I Get Tired Of Having Opinions

For me, one of the most exhausting things about being a humanities scholar is the constant having of opinions. As regular readers know, I used to study math, and then I switched to philosophy. One of the first things I noticed when I made this switch was the fantastical number of opinions I was suddenly expected to have. "What did you think about that article"? "What do you think about framing the issue that way?" " What do you think about the curriculum being this rather than that?" And of course, the omnipresent "What do you think of that philosopher? Are they smart or what"?

In case it's not obvious, "I don't know what I think about that" is not an escape from having an opinion. It is, in its own way, an expression of a point of view. If your interlocutor is like "Isn't X completely outrageous"? and you say "I don't know what I think about that," you're not going to be heard as expressing "no opinion."

By comparison, math is a haven of rest for the mind. Most of what you do in advanced theoretical mathematics is find and write out proofs of things. While there are debates at the margins, there is vast agreement about how you do it, and what there is to be done. The difficult part is the doing it, because, as Barbie knows, Math Is Hard. But you don't have to have a million opinions about it. You just have to do it. I remember I would spend hours in mental effort and frustration working on math problems, and I would come away refreshed: my mind would be pleasantly tired and worn out, and would have escaped thinking about things like global injustice or whatever for a few hours.

In my experience, there are a few strong opinions in math, but they tend to focus around a few math-y issues, like "How should we teach math to non-math people" and the all-important "Is that branch of math difficult and important or easy and stupid?"

By contrast, in philosophy, opinions infuse everything, and they're often opinions about huge topics that many people have strong feelings about. Obviously you're having opinions when you draw philosophical conclusions. But it goes way beyond that. There are opinions about what you choose to talk about or not talk about, what you choose to draw on in making your argument, what you think is "persuasive" or "relevant."

I sometimes encounter the idea that there should be fewer opinions in university teaching, and that one problem with the humanities is the way professors rely on or convey their own opinions in teaching. In some ways it is a complicated issue, because I agree that opinions are constantly flying in all directions, and it matters which opinions are where. But I'd say the issue with opinions in humanities teaching is never "if," but always "how."

In choosing to assign some readings rather than others, you're expressing an opinion. In responding to student questions, even if it's just to draw connections between their comment and the readings or other comments, you're expressing opinions -- about what is significant, interesting, similar or different.

I actually go out of my way to de-opinionize, especially with controversial topics, asking students questions like "From the point of view of author X's theory, what conclusion would we draw about this example?" We can explore that question together, regardless of what opinion we have about author X's theory. I also try to assign readings that express a range of views. I am often cagey about my own opinion, not because I am under the delusion that I can be "objective," but just because when the professor says "I think X," that makes it easier or harder for some students to express an opinion of X or not-X or something else like Y. It's a tricky dynamic.

But there are limits to de-opinionization. What is "a range of views"? Over what topics should views range? If we're studying medical aid in dying, and I assign one text saying that it's immoral because of the sacredness of life, and another saying it should not be legalized because of the way its use discriminates against people with disabilities, is that a "range of views"? Any way of framing the issue makes assumptions about what the main question is and what is, and is not, up for debate.

A million choices about how to respond in classroom interactions also convey opinions. In my teaching evaluations not that long ago, a student expressed strong satisfaction that the classroom interaction was one in which they felt comfortable asking or saying whatever they wanted, without fear of being attacked or shut down. In the same batch, another student expressed the feeling that because of the open dialogue, the contributions of the other students verged on being misogynistic or problematic in other ways.

What this shows is partly that what is a good class atmosphere for one person is not necessarily a good class atmosphere for everyone in the same way. What atmosphere you want in class is, like everything else, not a matter of objective matter of fact, but always reflects a set of opinions. You can't get away from opinions. You can only try to use the ones you think best in the most constructive way. Exhaustingly, even that project is often difficult.

The Bus Riding Experience And Living In Late Capitalism

Last weekend I went to Vernon, Connecticut to visit some family members. Vernon is kind of near East Hartford, kind of in the middle of Connecticut, which means it's like a suburb in a state that is, itself, almost like a suburb of something else. All of that to say: it's a place where transportation becomes a major issue for me.

As regular readers know, I hate to drive -- and I often take the bus. I find it exhausting to pay close attention to a high-stakes and potentially lethal activity over a sustained period of time, and I find it stressful knowing that a wrong move could cause life-changing injuries or death for other people or myself. As someone who doesn't drive a lot, I'm constantly amazed that this kind of insane activity has become so embedded in everyday life.

Anyway, for complicated reasons, when I visit Vernon I usually fly in and out of Logan Airport in Boston. This is because a bus ride between Toronto and Hartford takes around 15 hours (literally, as we say nowadays -- you can look it up), and because flying between Toronto and Hartford is complicated and expensive. Going between Logan Airport and Vernon, I face a major decision: I can drive, which is around 1 hour and 45 minutes, in some pretty intense traffic, or I can take a sort of long public transit journey involving  the Silver Line bus between Logan and South Station and a bus between South Station and Hartford.

In the past, I've usually settled myself into what seems to be everyone else's denial, that driving is a normal everyday sort of activity, and done the drive between Logan and Vernon. This time, though, I was sick with a bad cold. So on the way back, I decided to do the transit option. And for the bus between Hartford and South Station, my best option was the Megabus (the fancy Acela doesn't stop in Hartford).

I have no complaint about the Megabus itself, which left on time and arrived early. What this post is about is about the Megabus ... um ... pick up spot? Which is 1) not associated with a station 2) not associated with a street address, 3) not marked as a Megabus location, and 4) not near any normal places where you could get some water or use a bathroom.

On the ticket, the "from" location is listed as "Hartford, CT, Columbus Blvd between Morgan & Talcott St." Here is the place viewed from across the street:

And here is the view from the bus stop:

I feel like having a bus that picks you up at an unmarked location between one street and another, surrounded by freeway overpasses, is a symbol of something distinctive about modern capitalism even if I'm not sure exactly what it is. Hartford has a perfectly good bus station, one that is actually linked with the train station, and is right downtown, very convenient. So I'm assuming this arrangement arises because there are fees associating with using the terminal that Megabus wants to avoid. I'm not blaming Megabus -- they want to offer cheap fares and make money. And who knows how those fees are set? Still, the outcome seems bad, and I hate the feeling that the things poor people use get worse and the things rich people use get better.

From a governance point of view, driving is massively subsidized, even though car accidents are a major cause of death and horrible for the environment. You couldn't toss in a few bucks for a bathroom, a water fountain -- or, I'm really dreaming now -- a ticket counter for bus riders? Maybe you could even incentivize companies like Megabus to use your station, rather than charging them for it?

From a markets point of view, when I'm reflecting on these matters, I frequently find myself thinking more broadly about the market forces that shape the options I have and don't have as a consumer. I want to take a reasonably comfortable bus ride, and I am willing to pay a bit extra for that, since I am lucky in making a good salary. But that option doesn't exist for me, partly because the other people who make the money I make prefer to spend it on driving. So, to satisfy my consumer preference would require getting enough people to share it that it becomes a profitable option for someone else.

When it comes to driving and busses, I think that project is a lost cause. Nobody likes to take the bus. In enjoying a ride of kicking back, with my podcasts and playlists, daydreaming out the window without a care in the world, I see to be in a tiny minority.

Juuling And The Youth Mood Of Comedic Despair

 I loved Jia Tolentino's recent New Yorker article about teen vaping and the rise of the Juul -- which was not only informative but also avoided the whole "OMG teens are doing a thing, oh no."

In case you don't know, a Juul is an electronic nicotine vaporizer that looks like a flash drive and that you can recharge using your computer. A lot of the article is about adults worrying that Juuling, like other kinds of vaping, is creating nicotine addicts instead of helping them -- but let's just pass over that part. From a cultural perspective, I'd say that the most noteworthy things about the Juul are the aesthetics, the mood, and the price.

Aesthetically, at first I was surprised to hear that teens found smoking "gross" and Juuling cool. I smoked for a long time, and though I quit years ago, I still miss smoking. And of course most of that is nicotine-related, but clearly I am not alone in thinking that smoking is cool. And if you're coming from a point of view in which smoking is cool, how could you prefer this ... piece of plastic with "rounded edges and a gently burnished finish"? It sounds like a generic piece of computer equipment.

But the cool of Juul is explained later: "Teen Juul iconography radiates a dirtbag silliness. Vapes are meme-ready, funny in a way that cigarettes never were: the black-and-white photograph of James Dean smoking in shirtsleeves has been replaced with paparazzi snaps of Ben Affleck ripping an e-cig in his car. In one popular video, a girl tries to Juul with four corn dogs in her mouth." This I can understand. If Instagram is your aesthetic reference point, and everything should either be sleekly sexy or humorously ridiculous, the Juul is going to fit your life and a cigarette is going to seem ash-producing and literally filthy. Of course, there's a generational factor: the teens interviewed are very clear that Juuling is for the young: one person describes her older sister as a Juuler -- and how weird that looks, because her sister, at 23, is "older."

The teens that Tolentino interviews have a perspective on Juuling, and on life, that I found not only familiar from my own youth but that actually resonated with my mood right now. One young man said that "Juul represents his generation’s 'tech-savvy ingenuity when it comes to making bad decisions,' but added that "his generation was most flippant when it came to serious things, 'like health, or mortality.'" When asked if Juuling was a destressor for young people or a source of stress, a young woman said, "I don’t know ... People definitely stress-Juul. But everything we do is like Tide Pods. Everyone in this generation is semi-ironically, like, We’re ready to die.”

In a way, I feel like this is a general feeling in adolescence, which is why teenagers engage in so many risky and unhealthy behaviors. Those behaviors are fun, and who cares? This is not a knock on teenagers, by the way -- they may very well be right about the meaning of life and it's the rest of us who are trapped in the risk-averseness of growing up.

But in another way, I feel like "semi-ironically ready to die" has a particular resonance to being young in modern America. With climate change, police shootings, school shootings, health-car-via-GoFundMe -- for fuck's sake. In this context, "semi-ironic" is kind of a heroic stance.

In any case, price-wise: at least for teens, Juul is expensive. Teens can't shop in the online store, so there's a whole resale-markup-dealer situation going on for them, and Juuling is associated with teens who have cars and money. I don't have much to say about this except that it is ultra coherent with every other trend in which extra money is more and more essential to having any of the things.

Part of me wants to share and partake in the generalized mood of comedic despair that the Juul seems to refer to. But, at my stage of life, I also feel an obligation not to be too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. We older people are supposed to have perspective and experience that will enable us to be constructive and helpful, to maybe steer the world toward solutions; even if there aren't any solutions, we have an obligation to care for people and help them feel less alienated and frightened. Ultimately, like Juuling itself, comedic despair is not always good look on a middle-aged person.

Why Do Canadians Love Consumer Loyalty Programs?

When I moved here in 2004, one thing I did not anticipate about Life In Canada was the ubiquity of consumer loyalty programs. As Canadians well know, these fall into two categories: there is the Mother Of All Loyalty Programs, the so-called "Air Miles" program, and then there are the zillions of smaller ones, like Canadian Tire Dollars, Shoppers' Drug Mart Optimum cards, and endless coffee punch cards. My university eateries even have a punch card loyalty program for soup.

I generally don't participate in consumer loyalty programs. I'd like to say this for high-minded reasons related to surveillance and resistance, and sure, that's part of it, but the real reason is that I'm trying to get on with my fucking life. I don't know how people have the patience and mental energy to carry around all these cards and fish them out of their wallets at the appropriate moment, never mind waiting for every other patron in front of them to do the same. Am I the only person who wants to die when I'm behind seven people in the LCBO line and the cashier says "Air Miles"? and the customer is like 'Oh ... yeah ... uh ... wait ... I can't ... um ... hold on ... can you do it with my phone number?"

I know there are loyalty programs in the US, and people use them at the grocery store, but somehow the whole thing takes on a different texture here. If you're not Canadian, you might not appreciate the way loyalty programs are such a centrality of life here.

The "Air Miles" program sounds like something to do with frequent flyer miles -- and when I first moved here I kept confusing it with "Aeroplan," which is the actual miles program associated with Air Canada. But AirMiles is everything. You get points on different kinds of purchases and then you spend them on all kinds of things. 

News and controversy about loyalty programs regularly feature on the front news page of the CBC webpage, and in recent years the rewards of Air Miles have been big news. It used to be that Air Miles didn't expire, and then in 2016 it was announced that they would, so people would lose miles received before 2012. People were enraged, and the company backed down. Then the federal government stepped in and said that loyalty programs can't have expiration dates. The Air Miles people were also accused of shenanigans, where you could only see the big rewards if you didn't have enough points for them, and later they disappeared. Then last year people started stealing Optimum points. I don't know how this works, but it's like you're racking up points at home in Sastaktoon and someone goes and spends your points in Quebec.

This corner of Canadian culture gives me mixed feelings. For one thing, seeing news stories like "Thieves steal millions of PC Optimum points" as headline news, I often go through a two-step emotional response. First, I feel a wash of gratitude, that I am lucky enough to live in a country so peaceful and prosperous that "Thieves steal loyalty program points" is big-time, national news. But then, there are newsworthy things happening in Canada, and sometimes I learn about Canadian news related to Indigenous people or foreign policy in The Guardian. So I'm like, Wait, why wasn't this covered at home? Why are we reading about loyalty points?

More fundamentally, I'm ambivalent about the kind of sensible Canadian frugality that seems to motivate the careful, ongoing, attentive use of loyalty programs. Canadian frugality is so different from American profligacy. These are, I think, deeply rooted cultural differences. Go to Buffalo and you'll see block after block of huge, beautiful Victorian houses, made of wood, with high ceilings. Cross into Ontario, and you'll see houses made of brick, with small, cozy living rooms, perfect for keeping warm in a cold climate. Even in the late 1800s, Americans were thinking Go Big Or Go Home.

I admire Canadian frugality -- it is probably linked to all kinds of other wonderful Canadian qualities like generosity and good sense -- but I cannot see myself reflected in it. I know that by punching 12 punches in a card I can get a free cup of coffee, but I just don't care. Sure, at this point I'm lucky to make enough money that I can just pay for the extra cup, but honestly I wasn't frugal in this way when I was a waitress and a grad student and trying to help my poor, widowed mother. I'd rather ratchet down my living standard altogether, or go without the extra cup of coffee, than attend to the ways that I can incrementally make things better by paying careful attention over time.

My reluctance to participate in loyalty programs is a source of ongoing interpersonal awkwardness for me, especially buying coffee on campus. The efficient and helpful people who work in food services here are always like "Coffee card?" and I'm like "No, thank you," and sometimes they ask "Why not?" and I try to explain "I can't handle keeping track of all those cards" -- and then we look at each other with mutual misunderstanding. It always reminds me of when an American colleague came to visit our Department, and went to buy wine at the LCBO, and the cashier said, "Air Miles"? And she, befuddled by what this could mean, answered "Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not even from this country."