Great Plain Drain

Meritocratic winners debate whether the world is getting better and better,
or whether it is getting worse and worse.

Tomorrow's anticipated World Series opener between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees carries an interesting twist. The starting pitchers, C.C. Sabathia for the Yankees and Cliff Lee for the Phillies, each won Cy Young awards* in 2007 and 2008, respectively, while playing for the Cleveland Indians.

In other words, if you're a Cleveland baseball fan, you probably want to kill yourself.

I'm struck by how similar this situation is to a more widespread and more consequential phenomenon in our country. I witnessed it as a student at Penn, a university which boasts an acceptance pool from all fifty states and many countries besides.

People entering Penn may come from all over, but graduates are not nearly so far-flung. They tend to congregate in the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast and of the West Coast. My dear friend Ben, who returned to his native Minnesota for law school in Minneapolis, is by far the exception.

The result is what some have called the "Problem of Meritocracy:" the nation's smartest are drawn from all over to the coasts, leaving the "flyover states" desolate of leaders and thinkers with perhaps the highest potential. This article puts it aptly, likening the SAT to strip mining:

For the meritocratic system is a method that uses impersonal technology (e.g., the SAT) to help us identify valuable natural resources (bright kids), and then pitilessly removes them from their ecological contexts (local communities), never to return them, thus creating cultural landscapes just as ravaged as the denuded mountainsides of Kentucky coal country.

I am not sure what I think about this issue. If you ask me, the principal advantage in going to the University of Pennsylvania compared to the much-cheaper Penn State University, where one could ostensibly learn the same facts and study the same subjects, is in being surrounded by brilliant friends and classmates. This grouping would not have been possible had we not been brought from hither and yon to the same twelve square city blocks.

In addition, my primitive understanding is that the "knowledge-based economy" into which the United States continues to develop requires collections of really smart people. Take a company like Google for example, whose achievements have made significant improvements in daily life for just about everyone who uses the Internet. Those achievements were all developed by groups of very smart people who likely came from all over.

Yet I also know that a great deal of this coastal congregation amounts to selfish gain rather than the greater good, as a large stack of currency trading books I saw today reminds me. The University instills certain values, but duty and responsibility are not among them, nor anything that acknowledges anyone is responsible for students' success but themselves.

Perhaps the great danger in meritocracy lies here, in the easy bridge it offers to entitlement. Those who have conquered meritocratic establishments do so by definition according to their own achievements. That is probably a better system than the old standby of heredity, but it hides the many factors that students have no control over yet which play crucial roles in their successes.

Since students are led to feel entitled to their standing, nothing inhibits them from adding to that privilege rather than sacrificing for others' benefit. Notable losers in this exchange may be the communities which poured their resources into raising these children to begin with, or anyone not blessed with the same kind of golden ticket.

I have pride in my hometown of Phoenixville, which is doing just fine without me, but to which I would love to contribute meaningfully someday. I know there are countless other locales which are not so lucky, and which could be enlivened greatly by the devoted attention of their native sons and daughters.

Make no mistake. I will be rooting for Cliff Lee to absolutely topple the Yankees hitters, while I hope C.C. Sabathia is himself toppled by the Phillies' bats. But lurking in the back of my mind, as I watch the game with many friends who are lucky in the same way I am, will be a feeling of loss for the Cleveland fans and the large swaths of America which they represent.

*The Cy Young award is given annually to the American League pitcher and the National League pitcher deemed to be the best in his respective league.

Consumers, Producers, and Capitalists

Consumerism is an oft-criticized force in these blogging circles. There can also be a backlash from those who feel such critiques are implicitly critiques of capitalism itself. I'm thinking of this guy.

At any rate, I recently came across an elegant statement of why consumerism is bad. In the short book "Handoff," Jeff Myers says that today's youth have been "raised to consume rather than produce" (92).

In this way of looking at it, consumerism is not a choice made in a vacuum. It is the flip side of production. It is taking rather than giving.

As for the assertion that today's youth are more consumeristic than previous generations, that at least seems a reasonable hypothesis. In my picture of the past (by definition idealized and incomplete), it seems like Americans found their identity more in their occupation or their trade. Just look at all of the surnames that are trades - Mason, Baker, Smith, and so on.

In college I noticed people still defined themselves by their (future) occupation, but I think more indirectly. People want to be investment bankers not for the sake of the work that investment bankers do, but for the lifestyle that they lead. In other words, not for what they produce, but for what they consume.

Now, I don't think it's right to find identity in an occupation. The Christian finds his identity rooted in Christ, and what the Gospel says he is - a saved sinner, a child of God. There is no need, nor any real possibility, of adding to this with our own works.

But there is real value in being creative (in the most Genesis 1 sense of the word), in doing good works for the Lord. In fact, these are to adorn our lives as sweet offerings to God, and we look forward to a reward for faithful stewardship.

Consumption in itself isn't bad - for, as Jesus says, the laborer is worthy of his wages (Luke 10:7). But as a mode for finding our identity, it is quite dangerous.

In sum, consumerism is empty because it finds identity in taking. "Producerism" is still off the mark, but perhaps less so.

And this need not be a critique of capitalism, which is based on the premise that we all benefit from exchange - in other words, from simultaneous giving and taking.

True Education

Lasagna facilitates true education.**

The high school physics textbook from which I will be teaching next year begins with a philosophical treatise on the nature of science and its relation to religion, the arts, and technology.

Were I teaching a worldview class, this chapter would provide me with weeks of material. A pure physics course could probably skip the chapter without missing a beat. Fortunately, the philosophy of my school allows the former to supplement the latter.

Among many thought-provoking quotes, I find:

A truly educated person is knowledgeable in both the arts and the sciences.

I believe this summarizes the philosophy behind liberal arts education. Penn's College of Arts and Sciences, the school from which I have my degree, still practices this idea in theory: In addition to 18.5 courses in my major (physics), I had to take courses from seven varied sectors, in addition to language, writing, and quantitative data analysis requirements. In this way, no student gets out of the College without being exposed to the full spectrum of arts and sciences.

In theory.

It doesn't surprise me that the above quote would come from a physicist. Most physicists I've encountered are also students of the liberal arts. Many consider themselves philosophers, or so their actions indicate (like the writing of this chapter), and many have deep love for literature. Indeed, I feel I could have almost as easily majored in English or history as physics or biology, and I treasured the excursions into these other subjects which my requirements permitted me.

However, I can't help but feel that the reverse is considerably less true for most students of the liberal arts. While most of my colleagues in physics enjoy studies in music or philosophy or religious studies, friends majoring in liberal arts disciplines are likely to take the easiest and fewest courses in science and math possible.

Geology is a favorite because it fulfills two requirements simultaneously. So instead of plumbing the wonders of creation with the time permitted them, students suffer through a semester of rocks and plate tectonics (interesting, to be sure, but hardly at the top of the list) and learn very little.

I think this highlights a real failure. A popular excuse is that these students simply can't handle real science courses, but I'm skeptical. Students at Penn have demonstrated considerable aptitude in math and science before being admitted.

Instead, I think there is very little popular appreciation for the sciences. And it is quite possible that introductory courses for non-majors go about things the wrong way.

Perhaps physics courses for non-majors should include conceptual overviews of the great staggering truths of physics: To describe light as either a particle or a wave, or even as both, is inadequate. Time moves slower when you move faster. It is literally impossible to know exactly where something is at a specific time.

I could go on. Having an inkling of these ideas changes fundamentally one's conception of reality, something which undoubtedly deserves expression in the arts. Intro courses should make them clear.

However, I think the core problem is that our culture somehow devalues science. Science is for geeks and mad professors, but only technology has relevance for the general public. It doesn't have nearly as much to teach about the human condition than literature or history. Or so the assumptions go.

Bunk, I say. As a science teacher, I hope to instill otherwise.

As for you who haven't filled your science requirements, do yourselves a favor. Don't take the boring way out.

*My old housemate Carlos is a notable exception. An English major, Carlos wishes he had done physics. Now there's a man with his head on straight.
**Gosh, by year's end two of these people will be married, and the other two likely aren't very far behind. Growing up is weird...

E-mail to Penn InterVarsity, 5/31/08

The visual representation of an abstract concept! Ahhhh!

Subject: Summer Reading

Hello friends,

I write to you this afternoon from my porch in southeastern Pennsylvania. Thunderstorms from earlier have rolled away and it's fresh and cool and pretty out.

You may have heard us at various times in the previous year prattle on about the importance of community. You may not have quite understood what the big deal was. It seems a simple concept, and our emphasis on it may not seem very profound. After all, don't we all live in community? Our school is in the city, and most of us further live in communities within College Houses.

The truth is that while community is a really simple idea, when it functions it has profound power to transform those who live in it. Community is not just an agglomeration of people; it's what occurs when those people take on a collective identity and life together. In real sense they become part of one another and their web of interactions changes all who are involved.

"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." - Proverbs 27:17

That might sound a tad on the creepy side to you. I think twinges of creepiness come from examples we've seen where acquiring a collective identity has meant relinquishing an individual one. We've seen streams of Nazis marching in lockstep. Communist propaganda seems to advocate this relinquishment. And there's always the Borg Collective from Star Trek.

But the paradox of Christian community is that individuals lose none of their individuality in joining it. On the contrary, as we collectively acquire more of an identity together, our individual identities are actually enhanced. We become more ourselves.

This is the mystery that we are talking about when we encourage community. It's something that must be experienced to be fully understood, but take my word for it when I say it's a marvelous thing indeed.

"If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. " - 1 Corinthians 12:26-27
(Read all of 1 Corinthians 12:4-27 for all of the classical Biblical passage on community.)

I write this to all of you today to invite you into a facet of our community that you can participate in even over the summer. I'm of course talking about - blogging!

Blogging is something I'm passionate about. A group of blogs can provide many of the same functions as an in-person community, and in some cases they do an even better job.

Blogs can be incubators of discourse. They allow people to present ideas in a format often better thought out and more communicative than in-person discussion. Comments sections and other blogs allow people to respond and have conversation.

Posters and readers alike learn and develop ideas significantly faster than is often possible in person. The result? We learn more about who we are, who we'd like to be, and what we want to do in the world. Iron sharpens iron.

Now, our in-person community of InterVarsity also has a collection of blogs associated with some of its members. As is also evident when we come together in person, they display the wonderful variety in individual identity that God has given each of us.

As I said, these blogs provide a vibrant opportunity for growth in community even now over the summer. I've included a directory and short description of many of these blogs.

And if this is the sort of thing you're interested in, I encourage you to join in on the fun. Don't let any feeling that you don't have value to contribute stop you - as with our fellowship at large, I'm certain that is not the case.

"To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." 1 Corinthians 12:7

Yours,
Nick

[Note: Here's another e-mail that I could have made into a post but was just easier to leave as-is.]

Econ 002 is still easier.

I just completed my student loan exit counseling session, a required pre-graduation rite of passage for those of us with debt awaiting us.

After learning about the horrors of default and forcibly completing a monthly budget, I was grilled on the gritty details. The quiz involved difficult questions such as:

(6) Federal student loan money should be used for:
A down payment on a stereo system
A trip to California
A new wardrobe
Educational related expenses

Side note: What does this question say if you already go to school in California? Probably "A trip to Pennsylvania."

Upon completion, I was greeted by the pleasant message:

Nice job, you got them all right!
In these uncertain times, it's good to receive some affirmation.

Christians and Abstinence - How?

James wore footwear generally considered appropriate for a bridegroom.
From what I can tell, he and Kate's honeymoon hasn't stopped yet.

Maddy Kronovet's post today brought up a couple of practical criticisms of abstinence in Christianity that I thought worth addressing.

She begins by saying that those who choose to abstain are, "fighting a losing battle. Biology is hard to beat. We are programmed to want sex.*"

In large part, she's right. I say from experience, it is hard. Very hard. There is good reason that many Christians marry "young."

But this is a battle which need not be losing. In fact, the entire Christian message can be summed up in saying that life is a battle which need not be losing. The victory is for the having, thanks to Jesus's free gift.

Even with free victory, we fail often, especially when measured up to standards that say even a lustful look is adultery. We are hypocrites.

But that's not the point. For the same reason that we ought not condemn others for having sex outside of marriage, we ought not condemn ourselves: Jesus is the only Judge, and as his sacrifice has declared us righteous, we dare not make ourselves a higher authority.

We Christians are often criticized for failing to practice what we preach. The problem is that it is impossible to practice what we preach. Unconditional love, moral perfection - these things are far beyond human capability.

A great misunderstanding of Christianity is that the point is to live a moral life. The real point is that the life God requires is impossible to live, and so Jesus did it for us. We do seek to live morally, not out of obligation, but out of gratitude and because (as I attempted to illustrate with my last post), it is simply better for us. Just as God designed our bodies to function better when drinking water than when drinking gasoline, our souls thrive under a lifestyle of moral nutrition - love and obedience.

To recap: chastity is hard but it's worth it. We mess up, but it's okay because not messing up isn't the point.

I also wanted to address the statistic Maddy brought up, the latest in a long line showing that abstinence pledges don't seem to be all that effective.

I'm not surprised. Christian youth are often told that they shouldn't have sex, but the good reasons why they should wait are seldom explained.

Even if they were, kids are almost as dumb as adults, in general view the present as much more important than the future, and are subject to powerful and new hormonal urges.

So it's no surprise that an emotional commitment made in a peer pressure situation one evening doesn't hold fast when the moon hits their eyes like a big pizza pie. I see little value in these pledges. I do esteem much more highly parental dialogue and example, but even then kids make their own choices. Sin and biology are hard to beat.

Again though, it's not the point. Those who haven't had sex out of marriage aren't better Christians than those who have - we're all equally terrible Christians. The beauty is that once mistakes have been made, Jesus instantly invites us to live as if they hadn't, guilt-free.

*I agree with Maddy that we are programmed to want sex, but we may disagree on who the programmer is. "It is not good that man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18).

Christians and Abstinence - Why?

What you don't see is that Matthew is wearing Chuck Taylors.
So unoriginal.

In Maddy Kronovet's post in The Spin today, entitled "Do I feel like a virgin or a whore tonight?", Ms. Kronovet criticizes students who choose to abstain from sex before marriage, with an emphasis on those who do so for religious reasons.

As is often the case when someone writes about a culture with which he or she is not well acquainted, the post reveals a two-dimensional understanding of why Christians choose abstinence and what it's like for them.

Being a Christian and acquainted with what might loosely (and somewhat incorrectly) be called evangelical culture here at Penn, I thought I would try and explain the basics.

The big myth is that Christians believe that sex is bad and you shouldn't do it. In this myth's narrative, Christians who abstain are blindly following teachings from the Bible which are archaic and counterintuitive.

On the contrary, Christians have a higher view of sex than popular perspectives today do. Christians believe that our bodies are inseparable from our selves, and that the physical union of a man and a woman in sex signifies and accomplishes the complete union of those two people.

This complete union is also known as marriage, after which, as Jesus says, "they are no longer two, but one flesh" (Mark 10:8). Note that I said sex both signifies and accomplishes this union: more than just symbolic, sex actually encompasses the spiritual and physical reality of two people becoming one.

From here, it's not difficult to see from where a belief in abstinence before marriage comes. In fact, in this view pre-marital sex is impossible. All sex is marital.

Jesus goes on to say in that passage, "Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate" (Mark 10:9). That doesn't mean that people can't separate, as many demonstrate with their lifestyles. But in the Biblical view, all of this sexual activity is nothing less than adultery.

Do we Christians look down on the sexually active majority around us? We shouldn't. To the extent that we do, we are sinning just as much as those we would think ourselves better than. The same Jesus that said the above words also said, "Judge not, that you be not judged" (Matthew 7:1). Judging is Jesus's job, and when we do it we are pretending to be him. Unlike him, we're not perfect, and so we are made hypocrites.

That's not to say we are indifferent. Christians wish others would be abstinent as well, not simply because we want to enforce an arbitrary moral code, but because we believe that the Bible's view of sex is so much better (in all senses of the word) than Cosmopolitan's, and we would love for everyone to share.

"Why knock something you haven't tried?" asks Kronovet. I would repeat the same challenge to her. It is countercultural to put off pleasure now for pleasure later, but when the future pleasure promises to be much greater* than the presently available one, abstinence is a proposition which makes good economic sense.

And economic sense is something upon which most students at Penn can agree.

* What do I mean by greater pleasure? By Cosmopolitan's standards, this statement is ridiculous. Cosmo and Western culture at large teach that the utility of sex is in its ability to bring mind-blowing orgasms, and the quality of one's sex life can be measured by the integral of all sexual pleasure over time. In this view, any period of abstinence is a period of no sexual pleasure and thus a decreased quality of sex life over a lifetime. So why wait?

By greater pleasure, I mean that sex in marriage is about more than physical gratification. Christians thank God for mind-blowing orgasms, but they have a lot more to thank him for, too: Having someone to be completely vulnerable - naked - with, requiring trust which is only possible in light of a lifetime commitment. The joyful hope that their union may create new life, and that the same union will provide the environment for that life to thrive. Having a companion with whom to split life's sorrows and amplify life's joys. I could go on.

Much more than antiquated and arbitrary, the Christian view of sex is beautiful enough to marvel at, too complex to be easily dismissed, and ultimately worth waiting for.

**As you can see in the photo above, my good friends Matthew and leighcia recently married. For some of leighcia's thoughts the week leading up to the wedding, see here and here. Matthew's, here and here.

Response: Corporate Cosmopolitans and the End of Place

Matthew has a well-developed sense of place.

My good friend Matthew recently wrote an excellent essay in response to Manuel Castells's "The Social Theory of Space and the Theory of the Space of Flows," which I have not read.

A major point that Matthew highlighted was the creation by elite corporate society of a globally homogenous living space. Meaning, people with elite (consulting, managerial, etc.) jobs which jet them across the country and the world can find the same living arrangements and lifestyle wherever they go: the same diet, the same hotel furnishings, and the same separation from any locals who aren't serving them.

In this way, these people are freed from the demands that crossing between places of different cultures and histories would place on them, since everywhere that they go is part of what Matthew calls "one global, virtual city of the elite, with outposts all over the physical world" and what Castells calls the "space of flows."

This transcendence of culture and place is precisely what makes such people elite. Instead of traveling to different "places," each with its own unique nature, corporate elites merely inhabit extensions of the same "space." In this view, the value of different locations rests only in the sum of their consumable attributes; New York and Los Angeles become the only cities of worth in the United States. "Whatever they got here they got there, right?" Matthew says of anywhere else.

I notice such an outlook as a student here at Penn.

I was annoyed last semester when the Undergraduate Assembly announced that they would be bringing The New York Times to campus for free this semester. Why not The Philadelphia Inquirer? I realize the Times is larger and regarded as the nation's paper of record, but inescapable is a sense of widespread indifference about the city we live in.

It makes sense in light of the space of flows. Students at the visible top of the ladder at Penn are corporate elites in training, and New York is the nearest gateway into the space of flows. Penn's location in Philadelphia is irrelevant, since the University is just a clearinghouse for the big firms. So students spend four years without leaving the campus and don't look back after graduation.

Penn gives plenty of lip service to being part of the surrounding West Philadelphia community, but its claims are ridiculous in light of the indifference its primary constituency holds toward its surroundings. The University is in the business of attracting the most gifted graduate and undergraduate students, and it doesn't do that by caring about West Philly. The students that come are in turn just passing through, on their way to jobs that also couldn't care less about the city. So they don't care either.

It bothers me for several reasons. For one, as a native to the Philadelphia area, I know that there is a ton that people are missing by ignoring it. There's much of value to learn and experience here, and to see students close their eyes to it is frustrating.

For two, whether or not individual students and the University at large put anything into the city, they are certainly reaping its benefits. Instead of being part of the community, they are - you guessed it, Jon - merely consumers.

This outlook is reinforced by the same philosophy governing the space of flows: West Philly is the space that students inhabit during their time here, not a place. Its own narrative is something separate, parallel to their own lives, not something of which to collaborate in writing the newest chapters.

And the upshot is not that the West Philly community loses and the University community wins; rather, everyone loses, for to be divorced from place is a great cost to the student. Likewise, were the student body to view itself truly as a part whose welfare is bound to its whole, even if temporarily, everyone would benefit.

Penn's community indifference is a popular topic to complain about, but I thought interpreting it in the framework presented by Castells was insightful in understanding it and in linking it to the greater values that drive people through Penn.

Understanding is well and good, but what can be done about the problem aside from complaining? Well, let's think about it.