tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71680608249231357502024-03-12T20:14:20.505-07:00Agrarian Ideas for a Developing WorldEconomic development, current events, travel, sustainable living, and fatherhood, all from an agrarian perspectiveUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1250125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-73610327402424396732019-02-26T12:54:00.001-08:002019-02-26T12:54:12.449-08:00A year without my mom<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Today marks
the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve watched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8CXUzepL6k">R.
Kelly’s video of “I Wish” (in which he laments the loss of his mother</a>) more
than once today, both alone and with my kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is somehow comforting to me to listen to a grown man still struggling
to come to terms with a parent’s death even years after the fact (though it
bodes ill for any prospect of this getting any easier with time).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kelly captures the sense of helplessness,
bewilderment, resignation that seems unavoidable whenever you think too much about
your lost loved ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me the only
way not to feel these sensations all the time is to avoid pondering the loss
too much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So though my mom is always
present in my thoughts, in my family’s conversations, in our dreams, I try not
to dwell on the what-ifs of her death, nor conversely on the sheer
inevitability of death for us all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Ironically,
this anniversary also falls on the day after <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/r-kelly-not-guilty-sexual-abuse-charges-court-hearing-steve-greenberg/">Mr. Kelly posted bond to get outof jail pending his trial for sexual abuse of minors</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a sordid affair, and I don’t give him a
pass for any of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I obviously don’t
have an answer to the question of how much, if at all, we can honor the art of
a person without condoning that person’s actions in the real world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of this, what is a mainly philosophical
question for cases like Wagner or Rick James, is complicated further when an
artist is still alive and benefits economically from your patronage of his art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But with all that, R. Kelly is what I felt
like listening to to console me today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">For a white
woman who came of age in 1950s Wisconsin, reared on the Chordettes (though also
admittedly on Sam Cooke), my mom was very much in tune with 21<sup>st</sup>
century pop culture trends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I
turned 33, she told me that at that age Christ saved the world and Tupac had
already been dead for 8 years, so I had a lot to live up to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think she’d get a kick out of sharing her 1-year
anniversary with news of R. Kelly’s post-bail trip to McDonald’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can see her laughing and yelling about how
gross he is, and dishing on the latest news with my wife, who only indulged in
tabloid gossip with my mom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My few loyal readers will have noted that I haven't posted anything on this blog for a month or so. I've been vacillating between wanting to share lots of ideas and impressions with the world at large, and then feeling more in the mood for silent reflection. Mom was a writer though, and I feel like she's pushing me to take up the pen in a more disciplined way again.</span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-42599505173614747822019-01-28T14:25:00.000-08:002019-01-28T14:25:14.119-08:00Madrid as consumption cityAround when I was <a href="https://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2019/01/non-industrial-urban-centers.html">writing a recent post on production vs. consumption cities</a>, I also happened to be reading a short blurb about the history of Madrid. Madrid is like the original DC or Brasilia--no real commercial or logistical reason for existence, but rather planned as a geographically central capital for the newly united Spanish Kingdom starting in the 1600s or so (the royalty also liked the mild, sunny climate and the good hunting grounds). Even when the monarchy vacillated about whether Madrid should be the permanent capital or one of a few temporary capitals, the city kept growing, drawing in merchants and other service workers catering to the nobles that were increasingly clustering near this new power center. <br />
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So in this sense, Madrid is like an early version of a Lagos or Conakry. In fact, an oft-repeated quip is that the most abundant culinary "port" in Spain is Madrid, where a majority of the country's seafood is consumed despite its being located a few hundred miles inland of any coast. <br />
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I have loved Madrid ever since I spent a few years living there in my early 20s, strolling its quirky streets and absorbing its unique character. But even back then I vaguely realized that part of its character was this sense of having sprung out of nothing a few hundred years ago, and persisting as a population center, with entire regional, quasi-ethnic identities around long-established neighborhoods (think the Cockney culture of East London, an entirely urban regional cultural group) that had no underlying industrial reason to exist. So again, this characterization of consumption vs. production cities has proven useful for me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-17908678512201759362019-01-26T14:20:00.000-08:002019-01-26T14:20:07.791-08:00Improving schools without integration?Here is an <a href="https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/segregated-schools-desegregation-city-suburbs-history-solutions/Content?oid=9992386">article that is five years old but still relevant. It is about how the Chicago Public Schools have long tried to improve racially segregated schools without reversing the segregation that characterizes them</a>. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-16119480116267026022019-01-24T13:37:00.000-08:002019-01-24T13:37:17.926-08:00Tourism as resource curseOn the heels of my last post on how resource export can alter urbanization and economic growth in bizarre ways, here is <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/19/the-tourism-curse/">an article on how tourism can often act like a natural resource that causes a "resource curse", a type of economic model that may create income but hinder long-term development and diversification</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-14790618627869154592019-01-22T13:21:00.000-08:002019-01-22T13:21:15.325-08:00Non-industrial urban centersI've often wondered about fast-growing cities today that seem not to have an underlying logic to their growth. There have been lots of articles published about cities like Kinshasa or Port-au-Prince where urbanization has not necessarily led to the improvements in economic wellbeing that we have historically seen when people move to a city. In other words, there are cities today that seem to buck the logic of people moving to them because their earning potential and general wellbeing are vastly better than if they stayed in a rural setting.<br />
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This <a href="https://www.citylab.com/life/2015/06/the-problem-of-urbanization-without-economic-growth/395648/">article lays out the general panorama: urbanization has not always gone hand-in-hand with a country's economic growth, neither as a cause nor an effect</a>. There have been periods when urbanization has tracked closely to growth, most notably the trajectory of now-developed countries in the 19th and 20th centuries, but there have been other periods, including the present, when the two are less tightly linked. <br />
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The question of individual wellbeing is slightly different, but related. I have heard somewhere that life expectancy in London and many cities up until the early 20th century or so (when municipal sewer systems greatly reduced disease burden) was lower than in their countries' rural areas. Population growth in such cities is driven entirely by in-migration, because many of the newcomers survive only a few years before they die of typhoid or something.<br />
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Anyway, it has all led me to continually wonder about today's fast-growing cities. I do believe that people's wellbeing is often vastly improved by moving to these new boomtowns. If you're earning five dollars a day or so farming to support your family, then even doing something as menial as selling Kleenex to cars in traffic jams in a city can net you that with a few hours of work. But even when the economic perspective is a wash between the city and the country, cities everywhere continue to grow rapidly. Often these cities depend a lot on imports, especially in countries where poor transportation infrastructure makes it easy for coastal cities to receive goods from abroad than from their rustic interior. I always wonder then where the money comes from ultimately to buy these imports. It may make sense for one person or even a whole army of migrants to sell Kleenex in traffic jams, but ultimately the money their customers have to buy the Kleenex must come from somewhere. In the 20th-century boomtowns of Europe and the US, the source of this money, this "created" wealth that could finance purchase of imports, was often industry. If Chicago's industry (and the workers paid by it) was producing steel or cattle or even software or tourism that brought in money, then it stands to reason that those workers will have money to buy Kleenex etc. from abroad. But if a country lacks major industry, where is it getting the money to buy its imported Kleenex?<br />
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I recently came across this <a href="https://www.theigc.org/blog/urbanisation-with-and-without-industrialisation/">useful article that explains the phenomenon for me. The authors talk about consumption vs. production cities</a>. The latter are like the Chicago case I've described; these cities produce something for export, and can thus finance their own consumption. But the former, the so-called consumption cities, tend to get their money from resource extraction. This begins to explain for me how even a <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2019/01/readings-in-modern-igbo-literature.html">mega-city like Lagos in a mega-country like Nigeria can lack a lot of industry, and have its rich people linked more to real estate or government</a>, neither of which are productive in themselves. In countries that export primary resources like oil, timber, or minerals, relatively few people are actually employed in these sectors, which explains why a large proportion of the population in their major cities are employed in services like Kleenex-selling. And the money to import said Kleenex wholesale and then buy it at retail, is ultimately the trickle-down from the riches accruing to the few involved in the oil or mineral extraction. You can imagine then that this would lead to a situation where a few people would accumulate a lot of wealth, either saving it or spending it on lavish consumption from abroad, and ultimately not much of it would be available to spark real local entrepreneurship and economic growth. In such a setting, importers and retail prosper, as do sectors like security guards and lottery shacks. But there's not a broad base of well-earning, socially-organized industrial workers to really drive equitable, widespread development.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-7164104024762952542019-01-07T14:56:00.000-08:002019-01-07T14:56:28.451-08:00Readings in modern Igbo literatureOver the past few years my wife and I have read a lot of literature by Igbo authors. When I say a lot, it's probably only four or five books in the course of two years, but if you're only occasionally reading novels outside of your normal cultural sphere of reference, and four of them end up being by authors from the same ethnic group in the same country, it seems like a lot.<br />
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Anyway, one of them is <a href="http://www.mantlethought.org/content/sound-things-come">The Sound of Things to Come by Emmanuel Iduma</a>. This is a multi-perspective collection of vignettes that eventually converge, at least partially. I hesitate to describe it as a Nigerian novel in a broad sense, since all the major characters are Igbo, and there's no attempt to explore viewpoints other than these Igbo people's particular visions. The few times non-Igbos appear, it is either as attackers in interethnic violence, or as sleazy romantic partners that Igbo parents disapprove of. <br />
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Iduma's novel deftly explores individuals, and specifically the internal conflict between reason and passion. But the source of interest is basically that all of the people he profiles are disagreeable and self-centered. The conflicts arise from people just randomly acting like jerks to one another. The end effect is an expertly-rendered exploration of people that you don't particularly want to explore, and who are so unpleasant that they seem sometimes unrealistic. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is fascinating, but I wouldn't want to be friends with the protagonists, and frankly I'm not sure how many people even exist that are so brazenly, rawly ugly.<br />
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The novel thus paints a pretty bleak picture of Nigeria, or at least of Igbo culture, in the 21st century. The salient cultural traits Iduma shows are a determined self-centeredness, a lack of human connection or emotion. I don't know if Nigeria is really like this, but the country Iduma depicts made me really sad. It is frequent in popular discourse to oppose the developed world, where material conditions are comfortable but human hope and emotion has been dulled, with the developing world, where people are poor but there is a certain human warmth and fun to life. This is obviously a cliche, but at least some truth must be found in the objective fact (which is repeated in the next novel I'm going to discuss) that in the developing world, the present material poverty convinces many that the best times are yet to come, so the culture tends to be hopeful. But Iduma's Nigeria is a country that exhibits dire poverty with no human affection or joy to temper it. If this place really exists, it sounds pretty grim.<br />
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The other Igbo novel I read is <a href="https://www.chimamanda.com/book/americanah/">Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah</a>, about young people raised in Nigeria but always looking abroad for meaning and self-fulfillment. The novel shares some common leitmotifs with Iduma's in its depiction of modern Nigeria. Mercantilized love, hypereducated people, relentless classism, women kept by military strongmen, university strikes and demonstrations, a society where all money is dirty money, and a hypocritical religiosity heavy on prosperity theology and light on common decency (there's a scene where a woman who has been praising Jesus for bringing a corrupt general into her sister's life to keep her as a mistress, then turns around and insists that her sister get an abortion when she actually gets knocked up by said general). But where Iduma's book is all character study and little relation to the larger society, Adichie's book expertly explores societies, but the individual people are mainly flat caricatures. Not all of them--the Nigerian characters are a lot more fleshed out and three-dimensional. But almost all the Americans and Brits are really just tropes of different strains of sanctimonious liberal flake. <br />
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I wonder if the difference in depth of characterization of Nigerian vs. non-Nigerian characters in Americanah is due in part to the protagonist's (maybe even the author's?) perch as an outsider observing the US, located within the country but never feeling a part of it. If so, it makes sense that the "real" people are those that she grew up with, while the new people she runs into in a new context are like so many extras in the movie of her life. I know that's often how I feel about my friends and family vis a vis everyone else. There are certain people I know and relate to in a very deep way because I have shared so many moments with them, and everyone else I just have a surface impression of.<br />
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As with Iduma's irredeemably ugly characters, I don't think that most people are actually like Adichie's shallow Americans, and I
certainly can't imagine being in any context where everyone around me is
just phony and absurd. I have certainly found myself at times around boors who only talk in
cliches and groupthink, but when I am in a situation where I'm
surrounded by them, I make it a point to get out of those settings as
soon as I can. So it's hard for me to imagine a 15-year stretch of
someone only running into, and continuing to hang around, phony people.<br />
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That said, maybe I'm giving people's individuality more credit than I should. I try not to act out predetermined roles or cliches (not that I'm aware of, at least), but maybe people find comfort in conforming to certain of these molds. I recently went to a dance school in my neighborhood to see about signing my kids up for classes in African dance and drums. In my neck of West Africa, there is a cottage industry of master musicians, dancers, and choreographers who host people from all over the world for intensive multi-week workshops in these arts. So when my family and I went, we caught a group of mainly Mexican students practicing their dance routine. I was surprised (though not too surprised, I guess) at how similarly the non-African students were all dressed and coiffed. Shaved sides of the head, long hair from the top, usually in braids or dreads, lots of piercings and tattoos on the rest of the body, baggy yoga/circus clothes (mixed of course with more practical, tight-fitting dance gear). It was like a uniform they had all agreed on. It was perhaps a confirmation of Adichie's implicit thesis that modern bourgeois people (both Americans and Nigerians in her novel) are only a collection of so many cultural tics and socially-controlled values, according to a pre-packaged image that each person tries to project.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-33848852088067175412019-01-04T08:24:00.001-08:002019-01-04T08:24:30.306-08:00Blackest and whitest things in Philadelphia<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mWOTdt9Bovk" width="400"></iframe><br />
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I recently ran across this video of Billy Paul singing his signature piece, Me and Mrs. Jones. There are a couple of things I love about this video (once you get past the weird modern dance number at the very beginning). Most immediately striking is that Billy sings the whole song with a long, thin cigar clenched between his teeth. It's just so effortlessly cool, and doesn't even looked contrived, though it was surely the result of a very deliberate decision by the production team. The second thing I like about this is that Billy is about 38 when he's singing this song. It's a grown-up song about a grown-up topic, sung by a grown-up. This contrasts with much of pop music throughout the late 20th century, which tends to be teenyboppers singing about silly nonsense. Billy Paul is unapologetically adult here. In this sense he is really archetypal of the Philly Soul sound, which to me is defined by just such a confident, self-assured grown-up attitude.<br />
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At the same time, my wife and I have been watching the old TV show "thirtysomething". I'd never seen it, save occasional snatches I'd catch when I was a kid and had network TV on at that hour of the night. It's really good, and deftly captures a lot of things about being a grown-up, navigating a marriage, raising kids. It's particularly mind-blowing for me because the characters are the age I am now, but the show was shot thirty years ago, when I was a little kid. So it's this odd mix of familiar from my childhood, familiar from my adulthood, and a lot less dated than you might expect a 30-year-old show to be. Coincidentally, "thirtysomething" is also set in Philadelphia. But don't expect a cameo from Billy Paul. In fact, don't expect to see anyone who looks even remotely like him. We're about 5 episodes in, and I can't recall having seen one black face, not even walking around in the background of scenes set downtown. I guess it's because there aren't many black folks in Philly, right?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-43319715738902595812018-12-28T13:08:00.000-08:002018-12-28T13:08:02.740-08:00Mano River impressions, or Notes from the Bump of AfricaFor the past few weeks my work has taken me to the countries of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mano_River_Union">Mano River Union, namely Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cote d'Ivoire</a>. This is an interesting little corner of West Africa, forming sort of a bump on its southwest end. It isn't the sophisticated, very English stretch of Ghana and Nigeria, but it isn't the sophisticated, very French stretch of the Sahel either. Especially if we don't count Cote d'Ivoire, the three remaining countries form a little subgroup of their own, with many elements of shared culture. There is a long history of migration between Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and back, at least as far back as the 1970s, when Guineans fleeing dictatorship and post-dictatorship chaos looked to the more developed climes of their neighbors, only to have a massive counterflow as brutal civil wars broke out in both Anglophone countries. This back-and-forth migration has further muddied the preexisting situation of many ethnic groups (Kpelle/Guerze, Mende, Susu, Malinke/Mandingo, among others) being distributed across borders in multiple countries. The result is that there is a lot of multilingualism across the board, both in African and colonial languages. I would venture to say that in few other places of Africa do you find so many francophones who also speak English, and vice versa. It seems like everyone in a given country has either worked in one of the others, or is married to someone from a neighboring country (but sometimes with the same mother tongue), or did their Quranic studies or high school or whatever in one of the other countries.<br />
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Right now the Mano River countries are a relatively impoverished backwater of the continent, and especially of the West African region, but I wonder if this may someday change. Their coastal populations, command of both English and French, their major ports and fishing cultures, and tight links between both co-ethnics in different countries and different ethnicities within the same country, seem to suit the region well for success in a globalized world. Especially Sierra Leone and Liberia seem to have emerged from their wars with a newfound sense of unity and national identity, and a drive to make a decent, prosperous society. Bad road and air connections between countries are a hindrance for now, but this could be fixed in very short order with just a bit of political will.<br />
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There are of course differences that sort of baffle me, too. The road from Conakry to Freetown is totally atrocious throughout Guinea, up to the Sierra Leonean border, after which it becomes an excellent, smooth, well-maintained highway. The Guinea stretch literally has sections like those photos you see of jungle tracks in the Congo or the Amazon somewhere, with car-sized holes in the pavement that oblige you to drive down the drainage ditch by the side of the road, which is also car-deep but at least has smooth inclines on the side. Both countries are notoriously poor, with similar per-capita incomes and malnutrition rates, but Sierra Leone's roads look like Wisconsin blacktop, while Guinea's are like a scene out of Blood Diamond or something. By the same token, Guinea's capital Conakry hasn't had effective trash pickup for a few years, so the streets are literally overflowing with garbage, sometimes down the median strip, always on the sidewalks, and sometimes closing off entire lanes of traffic with ad hoc dump sites. There is usually a haze of smoke in the air from burning garbage--it really gets to look post-Apocalyptic at times. Freetown, on the other hand, looks like a Mediterranean beach resort, quaint, colorful houses neatly arrayed down verdant hillsides that flow to the sea. Little garbage to be seen anywhere, street signs and pavement everywhere, and light traffic. Again, I just don't know what the difference is. Sometimes I wonder if Conakry is in fact more prosperous than Freetown, and because of this is plagued with more garbage and more cars, both symptoms of higher consumption. In any case, Conakry has twice as many people as Freetown.<br />
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On the other hand, the natural environment is notably less intact in Sierra Leone, with its denser population. In Guinea you see pretty dense forest (or savanna, in drier areas) wherever you go, even along major roads. In Sierra Leone, however, it's mainly grassland and cultivation, until you get to even denser populations in the north, where economics seem to have dictated intensive planting and caretaking of oil and other palms, as well as other useful trees.<br />
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Back to the similarities. Colonialism (or maybe just the sheer abundance of languages, even before the Europeans came along) seems to have worked a perverse linguistic legacy in the Mano River Union. There is pretty broad understanding of French in Guinea, and English in Sierra Leone and Liberia. But this can be misleading. I have often found myself speaking my shaky, un-nuanced French to a Guinean whose French is (in its own, different way) also shaky and un-nuanced. Add to that a certain reticence on both sides, an expectation that your cultural referents are so disparate that you can't possibly expect to understand one another, and you get frequent situations in which all parties are ostensibly speaking and listening to words they all mutually understand, but they nevertheless don't really understand one another. Add now to this a culture of deference to authority, where people won't contradict or ask clarifying questions so as not to offend, and you've got a recipe for confusion! This doesn't just happen to me--I've seen lots of Guineans talking past each other, or not understanding the nuance of what the other is saying. If someone asks someone else to do something, it will usually take a few tries, each try with its attendant response and correction, before party A actually manages to do what party B is requesting. The misunderstanding is greatest when someone is trying hardest to please the other, since they are overly eager to act and totally unwilling to clarify what's being said!<br />
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I thought this was just in Guinea, surely not in the Anglophone countries where almost everyone understands at least Krio, if not standard English. You know that look of terror that Americans sometimes get when they are talking to a native speaker of West African English? They know they should understand, but they don't at all, and even things they probably are capable of understanding pass them by, bewildered as they are by the speaker's heavy accent. That is the look that has greeted me on more than one occasion as I respond in my Chicago English to a fluent speaker of Sierra Leonean English. They are hearing something they are supposed to understand, but they just can't get the key piece to unlock the meaning of the words mangled by my weird, twisted accent. When I try to speak more slowly and clearly, it is even harder for them to understand--I'm just making their torture more drawn-out and louder!<br />
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Food in Guinea has the other places beat, in my opinion. The cuisine across the region is similar--rice with peanut sauce or cooked greens or spicy stews--but Guineans seem to put more effort into it. There was the hamburger meal that I indulged myself in at a provincial hotel in Sierra Leone. It looked great, with a crisp toasted bun and fresh vegetables on top of a burger paddy colored red from the rich seasonings they mix with ground beef here. But once I bit into it, I found it to be sinewy and unchewable, sort of a mix of minced offal as opposed to ground prime beef. I left most of it on my plate and didn't make a fuss, but the waitress just said, "Sorry about the food," as she handed me the bill. It was as if she'd known beforehand how bad it was going to be but had been torn between the urge not to contradict me, and the decency to tell me straight out not to order it. I got a kick out of her quiet dignity mixed with a resigned frankness. <br />
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Music in Guinea is also superior to the other places. Guinea has a long autoctonous musical tradition, ever since the great medieval empires with their griots, and extending to the Communist state-sponsored music of the 60s and 70s. The Anglophone countries, on the other hand, seem to be flooded with foreign music in English. While I enjoy hearing Wham and Whitney and other 80s and 90s acts on the radio, it doesn't give you the sense of a strong national music culture.<br />
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One thing that has been noticeably absent from my experience of these countries is war. For most of my conscious life, I have associated Liberia, Sierra Leone, and to a lesser extent Cote d'Ivoire, with gruesome civil wars that raged in the 1990s. Even today people outside these countries still refer to the wars, and within the countries the war is fresh on people's minds. If you get folks to open up, they will discuss the war, and many places and events are defined in time by their relation to the war. But the countries don't look like war-torn places. Of course it's been almost 20 years since these wars ended, but I would expect to at least see more of their physical marks--craters, bullet holes in buildings, amputees. It's almost jarring to <i>not</i> see any of this. Freetown, which was overrun by one group and then another of marauding, coke-addled killers, just looks like a little Dutch Caribbean town or something.<br />
<br />
I'm sure that, as with any place briefly visited, these countries have a lot more going on, just under the surface and invisible to my initial cursory glances.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-58732917930380402332018-12-26T14:30:00.000-08:002018-12-26T14:31:10.800-08:00Children of Blood and BoneThis is a <a href="http://www.tomiadeyemi.com/books/">really cool young adult novel I heard about a while ago and wanted to get as a present to diversify the literary diet of some of the young adults in my family and social circle who like fantasy fiction</a>. I had to read it myself too, and I'm glad I did, because it is a heavy read. Engrossing and well-done, but it offers a very real, raw representation of systematic oppression. Lots of science fiction envisions dystopian futures where people are massively oppressed, but it's often crafted by people who in real life are quite removed from the direct experience of day-to-day oppression of them and theirs. Children of Blood and Bone, on the other hand, is written by someone who's channeling the recent spate of police killings of black youth. It is valuable and necessary and I think can help a lot of young people imagine and understand what it's like to be persecuted for who they are (or to look at their own situation in a new light, if they're living this already). But I don't know if I'd recommend it for kids much younger than 15 or so. For the time being, any younger kids I'm going to give it to their parents, and leave it up to them when to share.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-47531179261507941732018-12-24T14:00:00.000-08:002018-12-24T14:01:35.315-08:00Race, school, and civic responsibilityOver the past year or so I've run across some really good articles that are all related in some way to using one's own social capital to improve the area around oneself, as opposed to using one's advantages in life to cherrypick the best of everything. Concretely, I am talking about parents' not always looking for the outcome that most favors their own children individually, but rather those options that might provide their children with a decent life and opportunities while not depriving others thereof.<br />
<br />
Here's an <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/where-should-we-send-our-daughter-to-school-in-chicago/amp/?__twitter_impression=true">article by an important analyst of black Chicago, as she muses on what school she should send her young daughter to within the Chicago public schools</a>. She doesn't have a definite choice yet, but she does not want to funnel her kid into one of the handful of elite schools within the public system. I have <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2016/06/flipping-schools-from-black-to-white-in.html">read similar reflections from other parents, and never cease to be surprised that it's often parents of color who are thinking about the greater good of the larger community</a>. In theory there are a lot more white folks in the US that enjoy a level of economic and academic security that would allow them to think honestly about not maximizing their individual gains at the expense of general wellbeing. But once again we see black folks serving as the voice of conscience for a larger nation that often doesn't want to listen.<br />
<br />
Here is a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/white-kids-race/569185/">summary of research into how high-income whites reinforce patterns of social segregation by using their own advantages to maximize positive outcomes for their kids without regard for the effect on everyone else</a>. Here are a few pithy quotes: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"These affluent white parents are in a position where they can set up their kids’ lives so that they’re better than other kids’ lives. So the dark side is that, ultimately, people are thinking about their own kids, and that can come at the expense of other people’s kids. When we think about parents calling up the school and demanding that their child have the best math teacher, what does that mean for the kids who don’t get the best math teacher?"</blockquote>
... <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"white parents, and parents in general, need to understand that all children are worthy of their consideration. This idea that your own child is the most important thing—that’s something we could try to rethink. When affluent white parents are making these decisions about parenting, they could consider in some way at least how their decisions will affect not only their kid, but other kids. This might mean a parent votes for policies that would lead to the best possible outcome for as many kids as possible, but might be less advantageous for their own child. My overall point is that in this moment when being a good citizen conflicts with being a good parent, I think that most white parents choose to be good parents, when, sometimes at the very least, they should choose to be good citizens."</blockquote>
...<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We have other societies that do things differently. I think when we look across time and history and geography, we can see that the way that we’re doing it—prioritizing your own child over everyone else—is one way, but I don’t think that has to be the only way. I don’t have any grand answer, but I think people could think in bigger ways about what it means to care about one another and what it means to actually have a society that cares about kids."</blockquote>
I would add to this researcher's analysis that it's not just in the US that we see people trying to distance themselves socially from others. Across the developing world I see people replacing long-standing traditions that fostered equity across society with new, consumerist habits wherein everyone is scrambling to buy on the private market goods like education, health, and infrastructure. These are goods and services that should be public goods that we all fight for to get for everyone, but in today's post-Cold War world a lot of that ethic of equity has been replaced by a logic to look out for your own immediate interests regardless of, or even at odds with, every else's wellbeing.<br />
<br />
I'll close with a <a href="https://chicagodefender.com/2018/11/12/open-letter-from-michelle-obama-exclusively-for-the-chicago-defender/">link to an uplifting Op-Ed by Michelle Obama for the Chicago Defender. In it, she urges the black population of Chicago to stand firm, to keep investing in and believing in and loving our kids, even when the rest of society doesn't much value them</a>. Again on display here is a commitment to the larger community, and a recognition that our own immediate children are no more important or deserving than anyone else's children.<br />
<br />
Says the former First Lady of herself and her brother, "neither of us was anything special. When we were growing up, ...
the South Side was full of thousands of little Michelles and
Craigs—good kids who worked hard and knew the difference between right
and wrong. The rest of the world just didn’t get to see that very often."<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-67520642876134892942018-12-22T12:49:00.000-08:002018-12-22T12:49:00.330-08:00On single-room occupancyThis is a nice photo-<a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-sro/553946/">article about the transition of housing stock in the US, from an abundance of rentable beds and single rooms, to an idealized standard of a single-family home</a>. This was a fascinating read for me, because I grew up in a neighborhood that went from having at least five SROs I can recall in a square mile, to having none.<br />
<br />
I've long thought of creating new SRO-type housing in Chicago, and this article keeps me inspired to do so. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-30962968970075526462018-12-20T12:12:00.000-08:002018-12-20T12:12:10.290-08:00Exposé on palm oilA long time ago I shared <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2015/01/palm-in-colombia.html">an article about palm oil production in Colombia</a>. Here is a much more in-<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oil-borneo-climate-catastrophe.html">depth article about the effects of clearing forest for oil palm plantations in Indonesia and elsewhere in the world</a>. It is a sobering lesson in how technocratic fixes to one environmental problem can lead to a different, even worse problem, if not thought through carefully.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-51753672040234620912018-12-18T11:27:00.002-08:002018-12-18T11:27:33.545-08:00Theological diplomacyThis is a <a href="https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2018/11/20/the-varieties-of-muslim-faith-become-a-vital-form-of-diplomacy">fascinating article about how different countries are exporting their respective styles of Islam to other countries, as a form of soft-power diplomacy</a>. I can't think of present-day parallels in Christianity, except for the freelance Evangelical churches that do mission work in developing countries. But these don't bear the official stamp of an organized country's diplomatic efforts, and my impression is that the most effusively missionary strains of Christianity are also the most radicalized; I don't think the centrist Lutheran or Methodist churches are aggressively promoting their moderate interpretation of Christianity abroad, but maybe they are and I just don't know about it.<br />
<br />
In any case, just another reminder that there's a lot of stuff going on around the world that I have no clue about.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-88168068698763736522018-12-14T13:42:00.000-08:002018-12-14T13:42:08.938-08:00Intercultural communicationI recently ran across a book called <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Basic_Concepts_of_Intercultural_Communic.html?id=Y_8b4z2z2u0C&source=kp_book_description">Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication</a>. It is a bit long, and many of the articles don't interest me, focused as they are on the different business cultures of the US and Japan (I think it was published at a time when the private sector in the US was still very worried about the competitive threat posed by Japan's economy).<br />
<br />
There is one article though that caught my attention on Black and White cultural styles in the workplace. I'm sure some of the author's assertions can be questioned, but I thought it was a useful, honest approach to describe some of the differences in cultural style, and how that can either cause friction or constructive tension in the workplace. The main differences the author highlights are that black culture accords a more protagonistic and semi-autonomous creative role to the individual, while white American culture stresses the uniformity of work processes and the interchangeability of each person (read: the discouragement of too much individual protagonism or flair). Another difference is the black comfort with heated discussion as a means to get to the truth, versus the white suppression of emotion in order to avoid conflict and thus maintain a relative unity and harmony.<br />
<br />
You'll have to read the article yourself in order to judge its merit, but one thing I reflected on after reading it is how we're all on a continuum. Some of the traits ascribed to white Americans by this author with respect to black Americans, are precisely the traits ascribed to non-American cultures vis-a-vis general US culture. In other words, where Americans as a whole (when compared to many Europeans or Japanese) are more direct, more independent and individualized, more willing to engage in argument, and less beholden to maintaining harmony and unity, within the US the reference point changes, so black Americans may embody these traits to a greater degree than whites. This is pretty consistent with my very idiosyncratic reading of US culture as basically being what happens when you take a bunch of predominantly European people and inculcate West African values and traditions in them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-86990157311968880472018-12-11T22:27:00.001-08:002018-12-11T22:29:16.641-08:00Community development by staying put<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I ran
across <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/where-the-small-town-american-dream-lives-on">this New Yorker article a year ago about a small town in Iowa that has managed to maintain its somewhat insular charm while also providing economic growth and a decent quality of life to its inhabitants (and holding on to its young people). I thought it was an interesting counterpoint</a> to my thinking and concern about <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2015/05/more-on-moving-out-of-bad-neighborhoods.html">people leaving their surroundings</a>
in order to <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2015/04/on-ferguson.html">develop themselves</a>, as opposed to developing their entire community
(and thus bettering their own lot as well).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here
is an example of a community that has managed to do just that, through a mix of
cultural predisposition, lucky geographical breaks in terms of the location of
higher education institutions and industrial employment, and concerted,
conscious efforts to maintain their small town as a viable, pleasant place to
live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The article highlights some of the
tensions inherent to any local development approach, most notably that you need
to foster a strong sense of place and belonging so the natives stay, but at the
same time you don’t want to be so closed to outsiders that you block the needed
migration and investment from outside the community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When I was
younger I sometimes decried the type of people who were just content to stay
where they are, working in the same place their folks did, finding their
greatest meaning and interest in the affairs of their own neighborhood and not
concerned with much that transpired beyond it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As I have pursued economic development as a professional field though, and
as I raise kids that I want to be grounded in the community I grew up in, I
appreciate more this attitude of rootedness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At the same time, I’m not sure if I’d enjoy living in a place like the Iowa town described in the New Yorker article.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might
be a bit <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">too</i> perfect, a bit <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">too</i> satisfied with and centered on
itself </span>(I'm lucky enough to be from a place like Chicago that is at once rooted and cosmopolitan, so there's something to satisfy all tastes, or at least all <i>my</i> tastes). On a larger scale, it’s a cruel
irony that the communities where people are most active in maintaining and
improving the quality of life, are by definition the communities where people
have less energy to devote to improving life in the rest of the country and the
world. The end result is that you see
nice, cohesive communities constantly investing in themselves and further
improving their lot, while nearby there are other communities that would
greatly benefit if their neighbors directed some of their dynamism and
investments to these other, less fortunate places.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In the end
I’m not sure what the best recipe is for broad-based economic development,
whether it’s best to have small communities centered on themselves, or whether
it’s better to have more centralized, conscious planning to spark broader-based
economic development.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously both are
necessary—I’m just trying to figure out the place and proportion of each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is certainly a need for communities
that are centered on their own wellbeing, because this is the only sustainable
way for a place to prosper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same
time, I worry about the implications of this approach for inequality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We certainly see that, in the US at least,
there are a few places that concentrate most of the well-educated, well-earning, socially-
and politically-active people (think wealthy suburbs of any major city), and
these people do all they can to improve their community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This leads to inequality in at least two
ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is that these places naturally
prosper more than others, because they have the most resources and these resources are
continuously reinvested in the community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But more insidiously, part of the advocacy efforts of these communities
is almost always to set up all sorts of barriers (zoning laws, tax paying and sharing
arrangements, transport infrastructure, and sometimes literal physical fences)
to keep out people with less capital (social, economic, human, and
otherwise).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I have often been in situations where my work entails trying to drive or
catalyze economic development through very conscious, technocratic
processes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes people like me put
a lot of work into trying to make development happen, and it takes a lot of
time and investment to make just a little progress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But a</span>t the very same time, you’ll sometimes see
relatively unplanned or unregulated economic processes generating more poverty
alleviation than our best efforts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
isn’t always or even usually the case, but it happens enough for me to realize
that sometimes these more organic, self-centered community development
approaches that I’ve highlighted in the prior paragraphs are indeed the best way to
reduce poverty and improve economic development.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As I write
this and think it through, I guess I’m coming back to an old adage in my field, which is no less
true for its being oft-repeated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
field of economic development, it’s often best to use a light touch on the
planning or governance side, letting natural positive economic and social processes
take their course, while using your outside interventions mainly to favor good
processes, correct negative side effects (inequality chief among them), and
maximize the social benefit of whatever economic growth is occurring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-49770045097444036152018-12-09T09:30:00.002-08:002018-12-11T05:36:55.130-08:00Percy Jackson and the Proud Boys [THIS IS NOT A NEW CCR ALBUM TITLE]<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="List Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="List Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There have
been a few kids’ books that have kept nudging me lately to think about how we
talk about the West, especially with our children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2018/12/calypso-work-love-and-individual.html">wrote recently about the Percy Jackson books that my son enjoys</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In these books the
Greek gods move their geographical reference points as the center of Western
culture shifts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One character explains
that, after divine Olympus was actually located above the physical Mount
Olympus, it shifted to Rome, then northern Europe, and eventually reached its
current location in the sky above the Empire State building, where the gods
live today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Left out in this description
were the few hundred years where the Classical Mediterranean legacy, and indeed
the most vibrant, vital bastion of Western culture, was in Baghdad or Fatimid
Egypt or Muslim Spain somewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may
seem like a small oversight, but when a book is repeatedly telling kids about
what counts or doesn’t as Western Civilization, I’m going to be looking very
carefully at any ethnocentrist messages it may be sending (in this case, I
think entirely inadvertently, but still).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Leaving the medieval Muslim world out of any discussion of what the West
is is historically inaccurate, and speaks more to modern-day interpretations of
who does or doesn’t count as part of a Western “us”.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We also
recently read a book called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/historia-historias-History-Stories-Spanish/dp/8490430411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544376593&sr=8-1&keywords=la+historia+del+mundo+en+25+historias">World History in 25 Stories</a>, that (unsurprisingly,
given its conservative Spanish authorship) is also unabashedly Western-focused
and West-promoting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book has a cool
premise of telling kids about the major events in history through the lens of
quirky individual stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the most
part the main characters are made-up people that participate tangentially in
these major events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of 25 stories, maybe
3 feature non-European or non-US protagonists (an obligatory nod to Chinese
imperial history, an ancient Egyptian story, and I think an Inca thing).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rise of West African empires around the
Niger River, or South Asia’s long and colorful history, don’t merit a
mention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This omission of non-Western
viewpoints is pretty standard, so it didn’t surprise me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But even for the few stories that are
unavoidably about East-West encounters, non-Europeans are not really given a
central part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is one about the
Andalusian conquest in which a Christian king opens a treasure chest he had
been prohibited from opening, thus setting in motion a prophecy that he’ll be
defeated by invaders (a prophecy fulfilled when a jealous neighboring king
collaborates with the Moors to give them the secret to overrunning Spain).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this account, the Muslim armies that
conquered most of Iberia in a scant few years owed their victory not to astute
strategy and superior technology, but rather to a magical prophecy and
inter-Christian jealousy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A story about
the Crusades is told by a Syrian soldier, but it is entirely focused on Richard
the Lionheart and how much Saladdin revered him.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The book
also rehashes the old idea of the Spartan resistance to Persians at Thermopylae
as a fundament of Western history, a standoff of the West against decadent
invaders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the Spartans were not
really Classic idealists, upholders of a grand intellectual tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were themselves pretty barbaric and
non-Western, at least by our modern standards or as compared to the
Athenians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Conversely, Persia wasn’t
some awful, barbaric kingdom totally alien to the larger culture and dynamics
of the Mediterranean world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Persia
had prevailed after Thermophylae and definitively invaded Greece, I wonder if it really would have drastically
changed the overall arc of history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
might have simply moved up a hundred years or so the timeframe on the
Alexandrian and Roman establishment of a cosmopolitan, undemocratic
Mediterranean empire extending beyond Greece.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Earlier
this year (oddly enough, it was perhaps the day before my mother died), I was
in a hotel room in rural Honduras, where I read <a href="https://splinternews.com/i-hung-out-with-juggalos-and-trump-voters-and-saw-our-w-1818520515">this very weird article about the simultaneous Insane Clown Posse and Trump supporter rallies in late2017</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a passing reference in
the article (as if it were something everyone knew about already) to the Proud
Boys, which I initially assumed was a gay Trump supporter group or
something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it intrigued me, so I looked
them up online, and learned that they are a group dedicated to promoting the
idea that Western Civilization is superior to all others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Initially this inspired a flurry of snarky
thoughts on my part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things like, “as if
Rudyard Kipling and a few centuries of Euro-American literature and politics
hadn’t done that already”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The article
cited above has a great line, that social media has “made a culture out of
every preference”, and the Proud Boys seem a prime example. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But I wanted
to engage more seriously with this <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2016/09/myths-to-live-by.html">idea of Western vs. non- Western culture. I already did so a bit in a prior blog, whereI argued that the distinction between East and West is not only hard to makebut also essentially meaningless, since in the 21st century (and forlong before now, in fact), there has been so much cultural exchange and overlapbetween different cultures in the world that most things can no longer beascribed to one culture as opposed to another</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The Proud
Boys, who are loudly unashamed of being Western in an age when there are
supposedly all sorts of voices trying to make them ashamed of their heritage,
bring up another facet though of this discussion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Let me offer
a quick comment about people of today being the inheritors of Western
accomplishments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read an article that
I can’t find anymore (maybe it was just a snarky comment on an online article)
that had a funny line saying that it’s not like some white dude sitting on his
couch in the US had anything to do with Aristotle’s writings, or Newton’s
discoveries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agree with this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I (as that proverbial white guy on the couch)
am no more linked to Aristotle or Newton than some random guy in Malawi is, and
certainly much less so than would be a mathematician or a philosopher from
Malawi who is actively engaging with and extending their legacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But if you
are going to argue that you as a Westerner are to be especially congratulated for
those accomplishments, then the logical extension would be that you’d also
especially own up to the crimes of the Atlantic slave trade, the world wars, or
colonialism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we do concede that the
West exists (which, as I’ve argued in my above-cited blog, is a shaky
affirmation in itself), then those who are part of the West (like any people in
the world) are the inheritors of both glorious and heinous legacies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the West exists, and certain people we
define as Westerners have more of a claim on its culture and history than do
other people, then they would in fact have a greater claim to (responsibility
for?) the crimes of the West as well, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you ‘bout it, then be ‘bout it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Even if we
overlook this issue of accomplishments vs. crimes of the West, and we want to
engage in good faith with the Proud Boys’ claims of Western superiority, we
still come back to the paradox of what is or isn’t Western, and what makes the
West great.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it’s the current power
distribution that defines the West and makes it great, then we would have to
admit that the West today is probably located in Asia (or soon will be), where
a disproportionate share of the world’s population and economic activity
occur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hold on though”, you might
argue,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“what defines the West is not the
specific arrangement of power right in this historical instant, but rather the
impressive accumulated heritage of thought and technology that has come out of
Europe, and that the rest of the world benefits from today”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the problem there is that this heritage
is just as non-Western as Western.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Gunpowder, vaccinations, moveable type, most of the crops that feed the
world, and certainly the land and slave labor that fuelled the rise of Europe
in the early modern period, came from outside of Europe, and the West’s
contribution in many such cases was not to invent something original but rather
to combine it in new ways that gave Europe an advantage over other regions
(just as Asia is doing today with lots of manufacturing technology that may
have originated outside of Asia).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">To get out
of this rather sterile dichotomy, I would advocate that “Western-ness” in such
discussions comes really to mean modernity as opposed to a clear geographic designation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we’re all modern now—no one region has a
priority claim on modernity or the superiority that it implies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are few places in the world today that
are not clearly, firmly situated in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, with a shared
cultural, technological, and intellectual heritage extending from the Fertile
Crescent to Mesoamerica to Qin China to the Vikings to Mansa Musa to Gandhi to
Chinua Achebe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Continuing
then the argument from above, if within this modern order the mark of genius or
superiority is the ability to put together inheritances from elsewhere in a
novel way, then today’s Asian factories assembling computer components and
researching artificial intelligence, or young African writers redefining the modern
novel, are at the apex of our development as a world society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If, conversely, the mark of genius is whoever
first invented or worked on these things, then the apogee of the West is still
just as much Asian, African, and American Indian as it is European.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">To
summarize, there is no coherent argument that the West even exists, and
certainly not that it’s innately superior to any other part of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end the Proud Boys’ self-labelled
“Western chauvinism” becomes a species of ethno-nationalism with a light
airbrushing over the “ethno” part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To convincingly
argue that one region or culture is superior to another, you have to narrow
your lens so much to a specific period and place (in this case, the few hundred
years that Europe and its satellites prevailed militarily and economically over
other regions, but before the present when they are eclipsed by these regions)
that your claims of superiority are either meaningless or pointless, designed
more to justify a foregone conclusion as opposed to a sincere search for which
culture is the “best” (which is a stupid thing to spend your time thinking
about, anyway).</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-14938093153374805692018-12-06T14:06:00.002-08:002018-12-06T14:06:56.965-08:00Free will and liberal democracyHere is an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-harari-the-new-threat-to-liberal-democracy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">article describing the many ways in which our concept of free will is a fallacious myth</a>. Namely, that our feelings and desires don't spring exclusively from some sacred inner source but rather from a mix of our genes, culture, biochemistry and psychology, and only very partially from our own conscious, rational thought processes. From there, the author goes on to argue that liberal democracy itself is a somewhat unsound construct, founded as it is on this idea of a somewhat rational, reasonable free will in individuals and the collective.<br />
<br />
But far from despairing, the author insists that we must continue to defend liberal democracy, and strengthen it based on what we now know of the malleability of humans' [unfree] will, because it is the most decent system we've conceived of yet for honoring the dignity and value of human life and freedom.<br />
<br />
My takeaways from the article are twofold. First, that you should always question yourself, your own feelings, just as rigorously if not moreso than you question the motivations of others. Often you will find that you are believing something without evidence, or insisting on your initial position out of mere inertia, or that your base urges and passions are being roused (even perhaps manipulated by others). Skip over the political news feeds that aim to stoke your indignation (but do make the phone calls and petitions for causes that are right). Don't look at the ads on the side of your browser. In fact, use a browser like DuckDuckGo that doesn't have those ads and doesn't track your behavior. Use a Virtual Private Network to hide your habits and beliefs from those who would track you. Live in the physical and the analog world more and the digital world less. All these things will detour you away from forces that would reinforce your own biases or attack your weak spots, and thus improve your ability to question and think about your own behavior.<br />
<br />
My second and final takeaway is that we must continue to argue for what's right, even when so many things seem to be working against it. For me this means insisting in the importance of human life and freedom, that no one person is more important than another nor has the right to more than another, that no one should aim to hurt or oppress another. These sound like pretty unambitious assertions, but we live in an age of such aggressive meanness, a lack of respect for fundamental human rights, and lots of sophistry that can convincingly argue in favor of even gross violations of decency and rights. Indeed, there are lots of times when I hear the twisted arguments of would-be autocrats, racists, oppressors, and fascists, and I don't have a pat or passion-inducing answer to their endless "what about?"s and false equivalencies. But I return again and again to these truths, that people all deserve decent treatment, freedom of the spirit, and equal rights. These humble principles may not win a cable news debate, but they are the only things you can cling to without doubt or remorse.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-43063856849332740732018-12-04T15:14:00.000-08:002018-12-04T15:24:19.723-08:00Calypso, work, love, and the individual<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of figures"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope return"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="line number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My older
son really likes the <a href="http://rickriordan.com/series/percy-jackson-and-the-olympians/">Percy Jackson books</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is a series aimed at young adults (I think more specifically young
adult boys) that follows a modern-day demigod son of Poseidon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, I have been reading this series on
and off to my boys over the past year or two; we’re on the fourth book of five
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In the most
recent chapter we read, Percy finds himself on Calypso’s island of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogygia">Ogygia</a>,
where like Odysseus, he is tempted to stay with Calypso, making love and
enjoying a paradise on earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However,
the author (Rick Riordan) fleshes out Calypso’s backstory, making her an
interesting, three-dimensional tragic hero instead of a treacherous sexpot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Riordan’s Calypso is herself condemned to
Ogygia as a sort of luxurious prison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She has done nothing wrong, but as the daughter of Atlas, who fought
against the Olympian gods in the long-ago war, she is suspect for her
sympathies with the Titans, so the gods keep her isolated from the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a lot to unpack here about how we
define good guys and bad guys, and how often we side with our kin in a conflict
where no side possesses a clear moral high ground.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But what I
want to talk about is the topic of love and how it fits into a fulfilling life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Riordan’s rendering of Calypso is a tragic
hero because she is stuck on her island isolated from the rest of the world,
and can only share the island with someone who elects to stay there for
eternity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who makes that decision
will be waited on by invisible servants (as Calypso is), will be granted
immortality, and will live on a tropical/Mediterranean paradise island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can share his days with the beautiful,
enticing Calypso, the sweet-smelling forest of cinnamon and herbs, the docile
birds of the forest, and tend to a magical garden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he won’t know what is happening in the real
world, won’t be able to participate in history, to help his friends or the
world in general to overcome their problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Fates occasionally (every thousand years or so) send a hero to
Ogygia, like Odysseus, that Calypso falls madly in love with and who she wants
to stay on the island, but Calypso can never have him, because his noble
longing to help others in the world (which is of course what makes him so attractive
to begin with) obliges him to opt out of the island paradise, as appealing as
it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pretty heady stuff for a teen
adventure novel.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Percy’s encounter
with Calypso (whom he falls in love with but ultimately decides to leaves) got
me thinking about what we love in a romantic partner, and what it would be like
to spend an eternity on a paradise island with that person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s get out of the way one thing—Riordan’s
Calypso isn’t that interesting of a person, because she hasn’t really been
around other people or events or the larger world for millennia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She loves hearing about Percy’s life and
adventures, his descriptions of Manhattan, but I’m not sure what subjects she
has to talk to him about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I understand
that Percy is enchanted by, perhaps even truly in love with, Calypso just for
who she is—her smell, her eyes, her way of talking, of thinking, of
gardening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this is ideally what we
love in a person, their essence, not what they’ve done in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I don’t think this is realistic in the
long term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your essence is shaped by
what you do, what you’ve lived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In turn
the way you, or another, can get to know your essence is precisely by seeing
you act on the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’m not sure it’s
possible in real life to love someone “just for who they are” without regard to
their interactions with the larger world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I love my
wife fiercely, and I love how she smells and talks and thinks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s the most interesting person I know, and
the only person I can see myself spending a lifetime or an eternity with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I don’t know if I could just sit on an
island looking into her eyes for eternity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most of what we talk about isn’t some idealized concept of who each one
is, divorced from reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, we talk
about the world, our friends, our enemies, our family, politics, poverty,
development, values, novels, movies, our kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In short, the relationship between us is profoundly shaped by the world around
us, and I think that’s the case for any relationship between two people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps what I love most about my wife, and
what I think of when I think of who she is, is how she works, how she acts in
the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Even when
we talk about ourselves, it’s with respect to what we’ve lived through, our
personal stories, some of which are from long ago but most of which are being
constantly nourished as we continue to live life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My kids are probably the people I’d be most
willing to just stare at and hear them talk or watch them play idly, and love
them just for who they are. Hell, they’ve only got a few years of lived
experience under their belt, much of which they no longer remember, so my love
for them really is for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them as they are</i>
and not so much for what they’ve done in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But even with my children, I don’t want to be around them all the time,
and the feeling is mutual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They want to
engage with the rest of the world, and that engagement during the hours we’re apart,
each at work or at school, then gives us interesting things to talk about and
further explore our relationship in the time we are together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Calypso’s
lived experience essentially stopped a few thousand years ago when she was sent
to live on Ogygia (as would the experience of Odysseus or Percy Jackson if they
chose to live there).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, you could
talk with her about her life before then, maybe you could talk about that for a
few hundred years even.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But eventually
in eternity you’d run out of things to talk about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if you both had new reflections on your
past experiences, whatever revelations would arise from such discussions wouldn’t
be very useful, since you don’t live in a world you can apply those lessons to.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I mean, I
guess you could just have sex all day on your island with the love of your life,
or plant stuff in your garden, or commune with the birds, but I think that
would kind of get old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if it were
possible to just live in the moment and enjoy each experience as it happened,
each sunset, each birdsong, regardless of whether you’d heard them before, I for
one would feel guilty living so well while I knew that other people in the
world were suffering, and I would get bored living so tranquilly while I knew
that the rest of the world was still happening, still moving.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In this respect I am a believer in the philosophy that humans are defined by our work,
that our very uniqueness as human beings is contingent on our acting on the
world around us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a big theme in
Paulo Freire’s thought, but I don’t think it’s that complicated or weird or
radical.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Nevertheless,
I try to be objective and critical enough to wonder if my vision not only of
love but also of what defines us, and what makes a good life, is misled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are certainly people who believe that the
individual person is the supreme measure of importance, in the sense that
happiness for a person can lie in their own personal likes, pleasures, and
desires, or that the ideal romantic love is for an individual person as such,
without reference to the rest of the world or how that person interacts with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, I know plenty of people who don’t
particularly care about their job, and just spend a lot of time getting through
things they don’t like or care about in order to be with the people they love,
or practice the hobby that fulfills them, or watch the TV or read the books
that titillate them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I remember my
American friend admiring this when we both lived in Spain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having grown up in our US culture where we
define people to such a great extent by what they do for a living (despite the
fact that many Americans fit the description above of not caring about their
work), my friend thought it was really cool that Spaniards were often blasé about
their work, and got most of their pleasure from family and friends. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously Spaniards are just as diverse as
anyone else in their opinions, but let’s pretend that the archetypal Spaniard I’m
describing is accurate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a person
might argue that working in the world is a mere distraction from the things that
give you pleasure, and that the best possible way to spend your time is to
maximize your pleasurable pursuits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
such a way of thinking, days and nights of idleness and lovemaking amidst
pleasant surroundings would be the best way to spend eternity. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But I’ve
tried to show above that I don’t think this is a viable conception of the
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think any one person does
or can exist apart from the world, so accordingly it’s impossible to appreciate
or love another person as separate from the world (or even just to entertain
your own self apart from the world).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That said, I realize that my conception of love and meaning may sound
cynical or utilitarian or unromantic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Right now I’m
living in West Africa, amid a culture that seems to have a very
different concept of the individual than I am used to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here people define themselves to a large
extent by their families, or even by their jobs (which are often passed on down
family lines).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People don’t offer their
name when you meet them unless you ask for it, their first names are one of a
few possible names determined by the day they were born, and usually they’ll
give you their<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>family name instead of
their first name anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there are
like the same 12 last names that cover about 80% of the population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Families are big too, so kids live and are
raised collectively, without receiving a lot of one-on-one adult attention or
contemplation of their individual idiosyncrasies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marriages are often arranged for utilitarian
purposes, and romantic love is not a central factor for many couples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that said, and despite the pride people
take in their work, here the supreme measure of meaning is the family,
specifically hanging out with your kids and with your elders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Weekends are spent at funerals, weddings,
baptisms of people who are only distantly and tenuously related to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So even here in a context as different as the
American or Spanish ones I’ve generalized, it seems like my preferred focus on
working in the world is missing something, missing the focus on immediacy and just
enjoying other people that seems to be so prominent in many cultures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I do want
to appreciate each sunset as such, even if I’ve seen sunsets before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do want to find pleasure and meaning in the
waves lapping on a beach, or in planting a (non-useful, just-because) garden,
or in looking into my love’s eyes or smelling her hair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do want to just sit back and ponder my kids
as they play or do Legos, and think of how wonderful they are and life is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I do do all these things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I don’t think you could or should spend
eternity doing this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2016/09/myths-to-live-by.html">JosephCampbell</a> might argue that those moments <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i>
in fact eternity, that our only taste of the eternal is when we smell our loved
one’s hair or lose our gaze in the ocean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For my money though, if I’ve got to be somewhere for eternity, it better
be in the larger world, living for others and not just my own pleasure or
contemplation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-36846909538831982852018-11-11T08:14:00.002-08:002018-11-11T08:14:38.276-08:00Veteran's DayA hundred years ago today the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_11_November_1918">Armistice was signed to end the First World War</a>. I think everyone was so appalled at the spectacle of mechanized war that they hoped this would be history's last war. So much for that. Anyway, I hope all the veterans out there enjoy this special day, and that our leaders can take a moment to reflect on the lessons of that war and all the wars since.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-2342512054760445022018-09-29T08:58:00.000-07:002018-09-29T08:58:32.309-07:00Very negative article on the prospects for the USThis is an <a href="https://eand.co/three-hard-truths-about-american-collapse-cbf45295c198">article in which the author diagnoses a fundamental flaw in the US, namely a lack of common purpose and solidarity between the different people that live here</a>. This is something I've discussed on various occasions. As a society, there seems to be a strong thread of <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2017/01/meritocracy-and-grace.html">punitive and vengeful thinking in our character. Something bad happens to someone or a group, and our first impulse is often to look for the shortcomings of the victim that might somehow justify their misfortune</a>. Add to this a visceral racial animus and you've got a society that has a hard time banding together to improve life for all. I agree with the author's observation that, in affairs big and small, <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2017/02/malevolence-and-malice.html">we are often so intent on spiting certain people that we are willing to suffer a drop in our own quality of life in order to do so. From our focus on incarceration and punishment of the poor and the addicted instead of rehabilitation, to massive efforts to exclude and terrorize immigrants instead of welcoming them, to a penchant for emergency response and military interventions as opposed to long-term support for economic development in other countries, we opt time and again for actions and policies that are more costly and less effective, as long as they hurt as opposed to demonstrating any type of "soft" traits like decency, solidarity, or empathy</a>.<br />
<br />
All this said, I don't share the author's totally dire prognosis for the future of the US, at least not based on these (admittedly worrisome) aspects of the national character. On the one hand, my work transpires almost entirely in the developing world, where I am exposed to lots of societies that share similar flaws of a lack of solidarity and common purpose. Many countries are home to yawning gaps between rich and poor, as well as pernicious ethnic animosities that prevent the forging of a better life for all. There, as in the US, the project is to gradually build a sense of decency, of shared values, and of liberal democratic principles like equality, transparent and representative governance, respect for minority viewpoints, protection for the vulnerable, and freedom from oppression. In short, every country in the world is in a long and arduous quest to ensure human dignity for all. So for me, the fact that the US still falls short of this ideal isn't cause for despondency. It just is how it is. Life is messy. (Incidentally, I hesitate to brand all institutions in the US as irreparably broken, as the author does. There are plenty of troubling developments in our systems of public health, education, taxation, etc., but there are also very real movements to make our institutions more fair and more functional).<br />
<br />
Lastly, the European societies that the author rightly cites as models we can learn from, countries he describes as being functional and constantly improving, are also involved in this same process of constant, difficult work to make life better for all. Many of these countries did their growing and improving in the mid-20th century, precisely after a massive conflagration (actually a series of wars starting in the 19th century and before, not just the Second world war) did away with much of the countries' ethnic diversity (not just the Holocaust of the Jews and Romany, but also the postwar redrawing of boundaries and relocation of populations that "repatriated" ethnic Greeks, Germans, Turks, etc., as well as the coopting of subnational identities that turned Tuscans into Italians, Saxons into Germans, Provencals into french, etc.). In short, most of Europe has been able to forge a common identity and a progressive society only in the absence of ethnic diversity, and now that these countries are becoming newly diverse due to immigration and the arrival of refugees, they are in fact facing existential crises, the rise of intolerant, spiteful thinking, and the whole slew of problems that the author of this article rightly identifies in the US. So again, creating a better world, societies that ensure human dignity, is not a done deal where some have succeeded and others failed. It's a constantly evolving story that involves all of us.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-17742257033906988462018-09-17T04:46:00.001-07:002018-09-17T04:46:15.823-07:00Economic equality as principleThis is an <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-inequality-industry/">interesting article on how the recent widespread interest in economic equality seems to be more instrumental (inequality is bad because it has perverse economic and social effects), as opposed to principled (inequality is bad because it's not right or fair)</a>. I'm not sure I understand all the nuance, but I agree that the distinction is important, and that we collectively need to remember that inequality is wrong, that it goes against our American principles of equality and fairness. <div>
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This focus on the value of equality as a concept, and not just as a means to a stable society or other desireable outcomes, also provides a flip side to an observation I made in my <a href="http://agrarianideas.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-american-soul-on-july-4th.html">blog about the book The American Soul</a>. Namely, that the idea of our founding American principles is often used to justify an excess focus on individual freedom, to the detriment of a concern for the collective wellbeing. But if we remember that equality is also a core value of our great nation, it gives us a useful vocabulary for talking about inequality and why it's important to fight against it.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-31783559271850243042018-08-29T21:31:00.001-07:002018-08-29T21:31:21.327-07:00Sobering numbers on the black exodus from ChicagoAccording to this article, <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/?post_type=cst_article&p=1309979&utm_campaign=ChicagoSunTimes&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=1534895368">Chicago's black population by 2030 is projected to be 665 thousand</a>, about half of what it was when I was born. This is a sad situation for a city that has been largely defined by its black citizens. I want to do everything I can to counteract this trend.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-13688955305856372242018-08-26T20:36:00.000-07:002018-08-26T20:36:00.367-07:00Dirty ComputerSo I just wanted to share with everyone this <a href="http://www.jmonae.com/">amazing, far-out short film put together by Janelle Monae for her latest álbum, Dirty Computer</a>. It is basically a montage of videos for songs from the álbum, but with a coherent dystopian narrative going throughout. It somehow melds 2018 political and racial commentary, with a Blade Runner-esque future, and Monae's trademark 1980s revival musical and aesthetic style.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-58046572735194807892018-08-24T16:36:00.000-07:002018-08-24T16:36:02.992-07:00Filming in ChicagoI have been taking my kid to summer camp in a park in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago for the past few days. As we walked along 18th street, I noticed a lot of businesses that seemed to have an old sign still up from a prior iteration, but then a newly-printed vinyl sign proclaiming them to be a different business. For example, a hat store sign was undermined by a vinyl sign proclaiming that the business was in fact a cafe, and was indeed still open. <br />
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Later the same afternoon, I saw lots of people painting new signs in an old-style on the walls. And there were little notices about businesses still being open during filming. Finally, the real clue was that there was a "Negro travel agency" with the NAACP's guide for safe roads, businesses, and hotels. I put two and two together and realized that the old-style signs were part of a movie set, but the current businesses wanted you to know that they were open for business selling cupcakes or tattoos or whatever instead of hats and 1930s fountain drinks. It hadn't really registered on me before, since there are plenty of businesses in Chicago with signs still up from the 1950s or before, and often these old signs might be left up out of nostalgia even though they no longer describe the current commercial occupant. People painting walls in Pilsen didn't seem odd either--it is famous for its Mexican-style mural art. As for all the people working in the street with heavy equipment, I just assumed they were doing summer road resurfacing, another Chicago staple. <br />
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Anyway, I just thought it was funny that this film set, which was very accurately evoking a 1930s commercial strip in the US, didn't register as odd to me. I guess they chose the location well, if it only needs relatively light, unnoticeable touches to look like a street from the past.<br />
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For your information, the show is <a href="https://blockclubchicago.org/2018/08/06/expect-road-closures-as-lovecraft-country-filming-returns-to-pilsen/">Jordan Peele's Lovecraft Country</a>, which looks like it will be really good.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7168060824923135750.post-63443343158356667992018-08-22T15:45:00.000-07:002018-08-22T15:45:22.149-07:00PEPFAR and EvangelicalsThis is a fascinating look at <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/christians-and-the-new-age-of-aids-93128">PEPFAR, the US's revolutionary AIDS relief program created under President W Bush. Evangelical Christians played a key role in creating this program, after a few decades of not-very-progressive attitudes on the AIDS epidemic</a>. It's a really interesting story, and continues to be relevant today.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0