Harvard Students Launch a Free Course on How to Resist: Now You Can Watch the Lectures

in Current Affairs, Politics | April 5th, 2017

NOTE: As of July 22, we updat­ed this post to include the videos from the class ses­sions. Watch the playlist of lec­tures above.

I have my doubts about whether we should call reg­u­lar acts of civic duty “resis­tance,” rather than Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-pro­tect­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms.  Yes­ter­day we remem­bered Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. on the 49th anniver­sary of his assas­si­na­tion (and the 50th anniver­sary of his speech oppos­ing the Viet­nam War). As King and count­less oth­er civ­il rights and anti-war cam­paign­ers have demonstrated—some at the cost of their lives—civil dis­obe­di­ence is very often required and moral­ly jus­ti­fied when legal appeals for jus­tice fail. But for bet­ter or worse, “The Resis­tance” has become a catch-all media term for a loose and very often frac­tious col­lec­tion of main­stream Democ­rats, pro­gres­sives, and rad­i­cals of all stripes, whose tac­tics range from polite phone lob­by­ing to brawl­ing with white suprema­cists in the streets.

Mil­lions of peo­ple who for­mer­ly had lit­tle to no involve­ment in pol­i­tics have thrown them­selves into activism, and vet­er­an orga­niz­ers have been over­whelmed with new recruits. Just as quick­ly, those orga­niz­ers have met the chal­lenge by dis­sem­i­nat­ing guides for lob­by­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives, run­ning for office, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in more direct forms of action.

Every move­ment has its res­i­dent schol­ars and edu­ca­tors, whether they be eru­dite laypeo­ple, pro­fes­sion­al aca­d­e­mics, or enter­pris­ing col­lege stu­dents. A group from the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, “pro­gres­sive stu­dents,” writes CNN, from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, begin today what they’re call­ing “Resis­tance School,” a “4‑week course in anti-Trump activism… open to peo­ple across the coun­try and the world.” (You can watch the video from the course above.)

At their site, the stu­dents bill “Resis­tance School” as a series of “prac­ti­cal skills for tak­ing back Amer­i­ca” and open their online syl­labus with a quote spu­ri­ous­ly attrib­uted to Thomas Jef­fer­son: “When injus­tice becomes law, resis­tance becomes duty.” It’s pos­si­ble that who­ev­er said it had blood­i­er things in mind. Resis­tance School sticks to peace­ful means, with four ses­sions that teach, in order, “How to Com­mu­ni­cate our Val­ues in Polit­i­cal Advo­ca­cy,” “How to Mobi­lize and Orga­nize our Com­mu­ni­ties,” “How to Struc­ture and Build Capac­i­ty for Action,” and “How to Sus­tain the Resis­tance Long-Term.” Instruc­tors are drawn from the ranks of acad­e­mia, labor orga­niz­ing, and the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, and you can stream the ses­sions on the school’s site or on Face­book, or attend in per­son.

The Resis­tance School is sure to attract crit­i­cism, not only from the expect­ed sources but from more anti-estab­lish­ment fac­tions on the left. But that may be unlike­ly to deter the more than 10,000 peo­ple who have reg­is­tered for the first class. Orga­niz­ers have encour­aged peo­ple to attend in groups, and cur­rent­ly have about 3,000 groups enrolled. “Some are com­ing with groups of 700 peo­ple,” says co-founder Shanoor Seer­vai, “some are small­er groups, potlucks, gath­er­ing in people’s kitchens.”

Ser­vaai and fel­low Kennedy School stu­dents have been tak­en aback and are now, writes CNN, “grap­pling with ques­tions of scale.” How, they won­der, will such large num­bers of peo­ple coor­di­nate; how to mea­sure the impact of the pro­gram?.… ques­tions, per­haps, they will resolve by the fourth ses­sion, “How to Sus­tain the Resis­tance Long-Term.” But they’re cer­tain­ly not alone in try­ing to steer a mas­sive surge of new inter­est in activism and elec­toral pol­i­tics. As the mil­lions now plan­ning and par­tic­i­pat­ing in civ­il actions across the coun­try attest, peo­ple have begun to take to heart sen­ti­ments recent­ly expressed by orga­niz­er Alice Mar­shall: “If we wait for some great leader to save us we are lost. We have to save our­selves.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Matt Damon Reads Howard Zinn’s “The Prob­lem is Civ­il Obe­di­ence,” a Call for Amer­i­cans to Take Action

Hen­ry David Thore­au on When Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence and Resis­tance Are Jus­ti­fied (1849)

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Watch The March, the Mas­ter­ful, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored Doc­u­men­tary on The Great March on Wash­ing­ton

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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An Animated Introduction to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies and How He Used Semiotics to Decode Popular Culture

in Current Affairs, Philosophy, Politics | April 4th, 2017

In 1979, French the­o­rist Jean-François Lyotard declared the end of all “grand narratives”—every “the­o­ry or intel­lec­tu­al sys­tem,” as Blackwell’s dic­tio­nary defines the term, “which attempts to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive expla­na­tion of human expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge.” The announce­ment arrived with all the rhetor­i­cal bom­bast of Nietzsche’s “God is Dead,” sweep­ing not only the­ol­o­gy into the dust­bin but also over­ar­ch­ing sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries, Freudi­an psy­chol­o­gy, Marx­ism, and every oth­er “total­iz­ing” expla­na­tion. But as Lyotard him­self explained in his book The Post­mod­ern Con­di­tion, the loss of uni­ver­sal coherence—or the illu­sion of coherence—had tak­en decades, a “tran­si­tion,” he wrote, “under way since at least the end of the 1950s.”

We might date the onset of Post­mod­ernism and the end of “mas­ter nar­ra­tives” even earlier—to the dev­as­ta­tion at the end of World War II and the appear­ance of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialec­tic of Enlight­en­ment and of Roland Barthes’ slim vol­ume Mytholo­gies, a col­lec­tion of essays writ­ten between 1954 and 56 in which the French lit­er­ary the­o­rist and cul­tur­al crit­ic put to work his under­stand­ing of Fer­di­nand de Saussure’s semi­otics.

As a result of read­ing the Swiss lin­guist, Barthes wrote in a pref­ace to the 1970 edi­tion of his book, he had “acquired the con­vic­tion that by treat­ing ‘col­lec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tions’ as a sign-sys­tems, one might hope to go fur­ther than the pious show of unmask­ing them and account in detail for the mys­ti­fi­ca­tion which trans­forms petit-bour­geois cul­ture into a uni­ver­sal nature.”

While gen­er­al­ly lumped into the cat­e­go­ry of “struc­tural­ist” thinkers, as opposed to “post-struc­tural­ists” like Lyotard, Barthes nonethe­less paved the way for a par­tic­u­lar­ly French mis­trust of “petit-bour­geois cul­ture” and its pop­ulist spec­ta­cles and all-know­ing talk­ing heads. He was an oppo­nent of total­iz­ing nar­ra­tives just as he was “an unre­lent­ing oppo­nent of French impe­ri­al­ism,” writes Richard Brody at The New York­er. Like Adorno and many oth­er post-war Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­als, Barthes riffed on Marx’s notion of “false consciousness”—the men­tal fog pro­duced by dog­mat­ic edu­ca­tion, mass media, and pop­u­lar culture—and applied the idea relent­less­ly to his analy­sis of the post-indus­tri­al West.

“Barthes’s work on myths,” writes Andrew Robin­son at Cease­fire Mag­a­zine, “pre­fig­ures dis­course-analy­sis in media stud­ies.” He direct­ed his focus to “cer­tain insid­i­ous myths… par­tic­u­lar­ly typ­i­cal of right-wing pop­ulism and of the tabloid press.” Barthes though of pop­ulist mythol­o­gy as a “meta­lan­guage” that “removes his­to­ry from lan­guage,” mak­ing “par­tic­u­lar signs appear nat­ur­al, eter­nal, absolute, or frozen” and trans­form­ing “his­to­ry into nature.” Through its nor­mal­iza­tion, we lose sight of the arti­fice of cable news, for exam­ple, and take for grant­ed its for­mat­ting as a uni­ver­sal stan­dard for high seri­ous­ness and cred­i­bil­i­ty (as in the por­ten­tous sig­ni­fi­ca­tion of “Break­ing News”), even when we know we’re being lied to.

The Al Jazeera video at the top of the post asks us to con­sid­er the “rhetor­i­cal motifs” of such media, which con­struct “the biggest myth of all: that what we are watch­ing is unmedi­at­ed real­i­ty.” The obser­va­tion may seem ele­men­tary, but Barthes sought to go fur­ther than “the pious show of unmask­ing,” as he wrote. He “would have seen,” the video’s nar­ra­tor says, “the TV screen as a cul­tur­al text, and he would have unveiled its myths,” as he did the myths prof­fered by wrestling, adver­tis­ing, pop­u­lar film and nov­els, tourism, pho­tog­ra­phy, din­ing, and oth­er seem­ing­ly mun­dane pop­u­lar phe­nom­e­na.

The video above from edu­ca­tion­al com­pa­ny Macat offers a more for­mal sum­ma­ry of Barthes’ Mytholo­gies. The French crit­ic and semi­oti­cian made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to lit­er­ary and crit­i­cal the­o­ry, demonstrating—with the wide-rang­ing wit and eru­di­tion of his human­ist coun­try­man Michel de Mon­taigne—how “dom­i­nant ide­olo­gies suc­cess­ful­ly present them­selves as sim­ply the way the world should be.” Look­ing back on his book over twen­ty years lat­er, after the events in Paris of May 1968, Barthes remarked that the need for “ide­o­log­i­cal crit­i­cism” had been “again made bru­tal­ly evi­dent.” Indeed, we have ample rea­son to think that, over six­ty years since Barthes pub­lished his clas­sic analy­sis, the need for a rig­or­ous­ly crit­i­cal view of mass media, adver­tis­ing, and polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle has become more press­ing than ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Roland Barthes Present His 40-Hour Course, La Pré­pa­ra­tion du roman, in French (1978–80)

Hear the Writ­ing of French The­o­rists Jacques Der­ri­da, Jean Bau­drillard & Roland Barthes Sung by Poet Ken­neth Gold­smith

Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Edward Said’s Ground­break­ing Book Ori­en­tal­ism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Animated Introductions to Edward Said’s Groundbreaking Book Orientalism

in Current Affairs, Literature, Philosophy, Politics | March 31st, 2017

For a few years, many people—those who might these days be called a “self-sat­is­fied lib­er­al elite” (or some­thing like that)—believed that the argu­ments in Edward Said’s 1978 book Ori­en­tal­ism were becom­ing gen­er­al­ly accept­ed. Put broad­ly, Said argued that our con­cep­tions of cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal dif­fer­ences between “the West” and “the East” are pro­duced by Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al and lit­er­ary tra­di­tions that have exag­ger­at­ed and dis­tort­ed such dif­fer­ences, cre­at­ing a nar­ra­tive in which “the West” is civ­i­lized, dis­ci­plined,  indus­tri­ous, and enlight­ened and “the East” is exot­ic, back­ward, sen­su­al­ist, lazy, pas­sive, dan­ger­ous, irra­tional.…

The tra­di­tion of Ori­en­tal­ism—which stretch­es back into the mid­dle ages—came to jus­ti­fy colo­nial­ism, land and resource theft, slav­ery, and impe­r­i­al aggres­sion in the name of civ­i­liza­tion and sal­va­tion, Even where Euro­pean Ori­en­tal­ist schol­ars and writ­ers had a nuanced under­stand­ing of oth­er cul­tures, such nuance was lost in the pop­u­lar­iz­ing and instru­men­tal use of their ideas.

Said’s the­o­ret­i­cal inter­ven­tion into Ori­en­tal­ist dis­course showed us how the “clash of civ­i­liza­tions” trope that per­vades hun­dreds of years of inter­ac­tions between “the west and the rest” of the world itself has a history—as a ratio­nal­iza­tion for dom­i­nance and exploita­tion. The short ani­mat­ed Al Jazeera video above neat­ly sum­ma­rizes Said’s major argu­ments in the book, and asks us to “unlearn the myth.”

Cast­ing West and East as two dis­tinct civ­i­liza­tions makes lit­tle com­mon sense on its face. Chris­tian­i­ty, one key sup­posed bedrock  of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, is an East­ern reli­gion. Aris­to­tle, a foun­da­tion of West­ern thought, was pre­served for many years by Islam­ic schol­ars, who were in fre­quent dia­logue with Greek thinkers, who were them­selves in fre­quent dia­logue with North Africans…. the inter­re­la­tion­ships and cor­re­spon­dences between con­ti­nents and cul­tures are innu­mer­able, the bound­aries between the cat­e­gories high­ly per­me­able. But with the rise of what we’re call­ing “pop­ulism” in the past decade or so, the nuances of intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry have been lost. Old false dichotomies, always haunt­ing the mar­gins, have once again moved firm­ly to the cen­ter.

In the realm of cable news pun­dit­ry, cor­po­rate secu­ri­ty con­fer­ences, and con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees not only do we rarely see actu­al schol­ars rep­re­sent­ed, but we almost nev­er see schol­ars like Edward Said, a Pales­tin­ian intel­lec­tu­al who spoke and wrote crit­i­cal­ly as a per­son from the Mid­dle East with exper­tise in West­ern lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry. This fact is itself cen­tral to the con­struc­tion of Ori­en­tal­ist dis­course, as Said wrote in 1978:

The Ori­ent and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal­ly reduced sta­tus that puts them out of reach of every­one except the West­ern expert. From the begin­ning of West­ern spec­u­la­tion about the Ori­ent, the one thing the Ori­ent could not do was to rep­re­sent itself.

We can accept noth­ing about “the East,” in oth­er words, unless it is first fil­tered through the lens­es of Euro-Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tive “experts,” who often have extrem­ist views, very lit­tle schol­ar­ly exper­tise, and whose ideas often still come direct­ly from Ori­en­tal­ist nov­els and philoso­phies.

Said’s the­o­ries in Ori­en­tal­ism have received ample crit­i­cism from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. He’s been cast by the right as a kind of reverse racist against “Cau­casians,” an anti-intel­lec­tu­al accu­sa­tion that dis­torts his views and makes ad hominem attacks. Said traced Euro-Amer­i­can colo­nial his­to­ry with a lev­el of depth that demon­strat­ed the remark­able con­ti­nu­ity in the way major Euro­pean colo­nial pow­ers and the U.S.—their suc­ces­sor by the late 20th century—constructed ide­olo­gies of excep­tion­al­ism and supe­ri­or­i­ty through very sim­i­lar rhetoric.

For a slight­ly dri­er overview of Said’s Ori­en­tal­ism, watch the short video above from edu­ca­tion­al com­pa­ny Macat, a self-described “glob­al leader in crit­i­cal think­ing.” Nei­ther of these explain­ers can sub­sti­tute for actu­al­ly engag­ing with the argu­ments in Said’s book. His his­to­ry of Ori­en­tal­ist fables is itself an adven­tur­ous tale. As a lit­er­ary prod­uct, “the Ori­ent was almost a Euro­pean inven­tion,” he writes in his Intro­duc­tion, yet as a region, it “is an inte­gral part of Euro­pean mate­r­i­al civ­i­liza­tion and cul­ture.” There is no one with­out the oth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Said Recalls His Depress­ing Meet­ing With Sartre, de Beau­voir & Fou­cault (1979)

Edward Said Speaks Can­did­ly about Pol­i­tics, His Ill­ness, and His Lega­cy in His Final Inter­view (2003)

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Mid­dle East­ern His­to­ry: Free Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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I’m Just a Pill: A Schoolhouse Rock Classic Gets Reimagined to Defend Reproductive Rights in 2017

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health, Politics, Television | March 27th, 2017

Like many Amer­i­can chil­dren of the 70s and 80s, my under­stand­ing of how our gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to func­tion was shaped by School­house Rock.

Immi­gra­tion, sep­a­ra­tion of leg­isla­tive, exec­u­tive and judi­cial pow­ers and of course, the promise of the Con­sti­tu­tion (“a list of prin­ci­ples for keepin’ peo­ple free”) were just a few of the top­ics the ani­mat­ed musi­cal series cov­ered with clar­i­ty and wit.

The new world order in which we’ve recent­ly found our­selves sug­gests that 2017 would be a grand year to start rolling out more such videos.

The Lady Parts Jus­tice League, a self-declared “cabal of comics and writ­ers expos­ing creeps hell­bent on destroy­ing access to birth con­trol and abor­tion” leads the charge with the above homage to School­house Rock­’s 1976 hit, “I’m Just a Bill,” recast­ing the original’s glum aspi­rant law as a feisty Plan B con­tra­cep­tive pill. The red haired boy who kept the bill com­pa­ny on the steps of the Cap­i­tal is now a teenage girl, con­fused as to how any legal, over-the-counter method for reduc­ing the risk of unwant­ed preg­nan­cy could have so many ene­mies.

As with the orig­i­nal series, the prime objec­tive is to edu­cate, and com­ic Lea DeLar­ia’s Pill hap­pi­ly oblig­es, explain­ing that while peo­ple may dis­agree as to when “life” begins, it’s a sci­en­tif­ic fact that preg­nan­cy begins when a fer­til­ized egg lodges itself in the uterus. (DeLar­ia plays Big Boo on Orange is the New Black, by the way.) That process takes a while—72 hours to be exact. Plen­ty of time for the par­tic­i­pants to scut­tle off to the drug­store for emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion, aka Plan B, the so called “morn­ing-after” pill.

As per the drug’s web­site, if tak­en with­in 72 hours after unpro­tect­ed sex, Plan B  can reduce the risk of preg­nan­cy by up to 89%. Tak­en with­in 24 hours, it is about 95% effec­tive.

And yes, teenagers can legal­ly pur­chase it, though Teen Vogue has report­ed on numer­ous stores who’ve made it dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, for shop­pers to gain access to the pill.

(The Repro­duc­tive Jus­tice Project encour­ages con­sumers to help them col­lect data on whether Plan B is cor­rect­ly dis­played on the shelves as avail­able for sale to any woman of child­bear­ing age.)

There’s a help­ful foot­ball anal­o­gy for those who may be a bit slow in under­stand­ing that Plan B is indeed a bonafide con­tra­cep­tive, and not the abor­ti­fa­cient some mis­tak­en­ly make it out to be. It’s NSFW, but only just, as a team of car­toon penis-out­lines push down the field toward the uter­ine wall in the end zone.

The oth­er bills who once stood in line await­ing the president’s sig­na­ture have been reimag­ined as sperm, while song­writer Hol­ly Miran­da pays trib­ute to Dave Frish­berg’s lyrics with a piz­zazz wor­thy of the orig­i­nal:

I’m just a pill

A help­ful birth con­trol pill

No mat­ter what they say on Cap­i­tal Hill

So now you know my truth

I’m all about pre­ven­tion

If your con­dom breaks

I’m here for inter­ven­tion

Join me take a stand today

I real­ly hope and pray that you will

Drop some facts

Tell the world

I’m a pill.

Let’s hope the resis­tance yields more catchy, edu­ca­tion­al ani­ma­tions!

And here, for com­par­ison’s sake, is the mag­nif­i­cent orig­i­nal:

Via BUST Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

School­house Rock: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Foster Wallace on What’s Wrong with Postmodernism: A Video Essay

in Current Affairs, Television | February 7th, 2017

“We live in a night­mare that David Fos­ter Wal­lace had in 1994,” said a tweet that put me in stitch­es last sum­mer, but I have a sense that we’ve only sunk deep­er into that hyper­ver­bal, media-obsessed, and deeply fear­ful nov­el­ist’s bad dreams since then. “The Amer­i­can writer in the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tu­ry has his hands full in try­ing to under­stand, and then describe, and then make cred­i­ble much of the Amer­i­can real­i­ty,” Philip Roth argued 55 years ago. “The actu­al­i­ty is con­tin­u­al­ly out­do­ing our tal­ents.” Now, at the begin­ning of the 21st, that actu­al­i­ty out­does not just what the com­par­a­tive­ly tra­di­tion­al Roth could come up with, but even any­thing imag­in­able by Wal­lace’s heirs in the form-break­ing, extrem­i­ty-ori­ent­ed realm of “post­mod­ernism.”

But did Wal­lace con­sid­er him­self post­mod­ernist? Asked by Char­lie Rose in a 1997 inter­view what “post­mod­ernism means in lit­er­a­ture,” he at first replied only that it means “after mod­ernism.” But soon he got into the broad­er cul­tur­al cri­tique for which he’s now remem­bered: “Post­mod­ernism has, to a large extent, run its course,” despite hav­ing made the con­sid­er­able inno­va­tion of pre­sent­ing “the first text that was high­ly self-con­scious, self-con­scious of itself as text, self-con­scious of the writer as per­sona, self-con­scious about the effects that nar­ra­tive had on read­ers and the fact that the read­ers prob­a­bly knew that.” Decades lat­er, Wal­lace saw that “a lot of the schticks of post-mod­ernism — irony, cyn­i­cism, irrev­er­ence — are now part of what­ev­er it is that’s ener­vat­ing in the cul­ture itself.”

“The Prob­lem with Irony,” Will Schoder’s video essay above, draws on Wal­lace’s inter­view with Rose and much oth­er tele­vi­su­al mate­r­i­al besides. That focus may seem slight­ly quaint in the inter­net age, but Wal­lace, a self-con­fessed tele­vi­sion addict who wrote a thou­sand-page nov­el about a video­tape so enter­tain­ing that it kills, looked into the screen and saw a real and pow­er­ful threat. “Irony, pok­er-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are dis­tinc­tive of those fea­tures of con­tem­po­rary U.S. cul­ture (of which cut­ting-edge fic­tion is a part) that enjoy any sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion to the tele­vi­sion whose weird pret­ty hand has my gen­er­a­tion by the throat,” he wrote in the 1993 essay “E Unibus Plu­ram,” blam­ing those qual­i­ties for “a great despair and sta­sis in U.S. cul­ture.”

Even as “a cer­tain sub­genre of pop-con­scious post­mod­ern fic­tion, writ­ten most­ly by young Amer­i­cans, has late­ly arisen and made a real attempt to trans­fig­ure a world of and for appear­ance, mass appeal, and tele­vi­sion [ … ] tele­vi­su­al cul­ture has some­how evolved to a point where it seems invul­ner­a­ble to any such trans­fig­ur­ing assault.” But as that cul­ture moved on from the likes of David Let­ter­man (to Wal­lace’s mind, “the iron­ic eight­ies’ true Angel of Death”) and Sein­feld to those of Jon Stew­art and Com­mu­ni­ty, Schold­er argues, its atti­tudes de-ironized some­what: “The best shows of our age aren’t find­ing humor in the gaps that have devel­oped between peo­ple. They find humor in the absurd and awk­ward attempts by peo­ple try­ing to bridge those gaps. They want to show us that humans can have real con­nec­tions and sin­cer­i­ty for each oth­er.”

And yet human­i­ty’s pas­siv­i­ty remains wor­ri­some. “Today, the aver­age week­ly screen time for an Amer­i­can adult – brace your­self; this is not a typo – is 74 hours (and still going up),” writes Andrew Post­man, son of media the­o­rist and Amus­ing Our­selves to Death author Neil Post­man, in a Guardian piece just last week. “We watch when we want, not when any­one tells us, and usu­al­ly alone, and often while doing sev­er­al oth­er things. The sound­bite has been replaced by viral­i­ty, meme, hot take, tweet.” Post­man includes Wal­lace with his father in the group of observers who “warned of what was com­ing”: a time when few can be shocked by, among oth­er cur­rent phe­nom­e­na, “the rise of a real­i­ty TV star, a man giv­en to loud, inflam­ma­to­ry state­ments, many of which are spec­tac­u­lar­ly untrue but vir­tu­al­ly all of which make for what used to be called ‘good tele­vi­sion.’ ” Stay tuned, if you must.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Talks About Lit­er­a­ture (and More) in an Inter­net Cha­t­room: Read the 1996 Tran­script

Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Sub­scribes to the The Believ­er Mag­a­zine with a Lit­tle Humor & Snark (2003)

Noam Chom­sky Calls Post­mod­ern Cri­tiques of Sci­ence Over-Inflat­ed “Poly­syl­lab­ic Tru­isms”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How to Respond to the Challenges of Our Time?: Jazz Legends Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter Give 10 Pieces of Advice to Young Artists, and Everyone Else

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs, Jazz, Music | February 7th, 2017

Some moments in his­to­ry strike us as dra­mat­ic rup­tures. Cer­tain­ties are super­seded, thrown into chaos by a seis­mic event, and we find our­selves adrift and anx­ious. What are artists to do? Gripped by the same fears as every­one else, the same sense of urgency, writ­ers, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, painters, etc. may find them­selves unable to “breathe with uncon­di­tion­al breath / the uncon­di­tioned air,” as Wen­dell Berry once described the cre­ative process.

We might remem­ber the rad­i­cal break with tra­di­tion when the shock­ing car­nage of World War I sent poets and painters into fright­en­ing places they had pre­vi­ous­ly left unex­plored. Vir­ginia Woolf summed up the sit­u­a­tion in her essay The Lean­ing Tow­er: “sud­den­ly like a chasm in a smooth road, the [Great] war came.” Shat­tered as they were, her gen­er­a­tion over­came their paral­y­sis. Mod­ernists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry were able to speak to their bro­ken age in ways that con­tin­ue to speak to ours.

But we should tem­per our belief that bad times make good art by not­ing that the most vision­ary cre­ative minds are not sim­ply reac­tive, respond­ing to tragedy like reporters on a crime scene. As Wayne Short­er and Her­bie Han­cock— two of the 20th century’s most con­sis­tent­ly inno­v­a­tive musicians—suggest, artists at all times need a set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples. (See the two play “Mem­o­ry of Enchant­ment” above in 2002.) There is always a lot of per­son­al work to do. And in “tur­bu­lent and unpre­dictable times,” the two jazz greats advise, “the answer to peace is sim­ple; it begins with you.”

A plat­i­tude, per­haps, but one they illus­trat­ed near­ly a year ago in an open let­ter at Nest HQ with some pro­found, if chal­leng­ing, pre­scrip­tions for our present cul­tur­al ill­ness­es. Short­er and Hancock’s coun­sel is not a reac­tion to the rup­ture of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, but a response to the events that pre­ced­ed it, “the hor­ror at the Bat­a­clan… the upheaval in Syr­ia and the sense­less blood­shed in San Bernardi­no.” Not pas­sive­ly wait­ing to find out where the past few years’ vio­lence and unrest would lead, the two have made eth­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al inter­ven­tions, pre­sent­ing their phi­los­o­phy and ethics through jazz, Bud­dhism, sci­ence, art, and lit­er­a­ture.

Below, you can read their ten pieces of advice “to the next gen­er­a­tion of artists,” or at least excerpts there­of. They begin with a reas­sur­ing pref­ace: “As an artist, cre­ator and dream­er of this world, we ask you not to be dis­cour­aged by what you see but to use your own lives, and by exten­sion your art, as vehi­cles for the con­struc­tion of peace…. You mat­ter, your actions mat­ter, your art mat­ters.” That said, they also want to assure read­ers that “these thoughts tran­scend pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries and apply to all peo­ple, regard­less of pro­fes­sion.”

First, awak­en to your human­i­ty

You can­not hide behind a pro­fes­sion or instru­ment; you have to be human. Focus your ener­gy on becom­ing the best human you can be. Focus on devel­op­ing empa­thy and com­pas­sion. Through the process you’ll tap into a wealth of inspi­ra­tion root­ed in the com­plex­i­ty and curios­i­ty of what it means to sim­ply exist on this plan­et.

Embrace and con­quer the road less trav­eled

Don’t allow your­self to be hijacked by com­mon rhetoric, or false beliefs and illu­sions about how life should be lived. It’s up to you to be the pio­neers.

Wel­come to the Unknown

Every rela­tion­ship, obsta­cle, inter­ac­tion, etc. is a rehearsal for the next adven­ture in life. Every­thing is con­nect­ed. Every­thing builds. Noth­ing is ever wast­ed. This type of think­ing requires courage. Be coura­geous and do not lose your sense of exhil­a­ra­tion and rev­er­ence for this won­der­ful world around you.

Under­stand the True Nature of Obsta­cles

We have this idea of fail­ure, but it’s not real; it’s an illu­sion. There is no such thing as fail­ure. What you per­ceive as fail­ure is real­ly a new oppor­tu­ni­ty, a new hand of cards, or a new can­vas to cre­ate upon.

Don’t Be Afraid to Inter­act with Those Who Are Dif­fer­ent from You

The world needs more one-on-one inter­ac­tion among peo­ple of diverse ori­gins with a greater empha­sis on art, cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Our dif­fer­ences are what we have in com­mon…. We need to be con­nect­ing with one anoth­er, learn­ing about one anoth­er, and expe­ri­enc­ing life with one anoth­er. We can nev­er have peace if we can­not under­stand the pain in each other’s hearts.

Strive to Cre­ate Agen­da-Free Dia­logue

Art in any form is a medi­um for dia­logue, which is a pow­er­ful tool… we’re talk­ing about reflect­ing and chal­leng­ing the fears, which pre­vent us from dis­cov­er­ing our unlim­it­ed access to the courage inher­ent in us all.

Be Wary of Ego

Cre­ativ­i­ty can­not flow when only the ego is served.

Work Towards a Busi­ness with­out Bor­ders

The med­ical field has an orga­ni­za­tion called Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders. This lofty effort can serve as a mod­el for tran­scend­ing the lim­i­ta­tions and strate­gies of old busi­ness for­mu­las which are designed to per­pet­u­ate old sys­tems in the guise of new ones.

Appre­ci­ate the Gen­er­a­tion that Walked Before You

Your elders can help you. They are a source of wealth in the form of wis­dom…. Don’t waste time repeat­ing their mis­takes.

Last­ly, We Hope that You Live in a State of Con­stant Won­der

As we accu­mu­late years, parts of our imag­i­na­tion tend to dull. Whether from sad­ness, pro­longed strug­gle, or social con­di­tion­ing, some­where along the way peo­ple for­get how to tap into the inher­ent mag­ic that exists with­in our minds. Don’t let that part of your imag­i­na­tion fade away.

Whether you’re a jazz fan, musi­cian, artist, writer, accoun­tant, cashier, truck­er, teacher, or what­ev­er, I can’t think of a wis­er set of guide­lines with which to con­front the suf­fo­cat­ing epi­dem­ic of cyn­i­cism, delu­sion­al think­ing, ram­pant big­otry, hatred, and self-absorp­tion of our time. Read Short­er and Hancock’s full open let­ter at Nest HQ.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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“Calling Bullshit”: See the Syllabus for a College Course Designed to Identify & Combat Bullshit

in Current Affairs, Science | January 27th, 2017

Two pro­fes­sors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, have cre­at­ed a web­site meant to accom­pa­ny a poten­tial col­lege sem­i­nar enti­tled “Call­ing Bull­shit.” Here’s how Bergstrom and West explain the premise of their course. It’s worth quot­ing them at length.

The world is awash in bull­shit. Politi­cians are uncon­strained by facts. Sci­ence is con­duct­ed by press release. High­er edu­ca­tion rewards bull­shit over ana­lyt­ic thought. Start­up cul­ture ele­vates bull­shit to high art. Adver­tis­ers wink con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly and invite us to join them in see­ing through all the bull­shit — and take advan­tage of our low­ered guard to bom­bard us with bull­shit of the sec­ond order. The major­i­ty of admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ty, whether in pri­vate busi­ness or the pub­lic sphere, seems to be lit­tle more than a sophis­ti­cat­ed exer­cise in the com­bi­na­to­r­i­al reassem­bly of bull­shit.

We’re sick of it. It’s time to do some­thing, and as edu­ca­tors, one con­struc­tive thing we know how to do is to teach peo­ple. So, the aim of this course is to help stu­dents nav­i­gate the bull­shit-rich mod­ern envi­ron­ment by iden­ti­fy­ing bull­shit, see­ing through it, and com­bat­ing it with effec­tive analy­sis and argu­ment.

What do we mean, exact­ly, by the term bull­shit? As a first approx­i­ma­tion, bull­shit is lan­guage, sta­tis­ti­cal fig­ures, data graph­ics, and oth­er forms of pre­sen­ta­tion intend­ed to per­suade by impress­ing and over­whelm­ing a read­er or lis­ten­er, with a bla­tant dis­re­gard for truth and log­i­cal coher­ence.

While bull­shit may reach its apogee in the polit­i­cal domain, this is not a course on polit­i­cal bull­shit. Instead, we will focus on bull­shit that comes clad in the trap­pings of schol­ar­ly dis­course. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such high­brow non­sense has come couched in big words and fan­cy rhetoric, but more and more we see it pre­sent­ed instead in the guise of big data and fan­cy algo­rithms — and these quan­ti­ta­tive, sta­tis­ti­cal, and com­pu­ta­tion­al forms of bull­shit are those that we will be address­ing in the present course.…

Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think crit­i­cal­ly about the data and mod­els that con­sti­tute evi­dence in the social and nat­ur­al sci­ences.

The “Call­ing Bull­shit” course would sit nice­ly along­side the work of Prince­ton philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt, the author of the fair­ly recent book, On Bull­shit. (In fact, On Bull­shit would be read dur­ing Week 1 of the “Call­ing Bull­shit“course. See the syl­labus here.) There’s a lot of bull­shit freely flow­ing through our world, and it may well take a cross-dis­ci­pli­nary team to help us cut through the crap.

To learn more about the envi­sioned Call­ing Bull­shit course, vis­it Bergstrom and West­’s web­site, where they have an FAQ that explains what a study of bull­shit might look like.

Update: You can now view the lec­tures for the course here.

Note: You can down­load Har­ry Frank­furt’s “On Bull­shit” as a free audio­book (or any oth­er two free audio­books) if you sign up for Audible.com’s free tri­al pro­gram. Learn more about Audible’s free tri­al pro­gram here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Spot Bull­shit: A Primer by Prince­ton Philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt

Young T.S. Eliot Writes “The Tri­umph of Bullsh*t” and Gives the Eng­lish Lan­guage a New Exple­tive (1910)

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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An Animated History of Planned Parenthood, Brought to You by Lena Dunham, JJ Abrams & More

in Current Affairs, Health, History, Life, Politics | January 23rd, 2017

Lena Dun­ham draft­ed a host of well known friends for The His­to­ry Of 100 Years Of Wom­en’s Health Care At Planned Par­ent­hood, the short film (above) she co-direct­ed with ani­ma­tor Kirsten Lep­ore. Oth­ers tak­ing part in the pro­duc­tion include come­di­ans Mindy Kaling and Amy Schumer, actors Meryl Streep, Amer­i­ca Fer­rera, Hari Nef, Jen­nifer Lawrence, and Con­stance Wu, and pro­duc­er J.J. Abrams.

But the real stars of this show are the female trail­blaz­ers who fought (and con­tin­ue to fight) for access to safe and afford­able repro­duc­tive care for all women, regard­less of age, race, or abil­i­ty to pay.

In the words of founder Mar­garet Sanger, a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure who seems to share quite a few traits with Dun­ham, from her deft lever­age of her celebri­ty on behalf of her cho­sen cause to her capac­i­ty for alien­at­ing fans with some of her less savory views and state­ments:

No woman can call her­self free who does not own and con­trol her body. No woman can call her­self free until she can choose con­scious­ly whether she will or will not be a moth­er.

Women like Rosie Jimenez, a sin­gle moth­er who died from com­pli­ca­tions of a back alley abor­tion fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the Hyde Amend­ment, were vic­tim­ized by laws regard­ing repro­duc­tive choice.

Oth­ers, like Estelle Gris­wold, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Planned Par­ent­hood League of Con­necti­cut, flout­ed the laws to bring about change.

More recent­ly Faye Wat­tle­ton, Planned Parenthood’s first African Amer­i­can pres­i­dent and its cur­rent pres­i­dent, Cecile Richards, have worked to pro­mote aware­ness of both the pub­lic’s rights and any impend­ing dan­gers to those rights.

(Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence’s inad­ver­tent fundrais­ing efforts go unher­ald­ed, appro­pri­ate­ly enough. The mil­lions of women—and men—who made small dona­tions to Planned Par­ent­hood in his name are the true heroes here.)

For more of Dunham’s high­ly vis­i­ble sup­port of Planned Par­ent­hood, read her 2015 inter­view with Pres­i­dent Cecile Richards or check out the t‑shirt she designed to ben­e­fit the Cal­i­for­nia Planned Par­ent­hood Edu­ca­tion Fund.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

Down­load Images From Rad Amer­i­can Women A‑Z: A New Pic­ture Book on the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nism

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Fem­i­nist Phi­los­o­phy of Simone de Beau­voir (on Her 109th Birth­day)

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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