Crimes Against Humanity

I am in my office, which is above the living room in my little house. The NewsHour is playing, and the menfolk are listening to a report about software

designed to safely store data about torture, murder, killings and other human rights abuses in countries around the world. It's meant to help human rights workers who are collecting that information and use it to document what went on -- or is going on -- in nations run by brutal dictators who might eventually be brought to justice.

It's pretty ingenious stuff, and my hat's off to the guy who invented this modern tool of resistance. His name is Jim Fruchterman - here he is, talking about this:


This is the sort of story that gives me great hope. In the same world that holds brutal dictators and their victims, there are men like this, asking themselves, What could I do with what I have that just might make this humanitarian problem less powerful? How can I help? I want to choose sides, and not just agree with the good, but also work for the good.

Tonight, when I was listening to the story from up here in my office, I heard the phrase of accusation, "crimes against humanity." That phrase came into being in the war-torn, modernizing, machine-making, bomb-dropping 20th century. That has a beautiful and grotesque irony to it, don't you think? What we did to each other became so enormous that we made a phrase to describe it. We, the people of the planet who decried the horrors of the World Wars, took a stand. There is no "us" and "them" at a certain point, we said. At that point, we're all us. Do that to them, we said, and you have done it to everyone.

Do not play this video if there are children nearby. This is the short French documentary Night and Fog. I have seen few things in my life more chilling.
Night and Fog Rare Holocaust Footage

There is no "us" and "them."

During this school year, I have read for a course in The Literature of Resistance. The above film was one of the documentary genre in History of Film. Over and over, the awareness has come to me, in class, and at work, and at prayer. There is no "us" and "them." All humans are included in the "humanity" against which crimes ought not to be committed.

There are a lot of reasons why I will always vote for public parks, public schools, public safety, public roads, and public transportation. These are the things we expect to find in a modern country, where there are more than enough resources for such things. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about health care - public, private, insured, uninsured, fee-for-service, wellness, crisis management, complementary, human-centered ... thousands of billing codes ... people sitting in their cars in the parking lot outside the emergency room, wondering how they will pay for it if they go in ... and how much more sense it would make, fiscally and practically, if we did not have such a disjointed and scattered way of going about it.

It's not a simple problem to solve, but we need to solve it. We need to solve it not only because we're throwing away both money and the health of a nation doing it this way, but more because there is no such thing as "us" and "them." A human being is a human being, and we have a moral and humanitarian obligation to stop pretending that the man left for dead by the side of the road is not our problem.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said, He that shewed mercy on him.
Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

Shivers! A new Jane Eyre opens today!

And NPR's interview with the director, along with more clips, here

A free man

Nervous.

Jittery. Jumpy. Twitchy and unable to settle.

There are moments in a life lived consciously, when awareness seeps in under the door and through the cracks around the window frame, and just before losing consciousness you know. Now. It's now. From here on out, all of my reference points and indicators and familiar protections will be altered or gone.

I am choosing - and I know it. I am choosing to stand before the masked faces of my inner jury and make an argument. The changes we have in our lives - the big ones, I mean - they make us Number Six, taken to The Village, held captive there, and finally making our arguments to our own masked faces.

With a few exceptions, each episode begins with a repetition of some of the opening sequences from the first episode--McGoohan resigns; his file is dropped by a mechanical device into a filing cabinet labeled "Resigned"; he is gassed; he wakes in "The Village" and confronts (the new) Number Two. This beginning is followed by a set piece of dialogue:

Prisoner: Where am I?
Number Two: In The Village.
Prisoner: What do you want?
Number Two: Information.
Prisoner: Which side are you on?
Number Two: That would be telling. We want information, information, information...
Prisoner: You won't get it.
Number Two: By hook or by crook we will.

Prisoner: Who are you?
Number Two: The new Number Two.
Prisoner: Who is Number One?
Number Two: You are Number Six.
Prisoner: I am not a number. I am a free man.

Number Two: Ha, ha, ha, ha....

With few exceptions, this sense of knowing has preceded a profound and seismic change in my life. Although (I may at last have learned) "it" will all be the same when I return to my life at the end of the show, I will not be the same. I will have been a Prisoner in the Village, silenced at every turn, unable to make an argument or bring awareness - or find it.

The difference this time is that I have hopped onto the the helicopter of my own volition. I choose this change.

I choose this change - I choose this course in narratives born of pain - I choose this awareness. I choose to be the living clay on which the Literature of Resistance may be written, and I choose it for all of the Prisoners who have been silenced. I choose it for the silencing of gas chambers and columns of smoke, and I choose it for machete amputees and fearful children.

And I choose this next stay in The Village for the smallest darkling spot of confusion in the mind and soul of anyone I might ever stand before as a teacher. I do not compare our privileged lives and times to the unmaking of the Holocaust - the erasure of voices and unreality of a nightmare made corporeal and then snuffed out so easily. But I see that the planting of one healthy tree is an answer to the fire of mountain ranges, and I choose to plant the trees.

I'm afraid.

I've been here before. I've been drugged and captured and taken to The Village when I did not want to be and no one warned me and the panic of it nearly unhinged my mind and stopped my body.

But this is different. I know the white balloon is here, and I know it will not let me leave until it's time to make an answer to the masks in the gallery. But this time, I choose it.

You've been erased - probably - maybe - well, it depends

I can't help it. Eraser and True Lies (and all of the Die Hard movies - yes, all of them) - I love them. I get in a mood to bash up some bad guys, and I put the disk in (and I set up the ironing board and get out the shirts or the altar linens), and Arnold or Bruce or someone like that just clears 'em all outa there. And no mess for me to clean up afterwards! It's a pretty good deal, I think.

Somewhere near the center of my chest and up in my neck and shoulders, bashing up the bad guys is connected to having a good clear-out. That's what Jean calls it in As Time Goes By. "A good clear-out." From under the stairs, from the back of the cupboards and the closets ... a good clear-out for donating things or taking them to the country house or throwing them away entirely. A good clear-out feels very action heroey to me.

And so, apparently, does moving all my RSS feeds to a new reader. Who are all these people I've been "following?" Why did I put that one in there? Oh, good grief. I haven't looked at that in ages! ... or, sometimes, Awwww.... I'd forgotten about that one. I wonder why he's not posted in a long time.

But one thing about a good clear-out (or thinning the carrots in the garden, callously discarding so many tiny orange strands, playing God like that ...) one thing about a good clear-out is the moments of pulse-quickening, "You've been erased." You, Mr. Snarkyman. The tools of irony, wit, and even bare-knuckle sarcasm -- you're not up to it. You're a whiner. You've been erased. Oh, my. This woman. I'd forgotten about her. No wonder I never follow that link and look at her page. That level of intensity over sock drawers and flea market finds ... no thanks. It's just not going to happen. Some stuff goes away because, like the denim jumper, it's just not me anymore. And some stuff goes away because I'm tired of averting my eyes. Erased. You're not coming to the new reader, you ... You've been erased.

But there's another thing about a good clear-out. It's the reason I used to put money in my books at school (which turned out to be a bad idea, since I could never remember which books), and it's the reason putting away the holiday decorations between Epiphany and Advent II or III is better than Christmas in July. There's the thrill of re-discovery.

In my old web crawler, under the headings of Books and Writers, or Homeschoolers (the two largest categories in my list) are a few real gems. "Families" and "Folks" are pretty promising boxes to sort through as well. It's reassuring. Restorative, even. It's an exercise in appreciation of the friends and family and peers and admirable people that surround me - people to whom I want to measure up - people who help me remember to laugh or to rewrite my work or to say thank you.

No, I'm not going to share my list. I won't say who's being erased. But you? Have I erased you? Probably not. If you read this blog, you're probably going into the witness protection program. I'll know where you are. Me 'n' Arnold 'n' Bruce. We only shoot the bad guys.

Changing my mind about the kid in the principal's office

Last winter, during our annual trip out of town for walks and movies and relaxation at the coast, we watched the entire disc set of The Prisoner, and I figured out (again) that other people think I'm unmutual. I was bemused (again) at this notion, considering the strain of mental and emotional effort I have always, always expended trying as hard as I can to understand and be understood. It's hard to express how important this is to me - to understand and be understood. It's a need that flows from my sternum and from my lower back, and it has caused the deepest physical and psychic pain in my life when this need cannot be met. (yes, really)

I know, right? Weird. What's anyone else supposed to do with that level of intensity in one of their friends? What were all my friends and family supposed to do with that?

Mostly, people just love me anyway, and tolerate my relentless drive for clarity and understanding. Mostly, it's a good thing I married a man who would put up with such an intensity of endless conversations that start with my saying, "I don't understand this," and he will have the conversation with me for the thousandth time, parrying with my mind, refusing to give in just to make me leave it alone. (Thanks, honey. I think this has kept me out of both the loony bin and the pharmacy.)

See, back when I was a kid, I was never - no kidding, not one time - sent to the principal's office in school, except on errands, to deliver messages in the days before intercoms were ordinary, or to retrieve the naughty student and escort that student back to the ordered, stable, mutual and socially predictable classroom. The classic teacher's pet. The good child. The natural student, in fact so naturally at home in the classroom that I started studying my teachers for methods, pedagogy, and classroom management techniques at about the age of seven. When you're a kid, no one's really listening to the kinds of questions you're asking anyway, so no one thought my desire to understand and be understood was unmutual. I was just a kid - and when I didn't get real answers, I figured it was because I'd made an error in the way I asked the question. (yes, I really thought like that, even then) And the island was not such a bad place. If you grow up in a very mutual place, the fact of imprisonment does not fully impress itself on the mind until you've been a grownup for long enough to see people escape - or try to.

Is this too metaphorical? I will try to be understood. Here is what I mean.

The parents and teachers and babysitters and camp counselors and club leaders and recess monitors who surrounded me as I grew were all people who gave me the same set of rules for living. They really did love me, and I really did trust them, and because of this, I really did believe that the kid who got sent to the office was a kid who had done something immoral. Wrong. Bad. Naughty. I thought, I mean to say, that every rebel - every unmutual - was wrong. (yes, I really thought that)

And yet ...

There was a relative or two who hinted to me that beyond the walls and beaches of the island, there was a wider world. Sometimes the parent in some other household, or a teacher who didn't stay long, or even one of my peers would let me in on a reality I'd never imagined.

And now that I'm so old all of my own kids are grown, and I've seen many, many people younger than I am try to figure out how to avoid being unmutual, and I've learned about some huge ideas like "civil rights" and "racial equality" and "war crimes" being committed by our side.

If the sign says "Whites Only," but you drink from the fountain with your colored face, you have been unmutual. Uncooperative. But wrong? Not really.

If you're a child in a school, and you hit back when someone weak is being bullied, have you disobeyed the rules? Yes. Are you very, very likely to get into trouble for standing in the way of oppression? Yes. But have you done something wrong? Morally wrong? No. Sometimes the rules are wrong.

So now I've decided that sometimes, in fact, much more often than I knew, being unmutual is the best, more moral, most brave thing a person can do. And I've even changed my mind about the kids who got sent to the principal's office. I might finally be beginning to understand the difference between being cooperative and being good. Yes, really.

Today's Challenge: What's in your Art Pile?

So ... something interesting just came of a facebook conversation. It was one of those art, the arts, and trading movie titles conversations.

Here's the Challenge:

If you made a pile of art (of any kind) to represent you, what would be in your Art Pile? These are not necessarily your Top Ten of anything - nor are they titles of things you've enjoyed or even love. Your Art Pile is supposed to be YOU, in Art.

Here's one way I could do mine (there are different ways):
A box of movies would be on the bottom of the pile, and there would be books on top of the box, and on top of the books would be a few poems.

The movies in the box of me are:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967):

"You listen to me. You say you don't want to tell me how to live my life. So what do you think you've been doing? You tell me what rights I've got or haven't got, and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you're supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don't own me! You can't tell me when or where I'm out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don't even know what I am, Dad, you don't know who I am. You don't know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life you will never understand. You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you've got to get off my back! Dad... Dad, you're my father. I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man. Now, I've got a decision to make, hm? And I've got to make it alone, and I gotta make it in a hurry. So would you go out there and see after my mother?"

The Big Kahuna (1994):

"I'm saying you've already done plenty of things to regret, you just don't know what they are. It's when you discover them, when you see the folly in something you've done, and you wish that you had it do over, but you know you can't, because it's too late. So you pick that thing up, and carry it with you to remind you that life goes on, the world will spin without you, you really don't matter in the end. Then you will gain character, because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself across your face."

The Forgotten (2004):

"I had life inside me. I had life. I have a child. I have a son. I have a son, and his name is Sam, you son of a bitch."

The Village (2004):

"Heartache is a part of life, we know that now."

The Family Man (2000):

"I choose us."

Proof (2005):

"How many days have I lost? How can I get back to the place where I started? I'm outside a house, trying to find my way in. But it is locked and the blinds are down, and I've lost the key, and I can't remember what the rooms look like or where I put anything. And if I dare go in inside, I wonder... will I ever be able to find my way out? If I go back to the beginning, I could start it over again. I could go line by line, try and find a shorter way. I could try to make it... better."

On top of the box, I'd stack:

the Emily of New Moon trilogy, by L. M. Montgomery

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Joanne Greenberg

The Scent of Water, by Elizabeth Goudge
and

Beach Music, by Pat Conroy

and I'd top it off by some of Pablo Neruda's poetry.

Leaning against the pile are the works of painters who capture a source of light - and from deep inside, there is music coming out.

And I notice something: I notice the triumph of love over confusion, oppression, and fear. I notice the power of articulated love. The honesty of love, and the love that is honesty.

Okay ---- Now YOU go. What's in your Art Pile?

Education mapping: I've found the red X !

Did you ever stand and stare at those mall diagrams on the lit boards, looking for the red X labeled, "you are here?" Ever feel that slightly dizzy disorientation that comes from realizing you're facing about 90 degrees off what you thought you were? Mall maps are some pretty simple ones, though. As long as the thing is oriented in the same direction you're facing when you're standing there, those aren't too wacky-headed to read.

(But the questions always do tend to pop into my head - questions like, "Why do they split department stores into two annoying separate places? And exactly who is 'Westfield,' anyway? Why does he suddenly own all the 'shopping towns' and why are they all the same?")

Mall maps are a tool for finding the store I want so that I can buy the thing I want and get the hell outa Dallas. Or Renton. Or Clackamas. Or Vancouver. Or wherever else I happen to be where there's too much smell of food court, far too many teenybopper hairdo's and voices talking on cell phones, and where the walls in the mall are, like, rilly rilly tall ... chah ...

In general, I love maps. When I was a kid, we had one like this one (found in a games museum in Waterloo), and I loved it. I should have used it a little more intentionally for learning all the states and capitals in the fifth grade. Somehow, that was a very hard task for me, and I suspect it's because I was memorizing names for things that had no faces. The puzzle would have given me some faces. (Notice that New Mexico is missing? Maybe they just took out that piece so that the viewer could see the information under it. My puzzle didn't have that information. Very cool, say I. Parents everywhere should have puzzles of the states and continents. I wonder if there's one for European countries.)

Maps breathe out possibility and the romance of the unknown. They entice imagination. Or, they should, anyway. Somehow, the map assignments I had to do in school were some of the most mind-numbingly, panic-inducingly, what's-the-point-of-this-beggingly assignments I was ever commanded to do.

How odd. How, I wonder, did those teachers manage to kill the romance of maps? Do you suppose maps are a bit like music or art? If the student isn't allowed to form a genuine and personal attachment to her own creative thoughts and fancies, then it's a bit like pretending to love someone? Ugh.

I quite agree with Margaret Dashwood. The really lovely books of maps ought to be kept away from the greedy hands of dull witted heiresses - and all else who do not understand what they see. (And a library is a very good place to hide! The dull of sense never do think anyone would be in a library.)

But back to the subject at hand. Maps. My maps. Specifically, my MAP, my LAC plan, and my INT plan. Gibb'rish, i'n't it?

Not to me! Not anymore! After a very long day, with the hours slipping by until my stomach reminded me of meal times, I have finally found where X marks my spot. I may even have conquered my hostility toward making maps for school.

See, at Marylhurst, there is one constant drum beat that the student cannot escape. In every class, for nearly every assignment, the school asks the student to own it. Own your education. Own your learning. Name your goals, say if you meet them or if you don't and why and how you believe that happened. Explain yourself. Explain yourself in relation to: your own experience, your own expectations, and all the learning and expectations of all the academics who have gone before you in your chosen field. It's yours. Your education belongs to you. At Marylhurst, they have the keys to the doors, and the doors are labeled, but the students are no more shepherded to the "right" doors than they are given spelling tests each Friday.

The students at Marylhurst have to draw their own maps, and then place their own bright red X's in their own landscapes. You can use a stencil if you want to - for the X, I mean. Or draw it with a marker, or paint it with oil paints, or glue and glitter if that's your bent. But the map is yours, and so is your place on it. Oh. And one more thing. This map of yours has to make sense to other people.

Marylhurst Map #1: It's your EDP - your Educational Degree Plan. (The links are to tutorials on the Marylhurst website.)

In the olden days, I would've called the EDP something else, but I don't remember what that was. A transcript, maybe? An incomplete transcript?

Anyway, the EDP is the list of stuff you have to take to get your degree, and then there's a column for whether or not you've taken it. This is the one map you get given to you at Marylhurst. It's generated through your declared degree, your credits earned so far, and the requirements for what you say you're doing. But there's a catch. It's only in a rare case that the actual courses will be listed on a brand spanking new EDP. Instead, you get a list of "outcomes" you have to fulfill, and you have to figure out for yourself how you want to do that. (It's yours. This education belongs to you.)

The outcomes are determined in two categories: your major, and the LAC - the Liberal Arts Core, the unifying and grounding element central to Marylhurst's mission and identity. In the olden days, a liberal arts degree included history, math, language, etc. Now all of those specific things are gathered into categories. (Am I the only one who didn't know this?)

Marylhurst Map #2: I must find courses that have outcomes in Arts & Ideas, Human Community, Life and Learning Skills, and Natural World.

Marylhurst Map #3: And how does one keep track of these outcomes? On one's Marylhurst MAP, of course! The Marylhurst Academic Portfolio. Name the course's outcome category, tell what you learned in it, and write the ubiquitous Marylhurst "reflection" regarding the course's efficacy in meeting the outcome's goal, and get feedback from advisors. (It's yours. This education belongs to you. You draw your own map, but someone is checking to make sure it's a map that leads somewhere when you're done.)

Marylhurst Map #3: Yesterday, I spent the entire day doing the other part. The requirements for an Interdisciplinary Degree. And now there's a twist. I have to write my own Outcomes. I have to declare my own intentions - draw my own map. Interdisciplinary Studies require that the student both design and justify the degree. It is not a double major - it's a threading together of at least two academic disciplines into one tapestry, the the tapestry has to make sense.

After all of this, the cherry on the top of the sundae is this: I've been writing for Prior Learning Assessment credits. These are very structured essays which are meant to prove academic learning which has occurred within non-academic life experience. Those credits have to have someplace to go. They need to fit either into the Liberal Arts Core (such as the essays I did for Public Speaking and Effective Listening), or into my major (I am not putting any of my prior learning into that category), or they must go into the Electives pile (and that's where the Library Procedures essay went.)

It has taken me two full years of going to school to make a map I want to follow. I've tried versions of other maps, but none of them went where I want to go. As of the end of the day yesterday, I have done it at last. This is my education. It belongs to me. I will be am earning an interdisciplinary degree called "Composing the Human Experience," which is a liberal arts degree with concentrations in Writing and Human Studies.

I am here.

I think it's like an arch

An arch is a structure that spans a space while supporting weight (e.g. a doorway in a stone wall). Arches appeared as early as the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamian brick architecture, but their systematic use started with the Ancient Romans who were the first to apply the technique to a wide range of structures.^[1]

So saith Wikipedia.

And that, I think, is a good visual for the problem(s) faced by a free and principled democracy whenever it comes to questions of social justice. We have oppositional values, and we need them if we wish both to span space and to support weight. We need justice and kindness. We need generosity and everyone working. We need profit and philanthropy - not just as individuals, but as a people.

We wish to be fair, not preferring wealth and privilege over poverty or a bad start in life; but we also want each man to pull his own weight and earn what he has. We do not believe that law enforcement has a moral right to bully, intimidate, or coerce - no, not even to behave that way toward the criminal. Or maybe we do.

Maybe we do think the good guys have immunity from moral obligation.

I saw the movie Public Enemies this summer. It's not a movie to make the cogitator comfortable or happy in any way. It's also not for the squeamish (lots of brutality) or for anyone who has a problem with motion sickness. (Could we pulleaze stop all the jerky camera work and just get into the scene? Seriously. There are some fatuous film students who need to study the greats or stop studying altogether because jerking the camera around does not make the viewer enter the scene, but step back instead, trying to stand still in order to see what's going on because the story is compelling but someone keeps jiggling the floor. Geeeez Louise, that was frustrating!)

I really liked this movie - despite the jumpy camera man. It is about the famous bank robber, John Dillinger. I went to see it on the strength of Ebert's review. I agree with Ebert about most of the movie - especially this bit.

This is very disciplined film. You might not think it was possible to make a film about the most famous outlaw of the 1930s without clichés and "star chemistry" and a film class screenplay structure, but Mann does it. He is particular about the way he presents Dillinger and Billie. He sees him and her. Not them. They are never a couple. They are their needs.

But I do not agree with his conclusion that

I'm trying to understand why it is not quite a great film. I think it may be because it deprives me of some stubborn need for closure. His name was John Dillinger, and he robbed banks. But there had to be more to it than that, right?

I don't agree with that bit because I think the movie was asking a much, much larger question. Closure or the answers to how Dillinger ticked ... those aren't the point. I think this movie asked the question Charles Dickens asked. He too wanted people to notice that the underclass of criminals was joined at the hip to the law enforcement policing them. Nice people in nice houses want neither criminal nor cop in the living room - and thus it has always been. (This, I discovered during my 19th Century Lit course, is a very clear theme in Oliver Twist. But it's just as obvious in the stories of Jeeves & Wooster.)

I think this movie, and Charles Dickens, and every police corruption case and every horrifying truth of what Americans have done in the name of acquiring information for the sake of a safer citizenry - these have all asked the same question. The question is this.

At what point does the cop become a criminal? Where is the line crossed? When is it valid to do harm in order to do good? Who are the good guys when the power is used for evil?

This isn't a blog post about torture or the questionable information it obtains. And it isn't a blog post about nationally funded health care or whether or not all the things it would pay for are moral or good or healthy. This is a blog post about the need for opposing values.

If you try to build an archway with more weight on one side than the other, it collapses. If you try to build an archway without joining the sides at the top, it collapses. If you try to build an archway without 1. Keystone 2. Voussoir 3. Extrados 4. Impost 5. Intrados 6. Rise 7. Clear span and 8. Abutment, it will not stand.

And if you try to build a strong, functioning, healthy, prosperous society without kindness for the less fortunate, or without a moral sense that says, "I will not do that - not because I cannot, but because I should not," it will not stand. Not everything can be for expediency or for profit.

In the movie Public Enemies, there is a moment when the agent goes too far. He is determined to bully information out of Dillinger's girlfriend. The others in the office are horrified at his behavior ... but no one stops him. The Lucifer Effect has the right name. It masquerades as light when the moral "good" outweighs morality. When we try to pass through the archway made that way, we all get crushed in the collapse.