I recently read an article about childhood and play and the increasingly all pervasive place of school in the lives of children. School work which runs all day, followed by extra-curricular activities such as sports, followed by hours of homework, does not leave a lot of time for playing. The author of the article argues for a central importance of play, unstructured and unsupervised, in the lives of children.
Sometimes it is hard for me to get into the mindset of school. When I was a kid I was homeschooled. All of us were. We did more actual work and got better grades and test scores than our public school peers, but we spent less time at it. I remember looking up at the school buses going down the road in the morning while I was eating breakfast or doing barn chores, not having even started school for the day. I remember looking up again in mid to late afternoon while I was working on hobbies, or reading a book, or playing with legos, or running wild with my brothers, having been done with school for hours. School was self initiated, self-directed. The lesson plans were given to us at the beginning of the week, and as long as we turned in the required assignments and got passing grades, we were free to decide when we did what, how quickly we did it, in what order we did it. We could knuckle down and get to it, or we could dawdle. It was completely up to us. My siblings and I frequently worked an extra hour on Thursday to do all of Friday's work, so that we would have Friday completely off to play all day, or go on a field trip or whatever else took our fancy.
This kind of personal control over our time, and the amount of free time we had are, in many ways, an ideal only feasible in a small group setting. (Or is it? Why would I assume that? Has anything different been tried?) My family's particular small group model was far from perfect, despite that amazing privilege, but that freedom was foundational to who we became. I think it is safe to say, and I doubt my parents would gainsay it, that the vast majority of our learning took place in the out of school hours. This does not mean that school hours are not useful, or that 12 years of unstructured play is the ideal educational model. Rather it seems to indicate a model of formal education that I am becoming increasingly enamored of.
Formal education is a foundation. It provides training in skills of the mind, through reading, writing, arithmetic, and the sciences and arts, which shape how the children think. Good training will yield better thinking than poor training. It will be more logical, more nuanced, more systematic, more communicable. However, the educator is really only laying a foundation. The real education is the building that is built on top of that foundation. To grasp the relative importance of the two, and to settle any silly debates about which is more important, simply look at any building you please and ask which is more important, the foundation or the building which is build upon it. A good formal education, like a good foundation, is largely a hidden thing. No one walks around spouting multiplication tables and spelling "prestidigitation" and balancing chemical equations, anymore than people live on cement pads in the open air. It is in the building that the real business of life happens, and it is in the active life of the mind that real learning happens. The practice in reading, diagramming sentences, writing essays on fungi and field mice and Ferdinand of Spain, mutilating multitudinous maths problems and learning about levers and and lemmings and chemicals that exploded when mixed with water, all of these were slowly shaping my mind into the sort of mind which could analyze, recognize, organize and philosophize. However, the real education came from the use I made of those abilities in my free time.
When children are little, in preschool, kindergarten, maybe first or second grade, they are full of dreams and schemes and big ideas. They want to build skyscrapers and castles in the clouds. By the time they reach middle school, a lot of them lose that imaginative spark. Instead of asking questions like, "Why does that work like that? Where do these chemicals come from? What makes gravity work? Why would Hitler do that? Didn't he know better?" they start asking questions like, "Is this going to be on the test? How many paragraphs do I have to write?" We start out by training kids to achieve a standard, usually one set by the lowest common denominator, and they follow by sinking to the level of the standard we expect of them.
I am hypothesizing that this is because education has tried to go into the business of building buildings instead of merely pouring concrete for foundations. We have codified and quantified, metered and measured every possible dimension of what we term success, broken it down into its component parts, and tried to fit children into that model of what we think they should look like when they are done. It is a natural temptation for any educator, trainer, teacher or mentor, but kids quite rightly resent being built. Eventually they want to build themselves, even if they cannot articulate it, and it is meet and just that it should be so.
We needn't worry about kids "making something of themselves." It is not the responsibility of adults, parents or teachers to see that children "make something of themselves," that is their responsibility, and I think we needn't worry too much about it. As I said, little children are natural born builders, (once they get past the natural born destroyer phase, which takes longer for some than for others.) Young children build castles on clouds and to them nothing is impossible. The ideal education is one which preserves into adulthood that imaginative spark, that impulse to build something beautiful and interesting and useful and just plain cool, coupled with a mature, level-headed knowledge of ways and means. Such young people will build themselves, and it will not be after the image that their elders would have chosen for them. It will be more nearly after the image they were created to show.
Showing posts with label social issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social issues. Show all posts
Friday, January 17, 2014
Saturday, December 7, 2013
The One Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil
Granted, there is no point in jumping half cocked into a situation where you might end up getting stabbed or shot, and not do anyone any good. On the other hand, the sort of bullying shown in this video could easily have been stopped by nearly any college age adult with a half an ounce of confidence. People choose not to step in, not because of any reasonable fear of personal harm, but because of a kind of psychological and moral paralysis, which may be the subject of my next blog.
The decision about when and how to step in in more dangerous situations is a thornier question. I think I might do a blog on that as well.
In the meantime, I hope this video has given you some cause to think.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Just Get Married? :-o
Part four of four posts, based on a conversation with Mark Miloscia, Catholic
Lobbyist for WA state legislature. Part one, part two
and part three.
I asked him what he thought we should do about it. He looked at me as if I had asked a question to which the answer was obvious and said, "Get married." I appreciate the simplicity and directness of that answer, but I pressed him further. Given the fact that we live in a society that, for whatever reason, young men are not motivated to seek out marriage, I asked if he reccomended that we just get married out of a sense of duty. He answered unequivocally, "Yes."
I can agree with Mark in two points: I agree that marriage is a great good. For some people it may even be the greatest good this life has to offer, but for all it is a noble and worthy vocation. I can also agree that we are experiencing a shortage of Catholic marriages and that more Catholic young people should probably be pursuing marriage.
The streets having led on as they do, I am now come to the "overwhelming question."
What do we do about it. Mark's answer was one of childlike simplicity. "Just get married!" He even raised his eyebrows, like a ten-year old asking "Why aren't you married? I thought all grownup people got married."
From Shakespeare's dictum that the "path of true love never did run smooth," (at least I think that was the Bard, but I could be wrong) to the present day, it seems that that simple proposition "Just get married," has become fraught with complications. I notice that the ones who regard it with that childlike simplicity are either children for whom it is nothing more than a fuzzy imagination, or older people who have long since chosen their vocation, committed to it, lived with it, endured it, fallen out of love with it, all but given up on it, perhaps, but in the end stayed true to that commitment. From that perspective of a certain amount of security in their choices, even if it is only the security of having so much invested, no doubt it does seem like a simple choice.
One of my pet projects has always been trying to imagine everything from everyone else's point of view. I can see how, with a lifetime invested in living the marriage, all the decisions leading up to it might seem like not worthy of so much fuss. It's almost as if they say, "Mercy, child! You think this is stressful? You ain't seen nothing yet!"
An analogy would be the way I view basic trainees. I went through basic more than ten years ago. Since then I have been through multiple deployments, Sapper School, years of regular army training, Special Forces training, schools and places where a good day was worse than anything Basic Training had to offer. It is easy for me to look at the basic trainees and laugh with a certain superior attitude and say, "Awww! Did the big scary Drill Sergeant yell at you? Just wait until you get into the real army!" But I can't do it. I still remember what it was like. I was terrified. I was alone and isolated, I didn't like or trust my fellow soldiers and they didn't like me. We learned to get along but I had no real friends. To this day I do not like yelling, I don't like calling people names or hearing people called names. There is a certain irony in the fact that I practice killing people on a regular basis, but sarcasm shivers me to my very soul.
To the people in the midst of discernment it is a very real cross. It has to be. I didn't wake up one morning in the middle of Camp McCall North Carolina and find myself training to be a Green Beret. I had to go through everything that led up to it, and struggle and feel small and pitiful, and want to quit a million times. Of course to a Green Beret my little struggles would look small. But then again, I was small, and those struggles were making me bigger.
Mark's idea "Just get married," kind of appeals to me. That is, he appeals to duty, and I like duty. Duty is solid. Duty is not complicated. Just figure out what it is and the rest is simple. Everything is always simpler when you no longer have to worry about what or whether, but only how.
On the other hand, most people don't have that attitude, and I am not sure it is a correct one in regards to marriage. There is something to be said for doing the right thing, regardless of how you feel about it, but, as a reader reminded me in a post a few months ago, no woman wants to feel like she is a chore. The problem is at its root a problem of desire. Perhaps getting married out of a sense of duty is better than not getting married at all, and perhaps it is not. The problem runs deeper. The very fact that we are discussing what should be the most natural and desirable thing in the world as a duty, that in itself is evidence of a problem.
There are two answers to that. The first and simplest is that all we need is to be wakened. Most guys will probably find that it is pretty natural and even fun, being in love. Like when we were little and my older brother didn't want to do anything with the family on the weekends because he was a teenager. He would whine and moan about it, but once we got going he would get into it, and by the end he would be having more fun than anyone. I suspect that all those Catholic guys out there who, for whatever reason, just don't feel like dating, would probably find themselves enjoying it if they once got into it.
(Incidentally I also expect they would find themselves hating it often enough. Being in a relationship is hard work. It requires you to get up off the couch, stop playing WOW and pick up the phone and call someone, schedule activities and actually honor those commitments. Since this is a relationship with a view to marriage, it reuires you to get to know the person, pray with her, and ultimately to make a choice concerning her. It requires inventiveness, attention, commitment, sacrifice, and whole host of other bloody uncomfortable things. On the whole, video games are a lot easier. So is porn. So is hanging out with the bros (they don't give you hell if you don't call everyday.) Almost anything is easier. But that is not the way to holiness. For something that is handed out as free gift, holiness sure does take a lot of work.)
The second answer to the problem of desire (two paragraphs up, if my parenthetical paragraph distracted you. [I am noticing I have a thing for parenthetical phrases]) is much more complex. In speaking of rekindling a desire and passion for marriage as a vocation on a serious cultural level we are getting into a problem too broad for the tail end of an already overly long blog post, and too in depth for my powers of analysis at 9:40 PM, even after two beers. (They weren't really great beers. Not bad, but not spectacular. For spectacular blogging I reccomend spectacular beer.)
Individual choices. That's what interests me right now, and so that is what I will stick to for now. Goodnight, Y'all.
I asked him what he thought we should do about it. He looked at me as if I had asked a question to which the answer was obvious and said, "Get married." I appreciate the simplicity and directness of that answer, but I pressed him further. Given the fact that we live in a society that, for whatever reason, young men are not motivated to seek out marriage, I asked if he reccomended that we just get married out of a sense of duty. He answered unequivocally, "Yes."
I can agree with Mark in two points: I agree that marriage is a great good. For some people it may even be the greatest good this life has to offer, but for all it is a noble and worthy vocation. I can also agree that we are experiencing a shortage of Catholic marriages and that more Catholic young people should probably be pursuing marriage.
The streets having led on as they do, I am now come to the "overwhelming question."
What do we do about it. Mark's answer was one of childlike simplicity. "Just get married!" He even raised his eyebrows, like a ten-year old asking "Why aren't you married? I thought all grownup people got married."
From Shakespeare's dictum that the "path of true love never did run smooth," (at least I think that was the Bard, but I could be wrong) to the present day, it seems that that simple proposition "Just get married," has become fraught with complications. I notice that the ones who regard it with that childlike simplicity are either children for whom it is nothing more than a fuzzy imagination, or older people who have long since chosen their vocation, committed to it, lived with it, endured it, fallen out of love with it, all but given up on it, perhaps, but in the end stayed true to that commitment. From that perspective of a certain amount of security in their choices, even if it is only the security of having so much invested, no doubt it does seem like a simple choice.
One of my pet projects has always been trying to imagine everything from everyone else's point of view. I can see how, with a lifetime invested in living the marriage, all the decisions leading up to it might seem like not worthy of so much fuss. It's almost as if they say, "Mercy, child! You think this is stressful? You ain't seen nothing yet!"
An analogy would be the way I view basic trainees. I went through basic more than ten years ago. Since then I have been through multiple deployments, Sapper School, years of regular army training, Special Forces training, schools and places where a good day was worse than anything Basic Training had to offer. It is easy for me to look at the basic trainees and laugh with a certain superior attitude and say, "Awww! Did the big scary Drill Sergeant yell at you? Just wait until you get into the real army!" But I can't do it. I still remember what it was like. I was terrified. I was alone and isolated, I didn't like or trust my fellow soldiers and they didn't like me. We learned to get along but I had no real friends. To this day I do not like yelling, I don't like calling people names or hearing people called names. There is a certain irony in the fact that I practice killing people on a regular basis, but sarcasm shivers me to my very soul.
To the people in the midst of discernment it is a very real cross. It has to be. I didn't wake up one morning in the middle of Camp McCall North Carolina and find myself training to be a Green Beret. I had to go through everything that led up to it, and struggle and feel small and pitiful, and want to quit a million times. Of course to a Green Beret my little struggles would look small. But then again, I was small, and those struggles were making me bigger.
Mark's idea "Just get married," kind of appeals to me. That is, he appeals to duty, and I like duty. Duty is solid. Duty is not complicated. Just figure out what it is and the rest is simple. Everything is always simpler when you no longer have to worry about what or whether, but only how.
On the other hand, most people don't have that attitude, and I am not sure it is a correct one in regards to marriage. There is something to be said for doing the right thing, regardless of how you feel about it, but, as a reader reminded me in a post a few months ago, no woman wants to feel like she is a chore. The problem is at its root a problem of desire. Perhaps getting married out of a sense of duty is better than not getting married at all, and perhaps it is not. The problem runs deeper. The very fact that we are discussing what should be the most natural and desirable thing in the world as a duty, that in itself is evidence of a problem.
There are two answers to that. The first and simplest is that all we need is to be wakened. Most guys will probably find that it is pretty natural and even fun, being in love. Like when we were little and my older brother didn't want to do anything with the family on the weekends because he was a teenager. He would whine and moan about it, but once we got going he would get into it, and by the end he would be having more fun than anyone. I suspect that all those Catholic guys out there who, for whatever reason, just don't feel like dating, would probably find themselves enjoying it if they once got into it.
(Incidentally I also expect they would find themselves hating it often enough. Being in a relationship is hard work. It requires you to get up off the couch, stop playing WOW and pick up the phone and call someone, schedule activities and actually honor those commitments. Since this is a relationship with a view to marriage, it reuires you to get to know the person, pray with her, and ultimately to make a choice concerning her. It requires inventiveness, attention, commitment, sacrifice, and whole host of other bloody uncomfortable things. On the whole, video games are a lot easier. So is porn. So is hanging out with the bros (they don't give you hell if you don't call everyday.) Almost anything is easier. But that is not the way to holiness. For something that is handed out as free gift, holiness sure does take a lot of work.)
The second answer to the problem of desire (two paragraphs up, if my parenthetical paragraph distracted you. [I am noticing I have a thing for parenthetical phrases]) is much more complex. In speaking of rekindling a desire and passion for marriage as a vocation on a serious cultural level we are getting into a problem too broad for the tail end of an already overly long blog post, and too in depth for my powers of analysis at 9:40 PM, even after two beers. (They weren't really great beers. Not bad, but not spectacular. For spectacular blogging I reccomend spectacular beer.)
Individual choices. That's what interests me right now, and so that is what I will stick to for now. Goodnight, Y'all.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Differentiation
Part three of four posts, based on a conversation with Mark Miloscia, Catholic
Lobbyist for WA state legislature. Part one, part two, and part four.
I challenged his assumption we are all called either to the clergy/religious life or to the married life, and he acknowledged that there were exceptions to the general rule, but insisted that for most people marriage was the path to holiness. "That is the only way we learn how to love. I could have been more blunt about it. I could have gone around the room and asked every individual person, 'Why aren't you married? Why aren't you married?' But everyone needs to be if they are not called to the religious life."
The question of vocation is one I have written about before. I have thought about it a great deal for the last ten years or so, but always trying to make sure that, even in the midst of seeminly endless discernment I was at least trying to do something worthwhile.
For Catholics the typical options are:
1) The priesthood or religious life (which includes celibacy).
2) Marriage, family, children etc.
For Mark, these are the only two options, (with a few rare and grudging exceptions) and most people will be called to the married life. He approached the subject in conversation with a refreshing directness and firmness of choice reminiscent of a time with fewer options. When he grew up, perpetual singlehood was simply not a common choice.
Whereas in Mark's day "discernment" was almost an unheard of concept, in our day it is expected of every good Catholic girl and boy. Why? We as a generation, we young adults, have been given more options than any other generation. Careers are open to us, dreams, aspirations, hopes, nothing is out of our reach it seems. We have been given so much! From my experience most of the Catholic young people I know who take their faith seriously at all have a strong sense that much has been given us and much will be expected from us. We want to dare and do great things, but at the same time we also want the comfort of home and relationships. We have so many possibilities, but the very surplus of possibilities seems to have a paralyzing effect on us. We are a lot like stem cells, full of potential. However, the only way to realize that potential is to differentiate, become one thing or the other, giving up all other possibilities.
I think, as a response to the lack of priests and nuns that has plagued the Church for the last thirty or forty years, parents, parish staff, youth ministers and everyone else in authority has been pushing the idea of discerning a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. Sometimes it seems that marriage is veiwed as almost a second-rate vocation, for those who can't hack it alone. None of those who encouraged the young people in their care would ever say so, or even think it, but the effect is measurable. It is seen in that nagging feeling so many young people experience that we should be doing more, something better. The emphasis is on doing things for God, visible things.
I like Mark's idea that marriage is the only way most of us will learn to love. It counteracts the idea that holiness can be seized by doing great deeds. It does not deny the great deeds done by great Saints, like Mother Teresa. Instead, it acknowledges the true source of those great deeds. She did not become holy because she did great things. She did great things because she became holy. She became holy because she did little things with great love.
I cannot agree that marriage is the only path to holiness for most people. I believe it is the ideal path for most people, but, society being what it is, I have to acknowledge that some people will never find themselves on that path. Nevertheless, they will still find their way to holiness if they desire it. Some people, because of the wounds they have suffered growing up or in previous relationships simply do not have the capacity to live in a loving, respectful, human relationship. Others simply lack the desire, which is certainly a crippling emotional defect (not to be confused with an overabundance of desire for something greater, which is a great grace.)
The answer, I think, is to remember that marriage is not the end, it is only the means to the end, which is preparation for heaven. Heaven is relationship with God and with all other people in Heaven, and that relationship will be closer and more intimate than any relationship on earth ever could be. The purpose of marriage in this life is as a sort of purgatory, to draw the person out of himself and teach him to surrender his own wants and needs for someone else, constantly, day in and day out, in sickness and health, in richness and poverty. The purpose of the celibate life is to learn to let go of all temporal goods, including relationships with other people, for the sake of a deeper relationship with God. Both cramp our style. Both are necessary aspects of preparing for heaven, and whichever one we don't have time for on earth, we will make up in purgatory.
So this is my principle, for now (until I learn more and revise it again.) Live life so as to love God and love your neighbor. Life is in time and therefore I cannot love both with totality yet. I can only love one at a time, and I must choose one thing and follow that with all the strength God gives me. True, I will not learn some things that I would have learned had I gone the other way, but by God's mercy I can finish the rest of my education in purgatory.
I challenged his assumption we are all called either to the clergy/religious life or to the married life, and he acknowledged that there were exceptions to the general rule, but insisted that for most people marriage was the path to holiness. "That is the only way we learn how to love. I could have been more blunt about it. I could have gone around the room and asked every individual person, 'Why aren't you married? Why aren't you married?' But everyone needs to be if they are not called to the religious life."
The question of vocation is one I have written about before. I have thought about it a great deal for the last ten years or so, but always trying to make sure that, even in the midst of seeminly endless discernment I was at least trying to do something worthwhile.
For Catholics the typical options are:
1) The priesthood or religious life (which includes celibacy).
2) Marriage, family, children etc.
For Mark, these are the only two options, (with a few rare and grudging exceptions) and most people will be called to the married life. He approached the subject in conversation with a refreshing directness and firmness of choice reminiscent of a time with fewer options. When he grew up, perpetual singlehood was simply not a common choice.
Whereas in Mark's day "discernment" was almost an unheard of concept, in our day it is expected of every good Catholic girl and boy. Why? We as a generation, we young adults, have been given more options than any other generation. Careers are open to us, dreams, aspirations, hopes, nothing is out of our reach it seems. We have been given so much! From my experience most of the Catholic young people I know who take their faith seriously at all have a strong sense that much has been given us and much will be expected from us. We want to dare and do great things, but at the same time we also want the comfort of home and relationships. We have so many possibilities, but the very surplus of possibilities seems to have a paralyzing effect on us. We are a lot like stem cells, full of potential. However, the only way to realize that potential is to differentiate, become one thing or the other, giving up all other possibilities.
I think, as a response to the lack of priests and nuns that has plagued the Church for the last thirty or forty years, parents, parish staff, youth ministers and everyone else in authority has been pushing the idea of discerning a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. Sometimes it seems that marriage is veiwed as almost a second-rate vocation, for those who can't hack it alone. None of those who encouraged the young people in their care would ever say so, or even think it, but the effect is measurable. It is seen in that nagging feeling so many young people experience that we should be doing more, something better. The emphasis is on doing things for God, visible things.
I like Mark's idea that marriage is the only way most of us will learn to love. It counteracts the idea that holiness can be seized by doing great deeds. It does not deny the great deeds done by great Saints, like Mother Teresa. Instead, it acknowledges the true source of those great deeds. She did not become holy because she did great things. She did great things because she became holy. She became holy because she did little things with great love.
I cannot agree that marriage is the only path to holiness for most people. I believe it is the ideal path for most people, but, society being what it is, I have to acknowledge that some people will never find themselves on that path. Nevertheless, they will still find their way to holiness if they desire it. Some people, because of the wounds they have suffered growing up or in previous relationships simply do not have the capacity to live in a loving, respectful, human relationship. Others simply lack the desire, which is certainly a crippling emotional defect (not to be confused with an overabundance of desire for something greater, which is a great grace.)
The answer, I think, is to remember that marriage is not the end, it is only the means to the end, which is preparation for heaven. Heaven is relationship with God and with all other people in Heaven, and that relationship will be closer and more intimate than any relationship on earth ever could be. The purpose of marriage in this life is as a sort of purgatory, to draw the person out of himself and teach him to surrender his own wants and needs for someone else, constantly, day in and day out, in sickness and health, in richness and poverty. The purpose of the celibate life is to learn to let go of all temporal goods, including relationships with other people, for the sake of a deeper relationship with God. Both cramp our style. Both are necessary aspects of preparing for heaven, and whichever one we don't have time for on earth, we will make up in purgatory.
So this is my principle, for now (until I learn more and revise it again.) Live life so as to love God and love your neighbor. Life is in time and therefore I cannot love both with totality yet. I can only love one at a time, and I must choose one thing and follow that with all the strength God gives me. True, I will not learn some things that I would have learned had I gone the other way, but by God's mercy I can finish the rest of my education in purgatory.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Why the Men are not Getting Married
Part two of four posts, based on a conversation with Mark Miloscia, Catholic Lobbyist for WA state legislature. Part one, part three, and part four.
1) I was specifically interested in his ideas on underlying causes for the dearth of marriages. He didn't have much idea as to the why of it, not on the level of social dynamics, which is what I was interested in. He went straight to the underlying cause: "We live in a selfish and individualistic society. It's all about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll." He left me to fill in the blanks for myself.
It's easy enough to see how marriage just isn't a priority for those living the casual sex, one-night stand, hookup cultural lifestyle. Marriage intrinsically involves sacrifice, commitment, responsibility, and these are not qualities exercised by the hook-up culture. Those who live in that culture find themselves ill-prepared to desire marriage, and ill-prepared to maintain it if they do get married.
For those who aren't in the hookup scene, but are cohabitating or having sex before marriage, the lack of marriage is also easy to account for. Why would you take the formal step, make that formal commitment, if you are getting all the benefits without all the responsibilities of it? In a non-married relationship there is always the walk-off option. No cost, no lawyers, no courts. Child support, of course, but thats what we have contraception for.
No, the lack of marriage in society at large is not puzzling at all. The demographic I was thinking about when I asked the question was the Catholic Young Adult scene, since that is my demographic and it was a Catholic Young Adult group that hosted the talk. These young folks are not sleeping around, not co-habitating, living out the Church's sexual morality, sometimes to an extreme extent. Modesty is practiced by the women, and respectful talk and behavior by the men. There is mutual respect, strong friendship, fellowship, community. There is just very little dating. Very few of my friends my own age are in marriage track relationships. Those who are dating are likely to date for years without getting engaged.
Why?
I am not really qualified to comment on the women. It seems to me most would like to be married and are willing to be pursued and won. There are exceptions, of course, and the world being what it is, most women have their share of baggage, either from families, previous relationships, or both. Some few cannot seem to decide whether they are called to marriage or not, but that issue cuts across gender lines among the most devout young people these days.
The men, on the other hand, I can take some guesses at:
1) I was specifically interested in his ideas on underlying causes for the dearth of marriages. He didn't have much idea as to the why of it, not on the level of social dynamics, which is what I was interested in. He went straight to the underlying cause: "We live in a selfish and individualistic society. It's all about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll." He left me to fill in the blanks for myself.
It's easy enough to see how marriage just isn't a priority for those living the casual sex, one-night stand, hookup cultural lifestyle. Marriage intrinsically involves sacrifice, commitment, responsibility, and these are not qualities exercised by the hook-up culture. Those who live in that culture find themselves ill-prepared to desire marriage, and ill-prepared to maintain it if they do get married.
For those who aren't in the hookup scene, but are cohabitating or having sex before marriage, the lack of marriage is also easy to account for. Why would you take the formal step, make that formal commitment, if you are getting all the benefits without all the responsibilities of it? In a non-married relationship there is always the walk-off option. No cost, no lawyers, no courts. Child support, of course, but thats what we have contraception for.
No, the lack of marriage in society at large is not puzzling at all. The demographic I was thinking about when I asked the question was the Catholic Young Adult scene, since that is my demographic and it was a Catholic Young Adult group that hosted the talk. These young folks are not sleeping around, not co-habitating, living out the Church's sexual morality, sometimes to an extreme extent. Modesty is practiced by the women, and respectful talk and behavior by the men. There is mutual respect, strong friendship, fellowship, community. There is just very little dating. Very few of my friends my own age are in marriage track relationships. Those who are dating are likely to date for years without getting engaged.
Why?
I am not really qualified to comment on the women. It seems to me most would like to be married and are willing to be pursued and won. There are exceptions, of course, and the world being what it is, most women have their share of baggage, either from families, previous relationships, or both. Some few cannot seem to decide whether they are called to marriage or not, but that issue cuts across gender lines among the most devout young people these days.
The men, on the other hand, I can take some guesses at:
- Financial climate: It is hard enough for a young man to support himself in our current economic climate, especially if he is going to college, or has no degree. The blue collar jobs that once kept America strong are not what they used to be. The worker has become a means of production and the cheapest workers all live in China. The lack of jobs means a lack of money. Men are far less likely to pursue marriage when they don't feel financially stable.
- Entertainment culture: Video games, facebook, youtube, etc. All of these are useful and enjoyable pastimes, but they can be traps. It is very possible for a young man to use facebook, or comments on a blog or video channel, or twitter followers as a substitute for relationships. They fill the immediate craving, lessening any sense of urgency to pursue a real relationship, but in the long run they do not satisfy the real longing of the human heart for communion. Not that any human relationship can, but a real relationship with a real person is a means to learning to love, which is the perequisite for that ultimately satisfying relationship.
- Pornography: It is an open secret that internet pornography is the plague of Christian manhood. Around the American Catholic Church and the Protestant churches very few men have never seen pornography, and far too many have viewed it deliberately and habitually. It is an issue that is too big to cover here, but I consider pornography to be a huge discouragement to marriage for two reasons: 1) It is an outlet for the sexual instinct that should be directing men towards marriage. It is not satisfying, and ultimately it frustrates and stunts the drive it professes to fulfill, but in the short term a man without that sexual tension driving him to seek a lawful outlet is not likely to seek out marriage. 2) It establishes an unreasonable standard of sexual attractiveness. No woman can hope to look like an airbrushed model, and shouldn't bother trying. A porno star never argues, never has her own opinions, and never suffers from PMS. The man who lives on a steady diet of such unreality will lose his ability to fall in love with a real woman. Even if he does "settle" for someone who is not quite as hot as the women on the computer screen, even if he falls in love with her personality or her character, he is still splitting himself. He is splitting the sexual desire from the personal desire and it will bear rotten fruit later on. So, whether porn use completely stifles his desire for marriage, or merely delays him in acting on it, I still classify it as a severe impediment to Catholic Marriage.
- Lack of Example: We are all, to some extent, products of our culture. Our culture does not value marriage. It values the "bro-life." Unbridled freedom from responsibility, self-actuation, self, self, self is our cultural idol. Guys who get married and work 9-5 and drive a minivan are not cool. They don't have big-screen TV's, they don't drive fast cars, they don't stay out late anymore. They are not the ones that young men want to emulate. They don't make marriage look fun. (No offense meant to the many wonderful married men I know. I am just generalizing.) This cultural reality bleeds over into the Church. Even though we may agree in theory that marriage is a worthy goal for "someday" the single life is fun, free of responsibility, and has its own business. We let the urgent override the important.
- Within the Church there is the phenomenon of endless "discernment." To which I can only say that, even if there is a "right" and "wrong" decision (which I am not convinced of), the worst possible decision is no decision. Rather like the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30. One made more than the other, but the only one who was punished was the one who did nothing with what he had been given.
- And of course we must not forget the individual story. Each particular man has his own background and his own call. Some men may very well be called to do some work for God which is their true vocation, and they are not able to marry. For that they are responsible to explain themselves to no one but God.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Catholic Marriage: the New Vocation Crisis?
Part One of a series of four posts. Part two, part three and part four.
I wrote about this before, and have put more thought into it since, but the idea was brought strongly before my mind last tuesday night at a talk I went to. Here in the Archdiocese of Seattle, the Office of Young Adult Ministries puts on a talk series called "Wine and Wisdom" several times a year. The premise is a lot like "Theology on Tap" except that it is specifically geared towards young adults. Last Tuesday's speaker was Mark Miloscia, a former Representative in WA state legislature, and now a Catholic lobbyist. He hit on a number of themes, including the need for evangelization, the need for political activism, and the need for solidarity among Catholics in the political spere. However, one of his most pointed themes was on the need for Catholic marriages. He couched it in much the same language that is used of the dearth of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. He even asked how many of us were married and when only one person raised her hand (the mother of one of our college kids) the look on his face was one of bewilderment. I could almost hear him thinking, "Wow! Do I put them on the spot or just let it go?" He let it go, mostly.
I asked him more about it after the talk, and came up with three major points I want to examine more closely:
1) I was specifically interested in his ideas on underlying causes. He didn't have much idea as to the why of it, not on the level of social dynamics, which is what I was interested in. He went straight to the underlying cause: "We live in a selfish and individualistic society. It's all about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll." He left me to fill in the blanks for myself.
2) I challenged his assumption we are all called either to the clergy/religious life or to the married life, and he acknowledged that there were exceptions to the general rule, but insisted that for most people marriage was the path to holiness. "That is the only way we learn how to love. I could have been more blunt about it. I could have gone around the room and asked every individual person, 'Why aren't you married? Why aren't you married?' But everyone needs to be if they are not called to the religious life."
3) I asked him what he thought we should do about it. He looked at me as if I had asked a question to which the answer was obvious and said, "Get married." I appreciate the simplicity and directness of that answer, but pressed him further. Given the fact that we live in a society that, for whatever reason, young men are not motivated to seek out marriage, I asked if he reccomended that we just get married out of a sense of duty. He answered unequivocally, "Yes."
I want to take a bit of a closer look at each one of these in subsequent posts.
I wrote about this before, and have put more thought into it since, but the idea was brought strongly before my mind last tuesday night at a talk I went to. Here in the Archdiocese of Seattle, the Office of Young Adult Ministries puts on a talk series called "Wine and Wisdom" several times a year. The premise is a lot like "Theology on Tap" except that it is specifically geared towards young adults. Last Tuesday's speaker was Mark Miloscia, a former Representative in WA state legislature, and now a Catholic lobbyist. He hit on a number of themes, including the need for evangelization, the need for political activism, and the need for solidarity among Catholics in the political spere. However, one of his most pointed themes was on the need for Catholic marriages. He couched it in much the same language that is used of the dearth of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. He even asked how many of us were married and when only one person raised her hand (the mother of one of our college kids) the look on his face was one of bewilderment. I could almost hear him thinking, "Wow! Do I put them on the spot or just let it go?" He let it go, mostly.
I asked him more about it after the talk, and came up with three major points I want to examine more closely:
1) I was specifically interested in his ideas on underlying causes. He didn't have much idea as to the why of it, not on the level of social dynamics, which is what I was interested in. He went straight to the underlying cause: "We live in a selfish and individualistic society. It's all about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll." He left me to fill in the blanks for myself.
2) I challenged his assumption we are all called either to the clergy/religious life or to the married life, and he acknowledged that there were exceptions to the general rule, but insisted that for most people marriage was the path to holiness. "That is the only way we learn how to love. I could have been more blunt about it. I could have gone around the room and asked every individual person, 'Why aren't you married? Why aren't you married?' But everyone needs to be if they are not called to the religious life."
3) I asked him what he thought we should do about it. He looked at me as if I had asked a question to which the answer was obvious and said, "Get married." I appreciate the simplicity and directness of that answer, but pressed him further. Given the fact that we live in a society that, for whatever reason, young men are not motivated to seek out marriage, I asked if he reccomended that we just get married out of a sense of duty. He answered unequivocally, "Yes."
I want to take a bit of a closer look at each one of these in subsequent posts.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Hugged Upon: A Social Commentary
Yesterday I went to Mass before going to work. It was only a weekday Mass, even if it was the feast of the Presentation, so the church was mostly empty. One of the things about this parish that I don’t particularly care for is that at the sign of peace, everyone leaves their pew and walks all over the church to shake hands with everyone. It’s not wrong, as far as I can tell, but it rather distracts from the real focus of the Mass. After all, at this point in the liturgy, the Host is consecrated and Jesus is sacramentally present on the altar. That is the focal point of the entire universe! It’s not really the time for a social event.
However, as I said, I don’t think it is wrong, and I certainly don’t think those who do it mean any disrespect by it so I did what I usually do. I shook hands with and asked God’s peace upon those in my immediate vicinity, and any others who wandered over from other parts of the church, and then turned back to the altar to get back to the Mass. Upon turning back, however, I saw someone moving towards me from the front of the church. She was a largish lady, in her fifties I would guess, with a look of intense focus on her round face. She had me in her sights, so I prepared to shake hands with her as well, but as she bore down on me (she had to cover enough ground that I had time to size her up) her arms stretched out wide. My thoughts were not coherent, but they could be translated, “That looks like… but no it couldn’t be… but it really… no…”
Then she said loud enough to be heard through the building, continuing to advance at a high rate of speed, “Can I get a hug?”
She was close enough to be breaking the comfort zone, you know that little personal bubble area in front of you where someone is just too close for conversational purposes? As she broke it I retreated half a step back into my pew, and held out my hand, mumbling something stunned and lame under my breath. I didn’t register her reaction, except that she shook and walked back to the front of the church. In retrospect, I suppose it might have embarrassed her a bit to be so obviously rejected. She’s fortunate I didn’t have time to collect my thoughts or I would have just said “No” in the driest, most end-of-story tone I could muster. No doubt many would consider my reaction rude enough as it was. I wish I knew how she viewed it, since at the moment she represented a mindset almost entirely alien to me and I would like to understand it better.
Since I couldn’t figure out her reaction, I spent part of my drive into post this morning trying to analyze mine. I was surprised, not only by her action, but by the fierceness and strength of my reaction. It took a while for me to bring my thoughts back into the realm of charity. You see, I hate being hugged upon by strangers. I don’t even like having my space invaded (with some exceptions), and my initial reaction is always defensive, but when someone I don’t know tries to hug me (it happens very rarely) my first instinct is to shove them back, create some space, and just say “Whoah, hold on. Back off, I don’t know you.”
She obviously had no such reservations, and I had to question my reaction. After all, she just wanted a hug, right? Aren’t we supposed to love one another? Well, that wasn’t a very loving thing to do, now was it? Isn’t that what the sign of peace is all about, showing the love of Jesus? Doesn’t Saint Paul tell us to greet each other with a holy kiss?
I suppose she must have decided I just didn’t like hugs or something, and it was this supposition that gave me an insight into why my reaction is always so strong. You see the fact is I actually don’t hate hugs. I love them in fact. I hug the heck (literally) out of people I know well, family and really close friends. In going through the list I realized that there are people that I love well enough to take a bullet for, but I would never hug. Most of my patients have been like that. Even that lady in the church, I certainly wouldn’t say I didn’t want to have some charity for her. But a hug is still unthinkable, even repulsive. It isn’t the person that repulses me, but the act of hugging someone I don’t know.
And right there is the crux of the matter. There are some people who say that a hug or a kiss is a statement of love, and therefore to be expected between Christians united in the Love of Jesus. After all, you don’t have to know the person to know that Jesus loves them. Very true, and yet that doesn’t call forth the hugging instinct in me. To me, hugging is not so much the language of love, as a language of intimacy, to one degree or another. Love may be possible without knowing the person. Intimacy is not. Charity is guaranteed, or should be, simply on the basis of the shared love of God. One of the results of charity is that it should encourage us to seek to know the people that God loves so much, but it does not change the fact that we are human. We don’t know people right away. It takes time and patience to get to know a person, and this “knowledge” is not simply awareness of facts about that person. It is a matter of trust, a mutual exchange of part of the soul of each. It is a mystery how one person can “know” another at all, but one thing I do know: intimacy exists only in relationship. There must be giving and receiving, gift and regift over and over again. The longer this has been going on the deeper that intimacy becomes. If it hasn’t happened at all, there is no intimacy. You don’t know that person.
This is what “knowing someone” means to me. So I realized that it isn’t because I hate hugs that I recoiled so profoundly from that lady’s well-meaning gesture. It is because I love the act of hugging rather jealously. I want it to have some meaning, not just be a flippant thing we throw around to whomever happens to be within arm’s reach. It seems dishonest. It is lying with your body, pretending that something is there which isn’t there at all. Like a man who vows undying love on the first date, it means nothing.
I guess this is just one symptom of my overall critique of our culture’s approach to social interaction. We tend to be so very friendly and open and “frank” and we tell people just exactly what is going on in our minds. Our heartbreaks are emblazoned on the shifting sands of our facebook walls, there to be pawed over by the crowds for the few hours or minutes or seconds it takes to work its way to the bottom of the feed. Our every thought, emotion, action, and relationship must be dragged out into the cyber streets and vivisected. And what of those thoughts so casually thrown around on twitter? Did that thought even have time to grow up before I stuck it out there? What happens when you put the hops in the still, and then pour out the juice before it has time to ferment, let alone age? Can we even think for more than 140 characters at one time anymore?
I applaud the willingness we have to lay our cards out. The ability to be vulnerable is a prerequisite for relationship, but I wonder. Do we really gain anything by it? Have we increased the breadth of our attachments, but sacrificed the depths? If you try to be intimate with everyone, you end up losing the ability to be truly intimate with anyone. That seems to me something too precious to give up.
One Real Hug is worth about five and a half bazillion fake ones.
Then she said loud enough to be heard through the building, continuing to advance at a high rate of speed, “Can I get a hug?”
She was close enough to be breaking the comfort zone, you know that little personal bubble area in front of you where someone is just too close for conversational purposes? As she broke it I retreated half a step back into my pew, and held out my hand, mumbling something stunned and lame under my breath. I didn’t register her reaction, except that she shook and walked back to the front of the church. In retrospect, I suppose it might have embarrassed her a bit to be so obviously rejected. She’s fortunate I didn’t have time to collect my thoughts or I would have just said “No” in the driest, most end-of-story tone I could muster. No doubt many would consider my reaction rude enough as it was. I wish I knew how she viewed it, since at the moment she represented a mindset almost entirely alien to me and I would like to understand it better.
Since I couldn’t figure out her reaction, I spent part of my drive into post this morning trying to analyze mine. I was surprised, not only by her action, but by the fierceness and strength of my reaction. It took a while for me to bring my thoughts back into the realm of charity. You see, I hate being hugged upon by strangers. I don’t even like having my space invaded (with some exceptions), and my initial reaction is always defensive, but when someone I don’t know tries to hug me (it happens very rarely) my first instinct is to shove them back, create some space, and just say “Whoah, hold on. Back off, I don’t know you.”
She obviously had no such reservations, and I had to question my reaction. After all, she just wanted a hug, right? Aren’t we supposed to love one another? Well, that wasn’t a very loving thing to do, now was it? Isn’t that what the sign of peace is all about, showing the love of Jesus? Doesn’t Saint Paul tell us to greet each other with a holy kiss?
And right there is the crux of the matter. There are some people who say that a hug or a kiss is a statement of love, and therefore to be expected between Christians united in the Love of Jesus. After all, you don’t have to know the person to know that Jesus loves them. Very true, and yet that doesn’t call forth the hugging instinct in me. To me, hugging is not so much the language of love, as a language of intimacy, to one degree or another. Love may be possible without knowing the person. Intimacy is not. Charity is guaranteed, or should be, simply on the basis of the shared love of God. One of the results of charity is that it should encourage us to seek to know the people that God loves so much, but it does not change the fact that we are human. We don’t know people right away. It takes time and patience to get to know a person, and this “knowledge” is not simply awareness of facts about that person. It is a matter of trust, a mutual exchange of part of the soul of each. It is a mystery how one person can “know” another at all, but one thing I do know: intimacy exists only in relationship. There must be giving and receiving, gift and regift over and over again. The longer this has been going on the deeper that intimacy becomes. If it hasn’t happened at all, there is no intimacy. You don’t know that person.
This is what “knowing someone” means to me. So I realized that it isn’t because I hate hugs that I recoiled so profoundly from that lady’s well-meaning gesture. It is because I love the act of hugging rather jealously. I want it to have some meaning, not just be a flippant thing we throw around to whomever happens to be within arm’s reach. It seems dishonest. It is lying with your body, pretending that something is there which isn’t there at all. Like a man who vows undying love on the first date, it means nothing.
I applaud the willingness we have to lay our cards out. The ability to be vulnerable is a prerequisite for relationship, but I wonder. Do we really gain anything by it? Have we increased the breadth of our attachments, but sacrificed the depths? If you try to be intimate with everyone, you end up losing the ability to be truly intimate with anyone. That seems to me something too precious to give up.
One Real Hug is worth about five and a half bazillion fake ones.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
UC Davis Incident: A Technical Critique
I suppose everyone has seen this video by now.
I’ll start off by saying that from a big picture point of view, I don’t know much about this incident. I don’t know much about Occupy Wall Street, I don’t know what (if any) goals they have. I don’t know what these students were trying to accomplish, or whether they knew what they were trying to accomplish, or how legal their protest was. I also don’t know much about the overall decisions from the cops’ point of view. Whether it was necessary to move the protestors or not, whether it was necessary to intervene at all, I can’t say. My issue with this is from a much more technical point of view. That’s not how you run a revolution, and it’s not how you deal with one. Both sides seemed amateurish to me.
First, from the cops point of view: Let’s bypass the question of the legality of breaking up the protest, and the decision to make the arrests and skip straight to how that decision was executed. Cops on UC Davis campus: automatically in hostile territory. They can start by knowing that 1: they are not welcome; 2: they are already assumed guilty until proven innocent; 3: they are surrounded by cameras, which is essentially a hostile PR campaign already under weigh. Thanks to this attitude, combined with the ubiquity of I-Phones and youtube, police ought to know that even before they get on the ground they are already the target of choice for a decentralized mechanism of propaganda gathering and distribution.
This situation is the truth on the ground. Lack of situational awareness of this strategic concern is the root issue behind the mistakes made.
If you watch the video carefully you’ll notice that the only voices you can hear are the voices of protesters. They are not especially unified, not especially controlled, but they have one advantage: they are loud. By contrast the cops are absolutely silent. They aren’t yelling and screaming, only a few of them are doing the talking and they appear to be the command and control (C&C) element for the riot control unit. This is good unit discipline, but bad PR. It means that the only point of view that is going to be heard is the protesters. Anything the cops say afterwards is automatically damage control at best, which leads me to my first critique: where was the megaphone? If you are a riot control unit, your megaphone is your primary weapon. If you don’t have one, you’re wrong. You can’t shout down the protestors, but you can at the least make sure that you are providing a step by step narration of what you are doing, which is then an intrinsic part of any audio record of the event.
Next step, the decision to arrest was made. Already their actions are crippled because they don’t have the shouting power to issue clear instructions or ultimatums. All we see is one muttered contact in the first ten seconds, and then two minutes of the cops standing around, silent and indecisive. I know what they are doing. They are pulling security, while the C&C element makes up their minds what to do. Bravo on maintaining good discipline, but in the long run it makes them look like idiots. At 2:12 you can see one officer make one half-hearted attempt to pull one of the protesters out of their formation. Everyone knows what’s coming, but the cops are not visibly trying to resolve the situation without escalating to the use of chemicals. So I have to ask, what is their protocol? Given a decision to arrest, it might be argued that it’s safer to break up the formation with pepper spray than with batons. I would whole heartedly agree with that. However, there has to be an escalation of force protocol. Warnings (mostly inaudible apparently) notwithstanding, I would question the wisdom of going directly from verbal warning to pepper spray. There has to be an intermediate level of force.
Starting at 2:05 you can hear a female voice yelling “Protect yourselves, cover your eyes.” Why shouldn’t that warning have come from the cops? Nothing enhances your image like visibly and obviously seeking to limit damage to your opponents.
The actual spraying, from 2:25 on is obviously visually disturbing to civilians. It looks so wanton, so cold-blooded, so cruel. He’s spraying it right in their faces and they aren’t violent, aren’t visibly resisting. It screams “Police Brutality.” From a tactical point of view I can understand it, though. Once the decision is made to move them, and the tool chosen is pepper spray, it makes no sense to delay or be half-hearted about it. Either do it or don’t do it, but don’t half do it. It does no one any favors to draw it out. One quick pass across their faces is not going to damage them seriously, and from then on out, it’s all business. Break up the formation, pair up on the protestors, cuff them and move them out. I would have had my paddy wagon closer, but other than that it was tactically pretty good. They don’t lose security either. The perimeter gets pretty thin at one point, but by 4:30 all the moving pieces are resolved. The perimeter is full and solid, and it needs to be. They are surrounded by a crowd, and maybe the crowd was initially spectators, but now they are clearly shifting into protester mode. Anyone who was not involved before is involved now. A solid perimeter is a must.
Say what you will, from the point of view of the cops it is a tactical success. They moved into a hostile crowd, arrested the focal point of that crowd and moved out in less than ten minutes with no injuries on either side. No one broke ranks, no one went crazy, the objective was met and the withdrawal was planned and disciplined. The problem is, no one is ever going to see it from their point of view except those who already know it.
Now, let’s move to the protestor side of the house: Overall I am left with an impression of simple, mass hysteria. They did a lot of things right. There were clearly movers and shakers within the crowd who were periodically able to start a mass chant, aided by the fact that it’s friendly territory for them. Those most involved have at least passive support of everyone around them, and moral support from a majority of potential youtube viewers. They can move with ease, their risk is minimal due to the cops’ rules of engagement, and their payoff is potentially high. The big questions I have really come down to, What’s it all about? Who organized the protest? Who decided to occupy that particular piece of ground, and why? Was pepper spray anticipated? Apparently not, but an intelligent organizer might have anticipated it, and planned a ready-made PR campaign for it. Overall, though, my impression is of hot-headed, young, amateurish disorganization. I would bet most of the people there could not have told you why they were protesting or what their goals were in any coherent form that would hold water for more than a minute. They didn’t need to. Whoever organized it doesn’t need intelligent disciples to provide rational argument on a popular level. He needs bodies to fill space, and vocal cords to fill the air with noise.
The exploitation of the incident was ad hoc, and hot-headed. At 8:56 you can see that the crowd is getting riled up, and is starting to press the cop’s withdrawal. A cop flashes a tear gas canister and a student yells “They’re spraying again.” The crowd backs off a little and at 9:05 you hear a voice start rising out of the chaos. Again, it is not the cops, it is a protestor. He essentially leads the crowd in proclaiming that they are going to give them a moment of peace so that the cops can leave. By 9:33 they are cheering and shouting as if they drove out the invader, when that is simply not what happened. It was a spur of the moment thing, and it was hot-headed. Taunting edgy, adrenalized cops in a situation like that is far from a smart move, tactically. Strategically it makes all the sense in the world because any reaction on their part is more fuel for your fire later on, but the fact remains that it was only the fact that those police officers were disciplined and did not rise to the taunts that saved those kids from a serious hurting. Their restraint was the protestors’ only guarantee of safety. The taunting was a juvenile attempt to appear in control of the situation, when that was far from the truth, but once again, the truth matters very little to America. The cops won the battle, but they lost the war.
The protestors were a little lacking in follow-up, though. This is a golden opportunity to get the message out but there seems to be an issue: There is no message. There are only pity-parties, such as this first class example of incident exploitation. No manifestos. No pithy statements of objectives. There aren’t even any demands. I still have no idea what they were protesting. There should be a website with clearly defined problems to be addressed and solutions to those problems proposed. But I haven’t seen it. Nothing.
This leads me to my biggest issue with the protestors. In the Army we have a saying: “If you don’t have a solution, don’t point out the problem.” Apparently these kids see a problem. Whether it is a legitimate problem or not I don’t know, but all they are doing is criticizing. As far as I can tell there is no effort to come up with a solution. That’s the government’s job, apparently. There is no coordination, no planning, no foresight. They seem to be flying on the seat of their pants, letting an agenda emerge haphazardly as they go along. As someone with some degree of specialized knowledge on this subject, that’s no way to run a revolution, unless your goal is simply mass hysteria. I can think of several scenarios that would fit that picture.
I do not take sides on this issue. I neither condone the use of tear gas, nor do I agree with the protestor’s allegations of police misconduct. If I have put a little more time into showing what I perceive to be the cops’ point of view it is because no one else seems to. I am trying to avoid Monday morning quarterbacking. Instead I am trying to provide an honest and objective assessment of both sides. I have no illusions that either side will read it, but it might just help a few spectators find a more balanced and hopefully charitable view.
I’ll start off by saying that from a big picture point of view, I don’t know much about this incident. I don’t know much about Occupy Wall Street, I don’t know what (if any) goals they have. I don’t know what these students were trying to accomplish, or whether they knew what they were trying to accomplish, or how legal their protest was. I also don’t know much about the overall decisions from the cops’ point of view. Whether it was necessary to move the protestors or not, whether it was necessary to intervene at all, I can’t say. My issue with this is from a much more technical point of view. That’s not how you run a revolution, and it’s not how you deal with one. Both sides seemed amateurish to me.
First, from the cops point of view: Let’s bypass the question of the legality of breaking up the protest, and the decision to make the arrests and skip straight to how that decision was executed. Cops on UC Davis campus: automatically in hostile territory. They can start by knowing that 1: they are not welcome; 2: they are already assumed guilty until proven innocent; 3: they are surrounded by cameras, which is essentially a hostile PR campaign already under weigh. Thanks to this attitude, combined with the ubiquity of I-Phones and youtube, police ought to know that even before they get on the ground they are already the target of choice for a decentralized mechanism of propaganda gathering and distribution.
This situation is the truth on the ground. Lack of situational awareness of this strategic concern is the root issue behind the mistakes made.
If you watch the video carefully you’ll notice that the only voices you can hear are the voices of protesters. They are not especially unified, not especially controlled, but they have one advantage: they are loud. By contrast the cops are absolutely silent. They aren’t yelling and screaming, only a few of them are doing the talking and they appear to be the command and control (C&C) element for the riot control unit. This is good unit discipline, but bad PR. It means that the only point of view that is going to be heard is the protesters. Anything the cops say afterwards is automatically damage control at best, which leads me to my first critique: where was the megaphone? If you are a riot control unit, your megaphone is your primary weapon. If you don’t have one, you’re wrong. You can’t shout down the protestors, but you can at the least make sure that you are providing a step by step narration of what you are doing, which is then an intrinsic part of any audio record of the event.
Next step, the decision to arrest was made. Already their actions are crippled because they don’t have the shouting power to issue clear instructions or ultimatums. All we see is one muttered contact in the first ten seconds, and then two minutes of the cops standing around, silent and indecisive. I know what they are doing. They are pulling security, while the C&C element makes up their minds what to do. Bravo on maintaining good discipline, but in the long run it makes them look like idiots. At 2:12 you can see one officer make one half-hearted attempt to pull one of the protesters out of their formation. Everyone knows what’s coming, but the cops are not visibly trying to resolve the situation without escalating to the use of chemicals. So I have to ask, what is their protocol? Given a decision to arrest, it might be argued that it’s safer to break up the formation with pepper spray than with batons. I would whole heartedly agree with that. However, there has to be an escalation of force protocol. Warnings (mostly inaudible apparently) notwithstanding, I would question the wisdom of going directly from verbal warning to pepper spray. There has to be an intermediate level of force.
Starting at 2:05 you can hear a female voice yelling “Protect yourselves, cover your eyes.” Why shouldn’t that warning have come from the cops? Nothing enhances your image like visibly and obviously seeking to limit damage to your opponents.
The actual spraying, from 2:25 on is obviously visually disturbing to civilians. It looks so wanton, so cold-blooded, so cruel. He’s spraying it right in their faces and they aren’t violent, aren’t visibly resisting. It screams “Police Brutality.” From a tactical point of view I can understand it, though. Once the decision is made to move them, and the tool chosen is pepper spray, it makes no sense to delay or be half-hearted about it. Either do it or don’t do it, but don’t half do it. It does no one any favors to draw it out. One quick pass across their faces is not going to damage them seriously, and from then on out, it’s all business. Break up the formation, pair up on the protestors, cuff them and move them out. I would have had my paddy wagon closer, but other than that it was tactically pretty good. They don’t lose security either. The perimeter gets pretty thin at one point, but by 4:30 all the moving pieces are resolved. The perimeter is full and solid, and it needs to be. They are surrounded by a crowd, and maybe the crowd was initially spectators, but now they are clearly shifting into protester mode. Anyone who was not involved before is involved now. A solid perimeter is a must.
Say what you will, from the point of view of the cops it is a tactical success. They moved into a hostile crowd, arrested the focal point of that crowd and moved out in less than ten minutes with no injuries on either side. No one broke ranks, no one went crazy, the objective was met and the withdrawal was planned and disciplined. The problem is, no one is ever going to see it from their point of view except those who already know it.
Now, let’s move to the protestor side of the house: Overall I am left with an impression of simple, mass hysteria. They did a lot of things right. There were clearly movers and shakers within the crowd who were periodically able to start a mass chant, aided by the fact that it’s friendly territory for them. Those most involved have at least passive support of everyone around them, and moral support from a majority of potential youtube viewers. They can move with ease, their risk is minimal due to the cops’ rules of engagement, and their payoff is potentially high. The big questions I have really come down to, What’s it all about? Who organized the protest? Who decided to occupy that particular piece of ground, and why? Was pepper spray anticipated? Apparently not, but an intelligent organizer might have anticipated it, and planned a ready-made PR campaign for it. Overall, though, my impression is of hot-headed, young, amateurish disorganization. I would bet most of the people there could not have told you why they were protesting or what their goals were in any coherent form that would hold water for more than a minute. They didn’t need to. Whoever organized it doesn’t need intelligent disciples to provide rational argument on a popular level. He needs bodies to fill space, and vocal cords to fill the air with noise.
The exploitation of the incident was ad hoc, and hot-headed. At 8:56 you can see that the crowd is getting riled up, and is starting to press the cop’s withdrawal. A cop flashes a tear gas canister and a student yells “They’re spraying again.” The crowd backs off a little and at 9:05 you hear a voice start rising out of the chaos. Again, it is not the cops, it is a protestor. He essentially leads the crowd in proclaiming that they are going to give them a moment of peace so that the cops can leave. By 9:33 they are cheering and shouting as if they drove out the invader, when that is simply not what happened. It was a spur of the moment thing, and it was hot-headed. Taunting edgy, adrenalized cops in a situation like that is far from a smart move, tactically. Strategically it makes all the sense in the world because any reaction on their part is more fuel for your fire later on, but the fact remains that it was only the fact that those police officers were disciplined and did not rise to the taunts that saved those kids from a serious hurting. Their restraint was the protestors’ only guarantee of safety. The taunting was a juvenile attempt to appear in control of the situation, when that was far from the truth, but once again, the truth matters very little to America. The cops won the battle, but they lost the war.
The protestors were a little lacking in follow-up, though. This is a golden opportunity to get the message out but there seems to be an issue: There is no message. There are only pity-parties, such as this first class example of incident exploitation. No manifestos. No pithy statements of objectives. There aren’t even any demands. I still have no idea what they were protesting. There should be a website with clearly defined problems to be addressed and solutions to those problems proposed. But I haven’t seen it. Nothing.
This leads me to my biggest issue with the protestors. In the Army we have a saying: “If you don’t have a solution, don’t point out the problem.” Apparently these kids see a problem. Whether it is a legitimate problem or not I don’t know, but all they are doing is criticizing. As far as I can tell there is no effort to come up with a solution. That’s the government’s job, apparently. There is no coordination, no planning, no foresight. They seem to be flying on the seat of their pants, letting an agenda emerge haphazardly as they go along. As someone with some degree of specialized knowledge on this subject, that’s no way to run a revolution, unless your goal is simply mass hysteria. I can think of several scenarios that would fit that picture.
I do not take sides on this issue. I neither condone the use of tear gas, nor do I agree with the protestor’s allegations of police misconduct. If I have put a little more time into showing what I perceive to be the cops’ point of view it is because no one else seems to. I am trying to avoid Monday morning quarterbacking. Instead I am trying to provide an honest and objective assessment of both sides. I have no illusions that either side will read it, but it might just help a few spectators find a more balanced and hopefully charitable view.
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