Steve Harris
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  • Condemned to Repeat It

The Meaning of Fifty.2

6/24/2022

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The great fiftieth reunion has come and gone.  Back in ’72 we might have predicted that it was going to happen, but had no frigging idea what it meant; indeed, we had little sense of the concept of fifty years at all and no patience to contemplate it. Even incremental reunions along the way seemed to exist on their own, with no apparent connection to prior or subsequent events on the list. Indeed, the most common refrain was on the absurdity of it all. For me, this reunion brought home that my self-mythologizing of my life is far more fragile and constructed than I might like to think.

So, before I go too far down that trail, congrats and thanks to those who, over the past 18 months or so, chatted up the idea and then did the unglamorous work of putting together what will likely be a model for other alumni classes in terms of events and esprit de corps. I was glad to be part of the team.

As in the past, we were—entirely justifiably—self-congratulatory. Back then, we knew we lived in unusual times and were given rare opportunities to learn and live with instructors and a campus of extraordinary beauty.

This time, we had about 80 folks present (almost half of those still around), a remarkable showing especially since only about 15-20 still live in the Metro Detroit area. We had gracious hosts from our class for some special evenings, a well-executed program from the School, musical talent, and an outstanding guide to the revival of the city of Detroit (an amazing story of history, demographics, collapse, and innovation).

As a historian, the saga of Detroit’s mid-century power, late-century decline, and recent resurgence illustrates the cyclical nature of many historical phenomena and the futility of prediction based on blithe extension of current trends. In the end, I came away optimistic; having seen the effects of intelligence, inspiration, and effort that stand as a rebuttal to the easy despair of our current national/global situation.

We were fortunate to have with us one of our teachers with us for the weekend. He (too) was young then (fresh out of college) and was part of the English Department which gave me great gifts of literature, criticism, creativity, and the discipline of writing. As a professor now, I was especially glad to be able to thank him (as did many others) for his work and to give him a glimpse of his effect on me and the world (which is the secret and rarely-found food of all teachers).

I had noticed, as early as my tenth reunion, that the campus, even if a bit more buffed up than in my day and graced with all manner of new facilities, seemed smaller than when I was bustling through as  teenager. The new buildings and refurbished interiors made clear the distance from then ‘til now. We were there, in the words of one school song: “shorter in wind as in memory long,” but it wasn’t ours anymore (if it had seemed so at the time). The school, the students, the styles were clearly of this time and era; and, in that way ordinary. Our memories—of different clothing, different music, different sophistication, and different presence—stood out for their difference (not to say ancientness): faded ghosts running down the same hallways.

Of far greater richness was the time—three-days—of hugs and back pats, winks and knowing smiles, some grimaces, some tears together. How can words capture the immersion in memory? All the cliches are rampant: in the mind’s eye hair is longer, fuller, darker; faces fresher; steps springier.

Even richer was the chance, if only for an hour, to leave those cliches to the side and have some serious talk and reflection about our state(s) of mind.  I was gratified that about 30 folks came together to push past the glad-handing and make an effort to see ourselves and each other. We have now all returned to our “normal” lives; but I, for one, feel a bit more anchored, both to my past and to my fellows. The time has come, as I said to the group, to “put down the baggage” of the competition and insecurities of that youth. Getting some understanding of the intervening years/lives of all those with whom I worked and played has helped to clear away those ancient burdens and see my self (both then and now) more clearly.

As our discussion ended, I challenged the group: The clock is ticking. There will be fewer of us at the 60th. When we re-gather, let’s report back on how will I account for the intervening decade (beyond the inevitable physicalities)? How will I leverage what I learned long ago (and since)?

Back in 9th or 10th grade English class, we read and had to memorize Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” (1816) [it was an English-inspired prep school, after all].

I can still recite it (mostly). The closing lines read:

 Could I revive within me
   Her symphony and song,
   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Part of my mission was to find the boy who was entranced by that language, to reconnect to the energy and the possibilities it splashed across my consciousness; to push the intervening years aside a bit and look forward as I did then.


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Games Historians Play

6/17/2022

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Just so you know, in the last few days, I’ve been a Jesuit, Cardinal, and Pope; then an English Viscount. IRL, I just got back from Boulder, where I attended a conference of history professors who play games. In class. And get paid for it!

Actually, we spent four days talking about how to teach using historically-embedded live-action role-playing games in history (and other) courses, mostly by practicing playing the games ourselves. This time, I played one game based on the Trial of Galileo (17C Italy) and another based on the Industrial Revolution (19C England).

In the first game, I was Christoph Grienberger, an Austrian Jesuit mathematician in the College of Rome. I played Vatican politics so that I was elected Pope (the first Jewish guy to do so since St. Peter!) and tried to protect Galileo, but the conservatives were unhappy and elected an antipope! In the second game, I was Viscount Melbourne, the aristocratic magistrate of Manchester in 1817-18. I tried to keep the peace between workers and merchants, all the while investing in the newfangled industrial factories. I made a pile of money and ended up with a fine country estate and a splendid house in the city as well. I had to “read the Riot Act” to the disgruntled workers and sentence one troublemaker to be banished to Australia.

For over 20 years, Reacting to the Past has used these games to teach history, critical thinking, and communications skills in classrooms in over 500 colleges across the country. The group now deploys more than 25 published games (including instructor’s manuals, student gamebooks, and individual character roles), and has over 100 games in development addressing situations from pre-history to the 21st century and engaging students with primary sources from dozens of cultures. Through structured debates and the motivating elements of collaboration and competition, students teach themselves and one another about conflicting ideas and motivations from political, social, strategic, and cultural inflection points in history. Check it out here.

It's not “re-enacting,” i.e., replicating history. Students are not obligated to do what “actually happened” in history. Sometimes, Socrates is not convicted by the Athenians. I’ve had Constitutional Conventions where they couldn’t agree on a document and the US stayed under the Articles of Confederation. Sometimes, slavery is abolished; sometimes not. Sometimes, World War I starts “on schedule,” sometimes peace is maintained. Students get to see that individuals matter and if they don’t speak or vote, their side will more likely lose.

I’ve been part of this group since 2017 when I stumbled across some of the game books at a publisher’s table at a regular historians’ conference. I was looking for some way to get my students more engaged in their own learning. What I found was a remarkable community of teachers and a way to combine fun with history. I’ve been to a bunch of conferences since and was glad when we re-emerged from COVID to gather again this past week. It was the first time I’ve been in a room with dozens of historians in over two years (oh, we also have teachers of philosophy, politics, economics, communications, rhetoric, literature, etc.).

I use several games regularly in my courses: Athens 403BC and South Africa 1993 feature in my freshman seminar on the history of democracy; Philadelphia 1787 is the focus of my course on US Constitutional history (along with a short game on the 13th Amendment); a game on the diplomatic crisis leading up to WWI was the culmination of my 19C International History course. I have also run games on the English Glorious Revolution in 1689, the French Revolution in 1789, Kentucky’s decision on secession in 1861, as well as some short introductory games.

I really love using this way of teaching (and it is not (obviously) because I don’t like to give lectures)). Student’s (most of them at least) read primary sources and argue about the issues of the day. They have to figure out practical politics of teams and factions, negotiate deals, based on the beliefs and the goals that their characters actually had. I sit in the back and watch, guide, and grade. My workload is actually about the same as a “regular” class, but what I do is different. I’m more of a coach to their learning than the font of wisdom and knowledge which is the usual stance of university professors. More importantly, students come away with a deeper knowledge of some segments of history as compared with whatever they might retain (usually not too much) from lectures, especially in terms of the context and mentality of the time and place we’re studying. They have fun and they learn more (not a coincidence).

As for me, I get to work with authors of the games I am playing and trade tips and ideas with others who are running games. As a recovering lawyer/business guy, I’ve also been able to help the organization improve its structure, management, and strategy.

Overall, Reacting has been great for me as a teacher and as a colleague. Based on many of their comments, it’s been terrific for my students too!

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Vox Populi

6/10/2022

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It seems that much of what passes for ‘news’ these days is really just reporting on what people (ordinary folks, that is) think, whether via structured polling or person-in-the-street interviews that purport to represent the sensibilities of a broad group. From one perspective—as a tool to predict political or commercial activity—there might be some substance here, but more often, not. When compounded—one media story reporting on what other media are reporting or reaction to such reports, I usually have the sense that (per McLuhan) “the medium is the message;” i.e., that all this airtime/ink/electrons are being spilled to create and validate media power rather than actually tell us something. Particularly useless in this regard are the reports of what “the people” think about thus-and-such factual matter (e.g., whether COVID is a bigger threat than the flu or whether China will leverage the Russian debacle in Ukraine), as if public opinion could change (or create) the real world of epidemiology or geopolitics. Just as bad are reports which (in the interests of “fair and balanced” news reporting) offer opinions on “both” sides of some issue as if the presence of some “controversy” justifies coverage when often it’s merely a tool for the media to hype up the adrenaline in order to get us to watch.

I suppose that this noise is, to some degree, the product of the modern global culture (fetish?) of democracy. It’s not enough that the masses should choose the President, but now they should also tell us what is true or good.

Looking across the world, it’s striking how much the mantra of “public opinion” seems to count, even in countries with considerably less “democracy” than the Western model. Since relatively few countries experience popular revolutions (as compared with military coups), the substantive weight of the “people” in such countries wouldn’t seem to matter much. Does anyone expect marches in Beijing, Moscow, or half of Africa to topple the existing power structure? Popular unrest might prompt insiders to launch a coup, but that aint democracy. So, what does it matter? In other words, “public opinion” (as mediated/defined/invented?) by the press represent anything real or is it just a construct for the chattering classes/politicos?

From a historical perspective, it is hard to find countries where democracy was more than an aspiration before the 20C. Thus, it has always been intriguing to me to see references to “public opinion” in the19C, even in Britain or France (which had as much of a claim to democracy as any (even with only small fractions of the population having a vote)). So, it’s important to read the phrase “public” as meaning “the powerful outside the formal governmental structure” rather than fall into the anachronistic trap of thinking of the subjects of a Gallup poll or the number of “re-tweets.”

Most modern historians would argue that there wasn’t even such a thing as the “public” until the late 17C (England, France, Netherlands, US). The 20C German writer Jurgen Habermas articulated the concept of the “public sphere” to describe the emergence of a group of people who developed and debated opinions on the political and cultural issues of the day, often in the context of salons, newspapers, and newfangled coffeehouses, they were outside the scope of official discussions within the royal court, but including an open-ended group of people, beyond a private dinner party; thus: “public.” It’s hard to imagine the birth of modern democracy without such a space and so, the “public” and its opinion became an essential part of the model.

Very often, pre-20C (indeed, pre-WWII) “public opinion” really meant whatever the leading media of the day said it did, sometimes based on their own views, sometimes based on (the very limited range of) the people they talked to. Sometimes, “public opinion” was a shorthand, used by leading public figures to project their own views and clothe them in the garb of popular support (when it really was just the views of three fellows at the club last night). All-in-all, not worth very much except to create the impression of democracy.

Now, we have polls—lots of polls—which tell us with apparent statistical validation what it is that “the people” think. For many reasons, they can be (at best) a coarse diagnostic tool for understanding our society and its politics. Certainly, they provide fodder for breathless news reports (e.g., “exit polls” for those who can’t wait a few hours for the actual election results) or for the apparently more considered question of whether “the people” have a “favorable opinion of______.” Such questions conflate people’s feelings (i.e., whether they are happy about the state of their lives) with something more objective and analytic (i.e., whether the President is effectively addressing the issues of the day or implementing his promised agenda). It’s all part of the commodification/marketing of politics.

The extent to which we now commonly take polls for politics is symptomatic of the superficiality of modern democracy (both a bug and a feature). The specialization/division of labor inherent in periodically-chosen representative democracy is based on the complexity of modern life and the inherent limited education and short-attention-span of most of the electorate. At best, polls can only provide a directional indication for policy (another reason why California’s law-by-referendum process is so cockamamie).

“Public opinion” is a great concept—in theory. But it is redolent, in Shakespeare’s phrasing, of “sound and fury, signifying nothing”  or, to paraphrase the famous line about the effectiveness of advertising: “half of it is meaningful; we just don’t know which half.” It provides news filler, rationalizations, and a substitute for sound thinking. Whenever someone cites it to persuade you of something, makes sure your wallet is secure

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Sound Tracks

6/3/2022

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Growing up in the era of Motown and the explosion of rock-n-roll, it’s hard for me to imagine young people having an affinity for the music of my parents’ era. Sinatra, Streisand, Mitch Miller, etc. seemed awfully ‘white bread’ compared to the rhythm of the Four Tops or the juice of The Who. While I now have some appreciation for the standards of the American Song Book (mostly from watching my wife perform much of it in the last twenty years), back then I found it b-o-r-i-n-g. And, while I’m not sure that (even now) I can articulate what “Stairway to Heaven” or “Sgt. Pepper” were all about, their meaning and their power were evident to me at the time (preferably at loud volume).

I pretty much disconnected from pop/rock music in the ‘80s and have shifted to classical  (especially baroque) and jazz, but I have observed that one of the ways in which late 20C/early 21C culture is different than ‘back-in-the-day’ is the taste of young people. Naturally, their tastes run primarily to the popular music of their day, especially various flavors of rap. It’s not my style, but what is remarkable is their affinity for the music of my era. What are my friends’ kids doing lining up for a Stones’ concert, or going to see the Eagles’ (umpteenth) reunion tour??? Why are they downloading  tracks from Santana or Stevie Wonder onto their iPhones?

There is part of me that would like to think that the popular culture of my era was distinctively great; with universal appeal that transcends generations. The first era of rock-n-roll (i.e. from 1956 up to Disco) was awesome, but I’m sure much of my opinion is solipsistic. Actually, however, I suspect that there is something else going on here. It has to do with the infamous “generation gap” and the evolving nature of mass culture in an increasingly technology-driven media environment.

For one thing, culture (especially music) is much more easily available today than 60 years ago when getting a record player or an “8-track” was a big deal. This has been true since CDs (the fax-like music technology of the late 20C) and even cassettes made it simple to get your hands on and swap the latest tunes. Making the “back catalog” available was low-hanging fruit for the music companies (and now, with streaming, even more so).

Second, we “owned” our music in a way that differed from our parents’ relationship with their music. Part of this was due to the inherent rebellion of Rock and its tight generational affiliation. We were proud of our music in a way I don’t think our parents ever were. It’s not surprising, therefore, that we were prone to push it at the next generation. Plus, the economic and cultural power of us boomers made it harder to avoid our tastes and memories than those of earlier generations. We can see this in the innumerable (and often horribly-named) tribute bands reviving the “Golden Oldies” of yesteryear; not to mention hearing “Layla” on Muzak.

Third, the evolutionary nature of popular music since the ‘60s made our sales job easier; i.e., our music is closer to our kids’ music than our parents’ music was to ours (e.g., in terms of volume or rhythm or angst). So, it’s a much shorter bridge and we were more willing to cross it and to bring our kids over to our stuff (and they were more willing to listen than we were, too!).

I wonder how much of this transfers to other modes of popular culture? Remakes of movies and play revivals hearken back to their originals; but that’s not new, Shakespeare and Euripides have been performed for centuries. What is different is the continuing availability of the originals. Although the first two tries at Dune are best left unwatched; the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol is still the best. The remakes say more about the profitability models of media companies than about an aesthetic judgement of earlier versions (see also King Kong). Still the continued availability of the earlier works makes it feasible for multiple generations to share the same cultural experience.

Overall, it seems that the presence of electronic media has fundamentally changed the nature of the inter-generational transfer of culture. Given the rapidity of technological change, it’s likely that the 20C phenomenon noted here will morph considerably on the rising tide of games, VR/AR, mash-ups, and other experimental/experiential genres. It will be interesting to see if grunge bands or rap artists carry the same longevity twenty to thirty years hence or if the current phenomenon was/is a “one-off.”

But for now, we can see that the nature of culture has changed. The past is still available in ways that weren’t previously possible. The ties between generations is different. Perhaps have we found one way to bridge the famous “gap?”

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    Condemned to Repeat It --
    Musings on history, society, and the world.

    I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

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