All posts tagged science fiction
Writing of Disaster, Writing of Hope
As a professor of literature, I tend to pay special attention to what my son is reading in school. I wish I could say I paid attention to what he reads at home, for pleasure, but the truth is that he does not read for pleasure. He reads on assignment, and that's it.
So what is he reading, in his typical 9th grade American public high school?
So far this year he's read 1984, Lord of the Flies, and Night. Now he's reading a contemporary novel, How the Light Gets In, by a British author, M.J. Hyland, billed as a 21st century girls' version of Catcher in the Rye.
In short, it's been one depressing, upsetting book after another. Thought-provoking would be the kind term to use, but it saddens me to recognize that generally speaking, "serious" literature is about the things that frighten us.
And it's not just in literature that this is true. In pop culture too, the violence that plays out over and over in every form of media entertainment is catering to what seems to be a human need to imagine and play out in fantasy our deepest fears.
Almost all science fiction series and movies that try to imagine the future show us disasters and social dystopias. These are considered "realistic" (a positive attribute), as distinct from "utopian" scenarios (dismissed as unrealistic, hence not to be taken seriously).
As a parent, a teacher, and a member, like you, of the transitional generation on this planet, I worry about our apparent addiction to what 20th century philosopher Maurice Blanchot called "the writing of disaster."
Certainly I have not shied away, in my own career, from making myself aware of the ugly side of human experience. I have studied human rights abuses of every stripe and geographic origin, including sexual abuse, torture, war and genocide.
I have confronted the grotesque truth of the devastation we humans are wreaking on non-human animals and on our planetary environment—the chemical poisoning of air, waters, earth, along with the life forms that inhabit these strata; the factory farms; the mountaintop removal, clear-cutting and strip-mining; the plastics pollution of the oceans; and on and on.
I don't bury my head in the sand, by any means.
But I question the wisdom of inundating our imaginations, especially those of young people, with violent stories.
Whether they're historical like Night or futuristic fiction like 1984; whether they're video game scenarios like GTA or Call of Duty; or TV series, movies, or the daily news—if all we see in virtual reality is human beings being violent, doesn't this begin to affect the way we understand ordinary reality?
Doesn't it make us more guarded with each other, less likely to trust, less likely to build community and bring out the best in each other?
Mary Pipher
In preparation for my new class this spring, "Writing for Social and Environmental Justice," I've been re-reading Mary Pipher's 2006 book Writing to Change the World. Mary Pipher, you may remember, is the psychologist who wrote Reviving Ophelia, a book from the late 1980s that provoked a major surge of attention to the way American girls self-sabotage as young teens, and what societal factors made their swan-dive of self-esteem more likely to occur.
In recent years, Pipher has become an environmentalist, leading the charge in her home state of Nebraska against the Keystone XL. Although the pipeline is not dead yet, it has at least been re-routed away from the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region.
In Writing to Change the World, she offers a how-to book for those, like me, who see writing as one of the best tools to raise awareness about the issues that matter most.
Pipher writes: "The finest thing we can do in life is to grow a soul and then use it in the service of humankind. Writers foster the growth of readers' souls, and the best soil for growth is love. Writing can be love made visible….This is our challenge: to cultivate lives of reflection, love and joy and still manage to do our share for this beautiful broken planet of ours" (241-2).
However, it seems to me that the kinds of writing we are consuming as a culture, and especially what we're feeding to our young people, will neither "cultivate lives of reflection, love and joy" nor inspire us to take arms against the sea of troubles that is our planet today.
On the contrary, the dominant narratives I see, at least in American culture, are violent, cynical and despairing, showing us the worst of humanity rather than enticing us forward with dreams of what could be.
I'd like to see the start of a new global literary movement of change narratives in every genre aimed at holding a positive mirror up to human nature, giving us examples of the good we have done and the good we are capable of doing if we draw on our positive qualities—our ability to love, to nurture, to steward, to protect.
Even our oh-so-human violence has a place, if it is used to protect rather than to abuse and wreak wanton havoc.
I would like school curricula to stop replaying the horrific stories of our past—or at least, to balance these negative stories with narratives that give students some positive, hopeful models of human beings as well.
Trying to "grow a soul" in today's social climate is like trying to grow a plant without sunshine.
Writers, let's take on the challenge of using our gift with words to change the world for the better. Let's be the sunshine, not the shadow.
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Education, literature, love, Mentoring, New stories, Parenting, pedagogy, Social change, writing
Tagged American public education, be the change, dystopias, high school curricula, literary movements, literature, Mary Pipher, Maurice Blanchot, science fiction, utopias, writing to change the world
https://bethechange2012.com/2014/01/26/writing-of-disaster-writing-of-hope/
Shades of an American Kristallnacht?
Tonight at dinner the conversation turned to politics, although it seemed that everyone at the table was reluctant to mention the name "Obama"—a sign of the deep disappointment in our erst-while hero.
There was some enthusiasm for the political satire of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, who are probably doing more to educate young people in politics than most high schools in America today.
There was derision for the spectacle of the Republican primaries, which I, for one, have been unable to stomach watching—not even for a moment.
And there was deep sadness over the unavoidable truth that now, in the wake of Citizens United, it has become totally legal for rich people to run politicians the same way they might run horses or greyhounds. Just like that.
Maybe that's what provides the eerie, zombie-like atmosphere in politics these days. You really have the sense that most politicians, especially the ones at the top echelons of power, are like old-fashioned Kabbalistic golems, animated out of clay by skilled magicians who can control them from afar.
Of course, that's been going on for a long time. Remember George Bush, a wind-up man getting remote control instructions through his earphone in the 2004 Presidential debates?
But it's getting worse and worse. That's why I can't stand to watch Gingrich and Santorum and all the other Republican wax model men mouth their lines on the stage these days. You know they'll say whatever they're told…whatever they think it will take to win.
There is certainly a good chance that one of the Republicans will win. The Democrats are dispirited and grumpy, not much in the mood to get all fired up about yet another election.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are rabid to take back the White House. They've been busy as hell redistricting to try to gain every electoral advantage, and I have absolutely no faith in the electronic voting machines that they've been installing in every town and city in the land.
It's very possible that Mr. XY Zombie Republican could seize power in November, with the backing of endlessly deep pockets like the Koch brothers, Big Energy, and Big Finance, and the blessing of the Supreme Court.
If the Republicans controlled all three houses of government, they could ram through the legislation they've been concocting during the past decade or so: legislation powering up the assault on the environment, on health, on social services, destroying any kind of safety net for people, animals or the environment.
They could escalate the war on dissidents (like me), who dare to oppose their plans. In short order, the United States could turn into just another big banana republic, with a military-backed regime of elites governing through the indiscriminate use of fear tactics, with violence applied as necessary to keep the people in line.
Lately I have been re-reading Margaret Atwood's marvelous sci-fi novel The Handmaid's Tale, and finding it chillingly prophetic. In Atwood's dystopia, environmental catastrophe has rendered the elites infertile, and pushed them to withdraw into gated communities where food shortages are common, and people are regularly hung in the public square to keep everyone fearful and docile.
The narrator remembers how just before her world fell apart, there were signs of repression: books being banned and burned, identity cards being issued and required, mobility restricted, media censored. All of a sudden, one fine morning, it was no longer possible for her and her family to get in their car and drive away to seek safety in Canada. All of a sudden, they were trapped in a nightmare that went quickly from bad to worse.
Augusto Pinochet of Chile
This reminds me also of the many testimonials I have read from Latin America—true stories, not fiction—from the 1970s, when wealthy politicians wielding military power and complete control over the ballot boxes ruled their countries with iron fists, "disappearing" anyone who might remotely be a threat, including thousands of innocent students. This happened in Chile and Argentina, in Guatemala and El Salvador and many other countries. Often the shift from democracy to fascist dictatorship happened literally overnight.
As in Germany before the Kristallnacht, none of us here in the U.S. wants to believe that anything could happen to destroy our cherished freedoms, our vaunted "American way of life." We don't want to admit, even to ourselves, the extent to which our freedoms are already being encroached upon, day by day.
Just last week, for example, there was an outrageous episode in Arizona, where the government declared a whole long list of books by Mexican Americans to be unsuitable for school use, and went so far as to direct the school librarians and teachers to pull them from the shelves, box them up and put them into deep storage.
Among the authors banned are some of my favorite writers—Gloria Anzaldua, Elizabeth Martinez, Paulo Freire.
Yes, that Paulo Freire, the famous Brazilian educator and free thinker who wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a brilliant analysis of the way that traditional education indoctrinates students into conformity and submission to authority.
Freire proposed that instead of a banking style of education, where knowledge is deposited into students, who are then required to spit it back upon demand, education worth its salt should empower students to think for themselves.
Such a simple idea, but so powerful, too. Education should teach people to think for themselves, and to work with each other to come to consensus on issues of importance to the larger society.
Isn't that just what the Occupy movements have been trying to do? If Freire were alive, he would be out there in the thick of the Occupy action, inspiring the young to shake off the false animation of Zombiland, and insist on dancing to their own authentic beat.
This reminds me of another beloved science fiction book, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, where the sinister IT controls all the inhabitants of a city by forcing them to conform to ITS rhythm. Their hearts pulse to ITS rhythm, their eyes twirl to ITS rhythm, their thoughts are entirely subsumed by IT. The only way to break ITS control is to think for oneself, to be creative, resilient and determined.
The children Meg and Charles Wallace succeed in rescuing their father from the clutches of IT by dint of their own powers of creativity and love, with a little help from some eccentric and freethinking guides.
Will the science fiction tale we're living through now have that kind of happy ending?
Oh yeah, it's not fiction, is it.
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Education
Tagged Democrats, Kristallnacht, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, Presidential elections, Republicans, science fiction
https://bethechange2012.com/2012/01/22/shades-of-an-american-kristallnacht/