Mumbling and musing again.

[katealaurel]

This morning while drinking a cup of my father's (very strong) coffee, I ran out of back issues of Time and wound up reading a rather less mainstream magazine my parents receive, called Yes! They were given a subscription last year by old friends of theirs who live in rural Kentucky.

My parents, actually, also lived in rural Kentucky until about eight months after I was born. [1] Lamero, Kentucky is an extremely small town-- I tend to describe it as about forty people living along a ten-mile section of road, although I'm not sure that's actually statistically accurate. They had rented a very small house from an old man named Hobert, and as long as my parents lived there, the house was still referred to by the locals as "Hobert's House". The post office / general store / town hall was a tiny little building that I remember from later visits as being about twenty feet on each side, with a series of little mailboxes on one wall, a wood stove next to them, and several shelves full of things like Wonderbread and pickles in the middle. It was run by an elderly woman named Laverne, from whom my parents still receive a Christmas card (my mother says she sounds more depressed each year); the town was populated by various other interesting characters, including "Ivorine, Geraldine, and Rat", who lived across the road from my parents and were evidently rather disreputable.

When my mother and father had lived in Kentucky for a fairly long time, they decided to build a studio (for my father's painting), and purchased a small amount of property adjacent to their house for that purpose. The Studio was designed by my uncle, an architect, and hand-built by my parents, my aunt & uncle, and various friends from rural Kentucky, including the couple who gave them the subscription to Yes! (In fact, building my parents' Studio may be where the pair met each other, but I'm not entirely sure about that.) It was an interesting building-- because it was built on a steep hill, the front was supported on long posts like stilts, leaving a deep triangle of space underneath the building itself. A deck led into the main room, which was heated by a wood stove, and which had large windows facing down the hill and into the valley. There was a loft (led to by a ladder) up above to sleep in. [2] This is also where and when my parents had the infamous Chickens, who are partially responsible for having made me a vegetarian. [3]

In short, as these somewhat unique stories demonstrate, my parents used to be Hippies. [4] They were into farming their own produce and having chickens, building sustainable architecture and local activism and folk dancing. There's an old copy of the Whole Earth Catalog on the bookshelf upstairs somewhere. This, however, always surprises me. My parents now live a comparatively staid and traditional life, particularly my mother-- while her work is still in nature education, it's for the City of Cincinnati, and most of the talk around the dinner table at home is her daily recitation of the problems with City Parks and the frustrations of her coworkers. My father rarely leaves the house except to run errands, and his day is mostly a cycle of moving between the room he uses as his studio, the computer, the kitchen, and the tv. While my mother makes family donations to charity and even helps run the Community Shares campaign in City Parks, she no longer gardens most of our produce, as she did when I was in elementary school, and my parents are certainly not as close to their rural Kentucky friends as they used to be. [5] My parents are still not exactly typical "Middle Americans", certainly-- my mother obsesses over energy conservation in our house (although I think that's mostly because it saves money), and reads Yes! eagerly; my father is a wildlife artist who gets to go on trips to Borneo and the Amazon. They don't live in the suburbs, they live in a complicated urban neighborhood slowly transitioning out of the ghetto (see here).

However, my parents are no longer as likely to go folk-dancing or grow produce as they are to rant about President Bush or complain about ads on the internet, and I have to wonder whether this isn't in part due to the different cultural forces that competing social activist movements produce. When my parents lived in Kentucky, their social concerns were focused largely on the environment-- they lived very close to the land, and they were pretty concerned by their increasingly non-environment-conscious neighbors and the various timber and coal companies that wanted land in their area. In Cincinnati, what attention they do give to social problems tends to go to poverty, education, and politics-- problems that certainly aren't solely issues in urban areas [6] , but which do tend to be addressed more commonly in urban settings.

Reading through Yes! this morning led me to think about these things-- my parents' history in terms of nonconformity and social activism, the social pressures of different places in society. And of course, since I miss it, my thoughts turned to Reed for a while, and how Reed's population is so very socially aware, but addresses various issues in such different ways, if at all. [7] If I were to divide up the population of Reedies based on their idealistic leanings, I think it would be a breakdown something like this:
• "Neo-Hippies", interested in environmentalism and some aspects of social justice.
• "Social Activists", interested in working with urban and social issues.
• "Political Activists", focused on reforming politics and getting specific people elected (at Reed, this is almost wholly liberal).
• "Information Activists", worried about information freedom and technology.
• "Apathetics", who are mostly burnt-out or spoiled. (Sadly, they're even at Reed.) [8]

Most people, of course, have interests in several of these areas, but it seems that they tend to focus in on one or the other. And based on where they focus, their lifestyles are different-- to make broad stereotypes, people who are interested in information activism aren't as careful about composting or conserving energy, and people who are worried about urban poverty aren't quite as focused on rehabilitating baby herons. [9] Reading Yes! brought this to mind because the issue at hand was discussing "separating yourself from the global economy". A lot of the focus was on buying local produce and services, and making efforts to keep away from multinational chains. This struck me as strangely at odds with the other issues I've been thinking about in the past few days-- particularly a cover story from last week's Time on how to change the American education system so that our students are better able to compete in the "global economy".

Clearly, there's a very basic ideological conflict going on between movements-- between the people who want to focus on returning to our roots in the land and local community, and the people who want to use technology to connect the world and different cultures. It is, to some degree, this conflict that changed my parents' lifestyles after they moved to Cincinnati-- when they wound up in a place that was more diverse and more culturally connected, their lives started to focus more on technology and politics, and less on the environment and their local community of friends. I don't think this change is part of a cause-and-effect relationship so much as a simple correlation between urban life and interest in technology, the economy, and cultural differences.

It's not clear to me, however, why these social movements have to be so opposed to each other. I care about the environment, conserve energy, and want to have a vegetable garden someday; I also care about net neutrality and open source software development. I don't understand why so many people pick one or the other side, local or global, earth or technology, rural or urban. Admittedly, everyone has limited amounts of time to devote to volunteering and concrete activities (and few people even give as much time as they could-- I know I'm frequently guilty here). However, the ideological gap between these movements isn't so big that it should be preventing people from seeing the virtues of both, and even those without time or money to volunteer can afford to care.

Part of the problem, it seems, is each movement's evident perception of the other. Based on my reading of Yes! this morning, a lot of the people focused on "getting away from the global economy" and "focusing on local community" worry that all global economic connections will necessarily lead to corrupt megacorporations and the quashing of local businesses. This is certainly a legitimate concern-- free trade agreements haven't been very beneficial to the small farmers of Third World countries, even if they have lowered prices in the US. Walmart, Nike, Coca-Cola, and other giant chains are widely mocked, feared, and protested for their shady business practices, both here and abroad. However, I'd hope that most people can recognize that not all global connections are bad. The more interdependent the global economy becomes, the more each country is tied into the fate of others-- which provides a much-needed incentive for people to recognize other cultures and aid the less fortunate. Altruism, unfortunately, doesn't always seem to be enough to motivate people-- we need these economic connections in order to encourage a more global society. The opposite concern reigns among those who are focused on technology and global connection, as far as I can tell. There's certainly fear that those who don't understand or disapprove of technology-- the Luddites still among us-- have enough power to retard the growth and development of new technology. Many of the techies that I know or read of on the Interblag also do sometimes feel a small amount of disdain for people who don't "get" technology. [10] However, there's no reason to assume that environmentalism and social justice, or trying to build local community, are causes that will stand in the way of technological research and development. There are a surprisingly large number of environmentally and socially conscious tech companies out there, and the internet should be a valuable way of linking local communities into larger ones, sharing ideas, and sharing ideologies. Interestingly, technology also contributes surprisingly little to household energy waste, as a recent Slashdot article pointed out.

So why do these two movements get so separated from each other? I honestly don't know. I'm left, however, with the impression that it all comes back to education. It takes a surprising amount of intellectual effort to sit down and sort through the different claims of each group, to try to figure out where the generalizations are and where the hidden concordances between their ideals lie. The effort of making connections and seeing patterns is where I think intelligence matters most; it is also, I fear, where most of middle America lacks both practice and interest. (None of this is to claim that I am extraordinarily smart or putting an extraordinary amount of effort into this-- quite to the contrary. I'm just thinking about this subject because it interests me, and I'm stuck in Ohio with nothing else to do.) If we only placed more emphasis in schools on making connections between ideas and disciplines-- which is, frankly, the best part of academia-- students would be much better prepared for work and life than by needing to memorize details about American History that can be easily looked up. [11] Certainly they'd be less likely to make the common mistake these two movements are making-- generalizing a single instance or anecdote to the whole of a group. Because some effects of globalization are bad for the environment and local communities, and some people focused on the environment are also Luddites, a huge tendency to generalize those traits to everyone involved has grown up, keeping the two issues much more separated than they need to be.

In the end, this is harmful to both movements. If they could work with each other-- if the open source people would spend more time with the organic gardeners-- it seems that there'd be far more progress being made from those harmonious differences. I think, and hope, that there's an increasing trend to work across movements these days-- particularly in the Northwest, which has a strong history of environmental consciousness, but is also a technological and economic center. However, a lot of the rhetoric on either side is still narrow-visioned, with each movement isolating itself to its own specific causes. I hope that starts to change, too-- and I hope that, when I finish at Reed, I'll be able to keep following both movements in my ideology, rather than picking one or the other as my parents did.

I may, of course, be completely crazy here. These are all musings on a topic I know less of than I should-- and I'm a classicist, not a social scientist. This is what I see, though, and it's frustrating to think that so many people want to improve the world, but separately.

Now I need more coffee.

[1] My parents had a very interesting history until I was born, which always makes me feel a little guilty for interrupting it. A brief summary:
• When they got married in the early seventies, my father was still in art school at the University of Cincinnati, and so my mother taught for Cincinnati Public Schools at a really awful inner-city school for a year or two to support them. At that point, they were living in an apartment building very near the Cincinnati Zoo, in a fairly bad neighborhood (Walnut Hills; incidentally also where my high school is). My mother describes the building as having "an asphalt lawn and green astroturf steps up to the front door"; my father likes to tell a story about coming home one day to find the building surrounded by police cars, because they were trying to arrest my parents' next-door neighbor, who turned out to have committed multiple armed robberies.
• After those exciting adventures, they moved to Florida, where my father was the Curator of Exhibits for a science museum in West Palm Beach (the normal, non-wealthy neighbor of Palm Beach), and my mother taught at Pine Jog Nature Education Center. My parents both reminisce about Florida frequently-- particularly my father, since he hates the Ohio climate. They spent almost all of their free time canoeing in the Everglades, and also went on trips to the Yucatan peninsula frequently with a friend of theirs who ran a very small tour company-- they'd help get the tourists through the transportation part of the trip and settled into the city in exchange for free or cheap transportation to the Yucatan, and then they'd go hang out with their Mayan friend Rafino and have exciting adventures. (Lots of stories. My father found a stash of ancient pottery in the back of a cave he discovered; my parents slept in a jaguar preserve... Should any of you ever meet my parents, these stories are well worth hearing.)
• Then, for some reason (I've never been entirely clear on this one, but I think my father was hired to paint the murals in the Cat House at the Cincinnati Zoo at this point), they decided to move to rural Kentucky. More on that back where you were.

[2] I was, as you've probably gathered from this text, born in rural Kentucky-- at the hospital in nearby Laurel County, actually (my parents' house was in Rockcastle County). (My middle name, therefore, was given to me by my mother for two reasons: for the mountain laurel plant, which she is very fond of, and for the county where I was born. I kind of like to pretend that it destined me to be a classicist instead, but I'm a dork like that.) Kentucky also feels much more like home to me-- in that deep-seated sense of place that you feel when you belong somewhere-- than Ohio does. The part of Kentucky I know has a very distinctive landscape, full of "knobs" (foothills that have been eroded into strangely pointy shapes) and limestone ledges and long caves. Part of the reason I feel so connected to Kentucky, however, is that my parents kept the Studio for a long time after we moved to Cincinnati-- until I was in fourth or fifth grade, I think. I have very clear memories of spending weekends there in the fall, spring, and summer (with only a wood stove, it got too cold during the winter to visit often). Those are some of the best memories of my childhood-- my parents and I always got along best when we were out in the woods somewhere. Back to where you were.

[3] While my vegetarianism is based less on the fact that I think factory farming is unethical and more on a simple lack of interest in eating meat, there are two caveats to that basic explanation. The first is that I do truly hate the idea of factory farming; it just seems disingenuous for me to claim that's why I don't eat meat when that really isn't why I stopped (and I also don't really go out of my way to buy free-range eggs or cheese). The second caveat is that when I first started to reduce my meat intake (in third or fourth grade), the first thing I dropped was chicken-- not because I disliked it, but because my parents had told me too many stories about Lucky the Rooster and his flock. The most canonical of the stories is this one:
• When they had just moved to Kentucky, my parents were debating getting chickens. They kept delaying, though, because they'd have to build a coop and buy feed and so forth. However, my father had a very large boa constrictor at the time (he's allergic to fur, and so has kept snakes since high school), and started getting excess rooster chicks from a farm up the road to feed to it. The general procedure was to pick up the chicks, wring the necks of all but one and put them in the freezer to be stored, and give the last one to the boa constrictor, live, as a treat. So one day, my father picked up a new batch of chicks, wrung the necks of all but one, tossed the last in with the snake, and went off to paint. When he came back later, however, the snake was still sleeping in the corner, and the chick was still alive and sipping from the snake's water dish. My father decided that the snake must not have been hungry, and pulled the chick out of the cage. Having twisted its neck, he threw it to the ground (standard procedure for chick neck-wringing)-- at which point it hopped up and ran away. Somewhat surprised, my father realized he had not wrung its neck sufficiently, shrugged, and went off to paint again, assuming that the foxes would eat it. The next morning, however, he opened the front door of the Studio, only to find the chick huddled up against the wall, which was slightly warmer than the air outside, thanks to the wood stove indoors. Throwing up his hands in defeat, my father scooped up the chick and took it indoors; the next week, it was named Lucky and became the rooster of my parents' chicken flock, having survived "certain death" three times. Lucky the Rooster had a long and prosperous career. Back to where you were.

[4] Also, my dad was in art school in the seventies. Think about the implications for a moment. Back to where you were.

[5] My father just wandered in and talked with me for a while. When he found out what I was writing about, he requested that I not portray him and my mother as "old fogies". So, a disclaimer: my parents aren't "old fogies", and as my father claims, their life today is probably more culturally connected than their time in Kentucky was (largely due to the Internet). However, I maintain that my parents live a very staid and predictable life, and really wouldn't have to if they didn't want to. More on that back where you were.

[6] Rural poverty and education problems are, of course, as bad and as complicated as those in urban areas. It's particularly difficult to address them, however, because local charity organizations in rural settings tend not to have as many resources as those in urban settings. Teach For America does offer rural placement for its volunteers, which I think is an excellent-- and often overlooked-- way to help students; rural students are often struggling against as many disadvantages as the inner-city poor. If I had a better background in the subject, I'd be inclined to question whether we overlook rural problems in part because of the immensely greater power of politics and the media in urban areas; that is, national media organizations are centered on large cities, and large cities tend to have greater sway over politics simply because of their concentrations of voters and economic forces. However, I'm not sure my polisci knowledge is really sufficient to try to support those claims, so I'll just leave them in the air for others to attack. Back to where you were.

[7] Reedies bother me a little in this regard. I don't have any statistics to hand-- I'm actually not sure that there are any-- but my perception of the Reed attitude towards society is that most of us can identify plenty of major and minor problems with society-- especially fixable ones-- but then do absolutely nothing about them. This seems partly due to the fact that Reed wants to suck the living souls out of us every semester, and partly due to laziness and apathy. I've been trying to get myself more involved in volunteering, but it's admittedly difficult with other Reed responsibilities; and for all of the efforts of SEEDS, Greenboard, AI, etc., I honestly don't see much happening among my peers, either. Maybe I'm just a pessimist in this regard, but I see what I see. Back to where you were.

[8] Isn't it great that "apathetic" means "non-feeling" or "non-suffering", etymologically? It really hits the heart of the word better than the generic English definition, which tends to focus on "uncaring". It implies that in order to be uncaring, you have to be unable to feel-- particularly, unable to suffer. Etymology = the awesome. Back to where you were.

[9] These are, as I said, extremely broad stereotypes. I use them simply to make a point about things not overlapping as much as they could-- more on that back where you were.

[10] I do tech support work for Reed, and there is frequently frustration and hilarity among us when people come in with particularly stupid computer problems. It's not that we look down on you-- it's just the natural human impulse to laugh when someone can't figure out something that seems obvious. We know it's really not, which is why we help you. But it's still both funny and infuriating, and that sometimes inspires a little disdain for people who repeatedly come in with "obvious" problems. See the Tech Support lj community for examples (sometimes vicious and/or snarky) from the wider world of tech support. Back to where you were.

[11] This isn't to say that knowing facts is pointless, because it isn't-- you need to know a lot of facts in order to grasp overarching concepts, for one thing. However, there's a little too much emphasis placed on rote memorization in public school-- even in the very good ones, like those I attended-- and not very much placed on intellectual connection or analysis, which are far better tools for learning. This was, incidentally, one of the central arguments of that Time article that I referenced earlier. Since it's something I've argued before, and I don't wholly agree with their treatment of it, I'm not citing it as coming from them-- however, they do deal with the idea in an interesting way, so I'd encourage you to read that article if it's a topic of interest to you. Back to where you were.