In defense of "Seven Pounds"

A few months ago (August 9, to be precise) the Contentious Introvert did some serious ragging on the movie "Dark Knight." I thought then and I think now that the movie was an implausible, over-the-top, over-hyped special effects disaster--a cacophony of nothing. Among other things, I didn't think much of Batman's voice; I didn't think Maggie Gyllenhaal had sufficient romantic gravitas, and I thought the ending sucked because it was too ambiguous. As is often the case, Contentious Man was swimming upstream on this one: many critics adored the movie, yet here was some yahoo from Minneapolis (me) who has zero film credentials offering his mighty but contrary opinions.

And now, once again, the Introvert may be swimming upstream a little bit. Although some critics have given high praise to the movie "Seven Pounds," other critics have torn it to shreds and are regarding it as one of the very worst movies to be released in this year or any year. Well, although it's not a perfect movie perhaps, I am here to say that it is so much better crafted than "Dark Knight," so much more nuanced than "Dark Knight," and so much more emotionally compelling than "Dark Knight" that I am inclined to put the movie on my All-Time Top Ten list (maybe hanging in there at 7th or 8th).

Is the movie implausible? Not compared to many these days (read: ANY action/adventure film for starters), and at least every part of the plot fits together or is foreshadowed in some way. And woe be unto any viewer or critic who pans "Seven Pounds" while simultaneously recommending "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." A guy who keeps getting younger: jeez, THAT'S not implausible now, is it? "Seven Pounds" is also generally more plausible than "24" for the most part; hard to believe but true that we only know six days of Jack Bauer's entire life--but what a six days they are!

Is the movie "melodramatic"? I consider that a cheap shot, and a convenient way to dismiss the fact that it does pull on the heartstrings. But dammit--I don't really see anything here that's maudlin, mawkish, saccharine, or even super-manipulative. "Seven Pounds" is a distinctive and memorable story that actually gets a person to reflect and to feel, and I think Will Smith and Rosario Dawson are believable and first-rate. And yes, I tried to fight back the tears at the end, but I couldn't; that alone says a lot about the very real and legitimate emotions that this movie taps into. And unlike leaving the theater after "Dark Knight"--when I just felt numb from all the craziness--when I departed after "Seven Pounds," I felt a little more human, in the best sense of that word. So, the Contentious Introvert puts his thumb way up for "Seven Pounds." (Take THAT, you wise-ass critics!)

My first 55-word story

Fifty-five word stories are all the rage these days. (Well, that may be putting it a bit strongly, but they are popular.) I had no idea where the fifty-five word story came from--and what's so damn magic about the number 55. But, like (most) everything else (except maybe why people ever liked game show host Wink Martindale), it has an explanation.

According to that wondrous source Wikipedia (which HAS to be a good source because the Contentious Introvert is included by name in its entry on "nonverbal communication"), "the origin of 55 Fiction can be traced to a short story writing contest organized by New Times, an independent alternative weekly in San Luis Obispo, in 1987. The idea was proposed by New Times founder and publisher Steve Moss. New Times, while often mistakenly believed to be part of the New Times chain of papers, is actually part of the smaller, San Luis Obispo-county based New Times Media Group, which also owns the Santa Maria Sun." (Probably WAY more than you really wanted to know!) But, more to the point:

A literary work will be considered 55 Fiction if it has:

1. Fifty-five words or less (A non-negotiable rule)
2. A setting,
3. One or more characters,
4. Some conflict, and
5. A resolution. (Not limited to moral of the story)

Now, I wrote my first 55er before reading these "rules" on Wikipedia, so I don't know if my story meets all of them. But, what the hey? I'm just gonna post it. And so here is the (drum roll....) world debut of my first 55-word story:

He never appreciated the utter insanity in the world until a sweet, concerned student gave him a book: The Backside of Satan. Therein he learned that the author's son, living in India, was ill. Why? Because in India, "they worship false gods." Reading such nonsense, he took his first leap into the pit of despair.

Hmm. Autobiographical, perhaps? Not sure one could make up stuff like this. Unfortunately.

On that cheery note, a Merry Christmas to all!

A well-earned respite

As of 60 minutes ago, I'm completely through the fall academic term. Sometimes it takes me until after Christmas to read all the papers, score all the exams, tally the points, and deal with "oddball" cases. But this year I was bound and determined to be finished, period, by December 19. It's a well-earned respite; I don't have to be anywhere for two-and-one-half weeks.

As I have said somewhere in a previous post (I'm not in the mood to find it!), life in general is full of demands, burdens, tasks, and challenges. Western Civilization certainly takes a good chunk of the blame; we are a culture that is built around being "productive," accomplishing tasks, filling out forms, meeting deadlines, yada yada yada. In some ways, it's a wonder that any of us keeps our sanity in the midst of it all. I'd like to say that the Christmas/New Year's season has been historically "restful," but more often than not, I've seen it as yet another series of tasks and responsibilities--enough so that I'm usually just relieved that it's the New Year and life will sort of go back to normal.

But now, today, I have 17 straight days where I really don't have to do ANYTHING, at least for work. Part of the academic life, it seems to me, involves a trade-off that I haven't always been able to take advantage of: namely, to have a modest, secure income in exchange for the ability to step back a bit, smell the roses, and even THINK about roses. It is such a liberating feeling that I hardly know what to do with myself at the moment. But damn, I think I don't mind trying to figure that out. Two weeks of freedom: it's hard to find in this world.

Things I will never do in my life

As I have reached an even riper old age as of November 27, I realize, to employ a rather trite golf metaphor, that I am "playing the back nine." Such a passage causes one to consider those things left to do in life--and conversely, those things that one plans to NEVER do. And sad as it may be to acknowledge, there are some things that I shall never do, including:

• Buying and/or wearing shoes with tassles. I'm sorry, but my masculinity is already sufficiently challenged, and there's nothing like those tassles that says "WUSS."
• Bungee jumping. I do not have a morbid fear or heights, but I certainly respect them. And nothing is quite so terrifying as leaning forward and propelling one's self head-first toward the earth. I'd even consider skydiving over bungee jumping, but that's not a likely scenario, either.
• Eating organ meats of any sort. After 38 years as a vegetarian, I can still feel tempted by a nice boneless chicken breast, but you can forget about headcheese, liver, kidneys, and brains. Ain't gonna happen.
• Speaking in tongues. Organized religion is alien enough without some of its most bizarre rituals, and speaking in tongues is high on that list. But I'm readily freaked out by even the more "normal" Christian practices of communion and putting ashes on one's forehead. Any sane and empathic God would understand my reticence.
• Seeing the movie "Waterworld" with Kevin Costner. This may be the stupidest movie I have ever seen, and I've had the misfortune of viewing it three times--once as a captive audience on an airplane to Malaysia. It is hard to believe that this is the same Kevin Costner who was in "Dances With Wolves," one of the better movies of the '90s. Go figure. Never again.
• Getting a tatoo. Jeez, them things are all the rage, and many people under 25 look like they have botannical murals embedded on their limbs. (OK, I'm exaggerating, but to me it's just not a good look.) Reminds me a bit too much of a lizard. But, I said I was playing the back nine--I'm an old geezer who likes to see a little skin. Hey--now don't take THAT the wrong way!

To sorta quote Mary Poppins, "these are a few of my least favorite things," even more so than biting dogs or stinging bees. But I WILL take a bowl of crisp apple strudel, although I'll forgo the raindrops and roses. (I'll be damned if I can find a way to end this post gracefully! THE END.)

Thankful for Thanksgiving

I've never really written this, but I have certainly said many times that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Why? Let me count the ways:

1. Thanksgiving may be the only major holiday that has not been commercialized. There are no cards to buy, no gifts to give, no huge hype about Circuit City holding its Annual Pilgrim Sale; in fact, almost everything commercial is closed. Yes, "black Friday" is the day after, but that's a Christmas thing, not a Thanksgiving thing.

2. You don't have to believe anything dogmatic. I don't have to stand in a church and mutter something about the Thanksgiving Angel who came down from Heaven to rescue the people of Israel, holding a golden chalice in one hand and a magical spear in the other. I don't have to believe anything, and I don't have to pretend that cultural myths are the same as historical fact--all I need is to be thankful.

3. I've heard that there's some food involved. Thanksgiving is the #1 opportunity to pig out, and even for us vegetarians, who don't "pig" too much, there's a lot to like. It's a time to loosen the belt, chow down, and ease into a food-induced stupor. Food is my drug of choice.

4. By its nature, Thanksgiving emphasizes personal connections. People spend some quality and quantity time with those who are near and dear to them. It's one of the few truly family-focused events of the year. (One could say that Christmas also qualifies, but all the gifts and glitter and hustle 'n' bustle can kind of obscure all that.)

5. It's near my birthday. And in fact, this year Thanksgiving is ON my birthday! And when my birthday rolls around, at least the level of physical and verbal abuse I receive wanes a bit, and there are even a few presents to be had. What's not to like about that?

I'd say those are five reasons that work for me. Happy Thanksgiving to all of my thousands of devoted readers from Singapore to Cincinnati. There's a lot to be thankful for. (And if you don't like sentences that end in prepositions, there's a lot for which to be thankful!)

Obama the Antichrist

Oh please, say it ain't so! I'm reading "Belief Watch" by Lisa Miller in the current issue of Newsweek, and I discover that there's a website called RaptureReady.com that is obsessed with the apocalypse and the rapture. And we learn that the head of this site, a fellow by the name of Todd Strandberg, even has a "Rapture Index." For some unknown reason, if the index goes over 160, "fasten your seat belts." And--gulp--Obama's win pushed the index to 161! (Ah, the mystical appeal of putting something into numbers. But, these numbers can and do change. As noted in the site, some 45 factors are taken into account; the index has been as high as 170 in 2008, and even today, shortly after the Newsweek column, the index is down to 159--whew, good news!)

So how can Obama be the Antichrist? Well, recently one of the winning lottery numbers in Obama's home state of Illinois was 666--need we say more, or think more? Seems self-evident that Barack is it. Not only that, but he's a nice guy! According to Miller's column, the Antichrist "will be a sweet-talking world leader who gathers governments and economies under his command to further his own evil agenda." I'm sure we can all remember Barack's platform, which included his daily call for Total World Domination.

At this website I found that there are other eerie, spooky signs of the Second Coming. Did you know that JFK got 666 votes for the Democratic nomination at the 1956 DNC? Did you know that Ronald Wilson Reagan has six letters in each of his three names? Did you know that numerologically, both the names of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and William Jefferson Clinton (supposedly) add up to 666? And did you know that the Contentious Introvert once ate 666 kernels of niblets corn in a single sitting? We're talking convergence here.

All this stuff would be funny....if it wasn't funny. According to Miller, one-third of white evangelicals believe the world will end in their lifetimes. I can only regard such beliefs as mass hysteria, colossal ignorance, and total idiocy. A significant portion of my professional life is devoted to helping people think more clearly, but it's an uphill battle. Whether I pass on tomorrow or 50 years from tomorrow, I fear that these yahoos will still be around, poisoning the brains of any gullible person who wants to believe them.

The limits to voting

Now that the 2008 election is a memory (although still not a distant memory!), it's worth observing that many people are proud to have done their civic duty--they have voted. And of course, given a choice between not voting and voting, going to the polls is the better choice. However, my concern is that civic involvement is often equated with voting, as if it is the only relevant or important political act. Some people may say to themselves, "I've done my duty; voting is what politics is all about; I voted, and now I can kick up my feet and rest until the next election in 2010."

However, the reality is that there are lots of political activites that are way more effective and way more important than simply voting. For example, my mom was a lobbyist for the state AFL-CIO. She testified in state legislative committee hearings on a wide variety of bills; her input and that of her organization had real impact at times. Showing up at your local city council meeting has more impact than one vote in November has; so too with writing a letter to one's representative, or the local newspaper, or trying to influence friends and neighbors, or volunteering to work for an organization that promotes specific stands on specific issues.

In short, voting is just the tip of the political iceberg. If you voted, good for you--but don't think that vote is the be-all and end-all of political participation. It simply isn't.

Books in my life

When I graduated from college, way-back-when, I obviously had a Bachelor's Degree, but I still felt pretty ignorant. And so I spent a fair amount of time in my 20s reading, trying to fill in at least a few of the gaps. I realized that I had I had never read Moby Dick, never read Crime and Punishment, and so on.

Out of that experience I came to know many works that have stayed with me over the years. Some probably demand a re-reading; I wonder if they would hold up with the passage of time. But among my most influential books are these ten:

• The Age of Reason by Jean Paul Sartre - got me thinking about existentialism in an artistic way
• Irrational Man by William Barrett - got me thinking about existentialism in an academic way
• Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller - freed me up to think a little more radically
• Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins - ditto
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - double ditto (and he's quite the wordsmith, too)
• The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud - helped me understand the psychology of religion
• Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell - made me realize the shortcomings of dogma
• The End of Faith by Sam Harris - a more recent read, but an important one
• Earthwalk by Philip Slater - got me to re-think Western culture and its values
• Animal Liberation by Peter Singer - propelled me toward vegetarianism

Of course, it's also worth mentioning The World According to Garp, Gandhi: An Autobiography, The Jungle, Breakfast of Champions (Vonnegut), Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche), The Faith of a Heretic (Walter Kaufmann), Fear of Flying (Erica Jong), and Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Postman & Weingartner). Suffice it to say that the world of books has been an important world that has shaped my view of just about everything. As with my fairly recent post about songs (October 13), feel free to nominate your personal favorites--I'm always looking for something that's worth reading.

Please "spread the wealth"

This whacky Presidential campaign continues unabated. In some ways, I can hardly wait for November 5 and the end to this madness. On the other hand, many of us will probably feel like heroin junkies who suddenly don't know where they're going to get their next fix.

The newest whacky issue is that the Democrats are "socialists" who want to "spread the wealth." Say what you will that's unflattering about the Obama campaign, but I don't think simplistic labels and incessant name-calling are at its heart. But McCain/Palin love to throw out nasty labels that are presumed to be negative. With respect to taxes, let's re-consider that "spread the wealth" metaphor and whether Obama is a "socialist."

To be blunt, I think we desperately need to "spread the wealth" a bit. Having lived in L.A. for 16 months way-back-when, I can tell you that one afternoon drive through Beverly Hills ought to convince you that there is an obscene level of wealth in our nation, and an obscene disparity in wealth. Here in the Twin Cities, a leisurely drive through parts of Minnetonka, North Oaks, or Edina will convince you of the same thing.

Enter the Obama tax plan. From the McCain response, you'd think Obama was proposing a 90 percent tax rate for the rich. But the hard reality--the actual numbers--suggest that an Obama tax plan would, at most, tweak those high salaries somewhat. We're talking a very small percentage here--an amount that is just plain affordable and almost inconsequential to these people. Yes, the rich became rich partly because of their drive, their hard work, their creativity, and their willingness to take risks. And they deserve to be rewarded for that--absolutely nobody is saying otherwise. But, when you're making into the 7 figures, you should rightly expect to pay more in taxes than the secretary who's making 38 grand. And, by the way, how did many of these people GET to a 7 figure salary? On the backs of many other people who are often paid peanuts.

So I say, spread the damn wealth a little. We are so far away from "socialism," even with the Obama tax plan, that it isn't even funny. And it really ISN'T funny; in a nation of such alleged wealth, there is a disparity in means that approaches shamefulness.

That dirty word, "eloquence"

One of a zillion interesting and distinctive features of the current Presidential race came into focus during the last "debate" (joint appearance, really) between McCain and Obama. And the lesson here is that anything can be turned on its head; all things, good and bad, are sort of a two-sided coin. It's the sort of thing for which we "Sophists" are notorious: finding what Aristotle would call topoi, the possible lines of argument. It's the kind of argument that can help O.J. beat a murder rap, the kind of argument that says "work will set you free," the kind of argument that morphs into "sophistry," in the pejorative sense of that word.

This week's "morphing" involves the word "eloquent." We haven't had a President or Presidential candidate who's been called "eloquent" since probably JFK. Even Ronald Reagan, often considered a capable speaker and "The Great Communicator," wasn't really "eloquent." But Barack Obama is so regarded.

Now, you'd think that being eloquent was an inherently "good" thing. You'd think that eloquence is to be admired. However, in the case of Obama, eloquence--according to McCain--is essentially a way to "sweet talk" and to mislead an audience. He essentially made that point two or three times in their last meeting. This is all very clever, I must admit: suddenly eloquence is a bad thing. You've got to give those types of spins a tip of the cap. That little bulldog, John McCain, probably managed to make some people re-think his opponent's ability to, of all things, capture the imagination of an audience. I didn't think I'd see the day when eloquence could become a dirty word.

Songs in the Key of Life

Hundreds of notes from coast to coast, all saying the same thing: whatever happened to the Contentious Introvert? He hasn't posted anything in nearly a month! Stop fighting back the tears--I'm here again, if only for a brief post. (Other aspects of life have been time-consuming and demanding; I do have a life beyond cyberspace--well, sort of.)

The only thing that's on my mind at the moment is music--in particular, songs that have a magical quality and seem to last. Since headphones with five pre-set FM stations are an integral part of my running regimen, I listen to music several hours a week as I'm tromping down the street, through Woodlake Nature Center, or around a lake. And I realize that certain songs never fail to grab me. For example:

• "So Hard to Go" by Tower of Power: a winner from start to finish; love them horns
• "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes: I could listen to the piano solo halfway through over and over
• "Midnight at the Oasis" by Maria Muldaur: sultry and a little quirky
• "This Will Be" by Natalie Cole: my running pace always picks up a bit
• "Been to Canan" by Carole King: has a haunting quality
• "Heat Wave" by Linda Ronstadt: her encore song at an L.A. concert I attended many years ago
• "Somewhere Out There" by Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram: OK, a little corny, but poignant
• "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones: their best song as far as I'm concerned
• "The Long and Winding Road" by the Beatles: wistful
• "In My Life" sung by Judy Collins: equally wistful
• "Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston: big pipes!
• "This Kiss" by Faith Hill: got me through mile 25 of the 1998 TC Marathon

Well, those are a few of my nominees. Feel free to nominate your own songs.

New lows in public discourse

It is incredibly painful to stand by and watch the current Presidential election campaign. Having spent the better part of my adult life trying to get people to think more clearly, I can only respond to what's going on now with despair. The 2008 Presidential election is a type of final exam on the intelligence of the American electorate, and I'm not sure that they are going to pass.

When, in today's Star Tribune, syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. writes that John McCain is running "a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign of distraction and diversion," he is exactly right. And let's try to put partisan politics aside at this point--this is not about "stands on the issues," it's about a manner of dealing with these issues in the form of public discourse.

Whether it's the "right" policy or not, Obama has called for tax cuts for all U.S. citizens, except those who earn more than $250,000. For McCain to say that Obama will "raise our taxes" is a bald-faced lie. To belittle Obama's resume with a running mate who's monumentally unqualified to step in as our Commander in Chief is monumental hypocrisy. To make light of someone who has been a "community organizer" flies in the face of what Republicans claim to be about: local initiative in place of big government. (Ironically, what Obama has done is a version of what Bush Senior used to call "a thousand points of light.") Supporting sex education for kids in kindergarten is not teaching them the details of the Kama Sutra; it's helping them learn that there is such a thing as "bad touch" and that they should not be sexually exploited. And for the umpteenth time, the war in Iraq is not and never was a "war against terrorism."

TAXES!--9/11!--SEX EDUCATION FOR 6-YEAR-OLDS!--TERRORISM! Just keep saying that shit, over and over, and people come to believe it. Hitler's so-called "big lie" was no bigger. This truly is a disgraceful campaign, and I can only hope that 50.01 percent of the American electorate, representing 50.01 percent of the nation's electoral votes, will be able to see through all this. If not, I hope there's a little apartment in, say, Vancouver that I can rent as I flee to a place that is more sane--which right now is just about anywhere.

"Winning" wars (yeah, right)

I think that I am going to puke if I ever again hear the claim that we are "winning" the war in Iraq. I'd like to be tactful, but people who say things like this are IDIOTS, plain and simple.

The idea of "winning" a war is so...20th century. Yes, the Japanese signed an agreement in 1945 after we bombed the crap out of them, and this agreement ended a war. We "won." But the "war on terror" is not a war against a specific nation-state; it's not a war that we can "win" or "lose," strictly speaking. There will be no armistice agreement. It's not a war that has a precise beginning and end. In short, it's not a football game. (U.S. wins on a late field goal, 17-14! Hooray!)

Jeez, let's do a little "game analysis." This "win" has cost us half a trillion dollars. It has killed several thousand U.S. service people, and probably several hundred thousand Iraqis. It has probably re-invigorated those who would seek to employ "terror," both inside and outside of Iraq. It has seen us abuse prisoners, both in Iraq and at Guantanamo, in the name of "freedom," and make us appear no better than our "enemies." And--irony of all ironies--although it's now being called a war against "terrorism," it was never intended as such and is poorly designed to deal with the "real" terrorists, who were never in Iraq in the first place! And yet some people have the gall to suggest that we are "winning."

Wins and losses: our sports metaphors can imprison our brains. They can mislead us, in deep and important ways. We simply have to get past them if we are to understand what's going on in the world.

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!)

Nibbling on bacon while jingin the jango

As long as I'm citing verse these days (see previous post), I want to remind you all of a particular song and its lyric line. I was "runnin' to the oldies" the other day, listening to 105.7 FM while I trudged down 70th Street in Richfield, when up came that classic tune, "Muskrat Love." I'm thinking, the Captain and Toni Tennille got pretty lucky with this one--it's not exactly Art for the Ages. But after the song plays, what does the DJ add? That this tune was first recorded by the guy in Texas who wrote it--he called it "Muskrat Candlelight," but it didn't catch on, and then the band "America" released it as "Muskrat Love," and it didn't catch on for them either. How in the world could such failure be possible, given the profound lyrics of this piece? I include them herewith:

Muskrat, muskrat candlelight
Doin the town and doin it right
In the evenin
Its pretty pleasin

Muskrat susie, muskrat sam
Do the jitterbug out in muskrat land
And they shimmy
And sammys so skinny

And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed
Singin and jingin the jango
Floatin like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love

Nibbling on bacon, chewin on cheese
Sammy says to susie honey, would be please by my missus?
And she says yes
With her kisses

And now he's ticklin her fancy
Rubbin her toes
Muzzle to muzzle, now anything goes
As they wriggle, and sue starts to giggle

And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed
Singin and jingin the jango
Floatin like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love

La da da da da ....

Meanwhile, yours truly, the Contentious Introvert (who wanted to be the Howling Wolf, only that name was taken) writes his share of stuff, including a textbook that's within weeks of being published. Yet, HE SOMEHOW WONDERS IF HIS WRITING WILL EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH! Hey--if "nibbling on bacon, chewin on cheese" is sufficiently profound for three different artists to record it, and to make money off of it, then dammit, I'm good enough, too. (Aren't I? Maybe?) Anyway, here's another shake of the head along with a little muttering and eye-rolling; the world is certifiably bizarre. But I will keep jingin the jango! (if I ever figure out what in the hell that means!)

Different and separate realities

Hard as I may try not to think this way, I am continually aware of the many realities that make up "reality." As I am keyboarding this sentence, some woman in Malaysia is giving birth; some guy in Belgium may be falling to his death on a construction project; and a whole lotta people are simply sleeping in Eugene, Oregon.

I'm reading the Star Tribune yesterday--a piece on the OpEd page by Michael Gerson of the Washington Post. He's talking about Joseph Kony, "a barbarian who threatens regional stability in Africa." Here's the lead paragraph:

"WASHINGTON - A friend, the head of a major aid organization, tells of how his workers in eastern Congo a few years ago chanced upon a group of shell-shocked women and children in the bush. A militia had kidnapped a number of families and forced the women to kill their husbands with machetes, under the threat that their sons and daughters would be murdered if they refused. Afterward the women were raped by more than 100 soldiers; the children were spectators at their own, private genocide."

I try to take all of this in as I drink coffee and eat my raisin bran. And I do not wonder in the least why I resonate to the word "absurd" as a way to conceive of human existence. These different realities also explain why my all-time favorite poem is "Musee de Beaux Arts" by Auden; it's on the wall in my office, and it captures the same bizarre juxtaposition of multiple realities:

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-- W. H. Auden

I try to be thankful for what I have, and where I am. And all the while, I am keenly aware that other people are in other places and have other realities. And some of those realities are simply so gruesome that one is left feeling quite powerless.

Fundamentalist rant

Currently reading The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. This book won a Pulitzer Prize; it basically explains how 9/11 became 9/11, going back the better part of a century to help us understand what has gone on in Egypt, in Afghanistan, in Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the Middle East that foreshadowed where we are today.

In many ways, the book is spooky and forces one to acknowledge that there are two radically different value systems and mindsets out there: one that promotes religious totalitarianism, and one that promotes religious pluralism. There is a traditional mindset and a modern mindset; a mindset that worships freedom and one that is wary of it; one that welcomes diversity and change and one that does not.

In my view, the two biggest obstacles to world peace at the moment would be fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity. They are both quite scary. The Looming Tower tells us quite a bit about the Islamic version; Sam Harris's The End of Faith does the same with both Christianity and Islam.

I am afraid that in my lifetime, I will not see organized religion--at least, the fundamentalist versions of it--be reformed in any meaningful way. But someday--maybe a century or two from now--people will read what others believed at this time, and believed with absolute certainty because it was decreed by either God or Allah, and they will shake their heads and mutter in disbelief. For now, however, I must write this from within the "loony bin" that is the world of 2008, and it's truly a more certifiably crazy world than most people seem to think.

Mr. Consistency

Call me Mr. Consistency.

As my countless legions of friends know, distance running is a very big part of my life. I haven't written much about that over the years, but someday I will, because running is a religion for me and I feel a need to proselytize. Running is my time away; it's my way to get in touch with the natural world and my own body (no sleazy jokes, please!); it's my form of meditation; it's my health insurance policy; and along with caffeine, it's my drug-of-choice. In short, running keeps me feeling sane, relaxed, and whole. And, somewhat obsessive person that I am, I have kept fairly careful running records over the years, going back to (gulp) 1975. (Keeping track of all this has been a big motivator!) To date, I have run 17,090 miles, which includes:

• six marathons (26.2 miles)
• five 25K races (15.52 miles)
• twenty half-marathons (13.1 miles)
• four 10-mile races
• three 15K races (9.3 miles)
• seventeen 10K races (6.2 miles) and
• eleven 4-5 mile races

To reinforce my obsessive impulses, my lovely wife bought me a "Garmin" for my last birthday (it goes on your wrist--looks like a rather large wristwatch), which can now tell me, on any run, exactly how many miles I went (to the hundredth of a mile), my exact time, my per-mile pace, my average and top speeds in miles per hour, the number of feet of ascent and descent in the run, the number of calories that I burned, and also provides a map of exactly where I ran (those satellites are spying on all of us anyway--why not use them for this as well?). You want data? I got data.

There will come a time when running is no longer a possiblity (knock on wood), but I continue to hang on to the illusion that I can do this forever. One needs a few illusions, dontcha think?

At any rate, I am getting pretty consistent, though. In late January, I ran the Securian Frozen Half Marathon (the St. Paul Winter Carnival Half Marathon) in 1 hour, 56 minutes, and 47 seconds. Then, last weekend, I ran the New Prague Half Marathon in (drum roll) 1 hour, 56 minutes, and 47 seconds. My, my--I couldn't do that again if I tried! I may not be really fast, but damn, I'm consistent.

Star Tribune: an obstacle 93 percent of the time

Well, the Don Quixote of the blogosphere (that's me) continues to tilt against the windmills of the world. Anyone who knows me (but who REALLY knows me? I have a secret life that involves azaleas, model railroading, and nipple rings) also knows that I have "had it up to here," as they say, with people who purport to know about nonverbal communication. Dr. Phil actually told Larry King on the air (on Larry King Live) that "communication is 93 percent nonverbal." Dr. Phil was spreading (like cheap manure) the most famous set of false statistics in my field: that the meaning in a message is "7 percent verbal, 38 percent vocal, and 55 percent facial." As I have demonstrated in two different articles (I will spare you THOSE details), these numbers are wrong, misleading, bogus, faux, and any other synonym you can provide.

Enter the Star Tribune, which, on May 5, had as its lead article in its "Source" (variety) section, "Bodies at work." Big 48-point headline. Big colorful graphics. And an article that begins with a big, big lie. Alison Grant, the Newhouse News Service writer, tells us in the 4th paragraph that "A classic 1971 study by UCLA psychologist Albert Mehrabian showed that less than 10 percent of what audience members remembered from a speaker was verbal. About a third of the impact came from tone of voice. The rest, more than half the recall, involved body language--gestures, facial expressions, posture, movements." That prompted me to send the newspaper this letter:

Dear Star Tribune:

It is often painful to read about "nonverbal communication" from people who claim to have knowledge about the subject but really don't. In the Source section of the May 5 Star Tribune ("Bodies at work," by Newhouse News Service writer Alison Grant), it is stated that "A classic 1971 study by UCLA psychologist Albert Mehrabian showed that less than 10 percent of what audience members remembered from a speaker was verbal," implying that roughly 90 percent of a message's meaning is nonverbal. That is simply not true.

First, the two studies that arrived at these numbers are from 1967, not 1971. Second, the key study involved only 37 female psychology majors at UCLA reacting to a situation that essentially forced these women to pay more attention to the nonverbal message because the verbal stimulus was limited to but one word: the word "maybe." Third, the study was not a test of what "audience members remembered," but how they judged the feelings of the speaker. And with only one word to react to--"maybe"--it should come as no surprise that these laboratory subjects paid more attention to the speaker's tone of voice and facial expression to determine the speaker's feelings. There are other inaccuracies in this article as well about Mehrabian's line of research, but I will leave it at that for now.

The bottom line is this: there is no magical formula that can precisely express the relative importance of the verbal and nonverbal messages in any given situation. The percentages from the Mehrabian research are widely cited, but they are a type of "urban legend." And if you don't believe me when I say that words can count for more than 10 percent of the total meaning in a message, try calling your best friend a "big fat selfish pig" in a very calm voice with a gentle smile on your face and see if they actually pay more attention to "body language."

David Lapakko, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication Studies
Augsburg College

So there, I say! This letter did not meet the Star Tribune's high standards and was not published. But the letter does meet my standards (read: none whatsoever). Once again the local newspaper cannot stop me, although I'm beginning to develop a little psychological complex. I hope I am not turning into that slightly deranged guy you see in our urban centers, aimlessly walking about and muttering to any stranger who will make eye contact with him--and even any stranger who won't! I may be 93 percent crazy, but I hang on to that 7 percent of the time when I can be normal and lucid. Pass my meds over to me, please!

Let's not be average

What the hey! Contentious Introvert has become a dumping ground for any piece of prose that I've cobbled together at some point along the way. Ergo, I've pasted in, below, the FULL TEXT of an essay written for the Augsburg Echo, our local campus newspaper. I emphasize "full text." In their effort to make this piece fit into exactly two columns of newsprint, the editors decided to axe a few phrases and sentences--most notably, they didn't print the quotation that OPENS the piece! So, when reading it in the student newspaper, there's a reference to that quotation in the first paragraph--but there ain't no quotation! Some people must have thought that I was a little loopy--who is "Ledru-Rollin," they must have wondered. At least here, on my own blog, I can make sure that the 2 or 3 people who read this in the next 20 years will at least have the correct version. Ah, the sweet smell? taste? of vindication.

"LET'S NOT BE AVERAGE"

David Lapakko
Dept. of Communication Studies

“There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader.” - Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

Contrary to popular belief, leadership is not all that it is cracked up to be. Yes, it has its perks, but the life of a leader can be both lonely and frustrating. It’s lonely because you can feel that no one understands you, yet you are responsible for things, and people think that you can make even more things happen because “you’re in charge.” And it’s frustrating because leaders are not as powerful as they would like to be; as Ledru-Rollin indicates, often you can only take people as far as they are willing to go. (I might like to assign six books and eight major papers in each of my courses, but that simply wouldn’t fly!)

Enter President Pribbenow. I don’t know that he feels especially lonely, but I’m sure he can feel the limits to his power. Heading up any organization is a bit like piloting a giant iceberg—you hope to nudge it a bit in the right direction, but the iceberg can be very obstinate. Yet in the midst of all this, people must try to lead. In that sense, I do not envy our President; he has a job that is inherently challenging.

Part of leadership is providing a vision, a mission, a set of goals. In a March “all hands” meeting held in the chapel, President Pribbenow tried to lay out such a vision. It was perhaps a bit much to process in a mere 30 minutes, but his PowerPoint presentation tried very hard to explain where the college is and where he wants it to be many years from now.

However, the President’s audience was not necessarily fixated on what the campus might look like in the year 2020; it’s probably good that it was on his mind, but it wasn’t on theirs. The concerns of faculty and staff are at the moment much more immediate. People have lost their jobs. Other people worry that they might lose theirs. Others sense that the “corporate” mindset has so overtaken more humane approaches to organizing that Augsburg will never be the same. And for a college that should be celebrating “abundance” (a popular word these days), it’s not clear how we are going to find enough money to construct a new science building, much less all the other buildings that are dreamt about in the future. These are the concerns of people on campus right here and now.

In his presentation, the President made more than one reference to his vision that Augsburg should be “nimble and entrepreneurial.” Don’t get me wrong, nimble is good. Entrepreneurial is good. But this is modern corporate business lingo; it’s not geared toward human relations. I can assure you that no one who feels happy and proud to work at Augsburg is going to say, “I love my job because we are so nimble and entrepreneurial.”

To his credit, the President does seem to realize that there are some fairly normal and inevitable tensions on campus, and disagreements about certain decisions—most notably, the decision to keep the college open between Christmas and New Year’s. And, he claims to be hearing and even listening to these concerns. The problem, however, is that listening can seem a little hollow if you aren’t prepared to do something meaningful in response. Near as I can tell, the President’s stance seems to be, “I am listening to you, and I respect your concerns, but I disagree with you, and so that’s that.”

In the case of our staff people, I believe that the President missed a great opportunity to score a few precious points. If he had started the March all-hands meeting with an announcement that he had re-considered the decision to keep the college open the last week of December, many might have felt even a bit triumphant. Symbolically, such a move would say to them, “I really do listen, and I really do care, and I am even willing to tacitly concede that I didn’t make the most appropriate decision.” In the end, no member of any community wants or expects their leaders to be perfect. What they expect—especially at a small Christian school where “caritas” is supposed to be more than a funny Latin word—is a culture and a climate that truly supports and celebrates the people who are here. “Nimble” and “entrepreneurial” can’t be the rallying cry, even if they are both virtues from a corporate perspective.

For me, what can and does make Augsburg special has nothing to do with being entrepreneurial. It may seem inconsequential, but I feel most proud of this place when I consider the individual people who are here. For example, as many of us know, there is a gregarious fellow who eats in the dining commons every day but is neither a student nor an employee; that he is welcome here makes me proud. Among our students is a woman who was actually willing to donate a portion of her liver to a total stranger; that makes me proud. In our copy center is a woman who will perform amazing 55-word stories for you on command; I’m proud to know her, too. In the end, it all comes down to people--not blueprints, floor plans, or an array of PowerPoint slides.

The modern organizational world—including Augsburg’s--is quite friendly on a superficial level, but underneath it all is a sort of dehumanization and dysfunction that can be so suppressed that we hardly realize it is there. Rather than trying to merely reflect the standard practices of the corporate world, Augsburg, as an educational institution grounded in the liberal arts and the Christian church, has the opportunity to create an organizational culture and climate that can rise above the rest. What we want is for people to feel privileged to even be in this environment—to feel that they are the luckiest employees on the planet. That’s a lofty goal, but one that is worth pursuing, right along with tons of money to build the new science building; the two goals are not necessarily incompatible.

I would also remind the President that when it comes to “human resources,” we have a lot of them on this campus, and they can potentially be very helpful to him and to the college. We have our Enormous Cash Cow, the Department of Business Administration, staffed with many people who have considerable business acumen. We have an MBA program and an MAL program that prepare graduate students for leadership in the 21st century; people on this campus teach about leadership and management every single day. And (dare I say it?) we have a Department of Communication Studies that devotes itself to the construction and interpretation of symbols and messages, whether those messages are one-to-one, one-to-many, verbal or nonverbal, written, oral, or electronic. Although many on campus already feel burdened in their work, they would also be flattered to be invited to come to the table and share their perspectives on issues facing the college. Obviously, nobody has all the answers, nor even necessarily the same answers, but we have helpful resources right here on campus.

Leadership is seldom easy. Augsburg’s leadership over the years has hardly been inept or mean-spirited. But now and in the past, I am keenly aware of what is possible, and I don’t want the college to settle for what’s “normal.” If you want to talk “vocation,” one part of our vocation should be to feel a calling to transform our world of work and let that transformation be a model for others to admire and to emulate.

STILL raising your body's light vibration!

Since my colleague Kristen Chamberlain (of "Showering With Sharks" blog fame) is writing about food these days, I thought I'd follow her lead--although all of this may fall into the "more than you really want to know" category!

For 16 months in the late '70s (Kristen was not yet even a gleam in her mom and dad's eyes at that time), I lived in Venice, California, a half-block off of the Pacific and an amazing display of humanity on parade. While in L.A., I dined at a "natural foods" restaurant in the Topanga area, which is not far from Malibu and resonates with "new age/hippie" vibes. The establishment was called The Inn of the Seventh Ray. The menu was so pretentious and bizarre that I took one home with me, wrote an article about the place, mailed it to the (then) Minneapolis Tribune--and lo and behold, they published it in the food section of the paper on October 19, 1978. (I even got 30 whole bucks for that piece!) Included above the article was a cartoon by a staff artist--it showed two of the Inn's patrons floating away from their table; they are both almost out of the frame. One says to the other, "Quick John! Spit out that artichoke and grab a leg of lamb!" (Why, you ask? Keep reading!) Here's the Tribune article in its entirety:

MYSTICAL L.A. RESTAURANT EMPHASIZES 'LIGHT VIBRATION'

By David Lapakko

"We at the Inn of the Seventh Ray believe in giving you the purest of nature's energized foods--with a dash of esoteric food knowledge thrown in to raise your body's light vibration."

So begins the menu at a Topanga natural foods restaurant, where the New Era of Food Consciousness seems to have advanced to a stage of mundane earnestness befitting southern California.

The Topanga area, on the western edge of Los Angeles, is known for its devotion to the mystical. The night of my visit, a bookstore nearby featured an autograph session with a distinguished but obscure author who possessed nothing less than heavy karma. His trip? Praying with two loved ones in a triangular formation, which releases simply magical energies. "Wow--this stuff is really advanced!" someone marveled while flipping through the pages of his latest work.

Eating in Topanga has become really advanced, too, as the Inn of the Seventh Ray testifies. The menu tells us that "the lightest and least dense foods are listed in order of their esoteric vibrational value for your experimentation." The meaning of that sentence, despite a fairly rigorous five years at Macalester College in St. Paul, still eludes me. But then, Topanga deals in more than mere education: "Awareness" seems to be "what's really happening."

I was able to surmise, however, that vegetables are less dense than meats, for they are listed first on the Inn's menu. "Five Secret Rays," at the top, are vegies from the Inn's "master steamer." "Artichoke Queen of Light," the next entree, verges on the gastronomically sublime: It is "a green crown of starry organic gems with the center removed and replaced with a culinary masterpiece of white fire tofu and sesame seed filling laced with ginger and sprinkled with the freshest of chives--very high and light."

The "Gold Chalice," next on the bill of fare, raised my food consciousness to the pinnacle of nirvana: "a cup of acorn squah filled to the lip with Saint Germain's own alchemy-blend of the freshest of herb stuffing with an unusual base of millet and steamed in our master's own steamer to an exact alchemical formula for transmutation into gold energy."

Believe me--I wish I were only making all this up.

I finally settled for the "Om-ri-tas," largely because it came "direct from the violet planet, a spaceship of nature's perfect vessel." This translated to half an eggplant stuffed with olives, nuts, and "unusual cheeses," which were all carefully married in a white wine sauce--"for your transportation."

The next morning, I discovered that the "Om-ri-tas" was not so carefully married to my gastrointestinal tract.

Prices at the Inn are not out of line for Los Angeles, in other words, occasionally higher than the Twin Cities. But if my wallet stood in the way, the management offered this consolation: "It will cost slightly more, but we believe in the long run it will be much less expensive and your body will work more efficiently and we hope your consciousness will become awakened."

Altogether, the Inn of the Seventh Ray makes Minneapolis' Prashad Kitchen (3515 W. 44th St.) seem like just another branch of Mickey's Diner.

But that is because no place can compete with the Inn when it comes to cosmic food awareness. As the front of the menu proclaims: "Dining creekside in old Topanga next to the mother flow of water at the Inn of the Seventh Ray is a unique and different experience. We want you to rest unhurried and soak up Saint Germain's violet ray, and to experience a timelessness of what can be the coming culture of the Golden Age."

Now that's dining experience too heavy for words.

David Lapakko is a free-lance writer from Los Angeles.

End of story, right? No way, Jose. Just tonight it occurred to me: whatever happened to the Inn of the Seventh Ray? I was there almost 30 years ago! Surely this place must have bitten the cosmic dust by now, somehow vibrating itself into oblivion. So, I went to yahoo search and discovered that the Inn is still around, with all of its charm! Whoda thunk it? Not only that, but when I went to the Inn's website (yes, everybody has a website these days), I found the following information (emphasis added):

"The property was discovered by the present owners and restored to it’s [sic] natural beauty, Over the passing years the restaurant has become known as one of the places to go. We, at the Inn, believe in giving you the purest of Nature’s foods, energized as a gift from the sun with a dash of esoteric food knowledge and ancient mystery school wisdom tossed in for your seasoning and pleasure. It may just raise your body’s light vibration and the extra work may cost you a few pennies more, but we believe in the long run, this way of living and eating may prove less expensive. Your body elemental, that selfless, shy, invisible little fellow who works so hard to keep the oft mistreated human machine going, will jump with joy for your choice of this eating establishment. He prays and hopes you will return soon to make this a pleasant ritual with each return being a new celebration in honor of taking a small step on the path of good dinning [sic] and good doing." [sic, sic, sick!]

Yes, some things have changed there. The photos on the website make it look a little more "upscale" than I remember. And they're serving some new entrees, such as "Handcrafted Vegan Mascarpone Ravioli," "Black Trumpet Dusted Ahi Tuna" (didn't know trumpets could even DO that!), and "Pomegranate Lacquered Muscovy Duck Breast." Suffice it to say that this place is still out of my league; I may never achieve the state of enlightenment that would enable me to eat there on a regular basis. But nonetheless, it all brought back fond memories.

Star Tribune editors can't stop me!

Ya think that maybe I'm developing some sort of complex? A feeling of being neglected and discomfirmed? When Lapakko writes something, he expects it to be published! After all, who could possibly say it better? Well, I guess Alison Rasch of St. Paul can say it better, because the Star Tribune chose her letter to the editor over mine on the same subject. And actually, looking at both letters, hers may have been the better choice.

Context: A guy from Eden Prairie writes a whiny letter on March 19 complaining about those "photo cops" that can nab a motorist for moving violations. Here's the text of his letter:

I was one of the drivers who was ticketed by photo cop before the law was suspended. Photo cop does a great job of enforcing the law. But there is a huge difference between speeding through a red light at 40 miles per hour and making a "rolling stop" while taking a right on red (my offense).

Practically no one comes to a complete stop before turning right--assuming there is no oncoming traffic. It doesn't make sense to waste gas, brake linings and time just to fulfill the letter of the law when the spirit of the law is to prevent accidents. Yield signs already exist to remind drivers that cross traffic has the right of way. The law for right turns should be changed to "yield" rather than "complete stop" at most red lights. Otherwise, the law will be subjectively enforced (which is what photo cop is designed to prevent) and a lot of fines will be levied that will do nothing to prevent accidents.

Now I don't know about you, but I thought this guy seems to have some "entitlement issues." Heaven forbid that he should actually have to stop at a red light before turning! Such a huge waste of time, gas, and brake linings! And so I submitted the following letter to the StarTrib:

A March 19 letter writer has the gall to rationalize his failure to come to a complete stop at a “right turn on red.” He asserts that “practically no one comes to a complete stop before turning right.” He whines that having to stop before turning “wastes gas, brake linings and time.” And he claims that the current law is “subjectively enforced.”

Translation: this guy really doesn’t understand the law or why it is there in the first place. Yes, I do see people flaunting this rule from time to time, treating the red light as if it were a yellow one. But most people do follow the law, and they should, for safety reasons. Cars--and pedestrians--are moving in each direction; one needs to actually stop and look for them. Some people simply regard the red light as an annoyance, but I’ve seen impatient, careless right-turners create safety issues many times. And I don’t feel great sympathy for the loss of maybe two seconds of time and a ridiculously inconsequential amount of gas. And wear on brake linings? Give ME a break!

The letter-writer suggests that the right turn on red should be changed to “yield.” He implies that this would eliminate “subjective enforcement.” But in some ways, that makes for an even murkier law: now we would have to make a judgment as to whether someone did in fact “yield” or did in fact need to yield. To me, that’s even more subjective, and if the letter-writer actually thought about that a little bit, he’d realize it as well.

David Lapakko, Richfield, MN

OK, maybe it was a little nasty, and maybe it wasn't focused on the "photo cop" issue. But I thought it was worth printing. Still, the letters editor chose instead to publish the following letter from the aforementioned Alison Rasch:

A March 19 letter writer from Eden Prairie is angry that he was nabbed for not stopping at a red light before turning right ("Photo cop/It's too strict"). He believes the law that requires a driver to come to a full stop is "too strict" and "doesn't make sense."

If his contention is that the spirit of the law is to prevent accidents, he might consider that stopping and looking before proceedings will prevent him from running over pedestrians and bikers who may be out of his line of vision.

As a walker and bike-commuter, I am so glad I don't live in Eden Prairie and have to risk being smacked by this self-centered driver, who seems more concerned about wear and tear on his car than the safety of those who share the road with him.

Alison Rasch, St. Paul

Good goin', Alison! In the end, her letter was slightly more concise, slightly more polite, and dealt with the important biker/pedestrian issue in a nice "personal" way. I can see why if, they only had to publish one letter on this subject, that they would have published hers.

And so, the howling wolf/contentious introvert (that's me) keeps plugging along, hoping that I don't have to do something really weird (like sit on a toilet for TWO YEARS--now that's quite the story; look it up if you don't know what I'm referring to) in order to gain the attention of our mass media. This blog is a medium, but seriously, could we put the word "mass" in front of it? I think there have to be at least two or three readers for it to qualify as such!

These are a few of my favorite things

A reader from Cincinnati, OH writes, "Hey Dave--what are some of your favorite things?" Glad you asked. (And I'm especially glad to know that someone in Cincinnati is, well, MIGHT be reading this stuff--I don't actually know that for a fact, as they say. OK, it's just a bald-faced lie.)

• Favorite color: green, in most forms
• Favorite season: spring (I'd make every day about May 10th if I could)
• Favorite classical music ending: tie between "The Pines of Rome" by Respighi, "The Firebird Suite" by Stravinsky, and Mahler's First Symphony (The "Titan")
• Favorite movie: really, when all is said and done, "Ordinary People"
• Favorite race distance: the half marathon, of course!
• Favorite running venue: Lake Harriet in Minneapolis
• Favorite running shoe brand: New Balance (love them 2Es)
• Favorite lack-of-impulse-control food: pizza, in any form
• Favorite early Beatles' song: If I Fell in Love With You
• Favorite late Beatles' song: The Long and Winding Road
• Favorite Marx brother: after Karl, probably Harpo
• Favorite holiday: Thanksgiving, hands down
• Favorite hand lotion: Lubriderm, unscented
• Favorite female vocalist: always had a crush on Linda Ronstadt, until I heard her speak in a normal voice!
• Favorite obscure oldies' song: "Will You Be Staying After Sunday" by the Peppermint Rainbow
• Favorite oldies' social commentary song: "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees
• Favorite margarine: Smart Balance
• Favorite novelist: probably Tom Robbins
• Favorite sort-of-raunchy novelist: Henry Miller
• Favorite fruit: when they are at their very best, oranges
• Favorite existential philosopher: Jean-Paul Sartre (who else?)

Well, there you go, Cincinnati. Something to read and think about. And debate about. It can be on the list of activities for your next baby shower, bridal shower, or even post-funeral social hour. Glad that you asked, and really glad that I could help.

Newsweek editors cannot stop me!

A few months ago, I submitted a column to Newsweek for their feature called "My Turn," in which ordinary folks like you and me get a full page to write something that's a little more on the "personal" side. But, they are quick to remind submitters that they get hundreds of such columns each week and can only publish one. Guess what? I lost this time--probably for several reasons, not the least of which is that my thoughts were a little more "political" than "personal." Nonetheless, here for everyone to see (even you folks in Malaysia, Poland, Brazil, etc. etc.) is what I sent them. It is, in many ways, my stance on what we are doing in Iraq:

In last fall’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, candidate Mark Kennedy, defending our actions in Iraq, ran TV spots that included this statement: “You can’t negotiate with people who want to kill you.” For many, such a quip might seem so correct and so self-evident that even a smidgen of skepticism about its wisdom would be incomprehensible.

But for me, whenever I heard this statement, the question always arose, “Aren’t those the very people you’d want to negotiate with?”

“Negotiation,” “discussion,” and “communication” seem like wimpy words to many people. A letter-writer to the Star Tribune last fall said that we need to “get tough” in Iraq, including the use of “heavy artillery” and “Hiroshima-style bombs,” because “the only way we will be victorious in the war on terror is to bring the enemy to its knees, and force them to surrender.” For some people, there’s no problem that a few nukes couldn’t handle!

Unfortunately, the prevailing mindset is that “terrorism” can only be conquered with violence. However, a foreign policy based on trying to “kill the enemy” is destined to fail. Whether it be the Hatfields and the McCoys or the United States and Al-Qaeda, the lesson we should have learned, over and over, is that violence simply tends to beget more violence. This is even more the case when the “enemy” has no national identity. We could get the Japanese nation to surrender in 1945, but we cannot do that so readily with antagonists who are spread across many countries and are not legal representatives of any political state. We cannot really “win a war” here; we must instead win hearts and minds.

We hear a lot about our military strategy “to win the war on terrorism.” But we don’t hear anything about our communication strategy. What do we know about these other people, and their cultures? How do their values and communication styles differ from ours? What are their political and religious views? What do we have in common with them, and where are the tension points? Until we are ready to address these questions seriously, we leave ourselves in the position where the only option seems to be violence.

If I were the President, I would make effective communication my number one priority. If elected, I would say to the world: “Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and anyone who has issues with the United States—I will meet with you, anytime, anywhere to try to make this world better. Let’s sit down and see what we can agree upon, and what we need to work on. Because the reality is that what we are doing right now just isn’t working--for anyone.”

I can already anticipate the letters to Newsweek in the next few days. Words such as “hopelessly idealistic” and “incredibly naïve” will appear. Doesn’t he remember the Nazis? Why should we appease “aggressors”? Weren’t the 9/11 attacks unprovoked? And how do you negotiate with people who want to kill you? Of course, part of the answer involves another communication skill: the need to listen, and to realize, even if it is abhorrent to us, that in the view of Al-Qaeda, 9/11 was not unprovoked.

Still, there are no simple or magic answers to the world’s problems, and that includes “better communication.” But until we make a concerted effort to communicate more effectively with the rest of the world, we are left with options that are, in the long run, not only more unpleasant, but counterproductive. Indeed, the times when we have shined as a nation have been built around the positive force of our vision for a saner world, whether that be in the form of the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, or the courageous nonviolent campaigns of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Change is not always easy or pleasant, but it can happen when people are committed to making it happen. We’ve squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on the military in Iraq, and yet some might have the nerve to suggest that better communication is somehow a wasted and pointless effort. But with a small fraction of that military money we could engage the world in substantive discussions and intercultural initiatives that would do far more to move us in the right direction. A smart cultural, economic, and diplomatic strategy would have far better results in the long run and could restore the tarnished image of the United States in the world community.

What is highly ironic to me is that many people have defined “stopping terrorism” as the central, defining issue of the 21st century. Terrorism, so this view goes, is the pivotal issue of our time. The irony is that by trying to kill our way out of this mess, we are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. A foreign policy that is based on military intervention will help ensure that this remains a military problem, far into the future. What we desperately need in order to break this cycle of violence is a radically new stance that will reach out to the world, start meaningful exchanges with both our friends and our foes, and make the United States a constructive force for peace, something that would make us all proud.

This message, of course, is hardly original and certainly not profound. But it is such a neglected and overlooked message that someone needs to say it here and now: we simply cannot secure the peace by waging war.

A few of my favorite quotations

Yes, I've received literally hundreds of requests to post my favorite quotations. So, "giving person" that I am, here are a few:

"No matter in how many ways our lives are demonstrated to be insignificant, we can only live them as if they were not." - John Updike, A Month of Sundays

"It is natural to give a clear view of the world after accepting the idea that it must be clear." - Albert Camus, "An Absurd Reasoning"

"The aim of a liberal education is not to turn out ideal dinner guests who can talk with assurance about practically everything, but people who will not be taken in by men who speak about all things with an air of finality. The goal is not to train future authorities, but men who are not cowed by those who claim to be authorities." - Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic

"Western civilization is a man running with increasing speed through an air-sealed tunnel in search of additional oxygen. You can quite reasonably tell him he will survive longer if she slows down, but he is not likely to do it." - Phillip Slater, Earthwalk

"'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true." - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (or, "Faith is believin' in something that nobody in his right mind would believe"- Archie Bunker, CBS "All in the Family" broadcast)

Ponder those quotations for a while. There will be a short essay exam next Tuesday.

Communication Studies? What's THAT?

Being in a department of Communication Studies (formerly, speech-communication), I am constantly aware that we must fight for legitimacy. If you are a department of political science, or sociology, or history, or physics, or chemistry, you can rest assured that no one will eliminate you--it would be unthinkable within a liberal arts institution. Yet communication studies always needs to be looking over its shoulder. In fact, in the last 10 years, both St. Olaf College and Macalester College have eliminated the communication studies department and major. Go figure.

When St. Olaf was about to dismantle its "speech" department in the late '90s, I sent the President of St. Olaf the following letter in April 1998:

Dear Dr. Edwards [Mark Edwards, then President]:

I was both concerned and bemused to learn that St. Olaf College is considering elimination of its major in speech communication. I am concerned because such a move reflects a lack of appreciation for the value of a communication major. I am bemused because such thinking is counterproductive for a place such as St. Olaf and will, ironically, have adverse economic impact for the institution in the long run. [Note: part of their rationale for this decision involved "finances."]

As an academic discipline, speech communication has a long and proud heritage. As you may know, the study of rhetoric has been one cornerstone of a liberal education since ancient Rome and Greece. In the modern era, speech communication has as its central mission the exploration of communication in a variety of important contexts: public advocacy, mass-mediated rhetoric, and communication in interpersonal, small group, intercultural, and organizational settings. Communication majors will enter the 21st century with the knowledge and skills to make important contributions in education, law, business, print and broadcast journalism, religion, and a host of other fields.

Tacitly, it would appear that St. Olaf recognizes the importance of the communication discipline because a "communication emphasis" would continue to be part of the curriculum, with "communication" related courses being taught by faculty from other disciplines. I can tell you from experience that this is not a very workable plan. Although most of us speak and write English and read literature, that does not make us prepared to teach courses in an English department. By the same token, the fact that we all attempt to "communicate" does not mean that we all understand the conceptual elements of communication as articulated in a dozen of our major communication journals and a wide array of our textbooks--nor does it enable one to work effectively with students in the development of their communication skills. All of that takes formal training.

From a more pragmatic standpoint, I would urge you to consider that virtually every college and university in the state has an active, thriving department of communication. At Augsburg, nearly 250 students have chosen a communication major; two-thirds of them are in our Weekend College program for working adults. Overall, the communication program is a real "draw" for many of our students, and we think we do a good job of providing a challenging, meaningful, and academically sound curriculum. If St. Olaf were to abandon its communication major, we would no doubt stand to benefit at least a bit, as would every other school throughout the state. But that is not the way we would like to attract students; ideally, we would prefer to "earn" our communication majors rather than getting them by default.

I hope that St. Olaf does not dismantle its communication program. To do so would be a loss for your students and a loss for St. Olaf institutionally--it would put the college at a competitive disadvantage. The negative publicity alone would linger in many circles for years and ultimately offset any short-term savings. I was told yesterday that the Department of Speech and Theater had been planning a 50th anniversary celebration for the communication program. You can imagine how well-received the proposed abolition of the major will be from the many alumni attending this event. And you can imagine what I will have to tell prospective Augsburg communication majors when they come for a campus visit and tell me that St. Olaf is on their "short list" of college choices.

For all of these reasons, I truly believe that St. Olaf will be doing itself a favor by reconsidering its stance on this matter.

Sincerely, blah blah blah......

[Needless to say, "Howling Wolf" (that's me--what I wanted to call this blog, but the name was already taken) never heard back from President Edwards, and St. Olaf just went right ahead and deep-sixed the department anyway. But just the same I had to howl, if only to keep my sanity. Now having shared this dusty old letter, I can go back to being, simply, a contentious introvert.]

What's 40 years between friends?

Had dinner last night with my fellow members of the 1968 Sibley High School debate team. It's pretty awesome to realize that these are people I have not gone to school with in 40 bleeping years! And that we knew each other when John F. Kennedy was President! It's at times like that when I realize how freaking old I am getting. Quite an amazing group:

• Stan, Harvard Law School graduate, blues musician, and bankruptcy attorney;
• Mordecai, publisher and editor of the American Jewish World Newspaper;
• Mike, producer of the channel 6 cable show "It's a Woman's World"; and
• Randy, Stanford Law graduate, an attorney for the United Auto Workers.

I feel privileged to know these people, and to continue to have at least some sort of relationship with them--and I feel just plain lucky to be alive. And somehow, over a two and a half hour dinner, we managed to avoid virtually any "old people talk"--not a word about x-rays, CAT scans, bowel movements, or sciatica. Well, maybe a few words, but not more than 5 minutes. Take that, Grim Reaper!

Can't keep up with e-life, or life in general

What's a fellow to do? I've got my work email, my Facebook account, my MySpace account, my Classmates account, and my blog (read daily by hundreds of thousands--nay, millions of people!). I can't keep up with it all--Sisyphus had it easier.

Today I can't write no more stuff. (I can't even write without a double negative.) So I will include something I wrote that appeared in today's campus newspaper, the Echo, which attempts to analyze why people who don't want to communicate (such as the college's President, at least in one context) actually are communicating. There may be a lesson here for all of us--or then again, maybe there isn't.

"Metamessages: a note on communication"

The Echo staff (Sean Stanhill specifically) has asked tenured faculty to weigh in on what we shall call the “Pribbenow issue.” And so I am answering that call, for a couple of reasons.

The first reason to give my perspective on this matter involves an obligation to participate from time to time in the affairs of the college community. But second, I see it as a good opportunity to share with the campus community what the communication studies discipline is all about. For many, what we do is basically make sure people sound sort of confident when they give a speech and make sure they don’t say “um” too often. Not surprisingly, we like to think that it’s far more than that. There are, frankly, a wide array of theoretical “lenses” through which we in communication studies might view the Pribbenow issue; I will employ only a few of them here.

As colleague Phil Adamo pointed out in the last Echo, President Pribbenow may well indeed have honorable intentions. And, in fact, my exchanges with the President have been pretty cordial. Most people, I like to think, have good intentions. However, one type of communication problem is what in our field would be called an “evocation” problem. That simply means, one can understand that another person sincerely wants something—in this case, not to “squelch healthy discourse”—but yet still does not fully believe it. In other words, the message does not evoke the intended response. So, despite his apparent good intentions, some people on campus simply can’t accept or don’t believe that the President’s “real” motivations are entirely up-front (dare I say not entirely “transparent”?). It is, in the end, a “trust” issue. Therefore, the President’s challenge is to convince us that he really wants his opinions to stay out of the school newspaper for good, convincing reasons. At this point, some people are simply not convinced.

Related to the evocation issue is one of the most hallowed principles of communication, proposed four decades ago in a seminal book in my field: Pragmatics of Human Communication. Therein lie four axioms of communication, the first of which is that “You cannot not communicate.” It’s a simple proposition, yet a very important one. What this means is that even when one chooses “not to communicate,” that still communicates something! This becomes the place where the President’s pledge to keep his opinions out of the campus newspaper can potentially backfire. When someone says that they refuse to communicate, even with good intentions, that refusal itself becomes communication.

What does that refusal mean? The problem is that people will make a variety of meanings out of it, and not all of them will be “flattering.” For some, not communicating is a type of disconfirmation—it says, in essence, that you are not important enough to communicate with. For others, it will convey the idea that one is defensive and does not want the kind of scrutiny that comes with such messages. That becomes the paradoxical problem within communication: not communicating still sends out a message.

On a related note, a basic precept of communication studies is that all messages have a content level and a relationship level. In this case, the content level is reasonably clear: the President says that the Echo is not a place to dominate with his personal opinions. But it’s at the relationship level where problems often arise—the relationship message is a type of “metamessage”; it’s a message about the message. In this case, many of the perceived relationship messages are negative. They would include:

• The Echo is not worth my time.
• The Echo isn’t an appropriate venue for expressing my opinions.
• There’s nothing really important that I could say in the Echo.
• I am so powerful that no one would dare to contradict me.
• I am more capable of presenting my views than others are.
• I must be a little “paternalistic” and protect people from my opinions.
• I prefer to listen than to be more actively involved as an advocate.

Again, not all of the “relationship” messages are necessarily “negative.” The President would want us to believe that his reticence to put his opinions in the Echo reflects an abiding respect for other members of the campus community. Again, that may be so. But, unfortunately, things are not being perceived that way.

In the end, I think the President’s refusal sends out the “wrong” message to too many people, despite his best intentions. The President does not have to see his role as inherently “domineering.” Indeed, he can help create a climate in which everyone’s ideas have a place and are heard, valued, respected, and embraced. But accomplishing such a goal will be a long hard climb in this situation. Just in case our CEO does not fully appreciate this, the mood among “non-tenured” people on this campus is on the wary and paranoid side. And really, who can blame them? Good intentions, a crisp bow tie, an upbeat weekly newsletter (which should of course continue), and a bright and bouncy demeanor (also a plus) can’t erase the fact that Augsburg has become a less secure place in some ways for many who are employed here.

Trust. It’s an important element of any relationship. And it tends to be rather fragile. That’s why now, of all times, I think the President should re-consider his stance on “silence” in the Echo. We desperately want to know what the people “at the top” are thinking. We are willing—even eager--to consider the President’s point of view. We will agree with some things and disagree with others, but we can handle the controversy. And, we can become stronger and more connected in the process. Yet we can’t do it—at least, in an inclusive, democratic culture—if everyone doesn’t participate.

The history of the study of communication, both at the private and at the public level, has a strong presumption toward openness, in my reading of things. Obviously there is a time and a place for silence and discretion. But until I can get to know you—who you are, what you believe, how you feel about me, what’s important to you—only until I know these things can I hope to have a meaningful relationship with you. With such an orientation, “not communicating” ceases to be either possible or productive.

Thus Spake Zarathustra.