Political Talk & Political Drama Part 2

So, my previous post, Political Talk & Political Drama Part 1: Election 2016, was about the first panel discussion hosted by the New York Society for General Semantics back on September 9th. And by popular demand, we held a second program on the same subject after the televised debates were over, on October 26th. The panel, "Political Talk and Political Drama Part 2," was again held at The Players, the historic club over in Gramercy Park in Manhattan. This time around, the participants on the program were...

Terence P. Moran, Professor of Media Ecology, New York University

Sal Fallica, Professor of Media Ecology, New York University

Robin Levenson, Professor of Communication  Studies, LaGuardia Community College

and once again moderated by yours truly, NYSGS President and Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, Lance Strate

And while the first panel was great, this one was, in many ways, even better. More talk this time, and less drama. But once again, don't take my word for it, you be the judge, because again we recorded the conversation on video and published it on YouTube, and you can watch it there, or right here:






So now, we're all set in advance of Election Day, and prepared for whatever new reality we may be faced with on the day after.

I'll post more on NYSGS later on, but for now, again, please feel free to check out all of the resources available on the New York Society for General Semantics site. And you can subscribe for updates, you don't have to be a New Yorker, or anywhere nearby.

Political Talk & Political Drama Part 1: Election 2016

So, back on September 9th, I held my first major event for the New York Society for General Semantics. September 9th was the 70th anniversary of the NYSGS, and the program I set up was a panel discussion entitled, "Political Talk and Political Drama: Election 2016," held at The Players, the historic club over in Gramercy Park in Manhattan. The participants on the program were...

Terence P. Moran, Professor of Media Ecology, New York University

Marvin Kitman, author, humorist, and critic

Susan J. Drucker, Professor of Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations, Hofstra University

Paul Levinson, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University

and moderated by yours truly, NYSGS President and Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, Lance Strate

And in my perfectly unbiased opinion, it was great. An exciting, insightful, and at times dramatic discussion. But don't take my word for it, you be the judge, as we caught it all on video and uploaded it to YouTube, and you can watch it there, or right here:





I set up a second panel on the same topic more recently, more on that in my next post.

And please feel free to check out all of the resources available on the New York Society for General Semantics site. And you can subscribe for updates, you don't have to be a New Yorker, or anywhere nearby.

Trump By Design

So, with Election Day almost upon us, I figure I better post this now, before it's too late. And with Halloween just past us, I apologize if this is a bit scary to consider. 

But this past winter I was asked to write a guest blog post for Visible Works Design, a company run by my old friend from Hillcrest High School, Peter Darnell, and to write something about politics, since that was the hot topic at that time. I should add that this wasn't the first time I wrote a piece for them, but more on that another day. 

So this time around, I wrote a short essay called Trump By Design, which was posted over there on March 23rd (you can check it out there by clicking on the link). And maybe it was coincidence, but then again, I think not, that their site was hacked shortly after the post went up. There was just some weird and obscene verbiage added onto the post, I'm not sure what exactly because it was fixed before I knew it happened. So maybe the hacker didn't like my post, but if so, I'm not sure if it was because I was critical of Trump, or because I said I think he's going to win.

Be that as it may, I will point out that I wrote this at a time when it looked like Trump was not going to secure the Republican nomination. All the pundits and broadcast journalists were saying there was a ceiling to his support and that he would never be able to get to the needed totals to be nominated on the first ballot, which was the only way he could win. These were the same folks who laughed at this candidacy summer before last, and refused to take him seriously all last fall.

Well, I guess the joke's on them, isn't it? And us too, unfortunately.

I mean, even if he loses on Tuesday, he will have come awfully close, and the only thing that stopped him was some very idiosyncratic stuff that no one could have predicted, that X-factor. And that's if he loses.

There has been much water under the bridge since I wrote this, but I won't alter or adjust the original post, and you can be the judge of how good my assessment of the situation was, and is.

Trump By Design 

Maybe it was foolish on my part, but I made a bet with a colleague that Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination and defeat Hillary Clinton, becoming our next president. My one stipulation was that if, somehow, Bernie Sanders becomes the Democratic candidate, the bet would be off. And I'll admit that the problem with my bet is the possibility of some X-factor intervening, like a third party run on the conservative side, for example.

But holding aside some unusual or unforeseen occurrence, I feel pretty confident in this prediction. And maybe I'm wrong. Believe me, I hope I'm wrong. But I do think it's been pretty apparent that most of the pundits and politicians have been in complete denial about Trump's candidacy, and incapable of assessing his chances in an objective manner. And so, reports of his political death have been repeatedly and frequently exaggerated. It's practically a ritual by now.

But what is the secret of Trump's popularity? Some say it's his political stance, which represents populism and a new strain of American nationalism, but his critics argue that he has no real policies; others say it's the state of the electorate, that many voters are angry and feel betrayed. I don't want to discount these factors, but they don't actually answer the question of, Why Trump? Why not, say Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, or Rand Paul for that matter? Or, on the Democratic side, why hasn't Bernie Sanders taken the lead over Clinton?

The answer lies in the nature of the media we use for the purposes of political communication, the media through which election campaigns are conducted. When it comes to campaigning via the electronic media, factors that used to matter when print was the dominant medium of communication, and campaigns were conducted by way of words, both spoken and written, no longer carry the same weight. All too often, these factors, factors such as ideas, policies, ideologies, simply put, the content of communication, what might otherwise be referred to as the substance of our messages, make little or no difference in election outcomes, at least outside of local arenas.

Instead what counts would be style, tone, appearance, personality, image. We are in the era of image politics, a point stressed back in 1985 by Neil Postman in his classic study, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. It's an argument I followed up on more recently in my book, Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited. In our electronic media environment, candidates live by the image, and they die by the image.

It's no secret that Trump has a certain genius for image-making, that is, for marketing and public relations. The Trump brand first became well known during the 1980s, the decade in which Ronald Reagan, former star of movies, radio, and TV, was elected to two terms as president. During the 80s, automobile executive Lee Iacocca made the ability to communicate effectively on television part of the formula for leadership in the business sector, as he saved Chrysler from bankruptcy; there even was talk of Iacocca, who had no experience in politics, as a potential presidential candidate, although nothing ever came of it.

As for Trump, he was far from being the nation's wealthiest or most successful entrepreneur or business executive, or even real estate developer, but his fame at that time had already eclipsed his contemporaries. He made himself into a brand name, and never faded into obscurity, in contrast to another self-promoting rival from the casino industry, Steve Wynn. He was able to maintain a relatively positive image, unlike real estate rival Leona Helmsley, who was reviled by the public, became known as the Queen of Mean, and was ultimately convicted of income tax evasion. He was able to attain high visibility by becoming a television personality, much like Martha Stewart. Stewart, while not despised in the manner of Helmsley, faded from public view after being convicted of insider trading.

Of course, Trump is much more than a real estate developer and business executive. He is a media professional, and television star, having hosted 14 seasons of The Apprentice between 2004 and 2015 (half of which were in the format of The Celebrity Apprentice). Interestingly, one season of a spinoff featuring Martha Stewart aired in 2005. Significantly, with Trump out of the picture due to his presidential run, the next season of the series, scheduled to run later this year, will be hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like Reagan, Schwarzenegger is a movie star who became the governor of California (and would have been a viable presidential candidate were he not a naturalized citizen). It is not so well known that the Arnold, like the Donald, is also successful in the business of business, but what the program banks on is not simply star power, but the ability to convey an image of leadership.

Schwarzenegger as a stand-in for Trump certainly will help to reinforce Trump's leadership image, but also recall that Trump's role in The Apprentice was to give assignments to the contestants, and then evaluate their performance. His signature line in the series, you're fired!, established him as the person in charge, an individual capable of making firm and often difficult decisions. He played a similar role in an obscure and short-lived spinoff, Donald J. Trump Presents the Ultimate Merger, a dating program. The important point here is that his experience on television reinforced the image he promoted of himself as a successful business executive, and built on that foundation an even more powerful image of himself as a powerful and effective leader. Celebrity is helpful in political campaigns, but ultimately it is not visibility alone, but conveying the right kind of image, and being able to engage in image management, that wins and loses elections.

While Trump's opponents have argued that running for president is not the same thing as starring on a reality television series, the simple truth is that the race for the White House is, in fact, a form of reality TV, televised debates for example having more in common with quiz and game shows than with actual, traditional debates. And this plays to Trump's strengths as a professional on-camera media personality. He knows how to play to the camera, how to speak to the microphone, and how to appeal to the viewers at home. He understands that television is all about attracting audiences, and he knows how to get their attention, how to provide the entertaining content that they're looking for, the kind of content that works well with the inherent bias of television as a medium. As he is not shy about pointing out, he singlehandedly has vastly expanded the viewership of televised debates and news programs that he's appeared on.

Trump is a performer, and so far he has out-performed his Republican opponents on the television screen and in the ballot box alike. Television, as a visual medium, also favors attractive individuals, and whether or not you agree with Trump when he says he's good looking, I think that objectively we can at least say that he's not unattractive. Although he has been subject to some mockery over his hairstyle, and the orange tint of his skin, it is also true that he is tall, and historically the taller candidates tend to win, a fact that does not bode well for Marco Rubio's future chances. Moreover, Trump's features are relatively soft and not distinct, in contrast to Ted Cruz's sharp features. In Marshall McLuhan's terms, he has a low definition appearance, one that is consistent with television being a cool medium.

McLuhan also suggested that what we call charisma amounts to looking a lot like everyone else. As hard as it may be to accept, visually, Trump is actually easy for many Americans to identify with, to see themselves in, to serve as a screen to project themselves onto. His face is very much a face in the crowd (the name of a prescient film on the power of television-based celebrity). And sure, he's rich, but he acts the way most Americans would act if they won the lottery. His nouveau riche manner is instantly relatable, and that has much to do with the early and powerful clash he had with Jeb Bush, the Bush family being old money, elitists types. That's why George H. W. Bush was a one-term president after riding Reagan's coattails to the White House. George W. Bush avoided his father's fate by putting on a Texan persona, Texans being the opposite of New England snobbish types. Jeb didn't have that advantage, and didn't know what hit him as Trump took him apart rather quickly.

Experts who focus on content find much to criticize in Trump's discourse, just as they did with George W. Bush, but if you focus on tone and style, Trump talk exudes unwavering confidence and strength, with a fair amount of humor, and calm. As much as he has been increasingly associated with voter anger, violent crowd behavior, and accusations of bigotry, he rarely looses his cool, keeping his temper even while he is quick with a comeback or put down. By way of contrast, John McCain's image as angry or irritable did not serve him well, especially as the polls showed him losing ground to Obama following the financial downturn in the fall of 2008. As someone who promotes himself as a master at making deals, Trump knows how to make a sale, and knows that the key to selling things is first and foremost to sell yourself.

Trump is a made-for-television candidate, but let’s not overlook his use of other media. Obama demonstrated the power of social media in 2008, and Trump has proven to be quite adept at using Twitter, understanding that what counts is how often you tweet, how fast you get your tweets out there, how well you can get across a point in no more than 140 characters, and once again, how entertaining your messages can be. Again, critics call him out for misspelling, and in doing so they break one of the unspoken taboos of online messaging. Trump also knows quite well the power of retweets, which not only flatter the person retweeted and allow for engagement with and direct encouragement of his followers, but also allows him to send messages that he doesn't have to take responsibility for, as they are not his own. This is a lesson learned from journalists, who maintain their image of objectivity and factuality by using quotes from others, rather than making their own statements. If I say the moon is made of green cheese, and the news media quote me saying so, then what they have printed is true, it is true that I said that the moon is made of green cheese, and it doesn't matter that the content of my statement is actually false.

If Trump's televisual image is cool in McLuhan's terms, his use of this type of social media is what McLuhan called hot, that is, intense and provocative, in keeping with the hotter nature of text. The two complement each other, heating things up via social media, cooling them down via television, and the telephone, which he also uses quite effectively when he calls in to TV news programs.

So far, he has been able to convey a sense of genuine authenticity through his direct, seemingly off the cuff comments, which come across as not filtered through the typical kind of diplomacy and political double talk of other candidates, neither politically correct nor drawing on weasel words to avoid making clear and direct statements. McLuhan observed back in the early days of television that the electronic medium favors real life, and reality TV is just the latest manifestation of this bias, one that is shared by social media. It is worth recalling that reality programming is actually created by a host of unseen production people, running cameras, lighting, microphones, interviewing, etc., and then edited to create a narrative, and that social media can also be used in a deliberate and planned manner to create a semblance of spontaneity.

Trump makes almost all of his opponents appear phony by way of contrast. This will certainly be the case if and when he goes up against Clinton; Sanders, whose messages have been remarkably consistent, would give him more trouble on this score, as he also has conveyed a strong sense of authenticity. Trump differs, though, in being quite inconsistent, but his bouncing from topic to topic, from hot text to cool video, and even from one position to another, has managed to keep his opponents, and the journalists covering him, very much off balance, while keeping his audience entertained, and his followers stimulated and energized.

Reagan was known as the Teflon President, because no matter how many times he said things that turned out to be false, or otherwise displayed his ignorance on his topic or misspoke in some way, nothing would stick to him, that is, nothing affected his popularity. Trump is very much reminiscent of Reagan, and has that same Teflon quality about him. Not slick, just non-stick. Indeed, much of the negative response to Trump strongly mirrors the criticisms of Reagan, which is why I believe Trump will wind up in the White House as well. As for the criticisms of Trump's public speaking, characterized by a kind of stream of consciousness nonlinearity, they pale in comparison to what was said about George W. Bush's lack of fluency and malapropisms, what became known as his Bushisms. I would also note that W., our first MBA president, also tooted his business background. Trump's similarities to our last two two-term Republican presidents lead to me to think that Trump has much better than even odds for being elected for one term, at least.

Trump will be our first designer president, our first brand name Commander-in-Chief. Whether he could defeat a Democratic opponent like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama is hard to say, but Hillary Clinton is another story. Simply put, she does not come across all that well on television, and whatever social media competency her staff enjoys is not enough to compensate. Her strong negatives will to a large extent cancel out those of Trump. We would do well to remember how Gore lost the presidency in 2000. And sure, he won the popular vote, but with the economy booming under Bill Clinton, and the country safe and secure in the period between the end of the Cold War and the new reality that would emerge after 9/11, Gore should have won in a landslide, rather than make it so close that his opponent could claim victory by the margin of a handful of hanging chads. Gore lost because his image, his appearance and personality, did not work well as content for the electronic media. Hillary Clinton has a similar kind of awkward quality to her, and and having tied herself so closely to President Obama, will have a harder time overcoming her inherent limitations, and will be especially vulnerable should anything go wrong domestically, especially with the economy, or in regards to our foreign affairs. Also having a public identity intimately tied to her husband is a two-edged sword.

Win or lose, the race for the Republican nomination has turned into a referendum on Trump. Assuming he gets the nod, the general election will be as well. The presidency will be his to win or lose. As it stands right now, I think the odds are in his favor. And maybe I'm wrong. And there certainly are many other factors that can intervene between now and November. But if you understand the contemporary American media environment, you have to take Trump very, very seriously. And you have to understand that every aspect of American society has been and continues to be radically mutated by our new modes of communication.

Miss Me?

So, I know everyone has been asking where I've been, blogwise, why I haven't been posting, when will I be back, why the hiatus, when will our long national nightmare be over, that sort of thing. Or not. But I feel like I owe you an explanation, even if you don't feel the same way. It's sort of like why we say oops! when we trip or drop something, a bit of face-saving for our own sake, if not for others.

Anyway, here's the story. I've been working on a book, it was under deadline, I was way behind, got an extension, but still wanted even more than needed to get it done, not just for the sake of meeting the extended deadline, but for my own peace of mind. This is a book that I needed to get done. Anything else would be something I wanted to do, that would be nice to do, or good for my career, or whatever. But this is a book that, in my mind, it was necessary for me to do. It may sound morbid, but you never know when you will be called away, so to speak, and this is a book I needed to complete before going to my just desserts or wavy gravy or whatever.

And no, it's not a magnum opus, or magnum pi (π to the nth place). It's more like a manifesto maybe, or just a statement setting out some basics. Can you guess what the topic is? If you know me, you probably have, yup, it's media ecology. As you may know, I long ago said I was working on a book called Understanding Media Ecology. And I was, but other things came up, like starting up the Media Ecology Association. Later on, I was asked to write a review essay on media ecology for the Jesuit journal, Communication Research Trends, which I did, it was entitled "A Media Ecology Review," and it was quite extended, taking up the entirety of the Volume 23, Number 2 issue back in 2004. I then revised and updated that review of the literature, incorporating it into my 2006 book, Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study.

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Echoes and Reflections represented one part of what I had wanted to do in Understanding Media Ecology, and I would have moved on to the next part, but other things came up, like becoming executive director of the Institute of General Semantics, a position I held for three years before moving on. I had always considered general semantics to be part of the field of media ecology, but I developed a deeper understanding of its significance at this time, and while Neil Postman's assertion that media ecology is general semantics writ large may not have been entirely accurate, he was definitely correct in noting the strong connection between the two. During this period, I wrote a number of essays exploring general semantics and its connection to systems theory as well as media ecology, and collected them, along with a few earlier pieces, for my book published by the IGS in 2011, On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology.

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Two of the essays in On the Binding Biases of Time were about Neil Postman, which perhaps had something to do with an editor at the publisher Peter Lang asking if I would be willing to write a book following up on Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. It was an offer I couldn't refuse, the result being Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited, published in 2014.

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Amazing Ourselves to Death included a relatively concise explanation of media ecology as a field and intellectual tradition. Following the publication of the book, I agreed to edit a book series for Peter Lang on media ecology. I had previously edited a book series entitled Media Ecology for Hampton Press, and since they wanted to differentiate this new series from the old one, we discussed some possibilities, and I reluctantly mentioned my book title, Understanding Media Ecology, which turned out to be the best choice for the series, hence Peter Lang's Understanding Media Ecology book series. By the way, two books have already been published in the series, including The Future of the Library by Robert K. Logan and Marshall McLuhan.

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So, with my original title taken, and my thinking on the subject evolving, the new title I decided on was simply Media Ecology, and the subtitle I came up with was, An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition. This book is a synthesis that I hope will serve as an introduction to media ecology, and as a way of moving the field forward. What I hope it does is set out some foundations for media ecological inquiry, while providing a philosophical foundation for the field.

So, anyway, that's what I've been up to, and I was determined to get the thing done, so I set aside all non-essential activities, like blogging. It's a book that I had to get done out of my sense of obligation, entirely my own sense I hasten to add, to my mentors, to Neil Postman and Christine Nystrom. The book is now out for peer review, and should be in print some time next year. Now that it's done, I'm still trying to catch up on other obligations, but I do hope to have some time for Blog Time Passing, for whatever it's worth. So, see you soon! 

 

New York Society for General Semantics

So, back in January, I became president of the New York Society for General Semantics. And I know what you're thinking⎯why did I wait until now to let you know about it? Well, the organization had been inactive for a couple of years, and it's taken some time to get it started up again.

Actually, it's still in the process of re-organization, but I've set up a new website at http://nysgs.org which has a modest amount of resources, as well as general information about the organization and what it represents. Go check it out. And please feel free to subscribe for updates on events and other news, especially if you are in the vicinity of the New York Metropolitan Area.

Here's the new logo for the NYSGS, courtesy of my old friend Peter Darnell of Visible Works Design:

As you may know, that letter A with the bar or line over it is a symbol for not A or null A, which is short for non-aristotelian, general semantics having been developed as a non-aristotelian system by its founder, Alfred Korzybski. What he meant by that was a kind of post-Aristotelian logic that could take its place as principles of thought alongside the new non-Newtonian physics and non-Euclidean geometry that were associated with Einstein's paradigm shifting revolution in physics in the early 20th century. Science fiction fans may also recall the Korzybski-inspired null-A novels by A. E. van Vogt.

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Anyway, when I first became associated with the NYSGS many years ago, it was run by Allen Flagg, and held monthly meetings that generally consisted of a speaker, or other kind of presentation, on topics of interest, such as language, symbols, media, and technology, communication, consciousness, and culture. I don't know very much about the early history of the organization, I'm sorry to say, except that it was founded in 1946, on September 9th of that year to be exact. And its name indicates a connection to the larger Society of General Semantics that was founded three years earlier by English professor S. I. Hayakawa (later to become notorious as president of San Francisco State College and then United States Senator from California), and communication scholars Wendell Johnson and Irving Lee. In 1948, the SGS changed its name to the International Society for General Semantics, a name it retained until it merged with the Institute of General Semantics in 2004.

The NYSGS has had a long association with the IGS, including serving as a co-sponsor of the annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and the symposium that follows, which is almost always held in New York City. And given the New York connection, there is also a significant association with Neil Postman, who was the former editor of ETC: A Review of General Semantics for over a decade⎯ETC was founded by Hayakawa and published by the SGS/ISGS until the merger, after which it has continued to be published by the IGS, most recently under the editorial helm of my friend, Ed Tywoniak. And among the resources that are available from the site are Postman's piece on media ecology and general semantics from the 70s, and a wonderful document entitled, Instant Pep* for Language (*Postman Enthusiasts Project) by the Staff of Fort Meyer Elementary School, Arlington, Virginia, originally published by the ISGS in 1968. And there's more of interest on the site as well, but I'll leave it for you to explore.

So, my plan is to hold events at The Players, a club in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan that was originally founded by Edwin Booth, the most famous stage actor in 19th century America, and brother of the infamous John Wilkes Booth, along with Mark Twain and other notables, back in 1888. According to their website, "The Players is a private social club that draws its membership from the international theatre community, the related fields of film, television, music, and publishing, as well as respected patrons of the arts." This should add some creative energy and synergy to our programs.

Our programs will begin in earnest in the fall, but we'll be holding a preliminary meet-up at The Players on June 2nd. It's free, but registration is required. All the information is over there on http://nysgs.org, so let me wrap this up right now, so you can stop wasting your time over here, and go take a look, and maybe sign up. And otherwise, stay tuned! 

The Lifelong Learning Community

Back when I started this blog in 2007, one of my earliest post was entitled The Fragile Community, which was about a book co-authored by my friend, the distinguished communication scholar, Larry Frey. Subtitled, Living Together with AIDS, the book is based on ethnographic research Larry and co-author Mara Adelman conducted on a residential community for people with AIDS.

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The reason this came to mind is that one of my former MA students from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Margaret Roidi, recently published an article in Synergy: The Online Journal for the Association for the Tutoring Profession. According to the website, Synergy "is the national peer-reviewed online journal for ATP; the mission is to provide an avenue for scholarship and discussion to further the knowledge of learning processes, tutoring practice and the administration of tutoring services." As for the article she published, its title is: "Tutor Training Procedures in Higher Education: Creating a Community of Lifelong Learners" (and yes, it's available online, I've conveniently linked the title to it, so just feel free to click away).

Now, aside from congratulating a former student on a significant achievement, I do want to acknowledge the important role that tutors play in the university setting, a role that often goes unremarked. Sometimes students need something more than class sessions can offer, some degree of individualized help, and this is where tutoring comes in. It can make the difference between student success and failure. As a faculty member, I do want to note that we try to give personal attention to students who need it. But much depends on class size, and even at an institution like Fordham University, where there are almost no large lecture classes and a tradition of cura personalis, there is only so much that a faculty member can do.

So, tutors are an essential component of any institution of higher education. That much is clear. But when you think about what tutoring entails, generally working with students on a one-on-one basis, it seems almost the antithesis of community. And yet, more and more, there is an emphasis in higher education on building communities of learning. As Roidi discusses, tutors are, or ought to be, an important part of these learning communities, to improve their teaching skills, and outcomes with students, and the university as a whole. As she puts it in her conclusion, "a community of tutors can benefit tutees, institution of higher learning, academic support programs, and the community at large" (p. 12)

Educational technology is an important component of this kind of initiative, as she also notes: "Tutors as well as instructional designers must possess a highly adaptive leadership mindset that can be influenced heavily by the rapidly evolving technological environment (McLuhan & Gordon, 2003)" (p. 3). Certainly, a media ecological observation!

And I think that the basic statement that Adelman and Frey make in The Fragile Community is worth repeating here: "Communication is... the essential, defining feature⎯the medium⎯of community" (p. 5). This is as true for learning communities as it is for residential communities, if not more so.

Building community⎯there once was a time when we could take it for granted as a basic function of communication, and the basis of all human life. Here and now, we find it more challenging than ever before, and therefore more essential.

The Angel of Death and the Choice of Life

Here's my latest op-ed to appear in the Jewish Standard, published in the April 22nd edition of the weekly paper. Published just in time for Passover, it's a reflection on the significance of the holiday, entitled, The Angel of Death and the Choice of Life:

Passover is a celebration of freedom, a holiday marking the defining moment in Jewish history, our liberation from bondage.

Passover represents the birth of a nation. The clan of Jacob, just an extended family, becomes a multitude, the children of Israel.

And the story takes us through a revolution against an unjust monarch and an escape from tyranny, to the framing of a constitution at Sinai. No wonder that the holiday resonates so powerfully here in the United States. The Jewish story of slavery’s abolition even includes a civil war of sorts, with the confederacy that turns to worship the golden calf.

The powerful injunction to remember that we were slaves in Egypt stands in sharp contrast to the mythologies of other peoples of the ancient world, which cast them as the descendants of gods or otherwise of supernatural origin. Passover establishes the foundation of Jewish ethics—not simply to value freedom, but in the words of Micah, “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” You can’t get much more humble than being a slave.

Birth is a common theme for holidays that incorporate the rites of spring, as does Passover, with the rebirth of nature symbolized by the green vegetable and the egg on the Seder plate. The other side of birth is death, a topic we don’t like to think much about. But death, unlike taxes, is unavoidable for each and every one of us, whether we acknowledge its existence or not. The very name of the holiday Passover, or Pesach, refers to the Angel of Death passing over the dwellings of the Israelites.

The escape from servitude only occurs after the escape from death. First there must be life. Only then can there be hope, and the potential for freedom. But what is left unsaid is that the escape from death is only a temporary reprieve. Does this imply that the same might be true of the escape from bondage? Certainly, there is no permanent liberation from the inevitability of death.

The Jewish-American anthropologist Ernest Becker, author of the 1974 book The Denial of Death, argued that we human beings are the only forms of life on earth that are aware of our own mortality, and that awareness represents a crushing blow to our self-esteem. The function of human culture is to provide some form of compensation, through beliefs in various kinds of immortality, and by providing us with heroic roles to play in the lives that we lead. Of course, when it comes to the denial of death, religious beliefs have played a major role, especially in the very specific conception of an afterlife that many provide.

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Passover stands out from all of the other traditional holidays on the Jewish calendar in its direct confrontation with death. By way of contrast, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we pray that we may be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life, with barely a mention of life’s opposite. On Passover, however, death is personified in the guise of an angel. Since an angel literally means a messenger, this implies that death is a message from God, the same God who exiled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to keep them from eating from the Tree of Life and becoming immortal.

The message is one of choice. In Deuteronomy (30:19) God tells us, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you may live.” While we do not choose to be born or to die, there are choices still to be made. The Pharaoh chooses death time and time again, beginning with his order to kill every newborn Hebrew male, continuing with his refusal to let the Israelites go, resulting in the death of the Egyptian firstborn. The Pharaoh’s choice of death culminates in the decision to pursue the escaping Israelites, resulting in the drowning of the Egyptians army.

Pharaoh’s choices come as no surprise, insofar as he represents an ancient cult of death. We may marvel at the pyramids and Sphinx as wonders of the ancient world, but we also should recall that they were built with the blood of forced laborers, and that they are enormous tombs carrying the embalmed remains of the Pharaoh along with those who served him in life and were sacrificed so that they might follow him in death.

While the Pharaoh chooses death, the Israelites must make an active decision to choose life. When it comes to the tenth plague, the Angel of Death will not discriminate automatically in favor of the Israelites, will not spare anyone by virtue of their descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or because they are circumcised, or because they worship Adonai. It is not Jewish blood that saves the Israelites, but the blood of the sacrificial lamb. This requires, first of all, being a part of the community. If you were not, how would you learn about what had to be done? It also requires choosing to follow the instructions.

We may have replaced the sign made with lamb’s blood with mezuzahs long ago, but the lesson remains: choose life, that you may live.

The Angel of Death who executes the tenth plague is no Adversary. It is not the equivalent of the Christian Satan or Lucifer, nor is it a lord of the underworld along the lines of the Greek god Hades. The personification of death quite naturally is a frightening figure. Its depiction as a creeping darkness in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments, usually broadcast on television at this time of year, has been the stuff of childhood nightmares for six decades now.

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I recall being disturbed, in my youth, by the image of this angel in a Haggadah that illustrated a Passover song, Chad Gadya. That the “Holy One, Blessed be He,” finally “smote the Angel of Death, who slew the slaughterer, who killed the ox…” clearly communicated the hierarchy, but this didn’t change the fact that both the slaughterer and the ox ended up dead.

Which brings me back to the point that Passover is a holiday that confronts death rather than denying it, and offers the alternative—to choose life. The Angel of Death is neither an object of worship nor the embodiment of evil. The personification of death is frightening, without a doubt, but as God’s messenger, it is at the same time an Angel of Justice, under certain circumstances an Angel of Mercy, and without a doubt an Angel of Humility.

Ernest Becker eventually came to the conclusion that in our contemporary culture, we have come to place too much emphasis on enhancing self-esteem. Humility serves as a counterweight to that tendency, the humility that comes from remembering that we were slaves, and the humility that comes from remembering that our lives are finite.

Passover is a celebration of redemption and renewal, but above all it is a celebration of life, whose meaning and value can only be understood through its contrast with death. So as we drink our four cups of wine at the Seder, let us also remember to say L’chaim! To life!

Space Travel and Religion

The March 18th issue of the Jewish Standard carried a feature article that I played a part in, in suggesting the topic and providing a quote and some background information. The piece, written by reporter Larry Yudelson, is entitled Bound for Glory (and yes, click on the title to read it online). It continued with the following subtitle: "Leonia rabbi, shul president contribute to anthology on space travel," shul being the Yiddish word for synagogue, the shul in question being Congregation Adas Emuno, in the town of Leonia, in Bergen County, northeastern New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, and the shul president is none other than your humble host here at Blog Time Passing. Oh, and the anthology you may remember from my previous post, Interfacing With the Cosmos.

Here's how the article looked in print, by the way:

Of course, it's a bit hard to read, that way, so let me help you out out by providing the text:

When Barry Schwartz was 11 years old, he begged his parents to let him stay up way past his bed time so he could watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

Outer space seemed close at hand in the summer of 1969. President Kennedy’s promise of landing a man on the moon within the decade had been fulfilled. Hollywood imagined routine Pan Am space shuttles to orbiting space stations by the year 2001.

That promise was not fulfilled. Pan Am went under, and the Challenger exploded, and though tickets have been sold to the optimistic and rich, tourist flights to space have yet to launch. The astronauts of Apollo 17 left the moon in the winter of 1972, and nobody has returned.

Barry Schwartz dreamed of being an astronaut as a child, but when he grew up he landed not on Luna but in Leonia, where he is rabbi of Congregation Adas Emuno. This month, with the publication of Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion, a new anthology from Fordham University Press, Rabbi Schwartz finally finds himself bound up with astronauts both real and fictional, if only in the pages of a book.

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The volume begins with an interview with astronaut John Glenn, conducted by one of the editors, Dr. Paul Levinson. Dr. Levinson is a professor at Fordham University’s Department of Communications and Media Studies. He has published several science fiction novels and was president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but it was a nonfiction work, 2003’s Real Space: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet, which was the springboard for this new anthology.

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One of the topics he explored in that book, Dr. Levinson said, was “how come we made such little progress in getting off the planet since the ’60s? Even now no human beings have been back to the moon. We haven’t been to Mars.”

This got him thinking about people’s expressed motivations for exploring space. There was the military motive that fueled the Cold War space race of the ’60s, the pull of scientific curiosity, and more recently, the view that there is money to be made in orbit.

What was missing in these discussions, he realized, was “something that underlies all these motivations, the almost spiritual exploration of knowing more about who we are in the cosmos. Getting out to space satisfied the yearning every sentient being has, to learn a little more about what this is all about, what are we doing here, what part of the larger picture are we part of.”

And thus was born “an anthology where people from different religious backgrounds and people who are not religious at all write about this intersection of space travel and spirituality,” he said.

Dr. Levinson’s interest in space travel, like Rabbi Schwartz’s, goes back to childhood. “I was absolutely riveted when the Soviets launched the first sputnik,” he said. “I thought it was amazing.”

The book includes an essay from the Vatican’s astronomer, an anthropologist considering the symbolic meaning of objects taken to space by astronauts (including the Torah scroll taken by astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman), and scientist and science fiction writer David Brin giving an original midrashic reading of Genesis to justify scientific discovery and creativity. The book’s fiction includes a seder-in-space scene excerpted from one of Dr. Levinson’s novels and a story by Jack Dann, the editor of Wandering Stars, a 1974 anthology of Jewish science fiction, about a far-future rabbi on an alien planet.

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As for the actual rabbi in the book—Rabbi Schwartz entered the anthology via Dr. Lance Strate, Dr. Levinson’s colleague at Fordham who is president of Rabbi Schwartz’s shul. Dr. Strate—who is a Jewish Standard columnist—has an essay of his own in the volume, which mentions Maimonides but takes a somewhat more skeptical stance toward space exploration than the other contributors do.

In his essay, Dr. Strate suggests that the desire for space travel reflects a “longstanding desire to look upward, perhaps a returning to the trees,” he said. He quotes Lewis Mumford, who condemned the space program during the Apollo era as a rerun of ancient pyramid building, in which “a select few individuals were the subject of an extreme amount of labor and resources to send this select few to that culture’s conception of the heavens.” Mr. Mumford argued that “our time and effort and resources would be better spent dealing with our needs here on earth. The overall thrust of the essay is that space travel is about the search for transcendence but we’re not going to find it.”

Rabbi Schwartz, however, argues in his essay that astronauts found transcendence in space—and that they were able to bring it home with them and share it with the world.

“Our journey into space is really about our journey back home,” he writes in an essay that began as a High Holiday sermon in 1989, 20 years after the first moon landing. The essay looks at how the views from space changed our view of earth.

He quotes Saudi astronaut Bin Salman: “The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth.”

When Rabbi Schwartz first delivered the sermon, he ended by holding up a photograph taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts that showed the blue globe of the earth.

“From outer space we have gained an inner understanding; a fresh perspective,” Rabbi Schwartz writes. “We are one community on one Earth; a dazzling bundle of interdependent life, hurtling through the void. We are one human race; and must we not join hand in hand across the globe, to care for this our home?”

That's how the article ends, but let's also note the little box that comes right after the piece's conclusion:

Yes, on Saturday, April 9th at 10 AM Congregation Adas Emuno will be hosting a special edition of our weekly Sabbath morning Torah study session, with Paul Levinson joining us for a discussion that's sure to be out of this world! I'm looking forward to it!