Joe the Lawyer's Personal Identity

Since Mr. Lawler and Mrs. Logan introduced our new unit about American identity and the search for one's self, I've given some thought to the dominant narrative of the North Shore, and how this affects individual's personal narratives.

Whenever I'm away from home and tell someone I go to New Trier and live on the North Shore, I always get the same stereotypical responses. "Ohhh, so you're like rich?" "Do you live in a mansion?" "Are there any clothes you wear that are NOT designer??" While these reactions seem laughably dramatized, I really have been asked these questions. While these are only stereotyped responses, they do say something about the community we're living in. Walking through the halls of New Trier, one can see girls toting Martha Vineyard book bags, guys sporting Lacoste polos. $300 designer jeans are worn and Louis Vuitton wristlets are the new pencil case. While these brands do not make us who we are, we are the product of the environment we grow up in. And it sure seems like we're being submerged in an environment shouting a clear message: success and happiness are achieved through money. 

In thinking about how the North Shore's dominant narrative affects the individual's search for identity, it would be easy to say that anyone and everyone who buys into brand's appeals for happiness and success is too busy thinking about what everyone else thinks to know who they really are. It'd be easy to say that one cannot possibly know their personal wants and desires, their goals and ambitions if they do not create their personal, unique narrative, but aimlessly wander their way into the footsteps of society's dominant narrative. It'd be easy to argue that because that argument has been argued before. But what if I were to propose that in some cases, individuals actually find their identity in a materialistic item. I won't deny that it's a rather shallow identity, but it's an identity nevertheless. The recent recession has affected everyone, even New Trier and families on the North Shore have had to cut back. Fathers have had to give up their Jags, mothers can no longer afford those Gucci sunglasses, and teens have to give up their $300 designer jeans. With that Jaguar, Joe the Plumber (scratch that, Joe the Plumber couldn't afford a Jag, let's call him Joe the Lawyer) Joe the Lawyer knew some things about himself. He knew what kind of a world he fit into it. He knew how he defined success and he recognized his self worth. However, once Joe the Lawyer has to give up his Jaguar due to financial circumstances, he loses a significant part of who he is-or at least a part of how he characterizes himself. 

This is a sad, yet seemingly accurate portrayal of how some on the North Shore define their identities. Of course, there are many that determine their identity on a much more personal and spiritual level, yet I have seen many indications in my home community that sadly seem to support my claim.

The Morality of NOT Going to War

For New Trier's student seminar: T.E.L.L., I taught a class called "How the Problem Started." In the 40 minute session, we focused in on two current crises, the civil war in the Congo and the conflict in India and Pakistan. I explained a brief overview of each conflict, and we then held a group discussion on what the U.S.'s role (if any) was in each conflict. Much of what we talked about applies to our current unit on war.

For sixteen years, the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo have endured a war linked to regional politics over precious minerals, interethnic tensions and power struggles. The Congo has become a severely civil war-torn country, most well known for its "silent war" against women and girls. According to Condition Critical, a humanitarian organization that gives aid to Congolese people, 1 in 2 women have been raped, victims of psychological warfare, at least once in their lifetime. Many females have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair. A video-clip I found interviews different rape victims and portrays just how terrible and seemingly hopeless the conflict has become.

Over the past few weeks, we've discussed in class how historically America has assumed the role of the father figure in the international community. We've seen this portrayed through political cartoons and have seen it through studying how the U.S. has acted in different wars and conflicts. So being the supreme super power we are, shouldn't America intervene once again in the Congo to save the day?

Well after reading the opinions of numerous authors on the Iranian conflict, I think we can all agree that it's never that simple. There are many different reasons why it would be difficult-not to mention controversial-for the U.S. to become involved in the Congo conflict. First, this civil war has been going on for a very long time. There are over 200 different ethnic groups inside the Congo's borders. Each group with it's own culture, values, and many with their own languages. Many of the groups interests are not aligned, yet they are all fighting to maintain a dominant position of power in the Congo. Sure the U.S. knows a little about this conflict. We've been educated about the general facts, but even the most distinguished scholars have only read about it. We're lacking the life time, hands on experience the people in the Congo have. If we're not living it, truly witnessing it, then how can we possibly begin to really understand the situation? How can we begin to help them form a solution when we can barely grasp the problem? Plus, the conflict is much more complicated than merely interethnic tensions. There are many, many other contributors.

So again, what exactly is America's role in this conflict? The possibility of invading Iran is a hot topic because Iran's situation severely effects us and the rest of the world. Our relationship with them is very fragile, not only do they have nukes but they also have OIL!! But the Congo on the other hand, aside from the fact that it is the deadliest war since WWI, their situation really doesn't effect us. Is it morally wrong for the U.S. to be essentially ignoring this silent war-not just against women and children but again the entire Congolese nation-or is it simply an inevitable causality (no pun intended) of a higher power with an agenda?

A Spy, An Interpreter, and A Model: One Classy "Soldier"

While exploring various wars in class, we learned about each conflict's immediate causes, the goal/rationale, and then we primarily discussed its outcomes in terms of the United States.It makes sense that we'd focus on the war's effects mostly on America because we're American and since we're in American Studies, but I wonder how did these wars effect other nations, those directly involved, and those indirectly involved? I thought it would be interesting to share a very unique account of World War II as seen through the eyes of my grandmother, Lysiane Wagner Sutherland. 

Lysiane was in her twenties when her home city of Brussels, Belgium was taken over by the Nazi Germans. She lived alone with her mother, a baroness, in a castle. Their estate was invaded by a German pilot and his family. My grandmother and her mother, keep in mind they're Belgium royalty, were ordered to cook and clean for the Germans, powerless in the confinements of their own home. Being the determined and unbelievably strong willed woman that she was, Lysiane decided she would use her unfortunate situation as fuel to forge her way in combatting the war against the denial of the Four Freedoms. She became a spy for America, trading secrets and undisclosed information to General Eisenhower. Since she was fluent in seven languages, she also worked as an interpreter. In compensation for her espionage work, Lysiane was decorated by General Eisenhower and flown to the United States on his private plane. 

A pretty amazing story, huh? I cannot deny that I have and always will consider my grandma's story heroic. Even so, On the Rainy River, the short story we read by Tim O'Brein makes me look at her narrative through a different lens. While O'Brein did (courageously?) fight for his country in the Vietnam War, he considered himself a coward for he went for the wrong reasons. While my grandma had no resistance to her public service, think about all of those she betrayed and hurt in disclosing information to the Americans. Any conversation she had-whether with family, friends, or acquaintances-was taken as evidence for German exile, as a warrant for defending the Four Freedoms. Inevitably, through disciplining traitors, innocent lives were lost. They lives were involuntarily sacrificed for the greater good of not not simply Belgium, of not solely America, but of the entire world.  This adds even more questions to our class conversation of how to justify the worth of a single life. Can and should one life be sacrificed for the protection of a thousand lives? 

With something as abstract as war, I don't think answers can ever be fully determined to a question like "is war ever justified?" However, their answers are ever changing, ever evolving from conflict to conflict, from person to person. I do know that I count myself extremely lucky to have such an interesting slice of history in my ancestral descent. 

P.S. While this doesn't have much to do with our unit on war, I thought some might be interested to know that after coming to America, my grandmother became a Christian Dior model and married my grandfather, who was the voice of Thumper in Bambi. 

Racial Outliers

After reading the excerpt in class of Malcolm Gladwell's: Outlier's-The Story of Success, I was so intrigued by his asterisk to America's dominant narrative of success that I decided read the book in its entirety. Along with his 10,000 hour rule and theory that arbitrary advantage and luck play as large of a role-if not larger-than innate talent in the equation of true success, Gladwell brings up many other fascinating points. However it is not until the end of the book that he truly brings his theories full circle.

In the book’s last chapter, readers gain an insight into Gladwell's family history and discover that the success of his relatives were not just of their own making, but depended on opportunity and legacy, on history and community. He ties the lives of his family as a foundational warrant to prove his final claim. However, what stood out to me the most out of this last chapter was not the remarkable power of opportunity and luck in the story of sucess, but something that connects back to our unit on agency and oppression.

Gladwell’s relatives lived on the island of Jamaica. In Jamaica, the plantation owners extracted the maximum possible effort from their human property while the property was still young. They worked the slaves until they were useless or dead, and then simply bought another round of slaves at the market. They had no problem with the philosophical contradiction of cherishing the children they had with a female slave, while simultaneously treating their slaves as property. Thus due to the inhumane treatment of dark skinned slaves, the lighter-skin classes-or brown skinned- blacks in Jamaica came to be regarded as worthier, for they were partly of white blood. Very stark divisions divided the dark skinned from the brown skinned. These divisions were most apparent within the family structure, which ultimately lay the foundation for the public manifestation of color prejudice: “the most lightly colored will be favored at the expense of the others…the darker members of the family will be kept out of the way when the friends of the fair or fairer members of the family are being entertained” (Gladwell 282).

In our agency and oppression unit, we talked in depth about the oppression of whites onto blacks and the agency between blacks. However, we did not talk about the existence of oppression within a single racial group. Rather than uniting and creating agency to empower their racial status, the blacks created further division within their own race by essentially segregating the darker skinned from the light skinned. Not only did this most likely delay their attainment of equal rights, but it also reflects an approval, rather than a defiance, for what the whites were doing. It sends the message that superficial divisions based on skin color are acceptable. Perhaps this is a commentary of what one will do to rise up the social ladder. Regardless of familial ties, friends, and the belief that “all men are created equal,” it appears that people will do whatever necessary to gain, or remain in power. 

Are YOU in Good Hands?

In class a few weeks ago, we looked at advertisements and analyzed the appeals companies were selling along with their commodity. Ever since this exercise, I've become very conscious of how manipulative advertisements are, for along with their actual product, they sell what they know their viewers are hungry for. Often times this includes the appeals of popularity, success, beauty, and happiness. Considering the monumental impact our current economic recession is having on America, it only seems appropriate that advertisements are using this financial situation to gain pathos and logos in selling their products. While watching TV, I came across a specific AllState commercial that exemplifies how useful this tactic really is. 

The commercial opens to images of the desparity of the Great Depression and announces that AllState opened its doors in 1931. This important fact adds credibility to AllState's ethos, for it lets the viewer know AllState survived the Depression, and infers that AllState's main goal is to help the average person, especially those suffering from financial loss. The ad then stresses an emphasis on "it's back to basics," claiming that these difficult economic times allow for families to become closer. AllState insinuates that they are a part of that family, and a part of that close bond. This tugs on the the viewers pathos. 

Many different companies are using the recession as amunition to fuel their quest to sell their product. Is this ethically right and sensitive to the times? Perhaps not. But AllState has me sold!

Redefining Wealth

As questions are raised as to whether our current economic situation will lead into a depression, and as we hear blurbs about the latest unemployment rate on the news, panic rises. This is the inevitable reaction of course, and a natural one considering how Americans characterize the American Dream, and thus happiness, as financial prosperity. Although we as a society like to convince ourselves that we are the exception to the rule, and do not link happiness with financial wealth, all too many are lying to themselves. Two economists from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study where they concluded that the majority of people do indeed link money to happiness. 

Yes of course, the economic crisis is awful, and has imposed many dire outcomes onto hundreds of innocent, hardworking people. However, shouldn't we take this situation as a reminder of how lucky we are? Not only in economic means, but also in other ways. According to the poem "Happiness" by Carl Sandburg, happiness is found through fellowship with friends and family. Sandburg wrote of the Hungarians who had little more than a "keg of beer and an accordion", and claimed they knew the true meaning of happiness, where the professors and executives, the stereotypical players for success, did not. Think of every cliche you have heard or seen: the hallmark cards, sappy movies, overly sentimental books, all of which stand to prove happiness cannot be linked to a monetary value, but must be found through enjoying and piecing together the little things. People enjoy these cliches for a reason, they hold some truth to them, and give hope for happiness to those who are financially poor. 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, affluence is defined as having a great deal of money. Wealth on the other hand, is defined as an abundance of valuable possessions. All to often, Americans view money as the only valuable possession that must be possessed in order to be labeled as wealthy. However, if one looks at all of the valuable, non monetary, possessions they are surrounded with in their lives, I'm they they will find they are much wealthier than they thought. 

An Unfortunate Asterisk to the American Narrative

As I was reading one of our classmate's blog post, a quote on their home page caught my attention: "This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do" -Jack Kerouac. This is a pretty bold statement, for it argues that Americans are not individuals, but conformists. At first, I was surprised and rather offended by the claim, because I have been trained into accepting America's dominant narrative as its reality. Our class saw a good portrayal of this dominant narrative at the beginning of the year when we watched the Chevy commercial, which characterized America as a populace of hard working, self-made individuals. Although I believe Kerouac's statement to be an over generalization of Americans, I agree there are many aspects of American society that breed followers, rather than leaders. 

Take the example of society's view of success. In today's world, the success which is commonly celebrated and praised, is marked by predictable and conventional achievements, such as getting into a "good" college, landing a well paying job, and living in a nice neighborhood with a happy family. It seems that any other road to success that does not comply with these "all American cornerstones," is simply, a failed attempt at happiness. And since no one wants to be unhappy, or more importantly because no one wants to be labeled as a failure, isn't it easier to abandon our dreams, that run the risk of failure, and follow society's conventional road to success? This thought process is where we as a nation fall victim to conformity. Of course, there are the exceptions to the rule. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Guy Starbuck surely did not let the fear of failing and being rejected by society stop them from pursuing their dreams. However, many average Americans do feel the pull of the desire to be accepted, believing that happiness and success will come with it. 

Given the countless crisis's ailing our world today, Americans cannot afford to be doing what everyone else is doing, or doing what "they think they're supposed to do" as dictated by society. We need to stand apart from the crowd as strong leaders. Otherwise, the future of our nation and our world is sure to be doomed if everyone continues to put the job off for someone else.