Alternative Dispute Resolution

It's cooler outside this morning than it has been. Now, last post I mentioned how I think people who talk about the weather have nothing better to talk about, so they arbitrarily pick something everyone knows, at least in a tangible sense: temperature.

Since making that observation, I've changed my mind a bit.

In fact, when I look back over my posts, the majority of them mention weather, which means I'm either self-loathing, or just an idiot. I'll let the internet decide.

I found a study awhile back that list the top 100 angriest cities in America. Florida's five major metros are in the top 12 (Here's a copy of what I think I read). The U.S. National Library of Medicine has defined a type of depression as Seasonal Affective Disorder ( or, amusingly enough, S.A.D.). There are all kinds of characters throughout literature whose moods correlate with the weather- Dostoevsky's Underground Man is biting and intense yet stricken with ennui, like the winter's of St. Petersberg; the absurd, apt and aware Jewish anti-hero Yossarian spends his tours of duty stationed on the island of Pianosa, where the temperature never seems to rise above 75 F or below 60 F (clearly a great temperature for paranoia and scheming); look at any one of the Dickensian backdrops, probably by and large to his sensationalism.

I'm not saying that the authors were intentionally shaping their character's psychology around the weather. But if I took the time, I think it would be an interesting research paper, with plenty of rich examples due to the mimesis and distortion of the natural world in art. But, I digress.

I was reading through a selection of Thoreau works last week, and though I didn't have the weather in mind, thinking back on it, his time at Walden Pond was a climatic experience, among many other things. After all, when in thought, it is wise to "simplify, simplify", and what can be more simple than the weather?

Sparing this space of anything too personal, I was embracing the Lord Byron and Thoreau ethos last week.

I don't think it's ironic to harbor a sharp disdain for institutions while relentlessly pursuing a life as a functioning member of one (I'm sure I've mentioned my public defender aspirations here before), but there is a strange and caustic resonance with the territory; if there are so many times now that I want to leave this mess of systemically cruel establishments, what's going to happen to me when I start interning with/working as a PD?

I'm about to get very lofty, so let me come in for a landing for a sec. It is a cornerstone of our society to ascribe labels to ourselves. Gangster. Middle-class. Lawyer. Celebrity. My problem is that: the willful submission of vacuous labels that literally strip each and everyone of us of our humanity. But it doesn't just stop with superficial signifiers.

Take something as palpable and visceral as pain. Physician's are trained not to trust patients diagnosis and literally objectify their pain into levels of "stabbing" or "burning", things divorced from the actual feeling but more tangible than a naturally resistant feeling (Elaine Scarry writes a beautiful piece on the destruction of language through pain and the political consequences of it called "The Body in Pain"), advocate groups hyperboleize and exploit real human emotion to achieve their goals (for better and worse: Murdoch's FOX News and Amnesty Intl Freedom Writers are two cogent examples), the legal system, particularly personal injury lawyers, are burdened with extricating the pain of a client from a unique set of circumstances and representing their trauma by objectifying their feelings. I see children fighting with their parents, endlessly inquiring as to "what the fuck have I done" or "this hurts me". I see them destroying themselves with drugs and slowly robbing the sole arbiters of unconditional acceptance in their lives of any ability to love their child. It's selfish. It's disgusting.

But it's not always their fault. And as much as I want to feel hatred for it, I can't. I don't know where my bleeding heart comes from, but it is very brittle sometimes. It's just so disheartening that in a world so relentlessly burdened with an array of interesting conflicts (I'll remind you that I don't see conflict as a negative thing), that people can be so cruel to each other. In a world where we have the opportunity to say "enough", we all too often forgo that privilege and allow systems perpetuate poverty. And malice. And control. And deceit. And hate.

And I'm writing about all of this now, because last week, in the humid and stale air from where I live, I could feel the temperature dropping and a proportionate conflict of 'crispness in the air v. damp, lingering exhaustive air' in my head, in the form of 'positive optimism v. pervading systemic problems'. My weather forecast wasn't gloomy, it wasn't dismal. It was worse; it was insolent. It was contemptuous. I wanted to burn the whole thing down, and watch each ember glow and fade. At least that way, I wouldn't have to wonder "how" any more.

But I can't. It's where I keep coming back to. It's not who I am. Those feelings are part of me, but they don't define me. I can't feel ashamed or guilty for having them, but I can try to use them for something constructive; like Viktor Frankl says, "Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time." Feeling what I felt provides me with a "why" things are the way they are, and having that can help me confront each and every variant of this discursive reality, in the end, with a smile. Even if it may be one of contempt.

Hillel put it best when he said "if I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'?

If not now, when?"

If I don't relentlessly pursue fairness and justice on behalf of someone who has layers and layers of institutional control stacked against them, who will?

That's what I love about each and every one of our flawed institutions. In spite of their shortcomings, they do provide you a forum to fight the good fight, however difficult or impossible that may seem.

That kept me from disappearing into the vast recesses of this country after I graduate next week. Something had to, and given my impending graduation, it may as well have been a couple works of fiction enfolded by overarching theories of Foucault and Althusser to remind me that I just may have learned something over the past four years.