Psychological, Not Sociological

Thanks to Audible's Cyber Monday sale (which would be the only one I actually got it together to take advantage of), I'm now listening to Methland, by Nick Reding.

He quotes Douglas Constance, a rural sociologist at Sam Houston State University, as saying that the US is a psychological, and not a sociological, nation. That is, when there are problems in our country, state, or city, we'll look to the individual as the source of the solution, and the nexus of blame, and not the larger society.

This rings more true to me than just about anything I've ever heard said about this country. A quick glance back through older posts will reveal that I'm not exactly a fan of our penchant for seeking individual solutions to societal problems, which would be exactly where this viewpoint breaks down in its ability to lead to real, substantial change.

However, I'm well aware that problems on the other side exist. A year or so in Sweden, a sociological nation if ever there were one, will do that. Why address problems on the individual level at all if the state will step in? And while I know there are many, many cultural factors at play, it's hard for me to not see this impacting the way people deal with each other in public spaces, when I'm the only person in a crowd who helps a woman pick up her groceries, or my husband is the only one in Ikea who helps two struggling shoppers lift a giant box.

Fascinating. Douglas Constance, if I'm spelling your name correctly, I'll have to check out some more of your work.

The Internet Version: Recent/Current/On Deck

Recently Read:

Listless: The Ten Not-best (and Not Even End-of-Year) Lists of 1913

Travel Rules for Staying Healthy

The Book of Tebow

Currently Reading:

Ketchup: The All-American Condiment That Came from Asia

Hiter's Doomed Angel

Imagining the Post-Antibiotic Future

On Deck:

A Moving Experience

When Do We Start Becoming Writers?

The Great Stratification

(Why yes, I am one of those people with twenty tabs open at once.)

Touching the Mask

Loved this piece in Poets and Writers by Kamilah Aisha Moon, especially this part:

So much of one’s character and spirit can be revealed in the smallest of gestures, gleaned from our choices. This scenario has played out in my life again and again, a hallmark of the way I’ve moved through experience after experience thus far. The decisions to move from city to city, building from the ground up in strange towns and new jobs, with someone and alone. The willingness to try and often fail at new things and travel solo abroad. The decision to put my writing first and leave a good career to move to New York for graduate school, despite considerable odds.

Reminds me both of my own constant balance and re-balancing acts and a passage from one of my husband's favorite Vonnegut books, Mother Night:

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

I could wax philosophical, but I have work still to do, so I'll just say that one of the most fascinating things about growing older is having more of life to look back on, a broader tapestry in which to find patterns.

On to the Next

I've been giving a lot of thought to my next project, another novel, as of yet untitled. I've been sitting back, mostly, doing some research, and just generally shoving things into my brain in the hopes that they will soon boil over. 

In the meantime, a preview:

Los Angeles, 1939:

I wrapped them so carefully. It was the least I could do, it was all I could do, and so I tucked their little limbs tightly against their bodies and swaddled each one up tight in the newsprint, so tightly that they might still believe, at least for a few moments longer, that I still held them close. We cry when we are born—I did, I’m told. My first did not; she was too young, but the second wailed. It was a painful cry. He was shocked, I think, shocked and outraged at the world he’d been forced into so abruptly. That first maternal embrace is just a salve, an attempt to make up for what’s been lost. But the world never again provides that level of comfort, nor safety. At least I did not lie to them and tell them that it would. Every embrace outside the womb is a failed attempt to slip back inside.

I've heard men say all sorts of things about children, about women, about women giving birth to children, but what they say is easy to laugh away. Their words are soap bubbles, glossy and chimerical, gone with the faintest gust of wind. They mean nothing to me, and though they may not be aware of it, their words mean little more to themselves. Self-righteous posturing over brandy, with no real danger of ever having to mean it.

Women, though. What women say can wound me, although I don’t know that I’ve ever let on, not in decades. They can judge me, and I know it; anyone who has lent her body to another and then, after that painful, joyful indignity, gone on to watch it toddle out into the world knows more of life than me.

But I wouldn’t have been allowed to watch; the brandy-men wouldn’t have had it. And while they know nothing, they own everything, tyrannical children banging away with their toys. And so I sung them into drowsy, laudanum-laden sleep—for I am not a heartless mother—just once, only once, before laying them into their trunk bed and firmly, quietly, closing the lid.

I'm Suddenly Starving

If only there were an easier way to get some Chinese street food than dropping hundreds of dollars for a 12-hour plane ride. I'm overdue for a visit.