Category: Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Caveat: On Marxism

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

Just a brief thought.  I often describe myself as a marxist.  I'm careful to use a small "m".  The way I see it, it's a philosophical stance more than a political program – a way of analyzing the world with a focus on economic forms and causes, and with an interest in how ideologies interact with class (and social) consciousness.  It is not – and for me, at least, never has been – a set of prescriptions about politics.

In fact, politically, I have tended to lean somewhat libertarian, although as that ideological current gets more and more hijacked by the "tea-party" right in the U.S., I grow less comfortable with the term.  Lately, I've been thinking of myself as an anarcho-syndicalist, which is really just code for the libertarian left.

For those who confuse philosophical marxism with, for example, Soviet history, Terry Eagleton makes an important point when he says, "What perished in the Soviet Union was Marxist only in the sense that the Inquisition was Christian."

[This is a "back-post" added 2010-05-23, from handwritten materials]

Caveat: Sucky Rosetta Sudoku

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I don't like sudoku.  Nor do I like crosswords, chess, "brain-teaser" puzzles, etc.  I feel like this fact about myself is somehow a serious violation (nay, betrayal) of my nerdly origins, that I'm like this.  But, I've always lacked enthusiasm for these types of mental recreations.  One memorable example:  I remember when Rubic's Cube first came out, and everyone was obsessively trying to solve it.  I managed to solve it – it wasn't easy, but I managed – but  I genuinely recall my efforts to do so as a profoundly unpleasant experience.  I never picked it up again.  Even today, when I see a Rubik's Cube, I have a sort of visceral reaction of strong distaste, similar to how I react to seeing bananas (to which – it has been verified – I am allergic).

My theory is that this gut reaction is because my perfectionism is stronger, and receives higher priority, than my intellectual curiosity.  That doesn't sound like a very good reflection on my personality.  And… it's not.  But I'm trying to be honest about things, here.

Anyway, that's not what I meant to write about.  I had a major insight, yesterday. 

I'd decided to dedicate some more time to working through the Rosetta Stone software I'd splurged on last fall.  I've been pretty unhappy with it, and so it's hard for me to motivate to use it.  I have only managed to work up to around the middle of the Level 1 Korean package.

So I was slogging through it… I see the value in it, in building some automaticity with respect to grammar points and  vocabulary.  My core criticisms remain the same:  it's not very linguistically sophisticated in its presentation of material (especially of phonological issues and grammar); the speaking sections' "listener/analyzer/scorer" is majorly wonky (I sometimes get so frustrated I just start cussing at it, which tends to lower my score); the grammar points covered sometimes don't match the way actual Koreans around me actually speak, in my experience.

But I found a new reason why I don't like Rosetta Stone, and I found it in a surprising way.  I was reading a recent issue of the Atlantic magazine, and there was an ad for Rosetta Stone.  And the ad said something to the gist of:  "if you like sudoku, you'll love learning a language with Rosetta Stone."

You can see where this is going, right?  Rosetta's software is deliberately designed to activate the same mental processes and reward centers that puzzle-games like sudoku do.  And therefore it's suddenly obvious why I spend most of my time when trying to use the software feeling frustrated and pissed-off.  It's the same reason I feel constantly frustrated and pissed-off when I try to solve sudoku puzzles, or play chess, or other things like that.  I just don't enjoy that type of intellectual challenge.

But this insight also forces me to temper my criticism of Rosetta Stone substantially, in one respect:  it means that it's just my idiosyncrasy, in part,  that causes me not to like it, and to regret having bought it.  If you're like most reasonably intellectual people, and enjoy killing some time solving sudoku or playing chess or the like, then, probably, Rosetta Stone is a great tool for learning a language.  You'll probably think it's really fun.

Sigh.

So… there.

Caveat: the sustainable recession

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

According to the common wisdom (in economics, that is), Japan has essentially been in recession since around 1990.  I remember the 1980's – everyone talked about Japan the way people now talk about China:  it was going to take over the world, it was breaking all the economic rules, etc., etc.  And now, everyone in economics circles seems to view Japan as a "has been."

So it's unarguable that Japan has been in a sustained recession.  But I have two observations.

First, it really doesn't seem that bad here.  I know that as a tourist, and as a person who is only visiting a fairly small corner of the country (Kyushu's major cities), I'm not getting the full picture.  But countries with depressed economies feel depressed.  There's a dispiritedness in the people, which I was, for example, even conscious of during my driving around the US, last fall.  I don't really feel that, here.  You'd think, after 2 decades of supposed economic "failure," the people would seem broken down and miserable, but the country doesn't really feel that way.  That's my personal, uneducated, anecdotal observation.

My second thought is much more philosophical.  There is so much talk of "sustainability," these days.  And everyone acknowledges that in the very long term, constant material economic growth is unsustainable.  There's a limited amount of stuff on the planet (and in the solar system, and in the universe).  So looking out over thousands or millions of years, assuming our civilization keeps going… at some point, material economics is guaranteed to break down.

So why don't we begin questioning the received wisdom of the need for economic growth?  We can look at Japan as an example of not just a sustained recession, but, perhaps, a sustainable one?  More simply… why does Japan need to start "growing" again?  Can't it just sort of move along, not growing, maybe even shrinking a bit?  The people seem to be dealing with it pretty well.  Who wrote the book that says that economic growth is necessary?

These are just reflections of someone with no training in economics, but with an interest in such matters. 

Caveat: the stranger

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I've commented before that in some ways,  I seem to like being an obvious foreigner – it seems to confirm or reinforce my internal feelings of alienation.  Yesterday I was forced to think about this when I found myself feeling uncomfortable because some foreigners, like myself (Westerners), were being friendly to me, and rather than being friendly back, I was being antisocial.   Not blatantly antisocial – just not opening up to the conversation.

Then again, sometimes I get antisocial with everyone, but I was thinking that if it had been locals trying to be friendly with me, I'd have been less antisocial, probably.  I was trying to figure out what was going on in my mind.

I didn't have much luck figuring things out, except to realize that I am (have always been, will probably always be) a loner.  And maybe one reason I don't mind existing in a country where I don't know the language, and where I stand out so much, etc., is because it allows me to be much more existentially alone.  The chances of being understood diminish to near zero.  Which seems to suit me in some weird way – it's like my mental process is:  "no one is going to understand me, anyway, so I might as well spend time around people who won't feel badly that they don't understand me."

Caveat: The Mall Builders

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life is a Dream / My Photos / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Fukuoka feels like a big city, after southern Kyushu, but it’s still pretty compact. It’s not like Seoul or Tokyo, and I walked around a major portion of the “downtown” yesterday, mostly the Tenjin and Hakata areas.

I ended up in a big, futuristic mall called Canal City. I’ll add a picture later. Funny how malls everywhere are the same. I always remember when I ended up in a mall in Temuco, Chile, and I was wandering around, thinking, “Wow, this is a mall in Temuco, Chile, but it feels just like any other mall.”

I once had a brainstorm about the nature of our global civilization – what characteristics of our cities and cultures would be most salient to an anthropologist in the far future, or from a different planet? And I decided that those hypothetical anthropologists would realize one of the unifying elements was the existence of malls.

That means their name for us would be: “The Mall Builders.” Which is a name that sounds suitably ominous and monumental for a global civilization reduced to dust by the ravages of time.

[Canal City Mall, Fukuoka]

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 50 first dates… with a Vulcan

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I used to love Star Trek.  I thought the best of the many spinoffs was The Next Generation – far better than the original, both in terms of acting and production values, as well as in writing.  And after TNG it went downhill, too.  Needless to say, when the series Enterprise came out, a few years ago, I was unimpressed, and I never watched more than a few episodes.

But it turns out, among the many unexpected things I found stashed on my hard drive recently, I found all of seasons 2 and 3 of Enterprise.  In a fit of escapist boredom, last night, I watched a few.  Compared to the first season, which is what I had seen before, the writing was improved.  And the main actors had developed some rapport and cohesion, too, so that the whole seemed less of a violation of the canon. 

I saw one episode in particular, last night, that I rather liked.  It was entitled "Twilight," and, like most episodes of Star Trek that I like best, it involved themes of weird time travel conundrums, alternate histories, and memory.  In fact, the plot was basically a rip-off of the movie 50 First Dates, which starred Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.  It`s one of my favorite cheesy romantic comedies, because the themes, involving the nature of memory and the narratives that make up our lives, along with the ending,  are pretty deep, in my opinion.   Anyway, take that same plot, and put the captain the Barrymore character`s role, and put T`pol (the Vulcan first officer) in the Sandler role, and you get the plot of the episode.  It was … philosophically hilarious.  So I liked it.  It will rank up there with some of my favorite Star Trek episodes. 

OK.  Back to reality.  It`s raining.  I think I`ve decided to return to Fukuoka, today.  I`ll resume my WAITING, there.

Caveat: Hello Kitty

Banalities & Journaling / My Photos / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

When I went to the Sengan-en garden/estate (which was made many hundreds of years ago, and then expanded by one of the modernizing pre-Meiji Satsuma [sp?] lords in the 19th century, who built Japan’s first machine-based factory, first electric plant, and first telegraph, all here in Kagoshima).

On the grounds of the garden there was a shrine to cats. Some Japanese conqueror had taken some cats with him to Korea in the 16th century (where he no doubt worked on building that excellent rapport that exists to this day between Korea and Japan – this is a joke, OK?). The cats came back with him, having provided excellent luck and service (what sort of service, exactly?) during the war.

I took some pictures of the cat shrine, and promptly spent 25 bucks in the inevitable giftshop nearby. I will add the pictures when I get a chance and the appropriate bandwidth.

What`s weird is that in the hours after my visit to the cat shrine, I started running into cats. Cats in parking lots, cats in the forest climbing up the mountain. I took some pictures of these cats, too. I think it was a “hello cats” day. Which is only right, in the land of Hello Kitty.

Here’s some pics.

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

picture

Caveat: Easy Japan

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / My Photos / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I won’t say that I like Japan more than Korea. But in a lot of ways, I find Japan easier to like than Korea. I spent a long time yesterday trying to figure out why that is. It might be something as simple as the fact that the Japanese character includes a level of cultural self-confidence that is comforting after constantly coping with the myriad minor insecurities embedded in contemporary South Korean cultural discourse: the petty nationalisms, the linguistic deference … these things are mostly absent in my interactions with random Japanese and in my observations of cultural output, here.

Maybe if I spent more time in Japan, these perceptions would become more nuanced. But superficial impressions count for a lot. Still, there remain many reasons why I’m sticking with Korea, despite my fascination with (and liking for) Japan.

A picture.

picture
picture

Caveat: The big f엌ing deal

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I want to say something about Obama's healthcare reform.  And don't blame me for the title – that's what Joe Biden calls it, and he's probably right, too.

I was reading Andrew Sullivan's blog at The Atlantic, and he said something in passing about the fact that if Obamacare is successful, it will improve his overseas popularity.  This is exactly right.  In fact, I would hazard a guess that it will improve his popularity a great deal more in foreign countries than in the U.S.  If this healthcare reform passes, I would like to suggest that that single action will do more "cancel out" the bad image W's invasion of Iraq gave of the U.S. than any possible Iraq exit-strategy.

How is this possible?  It's because for the most part, in most parts of the developed world, the U.S.'s refusal to have comprehensive, universal healthcare is not only puzzling, it's downright weird.  I can only speak from the example of South Korea, where I am now, but I think it's same when looked at from Japan, Australia, Canada, or Europe, too.  No one in Korea, no matter how conservative, questions the government's important role in providing healthcare to citizens. It's part of being civilized.  So Koreans are often shocked and dismayed when I begin trying to explain the lack of universal coverage in the U.S., and even more disturbed by the notion that it's been a sufficiently unpopular idea that it still may not pass. 

So Obama, by passing healthcare, will give the U.S. a newfound patina of rationality in the eyes of foreigners like Koreans.  And that, in turn, can improve U.S. credibility, which has been so badly damaged by Bush's unilateralist tendencies in the area of foreign policy.  Thus a strictly domestic policy move on the part of Obama's administration will, I predict, actually have more impact in the area of foreign policy than anyone realizes.  And thus it is that Hillary Clinton still has a vested career interest in healthcare reform.

Caveat: More neverminding

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Normally, I try to change themes with each new post. But this racism thing seems to have opened a can of worms – not so much among others, as in my own mind – although I’ve received some feedback, too.  

My friend Christine wrote a long comment in an email to me, which she sent to me right as I was posting my first “nevermind” (previous post). She said things that surprisingly matched what I wrote in that post, but one thing she said that I didn’t address stands out.  I will quote the relevant paragraph:

I would never defend racism, especially after my own experiences with them. But honestly, after all the racial slurs / comments I’ve heard in America towards non-whites (and many directed at me), I don’t feel like Koreans’ racist views are all that unique, only disturbing in how comfortable they are in them. But you know…if you want to see things as cause and effect rather than good or bad, Korea’s own idea of race will probably change as they become economically wealthier, better known globally, thus inadvertently attracting other races to move to Korea. 

I think this is a very important perspective, and it’s surprising to me that I didn’t include some mention of this before, in either my original post or in my subsequent apology. Surprising to me, because, in fact, I’ve talked about this idea very often with friends (probably with Christine, more than once, last year): Korea is changing rapidly, including in its attitudes about race. I’ve said before that actually, I believe Korea may be better positioned, culturally, to become a country that welcomes immigrants than any of its neighbors, e.g. especially Japan or Taiwan, which are the countries it most resembles socio-economically at this point.

And if Korea is going to be welcoming immigrants, that implies strongly that it’s going to be dealing with its blatant racists in some way or another… much as Europe has been struggling, not to mention the U.S., over its long historical cycles of immigrant-welcoming and immigrant-bashing.

What I most want to make clear is that even in my anger, in my original post, I realized that the racists in Korea are not the majority. And my conclusion, now, is that they’re really no more numerous than in other places. They’re only more visible, because of the lack of social constraint on the open expression of such ideas.

Perhaps the same analysis could be applied to one of my other personal conflicts with Korean culture: ageism. This is one which negatively affects me much more directly than the issue of racism (which, given the bias toward people of northern European descent, actually favors me, in a majorly guilt-inducing way – see also the “charisma man” phenomenon, from Japan). I wonder if, like what I’m saying about racism, Koreans are only more open about age-related biases that, in fact, exist within and across most world-cultures, these days: the youth-worship, the superficial-beauty-cult (with respect to both woman and men), etc.

These tendencies are deeply embedded in the output of the world media machine(s) (i.e. Hollywood) , which Koreans happily consume, just like Americans. If anything, we should be looking for the origins of Koreans’ worship of youth, superficial beauty, as well as their preference for pale skin and blue eyes, not in Korean culture, but in the Western paradigms they’re avidly consuming.

More later.

picture

Caveat: Nevermind about the rant

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Well, somewhat. In my previous post from earlier today, I was angry, and so I ranted about Korean racism. Riding the bus back to Suwon, I had an insight: maybe Koreans are no more racist than Americans. Which is to say, I would guess that there are probably just as many racist Americans as a percentage of total population as there are racist Koreans. Not a majority, but probably a scarily large subset of the total population.

The difference is more subtle. Americans who happen to be racist are raised, nearly from birth, to be circumspect about their racist attitudes. They come to understand that there are real consequences for openly expressing their feelings, from ridicule to lawsuits to criminal prosecution. So they learn to be circumspect. Koreans, who live in a largely homogeneous culture, have little reason to be circumspect about such attitudes. “Good” race or “bad” race, it’s all the same, mostly: just a bunch of foreigners – so openly expressing one’s positive or negative opinions about them is no big deal. So racist Americans are stealth-racists, while racist Koreans are in-your-face racists. Maybe there’s actually something positive in that, as there is in any kind of transparency. Certainly, at the least, it’s clear whom to avoid.

That doesn’t change my feeling that it bothers me. A lot. But I need to be careful about what I allow to annoy me about Korean culture, lest I fall into a trap of hypocrisy. So… nevermind about the rant – at least on the charge of racism. The other comments can stand, for now. But I’m over being mad about it, I think. Sorry.
picture

Caveat: Language is not the same as culture (thankfully)

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Passive-Aggressive Lunatic Ravings / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

This is one instance where the “caveat,” above, is “real” – I really mean that as a caveat to what I am about to say.

I have been feeling a bit annoyed with some aspects of contemporary South Korean culture, lately. The issue that came up yesterday was perhaps just a “final straw” that pushed me into outright anger. Many Koreans are unabashedly racist. This is not the same as the mild xenophobia that I often comment on.  Korean xenophobia is something that is both historically understandable given their repeated subjugation over the centuries to the Chinese, Mongols or Japanese, as well as being something that I would characterize as essentially more naive and reflexive rather than somehow premeditated or unethical.

But many Koreans also have openly racist attitudes, which are more complex than simple xenophobia, because there are hierarchies of “good” and “bad” races. I see these as having been “imported” at some point from both Japan and the West, and more specifically, from 1930’s Japan and 1950’s America – which were the “occupiers” at those specific times. Pale Europeans, whether from Europe or North America, are near the top of the hierarchy. Koreans and Japanese are, too – although since the Japanese are the “enemy,” they get disqualified from Korean respect for different, non-racist reasons… if that makes any sense. More like a hated sibling. But to be a non-European, non-East Asian in Korea must be utter hell. That’s my speculation.

Um… I’m being disorganized, here. I’m ranting. Yesterday, talking about student exchange programs with a Korean, he mentioned something about the difficulty of placing minority American kids with Korean host families. And something like, “hopefully we can convey this sensitive issue to the Americans.”

I thought about this a bit, and felt only outrage. Why should Americans bear the responsibility for accommodating Korean racism? If Koreans want to participate in a student exchange program, it should be their sole responsibility to cope with making sure their attitudes can accommodate any possible American. That’s the only possibility that looks ethical, from my point of view.

OK. Back to the “caveat.”

I have always felt a great deal of ambivalence about some aspects of Korean culture. There’s the low-grade disrespect for rule-of-law: the never-ending stream of offers for illegal employment being just my own personal brush with this phenomenon. There’s the xenophobia, already mentioned.  There are the in-group / out-group distinctions, which can sometimes make one feel that one is living in a country inhabited exclusively by people suffering from a mild form of autism.

Then there’s the ageism. Ostensibly, Korea is a culture that honors elders. But there’s a caveat there: elders are only honored as long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to – they need to be fulfilling age-appropriate roles. Thus, I have actually been refused two interviews for teaching jobs, solely because of my age, and I was openly told that that was the reason – it’s not illegal, here, to discriminate because of someone’s age.

My love affair (if you want to call it that)… my interest… my focus… has always been an unabiding fascination for the Korean language. Unless you’re some kind of unreformed Whorfian, you will understand that culture and language aren’t the same thing.

So, I reserve my right to love the Korean language, and nevertheless harbor serious misgivings about parts of Korean culture. Which isn’t to say there aren’t parts I like, also. The food is incredible. The entrepreneurial spirit is stunning – though often repressed by the neo-confucians in the bureaucracy. The genuine generosity and kindness of most individual Koreans is undeniable.

I feel thankful that language and culture are not, in fact, the same. Otherwise, I’d feel compelled to leave, just at the moment.

Well… that is a really poorly-structured rant. But… such as it is. More later.
picture

Caveat: Toward a Quantum Theory of Holiness

Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

There's no need for anything behind, or beyond.  We can look at each individual snowflake, each individual pebble, each face, each tree.  Little self-contained units of magic, or holiness?  Like Neruda's garlic, or Ginsberg's grandfathers in Kansas.  This is a poem that I haven't written.

A quantum of holiness would be… a hole?  A microscopic hole in reality, floating across… magical  beautiful window on nothingness.  Yes, a poem I haven't written, that I hold in my hand like a bit of snow, that's suddenly gone.

Caveat: Becoming a better teacher

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Teaching & Methodology

I read a long book review of a book by Doug Lemov entitled Teach Like a Champion, in the New York Times.   While the apparent reported premise of the book – that good teachers can be "made" as opposed to it being something that is innate – resonated with me deeply, I came away from the review feeling a bit annoyed with the both the reviewer and the book's author.

That's because instead of coming out and explaining the details of Lemov's thinking about how one becomes a better teacher, or how one can be taught to be a better teacher, the review only serves to "tease" the content of the book.  The reviewer is obviously a Lemov "fan," and she's just cheerleading without really contributing to an intelligent discourse about teacher education.  Basically, the message of the review is:  buy this book, and you'll get the secret to becoming a better teacher.  

Knowledge like that shouldn't be proprietary.  But setting aside philosophical/ethical quibbles, I also suspect that knowledge of that sort can't be proprietary – by which I mean that it's not going to help improve education as long as it remains proprietary, when looked at from a cultural practices / knowledge systems angle.  Where good educators come from and how they're made, if they can be made, is not the sort of information you can or should hide behind a "for only $16.77!" barrier (current price on Amazon).  Lemov (and possibly the reviewer) may wish to revolutionize education in America, but I doubt they'll make much progress until they lose the mercenary attitude.  Is that too idealistic of me?

I have had consistently bad experiences with knowledge that hides behind "buy this book" barriers – I'm thinking mostly of the infinite number of self-help manuals that circulate in the world, but my experience with Rosetta Stone language-learning software is also a recent, and expensive, example.  I have begun to develop the belief that "good" knowledge (by which I mean truly revolutionary and/or useful knowledge) must, by definition, be "open source" in some sense of the term.  

So getting back to the idea that good teachers can be made, instead of found, I guess my thinking is that I agree, and I think the idea could be revolutionary for teacher training, but for now I'll continue looking at my own insights, and keep searching blogs and other online content, and keep reading less promotion-reliant tomes.

Caveat: The Literate Dictator (Dreams of His Father[land])

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

One of my many eccentricities is my strange fascination for the now deceased former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet.  I've been carrying around and re-reading the first volume of his autobiography, "Camino Recorrido:  memorias de un soldado." 

I'm hardly an apologist.  He was a brutal dictator, and his actions on September 11, 1973, and subsequent misrule and corruption are indefensible.  But several things stand out about this man, that make him different from most historical personages of the "evil dictator" stripe. 

First, of course, is the very existence of a fairly well-written, reflective autobiography.  And although some will disagree, I'm almost certain it was not ghost-written.  Firstly, there's the fact that he was a published author (mostly in the area of social sciences and military history) prior to becoming dictator of Chile.  Not very many evil dictators moved into that latter career from academia, but arguably, Gen. Pinochet did.   Secondly, the book is too stylistically immature to be ghost-written.   What I mean, is that its tone veers from petty-defensive to philosophical to nostalgic to sociological, without much logic or consistency, yet, for all that, it's got some very well-written passages.

Secondly, there is the fact that, unlike most evil dictators, Pinochet accepted the results of a plebescite and stood down, after 15 years in power, and willingly allowed the dismantling of the undemocratic 1980 constitution that he himself had created.   Again, his late-career actions hardly excuse his behavior at the height of his rule, but… well, not all evil dictators are equally evil, perhaps.

Lastly, I for one am inclined to believe the speculation that he was not an entirely willing participant in the initial coup, despite his own efforts to rewrite history after the fact to make his role more prominent.  In essence, I believe that he attached himself "at the last minute" to the CIA's plot, because he saw the writing on the wall, and that, as bad as things were, there were few leaders in the Chilean military who would've been "better," and many, many, who would have been much worse, and much scarier.  In essence, I would argue that his role was, paradoxically, a moderating one vis-a-vis the ultraconservative establishment in Chile.

Again, it's not my intention to defend him – but having access to his autobiography, and to sit on the bus this morning reading his nostalgic prose about his high-school years in Valparaiso and his time as a cadet at the military school in Santiago in the 1930's… well, even evil dictators can be humanized.  I've always thought that there were eerie and unintended similarites between his autobiography and, for example, Garcia Marquez's El otoño del patriarca.

And, how can I deny that I relish the sheer eccentricity of being an American on a commuter bus in Seoul reading Pinochet's autobiography – it's one of those moments when you get to think:  "Wow, I bet no one has ever done this, before.  Ever."

Caveat: A World Worthy of Invention

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I used to read a lot of science fiction.  I liked the complex, imagined futures, the invented civilizations and cultures.   It was a sort of escape, obviously. 

I hardly ever read science fiction anymore.  I haven't stopped, entirely, but I will plow through less than half-a-dozen novels of the genre in any given year, anymore.  I had a weird insight, yesterday, as to a possible reason:  the real world is more interesting, more complex.

Take, as an example, one particular aspect of the sort of thing I like about those science fiction and fantasy novels:  imaginary languages.  I used to spend time inventing languages, myself.  A strange hobby, I know.  And at least once before in this blog, I've alluded to the fact that the Korean Language is in many ways a surrogate for those invented languages:  whenever I feel that language-inventing impulse, I simply pull out my Korean reference grammar and browse a few pages.

Yesterday, I was walking down the street, watching the people, looking at signs, thinking about the world's complexity, and realized the whole of Korean culture was the same kind of surrogate.  At some point, the real world became just as interesting and complex as any possible imaginary one.  In that sense, the sort of escapism I used to achieve by reading a book  I can now achieve simply by looking around.   Maybe that seems strange.  Or even trivial.  But it felt like a great insight, at the moment.

Caveat: The Party Crasher

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

As I've said, I've kind of made friends with the proprietor of this guesthouse that I'm staying at.  Two nights ago, he said he was going to a "younger brother's" opening ceremony, and asked if I wanted to go along.  I really didn't know what this meant.  But I went along.

Koreans use brother and sister to mean anyone in their social cohort.  And the fact of being younger or older is important:  it's about rank in the social hierarchy.  They have specialized vocabulary for all of this:  "older brother of a male," "younger brother of male," etc. – all are separate words.

After some quizzing and discussion, I figured out that this wasn't his "real" younger brother, but a colleague from his high school years that had been a few grades behind him.  In the U.S., we'd call such a person, having been in contact with him all the years since, simply a "friend."  But Koreans maintain these historical hierarchical relations throughout life.

Anyway, the friend was a successful businessman.  And the opening ceremony in question was in fact an anniversary celebration of the man's business.  A kind of business birthday party, which they labelled, in giant letters on a big sign in bad English, "Renewal Open!" 

It was definitely a business party.  A catered affair in a place similar to a wedding reception hall.  These kinds of events are mind-numbingly common in Korea.   They'll have a catered business event of some kind or another at the drop of a hat.  There'll be a DJ, some contests, some exhortations to work hard in the year to come from various vice presidents in dull black suits, too-loud music, a few aimless children running around having been dragged along by their parents, dancing girls (entirely G-rated and vaguely silly), karaoke events, a buffet table, soju and beer on each table, a company song to be sung, etc., etc.

I felt like an alien, of course.  The only obvious foreigner there, and no clear reason to be there except that I probably represented some kind of bragging rights for my newfound friend, the guesthouse proprietor.  I was a  "pet wegugin [foreigner]".

I had some food from the buffet and sat and tried to be friendly with the various men he introduced me to:  the founder/president of the business in question, his "younger brother";  some man of uncertain profession;  an alleged "artist."  It was interesting, to see one of these parties for a line of business outside of the realm of the hagwon industry.  Basically it was the same thing, but with a different crowd.  This was an advertising and marketing company, so there was a patina of creative types in attendence – Korean "longhairs" who wore no ties and had hollywoodesque goatees.  I've seen the type plenty on Seoul's streets and on television, but in the hagwon industry you don't get to interact with them much.

Their English was all stunningly atrocious.  But they were pleased and amazed at my own halting efforts at Korean.  At one point I had an almost-conversation with a man:  I'm here with a friend;  I'm American; I work as an English teacher;  Korean is very difficult.

I had a weird thought, I guess as sort of short story idea:  a foreigner such as myself, with a smattering of Korean, could perhaps almost subsist by crashing business events of this sort.  They're always going on, and by visiting the sort of catered halls where they take place, he'd find them easily enough.  As a foreigner, everyone would be afraid to ask too many questions as to who he was or what he was doing there.   Such a foreign party-crasher could avoid confrontation completely, with simple protestations of "sorry I don't quite understand, my friend is around here somewhere."  And many would be friendly just to be friendly.

It would be like a sort of perpetual party-crasher adrift in a Kafkaesque Confucian paradise, free soju, free food, hospitable people.  One would never have to buy one's own meal, and every night would be different.

Caveat: Visionarily Fashionable

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

When you see it once, it's just someone being eccentric – or else they're having some kind of bad day, maybe.  When you see it twice, on the same block, it's two schoolgirls trying to make a statement.  When you see it a third time, down at Suwon Station, maybe it's a peculiar local trend.  But when you see it a fourth and fifth time, on the subway around Seoul, you realize it's an all-out fashion movement.

What's this, I'm seeing?  Women wearing heavy-framed plastic eyeglasses, generally high-end designer frames like Ray-Ban or DKNY, without lenses.  Personally, I think it looks cool, but it does strike me as a bit out there, as a fashion statement.  Most of the few comments out in the interwebs that I could find are overwhelmingly negative, attributing the behavior to "emo posers" and the like.  But… whatever.

Caveat: 컴퓨터&효성

Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Teaching & Methodology

My friend text-messaged me the above, saying he’d seen it as a name for a 학원 [hagwon].  It means:  “Computer & Filial Piety.”  Which, in and of itself, just about summarizes the weird tensions in Korean society between old and new, East and West, etc., etc., and all that trite cliche stuff that’s nevertheless totally going on.
I wonder what the classes are like, there?  Is it like a Confucian-style computer-literacy school?  Or is it computer-based Confucian moral education?  Or a little of both?  Or is it just a cool sounding name, and has nothing to do with curriculum or teaching philosophy?  Hmm… I’d vote for that last one, based on my personal experience.  Maybe there’s neither a PC nor an analect in sight.

Caveat: 행복하는 것이 중요해요

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable

I have a little book where I occasionally will write down little aphorisms, that I hear or that I make up.  I found the germ of the following that I’d made up last fall.  I’ve made some changes to it and thought it sounds very… aphoristic.
“I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state.  It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you.  Happiness something that you do.  And like most things that you do, it is volitional.  You can choose to do happiness, or not.  You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.”
Really, I should point out that this insight partly derives from studying the Korean Language.  In Korean, the predicate “to be happy” is “행복하다” literally means “to do [or to make] happiness”.  When you say “행복해요” (“I am happy”) what you’re really saying is “happiness [I] do.”  “행복한 사람” (“a happy person”) is literally “happiness doing [who-is] person” (taking into account the almost exact reverse word-order compared to English).

Caveat: all the buddhas died

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

I was reading the Economist, yesterday.  Apparently, Tsutomu Yamaguchi died.  He was one of the very few "double survivors" of the US's atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 — meaning, he survived Hiroshima, and then, 4 days later, survived Nagasaki.  What I was struck by were some bits of his poetry, quoted in the magazine:

Carbonised bodies face-down in the nuclear wasteland

all the Buddhas died,

and never heard what killed them.


Caveat: Deistic Distraction

Buddhism & Zen / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable

I formulated this last fall, and wrote in a paper notebook. I googled it, and it's unsaid, at least in this form. So I declare authorship of this aphorism at least for now.

"The reason we should not believe in god isn't because there is no god, but because believing in god distracts us from what's important in life."

Here is another quip written nearby in the same paper notebook, that appears original to my own formulation to the best of my ability to research it.

"It hardly matters at all where I end up. Just being there is what's interesting."

Caveat: Foucault’s Fun Farm

Buddhism & Zen / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

[This is a “back-post”;  it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks.  This is “day 4(a)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat.  For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]

It’s all about the discipline.

Michel Foucault is one of the most notable philosophers of the 20th century, and I would say his most influential work on me personally was his Archeology of Knowledge (which, incidentally, I read the first time in Spanish translation as Arqueologia del saber).  Nevertheless, perhaps one of his most widely-known works is Discipline and Punish, and within my imagination, Foucault’s name is synonymous, perhaps unfairly and certainly inaccurately, with certain notions of the weird give-and-take of our relationship, as individuals and more broadly as a civilization, with discipline, both external and internalized.

So I have coined the term “Foucault’s Fun Farm” for this entirely voluntary retreat that is so focused on concepts of discipline.  The disciplinary aspects include everything from the hours we keep to the food we eat, to the way we interact (or refuse to interact) with one another, to the way we sit and think (or not think). The fact of the matter is that I like it.

The same way that my favorite part of my military experience was the training — when discipline was maximal (and things seemed profoundly ethical and fair), and meaning was almost non-existent.  The same way that I can sometimes be nostalgic for a long stay at a hospital, where everything is structured and predictable.

Because one of the things I most lack in my life, is self-discipline.  Or…well… I feel that I lack it.  I’m better than I once was, really.  But I came here, ultimately, as much for the discipline as for the meditation, per se.  Certainly, I didn’t come for the Buddhist dogma.  That last is just a sort of adjunct, an annoyance… a gnat.

Beware dogmatic gnats. They’ll bite you.

picture

Caveat: Thanksgiving Moonlit Rocks

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I didn't really sleep, Wednesday night.  I've ended up on a night owl schedule staying with my friends Mark and Amy, and I had to get up very early to catch my flight, so I did what I often do when I'm facing the possibility of only a few hours of sleep:  I just stayed up.  Mark did too, and then he drove me to the airport at 520 am.

I flew via O'Hare, because I saved a lot of money on my last-minute ticket, that way.  I arrived at Las Vegas around 11:45 in the morning.  My friend Jay and his accomanying group were running late due to traffic out of L.A., so I killed about an hour in the Las Vegas airport.  They picked me up at about 1 pm. 

I met Shah and Kong again, two of Jay's friends with whom I've traveled to Zion before.  In fact, when I came to Zion in 2006, Shah and I were the only ones, as that was the year that Jay was sick.  Also joining us this year were Cameron and Kameron.  Really.  I learned a bit later that their nicknames were Old School (Cameron) and New School (Kameron), because the later was 16 and the former was 40's.  I guess New School has been a kind of adoptive son (maybe a big-brother mentoring thing) for Old School, over the last several years, through their church.

So we all piled in and drove the last 3 hours up to Zion, after getting lost in the hellhole known as North Las Vegas looking for a fast food joint to eat lunch.

We arrived in Zion, with a few short stops, at exactly 6 pm.  We checked in to the motel and made our dinner reservation at the Zion Park Lodge at 7 pm, exactly on schedule.  The food's pretty good, especially the chicken bean southwesternish soup, the cranberry stuff for the turkey, the chocolate cake. 

There was lots of interesting converastion:  one thing that intrigued me was when Cameron was talking about a "World Banquet" (I guess a sort of charity event held by his church) wherein the guests would draw a world locale (e.g. U.S.A., China, Gambia, etc.) and then they would be seated a table and could eat what was served for that locale.  All sounds very clever and interesting, but here's the catch:  obviously, a lot of locales, the average diet is both boring and insufficient.  So imagine sitting down at the Bangladesh table and being served only a small bowl of rice; while those at the USA table get many, many courses of meat, carbs, and fruits and vegetables from all over the world.   See?

So, We ate and talked, and then we went on a 3 mile night-hike, up to a place called Watchtower.

We didn't practice very good trail etiquette, as we left Old School down at the vehicle parking area and didn't realize he wasn't along until 20 minutes up the hill.  So Shah went back down and fetched him up.  But hiking in the dark, by the three-quarters moon, was awesome.  I always feel like I'm living out Tolkien's Silmarilion's "first age" when hiking in moonlight (Tolkien's "first age" was the age between the creation of the moon and the creation of the sun, and the elves had whole civilizations rise and fall in the moonlight of Middle Earth). 

Unfortunately, it's hard to take pictures that capture the night-hike experience.  But it was awesome.

And after that long, long day, I slept soundly.

[this is a "back-post" written 2009-11-30]

Caveat: Immigration Risk

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I crossed the border into Canada, today. Barely.
I spent two hours being intensively interviewed by a Canadian border official. It turned out that they had decided I was an “immigration risk.” Yes, that was the term used.
I was meticulously honest about my life. I prefer to operate that way, with officialdom. But I could offer “no fixed US address,” I had a passport full of exotic stamps, no “proof of current employment,” a truck full of “junk” (things I’ve been carrying around with me to sort through along with some books I collected in Arcata), and, probably most alarmingly, a bumper sticker reading “migration is a human right” (yes, I really believe this, and I’ve written about it before in my blog).
The potentially offending sentiment:
picture
I really didn’t think about these things. I’ve entered Canada so many times, in life, and they’ve almost always hassled me about one thing or another (always very politely, as that’s the Canadian way), but in the past it was always because they were worried about drugs or some kind of customs-related thing. Or who knows.
In fact, I’ve probably crossed at the I-29/MB75 crossing at least six times. And I’ve done my recent travels in Asia and to Australia last year utterly effortlessly, when it came to border crossings. Japan to Korea by boat was easier than England to France – they asked me no questions, despite the fact that I’d prepared a complicated explanation for returning as a tourist only 10 days after the expiration of my work visa, which I was worried would raise alarm bells.
Well, so… anyway. The Canadians didn’t want me to immigrate. The man was very nice, but very firm, and I was deferential and scrupulously honest. He wrote it all down – I’m thinking of going back and offering him a job as my ghost writer for my autobiography, because he really got quite detailed. “You have to see it from my point of view,” he said, and I nodded sagely.
I offered to go online and show them receipts from my storage unit in Minneapolis, the ticket back to Korea that I’d recently paid for, this blog, even, where they could spend time reading about my vacillations about future plans over the past year or so, but could clearly discover that immigrating to Canada was NOT one of the many options I’d been contemplating.
But they strongly resisted the idea that I lived my life “online,” and they couldn’t seem to understand that I didn’t carry paper copies of these things. I finally sighed, and said, “well, I guess it’s not that important to visit my friend in Winnipeg, it was a kind of spontaneous, impulsive decision, anyway. How about I just turn around and go back into the US?”
The friendly Canadian went off to have a “little meeting” with some of his coworkers, or supervisor, or something. Or maybe he googled me – that’s what I would have done, maybe. To try to check me out.
I sat and pondered what would end up happening if I turned around and then had to pass through US border controls. The US people are always hard-asses anyway, and much less polite than the Canadians, and I began to visualize trying to explain to them that the Canadians had rejected me. That would, of course, set off alarm bells with the Americans. I started developing a little scenario where I lived out some weeks or months in my little truck, parked in the no-man’s land between the Canadian and US border control stations on the Manitoba / North Dakota border, because neither country would let me in.
And then the big, burly, boy-scout-freckled Canadian waved me over and said, very seriously, “we’ve decided we trust you. I’m giving you a one month visa.” And he stamped my passport. And then proceeded to try to convince me to stay more than just one night in Winnipeg, which is what I’d told him my plans were, because, after all, he said, “there’s a lot of fun things to do in Winnipeg.” Really. He said this.
And then, like a latter-day Colombo (70’s TV police drama), he held up a finger and said, “Just one more question.”
I smiled, “Sure, anything.”
“Why was it, again, that you said you had all this stuff in your truck?”
Here we go again, I thought. I began to give, with more detail than before, the story of how I had landed at Minneapolis, and preliminary to driving to California, I had collected some boxes of stuff to “sort through” on my travels.  He said OK, but nodded skeptically.
I shook his hand, went back out to my truck, and drove away from the setting prairie sun, toward Winnipeg.
My friend Gerry said that, on the contrary, it wasn’t the bumper sticker that freaked them out;  it was the laundry basket! “People don’t travel with laundry baskets. Only people who are moving carry laundry baskets.” Hmm… is this a Canadian proverb?
picture

Caveat: una patria accidental

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Life is a Dream / My Poetry & Fiction / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

(oda ambigua a la gran ciudad de El-ley)

La persona típica lleva varias patrias en su alma.  A mí, me pertenece un media docena, al menos.  Entre estas patrias, de alguna manera, la metrópolis de Los Ángeles podría ser la patria más patria de todas, porque aquí nació mi padre y también su padre, mi abuelo:  así, patria de padres.

Yo, nacido de otro lado, entre niebla y lluvias y una infinidad de coníferos, nunca sentía ningún amor por la gran ciudad de mis abuelos; ciudad de asfalto y desierto y carreteras y palmeras y grandes shopping malls tras otras shopping malls.  Pués, por lo menos, no cuando de niño.  Sin embargo, era siempre un lugar fascinante, desafiante, y de sueños.  Podría contemplar el smog con una claridad insólita.

Años después, mi papá volvió al Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Ángeles de Poríncula.  Yo también he logrado acumular una quinta parte de una vida humana vivida acá.  Ahora amo a Los Ángeles, tal vez porque la odio también, y vice versa.

Me encanta encontrarme en un Starbucks cualquiera, y darme cuenta de que la joven a mi derecha está quejandose de algo trivial con su madre en el cellphone, en coreano, mientras la mujer profesional al otro lado está explicando algún procedimiento médico, en ruso, mientras veo en frente, por la ventana, un anuncio al otro lado de la calle en la escritura impenetrable (para mí) del idioma armenio.  Y todo es normal.

Me encanta manejar por tres horas en carretera, arriba del 65 millas por hora, y no haber podido salir de la megalópolis.

Me encanta la silueta de unas palmeras sobre las montañas.

Padezco un amor ambíguo, porque también la odio.  Odio el calor de casi todos los días, y lo aburrido que es el clima.  Odio la carencia de transporte público adecuado.  Odio su solipsismo cultural.

Es patria, pero no es patria querida.  Es patria ambívala, media querida, de índole casi aleatoria o accidental.

Caveat: America is full of weirdos

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

OK.  I'll be the first to admit that maybe North Hollywood isn't the most representative population sample.

I had my third major experience of "reverse culture shock" today.  The first was in the grocery store on my first visit.  The second was at that social gathering with my friend Bob's friends.  And now… just wandering around.

I took my truck in to the dealer for its 100,000 mile service  (the actual dealer where I originally bought it, which they thought was weird because it's got Minnesota plates and all that).  But they took a long time to do it, and so I killed some time by walking around my old stomping grounds in Toluca Lake and Noho (North Hollywood).

Boy, there sure are a lot of weirdos.  I suppose there might be a lot of weirdos in Korea, too, but I don't notice them because I'm not as tuned in to the cultural norms they might be breaking.   Perhaps because, ultimately, in Korea, I'm the weirdo.

Caveat: Stealthbucks

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I guess Starbucks corporation, having made its name synonymous with brand ubiquity, is going to be experimenting with running locations under alternate brands (see this article in the Seattle Times).  Call them "stealthbucks."   They're trying to have it both ways:  mega brand identity for mass consumers seeking sameness and comfort, but also the rebellious consumers who want locality and uniqueness.  Can it work?  What other companies have successfully operated this way?  Is this a genuinely new corporate branding strategy?  There have been many cases of companies maintaining different brands for different demographics, but the idea of creating one-off brands for individual locations… that seems very subversive.

Caveat: Panopticon

Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

A lot of people seem to comment about how the internet seems to be increasing the insularity of societies.  I don't really think that's the case.  I think what happens is that the internet makes visible (to outsiders) the preexisting insularity of societies.  Prior to the internet, the only window we had on other societies and social groups was whatever they made public via the mass-media.  But now, we can "look inside" each society's internal "conversations," and this, inevitably, reveals their fundamental insularity vis-a-vis other social groups and societies.  This is especially true across linguistic boundaries.

I've commented before about how South Korea somehow manages to be one of the most internet-connected societies on earth yet also manages to remain alarmingly xenophobic and uninterested in the "world outside."  But that's an example where I myself have fallen into this trap of imagining the internet would somehow broaden minds and level differences.  It doesn't do that, especially across language-barriers.  Instead, it only "makes visible" preexisting differences.  It puts us all inside Foucault's panopticon, but it doesn't really change how we act as social and fundamentally "tribal" beings.

Caveat: Saliendo del túnel por fin

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Acabo de terminar la novela El Túnel de Ernesto Sabato.  Me costó mucho tiempo terminarlo, porque me dediqué a leerla únicamente en el metro.  Incluso, sólo la leía durante los períodos cuando el tren se metía debajo la tierra… en el túnel, por supuesto.  Era mi 'subway project.'  No tengo la menor idea porque se me ocurrió leerla de tal manera, aunque al fin y al cabo, fue una forma de leerla muy fiel a sus monomanías novelescas.  

No sé decir si me gustó o no.  Lo cierto es que nunca me aburrió, y a pesar de mi decisión de leerla sólo en el subte, a veces me fijaba bastante para que siguiera leyendo algunos momentos en alguana estación, después de bajar y antes de buscar mi destino.  La terminé sentado en un Starbucks, esta tarde, bebiendo un cafe helado y mirando afuera el tormento a truenos, con fuertes lluvias y viento, que se sintonizaba con la tormenta al final de la novela.

No estoy seguro de que fuera una novela posmoderna, como la califica algunos.  Tiene su cara kafkiana.  La primera mitad me acordó bastante a Gombrowicz, por ejemplo.  Pero al final, es tal vez más que otra cosa un sencillo estudio sicológico, con parecer a una novela decimonónica — como algo de Galdós (Niebla) o de Henry James (Turn of the Screw). 

Hace mucho tiempo que me dedico a un analisis literaria.  Es la primera vez hace casi cinco años que leyo uno de los libros de la maldita lista de los 300 que eran los libros requeridos por mi programa de doctorado en la U de Pennsylvania, de la cual sólo logré leer menos que 50 antes del examen de maestría en 96.  Aquel fue el peor verano de mi vida.  Salí del programa, en parte, porque no quería llegar a odiar la literatura hispana.  Me alegro haber terminado y gozado de este libro, si sólo porque sirva de prueba de que he logrado no odiarlo por pertenecer a la literatura hispana.

Ahora vuelto a casa, he cenado muy sencillamente de arroz con un gimchi de pepino (오이김치) muy sabroso que compré en un mercado el otro día.  Estoy escuchando algunos nuevos tracks en mi computadora y estoy organizando mis notas y pensamientos.

Lista de música recientemente disfrutada…

  • Metric – Gimme Sympathy
  • Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream
  • The Herbaliser – Same as it Never Was
  • Hyperbubble – Better Set Your Phasers to Stun
  • Marina & The Diamonds – I am not a Robot
  • Moby – Pale Horses
  • Yelle – Qui Est Cette Fille
  • Röyksopp – This Must Be It

Caveat: Floor Mats

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Science & SciFi

During my years in Burbank, working for Paradise, I learned more about the commercial floor-mat market than I ever dreamed possible.  Certainly, it was more than I wanted to know.   Why am I mentioning it now?   I saw the guy changing out the floor mats here at LBridge hagwon — replacing the dirty ones with clean ones.  These are "logo mats" — they have the hagwon's name on them (maybe sometime I'll sneak a picture and post it).   And I felt this weird kinship with the man rolling out the mats and lugging the dirty ones to the elevator. 

"I've done that," I thought.  Well, I wasn't the delivery guy.  I was a "corporate office" guy, doing database things.  I analyzed customer buying patterns across different product lines, and helped tell the marketers who they should target for their next promotion, or worked out more cost-effective ways to enforce large corporate contracts with respect to our unruly branch service locations.  But all of us central office types had gone on the occasional "route ride," where you accompany the delivery guys as they go out and deliver the uniforms, mats and other laundered paraphernalia to the customers.   I'm not sure if LBridge rents these mats, or if they own them and pay a laundry service to clean them.  I have no idea if the company cleaning them operates giant computerized plants all over Korea or is a mom and pop business that spreads them out on concrete somewhere and hoses them down.

But I spent way too much time thinking about it.  Speculating about the secret lives of our hagwon's floor mats.  Or maybe it's not bad to spend time thinking about it.  Mostly, most people never think about things like the vast number of rubberized floor mats that exist in businesses all over the world:  how they get there, who owns them, what they're made of, how much they cost, who cleans them.   I remember when I worked at the Casa in Mexico City, watching the maids taking them into the courtyard and having to hose them off and scrub them.  Unpleasant business.   And I had to do that with floor mats myself, when I worked at that 7-11 store in Boston, that summer.  Where were the rental and laundry guys, then?

And… there are wider cultural questions.  What's the cumulative carbon footprint of all rubberized floor mats, in all the world?   I mean, there's manufacturing issues, the wasted water and toxic chemicals involved in cleaning them, and disposal issues, too.  Are they really necessary?  Are there alternatives?  What are those alternatives?  Would western civilization be the same, without them?  Would we all be languishing in hospitals with fractures acquired from slipping on slippery floors?  Would retail business models collapse due to a lack of repeat business, because there were no snazzy floor mats establishing brand identity in the entryways? 

Oh… that gets deep.

Caveat: Thanks for the moe

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

"Moe" is a Japanese term for a kind of romantic cuteness.   Sometime back, I watched a Japanese anime series called "Ouran High School Host Club."  I think one of the episodes was titled, "Thanks for the moe," which is kind of a tongue-in-cheek ironical remark, I suspect.  Moe is really a flipside of otaku-ness (otaku being Japanese nerdy-geeky-fandom).   I guess you could think of moe as the cuteness that gets the anime fans all excited.

The series is kind of silly, but it's actually rather complex, too, as it deals, in a cartoon setting, wtih some rather deep issues around gender roles and sexuality in contemporary Japan.  As anime series go, I would rank it only middling for visual style and character interest, but for depth and philosophy (and lots of irony), it's near the top.  Certainly, it seems unlikely that its themes would be dealt with in anything like the same way in either more salacious America or more prudish Korea.

Anyway, I thought of it because yesterday listening to my mp3, I heard the series' closing theme song, "Shissou," by Last Alliance, a Japanese alt-indie-sounding rock band.  And now that damn song is stuck in my head.

[Youtube embed added later as part of background noise project.]

Back to Top