Pana-WHAT?

Given that I'm in a department of "communication studies," it should come as no surprise that people who take our courses--indeed, even people who teach our courses--will claim that communication ("good" communication, presumably) can solve the world's problems. Sounds nice. I wish it were that simple.

As I see it, on a good day, when two or more people have the same level of communication skill and the same motivation to succeed, communication can do the magical things it claims to do. I guess we call those "win-win" games. Unfortunately, the world is full of people who either see themselves as losers, and/or want badly for you to be a loser. In these situations, communication becomes weird, competitive, emotional, irrational, strategic, and dysfunctional. Like any other tool, communication works best when people who really know their craft and who really care about the process and the product are at work.

In addition, communication is not the answer to all of our problems anyway--even when it's done well. Sometimes a whole big pile of money will beat a whole big pile of communication. Certainly in our household, a few more (read: 40 or 50 thousand more) bucks would put everyone at ease and eliminate much of the tension and bickering. Sometimes the absence of a major calamity (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, etc.) will do much to keep the mood cheery; on the other hand, there's nothing as stressful--personally and interpersonally--as trying to cope with Mother Nature when she is really pissed.

In the end, communication is one potentially important piece of the puzzle, and I really do believe there's a whole lotta hurtin' out there because people have difficulty communicating effectively. But to resurrect an old 10th grade vocabulary word: communication ain't no PANACEA.

Dark Knight: not right

OK, readers from coast to coast have been asking me to write something that's a bit more connected to popular culture. Glad to oblige!

We saw "The Dark Knight" yesterday. I was underwhelmed. Let me count the ways in which I was:

1. Hype, hype, hype. Big box office receipts. Big money for certain other people, and none for me. Not proud of the emotion, but I feel a general sense of resentment. This is not great art. There is nothing to admire here--only the level of revenue it's generating.

2. Action, action, action. Films these days try to set new records for vehicles chasing other vehicles, people falling off of buildings, people trying to hurt each other, and lots and lots of (BOOM!) explosions--with twelve special effects per minute. But less is more. And more is definitely less. Yeah, it's a cartoon, but it's still over the top.

3. Preposterous plotting. Many things made no sense whatsover. Got the Joker in custody? Do something totally stupid to enable him to escape! Cell phones rigged to track people? How could one possibly use the giant screen where all these cell-phone-derived images appear? Blow up a hospital with about a dozen pre-planted charges? No problem--it's the Joker, after all! He and his minions can sneak in just about anywhere. (He's very good at timing and orchestrating all sorts of violence to the exact moment when it needs to happen.)

4. Batman's voice. I believe one critic referred to it as a cross between Darth Vader and a grizzly bear. Sounds silly.

5. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Still kinda cute--i.e., I'd date her in real life--but not the kind of woman to be the focus of a titanic struggle, a love interest in a major motion picture. Not enough romantic gravitas there.

6. The Joker's motivation. OK, the late Heath Ledger did a nice job of acting demented, but I worry that some people believe that the world is just filled with people who like to see chaos and violence, and for no apparent reason whatsoever (like them "terrorists" we've been told to watch out for). Subliminally, the message is, some people are just plain evil, and there ain't nothin' you can do about that. I think it's a bad message in the current geopolitical context. (If you think I'm a little loopy here, understand that a recent Newsweek column suggests that our stance at Guantanamo regarding torture may have been influenced by Jack Bauer, of "24" fame. If Jack can extract a key piece of information with torture, then we should too! Even a U.S. Supreme Court justice--Antonin Scalia--has mentioned that Jack needed to use torture because, on the show, there was a nuclear warhead hidden somewhere in Los Angeles. Scalia said, "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" I wish I was making this up, but there is evidence to support the notion that a TV show has influenced our response to "terror." And I believe this Batman movie subliminally affects our view of just about anyone who resorts to violence--such people are evil, amoral sociopaths.) [See "The Fiction Behind Torture Policy" by Dahlia Lithwick, Newsweek, 8/4/08.]

7. The joke's on us: we never learn what HAPPENS to the Joker! (Even though it SEEMS to be clear what MIGHT have happened.) But in the world of Hollywood, when you see such an ambiguous ending, "sequel" is the magic word, and if we don't know for sure what happened to that guy, we may well be seeing him again. But if we do see the Joker again, who will play him? Ah, who cares? For them, it's another bazillion dollars in box office receipts and sales of little Batman figures from a special promotion at Dairy Queen or some such place.

I was ready to be dazzled, but in the end, I was frazzled. And even a little bored.

Coping with Western Civilization

Some of my students are very, very good. Others are not quite so good. Many of those "others" have difficulty dealing with details, meeting deadlines, and generally understanding what's required for someone to be successful in the Modern Industrialized World. Occasionally, I have said to such struggling individuals, "You know, you really don't HAVE to learn to function in this manner--you could, for example, build or buy a small cabin up north, fish the lakes and farm the land, and say goodbye to schedules, computers, cell phones, faxes, and bureaucracy." And sometimes I want to join them if they ever choose that route! Some cases in point:

Financial planning. Anyone who truly understands investments and taxes and the like has a leg up on me! IRAs, tax-free municipal bonds, annuities, price-to-earnings ratios, and so on (including anything that involves a "rollover" and anything where a "cost basis" needs to be calculated) are in the end a complete mystery to me. I try to rely on a couple of "professionals" to help me navigate these worlds, but I really don't have a clue as to whether I'm doing it all right, or well. For all I know, I've squandered thousands of dollars in some way or another by doing what I have been doing.

Health and dental insurance. I had a tooth extracted. Dentists say I don't absolutely have to do anything about the hole in my jaw, but they recommend either a three-tooth bridge or a dental implant. But try to figure out how that's handled by insurance! There are procedure codes, pre-treatment estimates, x-rays, and "in or out of the network" issues that need to be addressed. Yuck.

Car and home insurance. Deductibles, levels of coverage, comprehensive coverage, liability, etc. etc. might as well be written in Urdu. Once again, I pretend that I know what I'm doing, but the best I can say is that I seem to do what most people do, and I'm not a big fan of doing something just because the majority does it. (In argumentation, we might call that the fallacy of argumentum ad populum.)

If I were independently wealthy, I might just hire someone to take care of these things. But we all know what that could mean: some shyster trying to take advantage of me and my vast sums of money! Perhaps what we have here is the strongest argument for mortality: at some point, I'll never again have to worry about this stuff! (And, in the afterlife, I pray that hell is not a place where one must continuously fill out insurance forms.)

Exposure: too much and too little

Now that we are in the Internet Age (I think we can finally christen it as such, with some sort of special ceremony), we must continue to figure out the nature and dynamics of this world. As I have said more than once (but not in this venue), the Internet is like a massive social science experiment without any experimental controls. It continues to plow along, a daily mega-tsunami of messages, developing its own rules and expectations along the way, and changing the way we relate to one another and do things. And if you think about it, all of this has basically happened in just the last 10 years--to coin a new phrase, "in the blink of an eye" (remember that one--I think it will catch on). I really don't think we can say what impact all of this will have; I can't quite picture the electronic world in the year 2028.

However, I can say that with the advent of this instantaneous and wide-reaching medium of communication, there is a funny aspect that's hard to know what to do with. On the one hand, the Internet is available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and once people hear about something, the buzz can be intense and put people in a very scary fishbowl. I am thinking of poor Miss Teen South Carolina, who gave one of the most inarticulate answers ever to an interview question at a "beauty pageant." (If you haven't seen it, it is a hoot and worth 30 seconds of your time--just go to You Tube and hit "Miss Teen South Carolina.") This little slice of life has been observed by millions of Americans, both on-line and on something called television. And this 30 seconds of her life will stay with her probably forever--someone in 2028 will be able to call up this embarrassing moment in her life and play it once again for the grandkids. So that's one side of things.

On the other side, there are thousands of people out there who are bloggers, for example (gosh, I wonder who he is referring to here?) who continue to record their thoughts on-line. Now, many of these various bloggers' thoughts are not "great thoughts," but they are a hell of a lot better thoughts than those of Miss Teen South Carolina. Yet, most blogs, I'd be willing to bet, have audiences that can easily be counted on one's hands, or maybe one's hands and one's feet. (Although I've found that hash marks on a sheet of paper is an easier way to tally things; you don't have to take off your socks.) These people continue along in a totally obscure way, talking mainly to themselves. In my case, I could be sitting here totally naked, hurling epithets left and right (and those suckers can be tough to hurl after a while), doing all manner of anti-social things, and nobody would notice. So, quite ironically, we have this "modern" style of communication that's lightning fast and efficient and enables us to communicate with....absolutely nobody. Somewhere in there is a postmodern idea.

I haven't figured out what to do with this weird dichotomy/disparity, but like Sisyphus, I'll keep blogging along, howling into the wind, hoping that I say something that's memorable but won't make me the Laughing Stock of the Western World. At least, I think I know (unlike Miss Teen South Carolina) why many who live in this nation cannot locate it on a world map. But let her give you the more amusing answer!

OMG - 40 years

I attended my 40-year high school reunion last night. That's a little hard to believe, since I am only 36 years old! (I am youthing myself through positive self-affirmation.) And in the less silly, more normal sense, it's hard to believe--I asked our 18-year-old daughter who just graduated from high school if she could imagine re-visiting her classmates in the year 2048, which would be the equivalent passage of time. Oh my.

Something like 26 of my classmates are dead--there's a wake-up call! And although many of them look almost exactly like they did in 1968, others have had mastectomies, or hip replacements, or are in wheelchairs. Many of the men are a couple of pant sizes larger. And with one exception, our favorite teachers have either headed to the Great Beyond or are struggling to stay on this side of it.

I re-connected with several people who are still very sweet and very special--some more so now than in the past. And I made a valiant attempt to figure out what happened with some old romances--at age 17, you don't know what you're doing in those situations, and you are ill-equipped to handle them. I tried to ask the sorts of questions that would resolve those old mysteries, and I got at least half way toward a better grasp of things.

Quite a few people who are members of the Sibley High School class of 1968 and live in the Twin Cities did not attend this event. I always wonder why--it's not as though these gatherings are frequent; the last one was in 1998, and there may not be another one ever again. Whether one goes is kind of like a Rorshach test; it says something about one's temperament and one's life--I'm just not sure WHAT it says, though. I only know that at this point, having connections to the various people who form the tapestry of my life has value, and that the threads which make up that tapestry are all important in their own way.

If Aristotle has flaws, then so can I

By the end of this month, all of you will be able to purchase that fascinating textbook, Argumentation: Critical Thinking in Action, published through iUniverse. Get one for yourself, and several for your friends! And, they make a nice alternative to those run-of-the-mill baby or wedding shower gifts. Just go to www.iUniverse.com. Best of all, 20 percent of the sale price goes to a very worthy local charity. (OK, that charity is me--but I need the dough!)

Despite the relief connected to finishing that particular project, one also develops a nagging feeling that "I could have done better." Or worse, that "I made some mistakes." But you know what? People who are better, smarter, and more famous than I (are any of those things even possible? ha ha) have made mistakes, too.

Take our old friend Aristotle. (I know him well, so I just call him "Ari.") Turns out his famous book on rhetoric (a "Bible" of sorts for those of us in communication studies) has statements that are just plain wrong, or totally silly!

In book I, chapter 7 of The Rhetoric, Ari says: "If the largest member of one class surpasses the largest member of another, then the one class surpasses the other; and if one class surpasses another, then the largest member of one surpasses the largest member of the other. Thus, if the tallest man is taller than the tallest woman, then men in general are taller than women."

Now hold the phone! That ain't necessarily so! At best, if the tallest man is taller than the tallest woman the probability is perhaps higher that men are in general taller than women. But it certainly isn't an assumption that is entirely safe to make--I'd almost call it an error in logic. Maybe, somewhere in the Chernobyl area, there's an 11-foot-tall woman, a result of the radiation from the 1986 accident, who is taller than any man on the planet. Aristotle may be wrong!

Other things that Ari says just seem outdated and silly. For instance, in chapter 5, book I he says "The constituents of wealth are: plenty of coined money and territory; the ownership of numerous, large, and beautiful estates; also the ownership of numerous and beautiful implements, live stock, and slaves. [emphasis added] All these kinds of property are our own, are secure, gentlemanly, and useful." Sounds like a weird combination of J.R. Ewing, Ted Turner, and some southern plantation owner. Aristotle may be a capitalist, racist pig! And, let us not also forget this comment in Book I, chapter 9: "Again, one quality of action is nobler than another if it is that of a naturally finer being: thus a man's will be nobler than a woman's." He's a bleeping sexist, too!

"I could go on and on," as they say, with lots of other examples of this nature from Aristotle's Rhetoric. But I can't do all the work for you--go find your own silly "Aristotle-isms"! But the bigger point is this: if Aristotle can be flawed, then it's OK if my book is a little flawed--because in the end, I think his flaws are more glaring than any of mine! Whew, that's a relief.

The world ain't no meritocracy

Considering the different realities that are a part of life (see post of June 8), I am also struck by the fact that people in this world may or may not advance in proportion to their ability, their intelligence, or their general worth as human beings. In a nutshell, the world ain't no meritocracy.

Consider a former advisee whose dad is a well-known actor. He was a decent student and a nice kid, but in the end, a "C" student without particular academic talents. But, in the last week, I have seen this kid pictured with his dad in two national magazines. Why? They have co-authored a cookbook. I can assure you that without the "dad connections," this person's writing would not be featured and promoted in an issue of People.

Consider a person in the legal field for whom I wrote more than 50 radio commentaries back in the 1980s. He wasn't paid much to read them on-air ("only" $100), but he kept $70 and I got $30 for each one. Sometimes all the ideas and the language were his, but sometimes I had a meaningful role to play in both coming up with an idea and expressing it in words. But, the nation heard him, not me. Any "benefits" that came with such exposure came to him, not me. And 70 percent of the money came to him, not me.

And, consider the bonuses and various types of "golden parachutes" that are provided for CEOs. When someone receives additional compensation that goes into the scores of millions of dollars, one has to wonder about the general lack of justice in the world. These people are not a thousand times brighter or better than you and I, but they can make a thousand times more.

In the end, I try to be thankful for who I am (warts and all) and what I have (which is a lot). And I pray a Unitarian/existentialist/humanistic prayer that I do not become one of those people who stands at a freeway off-ramp with a cardboard sign begging for money. But you know what? All it takes is one health crisis, one bad decision, or one unfortunate moment in time and "Mr. Ph.D." becomes "Mr. Please Donate to Me." (Oh my. That's a rather silly turn-of-phrase--barf bags available upon request!)