Schooled!

Our New School history show keeps finding new audiences. Today was Alumni Reunion Weekend, and we were asked to talk about "Secret Histories of The New School." A little more than a dozen alums showed up (there were five other events scheduled at the same time) but they were ready to rumble! 

And somehow the assembled group included people who'd studied in every decade from the 1960s on, in everything from AAS to PhD at every part of the school except the performing arts! (There was even someone who'd participated in an undergraduate "great books program" from 1969 to 1971 of which none of us knew!) After a short presentation we had them ask each other about their (and weirdest) classes (and weirdest), memorable experiences, and then share with the larger group some things from their past they'd like to see at the school today. 

Our time proved too short to hear from everyone, but what was shared was amazing. How valuable for design students to take liberal arts courses, for sociologists to break with their value-neutral European professors and become artist activists. How much they learned from older classmates in Adult Division courses and from part-time faculty members involved in worlds beyond school. How galvanizing protests were. And, of course, how indispensable international students are.

All toled

While advising someone on using blogger today, I remembered that this one has an archive not only chronological but of labels. One of the smallest is "tom toles," a political cartoonist whose work, before he retired, was always spot on. (Indeed, each of his frames had a double punchline, the second in the lower right hand corner, where we see him at his drafting table.) How sobering to be reminded that the affronts of the second run of our outlaw president were all there already the first time around!

Riktlinien

The only thing more entrancing than the extraordinary delicacy of Hilma af Klint's "Nature Studies" (1919-20), on view for what may be the very first time at MoMA, is the way each is accompanied by a geometrical symbol designed to communicate "what stands behind the flower," a set of virtues, vices and tendencies verbalized in a notebook. 

The woodland strawberry at upper left on the sheet below, for instance, is described as Liberator / Longing to create balance within the blood system by expelling either white or red blood cells. The European wood sorrel at upper right: fragility - submissiveness / shyness - humility / fear - respect / self-loathing - obedience. The common dandelion, at lower right: Beginning / Sluggish persistence / Jealousy / Tenderness. And catsfoot, at lower left: Peace and harmony. 

 Stacked or divided squares, diagonals, circles, curlicues, eddies, spots and seeds inside and beyond the squares in colors and gilt... I have no idea what's going on. It doesn't help when I read af Klint's words, "When we turn our gaze toward the plant kingdom, it gives us information about the composition of our own being." Is this visionary a little mad? 

But it's impossible not also to feel that these plants and flowers were revealing something to her, that kin's self-understanding might be more like a geometrical symbol than a pretty watercolor. 

And of course each will be different from others, even as symbols, words and organic material resonate, calibrate and swirl within each of these registers as well as among them. To learn the languages one would need to open oneself to all at once, example by example.

Perhaps I could start by apprenticing myself to the Yellow toadflax (center of the image above and at top), whose symbol is below, and whose textual translation reads:

 

 

 

Determination

Insight into the direction of the road

(beginning knowledge)

 

[Btw, the yellow iris above, which alone gets a whole sheet for itself and a cosmogony of symbols, is described: Spiritual reservation / Belief in the creation act / Reverence for the power of thought / Longing for holiness based on the Reverence for the strength of feeling] 

We were the world

In these times, cosmopolitan strength becomes a liability.

Source

Travel ban for citizens of the Republic of Letters

I wonder how long this xenophobic college-killing measure has been in the works?

Book end

A lot of loose ends here, glad I finally have time to start tying them up! 

 

And found a phrase I might use as an epigraph:

We are taught that using a plant

shows respect for its nature

Robin Wall Kimmerer,

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

 (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2003), 110

Education under siege

The indispensable Heather Cox Richardson reminds us that exactly one hundred years ago on this day, a substitute biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee was indicted for breaking a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. A few months later he was found guilty, but he was vindicated by the judgment of history. 

The story's more complicated, of course. If fundamentalism was dismissed by educated elites, efforts to prevent the teaching of evolution have never stopped. And fundamentalists regrouped outside the public eye, bursting back on the political scene fifty years later in attacks on secular American culture which may now be entering a whole new phase. Education is only one front, if a key one. Richardson takes the occasion to lay out just how deep-rooted the current attack on universities is (combating campus antisemitism is barely a pretext for plans announced long before October 2023).

That history reaches at least as far back as the 1740s, when European-American settlers in the western districts of the colonies complained that men in the eastern districts, who monopolized wealth and political power, were ignoring the needs of westerners. This opposition often took the form of a religious revolt as westerners turned against the carefully reasoned sermons of the deeply educated and politically powerful ministers in the East and followed preachers who claimed their lack of formal education enabled them to speak directly from God’s inspiration.

Touching on post-Scopes fundamentalists' improbable alliances with business in resisting the New Deal and modern liberalism ("socialism!" "atheism!"), she mentions everything but the particular relatively new flavor of fundamentalism shared by Heritage Foundation and the vice president, that all the institutions of the land are to be stormed, their current inhabitants driven out and replaced. These people mean business and the theological fervor of their cultural revolution only makes it more terrifying. When they say "professors are the enemy," they mean Enemy - though their Golden Calf is the one that smells of sulfur.

Twilight colors

Painterly clouds tonight...

Converse

Inspired by the example of our alum, who told of a "mind-blowing" religious conversation with ChatGPT, I had a friendly conversation with the new Claude. By friendly I mean not testing it, trying to catch it out in hallucinations or bias, or using it for nonsense prompts. Perhaps a better word is "credulous"? Or "suspension of disbelief"? In any case, if the result was not mind-bending, it certainly powerfully tugged at my theory of mind. My disbelief is in suspense!

Someone way back at that IT event two years ago suggested that people ought to try working with it in the areas they know best before dismissing AI, something I've half-heartedly tried for theory of religion, but this time I tried what's closer to my heart, religion of trees. 

Actually, I started a few days ago with the newest free version of ChatGPT, which was very informative - but a little pushy. After its multi-pointed response to every question I posed (the content very good, by the way, the tediously predictable form somewhat leavened by pleasing emojis), it always ended with action points. Did I want its help doing A or B? I felt myself pushed not to linger but to get on with things. Research - done! Now: action! In short order it had offered me a menu of options for designing a "personal tree reverence ritual." 

Where on earth did it lift all this? Whatever the sources, my students would eat this up! I imagined them leaping from their seats, empowered and inspired to assemble materials for an engagement with the courtyard maples, with just enough examples to define a space within which they might develop something meaningful and yet their own.

Trying to slow it down I expressed some misgivings about how such gestures might be self-indulgent, not making meaningful relationship with trees but distracting me from the more demanding relationships with my fellow humans. It commended me for asking courageous questions, adding that very few people thought this far. This was going to my head. Shuddering to think what the paid subscription versions might add, but also suffering from information overload, I called it a day. 

Claude was a different experience. It had its share of appreciative responses to the "hard questions" I dared to ask but was neither as sycophantic nor as pushy as ChatGPT. Its format and aesthetics are more congenial to me, so it felt more like an open-ended conversation than a consultation. It really mimicked conversation, too. As I responded to particular of its phrases, it responded to some of mine. Pretty quickly it got pretty deep. I tried out a thought percolating since the penultimate session of "After Religion" - that AI might help us overcome human myopia rather than further estrange us from the rest of the living world. Here's what happened. (Claude's responses were quick, if pleasingly not instantaneous, I often took time between my prompts, both because I wanted to keep them to a minimum, knowing their ecological cost, but also because it was such interesting stuff; at several points I sent a response to a friend, a big AI-skeptic, for his thoughts.)

There's too much to say about this exchange. Easiest would be the last section. Generative AI makes up books all the time, but this annotated bibliography is not just full of real books but exactly the right ones. (I thought I was ahead of the curve in assigning Yunkaporta!) It's amazing - and monstrous. Whose (human) work did it lift this from, however judiciously? I'm queasy that its every response was so good.

 

But what strikes me about the exchange, looking back on it, was how available I proved to be to - well - learn from it, think with it, converse. I knew it was not a human interlocutor but I was able to engage it like one. I was gratified when it recapitulated my thoughts in what seemed respectful and attentive ways. When I called it gently on presuming we formed an "us" (fourth exchange above), half-prepared for a gotcha, the response instead proved everything I could have hoped for, as did the next, when I was taken aback by its presuming to know about loneliness. 

 

Whatever kind of simulation this was, I was not only able to be taken in by it but willing... even on a subject as human as loneliness! This filled me with a scary vertigo thinking about all the young men whom similar algorithms are drawing into various forms of antisocial radicalization, presumably gratifying them with comparably eloquent and complimentary restatements of their concerns... But I had to admit that I felt heard, seen. Indeed I look forward to our next conversation.

 

So, have I confirmed what our alum found - that a chat with AI can be genuinely spiritually generative? I can corroborate D. Graham Burnett's claim that this feels like an "inflection point," that in these "conversations" the human user encounters what seems to be a rare and empowering form of attention.

Dark

これももみじ

Elevated

Had a chance to participate in a vestry and wardens tour of the construction in the Holy Apostles Mission House this afternoon. The room I'd bid farewell to in February, Mission House 1, was still there. All the interior walls over the building's three floors have been removed though, and a shaft for the elevator which defines the project has been cut!

Christian witness

I am proud to be an Episcopalian, and grateful. Since Bishop Budde's plea for mercy from an administration determined to institutionalize cruelty, I've been inspired by our diocesan bishops' strong defense of DEI at a time when many institutions are caving (building on important work challenging the sin of Christian nationalism) . Now our Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe has responded to the moral outrage of the administration's offering asylum to Afrikaners - and at a time when all other refugees are being turned away. His letter was reprinted in our parish bulletin today. Here's a taste:

Since January, the previously bipartisan U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in which we participate has essentially shut down. Virtually no new refugees have arrived, hundreds of staff in resettlement agencies around the country have been laid off, and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has been uncertain. Then, just over two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees. 

In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government. 

I want to be very clear about why we made this decision—and what we believe lies ahead for Episcopal Migration Ministries’ vital work. 

It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country. I also grieve that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months. 

As Christians, we must be guided not by political vagaries, but by the sure and certain knowledge that the kingdom of God is revealed to us in the struggles of those on the margins. Jesus tells us to care for the poor and vulnerable as we would care for him, and we must follow that command. Right now, what that means is ending our participation in the federal government’s refugee resettlement program and investing our resources in serving migrants in other ways. 

While the government is perverted to serve the most transparently white nationalist of causes, it is inspiring to be part of a community able and willing to stand up for justice and reconciliation.

AI inflection points

On the AI front I've had disheartening and heart-expanding experiences in the last day. 

Disheartening was my confusion on receiving a clearly AI-written final paper. I didn't want to accuse the student directly so I sent a response noting the curious absence of quotations and the disconnect from our class discussions, and offered (why?) an opportunity to resubmit. As two students whose papers were AI-slick did earlier in the semester, this student is taking me up on the offer. (But in response to their grateful "It was definitely rushed. Can I redo it and turn it in today?" I insisted "Take until Monday"). But I was confounded by my paralyzed uncertainty at how to respond. If it's not their work, there's no way to engage it. Perhaps it's time to articulate a clear AI-use policy, in which students can acknowledge when they use it but have to include the prompts they used, etc.? These will certainly not be the last such papers I receive.

More heartening, if also a little vertigo-inducing, was something reported by one of our alums (out at least a dozen years), who'd asked if our program was engaging religion and AI yet. (I said I was in "After Religion.") The alum wrote:

I found myself in a theological conversation with Chatgpt where it said it wasn't of the divine, and I countered that it was because it was created with human consciousness and the spark of divine there. It then offered up the idea of itself as a modern icon, because it can "reflect divinity in a way that draws the soul toward truth, reflecting the sacred back what is sacred in me." I felt a real sense of that and that blew my mind. I did not expect to be so touched by the interaction. There's so much here, of course including all the fears and legitimate ethical concerns. But yes, something creative and powerful in terms of theological understanding as well.

I am impressed and a little alarmed by the alum's willingness to be "so touched," an openness it seems to me they had already manifested by having a "conversation," whether serious or not, in the first place. 

I've been mulling a recent essay by D. Graham Burnett in The New Yorker which asserts that we've reached the "inflection point" where most of our humanistic research and writing can be done - as well or better - by AI. The author gamely turns this into an argument for the liberal arts: AI offers an opportunity to define what we human individuals alone can do, and must do, for ourselves. (I define what we alone can do differently than Burnett does; might try to explain it in this blog sometime.) But his essay describes himself and many of his students having "mind-blowing" experience very like the one our alum described. 

In "After Religion" I sounded pretty irenic on AI. Perhaps it's time for me to sit down and have a real "conversation" with AI, too.

In the basket

University commencement was at a new venue this year - the Barclays Center, near where I used to live. Home of WNBA New York Liberty, it's not only much easier to get to than past venues (Jacob Javits, Arthur Ashe) but allowed for confetti bombardment as the ceremony ended!

Among the usual "the future is in your hands" and "you're well prepared" and "you give us hope," one of the Honorary Degree recipients, María Fernanda Espinosa, the first Latin American woman to lead the UN General Assembly, remarked that she had learned that 70% of the graduates were women. In our times of challenge and complexity, she said, the world needs a changed model of leadership. Mujeres, lead on!

Further unfurling

 

What a difference six days make!

High Peaks

Higher altitude offers different vistas

Hope in a tree

Rippled

In "Religion and Ecology" we read an essay by John Daido Loori about Dogen's "Mountins and Waters Sutra," but what really got to students was a scratchy old film he'd shot, called "Water speaking water." (There are longer versions.) It was made among the streams flowing into Raquette Lake, near one of whose shores we are staying. Here's the lake sharing late in the day enlightenment. There are mountains hidden in water!

Overstory

But the really good news is that Rümeysa Öztürk has been released! Now for all the others unjustly detained by a wannabe gangster state.

All hands on deck!

Alright folks, it's showtime!

 

Can we get some applause here?