Rescuing Hokget and Everybody Else

Several months ago, I read "The Problem With Human Compassion," an excerpt from Shankar Vedantam's book The Hidden Brain, printed in the February 19th issue of The Week. I include a lengthy selection here.

"On March 13, 2002, a fire broke out in the engine room of an oil tanker about 800 miles south of Hawaii. The fire moved so fast that the Taiwanese crew did not have time to radio for help. Eleven survivors and the captain’s dog, a terrier named Hokget, retreated to the tanker’s forward quarters with supplies of food and water.

[...] Drawn by wind and currents, the Insiko got within 220 miles of Hawaii. It was spotted by a cruise ship, which rescued the crew. But as the cruise ship pulled away, a few passengers heard the sound of barking.

The captain’s dog had been left behind on the tanker. A passenger who heard the barking dog called the Hawaiian Humane Society in Honolulu. [...] The Society alerted fishing boats about the lost tanker and soon media reports began appearing about Hokget.

[...] Money poured in to fund a rescue. Donations eventually arrived from 39 states and four foreign countries. One check was for $5,000. 'It was just about a dog,' Pamela Burns, president of the Hawaiian Humane Society, told me. 'This was an opportunity for people to feel good about rescuing a dog. People poured out their support. A handful of people were incensed. These people said, ‘You should be giving money to the homeless.’' But Burns thought the great thing about America was that people were free to give money to whatever cause they cared about, and people cared about Hokget.

The problem with a rescue was that no one knew where the Insiko was. The U.S. Coast Guard estimated it could be anywhere in an area measuring 360,000 square miles. Two Humane Society officers set off into the Pacific on a tugboat. The Society paid $48,000 to a private company called American Marine to look for the ship.

[...] The U.S. Coast Guard had said it could not use taxpayer money to save the dog, but under the guise of training exercises, the called the U.S. Navy began quietly hunting for the Insiko.

[...] Human beings from around the world came together to try to save a dog. The vast majority of people who sent in money would never personally see Hokget. It was, as Pamela Burns suggested to me, an act of pure altruism and a marker of the remarkable capacity human beings have to empathize with the plight of others.

There are a series of disturbing questions, however: Eight years before the Hokget saga began, the same world that showed extraordinary compassion for a dog sat on its hands as hundreds of thousands of human beings were killed in the Rwandan genocide.

The philosopher Peter Singer once devised a dilemma that highlights a central contradiction in our moral reasoning. If you see a child drowning in a pond—and you would ruin a fine pair of shoes worth $200 if you jumped into the water—would you save the child or save your shoes? Most people react incredulously to the question; obviously, a child’s life is worth more than a pair of shoes. But if this is the case, Singer asked, why do large numbers of people hesitate to write checks for $200 to a reputable charity that could save the life of a child halfway around the world—when there are millions of children who need our help?

The answer is that our moral responsibilities feel different in these situations; one situation feels visceral, the other abstract. We feel personally responsible for one child, whereas the other is one of millions who need help - there are many people who could write that check.

[...] The brain is simply not very good at grasping the implications of mass suffering. Americans would be far more likely to step forward if only a few people were suffering or a single person were in pain. Hokget did not draw our sympathies because we care more about dogs than people; she drew our sympathies because she was a single dog lost on the biggest ocean in the world. [...] We are best able to respond when we are focused on a single victim."

Vedantam and Singer are correct; we humans act more compassionately when we are able to put a face to a cause, yet too many faces dull our response.

I've noticed such a benumbing in myself recently, an unexpected consequence of my transitioning from New York City to San Francisco. Both cities have substantial homeless populations, but panhandling in San Francisco is far more common. My street charity policy, modeled on the approach of a rabbi I heard lecture, is simple enough: I give change to any panhandler who says that he or she will use the money for food (or cites hunger as their reason for begging). I don't give change to those individuals requesting money for any other reason. In New York City, confronted with a few beggars each day, I typically gave change two or three times every week. In San Francisco, however, beggars ask for handouts on every other block, and a good number of them say that they're hungry. If I hold to my standard, I'll give change two or three times a day, if not more often! Shamefully, I've noticed that I've almost ceased giving during my visits to San Francisco.

This is a personal failure that I must address. Each of those many faces is an individual, a single person in need, despite the fact that their larger numbers and concentration counter-intuitively make them relatively anonymous or invisible. The rabbi's rule should be no less applicable in San Francisco than it is in New York. I'm confronted, then, with more need, and I must respond in kind; a hungry person is a hungry person.

But what about a hungry dog? Is Vedantam right to suggest that the thousands of people who contributed money to the Hokget search did not "care more about dogs than people"? Not exactly.

Our species' evolved, inborn behaviors haven't made our adaptation to the globalized world easy. In fact, it seems that contemporary humans are increasingly suspicious of other humans, especially of those outside our respective tribe, whereas animals (and perhaps especially dogs) are seen as uncomprehending innocents. I don't mean to suggest that no one cares about miners trapped in a coal mine, but it's clear that the little girl trapped in a well sells more newspapers, and that the little dog trapped on an abandoned tanker not only sells newpapers, but also inspires a flood of unsolicited donations and generates public outcry.

"Facing intense public pressure to save Hokget, government officials concluded that asking the Navy to sink the tanker—750 miles from Hawaii and drifting away from the distant U.S. mainland—posed unacceptable environmental risks. The Coast Guard finally agreed to access $250,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds to recover the Insiko. It wasn’t officially called an animal-rescue effort. Instead it was authorized under the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, based on the argument that if the aimless Insiko managed to drift westward for 250 straight miles, it might run aground on Johnston Atoll and harm marine life.

[...] On April 26, nearly a month and a half after the dog’s ordeal began, the tugboat’s crew found the Insiko and boarded the tanker. Hokget was still alive, hiding in a pile of tires. [...] Hokget arrived in Honolulu on May 2 and was greeted by crowds of spectators, a news conference, banners welcoming her to America, and a red Hawaiian lei."

What a marvelously strange species we are!? I applaud our ability to extend compassion to other animals (we're one of handful of species that have demonstrated such empathic ability), but I wonder at our brains' curious moral calculus.

I suppose all I can do is begin with myself, and humbly pledge to keep my pockets filled with coins.

Image credit: ripped from Corbis Images

"Inherited Purpose and Pattern"

William Kentridge
Still from "History of the Main Complaint"
Animation
1996
I enjoyed reading Calvin Tomkins' recent profile of William Kentridge ("Lines of Resistance," The New Yorker, January 18, 2010). Tomkins includes some fascinating details about Kentridge's background and family, and I especially appreciated some of the remarks made by the artist. The following quotation was particularly resonant.

"[Working in South Africa,] I was aware of Joseph Beuys - Beuys and his honey pump, which was supposed to be political art. But politics is not spreading honey around the main building at the Documenta art exhibition. It's putting electrodes on people's testicles, locking them up, putting them in fear of their lives."

Kentridge acknowledges his South African perspective (the artist was born into a state of apartheid and is today living through its often grim aftermath), but his observation also speaks to the general disconnect between so much 20th century fine art and "the real world."

Both modernism and postmodernism prioritize iconoclasm and individual achievement over "a system of inherited purpose and patterns."(1) It's thoughtless to dismiss the sibling -isms (both offer valuable insights and fundamentally inform our contemporary world), but the march of globalization is revealing the societal impotence of the philosophies. Absent "inherited purpose" and narrative, postmodern community is soulless, a mere facade. One of many casualties, the artist is but a mote in a vast and turbulent sea of competing sentiments and ideologies. Graphic design and advertising occupy the popular position once given to fine art, but, excellent though some of both may be, these are commodity driven disciplines; as such, they can make no genuine claim to political or moral coherence.

Still, I don't believe that we should bemoan our station as the end of the line. Globalization is in its infancy, and the 21st century will likely see a new concept of cosmopolitan citizen emerge, one that could usher in an era of shared mythos. Back to the future, so to speak.

(1) This definition of pre-modern art is drawn from Adam Gopnik's fantastic essay, "Van Gogh's Ear." (The New Yorker, January 4, 2010)

The Art Community and Common Sense

Ryan Trecartin
"I-BE AREA"
2007

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."

- Gertrude Stein

We're a week-and-a-half into 2010, and I'm hoping that the din produced by so much fin-de-decade media will soon die down. It's no secret that we citizens of the United States (and all other essentially "Americanized" peoples) are principally defined by our consumption. What's more, after decades of adaptation to the consumer role, we've become so fond of the talk surrounding our consumer products that the consumer reviews themselves have become another kind of consumable. Regrettably, this is no less true in the arts.

I've made a contrarian effort this year to avoid most of the "Top" lists and their Op-Ed equivalents, but I've not been totally chaste. The diviners of social, political, or cultural trends have been working furiously to meet their deadlines, and the surplus of art-related stock-taking is in large part responsible for the dearth of new HH content. Anything that I write here will only add to the pervasive and stupefying hubbub; it is further distraction from the business of life well-lived.

And yet, here I sit, writing this post. Like all the other commentators, I'm guilty of editorializing and contextualizing that which is better meditated upon individually or mulled over with our loved ones. And I'm guilty of adding one more perspective to the countless millions already vocalized, furthering the unfortunate and wrong-headed belief that subjectivity reigns. What I'm engaging in, then, is dangerous. While post-modern notions of relativism are valid and philosophically valuable, our globalized culture must strive to sort, such that we can, the wheat from the chaff. That is to say, in a time of increasing cross-cultural interaction, the need for some consensus, some agreed upon hierarchy of moral, ethical, and aesthetic value, is acute. It is a dangerous and exciting era; as such, it is a good time to be a artist.

I agree with Roberta Smith's contention that "the years 2000 to 2009 saw the emergence of a tremendous number of really good, interesting, promising artists." My list of "really good" artists, however, is very different from hers, and Ryan Trecartin, one of the artists that the New York Times' critic celebrates in her recent article, "Make Room for Video, Performance and Paint," is definitely not on it. I don't know Trecartin personally, and he may be a well-meaning, pleasant enough person, but his artwork is poisonously self-absorbed. In this respect, at least, Smith is right to assert that he is an important representative of the decade past. The art world, and especially that of New York City, the community to which I'm most attached, has seen an explosion of navel gazing.

To be fair, most artists engage in some level of narcissism. At the end of the 1990s, when I was in my early twenties, I had puerile aspirations to produce "art videos" of my ejaculating penis (paging Sterling Ruby), and my paintings were dominated by angst-ridden self-portraits and hyper-sexualized imagery. The few paintings of that period that survive are today stacked in my parents' Virginia garage, partly covered by a plastic tarpaulin and years of accumulated mouse shit and winter-killed wasp corpses. Such is the fate of personal history. Serpent-like, we periodically shed our skins and move on, hopefully a little more wise. Some of us, however, put our sheddings and bruises on display, mistaking personal exposure for bravery. Indeed, in some contexts it is brave, but when the sharing is marshalled in service of a cult of personality, it is a celebration of individual dysfunction. And when such exhibitionism is mistaken for art, it is an indication of critical and cultural dysfunction.

Believing that art is fundamental to humanity, and that it is transformative and sacred, I don't accept Freud's famous contention that the artist is a neurotic who seeks to attenuate or postpone confrontation of his or her mature psyche. In fact, for most of our species' tenure, the role of the artist was precisely the opposite; we were called upon to ground our brethren is real experience, be it material or metaphysical. Yet Freud's categorization accurately describes much of the juvenalia that passes for contemporary art. Certainly, we artists should be embarrassed by this trend, but you can't kill the messenger, as the saying has it; Trecartin and others creating hysterical or megalomaniacal artworks are reflections of the dominant (and apparently yet ascendant) iCulture. It is instead the critics and the gallerists, the purveyors of taste, that should be most ashamed of themselves.

Essayist, critic, and philosopher George Steiner is far more intelligent and incisive than I, so I include a pastiche of pertinent excerpts from his 1989 book, Real Presences.

"The usages and values predominant in the consumer societies of the West today [are] the secondary and the parasitic[...]. Literate humanity is solicited daily by millions of words, printed, broadcast, screened, about books which it will never open, music it will not hear, works of art it will never set eyes on. A perpetual hum of aesthetic commentary, of on-the-minute judgments, of pre-packaged pontifications, crowds the air. Presumably, the greater part of art-talk or literary reportage, of music reviews or ballet criticism, is skimmed rather than read, heard but not listened to. None the less, the effect is antithetical to that visceral, personal encounter[...]. There is little 'ingestion'; it is the 'digest' that prevails.

[...]

The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform. Political enormity and the circus, the leaps of science and those of the athlete, apocalypse and indigestion, are given the same edge. Paradoxically, this monotone of graphic urgency anaesthetizes. The utmost beauty or terror are shredded at close of day. We are made whole again, and expectant, in time for the morning edition.

[...]

Two principal impulses energize the American spirit: immanence and egalitarianism. The crux of American time is now. The past matters in direct reference to its usability in and by the present. [...] No other culture has so dignified the immanent. [...] Poets, novelists, choreographers, painters of the most derivative or passing interest, are made the object of seminars and dissertations, of undergraduate lectures and post-doctoral research. The axioms of the transcendent in the arts of understanding and of judgment [...] are invested in the overnight."

Steiner, I presume, frowns on the Top Ten lists and "best of the decade" summaries as much as I do. I also believe that he would dismiss as "derivative or [of] passing interest" most (though not all) of the artists that Smith praises in her article. The cultural longevity of most on Smith's list is questionable, certainly alongside the likes of Alec Soth, Bill Viola, Matthew Day Jackson, Omer Fast, or Tom Uttech, all contemporary artists crafting intelligent and soulful artworks.

Smith writes, at the article's close, "In all, we are confronted with the distinct possibility that quantity and quality may not be so mutually exclusive after all. More means more better." That's very true. But more also means more bad, of course, which is why we today have an urgent need for critics, curators, and gallerists who, like Steiner and Donald Kuspit, are willing to reside outside the community, to avoid political entanglements, and to judge, sometimes harshly. To those critics, artists, and gallerists already plugged in, let's begin this decade, this arbitrary but useful marker in our human journey, with a renewed commitment (a resolution, if you prefer) to be more rigorous, contemplative, and socially committed. The art world, like the world at large, needs fixing, and responsible action is the only thing for it.

Happy Twenty-Ten. Here's hoping that it's healthy and auspicious.

Image credit: Ryan Trecartin, 2007

Holland Cotter's Unknowns

I enjoyed reading "The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!," Holland Cotter's sometimes scathing New York Times farewell to contemporary art's reckless past decade. Cotter describes the art world as a "full-service marketing industry [built] on the corporate model," and he sees art schools as a branch of this money-hungry industry. In his estimation, critics, curators and other art world operators are "public relations specialists who provide timely updates on what desirable means." With these stark observations in mind, Cotter asserts that "a financial scouring can only be good for American art."

"The Boom Is Over" likely raised the ire of many artists and dealers. A commenter on Edward Winkleman's blog characterized Cotter as "out of touch" and guilty of perpetuating a "fabled myth," and I wouldn't be surprised if more online dismissals and condemnations of Cotter's article appear in coming days. That's a shame. I don't believe that the article is intended to titillate or to offend.

Cotter's description of our prodigal art world brings to mind artist and critic Robert Morgan's caution not to mistake glamour for substantive beauty.

"Beauty is not glamour. Most of what the...art world has to offer is glamour. Glamour, like the art world itself, is a highly fickle and commercially driven enterprise that contributes to...the 'humdrum.' It appears and disappears...No one ever catches up to glamour."

Because I call on Morgan's rather romantic position, some readers will immediately decide that, like Cotter, I'm guilty of perpetuating a myth. If so, it is a vital myth. The beauty that Morgan exalts is complicated and profound. I have in mind philosopher poet John O'Donohue's conception of beauty.

"Beauty induces atmosphere and spirit: wonder, delicious turbulence, love, longing and a trembling delight....Beauty inhabits the cutting edge of creativity - mediating between the known and the unknown, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, visible and invisible, chaos and meaning, sound and silence, self and others."

O'Donohue defines a soulful beauty, a beauty that springs from generous attempts to be and to belong.

Although many of the artworks offered for sale at art fairs or on auction blocks are born of beautiful striving, art fairs and auctions are never, themselves, beautiful. And because fairs and auctions are the events most representative of the contemporary art world, Cotter's harsh language seems reasonable. He's right; "during the present decade [art] has become a diminished thing."

I sense that Cotter wants the Times article, a dismal record of a profligate art world, to serve as license for artists, dealers, curators and critics (Cotter's own tribe) to ruminate on their standing. He hopes that the result of that rumination would be an open-hearted embrace of the artist's vital social role (and the art world's part in facilitating that). It is edification, above all, that interests Cotter.

"With markets uncertain, possibly nonexistent, why not relax this mode, open up education? Why not make studio training an interdisciplinary experience, crossing over into sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, poetry and theology? Why not build into your graduate program a work-study semester that takes students out of the art world entirely and places them in hospitals, schools and prisons, sometimes in in-extremis environments, i.e. real life?...Such changes would require new ways of thinking and writing about art, so critics would need to go back to school, miss a few parties and hit the books and the Internet....[If] there is a crisis, it is not a crisis of power; it's a crisis of knowledge. Simply put, we don't know enough..."

Amen.

But I think that Cotter should have included an addendum. Speaking in generalities can be valuable, but the excess and superficiality of the art world's recent history hasn't tainted all artists, dealers, curators and critics. Certainly, there are "thousands of groomed-for-success [art school] graduates" who have made contemporary art into something "proliferating but languishing," but there are also, as ever, many individuals pushing toward O'Donohue's complicated beauty. Some admirable artists and dealers experienced great success in the boom market of the late nineties and oughties. Perhaps they wouldn't have flourished without the opportunities afforded them by the fattened industry? Artists have always had an uneasy relationship with commodity, and there's little sense in championing lean times over relative abundance.

We're now living through an socio-economic upheaval that is quite nearly global. Such rapid and widespread change should, as Cotter expects, force a significant number of artists to conscientiously reexamine their ideals. But let's not delude ourselves. The opportunity for reflection and mindful action wasn't precluded by the excesses and superficialities of boom time. Although some artists, dealers, curators, critics and hangers-on acted improperly because the environment encouraged bad behavior, most did so because they wanted to. So even as I cheer Cotter's call for us to "[imagine] the unknown and the unknowable," to raise up "new ways of thinking and writing about art," and to see artists blazing unexpected paths, I remind myself that the burden of proof falls foremost on the individual.

Image credit: ripped from Daily Serving

A Belated Sermon

A few days before I flew south to Brazil, an acquaintance asked me why I would choose to use my limited vacation time volunteering for manual labor. I was distracted by last minute travel preparations, and my answer was inadequate and perfunctory, but I recalled her question this week and decided that I should address it.

We live, as we're so often reminded, in an age of global interconnectivity. Every year, millions of people (of a certain means) visit far flung places. Recreation and relaxation are their priorities. Excluding work-related trips, contemporary travel is less about the destination than it is escape; we flee our mundane existence. Although this attitude is an indication of pervasive ennui, there's nothing wrong with taking a break from the hectic schedules and frivolous intrigues of contemporary living. Indeed, it's essential that we find time to enjoy life, but we needn't travel to do so; we can center our lives without leaving home. This approach is sometimes called a "stay-cation."

Furthermore, although most people think of a vacation as an opportunity to take stock and de-stress, it's usually anything but. We travel to places where the local "recreation" feeds our consumer impulses, and "relaxation" is centered around food and drink. After all, we associate the word "vacation" with overfull shopping bags on the Champs-Elysees or mojitos on the beach. The vacation is, above all else, a recess from guilt. We sleep too much, eat too much, spend too much...and revel in the excess. Away from our community, we discard our moral compass. What happens in Costa Rica stays in Costa Rica.

Yet some of us insist, sincerely, that we don't travel for escapist reasons and, furthermore, that it is irresponsible to do so. We cite as our impetus the geography and culture of the chosen destination. The trouble is, you don't "know" a place by sight-seeing. A guided stroll away from the cruise ship or a double-decker bus tour only superficially acquaint the tourist with the place they visit. To be fair, you don't really know a place until you live there, and for some years at that.

Unfortunately, none of us has enough years to live in all the places we'd like to "know," so visits have to suffice. The best way to make the visit (and the place) memorable is to participate more fully in local life. And what better way to participate than to work alongside people who do live there?

Consider, too, that the infrastructure international travel requires - the true price, if you will - necessitates that the conscientious traveler give something back to the destination community. In other words, travel isn't just about your having fun or relaxing (again, you can do this at home), but about being exposed to a new place, new people, and new ideas.

Groups like the Sierra Club, Earthwatch, Global Volunteers, and others(1) offer travel/work opportunities. More people should take advantage of these trips. Volunteers interact directly with the local culture and assist with valuable work. As a result, the trip is more meaningful (and, as an added bonus, it costs less than conventional tourism).

(1) Visit the travel page at idealist.org for an impressive list of volunteer travel opportunities.

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2007

Dreaming of Release

Steve Mumford
"The AK-47 Round, Squad from Bravo Company takes cover during a nighttime patrol after a shot is fired nearby"
2003
Watercolor wash

Last night I dreamt that I was listening to dispatches from Iraq on the radio. By now we're all familiar with such reports: "A car bomb exploded in Fallujah today, killing three marines and injuring twelve civilians." But in my dream, I wasn't painting in my studio or cooking dinner in my kitchen while listening to the unhappy news. I was instead sitting on a second-story porch in Baghdad, with three Iraqis and an American soldier for company. In front of me, on the floor of the porch, rested a helmet. Instead of the standard steel pot, this helmet was formed from frosted glass. Realizing that it belonged to me, I anxiously wondered if all my body armor was equally delicate.

The radio reports of bombings and fire fights ran together endlessly. The Iraqi man to my right whittled at a bit of wood and one of his friends savored tea from a pot that sat on a small stool. From our elevated vantage point, I watched the bustle of Baghdad street life. Over the radio and the murmur of the people below, we could hear the crackle of approaching gun fire.

The dream was soaked in yellows, browns and whites, the muted colors of our western conception of the Middle East. Gradually, this monochromatic scheme clued me in to the unreality of the scene. This, I realized just before I awoke, isn't war. This is only me dreaming of reclaimed immediacy, a longing for direct engagement with my surroundings and the associated stretching of time experienced when the conscious being is forgotten and the animal acts alone.

I believe that the dream was inspired by three things. In the hour before I went to sleep, I admired a photograph of sculptor Joseph Zito's glass helmet in Art in America and, in the same magazine, read artist Dawn DeDeaux's account of her return to New Orleans one month after Hurricane Katrina. DeDeaux writes,

"Katrina is the indifferent manifestation of a weather pattern to be measured in centuries, not seasons. Thinking in such meteorological time, biblical scale and mythic proportion, contemporary art is the smallest speck of time, and I am wiped off the map."

I also spent some time yesterday thinking about my father's struggles with his current book project, an account of his two tours in Vietnam, his wartime work for the RAND corporation, and his experiences as a key translator of Vietnamese at the Paris Peace Talks. My father is the author of over thirty books, the majority of which deal with conservation and natural history. Some of these earlier books were long in coming, but none seemed so difficult as the current one. I'm convinced that the shift in subject matter is responsible.

I've rarely seen my father cry. Excusing tears brought on by the Hollywood dream machine, his recollections of Vietnam are usually responsible. "Over there," he sometimes found himself "in the shit," as Max Fisher would put it. Details are only reluctantly shared, but he saw some terrible things, both "on the ground" and in the control room. I've never pressed him for the whole truth, but I look forward to reading his story when the book is completed.

My father's negative experiences in Vietnam and his relatively leftist political leanings didn't stop him from encouraging me to enter the military, however. When I came of age, I gave the Army some thought - even though my father was a Navy man, I believed that I could more quickly become a trained helicopter pilot by entering the larger force - but ultimately decided service was not for me. I was not adrift; I knew that I wanted to be an artist and so concluded that the military would just delay my vocation. I finished undergraduate schooling never having joined ROTC, and I rarely second guess that decision.

But last night's dream points to an experiential void, one that sometimes haunts me in the city. In the country, at least, time spent outdoors, observing animal behavior and other natural phenomena, sustains my desire for immediacy. Furthermore, hunting, infrequent though the practice has become in my life, confirms that I am still alive, that I am still connected to the animal I murder, butcher and consume. (The move from country to city was added motivation to give up meat and fish - except that for which I am personally responsible.) Here in the city I am coddled, things feel "taken care of" and life becomes routine, punctuated only by late nights of inebriation. Silly errands take on unwarranted import in such a setting. Self importance is the order of the day and any sense of interconnectedness that one has cultivated evaporates, forcing many urbanites to turn to yoga or some other activity that might enable them to reconnect with real time.

I'm grateful that my day job is in a building which overlooks the East River. I can watch the wakes of passing ships slap at the reinforced perimeter of Roosevelt Island, pushing imperceptibly at the foundation, while the herring gulls circle and dip above, their predatory eyes on the look out for some scrap of thoughtlessly discarded food. This scene allows me a glimpse of the time scale that DeDeaux described, what she calls "meteorological time" or "mythic proportion." This moment is connected with the vast expanse.

When young men dream of war, they are entertaining thoughts of self destruction; more precisely, they dream of destroying the ego, wishing for it to be replaced by the group experience, by the animal drive, by the eyes of the hungry herring gull. This same erasure is achieved in times of crisis. That which is not of immediate relevance falls away, and the individual's decisions are dominated by the lower and mid brain, the portion residing at the top of the brain stem (including the amygdala, pons and medulla oblongata).

Recent events along the Gulf Coast of the United States and in Pakistan remind us of this reality. In her essay, "The Uses of Disaster," (published in Harper's Magazine) Rebecca Solnit addresses this precedence.

"This joy - this unspoken and perhaps unspeakable relief in disaster - also hints at an unfamiliar version of human nature...In his 1961 study, 'Disasters and Mental Health: Therapeutic Principles Drawn from Disaster Studies,' sociologist Charles Fritz asks an interesting question: 'Why do large-scale disasters produce such mentally healthy conditions?' One of the answers is that a disaster shakes us loose of ordinary time. 'In everyday life many human problems stem from people's preoccupation with the past and the future, rather than the present,' Fritz wrote. 'Disasters provide a temporary liberation from the worries, inhibitions, and anxieties associated with the past and the future because they force people to concentrate their full attention on immediate moment-to-moment, day-to-day needs.' This shift in awareness, he added, 'speeds the process of decision-making' and 'facilitates the acceptance of change.'"

I need not fight in a war - especially one that I am opposed to - to achieve such a shift in awareness, but living in the city does prioritize ego over the live animal.

I'm happy to be heading home for Thanksgiving this year. I look forward to taking a long walk and to being outside at first and last light.

Photo credit: reproduction of Steve Mumford's artwork ripped from Artnet.com

Context Is A Curious Thing

When I first heard Daft Punk's popular single, "Technologic," I assumed the French duo intended to satirize or critique our contemporary, wasteful attitudes. Over a straightforward marching guitar and bass line, a robotic voice fires commands at us relentlessly.

"Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Trash it, change it, melt - upgrade it,
Charge it, pawn it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick - erase it,
...
Name it, rate it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax - rename it,
Touch it, bring it, obey it, watch it,
Turn it, leave it, stop - format it."

Intrigued by the simple, catchy track, I found the associated music video online. The video's concept confirms that Daft Punk intend "Technologic" as a condemnation of our consumptive ways. In the video, a skeletal robot with human gums and teeth watches itself on television. The televised robot delivers the track's "lyrics" from a pulpit-like position in a geometric world dominated by red skies and black mountains. The minimal treatment and the color choices call to mind fascist regimes, making explicit the critique.

Enter Apple. Once a relatively small company sustained by a devoted minority of computer users, Apple is now an industry Big Boy, thanks to the success of its iPod. The colorful iPod television commercials are by now familiar to most of us living in the United States or Europe. Currently, Apple is using Daft Punk's "Technologic" as the accompanying music for one of these television spots. Watching silhouettes of hip, urban youth dance to a song about disposability, the track no longer critiques; it now celebrates.

iPods are not known for their durability. Distressingly, most iPod owners of several years are working on their second or third unit. Sure, I'm holding on to my old, broken model until I can find a way to recycle its parts safely, but I have a feeling that many people just toss broken iPods into the trash. Not only is such a practice dangerous - iPods, like computers, are filled with toxins and metals that, once leaked, have been linked to environmental problems and human illness - but the very act itself represents a turn towards carelessness. Just as the slob who drops litter on the subway tracks or tosses an empty soda can out the car window accepts less responsibility with each such action, so too does the contemporary consumer of disposable technology. This is precisely the sort of irresponsible behavior Daft Punk highlights with "Technologic," but Apple turns the message on its head, making it a gleeful anthem for those who don't give a shit about anything except their entertainment. I can't help but think of the lyrics to another, more dated pop song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

"With the lights out it’s less dangerous
Here we are now
Entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now."

Photo credit: Top, still from Daft Punk's "Technologic" video; Bottom, still from Apple iPod commercial

The End Is Here?

Living in New York City, one quickly grows accustomed to "architectural advertising." Advertisements for gyms, perfumes, record labels, clothing, books, radio stations, television programs, and movies are plastered on subway station walls, phone kiosks, city buses, taxi cabs, and many building facades. In the course of my five years here, I've come to view this colorful assault as a less offensive version of the billboarding of America's highways. The integration of product placement into the urban landscape not only makes more sense, it is also more easily ignored.

With so much visual competition, an ad agency has to come up with a good pitch to standout. For the past month, the new NBC series "Revelations" has been heavily promoted via architectural advertising. Most noticeable are the Metropolitan Transit Authority buses covered (excepting the windows) in an apocalyptic sunset. "The End Is Here," the text proclaims as an evening flight of ravens lifts above a stoic Bill Pullman and Natasha McElhone. The first time I saw one of the "Revelations" buses, I stared after it as it groaned north up Third Avenue. Several times, over the course of the next week, I caught myself involuntarily shaking my head as I passed a "Revelations" poster in a subway station or audibly "tsk-tsking" when I opened a newspaper and was confronted by an advertising spread heralding the mini-series.

What was it that so unsettled me? As a science fiction fan who, for the most part, has a deep respect for thoughtful religiosity, I was surprised by my negative reaction. Upon watching the (disappointing) first episode of "Revelations," though, I realized that it wasn't so much the program's concept that bothered me as it was the advertising itself. After all, a growing number of evangelical Christians believe that the Rapture is imminent. Visit RaptureReady.com and you'll learn that increases in drug abuse, unemployment, environmental degradation, inflation, natural disasters, starvation, and sloth are all desired, even promoted, by Rapturists! The more of these terrible abuses and tragic events, the more the stage is set for Christ's triumphant return. This may be good for the blindly religious Christians among us, but it is not a good thing for a secular democracy, especially the one in which Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" protects those of us who are atheistic, agnostic, or members of a religious minority from the tyranny of theocratic nationalism. So why is NBC promoting the tribal apathy associated with Rapturist belief? The bottom line.

Folks who troll the "eco-blogosphere" have likely read a transcript of Bill Moyers' remarks upon accepting the Harvard Medical School's Global Environmental Citizen Award. It makes for troubling reading and, though I do my best to concentrate on environmental success stories, the doom and gloom is difficult to ignore, no matter what "The Death of Environmentalism" authors prescribe.

From Moyers' address:

"Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the "Left-Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

[...] I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. [...] Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer - the road to environmental apocalypse. Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

[...] As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups."

Moyers feels strongly about what he is witnessing and his tone is reactionary and not without hyperbole. As a result, some readers, particularly those predisposed to disagree, will write off his statement as the rant of a now impotent journalist. This is unfortunate. Although I think the political influence of evangelical Rapture-types may be slightly exaggerated in Moyers's address, it should not be ignored. More critically, what of the popular element? With the box office success of Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," some media critics have begun to call this the "religious entertainment era." Religious entertainment? Upon first hearing this label I immediately thought of the Middle Ages, when religious entertainment was at its pinnacle. It is difficult to imagine 21st century America regressing to such a degree. Or is it?

Jonathan Storm writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer, "lavish and well-made, 'Revelations' sadly seems little more than a cynical grab for the zeitgeist, exploiting the popularity of 'The Passion of the Christ' and 'The Da Vinci Code.' It may attract a big initial audience, curious to see a TV blockbuster pushing the idea that the end is near."

That there exists a "big initial audience" for books, films or television programs "pushing the idea that the end is near" is frightening! It highlights the importance of Moyers's question, "What has happened to our moral imagination?" Are we truly a nation content to be force-fed apathy while participating in an orgy of narcotic consumption? Is there really, as Moyers suggests, an absence of "hocma - the science of the heart?" (The hocma Moyers references is one of Kabbalah's ten Sephirot; it is more often spelled chokhmah, or chochmah, and the best translation is "wisdom.")

I'm presently rereading my father's 1983 Pulitzer Prize nominee, Wanderer on My Native Shore. At the end of the first chapter, which focuses on coastal Maine, he writes,

"...as I contemplate the purple majesty of Cadillac Mountain, I feel an awe for its origins mingled with wonder for human optimism. On one hand, our capacity for hope has created marvelous machinery for drilling through the sea floor. On the other hand, this same optimism has generated laws to protect the eagles soaring over Cadillac Mountain.

Life may, indeed, be a dream, and the best efforts of all mankind may be nothing more than brief shadows on a granite dome. Yet isn't our persistent stretching for perfection in the face of inevitable death what touches humanity with divinity?

Our greatness lies not in our sense of humor or intelligence, for other creatures besides man exhibit humor and intelligence. Our greatness lies in our knowing that, although we are doomed, we still want to fashion a better arrowhead or drill bit, and that men may devote themselves to preserving a hard, but productive, way of life as well as eagles drifting on the winds of time."

Well said, Dad. What worries me, though, is the sense that we seem to care less and less about that stretching. Overwhelmed by consumer choices and our slavish routines, apathy has become pandemic. Rather than try to shake the blues, we proclaim the sickness a sign of the apocalypse and, content to wait, pop pills and watch the TV...'cuz Jesus gonna be here, gonna be here soon.

Photo credit: image ripped from inetours.com

In Brief: Taxonomy, Natural Selection, "Pets"

Chris, at Organic Matter, offers this thoughtful post about taxonomy, one of my favorite messes. The current debate over species organization is concerned with two possible modes of classification. The Biological Species Concept (BSC) is based on breeding potential (that is, if duck A can make a duckling with Duck B, the two birds are the same species). The BSC results in fewer distinct species, but some biologists insist that it is overly simplified. The Phenetic and Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC) are based on distinct characteristics, both genetic or physiological; it makes for many more distinct species, but requires an extensive overhaul of the current arrangement. Still other biologists call for a unitary, web-based alternative, a kind of Wiki-taxa open to all users, but designed and funded by an international committee of serious taxonomists. Whatever system biology opts for, confusion is likely to remain constant for a long while. What will such biological debates mean for conservation biology at large? Politicians love simple answers to complex questions; taxonomy, like most sciences, has few simple answers...unless, of course, we fudge the science. (See also Dave Roberts' post at Gristmill.)

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Observable instances of natural selection don't get much better than this. In the November 29, 2004 issue of PNAS (Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences), Ben Phillips and Richard Shine published this study (unfortunately, you can only read the abstract) on the effect of cane toads (Bufo marinus), an introduced species, on native Australian snake populations. Because the toads are large and toxic when full grown, snakes capable of swallowing the adult cane toad are more likely to be poisoned. Since the introduction of the cane toad in 1935, snake head sizes have been gradually shrinking relative to body size. You gotta love this stuff! Those folks dunderheaded enough to still decry evolutionary theory are also missing out on the fun!

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Are you into exotic pets? If so, you're not alone. With nearly 7,000 tigers kept as pets and only 2,500 remaining in the wild, it's clear that more and more people are bringing wild animals into their homes. As a keeper of multiple pythons and, at various times throughout my life, Northern flying squirrels, European starlings, Eastern box turtles, snapping turtles, and several species of snake, frog, and toad, I understand the desire to keep wild animals in captivity. One can learn a lot about animal behavior and develop a life long love of other species. But I think it cruel in all but the most exceptional cases and, although I'd like to keep a starling or crow again, I view these animals less as pets than as creatures in my care. (Reptiles and amphibians, if reasonably sized, do fairly well in captivity, but I get very upset when I see a reptile owner being careless with temperature/humidity control or mishandling the animal.) Their needs are often specific and unusual and I fear most people purchasing a caracal or kinkajou don't think about long-term commitment; these animals are impulse buys.

I'm reminded of the "Mr. Show" "Sulu the Iguana" skit in which David Cross gets angry at his "pet" iguana for knocking over his bong, beats it to death with an encyclopedia, and then sobs over the reptile's body. Undaunted in his quest to be the most "original" pet owner, however, David buys a "real, live albino boy" to replace the iguana. Funny though it may be, it accurately depicts the selfish impetus of many exotic pet owners.

ANWR Drilling: Politics, Not Pragmatism

"But if Mr. Bush's drilling plan passes in Congress after what is expected to be a fierce fight, it may prove to be a triumph of politics over geology.

Once allied, the administration and the oil industry are now far apart on the issue. The major oil companies are largely uninterested in drilling in the refuge, skeptical about the potential there. Even the plan's most optimistic backers agree that any oil from the refuge would meet only a tiny fraction of America's needs."

-Jeff Gerth, NY Times, February 21, 2005

The major oil companies have admitted that they are skeptical about the amount of oil under the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. A rational citizen would therefore assume that the Bush administration would opt to let sleeping dogs lie. If even the oil companies have lost interest, why further incense those of us who are opposed to the proposed drilling and exploration?

There are two answers to that question. First, simply because the administration can; our myopic, irresponsible president wants to line the pockets of his cronies, no matter the long-term cost. Secondly, because ANWR isn't about oil anymore.

The administration views ANWR not as battle between environmentalists and realists (though they certainly couched the debate in these terms a year ago)*, but as a fight between environmentalists and the Bush agenda. Should ANWR be opened for "explorative drilling," Bush will have won a symbolic victory and more political capital.

*Let's not forget that the Bush administration implied our energy policy under Clinton was weak in large part because the United States depended too much on foreign oil. Opening ANWR to drilling, they explained, would one day give us local reserves greater than those of Iraq.

The first assertion is absolutely true; we do depend too much on foreign sources of oil. For that matter, we depend too much on oil, period. The second assertion sounded bogus then and, judging by the quickly waning interest of the big boys, is proving to be so now.

Photo credit: A.W. Barnhart, Copyright 1999