“Places not worth caring about” May 28, 2009
Posted by Joshua in Car Culture, Society/Culture, Suburbanization.add a comment
In a recent post, I mentioned the writer/social critic, James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler is probably one of the most intense critics of suburban sprawl in the United States. He has gone so far as to call it, “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” As a born and bred, former suburbanite myself, I share many of Kunstler’s critical views of suburbia and what he calls the “happy motoring fiesta” in the U.S., and have written a little bit on the topic on this blog in the past, mainly here and here.
I recently stumbled upon an insightful and very funny TED Talk he did a few years ago that ties in quite nicely with the points in my last post about the public sphere and civil society (video embedded below). While he argues in this talk that, “We’re going to have to down-scale, re-scale, and re-size virtually everything we do in this country and we can’t start soon enough to do it,” because he believes we are heading into “the end of the cheap oil era,” the underlying theme of his speech (and argument for why our suburbia is so bad) is actually closely related to the points Benjamin Barber makes about civil society (as I mentioned in the last post). The difference is, Barber focused primarily on the particular human elements of civic life: forums, organizations, institutions, and the like. Kunstler argues here that, actually, the quality and character of such civic life is directly connected to the way we design and build our social environments.
Kunstler speaks of the correlation between how well we define space with architecture and the health or even the very existence of meaningful public spaces and the public life to go along with them. What should be the function of such public spaces, or of the “public realm” in general? For Kunstler it has “two roles: It is the dwelling place of our civilization and civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good.” But, he argues, particularly speaking of our sprawling suburbia, we have become so bad at defining space toward these ends that we now essentially have a nation full of many “places that no one wants to be in…places that are not worth caring about.”
Kunstler goes on to say,
The public realm has to inform us not only where we are geographically, but it has to inform us where we are in our culture. Where we’ve come from, what kind of people we are, and…by doing that, it needs to afford us a glimpse to where we’re going in order to allow us to dwell in a hopeful present.
When I heard that, I was reminded of a trip my wife and I took a few years ago shortly before we were married. We drove a packed U-Haul from her parents’ house in Massachusetts to Alabama. Somewhere along the way (maybe it was in Virginia?), we pulled off the interstate and stopped at some monster outdoor shopping center – the likes of which seem to be popping up all over the country, all with a strikingly similar feel and many of the same stores, as they affect cartoon images of public spaces. We didn’t really know where we were, and there wasn’t anything unique or distinct about this particular place to inform us. We jokingly remarked that we were in “Anywhere, U.S.A.” This has been a common experience for me throughout suburban America. Passing countless strip malls on highways in other cities and states, I have often been reminded directly of other places I’ve been through, but not able to recall exactly what place that was or where, much less know exactly where I was at the time.
Personally, I think the social and political implications of all of this are very significant, and the consequences seem quite evident. Patrick Deneen, writing about the recent “tea parties,” argued that at their root was a basic, unarticulated frustration, because currently,
we are…more subject to titanic forces over which we exercise little if any control, and frustrated at the sense of impotence and irrelevance that the impersonality and massness of modern political and economic life thrusts inescapably upon us.
Deneen then goes on to say, “The tea parties were wildly incapable of articulating the true sources of this frustration…”
I think Kunstler has certainly identified at least one source of it, in that – to paraphrase him – our “bad urbanism” and suburban sprawl have degraded the quality of our public realms and likewise, of our public lives, leaving the common good without local, tangible manifestation. In the process we have become more and more separated from one another, from actual communities, and from the mechanisms and processes backing modern life, thus heightening alienation, apathy, and a general sense of irrelevance.
I’d venture to say that many people feel the frustration of which Deneen writes, but I think many of them fail to make the deeper connections that can be made from Kunstler’s criticism of our disconnecting and debilitating sprawl. As a result, they fail to see that the kind of living we’re widely engaged in is built upon and requires more and more distant, centralized, and bureaucratic forms of power which we have very little say in or ability to influence. It seems that our best counter to this is our capacity to come together publicly to revitalize communities in pursuit of common goods, needs, and communal goals. But our ability to do this very thing is undermined and discouraged by the ways we have chosen to spread out and degrade our places of living.
Before I embed the video, I’ll leave you with this part of his closing statement, which I particularly like. Benjamin Barber has made this exact same point, and I will revisit it soon:
Please, please, stop referring to yourselves as “consumers.” OK? Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings. And as long as you’re using that word consumer in the public discussion, you will be degrading the quality of the discussion we’re having. And we’re gonna continue being clueless going into this very difficult future that we face.
Moot May 23, 2009
Posted by Joshua in Political Commentary/Statements, Society/Culture.add a comment
It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish, and we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.
It seems like it has been an age since I wrote anything on this blog, much less (until about two months ago) actually read the blogs/news I used to read regularly. In December, my body forced me to completely slow down pretty much right up until school was in full swing again in January. And here I am, just now beginning to write again, amazed that an entire semester has gone by. I’m not fully sure why, but I just wasn’t able to get back into any sort of an extracurricular reading/writing routine during this time. This was probably for the best as far as my schooling goes, but it is certainly a shame that I haven’t been in a very good position to comment intelligently on current affairs during this rather eventful time.
Besides the constant shortage of time, I think part of my reluctance to sit down and write has had something to do with a general ambivalence I’ve been feeling toward our politics and culture on the whole. Shortly after I wrote the last two posts concerning the election, I felt certain that some would see what I wrote as naive and unrealistic propaganda. And perhaps I began to think this, because there is some cynical/fatalistic part of me that worries that may be true to some extent. But then there is certainly a large part of me that still has belief in those sentiments and holds out hope for such healthy democratic society. That is not to say, however, that I don’t have a healthy skepticism of politics and power and the enormity of it all (though it is certainly not merely governmental power that concerns me), nor do I fail to see that our two dominant parties seemingly share many of the same general assumptions, though disagreeing a bit on the path and the means. In truth, I am concerned with many of our dominant cultural assumptions and aspirations for what seems to amount to limitless material growth, consumption, and atomization; all of which I think need to be questioned, discussed, and reassessed far more and in far deeper ways than is now being done in the main. And unfortunately, too few of those who dominate our “left” and “right” seem interested in doing this in any fundamental or significant way.
So where do we look? It is a complicated question, no doubt. As I have shown, I do have strong sympathies with the movements and ideas that have crafted our contemporary idea of “liberalism”/progressivism (and, of course, in a general sense, we are all pretty much liberals to some extent). And I have been increasingly angered by the band of vitriolic and reactionary so-called “conservatives” (and the lack of a resolute opposition to them) in this country that seem more interested in whining and obstructing and trampling all over whatever capacity we have politically for locating the civil and humane (or to clean up their mess) than bringing something of value and reason to the table.
In an interesting contrast, though, I do think we have some classically conservative-minded social critics (such as Wendell Berry, Patrick Deneen, et al.), that are very much worth paying attention to. Such critics might be called “traditionalists” or “localists,” or some such thing, for their emphasis on the importance of acknowledging limits and reestablishing culture, the communal, and the traditional on the local, small scale as counters to the individualistic placelessness and deracination that characterizes much of our society and has left us with a rather disjointed, alienating, and wastefully designed environment. These critics are certainly distrustful of very large and distant bureaucratic government, sure. But, unlike those who generally pass for “conservative” in the mainstream, they are actually quite conscious of the social/communal and environmental implications necessarily contained in the term (root word = conserve), and are quite critical of the sometimes difficult-to-see destructiveness attendant with market forces and the concentration of private power, bureaucratic or otherwise, as well. While I’m not yet sure how far I’m willing to go with such thinkers politically, I value their voice largely because they provide a rare, genuine and spiritual consideration of what is truly of value in the face of a world where everything and everyone become ever more and more defined by overwhelming, insatiable commercialization and acquisitiveness.
So perhaps there is quite a lot to be said for social critics standing somewhat outside of our largely unhelpful left/right dichotomy. Actually, we seem to have a fair share of critics these days – well, on the internet at least. There are even some generally assigned to the political left, such as James Howard Kunstler, who articulate a social critique very similar to the above-mentioned critics. But these kinds of critics (Deneen, Kunstler, et al.) seem to differ significantly from some others (some anti-state “libertarian” free marketeers come to mind) whose criticism is almost entirely leveled at government while they otherwise unabashedly praise capitalism and consumerism – come what may – resting on their unwavering, dogmatic faith in “the market” and “sovereign individuals/property owners” – if left fully to their own devices – to sort out what is best. There is a lot I could write, and will as time goes on, about the significance I see in this contrast. But this is not quite the purpose of this post.
The point here is, I generally am interested in challenges and changes to our current system; our current assumptions; our current dominant values; etc. But of course I have my own complicated bias and predisposed ideas of what I’d like to see, even while I remain somewhat open-minded and somewhat undecided. And I’m learning to be perfectly ok with that. As Bertrand Russell wrote,
“the essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”
Certainly, that is a key attribute in politics and for realistically engaging the mixed-up complexities of our society, so full of complications, myriad concerns, varying conditions, unintended consequences, and inevitable exceptions.
So, I’m interested in pragmatically seeking out decent solutions as well as continually assessing the values we are or should be applying to the solutions we seek for the problems we face. But I am not particularly interested in what ought to work or not work according to some axiomatic ideologic system or dogmatic rigidity. In fact, I’m beginning to think that “isms,” particularly the ways they are popularly understood and bandied about – at best counterproductively and at worst falsely and meaninglessly – and our propensity to grasp at ideologies and present ourselves with false choices are large contributors to our recurring downfall.
Besides the fact that the real nature of modern “conservatism” has made the label itself a kind of sick joke, there is perhaps no better example of the above than the silly way “conservatives”/Republicans and others are now fearfully throwing around (without clear definition) warnings of “socialism” and the dismantling of “capitalism.” It begs the question what exactly are these things supposed to mean or exactly look like anymore? In a general sense, of course, we understand the meaning, but also must be aware that the term “socialism” is mainly being used, as it long has been, in a broad, simplistic way to generate fear and create an us vs. them, or “collectivism” vs. “individualism;” “tyranny” vs. “liberty;” “slavery” vs. “freedom” sort of paradigm.
But this is just completely silly. Instead of genuine discussion about policy and reasoned, achievable proposals, we all too often get only selective, knee-jerk opposition in the form of platitudes and brandished labels (e.g., socialism), aimed at simply stirring up all general negative connotations and perceptions of such labels. Not only does this serve to block rational and realistic discussion about what we face and can or should publicly shape, but it creates false choices. Sure, areas of our system could conceivably have rather different socioeconomic orientations (and of course, we’ve long had and widely accepted public elements that are not deemed “socialistic”), but, no, that would not necessarily have to mean only what many ideological alarmists want you to think that would mean. We don’t seem to find ourselves in this always either/or situation in which the choice is either some cartoon, pure system image of this or that – “socialism” or “capitalism,” wherein such things can only behave in one certain way or lead to one particular end leaving us in either total enslaved ruin or free, prosperous happiness.
Even so our ideologues continue to loudly insist that this is so, as they trot out the faded memories of all the worst regimes saying, “It can happen here too, and this is how it starts!” All this even as all the “isms” and ideologies (which some love to talk about conveniently without ever defining) we are told are at our door look a little odd in actual practice as they are invariably bound to become a little disheveled and compromised in the face of political realities, and bits and pieces of their practical applications coexist or are fused to create our mixed and varied social landscape.
We need to find ways to move past our counterproductive, often illusory grasping at ideologies and understand that politics is all about compromise and consensus building (among other less desirable things), and would, therefore, benefit from a higher level of humble engagement and civil discourse. Of course that probably has a lot to do with why we dislike politics so much, why we would rather get and stay angry, and why some would like to dismiss it altogether. But all of this takes work, and, as ugly as it can be, I don’t think, as some seem to, that our answer is to simply wish for little to no government, nor can we afford to remain aloof from it. So for me, it seems we must proceed constructively toward politics, while also reclaiming the civically engaged and publicly responsible role of citizens over and above the siren call to be disengaged, self-centered consumers. And hopefully, as we attempt to affect change, we will find the serenity, courage, and wisdom of which Reinhold Niebuhr famously wrote.
More on all this in the coming months…
Radio Killed the Public Star May 24, 2009
Posted by Joshua in NPR, Political Commentary/Statements, Right Wing Radio, Society/Culture.2 comments
During my time away from this blog, which I covered briefly in the last post, I unfortunately fell into a pretty bad slump as far as intellectual inspiration goes. A couple months ago, two things helped pull me out of that. First, a professor of mine encouraged me to finally read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which is, by all counts, a remarkable book. Second, the same professor pointed me to a National Public Radio show called “Speaking of Faith.” I had never heard of it, because it isn’t aired in my neck of the woods, or, nation, as it were. But of course, the show can be heard on its web site or in podcast form.
The weekly program is dubbed, “public radio’s conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas.” My professor recommended the show after talking with me about Reinhold Niebuhr, and linked me to an episode that explored Niebuhr’s public theology. I was quickly drawn in by the artful nature of the show, and the thoughtful discussion therein of the rather challenging and nuanced political thought of this figure throughout his life. I’ve listened to a few other episodes since then that are also highly enriching and thought-provoking: of particular interest so far have been episodes “The Ethics of Eating,” on eating/living locally, and “An Architecture of Decency,” about Alabama’s own Rural Studio project aimed at economical, smart, and sustainable building in rural areas. The show also features a regular series called “Repossessing Virtue,” in which the current economic downturn is explored as a moral and spiritual crisis and, thus, a time to cultivate different thinking and grounding. It’s a wonderful idea, and altogether, it is a refreshing, humbling, and challenging show that is right up my abstract, open-ended thought process alley.
The funny thing is, when I listen to this kind of show, or other NPR shows like this, I can’t help but think about how right wing talk radio hosts love to include NPR on their “liberal media” hit lists, as if it is a counterpart to their kind of programming. Like many things that such hosts say, this begs many questions. Exactly what programming here is supposed to be considered “liberal” and why? Is it all programming or just the news? Certainly it’s not the classical music? Maybe it’s all that worldly, new-age music on Sunday nights? If it is the news or talk-based programs, is it because, for right wingers, there must be either a “conservative” or “liberal” bias in media, no middle ground, and NPR just doesn’t fit their blatantly partisan, ultra-nationalistic and jingoist framework, opting for a more nuanced, multicultural, and international flavor instead? Well I guess, given the choices, that makes them liberal. And, of course, I think to myself, if all of that makes a station liberal, then we need a lot more so-called liberal media.
But seriously, I’ve been dwelling quite a bit on the strong contrast between programs like “Speaking of Faith” and AM talk radio programs hosted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al. Particularly, I’ve been considering the potential implications the two different kinds of programs have for society, democracy, and even faith.
In his book, Jihad vs. McWorld, Benjamin Barber writes about regaining a proper idea of “the public.” He describes the “public voice” as being the voice of democratic citizens and “the voice of civil society, of citizens in deliberative conversation.” Thus, on the topic of talk radio and television media, he writes,
Why is this and what exactly makes a “citizen” and a “public?” Barber describes what he believes to be the proper idea (that has been largely lost) of the public and a citizen thusly,
He argues, then, that,
Barber’s book tackles a rather big subject, and I intend on returning to it in the future. But for now, suffice it to say, the thrust of his book is this: in the face of all-consuming, western capitalistic-style globalization and the sometimes violent, almost tribal-like backlash to it, what is needed is greater and stronger democracy. He doesn’t call for this to come through the barrel of a gun, however, but through the rebuilding of a healthy civil society, or “civic space,” which is to reside in “the middle ground between government and the private sector;” which democratic government and markets can both therefore be grounded by; and which “offers conditions for the creation of democratic citizens,” who, in turn, should be the foundation of democratic government.
With all of that in mind, Barber’s point that talk radio and the rapid-fire media it responds to and reflects upon are antithetical to “public talk” seems spot on. Though some of the aforementioned talk radio hosts give lip service to serving the public and American democracy (e.g., Rush Limbaugh likes to call himself “the Doctor of Democracy”), they really don’t seem to care much for the actual processes and application of democracy, nor do they encourage the kind of engagement and “deliberative conversation” among citizens necessary for a healthy public sphere.
Now perhaps some might say, “Wait a minute. Doesn’t talk radio encourage discussion, keeping people informed about, thinking about, and involved in political affairs, and isn’t that a good thing for democracy?”
Well, here’s the thing – actually, here are the few things:
First, as for talk radio’s talk, there is quite a distinctive difference between what Barber calls the “deliberative conversation” of citizens and “the divisive rant of talk radio.” In other words, one does not expect to turn on talk radio and hear actual conversations of a genuine and thoughtful nature in which the host might actually be reasonably interested in an exchange of ideas or encouraging true debate, cooperation, or problem solving, etc. Instead, you generally hear hosts insisting on their rightness on nearly all points on a program that amounts to an us vs. them sporting match or pep rally, in which people tune in not to have their thinking tested and challenged, but largely to hear a daily, religious dogma-like affirmation of already held assumptions and views.
Second, Barber contrasts his vision for a mediating civil society with the overshadowing and depoliticizing dichotomies that have come to shape our political perceptions instead; i.e., “the state versus the individual;” “government versus the private sector;” “the command economy versus the free market.” In my view, almost more than anything else, right wing talk radio voices daily end up distracting listeners from the mediating, empowering, and cooperative potentials of civic life by keeping these dividing dichotomies fresh in their minds as the central front in the war against “liberal Democrats.”
Third, to whatever extent such talk radio encourages political awareness and involvement, it, by and large, encourages a negative, limited, and stubbornly partisan kind of political action that mostly amounts to working to vote Republicans in/Democrats out every couple of years or embrace a massive resistance-style opposition to Democrats that are in power. At the same time, much talk radio is ironically also depoliticizing as it misleadingly portrays government as an outside force that must simply be separated, as much as possible, from the market and from individual aspirations. No positive public realm to see here.
Now I don’t know how many people actually give a damn about talk radio or take it seriously. But my guess is, the numbers are fairly high. And the extent to which it is successful is probably due in part to the sense of meaning and shared identity it can provide. But that meaning and identity is extremely exclusive and can often be unthinkingly partisan. This not only makes political talk more and more divisive and decent ideas for public solutions harder to come by; it largely precludes social respect, public thinking, and cooperation. Further, in lieu of the kind of “public talk” Barber wishes for, such talk radio and related media tend to co-opt public discourse, exchanging it for talking points, and diverting thought, time, and resources away to distracting and angry rhetorical battle lines.
What if we compare all this about talk radio to “Speaking of Faith” and similar public radio programming? I should note first that “Speaking of Faith” is actually a bit different categorically, in that it’s mostly interview-based and not primarily political. But what the show does (very much unlike talk radio), in a rare, patient manner, is attempt to synthesize many aspects of our society and individuality – be they political, economic, material, or spiritual, etc. – while considering how these things are informed by culture and different approaches to/understandings of faith/beliefs, and how we, in turn, can shape/inform these areas of life and society by the way we think about and approach them together. So not only does the show provide a model for “deliberative conversation,” or genuine and thoughtful public discourse; I think it also actually serves as an expression of true faith in action by a willingness to grapple with doubt and acknowledge our limited understanding, while also genuinely trying to reach a better and broader understanding. Talk radio, in contrast, is more of an expression of fundamentalism with desires to remove all ambiguity, complexity, nuance, and, indeed, any doubt at all from the picture.
It is no surprise then, that talk radio serves to divide, making people more prone to anger, fear, and defensiveness than to embrace a civic role, engage in genuine discourse, and offer meaningful ideas and proposals. And I am spending so much time writing on this, because it seems those effects of this kind of endless, noisy, and partisan barrage of distraction have become notably pervasive throughout substantial portions of our society in relation to politics.
Take, for example, the recent “Tea Party” protests. Though media figures consistently insisted that this was a genuinely “grassroots” and “nonpartisan” “movement,” it is unmistakably clear that this so-called “movement” was co-opted, if not engineered at times, by the right wing media machine, à la talk radio and Fox News, for clearly partisan purposes. So, in the first place, the “tea parties” lost whatever chances they might have had of intellectual integrity and being taken seriously. Instead, they came more to look like what other bloggers have aptly described as “tantrums” over the Republicans losing power; since, after all, where was such “outrage” at big government spending levels, big deficits, and the like when they were in power?
Beyond that, though, there is of course nothing wrong with such protests per se, except that they seemed to, on some level, reveal a frustration and disconnect that may be a result of the much deeper underlying problem in this nation of depoliticization and a lack of functioning democratic institutions through which citizens can have a public voice. Noam Chomsky has recently referred to this lacking as a “democratic deficit.” For example, speaking about the strong public opposition that at first prevented the first proposed bailout, Chomsky said,
And this brings me to what really bothered me about the “tea parties.” They seemed to lack any interest in either initiating a realistic discourse in the nation about its woes nor articulating any coherent, detailed opposition or anything of alternative proposals regarding taxes, government spending, bailouts, and whatever else was being complained about. This of course made it quite difficult to know exactly what it was the protesters were against or what exactly they were for. And, I must say, we mustn’t confuse the simple calls for “less government” with actual proposals – half-heartedly hoped for guiding principle or long term goal maybe, but that is absolutely not an actual specific proposal for the current situation at all, nor, understandably, is it now going to be widely perceived as even reasonable.
Maybe I am expecting too much of impassioned protesters. Still, my impression was always that the protests would not amount to much in the end, because they lacked a firm foundation and clear goals. But my larger point here is simply Chomsky’s point and Barber’s point. We have to do better. We have to have more than the occasional angry protest when we don’t think things are going our way. We need to somehow cultivate the public realm and reawaken our dusty public vocal cords through civil society and democratic institutions wherein we might actually invest ourselves and play a more active and thoughtful role. Instead, the “tea parties,” from what I could see, were eerily like mirror images of the ranting of talk radio. The end result looks to me like large groups of people who, looking through the lens of “the state versus the individual” dichotomy, seem to think they know what it is they do not want: more taxes; larger government; etc., but don’t seem to articulate well or fully understand what they do want instead. Perhaps more importantly, they do not seem to really consider what many people actually want overall as a society - and thus the reason for a public sphere - or how else to truly achieve that in our current system if it’s not going to be through “bigger government.”
What if these folks, instead of only selectively opposing and complaining about government when they think, for whatever reason, that government is overburdening them and their pocketbooks, or their children’s future pocketbooks, they – and all of us – were actually interested in sustained public discourse and action in the pursuit of truly public goods and public goals? As Chomsky points out in the video link above, with such public involvement, even things like government bailouts could possibly be made to directly serve public interests rather than private ones. But, oh, our talk radio demagogues would say, to do that would be even worse than a regular bailout, because, oh god, why, that would be “nationalization” and “socialism!” Thus, there is no other alternate proposal, only armchair opposition, as if it all might just go away. And then what happens? Unfortunately, yet predictably, it is done anyway, and wealthy private interests are the primary beneficiaries.
And therein lies my point. If we truly wish to figure out ways of locating and securing public goods and goals through civil society and a more responsive form of democracy through greater productive participation, then talk radio is not part of the solution but very much part of the problem. And to bring this full circle, back to “Speaking of Faith,” I guess I am also saying that I am very glad to know there are other radio programs out there that might actually provide us with both a better understanding of ourselves as social, political, and spiritual interconnected beings and a much better model for healthy and genuine public discourse that could help us set foot on a better path of mutual respect and cooperation.