The elections, thankfully, are finally over, but America’s search for security and prosperity continues to center on ordinary politics and raw commerce. This ongoing focus is perilous and misconceived. Recalling the ineffably core origins of American philosophy, what we should really be asking these days is the broadly antecedent question: “How can we make the souls of our citizens better?”
To be sure, this is not a scientific question. There is no convincing way in which we could possibly include the concept of “soul” in any meaningfully testable hypotheses or theories. Nonetheless, thinkers from Plato to Freud have understood that science can have substantial intellectual limits, and that sometimes we truly need to look at our problems from the inside.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit philosopher, inquired, in The Phenomenon of Man: “Has science ever troubled to look at the world other than from without?” This not a silly or superficial question. Earlier, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American Transcendentalist, had written wisely in The Over-Soul: “Even the most exact calculator has no prescience that something incalculable may not balk the next moment.” Moreover, he continued later on in the same classic essay: “Before the revelations of the soul, Time, Space, and Nature shrink away.”
That’s quite a claim. What, precisely, do these “phenomenological” insights suggest about elections and consumerism in the present American Commonwealth? To begin, no matter how much we may claim to teach our children diligently about “democracy” and “freedom,” this nation, whatever its recurrent electoral judgments on individual responsibility, remains mired in imitation. More to the point, whenever we begin our annual excursions to Thanksgiving, all Americans are aggressively reminded of this country’s most emphatically soulless mantra.
“You are what you buy.”
This almost sacred American axiom is reassuringly simple. It’s not complicated. Above all, it signals that every sham can have a patina, that gloss should be taken as truth, and that any discernible seriousness of thought, at least when it is detached from tangible considerations of material profit, is of no conceivably estimable value.
Ultimately, we Americans will need to learn an altogether different mantra. As a composite, we should finally come to understand, every society is basically the sum total of individual souls seeking redemption. For this nation, moreover, the favored path to any such redemption has remained narrowly fashioned by cliché, and announced only in chorus.
Where there dominates a palpable fear of standing apart from prevailing social judgments (social networking?), there can remain no consoling tolerance for intellectual courage, or, as corollary, for any reflective soulfulness. In such circumstances, as in our own present-day American society, this fear quickly transforms citizens into consumers.
While still citizens, our “education” starts early. From the primary grades onward, each and every American is made to understand that conformance and “fitting in” are the reciprocally core components of individual success. Now, the grievously distressing results of such learning are very easy to see, not just in politics, but also in companies, communities, and families.
Above all, these results exhibit a debilitating fusion of democratic politics with an incessant materialism. Or, as once clarified by Emerson himself: “The reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.”
Nonetheless, “We the people” cannot be fooled all of the time. We already know that nation, society, and economy are endangered not only by war, terrorism, and inequality, but also by a steadily deepening ocean of scientifically incalculable loneliness. For us, let us be candid, elections make little core difference. For us, as Americans, happiness remains painfully elusive.
In essence, no matter how hard we may try to discover or rediscover some tiny hints of joy in the world, and some connecting evidence of progress in politics, we still can’t manage to shake loose a gathering sense of paralyzing futility.
Tangibly, of course, some things are getting better. Stock prices have been rising. The economy — “macro,” at least — is improving.
Still, the immutably primal edifice of American prosperity, driven at its deepest levels by our most overwhelming personal insecurities, remains based upon a viscerally mindless dedication to consumption. Ground down daily by the glibly rehearsed babble of politicians and their media interpreters, we the people are no longer motivated by any credible search for dignity or social harmony, but by the dutifully revered buying expectations of patently crude economics.
Can anything be done to escape this hovering pendulum of our own mad clockwork? To answer, we must consider the pertinent facts. These unflattering facts, moreover, are pretty much irrefutable.
For the most part, we Americans now live shamelessly at the lowest common intellectual denominator. Cocooned in this generally ignored societal arithmetic, our proliferating universities are becoming expensive training schools, promising jobs, but less and less of a real education. Openly “branding” themselves in the unappetizing manner of fast food companies and underarm deodorants, these vaunted institutions of higher education correspondingly instruct each student that learning is just a commodity. Commodities, in turn, learns each student, exist solely for profit, for gainful exchange in the ever-widening marketplace.
Optimally, our students exist at the university in order, ultimately, to be bought and sold. Memorize, regurgitate, and “fit in” the ritualized mold, instructs the college. Then, all be praised, all will make money, and all will be well.
But all is not well. In these times, faced with potentially existential threats from Iran, North Korea, and many other conspicuously volatile places, we prefer to distract ourselves from inconvenient truths with the immense clamor of imitative mass society. Obligingly, America now imposes upon its already-breathless people the grotesque cadence of a vast and over-burdened machine. Predictably, the most likely outcome of this rhythmically calculated delirium will be a thoroughly exhausted country, one that is neither democratic, nor free.
Ironically, we Americans inhabit the one society that could have been different. Once, it seems, we still had a unique opportunity to nudge each single individual to become more than a crowd. Once, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the quintessential American philosopher, had described us as a unique people, one motivated by industry and “self-reliance,” and not by anxiety, fear, and a hideously relentless trembling.
America, Emerson had urged, needed to favor “plain living” and “high thinking.” What he likely feared most was a society wherein individual citizens would “measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.”
No distinctly American philosophy could possibly have been more systematically disregarded. Soon, even if we can somehow avoid the unprecedented paroxysms of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, the swaying of the American ship will become unsustainable. Then, finally, we will be able to make out and understand the phantoms of other once-great ships of state.
Laden with silver and gold, these other vanished “vessels” are already long forgotten. Then, too, we will learn that those starkly overwhelming perils that once sent the works of Homer, Goethe, Milton, and Shakespeare to join the works of more easily forgotten poets are no longer unimaginable. They are already here, in the newspapers.
In spite of our proudly heroic claim to be a nation of “rugged individuals,” it is actually the delirious mass or crowd that shapes us, as a people, as Americans. Look about. Our unbalanced society absolutely bristles with demeaning hucksterism, humiliating allusions, choreographed violence, and utterly endless political equivocations. Surely, we ought finally to assert, there must be something more to this country than its fundamentally meaningless elections, its stupefying music, its growing tastelessness, and its all-too willing surrender to near-epidemic patterns of mob-directed consumption.
In an 1897 essay titled “On Being Human,” Woodrow Wilson asked plaintively about the authenticity of America. “Is it even open to us,” inquired Wilson, “to choose to be genuine?” This earlier American president had answered “yes,” but only if we would first refuse to stoop so cowardly before corruption, venality, and political double-talk. Otherwise, Wilson had already understood, our entire society would be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more unsightly even than the death of an individual person.
“The crowd,” observed the 19th century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, “is untruth.” Today, following recent elections, and approaching another Thanksgiving, America’s democracy continues to flounder upon a cravenly obsequious and still soulless crowd. Before this can change, we Americans will first need to acknowledge that our institutionalized political, social, and economic world has been constructed precariously upon ashes, and that more substantially secure human foundations now require us to regain a dignified identity, as “self-reliant” individual persons, and as thinking public citizens.
Heading image: Boxing Day at the Toronto Eaton Centre by 松林 Ｌ. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The post After the elections: Thanksgiving, consumerism, and the American soul appeared first on OUPblog.
Well sir, it’s a heckuva week. Book stuff is happening out the wazoo, but for a moment I’d like to concentrate on what else is going on in the wider children’s literary world. What say we Fusenews it up a bit, eh?
Of course there’s no way to begin today without a hat tip to the late, great E.L. Konigsburg. The only person, I believe, to win both a Newbery Award and a Newbery Honor in their debut year. Top THAT one, folks! The New York Times pays tribute to one of our luminaries. We had managed to do pretty well in 2013 without losing one of our lights. Couldn’t last forever. Godspeed, Elaine.
- Speaking of deaths, I missed mentioning my sadness upon hearing of Roger Ebert’s passing. Jezebel put out a rather nice compilation of Roger Ebert’s Twenty Best Reviews. I wonder if folks ever do that for children’s book critics. Hm. In any case, amongst the reviews was this one for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It’s rather brilliant. See for yourself.
12. On the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
“Kids are not stupid. They are among the sharpest, cleverest, most eagle-eyed creatures on God’s Earth, and very little escapes their notice. You may not have observed that your neighbor is still using his snow tires in mid-July, but every four-year-old on the block has, and kids pay the same attention to detail when they go to the movies. They don’t miss a thing, and they have an instinctive contempt for shoddy and shabby work. I make this observation because nine out of ten children’s movies are stupid, witless, and display contempt for their audiences, and that’s why kids hate them….All of this is preface to a simple statement: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz. It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren’t: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. Willy Wonka is such a surely and wonderfully spun fantasy that it works on all kinds of minds, and it is fascinating because, like all classic fantasy, it is fascinated with itself.” [
January 1971]
- New Blog Alert: Now I would like to brag about my system’s children’s librarians. They are uniquely talented individuals. Smart as all get out. One that I’ve always been particularly impressed with is Stephanie Whelan, a woman I trust more than anyone else when it comes to finding the best in children’s (not YA) science fiction and fantasy fare. Now Stephanie has conjured up one doozy of a blog on that very topic. It’s called Views From the Tesseract (nice, right?) and it looks at a lot of science fiction and fantasy specifically with side views of topics in the field. You’ll find posts with subjects like A Matter of Taste: Preferring One Genre Over Another, Five Fantasy Pet Peeves, and the fascinating delve into the world of Tom Swift in The Swift Proposal. Stephanie also has access to galleys so be sure to check out her early reviews for books like William Alexander’s Ghoulish Song and Sidekicked by John David Anderson (which I’m reading right now on her recommendation).
- Turns out that the Mental Floss piece 11 Book Sequels You Probably Didn’t Know Existed spends an inordinate amount of time looking at children’s books. Check it out for mentions of the 101 Dalmatians sequel (missed that one), the E.T. sequel The Book of the Green Planet (which, if memory serves, was illustrated long ago by David Wiesner and is the only book he no longer owns the art of), and more.
- Nice blogger mentions this week. Thanks to Sara O’Leary for mentioning my new website and to Jen Robinson’s for the nice review of Giant Dance Party. I appreciate it, guys! Plus Jen is the first review I’ve read that draws a connection between my book and the Hunger Games series. Few can say so much.
Speaking of reviews, I owe Travis Jonker a debt of gratitude for reviewing Marguerite Abouet’s Akissi. I read that book in the original French a year or two ago and was completely uncertain if it would ever see the light of day here in the States due to a final story that, quite frankly, DEFIES anything I’ve seen in children’s literature before. The kind of thing that makes Captain Underpants look tame. You have been warned. Great book, by the way. Let’s not lose sight of that.
- Not too long ago I spoke to a group of 6th graders at Bank Street College’s school about contemporary book jackets and how they’re marketed to kids. Only a portion of my talk was dedicated to race or gender. Fortunately, the kids have been thinking long and hard about it. Allie Bruce has posted twice about a covers project the kids have participated in. Be sure to check out race and then gender when you have a chance. Food for thought.
- What do Pinkalicious, A Ball for Daisy, and Square Cat all have in common? Read ‘em to your kids and you’ll be teaching them that consumerism is king. So sayeth a 196-page thesis called “Cultivating Little Consumers: How Picture Books Influence Materialism in Children”, as reported by The Guardian. And they might have gotten away with the premise to if they just hadn’t brought up I Want My Hat Back. Dude. Back away from the Klassen. Thanks to Zoe Toft (Playing By the Book) for the link.
- Required Reading of the Day: There are few authorial blogs out there even half as interesting as Nathan Hale’s. And when the guy gets a fact wrong in one of his books, he’ll do anything to set it right. Even if it means going to Kansas. Here’s how he put it:
We made a HUGE historical error, and we are going to fix it! We are going to learn why Kansas wasn’t a Confederate state–why it was a “Free State,” and how it happened. We are also going to visit Kansas on an official apology and correction trip. When we are finished, all Hazardous Tales readers will know how to correct their own copy of Big Bad Ironclad! Stay tuned!
You can see the official ceremony here, but be sure to read all the blog posts he drew to explain precisely why Kansas was a free state anyway. You can see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, and Part Six.
It’s not the holiday gift giving season, but if you know a librarian in need of a unique gift, I have your number.
Awesomesauce. Thanks to Marchek for the link.
I loved Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I loved that it was entertaining, compelling and that it taught me about a wide variety of geeky tech things I didn't know a damn thing about. I loved its honesty about scary things like government, sex and violence. I loved its moral compass. I loved its idealism. I loved the way it textured my life after I read it, how I couldn't help but think of the things I'd learned when I made a withdrawal from the bank, used Fastrak, bought Mac products.
But I loved For the Win even more.
When I was in high school and was forced in my senior year to take economics, I HATED IT. It was a close second to my least favorite subject of math (at the time statistics) which makes sense. Both disciplines require attention to detail, number crunching, formulas. Things I do not like. And my continuing near complete ignorance in regard to all things money related 
has come back to bite me in the butt on numerous occasions, not least of all raising its head during the entire economic meltdown, which, when asked about it I would have to say things like: "It's just bad news all around," and/or "Um yes, I guess the president should fix this... how? Oh wow, look over there!" [runs away]
So, despite what several reviewers cited as didactic passages, I loved how much I was able to learn from this book. Yes, I understand that this book is meant for teens. Yes, I know I should have known a lot of this stuff going into this book. Yes, I get that for people who already know all this, the "here's what's happening when people sell you stock" passages may feel overly didactic. But for someone totally ignorant (me!) it was great-- Doctorow makes all this stuff that made me want to stick glass in my eyes during high school totally interesting, fascinating even, and most of all cool. His comparisons are fresh, humorous and intelligent. The passage about the Coase cost utilizes light touches of neuroscience to help people like me engage, and feel clever for being able to do so.
If there's anything I cared about less than econ, it's online gaming. I'm a total nerd for some things (...I keep a blog of kids' book reviews...in my adult life) but online RPGs are just past my threshold. And by just past, I mean way past. And just like econ, Doctorow was able to pull me in, despite overwhelming prejudice. I still don't want to play the games, but I have a new found interest in the people who do, and the meta-markets they support.
Set in 4 different countries, with an epic cast of characters, Doctorow puts a face to globalization in a way that is undeniably cool, without glorifying the characters--there's a great moment of self-awareness when one of the 2 main American characters, a white kid named Leonard who goes by Wei-Dong (in order to fit in with his remote Chinese gamer friends) is forced to remind himself why he's gotten involved with the burgeoning online-revolution, and the loneliness inherent in his lifestyle. Each major character has a moment when they question fighting for a cause with people in countries they will never go to, and comrades they will never meet, to fantastic effect: the "real world" becomes an outmoded term, and the world of the gamers asserts itself.
These elements in conjunction with Doctorow's strong use of inte
Here it is, 4:30 in the afternoon and I've just now had a moment to sit down and blog. It's been another one of those whirlwind days that seem to be the norm lately!
So, let me begin by saying "I loathe traffic"!! I long for the days when I was a young girl and I walked to the store each day with my mom. You see, my mom didn't know how to drive. She still doesn't, and she has found her way in life without a vehicle. When I was a little girl, I would walk with my mom to "Johnny's" market each day to purchase fresh food for dinner every night. Sometimes I would bring my dolly buggy along. Other times, my mom would let me bring a friend. They loved walking with my mom and me to the store. They actually considered it a treat. We would do our little bit of shopping and carry it home in brown paper bags. Mom always had her purse locked on to one arm and a grocery bag or two balanced on her hips. When I was old enough and strong enough, she would let me carry a bag too.
In comparison, when I go to the grocery store now, I fill up the entire back of my car with, what's probably, excessive amounts of "stuff". I drive everywhere and I buy too much. I've been feeling excessive for some time now, but recently, I just can't seem to shake that unhumbling, almost embarrased feeling I get when I study my own excessive consumerism. Funny thing is, I have so much less than most everyone I know. Well, less in the way of material property and luxurious trips, anyway. Nevertheless, I have this great personal desire to pull back. To live simpler and to abide by a stricter budget.
Looking back over the course of my married life, Gary and I have had our share of terrible lean times and financial hardships. Especially when the kids were toddlers and we lived in Northwest Arkansas. But when I think back to those times, they are the sweetest and most heart-warming times of my life. The struggles and trials aren't what stand out. I remember laughter and closeness and picnics. What more do we, as a human race, need? Do we really NEED jewels, stainless steel appliances, cars that are almost as big as the house that I grew up in, designer label purses and jeans and shoes, and so on and so on and so on....
I want off the merry-go-round. I don't ever want to forget how to smell a storm or listen for the first cricket of the season. Very few things can compare to that first bite of a tart and crunchy Fried Green Tomato. I don't want to lose my desire to dig or my love of the soil. I never, ever, not for one second, want to forget the smell of my newborn babies heads, or the squells of laughter that would overtake them as toddlers while running and reaching to catch fireflies.
These are the things that real and true and gritty life is all about. Love, faith, hope, God, family, smells, storms, trials, brown paper bags, good times, bad times and Fried Green Tomatoes. This is where my truth and my heart is and I intend to keep it this way.
As usual, here is where I include my relentless marketing plug for my newest print listed in My Etsy Shop.
This ACEO is a tribute to the traditional Hispanic families that I grew up around. They so often held tight to their history and priorities.
Jolene: Thanks for understanding my need and desire to include my familiarity to Hispanics in my collage art. I truly appreciate your awareness!!
Beautiful Mexican Girls Of Los Angeles
Thank you so very much for reading through my daily rants and writings. Here's to a calmer tomorrow
Until Tomorrow:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
gnarly-dolls
Kim's Kandid Kamera
It's the mid-2070s, and the United States has changed. It's not the USA anymore, for one thing. It's the USSA -- United Safer States of America. People are encouraged to wear helmets when they walk, beer is illegal, and football was banned for being too dangerous. The Child Safety Act of 2033 made protective gear mandatory in the school sports. And we're not just talking mouth guards in field hockey. Here's what students of the time wear to run the 100-meter dash:
... AtherSafe shoes with lateral ankle support and four layers of memory gel in the thick soles, knee pads, elbow pads, and a FDHHSS*-certified sports helmet. We raced on an Adzorbium track with its five centimeters of compacted gel-foam topped by a thick sheet of artificial latex. It's like running on a sponge.
Jail has been abolished. When people break the law, they are sent to work camps. Almost a quarter of the adult population is serving time -- not surprising, as breaking the law is not very difficult:
"Littering is only a class-four misdemeanor--you don't get sent up for that."
"Mr. Stoltz did."
"That was for assault. Melody Hynes got hurt."
"But all he did, really, was litter. He dropped an apricot when he was unloading groceries from his suv."
"Yeah, then Melody slipped on it and got a concussion."
"She should have been wearing her helmet. My point is, Bo, all the man did was drop an apricot and they sent him away for a whole year. A year of hard labor on a prison farm. For dropping an apricot!"
"But if he hadn't dropped it, Melody wouldn't have gotten bonked," I said. Sometimes my grandfather could be kind of dense.
The men in Bo Marsten's family tend to be quick-tempered (his father is serving time for road rage and his older brother for getting into a fight) and Bo is no exception. Though the Levulor he takes usually prevents violent outbreaks -- it slows his anger reflex (and, in an unfortunate side effect, every other reflex) by a tenth of a second -- but he occasionally "forgets" to take it.
Given his family history, it's not real surprise when sixteen-year-old Bo is sentenced to serve three years for a plethora of violations. (Verbal assault, physical assault -- well, he tried to punch someone -- and causing the outbreak of an itchy rash at his school.**) He is send to Canada (which was annexed to the USSA in 2055) to work in a gourmet pizza factory.
This arm of McDonald's Rehabilitation and Manufacturing Corporation is a terrifying place, full of sharp corners, non-padded clothing, and people who have no qualms about verbally assaulting (not to mention physically assaulting) others. The factory is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a tall fence, beyond which are ravenous, man-eating polar bears. The warden runs an illegal football team.
If the team wins the Tundra Bowl, they will all be treated to early release. If they lose, they'll be Polar Bear Chow.
AWESOME. It's a sports story, a futuristic dystopia story, a juvie camp story and a story that mocks consumer culture. It explores Big Ideas, about government and free will and safety vs. freedom, but without ever feeling like a Frying Pan***, and without ever feeling heavy. It's rare for a book to be both thoughtful and thrilling.
Highly recommended. I'm planning on trying it out on older fans of Holes, as well as teens into Uglies and So Yesterday, Feed and Jennifer Government. Also fans of thoughtful sports stories -- I think there are a lot of Chris Crutcher fans who will enjoy it.
*Federal Department of Homeland Health, Safety and Security. Also, that description totally made me want to re-read Harrison Bergeron.
**Good thing that Those In Charge don't know about the possibly-sentient AI entity that he (oops) accidentally created. He could get twenty years for that, easy.
***Frying Pan Message Books: Books that are so message-driven to such an extent that you feel you are being battered with a Message-Laden Frying Pan. Duh.
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Diane or I cook most evenings so I’m not sure why the kids always respond with a fast-food joint when asked that question. I guess it’s pop culture conditioning.
Thanks for the introduction to Stephanie’s blog! I feel sad that even though I search the internet assiduously every Sunday for my mg sff round-ups, I never found her–makes me wonder what else I am missing.
She’s relatively new to the blogging game, all things considered. Glad to help you direct your attention to her. I trust her opinions implicitly.
Aw, thanks, Betsy. I’m working on another kidlit footwear post — there is no better way to procrastinate than looking at bananas (LITERALLY) crazy shoes. And I know you know what I’m talking about.
Love your news! “Back away from the Klassen” ha! I do agree Pinkalicious can be a bit bratty, but I’m perfectly good with the lying and theft of the hat in Klassen’s- what does that say about my morals!!!!
Thanks Betsy!
Glad you found the review. I wonder if it will remain the only one to draw a connection to the Hunger Games books… Love the shoe piece, too. I can see why you had to include it
My reaction was more “NO! Not ANOTHER blog I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO READ!” *added to my feed reader*
Don’t worry. Blog death rates are skyrocketing these days. Surely some of your favs will pass in time. Then you’ll be grateful for the newbies.
Thanks for the shout out, Betsy!
Thanks for the link to my Kansas blunder. I’m still cringing at the thought that somewhere out there, there is an angry librarian shaking her head at my horrible map mistake. The good news is, the map has been fixed and all future editions will have it correct.