Pedantic is not a compliment

It is a list that gets longer.  A list that gets longer primarily because I am retired, which has released me from the otherwise stressful and time-consuming tasks of grading essays and attending committee meetings.

What is the list?

It is not a to-do list.  Those who have known me for a long time know all too well that I don't do anything.  I used to be a living example of GBS' "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  Now, I neither do nor teach!

The list is perhaps pedantic, reflecting my old profession.  A "pedantic professor" is an alluring alliteration.  It is also tautological; aren't professors pedantic?

The list of authors of fictional works that I have recently read:

Tahmima Anam's The Startup Wife;

S.J. Sindu's Blue-Skinned Gods and Marriage of a Thousand Lies; 

Anuk Arudpragasam's A Passage North;

Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future.

These authors get added to the list that includes Alan Lightman and Jhumpa Lahiri.

What is so special about these authors?

They earned their PhDs before they became fiction writers of note.  Not honorary doctorates, but earned!

Anam, with Bangladeshi roots, has a PhD in anthropology from Harvard.  Sindu's PhD in creative writing is from Florida State University, and is part of the vast Tamil diaspora.  Arudpragasam, a Sri Lankan Tamil, has a PhD in philosophy at Columbia University. 

Compared to these young authors, Jhumpa Lahiri is old, and Lightman, and Robinson are way old!  Oh, their credentials: Lahiri has a PhD in renaissance studies; Lightman is a big-time physicist as well with a PhD from Caltech; and Robinson's PhD is in English.

They have doctorates and are also wonderful storytellers.  Their stories are statements on the human condition, which will make us think about the path ahead that we humans need to carefully and consciously tread.

Whether they are anthropologists or physicists, the stories they tell easily and immediately convey the remarkable breadth and depth of their understanding.  When Anam writes about the startup culture, it is more than mere anthropology at work.  Robinson's science fiction is not perhaps what one would expect from an English major.

(I am confident that my old classmate and friend, Vijay, would have easily belonged to this group of PhD writers had he been born in the US, which allows the youth to take the time that they need to tap into their potential.  The India of old, on the other hand, compelled him to make a choice early in his life, which is what he did.)

But, I am not sure if reading fiction is something that people do anymore in huge numbers.  I couldn't get students to get excited even about the short stories that I curated for them in a course that was about understanding the world through short stories.

Quite a few years ago, I noticed on the first day of classes that a female student had the last name of Steinbeck.  As students introduced themselves one after another, when it came to her turn, I remember asking her if she was related to the Steinbeck.  When she excitedly said yes, I asked her if she was asked that question all the time.  Her response shocked me: In her couple of years in college, I was the first one to ever ask that question.  Naturally, I took a couple of minutes to engage the class about Steinbeck, and it was even more depressing that very few had ever read anything at all by Steinbeck.

Now, in retirement, I can read whatever I want like I did before I was laid off.  The only difference is that I now don't have to ever think about whether what I read would be of interest to students.

And I can develop my own lists that mean nothing to other people!

We have digits

A few years ago, Tunku Varadarajan, who used to write for the Wall Street Journal--when it was a respectable publication before it became a Faux-News-wannabe rag pretending to be a newspaper--wrote in a tongue-in-cheek commentary on why Indians love Facebook: "They take to it naturally and with great passion. It allows them to do two things they love: Tell everyone what they are doing; and stick their noses into other people's business."

As one can imagine, Varadarajan's commentary was not well received by Indians. 

But it is not only Indians who tell everyone what they are doing and stick their noses into other people's business.  On Facebook everyone is an Indian.  As a New Yorker cartoon memorably summed up a long time ago during the very early days of the dot.com era, on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog!

It has been years since I deleted my Facebook account after temporarily suspending it.  I don't imagine human behavior having changed for the better in Facebook and Instagram and whatever else that kids and adults alike seem to enjoy.

If anything, the recent years of Twitter have convinced me that human behavior has worsened with social media.  People like the former President knew how to tap into this base human instincts inside us and rose to power.  The rabid humanity is forcing one of my favorite columnists and Twitter pundits, Charles Blow, to withdraw from Twitter.  Blow writes:

Social media is full of hate speech, bots, vitriol, attack armies, screamers and people who live for the opportunity to be angry.

For people like me, that meant half my time on Twitter on any given day could be spent blocking and muting accounts. It’s not because I’m fragile or averse to opposing views, but rather that much of what I was seeing clearly crossed over into hostility and sometimes harassment. I can’t even count the number of racial slurs that have been directed at me, or attacks on my sexuality, or allusions to my family. And, of course, there is the occasional threat of violence.

It is not difficult to imagine what Blow is describing.  In this post in April 2018, I quoted Tristan Harris who said:

Social media was supposed to be about, “Hey, Grandma. How are you?” Now it’s like, “Oh my God, did you see what she wore yesterday? What a fucking cow that bitch is.” Everything is toxic — and that has to do with the internet itself. It was founded to connect people all over the world. But now you can meet people all over the world and then murder them in virtual reality and rape their pets.

Blow has received threats, even to his life.  He writes that by pulling back, he is "slowly returning to me, the person, and away from the persona."

Who are we, and what is social media doing to us humans?

Tish Harrison Warren joins a long list of people who worry about the increasing digitization of life, and wants us to reconnect with material things:

We are made to enjoy the physical presence of other human beings. We are made to enjoy rainstorms or sunshine or walks in the woods. We are made to enjoy touchable things. We cannot escape or overcome this need through technology. Our attempts to do so go against the grain of our deepest human needs and longings.

This gregarious hermit has been living such a life--out of choice, and without any remorse.

Warren adds:

Claims that we can fundamentally alter how human beings have learned, lived and interacted together in essential institutions and activities like education, worship, friendships, dating, communities, work and parenting without large unforeseen social consequences smacks of the hubris and reductionism.

So, what should one do?

We have to be cautious and wise about introducing devices into our lives that fundamentally change how humans have interacted since time immemorial. We have to plunge ourselves primarily into the natural world and embodied human relationships, with all the complexity, challenges, inconvenience and pain that entails.

I hope you will think about that.  

“To choose is to renounce”

The title of this post, which I came across in this essay, sounds even better in the original French, even though I don't know that language: “choisir, c’est renoncer.”

By choosing one out of the many options that we might have, we are essentially sacrificing all those other options.  And if ever if we have even a little bit of unease with the choice that we made, then forever we could be haunted by the "what if ...?"

A few weeks ago, a couple came over for dinner.  We presented the drink options: wine, soda, and water.  Then came the qualifiers: Red wine, or white wine? Grapefruit soda or blood orange soda?

"There is something called a blood orange?"

I told them that I hadn't known about such an orange until I came to Oregon.  And how it was only here that I also knew about, and came to enjoy, Cara Cara oranges, which are pinkish inside.

I laughingly told them that this is the problem in rich countries: There are always too many choices. 

As brown immigrants, they knew what I was referring to.  Back in our respective old countries, especially when we were younger, there was no choice; we ate and drank whatever that we were given.  I laugh within when I see mothers here in America asking their toddler children what they would like to eat; what does a child know!  It is no laughing matter, however, when a child chooses a super-gulp that the parent is happy to pay for without worrying about the long-term health consequences.

The modern economy presents us with a gazillion choices in everything.  Fifteen years ago, when TED Talk was a thing, Barry Schwartz made a compelling argument about the tyranny of choice.  While we might think that more choices are good, it turns out that decision-making becomes a Himalayan challenge when we are forced to select one out of many.  Have you not been stumped by the health care plans that you are asked to choose from?  Or, heck, even the coffee options?

So, now, we have to learn how to choose.  And want to make sure that we choose well so that we don't have regrets later.

Or, as a first step, we can simply learn to reduce our choices even as the modern economy is hell bent on further increasing the options.  I would think that deciding from fewer choices is easier and a lot less stressful.  And, therefore, less anxiety over what we might have missed out on.

The moral of the story is not difficult to figure out: Without being hasty, reduce the unnecessary decisions that you have to make in a day, and try to get going with the choices that you have.

So, yes, "to choose is to renounce."  Living such a life of systematic and conscious saying no is also perhaps why I come across as a person who knows what he wants, and is quite decisive.  I try my best to ignore the gazillion other options that are not really meaningful choices at all.  Blood orange soda is such an easy call!