The Fifteenth Floor

And The High Evolutionary Speaks*


Points of parliamentary procrastination:

1. Some people say I don't post on PK enough, and they're right. But that's only because of the reasons I don't. And this is the post that is meant to change all that: Get me ready for the team. Set the stage. And, uh, go. (Testing...testing...)
2. As at a DJ Shadow show, the first five minutes is like practice, so bear with me as I aspire to the heights achieved by the other masters of mayhem at PK (Sparkles, even.). Now with added peer pressure since we have that peerless Doctor Whophyte, Willie G. visiting so often.**
3. I am ostensibly here to provide a distinct flavor to the PK experience. Safety advisory for those who run the risk of whiplash when they snag themselves on my posts. They stick out like thorns on a thorny thing. By which I mean:
4. I hate basketball.
5. More specifically, you will see that I concern myself with less important topics and concerns--am, myself, concerned with topics of less importance than my PK brethren. No basketball. No poppy culture. And no freaking Nancy Lang.*** I am here to write for you about more trivial items. Tonight's topic:

THE FATE OF ALL MANKIND(TM)

Nobody asked me, but I need to say what I’m thinking in this new year in New York City, five months after the Twin Towers burned, after long stretches of fall weather eerily close to perfect—clear blue skies, shirtsleeve warmth—through December, a bizarre hesitation, as if nature couldn’t get on with it’s life and cycle to the next season, the city enclosed in a fragile, bell-jar calm till shattered by a siren, a plane’s roar overhead.

--John Edgar Wideman, Whose War

The world is going to hell. Or, rather, the slide has been remarkably smooth and consistent this past several years. Like polka-dots just surged back into style****, we've met our war, corruption, mediocrity and apathy quotas with effortless ease. Barely knew we did it, did we? John Stewart has more gray hair than an elephant's ass now and I think it's because the state of the world has gotten so bad that not even he can laugh it off anymore. It's a form of shock and awe: current events based humor isn't based in laughter anymore, just incredulity. Never have so few sacrificed so little for their own greater good that outweighs the needs of the many. Live long and fester. Disillusioned we fall.

Never fear. Like Rapunzel letting down the hair of wisdom from the heights of the Ivory Tower (in Technicolor), I am here to tell you that the luminaries of social science and societal critique have diagnosed the world's ills and prescribed a cure:

Talking.

That's right. In a world gone mad, surrounded on all sides--French to our left, international terrorists to our right, and the Chinese dancing all over the godamned floor with any colored cat that'll fill their card--the privileged percent of the population that gets to read this kind of cheerleading now knows that the thing to do is to convince everyone to just sit down and have a good chat.

I say.

This theory is the brainchild of, among others, Kwame Anthony Appiah, whose gist is basically: Because humans are so incredibly different and diverse, there's no hope for a singular human identity, so we can forget about using that identity as a way of connecting to one another. He often explains this this through the example of his own (non)identity as a gay half-Ghanaian, half-English bloke with Indian, American and Klingon branches on his family tree.***** Ergo, the Miraeryu(TM) is a mixed up batch of humans who are so hodgepdoged in terms of national, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual preference, global, local and Korean songstress affiliations that we we will soon be forced to realize two things: 1) Generalizations that hold water are a thing of the past, not to mention awkward mixed-metaphory like figments of my imagination. 2) Our increasing inability (it's lack of applicability, really) to be able to identify with each other in the traditional ways will lead us to form more cosmopolitan notions and ideals. Sounds good. Sorta. Might be a glitch or two. Tell me if you see them.

The application side to this theory is that the way forward in establishing cosmopolitan ethics is to de-emphasize reaching a consensus: with Muslims, Muppets, Mavericks, Manchesterites and that bastard Michael Bay all inhabiting the same planet, there are just some things, some REALLY important things (as in the ones that people bomb each other over) that we are just never ever ever going to agree on.

So why bother trying?

Appiah and his posse think we would be better served just talking to each other without worrying about reaching a consensus. The idea is that by communicating with each other, we'll be faced with each other's humanity (the thing which, if you recall, he says isn't a real identity at all...), develop empathy for each other and reset to an ethical default. Why do you think the good terrorists never talk to their prisoners? Why was Mr. Zuckerman in denial about Wilbur?

Now, I, and other Buddhists, should be applauding Dr. Appiah for his brilliance (there's even a healthy taste of dukkha in it all). Means not ends, hear-hear! However, I find myself rather asking: What in the bloody hell are you thinking, Kwame??

I don't buy it. I can't. I mean, it's a nice theory and all, but what about the particulars? How long are we supposed to sit down and talk to each other? I can't sit at the same Thanksgiving table for more than an hour with my family, how am I supposed to with the real enemy?****** And a lot of people think this is the way forward. A lot of people. (Mainly in Cambridge and on the Upper West Side.) But I'm not sure it's not more about Wideman's righteous rant. I.e., it's less about people saying things to each other and more about what people feel they just have to say. (Hello, blogging revolution, kinda.) And when what they have to say makes it over to "each other" it isn't always going to jive with the way "each other" thinks this blue marble rolls. Paradigms are a dime a dozen, the only thing you can be sure of is that the insurance policy that came in the box with yours doesn't provide global coverage. So you had better be ready to shift.

Talking is good. But dancing is better. When paradigms collide, people get stuck. Fixed and rigid. When people are fixed and rigid, ain't no amount of chitter-chatter and open-listening gonna help. Hell, a just sublime example of this took place the other week when I was at a seminar on discussion as a means of conflict resolution: three of the academics at my table opted for halt over gestalt and the talks bogged down halfway through the day. The topic we were discussing? Appiah's theories on conversation and cosmopolitanism. When I pointed out the irony of the situation, I was told to get stuffed. Empathy, my patookus.

Talking is essential, but Dancing is fundamental. What I mean to say is:

'Dance,' said the Sheep Man. 'Yougottadance. Aslongasthemusicplays. Yougotta dance. Don'teventhinkwhy. Starttothink, yourfeetstop. Yourfeetstop, wegetstuck. Wegetstuck, you'restuck. Sodon'tpayanymind, nomatterhowdumb. Yougottakeepthestep. Yougottalimberup. Yougottaloosenwhatyoubolteddown. Yougottauseallyougot. Weknowyou'retired, tiredandscared. Happenstoeveryone, okay? Justdon'tletyourfeettop.' ... 'Dancingiseverything,' continued the Sheep Man. 'Danceintip-topform. Dancesoitallkeepsspinning....'

--MH, Dance, Dance, Dance

It's nice to think that talking will save the day, but in the end you are as likely to end up with a brawl as a group-hug (betting types go for the brawl). So let's not kid ourselves about the wonders of the written, spoken, or listened-to word--let's just be ready for anything that comes our way. Because when people have got to say what they've been thinking, you had better be ready to loosen up what you bolted down.

And what does this have to do with you? Well, if you think I'm the only one letting down his locks from the tower you don't know how eager some punters are to shimmy up that ladder of dirty hair and scale the buttresses. For our audience in the World, don't be ambushed by hearing that word "cosmopolitan" bandied about outside of a SATC context, but do expect those doing the bandying to be the same vapid set. For our audience in Korea, read the book now so you can snatch the early openings at the imminent rash of 코스모포리탄 학원s before the maple leaf peril corners the market, just like they did with the Sarah Jessica Parker Academies of the Literally Petty Bourgeois.

And that, by way of an introduction, is my first five minutes of spin. The team is ready. The theme is set. And...


___________________________________

*Hey, the boy gave me a name, what am I supposed to do?

**All I can guarantee is that whatever's off the floor after post-production, it will be better than Dostoevsky. But consider this post the first five minutes of my PK oeuvre. It'll all tie in, fo' sho. (It'll seem less preachy-like too. Gah-run-tea.) For now, to ease the transition, I will footnote smarmily like the brothers.

*** That's more of that damn jealousy, perhaps. I can, however, guarantee there will always be some kimochi smuggled into every post. You show me an intellectual who doesn't like beautiful women, and I'll show you the academic establishment.

**** "Mediocrity is like a spot on your shirt, it never comes off." --MH

***** The last one may have been Kenyan. Semantics.

****** Al-Dostoevsky.

Caveat: I agree with 99.99% of what Appiah writes. But that doesn't sound even half as edgy.