X Times Seven Equals Life

It's one of the best research documentary ideas ever. And it makes for some of the most fascinating television I've ever watched. I wish I had a similar record of my own family, my own communities. Apparently the model has been copied in several countries around the world, including the US, Russia, and South Africa, but until doing a little web-surfing for this blog post, I’d never heard of any of them. Certainly it’s a model worth copying, as it offers up a treasure trove of insights into the journey through life and the human condition. And talk about “reality television”!

 

What I'm referring to is the 7-Up series of documentaries that began in 1964 in England, a product of Granada Television’s World in Action series  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series). Seeking to explore the truth of the maxim: "Show me a child at seven and I will show you the Man", Michael Apted, then a twenty-two year old researcher, selected a group of seven year olds, from the privileged and the underprivileged classes. Apted has noted his regret that he chose no strictly "middle class" children. Also, there are fewer females than males, and except for one bi-racial boy, no minorities were represented. He says that at the time he “wanted to make a nasty piece of work about these kids who have it all, and these other kids who have nothing.”

 

The children were interviewed, asked a range of questions about money, class, race, whether they wanted marriage and children, and where they saw themselves in the future. It was conducted with the view to catching a glimpse of what British society might be in the year 2000. It was originally conceived as a one-off, though apparently the original show included this post credits narration: "If you want to know what happens to these children, watch Granada Television on Tuesday 2nd May in the year 2000.”

 

What actually happened proved way more interesting than even that thought-provoking tease. Because, when 1970 rolled around, Apted, now in the role of director, tracked down the children – now fourteen – and interviewed them again. By 1977, at the third go-round, the potential and promise of the exercise really began to show itself. Some of the twenty-one year olds were exactly what their seven year old versions had hinted at, but others were startlingly different. I won’t spoil it for you, but seeing the change in Neil, from 7 to 14, then on to 21, can’t but make you wonder what happened in his young life to cause such a transformation.

 

Apted, who eventually moved to Hollywood, where he directed such fare as “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, “Gorillas in the Mist”, “Thunderheart” and “Nell”, returned every seven years to track down the fourteen children and create another episode in the Up series. From time to time, one or another of them has refused to participate. One of the 14 hasn’t participated since he was twenty-one, though, ironically, he’s become a documentary film-maker himself.

 

The series has continued right up to the present, the latest episode, broadcast in 2012, catching up with the “kids” at age 56. I can’t recall for certain whether I was introduced to the series when the participants were 21 or 28, but being just two years their senior, I feel as though I’ve been taking my life journey right alongside them. One can’t help but contrast and compare, not only them against one another, but also against one’s self. But I imagine that this is the case whatever a viewer’s age.

 

Despite Apted’s original, incendiary intention, the series did not mature as a political piece. While there’s certainly lots of room for partisan or sociological analysis, it stands as a much more personal exploration of life’s challenges and rewards, its small joys and the abundance of sacrifices it demands of us. Watching the show, you develop affection for some, perhaps judgement of others. You empathize, mourn, smile along with. You understand.

 

I’ve missed episodes through the years, but have always caught up when I had the chance. And now, the entire series – except for the very last episode – is available on Netflix! A great feature of the presentation is that each episode contains clips from all of the previous episodes. This is an invaluable aide when several years separate viewings. When binge-watching the entire series on Netflix, they can become pretty repetitive. But even with that small drawback, I can’t recommend this series strongly enough. Though its diversity is limited in being set within the mono-culture of a single, European country, there is a deep universality to this series. It will give you much to think about: How much are we all conditioned to live the lives we lead? To what extent are we free to remake ourselves, and to what extent are we subject to the whims of circumstance? To the extent that we have choices, what have we made of them? How might we have done better, or worse? How have we touched the lives of others, and how have our lives been touched by them? And, the one that is ever present, for us and for the fourteen kids of 1964, on and off the screen, what lies ahead?

 

On Incompleteness & Missing Pieces

           Over the last few weeks I’ve amassed a number of drafts of pieces that never made it into my blog. They are all pieces I wanted to post, but which fell short is some way or another, most often because they are incomplete.

          Incompleteness, I’ve come to recognize, is one of the unavoidable – and annoyingly common – aspects of life. I’ve written here about my frustrations with time, how there never seems to be enough of it, my struggle with finding balance, so as to keep up on all the important commitments and interests in my life. But this focus on time and balance, as though there were some skill set that would eliminate incompleteness from my life, is a false hope, a distraction from the reality that nothing in life can simply be captured, contained or managed in a complete way.

          So much of the great literature is about this essential incompleteness, isn’t it? The Brothers Karamazov, Macbeth, The Foundation Trilogy all take a view on this. Perec's Life: A User’s Manual presents an achingly beautiful view of the incomplete jig-saw puzzle that life is. All of those books that present a character who has it all figured out, or with a vision of attaining “the perfect life”, such as The Mosquito Coast or Invisible Man, or Crime & Punishment end up exploring the failure to contain or control life, or incompleteness.

          At this point, I recognize that few if any of my ‘drafted’ blogs will make it to post. And so, rather than leave their content totally unexpressed, I’m aiming here for a kind of distillation, one I hope will manage to unite them thematically in some way, and thereby, take us almost in the opposite direction from incompleteness, toward gestalt, that other beautiful and inescapable characteristic of reality, namely, that a whole will amount to more than simply the sum of its parts.

          Among the things I’ve draft-blogged about are: the comical nightmare of political life in Toronto, under our bobble-head, buffoon king mayor, Rob Ford; the overzealous application of political correctness when a white school vice principal dared to costume himself as Mr. T., using blackface; and finally, the injustice faced by a young couple I work with, whose child is in the care of the Catholic Children’s Aide Society.

          But, before I try to concoct this mixture of themes, a final word on “Incompleteness”. I first came upon this quality as a subject for serious study in Douglas Hofstadter’s absolutely brilliant book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal, Golden Braid, written in 1979 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize. On one level, this is a book about something not even remotely hinted at by its title, that being artificial intelligence. On another level, it’s a philosophical game book, that pulls you inside of a wonderful medley of musical play, zen koans, Aesop’s fables, and surrealist art. But fundamentally, it’s an exploration of Kurt Gödel’s “Incompleteness Theorem”, which tells us that no system or science or tool that seeks to offer a complete explanation of the world will ever succeed. And further, that the place where this system or tool’s failure will be most evident is where it attempts to explain itself. Well...something like that. (I confess that the mathematical sections of this book lost me, but DON’T LET THAT DETER YOU FROM READING IT. Just skip over the hard parts, like I did!)

          There have always been arguments about the dangers of taking very precise, scientific notions and applying them broadly to social, cultural or political areas. Witness the ways that ‘social’ Darwinism has been used to justify racial hierarchies, or the way ‘relativity’ theory has been used to excuse all sorts of behaviors. So yes, apply with caution. But, for me, a recognition of life’s essential incompleteness has served, not unlike Solomon’s “I have seen everything under the sun...and all is vanity and striving after wind”, to comfort and reassure me. Yes, I am human, my reach is small, I will die...so don’t be so hung up about not finishingd that short story!

          Now onto my ‘draft blogs’. But I’ve spent so much time on this introduction, I now feel that I’ll have to be brief about it.

          What a bit of nonsense, suspending a vice-principal and initiating an investigation, because he appeared at a Halloween function dressed as Mr. T. and in blackface. Now, as a fifty-nine year old, Black, American male who grew up through the civil rights era, I can surely understand that the very mention of blackface will give one reason to pause and consider. But after considering, what then? Is some item or act, because once associated with a hateful system, always to be despised? I don’t think so. Dressing up as other people is what happens at Halloween. I don’t see that there’s anything offensive or embarrassing about Mr. T., such that masquerading as him is racist.

          Then you have Mayor Rob Ford, who, if a high school vice-principal would’ve been fired long ago, for any one of dozens of acts and statements, including his public drunkenness, admission to buying and using illegal drugs while in office, and any number of questionable comments. I wish Ford were gone. I’ve never felt that he was broad or deep enough in his understanding of social issues to be a good leader for this city. And as much as I fault Ford for his very selfish refusal to step down from office, there is a small degree to which I applaud the theoretical separation of a person’s human frailties from their ability to competently hold a representative position in government. The facts of him having addiction issues, being cartoonish, or making embarrassing, personal statements should not, in and of themselves, be grounds for removal from office. (And I actually find it as ridiculous as the overreaction to blackface, that some people referenced his comments about eating pussy as obscene or misogynist. Come ON, people!)

          The couple I work with, that is trying so hard to get its now 5 month old child away from Catholic Children’s Aide, is another instance of misapplied standards. These are such invaluable months in the bonding and development of a child. And this couple would likely never have come under scrutiny but for the SIDS death of their first child a year ago (for which they were deemed not responsible after investigation). Now, not only are they victim to the achingly slow legal process involved in demonstrating their worthiness to parent, they are also being held to standards far beyond any that can be considered reasonable in this day and age. Such as, that the father, a practicing Rastafarian, be tested as free from marijuana use for 3 and a half months, before they can have their son in their care. Were this standard to be applied to all parents, I suspect that we’d have more than 30% of kids in Children’s Aide custody.

          Threads that these items share are the ways in which we judge and are judged by others. And it relates to the broader theme of incompleteness in that few, if any of our judgements are rendered with complete knowledge. We try to stay on top of things, to make decisions and judgements that uphold our deepest values and that support health and respect and well-being. But so often, our judgements come down to guesses and feelings and biases. Referring back to the young couple again, it seems certain that the Catholic Children’s Aide Society is testing their readiness to parent with such fervor because it has been knocked severely in recent months for failing to identify abusive situations in which children suffered.

          I hope this isn’t a depressing piece. I didn’t intend it to be. But it does represent a kind of surrender. I’ll not manage to write here about all the things I’d like to write about, even if at times I feel my well has run dry. And what I do take on won’t be covered exhaustively. It will merely represent a pulling together of some of the thoughts and impressions (maybe even a fact or two) I have in a moment in time. And even that passing moment will defy any containing or explaining. I find this an almost liberating view. It points to the fullness and richness in things. This “incompleteness” isn’t something in the world, really. It’s just a reminder of how huge and wide and miraculous the world really is.

Man, on a Pier, in the Dark

A friend of mine is drowning. He is angry, obsessed with the circumstances of his undoing, and with the ocean of indifference that washes over him, wave by wave, day in and day out. Maybe it's his anger that has kept him from drowning. Because he's determined to have justice. He did not place himself in this sea of troubles. He should not be here, but on firm land somewhere. Or in a boat at least, with a steady hand on the tiller, the power of the winds held comfortably in the fold of his sails.

My friend won't swim to shore, because drowning is his evidence, his proof of how he's been wronged. Difficult enough to get anyone to pay attention as it is, treading the deep dark waves, with only the occasional piece of floating detritus to lend a bit of buoyancy, while he lifts his voice in a roar, demanding his vengeance, his day of retribution. How much less chance of being heard once he is safe and dry again.

His story is that he was walking alone on a pier, in the dark. He was doing nothing more than passing his time, attending to nothing but to the stuff of his everyday, making it more real by remembering it after, or by looking ahead to what it would be. He could hear the surf, but could not see it. He felt the spray of the ocean across his face, a heavy, stinging blast occasionally slapping him out of inattention, to notice the chill in the air, the dampness gathering in the fabric of his thin jacket.

The truth is, he was aware of nothing more than a shape that brushed up against him. He will say that the shape was a man, and that the brush was a shove. He will say that he felt the malevolence, and further imagine that he was being stalked all the while he walked there, his aggressor waiting for the moment of his ripest vulnerability.

During his hours and days in the life-draining waters he has put various faces to the shadow. His past is peopled with enemies, declared and not, and with the envious, and with those secret agents of reasonless hate. And though he has no solid clues, my friend knows that, as there is logic and reason and justice in the world, when his day comes, he will point out his prosecutor and name him. He will no longer be shadow, but flesh, like his flesh, bone like his bone, with thoughts and dreams of his own, however twisted by spite. This tormentor will be named, and then will know how things come around, that there is a right order, and how courage prevails over slinking meanness. And on that day, in that future, my friend will be dry and content. Fulfilled.

But I say to my friend: swim instead. I ask him to raise his arm and to beat his anger usefully against the waves, then to do it again, until he is moving. I ask him to choose a direction in the blinding mist and foam, and to believe in that, instead of all the rest. Save yourself, I say to him, because there is no one else. All the rest are phantoms. I ask him...but you see, I'm not there, but only a whisper in the wind myself, which is nothing against the roar of nature he's battling, and the tumult of his own anger. That he will hear me is my own whispered wish, and only if dreams speak to one another is there a hope.