American Dream: Radio Reflections

HERE the first in an NPR series on the American Dream.

The American Dream is an implicit contract that says if you play by the rules, you'll move ahead. It's a faith that is almost unique to this country, says Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center.
"When Germans or French are asked the same questions about whether it's within all of our power to get ahead, or whether our success is really determined by forces outside our control, most German and French respondents say, 'No, success is really beyond our control,' " Dimock says.

This bit identifies something we may have underplayed in our class' focus on perpetual dis-satisfaction: the expectation and confidence that satisfaction (success or happiness) is obtainable, more precisely that these are within our personal control.

Current discussion, including the linked story, suggests that this confidence is on the decline.  That observation raises related questions: what is the basis of the confidence and its loss?  How possible has it been for the average American or for most Americans to get ahead in past decades?  And how much of that was in individual's control?

Now I also wonder about the effect of declining confidence on our willingness to be generous to others?  Is it the case that when individuals feel that the deck is stacked against us that we become less willing to give others help?  If so is that because we figure that there is only so much good luck available and we want to keep ours for ourselves?  I recall reading about this notion of limited luck in an anthropological article about fishing cultures, more specifically about pre-modern, peasant Norwegian fisherfolk.

semester's end

The 2010-12 cohort of American Conversations has come to its conclusion.   Students have gone on to their summer's activities.  Some are anticipating study abroad next year.  Others will be back on campus.  The formal program's completion does not signal an end to conversation or reflection upon perennial issues.

I may continue to make posts here on related topics, but only now and then rather than on a regular basis.

on first drafts

This from Patricia Hampl's essay "Memory and Imagination," in which she writes specifically about memoir so the point might need a bit of  adjustment for other genres.  Nonetheless, I offer it at a time in the semester when many students might benefit from the encouragement she gives.

"For me, writing a first draft is a little like meeting someone for the first time.  I come away with a wary acquaintanceship, but the real friendship (if any) and genuine intimacy--that's all down the road

"A careful first draft is a failed first draft.  That may be why there are so many inaccuracies in the piano lesson memoir...

"The real trouble: the piece hasn't yet found its subject; it isn't yet about what it want to be about.  Note: what IT wants, not what I want.  The difference has to do with the relation a memoir -- any writer, in fact -- has to unconscious or half-known intentions and impulses in composition."

The advise, the encouragement?  Well, it is to get something on the paper so that you can think about it and learn from it.  The first draft may not even be worth cleaning up; it may require a new start; but it will have done its work of helping you to find out what there is to be said.

NPR TED talks on Happiness: choice and action

THREE TALKS about happiness:

Barry Schwartz: Does Having Options Make Us Happier?   
Only some of the time, but raising expectations can also contribute to dissatisfaction and having too many options may be paralyzing.   But, my students assert that this is NOT true for them.  At least most of them did and one agreed that when the analysis is applied to buying jeans (the example Schwartz gave from his own experience), she experiences something like paralysis and would prefer not to undertake the task.  Another confessed to something similar when selecting a movie on Netflix.  Others suggested that Schwartz may be accurate for people of his generation, but not for theirs.  They have always had so many choices, so they are not paralyzed or rendered dissatisfied.  In the midst of the exchange, I wondered if the parallel between jeans, or shampoo, or coffees and big ideals is valid.  That is to suggest that dissatisfaction with consumer goods may be debilitating, but dissatisfaction with with the nation's current reality relative to is highest ideals can (indeed should) motivate action.  

Kathyrn Schulz: Why Should We Embrace Regret?  Schulz uses the example of the tattoo she got when she was 29 to explore the value of regret which is not precisely the opposite of happiness.  Rather she suggests that regret can be a reminder that we can do better.  Her remarks are of interest in conversation with our discussion in class about ways to understand Americans' failure to bring our best ideals to reality.  The assertion that honest recognition of that failure can be the basis of renewed effort resonates with her suggestions about the value of regret for individuals.

 

Malcolm Gladwell: What Does Spaghetti Sauce Have To Do With Happiness?   The shift from expectation of universals to recognition of varying preferences for such things as the viscosity of tomato sauce and the taste of mustard and the roast of coffee.  Has this given us more pleasure?  Can insights drawn from research on food preferences be used to promote conflict resolution?

 

Taking a moment for beaming with pride

about the two retrospective panels we've had so far.  Each of the twelve students have returned to a previous reading and offered an interpretation that takes account of our four semesters of work together.  With only five minutes to speak they have had to be concise in expressing their insights; and they have been.  Also impressive: the coherence among them!  Evidently they have been in the same conversation over these months.  They have taken note of a cyclical movement between emphasis on individualism and revival of concern for community.  They have noticed that even linear developments often have periods of regression.  They have commented upon parallels between the experience of distinct groups.  They have observed the interaction of large scale social and political movements with the personal lives of individuals.  They have pointed to the important distinction between seeking commonality and being forced to conform.  Important, rich insights and knowledge that hints at the value of this program.

memory becomes reality

From Patricia Hempl, the author of the beautiful memoir A Romantic Education, this quotation from an essay, "Memory and Imagination."

"What is remembered is what becomes reality.  If we 'forget' Auschwitz, if we 'forget' My Lai, what then do we remember?  And what is the purpose of our remembering?  If we think of memory naively, as a simple story, logged like a documentary in the archive of the mind, we miss its beauty but also its function.  The beauty of memory rests in its talent for rendering detail, for paying homage to the senses, its capacity to love the particles of life, the richness and idiosyncrasy of  our experience.  The function of memory, on the other hand, is intensely personal and surprisingly political. 

Our capacity to move forward as developing beings rests on a healthy relation with the past."

Although Hampl is writing about memoir, much of what she writes might also inform the writing of history that is not reduced to counting, statistics in the past tense, or efforts at accurate reproduction of what was.  What we remember as members of groups and what we forget contributes much to what we can become.  Taking mythology as a strong, potentially positive force, it is necessary; but false memories that forget or deny what was painful or a failure allow us to carry those diseases and broken bones in our bodies without healing.  Even if we present ourselves as successful and whole, the wounds fester.

Now I'm thinking again of the final speech Prior makes at the end of Angels in America.  Certainly when the play was written his reference to "this disease" was to AIDS, but now we might extend the reference metaphorically to the failure to remember and confront the ways in which the nation and its people fail to meet our aspirations.  It kills some, but Prior prophecies that some will recover to carry out the Great Work.  So . . . . perhaps  . . . . the possiblity of utopia depends on a healthy recollection of the past.

more on plastic dinerware and hospitality

After AmCon students came to dinner Monday, as I was cleaning up the blue plastic plates and plastic forks of various colors for re-use, I thought again about tableware.  This time I thought less about how what these implements convey about one's class and economic standing and more about what they might say about one's communities.  My thoughts were hardly profound or original, but I was grateful to have enough dinnerware so that everyone could eat, enough to make hosting a smallish crowd easy.  And I noticed that having enough of these in plastic rather than good china and silver also suggests something of the sort of hospitality I am prepared to offer and that my guests are willing to accept: casual and convivial rather than formal.  In this situation the implements are pared down almost entirely to their function with little symbolic meaning remaining.  They are tools for eating and building social communities not markers of my economic resources or social status.

We are all pioneers, or maybe not

In the opening scene of Angels in a America, the funeral of Louis' grandmother, the rabbi speaks about the immigrant journey and asserts that the descendents can not make the same journey.  " You can never make that crossing that she made, for such Great Voyages in this world do not any more exist." 

One commentator remarks that all the major characters in the play are pioneers of some sort, perhaps contradicting the rabbi.  Certainly the Mormon characters bring to mind their own ancestors who made the 19th century journey from New York state to Utah across the western plains.  Even if Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier hypothesis is out of fashion and the frontier was not the most important experience in shaping American character, the mythology of journey--both immigrant and pioneer in the west--remains powerful.  

This poem allows us to think about the value of a slow journey at ground level from the perspective of those who more often travel rapidly in the air.   (Remember Harper's final speech delivered through the window of an airplane.)  Nye encourages us to consider what we miss as we travel fast and high, but she does not avoid noticing that the old journey also had its cost.

 

Full Day

by Naomi Shihab Nye

The pilot on the plane says:
In one minute and fifty seconds
we're going as far
as the covered wagon went
in a full day.
We look down
on clouds,
mountains of froth and foam.
We eat a neat
and subdivided lunch.
How was it for the people in
the covered wagon?
They bumped and jostled.
Their wheels broke.
Their biscuits were tough.
They got hot and cold and old.
Their shirts tore on the branches
they passed.
But they saw the pebbles
and the long grass
and the sweet shine of evening
settling on the fields.
They knew the ruts and the rocks.
They threw their furniture out
to make the wagons lighter.
They carried their treasures
in a crooked box.

"Full Day" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from Come With Me. © Greenwillow, 2000.

Technology that promotes social captial

"covered dish" for bringing a meal

My students know that I tend to be skeptical about the degree to which electronic technology actually promotes human good.  I recognize the potential, but I also see the down side.  So it seems honest for me to acknowledge that CaringBridge and FoodTidings.com appear to be uses of technology that do promote social capital.  Both depend upon prior relationships and foster them in service of sharing news about a person well-loved and of providing meals and other help.  Perhaps by making that person's network of friends visible, these programs even stimulate new relationships and expand community.  Seems like an interesting topic for further research.

History of America in 15 Cars

The book is Engines of Change, by Paul Ingrassia who is interviewed here on NPR.  Which cars?  The interview touches on the 1953 Corvette, the VW Bug, the 1964 Mustang, and the Prisus.

As many of my students know, I keep a metal model of a yellow Mustang convertible in my office.  Not because I ever owned a real one, but because I have a pretty clear memory of seeing one in a garage, probably near Cambridge, MA, when my family spent the day there getting our dark blue falcon station wagon repaired after sliding into a bridge.  I must have been about nine years old.  I was not (am not) much interested in cars, but that one impressed me.  I did not know, what I know now from this interview, that the Mustang was relatively inexpensive and therefore encouraged the trend toward the "two car family."And that new information leads to the observation that, of course, suburbs with out public transportation also encouraged ownership of two cars because one took the father to work and another was necessary for grocery shopping, taking kids to activities, and other "errands."

It is not quite true to say that I'm not much interested in cars.  While I don't read car magazines and I'm not able to identify models and years beyond the most iconic ones, I am interested in the symbolic value of cars and in what they tell us about American culture.  So, I'm eager to see this book.  It seems like it might be a good fit for AmCon 202 next time around.

The brain is NOT a computer

This from David Brooks:

"The most important and paradoxical fact shaping the future of online learning is this: A brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion. If you think about how learning actually happens, you can discern many different processes. There is absorbing information. There is reflecting upon information as you reread it and think about it. There is scrambling information as you test it in discussion or try to mesh it with contradictory information. Finally there is synthesis, as you try to organize what you have learned into an argument or a paper." 

The editorial is about on-line learning, but the description above is more generally applicable to the learning process.  At this point in the semester, near the end, we are moving toward synthesis, trying to move from merely acquiring information and playing with it (scrambling in Brooks' terms) to making our own meaningful patterns. 

Angelic Declaration of Independence?

Two nights, three hours each, watching the HBO version of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, in two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika.  This is my second viewing and this time I also read the script for the stage version as well as some scholarly articles.

I watched with students who were born about the time the play was first staged.  For them, there is no pre-AIDs experience, just as there is no pre-9/11 America, as one of them pointed out to me a year ago.  Watching with them intensified my awareness of the passage of time, not so much in relation to the play's concerns about time, history, change, and stasis, but more in relation to how one's location and perspective affects one's identification of what the play is about.  Of course it is a play 'about' AIDS; of course it is a play that portrays a moment in American history; but from this chronological distance, the under laying themes seem to come to the surface and the events of the late 1980s become the vehicle for exploring enduring concerns.

All of that was to prepare to comment on Prior's final speech.  Last night that speech seemed to echo the Declaration of Independence.

"This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away.  We won't die secret deaths anymore.  The world only spins forward.  We will be citizens.  The time has come. . . . The Great Work Begins."


From this distance the disease can not be reduced to AIDS, although that is the actual referent, and many more people are included in the "we" than the gay men afflicted by AIDS in the 1980s.   Post 9/11, for example, the disease might be construed as xenophobia, fear and hatred, an infection that spreads and threatens our ideals and our life together.  Thus the declaration, "We will be citizens," rings a note rather like the Declaration of Independence, a commitment to taking responsibility for the work of becoming what we prize.