Sunday News-Wrap 4.24.22
Imprints and Blindspots: A Bifocal Take on American "Wokeness"
Monday greetings from newShrink, and a slightly tardy welcome to a News-Wrap with some unexpected twists!
This edition turns out to be bifocal in several ways, on many levels. For starters…
connecting themes: what I thought it was about…
Today’s focus, straightforwardly planned last weekend and consistently reported and drafted through the week, has been toward both the historic and the current.
🔷As presented visually in the illustration above, front and center for discussion were enduring historic and practical imprints of Benjamin Franklin’s phenomenal life and vastly varied body of work.
🔷Then from across today’s news-scape came brief examples of stories with similar patterns or themes.
🔷Among these, of most intense interest from the newShrink soul/psychology perspective were striking contrasts, contradictions and paradoxes: Examples of highly developed human progress, growth, learning and increasing consciousness vs their glaring, opposite unconscious shadow-blind spots.
🔷As central figure here Franklin was both subject of a deeper biographical dive and lens for our viewing of current news. (Perhaps more accurately that’s plural lenses, for bifocal spectacles were among Franklin’s many inventions with enduring creative, practical and scientific magnitude.)
🔷 Additionally the fact that Benjamin Franklin’s early business success, skill, and vast range of creativity, inventive tools and improvements were in printing, publishing, prolific writing and development of the colonies’ earliest newspapers and other journalism have made him a natural lure for newShrink attention.
This is the overall blueprint and a general sense of the original piece, 99% completed well ahead of its planned Sunday morning posting.
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the twists…
Instead it is slightly tardy.
All of the above, with bigger-than-life Franklin as central example and figure of interest, remains the reference point and context for today’s News-Wrap. If you haven’t yet seen it, I still highly recommend the current comprehensive Ken Burns documentary on PBS and streamable venues. And meanwhile some links to factual biographical resources are included below.
But a rare serious technical glitch in the Substack platform erased a lot of that forcing a delay… and in that pause an emphatically clearer focus for center-stage spotlight here had shifted, literally overnight.
connecting themes: what it’s really about
So here, in the form of questions, are themes to read, listen and watch for in both the historic Ben Franklin biography and in today’s range of news stories:
🔷 Who uses, and what is even meant by, the slangy pop-culture terms “woke,” and “wokeness”?
🔷From newShrink perspectives what are the psychological — conscious, unconscious/soul, or neurological — meanings, effects or significance of being “woke” and of “wokeness?” and,
🔷What examples of “wokeness” — and its shadow blind-spots — show up, not only across the varied stories of today’s news but also even in historic biography of a titan-founder like Franklin?
In so many ways both professionally and personally the overall ideas and goals generally suggested by “wokeness” resonate for me. But at this point just thinking about these words, now with their many pop-culture-warfare uses, kind of makes my teeth hurt (and my brain and a lot of the rest of me tired.) Salvos of them are hurled around “sociably” in all kinds of settings beyond cable TV, from long-COVID-postponed high school reunion planning to passive-aggressive Facebook “friend” chat.
But a lovely email — with subject-line “Awake!” — arrived last Sunday in response to the egg-themed Postcard. My friend and reader Myra in Northern Virginia-suburban D.C. was noting the signature sign-off lines from the William Stafford poem at the end of every newShrink post. Here is some paraphrased excerpt from our exchange:
“Reading the last part of your latest essay about ‘awake people staying awake’….
am always thinking how absurd it is for the far right to have come up with the ‘woke’ description as something negative. But I guess it fits for those who have just blindly followed… and still do!”
This lingered with me all week, with an unavoidable realization. I have pretty literally defined newShrink’s very purpose and mission — not as some breezy or slangy either/or state of over-and-done “wokeness,” but rather as a continued attention to awakening of soul, of increasing consciousness.
Like it or not, this topic seems to have my name on it!
on “woke” and “wokeness”
Based on several dictionaries, the most common definition of the terms is simply to be described as, or a state of being “alert to injustice in society, especially racism.” This gets at a desired attitude, used originally and fairly narrowly as a rallying call for remedy and justice in the wake of specific extreme or fatal attacks and incidents, particularly racist ones, by those intensely affected by them.
But as my friend and reader describes above, these have become such loosely and widely used terms — weaponized in backlash against such seekers of justice — that the words’ original meaning and power are twisted or lost. (Are those seriously concerned about changing injustice even saying “woke” any more? These days I hear and read it used mostly as a nasty epithet.)
And even on the terms’ basic meaning, from both conscious and soul/unconscious psychological dimensions I have a somewhat different take, definitions and perspective. Some of my thoughts:
🌀Most simply in psychological terms the “waking” or “awakening” suggested most closely by these words means to become increasingly aware or conscious about things that were previously unknown or unconscious.
🌀Rather than a goal or destination that is ever finished, becoming more and more aware, conscious, psychologically “awake” is a continuous process; there is always more to learn, to be curious about, both within and outside ourselves. And the areas in which we have become consciously aware are those it is then impossible to “unsee,” or “go back to sleep.”
🌀Psychological waking is more like the proverbial “eureka” moment, or falling in love, than memorizing vocabulary words or deciding logically to date someone who checks all of the good-mate boxes.
🌀The “aha” experience of new conscious awareness can be understood like the epiphanies explored in the 1.1.22 New Years edition of newShrink. In the therapy room and in dreams during periods of a lot of such awakening awareness, there will appear such images as unknown new rooms, wings, or levels in a familiar home, office or other setting.
🌀Nor is wakening-awareness an either-or, or total state. Even along very similar or related issues and experiences all of us can be acutely aware or “awake” on some things while utterly clueless about even closely related others. An excellent example of this can be found in the long life trajectory of U.S. Constitution-author Ben Franklin: in early life an enslaver and British-appointed public servant… fiercely ambitious businessman seeking financial fortune, then retired at age 42 to focus in creating things to learn and apply science and improve life for humankind… still later a fierce patriot in the Revolution… creator of the original Constitution’s racist and morally tainted 3/5 compromise that did bring recalcitrant Southern colonies into the United States… and finally a vocal abolitionist by the end of his life.
🌀Today’s far-right culture warriors would do well to study Franklin’s many dimensions as a historic role model for the “wokeness” they so loathe. Similarily today’s Constitutional “originalists” would do well to study carefully Franklin’s very earliest “original” descriptions of it as the result of the defining compromise essential to democracy and as such, a document that must be a living, evolving, ever-improving one.
🌀In glaring contrast and blind-spot, throughout his life Franklin demonstrated little to no such growth or awakened consciousness regarding the women in his life — or any prospects for women as citizens in the new democracy. In both reading and watching his biographical life story his utter disregard, a kind of absent cluelessness or worse, especially toward his loyal partner wife and largely unknown daughter, are a jolting contrast to so much else about him. While he widely enjoyed a sophisticate’s intellectual banter and other connection with educated and vivacious “society” women, particularly in the upper-class salons of France, I kept getting the sense that for him women were not quite real people. (And perversely kept hoping he would experience just one of those lightning bolt-unicorns of conscious relationship with one before he died!) I have seen no evidence that ever happened.
For various ways that both awakening/increased awareness — “wokeness,” if you prefer — and its shadow-blind-spots show up, here now is a range of historic to current stories and images to explore. (Numbered items refer to images in the intro-illustration.)
The usual navigating details for accessing all links and references on the newShrink website are at the bottom of this post after closing comments.
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… with stories
1.Ken Burns interview on Ben Franklin: “Trying to Tell Really Complicated Stories About Us” (From Hollywood Reporter)
[Franklin] only had two years of formal education, so he didn’t know what he didn’t have to know; he just assumed he had to know everything, and that made him a lifelong learner. And that’s the genius here. It’s the genius of the founding fathers: “The pursuit of happiness” is not the pursuit of material objects in the marketplace of things, it’s about lifelong learning, they all felt that. The pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of improvement in a marketplace of ideas. And Franklin has that embodied in everything. So yes, he is a man of his time, but that’s no excuse whatsoever. But that man of his time did outgrow many of [his] prejudices. To me, it’s an interesting evolution.
A biographical summary of Franklin as a printer, inventor and writer. (from history.org)
🌀In Ben Franklin’s skill and experience with printing there’s a neurological brain-elasticity dimension I find fascinating. Using his era’s printing trays of individual, raised lead letters (pictured in the above illustration) required the craftsman like Franklin to read, think and compose accurate words and sentences using letters and characters that were not only backwards but upside-down. It is little wonder the self-taught man became such an achieving polymath! (Even our very brains seek growth and adaptation.)
🌀And by the way, in the above illustration photos that’s a pair of antique Franklin bifocals. I just discovered I happened to have them around, who knew?! (They’re most likely from among the maternal-side, S.C. rather than N.C. or Virginia, ancestors.)
Here are some word definitions, derivations and etymology from Franklin’s field of writing and publishing, still in use today. (I especially like “upper and lower case,” referring to the pictured double-printing-tray’s storage of capital and small lead letters.)
Also interesting is this NPR story on linotype “hot type” machine. In printing that was the late 1800s-1970s “lines of lead type” generation of Franklin’s 1730s rows of individual letters. (Photographic and digital printing replaced both in the late 1970s.)
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2. Mr. Magoo Cartoon pictured at top left). The seriously nearsighted cartoon character was known for driving everywhere with abandon and stubborn refusal to wear glasses. I consider him a wonderful expression of the blind-spot archetype! (Mr. Magoo was created in 1949 by Millard Kaufman and John Hubley, voiced by Jim Backus.)
(Here are several stories and issues to be revisited in ongoing discussions.)
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3. Censorship Battles’ New Frontier: Your Public Library (The Washington Post. Photo by Sergio Flores of WAPO.)
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Gun Violence and Major Mass Shootings During Holiday Week (NBC News — video and text story)
It’s no mystery why shootings are on the rise (The Charlotte Observer)
Columbia SC mall shooting: Injuries, but police say no fatalities reported as mall evacuated (The Charlotte Observer)
Biden Moves Fast on Gun Violence (Bloomberg in The Charlotte Observer)
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Biden could diversify federal courts, judges of western NC (The Charlotte Observer)
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Ongoing NC School of the Arts decades-long sex abuse case (vivid example of enormous institutional and cultural blindspot)
As violinist’s sentencing nears, women’s abuse stories told (The Charlotte Observer)
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5. Federal Judge Strikes Down Mask Mandate for Planes and Public Transit (The New York Times)
The nation’s largest airlines dropped the requirement within hours of the ruling, but New York’s M.T.A. said its passengers must still wear a mask for now.
Justice Dept. Appeals to Reinstate Transportation Mask Mandate (NYT)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ruled the mandate “necessary,” but an appeal risks creating a precedent that could permanently constrain the agency.
Concerns Rise as Passenger Masks Fall (NYT)
Health experts expressed dismay at a judge’s ruling that struck down the C.D.C. mask mandate for planes, trains and buses.
Americans divided on mask mandate lift on public transportation (WAPO)
And in polling by Politico (results less than 48 hours after the federal judge ruling on polling conducted just before the ruling):
Fifty-nine percent of voters support the CDC’s original extension of the federal travel mask mandate. Only 32% oppose the extension.
Nearly half of voters (49%) say it is too early to end the federal travel mask mandate. Just 16% say it’s the right time to end the mandate, another 16% say it should have already ended and 11% believe it should neverhave been in place to begin with.
6. Updated stories on the Ukraine war as of Friday night from The New York Times. The Biden administration also announced an additional $800 billion in aid to the nation’s resistance to Russian invasion with intent to ask Congress for more.
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(Now, starting at the top of the illustration’s right column are stories that would be pure silliness if they were only comedy or satire. Unfortunately they are also both reflecting and influencing laws, public policy… and voters in a year of fiercely fought midterm elections around the nation.)
7.Disney to Lose Special Tax Status in Florida Amid ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Clash
Lawmakers in the state voted to revoke the company’s special designation after a dispute with Gov. Ron DeSantis over a new education law.
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Ted Cruz Mocked Over Disney Remarks About Mickey Mouse 'Going at It'
(From Newsweek.)
Critics have mocked Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) after he suggested that Disney cartoons might feature Mickey Mouse and his pet dog, Pluto, having sex with each other.
Cruz made the remarks during a recording of his podcast Verdict With Ted Cruz as part of his disapproval of Disney for the company's public opposition to a controversial new Florida education legislation that critics have dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" law.
A clip of the recording released on Tuesday garnered criticism on social media, with some Twitter users mocking Cruz for bringing up the idea of intercourse between the well-known cartoon characters.
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(This one’s for a needed refreshing break of sanity…)
8. Michigan lawmaker's forceful speech rebuts 'grooming' attack (NBC News — video and text)
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(But then, this final show-stopper…)
Serious news coverage of this, also in The Guardian and Forbes, reads a lot like the linked one here from Business Insider. The trailer widely seemed so absurdly satirical that by midweek Carlson issued a statement confirming that it and his upcoming “documentary” are real.
Tucker Carlson's 'End of Men' Doc Mocked as Homoerotic: 'This is So Gay' (Newsweek — video and text)
Here Jezebel zeroes in on total lack of expertise of any kind by either Carlson or the spokesman he is interviewing — who is presumably the “tanning” figure in the bizarre images taken from the Carlson documentary trailer on Fox at the bottom right above.
Tucker Carlson Asks Former Abercrombie Manager How to Up His Testosterone (from Jezebel)
These two noted non-scientists are now advising men across America to tan their testicles.
On this of course the comedic satire was also widespread, much of it both spot-on and funny. Here’s a favorite take from Stephen Colbert, “Tucker’s Testosterone Doc Is Too Stupid to Ignore.”
The Carlson segment begins around minute 5:15. The earlier comedic take on Florida “war with arithmetic” is also relevant to what was a wild news week in the state.
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A note on looking ahead: This weekend is granddaughter Miz E’s birthday-Easter celebration here. So part, or even all, of the week’s newShrink will reflect her services as reporter and her creative works or tableaux!
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I’ll leave you now with a closing image that’s a nod to Friday’s 52nd Earth Day. An online post by friend and reader Ann Ahern Allen, it’s an earthy variation on the yin/yang symbol from Chinese Taoism. The symbol also has significance in Jungian psychology, aptly depicting the vital dynamic tension between opposites that is at the core of transformative change and creativity. The additional smaller circles illustrate how each side contains a bit of its opposite.
A lovely bifocal view of things!
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
•🌀🔵🔷🦋💙
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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