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Can you step in the same river twice? Wittgenstein vs. Heraclitus
Imagine Heraclitus spending an afternoon down by the river...
12 January, 2021
Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash
'I am not a religious man,' the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said to a friend, 'but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.'
<p>These problems that he claims to see from a religious point of view tend to be technical matters of logic and language. Wittgenstein trained as an engineer before he turned to philosophy, and he draws on mundane metaphors of gears, levers and machinery. Where you find the word 'transcendent' in Wittgenstein's writings, you'll likely find 'misunderstanding' or 'nonsense' nearby.</p><p>When he does respond to philosophers who set their sights on higher mysteries, Wittgenstein can be stubbornly dismissive. Consider: 'The man who said one cannot step into the same river twice was wrong; one <em>can</em> step into the same river twice.' With such blunt statements, Wittgenstein seems less a religious thinker and more a stodgy literalist. But a close examination of this remark can show us not only what Wittgenstein means by a 'religious point of view' but also reveal Wittgenstein as a religious thinker of striking originality.</p><p>'The man' who made the remark about rivers is Heraclitus, a philosopher at once pre-Socratic and postmodern, misquoted on New Age websites and quoted out of context by everyone, since all we have of his corpus are isolated fragments. What is it that Heraclitus thinks we can't do? Obviously I <em>can</em> do a little in-and-out-and-back-in-again shuffle with my foot at a riverbank. But is it <em>the same</em> river from moment to moment – the water flowing over my foot spills toward the ocean while new waters join the river at its source – and am I the same person?</p>
<p>One reading of Heraclitus has him conveying a mystical message. We use this one word, <em>river</em>, to talk about something that's in constant flux, and that might dispose us to think that things are more fixed than they are – indeed, to think that there are stable <em>things</em> at all. Our noun-bound language can't capture the ceaseless flow of existence. Heraclitus is saying that language is an inadequate tool for the purpose of limning reality.</p><p>What Wittgenstein finds intriguing about so many of our philosophical pronouncements is that while they seem profoundly important, it's unclear what difference they make to anything. Imagine Heraclitus spending an afternoon down by the river (or the constantly changing flux of river-like moments, if you prefer) with his friend Parmenides, who says that change is impossible. They might have a heated argument about whether the so-called river is many or one, but afterwards they can both go for a swim, get a cool drink to refresh themselves, or slip into some waders for a bit of fly fishing. None of these activities is in the least bit altered by the metaphysical commitments of the disputants.</p><p>Wittgenstein thinks that we can get clearer about such disputes by likening the things that people say to moves in a game. Just as every move in a game of chess alters the state of play, so does every conversational move alter the state of play in what he calls the language-game. The point of talking, like the point of moving a chess piece, is to <em>do</em> something. But a move only counts as <em>that</em> move in <em>that</em> game provided a certain amount of stage-setting. To make sense of a chess game, you need to be able to distinguish knights from bishops, know how the different pieces move, and so on. Placing pieces on the board at the start of the game isn't a sequence of moves. It's something we do to make the game possible in the first place.</p>
<p>One way we get confused by language, Wittgenstein thinks, is that the rule-stating and place-setting activities happen in the same medium as the actual moves of the language-game – that is, in words. 'The river is overflowing its banks' and 'The word <em>river</em> is a noun' are both grammatically sound English sentences, but only the former is a move in a language-game. The latter states a rule for using language: it's like saying 'The bishop moves diagonally', and it's no more a move in a language-game than a demonstration of how the bishop moves is a move in chess.</p><p>What Heraclitus and Parmenides disagree about, Wittgenstein wants us to see, isn't a fact about the river but the rules for talking about the river. Heraclitus is recommending a new language-game: one in which the rule for using the word <em>river</em> prohibits us from saying that we stepped into the same one twice, just as the rules of our own language-game prohibit us from saying that the same <em>moment</em> occurred at two different times. There's nothing wrong with proposing alternative rules, provided you're clear that that's what you're doing. If you say: 'The king moves just like the queen,' you're either saying something false about our game of chess or you're proposing an alternative version of the game – which might or might not turn out to be any good. The trouble with Heraclitus is that he imagines he's talking about rivers and not rules – and, in that case, he's simply wrong. The mistake we so often make in philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, is that we think we're doing one thing when in fact we're doing another.</p><p>But if we dismiss the remark about rivers as a naive blunder, we learn nothing from it. 'In a certain sense one cannot take too much care in handling philosophical mistakes, they contain so much truth,' Wittgenstein cautions. Heraclitus and Parmenides might not <em>do</em> anything different as a result of their metaphysical differences, but those differences bespeak profoundly different <em>attitudes</em> toward <em>everything</em> they do. That attitude might be deep or shallow, bold or timorous, grateful or crabbed, but it isn't true or false. Similarly, the rules of a game aren't right or wrong – they're the measure by which we determine whether moves <em>within</em> the game are right or wrong – but which games you think are worth playing, and how you relate to the rules as you play them, says a lot about you.</p>
<p>What, then, inclines us – and Heraclitus – to regard this expression of an attitude as a metaphysical fact? Recall that Heraclitus wants to reform our language-games because he thinks they misrepresent the way things really are. But consider what you'd need to do in order to assess whether our language-games are more or less adequate to some ultimate reality. You'd need to compare two things: our language-game and the reality that it's meant to represent. In other words, you'd need to compare reality as we represent it to ourselves with reality free of all representation. But that makes no sense: how can you represent to yourself how things look free of all representation?</p><p>The fact that we might even be tempted to suppose we can do that bespeaks a deeply human longing to step outside our own skins. We can feel trapped by our bodily, time-bound existence. There's a kind of religious impulse that seeks liberation from these limits: it seeks to transcend our finite selves and make contact with the infinite. Wittgenstein's religious impulse pushes us in the opposite direction: he doesn't try to satisfy our aspiration for transcendence but to wean us from that aspiration altogether. The liberation he offers isn't liberation <em>from</em> our bounded selves but <em>for</em> our bounded selves.</p><p>Wittgenstein's remark about Heraclitus comes from a typescript from the early 1930s, when Wittgenstein was just beginning to work out the mature philosophy that would be published posthumously as <em>Philosophical Investigations</em> (1953). Part of what makes that late work special is the way in which the Wittgenstein who sees every problem from a religious point of view merges with the practical-minded engineer. Metaphysical speculations, for Wittgenstein, are like gears that have slipped free from the mechanism of language and are spinning wildly out of control. Wittgenstein the engineer wants to get the mechanism running smoothly. And this is precisely where the spiritual insight resides: our aim, properly understood, isn't transcendence but a fully invested immanence. In this respect, he offers a peculiarly technical approach to an aspiration that finds expression in mystics from Meister Eckhart to the Zen patriarchs: not to ascend to a state of perfection but to recognise that where you are, already, in this moment, is all the perfection you need.<img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/d897983e-d290-4f89-9be9-9972029adbd0.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>David Egan</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/can-you-step-in-the-same-river-twice-wittgenstein-v-heraclitus" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
14 January, 2021
Credit: Getty Images
Sponsored by Northwell Health
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
<p>One of the most devastating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been unpredictability. The nation's health systems—especially those in hard-hit areas like New York City—have had to adapt to sudden surges of COVID-19 cases, all while dealing with limited resources, existing patients, and a novel virus that's still not fully understood.</p><p>But what if health systems were able to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks before they occur? Northwell Health, the largest health care system in New York state, recently deployed a predictive tool that does just that.</p><p>Northwell Health's <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/northwell-website-patterns-predict-covid-19-cases" target="_blank">surveillance dashboard</a> is able to predict COVID-19 hospitalizations by using insights from machine learning. In March, Northwell Health's Customer Insights Group developed an algorithm that's been mining data from online traffic to the Northwell.edu website, which has received more than 20 million hits since March.<strong></strong></p><p>The algorithm collects data through 15 different indicators, each of which reflects the online behavior of the website's visitors. For example, the tool analyzes metrics such as the length of time users spend on certain pages, searches for emergency department wait times, and specific symptoms users search for. Combined, this information translates into something like the "public mood" of the website on any given day.</p>
<blockquote>Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.</blockquote>
<p>To understand how this mood relates to future COVID-19 cases, Northwell Health began comparing its data with a timeline of COVID-19 hospitalizations across 23 hospitals and nearly 800 outpatient facilities and in the metro New York area. This enabled the Customer Insights Group to see patterns of online activity that precede future increases or decreases in hospitalizations.</p><p>Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.</p><p>"This is really the first tool that I've been exposed to that gives me a sort of guestimate of what two weeks from now may look like," said Dr. <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/find-care/find-a-doctor/emergency-medicine/dr-eric-scott-cruzen-md-mba-11346068" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Eric Cruzen, </a>chief medical informatics officer of Northwell's emergency medicine services and chair of the emergency department at Lenox Health Greenwich Village in Manhattan.</p><p>"Even if the data can provide an idea of whether to expect an increase, decrease, or stasis, that's valuable. Because every day we're working to estimate what tomorrow's going to bring. Any tool that's going to shed light on that is a good tool in my book."</p>
The value of forecasting
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTA0Njk2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMzM2NDQzOH0.rid9regiDaKczCCKBsu7wrHkNQ64Vz_XcOEZIzAhzgM/img.jpg?width=980" id="2bb93" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="31345afbdf2bd408fd3e9f31520c445a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1546" data-height="1056" />Northwell emergency departments use the dashboard to monitor in real time.
Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>
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Did early humans hibernate?
New anthropological research suggests our ancestors enjoyed long slumbers.
30 December, 2020
Credit: Gorodenkoff / Adobe Stock
- Neanderthal bone fragments discovered in northern Spain mimic hibernating animals like cave bears.
- Thousands of bone fragments, dating back 400,000 years, were discovered in this "pit of bones" 30 years ago.
- The researchers speculate that this physiological function, if true, could prepare us for extended space travel.
<p>Humans have a terrible sense of time. We think in moments, not eons, which accounts for a number of people that still don't believe in evolutionary theory: we simply can't imagine ourselves any differently than we are today. </p><p>Thankfully, scientists and researchers have vast imaginations. Their findings often depend on creative problem-solving. Anthropologists are especially adept at this skill, as their job entails imagining a prehistoric world in which humans and our forebears were very different creatures. </p><p>A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003552120300832" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">new paper</a>, published in the journal L'Anthropologie, takes a hard look at ancient bone health and arrives at a surprising conclusion: Neanderthals (and possibly early humans) might have endured long, harsh winters by hibernating. </p><p>Adaptability is the key to survival. Certain endotherms evolved the ability to depress their metabolism for months at a time; their body temperature and metabolic rate lowered while their breathing and heart rate dropped to nearly imperceptible levels. This handy technique solved a serious resource management problem, as food supplies were notoriously scarce during the frozen months. </p><p>While today the wellness industry eschews fat, it has long had an essential evolutionary function: it keeps us alive during times of food scarcity. As autumn months pass, large mammals become hyperphagic (experiencing intense hunger followed by overeating) and store nutrients in fat deposits; smaller animals <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/367950" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">bury food nearby</a> for when they need a snack. This strategy is critical as hibernating animals can <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3105343/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lose over a quarter of their body weight</a> during winter. </p><p>For this paper, Antonis Bartsiokas and Juan-Luis Arsuaga, both in the Department of History and Ethnology at Democritus University of Thrace, scoured through remains of a "pit of bones" in northern Spain. In 1976, archaeologists found a 50-foot shaft leading down into a cave in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Atapuerca" target="_blank">Atapuerca</a>, where thousands of bone fragments have since been discovered. Dating back 400,000 years—some of the fragments may be as old as 600,000 years—researchers believe the bodies were intentionally buried in this cave.</p>
Evidence of ancient human hibernation / human hibernation for space travel | Dr Antonis Bartsiokas
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c18723ed15c9b3ed88a24552f681711e"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ba72UrBWsc4?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>While the fragments have been well studied in the intervening decades, Arsuaga (who led an early excavation in Atapuerca) and Bartsiokas noticed something odd about the bones: they displayed signs of seasonal variations. These proto-humans appear to have experienced annual bone growth disruption, which is indicative of hibernating species.</p><p>In fact, the remains of cave bears were also found in this pit, increasing the likelihood that the burial site was reserved for species that shared common features. This could be the result of a dearth of food for bears and Neanderthals alike. The researchers write that modern northerners don't need to sleep for months at a time; an abundance of fish and reindeer didn't exist in Spain, as they do in the Arctic. They write, </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The aridification of Iberia then could not have provided enough fat-rich food for the people of Sima during the harsh winter—making them resort to cave hibernation."</p><p>The notion of hibernating humans is appealing, especially to those in cold climates, but some experts <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/20/early-humans-may-have-survived-the-harsh-winters-by-hibernating" target="_blank">don't want to put the cart before the horse</a>. Large mammals don't engage in textbook hibernation; their deep sleep is known as a "torpor." Even then, the demands of human-sized brains could have been too large for extended periods of slumber.</p><p>Still, as we continually discover our animalistic origins to better understand how we evolved, the researchers note the potential value of this research.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The present work provides an innovative approach to the physiological mechanisms of metabolism in early humans that could help determine the life cycle and physiology of extinct human species."</p><p>Bartsiokas <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba72UrBWsc4" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">speculates</a> that this ancient mechanism could be coopted for space travel in the future. If the notion of hibernating humans sounds far-fetched, the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/01/human-hibernation-real-possibility/605071/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">idea has been contemplated for years</a>, as NASA began funding research on this topic in 2014. As the saying goes, everything old is new again. </p><p>--</p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a>. His new book is</em> "<em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRVMP2M?pf_rd_r=MDJW43337675SZ0X00FH&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy</a>."</em></p>
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A prayer without words: The story of the wanderer
Take a journey through the maze of interpretations of one of the most famous paintings in history.
30 December, 2020
A tale of silence, an icon of human solitude in the face of the forces of nature, or perhaps a memento of the great artist?
<p><em>I come down from the mountains,<br/>The valley dims, the sea roars.<br/>I wander silently and am somewhat unhappy,<br/>And my sighs always ask "Where?"</em></p><p>This is the lamenting of the Wanderer from a song composed by 19-year-old Franz Schubert to the words of G.P. Schmidt. The stranger looks for a spiritual home everywhere, but is condemned to wander forever. Schubert's music was composed in 1821. Three years earlier, Caspar David Friedrich painted a picture that often illustrates the recordings of the Austrian composer's song. <em>W</em><em>anderer above the Sea of Fog</em> also often ends up on the covers of books about German Romantic painting. It shows a man from behind, with a cane, wearing an overcoat, standing on a protruding rock. At his feet, a spectacle of nature takes place: clouds are lifting from a valley, exposing rocky ridges. Further away, on the horizon, a mountain range looms wrapped in a morning haze. No other painter has possibly ever created a comparable icon of solitude in the face of the forces of nature; no other painter has so emphatically shown the melancholy of unfulfilled hopes. Friedrich himself likened his work of art to a prayer. "Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feelings <em>paints </em>and the sensitive man understands and recognises it."</p>
<p>Friedrich's painting was created 200 years ago, and we, as its viewers, rank among the more thick-witted. Accustomed to the school-level version of Romanticism, we sometimes forget that it was "the fallen religion". Caspar David Friedrich was born in Greifswald, on the territory of the then Swedish Pomerania, in the family of a soap-boiler with a strong, Protestant history. Thanks to his first painting teacher he met the philosopher and pantheist, Thomas Thorild, and the poet, preacher and theologist Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten. The latter praised the beauty of nature leading to the meeting with God.</p><p>Friedrich Schiller himself said in 1794 that landscape is perfect for expressing both ideas and emotions. However, Friedrich's <em>Tetschen Altar</em> (1808) provoked a controversy: a simple cross on a rock surrounded by spruces against the background of the sky turning pink. The critic F.W.B. von Ramdohr was scathing when he wrote that it was "a veritable presumption, if landscape painting were to sneak into the church and creep onto the altar." Indeed, this was supposed to be a secular landscape. Only later on did Count Anton von Thun-Hohenstein insist on placing this painting in his palace chapel. Cherubs, stalks of grains and wine chalices carved into the frame created the correct context, however Friedrich's lonely cross covered with ivy was not so much a religious symbol as an element of the landscape. Answering his critics' objections, the artist explained that "Jesus Christ, nailed to the tree, is turned here towards the setting sun, the image of the eternal life-giving father." Yet this does not necessarily mean that the sun always symbolizes God in his works, and that evergreen trees should be associated with the hope of resurrection. Friedrich's contemporaries often exaggerated the religious aspect of his works, envisaging their artificially sophisticated mysticism. Critics were doubtful as to whether being moved by the spectacle of the fog should be associated with religious elation. However, the writer Ludwig Tieck claimed that Friedrich had sensed the spirit of the era: "Friedrich expresses the religious mood and excitement that recently seems to have stirred our German world in a particular manner, in sensitive, solemn, melancholy landscape motives."</p><p>Friedrich painted his pictures in the studio, based on earlier sketches drawn on location. His compositions are well-balanced, often symmetrical. Tree trunks mark the centre of the composition or frame it; diagonal branches do not project beyond the frame. "This insistent geometry accords with our modern sense of artistic decorum," John Updike wrote. "If Friedrich meant to imply Presence with his controlled, emptied vistas, and we can feel only Absence, well, Absence is an old friend, and we wouldn't know what to do with Presence if it came up and hit us in the face."</p>
<p>19th-century thinkers and poets were searching for divinity in personal contemplation. Friedrich's painterly approach was incidentally expressed by Ludwig Tieck in his early novel <em>Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen</em><em>. </em>An old painter, a hermit, considered mad, tells the main protagonist: "I do not want to copy trees or mountains, but my soul, my mood which reigns over me at this hour, these I want to fix for myself and to communicate to those who are able to understand." Friedrich's landscapes are usually divided into two zones: a dark foreground with a man in contemplation, and the landscape in the background, flooded with light. One of the main stylistic tricks of the German master is the so-called <em>Rü</em><em>ckenfigur</em>, a figure shown from behind. Details of the landscape become less important than the fact that it is being observed and experienced. On the other hand, we, the viewers, can only imagine the emotions and thoughts of the person we are seeing from behind.</p><p>Friedrich's famous painting was also interpreted as a tale of silence, of a creative individual reaching the blessed state of being alone with nature and their own thoughts. The American scholar Theodore Ziolkowski said that the traveller on the rock should be seen as Goethe. Indeed, this painting is a peculiar conversation with the author of <em>Faust</em>. The poet asked Friedrich to paint a set of studies of clouds, according to their classification, recently published by Luke Howard. Friedrich could not accept such a challenge: scientifically systemized clouds would not convey higher, spiritual meanings anymore. For him that would be "the end of painting". Therefore, his picture has a polemical character. Nature does not comfort, it is menacing and oppressive. The wanderer stands above a precipice.</p><p>It's worth remembering that <em>W</em><em>anderer above the Sea of Fog </em>also functions in the collective imagination as a metaphor for the German conscience. It was used on the cover of <em>Der Spiegel</em> on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. From the height of the rock, the man in the painting contemplated the ghosts of Nazism. Then, on the cover of <em>Stern</em> in October 2015, Friedrich's wanderer watched a sea of refugees emerging from the sea of fog. It might perhaps be that the German Romantic's painting today is not just an allegory of artistic solitude, but also of the fog from which critical awareness emerges, as well as sensitivity to the suffering of others.</p><p><em>Translated from <a href="https://przekroj.pl/kultura/modlitwa-bez-slow-anna-arno" target="_blank">the Polish</a> by Anna Błasiak</em></p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a target="_blank" href="https://przekroj.pl/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="">Przekrój</a>. Read the original article. </p>
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I don’t believe in blind idealism: An interview with Katarzyna Boni
The author of "Auroville: The City Made of Dreams" talks about the difficulties of establishing (and writing about) utopian societies.
29 December, 2020
ARUN SANKAR/AFP via Getty Images
Culture & Religion
Is it possible to bring a utopia to life? When searching for an ideal world, do we part with reality or maybe give it a new shape?
<p> And is creating alternative realities something only cult leaders do? Stasia Budzisz discussed these and other questions with Katarzyna Boni, whose reportage Auroville: The City Made of Dreams was published in Polish in June 2020.</p><p><strong>Stasia Budzisz: You came across one of the communities of Auroville, the</strong> <strong>city of the future, by accident in 2009. You knew nothing about it, but what you found frightened you, and you decided to run away. What happened there?</strong></p><p><strong>Katarzyna Boni:</strong> I was travelling alone around the south of India. At some point, I felt that my journey made no sense; all I did was check the landmarks off a list from a travel guide. I figured it was the right moment to try some volunteering. I found a local community that planted trees and decided to join it. And so I ended up in Auroville, although the community was located on the outskirts rather than in the city itself. When choosing a project to volunteer on, I didn't even know I was applying to an Aurovillian community – I just liked the idea of planting trees in exchange for food and shelter. I only learned about Auroville itself from my pocket guide. Two weeks in, I didn't want to stay for a moment longer. I ran away to the Himalayas, at the exact opposite end of India. Several factors had prompted my reaction. First of all, I was at a stage of my life where I was changing jobs. I wasn't yet in my thirties; I was still trying to give shape to my identity. I knew my dreams, but didn't really know what to do with myself and what path to follow in order to get there. In the community, I met people whose situation was similar to mine, except they genuinely believed this place was going to save them. And I am severely allergic to this way of thinking, as I don't believe in blind idealism. Back then, I saw Auroville as a settlement established by Americans and the French, convinced that communism was the best thing to happen to us because they forgot to ask Poles about the reality of it. I was cynical and mocking about Auroville.</p><p><strong>You wrote that you wondered whether Auroville was a cult, and yet several years later, you went back there and wrote a book about a utopia. How did you come up with that idea?</strong></p><p>The idea to write a book around this topic had been there for a long time; I even set up a whole separate project about it. But then I started working on a <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/literature/what-lies-under-the-water-katarzyna-boni" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reportage in Japan</a> – <em>Ganbare!</em> – and it consumed all my attention. I decided that my 'utopias' could wait and I shelved them for later. Then, just as <em>Ganbare!</em> was published, I got back on track with that topic. At first I thought I would write about various places that try to bring utopian ideas to life and are currently on different levels of realization. I was interested in the energy found at various stages of making a dream reality, how this energy changes over time, and how dreams and reality start to influence one another. At some point, I had a several-pages long list, including intentional communities and ideas for whole new nations (such as Liberland). I thought I would visit several places and then see what I might write. I wanted to visit South Korea, where a city of the future was created based on technology to facilitate every aspect of life. To me, Songdo is at the very beginning of its journey towards fulfilling this utopian dream. I wanted to visit Christiania which, as it seemed to me, was near the end of this road. I perceived Christiania as a ripe dream, if not overripe. I don't know how much of it was true, since I never ended up visiting. Auroville was supposed to be the place to illustrate a dream in the process of being realized. I started with it, and once I took a good look at it from up close, I decided it deserved its own book. I think I made the right decision.</p>
<p><strong>Why do you think that?</strong></p><p>Auroville is one grand experiment. People came to the desert with their children and started establishing a new city, this new world from which a new kind of human was supposed to emerge. Auroville turned 50 in 2018, and I was curious about its children and who they grew up to be. What worked out, and what didn't. I no longer needed other stages of utopias to describe what I found interesting.</p><p><strong>Generating a new human species does sound a bit frightening and cult-like.</strong></p><p>I had the same impression, which was why I ran away from Auroville the first time I was there. Once I returned, I knew I would have to face my reluctance. Indeed, some people there spoke in a very cult-like way. One of my interviewees said Auroville is inhabited by 12 clans that, in his opinion, provide a very natural way of distributing social roles within a community. There was a clan of priests, a clan of businesspeople, a clan of farmers. Still, Auroville is definitely not a cult. There is no initiation ceremony required for someone to stay there, even if they live there for a year, as I did. The trial period one has to undergo is a time you need to understand what the point is of working for this community. I recently spoke to an Aurovillian about how they're handling the COVID pandemic. I asked whether the city helps the businesses (which are, in fact, owned by the city, since due to a governmental solution, Auroville is a foundation with an array of non-governmental organizations underneath. Were the taxes lowered, for example? My goodness, did she take an offence! "Kasia, what are you talking about? It's Auroville that needs me now, not the other way round. Now more than ever." I realized that, once again, I had missed the fundamental truth about Auroville: it's the citizens who make the city, and they are not 'made' by it.</p><p>Auroville is not meant to provide a comfortable life; all it gives to its people is the means of basic survival, and everyone must take care of the rest. It is the citizens' responsibility to make sure that Auroville – the idea in which they believe – survives. Therefore, the question Aurovillians ask themselves is "How can I support my community?" rather than "What can I get out of my community now?" It's the complete opposite of the situation we are experiencing here, but I would not call it a cult. Those people have an idea that they believe in, and they understand it's not possible to achieve it from the position of making demands. They have to roll up their sleeves and work for it. As for a new species of human, it all depends on how literally we read into this concept. Siri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher from the University of Cambridge, whose thought served as the blueprint for Auroville, insisted that humans are not the final stage of evolution and that something else will appear after us. However, Aurobindo considered it from the perspective of consciousness rather than biology, as he believed we can still become better versions of ourselves. That's how I see it. But in the 1970s, some people believed their children's consciousness was already more advanced than everyone else's. I'm pretty sure they were soon cured of that conviction. Today, nobody means a new species of human literally.</p><p><strong>What image of Auroville did you have in your mind when you returned to this city to write a book about it?</strong></p><p>I tried to keep my mind open, although I was going there with my own thesis. While my work on the book about Japan had taught me that such preconceived notions tend to go down quickly, I still need them for inspiration and ideas; they draw me into a new subject. The starting point was the dreams that shape reality. In Auroville, it's perceptible. Before the humans arrived, there was nothing there, just emptiness. Dreams and reality were my first lead. Then, I wanted to see what they managed to achieve within those 50 years and what they did not; whether our society could learn from it, too.</p><p><strong>In your book's title, you refer to Auroville as <em>The City Made of Dreams</em>. Why did you choose dreams as the starting concept?</strong></p><p>I wanted to write about a place in which one can see how dreams shape reality, and how reality shapes dreams, as well as see the moment in which the dream is no longer just that. It's the moment when the reality has changed your goal so much, it's no longer what it was when you were at the beginning of your journey. What to do then? Will you decide that you have changed along with your dream and want to keep going at it, despite it being different? Do you stick to it or leave it all and change your life again?</p><p><strong>How much time did you spend in Auroville?</strong></p><p>One year, not including my first time there in 2008, but it was not a year all in one go – I split it into several visits. Initially, I thought I'd make it three stays – two months long each time – but after my first visit, I already knew that was way too little time. The first visit allowed me to get into the community, but it was still just scratching the surface. I was only beginning to realize who was who and which issues I found interesting, but I didn't even manage to conduct one interview. Not because the people of Auroville are wary of strangers or don't want to talk to outsiders. They are simply very busy. Sometimes, they told me they could meet me in three months from now, which was why I needed more time. Aurovillians don't have whole days at their disposal to spend talking to reporters and journalists, of whom many visit. The city saw a surge of journalists in 2018 when it was celebrating 50 years of existence. I was in a more comfortable situation, as I had arrived in Auroville a year before. It was a good time to start working on my project. Over the course of my first two months there, I realized the subject could fill the entire book. The next two months gave me my first interactions with the main characters of the story. That was when I decided to go back there for eight more months – also because I just wanted to experience normal life in Auroville. Did you know that in total, I spent four years working on this subject?</p>
<p><strong>That's a long time. You wrote that at some point, you thought about staying in Auroville for good.</strong></p><p>If you live somewhere for a year and, due to the nature of your job, you try to get to know it in-depth, understand it, learn as much as possible about it, at some point, you get really drawn in. It's natural to ask yourself whether you would like to stay there.</p><p><strong>You had to dig deep into the memories of Aurovillians, but in your book, you point out that those who reach the community today are not focused on the city's past. Where did you find documents on the history part of your book if they don't teach the history of Auroville in their schools?</strong></p><p>I did it bit by bit, in snippets. Of course, I looked for information in books about the first years of Auroville – in the Pioneer's biographies and in my interviews with them. However, some things reached me as single sentences, dropped during my trips around Auroville, for example. This way, I learned about the conflict that divided the community in the 1970s, and I started researching it. If you keep asking, then sooner or later you will get some answers. But at first I didn't even know myself what I was looking for. I grasped at various threads, arranged meetings and interviews, not knowing whether they'd take me anywhere at all. I often felt like I was stumbling in the dark. On the one hand, I knew what interested me and what questions to ask. On the other hand, I had no idea where it was going to lead me and what story I was going to tell. As if I was wandering around a labyrinth with many exits, each of them leading towards a completely different landscape. This experience was radically different from what I discovered when working on <em>Ganbare!</em>. In that book, it was obvious that I was writing about ways of handling trauma and loss. That was the core of my conversations and the people I chose to feature in that book. And here, everyone – not only an Aurovillian but someone just passing through Auroville as well – could be a potential character. The breakthrough came when I met Auroson, the first child of Auroville. He was the first aurochild and the first new human.</p><p><strong>When exactly did you meet?</strong></p><p>I found out about him during my second visit to Auroville. We made contact, but we did not meet at that time. In November 2017, when I came over for eight months, we were already in touch on a regular basis. We talked for many hours, and we became friends.</p><p><strong>Who were your sources?</strong></p><p>I divided them into two groups: those who could tell me their personal stories and those who could explain how Auroville handles the development of society. That is – how Aurovillians work on changing the system, how they look for solutions and which solutions have already been put to the test. When talking to the former, I wanted to know what made them come to Auroville. I also looked for people from both sides of the conflict that divided the community. I was very fortunate, since many of the Pioneers came back to celebrate the city's 50th anniversary. Most of those interviews did not appear in the book since they were very similar and repetitive: arrival at the city, meeting the Mother, transformation, then life in the desert. As for the latter group, I wanted to know what Auroville does about various areas of life that it wants to improve, such as education, management, economy, architecture, culture, health and nutrition. I tried to meet with the people responsible for urban planning, with farmers, teachers, mediators, and with people who were brought up in Auroville since early childhood, at various stages of its existence. In order to draw in the children, I organized a creative writing class in one of the schools, but it was not very successful. Only one girl came back.</p><p><strong>Congratulations!</strong></p><p>Thank you. Discouraging people from writing is a very useful thing to do.</p><p><strong>In your book, you admitted that you didn't talk to everyone you wanted to interview. You didn't find the courage to chat to Jurgen, even though you had spent several months waiting for him in a café. It's a very honest admission for a reporter. Did you get cold feet?</strong></p><p>I turned out to be a reporter who's afraid of people. No, I did not speak to him. At that moment, it was more than I could have dealt with. It's not like I was waiting there just for him. The 'café', or rather a tea-serving booth, was a place I had already frequented earlier, before someone said: "Oh, you must talk to Jurgen." I started coming more often, Jurgen was never there, and when he finally showed up, I was taken by surprise, so instead of coming up to him and introducing myself, I just kept on drinking my tea. I was not in the mood for talking, and I found him a little intimidating, too. I could have always spoken with him later, after all. This happened several times. In the end, I found it embarrassing to start a conversation at that point. What would I even say? "You know what, Jurgen, I've been sitting here smiling at you, and it's lovely to drink tea in silence together, but I'm actually a reporter and I've heard of you before. Could we talk about your life now?" I realized that I don't have to come up to him. That not everything in my life has to revolve around doing research for my book. Sometimes, it's good to let it go. I felt similar about a certain woman. I waited three months to talk to her, and then it turned out I couldn't make conversation with her – she just frightened me.</p><p><strong>Did you learn any other hard lessons while writing about Auroville?</strong></p><p>It was difficult to decide whom I should describe and how to do it. I resolved not to write about my friends (whose stories were fascinating, and I would have loved to tell them, but I could not do it precisely because of our friendship). The relationship you establish with someone as a book interviewee is different than a relationship with a friend. This could also lead to a grudge; perhaps some of the things they shared were said in confidence granted by our friendship, and only some were meant for publication? It was also important for them to know whether I viewed them as friends or just book material. Auroson was the only exception to this rule, but our relationship was clear from the very beginning. Still, we became very close and sometimes I was not quite sure whether I was talking to him as a reporter or as a friend.</p><p>In Auroville, I came across one more difficulty that I didn't have to deal with in Japan: here, many people simply refused to meet with me. In Japan, it was also easier for me to conduct the interviews, as they were all focused on just one topic. I arrived at a place wrecked by a tsunami, a place recovering from a trauma. Both I and the main characters of my book were clear on what we were going to discuss. In Auroville, it was much more difficult. I had to serve as a guide to a conversation whose topic was incredibly broad. I sought out turning points in a person's life, something that made them chase their dreams, but I also looked for something that defined them, showed who they were, where they started and where they arrived. So I could have said: "Tell me all about your life, since your birth until now, and only then will I start asking you more detailed questions." Of course, this was usually impossible. Therefore, the course of the interviews usually depended on how aware my interviewees were of the turning points of their lives.</p><p>In Japan, it was obvious that our conversations were all built around the events of 11th March 2011 and everything that came after. People exposed their emotions in front of me, but they did not have to look for some meta-level inside themselves that would allow them to view their lives from an observer's perspective. My role is to facilitate entering that level with my questions. In Japan, I knew what questions to ask. In Auroville, I had no idea.</p><p>On top of that, the question about the meaning of our existence was always hanging right there in front of us, and that's the most difficult question to handle, as it provokes banalities. Especially when writing a reportage on spirituality. There was one more problem at hand – I realized I find it easier to write about strong, painful emotions. They're so overwhelming that they turn out to be enough to draw readers into the story. In Auroville, there is no drama. All we get is mundane day-to-day life. I had to problematize it and find a way of describing it so that it remained interesting and absorbing, despite its lack of emotional highs and lows.</p><p><strong>Do you think Auroville's existence makes sense today?</strong></p><p>Yes and no. I think it depends on how we approach this city. After all, we don't need Auroville to change the world or to work on becoming better versions of ourselves. It's not like the world won't survive without it. Auroville has no importance to the world. Seeing how India – and the world in general – has moved forwards, we must keep in mind that Auroville has become somewhat stagnant, especially when it comes to technology. Still, just because I lived there doesn't mean I understand everything that happens there. I keep asking questions. I think that Auroville is not pointless, because there are people still coming there today, wanting to try the thing it has to offer. This way, they can take something out of it, other than various ecological solutions – for example, they can discover that they don't need Auroville to change. But this city provides an impulse, teaching them to ask the right questions. In my opinion, Auroville shows that change, while being slow and difficult, is actually possible. It requires enormous open-mindedness, endurance and conviction. The fact that changes happen so slowly is less comforting; today, we need changes to take place much more swiftly. But perhaps it would happen faster if more people worked to make them come true?</p><p><strong>So how is the 1968 utopia different from the 2018 utopia?</strong></p><p>The premise remains the same, but it's the concept that was successful, not the city itself. The final vision is so vague that everything can work out – there is no ultimate goal, no ideal you strive to achieve. All we get is a clue: creating a place of human unity. Of course, it was said in advance that the city would reach its peak once it housed 50,000 people. Next, we would have to set up more communities until they covered the entire globe. But this recipe provided no measures. You have to try and figure it out yourself to make it happen. Auroville is not an escape from reality, because here, everyone takes responsibility for their actions. Everything is clear from the very beginning. Even the omnipresent Mother had no rigid guidelines to follow.</p><p><strong>What was your relationship with Mother?</strong></p><p>I don't want to say who Mother was. But it is thanks to her that Auroville exists at all today. She convinced UNESCO and 124 countries to support its conception. She was a charismatic woman, a woman who could change people's lives with just one look. She kept on changing their lives even after she passed away – many Aurovillians insist they can still feel Mother looking after them. I didn't manage to establish a relationship with Mother. It's not like I didn't try to. Today I think I respect her, although I did not like her at first. I had my doubts about her, precisely because I saw her as a cult guru. Even though she is no longer alive, everyone – even those who are not very religious – keep referring to her words. I found Mother unsettling. Perhaps it was because I had never met someone so charismatic, even though I know such people do exist. She could evoke genuinely extreme emotions in people. When telling me about their meetings with Mother, Aurovillians had tears in their eyes. And yet, I didn't trust her, as I didn't trust the whole narrative that grew around her. On top of it, she stared at me from the photographs almost everywhere I went. As if she actually was the Mother of the People. I felt invigilated. I saw no love in her gaze.</p><p><strong>Sometimes, people who have met John Paul II say they experienced similar emotions.</strong></p><p>Yes, I also thought of this comparison when I was thinking about other charismatic people I might know. I think that meetings with John Paul II evoked similar emotions: elation, understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, concern, tenderness, love. People who describe their experience of meeting a person they considered charismatic often report it in a very similar way. I did not feel comfortable around Mother, but I knew I could not write my book without her.</p><p><strong>The structure of your book is very purposeful. From the very beginning, we don't know what to expect and how the story will unfold. Was that your conscious writing choice when you started to put it all together?</strong></p><p>No, it emerged during the writing process. I knew I wanted to write the story of a city through the stories of its people and that each of these stories had to push the city's story forward. But I had no idea what the final form would be. It was the same with <em>Ganbare!</em> – I had two drafts ready before I understood how to make a book out of them. In this case, there were even more drafts to work on.</p><p><strong>Your book ends with a brutal statement about what life is.</strong></p><p>Perhaps I needed Auroville to understand that.</p><p><em>Parts of this interview have been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.</em></p><p><em></em>Reprinted with permission of <a target="_blank" href="https://przekroj.pl/en/">Przekrój</a>. Read the <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/society/i-dont-believe-in-blind-idealism-stasia-budzisz" target="_blank">original article</a>. </p>
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Want Americans to graduate college? Make it affordable.
Research from MIT's School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative found making college more affordable cut dropout rates and boosted degree attainment.
29 December, 2020
Credit: Adobe Stock
Politics & Current Affairs
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<p>The <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/11/6-key-findings-about-going-to-college/" target="_blank">benefits bestowed by a college degree</a> are well-known. Degrees open access to job opportunities and, with them, economic stability. The average earning potential of a college graduate is roughly twice that of someone with only a high school diploma. Graduates are less likely to live in poverty, more likely to be married, and more likely to be satisfied with their life and career choices. And the number of jobs that require a degree or postsecondary school training <a href="https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/recovery-job-growth-and-education-requirements-through-2020/" target="_blank">continue to increase</a>.</p><p>Many Americans can recite this litany, yet when it comes to attaining college degrees, the United States is woefully behind its Western peers. According to <a href="https://www.ed.gov/college" target="_blank">the U.S. Department of Education</a>, America was the world leader in degree attainment by young adults a generation ago. Today, it ranks thirteenth. Nearly half of students who begin college don't finish within six years, with <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/eight-economic-facts-on-higher-education/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a quarter of low-income students</a> dropping out by their second year. </p><p>Meanwhile, tuition continues to rise. Even after adjusting for inflation, the costs of attending a four-year public school have doubled in only three decades. Such ballooning expenses have spearheaded <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/12/how-student-debt-became-a-1point6-trillion-crisis.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a $1.6 trillion student debt crisis</a>.</p><p>For many young people looking toward a brighter future, college has become a gateway locked from the inside. As the Department of Education concluded: "Today, college remains the greatest driver of socioeconomic mobility in America, but if we don't do more to keep it within reach for middle-class families and those striving to get into the middle class, it could have the opposite effect."</p><p>Research has looked into the predicament and now suggests a daring, counterintuitive means of increasing degree completion among young people: We make college affordable.</p>
The study groups
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDk1OTU2OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NzYyMjgyMH0.HoOUfA4eXLgFltk-M_Mu3E3qORUh2shzeYoVa3wk86E/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C237%2C0%2C237&height=700" id="861dd" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cfef9e15abee21ae82c46b76199c4436" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />An aerial view of MIT and Harvard Bridge. The university's School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative partnered with the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation for the study.
Credit: Adobe Stock
<p>The study comes from <a href="https://seii.mit.edu/" target="_blank">MIT's School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative</a>. Its researchers wanted to determine the effect scholarships had on degree attainment. As they put it, </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Financial aid is typically motivated by a desire to increase postsecondary attainment by making college more affordable. This raises the question of whether aid meets this test by boosting educational attainment. As with any sort of award or subsidy, it's worth considering the extent to which financial aid changes behavior. The fact that aid is motivated by the desire to increase schooling does not mean aid programs accomplish this."</p><p>To test this question, they partnered with <a href="https://buffettscholarships.org/" target="_blank">the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation</a>, an organization that offers scholarships to first-time freshman attending public colleges in Nebraska. The researchers designed a partially randomized study around the Foundation's 2012–2016 scholarship applicants, a cohort of roughly 16,500 students seeking aid. </p><p>Because low-scoring applicants were unlikely to complete college, they were not provided a scholarship and were removed from the study. Similarly, while high-scoring applicants were awarded a scholarship, they too were removed from the study as their degree completion was likely with or without the financial abetment. This left a middle pool of applicants, each sporting a comparable level of need and college-readiness.</p><p>The Foundation awarded scholarships randomly to this middle group of applicants; those who did not receive scholarships served as the controls. Because the number of applicants far exceeded the available aid, no student was artificially denied a scholarship for the study's sake. All told, the study included 3,699 scholarship-awarded participants and 4,491 controls. Most sought degrees at four-year colleges though some matriculated into two-year schools.</p><p>As this group was comparable in areas such as GPA, colleges attended, and expected family contributions, any statistically significant difference between the recipients and the controls would provide some evidence of a causal connection between financial aid and degree attainment.</p>Easing the six-year itch
<p>The researchers followed the students' college careers, from freshman year to spring 2019, and found that the scholarships did change behavior. Enrollment was only slightly higher for the aid recipients than the controls—98.7 percent compared to 96.1—but as the two groups' college careers continued, a noticeable difference emerged in dropout rates. By the end of their fourth year, only 71.6 percent of the control group remained, a dropout rate of 24.5 percent; meanwhile, the scholarship group only declined by 18 percent.</p><p>The scholarships also bolstered degree completion. Though bachelor degree completion was roughly even by the end of the fourth year, the aid recipients began to pull ahead after that. By the end of their sixth year, 71 percent of the award recipients received their degree, 8.4 percentage points more than the control. This suggests that as degree completion began to drag on longer, the infusion of extra financial resources made the final push more manageable.</p><p>The researchers not only found that aid promotes full-time enrollment, but that it benefitted historically underrepresented groups most, including non-white and first-generation applicants. These findings support a <a href="https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/100548" target="_blank">growing</a> <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED545465.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">body</a> of <a href="https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/12507/Shulenburger_University.pdf;sequence=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">research</a> that suggests college affordability directly impacts student decision-making and degree attainment.</p><p>The study, titled "<a href="https://seii.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2020.06-Angrist-Autor-Pallais.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Marginal Effects of Merit Aid for Low-Income Students</a>," is part of an ongoing research study. Additional reports will be released as the study continues.</p>What does college affordability mean?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2f032882b6038c7d6734ac69f95fbb69"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qZTnmMxnU0A?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Scholarships are one way of making college more affordable, but they are part of a much larger conversation as to what affordability means.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/24/why-college-tuition-keeps-rising.html" target="_blank">ballooning cost of tuition</a> in recent decades is another concern. Factors for this surge include a massive increase in demand, cuts in state funding, new student services, and <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/executive-compensation-at-public-and-private-colleges/#id=table_public_2019" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">bloated administrative compensation</a>. While colleges could certainly rein in some of their more extravagant expenses, and legislators agree to fund more, <a href="https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/publications/ideas_summit/College_Affordability-What_Is_It_and_How_Can_We_Measure_It.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the question of affordability</a> goes further still. </p><p>It concerns the quality of education, whether students are dependent or independent, their resources before matriculating, what they can expect from the investment after graduation, and how much of their future income they are willing (or able) to pay. The calculus must also consider <a href="https://bigthink.com/kenzie-academy/software-engineering-school" target="_self">available alternatives</a>, their costs, and their potential outcomes. It's a multifaceted balancing act between what's available, what students can afford, and what schools can offer with the resources they have available—which, of course, ties directly to the funds that schools have available. </p><p>In <a href="https://www.higheredtoday.org/2017/05/16/think-college-affordability/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an op-ed for Higher Education Today</a><em>, </em>Susan Baum, a senior fellow in the Education Policy Program at the Urban Institute, correctly points out that a "low-cost program designed purely to train people for an occupation that is unlikely to exist in 10 years, while appearing 'affordable,' is not affordable at all."</p><p>So then, how should we think about college affordability?</p><p>Baum recommends we start the conversation with need-based considerations at the forefront. "The financial resources available to a student at the time of enrollment are critical. Students have very different starting points for measuring outcomes and value depending on their circumstances," Baum writes. But it also requires us to think beyond funding; we need to consider the resources colleges need to provide a valuable education as well as the types of experiences that students want. </p><p>If we want more students to graduate, we need to discover the right balance between moderate spending, need-based aid, and program quality, a balance that will make college accessible to all who desire to attend.</p>
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The little brother of war: The history of lacrosse
For the Iroquois, it was a type of military training and a way to honor the gods.
29 December, 2020
George Catlin, Wikimedia Commons
Culture & Religion
Lacrosse, North America's oldest sport, goes far beyond the contemporary idea of a team sport.
<p>For the Iroquois, it was a type of military training, and a way to honor the gods.</p><p>Long, long ago, only the quadrupeds played lacrosse, against the birds. The leaders of the first team were the bear, the deer and the turtle; of the second, the owl, the hawk and the eagle. One time, not long after a match, the mouse and the squirrel visited the birds and asked whether they could join their team.</p><p>"Why don't you ask the quadrupeds?" the eagle asked.</p><p>"We did. They laughed at us because we're small," the mouse and the squirrel replied.</p><p>After long deliberations, the birds decided to accept the players, but they had to be equipped with wings. One of the birds suggested finding a drum, taking off the skin and attaching it to the mouse's legs. And thus was born the bat. Wanting to test their new player, they threw the ball up. It turned out that the bat could keep it in the air, with great control. The owl, hawk and eagle decided that the new player would strengthen their team. There was no skin left for the squirrel, and no time to find another drum, as the match was about to start.</p><p>"And maybe we could stretch the squirrel's skin?" the owl suggested.</p><p>And the birds pulled with all their might, from every direction, until they made the flying squirrel.</p><p>The bear and the eagle started the match. The flying squirrel got the ball and passed to the hawk, who kept it in the air for a while, but made an error in the end, and it was almost stolen by the deer. At the last moment, the eagle took the ball. He faked a pass to the flying squirrel, but in the end passed the ball to the bat, who scored the winning goal.</p><p>This legend (in slightly varying versions) has been told for centuries by the Indigenous peoples of North America. The moral of the story is that regardless of size and strength, one day anybody can come in handy.</p>
<h3>Sticks like crosiers</h3><p>We don't know what exactly the French Jesuit Jean de Brébeuf saw when in 1637 he travelled through what is now the Canadian province of Ontario. He saw people behaving strangely – neither fighting nor playing. His attention was drawn to the sticks they held. They reminded him of a bishop's crosier – in French, a <em>crosse</em>. That's the name De Brébeuf gave to this activity, unknown in Europe. But he didn't devote a great deal of space to it in his memoirs. There was no information on the rules, the number of players or gameplay. It's possible that the reason was simply the missionary's approach to foreign games – he treated them with contempt, and believed them to be anti-Christian. Additionally, the games were an occasion for increased alcohol consumption, and gambling for horses, weapons and clothes; it even happened that the losers were left with nothing at all.</p><p>Another source of doubt concerning De Brébeuf's discovery is that the Indigenous North Americans played many games in which a ball and stick were important; they differed only in the details. The Cherokee played to 12 points; the Menominee to four; the Great Lakes tribes to three; and the Iroquois required different scores depending on the circumstances and the stakes. Usually the matches happened on land between villages, and lasted from sunrise to sunset (though there were also multi-day games). The pitch could be several kilometres long, and the goals hundreds of metres wide. Sometimes as many as 1000 people took part. The goal of the players equipped with sticks was to put into the net a ball made from wood, clay or deer skin. The detailed rules were set by the elders the day before each match.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTA5ODE2NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTQyNjEyNX0.VC2OvJrNslHKNJ5S9Ld4QwXs1jSLWzNciGMw7bkBc3A/img.jpg?width=980" id="4c1ca" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="66fdfac895eb494aecea501fc464ce8e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt=""Ball players", a hand-colored of people playing lacrosse lithograph by George Catlin" data-width="1400" data-height="1040" />
George Catlin, Wikimedia Commons
<h3>Power of muscles, power of ritual</h3><p>The Shawnee let women play, but only with their hands. Only the men used sticks. The Dakota didn't have any such prohibitions. They even allowed mixed matches, but for each male player there had to be five females (the women also competed among themselves). But these were exceptions; in most tribes, women were prohibited from coming near the pitch. Men whose wives were pregnant weren't considered for the team, as it was believed that they had transferred all their strength to the child and were greatly weakened. For three days before the match, the players were required to refrain from sex. Before the team left the village, the shamans sent scouts to make sure the way was clear – enemies could leave something along the path that would weaken the players.</p><p>Before the match began, the players marked their bodies with charcoal; they believed this gave them strength. In clouds of sacred tobacco thrown onto a fire, they asked for supernatural strength to give them the eyesight of the hawk, the agility of the deer, the strength of the bear. But the most important were the sticks. The players paid them the same respect as they did to weapons. Before entering the pitch they smeared them with magical ointments, festooning them with amulets prepared by the shamans. The sticks were also placed in players' coffins so that they'd have equipment to play with in the afterlife. The reasons for playing a match were legion. It could be about maintaining relations with neighbours (after a game ended, a rematch was immediately agreed); rendering honour to the heavens, e.g. on behalf of an ill person (whose fate depended on the result); commemorating the dead. Matches could also be part of a funerary rite.</p><p>Lacrosse was also used to solve conflicts; the game was seen as a great method of keeping warriors in shape. Sometimes, during a match, the players stopped worrying about the ball and focused on each other. Confrontations switched instantly into wrestling or fistfights. Hence the Mohawk-speaking tribes called their version of lacrosse <em>begadwe</em>, or the 'little brother of war', and those who spoke Onondaga, <em>dehuntshigwa'es</em>: 'small war'.</p><p>The most spectacular example of using lacrosse during a battle was a manoeuvre by Ojibwa chief Minweweh in 1763. At that time, several tribes rose up against British rule, starting what became known as Pontiac's Rebellion. Since the springtime, the Sauks and Ojibwas had been passing through the Mackinac straits to Fort Michilimackinac, one of the strongest fortresses in the region, and one of the most difficult to capture. On 2nd June, unexpectedly for the British, a lacrosse match began. The tribes played outside the fort for several hours, when suddenly the play turned into an attack, and the players into warriors. The fort fell; 35 British soldiers perished. The capture of Michilimackinac turned out to be one of the most effective victories of the rebellion; the Europeans retook the fort only a year later.</p><h3>Ball and identity</h3><p>Men's teams have 10 players; women's have 12. The men play four quarters; the women, two halves. The men wear helmets and gloves, while the women have protective goggles. All of them carry sticks with a pouch-like net on the end. The object is to put the ball (slightly larger than a golf ball) into a square goal. That's how lacrosse looks today.</p><p>In 1860, the Montreal dentist William George Beers recorded the rules on paper for the first time. Since then, of course, many things have changed, but lacrosse has proven resistant to the disease of modernity. It hasn't been corrupted by money, as there's never been any. The best players are semi-pros, earning about $30,000 a year in America's Major League Lacrosse. Not a small amount, but compared to the millions that basketball, soccer, baseball and American football players cart off the field, it's nothing.</p><p>The presence of an Iroquois team at the world championships shows how lacrosse hasn't completely lost its character or its consciousness of its roots. The team can't compete in the Olympics or the World Cup (not that they have particularly tried); those events are only for nations with their own territory, recognized by the international community. The lacrosse world championships are different. It's the only event where the Iroquois can send a team, sing their anthem, show their colours. For them, this is probably even more important than sporting success measured by scores and medals (over three decades, they've only taken home two bronzes).</p><p>In 2010, the world championships were organized in Manchester in the UK. Right before they started, the British government announced that it wouldn't let players enter the country on their Iroquois passports (which the Confederation has been issuing for almost 100 years). When the team got stuck in New York, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed express issuance of American documents for the players; with US passports, they wouldn't have any problems at the border. The Iroquois deemed the idea an attack on their identity. They preferred to withdraw from the championship rather than taking part with passports from another state.</p><p><em>Translated from <a href="https://przekroj.pl/spoleczenstwo/mlodszy-brat-wojny-andrzej-kula" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Polish</a> by Nathaniel Espino.</em></p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a target="_blank" href="https://przekroj.pl/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="">Przekrój</a>. Read the <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/society/the-little-brother-of-war-andrzej-kula" target="_blank">original article</a>. </p>
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