To Grow in Wisdom: Jesus as a Model of Liberal Arts (Part 2)

            Perhaps he could, some may argue.  “Of course he knew how to refute them; he was God and God knows everything.  Jesus didn’t need to learn the Bible because he wrote it!”  Yet this ignores what Luke told us earlier in his gospel.  “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).  This means that the four-year-old Jesus did not have a supernatural knowledge of reality.  He was not discoursing in Christian metaphysics while his kindergarten playmates ate mud pies.  He had to learn things just as we all must.  He knew the Bible not because he had a supernatural, divine memory of it but because he applied himself to it.  He learned it.  The Book of Hebrews tells us that he lived just as we did and felt the full human experience.  He cannot be held to be fully human if he didn’t live the human experience—including long days of note-taking and memorization.

            However, Jesus not only demonstrates intellectual knowledge but also earthy, tangible service, though always to serve the greater purpose of his ministry.  His sermons were not designed for academic audiences but popular ones.  His audiences were primarily farmers and fishermen.  His parables frequently use blue-collar metaphors familiar to them.  One of the most explicit stories of Jesus’s concern for the practical comes in his healing of the paralytic.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that a crippled man is brought to Jesus.  He is lowered through the roof of the house in which Jesus is teaching.  When the man is lowered to him, he announces that the man’s sins are forgiven.  The Pharisees balk, murmuring to themselves that this is blasphemy.  Jesus knows their hearts and announces that he will prove his authority to forgive sin by healing the man.  We see in this that Jesus’s tangible ministry is spurred by a spiritual imperative.  Time would fail me to explore other examples like the feeding of the multitudes, his social discourse in the Sermon on the Mount, his affirmation of paying taxes to Caesar, even raising the dead.  Nevertheless, it is clear that Jesus believes that a bodily life must be grounded in a spiritual foundation.

            Most striking for our purposes, however, is how Jesus is passionately concerned with the hearts of his hearers over the particularities of how they make a living.  We read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that a rich young ruler came to Jesus and asked how he may inherit eternal life.  He appeared to have all the correct practices, was obviously wealthy, had a promising political career ahead, and showed a real desire to follow Jesus.  To use Berry College language, his “head” and his “hands” appeared to be in order.  Then Jesus, loving him, drops a dramatic challenge upon the young man.  “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  Rather than follow, this pious, intelligent, practical young man goes away sad.  In saying this, Jesus was not saying that all who follow him must be poor and destitute.  We see numerous people in the Bible who are wealthy Christians.  Yet Jesus knows something about this man; Mammon is his god and he will never be truly fulfilled until he casts his idol into the dust.  He must drop everything and follow this itinerant preacher for as long as he has left on Earth.  This man must leave his doubtlessly promising political career, all the financial gain he has achieved through his job, and follow the Master, an unwise career move in any century.  In saying this, Jesus illustrates what he taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.”  For Jesus, the heart of what we do cannot be devoted to profit.  It must be devoted to God.

            The greatest challenge to the mechanical/employability view of education is the very core of Jesus’s life and teaching.  Bill Gates told the National Governors Association in February 2011 that “everybody should have a sense of which of the colleges—both community and four-year institutions—are doing very well.  You can even break that down by the departments. […] The amount of subsidation is not that well-correlated to the areas that actually create jobs in the state—that create income in the state.”  And surely this is common sense, right?  Pour taxpayer resources into departments which create jobs, take the humanities off of life support, and you will maximize state investment in education.  Let the English majors be baristas and let the hard sciences do the real work in the economy.  Isn’t that what China and Japan do?  But the very premise of the Gospel Jesus preaches, the very premise of the entire Bible, is that truth must be revealed from the outside.  It is not enough that students graduate, make money, create jobs, and figure out who they are on their own.  The Bible says that truth must be revealed from without, not from within.  Jesus tells us that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.  He tells us that the Scriptures have been fulfilled within our hearing.  He tells us that we are in far more trouble than we ever realized in the Sermon on the Mount.  Most importantly of all, he tells us that greater love than we can possibly imagine has come in the body of the modest carpenter calling us home.

            This is why Christianity cannot affirm a libertarian view of education.  Education cannot consist solely in acquiring skills for a marketplace.  Christians throughout the centuries have followed Christ in affirming that education must be holistic.  We cannot be only concerned with right belief, lest we become like the teachers of the law who believed many of the right things yet were “whitewashed tombs”, clean on the outside yet full of death.  Nor may we be concerned only with the pragmatics and measurable outcomes (or incomes) of education lest we become like the rich young ruler who was successful and affluent, yet in the end worshiped money and comfort.  Christian education must be fully embodied, recognizing that Jesus Christ, the Truth, is concerned with the whole person.  Jesus’s final charge to the newly-formed Church is to “Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, even until the end of the age.”  Disciples cannot make themselves no matter how much money or job fulfillment they find.  They must be taught, head, heart, and hands.

To Grow in Wisdom: Jesus as a Model of Liberal Arts (Part 1)

When it comes to educational philosophy, the liberal arts are falling out of vogue.  Organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Casey Research Institute issue dire warnings about the future if America does not devote more resources to mathematics and engineering.  Alex Daley with the Casey Institute even went so far as to write a piece entitled, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Major in the Liberal Arts”, an unsubtle title to say the least.  There he argued that American students are “graduating less prepared for the technological future than their peers from around the world – a trend that is already having serious economic effects as jobs like biotech research now head overseas as quickly as manufacturing once did.”  No doubt Mr. Daley has in mind countries like Japan, Germany, or China, nations which excel in engineering and research.  Or perhaps he has in mind numerous media reports about fledgling American science and math scores or the dire predictions of our economic future if we don’t shed our obsession with the arts.  As any reasonable libertarian like Doug Casey, founder of the Casey Research Institute, will tell you, history, literature, dead languages, and theology are really nothing but diversion or a hobby at best.  Maybe as well the ironically unscientific anecdote of freeloading Occupy protesters with loads of debt and useless Medieval Literature degrees still rings true in the ears of many hearers.  So off to war march the pragmatists and the artists, engineers citing the indisputability of common sense.

            As a Christian, however, I am left wondering how Jesus informs this discussion.  While I no longer sport a knit bracelet advertising it, I still have to ask “What Would Jesus Do?”  (My Sunday School teacher said so.)  More aptly in this discussion, what can we learn from Jesus’s pedagogy here in 2013?  What can we glean from the famous teacher Jesus Christ, the most influential man who ever lived?  I believe that we can see from Jesus a holistic view of education, one which engages the mind with the arts, values the practical life of work and career, and transforms the human heart.  Thus, Jesus the liberal artist sees and educates the whole person.

Jesus demonstrates a holistic liberal education in his knowledge not of only of the Scriptures (a decidedly unscientific book, despite our loudest fundamentalists’ yelling).  In Luke 4:16-22, Jesus attends the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth.  In this passage, we read that Jesus opens the scroll of Isaiah and announces the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in the presence of the assembly—namely, that the Messiah had come and was now standing before them.  We may note two very significant facts here which may not be apparent to the reader.  The first is that Jesus is familiar with the Hebrew Bible.  This story takes place in a time before the conventional chapter and verse designations with which we are familiar.  This was also in a time before the codex, meaning that the entire text of Isaiah was on a single scroll.  Jesus would have studied the synagogue’s copy of the book; it was too expensive to produce individual copies.  Further, Jesus was familiar with Hebrew, a language which was essentially dead at the time.  Modern Hebrew spoken in Israel today is the only example in history of a revived language.  Jesus probably spoke Aramaic as his native language; spoken Hebrew was almost dead by this time.  In fact, most young Jews would not have begun any kind of practical job training before learning Hebrew from the local rabbi.  Jesus was well-versed enough in the Hebrew faith that he was even able to astound the rabbis in Jerusalem… at the age of twelve!

            However, beyond simply knowing the Bible, Jesus the blue-collar carpenter was also familiar with the theological ideas in vogue at the time.  In Luke 20, we read an account of Jesus’s time in Jerusalem during Holy Week.  The Sadducees approach Jesus and pose a hypothetical example concerning the resurrection of the dead.  “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”  The Bible tells us that the Sadducees denied resurrection and they also held only the Torah—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—as canonical Scripture.  The most explicit references to the resurrection of the dead in the Old Testament come in the writings of the Prophets (such as Isaiah and Ezekiel), books denied by the Sadducees.

            Jesus is familiar with their theological opinions and meets them on their own terms.  He answers their question by refuting their silly example (there is no marriage in the resurrection) and then citing Exodus.  He says that God is the god of the living, not the dead.  How can he be (present tense) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob if they are dead?  While modern-day Jews may dispute Jesus’s interpretation of this verse, we are told by Luke that this completely dumbfounded the Sadducees.  Jesus the carpenter quoted passages his opponents considered authoritative, something he could not have done if he hadn’t studied their theology.

A Well-Intentioned Accident

Lately, the tubes of the interwebs have been packed by criticism of Brad Paisley and LL Cool J.  I have been surprised how suddenly everyone is an expert not only in race relations but also Civil War history, country music, Confederate symbolism, and urban poverty.  Here at Artery Bloggage, I try to avoid the topical in favor of the timeless.  The reason is that every controversy that sails across the internet passes and I know better than to "feed the trolls."  Yet I can't help but tackle this one head-on.  After all, I find it somehow heartening that discussing Southern identity will still ignite a firestorm 150 years later.

Above: A previous firestorm of Mason-Dixon controversy.

For those not in the know, country music star Brad Paisley released a song called "Accidental Racist" last Monday, featuring rap by LL Cool J.  The song is a plea for reconciliation and understanding between rural Southerners and urban blacks (and potentially Yankees given some of LL Cool J's lyrics).  The song has sent shock waves across the cultural scene, making headlines across the internet and even getting discussion among the talking heads on CNN, among them my favorite NYT columnist Ross Douthat.  This should probably be taken as evidence not of the song's offensiveness or impact, instead only that North Korea hasn't been rattling their sabers for at least forty-eight hours.

Nevertheless, real issues are at play simmering underneath the veneer of yet another country song.  So is the song a defense of white Southerners, the Confederate battle flag, redneck culture, or under-dressing for pretentious baristas?  Let's have a look:

To the man that waited on me at the Starbucks down on Main, I hope you understand
When I put on that t-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I'm a Skynyrd fan
The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the South
And I just walked him right in the room
Just a proud rebel son with an 'ol can of worms
Lookin' like I got a lot to learn but from my point of view

Now this is a bit jumbled and doesn't make our analysis any easier.  All of these themes seem to be on display.  Still, the key line "the elephant in the corner of the South" indicates that yes, the Confederate battle flag is the main issue (bringing worms into a Starbucks notwithstanding).  Yet I feel it necessary to parse these issues out which have been lumped together.  After all, I lost family fighting for the Confederacy.  I actually like the Confederate flag and own several.  Unlike Mr. Paisley, I am not an avid fisherman (the only thing which revolts me more than worms are fish), I am a Skynyrd fan but don't think Skynyrd paraphernalia requires wearing a rebel flag, and don't display the flag in public.  I could write a book on the history of the symbolism of the Confederate flag, but someone already has.  

Paisley goes to great lengths to argue that no modern-day Southerner is responsible for the flag's offensiveness.  He believes that is primarily the result of slavery and secession.

Our generation didn't start this nation
And we're still paying for the mistakes
That a bunch of folks made long before we came
And caught between southern pride and southern blame

Corski argues in his book that the Confederate flag became a symbol of the South more broadly during and after World War II.  I would argue that World War II and not the War Between the States is the most transformative event in Southern history.  For many poor white and black Southerners, this was their first time traveling abroad, interacting with men from other states, and serving toward a common goal with Yanks and Westerners.  The flag emerged as a symbol of Southern units.  And while the use of the flag as a symbol of the South certain did not begin with the war, World War II cemented its place in the popular consciousness of the nation generally.

It was not until Brown v. Board in 1956 that its symbolism became sinister.  Unbeknownst to nearly ever commentator on the display of the flag, the KKK did not use the flag in their rallies until segregation was challenged.  There were two simple reasons for this: 1) they considered the flag sacred (they are all supposed to be Confederate ghosts, remember?) and 2) they wanted national, not just regional, appeal.  The Klan made strident gains in New England and the West at its re-founding in the 1920s by broadening their "hate-appeal" to Catholics, Jews, Communists, and evolutionists instead of merely "uppity" blacks.

So what?  Well, Paisley is flat-out wrong when he asserts that we are simply living with the consequences of our ancestors.  Like they did with cheap ghost costumes, the Klan has also fairly well ruined the rebel flag.  While no one was alive to have owed slaves or have been a slave before the Thirteenth Amendment, many people are still alive who opposed segregation and used the flag to threaten and intimidate young black Southerners who wanted equal access to education.  So the worst aspect of "Unintentional Racist"--even worse than the musical aesthetics--is that it introduces big topics without really understanding or seeking to resolve them.  For Paisley and LL Cool J to issue a mutual "judge not" on doo rags and rebel flags glosses over the visceral issues afflicting race relations even today.

It is ironic to consider because in many ways rural whites and urban blacks are more similar than they are divided.  Both are cultures which struggle with educational access.  Both have been known to ostracize those who leave the community for education opportunities.  Both communities deal with poverty and discrimination; "Cletus" and "Rondell" may find their résumés in the trash can or judged ignorant by virtue of their accents.  They are both geographically-isolated from a more affluent bourgeois culture.  I don't mean to say that one has life any worse than the other, though both would probably dislike being at all compared with the other.

Yet in spite of all this, I really won't join the din of self-important online pontiffs decrying the latent racism of the song.  They tried.  It was woefully inadequate, sure, but did we really expect a pop country-rap collaboration to complete the work of Martin Luther King Jr.?  And should we really expect a bunch of WASPy NPR Yanks to understand race relations on cotton soil?  The most vocal critics of the song seem to be those farthest outside the intended audience.  So let's leave the Ivy League to complain and moan while we Southerners deal with an American problem on the ground.  How can we preserve Southern pride while also acknowledging Southern sins?  And is there some way to create a symbol and a culture with black Southerners--a pan-racial Southern identity--without devolving into feel-good sentimentality?

The Natural Self

(With regards to Walker Percy.)

Why the Self feels Synthetic and finds Food Erotic

Thought Experiment: The Sexy Chef and the Organic Store

Imagine you have chosen to visit a popular organic supermarket.  You are trying to avoid chemical processes, refinements, and additives for their unhealthy and overall negative influence on your nutrition.  This particular location is the only one in town which carries corn chips for your all-natural Southwestern salsa accentuated with homegrown black beans and pico de gallo (confident as you are that each ingredient has been shipped directly from their respective soils with no preservatives).  You have brought your reusable burlap grocery bag, stylishly embroidered with verdant leaves on a khaki background.  Looking at it reminds you of the quaint, simple days on a farm you wish you'd grown up on.  You wander the aisles with an intentional aimlessness, drifting through each as you snatch a head of all-natural lettuce and a cut of grass-fed beef.

Somewhere between the Fair Trade coffee beans and the sugarcane soft drinks, you spot a popular Youtube chef.  This particular man's channel is less about guiding the audience through follow-along steps and more about the audacity of the dishes.  On one episode, you watched him and his Canadian cohorts buy dozens of cheeseburgers from local fastfood restaurants and layer them as a giant dish of lasagna, separated by a sheet of bacon strips woven together.  A calorie, fat, and sodium counter ran on the bottom of the video; at the end of two minutes detailing the preparation, the calorie counter was over 16,000.  Each video concludes with the Canadians drizzling the concoction in Jack Daniels whiskey and tearing into each dish as hedonistic gluttons.  As they cook each dish (with names like "Bacon Fortress" or "Meat Salad"), triumphant orchestral music swells from the first slab of bacon-wrapped steak to the last sloppy bite oozing down the sides of the Canadians' mouths.  It is shameless in its recklessness to the point of absurdity.  Each episode you have watched has evoked laughter, disgust, and excitement with such mastery that you cannot rightly express your fascination with these epic meals.  You are riveted by each and every episode.

You are understandably surprised to see the Canadian chef in a socially- and health-conscious market like this one.  The Canadian politely asks a stock boy which are the strongest coffee beans.  The stock boy--his name tag reads "Scott"--answers, "Probably the Ethiopian dark roast.  It has rich body flavor and is guaranteed grown without pesticides."

The Canadian takes one look at the price and balks.  "I think I'll just go for Folgers.  Where's that?"

"Sir," Scott replies too pleasantly, "you won't find Folgers here.  Their product has not been guaranteed chemical-free or Fair Trade."

"Does that explain the pricetag?  I need four pounds."

"Four pounds?"

"Yes.  I need four pounds of coffee beans."

"Buying for the office, huh?"

"No.  We're making Atomic Slam Breakfast."

"Atomic Slam Breakfast?"

"That's right, sissy-pants!"  The Canadian suddenly adopts the swaggering intensity of a Pentecostal minister or a drill sergeant.  "First, we take three dozen eggs.  Throw those chicken fetuses in a bowl!  Then we beat them eggs... spatula's too small... better use the shovel!  Next we brew that coffee double-strong!  We gonna drink it?  No way, granola-munch.  We pour that **** in a pot for marination!  Next we add bacon strips.  And bacon strips.  And bacon strips!  Strippin dat bacon... for dat coffee meat we makin'!!!

"Next level: sausage drizzled in bacon grease!  Two pounds enough?  Better make it three.  Pancakes with bacon bits?  Smart!  Glaze it with whiskey, bread it all over!"  At this point, you can almost see the calorie counter running higher and higher.  "Deep-fry them pancakes.  Coat it with syrup and Mountain Dew!  Marinated pig is done... fry up that coffee-bacon!  Throw some scrambled eggs on that plate... add habanero peppers for complete morning energy!  Finish it off with a tall glass of orange-flavored energy drink!  Combat that scurvy!"

Scott's face is glistening with Canadian spittle as the chef concludes.  His shouts ring out like a Mongol warlord down a Serbian valley.  "Now we got all that coffee and Irish cream, we got them habanero eggs, we got that caffeine-bacon and those Mountain Dew, deep-fried pancakes!  We gonna eat that ******!  And then we stay awake for a three weeks."

The Canadian's eyes are wide with fire, his beard dripping sweat and saliva.  His face is flush with blood as he leers the stock boy in anticipation, waiting for Scott to respond to the apocalyptic meal the chef has prophesied.  Scott's face is twisted in equal parts bewilderment and indignation.  He finally stammers, "How can you be like this?!!"

"Like what?" asks the Canadian, his demeanor abruptly calm.

"How can you eat like that?  How can you be so indifferent to your health?  That kind of eating will kill you!"

"We're professional chefs.  We only eat like this once a week.  We exercise regularly.  Most of the time we eat normal meals.  We do this for our webshow, Epic M-"

"I know who you are now.  That doesn't excuse what you do!  You blow hundreds of dollars on a single meal while people the world over starve and you fuel the unjust systems which perpetrate the oppression of foreign workers by shopping at discount supermarkets!  You glorify unhealthy eating in an age where obesity in this country is epidemic!  You bring in attractive women and exploit their sexuality to increase your viewership!  Your only appeal is your oafishness, a caricature of a barbaric relic!"

You are uncomfortable in the silence which follows.  The Canadian has a confused expression on his face.  He finally manages, "Last year we cooked for a homeless shelter.  A whole episode devoted to feeding the poor."

"You fed them one of your characteristic dishes?"

"Well, yeah.  The guys at the homeless shelter loved it."

"I'm sure they did," Scott snaps.  "They had a month's worth of calories in a few minutes.  That's to say nothing of the preservatives and growth hormone in the beef you stuffed them with!"

"There's no growth hormone approved for beef cows."

"Don't pretend like you're a part of the solution!  You're a part of the problem."

"Is obesity really that big of a deal?  It seems like a problem most people throughout history would have liked to have."

"You mean in the Dark Ages?  When people didn't wash their hands or bathe?"

"Life expectancy has never been higher."

"So people live longer, more miserable, obesity-laden lives before they become bedridden and die from complications from that obesity!  Huge improvement there, buddy.  Heart disease is the top killer in this country and your meals revel in it."

"Healthy eaters die in bus crashes."

Scott is befuddled.  "Excuse me?"

"Yeah.  You can eat healthy or gross and still get hit by a bus or shot or stabbed or fall off a bridge..."

"Don't be ridiculous!  Heart disease is preventable..."

"Everybody dies sometime.  Something has to kill you," says the chef calmly.

Scott sighs as the teacher defeated by a defiant child.  He resignedly returns to stocking the shelf.  "You do so much to keep these big food companies afloat that you may as well be their spokesman.  You're a champion of regression.  Wal-Mart may have some discount coffee.  Good luck with your show."

Other shoppers have been casually eavesdropping on this rather heated exchange.  As the Canadian strides out of the supermarket, you cannot help but notice their reactions.  Some look back after him in shock and shake their heads in disapproval.  Some of the women seem drawn to his swagger and reckless allure.  Some of the men nod subtly to acknowledge his manly superiority.  All shoppers are awestruck and some stride proudly behind him like the disciples of an Old Testament prophet.  You too find that you cannot take your eyes off him until the automatic doors slide shut behind him.

Question I: Why do you have such a strong reaction to the Youtube chef?

(a)  The Youtube chef is a dangerous radical who encourages people to continue in uncritical and unhealthy eating at the expense of human suffering in America (in the form of obesity) and abroad (in the form of supporting unjustly-low wages.  His cavalier attitude toward the health and safety of his audience is indicative of the apathy endemic to the greatest accomplices of injustice.  "All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."

(b)  The Youtube chef is an entertainer.  While he eats poorly, he is fundamentally a businessman.  His livelihood comes from his show.  No one forces to anyone to watch his show, they do so by choice.  Just because someone watches his show about epically-sized meals does not mean they will eat that way.  The show is funny, well-edited, and the chefs are professionals.  No one in their right mind saw Evel Knievel jump the Grand Canyon and tried to replicated it.  People are free to get fat and die as they please.

(c)  The Youtube chef is a sinner under God's condemnation, glorying as he does in gluttony.  God's Word says, "(For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)" (Phil. 3:18-19, KJV).  Other passages condemn this man (Prov. 23:2, 20-21; 1 Cor. 3:16-17; Deut. 21:20; Jug. 3:19) as indulgent in the lusts of the flesh.

(d)  The Youtube chef is a man you can follow.  Men and women flock to his channel because he stares certain death in the face and does not blink.  His eating is edgy--sexy even--and the babes who attend reinforce this.  I mean, if he was just good with the ladies that would mean nothing (since he must practice safe sex).  But there are no condoms for the tummy and this man don't give a four-letter word! Given the chance, you would join his team and chow down along with them... provided you could quit your job, relocate to Canada, toss caution to the wind, exercise to keep the weight off...

(CHOOSE ONE OR MORE)

Question II: Why are you at this organic supermarket anyway?

(a)  I have done extensive research into the health benefits of organic supermarkets.  I studied nutrition in college, designed several experiments, and gathered numerous data to indicate that the additives and preservatives endemic to the mainstream food industry are the direct causes of obesity, cancer, birth defects, and diminished quality of life in the West (especially America).

(b)  I have it on good authority that mainstream supermarkets are untrustworthy.  My friend passed me this article from a nutrition magazine that said that people who eat processed food are consistently fatter.  I read one facebook post which said that brominated vegetable oil is used in Mountain Dew and is also a flame retardant chemical used in plastic toys. Pesticides on fruits are specifically designed to kill bugs. How could they possibly be good for my baby?

(c)  I am here ironically.  This is so the opposite of who I am.  I usually stuff bacon down my gullet like the Jewish Devil.  Bumping into a fellow organic-hater slamming knowledge on that hippie twerp was the highlight of my week.

(d)  I came for the same reason I have a farm-themed tote.  I would never admit it, but I live rootless in a hyper-connected world.  I have lived in six different cities, never been back to my roots because I have none, never run in large enough social circles to be truly known by anyone.  I have a synthetic community through social media, synthetic friendships through workplace networking, synthetic identity through my ironic wardrobe and 90s pop culture references.  Even my love life is synthetic since the love and lovemaking in movies or pornography somehow seems so much more real and tangible than the mere pleasantries I get in real life.  So is it so much to ask that even the food on my plate--the one thing left that reminds me that I am more than just a disembodied consciousness--be something rooted and real and dirty from the ground and coated in the sweat of a real farmer with dirty hands and a place in the world?

(CHOOSE ONE)

Ghosts

When I walk down Bardstown Road in Louisville, I am simultaneously surrounded by the throbbing pulse of life and the hollow pallor of death.  It's a busy street, the top hipster destination of Louisville.  It is abuzz with the bustle so common to many cities: too many people crammed into too little space and confident that this efficiency minimizes the carbon footprint of humanity and eliminates the encroaching evil of urban sprawl.  As to whether or not this ecological righteousness outweighs the evil of furious thoughts directed at the throngs of bodies crowding the sidewalk or the incompetent drivers slowing the flow of traffic, only the Universe knows (if it has personality or will at all; evidence suggests it is coldly indifferent).  I myself am less enthralled with the environmental responsibility and feel more like a flatfooted kid forced to wear shoes three sizes too small.  I am pressed and not comforted by the chattering bodies pressing in upon me.

But the thousand-yard-stare of these walking dead is far more troubling than the enclosure and noise.  Each is clothed in thick layers of irony.  The Bardstown hipster goes out of his way to dress sloppily because he finds it ironic.  He listens to obscure neofolk music, intentionally building an identity which few others may share.  He drinks terrible beer--the worst he can find--just to get a rise from those who recognize the rotgut he swills.  He swears he loves that he may get even more disapproval from the average clean-cut observer.  He lives post-culture, post-liberal, post-postmodern, post-everything but pre-nothing.  He is pre-nothing in the sense that he is not a pioneer of anything but reacting to everything.  Far more ominously, he is also pre-nothing in the sense that he in fact runs before nihil.  An existential void howls just beneath the ironic scaffold which he has constructed, caulked over with Ray-Ban glasses, unflattering skinny ties, and an affinity for Wes Anderson films.  In truth, any critique of the hipster has been exhausted to triteness by better and worse writers than me.  I only wish to note that these hipsters drift through the world as perpetual ghosts, reveling in all they aren't (i.e. mainstream, conformist, familiar, hygienic) rather than in all they are.

I can't say I blame them.  They suffer from the same heart disease I sometimes feel spiritually clogging my own metaphysical arteries.  They struggle to know who they are or why they're here.  They may gloss over it with a veneer of New Age spirituality or twentysomething progressivism or unsightly beards and skinny jeans.  In reality, they seem no more tied to Louisville or even their favorite haunt Bardstown Road as a place than they are to their own roots which they no doubt found too conventional or unjust.  True, they may be ardently devoted to a particular coffee shop or a local neo-folk bluegrass band.  Yet they share with most people (besides the elderly and the Evangelical Christians) the fact that they are unlikely to see themselves as dutiful citizens who may be called upon to sacrifice billfold or style, life or limb for the sake of this particular city.  Who am I to critique?  I am not much of a Louisvillian either.

It's all so different from the Southern roots I left.  I grew up in two small-ish towns/suburbs.  I much prefer to identify with my small town in Georgia than with the metropolis of Atlanta; I hated going to the city and rarely did.  (A Braves game was the only real draw.)  I was too young to do much travel in Birmingham when we moved away from its suburb.  However, Birmingham in the 90s felt more like Alabama's biggest town and seemed not to aspire to be an oasis of hip culture in a sea of redneck ignorance (unlike Birmingham today, desperate as it is to emulate Nashville or Atlanta).  All my grandparents came from very distinct roots in their small Alabama towns.  All the neighbors knew who they were and they understood their civic obligation to the neighbors; they had roles in town to play at were happy to play them whether or not Camden or Millbrook ever achieved hip metropolitan status or not.  Even when I was young, I was mystified that everyone (even the black folks) hollered, "Howdy, Mister Charlie!" to my grandfather every time we walked past the Wilcox County Courthouse on the way to the barber shop.  People there still know who I am years after my previous visit, a foot of height and a healthy beard notwithstanding.

Now the grands are dead and I am haunted by their ghosts every time I go back to the family estate.  This is especially true in Millbrook where three generations of family are buried in the side yard.  This always used to unnerve me when I was a kid.  I was convinced the house was haunted when I would hear creaks in the night.  Grandmother certainly agreed the spirits were about, though they never seemed to bother her as much.  Walker Percy wrote in The Moviegoer how every Southerner knows he is haunted by ghosts, be those spirits Confederates or slaves or great uncles or Episcopal ministers or Sir Walter Scott himself.  I have always known the land was haunted, even if I rarely felt brave enough to mention it.

Yet as I have grown older, I have grown to love the ghosts.  I grew less afraid that some ghoulish spirit would appear to me at night as I awakened to their ethereal presence in the sunlight.  They haunt me all the time as the voices of Stoical talk of obligation and duty.  I go home to Mama all the time because when she calls, a man must answer (Bear Bryant said so).  They haunt me in instinctive chivalry and honor.  "Hold the door for a lady, get between the lady and traffic when you stroll the sidewalk, hats off when you pray."  They haunt me in the mournful sadness at the rebel graveyards.  The grand Greek tragedy of Dixie--a proud culture built upon the back of irredeemable subjugation--strikes a chord in my soul even though I never donned a gray kepi or loaded a musket against a Yankee or forced a man into servitude.  Maybe it's as simple as the fact that the ghosts have inevitably become familiar as the years have marched on.  The boy sleeping by the graveyard in Alabama scarcely knew the souls lurking in the shadows.  But the graduate student twenty years later knows a few of them now since they have only lately passed into death and wouldn't mind a visit from them.  Family is still family, fleshly or ghastly.

The matter may be concluded with a cruel, untrendy irony.  Caught between three or four potential roads, enabled to be anyone or anything by the anonymity of the cosmopolitan metropolis, formed by the "you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be" self-esteem of Disney movies and 90s educational philosophy, I am rootless in a town whose soil is as alien as the red dust of Mars.  I can be anyone or anything, but who should I be?  The hipster hides his uncertainty with trendy cigarettes and ironic beer and empty talk of his individual liberty and the providence of an impersonal universe.  Some days I would gladly trade the grounded shackles and limitations and small minds of a small Alabama town for chic twentysomething freedom which yields only listlessness and cosmopolitan relativism.  When you needn't be anyone, you can be whatever you want.  But what should you want and who should you be?

Put plainly, I prefer the dead ghosts to the living ones.

Our Ancient Happy Family

The most striking thing to me in my first serious read-through of Aristotle's Politics comes at the very beginning where Aristotle claims the origin of civil government is the family.  For Aristotle, families are comprised of the rulers and the ruled (just as each individual has within himself an element of ruling and being ruled or sovereignty and submission).  Husbands rule the household and wives obey them (here there may be a fair amount of misogyny in his description of women and wives).  Children are subject to the parents, especially the father.  Slaves are subject to the household manager (whichever parent happens to be holding that role).  He then notes how recognizable governments came to be.  Families grew in the number of children and those children grew into adults and started families of their own.  These families stayed within a fairly close distance, forming a village.  As space came to a premium, villages continued to grow in size until they became a collection of villages--towns and then cities.  Cities achieved what Aristotle considered full political statehood: the polis.  When cities connect themselves together under greater rulers, they became full-fledged nations.  Everything Aristotle writes in books 2-9 of Politics is based on that foundation.  The family is a microcosm of the state, whether we are considering villages, local communities, city-states, or grand empires.

The Old Testament/Hebrew Bible offers a similar account.  As we are reminded at weddings, God's first institution is not the church or the state or the charity or the bridge club but the marriage.  Adam and Eve constitute a divinely-ordained covenant.  Dysfunction going forward in the biblical narrative is often traced back to "sins of the father".  Jacob, Isaac and Rebekkah, Abraham, Noah, and most ultimately Adam are directly or indirectly responsible for contention in the narrative of Genesis (and arguably the rest of the biblical narrative).  So the problems between men both personally and in society are in some fashion a fault of the father.  Aaron's failure to properly train his sons Nadab and Abihu as priests lead to their deaths in one of the few narrative sections of Leviticus.  Another very dramatic example is the story of David.  In the wake of his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah, God curses him with strife in his family.  And while much ink has been spilled on the lust of David, much less has followed his shocking passivity as Amnon and Absalom commit atrocious sins.  This culminates in an Israelite civil war as Absalom cultivates latent resentment against the king into a war of usurpation.  David's famous lament for his son in 2 Samuel 18 is the culmination of his failures as a general and king, but at least as importantly his failures as a husband and father:

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

The New Testament carries this theme forward.  One of the most scandalous things Jesus does in the Gospels is refer to Yahweh as "Father" and himself as the Son of God.  In some ways this can be seen as a political statement as well as a statement of love, since in Genesis the notion of sovereignty begins with Yahweh's sovereignty over the creation he spoke into being from nothing.  Jesus is often called "lord" or "master" in the Gospels, translated in English Bibles from the Greek κύριος.  In Greek, this word can be used as a polite term for a teacher or social superior.  However, it is also the word used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) for the Hebrew יהוה ("Yahweh", usually rendered in English Bibles as "the LORD").  As Christian writers continue forward, they describe Jesus as "Lord" and attribute to him both the traditional Greek political connotations and the Hebrew divine sense of the term.  Jesus is also identified as the "Christ" or "Messiah", Greek and Hebrew words meaning "anointed one" and used exclusively in reference to reigning kings (thus David and Solomon are rightly understood as lesser "messiahs").  The reign of Jesus as "king of kings" is a political image... and a familial one.

The Apostles are no exception to entwining the family and the community.  Paul instructs families in 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians.  Paul also considers government officials as executors of God's will and ruling with divinely-delegated authority in Romans 13.  Peter gives similar instructions in 1 Peter as a part of his general instructions to submit to all authority.  The author of Hebrews compares a Christian's relationship to God as one of a father disciplining his children (just as Jesus does in the Gospels).  The authors of the epistles (particularly John) do not favor the term "Christian" for one another; they (gender-inclusively) use "brothers" or "brethren".  This is a clear and over-ridding use of family language for the much larger institution that is the Church.  In light of this evidence, Jews and Christians alike ought to see something quite familiar and even agreeable in Aristotle's depiction of politics.

In contrast, some of the American Founders, particularly those taking their cues from John Locke like as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, see the state as a necessary evil above all else.  After all, Locke's account for political origins in his Second Treatise seems a bit less cuddly.  Rational, free individuals lived in a state of nature perfect harmony and respect.  Everyone only ever used what they could enjoy.  Resources were limited enough that a free individual's reach could rarely exceed their grasp.  It was only with the introduction of money that things started to get chaotic, developing into a state of war where strife for scarce resources threatened the life, liberty, and property of all.  So the most intelligent and hardworking individuals arranged a contractual system by which all people would surrender some of their individual sovereignty to an authority figure.  They must obey this figure so long as he asked reasonably of them and defended their life, liberty, and property.  So really, government is something we had to invent because "if men were angels, no government would be necessary."  We are not governed nor governors by nature, only by necessity.

Modern attitudes towards politics tend to be informed by this mentality whether or not anyone is cognizant of Locke's myth.  Most Americans are fairly negative in their appraisal of the political process and politicians, more so with each passing year.  We "just know" that every politician is corrupt even if we have zero evidence to substantiate that belief.  Government solutions are either inadequate or too modest in scope.  We don't trust our representatives to tell us the truth.  And while we recognize the necessity of making some individuals unequal in their authority, we also refuse to surrender to their assurances that they know what's best for us.  No one knows what's best for us better than we free individuals!

I am by no means suggesting that politicians need less accountability or that we need more government programs.  I am instead saying that maybe our outright negativity toward politics and government is wrong and destructive, especially if we view our fellow citizens and countrymen as brothers and sisters in a temporary and ever-uncertain life.  Maybe we could learn to appreciate the political process and return to a civic virtue that takes our role as citizens seriously.  Libertarians (who buy Locke almost wholesale) would have us believe that the best bulwark against tyranny is less government.  But I rather agree with Aristotle who said, in light of our family-city, "Man is a political animal."  Politics isn't a nasty thing like excreting or bathing that we do because we have to.  Man is the only animal to arrange himself in a group, to rule and be ruled.  Maybe politics is part of what makes us human.

In fourth-grade I was given a citizenship award by my teacher.  I had no idea what this meant then.  Reflecting back, it's sad that I didn't.  Aristotle's point about genuine concern for our fellowmen--both body and soul--through political action is the very basis of any free republic.  Ignore the economist, the pundit, the cynic who would have you believe that some abstract state always expands into tyranny.  The liberals are right to note that the state only expands where free citizens fail.  Now I understand and am honored by that flimsy piece of paper I lost a long time ago.  The best bulwark against tyranny isn't less government, it's better citizens.  Citizens who care about other citizens, citizens who use what they have to help out others whether through tax dollars or moral oversight or bodies in the army or even out of their own pockets, citizens who are truly "other-centric" are the worst enemy of any potential tyrant.

The South and Selfhood

Last night, I partook in an inadvertently tense conversation.  Somehow, as our community group meandered through the serious and the hysterical, the topic of conversation turned to the display of Dixie flags and Southern identity in general.  One friend from Indiana was somewhat taken aback to discover that she was a "Yankee".  This was not a label she applied to herself, nor was it something derisive where she was from.  Yet upon moving to Kentucky and being surrounded by transplanted Southerners, she found that she was a damn Yankee "who just couldn't understand."  She seemed confounded and almost taken aback by the casual attitude many Southerners (mostly from Alabama, Georgia, [panhandle] Florida, or Virginia) took toward the display of the Confederate flag--to say nothing of the nostalgia for the Confederacy or the exclusivity of being Southern.  The room seemed divided quickly between the vocal Southerners and mostly silent (and presumably Yankee).  Explanations fell on deaf ears going both directions and the tension cooled only when I explained the history of the flag and when it moved from a symbol of a region to carrying racist connotations (Southern protests against the Brown v. Board decision in 1956).

My friend never thought of herself as a Yankee.  She is first and foremost herself, no more tied a unique historical or geographic identity than any one in most states north of the Mason-Dixon.  There's not as much of a tribal--even adversarial--concept among the many Northerners I've met in Louisville.  They don't even much consider themselves "Northerners" (with the exception of a friend from New Hampshire, though is identity is more "New England" than "New Hampshire" and that only because he is in a quasi-Southern setting now).

Yet even among young people from the South, I have observed a tendency away from Southern pride.  Many young, sophisticated professionals in Atlanta would even prefer to do public-relations damage control, going above and beyond to mock Southern ignorance on racial and social issues.  Finding a conservative "good ol' boy" under thirty in Atlanta is easier than finding one in many cities, but much harder than in small Southern cities like Montgomery, Chattanooga, or Columbus.  To their credit, these millennial cosmopolitans are doing much to raise awareness of latent racial and social injustices (though I think they overplay the problem; racism is no worse in Montgomery than it is in New York or Chicago these days).  Yet they too are struggling to identify themselves as individuals rather than as Southerners.

The movement of higher education, according to Peter Lawler in chapter 3 of Modern and American Dignity, is no longer toward teaching students to live in light of their natural condition.  Instead, college is now based on two premises: productivity and autonomy.  Productivity is the thrust of twentieth-century bourgeoisie values represented by practical majors like engineering, hard sciences, and business.  Autonomy is the 1960s bohemian response, usually embodied in majors like psychology, the "soft sciences" (sociology, anthropology, etc.), and anything ending in "-studies" (Native American studies, African American studies, women's studies, etc.)  These are, in the minds of modern sophisticates, the two venues for displaying real individual dignity and significance.

Let's break those two down some more.  The philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that people demonstrate their dignity through their productivity.  This means that traditional understandings of dignity--birth or pedigree, race, gender, religion, means--are false and useless.  The only adequate and legitimate measure of a man or woman is what results he or she can get.  So the hard sciences are what you wanna study.  Engineers build stuff and make money.  Managers lead big companies and make money.  Scientists invent stuff or save lives and make money.  Very pragmatic and useful definition, just like the stereotypical 1950s dad.

And autonomy?  This comes from the philosopher Immanuel Kant (among others).  He taught that your dignity can't come from what you can do.  It's crass!  So instead, your dignity comes from asserting your individuality against the principles of nature and behavior.  You are at your individual best when you are distinguishing your values and identity over and against whatever society prescribes to you.  You are not first and foremost a son, a wife, a student, a Christian, an employee, an American, even a Southerner.  You are an individual and the more you distinguish yourself from any natural limitations or societal roles, the more dignified you are.  That's why many social sciences (sometimes eschewing the earlier and more medieval term "humanities") are all about empowering yourself against the constraints of a society out to define you.  At my college, there was even a women's studies group called "Empower" for this very reason.   The thrust of this idea is very free-spirited and unique, just like the stereotypical 1960s hippie.

Today we have fused these two principles together.  Millionaires are no longer stuffy and WASPy like Cornelius Vanderbilt or John D. Rockefeller.  Now they are button-down, casual, even whimsical like Steve Jobs or the executives of the laid-back and fun Googleplex.  David Brooks called these nouveau riche "bobos"--bourgeoisie bohemians.  They display their individuality as much as they can... so long as it doesn't interfere with their productivity.  Even the funhouse that is Google headquarters will fire you if you spend too much time in the onsite swimming pools or volleyball courts.

And what has all this to do with Dixie?

As the family, the church, and the social state weaken, colleges ought to be filling in the gap.  My time in college ministry showed me that many students don't know who they are or what they should be doing.  They have been raised on 90s pop-psychology of self-esteem.  Since "everyone's a winner" and "you can be whatever you want to be", the immediate questions to arise in each student are: "Then who am I?"  "And what should I be?"  Parents, pastors, educators, and community leaders who drank deeply of the feel-good Kool Aid have no answer.  So many will distract them with money and material needs or will resort to empowering them against the ills of society.  But who are they?

Proud Southerners, with our tribal mentality and our sometimes-irrational devotion to our region and culture, find better grounding than the Atlanta-style sophisticates or the Yankees because Southern is part of the identity.  Our devotion to God, guns, and glory (or college football, fried chicken, and "Bless Your Heart"s if you prefer) is finally impossible to explain.  It is a part of being Southern and it something greater than any individual Southerner.  It's part of a larger realization of our natural roles given to us by the God of the Bible or the philosophers' God of nature.  It is a part we are given as a part of our tribe, just as we are all sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, citizens of our nation, servants of Jesus Christ.  Call them roles, call them labels, call them duties, whatever you want; they give us our identity.  As Walker Percy says in Lost in the Cosmos, we just don't have the words for ourselves.  We ultimately can't define ourselves because there's no words we can formulate to fully encapsulate who we are as individuals.  To do so is futile.  We must ground ourselves from the outside with the roles we have been given.

When we recognize the futility of self-definition, will we finally cry out for help from beyond?