One World, Many Peaces

Two Major Intellectuals, Levi-Strauss and Ayala, Die; What the World Has Gained

"Loss" is a word commonly heard when someone dies, as in "a loss to us" or "the world's loss." But what about what we and the world have gained because someone has lived? This may be the more inspiring and pragmatic question to ask of everyone, but especially in noting the passing of two of the great 20th century intellectuals today as centenarians: Claude Levis-Strauss at 100, the French anthropologist and a founder of the widely influential structuralist school of critical analysis; and Francisco Ayala at 103, the paradigmatic anti-fascists sociologist and novelist. The following is less of a tribute than a well-deserved acknowledgment.

Trained as a philosopher in France, Claude Levi-Strauss taught in Brazil from 1935 and came to prominence with his landmark Tristes Tropiques (trans. A World on the Wane), which has since become a classic. In it he proposed that so-called "primitive" mythologies are structurally analyzable in the same way as "civilized" ones, calling into question two centuries of "progressive" thinking. The work had a profound influence not only in anthropology, but also in sociology, philosophy, political science, history and literary criticism, among other fields. He became a member France's prestigious Academie, which rushed to pay homage to him today. Just recently, Levi-Strauss expressed contempt at dying in a world he "does not love," and remarked that the purpose of structuralism was a "search for unsuspected harmonies" by drawing parallels and analogies between otherwise unrelated thought and social systems.  The next-generation of French intellectuals (including Jaques Derrida and Michel Foucault) are often called post-structuralists because they focused on changes in structures over time, in deference.

The Spanish intellectual Francisco Ayala coincidentally followed a similar trajectory as Levi-Strauss, spendinghis early career in South America before return to his home country, where accolades eventually followed. After receiving his doctorate in law from Madrid University in 1930, he went on a lecture tour in Argentina, when the fascist Franco took power back in Spain (1936). In Buenos Aires, he taught sociology and founded the literary journal Reality, where the works of Jorge Luis Borges were first published, among other literati. After moving to Puerto Rico in 1950, he taught at several premier university in the U.S. (including Princeton and the University of Chicago) before returning to Spain in 1975, the year Franco died. His key works include The Usurpers and The Lamb's Head, each of which critically examines the relations between individual consciences, social consciousness and the state. He was awarded the prestigious Cervantes Award in 1991 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998.

While it is safe to say that Levi-Strauss' influence on Western intellectual history is more pronounced than that of Ayala, the latter was a catalytic figure in Latin American literature and thought as well as the epitome of anti-fascist writers in exile. It is also safe to say that the worldwide intellectual landscape of the 21st century, of which I and we are all a part, would not be what it is without them. In death as in life, Levi-Strauss and Ayala are turning point current events that have brought us to a better understanding of the past and present so as to create a better future.

Criminal CIA Probe is a Copout but there's Hope Elsewhere...

The criminal probe announced by US Attorney General Eric Holder into CIA agents who interrogated "inhumanely" is a copout move for the Obama administration, who should have gone after those who ordered and supervised them too. Might as well have been satisfied with getting Nazi infantry rather than going after Hitler and his close circle. Or better yet continue, as the White House has on the issue since Obama took office, talking lots and doing nothing. But never fear, The 99 are here!

There is a paradox of peace at the core of every superhero: they uphold values of peace by breaking them as they see fit. This paradox applies equally to heads of states as to our favorite DC and Marvel comic book superheroes,  reinterpreted like Greek tragedies over and over again by Hollywood studios: Batman, Iron Man, Superman and my favorite, Hale Berry as Cat Woman, to name a few. Each of them uses all the violence they can to prevent violence being done or to right wrongs. Kapow!

Enter The 99: explicitly Islam-based superheroes who do exactly the same thing for different reasons. Or are they?  Each character mirrors an attribute of Allah: one, Jabbar, is reminiscent of the Hulk except he is Saudi Arabian; Darr the Afflicter is a paraplegic American who can cause pain with his mind alone; and then there is the character in a burka, Batina the Hidden. Forbes named The 99 one of the top twenty trends sweeping the world, from Morocco to Indonesia. They'll get'm.

The irony is that The 99 basically represent the same values of peace as their Western counterparts, but from a different source. Which brings us back to the copout criminal CIA probes. Just as what differentiates Western and Islamic superheroes is not so much what they do or how they do it, but the source which gives them authority to do so, likewise with carrying out military or other state maneuvers:  these fictional current events thus can inform the creation of our actual future.

'Failing Better': A Beckettian View of Success and Progress

A photographer friend tells me he wakes up every day telling himself: this is the worst day ever. "It usually gets better after that," he jokes. Not far in spirit from this depressingly optimistic  way of thinking is a quote from Samuel Beckett which, if taken more seriously than I do this morning mantra, bears an absurdly great import on popular contemporary thinking and practices of 'success' and 'progress,' personal, local or global:

Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

Anyone who has lost or is tired of their job and is trying to find a perfect or just paying one, anyone who is searching for their 'soul mate,' anyone who has been systematically rejected from any application process or pursued any endeavor with any zeal can immediately relate. Any artist,  inventor or entrepreneur will readily identify with this anti-haiku, the rigid form of which would betray what Beckett may be trying on purpose to fail to say. Writing about trial and failure, what he conspicuously leaves out is any mention of success or progress. And there's the rub.

Success must in some way be pre-defined to be achieved, and so what is reached after much or little toil rarely if ever meets exactly what one pre-defines for one's self, one's community or our world. Progress, in contrast, is determined by a future state being 'better' somehow than a past or the present one, and so depends equally on how we preconceive start and end states. What Beckett's notion of failing better allows for that success and progress do not are totally unexpected results of effort that can improve anything without predefinitions or preconceptions, always self-limiting. Unscientific in being unsystematic, failing better is better than success or progress because thereby we can never lose or move backwards.

A serious problem with the whole notion of 'progress' is that it makes the past something to be looked down upon, not learned from. Likewise, 'success' privileges ends over means, which has permitted more disappointment and destruction than needs be recounted here. We are better than those before, or so progressive thinking goes, so what can the past teach us? As success is our goal, or so motivational speakers tell us, who cares what we do to achieve it? Dearth in debate is never in itself proof of affirmative agreement, which thinking in terms of success and progress curtail more than failing better.

In chainging the terms of progress from nothing-to-something (success) and better-to-better (progress), to worse-to-less-worse (failing better), we are freed in mind and action from the dogmas that determine who we can be and what we can make our worlds. As a current event, failing better would create a future where the last are actually no better off than the middle or first because each has an equal distance to go in never resolving Zeno's paradox.  

Censoring Violence and Selective Morality

If you asked 100 people and ethics experts what is more morally wrong, murder or rape, chances are that they would say it’s a poorly phrased question and their answer would be both equally (or at least we may hope so).  But a clear-cut answer came from Amazon a day before Valentine's Day, when the internet's largest retailer pulled a Japanese video game simulating rape and sexual assaults from its site while keeping thousands of others that simulate other kinds of corporeal violence. So what?

The point is not to open the Pandora's box about violence in media, but to stress the highly problematic selectivity of the moral issues open to debated within it. Games in which murder, theft, assault and even genocide are encouraged or even required to win regularly receive top awards and highest sales, as do movies and television shows that depict them, whether in glorification or damnation. Why? Because apparently for those who play and watch them, recreationally or addictively, they are as entertaining as entertaining can be and a lot of money is made as a result, including by Amazon. The morally offended may find a little comfort in the "rating" system but not satisfaction.

Nor is the point to posit a litmus test for tired arguments pro and con violence in the media; though the debate is decades (if not centuries) old, a stalemate status quo seems to have been reached in the public arena  outside academia with which everyone is ok enough not to do anything too serious about it until a new kid's in town. Among the most popular defensive arguments for these types of pass times is the possible cathartic effect they have on users: "The more I play violence, the less I do it," or so the line goes.  At the risk of being misinterpreted in the hopes of provoking debate:  Should this logic not apply to all kinds of video game violence equally? And if not, why not?

What, then, is the point? Stifling debates through which collective ethical decisions are made is more dangerous than any kind of media violence.  In putting its foot down on one kind of violence and not others, the slippery selectivity of Amazon's moral lip service becomes clear. Censoring one kind of violence and not others conspicuously legitimizes those which remain, weakening the overall societally healthy debates surrounding the entertainment value and/or ethical detriment of media violence altogether. In this case, shutting a door does not open a window, depleting the intellectual oxygen in the room, and the vigor of our moral minds and hearts consequently suffers as a current event creating the future. 

Artistic Imperatives in Tough Times

Emphasizing the pursuits and benefits of scientific and technological careers has become a trademark of discourse about how to solve the short-term economic crises while providing for long-term stability. Regardless of the extent to which this limited precept is true, focusing exclusively on science and technology at the expense of artistic endeavors puts in jeopardy the productive balance between them by which societies have progressed and cultures thrived.

Both in the sense of why the arts and artists ought to be fostered and how artists ought to go about their work so as to be fostered, there are at least fives artistic imperatives in tough times such as our own:

Diversion: Facing the fact that many audiences in all artistic media turn to the arts for a pleasant (as in romantic comedy) or empathic (as in the blues) distraction from their troubles in no way belittles the arts or artists themselves. On the contrary, providing a respite or oasis from the toils of daily life during difficult days is one of the primary functions of art and artists because of the renewal in mind, body and spirit that can thus be achieved.

Inspiration: Masterworks of arts in any genre become all the more important in tough times because of the awe-derived motivation they instill in their audiences. A prominent example is John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the beauty of which stems equally from the desperation it describes as the exceptional quality of the craftsmanship.  This is not to say that masterworks are only those which earn a Nobel Prize, but rather that any piece of art that can positively inspire to a high degree and on a widespread and/or intensely individual basis may qualify as one.

Provocation: Pablo Picasso's Guernica like the novels of Dickens and Zola stand as exemplars of how art can provoke the kind of thought and action that are required for any meaningful, long-lasting change for the better. There is a flipside, though, because being provocative is not always coterminous with being catalytic in a positive and productive way, so artists and audiences please beware.

Mobilization: It is one thing for the arts and artists to create powerful subjective experiences for their audiences, and wholly another for them to create actual objective differences in the world, despite that the two are inextricably tied. Science and technology can give people with ways to improve our world, but art can give reasons and directions in ways that science and technology alone cannot.

(Re)conciliation: Trying to posit the arts and science/technology as a dichotomy harmfully limits each sphere; only by embracing them together can full potentials be actualized. Technology in particular has proven to be a way to connect people of different identities and backgrounds in ways previously unimaginable, but the arts (musical, visual, verbal) have always done so as well in complimentary and irreplaceable ways.

I invite you to add your own here and/or in your heads and hearts, whether you are an artist, part of their audiences or an administrator in the position to foster both, so that they will continue to be vital and revitalizing parts of current events creating the future.