Reading

Not long ago I visited the doctor and as is my custom I brought along a book to read. Then, as has become his custom, my doctor, upon greeting me when he entered the consulting book, checked to see what I was reading. This time it was a book on the life of Julius Caesar.

After the examination was over, the doctor wondered what I would be reading the next time we met. Then he commented that it was nice to see someone with a book in hand when fewer people seem to be so inclined.

I’m not sure if my doctor is familiar with the statistics, but he was quite right to assume that there is less reading going on. No, let me correct that: there is less intensive reading going on. Light Internet type scanning has become nearly universal, whereas digging into more challenging fare has gone out of style.

As a university professor, I see this in my classrooms. Many of my students have laptops open even as I lecture. But what they are checking into rarely concerns the topic under discussion. They are far more likely to be engaged in a Facebook exchange with friends. Totally immersed in gossip or in planning an expedition to buy pizza, learning is the last thing on their minds.

If I needed confirmation of this, it is available at test time. One of the techniques I use to encourage reading is to include a mandatory essay on an assigned book. Students are informed of this well in advance, but for many it makes no difference. Thus, on one final this term, it was clear that a third of the class had never even opened the required book.

I may be preaching to the choir in writing about this for newspaper readers, but there is a crisis brewing. Why this is so has been documented in a recent book by Nicholas Carr. In The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, he lays out the whole sad story.

Research is beginning to demonstrate that regular Internet use is inimical to genuine learning. This is a consequence of the way people use their computers when online. One of the miracles of modern technology is the instant access it gives us to globe-wide information. Many have assumed this would make us smarter, but it seems to be doing the reverse.

The culprit is the hyperlink. With the push of a button, it is possible to jump from one piece of information to another. This has encouraged people to skim as they seek additional data. Instead of contemplating what they read and incorporating it into their knowledge base, they merely pass it by on the way to additional stimulation.

Carr points out that this means that what enters their short-term memory is never consolidated in their long-term memory. What they read is literally here one moment, then gone the next. For it to remain with them, they would have to contemplate the data in the context of other things they know—which they do not do.

The secret of genuine intellectual growth is what Carr calls “deep reading,” that is, thinking while reading. Moreover, the place this is most apt to occur is in the depths of a book. Diving into one enables us to linger over ideas during a simulated conversation with the author. As we read, we are free to agree or disagree. Either way, however, we must contemplate why we do.

Deep reading, to be sure, can be challenging. It takes effort to understand what may not immediately be clear. But the reason this is important is that our techno-commercial society requires more of us to be self-directed. Because we have to exercise discretion on the job and at home, we must frequently figure things out on our own.

Yet what happens when we do not know the answer? And there are always times we don’t—because no one can know everything. At such moments, deep readers have a place to go for inspiration. They can check with books to tap into the knowledge of well-versed strangers. This makes them smarter than they could ever be on their own.

Unfortunately, those who seek only computer-based entertainment deprive themselves of this resource. This is not good for them, but it is worse for the rest of us who are forced to depend on their expertise.

Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Audacity of (False) Hope

Barack Obama has been on the public stage for well over three years. By now it might be assumed his modus operundum would be universally recognized. Whatever else our president is, he has been consistent in how he has approached his job. It should, therefore, be easy to identify his style.

Many have indeed done so. His critics routinely call him a demagogue; which he certainly is. This is a man who habitually seeks to mislead the public. Thus, he regularly declares that he wishes to reduce the budget deficit, but never offers a plan for doing so. Or he tells the voters Republicans want to reduce Medicare benefits to seniors, when he knows full well their proposals exempt current recipients from any changes. Or he claims that the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes when they, in fact, pay the lion’s share.

The president is also man who likes to transfer blame. For a long time his favorite whipping boy was George W. Bush. But recently, he has blamed the Japanese tsunami, the Greek budget crisis, and the Gulf oil spill for our economic woes. Nothing, it seems, is ever his fault. Perhaps it was Rush Limbaugh’s doing all along.

Which reminds me, George W. Bush used to be criticized for his stubbornness. It was said that he refused to make changes. So where are the parallel commentaries on Obama? He is someone who has relentlessly pursued the same policies despite changes in social conditions. Only his words have changed. His deeds have not.

All this is beyond question. No disinterested observer could deny it. Yet denied it is by the president’s partisans. They have managed to keep his approval numbers in the high forties despite his presiding over the longest sustained period of unemployment since the Great Depression.

Here then is the problem: Why do so many people believe Obama when he continues to propagate falsehoods with reckless abandon? Why when he implies that he can reduce the budget deficit by raising taxes on private jet owners do they not realize this is pocket change when the bank itself is going bust?

I submit that there are several reasons, and that Barack himself has identified one of the most important. To begin with, few people are prepared to admit their mistakes. They surely do not want to advertise these to others, but neither do they wish to acknowledge their weaknesses to themselves. This is part of the reason many Jews have taken so long to realize Obama’s policies are anti-Israel.

But there is something of greater significance. One of the president’s books was entitled “The Audacity of Hope.” In this, he struck a chord. People want hope; they need hope. And hope is what he has been selling. In undelivered promise after promise he has played on our nearly universal longing for a better world.

Does it matter that Obama promises to provide benefits for which the necessary resources are unavailable? Apparently not. And what’s wrong with a free lunch or with Medicare subsidies that eventually cost more than the gross national product? After all, don’t we, as Americans, have a right to these? Some would answer yes.

It seems that hope, even when it is unfounded, is difficult to relinquish. People have dreams, and if these are pandered to, they readily believe. They want what they want and hence they persist in believing that it will somehow be available to them.

Yet what is their alternative? The answer is that they would have to give up on their dreams and this is unacceptable. They therefore keep believing what in their heart-of-hearts they must know is untrue because otherwise they would lose hope and sink into a depression they secretly fear might be fatal.

Too many people live empty lives that are only sustained by fooling themselves into believing someday they will be rich, or famous, or, dare I say it, happy. They do not have the courage to face the limitations with which we must all deal and so they convince themselves that these are chimeras the appropriate government program will banish.

Obama feeds on this impulse to self-delusion. One of his central skills is using language to persuade susceptible people that he is their savior. And so they continue to hope no matter how dire their actual circumstances or false his blandishments.

Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Running Away: Obama Style

Barack Obama is hard to know. Despite his easy style and occasionally apparent candor, his deepest motives remain a mystery to most of us. He has been in the fishbowl of the presidency for well over two years, yet his innermost self continues to be hidden from view.

Important clues, however, are to be found in Janny Scott’s revealing new book. Entitled “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” it sheds unexpected light on the internal dynamics of her son. Most people know our president’s history is an unusual one, they just don’t know how unusual.

Stanley Ann Dunham (yes, her first name was “Stanley”) was not just singular; she was peculiar. Very intelligent, energetic, engaging, and on several levels brave, she never did solve the central mysteries of her life. Instead, she bequeathed much of her unfinished business to her children.

The most important fact to understand about Stanley Ann is that she was running away from her demons. First, she ran away from her given name. This, of course, was forgivable. A girl named Stanley is at least as strange as a boy named Sue. Thus, nearly all of her adult life she was known as Ann.

But second, she was running away from her family. Her parents (Barack’s grandparents) were constantly bickering. And no wonder. The elder Stanley may generously be described as a charming rogue. Regularly given to embroidering stories about his achievements, he was essentially a restless n’er-do-well.

It was therefore up to Ann’s mother Madelyn to pick up the slack. She was much more straightforward and responsible than her husband and therefore held down jobs wherever his aimless ramblings led. Eventually her competence allowed her to rise to become the vice-president of a Hawaiian bank.

Nevertheless, it was her father with whom Ann was more psychologically involved, apparently because he was the less emotionally distant parent. Yet given his unreliability, theirs too was a conflict filled relationship. Ann loved him deeply, but could not abide what she perceived as his crudeness.

And so she ran away. For starters, she ran way emotionally. She always seems to have been a person who kept her own counsel. Next, as a teenager she ran way from home to the romantic lure of San Francisco. Absent any plans on how to survive, she naively trusted to whatever would turn up.

Eventually, after she, at seventeen, entered college, Ann ran into the arms of an exotic marriage. In becoming sexually involved with an older African (Barack Sr.) she could not possibly have understood, she entered an idealized life-space very different from the one she had known. And that was the point—it was different and hopefully better.

Once this fantasy failed to pan out, she again ran away into marriage with a mysterious foreigner—in this case an Indonesian. This led to physically deserting her country. Indeed, even after this marriage disintegrated she spent the better part of her adult life as an expatriate—idealistically attempting to solve others’ problems.

In the process, of course, she ran away from raising her ten-year-old son Barack. Despite her ostensible love for him, he was farmed out to her parents to be raised in Hawaii.

As for Barack, he evidently inherited this proclivity. While he has not run away from his family or country, he does run away from important responsibilities. Consider how he abandoned writing the stimulus and health care laws to Nancy Pelosi and congress. Consider how he leads from behind in Libya. And consider how he has not offered a serious budget to address our impending national bankruptcy.

Instead, he continues to bombard us with idealized talk about saving the nation. Others, whether vice-president Biden, the Senate, the Republicans or Nato are left to deal with the particulars, while he stands above the fray—or rather scurries away for it as expeditiously as he can.

Our president has even run away from the nation as a whole—at least symbolically. At nearly every turn he has been prepared to blame the United States, and its allies, for other’s problems. Thus, he regularly apologizes for who we are. Like his mother, he is evidently embarrassed by us and therefore pursues naively idealized policies as a substitute.

Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Our Prague Spring

My wife and I recently returned from a trip up the Danube. We began at Budapest, paused at Vienna, and ended our river cruise at Passau in Germany. But our climactic stop was at Prague in the Czech Republic. Before we went, many people told us that Prague was special, and they were right! It is one of those places that enchants and makes you think—all at the same time.

The city that most reminded me of Prague was Paris. Each is elegant in its own way, with both possessing an outdoor café ambiance that invites sitting down—and in the case of Prague drinking a beer—so as to converse amiably with friends. When one does, the surrounding cityscape captivates with the humanity in its dimensions and artistic sophistication of its architecture.

But Prague has the edge in being older and more historic. Most Westerns are not familiar with the city’s storied past, yet the evidence is everywhere. So too are the building facades festooned in paintings and sculptures. Indeed, there is so much to be seen that it is easy to overlook its profusion.

Prague also has the advantage in being a friendlier place than Paris. A bit smaller and more intimate, one does not get the sense of being a visiting barbarian—as is frequently the case in France. The Czechs know they are few in number and relatively impotent compared to their more powerful neighbors, hence they keep their pretensions to a minimum.

I was also compelled to compare Prague with my once hometown of New York. Both are tourist Meccas, but what they choose to push on the visitor is very different. In New York’s Times Square one is constantly accosted by strangers handing out flyers for girly shows, whereas in Prague’s Old Town the flyers advertise concerts featuring the works of Mozart and Dvorak.

All this made a deep impression, but even more potent in their impact were the reverberations of the Holocaust. I had not gone to Europe with the expectation of revisiting the horrors of World War II; nevertheless they were still close to the surface. The sightseer did non have to ask about these matters; the locals volunteered them.

Thus, it turned out that one of the major stops on the Prague tourist circuit was the old Ghetto. And one of its major attractions was an old synagogue dedicated to remembering the victims of Hitler’s homicidal deportations. There, by the tens of thousands, on its interior walls were their neatly lettered names. Included among them, needless to say, were several with the surname Fein. They were almost certainly not my relatives given that my father’s family lived in Poland; still the connection brought their deaths close to home.

But something else left me more shaken. It was the fact that the adjacent cemetery was twenty feet above street level. This was so because during the Middle Ages the size of the Ghetto was stagnant. Because the authorities would not allow the Jews to reside beyond its walls, the space allocated for burials was too small to accommodate the growing demand.

As a result, bodies were buried on top of bodies until the pile was at least twelve deep. This was confirmed by the generations of tombstones that were also piled on one another as the assemblage expanded. Deeply weathered, and for the most part unreadable, they too bore names with which I was familiar.

This was distressing, but even more distressing was a casual remark made by our guide. She noted that the residents of the Ghetto were as tightly confined as their dead. They too had to contend with arbitrarily space limitations. As a consequence, they were more closely packed together as their population grew.

It was this overcrowding that almost brought tears to my eyes. It made me realize that my ancestors must have lived very uncomfortable lives thanks to the discrimination with which they contended. They survived, but for centuries this could not have been easy.

This then put me in mind of the people who did the confining. It also provoked thoughts of those who perpetrated the Holocaust. After all, their descendents surrounded me throughout our trip. Nevertheless, what was most remarkable about them was that—for the most part—they were ordinary and basically decent human beings. Far from monsters, they were not unlike my wife and myself.

And so the bottom line, the one that shook me the most, was the realization is that I too was probably capable of perpetrating atrocities. As Hannah Arendt long ago opined, evil can indeed be banal. Its seeds are within all of us, even when people live in cities as captivating as Prague.

Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University