Chavs

After reading "Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class" by Owen Jones, I felt like to do it justice would require a researched college-style essay instead of a blog post. Not gonna happen! So go read it! It was a great book, and at the same time I learned a little bit about UK politics and history.

But even though I won't write an essay, I've made some notes about the pages I marked while reading. Also, most of the social commentary applies in some way to the dialogue going on in America around class, but of course there are important differences... someone should write a book about that. (Or a college-style essay!)

Racism bad, Sexism bad, Classism funny!
"Chav" is a derogatory term in the UK for working-class people. The closest thing I can relate it to in US terms is "white trash" - though of course one of the things that struck me while reading this book is that there is no derogatory term for poor people in the US that isn't also about race. (So we have that going for us?) The chav stereotype is of an uneducated young street thug wearing "Burberry" or other bling; laziness, drunkenness, violence, teenage pregnancies, racism, etc. are all traits associated with chavs. Literally the term comes from the Romany word for child, 'chavi', though people often associate the term with acronyms like 'Council Housed And Violent'. Another US analogy is needed here: council housing can be considered a nicer, British version of the projects... plus without the guns.

Jones opens the book with an anecdote: he was at a dinner party with educated, middle-class, liberal friends, and yet someone cracked a joke about chavs and everyone laughed. Why has it become okay to make fun of poor people? Why are there TV shows in the UK devoted to this very thing? I think this all hinges on the popular notion that class is a choice, or a result of your choices, as opposed to things like your race or your gender, which you are born with. This is a ridiculous and upside-down idea in the face of all the data about upward mobility (i.e. the lack thereof). But if being poor is your own fault, then it's okay to make fun of you for it, and not feel guilty. Game on!

There are probably other psychological things going on though that explain why people would rather believe people are poor entirely because of their choices than that education, race, gender, parental income, the structure of society, etc. have a huge impact on your life. Part of the story is perhaps that believing that the disadvantaged deserve what they get makes it easier for the wealthy to think they are entirely responsible for their own wealth ("I BUILT IT!!!!"), rather than accepting that they were dealt a good hand and used it well.

What is the working class?
"Interestingly, more people in Britain call themselves working class now than did in 1950," despite Tony Blair's insistence that "we're all middle class now." Stock-brokers "ask with faux puzzlement: 'I work, don't I? So why aren't I working class?'" A childhood friend which Jones considered indisputably working class "felt that being working class meant being poor, while being middle class meant being educated." (p. 141)

I think the last quote is why I marked this page. Also, after reading the entire book, I'm still not entirely certain what is meant by working-class. Maybe it just sounds better than "lower-class" (after all, we have "middle" and "upper").

The lack of upward class mobility scapegoated by the lack of aspiration
A common criticism of the working-class (I might just start calling it "victim-blaming") is that they have no aspiration - that they could make their lives better but they just don't care enough to try. Jones interviews Liam, who came from a working-class background: "I literally didn't know what university was, aged sixteen. University, to be honest, was kind of where posh people go!... It's just not what we do, it's just not on the radar... You can only ever really aspire to something if you know it and understand it." (p. 174-175)

I thought the last bit was incredibly profound. How can we expect poor people to work really hard (and spend a lot of money that they don't have... at least that's how it works in America) to get a University education when they have no frame of reference for such an aspiration? Especially now when a college degree is often a ticket to live with your parents in your early 20s rather than a ticket to a good job? In poor communities in the US, the most that kids have to aspire to is to work at McDonald's and not get shot. These are the kinds of things they can point to as attainable goals. These are the jobs they are trained for with what our education system is providing them.

The "get a job" argument, i.e. "try harder," i.e. "it's your fault you're poor"
Perhaps this is just a variant of the above "victim-blaming" excuse, both of which stem from the assumption that people have complete and total control over their own lives no matter what... But as it turns out, in the UK "the majority of people living in poverty actually have a job." New Labour (close enough to Democrats) attempted to tackle this problem, but they did it by "allowing the market to run amok," according to Jones. A Labour MP (Congressperson) describes this as introducing tax credits and redistributing wealth by forcing people into the lowest paid jobs: "In that way, you become the guilty person if you can't afford to dig yourself out of poverty. There's a Victorian, patronizing attitude towards working people." All the while, the minimum wage has been allowed to become less and less meaningful. (p. 201-202)

If there were one word to describe the 'chav' stereotype, patronizing would be it.

Chavs are all racist idiots who blame immigrants for their problems
If Children of Men taught me anything, it's that the British hate immigrants. The British National Party (one of those minor Nth parties that other democracies have) represents those sentiments. Hackney (a town? a part of London? something like that...) got a lot of votes in the 70s for the National party, but more recently they got virtually none, which a former London mayor thinks is because "you tend to get a problem of racism in an area undergoing transition." Very insightful! Jones goes on: "Hackney is one of the most mixed areas in the country, and as a result the far right has died out there." (The U.S. analogy is major cities, which are the most diverse and the most Democratic.) "But it [far right/BNP] flourishes in areas... where mass immigration is a new phenomenon... or, conversely, where there is very little immigration but a tremendous fear of it." Additionally "liberal multiculturalism has understood inequality purely through the prism of race, disregarding that of class." This is also what we often do in the U.S. but with good reason; however, in the UK, the white majority is a real 90% majority (which I learned from this book). (p. 224-225)

If you are middle-class and don't exactly have swimming pools filled with gold, you are probably worried about sending your kids to college and saving for retirement. It may seem unfair that some people are getting help from the government. You might have some reasonable things to say about that. BUT, it may seem even more unfair if those people getting help don't look like you. (I'm saying this simply as a statement of human nature and not a moral judgment.) "Why do they get handouts just because they are minorities?" is unfortunately something that real people say. It doesn't help that "affirmative action" policies in the UK are called "positive discrimination" (!!), but I will have to leave that discussion to future work.

A new sense of aspiration
"The new aspiration must be about improving people's communities and bettering the conditions of the working class as a whole, rather than simply lifting able individuals up the ladder." (p. 258)

Word.

The Universe is Void

While waiting for my sister to once again find the time to create artful interpretations of awesome facts about the universe, I inadvertently made art at work!

Most of the universe is void, containing not much matter and very few galaxies.

This is a thin slice through a simulation that calculates the evolution of dark matter particles under gravity as the universe expands. The big, colorful points are void particles, with different colors representing different voids; these are plotted over little black points of wall, filament, and halo particles that represent the collapsed structures in the universe. The voids, instead of collapsing to form stuff (i.e. galaxies form in the dark matter halos), are regions of space that matter flows away from because they are less dense than their surroundings.

It turns out that voids occupy most of the volume of the universe, perhaps around 90%, while only containing perhaps 30% of the mass. These numbers depend on the physics of structure formation, including whether Einstein's general relativity theory is correct on large scales. But they also depend on how you define a void and so could change depending on whom you ask on what day of the week. Researchers in my field are slowly converging on the best ways of defining voids in both simulations of dark matter and observations of galaxies.

So if you are wondering what I do, now you know: I study the large-scale structure of the universe, and I make art.

The Fact of the Matter

"The Fact of the Matter" by Sally Keith:

Industry sprang up.
Orange flowers surrounded the metallic poles.
The statue was a painted hawk with outstretched wings.
Sun beams spread out on wall-sized panes.
Two knights in armor were shown on the door.
People believed in me when I opened my coat.
An origami cat.
The poem a great gray wall.
The wall the softest kind of sheet.
Cosmos clustered in the median strip.
Soft pink slowed the city's strong wind.
The cosmos' stems shone electric green.
Elsewhere out flew a couple of cranes.
A beautiful boy into the velvet curtains pressed.
The stage barest black.
The hills behind it backlit, gold-rimmed.
A woman steps out and opens her hand.
Why do you weep? I ask.
She only unfurls her fingers to offer some seed.
She only bends her knees.
The world is the same. The world is the same.
The long green reeds will remain.
The wind inside is softly carving its name.

No commentary, I just enjoyed this poem - another from the PBS Newshour blog. You can watch the author read it here.

Happiness

Please remember this for me: If you don’t
have happiness in the present moment, there
is no way to have happiness in the future.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

A friend of mine posted this quote (with a picture of jumping happy people!), but instead of appreciating the sentiment and moving on, I am taking this opportunity to delve into the meaning of happiness. 

What is the sound of one hand being happy?

As most people would agree, "happiness" is a pleasant emotional state. I bring this up because below, I will suggest that there are better interpretations, or perhaps better words, in this context. For now, though, using the definition that 99% of readers will use, then on the surface, this seems like a pretty standard inspirational quote from a Zen master. Be happy now. Stop trying to be happy in the future. Take this opportunity to enjoy the life you are living. That's one way to interpret it... go jump around and be happy!

But because it is Zen inspiration, there is far more to it than appears on the surface. "If you aren't happy in the present, you will not be happy in the future"... well, that actually sounds pretty grim! The burden of happiness is laid heavy, and there is an implication of immense pressure: this is it, be happy now! If you aren't happy it's you're own fault and you will never be happy. Literally, that is what the quote is saying. But luckily that's just another way to interpret it, and literal interpretations are lame and boring and very un-Zen-like.

I would say that both of those are wrong, or at least only partly right. The first interpretation, positive and light, is correct in that happiness happens in the present moment. The second, with its Zen disregard for making sense, is correct in that happiness never happens in the future. You could substitute "happiness" with anything else and these would still be true. When things happen, they are in the present, and never the future. The future doesn't exist, and neither does the past, so how could you expect to be happy in the future? There is only now.

Therefore, if you aren't happy now, you will never be happy. The Zen thing to realize is that now is a constantly changing moment that each individual experiences in different ways as the Universe moves through time. Now is always. Then is merely what you remember, or what you anticipate or worry about. Basically, the quote is saying, "don't worry, be happy." (Now you have that song in your head. You're welcome.)

Be happy, or else.

The problem is this: I fully get behind the "don't worry" aspect of the quote, but not the "be happy" part; I reject the presumption that happiness is somehow the goal in life. Most people take this happiness goal as given. Various forms of "wisdom", whether religious, philosophical, or colloquial, are interpreted as ways of living that maximize happiness. And, if you are not happy, then something is wrong either with you or with your life situation, so one of those should change until you are happy all the time. Be happy now sounds nice, but it is a meaningless burdensome thing to say to a sad person.

Perhaps Thich Nhat Hanh only said "happiness" to be generally understood, because I think there is a deeper wisdom to be learned that the idea of happiness clouds. Happiness is just the other side of sadness, and vice versa, each meaningless without the other. Striving for happiness invariably strives against sadness, puts this ahead of that, whereas the experience of being human involves both. Fighting sadness thus fights the full expression of who you are in the moment. Here, too, the trick is not wallowing in past sadness or imagining future sadness. The trick, in my opinion, is not to be happy now, but to be here now.

When we get down to it perhaps we don't want to be happy. Perhaps what we want is meaning. Some substance to our lives that stitches it in with the rest of Life so that we feel alive. No one wants to be sad, but if we were happy all the time how would we grow? Why would we ever change anything? What would be the point? (Though, maybe realizing this would instantly trigger sadness, proving that it is not possible to be happy all the time, thereby solving the momentary existential crisis and restoring a feeling of well-being.... paradox averted!)

I might even go so far as to say that society's preoccupation with happiness is damaging, in the long run - that trying to be happy now will actually reduce future happiness. For example, it has been conclusively shown with sarcasm that listening to NPR makes people sad:

NPR is committed to delivering the news, and the news is not good. Whether they're reporting on corporate greed, school shootings, religious extremists, or a grossly over-entitled populace, it's hard to listen to public radio and not come to the conclusion that we're all just completely and totally screwed.

I believe that it is vitally important to pay attention to what's going on in the world, and that if we as a society continue to ignore things that we don't want to hear, we are lost. But that doesn't mean we should listen to the news and be sad. We should listen to the news and do what we can to make things better, and not worry about not being able to fix everything all at once. Don't worry, and listen to the news. But that somehow doesn't sound inspirational.

Be in the moment, or else.

 "We're often happiest when we're lost in the moment" seems obvious to me, but it was "among the surprising results" of this TED talk. Another talk says "flow" is the secret to happiness, when the "sense of time disappears" and you "forget yourself," which to me is the same as being lost in the moment. And yet these discussions are still framed in terms of how to achieve happiness. Being lost in the moment, forgetting yourself... how can you be happy if there is no you?

I don't think the experiences those talks describe actually amount to happiness, but that we lack a better word. I like to think of it as the intense experience, with full awareness, of the present moment... but that is tedious. Joe Campbell might call it "the rapture of being alive" and that is good too, but it sounds like an even more pleasurable state of happiness. (Happiness +1.) Being in the moment is beyond happiness or sadness, but even describing it that way is just moving the target. (If you are not beyond happiness and sadness now, you will never be...)

Despite all my above words, I don't have anything against happiness. My issue here is with happiness as a goal, because my issue is with any goal at all. Goals are things to be had in the future, and I think the real wisdom in the quote that started all this is the insight into the nature of time: now is all there is. Or put another way, from the pages of Dune and one of my own personal mantras:

Eternity is now.

Open Spaces

THE ROCK

Burger King sat on top
of the sky
today.

A fugitive rock tried to speak
to the asphalt,
but the asphalt like a traumatized child
said nothing
and the rock died.

We were really stressed out
until we heard the rock speak.
The pine trees had a few things to say
that also quieted our nervous hearts.

They said, "Listen, be still."
And the rock answered,
"You're telling me."

But the hummingbirds and the crows
were living on top of Burger King,
singing a song of sadness.

~ Albert Markovski, fictional poet and community organizer

Today I am really glad that my favorite DVD was recovered from the clutches of HM Revenue and Customs. To celebrate I am sharing some poems! Here is another:

Nobody sits like this rock sits.

You rock, rock.

The rock just sits and is.

You show us how to just sit here
and that's what we need.

~ Albert Markovski of the Open Spaces Coalition

I could say something serious about the actual loss of our open spaces all over the world, but that would be a drag. Plus there are worse things to be bummed about.

Like a dialysis machine to keep us alive in this horrible hell we call earth that we seem to be so proud has evolved from the dinosaurs to our "higher" species when in fact, as with the dinosaurs, it has always been a wretched carnival of violence, consumption, suffering, and survival. Shall we talk about war? Children losing limbs or eyes? Don't feel like it? I didn't think so. Why would you? It is an unbearable drag, all of it. How about your boring job?

~ Caterine Vauban, fictional philosopher, French

Somethingness.... Nothingness.... I guess if I want to talk about actual nothingness I could get back to studying the distribution of voids in the large-scale structure of the universe. Open Spaces indeed! To end on a more positive note, here is another quote from my favorite DVD booklet:

There is no remainder in the mathematics of infinity.

~ Bernard Jaffe, existential detective

Epistemology and the Media

A while ago I saw the documentary "Manufacturing Consent" about Noam Chomsky and recorded some thoughts as it was playing. Watch it yourself if you can, though it is rather long and rather old, or you can trust that my interpretation is a faithful representation of its main ideas - but be aware that these are not epistemically equal!

One of Chomsky's main tenets is that the media deceives and indoctrinates the public (though individuals in the media aren't consciously deceptive, and I think this is a misconception by critics). Anyway, soon in the documentary I realize that why I'm drawn to this subject and why I think it's so important is because I'm fascinated by epistemology, which is the study (or philosophy) of how we obtain knowledge. The dissemination of (mis)information through the media is another example of a process by which people learn about the world and how that information becomes biased, and how they come to believe things that aren't true. This is a lot of what fascinates me about politics, sociology, and religion, and as a scientist this is also what I'm interested in - not discovering the next big weird thing about the universe, but aiding the process by which that discovery can be made.

Process is important. Learning isn't about collecting facts, as if they're shells on the beach waiting to be picked up. The process by which one obtains information says everything about the quality, and even veracity, of that information. It is also important to be aware that you will never know all the facts about a situation. Most are buried beneath the sea, and the ones in view depend on where you are along the beach.

What follows is disjointed snippets of commentary, but hopefully not incredibly confusing to follow.

--

I like that Chomsky is a linguist. Tolkien was a linguist. I love languages and grammar but have never put in the effort to learn another language. (No, not even Elvish.)

... and then he said anarcho-syndicalism was the optimal way to structure societies and for some reason that is associated with Monty Python... yup, found it. Enjoy.

--

Is the "sinister view" of the media's control of information insulting the intelligence of those who consume the news? No. I think it's merely a description of how people think and judge and collect information, which is more often than not in a quick and inherently biased way. This is why understanding unconscious bias is so important to understanding discrimination - because people are often not meaning to discriminate, but merely making judgements they way they usually do when faced with little information, which is to resort to stereotypes and untested assumptions...

--

"More terrifying than the occasional Hitler..." is the "equanimity and the detachment" of observers...

This is quite a statement, but I think I might have to agree. Think about it in terms of the Sandy Hook school shooting (which happened after I saw this documentary, btw). How much more horrible would that have been if people had not been shocked by it, had not been deeply affected? As horrible as the daily atrocities which we ignore. As of this writing, there have been 489 gun deaths in the U.S. since the school shooting. The occasional tragedy shocks us and may start a dialog about aspects of our society, but if we remain detached we will continue to allow tragedies to happen. Why doesn't the nightly news say, "There were 15 gun deaths on January 3rd, 15 on the 2nd, and 39 on the 1st day of the year." Why don't we demand it to?

--

Media presentation of gulf war: "This is the people's war," so you need to know everything you can about it... i.e. we are going to war, there's no discussion to the contrary, we will help you deal with it. I remember MSNBC playing in the common area of my college residence hall with the title "Countdown to Iraq" on the bottom... the media just getting people used to the fact that we will go to war, neglecting their duty to inform people of the consequences, to question critically the politician's agenda, the evidence for WMD, etc...

--

This documentary is pretty old (1992) so it's talking about alternative media in terms of magazines, publishers, and radio instead of THE INTERNET i.e. blogs. But even back then, and more so now, it seems there is soooo much information out there - how does one take seriously the job of self-education and learning about the world when there is so much out there and hey I've been thinking all day I'd much rather watch TV ??

I wish I had an answer for that question.

Things

I had envisioned writing this months ago. I would arrive in England, unpack my boxes, re-discover what books I had decided to ship across an ocean, and write about what they mean. These are the books I could not live without (or could not fit into my storage boxes) - that meant so much to me I would pay serious money and cause myself serious mental anxiety to have with me.

It turns out they caused me even more mental anxiety when that box simply did not arrive in England! I had my few cosmology textbooks and a few books I put in my luggage, but not the bulk of my favorite books and DVDs. Apparently I did not need them enough to get over my calling-businesses-on-the-phone anxiety (yes, I have anxiety issues, and that makes me anxious...) so I just hoped they would show up and planned to buy them all again until miraculously, a few days before Christmas, they were returned to my mom's house. (Custom's thought I owed duty fees but never bothered to send me a bill. Asshats.)

All of this strongly reinforces what I already knew, and what made moving out of a house I lived in for 6 years so hard, which is that I love my things. A book is not just a book but the experience I had reading it, over and over for my favorite books. I like to look at my things and have special places to put them. Even in the game Skyrim, I love how I can display my books on a bookshelf, armor on a mannequin, and special weapons I no longer use on a weapon rack. Sometimes I try to arrange the books by theme, because what matters is not that I have a bunch of things, but that I have a place for the things I care about, even when they are fantasy things in a fantasy world.

So what about my real books? (And DVDs while I'm at it.) It will surprise no one that I have very special copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and even The Children of Hurin, two of which I brought in my luggage and the other two I packed, leaving the rest of my Tolkien books (you bet there are lots!) to storage. I'm actually glad The Hobbit was in the lost box because that means it is here now and I am reading it to my nephew. The DVDs were mostly movies that I don't have pirated copies of, but especially all 3 LOTR extended edition DVDs. Other fantasy books I brought or packed are the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman and all 7 Harry Potter books, plus The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I probably debated whether to pack Dune (all 6) or HP, deciding that HP belonged in England. To round out the fantasy genre I also packed Legend. (I will accept no criticism. It is awesome.)

Next I packed The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, a book on Guided Meditations by Stephen Levine, and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, because, you know, deep thoughts and stuff. Then there's an awesome old book of the collected writings of John Steinbeck which contains my favorite, East of Eden. Deep thoughts in that one too. DVDs in this theme include I Heart Huckabees and a Joseph Campbell compilation, Sukhavati (I guess the Power of Myth was too big for the box). I will have to either find place in my luggage or download these in preparation for my next existential crises. I also packed The Matrix set of DVDs, which arguably goes here in the Deep Thoughts section, but that will take another blog post of explaining (and room in my luggage). I miss having my things!

The rest is a less meaningful hodgepodge of useful (Julia Child's French cookbook, Chocolate Desserts, French for Reading, Spanish phrase book, and a Guide to Madrid), not yet read (The World of Dreams (a collection of essays), volume one of Sandman by Neil Gaiman, and The House of Seven Gables), and awesome (Kung Fu Panda 2, Avatar: The Last Airbender volume 1, and Planet Earth). Maybe it's not as interesting as I thought it would be to learn that I like fantasy and metaphysics (and cartoons featuring martial arts). Sorry for boring you! But I do believe that the things people value tell a story about who they are.

I will have to figure out what I can fit on the trip back. Obviously I don't need these things. I can live without them. But I want my flat in England to be my home, "where the rooms are a collection of our lives," and for that I need my things.