Shamrocks, Dragons and Beets

China is big and Ireland is little.  But when I was growing up, the big country was insignificant, whereas the little one was fairly important--even in weeks and months not leading up to St. Patrick's Day.

China was somewhere on the other side of the world and it was known mostly as the homeland of the starving children who would be more than happy to eat the pickled beets that I was trying to leave on my plate.  Ireland, on the other hand, was a magic place where people did everything in excess:   laughed a lot, drank a lot, sang a lot, talked a lot (in an accent that "tickled").  Never mind what they said in school about famines and religious wars.

My maternal grandfather's name was Clinton Kelly--but his family was proudly Protestant.  So proud, in fact, that my great grandfather's first name was "Orange."  Still, there was no denying that I was 1/4 Irish.  I don't think anyone in my immediate family cared (or even knew) about all that Irish /English /Catholic /Protestant /Green /Orange stuff.

So despite my Orangeman roots, I enthusiastically pinched any classmate not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day.  (Actually, as I remember it, almost all the German and Norwegian kids loudly claimed some marginal Irish heritage on March 17, thereby escaping serious bruising.  The most obstreperous holdout was my third-grade teacher, Laura Brundgardt, who wore black-- perhaps because of some unfortunate prior pinching from "excessive" Irishmen.  No attempts were made to punish her for her staunch Germanic stance.)

We all loved the sappy Irish-American movies starring Bing Crosby--"Going My Way," "Bells of St. Mary's"--and we cheerfully sang silly or maudlin Irish songs:  stories about Mrs. O'Leary's cow and Mrs. Murphy's chowder.

So, even as I began my love affair with France, I continued to be fascinated with Ireland--which always remained a dreamy, far-off--and yet, strangely familiar--place.  It's funny.  I never actually visited Ireland until about five years ago.  By that time, I was already a veteran teacher of Irish literature and Irish history.  What I discovered, when I finally laid eyes on the "Auld Sod"--was that the Irish were, indeed, excessive in their love of life.  I was sometimes even a little embarrassed by their enthusiasm and their unreserved friendliness:  how could such happy folks have emerged from such a relatively unhappy history?

By the way, St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, is a Protestant cathedral, associated with the Anglican Church of Ireland, and the former "hangout" of  one of my favorite writers--Jonathan Swift, who was its Dean.

I remain, thus, a Greenman with an Orange grandfather--and I'm still in awe of Ireland.

As for China, well, my attitude has changed quite a bit.  In grade school, I knew only that China had lots of people (most of whom were, according to popular accounts, starving).  Many good white people, especially Americans like Pearl Buck, tried to help the poor Chinese, of course.  My classmate, Joan Vandereau, had spent time in China where her parents had done their very best to bring Jesus and pickled beets to the miserable heathen on the banks of the Yangtze. Joan taught the whole class how to say "have you eaten yet" in some Chinese dialect or other.  We felt very civilized and very superior to be Christian children in prosperous, well-fed America.

Well!  Where has that comfortably pathetic and unthreatening China gone?  Nowadays, the airwaves are buzzing with fearful tales of the Chinese menace--of a great dragon that is plotting to take over the world and, quite possibly, force us to eat our own pickled beets.  I wear clothes made in China, I sit on furniture made in China, and I even cook my St. Patrick's Day corned beef in a pot made in China.

Now I ask you:  why have the mercenary Chinese forced us to buy all this stuff?

Then there's that other thing:  I wound up teaching in a school where at least half of my students were of Chinese descent.  At DBHS, if I had tried to pinch anyone on St. Patrick's Day, I would have been beaten up and then fired.  So, in a slightly bad-faith epiphany, I rediscovered my Orangeman heritage and wore orange on March 17. Self-protection.

I have said all the above tongue-in-cheek.  Thanks to my students and their families, I came to respect and appreciate China and Chinese culture (what little I know of it).  I love the United States, but it is indeed humbling to reflect upon the contributions made to humanity by the Middle Kingdom.  If the Irish are "excessive," then the Chinese are "oversized"--not physically, perhaps, but in ambition, in diligence, in determination, in accomplishments--and in sheer numbers.

One example of Chinese size does worry me, though.  The most recent issue of  "The Economist" reports that, in about 10 years, there will be 40 million Chinese men of marriageable age who have almost no prospect of finding a wife (this because of the "one-child" policy whereby many couples aborted female fetuses).  What will the Chinese government DO with those 40 million extra guys with raging hormones and no outlet for their energy?  Send them to conquer India or Russia?  Round them up and set them to work paving over the Himalayas?

Jonathan Swift, in his "Modest Proposal," suggested that the Irish--who, at the time, had a lot of extra children, but not much food (pickled beets or otherwise)--might eat their surplus babies, thereby solving two problems at once.  Perhaps the Chinese government should consider such a Swiftian solution:  and if the Chinese don't want to eat their 40 million young men themselves, they could always export them to other countries--as a good source of protein for starving foreigners, and of still more yuans for now-prosperous China.

Personally, I think I'll try to develop a better attitude toward pickled beets.

Gimmickry

Now tell me:  doesn't Charlize Theron at the 2010 Oscars look a little like Miss Mazeppa, the brassy stripper in Gypsy? She's got the breastplate and the don't-mess-with-me moue.  All she needs is a helmet and a trumpet.  I guess Miss Mazeppa's song still applies:  "Ya Gotta Have a Gimmick." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFRSawe33sA




President Obama could probably take a cue from Mazeppa and Charlize.  Americans don't seem to want their leaders to be too ordinary--think about "Honest Abe" with his stovepipe hat and beard--or TR with all those kids and all those dead animals on his wall--or, the absolute champion of gimmickry, FDR, with his pince nez glasses, jaunty cigarette holder and Yalta cape.  These guys knew how to "get a hand" and "get ahead" with some pretty good gimmicks that shielded them from what Miss Mazeppa calls "disisparaging remarks."  


C'mon Mr. President.  We paid you to give us a good show, to take us somewhere out of the ordinary.  So far, all you've managed to do is talk nice and remove your tie.  That's much too tame.  


So here's a little advice.  First of all, shave your head completely--bald heads on black guys make us think of real heroes, i.e., basketball players.  Second, go ahead and acquire a little discrete bling--maybe a nice "O"-shaped earring to remind us that you are still that rock star that we thought we elected.  Third, just to tone things down a bit, start reading your Tele-Prompter using professorial half-moon glasses (not dark, drug dealer things, though); this will reinforce the notion that you actually know more than the rest of us and, consequently, can be trusted to lead us somewhere we might like to go.


And remember Oscar Wilde:  "In matters of grave importance, style not sincerity is the vital thing."  The Republicans already know this (just watch Glenn Beck).  It's time you learned the lesson, too.  Start tooting your horn.  I bet you'll get a hand.  (As I did, for playing FDR at a party once, long ago.)

  

The "New and Revised" Absolute Truth

I guess we all adhere to a number of "orthodox" notions--ideas that just seem so self-evident that we never think to think about them.  And naturally, we view such received ideas as definitive--the end of the evolutionary train--the ultimate stage in whatever gamut has been run.

(We have no doubt that homo sapiens, for instance, is the end of the line, the "best.")

But as I think back on all the pedagogical orthodoxies that I've been expected to espouse, each successive one-true-way diametrically opposed to the previous one-true-way, I have become increasingly wary of  the authority of any particular Zeitgeist.

Right now, for example, I'm in a bit of a snit about "democracy."  Goodness knows, this is a political buzzword that almost everyone (except, perhaps, the Saudi king) bandies about with abandon, confident that he/she is on the side of absolute, definitive, end-of-the-line truth.  (Never mind that all those joyous voices raised in praise of the indisputable superiority of democracy are, in actuality, referring to wildly divergent notions of the abstraction they're lauding.)

Still, democracy uber alles. Like, WHATEVER...

Well, the audio-lingual method was once the only effective way to teach foreign languages.  It worked for a while. Then, somehow, it became totally ineffective and, in fact, a waste of time.  Later, the direct method was proved, beyond a doubt, to  be the only true faith--and it worked for a while--only to be condemned a bit later as heretical.  Then the natural approach was canonized, itself to be dumped in favor of TPRS (Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling).  Having thus espoused four consecutive true faiths (and made each of them work for a while before being condemned to ed. psych. hell for doing so), I simply abandoned foreign language teaching altogether.

Isn't it possible that democracy--the current political orthodoxy (regardless of what the word really means)--will go the way of the late and unlamented audio-lingual method?  Because, though it may have worked for a while, it clearly isn't working anymore. Not, at least, in Obama's America.  So, après Obama, le déluge?

I wonder if the NEXT one true political system is already out there, somewhere--in incipient form--just waiting for the chance to prove that it alone is THE "definitive" system--the ultimate, the end of the line.

Maybe something inscrutably Chinese:  a peculiar mixture of Communism, Confucianism and committee rule? Well, whatever it is, once democracy is dethroned and the new system espoused, it will probably work for a while...

That's the good news...  The thing is, now that I've written all of this cynical stuff, I realize that I'll probably miss democracy once it's gone.  (And I never missed the audio-lingual method.)

Old Age Gas

Blah, blah.  I just reread, for about the hundredth time, yesterday's blog "Same or Opposite."  I apologize for being such an insufferable gasbag.  My intention in writing that wordy discourse was to clarify my own thinking about the issue of same-sex marriage.  I realize, now, that I obfuscated more than clarified.  And I rambled on pontifically about things that I don't really understand and/or can't be sure about.  I really don't know, for example, whether there is a God who might grant or withhold "inalienable" rights to some or all human beings.  I don't know for sure that karma isn't built into the structure of the universe.  And I'm actually embarrassed by my confident application of Darwinian principles to societies as a whole (rather than to species).  I have always been terribly uneasy with social Darwinism, so what was I thinking?  In fact, I have no idea exactly HOW certain practices, once considered unacceptable, gradually acquire respectability and currency.  Maybe social norms CAN be established by executive or judicial decree (did Brown v. Board of Education change society, or did it merely legitimize a change that had already taken place in our collective consciousness--if not in our actual behavior?)

I hate not knowing.  For me, anyway, uncertainty is paralyzing.  I just dither, unsure of what direction to take, what plan to support, sur quel pied danser.  Help!  I'm becoming a fossile.

Anyway, I was tempted to remove "Same or Opposite," since it's so clearly (!) unclear.  But I finally decided to leave it hanging there--as a testimony to my struggle and as evidence that, in the end, a great deal of political commentary is just hot air.

Same or Opposite?

Carrie Prejean famously declared that "opposite" marriage was best--and she has a lot of tradition supporting her stance (if not her English usage).  But recently I've been reading and listening to lots of heated debate about the "right" of same-sex couples to marry.

Trust me, everyone:  if I had a vote in this matter, it would definitely be in favor of legalizing gay marriage.  But I am genuinely puzzled by the kind of reasoning that is being used in order to support such laws.


Because, you see, I simply don't believe that anyone has any inherent, natural "right" to anything at all.  When Thomas Jefferson wrote those eloquent words about "inalienable rights," many learned people actually thought that certain natural laws were written (by a  "Creator" of some sort) into the very structure of the universe.  But Darwin demonstrated, pretty convincingly, that nothing is divinely granted to any creature--all apparent "order" has evolved from something else and is moving inexorably toward still another state.  Thus, to claim, as do many of the gay marriage advocates, that "every adult has a natural right to marry whomever he/she chooses, regardless of sex," is just utter nonsense. In fact, this argument from "natural law" is every bit as loony as the arguments of the other side which are usually based on "biblical law."


Neither nature nor God grant marriage privileges:  only societies do that.  Indeed, marriage is the quintessential social institution--created by societies in order to guarantee that a particular "way of life" will renew and perpetuate itself.  Not surprisingly, then, traditional marriage was primarily an "opposite sex" legal contract whereby one male and one (or more) female(s) committed themselves and their property to the propagation and proper rearing of children.  "Proper rearing," of course, meant inculcating the children in the "way of life" approved and required by the society that sanctioned the marriage.  Traditional marriage thus served to pass on both genes and memes.   


I guess the point that I'm trying to make here is this:  societies structure their marriage laws according to the benefits that they (the societies) expect marriage to provide to the common weal.  And so, in ancient Egypt and in more recent Polynesia, sibling marriages were permitted--even encouraged--at least among the aristocracy, since a benefit accrued from guaranteeing the purity of rulers' bloodlines.  Similarly, many societies have authorized marriages that 21st Century Americans might label "pedophilic"--mature men taking child brides and thereby neutralizing potentially dangerous rivalries between powerful families.   


But everywhere, as far as I can determine, marriage laws were intended to legitimize and regulate child-bearing, child-rearing and wealth distribution.  Nowhere were were they primarily a kind of social consecration of an emotional commitment between two individuals. 


Oh, I'm sure that feelings and inclinations sometimes played a role in drawing up marriage contracts.  And it's pretty clear that many (perhaps most) marriage partners in traditional societies ultimately came to love or at least cherish their partners.  Indeed, the traditional words of the religious ceremony (as opposed to the legal contract) ask the contractors to pledge both love and fidelity to each other.  In actual practice, though, traditional societies seemed to be largely indifferent to spousal love.  As long as couples had children and cared for them properly, society generally allowed individuals (well, males at least) to find love and companionship wherever they wished.  


Indeed, the medieval tradition of "courtly love" was actually posited on the quest for affection and companionship outside of marriage.  And ancient Greece had clearly established conventions whereby mature males (married and fathers of children) entered into emotional and physical relationships with adolescent boys.  But again, I return to a central idea:  these customs were not, strictly speaking, "legal"--probably because they were largely personal and emotional matters, involving individuals and their feelings, but having little to do with the orderly functioning and preservation of the state.


Society just didn't care about according any special legal status to commitments between two people to love, support and have sex with each other. 


Only when love and, especially, sex could be seen as having some impact on the social order did authority (God, government, etc.) intervene.  A marginal desert tribe like Israel could scarcely perpetuate itself if males "wasted" their sperm on other males or on the ground.  So taboos banning such practices were established and canonized in that particular society.  Ancient Athens was apparently more confident that there was plenty of sperm to go around. 


In any event, we can pretty much summarize by stating once again:  traditional marriage legitimized the rearing of children and the distribution of property, not commitments of love and companionship.  


But somewhere, in the course of the last 300 years, societies began to believe that the marriage contract was more a commitment to love a partner than it was to have children with that partner. In fact, it just occurs to me that--in 21st Century America--people are increasingly having children without even thinking about marriage.  Whereas, on the other hand, these same breeders often don't want to commit themselves to marriage until they are quite certain that the partner they have chosen will continue to provide love for the remainder of life.


Why is this?  Perhaps because, as society has evolved and become more sophisticated, many of the child-rearing and meme-perpetuating functions traditionally accomplished by marriage have been assumed by other institutions--most especially by schools (alma maters).  We still need opposite-sex relations in order to produce children--but we really don't need marriages to rear them.  (Oh, I will be vilified for this statement--but as a former teacher, I know that it is true.)


And so, what does society TODAY require in order to survive?  It still requires opposite sex intercourse in order to conceive children, since we haven't yet figured out how to "decant" kids a la Brave New World.  That's probably all Carrie Prejean was thinking about (if, indeed, she was thinking about anything at all). But child-rearing has become a secondary function of marriage:  if parents don't take care of their kids, society itself will.  And even child-bearing is no longer viewed as essential:  most societies can perpetuate themselves quite nicely even if a large amount of sperm is simply "wasted" on love-making that has no reproductive goal.  Childless marriages are just fine.


In other words, marriage simply isn't as important to society as it once was.  But as it has lost its importance for society in general, it has acquired additional significance for individuals, since it is now seen as a kind of social acceptance of an emotional contract :  society's "seal of approval" for the decision of two people to unite their lives and fortunes for their mutual well-being (whether or not children are involved).


Obviously, if this is our definition of marriage, it is no longer particularly significant whether the contractors are opposite-sex or same-sex.  Indeed, if marriage is society's seal of approval for a commitment to love and share life and property, then it seems positively unfair to deny same-sex couples this social sanction.


Unfair, yes.  But NOT against some kind of "natural" law.  Merely against currently perceived norms, norms that have evolved over many centuries and that will continue to evolve.  The primary criterion has always been, and will remain:  what does society expect marriage to contribute to society?


This is why I am wary of efforts to base marriage law on any authority other than social norms as determined by legislatures, not courts.  Just as "natural law" is silent about marriage, so, too, I think, is "constitutional law".  The 14th Amendment ensures equality based on race and gender, but it's a stretch to see how gays can claim that "sexual orientation" is a "gender."  In fact, the social conservatives are probably right when they say that a gay male has the same marriage rights as a straight male:  he can marry any woman he pleases (except his sister, etc.).  And society is simply not ready for a truly broad definition of marriage:  i.e., "any consenting adult can marry any other consenting adult."  We might indeed be prepared to extend this privilege to a gay couple.  But we are certainly not ready to legitimize unions between siblings or between parents and their children.  This disinclination has NOTHING to do with the Constitution.  Rather, our society almost universally views such incestuous unions as detrimental to the common weal.  


So we're back to that essential formula, then.  The definition of marriage must be established by a kind of general consensus about what is good for society in general.  Many societies have already legislated in favor of same sex marriage (Canada, Sweden, Holland) because, clearly, the citizenry in general views such unions as fundamentally beneficial.  But America is always slower and more conservative than Europe and Canada. Hence, many Americans seem unwilling to wait for ordinary laws to be passed in the ordinary fashion.  Rather, they want to discover some kind of "natural," "divine" or "constitutional" right--existing out there in the ether somewhere--to justify their personal viewpoints and impose these notions on a public which is not yet entirely free of Carrie Prejeans. 


I think this is a very dangerous strategy which could lead to some decidedly unpleasant reactions and setbacks.  Evolution cannot be imposed from on high.  Just as there are no inalienable and self-evident rights, neither is there any outside authority that can change society by decree or judicial fiat.  The Supreme Court simply legitimizes as "constitutional" what five-out-of-nine people figure the society in general wants or needs.


Let's wait for the legislatures.  It's so frustrating--and so unfair--but genuine laws are the closest we'll ever get to "inalienability".


To my gay brothers and sisters in committed relationships (of the kind that I always yearned for but never achieved):  I hope you'll soon be able to get married.  Some additional patience--and less self-pity--may be required of you, but don't despair.  I am confident that the Carrie Prejean view will eventually fade--not because anyone is inherently entitled to anything--but because Prejean's view is no longer particularly useful or relevant in 21st Century society. 


Sorry it took me so long to express myself on this issue which, obviously, matters deeply to me.  Please keep me on your list for a wedding invitation.  I'll come if I'm still alive.

Quand j’étais blonde

Ce matin, en me réveillant, j’étais hanté par une vieille chanson de Jacqueline Danno qui se chantait impitoyablement dans ma tête—pas toutes les paroles, bien sûr, car j’avais oublié le milieu—mais le commencement et la fin restaient, très forts, très pénibles.  C’était la plainte d’une prostituée vieillissante qui avait perdu beaucoup plus que sa blondeur. L’ouverture en est gaie: « Quand j’étais blonde /  Je régnais sur tous les quais des ports du monde/ A Rotterdam, à Liverpool ou bien à Londres. »  Mais en voici la conclusion désabusée  : « Je vends l’amour mais je ne crois plus/ Les capitaines, ni les marins. »

Cette pauvre fille, c’est moi--et son histoire est la mienne.  Oh, je n’ai pas exactement « régné »--mais, comme tout le monde, je me suis prostitué, me suis vendu, dans l’espoir (qui paraissait alors bien fondé) d’y gagner.  Car les compromis que nous faisons, jeunes, ne nous tracassent pas—ce ne sont que des paris, des « investissements » qui rapporteront sans doute joie, bonheur, succès.

La blondeur, c’est l’époque où l’on croit—en l’amour, en la vie éternelle, en Dieu.  On se vend, alors, à un métier, à un amour, à une amitié, à un parti politique, à un messie quelconque.  Du coup, la vie s’enrobe de soleil, de signification, de dignité.  Toute prostituée qu’on est, on marche quand même sur le bras d’un beau marin, on est fille de joie, on règne.

Mais viennent alors, et trop vite, les ruptures, les déceptions, les trahisons, les licenciements, les faillites, les maladies.  Le marin s’en va ; les cheveux tombent.

Et ce qui reste, c’est la facture.  Car la blondeur se paie--et la maison, implacable, n’accepte ni chèques ni crédit.

Il arrive, donc, que nous payons—telle cette ancienne blonde—avec tout l’argent que nous avions si soigneusement ramassé (comme étant notre dû) lors de notre règne :  la foi, l’espoir, l’amour…

Non, je ne suis plus blond—mes quelques cheveux sont maintenant blancs—et moi non plus, « je ne crois plus les capitaines, ni les marins… »

Je ne crois plus du tout.

Wisdom Teeth

I never got any wisdom teeth.  The dentist said that I was lucky, that I was more "evolved" than most people and (he implied) because I had never been afflicted with wisdom, I would suffer less than most of my fellows.  He was probably right.  Even the smallest dose of wisdom--like those "extra" teeth--almost always causes pain and anguish.  Wisdom teeth simply have to be extracted from the body--else "normal" functioning is impossible.   Similarly, wisdom of any sort must be eliminated--perhaps by high colonics?--lest the entire organism suffer mercilessly from knowing too much.

It's the same with wise people, isn't it?  As wisdom teeth inflame the gums, so also do wise people torment the body politic.  Indeed, wisdom teeth and wisdom are both "too much"--there is no room for them, they cannot be tolerated, they must be removed. Hence, throughout the centuries of--dare I call it civilization?--society has repeatedly found it necessary to extract wise people from the social dentition they are poisoning.  Derisively,  we denounce the insufferable "wise guys" whose truth-telling causes us such pain:  Socrates and Jesus, of course--but also Lincoln, Gandhi, King.

French parents tell their children to "be wise."  But I think they're joking.  What they really mean is:  "Be stupid so as not to make yourself or anyone else aware of the mess that we're all in."  In short, lack of wisdom, as my childhood dentist knew, is indeed the most evolved state.  After all, wisdom is, well, original sin, isn't it?--remember that "tree of knowledge"? And so, in some sense, aren't those of us who never acquired any wisdom (or wisdom teeth) as sin-free as Mary's Immaculate Conception?

I'd like a chapel, please.