Society Matters Too

In his book Consumed, Benjamin Barber draws attention to the capitalist markets of today and how they are cultivating a society of children that purchase trivial products, in essence “making kids consumers or consumers kids” (Barber 20). Although controversially portrayed, Barber’s thesis serves as an end in itself by making audiences more aware of their own and others’ decisions as consumers and their chilling impact on the economy; Barber attempts to defog a rather cyclic system in which we feed the very institutions that corrupt us into thinking we should feed them.

Central to his argument is the idea of privatization, that our decisions in the marketplace our dominated by the notion of what’s good for us personally rather that what’s good for the wider world. In the airline industry, Barber asserts that privatization manifests itself in the flawed reality that “taxpayers are assessed for training pilots, commercial airlines reap the rewards” (Barber 149). As part of resolving the dilemma that results from the ongoing shift between a consumer identity and a citizen identity, Barber advises us to consider public interests over our own. While I agree that this point could positively impact our global community in the long run, I would exercise caution when practicing this weighing of private vs. public costs, for the individual who is constantly engaged in placing public needs over his own would undoubtedly end up as a bubble-wrapped child constantly going out of his way not to expose himself to the dangers of society, yet on the alternative, the consumer going out of his way not to expose society to his harmful impacts.

In Italy a cultural phenomenon exists known as ‘Ben Comune’. Essentially, the concept capitalizes on public good vs. private good and of performing good works for the advantage of the community. An American equivalent does not exist as we are the growing collective of many cultures with varying senses of ‘doing good’ for the public. While this notion of benefiting society at the expense of personal desires may be absent from the modern American ethos, we should consider embracing this idea of doing public good so as not to further compartmentalize society further into pockets of “I want, I want,” as Barber posits.

Works Cited

Barber, Benjamin R. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. Print.

How Trees Relate to West Wing

In Present Shock, Douglas Rushkoff, an acclaimed media theorist, describes how society is slowly becoming disoriented due to the reality are faced with “in the moment.” He asserts that present shock, this state of disorientation, manifests itself in five primary ways: the collapse of narrative, “digiphrenia,” “overwinding,” “fractalnoia,” and “apocalpyto.” The concept of fractalnoia in particular provides an unprecedented link to the episode of West Wing: Isaac and Ishmael. In this episode, which serves an allegory to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, a visiting group of honor students are locked down in the White House due to an internal terrorist threat. During the lockdown, the White House staff members, through discussion, teach the students about terrorist motives and goals, therefore serving as an educational episode to the audience viewing the West Wing in the real world where the events of 9/11 actually did occur.

As detailed by Rushkoff, fractalnoia is when “we engage by relating one thing to another, even when the relationships are forced or imagined.” Recalling a past unit in mathematics, I know that fractals are the collectives of geometric shapes upon geometric shapes formed by recursive equations. Rushkoff offers a similar definition, which does little to bring clarity to the meaning of a fractal. As a result, this remains a rather fuzzy concept for the remainder of the book. This vagueness prompted me to investigate the matter a bit further and led me to conclude that the easiest way to describe a fractal is by looking at the image of one:

The basic tree is therefore an ideal representation of a fractal. The repeating geometric shape in this image could best be described as ‘Y’ – by looking closely enough we see that Y’s upon Y’s forms the entirety of the tree. Rushkoff then argues that fractalnoia arises when we attempt to connect everything to something else, no matter how ridiculous the link. This obsession, in my opinion, is simply a metaphor for the human goal of adding comprehensible meaning to everything. In The End of Education, Neil Postman asserts that the worn-out ‘gods’ of Economic Utility and Consumership provide false meaning in the education of schoolchildren today. Postman would then most likely agree with Rushkoff in the sense that those who cling to these irrelevant narratives are fractalnoids in that they desperately link education to getting a good job and being able to purchase lots of material goods. But these connections are simply imagined, because in the competitive society of today these covenants are no longer realistic.

This concept of the fractal can be taken further in application to the episode of West Wing: Isaac and Ishmael. A White House staff member, Josh Lyman, suggests that the children “accept more than that one idea, [because] it makes them crazy.” Lyman refers directly to the terrorists who he believes come from a very singular culture, not open to connecting to various ideas. In contrast, Lyman advises the children to expand their mindsets and to relate to more than one notion, complicating the fractal that is their identity. As a result, the plethora of connections on the individual’s part will render a pluralist society, spiting those cultures instead focused on single chains of ideas.

Works Cited

"Isaac and Ishmael." The West Wing. N.d. Television.

Postman, Neil. The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. N.p.: Vintage, 1996. Print.

Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Current, 2013. Print.

Dang, That Was Clear (Reaction to A Moveable Feast)

Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast recounts the author’s personal experiences in the post-World War I, expatriate community of Paris. Published posthumously, A Moveable Feast captures many of the intimate encounters he shared with prominent writers of the day, including Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. Hemingway presents these non-fictitious memoirs in a very straight style of writing. He should be applauded for his concise delivery, retaining a wealth of content but with minimal text. Because of his matter-of-fact prose, Hemingway is deliberate in choosing the perfect adjectives and descriptors to express his opinions toward a person he meets or a place he goes.

At many points in the book, Hemingway refers to himself and the audience as being in the present. This is vital to understanding him because envisioning ourselves in his “present” places us at the point of time in which he began writing for a living. Consequently, we fulfill the role of an observer of his ways. We learn that “If [he] started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, [he] found that [he] could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence [he] had written” (Hemingway 22). In the very wording of this statement, Hemingway is succinct in communicating the idea of writing succinctly. So, the aforementioned sample is surely an instance of form-follows-content, just as when he discusses his lean writing style (in a lean manner of course) at many other points in the book.

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway represents the ideal writer that George Orwell discusses in his essay Politics and the English Language, a writer that “let[s] the meaning choose the word and not the other way around” (Orwell). In his writing, Hemingway tries not to let the verbiage of his content obscure the “truth” behind it. Fittingly, the title of this essay is also the name of our current unit in English, which further reinforces the link between this book and our current studies. Within A Moveable Feast, there are no narrative problems to solve in terms of comprehension, and that is the sheer beauty of Hemingway’s writing. The absence of complicatedly woven statements makes for coherent prose and a minimization of ambiguities caused by unclear language.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest, and Séan A. Hemingway. A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. New York, NY: Scribner, 2009. Print.

Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." N.p.: n.p., 1946. N. pag. Print.