the many Bachs

For some reason, I was thinking about all the dramatically different

ways in which people have seen and admired J.S. Bach since his own day.

  • There is Bach as a virtuouso improviser, the man who could sit

    down at a keyboard and swiftly invent a multi-part fugue on any

    theme. This is Bach as forerunner of a jazz musician, an exciting

    live performer.

  • There is Bach as pedagogue, the man who taught three sons who

    were much more successful than himself and who wrote great instructional

    works such as the "Well-Tempered Clavier." These musical

    texts have been consistently consulted by composers even when Bach’s

    other works were forgotten (for instance, in Mozart’s time).

  • There is Bach the profound spiritual master, the Lutheran churchman,

    the author of great narrative choral works such as the Passions,

    which realistically depict human emotions in relation to God’s providence.

    This is the Bach whom the Romantics admired most. They even disparaged

    the "Christmas Oratorio" because it recycled music from

    secular works—so it couldn’t be spiritually inspired.

  • There is Bach as an anti-Romantic, an unpretentious musical worker.

    Whereas Romantic musical geniuses were supposed to be free of all

    worldly motives and inspired only by Art, Bach happily turned out

    church music for every Sunday, often re-using material, borrowing

    from other sources, and making do with amateur performers. For this,

    he was admired by leftish anti-Romantics such as Paul Hindemith.

    If I recall correctly, Bertold Brecht used to call himself a Schreiber,

    not a Dichter—someone who makes his living by writing,

    not a literary Artist. The same could be said of Bach.

  • There is Bach as mathematical genius, author of technically and

    formally complex instrumental works, especially the "Musical

    Offering," that seem as other-wordly as mathematical proofs.

After writing a list like this, one is expected to say, "Of

course, Bach was all of these things, and that’s why he is

so great." I’m going to be a little less predictable and say

that Bach was all of these things, of course, but he was

at his greatest as the composer of narrative works that were grounded

in his understanding of human life and emotion.

the Net and participation

Right now, Hurricane Isabel is howling around us and most work has

ceased. The University has taken its server down, blessedly cutting

off my email. Yesterday afternoon, when the skies were still clear,

I met with Marty Kearns of Green

Media Toolshed, who is full of fascinating ideas about how the

Internet and other distributed technologies (including billboards

and buttons) can be used for political activism. Meanwhile, I was

reading reviews of Bruce Bimber and Richard Davis’ new book, Campaigning

Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections. Apparently, they argue

that the Internet is effective for mobilizing strongly committed partisans,

but it does not increase net participation in politics and elections.

This is consistent with CIRCLE research on young people, and also

with my predictions in a 2002 essay

on the Internet and politics.

Marty Kearns makes me optimistic about the political power of digital

technologies and their value for progressive organizations. But I

also worry about the chief barrier to participation. It’s not the

digital divide, or technological literacy, or the power of major media

companies to constrain the ways that the Internet is used. It’s rather

the lack of motivation to participate politically—the lack of

identity as citizens—among many marginalized people. In the

past, people developed that kind of identity and motivation by enrolling

in disciplined organizations with strong cultures: unions, political

parties, religious denominations. I’m not convinced that we’ve found

replacements for such organizations in the digital age.

mapping with kids

We’ve made it past the first stage of a grant competition to provide

funds for our local mapping

work with high school kids. That’s great news, except that now

I have to write a full proposal on short notice. Among other questions,

I need to answer this: "What is unusual about your project?"

We intend to help high school students who are not college-bound to

play leading roles in original scholarly research on a matter of public

importance, and see whether that work increases both their academic

skills and their civic commitment. The topic, which I’ve discussed

here before, is healthy nutrition and exercise and the degree to which

these outcomes are affected by the physical environment.

The Orton Foundation provides a great collection of youth-generated

maps at communitymap.org.

John Bridgeland

I spoke this morning at the 50th anniversary of the National

Conference on Citizenship. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) spoke

later, as did John Bridgeland, Executive Director of USA Freedom Corps

and advisor to President Bush. After Mr. Bridgeland spoke, someone

in the audience rose to say that he had just seen a car blatantly

stolen outside the hotel, and no one (except himself) had done anything

to try to stop it. His implication: We need to teach young people

good values, just like in the good old days. The standard politician

would take the bait and say that morals have declined, it’s a terrible

thing, but this administration is committed to character education.

John Bridgeland, however, is a thoughtful and sophisticated

guy, and he immediately recalled the game-theoretical explanation

of cases like this. For each person who witnesses the crime, the worst

outcome is that no one does anything to stop it. But the second-worst

outcome for each person is that he or she is the one who intervenes.

Chart the situation on a game-theorist’s grid, and you’ll see that

no one is likely to do anything. Mr. Bridgeland revealed that he was

thinking about game theory when he called the situation outside the

hotel a "chicken game." I found it appealing that he gave

an answer that was interesting, probably true, and that didn’t score

him any political points. (By the way, chicken games offer the most

useful advice ever generated by game theory. If you need immediate

assistance, don’t shout "help," to a crowd. Pick an individual

arbitrarily and say, "You, please help me.")

Public participation and the war on terror

Influenced

by Harry Boyte, I believe

that opportunities for people to contribute public goods have shrunk

over the last century. Government is increasingly "rational"

(in Weber’s sense): this means that important functions are divided

into specialized tasks and assigned to experts, who are given minimal

discretion. The government as a whole does good, but relatively few

people can gain deep personal satisfaction from their own public service.

Meanwhile, the private sector grows ever more efficient and competitive.

As a result, there are few niches for people who want to work in business

for partly public purposes. (An example would be the demise of the

old publishing houses, which were "for profit," but not

very efficient about it; editors saw themselves mainly as friends

of literature.)

The loss of opportunities for public work is unfortunate, because

we waste the talents and energies of millions of citizens. It also

means that people lose the very special satisfaction that comes from

creating public goods. And I believe that it partly explains the decline

of other forms of citizenship, such as voting and reading the newspaper.

People who don’t make public goods are less likely to participate

in other ways.

Now we face a national crisis, terrorism, and it seems worthwhile

to look for opportunities to involve many citizens in significant

public work. Only an expert on national security could tell us what

jobs people are equipped to do. Spying on our fellow citizens is not

a good idea (the damage to privacy and due process is too great).

Thus I offer some very ill-informed ideas about some other roles that

citizens might play. My main goal here is to provoke others to think

of better ideas:

  • The military personnel who are doing peace-keeping and nation-building

    work in Iraq are creating public goods. They are creative and improvisational,

    in the best tradition of public work. We should celebrate them as

    good citizens, and recognize the (non-martial) virtues that they are

    displaying—virtues that we also need in civilian life. Everyone

    wants Iraqis to play a larger role; but for the time being, let’s

    recognize that Americans are exemplifying citizenship in Iraq. (This

    is true even if the invasion was ill-advised or even illegal.) We

    also need ways to help veterans of Iraq to use their skills back home.

  • Citizens could deliberately learn strategic languages, such as Pashto

    or Malay; read newspapers and websites in those languages; and then

    post their own translations of key excerpts online. Their audience

    would be US experts in foreign affairs, and also fellow citizens who

    are trying to understand a complex world. Clearly, volunteers would

    have to learn these languages from someone. This suggests

    a great opportunity to employ immigrants as language teachers.

  • Citizens could assist in planning the emergency evacuation of major

    cities. Big highways would be quickly jammed after a catastophe, so

    we need to figure out how to move large numbers of people through

    side streets. Citizens could collect data on the capacity of each

    street segment to carry heavy traffic. Fed into GIS software, these

    data would show alternative evacuation routes.

  • There are many ways for citizens to work together to conserve oil,

    thereby reducing our dependence on middle eastern sources.

    I’m sure there are better ideas than these. It’s a shame that our

    creativity and dedication were not tapped soon after 9/11, when

    people were desperate to serve. But it’s not too late.