How Fight Club Helps Me Cope With Tragedy:

Even though this new year is young, we have already seen quite a bit of tragedy and loss in the world. When faced with sadness or loss, people often struggle with how to respond. Often I go back and re-watch movies. Partially for the opportunity to engage in a bit of escapism, but also because there are often great lessons to be gleaned from them. (If you think I’m being a bit daft, consider that at their most basic level many religious texts are simply collections of stories.)

 
One of my personal favorites is David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club. I think it’s a movie that is quite often misunderstood as some type of endorsement of hyper-masculine violence, and that today its biggest contribution to the cultural landscape might be people repurposing a quote from the film to instruct people on what not to talk about. However, there’s another moment from the movie that I think about from time to time, particularly in times of distress or anxiety. In a pivotal scene, Tyler Durden impresses upon the narrator the importance of “know(ing), not fear(ing) but know(ing) that someday you’re going to die.” Some might look at that as a bit morbid, particularly if you’re watching the movie in the wake of some tragedy, but I think that like the movie, they may be missing the point.
 

I would argue that the movie, and life itself, is largely about overcoming fear. The narrator in the film goes to great lengths to avoid confronting his fears with disastrous results. It’s only after he recognizes those fears and accepts them that he is able to overcome them and move forward. For us it’s quite similar. How much energy and effort do we put into avoiding even considering the existence of the things we are afraid of? And when life intervenes and doesn’t allow those fears to be shoved aside any longer, how often do we respond poorly because we are still reacting from a perspective of fear? Finally, how many things that you have extensive knowledge of--things that you know--are you afraid of? You may have a respect for something’s power. You may use your knowledge to avoid certain circumstances because you know the likely results, but you’re not really afraid of it. Fear and the unknown can’t exist without each other.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not recommending that we all go out and actively embrace death. What I’m saying is that once you know, and accept, that it too is a part of life, you’re better able to respond to it. I’m not saying that I’m perfect in this regard. When my parents got sick, I spent a good deal of time being afraid. I was scared because I had no way of knowing what the world would look or feel like without them. It kept me stuck for a while, spinning my wheels, but knowing and accepting that one day it was going to happen is one of the things that allowed me to move forward. It’s only after we realize that life is finite that we truly start living.

5 Things Progressives Need to Do to Move the Country Forward:

It seems that an ever increasing amount of bandwidth is being dedicated to constructing lists of various things like kittens, movies, ridiculous selfies, and even what passes for political analysis these days (I’m looking at you Buzzfeed, VOX, and Cracked). In an attempt to evolve (and hopefully stave off Darwinian obsolescence), I figured that I would try my hand at this. To be honest, some information is actually better presented as short, punchy, easy-to-remember tidbits. So without further ado, this is my list of the five things that progressives/Democrats need to do in order to move the country forward.



1) Forget about purity:

There’s an old saying that goes something like, “liberals look for heretics, while conservatives look for converts”. I’m not particularly interested in debating the past validity of that statement. What I would like to point out is that conservatives are currently engaging in their own series of ongoing and increasingly ridiculous purity tests. Seriously, if Mitt Romney is a RINO (Republican In Name Only), and David (Axis of Evil) Frum can be excommunicated from their movement, how does a Republican stay in their party’s good graces? (I have an answer, but it’s pretty inflammatory so I’ll leave that be for the moment.)

This presents progressives/Democrats with an opportunity. Sometimes observing the actions of your adversary can illustrate potential pitfalls that one can hopefully avoid, and I think there are few bigger mistakes that progressives can engage in than infighting amongst ourselves over what amounts to small differences when viewed in comparison to what is on offer from the other side of the aisle. Don’t get me wrong, we’re a big country and part of that entails having as many, or more, opinions than people living in it; but if you’re not one of the people that are trying to decide whether tax cuts for Donald Trump, requiring mandatory prayer in public school, or adding Ronald Reagan’s face to Mt. Rushmore is at the top of your political agenda, then you’re not on their team. Don’t get me wrong, they’ll gladly take your vote, but don’t expect for your concerns to be addressed.

I know that may sound overly simplistic, but here’s why it’s not. Our political system is structured in such a way that the creation and maintenance of two, and only two, viable national parties is inevitable. I could get into a long-winded discussion of why this is, but for the moment just take my (and the entire political history of the country’s) word for it. In a public sphere as vast and as diverse as ours, boiling down every issue into an either/or proposition and then insisting that people conform uniformly to a set of positions in order to be a member in good standing of one of the dominant political factions is a recipe for widespread public disengagement. (Gee, I wonder if that’s one of the reasons that only a little more than half the population votes?) Given what is happening in the Republican camp, if what they’re doing, or stand for, makes you uncomfortable, then you need to be with us. And in turn, we need to be accepting, check that, we need to be welcoming, of people that may disagree with us on priorities, or even on some issues. Doing otherwise is a recipe for seeing both houses of congress, the majority of state legislatures, and governorships as well, in the hands of a political party that has lost the ability to govern responsibly. (In case you didn’t notice, that is exactly the current state of affairs) Do we really want to get into fights about whether we should prioritize the environment or working and middle-class economic security at the expense of losing the opportunity to advance either cause, to people that are hostile to both? This leads me to my second point.



2) We’re all in this together, but you can’t please everyone:

Regardless of how you feel about the Occupy Wall Street movement (if you’re still reading this I’m assuming you’re not completely hostile to everything they publicly stand for), the way that they were able to frame the debate of the 1% versus the rest of us was invaluable. While that may be an oversimplification, what can’t be denied is that the wealthy in this country continue to see their economic fortunes prosper while the rest of us see our prospects stagnate or decline. Another thing that I would find it hard to argue against is the idea that the economic interests of everyone (with the possible exception of defense contractors, hedge fund managers, and oil company executives) are better represented by the Democratic Party. It’s not just about economics; Democrats are better on women’s rights, the environment, worker protections, education, healthcare, defense--basically every policy area you can think of. I won’t sit here and pretend that every elected Democrat is excellent on all of those issues, but remember we’re not going for purity; we’re looking for better than the alternative.

Of course there are going to be folks that aren’t convinced; people that think that Reagan single-handedly defeated communism and that tax cuts always produce economic growth. We shouldn’t be trying to convince them otherwise. I’m not writing them off completely, but we need to stop chasing them. Honestly, after the last three decades if they’re not already converted, there’s nothing that can be said to change their minds; their positions have more to do with tribal identity than with anything rational. There’s even research that suggests attempting to debunk their misconceptions results in them digging in their heels even further. That isn’t to say that there will not be some that eventually see the light, but in a country with as many nonvoters as this one, we need to convince the people that are not currently involved in the process, that getting out and voting for the Democratic Party will improve their lives (notice I said improve, it isn’t a cure-all and we shouldn’t try to sell it as such).



3) There are no unimportant elections:

Here is where the rubber begins to meet the road. We have to get people to the polls, every election. Let me say that again for emphasis; we have to get people to the polls every election. Yes, the presidency is important, but so is congress, so is your state legislature, so is your city council. These other institutions are making decisions that affect your life and mine; we need to have people there that are representing our best interests. That is the essence of a democratic republic. I know that it can be tough to get out and vote. You’re busy—you have things to do, kids to run to after-school events, grocery shopping that needs to be done, resting up for another tough day—I get it. It’s important though. If you don’t think it is, ask yourself why so many Republicans are working so hard to limit your ability to do it. Nobody said that changing the country was going to be easy work that you could easily do without getting up from the couch.

I know that there is a tendency for some to throw up their hands and say that the whole thing is corrupt, and that they aren’t even going to bother. Some even go so far as to say that we would be better off if the whole thing collapsed so that we could start over fresh. Let me say something to those people—pull your head out of your ass, and stop acting like a Tea Partier without the white nationalist streak. (Yes, I just went there, and no, trotting out Alan West or Ben Carson out doesn’t change a thing.) I don’t know how else to say it. Government matters, it is essential to the well-being of all of us. Food safety, education, keeping the lights on, things that a lot of us take for granted are there to be taken for granted because government is on the job. Look, I’m not thrilled with its recent performance either, but that’s why it’s incumbent upon us to work to make it better. I can guarantee that if our current experiment in democracy should fail, it will be replaced by something even worse. Look to history if you doubt me.



4) Work for concrete policy changes:

The next step is to have a set of concrete policies that we can lobby and instruct our elected officials to support. Of course we all want things like justice, fairness, equality, and prosperity, but those things are just empty concepts without a set of policies designed to get us there. Fortunately, we already have ideas that would be a good start towards improving the lives of millions of Americans. We need to push our elected officials to support increasing the minimum wage, to strengthen and expand Social Security, to begin to rebuild our infrastructure—the roads, bridges, electrical grid, and more—that allowed us to become a prosperous country in the first place. We need to pressure our elected officials to support our schools through increased funding, greater support of our teachers, and to move away from the endless standardized testing that has replaced educating our children with the act of filling in bubbles on a test form. There are other things too, ideas that haven’t even been widely articulated yet. It will be our responsibility to identify these things, and to pressure our leaders to support them with their votes. Will every Democrat always vote in lockstep with our preferences on these issues, of course not, but remember point #1, insisting on purity will do worse than get us nowhere, it will lead us backwards.



5) There are no saviors: 

Finally, we need to realize that there are no political saviors. The people that we think of as our great historical leaders—Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Martin Luther King—were not successful just because of their personal talents, of which they had many, but because they were able to harness the dreams, hopes, ambitions, and yes, the talents of thousands of people that you’ve likely never heard of. They would have accomplished little if they did not have the support of men and women who trusted that with work and perseverance, the gap between our ideals and our reality could not be closed. As our current president, and a man who will no doubt be added to that list of historic leaders, has often said—“We are the change that we seek.” It is up to each one of us to contribute in the ways in which we are able to the cause of building a greater country, a better today, and a brighter tomorrow.

Winter Hibernation Guide Part 1

Growing up I was never a very much of a television person. I watched sporting events and would have it on as background noise, but my lifestyle just didn’t fit with the concept of appointment television. College and grad school was more of the same; professors weren’t very concerned with whether or not a show had its season finale when assigning term papers and exams. My relationship with television changed after I became a caregiver, both professionally and for members of my own family. My on-the-run lifestyle was replaced with long periods of being sedentary (punctuated of course with moments of sheer terror, but that’s a story for another time), and television is perfectly designed for long periods of killing time. Also, the seemingly never-ending stream of horrible news in the world (both far and close to home) has resulted in a sharp decline in my news junkie tendencies, and a strong desire to engage in a bit of escapism. Luckily, my immersion into the land of commercialized make-believe coincided with the airing of some really good programming. I’ve still managed to miss out on some of the shows that everybody (read: upper-middle class types) tells me are the best thing ever (So please no Mad Men, True Detective, The Wire, or Boardwalk Empire spoilers), but I have found some shows that I actually look forward to every week (the advent of dvr’s and on-demand television have definitely helped contribute to this, but I don’t want to shortchange my library card’s ability to let me play catch-up on some of the shows that I missed out on while I was busy cranking out term papers and PowerPoint presentations). So with the cold grip of winter upon us, and the end of most shows’ holiday hiatus, I wanted to give you a quick run-down of a few of the shows (both continuing and newly airing)  that I hope will get me through until the first pitch of opening day, or at least until pitchers and catchers report. I’ll start with the new shows, followed by continuing series in a part 2 posting. (You may notice that this entry is a bit heavy on the comedy. That’s actually not unintentional, given the flame out rate of network situation comedies and the heaviness of the of the shows that are returning from the Fall or starting a new season that I plan on continuing to watch, the inclination to load up on potential palette cleansers seems wise.)

Galavant: (ABC Sunday 8:00) Starting January 4^th

Shortly after the first round of the NFL playoffs conclude on Sunday, ABC will air the first episode of its four-part series, Galavant. Billed as a hybrid of The Princess Bride and a light hearted musical (you had me at Princess Bride), the show promises plenty of guest spots from celebrities like Ricky Gervais, Weird Al Yankovic (this show sounds like it’s perfectly tailored to the musical funny-man’s talents) and John Stamos. Even if the show isn’t exactly breaking new creative ground, a live-action Shrek, with attractive lead characters (played by Joshua Sasse and Karen David) isn’t the worst way to spend a few Sunday nights in the middle of a long cold winter.     

Agent Carter (ABC Tuesday January 6^th 2 hour premier 8:00, 9:00 afterwards)   

Hayley Atwell reprises her role from Marvel’s Captain America movies, and ABC is promoting the character as continuing in the lineage of other take-no-prisoners female lead characters (Sydney Bristo and Olivia Pope) that the network has found success with. I’m really excited for this limited-run series, partly because the Captain America movies are (in my opinion) the best of the Marvel movies, and a show set in that corner of their universe could be really enjoyable. I’ll admit to jumping early from Agents of Shield (too early if the articles I’ve read are true, something I might address this summer, perhaps), but hopefully Team Marvel has worked the kinks out of their television operation. I’ve heard rumblings that the Howard Stark character will play a prominent role, and as a fan of the Iron Man series of comic books and the first two films (I hated Iron Man 3, and if you disagree you’re just wrong) anything that gives me Stark-related backstory is too juicy to pass up.

Younger (TV Land Tuesday 10:00) Starting January 13^th

Tony Award winner Sutton Foster stars in a series from Sex and the City producer Darren Star about a 40 year old newly single mother that has to pass herself off as 26 in order to land an entry level gig. I’m mostly interested due to the inclusion of the always spectacular Debi Mazar as Sutton’s best friend, and for any potential age-defying techniques that I might pick up as I approach my seventh 29^th birthday.

Fresh Off the Boat (ABC Wednesday 8:00) Starting February 4^th

For some reason this show comes off as a Blackish, but for Asian Americans. (Maybe it has something to do with ABC’s tendency to plug the show multiple times during its commercial breaks.) The show, which premiers February 4, is based on a memoir by Chef Eddie Huang, who also provides voice-over work. The involvement of the original work’s author should hopefully help the series avoid falling into some type of self-parody of a network’s attempt at diversity. Also, the success of Blackish (a rare bright spot in a fall lineup littered with new comedies that couldn’t make it to November without being cancelled) suggests that ABC might have the skill to pull this project off.

Better Call Saul (AMC Sunday 10:00) Starting February 8th 
Breaking Bad is/was one of those much talked about shows that I managed to completely miss while I was pulling all-nighters in the library stacks. Better Call Saul is a prequel of sorts, following the exploits of lawyer Saul Goodman (played by Bob Odenkirk). The fact that this is a prequel and would allow me a way to jump into this universe (presumably) without risking spoilers is a real selling point. (I plan on playing catch-up with Breaking Bad at some point, even with having an idea as to the fate of some of the characters, the show’s good press is too much to ignore.)

12 Monkeys (SyFy Friday 9:00) Starting January 16th 
A television remake of the incomparable Terry Gilliam’s 1995 movie of the same name is a tall order, and time travel is incredibly difficult narrative device to pull off, but I’m interested (in a morbidly curious way, if nothing else) to see what can come from the attempt. A quick IMDB check unfortunately didn’t turn up a Jeffery Goins character (played by Brad Pitt in the film version) so we may be robbed of/blessed by the opportunity to watch someone attempt to recreate Pitt’s twitchy over-the-top performance. I can’t say that I’m overly optimistic that I’ll stick with the show for the entire season, but I’ll definitely be checking it out just to see what they can come up with.

Sometimes it’s not what you know but who you know

I was doing a bit of bookmark housecleaning and stumbled on a piece Adam Liptak of the New York Times filed where he notes that, “judges with daughters are more likely to vote in favor of women’s rights than ones with only sons. The effect, a new study found, is most pronounced among male judges appointed by Republican presidents, like Chief Justice Rehnquist.” The study conducted by The University of Rochester’s Maya Sen and Harvard professor Adam Glynn, uncovered results that I think are echoed in other areas of life, specifically, that the ability to sympathize tremendously affects the way that we perceive and interact with the world. The way that this effect largely functions isn’t particularly mystifying. It appears that in this case, judges who had the opportunity to develop close personal bonds with a female that they presumably viewed as someone they were responsible for nurturing and protecting resulted in recognition that women in this society actually still encounter discrimination. I would argue that a key piece of this is the subject’s (the judge, in this case) role as a father. Unlike support for same sex marriage, which studies have suggested can increase by virtue of personally knowing a same sex couple, a somewhat different dynamic appears to be at play. The results of San and Glynn’s study show no increase in support for women’s rights by judges who have only sons. This suggests that simply having an intimate relationship with a woman is not sufficient to trigger support for women’s rights, because presumably these judges had intimate relationships with the mother of their sons (at least at some point in their lives).

It is possible that the concept of role, or self-identity, is doing much of the heavy lifting as it relates to both issues. In the case of same sex marriage, merely being acquainted with a same sex couple could result in simply wishing the best for them, which would be a common thing for people to do. Since the same sex relationship is only loosely related to the individuals outside of the relationship making the assessment, the bar to clear for triggering a reversal of opinion is relatively low. On the other hand, the role of judge would likely be much more central to an individual’s identity than the role of acquaintance or even friend of a same sex couple. This may explain the higher threshold for the reversal of a previously held belief or for holding an opinion that is inconsistent with other acknowledged beliefs.

 

These findings pose many questions, but the one I’m particularly interested in is this—What is the relationship between individual identity, personal experience, and attitudes about the world? I realize that question doesn’t have a simple answer (or even one answer for that matter), but it’s one of those questions that I spend a lot of time thinking about. As always feel free to leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments