Milquetoast Americans love to be afraid, and they love to live in constant fear. These fragile beings desire the government to step in and regulate all of our lives to their liking: the way we play, what we eat, where we smoke, when we can drink, how we drive, how we parent, where we educate – all under the pretense that it is for our own collective “good.” These people are not only hysterical about their own kids, but they are hysterical about all of our kids, and they use the power of the state to force others into obeying rules and preferences set forth by them because they believe that only they know what’s ultimately best for all. These are the self-anointed Safety Czars – mere “concerned” citizens who have a penchant for cross-examining the lifestyles of their fellow humans, and they are never lacking in “expert” advice or a slew of new ideas for more laws to defend each of us from ourselves.

So writes Karen De Coster in an article promoting the idea of “free range kids”. These are children, she says, whose childhoods are minimally regulated in terms of strict activities schedules, kids guarded by responsible but pragmatic notions on safety.

Children whose parents recognize that the happiness and spirit of childhood is rooted in self-learning and discovery absent an omnipresent eye, watching over a shoulder.

Fred Reed, an eccentric self-described “sociopath”, reflected on his own childhood, growing up in rural 1950s America. One of the chords that struck me:

Solzhenitsyn once told of stopping on some desert desert highway, getting out of his car, and marveling that no one knew where he was, or cared.

To wander into the great beyond that is the world outside of cell phone reception!

Related: MSNBC ran a story on a group of researchers who withdrew to remote Utah to live outside of civilization. They sought to gain insights on how connectedness alters our mental processes.

Also: Lenore Skenazy’s “Free Range Kids” site. “How to raise safe, self-reliant children (without going nuts with worry)”.

The stock market is where people go to lend and borrow accumulated resources. For example, if you have a savings account, you are lending your resources to your bank during the time you do not plan to use them. The bank takes your deposit and invests it in productive investments, so your money grows and is available when you decide to use it.

Socially, the stock market works to allocate society’s surplus capital to the most productive use. We ask “What should society make, how much should it make and how should it make it?” The stock market answers these questions by allocating capital to the “right” firms and sectors. “Right” being whichever investments yield a high return.

Courtesy of Robert Ross.

Imagine Walt Disney at the age of nineteen. His uncle asks him what he plans to do with his life, and he pulls out a drawing of a mouse and says, “I think this has a lot of potential.”

Or Springsteen. In a concert he once told the story of how he and his dad used to go at it — how his father hated his guitar. Late one night, Springsteen came home to find his father waiting up for him in the kitchen. His father asked him what he thought he was doing with himself. “And the worst part about it,” Springsteen says, “was I never knew how to explain it to him.” How does he tell his father, “I’m going to be Bruce Springsteen?”

But it’s time to begin. I stayed there for nine days, and traveled there legally as a journalist. I’m working on an article or two that I’ll link to here once they’re online, but for now I’m posting some of my thoughts on Cuba, her people, infrastructure, services, and state of life.

The following is part basic impressions, part blow-by-blow description, and part diary.

The Capitolio was built in the 1920s, modeled after the U.S. Capitol, and housed the Cuban Senate and House of Representatives.

Havana

You’ll find plenty of neo-classical and art deco architecture in the capital city, and much of the city’s design is Spanish-influenced. Like much of the island, Havana has seen better days. For every building in decent repair, there are five more in very poor shape. You’ll find yourself amidst mediocre main road ways, poor alleys, dysfunctional sidewalks (often with open pipe holes, or large chunks of concrete missing), all surrounded by a generally crumbling city.

Much is made of various restoration projects going on in Havana, some funded by outside entities or governments, like the European Union. But one gets the sense of a band-aid being applied to a gunshot wound.

What I found striking about Havana was that the material poverty of the Cuban people seemed somehow more heinous here — thanks to the shadow of a once functioning city — than I imagine it feeling in a nation that has never known proper civilization.

The average Cuban earns between $15-20 per month, which is worse than many African nations. But the city is evidence of a nation that once commanded industry and wealth — little of its architecture or infrastructure would have otherwise been built — and so Havana is in many ways a bittersweet experience, for the Cuban people are truly a Christian people, but the opportunity possible for them is … limited.

Havana is home to some 2.5 million, but lacking in even a single hardware store. I don’t mean to convey a sense of the city as anything other than grand, surreal, and humbling, but the lasting impression of Havana to me is a place of great potential, a once great past, and of extreme present dysfunction.

Santa Clara

Santa Clara was the place that felt most like home, and was the place where I felt most content, during the trip. The city itself is a pleasant one, if not terribly remarkable, other than for being the site of a pivotal battle against Batista’s military during the revolution (Che and a crew of boys derailed a train), and later a home to Guevara’s mausoleum.

The “home” factor: it was here that we met up with two friends from home who were traveling across Cuba, and who spent more than six weeks there from June-August. Knowing no Spanish ourselves, being with the girls was a God-send (they spoke it fluently).

We stayed with them in the casa they were renting (for $25/night total), and so got our first taste of the “real” Cuba: living with a family, speaking (via interpreter) to a casa owner with whom we developed bonds of affection after wide-ranging and candid conversation on everything from the future of the Revolution, his hopes for his children, gays and transsexuals in Cuba, and medical care and education.

We were here partly to meet up with the girls and partly to experience Revolution Day (more on this below), but it was here that I became closest to Cuba.

A map of the three cities we visited.

Trinidad

We traveled by vintage, and well maintained Chevrolet from Santa Clara to Trinidad. Traveling from the north to south gave us a beautiful sense of the island’s rolling hills and valleys, and its people (many of whom walked along the “highways”). Our drivers spoke only Spanish (like most), making our ride pleasantly silent, excepting the roar of the elderly engine.

Our casa friend from Santa Clara had arranged us a place in Trinidad in the heart of the old, cobblestone town. Trinidad was starkly different from Havana and Santa Clara, due partly to its much smaller size (approx. 70,000). After a few days with the girls, being able to carry on in English and enjoy time with familiar faces, Trinidad represented a step back to our naturally disabled social abilities.

Communicating with our casa owner was a challenge, as she spoke no English. Hand motions helped win us three delicious meals, and in paying our bill ($109 total for three nights, three meals, and two beds).

In Trinidad we saw more of the rural and agrarian soul of Cuba, spending many hours on horseback, riding through jungle conditions across mountains, through a valley, and to a swimming hole. We spent a night with Europeans and some Cubans at Disco Ayala, a bar/club located underground, in an ancient cave. ($3 cover charge.)

We toured a church that, fittingly for Castro, had been converted to another use: military museum. It housed the shell of the engine of the U-2 spy plane shot down in the ’60s, precipitating the Cuban missile crisis. There was no protective glass. To run my hands along the blue-and-white painted metal was humbling. (I could have even broken a piece off to take home — there were no guards.)

But Trinidad, despite its pleasures, was also the most troublesome. Its cobblestone streets made days here worse than trekking through excavated Pompeii. The slum-conditions of many of the people here was more pronounced than elsewhere, though walking amongst them even past midnight rarely warranted a sense of unease.

Money

For a decade now, Cuba has maintained two separate and distinct currencies. The national currency, created for use by Cubans themselves, is debased. Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC, pronounced “kooks”) is the tourist/foreign currency, and it’s pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The rate of exchange is 1 CUC for 24 Cuban national pesos. As such, the economy has been fractured, and in essence has resulted in a de facto economic apartheid for Cubans. Due to the demand for CUCs by Cubans is great, and tips are frequently sought. Outright begging is very rare — only seen once in nine days. Cubans have retained a certain pride despite their poverty.

A Viazul tourist bus in Trinidad. These are made in China.

Transportation

Tourism is still a relatively new concept for Cubans, and the idea that transportation should be readily available remains foreign. Part of this is due to a physical lack of buses. Cuban buses are different from tourist buses, and much cheaper. Cuban buses are jam packed, always, and not air conditioned.

Viazul, the company that runs tourist buses, does a better job, with air conditioned coaches mainly from China. Trips themselves are cheaper than Greyhound, but every trip takes hours longer than expected, partly due to a lack of a real highway system, and partly because bus drives tend to stop frequently to chat with friends by the road, haggle for roadside fruits, and generally ease their feet.

Private cars (illegal) and taxis can be rented for long-distance travel. We traveled from Havana to Santa Clara, and then on to Trinidad, by taxi ($189 for 2-3 hour trip on Soviet-built highway), and then by private car ($50 for a 4 hour trip in a beautifully maintained 1950s Chevrolet).

Cuba also has a train, built by Milton Hershey in the early part of the 20th century to facilitate his sugar business. We tried to take the train, but were actively dissuaded by more than one person, and turned away at the train station in Havana.

It’s the only island in the Caribbean to have a train, largely due to its enormous size (the equivalent of Philadelphia to Saint Louis from east to west.)

Tourism

I’ve touched on this a bit, but one of the outcomes of foreigners in the country with significantly more cash than Cubans are used to is a high presence of hustlers, known as jinetaros. Jinetaros are relentless, and worse than anything you’ve had to deal with, probably ever before, in terms of street hustlers. They will follow you sometimes for multiple blocks, beginning typically with, “My fren, my fren, where you from?” Their goal is to get you to stop, and once you do, only the most iron willed will typically be able to extract themselves. They’ll want to refer you to a restaurant, a cigar dealer, girls (either at clubs or prostitutes), and any variety of services. They’ll take a cut of whatever (very inflated) prices you’ll end up paying at your destination.

Aside from this hazard, which quickly becomes one of the most depressing and infuriating aspects of life in Cuba for a foreigner, there are 1-2 tourism agencies (at least one foreign owned) to assist with travel, sightsee, horseback ride, etc. Our experiences were mixed. One really great woman, know spoke English fluently (only person in nine days), but others knew very little, or were not able to provide services quickly and efficiently. We walked out of at least one place as a result of tedious delays.

Europeans

Europeans were everywhere. Americans, of course, cannot travel to Cuba thanks to the economic embargo on the Communist island (though about 100,000 travel there illegally each year anyway). Europeans represented probably above 95% of the tourists we saw there, and most of them seemed to be having a genuinely good time. I resented them, in a sense, for the lack of attendant political-social baggage in their experience of Cuba.

Revolution Day

We were fortunate to be in Cuba for Revolution Day, the Cuban equivalent of our Fourth of July. “26 Julio” flags hung from hundreds of windows, on homes, an along thoroughfares in Havana and Santa Clara. I speculated that most of the flags were probably placed on government buildings or homes with citizens on government payroll.

We stayed in one of Santa Clara’s “casas particulares”, private homes licensed by the government as bed and breakfasts for tourists. Casas owners represent a middle class, and while they benefit from the hard currency tourists bring, they also must pay a monthly tax (of, I believe, roughly $300) to the government. We awoke at 3am on the morning of July 26, heading out in order to get prime standing spots for the speeches.

The events themselves, which began around 7am, were surreal. Things opened with a martial and Soviet-reminiscent series of marches and parading on a raised platform where speeches would take place, on Che Guevara’s mausoleum site, with his AK-47 brandishing statue towering over the crowd of some 20,000.

Raul Castro did not speak (I was told this was the first time since the Revolution that neither Castro brother delivered remarks), but other government functionaries — as well as an interloper from Venezuela — spoke at great length.

They focused their remarks on the accomplishments of Cuban Socialist-Communism (cited mainly as health care and education/literacy), the need to persevere in their socialist project, and the evils of the global American empire (in this respect, adventurism in Vietnam and lust for Iraq were two examples cited). The Venezuelan guest speaker spoke of his people being undying “brothers” with Cubans, focusing on the importance of forging an alternate path to the future, and resisting “imperial Yanqui” dominance.

(A joke I’ve heard: “Revolution Day: A celebration of the day Cuba went from one of the richest nations in Latin America to one of the poorest.”)

Afterward, we walked up and saw Guevara’s mausoleum site close-up, though the crypt itself was sealed over security concerns. We had been standing for some 5-6 hours straight in what was the tightest crowd I had ever experienced, and after we arrived back at our casa, we slept, exhausted, for many hours.

I’ll say this about Revolution Day: despite the crowd turnout and despite the speeches, “tepid” characterizes the overall atmosphere. It seemed most were interested in seeing their leaders, and simply in escaping the norm. In between the frequent cheers of “Viva Fidel” (as well as other “vivas” for Raul, Cuba, Socialism, etc.), applause was somewhere between that of an American baseball match, but certainly below a football stadium.

What this says about the health of the Revolution, and the enduring spirit of its principles in the hearts of the Cuban people, if anything, is worth pondering.

Technology

Cubans have only recently been allowed to own cell phones, though the cost (about $100, not including service) remains impossibly prohibitive. Internet costs about $10 per hour, making this also a great luxury, the equivalent of a month’s salary for some. Basic landlines telephones exist in some homes, and public telephones can be found more readily than in America.

There are no digital billboards (no billboards, period) and very little automation (our British-owned Hotel Saratoga in Havana was using very old single laptops to manage customers). In most of the cars we rode in, speedometers failed to function. I saw no one else with an iPhone — let alone a smartphone — in nine days.

Despite trade and tourism with most of the world, this was the only ATM I saw in nine days.

U.S. Embargo

One’s regard for America’s economic embargo is typically intellectual, political, or visceral. Going in, I was swayed by competing persuasions. Having traveled there, I maintain, primarily, a visceral sense of the injustice of a people strangled by their own inability to engage in free enterprise amongst themselves.

The embargo, in terms of its primary aim — to isolate and asphyxiate the Communist regime — has been an unqualified failure. In this sense, the embargo should be re-examined. And yet Cuba has survived despite lack of U.S. trade, which represented some 80% of all trade before 1960. (The Soviet Union replaced us, with Cuban-Soviet trade hovering around a similar 75%.)

My beach chair in Trinidad was made in Spain. The bus we rode on in China. The 1950s Chevy, of course, in America. The hotel repaired with British wealth, and another thanks to the French. The EU was redeveloping buildings. France has donated train cars.

And yet Cuba remains mired in dysfunction and chaos, because its underlying political premise — central economic control and management by a self-appointed oligarchy — distorts and defeats the limited enterprise allowed there.

Perhaps a flood of U.S. trade would change things. But the risk of it serving to ensure the continued reign of the Communist apparatus would represent a social evil so great as to make taking the chance not worth the cost.

Without concrete economic concessions, it’s difficult to imagine a way to ease or life our embargo without guaranteeing money and support for the regime, despite the marginal improvements Cubans themselves might experience.

If existing trade with the rest of the world has not resulted in a decent life for Cuba’s people after the collapse of the “socialist market” (Soviet Union), it’s difficult to imagine additional U.S. trade serving as a tipping point.

What can be done so long as Fidel remains intractable?

State of Life

I am severely under-qualified to speak authoritatively on the state of life for contemporary Cubans. I do not speak their language, and I lived among them only briefly. I’ll do my best to speak to what I witnessed.

Cubans make do. One of the enduring mental images is of Cubans passing time in their front rooms, TVs on, state-run news rolling, impassive glances toward me passing by on the street.

I picked up a book in Trinidad, published in Havana, called, “Cuba in the 21st Century: Realities and Perspectives” that talks about Castro’s success in eradicating unemployment. Employment might be universal, but only if dabbler and dilettante are considered professions.

Cubans waiting to receive their rationed goods. Shelves are not well stocked.

Two things I liked in Cuba were digital clocks on stop lights that counted down the time until the light turned, and signs on roadways warning of upcoming police speed checks. (While the latter seems to defeat the purpose, it’s safe to assume the police aren’t losing commissions.)

Cigarettes in Cuba were one of the more shocking differences from America. Cuba has no sin taxes on its tobacco, so the packs averaged 90 cents. Legal liability culture has not yet infected the nation, which made daily life feel much more human than is often felt in the U.S.

For instance: Hotel windows opened (you could feel a breeze and hear the city as you worked). Vehicle emissions are unregulated, meaning a more varied smell. Food had distinct — distinct — tastes. (No FDA.) Horses could be ridden for hours for only $20. Stray dogs roamed streets freely in every city, and only rarely got into fights with one another. (Downside: most were starving, some dead on sidewalks.)

Service was poor, almost universally. Long delays, followed by glacially paced response times for basic requests like currency exchange or bus trips.

The people, on the whole, lived aware, on some level, of what they’re being excluded from in the wider world (a Cuban must obtain a “white card” to travel abroad). Others seemed to get most of their news from state-run sources with questionable integrity.

Once, upon hearing we were from New York (for fun, we came up with various home cities, including Toronto, Miami, and Detriot), one jinetaro joked about walking down streets and worrying about, “bang, bang!” as he put it. Others praised Obama, asking if we agreed (what could be said?).

Cuban culture is rich across the board, from cuisine to poetry, painting to music, and the spirit that gives rise to that culture remains strong, albeit repressed. We heard of parents expressing hope for change so that their children might have a chance at a life outside Cuba.

For most Cubans, it seems like the challenge is how to plod on in an existence based on rationing and restriction. Monthly rations are pitiable (a few pounds of meat, a dozen eggs, etc.), and ration centers were chronically understocked.

Che Guevara was everywhere. Almost literally everywhere. From brick wall murals to government billboards and t-shirts to monuments, his image was impossible to escape. One can’t help but think how fortuitous his martyr’s death in Bolivia has been to Fidel Castro’s propaganda machine.

Final Thoughts

I first began seriously considering a trip to Cuba last fall. After considerable research into the logistics and legality of a U.S. citizen visiting the embargoed Communist holdout, the trip became a must-do.

To travel, experience, and interact with a people who have lived a very different way of life from their neighbors 90 miles to the north was an attractive adventure.

Near the Malecón in Havana, twilight approaches.

And with Fidel Castro and his Communist-Socialist experiment still in place (despite his brother’s rumored efforts at a glasnost and pestroika of his own), feeling Cuba before its (let us pray) re-emergence as a first-world nation became a priority.

Cuba is a complicated nation, and no denunciations of the ills of Communism or socialism can adequately convey the peculiarities of the island nation in 2010. It’s said that the first question a Cuban asks himself in the morning is, “What will I eat today?”

For a young American, used to a much more automated, mechanized, service-oriented (and thus comfortable) way of life, nine days in Castro’s Cuba are physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally exhausting. The Christian will find he must accept a perverse standard as default, and witness a people without concrete expectation for anything better than an almost total cultural ghettoization.

Cuba is a nation stuck between eras. Despite the enormous social evil of a people unable to engage in even basic rights of speech, property, and movement, there remains great tenderness and spirit.

I think of my time there daily, and recall the faces of tan-faced children peering tentatively out barred-up windows, waiting for a rain shower to pass. Of packs of jinetaros waiting for the latest unsuspecting traveler. Of Alejandra, a casa owner, single with four children. Of a broken people who retain pride enough amidst shared want to forgo outright begging.

Of a bent old man pushing through Havana, twilight’s glow fading to black, struggling silently with his canine companion and a single candle, Diogenes-like, searching, perhaps, for signs of a more righteous future for his people.

N.B. — I took approximately 2,000 photos and a few dozen videos in Cuba, most of which are available at my Flickr gallery. There are specific albums for Havana, Santa Clara, and Trinidad, as well as a “Cuba At A Glance” album, featuring 35 selected photos and 10 short videos.

We may spend the better part of our professional lives projecting strength and toughness, but we are all in the end creatures of appalling fragility and vulnerability. Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few who hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

From Alain de Botton’s “A Week In The Airport,” a short little work of characteristic depth and insight into life as lived for a week at Heathrow.

It’s the tendency to boil down reality to biology, as if, by detailing the processes of chemical and physical reactions in the body, we can infer the reason for that body in the first place, and, more broadly, for the natural world that hosts that body.

John Searle spoke with Reason Magazine in 2000, and in the interview came this gem:

Searle: Behaviorism was the idea that when you do a scientific study of the mind, you don’t actually try to get inside the brain and figure out what’s going on, you just study overt behavior.

Reason: Inputs and outputs?

Searle: Inputs and outputs. And the science of psychology on the behaviorist model was you were going to correlate these stimulus inputs with the behavioral outputs. It’s a ridiculous conception of the mind–the idea is that there’s nothing going on in there, except you have the stimulus input and the behavioral output.

The best comment about behaviorism is the old joke about the two behaviorists after they just had sex. He says to her, “It was great for you, how was it for me?” (Laughter) If behaviorism were right, that ought to make perfectly good sense, because there’s nothing going on in him except his behavior, and she’s in a better position to observe his behavior than he is.

Leon Kass has spoken to the problem of the micro versus macro view of Man:

The science was indeed powerful, but its self-understanding left much to be desired. It knew the human parts in ever-finer detail, but it concerned itself little with the human whole. Medicine, then and now, has no concept of the human being, of the peculiar and remarkable concretion of psyche and soma that makes us that most strange and wonderful among the creatures. Psychiatry, then and even more now, is so little chagrined by its failure to say what the psyche or soul is that it denies its existence altogether. The art of healing does not inquire into what health is, or how to get and keep it: the word “health” does not occur in the index of the leading textbooks of medicine. To judge from the way we measure medical progress, largely in terms of mortality statistics and defeats of deadly diseases, one gets the unsettling impression that the tacit goal of medicine is not health but rather bodily immortality, with every death today regarded as a tragedy that future medical research will prevent.

We live in an age concerned primarily with dialing down with atomistic focus into the functioning of biological life while typically ignoring the larger question of purpose.

Buckley’s characteristically erudite and linguistically graceful apologia for belief is important for its articulation of belief as a rational good, as something as motivated by intellectual reason as by religious faith.

I’ve always liked the exchange featuring the excited young Darwinian at the end of the 19th century. He said grandly to the elderly scholar, “How is it possible to believe in God?” The imperishable answer was, “I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.”

That rhetorical bullet has everything — wit and profundity. It has more than once reminded me that skepticism about life and nature is most often expressed by those who take it for granted that belief is an indulgence of the superstitious — indeed their opiate, to quote a historical cosmologist most profoundly dead. Granted, that to look up at the stars comes close to compelling disbelief — how can such a chance arrangement be other than an elaboration — near infinite — of natural impulses? Yes, on the other hand, who is to say that the arrangement of the stars is more easily traceable to nature, than to nature’s molder? What is the greater miracle: the raising of the dead man in Lazarus, or the mere existence of the man who died and of the witnesses who swore to his revival?

The skeptics get away with fixing the odds against the believer, mostly by pointing to phenomena which are only explainable — you see? — by the belief that there was a cause for them, always deducible. But how can one deduce the cause of Hamlet? Or of St. Matthew’s Passion? What is the cause of inspiration?

This I believe: that it is intellectually easier to credit a divine intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature. …

Since Einstein, scientists have sought a unified field theory, more frequently known as a “theory of everything” that could unite disparate fields of research and reconcile quantum theory with classical physics, in short, explaining all natural phenomena.

What Buckley speaks to in his essay is human faith in a universally intelligent and intelligible reality.

In other words, the believer’s insistence on a universe predicated on order and built by an intelligent Creator would seem a logical conclusion given that the universe is both ordered and intelligible (ie – its parts are discernible and explainable by scientific inquiry).

Another way to put it: a unified field theory for Why Reality Functions may one day be discerned, and a unified field theory for the fundamental question Why Reality Exists To Function is what man has come to call “God”.

It’s not that they think they, as journalists, won’t have biases, but that they believe they will be sufficiently impartial in their reading of events, placement of data, and interviews with sources as to provide an “objective” picture of reality.

But what if the notion of objectivity in journalism were its great weakness?

“Objectivity” presupposes an objective, impartial observer. And a reporter’s mission is to obtain information and synthesize disparate raw materials into a sensible narrative. As a reporter learns more about a subject, cognitive biases will take hold on what information is deemed important or relevant.

Penn State’s Daily Collegian editor, Elizabeth Murphy, wrote on her paper’s recent run-in with the law. In her blog post explaining why she received a court order to remove articles from her paper’s web site, and why they refused to agree, she provided a glimpse into the Objectivity mindset of journalists:

The Daily Collegian will not yield to intimidation.
The Daily Collegian does not answer to the government.
The Daily Collegian reports the truth as it happens, day in and day out.

But what happens when her newspaper reports information that turns out not to be the truth? Or only a partial picture of the truth?

A better standard to adhere to as a journalist would be to acknowledge the mind’s tendency toward bias and proclaim that journalists should be naturally skeptical — rather than claiming the mantle of objectivity and Truth.

Skepticism is a useful tool, for its demand is to question and probe into greater depth in all things. The self-proclaimed objective observer, by comparison, seems more likely to fall prey to blind spots and hubris — the kind that breeds self-congratulatory assertions that one “reports the truth as it happens”.

The idea of objectivity ignores the possibility that central parts of the “truth” were perhaps omitted, maybe due to careless research, lazy interviewing, or simple lack of column inches or word count ceilings.

In doing so, the reporter might be doing greater harm than good, working against the public interest by drumming up trust and faith in a system that isn’t itself objectively Truthful, objectively Right, or even objectivity Relevant.

Jesse Walker at Reason Magazine explained a reason for the myth of objectivity in 2003:

There’s a reason that Fox News, whose very selling point is its reliable slant, would adopt a slogan like “We report, you decide.” And there’s a reason why Ann Coulter and Eric Alterman, scarcely objective writers themselves, would attack the media not merely for being wrong but for being biased. The rhetoric of “objectivity” is far too useful a tool, for denouncing your enemies or for patting yourself on the back, to expect everyone to give it up.

Jack Shafer at Slate took on the notion of the “objective” war correspondent that same year.

Carr’s assertion is anecdotal and introspective. He’s careful to note in his shot-across-the-bow article that we still “await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition”.

His central point is a compelling one: the internet is re-wiring the way we think and relate to facts, friends, and reality. It may even hold the power to change how we perceive human-ness.

William Deresiewicz made a similarly important point in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2009 in The End of Solitude:

And losing solitude, what have they lost? First, the propensity for introspection, that examination of the self that the Puritans, and the Romantics, and the modernists (and Socrates, for that matter) placed at the center of spiritual life — of wisdom, of conduct. Thoreau called it fishing “in the Walden Pond of [our] own natures,” “bait[ing our] hooks with darkness.” Lost, too, is the related propensity for sustained reading. The Internet brought text back into a televisual world, but it brought it back on terms dictated by that world — that is, by its remapping of our attention spans. Reading now means skipping and skimming; five minutes on the same Web page is considered an eternity. This is not reading as Marilynne Robinson described it: the encounter with a second self in the silence of mental solitude.

Isolation, intimacy, and proximity remain as important now as in the past, but I wonder how actively thought is given to these things by the youngest generation.

Perhaps Deresiewicz asks it best with his opener: “What does the contemporary self want?”

Pulling from Carr’s Atlantic piece:

If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake:

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”

Put another way: are we going to be a people who approach the world with a sort of ruggedness and skepticism informed by an understanding of past and present of a decent depth, or will we be more like sponges, absorbing — but not necessarily processing or placing into a context — minute-to-minute information?

Leon Kass provides greater depth in this respect:

No friend of humanity should trade the accumulated wisdom about human nature and human flourishing for some half-cocked promise to produce a superior human being or human society, never mind a post-human future, before he has taken the trouble to look deeply, with all the help he can get, into the matter of our humanity—what it is, why it matters, and how we can be all that we can be. …

Only a few, a small percentage, of a culture can focus on such questions, on getting into the “matter of our humanity” — an elite, if you will, tasking with the preservation of a culture and its identity.

Solitude, though, is often one of the preconditions for deep thought, and unless we can move beyond a knee-jerk reaction of “change = progress” and a sense of technology as an inherent good, it’s difficult to imagine a return of solitude.