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Second Thoughts About the Puritans

Posted in Abezier Coppe, activism, Bruce Byfield, Diggers, Gerrard Winstanley, Guy Fawkes, Leon Rosselson, Occupy Movement, Personal, Puritans, Ranters, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Thanks to the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta, many members of the Occupy movement sport Guy Fawkes masks. However, while the often-repeated line about Fawkes being the only person to enter Parliament with honorable intentions is good for a laugh, Fawkes is a poor symbol for the movement. In fact, with his plans to restore a Catholic monarchy, Fawkes was a reactionary, and would probably disapprove of the movement if he were alive to see it. Instead, I wonder why no one has looked deeper into some of Fawke’s contemporaries – specifically, the Puritans.

At first, the suggestion sounds ridiculous. Puritans have been the object of ridicule for centuries, from Shakespeare’s Malvolio in Twelfth Night to H. L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism as “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Moreover, at least since the 1960s, to describe some as “Puritanical” has been one of the deepest insults possible. The adjective suggests someone who is humorless and repressed to the point of obsession.

Remember, however, that history is written by the victors – and that, with Charles II’s restoration of the monarchy, the Puritans became the losers. The truth is, our view of the Puritans is about as accurate as an investment banker’s view of the counter-culture of four decades ago.

Yes, many Puritans fit the modern stereotype. But many others did not. Historically, all “Puritan” meant was an extreme form of Protestantism. During the seventeenth century, there were dozens of different schools of Puritanism. The Diggers, Ranters, Levellers, Muggeltonians, the early Quakers – these are only some of the different sects of Puritanism you could find in the early to mid 1600s, and many of them disagreed strongly with each other.

What all Puritans had in common was a deep belief in the essentials of Protestantism: the idea that each person had to work out their own salvation for themselves. This belief led them to question the authorities of their day, both the religious and the secular ones. In fact, since in Anglicanism, the monarch is the head of the church, at the time, there was no real distinction between the religious and the secular (which was one of the circumstances to which many Puritans objected).

The result of much of their questioning sounds very familiar today. Universal suffrage? Votes for women? Communal responsibility for the sick, poor, and the elderly? All these ideas were first raised in the English-speaking world by the Puritans. Some sects went even further, experimenting with communal living and denouncing the evils of property and hierarchy, becoming so much of a threat that less radical Puritans like Oliver Cromwell suppressed them, and called in the troops to disperse some of their experiments with communes.

Admittedly, to the modern mind, their ideas had some strange twists. Living in a religious age in which most people believed that the civic order was ordained by heaven, they did not reject religion so much as reinterpret it. Some Puritans, like the Diggers, recast the Biblical Fall, not as the literal disobedience of Adam and Even to God’s commandment, but as a metaphor for the rise of social hierarchy. Others, like the Ranters, went even further, declaring that all humans were naturally innocent, and that sin was merely the corrupting result of conforming to the social order, which could be removed by everyone giving in to their natural inclinations. The idea that society could do without Christianity seems to have occurred to very few of them.

This religious orientation aside, most of the radical Puritan’s beliefs would sound instantly familiar to most moderns, especially the activists. You could even say with some justification that the shaping of our modern world and its values and aspirations began with movements like The Diggers and The Levellers.

Instead of choosing a figure like Guy Fawkes for a hero, today’s activists might try taking a look at people like Gerrard Winstanley, the intellectual leader of the Diggers, or Abezier Coppe, the prominent Ranter. If their original works are hard to find, you can at least read about them in the works of historians like Christopher Hill, or hear them summarized in some of the songs of English folksinger Leon Rosselson, such as “The World Turned Upside Down” or “Abezier Coppe.” In doing so, you will regain part of the English-speaking world’s heritage that anyone interested in improving society should know about — because, believe it or not, we’ve been here before.

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Everything happens for a reason

Posted in "everything happens for a reason", Bruce Byfield, existentialism, Fritz Leiber, Personal, problem of pain, purpose, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A friend of mine insists that everything happens for a reason. If a relative dies, or he receives a disconnection notice from the power company, or he fails to make his rent on time, he consoles himself by repeating this idea over and over. But for all my familiarity with his refrain, it only occurred to me today that he might be right – although not in any way that he would suspect.

I’ve never told him, but the implied resignation in his philosophy always leaves me faintly irritated. If you’ve ever been with someone whose hearing is much better than yours, you’ll understand my irritation, because if there’s a pattern to the events around me, it appears to be beyond my perception. I’m tempted to dismiss the idea out of hand, then I wonder: what if he sees something I can’t?

Even more seriously, if you believe that everything happens for a reason, you quickly confront the idea of inevitability, or of a deity who controls events. In turn, either of these ideas quickly comes up against the so-called problem of pain – in other words, what’s the role of suffering within that all-explanatory reason? And if hurt or loss is either inescapable or ordained by a deity, then the universe is hostile, and any ruling god is, as Mark Twain suggested, “a malign thug,” worthy neither of worship nor resignation towards through the belief that everything happens for a reason.

Such possibilities seem a needless complication compared to the idea that there is no innate reason, and that much of what happens is simply the result of chance and beyond our control. My friend creates a sense of meaning by believing in hidden causation, just as I create meaning by opposing and trying to limit the painful when it randomly occurs.

So far, so existential. But I suddenly realized today that I hadn’t taken my outlook far enough. If no innate reason exists, there is no reason why you can’t settle on your own purpose for everything happening, and take comfort from that, even if that purpose is only finding satisfaction in the fact that what happens is in accord with your perception of how existence works. That may be a distant and unsatisfying outlook, but it would make my friend’s mantra truer than I imagined possible. But what purpose would reconcile me to stoicism in the face of disaster?

Immediately, I thought of a story by Jorge Luis Borges, which mentions in passing that the entire purpose of a greedy Sixteenth Century merchant’s existence was to give Shakespeare the model for Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Having recently spent a couple of days with fantasist Fritz Leiber’s immediate descendants, that in turn reminded me of Leiber’s comment that seeing everything he experienced as potential story material was part of his adoption to life.

Was there any reason, I wondered, why I couldn’t assume the same perspective? If what happens is story material, then that would be a reason that I could accept for everything that happens. Some events might be horrific, but, softened by being put in a story, maybe even they might instruct, amuse, or distract both me and any audience. The idea requires no belief in destiny or a deity, and morally involves nothing worse than salvaging something from whatever happens.

The only problem is that, so far, I’m not much of a fiction writer. While I’ve sold close to twelve hundred pieces of non-fiction, I’ve only published two pieces of fiction, both so short and so slight that calling them minor is being kind. The potential is there, but time is starting to run out.

Still, there is no reason why I can’t try out the perspective. Cultivating it might even encourage me to use the material I’ve collected, to settle down and make more of an effort at fiction.

That may be expecting too much. But, effective immediately, I’m resolved to see how the perspective works out. Since I’ve been mentally circling the idea since I first thought of it this morning, it seems worth exploring. I’ve rarely had an idea that intrigued me so much.

Who knows? Perhaps in a year or two, when my friend tells me everything happens for a reason, I will nod and tell him that he doesn’t know how true his belief actually is.

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Arlynn Presser and the Face to Facebook Project

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Face to Facebook, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 17, 2011| 2 Comments »

By mid-December, most New Years’ resolutions are long-forgotten. However, for Arlynn Leiber Presser, December sees her rushing to finish the resolution she made last January: to meet every one of her Facebook friends in a project that she calls Face to Facebook.

Presser and I had exchanged a few emails in the last twenty years, most of them about her grandfather, fantasist Fritz Leiber, whom I wrote my master’s thesis about, and mentioning in passing her father Justin Leiber. But, until yesterday, we had never actually met. Presser, her father, and I had leisurely drinks and dinner, then retired to their hotel suite, where I took the opportunity to interview her.

Face to Facebook began when Presser realized that she was feeling increasingly isolated, except for her contacts on Facebook. “I work at home,” Presser said. “My kids were gone, and my feeling was that I could stay in my house every single day without leaving as long as I could get the pizza delivery boy to stop by the liquor store on his way over to the house.”

At first, Presser found herself thinking that “It’s okay, I have a great social life – I have 325 friends on Facebook. I know what everybody is doing for dinner. I know what music they like, and what their problems are, and what goals they have.”

Yet on closer thought, Presser realized that she had never actually met about half of her Facebook friends, and that some of the meetings were years ago. “I thought, who are these people? So I woke up and said this is my New Year resolution: I’m going to find every one of those friends.”

Furthermore, Presser decided this was one resolution she would keep. “I’ve had New Years Resolutions where, yeah, I’m going to lose those five pounds, I’m going to give up drinking – and I don’t do any of those. But this one I have, although I’m not at the end of it.”

The resolution meant that Presser, who has written several dozen romance novels and worked in a variety of other jobs ranging from lawyer to waitress, would not be working for the year. Instead, she has been living off her savings, with financial assistance from her father and frequent flyer points from her ex-husband.

However, Presser remains philosophical about the lack of income. “Everyone’s losing money,” she says. “I’m just losing money in a different way. I’m losing it deliberately.”

Meeting her Facebook friends has required her to be constantly arranging and rearranging trips in order to meet everyone as efficiently as possible. “I can’t claim to be Napoleon,” she says. “I’m not good at this.”

All the same, she has kept on, always traveling with a chaperon for safety – often, her oldest son Joseph, and, on her most recent trip, her father. She has also gathered a support team around her. In addition to her father, two sons, and ex-husband (who house-sits for her), it includes a friend who makes her travel arrangements, and a cab driver named Murphy, who not only drives her to and from the airport and around Chicago, but arranges to meet her at the end of each visit. “Murphy and I will have an agreed-upon time, and then he will text and say, ‘Look out the window of the restaurant, or the hotel, or whatever,’ and he’ll be there.”

The actual visits have ranged from the disastrous to the unexpectedly magical. One woman promptly unfriended Presser when she refused to buy a Mac computer for her and carry it around the world to Ankara in Turkey.

Even worse, at Comic-Con in San Diego, a male friend said he couldn’t visit because he had walking pneumonia. Then, he added, “But I’d like to stop by the hotel and give you a hug.” He did so, and a few minutes later, “he sends me a text saying, ‘You are so sexy.’ The texts continued, with invitations to his house, which Presser refused.

Then, “Two months later, this dude texted, emailed, and used every communication device known to man to say, ‘Do not blog, do not admit that you know my name, because my girl friend doesn’t like it.’ Then about a week later, I got an email from a girl whom I didn’t know, saying, ‘Did you fuck John Smith? Because if you did, he’s a liar, and he says you’re not that sexy.’ Which I thought was hysterically funny, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow! This is fun!’”

However, the highlights are what seem to have touched Presser the most. For instance, she is especially grateful to her friend Brian Brethauer, who, realizing that his home outside Boise Idaho would require a special visit, arranged to meet her at Comic-Con, and then shepherded her through the experience.

Another memory Presser treasures is her time in Manila. She had hoped to visit a friend there, only to find out – too late to change her itinerary – that he was having his appendix out and would be unable to meet her. When she checked into her hotel, the front desk rang and said that a woman had been waiting to see her for three hours. The woman, who proved to be her friend’s wife, told her, “’I’m so sorry. My husband had his appendix taken out last night. He’s still not well, but can I take you to lunch?’ So I didn’t actually meet that Facebook friend, but I got to meet his wife, and I got to go out into Manila, and it was wonderful. When we were coming home in the cab, my son was still saying, ‘She was the best!'”

Presser still has a busy schedule if she is going to finish the project by December 31, but she already knows how she’ll be spending New Years Eve: “I’m going to be in my pajamas in my bedroom. There’s a little fireplace. I’m going to be there drinking champagne – by myself.”

After that, Presser plans to decide what to do with her blog and other notes. “There was someone who was doing a video,” she says. “But I don’t know, because my history has been to write books. So my mind thinks I’m going to write a book.”

Asked what she has learned from the past year, Presser responds, “I’m not as weird as I thought I was. I’m just very normal.”

But hearing her enthusiasm for the project, even while she is obviously jet-lagged, I suspect that life lessons are beside the point in Face to Facebook. What the project really seems to be is a series of small adventures, mishaps and all – and, if Presser hasn’t enjoyed every moment of travels, she obviously delights in all the stories she’s collected.

Arlynn Presser and I in the Griffin Room of the Hotel Vancouver

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John Wilson: “Blind Shaman in a Trance”

Posted in art appreciation, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, John Wilson, native art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2011| 4 Comments »

Over the last few years, I’ve received four masks and three prints from Haisla artist John Wilson, as well as a bentwood box carved and painted by him. The masks in particular are among my favorites hanging in the townhouse, and show Wilson’s increasing expertise as an artist. My latest purchase from Wilson, “Blind Shaman in a Trance,” illustrates the level he’s reached – one that makes his work stand out among the artists who have established themselves in the last five years.

“Blind Shaman” depicts a common theme in historical Northwest Coast art, and one popular among many modern artists: a shaman going about his business as the mediator between different aspects of reality. A blind shaman was thought to be compensated for his lack of sight by greater inward vision, and this one has the additional support of frogs as spirit helpers. As creatures who change form as they grow, and as adults move freely between the water and the land, frogs are especially suitable as helpers, because they embody exactly the freedom of movement between planes of existence that the shaman tries to develop. Unsurprisingly, the placement of spirit helpers like mice or frogs on the cheeks and forehead are a common feature in shamanistic masks in the northern tradition, particularly among the Tlingit.

Like much of the work that Wilson has done this year, “Blind Shaman” is more complex than the portrait masks that comprise the bulk of his work. Although his past work shows that a face alone can be interesting, “Blind Shaman adds additional figures, making for a more complex composition, even before painting. In fact, in some ways, a picture of the mask in progress that Wilson posted on Facebook is more interesting than the final version, because the lack of paint emphasizes the carving more, as well as the shadows it creates.

However, the mask has an effect when painted that it could never have when unpainted. By rising to the top of the nose, the blue triangle that covers the lower face allows an easy reversal of figure and ground. At first glance, the mask appears to be a face surrounded by frogs, all much smaller than the face. But if you focus on the mouth of the figure on the forehead, then suddenly the frogs on the cheeks look like hands, and a much larger figure is looming over the shaman’s face, consisting of mostly uncarved wood. Focus again, and the mask appears in its original form. This reversal emphasizes the fact that the shaman’s trance involves him opening up to forces larger than himself, perhaps even inviting possession.

From either perspective, “Blind Shaman in a Trance” is an arresting piece of work. I look forward to seeing what Wilson does next – and, meanwhile, this latest mask is a welcome addition to one wall of my bedroom.

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Eccentric vs. activist

Posted in activist, Bruce Byfield, eccentric, Personal, social advocacy, social causes, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

From the age of thirteen, I’ve marched, donated, and worked for causes I’ve believed in. Consumer advocacy, elections, environmentalism, feminism, recycling, social justice, welfare advocacy, wildlife rescue, unionism – name the cause, and I’ve probably been involved at some point. But close involvement has never been very satisfying, and sooner or later I become more of a fellow traveler than a regular worker for the cause. Recently, when the pattern reasserted itself yet again, I realized what I should have known years ago: I’m more of an eccentric than an activist.

This is a distinction that’s rarely made, but it’s an important one for me. Like an activist, I abstractly want a better life for everyone. Outwardly, you could frequently mistake me from the average supporter of good causes.

However, what differentiates me from a routine activist is that what concerns me most (not wholly, because it’s a matter of degree) is how those causes fit into my life. For example, a redefinition of gender roles seems healthy and necessary to me, but what mainly concerns me about feminism is how my belief in its tenets affects my own behavior and interactions. While I agree with many feminist social critiques, what matters most to me is how I interact with women myself. Do I avoid being condescending and trying to take charge? Do I refrain from taking charge of a conversation? Keep in mind that an interest in a woman doesn’t give me the right to intrude on her? Guiltily, I admit that I am more concerned that my conscience is clean than in the causes that activists talk about. I frequently condemn my focus as egocentric, but I retain it all the same.

This focus often distances me from any group working for a specific cause. With my concern for acting rightly, I am very much a believer that the means must be in keeping with the ends. Most activists would agree to this statement in theory, but, in practice, they violate it all the time.

For example, I frequently encounter groups that claim to believe in consensus, yet are organized from the top down. The leaders make a point of appearing to consult, but actually only do so on minor issues; they may allow discussion of T-shirt designs, but only limited discussion (if any) of general policy. Similarly, the leaders say that they don’t believe in the cult of personality, but do everything they can to promote their own celebrity. All too often, the leaders do not even feel they have to keep their promises to supporters.

No doubt this behavior shows the difficulty of trying to do things in alternative ways, but I react to these inconsistencies the way I would in personal life: I consider them evidence of hypocrisy, and as proof that the leaders are more interested in ego-satisfaction than their alleged cause. Being what is politely termed a high-vocal, sooner or later I’m likely to voice my opinions about what happenings, which speedily results in my withdrawal from the group.

Yet another problem with my conscience-driven approach is that I have trouble supporting the party line without questions. For me, being concerned with acting rightly means perceiving accurately what is happening around me. That means that I believe in multiple causality and that I’m always watching for nuances. But neither multiple causes or nuances are compatible with a party line. Again and again, I come to perceive the required beliefs of a cause as a collection of half-truths and over-simplifications at best.

This perception doesn’t mean that I don’t support a cause. After all, the corollary of my outlook is that conventional views are also half-truths and over-simplifications, and I believe that I have to choose a place to stand, even if it isn’t completely perfect. But such qualifications mean that my support is more intellectual than emotional, so I rarely manage the unthinking enthusiasm that so many activists seem to demand. I’m simply not that good at lying to myself.

Moreover, my outlook isn’t one that activists enjoy hearing. They’re apt to accuse me of over-intellectualizing, or of being undermined by doubts and therefore bad for the general morale. All too often, they accuse me of imperfect loyalty, – and, once or twice, of being a traitor. These seem the only interpretations that most activists can make of qualified support.

Such realizations do not mean that I no longer support the causes of my younger days. I do, and plan to continue to support them this side of senility or death.

But my realizations do mean that in the future my support should be more distant than in the past, taking the form of more donations and occasional consulting or helping out when asked than regular involvement. I’m tired of thinking I’ve found a community only to find myself needing or wanting to move on, or of puzzling people because I try to practice what I consider intellectual honesty. As an eccentric, I’m more of a fellow traveler than dedicated party member, and while I’m not altogether happy with this truth, denying it seems needlessly disruptive for everyone.

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7 Common Mistakes in Marketing Campaigns

Posted in Bruce Byfield, marketing, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

One of the ironies of my life is that, although I am personally scornful of marketing, I’ve orchestrated two North American-wide campaigns and a dozen minor ones, including a couple of charities. This experience (which I can only say seemed like a good idea at the time), has made me sensitive to the mistakes that beginning marketers commonly make.

Read this list of strategies to avoid, and see how many you’ve done. I admit to having made all of them at one time or the other.

Avoid December to February product releases

In the month before Christmas, most people are distracted. They have a lot of demands on their income, including more requests from charities. After Christmas, they feel poor and depressed and are starting to think of putting whatever cash they have left over into retirement savings plans – all of which makes these three months the worst possible for starting a campaign. If you want people to buy for Christmas, you need to start by mid-October at the very latest. Otherwise, you’re almost guaranteed a lack of interest, no matter what you are promoting.

Don’t think that the second campaign is as easy as a first

When you first announce a product, you generally get a free ride. People are curious (with any luck), and they generally don’t know anything against the product, regardless of whether it’s a piece of merchandise, a service, or a cause.
But, the second time around, the product has a record. People have seen it before, and heard of the company or non-profit behind the product. Consequently, a successful followup campaign is much harder than a successful introductory campaign.

Don’t assume that what works once will work again

Just because a strategy or angle worked for you once doesn’t mean that it will work indefinitely. A clever campaign is a novelty the first time, and a bore the second time. You’ll do better with a different strategy for each campaign.

Don’t aim at the same audience continually

Members of an existing audience have already bought your product or donated to your cause. Appealing to them again makes you more likely to be ignored. You also risk losing what support you have built up. Instead, find a way to add to your audience.

Don’t assume that the value of your product is obvious

You may think that the value of what you are offering is obvious. By the time a campaign starts, the product’s value probably is obvious to you, especially if you are operating a non-profit or charity. But to your audience, which may not be paying close attention, that value is not obvious. Try to go beyond generalities and explain as concretely as possible the value of what you are offering.

Don’t shut out part of the audience

Understanding the demographics of a product is important to help you to understand the emphasis of the campaign. But don’t completely ignore other audiences. Just because your product mainly appeals to men doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay some attention to women in the campaign, or the other way around. Otherwise, developing a larger audience becomes much more difficult.

Don’t over-saturate

Faced with a less than successful campaign, the impulse of many marketers is to try harder. They step up the tweets, increase the automatic phone dialing, and take out more ads in a panicked effort to stave off failure. However, the result of such tactics is likely to be the loss of your existing audience members because you’ve ignored them. Probably, by the time you notice problems with a campaign you can’t cancel it altogether, but look for creative ways to tweak or supplement it rather than speeding the train wreck by increasing its speed.

When I was learning how to market – usually on the fly, half a step ahead of necessity – a time came when I was so aware of these faults that I would keep count of how many examples of each mistake I found. Sanity has since prevailed, but, like anyone with special knowledge or expertise, I still notice frequent examples of all of them. Look around, and the chances are that you will, too – maybe even in your own efforts.

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Kelly Robinson, “Mother of Mischief”

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, indian art, Kelly Robinson, Northwest Coast Art, northwestcoast art, Personal, Raven, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Kelly Robinson is a new artist of mixed Nuxalk and Nu-chu-nualth ancestry. His silver jewelry is starting to become a regular feature of Vancouver galleries, and in the last year he has begun carving masks in both his traditions. However, he tells me that his first medium was painting, and, to judge from “Mother of Mischief,” it remains one that he is deeply interested in developing.

“Mother of Mischief” is done in the Nuxalk style, and is the first art in that tradition that I have bought. Geographically located between the northern nations such as the Haida and the Tsimshian and the central Kwakwaka’wakw, the Nuxalk culture has been comparatively overlooked and has had little written about it – so much so that an artist of another nation spent most of an afternoon trying to figure out how to carve the eyes of a Nuxalk mask with Robinson.

However, from what I have been able to learn from first and second hand sources, the Nuxalk tradition might be called loosely-rendered formline. By that I mean that it shares many of the individual elements of the northern formline, such as the ovoids and U shapes, but follows more informal rules about their positioning. Nor, on the whole, are Nuxalk designs as intricate as any of those in the northern tradition. Instead, Nuxalk designs have a bold simplicity that give them a strong visual appeal, especially when shown at large sizes.

Another characteristic of Nuxalk art appears to be a wider variation of colors than in the northern formline traditions. While northern formline favors black for the primary formline and red for the secondary, only occasionally reversing the color scheme or adding a third color, the Nuxalk palette seems broader, with greater use of blue and green, as in Kwakwaka’wakw work.

From this brief description, you can see why “Mother of Mischief” seems to me to be rooted firmly in the Nuxalk tradition. Centering on a Raven hen and her offspring ,at three feet by three feet, the painting has all the boldness of the best Nuxalk work, with three realms of existence – the land, water, and sky – depicted by rectangles of different blues.

Once you see realize the organization, the picture falls into place, with the middle blue strip representing the water where the salmon swim and the sun positioned both in the sky and, because of its reflection, in the water as well. On the land is a salmon or salmon roe that that the mother has found (for, contrary to common belief, ravens are not just scavengers; they can fish and hunt as well as other birds, but often carrion makes for an easier meal).

At the same time, the painting has a surprisingly modern feel to it. Parts, such as the ovoid at the top of the mother’s wing resembles the simple outlines of a sports logo, in particular, the old hockey stick logo of the Vancouver Canucks, a team that I happen to know that Robinson follows. Other parts of the design, such as the bent wing tips and the reduction of the mother’s body to a single tapering line, are reminiscent of late period Bill Reid.

Nor, do I think that a traditional design would be so strongly asymmetrical, or depict the raven fledgling as mirroring the mother’s positioning and design, with minor differences. Maybe you would have to be familiar with birds to notice, but, to me, the fledgling’s bare beginnings of a curved beak suggests immaturity.

Similarly, the lack of an oval in the eye or a visible tongue between the upper and lower beak suggests that the fledgling doesn’t share the mother’s watchfulness. Instead, it seems to be looking fixedly at the salmon on the shore, ready to waddle after it without worrying about the possibility of danger.

Robinson may be a newcomer, but”Mother of Mischief”shows that he is already an artist to reckon with. I’ve hung it over the largest couch in the living room, and, sooner or later, I expect it to be joined by either another of Robinson’s paintings, or perhaps one of his masks.

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Anger

Posted in Abezier Coppe, anger, Bruce Byfield, emotion, Leon Rosselson, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

According to English song-writer Leon Rosselson, the seventeenth century radical Abezier Coppe was arrested for blasphemy after repeatedly declaring that he didn’t believe in sin. Found guilty, he recanted, acknowledging that the sins his accusers might be prone to – “greed, tyranny, hypocrisy and pride” – really were sins after all. A neat reversal, I’ve always thought, considering the circumstances.

This week, I’m feeling about anger the same way that Abezier Coppe felt about sin. After years of carefully regulating my temper, I got angry recently. And you know what? I was right to do so.

I trace the distrust of my temper to a pickup baseball game when I was in elementary school. Another boy was cheating, and refused to admit what he was doing. He owned the bat and ball, he kept saying, so he could do what he want. Furious, I threw the ball at him, screaming he could go. I wasn’t aiming at him or anyone else, but the ball hit the girl on the catcher’s mound on the head.

She wasn’t hurt, but she left and so did the boy who owned the bat and ball. But I was so appalled at what I had done that, after half an hour of hiding, I marched over to the girl’s house and confessed to her mother what I had done. To my surprise, her mother hugged and forgave me, and nothing more came of the matter.

Except this: I told myself that I would never let myself get so blindly angry ever again. And, aside from a few sharp words, I kept that promise. I cultivated an easy-going attitude, one more prone to humor and sarcasm than anger – so successfully that the few times I did snap at someone, they were surprised. As several people told me after, they hadn’t known that I was capable of anger.

Later, I found another reason for avoiding anger. I realized that I was born moderately privileged, and that anger could be a means of invoking that privilege if I wasn’t careful.

So I told myself that a mature person resists giving way to anger. When I grew annoyed, I’d go out and do some heavy exercise, or at least some strenuous chores around the house. Almost always, I sat down calmer afterwards. Just as the only sins that Abezier Coppe acknowledged were those of the privileged, the only targets I allowed for my anger were abstract social ones and the people who defended them – and even then I felt uneasy and did my best to see more than one side to everything.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got angry for the first time in several years. I’m not going to give a play by play, but, after having someone inflict three out of the four of Abezier Coppe’s acknowledged sins on me (there was no greed that I could see), I told her what I thought of her bullying, thoroughly and in the bluntest terms I could muster.

What surprised me was that I wasn’t ashamed of my anger, and that I didn’t let it control me. Instead, I restrained it until there was no reason not to express it, and, having expressed it, felt no inclination to do anything further except mutter for a couple of days. Even more importantly, for the brief time I was angry, I felt perfectly justified.

I realize now there is a world of difference between a boy’s ability to restrain his emotions and a middle-aged man’s. Not only that, but in some circumstances, anger is the only sane response. At times, to suppress it would mean acquiescing to the unacceptable.

Does that mean that I have any right to go berserk, or to cultivate anger and keep acting on it for weeks or months? Of course not. Some limits still apply. But it does mean that a shadowy part of myself is not nearly as scary as I had long imagined, and – occasionally, at least – is justified and deserves to be expressed.

The price of this knowledge may be steep, but I suspect now that a similar incident would have come sooner or later anyway. At least in the circumstances I can say I learned something:

I’ll never be afraid of my temper ever again. Nor will I have any further doubts about my ability to control it.

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Examples of Comparative Methods

Posted in Bruce Byfield, comparison, comparison-contrast, composition, education, English, Personal, teaching handout, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

(Note: The following is a handout I used to give in composition courses to first year university students. You are welcome to reformat and distribute it under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Basically, that means you it any way you like so long as you give me credit and let others use it under the same conditions)

A. “Chunk” (Paragraphs arranged by subject):

In the co-op, Judy is the practical one. Of the four people who share the house, she is the only one who is not visibly eccentric. She keeps regular hours, and sees that the bills are paid. If food is bought, or laundry is done, either she has done the work or bullied someone else into doing it. Periodically, she musters everyone else for a massive cleaning of the house. It is only her profession–writer–and her New Age interests that suggest how unusual she is.

By contrast, Saul, the household’s other original resident, is so eccentric that his friends think that he looks abnormal in ordinary clothes. His usual wear is either a faded red caftan or Scottish formal wear, complete with a sporran and skean dhu. Because of his light-sensitive eyes, he is usually awake while other people are asleep. He rarely leaves the house, and the ordinary business of living holds little interest for him. He never considers bills, and, although he will eat if food is available, will lives for several days at a time on nothing more than nerves and coffee. Only the area around his computer is clean; the rest of his living space has mounds that archaeologists would love to excavate. Even his hobbies are unusual: sword meditation and writing poetry in obscure languages like Gaelic and Iroquois. Unlike Judy, Saul seems incapable of functioning normally; he does not meet visitors in their world so much as invite them into his.

B. “Slice” (Paragraph arranged by Points of Comparison):

Although both Judy and Saul are old friends, they have little else in common. Saul is visibly eccentric; Judy is so ordinary that she is no more noticeable on the street than a lamp post. She is awake and starts work when their neighbors do, and she can handle such things as bills, laundry, shopping and cleaning–matters that are mysteries to Saul. She even knows how to organize the other household members. Saul, on the other hand, can barely organize himself. Except for his work station, he is surrounded by clutter. If his routine is more organized than Judy’s, the reason is only that he organizes only himself–and then only so that he can work, which is the most important thing in his life. His life is arranged to give him as much time to work as possible, so he pays no attention to ordinary matters like food. A night person, he may go for days at a time seeing nobody, never leaving the house, and surviving on coffee with the odd bit of leftovers. Even his hobbies, sword meditation and writing poetry in obscure languages like Gaelic and Iroquois, are private. He is so different from Judy that many people are surprised to learn that they have shared a house for over twenty years.

C. Analogy:

If the difference between eccentrics and ordinary people is the difference between night and day, then Judy is twilight and Saul is midnight.

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Not appropriate

Posted in Bruce Byfield, English, language, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , on November 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Whenever I come across a use of language that makes me cringe, I tell myself that the English language is robust and evolving, and can survive any number of hopeful monsters. I outlasted “not” being added to the end of every sentence, I keep reminding myself, and I can survive whatever other grotesque usage that slouches my way. But there are limits, and mine is “not appropriate” and its near-relative “inappropriate.”

You know what I’m referring to: flat, prim statements that something done, said – or even thought – is “not appropriate.” Typically, I regret to say, it is said by someone such as a unionist, feminist, or environmentalist, with whose basic ideas I agree, but with whose tactics (obviously) I find reprehensible. In fact, I can think of few phrases I disdain more.

What’s my problem with “not appropriate”? For one thing, it’s a euphemism. When someone says that something is “not appropriate,” what they really mean is that they dislike or disapprove of what they are condemning. But instead of saying what they mean, they hide behind a vague phrase. So, right away, they’re being dishonest.

However, unlike many euphemisms, “not appropriate” isn’t used to be discreet or to spare someone’s feelings. Instead, it’s one of the most basic invalid arguments imaginable: an appeal to an authority – in this case, the alleged standards of the community and the unspoken rules by which we live by. The implication is that the person who has done something “not appropriate” has transgressed in a way that no decent adult ever should.

I say “alleged standards” because, almost always, the transgression is not against existing community norms, but against what the speaker would like to be the community norms. My impression is that the speaker is hoping that, by assuming that these norms are already generally accepted, they can enforce their ethics as though everybody shared them.

I would find such tactics hard to tolerate in anyone, but, when standards I support are used in this way, I worry about the harm they can cause. I suspect that many people who might otherwise be persuaded to those standards will reject them simply because they resent the clumsy efforts at manipulation.

After all, when accused of being “not appropriate” or “inappropriate,” you are not supposed to stop and consider the merits of the standards being implied, or discuss what is happening. You are supposed to act on reflex, and shut up.

Those who go around condemning things as “not appropriate” are setting themselves up – almost always, completely unasked — as authorities about what is socially acceptable. The implication is that they know what is right and wrong, and those they address they do not.

Basically, they are offering themselves as the guardians of ethics and morality, demanding that others obey without any discussion. They are taking on the role of teachers and casting everyone else as dull students, playing parents to unsatisfactory children, or cops to the mob. They are usurping an authority to which they have no right – and, when they stoop to condemning even thoughts (or their interpretations of them) as “not appropriate,” they become downright creepy.

No matter how you parse the phrase, “not appropriate” is a fundamentally dishonest and authoritarian expression. The sole virtue of “not appropriate” (or “inappropriate”) is that its use signals that the speaker is so committed to intellectual fraud and authoritarianism that you can save yourself endless time and effort by walking away from them.

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