Flogging dead equines

I've had an ongoing debate with my chair about video game violence. His point is that games, while not causing violence, make it more likely to happen, a kind of rehearsal for it. I've argued the opposite. I think violence and video games is one, big red herring, which takes away time from other, more important discourses. I promise this is the last thing I'm saying on the matter.

I have to believe that we aren't a product of our environments. The fact that I've got a choice in the matter is what gets me out of bed in the morning, and helps me to have normal kinds of human interactions. More on this later after an aside.

Aside: one of the most disconcerting things about the Liturgy of Hours is encountering people who've consecrated their lives to peace and contemplation recite or chant some of the cursing psalms. (35, 69, 109 are the three worst) It's difficult to relate the sheer cognitive dissonance of a group of nuns reciting a line from the psalms discussing dashing children's heads against rocks.

I asked a friend of mine, a Benedictine nun, about this when I was in the process of becoming an oblate. Her response was that the violent imagery helps her understand and pray for those who are affected by it. She had an obligation to not shy away from those lines, no matter how repugnant or distasteful, so she could do her job as a contemplative.

Do I have better things I could be doing than going on shooting rampages throughout Liberty City? You can count on it. Is there a better use of my time than engaging other departments on campus in Quake deathmatches? Most definitely.

There are more insidious forms of violence, which never leave a bruise, nor do they find their virtual expression in a cloud of pixelated gore from being hit with a BFG. It's easy to focus upon physical violence because it leaves the most obvious mark. But emotional, spiritual, verbal, and psychological violence is no less harmful, even if the marks are nebulous and can't be objectively proven.

Literature on video game violence would suggest that violence in games may increase violent tendencies. And it's similar to literature on abuse: those who have been abused are more likely to abuse others. Perhaps I'm tempting fate by playing violent video games, since I've got the double-whammy the literature would like me to have.

But I find there's something healing about violent video games. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to play Quake against other people. I'm still not overly comfortable with it, but it won't give me nightmares. I've been exposed to a lot of real-world violence, not all of it physical and thankfully none of it sexual, and it isn't remotely similar to that which is found in video games.

If I hide from violence, thinking that it'll make me do violent things, I'm still controlled by it. Those who perpetrated the violence would still have power over me. My indulgences in Quake and Grand Theft Auto are my erect middle finger at them. But there's another reason from not hiding from violence. Girard was wrong: exposure to violence doesn't beget other acts of violence. It can promote empathy. I feel that which I've experienced helps me to feel what others have endured. In a weird way, it feels as if their burden is shared. If I knew that their burden was eased by my old hurts, I'd relive it again.

I don't think it's by accident that universities sprang up around monasteries. If you look hard enough vestiges of it can be seen in architecture (Most campuses have some sort of "quad," which looks suspiciously like a garth, with rows of buildings surrounding it like a cloister), dress (ever compare a traditional monastic habit with the gowns and hoods Ph.Ds wear?), curriculum (trivium, anyone?), the fact that monasteries were libraries and places of learning, and the attitude of life as a process and formation. No matter how distant the beginnings, academics still need to learn a lot from contemplatives.

On the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (the period after Pentecost and until the day after the feast of Christ the King), in Year C (so once every 3 years) we get this reading:

In the course of their journey he came to a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who sat down at the Lord's feet and listened to him speaking. Now Martha, who was distracted with all the serving came to him and said, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please tell her to help me.' but the Lord answered, 'Martha, Martha,' he said, 'you worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part, and it is not to be taken from her.' (Luke 10:38-42, New Jerusalem Bible)

We all know at least one Martha. They're the ones who have their hands in everything, are "team players," are part of every committee, do five things at once, and have no patience for Maries. In the Ivory tower, they're the ones who make every faculty meeting, are on several committees, have at least three papers going at once, and teach a full load consistently. They have little time for anything that doesn't directly add to their CV. The Ivory Tower needs its Marthas, since they're the do-ers. I think most academics have a Martha hidden somewhere inside of them, and certainly grad school forces one into that mindset.

That having been said, I think many of the problems in academia stem from the fact that we're all running around like Marthas with our heads cut off. Burnout happens--whether student or professor--from having too much to do, most of it unavoidable, especially in the days of budget cuts. Interpersonal conflicts happen when burnt out people get sick of being around each other. And the Martha in us all gets resentful when we find a Mary, who isn't a "team player," and appears to be loafing around, doing nothing, while we're distracted with serving.

'You worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one.' It's so easy to get wrapped up in the daily minutiae of the grind. The part Mary took for herself may seem to be selfish and lazy, yet it's the part that we most desperately need in the Ivory Tower. The best definition of the contemplative life that I've heard came from one of the Dominicans at my parish: "resting in the embrace of the Divine."

I think we can be better teachers, students, researchers, and academics if we take time for ourselves. The cloister isn't always a physical space, and it isn't always possible. But it's about reserving a part of ourselves and taking the time to refresh the rest of us, "resting in the embrace of the Divine." On first glance, the contemplative life in western monasticism seems overindulgent and impractical. What good are people who pray all day? Why break up a perfectly productive day with the Liturgy of the Hours? But it's this constant drive for productivity and work which is burning out people and hurting them.

In Benedictine monasticism, one's life becomes a continual prayer, with the Liturgy of Hours and the Eucharist being central. The offices are a time to recenter and publicly connect with the central reason for being there, in the first place, and the Eucharist forms the source of all aspects of life.

I'm not saying that there should be public time for prayer in the Ivory Tower, but if academics are to survive this time we're in (which is by no means favorable to higher ed), then they need to consider Mary. It's only by taking their better part, some time to reconnect with who they are and why they're there in the first place, that they can find the strength to keep going. And administrations need to realize that this better part is our right, and not to be taken from us.

You know, I almost feel sorry for "Ivan Tribble," a pseudonym of a columnist at the "Chronicle of Higher Education." He wrote two rather scathing critiques of blogging, insinuating that one who desires a job in the Ivory Tower shouldn't blog, but then backpedals, saying that they should be careful about supplying the URL to one's website or blog when applying for a job. The backlash was extreme, even though he does have a good point or two in the second essay. Not that he doesn't have it coming, since blogging is one of the hottest topics in digital literature and in most fields, but he's been flogged enough.

But in the second essay, he does have a point. It's far too easy to get information about a person via google. As my computer security boyfriend reminds me, nothing on the internet is secure, and information is notoriously hard to secure. The only privacy we have is that which we create.

Out of curiosity, I plugged my real name into google. My dopplegangers are into various sports, a real estate agent, and a beer executive. And it turned up a bunch of seemingly-benign information about my person. It turned up some posts I made to a programming language mailing list, a few concert listings, and a schedule of liturgical ministries I'm involved with in my parish.

According to Prof. Tribble, I should be concerned about the last one, since it does give identifying information about my personal life, and is, therefore, suspect. Any employer would find out that I'm a practicing Catholic, Eucharistic minister, and altar server. We aren't far removed from the days of "Catholics need not apply," and while I've never encountered anything but respect from my professors, I've heard a lot of anti-Catholic BS from fellow students. In the days where evangelical Christianity--which isn't overly friendly to Catholicism--is dominant and Catholicism is seen as nothing more than rabid anti-abortion platforms, it isn't an easy thing to be a practicing Catholic and academic. My politics are assumed for me, if one should happen to glance the medal of Our Lady of Guadalupe I normally wear.

But the larger question is one of distance: where is the line between public and private? Is there even such a line anymore? How far should one have to bury one's private life to get a job? What about to hold it? Should an employer have the right to delve into one's personal lives?

In memory of me...

I'm thinking I need to start a piece for a former teacher of mine, who recently passed. It's a strange and difficult thing to be thinking about, since a part of me doesn't want to believe he's dead; another part keeps sending off emails, forgetting; and the other part still hurts. Because of my exams and the headspace required for them, I'm just now coming to terms with it. You find someone dear to you, and you think they're going to be around forever.

There's another loss I'm thinking of lately. Since I'm ABD, the formal composition study I had is ending. I know all relationships eventually end, but it's a bit melancholy. I'm more than capable of making my own decisions, but I miss the debate and fellowship that came from private instruction. But this is the natural order of things. People grow to leave home, and every birth contains within it a death.

These people aren't far away, though. Whenever I compose something, it feels like they're with me and are a part of me. Their presence is no less real and strong, even if they aren't around physically. A Benedictine once described ritual as a kind of prayer you do for others when they're not able, and when the time comes, they do the same for you. I don't see composition as being that much different. I know these people were carrying me, when I couldn't work. Now I'm blessed to be able to do the same.

This one is about a cup of tea.

We often go through life not thinking about the effects we have upon others. Sometimes this means taking those around us for granted. It's all too easy to fall into the trap that we mean nothing to those around us, and it's a mindset that's easy to adopt in the Ivory Tower. So much of what we do in grad school is isolated from others, and our colleagues become competitors, especially now, when finances are cut daily for higher education.

I hear and read about other grad students and their relationships to their chairs. Sometimes it's a good one, but it seems like there are so many people out there with broken relationships with their chairs, like so many other relationships.

My chair's someone, with whom I have much in common, but also differences. While there have been metaphorical scrapes and bruises, we tend to get along pretty well. Considering some of the stories out there, I think I'm pretty fortunate to be studying with the person I am.

It would be naive to say that things have been easy. There was a time when we were both pretty burnt out and things were tense. I can't imagine I was too pleasant to be around in the months leading up to my exams, either. Trust doesn't come easily to me, especially when it involves some sort of authority figure, which probably created some tension, as well.

So fast forward to last week. My throat was killing me; my voice was nonexistent; I had the flu; and the soundcard on my computer kept falling out of its PCI slot. I had a bottle of water and hopes that I'd make it through. While I had my head in the bowels of my computer, banging in the soundcard once again, my chair asked if I wanted a cup of tea, since he was getting something. I think it was because of that tea that I made it through the next couple hours of my exams.

On the surface, it seemed like a mundane enough interaction, but when you're sick and nervous as hell, such things take on different proportions. He was doing what anyone with half an ounce of common courtesy would do, but in a larger sense it's also a metaphor of what the student/chair relationship is. It's an unthinking, selfless giving. It doesn't always happen, and it isn't always noticed. But when it does, it becomes a powerful moment.

Out from under the pall...

"Receive me, Lord, as you have promised, and I shall live; do not disappoint me in your hope."

I passed. =)