Community

I study citizenship. When I practiced citizenship as a lobbyist, attorney, and congressional aide in Washington, DC, my conception of citizenship was at once too broad and too narrow. I though of citizenship as a national identity. Now that I teach, I think of citizenship in terms of community. My students are citizens of my classes, for example. And after one day, I can tell some will be good citizens, some bad, and some (like most Americans) clueless.

I am teaching argumentation this year and asked my students to introduce themselves by making an argument about something they care about. The vast majority of the arguments were thoughtful though of course I got the obligatory "White Sox rule" argument. But I did not hear arguments about abortion, stem cells, the school mascot, George Bush . . .. Except for the second argument that was made: "I believe that everyone should take Jesus into their heart because that is the only way that they will be given eternal life."

My response: "But according to your religion, I'll get eternal life too, only I'll be burning and in a lot of pain. Oh, and my community will be composed of people like Albert Einstein, Mohandas Gandhi, Frederick Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Buddha, Mohammed, and the billions of humans who will not be included in the few hundred thousand souls selected to go to Heaven." Then I asked to class to be precise with their arguments, otherwise the argument quickly falls apart.

His response. "Oh, right, I meant good eternal life."

Thanks, but If I have to exist forever (a frightful prospect), I would prefer to hang out with Albert and Mohandas (and the vast majority of humankind). Though I might try to avoid Nietzsche.

Admission

Term: Admission
Method: Example

To admit is to allow one entry (i.e. into a university), or to recognize something one would otherwise not recognize. I recognize that I have a neice who is VERY cute. And cute is not a word I use much . . . ok, ever.

Preparation

Term: Preparation
Method: Contrast through parsing

If reparation is to make up for past mistakes, then preparation is to plan in order to avoid making mistakes in the first place.

If Parati is a coastal village in Brazil whose purpose as a gold exporting port was eliminated by the opening of a nearby river in the eighteenth century, then preparation is the work it takes to sustain a long-term engagement with the world and not to disappear for 200 years only to become a disneyfied and soul-less tourist attraction.

If ration is to reduce one's consumption of goods in order to stretch resources in a time of shortage, then preparation is the effort it takes to avoid shortage.

Blog Comment

I study a guy who regularly attempted to erase his own past. He extolled the greatness of Boston's eighteenth-century Black poetess, Phyllis Wheatley, only to omit that reference in subsequent copies of the same tract (because someone else had written that she was not great). He proclaimed the evils of publishing anonymously though he had anonymously attacked George Washington . . .. All this is by way of admitting that some entries in this blog have been removed. As much as we might wish to be, Auditus, Thesaurus and Definer are not Wonkette. We are serious academics and so unserious blog entries have been deleted. We also recognize that readers may have been disappointed by our absense over the past two months but all three of us have been buried in work - summers are not kind to academics.

D