Being Woke in a Messy World

What does activism mean in these times?

I have been struggling with this question for a while.  And not merely as a response to tRump and his toadies--though even in that context I am at a loss.  What the hell can I do?  I can tweet my rants, but that does not do any damn thing other than to release the pressure within.  I can blog. I can talk to the few remaining friends that I have.  Nothing really makes any meaningful impact.

But, this is more than merely about tRump. But, let's start with him.  His rise to notoriety and power was not through any conventional methods of debating public policy issues or organizing movements.  He called into radio and television shows. He tweeted.  He colluded with foreign powers. He got elected to the White House.

In a way, this old orange monster presents us with the reality--political activities are not conducted the old ways anymore.  He has transformed it.  Now, routinely statesmen and idiots, elected officials and basement dwellers, anybody, tweet out their commentaries and activism.

So, yes, what does activism mean in such times?

I got pissed off with the answer that Barack Obama gave.  I mean, mighty pissed I was.

“I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: ‘The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people,’” he said, “and that’s enough.”
“Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb,” he said, “then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”
Then he pretended to sit back and press the remote to turn on a television.
“That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change,” he said. “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”

Bullshit!

My immediate thought was about #MeToo.  And then I thought about #BlackLivesMatter.  Black Lives Matter started in the virtual world, remember?

The phrase “black lives matter” was born in July of 2013, in a Facebook postby Alicia Garza, called “a love letter to black people.” The post was intended as an affirmation for a community distraught over George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida. Garza, now thirty-five, is the special-projects director in the Oakland office of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents twenty thousand caregivers and housekeepers, and lobbies for labor legislation on their behalf. She is also an advocate for queer and transgender rights and for anti-police-brutality campaigns.
Garza has a prodigious social-media presence, and on the day that the Zimmerman verdict was handed down she posted, “the sad part is, there’s a section of America who is cheering and celebrating right now. and that makes me sick to my stomach. we gotta get it together y’all.” Later, she added, “btw stop saying we are not surprised. that’s a damn shame in itself. I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter. And I will continue that. stop giving up on black life.” She ended with “black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.”
Garza’s friend Patrisse Cullors amended the last three words to create a hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter.

So, WTF is Obama talking about!

I decided that the guy has become like one of those people who get old and start to angrily shake their fists at younger people.  Which is also why I liked this response:

His eagerness to dismiss one part of what happens when young people stand up for what they believe in as “casting stones” is a reminder of a largely generational divide about whether it’s impolite to speak out in favor of the most vulnerable among us and the world we’d like to live in. While there’s some debate about which generation Mr. Obama belongs to, he’s solidly in the older camp.

Exactly!

The issues that my fellow millennials, along with even younger people in Gen Z, tend to be “judgmental” about are the same ones many of our parents and grandparents have been debating for decades. Being outspoken about climate change, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ inclusivity and gun control — and critical of those who stand in the way of progress on these issues — is work that’s been left to us.

Of course I agree with this.  I am damn judgmental.  I have booted out the tRump toadies. People opposing gun control can go to hell. And about the old country too. The mOdi toadies have no place in my life. I piss off the brahmins too. I am tired of the old approaches that have pretty much resulted in injustices to continue.

Of course, Black Lives Matter did not merely exist in Facebook.  Me Too was not merely a Twitter hashtag.  These translated to real work in the real world.  I hope the young will translate their online activism into real votes in the real elections in the real world and boot out the evildoers.

I am cheering on the young "Woke" people.

Mr. Obama is right that “the world is messy.” But the messiness we see looks like people who are suffering because others stubbornly reject progress and refuse to show compassion. Millennials and Gen-Zers are doing what we can to take down the Goliath many of our parents have been rightfully casting stones at for decades. We have a tool that has helped democratize public debates about these issues, and we hope it will move us to a more just world.
It’s called social media. And we’re going to keep using it. 

Barre it all

On our way to the creative engagement of the evening that was the ending of this post, we passed a Barre3 studio.  We wondered, yet again, what that is all about.

And then, there I was reading a review of Jia Tolentino's book, (which M is currently reading) and the cosmos--well, the reviewer--answers that question by channeling Tolentino:

Barre dance studios, she writes, are a “nationwide fixture” that offer a cross between ballet and gymnastics, a series of positions that resemble “what a ballerina might do if you concussed her and then made her snort caffeine pills.” Barre was conceived and developed in the 1960s by Lotte Berk, a Jewish dancer who fled Germany for England before World War II and then passed the business on to her daughter, Esther. Today the largest barre franchise has more than five hundred outlets across the United States. Esther describes her mother as abusive. She dismissed the sexual proposition Esther’s father made to their daughter and said she’d pay Esther to give a blow job to one of her colleagues. Nonetheless, Esther chose to run a studio in Berkshire, England, and continues her mother’s tradition to this day.

That is perhaps far more than I would ever need to know about Barre3!

But, there is more in the review, about Tolentino as a writer, critic, and a voice coming from a younger generation:

Tolentino always has her eye out for the ugly history, the stain on the carpet that so many refuse to see. In this case, it is hard not to believe that the double trauma of the war and sexual abuse is lurking beneath this dazzling, cruel success story, the hidden spur for the “arbitrary prolonged agony” that barre inflicts systematically on its devotees (who over the years have included Ivana Trump, Edna O’Brien, and Mary Tyler Moore). Owners of barre studios have made a fortune in exploiting human masochism at a very high cost. Tolentino admits to finding it uplifting. Spandex, the luxury textile of choice for the new athletic class, was created by the military, also during World War II, to be “uniquely flexible, resilient, and strong.” Tolentino imagines herself wrapped in the material, chanting its mantra of potency on behalf of women, as blood streams from her eyes.

If you are like me, by now you are convinced that a Barre3 experience means getting on the road towards enhanced interrogation at Gitmo!

Like many, my first introduction to Jia Tolentino was through her fantastic memoir essay in The New Yorker.  As awesome as her writing was, the content was troubling and nihilistic. I, too, rejected the religion that I was born into, and do not subscribe to any faith, but I am not nihilistic about the life that I live.  Instead, I try to create meaning out of this otherwise mysterious and meaningless existence.  But, Tolentino did provide me a window into how others like her, irrespective of how many that might be, make of their lives.

The reviewer notes about this aspect too:

It is easy to be lured by the exhilaration—the fun, even—of these essays, and to miss the depression, not to say nihilism—a word Tolentino uses—that runs beneath the stream. Nihilism has almost become the common philosophical currency of the age, a way of describing the bleakness of a political system that seems always ahead, or on top, of the resistance that its glaring injustices provoke. “The half-ironic millennial death wish,” she wrote in a New Yorker essay in June, “has become an underground river rushing swiftly under the surface of the age.”

I wonder how many of the students that I interact with feel scammed the same way--if not fully--by the socioeconomic/political/religious framework that Tolentino writes about.  It would be a shame if the "half-ironic millennial death wish" is indeed pervasive.  I am confident, though, that the answer to that will not be found at a local Barre3 studio!

Driving Miss Crazy

Like anybody, I too am always delighted when my analysis is on the mark.

Let me explain.

A few days ago, in responding to a comment at this post, I wrote:

First, the equation of decreasing car sales with loss of employment. I would rather interpret this way: The hundreds of thousands (or lakhs) of rupees that would have been spent on cars will now be spent on other things, which will generate employment. The "loss" is primarily for those who invested in automobile manufacturing. I have no sympathies for those big investors, who know all too well about the market and profit and loss.
Second, some of us have been hypothesizing that in highly densely populated cities--which is all of India--the cost of car ownership is immense. Car sharing, which has been made possible by the likes of Uber and Ola and others, makes it possible for the upper-middle class to move around in cars without owning them.

As much as I don't care for the likes of Uber, those services are here to stay and will continue to grow.  Therefore, betting on the auto industry to sell more vehicles to a younger generation doesn't seem wise to me.  While I am no investment guru, I interact a lot with young people, and read commentaries, based on which even three years ago I wrote that teenagers perhaps don't dream of cars anymore.

Today, I read in the news that the finance minister of India is blaming millennials and services like Uber for the massive slump in the auto industry in my old country!

To which I have only one response:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Source

The minister made this comment in Chennai for a good reason--it is the Detroit of India, where the auto industry is huge.  But, it is remarkably stupid for a finance minister to blame young people for not buying automobiles.  Seriously?  Is the government now going to mandate that thirty-somethings buy cars, or else?  Next they will frame it as a patriotic duty to buy cars?  Like how my President here tweets and talks about "Patriot Farmers" who are being screwed by his trade wars?

A year ago, when I was in India, an old high school classmate suggested that I use Uber or Ola.  He, like me, is no millennial.  And is a highly affluent fellow.  Even he regularly uses Uber to get to work, he said--better than hiring a driver, and far better than "self-driving."  Another advantage?  He could talk without distractions while on the road--he was, in fact, in an Uber ride when he made that suggestion to me.

I tell ya, if only people listened to me and my analysis of how the world works! ;)

Anxiety and the nanny state

In my early years of graduate school, I came to read about--and watch on television as well--the free speech movement at Berkeley, and how Reagan, who was the governor of California then, could not stand those student protests.  Reagan perhaps even owed his political successes to the radical movements, which he attacked and capitalized on in his culture war against freedom in many ways and for many people.

Fifty years later, we continue to fight those same culture wars of free speech.  But, oddly enough, young people these days prefer restrictions on free speech, and seem to be even losing faith in freedom!

protecting children from needless harm became conflated with shielding them from stressors and uncertainties (such as having to solve everyday problems, like getting lost, on one’s own) that are critical for developing personal independence.

Those raised on free speech movements turned around to protect and shelter their precious kids so much that now these young adults are scaredy cats who don't want to be free!  On college campuses, it has taken on crazy forms:

Colleges and universities have exacerbated the problem of dependence by promoting what is sometimes called a culture of victimhood. American college students (who are some of the safest and most privileged people on the planet) are to be protected from, and encouraged to be ever-vigilant about and even report, any behavior that could cause emotional distress. Feelings and experiences that were once considered part of everyday life, such as being offended by someone’s political views, are now more likely to be treated as detrimental to mental health.

I get angry and depressed with trump's words, yes.  But, that idiot saying whatever pleases him is the very mark of freedom that makes America different.  How can college-age adults--the key word is "adults"--not understand freedom of expression?

One of the reasons is: Fear and anxiety.

Anxiety is the most common mental-health disorder in the United States, affecting nearly one-third of both adolescents and adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

That begins right from when they are children:

Suniya Luthar, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University who has studied distress and resilience in both well-off and disadvantaged teenagers, has found that privileged youths are among the most emotionally distressed young people in America. “These kids are incredibly anxious and perfectionistic,” she says, but there’s “contempt and scorn for the idea that kids who have it all might be hurting.”

What are the adults doing?

In a seemingly well-meaning effort to help kids avoid what makes them anxious, administrators actually make anxiety worse. “Anxiety is all about the avoidance of uncertainty and discomfort,” Lyons explained. “When we play along, we don’t help kids learn to cope or problem-solve in the face of unexpected events.”

And, given that you have been reading this blog for years, you know well there is one major factor behind an increased level of anxiety these days: Social media!

Anxious kids certainly existed before Instagram, but many of the parents I spoke to worried that their kids’ digital habits — round-the-clock responding to texts, posting to social media, obsessively following the filtered exploits of peers — were partly to blame for their children’s struggles. To my surprise, anxious teenagers tended to agree. At Mountain Valley, I listened as a college student went on a philosophical rant about his generation’s relationship to social media. “I don’t think we realize how much it’s affecting our moods and personalities,” he said. “Social media is a tool, but it’s become this thing that we can’t live without but that’s making us crazy.”

When these kids grow up ...?

Lyons sees a connection between how some schools deal with anxious students and what she worries is a generation of young people increasingly insistent on safe spaces — and who believe their feelings should be protected at all costs. “Kids are being given some really dangerous messages these days about the fact that they can’t handle being triggered, that they shouldn’t have to bear witness to anything that makes them uncomfortable and that their external environments should bend to and accommodate their needs,” she told me.

You can now see why college students now actually favor restriction on expression.

A few years ago, there was a young woman ready to graduate from the Honors Program.  She was heading to law school on the east coast after graduation.  Her only sister was already in London working on her graduate degree.  I asked her what her parents thought about their two daughters going so far away from home, from Oregon.

Her response was awesome.  And says a lot about her parents.  The parents apparently always told the two daughters that their task was to help the daughters grow their wings, after which they expected--and wanted--the daughters to fly on their own.

At graduation, I met her parents.  I shared with them what their daughter had told me.  They smiled.  They were happy.  No anxieties.  No fear.  No worries.  But that was a decade ago, and apparently life has changed a lot since then--seemingly for the worse!

On the road again. Heck, at least once!

Every once in a while, when discussing the economic future, I ask students who are pretending to listen to me whether they would consider moving far away from Oregon.  "What if you have much better employment opportunities in North Dakota?" is my favorite way to get them to think.  I like beating up on North Dakota because back when I was a graduate student, I used to tell people, "hey, if the teaching job is in North Dakota, then that's where I will go."

Moving far away from home because of productive, gainful, and meaningful employment is not an alien concept to me.  As a young man, my father headed all the way to a remote part of India, from his roots way down in the country's peninsula, and that was back when transport was slow, and there were no phones.  From door to door--from his place to grandma's--was a five day travel.  Ten days out of a month's vacation were merely for the travel.  My grandfather would have taken up a job in Ceylon if it had not been for the elders in the family who blocked his plans.

I intentionally asked for a posting in Calcutta at the campus recruitment.  And then I came here to the other side of the planet as a 23-year old, before the Web was invented and when international calls severely dented my graduate student budget.

Even now, old high school friends are in different parts of India and around the world.  Geographic mobility has been very much a part of my life. I have even written op-eds exploring these (like this one.)    Which is why the students' responses always surprise me--most of them do not want to move far away!

I then remind them about how people immigrated from European countries, fully knowing that they might never ever be able to visit their homelands, and might never be able to even talk with any of the ones they were leaving behind.  After all, the large scale European immigration to the US was before telephones and air travel.  Yet, they moved.  And they even moved to godawful North Dakota!

In some classes, I have even joked that they--and the American youth--have become wusses compared to their grandparents and great-grandparents.

I am not the only one who thinks about all these.  For instance, here is Arthur Brooks in his column in the New York Times:

Through census data, we know that Americans are less geographically mobile today than at any point since 1948. Other scholarship suggests that the decline stretches back further. This might help explain why our country is having such a hard time getting out of its national funk.
Mobility is more than just a metaphor for getting ahead. In America, it has been a solution to economic and social barriers. If you descended from immigrants, I’m betting your ancestors didn’t come to this country for the fine cuisine. More likely they came in search of the opportunity to work hard and get ahead.
Even for those already here, migration has long been seen as a key to self-improvement.

It is not merely the economic opportunity issues.  I worry that the young increasingly shy away from taking chances. 

The mobility decline since the Great Recession has actually been the most pronounced among millennials. As the first rungs of the economic ladder became more slippery, young adults began to delay major steps into adulthood and became less likely to relocate for college or careers.

Yep!  

I can think of a number of reasons. Like the over-protective parenting of today where free-range kids are not possible.  The umbilical cord that continues via the constant texting and phones with the parents. The education system that has made kids into subservient and unthinking adults.  Whatever the reasons are, we need to get the young to get moving again.  

All that jazz about the "millennials" ... blame higher education, at least partly

Consistent with my personality to happily march to my own drumbeat if I find others to be way too cacophonous, the last few years I have been worried about all the hype about the millennial generation.  It served as a wonderful marketing gimmick, no doubt, in the higher education industry: advertise to a whole bunch of gullible teenagers that they have boundless talents and abilities to go with limitless opportunities and, hey, the world is your oyster. So, they too responded by attending college in huge numbers and, now I hope the youth are beginning to see how much they were duped.  I hope.

Speaking of her fellow millennials, Alexandra Petri writes in the WaPo:

Our problem is not lack of finesse. Or, Lord knows, lack of social media linkages. It's lack of content.

It's the Lady Gaga problem: slick design, marvelous presentation, catchy tunes, no real there there. Listen to her anthem, "Born this Way." Those lyrics could mean anything. At one point I think she told me I was an air freshener.

Everyone used to like her. Now, well, she's wearing thin.

And so is President Barack Obama. No wonder she showed up at a recent event of his.

Obama "absolutely" agreed when asked this week if he worries that today's college graduates do not have the same opportunities the baby boom generation did. America has "gotten soft," the president continued.

But our problem as a generation isn't just that hipsters are trying to bring our living standard back to that of a badly remembered 1960s. ("There were records and plaid," they say. "Beyond that we could not really say.")

We are starving for content.

Form we understand. We are the generation of vague statements and good graphic design. And no wonder we gravitate toward Twitter, where you have the illusion of talking without the room to actually say anything. We have nothing to say. 

In higher education, it feels like we actively cultivate this all-slick and little to no content approach, and inflate the millennials' egos, who find out, only after graduation, that the real world outside rewards content.  Lady Gaga, excepted, of course!

A generational change: The new ethos of the young and the restless

I totally get it that my students are different from me, perhaps even more than how my generation and I were different from our predecessors.  Which is why I don't care much when students have their smartphones always visible to them on their desks in the classrooms.  Or when students have their laptops open ... as long as they are able to respond to the questions I have for them, and jump in with relevant and interesting comments.  After all, I experienced this even with my daughter, who was a big time multi-tasker even a decade ago, which seems like a century ago.

Which is why the following from a NY Times report on the  Millennials (Gen Y) does not surprise me at all:

Perhaps most important, many of the behaviors that older generations interpret as laziness may actually enhance young people’s productivity, say researchers who study Generation Y.

Members of Gen Y, for example, are significantly more likely than Gen X’ers and boomers to say they are more productive working in teams than on their own, according to Don Tapscott, author of “Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World,” a book based on interviews with 11,000 millennials.

To older workers, wanting help looks like laziness; to younger workers, the gains that come from teamwork have been learned from the collaborative nature of their childhood activities, which included social networks, crowd-sourcing and even video games like World of Warcraft that “emphasize cooperative rather than individual competition,” Mr. Tapscott says.

Employers also complain about millennials checking Facebook and Twitter on the job, or working with their ear buds in.

Older workers have a strong sense of separate spheres for work and play: the cubicle is for work, and home is for fun. But to millennials, the boundaries between work and play are fuzzier, said Michael D. Hais, co-author of “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.”

There is a big time blurring between work and fun that is even more than how it is in my life.  To recall the words of a really, really old dude, "the times they are a-changing." Again. And again.