Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Friday, January 07, 2005 Saks Fifth Avenue, February 2004
In the wide-ranging, terrific comment thread, two posts ago -- I am continually so appreciative of the readers and commenters here -- Siona brought up a question:
"There's an odd paradox in the fact that while Canadians are more comfortable with themselves than are Americans, but they are less secure in their country . . . Canadian culture is seen as being constantly threatened... Does the apparent security of America as a nation mean that Americans have the 'luxury' of feeling insecure themselves?"
What an interesting question! I think Americans are perhaps "secure" about their culture, if secure means basically "content with", and that most Americans feel they're the ones on top who everyone else wants to emulate. This impression comes both from lack of a deeper, genuine exposure to other cultures, and the obvious fact that American movies, jeans, cars, technology...fill in the blank... are considered desirable in many places across the globe, even in many cultures who don't like us much politically. So does that sense of -- let's call it cultural superiority -- give us the luxury of feeling insecure about ourselves?
What do you think? I guess I'd say yes and no. Many people do have a much more nuanced view of American culture and our place in the world, and surely that would be more likely to create anxiety, not security. But I think there is a huge amount of underlying anxiety in our culture anyway, which may be expressed differently, depending on a given person's point of view - one may be worried about terrorism, another about the stock market, another about getting cancer, another about not having the right clothes or the right perfume, another about not being successful - and these worries are all fanned by the mass media and by advertising pressure, as well as family and marital expectations and a lot of other historical/psychological/emotional/practical reasons.
But I'd go so far as to say that I feel that this pervasive anxiety is the defining feature of American society at this point in time. From what foreign friends have told me, when they've come here in recent years, they are very shocked by the extent of this - going so far as to call it paranoia - and how deeply Americans on all levels of society have bought into it. I can tell you that people in other western countries may be anxious too, but it's about George Bush, not about anthrax or shortages of flu vaccine, and the latter sort of anxiety doesn't permeate people's thinking or interfere with their ability to enjoy and appreciate their daily lives.
Of course, in many parts of the world, and in those forgotten and neglected parts of our own country, people can barely live, or their entire lives are circumscribed by genuine fear based on real day-to-day circumstances. So I think Siona points to something essential when she uses the word "luxury". Many of us do have the luxury to be worried and insecure about seemingly trivial things, too, and to focus our attention on them. Some of this is due, I think, to a sense of helplessness and inability to think or engage effectively about the big things - war, terrorism, the economy, the environment - so that people transfer that anxiety to a more personal sphere. And we also have a cultural addiction to wanting things, as a distraction; and buying things, as a quick fix way to feel better; and flaunting them, to assure ourselves that we're actually OK. And this pattern of behavior is, most definitely, a luxury few people in the world enjoy.
Another aspect of this question has to do with cultures based on individuality and self-determination, as opposed to collective cultures where the individual's wants and needs are often secondary to the needs of the group. Here it is culturally normal and acceptable to focus on the self and ask "what do I want or need today in order to feel good?" while in other places, there are people who would never ask that question. Even in small American villages, I've experienced less of the posturing and insecure focus on self-identity I described than in more urban settings - but it still exists.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
SOUND BYTE-ING the A. of C.
A thoughtful article about the theological questions raised by the Asian tsunami by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams appeared in the Sunday Telegraph last week. In it, Williams attempted to speak about how a thoughtful person might consider the inevitable (and perennial) questions about the existence of God amid terrible suffering. As in most of Williams' writings, he had something to say and said it quite well, freely acknowledging the doubts any intelligent person might have, yet speaking movingly about how action to relieve the suffering is really more meaningful, and may ultimately give us more answers, than theological debate. The Telegraph's headline writers, however, ran the article under the title: "Of course this makes us doubt God's existence."
Lambeth's response, as well as some comments by and about the Telegraph, can be found at Thinking Anglicans.org.
Back in my blogging spot in Vermont, here in the living room where the Christmas decorations are still up and the house is gradually warming. We drove down yesterday afternoon in grey weather, the snow cover dwindling with each mile, and arrived to find our valley swathed in thick fog, the lawn partially unthawed and muddy. We unpacked the perishable things quickly and took off to go to a birthday party for an old friend.
It was a good party, with lots of good food and people we hadn't seen for a long time. But I had the same feeling I often have in such gatherings in the U.S.: a lot of these people are posturing. I think the feeling was heightened because of the New Year's party we had attended in Canada, where we knew very few people except the host and hostess, and there was no feeling like that whatsoever.
Now, I think I've lived long enough to be able to go beneath the surface of most emotions and see at least some of what's there and where the origins might lie. And I know that I used to be more confused and insecure about these social reactions than I am now; for the most part, I'm a pretty confident person and I don't think I need to convince people anymore that I'm anything in particular. So I don't think that these waving antennas signalling "something feels uncomfortable here" appear because of something from inside me, from my own insecurity. I think the feeling originates from the fact that there is a tremendous insecurity about one's own worth in American culture in general which is not present to the same extent in the culture to our north, where people seem much more comfortable both with themselves, and with others.
I've felt it all my life, this jockeying for position and impact, this rather desperate and unhappy feeling of people needing and trying to impress each other: "ohmigod, if only I'd worn higher heels or a more arty jacket or could say I had a show coming up, or if I had something, some new techno gadget, maybe..." It started in grade school, when the girls I walked to school with made cruel fun of each other for wearing knee socks instead of tights, or whatever they could find and use as a wedge of superiority/inferiority; hip vs. square. Grown-ups don't do that outloud, except on make-over shows, but the judging and the comparing still goes on all the time. And I've got to tell you - I am sick to death of it. Even though I recognized this years ago and made a decision not to participate, to learn instead to be comfortable with who I was and to hell with the rest of them if they didn't like it, what hurts now is walking into it and seeing and feeling the painfulness of other people who don't see and are, despite their hip exterior, very insecure inside. And realizing how our culture and our media feed this dis-ease and insecurity, because once they've convinced you that you should be insecure and off-balance, the way out is always to buy, to change oneself, to emulate someone who the cultural arbiters-of-the-moment say is the most beautiful or coolest or most successful. At the party last night, where many of the guests were artists and/or gay, the potential traps seemed even more cleverly hidden, and the posing even more deliberate and calculated. I felt a sea of unhappiness and uncertainty beneath the celebratory atmosphere.
The only way I could see to cut through was to listen and try to connect very attentively and directly, bypassing the surface stuff as much as I could. Several of my priest and minister friends have told me that this is the spiritual dis-ease they see most often: the inability of many, even most, people to believe that they are worthy of being loved, just as they are. Yet every person at that party was wonderful, lovable, perfect in their own uniqueness. Is it possible to tell people that with your quietness, with your eyes, with your careful attention?
Today we shopped for the first time at Canadian Tire, and got our first Canadian Tire Money. Forgive me, clueless readers of other nationalities: I am nearly as in-the-dark as you about this Canadian institution, but I've taken my first steps toward learning.
When you walk into a Canadian Tire store - and these are huge, box-store size establishments, located on the outskirts of towns or in malls - it feels sort of like a Home Depot, sort of like Wal-Mart, but somehow different. It's home-ier, less packaged, low-key but fairly high quality, but still a great big store selling automotive parts, sporting goods, tools...I don't know how to describe it. But I liked it, and didn't have the same shuddering, steel-myself, incipient-headache reaction I usually do when entering one of those enormous fluorescent-lit, high-ceilinged monstrosities.
"Today, nine out of ten adult Canadians shop at Canadian Tire at least twice a year and 40% of Canadians shop at Canadian Tire every week. Eighty-five per cent of the Canadian population lives within a 15-minute drive of their local Canadian Tire store." (from the Canadian Tire website)
The lines were long, so we did a quick circuit of the store, trying to get an idea of what was available and what the prices were like. We checked out an entire rack of various flashlights; a wall of hockey sticks; a display of hockey and figure skates; the parkas and boots and camouflage hunting gear, and the socks with fish printed on them (big fish - one per sock - head at the ankle, tail running up the leg).
A bin of hockey sticks on sale
There are dishes, and pots and pans, and storage containers, and some furniture, and lighting. I browsed the Christmas lights, now on sale, for some of the intense blue LED lights I've seen up here, but didn't manage to make a buying decision. In an impressive section of snow shovels: snow scoops, collapsible shovels, adjustable-length shovels, children's shovels - not surprisingly, more choice than I've ever seen - we found a clever folding model for the car, and I managed to ask for a windshield scraper ("un outil pour grater les fenetres d'auto?") - hey, don't laugh, he understood me!
At the check-out, J. said, "be sure to get the money." I don't quite understand about Canadian Tire money, except that it seems to work kind of like S&H green stamps (yes, how old are you, dear reader?) being redeemable for future purchases at Canadian tire. Canadians joke about it, saying it's worth more than their own currency - which, as the loonie (the vernacular for a Canadian dollar, called that because it has a loon on it) rises in value, is becoming a lot less true. But he needn't have worried. The cashier, Sonia, handed me my currency automatically, with my receipt. For my $20+ purchase, I received a 5-cent and a 25-cent Canadian Tire bill - which, mes copains, is not much. But I was delighted. I walked out to the parking lot turnign the bills over in my hands, staring at them like the clueless immigrant that I am, but feeling that warm glow of crossing yet one more threshold.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
GLASS BEADS, BUT NOT THE GAME
We were downtown today for church, then had lunch and went to a movie ("House of Flying Daggers"). When we came out at 3:00 we were astonished to see white everywhere: it was the sort of storm that we call ice-pellets - very very fine, tiny crystals of ice that look like snow but are, in fact, hard and sharp, stinging your cheek and forming a treacherous surface that is like tiny glass beads. We walked cautiously to the car, and drove even more cautiously home, stopping at the Provigo at Parc and Sherbrooke to get some sole and a baguette and a few other things we needed.
We had planned to do some other shopping errands today, but to our surprise everything was closed up tight. We found out that Quebec has sort of "blue laws" still - the government says when shops can be open and when they have to close - and this is apparently still the New Year holiday. Businesses that insist on opening, like the Indigo bookstore, one of the only businesses open on St. Catherine Street today, have to pay a heavy fine. There was postal service only for a few days last week, and the banks and government offices will still be closed tomorrow. These closures are inconvenient when you don't expect them, and surely it can't be great for the economy, but on the other hand, coming as we do from such a commercialized culture, it's actually nice to have a period of time when everybody just slows down and takes time off.
So much of what goes on here reminds me of my childhood. No store were open on Sunday in my hometown; in fact I remember when a pharmacy decided to open for a few hours - it was a sort of scandal. There were still some blue laws in New Hampshire and Vermont when I moved there; that has very much changed with the emptying of downtowns and the growth of malls and franchises.
As J. and I discussed over our lunch today - watching Quebec families (French, Asian, Cree, Spanish) at nearby tables enjoying their own leisurely meals - it's a questions of what values are going to drive a culture, and who is responsible for making those decisions? In the United States, we worship money and the personal ability both to make and spend it. We always seem to be influenced in the direction of "more is better". I've always seen that to some extent, but never as clearly as I do now, living parttime in a culture where other things are considered more important, where basic needs are cared for - subject to some collective compromising - and quality of life is defined differently. I also notice how difficult it is for me to adapt to certain aspects of this, such as how much more slowly business is conducted, and how much less emphasis is placed on "accomplishment". It's getting to be a more and more interesting, and complex, life experiment.
