Chronological Ethnocentrism

The ideology of progress amounts to a chronological form of ethnocentrism. -James W. Loewen

A friend of mine often remarks that they are rarely captured by fiction writing, instead preferring nonfiction for its edifying properties. In these discussions I unfailingly counter with the argument that fiction offers a unique form of knowledge that comparatively dry books on math, science, or philosophy rarely do: information modeling in the form of illuminating metaphor and allegory. I'm known to recommend speculative fiction in particular for it's unique ability to smoothly integrate topics of interest like technology, politics, and metaphysics into these metaphorical models of potential outcomes. Stories that involve time travel, alternate dimensions, or a combination of the two are doubly (triply? infinitely?) suited to aid the learning process for their ability to observe a given model from as many different facets as there are wave functions to collapse into a narrative¹.

The final season (spoiler alert) of the J. J. Abrams produced television series "Fringe" (which incorporates alternate dimensions and time travel to an above average degree of success) posits a far future in which humanity picks up where evolution leaves off and follows a course of self-directed genetic "progress" to a level of apex-predation that spans universes and timelines. Some might say humanity started this process the moment we grabbed up the femur and started smashing tapir skulls with any kind of self awareness, but that's a discussion for another time. What's relevant in the "Fringe" plot-arc is that the primitive, present-day human protagonists of the series resist invasion, subjugation, and replacement at the hands of their time-traveling, dimension-hopping, lebensraum-seeking descendants in spite of the apparent progress their own species has made. They reject the argument that simply because future versions of themselves exist and are vastly superior in many obvious ways that they should therefor roll over and accept these descendants as their betters. They reject a chronological form of ethnocentrism.

In the series the protagonists are rewarded for their pugnacious spirit with the discovery of an even more superior future version of humanity without all the patricidal tendencies that, with a just a bit more time travel, can take the place of the bad guys in The Darkest Timeline² and save humanity from a nightmarish dystopia. What's interesting to imagine however, is if the villains had not expressed such obvious antagonisms (time-colonialism, failure to emote, head a'splodin') and were instead simply mild mannered future versions of all of us set on a collision course of no one's design. If looked at from another facet, this is in fact exactly what happens, but the collision course is the simple progress of time and the replacement of one second with the next, one life lived with another born, and the slow erosion of one era's morality with another's. How could any rag tag group of protagonists defend their ideals against the inevitable march of time?

The introductory quote suggests one answer: a reconsideration of the idea of progress. Explaining the implications of revisionist history in American textbooks, Mr. Loewen wrote in his work of popular anthropology "Lies My Teacher Told Me":

Besides fostering ignorance of past societies, belief in progress makes students oblivious to merit in present-day societies other than our own. ... Ethnocentric faith in progress in Western culture has had disastrous consequences. People who believed in their society as the vanguard of the future, the most progressive on earth, have been all too likely to indulge in such excessive cruelties as the Pequot massacre, Stalin's purges, the Holocaust, or the Great Leap Forward.

Much ink was spilled in the last decade lamenting an increase in partisanship, often ascribed to the loss of impartial writing in modern media. Journalists wrote as if a halcyon era that began with Woodward and Bernstein were coming to a close with the end of the network and print news oligarchies at the hands of the comparatively anarchic Internet. Other media observers heeded Mr. Loewen, hearkened back to journalism's yellow past and the brutal politics of prior eras, and pronounced the cycles of partisan and impartial media as entirely normal given a modicum of (accurate) historical perspective. Today, participants in the debate about the merits and degree of modern partisanship seem to agree on at least one thing: moral relativism is a thing of the past³. Ideological proponents may disagree bitterly about their vision of progress, but they agree that theirs should be the one to win out in the end.

Beware the End Of History!

The worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. -Francis Fukuyama

If any ethos ever truly wins out, it blankets not just some large area or volume of human space, but some long epoch of human time as well. We may not experience the boredom Fukuyama hoped might rekindle a lively debate, we may simply change our core selves to better suit the winning ideology. From the lens of multiple backstories (pasts), universes (presents), and plotlines (futures), each party's morality is another protagonist armed with a fighting chance to resist a tyrannical outcome. Today your ideological foe may drive you to froth at the mouth and flail at your radio dial, but tomorrow they are a potential ally against a grinding monoculture intent on snuffing the both of you out of the history books. Or against time traveling telekinetics. Can't rule them out either.

1. Anathem, Neal Stephenson's incomparable novel on quantum mechanics and the clash of philosophies in and against the secular world, is perhaps the best example of this phenomena. It is the underlying source of this post as well, I simply did not feel qualified to write about it at length without at least a third read through.
2. A satirical examination of short run moral decision making via multiple timelines can be found in an episode of the television show "Community" entitled "Remedial Chaos Theory".
3. The final prompt in the writing of this post was the recent This American Life episode on gang violence in and around Harper High School in Chicago, where Officer Aaron Washington remarked: "There is no neutrons anymore. It used to be if you play sports, or you were academically better than the average kid, [gangs] didn't bother you. Now it's different. It doesn't matter. If you live here, you're part of them."

Endorsing the City

For anyone interested in seeing a reurbanization of the American landscape, Stanley Kurtz's recent OP/ED in Forbes Magazine "How Obama Is Robbing The Suburbs To Pay For The Cities" is a ringing endorsement of President Obama's reelection campaign:

Once voters realize that there has never been a president more ideologically opposed to the suburbs, or more reliant on redistribution as a policy, they should know what to do.

As with most ink spilled opposite the editorial page, the piece is tragically empty of facts supporting these pie-in-the-sky, would-be campaign promises like:

• "an initiative to systematically redistribute the wealth of America’s suburbs to the cities"
• "policies designed to coerce people out of their cars"
• "take from the suburbanites to give to the urban poor"
• "quit building sub-divisions and malls"

Too bad for Obama! Having your staunchest ideological enemies talking up your political prowess and mastery of urban planning is the kind of get Democrats rarely luck into under their own steam. When was the last time any Democrat promised a platform so boldly progressive, or any of their constituents believed those promises as passionately as Mr. Kurtz believes in Obama?

But enough about the professionally outraged class, the bizarre sense of entitlement they hold so dear, and their world-class ability to theorize conspiracies. What's so great about the cities? After all, as Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissmann point out in a recent article for The New Republic "The Cheapest Generation", cities seem to be responsible for an entire generation of Americans abandoning the endless business cycles of the disposable auto, hotel, and fashion industries:

The emergence of the “sharing economy”—services that use the Web to let companies and families share otherwise idle goods—is headlined by Zipcar, but it also involves companies such as Airbnb, a shared market­place for bedrooms and other accommodations for travelers; and thred­UP, a site where parents can buy and sell kids’ used clothing.

And don't even get them started about what these selfishly possessionless Millenials are doing to the real estate industry!

If the Millennials are not quite a post-­driving and post-owning generation, they’ll almost certainly be a less-­driving and less-­owning generation. That could mean some tough adjustments for the economy over the next several years. In recent decades, the housing industry has usually led us out of recession. When the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates in the midst of the sharp recession of the early 1980s, for instance, a construction boom helped fuel the “Reagan Recovery.” With the housing market moribund, the Federal Reserve has lost a key means of influencing the economy with lower interest rates. The service-led recovery we’ve gotten instead is not nearly as robust.

Damn you kids, buy my lawn! After all, the construction boom that fueled the GOP's dreams of an "ownership society" and the financial sector's love affair with sub-prime real estate markets didn't cause our current Great Recession, it simply provided the majority of the air released from the bubble that preceded it. So if they aren't going to buy the cars or prop up the next housing bubble, er, market, how does this new generation plan to feed the financial sector's endless need for lightly taxed capital gains?

Economic research shows that doubling a community’s population density tends to increase productivity by anywhere between 6 percent and 28 percent. Economists have found that more than half of the variation in output per worker across U.S. states can be explained by density. Our wealth, after all, is determined not only by our own skills and talents, but by our ability to access the ideas of those around us; there’s a lot to be gained by increasing the odds that smart people might bump against each other. Ultimately, if the Millennial generation pushes our society toward more sharing and closer living, it may do more than simply change America’s consumption culture; it may put America on firmer economic footing for decades to come.

As Mr. Kurtz says, you "should know what to do."

Idiom Watch

• Inside baseball - I can't tell if I like this one because it is always used in the context of some secret knowledge (the best knowledge!), or if the idiom has inherent worth. After all, I am not the biggest baseball fan in the world (ChiSox!), but any kind of respect paid to those who would study a field to within an inch of ridicule has a tip of the hat and five on it from me.
• Hit the spot - Again with the food idioms, I know. What is the spot? Is it the bullseye of your consumptive target? What happens when you hit it? Are you supposed to feel some sense of satisfaction, as though you had trained yourself over time through repetitive practice sessions to find exactly the right combination and amount of foodstuffs to satisfy your dietary needs? If so then by all means, because that sounds laudable now that I've written it out, but this phrase is far more often uttered in response to less condonable desires.

City Living 2

Alec Baldwin reads Colson Whitehead's "Lost and Found":

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I read this piece for the first time back during the 10th anniversary recap in September when folks were linking to articles written in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It's got two of my favorite quotes about urban living that apply equally well to New York as they do to any city:

You are [from a place] the first time you say, ''That used to be _____''

And this quote about change, maturation, acceptance, and / or forgiveness:

Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us. To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. The kid on the uptown No. 1 train, the new arrival stepping out of Grand Central, the jerk at the intersection who doesn't know east from west: those people don't exist anymore, ceased to be a couple of apartments ago, and we wouldn't have it any other way. New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.

Idiom Watch

• That's my speed - You instantly picture Steve McQueen in place of whoever utters this phrase, and he's a cool dude who drives fast (which is itself a cool thing to do), so you want to match his speed. That's what separates this phrase from generic "I like ____" statements: it implicitly invites the listener to agreement, if only they would step on the gas to catch up, or equally, one supposes, the brakes to chill out.
• Walking around money - Nothing says class like old timey political grift, and this phrase connotes the fattest of ward bosses doling out dollars in exchange for votes on the correct side of the ballot. Try it out on your partner the next time you need a couple bills from your (ultimately, if not explicitly) shared bank account but forgot to swing by the ATM before meeting them at the bar, and see if it doesn't put a smile in the corner of their mouth.