It’s a fine thing to know thyself, I’m told.  If only that were as easy to do as it is to say.  One of the ironies of the modern era is that the incredible achievements of science and technology have led primarily to knowledge of the natural world–even to the distant edges of the universe and the beginning of time.  There has not been a corresponding increase in the ability to know what it is to be human, to be a society, or to be an individual person–indeed, those goals have become ever more complicated by the advances that have occurred in the natural and human sciences.  Recent developments in imaging technologies provide intriguing demonstrations of how the production of knowledge can bring us both closer to and farther away from knowledge of who we are.

This stunning image presents axion pathways in a live human brain.  It seems to impart immediately an aesthetic knowledge of human consciousness, and reflexively so: I see an essential dimension of neural organization, and my brain looks at another version of itself.  The beauty of the vibrantly interwoven blue tracery against the black background suggests complexity and density, while its visual analogies with hair, helmut, crest, and other natural and artistic forms carries the image, like consciousness itself, across the divide between inside and outside, seen and unseen, self and world.

But aesthetic knowledge alone goes only so far, at least in this domain.  Does this image impart anything else to those not studying axion pathways?  Does it extend the horizons of self-knowledge to include a more articulate sense of our inner world, or does it create an illusion of self-knowledge and of scientific mastery of what remains almost completely unknown?  Consider these additional options as well: perhaps it constructs a model of human being that will lead inquiry down one path but not another–toward, say, reductive knowledge of bodily functioning rather than understanding emergent properties in complex systems.  Or it might offer not merely knowledge but possibility, that is, an ability to visualize complexity in a manner that might lead to productive analogies and genuine insights regarding how human beings are creatures with a remarkable capacity (though not the only one) for transferring information across networks.

Networks like this one, for example.  It could be a circuit board, but it is the city of Milan, Italy.  The radiant energies are palpable yet not threatening, perhaps because of the broad distribution throughout the system.  Though a vast fabrication of streets and buildings on an electric grid, it seems almost organic, as if a life form that had grown through cellular replication in close adaptation with its physical environment.  There is a decorative beauty to the array, which articulates both nodal intensities and patterned expansion.  Frankly, it looks smart: as if intelligence had emerged through the growth of complexity.

As so we know ourselves a bit better, perhaps, for seeing these images, but imperfectly so.  For example, the self-awareness activated by the first image is in fact flawed: the brain belongs to a stroke victim, and, happily, your brain stem probably looks quite different than the one above.  Likewise, the experience of the city on the ground will usually have little relationship to what is seen here, not least when encountering any of the problems sure to be a part of life on the street.

Both of these images provide an opportunity for thinking anew precisely because they are the result of extraordinary instrumentation: we cannot otherwise see into the brain or from the vantage of the International Space Station.   They can be misleading for the same reason.  Even so, I think these and others like them present a marvelous opportunity to better understand the human species, modern societies, and perhaps even how you or I are embedded in complex systems that each are partial analogues of the others.

MRI by Henning U. Voss and Nicholas D. Schiff; and ISS/NASA.

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Scientists at a Fox News lab known as the “weasel works” were giving each other high fives yesterday on receiving decisive confirmation that they had created a new life form.  After years of research involving genetic recombination of primitive cellular memes, a research team successfully created the laboratory conditions for the emergence of life.  In doing so, Research Group Alpha beat out several other teams in a race to the bottom of the gene pool.  “We knew that the breakthrough would come to whoever could isolate the most simple forms of cellular response,” lab director Gene Shelley remarked, “and that has been the Fox News objective from day one.”

Shelley emphasized that the new species was fully formed.  “Since evolution wasn’t involved, the designers are confident that the species will continue to exhibit its initial characteristics in perpetuity.”  Those characteristics are admittedly not found at the high end of the food chain, but they are likely to have considerable survival value.  The creature remains suspended in a state of continuous consumption, moves in whatever direction it is manipulated, bonds exclusively with its information source, and never risks cooperative behavior.

Fox News was quick to point out the implications of this scientific breakthrough.  “We know that this isn’t the first case of successful biological invention,” PR director Mary Shelley remarked, “but it is the first one that has obvious political significance.  Our lab has finally produced what the network only dreams of: the perfect citizen.”

Photograph by Rolf Vennenbernd/DPA/ZUMAPRESS.com.

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Despite their routine, conventional, ritualized, and otherwise predictable nature, public media can mash up different topics with an ease that should make novelists growl with envy.  Editorial cartoonists make the most of this everyday opportunity, but it pops up all over the place: politicians’ metaphors, athletes’ analogies, advertiser’s corny TV ads, and often enough a deft comparison in a letter to the editor.  I’m not immune to temptation, either, and so today it’s time to talk about both Earth Hour and Stanley Fish.

No, that’s not Stanley, although I’m sure he wouldn’t mind having his statue overlooking a major city.  This statue is labeled Christ the Redeemer and overlooks Rio de Janeiro.  Very famous, dare we say iconic, and certainly one of the signature monuments that many cities now try to erect in order to brand themselves visually to attract tourism and other business.  And so it becomes easy to say that it is both a religious and a cultural symbol, and perhaps more cultural than religious.

And that’s where Fish comes in.  On Monday he posted on a peculiar decision by the European Court of Human Rights which ruled that Italy could place crucifixes in public schoolrooms because the cross is not primarily a religious symbol.  You can read Fish’s account of the opinion, and the opinion itself, but I’m not really concerned about either.  What is interesting is the debate about when a symbol should be seen as more parochial or more general, as something dedicated to a specific group or something in common circulation, as exclusionary or assimilated.  Examples include everything from the Confederate Flag–which I would prefer to see as a sign of treason, but few seem to concur–to “In God We Trust” and other bits of civil religion.

And that’s where Earth Hour can help.  On Saturday night, March 26, thousands of organizations and individuals around the world turned off their lights (well, most of them) for an hour to symbolize support for energy conversation.  (I was in Paris when the Eiffel Tower went dark.  The experience did not strengthen my commitment to sustainable energy.)  This week The Big Picture has put up a gallery of before and during photos.  The comparisons, and the digital mechanism for making them, are interesting, but one pairing goes further.

Incredible, isn’t it?  One could almost title it “Christ, Prince of Darkness.”  The city looks like Hell, glowing embers of eternal misery from which rises an awful miasma of vapors, while darkness surrounds everything, shrouding all hope.  Or not: perhaps some will see a real Christ, and one who offers not salvation but rather compassion, not escape but rather God’s presence amidst the suffering.  And one who may be present only because he has agreed to be powerless.

Now go back to the first photograph.  I see only kitsch: it might as well be in a snow globe.  The official, illuminated symbol has no religious depth.  How could it?  That doesn’t mean that it won’t be exceedingly meaningful when seen by some believers, especially for the first time.  But those responses are drowned in the sea of indifference–or, better, obliterated in the bright lights and endless repetition of civic branding.  When illuminated, it is reduced (although not completely) to being a cultural symbol.  Only when the lights are turned off, for a moment not to be repeated for a year, can religious meaning come to the fore.  How do we know?  Because only then are we confronted with our finitude, our fatality, and the dim prospects for achieving heaven on earth.  Come to think of it, not a bad message for Earth Hour.

Photographs by Felipe Dana/Associated Press.

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Sorry, but we don’t have a regular post for today due to a bad combination of connectivity problems at one end and jet lag at the other.  If we were a high-tech industrial corporation, we’d blame it on unspecified “human error.”  If we were Fox News, we’d say it was Obama’s fault.  If we were the Japanese government, we would assure you that everything was under control.  But we are who we are, so we’ll let it be what it is: another sign of the impending collapse of civilization as we know it.  Have a nice day.

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There has been a good deal of talk recently about the public value of unions, much of it framed in the euphemistic language of “right to work” laws and the alleged unfairness of “collective bargaining.”  There is probably something to be said about how unions have occasionally exploited the power of collective bargaining in ways that may not always be in the public interest, but as Hariman pointed out recently, corporations are no less collective bargaining agents representing the special interests of owners and shareholders.  And so it hardly seems reasonable to single out unions as singularly or generically problematic in this regard.  But since we are approaching the 100^th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, there might be a different point worth making.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (TSF) was on the 8^th-10th floors of the Asch Building near Manhattan’s Washington Square.  The TSF was what we would today call a sweatshop and the working conditions were oppressive.  The vast majority of the 500 employees were teenage girls, most of them recent immigrants who spoke little or no English.  At 4:45 p.m. on March 25^th, just short of quitting time, a fire broke out and spread quickly.  There were two descending stairwells, but one was quickly blocked by flames and the second was locked to avoid theft.  Some packed themselves onto the sole working fire escape which quickly collapsed under the extreme weight (and in any case apparently led nowhere), others jumped down an elevator shaft or made their way to the roof of the building only to jump to their death 135 feet below.  When all was said and done 148 people—129 women and 19 men—were dead.  The owners were indicted on charges of manslaughter, but subsequently acquitted.  Two years later they lost a civil suit which compensated each family $75.00 for the loss of their loved one.  The owners were compensated by their insurance company in excess of their reported losses and in the amount of $400 per death.

The final cause of the fire was never determined, but what the photographic record made palpably clear (here, here, and here) was that the health and safety conditions of the TSF were wholly inadequate.  And this was doubly tragic since groups like the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Women’s Trade Union League had been advocating for better working conditions and protective safety legislation for several years. Following this tragedy they redoubled their efforts in both lobbying for reforms and monitoring the safety conditions within the garment industry.  Things did not change immediately, as industry leaders continued to argue that stringent safety codes would wipe them out of business—an argument that seems to persist in contemporary times—but it is hard to imagine that without the efforts of union organizations that things would have changed very much … or at all.

As we debate the value of unions in the days and weeks ahead we are well advised to recall the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the need that workers have for a collective voice in representing their interests, particularly in the face of efforts to castigate unions as little more than selfish, greedy operations.  And to the extent that any of that interest speaks to questions of health and safety we need to recognize the especially important watchdog, public interest that is being served.

Photo Credit: Brown Brothers/Kheel Center

Update:  The NYT “City Room” is remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire this week.  Thanks to NCN friend Jim Johnson for bringing this to our attention.

Update: Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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The photographs of the devastation wreaked by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan are, well, simply devastating—aerial views of towns and cities literally flattened beyond recognition, acres upon acres of rubble and debris, and, of course, amidst all the scattered wreckage, dead bodies.  But for the fact that they are in color, many of these photographs could be perfect doubles for photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the immediate aftermath of suffering nuclear attack.  It is a haunting reminder of the persistent threat of calamity to human frailty whether wrought by man or nature.

Many of the images of rubble and wreckage show oddities such as boats teetering perilously atop buildings or hundreds of cars and trucks piled upon one another in a city street as if rather in a junkyard.  But equally prominent, and far more poignant, are photographs such as the one above of family photo albums that managed to survive the catastrophe only to come to rest among the detritus.

The family photo album is a modern affectation, of course, but within liberal, late modern cultures its presence is ubiquitous to the point of being almost universal.  And its value in this context is pronounced as a central marker of time and identity, of where “we” have been and who “we” are, as well as a family relic to be passed down from one generation to the next. Just as the photograph is an index of the thing photographed, indicating that “this” once was here, so too is the family photo album an index of the family it records.  It is not clear if these particular photo albums will ever find their rightful owners, if the mud and dirt will ever be cleared away, or if the images contained within them will live on in specific family memories—or if they will live on at all.  What is clear, and perhaps what is most important, is our willingness to recognize them among the rubble as important symbols of a common humanity that invites us to activate a powerful stranger relationality.

There but for the grace of god …

Photo Credit:  Damir Sagolj/Reuters

 

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Over 57,000 people attended the recent Shot Show in Las Vegas, the premiere annual gun trade show in the USA.  One of the largest and most frequently visited exhibits at the show was sponsored by Glock—the maker of the Glock 19, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol used most recently in the slaughter of 19 people (6 dead, 13 injured) by a deranged Jared Loughner in Tuscon, Arizona. The Glock 19, characterized by the gun maker as “the all around talent,” normally carries a 15 bullet magazine, but for those who think they might need more fire power than that, one can actually purchase 33-shot magazines like the ones used by Loughner.  It is hard to imagine why anyone other than the police or military might need such high capacity clips, and perhaps that is one reason why they were prohibited under the 1994 assault weapon ban that was allowed to expire under the Bush administration.  That is an issue that should be addressed, to be sure, but there is a different point worth making.

The sponsors of the Shot Show emphasize that the problem is not one of gun control, but rather one of mental health.  And at least at one level they are right.  I can’t help but to believe that saner gun control—such as a ban on assault weapons—would truly hurt anyone’s 2^nd Amendment rights, but beyond that what we really need is more attention to the problem of mental health.  But that means a health system attentive to mental health problems and a guarantee of access to that system by those most in need of it.  There’s the rub, however,  for the people who argue for the unfettered right to own and carry guns in public are also those who tend to argue that “big government” should be eliminated everywhere, and especially and most recently with respect to government efforts to make sure that everyone has access to effective and affordable health care.  The shooter in the photo below carries a bag that say’s “Don’t Tread on Me,” and it is surely no coincidence that this is one of the slogans featured not only by the NRA, by members of the “tea party” movement as well.

One obvious response to such an argument is that there is no guarantee that Loughner would have necessarily sought or received the treatment that he needed even if we had affordable access to such health care.  That is true enough, though obviously the chances of his getting needed care would have been better rather than worse if it had been easily accessible. At the same time, it is worth noting that Arizona has among the most liberal “carry” laws of any state in the union and that didn’t seem to help the people in Tucson when a madmen began shooting.  So where exactly should we be placing our faith in such matters?

Our concern at NCN is with the relationship between civic and visual culture, and so we should end by looking more closely at the two pictures above featured at a NYT article on the gun show and ask what they show—or, perhaps more to the point, what they almost systematically fail to show.  The top image shows what the caption refers to as an “intricate display of ammunition,” but it is of course much more than that.  The intricacy of the display animates the tension between minimalist art, as it is built out of so-called “ordinary” and “everyday” materials, and the spectacle of the Las Vegas revue, as the ammo-sculpture is cast in bright lights that accent the golden hue of the uniformly manufactured bullets. The “hand gun” in the middle is shrouded in a slight shadow, but only enough to feature it as somewhat distinct from the ranks of bullets that surround it—as if the featured dancer surrounded by a chorus line—and thus to direct our attention to it as the center of focus.

The second photograph would appear to be different from the first, as it relies upon the aesthetic conventions of realism, and so it is in many ways. But for all of the aesthetic differences, the effect of the two images  is the same and it calls attention to the real problem:  guns have become objects of desire.  And as such, we are witness to a culture that has converted them into something of a fetish; not just as items that evoke a habitual erotic response, though perhaps that too, but as possessing some sort of magical or incantatory power that inspires awe. Guns may be a necessary evil that helps to guarantee freedom, though I’m skeptical of such a claim.  But such a fetish should be a warning that something has gone awry; at the least it should be a wakeup call to ask what is not shown—what is hidden or missing?

What is veiled in the pictures above, of course, are the palpable effects that such weapons have upon the world. In a roundabout way it points to our public mental health.  And that is a tragedy that knows no bounds.

Photo Credit:  Isaac Brekken/New York Times

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There have been so many photographs of the democratic protests in Egypt than one can’t help but look for something unusual.

This image is a remarkable exception to the parade of images: it contains no demonstrators, no police, no political slogans, no action.  We don’t see crowds or tanks or flags or blood or burned out buildings.  So what is being shown?

Perhaps irony.  I thought about making the caption “Things Go Better with Coke.”  Some political commentators are quick to contrast citizenship with consumerism, and so this image of pop bottles being “repurposed” as Molotov cocktails can seem doubly misplaced: the consumer product shouldn’t become the vehicle for political action, and the act of making these bottles into weapons degrades politics by turning it to violence.  It seems that Coke can’t win as a public good: no matter how much it might be the people’s drink throughout the world, it either distracts or destroys.

But that’s too clever.  Whatever irony is there–and some is there–the mood of the image is something else.  Organized trash is still trash, and that’s the best in the scene.  Broken and crumpled plastic are so much flotsam in this sea of stone, and the dingy case holding the grungy bottles is hardly a triumph of civilization.  True, someone carefully prepared each of the weapons, but now they sit there as if forgotten like some old thing left at the beach at the end of the season.  The scene seems forlorn, as if they called for a revolution and nobody came.

But, of course, the people did come.

Now we’re back to a more conventional image, and a beauty at that.  This view of Tahrir Square in the evening, filled with crowds and lights, brings back so much of what was missing before: the city framing the demonstration reminds us of its purpose of political reform on behalf of the general welfare, something that is being articulated by the banners and everything else flowing into the square.  The intensity of the scene is communicated both by the sheer density of the crowd and by the lights burning brightly.  The symbolism is obvious but no less meaningful for that: a democratic Egypt is awakening, blazing forth here and there and here again amidst the darkness produced by decades of authoritarian rule.

So it is that we are tempted to allow the second image to displace the second.  How much nicer it is to be lifted up emotionally rather than pushed into sarcasm or discouragement.  The pictures are not merely opposites, however.  Light is an effect of fire, and electric lights are the descendants of fire, and Molotov cocktails are weapons of fire.  More to the point, one reason the demonstrators can fill the square on Day 15 of the protests–one reason they can still be there, well-organized against the night–is that not too long ago some of them were making and throwing Molotov cocktails.  Despite all the froth in press coverage about Facebook and the Internet, this revolution has been a bloody battle.

We all should be grateful that it may be developing into a more peaceful and more recognizably political process.  But amidst the calls for “calm” and “patience,” we should not forget that democracy at times has to resort to violence.   Those who start there should be trusted even less than those who call for civility when it protects the corrupt, but there are other alternatives.  I don’t know whether the bottle bombs shown above were ever used, or even if they were used by those opposing Mubarak or those supporting him.  In Egypt as elsewhere, most of the violence will have been directed against the protesters by reactionary forces who usually are well-armed.  The fact remains, however, that more than one democracy has of necessity been born in violent confrontation.   The lights in the square this week may have been started by those who last week were willing to fight fire with fire.

Photographs by Ed Ou/New York Times and Hannibal Hanschke/DPA/ZUMAPRESS.com.

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One of the interesting facets of photographs is how they can contain information that often goes unnoticed.  The same is true of the discourses of empire.  For those living at the center of the system, the operation and effects of the imperial state might as well be invisible, for they have been neutralized by long periods of habituation and denial.  Thus, one thinks nothing when presidents speak of the need for “stability” in a region, not questioning how that is code for “continued support of authoritarian rule.” Or one is genuinely puzzled why demonstrators in a small country far away would burn an American flag–what have we ever done to them?  Even when caught up in the euphoria and instinctive identification with a democratic revolution, it is easy to overlook the evidence that at the end of the day geopolitical relationships may prove to be, well, stable.

This is one of many photographs from Egypt’s civic uprising that features army tanks surrounded by the demonstrators who could conceivably have been or still become victims of a military assault.  As John Lucaites pointed out on Monday, the images draw on a rich iconography of political upheaval while capturing key elements that are obviously important yet still not fully understood in this particular event.  The ongoing, often micro-political negotiation between the people and the army seems to be crucial to whether the demonstrations succeed or are betrayed and crushed.  That alone would seem to be reason enough for the photograph.

Even so, you might wonder why no one bothers to talk about the tanks themselves.  They are symbols, sure, but they also are real tanks having specific designs and manufacturers.  And that’s where some of the “missing” information is actually there to be seen.  The tanks in the long line are versions of the M1 Abrams.  I’m not positive about the tank on the left, but I’m fairly sure it’s an M60 Patton.   Want to guess where they are produced?

Tanks are not cheap, of course, but Egypt has the benefit of $1.3 billion in US military aid every year.  Although President Obama’s recent statements on behalf of regime change are a good thing, don’t think they is going to change the client status of the Egyptian state or the role of the Egyptian army, its officer corp properly schooled by the US, in maintaining that relationship.  As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others have already said, the military aid is not going to change.

And so a photograph of a democratic moment is also a photograph of an imperial relationship.  From there, its a small step to answering the question of “why they hate us.”

Unlike the army, the Egyptian police have not been playing nice.  Gassing, beating, shooting, spying on, and probably torturing the demonstrators, they have revealed in a few days what they have been doing continuously for many years.  The basic reason that many people hate the US is that we maintain dictators who run police states.  We support those autocrats by providing the enormous advantages in money, weapons, information, and just about anything else they need to suppress their own people. And the people notice.

So it is that we have the photograph above: If you look at the figure on the right, you might see the incarnation of a Fox News nightmare: the terrorist, black on brown, his face covered in defiance, his eyes sharply focused in hate.  (Or you can see a young man wearing a scarf to protect himself against tear gas and perhaps the secret police.)  But look at the tear gas canister on the left.  It will have been fired by the police into the crowd; its effects range from painful to terrifying to debilitating.  And look at the bottom of the can: “Made in USA.”

Photographs by Miguel Medina/AFP-Getty Images and Yannis Behrakis/Reuters.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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