Broken Decade

The gunshot made losing popular, 

Distortion channeled the anger,

Annihilation of soul commenced

Through filters of noise. 

Industrial trash to feed the homeless,

Prozac to pacify the rebellious,

Books and music plagiarized by formulas,

Whistles of distraction fired from prime-time 

Hernias of Friends and Seinfeld.

Postmodernism debunked by computers,

Networks, medications, reality TV, 

The paralyzing venom of advertising

Packaging the hopes of youth,

Auctioning them off to the machine.

And the kids they grew up,

The kids hurdled the valley of death,

Streetlight prayers drowned by freeways,

And yet they dreamed, the kids growing up, 

How fragile they were, abused by the system, 

Parents who forgot how to read,

Forgot history, forgot their kids

Wasting away in basements of neglect. 

On drugs and gunshots the kids grew up, 

Losing their religion, their teenage spirit,

Crucified brains stained on Jeremy's blackboard,

Cold nights in bonfire under the bridge downtown.

And I grew up too, perched over the wasteland, 

Ejected from history, golden ages of community,

Buried by darkness of awkward identity,

Self-esteem mutinied, self-respect bullied,

To contemplate the big idea from the sideline,

To summon the will to survive. 

Neglection was my shield, desperation my sword,

Embers of rage the nuclear meltdown besieged,

Holocaust built on scraps of demolition 

Yearning for a stability once captured

So blissfully by the Sonics and Mariners. 

Grunge was my anthem, like the kids who grew up,

The raped kids, the mechanical brood

Picked from an assembly line to reap the cartridge.

And it was there, in a reverse suburbia,

Where the automated apocalypse throttled

The surface, earthquakes broke the structure,

Whose horror novels became reality,

The system broke down, subverted by nature,

Gothic aperture dilating a social suicide. 

Magnetron vortex that gravitated the damage,

Innocence consumed by anarchy, war, 

Freaks unleashed by the millennial gateway 

Opened by aliens on the radio waves

Spewing litany of conspiracies across the high desert,

Trapping us lost souls, we children of the Korn.

Bitterness burned me, I lifted the axe,

Cut the cord on my youth, drowned in the past,

My little boy, yes my lovely little boy,

Struggled to keep up, to keep his stupid head 

Above water, above the clouds, above the violence,

My beautiful little boy turned ugly by ninth year,

A crying angel, skin fried, feathers snipped,

Ripped carcas off the mist, a warm place,

A place I didn't belong, I didn't belong there

On that aimless path, that torture chamber of desks,

Knowing everybody's name, nobody knowing mine,

The hours becoming days, the days becoming months, 

The months stealing the years,

Boxing them with ribbons of deceit,

I didn't belong there, I belonged to that apocalypse

The 90s promised, because there was no other

Way out, nothing to inspire change

But the caterpillar in Lector's metaphor,

That became a butterfly to escape the burning.

Prescription low, electric storm brewing, 

Zapping that little boy, torturing him,

Burying him in the subconscious

Never to return, never to follow me,

The young man I was meant to become, 

Locked in the crystals of an ice-cold cavern.

 One morning I woke up.

 I got out of bed and brushed my hair.

 In the mirror I saw that little boy.

 My face was his.

 His face was the transformation.

 I tied him to my shadow.

 I brought him with me.

 Down the street we walked

 Thinking about a girl.

 And that's when I wanted her.

 That's when I wanted to become her.

 I wanted to bring the past with me

 By becoming her.

 The only way to become her

 Was to love her.

 Then to lose her.

 Then to live again.

Structure vs. Agency in Geographic Thought

        Structure and agency are properties of social interaction that represent the capacity for human action.  The difference between them is that structure is built into social organization, while agency is the set of possible behavior within it.  They are like opposite sides of the same coin; as structure puts constraints on interaction, agency provides the vehicle of choice.  Many geographers prefer one over the other, such as Marxists and humanistic geographers (Cresswell, 198).  As Marxists rely heavily on economic structure to diagnose behavior, humanists believe agency reinforces structure as a byproduct of interaction.  Most geographers accept that both exist because of each other; that individuals are not able to act freely, but they are able to make choices based on the structures they live in, which determine the possible actions of the individual.

            The cause for such debate lies in one’s theoretical position, and there is a long history in geographic thought that has sustained it.  Early geographers were more heavily influenced by structuralism than later geographers.  They believed things like environmental determinism, language, and culture were ways of explaining agency, as each were thought to program people to think and behave certain ways (Cresswell, 198).  After the quantitative revolution, it was Marxist geographers who most strongly supported structuralism, as the means of production were seen to allow more agency for the bourgeoisie than the proletariat.  During this time, there was an increasing reaction against structuralism, pivoting the balance in agency’s favor, or at least finding an equilibrium with structure.  Humanists and poststructuralists introduced agency as a way of sustaining structure, stressing the importance of choice in maintaining social order.

The structures that early geographers envisioned had centers around which they revolved.  In environmental determinism, it was ecology and natural selection that determined traits and thus behavior.  In language, it was grammar that determined forms of communication, which was critical to interaction.  Those who believed culture was the strongest structure thought that rules and mores were what determined one’s agency.  In Marxism, it was the heavy constraint of capitalism that limited agency by exploiting the labor of the masses.  Such variety in explaining structure led to wide disagreement about what the most important structure was, which resonated across disciplines, not just geography (Cresswell, 199).  It also led to wide disagreement about the degree of agency’s influence on structure, which the poststructuralists sought to reconcile.

The way they did this was through structuration theory, introduced by Anthony Giddens to describe the process of the structural properties in any society being reiterated by agency (Cresswell, 202).  Since everyday actions reiterate the structure of a society, it isn’t as rigid as a structure would assume, allowing agency to constantly reinvent it in subtle ways.  For example, Juneteenth became a federal holiday because of all the agency involved in the civil rights movement, starting from the Civil War to present.  It was brought to a head in 2020, after the George Floyd incident, culminating in federal recognition after decades of struggle for social justice.  The new holiday subtly adjusted the structure of our calendar, impacting many services on a single day. 

But the most important point of structuration theory is that agency is expressed within the framework of it.  Group actions, such as playing a game of football, support the structure of a place by creating the need for a field, showing how there can’t be a structure in place without agency.  Most of the time the structure stays the same, but as Cresswell (205) points out, once somebody decided to pick up the football (agency), the new sport of rugby was conceived, reinventing the structure of fields. 

This is how the poststructuralists completed the reconciliation of structure and agency: through specific examples that display the balance of action and constraint.  The agency of action has enough mobility to slightly alter the constraint of structure, but not to the point of it breaking.  That can only be done by a series of changes, as the Marxists and civil rights activists demonstrated.

Cresswell, T. 2013. Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

The Octopus by Frank Norris

  One of the better novels I have read recently is "The Octopus" by Frank Norris. Set in the 19th century, it is a colorful portrait of a California farm town getting overrun by a railroad company. The soul of the novel is not any illustrious character, though there are a few. It is the globalized conquering of wheat that becomes mass-produced to feed a starving world. While the "octopus" in the title refers to the metaphor of a railroad network gripping its tentacles across the land, suffocating the locals who bear its machete, wheat is the resource that pumps its blood, so it is in fact this now ubiquitous grain that uses machinery to conquer the food chain, granting further supremacy by evolutionary monopolies of farmland, which is but an extension of the way it enslaved us during the Agricultural Revolution, reaching new heights with the advent of industry. Wheat doesn't have to do anything to survive or find critical means of reproduction; as we domesticated it, it domesticated us. In a sense, we are the ones serving its power, for it does not need our labor to evolve. It merely exists, somehow knowing we are in its debt.

 The novel reminded me of this harrowing insight, especially toward the end, as we see the death of a certain character. There were a few shocking deaths in this novel, so don't get to invest in any of the characters. Norris's development of character requires some patience, as he exquisitely describes most scenes in the book, often using long-winded description, which I enjoy. It's literature at its finest. His prose paints lovely pictures in the mind, similar to the way Proust did. A book it reminds me of is "The Grapes of Wrath", but even that falls short of this hidden gem. And why is it so obscure? It should be a classic, on the same level as "Moby Dick". Perhaps it was missing those iconic characters like Tom Joad, Ishmael, and Capt. Ahab. But the wheat itself became a character, organically mesmerizing, every bit as horrific as the railroad or the White Whale.

Postmodernism’s Rejection of Metanarratives

        Postmodernist geography was a movement that followed the feminist interpretation of geography being constructed by masculinist forces.  Feminists had pointed out that knowledge was biased toward a male epistemology (Cresswell, 156).  As the colonizing male (especially in the West) was the catalyst of modern development, so was he the progenitor of science, technology, and all the structures that supported society, both physically and socially.  More significantly, masculine models of causation, like those seen in spatial science and Marxism, assumed there were universal laws governing human behavior.  Haraway (Creswell, 158) felt that “forms of knowledge that are recognized as context specific are more reliable than those that pretend to be universal and neutral”.  Many feminist geographers adopted this view, simultaneously dismantling the universal structures that the masculinist models had proposed and suggesting a more complex geography that involved being located in multiple ways.

            Central to postmodernist theory is the rejection of metanarratives, which are schemas we traditionally use to place order on the world (Stanford).  Most of the previous comprehensive views of geography involved metanarratives, including regionalism, quantitative geography, humanistic geography, and Marxism.  Lyotard and other postmodernist geographers rejected metanarratives because they wanted to emphasize local uniqueness, which is truer to an observer than global totality.  Reality and truth were relative because they were based on local representations, offering a unique schema to any location by ignoring the global ones.

            Metanarratives were criticized by postmodern geographers because they assumed a totalizing discourse that revolved around a center of social causation (Sayer, 332).  For example, in Marxism it is assumed that production is the main determinant of social relationships.  In spatial science, various laws like distance minimalization are assumed to control behavior.  For feminists it is the relationship between men and women, while for humanists the center is experience (Cresswell, 177).  Outside of geography, things like religion and politics are the center for those who hold firm beliefs about them.  Metanarratives like these were seen as essentialist, overly rational, and based on a flawed foundation.  They put too many constraints on associations (such as race) that postmodernists saw as mere social constructs.  Their attempts to reveal truth were undermined by the very representations they utilized, for it is inevitable that any language, map, or diagram is culturally biased and therefore transparent.

            Postmodern geographers attempted to shift the focus back on the local and particular, as regional geographers had done prior to the quantitative revolution.  But this time, they took a more theoretical approach due to the ambiguous nature of differences, which can be far broader than they appear.  (For instance, the output of gender is assumed to be either/or but could theoretically have many varieties.)  By focusing on specific localities, the full range of determinants to behavior and social order could fully blossom, based on these spectra of differences.  The result was that particular truths were only possible through deep involvement with local geography (Cresswell, 182).  Only by analyzing the local environment can one gather the truth of a location, not a global one.

Postmodern geographers were successful at showing how the truth is more accurate locally than globally.  Even if a global event triggers local variation, the result will be based on each location’s specific parameters.  It is analogous to weather prediction in that events happening far way can change the local weather seven days from now, but local variation (topography, elevation, latitude) will determine the degree of difference that occurs.  It’s important to remember this contribution to geography because the field has tremendous power to influence decisions that impact local conditions.

Cresswell, T. 2013. Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Sayer, A. 1993. Postmodern Thought in Geography: A Realist View.  Antipode 25:4, pp. 320-344 ISSN 0066 4812

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Sep. 21, 2018. “Jean Francois Lyotard.” Retrieved Nov 15, 20023 (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lyotard/)

Critical Theories in Geography: Reactions to the Quantitative Revolution

        In the 1950s, quantitative geography introduced a revolution in the field that shifted the focus away from regions and into spatial science.  Regional geography had focused on the particular and the specifics of places while the new spatial science theorized that claims could be generally applied and universal (Cresswell, 81).  This was an uncomfortable shift for many geographers because it philosophically placed heavy importance on positivism- the belief that only things experienced through senses can be known.  The heavy use of mathematical languages and modeling felt dehumanizing to many geographers, who found it lacking in human qualities of agency, such as emotion and behavior.

            From the 1960s to 1980s, several reactions occurred against the quantitative revolution, which returned qualitative research to the field.  These reactions generated new critical theories that challenged the assumptions of the quantitative revolution.  One challenge came from the humanistic geographer David Ley, who saw that the activity of humans couldn’t always be explained by law-like behavior, such as distance minimalization (Cresswell, 105).  Other reactions by Marxist and feminist geographers found that the quantitative revolution had ignored explanations of gender, justice, equality, exploitation, and oppression (Cresswell, 123).  These were crucial to behavior because they involved power and mobility- things that couldn’t always be determined from quantitative analysis.

            Alternatives were provided by humanist, Marxist, and feminist geographers.  Humanists sought to return to the qualitative methods regional geographers had used, involving interviews, oral history, surveys, and observation.  This allowed for a more personal worldview to be recorded, in what John Kirkland Wright described as “geosophy” (Cresswell, 108).  They also rejected what the quantitative geographers had defined as general and universal.  By incorporating personal experience through relations between people and spiritual and psychological attachments, humanistic geographers showed how it was the individual that was more universal than any spatial law. 

            Marxist geographers wanted to dig deeper than an individual sense of place by incorporating society into it, particularly when it came to inequality.  The goal was to describe unequal development in capitalist societies as a function of geography.  Since most resources are regionally exploited, it follows that there are social consequences in regions where capitalism thrives, especially when it comes to labor.  Space is produced through the actions of people, leading to unequal development that is inherent in the economic structure supporting it.  They felt that it was only “by changing the economic system of a society would it be possible to change the culture” (Cresswell, 127).  Thus, it had a far stronger theoretical power than spatial science, serving as an incentive to bring about social change.

            Feminist geographers suggested that since the theories of geography had largely been defined by men, the research had an inherent male bias (Cresswell, 148).  This was especially true about spatial geography, which was considered the most scientifically based subfield.  Feminists introduced a new female epistemology that involved emotions and metaphorical associations about space.  An intricate complexity about space developed, utilizing the idea of place as your own body, allowing it to be located in multiple ways (Cresswell, 156-157).  Like Marxism, it challenged the power structures of social systems, particularly as they involve patriarchy in addition to inequality.

            Critical theories have shaped the discipline of geography and geographic research by introducing a variety of new methods involving qualitative research.  Humanistic geographers suggested analyzing the “lifeworlds” of individuals, or how they move in space.  Novels were also suggested as analytic sources, as they tap into the essence of being in a particular time and place by allowing the reader to experience their own version of it.  Marxist and feminist geographers preferred to analyze the modes of production and the complexity of emotional spaces, respectively.

            Other ideas sprang from the reactions to these critical theories, involving postmodernism, poststructuralism, and relational geographies.  This group of theories progressed the alternatives by stressing the importance of regional variation as it applies to behavior.  Whereas Marxist and humanistic geographers thought that behavior was determined by economic structure or individual choice, these groups felt it was more determined by relative truth.  This was represented on the maps, charts, letters, numbers, and pictures of a society (referred to as signs, signifiers, and discourse by various philosophers).  This relational approach meant that there was an unseen dimension of society that moved in time, an organic mobility of space that was changing through phases of history.  A major component of their research was posing questions that challenged any theory that held power by claiming a structure, including the Marxist and humanistic ones (Cresswell, 207).  Some relational geographers even suggested that truth was irrelevant: only events determined behavior through non-representation (Cresswell, 227).  Their research involved considerable attention to the way events shape discourse and in turn, human behavior.

            The alternatives to quantitative geography are so rich in variety that they can seem confusing.  For simplification, I see each of them as contributing something new to the field, not necessarily that any of them have a universal answer.  Depending on the situation, each has a valid position.

Cresswell, T. 2013. Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

The King of High Fantasy: Sanderson vs Martin

  I love the stories of Brandon Sanderson. They are full of magic, fascinating worlds, and strong characters. The only thing lacking from his stories are strong villains; the last three books I read have featured promising villains that just kind of sputter out at the end. I can't criticize him too much since my own creative writing is mediocre at best. He's become one of my favorite writers, and the best in my favorite genre: fantasy. His "Stormlight Archive" is something to behold. Try putting that on a film, wow. Any of his books would be a challenge to translate on screen. Unlike George RR Martin, whose stories are so human that it's a wonder they aren't true. Martin took elements of medieval lore all over the world to make a cohesive story in "A Song of Ice and Fire", albeit chaotic. It has got to be the most complicated series I have ever read or watched, due to all the strange situations and unpredictable reactions of its characters, who are all incredibly well-developed. Martin's strength in dialog and character interaction is analogous to Sanderson's superior world building. Both are masters at high fantasy. I can't say one is better than the other; just that there's a preference for Sanderson because of the diversity of his worlds, their originality and beauty. And because he can actually finish a series!

Puzzle Dance

 You aren't even two
 But amazingly you can do it,
 A puzzle of the states
 Without any help.
 You know exactly where each one goes,
 Yes, you do,
 Like when you clean
 Instinctively, the way your mother does.
 Today you were close
 But a piece was missing,
 Wisconsin.
 You searched the bin
 A long time,
 Patient as the sea,
 For that missing piece,
 Your albino whale.
 Once you found it,
 You danced for us as bees do,
 Waggling towards pollen,
 Toes akimbo, mysterious,
 Proud to anticipate completion.
 Locked in, the piece gave you joy,
 Brought smiles to all of us.
 How happy you were
 To show us your new dance,
 A most puzzling one.

Gaza

  As events Gaza continue to shake-up the world, I am reminded of something the prophets of ancient Israel warned against: "Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore" (Isaiah)... "Lest I (God) will give you over to ruin and your people to derision; you will bear the scorn of nations" (Micah). The prophets embraced a peaceful concern for all humanity, predicting that all nations would someday come to the God of Israel if it remained peaceful and socially just.

 I understand the intense feelings of retribution the people of Israel have suffered in the past month. Aggression is usually merited in cases of mass terrorism, which is why the US invasion of Afghanistan was globally applauded but not the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The difference is that the US attacked terrorist sites away from civilian populations, in the mountains. Israel is unfortunately acting with little regard for human life, innocent or not. They are dangerously approaching the line of engaging in war crimes. Israel must be careful and calculated if she wants the continued support of nations. Israel must remember the words of her prophets, written at a time when she was threatened by multiple empires.

 Babylonians, Chaldeans, Persians, Romans, the list goes on. Each had a turn dismantling her cities for their sins, so it is thought. Gaza is not a world empire, but Israel is surrounded by powerful states who would see the prophecy through, especially without the support of global powers like the US. It isn't a stretch for the Palestinians to appeal to their neighbors as religious and racial brothers, to take up arms against their aggressors. We've seen that story played out too many times before.

 One thing we can't lose sight of is that Gaza was the initial aggressor. This isn't like Ukraine, who got invaded by Russia for no other reason than existing. Israel is right to defend herself, and free the hostages. But this cannot be done at the expense of a humanitarian crisis. By demonstrating restraint, Israel could remind the world how resilient of Jewish people are in the face of aggression. Like they've been doing for millennia, they could roll with the punches, turning their enemies' actions against them by not responding, by letting the evil wash over them like baptismal water. It is only in hindsight that the pogroms, the Nazi extermination, the forced diasporas, and the Inquisition are seen as cowardly acts, handled well by the Jews who refused to fight back. Modern Israel is not following in its father's footsteps, and for that she may pray the price.