Self-identification

So I finished my dissertation, and it was good. I have some changes to make, I assume, but they will be good, and I will be happy. I have often spoken about writing it, researching it, putting it aside, but to speak of those things to a public is like putting us all in the situation of watching a one-man show.

So I thought I would move towards something more interesting, at least in this particular medium: self-identification. Seems the practice of writing a large piece that involves depths of research and complete knowledge of a subject outside of personal experience can be self-erasing, although I did choose "religious joy" in an attempt to ward off that particular side effect. And besides, my personal tastes reflect much of who I am, so this blog has been in large part self-identification anyway. And yet. In the last year, I have often found myself in situations where my particular point of view, or the very real markers of my identity, have provided destabilization that I am not necessarily seeking but that come anyway. That is to say, I am, not necessarily in order of priority, an active and believing Mormon, a liberal, a phd candidate heavily invested in the practice of literary criticism, a very proud father of three, an advocate for culturally and environmentally sustainable living, a person who has spent the last ten years specializing in a small set of skills. But at the same time, I identify equally with these paradoxical counterweights: I find much of contemporary manifestations of Mormonism to be tribal and off-putting, my liberal leanings are tested by the nonsensical relativisms that I often encounter in university life, I find most current literary criticism to be lifeless and irrelevant, my experience in fatherhood is anxiety-ridden, depressing, and confusing, I live in a suburb (right next door to a mall) with no real sustainable living practices unless you count my meager garden in the backyard, and the last ten years of specializing in a small set of skills has yielded only a small set of skills that will earn little to no money.

All of these paradoxes (I won't call them contradictions, because they are not--the slight difference between paradox and contradiction means everything to my integrity) are explainable, but again, I am not putting on a one-man show nor am I writing a memoir. I have written about each of these things, and the depth of my interest in each, at length either on this blog or elsewhere. But the strangeness of their conglomeration has often meant that it has been difficult for me to find heroes--people that have articulated a set of ideas that I can identify with and embrace. I have moral heroes: Dad, Tyndale, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Jimmy Carter, Hester Prynne, Boo Radley (having fictional moral heroes is often much safer, for obvious reasons), all of which lived their lives doing things that I consider extremely moral. I have intellectual heroes: St. Paul, Mary Sidney, John Milton, Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Northrop Frye, David Brooks, Terryl Givens, all of whom, even when I totally disagree with them, provide a method or approach that I find productive or inspiring.

I did not mention creative heroes (Arvo Part, Bach, Rembrandt, and so on), sports heroes (Steve Nash, Jim Thorpe, Bill Russell), or even personal heroes (friends and family that don't get the discomfort of being named), but all of these heroes, in whatever niche of my mind they belong, can not adequately represent something that I fully want to be either publicly or privately. Because I am woefully inarticulate when it comes to self-representation (Kathryn always tells me that I speak in church in such vague terms that when I get to specifics, nobody knows where it all came from, but that is really only because the vague terms usually mask some unorthodox thinking and experiences, but whatever), I am always looking for statements and expressions either in writing or in speech that can do the hard work for me, which only means that my practice of reading could be characterized as "in hope." Really, what this means is that I want someone to speak in terms that I have not fully thought out yet but in ways I can recognize as ideas that I aspire to.

Fairly recently (January 30, to be exact), in frustration from some comments by some friends and family that are close to me, I wrote up a statement that tried to sum up my political approach. I am attaching them with caution:

I'd like to think my political views are highly nuanced and careful, but Kathryn often tells me that they are predictable and part of an ideology. I do come at my views carefully, though, with a lot of consideration: seems the people I most love in my life are pretty conservative, so I have never shied away from validating that point of view as honest, sincere, and productive. My favorite political writer is David Brooks, the token conservative (besides Ross Douthat, who I also like) at the New York Times and one of the premier public intellectuals in the country. I liked John McCain before his camp made the decision to get Sarah Palin, and I like Mitt Romney, even though I find his views on immigration deplorable, his narrow-minded reliance on the market to be limiting, and his criticisms of Obama to be too broad and pandering. My dad, who was my greatest hero, had always been conservative, but in the 90s decided he could not support Newt Gingrich's nonsense anymore because he was giving conservatives a bad name with his petty grievances and penchant for anger and irrational behavior. I think that still holds, and I wish my dad were still around to discuss this with him, and I have a feeling he would be a strong Mitt advocate. George Bush senior was a favorite president of mine growing up, and I even liked George Bush Junior, who didn't make a great president because his advisors and colleagues, the ones who seemed to making most of the decisions, were not to be trusted, something I am guessing he would acknowledge now. Among many of my friends, I am the most conservative. This is all to say, I have never delegitimized conservatism and I find that it often pulls our country back from a kind of cultural and political excess that is destructive. I also believe traditional conservatism encourages a certain kind of growth, operates on a level of rational economics, and propels good ideas forward.

That said, I remain a liberal, a word I refuse to acknowledge as bad, and I am especially impressed with President Obama. Perhaps that keeps me in a minority, both among my conservative friends and my liberal friends, but I have admired Obama's approach to foreign affairs, from which he has an impeccable record, to economic issues, which record is much more polarizing. I just read an article that uncovered a bunch of White House memos of the first three years of his presidency, and I found the article illuminating in my ways, particularly in the way the Washington political world works. It is here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lizza and it is long, but I think it most accurately sums up the agenda of President Obama, and it is duly critical of him by showing the ways in which he has abandoned certain ideals and campaign promises in order to govern from the center. This is exactly what I like about him--he is more of a centrist than anything, in much the same way that Clinton was a centrist, but he retains a moral integrity that Clinton never had. I find the vitriol towards him to be purely ideological without real critiques of his policies in their practical application, and I feel like there is a faction that is opposed to him no matter what he does or says. We've had cable for the last year, and I spent more time watching Fox News than MSNBC, but I find both of them objectionable by how dishonestly they approach real governance as opposed to preconceived political positions. This is the operating mode of the television press--it is sensational on both sides with very little substance. Sean Hannity--the conservative--and Ed Schultz--the liberal--seemed to me to be the greatest offenders, particularly for the former's smug portrayal of his unexamined positions and the latter's incoherent belligerence. Neither seems to have spent any time actually listening to anyone else, and you can tell by the way their views are only in conversation with a nonsensical, and non-existent, version of opposition--again, a straw man.

I consider myself liberal probably because of my sympathy for Keynesian economics and my view that the barriers of entry into a world of economic stability are fixed by the drive to maximize profits at the expense of working people. I find the glorification of the individual, and the self-centered charge that one person can do it alone, to be a myth that has nothing to do with the way we succeed. My sense of the positive affect of institutions also influences my political stance: I see charity and institutional help denigrated by the charge of "inefficiency," but "inefficiency," to me, will always be a by-product of absolute honesty, compassion, and sympathy. I recognize that a balance needs to be struck between my own devotion to groups of people and the large market forces that need to improve our economy, but I don't see that balance in strict Rand-ian philosophy, and I think the balance is already in place--it just needs to be adjusted according to timely needs (and our needs now stem from the fact that we are still recovering from some pretty egregious business practices that ignored a vulnerable population in order to maximize immediate profits). I probably don't need to go into the specifics of all of these views, but they usually inform my opinions, voting practices, and decisions. I think the best political philosopher in the history of the world was King Benjamin, and I believe that governments are in place not in opposition to growth but in the desire to help spur equal opportunity, protection, and service. I am not a socialist, which is a system that constricts as much as unfettered and unregulated capitalism does, so I don't think the government should control economics, but my patriotism is ignited by American ideas that I can honestly say contribute more to quality of life than almost anything except religious institutions: public education--both higher education and primary education, public arts, free libraries, public transit and high quality roads and interstates, national parks and local parks, the police and fire department, and Emergency Rooms. My sense is that these things are completely tied into the reasons America is exceptional, and they provide a great balance to an economic system that has always spurred competition and innovation. I don't believe, however, in a system where rich get richer while poor get poorer, but rather in a system where rich can get richer and poor can get opportunities to get out of poverty, or at least have access to things that will enrich their lives, and more often than not, those opportunities will come in the form of public help--community colleges and public education, state-sponsored training programs and non-profit organizations, help on food, housing, and childcare while a parent seeks jobs or training, health care for those who can't afford it, and so on.

I don't think I am an idiot, and I don't like to be portrayed as one by people, but I do like honest conversation and arguments that involve real listening. I have proudly proclaimed myself a flip-flopper, a bit like Mitt, because I believe that a policy or opinion ought to change with more information at your disposal, which is why civil discourse remains the best tool of policy. When the discourse loses its civility, it reinforces people's previous positions by solidifying their oppositional stance. That is, it has no real practical purpose with the exception of making the right righter and the left lefter. Finally, this is the reason my Dad was a hero. He was always up for an argument, not for argument's sake but because he loved to test ideas. He always beat me in arguments, but he also listened. I recall late in his life he and my brother Mark were often arguing about Mark's environmental worldview. Eventually, and quietly, my Dad joined the Sierra Club, acknowledged the validity of Mark's opinions and told me that Mark had found something that mattered, and did the world good. My dad did not change all of his views about the issues, but his recognition that something good was to come out of it was unforgettable. Once, after coming home from my mission, my dad and I got into an argument about language programs at school--he destroyed me, and he would continue to destroy me over the next couple years on that particular issue. But he said something at the end of our initial conversation that made me believe that he was listening: "Don't let your good opinions be sullied by not listening to your opposition. You need to really listen and then think hard about it." It was a lecture, typical of my dad, but I have trying to really listen since.

That was long, and this is about to get much longer. Rereading that feels strange, but for the most part I still believe in what I said.  I wish I had said it better.

But returning to the question of people speaking for us in a manner we aspire to, I just bought Marilynne Robinson's new book of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books. The essays in the collection are simply put the best pieces of cultural criticism I have ever read, and perhaps the most beautifully written cultural criticism ever produced. I'd like to review the book, but this blog entry requires something different. Just know that I recently read a review by Stefan Beck that mentioned, "If one feels no challenge from Robinson's essays, one is not thinking hard enough. If one finds nothing in them to disagree violently with, he is perhaps overawed by her credentials." Guiltily falling into the second camp, I'll defend myself by saying that if her credentials are nothing more than her seven books, her teaching, her public lectures, and her generous personality, I am not overawed as much as intellectually and morally trusting, and then from there I can let the arguments themselves sway me or not. But I am speaking of someone who gives better words to my thoughts--presumption on my part--so I was swayed from the beginning. I do remember disagreeing with Robinson's reading of Milton when she was teaching, so there. At any rate, the essays in the book tackle atheism, patriotism, public universities, liberalism, the Bible, violence, love, American history, European history, intellectual culture, American frontier (and the West)--all the little things. Being a westerner, living in Iowa City, getting a doctorate in Renaissance lit, born in Idaho no less (and my brothers always made fun of me for it), we have a few things in common, but what I find useful is her articulation of the way religion, and specifically Christianity, ought to inform our politics. Forgive me for quoting at length:

A narrative has emerged lately, a narrative of decline. It is about the loss of our religious and cultural essence, and it is stimulating in its way, like a horror movie or a panic attack. . . . For our purposes it begins with the assertion by certain excitable people that this is a Christian country. So it is, demographically. And since this is true both historically and at present, attitudes and institutions that are Christian in their origins are profoundly influential in our culture. But this is not good enough. This influence is both unconscious and unforced, and it is therefore invisible to those who think that the majority religious tradition in the country, by virtue of its being the majority tradition, ought to be asserted very forcefully as an intrinsic part of our national identity. These people see an onrush of secularism intent on driving religion to the margins, maybe over the edge, and for the sake of Christianity they want to enlist society itself in its defense. They want politicians to make statements of faith, and when merchants hang out their seasonal signs and banners they want them to say something much more specific than "Happy Holidays." they say that the Founders meant to establish freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Well, in fact, the Founders meant to give us freedom from established religion, from state-sponsored religion. Whether they themselves were religious or not is a separate question. I assume they were. But the country in its early period was largely populated by religious people escaping religious oppression at the hands of state churches . . . Freedom of was freedom from. Historically the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly were deeply implicated in religious freedom, all of them being violently curtailed on religious grounds through most of Western history. Since my own religious heroes tended to die gruesomely under these regimes, I have no nostalgia for the world before secularism, nor would many of these "Christian nation" exponents, if they looked a little way into the history of their own traditions.

I suppose this is just a small example of the kind of reasoning in which the book participates. I don't know how often I have been at church lately and had to sit through lessons or comments about how the world is on its way to hell and that we have to separate ourselves and be strong in our convictions to ward off the evil, even the people, that want to destroy us by virtue of their own moral reasoning. I don't buy this. I just don't--people, almost all, are good, which nobody denies once they get to know other people. The more people we know, the better the world becomes. That, to me, is encouraging and urgent. I'll let Robinson articulate it thusly:

I was traveling from Iowa to New York with my son not long after September 11. We passed a great many of those tall highway signs that usually advertise hardware sales and dinner specials. Most of them then said, GOD BLESS AMERICA. Only one of them said GOD HAS BLESSED AMERICA. Yes, he has. He has blessed us with one another. We have had an extraordinary experience here together. I don't think anything is more emotionally stabilizing, more clarifying in every way, than gratitude, especially in dark times. And we have more reasons for gratitude than we could ever count, or even be aware of. But respectful attention to those around us would help us to take account of the human wealth that contributes so much to our lives. Then why not trust? Why not enjoy the coutnry God has blessed, in all its turbulence and variety, rather than judge and condemn, as if by a standard of righteousness God himself does not see fit to apply?

Robinson goes on, and I am going to quote what comes next, simply because it culminates in a "This I believe" moment of incredible power and characteristic wit. But I interject: this seems to me such a positive and generous view of the country and its people that I can't help but feel a true Christian ethic that feels consistent with the way I view my own religion, at least--one I consider Christian not in political terms but in doctrinal terms, a religion that I see doing more good with its hands than with its mouth, an observation that has kept me as faithful as I am. Robinson continues,

Of course we have seen bad times, and we will see more of them. I am such a regenerate liberal as to feel that much of what we suffer and will suffer we could also alleviate or prevent. In my Bible, Jesus does not say, "I was hungry and you fed me, though not in such a way as to interfere with free-market principles." I am so unpatriotic as to attach great importance to the day-to-day practical well-being of my fellow citizens. Until there is evidence that ideology mattered to Jesus, it will be of no interest to me. And we know now, if we want to know, how free and how wise and how principled those markets were, to which--for the greater good, of course--we subordinated practical concerns apparently so close to the heart of Christ, the feeding and clothing, the tending to the sick and respecting the humanity of the imprisoned. These good works, if they were assisted by means of governments, would make us like the French, they say. Whatever that means. I doubt that this notion is based on any actual knowledge of the French, but if it is, it certainly encourages me in the opinion that the secular have an excellent hope of heaven.

 This I believe, indeed.