So I recently went to the Golden Corral location in Marysville.
Needless to say I was somewhat horrified and even a little disgusted. Not because of the Golden Corral chain, mind. They provided excellent service and given the high volume of customers at the time, I can find no fault in their food outside of the fact that it is a buffet.
In my opinion, the food was bland, overcooked, drowned in fat, and grossly over salted. The patrons, bless their hard-working hearts, were for the most part grossly overweight or too young to have put on the pounds yet.
I felt traumatized by the experience because sometimes, less is more, and the culture that I've cultivated around myself here in Bellingham is not particularly one of excess. As a college student in the United States, it's by no means poor, but it's not overindulgence, not gluttony.
When we first sat down, I felt markedly out of place for immediately making a beeline for the salad. There was no line. I was the only person getting food from the salad section for at least ten minutes. I could have been happy with simple spring greens and a little fruit and nuts and cheese and a few small pieces of chicken breast meat. That was just enough to constitute a satisfying, if small, meal.
Buffets are the epitome of Americana in that they promote a lifestyle of too much the same way Wal-Mart does. They target themselves at the lower classes, promoting "low prices" while gunning for profits. They're effective at this in that they can create appeal, and in ways there's often no choice or no alternative.
I'm blessed to be in a situation where I have options and to have the education to see the larger systems at work. They make me uncomfortable.
Showing posts with label Class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Class. Show all posts
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Walt Whitman, Privilege and my Frustration with my Peers
I'm slightly unnerved in my 18th/19th Century American Literature class.
The last few days we've been talking about Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.
It's a great poem, kind of long and I'm never sure which edition people have looked at. For my class, we read the 1855 edition: http://www.naturalawareness.net/songofmyself.pdf
Over the course of our class discussion, we talked about how what Whitman seems to be trying to do is to deconstruct hierarchies within society and represent the "I" he refers to in this poem as an operative everyman. "I" am the working class, the lowly, mundane, earthly everything of existence, and "You" are me.
"E pluribus unum" or "Out of many, one." We are all equal. We are all beautiful in all our dirty little lives.
The last few days we've been talking about Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.
It's a great poem, kind of long and I'm never sure which edition people have looked at. For my class, we read the 1855 edition: http://www.naturalawareness.net/songofmyself.pdf
Over the course of our class discussion, we talked about how what Whitman seems to be trying to do is to deconstruct hierarchies within society and represent the "I" he refers to in this poem as an operative everyman. "I" am the working class, the lowly, mundane, earthly everything of existence, and "You" are me.
"E pluribus unum" or "Out of many, one." We are all equal. We are all beautiful in all our dirty little lives.
"I do not press my finger across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds."
But I think what Whitman fails to recognize in this inclusive, generalized optimism, is that he is speaking from a place of privilege. Whitman is an educated, white male of the upper-middle class. He can afford to deconstruct and challenge these societal norms. Where someone like Phyllis Wheately whom we read earlier in the quarter had to heavily veil her messages within her poetry and exclusively use a Christian discourse in order to even be considered the legitimate writer of her work.
As I understand it, the American Trancendentalist movement of the mid-19th Century as a reaction to the intellectual Empirical style of thought of the late 18th Century, transitioning away from Romanticism and creating a more "American" style of writing was still confined to the intelligentsia. Much as Whitman would like to pretend he's the ants and dirt and grass and his appeals are meant to represent one in the many, I can't accept it.
I realize I'm coming from a distinctly modern perspective, but to say "Look at yourself and look at me, we are equal" delegitimizes the differences of identity inherent between them and what's more, as a person with privilege, Whitman, in saying this, reasserts his privileged position. Thus, his entire discourse is a fallacy that contributes nothing towards the working, poor, socially stigmatized people he seeks to celebrate. He glorifies them without doing anything to change their position.
I will accept that for his time, Whitman was pretty radical in embracing and creating a wholly American style. And this was needed to pave the path for future discourses, but how is he so different from the 18th century abolitionists parading around freed slaves like Frederick Douglass?
As I understand it, the American Trancendentalist movement of the mid-19th Century as a reaction to the intellectual Empirical style of thought of the late 18th Century, transitioning away from Romanticism and creating a more "American" style of writing was still confined to the intelligentsia. Much as Whitman would like to pretend he's the ants and dirt and grass and his appeals are meant to represent one in the many, I can't accept it.
I realize I'm coming from a distinctly modern perspective, but to say "Look at yourself and look at me, we are equal" delegitimizes the differences of identity inherent between them and what's more, as a person with privilege, Whitman, in saying this, reasserts his privileged position. Thus, his entire discourse is a fallacy that contributes nothing towards the working, poor, socially stigmatized people he seeks to celebrate. He glorifies them without doing anything to change their position.
I will accept that for his time, Whitman was pretty radical in embracing and creating a wholly American style. And this was needed to pave the path for future discourses, but how is he so different from the 18th century abolitionists parading around freed slaves like Frederick Douglass?
Friday, February 12, 2010
We have an infestation
My Parasites
I have a few parasites of my own, and for once I'm not talking about the Fool.
These are more vampires upon my time and energy than mental illness.
Anyone remember these:
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jg9oz
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jgbfc
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jg9rw
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jgawg
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jgau0
Or how about that phone call I got from @cephalopod on Wednesday asking me to go to lunch with her so she could physically stay up?
http://www.plurk.com/p/3q8fvd
http://www.plurk.com/p/3q7wbp
I serve my purpose to these people. In the capacity of friendship, feedback generator and bouncing board, etc. I am available because I make myself so, sharing books, time and ideas and what do I get?
I get exactly what I ask for. Which by nature of our relationship, isn't much: the occasional conversation and tea. Did Harker ask much of Dracula? What does the country mouse ask of the city mouse? What did Master Abraham ask of Murr?
As I sit in class now, listening to the conversation about Serres and what we're getting, what we want from the text, I think the question applies here as well. We are the excluded third of Parasite. It's pushing us where we're used to pushing the text, forcing our way in. What are we asking of the text? But also, what is the text asking of us?
I state it here: I'm pushing. I'm asking that you push back.
And that's what I believe the text is doing as well. Pushing us and the only way we can understand it is to push back.
Our Parasites
I take this quote from a blog post made by someone in the Nanotext class I had with Tony last spring.
The post was about a girl, Eli (pronounced like what is perhaps the more familiar spelling of Ellie), who visited the class at the invitation of one of our peers and the reactions the class had to her on plurk afterward.
I bring this up because I see it as being relevant to our Parasites class. Would we have the same kind of reaction? I hope that with all our discussion of the interruption that the answer would be no, but if I recall correctly, even in Nanotexts, we'd just finished a rather lengthy section on alterity and the meaning of the other, the exterior.
In thinking about this though, I'm brought to the question of what is a parasite unto our collective Parasites class? Clearly there are a select few of us in the 2:30 class who are parasites upon Tony's time. We're welcomed by the gracious host that he is, but even still, we encroach on his office hours, essentially owning the class from the inside out as we discuss what is, what was and what is to come: often eying others as an intrusion.
And here, I think the answer is in ourselves. We are our own parasites, interrupting and disturbing the quiet status quo of the class. To relate to another text from Nanotext we are the Ned Slades upon the Hand. We have infiltrated the system and are slowly destroying it from the inside out. This is our education.
A last point on the idea of ideas
I've already posted this as a plurk update, but wanted to reassert and expand upon it in a more cohesive format:
We hear talk of energy and tend to think it is bound within the realm of physics, that it obeys the first law of thermodynamics, but with the energy of ideas -- or rather ideas as a form of energy -- this is wrong. Ideas and technology work together as a kind of perpetual energy machine, generating more energy (ideas) than is input and required in other systems. The teme is self-replicating. It is parasite.
It's a matter of infrastructure. We've built the kind of infrastructure in our technology that allows this growth with minimal maintenance. To send a message to 20 people no longer takes a three hours of writing, 1+ days travel per message, etc. Yes, we've expended that kind of energy in building the technology to allow us to bypass that, but that was a one-off. We do not use that every time we send a message. We're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Once we've sent off enough ideas, the exchange of that being sent versus that being put in to maintain the system becomes uneven. Our investment has more than paid for itself.
If we think of the meme/teme as a unit of the energy of an idea, we see that this growth has the potential to be exponential. A hyperlink, a small underlined blue word can send us to a page full of thousands more words, images and even videos. Or you input 5 words, and it's replicated 20 times with the same amount of energy it took you to put those in.
We see it here in that video we watched in class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU
A simple search of a few key words brings us thousands (and even thousands upon thousands) of search results, of ideas. And I've said it before and I'll say it again; ideas are dangerous. Ideas are parasitic in their ability to control you. This whole update represents the small seed of Tony sitting next to me in class on Wednesday and mentioning the word energy. Like clicking an internal hyperlink in my mind, we take one simple word and expand it.
I have a few parasites of my own, and for once I'm not talking about the Fool.
These are more vampires upon my time and energy than mental illness.
Anyone remember these:
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jg9oz
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jgbfc
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jg9rw
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jgawg
http://www.plurk.com/p/3jgau0
Or how about that phone call I got from @cephalopod on Wednesday asking me to go to lunch with her so she could physically stay up?
http://www.plurk.com/p/3q8fvd
http://www.plurk.com/p/3q7wbp
I serve my purpose to these people. In the capacity of friendship, feedback generator and bouncing board, etc. I am available because I make myself so, sharing books, time and ideas and what do I get?
I get exactly what I ask for. Which by nature of our relationship, isn't much: the occasional conversation and tea. Did Harker ask much of Dracula? What does the country mouse ask of the city mouse? What did Master Abraham ask of Murr?
As I sit in class now, listening to the conversation about Serres and what we're getting, what we want from the text, I think the question applies here as well. We are the excluded third of Parasite. It's pushing us where we're used to pushing the text, forcing our way in. What are we asking of the text? But also, what is the text asking of us?
I state it here: I'm pushing. I'm asking that you push back.
And that's what I believe the text is doing as well. Pushing us and the only way we can understand it is to push back.
Our Parasites
"If we're going to compare the class to a sort of organism, why not go with the metaphor of an immune response. Sure, it may have been rude of Eli to interrupt and not be completely in terms with the way the class is run, but I personally found her input stimulating.
If you completely isolate a biological system, say our class, and then randomly introduce foreign bodies, you kind of have to expect a certain level of chaos to accompany that introduction. Exactly like what happens when those little black critters get in through the little boy's nose (mouth? I don't remember). [Referring to a video we'd watched]
My point here is that I don't think Eli served so much as an invader as she did a vaccine. You can't expect the incoming bodies to follow the same routine and must adapt accordingly until they are gone. "
I take this quote from a blog post made by someone in the Nanotext class I had with Tony last spring.
The post was about a girl, Eli (pronounced like what is perhaps the more familiar spelling of Ellie), who visited the class at the invitation of one of our peers and the reactions the class had to her on plurk afterward.
I bring this up because I see it as being relevant to our Parasites class. Would we have the same kind of reaction? I hope that with all our discussion of the interruption that the answer would be no, but if I recall correctly, even in Nanotexts, we'd just finished a rather lengthy section on alterity and the meaning of the other, the exterior.
In thinking about this though, I'm brought to the question of what is a parasite unto our collective Parasites class? Clearly there are a select few of us in the 2:30 class who are parasites upon Tony's time. We're welcomed by the gracious host that he is, but even still, we encroach on his office hours, essentially owning the class from the inside out as we discuss what is, what was and what is to come: often eying others as an intrusion.
And here, I think the answer is in ourselves. We are our own parasites, interrupting and disturbing the quiet status quo of the class. To relate to another text from Nanotext we are the Ned Slades upon the Hand. We have infiltrated the system and are slowly destroying it from the inside out. This is our education.
A last point on the idea of ideas
I've already posted this as a plurk update, but wanted to reassert and expand upon it in a more cohesive format:
We hear talk of energy and tend to think it is bound within the realm of physics, that it obeys the first law of thermodynamics, but with the energy of ideas -- or rather ideas as a form of energy -- this is wrong. Ideas and technology work together as a kind of perpetual energy machine, generating more energy (ideas) than is input and required in other systems. The teme is self-replicating. It is parasite.
It's a matter of infrastructure. We've built the kind of infrastructure in our technology that allows this growth with minimal maintenance. To send a message to 20 people no longer takes a three hours of writing, 1+ days travel per message, etc. Yes, we've expended that kind of energy in building the technology to allow us to bypass that, but that was a one-off. We do not use that every time we send a message. We're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Once we've sent off enough ideas, the exchange of that being sent versus that being put in to maintain the system becomes uneven. Our investment has more than paid for itself.
If we think of the meme/teme as a unit of the energy of an idea, we see that this growth has the potential to be exponential. A hyperlink, a small underlined blue word can send us to a page full of thousands more words, images and even videos. Or you input 5 words, and it's replicated 20 times with the same amount of energy it took you to put those in.
We see it here in that video we watched in class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU
A simple search of a few key words brings us thousands (and even thousands upon thousands) of search results, of ideas. And I've said it before and I'll say it again; ideas are dangerous. Ideas are parasitic in their ability to control you. This whole update represents the small seed of Tony sitting next to me in class on Wednesday and mentioning the word energy. Like clicking an internal hyperlink in my mind, we take one simple word and expand it.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
I feel poetic today.
Escape me
Have you ever just looked up through the leaves as you passed beneath a tree?
Gradient greens abound in overlapping sheets.
Trapped in air-conditioned confines
Learning language/linguistics
So many videos I get antsy
Twitch and twitter and tweet
Internet distractions abound
IM interactions, blogging blessings
Browser A.D.D as I surf this superinfo highway
I watch out for web sharks lookin' to take a bite out of my
Seal shaped wireless card
Chomp chomp at my bandwidth #pataphor
We're a bunch of Granolas up here
People Lurk
Peace with myself
Love those around you
Unity can lead to compassion
Respect my property
or Karma will get you
Where these words are taking me.
I don't know.
Have you ever just looked up through the leaves as you passed beneath a tree?
Gradient greens abound in overlapping sheets.
Trapped in air-conditioned confines
Learning language/linguistics
So many videos I get antsy
Twitch and twitter and tweet
Internet distractions abound
IM interactions, blogging blessings
Browser A.D.D as I surf this superinfo highway
I watch out for web sharks lookin' to take a bite out of my
Seal shaped wireless card
Chomp chomp at my bandwidth #pataphor
We're a bunch of Granolas up here
People Lurk
Peace with myself
Love those around you
Unity can lead to compassion
Respect my property
or Karma will get you
Where these words are taking me.
I don't know.
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