My pandemic journal continues with Part 15. It's Halloween today, and the 2020 US election is in three days. Everything is fine. Well, not really. Anyway, here are some things I've been thinking about the last few weeks. And as has become my custom, there are plenty of memes.
If you are eligible to vote in the USA and you haven't voted yet, for the love of Gene Roddenberry, VOTE ON TUES. NOV. 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tues. 13 Oct. 2020
Today I had some Zoom meetings with my students who are doing their film projects. It was a huge pain to schedule these meetings, but it was good to see them (it’s a hybrid class, but most of the online content is asynchronous and the face-to-face meetings are optional). I miss the days when I could just walk around the classroom and talk to them in their groups. I miss the way I would have gotten to know them by now instead of having to ask some of them in week 9 how to pronounce their names because this is the first time I’ve talked to them instead of text-based communication. I miss the chit-chat before class.
For that matter, I miss chit-chat with colleagues and running into people at the library.
I hate that communication is so overly intentional now and requires so much planning. The social glue of non-planned banter or waving in the hallway has come undone. Not that I was ever good at “small talk,” but I still miss it.
I went to campus for a bit today to get out of the house, but also because I’ve hardly unpacked my new office after moving in over two months ago. It has been hard to get motivated to unpack, but maybe it will help me work on a project due in a few months. While I was on campus I also submitted my proposal for a new course (Topics in World Philosophy) and a new Breadth Requirement for the Philosophy Major.
I hated online meetings before the pandemic. I don’t hate them now, but Zoom fatigue is a real thing. Or is it something deeper? Check out this article: “Do You Have ‘Zoom Fatigue’ or Is It Existentially Crushing to Pretend Life Is Normal as the World Burns?”
In other news, I’m getting really worked up about the election. I donated to some competitive US Senate races around the country. I signed up to textbank for Marquita Bradshaw here in Tennessee. She probably won’t win, but she’s a great candidate. If she can make a good showing, that could be good for the state. And it would be fantastic if the Democrats won the Senate, which is punctuated by the start of hearings for a Supreme Court Justice three weeks before the election.
Locally, a candidate for my State Senate (Glenn Scruggs) has a chance (one of the candidates the union endorsed), which would be awesome because the Republican there now is awful.
And some really good news today: the county election commission approved the language for a petition to get a Community Oversight Board for the city police on the ballot in March. I’ve been involved with the coalition making this happen for over a year, so this is great news. Now we need over 4,000 signatures by December. No small task, but I’ve been really impressed with the activists in the coalition. I hope to do my part.
Wed. 14 Oct. 2020
Early voting starts today in Tennessee! I thought about going today, but the reports are that the lines are really long. I may try tomorrow when I have more time. I have until Oct. 29 to vote early. I’m thinking of serving as a poll worker for election day. I’ve always wanted to do it, but the 14 hour commitment that begins at 7am is… a lot.
Obnoxiously book orders for spring semester are due today. I’m still officially complaining about it, but having to do that did give me an idea of a theme for my Philosophies of India class: ancient advice for modern uncertainties. The course will focus on the Upaniṣads (look to the deeper self), early Buddhism (let go of the idea of self), Madhyamaka (relinquish all views), and Nyāya (get the right views). I’ve always meant to do a more in-depth unit on Nyāya, so this seems like a good chance.
I also thought a bit about my Africana Philosophy course. I probably ordered too many books, especially considering I want to supplement them with articles, but the basic idea is to start with Africa (maybe even back to ancient Egypt, but definitely starting with Zera Yacob and the work of Kwame Gyekye on Akan philosophy with a framework provided by my undergrad professor Sam Imbo). Then we’ll go to the diaspora with American figures like Maria W. Stewart and Frederick Douglass and then Du Bois and others (hopefully some Fanon), ending with MLK and Angela Davis (and hopefully others working today like Charles Mills, no relation, and Chike Jeffers). My plan is waaaaay too ambitious. I might have to cut a book or three, but that’s what happens when the bookstore asks for book orders three months before class starts (I told you I was reserving my complaining stance about the whole thing).
I’m already exhausted thinking about the spring, and it doesn’t start until mid-January (one blessed Covid change: they pushed back the start date of the spring semester).
Thurs. 15 Oct. 2020
I voted!
I went to the county election commission about 10:45am with the idea that this was after the early morning rush and before the lunchtime rush. I waited about 45 minutes. I brought a book (the last book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series… I’m about 500 pages into this 800 page book, so I was prepared to wait).
I’ve been voting regularly since I was 18. I maybe missed a few odd-year elections, but I’m pretty sure I’ve voted in every even-year election and definitely every Presidential election since then. For those keeping track at home, this means 26 years of voting in four different states: Minnesota, New Mexico, Arizona, and Tennessee. I voted absentee in Minnesota when I lived in Hawaii, and I wasn’t 18 yet when I lived in Wisconsin.
I can’t remember ever being this excited/anxious/enthusiastic to vote. That people have to wait so long is a complicated issue, but it’s heartwarming to see so many regular people working against all the subtle and not-so-subtle forms of voter suppression. I’m really, really hoping that early reports about voter turn-out are evidence of record turn-out for this election, and that this means tens of millions of regular Americans are pushing back against the rising tides of bigotry and fascism.
For the love of Gan and the Beam and the Dark Tower, I hope that’s what’s happening in this election.
(It occurs to me that I’ve been a little too immersed in the Dark Tower… it has that effect on its fans, I guess. Which reminds me of my idea for a blog post: How Re-Reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series Helped me through the Pandemic So Far).
Fri. 16 Oct. 2020
Notes from pandemic teaching: I told all my students they could turn their papers in a few days late with no penalty, but 40% of them sent me polite, apologetic emails to ask for extensions, anyway. This is kind of adorable, but also sad.
Sun. 18 Oct. 2020
This afternoon I was prepping my lecture notes on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and I randomly thought about movie theater popcorn. The smell embedded in the theater air. The salty, buttery goodness that pairs so well with an overpriced box of Junior Mints and obnoxiously-sized soda. This memory made me sad. Anyway, back to Aristotle.
It did occur to me that Aristotle never had movie theater popcorn. Eudaimonia without popcorn? Seems unlikely.
Later… I watched the season finale of Lovecraft Country. What a wild show! My only real criticism is that the show moved so fast it was hard to keep up. My analogy of the relation between the book and the show is like the relationship between Bob Dylan’s and Jimi Hendrix’s versions of “All Along the Watchtower.” All the versions are good and technically the latter things are adaptations of the former, but the adaptations in both cases explode the original ideas into higher, mind-bending dimensions.
It will be fun to mention the show when my students read Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom in a week or so. That’s a much more direct answer to Lovecraft than either the book or show Lovecraft Country.
I was planning to write a review of the show Lovecraft Country on my blog (I already reviewed the book), but I wonder if the world really needs another white dude’s opinion of this particular series. Maybe not.
Mon. 19 Oct. 2020
I did more text banking for the Bradshaw campaign for US Senate. Last time I did text banking for this campaign I was texting likely supporters and has mostly positive responses. Today I was texting general voters in Knox County, which did include a fair number of supporters, but also a few "Hell, no!" responses and at least one lengthy diatribe against Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party (it's weird to me that someone would stop what they're doing and write a paragraph-long rant to a random campaign text, but there you go.)
Another person said "Trump 2020! Make liberals cry again!" I entered the canned response to people voting for other candidates (something like "Thank you for letting me know.") and they responded, "No problem. Any time. My pleasure." I'm mostly puzzled about what this person thinks happened in our interaction. If I were going to cry about it, I would cry about what it indicates about the state of political discourse in this country, but I can't imagine that's what this person meant by making liberals cry. Yet another reminder that we live in very strange and troubled times.
Later… When you make even very modest contributions to Democratic campaigns for State House in Tennessee, you might get a personal thank you email or hand-written thank you note in the mail. (The email came from Joseph Udeaja and the note came from Joan Farrell).
Sometimes I think about the horror of our current times – over one million dead from COVID-19, fascism and bigotry on the rise around the world, human suffering from poverty and hunger as pervasive as it is preventable – and it’s all just too much.
But then I remember I have to feed the cats and take out the recycling. And life goes on. For me. For a bit. But that horror is always there, lurking in the chthonic depths threatening to flood the world into ruin. Maybe some version of that horror has always been there. Maybe we have to fight it anyway.
Tues. 20 Oct. 2020
I almost forgot that it’s Stoic Week. Forgetting would have been an endurable state of affairs, but I’m glad I remembered.
Today’s midday exercise asks a really great question:
Do you think the Stoic idea of happiness can be particularly helpful during the time of a pandemic?
The key here is that for the Stoics, as for Aristotle and other ancient Greeks, happiness (eudaimonia) is not a good feeling or subjective assessment of how one’s life is going. It’s about being the best human you can be, or as some translators put it, flourishing, or being well and doing well.
And right now being the best human you can be probably doesn’t involve a lot of good emotions or warm fuzzy feelings. It’s probably hard to say that your life is going how you want it to go right now (unless you’re one of the billionaires who made more money off the pandemic, but that’s another issue).
But maybe, just maybe, it’s enough to say that you’re being the best human being you can be right now. Maybe it’s enough to do your best in these “unprecedented times” to embody virtues like courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom (I’d go with Buddhists and add compassion, and in a certain sense, Stoics would, too).
So, even if we don’t have a lot of warm fuzzies and things aren’t going well for many of us, maybe we can be happy in a deeper, more enduring sense.
Of course, a key disagreement between Aristotle and Stoics comes in here, too. For Aristotle, happiness is partially dependent on external factors like health, basic wealth, and friends, whereas the Stoics take a more Socratic stance that happiness does not strictly speaking depend on external factors.
I’m more with Aristotle here. You don’t need to hoard wealth unethically and unjustly like modern-day billionaires, but you need enough to take care of your basic needs. And being unhealthy (like having COVID-19) can impact your ability to flourish. This is why a just society is one in which everyone’s basic needs are met as much as possible: people can’t really be happy otherwise.
Yet what I want to say is something of a mixture of the Aristotelian and Stoic senses: while full happiness (eudaimonia) may not be possible in certain circumstances (like a global pandemic, rising fascism, racial injustice, etc.) what happiness there is to be had comes from being as virtuous a human as possible within those circumstances. And in the presence of suffering and injustice, acting out of compassion and a sense of justice is the way to be happy.
It may not be the happiness we wanted in the Before Times, but it may be happiness enough for now.
Later: Odd news: I got an email claiming to be from Livejournal that actually was from Livejournal. I then spent an hour or so looking at Livejournal posts from 12-19 years ago. It’s interesting how it’s definitely proto-social media, but it moved much more slowly. Comments would go back and forth posted several days or weeks apart. It’s also interesting to see how I and others have changed and how we’re the same.
It’s also weird that Facebook and Livejournal overlapped for me for a little while. And that I’ve been using Facebook almost twice as long as I used Livejournal. A few years ago I kind of thought Facebook might be on the way out, but as problematic as it is, it’s hard to see anything replacing its function anytime soon.
And I did all this while listening to some electronica inspired by Marcus Aurelius that a student recommended when I posted about Stoic Week (to bring this around to my earlier entry).
Wed. 21 Oct. 2020
I'm teaching Aristotle this week, and I've always wanted to walk a few laps around campus as a Peripatetic when I teach Aristotle. Why not today?
A shower thought: I live in a happy liberal bubble (okay, it’s not so happy these days, but you get the idea). But occasionally I dip into comments sections, social media, etc. that reveals a whole different world where mainstream Democrats are dangerous Marxists, Black Lives Matter and Antifa are seeking the violent destruction of the United States, and people will vote for Trump to make liberals cry. I’ve always disagreed with the right, but I’m not sure I’ve ever felt as much like we live in different worlds than I have in recent years.
So, for example, from my bubble tens of millions of Americans are voting in this election to move our country in a more progressive direction, but there seem to also be tens of millions of Americans voting to keep our country from descending into “socialism” and “anarchy.” To paraphrase MLK: where do we go from here?
Later: I did my Peripatetic walk! It was optional, and one student showed up to join me. I also met with a couple other students to sign the Community Control Now petition. Not a bad way to spend half an hour of an unusually warm October afternoon. Now: Zoom office hours in my office… insert some sort of Baudrillard joke about having a simulacrum of office hours while sitting in my physical office.
The other day I said I didn’t feel like the world needs another white dude’s opinion of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, so instead of reviewing it on my blog, I’m going to write a “non-review” that highlights other resources by Black artists, academics, and critics.
Thurs. 22 Oct. 2020
I just got a news notification that the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the candidacy of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. My reaction—“disappointing, but not surprising”—pretty much sums up my opinion of Republicans in recent years.
Also, James Randi (aka, The Amazing Randi) died recently. He lived a long, full life dedicated to using his knowledge of magic to put all sorts of hucksters and charlatans to the tests, tests they always failed.
I got a few more signatures for the Community Control Now petition yesterday at a small demonstration on campus. The demonstration was for a student who was threatened with punishment from UTC administration after an anonymous tip that she was arrested at a BLM protest in May. Weird and disturbing. Luckily the administration decided not to move forward and dropped their investigation, maybe because of the pressure of going public with this. But the demonstration went on to show that this is not okay.
After putting it off for a few weeks, I weighed my hatred of getting up early against my love of democracy and applied to be a poll worker on election day.
Later… for reasons I don’t completely understand (morbid curiosity?) we watched most of the final Presidential debate tonight. It was more of a regular debate than the last one, as much as anything involving Trump can be.
I guess I’m mildly astounded/depressed/disgusted that this election is anywhere near competitive when almost 230,000 Americans are dead from COVID-19 after little to no response from the federal government, the same government that can no longer locate the families of 545 children after separating these children from their families.
Sat. 24 Oct. 2020
I finished The Dark Tower this afternoon. I love that series and that ending so much! I need to sit with it a bit before writing my re-review, but I suspect I will have a lot to say.
Mon. 26 Oct. 2020
Today I did some tabling for the union and to get some signatures for Community Control Now. I got a handful of signatures. It’s weird to see the different reactions. A lot of people aren’t registered in the city of Chattanooga, so I just asked them if they voted and congratulated them if they did. Some are registered in Chattanooga but simply said they weren’t interested after I gave a brief spiel. Others signed before I finished the spiel. Some wanted more information and said they’d have to think about it. I even talked to a current and at least one former student.
This sort of work is hard for me. I can overcome the tendency to introversion if I’m in the right context (like gathering petition signatures or teaching a class), but it takes a lot out of me to just go up to people out of the blue and ask them to sign something. And the pandemic makes it all much weirder yet.
Anyway, I’m really behind on grading, so I should probably get to that before some meetings with students and a union meeting later.
Later: Some grading, a few meetings with students, and then a union meeting… and then tonight Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed by the US Senate and sworn in. The whole process is totally on-brand for the evilness of Republicans these days and I can’t say I’m surprised, but one thing that really has me seething is that Senate Republicans made this their priority (they worked all weekend to make this happen), but they’ve been delaying a second COVID relief bill for months while Americans are suffering with no help from their government. Fucking Republicans.
Tues. 27 Oct. 2020
Today’s is Beth’s birthday! Yay! Happy birthday to my spouse and housemate in this cabin fever apocalypse! Hopefully I bought enough birthday whiskey today to get us through the week before the election.
Thurs. 29 Oct. 2020
Today is the last day of early voting in Tennessee. It’s tomorrow in nearby Georgia. And then election day is Tues. Nov. 3. (Still no word on whether they need me as a poll worker. Maybe I should call tomorrow?)
I think we might be okay for the Presidential election, but you never really know. For the love of Gene Roddenberry, I hope Biden/Harris win by a huge margin. But then there’s whatever happens after the election. Will the votes be counted? If he loses, will Trump concede? Will there be violence from white supremacist terrorists? So, a bit of anxiety there.
And then there are the down ballot races. I don’t think Marquita Bradshaw for US Senate has much of a chance of winning, but I’ve been text banking for her campaign. She’s a phenomenal candidate, and I’d love to see a progressive working class Black woman represent Tennessee. The Democratic candidate for US House (Meg Gorman) is also great, but unlikely to win. I think the TN Senate candidate (Glenn Scruggs) actually has a decent chance. I’d love to get rid of the incumbent, Todd Gardenhire, an old money white dude and embodiment of everything I despise about Republicans. I’m extremely confident about my State House race (Yusuf Hakeem). The Republicans aren’t even running anyone against him. So I can be pretty sure at least one race will go the way I want it to!
I’ll be phone banking tonight, getting out the vote for other members of United Campus Workers.
I’m writing this in an empty classroom again. I thought I’d have a few students today because the discussion assignment is individual again (so it’s not easier to just do it online with your group). But there were major storms in the area last night due to hurricane effects, so that probably made a difference (we’re way too far inland to get hurricanes, but we get the rainy, stormy effects of hurricanes).
Sat. 31 Oct. 2020
Happy Halloween! (Is it happy? Is it really Halloween during the pandemic or should we just say all holidays are canceled this year? Who knows? One thing that is the same: my costume as inspired by Wednesday Addams.)
I bought a badge for the Frightening Ass Film Fest, so that’s Halloween-y. I saw some really great shorts.
I was going to say something about how 2020 has been scary enough so far. Which is true, but it could be a lot worse. Maybe it will get worse next week with the election. Let’s hope not.
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