Writing Leftovers

Usually when I’m revising, there’s a stage at which I realize I have to cut some stuff, either because it’s kind of tangential to the focus of a paper or because the draft has gotten too long. The writing I have to cut might be just a sentence or a paragraph or two; occasionally it’s multiple pages of text. It can be painful to just delete writing that I spent hours working on, that I think explores some good ideas, or that I just really like how I said it. So about halfway through my Master’s program, I quit deleting stuff I liked from my drafts. Instead, I save it for later.

I am not sure exactly how I arrived at the “freezer” metaphor. Maybe it was because I had recently been reading Plato’s Gorgias, in which Socrates compares rhetoric to “cookery,” and maybe it’s because as a grad student who liked to cook, I always ended up with a lot of leftovers. In any case, I created a folder named “FREEZER” on my cloud drive. It’s got a bunch of files with leftover writing that I’ve cut from various projects over the years. I try to label the files well enough to remember more or less what’s inside them, but some are labeled better than others.

Partial screenshot of a file folder labeled "FREEZER"
in all caps, with several MS Word files inside

My "leftover writing freezer" comes in handy in two situations: first, if I am searching for a new project to get started, I can look through the freezer for inspiration. For example, two of the files in the screenshot above have text I cut from other work because it needed to be its own project; I just haven't had the chance to get back to them yet. Second, sometimes when I am working on a project, I realize I’ve already written something related. I open up my “freezer,” pull out some of the contents, warm them up through revision, and use them. Having "leftover writing" can help me avoid writer's block. 

On the other hand, some of the stuff in my “freezer” is probably too old and stale to be usable anymore. Every once in a while, I open up that folder, check the contents, and decide whether or not to throw anything out. Since file space is cheap these days, I rarely throw stuff out, but when I do it’s because I no longer feel bad about tossing it. Putting bits of my writing in the freezer instead of deleting them is an easy way to make my writing and revision process more effective and less painful.

Setting In for Social Distancing

It seems that social distancing will be our reality for the next 6-18 months, depending on a bunch of variables, a few of which we have some influence over, and some of which are just unknown because researchers have had so little time so far to study this virus. Anyway, you can look up the details if you want; this post is about how I'm making plans to settle in for a while.

I posted on Facebook last week about the need to set a personal schedule and create boundaries both in time and space. I'll reiterate those here, with additions and revisions. I also highly recommend my brother's post about dealing with social isolation.

Create a schedule that works for you and stick to it as much as possible.

Some of us have been required or strongly encouraged to stick to regular business hours so that we can coordinate our work with coworkers. Others will have the ability (or the necessity) to adjust their working hours to accommodate the fact that they are now de facto homeschooling teachers and caregivers, or for other personal reasons. Regardless of how much flexibility is available to you, I recommend the following: 

1. Get up and go to bed at the same time every day. 

In Doctrine and Covenants section 88, the Lord counsels his servants regarding their preparations to build a temple for the first time since the Restoration and to establish what was known as "the school of the prophets." In verse 124, we read:

Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated. (emphasis added)

Due to the protestant work ethic that was imported into Mormon culture from its earliest days, this verse has often been interpreted to mean something along the lines of "faithful members should be asleep by 10 PM and awake by 6 AM, if not earlier." But I want to suggest a somewhat different interpretation, especially given the evidence that different people do in fact have different circadian rhythms, and that some people's work schedules simply don't permit such a rigid reading. What I want to suggest, then, is that while the underlying principle expressed in verse 124 is true for all people, "early" is subjective. And I think it has to do with what I like to call "the Hour of Dumb."

The Hour of Dumb
The Hour of Dumb varies somewhat from one person to another, but all of us have one. If you think you don't, it's probably because you're in the habit of staying up way past your Hour of Dumb and you're in denial.

The Hour of Dumb arrives when you have pushed past your body's normal feeling of nighttime sleepiness and achieved a sort of second wind that you mistake for actual alertness.

In fact, at this point, your brain function is pretty much that of a drunk person. You cease to have the good sense to go to bed, or if you do start getting ready for bed, you find it difficult to remember or perform your normal bedtime routine: e.g. you forget to take your nighttime medicine, or to floss, or something like that. Even more likely than failing to properly navigate your bedtime routine, you'll just decide to postpone going to bed even further for no particular reason. If you are past the Hour of Dumb, you will likely find yourself watching a whole series of inane YouTube videos and reading the comments, or worse: responding to YouTube comments. If you are trying to overcome a bad habit, the Hour of Dumb is the time you're most likely to cave in and repeat the bad habit.

So I interpret "retire to thy bed early" to mean "go to bed before your Hour of Dumb."

Now, if you're going to bed before your Hour of Dumb, it is equally important not to sleep in longer than you need to. I don't have a catchy name for that point in the morning when you've indulged in one too many hits of the snooze button, but most of us are probably familiar with that groggy feeling we get on weekends when we try to "catch up" on the week's lost sleep by sleeping in until 10 AM (or whenever it is for you). Plus, getting up at the same time every day as much as possible will help you avoid staying awake past your Hour of Dumb.

2. Establish regular working hours and maintain those boundaries carefully

Maintaining regular working hours benefits you, your coworkers and students (if applicable), and anyone you live with (including pets). Especially in a time of so much uncertainty, routine helps manage stress and sustain realistic expectations.

I realize that my rules for boundaries won't work for everyone in every situation, so feel free to adapt them, but stick to the underlying principle: you need work-life boundaries even more now than you did when you weren't working from home.

• Dress for work. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to wear a suit and tie at home. It might simply mean that you have a different, somewhat nicer pair of yoga pants and a cleaner, nicer shirt to wear while you're working than you do when you stop working. 
• If possible, create a dedicated work space. Maybe that just means a corner of your living room, or maybe you can convert a guest room or another space into a home office. Ideally, this will not be in your bedroom, but regardless of where it is, try to create some kind of visible divider between your work area and where you relax, unwind, and sleep.
• Establish a "preparing for work" and "ending the work-day" routine that is similar to what you had before. If you didn't have a routine before, create one. Your mind needs cues to know when it's time for work and when it's time to not work.
• TURN OFF YOUR WORK EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS. I'm absolutely serious about this one. I know some employers won't like it; some might even prohibit it, and sometimes it's a necessary evil. But it's even more important now that you not allow work to invade non-work time. If at all possible, turn off those notifications. Use your phone or computer's calendar app to create a reminder to check your email once or twice a day on workdays. Unless your job actually, officially requires you to be available after working hours, do not check or respond to work email outside of your established working hours. 
• You will most likely have to go into your mobile device's system settings to turn off each app's permission to send you notifications. If you don't know how, you can google it.
• Turn off your social media notifications. While you're at it, it's just as important to prevent your non-work activities from invading your work hours. It's OK to choose to open your Facebook or Twitter app during your breaks (but set a timer); the notifications will all be there waiting for you at a time of your own choosing! But it will be even harder for you to resist checking those notifications when you're working at home than it was before (and be honest, it was already nearly impossible).
• You will most likely have to go into your mobile device's system settings to turn off each app's permission to send you notifications. If you don't know how, you can google it.
• In as many other ways as possible, create and stick to a work routine.

3. Establish a self-care routine and stick to it

This includes things like getting regular exercise and nutritious meals, but you might also consider replacing time you might have spent going out to socialize with other things you enjoy. For example, you might:

• Set aside daily reading time, either to make a dent in that massive pile of books that's been accumulating next to your night-stand, or to spend quality time with your kids. But don't spend too much of your free time reading; be sure to include a variety of other self-care activities as well.
• Learn (or continue practicing) a musical instrument. I've ordered myself a ukulele, because I've been told they're relatively easy to pick up the basics and the instruments themselves are pretty inexpensive.
• Learn (or continue practicing) how to draw, paint, whittle, etc. Basically, indulge in a little artistic creativity! Even better if you include your family. There are all sorts of tutorials available for free online.
• Start a garden. Not only will a garden reduce your need to go to the grocery store if the need to practice "social distancing" continues well into the summer, but working with soil and plants is good for your mental health! You don't even have to have a yard; you can set up an herb garden in a window sill--with or without a fancy hydroponic thingy.
• Spend time outside, but maintain appropriate distance from non-household members. If you've got a porch and the weather permits, pull a chair outside, enjoy some fresh air, wave to your neighbors, and maybe even enjoy some music together. I was saving up to buy a porch glider, but now I'm retooling my budget so that I can buy it sooner--I need more usable living space since my roommate and I are going to be home pretty much all the time!
• Check in virtually (and regularly) with family and friends. Make phone calls. Send letters (don't worry; the Post Office sterilizes them). Use video chat. Practicing social distancing makes it even more important that we practice relational gathering.
• Maintain good hygiene habits. I mean in addition to properly washing your hands, keep the rest of your body and living space clean and reasonably tidy, too. Hey, I know nobody can see your hair when you're working alone in your studio apartment. Wash and style it anyway; you'll feel better.
• Maintain health habits. Keep taking your medicine on time. Set up virtual appointments with your health care providers as needed. 

If your budget permits, make your home a more enriching, enjoyable space.

In the first few weeks of the pandemic, most people focused on the core essentials: nonperishable food storage and, for some reason, toilet paper. However, experts are now saying that the need to maintain social distancing may last between 6-18 months. And the longer it lasts, the better it will be in terms of saving human lives, but that will come at an almost incomprehensible cost, both economically and personally. So since we're in it for the long haul, we need to start thinking strategically about how to manage for the coming months. We don't need to head for the hills; we need to hunker down. And that means making the places we're hunkering down in as livable as we can manage.

I certainly do recommend investing in good quality emergency food storage, including having a 72-hour kit as general good preparedness practices. However, the reality of our current situation is that we are less likely to have to grab a bag and leave our homes or to experience food (or TP) shortages than we are to drive ourselves stir-crazy following CDC guidelines to stay home and practice social distancing. So my advice is that when you're thinking about stocking up on emergency supplies, once you have food and shelter sorted out (which I hope everyone reading this already does), you will want to expand your thinking to include other kinds of emergency supplies.

I already mentioned and linked above to some things you might consider obtaining, but here's a quick list of the kinds of things I've already gotten or will get to help keep my spirits up and make living nearly 24/7 at home for at least the next several months more bearable: 

• LEGO. It's a fun, creative, and infinitely variable hobby. I find it highly relaxing and mentally stimulating.
• Arts and crafting supplies.
• A ukulele and set of materials for absolute beginners.
• Treats. Chocolate, cookies, brownie mixes, stuff like that. 
• A good webcam.
• A better keyboard.
• A floor mat for my home office chair.
• Speaking of home office chairs, I already have a really nice one because fibromyalgia and dissertation, but if you have a cheap one and you just moved your desk job home, consider these (fairly expensive but worth it): 
• The Aeron (which is what I have at home and used for writing most of my dissertation) 
• The All33 Backstrong (which is what I bought myself for my campus office and I LOVE it)
• A porch glider. I like the ones at Polywood because they look good, are high quality, and are made from recycled milk bottles!
• An indoor slackline. I have had one of these for a few years now, and it's great! Ilove slacklining, and it's not too difficult to pick up, but you might want some other kind of indoor exercise equipment. Just make sure it facilitates an activity you really enjoy, or it will end up just an expensive dust collector, and you really want to avoid clutter in your living space right now!
• A Backmate self-massager that sets up in any door frame. I was a Kickstarter backer for this product, and I like it a little more than I expected to. It's not as good as a real massage, but it's great for in-between times when you can' get a real massage.
• Comfy indoor footwear. I like going barefoot, but it can get hard on my feet. At the same time, I definitely don't want to wear my "outdoor" shoes inside right now. 
• Comfier bras--or rather, not exactly bras. Nuudis provide some support and not much coverage, but are much more comfortable than traditional bras.
• Books. I didn't need to buy more of these, but I did it anyway.
• Chicks! As in baby chickens. They are adorable, and when they reach adulthood they will produce the most delicious eggs, which helps my household be a little more sustainable.
• Seriously, look how cute they are: 

Your list will probably look different than mine does--it might be completely different depending on what your own and your family's needs are. 

What are your strategies for settling in for the "Coronapocalypse"? 

Why All Grades Are Subjective

It's been quite a long time since I posted a blog entry. My life has been very busy with a full-time job, a dissertation to write, and a household to maintain. Today I'm going to share a reply I sent to a student email about why all grades are subjective.

Image Source: Alexander Russo. "This Week in Education: Cartoons: 'Climb That Tree.'" Scholastic. Accessed 24 April 2019. Note: The attribution of the above quote to Albert Einstein is almost certainly false. See its entry on Quote Investigator for more information on its probable origin.

For context, Monday was the first day of BYU-Idaho's Spring semester. As usual, we went over the syllabus, and as I explained my somewhat heterodox grading policy (which I implemented in part to address the challenges of subjectivity and grade disputes), I declared that grades have nothing at all to do with learning, and that all grades, not just English grades, are subjective. At this point, I paused. I told them that one of my grad school professors, James Paul Gee, often says that "Academics is an evidence game," which means that when we make claims, we provide reasons and evidence to support our claims, and in so doing, we subject our judgment to scrutiny. However, there was insufficient time at that juncture for me to provide evidence to support my claim that all grades are subjective. I said if any of them would like me to do so, they could email me, and I would be happy to oblige. One student did (the first to take me up on my offer in three years, hurrah!). Below, I copy my reply:

Dear Student,

I'm so glad you asked!  

All grades are subjective because teachers (or administrators, or state and national standards boards) have to make choices about what to measure, how to measure it, how to weight each thing they are measuring, and so on. Let’s take math as an example.

Most people consider math to be the least subjective of all academic disciplines, because, at least at the level of arithmetic and simple algebra, it is clear whether a student got the answer correct or not—whether their final calculation “adds up.” However, math teachers still have to decide whether to grade solely on whether students calculated the correct result, or whether to include the student’s process of calculating their result. In other words, they have to consider whether students should get partial credit depending on how well their calculations demonstrate that they are grasping the concepts, even if they make errors along the way and ultimately may not get the correct result. If teachers decide to grade on both process and result, they have to decide how to weigh process vs. result in determining a score.

One problem with grading based only on getting the correct result is that any student with a calculator and an understanding of how to use it can get a correct result, even if they do not understand the underlying mathematical principles. If we only care about whether students can use calculators correctly, then why teach math at all? The reason is because we need people who understand mathematical principles in order to conceptualize and solve difficult quantitative problems that machines cannot do all by themselves—we need mathematicians who can think holistically and creatively. That requires that we measure process—but standardized tests, which measure outcome, do not measure process. In fact, if you ask a professional mathematician whether process matters less than, as much as, or more than outcome, I guarantee they will say that process matters as much as or more than outcome. Some ways of formulating a calculation are better, “more elegant” than others, even when they both get the same result. Thus process matters, and expert judgment, which is to some degree always subjective, is required to evaluate students’ answers to set problems. But as any builder or engineer can tell you, getting the right answer to a mathematical calculation matters a great deal! So we can't grade solely on process, either.

In creating exams, teachers have to decide not only what sorts of problems to set, and in what form (i.e. written out, multiple choice, etc.), but also how to weight different kinds of questions. They have to decide how to prioritize the importance of different mathematical concepts in determining how well students are demonstrating learning the core objectives of the class. They have to decide what those objectives are. They have to decide whether to “curve” their grades or not. Furthermore, even when a test and its scores are “standardized,” the teaching itself may not be. Different teachers will naturally emphasize different aspects of a standardized curriculum, and will be better at teaching some concepts than others. That will likely affect student outcomes on standardized tests—so then, how much are the tests measuring student outcomes vs. teacher performance? This is one (misguided) reason why some national school standards programs have tried to penalize teachers when their students underperform on standardized tests. But that, too, is problematic, because teachers control very, very little of what our students come into our classes with and take away from our classes.

So let’s consider some aspects of the student half of the equation. Going back to the question of results vs. process, some students start out “ahead” of others. The students at the top may make very few gains over the course of a semester—in other words, they did not learn much. In contrast, students closer to the bottom may make lots of progress. Yet if grades are based on outcome, the students who started out ahead and learned little would get an A, while the students who started near the bottom and learned much might still only manage a C. On the other hand, if we measure process, then the student who learned the most but still has a poorer grasp of the subject would get an A, and the student who learned little but has a better grasp of the subject would get a C. That also seems unfair, doesn’t it? Would it be fair to measure both process and outcome, and give both students a B? I don’t know—that’s why it’s subjective.

But wait, there’s more! Evidence demonstrates that students who get a good night’s sleep and eat a good breakfast before an exam will score much better than those who don’t. And students who experience greater stress in their environments tend to struggle more in school—it’s hard to stay focused on math when you’re worried about whether your older brother is going to get killed by someone just because they think he “looks suspicious,” or whether your unemployed dad will be drunk when you get home, or whether you mom will have managed to save enough money from being spent on alcohol to buy you and your siblings some fast food for dinner (because your electricity has been turned off and you have no way to cook meals at home). It’s hard to get enough sleep when you get woken up by the sounds of gunfire. It’s hard to stay focused when your stomach is gnawed with hunger because your parents can barely afford to provide one meal per day, and the hard classes you have to take are all scheduled before you get to eat your school lunch. And so on.

Thus, if a student who lives in a secure neighborhood, in a secure home, with parents who are financially secure enough to provide regular meals and other kinds of support gets an A on the exam, and a student who lives in a dangerous neighborhood, who has had to move three times already this year (changing schools along the way), who sleeps on a mat on the floor in an apartment with thin walls through which she can hear the neighbors fighting until well after midnight, and whose mom is working three jobs just to make ends meet and cannot afford to provide breakfast gets a C on that same standardized exam—does that really reflect the academic merit of each student? If a teacher takes such obstacles into account, though, then those grades are obviously subjective. They are tailored by the expert judgment of a particular teacher about the needs, circumstances, strengths, and growth of a particular student. If the teacher does not take any of these environmental factors into account (perhaps even relying on a blind grading mechanism to ensure they don’t know which exam was marked by which student), then the grade appears more objective, but as I said: it measures outcome, not learning; and that is itself a subjective judgment call about what matters.

All of these factors influence the subjectivity of grades. Nevertheless, we must have a way to measure students’ learning and their grasp of core concepts. We must have a way to give them feedback about their progress. Administrators and school officials like grades because, as numbers, they seem objective. Furthermore, they’re easy to add up and track over time (which is advantageous to teachers as well as administrators and school boards). They’re scalable in a way that more specific written feedback is not. These administrators and school officials rarely stop to ask what those letters and numbers mean—what they are actually measuring. Learning is far more complex than can be measured by any set of numbers, let alone a cumulative course grade or GPA.

And speaking of GPA, let’s talk about the way it’s calculated. Here’s a standard* grading scale:

Percent Grade	Letter Grade	4.0 Scale
97-100	A+	4.0
93-96	A	4.0
90-92	A-	3.7
87-89	B+	3.3
83-86	B	3.0
80-82	B-	2.7
77-79	C+	2.3
73-76	C	2.0
70-72	C-	1.7
67-69	D+	1.3
65-66	D	1.0
Below 65	E/F	0.0

Scores for all graded assignments are totaled up (using weighted algorithms that vary from one class to another) into a final percentage, which is then converted into a letter grade. This reduces the complexity of the data, because it’s the letter grade that gets converted into a GPA. Note that in some cases, a difference of only 1% on a final grade (a score of 89% vs. 90%) results in a loss of .4 points in the calculated GPA—the same as a difference of 5% (an 87% vs. a 92%). The final grade and its attendant GPA tell us nothing about the relative difficulty of the class, what specifically the student actually learned and can implement outside the context of a regimented classroom, or how much progress they made from the beginning of the class to the end. It’s just a letter. It’s just a number.

Anyway, that’s why all grades are subjective.

Sincerely,

Sister Robinson

*Note that I said a standard grading scale, not the standard grading scales. There are variations from one school, academic department, and even one course to another. 

This is my new Betta, Irving Braxiatel. He earns an A+ in Being A Fish. This is the only grade that is completely objective.

A Vocabulary (and History) Lesson

I teach college English--writing, mostly. Because it's college English, I almost never spend any direct instruction time on vocabulary. My students do develop their vocabulary in my classes, but mostly by doing a lot of reading and writing.

I do have one vocabulary lesson, however, which I will give if they ask and aren't satisfied with "read a lot; write a lot." It is this: learn affixes. Affixes are the bits we stick at the beginnings and ends of words to modify their meaning--in other words, prefixes and suffixes. If you learn affixes, your vocabulary increases logarithmically.

The word I most often use to illustrate affixes is "antidisestablismentarianism." Not only does it use a lot of affixes, it's also recognizable and generally regarded as a bit silly, which makes the lesson more memorable.

So I write the word on the board and ask my students to help me break it down. First, we identify the root ("establish") and note that it is a verb. Then we work our way outwards, identifying the affixes and their meanings, until they can successfully decode the word. I'll give you a moment now to try it yourself; the answer is after the break.

Image: A stack of LEGO blocks with the parts of the word
"antidisestablishmentarianism" written on them. CC0 Public Domain.

Politics and Moral Reasoning (An Argument for and against Myself)

I grew up in a deeply conservative household. Most of my family remains conservative or very conservative. I live in a very conservative state and work on a very conservative campus. Yet some years ago, during one of those wonderfully long conversations you have on road trips, my younger brother observed (in a bemused rather than a judgmental tone) that I was "kind of liberal." I laughed at the absurdity of it, because having just finished my first two years of graduate study, during which I had almost daily experienced direct or indirect disparagement of my conservative and especially my Christian values, I was keenly aware that by liberal standards, I was much more likely to be regarded as "kind of conservative." And so it remains.

It's true that I've moved to the middle, and am, at present, probably a bit left-of-center, whereas at the time of that conversation I was more right-of-center. I am, as my brother perceived before I did, "kind of liberal," and it turns out I kind of always have been. I did not experience my shift toward the political center as a shift away from my core values, but rather a more nuanced and self-determined understanding of their application in the world. What has most changed is that I no longer feel at home among conservatives; nor do I think I will ever really feel at home among liberals. Whereas the attacks on my perceived conservatism that I experience among liberals have been sly and insidious, the attacks on my perceived liberalism that I have experienced within my conservative community have been direct and vicious. As painful and exhausting as this frequently is for me, maybe this inability to belong, politically speaking, isn't entirely a bad thing.

This next paragraph is the only paragraph in which I'm going to mention the presidential candidates by name, and then I'm going to write instead about broader principles, because that's what I want to talk about right now--not which candidate was wronger, or more corrupt. I'm tired of that.

I've read a lot of statements this week to the effect that for democrats (or those who voted for Clinton, not all of whom are democrats), this election was about deeply moral issues, while for republicans, it was largely about the economy, or about preserving their way of life. Of course that's no more true than the inverse would be: that for republicans (or those who voted for Trump,not all of whom are republicans), this election was about deeply moral issues, while for those who voted for Clinton, it was about the economy, or about preserving their way of life. While it's probably true that for a lot of voters, this was about the economy, it's worth noting that regardless of their political ideology, most people believe economic issues are moral issues (and they are), and obviously, so is preserving a way of life. It may be true that some people did vote primarily out of self-interest, but I think that's as likely to be the case for liberals as for conservatives.

However, I've really only seen one side of this political divide argue that voting out of self-interest is at least potentially acceptable, and that's the liberal side. Liberals don't usually argue that they vote out of self-interest. Rather they complain that their political foes are voting against their own interests, and that they must really not understand the fact that they are doing so. The implicit argument is either that conservatives are inherently selfish, and/or that self-interest is a valid reason for political decision making. To the conservative mind it must follow that either liberals themselves vote not out of principle but out of self-interest, or that they regard conservatives with outright contempt.

Which is maybe why conservatives have scoffed at liberal moral outrage throughout this whole election cycle. And who can blame them? Liberals make regular sport of scoffing at conservatives' moral outrage, and justify it in turn because conservatives regard them as morally bankrupt. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

To be clear: I believe that liberals vote out of self-interest no more than conservatives do, but also no less (an assertion that is unlikely to win me friends on either side, so I'll just add that I include myself in this unflattering assessment). That is to say, of course people vote out of self-interest, whether consciously or unconsciously. But however rational a political argument from self-interest might be, or however necessary to healthy political life it might be that we analyze the ways that self-interest plays a role in political decision-making, as a persuasive tool for conservatives it is much worse than a non-starter.

Much has been written about the moral reasoning of liberals and conservatives. It is a truism that conservatives tend to think in terms of moral absolutes, whereas liberals tend to be more comfortable with casuistic moral reasoning. To the degree that such a generalization is accurate, it should be obvious why accusing conservatives of voting against their own interests is sheer folly, if it is not malice.

I remember an argument, many years ago, between a cousin and another one of my brothers. This cousin could not understand why, given that both my parents are disabled, and this brother is himself disabled, my family tends to vote for politicians who promise to cut medicare, medicaid, and social security. How could it be logically or morally consistent to vote against the very programs on which my family depends just to get by from day to day? But it is absolutely logically and morally consistent to vote against such programs, even if you benefit from them, if you believe (as conservatives do, with a great deal of political philosophy behind them) that they are beyond the proper purview of government. For conservatives, what matters is voting for what is good, not simply what is good for them. Liberal readers will be quick to point out that this is what matters to them as well, and they'd be telling the truth, too. But to liberals (at least to white, middle- and upper-class ones), it often seems that only they have the moral courage to knowingly vote against their own self-interest; they have so much privilege to lose, and they are eager to lose it. We all see through a glass, darkly. Sometimes the glass is so dark it's more of a mirror than a window on the world.

But if conservatives don't believe in casuistic moral reasoning, what right had my parents to take government handouts which they believe it has no right to give? Pretty much the same right that a liberal who votes for strong gun control would have to shoot someone in the face to save the lives of their children. Put in less visceral terms, even the most ardent conservative can't completely avoid casuistic moral reasoning (and I don't believe that, if pressed, many of them would argue that they should), but they prefer a more clear-cut moral consistency. They would prefer a world in which people are free to keep more of their hard-earned money and choose how to bestow it charitably, rather than have the government take it and decide who deserves to have it, and how much, and for how long.

Having been welfare recipients since almost my earliest memory, my family knows better than most how precarious welfare is to rely on, and how unhealthy dependency on it is. The prospects of homelessness and hunger are terrifying, especially when thinking of your children. If a government is in control of your rent and your bread, you are at serious risk of being enslaved by it. A great many conservatives will tell you that this is why a majority of low-income and people of color vote democrat; they even call it "welfare slavery." Of course private charity can be precarious too, can foster unhealthy dependency too. And contrary to conservative protestations, private charity has never in recorded history been adequate on a widespread scale, which is why we have a social safety net in the first place. But given how well-versed liberals are in critiquing the mechanisms of power, is it really so hard to understand that government welfare is a twice-over exercise of alarming force? Is it really so hard to understand why conservatives who rely on it for survival would still vote to abolish it, not out of ignorance or foolishness but as a matter of principle? Is that not exactly what liberals urge us to do by enacting policies that they argue are necessary to abolish systemic racism, sexism, etc.? Is it not more worthy of respect than ridicule? Alfred P. Doolittle was wrong, you see: you are never too poor to afford moral principles.

Ironically, liberal bewilderment at low- and middle-income conservatives "voting against their interests" also makes it hard for conservatives to take liberals seriously when they talk about "the Patriarchy." What is more patriarchal than the assumption that conservative voters do not really know what is good for them? What is more patriarchal than liberal policies which aim to expand dependence on government to provide for basic necessities, rather than affirming that responsibility to provide food, shelter, and health care belongs with individuals, families, and communities? How can it be morally and logically consistent to uphold the right of self-determination (which liberals seem to hold above almost all others) while denying that huge swaths of Americans are capable of exercising it responsibly on their own behalf?

Well, we liberals and "kind of liberals" would answer, it's also pretty hard to exercise self-determination when you're chronically sick and can't get health care; or when you don't have access to a shower and clean clothes and a car so that you can get and keep a job; or when you have to choose between being able to feed yourself and your kids or getting out of an abusive marriage. Expanding the social safety net isn't about expanding dependence on but about expanding access to welfare, with the goal of helping people get back on their feet as quickly as possible, which we assume is what everyone involved wants.

Except it isn't necessarily what everyone wants--and I don't mean the debunked and extremely demeaning conservative myth of welfare queens and the undeserving poor. I mean the principle which both liberals and conservatives believe in: that people with power want to hold onto it. And if you put the power to help people increasingly in the hands of government, it's not really in government's interests for people to stop needing their help. There's a lot more power in giving than in receiving.

Conservatives, for their part, keep voting in ways that put us all ever more at the mercy of the ultra-rich, who are no less likely to do everything in their already terrifyingly considerable power to hold onto it, who are not answerable to the electorate, and who keep on amassing to themselves a greater and greater share of our nation's wealth, which is our only means of "voting" against them by refusing to buy what they're selling. But since most of their wealth now is self-generating via financial market manipulation, and since government demonstrated after the crash of 2008 that it has no interest in curbing their power to continue manipulating said markets, we're all basically screwed anyway, and that, dear readers, is another thing that conservatives and liberals basically agree about. Alas, it's also one of the many things we seem incapable of agreeing about how to solve.

I've offered a handful of examples of liberals and conservatives arguing from principles (some of them the very same principles) to reach very different conclusions, both of which are (sometimes, sometimes not) based on facts as well as moral reasoning. I assure you, I could offer more, but a thorough enumeration isn't my goal. My goal was to prove to myself, if not to the few people who occasionally read my blog, that it really is possible to find common ground between liberals and conservatives, on principles if not on policies. That ground is where I try to live.

I don't offer any solutions. Perhaps I ought to try, but I don't know what they are, and right now I'm too tired from having to defend my moral principles and my political choices from every direction. A lot of people seem to think that being moderate (like voting third-party) is a cop out, the most morally inconsistent position of all. Maybe sometimes it is. But it's also really hard. It's lonely. At least in the trenches you have lots of comrades to guard your back. It's pretty exposed out here in no-man's-land, and this war doesn't seem close to a cease-fire anytime soon.

So I'll just end this post with a meme that's been making the rounds recently among both my liberal and my conservative social networks. I don't know where the image came from; I wasn't able to track it to its source, but if anyone can point me to it, I'd love to give proper credit.

Episteme, Techne, Phronesis (AcWriMo Update)

Having a schedule of specific times for writing every day is helping, though I missed Tuesday entirely, had to bump my writing time to later in the day on Monday because of a doctor's appointment, and seriously overslept on Friday. It is challenging to change from a habit of fitting my writing time around everything else in my life, to fitting everything else around my writing time. Still, other than Tuesday I did spend at least 2 hours writing, or doing writing-related reading every day this week, and as a result I have written 1300 more words for my first portfolio paper--not even remotely close to my goal, but progress nonetheless. I have also written about 3700 words of annotations for the books and articles I read this week. The balance of writing should really have been be the other way around, but at least my extensive annotations will help me when it comes time to study for my comprehensive exams.

One of the things I'm trying to do with my revision is to construct a new theoretical framework from which to make sense of my data, and in fact to make new sense of the entire project. When I say "make new sense," I mean that it already makes a kind of sense. I know what happened, and even a good deal about the chain of cause and effect that led to the point I'm at now--the point of having a mess of data that I need to write something meaningful about. I'm not exaggerating when I say mess, by the way. It's such a mess that I've spent the better part of the past five months in a cyclical pattern of anger, anxiety, and avoidance over what to do with it. This, my colleagues and advisor assure me, is not uncommon and does not mean I am a total failure as a researcher. So they say.

To make new sense of my research means to go from merely knowing what happened, to constructing particular meaning from it, meaning that will be recognized as meaningful by the community of scholars I'm trying to join. To do that, I needed a theory, grounded in the discipline, which would not only help me interpret the data but also the ultimately quite haphazard method by which it was obtained. To find it, I went all the way back to Aristotle, mainly by way of Janet Atwill and Joseph Dunne.

The ancient Greeks loved knowledge, and they loved to classify and systematize absolutely everything--including knowledge itself. They recognized, and had words for, many kinds of knowledge: nous meant first principles, which must be apprehended since they cannot be derived from observation or logic; episteme, or theoretical knowledge, is logically demonstrable truth; sophia is the power of both apprehending first principles and demonstrating theoretical knowledge; phronesis is practical knowledge, or the virtue of wise action; and techne is productive knowledge--that is, the power of rational creation, or of knowing how to intervene in specific cases in order to bring about a desired end. Whereas episteme is universal, techne and phronesis are particular, and whereas phronesis constitutes a mode of being, techne is about accomplishing specific ends. Though there is some ambiguity about the boundaries (and even the legitimacy) of some of these definitions of knowledge, the ancient Greeks as well as modern theorists generally agree that rhetoric is a type of techne. Atwill, however, gives an account of rhetoric that seems closer to phronesis. Even Dunne admits that the distinction between the two is ambiguous; his whole book is a project of teasing out the difference.

Anyway, the problem I had with my portfolio paper is that I wanted my research project to yield episteme. I wanted to be able to construct a rational account connecting my data to universal principles as unambiguously as possible. It couldn't possibly have worked--not only because I am such an amateur when it comes to designing and conducting such a study, but because the subject itself is one of particulars and not of universals. What I need--and what I ought to be seeking, is not theoretical but practical or productive knowledge, a rational but highly flexible way to deal with inherently messy and largely uncontrollable situations, ideally in order to increase the likelihood of bringing about specific ends. In order to be a techne, that way has to be teachable: it can't just work once, or only for me. As Charles Bazerman explains, "We consider theories successful when we do better with their guidance than without, when we accomplish more of what we wish when following their accounts than when following any or no other account. When considered this way, theories can be seen as heuristics for action" (103). Really though, I'm not sure that what I have--an application of Kenneth Burke's "comic frame"--amounts to a techne, or is more a type of phronesis. In any case such a heuristic would not only help me make sense of the data at hand but also make sense of the larger process of doing this research and writing project--and, I hope, future projects.

If you've actually read this far, congratulations! You're a giant nerd. Here's a cookie. 

...What's that? Aristotle ate your cookie! What a jerk. No, no, it totally wasn't me. It was Aristotle. Check out that guilty look on his face! Well, you know what they say about gifs bearing Greeks.

Source of images: Wikimedia commons.

Jock the TA Octopus

My friends and I have been grading a lot lately. It's that time of the semester. Reading students' papers can be very interesting and rewarding, but it also (as I think most teachers would agree) frequently tends to be a frustrating experience, when it's not simply mind-numbing. Often, we fantasize about ways to make grading easier. Tonight, an exchange about grading between fellow Comp instructors on Facebook somehow led us to imagine sea slugs writing papers, and thence (naturally) to the idea of an octopus TA. 

It's actually not that far-fetched. I recently read some articles about octopus intelligence. They use tools, play, solve puzzles, are amazing escape artists, can crawl around on land, and have awesome camouflage skills. Then Abby shared this little article about Jock, an octopus in Scotland who has taken to cleaning his own tank. Feeling that an intelligent cephalopod like Jock might be interested in switching from janitorial to clerical work, in a moment of stress-relieving silliness, I invented Jock the Octopus TA. Below, I share some of Jock's recent assessments of student writing. Also, apparently octopuses refer to themselves in the third person. They are solitary creatures who evolved at the bottom of the ocean; their brains are not like our brains. Don't question it.

"Jock says your source is invalid. Try JSTOR next time. Jock loves peer-reviewed articles almost as much as he loves rearranging his tank furniture to be more feng shui." 

"Jock wishes to use this paragraph to scrub the scum off the side of his tank." 

"Jock is not interested in how comprehensive sex education is the solution to the failure of our entire educational infrastructure. He thinks you should write a paper about cephalopods' right to privacy." 

"QUOTING ACTUAL SCHOLARS! Jock approves."

"Jock finds your mastery of academic style over substance simultaneously impressive and depressing." 

"Jock is intrigued by your thesis statement, but finds your argument's credibility hampered by poor paragraph organization and weak source attribution."

 image source: dailyvisits.co.uk

 When Jock is not grading papers or cleaning his tank, he practices playing his bagpipes. He and Paul II, a German octopus guitarist, are hoping to start an international Octopus band. Paul II's predecessor was allegedly psychic, but Paul II is an empiricist and doesn't believe in such pseudoscientific nonsense. Inspired by his high-achieving bandmate, Paul II thinks he may have a future in academia as well--perhaps as a research assistant.

How to Solve a Problem Like a Gorilla

Last week when I was at Hogle Zoo with Nancy, we saw this gorilla. When we first got there, he was banging that piece of pipe against the wall, then occasionally looking into it, or sticking his fingers in it, before banging it against the wall some more. At first we couldn't figure out what was going on, and as another woman walked off I heard her say to her companion, "Let's get out of here. This is too depressing." But as my friend and I kept watching it became clear that the gorilla wasn't acting out of frustration. There was something edible stuck inside the pipe (I overheard somebody say peanut butter, but it looked like bits of apple to me), and by banging it against the wall, he was able to knock some of it loose and eat it.

After a while, though, when it no longer seemed to be working, the gorilla looked around himself, picked up that sheet you see at his feet, twisted it up, and shoved it into the end of the pipe. But the twist of sheet was too thick to go in far enough to get to the food. That's when things got really interesting. The gorilla shook out the sheet, grabbed a corner of it in his teeth, and tore a smaller length of sheet off, then twisted this smaller piece of fabric, and pushed it back into the pipe. This time, the improvised pipe cleaner was too small, and Nancy and I began speculating about what he would try next, when a zoo keeper called him into a different part of the habitat, so we never got to see whether he eventually would have figured out how to get the rest of his snack.

Even so, it was a fascinating, eye-opening experience for us. I knew gorillas were among the smartest of animals, and besides being capable of learning rudimentary sign language, have been known to use tools both in the wild and in captivity, but I had no idea they were such good problem solvers. It made me think about other highly intelligent animals, like dolphins and corvids, and how some experts have argued that such animals deserve rights as "non-human persons". I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but the line between human and animal intelligence does seem blurrier than it used to.

I don't know how well this guy's behavior compares to wild gorillas, but it was quite impressive anyway. In fact, I wish more people would be as creative and persistent at solving their problems as this gorilla was. I'm not disparaging my fellow humans' intelligence: I'm sure that, faced with a similar challenge, the average person would have come up with a solution on the first try, with very little difficulty. What impressed me about the gorilla--and what I myself sometimes forget--is that when his solution no longer worked, he tried a different method, and when that method didn't work, rather than just giving up or trying something else entirely, he reflected on what was wrong with his current method and modified it. Sometimes, we need a completely different solution, and sometimes we only need to tweak a solution we already have. But mostly, we just need to keep trying.