He’s the President, I thought. He’s a good guy…. right?

Nowadays, every time another sex scandal breaks in the news, all I can think is “Oy vey, not this again!” It is satisfactory when a politician who ran on ‘family values’ and ‘fiscal responsibility’ gets caught flying to Argentina on taxpayer money to shag his mistress, or when an anti-gay crusader gets caught giving a very personal sermon to a rentboy, but when I’m thinking clearly, I realize that all this brouhaha does none of us any good. If anything, it reveals our deep discomfort with sex generally, and socially unsanctioned sex in particular. Our taboos seem sensible because we are told by people we trust that they are ‘right,’ when really, they are as arbitrary as the taboos of any other culture.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if polyamory was more widely accepted. The idea of consensual non-monogamy has a fair share of followers, especially among my generation, but the idea is far from mainstream, and acceptance of this way of loving may be a bridge too far in a land where committed, monogamous queer couples face legalized bigotry – though the Supreme Court’s ruling is pending.

Still, I cannot help but fantasize about a more permissive norm – where polyamory and monogamy share the social space gracefully, neither approach claiming more validity than the other, and neither having a legal upper hand over the other. In this fantasy of mine, the inane babble about the sexual dalliances of polyamorous politicos would be confined to hard-line Christian talk radio and their ilk, leaving the mainstream airwaves free for actual debate and inquiry.

Acceptance of polyamory is a grand goal, though perhaps a far-off one. It is tempting, as a person for whom polyamory works pretty well, to call it a panacea, a cure-all that will do away with any social ills it encounters. Certainly when I first saw the light, I made statements to that effect, talking about how many romance stories could be resolved with polyamory (the Phantom of the Opera, for example, or *cringe* Twilight). In the real world, polyamorous relationships have a lot to recommend them: increased variety in sex and romance, developing better communication skills between partners, a larger social network for finding jobs, raising children, etc. But polyamory, like any intimate human connection, is hard work, and though it may well be a net good for society, it is not for everyone, and it will not single-handedly solve our problems.

Any time someone tells you that any one thing – a religion, a scientific breakthrough, a social or political movement, or a person – will, on its own, get us out of our manifold messes, listen but do not be swayed. There are lots of worthwhile causes, viewpoints, revelations, and discoveries out there, and every person you meet has something wonderful to share with you if the circumstances are right. But the boondoggles of modern times require action on way more than one front. Polyamory will not keep the old growth forests from being cut, but blocking logging roads will not make a more sexually permissive society, and neither of these addresses the obscene levels of hunger in the Global South or the injustice to workers by multinational corporations… The list could go on and on.

In the face of a culture that cannot live with itself, a government that cannot govern itself, and a civilization that cannot sustain itself, it may seem quixotic to go on trying to change things. But just because polyamory won’t automatically save our asses doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring, promoting, critiquing, evaluating, and experimenting with. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but any deviation from the norm (which includes anything aimed at social change) is gonna be hard.

Polyamory may not save our asses on its own, but it may well be an ingredient in the cultural stew that could, if we get cooking now, save the planet and us with it. I wonder, what other ingredients are needed? I have some ideas, but I’d much rather hear from you.

On Geekery part 1.5 – Pride and Privilege

Who the HELL do I think I am anyway? 

Where do I get off defining geekiness, and what makes me think I can get away with it?

Definitions are tyrannical. The ability to craft definitions is a great power and (say it with me, Spidey fans!) with great power comes great responsibility. So why should I, anarchistic deconstruction-fanatic that I am, build such an ontological border fence?

Part of it came as a reaction to the quotes that formed the first part of my last post. Some of it was intellectual hubris, but what really made me feel able to do it and get away with it was the fact that I have a very privileged existence. Being white and male in a culture where whiteness and maleness are both still unfairly coupled with better access to just about everything does tend to foster a sense of entitlement. In the geek world, I am the norm. Nobody questions my belonging because of my gender or race. It might turn out that I’ve never seen Wrath of Khan, never played Magic: The Gathering, or never got into the Marvel universe until seeing Iron Man on the silver screen (all true, by the way), but I’m not going to be lambasted and vilified because of that, let alone linked to a supposed conspiracy to destroy geek-kind. That is what geeky male privilege looks like, and the same can be said of my last post on the subject. The freedom to define oneself is utterly basic, but if it is not extended to everyone, then things get ugly fast.

The ‘fake geek girl’ moral panic has been covered by much better writers than myself, most recently by my dear friend over at Bound and Gagged Books, but I would like to take a stab at why geek culture, a refuge for the kids who got mercilessly teased, physically bullied, and socially shunned in school, should want to mimic those same senseless and hurtful mammalian in-group/out-group games.

The charge against the so-called ‘fake geek girls’ is that they work out provocative costumes for conventions, cosplaying characters about whom they know and care little or nothing, for the sole purpose of attracting (straight) geek men who they can then sadistically spurn. Leaving aside the astronomically thin likelihood of this being the case, let’s unpack this and see what we can learn.

The worldview we see here is paranoid. ‘Normal’ women, and by extent, the ‘normal’ world are constantly seeking entrance into the geekosphere. There are enemies at the gates, and in the case of the ‘fake geek girls,’ they are getting inside. And what is their mission? To demean (straight) geeky men – to make them think they have a chance and then reject them. In this reality-tunnel, anyone who is not a true geek is a potential bully, and their only defense is to root out the Fifth Column and shore up the stockade. This is a scary reality, a reality of the Alamo, of the Sack of Rome, a 24-7 loop of the battle for Helm’s Deep. Certain conservative politicians may disagree, but it is hard to get anything constructive done when you feel you are constantly under an existential threat from an invasive, encroaching Other.

The practice of vetting has been around for ages. People who wish to meet in secret, whether to discuss banned subjects, express forbidden desires, or conduct illicit business of any kind always develop some kind of protocol to make sure that newcomers are truly part of the in-group. Obviously, there are elements in the geek community who feel that we should adopt the practice ourselves. The difference between us and the secret societies, organized crime syndicates and various other communities who vet their newcomers is this – if the geek community is infiltrated… nothing happens. We are not a secret society, a drug cartel, nor a band of freedom fighters: if they are compromised, there will be consequences. The geek world is not illegal or clandestine, yet some of us feel that we ought to operate as though we are. Yet even once we are in the geekosphere, our tests are not over, especially for the women. Hop over to Bound and Gagged to read about self-policing in geeky and feminist circles.

I did not write my initial post in this series meaning to shut anyone out, but that is what definitions do. In the end, my definition is no more than a thought shouted into the yawning gulfs of the Internet, but sailing on my own pride and privilege, I dared to think that someone might take me seriously. Am I ultimately any better than the people who want to oust ‘fake geek girls’ from our conventions and forums?

The only solution I can see is this: fling wide the gates. Dare the world and its people to be as awesome as your geeky friends. Let the title of ‘geek’ go to anyone who wants it. Our appreciation for comics or Star Trek or Doctor Who are not country club memberships: they are little blots of happiness in an often dreary world. Why not share them freely? They will make you no less happy if fifty or fifty thousand others share your enjoyment of and engagement with them. There are bullies out there, to be sure, but the bullies within us all need to be conquered first.

The Work of a Man

Why changing times don’t scare me

I recently found a truly awful blog, written by a truly awful person. It is the sort of blog whose author feels that he is among the last ‘real men’ on the planet, that he must help his fellow penis-bearers stand up to the feminist hoarde by ‘living like a Spartan’ and refusing their dogma at every turn. I will not give a link at this time because this blog’s author believes that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and let’s face it, dear readers, I’m a much better blogger than this guy.

Many of my readers will be familiar with the idea of the slippery slope of manliness. We see it all the time in media, the idea being that modern men have ‘lost their way,’ that they are unable to grasp ‘true manliness’ any longer. Couched in a modern context, this means that advertisers and others with a stake in a certain cultural narrative are keen to cash in on male anxieties about their gender identity. We see it all the time on commercials- men threatening to take away another’s “man points” or “man card” if said man buys the ‘wrong’ product (meaning, of course, any product other than the one being advertised). We are told that our gender is something that we can buy, and anxiety about being ‘man enough’ means big money for those in the business of selling us our masculinity via beer, razors, etc. Our sisters have encountered this as well with different products and different aesthetics but with the selfsame MO: Gender insecurity means a bigger market for manufactured femininity, as Cliff over at The Pervocracy so eloquently and so often points out.

The blogger I mentioned before (the first blogger, not Cliff. Cliff is awesome) is the same as any of these Madison Avenue shills, just with more blatant misogyny and an outright claim to hold the key to True Manliness, rather than an implied claim. He gets bonus affirmation for his Omega Man complex whenever he gets called out by other bloggers who disagree with him, calling them man-hating bitches, or self-hating sissies respectively. His reality-tunnel is untouchable because he knows he is right.

I have been thinking long and angrily about this conundrum, and one thing that lit the shadowy recesses of this thorny thicket was a statement by the ancient Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who penned his master work, The Meditations, a solid treatise on Stoicism, while dying of dysentery on a far-flung battlefield, trying to win a war that he hadn’t started. I can say without exaggeration that if I were in that situation, I would have nowhere near the grace and nobility of spirit that Emperor Marcus Aurelius showed. The aforesaid blogger would tell me that this is simply because I’m not “living like a Spartan,” that I have been sissified by my comfortable modern life and my feminist aspirations. The Emperor in question was doubtless more disciplined than I am (that is not hard to do), but he certainly had more on his mind on a given day than ‘kicking ass’ and ‘winning.’

In the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius is very clear about what makes a man good, what will help a man to be the best he can and do what needs doing while retaining a cosmic perspective and reverence for the Logos that informs the natural world. He takes these questions seriously, and the code of conduct that he outlines is one of restraint, ethics as a practice, and analysis. However, the kicker is that these Meditations are his thoughts, which he wrote for himself. He understood that his own philosophy, his own ethical, practical, and spiritual guidelines for how to live were and are specific to him. That they are applicable to many people and the fact that history, in large part, has considered them ‘good’ are secondary to this first inescapable fact. The real example that the Emperor sets, therefore, is not so much the directives in the Meditations themselves, though these are indispensable reading for anyone who wants a sense of the Stoic perspective, but his method of gaining perspective on his own life and his analysis of his life and his way of living.

Our blogger might imagine himself an example of manhood as impressive as Marcus Aurelius, but even if he were, that would not make his philosophy right for everyone, or indeed anyone other than himself. His experiences, the ones that shaped his practices and views, are specific to him, and just like the rest of us, his sample size regarding men, women, and the world at large is statistically puny, though he would tell you that he has seen enough of the world to know what’s what. He might have a completely accurate scale model of reality in his head, but the odds against this are astronomical. Ideas are not interchangeable parts: analyses and BS (belief systems) that work well for one of us may fail utterly in the experience of others, or they may work in some situations and fall utterly apart in others. Our blogger’s “Spartan” lifestyle might make you a hero in your local gym, but it might also get you arrested for sexual assault.*

It is with this in mind that I advise all my readers- never take anyone else’s analysis or BS as Gospel, whether they are our blogger, Marcus Aurelius, writers of actual Gospels, or, I dunno, me. The fact is, we’re all fallible, and subject to the biases of our culture – no doubt the makeup- and tights-wearing fops of Europe thought of their brusque, pioneering sons as ruffians who did not appreciate the refinements of the ‘real manhood’ of that time and culture. The same could be said of the Greek attitude towards the Romans, but don’t take it from me – read about it for yourself!

If you don’t make your own rules about your gender, your sexuality, and your life generally, then you will fall under someone else’s narrative, which may have disastrous consequences for your mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. That said, if you can find a way to get out of your cultural conditioning (for more on this, see Patanjali, Lao Tze, Gotama Buddha, St. Theresa, Issac Luria, Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, Terrence McKenna et al.), do not suppose for a moment that The Way you find is somehow universal. Even if our blogger had found a way to break open his head in such a way, he would have found a Way specific to him, but his hubris will not let him do this. To him, he has found THE WAY, deeply disturbing to rational beings though it is, and we must imagine him happy, leading his little clan of bodybuilding misogynists to rail against the feminist foreshadowing of the archaic revival that is happily underway all around us.

One bit of advice from the Emperor before we part, dear ones, and one bit of commentary from the Bandaloop Mainframe. 

“If, upon waking, you find that you are sluggish, and reluctant to leave your bed, simply remember, ‘I am rising to do the work of a man.’”

And it is up to you to determine what that work is, how much or how little to do, and what you mean by a man. If any part of this disappoints you, it’s your fault, and you have the power to fix it upon rising the next day. 

*That’s not to say that people ought to listen to or enact any of this blogger’s ravings, including the blogger himself. We all have the capacity not only to input faulty data about the world into our brains, but to interpret the data inappropriately and to invent or imagine. Put bluntly, this person could be a psychopath. Then again, so could I. But I’m not the one telling people to act in ways that set back the rights of half the population by approximately a century, so I rather doubt that I’m the psycho here.

I Know Why You Watch Honey Boo Boo…

Image courtesy of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For a long while, I have been wondering what gives series such as The Real Housewives, Toddlers and Tiaras, and most recently Here Comes Honey Boo Boo their mass appeal. It’s nothing new, of course – reality TV has been with us since the early aughts, but these days, we are seeing a trend toward a sub-genre I think of as Freak TV. Whereas standard reality television shows a contest (think Cupcake Wars, Iron Chef, or Survivor), a process (like most of HGTV), or a somewhat contrived social experiment (Big Brother or Wife Swap), Freak TV just shows us people who live somehow outside the norm, focusing on the drama that springs from their spotlit strangeness. Taken together, Freak TV shows are not unlike a sideshow from an old time carnival. But whether in person or on the small screen, what purpose does the freak on the pedestal serve, and what do well-educated, well-intentioned, and otherwise thoughtful people get out of it?

Before you tell me how condescending I am, you should know that I have tried to give these shows a fair hearing. In the name of spending time with the family, I have tried to watch many hits from this subgenre, but something makes them stick in my craw. The prospect of investing time and emotion in the foibles of rich socialites, the misadventures of a so-called psychic, or the wacky antics of pageant queens who haven’t reached middle school all strike me as vain, foolish, and a complete waste of time. And for whatever reason, I can never seem to keep it to myself. I either end up riffing on the show in the style of MST3K (before being ejected from the room), or excusing myself with a stage whisper about how stupid the whole thing is. I know it’s immature of me, but the hate these shows conjure up in me comes from somewhere deep and primal.

So, what pisses me off about Freak TV? A day ago, I would have told you that it is the subject matter of each particular show, and I still find that their premises range from unappealing to torturous. However, today I have found a reason to dislike the sub-genre as a whole, a realization that sprang from a series of conversations with fans and fellow cultural critics.

Freak TV, I reasoned, is popular not because our society is seeking to reward unconventional behavior but because we are holding it up to be ridiculed. Sure, Honey Boo Boo’s caretakers are laughing all the way to the bank, but they have become a laughingstock for everyone in the US with basic cable. Like the heads of traitors displayed on pikes over a medieval city’s gates, the fame of the Freak TV stars serves as a visceral warning to the Silent Majority while simultaneously reaffirming their life choices. To people who choose to conform to middle-class expectations and values, these TV tabloids serve as a manual in reverse, showing them exactly how not to live, barbed with the threat that if they stray too far from the fold, they themselves might be the next ones singled out and held up for ridicule. People feel an ego boost when they laugh at the other, they feel empowered as part of an in-group that can collectively pillory those who are too rich, too poor, too obsessed, too ethnic, or otherwise unfit for entry. In short, Freak TV reminds the masses that they are normal, and this may go some way toward explaining its success. This also helps to explain my own hatred of the genre, because as someone who prides himself on being a wierdo, the veiled threat of becoming a despised celebrity looms larger over my head. However, in my vanity, I see my transgressions against normality as far more valuable than those currently onstage at the freak show. I both fear the Freak TV spotlight and jealously covet it.

Now, I would call this behavior more or less harmless except I have to wonder – quo bono? Who benefits from continued conformity? Who wins in a climate of engineered normalcy? And just as importantly, though rarely asked, who are the victims of such a climate? Who is being set up to lose? What would a media landscape that celebrated rather than stigmatized unconventionality look like? I am not going to spoon-feed anyone an answer, but these questions are by no means rhetorical – that’s what comment sections are for, my dearie-os. Have fun!

Beyond the Barricade and What I Found There

Check out this video of the cast and crew setting up Less Miserable at The Steel Yard! – J.

Sometimes we work for ages to achieve our vision, slogging over untrodden terrain, encountering fearsome obstacles, overcoming them, and transforming ourselves in the process.

Other times our vision springs forth fully formed out of nowhere. Or, in this case, out of Vermont.

I saw Less Miserable on July 2nd at the Steel Yard in Providence, Rhode Island. A repurposed industrial space, the Steel Yard is about as far from the plush (or as one fellow audience member put it, ‘fluffy’) theatres that usually host large-scale musicals. My father and I watched the bold reinterpretation of Schöenberg’s opus sitting on large stretches of upholstery fabric set between the elegant, papier-mache proscenium and the several rows of actual seating behind us. The waxing moon shone down through the small-paned industrial windows on a production that wore its DIY origins proudly on its sleeve like Gavroche’s patch. We saw clearly the system of ropes holding up the backdrop, the rollerblade wheels that allow the gigantic turntable stage to spin, and though the production does have a few magical surprises up its voluminous sleeves (no spoilers here, my dearie-os!), the overall aesthetic of the show is frank – you know you’re watching a show. Despite conventional theatrical wisdom, this is not by any means a flaw.

When the red-and-white polka-dotted curtain rose, the band struck up, and the singing began, I was as impressed with the performers as I had been with the set. True, several of the vocalists were somewhat timid, and none of the vocalists were as polished as one might hear in a ‘fluffy’ theatre on Broadway, the music was every bit as moving as one expects during passages like “I dreamed a dream,” “One Day More,” and “On My Own,” and the rousing anthem “Do You Hear the People Sing” has never struck me like it did that night. Their Valjean (a thousand apologies for not knowing actors’ names – I left my program in Providence!) was appropriately haunted, their Javert a paragon of State-sponsored evil. Fantine’s performance tempered tragedy with dignity and did so with one of the best voices in the cast. The Thenardiers were both likably villainous, reminding me to a shocking degree of certain budget-slashing Republicans I might name, and the use of puppets for Gavroche and the young Cosette and Eponine was an inspired touch. The production made unabashed and very interesting use of bender gending, casting several women as male sailors and students, with men and women alike portraying prostitutes during ‘lovely ladies,’ but the choice of a young man to play the grown Eponine made a great impression on me – he sang and acted the part well enough that by the end of the show, casting him to play her seemed entirely natural.

I cannot quite summarize just how refreshing it is to see theatre done this way. I have, of course, been writing about DIY theatre for a good while now, and speculating with varying degrees of accuracy and romance about how an audience would respond to such a piece. As you may well imagine, I was fascinated to see the reaction of the crowd at Less Miserable. I am uncertain whether it was the unconventional location, the young, hip crowd in attendance, the informal seating, the influence of the waxing moon or what, but the performance sparked conversations between strangers in the ticket line, the toilet line, and both between the acts and after the show. Everyone seemed to be connecting with this piece in a deep way; the revolt portrayed in the show was described by one audience member as ‘Occupy Paris – 1832,’ another said that she felt the show was more ‘attainable’ than shows she had seen in ‘fluffy’ venues without being any less impressive. The whole place buzzed with creative energy as people exchanged emails, talked with actors and musicians about their process, and I felt the giddy, effervescent thrill that comes from seeing the Infinite Lotus of the Muses in action. Now that I have thoroughly read the director’s note and browsed the show’s blog, I have some vague idea of what it took to make the performance I saw possible. The ensemble, who assembled from all over the country, lived, ate, and worked together for all of June of this year, learning songs, making props, sets, costumes, and trying to stay dry on their corner of Glover, VT, and their efforts produced a truly aesthetic experience.

Far too often, theatregoers are met with little more than clever affirmations of their own lives, choices, and mythologies. This experience can be described in medical terms as anaesthetic – it puts us to sleep! Any form of media that reinforces the robotic imprints and conditioning that most of us obey is a mental anaesthetic. So, when I say that Less Miserable is an aesthetic experience, I mean to say that it challenged me – it took my entire sensory/emotional/rational matrix and shook up its assumptions about theatre generally, about ‘Les Miz,’ and about theatre as a DIY enterprise. It pushed my definition of beauty into channels that are rarely exercised these days, it stoked my revolutionary zeal, in short, it WOKE ME UP! And I very much hope you will check it out and let it wake you up, too. Sadly, the tour comes to an end very soon, but it is not too late to catch them in Philly!

See LESS MISERABLE:

July 6&7: Philadelphia, PA (The Beaumont Warehouse, 50^th St. & Beaumont Ave.)

For More Information, email FriendsOfTheABCCafe@gmail.com

Carl Sagan on Occupy Wall St.

On May 1, 2012, we will walk away from our work, our schools, our sense of business as usual!
Like the agricultural festivals of old, when Dionysos called people away from fields and flocks, from conquest and commerce to frolic in the streets and dance in ecstasy on the mountains, we, the children of the Occupy movement will come together in a Day Without the 99%, and it is my hope that we will do so not just to celebrate and rage, to party or protest. It is my hope that we can make use of this May Day not just to stop business as usual, but to start to build something new. We are already going in this direction.

When people first proposed this day of action, it was being called a General Strike. This made some folks in the movement very happy, perhaps admirers of the old days of radical union action, those tireless fights that won workers around the globe an impressive string of concessions from the powers that be. For many, those days are not over, and we salute your continued courage.

Then again, for some, the idea of the General Strike has run its course. The tactic is a good one, they say, but only within the context of putting the brakes on an entire country, or – why not be optimistic? – the entire globe to win certain boons or breaks from those in power. While this goal is certainly worthy, say the critics, Occupy is about much more than one industry, one country, one race, class, or creed, and many among us either question or deny that the powers that be have any right to be where they are today, despite every CEO claiming to have started in the mailroom in the true Horatio Alger fashion. If, as many of us believe, those in power do not deserve that power, and if instead it is the people who have the power, then tactics like the General Strike, while good for achieving stated goals, fail to address the more fundamental questions about power that many of us in the Occupy movement want to ask.

When the idea of a General Strike on May 1 was amended in some circles to be “A Day Without the 99%,” the image struck me and inspired me greatly. The images it conjured in my mind were both moving and amusing. In my head, I saw a wide open plain of cubicles standing so empty that one might expect a tumbleweed to blow through; I pictured great empty factories with golden dust motes dancing amidst the massive, silent machinery; I grinned to think of small stores and restaurants across the nation with signs in their windows that read, “Standing With the 99%,” “Which Side Are You On?” or “Closed for Revolution.”

But though our actions will no doubt shock the Fox News fuddy-duddies and their zombie audiences, we run a terrible risk if we frame the day as one of non-action. I know that many of you out there are planning actions for that day, some of them bold and daring, some of them massive and moving, and to all of you, I wish you success and cannot love you enough for your efforts for the movement. Certainly I don’t mean to suggest that any of the calls for action on May 1st that I have seen say we ought to stay at home and twiddle our thumbs. In point of fact, it sounds like it is going to ROCK! And I plan to thoroughly enjoy my May Day, but I also plan to use it well.

In his excellent 1973 book, “The Cosmic Connection,” no less a rationalist than the late great Carl Sagan defended and encouraged the hippie communes of the day. Sagan had the insight to look past the funky clothing, strange music, and relaxed attitudes toward footwear and explained that what these (mostly) young people were doing, and still are doing, is taking American culture and remixing it to fit their own needs, innovating and appropriating as they see fit to create something more or less unique – an alternative to Mother Culture’s demand for efficiency, growth, and uniformity by any means necessary.

Carl Sagan writes:

“Old economic assumptions, old methods of determining political leaders,old methods of distributing resources. . . all of these may once have been valid or useful or at least somewhat adaptive, but today may no longer have survival value at all. Old oppressive chauvinistic attitudes between the races, between the sexes, and between economic groups are being justifiably challenged. . . What is clearly needed are experimental societies!”

This need, he elaborates, was first met by the founders of communes such as The Hog Farm, Drop City, and The Farm, though he doesn’t mention these by name. On these communes, and in many of the intentional communities of today, the people empower themselves to identify what they like about modern culture and use it, while finding ways of working through or around the parts of our culture that they take issue with, meaning everything from racism, classism & sexism to division of labor, environmental degradation and more besides. Sagan’s main point is that these are all problems that we as a species need to deal with if we are to make the leap into the stars, or even survive what he would later term our ‘technological adolescence.’ The old way of building a culture moves with a snail’s pace, cautiously hazarding a new tradition or technique or design here, laying down what becomes irrelevant only with difficulty, and for quite a long while, our technology was linked deeply with this way of compiling a culture. However, in these days of rapid technological growth and development, writes Sagan, we must begin to actively experiment with culture in order to keep pace with it and use it to its fullest potential while solving the social problems of modern culture.

Sagan even addresses the failure of many of these communes in a scientific way. The conservatives of the day were content to point, laugh, and feel secure that the dissolution of communities like Drop City constituted proof that the Midcentury Middle-Class ‘Merican Model of life on Earth is civilization par excellence, and those dastardly SOB’s who are trying to tinker with it are all headed for disaster. Sagan counters that these cultural experiments can be described as mutations, much like the biological mutations that make evolution possible. As in biology, every mutation of a culture can either help the individuals involved or harm them, but we have the distinct advantage that if a cultural mutation comes along that does not help us, we can just stop, or opt out, or re-negotiate. Most organisms with less-than-helpful mutations are not so lucky. And 99% of the organisms that evolved here are now extinct, the vast majority due to nothing more than natural selection. So, in order to find that next step along the path of continuing cultural evolution, we first need to recognize that we as a society and a species have outgrown many previously-useful adaptations, and we then need to hit the ground running looking for the next breakthrough social mutatuion that will help us reach the stars, or at least make life on earth just, equal, and sustainable.

It is my firm belief, like Sagan’s, that we are at a crossroads, and clinging to harmful cultural baggage like chauvinism of any kind, economic models that defy the realities of limited resources and so on while we try to move forward will only serve to dig us deeper into a pit of nightmares than we already are. Our technology marries to our creativity in a myriad of different ways, enabling the fortunate among us to live vastly different lifestyles while retaining the same basic culture, and already, a few of us are actually taking the culture to task, but those voices are consistently downplayed in favor of the mainstream. Meanwhile, the GOP’s ‘back to basics’ rhetoric threatens to slash social progress back with broader and broader strokes, threatening artists and scientists with censorship and, perhaps more chillingly, forced irrelevance in their proposed regime of superstition and moral panic. There is no better example of this than the recent public slut-shaming of Sandra Fluke by leading conservative media goons, unless of course we mention the anti-intellectual leanings of Republican contender Rick Santorum. Leading the valiant charge against all of this, I see Occupy.

What better forum could there be for discussing alternatives to the present system, putting them into practice, adjusting them, calibrating them, practicing them, and presenting them to a public that is hungry for real change? Such a workshop or laboratory has been the dream of many counterculturalists for decades, and this is the moment when we have the power, the presence, and the people to get the message out there.

I envision May Day as a day to get started on this new front for the movement – organizing urban neighborhoods, suburban cul-de-sacs and rural hamlets into collectives, repurposing neglected land and buildings, giving every member of Occupy, and most especially the displaced and dispossessed, opportunities to plug into participatory models of life. There are legions of ideas waiting for birth or rebirth – gift economies, work-sharing communities, co-housing, free stores, free universities, syndicalism, voluntarism, the list knows only the same boundaries as human creativity and ingenuity, the marriage of mentalities that Walt Disney sought in his ‘Imagineers.’

Carl Sagan commends those who attempt this brave mission in cultural experimentation, saying that he thinks of them as people “of exemplary courage.” He also writes that there should be both popular approval of and government support for such experimentation on a global scale. Since neither popular support nor government assistance for cultural innovators seems to be in the cards at the moment, this could only make my opinion of those who shoulder the task regardless even higher. A popular movement like Occupy, however, has the resources of time, energy, people, and (through crowd-sourcing platforms like kickstarter) money to get the ball rolling toward some fantastic experiments in the field of human culture. And what better time to get people thinking about change at this level than May 1, a day not only a workers’ holiday around the world, but a widely respected Pagan celebration, a day of rebirth and endless possibility?

What if, instead of thinking of May 1 as a day to beg and plead for help or succor from our self-appointed superiors, we think of it as a day we are taking for ourselves and one another and the movement – whether or not the 1% likes it!

What if, instead of merely protesting wrongs, we began to see the rectification of these wrongs as the jumping-off point for massive new experiments in culture, a chance to pioneer entirely new ways to live on the Earth, to empower ourselves with action rather than to grovel at the feet of power, to engage mindfully with technology and culture and weave spectacular attempts, facing down the long odds with clear eyes and hopeful hearts, looking for that one-in-a-million shot at glory, at a viable, repeatable alternative.

We can do this, while simultaneously designing interim fixes for many if not all of the problems that Occupy concerns itself with. A new culture is a great and respectable long-term goal, but we must also remain vigilant, and remember that until such time as we can find a new model and implement it, the starving still starve, the homeless still wander, and the jobless still beg. So when I say there is room for progressives and radicals alike in Occupy, this is what I mean – the progressive urge to tackle immediate problems and the radical urge to address systemic ones can and must co-exist or the movement will perish. And remember: we write our own scripts, not the pundits, not the journalists, not even little me, here at my computer. I’m not here to provide you a script or a program or a regimen! I’m here to give you a wee dollop of inspiration, putting old words in a new frame, and now I’ve passed the ball to you, and to all of us in the movement. Happy May Day – Summer is a’Comin’ In!

Get Involved!

Occupy May 1  – http://www.occupymay1st.org/