is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.

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The World�s Indifference vs. The Indifference of People.

The World�s Indifference vs. The Indifference of People.

On Saturday my friend Adam and I went to Red Rock Canyon just outside of Las Vegas, and then sat under a rock like lizards, talking about philosophy. We agreed that it was probably good that we had not found anyone to join us, because that allowed us to spend our nature-time eating sandwiches, avoiding the sun, and talking about Levinas, Nietzsche, Agamben, Schmitt, and Rousseau without feeling like dorks. Nonetheless, when you are out in the middle of nowhere, say, in the High Sierras, or even very close to Las Vegas in Red Rock Canyon, one source of the feeling we humans can get of the greatness of the natural world has to do with its indifference to all things human. We always want to couch this in our own terms, by saying something like �it gives a person perspective.� But that statement still thinks of the natural world in terms of what it has to do with "us."

Throughout the conference I took copious notes for an unwritten diatribe about conference bad behaviors. A conference, like any gathering of a large number of people, will often remind a person that the world is full of self-involved people. I also started making a list of �conference types� and �presentation styles,� in part so I could pinpoint for myself when my dislike for something was irrational or idiosyncratic, and differentiate those occurrences from the dislikes I could set on more firm ethical grounds. In any case, I will most likely spare you the wider survey and just say this: think about other people when you are doing something that has to do with other people. If you do, you will usually not end up looking or acting like an asshole. It is fine that the natural world is indifferent to human beings, but not so fine when human beings are indifferent to each other to the extent that they neglect to think about the effects they have on other people.

Not that I am without sympathy for how difficult it is to play any of the roles one is called upon to play at an academic conference. Often someone�s solipsistic or maddeningly unfair performance is all about his or her own uncertainty or failing confidence, and not the opposite. I know. But it HURTS me to sit around for three days and observe a bunch of adults treating each other badly, whether they do so directly or indirectly.

And, of course, that wasn�t the whole conference, as you well know from previous entries. I saw some good papers and good people. I was just particularly sensitive to the indifference aspect this time, for some reason.

It�s funny that I was reading my friend Nicholas� book about living in Antarctica while at the conference. Because one theme of his book is the cruelty wrought by indifference, of the bureaucratic kind. Hannah Arendt wrote that �bureaucracy is the tyranny of no one.� It sets up a situation wherein no one can pinpoint who is responsible for any decision, every whim of a manager can be realized through diffusion of responsibility while, at the same time, rationality and a sense of fairness will not help any mere employee who finds herself on the wrong side of a pointless or undeclared rule, and, to top it off, the bureaucratic system put in place to run a program efficiently constantly undermines efficiency because no one who knows anything is empowered to make decisions. Nor is anyone allowed to intervene in a ridiculous hamster-wheel got out of hand. But it can be very effective, as well as destructive. The Nazi Final Solution would not have been possible without bureaucracy.

In fact the last two chapters of the book, which I finished today, combined with some progesterone poisoning and today�s news report (which struck me as somehow more dismal than usual while at the same time being nothing out of the ordinary: GM lays off 25,000 more workers, more companies cry to the government that they don�t want to honor their employees� pension plans, and a local boy is mauled to death by a neighbor's pit bull) have put me in a sad dejected mood. There is so much wrong in this world, and most of the reasons for that are well-entrenched and backed by more power and money than any of us could ever hope to combat. Not such an optimistic day for me.

Nonetheless, I want to recommend that you read Nicholas� book, Big Dead Place, even though I already recommended it; but, now that I have read it all, I can attest with greater authority (or, at least, personal accuracy) that it is well worth your time! Sometimes it is sardonically funny, other times clever and wicked, sometimes lyric in its descriptions of the power of the landscape and the climate in Antarctica, always irreverent, and always surprising in the way it weaves together its multiple purposes into one compelling narrative. He does a great job, in particular, using the history of Antarctic conquest, exploration, and scientific research, to show how the present is inflected by the past, even when it doesn�t know it is.

He even makes the point that the violent indifference of the inhospitable environment of Antarctica drives very few people away. When people leave, they leave because of the bureaucratic bullshit that constantly reminds workers that they have no power and no rights that can�t be taken away.

Today, in the midst of my dejected mood, I had a funny AIM argument with Evany while I was eating lunch at Chow and she was at her new job. She and I have very different views about UPS, the USPS, and Apple computers. Already you can tell it�s funny kind of argument. We fall into scripts. Anyway, she took the evidence that I have to send my iBook G4 in for service to be proof of her position that there is nothing redeemable about the iBook G4, whereas I still love mine and am glad that I have the three-year extended service contract. I�m sure the truth is somewhere between her position and mine. However, at some point I had to point out to her that she was attributing hostile or malevolent intentions to UPS (we jump around from script to script) for attempting to leave a package for her all three days she was out of town�as if they knew she was out of town! The larger world--even the human part of it--is so very indifferent to all our individual plans. That can be disheartening, to be sure. But it only makes it harder when we get angry or think that someone has it in for us, you know? Of course Evany was joking. This stock argument we have is only evidence of our different stress-inducers.

So there is an indifference that is caused by a bureaucratic abdication of all responsibility (bad indifference!) and an indifference that is simply the result of the world being a large and complicated place (inconvenience happens!).

This reminds me of the role played by the scheming evil janitor (who never has a name) on Scrubs. He stands for a kind of imagination that every office worker (including myself, when I was an office worker) can have: "the janitor is doing things to bother ME." But of course usually the janitor is just doing his or her job, and has never given one single thought to �me.� On Scrubs the janitor is constantly doing really complex ridiculously mean things on purpose to mess things up for people. And it�s funny, in part because it is so unlikely.

11:25 p.m. - June 07, 2005

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