Snapshot of the Good Life

Part 1 of an n-part series, where n >= 1.

You go to the farmer's market in Clark Park for eggs, those Mennonite eggs that are better than the eggs that cost twice as much. You got a late start and so they don't have any, but they say if you come back at 1:30 there should be a few more cartons.

You can spare 45 minutes and so you wander up the block until you see the Yumtown USA food truck selling sandwiches called "The Joy" and "The Bat out of Hell." It looks good but you decide you'd better not. You sit on a park bench and get out a book.

Two sentences in, you decide you'd better have that sandwich after all. Minutes later you're sitting on the same bench balancing the sandwich's paper carton on your stomach just hoping to drip the sauce and slaw and grease into it and not onto Cliff Lee's shirt.

The sandwich hits the spot but now you've got a problem. Your hands are a mess, you didn't take a napkin, and this is a park. But no sooner have you considered your options than Kristen Hsu walks over with a red wagon in tow. You explain your predicament.

"This is your lucky day," she says. She reaches into her bag and produces the perfect purple damp washcloth. This day could not improve.

The World Must Be Peopled

"The World Must Be Peopled." Such was my favorite line from William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, which I witnessed for the second consecutive night this evening in Clark Park.

"Shakespeare in Clark Park," having now for a sixth consecutive year provided free performances of the works of he who commanded English like no other man has, is becoming an institution in these parts. It is positively delightful to sit out on the grass in the lovely July sunset with the whole community, being challenged by art which is higher than our faculties rather than being sedated by entertainment that indulges our baser cravings, being shown a portrait of the good life entirely different from that which bombards us in most of our lives.

The experience could be a springboard for several themes with which I have been occupied, but I would like to return to the question of Community v. Network as discussed in my previous blog post, more specifically the related question of Past v. Present.

As is a constant delight to me, dear brothers Jonathan and Ben responded with thoughtful challenges to my views. I hope that we may continue to pursue the truth together, even over this great network and on this ethereal forum, not simply for conversation as an end in itself, but for the discovery of an idea of the good life (that is, the life worth aspiring to and fighting for) greater than either Shakespeare or we have known.

In order to return to this question, let us pause a moment and examine exactly what Shakespeare presents to us in this play. Much Ado is a comedy, and therefore presents something like life in the ideal: life in which the designs of evil may cast a dark shadow, but a shadow that ultimately flees before the light. At the end all is well.

As Shakespeare presents, "all" being "well" is characterized chiefly by a right ordering of human relationships. For him to say so requires saying first off that there is a right ordering, and consequently that there are wrong orderings as well. Contrary to Benedict and Beatrice's early avowals, it is right that they marry, and it would have been wrong if they did not. The estate of Beatrice's father must be carried forward after he dies; Benedict cannot happily remain a bachelor forever, nor Beatrice a maid; the world must be peopled.

Moreover, it was right that Hero should have known no man when she married Claudio. Had the accusation against her not been false, it would have been right that she should be ashamed; in such a situation her father went so far as to say:

O Fate! take not away thy heavy hand.
Death is the fairest cover for her shame
That may be wish'd for.

If we take Shakespeare seriously, we are presented with a double offense. The obvious offense is the content of the moral order here presented, which in our day has been rejected in nearly every respect. But before we arrive at the content of that order, we are first offended that there should even be such an order, objective and received, rather than subjective and created.

That I am in favor of an objective and received order over a subjective and created one, and that the order I believe would better make for peace, happiness, truth, and meaning resembles in many respects the one I have described here, is somewhat beside the point I wish to make. Rather, I would like to ask that we engage the question of the good life critically, rationally, and earnestly, with humility toward the past.

I want to emphasize humility toward the past. It is common to hear easy dismissals of past social orders. But I do not think that most who do so have done the intellectual heavy lifting required to make such statements. In essence, I do not believe they make the effort to understand that which they reject, nor do I believe they claim to.

I can think of two reasons why not. First, doing so is work, and there are many pursuits worthy of work. Second, doing so is unnecessary, because we are fundamentally different than those who lived in the past.

I will address the latter impulse before the former. C.S. Lewis called it chronological snobbery. I believe it stems in part from an idea of social progress that comes from the demonstrated reality of technological progress. The story goes something like this: People twenty years ago did not have the Internet, people seventy years ago did not have television, and people a hundred twenty years ago did not have electricity. Likewise, a hundred years ago women were not allowed to vote and what we now call racism was entrenched and accepted.

It is easy and natural to look at such a picture, which is stark and obvious, and to conclude that just as our technological advances have built on all of the best from our predecessors, so too have our social ideas advanced. We even have an idea of an abstract concept of a "civil rights movement," in which a society slowly becomes aware of a grave injustice in its order due to a minority courageously standing for the truth. I do not know how many times I have heard that such and such issue is "the Civil Rights issue of our time." Such an idea is an analog to the scientific method. It is an idea about how to make progress at a faster rate than it has been made in the past.

While the position that social progress is inevitable and self-advancing is completely natural given a naive presentation of contemporary life, it is overly simplistic. Unlike scientific knowledge, social knowledge does not automatically distill itself over time; that which is wrong is not naturally and inevitably corrected by that which is right. Rather, societies may regress as well as progress. Different ages may be peculiarly prescient, and they may also be peculiarly blind. That statement goes for the past, and it also goes for the present.

If true, we are brought more concretely back to the first objection to thinking about the past: it is hard work. If our age does not have a privileged moral position in the social realm, then the legitimacy of the claims of all other ages might seem to leave us in the midst of an indecipherable cacophany.

While I believe we may receive guidance from the past on how to make sense of the past, I will not dispute that we are left with a very difficult task. But I will assert that doing that work is not as hard as collectively going it alone, of soldiering into the terrifying future with nothing about us but our own wits. I will also assert that buried not so deeply in the sands of time are treasures of such richness that were we to possess them we would not think of questioning whether the manual work of digging was worth the opportunity cost. Luke Skywalker was better able to meet the foe with his father's lightsaber, and Frodo Baggins could not have faced Shelob without the light of an ancient star. We do well to carry with us the wisdom of our forebears.

Finally, I would like to respond to Jonathan's comment by acknolwedging the nonexistence of the kind of ideal past presented in Shakespeare's play. No people has ever built the just society or realized the rightness of all human relationships. But we in our time have considerably better heuristics available to us than "change is good" or "change is bad." In fact, thanks to technological advances, we may be better suited than any people has been to intelligently evaluate the past.

Let us set about the good work together. The future needs the past, and if we do not uncover it I do not know who will.

Communities and Networks

I wonder if the word "community" has become abused.

I am no etymologist, but I believe the original notion of the word refers both to a place and to the people who live in that place. My hometown of Phoenixville and those who live there constitute a community.

People in a community have in common that which pertains to their place, including a particular history and particular ways of life foisted upon them by their shared circumstance. Beyond that commonality, people in a community differ in many ways, but in the traditional sense they are more or less stuck with each other, and they must learn to get along. Healthy community life is a story of unity and diversity, running in both directions.

I fear this concept is more or less antiquated. One reason is that people are not tied as much to one place as they used to be. To give a simple example, my father was born in and died in Phoenixville Hospital. Rest assured, I will not be caught dead in my birthplace of Silver Spring, MD.

Along with this increased mobility, in many places there is no there to begin with, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. In large swaths of the country (including Silver Spring, MD) people are to get where they are going quickly in hermetically sealed containers, with destinations more or less indistinguishable from one another. People in such places are not forced into life with one another, and there are few distinguishing features around which they could build a distinct local identity anyway.

That it is very difficult in the midst of such social forces to keep from becoming alienated from one another and from nature, few will dispute. Indeed, a proliferation of technologies have stepped into the void. Such technologies promise to help us stay connected to those whom we love but who are far off, as well as to forge new and enriching connections.

Whatever the worth of these substitutes, it is important to main the distinction between them and this same idea of a community. They are not communities but networks; not agglomerations of disparate people in a particular place, but organizations of unified people in no particular place. To confuse them as such is to overlook fundamental truths about how human beings are meant to live.

Networks are suitable for organizing people for collective action, for communication about the mission of the group, and to some extent for the exchange of ideas. But they fail utterly at providing meaningful human connection. To take the most basic human relationship, friendship cannot be sustained across a mere network. Through a network it may be kept in stasis for a time, but if a connection is meaningful it will always converge toward life shared in person.

I doubt that these points about networks are very controversial, and yet as the exponentially advancing tide of technological growth drives us into ever more atomized existence, I do not see many making the hard life choices that could make for healthy life in a community. To be honest, I am not even sure how people could do so, short of dropping off of the grid and moving into an agricultural commune. I am by no means exempt from this criticism. I spend in excess of forty hours per week in front of a computer with people with whom I have no stake outside of the workplace, and I spend scarecly four hours per week collectively with those with whom I ostensibly have the closest connections.

Networks are not bad things. In general, I would say they are very good. But they are not communities, nor can they substitute for them. If we intend to preserve a civilization in which people can have meaningful life together, we will have to work very hard, and I suspect we will not receive much help from technology or from the voices of the world.

City Planning Fail

Order is nice, but not if it doesn't make sense.

City planning is a classic example of simplistic type-A thinking gone dangerously awry. Especially in the early and middle parts of the twentieth century, many of the most influential ideas in planning came from people who disliked the messiness of cities. Blocks full of varieties of uses in a variety of architectural styles, used by a variety of people at a variety of times, seemed unseemly.

And so a tendency emerged, especially when planning large initiatives, to cluster similar uses together. For an example in Philadelphia, see the Avenue of the Arts. In one stretch can be found the majority of the performing arts theaters and centers in the city. It makes a certain simplistic sense in that if you want to see a performance you know where to go.

Unfortunately, such ideas do not respect the actual forces which govern what makes city life vital. Exactly the disarray of diversity which the planners scorned is necessary for economic viability, for safety, for anything but quite literally oppressive dullness.

I have read about these concepts in Jane Jacobs's seminal 1960 work on city planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But I was reminded of them this weekend when I encountered exactly these deficiencies on a visit to Washington, D.C.

My friend Pat and I set out to go sightseeing, with a mind to visit national monuments as well as museums at the Smithsonian. All of these are located in the same general area referred to as the National Mall. Here the impulse toward order and uniformity I mentioned earlier is made manifest. Whether you want to see Lincoln's or Washington's memorial, whether the Hirshhorn Museum or the Museum of American History, you go to the same general area.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the advantages to such a layout. Pat and I started at Arlington National Cemetery and were able to spurn the metro in favor of a lovely walk across the Potomac River in the emerging spring sunshine. Without effort we soon found ourselves amazed by Lincoln's second inaugural address as inscribed on the wall of his memorial, and in short order humbled by the names of Vietnam veterans on their memorial. Later we met with a friend at the National Gallery of Art, where we didn't intend to visit but where was just a short detour from our planned destination.

All of these things were made easier and happily car-independent by virtue of each place's proximity. For monuments and memorials, proximity may make a particular amount of sense, since each is not likely to occupy attention for more than half an hour, and would not draw nearly as many visitors as in isolation. Just ask Thomas Jefferson.

However, we were starving.

From the Vietnam memorial, we intended to walk into the neighborhoods and find a place to eat. We walked and found nothing but a food truck which would have been shamed out of Philadelphia for its inventory of hot dogs and bad soft pretzels. Walking farther we found ourselves in the midst of a complex of Federal office buildings, which on a Saturday were perfectly deserted.

Further walking brought us no more options than clones of that same sorry truck from before. We finally broke down and bought candy bars, hoping the carbs would be good for something.

Soon we met my aforementioned friend at the Cascade Cafe inside the Gallery of Art, which we passed up on account of our desire for food other than coffee and gelato.

On our way to American History I remembered that my family and I had the exact same problem years ago. At that point we turned to a lone popcorn vendor to be sated. No sooner had I recalled this fate than we found ourselves facing the exact same vendor, unchallenged and unchanged in a decade. More popcorn followed, along with more hopes for the sufficiency of carbohydrates.

Finally, two hours later, after thoroughly enjoying the museum, we found ourselves at Dupont Circle for dinner. By this point my hunger pangs had turned into a roaring migraine, and ironically I found myself unable to eat. My friends ate hurriedly and we left, headed not to Stefanie's for dessert and catching up, but home for darkness and Advil.

In short, the overuse of segregation in planning the National Mall led to a shortage of viable food options, which led to a headache and a missed chance at seeing two old friends.

Though without certainty, I can guess at some of the roots of this situation. The dearth of respectable food trucks around the mall leads me to suspect that the networks which allow such vendors in Philadelphia to stock up and sell cheap food at a profit do not exist in D.C. The dearth of any commercial restaurant leads me to suspect that such a presence is deemed undesirable in the presence of such hallowed grounds and thus barred, despite its considerable utility.

Moreover, as the metro station's thronged state at 5:30 pointed out, there is virtually no good reason to be at the mall outside of monument and museum hours. In the void left by good reasons, bad reasons creep in, and I would not be surprised if the area is dangerous during such times.

Next time we will be sure to remember our peanut butter sandwiches.

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.

A Friend in Dialogue is a Friend Indeed

Handsomer men would be hard to find.

Jonathan and I both like to think. We also like to talk. We also have amazing chemistry. We also properly spell, capitalize, and punctuate text messages. Put it all together, add some intangibles, and you get some really great exchanges. Let me offer a sample:

Me: Wow, blogging about evolution is really exhilarating for me. I'm not sure why, but I hope it doesn't spill into giving the issue more centrality than it merits.

Jon: Yeah, I hear you. I think it's a little too emotionally charged in some circles.

Me: Yes, people perhaps equate fighting for Jesus with fighting against Darwin.

Jon: Not to mention the personal dimension. For me I mean. And I think it contributes to anti intellectualism among Christians.

Me: YES. I HATE anti-intellectualism among Christians. It is one of our big failures communally.

Jon: It's definitely an area where we play into the narrative of the world.

...

Jon: Yeah. One thing that's been hard for me since high school is not being the scientist in the room.

Me: Guess you will have to fit in a few physics classes [in grad school]. At least audit.

Jon: I don't know. While I like being a poly math, I definitely believe in division of labor. I want to be thinking econ 16 hours a day.

Me: Hah, that's your econ speaking. Try some science and you'll change your tune. That's funny because I love the idea of a "renaissance thinker."

Jon: So do I, but in today's world very often a renaissance thinker is a shallow thinker. It's just not possible to know everything that deeply.

Me: But is the integral of knowledge the same? Can one assign relative worth to breadth vs depth? Is there a place for each? Ephesians 3:18

Jon: You have to go deep to reach the frontiers of knowledge. Although sometimes ideas from other fields have applications in your field, you need depth in your own field to recognize that opportunity.

Me: In other words, take a 17 c.u. major as well as one or two courses in seven varied sectors?

Jon: Well, an undergraduate degree rarely takes you to the frontiers of knowledge. But yes, the principle is there.

Me: I do think in modern academia there is an idolatry that says new knowledge = progress, and that does not necessarily follow. Let's synthesize what we know.

What a friend!

Even a Few

In need of hope.

I'm reading a great book about the role of Christians in the city. Author Ray Bakke, raised in rural post-World War II Washington state, became the reluctant pastor of a congregation of hundreds at the age of 23. In the 1960's he moved to Chicago, an explosive place at an explosive time, and remained there for the next 30 years.

In a chapter entitled "Can We Save a City Like Sodom?" Bakke discusses the transformational power of even a few Christians living in and for a city, as well as the widespread withdrawal of Christians from cities in the second half of the twentieth century.

Bakke writes:

When I became a pastor in Chicago [in 1965], my first community service was the funeral of the neighboring pastor and wife two blocks down the street from the church. They had been stabbed to death during the night in what is still an unsolved crime. One of their three preschool children stopped the postman at the door the following morning and plaintively asked, "Can you wake up my daddy?" As I described the situation to my mother later that week, she asked - doubtless thinking of my own little boys - "How long are you going to stay in Chicago?"

I replied, "As long as I can count on other believers here. If I can't, I'll run far and fast."

From Ray Bakke, "A Theology As Big As the City" (1997), pg. 41

When a 23-year-old aspiring teacher was murdered in Philly recently, my mom asked me if I really wanted to live in Philadelphia. I told her that if everyone who was able to leave the city were to do so, things would be even worse for those who couldn't get out.

Bakke believes that the welfare of a city is contingent on the presence of God's people within it. Indeed, he notes Jesus calls his followers salt (a preservative) and light (exposing, eliminating darkness). Genesis teaches us that Sodom* could have been spared by the presence of ten of God's followers (18:22-33). Indeed, in Jeremiah we learn that Jerusalem could have been saved by even one seeker of the truth (5:1).

So I think Bakke is onto something. If God is who the Bible says he is, cities desperately need His people, any of His people, to live in and for them, to death if necessary. And those who do so must unite in their purpose, or all will be adrift.

These principles are the those that lead me to seek employment in Philadelphia now that I have graduated. It's time to put my money where my mouth is.


On a final note, contrast the importance of this call with the widespread response of the church when things have gotten rough in the cities:

I don't need to tell American Christians that we live in a day of large-scale Christian withdrawal from large sections of our cities. The people running away from Los Angeles are bumping into the people running away from Chicago, somewhere in Colorado's pristine mountains, or so it seems at times. The results: social gaps grow, God is furious, and our nation is at risk (44).

We have a history of flight and failure, not to atone for (for Jesus has done that), but to learn from. Let us boldly approach the throne of grace and find our Lord's heart for his city:

Can we save a city like Sodom? Of course we can, and we must. Thankfully the preserving effect of a few righteous people is much more widespread than we might think (46).

"For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says."
Mark 11:23

*It is a common misconception that God destroyed Sodom primarily because of sexual immorality in the city. Ezekiel 16:48-50 reveals that the primary reason God destroyed it was that though the people of the city were economically prosperous, they did not help the poor and needy. Is there any city today in which this neglect is not widespread?

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.]