i am facebook friends with Flat Man, our local superhero.
Flatman's identity is unknown to everybody except his mother, Flat Mum, and his sidekick, Quake Kid. He has a fairly standard superhero costume. He began his superhero career shortly after the earthquake here, specialising in turning up unannounced at student flats where students were known to be in need of extra food and a fun visit. He wanted to support students who had elected to stay in Christchurch after the quakes, but who were struggling. For a long time he paid for his food parcels entirely out of his own pocket. His brief gradually extended to include schools and shopping malls and the university campus, where he distributed food and just plain lifted spirits. He became world famous in Christchurch. After a while he found the load too heavy and confided in a friend, who became his loyal side kick Quake Kid. He attracted some sponsorship, and now has the use of his own 'Flatmobile', a yellow 1970 Chevy Camaro.
Here is what Flat Man says about his role:
'People can relate to Flat Man. The mask is there to show that Flat Man can be any one of us. Anything good happening for the people of Christchurch always gets a lot of focus as there's still so many people in this town who need continuing help. And that's what I'm trying to do - to show New Zealand and the world that even though it's been a couple of years since the first quake, people still need all the support they can get. Even if it's in the form of two masked and lycra dressed men.'*
Flat Man is a pretty cuddly superhero. There is no brooding Dark Knight Rises stuff and no post traumatic back story. Flat Man is mostly apolitical; he supports local causes but is seldom controversial (except for the time the university campus bar refused to serve him alcohol because he couldn't produce ID - a true event that raised the ire of every student in town and every young person who has ever been in a bar with a dodgy ID.) But here's the really cool bit - when he says 'The mask is there to show that Flat Man can be any one of us'.
i haven't had much to do with superheroes apart from watching the Avengers movie over and over, partly because it is made by the wonderful Joss Whedon who in our household Can Do No Wrong.**
But i notice one inevitable dynamic tension - between being special and being anonymous. Of course Flat Man is a bit special and would quite like his own action figure. Mostly if we're special we aren't anonymous - what would be the point? But anonymity is awesome because we can do things anonymously that we can't do otherwise no matter how special we might be. Not only can we risk making dicks of ourselves, but we can shine. When we are masked or heavily costumed, we can show ourselves and hide at the same time. Maybe that is why masks and costumes have such a long assocation with activism and the disruption of social norms.
i noticed masks first when looking at Picasso's African period and his interest in Wobe masks. How elaborate and fine, and how bloody scary. i imagined wearing one and being transformed. Mask work in drama improv does this; the mask takes over. i am not myself - and so i can be more fully myself.
i was once a part of a short lived but luminous group called Women for Peace and Justice. We did mostly anti nuclear protests (boy does that date it!), and we specialised in small scale events that straddled art and politics. One day we performed an event where we paraded through the main street pushing sinister old fashioned prams done up like coffins. One of us was dressed as Death. i could not have done it without the props and the costumes. And thus we make carnival, and masque, where we can misbehave, where peasants can be royalty for the day, where the social order can be overturned, where we can wake up the next morning and, if we have to, deny that it was us. #
The most obvious recent example of mass mask work is the use of V for Vendetta masks by Anonymous during protests. 'We are Anonymous', they say, 'Expect us'. We could be anyone. We could be your chauffeur, your waitress, your nanny. As Tyler Durdon says, we watch you while you're sleeping. It's both celebration and incipient threat. Like everything to do with masks.
i can tell you about the V for Vendetta masks though, you sweat something awful after a mile or two of marching. And it is sort of ironic that they are mass produced and you buy them in joke shops. Flat Man wears two masks because he was once briefly unmasked by a toddler in a bouncy castle. He must get pretty hot.
There is a way more political and edgy antecedant for Flat Man, and his name is Superbarrio. Would you believe, there is another post earthquake superhero among us. After the earthquake in Mexico, he came forward to engage in protest and non violent civil disobedience against the government's ill treatment of the poor. He has become an inspiration. His is the culture of the Luchadores, the masked wrestlers in Mexico. i don't get this Lucha Libre stuff much, but it seems the masks are taken very seriously. One of the most famous wrestlers was buried in his mask, and unmasking a wrestling opponent is a grest insult. The masks often reference folk culture and local myth. They are reminders of Mexican identity and history. Superbarrio's mask is recognisably in that tradition, and so it is easy for him to take the lead in protest. Flat Man would agree. 'People identify with Flat Man'. People trust him and understand his role. Superbarrio takes a similar view to Flat Man in that he sees his character as Everyperson. He is nobody, he is everybody, he is us. He speaks for the barrio, the poor neighbourhood, the students, the quake damaged. Because he is anonymous, he can say what we mean. Both Flat Man and Superbarrio are humble, remarkable, ordinary, extraordinary Superguys.
*Canterbury Magazine, Summer 2012
* And because i briefly had a sort of Robert Downey Jnr thing going on, but it's OK i'm over it now.
# i also collect for SAFE, Save Animals from Exploitation, in costume and accompanied by my little dog Tigger. Last time i was in full body costume as an owl. i stood for hours (hours i tell you!) in the blazing heat with this heavy owl head on, and all people noticed was the little dog. What a cute little dog they said, can I pat him. Of course i said, and clink goes the money in the bucket. God damn it i am dressed as a fricken OWL! It's forty degrees in here! i'm just as cute and i'm SUFFERING here!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Friday, November 23, 2012
New stereo
Recently i executed Poor Judgement and bought a stereo for my car.
In my younger days it was a source of pride among the men that their car stereos were more expensive than their cars. It showed the world they were hard core musos. These were guys who despised all material possessions except stereos and surfboards, which were somehow in a different category and not material at all.
On a morning after a night shift i got suddenly tired of having only a radio and said radio being able to get only one station. i had also been sadly acknowledging that due to my place of work changing post EQ i was driving the damn car more than i really wanted to. So i took it into a nearby car stereo place and spent $200 more than i expected on a new stereo. It took me about two weeks to learn how to use it. For a while every time i wanted to change something i had to pull over to the side of the road and take my glasses off and peer at the console. i have also learned a surprising lesson: yes, you can have too much sub woofer. But the coolest thing is i can plug in my iPhone.
Here is my playlist for driving to work. i seem to have come over all Scandinavian.
Nekromantix: Nice Day for a Resurrection, and Gargoyles over Copenhagen, from their album Return of the Loving Dead. Nekromatix are a Danish psychobilly band. Nice Day sounds like Billy Idol would if he had horns. And teeth. And.... other things...and all of their music is fun and fast.
Tenpole Tudor: Swords of a Thousand Men. Terribly English punk band.
Vaartina: Seleniko, the whole album. i have always liked this Finnish folk band, their music has the most complicated rhythms and the women have names like Sari and Mari and Dari. The lyrics for the songs are about such things as not liking the boys in your village and thinking that the boys in the next village might be better looking. And they have a heartbreakingly lovely Karelian wedding song. Traditionally in Karelia the men go out and kill a boar for the wedding feast, and this is the song the women sing on their return. They really know how to get married in Karelia. i have been married twice and still no boars.
Caninus: Now the Animals Have a Voice. Pitbull grindcore. Seriously. This is deathgrind music with the pitbulls growling and barking for lyrics. It's kinda amusing. But for added poignancy, Basil, one of its two canine members, died of a brain tumour and that was the end of the band. It reminds me somewhat of minimalist composer Rautavaara's very beautiful Cantus Arcticus, scored for orchestra and birdsong. But not very much.
Turbonegro: especially Fuck the World, Drenched in Blood (DIB) and their new one You Give me Worms. You have to understand about Turbonegro that they are Not To Be Taken Seriously. i first discovered Trubonegro reading about them in the Guardian, so they must be cutlurally all right. Their fans call themselves Turbojugend. They are from Norway, and are a very bad ass punk/death metal band with more than a touch of glam, i'm afraid. They kinda started off as a punk parody and grew from there. Spinal Tap they ain't. i first heard them when i was sick in bed and i lay there with the flu and laughed and laughed.
Refused: Liberation Frequency. Very left wing Swedish punk hardcore band now defunct.
Motorhead: Get Back in Line. For all us grunts.
Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Good for sitting in traffic.
In my younger days it was a source of pride among the men that their car stereos were more expensive than their cars. It showed the world they were hard core musos. These were guys who despised all material possessions except stereos and surfboards, which were somehow in a different category and not material at all.
On a morning after a night shift i got suddenly tired of having only a radio and said radio being able to get only one station. i had also been sadly acknowledging that due to my place of work changing post EQ i was driving the damn car more than i really wanted to. So i took it into a nearby car stereo place and spent $200 more than i expected on a new stereo. It took me about two weeks to learn how to use it. For a while every time i wanted to change something i had to pull over to the side of the road and take my glasses off and peer at the console. i have also learned a surprising lesson: yes, you can have too much sub woofer. But the coolest thing is i can plug in my iPhone.
Here is my playlist for driving to work. i seem to have come over all Scandinavian.
Nekromantix: Nice Day for a Resurrection, and Gargoyles over Copenhagen, from their album Return of the Loving Dead. Nekromatix are a Danish psychobilly band. Nice Day sounds like Billy Idol would if he had horns. And teeth. And.... other things...and all of their music is fun and fast.
Tenpole Tudor: Swords of a Thousand Men. Terribly English punk band.
Vaartina: Seleniko, the whole album. i have always liked this Finnish folk band, their music has the most complicated rhythms and the women have names like Sari and Mari and Dari. The lyrics for the songs are about such things as not liking the boys in your village and thinking that the boys in the next village might be better looking. And they have a heartbreakingly lovely Karelian wedding song. Traditionally in Karelia the men go out and kill a boar for the wedding feast, and this is the song the women sing on their return. They really know how to get married in Karelia. i have been married twice and still no boars.
Caninus: Now the Animals Have a Voice. Pitbull grindcore. Seriously. This is deathgrind music with the pitbulls growling and barking for lyrics. It's kinda amusing. But for added poignancy, Basil, one of its two canine members, died of a brain tumour and that was the end of the band. It reminds me somewhat of minimalist composer Rautavaara's very beautiful Cantus Arcticus, scored for orchestra and birdsong. But not very much.
Turbonegro: especially Fuck the World, Drenched in Blood (DIB) and their new one You Give me Worms. You have to understand about Turbonegro that they are Not To Be Taken Seriously. i first discovered Trubonegro reading about them in the Guardian, so they must be cutlurally all right. Their fans call themselves Turbojugend. They are from Norway, and are a very bad ass punk/death metal band with more than a touch of glam, i'm afraid. They kinda started off as a punk parody and grew from there. Spinal Tap they ain't. i first heard them when i was sick in bed and i lay there with the flu and laughed and laughed.
Refused: Liberation Frequency. Very left wing Swedish punk hardcore band now defunct.
Motorhead: Get Back in Line. For all us grunts.
Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Good for sitting in traffic.
Friday, November 16, 2012
The Sport of Kings
Since this week in Christchurch there has been horse racing* and a visit from royalty it might be timely to write about dumping.
Dumping is of course the sport of kings, or used to be. Back in the day, i knew people who were proud to have furnished their whole houses from the dump. It went with the hippy chic we adopted. We would engage in dumping at times. Dumps then were great sprawling stinking affairs that emitted clouds of dust and shrieking gulls. Back then you could wander in them like you were some sort of post industrial waste wraith, a piece of randomised ephemera made of flapping rags and swirls of dust, blowing and dissolving in the fetid wind....etc etc. You could come across half a teddy bear, or a perfect row of skinned ferrets, or a lacquered box with a map in it. You could enter for free and wander at will and take whatever treasures you found.
Recently we had an attack of entropy and i came home from work to discover half the lounge furniture broken beyond repair. Neither i nor my husband the Archduke Piccolo are keen on throwing things out. For most of our marriage our lounge suite was propped up on concrete blocks because the legs had broken. This furniture however was beyond propping up. So off we went to engage in the sport of kings.
Or so we thought.
Now the city refuse services have become further sterling examples of the Franz Kafka School of Management. Obviously they are run by the same outfit that manages the health system. We turned up in our Nissan Sentra hatchback feeling rather small among the trucks. We then began a Byzantine process of finding out what items could be dropped off at the post where they on-sell things, and what could be salvaged and what needed to be actually thrown out.This mostly involved driving around and around and shouting at each other. Finally we backed up in front of a big concrete pit and hurled our stuff into it. A machine came along and began to snuffle at it, a bit like the vacuum cleaner in the Teletubbies. We found our way out by a further Byzantine process that mostly involved driving around and around and shouting at each other, and discovered that they seem to have forgotten to charge us our $8. Perhaps it was because we were so pathetic.
It was all a bit anticlimactic. And clean. There was hardly any rubbish in sight, and no chance to pick over anything unless you offered to interact with the people in the trucks next to us, and that would have been plain weird. We were cogs in a wheel. Gizmos on a conveyor belt. Passive victims of Fordist 'efficiency' and the dehumanising fetishism of corporate greed.
Oh well, after that sobering thought, off to buy more furniture!**
*Actually the horse racing is incidental. Cup week in Christchurch is mostly women in big hats and very high heels getting drunk and falling over. Generally however people are only appalled if they're also fat. Slim women are mercifully free from tastelessness.#
# Oh, all right. Miaow.
**Actually, no, we have discovered that without the furniture we have more space for - the Archduke Piccolo's wargaming!
Dumping is of course the sport of kings, or used to be. Back in the day, i knew people who were proud to have furnished their whole houses from the dump. It went with the hippy chic we adopted. We would engage in dumping at times. Dumps then were great sprawling stinking affairs that emitted clouds of dust and shrieking gulls. Back then you could wander in them like you were some sort of post industrial waste wraith, a piece of randomised ephemera made of flapping rags and swirls of dust, blowing and dissolving in the fetid wind....etc etc. You could come across half a teddy bear, or a perfect row of skinned ferrets, or a lacquered box with a map in it. You could enter for free and wander at will and take whatever treasures you found.
Recently we had an attack of entropy and i came home from work to discover half the lounge furniture broken beyond repair. Neither i nor my husband the Archduke Piccolo are keen on throwing things out. For most of our marriage our lounge suite was propped up on concrete blocks because the legs had broken. This furniture however was beyond propping up. So off we went to engage in the sport of kings.
Or so we thought.
Now the city refuse services have become further sterling examples of the Franz Kafka School of Management. Obviously they are run by the same outfit that manages the health system. We turned up in our Nissan Sentra hatchback feeling rather small among the trucks. We then began a Byzantine process of finding out what items could be dropped off at the post where they on-sell things, and what could be salvaged and what needed to be actually thrown out.This mostly involved driving around and around and shouting at each other. Finally we backed up in front of a big concrete pit and hurled our stuff into it. A machine came along and began to snuffle at it, a bit like the vacuum cleaner in the Teletubbies. We found our way out by a further Byzantine process that mostly involved driving around and around and shouting at each other, and discovered that they seem to have forgotten to charge us our $8. Perhaps it was because we were so pathetic.
It was all a bit anticlimactic. And clean. There was hardly any rubbish in sight, and no chance to pick over anything unless you offered to interact with the people in the trucks next to us, and that would have been plain weird. We were cogs in a wheel. Gizmos on a conveyor belt. Passive victims of Fordist 'efficiency' and the dehumanising fetishism of corporate greed.
Oh well, after that sobering thought, off to buy more furniture!**
*Actually the horse racing is incidental. Cup week in Christchurch is mostly women in big hats and very high heels getting drunk and falling over. Generally however people are only appalled if they're also fat. Slim women are mercifully free from tastelessness.#
# Oh, all right. Miaow.
**Actually, no, we have discovered that without the furniture we have more space for - the Archduke Piccolo's wargaming!
Friday, November 9, 2012
No heroism required
This post is in part a review of Rebecca Solnit's book 'A paradise built in hell: the extraordinary communities that arise in disaster'.
Rebecca Solnit is one of my favourites. Art historian, feminist, activist, environmentalist, she does a good line in looking at things differently. After Hurricane Katrina i was reading her articles on the weblog TomDispatches, about the aftermath of the hurricane and the way ordinary citizens and the authorities handled it. Of course now we have had our own disaster here in Christchurch, and i was keen to buy the new book.
Her main idea is that after a disaster people come together in new ways, even if only temporarily, and care for each other. How well the citizenry does however can depend on how those in power see them. If the authorites fear the citizens and want to protect property rather than lives, things are likely to be more chaotic and less humane. Her first chapter is about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. While ordinary people formed tent cities and communal kitchens, the authorities took the view that social order was bound to break down unless they took a firm upper hand. And so they burned the city, burned down the very properties they claimed to be protecting, and deprived people of the means of saving themselves.
The popular view of how people behave in and after a disaster would state that people panic, sink down to the worst of themselves, and become selfish. This view sees the populace as needing strong leadership and sanctions to stop law and order breaking down. This view is often held by those in power, and this is why they send in the National Guard. Or the Army, in our case in Christchurch. It is also the thinking behind vigilantism and the fear of looting.
Alongside this view, a sociology of disaster has developed, based on researching lived experience. In fact, people mostly don't panic. They move fast for sure, but they don't necessarily panic. And by and large they don't loot. They may take what they need to set up communal shelter and feed themselves, but actual looting of material goods not related to survival is not common. Moreover, people don't turn into selfish survivalists. They help each other, go to courageous lengths for each other, cross social and racial divides for each other, unless the authorities get in the way.
Solnit thinks that we are prevented from seeing clearly the ordinary best experiences of people because of the popular culture desire for heroes. Heroes come from outside, they usually work alone, they are self reliant and extraordinary. It is easy to see firefighters, for example, as heroes. We overlook people who are just as useful, but don't fit the hero mould. We expect to be saved when really we all got together and saved ourselves.
Reading her book drew out memories of how it felt after the big earthquake here. i was moved reading it. i thought to learn about our other great earthquake, of 1848, which nearly destroyed the fledgeling city of Wellington.
Wellington at the time had about 3000 people and almost all of them survived, but most of the city fell down and the people were thoroughly spooked, most of them being fairly new immigrants. The aftershocks continued for months, and coincided with strange lights in the sky which people thought were volcanic eruptions. In fact it was the Aurora Australis.
The people of Wellington sought meaning in these catastrophic events, as we do, and the most common official one was that the earthquake was the will of God. In fact it was often called the Visitation. Churches were full for months afterwards. It was most gratifying. While no one suggested the earthquake was any sort of punishment for wickedness, and it was attributed to natural causes, it was also seen as a timely reminder for us all to remember our sins and turn back to God. Certainly there was no perceptible break down of society. People just got a bit more churchy for a while.*
i remembered how small scale communities did form after our EQ. We met some of our neighbours properly for the first time. We gradually emptied our freezer onto the barbecue and people came round and ate with us. My neighbour commented on how close we had become, and how when it was all over we would probably go back to how it was before. She was right. We still see each other but we are no longer best buds.
There were indeed acts of generosity and unity all over the place. A man who worked delivering goods in the hospital bought chocolates and delivered them wherever he went, to all the wards and offices. After a week of this the management noticed and chipped in money for him to continue. One red zone couple made a list of everyone in the stricken area, their health and welfare needs, and took it to Civil Defence. Their house became the distribution centre for relief. They looked after over 100 people. A bakery owner just gave away everything to passersby, including my daughter. (No looting there!) A couple whose fruit and vegetable shop was destroyed gave away their stock, and when they were finally able to rebuild, they found their generosity rewarded. Here is Max the grocer:
'One thing the earthquakes have done is make people stop and realise you need community, you don't live on your own. A lot of people had no time, were too busy to know their neighbour. All of a sudden, they've realised you need your neighbour. That's one of the positives of the earthquakes and you need to look for positives.'#
No heroism required.No uniforms, no leadership, no noise. Just purposefulness, unity, compassion, and generosity - the virtues of every day, writ a little larger. For a while, some of us were better people.
*i remember some of the less temperate comments at the time of the Christchurch EQ, that it was indeed punishment for immorality in society. The mainstream churches were not at all keen on this. Their spokespeople made public statements against those comments.They maintained that God loves us and had nothing to do with the EQ. i also remember some comments that the EQ was a sign that God hates the mainstream churches and there was some evidence for this - most of the large churches were very badly damaged including both cathedrals. However, i have observed something more specific - it was the brick or stone churches that were damaged. Clearly God hates bricks. And i have some exegetical backup for this. The first mention of bricks in the Bible comes from Genesis, and relates to the time of the building of the tower of Babel. Thus it is clear that bricks are associated with social chaos and division and lack of communication. Accursed be the bricklayers, those sinners in the service of the fiend that is the demonic brick!
# Quoted www.aadirections.co.nz
Rebecca Solnit is one of my favourites. Art historian, feminist, activist, environmentalist, she does a good line in looking at things differently. After Hurricane Katrina i was reading her articles on the weblog TomDispatches, about the aftermath of the hurricane and the way ordinary citizens and the authorities handled it. Of course now we have had our own disaster here in Christchurch, and i was keen to buy the new book.
Her main idea is that after a disaster people come together in new ways, even if only temporarily, and care for each other. How well the citizenry does however can depend on how those in power see them. If the authorites fear the citizens and want to protect property rather than lives, things are likely to be more chaotic and less humane. Her first chapter is about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. While ordinary people formed tent cities and communal kitchens, the authorities took the view that social order was bound to break down unless they took a firm upper hand. And so they burned the city, burned down the very properties they claimed to be protecting, and deprived people of the means of saving themselves.
The popular view of how people behave in and after a disaster would state that people panic, sink down to the worst of themselves, and become selfish. This view sees the populace as needing strong leadership and sanctions to stop law and order breaking down. This view is often held by those in power, and this is why they send in the National Guard. Or the Army, in our case in Christchurch. It is also the thinking behind vigilantism and the fear of looting.
Alongside this view, a sociology of disaster has developed, based on researching lived experience. In fact, people mostly don't panic. They move fast for sure, but they don't necessarily panic. And by and large they don't loot. They may take what they need to set up communal shelter and feed themselves, but actual looting of material goods not related to survival is not common. Moreover, people don't turn into selfish survivalists. They help each other, go to courageous lengths for each other, cross social and racial divides for each other, unless the authorities get in the way.
Solnit thinks that we are prevented from seeing clearly the ordinary best experiences of people because of the popular culture desire for heroes. Heroes come from outside, they usually work alone, they are self reliant and extraordinary. It is easy to see firefighters, for example, as heroes. We overlook people who are just as useful, but don't fit the hero mould. We expect to be saved when really we all got together and saved ourselves.
Reading her book drew out memories of how it felt after the big earthquake here. i was moved reading it. i thought to learn about our other great earthquake, of 1848, which nearly destroyed the fledgeling city of Wellington.
Wellington at the time had about 3000 people and almost all of them survived, but most of the city fell down and the people were thoroughly spooked, most of them being fairly new immigrants. The aftershocks continued for months, and coincided with strange lights in the sky which people thought were volcanic eruptions. In fact it was the Aurora Australis.
The people of Wellington sought meaning in these catastrophic events, as we do, and the most common official one was that the earthquake was the will of God. In fact it was often called the Visitation. Churches were full for months afterwards. It was most gratifying. While no one suggested the earthquake was any sort of punishment for wickedness, and it was attributed to natural causes, it was also seen as a timely reminder for us all to remember our sins and turn back to God. Certainly there was no perceptible break down of society. People just got a bit more churchy for a while.*
i remembered how small scale communities did form after our EQ. We met some of our neighbours properly for the first time. We gradually emptied our freezer onto the barbecue and people came round and ate with us. My neighbour commented on how close we had become, and how when it was all over we would probably go back to how it was before. She was right. We still see each other but we are no longer best buds.
There were indeed acts of generosity and unity all over the place. A man who worked delivering goods in the hospital bought chocolates and delivered them wherever he went, to all the wards and offices. After a week of this the management noticed and chipped in money for him to continue. One red zone couple made a list of everyone in the stricken area, their health and welfare needs, and took it to Civil Defence. Their house became the distribution centre for relief. They looked after over 100 people. A bakery owner just gave away everything to passersby, including my daughter. (No looting there!) A couple whose fruit and vegetable shop was destroyed gave away their stock, and when they were finally able to rebuild, they found their generosity rewarded. Here is Max the grocer:
'One thing the earthquakes have done is make people stop and realise you need community, you don't live on your own. A lot of people had no time, were too busy to know their neighbour. All of a sudden, they've realised you need your neighbour. That's one of the positives of the earthquakes and you need to look for positives.'#
No heroism required.No uniforms, no leadership, no noise. Just purposefulness, unity, compassion, and generosity - the virtues of every day, writ a little larger. For a while, some of us were better people.
*i remember some of the less temperate comments at the time of the Christchurch EQ, that it was indeed punishment for immorality in society. The mainstream churches were not at all keen on this. Their spokespeople made public statements against those comments.They maintained that God loves us and had nothing to do with the EQ. i also remember some comments that the EQ was a sign that God hates the mainstream churches and there was some evidence for this - most of the large churches were very badly damaged including both cathedrals. However, i have observed something more specific - it was the brick or stone churches that were damaged. Clearly God hates bricks. And i have some exegetical backup for this. The first mention of bricks in the Bible comes from Genesis, and relates to the time of the building of the tower of Babel. Thus it is clear that bricks are associated with social chaos and division and lack of communication. Accursed be the bricklayers, those sinners in the service of the fiend that is the demonic brick!
# Quoted www.aadirections.co.nz
Friday, November 2, 2012
But we were taking the train
On the West Coast, the rain held steady. The road was closed over Porters Pass, but we were taking the train.
The river valley made way for broom-clad hillsides, and more rain. Then Otira, a tiny settlement that gets about two hours of sun a day in winter and has denizens rather than residents. (i love Otira!) Then the tunnel, 8 kms i think, and steep as, up and up - and out - and into the snow. It was a foot deep. It looked snug and settled. Colour washed out with it. And there we were at Arthurs Pass, to unload the second engine that had pushed us so gallantly up the hill and through the tunnel, and to play in the snow.
Only the children played, really. They ventured as far as they could and squealed and wallowed. The adults photographed themselves.
A thin, older man posed with his Indian wife. He held her under one arm and in the other hand he held a lump of snow her had formed into an oblong shape the size of a concrete block.He grinned straight at the camera, snaggle toothed, his beanie astride his big ears. She cuddled into the crook of his arm and smiled. Her Indian friend took the photo.
One woman modelled for her man to photograph her. She held little snowballs and gazed at them wide eyed. She tossed snow into the air and flung her arms wide with childlike delight. She flicked her long brown hair. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks shone in the cold. When she came back into the carriage she brought out her tablet, and uploaded the photos immediately. Now they have gone all around the world. And i noticed that she was actually quite middle aged, quite plump, unremarkable in a crowd, as most of us are.
How did we learn to be so self aware? None of the adults played in the snow. They had a being-photographed-playing-in-the-snow experience. The snow was the vehicle for the photographs. It could have been any vehicle. And the woman with her modelling moves - how did she learn that this is how one should be photographed, as if for a fashion shoot?
Family snapshot photography has always been thoroughly stereotypical. That is part of its charm. Its artistic and sociological lessons for the viewer are usually incidental. It is an innocent art. Those involved have always known that this is for the future, that soon this moment will be a memory and that this is the memory we want preserved, that when we look at photos we are looking at younger versions of ourselves, and so by their very static nature we are reminded of the passage of time. i think even with our current instant technology the same applies today. Perhaps we just want more choice about how we present ourselves to the future, and we are more informed about the conventions of looking good. Perhaps it is a less innocent art now, but it still has its charm. Seeing ordinary people turning themselves briefly into models of glamour or goofiness is indeed charming.
Us, we photographed the snow.
The river valley made way for broom-clad hillsides, and more rain. Then Otira, a tiny settlement that gets about two hours of sun a day in winter and has denizens rather than residents. (i love Otira!) Then the tunnel, 8 kms i think, and steep as, up and up - and out - and into the snow. It was a foot deep. It looked snug and settled. Colour washed out with it. And there we were at Arthurs Pass, to unload the second engine that had pushed us so gallantly up the hill and through the tunnel, and to play in the snow.
Only the children played, really. They ventured as far as they could and squealed and wallowed. The adults photographed themselves.
A thin, older man posed with his Indian wife. He held her under one arm and in the other hand he held a lump of snow her had formed into an oblong shape the size of a concrete block.He grinned straight at the camera, snaggle toothed, his beanie astride his big ears. She cuddled into the crook of his arm and smiled. Her Indian friend took the photo.
One woman modelled for her man to photograph her. She held little snowballs and gazed at them wide eyed. She tossed snow into the air and flung her arms wide with childlike delight. She flicked her long brown hair. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks shone in the cold. When she came back into the carriage she brought out her tablet, and uploaded the photos immediately. Now they have gone all around the world. And i noticed that she was actually quite middle aged, quite plump, unremarkable in a crowd, as most of us are.
How did we learn to be so self aware? None of the adults played in the snow. They had a being-photographed-playing-in-the-snow experience. The snow was the vehicle for the photographs. It could have been any vehicle. And the woman with her modelling moves - how did she learn that this is how one should be photographed, as if for a fashion shoot?
Family snapshot photography has always been thoroughly stereotypical. That is part of its charm. Its artistic and sociological lessons for the viewer are usually incidental. It is an innocent art. Those involved have always known that this is for the future, that soon this moment will be a memory and that this is the memory we want preserved, that when we look at photos we are looking at younger versions of ourselves, and so by their very static nature we are reminded of the passage of time. i think even with our current instant technology the same applies today. Perhaps we just want more choice about how we present ourselves to the future, and we are more informed about the conventions of looking good. Perhaps it is a less innocent art now, but it still has its charm. Seeing ordinary people turning themselves briefly into models of glamour or goofiness is indeed charming.
Monday, October 22, 2012
In support of Honey Boo Boo
i was alerted to the phenomenon that is Honey Boo Boo via the issue of Mitt Romney saying he would cut funding to PBS, the educational TV channel that makes Sesame Street. (Run for your life, Big Bird!) The Learning Channel, or TCL, is a privately funded TV channel that purports to engage learning but the result of privately funded educational TV is.....
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
Honey Boo Boo's real name is Alana. She is a six year old beauty pageant queen raised in a Southern 'redneck' household. She is known for her one-liners such as 'A dollar makes me holler' and her Here Comes Honey Boo Boo show is a spin off of TLC's earlier show Toddlers and Tiaras. Her household consists of June, age 33, June's partner Sugar Bear age 40, and the four girls Anna, Jessica, Lauryn and Alana, all of whom are known by their nicknames such as 'Chubbs' and 'Pumpkin'. The oldest girl is pregnant and during the series gives birth to baby Katelyn. They live in a very small town in Georgia, and the series shows them preparing for Alana's beuaty pageants, eating out, and attending the Redneck Games. There is a lot of farting and blowing noses. The show is phenomenally popular. One ep was watched by more people than one of the Republican Party debates, although that may indicate that Republicans prefer Honey Boo Boo to any of the candidates.
If you watch on YouTube the extended promo for the show, you will get a good sense of the whole HBB vibe. But i was more interested in the comments, which were numerous and largely scathing. There were far more dislikes than likes, for a start. One person apologised for being a Southerner and earnestly tried to persuade us that all Southerners are not like that.
Sweetie, even we in Aotearoa have a far more sophisticated view of what goes on south of the Mason-Dixon Line. i have watched many episodes of True Blood on HBO and i am well aware that the South contains relatively few rednecks in comparison with hordes of vampires, werewolves, shape changers, Santerian shamen, fairies of all stripes, Mesopotamian nursery demons, etc etc etc ....and of course the gorgeous Anna Paquin. Don't talk to me about stereotypes.
HBB has been roundly criticised as trash TV, exploitation, and simply as bad taste. And so, in order to research this blog post i have watched some hours of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. i have three words to describe this feat: Pulitzer - fucking - prize.
So for the sake of editorial balance, and as a slightly masochistic thought experiment, i have come out in support of HBB and her world. Here are some of the criticisms, with my responses:
Obesity. June is probably morbidly obese, at the age of 33, and Alana is very overweight. The rest of the family are definitely stocky. There is one sequence where June finds dirt encrusted in the folds of her neck. The sequences that show the family out and about show their associates are also overweight.
OK. i start with the bald statement that obesity an issue of social class. By the 1990's, obesity had become more common among poorer women in most rich countries. In the USA in the 1970's close to half the population was overweight and 15 % were obese. Now, three quarters of the population is overweight, and close to a third is obese. Levels of obesity tend to be higher in countries where income inequality is highest, and in the USA, a very unequal society, obesity is highest in more unequal states, such as Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. The reasons for this are complicated, and seem to relate as much to stress as to diet and exercise. In other words how and why people eat is important. Fast food gets linked to comfort, to status, and to the normative American lifestyle. Evidence about the 'thrifty phenotype' shows that when a baby in the womb is exposed to stress, it adapts to what may well become a life in a stressful environment. Such babies are born with lower birth rates and lower metabolic rates. They are adapted to a world where food is scarce. Except that food isn't scarce - it's crap, it's sometimes even dangerous, but there's plenty of it. There is even evidence that supermarkets in poor areas of the USA sell poor quality food, and poorer quality food is often cheaper. i find it hard to judge June and her family, in their obesogenic environenment. Why do we expect the poor to be morally better than their environments? Me, i paid $20,000 to fix my obesity and i can't say what sort of person that makes me. Except rich.
Bad nutrition. In Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, one episode features 'extreme couponing'. June and HBB go to the local supermarket and use coupons to get their groceries for almost nothing. Naturally, the stuff they buy is of negligible nutritional value. In another episode they go to a 'food' auction. i can only put the word food in quotation marks because none of it was really food. What dreadful modelling for her daughter.
Except - HBB learns a few things here. Maths, for a start, and how to bargain. And thrift. June feeds her family on $80 a week by judicious use of coupons, auctions, and free road kill. The shots of vats of squishy dead animal should really bring us back to our pioneering heritage, back when we had a relationship with what we killed and knew how to do it ourselves. June and co. will survive after the zombie apocalypse even if they can't run fast enough to escape the zombies.
Dreadful parenting. Six year old HBB is a beauty pageant veteran, that epitome of child exploitation. She is also untrammelled by manners or courtesies. People fart and burb and clamber over each other in this household. The kids are rude about their mother, especially her eating habits.
However, if we look at Donald Winnicott's notion of 'good enough' parenting being actually better than 'perfect' parenting, maybe June passes muster with her brood. HBB is a joyful child. She spontaneously goes to her Mama for cuddles. They family don't get any formal exercise but they have outings together, make their own slip-n-slide, have a laugh, socialise, and engage in occasionally witty banter. There seems to be no violence or aggression. People just say what they mean. From the little we see, it is hard to fault their attachment to each other. We also learn about women on top. June is a classic matriarch, at the age of 33. Her partner Sugar Bear sits around looking dumbfounded, while June runs the show. And while you don't see a lot of paid work, or school, or homework, you do see activity and busy-ness.
Teen pregnancy: Anna, age 17, is pregnant. June was 15 when she had Anna. Babies born to teen mothers are more likely to have low birth weights, to be born prematurely, to be at higher risk of dying in infancy. As they grow their social outcomes are statistically worse than those born to older mothers. Teen motherhood is associated with intergeneration deprivation. The pregnancy is in the background of the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo programme, but it is a theme, and i suppose we are expect to harrumph and disapprove as we watch. Well, yeah, but some of the evidence is debatable. Among some poor American women, exposure to poverty and stress over their life times compromises their health anyway. There is no advantage for them having their children later. Social scientists call this 'weathering'.June had her kids early, and fair enough, because what we know about her tells us she is unlikely to live to a healthy old age. Be a grandmother at 33 because you may not live to 60. Another point is a kind of evolutionary argument about quality versus quantity. In societies where there is poverty, opportunism, scarcity of resources, and a lack of trust, women reach maturity earlier and become sexually active earlier. It makes sense to have lots of children - some will survive, some good things will happen to you, even if you can't trust your partner or your family or the system around you to support you. These are sad facts. It does not augur well for Anna and her new daughter. But, again, how can i judge her? As the programme goes to air, she has status and support, and someone to love, and she has become an instant adult. And her Mama June models how it's done when you enter adulthood in the fast lane - at 33 a matriarch, with her own life wisdom, when many wealthy 33 year old women are still mooching around wrestling with their first worl problems.
Go go juice: June feeds Honey Boo Boo he own concoction before the pageants, to pep her up. Go go juice is a mixture of Red Bull and Mountain Dew and it seems to give her boundless - well, something. June has apparently said, at least it's not alcohol. In this, she joins the legions of stressed and impoverished mothers throughout the ages who have dosed their children with whatever, from gin to Ritalin. Mostly they do it for peace and quiet; it seems June's crime is that she is aiming for the opposite effect. Hmm. Of course i do not mean to decry parents whose children suffer genuine mental illnesses, or major behavioural problems. i guess i mean that all through time mothers have just done what they thought best at the time, with whatever they had.
So, what are we left with? It seems to me, all up, that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is like most reality TV, part exploitation of course, part pruriance, part smarts. She and her family look snidely at the viewer and say you think we're dumb, but you're watching us and we're making the money. She really is a child of our times. When The Learning Channel sets out to make us judge the family and accuse them of exploitation, i think there are arguments all ways. The main crime here is aesthetic. The rest is anthropology.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
Honey Boo Boo's real name is Alana. She is a six year old beauty pageant queen raised in a Southern 'redneck' household. She is known for her one-liners such as 'A dollar makes me holler' and her Here Comes Honey Boo Boo show is a spin off of TLC's earlier show Toddlers and Tiaras. Her household consists of June, age 33, June's partner Sugar Bear age 40, and the four girls Anna, Jessica, Lauryn and Alana, all of whom are known by their nicknames such as 'Chubbs' and 'Pumpkin'. The oldest girl is pregnant and during the series gives birth to baby Katelyn. They live in a very small town in Georgia, and the series shows them preparing for Alana's beuaty pageants, eating out, and attending the Redneck Games. There is a lot of farting and blowing noses. The show is phenomenally popular. One ep was watched by more people than one of the Republican Party debates, although that may indicate that Republicans prefer Honey Boo Boo to any of the candidates.
If you watch on YouTube the extended promo for the show, you will get a good sense of the whole HBB vibe. But i was more interested in the comments, which were numerous and largely scathing. There were far more dislikes than likes, for a start. One person apologised for being a Southerner and earnestly tried to persuade us that all Southerners are not like that.
Sweetie, even we in Aotearoa have a far more sophisticated view of what goes on south of the Mason-Dixon Line. i have watched many episodes of True Blood on HBO and i am well aware that the South contains relatively few rednecks in comparison with hordes of vampires, werewolves, shape changers, Santerian shamen, fairies of all stripes, Mesopotamian nursery demons, etc etc etc ....and of course the gorgeous Anna Paquin. Don't talk to me about stereotypes.
HBB has been roundly criticised as trash TV, exploitation, and simply as bad taste. And so, in order to research this blog post i have watched some hours of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. i have three words to describe this feat: Pulitzer - fucking - prize.
So for the sake of editorial balance, and as a slightly masochistic thought experiment, i have come out in support of HBB and her world. Here are some of the criticisms, with my responses:
Obesity. June is probably morbidly obese, at the age of 33, and Alana is very overweight. The rest of the family are definitely stocky. There is one sequence where June finds dirt encrusted in the folds of her neck. The sequences that show the family out and about show their associates are also overweight.
OK. i start with the bald statement that obesity an issue of social class. By the 1990's, obesity had become more common among poorer women in most rich countries. In the USA in the 1970's close to half the population was overweight and 15 % were obese. Now, three quarters of the population is overweight, and close to a third is obese. Levels of obesity tend to be higher in countries where income inequality is highest, and in the USA, a very unequal society, obesity is highest in more unequal states, such as Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. The reasons for this are complicated, and seem to relate as much to stress as to diet and exercise. In other words how and why people eat is important. Fast food gets linked to comfort, to status, and to the normative American lifestyle. Evidence about the 'thrifty phenotype' shows that when a baby in the womb is exposed to stress, it adapts to what may well become a life in a stressful environment. Such babies are born with lower birth rates and lower metabolic rates. They are adapted to a world where food is scarce. Except that food isn't scarce - it's crap, it's sometimes even dangerous, but there's plenty of it. There is even evidence that supermarkets in poor areas of the USA sell poor quality food, and poorer quality food is often cheaper. i find it hard to judge June and her family, in their obesogenic environenment. Why do we expect the poor to be morally better than their environments? Me, i paid $20,000 to fix my obesity and i can't say what sort of person that makes me. Except rich.
Bad nutrition. In Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, one episode features 'extreme couponing'. June and HBB go to the local supermarket and use coupons to get their groceries for almost nothing. Naturally, the stuff they buy is of negligible nutritional value. In another episode they go to a 'food' auction. i can only put the word food in quotation marks because none of it was really food. What dreadful modelling for her daughter.
Except - HBB learns a few things here. Maths, for a start, and how to bargain. And thrift. June feeds her family on $80 a week by judicious use of coupons, auctions, and free road kill. The shots of vats of squishy dead animal should really bring us back to our pioneering heritage, back when we had a relationship with what we killed and knew how to do it ourselves. June and co. will survive after the zombie apocalypse even if they can't run fast enough to escape the zombies.
Dreadful parenting. Six year old HBB is a beauty pageant veteran, that epitome of child exploitation. She is also untrammelled by manners or courtesies. People fart and burb and clamber over each other in this household. The kids are rude about their mother, especially her eating habits.
However, if we look at Donald Winnicott's notion of 'good enough' parenting being actually better than 'perfect' parenting, maybe June passes muster with her brood. HBB is a joyful child. She spontaneously goes to her Mama for cuddles. They family don't get any formal exercise but they have outings together, make their own slip-n-slide, have a laugh, socialise, and engage in occasionally witty banter. There seems to be no violence or aggression. People just say what they mean. From the little we see, it is hard to fault their attachment to each other. We also learn about women on top. June is a classic matriarch, at the age of 33. Her partner Sugar Bear sits around looking dumbfounded, while June runs the show. And while you don't see a lot of paid work, or school, or homework, you do see activity and busy-ness.
Teen pregnancy: Anna, age 17, is pregnant. June was 15 when she had Anna. Babies born to teen mothers are more likely to have low birth weights, to be born prematurely, to be at higher risk of dying in infancy. As they grow their social outcomes are statistically worse than those born to older mothers. Teen motherhood is associated with intergeneration deprivation. The pregnancy is in the background of the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo programme, but it is a theme, and i suppose we are expect to harrumph and disapprove as we watch. Well, yeah, but some of the evidence is debatable. Among some poor American women, exposure to poverty and stress over their life times compromises their health anyway. There is no advantage for them having their children later. Social scientists call this 'weathering'.June had her kids early, and fair enough, because what we know about her tells us she is unlikely to live to a healthy old age. Be a grandmother at 33 because you may not live to 60. Another point is a kind of evolutionary argument about quality versus quantity. In societies where there is poverty, opportunism, scarcity of resources, and a lack of trust, women reach maturity earlier and become sexually active earlier. It makes sense to have lots of children - some will survive, some good things will happen to you, even if you can't trust your partner or your family or the system around you to support you. These are sad facts. It does not augur well for Anna and her new daughter. But, again, how can i judge her? As the programme goes to air, she has status and support, and someone to love, and she has become an instant adult. And her Mama June models how it's done when you enter adulthood in the fast lane - at 33 a matriarch, with her own life wisdom, when many wealthy 33 year old women are still mooching around wrestling with their first worl problems.
Go go juice: June feeds Honey Boo Boo he own concoction before the pageants, to pep her up. Go go juice is a mixture of Red Bull and Mountain Dew and it seems to give her boundless - well, something. June has apparently said, at least it's not alcohol. In this, she joins the legions of stressed and impoverished mothers throughout the ages who have dosed their children with whatever, from gin to Ritalin. Mostly they do it for peace and quiet; it seems June's crime is that she is aiming for the opposite effect. Hmm. Of course i do not mean to decry parents whose children suffer genuine mental illnesses, or major behavioural problems. i guess i mean that all through time mothers have just done what they thought best at the time, with whatever they had.
So, what are we left with? It seems to me, all up, that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is like most reality TV, part exploitation of course, part pruriance, part smarts. She and her family look snidely at the viewer and say you think we're dumb, but you're watching us and we're making the money. She really is a child of our times. When The Learning Channel sets out to make us judge the family and accuse them of exploitation, i think there are arguments all ways. The main crime here is aesthetic. The rest is anthropology.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
The Borderline Society and its Discontents Part III - Farewell Cruel World
In the last post i looked at the possibility that our global north society may be suffering from a kind of arrested development, that the whole of society may not have progressed beyond adolescence and true maturity is rare among individuals. In such a society, adults who regress into adolescent thinking patterns may find themselves indistinguishable from others around them, because the whole of society is not advanced beyond them. Thus they get no help - either from the individuals around them or the role models or policy makers they are expected to emulate. We are used to considering early attachment issues in order to understand Borderline Personality Disorder, but a look at adolescent thinking may help us further.
A useful model of help was proposed for me by Linda Kavelin Popov, of the Virtues Project. If you are in a hole, you don't need people to get in the hole with you. That's what adolescents sometimes do. When one is in a hole they all get in and wallow, all with the idea of somehow trying to get the first person out. Then all you have is lots of people in a hole. What you need when you in a hole is people outside the hole, people wise and caring enough to put a ladder down and hold it steady so you can climb out.
So, we have lots of people in holes and not enough wise and caring people to hold the ladders. Who are the people from whom our young ones are expected to get their inspiration? Well, the magazine most bought by older teen and twenties women in New Zealand is New Idea. No models of maturity there. A piece of research i was involved with earlier this year* among young people found they do not relate to world changers such as old skool Martin Luther King etc. They are concerned about things that affect them directly, such as plus size models being allowed on catwalks, and the issues touted by celebrities such as Hayden Panattiere's truly brave efforts for dolphins. Remember, more people voted for American Idol than for the American president. We have a dearth of examples of maturity and depth and wisdom. Our policy makers and shakers preach individual responsibility, then model that special politician's apology that goes something like - I apologise if you perceived that you were thinking that you may have taken offence by something inadvertant that I am damn well not going to take any responsibility for....
We also have societies that are increasingly unequal and becoming genuinely more anxious. Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kare Pickett describe this in their book The Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better. These two are interesting because they are so methodologically careful. It's a great book if you like graphs. They state that the age of prosperity building is over; it has long done its work. Societies where there is greatest relative inequality within that society have more social problems. One of those problems is anxiety, and they cite research that shows we are not just more aware of anxiety, we really are more anxious. Of course these guys are epidemiologists and they are not commenting on the individual experience of people with mental illness. They see mental illness as a social feature - they see the context of mental illness. For them the good news is that simply by increasing the relative equality within our societies we can help social problems. i don't know that in a more equal society there would be less BPD. But i think it is tragic that a woman in her twenties lives alone, on welfare, with no family contact, and few functional relationships, on medication that makes her fat and dulls her intellect, while the soundtrack of trauma and damage plays over in her head. Whatever label she has been given, there is a context for her experience, and we can do better. For this is the social context wherein people decompensate, regress, hurt and even kill themselves, fall in and out of crisis, and struggle to regulate and make sense of sometimes unmanageable emotions.
So in a society that is atomised, immature, de-natured, spiritually arid and porfoundly unequal, how can we tell who are the sick ones? Perhaps it is the individuals who are happily adolescent, who just stand in line for the latest toys, who are 'unwell'? Let us imagine a society where we shake our head sadly at people who have no depth, who care only for themselves, who seem unable to develop the huge compassion for all the planet that is normal for adults....
Miners used to take canaries down mines, and when the canaries got sick the miners knew the air was poisonous. Perhaps those with the BPD label are our canaries. They are telling us our societal air is poisoned, and we are all sick.
* Yeah OK i confess, it was my daughter polling her facebook friends at my request.
A useful model of help was proposed for me by Linda Kavelin Popov, of the Virtues Project. If you are in a hole, you don't need people to get in the hole with you. That's what adolescents sometimes do. When one is in a hole they all get in and wallow, all with the idea of somehow trying to get the first person out. Then all you have is lots of people in a hole. What you need when you in a hole is people outside the hole, people wise and caring enough to put a ladder down and hold it steady so you can climb out.
So, we have lots of people in holes and not enough wise and caring people to hold the ladders. Who are the people from whom our young ones are expected to get their inspiration? Well, the magazine most bought by older teen and twenties women in New Zealand is New Idea. No models of maturity there. A piece of research i was involved with earlier this year* among young people found they do not relate to world changers such as old skool Martin Luther King etc. They are concerned about things that affect them directly, such as plus size models being allowed on catwalks, and the issues touted by celebrities such as Hayden Panattiere's truly brave efforts for dolphins. Remember, more people voted for American Idol than for the American president. We have a dearth of examples of maturity and depth and wisdom. Our policy makers and shakers preach individual responsibility, then model that special politician's apology that goes something like - I apologise if you perceived that you were thinking that you may have taken offence by something inadvertant that I am damn well not going to take any responsibility for....
We also have societies that are increasingly unequal and becoming genuinely more anxious. Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kare Pickett describe this in their book The Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better. These two are interesting because they are so methodologically careful. It's a great book if you like graphs. They state that the age of prosperity building is over; it has long done its work. Societies where there is greatest relative inequality within that society have more social problems. One of those problems is anxiety, and they cite research that shows we are not just more aware of anxiety, we really are more anxious. Of course these guys are epidemiologists and they are not commenting on the individual experience of people with mental illness. They see mental illness as a social feature - they see the context of mental illness. For them the good news is that simply by increasing the relative equality within our societies we can help social problems. i don't know that in a more equal society there would be less BPD. But i think it is tragic that a woman in her twenties lives alone, on welfare, with no family contact, and few functional relationships, on medication that makes her fat and dulls her intellect, while the soundtrack of trauma and damage plays over in her head. Whatever label she has been given, there is a context for her experience, and we can do better. For this is the social context wherein people decompensate, regress, hurt and even kill themselves, fall in and out of crisis, and struggle to regulate and make sense of sometimes unmanageable emotions.
So in a society that is atomised, immature, de-natured, spiritually arid and porfoundly unequal, how can we tell who are the sick ones? Perhaps it is the individuals who are happily adolescent, who just stand in line for the latest toys, who are 'unwell'? Let us imagine a society where we shake our head sadly at people who have no depth, who care only for themselves, who seem unable to develop the huge compassion for all the planet that is normal for adults....
Miners used to take canaries down mines, and when the canaries got sick the miners knew the air was poisonous. Perhaps those with the BPD label are our canaries. They are telling us our societal air is poisoned, and we are all sick.
* Yeah OK i confess, it was my daughter polling her facebook friends at my request.
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