exchange

jackie and i have set up an exchange system of sorts. i'll make sure she has some art in her life (not that she struggles to fit in the artsy side or anything...) and she'll make sure i have some good old liberal arts in my life (because lord knows that is sort of missing from mica.) together, we have the best of both worlds.

in the first round of our summer exchange, i gave her boys of baraka, a copy of a james baldwin story i read in critical inquiry, the latest issue of the urbanite (tackling crime and violence in cities), and a slew of cds that i meant to send her months ago. the truth is, i need her mind on this stuff too. i reached a point this year where overload stopped being a good thing, and started to make me shut down. instead of feeling energized about all the possibilities, i felt stuck. i need jackie's over-analyzing action on this one.

and in exchange she gave me some fun things to read. the writings of robert motherwell and a reading called "value and meaning." (what more is there, really?)

so tonight i sat down and started in on it. epiphanies x 100. thank you, jackie.

i've been noticing things lately. like, i've been to i don't even know how many tigers games in my life, and suddenly i am bothered by the comerica park microcosm created in the city of detroit. i notice the predominately white crowd (which i happen to be a part of...) and i wonder why the african americans i see are either (1) outside the gates begging for change, (2) working the concession stands for minimum wage, or (3) playing center field. there is very little mixing. maybe that's what bothers me most. this separatism seems to only be defacto segregation. (like my brother's baseball game yesterday at southfield lathrup. how did we get to today, to where we can have such insanely segregated schools and cities?) i guess that's just society. i should shrug it off. so it goes.

but that kind of sucks. usually when my mind goes in too far in that over-analyzing direction i stop myself. there have been times at mica when i've brought up diversity on campus and have been challenged. and i don't know whose ignorance to blame (me or them...) but i am too much of a people pleaser to continue to push that button. even when class discussions turn into diversity debates, i sort of envy the people who are blind to it all. the people who have no worries and wonder why everything has to be about race. and that's where i've been stuck wondering if there is any merit to thinking things should change. there's a fine line between the way things are and the way things could be. and when you operate in that middle ground, it would be stupid not to question your motives for action. sometimes the trust i have in my own truth is not enough. and i need to look for outside reassurance/motivation/inspiration. something that always seems to come in due time.

"the greater the diversity that gets unified, the greater the organic unity; and also the tighter the unity to which the diversity is brought; the greater the organic unity. a monochromatically painted canvas would show a high degree of unity, but since no diversity of color, form, or theme would thereby have been unified, it would not possess a high degree of organic unity. thus a resultant organic unity depends of two things, the degree of diversity and the degree of unity to which that diversity is brought. the task of achieving organic unity is difficult because these two factors tend to vary inversely and so pull in opposite directions. the greater the diversity, the harder it is to bring to it a given degree of unity. something has intrinsic value, i suggest, to the degree that it is organically unified. its organic unity is its value." - robert nozick, "value and meaning"

the "value and meaning" chapter, excerpted from "the examined life," also had some quality connect in context quotes.

"value involves something's being integrated within its own boundaries, while meaning involes its having some connection beyond these boundaries. the problem of meaning itself is raised by the presence of limits. thus, typically, people worry about the meaning of their lives when they see their existences as limited... to seek to give life meaning is to transcend the limits of one's individual life."

"meaning can be gained by linking with something of value. however, the nature of the linkage is important. i cannot give meaning to my life by saying i am linked to advancing justice in the world, where this means that i read the newspapers every day or week and thereby notice how justice and injustice fare. that is too trivial and too insubstantial a link. (still, knowing external things and understanding how they are valuable may constitute a nontrivial link.) the greater the link, the closer, the more forceful, the more intense and extensive it is, the greater the meaning gotten. the tighter the connection with value, the greater the meaning. this tightness of connection means that you are interrelated with the value in a unified way; there is more of an organic unity between you and the value. your connecton with the value, then, is itself valuable; and meaning is gotten through such a valuable connection with value."

so much to process. just starting to squeeze out that sponge...