Minutes will return soon...

I am gearing up to start the minutes again...having recently finished a chunk of work on my dissertation, I will allow myself the pleasure of blogging. Woo.

Please check back soon.

Macaque Attack in New Delhi

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070517.MONKEYS17/TPStory/?query=monkeys

Yesterday's Globe and Mail featured a story about a monkey invasion in New Delhi. I was immediately drawn to the story because of similar news items I've read involving elephants. Conflicts between elephants and humans have become so numerous in parts of Africa that these events are now referred to with the acronym HEC (human-elephant conflict) and are studied intensely by animal biologists and psychiatrists interested in post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the case of the monkeys - more specifically rhesus macaques - the nonhuman animals have been terrorizing (a much overused term, don't you think) humans and, in particular, important humans, that is, Members of Parliament. Basically, the city has been sprawling and nearby trees and forested areas where the monkeys lived have been destroyed or severely diminished. With nowhere to live and little food to scavenge for, monkeys have decided to encroach on the city. Many have been offered food by residents. What else is a homeless individual expected to do?

A priceless quote in the article, lays clearly the complete blindness to the cause of the situation and even to the meaning of words. Mr. Malaisamy is quoted as saying: "In the name of environmental protection, we cannot afford to remain silent spectators to this monkey menace in South Avenue, where several government offices and flats of MPs are located." He is talking about his own environmental protection...not the monkeys.

Nonhuman animals are losing their homes and being left without food. With the way most human homeless individuals are treated by society, I guess it is no surprise that monkeys are being treated as a menace rather than as victims. By no means does this justify the situation, if anything it makes clear some of the ways in which we all need to think about our relation to others and to the ways in which we all live in 'the' environment.

Since I'm out of time, I'll refer interested folks to two articles about elephants. The New York Times one is absolutely astonishing and is bound to become a classic.

About elephant breakdown / crack-up:

NYTimes article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html?ex=1179633600&en=f4f09e6e96b4dc62&ei=5070

Science Buss article:
http://www.smm.org/buzz/buzz_tags/charles_siebert

A Taste for Silence

It is totally normal to see teens and adults plugged into a portable music player in a plethora of situations. For instance, I have taken notice of couples walking hand-in-hand down the street each plugged into their own iPod. In another instance, I observed a young boy of 8 or 9 wearing his iPod during a Mother's Day breakfast at a restaurant he was dining at with his family. Now these two cases can bother you or not. They bother me. And they bother me perhaps for a reason that is not directly obvious or, at least, is not the expected one.

My concern does not lie in the fact that the people are not talking and interacting. Rather, it strikes me that these individuals (perhaps) cannot deal with the silence between conversation shifts, or the silence of waiting in a line (which, to be sure, isn't even absolute silence...but I won't get into soundscapes here), among other silences. (I won't bother here to take down the argument that these people just love music so much they need it at all times and in all places). What presses these individuals to have a constant musical soundtrack? Do they flee from their own thoughts? Do they flee from social interaction? These questions may seem to overestimate the valence of such a practice, but really, what does such a practice say about the state of the individual's comfort with themself or others? Furthermore, why is the practice verging on normalized? What does this say about the state of a society in which this is brushed off? I don't exactly know what it says...but I'm pretty sure it doesn't say something great.

Why not cultivate a taste for silence or enjoy your incidental soundscape au naturel? And then see where this takes you.

Revolution is just a t-shirt away

When I attended the Earth Day events in Ottawa on April 22nd this year, attendees were for the most part decked out in message clothing which I (charitably or not) took to be their way of silently demonstrating their position on and alignment with environmental concerns. For a while, I've been a little irked by the proliferation of (read: marketing of) message tees. For example, Warren's, a large chain store, is selling a tee with the message "Give a hoot, don't pollute." While this is a great message - and better still, a great practice - it's probably fairly easy to see where my concerns lie. For starters, I am hard-pressed to believe that a revolution will come about through consumption. We can't buy our way out of this ecological predicament. Although, NOT buying might do some good. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we can live outside the system or that we should never consume - indeed, when we need to buy things/replace exhausted items we should do so responsibly and out of necessity.

Basically, I am weary (meaning highly critical) of a mantra that espouses (when you read between the lines) that it is okay to conspicuously consume as long as the items are 'green' (choose from one of the following: organic, locally made, cruelty-free, fair trade, in support of a charity, etc). This sort of marketing strategy is dangerous and irresponsible and has been picked up by a plethora of companies.

Take for example Roots Canada. Walking to the coffee shop this morning I stopped in at Roots to look for something for a friend. Upon entering the store I noticed the publicity materials for a Green Campaign Roots has launched. The flat board poster was hailing me to buy an Eco Bag - a green leather purse. Hmm. Last time I checked leather is a pretty aweful by-product of murder and the tanning process, which enables people to have items made from animal skin that won't rot, is terrible for the environment. But let's put my radical environmental stance aside. Even if leather was not the by-product of violence and environmental damage I still need further explanation as to how buying this purse will contribute to environmental protection (or some other 'green' initiative), and how it has transformed me into a steward of the 'natural' environment.

So, conclusion...I do think all this 'green' awareness is wonderful and hopeful and suggestive, but I really do hope that it will not all be washed away, diluted, and co-opted into another great marketing scheme that ultimately continues to do a disservice to the Earth community.

Be my Facebook friend

So, I guess I missed the press release (which must have come out mid-March 2007) inviting the citizens of the world to join Facebook. In any case, somehow, in the space of 2 weeks I got dozens of invitations to be 'friends' with people I was A) already friends with; B) had once been friends with; and C) knew in passing and was 'friends' with.

As a social experiment I decided to join Facebook - and as I learned this was the reason for others joining. (Other top-rated reasons by joinees: peer pressure and intellectual curiosity). Of course, no one actually wants to join Facebook, they are simply doing it out of some sort of obligation (to friends, to family, to investigative or creative impulses).

What I am wondering is what all these Facebookers will do in their 'new'found community/ies? Will it be another place to gossip? To parade one's new duds/glamour shots? To critique and leave action to others? (Leaving aside the argument that critique and action are categorically in/different). To soft sell your 'friends' on your way of life?

More importantly: How long until Facebook fizzles? Or could it possibly become a progressive chaotic voice in the public sphere?...and explode.

Okay, I think that's enough unanswered questions for one post.

On Hiatus

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm on hiatus until I finish writing two articles. The first on technologies of the self as challenge to technological rationality, the second on the status of nonhuman animal victims.

Please check back soon.

On the Hegemony of Science

If you needed a reason to question the authority of science in making decisions about the direction of human life and about the current status of technological rationality perhaps Simpson can point to one direction in which you might find a reason or two.

"I believe that science's inability to reckon adequately with themes of freedom and value makes our worry about its hegemony legitimate" (Lorenzo Simpson p.29 in Technology, Time, and the Conversations of Modernity" 1995).

Who's the Real Gourmand/e?

David Foster Wallace interrogates the issue of animal abuse in his article “Consider the Lobster” (2006). Since his article was first published in a culinary magazine he visits this question via the politics of eating lobster. The issue of eating animals in one sense comes down to longstanding questions concerning aesthetics and morality. There is already an established field in which these two aspects of philosophical inquiry are understood to be intimately intertwined. In life, however, it is convenient to separate the two when it comes to our everyday eating practices; but is this reasonable or responsible? As Wallace points out, particularly in the case of gastronomy, a very large part of the appreciation and experience of eating is the deep level of thinking and knowledge about the food one is ingesting – and yet there is a huge voluntary blind spot in one’s thinking about food preparation (in the case of meat, ‘preparation’ is a euphemism for killing) about the practices of bringing beef to the table, onto the fork, and into one’s mouth.

“For those Gourmet readers who enjoy well-prepared and –presented meals involving beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, lobster, etc.: Do you think much about the (possible) moral status and (probable) suffering of the animals involved? If you do, what ethical convictions have you worked out that permit you not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than mere ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)?... After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet?” (Wallace 2006:253-254).

In the case of some individuals this line of question is not cause for concern or worthy of serious consideration. For these individuals Wallace presses further: “is your refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that you don’t want to think about it? And if the latter, then why not? Do you ever think, even idly, about the possible reasons for your reluctance to think about it?” (Ibid). That is, how much thinking about eating animals is, actually, not thinking about eating animals?

(Re)Valuing the Simple

"...the orienting force of simple things will come to the fore only as the rule of technology is raised from its anonymity, is disclosed as the orthodoxy that heretofore has been taken for granted and allowed to remain invisible. As long as we overlook the tightly patterned character of technology and believe that we live in a world of endlessly open and rich opportunities, as long as we ignore the definite ways in which we, acting technologically, have worked out the promise of technology and remain vaguely enthralled by that promise, so long simple things and practices will seem burdensome, confining, and drab. But if we recognize the central vacuity of advanced technology, that emptiness can become the opening for focal things. It works both ways, of course. When we see a focal concern of ours threatened by technology, our sight for the liabilities of mature technology is sharpened"

--Albert Borgmann, "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life" p. 199

Building Green

Sustainable/green/responsible/environmentally-friendly architecture/construction/urban planning has become a veritable and thriving career and for good reason. While most of these endeavours do not go nearly far enough for my liking, I must nevertheless admit that I am happy these disciplines have (re)surfaced.

For those of you interested in getting into this field of work here's a nice little quote you can meditate on or put on your letterhead(!).

"Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build" (Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking" p.157).

Releasement Toward Things

"Releasement toward things and openness to the mystery belong together. They grant us the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way. They promise us a new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of tehnology without being imperiled by it" (Martin Heidegger, "Discourse on Thinking" p.55).

Reaching Beyond the Human

"We come closer to the mystery of what is today in truth in the technologically determined world when we simply recognize the demand, which speaks forth to humans in what is peculiar to modern technology and which orders them to challenge nature forth in its energy, instead of making way for it by helplessly positing ends that are limited to the protection of humanity" (Martin Heidegger, "Traditional and Technological Language" p.138).

"However, as long as the human being's relationship to those beings that surround and carry it, as well as to the being which it itself is, rests on the letting-appear, on the spoken and unspoken saying, the attack of the technological language on what is peculiar to language is at the same time the threat to the human being's ownmost essence" (Martin Heidegger, Ibid, p.141).

The Standard of Usefulness

"One need not worry about the useless. By virtue of its uselessness the inviolable and everlasting suit it. Thus, it is wrong to apply the standard of usefulness to the useless. The useless has its own greatness and determining power since it does not let anything be made out of it. In this manner, useless is the sense of things" (Martin Heidegger, "Traditional and Technological Language" p.131)

On Thinking, Thoughtlessness, and Stillness

"So long as we do not, through thinking, experience what is, we can never belong to what will be" (Martin Heidegger "The Turning" p.49).

"Let us not fool ourselves. All of us, including those who think professionally, as it were, are often enough thought-poor; we are all far too easily thought-less. Thoughtlessness is an uncanny visitor who comes and goes everywhere in today's world. For nowadays we take in everything in the quickest and chepeast way, only to forget it just as quickly, instantly" (Martin Heidegger, "Discourse on Thinking" p.44-45).

"The flash that comes out of stillness, as stillness itself. Stillness stills. What does it still? It stills Being into the coming to presence of world" (Martin Heidegger, "The Turning" p.49).

Extended Hiatus

Maybe you've noticed that I've stopped writing minutes...hmm. Yes, it's true, I am taking hiatus until I finish writing an article. Back soon. Until then...how about pondering this 'Quote of the moment'

"I may have difficulty comprehending the grasp that music has on its enthusiasts, but I see that as a deficiency in myself, not the music lovers. When a musician tells me Beethoven's Opus 132 is not simply an hour of music but of universal truth, is in fact a flood of beauty and wisdom, I envy him. I don't label him a nut. And being a city kid, I may be slow to appreciate the impact of nature on those raised differently, but, again, I regret that failure. And when Pablo Casals said, as he did on his ninety-fifth birthday, 'I pass hours looking at a tree or a flower. And sometimes I cry at their beauty,' I don't think age has finally gotten to old Pablo. I cry for myself."
--George Sheehan in 'Running and Being'

The Work World and Objectification

A 'debate' which took place over a period of many years between two highly esteemed philosophers, Jurgen Habermas and Herbert Marcuse, speaks directly to my earlier posts on domination, objectification, and the irrationality of capitalism. Let me see if I can encapsulate some of their ideas here...

One can distinguish, for explanation's sake, between two worlds: the practical and the work. What Habermas and Marcuse talk about in their exchange is the disturbing way in which the practical (everyday) world has been colonized by the work world. The work world is more than just literally offices and places of official work. The world of work is an ideological framework, a way of thinking. As such, if we return to their suggestion that both worlds have been colonized by the ideology of work, we can see how it is not so easy to just step out of this dilemma or to stop working. That is, our ways of thinking have been steered to think in this way. And therefore, for change to occur we must overhaul our way of thinking. Many of us have come to a point where we can't think outside this frame, indeed, to suggest that one could think otherwise is completely ridiculous and hopelessly naive according to this ideology.

The relevance of the ideology of the world of work is that part of this way of thinking involves the neccessary and automatic objectification of things. Historically, the objectification of things has been limited to inanimate objects, plants, and nunhuman animals. Which for me is a problem anyway. But where Habermas and Marcuse get really frightened is when this objectification spills over into our relationships with other people. This starts off in terms of conceptualizing people as work force, as labour. But as we all can see today, it is evident in the ways in which children are coopted in ads as resources for their parents, and the ways in which the body is so easily made object for consumption - I don't think I need to point you to examples of this!

I'll try to finally tie all of this together tomorrow, since I am, once again, out of time.

The Last Straw

I'd love to write about rationalism and oppression, capitalism and domination, but I just have to comment on Britney Spears's shaved head. I'll return to these other isms tomorrow.

Now, certainly there have been more than enough people writing and gossiping about it - Britney's bald head, that is. And I am reticent to comment. However, I just have to, in light of a project I worked on last fall which dealt with the balding of a woman.

Last November, I did a media analysis of an episode of Law & Order SVU, wherein a woman named Hailey is battered and raped. As a finishing move her attacker shaved her head. It was this shaven head - this stealing of her last trace of beauty and unadultered femininity - that ultimately enraged Olivia, the cop who took up the case, even despite Hailey's repeated requests that she not pursue finding her atacker. For all of the police officers involved, the shaven head was understood as the ulitmately cruel act that propelled them to pursue the perpetrator until s/he was arrested and detained. To be charitable, we have to assume that the rape was somewhere in the back of their heads, right?


Now, let's fast-forward to Britney. Her strange and dangerous behaviour over the last months and years has really only piqued the gossiping interests of the tabloids and her fans. Most of her behaviour has been shrugged off as typical young female celebism (I think I just coined a new word). However, with her own shaving of her head, all of a sudden people are actually concerned for her and for the safety of her children. This simple - what should be a fairly benign act - has catapulted her into the (new) spotlight of 'out-of-control,' 'on-the-edge,' 'danger to herself,' 'breaking down,' bi-polar mental case.

What?

I mean sure I'd agree to these statements (based only totally partially on her media representations). But I would have agreed to them LONG before she stripped herself of her 'last asset' - that is, before she REALLY went crazy and shed her feminine appeal.

Yikes.

Coming soon... a new minute later this week

Stay tuned...more on rationalism, capitalism, and domination.

Here's a quote from an article by Jurgen Habermas that resonates with some of the ideas I raised in my post a few days ago regarding the irrationality of capitalism.

"What is singular about the 'rationality' of science and technology is that it characterizes the growing potential of self-surpassing productive forces which continually threaten the institutional framework and at the same time, set the standard of legitimation for the production relations that restrict this potential" (Habermas, "Technology and Science as 'Ideology'" p.89).

Also from Martin Heidegger: ***just substitute "humanity" for "man" while reading the passage.

"Thus when man, investigating, observing, ensnares nature as an area of his own conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research, until even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing-reserve.

Modern technology as an ordering revealing is, then, no merely human doing. Therefore we must take that challenging that sets upon man to order the real as standing-reserve in accordance with the way in which it shows itself" (The Question Concerning Technology, p.19).

Domination/Objectification

Objectification. Domination. I've been struggling with these two concepts for over a decade. How do they operate in and through social relationships? What are the underlying epistemological and ontological conditions and assumptions they rely on?

At first I approached my investigation of these two concepts through feminist theory, it seemed the obvious place to start. I was 'enlightened' but still not completely satisfied. Disgruntled I decided to pursue other areas of research for a while. For the most part everything I started studying fell into (was sometimes stuffed into) the category of environmental politics. After some reading and reflection it became clear that nature was the quintessentially dominated subject. However, let me be clear, I am not talking the classical eco-feminist position which parallels the treatment of women and 'nature.' I am, to say the least, not a fan of this position. The historical objectification of both the category 'women' and of 'nature' has led to their domination by others. What are the bases for objectification, generally? How does objectification enable domination? Stay tuned until tomorrow...my minute's up.

The Power Within

It was really cold in Montreal for most of January and February. On some the especially cold days - minus 20 celsius, not accounting for wind chill - I noticed that some businesses that have automatic door-opening push-button devices elected to turn them off. This was, I learned from one security guard, in the interest of saving money on the heating bills. Signs went up around town saying "Only use if necessary" or "Use Door Handle."

Despite these requests, I noticed that a lot of people continued to push the buttons. Of course, some people need the push-button opening, but let's be frank, most of us don't. Now, I can account for some of these disobedient folks' actions on the assumption that they just don't read signs - they have mastered the art of selectively editing out much of the visual media around them. However, lots of people just don't want to open a door themselves, or at least, 'effortfully' open it themselves.

I have a number of 'problems' with this behaviour. However, what I will offer in my polemic / quickly expiring minute today is a series of questions: Why not open the door yourself? Why not build a tiny bit of strength, burn some calories, and save some collective/public power? Use your power within - to use a most irritating, misused and abused, new age phrase.

So, why not stop using elevators and escalators when stairs are available? Use your own power and 'save' the out-sourced power.