2010: So long.

 

New Year's encourages reflection. During my usual reflections I focus on the feelings I had or the feelings I have postmortem. So at New Year's I can pretend a more objective view, group past events and relationships into good and not-so-good. This accounting creates a distance--a distance reinforced by the idea that I am ending one time and starting another with the changing of the calendar.

My calendar and my accounting are both rhetorical acts. The calendar helps gather and organize my perceptions of experience. I demarcate periods in which I have, for example, grown so much in this way, or lapsed in my efforts towards this or that. The calendar is a tool in my self-accounting and self-creation, and I can use it when I  point to this or that period and argue that my behavior then was affected by some other concern, or by carryover from events in previous days.

If I could see time otherwise.

Being in the World

A few lines from Thomas Russo's novel Straight Man caught my attention. These lines come during a discussion between the book's protagonist, Hank, and his son-in-law, Russell. The topic at hand is Julie, Hank's daughter, Russell's wife, who keeps buying furniture she and her husband can't afford, being already underwater on their new house. Her behavior baffles both men:

How did two people like Lily and me manage to raise such an acquisitive daughter? is what he wants to understand. He actually seems to want me to explain it to him. What I'd like to explain is that I don't think Julie in her heart of hearts is all that acquisitive either. She's just unhappy and frustrated and she hasn't yet discovered how to "be" in the world. Unsure what to desire, she simply wants. Or this is the conclusion I've come to. A father's too generous theory, perhaps. Applied evenly, it might be a rationale for acquisitiveness in general, not just in my daughter. Who is truly at home in the world? Who is sure what to desire? Well, lots of people, I answer my own question.

The implication in part here is that a man's actions are motivated by his ambitions; and so a person without ambition will act inconsistently, inscrutably. Is understanding one's goals the key to understanding one's self?

Continuing with Hank's line of thought: A person who "simply" wants, as opposed to desires, is overly invested in the material world. Being "at home in the world", then, is entirely a spiritual act, an original act. So, what is the world?

In Straight Man, Hank is a self-avowed student of William of Occam, and so he believes the simplest explanation is usually the best. But when it comes to people, he comes to see that the matter is often not so simple.

Rhetorical Turn

After reading some nothing article in Wikipedia, I hit the "Random article" link and was given this:

Max Naumann (1875-1939) was the initiator of Verband Nationaldeutscher Juden (League of National German Jews), which promoted elimination of Jewish ethnic identity. The league was outlawed by the Nazis on November 18, 1935.

Along with Julius Brodnitz, Heinrich Stahl, Kurt Blumenfeld and Martin Rosenblüth, Naumann was one of the Jewish activists who were summoned to a meeting with Hermann Göring on March 25, 1933, during which Göring tried unsuccessfully to enlist their help for the prevention of a rally against Nazi antisemitism which was planned in New York for March 27.

Opposing other Jewish organizations, such as the Centralverein or the Zionist groups, he advocated total assimilation as an answer to anti-Semitism. During the Weimar Republic Naumann was active with the German People's Party. He was quoted in Michael Brenner's book The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany as saying "The election campaign must not be a struggle of religious conceptions, it must be a decisive struggle about our Germanness!" in reference to the 1933 election that resulted in Hitler's rise to power.

In this all too brief article, I note two ideas at odds. First, Max's words: "The election campaign must not be a struggle of religious conceptions, it must be a decisive struggle about our Germanness!" Second, the author's intro: "Max Naumann (1875-1939) was the initiator of Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (League of National German Jews), which promoted elimination of Jewish ethnic identity."

To my mind, Max's urging to define a people's Germanness is not quite the same as eliminating their Jewish ethnic identity. Today, a pundit might call Max "politically savvy".

Few other scenes from history are cited as much as Nazi Germany as an example of the power of propaganda and public relations. So, this rhetorical move towards tolerance: Where does it come from? Fear and self-preservation? Bravery? Nationalism? Was he a fraud? And what happened after the 1933 election?

I will be looking for books and more information on Max. But this article could be bunk.

Hope is Right

My grandmother wrote at least one book. Nothing of hers was published. Oddly, my grandfather wrote a single poem--a parody based on a famous poem--and immediately was published in some collection, somewhere.

Anyway, my grandmother. She once wrote and sent this letter to a publisher:

Enclosed is a short synopsis and the first three chapters of my manuscript, "West Winds of Hope". It is part of me. I felt every word of it.

I was born in western part of Texas. I haven't participated in any wild escapades. You can say, I'm just an ordinary home-maker who loves to write. I'm finishing a murder mystery now.

"West Winds of Hope" would make a great mini-series. It is quite a dramatic story. I hope you will consider it. It is two hundred ninety three typed pages. My manuscript has been edited. It is also registered with copyright.

I belong to several clubs and everyone is ready to purchase my book.

Her book, with its not-at-all cliché title, West Winds of Hope, was based on her own experience. She fails to make this clear in the letter. Regardless, she offers herself, her devotion, and not the book, to the publisher. I read this and hear the desperate plea of an 11 year-old girl begging father for a pony. To her credit, she was concise, and tried to appeal to the man's pocketbook, offering her friends as potential customers, hopefully representatives of the larger population of everyday women yearning to feel drama blow in from the West.

The letter, as much as the book, is autobiographical: "I haven't participated in any wild escapades." No wild escapades. Is she speaking with a pang of regret? Is she apologizing? Confessing? And, then: "You can say, I'm just an ordinary home-maker who loves to write." She turns suddenly, painting herself the underdog in this tale of aspiring author surrendering her fate to the silent whims of this powerful publisher. An underdog. A crazy kid with a dream.

I miss her dearly.

Quickie on Process Management

Current discussions of process management styles depict specific priorities in competition. Agile and other styles go a step further and attempt to privilege certain priorities, sometimes called values, over others. What effect does this value privileging have on actual work?

My guess? Not very much.

Let's assume that a certain set of priorities actually are in competition: For example, the more a worker invests in fine tuning the product's performance, the less he is able to fully document the requirements and changes. In our hypothetical process management style, we privilege product performance. One possible effect of explicitly emphasizing one priority over another is the exaggeration of pre-existing work habits. If Worker 1 has always authored weak documentation, now his documentation may all but disappear. If Worker 2 is learning his trade, he may not learn or develop a round skill set because he is coached to always direct his time and efforts in one direction.

Process management styles tend to assume all people are equal. They are not.

While adopting a process management system with explicitly emphasized values may have less impact on worker habits, it may play a large role in shaping the office culture. I would argue that an office culture can be viewed as a personnel filter. People seek out and thrive in certain settings. A worker whose habits and style are at odds with an office culture may become isolated, lose motivation, and then eventually quit or be fired.

I also wonder if this treatment of values is really all that different from how other, less self-conscious styles of process management deal with competing priorities. Might revisit this later.

Binx Bolling & Authenticity

Were you to accompany Binx Bolling to a movie, you'd be carted off to some out-of-the-way cinema. Once there, you'd witness his small talk with the cashier or the manager, him asking after their well-being and goings-on, and maybe his inquiring about the film itself. Not the movie: The actual reel of film. In short, you'd get a sort of show before the show. Bolling, protagonist of Walker Percy's 1961 book The Moviegoer, does all this in hopes of guaranteeing his own authenticity. He figures anyone can go see the 7 o'clock show. And being anyone is exactly what he wants to avoid.

Bolling differentiates his experience--and by extension, himself--by growing it from a simple routine act to one enmeshed in a variety of happenings. If he should he go to the 7 o'clock show, Bolling must learn that the reel of celluloid winding away overhead isn't just any old piece of celluloid, that the ticket-taker isn't just any ticket-taker. It seems anonymity is contagious.

This interested me, so I began to think of the result of living such a perspective. He can look back and relate a memory. And what is memory? The result of defining the Then from the Now. Then and Now: A duality fabricated or correctly perceived? At any given time either concept may be privileged: The good old days or Carpe Diem?

But are they really different? Isn't the event still happening? Why must it be happening immediately in front of you to be "happening"?