'Liking' versus loving

Jonathan Franzen

This is the time of year when college seniors put on their caps and gowns and go through the motions of listening to a commencement speaker. If they're lucky, the speaker will actually have something to say. And for those of us way past college, we're lucky if we come across an excerpt of a particularly thoughtful speech.

In that spirit, I highly recommend reading Jonathan Franzen's excerpted speech at Kenyon College. Franzen, the author of "Freedom" and "The Corrections," is widely regarded as one of America's finest authors.

In a piece that appeared in Sunday's New York Times ("Liking Is For Cowards, Go For What Hurts"), Franzen considers "the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb 'to like' from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice."

In today's world of techno-consumerism, "liking" has become a "substitute for loving," he says. In the process of collecting online friends, we delude ourselves into thinking we're engaging in real relationships instead of recognizing we're more likely stroking our own egos.

"To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors..." Franzen says. "My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love."

A loving relationship is imperfect and messy. It means recognizing your own -- and your partner's flaws -- and diminishing your self-regard, he argues.

"The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships"

Commencement speech or not, there's a lot of wisdom there. 

Photography by Greg Martin

'The Twitter Trap'

Bill Keller is the editor of The New York Times. When he speaks or writes -- even if it's to toss off an impish tweet -- people take notice.

Today in the Times' Sunday magazine (and four days earlier on the web), Keller came out with what I thought was a very sharp, insightful piece on the corrosive effect that Twitter (and other social media) has on our brains ("The Twitter Trap").
 
Just as the pocket calculator diminished our math skills, and GPS devices messed with our sense of direction,  Keller argues, so too is Twitter eroding our attention span.

Sending a single tweet requires thinking in 140-character bursts. Is that really a good thing? I suppose some people can convey wit, outrage ... or whatever ... in such a tight format. I also recognize that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have been indispensable tools to journalists and ordinary citizens who've been active in the Arab Spring and other pro-democracy movements around the world.

Yet I agree with Keller when he wonders if the new technologies may be eroding our essentially human characteristics -- "our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity."

The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions. Unlike the virtual fireplace or that nesting pair of red-tailed hawks we have been live-streaming on nytimes.com, Twitter is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation. Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop, I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from . . . from . . . wait, what was I saying? 

My mistrust of social media is intensified by the ephemeral nature of these communications. They are the epitome of in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, which was my mother’s trope for a failure to connect. 

I went to the comments section following Keller's article and was struck by the number of well thought-out responses, both agreeing and disagreeing with him on the utility and value of Twitter and other social media. Then I went to Google and the first piece of reaction ("NYT editor Bill Keller on 'The Twitter Trap' ") and was slapped in the face by the very kind of snark I've come to detest.

One commenter calls him "a trolling bully." Another asks, "Was this guy in charge of the paywall decision? Print media makes you old and stupid." And someone else writes, "I really don't think Twitter is what made Bill stupid."

I can appreciate the connections ou can make on Facebook, as well as the news tips you can glean from Twitter, but I think our use of these tools comes down to a matter of balance. You can overdo anything -- whether it's watching TV, talking or texting with your smartphone or spending time on your computer. If we're smart enough to recognize Twitter as a time-sucking drain on the brain, we should also be smart enough to step away from it more often than not.


Illustration by James Joyce

Is it fashionable to be rude?

The last couple of posts have dealt with mobile technology and manners. We've become so accustomed to our smartphones that we take for granted the ability to be connected nearly 24/7 to family, friends and even work. We can check email, send a tweet, watch a video, upload a photo or troll the internet virtually any time, any place.

But do we know when to power it down?

Thanks to David Carr's timely feature story in Sunday's New York Times, "Keep Your Thumbs Still When I'm Talking To You," I've got even more reason to keep myself in check.

Carr considers the digital revolution and what it has wrought, prompted by his recent attendance at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, where he moderated a panel called "I'm So Productive, I Never Get Anything Done."

Featured speakers competed with a screen in almost every seat, he noted. Laptops were everywhere. Tablets even more so. People traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to the conference in Austin, Texas, only to become part of a multitasking mass of thumbing-and-texting zombies. Remarkably, Carr writes:

...once the badge-decorated horde spilled into the halls or went to the hundreds of parties that mark the ritual, almost everyone walked or talked with one eye, or both, on a little screen. We were adjacent but essentially alone, texting and talking our way through what should have been a great chance to engage flesh-and-blood human beings. The wait in line for panels, badges or food became one more chance to check in digitally instead of an opportunity to meet someone you didn’t know.

During Carr's panel, the biggest reaction in the session came, he said, when Anthony De Rosa, a product manager and programmer at Reuters and a big presence on Twitter and Tumblr, said that mobile connectedness has eroded fundamental human courtesies.

“When people are out and they’re among other people they need to just put everything down,” he said. “It’s fine when you’re at home or at work when you’re distracted by things, but we need to give that respect to each other back.” 

His words brought sudden and tumultuous applause. It was sort of a moment, given that we were sitting amid some of the most digitally devoted people in the hemisphere. Perhaps somewhere on the way to the merger of the online and offline world, we had all stepped across a line without knowing it.

Amen.

Ever had someone whip out their phone in the middle of a conversation with you?
Ever had someone check their email during a meal or a meeting?
Or make a phone call from, ahem, a questionable location? (I'm thinking of the time I heard one side of a conversation coming from a stall in the men's restroom at a local theater. Seriously.)


I'd like to think I'm already on the right side of smartphone etiquette, though not perfect, by any means. Thanks to Carr's piece I'll be a little more vigilant -- both about my own behavior and someone else's bad manners.

Photo illustration: Tony Cenicola, The New York Times

'A New Arab Generation Finds Its Voice'

A Libyan anti-government protester with her face painted in the colors of Libya's old national flag takes part in a gathering in the eastern city of Benghazi on Feb. 27, 2011.

Sometimes you come across a piece of journalism that's so well done that you just point to it, get out of the way and hope others -- like you, dear reader -- will take 5, 10 or 15 minutes, whatever you can spare, to check it out.

Such is the case with this superb multimedia presentation by The New York Times. Metro dailies may be struggling mightily across the country, and even the storied Times has its financial challenges. But journalism like this is essential to our acquiring the knowledge and perspectives needed to understand our tumultuous times.

Here's the intro:

Escalating violence has tempered the regional euphoria that followed the youth-led revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. And yet, young people will continue to play an important role in the Arab Spring. This month, The New York Times interviewed more than two dozen of them, from Morocco to the West Bank, to find out how they consider their moment in history and their generation's prospects for the future.

Take a moment to listen to these passionate young men and women in the middle of transformative change.

Photograph by Patrick Baz, Agence France Presse/Getty Images

'Today you, tomorrow me'

I could not let this week end without mentioning the most moving piece of writing I've read all week.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has a back-of-the-book feature called "Lives" and when I got around to reading this week's issue, I flipped to the back and was drawn to the headline "The Tire Iron and the Tamale."

The writer describes three instances of car trouble he's had in the past year. All happened when he was driving someone else's car and each time he was "disgusted with the way people didn't bother to help."

Cars and trucks whizzed by. Service station attendants offered lame excuses for not loaning him a gas can. He was exasperated and I could understand why. It's rare anymore that anyone disrupts their routine -- or crosses an invisible line of suspicion -- to help a stranger.

"But you know who came to my rescue all three times?" he writes. "Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke any English."

Well, I was hooked. And I hope you will be, too, if you take five minutes to read this moving essay.

Bonus: The story takes place in Oregon.
Double bonus: The author, Justin Horner, works and lives in Portland.
Triple bonus: As a third-generation Mexican American, I was proud of mi gente.

Illustration: Holly Weiss

One nation divided

A growing chasm?

Finally, Election Day. I dropped off my ballot yesterday and now I'm bracing for the outcome -- more so for the national results than Oregon's. In this blue state of ours, most left-leaning candidates will win. The only question is whether voters will go for a second-time-around candidate, Democrat John Kitzhaber, or the fresh-faced but totally inexperienced challenger, Republican Chris Dudley.

In normal circumstances, Kitzhaber, probably would cruise to a third term. But, clearly, there is nothing ordinary about this election year. That Dudley, a former NBA player who's never run for (let alone served in) elective office at any level, is going head-to-head in the final polls really says something about the national backlash against Democrats and incumbents.

Funny thing. When I logged onto my blog this morning, the first pop-up ads were "Chris Dudley for Oregon." Guess that shows the strength of his fund-raising. The guy's on the Internet as well as TV.

Anyway, a final burst of pre-election reading these past 24 hours left me wondering just how small the political middle has become, with partisans on both sides clinging to their poles-apart stances and demonizing each other like never before.

It's one thing for like-minded people to flock together. Witness the Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., followed by last weekend's Stewart-Colbert " "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear."

It's another thing to analyze the demographic makeup of America's TV watchers and gear your political advertising accordingly. According to a New York Times article, "Where Parties Look for an Audience," Republican ad buyers favor sports programming (college and pro football, NASCAR racing) and crime dramas to reach their target audience while their Democratic counterparts connect with like-minded viewers watching comedies ("Everybody Loves Raymond," "Two and a Half Men") and talk shows ("Dr. Phil," "The Dr. Oz Show"). Check out the graphic to see the breakdown.

It makes sense, but isn't it just a little sad? Unless your viewing habits span the spectrum, you're getting only one side. Of course, given that most political advertising is in the form of attack ads, maybe it's a good thing we're missing more of each other's sniping.

Last word. The only show that seems to have crossover appeal for both Ds and Rs? "Dancing With The Stars." Go figure.

Photo: www.photobucket.com

Too harsh on Obama?

A week ago, I was part of a small gathering of Portlanders who turned out for an open-air discussion of politics, encouraged by a Huffington Post meetup program. The first, and most passionately discussed, topic was whether Barack Obama has been a disappointment as president. Consensus came rather quickly: Yes.

An op-ed column by Maureen Dowd in Sunday's New York Times stirred up many of the same arguments and caused me to revisit my thinking.

On the one hand, Obama swept into office with a huge electoral victory and commanding majorities in both the Senate and House. If the country really was saying it was ready for change, shouldn't he have delivered swiftly and decisively on health care and financial services reform, not to mention climate-change legislation and comprehensive immigration reform? Shouldn't he have pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan?

On the other hand, we probably expected too much, too soon given the euphoria of election night, the giddiness that came with his inauguration and, not least, the knowledge that campaigning is way different from governing. You say what you must to shore up your base; you move toward the middle -- away from extremes on both ends -- if you want to successfully practice politics.

Into this fray steps Dowd. In a column aptly titled "No Love From The Lefties" she calls on Obama to dump Robert Gibbs as press secretary and make him what he yearns to be: an inside counselor to the president, a position that relieves him of sparring with the press, often to his boss' detriment. I don't have an opinion on Dowd's suggestion or Gibbs himself, but I do have to say she absolutely nailed it when she analyzed the Democrats' current state of dysfunction. They were united by their hatred of George W. Bush, but Obama's election has revealed they are splintered according to how far left they lean. Liberal? Radical? Progressive?

Whatever they call themselves, they're disappointed to find Obama is on their right, trying to find traction in the political center. And, Dowd notes, the situation isn't helped any by the president himself.

President Obama is testing how elastic he can be, how much realism he can have before he betrays his idealism. For better and worse, he is an elitist and a situationist. But the professional left — like the professional right — often considers pragmatism a moral compromise. 

The lefties came to the defense of the centrist Clinton during impeachment. Now that Obama is under attack, however, they are not coming to his defense, even though he has given more to the liberal cause than the scandal-stunted Clinton ultimately achieved. 

He has shepherded the biggest expansion of social programs since the Great Society and spearheaded the biggest spending program with the stimulus. But for the left (and for some economists), it was not as big as it ought to have been. 

Obama got elected because of the clarity of his campaign and his speeches. But, surprisingly, he’s in some ways an incoherent president. He’s with the banks, he’s against the banks. He’s leaving Afghanistan, he’s staying in Afghanistan. He strains at being a populist, but his head is in the clouds.

There's a lot of truth in Dowd's analysis. Obama has been wounded politically by some of his own backers who expected home runs and got singles and doubles instead. At the same time, count me among those who wish Obama could reclaim some of his campaign magic and put it to good use in talking honestly -- and passionately -- to the American people.


Photo by Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

Face of the Tea Party

Finally, some poll-based data on those who consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement. If you were thinking of a monolithic group of poorly educated, below-average income hicks, think again.

From today's New York Times comes this story: "Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated."

The principal findings: The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. [No surprise there.]

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.” [Again, no surprise.]

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.” [Ah, now there's the revealing characteristic.]

And what are they angry about?

Mostly, the recent health care reforms, excessive government spending and "a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington."

They are pessimistic about the direction of the country and believe that the policies of the Obama administration "are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich." [Hmmm, is that a bad thing?]

They believe Obama "does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 90 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

We've heard a lot of outrageous stuff in the past year or so from the extreme right wing -- those who scream "socialism" at every turn, those who believe Obama is a Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, those who dispute the phenomenon of climate change.

This story, with the accompanying poll data and video interviews with Tea Party supporters, helps break down the easy stereotype. But it also helps put a face on those whose animosity about the new administration and its new policies reflects their loss of entitlement.

Photograph by Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

A bridge to the 21st century *

Writing in The New York Times this week, Thomas Friedman shed new light on some familiar themes and introduced me to a new constituency that could play a huge role in U.S. politics and economic affairs in the next few years.

"Who's Up For Building Bridges?" he asks, referring to the question of which political party is going to strengthen America's ability to compete in the global marketplace while practicing greater fiscal discipline. Based on the quagmire that currently passes for national politics, it's certainly not going to be the Republicans, who've become the Party of No. But it won't necessarily be the Democrats, either, if they can't get beyond a decades-long agenda of major entitlement programs.

Friedman argues that both major parties have essentially come to the end of the road of the divergent paths they've pursued during the 20th century. The GOP embraced the Reagan Revolution perhaps too much, with an incessant call for tax cuts, deregulation and a government-is-the-problem mantra. Meanwhile, with the passage of health care reform, the Democrats essentially brought the New Deal-FDR Revolution to its logical conclusion.

So, who's looking ahead to the 21st century to push us toward the creation of new jobs in a greatly changed environment -- both literal and figurative? President Obama is at least trying, Friedman says.

"Obama-ism posits that we are now in a hypercompetitive global economy, where the country that thrives will be the one that brings together the most educated, creative and diverse work force with the best infrastructure -- bandwidth, ports, airports, high-speed rail and good governance."

In a world with a warming climate and a steadily growing population -- projected to hit 9.2 billion by 2050 -- demand for clean energy is going to expand mightly. And so we should expect energy technology to be the next great global industry.

Anyone who thinks that can be achieved without government involvement -- whether offering incentives or setting high national education standards -- is delusional. Globalization has weakened both parties, Friedman argues -- and I'll suggest interested readers check out his column rather than take up more space here explaining why.

He concludes by pointing to the emergence of so-called "Newocrats," a new constituency created by globalization "which combines the multinational corporate manager, the technology enterprepreneur and engineer, and the aspirational members of the meritocracy." Such people would have leaned Republican in the past but now many lean toward Obama.

"They don't agree with everything he's proposing," Friedman concludes, "but they sense that he is working on that bridge to the 21st century, while today's GOP/Tea Party is just not in the game."

If he's right, that gives me some encouragement in the short run, for the 2010 mid-term elections, and for the long run, if our president can bring together enough level-headed people in business, labor, education and government to pull their oars in the same direction.

Photograph: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

* This column marks my 301st post since I started this blog a little over 15 months ago. Thanks to one and all who've been along for some or most of the ride.

The beauty of a long-lasting marriage

"Gotta stop everything and read this Modern Romance......"

The e-mail from my co-worker, Mary Kitch, arrived Friday afternoon with a link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/fashion/13love.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=print

Like everyone else who received it in the Editorial/Op-Ed Department at The Oregonian, I was pushing hard to finish my work on another weekend edition of commentary and analysis.

But I did stop and, boy, am I glad I did. What follows is one of most insightful takes and beautifully written pieces on the institution of marriage that I've ever read. That it came from our colleague, David Sarasohn, made it even more meaningful.

Before you read it -- and I really hope you will -- a few words about the author, a history professor turned journalist who is one of the most gifted writers at the paper. Best known for his left-leaning political column, David also is a first-rate restaurant reviewer and a baseball nut, with an affection for the New York Mets and a deep knowledge of baseball trivia.

*****

A Joint Account That Underwrites Our Marriage

By DAVID SARASOHN

Published: December 11, 2009

I HAVE been married forever.

Well, not since the Big Bang but since the Nixon administration — 35 years — a stretch long enough to startle new acquaintances or make talk-show audiences applaud. Recently one of my wife’s college students kept pressing us, with baffled curiosity, for our secret, as if there had to be some trick to it, like wearing each other’s clothes on Tuesdays.

Back when we became engaged, our news was also greeted with baffled curiosity. It was the ’70s, after all, when the freedom to be able to hop from one relationship to the next was as essential as anything in the Bill of Rights. Our friends were profoundly perplexed; nobody, they thought, could want a fondue set that badly.

To continue reading, click here:

Illustration: Christopher Silas Neal

Quick Takes

So...I've been at this now for six months. Yesterday's post was No. 150. And, as has become my custom, it's time to start or finish a month with some random tidbits lumped under the umbrella of Quick Takes. Before I begin, thanks to everyone for reading this blog, even if sporadically, and especially so to anyone who's taken time to post a comment.

-- A shout-out for National Geographic. Some people may make fun of N.G. as boring and old school. Not me. Every month that it arrives, it offers spectacular photography and superb writing, which together illuminate issues and cultures around the world and transport me to unfamilar, unreachable places.

In this month's issue alone, for instance, there's a great feature about king penguins on Possession Island, north of Antarctica ("Every Bird a King"), and a gripping a story about the failed state of Somalia ("Shattered Somalia"). See if these excerpts pull you in:

First comes the Noise, the turbulent din of king penguins calling, fighting, courting, like the ultimate schoolyard uproar. Then the smell hits, a choking reek of fish and ammonia from the birds' guano. But the assault on ear and nose is only a teaser for what awaits the eye. When photographer Stefano Unterthiner climbed a volcanic ridge on Possession Island—a wet, wind-blasted speck in the Crozet archipelago some 1,400 miles north of Antarctica—he found himself staring into a valley filled wall-to-wall with king penguins, tens of thousands of them, all standing as if gathered for a mass rally. The occasion was summer in the Southern Hemisphere—egg-laying season, the time when penguins, so agile and quick in the water, clumsily come ashore to molt, find a partner, and with luck produce a new crop of chicks.

And this...

This land is bred for trouble. Its nearly 250,000 square miles are, for the most part, deadly dry. Somalia's inhabitants have engaged in a constant competition for its scarce resources—water and pasturage—since antiquity. According to the great Somali ethnographer, I. M. Lewis, Somalia's occupants "form one of the largest single ethnic blocks in Africa." By tradition they are herders of goats and camels and cattle who share the same Islamic faith and the Somali language, and until the colonial era in the late 19th century they continuously occupied much of the Horn of Africa—including what is today Djibouti, northeastern Kenya, and the eastern portion of Ethiopia. In the Somali psyche, fierce nationalism coexists with equally fierce pastoral individualism. It is not their way to look to government for solutions. What held Somalia together—and sometimes drove it apart—was its elaborate clan system.

-- Putting a face on the president's critics. A thoughtful piece in the Aug. 30 New York Times Magazine by Matt Bai ("The New Old Guard") reminds us of the difficulty Barack Obama had connecting with older voters in last year's Democratic primaries and suggests what lies behind the "generational unrest.

For all the shouting that has dominated these town hall meetings on health care lately, they have yielded a few important insights. The first is that the town hall itself has probably reached the end of its usefulness in the Internet age; if you’re looking for thoughtful dialogue, you might as well hold your next meeting on the stern of a Somali pirate ship. The second is that we now have a visual sense of the kind of voter who is militantly opposed to Obama’s health care agenda and, more broadly, to the president himself.

The typical anti-Obama activist tends to be white, male and — perhaps most significant — advanced in age. A poll conducted earlier this month by CNN and Opinion Research showed a rather stark age divide when it came to health care: 57 percent of voters under 50 said they favored the outlines of a Democratic plan, but that number was a full 20 points lower among voters over 65. In three Pew Research Center polls going back to April, senior citizens consistently gave Obama’s job performance lower approval ratings than did than any other age group.

Photograph of Mogadishu, Somalia by Pascal Maitre

August and "Perfect Sand"

All this week, I've tried to practice what I preached during the class I taught at Portland State last winter -- namely, to spend some time surfing the Web, exploring the blogosphere and becoming part of the universe made up of tens of millions of blogs.

These past few days I've mentioned blogs by my co-worker Mike Francis, new media professor Pam Cytrynbaum and news reporter-turned-food writer Heather Lalley (all of whom, now that I think about it, are graduates of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism).

Today, I recommend to you "Perfect Sand," written by August. (That's her screen name; in real life, she is Rachel, living in Cincinnati).

But, first, some more background. When I began the class, I cited a few statistics, which even now boggle the mind.

According to eMarketer (May 2008), there were:
-- 94.1 million blog readers in the U.S. in 2007 (representing 50% of Internet users)
-- 22.6 million bloggers in the U.S. in 2007 (representing 12% of Internet users)

According to Universal McCann (March 2008), there were:
-- 184 million people worldwide who had started a blog, including 26.4 million in the U.S.
-- 346 million people worldwide who read blogs, including 60.3 million in the U.S.

According to Technorati.com:
-- 77% of active Internet users read blogs.

Summing up, Discover Magazine in 2007 said:

"The blogosphere is the most explosive social network you'll never see. Recent studies suggest that nearly 60 million blogs exist online, and about 175,000 more crop up daily (that's about 2 every second). Even though the vast majority of blogs are either abandoned or isolated, many bloggers like to link to other Web sites."

Given the explosive growth in this experimental medium, and allowing for extremes in quality, is it any wonder you can purposefully search for a blog on a specific topic and find treasure as well as trash? Likewise, is it any surprise you can stumble across something that disgusts or delights you?

It was the latter method that led me, about a month ago, to a blog that instantly appealed to me. It had all the qualities that I touted to my class: Well organized, clearly written with a distinctive voice, and thought-provoking content. A closer look revealed the writer's intelligence and tendency toward introspection.

What stood out to me? References to writers and topics that I care about, such as stories, teaching, writing, language, education. One post, "In the news," referenced David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, writing about a successful charter school in Harlem. Another, "Dishonor descended," discussed the words we use in everyday speech to either muddle or convey real meaning, citing the terms "waterboarding" and "water torture" as one example.

"Language," August wrote, "has the power to connect, to reveal truths, but it also can disguise or obfuscate...the truth."

As an editor, I'm all about clarity and specificity.

Anyway, I think August is a terrific writer. We've become followers of each other's blogs and I invite you to check hers out. http://perfectsand.blogspot.com/

And I hope you, readers, will expand this conversation by offering links to other blogs or Web sites that you recommend.