Education as transformation versus transmission

The implications of critical social theory in regards to the definition of quality education are essential to the definition of quality education in and of itself. Quality is a difficult word to define and I look toward American philosopher Robert Pirsig to help me address it before entering into the discussion of what quality education would look like. In Pirsig’s own struggle to define the word quality, he suffered a mental breakdown, was institutionalized and received shock therapy. In the post-treatment life, his philosophy grappled with the dialectical struggle between the classical and romantic views of the world - the classical, or rational view, that had him seek an objective truth to define quality, and the romantic view that focused on whether or not said quality was experienced by the subject, Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. ... The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. For Pirsig, ultimately, he sees this tension as being the everything behind quality of x. Similarly, quality education would have to find that synthesis between the practical and transformative aspects of public education in the US today in light of the structural realities of said institution.
Quality education, through the lens of critical theory, would have to address the agency of the learner within the institution, as well as the institution itself. Philosophers such as Paolo Freire and John Dewey directly address the role of the individual learner within the classroom as being an active participant in their own development. A democratic classroom would engage students as agents of their own and not as vessels to be filled with knowledge. Theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault and Freire again all also address the structure of the institutions that for so long have perpetuated the continuation of an entrenched hegemony. A critical theorist viewing education would also need to consider the role of the teacher as well. The authority figure in the classroom, the teacher is an important figure for their ability to either continue to prop up a system or to work as an agent of change herself. Zeus Leonardo touches on the transformative role of the teacher when discussing Freire; he posits the teacher as an intellectual and a cultural worker. If the teacher is a believer in the perpetuance of a particular orthodoxy, such as American exceptionalism, their role may be limited to a transmitter of education, expecting students to be passive observers within their own educational experiences. However, if a teacher is well-versed in critical theory, their ultimate goal would be to allow students to engage directly in their own experience, which would also include examining information presented through a more critical lens. This may lead students to reject what is presented to them. The goal of the educator in this instance would be to provide students with the tools to ensure that they can unpack any information presented to them in a constructive way; to transform and utilize their education to suit their own ends, and with hope, to make the world better for others beyond themselves.
Teaching in a modern setting has made it evident that students have a lot of experience with knowledge transmission. They’re used to being seen as “empty vessels” ready to be filled up and in some respects, do not like the internal tension of not knowing something. Teachers may derisively call this having to spoon feed students what they need to know. If we could stop as educators and unpack that statement, we can see that perhaps we’re the misguided ones. How do we say what they need to know? To students, the quality education may be vastly different from what the institution or even society has laid out as essential. As a classroom teacher, I have to find ways to engage students with materials that may ultimately come to broaden their understanding of the world either now or in the future. As a Dewey disciple for many years, a practical approach to teaching has yielded results and shaped my practice. The Global Citizenship course I teach (and also designed) is labeled a practical arts class in the school coursebook. One of the units we venture into is budgeting, and along with it college and/or job exploration. While the students are only freshmen, their initial forays into the world beyond high school is eye-opening for them. We begin budgeting with little to no guidance from me (on purpose). As the students build their dream life on Zillow and write out their monthly expenses, I can see their anxiety levels rise and their questions end up flooding me until we have to stop so I can address their concerns. While completing this assignment, we have also held many discussions about what they value in life. I find that many students want to go to college because their parents want them to or because it’s expected by society (and our school, which puts great emphasis on a 4 year college experience). When I ask them to explain what their own interests are, they sometimes have either a completely different conception of what success looks like and/or are at a loss to tell me. It has made me wonder what we, as a society, are instilling in our students and for what purpose? To have them be successful or to have them join us all in an unsustainable experiment that ends with the destruction of the planet. The knowledge that they gain from even researching for a few class periods on their own is transformative for them. When we move into building resumes and holding mock interviews, I say very little about their job choices. There is no judgment by me that their desire to be a barber is any less valuable to society than someone else’s desire to be a neurosurgeon. Theoretically speaking, this is reflective of a critical theory approach because the idea that success looks a certain way is not only a fallacy, but continues to set students up for failure. It perpetuates a system that forces many Americans to live on the edge financially while yearning for something more fulfilling spiritually.

Now I Am Here

“The world is material. We are always in a certain place. Now I am here.” - Autumn, Karl Ove Knausgaard

As a Social Studies teacher, a wide variety of courses get thrown your way - geography, sociology, law, psychology, history, economics - it depends on the school and course offerings, but most of the 'soft sciences' end up being something one might encounter along a career in the profession. In my 6th year of teaching, I took on human geography; the intersection of human culture and development with geography. The course itself is a distillation of social studies in a way - covering everything from linguistic development to demographics to agricultural systems.The cultural landscape is something I had never really considered deeply, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense and ultimately became one of my favorite classes to teach. Something that struck me most when beginning to study the subject in order to teach it was the influence of place on linguistic development. The native peoples of the Arctic Circle civilizations have many words for winter conditions that speak to not only what's coming out of the sky, but the conditions on the ground and whether or not said conditions are conducive to walking about. The perceptive abilities of humans will never be fully translate-able into verbal expression, but necessity can lead to amazing feats of human creation. 

Thinking about the interplay of humans and their environments, I hold an affinity toward extreme landscapes and often, those who come from them (or at least, the art they produce while in them). When the land itself is not welcoming to person or a people, it does something to their understanding of the world. So many Americans live in prefabricated neighborhoods and are entirely engulfed by the man-made as to never have to encounter the frightening vastness Earth has to offer. Since high school, I've personally wanted to see the Mojave Desert. The starkness of the desert biome has been likened to an extraterrestrial one many times; perhaps that's a deeply anthropocentric view. We did not create such vacancy; in fact, such traits are anathema to a social primate's instinctual desire for proximity and comfort, but that does not mean such landscapes do not belong here. Standing alone in a desert (hot or cold) surrounded for miles by emptiness would send anyone into an existential crisis after a while. Hell, it'd even make people want to live in Las Vegas just to avoid the uncomfortable nothingness. Humans are not so different from the  rhesus monkeys in Harlow's infamous psychology experiments. Primates, and likely many other animals, would give up actual nourishment for psychological comfort and security. Of course this might be a stretch of an analogy, but there is a degree of truth to why so many of us choose to live in less than ideal surroundings in exchange for the access to convenience of modern living, for the comfort of conformity with other members of our species.

For those who know me and have heard me fangirl over the epigraph's author, Karl Ove Knausgaard, you may also be aware that Norway is one of those places that calls to me. The extreme landscape has not only produced one of my all-time favorite writers, but also some of my favorite musicians. There is a conservative, Lutheran culture in Norway that I would venture to guess all of these artists have chafed against to produce their craft, a point that could be dissected in and of itself at length. What links the expressions that come from this environment is their reverence for the physical world that surrounds them. Even within the intense focus on his own mind for Knausgaard's six volume "autobiographical" novel,his writing has an expansiveness to it. Here we are, mining the depths of the mind of a middle aged man, and somehow we're faced with the unity of all of our own consciousnesses. Whether we want to admit it or not, we've all secretly scowled through meetings or cursed our friends or resented the existence of our most cherished. That internal struggle to be outwardly compassionate and inwardly curmudgeonly is not reserved for his experience. And although his work is not some sort of revelation in the sense that it's exactly saying something new, it does break through the confines of what we are supposed to publicly admit and feel about those whom with we share our lives.  

I've also been reading David Wojnarowicz's In the Shadow of the American Dream, which is a collection of his diaries from his teens through his fame and ultimate death from AIDS. There's something about the America he describes that reminds me of now; a brokenness or failure of culture that marginalizes those who do not fit in. The definition of who doesn't fit in is always shifting -that's the game. Sometimes marginalized groups are brought into the fold and a new "other" appears. Whomever the other is, however, within that marginalization there is a sort of freedom to create and be who you are. Although, on the other side, being persecuted for the exact same reasons comes along with those spaces. In final diaries, he's dying of AIDS-related complications, feeling as though his body has betrayed him but also that others have as well by continuing to live their mundane lives while he's thrust into the existential crisis of death. Living through a virus-caused pandemic right now, it's chilling to think about all of the parallels to the continued horrors of not knowing what the virus will do to a human host - Kaposi's sarcoma in young men? Blood clots that kill? We've lived this before. But death remains the ultimate "othering" - we shunt the dead and dying off into margins of our minds, even when they're the ones we love. The vastness of death is that existential desert we just can't bear to look at. 

Early into this pandemic, there was a moment where Americans really did seem to be at the precipice of an awakening to being more accepting of the unknown. People were spending more time outside, driving less, consuming less. As the pandemic has worn on and become more and more a politicized weapon, whatever desire for change has faded not because people care less but because they are made to suppress their desire for revolution. The pull of modern life plays on our desire for comfort and provides emotional shelter from mortality. Constant talk about returning to life as we knew it forms a sort of nostalgia for the old (even if it only mere months ago). Covid deaths continue to climb; we tend to understand the threat less and less, as the numbers become more and more abstract the higher they go. Similarly, the environmental crisis that looms in our near future has also kept us from dealing directly with the problem. The problem is our way of life. We must change, not the environment. We are part of the environment and must remember all of the times it has humbled us - even if one hasn't ever seen a town laid to waste by a tornado or hurricane, maybe a beautiful sunset gave pause, or a giant clap of thunder rattled one's brain. 

Sojourning through a desert for years on end in search of answers isn't a reasonable expectation for most to have. However, opening one's self to accept the existential expanse that is all around us is feasible even within the confines of a suburban hellscape. 

Musical Epilogue:
 
Although they're not Norwegian, American greats Mastodon have encapsulated this vastness perfectly in the song below....

On Play

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
― Fred Rogers

For nearly four months, playgrounds have been closed. My four year old daughter cried for a half hour straight the day her favorite playground had caution tape over the gated entry. After reality set in that this might be for the long haul, she became accustomed to waving to "Gazebo Park" from afar and wondering aloud whether or not the birds and squirrels were appreciating the slides and swings while children took a break from it all. My in-laws immediately offered to buy her a play set for the backyard. I had one as a kid and have fond memories of playing on it - but my adult backyard is an awkward shape without as much open space for the set. Plus, once quarantining is over, the idea of being confined to our own property with our own things....? It's safe to say everyone's had enough of that.

So what's a kid to do in this environment? Well, we began to make new explorations part of our daily routine. Instead of the trip to a designated park where we generally knew what to expect, we would set off on our walks with a different goal in mind; these goals varied from taking pictures to observing insects (and especially ladybugs) to finding sea glass. The attempt has been to find the extraordinary in the ordinary - to focus on what we usually walk right by. When I walked with her, on a whim, to a hundred-plus year old stone bridge in the neighboring town, it awakened an obsession with travelling there a few times a week. Zillow gave us an excuse to walk by interesting homes that we'd already viewed the insides of online. The mini-polaroid camera also provided a new way of looking at things - framing pictures just right to capture the shot she wanted to bring home to "show Dad." 

This week we walked along a fishing pier in the neighboring town, paying close attention to a group of teenage fishermen who had successfully caught a fluke (though were unsuccessfully relieving it of the hook in its mouth without serious damage to the poor thing). On the expanse of beach below the pier that continues to stretch down the bay to the ocean, I watched her scramble up large cement slabs covered in algae without concern for her hands or clothing. She slipped a few times as I looked on. not asking me for help but becoming more insistent that I let her climb even deeper into the rubble so she could "explore." Watching without intervening is hard sometimes, because I worry she will hurt herself, but I also think to the types of risks I took as a child - riding my bike where I was expressly told not to go, taken the shady old trail down through the woods with my all female crew - and know making these sorts of decisions is important for her to experience too. While the playground is missed, I do wonder what is missed when we make that our sole destination. A few years ago, I read about British risk playgrounds that have been designed with these choices in mind -to push small children into making choices about what risks are manageable and which aren't for their ability level. 

Beyond physical endurance and spatial cognizance, the beach-as-playground also allowed for organic discussion about what we were experiencing in the here and now. There were questions about tides, clouds and boats. She inquired why we shouldn't walk into the dune grass and even got to see the birds hopping in and out of the tall blades. She opined that an old tire didn't belong on said beach and wondered how/why someone would dump it there. We examined shells and and dead blue crabs and investigated whether or not two beached horseshoe crabs were indeed alive (one was, one was decidedly not). Seeing life or the remains of life taught her in real time about the cycle we're all in through a much gentler way than a relative or pet dying. These creatures showed her that death was natural and observable at all times, something most Americans avoid acknowledging at all costs. 

The real world is a scary place as we all know. We do our best to manage the risks it presents as adults. When we expose our children to environments outside of the means-tested, well-cultivated ones, we help them to be more prepared for what the real world can throw at them. As a teacher of young adults, I find their exasperation at the myriad current situations understandable - the padded table corners and exclusive playgroups do not translate to these times. They don't buy that everything will go back to normal and be "as it was" because the "as it was" was...well, bullshit. There were always risks, whether or not the adults in their world wanted to expose their children to them or even basically acknowledge their existence. And of course, certain populations have had to grapple with this all along - parents of black and brown teenagers have to have these talks, parents of girls and LGBTQ+ teens as well. To not mention that there might be a bias against your child simply because of their skin color, sexuality or gender would do those children a disservice that could lead to their death (and even with those warnings, it could happen anyhow). 

To resist Fear-based parenting not only recognizes are child are people independent of ourselves, it also allows them the ability to begin to see the world outside the ones we've provided for them as safe spaces to be themselves. It encourages them to 

On Grapefruits And Graveyards

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. - Alan Watts

On a sunny Tuesday morning in early May of the plague year, I finally offered to cut the grapefruit that my four year old daughter had been coveting since last week. The heavens rejoiced in her mind as she bound around the kitchen yelling, “YES!” On a whim, I purchased a grapefruit at the supermarket the week prior. As the world as we know it breaks down in fundamental ways, buying something as unessential as a grapefruit seemed almost transgressive. In the previous time, what would be as outdated and blasé as eating a grapefruit for breakfast? What is this? Some 1980s fad diet? Now, eating a grapefruit for/with breakfast has taken on some luxurious undertone in my mind. 

Since unpacking the groceries, this fruit took on great significance for her. La niña appeared, mainly to see if I had brought home some sort of “prize” from the supermarket, and then transitioned into interrogation mode regarding this purchase- what's this? What does it taste like? Can I have 'a piece'? Why does a GRAPEfruit have an orange rind? Since the moment it was shelved in the refrigerator, she's argued with me to cut up this fruit for her at every meal. She needed a grapefruit right NOW for a variety of reasons.

Finally, this morning the grapefruit was cut open. I segmented a half for her to try and placed it before her. Digging in, she ate two segments and then pushed it aside, to “save for later.” When I asked if she liked it, she gave a resounding yes, but that the real trouble was she was so full, there was no more she could eat. I offered her an out, “...but it's ok if you also don't like it.” Of course, the Iron Lady refused to recant her previous statements on the tastiness of grapefruits.

If you have never bargained with a small child, you've never truly experienced the unrelenting psychic stamina of another person. It's almost as though a pre-pubescent child's ability to physically stand in a freezing pool, teeth chattering and lips blue, can transfer to their mental state when required. Young children have “endurance.” This may sound like a cold assessment, but I'm awed by their skill. If only I had the endurance for endless small talk, bad arguments, or unrelenting pleas to cut random citrus fruits.

Since work has been minimized due to the new virtual format and constant worry about how much stress we can and should be putting on academic work during a pandemic, la niña and I have been walking quite a bit. We have a usual loop, in which I vary the path slightly, but typically head up a long, unbroken stretch of sidewalk that connects our town to a much cuter and prettier one which has a real downtown and a harbor to walk through. Tired of the usual the other day, I brought up going on a new adventure. We took a leisurely walk around a local cemetery. It's on a hilltop cleaning surrounded by a wooded area about 2 miles from our house, nestled inside one of the typical housing developments in this area. We took a Polaroid camera and a snack to visit tombs (her word) and learn more about them.

While walking through the back end of the cemetery, I saw a name on a gravestone that I recognized. Someone I had gone to school with since first grade (maybe kindergarten, even) was buried there. In fact, she'd died in 2014. The obituary revealed little when checked. This woman was not someone I was close to, although we'd gone to school together for 12 years. She was born in November and was likely one of the older students in my graduating year; I, on the other hand, with a late summer birthday, was always one of the youngest. While everyone matures at their own rate, sometimes the gap of nearly a year does create noticeable developmental differences. At some point in upper elementary school, she stood up for me to some other kids who were being a nuisance. That's pretty much the only memory I have of her besides thinking that in high school, she likely smoked cigarettes, which was what most suburban teenagers seemed to be into in the late 90s.

This "find" didn't necessarily provide pause for the contemplation of my own mortality – that's a nearly daily meditation anyhow. Instead, it led me down a line of thinking about the degree of anonymity our lives take on when removed from a daily routine. After a month of not being at work, I realized I hadn't thought of someone I see on a near-daily basis usually in the entire time we'd been away until that very moment. It was startling in a sense. And not necessarily because I'm a uniquely selfish asshole, but because removed from the daily grind, everyone's vision narrows to what's right in front of them. When people are imprisoned or held captive for a long time, sometimes they relay their time in that experience with a degree of calm more fit for a Buddhist monk. One of the reasons why is likely because they learned to accept their reality, to not struggle against it or to pin hopes on wishing it away. Maybe the suggestion for our quarantine time now should be to keep calm and meme on? Jokes aside, accepting that this is what the near entirety of the world is experiencing now would be a step toward allowing ourselves the space to breathe and be without having to answer to all of the demands we typically put on ourselves. 

When you consider the transitions we consistently face in our lives – graduations, promotions, moves, relationships, births, deaths, et al – it's no wonder internally we face such a degree of turmoil despite the mundanity of those events. Everyone goes through changes all of the time; change is the constant, not anything else about life is a constant as much as we would love that to be the case. Some of the changes we face, like aging, are much more gradual (and possibly) less abrasive to our psyches. But it is worth sharing our feelings about those tumultuous events with those we trust and/or love because, as it turns out, empathy is a great healer. It provides us the room to accept the situation and ourselves (physically, emotionally and spiritually). 

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recommended reading/listening:

interview - https://thedewdrop.org/2019/12/06/deneen-fendig-duncan-trussell/

music-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zikXou8vDc 

Feminism, Revisited.

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”  - Samuel Johnson, the epigraph of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it "a discussion” ― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Yes, Misters Johnson and Thompson both wrestle with the underlying plague of mankind- the burden of existence as a sentient being. Learning to navigate the existence of consciousness and metacognition on top of simply existence itself is something many great thinkers have come to such varied conclusions over. We can accept one of myriad solutions, or not, and negate the problem through suicide or excessive drug use.

I’ve beat the fuck out of this dead horse for decades. So now I turn to the question of what relieves us of the burdens of womanhood; the burden of being defined by a culture that does not see your kind as an equal participant (no, not really, especially when sexual dimorphism dictates that there is an exploitable inequality). As many women would acknowledge grudgingly, there’s an unspeakable level of domination that we pretend to equalize through other means, such as equal opportunity under the law. Let this be clear: equal opportunity does not guarantee equal outcomes.

We need not be defined as woman. To do so is to mark us as abnormal, different, non-man. We need to re-embrace female-ness. What it means to live as females, whether you come to that realization through actually being born with a vagina or not (and yes, that’s a dig leveled against TERFS. That sort of categorical thinking is bullshit and quite possibly the least feminine thing possible, hypocrites). My suggestion is to start with accepting our submission as part of accepting our great, untapped power to do just that – accept.

Sitting in general isolation from the rest of society thanks to a pandemic, I am transported back to November 2012, when Hurricane Sandy ripped through Monmouth County, leaving homes leveled, power lines destroyed, roads blocked and communication intermittent. Society was at an absolute standstill for over two weeks and, for many, disrupted for much longer than that. Many railed against the uncertain times by hiding out, hating every minute. For others, acceptance was the only way to move forward. It was either get over not having washed hair and lend a hand raking out someone’s house of debris, or sit miserably until some degree of normalcy was restored. But, what if “normal” was forever different? Acceptance of a limitation - frailty, mortality and uncertainty – is a negative power. Like negative rights, negative power marks the importance of not letting an externality affect your inner self.

To embrace femaleness is to embrace negative power. No one is affected by your female nature and they cannot take it away from you. It asks for nothing from anyone. Being a woman, in a sense, does because to embrace being a woman is to embrace the trappings of what others conceive of as defining a woman. There is not an inherent good to being a woman over being female, as someone who is defining this as inclusively as possible, female can be adopted by anyone, regardless of biological sex or adopted gender (or lack thereof).

For all people, regardless of sex/gender, start small – you don’t have to go right to accepting your own mortality – work up to it. Accept not racing through a yellow light and having to sit for two minutes at a yellow light. Accept that creamer is all gone and you have to use milk. Have your day not ruined by expectations that are sky-high. Feminism is for all the Lebowskis out there. Accept and feel no shame.

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”

― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.

"But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all." - Albert Camus, The Plague

It's not that anyone really wants a plague when the phrase, "We need another plague," is thrown around to express frustrations at some current situation. But those nihilistically jokey statements came true in 2020. We're facing a pandemic head-on with wildly varying responses on both from individual to individual as well as governing body to governing body worldwide. Much like natural disasters, wars or terrorist attacks, this pandemic has brought out the best in many people -banding together to help those in need, and in this case, halting the normal pace of life to 'flatten the curve' and prevent further transmission of the virus to other people, especially those more at risk due to weaker immune systems.

Of course, there are many that are flouting any sort of precaution because not only does the idea of community disgust them, they're so insecure in their ego that any threat must be taken as a personal affront rather than a collective problem to solve. The non-religious anti-vax movement falls deeply into the latter camp. It unites the ultra-libertarians and certain circles of wealthy liberals who bristle at not having complete control over every situation in their lives. Ironically, their beliefs will put them and their loves ones more at risk and under constant threat of disease, or if they're lucky enough to be healthy with robust immune systems, their privilege to choose not to vaccinate will gravely endanger others within their communities. In either case, their choice leads to less control, not more. 

The other aspect of a catastrophe like the pandemic we're undergoing is that exposes the systems that surround us for what they are - constructs of our own making. Like any physical construct, our bureaucratic constructs require maintenance. Throughout the world, 'lacks' within the governing bodies of major political players are increasingly harder to ignore in these times. China and Russia are egregious examples of states that employ surveillance, subterfuge and subjugation in order to maintain a status quo; that status quo only applies to the ruling parties however, with all others becoming canon fodder for the virus or the economy. Th US has a handful of pundits that have followed suit - sowing doubt and discord through social media platforms, encouraging people to carry on as normal and disregard safety precautions for the sake of the almighty dollar.

More glaring and widely problematic in the American case is the lack of civic awareness that has led us to the point of having a leader in office who is uniquely incapable of leading, even when the most basic guidance would be welcome to the fear this unseen threat instills in all of us. For all of the angry masses of liberals that were shook "woke"by 2016's election results, there are some of us who have been lamenting the dangers of a lack of civic engagement beyond voting for years. Only being aware enough of politics to vote once every 4 years is a privilege that most Americans do not have. Unfortunately, the federal and state governments dominated by Republicans for decades prior gutted civics education with continual cuts to public education funding. A dual party 'concern' with America's waning education system in the early 2000s swept a series of federal mandates into being, focusing on reading and mathematics skills and emphasizing 'proficient' standardized testing scores as the hallmark of quality education. All of these monetary slights and public statements against the public education system have eroded not only particular programs like civics, practical and fine arts, but wider trust in public education as an institution. As guardians have been holed up with their children for the past month, I think it has become increasingly clear to many the service that is provided on a daily basis for their students, which hopefully will have the lasting effect of seeing value in keeping this particular institution up and running well for many years to come. 

Linking education to the larger point about institutions, one of the amazing things about teaching history has been seeing students draw connections across space and time with their own experiences. So when students stop and say, "Oh wait...that way back when is like this today," it helps to reinforce the importance of knowing something beyond one's own now. Through understanding the past and our own institutions, we can get to the point of bringing new ideas to old problems. And sometimes those institutions may require more hands on maintenance. There has to be an acceptance that we may have grown beyond original designs or intentions of the Constitution and the constructs it put in place. I personally don't keep my baby onesies hanging in my closet hoping to fit into them one day again. The current pressures on our system have exposed what journalists and political scientists and even the lay history student have opined about for years. Topics like  - do we need new forms of representation that equalizes the voice  of votes (so that Wyoming voters don't have a larger "say" than Californian voters), is the electoral college a remnant of an era  bygone (and prior to universal public education), are lobbyists running the country's legislative branch, et al. - need to come to the fore.

As I sat watching the Tiger King documentary, like so many millions of people did last week, I thought to myself, this is a metaphor for America right here. An unabashedly selfish man, living his own fantasy, destroyed various peoples' lives only to have his own ending be as tragic and fitting as though Shakespeare himself penned it. And yet, Joe Exotic encapsulates the American dream in a disturbed way, the American dream not as some great founding father with an education in  Enlightenment thought may have laid it out, but surely the American dream that is sold to the millions of us who live in this world of endless consumerism. Joe consumed people as much as material goods. Even in tough times, his end goal was always to come out on top, not to save his animals, or to help his employees or even to protect his own spouse(s). For the rest of us, we don't need to have the sad, twisted American dream. We can take this moment to actually do something good for everyone, even if that only translates to staying home and watching Netflix. 

“What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

Damn Fine Coffee

A few weeks ago, I began watching Twin Peaks in earnest. The first time I watched it, I was pregnant, distracted and not open to the experience. I ended up stopping halfway through the second season. This time around, I stopped trying to figure everything out, let my questions subside and took in the story in a more "gestalt" fashion. Not surprisingly, the show began to click for me. By entering the flow of the narrative and not resisting the presence of supernatural beings or hokeyness and camp in an otherwise dramatic show, viewing became more enjoyable and comprehensible.

So...what do I think is going on?

The entire show is a metaphor for an existentialist view of existence. Characters create their own purpose - or become victims of circumstance. The serendipitous twists and turns also leave even the most purposeful of characters adrift. The overarching theme seems to be how each character reacts to their fate that ultimately drives their growth (or stagnation).

Within all of us is a capacity to morph into better or worse versions of ourselves -rising above our pain and suffering, or succumbing to our most destructive vices. Even the incorruptible among us, like Agent Dale Cooper, can and do fall prey to darker forces that can render us unrecognizable to those who care about us.

The uncovering of the true nature of the mysterious white and black lodges becomes the main thrust of the show after the initial mystery of who killed Laura Palmer is solved. The lodges are discussed as singular places initially, though there is slowly a revelation that they are connected or may even be one in the same. That duality of "light" and "dark" forces is not only contained within an external location but also within us all.

The horrors of existence are portrayed in a Sartrean hell of "other people" throughout the series, culminating in the truth behind Laura Palmer's psychological pain. The revelation that her demon-possessed father sexually assaulted her repeatedly is laid bare to a chilling extent in the post-season 2 movie, "Fire Walk With Me." Although his actions are linked to an inexplicable evil that casts a dark shadow on the bucolic village of Twin Peaks, in a wholly materialistic interpretation, his demonic possession is actually an undeniably entirely human abuse of power. Sexual assault, physical and emotional domination and manipulation occur with enough regularity that one could only hope there's some sort of demonic possession at the root - a neat explanation to excuse people's heinous behaviors.

The question then becomes for me: what if the darkness that haunts Twin Peaks is humanity itself? If we were all hermetically sealed, atomized players, many of our daily miseries would fade away. There'd be no worry about being judged for our appearance, actions and interests. This question is partially answered by the character Harold. He is a young man content enough to read, tend to his flowers and never venture from his home. His compassion for Laura is evident, but by letting her into his world and guarding her secrets, he destroys himself. Similarly, as Heather, a former nun, emerges from the sequestered life in a convent, she allows herself not only to be emotionally available to others, but vulnerable to their attacks as well. With an acceptance of love from Cooper, she also has her life endangered by the psychotic Windham Earle.

Years ago, I waxed poetically about the quote attributed to Albert Camus, "Should I kill myself or have another cup of coffee?" I referenced Cooper's line about his first cup in Twin Peaks - "This is a damn fine cup of coffee." Coffee ends up being his link to who he was when he is Dougie Jones. A love of the drink carries through and provides a thread that runs between his lives. Furthermore, this mutual pleasure in a good cup of joe foreshadows the much more disturbing shared memory that links the incarnations of Laura Palmer. Ultimately, despite Agent Cooper's best attempts to right the wrongs that led Laura toward destruction, he is unable to better her lived experience. The moral that bleeds through here is the existentialist dilemma posited by Camus' coffee quote. The Sisyphean task that is life can never be avoided - there will always be trauma and pain as long as we're alive, no matter how we try to avoid or prepare for it. Suicide only negates the problem, it does not solve it.

Finally, early into my rewatch experience, my partner mentioned that David Lynch is into transcendental Buddhism. This piece of information helped to shape my interpretation of various aspects of the series as well. For those who criticized Lynch's inclusion of unnecessarily long scenes of silence between characters or of someone performing a mundane task on screen (like sweeping the floor for an extended period of time) the following quote came to mind, “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes." Alan Watts, Zen Buddhist practitioner, has perfectly translated Zen Buddhist spirituality here for Western audiences - being "bored," trapped in the mundane is the whole point of the practice. To be in the now - to experience everything as it is currently without constantly trying to change it, escape it or wishing it were something else is the end goal of the practice of mindfulness.

Even the magical realism aspects of the show fit in with the tenets of transcendental Buddhism  -there's something inexplicable in the Twin Peaks universe (and our own). Perhaps it's an overall transcendent being, like God or some other higher, supernatural power that provides this fuzziness. Or maybe it's a reflection of the general nescience humans are saddled with as finite beings in a vast universe that will always remain beyond our full comprehension. 
"I carry a log — yes. Is it funny to you? It is not to me. Behind all things are reasons. Reasons can even explain the absurd. Do we have the time to learn the reasons behind the human being's varied behavior? I think not. Some take the time. Are they called detectives? Watch — and see what life teaches." - Margaret Lanterman, "Log Lady"