Slaughterhouse 5

I am on the plane to Germany. There are a lot of elderly Germans on the plane jabbering in German. I finished Slaughterhouse 5 a few hours ago. I found the book depressing. Not because the Dresden firebombing was so tragic but because it was a non-event. The actual firebombing takes up less than a dozen pages. It passes in and out of the narrator’s consciousness with barely a blip. Over 100,000 people were killed in a single air raid; that is more than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. So it goes. I think the ultimate tragedy of my generation is our desensitizing to the atrocities of war, poverty, and natural disasters.

The widespread media coverage of Vietnam was shocking to the US public because war had never been covered in depth before. The brutalities of war were never exhumed for the public eye. I was born during the first gulf war, raised during the Bosnia/Kosovo/Hergozivania war, grew up during the second Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and will be voting in a presidential election for the first time when we are engaged in war officially in one country and unofficially in three others. The sad part is the unpopularity of our current wars has nothing to do with the deaths of American soldiers but rather the enormous economic cost. When it comes down to it Americans care more about our wallets than human lives.

I remember in the nineties if there was a natural disaster the picture on the front page of the Washington Post would be mountains of wheat in the port closest to the disaster. We had so much excess we just gave it away; we shared what we have. This no longer happens; the corn subsidies make it too lucrative to grow corn instead of wheat. To quote Howard Zinn “We must get out of the mindset of being a military super power. Why can’t we be a humanitarian super power?” Schools, hospitals, roads, and bridges are far cheaper than a war; both in dollars and lives.

My freshman year a philosophy professor from the Air Force Academy came to speak at Wittenberg University (sorry don’t remember his name). He spoke of his time in Afghanistan. He is a member of the Corp of Engineers. He described how the region in which he was doing his work the American troops had been fighting the Taliban bitterly for years. The Corp of Engineers financed and educated the local government to build a school, hospital, and bridges. Lo and behold, in less than a year the Taliban had all but vanished from the region. Their support base disappeared with the construction of these utilities. This is an isolated case for me because I have not researched very deeply in this.

I do not argue that we do not eliminate the military and become totally focused on relief work. There are lots of bad people in the world and unfortunately I think the threat of military intervention by the US military keeps a good deal of them in line. I do however propose that we closely examine what we are buying with our money. The f-22 raptor and f-35 are failures of forward thinking equivalent to fighting a war ground war in Russia in the winter. Both planes suffer from massive overheating problems. We as a nation spent billions on planes that do not perform anywhere close to where they should in certain areas. Those billions could have spent educating and feeding millions of people.

Perhaps the largest failure of the United States in my memory is our failure to act on the genocide in Darfur. There is an argument to be made that we were already embroiled in two wars and could not afford to divide our attention to a third one. My problem is that we had the power to stop the genocide but were already using it elsewhere for reasons that were lies. What is the point of being the biggest kid on the playground if we don’t keep the bullies off of it?

Directors and the Pope

My recent experience with Geoff (pronounced Jeff but I call him Gee-off except to his face) has allowed me to come to the conclusion that I never want to design sets again. I was asked to design the set for 'Almost, Maine;' it is the spring show directed by an outside director this year. I thought that this would be a blast to do, my family has a summer cottage on the coast of maine, the director would love that kind of input. As it turns out, the director wouldn't like that kind of input. Gee-off, from what I tell is a capricious bastard. Right from the get-go Gee-off was on my shit list, he introduced himself, 'is from Maine, the real Maine, not the one that everyone pictures on the coast with the lobsterman, that Maine has been taken over by New Englanders that want summer homes.' For those of you that don't know, my family has a house on the coast of Maine and is originally from the Boston area. Anyways, Jimmy (the shop director and all around sweet guy) and I came up with a set design together for the second production meeting. We were told that he would with what we gave him only to have it summarily rejected. Gee-off as it turns out has directed the show before and 'was thinking' of a bare stage set, but likes what we did with the backdrop. This would be like if when designing St. Peter's Basilica the Pope agreed to Michelangelo's demand to have total artistic freedom only to have the pope say "I've built cathedrals before; I was thinking of a bare unobstructed floor, get rid of the pillars. Though I do like your choice of marble." Obviously I am not Michelangelo but neither is a director the pope (though on a side not if the pope had said he didnt like the pillars, too bad ninja turtle you are changing the design. He is the pope). I think that my experience with Gee-off underlines a fundamental problem in some working relationships. When the boss of a project has no personal investment in the time consumption of the workers, the boss has no incentive to be clear about goals or desires. The burden of completing the project falls on the people under the boss and not on the boss, at least in the boss' mind. When I did not produce a set design that Gee-off liked it was my fault, because he did not provide any direction as to what he wanted. Perhaps, if Gee-off had been paying me out of pocket (I was doing the work on a volunteer basis) he might have spent more time in the initial production meeting being clear about what he wanted from Jimmy and me. But, because he essentially has an unlimited budget and there is no connection between our time spent designing and him, he has no incentive to be helpful. Another good example is, over the summer I was working at BAH and someone asked me to make a graph for him. He explained the general idea and off I went to make his graph look the way he said he wanted it. As it turns out there was actual data for this graph to be had, he knew who had the data, and the data would never make sense on a single graph. These were all things that he knew and knew I would need to know but didn't share them with me until after several iterations of the graph(s) and a couple hundred billable hours. The two graphs became a single page in an 80 page document. This person had no incentive to be clear about his directions nor what he needed. In his eyes, my time and billing had no relation to him so he could afford to be withholding and, what seemed to be purposeful, unhelpful. During the process of creating the graphs each failed iteration was my fault because I did not get it right. I argue that both management and workers share an equal responsibility in the completion of work in a satisfactory manner. There is a fine line between being clear on direction and micro-managing. That line is where managers and, in my opinion, directors need to be. A set designer is there to provide artistic creativity in places the director may not have thought of, not to be a sketch artist merely drawing what the director wants. In summation, I am done designing shows, not because I don't enjoy it but because I don't enjoy working for people that think they are the pope, and a lot of directors think they are.

First

It was a beautiful day in Alta, Utah today. The sun was shining and it was warm, unfortunately those together make for 'lousy' skiing. I use the quotation marks because lousy at Alta is still better than everywhere else on a good day. In a few short weeks (never understood that phrase, a week is always seven days; it can't be short or long) I will be boarding a plane for the land of schnitzel and beer; one of these things I like. For those of you that didn't get where I'm going its Germany. I'm very excited to be studying abroad. It is kind of amusing for me though that it is in Germany; Germany is a country that was on my "I don't actually want to go there" list. I was directed to do this by my advisor. We were sitting in my advising meeting looking at classes that I should take this coming spring semester and what I needed to graduate. Since I was forbidden from graduating this year, my advisor Dr. Mchugh (wonderful lady, short and a little over-caffeinated) said "you should go to Germany." I am not always quick on the uptake so I think my response was something like "heh." Short story even shorter, I'm going to Germany. My intention with this blog is to chronicle my journeys, philosophical thoughts, and whatever drivel I feel like posting. I would like to credit my sister, Lillie, for the name of this blog as well as victorystretch.blogspot.com. The name angry philosopher comes from most of the people I read philosophically are: angry, depressed, or both. Most of the German philosophers were angry. The name seemed fitting. I am not entirely sure what type of posts will go here versus there but I am sure a pattern will emerge.

Joe