He Who Would Be King Now Is

As I write this, Lebron James and the Miami Heat have already tipped off Game 4 of the NBA Finals versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, a series they lead two games to one entering tonight’s contest. I don’t need to check the score now, or even after it goes final, to know the outcome of the series. The Miami Heat will triumph and Lebron James will be named series MVP as he collects the first set of championship hardware of his already storied career. I know this not because the NBA is fixed, because it isn’t, and not because Kevin Durant and the Thunder are incapable of coming back from a 2-1 series deficit. About two weeks ago the Thunder were down in a deeper hole, 2-0 to the four-time NBA champion Spurs, who at the time were riding a twenty game win streak and for whom the reputed basketball experts (see one Bill Simmons) were already measuring ring sizes for the one for the thumb. The Thunder won four straight, demonstrating the ability to take a punch from a team with a “Big 3” every bit as accomplished as Miami’s, and here we are. I know this (this being the Heat’s eventual triumph) because it is preordained, which is not the same thing as fixed, or at least fixed by a human being.

Watching Lebron James throughout the 2012 playoffs, or rather listening to his games on the radio or listening to people who have watched the games talk about them on the radio (which is how you experience the games if you are blind, or, like me, not allowed to have a TV in your house because you frighten the children when you yell at it during ball games), one gets the clear impression that one is witnessing someone who has paid his debt to society, and is once again a free man. That debt has nothing to do with the fact of his departure from Cleveland, an inevitability, nor the fashion in which he did so via “The Decision,” i.e. tacky and not classy. This hurt James’ popularity, or Q Rating, but wasn’t what landed him in the symbolic pokey. What got James in trouble was his premature, self-styled coronation, when he landed in Miami for the celebration of his arrival and freshly minted partnership with Dwayne Wade and, to a lesser extent, Chris Bosh. At the celebration, James announced that the Heat would win “not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven,” NBA championships. Eight championships is a bit over the top, but the collection of talent on the Heat is capable of winning three, four, or even five rings. So, if we excuse James’ understandable excitement in the moment and allow him a reasonable margin of error of three or four championships, nothing James said was demonstrably unreasonable. James’ mistake, his crime, if you will, wasn’t, then, how many chickens he counted before they hatched, but the simple act of counting any eggs whatsoever before they hatched. What James, who has always gone by the nickname King James, failed to realize is that for every king, there must be a kingmaker. To wear the crown, kings must go through the checkout counter staffed by a cashier, who acts as kingmaker. In ringing up his championships that heady first day in Miami in the self checkout lane, James undid the process of coronation, which has always consisted of athlete winning championship, and public crowning him king. Lebron reversed both elements, crowning himself king before “not one” championship had been secured. James’ sin, for which he would be punished in the 2011 NBA Finals, was not that he would be king, it was always clear that he was destined for that, but that he would be both king and kingmaker.



James’ punishment in the 2011 NBA Finals was as preordained as the outcome of these 2012 Finals. The first piece of evidence comes in the form of a tattoo on the person of Dallas Mavericks shooting guard Jason Terry. Prior to the 2010-11 NBA season, Terry, a good but not great basketball player on an at best very good but never great basketball team, had the Larry O’Brien Trophy ( awarded annually to the NBA champions) tattooed on his right biceps. Given both Terry’s and the Mavericks’ modest resumes (Terry’s previous greatest previous accomplishment was being named the NBA’s 2009 Sixth Man of the Year, which is like being named world’s best sous chef, and in their one previous NBA Finals appearance in 2006 the Mavs had choked up a 2-0 series lead to the pre-Lebron Heat) this was akin to fellow Texan Ron Paul having a tattoo of the Seal of the President of the United States tattooed on his right biceps just before the Iowa caucus. The second piece of evidence from the 2011 NBA Finals came in the form of James’ bizarre disappearing act in the decisive fourth quarter throughout the six game series. James, one of the most dominant and assertive players in basketball history, inexplicably watched listlessly from behind the 3-point arc as the rest of his team wilted in each of the last four games of the series. To this day, commentators and James alike are unable to account for what occurred. It was as if an outside force had taken over James’ body. It had (it being the symbolic order that had been violated the moment Lebron publicly counted to seven).

To understand the gravity of James’ crime, two examples of biblical king making will suffice. The first example comes from the biblical king par excellence, King David. What is most important about King David for our purposes is the fact that he was not yet king when he slayed Goliath. It was only by slaying Goliath that David put himself in a position to eventually be crowned King of Israel. As the story goes, David placed all of his faith in God, and on the battle field against Goliath it would not be going too far to say that he became God’s chosen, later becoming king of God’s chosen people. There is a king, in the person of David, but there is also a kingmaker, in this case God Himself. The second example comes from Christianity, which as a religion only begins to make sense when the rule of king and kingmaker is applied. Against an interpretation of Christianity in which Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God prior to his birth from Mary, the rule of king and kingmaker, a rule that binds God as surely as the laws of physics (apologies to the believers in a supernatural God, but He just doesn’t hold water) endorses an understanding of God’s adoption of Jesus as his son as Jesus hung on the cross. By this reading of Christianity, Jesus’ three year ministry qualified him as Son of God/Messiah/King, with the coronation occurring on Mount Calvary. The rule of king (Jesus) and kingmaker (God) had once more been obeyed. All things considered, Lebron James is getting off rather lightly for the hubris of playing the role of king and kingmaker. His coronation was postponed, not cancelled. It is being aired live on national television on not one, not two, not three, not four, but at least five and possibly seven nights. And perhaps it was better this way for Lebron. Just as there must be a king and a kingmaker, there can be only one king. In 2011, James wanted to be co-king with Dwayne Wade. Imagine Michael Jordan trying to share the throne with Scottie Pippen. It’s like imagining a squared circle. Recall the most recent king, Kobe Bryant, kicking Shaquille O’Neal out of his kingdom. Perhaps James’ punishment was for this offense as much as it was for playing king and kingmaker. But that James is gone, replaced by a 2012 version who is now a real life king to match his nickname. The coronation , the real one where you, me, and Bill Simmons get to play kingmaker, is taking place now.

And while I was typing, the Heat won Game 4. Let me be the first to say it: Long live the king!

What Could Be Sweeter than the Love of a Grandmother?

A recent print ad for McDonald’s sweet tea reads “Just like grandma wishes she made.” At first glance, the ad is simply a clever play on the familiar saying “Just like grandma used to make.” But a more considered reading of the ad reveals the formula by which McDonald’s, and others of its ilk, are reshaping the landscape of desire.

Until very recently, the ad could have successfully relied upon the original familiar saying, “Just like grandma used to make.” The stirring of warm feelings towards grandma mixed with memories of her kitchen, once linked to the sweet tea, would have been sufficient to attract the prospective sweet tea consumer. Grandma was the source of a loving nurturance that runs deep, fulfilling a primordial need and at the same time establishing a desire to have those very needs continually met in an equally satisfying fashion. This potent combination of need, satisfaction, and desire secured a loyalty to grandma that a McDonald’s could only dream of from its consumers, even as it traded on that loyalty with advertising come-ons such as “Just like grandma used to make.





McDonald’s couldn’t have run the ad “Just like grandma wishes she made” perhaps just fifteen years ago. Even that recently the idea that a fast food chain could outdo grandma’s home cooking would have been seen as both preposterous and at least mildly offensive to grandmothers and grandchildren everywhere. Major corporations that are tone deaf to mainstream sensibilities do not remain major corporations for long. That the ad has run now, and that no one seems to have noticed it (I googled it, and found one lone mention on what appeared to be a stream of consciousness tweet), indicates that McDonald’s knew it could safely run the ad. McDonald’s understands quite well that something has changed, and what has changed is where our desires and, by extension, our loyalties rest. McDonald’s no longer needs to play off of our loyalty to grandma, but can instead flout our loyalty to McDonald’s. And we are loyal to McDonald’s because the golden arches can meet our needs and desires more readily than anyone or anything else, including grandma. Presenting the 99 cent sweet tea. By pricing its sweet tea and other items within reach of even the beggar on the corner, McDonald’s has refashioned itself as the local soup kitchen, opening its embrace to all when the threat of becoming that beggar on the corner continually expands its reach. If home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in, that place is now McDonald’s. And if home is where the heart is, the respective questions of why grandma wishes she made it just like McDonald’s and how we could possibly take her wish for granted, have both been answered.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

The return of Oprah's prodigal son is an event truly worth celebrating, as something interesting, often engrossing, happens on almost every page of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. Each character in Freedom is broken right down to the core, which could make for some very depressing reading. But Franzen digs deeper and deeper into the broken cracks until he finds the place in the wound where healing might enter.

As long as there have been people we have been telling stories to make things alright. Never have we needed our storytellers more. The hope that emerges from Freedom's tattered landscape is the message that "all manner of things shall be well." Amen, Jonathan Franzen.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Reading the first half of Larsson’s wildly popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is like watching an intricate pattern of dominos being meticulously arranged, revealing just why the audience generally waits until the dominos are in place to fall before showing up. But once Larsson has all his pieces in place, the second half of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo rushes to its conclusion, transforming the quality of time during the reader’s encounter in a spirited fashion similar to the suspension of time that occurs as dominos fall. With dominos it is as if the total sum of energy is deposited into each little black and white piece over the course of countless hours of labor, and that all of this energy is released, thereby transforming time, in the few seconds it takes for the dominos to fall, which release makes watching Dominos fall a direct encounter with our malleable universe. Maybe we would appreciate the transformational impact of falling dominos if we were there to see them laboriously arranged. Or we might just be bored until the fun started, which is exactly what I was until Larsson pushed over the first domino in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The Fruit of Knowledge

Apple has come up with an ingenius advertising slogan for its new iPhone 4g: “This changes everything. Again.” This slogan is wickedly effective at accomplishing advertising’s primary goal, creating anxiety in the consumer that can only be calmed with a purchase of the relevant merchandise. It is so effective because it plays off of the destabilizing effect of the rapidly accelerating pace of technological change. Because technology is intimately woven into the threads of our everyday lives, it is no mere hyperbole to proclaim that “everything” has changed as a result of Apple’s latest breakthrough. Everything that occurs at the very least does so in some form of relationship to advanced technology, and much of what occurs involves this technology directly. Ipso facto, if you transform the technology this, indeed, changes everything.



Our ability to interact successfully in the world, meaning our ability to both keep ourselves clothed and fed with adequate shelter, and to attract sexual partners, now depends in no small degree on our ability to manipulate the current technology. But this ability is increasingly unstable, which is what makes Apple’s two line slogan such a knockout combination. Not only is Apple able to change everything, it has the power to do so “again.” It is the “again” that is truly threatening, releasing the toxic anxiety central to the 4g purchase. Perhaps we are all accustomed to a certain degree of change; see timeless clichés such as “the only constant is change.” But we are ill equipped for change on the everything scale, much less so everything changing repeatedly according to Apple’s rigid schedule. Apple’s slogan demonstrates that not only are they aware of how vulnerable we’ve become to their wizardry, but that they are willing to exploit it.

Apple has long since been lauded as the world’s “coolest company.” I’ve always noticed how those individuals recognized as the coolest appear more concerned with their status than with the people who grant it to them. Apple’s aforementioned label, then, is apt. The twisted part is how we always try to win the cool kid’s approval, in the hopes that we might soak up some of that cool aura, with all of its benefits. Just so, we have fetishized Apple, paying more for its products, waiting in line over night at the mall for the privilege to do so, in the hope that the world’s coolest company might, via its glowing logo, anoint us the world’s coolest consumers. Which makes us doubly pathetic. Not only are we at the mercy of Apple, for now and forever (remember “again”), we also worship Apple.

God is not dead, and the secular age is a sham. Once more we are prostrate in fear and awe. But where, for example, Christianity changed everything once, and has left us waiting two thousand years for the promised second act, we only had to wait four years between the iPhone and the iPhone 4g. Apple, of course, is just getting started with this Second Coming. Again!

Transition by Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks’ Transition would be compelling based solely on the sci-fi conceit central to the story, that infinite parallel worlds exist and that trained practitioners can “flit” between the unnumbered versions of earth, briefly inhabiting the bodies and minds of individuals in each world. Banks successfully plays with this concept for the duration of Transition, but also uses it as a platform for serious reflections on some of the grim aspects of reality as we currently know it. Foremost among these is Banks’ assault on the use of torture as a tool in the “war on terror.” Banks conceives of a parallel earth in which the terrorists are Christians, whom the state tortures relentlessly. This clever plot device removes us just far enough from all of the assumptions we make about “Islamofascism,” and highlights torture as exactly what it is: evil. In sum, Banks has crafted an immensely pleasurable sci-fi thriller, and one that makes you think as the pages fly by.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman

Apparently unsatisfied with the critique of Christianity embedded in his brilliant His Dark Materials trilogy (most famous for The Golden Compass), Phillip Pullman is back for more with The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Billed as a “fiercely subversive retelling of the life of Jesus,” it is mostly a platform for Pullman to air his particular biases and grievances regarding the organized religion of Christianity. These complaints fall well short of fierce subversion, as they take the form of a fairly straightforward fictional depiction of the difficult encounter between post-enlightenment secular reason and the mysteries at the core of the gospel stories. Plenty of us struggle every day in managing this encounter, but, unlike Pullman, many of us choose not to simply explain away the mystery. In doing just that Pullman enjoys the satisfaction that comes with saying “case closed,” when all that has really closed is Pullman’s mind to the possibility that some mysteries will always remain unsolved, but that we somehow grow in wisdom as we fail to solve the mystery.

The Decision

It’s been a couple of weeks now since Lebron James’ infamous “Decision” on ESPN, and I remain transfixed by both the fact of the event (full disclosure: I didn’t watch “The Decision”, since I am of course superior to all those mere mortals who indulge in television while I water my ornamental vegetable garden, but read about it and listened to sports radio about it obsessively) and the public response/backlash. I have read and heard numerous credible theories as to why Lebron James is now a certifiable schmuck, my favorite of which is ESPN “Sportsguy” Bill Simmons’ argument that the NBA has always obeyed the unwritten code of pick-up basketball that requires the two best players on the court to be on separate teams, although last I checked the Lakers and Celtics weren’t playing shirts vs. skins in the Finals. I also don’t seem to recall Simmons suggesting the original Magic-Bird-Jordan Dream Team give back their gold medals, or that they should at least have let Jordan play for Russia to make things fair.

But amidst all of the conspiracy theories and Lebron bashing, which are a huge part of how fantastically entertaining the whole Lebron “Decision” process has been, I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why Lebron chose to announce his decision on “The Decision.” Many have been quick to label Lebron a narcissist, and while I am certain that Lebron has quite the healthy ego, nothing that came before “The Decision” matches this diagnosis. Narcissists generally have lengthy resumes (see one Terrell Owens). You don’t go from all around good guy, which is how everyone perceived James prior to “The Decision”, to the antichrist in one week of free agency.

The consensus is also that James and his advisors completely misread the public in hatching their plan for announcing “The Decision.” Perhaps they did, as I don’t believe they intended to turn James into a villain as if he were fan favorite Andre the Giant morphing into villain mode to challenge Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania. But our misunderstanding of what actually took place during “The Decision” trumps any of Team Lebron’s missteps. Lebron celebrated “The Decision” because he understood, correctly, that at this moment in time he was at the peak of his powers. We all whiffed on that, and proceeded to pile on with every endorsement of Lebron-as-narcissist, because of how we have always understood the source of the athlete’s power; Michael Jordan sold oceans of Gatorade and countless Nikes precisely because of his on-court game. But Lebron is a different beast. He is a cultural icon who just happens to play basketball.



Some observers have attempted to belittle James for taking a shortcut to greatness by joining Wade in Miami. These observers claim that James can only cement his greatness by winning championships as The Man, and that joining Wade’s heat removes this option from the table. But what “The Decision” clearly tells us is that Lebron does not regard winning NBA championships as the ultimate accomplishment. For Lebron, holding the entire destiny of a sport in his hands, as he so clearly did this summer, was a far grander achievement than winning mere basketball games, championships notwithstanding. It was an achievement worthy of a cultural icon, something beyond the championship athlete, whose ranks include Lebron’s new partner, Dwayne Wade.

And on many levels, Lebron was exactly right. We all obsessed over “The Decision” not because we really cared which team Lebron chose, because really, outside of Ohio, who cares, but because we were enthralled by the mystique of someone who was in complete control. Which made the Lebron backlash inevitable, because under all that cover of rejecting Lebron for his betrayal, his narcissism, his competeitive cowardice, we really resent Lebron because he became exactly what he wanted to be: ubiquitous. With “The Decision”, Lebron transcended basketball and ascended to the heavens. We all now hate him for leaving us down here while his star shines brightly somewhere close to Elvis Presley’s. If Lebron keeps it up, just like the Beatles he too will be able to accurately say that he’s “more popular than Jesus.” Jesus, after all, was but the King of the Jews. Lebron’s moniker “The King” gives him a little more wiggle room as to whom he might rule.

Things We Didn't See Coming by Steve Amsterdam

Steve Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming is a remarkable account of a dystopian near future, and it is remarkable for what it leaves out. Amsterdam is deftly sparing with the details of social, political, and environmental rot as he tracks his protagonist from adolescence (during the Y2K scare, natch) into his forties. Each step of the way Amsterdam provides just enough description as to how the earth and the people on it are breaking down, but his narrative leaves open the questions of how and why. In doing so Amsterdam connects his vision of a dystopian near future to our experience of the present, when we too are left to wonder at the how and why of endless war and oil spills, or, if you like, endless spills and oil wars. So while we perhaps can’t see what’s coming, Amsterdam’s novel makes clear how blurry things already are.

Audition by Ryu Murakami

Audition is Ryu Murakami’s contribution to the tradition of the femme fatale. Unfortunately, Murakami’s femme fatale Yamasaki Asami is not up to the task. Other than some vague intuitions from the victim Aoyami’s friend, and some heavy-handed revelations by Murakami that something horrible is waiting to happen, there is little about Asami to worry us that she is capable of the pending grotesqueries. There is just not enough tension here to enjoy the novel’s violent, conclusive release. Look elsewhere for your femme fatale fix.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog eloquently presents two Parisian heroines who would escape the miseries of this world, but finally, and together, reverse their respective retreats and face all that is, with an assist from a Japanese gentleman. They find strength in simple moments of beauty, but what is most beautiful is how strong they become in their connection to one another. Barbery’s two heroines, Madame Michel and Paloma, each penetrate the farcical aspects of modern life, which leaves them each thirsting only for escape. But their friendships, first with newcomer Mr. Ozu, and then with one another, demonstrate that while it is next to impossible to save one’s self, it is truly liberating to save one another. And this is reason enough not only to go on living, but to celebrate life.

I Don’t Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner

If you’ve been through your share of romantic catastrophes, and, like me, I’m sure that you have, then Julie Klausner’s I Don’t Care About Your Band will help you laugh instead of cry about your own intimate disasters. Klausner’s memoirs mine her train wreck of a dating resume to hilarious effect. Klausner seems to have enjoyed her first experience of giving head as much if not more than most of us enjoyed our first time receiving: “I remember thinking the moment I felt Nick’s goth penis in my mouth that I. Was. Home. That this was what I was meant to do.”

Klausner’s comic gifts are as abundant as her libido, as she deftly combines two of life’s greatest pleasures, sex and laughter. I’m just glad that I’m not one of her loser ex-boyfriends, because Klausner’s scathing treatment of her blundering ex’s proves the old adage that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But this furious New Yorker is also seriously funny, and, at long last, happily paired off. Here’s betting she’ll write an equally funny follow-up about the inevitable follies of successful intimacy.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate is a 21^st Century update of William James’ classic The Will to Believe.  Both works face down an aggressive atheism, and Eagleton grapples specifically with those “neo-atheists” who go beyond a reasonable stance that God does not exist and that we might be better off without religion to a fundamentalist stance that belief in God is inherently harmful and that religion is the root of all evil.  The popular published neo-atheists, specifically Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, hold that reason has rendered the question of God definitively answered in the negative.  Eagleton, like James before him, understands that reason alone can never pretend to answer the question of God, and that its better use is in grasping what religious belief truly offers (and understanding the harm it has wrought) as each individual faces the question of God that remains open for all to consider, Dawkins and Hitchens (or “Ditchkins”, as Eagleton comically conflates the two) notwithstanding.

Eagleton, a Marxist who appears to personally hold to that more reasonable version of atheism, nevertheless takes the gloves off in an inspired defense of religious belief, highlighting the sundry ways in which segments of the religion most familiar to Eagleton, Christianity, stand for the poor and dispossessed left behind by globalized capitalism.  And, even more so than religion, it is the state of the globalized world that is ultimately in question in Reason, Faith, and Revolution.  Eagleton captures the current unnerving vulnerability of our collective plight as we stare down religious fundamentalism of all stripes, terrorism wrought by extremists and states alike, staggering inequality of wealth, and ecological catastrophe.  Reading Eagleton, it is clear that the history of western civilization is not the upward arc out of religious irrationalism that the neo-atheists paint it to be.  In fact, it is not clear in which direction the arc is currently heading.  Eagleton’s genius here is that whatever his personal beliefs as to the question of God may be, he understands that what direction that arc ultimately takes depends in large part on the actions of our believers. 

Whatever our individual beliefs, we all must carve out a healthy space in our midst for our believers and their contributions.  Closing the question of God, as the neo-atheists would have us, just might give us the end to the human story, and I’m not talking about Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history.”   I think I’ll take The Neverending Story, even if the end of the story that I’ll never get to is rational certainty as to the answer to the question of God.  I’m almost certain that it’s more fun not knowing how things turn out.  

The Professional by Robert B. Parker

Readers lost one of their great storytellers earlier this year with the death of Robert B. Parker. By the time of his passing, Parker had published forty installments of the Spenser novels that made him both famous, and, in this reader’s opinion, the greatest hardboiled crime fiction writer of all time. What separates Parker’s Spenser from Hammett’s Spade, Chandler’s Marlowe, and all other pretenders to the crown, is the philosophy that shines through every page of Spenser that Parker ever wrote: a world in which evil is constantly afoot is redeemed when courageous individuals risk all for their sense of honor and justice, and are supported in doing so by the love that binds them to others. And the second half of that equation, represented by Spenser’s lasting love for Susan, in her own right one of our greatest fictional shrinks, and Spenser’s fraternal bond with Hawk, the embodiment of unbounded masculinity, is as important as the first. Between Spenser, Susan, and Hawk, Parker put on paper his very own wholeness. Readers return to Spenser again and again not just because Parker was a master of crackling dialogue, wise guy humor, edge-of-your-seat fisticuffs, and flawless pacing, but because the trinity of Spenser, Susan, and Hawk shows us a way forward in this oft cruel world. The Professional, one of the last Spensers, is up to Parker’s usual standards, i.e. it is sublime. Rest in peace, Robert B. Parker, and thank you for writing forty Spenser mysteries. I only wish you could write forty more.

Obama Gets Tough?

In a recent interview with Today show host Matt Lauer, President Barack Obama had his “talking tough” moment.  Obama explained that he had been talking to regular, everyday Americans , not ivory tower experts, about the gulf oil spill in order “to know whose ass to kick.”  Upon learning of these remarks I was immediately reminded of Obama’s Oval Office predecessor, President George W. Bush.

            

Bush built his entire presidency around a tough guy response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.  Bush’s tough guy theatrics, which notoriously included the “Mission Accomplished” incident in which Bush arrived on a US aircraft carrier via fighter jet dressed in full fighter pilot regalia, reached their rhetorical peak in 2003 when Bush taunted the “Islamofascists” with a hearty “Bring ‘em on.”

            

While Bush was a disaster as president, he was, nevertheless, well suited to his role as tough guy.  His firm resolve to use force, even, as in the case of Iraq, when uncalled for, required minimal nuance.  And nuance, as exhibited by Bush’s singularly unimaginative “Bring ‘em on,” was not Bush’s strong suit.   Much better for Bush, at least stylistically, to round up a posse and “stay the course,” come hell or high water.  Bush the tough guy had a few good months rallying the American people after 9/11, and the dye was cast for the next seven years of his presidency.  Ironically, Bush publicly voiced regret for his “Bring ‘em on” remarks at the end of his presidency, which was like the 2 Live Crew expressing regret for their explicit lyrics; without incessant chants for female genitalia 2 Live Crew would never have existed in pop culture.  Similalry, Bush only ever existed as president in the guise of the tough guy.

            

Obama was elected president for a number of reasons, and not least among them was an intelligence plain for all to see (and hear).  One of the qualities of Obama’s particular brand of intelligence is his capacity for nuance; Obama successfully touched the third rail of racial politics during his campaign precisely because of this ability to engage with a complex issue on many of its nuanced levels.  In this sense, as in others, we elected Bush’s opposite.  It would be absurd to suggest that Obama is somehow not tough, as any African American able to win the presidency must necessarily possess vast reservoirs of toughness.  But Obama is just too nuanced to play the part of ass-kicking tough guy convincingly.  One gets the sense from Obama that when he does dispense discipline it is in a controlled fashion, measured and delivered with a precision simply foreign to an old-fashioned butt-whooping.  But, “I will diligently pursue those responsible and hold them accountable” doesn’t sound nearly as tough as “I’ll find them and kick their ass,” and the polls must strongly suggest that what Americans want from Obama in response to the gulf oil spill right now is unadulterated aggression.

            

But a more interesting contrast between Bush and Obama is apparent when we look carefully at Obama’s exact words here.  When Bush said “Bring ‘em on,” we had a good idea as to whom the intended recipient of the ass-kicking was (the qualifications for “Islamofascist” were not crystal clear, but at the very least we knew they had to be Muslims).  But explicit in Obama’s tough guy turn is his confusion as to where to open his can of whoop-ass.  Recall that he spoke to those average Joes “so I know whose ass to kick.”

           

Obama’s indeterminate target is a symptom of the most significant threat America faces today and for the foreseeable future.  While I certainly hope to avoid any terrorist violence, the threat posed to civilization, western or otherwise, by terrorism pales in comparison to the potential danger of ecological catastrophe.  And while some would argue that we have created the terrorists just as much as we have created the threats to a sustainable environment (and some would deny that we have created either), it remains far easier to target any given human enemy of the state, be they communists, terrorists, or illegal aliens, then it is to target the agents of ecological disaster.  Blame BP and/or the US Federal Government for the oil spill if you wish to delude yourself, because never has “we have met the enemy and he is us” been more true than in the case of all things “environmental.”

            

Obama’s confusion as to whose ass to kick re. the gulf oil spill is a preview of things to come.  As “the environment” begins to unravel, and basic human resources such as food and potable water begin to diminish, an enraged public will clamor for the responsible heads to roll, just as they have in the case of the gulf oil spill.  But the only ass to kick is our own, since we all created this mess together.   Of course, the outcome of man-made natural disasters such as the gulf oil spill will make that collective beating a fait accompli.  As in all disasters, man-made or otherwise, those at the bottom of the ladder will take the brunt of the beating.  But perhaps ecological catastrophe may be the great equalizer.  It’s silly when they call Obama a socialist; oil, the lifeblood of capitalism, may, when spilled across the earth, turn out to be the greatest socialist of all, i.e. we’re all equally screwed.

Black Gold

The oil spill is the cruelest of ironies: a man-made natural disaster that is the result of our efforts to master nature.  For all of its gushing physical reality, it is even more psychically real.  The oil spill follows the first rule of psychic life, the return of the repressed.  The repressed content, what is unacceptable to modern humanity, is our helplessness in the face of nature.  Our conscious emphasis on the domination of nature is, of course, an enterprise fueled by oil.  So it comes as no surprise that the repressed content, human fragility, would gush out of the very place we go in order to master the natural world.

When a tsunami kills 100,000 we mourn our dead and move on with the project of subjugating the mass killer, perhaps even with renewed vigor and purpose.  But when the very weapon used to wage war on nature backfires in our face, the psychic fallout is devastating.  Because the oil spill doesn't just symbolize our fragile mortality with the image of slowly bleeding out from a wound that can't be staunched.  And it isn't even the fact that this wound was self-inflicted.  It's that this wound was self-inflicted by the very process intended to cure the disease. The oil spill is that quintessential late modern tragic figure, the kid who got autism from his vaccines.

By way of oil we thought we could divorce ourselves from nature.  But oil is a strict Catholic and doesn't believe in divorce.  The oil spill reminds us that we are bound to nature until death do us part.  And nature will tell us when we can part, thank you very much.  If BP doesn't stop outsourcing its efforts to Wile E. Coyote and Acme, that parting of ways might happen sooner rather than later.  When plans A,B,C,D,E and F don't work what can we expect out of Plan G?  I say it's time to bring in the psychics.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga


The theme of Adiga's The White Tiger is liberation. That Adiga's protagonist Balram achieves his liberation by way of the murder of his wealthy oppressor forces the reader to wrestle with the heaviest of ethical dilemmas. But the weight of all this is eased by Adiga's wicked black comedy. Apparently you can laugh while wondering how complicit you are in creating the conditions that force Balram to choose between murder and a life of naked servitude. I am lucky enough not to have to make Balram's choice, but does that make me one whom the Balrams of the world might need to kill?

River of Gods by Ian McDonald


Ian McDonald's River of Gods is fun because it takes us to a near-future India, but it is important because it tackles head-on one of the most important looming questions: what to do when machines become as smart, if not smarter, then us? River of Gods is an admirable addition to the canon of sci-fi projects which engage with man vs. machine, its most noteworthy predecessors being The Terminator and The Matrix films. Unlike those two, however, McDonald's tale is an optimistic one, holding out hope that the encounter between human and sentient machine may benefit both. Let's hope, then, that McDonald is as much prophet as novelist. Because if he's not, I'm betting on the machines. 

The Inevitable Disappointment of Weekends


Fridays are celebrated with unfailing consistency. Enter any workplace on a Friday and you will hear workers exuberantly voicing some version of Thank God It’s Friday. Ask a worker how she is doing on a Friday morning and she’ll say “It’s Friday,” knowing that this says it all. Most recently I’ve encountered “Happy Friday!”, as recognition of each Friday as a holiday unto itself deepens among the 9 to 5 set. Friday is the force that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together, to borrow a phrase; the love of Friday crosses all boundaries of race, class, gender, etc. Friday is universal.

But on Monday ask the co-worker who on Friday danced a jig at the water cooler how his weekend went and you will get a resigned “It was too short.” Even if you are regaled with tales of midnight love or Sunday morning spiritual breakthroughs, you will get an “it went by too fast” somewhere in the narrative flow. The would-be perfect weekend is never long enough, and is at best bittersweet. So we find ourselves in an absurdly repeating loop of always feeling unsatisfied by what we are always looking forward to. Every Friday we are Charlie Brown trusting that this time Lucy will really hold the football long enough for us to kick it, and every Monday morning we are Charlie Brown lying flat on our backs wondering how we fell for it again. Of course, by Friday we’ll be lining up for that kick again.

The unfailing beauty of Friday morning is in the way the whole weekend stretches out before us with pregnant fullness. It is this fullness that infuses us with joy throughout the Friday workday. The weekend is close enough to taste as we float through our Friday labors, and we taste it in its unadulterated fullness, for not a precious second of weekend leisure has yet been burned. Just as the 1960’s really occurred in the 70’s, the weekend really occurs after hump day on Thursday and Friday, in the sense that any joy truly contained in the weekend occurs on Thursday and Friday. The weekend’s only pleasure is that of anticipation. Fun may indeed be had on Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, but this fun is divorced from the disappointment inherent to every weekend, the disappointment expressed by the eternal “It was too short.” The weekend’s true identity is freedom from work. This is why the weekend is celebrated on Thursday and especially Friday, when the weekend is fully intact as a 64 hour interlude between shifts. The moment the actual weekend begins on Friday evening the weekend as respite instantly begins to wane. Actual weekends are essentially an experience of loss, in that the freedom represented by the weekend shrinks palpably moment by moment; as soon it comes into our possession we begin to lose it. This sense of loss peaks on Sunday afternoons, renowned for their glaring melancholy, a sadness perhaps best captured as sung by Morrissey: “Every day is like Sunday, every day is cloudy and gray.”

The enormous and bulletproof popularity of professional football has more than a little to do with the fact that its games are largely played on Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter. Shrinking daylight matches shrinking weekends, casting a pall so grim that in comparison the escapist fantasy world of the National Football League glows with life giving warmth, each bone crushing collision reminding us that life will go on even as the weekend dies at our feet.

The only thing that goes by faster than a weekend is summer break. For students, June, July, and August last about a day and a half. For teachers it is less than an hour and a half. But that last week of school in early June, with an entire summer stretching out before her, is the happiest week in a teacher’s life. Heaven, in fact, is Friday during the last week of school. Hell gets a little closer every second thereafter.

Big Mac, Large Fries, and an Extra Large Reincarnation


In his excellent Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor notes the ironic core of the increasing belief in reincarnation among Americans (25% of Americans now believe in reincarnation, per http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99945,00.html ). In traditional Indian culture reincarnation was viewed as a failure; each reincarnation signaled the individual’s failure to achieve the ultimate goal: liberation from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. This traditional understanding of reincarnation regards earthly existence as, at best, a great place to visit, but by no means the final destination. More to the point, it is a place to work out one’s karma, usually with a great deal of suffering. Earth as a place of suffering is at the heart of the traditional conception of reincarnation. In contrast, as Batchelor explains, contemporary Americans’ belief in reincarnation is fueled by a desire for more, not less, of earthly existence American style (not so sure they’re interested in reincarnating in what we used to call the Third World). Americans who believe in reincarnation want to come back. We are like the two year old for whom you just cranked the jack-in-the box the umpteenth time, only for us to shout “Again!” Reincarnation is the same in name only; somehow, for Americans who believe in reincarnation, the grass is no longer greener on the other side of death.

Before considering why America has reinvented reincarnation, it is important to note that traditional Indian culture is not alone in its stance towards life in this vale of tears. Christianity, natch, wants off the island, too: “Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven. (Matthew 5:12)” There are an infinite variety of takes on eternal life in the heavenly kingdom, but it is safe to say that everyday life in 2010 America is not a version. For Christians, the real world is but a prelude for what follows, which of course has implications for the reality we inhabit. Reality is never more than a first step, whether towards reward in heaven, or damnation in hell. This is a nice solution for the problems of evil and suffering, which, as in India, are the definitive aspects of this place we call home. A home from which Christians and Indians, whether by way of heaven or by exiting the cycle of rebirth stage right, just want out.

If the dominant spiritual tradition in America regards earthly incarnation in much the same fashion as the Indians traditionally have, then whence this mutant American strain of reincarnation? There is one seemingly reasonable explanation as to why Americans have transformed reincarnation from a necessary step towards departure into an infinite series of arrivals. The average American enjoys material improvements in living conditions undreamt of for nearly all of human history. The relative ease and comfort enjoyed by Americans has perhaps fundamentally altered the experience of life on Earth such that those who experience this Earth 2.0 are lining up to sign on for another tour of duty. In short, the presence of e.g. Dunkin’ Donuts in our lives empowers us all to echo Nietzsche and say “Yes to life!”

The problem with this explanation is that the joys of shopping at Walmart and/or Saks Fifth Avenue only run so deep; scratch the surface and you will find as much misery in America today as you’d likely find in any other time and place. If suicide is any indicator of net misery then the following from Wikipedia kills the joyful reincarnation theory: “According to 2005 data, suicides in the U.S. outnumber homicides by nearly 2 to 1 and ranks as the 11th leading cause of death in the country, ahead of liver disease and Parkinson's. Worldwide suicide rates have increased by 60% in the past 50 years, mainly in the developing countries.” Material wealth, if anything, seems to have made us more miserable, which makes American reincarnation even stranger. We don’t seem to be jumping for joy, in contrast to what our version of belief in reincarnation would lead one to believe. We just watch TV, surf the web, go shopping, and slurp corn syrup to get through the day (the average American spends 151 hours per month watching TV, or 5 hours per day, 68 hours per month on the internet, just over 2 hours per day, and consumes 37.8 pounds of corn syrup annually; the average American woman takes 301 shopping trips for a total of 399 hours annually). And most of us get to do this a few years longer than our ancestors suffered through e.g. life before corrective eyewear. But we’ve always had wine, women, and song, and not a one of our manufactured consolations can top that. Not to mention that our material wealth giveth and taketh away in equal portions: there is a traffic jam for every luxury car, a sexually transmitted disease for every birth control pill, to mention but two of my favorite inventions.

We are as miserable as ever; you could make a case that we have gotten better at distracting ourselves from the misery, but these distractions weave their own unique web of desolation. And still, Americans want more, as if life were like the bottomless fries at Red Robin. Our many versions of bottomless fries are a good place to start if we wish to understand what may be at the heart of American reincarnation. Americans treat the world like a bottomless basket of fries, when there are only so many spuds to go around. According to a fun game on the web at http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/, if everyone in the world consumed as much as I do, it would take 4.1 Earths to provide the necessary resources. I am an American, I am eating the world, and I too have been increasingly looking forward to some reincarnation. This is all connected.

To understand why, let’s revisit Freud’s theory of the death instinct. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud explains “that all instincts tend towards the restoration of an earlier state of things.” Following this logic, “inanimate things existed before living ones,” so “the aim of all life is death.” Ergo, the death instinct. Almost no one takes the death instinct seriously, which of course reflects the fact that almost no one takes his or her inevitable deaths seriously. But Freud’s greatest psychoanalytic successor, Jacques Lacan, did, and it is to his understanding of the death instinct and its role in human enjoyment that we must turn to fathom American reincarnation. To understand how Lacan can help us tease out the meaning of American reincarnation we must first introduce his concept of jouissance. Per Wikipedia, jouissance is a form of pleasure that is in opposition to our normal understanding of the term: “The pleasure principle, according to Lacan, functions as a limit to enjoyment: it is the law that commands the subject to 'enjoy as little as possible'. At the same time the subject constantly attempts to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go beyond the pleasure principle. Yet the result of transgressing the pleasure principle, according to Lacan, is not more pleasure but pain, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this 'painful principle' is what Lacan calls jouissance. (Dylan Evans). Thus jouissance is suffering.” (for this quote see http://www.answers.com/topic/jouissance ) The precise connection between the death instinct and Lacan’s theory of jouissance is too abstruse for consideration here (for a concise description see http://www.answers.com/topic/death-instinct-thanatos ), but the key insight is that, due to the death instinct, we experience jouissance, that insatiable urge to overdo it. Thus, the bottomless fries.

If we take the death instinct seriously, as I believe we must, then we must be prepared, as Freud was, to follow the logic to its necessary conclusion and see if that conclusion matches the reality we see before us. So, here goes. If Freud is correct and there is “an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things,” by “becom(ing) inorganic once again”, then I see no more efficient means for the Earth as an interconnected organism to achieve this goal then by way of its human components’ consumption of mass quantities. The death instinct is driving us to literally eat the Earth back to an inorganic state. Does this seemingly bizarre formulation agree with the facts on the ground? I would suggest that the potential for an environmental apocalypse of human origins argues in its favor.

From this perspective, reincarnation American style is an expression of jouissance. Not content with doing our part to enjoy the pain of Earth’s annihilation just once, we shout “again!” Americans believe in reincarnation because of the instinctual drive for excess, and what is more excessive than using up four planets’ worth of resources not once, but until the job of killing this one planet is done? America is the ultimate “expression of the conservative nature of living substance,” (emphasis Freud’s) in the sense that we are at the vanguard of achieving the “final goal of all organic striving,” i.e. death. American reincarnation, then, is just reenlisting in the decisive march.

Perhaps the Indians and Christians are onto something when they consider the earth a place of suffering. Treating the earth as a place of excessive pleasure turns out to be in service of a death instinct that is leading us ever closer to the abyss; jouissance makes us lemmings, only we’re taking everybody and everything with us over the cliff. A return to suffering may just save us all. It may seem crazy to suggest that exercising a modicum of restraint at life’s various buffet tables would equate to suffering, but things have gotten so out of whack in late consumerist culture that for us Yanks the suggestion that we curtail our gorging is oddly anathema. But I’d like my children’s children to enjoy some French fries too, so one serving of fries will have to do. Okay, two servings.