Thinking in Pictures

Don Delillo's 1991 book Mao II may be one of the most brilliant works of literature I've read since I discovered The Corrections. It deftly covers modern Western culture with ruminations on authors' likeness to terrorists, mass consumption, and, at a very basic level, the way in which we understand the world through images. Delillo's novel is too good for any synopsis to be worthwhile, so I'll skip it. Instead, I would like to point out a contemporary demonstration of Mao II's themes.

A month ago, Trayvon Martin--a black seventeen year old in Florida--was shot and killed on the way back home from buying Skittles and an iced tea. The shooter was a man named George Zimmerman, a self-styled neighborhood watch leader who thought Martin looked "suspicious" and who has not been charged with any crime. There are all kinds of complexities in the case--Zimmerman was following Martin, Zimmerman has a history of calling the police for suspicious persons reports, a cry for help heard on the 911 tape that suporters of both parties claim as their own, and the recent reports that Martin had in fact been the aggressor--but I'm not going to go into any of those. They will only distract from my point.

The fact is that what exactly happened has yet to be determined. Nonetheless, the accounts fall into two camps:

(1) Martin was a completely innocent kid who was attacked for being black (and, if you listen to Geraldo Rivera, wearing a hoodie). This is a blatant case of racism in which the police don't care about the black victim and in which racial profiling led to the murder of a good child.

(2) Zimmerman was a good man trying to make his neighborhood safer after an influx of crime. In this effort, he got into an altercation with Martin and was forced, tragically, to kill him.

I will say at this point that I think it's obviously absurd Zimmerman hasn't faced a more thorough investigation at the very least. Even if Martin threw the first punch, he was being followed by a man he did not know, which would warrant that punch. Shooting Martin is not an acceptable action in those circumstances seeing as Zimmerman was the one who decided to treat Martin like a criminal based on no evidence and with no real authority.

My point, however, is that both of these accounts depend upon stereotypical images for their force. Zimmerman was picturing the young black gangster in the hoodie who is out to steal, kill, and rape. He had an image handed down from out culture in mind that he used as a judgment against Martin, and, as a result, killed an innocent youth. On the other hand, Martin's supporters are picturing the young black star who is the pure victim of his race.

One of these images--Martin as victim--certainly seems as though it is closer to the truth. But the problem is that in thinking via these images, there is no room for gradation. Things are not greater or lesser degrees from guilt or innocence: they are this image or that. Zimmerman was a good guy or a murderer. Martin was a victim or he instigated the fight that led to his death.

The way we think is limiting our understanding of events. It forbids the thought that Zimmerman was a decent but overzealous man. That thought does not lead to the conclusion that Zimmerman was innocent or that Martin is not the victim of racism--but it does forbid the vitriol toward Zimmerman that exists now without any certainty. Once again, both sides of the debate are plagued. Zimmerman's supporters ignore the obvious racism in the event and Martin's lack any subtlety.

While Delillo does not discuss racism in Mao II, he does demonstrate a key fact about modern culture. And it is this fact that we must understand in issues like Trayvon Martin's murder. This is not to say that there should not be outrage about Martin's death, but rather that the outrage should come with understanding--understand at the basic cause of modern racism. And thinking in images--as it is done now, anyways--cannot succeed in that task.

Three Papers

It was finals week last week. That means I just wrote approximately 60 pages of papers. I'm a bit over worked, so in lieu of a weekly post I'm providing links to those papers, in case you're so interested:

Anscombe's Incompatibility: Non-Observable Knowledge and Material Action

Cavell on Beckett / Beckett on Cavell

Freedom to Think: Truth-Concepts and Authority in Schmitt and Strauss

Cheers.

Kony 2012 as Symptom: Disregard for Knowledge

White guilt! Child Soldiers! Evil dictators! Oh, Kony 2012.

Now, I'm going to be honest, I have not watched the video. Nor will I. I have also done very little research about the issues, aside from an article or two critiquing the video and its response. Kony--and the discussion about Invisible Children's video--brings out many important problems, most of which involve Uganda's social problems and how Western culture interacts with Africa. But the discussion as a whole provides a telling example of how modern Americans take in information.

The reason I refuse to watch the video or research the responses to it with any depth is that learning of global problems from the poorly thought out work of a pretentious organization or the discussion of that work on social media sites and mass emails is problematic. Kony 2012, itself as a social issue, is a symptom of the fact that Americans don't take the time to understand systemic problems.

The sheer fact that only after a YouTube video--whether good or bad--do the complexities surrounding globalization come to the fore is worrisome. The advertising theories of information have taken hold. Individuals take brief bits of information, use slogans or persons that can be put in bold on banners to provide the label that is supposed to represent something larger. But with something as intertwined as a history of failed state dictatorships, un-developed economic sectors, ethnic conflicts, and severe public health shortcomings, a slogan is always too simplistic.

Whatever benefit a slogan does have, whatever information it does carry, remains as a small bit. It cannot contain the systemic relations that determine so many of the world's current problems. The surface problem is that the trend to simplify information that arose with capitalist advertising wasn't designed to inform anyone about large social dilemmas. The mode of dissemination is not robust enough.

But the other issue that arises is the fact that Americans know many bits of information, but show no interest and have little way to organize it all. The obverse of the internet's informational capacity is the fact that individuals are now bombarded with facts, figures, and opinions that bounce off one another, contradict one another, and, perhaps worst of all, drown one another out. The influx of information, at times, forbids actual knowledge.

Of course, this problem isn't a necessary one. Google's focus is often on building new ways to sift through information, to organize it for users. But we require a new focus. Moreover, that focus has to be on knowledge, not encapsulation of data. Only by fixing the way we systemize information in presenting it to others can we begin to understand systemic problems like what lies behind Kony 2012.

However, Google is most likely not the answer. This problem came from finding a way to sell information. This is advertising's marring of our world. Knowledge cannot be capitalized without creating a culture that does not value or understand information. And that culture is the one that creates Kony 2012.

Meaningless Santorum

A month ago I tried to tell you that you should treat Rick Santorum and his comrades with the disregard they deserve. Shockingly, my blog post didn’t change the course of national political discourse and Santorum has been making more headlines than ever. As a result, it has now become strikingly evident that he is speaking absolute, utter nonsense.

Take, for one small example, Santorum’s stance on gay marriage. Unfortunately (and still surprisingly) he doesn’t stand out for thinking that gays should not be allowed to marry. But his comments on the matter do strike a profoundly inane chord. Speaking to NBC, Santorum stated that the fact gay marriage has gained support in the nation does not imply that it should be legalized. "Just because public opinion says something doesn't mean it's right. I'm sure there were times in areas of this country when people said blacks were less than human."

Somehow, Santorum just equated denying gay marriage to ending segregation. Somehow, in our current political climate, making such an outlandish statement does not turn heads. Somehow we expect these sorts of things and find them acceptable. Of course people disagree, but few have questioned the fact that Santorum is able to make these claims at all. 

When I say Santorum is speaking utter nonsense, I’m not searching for an effect. I mean that very literally. And when I say that we should all ignore him, I mean that very literally too. The fact is that society requires communication, a form of discourse in which there are standards of meaning and in which one person can reasonably expect to have another understand her. The problem with Santorum--as well as his campaign opponents--is that he conflates concepts and ideals, refuses to care about what’s true and what’s meaningful, and thus fails to maintain any sort of standard of communication.

What I mean to say, very simply, is that Rick Santorum isn’t saying anything at all. To equate himself or Pat Robertson to MLK and Malcolm X isn’t faulty logic, it isn’t logic at all. It’s blind, deaf, and dumb.

The outcome of modern political strategies is the devaluation of actual discourse. Rather, we now have dueling monologues that invoke various ideals, none of which mean anything to another party. How can Newt stand for family values after his personal debacles? Santorum cannot coherently run his populist campaign at the same time that he decries public opinion. Yet his position is precisely that, and its accepted as a legitimate one, even if ill-informed or misguided.

No one is challenging Santorum on the precise grounds of his failure. Many explain exactly how his arguments are wrong or point to the missteps in his positions, but what we must do is show how Santorum isn’t arguing at all. His positions are incoherent, but it doesn’t matter because modern politics doesn’t require any actual arguments. It asks for positioning, for steadfast opposition to another’s ideas, for slogans. 

But a slogan is not yet a position in the argumentative, philosophical sense. And Santorum has yet to develop the complexity in his views to reach a point at which a position, in this sense, could be held. Rather, he stands behind opaque, ill-defined concepts that can take the brunt of any counter-arguments precisely because there aren’t any arguments in them that can be found faulty.

This idea is something Stanley Cavell argues for in Senses of Walden. Santorum is a proud ‘American’, but he doesn’t have any idea what America might mean. Nor does he care. He needs no rigor to his thought, no systematic understanding, no purpose to his words. His nonsense is enough. As Cavell argues, too many people today stand on ideas they don't bother to understand. This fact is how Santorum is still a public figure being debated in the news.

What we need today is not to show that Santorum’s logic is unsound, but the audacity to separate the meaningful from the not. We must not give him more respect than he deserves. One cannot argue with a person who doesn't bother to mean anything. We must be bold enough and diligent enough to demand something more than our politicians are giving us. And that something more is not better ideas, but, sadly, something that can be considered an idea at all.