Thank You, David Brower!

I went hiking with my sister this weekend at the Point Reyes National Seashore. Unbelievable scenery.

At the end of one trail, we found ourselves on a beach with huge waves crashing in and sending clouds of mist into the air. Right at the edge of the water, there was a guy staring out at the vast expanse of the Pacific. From where I saw him, he was no more than an outline of a figure facing the ocean with a hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. There was such simplicity in the image, a solitary figure in awe of natural beauty, just a couple of meters removed from the unfathomable strength of the ocean waves. As familiar and archetypal the image was, it struck me as immensely strange as well. He was so clearly outside the regular grid of routine, utility and worry in which we spend most of our time...how does one explain the type of appreciation embodied by a guy mesmerized by the ocean?

David Brower was the conservationist most responsible for protecting the Point Reyes area.

An Expanded Notion of Environmentalism

Typically, when we think of environmentalism, we think of that brand of environmentalism espoused by John Muir and the Sierra Club. We think of the great outdoors, trees, green things and dirty hippies. But if you talk to a psychologist about environmentalism, then a very different conversation evolves. Environmental psychology is about the interplay between one's surroundings and one's behavior. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about environmental psychology as "The Power of Context," and attributes the precipitous decline of New York City's crime rate to simple environmental changes made particularly within the subway system. According to Gladwell, doing things like scrubbing the graffiti off subway walls and arresting fare-beaters can lead to significant changes in individual behavior.

So, at first glance, it appears that "environmentalism" refers to at least two disparate bodies of thought. In thinking about the work of Majora Carter, however, and her pitch to "Green the Ghetto," tree-hugging environmentalism and the psychological variety as well find common ground. Saving the environment (Mother Earth) can have everything to do with reducing crime, fighting the war on drugs, lifting people out of poverty, etc.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

Cougars

It must be cougar night tonight!

Fate and Politics

From The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, a favorite quote of mine:

In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care about how you lived your life? Crisis comes, death comes, and your pathetic individual self doesn't have anything to do with it, only to suffer the effects. (447)

I remember having a class discussion in ninth grade about fate. The teacher surveyed the class and asked us to raise our hands if we believed in fate. A couple of hands went up. The rest of us, true children of the Enlightenment, believers in our abilities to forge our own futures, kept still, uncomfortable with the metaphysical nature of the question. Well, go to India, the teacher told us, walk the streets of Mumbai, look into the eyes of teenage mothers sitting alongside dirt-paved roads holding their infant children, look into the eyes of a leprous beggar, and you come back and tell me that there is no such thing as fate. Jeez, harsh message for a bunch of ninth graders. But well-deserved considering the mostly bratty, oblivious, affluent demographic.

When I hear Joe the Plummer talk about "American" values, and the rugged individualism that they embody, I remember that ninth grade class, and I remember that my station in life has more than anything else been determined by the geography of my birth. The movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith, draws upon classic American ideals about hard work and equal opportunity. It is a beautiful, moving story of individual triumph in the face of adversity. The story is powerful because it certainly is always nice to believe that we are the masters of our own fate, the shapers of our own destiny, the writers of our own story. That, despite everything, if we just work hard enough, we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

There is no real way to live without this fundamental belief in our hearts. And yet, economics is destiny. Unemployment is at something like a twenty-year high right now, and all those newly unemployed folk are not suddenly unemployed because of their own failings. Sheer will and determination will only take them so far. So, if Joe the Plummer wants to call Barack Obama a socialist for wanting to redistribute wealth, well, that makes me a little bit angry. Because equal opportunity does not characterize the US economy, it will never characterize any economy if simply left to its own devices, and while it might be a utopian ideal, it is an ideal worthy of our striving, even if impossible.

The question of fate, for me, is one of the definitive differences between liberals and conservatives. The discussion in my ninth grade classroom has been the root of much of my political thinking. And, damn, I can't wait to leave behind the era of cowboy individualism that Bush champions.

Unexpected Connectivity

During my freshman year in college, I was sitting at a cafe, Kohlberg Coffee Bar, reading To the Lighthouse. An elderly couple approached my table and sat down. They were just passing by, the older woman was an artist and her husband was accompanying her to see her exhibit at the school’s gallery. They saw that I was reading and asked me what I was studying at school.

"English Literature."

"Do you write at all?"

"Well, I’ve tried before. But every time that I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to put together more than a couple of pages. So I’ve written some vignettes, but I don’t think I’ve ever been able to wrap my head around an entire story."

"Unexpected connectivity."

"What?"

"Yeah. Have you ever listened to Beethoven’s fifth symphony? Well, it is the perfect example of unexpected connectivity. Each movement in the symphony stands on its own, seems different from everything else. But by the end, you’re made to recognize the unexpected connectivity in it all. Keep on writing, and you’ll find unexpected connectivity."

There is something so beautiful about the idea that no matter how one wanders through life, how incongruous the different stages of man may appear, some thread weaves through it all, a running stream through which all of life’s experiences may be reflected, that brings life into one coherent whole.

I tried listening to Beethoven's fifth symphony and finished listening to it none the wiser.

When Numbers Acquire the Powers of Language

In Moneyball, Michael Lewis writes about this idea, quoting Bill James, the father of sabermetrics:

When the numbers acquire the significance of language, they acquire the power to do all of the things which language can do: to become fiction and drama and poetry...And it is not just baseball that these numbers, through a fractured mirror, describe. It is character. It is psychology, it is history, it is power, it is grace, glory, consistency, sacrifice, courage, it is success and failure, it is frustration and bad luck, it is ambition, it is overreaching, it is discipline. And it is victory and defeat, which is all that the idiot sub-conscious really understands. (67)

When I first started watching different TED Talks, I mostly was watching things that didn't seem to have anything to do with Technology, Entertainment or Design, the three things that TED stands for. I was watching talks by Al Gore and John Doerr about climate change and the possibilities of greentech innovation. Sure, these talks had something to do with technology, but entertainment? design? But today, I watched a super cool talk by Hans Rosling, who presents statistics in an engaging way to describe the progress made by developing countries in improving health. And it dawned on me.

People typically think of design as very simply the study of appearance. At least this is the way that I understood design. But Rosling's talk, and really all of the TED Talks, have opened my eyes to a different understanding of design. Design isn't simply about the way something looks, or about how to make things look cool and interesting. Rather, design is motivated by such principles and ideas as the democratization of information, the accessibility of technology, the interactivity of humans, the relationships between humans and nature and space. Rosling uses data and organizes it, designs it in such a way as to make it accessible. Previously, I understood qualitative analysis as being fundamentally different from quantitative analysis, anecdotal evidence as being fundamentally different from empirical evidence. But Rosling presents empirical data in such a compelling way that numbers acquire the powers of language. Data-based storytelling.

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is a movie that stars a slideshow presentation. A slideshow presentation! Surely, that represents a triumph of design, of the ability to make scientific data as compelling and convincing as a story.

The personal computer was surely a technological innovation, but more than anything else, it was an innovation in design. It democratized the applications of technology, enabled people to interact with technology more intuitively. Doesn't this explain the success of Apple's iPod? It isn't just that the iPod looks cool or comes in neat colors, but it changes the way in which people interact with digital soundbites.

Maybe none of this is all that revelatory. But when I think about how little people typically understand of design, how little I understood, I am reminded of the scene from "The Devil Wears Prada," when Meryl Streep's character rips into Anne Hathaway's character who clearly regards fashion as a frivolous waste of energy:

This..."stuff?" Oh...ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of "stuff."

The Milky Way

I don't know that I've ever seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes. This bothers me. While I am by no means a hardcore outdoorsman, neither am I a stranger to the smells that a fresh rain unleashes from the earth. In fact, I derive much of my spiritual sustenance from moments of "Einsteinian wonder," moments when you are put face to face with the largeness and beauty of the cosmos through nature.

The night sky invites its undeserving gazers to ask age-old questions. It sends a chill down my spine to think that humans have been staring and wondering at essentially the same constellations since, well, the beginning. But I was at Safeway the other day, and I saw the front cover of a National Geographic magazine, a night-time, bird's-eye view picture of a city, a rationalized grid of orange light. The editor's letter was about a small town in Virginia that is known for its view of the night sky, and the controversial decision of the town to install stadium lighting for high school football games. Isn't it strange to think that something as ancient and revered as the night sky has become a tourist attraction? A thing that a town can become known for? Isn't it strange that I have only seen the Milky Way in pictures that I studied in elementary school?

I associate stars with the silent chill of night air, when one cannot help but shiver--from the coldness of the darkness? or maybe from the smallness of one's existence? It troubles me, then, that when I look up at the night sky--on those few clear, chilly nights when light conditions permit--I can only recognize the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and Orion's Belt. In a way, I suppose, this is nice. The night sky allowed to be a mystery, a spectacle that evades scientific classification in my mind. The stars unnamed and unknown to me. But the fact remains...I don't know that I have seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes.

I have always been fascinated by the different ways in which today's environmental problems are framed. Some describe the environmental crisis as a problem of awareness and consciousness, others point to the limits of technology and capitalistic growth. More recently, people like Al Gore and Thomas Friedman frame the problem as a policy failure and have advocated for a Coasian solution, a price signal placed on carbon emissions. Mark Wallace, in introducing his book, Finding God in the Singing River, describes today's environmental problems as fundamentally "a problem of the heart." It is this last formulation that I can't seem to get out of my head. How do humans relate to nature? Are we to be its benevolent stewards? its domineering masters? its helpless victims?

In Al Gore's famous climate crisis slideshow, the photos that he shows of melting glaciers are truly harrowing. Presented with such pictures, I invariably react with a mixture of thoughts and emotions. We did this? Changes of this magnitude are the result of industry and human activity? Is this really possible? There is such a profound hubris in the imagining. We did this, and now we need to try to fix what we have damaged. Weather, previously the exclusive playground of the gods, now rendered a human plaything. There is something deeply offensive to me about talking about global warming, or about our relationship with nature, in this way.

There are people who yearn for some imagined era when humans existed in harmony with nature, or who romanticize the relationship that exists between humans and nature in developing countries that have not yet been falsely weaned from Mother Earth. The irony being that companies from developing countries are invariably dirtier and more hurtful to the environment than their first world counterparts. Such romanticizations make me cringe. Have you ever been to a developing country? I want to ask. Have you seen the litter and the careless disposal of waste?

I don't know. Perhaps it can only be helpful to exaggerate our abilities to manipulate nature. Much like it can only be helpful to believe in the persistence of personal agency in the face of external constraint. Maybe, despite all odds, something profoundly human will triumph. It is a nice thought at the very least.

But jeez, the Milky Way. Surely something is amiss.

Makes Sense

I recently read a book that tells the story of how the world's first user-friendly personal computer came into existence. In it, the author describes a method of conflict resolution practiced within the group that developed the computer:

PARC's leader, Bob Taylor, had an especially deft way of resolving those conflicts that did surface. He employed a mediation model that eliminated the divisive win-lose element from arguments and substituted the goal of clarification. Taylor would urge people to move from what he called a Class 1 disagreement, in which neither party could describe the other's position, to a Class 2 disagreement, in which each side could articulate the other's stance. (Organizing Genius [Bennis] 122)

The method sounds incredibly simple, even a bit hokey, but it draws exactly upon the difference between a debate and a discussion that I talked about in an earlier post. I really don't understand why such a method of discussion isn't made more intuitive in our education system.

Language Barrier

During my freshman year, Richard Dawkins came to Swarthmore to lecture about his work on evolutionary psychology and his views on the apparent conflicts between science and religion. After his talk, I went up to him and, eager to use vocabulary and ideas I was picking up from my philosophy class, asked him if his ideas didn't represent a positivist and reductionist worldview. "I'm not a philosopher," he replied to my naive and inappropriately confrontational inquiry. Hearing such a curt reply, my facial muscles probably twitched awkwardly, and I probably looked down at the wrinkles in my t-shirt self-consciously before squriming my way out of the crowd that was growing around him.

In retrospect, this brief interaction represented my first encounter with the insularity that characterizes the academic world. If you are an established discipline, then you necessarily boast an esoteric vocabulary and specialized journals to boot. Unfortunately, these things set up walls between disciplines and inhibit communication. They essentially allow Richard Dawkins to rebuff inquiries such as mine by pleading ignorance. In Economics, there is the presitigious Journal of Economic Perspectives, but sometimes I wonder if a Journal of Perspectives on Economics and the Economy might not be more fruitful as an intellectually curious publication. It appears to me that a discipline often receives more fanfare for its methodology than the questions that it professes to answer. This is obviously a very short and perhaps a simplistically naive assessment of academia, but I think it merits consideration.

The problem of communication doesn't just exist in the academic world. I see evidence of a genuine language barrier in issues all around me. Let us take the issue of environmentalism as an example. There are those environmentalists that profess an eco-centric as opposed to an anthropocentric worldview. Such environmentalists condemn all environmentally hurtful activities and generally resist capitalism as an environmentally exploitative, earth-destroying, growth-bent, parasitic, soul-sucking system. Naturally, such environmentalists clash with traditional economists. In the context of Swarthmore, Crum-dwelling granola crunchers don't often fraternize on the halls of Kohlberg 2nd. Meanwhile, the concerns raised by such environmentalists fall deaf on the ears of the more pragmatically-minded economists and businessmen of the world. What happens? The 1999 WTO anti-globalization protests happen.

Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, forges a path forward. He sums up the problem burdening the environmental movement, which I think has its roots in communication: "Too many environmentalists oppose any growth, a position that locks the poor into poverty. Too many critics of environmentalism characterize any conservation as some flaky anticapitalist ideological dalliance" (194). But, if I could assign TF an epitaph, it would be, "Speaker of many languages." He "pals around" with venture capitalists, environmental activists, politicians, academics, and manages to speak to all these different groups of people. In his book, he gives one example of successful communication between groups that I find particularly inspiring. Friedman describes the success of a conservation project in Indonesia and quotes the project's leader, Dr. Jatna Supriatna:

When you talk with the head of the government, your language is economic; when you talk to the communities, the language is welfare; when you talk to business, you talk about their future profits; when you talk to other NGOs, the language is environment. (311)

The answer seems rather simple. Just communicate across disciplines, across interest groups. But the forces of insularity are strong. Language barriers difficult to surmount. I think that it is a point, while simple, that we tend to overlook and fail to appreciate. In my view, a language barrier serves as the greatest source of frustration for young idealists intent upon effecting substantive change in the world. Friedman pokes fun a bit at the youthful naivette:

ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and General Motors know the difference between a Facebook group and a blocking coalition in Congress. They are not in Facebook, but they are in the faces of those lawmakers who stand in their way. (400)

Most of us, i.e. young and eager twenty-somethings, don't speak even a single language that resonates with groups that are in a position to effect change. I think this is the harsh reality that youthful idealism confronts. We may possess the soft tools, the critical thinking and the drive, but we lack the credibility, experience and language skills to communicate effectively. There doesn't seem to be an easy way around the language barrier, and I guess that is why Friedman ultimately counsels diligence, discipline and sacrifice.

24-Hour Fitness

"Do you like to be challenged?"

"Yeah, sure, of course."

"Well, for just $99.99, you can get five one-hour sessions with a personal trainer. What d'you say?"

About two weeks ago, I signed up for a seven-day free trial at 24-Hour Fitness. And so for a week straight, I politely declined offers for protein shakes, personal training sessions and a paid membership. Meanwhile, I enjoyed all the benefits of membership without shelling out a single dime. Really duped the system, I did.

Two days after my free trial expired, Julie, the sales agent who was put in charge of my account, called me up with news of a promotional $29.99 monthly rate. Craving "challenge" and wanting once again to "be part of the club," I decided to sign up. Dollar-a-day health? Fine. I can afford that. What? There is a $49.99 initiation fee? Well...hmm...let me think about this for a second. Oh! It's only $49.99, and it's a one-time fee. Access to locations across the country and across the world. Well, in that case, sure, sign me up!

Okay, I admit it. Julie, the little devil, she got in my head.

Inside the gym are twenty treadmills lined up against a window that overlooks a busy street. Each one of these treadmills is outfitted with a control panel that lets you regulate your pace and incline, as well as monitor your calories burned, distance run and time elapsed. On top of each control panel is a 15-inch LCD screen. They probably call it a personal entertainment center, but I skipped out on the informational tour so I'm not really sure. All you have to do is plug in a set of earphones, and you can browse through any of the three channels that they offer (CNN, ESPN and some other cable channel), and enjoy watching TV with audio while getting a full-body workout. Or, if you're not one for TV, you can bring along your iPod and listen to your very own music library during your workout.

I don't own any earphones, I am a bit ashamed to say. So, as I jog on the treadmill, I watch the number of calories I've burned climb slowly through two-digit totals and finally break into three-digit territory. I'm all business when it comes to taking care of my body, let me tell you. Meanwhile, I also browse through the TV options. Today, there is AC360 on CNN, a college football game on ESPN, and an episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin has two plungers suctioned on to his man-boobs such that he has a pair of truly killer nipples. Anderson Cooper, muted by my lack of earphones, is rendered comical as he gazes ever so intently into the camera.

Here, I think to my nerdy self, is negative liberty at its very best. Freedom to choose without having to impose or intrude on others. My privacy and my personal space so fiercely protected. Never will I, in this gym, need to compromise my television-viewing or music-listening preferences. Never will I have to suffer through the eccentric musical tastes of another.

Once, during a particularly busy hour at the gym, I had to wait in line to get on a treadmill. I tried to make small talk with the girl that was waiting in front of me, "Is it always this busy at this hour?" I didn't realize, but she was listening to her iPod, so she couldn't hear me but could tell I was trying to ask a question. Removing one side of her earphones, and making it very clear how much of a hassle this was for her, she looked at me questioningly, accusingly. "Nevermind," I said apologetically. Peeved, she looked away, put her earphones back in and resumed her waiting, arms folded.

On to the weights. In the area for free weights, the walls are lined with full-length mirrors to feed the vanity and insecurity of the area's image-conscious frequenters. I am doing bicep curls today, so I position myself in front of the mirror and start counting reps. I exaggerate my exhalations to emphasize my effort. When I discover the faint outline of a vein popping out from my upper right arm, it is all I can do to stop myself from screaming out loud in self-congratulatory elation. Weights equals dates, I remember my college buddy telling me. I quickly look around to see if anybody else noticed my personal triumph. Nope. Nevertheless, I know that through furtive glances or sometimes outright staring, everybody is checking everybody out. There might not be much in the way of conversation to be found at 24-Hour Fitness, but let's make no mistake, this is a community of health-conscious individuals. There is no escape from being looked at here.

When I was teaching in Ecuador, my students were always curious to hear about what it is like to live in America, but I was always at a bit of a loss as to what to say. Once, we were watching the movie About Schmidt together as a supplement to reading The Death of Ivan Ilych. There is a scene in the movie where Jack Nicholson's character walks into a Dairy Queen to buy an Oreo blizzard. "American culture is so weird!" one student blurted out. We laughed disgustedly at the scene together. The interaction between Jack Nicholson and the DQ employee was so commercial, dehumanizing, impersonal, scripted. The brightness of the colors, the oppressiveness of the DQ uniform, the confines within which the interaction took place...it was all so offensive and repugnant to the eyes of my Ecuadorian students.

Today, with a sweaty towel carelessly adorning my neck and shoulders, I mosey my way past customers, attendants and personal trainers, and, as I open the door onto Davis Street, I smile. "Well, kids," I think to myself, "this is what it is like to live in America."

Twisted Twenties (continued)

Pretty quickly, the worrying subsides and the wandering commences. No, the worrying doesn't quite subside. Rather, it gets pushed aside by more immediate concerns, becoming more of an ambient noise. Decisions lose their grandiose sheen as your mind turns towards decisions of a smaller, but infinitely more pragmatic variety.

The first day after my graduation from Swarthmore, I was driving around New York City. First mistake. After circling the block looking for parking on the Upper West Side, I found a spot and Austin Power-ed my way into it. Fed the meter, only to show up five minutes after its expiration with a $60 fine. Second mistake. Oops. Whether or not I could afford to feed my caffeine addiction from Kohlberg Coffee Bar had previously been my biggest financial concern. That and how many hours I could reasonably log for a single tutoring session. Deadlines? Negotiable. Not so any more.

Always, though, always, the anxiety of the big questions--What the hell am I doing with my life?--nags away as you understand that all of the small decisions that you are making amount to an answer to the questions that truly matter. This awareness haunts you, and to deny its presence is to live in denial. Maybe you shove it under your bed, and you forget about it for stretches at a time, surely its absence enables day-to-day euphoria, but on some sleepless nights, it comes back in all its original, primal force.

Nevertheless, you forge ahead as you must.

Sheer inertia carries you through the days...

Some Articles

This period of life, what I have called the twisted twenties, has been written about quite extensively. Here are a couple of articles that I think are worth sharing:

"Tribal Workers" (Barlow)
Thomas Barlow writes about a culture of discontent that seems to be growing among the highly educated young. Particularly about the excess of opportunity that seems to greet such individuals.
"The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors" (Tierney)
John Tierney writes about a study from the field of Behavioral Economics about the utility derived from keeping options open.
"The Odyssey Years" (Brooks)
David Brooks writes about the transition from adolescence to adulthood, a decade of wandering that he calls the odyssey years.

If you have any other reading suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Twisted Twenties

I started this blog for a variety of reasons, but above all, I started this blog because being in your twenties can be rough business. I know that I have struggled, mightily at times, and I sense that my friends have had their fair share of worries and troubles as well. It is out of a sense of community then that I write in this blog.

Senior year in college: one foot in college, one foot already out the door. With that ominous graduation date looming so closely, every decision ahead seems to take on new gravity, at times unbearable weight. More than ever, you are aware that the decisions you make will change the course of your life. You try to avoid thinking in these overly dramatic terms, but it's nearly impossible to resist the urge. You are ready to leave your college years behind, sometimes you are even eager to be charting your own course, but the ugly truth is that uncertainty looms ahead.

On the precipice of today and tomorrow, of certainty and possibility...I am reminded of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and its first passage introducing Howard Roark:

Howard Roark laughed...He stood naked at the edge of a cliff...the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff...

He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already, because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh...

These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them. (omissions mine)

To feel so vitally young and empowered, as though the world is at your feet. Surely, it is an intoxicating feeling that comes over you at times as you look ahead to the unmolded years. But most other times, probably, your intoxication is of the OH (alcohol) variety and mixed with a good dose of anxiety. Howard Roark is an egocentric, incompassionate, nature-plundering, and most importantly, fictional character. Nobody is as certain or cocksure as he, or so you think. Then you look around and see your overachieving peers look so certain about their futures, so certain about their respective paths. How can you be so goddamn certain!? your innards scream.

Nevertheless, you forge ahead as you must. But, as you begin applying to graduate schools or to jobs, as you take that GRE or MCAT or LSAT, you realize how little control you actually have, how little power you exercise in deciding your own future. The resume and cover letter that you so meticulously crafted sit in a pile of hundreds of others, just waiting to be tossed aside by some unforgiving hand. Or worse yet, you wonder if that e-mail you sent sits in the "Spam" folder of your potential employer.

And then there is the nagging idea in the back of your mind that you are in your prime and that you are not living your every day to the fullest. These precious years should not be spent in a state of suspended worry, not in a cubicle pushing paper either, but living. The fierce urgency of NOW calls you, Carpe-fucking-Diem, or more eloquently, in Joyce's words: "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!"

Every fiber of your being calls on you to partake in life's feast, but you've got to watch your weight, you've got to think about the future and your career and what is best, how to optimally allocate your resources.............................

But you are not alone. The Dude abides. And I take comfort in that.

[to be continued...]

Okay to Hope

On November 3, the day before the election, I was on my way to the Stanford bookstore when I came across a political rally. A professor of political science was stumping for Obama, trying to instill in the minds of the under-20s in the audience the historical import of this election, stressing the importance of voting, and unabashedly adopting Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes We Can." At first it all struck me as a little bit, well, off-key.

Here, on this improvised stage, was a middle-aged white guy with a beard, a tweed, professorial jacket, slightly short and slightly plump, dressed impeccably as a scholar, stumping for Obama. Surely, I thought, this guy belongs in his book-filled office, hunched over student papers, thinking quiet, professorial thoughts. But no, here he was, pacing like a maniac with a microphone in hand, appealing passionately to those who would listen, and enticing the audience to chant with him, "Yes We Can." Not yet mesmerized, more in a state of detached amusement, I looked around me, couldn't help but smile at the sight of so many people chanting such a simple, naively optimistic campaign phrase. The size of the crowd grew.

Next up after the professor: a young conservative student dressed in madras pants and a pink button-down. The emotion in his voice so obviously young and raw: "I would rather disagree with a President Obama than agree with a President McCain!" Fist-pumping. Waving of campaign posters. More chanting. So the procession of speakers went. Each with more license to be impassioned, to be hopeful, and each with more fervent support from the growing crowd. And I found the words forming on my own lips, unexpectedly: "Yes We Can."

---

After it was all over, after enough votes had been counted, after history had been decided, I waited to watch Obama's victory speech. What impressed me most was the equanimity he has now become famous for, the absence of self-congratulation or even of celebration, the sobriety with which he reached out his hand to the audience in a gesture of gratitude. "It is okay," Obama's body language and facial expressions seemed to emanate, "It is okay to hope."

I remember following the 2000 and 2004 elections. I remember the incredulity with which the people around me greeted news of President Bush's respective victories. The post-game analysis was that gun-toting, homophobic middle America had stolen the election again. People talked about how liberals had forfeited all language of morality and could not stand their ground against evangelicals on issues like abortion, homosexuality and second amendment rights. "Moral issues" catapulted Bush to the White House in 2000 and 2004, leaving liberals feeling somewhat helpless.

Now, harboring hope, sanctioned by Obama's meteoric rise, I cannot help but feel that something has changed. That Obama's victory ushers in a new chapter, that liberals can now speak confidently of their own moral issues: equality of opportunity, the right to health care, personal and civic responsibility, sacrifice. Obama's victory speech, and the demeanor with which he delivered it, captured perfectly the tenor of this changed debate and articulated the sober optimism with which we can now all embrace tomorrow: "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep," but you know what? and you can even go ahead and say it out loud, "Yes We Can."

Reading

For want of proprietary thinking, I record a quote from Jonathan Franzen's How to be Alone essays to reflect the tragicomic mood that Franzen has put me in:

In Philadelphia I began to make unhelpful calculations, multiplying the number of books I'd read in the previous year by the number of years I might reasonably be expected to live, and perceiving in the three-digit product not so much an intimation of mortality (though the news on that front wasn't cheering) as a measure of the incompatibility of the slow work of reading and the hyperkinesis of modern life. All of a sudden it seemed as if the friends of mine who used to read no longer even apologized for having stopped. A young acquaintance who had been an English major, when I asked her what she was reading, replied: "You mean linear reading? Like when you read a book from start to finish?" (63)

Shamwow!

After going around and nerd-calling Stanford students, it is finally decided. I am going to buy myself a Shamwow!