"You Create Too Much Angst In People..."

Recently I was fired from my job. It was all conducted in the nicest possible fashion, becoming of a liberal "community-based" institution. I wasn't actually fired, but was "invite[d] to resign," because I "create too much angst in people." To be fair, I was told that there was "a file this thick" of complaints about me (I was lead to believe from students, colleagues, parents...); one or two vaguely-specified incidents were mentioned; to be even more fair, I'm surprised it took them this long to do it (I have been employed for five years and I do push it a it I must admit...), but in the end it had to be done - you can't have Philosophy teachers making people "feel angst." Ah, hang on a minute..."people"...before this goes any further, it probably should be said that the "people" in question were not student 'people' (if the petition against my "invitation to resign" is anything to go by at any rate), nor it is colleague "people" (if the amount of private e-mails and conversations is anything to go by). No, it is Senior Administrator "people."

You see, being a Philosophy teacher I have this irksome tendency to "speak truth to power," to use Foucault's phrase; I'm rather old-fashioned: I believe that those in charge of education should be intellectuals, should be up to the task, should be morally beyond reproach, should be critical thinkers, and should be capable of separating the intellectual from the personal. What matters in education is ideas. What matters in education is people. I believe Senior Administrators should be naive (in the best, original sense of the word) idealists. I also thus believe that one of my jobs is to point out to them when they are failing to be these things, and to do it in public. Let me be clearer: if they make public statements, the response should be public. To respond privately to public assertions is a failure of moral responsibility on the part of educators.

So, by doing so, I created "too much angst in people," and thus was "invite[d] to resign."

What follows is a series of my public responses to public e-mails, sent by Senior Administrators in the educational institution where I work. I shall try and provide context. Too much would be boring; too little would be unenlightening. Those of you who are my colleagues have, of course, already read them. Those of you who are not, and those of you who are not involved in education, may, if you read on, have a glimpse into the way educational institutions are being run. It will probably come as no surprise to you. It was a surprise to me, because I am a naive idealist.

E-MAIL 1
The school is currently on a 'green' kick. Lots of well-meaning, futile actions designed to 'ecologise' the school, 'greenwash' it, and infuse the whole thing with educational purpose. A colleague wrote that she had had a conversation with a Senior Administrator in charge of purchasing, and she had scored a "notable success." I replied:

""I informed Ibrahim and the leadership team about this. You will be happy to know that Ibrahim has kindly agreed to look into this more ecological and environmental-friendly affordable alternative for our garbage bags."
"Look into"? What does that mean? What is there to "look into"? The bloke who buys stuff is told that one brand of the stuff is cheaper than the other brand of stuff, and is better. What's to "look into"? "Look into", "take back to" (as in "take back to the leadership" for example), "consult with"....all sounds like institutional inertia to me...
Well done Else for doing the legwork; Ibrahim...get it done, no?
Once again I am reminded of horses, camels and committees...."

E-MAIL 2
On the same issue...

"Far be it from me to be churlish....but I'll try, 'cos it's what many expect...

Khalil's e-mail the other day threw down a certain sort of gauntlet...which wasn't really picked up on. He wrote:

"I think it would be a good idea to explore the environmental issue and deal with the root cause, as much as possible, of this Global issue. For instance instead of being the "garbage collectors" for big companies, we can tackle the problem of recycling by dealing with the source."

So, Lina forwarded a link to the GS magazine, which featured a nice self-serving article about how 'green' their own parent company, HST, is. I call it self-serving, because that is what it is; frankly, it's a typical example of a dodgy organisation giving itself a green 'makeover' for publicity purposes. A cursory glance at the rest of the magazine, however, gives the lie to this (the very existence of the magazine itself, printed on unrecycled paper and distributed in large quantities, gives the lie to this). Some of the companies they do business with (Timberland, for example) have less than exemplary records in this field. HST, it will come as no surprise to learn, have very high-profile tree-planting campaigns, perhaps knowing full well that new-growth deciduous trees are no replacement for old-growth trees. It's a (what do you Americans call plasters?) 'band-aid' on an amputation... The mall in Amman which they have taken a large amount of space in did a great deal, it seems, to keep quiet the reaction to what was done in order to clear the land that it was built on.

And so it goes...

So part of Khalil's crie de couer (spelling, please?) is for a little bit of joined-up thinking in the school...and...I'm going to say it again...every year our Sister School (whose efforts I never cease to applaud) organise a variety of events, one of which is a raffle, with prizes donated by a variety of organisations, local and global. One of them is a travel agency offering free flights on MEA airlines. I don;t know about you, but I thought the link between carbon emissions from aircraft and environmental degradation was firmly established by now....Might we have a firm look at some of the other organisations that we do business with? Sohat is licenced by Nestle, another company obsessed with its own 'green makeover' to cover up certain practices that they would probably rather we not hear about. Sadly, the list goes on.

So, are we going to take up Khalil's gauntlet...or are we going to let Else's efforts go down the toilet by merely giving ourselves a green makeover for the sake of public relations?"

As you can imagine, there was no response to this, so a few days later I wrote:

"Massive response to my previous e-mail of...zero...nada...rien...tipota. Way to go, people (as my my 'street' American brethren might say....). Are we going to either (i) leave it ALL up to students, or (ii) do sweet FA, or (iii) mumble about 'pragmatism' and 'realism', or (iv) pass it off as me and Khalil going off on another anti-capitalist rant, or (v) go shopping, or (vi) form a task force committee, or (vii) do sweet FA, or (viii) all agree, in a concerned, liberal, way, that 'something should be done', knowing that I won't actually have to DO anything...or what?

There is a term, 'Total Toxic Overload', used to describe the point at which the planet (Earth, I mean) cannot auto-regulate. It seems that, if we haven't already, we will soon reach that point. So, the children we are teaching won't have a habitable planet on which to become lawyers, engineers, social workers, actors, or whatever they want to be. If that seems a little apocalyptic, maybe it is, but don't any of you who don't already have them start having any grand ideas about grandchildren....

But, you know, I'm off shopping. I'm gonna get me a bunch of nice stuff sourced from I-don't-care-where, individually wrapped in paper, and in plastic bags made from oil-based residues, in a foreign country that I had to take a plane to get to, and then I'll have a dinner party so we can all coo over how nice my new purchases are...but, you know, at least the food will be from Souk el-Tayeb, so we can all reassure each other that we're being ethical and supporting local producers.

Or here's a suggestion: why don't we just stop, in the whole school, buying photocopy paper? Me, I love photocopying, I do loads of it. I love it, especially with the paper we use which is VERY dodgy indeed...every copy I make, a tree in Brazil weeps for its cousin...But don't worry, I could do without it, and I'd still find something else to moan about (I have that capacity...); can we, please, turn off the heaters? Can we not have air conditioning in summer, and have fans instead? Mammals sweat, it's no big deal. Never heard of deodorant? Buy roll-on - it doesn't have to be aerosol....What else.....oh yes...let's not have hordes of people flying off on aircraft for spurious reasons to a bunch of foreign destinations. We've got Skype now, so let's have online NESA conferences, and Board meetings. Let's just play badminton, and debate, and have forensics, here instead. What else? Sister School....let's not accept any more gifts that have anything to do with destroying the planet, like airline tickets and weekends in hotels that don't care where they spew their garbage...what else? Here's one: this practice of offering, as part of the employment contract, one return flight home a year to non-Lebanese teachers, let's not have that. Can we, perhaps, have car-sharing for students (and staff/teachers) so that they don;t all roll up in gas-guzzling automobiles, and refuse entry to anybody that tries to turn up in a car with less than four people in it (and while I'm on that subject, all those signs that say 'no parking' in both Arabic and English, why is nothing done about the appalling literacy levels that result in tonnes of parked cars nearly all of the time?). What else...(I'm on a roll here, so go with me..)...ah yes, enough of the out-of-country 'training' workshops for teachers..enough..just, enough, really...If we can't all do what we do without having to do more damage, then perhaps we should just stop...

So, what do you all think...?

I thought not....

So, I'm gonna get me a taxi, to the airport, fly off for the weekend to Oman (random example), buy me a bunch of stuff, exploit a few people in a very liberal sort of way (don't worry), live high on the hog, and then I'll give a few classes, maybe a teach-in, who knows, on the global ethics of climate change. I could even write an article for the school newspaper on how I've been introducing my students to 'global issues in a multicultural world' or something, or...or....I could just carry on as I have been doing. After all, I'm 44 years old, so I can reassure myself that I'm "doing something", because I'm an "educator" (how good is that?!! The ultimate 'get-out-of-jail-free- card!!) secure in the knowledge that, in twenty years or so I'll be dead, which will liberate me from any sort of moral responsibility whatsoever...'cos I'll be dead. Fantastic.

Right, I have to go now...I have to put out my recycling..."

E-MAIL 3
Something happened in the city on the day of this e-mail; something is always happening in this city, but on this particular day it looked for a brief moment as if something more than normally happens could happen. In the end nothing happened; however, here, as you may know, the paranoia dial is set to its default position of 'ape-shit', so what actually happens is irrelevant. Towards the end of the day we received an e-mail from a Senior Administrator. to which my reply was the following:

"They tell us that language is important, that it communicates as much connotationally as it does semantically. As such, I have to say that your choice of phrases leaves something to be desired (and I pick out two) as being a tad militaristic - we offered "dedicated service" and "stayed at [y]our posts." Really, I feel like I have just been awarded the Victoria Cross, or the Purple Heart. I feel like I have been honoured with a campaign medal...
At the same time, I am sure that you did act on the understanding that "At no time did we make any decision where there was confirmed information that it would put students, parents, staff, or faculty into any danger." I have no idea what it is like to be an Administrator, and I am equally sure that the work you do is invaluable, in an objective, realistic schema.
However, it is also the case that (and to quote a previous High School Principal) "perception is truth." Whilst I don't believe this to be so, many do...and today, from my vantage point, what I noticed is this:
* a rapidly dwindling number of students as the day progressed;
* concern, stress, worry, fear...(add your own not-very-nice word in here);
*rumour mill on high alert;
* a complete lack of 'boots on the ground' (to put it into a militaristic metaphor, as seems to be the order of the day...) in terms of Administrator presence (granted, you may have had stuff to do...)...
Enfin, the simple point is this: we had a bunch of teachers, students, staff members, ancilliary employees, who were here doing their thing....and zip from Administration, apart from a late-in-the-day e-mail about how great we all are. We also had a fair bunch of panic, worry, concern, nervousness.
Yes, we also had lots of "teachable moments" (or whatever the jargon phrase is), but we also had.....two schools. One was the school that operates 'up there', assuring us that it's all OK (and, again, I am not doubting that it was a frenetic, realistic day of information-gathering, monitoring, analysis and sound, objectificatory judgement on your collective part). The other school, however, the one where teaching, learning, human interaction, tears, fear, concern, and so on, goes on, I can assure you, had a very different take on the day's events. Days like today are not merely anecdotes that we can take to our graves with us. They are real days where shit hits the fan in the "outside world" (as they call it) (and do not even think to dare to pull me up for using a taboo term...) and human beings have to live with it in the ways they have to live with it.
It's a pity that these two schools never appear to have anything to do with each other.
Maybe we can set up a Task Force to discuss why this is so...
And before I get any private e-mails, or invitations to be hauled over the coals (as we Brits would say), I suggest that you read the words that I have actually written, not the ones you think I have..."

A different Senior Administrator wrote in praise of the first and, as is my wont, I couldn't resist:

"Lots of assurances. Lovely. And to imitate your language, {Senior Administrator 2], I was privy to more of the "front of scene" activity than those with offices, and I can assure you that the students and staff whose safety was your paramount concern would have appreciated a bit more 'face time.'
As I said, 'perception is truth', and, if you believe that, the 'truth' is that a lot of damage was done the other day by the perceived inaction of administrators."

E-MAIL 4
Hilarious. You are aware of all of those forwarded e-mails that people who work in institutions send out, enlightening quotations, pictures of fluffy cats, links to 'inspiring' videos and that sort of thing...some people like and enjoy them, others don't; some delete them, others respond. Such was the case here, and two very good friends (of each other) engaged in a light-hearted spat about one of them, in a public forum. A Senior Administrator thought it was not appropriate, for reasons best known to himself, and wrote:

"Let me be clear. Once you went personal this is came to [the institution's public e-mail system] and this is not acceptable.I need you to change this immediately."

I couldn't resist, so I responded (and I was trying to be nice and diplomatic):

"The following "Once you went personal this is came to [the institution's public e-mail system] and this is not acceptable. I need you to change this immediately" is neither grammatically intelligible - what are the referents of "this" in both sentences? - nor is it intellectually intelligible: as a non-participant in the discussion, I saw nothing "personal" in it - it was colleagues exchanging opinions. All of the exchanges were sent to [the institution's internal e-mail system], not [the institution's public e-mail system] (as was your - supposedly - personal response to the main interlocutors), if, indeed, this is what you mean by "it came to [the institution's public e-mail system]." To repeat, however, the main point, as a disinterested participant in this exchange - I have no dog in this fight, as the vernacular has it - I saw a healthy exchange of opinions on the ways in which altruistic intentions can sometimes have commercial underpinnings. I also saw both (primary) interlocutors moving towards a greater understanding of each other's opinions."

E-MAIL 5
The author of the previous e-mail, a Senior Administrator, has a habit of regaling us all with this thoughts and researches. He occasionally sends out things like the following:

"Good morning this Saturday, March 05, 2011
I Subscribe to [Organisation X] and I am sharing with you an article I thought you might find interesting.
I hope you weekend is going well"

So, you can imagine maybe what my response was like:

"In the spirit of our discussion the other evening, I have to say the following: in an English-medium school, which the American Community School at Beirut is, one would expect the linguistic skills of (especially) senior administrators to be impeccable. After all, such people set the tone for the whole school and are, as it were, the 'public face' of ACS. To that end, I notice that, on the entry page of the website at [our school], "Ken O'connor Webinar' is written thus, an appalling, and basic, error. Your own e-mail is also far from flawless.
I hope you understand why I point these things out. We are often being told that we teachers must be role models for our students; it can perhaps come as no surprise to you that we are not when our own senior administrators fail on so many levels to practice what they preach. It may seem to you pedantic that I point out linguistic flaws but, as I say, we are an English-medium school, and those of us who are native speakers could at least be expected to use our language correctly."

E-MAIL 6
...which I like to describe as "the straw that broke the camel's back"...Private, fee-paying educational institutions such as the one I work for are constantly trying any trick in the book to raise money. Fair enough, one might think...but, occasionally, they go overboard. My school launched, with a full trumpet fanfare, some 'new' 'initiative' or other, with a fancy title and a full-on 'teaser-campaign' - posters everywhere, articles in the school newspaper, the works. Thus, I wrote:

"Colleagues
I only ever speak on my own behalf. This time, however, I shall use the canard of "and I'm not the only one who feels this way" as I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with colleagues who, well, feel the same way. In that sense, what I have to say is a mere distillation...
On page 23 of the current edition of 'ACS Matters' (or, as it is known by employees, 'ACS Doesn't Matter'...) it is written that "proceeds of the raffle ticket sales contribute to the ACS Annual Fund, which supports...teachers' salaries...".
The various manifestations of the 'Fund Drive' initiative plastered around school (including the big barometer at the entrance to the [Main] Building) all mention "Support Teachers and Classrooms".
From what I have been able to find out (an unscientific survey of school websites, administrators I know in different schools around the world and so on), teachers' salaries are 'ring-fenced' from tuition fees; that is, tuition fees are spent first on salaries, then whatever is left over is spent on other things. Additional fund-raising is then used to support other projects. In short, I haven't come across another instance of a fee-paying school asking for donations from students and parents in order to support teachers' salaries. Whether or not this is in fact practiced elsewhere, however, is an irrelevance.
Quite a few people are a bit put out by it to say the least; it is, after all, tantamount to 'begging' for teachers' salaries; a once noble profession reduced to one where we can only continue to receive salaries thanks to donations, to hoping that kindly individuals may choose to give. It feels a tad like we have been reduced to a parody of Oliver Twist, holding out the porridge bowl and asking "Please, Sir, can I have some more." Please buy a raffle ticket or I won't get paid next month.
Whatever the details (as in X% of teachers' salaries do in fact come from source X and are ring-fenced), (i) these details are unbeknownst to us, and (ii) this is at the very least a spectacular own goal in terms of the ephemeral issue of 'staff morale,' especially when it is so publically paraded."

And so...I was "invite[d] to resign", offered a "soft landing" (to borrow the phrase used on a colleague who was similarly 'invited to resign' a few months ago (you know, 'resign, and X, Y and Z will be forthcoming; otherwise...' - you fill in the blanks yourself and you take the 'soft landing'), and am, to use the jargon phrase, "moving on with my life."

When the institutionality of institutions overrides the reason the institutions were set up in the first place, then something really is rotten in the state of Denmark. When it comes to educational administrators, I am reminded of Charles Dickens' comment on one such administrator: "If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more"

Egypt: Ramadan & Zizek

Lebanese X-Box

Last week I finally bought an X-Box. Well, I didn't: I would have no clue how to go about the whole process. I gave a pile of money to a friend of mine who knows what's what, and knows people who know people so he could get me a "sweet deal", and he arrived back a couple of hours later with the whole shebang: the eponymous box itself, a couple of extra joysticks (which reminded me a little of those in Cronenberg's 'Existenz'), and 23 games ("because you had some money left over, so I thought 'why not?'").
Well, you can imagine, those of you who already have such an entertainment system...but the highlights: two all-nighters already, occasional, fleeting blurrings of the boundaries between the world of 'Singularity' and the so-called 'real world' (for example, as I entered the stairwell at work the other day, for a moment I wanted to reach for my plasma rifle..), and a whole host of thoughts regarding how I can understand Baudrillard and his ilk a whole lot better now. My second year Philosophy students are demanding daily updates on my thoughts regarding this, of course, and we are going to have to go back over some of the readings we've been doing for the course in order to accommodate my new-found 'insights. That's OK, as revision week is going to have to happen soon anyway, prior to their mock exams, so this now makes it seem like playing 'Call of Duty: Black Ops' is actually a legitimate thing for me to be doing professionally.
However, all of this Abrutschen between the real and the hyperreal has been playing itself out on a country-sized game backdrop this past week or so. Jorge Luis Borges once wrote a story about a megalomaniac king who asked a cartographer to draw up the most accurate map possible of his kingdom. Two dimensions wouldn't do, so he ended up 'building' an exact replica of the country in order to accommodate and describe everything accurately.I'm also reminded of a Russian science fiction film, 'Nightmoves' I think, where, whilst we are all asleep, everything about our world, including who we are and the memories we have, is changed without our knowing it.
That's what Lebanon seems like at the moment. We have no government (again) (so I'm going to have to change that widget further down on the right-hand side of this page...), speeches from this, that and the other sectarian patriarch (Wednesday Hariri, Jumblat every five minutes - the man loves the sound of his own voice -, tonight Nasrallah), and huge swathes of reportage (Al Jazeera and Naharnet are, in the words of Kevin Keegan, "loving it, just loving it"), and we can all engage in that other great Lebanese pastime, speculation, rumour and all-round paranoia...which feeds that other great Lebanese Leviathan, speculation about the speculation, rumours about rumours, and paranoia about the paranoia (viz., for example, this article from Naharnet: http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&62D557961BAF5A39C225781F005F9229).
The ostensible reason for all of this political shenanegins is the forthcoming release of the report of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the "indictment" that will finally tell us, after years of painstaking research, who killed Rafik Hariri. It won't, of course, everybody already knows that. It'll be a damp squib. There may well be the names of some people who are already dead, in prison, or disappeared, but it will most probably, it seems, be about as interesting and enlightening as the Warren Commission Report into the assassination of JFK. Still, that's not going to stop the posturing Lebanese megalomaniacs from getting air-time, moving their pawns around the board, and generally seeking to fit as many terrible metaphors about blood and sacrifice and war in general into their rhetoric as they possibly can.
So it all reminds me of the world of the X-Box that I am beginning to discover: it seems like each group is playing their own 'Co-Op' game, within the same scenario of course, hitting checkpoints ('Speech on TV' - Checkpoint Reached), picking up health points ('Favourable Review of Speech in Biased News Outlet' - Health Points Gained), and arming themselves up to the back teeth ('Arms Cache Secured - Upgrade Now?'). If this all seems a bit tenuous, a bit laboured and stretched as a metaphor...then that's because it is. Still, you should try sitting where I am (by the way, 39 days without a passport and counting, thanks to the Surete Generale...).
It's not surreal at all: it is, in pure Baudrillardian terms, hyperreal. The lunatics have, however, once again taken over the asylum, but they think they are playing X-Box.

Wanted: a good home for a parrot...

But let's be honest, this thing really is the parrot from hell. It's an African Grey, but not one of the cute, light grey ones, with a colourful tail, and an endearing ability to bow its head and imitate words and phrases. Not for her (her - I have no idea, and don't really care, what gender it is - it doesn't really matter does it? It's alone in a cage... - her name is 'Alicia', Greek for 'truth', named optimistically in the belief that I could teach her to repeat rude things about people in Greek...) a happy life of parroting solitude...Twice she has actually escaped. Yes, twice she has forced open the door of her (enormous - I tried, I gave her the best) cage, and flew to pastures new...except she can't fly; it turns out she has had her wings clipped and can merely 'soar' (although that is probably too majestic a word for it - 'plummeted' is probably the best expression)...anyway, twice she escaped, once into the parking lot, from where she was returned by the bawab who looks after it, once onto the nearby generator-filled, sump oil-soaked roof of the next building, where she was fed for a couple of days by the itinerant Syrian workmen who live there (yes, such is the country we live in...) before a group of my students, upon hearing this heart-rending tale, rescued her and returned her to me. Damn it. I thought I had got away morally scot-free - she escaped, I had nothing to do with it...

Anyway, the point is this; I got (she didn't ask for it, she has no reason to be grateful therefore...) her a massive cage in which to live; I feed and water her religiously; I bought her a bunch of 'stimulating' stuff because the pertinent websites tell me that they need stimulation because of their enormous intelligence; I have tried, and tried, to make efforts to befriend her (but let's be honest: there are certain bridges I will not cross...), and still we don't like each other. It's not really a surprise is it? She is an African Grey, illegal in this country (in most countries), so god knows under what conditions she was brought here, or raised, so she has a healthy, I think, antipathy towards human beings. Let's face it, a creature that can escape, realise it can't fly, gets taken back against her will and ability, to the place she escaped from, to her hated captor, and still escapes again, has to be either desperate, or stupid, or both...

She was bought (indeed - bought: members of one species can purchase members of another...) on a complete whim; the day before my 45th birthday, and harbouring a thoughtless desire to have one because a close friend of mine has a brother who owns one which is really cute, I bought it. I mistook its gymnastics in the confines of the pet shop (if it can be called that...) for an endearing individuality. I undertook no research beforehand; I don't, like most humans, really care for the non-human species except when they are cute and endearing and attractive to my own species. We love (some) canines, but not others; we think rabbits are cute but not voles; who is campaigning for 'cockroach rights'?). In short, it's now 'mine'; I 'own' a creature of my own. Wow, it's a bit like slavery isn't it, except it doesn't have to work, it just has to entertain me...Except it doesn't. After dark, we tolerate each other. She is permanently exiled out on the balcony. I sometimes cover her when the sun is shining (the websites and the 'pet shop' owner tells me they don't like direct sunlight), but sometimes I forget; sometimes when I do cover her, I forget to uncover her. if I'm at work, and it begins to rain, well, sometimes the roof of the balcony does its job, sometimes it doesn't. I am not going to bring her inside at night, because - as those of you who know, know - these things wake up early, make noise, and then repeat the exercise at sundown. In the case of Alicia, there is nothing endearing at all about this noise, it's just a god-awful incessant screeching. The same screeching which is repeated any time I attempt to go anywhere near her. Frankly, it's an unbearable noise.

Anyway, the point is this (but I felt some background was needed)...moralise all you want, but I think I am not best suited to possessing a wild animal. I know there are many people around here who believe that owning wild animals, 'domesticating' them, is either healthy, or morally acceptable, or 'nice', or even doing them a favour, 'rescuing' them from an even worse fate (and, in this country, there are many worse fates...); there are even organisations, BETA for example (http://www.betalebanon.org/), that dedicate themselves to this type of thing (although not, it must be said, ALL animals come under their interested care, just the 'nice' ones, obviously...); some of you have very well-intentioned motivations when it comes to the treatment of wild animals. Myself, I believe that Peter Singer, the Utilitarian philosopher, had it right that we humans have a certain ethical (not moral) duty towards the non-human species. They may not have rights, but they do have interests, and their interests certainly do not outweigh our own; the fact that we can domesticate, enslave and use such creatures does not mean that our own interests trump theirs. They are not objects that exist for our pleasure; they are not playthings. At the same time, we do have to ask ourselves some questions about what we think we are doing by endorsing the domestication of wild animals. Recently, the Catalonian government banned bull-fighting in Catalonia. The response of the bull-fighting lobby was that bulls would have to be culled in large numbers if the cultural practice of bull fighting were outlawed. Well, imagine; if the practice of owning cats, rabbits, dogs, parrots were outlawed, we would protest in much the same way, with exactly the same argument...

So, I am (let me be honest) nowhere near the end of my tether with Alicia; I could quite contentedly tolerate her for a while yet; she amuses me at times, and she certainly amuses many of my friends (whether Alicia is amused is another question; how often do we anthropomorphise animal responses to human behaviour? How often do we take their responses to our behaviour to be enjoyment, pleasure, without really knowing whether it is or not?); we have come to a mutual understanding (what an absurd, again anthropomorphic, statement, but you know what I mean) - I am not going to abuse her, and if needs be I will bring her inside when the cold weather starts - she has interests which I cannot morally override); I am constantly trying to make her life as pleasurable as my limited non-animal imagination can stretch; she is not irritating; I have tuned her out - she no longer wakes me up in the morning for example; we derive no pleasure from each other; I take care of her (yes, yes, I know: ensuring her material well-being is only part of it...but I have no idea if the thing has a mind, a psyche, a set of emotional responses, so it cannot be said either way that I either am, or am not, caring for her 'emotionally' or 'intellectually', or 'psychologically'...). I have no idea at all what her experience is like - no human can have any idea what the life of a non-human is like, Thomas Nagel nailed that one - but I suspect it is not all that marvellous: she is a wild animal, and a wild animal does not, 'naturally', live in cages, apartments, houses.

However, I also suspect that things could be better. So, I know that many of you care more than I do for members of non-human species, so which one of you is prepared to take her and give her the life I cannot? I am often told that criticism without a practical solution is worthless. So, as I wrote above, "moralise all you want", but if you are going to moralise, then do something about it.

I know that this is not the best way to "sell" her, to "appeal" to your better instincts, but if there are any Singer-esque Utilitarians out there, you will not be persuaded by such empty rhetoric anyway. And if a cute photo of a cuddly parrot is a deal-breaker, then you probably should not be allowed to be anywhere near a member of the non-human species in the first place.

I make this appeal on behalf of Alicia.

P.S. I first wrote this some weeks ago, and sent it to the listserv of my employer. Alicia is not any longer 'on the market', but it generated some interesting responses. Sadly, only one person really understood...

Bliss?

'Bliss' is the name of a cafe in central Athens with which I am familiar, which I like and which is, in certain ways, faithful to its name (and whose awning this photograph is of); 'Bliss' is also the name of a street in the Hamra area of Beirut, where I live. The front windows and balconies of my apartment overlook it and, beyond it, over the luscious green trees and sandstone edifices of the American University of Beirut, to the Mediterranean sea. Somewhere over there lies the island of Cyprus. This street, however, is very far from being faithful to its name.

The back of my apartment looks over (what is also visible from Bliss Street) a building site. There used to be a decrepit old building there; one day (it took only one day) it was torn down, and the space it occupied was gradually turned into a car park, standard practice in Beirut when land ownership is contested. Such car parks/legal ownership disputes usually take a standard two years...but not this one. My rear balcony is now unusable during the day: I have removed the benches, chairs, tables and plants from it, and now rarely venture out there. Even in the evening, when the work has stopped, it is not a habitable place, due to the dust kicked up by the machines. This is what now inhabits that space:






There are, in Beirut, a range of organisations (largely fruitlessly) trying to do something about the bespoiling of Beirut's architectural and aesthetic heritage (what little there is left of it), for example http://www.savebeirutheritage.com/. They organise demonstrations, petitions, put up flyers everywhere they can (and yes, of course, they have a Facebook page...). All of this interests me, of course; I've written extensively about it on this blog, so I won't re-hash the arguments again here. I took these pictures partly in order to record what is happening to my own little bit of Beirut, partly to get out my frustration (I have been ill the last few days, but trying to get any rest of course when my bedroom gives out onto this scene is nigh on impossible).

But something caught my attention when I examined the third of the three photographs; call it what you will - a moment's respite, a vacant stare, a minute of rest, a breath, a contemplative instant - but it brought to mind the invisibility of the people who are doing the work that the rest of us complain about and would rather were not happening. There are a lot of such people in Beirut, because there are a lot of building sites; I can hear three separate ones from my place of work, and two (not including this one) from where I live. There is no aural peace (and this being Beirut, there are no decibel police or effective by-laws to stop certain things happening at certain times). We complain, and we suffer - about the noise, dust, destruction of Beirut. We then drive through Doura or Hazmieh, and see hordes of Syrians (mainly), Ethiopians, Egyptians, waiting for a chance, a possibility, to spend a day behind my house in order to earn 25,000 Lira (about $17 or so) doing what you see them doing above. On Sundays, of course, there's no work. Unless they can get 'in' with the contractor, there is no guarantee that they will work every day, And when they have finished for the day, they return to where they were picked up from, to a room in a building which is either being constructed, or is waiting to be demolished, with no amenities, no windows, and where they are charged much of what they earn on a daily basis to share that room with several other people living much the same precarious existence.

We rarely connect these two things...

In the meantime, we complain about the noise, the dust, the destruction of Beirut...

We don't complain about those working because they are, of course, invisible...

"Globalisation means many things. At one level, it talks of trade, which since the 16th century has exchanged goods and now, increasingly, ideas and information across the globe. But globalisation is also a view of the world - it is an opinion about man and why men are on the world. One in five of all the people on the globe benefits from this system. Four in five suffer in differring degrees from the new unnecessary poverty. Part of the fanaticism of the economic system that we now call globalisation, part of its bigotry, is that it pretends that no alternative is possible. And it's simply not true."

This was what John Berger wrote about the photographic work of Sebastiao Salgado. Wrote, without knowing it, about the three (at times more) men working behind my house. Men who I rarely remember are men because I am more concerned with noise, dust, the destruction of Beirut's heritage.

Men who are, for the most part, invisible...

And this is the film that Berger and Salgado made, about the three, invisible men who work behind my building:

Crepuscules...

During the last few weekends I have spent a good deal of time outside of Beirut. This past weekend I was with friends at an eco-lodge near Hermel in the Bekaa. Majestic, harsh, unforgiving mountain ranges. Peace, apart from the distant sounds of machine-gun fire from the Hizb'allah training camps in the hidden distance. A warming, enveloping cold. A few weekends ago, near Hammana, a different mountain range, a different non-sense: pine trees, identical and identikit villages nestling on the slopes. And last weekend (or that's at least how it seems), what is without doubt the most alluring place in Lebanon, Sannine. Isolation. Purity. Tranquility.

Partly to escape from the destruction of Beirut by property speculators, and the attendant noise (so much noise) that comes with it, partly to experience cold, which is long overdue (autumn shows no signs of arriving at any point soon down here in the city by the sea), and partly just to escape from the person that I become when I'm in the city too much. There are other more important reasons, but these will suffice for now.

Coming back to the city, the domestic, to work, containing and isolating my 'dromofilia' is increasingly a struggle, a dilemma better said. I am finding fewer and fewer reasons to do so, and more and more reasons not to do so. There is only one reason why I am still here, back here. Again. Still. Yet.

"The experience which I am attempting to describe by one tentative approach after another is very precise and is immediately recognizable. But it exists at a level of perception and feeling which is probably preverbal - hence, very much, the difficulty of writing about it...By this time you are within the experience. Yet saying this implies narrative time and the essence of the experience is that it takes place outside such time. The experience does not enter into the narrative of your life..." (John Berger, Field).

Still. Yet. Again. Words which all have double-entendres of a profoundly existential variety, and which describe both a state of being and a non-state of flux. 'Still': not-yet altered, but calm; 'Yet': for-the-moment', but 'however'; 'Again': the promise of continuance, though also the ordered disorder of inertia.

'Live' and 'leave' are two words which, in English, are difficult to phonetically distinguish. I leave because I need to live; in leaving I live. To live is, often, to leave.

Berger talks, in his beautiful, poetic, metaphysical style, about the 'narrative of life.' He is right (or, at least, what he writes resonates so much with me), and sometimes this narrative, however, condenses, crystallises into just a few (dis)connected words. Still. Again. Yet. I am still in Beirut, yet, again, I'm not.

When Big Brother Gets A Little Too Close...

Last week I discovered that I have a file held by the Lebanese Internal Security Forces. This doesn't surprise me: I'm a foreigner, I work for an organisation funded by the U.S. and operating under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy. The name on my file is mine, with the bracketed appendage "a.k.a. Koutalakis." Now, that 'nickname' is used for many things: three of my e-mail accounts have it or a version of it as the name; one of those accounts is linked to this blog so I have to suppose they are reading this too. it is also my Flickr and Facebook name. It's not that difficult to find this out and link them to me, though I think what surprises me is that anyone would bother. I suppose, charitably, that they didn't know that I wasn't a threat to national security until they had researched and found out that I wasn't. Fair enough.
...and I wonder what else the file contains. Not much, probably, otherwise I would have been either arrested and/or deported by now.
However, the circumstances surrounding my finding out about this file are what interest me. A colleague, in the presence of a third person, happily blurted out that he knew this about me because he has a friend at the ISF who let him, or allowed him, or didn't prevent him from, seeing the files (plural). In one sense this doesn't surprise me either: such is Lebanon. I told my boss about it and asked him to give this colleague of mine the third degree, for obvious reasons. It's partly an issue of confidentiality, but not really that either: when a society is based on transparent superficiality, information becomes a commodity to be traded. So it is everywhere of course, but the information that is most privileged here is trivial information, gossip. From the upper echelons of politics in Lebanon down to the corner cafe discussions, the exchange and possession of the trivial and the superficial become a modus operandi; witness the amount of 'celebrity' magazines, pages in newspapers, and TV shows. So it is almost everywhere, of course, but in a country where even MacDonalds have a valet service and VIP parking, what appears to be so is so, irrespective of any serious criteria.
What makes this different is that this act of reductionism, this particular piece of gossip, was lifted from the secret police. What disturbs me is that I am not at all disturbed by either the existence of the file nor by the fact that whoever is in charge of it shows it to anybody he wishes to. That's Lebanon. Excellent. They can't even get internal security right...