Journey of Words » Culture

Four Minutes For A Smile

Eric — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:14:06 +0000

I enjoyed watching the spectators enjoyment as much as the actual performance. It begs the question: what have you done in four minutes (or three or five) to bring joy to another human being today?

Creating Culture for a New Jerusalem

Eric — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:00:28 +0000

I am in flux. I am re-thinking many of my thoughts, beliefs, and approaches to the world, my faith, by reading of scripture, and, not insignificantly, my view of culture and what it means to interact, criticize, create with my surroundings.

I am working my way through Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making. I say working because is seems as though every other page I am having to stop and underline, make a note, or just sit and let the material sink in and percolate through the recesses and crevices of my gray matter. I wasn’t planning on blogging about it until I finished but I am moved by two things: the first being the quote below in which Mr. Crouch is discussing the “furnishing” of the new Jerusalem referred to in Revelation. Second, the posting of Mark Goodyear’s interview with Mr. Crouch at High Calling Blogs (You can read the interview here:
part 1 and part 2).

If there is one book in the bible that tends to scare off many, including Christians, it is the image-laden, metaphor-filled, apocalyptic, end-of-the-world book of Revelation. Yet, Mr. Crouch has framed John’s vision within the confines (and in many ways freedom) of a culture – one created by God and created by human hands (created by the creation of the creator?). While reading I was struck by this passage:

Are we creating and cultivating things that have a chance of furnishing the new Jerusalem? Will the cultural goods we devote our lives to — the food we cook and consume, the music we purchase and practice, the movies we watch and make, the enterprises we earn our paychecks from and invest our wealth in — be identified as the glory and honor of our cultural tradition? Or will they be remembered as mediocrities at best, dead ends at worst? This is not the same as asking whether we are making “Christian” culture. “Christian” cultural artifacts will surely go through the same winnowing and judgment as “non-Christian” artifacts. Nor is this entirely a matter of who is responsible for the cultural artifacts and where their faith is placed, especially since every cultural good is a collective effort. Clearly some of the cultural goods found in the new Jerusalem will have been created and cultivated by people who may well not accept the Lamb’s invitation to substitute his righteousness for their sin. Yet the best of their work may survive. Can that be said of the goods that we are devoting our lives to?¹ (emphasis mine)

I found this paragraph to be a key to the way in which we should live – socially, emotionally, creatively, economically within our lives. Are the “things” we are involved in bringing that glory and honor to our cultural tradition as stated above? Are we living and creating in a selfless fashion that leads to excellence? Or one of selfishness ambition or vain conceit², leading to mediocrity or the dead end road?

I don’t find this to be a limited activity. I need to examine my role as husband, father, son, brother, friend, teacher, writer/poet, and whatever other place I have within the cultures I am living. Am I creating a culture of the highest good, one worthy of furnishing the new Jerusalem?

How about you?

(ok…now back to the book )

Culture Making pg. 171
Philippians 2:3

The Book is Dead; Long Live the Screen

Eric — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:31:31 +0000

Christine Rosen of The New Atlantis writes in People of the Screen about the possible death of the book.

She begins:

The book is modernity’s quintessential technology—“a means of transportation through the space of experience, at the speed of a turning page,” as the poet Joseph Brodsky put it. But now that the rustle of the book’s turning page competes with the flicker of the screen’s twitching pixel, we must consider the possibility that the book may not be around much longer. If it isn’t—if we choose to replace the book—what will become of reading and the print culture it fostered? And what does it tell us about ourselves that we may soon retire this most remarkable, five-hundred-year-old technology?

We have already taken the first steps on our journey to a new form of literacy—“digital literacy.” The fact that we must now distinguish among different types of literacy hints at how far we have moved away from traditional notions of reading. The screen mediates everything from our most private communications to our enjoyment of writing, drama, and games. It is the busiest port of entry for popular culture and requires navigation skills different from those that helped us master print literacy.

And yet when photography entered the art world vernacular it was believed that painting would die out as well.

There is another aspect of reading not captured in these studies, but just as crucial to our long-term cultural health. For centuries, print literacy has been one of the building blocks in the formation of the modern sense of self. By contrast, screen reading, a historically recent arrival, encourages a different kind of self-conception, one based on interaction and dependent on the feedback of others. It rewards participation and performance, not contemplation. It is, to borrow a characterization from sociologist David Riesman, a kind of literacy more comfortable for the “outer-directed” personality who takes his cues from others and constantly reinvents himself than for the “inner-directed” personality whose values are less flexible but also less susceptible to outside pressures. How does a culture of digitally literate, outer-directed personalities “read”? (emphasis mine)

I see this as holding much truth. How often does one write a blog post or send a twitter tweet that is a true “personal journal” type piece and written in the vein of non-expectation of feedback from readers? While I do like the opportunity that technology offers for interaction and dialogue that can ensue, the idea of contemplation, of letting the words percolate through the recesses of the mind don’t seem to be high on the list of social media priorities (which to me means that the “book” will never truly die).

This post is a perfect example. I write it with the hopes that you the reader will come along and offer your opinions on my opinions and engage in a discussion about the subject presented. But, in the fast paced, changing-by-the-minute, internet media, I am in the dark ages with this post. I’ve had this article sitting in my browser for over a week AND it was originally written in the fall of 2008.

But the jury is nearing a verdict. While the testimonials of digital literacy enthusiasts are replete with abstract paeans to the possibilities presented by screen reading, the experience of those who do it for a living paints a very different picture. Just as Griswold and her colleagues suggested the impending rise of a “reading class,” British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield argues that the time we spend in front of the computer and television is creating a two-class society: people of the screen and people of the book. The former, according to new neurological research, are exposing themselves to excessive amounts of dopamine, the natural chemical neurotransmitter produced by the brain. This in turn can lead to the suppression of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which controls functions such as measuring risk and considering the consequences of one’s actions.

Writing in The New Republic in 2005, Johns Hopkins University historian David A. Bell described the often arduous process of reading a scholarly book in digital rather than print format: “I scroll back and forth, search for keywords, and interrupt myself even more often than usual to refill my coffee cup, check my e-mail, check the news, rearrange files in my desk drawer. Eventually I get through the book, and am glad to have done so. But a week later I find it remarkably hard to remember what I have read.”

And just in the process of writing this post I have: checked email, sent a couple of tweets, subscribed to four new podcasts, and read three different blog postings. If I was sitting in the chair across the room, book in hand, computer off, I would get much more reading done.

Go and read or (as I did) print and then read the whole piece and then come back here and offer your thoughts on whether or not the book is dying a slow painful death.

I am off to read a book.

The Theology of the Quilt

Eric — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:55:10 +0000

You see, you start out with jest so much caliker. You don’t go to the store and pick it out and buy it, but the neighbors will give you a piece here and a piece there, and you’ll have a pieve left every time you cut out a dress, and you take jest what happens to come. And that’s like predestination. But when it comes to cuttin’ out, why, you’re free to choose your own pattern. You can give the same kind o’ pieces to two persons, and one’ll make a “nine-patch” and one’ll make a “wild-goose chase”, and there’ll be two quilts made out o’ the same kind o’ pieces, and jest as different as they can be. And that’s jest the way it is with livin’. The Lord sends us the pieces, but we can cut ‘em out and put ‘em together pretty much to suit ourselves – and there’s a heap more in the cuttin’ out and the sewin’ than there is in the caliker.¹

From the forward of Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, & Scuppernong Wine by Joseph E. Dabney

Dumping the Grades

Eric — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:18:12 +0000

A school district in Colorado is changing the nature of school:

One Colorado school district is going to shake things up by getting rid of grades. The move includes traditional letter grades and grade levels.
The Adams County School District 50 school board approved a new system that lets students progress at their own pace. Students will need to master 10 skill levels to graduate. They could end up graduating earlier, or later than fellow classmates. It just depends upon how long they need in order to master the skills.

While I am a proponent of having not moving students to the “next level” until mastering the standards, knowledge, or what-have-you, of their current level, do not agree with the idea of dropping the grades. I also agree with the concerns that are addressed here:

How much do you wanna bet the new curriculum includes “peace and conflict resolution” and other highly useful multi-culturalist PC “skills” over traditional subjects like history or science? And how happy will colleges be, already buried by students in need of remedial education, when presented with yet more “skilled” students?

When I am presented with a class of fifth grade students and expected to have them master the fifth grade standards to pass a state test based on said standards AND a full third of the class is working at a third grade level or lower, the idea of having students promoted, taught, or grouped by ability seems all the more appealing. However, as the blogger above noted, the curriculum is a concern.

I would like to hear from the reform minded folks out there. What do think of this concept? Is it viable? Is it an idea that is worth pursuing? Or are we stuck in the chronological mindset in our education culture? Are we more concerned with a child being with his age peers as opposed to his academic peers?

I look forward to your thoughts…

P.S. Here’s another link to the story…comments are interesting.

Sharing Equals Culture

Eric — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:15:21 +0000

Only artifacts that leave the solitude of their inventor’s studios and imaginations can move the horizons of possibility and become the raw material for more culture making. Until an artifact is shared it is not culture.¹

He goes on to quote Steve Jobs: “Real artists ship”

My interpretation: Eric needs to get on with things and start posting, submitting, sharing the writing he’s doing offline with the outside world.

Enough said.

Andy Crouch Culture-Making, pg. 40

Zander On Human Potential

Eric — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:04:54 +0000

I came across this video the other day via Presentation Zen and realized as I was watching that this would probably be a good piece for teachers (as well as administrators) to view. What do you think?