Spoiler Alert

As will probably surprise not a single person, I am a bit of a geek. While I’ve dabbled in gaming and anime, among other geek pursuits, since I was old enough to use a library card, my drug of choice has been science fiction books. I have read libraries of the stuff: good, bad, memorable, forgettable, epic, pulp-you name it. The sheer volume of my consumption scares me to consider, now that I think about it.

I could go in depth about how each of these stories is basically the same exact one, but I’ll save that diatribe for another time and place. In almost every story, though, there is a relatively happy (at least locally) conclusion. Foundation ends with Terminus happily following its destiny into the future. Ender’s Game ends with averted genocide and the assumption of a lifelong quest. Fahrenheit 451 ends among a community of well intentioned scholars. The poignancy of loss or tragedy is in each story, but only to define the happiness and goodness of the actual conclusion.

This pisses me off to no end.

It’s such an easy out. There is no reason that any of these situations would naturally resolve themselves in such positive ways. It takes a metric fuckton of deus ex machina (that is the unit, I checked) to get the happy ending: the redefined natural laws, the mysterious ancient secrets unlocked just in time, the last second uncharacterisic change of heart of the rogue. I hate each and every one. Just because we can travel the stars, or redefine our shape or harness the energy of black holes does not change our essential humanity. Humans are imperfect creatures. We are defined by our passions, our weaknesses, and our evolutionary heritage. It’s not the end of those stories that show us who we are, it’s the middle. And that anger brought me to post-apocalyptic science fiction. These stories generally had the same “happily ever after” situation going on, but the stresses of the journey showed a more realistic view of humanity.

One of the first books of this sort recommended to me was Swan Song by Robert McCammon, and I still think it epitomizes the “reality of the middle”. The book opens with a tense US-Soviet relationship finally pushed to the breaking point and after crying havoc, they let slip the nuclear dogs of war. After following characters through the wastelands of a post-nuclear war America, the heroine comes into her power and destiny and sets out to bring the land back to life. Ya, right. More human is the part in the middle, where each character has to deal with life in the nuclear aftermath. One character is forced to compete with escaped psychopaths for his life. One is forced into sexual slavery in exchange for pills and safety, until PTSD leads to her mental unraveling. There are battles in destroyed shopping malls, villages devolving into disease and starvation and people holding off on suicide only as long as a set of AA batteries will last.

Books like this consumed me. I spent months thinking and planning and plotting what I would do in the event of some disaster. I had contingencies in the event that the apocalypse was some sort of nuclear war scenario, a plague situation (a la The Stand), a zombie outbreak, or even some Biblical occurrence (Lord knows I’m not going up). I was young enough to still be in my parents’ house, so I couldn’t put together all my supplies. Instead I had a mental list of all the items I would need and where to find them: the water bottles, the canned food, the knives, the crowbar, etc. I knew how long it would take me to get them, which neighbors would likely be gone if I needed more supplies and which direction would take me out of the city fastest. I gloried in the thoughts of the things I would do, the stuff I would take, and how I would hold my own against other survivors. Make no mistake, when the chips are down, people will always revert to the law of the jungle. In the event of a zombie panic, another survivor would have no problem throwing me in front of the undead horde. In the event of a nuclear attack, even former friends would slit my throat to steal my food. And I would probably do the same. No matter how far we go, we’re still scared little animals. To paraphrase Herbert in a later Dune book (I know, I know, we try not to acknowledge them), each person ever alive is the descendant of those who survived. Survival requires horrible things of us; our true legacy as humans is every vice, every barbarism, every unspeakable horror that was done to survive and prosper.

We ignore our base instincts and needs at our own peril. Try and build an empire, and some barbarian will inevitably come a-knocking. Focus on the stars and someone will pick your pocket. While we aspire to be better than we are, that we exist in this world imposes essential constraints and necessities on us. I imagine if you could inoculate them from the future shock, someone from the Wild West or the Renaissance or the Roman Empire or the Stone Age would easily recognize who we are today. The toys and knowledge that we have change the specifics of our conflicts, but we can never truly rise above our material selves. All we can be, in the end, is what we are- not gods, not devils, just men.

Every two weeks, a group of hardy creative sorts compiles blog entries on a single topic. For further (and better) reading about “What we might become if”, check out Creative Collective.

Newton’s First Law of Motion

“Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”

In the vein of using this space to further process life and other life like experiences, I wanted to continue (in monologue form) a discussion I started with a friend recently.

Change is hard. Not the change of seasons or the random perturbations that define our daily life but the real internal change, consciously undertaken, that drives who we are and what we do. That intense personal transformation is like being forced through fire and flame as we attempt to burn off our dross and impurities. Aspirational construction of self requires we do what comes hardest for us-destroy ourselves as we are in order to build ourselves as we want to be. Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves and Shiva destroys.

This summer (well, this last year in many ways), has been exactly that kind of experience for me. Anyone who has talked to me this summer has probably gotten an “oh my god, I’m so busy” or possibly “I’m so tired”, the latter possibly uttered before passing out in front of you. If that’s the case, let me go ahead and apologize again for that rudeness. It’s been a summer where I’ve been in motion constantly. Work (dissertation proposal writing, various papers and teaching), play (re-quitting WoW, books, movies, and music), and social outings have all pulled my time and attention in competing directions. While the sheer volume would be different enough from my own hermetic tendencies, what I’ve been doing itself is really uncharacteristic. I drove to Asheville the other day to see a band that I’m currently geeking out over. Instead of kowtowing to authoritative coauthors, I’ve stood up for myself and my time. I’ve made a conscious effort to actually answer questions that are asked of me and stop being secretive for its own sake. And I’ve been lucky enough to be able to hang out with a lady who, in addition to being pretty awesome herself, finds me at least somewhat occupying.

All of these have been a mile a minute. The hits, as they say, keep coming. There have been nights where I have had 2 or 3 different activities planned with different groups. I have actually said to good friends “I think I can meet up sometime late next week”. I’ve cut back on sleep to the level that it’s a miracle I am not seeing pink elephants on parade. Were it not for caffeine and pixie sticks, I am pretty sure that I would be gibbering in some corner wearing a nice white coat that buckles in the back.

And that’s what it takes. I’ve grown to believe that to break free of the bonds of who and what we are requires this level of audacious over-achievement. It’s like playing Red Rover as children; you don’t break through to the other side by playing it safe and slowly walking towards the line. You put your head down and barrel full speed straight into it. Without that energy expenditure, we’re snapped back into the rut of our default position, as if life were lived on the end of a giant rubber band. Inertia defines who we are and without that conscious application of intensity, it defines who we will ever be. Without that external force, we stay in exactly the same motion we’ve always been in.

That isn’t to say that I can keep this schedule up forever. If nothing else, I have to sleep at some point. Dreams would be nice to see again. And I miss the occassional quiet time with a beer and a good book. But for now, I’m working on getting to the new me and am enjoying being vibrantly myself. So let me know if you’d like a pixie stick or a kick in the ass for your own change-I’m always awake.

Truly Local

Five years ago I set out from the only home I’d ever known (college dorms/apartments don’t count) to make my way to North Carolina. I spent all summer readying myself for that move, in addition to sleeping and playing WoW. As I was winnowing down my remaining possessions to a small stack of boxes and clothes, I worried about all the things that would confront me in my new environment: getting and furnishing a new place, making friends, and other general grad school apprehensions. This trip was meticulously planned; I planned my route, got a hotel room, calculated how much gas I would use and decided how often I would stop. I had even calculated how long exactly I would spend driving through South Carolina, possibly one of the most important facts to know, as anyone who has driven through there can attest. I even knew exactly when I was meeting my landlord at my new little studio apartment/hobbit hole to get the key and that after meeting her, I would have enough time to go shop for a bed before the stores closed.

On the day itself, I packed everything I owned into my Corolla, waved goodbye to my mom and hit the road. I made it all the way to the bottom of our street before I had to stop. Apparently loading up the front seat without closing the seatbelt triggers a beeping alarm. So after a brief awkward moment of fumbling in the front seat, I was truly off. That trip and my first few days in North Carolina, a longer story in which our hero learns the value of perseverance and cleaning products, were some of the most liberating experiences I have ever had. I’m a relatively solitary person by nature, but never before have I been so completely on my own. Everything else of consequence I have ever done has been as part of a group or with the assistance of others: Boy Scout achievements, up to and including my Eagle Project, all my science experiments, even the various competitions and such I participated in. I was proud of myself for doing that whole trip solo, for the first time, I really felt like an adult.

A year or so ago, I was talking to my parents over a Christmas visit and mentioned, in passing, how this trip had made me feel independent. Halfway through, my mom couldn’t hide her smile anymore and said, “If that’s how you remember it.” And that’s when I realized that this defining moment of adulthood independence was anything but. While I had only seen my parts of the puzzle, I hadn’t appreciated how my independence was underwritten by others. I drove up in, what had been until a few days previous, my sister’s car. My maps were courtesy of my parent’s AAA membership. The hotel I stopped at was paid for with my points from my Dad’s frequent travels. To me, this trip was an exercise in establishing my autonomy, but from my parents’ perspective, it was merely a cute attempt to seem independent.

Locally meaningful is all we can really hope for in our independence. Unless you are drinking your own urine out in the wilderness, in which case I think it is safe to say that you are not among my readers, you are not independent. Your choices are constrained; available options depend on the actions of others. The economic and social position we find ourselves in makes it seem like our choices exist free and without linked dependencies, but the best to which we can aspire is the belief that our choices exist absent other forces. And as someone who enjoys electricity, books and even, on occasion (control your amazement) the company of other people-I think I can live with that.

Every two weeks a common pool of suckers get together and create new posts on the same topic. This week’s synchroblog posts about “Independence” are listed below. Check them out to see, you know, better writing.
Escape Velocity: Part III: WordShepherd
Hypothetically Speaking: nightsbrightdays
Independence: The Rebel I
The Thing Itself: plow and rain
interbeing: art, etcetera
Fear Itself: i write to be rid of things
Bodily Interruption: passionately pensive
Co-Dependence: muddledreamer

Honesty in Education

As anyone who’s talked to me recently can attest, I’ve been teaching summer school. With teaching comes teaching stories and at this point, my friend circle is saturated with them. Poor friends. Luckily, an additional outlet for my thoughts regarding higher education and its perils has presented itself. Sucker.

I had no idea, back when I was a student, what getting up in front of people and teaching would be like. Having done different speech (shout out for impromptu speaking!) competitions back in the day, I had a taste for what testifying in front of the crowd could be like. But even those experiences didn’t prepare me for what teaching is. Getting up in front of a classroom of people is a heady rush of fear and excitement. It’s like I get to teach the gospel of scientific thinking and sociological reasoning for 90 minutes a day. 90 minutes! Captive audience! No one else gets that. Even the President can’t compel us to watch his speeches like I can force my students to listen to me talk. The rush of power isn’t really what’s cool though. The best part is that I get to perform up there for them everyday. This is expository speaking as best I can do it, making up examples and phrases on the fly. I can’t repeat myself-the last phrase is already forgotten. I can’t slow down-I’m not sure where I’m going.

This freedom is exhilarating. I know the material well enough to not be scared about screwing up factually. I’ve taught the course often enough to have a feel for what mistakes people will make. Within those confines though, I can do whatever I want. In the last couple of days we have watched cars getting dropped into water, shot students with Nerf guns, talked about the history of scurvy prevention and discussed the relative difficulties of dunking children in toxic waste. I don’t know many other fields that would let someone like me have such free rein.

I wish that I could tell my students the one truth about teaching. Sadly, that would trigger some sort of post-apocalyptic hellscape in my classroom. So, dear reader, I’ll give it to you instead: none of your college instructors really has any idea what they are doing. Really. I’ve taken a course in teaching, I know the material I’m presenting and I have a rough feel for the showmanship of presentation. That’s it, the full marshalling of my resources. There are no magical wizards bestowing me with the wisdom to make the choices they require. Accepting late assignments, offering studying strategies, writing tests, designing homework assignments, showing videos-I have to muddle through this with the limited vision that everyone has in every facet of their daily lives. I can drop the facade occassionally and express humanity (“Sorry, I didn’t add your points correctly”, “Oops, I did not post the powerpoint yet”, etc) but go to that well too often and you lose control. So, like every other aspect of life, I get to perform and try to act the part. 3 cheers for Goffman.

It’s really too bad though. The best part of teaching is when you and your students get to be human together, instead of you being some sort of unapproachable Olympian uber-instructor. I made a joke about pedophiles as one group that would want to sample US 4th graders the other day. I did it without thinking; it’s the kind of thing I would say in normal conversation. And they loved it. Days when I can use my own research passions as examples are some of the ones that elicit the most feedback and kids staying to talk to me. I get to enjoy laughs as some of my students have realized what kind of humor I have. Recent responses on the homework included gems like “Wikipedia said something about this being accurate” and “You might have said something convincing about this in class, but I overslept that day.” On the other hand, I can’t come out to then and admit that I screwed up their midterm by writing a test that was too long and too hard or that I have no idea what to do about a late assignment when their car died. While freedom allows us to move towards that open environment, the structure of the system imposes formalism. The human interaction and essential honesty is lost in the nature of the process. And I miss it.