So, there's this mental illness that we have in the U.S.
I can encapsulate it in one sentence. Ready?
The customer is always right.
Right?
Wrong. The customer is not always right. Sometimes the customer is rude, unreasonable, uninformed, pig-headed, childish, or just outright wrong.
Anyone who has worked in the service industry knows that often the customer hides behind this axiom while they behave like petty tyrants, deliberately abusing people in that relationship because they know they can "get away with it" in a way that they never could with their boss, their spouse, or even some random stranger on the street.
I worked a bunch of service jobs. I've worked in grocery stores, bars, bookstores, libraries, restaurants, and even video rental places (my god, I'm old enough to have worked in an anachronism). In every one of those places, I had the repeated experience of being treated like a non-human simply because I wore a certain uniform and did a job that most people considered "menial" or "low class".
For a society which is purportedly dedicated to the freedom and equality of all, we as a people generally keep demonstrating that we suck at it.
I've come to the shocking conclusion that everyone deserves the same respect, no matter what sort of work they do or what sort of uniform they wear. If anything, I try and go out of my way to be nice to those wearers of uniforms, simply because I know that their abuse by "those" customers occurs daily. I can't fix it, but at the very least, I can hopefully provide some comfort and reassurance that not everyone behaves that way.
I'm very fortunate at this point in my law practice. I'm in a place where I can interact with customers on my own terms. In my law practice, I have certain standards for how I interact with clients. I have things I will and will not do for them. Those things, generally, are not negotiable. And while I may inform clients of this politely, the ultimate message is clear: if you don't like the way I run my store, you are more than free to get out and find someone else to help you with your problems. Play by my rules or get out.
If you want to be my customer, you have to be accountable. You have to communicate politely and accurately with my staff. You have to listen to what I'm telling you.
Here's the rub, though. I don't think this should be special. We should all be "allowed" to set these standards. In case I haven't stated this plainly enough, let me do so now. This should be the default practice everywhere. I think if we all hold each other accountable for our behavior, we grow as a society.
Imagine it. The customer who blows up and calls the staff at Target names gets told, "Leave. Don't come back to Target."
Now that person has to do a real analysis of how important his antics are, versus the service that store provides. The bad customer needs affordable housewares and Target is conveniently located down the street. Hopefully that leads the bad customer to an ultimate conclusion that goes something like: "These people have something I need. Maybe the experience with them isn't perfect, but I need to use all the resources available to me to create some sort of working relationship so we can both move forward."
That's constructive. Hell, that's the genesis of most positive human relationships.
I set these behavior bars, and my clients routinely meet them. It happens so often that I doesn't come as a surprise. Frankly, I kind of take it for granted. I have no reason to believe that this would not be true in other industries.
My experiences outside this country suggest this would work if widely applied. I had the good fortune to spend sometime outside the country as a teenager. In places like Italy, I'll tell you without reservation that the customer is not always right. I think of places like the shops in Assisi, where families owned their own businesses. If you disrespected those people in their own "houses", you'd get kicked the hell out. It would not get a second glance.
By, like, anyone.
This suggests to me that this model I'm proposing is not revolutionary, and would not cause panic in the streets or anything to that effect.
Maybe it is indicative of a deeper problem in our country. We're very much a "whipping boy" society. I see people take out all their aggression on "safe" targets. It is bad enough when people put the service industry in their "whipping boy" sights. It is even worse when it is family members.
I have seen parents talk to their children in ways they would not dream of talking to any other human being. I want to be clear here. I'm not talking about discipline or keeping the kid on the right track. I'm talking about outright, straight up, disrespect when the child does something the parent doesn't like. It can be verbal, or physical, or both. I really cannot wrap my head around why this makes sense. How does one's own flesh and blood merit less respect than a stranger he'd meet randomly on the street?
And yet, I see it all the time. It makes me grieve because I know it harms both parent and child, and both parties are usually totally ignorant of what's going on (even though the parent, at least, shouldn't be).
And be assured, whether we're talking about bad behavior towards children, waiters, nurses, customer service reps, or whatever, this bad behavior is a real harm to them. No one tells wants to star in a story going, "And the hero was heaped with abuse and accepted it silently, and the abuser totally got away with it." When these "safe" targets are hurt, it does real psychological damage. It hurts the self-image. Most of us tell ourselves that we aren't the sort of person who'd take someone else's shit. And yet, again and again, we do exactly that.
And the saddest part? The abuse is cyclical. Most victims of this abuse cope with that harm by paying it forward and doing the exact same thing to their own set of "safe" targets, whether they realize it or not.
The accountability I'm proposing is another way to discharge and ultimately heal the psychological harm done by this "safe abuse". Most people would be totally okay starring in a story that went, "And the hero told the customer to get the heck out if he continued with his childish antics." No deep-seated resentment to wrestle with there. Just a mutual exchange of accountability.
So, the next time you hear, "the customer is always right," allow for the possibility that the whole damn thing might be very, very wrong.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Friday, March 22, 2013
Steubenville, Blame, and Self-Defense
Well, I think the coverage of the Steubenville rape case has had one positive result: it has created a dialogue about the dynamics of rape and gender relationships. Granted, it is not an easy discussion. Buttons are getting pushed and people are getting pissed off. I don't doubt that this post will upset a few people and make plain some of my own backwards ideas. But perhaps those uncomfortable discussions are the best kind. When I start having strong emotional responses to something, I know that I'm getting into important and powerful territory that needs to be explored. The frontiers of change in society are not, and cannot be, a comfortable place.
When I teach any type of self-defense, I advise that rendering yourself helpless in public is a really bad idea. Drunk, stoned, whatever else... this rings true. It remains true, regardless of what gender you happen to be. Men violate women. Men violate men. Women violate men. Women violate women. My experience in the criminal justice system indicates that there's no monopoly there. The gamut of bad things that can happen when you're incapacitated in public is wide and spans both genders.
When I discuss these issues, I walk the razor's edge.
On one hand, I think of the world that ought to be. This is the world of my ideals. In the world that ought to be, anyone should be able to render themselves incapacitated just about anywhere, and the only thing that others would do is offer aid, or at the very least, leave the incapacitated person the hell alone. When I am in a position where I am teaching how human beings ought to act towards one and other, this is what I teach. In that way, I'm fighting the war with my ideas and ideals... this is absolutely necessary. If we want to affect change in how people treat each other, it will be through making contact with their hearts and minds and helping them make deep, fundamental choices about positive treatment of their fellow person.
If our society has failed in the Steubenville rape case, it is because we have not strongly enough taught and reinforced the message of mutual respect and personal sanctity to our young people. We need to look at these two young men and ask ourselves, "What more could we have done to cut these twisted ideas off before these young people started internalizing them?" How profoundly has our teaching of personal sanctity failed that ideas like this were not only allowed to take root, but to blossom into full-blown, despicable action?
It simply is not enough that I respect the sanctity of a woman's everything. It will not be enough, as far as I'm concerned, until all my fellow men do the same. As this won't happen in my lifetime, that means that I've got a moral obligation to teach people to respect the personal sanctity of others for my entire life. (I should be clear that I'm only using the man-woman dynamic here because it is the one being most extensively discussed as a result of Steubenville.)
That idea is important. It means something. Change starts with ideals and passionate hearts. So, the world that ought to be is damned important.
We need to critically and fundamentally re-evaluate how we view genders, and what is acceptable interaction between genders.
For example, I look at things like the rampant objectification of women for purposes like marketing, and realize that the objectification that starts in the market place doesn't end there. The deeply ingrained idea of women as objects doesn't just sell items... I think it pervades all of our thinking (both genders) and screws with our perceptions. I feel confident that it helped create the environment where these young men somehow believed their conduct was acceptable. External references are a huge part of our moral identity. If we see people that are behaving in a way similar to our own, we are much less likely to critically evaluate the morality of what we do.
Is that really worth selling more beers?
On the other hand, when I address these issues, I've got to bow to reality. Reality is that people do horrible and ugly things to each other. The attitudes that resulted in the conduct of the two young men at Steubenville run rampant, and they're perpetuated in thousands of different places in our society. These ideas give rise to thousands of incidents of horrific behavior each and every day. Part of my job in teaching people how to protect themselves is to show them how predators act and teach them how predators think.
If I claim to teach any kind of self-defense, I have a moral obligation to share this information.
Humans, like most apex predators, are opportunistic in nature. We attack targets when we believe the situation makes our success likely. An incapacitated target, be that drunk, stoned, or otherwise altered, is an easy mark.
One of the most basic lessons in self defense is to find effective ways to show would-be predators that you are not an easy mark, and that they need to move on to greener pastures. Simple awareness, the possession of your faculties (no matter how dangerous they may be), drastically increases your safety.
Thus, if you want to be safe, you will not get shitfaced where a bunch of strangers have access to you. Is that fair? Absolutely not. Is it reality? You bet your ass it is.
Where this message gets garbled is an unhealthy idea that is patriarchal and chauvinistic in nature. I think it is important to make it explicit here.
In discussing the Steubenville case, I have heard a lot of arguments that essentially amount to: "Well, that girl shouldn't have gotten drunk like that! She created a scenario where that was going to happen! She had a duty to protect herself! She's at least partly to blame!"
The hell she is.
Looking at my teaching above, it is true that rendering yourself helpless around people you don't know or trust is a bad idea. Perhaps this woman could have avoided what happened if she wasn't as inebriated as she was. We will never know.
That said, a woman's intoxication in NO WAY makes a violation of her person less blameworthy. Ever. For any reason. You would never say that a mugging victim should share blame for getting mugged because she failed to bring a machine gun with her to the grocery store. I do not see how this case is any different. Violation of another's person is wrong. Period. The fact that the person was especially vulnerable when it happened should make it MORE blameworthy, not less. (Ironically, our criminal justice system embraces this... some of the time. For instance, crimes against helpless children and disabled adults are more harshly punished. For some reason, a large portion of our society seems to have decided that if the helplessness stems from something else, it means the victim somehow "had it coming" and the punishment is less.)
Systematic "victim shaming" has been a tool utilized for years by chauvinists to justify a culture of rape. If you ever have the misfortune of dealing with people that commit crimes like this, you'll find that this victim shaming is one of the first lines of defense that these people use to lie to themselves about the vile nature of their own behavior.
Don't buy into it. Even if you aren't someone that commits these crimes, you really debase yourself if you buy into the ideas they use to enable themselves.
The idea that a woman somehow "asks for it" by being intoxicated demeans both men and women. It presumes that men are mindless beasts that will commit rape crimes whenever presented with temptation. It presumes that women are objects to be raped, and must conceal their "wares" in order to have the full gamut of rights we'd afford to anybody else.
Those ideas are entirely ridiculous... but if you look at society, those ideas are widely held. This is where the war for the world that ought to be needs to be fought.
So, if you are going to evaluate these issues, I ask you to do three things:
1. Aspire to a world where we hold each other sacred.
2. Be realistic about the world we live in.
3. Become familiar with how these two concepts relate to each other.
When I teach any type of self-defense, I advise that rendering yourself helpless in public is a really bad idea. Drunk, stoned, whatever else... this rings true. It remains true, regardless of what gender you happen to be. Men violate women. Men violate men. Women violate men. Women violate women. My experience in the criminal justice system indicates that there's no monopoly there. The gamut of bad things that can happen when you're incapacitated in public is wide and spans both genders.
When I discuss these issues, I walk the razor's edge.
On one hand, I think of the world that ought to be. This is the world of my ideals. In the world that ought to be, anyone should be able to render themselves incapacitated just about anywhere, and the only thing that others would do is offer aid, or at the very least, leave the incapacitated person the hell alone. When I am in a position where I am teaching how human beings ought to act towards one and other, this is what I teach. In that way, I'm fighting the war with my ideas and ideals... this is absolutely necessary. If we want to affect change in how people treat each other, it will be through making contact with their hearts and minds and helping them make deep, fundamental choices about positive treatment of their fellow person.
If our society has failed in the Steubenville rape case, it is because we have not strongly enough taught and reinforced the message of mutual respect and personal sanctity to our young people. We need to look at these two young men and ask ourselves, "What more could we have done to cut these twisted ideas off before these young people started internalizing them?" How profoundly has our teaching of personal sanctity failed that ideas like this were not only allowed to take root, but to blossom into full-blown, despicable action?
It simply is not enough that I respect the sanctity of a woman's everything. It will not be enough, as far as I'm concerned, until all my fellow men do the same. As this won't happen in my lifetime, that means that I've got a moral obligation to teach people to respect the personal sanctity of others for my entire life. (I should be clear that I'm only using the man-woman dynamic here because it is the one being most extensively discussed as a result of Steubenville.)
That idea is important. It means something. Change starts with ideals and passionate hearts. So, the world that ought to be is damned important.
We need to critically and fundamentally re-evaluate how we view genders, and what is acceptable interaction between genders.
For example, I look at things like the rampant objectification of women for purposes like marketing, and realize that the objectification that starts in the market place doesn't end there. The deeply ingrained idea of women as objects doesn't just sell items... I think it pervades all of our thinking (both genders) and screws with our perceptions. I feel confident that it helped create the environment where these young men somehow believed their conduct was acceptable. External references are a huge part of our moral identity. If we see people that are behaving in a way similar to our own, we are much less likely to critically evaluate the morality of what we do.
Is that really worth selling more beers?
On the other hand, when I address these issues, I've got to bow to reality. Reality is that people do horrible and ugly things to each other. The attitudes that resulted in the conduct of the two young men at Steubenville run rampant, and they're perpetuated in thousands of different places in our society. These ideas give rise to thousands of incidents of horrific behavior each and every day. Part of my job in teaching people how to protect themselves is to show them how predators act and teach them how predators think.
If I claim to teach any kind of self-defense, I have a moral obligation to share this information.
Humans, like most apex predators, are opportunistic in nature. We attack targets when we believe the situation makes our success likely. An incapacitated target, be that drunk, stoned, or otherwise altered, is an easy mark.
One of the most basic lessons in self defense is to find effective ways to show would-be predators that you are not an easy mark, and that they need to move on to greener pastures. Simple awareness, the possession of your faculties (no matter how dangerous they may be), drastically increases your safety.
Thus, if you want to be safe, you will not get shitfaced where a bunch of strangers have access to you. Is that fair? Absolutely not. Is it reality? You bet your ass it is.
Where this message gets garbled is an unhealthy idea that is patriarchal and chauvinistic in nature. I think it is important to make it explicit here.
In discussing the Steubenville case, I have heard a lot of arguments that essentially amount to: "Well, that girl shouldn't have gotten drunk like that! She created a scenario where that was going to happen! She had a duty to protect herself! She's at least partly to blame!"
The hell she is.
Looking at my teaching above, it is true that rendering yourself helpless around people you don't know or trust is a bad idea. Perhaps this woman could have avoided what happened if she wasn't as inebriated as she was. We will never know.
That said, a woman's intoxication in NO WAY makes a violation of her person less blameworthy. Ever. For any reason. You would never say that a mugging victim should share blame for getting mugged because she failed to bring a machine gun with her to the grocery store. I do not see how this case is any different. Violation of another's person is wrong. Period. The fact that the person was especially vulnerable when it happened should make it MORE blameworthy, not less. (Ironically, our criminal justice system embraces this... some of the time. For instance, crimes against helpless children and disabled adults are more harshly punished. For some reason, a large portion of our society seems to have decided that if the helplessness stems from something else, it means the victim somehow "had it coming" and the punishment is less.)
Systematic "victim shaming" has been a tool utilized for years by chauvinists to justify a culture of rape. If you ever have the misfortune of dealing with people that commit crimes like this, you'll find that this victim shaming is one of the first lines of defense that these people use to lie to themselves about the vile nature of their own behavior.
Don't buy into it. Even if you aren't someone that commits these crimes, you really debase yourself if you buy into the ideas they use to enable themselves.
The idea that a woman somehow "asks for it" by being intoxicated demeans both men and women. It presumes that men are mindless beasts that will commit rape crimes whenever presented with temptation. It presumes that women are objects to be raped, and must conceal their "wares" in order to have the full gamut of rights we'd afford to anybody else.
Those ideas are entirely ridiculous... but if you look at society, those ideas are widely held. This is where the war for the world that ought to be needs to be fought.
So, if you are going to evaluate these issues, I ask you to do three things:
1. Aspire to a world where we hold each other sacred.
2. Be realistic about the world we live in.
3. Become familiar with how these two concepts relate to each other.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Changing Filters: MGS and Me
Not too long ago, my Xbox 360 started dying. As this is an indispensable item on the Songy household (sadly, more for my toddler's Netflix than my own video game habit, these days), I immediately started considering replacements. It seemed pointless to get another 360... the system is on its way out the door, and the only thing I still care about that is exclusively for the 360 is the next Halo game. With that in mind, I purchased a PS3.
Now, in the heydays of console gaming, systems usually had exclusive games that you longed for if you did not own said system. Not so in this modern, hyper-commercial world. Just about every "hit" game gets distributed broadly across the platforms. One of the few exceptions to that was the Metal Gear Solid series, which has stayed on the Playstation platform exclusively (with a couple small exceptions). I picked up 4 (the only original offering for the PS3) and just finished it last night.
Here are my thoughts.
Changing Filters: MGS and Me
I've been playing these games since their origin on the Nintendo. I recall the original ones as being very difficult, and I don't believe I gave them an inordinate amount of attention. (It also bears mentioning that at the tender age of 7, Italian Plumbers were way more interesting to me that shadowy assassins.)
Like most people, where the Metal Gear series really grabbed hold of me was in Metal Gear Solid. I was fourteen or fifteen when it came out. I can say it is a great game, but that lacks specificity. The truth is a little more complicated.
From a technical standpoint, it is great because it really maximized the capabilities of the first Playstation. I don't think I'd ever seen a game as good-looking, immersive, or geographically "big". The use of CDs instead of clunkier, less efficient cartridges enabled sophisticated voice-acting and gave the game an extremely cinematic feel. The more complicated Playstation controller (which quadrupled the usable buttons from its older Nintendo cousin) allowed for a much wider range of behaviors for the player-character, allowing for a rich experience. There was definitely a lot of ways to accomplish the same objectives, and this was something fairly new to video games at the time. The score was great, and the artwork was extremely well-integrated and stylistically "fit" the story's themes.
It ran deeper than that for me, though. Snake was the first real "anti-hero" I had ever been exposed to, and like most young teenage boys, I ate it up. I admired his aloof strength, his facility for violence, and his unspoken devotion to the warrior's ideals. With his deep gravelly voice and dark demeanor, Snake embodied everything that a callow, teenage boy isn't.
The story for the game is good. It has some soul to it, and some human emotion, but it isn't overly convoluted. The good guy stays the good guy. The bad guy stays bad. The hero saves the world and gets the girl. Huzzah. It is exactly that palatable mix you want in a good action movie. Just a spicy side of thoughtfulness with your main dish of savory action.
Enter Metal Gear 2.
At first, I absolutely despised it. For one, my much adored Snake was put aside for the boyish, untried, and considerably feminine Raiden. Even though I was eighteen when this installment came out, I was very much a child and still very much threatened that Hideo Kojima would have the nerve to take my paragon of manhood (or so I thought at the time) out of the "spotlight".
And then there's the plot. While all the good things about the gameplay remained (and some new ones were born), the plot was convoluted to the point where it was fairly incomprehensible at the end. I remember thinking at the time, "Man, this started so good and ended so shitty! How would they let him drop the ball like this at the end of the game?"
Thus began a debate that has raged in my mind to this day.
I was in my second year of an English degree at that time and had done considerably coursework concerning creative writing. At that stage in my education, I was very much immersing myself in the fundamentals of story-building, and I was obsessed with a clean, goal-oriented narrative. This is all well and good, but it certainly isn't the only way to "skin a cat". Read Franz Kafka and you'll figure that one out real quick. Not all great narratives are clean and easily digested.
In this modern information age, where my "video game generation" has started to inherit the earth, there has been some serious scholarship regarding my beloved video games. Particularly, there has been a lot of examination of MGS 2 as the first "post-modern" video game.
Gamasutra's article about it, here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/119999/Analysis_What_Metal_Gear_Solid_2_Teaches_Us_About_The_Information_Age.php
I'd never considered it this way previous to now. The game really is a very interesting dialogue in how society evolves and, to an extent, imprisons itself in the information age. The end revelation, that Raiden is ultimately a pawn in a much bigger scheme, doesn't seem as disappointing as it used to. As I no longer need video games to affirm a youthful, misguided ideal of manhood, I'm able to "take a step back" and see what Kojima was trying to accomplish from an artistic standpoint.
While he does make some forays into the outright ridiculous, I'll concede that there may have been some very bold artistic endeavors going on in that second game. Even if it doesn't quite hit all the marks it is aiming at, I'll give the man praise for attempting something new and different in the forum of such a "big money" popular video game.
The third game I won't spend much time on, because as a practical matter, I think it was a throw-back to the first game. Simpler plot, more of an action focus, and those same uber-mensch ideals that I loved so much in my teens and early twenties.
This brings me to my most recent experience, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
The gameplay is excellent. The parts where you are behind the wheel are as fun and challenging as ever. The sneaking is exhilarating, and if anything, Snake has more options than ever in terms of attaining his goals. It is the other stuff that is an issue. (One astute Amazon.com reviewer suggested, "Just skip all the cut-scenes and you've got a great game.")
The cut scenes are looooooooong. I mean, "go make yourself a sandwich" long. Perhaps "go write the Great American Novel" long. My impression was that they were disjointed and frantic... almost like the manic scribblings of a drug-addict while he is in the grips of an opiate-induced euphoria. He has a narrative, and it makes sense to him, but that is about it. Ideas that seem brilliant and meaningful in his own mind come out as slop. You get a vague sense of what he is trying to communicate, and if it is something worthwhile, you feel a twinge of sadness that he isn't able to properly convey his vision. For some reason, the whole experience just makes me think of a drug addict trying to tell a story. Whether this is true for Hideo Kojima, or whether he is just drunk on his own success, I don't know for certain.
The cut scenes just seem like storytelling where the teller assumes that his audience has truckloads of patience and good grace when it doesn't. I get the sense in my mind that Kojima and his staff envisioned us all spell-bound with his forty-minute plus cut scenes detailing the plot, which is convoluted to the point of meaninglessness.
I get some of the overarching themes (purely commercial society is bad, material living without any deeper morals leads to a meaningless existence ultimately controlled by others), but they are loss in a haze of chauvinistic exhibitionism and grade-school humor. It is as if the game doesn't quite know if it is a commentary on human existence or a love letter to adolescent boys. I think it tries to be both and fails.
Thus is my mental debate. Is there genius behind all the madness? Is there some deeper meaning, as I suspect there was with the second game? Perhaps. But if so, I think it is lost on myself and the vast majority of people that have played it. Maybe Kojima is a genius and there's something here that I'm missing.
But maybe he just screwed the pooch on this one.
Now, lest you accuse me of being a overly serious grouse, let me assure you - I gave Hideo Kojima and company the benefit of the doubt. I played the game tip to tail, and took my time to stop and smell the roses. I approached it with a light heart and low expectations. I no longer need video games as some type of adolescent power fantasy, so I don't think I'm wearing the same blinders I was when I critiqued these games as a teenager.
Regardless, I think it still came up lacking. Part of any good storytelling (linear or not) is to have a clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish (which needs to be somewhat narrow, by necessity), and then executing it to the best of your ability.
And I just don't see that in the fourth game.
Ah well. The fact that an artist creates a brilliant work is a rare thing. Two is a certifiable miracle. It really is unfair to expect more. While it would be nice of Kojima was a proverbial "golden goose" of games and only laid "golden eggs", that is not how human art works. You try, you fail, and you fall victim to the foibles of humanity. In the end, I think you've just got to appreciate the good in anything that is produced. No one has a right to expect perfection out of every human endeavor, and if you feel like you do... you are in for a disappointing life.
Now, in the heydays of console gaming, systems usually had exclusive games that you longed for if you did not own said system. Not so in this modern, hyper-commercial world. Just about every "hit" game gets distributed broadly across the platforms. One of the few exceptions to that was the Metal Gear Solid series, which has stayed on the Playstation platform exclusively (with a couple small exceptions). I picked up 4 (the only original offering for the PS3) and just finished it last night.
Here are my thoughts.
Changing Filters: MGS and Me
I've been playing these games since their origin on the Nintendo. I recall the original ones as being very difficult, and I don't believe I gave them an inordinate amount of attention. (It also bears mentioning that at the tender age of 7, Italian Plumbers were way more interesting to me that shadowy assassins.)
Like most people, where the Metal Gear series really grabbed hold of me was in Metal Gear Solid. I was fourteen or fifteen when it came out. I can say it is a great game, but that lacks specificity. The truth is a little more complicated.
From a technical standpoint, it is great because it really maximized the capabilities of the first Playstation. I don't think I'd ever seen a game as good-looking, immersive, or geographically "big". The use of CDs instead of clunkier, less efficient cartridges enabled sophisticated voice-acting and gave the game an extremely cinematic feel. The more complicated Playstation controller (which quadrupled the usable buttons from its older Nintendo cousin) allowed for a much wider range of behaviors for the player-character, allowing for a rich experience. There was definitely a lot of ways to accomplish the same objectives, and this was something fairly new to video games at the time. The score was great, and the artwork was extremely well-integrated and stylistically "fit" the story's themes.
It ran deeper than that for me, though. Snake was the first real "anti-hero" I had ever been exposed to, and like most young teenage boys, I ate it up. I admired his aloof strength, his facility for violence, and his unspoken devotion to the warrior's ideals. With his deep gravelly voice and dark demeanor, Snake embodied everything that a callow, teenage boy isn't.
The story for the game is good. It has some soul to it, and some human emotion, but it isn't overly convoluted. The good guy stays the good guy. The bad guy stays bad. The hero saves the world and gets the girl. Huzzah. It is exactly that palatable mix you want in a good action movie. Just a spicy side of thoughtfulness with your main dish of savory action.
Enter Metal Gear 2.
At first, I absolutely despised it. For one, my much adored Snake was put aside for the boyish, untried, and considerably feminine Raiden. Even though I was eighteen when this installment came out, I was very much a child and still very much threatened that Hideo Kojima would have the nerve to take my paragon of manhood (or so I thought at the time) out of the "spotlight".
And then there's the plot. While all the good things about the gameplay remained (and some new ones were born), the plot was convoluted to the point where it was fairly incomprehensible at the end. I remember thinking at the time, "Man, this started so good and ended so shitty! How would they let him drop the ball like this at the end of the game?"
Thus began a debate that has raged in my mind to this day.
I was in my second year of an English degree at that time and had done considerably coursework concerning creative writing. At that stage in my education, I was very much immersing myself in the fundamentals of story-building, and I was obsessed with a clean, goal-oriented narrative. This is all well and good, but it certainly isn't the only way to "skin a cat". Read Franz Kafka and you'll figure that one out real quick. Not all great narratives are clean and easily digested.
In this modern information age, where my "video game generation" has started to inherit the earth, there has been some serious scholarship regarding my beloved video games. Particularly, there has been a lot of examination of MGS 2 as the first "post-modern" video game.
Gamasutra's article about it, here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/119999/Analysis_What_Metal_Gear_Solid_2_Teaches_Us_About_The_Information_Age.php
I'd never considered it this way previous to now. The game really is a very interesting dialogue in how society evolves and, to an extent, imprisons itself in the information age. The end revelation, that Raiden is ultimately a pawn in a much bigger scheme, doesn't seem as disappointing as it used to. As I no longer need video games to affirm a youthful, misguided ideal of manhood, I'm able to "take a step back" and see what Kojima was trying to accomplish from an artistic standpoint.
While he does make some forays into the outright ridiculous, I'll concede that there may have been some very bold artistic endeavors going on in that second game. Even if it doesn't quite hit all the marks it is aiming at, I'll give the man praise for attempting something new and different in the forum of such a "big money" popular video game.
The third game I won't spend much time on, because as a practical matter, I think it was a throw-back to the first game. Simpler plot, more of an action focus, and those same uber-mensch ideals that I loved so much in my teens and early twenties.
This brings me to my most recent experience, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
The gameplay is excellent. The parts where you are behind the wheel are as fun and challenging as ever. The sneaking is exhilarating, and if anything, Snake has more options than ever in terms of attaining his goals. It is the other stuff that is an issue. (One astute Amazon.com reviewer suggested, "Just skip all the cut-scenes and you've got a great game.")
The cut scenes are looooooooong. I mean, "go make yourself a sandwich" long. Perhaps "go write the Great American Novel" long. My impression was that they were disjointed and frantic... almost like the manic scribblings of a drug-addict while he is in the grips of an opiate-induced euphoria. He has a narrative, and it makes sense to him, but that is about it. Ideas that seem brilliant and meaningful in his own mind come out as slop. You get a vague sense of what he is trying to communicate, and if it is something worthwhile, you feel a twinge of sadness that he isn't able to properly convey his vision. For some reason, the whole experience just makes me think of a drug addict trying to tell a story. Whether this is true for Hideo Kojima, or whether he is just drunk on his own success, I don't know for certain.
The cut scenes just seem like storytelling where the teller assumes that his audience has truckloads of patience and good grace when it doesn't. I get the sense in my mind that Kojima and his staff envisioned us all spell-bound with his forty-minute plus cut scenes detailing the plot, which is convoluted to the point of meaninglessness.
I get some of the overarching themes (purely commercial society is bad, material living without any deeper morals leads to a meaningless existence ultimately controlled by others), but they are loss in a haze of chauvinistic exhibitionism and grade-school humor. It is as if the game doesn't quite know if it is a commentary on human existence or a love letter to adolescent boys. I think it tries to be both and fails.
Thus is my mental debate. Is there genius behind all the madness? Is there some deeper meaning, as I suspect there was with the second game? Perhaps. But if so, I think it is lost on myself and the vast majority of people that have played it. Maybe Kojima is a genius and there's something here that I'm missing.
But maybe he just screwed the pooch on this one.
Now, lest you accuse me of being a overly serious grouse, let me assure you - I gave Hideo Kojima and company the benefit of the doubt. I played the game tip to tail, and took my time to stop and smell the roses. I approached it with a light heart and low expectations. I no longer need video games as some type of adolescent power fantasy, so I don't think I'm wearing the same blinders I was when I critiqued these games as a teenager.
Regardless, I think it still came up lacking. Part of any good storytelling (linear or not) is to have a clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish (which needs to be somewhat narrow, by necessity), and then executing it to the best of your ability.
And I just don't see that in the fourth game.
Ah well. The fact that an artist creates a brilliant work is a rare thing. Two is a certifiable miracle. It really is unfair to expect more. While it would be nice of Kojima was a proverbial "golden goose" of games and only laid "golden eggs", that is not how human art works. You try, you fail, and you fall victim to the foibles of humanity. In the end, I think you've just got to appreciate the good in anything that is produced. No one has a right to expect perfection out of every human endeavor, and if you feel like you do... you are in for a disappointing life.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Reading / Watching / Listening - July 2012
Too tired to write anything earth-shaking. In fact, too tired to write anything even mildly amusing. So today, I pinch hit.
What I'm reading:
Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen
Man, this is it. I've followed the Buddha-dharma for some thirteen years now, and that has included extensive study and reading. I don't know that I've ever encountered another book that presents it all, removed from most of the cultural bells and whistles, so simply. I've given away and worn out more copies of this book than I can remember.
If you're into Buddhism, or just want a clear head, this is one of the greats.
What I'm watching:
Ronin directed by John Frankenheimer
This is one of those really good movies that no one knows about. When it comes to spy movies, I think Frankenheimer was one of the best. This film has got really nice cinematography, a well-unraveled plot, and of course, De Niro. While it isn't the best role he has ever played, I think he does a great job injecting a lot of depth and texture into material that is fairly stark. As opposed to the tidal-wave of testosterone rolling off of most of the protagonists in modern action cinema, De Niro's portrayal here has this deep sense of practicality that you just can't help but appreciate.
Clue directed by Jonathan Lynn
I cannot tell you how much I love this movie. It has been one of my all-time favorites since I saw it as a kid. I love the campy setting and very play-like dialogue. It has the feel of a well-rehearsed live production, and the chemistry between the actors is phenomenal. I think Wadsworth is arguably Tim Curry's best role, but it is a stiff competition, because Madeline Kahn, Michael Keenan, Eileen Brennan, and Chris Lloyd all steal the freaking show. If nothing else, you should watch this movie just so you can memorize the quotes and use them at opportune times.
What I'm listening to:
The Idler Wheel is Wiser... by Fiona Apple
I love me some Fiona Apple. She's just so nuts, and so totally unashamed about it. Her lyrical stylings are a bizarre mix of emotional vulnerability and the lilting progressions of ee cummings at his avant-garde best. It has been a delight to see her sound grow from something more mainstream (Tidal) into the realms of acid jazz, soul, and folk (this). This album is definitely some exploration on her part, but I think it works well. As weird and off-key as it gets, it always has that dark honesty that defines her work. That said, I'm not sure how this would strike someone that hadn't already been listening to her for a decade, so listener beware on that one.
Act II - The Father of Death by The Protomen
If you grew up in the eighties and love video games, you are pretty much doomed on this one. These guys have taken the basic plot of the Mega Man games for the NES and composed two acts (so far) of a rock opera. When I first discovered it, I thought it was going to be a kind of fun, tongue-in-cheek sort of thing, but imagine my surprise when I actually discovered a lot of soul in both acts. The material is well-composed, and the plot (you'll have to look up the "bridging" bits of action on the net, unless you happen to see it live) is actually thought-provoking. Act I is harsh, fun, yowling, off-key punk rock punctuated by eight-bit chiptunes.
The sounds in Act II are a bizarre and delightful mix, which is much more polished. All of the Dr. Light pieces are done in the tone of Johnny Cash in his middle period. This is directly juxtaposed the Joe numbers, which are driving synth pop that sounds like a hybrid between The Darkness, Cheap Trick, and Meat Loaf on their best respective days. And to complete the mix, Wily's number almost sounds like something from the Stray Cats. It is shamelessly melodramatic, and if you're prone to that 1980's musical excess (or just musicals, really), it will suck you in like a tornado.
What I'm reading:
Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen
Man, this is it. I've followed the Buddha-dharma for some thirteen years now, and that has included extensive study and reading. I don't know that I've ever encountered another book that presents it all, removed from most of the cultural bells and whistles, so simply. I've given away and worn out more copies of this book than I can remember.
If you're into Buddhism, or just want a clear head, this is one of the greats.
What I'm watching:
Ronin directed by John Frankenheimer
This is one of those really good movies that no one knows about. When it comes to spy movies, I think Frankenheimer was one of the best. This film has got really nice cinematography, a well-unraveled plot, and of course, De Niro. While it isn't the best role he has ever played, I think he does a great job injecting a lot of depth and texture into material that is fairly stark. As opposed to the tidal-wave of testosterone rolling off of most of the protagonists in modern action cinema, De Niro's portrayal here has this deep sense of practicality that you just can't help but appreciate.
Clue directed by Jonathan Lynn
I cannot tell you how much I love this movie. It has been one of my all-time favorites since I saw it as a kid. I love the campy setting and very play-like dialogue. It has the feel of a well-rehearsed live production, and the chemistry between the actors is phenomenal. I think Wadsworth is arguably Tim Curry's best role, but it is a stiff competition, because Madeline Kahn, Michael Keenan, Eileen Brennan, and Chris Lloyd all steal the freaking show. If nothing else, you should watch this movie just so you can memorize the quotes and use them at opportune times.
What I'm listening to:
The Idler Wheel is Wiser... by Fiona Apple
I love me some Fiona Apple. She's just so nuts, and so totally unashamed about it. Her lyrical stylings are a bizarre mix of emotional vulnerability and the lilting progressions of ee cummings at his avant-garde best. It has been a delight to see her sound grow from something more mainstream (Tidal) into the realms of acid jazz, soul, and folk (this). This album is definitely some exploration on her part, but I think it works well. As weird and off-key as it gets, it always has that dark honesty that defines her work. That said, I'm not sure how this would strike someone that hadn't already been listening to her for a decade, so listener beware on that one.
Act II - The Father of Death by The Protomen
If you grew up in the eighties and love video games, you are pretty much doomed on this one. These guys have taken the basic plot of the Mega Man games for the NES and composed two acts (so far) of a rock opera. When I first discovered it, I thought it was going to be a kind of fun, tongue-in-cheek sort of thing, but imagine my surprise when I actually discovered a lot of soul in both acts. The material is well-composed, and the plot (you'll have to look up the "bridging" bits of action on the net, unless you happen to see it live) is actually thought-provoking. Act I is harsh, fun, yowling, off-key punk rock punctuated by eight-bit chiptunes.
The sounds in Act II are a bizarre and delightful mix, which is much more polished. All of the Dr. Light pieces are done in the tone of Johnny Cash in his middle period. This is directly juxtaposed the Joe numbers, which are driving synth pop that sounds like a hybrid between The Darkness, Cheap Trick, and Meat Loaf on their best respective days. And to complete the mix, Wily's number almost sounds like something from the Stray Cats. It is shamelessly melodramatic, and if you're prone to that 1980's musical excess (or just musicals, really), it will suck you in like a tornado.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Charm School
For
most of my life, my associations with the term "charm" have
been positive. Shocking at it may be to those that know me well, I
was often described as a "charming" person when I was
younger. I had always considered it close kin to "pleasant",
"kind", and "genial". Call it a bit of egomania
if you will, but because the term was pointed at me, I always
considered it to be a positive thing. In fact, I went out of my way
to be charming. It is a behavior that I studied and honed over time.
It became one of the primary tools in my toolbox in terms of dealing
with people.
I recently read a very interesting defensive tactics book by Rory Miller. His description of charm is an interesting one. While he describes it in the terms of a tool that predator uses to get close to a victim, he makes an interesting discussion of charm as a whole.
The short version of his theory: charm is not a natural behavior for human beings. It is a goal-oriented manipulation tactic. The goal need not be nefarious. People use charm to calm tense situations, fit into new social groups, and advance their careers. While these may seem different from the rapist trying to get close to a victim, I think Miller has right about the underlying mechanics being the same.
Charm is a subtle attempt at controlling another party.
This theory jives with my own life experience. I am not charming when I am taking out the garbage, doing the laundry, or buying groceries. I am not charming to people who do not have anything that I want. I don't really describe any of my close friends as charming, and I find that I do not (these days) employ any of my childhood tactics on them to "win them over". With those that I feel safe around, I simply do not exhibit charming behaviors.
(Here's a fun exercise: ask my wife if I am charming. Report back here with the response.)
While charm does work to an extent, I think somewhere in our lizard brains, humans recognize these attempts for what they are and either reject them or dole out a heavy dose of distrust to the would-be charmer. While I think some people are more susceptible to charm than others, I think this natural resistance is something common to humanity.
My reliance on this behavior has waned over the years. I understand why I did it as a child. I had a lot of uncertainty and anxiety in my home life, and I did not have any other tools at my disposal (wasn't faster, stronger, bigger, smarter, or better funded), so I used charm. It became a compulsive habit, a manifestation of my inherent insecurity. I controlled with charm for not reason other than that control made me feel safer. I did it unconsciously.
The first place I encountered where my charm hit a brick wall was martial arts. My teacher, and to a greater extent, his teacher, recognized the behavior for what it was immediately. Both made damn sure not to let it work on them even a little bit, openly pointing out my subconscious attempts to control situations. I ended up looking like an ass quite often. (We tend to adhere to our childhood safety strategies well beyond the time when they stop working.) Time passed, though, and instead of charm, I tried honesty, sincerity, commitment, and willingness to be vulnerable. Those worked a lot better, and infected the rest of my life. (But that is another book, in and of itself.)
In the earlier days of my law practice, I leaned on the charm tactic heavily in front of juries. After prosecutor gave a relatively dry and exhaustive voir dire to a jury pool, I'd get up and make them laugh. I'd joke about the free coffee, the boring nature of the process, and the bizarre little world the potential jurors had been thrust into. I used to attribute some of my victories to that charm, but in light of the revelations above, I've changed my mind.
Like my teachers in law, I've come to the conclusion that evidence wins cases, plain and simple. (I once had a juror tell me, after finding my client guilty, "You made a fine speech, son, but that guy was as guilty as the day was long. Better luck next time.") I've seen a mediocre attorney easily win a case against a magnificent one because of the evidence. If a lawyer's personality has something to do with an outcome, it is a very, very small percentage of that outcome.
Interestingly, a lot of professional jury analysts and behavioral scientists agree. I have recently started studying the scientific research that has been conducted regarding the jury system and why results happen the way they do. While I do not agree with all of it, these conclusions seem to keep repeating themselves in the literature:
1. There is a powerful negative stereotype about two types of lawyers - criminal defense lawyers and plaintiff's lawyers in injury cases. Criminal defense lawyers are hired guns that will get any hardened criminal off for a buck, and plaintiff's lawyers are parasites that grow rich the suffering of others. (Having been both, plaintiff and defense, I'll tell you that this is horseshit, and you'll get an earful from me if you suggest it around me. Regardless, this is the public perception, whether I like it or not.)
2. The hours or days you have for jury selection will not be enough to counteract this stereotype, no matter how persuasive you are.
3. Utilization of charm and other overt manipulation tactics in picking juries just confirms the negative stereotypes, and harms the attorney's credibility from the outset.
I've tried to tailor my approach to one that is more of a "just the facts" approach. I think this is helpful, because it builds credibility and, more importantly, allows the jurors to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence. I think this is a much more powerful and engaging approach. It goes back to what I was taught in law school: "Never tell, always show."
So, that is why I thought Miller's description was so interesting. It helped me articulate a revolution that has been going on in my own life, as well as my professional practice. I encourage you to look at your daily behaviors, and see if you utilize charm, or one of its cousins, as a habit.
And I'd further encourage you to see what happens if you stop. You might be surprised.
I recently read a very interesting defensive tactics book by Rory Miller. His description of charm is an interesting one. While he describes it in the terms of a tool that predator uses to get close to a victim, he makes an interesting discussion of charm as a whole.
The short version of his theory: charm is not a natural behavior for human beings. It is a goal-oriented manipulation tactic. The goal need not be nefarious. People use charm to calm tense situations, fit into new social groups, and advance their careers. While these may seem different from the rapist trying to get close to a victim, I think Miller has right about the underlying mechanics being the same.
Charm is a subtle attempt at controlling another party.
This theory jives with my own life experience. I am not charming when I am taking out the garbage, doing the laundry, or buying groceries. I am not charming to people who do not have anything that I want. I don't really describe any of my close friends as charming, and I find that I do not (these days) employ any of my childhood tactics on them to "win them over". With those that I feel safe around, I simply do not exhibit charming behaviors.
(Here's a fun exercise: ask my wife if I am charming. Report back here with the response.)
While charm does work to an extent, I think somewhere in our lizard brains, humans recognize these attempts for what they are and either reject them or dole out a heavy dose of distrust to the would-be charmer. While I think some people are more susceptible to charm than others, I think this natural resistance is something common to humanity.
My reliance on this behavior has waned over the years. I understand why I did it as a child. I had a lot of uncertainty and anxiety in my home life, and I did not have any other tools at my disposal (wasn't faster, stronger, bigger, smarter, or better funded), so I used charm. It became a compulsive habit, a manifestation of my inherent insecurity. I controlled with charm for not reason other than that control made me feel safer. I did it unconsciously.
The first place I encountered where my charm hit a brick wall was martial arts. My teacher, and to a greater extent, his teacher, recognized the behavior for what it was immediately. Both made damn sure not to let it work on them even a little bit, openly pointing out my subconscious attempts to control situations. I ended up looking like an ass quite often. (We tend to adhere to our childhood safety strategies well beyond the time when they stop working.) Time passed, though, and instead of charm, I tried honesty, sincerity, commitment, and willingness to be vulnerable. Those worked a lot better, and infected the rest of my life. (But that is another book, in and of itself.)
In the earlier days of my law practice, I leaned on the charm tactic heavily in front of juries. After prosecutor gave a relatively dry and exhaustive voir dire to a jury pool, I'd get up and make them laugh. I'd joke about the free coffee, the boring nature of the process, and the bizarre little world the potential jurors had been thrust into. I used to attribute some of my victories to that charm, but in light of the revelations above, I've changed my mind.
Like my teachers in law, I've come to the conclusion that evidence wins cases, plain and simple. (I once had a juror tell me, after finding my client guilty, "You made a fine speech, son, but that guy was as guilty as the day was long. Better luck next time.") I've seen a mediocre attorney easily win a case against a magnificent one because of the evidence. If a lawyer's personality has something to do with an outcome, it is a very, very small percentage of that outcome.
Interestingly, a lot of professional jury analysts and behavioral scientists agree. I have recently started studying the scientific research that has been conducted regarding the jury system and why results happen the way they do. While I do not agree with all of it, these conclusions seem to keep repeating themselves in the literature:
1. There is a powerful negative stereotype about two types of lawyers - criminal defense lawyers and plaintiff's lawyers in injury cases. Criminal defense lawyers are hired guns that will get any hardened criminal off for a buck, and plaintiff's lawyers are parasites that grow rich the suffering of others. (Having been both, plaintiff and defense, I'll tell you that this is horseshit, and you'll get an earful from me if you suggest it around me. Regardless, this is the public perception, whether I like it or not.)
2. The hours or days you have for jury selection will not be enough to counteract this stereotype, no matter how persuasive you are.
3. Utilization of charm and other overt manipulation tactics in picking juries just confirms the negative stereotypes, and harms the attorney's credibility from the outset.
I've tried to tailor my approach to one that is more of a "just the facts" approach. I think this is helpful, because it builds credibility and, more importantly, allows the jurors to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence. I think this is a much more powerful and engaging approach. It goes back to what I was taught in law school: "Never tell, always show."
So, that is why I thought Miller's description was so interesting. It helped me articulate a revolution that has been going on in my own life, as well as my professional practice. I encourage you to look at your daily behaviors, and see if you utilize charm, or one of its cousins, as a habit.
And I'd further encourage you to see what happens if you stop. You might be surprised.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Of Aardvarks and Zebras - Politics and Me
I very rarely engage in political debate. Some have pointed out that this habit is very odd, for a lawyer. After all, don't lawyers like arguing? Especially about matters legal?
I have thought about that for a while, and this is my answer.
I do not judge people based off their words. Fact is, words are just too easy. Too easy to say, repeat, and eventually start believing. A man can build entire illusory palaces with his words, worlds that become real over time. So real, in fact, that he will start attacking anyone who threatens his ephemeral creation. It gets too easy to get embroiled in conflicts over things which ultimately are not real.
My first question, when considering any source of opinions, is "What has this person done? What do they really know, and what is just bullshit that they are guessing about?"
There is a certain authority that comes from taking action, and having real experience. I can talk about war, but my words are academic. They pale in comparison to those have gone through the visceral experience of life and death struggle in the service of one's country, witnessing the rending of flesh and the death of comrades. I can speak about war as an intellectual concept, but I do not know it.
And you bet your ass that when someone who actually knows war talks about it, I listen to his opinion and give it a hell of a lot of weight, because it ain't bullshit and speculation. The rest of us, despite how educated and respectful we might be, are only making guesses.
The guesses are not worthless. Some guesses have lead to revolutions in the way we live. But I give those guesses a certain weight. It is considerably less than observations based on direct experience.
This is why I avoid many political discussions.
In our political discourse, this country has developed a cottage industry of professional "opinion-havers", who say much but have rarely, if ever, actually had their "boots on the ground" in the areas they speak so passionately about. I have a hard time having any meaningful dialogue with these people, or any of their devoted sycophants.
Strangely, it is often these people who are guessing the hardest that are the most vocal in their opinions. I am not a psychologist, but I suspect this is based off the insecurity that comes off of pure "guesswork". Look at it this way: if you've never seen a certain animal, and you think it is an aardvark, your conclusion is a pure construct of thought. The aardvark is a guess. If someone says it isn't an aardvark, their opinion is a real threat - it is an idea, just like yours. The two compete on equal footing. On the other hand, if I see a zebra with my own eyes, touch it with my hands, and know it's a zebra, you can call it an aardvark if you want to. That won't particularly threaten me. While I am willing to listen to your logic... I know I saw a fucking zebra. It isn't a mental construct. It ain't guesswork, either.
Knowledge and experience.
I'll share a particular illumination I experienced about immigration and this country. Like many Americans, I believed that coming here illegally was wrong and unfair to the citizens of this country. It was a nice, tidy, easy unilateral idea. Then, as an assistant public defender, I had the opportunity to really talk with and work with many people who had come here illegally. In my experience, the vast majority were decent, hard-working, and humble people. In fact, I found many of them to be more decent, hard-working, and humble than many natural-born Americans.
I had a good discussion with one man in particular, from Juarez, in Mexico. If you haven't been reading the papers, this is one of the most violent parts of the world, outside of war zones. The violence perpetrated by drug cartels is unbelievable. People are gruesomely and horrifically murdered. This man told me about his life there. He had a wife and three children. The picture he painted of his daily life was visceral and deeply unsettling. Nothing in his life was untouched by the shroud of violence and corruption that hung over that place. He explained that his options were to stay in that hellhole of misery and violence, at the mercy of corrupt government and drug cartels, or illegally come to the United States.
I imagined what it would be like if I was in his position. I imagined if my family was in such danger, and there was a safe place I could get to within a day's drive. It didn't take long to figure out what my decision would be if my wife and child were on the line: I'd do what he did, and I wouldn't lose a millisecond of sleep over it. Maybe this makes me ignoble, immoral or unpatriotic. I'm willing to live with those labels, but I suspect that there are a lot of folks out there that agree with me that the safety of their family trumps damn near everything.
How am I any better than that man? I won the freaking lottery. I was born to educated parents in a free country where people have rights and a good shot at prosperity. I didn't chose that. I just lucked into it. His situation was the reverse. From a moral standpoint, I just can't bring myself to look down on him. It is easy to talk about what he should or shouldn't have done when we, ourselves, have not been in that particular crucible.
I still agree that it isn't good for people to come here illegally, but that idea is seasoned with what I've learned from people that have really had to wrestle with the problem from a very human position. People who know that problem. Not just the talking heads.
Having said all this, I guess the reason I rarely discuss politics with people is that I have little to no desire to argue over imaginary aardvarks. I am willing to engage in political discussion, but it is only with people that A) are not trying to bludgeon me with a perceived threat to their imaginary aardvark and B) will appreciate a pure idea for what it is - an educated guess that always weighs less than actual zebra experience.
I have thought about that for a while, and this is my answer.
I do not judge people based off their words. Fact is, words are just too easy. Too easy to say, repeat, and eventually start believing. A man can build entire illusory palaces with his words, worlds that become real over time. So real, in fact, that he will start attacking anyone who threatens his ephemeral creation. It gets too easy to get embroiled in conflicts over things which ultimately are not real.
My first question, when considering any source of opinions, is "What has this person done? What do they really know, and what is just bullshit that they are guessing about?"
There is a certain authority that comes from taking action, and having real experience. I can talk about war, but my words are academic. They pale in comparison to those have gone through the visceral experience of life and death struggle in the service of one's country, witnessing the rending of flesh and the death of comrades. I can speak about war as an intellectual concept, but I do not know it.
And you bet your ass that when someone who actually knows war talks about it, I listen to his opinion and give it a hell of a lot of weight, because it ain't bullshit and speculation. The rest of us, despite how educated and respectful we might be, are only making guesses.
The guesses are not worthless. Some guesses have lead to revolutions in the way we live. But I give those guesses a certain weight. It is considerably less than observations based on direct experience.
This is why I avoid many political discussions.
In our political discourse, this country has developed a cottage industry of professional "opinion-havers", who say much but have rarely, if ever, actually had their "boots on the ground" in the areas they speak so passionately about. I have a hard time having any meaningful dialogue with these people, or any of their devoted sycophants.
Strangely, it is often these people who are guessing the hardest that are the most vocal in their opinions. I am not a psychologist, but I suspect this is based off the insecurity that comes off of pure "guesswork". Look at it this way: if you've never seen a certain animal, and you think it is an aardvark, your conclusion is a pure construct of thought. The aardvark is a guess. If someone says it isn't an aardvark, their opinion is a real threat - it is an idea, just like yours. The two compete on equal footing. On the other hand, if I see a zebra with my own eyes, touch it with my hands, and know it's a zebra, you can call it an aardvark if you want to. That won't particularly threaten me. While I am willing to listen to your logic... I know I saw a fucking zebra. It isn't a mental construct. It ain't guesswork, either.
Knowledge and experience.
I'll share a particular illumination I experienced about immigration and this country. Like many Americans, I believed that coming here illegally was wrong and unfair to the citizens of this country. It was a nice, tidy, easy unilateral idea. Then, as an assistant public defender, I had the opportunity to really talk with and work with many people who had come here illegally. In my experience, the vast majority were decent, hard-working, and humble people. In fact, I found many of them to be more decent, hard-working, and humble than many natural-born Americans.
I had a good discussion with one man in particular, from Juarez, in Mexico. If you haven't been reading the papers, this is one of the most violent parts of the world, outside of war zones. The violence perpetrated by drug cartels is unbelievable. People are gruesomely and horrifically murdered. This man told me about his life there. He had a wife and three children. The picture he painted of his daily life was visceral and deeply unsettling. Nothing in his life was untouched by the shroud of violence and corruption that hung over that place. He explained that his options were to stay in that hellhole of misery and violence, at the mercy of corrupt government and drug cartels, or illegally come to the United States.
I imagined what it would be like if I was in his position. I imagined if my family was in such danger, and there was a safe place I could get to within a day's drive. It didn't take long to figure out what my decision would be if my wife and child were on the line: I'd do what he did, and I wouldn't lose a millisecond of sleep over it. Maybe this makes me ignoble, immoral or unpatriotic. I'm willing to live with those labels, but I suspect that there are a lot of folks out there that agree with me that the safety of their family trumps damn near everything.
How am I any better than that man? I won the freaking lottery. I was born to educated parents in a free country where people have rights and a good shot at prosperity. I didn't chose that. I just lucked into it. His situation was the reverse. From a moral standpoint, I just can't bring myself to look down on him. It is easy to talk about what he should or shouldn't have done when we, ourselves, have not been in that particular crucible.
I still agree that it isn't good for people to come here illegally, but that idea is seasoned with what I've learned from people that have really had to wrestle with the problem from a very human position. People who know that problem. Not just the talking heads.
Having said all this, I guess the reason I rarely discuss politics with people is that I have little to no desire to argue over imaginary aardvarks. I am willing to engage in political discussion, but it is only with people that A) are not trying to bludgeon me with a perceived threat to their imaginary aardvark and B) will appreciate a pure idea for what it is - an educated guess that always weighs less than actual zebra experience.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Portraits
Funny thing about children... they'll help you rediscover memories that you'd thought were long gone.
Saturday morning. 7:30 a.m. Bright sunlight streams through the windows and illuminates the toys strewn on our floor, and gives a golden hue to our battered, comfortable, mostly second-hand furniture. I am up because, despite a relatively sleepless night, my body simply will not remain asleep beyond 6:00 a.m. anymore. (I used to think Dad was crazy for getting up early on the weekends... I'm starting to realize he did not have a say in the matter.) I make cafe au lait for myself, and a much weaker version in a sippy cup for my son. My wife remains asleep, nested firmly in the spot that I recently vacated.
We sit in silence and sip our respective beverages. His sober little morning face is an incredible reflection of his mother's.
"Something is missing," I tell him.
He continues drinking from his sippy, his huge brown eyes studying my face.
"Something important."
His silence continues. Like myself as a child, Jack's consumption of coffee is an all-or-nothing ritual, where he does not rest until the cup is drained to the last drop.
"Donuts, Jack. We need to get some donuts for Mommy. And flowers. Why flowers? Not because it is a special occasion... it's just that when you live with a woman, periodically giving her flowers buys breathing room for those times when you royally screw up. Free tip, kid."
"Donuts!"
"Indeed."
I stand up to get him out of his pajamas, and then I stop. It hits me like a freight train.
It is probably 1987. New Orleans. The weather is that same muggy warmth, with the same sunlight that seems to turn everything to gold. My father and I are on the road. We're in his immaculate Nissan Maxima, with its square lines and uniformly gray everything. We're on our way to Morning Call, which is the other restaurant in town that sells beignets, French donuts with powdered sugar on top. Dad and I are both wearing our pajamas and flip-flops.
This is very strange, because my father is a very proper man. Always with immaculately combed hair, clean shaven, pressed shirts and pants. Always appropriate. Composed. Controlled. Even in his own home, I could never say that the man relaxed. I only got to see little cracks of my father's humanity on rare occasions.
This was one of them. Riding in that old car, sitting in his ragged pajamas, my father wasn't quite my father. Or, at least, not as I knew him. His hair was unruly and his chin was covered with dark stubble. Chuck Berry warbled "You Never Can Tell" on the radio, and we bellowed along. (I tried, at least. My knowledge of Berry's songs was limited at that time.) Dad dropped the hammer and we tore down the road, likely considerably faster than the speed limit. Both of us laughed in delight.
It was one of the few times I ever remember him doing so. This is one of my favorite memories of my father, because I got a little glimpse of who he was as a kid, before the world went to work on him. Rakish, impulsive, and a bit irresponsible, there was a certain delight in him that day. I'm not sure exactly why the walls came down, but I'm glad they did.
I smile at my son and leave his pajamas on. I neither shower nor shave. My hair looks like I've mixed it up with an electric socket and a battered "Tron" tee-shirt adorns my chest.
"C'mon, kiddo. We're keeping up a tradition."
"Donuts?"
"Yes. Still the donuts. And flowers for Mommy. And whatever the hell else we feel like."
I load him in the car. Through the magic of smart phones and little cables, Chuck favors us with another rendition of his classic. I roll down the windows and tear down the causeway, with the ocean wind roaring in my face. We sing along to the radio and shamelessly procure our treasure from the store. For a bit, the rest of my life with all its cares and worries fades into non-existence. I am 100% present, and I am delighted. Jack smiles his mother's beautiful smile.
When we get back home, he surprises Mommy with our treasures.
Hopefully, one day, something will remind him of this, and he'll smile at this glimpse of me, just as I did of my own father.
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