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....

Physics, the Universe and God

This is a part II to the previous post, which I felt was incomplete, but that I posted anyway because I couldn't quite figure out how to reconcile what I was really relaying. 

I have been reading a lot of science-based non-fiction lately. It started by watching Cosmos which re-ignited a piece of my brain that had laid dormant for a while - scientific inquiry. I always really liked science in high school. Science AND math actually. They provide answers to problems in a tidy way that just makes you feel accomplished. I have been waaaay out of that scene for a while though, so my skills of actually completing any sort of mathematical equations would be very compromised at this point without some serious remediation.

The book I am currently reading on this subject, "You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe," by Christopher Potter, is more of a history of science, specifically science dedicated to understanding the universe. The author was in a related field, but personally had some issues with understanding his "place in it all" and the point of what he was doing. And I think that philosophical inquiry regarding our understanding of, well, our understanding of everything, is key to actually being able to understand! Haha. Confusing. But Socrates was able to formulate this idea over 2,000 years ago too - All I know that I know nothing. We've come further into our knowing, but we still don't know anything. It's like we have gathered more puzzle pieces but we still don't know what the puzzle will look like once we snap them all together. Hell, we have like half a face and 3/4 of the border and we're still squinting at it like a damn magic eye picture, trying to figure out what the fuck we're looking at (also, for the record, I can't see ANYTHING in those magic eye pics, so I might be useless when it comes to figuring out what the universe IS or ISN'T). And I am not saying we shouldn't be collecting those puzzle pieces. We just can't get bogged down that the puzzle will solve ANY earthly concern for us in the grand scheme of things.

Potter discusses the "standard theory" of the universe and how messy it is. How it can almost be nothing in the end since it's so nebulous and seemingly disjointed. I haven't finished the book  yet, but even so far throughout, he has been pointing out how little we really know. Or how un-definitive our attempts have been to make sense of the universe. We have the atom, we break it open. We have the smallest particles we think we can find, we find smaller ones. We have anti-particles, theorized particles, and a slew of unanswered questions cropping up for each question we do happen to answer.  The physicists looking for a "unifying theory" are looking for "god" in numbers. And it strikes me as funny because I doubt they'd believe that to be true, but it's why someone like Sam Harris is so laughable to me. I can't take this genius of neuroscience seriously when he talks, and especially when he criticizes religion and spiritual leaders, because he's so full of shit. He's positing a new vision of god - just one that he can back up with numbers.

Math is the "universal" language, but it's not something that exists out in the wilds of nature. It's a recognizable pattern that HUMANS imposed on something that has existed without explanation since before our appearance on this planet. So what if the Fibonnaci sequence makes sense with this series of numbers? We figured that out after the fact of its existence. Nature is the ultimate existence precedes essence.

Once you stop looking for god in math and science, in spiritual realms, in others, even in yourself, that's when everything starts making sense because you realize that nothing does. The unity is the experience of living more than anything else. From person to person, those experiences aren't ever the same, and will never be- so the endless judgments we cast only makes our shared interactions painful. But we can overcome these tendencies somehow. I have a hard time knowing exactly how. I keep trying to express love and understanding, only to find myself getting stuck in the rut of a hate-fest and cycles of frustration and despair. What I keep coming back to is that ultimately, the goal is to live and not simply to avoid death, which is a scary thought because living entails risks and potentially death. But if I cozy up in my home eternally, or even just never extend myself to try and break down walls both physically and mentally between myself and others, well, then what good am I? Any suggestions are welcome.

The Hurt Locker of LIfe

Toward the end of the movie, The Hurt Locker, the main character, William James, experiences an existential crisis while shopping for groceries. As he stares at a sea of choices, you can see him trying to comprehend what he's doing there, why there are so many goddamn choices for cereal and whether he'd be better off doing something more....worthwhile. He even admits this to his own son, as to why he's leaving once again, "...But you know what, buddy? As you get older... some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you'll realize it's just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it's only one or two things. With me, I think it's one." The closing scenes of the movie show him back in Iraq disarming IEDs and even though he's putting his life in serious danger, he's content.

How does a seemingly innocuous trip to the supermarket end up causing a full-blown crisis? What does he see on the shelves - perhaps in between the Cocoa Puffs and the Cheerios - that countless others don't? I think I know. Recently I had a similar moment in a local store. I went food shopping on a dreary afternoon in the late summer. Usually I don't mind going but on this day I was already not feeling it as I walked in. As I was pushing my cart down an aisle, an in-store advertisement interrupted the flow of shitty music that you so often hear playing in supermarkets and retail stores (the kind of music that makes you wonder if the person who composed it was a sadist or on their deathbed or a catatonic schizophrenic...). As the advertisement blared on, I became awash with a feeling that I was actually in a virtual world, like some tv host would burst through a display, shouting, "You're on candid camera!!!!" while twenty of my closet family and friends surrounded me, laughing and cheering, or even worse, that the shelves would roll away to reveal that I had been in The Truman Show all along. Maybe I have read too many dystopian novels or maybe there really is something lacking from our world that cannot be replaced by consumer choice. If I happen to watch too much television, or sit in front of a computer for too long, or are bored through a series of nothing meetings at work, I experience the same feeling.

But what is this feeling? How do I classify it? There's definitely a hint of boredom. A sense of an unknown - what does this all mean? Ennui would probably be the best way to sum it up. I think a lot more people than just me and a guy who disarms IEDs for "fun" feel this way too. Today, during a suicide prevention workshop, the presenter mentioned that one of the signs of suicide is suicidal ideation (thoughts of suicide). I had to not laugh and then afterward, I had to remind myself that it's normal to consider your own mortality, having an expiration date, etc. Read this blog. I think about this shit a fuckton. I'm not suicidal. Sure, I think that CAN be a sign of suicide, but our society has some real hang ups about death. We don't handle it well. I think that's why we have shrines set up to youth and beauty (#selfies) and also why we hide old people away unless they have a sense of humor (we love you, Betty White). It's probably why people in the US are so losing their shit over the ebola outbreak that has killed thousands in Western Africa and 1 person in the US so far. 1 person. 1. 1...

What's missing? What is the undercurrent that joins these feelings of ennui? A lack of identity? A loss of community? We're all increasingly alienated - we construct shaky self-images and then categorize any outside force that may cause these to change as "threats." From trolls on 4chan to ebola to communism to...you name it, people somewhere, at some time, have railed against it. A profession as old as teaching falls in and out of favor with the public. Currently we're out of favor. And the insults lobbed at us run the gamut from strange progressives filling the next generation with lies about their "country" to inept and overpaid ("those who can't, teach" - don't even get me started on that straight line of bullshit). Instead of looking for ways to better their own working conditions and to raise everyone's standard of living, people look toward elected leaders and media talking heads to make their decisions for them. But shrewd politicians and media moguls of all political persuasions have been pretty effective at dividing and conquering a populace through those threats I spoke about earlier. Your tax money isn't going to fund my weekend getaways to the Bahamas that aren't happening, nor my yacht, nor my $400 riding boots. In fact, it's going back into your community where I also live and work and play. So I'm down to go cut some noble's head off and shove grass in its mouth when you finally come to the realization that you've been duped all these years, but I don't think we really need to go that far. Locking arms and saying, "NO!" firmly might do the trick, but even then, we're too scared.  Save hate for those who really deserve it.

And what can be done to change it? Well, as always I posit some ideas, but am always looking for input.

Educational Quality

“First and foremost school boards look out for students. Education is not a line item on the school board’s agenda—it is the only item. When making decisions about school programs, school boards incorporate their community’s view of what students should know and be able to do. School boards are accessible to the public and accountable for the performance of their schools. School boards are the education watchdog for their communities, ensuring that students get the best education for the tax dollars spent.” (Role of the School Board, Center for Public Education, National School Boards Association website)

Essentially the role of a Board of Education is…education. The quality of the education within a school district is its primary objective. Saving money is a boon to tax payers, but if it will be at the cost of the students’ experience in the classroom, then that takes precedent over anything else.

The Boards of Education for many Monmouth county school districts , and New Jersey school districts in general, have displayed, through tense contract negotiations in the past few years, a lack of understanding of their role in their communities. As a teacher, I represent a member of the community I serve. Yes, my address may fall out of the "district," but a community is not so arbitrarily defined as to be within city limits. My salary, like all other public employees, is paid for by the taxpayer, which is true. Yet, if you are not a public employee, your salary does not come magically from the sky. Maybe your salary is due in part to taxpayers choosing to spend money at your establishment, which, yes, is a choice and not a decree, but both represent participation in a society. We all choose to participate in a society because we would rather not go it alone. The concept of a social contract is not new, nor is it jeopardized by public schooling that is funded by property taxes. Ultimately, there may be a better way to fund schools, but that would be an argument for another time.

Furthermore, a quality education is an investment in the future of our country. By denying students quality teachers and a dedicated staff, you are not only doing the next generation a disservice, but yourself one as well. Working for Boards of Education that devalue the effort their teachers put forth, when coupled with the stressors of stalled contract negotiations, pay freezes, "0%" raises, rising benefits costs and an ever-increasing cost of living, may force the hands of many quality and prudent teachers to leave the profession outright for their own well-being.

If there is a way that we can broach the discussion of education and in particular, contract negotiations, without it coming down to the same tired arguments, the staff at these schools would be much more productive and able to achieve further greatness than they have in the past. If you are not a teacher, but know one, you might have noticed that they fall silent when the topic of education arises in a group setting. Why is that? Do they have nothing to say? Or is it futile for them to express an opinion in the particularly hostile environment created by the current politicians in office?

What would we, as a people, be able to achieve if our schools had more competitive salaries that attracted the best and brightest graduates and seasoned teachers from not only NJ, but around the country? How can we hold to a standard of excellence without competitive compensation? With various new initiatives, like new observational templates, NJSMART, Common Core and PARCC, teachers are already feeling the immediate heat of change in their classrooms and school communities. New curricula may be more demanding and require more preparation time. New accountability requirements now link student growth to individual teachers.  For the lot of us, these changes are something we will take on willingly. To ask us to do it while being demonized as not working our fair share, a reckless and untrue claim, is unconscionable.

If you are still not convinced by anything said above, Chris Christie and Barack Obama both send their own children to private school; the idea that spending money for quality education is not lost on them. They just do not care to ensure that it happens for your children at an equitable level to theirs. If we are going to be able to have a productive, vibrant democratic republic in the future, the continued focus on education needs to be at the forefront. 

Is There Anybody Out There?

In a live version of "Stairway to Heaven," Robert Plant, somewhat obnoxiously, asks the audience, "Does anyone remember laughter?" (After the lyrical line, "....and the forests will echo with laughter....") I always thought it was an odd rhetorical question thrown in for effect, but I am actively wondering if people do actually remember engaging in physical laughter, exuded from an interaction with another human being.
This odd segue is a roundabout way of me saying to you, the reader, aren't you tired of just reading laughter - lol, lmfao, haha, jaja? Is anyone actually laughing when they type these things - let alone, "laughing their ass off," wherever they are? Maybe, but does it matter either? Our [virtual] lives take place in our minds, not our physical realities and though very real in one sense, these exchanges leave many confused about just how impactful they are.

Cyberbullying is common among teens. Malicious trolling and manipulation of others' online profiles have actually caused children to kill themselves. For adults, it is difficult to understand how typed words in a social media or even private context could lead to such tragic events - in their childhood, bullies beat you up or humiliated you publicly, causing the victim physical and emotional pain. Cyberbullies thrive on the emotional (or psychic) pain caused by their infiltration of someone else's carefully cultivated online presence, which is a reflection not only of that person's physical realities, but also their potential realities. Facebook has been cited as a source of emotional anguish for teens and adults alike. Users of the site may feel depressed when looking at the pictures and statuses posted by their cyber"friends." However, there is a level of dishonesty in anyone's online persona - the poster is crafting their personal image by adding the items they want you to see, possibly leaving out that they gained 5 lbs since Memorial Day or that they are underwater on their mortgage. For teens and the younger generation yet, the virtual persona is as much their reality as their physical one. The pressures of living up to standards in their physical world is only added to by the standards they set for themselves through their virtual profile as well.

Cyberlife has also led to a further individualization of our experience. The advertisements and pictures we see as sidebars and news stories that pop up in our Facebook or Yahoo homepage are tailored to our likes and reflect our past internet usage. Furthermore, the notion that power is vested in the internet user is common, yet absurd. CNN has an ireport feature, where the average Joe can send in stories and pictures that they find to be newsworthy. This is not necessarily a bad trend, the democratization of media, but the overarching ideology, that by commenting, posting or clicking, one can make a major difference, is silly. Many internet users take part in this whenever there is a political row or humanitarian crisis: we post our "opinion" or photos or a "solidarity" hash tag (#Kony2012), with ease and real purpose. However, to find people who actually dedicate time and effort to a cause is much rarer. The "power" inherent in choosing your own adventure anytime you engage with the internet is there, but it is of a much smaller scale than one imagines. The user-to-screen connection that blocks out the rest of the world does not represent the same level of engagement as actual interactions.

Occasionally, if you have been on a computer for longer than you needed to be and you have visited all of your normal stomping grounds, you get a feeling of real emptiness, of a loneliness you only get when you found yourself home alone as a kid, but there was no explanation as to where everyone had gone off to, with no idea of when they'd return. And that sense of loneliness is probably what got us to go on the internet in the first place. Comedian Louis CK has a poignant commentary on reaching out to text someone , anyone, while driving and feeling alone. He concludes that we'd rather get into a terrible car crash than be alone with our own thoughts for a few minutes.

I see this as a teacher all of the time; without the incentive to NOT stay wired, students will use their phones idly, so that they do not have to find something to occupy their minds - they can just view pictures and posts as they scroll through Facebook or Tumblr. This choice of passivity does not just stop with their "downtime" - it also creeps over into their interactions in class as well. The old, "what do I need to know for the test?" and "What do you want me to write," are even more pervasive. Open-ended, creative effort is further trampled on by continual focus on knowing certain facts - the standardization of education will be the death of us. The best way to get students to think for themselves is to provide them with crayons. For students who are not usually challenged in the school day to think, giving them an open-ended, but seemingly innocuous task like drawing helps to get their wheels turning.

But how about for young adults and older? How do we get people to challenge their lot? To go beyond particular conventions of convenience and comfort? When adults are OK with just perusing pictures on their phones for hours too, where does that leave us as a participatory democracy? Is there a need for such a system anymore? Should we even worry about anything beyond our own. private news-stream? Is all that is left to us the virtual persona? In The Matrix, Morpheus gives Neo the choice of going beyond the Matrix or to continue to live within it. What would the average person say to that choice? Would they want the knowledge of what is really going on? Is there a difference between the virtual and the physical reality?

The increasingly connected and pervasive surveillance state under which we live is being exposed more and more to us daily through the confessions of Chelsea [formerly Bradley] Manning and Edward Snowden, as well as groups like Anonymous. Have people truly chosen security, safety and comfort over liberties? Do we know what is going on around us? Has the state become great at pretending there is no risk with what they're doing, and in fact, their actions are doing everyone a favor by gathering information (about everything, all of the time)?

Since not only Every home, but every person, is wired, now what do we do?