Don’t live in fear and obeisance: stand up, get educated, and live your life.

What struck me first is Daisey’s description of himself as an Apple Fanboy. Most of how he describes himself Geeking out to Apple fan sites and the loving attentions he bestows on his Apple hardware reminds me much of myself. However, I posit, perhaps naively, that I can have a critical eye toward Apple — this position does not mean that I don’t own most of their gadgets.

Yet, after listening to Daisey’s experiences in Shenzhen and Foxconn City, any Westerner with a conscience would have to question his or her use of gadgets that negatively affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of impoverished Chinese citizens — some likely underaged. Is an iPad or iPhone so important to my life that I’m willing to condone what amounts to slavery in the twenty-first century?

At least that’s what I thought after listening to part one of the program. After Daisey’s 40-minute narrative, I found myself still in my car; I had made it home, turned off the engine, and was sitting in a dark garage. I went inside to listen to act two.

This part provides a step back from Dasiey’s narrative — some analysis and fact checking. While there were some mitigating perspectives and evidence, the fact still remains that our tech that has become so ingrained in our lives is made in sweatshops.

Why is this the case? Really? Why don’t we make our own fetishized tech right here in the US? I know it would be more expensive — our gadgets would likely double in cost — but isn’t that the right thing to do? Should we, as one of the commentators suggests, just accept the grim realities for Foxconn workers as the growing pains of a nascent capitalist economy?

Is it really that easy?

Values worth having are not done so blindly. They must be examined critically and thoroughly in the harsh light of day by every generation. We must be deliberate in choosing and supporting our values if they are to have, well, value. It’s in this nebulous area where real education is integral for a healthy and prosperous society.

Real education is the water that cleans the grit of fear and ignorance out of our eyes. It washes away the superstition that allows us to be cowardly and hateful. It clears the way for us to see the possibilities that our lives could have free of the detritus of fearful tradition to trip us up. Today’s NYTimes obituary of Christopher Hitchens makes a similar point:

Not only do the things in the hate column inspire hate, they also try their best to destroy those things in the love column — the things that are a part of the subversive education.

I’m not talking about revolution. Subversion is more akin to quiet resistance à la Michel de Certeau. In The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson puts it this way: “intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.” Later, the protagonist is discussing a similar topic with the constable; he asks her which path will she take: “conformity or rebellion.” She answers:

Real education teaches the subtleties in life — the nuances. It teaches us to revel in ambiguity, not run from it. Contradiction is a time for consideration and dialog, not guns.

Yet, the demagogy that teaches absolutes and obeisance might also be a necessary part of education, only in giving the truly educated something to subvert and challenge. As Ted Nelson points out: primary education is more about training us how to behave than it is about teaching knowledge. Creativity is sacrificed for conformity. When we get through this structured system of imposed boredom and systematized indoctrination, we are called citizens and patriots and normal. If we stop here, we’re never truly educated.

Only after getting through my first two years as an undergraduate did I begin to get a real education. In these classes, I took an active part in my learning; instead of sitting in grids, we sat around conference tables; instead of being told what I should be learning, I was able to discover the knowledge for myself under the guidance of the professor. This was a time when poetry began to sing for me. This was a time when I discovered that the way I had always ordered my life — white, heterosexual, catholic, capitalist, male — was not the only way to see the world. In fact, it was a fairly  narrow way to look at life, and I have since discarded most of those arbitrary categories.

Maybe this is why I have always liked computers. Again, Stephenson gives us a look at a potential future for education in The Diamond Age. The primer that Hackworth illegally compiles for his daughter falls into the hands of a disenfranchised little girl living in a future China. The idea for The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is thought up by a Lord who tells the actual builder to consider what it means to be subversive. Hackworth at least unconsciously takes this message to heart and invents a book that allows the reader to find her own knowledge. The book does not work by itself — there is a “ractor” named Miranda that is just as integral to Nell’s education as the primer — but it is a key component to subverting the dominance of the ideologies that would have kept Nell a second-class citizen her whole life. This primer reminds me of what is beginning to happen with education in the digital age. Or at least the possibility for a real education.

While much of education is the learning of what our parents and other authorities say is True, it’s as much about understanding how it’s not — of finding our own ways and discarding those truths that no longer work for us. I teach literature, irony, humor, nuance, subtlety. My job is to help others dispel their own tyrannies of thought.

I teach subversion.

About fifteen years ago, my favorite uncle died. Uncle Elwood was a wiry, jolly man who always had a pocket full of silver dollars. He was also a pharmacist, so one time I remember him giving me soda water after a particularly rich country meal during a Lucas Family reunion in Eastern Kentucky. Uncle Elwood had a way about him, something that my child’s eyes saw as kindness, compassion, and sympathy. The silver dollars he gave became a symbol not of economic generosity, but of a genuine human connection.

At his funeral was another uncle of mine: Harry is my father’s older brother who happens to be a Texas businessman. I have no real memories of Harry, having seen him maybe there times in my life — though I got a general sense that he was a bit overbearing and that children like me should keep to ourselves. At the time of Elwood’s death, the US DOJ was prosecuting the Microsoft Antitrust trial; it was also the last few years of the Clinton presidency. I was a supporter of the DOJ’s actions. After the funeral, a group of Elwood’s friends and family were sitting around chatting with his widow, my Aunt Dee. I forgot how the topic even came up, but I mentioned my support of the DOJ. Harry, in all his overbearing bluster, shut me down: “I can’t believe you’d say something like that. This country was built on innovation and the free market. Microsoft is a great American company and the government should keep its hands off.” (Or something like that.) Since this was an inappropriate time for a political discussion, I remember responding, “OK, Uncle Harry.” Later, Dad told me that’s the only way to respond to Harry sometimes. Apparently George W. Bush agreed with my Uncle Harry, since the antitrust suit against Microsoft was quietly resolved after his 2000 “election.”

Fast forward almost fifteen years, it seems the Uncle Harrys of this country have done a pretty good job keeping the rest of us quiescent while they do what they want, particularly when it comes to class. In fact, this country talks a lot about race, gender, and sexuality, but we never seem to have discussions of class — as if it has nothing to do with contemporary America, only Victorian England. Is that a part of the agenda? Is this a tacit understanding: we know there’s inequality, but that’s just the way it is. And, if you get uppity about it, we — you know those that control the government, the jobs, and the media — the 1% — might be forced to do something you won’t like. Even things like facts don’t get in these guys’ way. Just ask the scientists.

I, for one, am glad to see discussions finally being had about class. In a nation that loves its money, class might be the most important issue that we face.

Big business wants to make everything about business. The bottom line of business is the bottom line: money. I don’t want to over simplify, but I’m increasingly seeing a country that is preoccupied with accruing this metaphor of wealth. Money isn’t even a thing — it’s a representation of value. It is a mythological measure of success, influence, power, and respect. A country whose main goal is the accumulation of this ideological construct will tend to look at everything through this green millionaire’s monocle.

I’m not even talking about materialism here, though the relation should have relevance. Yes, ultimately money buys the material, so the story goes. The issue is with abstracts: those who make so much money that it can (1) never be transferred to the material, and (2) relieves others of their life, liberty, and private property. This is what seems to be happening now. Let me amend that: it has been happening for decades, but the world is finally feeling the radical effects of this sort of American corporate greedthink that has penetrated all aspects of our lives.

Where does this greedthink come from? I think it’s a lack of education.

About a year ago, I was invited to a friend’s birthday party. My friend is a lawyer, so there were other lawyers there celebrating. I got to chatting with one of them, and he asked me what I do. I responded that I was an English professor — and that day I just happened to have taught Homer. “Oh, yeah?” he said raising his eyebrows in an act of feigned enthusiasm. “Yes,” I replied. “There are few literary expressions that I would put above the significance of Homer’s epics.” This was a pretty mundane conversation, one that I have had at cocktail parties many times. My last statement is usually a verbal tranquilizer, but he was feeling contentious, and it had the opposite effect: “I don’t have to read Homer. That’s absurd! Homer has nothing to do with my life as a lawyer, and I wasted a lot of time and money in college taking nonsense courses that had nothing to do with life.” (Or something like that.) At this, the rest of the jovial conversations at the table stopped, and they were looking at this guy. I decided this was another Uncle Harry moment. We were at a birthday party after all.

Yet this guy’s attitude is exactly what I’m talking about. What is the most popular undergraduate major? You already know. That’s right: it’s business! Out of the top ten majors listed by The Princeton Review, over half of them would not be considered as liberal arts. In fact, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, business trumps the second most conferred major by double.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the skills one learns in business courses are great for doing business, but what do they teach a student about being human? About compassion? Empathy? In other words, when the most popular college major in the US is business, we are training a world that is increasingly populated by Uncle Harrys, and we’re surprised at its current state? Is business inherently bad? No. However, when budgets are cut in education, which programs suffer? Take a guess. When we look at the education of our children and young adults as a business, we need to be prepared for what we’ll get.

I think we still need Homer and his scions. I think Elwood would agree.

Elwood and Dee

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members. That our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors. That a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people, and the Earth, and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

We come to you at a time when corporations — which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality — run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here as is our right to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in workplaces based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is, itself, a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut worker’s health care and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams, but look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products, endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives, or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully kept people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners, even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

To the people of the world, We, the New York City general assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard.

There was probably no impotence in all the world like knowing you were right and the wave of the world was wrong, and yet the wave came on. (Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night 197)

Arguably, the dominant form of literature in the twentieth century was prose fiction, of which the novel was a titan, if not a god. Indeed, there is something god-like about the novel and its relation to western civilization’s sense of identity and order. While the novel has its genesis in ancient prose texts, it didn’t develop fully until certain intellectual and technological foundations were laid. Since the Enlightenment, the novel has become an art form of — in Lukács’ words — the “new world,” a chief guide for the modern human seeking meaning in a cold universe (20). The novel, therefore, seems to be the medium of expression for a 20th-century zeitgeist, fully developed during the modernist days of recovery from the intellectual revolutions of the turn of the century and the literal rubble of the first World War. And while the work of the modernist novel was serious and sober, the postmodern novel’s authority is, perhaps, ironic and blasphemous.

While the world enters the digital age, the novel stands defiant. While many seek a new art form for the digital age — a cyberbard or a collectively authored cybertext — the novel appears to still provide something we need. After all, the novel has been developed since the invention of written language; it’s related to the epic, the romance, the novella, the picaresque and various modes of expression, the tragic, the comic, the moral, the licentious, the ideal, and the real. The novel’s emphasis on the character’s relationship to her society and her universe is traditionally told in a comfortable prose — in a language of verisimilitude that is comforting enough to allow the reader to engage new ideas. The novel, arguably, has become the medium of authority in the contemporary world, even despite the digital wave.

Perhaps the novel gives an order to life, particularly in the days following September 11, 2001 when America, as Norman Mailer noted in Why Are We at War?, was going through an identity crisis (10). The fact of terrorism shatters the meaning of life and death, robbing our lives’ order and replacing it with absurdity (War 18-19). The rest of Mailer’s essay examines the aftermath of 9/11: in an attempt to rebuild the national ego, many Americans became flag-waving neo-cons, drunk with a mindless patriotism that sought to reassert itself through a jingoistic wave of moral cleansing. A literal American supremacy in the form of empire must be asserted no matter the cost.

I would argue, too, that this struggle is expressed in the flow of the word. The digital word resembles the political anxiety of disorder and insecurity. With books, the word was solid, permanent, authoritative. With the Internet, words become tenuous, temporary, fleeting. Printing on dead trees provided a way to measure and judge the validity of the word because it could be held in the hand, put on a shelf, reliably referenced. The World Wide Web, too, opened up the flood gates of opinion, obfuscating the voices of authority by those of the masses: yes, the word gained more of an equality, but at the loss of the authoritative voice. In an age of print, achieving admittance into the world of publication was a Herculean task, but blogs now allow anyone with a computer to have a voice. These disparate voices represent for many the planes demolishing the towers of authority. While many revel in their newly found voices, many in America are left reeling and longing for the days of the few, sanctioned voices that could give them direction and order.

The problem with digital forms of art, especially literature, is that they seem to lack the necessary force of authority to provide them the structure they need to fulfill the audience’s aesthetic expectations. As Janet Murray points out in Hamlet on the Holodeck, audiences expect the guiding presence of the author to deliver a unified experience replete with all the accouterments of narrative (204). Without the authority, the narrative ceases to be engaging because it lacks the singular focus or unifying vision that we expect from literary expressions. The digital challenges the established conventions of the literary, and while we have traditionally turned to stories for a reflection of ourselves and for meaning, the digital explodes meaning into multiplicity (Murray 274).

It seems, then, that we are still in need of the author. Perhaps this will be the cyberbard that Murray suggests might become the voice of the digital age, or maybe we aren’t ready yet to dispense with the novel just yet.

The mania that followed the figurative collapse of America with its twin signifiers has brought about the literal collapse of the American economic system, especially for those who have historically been disenfranchised. There is a new world, the nascent and wily political and social movements seem to shout from the streets — one that must be engaged in a visceral way, not is an elitist, academic one. Just after 9/11, Stanley Fish’s voice defending postmodernism — what he characterized as an academic theoretical position, not an ontological philosophy — seemed to be drowned out by the cries for vengeance, war, and a reassertion of American dominance. Those smarties in their rarefied academic atmosphere have made us all sissies, irreligious, immoral, feminine, and tolerant. We need to take control back and drive the the immoral behavior back in the closet if it cannot be obliterated all together.

America flexed its military muscle and launched two wars after 9/11 that have drained not only our coffers, but our social morale. These are not the only wars America has waged since 9/11, but there has been cultural war, too. Mailer points out in Why Are We at War? that the political right has used the terrorist attacks as an excuse to tighten America’s chastity belt, to reassert those traditional values that privilege a phallologocentric views and practices. America’s empire is crumbling because it has lost its moral center. The only way to get it back is to institute a moral reform and eliminate the social evils of liberalism. America has lost its identity, and only through direct action can it get it back.

The crisis of identity that Mailer sees in America has brought about a further crisis of interpretation. Many of the attitudes vocalized by the right spring from the conservative pundits on the national “news” channels. Movements like the Birthers or the Tea Partiers (and now the Deathers) are strategically nothing new in partisan politics, nor are the talking heads that support them and feed their fires. One of the central aspects of old broadcast forms — television and radio, in particular — is that they fostered a culture of non-responsiveness, as Jean Baudrillard put it. He meant that the mass media are “anti-mediatory and intransitive,” leaving no room for communication, response, or play. In these old forms, “power belongs to the one who can give and cannot be repaid.” This has the consequence of forcing certain social attitudes, tends to assure that people are not talking to each other, and, Raymond Williams adds, leads to the privatized home, separate and distinct from decisive political and commercial powers.

Yet, while digital, social media might allow for a revolutionary response, it also leaves many of us afloat without a rudder on a turbulent sea. We are free, yes, but now at the hands of chaotic tides and devastating tempests. In much the same way as terrorism makes its victims flee back to the comfort of their safe houses, the current digital landscape provides a vertiginous amount of information, almost forcing us to focus our gaze on the good-ol’-days of narrower bandwidths. I can’t help but think of the Grand Inquisitor’s offer of miracle, mystery, and authority to the huddled, frightened masses. ALl one need do is leave your freedom at the door. Just do it.

As Langdon Winner observes in his essay “Mythinformation,” the utopian aspirations of digital access often have just the opposite effect: an impotent paralysis in the face of overwhelming choice. Too much freedom is a terrifying prospect to those not used to it — not prepared for it. In the face of such a prospect, the masses seek succor in the traditional narratives of their fathers. How do we interpret too much choice? It’s a loss of directions, values, morality, and sanity.

This crisis of interpretation has us retreating to the easily binary answers of good and evil, right and wrong, right and left. The problem with the polarities are they sacrifice subtlety, nuance, and choice to the gods of certainty, righteousness, and privilege. The rallying call demands that the polyphony of voices be silenced by the one, true voice of certainty. In a time of crisis, we seem to seek the authority that can help us out of it. Don your tea bags — we must act!

As I write this, Muammar el-Qaddafi’s state-run media organizations wage a narrative battle against the revolutionary forces of Facebook and Twitter while literally trying to crush a political rebellion. The former, an organization of old media forms like television, newspapers, and radio, obfuscate alternative views with official ones, while the latter allows a polyphony of challenges to attack this view both inside and outside of Libya. While the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were able to facilitate political change mostly through the media, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain — and arguably Iran — must translate the battle of words into the material world. Many of these regimes are not afraid to back their one-sided propaganda with force — a tactic not uncommon for the despotic.

A similar battle has been waging for over a decade now, also precipitated by social media: that between the entertainment industry (supported by the government) and the consuming public at large, mostly the young. The model of this industry is based on a physical product that can be controlled by the companies that own the copyright: publishing houses, the Record Industry of America (RIAA), and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Distribution of entertainment has always been easily controlled by these megapowers, not only whose voice was sanctioned for publication, but how that voice was disseminated. Even with the advent of new analog copying technologies becoming widely available to the general public beginning in the 1970s — the VCR and tapedeck — only succeeded in giving the powers-that-be more approved modes of distribution.

It wasn’t until the digital was combined with the Internet that the power of these entertainment corporations was challenged. The old model of distribution was based on a physical object that was easily quantifiable, controllable, and policed. The object — the copy — fit into the traditional economies of morality: it’s wrong to steal. When you steal this object, you’re depriving the owner of of money, enjoyment, his property. However, without the medium, this ethical narrative becomes tenuous — it just doesn’t seem like stealing anymore. Indeed, the benefit of the digital copy is that making one is not only a perfect reproduction, it does not deprive the owner of her enjoyment.

The digital zeitgeist is a challenge of medium. Any student of Marshall McLuhan can tell you that “the medium is the message.” By this, McLuhan meant to call critical attention to the politics of medium — how it controls the ways users process their reality. McLuhan was not interested in content, but in how our use of the devices of communication shaped our lives and our perception of them. Most media before the digital did not allow for what Jean Baudrillard calls “response.” Media, he argues, do not facilitate a communication exchange because information flows one-way; therefore, the powers that control the media also control the message. Watchers of television were in a controlled place at a stated prime time, and most importantly, they were isolated from each other. Not only were they given a message by the television, they remained apart from the mob that might organize a resistance against this “forced socialization” (283).

However, what happens when the medium disappears — when the order of the cathedral is abandoned by its apostates who now prefer the chaos of the bazaar? Eric Raymond’s metaphor refers to the open-source software movement, but it might be equally applicable to entertainment and now politics. The digital revolution has given Everyman a voice that he seems likely to relinquish easily. Globally, humanity has responded to and will continue to respond to the media that has structured their lives to promote another’s agenda. These tides seem to be increasing in number and force, seeking to wash the shore clean of its old monolithic structures. Yet, in the aftermath of such forces of nature, a sense of uncertainty often seems to frighten the newly freed into reestablishing structures of domination.

My interest here is inherently political, if not expressly. As a student of literature, I came to my discipline as many others did: reveling in the content — the thematic concerns of great narrative. However, I wonder how the authority of literature — particularly that of its dominant form, the novel — can withstand or should resist the tide of digital change?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. But just give me a chance to explain, son, before you get all hot. What’s mine is traditional — it’s what America’s all about. It’s why all those illegals want in so bad: it’s a chance to get some of what’s mine. They want it, and it’s no where else on this planet. But, son, this is where we start to run into problems. What’s mine is, well, mine. There’s only so much, and not everyone deserves to have it. You see?

Alright look, son. What’s mine is big, like the great state of Texas. I have the biggest house, on the biggest land. I drive the biggest truck, faster than anyone. I eat the biggest steaks, with the most fries, and a super-sized cup of sweet southern iced tea. My church is big — large enough to house the one-and-only God and seat His mighty congregation. Our Wal-Marts are the biggest in the world, and our canyons the grandest. We have the tallest mountains and the deepest seas, and the heaviest machines to extract their treasures. Our people are the toughest — the salt of God’s Earth. We’ve crawled through the dust and grit to conquer this land — to make it the best in the world. Now, that’s the truth, son, otherwise, why would everyone else want a piece of it . . . a piece of what’s mine? Am I making myself clear?

We have worked hard to make this country what it is today — yes, the best in the world. God’s own land. When we first came here, it was savage — nothing — and it probably would have stayed that way, if it weren’t for the ingenuity of our God-fearing forefathers. They cleared the rubble to make way for what’s mine. Even then, others wanted to take it, but we were strong — we persevered through the hardships and built something the world had never before seen: a great industrialized nation constructed by the sweaty tenacity of our hard-working hands. We transformed the land into what we wanted — what we dreamed about and God provided. We made it what’s mine. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give that up to any them — those whiny discontents.

See, that’s the problem, son. Yes, we let them think they had a voice, that they were good enough for what’s mine. That was our first mistake. Diversity? Hell, son, that just confuses people — makes them think that what’s theirs is important. Well, it’s not. They can keep what’s theirs — I certainly want no part of that. Everyday I have to listen to what’s theirs on the television. They try to tell me that what’s mine is too much — that it’s wrong somehow. Son, how can that which built this mighty country be wrong? No, it cannot.

I guess that’s what I’m talking about: what’s mine is wholesome, right — true. What’s theirs isn’t. It’s the opposite: threatening, wrong.

Look at it like this: how can there be more than one religion? Seriously, son. How can both Christianity and Islam be right? True? They cannot. So why would those whiny voices want me to tolerate a religion that I know in my soul is wrong? How am I supposed to stand by and watch while some Arab tries to steal what’s mine? Am I supposed to watch while they fly their planes into my buildings? While they try to use their terrorist money to buy our towns? While they try to kill my God? I will not, son.

Look, they can have their religion — they just need to keep it away from what’s mine. I’m no enemy of diversity. They can have their solar panels, their electric cars, their loud clothing, their evil lifestyles — just keep it away from me. Send it to another country or keep it locked in the closet. They can be wrong if they want to, but they shouldn’t dare try to tell me that what’s theirs is better or even equal to what’s mine.

This is when the gloves come off, son. That’s what’s happening right now in these United States. What’s mine has had enough. We’re not going to tolerate them trying to take what’s mine anymore. They want our guns; they want our freedom; they even want our environment. Global warming? Are they serious? Do they really think they can convince us to stop driving the trucks that we built with our own hands just because some egghead said it’s getting hotter? They’ll do anything to try to get what’s mine. I’m not interested in their facts. I know the truth. It’s part of what’s mine.

We don’t need saving, son. They do. If they would just shut up and listen to what I’m saying, I might let them have a bit. They have to act right; speak when spoken to. They’ve got to earn it. If they want what’s mine, they will only get it on my terms. If they try to ram what’s theirs down my throat, well, son . . . that means war.

Maybe all that’s true? Why am I any more qualified to have opinions than any other citizen of Central Georgia? What makes me so special? Nothing. Maybe in a room full of Ph.D.s, I do have some respect and empathy, but should I expect the same in a classroom? On a street corner? Shouldn’t I pay as close attention to what the students think? After all, isn’t it really about them? They are the customers. They have paid to be in the class. Why should they have to listen to anything that they disagree with? What gives me the right to try to make them? I’m such a jerk.

It’s true, and it’s time that I admit it to myself and do something about it. It’s a big, stinky piece of humble pie that I finally have to choke down. Offense used to be, to me, a learning opportunity — something to really make me examine my attitudes and convictions. It’s the most difficult thing about education: that existential moment of understanding that comes from an idea that shakes you to the core. Frightening as hell. Now offense often seems to be grounds for complaint to the authorities, not for introspection.

Aren’t I just a functionary? I have facts to impart to the students, and isn’t that what knowledge is about? Facts don’t offend; they’re impartial, beyond contention. If people wanted opinions, they could turn on their favorite “news” channel or go to church. Is it the fact of my jerkiness that you hate? Or is it that my opinions don’t match your own?

In this current political climate, perhaps the best course of action is to remain silent or risk a fatwa, a witch hunt, a crusade, or a book burning. Yes, I have a right to say what I want — and I even have the qualifications. However, maybe right now and right here the prudent thing would be to keep my jerky mouth shut?

What would my classroom be like if I just stuck to the facts, Jack? Seriously. What are the facts in the study of literature? Context for sure. Plot. Oh, yes. I could point to all the zeugmas, synecdoches, and caesuras in a Neoclassical poem — all facts. What about textual interpretation? Ah, that’s tricky. Isn’t “interpretation” just another word for “opinion”? Better check those at the door. So literature turns into a quantifiable exercise of plot, context, and device?

What piece of literature does not in some way challenge conventional attitudes and beliefs? This is why I love what I do: it deals with all that human stuff that makes us who we are, for better or worse. It’s a mirror that shows all of our beauty and scars — us at our best and our worst. It challenges — kicks us in the throat and teases us with subtlety. It’s not the fact of plot, but the significance of it. Literature is the labyrinth, the puzzle of humanity. No other human endeavor is as important. (Shit, did I just write my opinion?)

I get so passionate in the classroom because I love what I do. I love what I read, and I want to hear what others think about it, too. Yet, my zeal is often mistaken for overbearing intimidation. My execrable opinion. Not for everyone, but a vocal few. I do care about you. I do.

And this is what makes me sad. I don’t know how to change. The only way I can be sure not to offend is to remain silent. Is that what this is about? Is that the prudent course? I do need to think about my job security, no? No employer wants to employ a jerk.

How do I challenge without offending? Is this even possible? For a better educator than myself, perhaps.

I don’t know how to temper the sharp edge of my personality other than to remain silent and smile. Who could object to that? How do I foster a classroom where people can disagree without becoming offended and turning off or going on the attack? Is that even possible these days? The classroom is where we should engage these ideas, not in an administrator’s office.

I’ll probably remain a jerk, but I just need to be a quieter one if I am to remain an educator. I guess that means this is my last blog entry, too.

I’m beaten down.