Winter Reading

Haddon  Turner

You Are Limited

If there is an overarching theme to nearly everything I’ve thought and written about in the past ten years, it is this: I’ve received a clear, unavoidable message that I Am Not In Control (and that’s a good thing)* How do I then understand reality and live a good life in this paradigm? Haddon Turner is also thinking about these questions. His essay feels especially relevant in the first cold snap of winter: the first time the snow and ice has stayed on the ground. Winter driving alone makes me very aware of my limitations and those of the people around me. (I approve of AI tools to make driving safer. For me at least, driving a car is a unnatural activity and it makes complete sense that I need to supplement my attention and cognition to do it safely.)

Quote:

“…..The irrevocable limitations of the created order will always be something we come up against — things which cause us to stop and will confound the best of our limitless plans. As long as there is daytime in which we can work, the limitations of the darkness of night will not be far behind. The seasons will always influence (for good or for ill) our labour and health, and the uncontrollable weather will waylay our best plans. And most profoundly, the earth’s spatial, energetic and resource limitations will constrain the heights our economic growth is able to reach. We live on a limited earth. Only a fool forgets this.”

Alex Kaschuta

Cope Springs Eternal

Every time I read a perceptive essay about the illusions and delusions of the internet, I think, This is ironic. Would I be better off not spending time on the internet instead of reading criticisms of it? To some degree, the answer is Yes. But if you are going to use any part of the internet for information or entertainment or connection or commerce, and I assume most people are, including myself, this sort of critique is helpful.

Quote:

“Cope is not about the content, but about the psychological function of consuming it. Both the content that offers options for what you might do, such as interior design, fitness, health, and financial planning, and the content that provides reasons for why you are not doing these things, such as conspiracies, social critique, and, let’s be honest, politics, can serve the function of cope. You might do one of the 176 useful things you’ve scrolled through today, or, even better, you might collect a few more for use in an indeterminate future. You could start looking around for little ways to improve your existence, but when the world is on fire and “improvement” itself is a heteropatriarchal concept or a plot by our gynocentric hypergamous overlords, it seems best to sit tight.”

Heather Heying

Interconnection

An anecdote that is a sort of bookend to my previous blog about politicizing every experience, every relationship, every communication and why that might be not a good idea.

Quote:

“…..My friend feels free to share her anguish with me, because, like so many of our friends and family members, she cannot conceive that I might feel the exact opposite. And that’s a large part of how we got here: Hubris.

We’re so right, many of them have been saying for years now, and we have God on our side. How could any sane person see anything differently than how we see it? And if you do think differently, well, you're just plain wrong, and you’re probably an “ist,” - a racist, a sexist, a misogynist, and especially, our favorite word, a fascist.”

Haddon Turner (again!)

Where You Are Is Where You Are

The quote above mentioned hubris, and Haddon Turner tackles hubris head on here, discussing what should be the main focus of our attention: the local, national, or global? When I look back at my life, I think I have always wanted, consciously or sub consciously, to live my life immersed in local community. But it took a lot of exploring, including time living in places far from my birthplace, to be able to begin to understand how to do that. It wasn’t something I was taught. I would venture this is true of many people born in the last 40-50 years. We learned, directly or indirectly, that we create our identities through consumption, not through participation in local community. 

I also continue to come to terms with the fact that my forebears were fleeing fractured communities (many layers of dislocation) and they did not, most likely could not, (not having experienced it themselves) pass on to me the kind of continuous tradition and coherent identity I have always wanted at some level. I agree with Turner that the local is the correct place to  aim one’s focus most of the time: but myself personally, and undoubtedly many other millions of people, are in their current home because of global forces beyond their control. So understanding who you are now may require also learning a bit about the global. 

Quote:

“You are not responsible for the whole world — far from it. But you are responsible for the local places in front of you: the local people who you relate to, the unique buildings, art, and beauty that you enjoy every day, and the local environments and habitats that surround the place you dwell. Where you are is where you are — and what you are responsible for. This is a burden heavy enough for us. This is a burden that matches our limitations. This is a burden that we can faithfully discharge. And this is a burden that will present us with a lifetime of opportunities for doing good.”

And the last word goes to Paul Kingsnorth: 

The Moses Option

Quote:

I used to believe in Big Movements and Big Ideas. I wrote whole books about them. Not any more. For a long time, I have believed something else instead: that if there is any world-saving to be done - if this notion is not in fact just hubristic and stupid in itself - then it is only going to come from the small, the local and, above all, the spiritual. And if there is no world-saving to be done - well, then our work remains exactly the same.

….And I might as well get on with it.

Because I have a platform: a deconstruction

 If I do say so myself, I did a terrific job of ignoring a certain American election this year. I was at my dance class on a November evening and during a break, I overheard a couple of fellow dancers talking about two American politicians. I wondered "Why are they bringing that up?" and then I suddenly connected the dots and realized that oh yeah, today's the big day that Americans vote. (I knew they were going to vote sometime, just not the exact day.)

Ignoring the media/social media coverage of the election, with the exception of a very small number of trusted cultural commentators who prioritize depth rather than hot takes, was a conscious, straightforward choice on my part. Maybe some people will disagree with this decision. "Oh, but the outcome of the election will affect your life (somehow)!" I don't deny it will. But is there a single thing that I will do differently in my day-to-day routine based on the outcome? Nothing that I can think of. Also, there are an infinite number of things outside of my control that also affect my life, and I don't spend massive amounts of time reading about most of them and thinking and wondering. So I don't see any reason to do so for other countries' elections either.

Anyway. During the period of time I was ignorant of the fact Americans were going to vote on a particular day, I bought tickets to see a talented and well-known Canadian musician. By well-known I mean she has been performing for several years and sold out a theatre of 300 seats. If I had known that the vote was happening on a certain day, it may have influenced my decision to buy tickets, which are not cheap, not even for a small show like this one. I can't say for certain. But I did not know and so I did not think about anything except that it was likely to be a really good show.

Once the election happened, I stopped ignoring the media because I was curious to read the post-election commentary. Maybe this was a mistake on my part. I find it fascinating how people can witness the same event and come up with completely different interpretations. So I started reading, mainly for entertainment purposes. But what I read still affects me; I end up forming opinions, thinking one person is interpreting more correctly and another less so, and then I start thinking about why. Perhaps in hindsight I should have just stayed under my rock.

We made a date night out of the concert, which happened a few days after the election. In the days leading up, I realized the implications of the timing of the concert. I said to my husband over dinner: "I hope there isn't a lot of commenting on the election." (I phrased it a little less delicately). Then I back-pedaled at bit. "I hope there isn't more than one reference to the election."

The reason I brought this up is that unfortunately, based on the sort of concert this is, the style of music, the type of venue, the gender of the artist, and finally from following her on Facebook several years ago, I am quite confident of the politics of the artist and most of her audience. Both from personal experience of the demographic who would attend the concert with me, and from statistical evidence, I knew how the artist and most of her audience would react to the results of the 2024 American election.  To sum it up, they absolutely detest the president-elect.

I had looked forward to a cozy, feel-good concert and I wasn't disappointed. The artist sang a mix of popular standards and also several of her own excellent compositions. Her stage presence and connection with the audience was warm and animated. During the second set in particular, she did a couple of her original songs that were only guitar and voice. I couldn't stop the tears welling up in my eyes and awkwardly running down my face and making spots on my glasses. I recalled as well that I first discovered this artist's music around the time I met my husband. She also met her husband around that time. So when she sang the love songs she wrote for him early in their relationship, I remembered how I felt toward my husband when we first met. When she sang more recent songs, about marriage and children and the tender but not always romantic aspects of family life, I recognized those feelings too. I think it's important to note that enjoying music requires vulnerability and openness.  When I listen to music, I am not intellectually analyzing the lyrics and the melodies and deciding to have a response. I'm just responding. This requires trust. It is more than a bit like falling in love.  Giving and receiving an embrace, sharing a kiss, thrilling inwardly to a song: it's not so different.

It's also not political, at least not in this context, not with this style of music. And indeed, there were zero political songs, zero mentions of politics or any current events in both sets.

Not until the last song of the last set.

The last song was a humorous standard, in the style of a roast. And at one point, toward the end of the song, without naming names, the artist inserted several references toward a certain president-elect that suddenly made the song all about him. Oh, she got some loud laughs and cheers, you better believe it. I sat awkwardly thinking, right. I did say I'd be okay with one election reference. I said that. I did. There was always going to be at least one.

Did it ruin the evening for me? On one hand, that seems like an exaggeration. I applauded. I rose immediately for the standing ovation. But now, along with remembering this evening for the tender moments when I related to the artist's songs, when I sat with the audience around me in mutual appreciation of a beautiful voice and a sensitive talent, I'm going to remember politics, demographics, and the American election. Which memory is going to stand the test of time? Unfortunately, I suspect it will be the negative memory. This is because of negativity bias and because my social and media environments are probably still more likely to reinforce political partisanship than they are to reinforce appreciating beautiful music.

The encore song was a cover of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, sung in French and English. Again, it was beautifully done, but the romance was gone, and I was looking forward to the end of the date. When we stepped out of the multi-million dollar performance centre (many millions of which were funds from various government levels), I noticed again other things that my husband and I had discussed over dinner. There were homeless people and their possessions everywhere. Lines from "Suzanne" ran through my mind, modified on the fly. Suzanne takes you down, to a theatre near the encampments. You can hear the liberals virtue signal, you can see the shopping carts and blankets. You didn't participate in art, said a voice in my head. You participated in snobbery.

There are a lot of serious issues in the world. A lot of different people, who don't think anything like me, or the audience in that theatre, or the five (on a good day) readers of my blog. I'm pretty sure we need aspects of all of their perspectives and value systems. I'm sure none of us knows everything.  I'm sure that all of us can be, have been, and will be wrong about something or somebody.  Someday we're going to find that out, and maybe that day is today. I'm pretty sure that what I saw and heard at the end of my date night isn't making the world a better place, whatever else it's doing.

So, what to do. This is my blog and it is not about making the world a better place, which I have no qualifications to do anyway. But I am here to talk myself through a few things.

I will not contact the artist I'm talking about or confront her.  I have not named her here and see no reason to. And to give her credit, she said what she said in a clever and witty manner. It could have been much worse. I hope she continues to have a great career and make music and bring people happiness.

All the same, I think it's sad, and foolish when people try to politicize every experience, every space, every gathering, every relationship. There should be places where we can meet and focus on a higher value than what politician we like or dislike in the moment. I know people say that they believe they have to "speak out" because "I have a platform." In other words, because somebody somewhere might be listening to you, you need to take a stand on what you think is right. Even if the reason people are listening to you has nothing to do with politics and nobody is expecting you to have political answers. I disagree with "I must speak out because I have a platform." Making everything political cheapens relationships. It damages the trust that allowed me to be open to this artist when she was singing her songs. When people turn an encounter that should be focused on music, or art, or friendship, or family into an encounter about political loyalties, it's like a friend asking for a lunch date and then making you a pitch to buy a time share. Or a date pausing mid-embrace to ask who you voted for. Does anybody like that?

Sigh.

Will I buy tickets to this artist's concerts again? I don't know. Maybe I will, because her music really is lovely and resonates with many things I love about life. Perhaps I will just avoid going to concerts around elections. Trouble is, I don't actually think things are going to get better. I don't think people are going to get more reasonable and patient with each other and more likely to embrace values and experiences which connect rather than divide them. I would love to be wrong about that.

I can deepen my own commitment to not reading partisan political material. I'm pretty hard-core already (ignoring a whole election!) but I guess I can be even more thorough. I think Canada is going to have an election next year; I can't wait to have no clue about that.

I can stive to be more cynical, more analytical and less open and vulnerable when I go to entertainment events. Sigh.

I can further distance myself from anything resembling high culture or popular entertainment. Phew.

I can continue to explore the Christian perspectives that explicitly make Jesus and his teachings the highest value, not humans and their political opinions and solutions.

I'm still not Christian, but I have to say, I'm hemorrhaging confidence in everything except the last option.