Monday, March 23, 2015
Idle Threads
In The Devil Wears Prada, the 2006 rom-com starring Meryl Streep as a cartoonish version of the notoriously icy Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Streep delivers a speech about the importance of the fashion industry. “You think this has nothing to do with you,” Streep says to her new assistant (Anne Hathaway), who wishes she were doing hard-hitting investigative work rather than fetching coffee for an arbiter of high-end taste. “You go to your closet and you select . . . I don’t know . . . that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back.”
And yet, Streep explains, her assistant’s sweater is this particular shade of blue because a designer featured it on the runway a few years ago, a decision that then trickled down through the fashion food chain all the way to the shopping-mall clearance racks. “It’s sort of comical,” she concludes, “how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.” You think you choose to wear things because you like them, because they’re special, or maybe because you’re special. But in fact, you’re not special, and neither are your choices. You’re just an angora-clad cog in a great capitalist wheel.
The real Anna Wintour would never put it so bluntly, even behind closed doors. Hers is an industry that depends on all of us continuing to believe that our choices are special and that our senses of style are unique. At a White House event for aspiring fashion designers this year, Wintour said, “Fashion can be a powerful instrument for social change. It allows us to think about who we are as individuals and as a society.” She did not say, “A handful of luxury designers and a few major clothing brands decide what you will like and, in turn, buy and wear.” Why would she? The modern fashion industry wants consumers to think that we are not consumers at all, but curators instead. If the midcentury mantra was “Dress to impress,” and the roaring-’80s catchphrase was “Dress for success,” the directive now is “Dress to express.”
This approach to fashion is at the heart of Women in Clothes, a thick new book based on a survey that writers Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton circulated to more than six hundred women asking them what they wear and how they feel about it. The women offer hyperspecific thoughts about their every sartorial choice, but only a few admit that they are influenced by trends or marketing. They are much more likely to lay the blame on their own bodies. “A woman is never thin enough,” writes Vedrana Rudan. “I have a double chin, I shove my tits into minimizers that minimize nothing, I get into Levi’s designed to flatten the tummy and lift the ass, but my ass and stomach are immune to the intention of the jeans. I am a cow!”
The survey responses are shot through with the hollow promises of the fashion industry—that with the right combination of trousers and shirts and dresses and skirts, cut in the right way and worn just so, women can be more glamorous, more powerful, more desired, more respected. “I dress to withstand the elements,” says one woman. “I dress to be as interesting as the Tate. I dress to insert myself into social strata, to be accepted, to pass.” One five-year-old respondent says, in an aside designed to break every would-be earth mother’s heart, “I am always conscious of what I’m wearing.” Another woman offers a detailed journal of every high-end item she covets, from a Kenzo silk-crepe shirt to an “amazing Gudrun & Gudrun multi-coloured dream sweater.” Even unattainable fashion goals start to sound like they’d be great fun to pursue—a repudiation, somehow, of the grim, dictatorial vision of sexism as an obliging handmaiden of capitalism. There are, however, a few brief hints to the contrary: a Muslim woman who wears a jilbab writes, “When I see what the women on billboards, commercials, and game shows are wearing, it really aches my heart. I mean no offense to anyone, but it hurts me to see the bodies of these innocent women being used to sell products. And they are made to believe that this is freedom.”
Women, the book implies, are not sheep who will buy whatever they’re told is on trend or anything H&M stocks for less than $39.50. They are thoughtful and careful about what they wear and why. Fast fashion barely exists in the world of Women in Clothes; its carefully edited accounts of self-declared style preferences seem, indeed, to be the sartorial equivalent of the “slow food” revolution that Michael Pollan jumpstarted in 2006 with The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In response to a survey question about shopping, women express discomfort, embarrassment, or outright denial before the suggestion that they, as a group, buy a lot of new clothes. They describe shopping as an activity for which they must adopt a battle plan—or that, at the very least, they avoid on an empty stomach. “To hell with the whole concept of shopping,” says one respondent. “Who needs clothes?”
This professed aversion to the rigors of acquiring clothing doesn’t match up with the manifest joy that many of the women take in describing what ends up in their closets. It’s also an awkward fit with the book’s own apparent marketing strategy. Since it first appeared last fall, I’ve seen Women in Clothes on display in several women’s clothing shops, for sale alongside small leather goods and gold jewelry. It’s safe to assume that the owners of these boutiques don’t see the book as an antidote to the psychological pain endured by female shoppers, but as yet another fashionable accessory.
There’s a lot of whimsy in Women in Clothes—an artist’s rendering of various stains as they appear on women’s clothing, Lena Dunham’s description of her mother’s sartorial vibe as “bejeweled ventriloquist dummy,” a photo series cataloging each pair of black underwear a woman owns—but its main revelation is how serious women are about what they wear. They’ve so thoroughly infused their wardrobes with their hopes, dreams, and aspirations that the anthology could just as easily be titled Women as Clothes. “Because I resist the ephemerality of clothing, I make grandiose demands of it: a garment must touch on all that I have ever been and will be,” writes Ida Hattemer-Higgins in an essay about how a secondhand store in Athens helped her get over a breakup. “The irony is that, for all my grasping at eternity, in the end, I almost never wear any item for more than a few months.”
Out of context, such grandiose pronouncements seem over the top, but they’re right at home in a book about fashion and the female self. While J.Crew and GQ can still get away with acting as though it’s utterly modern for men to care about style, women have long been culturally saddled with the knowledge that they are how they look, and that therefore they are what they wear. The pursuit of stylishness is not something they opt into, but rather something they must opt out of at great social cost. Hattemer-Higgins tells herself she is resisting the ephemerality of clothing—and with it the dictates of the fashion industry—by carefully selecting each piece she wears from a pile of thrifted cast-offs.
But to scour the racks, secondhand or otherwise, for the makings of self-expression is only to double down on the importance of fashion. The truly transgressive choice—to dress purely for utility—never seems to cross the minds of the women featured in the book. I don’t blame them. Utility isn’t much fun. If you can’t control the fact that you’re going to be judged on your appearance, why not derive what pleasure you can from conveying to observers how you wish to be judged? The inadequacy of clothes—their inability to express the depth and complexity of female experiences—probably explains both why women invest their wardrobes with so much significance and why their clothes so often fail to satisfy them.
It can be hard to tell why women are overburdening their wardrobes with mystic powers of signification: Is it in spite of the fashion industry or because of it? If you were to ask Streep’s Wintour-like character, she would say the answer hardly matters. Whether you are an avid follower of fashion or studiously ignorant of what appears on the runways, you’re still affected by the prevailing style that’s set, in part, by clothing companies. Even secondhand shoppers are not immune; even the disenchanted can’t leave their houses naked.
And yet, Streep explains, her assistant’s sweater is this particular shade of blue because a designer featured it on the runway a few years ago, a decision that then trickled down through the fashion food chain all the way to the shopping-mall clearance racks. “It’s sort of comical,” she concludes, “how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.” You think you choose to wear things because you like them, because they’re special, or maybe because you’re special. But in fact, you’re not special, and neither are your choices. You’re just an angora-clad cog in a great capitalist wheel.The real Anna Wintour would never put it so bluntly, even behind closed doors. Hers is an industry that depends on all of us continuing to believe that our choices are special and that our senses of style are unique. At a White House event for aspiring fashion designers this year, Wintour said, “Fashion can be a powerful instrument for social change. It allows us to think about who we are as individuals and as a society.” She did not say, “A handful of luxury designers and a few major clothing brands decide what you will like and, in turn, buy and wear.” Why would she? The modern fashion industry wants consumers to think that we are not consumers at all, but curators instead. If the midcentury mantra was “Dress to impress,” and the roaring-’80s catchphrase was “Dress for success,” the directive now is “Dress to express.”
This approach to fashion is at the heart of Women in Clothes, a thick new book based on a survey that writers Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton circulated to more than six hundred women asking them what they wear and how they feel about it. The women offer hyperspecific thoughts about their every sartorial choice, but only a few admit that they are influenced by trends or marketing. They are much more likely to lay the blame on their own bodies. “A woman is never thin enough,” writes Vedrana Rudan. “I have a double chin, I shove my tits into minimizers that minimize nothing, I get into Levi’s designed to flatten the tummy and lift the ass, but my ass and stomach are immune to the intention of the jeans. I am a cow!”
The survey responses are shot through with the hollow promises of the fashion industry—that with the right combination of trousers and shirts and dresses and skirts, cut in the right way and worn just so, women can be more glamorous, more powerful, more desired, more respected. “I dress to withstand the elements,” says one woman. “I dress to be as interesting as the Tate. I dress to insert myself into social strata, to be accepted, to pass.” One five-year-old respondent says, in an aside designed to break every would-be earth mother’s heart, “I am always conscious of what I’m wearing.” Another woman offers a detailed journal of every high-end item she covets, from a Kenzo silk-crepe shirt to an “amazing Gudrun & Gudrun multi-coloured dream sweater.” Even unattainable fashion goals start to sound like they’d be great fun to pursue—a repudiation, somehow, of the grim, dictatorial vision of sexism as an obliging handmaiden of capitalism. There are, however, a few brief hints to the contrary: a Muslim woman who wears a jilbab writes, “When I see what the women on billboards, commercials, and game shows are wearing, it really aches my heart. I mean no offense to anyone, but it hurts me to see the bodies of these innocent women being used to sell products. And they are made to believe that this is freedom.”
Women, the book implies, are not sheep who will buy whatever they’re told is on trend or anything H&M stocks for less than $39.50. They are thoughtful and careful about what they wear and why. Fast fashion barely exists in the world of Women in Clothes; its carefully edited accounts of self-declared style preferences seem, indeed, to be the sartorial equivalent of the “slow food” revolution that Michael Pollan jumpstarted in 2006 with The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In response to a survey question about shopping, women express discomfort, embarrassment, or outright denial before the suggestion that they, as a group, buy a lot of new clothes. They describe shopping as an activity for which they must adopt a battle plan—or that, at the very least, they avoid on an empty stomach. “To hell with the whole concept of shopping,” says one respondent. “Who needs clothes?”
This professed aversion to the rigors of acquiring clothing doesn’t match up with the manifest joy that many of the women take in describing what ends up in their closets. It’s also an awkward fit with the book’s own apparent marketing strategy. Since it first appeared last fall, I’ve seen Women in Clothes on display in several women’s clothing shops, for sale alongside small leather goods and gold jewelry. It’s safe to assume that the owners of these boutiques don’t see the book as an antidote to the psychological pain endured by female shoppers, but as yet another fashionable accessory.
There’s a lot of whimsy in Women in Clothes—an artist’s rendering of various stains as they appear on women’s clothing, Lena Dunham’s description of her mother’s sartorial vibe as “bejeweled ventriloquist dummy,” a photo series cataloging each pair of black underwear a woman owns—but its main revelation is how serious women are about what they wear. They’ve so thoroughly infused their wardrobes with their hopes, dreams, and aspirations that the anthology could just as easily be titled Women as Clothes. “Because I resist the ephemerality of clothing, I make grandiose demands of it: a garment must touch on all that I have ever been and will be,” writes Ida Hattemer-Higgins in an essay about how a secondhand store in Athens helped her get over a breakup. “The irony is that, for all my grasping at eternity, in the end, I almost never wear any item for more than a few months.”
Out of context, such grandiose pronouncements seem over the top, but they’re right at home in a book about fashion and the female self. While J.Crew and GQ can still get away with acting as though it’s utterly modern for men to care about style, women have long been culturally saddled with the knowledge that they are how they look, and that therefore they are what they wear. The pursuit of stylishness is not something they opt into, but rather something they must opt out of at great social cost. Hattemer-Higgins tells herself she is resisting the ephemerality of clothing—and with it the dictates of the fashion industry—by carefully selecting each piece she wears from a pile of thrifted cast-offs.
But to scour the racks, secondhand or otherwise, for the makings of self-expression is only to double down on the importance of fashion. The truly transgressive choice—to dress purely for utility—never seems to cross the minds of the women featured in the book. I don’t blame them. Utility isn’t much fun. If you can’t control the fact that you’re going to be judged on your appearance, why not derive what pleasure you can from conveying to observers how you wish to be judged? The inadequacy of clothes—their inability to express the depth and complexity of female experiences—probably explains both why women invest their wardrobes with so much significance and why their clothes so often fail to satisfy them.
It can be hard to tell why women are overburdening their wardrobes with mystic powers of signification: Is it in spite of the fashion industry or because of it? If you were to ask Streep’s Wintour-like character, she would say the answer hardly matters. Whether you are an avid follower of fashion or studiously ignorant of what appears on the runways, you’re still affected by the prevailing style that’s set, in part, by clothing companies. Even secondhand shoppers are not immune; even the disenchanted can’t leave their houses naked.
by Ann Friedman, The Baffler | Read more:
Image: Eleanor Shakespeare
Sunday, March 22, 2015
France’s Baby Boom Secret
Over the past 10 years the offices of France’s National Institute for Demographic Studies (Ined) have seen a steady stream of Korean policymakers and Japanese academics, determined to crack the mystery of French fertility. Scientists present their birthrate graphs and explain the broad lines of French public policy. “In the past four or five years we’ve had over 10 Korean delegations,” says demographer Olivier Thévenon with a smile. Haunted by the threat of population decline, these Asian experts are keen to understand the recipe that has given France the highest fertility rate in Europe, alongside Ireland.
Since the early 2000s France has consistently topped European rankings. After two decades of decline, in the 1970s-80s, the fertility rate started picking up again in the late 1990s. Since then the country has registered scores just short of the mythical threshold of 2.1 children per woman, which would secure a steady population. Its fertility rate in 2014 was 2.01. “For the economy Germany is the strong man of Europe, but when it comes to demography France is our fecund woman,” says demographer Ron Lesthaeghe, member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences and emeritus professor of Brussels Free University.
Much of central and southern Europe has subsided into a strange demographic winter. Fifty years after the postwar baby boom, the fertility rate in the European Union has fallen in recent years to 1.58 live births per woman. Year in, year out the Mediterranean countries contradict the clichés about Roman Catholic culture. In recent years Spain, Portugal and Italy have witnessed a dramatic fall in the number of births (registering 1.4 or even 1.3 births per woman). German-speaking countries – Germany and Austria – have fared scarcely any better, much as most former eastern bloc countries – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Policymakers all over Europe are concerned about such decline.
Yet there is nothing mysterious about the approach that is working in both France and Scandinavia. It combines the idea of a modern family based on gender equality and powerful government policies. “Nowadays, both ingredients are needed to sustain the population,” Lesthaeghe asserts. “At first sight it seems a simple recipe, but it’s far from easy to put into practice: it takes a lot of time to design and establish a new family model.”
There is nothing straightforward or natural about “the family”. It is a very complex world based on social norms, what the American sociologist Ronald Rindfuss calls the “family package”. “In Japan, for instance, this package involves many constraints,” says Ined demographer Laurent Toulemon. “A woman entering into a relationship must also accept marriage, obey her husband, have a child, stop working after it is born and make room for her ageing in-laws. It’s a case of all or nothing. In France the package is more flexible: one doesn’t have to get married or have children. Norms are more open and families more diverse.”
Most countries in southern Europe are based on something akin to the Japanese package, with fairly rigid family norms in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta and Greece. There is social pressure on women not to work while their children are still young, just as it is ill-thought of to live with someone or have a baby outside wedlock. In all these countries the proportion of births outside marriage is below 30%, whereas in France, Sweden and Norway it exceeds 50%. In Japan the traditional family package clearly has a dramatic impact on fertility, with fewer than 1.4 births per woman.
The picture is very different in Scandinavia and France. “In these countries the family norm is much more flexible, with late marriages, reconstituted families, single parents, much more frequent births outside marriage and divorces than further south,” Toulemon adds. “People are far less concerned about the outlook for the family [as an institution].” The positive impact of this open-ended approach to families on fertility is borne out by the statistics, at more than 1.8 children per woman in Sweden, Norway, Finland and France.
The principle of gender equality and the necessary corollary of women being free to work are the key factors in this family model that emerged at the end of the 20th century. Yet in the 1960s-70s advocates of traditional family values claimed that the birthrate would be the first thing to suffer from this trend. Fifty years on it seems they were mistaken: fertility in Europe is higher in countries where women go out to work, lower in those where they generally stay at home. “Women’s freedom of decision is essential to this system,” Toulemon asserts.
Since the early 2000s France has consistently topped European rankings. After two decades of decline, in the 1970s-80s, the fertility rate started picking up again in the late 1990s. Since then the country has registered scores just short of the mythical threshold of 2.1 children per woman, which would secure a steady population. Its fertility rate in 2014 was 2.01. “For the economy Germany is the strong man of Europe, but when it comes to demography France is our fecund woman,” says demographer Ron Lesthaeghe, member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences and emeritus professor of Brussels Free University.
Much of central and southern Europe has subsided into a strange demographic winter. Fifty years after the postwar baby boom, the fertility rate in the European Union has fallen in recent years to 1.58 live births per woman. Year in, year out the Mediterranean countries contradict the clichés about Roman Catholic culture. In recent years Spain, Portugal and Italy have witnessed a dramatic fall in the number of births (registering 1.4 or even 1.3 births per woman). German-speaking countries – Germany and Austria – have fared scarcely any better, much as most former eastern bloc countries – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Policymakers all over Europe are concerned about such decline.Yet there is nothing mysterious about the approach that is working in both France and Scandinavia. It combines the idea of a modern family based on gender equality and powerful government policies. “Nowadays, both ingredients are needed to sustain the population,” Lesthaeghe asserts. “At first sight it seems a simple recipe, but it’s far from easy to put into practice: it takes a lot of time to design and establish a new family model.”
There is nothing straightforward or natural about “the family”. It is a very complex world based on social norms, what the American sociologist Ronald Rindfuss calls the “family package”. “In Japan, for instance, this package involves many constraints,” says Ined demographer Laurent Toulemon. “A woman entering into a relationship must also accept marriage, obey her husband, have a child, stop working after it is born and make room for her ageing in-laws. It’s a case of all or nothing. In France the package is more flexible: one doesn’t have to get married or have children. Norms are more open and families more diverse.”
Most countries in southern Europe are based on something akin to the Japanese package, with fairly rigid family norms in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta and Greece. There is social pressure on women not to work while their children are still young, just as it is ill-thought of to live with someone or have a baby outside wedlock. In all these countries the proportion of births outside marriage is below 30%, whereas in France, Sweden and Norway it exceeds 50%. In Japan the traditional family package clearly has a dramatic impact on fertility, with fewer than 1.4 births per woman.
The picture is very different in Scandinavia and France. “In these countries the family norm is much more flexible, with late marriages, reconstituted families, single parents, much more frequent births outside marriage and divorces than further south,” Toulemon adds. “People are far less concerned about the outlook for the family [as an institution].” The positive impact of this open-ended approach to families on fertility is borne out by the statistics, at more than 1.8 children per woman in Sweden, Norway, Finland and France.
The principle of gender equality and the necessary corollary of women being free to work are the key factors in this family model that emerged at the end of the 20th century. Yet in the 1960s-70s advocates of traditional family values claimed that the birthrate would be the first thing to suffer from this trend. Fifty years on it seems they were mistaken: fertility in Europe is higher in countries where women go out to work, lower in those where they generally stay at home. “Women’s freedom of decision is essential to this system,” Toulemon asserts.
by Anne Chemin, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Corbis
Editing the Human Genome
A group of leading biologists on Thursday called for a worldwide moratorium on use of a new genome-editing technique that would alter human DNA in a way that can be inherited.
The biologists fear that the new technique is so effective and easy to use that some physicians may push ahead before its safety can be assessed. They also want the public to understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique, which could be used to cure genetic diseases, but also to enhance qualities like beauty or intelligence. The latter is a path that many ethicists believe should never be taken.
“You could exert control over human heredity with this technique, and that is why we are raising the issue,” said David Baltimore, a former president of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the group whose paper on the topic was published in the journal Science.
Ethicists, for decades, have been concerned about the dangers of altering the human germline — meaning to make changes to human sperm, eggs or embryos that will last through the life of the individual and be passed on to future generations. Until now, these worries have been theoretical. But a technique invented in 2012 makes it possible to edit the genome precisely and with much greater ease. The technique has already been used to edit the genomes of mice, rats and monkeys, and few doubt that it would work the same way in people.
The technique holds the power to repair or enhance any human gene. “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity,” said George Q. Daley, a stem cell expert at Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of the group. (...)
Recombinant DNA was the first in a series of ever-improving steps for manipulating genetic material. The chief problem has always been one of accuracy, of editing the DNA at precisely the intended site, since any off-target change could be lethal. Two recent methods, known as zinc fingers and TAL effectors, came close to the goal of accurate genome editing, but both are hard to use. The new genome-editing approach was invented by Jennifer A. Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier of Umea University in Sweden.
Their method, known by the acronym Crispr-Cas9, co-opts the natural immune system with which bacteria remember the DNA of the viruses that attack them so they are ready the next time those same invaders appear. Researchers can simply prime the defense system with a guide sequence of their choice and it will then destroy the matching DNA sequence in any genome presented to it. Dr. Doudna is the lead author of the Science article calling for control of the technique and organized the meeting at which the statement was developed.
Though highly efficient, the technique occasionally cuts the genome at unintended sites. The issue of how much mistargeting could be tolerated in a clinical setting is one that Dr. Doudna’s group wants to see thoroughly explored before any human genome is edited.
Scientists also say that replacing a defective gene with a normal one may seem entirely harmless but perhaps would not be.
“We worry about people making changes without the knowledge of what those changes mean in terms of the overall genome,” Dr. Baltimore said. “I personally think we are just not smart enough — and won’t be for a very long time — to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.” (...)
There are two broad schools of thought on modifying the human germline, said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the Doudna group. One is pragmatic and seeks to balance benefit and risk. The other “sets up inherent limits on how much humankind should alter nature,” she said. Some Christian doctrines oppose the idea of playing God, whereas in Judaism and Islam there is the notion “that humankind is supposed to improve the world.” She described herself as more of a pragmatist, saying, “I would try to regulate such things rather than shut a new technology down at its beginning.”
The biologists fear that the new technique is so effective and easy to use that some physicians may push ahead before its safety can be assessed. They also want the public to understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique, which could be used to cure genetic diseases, but also to enhance qualities like beauty or intelligence. The latter is a path that many ethicists believe should never be taken.
“You could exert control over human heredity with this technique, and that is why we are raising the issue,” said David Baltimore, a former president of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the group whose paper on the topic was published in the journal Science.Ethicists, for decades, have been concerned about the dangers of altering the human germline — meaning to make changes to human sperm, eggs or embryos that will last through the life of the individual and be passed on to future generations. Until now, these worries have been theoretical. But a technique invented in 2012 makes it possible to edit the genome precisely and with much greater ease. The technique has already been used to edit the genomes of mice, rats and monkeys, and few doubt that it would work the same way in people.
The technique holds the power to repair or enhance any human gene. “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity,” said George Q. Daley, a stem cell expert at Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of the group. (...)
Recombinant DNA was the first in a series of ever-improving steps for manipulating genetic material. The chief problem has always been one of accuracy, of editing the DNA at precisely the intended site, since any off-target change could be lethal. Two recent methods, known as zinc fingers and TAL effectors, came close to the goal of accurate genome editing, but both are hard to use. The new genome-editing approach was invented by Jennifer A. Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier of Umea University in Sweden.
Their method, known by the acronym Crispr-Cas9, co-opts the natural immune system with which bacteria remember the DNA of the viruses that attack them so they are ready the next time those same invaders appear. Researchers can simply prime the defense system with a guide sequence of their choice and it will then destroy the matching DNA sequence in any genome presented to it. Dr. Doudna is the lead author of the Science article calling for control of the technique and organized the meeting at which the statement was developed.
Though highly efficient, the technique occasionally cuts the genome at unintended sites. The issue of how much mistargeting could be tolerated in a clinical setting is one that Dr. Doudna’s group wants to see thoroughly explored before any human genome is edited.
Scientists also say that replacing a defective gene with a normal one may seem entirely harmless but perhaps would not be.
“We worry about people making changes without the knowledge of what those changes mean in terms of the overall genome,” Dr. Baltimore said. “I personally think we are just not smart enough — and won’t be for a very long time — to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.” (...)
There are two broad schools of thought on modifying the human germline, said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the Doudna group. One is pragmatic and seeks to balance benefit and risk. The other “sets up inherent limits on how much humankind should alter nature,” she said. Some Christian doctrines oppose the idea of playing God, whereas in Judaism and Islam there is the notion “that humankind is supposed to improve the world.” She described herself as more of a pragmatist, saying, “I would try to regulate such things rather than shut a new technology down at its beginning.”
by Nicholas Wade, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Elizabeth D. Herman
[ed. Science lectures were a bit livelier back then.]
Defensive Architecture
Last year, there was great public outcry against the use of “anti-homeless” spikes outside a London residential complex, not far from where I live. Social media was set momentarily ablaze with indignation, a petition was signed, a sleep-in protest undertaken, Boris Johnson was incensed and within a few days they were removed. This week, however, it emerged that Selfridges had installed metal spikes outside one of its Manchester stores – apparently to “reduce litter and smoking … following customer complaints”. The phenomenon of “defensive” or “disciplinary” architecture, as it is known, remains pervasive.
From ubiquitous protrusions on window ledges to bus-shelter seats that pivot forward, from water sprinklers and loud muzak to hard tubular rests, from metal park benches with solid dividers to forests of pointed cement bollards under bridges, urban spaces are aggressively rejecting soft, human bodies.
We see these measures all the time within our urban environments, whether in London or Tokyo, but we fail to process their true intent. I hardly noticed them before I became homeless in 2009. An economic crisis, a death in the family, a sudden breakup and an even more sudden breakdown were all it took to go from a six-figure income to sleeping rough in the space of a year. It was only then that I started scanning my surroundings with the distinct purpose of finding shelter and the city’s barbed cruelty became clear. (...)“When you’re designed against, you know it,” says Ocean Howell, who teaches architectural history at the University of Oregon, speaking about anti-skateboarding designs. “Other people might not see it, but you will. The message is clear: you are not a member of the public, at least not of the public that is welcome here.” The same is true of all defensive architecture. The psychological effect is devastating.
There is a wider problem, too. These measures do not and cannot distinguish the “vagrant” posterior from others considered more deserving. When we make it impossible for the dispossessed to rest their weary bodies at a bus shelter, we also make it impossible for the elderly, for the infirm, for the pregnant woman who has had a dizzy spell. By making the city less accepting of the human frame, we make it less welcoming to all humans. By making our environment more hostile, we become more hostile within it.
Defensive architecture is revealing on a number of levels, because it is not the product of accident or thoughtlessness, but a thought process. It is a sort of unkindness that is considered, designed, approved, funded and made real with the explicit motive to exclude and harass. It reveals how corporate hygiene has overridden human considerations, especially in retail districts. It is a symptom of the clash of private and public, of necessity and property.
by Alex Andreou, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Imaginechina/REX
Japan Opts for Massive, Costly Sea Wall to Fend Off Tsunamis
Four years after a towering tsunami ravaged much of Japan's northeastern coast, efforts to fend off future disasters are focusing on a nearly 400-kilometer (250-mile) chain of cement sea walls, at places nearly five stories high.
Opponents of the 820 billion yen ($6.8 billion) plan argue that the massive concrete barriers will damage marine ecology and scenery, hinder vital fisheries and actually do little to protect residents who are mostly supposed to relocate to higher ground. Those in favor say the sea walls are a necessary evil, and one that will provide some jobs, at least for a time.
In the northern fishing port of Osabe, Kazutoshi Musashi chafes at the 12.5-meter (41-foot)-high concrete barrier blocking his view of the sea.
"The reality is that it looks like the wall of a jail," said Musashi, 46, who lived on the seaside before the tsunami struck Osabe and has moved inland since.
Pouring concrete for public works is a staple strategy for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its backers in big business and construction, and local officials tend to go along with such plans.
The paradox of such projects, experts say, is that while they may reduce some damage, they can foster complacency. That can be a grave risk along coastlines vulnerable to tsunamis, storm surges and other natural disasters. At least some of the 18,500 people who died or went missing in the 2011 disasters failed to heed warnings to escape in time.
Tsuneaki Iguchi was mayor of Iwanuma, a town just south of the region's biggest city, Sendai, when the tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake just off the coast inundated half of its area.
A 7.2-meter (24-foot) -high sea wall built years earlier to help stave off erosion of Iwanuma's beaches slowed the wall of water, as did stands of tall, thin pine trees planted along the coast. But the tsunami still swept up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) inland. Passengers and staff watched from the upper floors and roof of the airport as the waves carried off cars, buildings and aircraft, smashing most homes in densely populated suburbs not far from the beach.
The city repaired the broken sea walls but doesn't plan to make them any taller. Instead, Iguchi was one of the first local officials to back a plan championed by former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa to plant mixed forests along the coasts on tall mounds of soil or rubble, to help create a living "green wall" that would persist long after the concrete of the bigger, man-made structures has crumbled.
"We don't need the sea wall to be higher. What we do need is for everyone to evacuate," Iguchi said. (...)
Opponents of the 820 billion yen ($6.8 billion) plan argue that the massive concrete barriers will damage marine ecology and scenery, hinder vital fisheries and actually do little to protect residents who are mostly supposed to relocate to higher ground. Those in favor say the sea walls are a necessary evil, and one that will provide some jobs, at least for a time.
In the northern fishing port of Osabe, Kazutoshi Musashi chafes at the 12.5-meter (41-foot)-high concrete barrier blocking his view of the sea."The reality is that it looks like the wall of a jail," said Musashi, 46, who lived on the seaside before the tsunami struck Osabe and has moved inland since.
Pouring concrete for public works is a staple strategy for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its backers in big business and construction, and local officials tend to go along with such plans.
The paradox of such projects, experts say, is that while they may reduce some damage, they can foster complacency. That can be a grave risk along coastlines vulnerable to tsunamis, storm surges and other natural disasters. At least some of the 18,500 people who died or went missing in the 2011 disasters failed to heed warnings to escape in time.
Tsuneaki Iguchi was mayor of Iwanuma, a town just south of the region's biggest city, Sendai, when the tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake just off the coast inundated half of its area.
A 7.2-meter (24-foot) -high sea wall built years earlier to help stave off erosion of Iwanuma's beaches slowed the wall of water, as did stands of tall, thin pine trees planted along the coast. But the tsunami still swept up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) inland. Passengers and staff watched from the upper floors and roof of the airport as the waves carried off cars, buildings and aircraft, smashing most homes in densely populated suburbs not far from the beach.
The city repaired the broken sea walls but doesn't plan to make them any taller. Instead, Iguchi was one of the first local officials to back a plan championed by former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa to plant mixed forests along the coasts on tall mounds of soil or rubble, to help create a living "green wall" that would persist long after the concrete of the bigger, man-made structures has crumbled.
"We don't need the sea wall to be higher. What we do need is for everyone to evacuate," Iguchi said. (...)
The risk is not confined to Japan, said Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center, who sees this in the attitudes of fellow Dutch people who trust in their low-lying country's defenses against the sea.
"The public impression of safety is so high, they would have no idea what to do in case of a catastrophe," he said.
Despite pockets of opposition, getting people to agree to forego the sea walls and opt instead for Hosokawa's "Great Forest Wall" plan is a tough sell, says Tomoaki Takahashi, whose job is to win support for the forest project in local communities.
"Actually, many people are in favor of the sea walls, because they will create jobs," said Takahashi. "But even people who really don't like the idea also feel as if they would be shunned if they don't go along with those who support the plan," he said.
While the "Great Forest Wall" being planted in some areas would not stave off flooding, it would slow tsunamis and weaken the force of their waves. As waters recede, the vegetation would help prevent buildings and other debris from flowing back out to sea. Such projects would also allow rain water to flow back into the sea, a vital element of marine ecology.
"The public impression of safety is so high, they would have no idea what to do in case of a catastrophe," he said.
Despite pockets of opposition, getting people to agree to forego the sea walls and opt instead for Hosokawa's "Great Forest Wall" plan is a tough sell, says Tomoaki Takahashi, whose job is to win support for the forest project in local communities.
"Actually, many people are in favor of the sea walls, because they will create jobs," said Takahashi. "But even people who really don't like the idea also feel as if they would be shunned if they don't go along with those who support the plan," he said.
While the "Great Forest Wall" being planted in some areas would not stave off flooding, it would slow tsunamis and weaken the force of their waves. As waters recede, the vegetation would help prevent buildings and other debris from flowing back out to sea. Such projects would also allow rain water to flow back into the sea, a vital element of marine ecology.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas
Katherine Byron, a senior at Brown University and a member of its Sexual Assault Task Force, considers it her duty to make Brown a safe place for rape victims, free from anything that might prompt memories of trauma.
So when she heard last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,” she told me. It could be “damaging.”
Ms. Byron and some fellow task force members secured a meeting with administrators. Not long after, Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault.” Meanwhile, student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space” would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting.
The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.
Safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being “bombarded” by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints. Think of the safe space as the live-action version of the better-known trigger warning, a notice put on top of a syllabus or an assigned reading to alert students to the presence of potentially disturbing material. (...)
Last fall, the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, apologized for causing students and faculty to be “hurt” when she failed to object to a racial epithet uttered by a fellow panel member at an alumnae event in New York. The offender was the free-speech advocate Wendy Kaminer, who had been arguing against the use of the euphemism “the n-word” when teaching American history or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In the uproar that followed, the Student Government Association wrote a letter declaring that “if Smith is unsafe for one student, it is unsafe for all students.”
“It’s amazing to me that they can’t distinguish between racist speech and speech about racist speech, between racism and discussions of racism,” Ms. Kaminer said in an email.
The confusion is telling, though. It shows that while keeping college-level discussions “safe” may feel good to the hypersensitive, it’s bad for them and for everyone else. People ought to go to college to sharpen their wits and broaden their field of vision. Shield them from unfamiliar ideas, and they’ll never learn the discipline of seeing the world as other people see it. They’ll be unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses whose climates they have so carefully controlled. What will they do when they hear opinions they’ve learned to shrink from? If they want to change the world, how will they learn to persuade people to join them?
Only a few of the students want stronger anti-hate-speech codes. Mostly they ask for things like mandatory training sessions and stricter enforcement of existing rules. Still, it’s disconcerting to see students clamor for a kind of intrusive supervision that would have outraged students a few generations ago. But those were hardier souls. Now students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals — mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like. This new bureaucracy may be exacerbating students’ “self-infantilization,” as Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College, suggested in an essay for Inside Higher Ed.
But why are students so eager to self-infantilize? Their parents should probably share the blame. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, wrote on Slate last month that although universities cosset students more than they used to, that’s what they have to do, because today’s undergraduates are more puerile than their predecessors. “Perhaps overprogrammed children engineered to the specifications of college admissions offices no longer experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity,” he wrote. But “if college students are children, then they should be protected like children.”
Another reason students resort to the quasi-medicalized terminology of trauma is that it forces administrators to respond. Universities are in a double bind. They’re required by two civil-rights statutes, Title VII and Title IX, to ensure that their campuses don’t create a “hostile environment” for women and other groups subject to harassment. However, universities are not supposed to go too far in suppressing free speech, either. If a university cancels a talk or punishes a professor and a lawsuit ensues, history suggests that the university will lose. But if officials don’t censure or don’t prevent speech that may inflict psychological damage on a member of a protected class, they risk fostering a hostile environment and prompting an investigation. As a result, students who say they feel unsafe are more likely to be heard than students who demand censorship on other grounds.
by Judith Shulevitz, NY Times | Read more:
So when she heard last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,” she told me. It could be “damaging.”
Ms. Byron and some fellow task force members secured a meeting with administrators. Not long after, Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault.” Meanwhile, student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space” would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting.The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.
Safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being “bombarded” by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints. Think of the safe space as the live-action version of the better-known trigger warning, a notice put on top of a syllabus or an assigned reading to alert students to the presence of potentially disturbing material. (...)
Last fall, the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, apologized for causing students and faculty to be “hurt” when she failed to object to a racial epithet uttered by a fellow panel member at an alumnae event in New York. The offender was the free-speech advocate Wendy Kaminer, who had been arguing against the use of the euphemism “the n-word” when teaching American history or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In the uproar that followed, the Student Government Association wrote a letter declaring that “if Smith is unsafe for one student, it is unsafe for all students.”
“It’s amazing to me that they can’t distinguish between racist speech and speech about racist speech, between racism and discussions of racism,” Ms. Kaminer said in an email.
The confusion is telling, though. It shows that while keeping college-level discussions “safe” may feel good to the hypersensitive, it’s bad for them and for everyone else. People ought to go to college to sharpen their wits and broaden their field of vision. Shield them from unfamiliar ideas, and they’ll never learn the discipline of seeing the world as other people see it. They’ll be unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses whose climates they have so carefully controlled. What will they do when they hear opinions they’ve learned to shrink from? If they want to change the world, how will they learn to persuade people to join them?
Only a few of the students want stronger anti-hate-speech codes. Mostly they ask for things like mandatory training sessions and stricter enforcement of existing rules. Still, it’s disconcerting to see students clamor for a kind of intrusive supervision that would have outraged students a few generations ago. But those were hardier souls. Now students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals — mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like. This new bureaucracy may be exacerbating students’ “self-infantilization,” as Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College, suggested in an essay for Inside Higher Ed.
But why are students so eager to self-infantilize? Their parents should probably share the blame. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, wrote on Slate last month that although universities cosset students more than they used to, that’s what they have to do, because today’s undergraduates are more puerile than their predecessors. “Perhaps overprogrammed children engineered to the specifications of college admissions offices no longer experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity,” he wrote. But “if college students are children, then they should be protected like children.”
Another reason students resort to the quasi-medicalized terminology of trauma is that it forces administrators to respond. Universities are in a double bind. They’re required by two civil-rights statutes, Title VII and Title IX, to ensure that their campuses don’t create a “hostile environment” for women and other groups subject to harassment. However, universities are not supposed to go too far in suppressing free speech, either. If a university cancels a talk or punishes a professor and a lawsuit ensues, history suggests that the university will lose. But if officials don’t censure or don’t prevent speech that may inflict psychological damage on a member of a protected class, they risk fostering a hostile environment and prompting an investigation. As a result, students who say they feel unsafe are more likely to be heard than students who demand censorship on other grounds.
by Judith Shulevitz, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Eleanor Taylor
Tardigrades (also known as waterbears or moss piglets) are water-dwelling, segmented micro-animals, with eight legs.
Tardigrades are classified as extremophiles, organisms that can thrive in a physically or geochemically extreme condition that would be detrimental to most life on Earth. For example, tardigrades can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce.
via:
A Moving Experience
Travel suffers from false advertising. Tour operators, vacation companies, cruise lines, hotel chains, bad travel writers depict it as something “adventurous,” “exciting,” “romantic.” Though disingenuous, it’s understandable: They’re in the business of travel, and their job is to sell it to consumers.
As a result of this hype, people who travel often experience disappointment. Friends will tell you of their wonderful trips, and much of the time they’re being mostly honest. But they conveniently leave out the train they missed due to miscommunications, and the town that was shut tight for a holiday no one told them about. Travel, like football, is best in highlight form.
And people will gleefully tell you about their vacations from hell. The worst trips, travel writers love to say, make the best stories; everybody loves a good tale of woe.
Travel stories are divided, rather religiously, between paradise—a word used promiscuously by travel magazines—and inferno. Those about so-called heavenly places predominate, at least in written form (since most publications are dependent on advertising, and many feel the need to be promotional), while tales of the hellish generally belong to the oral tradition, though they sometimes make it into books, like the excellent anthology Bad Trips. But there is very little middle ground. You not only don’t read, you rarely hear someone say: “The trip was so-so.” Or: “Something was missing.” Or: “I left feeling a little unsatisfied.”
Readers sometimes say to me, You always meet the most interesting people when you travel. I tell them, Not really, I just write about it when I do. Most of the time I’m wandering around lonely and aimless. In my own way, I am as guilty as the cliché-mongers of perpetuating the idea of travel as a continuously fascinating activity—though all writers shape their experiences into an unrepresentative series of highlights; otherwise our stories would be too boring to read.
Condé Nast Traveler has never printed the “Top Ten Places Where You Won’t Feel a Thing.”
But in Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey, Janet Malcolm writes about her trip to Russia, in the course of which she lost her luggage. The effort to be reunited with her belongings propelled her out of her tourist shell, required her to deal with the locals, introduced a small drama into her journey. She came to the conclusion that “travel itself is a low-key emotional experience, a pallid affair in comparison to ordinary life.” Most tourists, she noted, are not doing anything adventurous or exciting or romantic; they are passive observers, visiting landmarks, looking at paintings, and are less engaged in life than they are on a typical Monday at home. It is only when something happens on our journeys—which is, frequently, something going wrong—that we are able to break through the surface of a place. (...)
Travel has been called the saddest pleasure. Sometimes it’s sad because of what we see: poverty, misery, hopelessness. Kate Simon, writing in Mexico: Places and Pleasures of some of the capital’s less reputable ones, ends the section on a philosophical note: “There is no playfulness in it, nor even much energy, just restlessness and several kinds of desperation and, if the night is cold and damp, the sight will depress you, which you may deserve or even want, if you’ve come this far.”
Often, though, travel is sad because what we see doesn’t include us. Much of a travel writer’s life, I once wrote, is spent watching other people have fun. Everyone who travels has the same experience; we’re all outsiders, excluded from the action. Being left out is never pleasant, but in travel it’s even more frustrating because a few days ago you were not just part of a group, of friends or family, you were the envied and celebrated member, the one heading off, as the travel brochures put it, for exciting adventures in exotic lands.
There are people who don’t need people. David Foster Wallace spent his last days aboard the MV Zenith in his cabin, traumatized by the orchestrated “fun” of cruising. The resulting story—”Shipping Out,” published in Harper’s in 1996—is a recognized masterpiece in the “bad trips, great stories” school. John Steinbeck, in Travels with Charley, drove coast to coast and back again with surprisingly few encounters and—as was revealed not too long ago—even fewer real ones. Bill Bryson, the most popular travel writer of the last few decades, has admitted he doesn’t enjoy talking to strangers.
Of course, writers of any kind are never the norm; those of us who write about travel are different from the start, since we usually head out alone. The reason cited most often is freedom from distraction; when you’re by yourself, you’re more attuned to your surroundings. Less discussed, but just as important, is the fact that, alone, you’re also more sensitive. You not only notice your surroundings more clearly, you respond to them more deeply. Smiles and small kindnesses mean more to the unattached traveler than they do to a happy couple. A merchant in Fethiye adds a few extra sweets to my purchase and I’m extremely touched, in part because no one has paid any attention to me in days. If I’d been there chatting with my wife, I wouldn’t have been so moved; I may not have even been aware. And the merchant quite possibly would not have been inspired like he was by my lonely presence.
Once on a trip I went days without having a conversation with anyone other than myself, which resulted in dangerously low levels of self-esteem. Everyone around me was talking, gesturing, laughing. What was wrong with me? One morning I headed toward a building with sliding glass doors and the doors refused to open. They seemed to confirm my suspicion that I had ceased to exist.
by Thomas Swick, TMN | Read more:
Image: Blair Dike, “Untitled,” 2009
As a result of this hype, people who travel often experience disappointment. Friends will tell you of their wonderful trips, and much of the time they’re being mostly honest. But they conveniently leave out the train they missed due to miscommunications, and the town that was shut tight for a holiday no one told them about. Travel, like football, is best in highlight form.
And people will gleefully tell you about their vacations from hell. The worst trips, travel writers love to say, make the best stories; everybody loves a good tale of woe.Travel stories are divided, rather religiously, between paradise—a word used promiscuously by travel magazines—and inferno. Those about so-called heavenly places predominate, at least in written form (since most publications are dependent on advertising, and many feel the need to be promotional), while tales of the hellish generally belong to the oral tradition, though they sometimes make it into books, like the excellent anthology Bad Trips. But there is very little middle ground. You not only don’t read, you rarely hear someone say: “The trip was so-so.” Or: “Something was missing.” Or: “I left feeling a little unsatisfied.”
Readers sometimes say to me, You always meet the most interesting people when you travel. I tell them, Not really, I just write about it when I do. Most of the time I’m wandering around lonely and aimless. In my own way, I am as guilty as the cliché-mongers of perpetuating the idea of travel as a continuously fascinating activity—though all writers shape their experiences into an unrepresentative series of highlights; otherwise our stories would be too boring to read.
Condé Nast Traveler has never printed the “Top Ten Places Where You Won’t Feel a Thing.”
But in Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey, Janet Malcolm writes about her trip to Russia, in the course of which she lost her luggage. The effort to be reunited with her belongings propelled her out of her tourist shell, required her to deal with the locals, introduced a small drama into her journey. She came to the conclusion that “travel itself is a low-key emotional experience, a pallid affair in comparison to ordinary life.” Most tourists, she noted, are not doing anything adventurous or exciting or romantic; they are passive observers, visiting landmarks, looking at paintings, and are less engaged in life than they are on a typical Monday at home. It is only when something happens on our journeys—which is, frequently, something going wrong—that we are able to break through the surface of a place. (...)
Travel has been called the saddest pleasure. Sometimes it’s sad because of what we see: poverty, misery, hopelessness. Kate Simon, writing in Mexico: Places and Pleasures of some of the capital’s less reputable ones, ends the section on a philosophical note: “There is no playfulness in it, nor even much energy, just restlessness and several kinds of desperation and, if the night is cold and damp, the sight will depress you, which you may deserve or even want, if you’ve come this far.”
Often, though, travel is sad because what we see doesn’t include us. Much of a travel writer’s life, I once wrote, is spent watching other people have fun. Everyone who travels has the same experience; we’re all outsiders, excluded from the action. Being left out is never pleasant, but in travel it’s even more frustrating because a few days ago you were not just part of a group, of friends or family, you were the envied and celebrated member, the one heading off, as the travel brochures put it, for exciting adventures in exotic lands.
There are people who don’t need people. David Foster Wallace spent his last days aboard the MV Zenith in his cabin, traumatized by the orchestrated “fun” of cruising. The resulting story—”Shipping Out,” published in Harper’s in 1996—is a recognized masterpiece in the “bad trips, great stories” school. John Steinbeck, in Travels with Charley, drove coast to coast and back again with surprisingly few encounters and—as was revealed not too long ago—even fewer real ones. Bill Bryson, the most popular travel writer of the last few decades, has admitted he doesn’t enjoy talking to strangers.
Of course, writers of any kind are never the norm; those of us who write about travel are different from the start, since we usually head out alone. The reason cited most often is freedom from distraction; when you’re by yourself, you’re more attuned to your surroundings. Less discussed, but just as important, is the fact that, alone, you’re also more sensitive. You not only notice your surroundings more clearly, you respond to them more deeply. Smiles and small kindnesses mean more to the unattached traveler than they do to a happy couple. A merchant in Fethiye adds a few extra sweets to my purchase and I’m extremely touched, in part because no one has paid any attention to me in days. If I’d been there chatting with my wife, I wouldn’t have been so moved; I may not have even been aware. And the merchant quite possibly would not have been inspired like he was by my lonely presence.
Once on a trip I went days without having a conversation with anyone other than myself, which resulted in dangerously low levels of self-esteem. Everyone around me was talking, gesturing, laughing. What was wrong with me? One morning I headed toward a building with sliding glass doors and the doors refused to open. They seemed to confirm my suspicion that I had ceased to exist.
by Thomas Swick, TMN | Read more:
Image: Blair Dike, “Untitled,” 2009
Friday, March 20, 2015
An Iranian Journey
Iranian photographer Hossein Fatemi, offers a glimpse of an entirely different side to Iran than the image usually broadcasted by domestic and foreign media. In his photo series An Iranian Journey, many of the photographs reveal an Iran that most people never see, presenting an eye-opening look at the amazing diversity and contrasts that exist in the country.
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