Sharpening my axe

So I've taken a short hiatus from generating a lot of new material for this blog. I wrote myself into a corner with the play that was going up on Mondays, so I stopped. And last week I just ran out of steam. The end of the academic year is a tough time, and given the work that I did over the January break, it was a particularly long and tiring spring.

I'm trying to find the balance between sticking to my writing practice and sharpening my axe. I find it very hard to take a rest from work. I think if I stop I'm going to miss out on an opportunity. I struggle with this feeling that I'm wasting time if I'm not actively working on something. My trainer once pointed out to me that a wood cutter can't cut wood if the axe isn't sharp. So taking time out to sharpen the axe is imperative. That metaphor really landed for me, and I'm trying to embrace it right now. Not get too anxious about productivity and just allow some time and space for rest and reflection.

My play "Bromancing the OK" is featured as the Play of the Week on TreePress this week, and you can read a copy of it for free! I also did an interview for them, which was a lot of fun. I talked about the axe sharpening in the interview, which made me think about including it for today's musing.  I hope you enjoy the play and the interview!

Looking for understanding rather than intolerance

Earlier this week, The New York Times published an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof called "A Confession of Liberal Intolerance." In the piece, Kristof writes about the notion that academia is big on diversity but only when it fits a liberal mindset. He cites examples of conservative-leaning and/or evangelical Christian faculty members who feel uncomfortable expressing their viewpoints within an academic institution. And then there are some quantitative statistics that support these stories, which just add fuel to the fire.

While I found the article disturbing, I wasn't surprised. Working in a university, I witness this all the time. I overhear comments made by faculty members. I see students react when another student speaks about Christianity in a personal way. I experience my own reactions when I hear something that contradicts what I believe to be "the truth." We talk a lot in higher education about microaggressions, small insults that we typically associate with historically oppressed peoples, however, I hear plenty of microaggressions flying at Christians and conservatives as well.

One could argue that Christians and conservatives are part of the dominant culture and that microaggressions towards them are just "righting a biased, oppressive system," but I'm not sure that it's the most effective or forward-thinking way of calibrating a system. When I was an undergraduate and just starting to embark on the long, never-ending journey of confronting my own privilege and becoming more mindful about social justice, a facilitator in a training session said that a person's perception is their reality. My perception of what's happening to me and around me is my reality. Regardless of what someone tells me is happening, if I can't perceive it, it's tough to embrace it as my reality. I may adamantly disagree with how someone is perceiving the exact same situation, but I can't tell them to experience it differently. They are having their own experience that is informed by their own context. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people across the political continuum don't understand this. And as a result, we see it play out on college campuses the way that Kristof highlights in his article and in countless other situations that dominate the news right now.

We have become a culture of backlashers. We have a very hard time agreeing to disagree because we experience that as a loss of power rather than as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of another's position. There's value in considering someone else's viewpoint. Knowing the "enemy" is better than not knowing the enemy. And I've learned quite a bit from thinking through the other side of an argument. It sharpens my own position.

None of this is meant to dilute the action that I want taken against the policies and positions that I disagree with, but I do think that we need to be careful about having a double standard when it comes to thinking through personal viewpoints, particularly on college campuses where we supposedly guarantee academic freedom of thought. Viewpoints are viewpoints. It's when viewpoints become legislation that we have problems.

Thinking about democracy--where does it go from here?

Andrew Sullivan's piece in this week's New York Magazine should be required reading for anyone planning to vote in the presidential election this fall. It's called "Our Democracy Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny: The Case Against the People."  Sullivan is known as a conservative political commentator, but he's also quite a complicated fellow (gay, HIV+, British-born, etc.). Regardless of how you might feel about him or any of these descriptors, his article in the magazine raises all sorts of historical and cultural questions about democracy, ideas that we should really pay attention to now that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican party, and as we inch closer to Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

I'm not sure that either of these candidates can or will solve the problems that Sullivan outlines in his article. And he's not the only one who's been making these points over the last few weeks. It's just that for my money, he does it in the most convincing way that I've encountered as of yet. He's essentially proposing that American democracy may very well be on its way down. Like down for the count. The case he makes is compelling based on histories both distant and recent, and I'm not sure anyone on either side of the political line is really safe.

The most disturbing moment comes when Sullivan writes that, "The most powerful engine for a mass movement is the evocation of hatred." When I think about the resonance of that statement, the depth with which it hits me in my head and in my heart, I grow very sad at what American democracy has become. Equal opportunity for all has never really taken hold, as people have continued to be disenfranchised throughout the history of America's democracy.  We don't like to think of it that way, but it's the truth. And so all of our attempts to auto correct for this long history of inequities haven't worked. They've functioned like bandages over deep wounds that just continue to fester, and instead of putting in the real time and energy necessary for the wounds to heal, we just keep picking scabs and letting infection set in. And that infection spreads, and we have a systemic situation on our hands. The hatred has taken hold, and we're having a hard time stamping it out.

I'm not sure what to do or what to suggest, other than that you should read this Sullivan article. My first baby step is to take stock, try to understand how I contribute to the points he raises, try to figure out how I might be able to re-investigate, re-understand the potentials of democracy without falling into the traps that have been laid. It's a sobering undertaking. And I have no idea what to think about the future.

Facing the silence

I'm late on this week's musing because I had a deadline that I needed to hit that took priority. It's that time in the semester when I'm feeling tired and overwhelmed by all the tasks that come with this time of year. I'm also aware of the cumulative effect of the academic year. At a certain point my threshold for shenanigans lowers, and general crabbiness ensues.

We as a 21st century culture have lives with lots of moving parts, spheres of influence, and often conflicting responsibilities. I've been revisiting a theatre project that I worked on last year that took place on a Revolutionary War battlefield in southern New Jersey, and even though the characters in the project were in the middle of a war, I can't help but think that their lives were much simpler. Master of the Obvious is in the house, I know, but the realization lands hard for me this morning as I write this.

I'm standing at the end of a subway train car, with my back against the door, and as I look down the car at all the faces sitting and standing, I see lots of the same feelings I have: heaviness, exhaustion, lack of enthusiasm, general discomfort. I wonder if my 18th century characters, both real and imagined, felt the same feelings. And if they did, were those feelings persistent or were they fleeting? And were they more likely to look each other in the eye, smile, take time to know each other, breathe deeply?  I wonder.

I know full well that I'm addicted to information and visual stimulation. It's very hard for me to not look at my phone or a computer screen or the television. I long for my childhood when a book could hold my attention for an entire day. That used to be the norm. Now it happens maybe once every three years. That's the root of my exhaustion. Quiet contemplation unmediated by a screen almost never happens.

I used to be much worse. At least I can stand to be alone with myself now, after many years of that not being the case. But as my comfort with that alone time increase, I find myself looking for ways to just sit in silence. That's still challenging.

So I guess that's the goal. Sitting in silence. Even if it's 5 minutes. What a concept...

Reconsidering revolution

New Yorkers did an interesting thing on Tuesday. Democrats gave a so-called "establishment" candidate a win and Republicans gave a so-called "anti-establishment" candidate a win. I don't usually associate contemporary Republicans with revolution, but that's kind of what's playing out across the country. Populists across party lines are rising up and throwing support behind Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders because they believe some sort of revolution needs to happen. Sanders uses that term outright to describe what he thinks America needs, and while Trump doesn't use "revolution" per se, it's actually what he's proposing.

At least I don't think he uses that word. I try to ignore what he says because his proposals make me shudder.

There's a big difference between talking about revolution and actually participating in and achieving one. I think that's the hard part. Revolution sounds glamorous to a lot of people, but most of us haven't actually experienced one firsthand. When I hear Bernie Sanders calling for revolution and see a lot of privileged, Liberal people raising their fists and screaming "Yeah!", I get uncomfortable. And skeptical about the follow through. Promises to break up big banks and of free college for everyone sound great, but are we hearing enough about the realities of those things? I'm not so sure.

Yes, I believe wholeheartedly that injustices need to be righted and that balance needs to be restored. However, I think that systemic, lasting change takes much longer than the amount of time it takes to make a promise from behind a podium. And it also takes more than one person to make that change happen. President Obama's two terms in office should have clarified that for us by now. People are starting to point to congressional elections at the state and federal levels as places where real change could begin to happen. That's where the revolution, if we really want it, could take hold.

But that's the real question for me. Are people really sure that they want what they're asking for?  Are we really ready to make these collective sacrifices for the greater good? I'm not so sure about that either. We're a pretty self-centered society, and we do a lot of talking out of both sides of our collective mouth.

When I was a kid, there were these television commercials for Toyota automobiles. The jingle was, "You asked for it? You got it! Toyota!" And then the people in the commercials did a victory jump with their hands in the air next to a Toyota car or truck. I can't help but think that it would be beneficial for some of our more revolutionary-minded friends to think about the actual benefits and deficits of a real revolution. Maybe it would be useful to listen to the stories of people who came to this country to escape the aftermath of a revolution. These first-person accounts might help to clarify what a call for revolution actually means. Political rallying and posturing make revolution sound like a great idea. First person accounts make revolution real.

Once again in this election cycle, I think we should be listening more carefully, rather than raising our fists and yelling, "Yeah!"