Thursday, February 05, 2004
With Apologies to Weather Vane
“Isn’t this a funny turn of events,” says the reader, noting the content of the staff box below. “Two former Weather Vane editors and the same paper’s current web editor, publishing their own unofficial news sheet. Surely they could just work for the real campus newspaper if they’ve got such an urge to publish?”
Well, yes and no. If you’ve read the ‘Vane in the last few weeks, you’ll see that the torch has passed. M.J. is taking a semester off; and neither Jeremy nor Jason have time for full-scale editing positions. So there’s a new administration in office, setting a new tone for the paper. We wish them well, and intend to continue giving them our aid in the capacities we currently enjoy on Weather Vane’s staff. We certainly aren’t trying to compete with the ‘Vane.
But we do wish to supplement it. Lindsay and Cory don’t want the Weather Vane to “get everyone all fired up,” in the words of Lindsay’s Jan. 22 editorial. They’re adopting a stance toward the university administration which is, shall we say, uncritical. This is entirely their right - they’re the editors.
We’re not interested in avoiding any issues, whether they fire people up or not. Some issues are, by nature, emotional and inflammatory - they’re still issues that we have to deal with. We’d like a campus media outlet to serve as a forum for vigorous, well-informed debate and criticism of the status quo. We’d like it to be a marketplace of ideas, which is why we’ve named it The Agora, after the classical Greek word for a marketplace, and why we’re inviting everyone at EMU – whatever their politics – to send their perspectives to us at emu_agora@yahoo.com. We’ll print just about anything, as long as we know who sent it.
So turn to The Agora for opinion that isn’t afraid to be controversial and, in the future, investigative reporting that takes a critical look at issues of concern to all EMU students. But read our little news sheet in addition to the Weather Vane, not instead of it. We’ll keep reading the paper which has served EMU since 1939 - and we hope you’ll spare us a minute whenever we publish.
- jby, jdg, akj, and mjs
The cross-cultural idol
By Andrew K. Jenner
Cross-culturals are one of EMU’s greatest strengths. My experience in the Middle East was probably the best semester of my college experience for a variety of reasons – the opportunity to travel, the excitement of being in new places, the lack of schoolwork, etc. I am sure that many students at EMU feel the same way about their cross-culturals as well.
There is a difference, however, between ranking cross-cultural as one of the best experiences at college and elevating it to the level of, say, heaven. How many times have EMUers, upon return from cross-cultural, waxed poetic about how they were greeted with amazing hospitality by the campesinos in Guatemala or encountered God in some hovel in Tanzania? For added effect, people will often say campesino in an extremely annoying Guatemalan accent to hammer home just how awesome their experience was. Am I denying the validity of these stories? No, but I’m aware that my cross-cultural group spent a great deal of time cursing the heat, the sand, their diarrhea, and one another. Cross cultural is cool but it’s not paradise; this is not the impression one gets upon hearing story after glorious story of life changing experience amidst angelic people in tropical splendor.
The climate of cross-cultural idolatry has gotten to the point where I would feel like a terrible, insensitive jerk if I was to say my life wasn’t changed on cross-cultural. I’m pretty sure that everyone on cross-cultural encounters something sucky, and I think we shouldn’t be ashamed to say it. For the record, I think Athens is a dumpy city and I hope all the mean Greek shopkeepers that I ran into go out of business. Also, Israeli kibbutzim are boring and I suspect that vendors in Cairo invited me to their mother’s house for coffee not because they are simply wonderful people but because I had lots of simply wonderful Egyptian pounds in my pocket.
To all you students out there who haven’t gone yet – I hope you have a great time. Don’t feel like you have to find God or discover the meaning of life for the experience to be worthwhile. Remember the good experiences and laugh about the negative ones after time has soothed bad feelings. Sharing criticism of the cross-cultural experience along with praise is enriching all the more.
Look away from the boob
By Jeremy B. Yoder
Of all the headlines I saw this week, I think my favorite is still the one in the British newspaper The Guardian: “Federal investigation ordered into Janet Jackson’s boob.”
I missed the boob because I had flipped over to CNN for a few minutes to see the real news item of the week, a political ad which CBS refused to air during the Super Bowl. Now, CBS also refused to air a pro-vegetarianism ad sponsored by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which took place on the set of a pornographic movie and essentially claimed that meat makes you impotent. I’m not going to argue with CBS on that one.
But the other ad, sponsored by the progressive online group MoveOn.org, was a factually sound, rational statement against President Bush’s fiscal policy. It portrayed a series of elementary-school-aged children working at unpleasant, low-wage adult jobs, then simply asked, “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?” I suspect that there are even quite a few Republicans who would agree with that sentiment.
But CBS decided the spot was too potentially controversial, too critical of our Commander in Chief. Heaven forefend that the American public should actually have a thought about something other than beer or erectile dysfunction during the Super Bowl. So MoveOn.org instead bought airtime on CNN during the Super Bowl.
Where were all the reporters who ought to have covered CBS’s suppression of political speech?
They were trying to decide if Janet and Justin meant to do it. The press frenzy we saw this week over a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ is just another indicator of the state this country – or at least its press – is in. Suppression of free speech – not interesting. Puritanical freak-out over a split-second of indecent exposure which was preceded by a solid half-hour of sexually graphic (but otherwise acceptable) display – that’ll keep the ‘crawl’ going on Fox News for hours!
Intentionally or not, the U.S. news media is actively preventing us from seeing anything that might be of real import. We don’t hear about the things that President Bush has done which, had he been a Democrat, would have probably got him impeached before he could even begin to obfuscate – the ‘bad intelligence,’ the failure to take seriously an act of treason by a member of his own staff, and the irreparable damage he’s done to our country’s foreign and domestic policies. Instead, we hear about the boob.
The best way to fight back is to view with suspicion any media outlet that claims to avoid ‘controversy.’ Avoidance of controversy is avoidance of thought. So listen to the BBC and Democracy Now! on WEMC, read the foreign press (noting how its tone changes when it talks about America) and, whatever you do, don’t be distracted by the boob.
Postmodernism isn’t really that evil after all
By Daniel P. Umbel
Like all popular buzzwords, ‘post-modernism’ is bandied about without much discretion as to its content or implications. And in the process the concept itself looses our attention and receives dismissal. Thus we sometimes find that those who dismiss post-modernism agree almost point by point with those who affirm it. This state of affairs can only be called confusion. Obviously we need to clear the air a bit and hone our definitions.
But first I will talk about what post-modernism is not. We need to distinguish between relativism and post-modernism – or at least I would wish to, because I find much in post-modernism that is needful to us as Christians living in a pluralistic world, but I do not think we must become decadent skeptics in the process.
I call relativism decadent because it assumes that we are determined by our cultural mores to such an extent that dialogue with the other (other culture, other religion, other faith, etc.) is either impossible or fruitless. Relativism is decadent because it resigns itself to a static restfulness, a bloated hands-off attitude to the world. “You have your beliefs and I have mine. Don’t confront me with what you hold dear and I won’t confront you. Because, after all, they are at heart the same substance wrapped in different jackets.”
Americans are by nature predisposed to this type of thought/act pattern. We usually do not dialogue or listen to one another with the assumption that the otherness of another person’s views confront our own with the possibility that our own views might be wrong. Neither do we claim our own views as true and on that basis engage the other with our own truth, fully embodied and full-blown. We tepidly tiptoe around real issues and talk about the weather. We exchange banalities and let the ultimates in our own lives and the lives of others bypass each other completely.
So I say to hell with the weather and what you did last Tuesday. Give me something to chew on, by God. It is only when I honestly speak my mind to you that you can know me, and it is only by your response in opposition to my own that I can judge myself. I suggest that all our relationships be a dialectic of confrontation, repentance, and reconciliation. Isolationism spackled over with the term ‘relativism’ isn’t Christian – it isn’t even human.
But it is not enough to rant against our spinelessness (even though I do enjoy a good rant every now and again) because I realize that the “lets all just get along” attitude is a product of past experiences with coercive confrontation. In coercive confrontation we fail to listen and respect the other, we beat their ideas into the dust before we carefully consider them. We make a claim upon them without considering their claims upon us. Nevertheless, the solution to past pains and exploitations (another dubious buzzword) is not ignoring differences, but speaking about them in vulnerability.
All this is to say that I realize why relativism is our zeitgeist, but what about post-modernism?
Post-modernism, like relativism, takes seriously the boundedness of our speech and our ideas (and therefore our religious identities and faith claims). No longer can we as post-modernists (if we claims such a title) claim to manifest the only reasonably valid view of the world. Indeed, we must concede the embededness of the tool “rationality” within a world-view, such that something is only “rational” to those within the committed group who share convictions. Now, at this point we might lose heart and thereby become relativists. But if we do so, we should remind ourselves that the only reason we did loose heart is because we were searching for a universal truth of existence outside a particular, embodied, embedded, life-practice in a specific human community. In other words, we were really modernists looking for the confirmation of our hypothesis.
Post-modernism is a boon to Christians (and people of all faiths) for the very reason that it does not become disappointed and cynical with the diversity of convictions. It does not become skeptical because it did not presuppose there to be a truth “beyond” the particular convictional systems of the many – all inclusive and determinative such that one’s own particular beliefs are “only” or “merely” “expressions” of the one, monolithic truth.
Post-modernism is simply the concession that others function within world-views other than our own, it does not assume that we cannot or should not seek to speak with those others. After all, the only way we can really understand our own claims to universal truth is by understanding and speaking to those with whom we disagree. To know the other I must know who I am, because there is no in between.
As a Christian I take Jesus to be determinative for all things, including my view of others. I make the claim that those who come to the Father, come to the Father through the Son. Not only is this an ontological claim, it is also epistemological, i.e. the concept of God as the Father of the Son is usually only accessible to one who has the language “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” I know that others are Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, and that they do not agree with me. I am alright with that, we disagree profoundly, but I have no problem saying they are wrong. It seems to me that I must say so because my own faith compels me to do so, and my own experience teaches me that we all do this anyways.
I said that I had no problem saying others were wrong, but this is itself a simplification. I would rather say, on the basis of my own experience from within my own tradition, that Jesus Christ man of Nazareth is the only thing within Christianity that is truly cross-cultural. He is the only “thing” that goes beyond our culturally manifested form of Western Christianity by being, not a thing, concept, or idea, but a person, in the flesh fully incarnate. In some paradoxical sense, the incarnation of Christ in a specific time and place differing from our own time guarantees his universality. And thus, in the end Christ actually breaks through all concepts: post-modernism, relativism, and modernism by being universal in his specificity, and pervasive in his finitude.
