Results tagged “social” from Uncivil Society
A rather nasty whomp on the head has of necessity kept things low key for me the past couple of weeks, but in my ongoing effort to get back to normal I did make it down to Tribeca for a few hours tonight to watch Lost at the showing sponsored by Slate. A most interesting event on several levels, not least of all for the way it exemplified the social theme pervasive in the show itself.
(spoilers ahoy)
As for the already notorious last episode of Lost, I could not help but compare it with the recently aired series finale of Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to the classic UK sci-fi drama Life on Mars. Both Lost and its UK cousins use mysteries connected to time travel to explore notions of purgatory, redemption, fate, freedom, self-awareness and personal meaning.
Lost appears to differ from the UK series in that it seems to make the physical world--real time before death--the realm of time travel and mysticism, but even that could be a swerve. It's equally arguable that the silent wreckage montage at the end of Lost is a not so subtle hint that even the main timeline was a collective fiction--everyone died, then came to self-realization through a shared mythic adventure as well as a more mundane form of purgatory. Think of it as Dante Wii with ascending levels and a side of suburbia.
Either way, what particulalry stands out for me is the subtle yet significant shift that both Lost and the UK series make in regard to personal meaning. Theirs is a distinctly social vision of salvation--we not only find meaning in overcoming our faults, believing in God, etc. etc., but in creating a communal reality with others.
Holographic realities and the social soul are themes that resound throughout human religion, philosophy and art--sure, Egyptians did this through pyramids and Christians, cathedrals, but even though we're pouring our millions into TV and movies at the core it's all the same thing. The individualistic turn of the past few centuries was a bit of swerve; shows such as Lost and Ashes to Ashes indicate that, as McLuhan predicted, the age of hyper-connectivity is retrieving a more tribal vision of the self.
Kissing a piece of paper for charity seems to have replaced the traditional kissing booth, which would today be seen less as a fun fundraiser than a hub for spreading the flu.
If the above vintage ad's strategy of prescribing carb-filled crackers to lose weight seems goofily retro (not to mention sexist), check out this new research on carbs as the dietary key to personal happiness.
Here's a fascinating set of photos documenting Asgarda, a group of women who have formed their own alternate society "based on the the tribal traditions of the Scythian Amazons of ancient Greek mythology."
Jezebel has an excellent roundup of information regarding Asgarda, including this excellent first-person account from the photographer.
Organized by Spike Lee & the Borough of Brooklyn, this block party celebrates Jackson's role as an inspirational icon. Personal and civic identity resonate in this contemporary version of the saint's day festival:
Anybody and everybody is invited to attend Michael Jackson’s 51st birthday party on Saturday, August 29, from noon to 5 p.m., at Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, New York. DJ Spinna will be spinning all things Jackson, from the Jackson 5 to the Jacksons to Michael Jackson. The Brooklyn borough president will be on hand to declare Aug. 29 “Michael Jackson Day.”
“At the end, we’ll all sing Happy Birthday to Michael,” Lee says. “We’re going to make sure he hears us, too. All over the world, people are going to be celebrating his birthday. But he’s going to hear Brooklyn; Brooklyn is going to be in the house. Deep.”
Law enforcement in Italy is cracking down on an industry reputed to be controlled by the mafia:
Windmills.
Turns out that La Cosa Nostra sees the eco-biz as a growth industry--tax breaks and government funding make it pretty much a sure-fire investment:
"Operation Wind" revealed Mafia promises to local officials in Mazara del Vallo of money and votes in exchange for help in approving wind farm projects.
The Mafia suspects were alleged to be linked to Matteo Messina "Diabolik" Denaro, a fugitive clan boss on ltaly's most wanted list.
Prosecutors suspect the hand of the Mafia in fixing permits and building wind farms that are then sold on to Italian and eventually foreign companies.
In an effort to assert its control over the sector, the Mafia is suspected of destroying two wind towers that were in storage in the port of Trapani after their delivery by ship from northern Europe, local officials told the FT.
"It is a refined system of connections to business and politicians. A handful of people control the wind sector. Many companies exist but it is the same people behind them," said Mr Scarpinato, whose investigations have focused on the evolution of the Mafia into a modern business organisation.
Which got me thinking. When I got into the social enterprise scene after years of bridging the worlds of nonprofit and for-profit law, my impression was that social enterprise offered a holistic vision with the potential to break down artificial walls between so-called sectors. However, in far too many ways social enterprise has become just another way for small groups of self-defined insiders to seize control of the market in virtue. This particularly hits home everytime I hear someone tell me that such-and-such group, person or area of activity is not really social entrepreneurship, as if excluding people from the movement were its real value added.
It's easy to condemn the criminal mafia, but often the more dangerous practice is what's legal.
The complete article from 1939 is available at Animation Archive.
This is truly one of the most unusual charity-related stories that I have ever encountered. Lucy Baxter works with Mencap, a charity for people with learning disabilities. She also has a 21-year-old adopted son with Down's Syndrome.
Her ongoing mission: to find him a woman volunteer to have sex with him:
'I'd like all my boys to find love and enjoy sex.
'I would have no problem paying for Otto to go to Amsterdam to visit a brothel if that's what he wanted but I dare say he could afford to pay for it himself.
'A few of his friends suggested it a few months ago and since then I've talked to Otto about it in an adult way.
'Why shouldn't he enjoy the same experiences as other men his age?'
To accomplish this distinctly social purpose, Ms. Baxter has helped Otto set up a profile on social-networking site Bebo.
A Down's Syndrome charity exec comments:
Chief Executive of the Down's Syndrome Association Carol Boys said yesterday: 'People with Down’s syndrome have the same feelings and desires as everyone else and there is no reason why they shouldn’t have relationships like the rest of us.
'There are many people with Down’s syndrome who have found a partner and some that have gone on to get married.
'Otto’s experience highlights that there are different challenges that people with Down’s syndrome have to face because they have a visible disability.'
Rarely explored in social theory: the olfactory dynamics of human interaction.
LITTLE girls may be made of sugar and spice and all things nice, but their armpits smell of onions. And while free of slug or snail odours, men's armpits pack a powerful cheesy whiff.
That's the conclusion of research in Switzerland that involved taking armpit sweat samples from 24 men and 25 women after they had spent time in a sauna or ridden an exercise bike for 15 minutes.
The researchers found marked differences in the sweat from men and women. "Men smell of cheese, and women of grapefruit or onion," says Christian Starkenmann of Firmenich, a company in Geneva that researches flavours and perfumes for food and cosmetics companies.
The team found that the women's armpit sweat contained relatively high levels of an odourless sulphur-containing compound - 5 milligrams per millilitre of sweat versus 0.5 milligrams in men. When the researchers mixed this compound in the lab with bacteria commonly found in the armpit, the bugs turned it into a thiol - a previously discovered odour from armpits that is akin to onion. . . .
Next, the team hope to develop new ingredients for deodorants that fight the smells. "We could make inhibitors that neutralise the precursors, or block the bacterial enzymes that do the conversion," says Starkenmann.
Some researchers are sceptical that gender is the main deciding factor, arguing that the patterns found in Swiss volunteers might not apply to other populations with different diets and genetic backgrounds. "Other factors include what you eat, what you wash with, what you wear and what genes you inherit," says Tim Jacob of Cardiff University in the UK.
Even if the specific aromas are culturally dependent, the fact that differences emerge raises interesting questions about the relation of our olfactory sense to social connectivity, as does the fact that our first impulse today is to neutralize and replace natural smells.
Recent news articles about Obama's post-ideological pragmatism got me thinking back to the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, when pragmatic philosophy rose as an alternative to philosophical idealism. John Dewey is probably the most familiar pragmatic thought leader in the public realm, but he was far from alone. You can see the semantic traces of this movement throughout political and philanthropic writing from that era.
For example, check out this 1915 book on civic ritual by poet, playwright and social theorist Percy MacKaye. It may seem quaint now, but back in the day it was quite radical, both theoretically and in practice. A number of its core themes--inclusive equality, social design, a shift from consumption to participation, --are values now seen as cutting-edge. MacKaye's argument, down to his explanation of the role of "symbolic dance," reflects his pragmatic perspective. It's especially evident in passages such as this--note the references to crafts, form and plasticity:
Above: a resident of the Lutheran Home in Topton, PA--a senior citizens facility near my childhood home--participates in the popular Wii bowling league:
Senior citizens, who are sometimes presumed to be averse to technological innovation, are embracing Nintendo's video game system.
"It's surprising how they've taken to the Wii technology," said Sue Fogel, activities coordinator at The Lutheran Home. "Once they got the knack of it, they were hooked."
On the Nintendo Wii console, seniors are bowling, golfing and playing baseball and tennis without venturing outdoors. . . .
When it comes to moves, few can match 83-year-old Ted Jentsch's sidewinder-style body language.
Coaxing the ball into the groove with a nod here and a nudge there, Jentsch nailed three strikes in a row - called a turkey - and finished a round with an impressive 193.
The performance made his day.
"I was feeling lousy all weekend, and I almost didn't make it," said Jentsch, a retired pastor of St. John's Lutheran in Sinking Spring. "Playing like this, though, gets me energized."
Jentsch, who once taught sociology and anthropology at Kutztown University, offered an academic's view of Wii bowling.
"This is an interesting way that modern technology has made it possible for people who can't perform vigorous physical activity to have a social experience and enhance their feeling of self-esteem," said Jentsch, who walks with a cane.
The U.S. Postal Service has temporarily shut down its annual Operation Santa Claus, in which individuals "adopt" children who write letters to the North Pole, after a postal worker recognized one gift giver as a registered sex offender.
"This is a program that we have promoted for 100 years that is very near and dear to the Postal Service," said Sue Brennan, a spokeswoman for the program. "Everyone wants to believe in Santa. For us to stop this, we feel we are doing the right thing."
At first, the Postal Service said the program would not resume until next year because the problem could not be fixed quickly. Later on, it said it planned to reopen the Manhattan program on Saturday, with procedural changes. It doesn't know about other cities.
Under the fixes, the program will acquire an anonymity that might drain it of some of its warmth. Names and addresses will be blacked out and letters will be numbered. Instead of sending gifts directly, gift-givers will need to take wrapped presents to the post office and provide the recipient's number. The post office will then send them out.
The idea of personally delivering gifts to children in the city's poorest corners -- a step that many program participants most enjoyed -- is now completely unthinkable.
This transformation of personal gift-giving into a black box is but one example of how questions of privacy affect the way groups implement the ideal of open connectivity. Human connections become mere abstractions, if they aren't prohibited completely. Yet if we open the system without making considerable expenditures of time and money to screen out untrustworthy givers, we run a real risk of equally, if not even more inhumane acts. It's a classic tragic choice.
Articles on the Madoff implosion highlight ripple effects beyond the loss of money & closure of prominent charities. Last night in my nonprofit class we discussed the tension this is creating within nonprofit boards, as well as its potential impact on nonprofit governance. Below, an excerpt from one news story highlighting the scandal's effect on local social networks:
"This is a very wealthy area, a place where there are a lot of philanthropic people. The fact that a lot of charity money has been lost is maybe the hardest thing for people to swallow," he said.
The local Palm Beach Post reported a frosty exchange at a birthday party Saturday night at Mr. Trump's ultra-exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club, where several furious Madoff clients confronted Robert Jaffe, who not only invested heavily in the disgraced financier but also received a fee for steering other clients to Mr. Madoff.
With Mr. Trump looking on, Mr. Jaffe came close to a physical confrontation with one particularly unhappy Madoff investor. "There were a lot of unhappy campers there," Mr. Trump told the newspaper.
In a response to my post on FORGE, global health and Islamic banking consultant Jody Ranck reflected on how refugee services "reinscribe the camp." It was a comment I really appreciated, because it referred to a model of moral nihilism that was quite influential on my extensive (and, I hope, to be published next year) research on uncivil society. The theory in question: Giorgio Agamben's work on the state of emergency (or "exception").
If you're interested in the unintended consequences of good work, I highly recommend checking out Agamben's writings, especially these three books. Here's a useful excerpt on The Camp as Nomos.
Agamben's research has applications way beyond refugee work, especially in the U.S. One thing I'm working on myself for next year: ways to move beyond the matrix of dependence that shapes the relation between philanthropy and what are perceived in the U.S. as minorities. If Obama's campaign reminded us of anything, it's that immigrant and ethnic minority communities have strong institutional resources that arguably provide stronger models for effective strategy than investment banks and hedge funds. Rather than reinforce the superior/inferior cognitive frame by pondering yet again how charity can "help," do-gooders would do better to study what we can learn.
Which--along with this UK Times article on celebrity and social enterprise--reminds me of one of my favorite all-time satires of charity: Ricky Gervais on celebrity appeals for Africa. As McLuhan was wont to say, behind every joke is a grievance, and here you can see a brutal takedown of how charity has come to serve commercial colonialism:
Turn the kaleidoscope, and a local mall transforms from a commodified conformist culture-free zone into a nexus of community:
Both Birnbrey and Susan Wachter, professor with University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Real Estate Department, warn the social and economic impact of empty stores can be devastating.
"One of the biggest consequences [of store and mall closings] is the loss of a sense of community," Birnbrey said. "I am a big believer that malls are an essential part of Americana. A mall is a place where people gather and socialize."
Birnbey is an industry rep, but his point is nonetheless valid--malls are social spaces, and a well-designed mall builds on our tendency to connect. A number of malls, however, are designed as if their sole function is to line up a strip of stores, and my thoroughly uninformed guess would be that these are the most vulnerable.
Susan Wachter has done lots of interesting work on real estate, economics and society, such as this 2005 article on The American Mortgage in Historical and International Context.
"So many years, so many changes, with Fortuna wending through them like Theseus' thread."
That's what I wrote back in February when Cafe La Fortuna closed its doors for the last time. Ten months later, I still regularly find myself about to suggest another trip uptown for coffee and community, only to remember that it is gone. Today, it's on my mind because Newsday has posted a nice commemorative photo gallery.
Every so often I hear a sincere nonprofiteer going on about how for-profits are corrosive while nonprofits propagate social values. At times like that I think about Fortuna . . . and the contractor who saw his work on homes as a way to build community . . and the auto mechanic whose passion for learning--and personal library--rivaled that of the professors and grad students who flocked to chat with him at his garage.
Social values are not a zero sum game. By recognizing the organic connections among all forms of personal identity, we don't diminish nonprofits--rather, we come closer to understanding what they mean.Above: In 1976, legendary Soviet-era folk singer Vladimir Vysotsky travels to New York & is interviewed for 60 Minutes. Note Vysotsky's subtlety--he used the system to beat the system. His music did more to undermine Soviet authority than any number of protests, and it will continue to exert substantial influence whoever exerts political control.
I missed the fair trade tea tasting, but maybe if I'm not too swamped I can make it to the exploitive soul-crushing tea event next Monday night!
Mark Federman has a useful roundup on McLuhan on art.
As for the post's political point, I'm utterly ignorant of the issues in Canadian politics, but one response that comes to mind is to wonder whether government-subsidized art is truly a counter-environment or a mediated co-option of a counter-environment by the Emperor. The radical goes numb, the way The Rite of Spring has gone from riot-inducing to sleep-inducing at major metropolitan symphonies. Just asking!
The book above: Federman's McLuhan for Managers, which is excellent. Buy it, read it, live it.
Via the Daily Bedpost, an update on this controversial church sign response to Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl & I like it."
Brothers and sisters, please. Besides, lesbians are usually the kind of people who fight for peace and women's equality and decent vegetarian food -- they make the world a better place. And they're probably the ones who make the most comfortable shoes in heaven, too.
