The Invaluable Grey

 Mirrors should think longer before they reflect. – Jean Cocteau

 

As a kid in Michigan, WJR radio was turned up to hear: “It’s time once again to ask Dr. Science. So, let’s ask Dr. Science. (That’s me.) Remember, he knows more than you do. (I have a master’s degree.) In Science!” This musing short radio spot created in the 80’s involved a man answering listeners’ questions. Most recently, on his website, he posted a response about social scientists. “Your average social scientist is the kind of guy that likes to dress in a lab coat and dance alone in front of a mirror. He’ll practice his Nobel Prize speech when he’s in the shower. Deep down, of course, he knows this is all just a fantasy, but what else can he do when his own work is so unrewarding.”

I think what Dr. Science has to say about evaluating ones reflection with our lab coats on, makes a good point. Information gathering, whether done in a lab, by a computer algorithm or by ourselves, needs somewhat of a smeared lens approach. The black and white facts often

apply to very few of us entirely because it is only in combination that we see all of the invaluable grey. Seeing each other with our eyes shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all of how we view one another. Stephen Jay Gould wrote that, “humans use our power to manipulate the world." This is a truth whose branches stretch into the vastness of the ever present future and roots that sink as far back as human history. In the 1800's Paul Broca manipulated data to suit his racist and sexist views and then others took these manipulations and used them to try and keep people from having rights. He gathered this (now) defunct information on people character and criminality through craniometry; "sorting people" by their cranial measurements.

We consume the messages we hear, read and see. We’re a human racket-ball court, bouncing messages about who “someone like me” should be into our internal walls of understanding. Like any exercise, we may feel depleted or energized after a hearty game of play. Dale Spencer wrote, “There is not always encouragement and acceptance for those who try to introduce meanings for which there is no conceptual space in the social order." Broca’s time on the (racket-ball) court may have been obsessively life-affirming and likely still is for white males today. In part, Broca’s ideal “gym fit” body type triumphed due to lack of media representation for non-white males. Nearly two-hundred years after his birth, the representation in media of white males is still in the lead. Though, with online pages like Facebook, Twitter and blogging sites, the right to become a powerfully represented force in media is fair game for all. Women are often consumed by the media and made, in fact, into consumable things. Today, the use of popular web tools has given a roaring voice to so many women and I am grateful for that.

Chimamanda Adiche's Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” is a great example of one such strong female voice. Adichie talks about starting a story from “secondly” because if we only hear a single story, we risk a critical misunderstanding. To think that there could ever be a set of beliefs that held true about an individual throughout their lifetime, let alone a country of people, is boring and reprehensibly ignorant. Furthermore, it is mental laziness to prefer to look externally rather than inside oneself, only to fear, hate and blame our neighbors. We should all use our ignorance for the power of good. It should empower us to ask questions of one another and ask questions of ourselves. I think there is often this invisible finish line for knowledge. A favorite blogger of mine, Allie Brosh, gives great insight into this idea when she writes about adulthood. “At some point, I start feeling self-congratulatory. This is a mistake. I begin to feel like I've accomplished my goals.  It's like I think that adulthood is something that can be earned like a trophy in one monumental burst of effort and then admired and coveted for the rest of one's life.”

The idea of forecasting any kind of finish line for knowledge is dangerous and prevents us from delving into the limitless knowledge in our world. Even scientists capable of the least biased research can’t find the conditions that will “make happiness.” Just as the world’s most brilliant artist could not paint what our imagination looks like. Nick Carr's article in The Atlantic discusses how future forecasting has affected our relationship with technology. In "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he mentions a study that negatively reports “power browsing”’ as a way online users avoid traditional reading. He reflects on a new kind of lazy relationship with online print.

Personally, I don’t consider reading something online in the same way I consider reading printed words or even a PDF document. I recognize the online space as different and a space

that allows for more engagement with one’s senses. I would think that a lax in the amount of reading that Carr refers to would be easily compensated by the ways in which one can respond to words read. I can place my pen in the margins of a printed text, but online there are spaces provided specifically for me to give such a response. One could argue that such tactics encourage me to read less. In which case, I would be encouraged to imagine more and I ask, why that would automatically be a negative?

Carr also mentions Brin , the co-founder of Google, who advises us that we would all be better off if our brains were supplemented, or replaced, by artificial intelligence. Online technology articles often address a concern over lack of privacy, and it would be easy to argue that having ones brain replaced would be invading ones privacy. What may be less easy to see is how our privacy can be invaded through online algorithms. Still harder to see is when scientific research is done that reports to us what is normal for “who we are,” or through stories about people we share similar external qualities or similar heritage. All these are methods to invade upon our privacy and to manipulate it.

           As a woman, I feel that it is extremely important to define what I want privacy to be in my life. Externally, a woman’s joys or pain is viewed as never private. It is exploited in the media, used in political wars, and every exposure is deemed as necessary or appropriate. Female State of Michigan representatives (Brown and Byrum) were banned from speaking on the House floor after being told that the use of the word vagina was offensive in discussion on an anti-choice bill. This is the kind of reprehensible ignorance I mentioned earlier on in this post. So, where and when we can, women need to write our own privacy laws.

Of course, this is an exercise that would benefit all of us to do. Racism, sexism, classism, ageism, these will all be battles that we continue to fight. These are all issues that turn up their noses up when we ask them to keep out of our rights as human beings. But we can all write our own laws on what serves us and what doesn’t serve our lives. I have a postcard in a frame kept by my bedside that reads, “Most women need a room of their own, even if it is outside their home. Germaine Greer, 1939” The image is a photo of a woman, sitting outside closed doors, on a dirt and stone road, one hand petting the side of a strolling cat, both sandwiched near a blockade built of beautiful castings of cherubs and ethereal women. This, I see as a beautiful example of defining individual privacy. 

 

The danger of the single story affects our privacy in a way that’s largely reflected in our health. Our personal definition should reflect a respect for our health. I take my mental health very seriously (I respect it) and partly define privacy as the time I have spent in therapy sessions. Having used free services to do so, this has given me a rich variety of experiences. One provider of services I used required that I be recorded on video. I was used, in a way, like a case study. Random samples from the sessions would be viewed by a group of soon-to-be-graduates and their teacher to aide in discussion for that term. I viewed the experiences by what my reasons for use were and disregarded what these student’s reasons could be. I guess I could have considered myself an example of a woman that these students would possibly try to fit into some pre-set definition. In my case, I viewed the work I did there purely from my intentions. I was the alpha, I forwarded the work and I depended on my bias to function there.

It seemed that Broca, Carr and Adichie all share in a common anger: a protective concern over those who would try to replace what they knew about themselves. Broca’s more rooted in vanity (the present), Carr’s in technology (the future) and Adichie in false tales (the past). Creativity is often championed as the way to live. Like an internal navigation process that lets us affect the world. In this way, “Creativity is like driving a car at night. You’ll never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way” ( E.L. Doctorow). I think that we need more for our journeys. Why not live more imaginatively? Imagination can create the path for our creativity to illuminate. Working imaginatively keeps our minds and bodies open to change and more accepting of not needing a creative solution to fix something when we are wrong. It’s time we stopped “re-inventing the wheel” and start moving Dr. Science closer to Dr. Seuss.