dumbass: an american standard?

^ 'Bush and the dumbing down of America', an excerpt from Susan Jacoby's hour long presentation in San Francisco recently. The full talk can be had here. | For iPhone users the full talk isn't available on YouTube, but two of its moments, 'The dumbing down of political language' and 'Computers: not making you smarter', are.

"Writer and scholar Susan Jacoby is sure to raise some hackles with The Age of American Unreason - an unsparing jeremiad that attacks the dumbing-down of the American public. Jacoby's area of study is US intellectual history, though she worries that the field is becoming a moot point in the face of our country's pervasive "infotainment" complex.

As politics get folded into entertainment, she argues, so too does morality become indistinguishable from consumerism. Though hardly the first to bemoan the pitfalls of mass culture, Jacoby's portrait of American anti-intellectualism is especially germane in the middle of an election year." - Booksmith, San Francisco

Philistine. I love the sound of that word and what it signifies. It's an ironizing word when used in a certain way, in this case to dismiss someone who chooses not to grow intellectually (yes, you can decide to be smarter than you were yesterday). At the risk of making myself look like an evil sonuvabitch with 'elitist' leanings, I confess to calling your average American dumbass a Philistine and he wouldn't know what that word meant, and you could accuse me, hence, of being anything but a Philistine. But think about it, there was one time that I myself did not know what that word meant. And guess what I did. I got off my dumb ass and actually looked it up in the dictionary. I grew better that day.

How many of us Americans today actually choose to get off our dumb asses to look up a new and intriguing word in the dictionary? How many of us Americans today actually choose to think, critically and analytically? How many of us Americans today actually choose to deeply and honestly examine the philosophical essence of our values instead of merely complaining out of our asses that our values are being attacked by terrorists and dictatorships?

^ These two guys were themselves elite - highly educated and independent thinkers and massively passionate about creating a world where everyone can be like them if they wanted. Are you, as a 'dumb American', gonna give them shit, too, the way you look down on other intellectuals and great thinkers? After all, these two guys co-conceived what would become two of the greatest manifestos in our history, The Declaration Of Independence and the United States Constitution. Yep, meet Thomas Paine (left) and Thomas Jefferson.

How many of us Americans would rather go shopping or watch Jerry Springer instead? Think about it. Or don't think at all and choose to be just another dumb American, one of many millions who have forgotten that the United States Of America was actually founded by a small group of amazingly bold and intelligent individuals, themselves learned men who chose to enlighten themselves and think critically and deeply. Where is the sin in that? Why should we as Americans toss aside the very principle on which our nation was built - the chance to be the very best, brightest, and highest quality that we can be for ourselves, of ourselves, and to set this down as a fundamental human right for everyone?

After all, is that not what Michelle and Barack Obama did? Is that not what my brother, a successful immigrant who earned his PhD in theoretical physics and now works for the JPL Labs at Caltech did? Why is being intelligent, individualistic, and elite looked down upon by so many of us Americans who would rather listen to trashy shock DJ's and obsess over what Britney or Lindsey did and be referred to as 'the lowest common denominator'?

^ Do forgive me, but his impressive knowledge of art and history and his incomparable experience in museums and culture aside.....FUCK, THIS GUY HAS ONE OF THE MOST GODDAMN DISTINCTLY SEXY VOICES EVER!! *faints*

I remember reading an interview with Philippe de Montebello in The New Yorker years ago. He has been the director of The Metropolitan Museum Of Art for the past 30 years and will be retiring at the end of this year. de Montebello was once confronted at a press conference for making the museum an elitist institution, why has he not reached out to, say, black kids in Harlem or the working class.

His reply was, in effect, "Yes, this is an elitist institution. And yet anyone can walk in off the street, go into the galleries, and learn about the world through the art. No one is stopping you at the door and telling you that you are too poor, too ethnic, too this or that. Everyone is welcome. The very moment you choose to enter The Metropolitan is the moment that you, yourself, become elite."

clutter and meaning

Photographs I took of my old digs in Chicago, a hardwood floored studio in the Lakeview neighbourhood by the lakefront, where I lived in the early 90s. The images were meant to be arranged in a panoramic David Hockney-esque manner.

We as humans keep many things, stash many things, often subconsciously, as a way of creating a personal geography of experiences deep inside ourselves. Each object we've acquired, been given, stumbled upon, paid dearly for, and otherwise seen pass into our lives becomes a sort of banal marker, perhaps a small milestone, or if it involves great emotional or psychic associations, a deep symbolic depth. We store our objects away, sometimes carefully cataloged, sometimes haphazardly and without order, and we forget them until that one moment when we happen to be looking for something, as search or investigation triggered by a present event. That's when we become aware again, become attuned again, to the perhaps existential connections between one's self, the world, time, space, materiality, and passage.

A copy of the first American hardback edition of the novel The Mandarins by writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. I found it years ago in a used books shop in Chicago and read it ravenously for hours at cafe. I still haven't yet, but will eventually read, de Beauvoir's seminal proto-feminist work, The Second Sex.

Earlier today something I was reading online triggered a desire to find and look at a certain coffee table style book I had that showcased writers' houses, particularly the spare and spiritually spacious sea front home of one writer, my favourite home out of all of them and one I could easily see myself effortlessly living in for the rest of my life (I'll post about it soon). Of course, it took me a while to find this book but meanwhile the task became an adventure for me and before I knew it I was looking at all these things I had put away in storage, each item igniting remembrances - passages of moments, relationships, and moods.

Left: Most have been read, some not. Pooh was given to me 11 years ago by an erstwhile lover and friend, Piglet I bought some time later to keep Pooh company. Right: When I used to work as a designer in the fashion industry I bought this sterling silver ball from a wholesale vendor. It emits a soft, very tiny bell-like tinkle as it rolls or shakes, as if it's giggling, tickling my spirit and calming me. I keep it in a little aubergine velvet pouch. It has since tarnished (until I decide to give it a good polish).


Left: My old boss knew I was a bookworm of sorts, so she presented me with an ostrich skin cover she designed and made herself for whatever tomes I had that would fit it. Currently it protects my indispensible paperback copy of The Art of Living by Epictetus. I read quite a lot back then, usually at cafe near my apartment building, spending hours vanished in literature, philosophy, psychology, biographies, and anthologies. I ordered this luxurious, beautiful stark black calf leather cover from Levenger; it came with a bungie bookmark to secure the whole thing. People thought I was reading the Bible! I told them, "Sorry to disappoint you, but it's Voltaire." Right: I wonder how they'd react if I showed them what I'm reading now that I keep sheathed in this Bible-like book cover.

It was compelling. I had to take some pictures of them at the moment they were bubbling up those remembrances in me, in effect creating a meta memory.


Listen to the giggling silver ball (recorded via iPhone by the CellSpin app)!

And what about you, friend? What things of yours have you adventitiously come across while searching for something else that triggered the same experience? How did you react? What meanings do they hold for you?