A few years ago, I briefly explained what I do with my students when it's time to talk about the Holocaust. It's an emotional, draining experience. This year, my birthday came the day after the Holocaust discussion (which happened during our Spirit Week, which meant that the day that I made so many students cry, they had face paint running down their cheeks in blue and gold), which was a relief because it meant that I had my own special day as such. At my school, we have themes to go along with our Spirit Week festivities. Last year, they picked gods of the Greek pantheon--as we're a classical liberal arts school, this was a good fit. This year, the Student Council decided to be Harry Potter themed. Since we have six grades at our school, the four Houses were represented, as well as Prisoners of Azkaban (10th grade) and Fantastical Beasts (7th grade). I was really rooting for the Prisoners, as most of my students are sophomores. Each day, there was not only a dress-up opportunity (for which the students got points) but also additional activities to do. On Wednesday and Thursday, the StuCo (with my permission) set up our quidditch hoops and ran a miniature tournament among the grades. In fact, they asked me to ref the games. So, Wednesday, during lunch and bedecked with my Ravenclaw robes, I ran about, shouting students back to their hoops, and blowing my whistle for goal. The eighth grade (Hufflepuffs) won that day's point differential, but both short games I played were really enjoyable. Seeing the bludgers fly, the quaffle bounce, the surprisingly immediate passion that they brought to the pitch…it was great. Thursday, however, was my Holocaust lesson and I told the Student Council that I wasn't going to be in a mental state where I would be able to watch kids running around with a pretend broom between their legs. The tonal contrast was too difficult for me. I ended up watching the game, my cooked plate of frozen pasta on my lap, from the sidelines as a friend at the school acted as substitute ref. It was amazing to see the natural athletics of some of the juniors and seniors, many of whom are on the soccer team, take to this other sport. They drove through, they (kind of) ran plays, they showed incredible capacity--it was enjoyable and more than a twist nostalgic. I mean, I played a bit of quidditch with my Winterim back in January, but it was a cold, rainy day, so not everyone really could watch or enjoy it. Seeing the kids play made me sad that I have left that part of my life behind (though I keep hearing students say they want to bring it back…an idea I'm open to but doubt will turn into much). Okay, not "sad"…I was sad for other reasons. More of a pining nostalgia, methinks. After school was over on Thursday, I didn't have a lot of time to wallow in my emotional distress, as I had to run some errands, buy pizza, and help get our family party set up. As you may already know, my oldest son, Puck, was born one day before my own birthday--albeit twenty-four years later--and so we always get to celebrate our birthdays together. He's a good kid, and having parties together is one of my favorite things about him. We had my mom, in-laws, brother (with his family), and sister-in-law (with her family) show up. Despite a couple of absences, we had a pleasant evening. We all chipped in to buy an iPad for Puck--a present he was not really expecting and something that made him very happy--and I got an incredible "library" quilt from my sister-in-law and wife. It has all (read: some) of my favorite books set up like shelves in my office, complete with the Tudor-style walls. Here's a picture of it: The thing that's so great about a gift like that, is the love that it shows me. I'm usually pretty happy with a gift card (guilt-free spending is nice because my retail therapy doesn't have to end with regret that I spent money), but having gifts like these--thoughtful, unexpected, and show how well the person knows me--really are treasures. And though it's not designed to be a super warm blanket, I still sat, Thursday night, playing Overwatch with the window open so the room would be cold enough that I could have the blanket on while I played.
Friday dawned. A downside was that I had early-morning classes (which means that I had to be to work by 8:00, instead of my usual 8:30…it isn't really that big of a deal), but they were all shortened (a sad thing, as I like being with my students and teaching my classes) as we still had the Spirit Bowl to do at the end of our half-day. So, I went through the classes. My Socratic class for the day insisted I play the "Epic Birthday Song" for myself; afterward, we analyzed "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a piece of poetry. It was lots of fun. The Spirit Bowl began. As a teacher, I have a responsibility to take roll during assemblies (which is a doable thing because our student body maxes out in the low 600s, and I only have to find twenty-odd kids in a small section where the sophomores are sitting). Because of this, I usually stand on the second floor window and look down at the gym filled with students while I headhunt for attendance. I do this in part because it's a good angle, but also because I don't have to be in the gym with 600 screaming students. As I was taking roll, one of my best friends and coworker saw me up there and did the little heart shape with his hands. Then, his face confused, he gestured in an Are you coming down? way. I nodded and held up a finger. Roll still unfinished, I decided to try to find the stragglers on my roll by being a bit closer to the action. I walked down the stairs and into the gym, staring at my phone as I considered who else I needed to find. Walking across the gym floor, the MC said, "Also, today is a very special day for one of our faculties. It's Mr. Dowdle's birthday!" The entire school began to clap and cheer wildly--even the middle schoolers, to many of whom I'm more of a terrifying ogre than an actual teacher--before launching into a 600-voiced rendition of "Happy Birthday". I couldn't help but smile and wave, feeling loved, recognized, and appreciated. I gotta admit…I really needed that. While, emotionally, I was doing better on Friday than I was on Thursday, the real trial of the week was Wednesday afternoon. I knew what was coming on Thursday, I knew how high of an expectation I put on myself to do that lesson well, to do it right (I think I missed some things and could've done it better, honestly, but I probably will always think that). I get really stressed, and that bleeds out into how I treat my family. I had no patience with my boys Wednesday night and a black cloud shadowed everything I did. I knew what it was coming from and I felt powerless to stop it. It was a bad day--it always is. So when I got the--dare I say?--love of acknowledging my birthday from my school (and, more importantly, those students whom I've come to know and care about), I felt…validated? Significant? Appreciated, surely. It was a demonstration that did much to buoy me and make me feel as though--maybe, perhaps--I'm making a difference to someone somewhere. The Spirit Bowl then commenced, which was lots of fun. One of the other teachers used an app to gauge how loud the assembly was. Apparently, we were hitting jet-engine levels of sounds. (Some kids had even brought earplugs specifically for the event.) Once the eighth graders won the Spirit Bowl, I played a short game of Dungeons and Dragons with a handful of students before going through a training meeting. Then I was free. My wife and I met up at Rodizio, a Brazilian steakhouse, where--to my surprise and delight--we were served by one of my former students, one who had played quidditch the day before. It wasn't too awkward, I'm happy to report. He's a congenial, capable kid and seemed pleased to be working with me. He told his boss that I'm his favorite teacher of all time (but doesn't he have to say that, since I'm sitting right there?) and made sure that we were well stuffed with all sorts of meats by the end of our meal. My wife and I then went to see Avengers: Endgame, which was one of the most impactful movies I've ever seen. I haven't stopped thinking about it since we got out, three hours later. It was a delightful birthday, and despite the dread that haunted me all week, I feel like the weekend has done a lot to help alleviate the emotional pain that I--and my students--suffered through. Not a bad way to start year 36, if I do say so myself. 1
All things taken together, I could listen to Neil Gaiman read a laundry list and walk away feeling as though I've done the right thing. His Hampshire accent and mellow expression is uniformly charming, so that even when he's describing something strange or uncomfortable, I'm lulled into the belief that whatever it is, it's not so bad. He isn't the most poetic of writers, though he isn't without his moments of brilliance, but what makes him so interesting to me is the effortlessness with which he writes. It's not actual effortlessness; he talks about this quite a bit, as a matter of fact--about how hard it is to write, to create art (pronounced as "awt" in his endearing way). He does have a tendency to fall up in his life, which he sketches with this book, The View from the Cheap Seats, though it isn't because of lack of talent or desire to work hard. In that sense, he's been immensely lucky, though I'm more and more becoming convinced that lucky is only useful if you're prepared beforehand to receive it. And Gaiman has been lucky--he's the first to tell you that. In fact, The View from the Cheap Seats is a collection of his essays (most of them in the form of introductions to different books by other authors) that operates also as a dim outline of how his career has worked thus far. I am a Gaiman fan in principle, in part because of his personality. I've read some of his books (Fortunately, the Milk was a favorite, though I liked Fragile Things well enough, too), but it's not usually his fiction that draws me to him; it's his thinking about fiction, about stories that affects me so much. That makes The View from the Cheap Seats a perfect book for someone like me. It focuses less on his own strange worlds and more on how he's been influenced by others' art (awt) throughout his life, including different bands (They Might Be Giants' album Flood gets a mention) and paintings and concerts he's been to. The entirety of his experience is sponged into his mind, ready to be squeezed out onto the page. I really admire that. 2 The View from the Cheap Seats isn't really a book I would recommend someone read. Instead, I'd insist that they listen to it. Though I don't know if I'd put Gaiman and Austen on the same level, it was said by one of Austen's surviving brothers-in-law that Pride and Prejudice never sounded as real and correct as it did coming out of her mouth when she read it aloud. I could perhaps assert something similar about Gaiman's book. His way of asserting something and then, in a quintessentially British manner, retract or modify or qualify what he's said works--I think--much better in the ear than on the page. Of course, how would I know? I haven't read the book, I've only ever listened to it. And my favorite of his essays, "Make Good Art" is a commencement speech that I have watched a handful of times, so that makes it doubly true in this case. In one instance, however, I really did read his essay before I listened to it--the introduction to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451--and, of the two, I liked the spoken one more. The rest of the recommendation is inference. 3 The idea--diminishing, it seems, in our increasingly connected and decreasingly empathetic world--that a person can live off of her words has long been one that appeals to me. I care a great deal about how other writers write (aside from the "letter-by-letter, word-by-word, page-by-page" approach that has the frustrating quality of being technically accurate and practically useful while feeling utterly worthless), so I listened to this book in order to see how Gaiman writes. Does he wake up in the morning at the same time as the day before, a cuppa by him, as he scribbles in a notebook? If so, what kind of notebook--a spiral bound or one of those expensive ones that look so attractive on the bookstore shelf and then do an excellent job ferociously collecting dust when brought home--does he use? What type of pen? If a pen, does it bother him if he loses his pen part way through the book? Can it change widths and ink types and colors, or does he simply have a Costco-produced bevy of pens that are identical and utterly replaceable? Or none of the above, because he uses the word processor, and does he think that there's a danger, as Mark Edmundson notes, in having his writing on the screen or printed out, already looking like a book instead of like a rough draft that needs to be trimmed and tweaked, twisted and wrought differently than when it first spurted out in the frantic heat of creation? Sadly, none of these questions are answered, though I somewhat doubt I would be able to do much with the answers anyway. He likely would say what he once heard the (a week ago) late Gene Wolfe observe, which is that you never really learn to write a novel, just the novel you're writing. And would I be better off as a writer if I knew that Gaiman (like I!) prefers EnerGel Liquid Gel Ink from a Needle Tip 0.7mm ball made by Pentel? Probably not. That doesn't change the fact that my questions about his process are yet unanswered and that I am, not-so-secretly, disappointed that I'm not likely to know. 4 I hoped that I could be given a hint about what he means about "good awt", because he writes fantasy and horror and speculative fiction (which he prefers over the term science fiction because it feels broader and more inviting and more accurate), the genre which I love and have dedicated almost my entire writing energies to doing, and I can't escape the feelings of disdain from people whom I respect who feel as though my contributions to literature are, at absolute best, tolerable. My own sentiments about the worth of fantasy as a genre, or speculative fiction's worth, are cloudy. And, yes, I understand that The Iliad and The Odyssey, if retold honestly and correctly, would be genre fiction. Nevertheless, I feel that my own writing, because it's genre fiction, can never be literature. To address that feeling, I thought that Gaiman might help me know what "good" writing is, what "good" art is, how I can feel as though I'm contributing when I feel quite certain I am not. But that didn't happen. At least, not directly. I think I could infer that he feels as though good art is that which makes the maker of it happy and touches someone else. That's not a bad definition, so far as it goes, but it doesn't really answer the question, does it? Taste is one thing; judgment of whether or not what one creates is worthy of exploration, preservation, or enjoyment is another thing all together. Because I teach literature, I put the responsibility of understanding this question upon myself. Can I justify teaching one thing when it will preclude every other possible thing I could teach? Is that worth the time, effort, and frustration that is a part of the process of learning? Especially when taste may be one thing, but it is an important thing. Quality can be judged differently, perhaps, when one is looking at skill and structure, at "objective" markers on a piece. But I don't like Dickens, despite acknowledging both his skill and structures. I don't want to teach Dickens, even though he makes good art. If finding an answer to a question is the indicator of good art, then The View from the Cheap Seats isn't good art. But if finding a way to ask a question is the indicator, The View from the Cheap Seats is very good. Maybe you should give it a look. Video gamers are a peculiar lot. While I wouldn't say that I'm a "gamer"--it carries with it enough negative connotations that I'm leery to use it--I definitely call myself an aficionado. And I like what I like the way I like it, rather unapologetically. Though my stance is shared by many who play video games, others--purists of one stripe or another--don't see games the same way I do.
For a long while now, there's been arguments about whether or not a video game should have an "easy mode" or some sort of accommodation so that the player can enjoy the game on her own terms. On one hand, the game's conception and conceit is designed around a particular experience--more than many other media, video games' ability to interact with the player (and vice versa) means that the personal connection is, at times, crucial. Though particularly impenetrable cinema or literature (I haven't, for example, been able to finish Alan Moore's Jerusalem yet, despite picking at it for years) can require mental fortitude or an intellectual flexibility to "get" what the filmmaker or writer was trying to say, there isn't a skill set that has to be attained when one picks up the latest John Grisham novel. Almost every video game demands a certain level of skill to enjoy the product. It's part of the nature of the medium. And so the desire of the designer to enjoy their vision is, in a sense, predicated on the assumption that the game will be played a certain way. This means, however, that the ability to enjoy the video game is contingent on something outside of the designer's control. I may get bored of a movie and turn it off, but I've abandoned video games that I liked because I got stuck in one particular part. My skills weren't enough to be able to continue accessing the content that I enjoyed (and paid for). The designer wasn't able to anticipate my skill level, thereby shutting me out of the experience of the game that I wanted to enjoy. And that's where the other hand comes in: I've invested in a product in the hopes of being entertained and--if the video game is good in more than superficial ways--leaving the title behind having had an emotional response to it. Not only do a great many games rely on narratives to pull the disparate parts of the game into a coherent experience, but the catharsis of completion--of hitting an end state--is a crucial component to the point of video games. There's a reason that characters in video games have specific missions, actionable desires…players want to be able to know if they have succeeded. It's a primal thing--some writing advice insists that a character should always be wanting something, even if it's just a glass of water--that helps propel interest in what's on the screen. Completing the objective--regardless of what it is--requires that the game allow a way deeper into its contents. If there's an obstacle between the player and the game, and that obstacle is the game itself, then the game isn't actually doing what it was designed to do: be played. Yet there are some neckbeards out there who are really adamant that a game even having the option (not even that it would force them into using the option, mind you) to play the game on an easy mode is an insult to the designer's vision and ought not to be. The idea that a feature programed and implemented by the designer as somehow being against that designer's vision is…um…stupid. Why sugar coat the absurdity of that argument? If it's in the game, it didn't happen by accident.* This reminds me of how excited my five year old, Demetrius, has been going through my old catalogue of Spider-Man video games from the original PlayStation era. They both have a "Kid Mode" which allows for the player to swing about more easily, take less damage, and basically have a way through the story and beat the game. Demetrius was ecstatic when he beat the first game (though he did need some help from his more experienced dad, even with the kid mode). Why? Because it's a Spider-Man game and so it was awesome to play as Spider-Man. It's pretty straightforward: He wanted the experience of playing as the wall-crawler and the game allowed him to do that. No vision** was corrupted, no video game gods offended that a player of a different level than an "ideal" player got the opportunity to play through a game. It was nothing but positive. The inspiration for this essay comes from a kerfuffle that I just learned about, explained well here. Since you can click through and read that article, I won't repeat what it's about. Instead, I want to dig into the sanctimony of what Fetusberry (I'll pass over the name without comment) was implying by his tweet. Not only is he completely wrong about the idea of the writer "cheating [him]self", but he's also, apparently, confusing real life benefits with digital ones. There's nothing risked in video games. I quote this bit by McKenzie Wark's Gamer Theory all of the time, but it's always important to how I view the medium: "[In games,] violence is at its most extreme--and its most harmless" (23). The reason it can be so extreme while still being harmless isn't just that it's pixels and digital representations--it's because there's nothing risked anyway. The stakes in a narrative aren't a personal stake; they're important for the characters. And though the interaction that a player can give the video game shifts this to a small degree, unless someone is playing video games professionally (like with e-sports), they're not "risking" anything when they plop onto the couch and fire up Bloodborne. What really irks me about Fetusberry (besides his*** asinine name) is that he's probably (and I'm acknowledging that I don't know this person and I'm making a broad generalization and assumption that could be wrong) the type of gamer who 1) doesn't think that violence in video games affects a person, nor should there be controls over who has access to violent content; 2) video games are art, but; 3) it's "just a game" so who cares if someone is offended by problematic content in, say, a Grand Theft Auto game? The reason I assume this is because there seems to be a trend among people of a certain gaming stripe: The more hardcore they are, the more they abide by those three interpretations (though number two is a bit squishy, since the concept of art--what it is, how it works, why it matters--is often lost on them). The thing is, number three can't be a defense if numbers one and two are true. If it's "just a game" then it's not really art--it's a game--and toys that lead to harm and violence can easily be banned. Additionally, if it's "just a game", there's very little to talk about. People don't get hot under the collar over a game of Parcheesi, why should they if someone is playing Sekiro differently than they would? Yet he insists, almost as if Sekiro and its punishing difficulty are part of a divine aspect of spiritual growth, that the author somehow skipped over an Abrahamic test by playing differently. We can't have it be "just a game" and the path to apotheosis--some contradictions can't work, no matter how hard we try to force them together. Now, as I said before, I may be wrong about Fetusberry (*ugh*) specifically, but the mentality is one that I see really frequently. One of the complaints that I see surface is when a video game is called out, criticized and critiqued, and its defenders seem incapable of realizing that criticism of a thing that they like isn't the same as a criticism of them. Just because I think that the treatment of race is immensely problematic in Resident Evil 5 doesn't mean that I can't appreciate and enjoy it. Shakespeare's treatment of women, while progressive for his time, doesn't mean that he's above reproach in our era. He has women behaving in all sorts of damaging and dangerous ways--just look at what Kat puts up with in The Taming of the Shrew--and that needs to be confronted. The same can happen to video games: If they are supposed to be treated seriously enough to inspire people and change who they are and how they see the world, they are serious enough to receive criticism. Perhaps more importantly, if they're going to slap an M for Mature rating on their boxes because they have "mature content" (boobs and blood and bad words), then those who play them they should be "mature" enough to know how to converse about games, to listen to criticism, and to empathize with others' points of view. Accessibility in video games is a hot topic now, in no small part because (no surprise here) disabled people like to play video games. If designers can accommodate that, it's a sign of maturity and respect for their audience to provide them. The greatest thing about video games is the interaction between player and game. Why not rely on that strength to allow it to be flexible, so that players can interact with it as they will? And, for crying out loud, Fetusberry, change your insipid handle. --- * Glitches are a bit of an exception to this rule, but only in the sense that it's impossible to get a perfect product. I've purchased books that had pages printed out of order, or with screwy margins. Flaws abound. An easy mode, however, isn't something that glitches into a game. It's not a bug. ** Vicarious or otherwise. Okay, that's a really deep cut for that joke. Hats off to whoever gets that one. *** Yeah, I don't know the pronouns, but let's be real: The person behind that stupid of a name with that stupid of a comment has gotta be a dude. In which I get political… There's a longstanding platitude--and who can challenge a platitude, save, perhaps, Plato, but then it's just platotudes on platitudes--about fishing. In its many iterations, it tends along these lines: "If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." I most often hear this idea expressed by devotees of supply-side economics and/or American conservatism/libertarianism. Its superficial meaning is, I think, pretty clear, but--like most aphorisms--its simplicity and superficiality overshadow the deep, inherent problems of the idea. Consider this poem by Kahlil Gibran, one of the most criminally underrated poets of the 20th century: Once there lived a man who had a valley-full of needles. And one Though less known as far as parables go, this one, I fear, more accurately represents the mindset of those who espouse the Fishing Proverb*. And, more than that, I think it comes from a misunderstanding of what's required of people within the Fishing Proverb. The premise is simply: A man comes to you and is hungry. "Teach him to fish" is not a bad idea--it is a useful skill that will sustain him, perhaps for the rest of his life. It's something that can benefit him and, provided he passes on the information to his children, subsequent generations. In many ways, that is literally what I've dedicated my life to doing: Teaching others so that they can benefit and pass on what they've learned.
The problem with using the platitude as a type of panacea for the problems many are faced with is in the first part of the premise: The man is hungry. Who can be bothered to learn to fish when one is about to expire? Using the Fishing Proverb as the response of a person to another's need gets us Gibran's poem, "On Giving and Taking". There's nothing inherently wrong with the man who lived in the "valley-full of needles" believing and giving a discourse on an important topic. That isn't his sin; it's that he gives her something that doesn't help her right now. Ought the mother of Jesus to learn about Giving and Taking? (Well, frankly, she has a better idea of sacrifice than almost any other human, I would argue, but let that go.) Sure. Timing, however, is rather important, and she needs something the man has. And not just what the man has, but what he has through no effort of his own, and an enormous abundance. The fact that he's awash with needles--so many more than he could ever truly need, and giving away one would in no way diminish what he has or could have in the future--is a crucial detail. The mother of Jesus doesn't go to one without and demand of her; she goes to one with bounty and requests a tiny boon. Though the broader principle of Giving and Taking is surely one from which she could learn, the mother of Jesus doesn't need an education at this juncture: She needs a needle. When pundits invoke the Fishing Proverb, it's often as a rationale against handouts and government subsidies. While there's plenty of room to figure out who (and, perhaps, to a certain extent, what) should receive governmental assistance in whatever form, I most often hear the Fishing Proverb used as a closing argument against welfare for the laboring class. (I never, incidentally, hear those same pundits argue against welfare for the corporate class; indeed, they often seem quite vociferous about tax cuts at the top somehow magically benefitting the remaining people below.) The idea, of course, is if you "incentivize laziness", then people will rely on governmental assistance ad infinitum and then where will we be? The thing about the Fishing Proverb is, even if it's only taken at face value, it is not the abnegation of responsibility for the "you" in the proverb to take no action. In fact, it insists on something quite different: The "you" in this is supposed to teach "the man" how to fish. It presupposes that you not only know how to fish, but that you will also take the time to impart that knowledge. In other words, it insists that the person petitioned devote time and energy to imparting skills to those without. Though less explicit than "On Giving and Taking", the Fishing Proverb is still a call to action. In our modern day, money has become the shorthand for almost every interaction. Karl Marx: "The bourgeoisie…has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'." Be that as it may, ours is a world wherein labor's value is entirely monetized, and the greater potential for monetization, the greater we value that labor. Intrinsic value is ignored--there's a reason people tease humanities majors--because worth has become tied to capital. (The current president was, by some, regarded worthy of the office on the sole qualification that he was a businessman--as if running a business and running a country are somehow comparable.) If this is the way in which we communicate, if economics is the new lingua franca of the modern/post-modern society, then money is the way to provide the "time and energy" component of the Fishing Proverb. Through money, then, we can teach hungry men and women "how to fish". (Additionally, it is through money that we can help feed a man for a day…long enough, in other words, that he can learn to fish.) And that's my job. As a teacher, I am in charge of a very small sliver of my students' overall education. I recognize that--I am one of six or seven teachers that they have each day, during one school year. In the grand scheme of things, I've very little chance to make a difference in the students' lives. That realization--for me, at least--is part of what inspires me to continue to teach as well as I possibly can: I've a limited window of opportunity that I** don't want to waste. Teaching is the potential remedy to the Fishing Proverb's problem, but what of "On Giving and Taking"? In this, we see a clear condemnation of the objectivist's creed that greed is a virtue. The man in the valley has much, much, much more than he could ever worry about consuming or using. He is asked to share a very small piece of his unearned bounty with another; instead, he bloviates about why others should think hard about giving and taking. Lest the comparison I'm drawing is too subtle here, I'm arguing that the American concept of economics is morally debased and men like the man in the valley should not be allowed to act in this way. I'm arguing that a more socialistic approach to the economy is morally superior to the supply-side economics that is currently destroying*** the lives of so many. And this leads me to my final excoriation: The Utah legislature, following the example of Rep. Christ Stewart (R - Utah), has recently made a more deliberate and clear push against socialism (and, because the idea of nuance in American politics is, apparently, impossible, communism as well). In the case of Stewart, he has made an Anti-Socialism Caucus to show…well, I'm not entirely sure. Ostensibly, the "marketplace of ideas"**** should allow the free intercourse of ideas, much like a "free market" should allow the buying and selling of goods without a lot of governmental intervention. Stewart's hypocrisy is hardly the point: Socialism as practiced in the United States is very mild, and is pretty much seen as using taxes to pay for public services…including his paycheck as a representative. I, as a teacher, get my money through taxes--and, as a worker in the state, I pay taxes, too. Like, 30% or so--percentage-wise, twice as much as a person like Utah Senator Mitt Romney did back in the 2012 election (remember when presidential candidates released their tax returns so that we could see if there was any pecuniary conflicts of interest?). I own a house, so my property taxes go toward, eventually, paying me. (It's weird, frankly.) How does this tie into needles and fish? The requirement of the Fishing Proverb is that we help teach those who do not know how to take care of themselves. This idea is not radical, but it does require money. Teachers in particular are in demand for this very thing, as well as being very poorly paid for it. Especially in Utah, we have a continual growth segment of the population: Children. As the linked article points out, one in five Utahns is a child. These are those who need to learn how to fish. But, more strikingly, is the fact that one third of those come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. (and if you don't think that economic disparity is damaging, you have some research to do). These are the ones who are--sometimes literally--hungry. If we are to take the Fishing Proverb seriously, then being dead last in per-student spending needs to end. Yes, Governor Herbert has proposed an increase--one that translates into a 4% increase on the WPU (how much the state spends on each student). That pushes Utah out of 51st place and into 50th (D.C. is on the list) place, assuming that the extra $280 Utah is adding per student isn't matched by Idaho--the current penultimate place on the list of per-student spending. Granted, the numbers are from 2016, and a lot can change between those numbers and what we actually see implemented. But the point, mixed metaphor though it may be, stands: Utah is more interested in being the man in the valley-full of needles rejecting the mother of Jesus than in truly teaching hungry children how to fish. --- * There are worthwhile distinctions between parables, proverbs, aphorisms, and platitudes, but I'm eager to explore the broader idea and will use them all interchangeably. ** Admittedly, not all teachers feel the same way, but that's their problem…and their students', actually. So, yeah, that's a bit of a problem. There are solutions--imperfect, as almost all solutions are--but they're not the point of this essay. *** I know what I wrote. I certainly wouldn't claim that socialism is perfect. I'm also not such a lackluster student of history as to assume that the crimes of capitalism and the crimes of communism are somehow comparable. Both systems have led to indescribable suffering and misery; both systems have furthered people's lives in positive and fulfilling ways. I reject the idea that capitalism's only alternative is communism, and I assert that there are ways to improve the lives of more people than capitalism can provide. **** A poor way to derive truth, honestly: The popularity of an idea does not equate with the validity of the idea. Just ask Socrates. |
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