Langue!

As an amateur linguist, I have spent the better part of my recent life dabbling in a few languages, and I must say that I've found a few that I thoroughly enjoy. Here's a quick list of languages that I love, and languages I hate.

Languages I dig:

1) Ancient Greek. It's like a giant logic puzzle. Nightmarishly complicated, but always rewarding and with an enormous and excellent body of extant literature.

2) Icelandic. Fun and jangly. While most languages are virtually unrecognizable from their predecessors 500 years prior, Icelandic has remained virtually unchanged since the 12th century. So a modern Icelander can still read classic Icelandic texts from way back in the day. Try doing that with English.

3) Latin. Your grandfather's language is still fun and erudite without being complex. It is the picture of Roman elegance, with straightforward grammar and a sound that is pleasant without being cutesy (see Italian). It's also a nice entry-level language to get you into all the other romance languages.

4) German. Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's so jaunty and idiosyncratic, and it is quite endearing once you get to know it. Also, I honestly think that there is nothing better than German poetry. If you don't believe me, check out "Mondnacht" by Eichendorff, which is genuinely beautiful.

Languages I strongly dislike:

1) French. Maybe I'm being overly iconoclastic here, but I just don't get the appeal of French. Of all the Romance languages, its literature interests me the least (Don Quixote, the Divine Comedy, or The Remembrance of Things Past--which one would you pick?). It's whispery and endearing, yes, but it's also nasal and awkward and very difficult to hear. Not to mention that we have them to blame for our horrendous English spelling.

2) Russian. This is a truly tone deaf language. I'm sure it could grow on me if I let it. But I simply don't intend to.


For languages I know almost nothing about but wish I knew more, see Dutch and Irish (Gaelic).

Saddam and the Kurds

On Sunday, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging for the deaths of 142 Shi'ite villagers in Dujail in 1982. It seems that every community in every country reacted differently to the verdict, from the widespread criticism of the death penalty in Europe, to glee from Iraqi-Canadian ex-pats. I am not morally opposed to the death penalty, although hanging does seem an archaic means of execution. The bigger issue, I think, is that this could allow Saddam Hussein to avoid a trial over the Kurdish genocide.

For Saddam, the killing of 142 Shi'ites was by no means an isolated incident, but he killed Shi'ites randomly. He killed Kurds systematically. The al-Anfal campaign that Saddam conducted between 1986-1989 killed tens of thousands of Kurds and forced the relocation of hundreds of thousands more. He used poison gas against entire towns of Kurdish civilians. The Kurdish people deserve the right to force Saddam to sit and hear testimony from the families, wives, executioners, and everyone else affected by or involved with that wretched campaign. The Kurds deserve their day in court, and the world deserves to see a wicked man shamed once again.

(Not so) bright eyes

I've been listening to the Bright Eyes song, "First Day of My Life." It's a touching, finger-picking love song with Conor Oberst's warbling croon and jangling guitar. But there's one line that really strikes me. It's when he says,

Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you'll like me.

It's effectively the last line of the song, and it sneaks in like a sucker punch to remind you that anything real or sincere in life is the exception. In that word, "Maybe," you're reminded that there's an implicit other half of the statement: maybe this time is just like every other time, and you won't like me. He can't write a love song with a straight face. He has to give a nod to brutal, harsh reality.

Welcome to the brave new world we've created. We can't grin at love without winking at rejection. And we undercut ourselves and write our second-rate love songs, and we'll whistle along, all the while knowing that we live in a world that we've given up on.

It's a peculiar nihilism.

The apple doesn't fall far from the....

Marketing isn't just a force in our culture; it's the force. It's the organizing principle. And there is no greater proof than the popular conception of Microsoft and Apple. Everyone knows that Microsoft is evil. Google even picked their slogan--"Don't be evil"--as a not-so-subtle dig at Microsoft. Their public perception is so bad that no one defended them during their ludicrous antitrust trial, or in the suit's aftermath. That antitrust case was the low point of the lousy tenure of a lousy attorney general (not that Alberto Gonzales is much better). Let's review the facts of the case: Microsoft bundled Windows with Internet Explorer, and this bundling was deemed so repugnant to consumers that Microsoft was found in violation of antitrust law. Netscape was still easily downloadable on Microsoft's operating system.

Apple, on the other hand, makes it impossible to play music downloaded from iTunes on any non-Apple mp3 player. That's right, you bought the music, but you can only use it on their product, and iTunes has 70% market share. That's like if 70% of gas stations in America only allowed you to fill up Fords. Furthermore, they made a product (the iPod) that had a battery that died after 18 months. They knew the battery died after 18 months, but they neglected to tell consumers. When the first generation of iPods began dying, Apple offered to replace the batteries, but for almost the full price of a new iPod. It took a class action lawsuit to force them to replace their batteries for a decent price.

But the case against Apple doesn't end there. Printed on the box of every iPod is the phrase, "Designed in California by Apple." So if they're designed in California, are they assembled there? Uh, no. According to the Daily Mail, iPods are made in a factory in China where workers are paid approximately $50 a month. The workers live in dormitories which house approximately 100 employees each, and the "iPod city," as it is called, has a population of 200,000. The plant is closed to outsiders and is secured by Chinese police. Perhaps the most absurd part of this story was when Apple stated that its iPod factory was "completely in accordance with the requirements of Shenzhen labor supervision departments." That's right. Apple said that their factory stood up to the rigorous standards of Chinese labor laws, so everything was kosher. This story went almost unreported in the U.S.

The most shocking aspect of the reign of Apple, however, is the religious fervor that Apple's customers have for their products. Magazines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and every other form of media imaginable has sprung up to report exclusively on Apple products. And if you want to understand the full measure of Apple's hegemony, start explaining to an Applehead the evils of Apple's ways. They will (this is almost unvariably true) react emotionally and, at times, angrily to any challenge to Apple's dominance. It reminds me of the way Catholics respond to challenges to dogma.

Which leads me to conclude one thing: Baudrillard was right. Capitalism is not about choice or freedom, it's about the illusion of choice and the illusion of freedom. We think we have a choice, and that's what's so brilliant. We think that we pick iPods because they are the superior product, when we would probably pick them anyway. We pick them because the flashy commercials and impossible-to-miss white headphones (which, incidentally, are complete pieces of crap) convey a picture of life that is completely irresistable to American consumers. After a while the Apple tumor has metastasized until it can no longer be removed. It's wrapped around the fabric of American life, and its associations and semiotic chains are iron-clad. Apple has found a narrative. When you buy an Apple product, you are smart, trendy, techie (but in a good way), urban, and cool. Or at least Steve Jobs wants you to think so. But at the end of the day, Steve Jobs is chasing the same dollar as Bill Gates.

But maybe the difference is that we're all complicit with Apple. Microsoft came to power in spite of everyone's wishes. MS-DOS snuck up on us, and everyone hated it, but it took power, and then it was too late. The regime was established, and the only thing we could do about it was our tiny acts of rebellion: jokes, Microsoft-bashing, or, if you're the DOJ, prosecution. But we let Apple come to power. We invited it to reign over the hearts and lives of techies everywhere.

This case is like the rise to power of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He came to power as a reformer, and he was a great reformer. Then he corrupted. Now he's a tyrant. It's difficult, however, for the people to stand up to the man they put in power; they realize that they're complicit in his rise. So it's easier to turn a blind eye upon his failings than to admit that you made a mistake.

Well I made a mistake. I bought an iPod. It's a silly product, and I was swayed by lifestyle marketing that told me that the iPod would make me cooler, happier, more fun. But I'm not going to sit by and defend Apple anymore. They can continue producing iPods in sweat shops and swindling American customers, but I won't be buying anything they make. Mr. Jobs, consider this a boycott.

Messianic Complexes, and all that

Bono recently made a reference to his "Messianic complex." When I heard him say it, it sounded so flippant and foolish that I dismissed it as another instance of Bono's brand of rock star Christianity. But maybe he's onto something. By Messianic complex, he means he wants to come to the world and overhaul it, fix it, repackage it, give hope to the huddled masses, feed the hungry, and make the children laugh again. It sounds silly and prideful when you say it that way, but I want the same thing.

I want to matter, so desparately and cloyingly that I spend my nights staring into the blackness of the lights-out night, lying on the couch, iPod playing some wistful prog rock, and I sit convinced that I'm one neuron-fire away from the Big Idea that will change the world. I have assured myself that I have some weird cocktail of talents that I will one day tame, and then, then, then I will pull it all together. People will be inspired, hearts will be open, and I will matter.

And then there's Christianity: ah, there's the ticket! What better place to nurture a Messianic complex than the religion that coined the term. The message of Christianity is that the last shall be first, and that a single man can matter. That's what it sometimes sounds like to me.

And if you completely eviscerate Christianity, the hollow shell looks like that. It takes a genuine theological dwarf to talk yourself into turning Christianity into rugged individualism. But I do it every day. I stare at the crucified Christ, and I look him in the eye and say "Yes! You did that for me." And I celebrate as if redemption is a line on my resume. I have taken the cross of Christ and turned it into a first step on some ladder of self-importance.

It's a picture of the peace and humble submission of Christ that he goes on, day after day, and week after week, and lets me walk on him. 2000 years ago, Christ died. And if his corpse were still around, I would step on it, climb over it. That's the form of sin: staring at Christ in all his blessed humiliation, and asking for a little more. We hoist ourselves on our self-made crosses and stare down and furrow our brows. We look at God with disbelief, convinced that someone has to fix this broken world, and Christ sure didn't do the job right.

There are two kinds of Christians in the world. The people like me, the flailing saints, demanding that the world be fixed. We are so self-righteously upset by poverty and genocide and terrorism and a million social ills, and like petulant children we pray for God to fix it. And then there are the real saints, who lie face-down on the ground, palms toward heaven, praying for mercy, mercy, mercy.

Only the man who can smell the gangrene of his own sin can find any value in the cross. In that sad sorry rot, God can implant a soul that's clean, a soul that can breathe, if we'd lie still long enough to let it.

Seven Storey Mountain

I am currently reading Thomas Merton's brilliant Seven Storey Mountain. You should read it, but in the meantime read these quotes:

"When I think of that part of my childhood, the picture I get of my brother John Paul is this: standing in a field, about a hundred yards away from the clump of sumachs where we have built our hut, is this little perplexed five-year-old kid in short pants and a kind of a leather jacket, standing quite still, with his arms hanging down at his sides, and gazing in our direction, afraid to come any nearer on account of the stones, as insulted as he is saddened, and his eyes full of indignation and sorrow. And yet he does not go away. We shout at him to get out of there, to beat it, and go home, and wing a couple of more rocks in that direction, and he does not go away. We tell him to play in some other place. He does not move.

And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away. The law written in his nature says that he must be with his elder brother, and do what he is doing: and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so wildly and unjustly violated in his case.

Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carrry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation."

The Darko Principle

I've had this theory percolating in my head for a while, and it's starting to become fully shaped. It's something that I call the Darko Principle. The Darko Principle refers, of course, to Darko Milicic and the debacle that was the 2003 NBA draft. In that draft, LeBron James was universally acknowledged to be the best player, so the Cavaliers took him first. After LeBron, things got fuzzy. The second overall pick belonged to the Detroit Pistons, and they had a bevy of options for improving their already stellar team. There was a host of can't-miss former college standouts, including Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony, but there was one player who was a wild card: Darko Milicic. Darko played professional basketball in Europe, and scouts praised his "upside." Because he played in Europe, it was hard to gauge his talent, but scouts were in agreement that with a few years of development, Darko would develop into an excellent player.

So the Pistons took Darko. And now, a few years later, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony have developed into perennial all-stars, while Darko is still sitting on the bench (and not even the Pistons' bench anymore). So what gives? Why would anyone pick a guy who should develop into a great player when there are great players strewn everywhere? My attempts to explain this kind of madness are where the Darko Principle gets it genesis. The Principle goes as follows:

People prefer potential to skill, fantasy to reality, and mystery to clarity.

A corollary to the Darko Principle is the Dwayne Wade Corollary: When people make decisions based on the Darko Principle, they tend to make bad decisions. This logically follows, because decisions based on murky, vague, and hopeful data tend to come out pretty bad, especially when compared to decisions made on concrete, straightforward data. The applications of these two theories to sports are obvious, but I argue that we operate on the Darko Principle in our everyday life, and it always come out bad.

In economics, dating, psychology, or pretty much anything else, we see people exercising the Darko Principle every day. You see it in the way people naturally prefer stocks to bonds; they'd rather possibly make tons of money than definitely make some money. And I'd rather buy a CD from some artist I've never heard of rather than Thom Yorke, even though I know that everything that Thom Yorke has ever made has been terrific. We want new, different, unknown.

So the trick is spotting ourselves doing Darko thinking and reminding ourselves of the Wade Corollary. For inspiration refer to the following excerpt from the movie High Fidelity. Go and do likewise.

-That other girl, or other women, whatever, I was thinking that they're just fantasies, you know, and they always seem really great because there are never any problems, and if there are they're cute problems like we bought each other the same Christmas present or she wants to go see a movie I've already seen, you know? And then I come home and you and I have real problems and you don't want to see the movie I wanna see, period. There's no lingerie...

-I have lingerie!

-Yes you do. You have great lingerie but you also have cotton underwear that's been washed a thousand times and its hanging on the thing and ... and they have it too just I don't have to see it because it's not the fantasy ... do you understand? I'm tired of the fantasy because it doesn't really exist and there are never really any surprises and it never really...

-Delivers?

-Delivers. Right. And I'm tired of it and I'm tired of everything else for that matter but I don't ever get tired of you.

Darko just doesn't deliver.

Gender roles

The German word for the Enlightenment is the Aufklarung, which roughly translated means the "clearing up." It means that during the Enlightenment the West performed a sort of spring cleaning on its ideas. I believe that we are now experiencing a second Aufklarung, but it is a social one, and, like the last Aufklarung, this one has a tendency to dismantle ideas recklessly, with the ravenous need to destroy of a mother cleaning out her son's closet.

One particular area that has been uprooted has been the area of gender. The movement happened so fast that many of us missed it. When I go to my father's hometown of Live Oak, Florida, to visit, I see a world of women told to be submissive, who often are full-time moms, while the husband provides for the family financially. At family gatherings, the women cook, clean, and dish gossip, while the men watch sports and grill meat. Areas of responsibility are clear: the woman manages the house, while the man manages the yard. When I was in this environment, the clarity of these spheres felt confining and freeing at the same time. I feel liberated because I understand what is expected of me: the yard must be kept up, money must be provided, and sports must be watched. If I can meet these simple conditions, I will meet the approval of my peers. The same impulses are enormously confining as well. There is an expectation of masculinity that is deeply troubling. Men cannot be nurturing or caring, they cannot play with the children or talk about relationships, and women cannot have a career or speak of serious things.

But then I return to my world, where women and men are hardly distinguishable, except physically. It's a more complicated, messier way to live, but it's not always worse.

Independence Day

Today is the day, I suppose, where we think about the long sequence of events, both providential and auspicious, that went into the establishment of this American democracy. From the Boston tea party (which seems, in retrospect, more like a frat-boy prank) to the oft-overlooked Louisiana Purchase, this country is assembled from a million swirling currents, and they all run together now. The recipe is somewhat irrational: combine the Enlightenment, a small group of Founding Fathers with hearts of steel and minds built like British dreadnaughts, an economy teetering on the backs of slaves, add a dash of heavy-handed English government, and churn until revolution foments.

And it does us well today to remember the mixture of fortune and steely effort that brought us here. Benjamin Franklin, for instance, was the son of a candle-maker, a low-born tradesman, yet he conquered the worlds of printing and science, and he charmed the French in a way no American has done since. This is significant because he talked the cash-strapped French into giving the colonies enormous loans of money and troops. He could conduct himself with ease in the rural setting of the colonies, or in high society London, or in Enlightenment France.

That was his greatest gift: his hell-bent confidence. Benjamin Franklin--and the other Founding Fathers--believed that they belonged. There was a place at the table for this ragtag bunch of gentlemen. They didn't merely stand opposed to England, they stood opposed to the idea of England, its sense of aristocratic pietas that demanded that rank and class mattered. The American experience said that men were not their titles, or their lands; they had a right to make their way in life.

And 364 days a year, we blow hot air about American exceptionalism and the greatness of our democracy, and it turns into little more than political posturing. But maybe just this one day we'll sing songs and wave flags, and that'll be ok.

Silence before the cross

When Christ was taken in by his captors, he faced a series of sham courts, complete with false witnesses and trumped-up charges. There he stood, a holy God, a battered man, being accused. And then he did the one act that we would never expect or accept. He got up in front of those vile men, and he said nothing.

In many ways, this act was the first shot fired for the gospel. It was an act that recalled everything Jesus did and foretold everything that Jesus would do. It was the first shot across the bow of death and sin. But I want to ignore it.

If there's anything that I want, it's something to say when the world accuses me. "You've wasted your life," they would say. And I would want to produce a resume, replete with acts of holiness and humility. "You're unloving and prideful," they'd say, and I would produce a wife of character and love, who respected me for who I was. "You're lazy and a waste of potential," they'd say, and I would point to my achievements.

But Christ's silence portends the end of all that. His silence says that God loves us, in a way we don't understand. It says that he loves us not because of what we've done, but because of who we are. Christ's silence means that we have nothing to say before the world anymore. The charges against us are made by a world with no authority.

And that's the hardest part: we have to learn to be silent before the world. That all our ambitions are doomed attempts to gain the respect of a world dying away. Paul said that everything that he'd ever done was all loss before Christ. Loss! That means all of his education, his accomplishments, his hopes, his dreams. Paul was a well-schooled aristocrat toiling away at a series of meager jobs, travelling from city to city, never able to settle down. One early account of Paul describes him this way: "a man little of stature, thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked, full of grace."
He was a man who was short, fat, bald, with a unibrow, empty of himself, but full of the grace of Christ.

Alan Paton and culture

Somewhere in my basement, buried in boxes of books in need of shelves, lies a copy of Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton. Five years ago I deemed the cover irreparable, and I replaced it with duct tape. All that to say, the book is good. It's a novel about the tragedy of mid-20th century South Africa. Its brilliance lies in Paton's ability to see the enormous complexity of racial problems, and, peering into the blackness of the human heart, to see possibilities for reconciliation. He could, as W.B. Yeats said, "hold in a single thought reality and justice."

As Paton sets out the central conflict of the novel, he makes one statement that forms the thesis of the first portion of the book: "The white man has broken the tribe. And it is my belief--and again I ask your pardon--that it cannot be mended again." In this statement Paton caught the first winds of the gathering storm of globalization. The white man--and Western culture, and the global economy--have broken the tribe, and it will not be mended.

So we're left here, with fragments of broken cultures, baubles left over from something grand and important, reduced to a price tag, or a dance performed for tourists. I am tempted to say that globalization turned our world upside-down, but that's not the case. Globalization shoved our world toward the middle. What used to be a world of fragmentary, unique, patchwork cultures is being shoved toward a centerline. In many countries--including America--we can now speak of Culture with a capital C. Homogeneity has replaced originality, and that homogeneity, rather than feeling diverse, has come out feeling bland.

In America today many people will start their day with yoga, have Chinese food for lunch, and then watch the World Cup while they eat their dinner. These swirling cultural currents have left the Western world without a firm grasp on anything. Culture is something to be consumed, not possessed or experienced, so marketers hijack consumables from other cultures and sell them to Americans, who then relish their own hipness at being the first on the block to have tried the new Thai place.

But the tribe is broken, and it will not be repaired. So it's up to us to create a new culture, not based on consumption, but on digging deep into the mines of our creativity and coming up with something fresh, something unborrowed.

As Kavanagh said,

That in the end
I may find
Something not sold for a penny
In the slums of Mind.

Civil liberties and all that jazz

While I will immediately admit that I am no supporter of the Bush administration, I don't buy the conspiracy theories. I've heard the left-leaning elements of the media carry on about how Bush is a war-mongering simpleton, or an oil-consumed, plutocratic nincompoop, but I just don't think so. I don't think he started a war because of a generational grudge, and I don't think that he destroys the environment just because he can. I really think that he is attempting to do his best.

That being said, there is one thing that does genuinely concern me about Bush, and that is his haphazard curtailment of civil liberties. The recent flap between the administration and some members of the press--specifically the Times--is an example of the Bush administration's attitude toward the smaller freedoms the constitution affords us.

For those of you not familiar with the incident, on Thursday the Times reported that the US government has a program in place that looks at records of international bank transactions in hopes of "following the money" to find out just who finances terror operations. Members of congress had been briefed on the program and found no fault with it; however, the program has not been tested in court.

Shortly after the report aired, a number of members of the administration--including Bush, Cheney, Snow, and a host of others--lashed out against the report, arguing that revealing such a program hamstrings the government's ability to conduct anti-terror investigations. Some even called for prosecution against the Times, and in particular against executive editor Bill Keller. Keller shot back against these calls with a letter, which emphasized that the Times considered thoroughly whether or not they should release this information, and that it was deemed in the public interest to green-light the story.

Bush's response to this story has been animated, calling the report "disgraceful." This has been an archetypal exchange between Bush and the press lately: the press reports on an anti-terror operation of questionable legality, the administration gets angry at the press for reporting it, and the schism between the administration and the press widens.

On one point I agree with Bush: revealing these programs may hurt their effectiveness. Likewise, revealing Abu Ghraib probably hurt the effectiveness of that institution, and revealing Haditha probably hindered the effectiveness of Kilo company. But these little inconveniences are the inevitable results of democracy, and they are to be celebrated.

The difference between the US and totalitarian states is that we believe that we have nothing to be ashamed of. We don't deal in misinformation, but in facts, cold and hard, and we trust the public to judge them appropriately. We stand by democracy because we believe that power corrupts, and that accountability is the only cure for the moral flim-flam of the demagogue. We believe that the morality of the many outweighs the morality of the few.

The founding fathers chose to allow a free and vigorous press because they stood by the idea of public oversight. Hopefully, Bush can understand that public oversight, while it is an inconvenience, is always a necessary part of a free and worthwhile democracy. While fighting the war on terror, we must remember not just what we fight against, but what we fight for.

Good ole Liz

I have recently discovered Elizabeth Bishop, the poet, and I think that I could do you no greater favor than to point you to "The Moose," my favorite of her poems.

Just click here.

The Literary Culture

I've been having this realization lately that text as a medium of communication is dying. To say this is sad feels trite. This is an atrocity. In a recent Time article, John Updike recounts his childhood, when everything was stacked with piles of books. Lending libraries were everywhere. He even remembers when departments stores had lending libraries. Those days are gone, and our great writers are dying. Updike is 74, Philip Roth is 73, Cormac McCarthy is 72, Toni Morrison is 75, Seamus Heaney is 67, and Don DeLillo is 69. Worse yet, all of these writers are feeling more and more irrelevant. Updike's new book, The Terrorist, feels awkward and feeble. He tries to portray an 18-year-old driven to Islamic extremism, but it feels so out of touch that I had to put it down.

Candidates are interviewing for the title of great young fiction writer, but all come with gaping holes on their resumes. Dave Eggers has yet to handle fiction with grace, and his po-mo cutesiness has proven to be an enormous handicap. David Foster Wallace is perhaps just a little too dark and a little too unreadable to find an audience. I'm convinced that Jonathan Lethem is holding back on us, but only time will tell. The sad thing is that even if these writers wrote a masterpiece, no one would read it. It would languish on book store shelves, and there it would die. I wish I could turn off TVs and force us as a people to learn to read again, to find margin in our days, but I know that's not possible.