Phoenix Rising

I was supposed to go to the Azar Nafisi lecture with Mrs. Owens, Mrs. Sholes, and Ms. Yorman, but I got sick instead. Fortunately, Mrs. Owens's friend, Emily, took some really good notes.

Nafisi, who has also been a professor at the University of Oklahoma, wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran, a commentary about a women's book group (except for one male student) that read banned Western classics during the Ayatollah's regime, just before Nafisi fled to the U.S.

I think we should listen to someone who has fled to the United States. An objective opinion never hurts. Here's what she said, gleaned from the wonderful notes I received:

She introduced the ideas of culture and democracy by describing the challenge of news media in America. She described having all news on so many different channels (stations, cable, etc.) from different perspectives (liberal, conservative, democratic, republican, etc.) and in different formats (television, radio, podcasts, internet). She said this is a good thing, because it is an example of democracy: many voices, many choices. In democracy, you get all things and the freedom to choose among them.
The problem, she said, in this example is that along side the news is presented pop culture. While it is important to share cultural things, and while pop culture has its place in communicating and expressing... in our country these things are presented alongside news itself. This means that it becomes confusing what is real, what is fact, and what is entertainment.
She said this kind of information overload brings numbness rather than knowledge. And when we are numb, we cease to make choices. And when we lack knowledge, we cease to realize we are not making choices. So we in living out the numbness, grow in apathy. And in our apathy, we cease to make choices. And when we quit making choices, we lose democracy itself.
She said information for the purpose of knowledge is different because it humbles you. In learning new things, we learn also what we do not know.

Nafisi said so much more, not in criticism of a country that has welcomed her (she is currently a guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins), but in critically thinking about what has and what is happening to our country.

I bring all this up because of its impact on teenagers. Just this week I read Joseph Farrah's article about a teenager sending nude pictures of herself to friends over the phone. It never even occurred to this kid that what she did was wrong. How could it? She lives in a culture where everywhere one turns selling sex makes millions of dollars, and I am not referring to prostitution. Last night, by chance flipping channels, I encountered full frontal nudity on HBO in the comedy Walk Hard - the same actor as in Tallageda Nights, so I was expecting a similar, albeit dumb, thing. I was so happy I didn't have a small child, or even a teenager sitting next to me! I don't want to be a moralist, but I am left wondering, have we lost our minds? This teen may get labeled as a sex offender, but the director of Walk Hard gets millions in profit? If it made that much...

Then I read Forgetting the Past, an article citing noted historian David McCullough's acceptance speech at the National Book Award. He said he asked history students in a seminar at one of our country's best Ivy League schools if they knew who George Marshall was, and silence. Not one had even heard of him or could even place him in an historical era. The author also cites a classroom in Minneapolis that chose John Lennon and Yoko Ono as their most interesting historical figure. And another example of his daughter's Spanish class learning global recycling terms, rather than conversational material. Recycling is great, but how many times will you find yourself in Mexico or Spain wanting to say, "What about this global warming?"

Now, there are those who might label this kind of thinking reactionary. I believe in the future and in our children and want to remain calm and keep things in perspective. And then I remember that nation-wide 80% of all students don't make it to graduation. Thousands of young people can't get the irony in the fact that Angelina Jolie has a Che Guevara tat and also won the U.N.'s Global Humanitarian Award (Guevara said, "A Revolutionary must be a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate." Funny, I don't remember any of our Founding Fathers making that statement, and yet they pulled off one of the world's most important and long lasting revolutions in government and in advancing human thought.).

Which brings me to the end of Nafisi's lecture. She said (transcripted by Emily) we came to America to have the freedom to choose to worship our religions the way we wanted to as individuals. We fought slavery and Harriet Beecher Stowe went to England to share her story, and her husband had to read her speeches because women were not allowed to speak in public. Switzerland only gave women the right to vote in the 70's. The Native Americans - we know that story. How is it our progress has been so much, so far, and now we are silent? Because we are choosing to be numb. And our numb-ness will cost us choice and voice. And this makes us silent.
She said but we need to pay attention. All these rights we so enjoy have only come to pass fully in the last 50 years. We cannot forget the sacrifices we have made for our freedoms, and cannot remain silent - She said that if you want to know about other cultures, you should go to their scientists and philosophers and poets and artists and musicians... because they are the ones who communicate culture.
Lives are not saved by art expression in and of itself, but the idea is that when we see fellow humans commit such atrocities, when you think you yourself are capable of such atrocities, then you become ashamed of being human. It makes you doubt humanity. Art, literature, music, philosophy, and science bring us back to the places where we have the right to celebrate being an individual beyond what we have experienced... they are expressions of our voice, and that is how humanity is saved... by being able to have a voice, and thus choose, what saves them and how.

I am hoping, and will continue to hope, that the school children who chose John Lennon as the greatest historical figure in American history, chose him because he imagined a different way for humanity, a peaceful, sane way, like a Phoenix rising. I am also going to hope their vision is tempered by the reality of history in remembering the hatred of Stalin, Hitler, and even Che. But more importantly, I hope they have the critical thinking skills necessary to see the difference between those men and George Marshall. If they even know who George Marshall was.