O Tempora O Mores

At the beginning of every academic year in Qatar I would leave aside a few periods of my English class to teach my students a little history, a little reductionist history that is. Reductionism, anathema to all serious historians, is the attempt to understand complex phenomena, in this case historical, by breaking it down to its constituent parts and usually emphasizing one of these constituents as the primary motivator. This is the history of social scientists who are always attempting to "ferret out the independent variable." In other words, it's an attempt to explain the past, the whole of nearly infinite interconnecting variables, with a phrase like "it all boils down to" this. For example, take a historical question like why did the Germans kill the Jews in the Second World War? There are innumerable reductionist histories that attempt answer this complex question with an oversimplified response. Perhaps the most acclaimed attempt at an answer of recent years came from political scientist Daniel Goldhagen, reductionist extraordinaire, who boiled it down to "eliminationist antisemitism," a virulent strain of a religio-racist mindset that developed ONLY in Germans over centuries and made them Jew killers (forgetting of course that many of the most brutal concentration camps of the Holocaust were manned by other nationalities). Anyway, the point I'm trying to get across is that reductionism is bad history but it does serve a purpose, namely to throw into sharp relief one variable that may have acted as a catalyst, one of many as is always the case, for some momentous development in human affairs.

For my Qatari pupils, all of whom subscribe to a sort of third-worldism approach to history which demonizes the Europeans and their American successors as vile and insidious imperialists, I invented a reductionist narrative of about a millennium and a half of human history that would serve to explain why their country was paying me thousands of dollars to teach them to read in English. In other words I was explaining to them why it was that they had to attend university in English even though many would never spend any significant time of their life outside of their own country. Of course, my history would have to be palatable to their sensitivities so my narrative began with Mohammed's visitation by the angel Gabriel who entrusted him with a book of monumental importance. I would remind them of Francis Bacon's terse maxim, "knowledge is power," and ask them how a bunch of camel driving nomads would suddenly bolt forth from a desert and build an empire that would extend from the Iberian peninsula to the heart of Central Asia and beyond. Knowledge is power and they had received their knowledge from a book, a divinely inspired one (remember I was teaching Wahhabi Muslims). Yet learning increased as the Muslims amassed more books. The Abbasids in Baghdad were so eager for knowledge that they began a concerted effort to translate the great works of Greek philosophy. So great was the library and learning of the Arabs, I would flatteringly tell them, that were we living in the thirteenth century, I would be paying them to teach me Arabic for it was at this time that learned Europeans would make the pilgrimage to Toledo in Spain where they could encounter schools that would teach them to read in Arabic.

Alas, I would lament to my students, this Arab obsession with learning would soon dissipate as the Arab world was corrupted by invasions of Mongols and Turks. I would skip forward to Gutenberg's printing press and contrast Europe's meteoric rise after the Renaissance with the injurious Ottoman ban of printing throughout its Arab territories. While Europe was producing millions of volumes of books by the sixteenth century, only a few hundred could be found throughout the near east. This then must have caused the decay of the Arab mind and the consequent decline of Islamic geopolitical power. Naturally, I didn't believe the whole of what I was saying but it certainly left an impact on my students, and, to an extent, Gutenberg's press must be considered a monumental event in human history that did indeed catalyze learning in several European nations. After all, my job was not to teach them history but to teach them to read. Indeed, my lecture left them with a renewed sense of urgency to read in English--the new language of learning.

This was my life for two years, encouraging Arab youths to learn and, most especially, to read: to take joy in lifting a book from the shelves, to thumb through its contents, and to absorb its contents through an active engagement with the text. The apathy towards reading I abhorred in my students was a localized problem or so I thought.

 On a recent flight, however, I had an encounter with a woman that caused me to think otherwise. There I was minding my own business on a rather empty international flight. As rarely happens in coach no one sat to either the left or right of me. So, as the lights went off in the plane I could stretch out, turn on my reading lamp, and enjoy my book. After a few minutes I was interrupted by a fellow passenger. She turned around to face me from the seat in front of me and complained, "excuse me, could you turn off your light? I'm trying to sleep!" By the tone of her voice you would think I had just lit up a cigar. When I informed her that I had no intention of turning off the light as I was reading, she only seemed more perturbed as she hunched back over and stretched out over the three seats in front of me. This occurrence jarred me and I have since spent a few minutes on each flight I take to observe the passengers and ascertain the number of fellow readers. My calculations have compelled to mourn the passing of the reading passenger.
 
As Cicero once did in his oration against Catiline I want to inveigh against this illiterate generation, "O tempora o mores!" Oh the times, oh the customs! I consider the absence of literature on planes only a symptom of this corrupted age in which we live. People don't bring books with them--even on flights across the world. Why? Well, they've grown accustomed to the technological accoutrements of our i-civilization. When they go on a long trip, they bring their tablets or smart phones, but only a minority employ them to read those skimpy magazine articles filled with colorful pictures that would entertain even my two-year-old. The art of texting, tweeting, gaming, internet shopping and facebooking have displaced the simple but essential skill of a learned society: reading. And like the Byzantines and Sassanids of the seventh century, we may awake one morning to find the barbarians from our periphery overrunning the heart of our intellectual empire.

Our Division of Labor

The last few months have been an ordeal, and I mean that in its most literal sense. Our word ordeal, despite appearances, is not from Latin or Greek origins. An ordeal in our teutonic forefathers' tongue meant something like "that which is dealt out" (assumably by the gods). When we today complain of something being an "ordeal," we are, without recognizing it, comparing our trials to the more brutal juridical proceedings of our German ancestors, who if accused of a crime, in order to be proven innocent, were required to walk blindfolded and barefoot between red-hot plowshares. Escaping this ordeal uninjured would result in the dismissal of the accusation, for naturally the gods had unanimously decreed the defendant's innocence with such divine protection.

Ordeals such as these persisted into the Christian era. Peter Bartholomew, who gained notoriety for discovering a shard of the holy lance in Antioch on the First Crusade, braved an ordeal voluntarily to prove the veracity of his divine visitations--apparently the Savior Himself visited him regularly--by walking through a bonfire and emerging unscathed. So he claimed at least--he died, presumably from his injuries a week later. Now, after my own ordeal, let's hope I don't suffer a similar fate.

Of course, my ordeal was not of the medieval sort, but much like Peter Bartholomew, I undertook mine voluntarily. After living the good life in the oil-rich emirate of Qatar, we decided to return to the impoverished US to try our hand at higher education. Without health insurance or full-time employment, we attempted to pursue my dreams by applying for doctoral programs in history (an ordeal in and of itself) while having a fifth child, homeschooling our children, exploring other avenues of employment with the US goverment, teaching a full load of English and Turkish classes, and improving my credentials as an English teacher with a second MA in TESOL. I say we because clearly no individual could hope to attempt all these things at once.

You see, I did not survive this ordeal but we did. My wife accompanied me through the flames, and lest we stumbled and succumbed to the unbearable heat, we had the steady hands of experienced grandmothers to pull us through. Ultimately, we became artful in our division of labor. Grandmom McCollum never tires of shopping and holding little fuspot babies. Grandma Dryg can entertain the rambunctious bears for hours with wholesome stories and intricate railroad construction. My beloved wife does what no other can: educate the three silliest boys in the western United States. Finally, I do what I do best: I educate myself while somehow managing to make enough money for us to eat.

At this time of year when we express our gratitude and remember that one individual who came to do what we couldn't do for ouselves, I would like to express my thanks for those who did what I could not. I have a heavenly Savior in Jesus, but I also have an earthly one in my wife. She has believed in me when I could not and has endured all my whimsical endeavors, no matter the cost. Her light awakens me long before the sun light peaks over the mountains and lifts me out of bed when all my strength has vanished. Thank you, Bunsy.

The Nanny State-ment

"We were reluctant at first, but let me tell you, it was the best thing we ever did." Thus ended the persuasive declamation of our acquaintance on the advantages, nay the blessings, of acquiring a live-in nanny. Now, to someone from the States the idea of a live-in nanny sounds, well, elitist, expensive, and just plain uncomfortable. That's there, but in the Gulf (Persian that is) the "nanny state" takes on a whole new meaning. Not only do the governments hand out entitlements that would have Vladimir Lenin turning in his ice box, but there also happens to be an abundance of third-world nannies ready to make your dreams of self-actualiztion possible at the expense of your children's future. These nannies can be quickly pressed into service as your modern-day indentured servants for the low price of a plane ticket from Indonesia and a few bucks to line the pockets of sundry shady businessmen.

Yes, slavery is alive and well, and you don't have to turn on some sappy Indie film or watch CNN's Anderson Cooper wax strong about it with a feigned tone of sincerity to learn about its pernicious and pervasive presence throughout the world. No, you can experience it and exploit it for yourself; all you need is a job in the Gulf. What is even better is that you don't have to feel bad about exploiting these people because they are not really slaves. Sure, they look like it--they have no skills, they have no education, and they spend their lives with a dour, depressed look on their faces--but they aren't slaves. They signed away their lives because "it is so bad in their own countries they'd rather come here and be your slave." To put this all in persective, as one of my lessons devolved into tangential conversation with my Qatari students, the topic of nannies came up. I confided to my students, who of course were all raised by these nanny slaves, that "I just don't think I would feel confortable having some strange person living in my house." My substitute: "I'd rather get some sort of a helper monkey. You know, a little monkey that could fetch the paper for me, wash the dishes, maybe even play the accordion if I so desire." Of course, I was just being silly, but one of my students responded to my ramblings with grave sincerity. "Teacher, no, you no want helper monkey. Monkey very expensive. Monkey, like 10,000. Human, like 1,000" (dollars, I assume he meant). The lesson: humans are cheaper than monkeys.

So, we have these cheap pseudo slaves and we can feel OK about it because it's really an act of charity taking these people in from war-torn Sri Lanka or impoverished Nepal (one is reminded of the mid-nineteenth-century defence of slavery as a patriarchal institition), but the real clencher is that these nannies don't just make our lives easier, they make it better. We can finally forget about cooking, cleaning, and all the other desultory and meaningless chores of life. Now we can spend our lives creating what we really want to with our life: learn to paint, sail, ski; open your own business; see the world. No longer do we need to worry about home; like some less glamorous expat incarnation of the Kennedys, we can stroll the malls of Doha childless(they're at home with the nanny), our I-Phone in one hand and our shopping cart in the other.

This would all be a marvelous life if we lived in a sitcom world where children rarely appear due to child labor laws. The problem is our children are always there even if we are not. We can build our childless self-actualized life with cheap imported labor, but this is not tantamount to having our cake and eating it too. At the end of the day parenting takes time, and that time is often gruelling and seemingly unrewarding. We expats spend hours making sure our kids get into the best schools, after-school activities, and sports, yet we rarely think of the hours they spend being watched by people we purchased at the lowest price. What are our children learning when they are not at school? That brown poor people should do all remedial labor? That mommy and daddy are too busy pursuing their "dreams" to sit down with their babies and give them a bottle? That manners are to be employed only when conversing with Westerners? Ultimately, we leave our children to be raised by people who, for the large part, have had no formal education and for whose culture we have little appreciation and understanding and then we have the audacity to tell ourselves that we're doing the best thing for our family. Perhaps those hours we spend at home doing the day-to-day routine are the most valuable time we have with our children. After all, shouldn't we be grateful for every moment we have been given with them even if it may involve the family cleaning up that nasty poo stain the potty trainee left on the toilet seat?

Is the Sediment Weighing me Down?

If one thing can be said of my wife and I, it is that we are not sedentary folk. Live in the same place all our lives? What are we, from Utah or something? After one year in most locations we're usually anxious to pull up the stakes and move on. Sometimes when the watchful eyes of my spouse are directed elsewhere, I take a few minutes to look at the world map on our wall and imagine where our next adventure will lead us.

These moments, however, are becoming few and far between. In the few minutes of silence I enjoy, the more pressing matters of financing our ever growing tribe seem to encumber my thoughts. Ibn Khaldun, the famed fourteenth-century "Herodotus of the Arabs", observed in his treatise on universal history that the growth of empires resulted from powerful nomads who, trained by the harsh conditions of their lifestyle, directed their military prowess against their wealthy but impotent sedentary neighbors. Once wealth accrued, according to Ibn Khaldun, impuissance and decline were inevitable. The once vibrant force of nomadic life gave way to the luxuries of city life, a malaise invariably ensued until another nomadic and bellicose force absorbed the city dwellers into their new empire. Hence, Alexander's march across the decadent Achaemenid Persian Empire, the Germanic migrations that usurped the power of Rome, or the Bedouin Arabs that toppled the Sassanids and sent the Greeks cowering behind the walls of Constantinople.

Where is my family located on Ibn Khaldun's cycle of growth and decline? My gaze, once fixated on the horizon, now concentrates on the numbers in my bank statement. Our cushy job here in Doha makes us reluctant to move; it is the lure of the sedentary lifestyle. Like Shahs or Caesars of old I am more preoccupied with my coffers than the glory of the advance into the unknown. Full of financial worries and longing for the insouciance of my earlier life I now confront our dilemma: should we stay or should we go?

Sharing Doesn't Work; How about Fratricide?

My family and I were invited to eat at a friend's house tonight. You may ask, why would such a mundane occurrence as a dinner invite merit a blog post? Well, for most families, surely it wouldn't. But for ours, this is quite a rare occasion. You see, I believe our reputation precedes us. With four of the silliest boys on this hemisphere we seldom receive an invite and with good reason too. My wife and I remarked that the host family must surely be so new to Doha that they haven't heard of our tempestuous boys.

Well, after tonight they definitely heard them. If it wasn't Hector screaming frantically for milk, it was the other three fighting relentlessly to dominate their young host's toy car collection. As I listened, or rather attempted not to listen, to Cinci's high-pitched wail as Sherman repeatedly "stealed" his toy from him, I could hear my wife with a veneer of calm and understanding encouraging Sherman to share with his brother. After two hours of our children's shreiking cacaphony, I'm certain our departure relieved our hosts.

Driving home with a few moments to contemplate as my wife dozed and my children, perhaps exhausted from two hours of incessant yelling, settled into a pristine silence, I wondered why my children can't share. " With four boys you'd think they could learn how to share, " I had heard my wife complain to our gracious hosts. Well, maybe sharing just isn't what boys do. The dynastic troubles of monarchies of old are replayed in the microcosm of my family. It seems that boys have always wanted everything within reach.

It's no marvel to me that the first recorded homicide in Western history was fratricide, Cain's killing of Abel. As man developed, it seems, boys had a tendency to quarrel over their share of an inheritance. As families began to acquire wealth, they realized that such capital, rather than being dispersed equally between heirs, should be concentrated under one patriarch in order to preserve the family's wealth. But to whom should go the greatest share? In the West the law of primogeniture entailed the majority of an estate to the oldest male heir, thus solving the internecine feuds that often ensued the death of a powerful patriarch. The Ottoman Turks had a different way of dealing with a boy's inherent desire to obtain his share, they codified the law of fratricide. With the death of the sultan civil war inevitably ensued as brother would contend with brother as each struggled to ascend the throne. Finally, the victor, he who had killed all of his brothers, claimed the spoils, and thus the empire, rather than being entailed away to the various offspring inhabiting the Ottoman harem, was consolidated in the hands of one man.

Unfortunately, neither primogeniture nor institutionalized fraticide appear to be suitable antidotes to the civil strife in my domain. Should we choose to impose primogeniture upon our family, Atticus, I'm sure, would be elated but his brothers would be loathe to acquiesce in his predominance. Although from the high-pitched shrills emanating from our walls the neighbors may conclude that fratricide is the law in our family, I'm afraid my wife doesn't have the stomach for it. So, it would seem that the search for a Pax McColluma will remain elusive in our lands.

The Last Paperboy

My wife and I, when we have a few moments of uninterrupted conversation, often attempt to predict the future of our children. Of course, this is a fruitless endeavor: we cannot draw upon our own formative experiences to foresee our children's future. The world has changed and, more precisely, parenting has changed to such a dgree that our children will spend their formative years in a social and economic environment radically divergent from our own. So much of our lives as children passed in absence of the constant attendance of adults. Like the characters of a Charlie Brown holiday special, we enjoyed near total autonomy with the occational appearance of an incomprehensible adult.

But all that has changed. Today's children must be constantly and rigorously invigilated lest some harm or malfeasance happen upon them in the blink of eye. From our current perspective, perverts, pedophiles, and predators abound lurking in all quarters. Drug dealers and drunk drivers prowl the streets awaiting the opportune moment to slaughter adolescent innocence. Did these dangers not exist when we were children? Has the world changed or is it just our awareness? Are these the dangers to be feared by parents or is it our own stifling of childhood independence that presents the real threat?

A friend recounted to me the other day a story of Utah woman who recently received a child endangerment misdemeanor for allowing her seven-year-old to ride to school alone on her bike. Heck, the moment I learned to ride a bike I was off. By the time I was seven the majority of my friends and I rode well over a mile to school and back each day. These days, however, we would all be stopped by the police and our parents arrested for doing such!

My wife and I lament these changes and wonder with nostalgia, "where have all the paperboys gone?" We have come to the conclusion that we are the last generation of paperboys. Partially from economic necessity and partially due to the new parental control of youth, the adolescent paperboy has become extinct. At the age of nine, I experienced for the first time true economic independence when I collected the first ten dollars from one of my customers. With my brother I then promptly rode to a mall across many busy intersections to enjoy the fruits of my labor at the Galactican Arcade. I doubt my children will ever experience such independence before they become a legal adult.

I'm Exhausted

1 year on and it is exhausting. I have started teaching in the small emirate of Qatar, a nation of about 1.5 million located in the Persian Gulf. As an English teacher at a post-high school bridge program I have been attempting to prepare the locals for the rigors of Western universities. Now, my job would appear not all too strenuous. I have two and a half months off in the summer and another four to five weeks of vacation during the year.

Acclimating to Qatar isn't all that hard either. The heat may be unbearable six months of the year but you rarely find yourself outside of an airconditioned building or vehicle. Only the most sensitive untravelled hillbilly could experience culture shock in a place where Americans seem to outnumber the natives and almost any ingredient on an American mom's shopping list, excluding pork of course, can found at some store or another.

Despite the ostensible ease of expat life here I am more fatigued than I have ever been. Hell, I wouldn't even be writing this post if my wife hadn't forced me to. So what is it that is burning me out? Qataris. To be honest they are a lovely people with great family values and a good, wholesome, and genuine care for others (that is if they are not behind the wheel of a car). I have grown to admire their respect for their elders and have been impressed by their communal spirit. That said, they are bereft of any intellectuality and, aside from a few anomalies, devoid of industry. So, in the classroom things can get quite exhausting. Every class is a veritable tapdancing performance in which I try to excite my languid students to pick up their books and read.

There are myriad reasons for the indigence of Qatari intellectuality. Sixty years ago four out of five Arabs were illiterate, and I'm willing to bet that percentage was considerably higher in Qatar. Then there is the difficulty of reading for Qataris. Their Gulf dialect differs markedly from the Modern Standard Arabic they need to access a wealth of literature in their native language. Then they have to learn English on top of that. Effectively they are stuck learning two foreign languages, Modern Standard Arabic and English, and never develop a facility with either that would encourage them to read for pure enjoyment.

Culturally they have never been strong readers, but it is the life of plenty that is not earned but endowed by a rentier government sitting atop some of the largest petroleum and natural gas deposits in the world that really debilitates my students. They may eat with their hands but they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Furthermore, there is little incentive for achievement when wealth, praise and acclaim are bestowed by tribal benefactors rather than earned through individual exertion.

I could go on and make this a more incisive review of Qatari culture, but I will end with this: I'm exhausted. Maybe my expectations are too high or perhaps to imperialistic. Who says we need to turn every Qatari into an industrious workaholic American prick? Why not let the good times role while the price of oil sores and the need for natural gas is increasing exponentially? After all, my students are good people. They do care about each other and they even care about their foreign teacher that is always busting their balls. Next year I hope to be more appreciative of what my students have and focus less on what they have not.