Understanding Our Selves

In a radical move, though admittedly inspired more by fear of theft than anything else, I did not take my computer with me as I vacationed during the week of fall break. Being without what has become essentially an extension of my body and mind was quite an experience – I did not have my music, my intricate planning devices and to-do lists, or instant access to the internet. The last is something people my generation seem to take for granted; can’t think of the name of a song or the title of a movie, can’t think of the precise wording of a quote or the exchange rate between different currencies or the conversion formula between Fahrenheit and Celsius? Look it up on the internet. How did people get by before? I suppose they actually had to know these things.

Fittingly – because I spent a lot of time during that computer-less week speculating on the ways in which my existence with such a tool has conditioned me on all different levels, physically, mentally, psychologically, etc. – when I returned to school and reunited myself with my laptop, I started browsing my news haunts and ran across this column on neuroscience. To summarize, the columnist is describing recent cutting edge research, done by young scholars from a wide variety of relevant fields, studying not only “the way biology, in the form of genes, influence behavior” but also “the complementary process of how social behavior changes biology”.

This is the issue of individual conditioning, but on a much larger scale, affecting whole cultures, on a longer time-scale, in more specific and quantifiable ways. Where this research will lead, I speculate, could be monumental in, among other things, leading to a greater sense of understanding and empathy between culturally removed peoples. Or between regionally removed peoples. Maybe analogies may be drawn between people on the individual level. After all, sometimes simply understanding what another person thinks or feels, which is already hard enough, isn’t enough. It would help to know why.

Why we think or feel certain things or react in certain ways seems to me to be even more important in regard to understanding ourselves. Self-reflection and critical self-examination is so important in the world, especially today; another avenue towards understanding those things and teaching them would be quite welcome.

The People Make the Nation

There’s so little room, today, to be a human being. The first eighteen years of life have been reduced to a preparation process, and you are defined by where you are on the path to… college. A job. Adulthood. I’ve known so many people, middle class students, who have their lives planned out to the hour, even during the summer, to fit in all the extracurricular activities and programs and volunteering that they think they need (that their parents think they need) to compete.

Talk to any one of these people, and on the surface you find an enthusiastic, motivated, ambitious little worker ready to take on the next challenge. Then talk to them a little bit longer and you realize the surface is all there is – because, where has the time gone to really think about anything on a more profound, less practical (“useful”) level?

Add to that a sense of entitlement, which seems (to me) to be a trend among natural-born Americans, a sense of narcissism, which seems (to me and probably others) to be a trend among teenagers, and a sense of arrogance, which is natural for some people who “do well” by doing what they’re told and not thinking too hard about anything.

And suddenly I don’t feel so good about the future of our country, filled with complacent automatons who fail to involve themselves in the battle between vicious irrationals and frustrated pragmatists. Government is essentially contractualism, although by now it focuses less on what is “right and wrong” and more on “what works” (perhaps not enough sometimes), and contractualism does not function unless the people who are affected involve themselves. Here’s where I become a hypocrite, though: some of these people who live without thinking, frankly, I don’t want them anywhere near the policy-making process that could affect me.

People need to be aware, well-informed, and civilly involved.The era of complacency and negligence has past. Now is the time for the revolutionary mentality – our nation is in crisis, and the blindfolded smile of good times is no longer appropriate.

What Makes Us Human (and what is it worth?)

Maybe this is just me, but I’ve found that some of most real human beings I’ve ever known were teachers of english or literature (Note the qualifiers! I’m merely making observations from experience).

Mine may be an extreme experience, but from middle school to high school to college, every single literature teacher I’ve had has struck me with their apparent profound understanding of the human condition, as evidenced by their behavior regarding themselves and others. Some were exuberant and “eccentric” in a way that suggested some secret knowledge about the nature of life; most balanced enthusiasm and a soberness, enjoying their work and continuing to strive to live up to it; all were astonishingly perceptive, understanding and compassionate.

My theory is that it has a lot to do with the nature of literature. It seems incomprehensible to me that someone could spend so much of their lives reading an endless number of books about people – all kinds of people, from all walks of life, in all kinds of situations – and not have a greater understanding of other human beings. How many characters can you analyze before you think to turn those skills of human dissection onto yourself?

A good literature teacher doesn’t just impart the mechanics of language or the ability to comprehend a story and compose an essay about it. Literature is about life itself, exploring what is to be human.

And in the modern world, where what the means is less and less clear all the time, when the more traditional avenues for learning such things, like parents or extended communities or religious communities, seem as though they are becoming less reliable, what an important job that is!

It’s a shame that teachers – not just lit teachers, but more so in the context of this post  – aren’t paid more. There are some positive aspects to it – for example, nobody would be attracted to the job for the money and prestige instead of a genuine love and understanding of the work. But it’s something of a practice in our society to value things, products or skills, with monetary value assignations. So it’s a little distressing to think our society just doesn’t care that much about these things.  It could make the difference between a mother screaming at her child, or not, or a CEO sacrificing ethics for self-interest, or not.

But then, what price can you put on someone’s humanity?

How to Do Hard Things?

My piano playing career has not been consistent – I had one teacher for perhaps a year before moving out of the country, where I studied with my grandmother for almost two years, before returning and flitting through a handful of teachers for almost three years before settling on the teacher I had for the longest, fifth grade through ninth grade. And after ninth grade, I quit. Fed up.

I started lessons again almost exactly two years ago. I have a piano lesson in twenty minutes. And I’m struggling to keep from telling my teacher, once and for all, that I don’t want to do it anymore.

I love playing the piano. I love music. I know the skills it takes to play the piano will be infinitely useful to me as an aspiring composer and theorist. I know that in five, or ten, or fifty years I will be infuriated with my present self if I throw in the towel and stop learning because it’s too hard right now. This is the voice of reason speaking (and the voices of my piano teacher and my academic adviser).

Will they be enough to drown out the voices in opposition – the part of myself and some of my friends who’ve noticed how I’m always exhausted, often sick, occasionally depressed, and once in  a while painfully desperate for something to give up to make things a little easier on myself?

(I apologize, I do have a melodramatic streak.)

I know I have to keep going. I just don’t know how I’m going to make myself do it.

I think most people understand that it’s sometimes necessary to sacrifice present well-being for a future reward – but sometimes the fear is that if we sacrifice too much, we won’t even reach the future in one piece.

Service

I like Google.

To appease those opposed to such simplistic statements: from what I know about Google, I like it. The search engine is more than sufficient for my needs, and as a bonus, it satisfies my aesthetic preference for simplicity and cleanliness. For similar reasons, I use many other Google creations, and am waiting excitedly for the Mac version of the web browser. I’m also attracted to the prevailing depictions of their corporate culture. My approval is based on the mostly-to-entirely positive image I have received, and I will maintain it up until the revelation of a scandal or skeleton.

So when I learn about something like this, 10^100, I’m inclined to suspend my suspicions of motives and react favorably (I can’t say the same about my reaction to this Disney offer; it seems like it could do a lot of good, but the incentive seems a tad bit too self-serving). It’s unorthodox (something of a shame), and I’m somewhat skeptical of the ultimate effectiveness, seeing as I’m unfamiliar with the way such things actually work. But I’m very appreciative of the idea and that apparent sentiment. Ten millions dollars for the implementation of the idea that will help the most people? If it is effective, how great would it be if everyone who had ten million dollars to spare did something like this? It would be like Kiva, a compelling service initiative, but on a larger scale.

It’s worth taking a look at the list of ideas on 10^100. I’m personally more enthused about ones like “provide quality education to African students” and “make educational content available online for free”, though several others are also intriguing.

Some are a little bemusing though; “Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists”? I mean, it’s a positive thing to be sure, although a little distressing that such an initiative would be needed, all over the world but especially in our supposedly modern country. But it doesn’t seem to compare to the other ideas that actually directly help people.

The essence of the initiative isn’t that novel – there are numerous aid organizations all over the world, after all. But the approach is very public, and thus potentially very inspirational. I hope it works out.

Late Night Pondering

A book I am reading for one of my classes suggests, in a parenthetical remark in the conclusion, that the consistent opposition to anything related to the National Endowment for the Arts on the part of the conservative party in our country has to do with their understanding of the power that political action through art and culture has.

I know nothing about this. I have to admit, I wouldn’t be surprised, but that’s probably my inherent biases speaking. Does anyone else know about this issue? Is it an issue? Is Fulcher (the author) on to something, or should she just stick to turn-of-the-century French politics?

Guilty of Metaphor

This is the first semester in which I am not taking a discussion-based class; the one class with other students is a high level theory course, which means there’s a lot of problem solving and speculative chatter… but that’s not the same as, for example, a seminar class, a round table hour and a half discussion about anything related to whichever book we were all reading at the time.

I rather regret it. It’s immensely enjoyable to talk about a subject or concept that everyone is new to. Nobody is embarrassed to admit that they aren’t an expert (who is?), so nobody is embarrassed to offer potentially half-assed comments, which lead to places no one could have expected. Nobody is embarrassed to back down when someone challenges them and they realize they might be wrong, because in this kind of setting, recognizing a more substantial argument and bowing to it – at least temporarily – is much more respectable than staunchly defending a single idea regardless of other arguments.

One fundamental skill learned in the two years of seminar is the ability to be wrong gracefully. But even more important might be the ability to be wrong at all. And this is where wrong doesn’t even have to mean believing something utterly untrue, but perhaps forming a conception of a situation that is flawed in some small way because of a misunderstanding of some piece of information regarding the plot. Perhaps taking a moral stance on a character based on a lack of empathy for or unrealistic expectations for a human being in a book. Perhaps judging a social theory too harshly without a full understanding of the status quo at the time the book was written.

There are so many ways to be wrong! There are so many ways to be mistaken, not just in class or at school, but in life, in relationships with other people, in understanding the nature of human beings, or even just understanding the self, in understanding the nature of the world… These things, for example, are so complex that to think we have them figured out, to make grand sweeping statements to encompass them, to believe that there’s only one right way to do anything, is either ignorance, lunacy, or arrogance.

To return to the bubble of academia… I’ve been in many a group of students who did not get along. Usually it’s because one or several are the slacker-type who either won’t do any work or will do work so insufficiently that it will need to be done over. But sometimes it’s two or more people who, for whatever reason, seem utterly incapable of agreeing with one another on anything.

Does being forced to work together make a stronger whole? If people are willing to compromise, to be practical, yes, a group will accomplish more than an individual. But if people are set in their ways and refuse to consider an alternate point of view, then frankly, the group may as well split up. Because the consequences will be a lot of anger, a lot of wasted time, and a final group project – if any – that nobody is happy with.

Advocating (Piston)

American classical music is nowhere near as well known as European classical music. Even in America. Ask anyone about classical music, and chances are they can rattle off German composers, French composers, even Russian composers, but probably not any American ones. It’s too bad. There’s some really terrific stuff out there.

There really isn’t an “American aesthetic”, considering how wildly the styles and techniques vary from composer to composer. But there are a few composers in particular that I’ve always associated with one another and with a sound that I often think of as American, even knowing that it isn’t definitive, which I’ll attempt to describe: broad, clean, open, spacious, rich, often pastoral, often quite tonal. Just a few of them are: Walter Piston, Samuel Barber, and Aaron Copland – interestingly, all three were active for a large portion of the twentieth century.

The qualities I described are most evident in their chamber music and orchestral work, and even though most of them are quite long, I may pick some to put up here… but not today. I was actually inspired to post this because I was organizing my music library and came across a specific piece that I hadn’t heard in a while, and on listening to it again, decided it was so wonderful and compelling I had to share it immediately.

Walter Piston’s piece for solo piano is called Passacaglia, and it is indeed (for the most part) a Passacaglia: a form based upon a simple bass figure that repeats over and over again. I haven’t studied it formally, but I would say it’s post-tonal, verging on atonal… that is, it stretches and twists traditional tonality quite a bit but doesn’t do away with it entirely, since as a result of the bass figure, there is a “center” to the piece. The strictness of form makes the piece very accessible, as long as you enjoy ominous, heavy music, that by the end tends towards a grand apocalyptic feel, eventually grinding to a halt under the weight of its unbearable angst.

I guess even in this piece I sense some of the qualities mentioned; openness, spaciousness, cleanliness… describing music can be such a challenge. I’d be interested to hear other takes on it.

Could You Stop Reading This If You Had To?

This is only one of many articles written over the past few months/years that tell us what we already know, which is that it’s very, very easy to get distracted these days by gadgets like phones and the internet. It’s the information age! News and trivia floods in from all directions, filling your brain so that you have no more space for the things you’re really trying to do. It could be argued that people will always find ways to avoid doing work. But worse than just aiding chronic time wasters, I get the feeling that the deluge of distractions actually inhibits the development of a person’s capacity to focus.

The track that the article takes, suggesting various programs to help combat the insidious influence of various websites, is refreshing: instead of simply reprimanding or bemoaning, it offers a solution. I would probably use the program that tracked how much time I spend on various applications, at the very least to satisfy my curiosity.

But I don’t think I’ll be trying out the wrist-slapping nanny-software. It doesn’t seem right to fight an addiction to technology by cultivating a dependence on another kind of technology. And in any case, that kind of solution isn’t addressing the real problem, not for me at least, which is that I’m frequently unable to remain concentrated on my work, as interesting as it is, without unconsciously opening up my favorite websites. Even if I get a message slapping me on the wrist for getting off task, the distraction is already complete, my train of thought derailed.

No, I’m going to focus on the real issue. A coincidental conversation I had this morning with a friend about this exact topic suggested a solution: meditation! My friend meditates on a regular basis. I suppose that’s at least part of the reason for his consistently calm and tempered demeanor, but he also claims that it’s the reason for his enormous capacity to focus for extended periods of time (If I was more scientifically literate I could explain what my friend explained about why meditation helps develop focus among other things, but unfortunately my talents lie elsewhere). Meditation is something I’ve always been intrigued by, but this is the first time that I’ve had a truly pressing motivation to devote the time to it.

There are so many different paths to take. Meditation is promoted by a whole slew of groups, ranging from doctors and therapists to new age groups and various religions. But as my friend, from whom I will be seeking advice anyway, approaches it through the Buddhist tradition, I decided that’s the approach I’ll take as well. It’s such a compelling practice, I’ve always had a lot of respect for it. I might not be completely sold (yet?) on some of the more metaphysical beliefs, but in any case it’s at least worth exploring as long as I’m learning about the meditative exercises and practices. And who knows, maybe I’ll finally become a more spiritual person.

Is meditation the only solution? Perhaps not. But it’s definitely an appealing one, and I think I’m going to enjoy it.

Advocating (Schoenberg)

A few semesters ago I took a music history class on twentieth century music. I was just thinking about it today because this semester I’m taking a class on twentieth century music theory, and wondering if it might have been more useful to have taken this theory class first.

Maybe, I’m telling myself. One of the mistakes I think some people make when approaching twentieth century music is thinking they need to know, technically and theoretically speaking, exactly what the composer is doing in order to understand the music. It can help, and for me personally it helps because I’m interested in composition myself. But it shouldn’t be necessary, and I think when a piece of music is “successful”, it absolutely isn’t necessary. All the listener needs is patience and an open mind.

The composer everyone loves to hate is Arnold Schoenberg – funnily enough, he’s been the “awful modern composer” for so long that people still think of that way even though it’s been almost sixty years since his last piece, and more than a century since some of his first pieces. In fact, his work has become quite well established on the musical scene.

Pierrot Lunaire, one of his most famous pieces (for good reason!) and written almost a century ago in 1912, is a cycle of twenty-one songs for voice (using a sprechstimme style that is a mixture of dramatic speech and actual singing), and what is now known as the Pierrot ensemble: violin/ viola, flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, cello, and piano. The texts, translated from the poetry of Frenchman Albert Giraud, are laden with meaning and metaphor, within themselves as well as in the way they are organized within the cycle, and of course in the way that Schoenberg sets them to music. The compositional technique Schoenberg uses is atonal, though still lyrical and, to me at least, quite romantic.

In short, it’s a stunningly beautiful creation. If anyone is the slightest bit interested, I recommend researching it in depth immediately. Seriously. (This is perhaps a good place to start, though it does not contain any of the possible fascinating textual or musical analysis.)

Excerpts, to tempt: By the way, the poetry is vital to fully understand the pieces, so, read along!

3. Der Dandy: (Voice, Piano, Piccolo, Clarinet) Turn the volume down, it starts out with a shriek that caught me unawares through my earbuds the first time I heard it. Delightfully mocking piece – arguably, the whole cycle is mocking – with such adorable imagery.

7. Der Kranke Monde: (Voice, Flute) And turn the volume up, for this heartbreaking duet, weak and thin, but “heavy” nonetheless.

12. Galgenlied: (Voice, Piccolo, Violin, Cello) This is the shortest and perhaps the most twisted; it also seems to be the favorite of most people I asked, though most of the people I asked are irreverent college students.