Doing The Best We Can...

So I'm waiting out the writer's strike by catching up on all the TV shows I watch on DVD (bonus: no commercials). Given how little time I have to watch TV, this strike could go on forever and I'd still have shows to catch up on. I recently watched the "Mr. Eko" episode while watching Season 3 of Lost. When Eko was a kid, he refused to confess his sin of stealing food to feed his hungry brother. And, true to form, years later, he still refused to confess his sins. He concludes that he did the best that he could under the circumstances, as if that was enough to justify all the bad things he's done (and he did some pretty bad things).


I haven't trafficked anything illegal, or murdered anyone, and yet I have a very hard time accepting that doing the best we can is good enough. Looking around at people in the court system these days (Robert Pickton comes to mind) I can't help but think there's got to be some standards. I mean, you can't just brutally and coldly murder innocent people and say, "I did the best I could." Where do we draw a line in this sea of moral relativism? Or is that like trying to distinguish the peeing and non-peeing sections of a pool?

The difference between people like myself and Robert Pickton is intention. I always have the intention of doing the right thing, whereas he's a sociopath with no moral compass. I don't know if what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions is true. A Muslim colleague of mine describes asking for forgiveness as being the sincere intent not to do the sin again. It's the sincerity of the intent that counts, not whether or not we actually do the sin again. The problem with intent is that the only being that can judge the sincerity of our intent is thought by some to be a figment of the imagination. And for those people who do believe in this being, judgement comes only at the end of our lives. So where does that leave us? How do we as a society judge those whose intent we can never know?

Maybe the point is that we shouldn't be judging as much as we do. Maybe we shouldn't freak out about every little stupid thing that other people do and even more important, maybe we shouldn't freak out so much about every little stupid thing we do.

"I ask for no forgiveness, Father. For I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive. A small boy once asked me if I was a bad man. If I could answer him now I would tell him that when I was a young boy I killed a man to save my brother's life. I am not sorry for this. I am proud of this. I did not ask for the life that I was given, but it was given nonetheless. And with it I did my best." Mr. Eko [Lost]

Zen and the Art of Solitaire

I read the first 2 chapters in the book The Joy Diet by Martha Beck. Essentially, I couldn't do the first thing on the diet, which is nothing, so I didn't consider moving on before I had mastered the first step. I never thought it would be difficult to just sit down and do nothing, but it is so ingrained in my Protestant-work ethic body to always be doing. So I found a compromise, and it's working well for me.

Solitaire. It's something many people would consider a waste of time, a mindless activity to pass the time. However, I have discovered life lessons in this simple game. First of all, it is statistically impossible to win every game. Although no statistics currently exist for the game, I know from experience that you can play a game without moving a single card. That's just the way the cards are dealt. Sometimes, that's life. We are dealt whatever cards we have in life, and sometimes, we just can't win. The nice thing about life (and solitaire) is that sometimes we do win. Solitaire may be just a game, and it's easy not to take it seriously. Life is not a game but sometimes I think we take it too seriously. Knowing that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose should help us keep things in perspective.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston Churchill

Loving Life and the Food Network

I used to think that to live a really full life meant you had to live, well, a full life. Every minute should be doing something, not just anything but something meaningful. Thus hours were guiltily wasted watching TV (except the Food Network-hey, even in the Sims you can gain cooking skills by watching cooking on television) and playing Solitaire. I would ask myself when I was going to write that novel, or do something useful.

I picked up The Joy Diet by Martha Beck the other day. The first step in the joy diet is to do nothing. Since I couldn't very well do nothing, I gave up after the second chapter (truth: why couldn't I do nothing? well, I think I've already explained that). I liked the idea of the book but its practices I wasn't quite ready for yet. I did, however, realize that this may be the only time in my life that I can play Solitaire without interuption and I have come to enjoy it as rather a Zen activity. So I'm halfway there.

My favourite chefs on the Food Network are Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver. Aside from their cute (but vulgar) British accents, one of the reasons why I adore their shows (and dislike so many of the celebrity "chefs") is because they have a lot of passion for their food. They care about quality ingredients and doing things right.

Then, it hit me: loving life is as much about filling every single moment with activity as loving food is about shoving fistfuls of food in your mouth. Loving life is about passion. It's about savouring moments, whether it's solitaire or the next great novel. It may be bitter, it may be sweet, it might leave a nasty aftertaste in our mouth, but if we're going to live it to the fullest then we should make every effort to relish every thing that comes our way. Isn't that what zest for life is all about?

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."- Benjamin Franklin

"All miseries derive from not being able to sit in a room alone." Pascal

Or What's a Heaven For?

The original name of God, the 4 Hebrew letters yud-hey-vav-hey (YHVH) is very special. We have long since lost the ability to pronounce it and instead use words like Adonai, Yahweh, or Jehovah. I am happy we have lost the ability to name God. In being able to name something, we are given power over it. If you think of all the stories like Rumpelstiltskin, Betelgeuse, and others that exist in other cultures, you will see what I mean. God has always been above definitions. In Exodus 3:13-15, we are told the story of Moses at the Burning Bush talking to God.

Moses said to God, 'So I will go to the Israelites and say, 'Your fathers' God sent me to you.' They will immediately ask me what His name is. What shall I say to them?'

"I will be who I will be" replied God to Moses.
[God then] explained, 'This is what you must say to the Israelites: 'I Will Be sent me to you.' '

God then said to Moses, 'You must [then] say to the Israelites, YHWH the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, sent me to you.' This is My eternal name and this is how I am to be recalled for all generations.

[http://bible.ort.org/books/pentd2.asp?action=displayanchor&pentid=P1595#P1595 accessed May 10, 2007]

Humans are thirsty for Knowledge. This might be Knowledge about God, Truth, Beauty, basically any Ultimate Idea. We are, of course, starting with the premise that these things exist, which is a pretty big presumption. The difficulty with the search, I have discovered, is that once we define an Ultimate Idea (and in my mind, all these Ultimate Ideas represent the same thing), it ceases to be Ultimate. Definitions are limiting and they give us power over the thing named. Ultimate Ideas are limitless and omnipotent.

At this point, one might ask why bother searching if the answer can't be found. My answer to that existential question is that the end does not justify the means, but the end is the means. The more we learn, the more we realize there is to learn. Perhaps that is why the universe is expanding.


"Don't search for answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer..." Rainer Maria Rilke

"A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" -Robert Browning

Our Ephemeral Times

I was discussing with one of my colleagues the other day about the new pedagogical renewal occurring in our province these days. One of the great disadvantages of this reform is that as old textbooks become outdated, the need for new ones increases. However, new textbooks are not being approved as quickly as the old ones are being made obsolete. As a veteran teacher, my colleague has seen pedagogical reform before and tells me that as early as the 60s, the mentality was such that books themselves were becoming obsolete and that we did not need new textbooks. And this was before the age of the Internet.

There are several problems with this mentality, especially in this age of information. The first one is that if we are to use the Internet almost exclusively, we have to change our perception that everything we read is fact. The advantage of books is that not everyone can publish them (the expense of self-publishing aside) and therefore most things in print meet a certain standard of accuracy. With the Internet, where everyone and their cat has a blog, anyone can publish anything. There is no censoring and much debate as to whether censorship should be taking place on the Internet. Our students lack the ability and are not being taught the skills they need to evaluate critically everything they come across. In the past, this was not entirely necessary (although beneficial) but if books become obsolete it becomes absolutely crucial.

The second problem is there even if everything on the Internet had the same degree of accuracy as the hardcopy world. You can find something really great on the Internet and the next day you'll be surfing Highway 404 (Page Not Found). Have you ever tried visiting all your old bookmarks? So few of them actually work after a year. Even my own webpage, after updating it time and time again doesn't resemble what it does when I first created it. How can I see how I have grown and changed as a person if I can't look back and grimace over the early years (as I can with my hardcopy journal). The ephemeral nature of the Internet does not allow us to effectively study the past, and we have all heard the adage about those who do not learn their history being condemned to repeat it.

One of the great advantages with this digital age, however, is the ability to live in the moment. We know what is happening in our world at any given moment because as soon as it happens, it's on the Internet. People are more hesitant to do things that they think might get negative publicity (unless you believe all publicity is good publicity). This global village makes us feel like neighbours with people halfway around the world, which is fundamental to the peace process.

Regardless of what happens, I hope we learn the skills necessary and adapt to the difficulties that these problems present.

"Censorship, like Charity, should begin at home; but unlike Charity, it should end there."-Luce

The Road Less Traveled

Besides being a poem by Robert Frost, and a best-selling self-help book by one of my favourite authors, what is the road less traveled? We are encouraged to take it, whatever it ends up meaning for our lives.

We have but one life to live, at least, in our present incarnation or that we know about. And while we lead our lives to the best of our abilities, there is only so much we can accomplish. We cannot be suburban housewives and glamourous movie stars at the same time, although either wishes they could change places from time to time. They are simply incompatible. And yet, who has taken the road less traveled? The movie star, simply because there are less of them? These are the existential questions that haunt us every day and fill us with regret. How do we know we are living the life we should be, when there are so many lives we could be leading?

Furthermore, if everyone began taking the road less traveled, wouldn't it no longer be so? Our society, so fixated on uniqueness to the point where we are all rebellious and non-conformists in the same way. Doesn't that make the old road less traveled look like a well-worn path?

The answers, as with any philosophical question, are few. I think the only two cents I have to add is that perhaps we just have to have confidence as we head down any road, certain that regardless of the path we chose, it is the one we want to be living. It is only with this confidence that we can drown out the sounds of the existential angst that plagues us.

""Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."-Robert Frost

Time is of the Essence

Rereading my post on Existential Angst, I've realised that I've learned a little more about Existentialism and therefore have to change my explanation of what it really is. So I guess we'll all go to bed a little less stupid tonight. I've just finished reading Sartre's Nausee, although, regrettably, not in the original French (pretentious enough for you? Seriously though, translations are tricky and should be avoided whenever possible).

The protagonist of the story is a writer going about his daily business. The style of writing is much like Alan Lightman or Jeanette Winterson, a stream of consciousness where you often find yourself unsure if he's having a flashback, a dream or it's really happening. It is mostly incomprehensible as a message, except that the protagonist eventually realizes that everything he's doing is pointless. This is what I used to believe the sole nature of Existentialism was.

I have had several existential moments since reading this text, and now I understand it a lot better. First, I contemplate sitting in front of the TV all evening. Second, I sit at a bureaucratic meeting where motions are passed and we all sit like chimps and raise our hands when told. Everything has been decided in advance, and our "vote" doesn't even count (no really, it happened just yesterday). The existential thought is not that these things don't matter but "Am I really doing all that I should be with the time that I have?" This is what the protagonist was wondering, and to a certain extent it paralyzed him.

Life is short. We all know that. Meanings can easily be taken away, and there are no certain answers. So how do we know we are using our time to its full potential? That is the true essence of existentialism. I realised this weekend how attached I am to time. I could sit alone, I don't crave company as much as others. I don't need too much (I like to think of myself as a modern day Thoreau) but I couldn't stop checking the time. A beautiful long weekend, with nothing to do but sit and relax, and I care about if it is 10 or 11. Odd, isn't it?

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." -Benjamin Franklin

Best. Book. Ever.

Ok, so maybe it was not THE best book ever. But it was certainly a damn good book and anyone who's in the know will know why I chose the title of the post to be what it is. The book, BTW, is called Planet Simpson, by Chris Turner, a fellow Gen-Xer whom I will describe as a fellow pretentious philosopher. Yes, the book is that good.

So let's get down to business and blog away. I mentioned that my peer was a Gen-Xer because that's the post today. This book (which I think is about our generation primarily and the Simpsons secondarily) speaks a lot about what it means to be Generation X. It sort of brought together a lot of ideas that I've been having about what it means to live in the time we live in and who we are. Who I am, given that I live in this time.

One thing that really spoke to me was our extreme individualism (see 1776 for my previous ranting on the subject). We think we are all so cool and new and not owing anything to wherever it is that we are descended from, as Chris says so adeptly in his book "[there is] an implicit argument that not only do we as citizens owe nothing to the institutions that gave us our comfortable and prosperous lives, but that we as individuals owe no debt to the people that gave us life." Yet Chris himself gives the perfect example of this in his book. He tells a story about a concert that he went to when he was reintroduced to rock'n'roll. It was dead to him, it had all been done before, and then, this concert came along and restored his faith in that particular institution. The part that really got to me though, was that the song the person happened to be singing (which was the person's own epiphany about creating something new when it's all been done before) was that the main lyrics were basically saying thanks for nothing. Chris, do you even realise the irony?

Chris gives many other examples of this extreme individualism in his book. The symptoms of this are people who don't give a shit for anything or anyone else because they are too busy caring about themselves. Are we really becoming that much of a self-centered society? The "I" began its existence in 1776 but we have reached the pinnacle where the only thing that exists is the I. Forget "I wandered lonely as a cloud." Who the fuck cares about the cloud? I'm lonely and the world owes it to me that I not be lonely.

We often forget that we were never promised a rose garden and that it was only the pursuit of happiness that was proposed. We may as well be chasing clouds for all the good it has done. So how does my generation deal with all of this? We watch The Simpsons and laugh our asses off. Why is it so funny? Because it shows us our folly right in our faces. It shows us the way the world is, and not the way the world should be. If only it could show us how to reconcile the two, it could win the Nobel prize.

Recommended Reading: Planet Simpson by Chris Turner
Recommended Viewing: For something else that strikes you right in the face, no-holds-barred, try watching Dead Like Me. It also proves that I am not the only freak out there obsessed with death.

"The answer to the great Question of...Life, the Universe and Everything...is Forty-Two." -Douglas Adams [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]

Oh, The Humanity

I've been thinking a lot about human nature lately. When I say human nature, I guess I'm wondering about the destructive or evil inclinations we have. Graffiti (tags specifically) particularly bothers me because it is ugly and pointless. Pure destructiveness. The metro (subway) station near where I live (and consequently take everyday to work) is littered with graffiti on the tarp that covers up the escalator that's under repair. Furthermore, there is so much litter under the tarp that you have to wonder: wouldn't it just be easier to throw it in the garbage? It's not like there aren't any around. We often use expressions like, "to err is human" or "he's only human" or "that's just human nature." I think one of the things people say that really bothers me is when they try to excuse themselves by saying it's only natural. To paraphrase M. Scott Peck: shitting in your pants is only natural.

What does this imply? That human nature, like the Christians believe, is base? Are we truly burdened with Original Sin? M. Scott Peck wrote a fabulous book on human nature called People of the Lie, and talks about why evil exists in the world. His belief is that we should not be disappointed when we see evil, but we should expect it. We should be more surprised when we see good in the world, because people are not naturally inclined to do good. This is probably a very depressing idea to most people.

To say that we are "sinners" and leave it at that is a naive concept. I think what makes us human is not just that we are inclined to do evil but that we are capable of learning to do better. I think, to be bold, this is how we make our life meaningful: by striving to be better people and improve ourselves in all areas of our poor existence. This is what truly separates us from the animals. It is not just our freedom of choice, in which we can choose to follow our baser instincts, or rational thought (a higher level of consciousness, if you will), which we can avoid, but a combination of these with the ambition to better ourselves. A good example of this is freedom of speech. Truly, we can say what we want. We can think and say things that show how intelligent and self-aware we are. Or we can decide to follow our baser instincts and say things for the sake of being provocative, without any thought as to the consequences (the incident with the editorial cartoon of the prophet Mohammed comes to mind).

In the end, as M. Scott Peck points out, we give up shitting in our pants. We figure out that it is not the way things are done, and make an effort to do something completely unnatural: hold it in, sit on a funny receptacle and flush it away. My hope is that in the end, we will give up our other baser natural instincts and strive for something purer.

"The problem with this world is that people are all too aware of their rights and not aware enough of their responsibilities."

God is Dead

So my dear friend Nietzsche said. Of course, like so many misunderstood of his time, he was pretty much branded a heretic without even so much as a thought as to what he meant by the phrase. It wasn't simply a saying that he was an atheist, that he did not believe in God (he very well might have been one, but that's not the point), but a profound statement that the world that he knew was coming to realize that the God of the Gaps was becoming less and less important as science began to fill up those gaps.

I have yet to read any Joseph Campbell (beyond Action Philosophers #3, in stores now), but his writings on myth are very important to us in this day and age. Myth does not mean "fable" or "fiction" but it can take the format of a story. It is the narrative, generally belonging to a group of people. As people mature, the myth no longer fits into their worldview and it is "broken." Like Humpty Dumpty, all the kings horses and all the king's men can't put it back together again. Either the myth changes, or it is abandoned. Hence why religions do change, albeit very slowly.

Having previously commented on the problems with postmodernism, I began to contemplate the paradox of competing narratives. The whole "everybody's-opinions-are-equally-valid-so-long-as-they're-not-hurting-anyone" postmodern view of things. We like to see things clearly, as they say, in Black and White. If something is true, then clearly what is the opposite of that something is not true. It is my opinion that although the narratives look different on the surface, they are only put into competition with each other because people lack the insight to read into the myth and what it really says. As my grandmother's grandmother used to say, "All roads lead to the same place." Competing narratives are just making the same point in a different way, just like we can say "yes" and "oui" and "ja" and it all means the same thing. It is up to us to discover the meaning of it all, to dig deeper and not keep God in our back pockets. Since we are all unique, we can also utilize the different interpretations to understand the Truth more fully. The elephant is not just the legs, the ear or the trunk.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -Niels Bohr
"Nietzsche is dead." -God

Beyond Absurdity

Having just finished a little book on the subject of postmodernism, I feel able to tackle a blog post. There are a few questions here, namely, what is postmodernism, what are the problems with it, and what are the solutions.

Regardless of our philosophical outlook, we are living in a postmodern world. I am so far entrenched in it that I am often blind to its influence. Yet as pervasive as it is, one of the biggest problems with postmodernism is that it is difficult to define. The foremost technique of the theory is a process called Deconstruction (with much thanks to Derrida and Foucault) by which we analyse texts to find out that they mean absolutely nothing. And by texts, I mean anything and everything. So essentially, postmodernism cannot have a definition, because by defining itself it opens it up to Deconstruction, and sets it up to be an essentially meaningless theory.

However, the irony is that Deconstruction makes postmodernism a meaningless theory even without defining it. By stating that because everything can be reduced to nothingness (as the title of this post suggests), postmodernism is making a vague claim that the truth does not exist. It sets itself up as anti-anything that claims to have the truth, especially anything remotely rational like science. However, this can sometimes be beneficial instead of just destructive. The problem with any theory and any claim to truth is that it often forces itself on others. And this is where I have to point out my bias as someone who never knew a world that was not fully entrenched in postmodernist theory. Certain peoples have been "put in their place" by those who believed they knew better. Many of those marginalised have now been given a voice thanks to this theory. If everything is up for interpretation, and no one interpretation is better than the other, then all may speak freely. However, the downside to this is that it created a society of victims. The insane amount of political correctness that haunts us today is a product of postmodernism. For even though what we say is meaningless, it can be interpreted to mean what we didn't intend for it to.

Where do we go from here? Any so called established "truth" is being destroyed, and dialectic, the backbone of truth-seeking, is also being torn down. I believe that the world will not tolerate this for that much longer, for as much as we enjoy basking in our helpless state of victimhood, the truth will win out. We must realise that people have an insatiable craving for the truth, and will find it wherever they can-why do you think Bush is on his second term? He promises what others refuse to. We will continue to lose people to idiocy if we cannot find our way out of this corner we have painted ourselves into.

"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art." -Susan Sontag
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." -Freud

Recommended reading: Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction by Christopher Butler

Of Bullies and Supermen

Yes, I realise it's been a long time since I've posted. Frankly, I've been busy with Passover preparations, and learning a haftarah to sing in synagogue. I know that you honestly don't care about the petty details of my life, and I promised myself this wouldn't be a blog like all other blogs (Today I changed my cat's litter box. I think Fluffy must be coming down with something. He hardly played with his ball of yarn today. I must see the vet about it. I hope he doesn't give me any medication. Remember the fiasco that happened the last time I tried to give him medication?! :)). Ever notice how all bloggers have cats? But I digress.

On to today's topic: bullying. This is something, of course, that I see on a daily basis. The notes I intercept on a regular basis are all about how so and so's been calling so and so words that I didn't even know at that age (and I'm still too young to know). Kids also get beat up in the hallways (on a less regular basis, as that type of bullying is more often caught and more severely punished). With instant messaging kids have an easier time of harassing each other at home (one reason to be thankful I didn't grow up in the age of the Internet). I don't know that things change much as we get older, there will always be aggressive personalities vying for some bitch to do their work for them or to make miserable for some unknown reason.

People are always going on about what's "natural." So isn't the natural order of things that someone stronger should prey on someone weaker and get what they want? Yet the great majority of us feel this is morally wrong, whatever code we abide by. Even Nietzsche wrote about the "Superman" who was being oppressed by society because of our beliefs. (I haven't actually read Nietzsche, but I read about him in the excellent comic Action Philosophers #1, in stores now). Regardless of how Nietzsche's beliefs have been bastardized throughout time, perhaps they still have some validity.

If my scientifically minded husband will forgive me for exploring the world of evolution, I will start with the reasons why we are programmed to be aggressive. The main reason is that if people weren't aggressive, somebody else would eat their share, and they'd have nothing and die. In scarce times, only those who were strong enough got to eat, and instead of bullies beating people up for their lunch money, they just took their lunch. Those who got to eat got to reproduce, if only for the sheer fact of being alive (but hey, bullies also have bad boy appeal, and maybe that's an evolutionary trait too--women want a man who can provide, no matter what he has to do to do it). This is how the world worked for many a year. At what point did this change?

I would have to say Romanticism killed the Superman. No where else in history (and my college professor always used 1776 as the beginning of the age of Romanticism) are man's rights defined so clearly: Rousseau and his Social Contract, the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution. During this time the idea that everyone has rights even if they can't defend them becomes paramount. Even a Superman is not bigger than someone's Rights. If a Superman tries to be bigger than someone else's rights, everyone gets together and does something to the Superman to beat him into submission, whether it be by shaming him or literally beating him. The Superman is nothing against the collective (Resistance is futile. He must be assimilated).

Besides cultural programming and societal pressure (as if that wasn't enough), why do we still espouse human rights? Why do we feel such a strong sense of morality when it comes to human rights abuses? It is possible that there is still a degree of self-preservation. Were it not for the stars, we could have been born in any situation around the world. I also believe that somewhere we know that now that we have finished being fruitful and multiplying (enough with the fruitful already! Isn't 6 billion people enough?!) that the way to world peace is through the respect of the rights of others. Essentially, while the Superman had a role to play in the building of this world, he is incompatible with the preservation of this world.

Fundamentally, though, the social contract not only comes to our benefit with Rights. It's purpose is to lay out Rights and Responsibilities, something which is greatly forgotten in our post-post-modern world. This is the reason why human rights abuses are still occurring around the world. And if we can't bear our responsibilities well in small things (someone else's lunch money), how can we manage the big ones (ethnic cleansing)?

"Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word 'human'"-Susan Lafollette [Concerning Women]

Special Status

I'm still alive...I was just buried in report cards for the past few weeks...

I have many students with various kinds of disabilities, as befits a teacher of special needs. I have kids with ADD/ADHD. So help me, they are the most frustrating kids on the planet...Still, they are the least of my worries (when I can get them to sit down and stop bothering the other students). Most of my students have what we commonly call a "learning disability" which doesn't really say much as to their condition. Usually it's up to the teacher to figure out what that means for each student so they can help them achieve their best. Generally, I find it very hard to see the difference between "learning disabled" and "lazy and forgetful," although I know the distinction is there somewhere. It just becomes a lot harder to deal with when you have them teamed up together, because you don't know what to blame.

The disabilities these students have are not going to go away. They are serious problems, not just made up by teachers who think students misbehave too much and need to be medicated in order to calm down. And learning disabilities are an even more serious concern because these students are eventually going to join the workforce and be productive somehow. The big problem, from my perspective, is not how do we teach these students (it's simple, the same way as any other student, just break things down more and take it slow) but how we integrate these students into our classroom and the world without pulling everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

No child left behind has begun to translate into "we don't fail kids anymore." Teachers do fail students (at least I do). They may curve their grades a little but at the end of it all students will still fail. What else can you do when Bobby refuses to work or Sally hasn't shown up to class all year? However, some of the kids who don't make it are trying really, really hard and they just can't do it. They're not academics and hey, even Einstein failed math in elementary, right? No child left behind, right? So why don't we just pass them along to the next grade, never mind the fact that they haven't mastered the skills they need to move on. Never mind that every year they get passed up their inabilities are compounded. And hey, while we're at it, since the parents of Bobby and Sally are going to complain, we'll have to pass them too. Never mind that it shows them they can get something for nothing.

Anyone with a bit of common sense (which must not include the people who passed a student of mine into the next grade who failed math with a 40 last year) sees the problem with this. Not only is our education system underfunded, a degree will eventually not be worth the paper it's printed on. Anyone can get one. I'm waiting for this to hit the college and university level, and as special needs students are given their rightful status at these institutions and people who know people are getting passing grades for nothing, slowly the entire education system of North America will crumble.

I don't believe we should have an education system like that of other countries, especially that of the Asian ones we try to compete with. These countries have no place for students who have special needs and have valuable things to contribute to our society. As with a democracy, our education is the worst form there is, except all the others that have been tried.

"Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time." -Winston Churchill

Dying Courageously

Let's check out the news today. A boy in the US goes on a shooting rampage, killing a bunch of people and injuring many others before shooting himself. A man fights to end his wife's life while her family and many unrelated Conservatives fight to save it. I speak of these today because I want to discuss what it means to die courageously, having already discussed what it means to live courageously.

The first thing I'd like to comment on is what was splattered all over the front page this morning, Columbine redux. Obviously this kid had problems. I find it sad that he was allowed to fall through the cracks, as so many children are, but that is besides the point. The fact of the matter is that while this child wielded a lot of power in the weapons that he branded, he had no courage, ultimately taking his life, knowing the consequences that awaited him. Regardless of his reasons for doing what he did, there was no courage in his act. Courageous people find ways of dealing with their pain that does not include murder of innocents (including themselves). Suicide is cowardice. The mental anguish of depression can outweigh some of the toughest physical pain, and there is no analgesic to stop it. Yet I cannot believe that it is where life should end. This is where we must be courageous, creating in the face of despair.

The second situation is also difficult to talk about. Some people think that we are more humane to our animals than we are to our fellow human beings. Who cares more about their pets, those who choose to spare them the pain (or perhaps think it is too costly to save their lives), or those who choose to fight for their lives (or who won't spare them the pain because they themselves can't let go)? While the pet analogy is simplistic, it rings true. Far more simplistic is the idea that euthanasia is always wrong, or the right to choose is always right.

The two newsworthy situations are one and the same. Whether the pain is mental or physical, I don't think we can judge when it is appropriate to choose when to stop living. However, since medicine can keep us alive for a great deal of time, we must figure out what it means if our bodies are being kept alive by machines. How do we determine what "living" really is? As I said yesterday, I believe it is more than just the fact of existing. Yet where do we draw the line? The slippery slope may be a logical fallacy, but it is something we must keep in mind: the line must be drawn somewhere. If it is courageous to live, at what point is it OK not to? No matter what our capabilities, we can all create, we can all be courageous. But when that capacity is taken from us, I should hope that we have the courage to let go.

For further reading: Denial of the Soul by M. Scott Peck

Living Courageously

To me, the title of this post is an oxymoron, because to live is to be courageous. The dialogue continues, as is fitting for a philosophical discussion. How can death not be depressing? Again, I ask the opposite, why is it depressing? So far anyone has yet to answer this question. Everyone just assumes that it is true, which is the antithesis of philosophical debate. We must question everything. Besides, regardless of how we feel about it, it is a fact that one day we will all die. Facts may invoke feelings, but by themselves they are objective and without feeling. For those relentless commentators I ask for you to explain to me why death is depressing, not just to say that it is. Otherwise the debate will have ended because I believe I will have no more to say on the subject after this post.

My view, and perhaps it is because I am more sensitive to the fact of death, is that we choose to live everyday of our lives. We have a choice to make everyday in the face of the meaningless void that threatens us, and that is to create meaning in a meaningless world. Each day (and this is more apparent to adolescents and adults more than to children) we awake and decide to live. We do not have to make this decision, in fact, it would be so much easier to give up and not do anything. When I say "live," I am not speaking of merely existing, but the fact of living, which is to say that we add our two cents to the world by the things that we do. We don't have to be great artists to add a great deal to this world, any act of creation, however small it may be, will do. This takes great courage because anything that we do could be senselessly obliterated at any moment by any random act of humanity or God. Still, we choose to do them. Why?

Regardless of the inhumanities of man, I must admire the courage to continue despite everything that has happened. Despite wars, despite natural disasters, despite disease, we continue. Not only do we get up each day and decide that suicide is just not an option (which for some of us is quite an accomplishment), we go even further and create meaning. We give birth to children that might not grow up, we give birth to ideas that might not see fruition, we give birth to art that might be destroyed and we teach future generations that this is the right path. I agree. This is what I mean by living courageously.

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage." -Seneca
"Often the test of courage is not to die, but to live." -Vittorio Alfieri
"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die." -G. K. Chesterton

Death and Dying

I received a comment recently about how all my posts seem to come down to death and dying. Granted, it is somewhat of an obsession of mine (and I have never been labeled as a Goth by myself or others), however, what occurred to me is not, "Why do I always think about death?" but rather, "Why don't others think about it more?"

We are a culture of eternal youth and living forever. Everyone wants to be young forever-or at least ascribe to a philosophy that promises life everlasting. Just look at our obsession with plastic surgery, even to the point of having TV shows about it! There is an enormous amount of research going into studying aging. In this past century life expectancy has increased greatly, and even the quality of life has improved for those who do reach venerable ages (at least in this part of the world). My own great-grandmother was cracking jokes at her hundredth birthday party. The number of centenarians is also increasing, and we are promised that soon everyone will live to be a hundred.

This is the norm. No one questions it, of course, because it's normal. So when someone does something that is not normal, like talking about death a lot in a life-centered society, they are considered to be abnormal. It doesn't bother me much to be considered abnormal, as if there's something wrong with thinking about death a lot. I'd rather be counter-culture anyway; I always have been, I always will be. Even Rollo May believes that the artists of our times are canaries of sorts, singing loudly to warn the people of impending danger.

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: people are afraid of death. I am no different than others, but I choose to live my life courageously by facing it. I don't believe we can ignore its importance. Death is the other side of the coin to life. It is only by struggling with this unknowable certainty that we can truly live.

"As you struggle with the mystery of your death, you will discover the meaning of your life." -M. Scott Peck [Further Down the Road Less Traveled]

For further reading: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross On Death and Dying and M. Scott Peck The Road Less Travelled

The Face That Launched One Thousand Ships

The reference in my title is to Helen of Troy, from a line in Marlowe's Faust. While Faust (whoever's it may be) is a post in itself, this particular post is about Helen and what she stands for, namely, Beauty (with a capital B). Why Helen? Helen is the inspiration for a culture. The Greeks are known as Hellenic for a reason. Although ancient Greece rules no more, it continues to inspire us (speaking from a strictly eurocentric point of view, which is fine considering that is my descent). Ancient Greece is the original classic, and since they were inspired by Beauty in all that they did, there must be something to it.

There is a reason why we human beings are creative, striving for Beauty. We are always striving to express ourselves and certainly art in all its forms is our means. According to Keats (Ode on a Grecian Urn), "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, --that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Dickinson also wrote in I Died for Beauty "'For beauty,' I replied./'And I for truth, -the two are one." Aldous Huxley also stated that "after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressable is music." Within our artistic endeavors lies a deeper meaning, regardless of its intentionality.

How does this Truth sneak into our endeavors? Part of it is how we are merely expressing that which has already existed for centuries as part of our culture. We are not only inspired by ancient civilisations but unconsciously socialised to make their Truths a part of us. Moreover, art acts as therapy as our artistic struggles mirror our struggles with the world around us. Our attempts to make sense of the world are expressed as art.

Fundamentally though, creative endeavors are the answer to our greatest fear: death. When we create something truly worthwhile, expressing enduring truths about the world, we are creating something that will outlast even ourselves. It is through these creative endeavors that we can continue to dialogue with those who are no longer physically with us and seek immortality for ourselves.

For further reading: Rollo May's Courage to Create and My Quest for Beauty

Personal Responsibility and Special Needs

A friend sent me a link yesterday to a message board discussing the situation of a special needs student at the university level. Obviously apropos to myself, given that I teach special needs students at the high school level, the debate proved interesting.

The situation was the following: the student has a condition known as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). [I will not even begin to debate whether or not this and other disabilities like it actually exist; anyone who does not believe in it should stop by my classroom sometime.] Given that most universities have policies for students with disabilities, this student was demanding extra time for his tests (up to twice the allowed time). Obviously, this is a difficulty for the person administering the test, and an ethical question involving the consideration of whether or not said student actually deserved the extra time because of his conduct during classtime. Plainly said, he didn't appear to be trying to compensating for his illness by sitting near the front of the class, visiting the professor during office hours, etc.

Regardless of what the answer is to the question, university policy exists and for good reason: there are students who need it. The fact that it is often abused (like so many other things) does not negate its necessity. There is nothing that the person administering the test can do-even if the student never attended class- but to grin and bear it. I don't think there is any review of policy or criteria you can put into place to make sure abuses don't happen.

However, ethically, we can debate this forever and a day. People have disabilities, this is a fact of life. To what extent can their disabilties be used as an excuse? It reminds me of the post I wrote on Fate (alas, the poor student was finally expelled; I wish him well). I would like to think that everyone is capable of doing much more than what they think they are capable of, if they would only try. Of course, again, my bias is that I am an educator and if I didn't believe that I wouldn't bother to help my students as much as I do. But just as I see so many people use their disabilities as an excuse, I see so many people overcoming incredible odds to accomplish amazing things.

"Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records."-William Ward

The Classics

Mark Twain defines a classic as "something that everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read." I wrote this quote down when I first began my collections because it amused me, but now I see a deeper meaning to it. We assume it means that people want to be "cultured," whatever that word means, because reading something somebody defines as a "classic" is one way to go about it. We would like to take the easy road, to be able to discuss the ideas present in the literature without having to actually read it. Again, I implore people to take the higher, more difficult path. You cannot skip important ideas without reading the full text (why Cliff notes are only good for high school English exams). The ideas inherent to the novel are not just about being "cultured" because you have read a certain piece of literature, but something far greater than can only be discovered as you work through the mythology that is inherent in it. What is "culture" anyway?

"Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit." -Arnold (emphasis mine)

Having just finished Rollo May's book The Cry for Myth, I am under the influence of his (and of course my dear friend Jung's) ideas about mythologies being inherent in our being. Regardless of the philosophy or psychology that you ascribe to, we love great stories because they present to us over and over again truisms about human beings, the way we are and act or could possibly act in given situations. Even before reading this book, I wrote in my writing journal three years ago, "Good writing is difficult to define because good stories come as close as possible to sharing the meaning of life-profound truth itself. When we write we must make our readers feel as if they are actually experiencing what we have experienced-our stories-and by doing so we share a little piece of life's grand puzzle." When we read literature we are in some way, whether we realize it or not, working through our own problems because the situations mirror our own.

"The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one's own growing inner self." -Harold Bloom [The Western Canon]

Honesty

Lying can take two forms. We can lie to others, and we can lie to ourselves. We start off by lying to others. We do it so often, and so well, that we actually convince ourselves of our untruths. Not just the untruths we tell others, but those we tell ourselves. We might use nice words like "rationalize," but it's really just a fancy word that means lying.

We lie to other people because it saves us. We make excuses for things not done or done, we fib so that we don't hurt others' feelings, but really, when it comes down to it, it's because we can't bear the discomfort that the truth brings. We don't want to be the messenger; there is a reason why the saying 'don't shoot the messenger' exists.

Lying to ourselves is a balm for an even deeper discomfort. If we told ourselves the truth about everything, we would make ourselves accountable for everything that we did. It would be our own responsibility to improve the parts of our lives that we dislike so much. We wouldn't be able to pin it on anyone else anymore, because we would have to be honest about it. Lying is a way of avoiding personal responsibility, Life and the Truth. How can we get closer to the Truth if we can't even bear to tell it to ourselves?

"Integrity is telling myself the truth. And Honesty is telling the truth to others."-Spencer Johnson