I’m currently sitting in the Salt Lake City airport, temporarily suspended between Portland and Kansas City, and it just struck me how weird airports are. It will also strike me, in a minute, that I need to buy a new battery for my laptop because this one apparently now only lasts about 40 minutes.

Here are a few things I appreciate about airports:

-No doors on the bathrooms
-Bathrooms have automatic flushers/faucets
-Terminal waiting area seat-backs, while uncomfortable, are at least high enough to reach my upper back
-Announcements warning against accepting “foreign objects” from strangers (suggesting that the SLC airport personnel is either very patriotic or they assume some sort of radical personal-political sovereignty)
-Use of the term “infant in arms” to signify an adult flying with a ticketless infant (or an infant with a gun, as the case may be)
-Talking with random strangers who also enjoy talking to random strangers (i.e., me)

Here are a few things i DO NOT appreciate about airports:

-SLOW WIFI
-Middle-aged creepy people staring at me
-Awkwardly sitting one or two seats away from someone and being unsure about how far your personal belongings should protrude from your personal space.
-A general lack of power outlets (15% battery…)
-The weird very short carpet with weird abstract-designs (except at PDX)

Well, comp’s about to shut itself down so I’m going to try to check my email one more time before it decides it needs a nap.

Talk of race in the US and elsewhere is a politically and socially loaded issue that never fails to ignite the fiery passions of those who disagree about it, and in many circumstances, those who agree about it as well. But this sort of discussion is not one I’m interested in having right now as I have no intention of igniting anyone’s fiery passions.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the fundamentals of what race is and how we should approach it. If this sounds like it isn’t relevant to you, stay with me–I promise you that it is.

What’s the Point?

I want to do this because I happen to be one of the relatively rare students of philosophy who is, first and foremost, concerned with how to use philosophy to help us in real world, every day circumstances. I’m not at all interested in it as an elitist intellectual exercise. But that’s a whole different issue.

Current “Race-thinking” in a Nutshell

The usual approach to thinking about race usually takes the form of answering the question, “What is race and what should we do with it?” I don’t mean (capital R) “Race” in the sense of black, white, asian, etc… I’m talking about the concept of race itself, in the most broad sense. There are many ways to answer this question but here are a couple of common examples:

“What is race…?”

(1) “Race is a biological fact rooted in genetics.”
or
(2) “Race is a social construct that we use to point out social and political differences.”

The second part of the question, “…and what should we do with it?” asks “If I believe race is X, what action needs to be taken?” For example:

“…and what should we do with it?”

(1) “Race is a biological fact so we need to figure out how it determines our skills and talents.”
or
(2) “Since race is socially constructed, we should stop using it and get rid of the idea of race.”

You probably recognize the “usual question” of race (“What is it and what should we do with it?”) from your everyday experience–after all, it’s the question that frames the entire discussion of race world-wide. Answers number (1) above were widely used to argue that white people were superior to other races and that we should therefore treat people of different races as inferior, or as is popular these days, that different races are good at different things because of their race. Answers number (2) above are taken by many civil rights activists in one form or another.

Side note: neither of these views hold water, even under a relatively simple analysis. If you’d like to discuss this, DEFINITELY contact me because I’m doing work in philosophy of race right now and I love talking about it. Nathan [at] brainchocolateblog [dot] com.

Aside from that though, I believe that the question “What is race and what should we do with it?” is the wrong question and is the main cause of our frustration when talking about race. So how do we fix it?

So What’s a Better Way to Think About Race?

No matter who you are, you know that you experience life in different ways depending on where you are–think about it. When you’re by yourself, you think about yourself internally (individual experience). When you’re with friends in a casual setting, you socialize and relate to them on a personal level (social experience). And in other settings you try to influence, persuade, or manipulate people to get them to do certain things or act certain ways (political experience). [I should mention that i don't mean "political" in the sense of politics or political parties, I just mean "any action that involves power, influence, control, etc."]

So of course, when you’re in each of these settings, you think of life differently–you don’t experience life in the same way when you’re just hanging out with friends (social experience) as when you’re trying to convince a stranger to buy a product you’re selling (political experience). So, because we have (at least) these three ways of experiencing the world, we need three different ways of explaining these three different kinds of experiences.

So what does that mean for race? It means that when we ask the question “What is race and what should we do with it?” we actually have to ask it three separate times:

(1) “What does race mean to me for the sake of my own identity?” (individual experience)
(2) “What does race mean when I’m interacting with my friends socially?” (social experience)
(3) “What does race mean in the context of systems of power and control?” (political experience)

So we can’t just give one answer to the question, “What is race and what should we do with it?” because the answer is completely different depending on what kind of experience we’re talking about.

…and Why is This Important?

It may be well and good to say, “race is a false construct and we should completely get rid of the concept because it doesn’t hold scientific or biological merit.” But that creates huge problems for our political experience: the effects of racism are still very strongly felt and if we ignore the concept of race, the problems will continue and most likely get worse. It also presents problems to individual experience: if we all decide not to recognize race, and John has based a large part of his identity around his own race, then we’re effectively telling him that a huge chunk of his identity is illegitimate, wrong, and doesn’t/shouldn’t exist.

By instead asking the question three separate times, and considering how each of our three answers effects the others, we completely avoid all of these types of problems. The “usual question” by itself, “What is race and what should we do with it?” is a bad question because it forces us to give an answer that ends up only reflecting parts of the ways we experience our lives–it’s the reason why when someone tells us “race is XYZ!” we think, “Yeah, I guess I agree with that, but something just doesn’t feel right about it.”

It doesn’t feel right because it only partially reflects how we really experience the world, and we can’t pinpoint exactly why it doesn’t feel right because the “usual question” doesn’t allow us to. My re-framing of the philosophy of race as well as race-thinking in general, I believe, is a necessary step in solving problems of race–if we fail to think about race in terms of the three different questions, we will fail to respond to the problems that race presents in such a way that we will be forever weighed down by the heavy fog of ambiguity.

[Adapted from my current project paper in philosophy of race.]

Fact: Lentils are one of the most nutritionally perfect foods on earth. Very low fat, nearly perfect carbs to protein ratio, and tons of fiber.
Problem: I hate lentils.

Naturally, as the good little problem solver that I am, I wanted to find a way to eat lentils and actually enjoy it. My general philosophy of problem solving goes something like, “If I can’t do/learn/etc something, it’s just because I haven’t figured out how yet. So…figure it out.”

So here’s my lentil soup recipe–it’s a result of a few different recipes I found and a lot of tinkering and experimentation. This has been my staple food since October 2009. Add hours to your week by cooking for 40 minutes on Sunday and eat it for the whole week.

It’s super cheap (about $10) and will probably feed you for a solid week.

Questions?

Twitter: @NPSchmitt
Email: Nathan [at] brainchocolateblog [dot] com

Ingredients

One bag of green lentils, picked over and rinsed
1 medium-large onion, diced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
10 oz frozen spinach, kale, or collard greens (20 oz fresh)
16 oz ham or your favorite pre-cooked meat

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Salt (pref. kosher)
Habanero powder (optional)
Greek yogurt (optional–stir a dollop into the soup after serving into your bowl)
1 poached egg per bowl of soup (optional)
Your favorite full-bodied red wine (optional but it adds good complexity. I use Malbec.)
2 cups water

Lentils: Rinse, pick over (remove rocks or any other small objects), and boil in water with a couple pinches of salt until reyhdrated–the same consistency you would normally eat beans (20-30 min).

Pour yourself a glass of wine.

###

Dice the onion: The easiest, fastest way to do this is to cut the onion in half through the root, remove the peal, and make ~1 cm cuts horizontally (toward the root) and vertically (through to the board) as shown above. The purpose of the root is to hold the onion together for ease of dicing, so be sure not to cut all the way through on the first two sets of cuts. Finish by cutting across your first two axes as seen above. [Click the picture to enlarge it and inspect the onion if this doesn't make sense--it has the cross-cuts in it already.]

###

Cut meat into small cubes (this is black forest ham from Trader Joe’s).

###

Drain Lentils through colander and let them hang out there for a bit.

###

Once oil is hot, sweat the onions with a large pinch of salt–stir occasionally to ensure even heat. Sweating means you bring the moisture out so if you see the onions start to brown, turn the heat down a little. The salt will help extract moisture from the onions so don’t skip out on that. You’re basically just sauteing but with lower heat.

Add the garlic and cook for a couple minutes, stirring occasionally.

###

Push the onions to one side once they’re translucent (about 5 minutes).

Add ~1 tablespoon of olive oil then mix cumin into the oil. Temper the spices for about a minute then mix them in with everything else–this just brings out the flavor of the spices more than if you just mixed them into the soup.

###

De-glaze the pot with about half a glass of your favorite full-bodied red wine: stir and cook for about a minute. (If you don’t have wine just skip this step)

###

Add 2 cups of hot water, crushed tomatoes, and lentils. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After 10 minutes: add ham and habanero powder to taste (3/4 tsp for medium heat).

###

Turn off heat, add greens, cover, and let sit for 10 minutes

Serve into bowl, add a dollop of Greek yogurt (I promise it’s amazing), a poached egg, break yolk  and eat.

###

Here I sit, three minutes ago, in a recliner with my laptop powered down in my hands, ready to go to bed. I look blankly around me maybe for a distraction, maybe just to look. My two eyes fall upon a bottle of water to my right that says to them, in their language of course, “From the Island of Fiji: Natural Artesian Water.”

I understand the concept of an “artesian well” well enough but my mind can’t help but think “artisan” water as I almost silently chuckle at the thought of there actually being a natural artisan in my bottle. It’s now a question of whether or not anyone could find an artisan, let alone a natural one, small enough to fit into such a bottle. The bottle is cubical in shape which, for some reason or another, suggests that an artisan could, in fact, fit in such a bottle. This seems reasonable not because artisans are shaped like boxes, though they would certainly deserve my pity if this were the case, but because in my mind artisans are capable of making such a box regardless of their actual trade. Somehow this suggests to me that because they put so much of their self into the making of it, they would be able to fit into it. It seems to be a reverse metaphor of sorts. I would like to think, however, that if there were an artisan in my bottle of water, I would recognize it as easily as i might recognize a knife in a glass, and promptly set it aside. I digress. It’s partially fictitious; I can do that.

“Untouched by man. Until you drink it” says the bottle. I would hope so. What business has a man’s hands with my water? There’s not much one can do with it with one’s hands. Does this imply that the men (do no women work at bottling factories?) of other bottling companies touch their water with their hands before bottling it? Again, what business do their hands have in my water? If they did have business there I would be perfectly fine with it because after all, they have business there.

I note the expiration note at the base of the cube. By this time, the time elapsed since first looking upon the bottle is arbitrary. Enough content has been imaginatively added to this experience that the value of time, what little value, if any, existed, is now completely nil. “Best before 08 January 09.” This is rather curious to me. This water, that itself has lasted presumably quite a while, will shortly be expiring, or if not expiring, perhaps just diminishing in quality.  How lucky am I to be presented with the opportunity of experiencing the expiration of this particular water. If I am to assume this water has never been molecularly deconstructed, which I will admit is rather far-fetched, I am quite the lucky fellow to have it in my possession not two years ante-expiration after it has been around for billions.

Though perhaps it’s arbitrary. Arbitrary like the time since I began this speech of self entertainment. Not the water, that certainly seems to have enough meaning if am I to assume, which I do, that meaning is created by the subject, by he or she who participates in this world, by he or she who must participate by creating action, by he or she who therefore MUST create. Rather, I am refering to the time. The time, of course, that it takes for water to expire. Rather fanciful, if I do say so myself; the expiration of water.

This is a rather daunting piece to try to close, so I’ll simply leave in peace.

Nathan

I should, and will, add the following. I felt that this was difficult to end because I know no more about ending a creative peace than starting or perpetuating one. I’ve recently, and by recently I mean for the past five years, been a strictly academic writer and therefore feel like a Seattlite in the Bahamas when dealing with such an endeavor.

Once again,
Nathan

“The life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it.”

-G.W.F. Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit

I’ve done a few things tonight: I ate a burrito and chips, discussed common frustrations, purposely didn’t read for a class I needed to read for, and now I’m drinking once-good wine, now–three weeks later–about half vinegar.  Probably should have eaten something else, arguably shouldn’t be frustrated with the issue at hand, definitely should have read for class, but I’m not sure about the wine.

Aesthetic Analysis

Sight: Seems fine. No mold. No particles. Great color. Cool bottle.
Touch: Feels like wine. My right index fingertip is now tinted red.
Hearing: Turning off music… Sounds like the ocean.
Smell: Smells like chocolate.
Taste: Hold on…  Yup, still kinda tastes like vinegar.

Conclusion: My vinegary wine is pleasing to 4 out of 5 senses. That’s 80%. That’s a B. According to my department’s grading rubric, my wine is “good. No significant mistakes, well-written, but not distinctive in any way.”

This is where I’m kind of conflicted. On the one hand, “good” is good, and it’s certainly good enough for me to be enjoying this glass of vinegary wine. On the other hand, “not distinctive in any way” is not good. I’m not OK with anything of mine being “not distinctive in any way.” And this is especially true of the things I create myself. If what you create has no mark to distinguish it as a product of its creator (you), then you haven’t really created anything have you?

Sure, you’ve made something, but manufacturing a product, an idea, a piece of writing, that doesn’t bare your mark is just an exercise in replication. I distinctly remember, when I was six, riding home in the car after daycare one day, quite upset that someone had accused me of copying another kid on the playground.

I thought, “Why is this kid being mean to me? Everyone just takes pieces of other people’s personalities and adds them to the box with all the pieces they’ve already collected.” This was the first time, that I can remember at least, that I realized that there’s no such thing as “originality,” but there is creativity, and creativity is what we should value.

“[Life] wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.”

Even if your creative efforts crash, burn, and explode, at least your efforts are not “not distinctive in any way.” I define creativity as (roughly), “the process of mixing the pieces in your metaphorical box together in such a way that what you create reflects a distinctive image of yourself back to you.” Of course, we often–usually–don’t like this image. Anyone who attempts anything meaningful with their life knows that we fail far more than we succeed. If this is the case, and we refuse to see ourselves in our failures, we might as well not look in the mirror at all, we might as well not be creative, we might as well not drink that wine that only pleases 4 out of the 5 senses.

Just like everyone else, the vast majority of my creative pursuits are miserable failures (if I thought otherwise, I’d just be delusional) but I make them public anyway. Hiding your creative failures from others is disingenuous but hiding them from yourself is harmful.

Again:

“[Life] wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.”

Honor those from whom you take the different pieces of yourself by showing the world how you put them all together; no one can rightly ridicule you for eating s*** on a creative project, but I’ll sure as hell call you out if don’t embrace your entire creativity–the successes and the failures–and I expect the same in return. For serious.