I found this story fascinating. There is plenty of room for exploitation in a system of marriage brokers. But having lived in Vietnam & read a bit of Vietnamese literature, I can tell you that there have always been such brokers & that the Vietnamese are in some ways quite unsentimental about marriage. They are also deeply committed — even sentimental — about the extended family. The Times reporter does a nioce job of showing that marriage in Vietnam (& presumably Korea, which I know much less about) is not so much a relationship between two individuals as between two families. And the bits of local color in the story made me nostalgic for Hanoi.
Monthly Archives: February 2007
The Map is Not the Territory
Two good meditations on the relationship of the scriptural map to the territory of reality by Fred Clark. I was particularly taken by Clark’s description of his awakening to reason because it bears a strong similarity to my own, though in my youth I moved away from the church more out of a sense that it hated emotion rather than that it hated reason. Rocknroll & poetry drove me away from fundamentalism when I was sixteen, those texts providing a better, though by no means perfect, map of my experience than the bible. As Gregory Bateson & George Luis Borges demonstrate, we make a tragic mistake when we imagine that there is any perfect map. The most important moments in a life are perhaps when the insufficency of the map we have becomes apparent & we are forced to become cartographers of our own experience, extending the map for our own & maybe even for others’ use.
The Angel Moronic
Apparently, Mitt Romney has opined that people “without faith” should not hold public office. I don’t think he goes nearly far enough. teachers & doctors are far more important to society than politicians — why not have a religious test for them? Or for police officers? Postal workers & airline pilots? Oh, well, there is that pesky little bit in the Constitution that forbids religious tests, but then a smarmy Mormon creep like Mitt Romney puts more creedence in the Golden Tablets Joseph Smith said were given to him by an angel named Moroni than in the Constitution. Me, I’m old fashioned. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t believe in the Constitution should hold public office.
Rollin’ & Tumblin’
For me, Muddy Waters is the one essential blues artist. Of course, the idea that there could be a quintessential blues singer is absurd, but I put my finger down on McKinley Morganfield because he takes the Delta blues & its whole rural mythology & transforms it into an urban music that both affirms & transcends its cultural origins. In an era when American culture & society are addicted to authority & conformity, Muddy Waters’ music lays down the reality of Dionysian insurrection. If you doubt me, get the Chess best-of compilation of Waters’ music from 1947 to 1945. That was a long time ago, it’s true. And the music is utterly apolitical in that it is almost exclusively about sex. But of course the freedom of sex is exactly what the current political construct fears most. What propels everything that is alive & important in American culture is the Hoochie Coochie Man, the Manish Boy, the Rolling Stone & above all the sense that I Can’t be Satisfied. The bad man Stagolee, the existential hero, continues to subvert the easily co-opted John Henry, the representative of community values of aspiration & self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice in the service of a corrupt oligarchy. Screw that, says Stackolee, skipping off down an alley & into a door that opens briefly & emits a slice of light before closing again. There is music inside. Blues music. Even when he goes to hell, Stack Lee bosses the Devil around.
Killers in the Classroom
I don’t have any Iraq war veterans in my classes, but I am heartily sick of the hagiography of “the troops” that is almost universal in American culture at the moment. This short essay by Dr. Jane Scorza Terpstra rings true. I’ve heard virtually the same thing from students who haven’t gone to Iraq, but who would endorse the necessity of the war & even of torture & terror tactics from the safety of the “homeland.” Here is an excerpt
What appears to trouble the soldier student is that the rhetoric of fighting for freedom and democracy is a lie that cannot blanket the horror and guilt of their terrorism. They do not want to hear that participation in invasion and occupation, murder and pillaging, is logically inconsistent with any legitimate concept of freedom or liberation. They know the greed and programmed lust for violence that motivates them. They expect that if they can make it out alive, they get some money, a comfortable lifestyle and an education. Their plan is to secure the oil, the diamonds, the gold, the water, the guns, the drugs, and the bling for their masters, who they hope will cut them in on the swag. They say that someone has to be on top and they want to be on the side of the strong, not the weak. Robbing Hoods, not Robin Hoods.
And now, here they sit in my course on social justice, terrorist war criminals, wanting high paying “criminal justice†jobs in a university Justice Studies program. They want approval, appreciation and honors for terrorism, torture, and murder. They want a university degree so they can get an even higher salary terrorizing more people around the world with security companies such as Blackwater or Halliburton. They want that appropriately named “sheepskin†so they can join the CIA, FBI, and other police and track down and terrorize US residents here. [_via_ Wood s Lot]