I’ve also had this dream twice in the last few days. I am on a charter bus coming from northern Vermont heading to Boston. The landscape begins with a drive down a typcial New England town’s Main Street, with shops and apartments on either side of the bus. As we exit the town the terrain becomes more hilly, and soon the bus is climbing a large hill. As busses are wont to do, it slows and the engine is working hard. Though the hill is steep, there is never a feeling of danger, like we aren’t going to make it. The first time the bus was at this hill it was daytime, the second time, it was night as a full moon hovered in the primal and mountainous distance. On the right side of the road, the hill sloped down revealing a college campus. On the upward incline one could see the academic buildings, a recreation center and a chapel. Before the bus reached the apex, it had to make a sharp left turn. Then as we began to glide down, the buildings clearly became dorms, each with a small balcony and double rocker swing. During this whole trip, there is a feeling of great calm and wonder among those of us on the bus. The college is a magical place to which we would all like to return.

Until my membership expired a few days ago, I’d been a regular at the Reily student recreation center here at Tulane. Though certainly not a facility to rave about (as is the case with pretty much everything at Tulane,) it had a fairly nice weight room in which I had become a regular. The music in the weight room, which I presume came from a cable music channel, was usually of the pop culture variety and was the same feed that was piped throughout the building. Though I was there to work out, I enjoyed the fact that there was music; indeed, the right music can really enhance a workout.

However, the music started getting a little stupid. The first song that raised my hackles was 3oh!3′s “Don’t Trust Me”. In this song, the protagonist talks about his feelings for women. The song’s most notable refrain reads:

shush girl,
shut your lips,
do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.

The next annoying song was “Take Me On The Floor” by The Veronicas. The female vocalist, who appears to be in a heat of passion, sings:

I want to kiss a girl
I want to kiss a girl
I want to kiss a boy
I wanna…
…
Take me on the floor
I can’t take it any more
I want you I want you I want you to show me love
Just take me on the floor

The third, and most annoying is a more recent entry to the vapid lineup, Asher Roth’s “I Love College”. In a celebratory style, he recounts a great party he attended the previous night and his plans to repeat the debauchery again the next day. First the refrain:

{Redacted}
I danced my ass off and had this one girl completely naked
{Redacted}
{Redacted}

The stanzas are not much better. Among my “favorites”:

{Redacted}
…
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}

{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}

{Redacted}
{Redacted}
…
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}
{Redacted}

Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!
Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!
Freshmen! Freshmen!
Freshmen! Freshmen!

Do something’ crazy! Do somethin’ crazy!
Do something’ crazy! Do somethin’ crazy!
Keg stand! Keg stand!
Keg stand! Keg stand!

I mentioned my college on a Vermont hill dream because I think it has something to do with my frustration over the idiotic nature of American pop-culture, as demonstrated by the above popular songs. What’s really irked me was the fact that as these moronic lyrics were blaring away in the weight room, nobody really seemed to mind or be paying attention anyway. This, I think, is our problem. What now passes for popular entertainment is crude, base, and ignorant (none of these songs even remotely classify as satire). These songs glorify quick cheap sex, gimmicky sexuality, misogyny and seriously misplaced priorities.

As we look around and see our once giant corporations declaring bankruptcy, a woefully poorly educated student body, and the ongoing degradation of our infrastructure and environment, perhaps we should, as our former chief executive was so fond of saying, attempt to connect the dots. Maybe kids growing up listening to the “I Love College” song will get the wrong idea about what it means to go to college. Maybe kids listening to “Don’t Trust Me” will feel somewhat less inclined to behave respectfully towards women.

Like I said before, music has a powerful impact on us. When I was in high school, my swim team coach would put on a meditation tape (with ELO’s Fire on High in the background) to get us mentally prepared for a coming meet. When I sought to teach my students about the 1960′s counterculture, I used a lot of music, and they listened. It’s a fact that we take in things that we see and hear; with televisions and music constantly blaring everywhere these days, we are inundated with messaging. Most of this messaging comes from corporate channels, such as cable television, advertisements and popular music.

This music, even if we don’t actively seek it out, seeps into our collective psyche like a poison slowly growing in potency from repeat exposure. Radioactivity is inevitable. It’s hard to know where this will lead, but I think we are seeing its effects already: selfishness, insecurity, decreased civility, increased violence. In short, we have been collectively dumbing ourselves down and teaching ourselves not to pay attention.

Looking back at my dream, though, I think that it is hopeful. After all, the bus made it up the hill both times and the college was still there. While sometimes I get depressed about our cultural waywardness, I still hope that we might once again be able to aspire to greater things. My current vision of the cool beckoning stone of the college on a hill reminds me that the great promise of mankind is still out there, even if illuminated only by our dreams.

Yet Ahan knows that she cannot simply walk away from her online life, because the people she knows online won’t stop talking about her, or posting unflattering photos. She needs to stay on Facebook just to monitor what’s being said about her. This is a common complaint I heard, particularly from people in their 20s who were in college when Facebook appeared and have never lived as adults without online awareness. For them, participation isn’t optional. If you don’t dive in, other people will define who you are.
…
This is the ultimate effect of the new awareness: It brings back the dynamics of small-town life, where everybody knows your business… “It’s just like living in a village, where it’s actually hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already,” Tufekci said. “The current generation is never unconnected. They’re never losing touch with their friends. So we’re going back to a more normal place, historically. If you look at human history, the idea that you would drift through life, going from new relation to new relation, that’s very new. It’s just the 20th century.”
…
Psychologists and sociologists spent years wondering how humanity would adjust to the anonymity of life in the city, the wrenching upheavals of mobile immigrant labor — a world of lonely people ripped from their social ties. We now have precisely the opposite problem. Indeed, our modern awareness tools reverse the original conceit of the Internet. When cyberspace came along in the early ’90s, it was celebrated as a place where you could reinvent your identity — become someone new.

“If anything, it’s identity-constraining now,” Tufekci told me. “You can’t play with your identity if your audience is always checking up on you… She laughed. “You know that old cartoon? ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog’? On the Internet today, everybody knows you’re a dog! If you don’t want people to know you’re a dog, you’d better stay away from a keyboard.”

Still a dog,
~WD

First, there have been major protests in Chisinau, Moldova. When I was in Romania, I had a good friend from Uzbekistan who was stationed in Chisinau. I was lucky enough to be able to visit him, and I can tell you that Moldova is not a place that has been going in the right direction as of late. Many, if not most Romanians believe that Moldova is rightly a part of Romania. The official language of Moldova (Moldovan) is nearly identical to Romanian. The interesting part about the protests is that word of them was distributed by cell phone, facebook, twitter and other social networking tools. With all the hype about technology and it is good to see it being used to help individuals come together against oppressive regimes. I wonder if this unrest will continue and the people of Moldova might one day be allowed to join their more forward-thinking neighbors, and perhaps even the EU…

FMI/Video: http://tvr.ro/articol.php?id=60799&c=47

Two interesting stories from the Times.

Gays in Iraq are becoming more visible as the levels of violence abate. The article surveys some young gay males, all of whom have seen many of their friends killed. Interestingly, most of the killings appear to be “honor killings” by family members seeking to redress the shame that these gays have brought upon the family name. I was honestly quite surprised to hear that there were individuals who would dare to be so open in Iraq at all. While there are certainly gays in all cultures, including oppressive ones such as Uzbekistan, most keep their private lives strictly private. It will be interesting to see what becomes of this subculture in Iraq.

The Last Jew in Afghanistan is a touching video op-ed. This man’s fate is like the that of Jews in so many parts of the world. I will never forget the small community of older Jews I met in Romania. Most of them were survivors whose children were pursuing lives either in Israel or the United States. Whether those who stayed did so by choice or necessity, it was an honor to celebrate some of the Sacred Jewish traditions with them. As we approach Passover, I’ll think of them as they gather for a communal feast, a bright moment in what is otherwise a rather lonely existence.

This, however, is not a self-congratulatory post; rather, I hope to extrapolate from my humble experience today to those challenges faced by Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee. While I do not expect Gov. Palin or any other one person to have all the answers regarding how to solve our our country’s ills, I do expect those in positions of power, such as herself, to be able to articulate the basic ideas and fact patterns that lay before us.

A good, I dare say competent, leader knows how to take complex issues and give people an in as to their exploration; that is, the process of distillation helps us understand both what is and what one aspires to do about it. In this regard, Gov. Palin is a complete failure. Not only is she unable to tackle questions that she ought to be able to anticipate, but she also fails to lay out a convincing rationale for her own beliefs.

Perhaps I ought not be surprised, given the fact that Palin has been chosen for the express purpose of pandering to the faith-based community. But to that community, I ask, in what do you intend to place your faith? Since the Bible or a “value” can not serve as our leader we are forced to place our trust in humans, whose fallibility is guaranteed. Obama and Biden are fallible, as are McCain and Palin.

A rabbi who recently gave a lunchtime talk to a group of Jewish students here threw out an interesting point: the interpretation of the word of God by his messengers has itself become an ongoing continuation of that word. While one could argue that such a formula was probably fomenting in the mind of the Unabomber, the basic principle is sound; our being is not static and we must strive to make sense of what we are given from all sources.

After three weeks of legal studies I can say that much of what constitutes this human element in our system of justice can be found in decisions of merit as rendered by judges and juries. The Rules (of which there are many) help guide us in reaching just and equitable conclusions; we who chose are asked to find connections, discern intent and apply facts to that for which we ultimately have no guidance. This process, which occurs both with and without volition, a billion (or 700 billion) times a day, forms the lexicon from which new paradigms are promulgated when the times so demand. We are but the random ball rolling from the table; like the enigmatic neutrino, our rare moments of connection prove our very existence…

Governor Palin, who once struck me as a ballsy fighter, has proven herself to be yet another American who seeks to restrict rather than broaden this fundamental lexicon. As evidenced by current events that, if taken to their logical conclusion, may well precipitate the collapse of our society, the last thing we currently need is to narrow our already myopic focus. I do not elevate Obama and Biden to any sort of mythic status; the Democratic ticket’s humility, as opposed to the folksy opprobrium of its opponents, is emblematic of its embrace of the evolving word. In a world that appears to be getting the better of us (literally,) it’s right time we embrace the both.

There is an amazing lack of correct information regarding the subnormal. Occasionally a well-disposed philanthropist believes certain subnormals of pleasing appearance who seem not too dull should never be sent to an institution. In general, the higher types of feeble-minded, such as the morons, are the most dangerous to the community and posterity.”

The book has been gripping as it presents accounts from various perspectives, oft quelled from period newspaper articles. I’m up to the 1950′s and the time line notes that the campus remained open until 1996. Click here for the quick version from the new center’s website – very interesting stuff! Many a treasure to be found if one looks.