Jazimomo’s Weblog

Wall-E repelled me from the start. The previews convinced me the makers of Pixar were going to make yet another movie about robots, and as opposed to the more critical (and I think accurate) accounts such as “I, Robot” and “A.I.” and others that show the negative affects of a world inhabited by robots, I thought this one was going to be about how good they were.

And it was… to a certain extent. Just as I was afraid they were going to do, since the main characters are robots, they used movie-making and story-telling magic (often through humor) to emotionally attach the audience to Wall-E and Eva. Wall-E’s eclectic-ness and love of beauty showed him to be more “humane” than one would expect from a robot, and it is subtly implied that that is what has kept him alive, since all the other Wall-Es have “died.” Eva could be described (in human terms) as a B.A.– ready to shoot anything that seems like a threat or even an inconvenience or annoyance.

Yet… ultimately, despite all my criticisms of the movie, it was a work in anthropology, trying to decide what it means to be human. And surprisingly to me, they encountered consumerism quite profoundly in the movie. Consumerism was seen to be a huge problem– the premise of why Wall-E is by himself on earth is because the humans filled it up with so much trash it was no longer liveable. So, they go off to space to live while the Wall-Es (which stands for “Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class”) clean up the mess they left behind. The original people intend to come back once earth is cleaned up enough that life can live, but for hundreds of years that is not the case. So instead, their space ship becomes something extremely and eerily similar to “A Brave New World”– people who can do whatever they want, consume as much as they want, and in that way find their happiness. And on that line of exciting consumerism, I recently found out that EVA is designed by Apple.

The captain, which is one of the three humans who begins to return to what it means to be human, specifically by being honorable and virtuous, says a profound line when the robot who is controlling the ship tells him they cannot return to earth. “You will survive here,” the robot tells him. “I don’t want to survive,” the captain says passionately, “I want to live!” Two other passengers, with Wall-E’s help, discover a world outside of their TV screen, a world of beauty. The space outside their windows, the pool that no one swims in, etc… and then ultimately, through human touch, each other.

It is not really clear (possibly because it is chiefly a children’s movie) how reproduction happens on this ship. Children are kept in separate quarters from the others, cared for by robots, and again it is a sense of Brave New World. The captain asks the control robot for statistics at the beginning of the day and is told there is no more human count. Death is not discussed, but there is talk of “ancestors” so even though they have found out how to live happily with no worries, it is not an eternal life. Obesity plays a large part in relation to consumerism as well.

My frustration with the movie is that although they brought out all these criticisms, the solution seemed extremely unreal. The ship defeats the “evil robot” (which is another discussion that could be had- some robots are essentially good, while others are not. How did that happen? A discussion of Frankenstein might be in order for that), and then returns to earth with a green shoot that miraculously survives quite a beating. The captain somehow had water on his ship, although all other water sources seemed to have disappeared on earth, and they have been in space for 700 years. Then the humans take that one shoot of green and manage to reproduce it into lots and lots of greenery.

Which on the one hand, is extremely profound. Wendell Berry might be excited, that farming is put in such a positive light, and that the humans’ personal relationship with the earth is what allows them to live instead of surviving in a consumerism theme park. But, possibly because its supposed to be a side-plot anyway, and the real story is the romantic relationship between two robots, their lives are way to easily, sometimes at the assumption that the technology and robots helped make it that way (even though that sort of lifestyle is what led to the hyper-consumerism in the first place).

However, with all that said, it is a great movie about what it means to be human, and what our relationship with the earth should be. And, it is fantastic that such a seemingly silly movie can have such profound implications.

I’ve heard a few rumors that Wal-Mart is moving into an area near where I live.

Discussing with an acquaintance of mine who had brought it up, I immediately (probably parroting something I had heard from someone else) said with selfish conviction, “Oh, yeah, that’s going to be just awful for traffic.”

To which they responded, “Well, maybe, but think of how necessary it is. Wal-Mart’s prices are great, and it’s going to help a lot of people out having one this close.”

This is a vague recollection of how the actual conversation went, since it wasn’t very important to me at the time. I remember thinking a little about the selfishness of my comment in light of my companion’s comment, and how it had caused me to feel a slight twinge of guilt, since my companion obviously was not thinking of just herself, as I was. But now, after spending the day reading William T. Cavanaugh’s new book, “Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire,” I realize we were both untruthful in our statements, for very different reasons.

Mine, was quite obviously a selfish comment. It is ridiculous that I would judge an event’s worth by how much inconvenience it would cause me through excessive amounts of traffic. My statement was not even concerned with environmental issues or safety issues that more traffic would cause… traffic was simply a negative entity because it would cost me an extra five minutes to get to where I wanted to go, as if the time was mine in the first place and that the new Wal-Mart’s traffic would unjustly rob me of that time.

My acquaintance’s comment, although seemingly more thoughtful, was unfortunately just as erroneous. Just as traffic is inherently a negative, something that’s going to save money is a positive, and Wal-Mart does this well, both by offering low product prices, and with the recent gas rates, being close in proximity for convenience. But even if the items are cheaper at Wal-Mart, one has to wonder, in this free market economy with other competing stores that charge a much higher price, how are those price reductions possible for a competitive business? How is the company dealing with the money that’s being lost?

One can only infer that, through globalizing and paying minuscule wages to workers in foreign countries, Wal-Mart saves money and can “afford” to keep their prices so low. But that is perhaps a hasty assumption. They may very well pay their workers a decent amount. But that’s an even larger issue– although, as my companion’s comment said, Wal-Mart might be convenient for the community in which it resides, that community will have no idea exactly where those products came from. Nor will they care. So in fact, although Wal-Mart offers decent prices, it cultivates a detachment from the products, and from the production process.

Through the unlimited amount of commodities they offer, they are encouraging an endless amount of desire for stuff. Cavanaugh makes a magnificent point saying that the problem of consumerism isn’t that people are too greedy, and hoarding away as much wealth as they can… the problem is that people are addicted to wanting for the sake of wanting. Instead of being overly attached to items, they are in fact quite detached from them, never being fully satiated and always returning to shop again and again. This detachment ends up not being just directed at the products, but at the method of production as well. Put simply, our want for a nice pair of jeans competes against our desire to have justice reign in the world. So although the jeans might have been made by a Chinese woman who had been working a 16 hour shift for the 30th day in a row, we feel like there is nothing we can do. We have no way of finding out whether or not the worker who made them made them with dignity. And even if we could find that information out, what would the alternative be? Our addiction to the idea of capital is often too strong for us to gauge how worthwhile it really is to pay more money for a product for the cause of justice, or healthfulness. We want a healthy world… but often the price seems to high.

Cavanaugh does not offer an easy answers for this. But what he does suggest, since the question should not be whether or not we consume but rather how or what we consume, that we allow our lives to be transformed through consuming the Eucharist. Cavanaugh’s Catholicism comes into place quite nicely here.

The Eucharist joins the body of Christ in a common telos, an end desire that is what directs our consumption. Any desire that does not have a goal, desire sought for desire’s sake, is nothingness, according to Augustine. The Eucharist is a sacrament in which a community of virtue learns to desire truthfully, and in that experiences true freedom.

Cavanaugh explains, when we consume the Eucharist, although the body of Christ is being consumed, it is mysteriously consuming us. We are the body of Christ. We, like Christ, are identified with the poor and the weak. By consuming the Eucharist, we are subscribing to a reality more real than capitalism. We are allowing our lives to be transformed by this consumption by living “eucharistically”, giving and pouring ourselves out to be consumed by others.The Eucharist shows us a different sort of globalization, a universalism that is made real by embracing particularity, not by shunning it, replacing the abstraction of capitalism not with other abstractions but recognizing the concrete particulars of our community, and recognizing in that particularity of each person, a universalism that makes clear the universal nature of the Gospel.

Trade turns everything into a commodity, according to Cavanaugh– objects, people, ideas, feelings, etc. This is done with a mindset that assumes scarcity. To trade something implies a giving up of something for the sake of something else. It implies ownership of one object that is transfered to be owned by someone else. The Eucharist works with a very different mindset. By allowing oneself to be consumed, instead of just consuming, it gives up the illusion of being in control and offers one up to the vulnerability of a sovereign God, a God who invites us on a difficult journey of discipleship that will not always make sense, and will require us to lose everything, claiming that (illogically- loosening our grip on what makes sense) we will gain Christ. The Eucharist invites us to participate in a heart-wrenching event of loss, of death, claiming that in that very event lies true life, and hope for redemption. But that hope cannot be gained unless one lays down the desire to simply consume and allows oneself to be consumed.

I have yet to post anything on Derrida yet, for fear that I would misrepresent him with the little that I know of him. However, this video is a good start in offering an extremely truthful, in a wonderfully humorous way, analysis of our language in today’s culture, and its implications, and also an alternative way of speaking.

And… the scrabble shirt is SO awesome.

Norms and Nobility is a book I read during my time as a teacher’s assistant. It was a difficult book for me to begin, honestly. The cover was a simple maroon that didn’t entice me much, and then when I began the language was just antiquated enough that I didn’t want to have to discipline my mind enough to put in the extra effort to understand it. But, finally, I was on the train back from Michigan and the two and a half day journey with nothing to do but read gave me the environment i needed to go ahead and read it. And once I did, I loved it! Here are some comments on it.

In this book, Hicks argues for the implementation of classical education because of its effectiveness in making the lives of students meaningful in a world inundated with meaninglessness, a world that Solomon might have described as “vaporous.” In the prologue, Hicks explains that classical education’s chief aim is to educate the young to 1) Know what is good, 2) Serve it above self, and 3) Reproduce it.

Drawing from the musings of Aristotle, he claims that while Aristotle’s theories of democracy made “the good life” possible for every one, classical education puts that theory into practice by teaching man that ultimately “the good life” is a life of virtue, or a life of serving a “self-transcending ideal.” Classical education will also secondarily benefit the state by giving individuals the role to “preserve and develop culture [paideia],” articulating society’s purposes and values.

Although teaching virtue in the classroom has become unnecessary to modern educators who are simply concerned with teaching in a utilitarian manner that is only concerned with teaching the student how to live, teaching a life of virtue makes that existence worthwhile by asking the question “how.” This is done by teaching the student to question not just whether something can be done, but if something ought to be done.

At the center of Classical Education is “the word,” which Hicks describes as a crossroads between the mythos (man’s imaginative and spiritual effort to make the world intelligible) and the logos (man’s rational attempt to make the world intelligible). Implemented in the classroom, the beauty of the mythos is experienced through studying literature and history, “eventually fill[ing] the young person’s head with the sound of voices: the impassioned debate of the many great figures of myth and history concerning what is good, beautiful and excellent in man.” The logos is served through ushering students into a dialectic maturity, wrestling with what Hicks refers to as “dogma.” It is the teacher’s role to embody “dogma” and allow students to wrestle with the embodied dogma, rejecting unimportant aspects and affirming what they ascribe to be true. The teacher is to “teach himself,” as opposed to the modern method of teaching objectively and analytically.

At its core, the classical education that Hicks describes is very truthful in light of the Christian story. In a world that is hauntingly “not right,” Christians can courageously have faith because of the story that teaches us to hope in redemption. Part of living that redemption is to live a meaningful existence. Classical education teaches students to lead a meaningful existence by asking, “What is the good life?” and perhaps in fact proving that part of “the good life” is asking that very question.

I’m sure dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds, of books have been written on the subject of prayer and its purpose. How it changes the one doing the praying, or that we just have to do it because Jesus did, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense how our words can really impact the God of the universe. Besides, he created us, why would we need to tell him our thoughts and longings if he already knows them?  In this case I am just talking about prayers where we are entreating God for something, in contrast to thanksgiving prayers, but one can’t really thank a God that they don’t feel like they need to ask anything of.

It seems to come down to logic. Prayer is illogical. For someone who values knowledge and truth, education becomes a necessity. But it tends to dominate, and become an idol of logic that distracts and takes away from one’s faith in God, and in prayer.

But once one has been educated and is in the clutches of logic, it seems impossible to get loose. And yet I see very smart, well educated Christians around me who really value things like prayer and reading Scripture. I can’t just call them all naive and say that they are foolish to do something so illogical. Besides, isn’t my faith supposed to be like a little child? I am the one in error. But how do I defeat my own mind that holds me captive?

I know some people have two separate blogs, one for what they are reading and the other for other possible blog comments. Mine isn’t popular enough to separate it yet, so its a bit of an eclectic piecing together.

A book I read after Gilead is a book called Wise Blood. Just as Gilead reminded me of The Road, so wise blood reminded me of both Gilead. At first anyway. Then I kept reading. I thought there might be some similarity with the pastoral role– the main character is the son of a pastor and ends up being a pastor of sorts, except he preaches “The church of Christ without Christ.” But it pretty quickly seemed to be a book of reversals– unlike Gilead’s hopeful, Christian worldview, this proposed what seemed to be a man trying to find meaningfulness in meaninglessness.

Definitely one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. I don’t know if I would recommend it. But, it was interesting how it almost seemed to correlate.

There couldn’t have been too many better places to finish Gilead than Shute Park. And even though Gilead takes place in a small country town, and Shute Park is in the middle of suburban central, it was still pretty good. I was there early in the afternoon, and since school isn’t out for most kids for another week, there was a school group there with about fifty kids and like two adults. But it was beautiful. A group of them played soccer together. One of them had this bright yellow sweatshirt on that invited the sun to come out from behind the clouds.

Gilead invited me to appreciate youth, and see every moment as beautiful. I was there for about an hour as I finished the book, and once or twice I looked up to see a grandmother pushing her granddaughter on the swings. She was there the whole time, with such a look of sheer joy on her face. I could tell she wasn’t thinking of all the other things she could have spent that hour doing. She truly enjoyed being with the child. The father in Gilead makes a few comments in his letters to his son that he was mostly just thankful for the boy’s existence. For just being. I could see that in the grandmother’s expression.

This does not have much to do with Gilead, but it was interesting. Not long after I sat down a man in a motorized wheel chair came over to me. Growing up in the area, I have seen him for years, wheeling up and down the streets, sometimes with a cat on his lap, if my memory serves me correctly. But this was the first time I had ever talked to him.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied.

“Are you a Christian?”

I knew then that he was partially disabled; his words were a little unclear, but I could understand him because he also held his cross necklace gingerly between his fingers as he asked.

“Mmhmm,” I said, smiling.

“Do you have a Bible?”

This one was a little harder for me to understand, until he opened and closed his hands together like a book.

“Yes.” I said, smiling again.

“Can you do me a favor? Could you read the book of John for me, please?”

“Yes.” I said again.

Then, he held his hand out straight, as if he was going to give me a high five. I raised my own hand and met his. He grasped it, firmly, and said, “I will see you in heaven.”

Then he wheeled away.

What a confusing, yet beautiful, world.

I have been thinking for a while that I should write something about The Road since it is a really good book and had a lot to do with why I enjoyed the last two weeks of my time in high school. But, I put it off, and then felt inadequate to properly blog about it since it wasn’t completely fresh in my mind… and so, it almost slipped through the cracks into the realm of “what might have been.” However! My recent friendship with the book, Gilead is about to change that.

Gilead struck me immediately in its similarity to The Road: It also depicts the relationship between a father and son, mainly from the father’s point of view, and although it is not about the end of the world, it is about nature, and life and death. It reminded me of Annie Dillard, some of the ways the father describes the world around him. It emphasizes the importance of remembrance and history, and most of all, beauty, truth, and goodness.

While on first glance it does not wrestle with the nature of evil, or nothingness, as much as The Road does, it does put it in terms that are very understandable to the reader, the evil of the human heart. This becomes especially clear to me in the letter the father is writing about the covetous nature of his own heart regarding the son of his best friend, a man named after him: John Ames. It is about life and what that should look like. It really does not end up dealing with death as something unnatural, as The Road tends to do… but it is a beautiful treatise on what it looks like when the ordinary is redeemed to the extraordinary through the intentional meaningfulness of saints.

Even with my initial post, I didn’t feel like I properly talked about graduation in a truthful way. But I didn’t quite know how to do a good job, since there were so many conflicting thoughts about it.

But I think I got it. I was having a conversation with a friend who is determined to be predisposed toward an attitude of hopelessness. If a situation is not going the way he imagined it, perfectly, it is valueless, and should be forgotten, or at least not dwelt on.

That seems to be a really common way to deal with grief. If something is less than perfect, or uncomfortable, don’t think about it. Ignore it. Blare the music really loud. Read a book to distract oneself. Get into a theoretical conversation that has no real relevance for anyone’s life. (I’m talking to myself, here).

But is that really the virtuous thing to do? To ignore it? The last class of worldview was by far the most redemptive, in that it took everything we had learned the past three weeks and made it relevant to our lives, and gave us a mindset with which to live by. There were three options in how to respond to evil, or nothingness in the world: Ignore it. But that’s a shallow and ignorant way of dealing with it. So, for the more thoughtful person, they might move from ignoring it to caving in to it. Reasonably, it is going to win. All data points toward evil’s victory. But! If one believes in a transcendental outside of our frame of reference, a different reality that claims that evil will not win, that in fact goodness will win, through unreasonable things like courage, and sacrifice, and love... then one has a myth that he or she can align himself to that makes his life meaningful.

All that to say… I am really tempted to ignore the messy aspects of graduation that made it uncomfortable. The fact that it totally did not fit in with the hopes I’ve had for it the past six years. The speeches that danced around the difficult subjects. The comments that seemed like just a bunch of b.s., and not even in a “let’s focus on the good so it becomes true” sort of way, but just the fake, let’s put on an act sort of way. The confusion of whether I was listening to the messages for my benefit, or for my non-Christian family? Was I the guest, or the hostess? All these confusions made graduation difficult. Not to mention the lack of sadness I felt at leaving people. Well certainly there were some people I’m sad to leave… but I’m so tired of things. Have I let that tiredness allowed my heart to grow cold and not care about people? Or have I allowed the cultural ramifications of what it means to move off to college affect how I act as I’m making that transition? The ego-centric, leaving people in the dust mentality?

See all these things are difficult and should be wrestled with. Maybe its just because its late that these all seem really important. But what if I didn’t wrestle with them? What if I stopped and just let graduation be a day that was less-than-perfect? Would it not do justice to the event to wrestle with it? And would it be an insult to myself if I allowed myself to get away with not thinking through it?

There’s a lot of good memories from the last six years at Heritage Christian School… but my senior year, unfortunately, was by far the most difficult year of my life.

So, the ceremony itself was a relief, signaling the end of a difficult time. But if I allowed myself to put away the nonchalance and see the true nostalgia that hid underneath, I would know that I was haunted by the “what might have beens.” But there was one or two redeeming factors that made it worthwhile. One of the traditions at Heritage, because the school is so small, is to have each senior receiving a blessing. Sometimes they are just a big pat on the back for all the good things someone has done… but the better blessings look to the future and encourage the student to be better.

I think my blessing did that. Delivered by my teacher and friend Christian Amondson, who has taught me more in a year and a half than I ever dreamed possible, it told just as much about his character and the things that are important to him as much as it described me. This definitely was the highlight of my graduation, and I pray I live up to the person he sees me as.

Jasmine, you are the seeker… of justice and of truth. You possess a restless spirit, which yearns to know the right, the good, the what should be. You loathe the lie, yet know, that in this world, the lie has great power. And so you work. You work to know the truth, you work to seek justice, and you work to subvert the lie from below. Put simply: You work to know and follow the way of the cross.

Jasmine, it has been my great pleasure to be your teacher. Your thought provoking presence has been a constant source of challenge and encouragement to me. And I never cease in my amazement of your insatiable appetite for ideas. You eat books like a half-starved peasant at the King’s table: devouring, savoring, reaching for more. And with all happiness and sincerity I can say that you are twice the scholar I will ever be… just give it time.

Jasmine, with a hunger for justice and truth comes the danger of resentment, cynicism, and despair. Take heart in the theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love. Let them guide you on your quest. Remember, that truth must always be wedded to grace. If you can hold them together, you will be well on your way. For if it is the Lord’s justice and the Lord’s truth you seek, then they must take the form of a suffering and obedient love. This is a love at work behind the scenes, leading through example, giving in service without asking in return. I see these traits in you already… tend to them and they will grow.

Jasmine, God has a tight hold on you. It is a joy to watch him ignite and reignite his Spirit within you. Please just remember to not forget us all back here at home as you follow Him down The Road.