Take responsibility

My mind has been musing over quite a bit the last little while. Religion, choice, parenting, entertainment, employment. Some of the musings have been personal enough that I haven't shared them here. Others seem a little shallow. It's been hard to nail down a particular musing long enough to formulate a blog post - hence last weeks lapse. Perhaps it is just a matter of me doing the BIC HOK method of writing.

That method might actually be very good for me. Not long ago my office did a Meyer & Briggs Typology Indicator workshop. Many of the people in my office are administrators of the indicator and provide it to our First Year Experience classes. I did the test a little over a year ago and showed up as an ENFJ (although there is very very little separating me from an ENFP). As an extrovert (someone who gets their energy from external sources and interactions) I often think out-loud - which can be really annoying for everyone, myself included. So my thoughts evolve as I communicate them. Perhaps that is why I have always enjoyed writing and why I started this blog.

Interesting enough I was thinking about the pro-choice / pro-life debate of planned parenthood and abortion when I saw this blog by Matt Walsh. I found it rather straight forward and will say that prior to reading it I agreed with him on many of his points. I consider all life sacred and power to create life is gift from God. I will say that in a life and death situation between mother and child that an abortion makes sense. I will also say that in the event of a pregnancy due to rape - where the woman had no choice - an abortion also makes sense. However, a parent or parents choosing to abort a child because it would be expensive, inconvenient, or not with the parents' life goals is very selfish and rather heartless reasoning. Pro-choice say they want to choose whether or not to have the child. That choice was there prior to the conception of that child. The choice to have sex, engage in intercourse, "do it," and every other euphemism and disisum used to describe the God given power of procreation was the first choice they made. If birth control was not used - that was the choice that was made. If birth control was used the responsibility for that child is still there. If both parties are unwilling to accept the commitment of having a child together then why were they doing the very thing that might lead to one?

I will readily acknowledge that physical intimacy is for more than just the conception of children. It strengthens relationships between partners. It brings people closer together. I find it very sad that there are people who engage in such a powerful, meaningful, intimate action in a carefree, flippant, or causal way - giving so much of themselves so readily with so few reservations.

The media of today would have you believe many things about sex. I can safely say that the bulk of what the media portrays can be called, "happy sex." "Happy violence" can be described as violence without consequence. This is what we see in cartoons as well as in live action comedies and even action movies. I love Screen Junkies' Honest Action videos. They had a doctor watch Home Alone 1 and 2 and all the Die Hard movies and report the number of times the villains (in Home Alone) and our hero (in Die Hard) would die. The numbers for Home Alone by itself are quite sobering. It would kill a combined total over 35 people if the violence in those seven movies were realistic. That's an average of 5 per movie and that's not counting everybody that is actually shown to die in Die Hard.

For a comparison, James bond has had sexual intercourse with at least 52 women over 22 films. Extrapolating from data from the WHO, it was estimated that just shy of 500 million people had an STD in 2008. Based on population totals for 2008 that would mean that just over 1 in fourteen people had an STD. Even if Bond had sexual intercourse with women who only had one other partner  he would have contracted 6 STDs over the course of his films. If the women had three partners - 10 STDs. Four - 14. If each were as promiscuous as he was - 193 STDs. At least. Also, assuming that Bond is not sterile I would imagine at least one pregnancy to occur, potentially 52. Bond is a prime example of Happy Sex, non-consequential, sexual intercourse. How many other portrayals of such behavior are spread throughout the media? With films with titles like "The 40 year old Virgin" and main stream cables shows named "Sex in the City" it is clear that sexuality is more pervasive and more accessible via media then previously. George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan and Nancy Signorielli talk about how media influences our perception on society. The more we consume the more we perceive what we consume as reality. This means that more more sexual activity we see in the media the more we feel that such behavior is normal - even though the contrary may be true. With such a flood of "happy sex" in the media is it any wonder that sexual intercourse has lost any meaning of intimacy.

So to bring it around to the original topic. Our media and culture pushes sexual intercourse as a causal act that has few consequences. When people adapt such an attitude it may lead to an unplanned pregnancy. When this happens the pro-choice crowed would have it a simple matter to avoid the unwanted consequence by aborting (killing) the child. I find it ironic that pro-choice mindset seems to disregard that the person already made a choice and now wishes to remove the choice from the unborn child. Even if the child cannot (or maybe should not) be cared for by the mother there are options that still give it a choice to live. It seems that the person who is being asked to make the choice on whether someone should live or die is the exact person who may have made the horrible choice of engaging in sexual intercourse without birth control. That doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I think that people need to take responsibility for their actions and let the consequences live.

Why we read

EA Younker recently had a new addition to her house, a young man named Tech, who struggles with reading. EA makes some pretty valid points - you need to be able to read to get a driver's licence and a job, but why is literature pushed so heavily in school? I clearly understand the need for people to communicate well in writing. However, is there validity to people questioning why they are required to read Shakespeare, Dickens, or any of the other "classics" out there? Just as people in the arts question the need for them to study algebra is there a reverse argument? EA's husband, Moose, did his training in technical fields and had very little patience or preference for reading. He's done well for himself and his career and his life without analyzing or even reading the classics. So - like math - what is defending the study of literature?

Unlike math, students can graduate from most colleges and universities without taking a literature course. I never took one. Writing classes, however, tend to be required as much as math is. With that said, I will say it's unlikely that a student will not be exposed to at least one instance of literary analysis in college. So, to get some kind of perspective literature requirements, I went back to high school. The Common Core has a nice website for what the standards are for the different levels from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Once you hit sixth grade and up the standards look very similar, but just require more extensive supporting of your ideas. From this, I get that the goal of studying literature is to help students see narrative structure, engage in critical reasoning based on evidence and inference, comparing and contrasting mediums in both artistic and practical uses of conveying ideas, examining how the characters respond to their environment, and being able to succinctly convey complex ideas. I guess I can understand those goals.

However, couldn't those skills be developed via other means? In fact, I demonstrated how algebra develops reasoning and critical thinking when defending why we study math. Scientific experimentation could be used to examine different mediums. Speaking and writing classes would be perfect for examining how to convey ideas. And psychology and sociology would let us examine real people interacting with their environment more accurately than a fictional character in a fictional environment. So, is literature just being redundant? Books take time to read - especially for someone with dyslexia, vision difficulties, and attention limitations. And many of the books that are required are books that the generation reading them don't feel they can relate to.

So, why do we require students to study literature? Because, the human mind works by building connections between both internalized, personal experiences and external examples. And literature can help provide us with both personal experiences and external examples in ways that other forms of entertainment can. Take film - often seen as the opposite of books. Lets take the Twilight series as an example. The bulk of the books is taken up by Belle's internal struggles, thoughts, insights, and musings. How do you translate that to visual - Stares! Mary Robinette Kowal mentioned this in talking about puppetry (4:05 in the podcast). The puppet is thinking about what it's looking at. Unfortunately the audience is watching the watcher and has to infer what they are thinking. While it is possible for an actor (or a puppeteer) to convey exactly what is being felt, it may still not be clear why they are feeling that way because we have no insight into the character's mind short of a blatant (and often criticized) voice-over. Not to say that books can't be ham-fisted in their approach to their topic, just that there are more options open to a writer than a film maker.

I threw this question out on Facebook and had a number of people contribute. One linked to an article on Scientific America that discussed results of reading literary fiction (the genre that "classics" often fit into). The study found that people that read literary fiction had a higher capacity for empathy. The same was not true for genre fiction, according to the study. The reason for this was that, "literary fiction... focuses more on the psychology of characters and their relationships." Which I find clashes slightly with the next statement, "Often those characters' minds are depicted vaguely, without many details, and we're forced to fill in the gaps to understand their intentions and motivations." If they focus so much on the characters' psychology and why are their minds often depicted vaguely. Anyway, I will agree that literary fiction tends to focus on unsympathetic characters and situations, requiring the reader to develop forms of empathy to understand the character better. I do think that thoughtful reading of genre fiction can also increase empathy, but the work will need opportunities for the reader to empathize.

A part of literature building our ability to empathize is that through literature we have the ability to witness the world through other peoples' eyes. George R.R. Martin said, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." My initial thought was that Julius Ceasar (in the Shakespeare play of the same name) says, "A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once." There are very important distinctions between these quotes. They just sound the same. Unlike the coward a reader has the luxury of experiencing others' lives and points of view in whether those people be fictional of real. One of the best books I ever read was It Doesn't Take a Hero, the autobiography of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Another was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. Both were non-fiction and enabled me to experience, in a small way, events and wars that helped shape my culture and generation. People looking to experience censorship and government controls have but to look to Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury, 1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell, and Anthem by Rand. There are so many topics that may be explored and experienced in literature. It doesn't just have to be non-fiction.

And lastly, a reason to study literature. To help people come to enjoy reading. Books are a basis for entertainment and culture all over the world. Many movies start life between covers. Even those that don't are first written down. The same goes for theater, broadcasts, speeches, and comedy. Someone first committed it to paper and it sounded good enough there to expand and build on it. I don't begrudge film makers their adaptations of books. I don't prefer audio books over paper copy or digital. I'm just glad that I gained an appreciate for a good story early in life so I could enjoy it for the rest of my life.

"Just because it's a classic doesn't mean it's good."

The title of this post is a quote from my paternal grandmother who was a vivacious reader of just about everything. She was the one that introduced Harry Potter to my mother before my mother read it to us. Her collection of books was a great legacy and her ability to talk about books was always a delight. I was looking forward to such a discussion when I called her to tell her that I had finished Bram Stoker's Dracula.

"Grandma! I finished reading Dracula!"
"Oh."
(pause) "Aren't you proud. I read a classic."
"Just because it's a classic doesn't mean it's good."
(pause followed by me chuckling) "So, Grandma. I take it you didn't like it."
"Nope."

That's a pretty accurate account of how the "discussion" went. Personally, I loved Dracula. I found it interesting and intriguing and more than a little suspenseful - particularly since I knew what Dracula was and could see the writing on the wall. I remember wanting to scream at Johnathan Harker, "He doesn't have a reflection!! This man is not normal! Get out of there!!!" but of course he wouldn't have heard me.

Dracula is considered a classic, and it's one of the few books that I've read that have that distinction. 11th grade English was not a good class for me. The only book I actually finished was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Didn't read Huckleberry Finn (Twain), The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne), or anything else that year. So, you could say that my experience with "great American Classics" is..... unfinished. I've read and seen more Shakespeare than many, but a deficiency of Dickens. I feel quite familiar with Austin but have only read Jane Eyre from the Bronte sisters' works. And my Classical (Greek and Roman) literature is even more lacking than my Dickens. I would say of my classic (and classical) literature education that I know what I should have read, but haven't actually done so.

Which launches me into my musing of what constitutes a "classic" and what should we be reading. "Classic book" even has its own Wikipedia page. For many, it's what we should be reading. Books that young people should be exposed to in order to "learn literature." However, there is some pretty heated debate about that. If you're looking for entertaining discussions on this, click the links to read and listen by authors I enjoy over at Monster Hunter Nation and Do I Dare to Eat a Peach who have something to about it.

For myself, a classic book is one that has longevity. Something that has stood the test of time, for one reason or another. They may be message fiction (have a particular agenda or moral lesson in mind - Scarlet Letter, 1984, and Lord of the Flies I'm looking at you.) It might be genre altering (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings come to mind, not to mention Asimov's work). It might be well written and compelling (King Lear, Macbeth, and Julies Caesar are just three of the many works - three that I'm more familiar with than others). These works have been through a lot and are still read and meaning and enjoyment is found within them.

What I find difficult to fathom is when someone will say "That isn't a classic because it's (a genre fiction)" or "(book title) is an instant classic." The definition of "classic" used in these statements must differ from might significantly. Standing the test of time, gaining a kind literary immortality, happens to many different kinds of books. J.R.R. Tolkien practically invented modern fantasy - one of the key staples to genre fiction. For the second, can anyone project what the next "classic" will be? In 1952 the movie "Singin' in the Rain" was released. Looking at the Academy Awards for 1953 the movie was involved with only two categories: Best Actress in Supporting Role (Jean Hagen in the role of Lina Lemont) and Best Music, Scoring of Musical Picture and it didn't win either of them. Based on that, one might think that "Singin' in the Rain" might fade from time. But when was the last time you talked to someone who saw "American In Paris" the show that won Best picture the year before? "Hans Christian Anderson" with Danny Kaye was nominated for more awards and is a wonderful movie, but is virtually unknown in popular circles. Yet, "Singin' in the Rain" has drawn audiences of many ages for years since. I only want to show that you can't say what will become a classic and what won't. Not until the time has passed and we look at what people are still reading.

And what should we be reading? Why are classics considered so important to read? With how long this post has gone, that is a question for another time. But in the meantime - What do you think people should read?